Equal Rites - Terry Pratchett	----	Equal Rites Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett Thanks to Neil Gaiman, who loaned us the last surviving copy of the Liber Paginarum Fulvarum, and a big hallo to all the kids at the H.P. Lovecraft Holiday Fun Club.   I would like it to be clearly understood that this book is not wacky. Only dumb redheads in fifties’ sitcoms are wacky.   No, it’s not zany, either. This is a story about magic and where it goes and perhaps more importantly where it comes from and why, although it doesn’t pretend to answer all or any of these questions. It may, however, help to explain why Gandalf never got married and why Merlin was a man. Because this is also a story about sex, although probably not in the athletic, tumbling, count-the-legs-and-divide-by-two sense unless the characters get totally beyond the author’s control. They might. However, it is primarily a story about a world. Here it comes now. Watch closely, the special effects are quite expensive. A bass note sounds. It is a deep, vibrating chord that hints that the brass section may break in at any moment with a fanfare for the cosmos, because the scene is the blackness of deep space with a few stars glittering like the dandruff on the shoulders of God. Then it comes into view overhead, bigger than the biggest, most unpleasantly armed starcruiser in the imagination of a three-ring film-maker: a turtle, ten thousand miles long. It is Great A’Tuin, one of the rare astrochelonians from a universe where things are less as they are and more like people imagine them to be, and it carries on its meteor-pocked shell four giant elephants who bear on their enormous shoulders the great round wheel of the Discworld. As the viewpoint swings around, the whole of the world can be seen by the light of its tiny orbiting sun. There are continents, archipelagos, seas, deserts, mountain ranges and even a tiny central ice cap. The inhabitants of this place, it is obvious, won’t have any truck with global theories. Their world, bounded by an encircling ocean that falls forever into space in one long waterfall, is as round and flat as a geological pizza, although without the anchovies. A world like that, which exists only because the gods enjoy a joke, must be a place where magic can survive. And sex too, of course. He came walking through the thunderstorm and you could tell he was a wizard, partly because of the long cloak and careen staff but mainly because the raindrops were stopping several feet from his head, and steaming. It was good thunderstorm country, up here in the Ramtop Mountains, a country of jagged peaks, dense forests and little river valleys so deep the daylight had no sooner reached the bottom than it was time to leave again. Ragged wisps of cloud clung to the lesser peaks below the mountain trail along which the wizard slithered and slid. A few slot-eyed goats watched him with mild interest. It doesn’t take a lot to interest goats. Sometimes he would stop and throw his heavy staff into the air. It always came down pointing the same way and the wizard would sigh, pick it up, and continue his squelchy progress. The storm walked around the hills on legs of lightning, shouting and grumbling. The wizard disappeared around the bend in the track and the goats went back to their damp grazing. Until something else caused them to look up. They stiffened, their eyes widening, their nostrils flaring. This was strange, because there was nothing on the path. But the goats still watched it pass by until it was out of sight. There was a village tucked in a narrow valley between steep woods. It wasn’t a large village, and wouldn’t have shown up on a map of the mountains. It barely showed up on a map of the village. It was, in fact, one of those places that exist merely so that people can have come from them. The universe is littered with them: hidden villages, windswept little towns under wide skies, isolated cabins on chilly mountains, whose only mark on history is to be the incredibly ordinary place where something extraordinary started to happen. Often there is no more than a little plaque to reveal that, against all ecological probability, someone very famous was born halfway up a wall. Mist curled between the houses as the wizard crossed a narrow bridge over the swollen stream and made his way to the village smithy, although the two facts had nothing to do with one another. The mist would have curled anyway: it was experienced mist and had got curling down to a fine art. The smithy was fairly crowded, of course. A smithy is one place where you can depend on finding a good fire and someone to talk to. Several villagers were lounging in the warm shadows but, as the wizard approached, they sat up expectantly and tried to look intelligent, generally with indifferent success. The smith didn’t feel the need to be quite so subservient. He nodded at the wizard, but it was a greeting between equals, or at least between equals as far as the smith was concerned. After all, any halfway competent blacksmith has more than a nodding acquaintance with magic, or at least likes to think he has. The wizard bowed. A white cat that had been sleeping by the furnace woke up and watched him carefully. “What is the name of this place, sir?” said the wizard. The blacksmith shrugged. “Bad Ass,” he said. “Bad - ?” “Ass,” repeated the blacksmith, his tone defying anyone to make something of it. The wizard considered this. “A name with a story behind it,” he said at last, “which were circumstances otherwise I would be pleased to hear. But I would like to speak to you, smith, about your son.” “Which one?” said the smith, and the hangers-on sniggered. The wizard smiled. “You have seven sons, do you not? And you yourself were an eighth son?” The smith’s face stiffened. He turned to the other villagers. “All right, the rain’s stopping,” he said. “Piss off, the lot of you. Me and -“ he looked at the wizard with raised eyebrows. “Drum Billet,” said the wizard. “Me and Mr. Billet have things to talk about.” He waved his hammer vaguely and, one after another, craning over their shoulders in case the wizard did anything interesting, the audience departed. The smith drew a couple of stools from under a bench. He took a bottle out of a cupboard by the water tank and poured a couple of very small glasses of clear liquid. The two men sat and watched the rain and the mist rolling over the bridge. Then the smith said: “I know what son you mean. Old Granny is up with my wife now. Eighth son of an eighth son, of course. It did cross my mind but I never gave it much thought, to be honest. Well, well. A wizard in the family, eh?” “You catch on very quickly,” said Billet. The white cat jumped down from its perch, sauntered across the floor and vaulted into the wizard’s lap, where it curled up. His thin fingers stroked it absentmindedly. “Well, well,” said the smith again. “A wizard in Bad Ass, eh?” “Possibly, possibly,” said Billet. “Of course, he’ll have to go to University first. He may do very well, of course.” The smith considered the idea from all angles, and decided he liked it a lot. A thought struck him. “Hang on,” he said. “I’m trying to remember what my father told me. A wizard who knows he’s going to die can sort of pass on his sort of wizardness to a sort of successor, right?” “I have never heard it put so succinctly, yes,” said the wizard. “So you’re going to sort of die?” “Oh yes.” The cat purred as the fingers tickled it behind the ear. The smith looked embarrassed. “When?” The wizard thought for a moment. “In about six minutes’ time.” “Oh.” “Don’t worry,” said the wizard. “I’m quite looking forward to it, to tell you the truth. I’ve heard it’s quite painless.” The blacksmith considered this. “Who told you?” he said at last. The wizard pretended not to hear him. He was watching the bridge, looking for tell-tale turbulence in the mist. “Look,” said the smith. “You’d better tell me how we go about bringing up a wizard, you see, because there isn’t a wizard in these parts and -“ . “It will all sort itself out,” said Billet pleasantly. “The magic has guided me to you and the magic will take care of everything. It usually does. Did I hear a cry?” The blacksmith looked at the ceiling. Above the splash of the rain he could make out the sound of a pair of new lungs at full bore. The wizard smiled. “Have him brought down here,” he said. The cat sat up and looked interestedly at the forge’s wide doorway. As the smith called excitedly up the stairs it jumped down and padded slowly across the floor, purring like a bandsaw. A tall white-haired woman appeared at the bottom of the stairs, clutching a bundle in a blanket. The smith hurried her over to where the wizard sat. “But -“she began. “This is very important,” said the smith importantly. “What do we do now, sir?” The wizard held up his staff. It was man-high and nearly as thick as his wrist, and covered with carvings that seemed to change as the smith looked at them, exactly as if they didn’t want him to see what they were. “The child must hold it,” said Drum Billet. The smith nodded, and fumbled in the blanket until he located a tiny pink hand. He guided it gently to the wood. It gripped it tightly. “But -“said the midwife. “It’s all right, Granny, I know what I’m about. She’s a witch, sir, don’t mind her. Right,” said the smith. “Now what?” The wizard was silent. “What do we don-“the smith began, and stopped. He leaned down to look at the old wizard’s face. Billet was smiling, but it was anyone’s guess what the joke was. The smith pushed the baby back into the arms of the frantic midwife. Then, as respectfully as possible, he unpried the thin, pale fingers from the staff. It had a strange, greasy feel, like static electricity. The wood itself was almost black, but the carvings were slightly lighter, and hurt the eyes if you tried to make out precisely what they were supposed to be. “Are you pleased with yourself?” said the midwife. “Eh? Oh. Yes. As a matter of fact, yes. Why?” She twitched aside a fold of the blanket. The smith looked down, and swallowed. “No,” he whispered. “He said -“ “And what would he know about it?” sneered Granny. “But he said it would be a son!” “Doesn’t look like a son to me, laddie.” The smith flopped down on his stool, his head in his hands. “What have I done?” he moaned. “You’ve given the world its first female wizard,” said the midwife. “Whosa itsywitsy, den?” “What?” “I was talking to the baby.” The white cat purred and arched its back as if it was rubbing up against the legs of an old friend. Which was odd, because there was no one there. “I was foolish,” said a voice in tones no mortal could hear. “I assumed the magic would know what it was doing.” PERHAPS IT DOES. “If only I could do something . . . .” THERE IS NO GOING BACK. THERE IS NO GOING BACK, said the deep, heavy voice like the closing of crypt doors. The wisp of nothingness that was Drum Billet thought for a while. “But she’s going to have a lot of problems.” THAT’S WHAT LIFE IS ALL ABOUT. SO I’M TOLD. I WOULDN’T KNOW, OF COURSE. “What about reincarnation?” Death hesitated. YOU WOULDN’T LIKE IT, he said. TAKE IT FROM ME. “I’ve heard that some people do it all the time.” YOU’VE GOT TO BE TRAINED TO IT. YOU’VE GOT TO START OFF SMALL AND WORK UP. YOU’VE NO IDEA HOW HORRIBLE IT IS TO BE AN ANT. “It’s bad?” YOU WOULDN’T BELIEVE IT. AND WITH YOUR KARMA AN ANT IS TOO MUCH TO EXPECT. The baby had been taken back to its mother and the smith sat disconsolately watching the rain. Drum Billet scratched the cat behind its ears and thought about his life. It had been a long one, that was one of the advantages of being a wizard, and he’d done a lot of things he hadn’t always felt good about. It was about time that .... I HAVEN’T GOT ALL DAY, YOU KNOW, said Death, reproachfully. The wizard looked down at the cat and realized for the first time how odd it looked now. The living often don’t appreciate how complicated the world looks when you are dead, because while death frees the mind from the straitjacket of three dimensions it also cuts it away from Time, which is only another dimension. So while the cat that rubbed up against his invisible legs was undoubtedly the same cat that he had seen a few minutes before, it was also quite clearly a tiny kitten and a fat, half-blind old moggy and every stage in between. All at once. Since it had started off small it looked like a white, catshaped carrot, a description that will have to do until people invent proper four-dimensional adjectives. Death’s skeletal hand tapped Billet gently on the shoulder. COME AWAY, MY SON. “There’s nothing I can do?” LIFE IS FOR THE LIVING. ANYWAY, YOU’VE GIVEN HER YOUR STAFF. “Yes. There is that.” The midwife’s name was Granny Weatherwax. She was a witch. That was quite acceptable in the Ramtops, and no one had a bad word to say about witches. At least, not if he wanted to wake up in the morning the same shape as he went to bed. The smith was still staring gloomily at the rain when she came back down the stairs and clapped a warty hand on his shoulder. He looked up at her. “What shall I do, Granny?” he said, unable to keep the pleading out of his voice. “What have you done with the wizard?” “I put him out in the fuel store. Was that right?” “It’ll do for now,” she said briskly. “And now you must burn the staff.” They both turned to stare at the heavy staff, which the smith had propped in the forge’s darkest corner. It almost appeared to be looking back at them. “But it’s magical,” he whispered. “Well?” “Will it burn?” “Never knew wood that didn’t.” “It doesn’t seem right!” Granny Weatherwax swung shut the big doors and turned to him angrily. “Now you listen to me, Gordo Smith!” she said. “Female wizards aren’t right either! It’s the wrong kind of magic for women, is wizard magic, it’s all books and stars and jommetry. She’d never grasp it. Whoever heard of a female wizard?” “There’s witches,” said the smith uncertainly. “And enchantresses too, I’ve heard.” “Witches is a different thing altogether,” snapped Granny Weatherwax. “It’s magic out of the ground, not out of the sky, and men never could get the hang of it. As for enchantresses,” she added. “They’re no better than they should be. You take it from me, just burn the staff, bury the body and don’t let on it ever happened.” Smith nodded reluctantly, crossed over to the forge, and pumped the bellows until the sparks flew. He went back for the staff. It wouldn’t move. “It won’t move!” Sweat stood out of his brow as he tugged at the wood. It remained unco-operatively immobile. “Here, let me try,” said Granny, and reached past him. There was a snap and a smell of scorched tin. Smith ran across the forge, whimpering slightly, to where Granny had landed upside down against the opposite wall. “Are you all right?” She opened two eyes like angry diamonds and said, “I see. That’s the way of it, is it?” “The way of what?” said Smith, totally bewildered. “Help me up, you fool. And fetch me a chopper.” The tone of her voice suggested that it would be a very good idea not to disobey. Smith rummaged desperately among the junk at the back of the forge until he found an old double-headed axe. “Right. Now take off your apron.” “Why? What do you intend to do?” said the smith, who was beginning to lose his grip on events. Granny gave an exasperated sigh. “It’s leather, you idiot. I’m going to wrap it around the handle. It’ll not catch me the same way twice!” Smith struggled out of the heavy leather apron and handed it to her very gingerly. She wrapped it around the axe and made one or two passes in the air. Then, a spiderlike figure in the glow of the nearly incandescent furnace, she stalked across the room and with a grunt of triumph and effort brought the heavy blade sweeping down right in the center of the staff. There was a click. There was a noise like a partridge. There was a thud. There was silence. Smith reached up very slowly, without moving his head, and touched the axe blade. It wasn’t on the axe any more. It had buried itself in the door by his head, taking a tiny nick out of his ear. Granny stood looking slightly blurred from hitting an absolutely immovable object, and stared at the stub of wood in her hands. “Rrrrightttt,” she stuttered: “Iiiinnn tthhatttt cccasseee -“ “No,” said Smith firmly, rubbing his ear. “Whatever it is you’re going to suggest, no. Leave it. I’ll pile some stuff around it. No one’ll notice. Leave it. It’s just a stick.” “just a stick?” “Have you got any better ideas? Ones that won’t take my head off?” She glared at the staff, which appeared not to notice. “Not right now,” she admitted. “But you just give me time -“ “All right, all right. Anyway, I’ve got things to do, wizards to bury, you know how it is.” Smith took a spade from beside the back door and hesitated. “Granny.” “What?” “Do you know how wizards like to be buried?” “Yes! “ “Well, how?” Granny Weatherwax paused at the bottom of the stairs. “Reluctantly.” Later, night fell gently as the last of the world’s slow light flowed out of the valley, and a pale, rain-washed moon shone down in a night studded with stars. And in a shadowy orchard behind the forge there was the occasional clink of a spade or a muffled curse. In the cradle upstairs the world’s first female wizard dreamed of nothing much. The white cat lay half-asleep on its private ledge near the furnace. The only sound in the warm dark forge was the crackle of the coals as they settled down under the ash. The staff stood in the corner, where it wanted to be, wrapped in shadows that were slightly blacker than shadows normally are. Time passed, which, basically, is its job. There was a faint tinkle, and a swish of air. After a while the cat sat up and watched with interest. Dawn came. Up here in the Ramtops dawn was always impressive, especially when a storm had cleared the air. The valley occupied by Bad Ass overlooked a panorama of lesser mountains and foothills, coloured purple and orange in the early morning light that flowed gently over them (because light travels at a dilatory pace in the Disc’s vast magical field) and far off the great plains were still a puddle of shadows. Even further off the sea gave an occasional distant sparkle. In fact, from here you could see right to the edge of the world. That wasn’t poetic imagery but plain fact, since the world was quite definitely flat and was, furthermore, known to be carried through space on the backs of four elephants that in turn stood on the shell of Great A’Tuin, the Great Sky Turtle. Back down there in Bad Ass the village is waking up. The smith has just gone into the forge and found it tidier than it has been for the last hundred years, with all the tools back in their right places, the floor swept and a new fire laid in the furnace. He is sitting on the anvil, which has been moved right across the room, and is watching the staff and is trying to think. Nothing much happened for seven years, except that one of the apple trees in the smithy orchard grew perceptibly taller than the others and was frequently climbed by a small girl with brown hair, a gap in her front teeth, and the sort of features that promised to become, if not beautiful, then at least attractively interesting. She was named Eskarina, for no particular reason other than that her mother liked the sound of the word, and although Granny Weatherwax kept a careful watch on her she failed to spot any signs of magic whatsoever. It was true that the girl spent more time climbing trees and running around shouting than little girls normally did, but a girl with four older brothers still at home can be excused a lot of things. In fact, the witch began to relax and started to think the magic had not taken hold after all. But magic has a habit of lying low, like a rake in the grass. Winter came round again, and it was a bad one. The clouds hung around the Ramtops like big fat sheep, filling the gulleys with snow and turning the forests into silent, gloomy caverns. The high passes were closed and the caravans wouldn’t come again until spring. Bad Ass became a little island of heat and light. Over breakfast Esk’s mother said: “I’m worried about Granny Weatherwax. She hasn’t been around lately.” Smith looked at her over his porridge spoon. “I’m not complaining,” he said. “She -“ “She’s got a long nose,” said Esk. Her parents glared at her. “There’s no call to make that kind of remark,” said her mother sternly. “But father said she’s always poking her -“ “Eskarina!” “But he said -“ “I said -“ “Yes, but, he did say that she had -“ Smith reached down and slapped her. It wasn’t very hard, and he regretted it instantly. The boys got the flat of his hand and occasionally the length of his belt whenever they deserved it. The trouble with his daughter, though, was not ordinary naughtiness but the infuriating way she had of relentlessly pursuing the thread of an argument long after she should have put it down. It always flustered him. She burst into tears. Smith stood up, angry and embarrassed at himself, and stumped off to the forge. There was a loud crack, and a thud. They found him out cold on the floor. Afterwards he always maintained that he’d hit his head on the doorway. Which was odd, because he wasn’t very tall and there had always been plenty of room before, but he was certain that whatever happened had nothing to do with the blur of movement from the forge’s darkest corner. Somehow the events set the seal on the day. It became a broken crockery day, a day of people getting under each other’s feet and being peevish. Esk’s mother dropped a jug that had belonged to her grandmother and a whole box of apples in the loft turned out to be moldy. In the forge the furnace went sullen and refused to draw. Jaims, the oldest son, slipped on the packed ice in the road and hurt his arm. The white cat, or possibly one of its descendants, since the cats led a private and complicated life of their own in the hayloft next to the forge, went and climbed up the chimney in the scullery and refused to come down. Even the sky pressed in like an old mattress, and the air felt stuffy, despite the snow. Frayed nerves and boredom and bad temper made the air hum like thunderstorm weather. “Right! That’s it. That’s just about enough!” shouted Esk’s mother. “Cern, you and Gulta and Esk can go and see how Granny is and -where’s Esk?” The two youngest boys looked up from where they were halfheartedly fighting under the table. “She went out to the orchard,” said Gulta. “Again.” “Go and fetch her in, then, and be off.” “But it’s cold!” “It’s going to snow again!” “It’s only a mile and the road is clear enough and who was so keen to be out in it when we had the first snowfall? Go on with you, and don’t come back till you’re in a better temper.” They found Esk sitting in a fork of the big apple tree. The boys didn’t like the tree much. For one thing, it was so covered in mistletoe that it looked green even in midwinter, its fruit was small and went from stomach-twisting sourness to wasp-filled rottenness overnight, and although it looked easy enough to climb it had a habit of breaking twigs and dislodging feet at inconvenient moments. Cern once swore that a branch had twisted just to spill him off. But it tolerated Esk, who used to go and sit in it if she was annoyed or fed up or just wanted to be by herself, and the boys sensed that every brother’s right to gently torture his sister ended at the foot of its trunk. So they threw a snowball at her. It missed. “We’re going to see old Weatherwax.” “But you don’t have to come.” “Because you’ll just slow us down and probably cry anyway.” Esk looked down at them solemnly. She didn’t cry a lot, it never seemed to achieve much. “If you don’t want me to come then I’ll come,” she said. This sort of thing passes for logic among siblings. “Oh, we want you to come,” said Gulta quickly. “Very pleased to hear it,” said Esk, dropping on to the packed snow. They had a basket containing smoked sausages, preserved eggs and - because their mother was prudent as well as generous - a large jar of peach preserve that no one in the family liked very much. She still made it every year when the little wild peaches were ripe, anyway. The people of Bad Ass had learned to live with the long winter snows and the roads out of the village were lined with boards to reduce drifting and, more important, stop travellers from straying. If they lived locally it wouldn’t matter too much if they did, because an unsung genius on the village council several generations previously had come up with the idea of carving markers in every tenth tree in the forest around the village, out to a distance of nearly two miles. It had taken ages, and re-cutting markers was always a job for any man with spare time, but in winters where a blizzard could lose a man within yards of his home many a life had been saved by the pattern of notches found by probing fingers under the clinging snow. It was snowing again when they left the road and started up the track where, in summer, the witch’s house nestled in a riot of raspberry thickets and weird witch-growth. “No footprints,” said Cern. “Except for foxes,” said Gulta. “They say she can turn herself into a fox. Or anything. A bird, even. Anything. That’s how she always knows what’s going on.” They looked around cautiously. A scruffy crow was indeed watching them from a distant tree stump. “They say there’s a whole family over Crack Peak way that can turn themselves into wolves,” said Gulta, who wasn’t one to leave a promising subject, “because one night someone shot a wolf and next day their auntie was limping with an arrow wound in her leg, and .... “I don’t think people can turn themselves into animals,” said Esk, slowly. “Oh yes, Miss Clever?” “Granny is quite big. If she turned herself into a fox what would happen to all the bits that wouldn’t fit?” “She’d just magic them away,” said Cern. “I don’t think magic works like that,” said Esk. “You can’t just make things happen, there’s a sort of - like a seesaw thing, if you push one end down, the other end goes up . . . .” Her voice trailed off. They gave her a look. “I can’t see Granny on a seesaw,” said Gulta. Cern giggled. “No, I mean every time something happens, something else has to happen too - I think,” said Esk uncertainly, picking her way around a deeper than usual snowdrift. “Only in the . . . opposite direction.” “That’s silly,” said Gulta, “because, look, you remember when that fair came last summer and there was a wizard with it and he made all those birds and things appear out of nothing? I mean it just happened, he just said these words and waved his hands, and it just happened. There weren’t any seesaws.” “There was a swing,” said Cern. “And a thing where you had to throw things at things to win things.” “And you didn’t hit anything, Gul.” “Nor did you, you said the things were stuck to the things so you couldn’t knock them off, you said . . . .” Their conversation wandered away like a couple of puppies. Esk listened with half an ear. I know what I mean, she told herself. Magic’s easy, you just find the place where everything is balanced and push. Anyone could do it. There’s nothing magical about it. All the funny words and waving the hands is just . . . it’s only for.... She stopped, surprised at herself. She knew what she meant. The idea was right up there in the front of her mind. But she didn’t know how to say it in words, even to herself. It was a horrible feeling to find things in your head and not know how they fitted. It.... “Come on, we’ll be all day.” She shook her head and hurried after her brothers. The witch’s cottage consisted of so many extensions and lean-tos that it was difficult to see what the original building had looked like, or even if there had ever been one. In the summer it was surrounded by dense beds of what Granny loosely called “the Herbs” - strange plants, hairy or squat or twining, with curious flowers or vivid fruits or unpleasantly bulging pods. Only Granny knew what they were all for, and any woodpigeon hungry enough to attack them generally emerged giggling to itself and bumping into things (or, sometimes, never emerged at all. Now everything was deep under the snow. A forlorn windsock flapped against its pole. Granny didn’t hold with flying but some of her friends still used broomsticks. “It looks deserted,” said Cem. “No smoke,” said Gulta. The windows look like eyes, thought Esk, but kept it to herself. “It’s only Granny’s house,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong.” The cottage radiated emptiness. They could feel it. The windows did look like eyes, black and menacing against the snow. And no one in the Ramtops let their fire go out in the winter, as a matter of pride. Esk wanted to say “Let’s go home,” but she knew that if she did the boys would run for it. Instead she said, “Mother says there’s a key on a nail in the privy,” and that was nearly as bad. Even an ordinary unknown privy held minor terrors like wasps’ nests, large spiders, mysterious rustling things in the roof and, one very bad winter, a small hibernating bear that caused acute constipation in the family until it was persuaded to bed down in the haybam. A witch’s privy could contain anything. “I’ll go and look, shall I?” she added. “If you like,” said Gulta airily, almost successfully concealing his relief. In fact, when she managed to get the door open against the piled snow, it was neat and clean and contained nothing more sinister than an old almanac, or more precisely about half an old almanac, carefully hung on a nail. Granny had a philosophical objection to reading, but she’d be the last to say that books, especially books with nice thin pages, didn’t have their uses. The key shared a ledge by the door with a chrysalis and the stump of a candle. Esk took it gingerly, trying not to disturb the chrysalis, and hurried back to the boys. It was no use trying the front door. Front doors in Bad Ass were used only by brides and corpses, and Granny had always avoided becoming either. Around the back the snow was piled in front of the door and no one had broken the ice on the water butt. The light was starting to pour out of the sky by the time they dug through to the door and managed to persuade the key to turn. Inside, the big kitchen was dark and chilly and smelled only of snow. It was always dark, but they were used to seeing a big fire in the wide chimney and smelling the thick fumes of whatever it was she was boiling up this time, which sometimes gave you a headache or made you see things. They wandered around uncertainly, calling, until Esk decided they couldn’t put off going upstairs any longer. The clonk of the thumb-latch on the door to the cramped staircase sounded a lot louder than it ought to. Granny was on the bed, with her arms tightly folded across her chest. The tiny window had blown open. Fine snow had blown in across the floor and over the bed. Esk stared at the patchwork quilt under the old woman, because there were times when a little detail could expand and fill the whole world. She barely heard Cern start to cry: she remembered lien father, strangely enough, making the quilt two winters before when the snow was almost as bad and there wasn’t much to do in the forge, and how he’d used all kinds of rags that had found their way to Bad Ass from every part of the world, like silk, dilemma leather, water cotton and tharga wool and, of course, since he wasn’t much good at sewing either, the result was a rather strange lumpy thing more like a flat tortoise than a quilt, and her mother had generously decided to give it to Granny last Hogswatchnight, and .... “Is she dead?” asked Gulta, as if Esk was an expert in these things. Esk stared up at Granny Weatherwax. The old woman’s face looked thin and grey. Was that how dead people looked? Shouldn’t her chest be going up and down? Gulta pulled himself together. “We ought to go and get someone and we ought to go now because it will get dark in a minute,” he said flatly. “But Cern will stay here.” His brother looked at him in horror. “What for?” he said. “Someone has got to stay with dead people,” said Gulta. “Remember when old Uncle Derghart died and Father had to go and sit up with all the candles and things all night? Otherwise something nasty comes and takes your soul off to . . . to somewhere,” he ended lamely. “And then people come back and haunt you.” Cern opened his mouth to start to cry again. Esk said hurriedly, “I’ll stay. I don’t mind. It’s only Granny.” Gulta looked at her in relief. “Light some candles or something,” he said. “I think that’s what you’re supposed to do. And then -“ There was a scratching from the windowsill. A crow had landed, and stood there blinking suspiciously at them. Gulta shouted and threw his hat at it. It flew off with a reproachful caw and he shut the window. “I’ve seen it around here before,” he said. “I think Granny feeds it. Fed it,” he corrected himself. “Anyway, we’ll be back with people, we’ll be hardly any time. Come on, Ce.” They clattered down the dark stairs. Esk saw them out of the house and bolted the door behind them. The sun was a red ball above the mountains, and there were already a few early stars out. She wandered around the dark kitchen until she found a scrap of dip candle and a tinderbox. After a great deal of effort she managed to light the candle and stood it on the table, although it didn’t really light the room, it simply peopled the darkness with shadows. Then she found Granny’s rocking chair by the cold fireplace, and settled down to wait. Time passed. Nothing happened. Then there was a tapping at the window. Esk took up the candle stub and peered through the thick round panes. A beady yellow eye blinked back at her. The candle guttered, and went out. She stood stock still, hardly breathing. The tapping started again, and then stopped. There was a short silence, and then the doorlatch rattled. Something nasty comes, the boys had said. She felt her way back across the room until she nearly tripped over the rocking chair, and dragged it back and wedged it as best she could in front of the door. The latch gave a final clonk and went silent. Esk waited, listening until the silence roared in her ears. Then something started to bang against the little window in the scullery, softly but insistently. After a while it stopped. A moment later it started again in the bedroom above her- a faint scrabbling noise, a claw kind of noise. Esk felt that bravery was called for, but on a night like this bravery lasted only as long as a candle stayed alight. She felt her way back across the dark kitchen, eyes tightly shut, until she reached the door. There was a thump from the fireplace as a big lump of soot fell down, and when she heard the desperate scratchings coming from the chimney she slipped the bolts, threw open the door and darted out into the night. The cold struck like a knife. Frost had put a crust on the snow. She didn’t care where she was going, but quiet terror gave her a burning determination to get there as fast as she could. Inside the cottage the crow landed heavily in the fireplace, surrounded by soot and muttering irritably to itself. It hopped into the shadows, and a moment later there was the bang of the latch of the stairway door and the sound of fluttering on the stairs. Esk reached up as high as she could and felt around the tree for the marker. This time she was lucky, but the pattern of dots and grooves told her she was over a mile from the village and had been running in the wrong direction. There was a cheese-rind moon and a sprinkling of stars, small and bright and pitiless. The forest around her was a pattern of black shadows and pale snow and, she was aware, not all the shadows were standing still. Everyone knew there were wolves in the mountains, because on some nights their howls echoed down from the high Tops, but they seldom came near the village - the modern wolves were the offspring of ancestors that had survived because they had learned that human meat had sharp edges. But the weather was hard, and this pack was hungry enough to forget all about natural selection. Esk remembered what all the children were told. Climb a tree. Light a fire. When all else fails, find a stick and at least hurt them. Never try to outrun them. The tree behind her was a beech, smooth and unclimbable. Esk watched a long shadow detach itself from a pool of darkness in front of her, and move a little closer. She knelt down, tired, frightened, unable to think, and scrabbled under the burning-cold snow for a stick. Granny Weatherwax opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling, which was cracked and bulged like a tent. She concentrated on remembering that she had arms, not wings, and didn’t need to hop. It was always wise to lie down for a bit after a borrow, to let one’s mind get used to one’s body, but she knew she didn’t have the time. “Drat the child,” she muttered, and tried to fly on to the bedrail. The crow, who had been through all this dozens of times before and who considered, insofar as birds can consider anything, which is a very short distance indeed, that a steady diet of bacon rinds and choice kitchen scraps and a warm roost for the night was well worth the occasional inconvenience of letting Granny share its head, watched her with mild interest. Granny found her boots and thumped down the stairs, sternly resisting the urge to glide. The door was wide open and there was already a drift of fine snow on the floor. “Oh, bugger,” she said. She wondered if it was worth trying to find Esk’s mind, but human minds were never so sharp and clear as animal minds and anyway the overmind of the forest itself made impromptu searching as hard as listening for a waterfall in a thunderstorm. But even without looking she could feel the packmind of the wolves, a sharp, rank feeling that filled the mouth with the taste of blood. She could just make out the small footprints in the crust, half filled with fresh snow. Cursing and muttering, Granny Weatherwax pulled her shawl around her and set out. The white cat awoke from its private ledge in the forge when it heard the sounds coming from the darkest corner. Smith had carefully shut the big doors behind him when he went off with the nearly-hysterical boys, and the cat watched with interest as a thin shadow prodded at the lock and tested the hinges. The doors were oak, hardened by heat and time, but that didn’t prevent them being blown right across the street. Smith heard a sound in the sky as he hurried along the track. So did Granny. It was a determined whirring sound, like the flight of geese, and the snowclouds boiled and twisted as it passed. The wolves heard it, too, as it spun low over the treetops and hurtled down into the clearing. But they heard it far too late. Granny Weatherwax didn’t have to follow the footprints now. She aimed herself for the distant flashes of weird light, the strange swishing and thumping, and the howls of pain and terror. A couple of wolves bolted past her with their ears flattened in grim determination to have it away on their paws no matter what stood in their way. There was the crackle of breaking branches. Something big and heavy landed in a fir tree by Granny and crashed, whimpering, into the snow. Another wolf passed her in a flat trajectory at about head height and bounced off a tree-trunk. There was silence. Granny pushed her way between the snow-covered branches. She could see that the snow was flattened in a white circle. A few wolves lay at its edges, either dead or wisely deciding to make no move. The staff stood upright in the snow and Granny got the feeling it was turning to face her as she walked carefully past it. There was also a small heap in the centre of the circle, curled tightly up inside itself. Granny knelt down with some effort and reached out gently. The staff moved. It was little more than a tremble, but her hand stopped just before it touched Esk’s shoulder. Granny glared up at the wooden carvings, and dared it to move again. The air thickened. Then the staff seemed to back away while not moving, while at the same time something quite indefinable made it absolutely clear to the old witch that as far as the staff was concerned this -wasn’t a defeat, it was merely a tactical consideration, and it wouldn’t like her to think she had won in any way, because she hadn’t. Esk gave a shudder. Granny patted her vaguely. “It’s me, little one. It’s only old Granny.” The hump didn’t uncurl. Granny bit her lip. She was never quite certain about children, thinking of them - when she thought about them at all - as coming somewhere between animals and people. She understood babies. You put milk in one end and kept the other end as clean as possible. Adults were even easier, because they did the feeding and cleaning themselves. But in between was a world of experience that she had never really enquired about. As far as she was aware, you just tried to stop them catching anything fatal and hoped that it would all turn out all right. Granny, in fact, was at a loss, but she knew she had to do something. “Didda nasty wolfie fwiten us, den?” she hazarded. For quite the wrong reasons, this seemed to work. From the depths of the ball a muffled voice said: “I am eight, you know.” “People who are eight don’t curl up in the middle of the snow,” said Granny, feeling her way through the intricacies of adult-child conversation. The ball didn’t answer. “I’ve probably got some milk and biscuits at home,” Granny ventured. There was no perceptible effect. “Eskarina Smith, if you don’t behave this minute I will give you such a smack!” Esk poked her head out cautiously. “There’s no need to be like that,” she said. When Smith reached the cottage Granny had just arrived, leading Esk by the hand. The boys peered around from behind him. “Um,” said Smith, not quite aware of how to begin a conversation with someone who was supposed to be dead. “They, um, told me you were - ill.” He turned and glared at his sons. “I was just having a rest and I must have dozed off. I sleeps very sound.” “Yes,” said Smith, uncertainly. “Well. All’s well, then. What’s up with Esk? “ “She took a bit of a fright,” said Granny, squeezing the girl’s hand. “Shadows and whatnot. She needs a good warm. I was going to put her in my bed, she’s a bit mazed, if that’s all right with you.” Smith wasn’t absolutely sure that it was all right with him. But he was quite sure that his wife, like every other woman in the village, held Granny Weatherwax in solemn regard, even in awe, and that if he started to object he would rapidly get out of his depth. “Fine, fine,” he said, “if it’s no trouble. I’ll send along for her in the morning, shall I?” “That’s right,” said Granny. “I’d invite you in, but there’s me without a fire -“ “No, no, that’s all right,” said Smith hurriedly. “I’ve got my supper waiting. Drying up,” he added, looking down at Gulta, who opened his mouth to say something and wisely thought better of it. When they had gone, with the sound of the two boys’ protests ringing out among the trees, Granny opened the door, pushed Esk inside, and bolted it behind them. She took a couple of candles from her store above the dresser and lit them. Then she pulled some old but serviceable wool blankets, still smelling of anti-moth herbs, from an old chest, wrapped Esk in them and sat her in the rocking chair. She got down on her knees, to an accompaniment of clicks and grunts, and started to lay the fire. It was a complicated business involving dry fungus punk, wood shavings, bits of split twig and much puffing and swearing. Esk said: “You don’t have to do it like that, Granny.” Granny stiffened, and looked at the fireback. It was a rather nice one Smith had cast for her, years ago, with an owl-and-bat motif. Currently, though, she wasn’t interested in the design. “Oh yes?” she said, her voice dead-level. “You know of a better way, do you?” “You could magic it alight.” Granny paid great attention to arranging bits of twig on the reluctant flames. “How would I do that, pray?” she said, apparently addressing her remarks to the fireback. “Er,” said Esk, “I . . . I can’t remember. But you must know anyway, don’t you? Everyone knows you can do magic.” “There’s magic,” said Granny, “and then again, there’s magic. The important thing, my girl, is to know what magic is for and what it isn’t for. And you can take it from me, it was never intended for lighting fires, you can be absolutely certain of that. If the Creator had meant us to use magic for lighting fires, then he wouldn’t have given us - er, matches.” “But could you light a fire with magic?” said Esk, as Granny slung an ancient black kettle on its hook. “I mean, if you wanted to. If it was allowed.” “Maybe,” said Granny, who couldn’t: fire had no mind, it wasn’t alive, and they were two of the three reasons. “You could light it much better.” “If a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly,” said Granny, fleeing into aphorisms, the last refuge of an adult under siege. “Yes, but -“ “But me no buts.” Granny rummaged in a dark wooden box on the dresser. She prided herself on her unrivalled knowledge of the properties of Ramtops herbage - none knew better than she the many uses of Earwort, Maiden’s Wish and Love-Lies-Oozing - but there were times when she had to resort to her small stock of jealously traded and carefully hoarded medicines from Forn Parts (which as far as she was concerned was anywhere further than a day’s journey) to achieve the desired effect. She shredded some dry red leaves into a mug, topped it up with honey and hot water from the kettle, and pushed it into Esk’s hands. Then she put a large round stone under the grate later on, wrapped in a scrap of blanket, it would make a bedwarmer and, with a stern injunction to the girl not to stir from the chair, went out into the scullery. Esk drummed her heels on the chair legs and sipped the drink. It had a strange, peppery taste. She wondered what it was. She’d tasted Granny’s brews before, of course, with a greater or lesser amount of honey in them depending on whether she thought you were making too much of a fuss, and Esk knew that she was famous throughout the mountains for special potions for illnesses that her mother - and some young women too, once in a while -just hinted at with raised eyebrows and lowered voices .... When Granny came back she was asleep. She didn’t remember being put to bed, or Granny bolting the windows. Granny Weatherwax went back downstairs and pulled her rocking chair closer to the fire. There was something there, she told herself, lurking away in the child’s mind. She didn’t like to think about what it was, but she remembered what had happened to the wolves. And all that about lighting fires with magic. Wizards did that, it was one of the first things they learned. Granny sighed. There was only one way to be sure, and she was getting rather old for this sort of thing. She picked up the candle and went out through the scullery into the lean-to that housed her goats. They watched her without fear, each sitting in its pen like a furry blob, three mouths working rhythmically on the day’s hay. The air smelled warm and slightly flatulent. Up in the rafters was a small owl, one of a number of creatures who found that living with Granny was worth the occasional inconvenience. It came to her hand at a word, and she stroked its bullet head thoughtfully as she looked for somewhere comfortable to lie. A pile of hay it would have to be. She blew out the candle and lay back, with the owl perched on her finger. The goats chewed, burped and swallowed their way through their cozy night. They made the only sound in the building. Granny’s body stilled. The owl felt her enter its mind, and graciously made room. Granny knew she would regret this, Borrowing twice in one day would leave her good for nothing in the morning, and with a terrible desire to eat mice. Of course, when she was younger she thought nothing of it, running with the stags, hunting with the foxes, learning the strange dark ways of the moles, hardly spending a night in her own body. But it was getting harder now, especially coming back. Maybe the time would come when she couldn’t get back, maybe the body back home would be so much dead flesh, and maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad way of it, at that. This was the sort of thing wizards could never know. If it occurred to them to enter a creature’s mind they’d do it like a thief, not out of wickedness but because it simply wouldn’t occur to them to do it any other way, the daft buggers. And what good would it do to take over an owl’s body? You couldn’t fly, you needed to spend a lifetime learning. But the gentle way was to ride in its mind, steering it as gently as a breeze stirs a leaf. The owl stirred, fluttered up on to the little windowsill, and glided silently into the night. The clouds had cleared and the thin moon made the mountains gleam. Granny peered out through owl eyes as she sped silently between the ranks of trees. This was the only way to travel, once a body had the way of it! She liked Borrowing birds best of all, using them to explore the high, hidden valleys where no one went, the secret lakes between black cliffs, the tiny walled fields on the scraps of flat ground, tucked on the sheer rock faces, that were the property of hidden and secretive beings. Once she had ridden with the geese that passed over the mountains every spring and autumn, and had got the shock of her life when she nearly went beyond range of returning. The owl broke out of the forest and skimmed across the rooftops of the village, alighting in a shower of snow on the biggest apple tree in Smith’s orchard. It was heavy with mistletoe. She knew she was right as soon as her claws touched the bark. The tree resented her, she could feel it trying to push her away. I’m not going, she thought. In the silence of the night the tree said, Bully me, then, just because I’m a tree. Typical woman. At least you’re useful now, thought Granny. Better a tree than a wizard, eh? It’s not such a bad life, thought the tree. Sun. Fresh air. Time to think. Bees, too, in the spring. There was something lascivious about the way the tree said “bees” that quite put Granny, who had several hives, off the idea of honey. It was like being reminded that eggs were unborn chickens. I’ve come about the girl, Esk, she hissed. A promising child, thought the tree, I’m watching her with interest. She likes apples, too. You beast, said Granny, shocked. What did I say? Pardon me for not breathing, I’m sure. Granny sidled closer to the trunk. You must let her go, she thought. The magic is starting to come through. Already? I’m impressed, said the tree. It’s the wrong sort of magic!, screeched Granny. It’s wizard magic, not women’s magic! She doesn’t know what it is yet, but it killed a dozen wolves tonight! Great! said the tree. Granny hooted with rage. Great? Supposing she had been arguing with her brothers, and lost her temper, eh? The tree shrugged. Snowflakes cascaded from its branches. Then you must train her, it said. Train? What do I know from training wizards! Then send her to university. She’s female!, hooted Granny, bouncing up and down on her branch. Well? Who says women can’t be wizards? Granny hesitated. The tree might as well have asked why fish couldn’t be birds. She drew a deep breath, and started to speak. And stopped. She knew a cutting, incisive, withering and above all a self-evident answer existed. It was just that, to her extreme annoyance, she couldn’t quite bring it to mind. Women have never been wizards. It’s against nature. You might as well say that witches can be men. If you define a witch as one who worships the pancreative urge, that is, venerates the basic - the tree began, and continued for several minutes. Granny Weatherwax listened in impatient annoyance to phrases like Mother Goddesses and primitive moon worship and told herself that she was well aware of what being a witch was all about, it was about herbs and curses and flying around of nights and generally keeping on the right side of tradition, and it certainly didn’t involve mixing with goddesses, mothers or otherwise, who apparently got up to some very questionable tricks. And when the tree started talking about dancing naked she tried not to listen, because although she was aware that somewhere under her complicated strata of vests and petticoats there was some skin, that didn’t mean to say she approved of it. The tree finished its monologue. Granny waited until she was quite sure that it wasn’t going to add anything, and said, That’s witchcraft, is it? Its theoretical basis, yes. You wizards certainly get some funny ideas. The tree said, Not a wizard anymore, just a tree. Granny ruffled her feathers. Well, just you listen to me, Mr. so-called Theoretical Basis Tree, if women were meant to be wizards they’d be able to grow long white beards and she is not going to be a wizard, is that quite clear, wizardry is not the way to use magic, do you hear, it’s nothing but lights and fire and meddling with power and she’ll be having no part of it and good night to you. The owl swooped away from the branch. It was only because it would interfere with the flying that Granny wasn’t shaking with rage. Wizards! They talked too much and pinned spells down in books like butterflies but, worst of all, they thought theirs was the only magic worth practicing. Granny was absolutely certain of one thing. Women had never been wizards, and they weren’t about to start now. She arrived back at the cottage in the pale shank of the night. Her body, at least, was rested after its slumber in the hay, and Granny had hoped to spend a few hours in the rocking chair, putting her thoughts in order. This was the time, when night wasn’t quite over but day hadn’t quite begun, when thoughts stood out bright and clear and without disguise. She.... The staff was leaning against the wall, by the dresser. Granny stood quite still. “I see”, she said at last. “So that’s the way of it, is it? In my own house, too?” Moving very slowly, she walked over to the inglenook, threw a couple of split logs on to the embers of the fire, and pumped the bellows until the flames roared up the chimney. When she was satisfied she turned, muttered a few precautionary protective spells under her breath, and grabbed the staff. It didn’t resist; she nearly fell over. But now she had it in her hands, and felt the tingle of it, the distinctive thunderstorm crackle of the magic in it, and she laughed. It was as simple as this, then. There was no fight in it now. Calling down a curse upon wizards and all their works she raised the staff above her head and brought it down with a clang across the firedogs, over the hottest part of the fire. Esk screamed. The sound bounced down through the bedroom floorboards and scythed through the dark cottage. Granny was old and tired and not entirely clear about things after a long day, but to survive as a witch requires an ability to jump to very large conclusions and as she stared at the staff in the flames and heard the scream her hands were already reaching for the big black kettle. She upended it over the fire, dragged the staff out of the cloud of steam, and ran upstairs, dreading what she might see. Esk was sitting up in the narrow bed, unsinged but shrieking. Granny took the child in her arms and tried to comfort her; she wasn’t sure how one went about it, but a distracted patting on the back and vague reassuring noises seemed to work, and the screams became wails and, eventually, sobs. Here and there Granny could pick out words like “fire” and “hot”, and her mouth set in a thin, bitter line. Finally she settled the child down, tucked her in, and crept quietly down stairs. The staff was back against the wall. She was not surprised to see that the fire hadn’t marked it at all. Granny turned her rocking chair to face it, and sat down with her chin in her hand and an expression of grim determination. Presently the chair began to rock, of its own accord. It was the only sound in a silence that thickened and spread and filled the room like a terrible dark fog. Next morning, before Esk got up, Granny hid the staff in the thatch, well out of harm’s way. Esk ate her breakfast and drank a pint of goat’s milk without the least sign of the events of the last twenty-four hours. It was the first time she had been inside Granny’s cottage for more than a brief visit, and while the old woman washed the dishes and milked the goats she made the most of her implied license to explore. She found that life in the cottage wasn’t entirely straightforward. There was the matter of the goats’ names, for example. “But they’ve got to have names!” she said. “Everything’s got a name.” Granny looked at her around the pear-shaped flanks of the head nanny, while the milk squirted into the low pail. “I daresay they’ve got names in Goat,” she said vaguely. “What do they want names in Human for?” “Well,” said Esk, and stopped. She thought for a bit. “How do you make them do what you want, then?” “They just do, and when they want me they holler.” Esk gravely gave the head goat a wisp of hay. Granny watched her thoughtfully. Goats did have names for themselves, she well knew: there was “goat who is my kid”, “goat who is my mother”, “goat who is herd leader”, and half a dozen other names not least of which was “goat who is this goat”. They had a complicated herd system and four stomachs and a digestive system that sounded very busy on still nights, and Granny had always felt that calling all this names like Buttercup was an insult to a noble animal. “Esk? “ she said, making up her mind. “Yes?” “What would you like to be when you grow up?” Esk looked blank. “Don’t know.” “Well,” said Granny, her hands still milking, “what do you think you will do when you are grown up?” “Don’t know. Get married, I suppose.” “Do you want to?” Esk’s lips started to shape themselves around the D, but she caught Granny’s eye and stopped, and thought. “All the grown ups I know are married,” she said at last, and thought some more. “Except you,” she added, cautiously. “That’s true,” said Granny. “Didn’t you want to get married?” It was Granny’s turn to think. “Never got around to it,” she said at last. “Too many other things to do, you see.” “Father says you’re a witch,” said Esk, chancing her arm. “I am that.” Esk nodded. In the Ramtops witches were accorded a status similar to that which other cultures gave to nuns, or tax collectors, or cesspit cleaners. That is to say, they were respected, sometimes admired, generally applauded for doing a job which logically had to be-done, but people never felt quite comfortable in the same room with them. Granny said, “Would you like to learn the witching?” “Magic, you mean?” asked Esk, her eyes lighting up. “Yes, magic. But not firework magic. Real magic.” “Can you fly?” “There’s better things than flying.” “And I can learn them?” “If your parents say yes.” Esk sighed. “My father won’t.” “Then I shall have a word with him,” said Granny. “Now you just listen to me, Gordo Smith!” Smith backed away across his forge, hands half-raised to ward off the old woman’s fury. She advanced on him, one finger stabbing the air righteously. “I brought you into the world, you stupid man, and you’ve got no more sense in you now than you had then -“ “But -“ Smith tried, dodging around the anvil. “The magic’s found her! Wizard magic! Wrong magic, do you understand? It was never intended for her!” “Yes, but -“ “Have you any idea of what it can do?” Smith sagged. “No.” Granny paused, and deflated a little. “No,” she repeated, more softly. “No, you wouldn’t.” She sat down on the anvil and tried to think calm thoughts. “Look. Magic has a sort of - life of its own. That doesn’t matter, because - anyway, you see, wizard magic -“ she looked up at his big, blank expression and tried again. “Well, you know cider?” Smith nodded. He felt he was on firmer ground here, but he wasn’t certain of where it was going to lead. “And then there’s the ticker. Applejack,” said the witch. The smith nodded. Everyone in Bad Ass made applejack in the winter, by leaving cider tubs outside overnight and taking out the ice until a tiny core of alcohol was left. “Well, you can drink lots of cider and you just feel better and that’s it, isn’t it?” The smith nodded again. “But applejack, you drink that in little mugs and you don’t drink a lot and you don’t drink it often, because it goes right to your head?” The smith nodded again and, aware that he wasn’t making a major contribution to the dialogue, added, “That’s right.” “That’s the difference,” said Granny. “The difference from what?” Granny sighed. “The difference between witch magic and wizard magic,” she said. “And it’s found her, and if she doesn’t control it, then there are those who will control her. Magic can be a sort of door, and there are unpleasant things on the other side. Do you understand?” The smith nodded. He didn’t really understand, but he correctly surmised that if he revealed this fact Granny would start going into horrible details. “She’s strong in her mind and it might take a while,” said Granny. “But sooner or later they’ll challenge her.” Smith picked up a hammer from his bench, looked at it as though he had never seen it before, and put it down again. “But,” he said, “if it’s wizard magic she’s got, learning witchery won’t be any good, will it? You said they’re different.” “They’re both magic. If you can’t learn to ride an elephant, you can at least learn to ride a horse.” “What’s an elephant?” “A kind of badger,” said Granny. She hadn’t maintained forest credibility for forty years by ever admitting ignorance. The blacksmith sighed. He knew he was beaten. His wife had made it clear that she favored the idea and, now that he came to think about it, there were some advantages. After all, Granny wouldn’t last forever, and being father to the area’s only witch might not be too bad, at that. “All right,” he said. And so, as the winter turned and started the long, reluctant climb towards spring, Esk spent days at a time with Granny Weatherwax, learning witch craft. It seemed to consist mainly of things to remember. The lessons were quite practical. There was cleaning the kitchen table and Basic Herbalism. There was mucking out the goats and The Uses of Fungi. There was doing the washing and The Summoning of the Small Gods. And there was always tending the big copper still in the scullery and The Theory and Practice of Distillation. By the time the warm Rim winds were blowing, and the snow remained only as little streaks of slush on the Hub side of trees, Esk knew how to prepare a range of ointments, several medicinal brandies, a score of special infusions, and a number of mysterious potions that Granny said she might learn the use of in good time. What she hadn’t done was any magic at all. “All in good time,” repeated Granny vaguely. “But I’m supposed to be a witch!” “You’re not a witch yet. Name me three herbs good for the bowels.” Esk put her hands behind her back, closed her eyes, and said: “The flowering tops of Greater Peahane, the root pith of Old Man’s Trousers, the stems of the Bloodwater Lily, the seedcases of -“ “All right. Where may water gherkins be found?” “Peat bogs and stagnant pools, from the months of -“ “Good. You’re learning.” “But it’s not magic!” Granny sat down at the kitchen table. “Most magic isn’t,” she said. “It’s just knowing the right herbs, and learning to watch the weather, and finding out the ways of animals. And the ways of people, too.” “That’s all it is!” said Esk, horrified. “All? It’s a pretty big all,” said Granny, “But no, it isn’t all. There’s other stuff.” “Can’t you teach me?” “All in good time. There’s no call to go showing yourself yet.” “Showing myself? Who to?” Granny’s eyes darted towards the shadows in the corners of the room. “Never you mind.” Then even the last lingering tails of snow had gone and the spring gales roared around the mountains. The air in the forest began to smell of leaf mould and turpentine. A few early flowers braved the night frosts, and the bees started to fly. “Now bees,” said Granny Weatherwax, “is real magic.” She carefully lifted the lid of the first hive. “Your bees,” she went on, “is your mead, your wax, your bee gum, your honey. A wonderful thing is your bee. Ruled by a queen, too,” she added, with a touch of approval. “Don’t they sting you?” said Esk, standing back a little. Bees boiled out of the comb and overflowed the rough wooden sides of the box. “Hardly ever,” said Granny. “You wanted magic. Watch.” She put a hand into the struggling mass of insects and made a shrill, faint piping noise at the back of her throat. There was a movement in the mass, and a large bee, longer and fatter than the others, crawled on to her hand. A few workers followed it, stroking it and generally ministering to it. “How did you do that?” said Esk. “Ah,” said Granny, “Wouldn’t you like to know?” “Yes. I would. That’s why I asked, Granny,” said Esk, severely. “Do you think I used magic?” Esk looked down at the queen bee. She looked up at the witch. “No,” she said, “I think you just know a lot about bees.” Granny grinned. “Exactly correct. That’s one form of magic, of course.” “What, just knowing things?” “Knowing things that other people don’t know,” said Granny. She carefully dropped the queen back among her subjects and closed the lid of the hive. “And I think it’s time you learned a few secrets,” she added. At last, thought Esk. “But first, we must pay our respects to the Hive,” said Granny. She managed to sound the capital H. Without thinking, Esk bobbed a curtsey. Granny’s hand clipped the back of her head. “Bow, I told you,” she said, without rancor. “Witches bow.” She demonstrated. “But why?” complained Esk. “Because witches have got to be different, and that’s part of the secret,” said Granny. They sat on a bleached bench in front of the rimward wall of the cottage. In front of them the Herbs were already a foot high, a sinister collection of pale green leaves. “Right,” said Granny, settling herself down. “You know the hat on the hook by the door? Go and fetch it.” Esk obediently went inside and unhooked Granny’s hat. It was tall, pointed and, of course, black. Granny turned it over in her hands and regarded it carefully. “Inside this hat,” she said solemnly, “is one of the secrets of witchcraft. If you cannot tell me what it is, then I might as well teach you no more, because once you learn the secret of the hat there is no going back. Tell me what you know about the hat.” “Can I hold it?” “Be my guest.” Esk peered inside the hat. There was some wire stiffening to give it a shape, and a couple of hatpins. That was all. There was nothing particularly strange about it, except that no one in the village had one like it. But that didn’t make it magical. Esk bit her lip; she had a vision of herself being sent home in disgrace. It didn’t feel strange, and there were no hidden pockets. It was just a typical witch’s hat. Granny always wore it when she went into the village, but in the forest she just wore a leather hood. She tried to recall the bits of lessons that Granny grudgingly doled out. It isn’t what you know, it’s what other people don’t know. Magic can be something right in the wrong place, or something wrong in the right place. It can be Granny always wore it to the village. And the big black cloak, which certainly wasn’t magical, because for most of the winter it had been a goat blanket and Granny washed it in the spring. Esk began to feel the shape of the answer and she didn’t like it much. It was like a lot of Granny’s answers. Just a word trick. She just said things you knew all the time, but in a different way so they sounded important. “I think I know,” she said at last. “Out with it, then.” “It’s in sort of two parts.” “Well?” “It’s a witch’s hat because you wear it. But you’re a witch because you wear the hat. Um.” “So -“prompted Granny. “So people see you coming in the hat and the cloak and they know you’re a witch and that’s why your magic works?” said Esk. “That’s right,” said Granny. “It’s called headology.” She tapped her silver hair, which was drawn into a tight bun that could crack rocks. “But it’s not real!” Esk protested. “That’s not magic, it’s it’s -“ “Listen,” said Granny, “If you give someone a bottle of red jollop for their wind it may work, right, but if you want it to work for sure then you let their mind make it work for them. Tell ‘em it’s moonbeams bottled in fairy wine or something. Mumble over it a bit. It’s the same with cursing.” “Cursing?” said Esk, weakly. “Aye, cursing, my girl, and no need to look so shocked! You’ll curse, when the need comes. When you’re alone, and there’s no help to hand, and -“ She hesitated and, uncomfortably aware of Esk’s questioning eyes, finished lamely: “- and people aren’t showing respect. Make it loud, make it complicated, make it long, and make it up if you have to, but it’ll work all right. Next day, when they hit their thumb or they fall off a ladder or their dog drops dead, they’ll remember you. They’ll behave better next time.” “But it still doesn’t seem like magic,” said Esk, scuffing the dust with her feet. “I saved a man’s life once,” said Granny. “Special medicine, twice a day. Boiled water with a bit of berry juice in it. Told him I’d bought it from the dwarves. That’s the biggest part of doct’rin, really. Most people’ll get over most things if they put their minds to it, you just have to give them an interest.” She patted Esk’s hand as nicely as possible. “You’re a bit young for this,” she said, “but as you grow older you’ll find most people don’t set foot outside their own heads much. You too,” she added gnomically. “I don’t understand.” “I’d be very surprised if you did,” said Granny briskly, “but you can tell me five herbs suitable for dry coughs.” Spring began to unfold in earnest. Granny started taking Esk on long walks that took all day, to hidden ponds or high on to the mountain scree to collect rare plants. Esk enjoyed that, high on the hills where the sun beat down strongly but the air was nevertheless freezing cold. Plants grew thickly and hugged the ground. From some of the highest peaks she could see all the way to the Rim Ocean that ran around the edge of the world; in the other direction the Ramtops marched into the distance, wrapped in eternal winter. They went all the way to the hub of the world where, it was generally agreed, the Gods lived on a ten-mile high mountain of rock and ice. “Gods are all right,” said Granny, as they ate their lunch and looked at the view. “You don’t bother gods, and gods don’t come bothering you.” “Do you know many gods?” “I’ve seen the thundergods a few times,” said Granny, “and Hoki, of course.” “Hold? “ Granny chewed a crustless sandwich. “Oh, he’s a nature god,” she said. “Sometimes he manifests himself as an oak tree, or half a man and half a goat, but mainly I see him in his aspect as a bloody nuisance. You only find him in the deep woods, of course. He plays the flute. Very badly, if you must know.” Esk lay on her stomach and looked out across the lands below while a few hardy, self-employed bumblebees patrolled the thyme clusters. The sun was warm on her back but, up here, there were still drifts of snow on the hubside of rocks. “Tell me about the lands down there,” she said lazily. Granny peered disapprovingly at ten thousand miles of landscape. “They’re just other places,” she said. “Just like here, only different.” “Are there cities and things?” “Idaresay.” “Haven’t you ever been to look?” Granny sat back, gingerly arranging her skirt to expose several inches of respectable flannelette to the sun, and let the heat caress her old bones. “No,” she said. “There’s quite enough troubles around here without going to look for them in forn parts.” “I dreamed of a city once,” said Esk. “It had hundreds of people in it, and there was this building with big gates, and they were magical gates -“ A sound like tearing cloth came from behind her. Granny had fallen asleep. “Granny! “ “Mhnf?” Esk thought for a moment. “Are you having a good time?” she said artfully. “Mnph.” “You said you’d show me some real magic, all in good time,” said Esk, “and this is a good time.” “Mnph.” Granny Weatherwax opened her eyes and looked straight up at the sky; it was darker up here, more purple than blue. She thought: why not? She’s a quick learner. She knows more herblore than I do. At her age old Gammer Tumult had me Borrowing and Shifting and Sending all the hours of the day. Maybe I’m being too cautious. “Just a bit?” pleaded Esk. Granny turned it over in her mind. She couldn’t think of any more excuses. I’m surely going to regret this, she told herself, displaying considerable foresight. “All right,” she said shortly. “Real magic?” said Esk. “Not more herbs or headology?” “Real magic, as you call it, yes.” “A spell?” “No. A Borrowing.” Esk’s face was a picture of expectation. She looked more alive, it seemed to Granny, than she had ever been before. Granny looked over the valleys stretching out before them until she found what she was after. A grey eagle was circling lazily over a distant blue-hazed patch of forest. Its mind was currently at ease. It would do nicely. She Called it gently, and it began to circle towards them. “The first thing to remember about Borrowing is that you must be comfortable and somewhere safe,” she said, smoothing out the grass behind her. “Bed’s best.” “But what is Borrowing?” “Lie down and hold my hand. Do you see the eagle up there?” Esk squinted into the dark, hot sky. There were . . . two doll figures on the grass below as she pivoted on the wind .... She could feel the whip and wire of the air through her feathers. Because the eagle was not hunting, but simply enjoying the feel of the sun on its wings, the land below was a mere unimportant shape. But the air, the air was a complex, changing three-dimensional thing, an interlocked pattern of spirals and curves that stretched away into the distance, a switchback of currents built around thermal pillars. She . . . . . . felt a gentle pressure restraining her. “The next thing to remember, “ said Granny’s voice, very close, “is not to upset the owner. If you let it know you’re there it’ll either fight you or panic, and you won’t stand a chance either way. It’s had a lifetime of being an eagle, and you haven’t.” Esk said nothing. “You’re not frightened, are you?” said Granny. “It can take you that way the first time, and -“ “I’m not frightened,” said Esk, and “How do I control it?” “You don’t. Not yet. Anyway, controlling a truly wild creature isn’t easily learned. You have to - sort of suggest to it that it might feel inclined to do things. With a tame animal, of course, it’s all different. But you can’t make any creature do anything that is totally against its nature. Now try and find the eagle’s mind.” Esk could sense Granny as a diffuse silver cloud at the back of her own mind. After some searching she found the eagle. She almost missed it. Its mind was small, sharp and purple, like an arrowhead. It was concentrating entirely on flying, and took no notice of her. “Good,” said Granny approvingly. “We’re not going to go far. If you want to make it turn, you must -“ “Yes, yes,” said Esk. She flexed her fingers, wherever they were, and the bird leaned against the air and turned. “Very good,” said Granny, taken aback. “How did you do that?” “I - don’t know. It just seemed obvious.” “Hmph.” Granny gently tested the tiny eagle mind. It was still totally oblivious of its passengers. She was genuinely impressed, a very rare occurrence. They floated over the mountain, while Esk excitedly explored the eagle’s senses. Granny’s voice droned through her consciousness, giving instructions and guidance and warnings. She listened with half an ear. It sounded far too complicated. Why couldn’t she take over the eagle’s mind? It wouldn’t hurt it. She could see how to do it, it was just a knack, like snapping your fingers - which in fact she had never managed to achieve - and then she’d be able to experience flying for real, not at second hand. Then she could “Don’t,” said Granny calmly. “No good will come of it.” “What?” “Do you really think you’re the first, my girl? Do you think we haven’t all thought what a fine thing it would be, to take on another body and tread the wind or breathe the water? And do you really think it would be as easy as that?” Esk glowered at her. “No need to look like that,” said Granny. “You’ll thank me one day. Don’t you start playing around before you know what you’re about, eh? Before you get up to tricks you’ve got to learn what to do if things go wrong. Don’t try to walk before you can run.” “I can feel how to do it, Granny.” “That’s as maybe. It’s harder than it seems, is Borrowing, although I’ll grant you’ve got a knack. That’s enough for today, bring us in over ourselves and I’ll show you how to Return.” The eagle beat the air over the two recumbent forms and Esk saw, in her mind’s eye, two channels open for them. Granny’s mindshape vanished. Now Granny had been wrong. The eagle mind barely fought, and didn’t have time to panic. Esk held it wrapped in her own mind It writhed for an instant, and then melted into leer. Granny opened her eyes in time to see the bird give a hoarse cry of triumph, curve down low over the grass-grown scree, and skim away down the mountainside. For a moment it was a vanishing dot and then it had gone, leaving only another echoing shriek. Granny looked down at Esk’s silent form. The girl was light enough, but it was a long way home and the afternoon was dwindling. “Drat,” she said, with no particular emphasis. She stood up, brushed herself down and, with a grunt of effort, hauled Esk’s inert body over her shoulder. High in the crystal sunset air above the mountains the eagle Esk sought more height, drunk with the sheer vitality of flight. On the way home Granny met a hungry bear. Granny’s back was giving her gyp, and she was in no mood to be growled at. She muttered a few words under her breath and the bear, to its brief amazement, walked heavily into a tree and didn’t regain consciousness for several hours. When she reached the cottage Granny put Esk’s body to bed and drew up the fire. She brought the goats in and milked them, and finished the chores of the evening. She made sure all the windows were open and, when it began to grow dark, lit a lantern and put it on the windowsill. Granny Weatherwax didn’t sleep more than a few hours a night, as a rule, and woke again at midnight. The room hadn’t changed, although the lantern had its own little solar system of very stupid moths. When she woke again at dawn the candle had long burned down and Esk was still sleeping the shallow, unwakable sleep of the Borrower. When she took the goats out to their paddock she looked intently at the sky. Noon came, and gradually the light drained out of another day. She paced the floor of the kitchen aimlessly. Occasionally she would throw herself into frantic bouts of housework; ancient crusts were unceremoniously dug out of the cracks in the flagstones, and the fireback was scraped free of the winter’s soot and blackleaded to within an inch of its life. A nest of mice in the back of the dresser were kindly but firmly ejected into the goatshed. Sunset came. The light of the Discworld was old and slow and heavy. From the cottage door Granny watched as it drained off the mountains, flowing in golden rivers through the forest. Here and there it pooled in hollows until it faded and vanished. She drummed her fingers sharply on the doorpost, humming a small and bitter little tune. Dawn came, and the cottage was empty except for Esk’s body, silent and unmoving on the bed. But as the golden light flowed slowly across the Discworld like the first freshing of the tide over mudflats the eagle circled higher into the dome of heaven, beating the air down with slow and powerful wingbeats. The whole of the world was spread out beneath Esk - all the continents, all the islands, all the rivers and especially the great ring of the Rim Ocean. There was nothing else up here, not even sound. Esk gloried in the feel of it, willing her flagging muscles into greater effort. But something was wrong. Her thoughts seemed to be chasing around beyond her control, and disappearing. Pain and exhilaration and weariness poured into her mind, but it was as if other things were spilling out at the same time. Memories dwindled away on the wind. As fast as she could latch on to a thought it evaporated, leaving nothing behind. She was losing chunks of herself, and she couldn’t remember. what she was losing. She panicked, burrowing back to the things she was sure of .... I am Esk, and I have stolen the body of an eagle and the feel of wind in feathers, the hunger, the search of the not-sky below .... She tried again. I am Esk and seeking the windpath, the pain of muscle, the cut of the air, the cold of it .... I am Esk high over air-damp-wet-white, above everything, the sky is thin .... I am I am. Granny was in the garden, among the beehives, the early morning wind whipping at her skirts. She went from hive to hive, tapping on their roofs. Then, in the thickets of borage and beebalm that she had planted around them, she stood with her arms outstretched in front of her and sang something in tones so high that no normal person could have heard them. But a roar went up from the hives, and then the air was suddenly thick with the heavy, big-eyed, deep-voiced shapes of drone bees. They circled over her head, adding their own bass humming to her chant. Then they were gone, soaring into the growing light over the clearing and streaming away over the trees. It is well known- at least, it is well known to witches - that all colonies of bees are, as it were, just one part of the creature called the Swarm, in the same way that individual bees are component cells of the hivemind. Granny didn’t mingle her thoughts with the bees very often, partly because insect minds were strange, alien things that tasted of tin, but mostly because she suspected that the Swarm was a good deal more intelligent than she was. She knew that the drones would soon reach the wild bee colonies in the deep forest, and within hours every corner of the mountain meadows would be under very close scrutiny indeed. All she could do was wait. At noon the drones returned, and Granny read in the sharp acid thoughts of the hivemind that there was no sign of Esk. She went back into the cool of the cottage and sat down in the rocking chair, staring at the doorway. She knew what the next step was. She hated the very idea of it. But she fetched a short ladder, climbed up creakily on to the roof, and pulled the staff from its hiding place in the thatch. It was icy cold. It steamed. “Above the snowline, then,” said Granny. She climbed down, and rammed the staff into a flowerbed. She glared at it. She had a nasty feeling that it was glaring back. “Don’t think you’ve won, because you haven’t,” she snapped. “It’s just that I haven’t got the time to mess around. You must know where she is. I command you to take me to her!” The staff regarded her woodenly. “By -“ Granny paused, her invocations were a little rusty, “- by stock and stone I order it!” Activity, movement, liveliness - all these words would be completely inaccurate descriptions of the staff’s response. Granny scratched her chin. She remembered the little lesson all children get taught: what’s the magic word? “Please?” she suggested. The staff trembled, rose a little way out of the ground, and turned in the air so that it hung invitingly at waist height. Granny had heard that broomsticks were once again very much the fashion among younger witches, but she didn’t hold with it. There was no way a body could look respectable while hurtling through the air aboard a household implement. Besides, it looked decidedly draughty. But this was no time for respectability. Pausing only to snatch her hat from its hook behind the door she scrambled up on to the staff and perched as best she could, sidesaddle of course, and with her skirts firmly gripped between her knees. “Right,” she said. “Now wha-aaaaaaaaa -“ Across the forest animals broke and scattered as the shadow passed overhead, crying and cursing. Granny clung on with whitened knuckles, her thin legs kicking wildly as, high above the treetops, she learned important lessons about centres of gravity and air turbulence. The staff shot onwards, heedless of her yells. By the time it had come out over the upland meadows she had come to terms with it somewhat, which meant that she could just about hang on with knees and hands provided she didn’t mind being upside down. Her hat, at least, was useful, being aerodynamically shaped. The staff plunged between black cliffs and along high bare valleys where, it was said, rivers of ice had once flowed in the days of the ice Giants. The air became thin and sharp in the throat. They came to an abrupt halt over a snowdrift. Granny fell off, and lay panting in the snow while she tried to remember why she was going through all this. There was a bundle of feathers under an overhang a few feet away. As Granny approached it a head rose jerkily, and the eagle glared at her with fierce, frightened eyes. It tried to fly, and toppled over. When she reached out to touch it, it took a neat triangle of flesh out of her hand. “I see,” said Granny quietly, to no one in particular. She looked around, and found a boulder of about the right size. She disappeared behind it for a few seconds, fox the sake of respectability, and reappeared with a petticoat in her hand. The bird thrashed around, ruining several weeks of meticulous petitpoint embroidery, but she managed to bundle it up and hold it so that she could avoid its sporadic lunges. Granny turned to the staff, which was now upright in the snowdrift. “I shall walk back,” she told it coldly. It turned out that they were in a spur valley overlooking a drop of several hundred feet on to sharp black rocks. “Very well, then,” she conceded, “but you’re to fly slowly, d’you understand? And no going high.” In fact, because she was slightly more experienced and perhaps because the staff was taking more care, too, the ride back was almost sedate. Granny was almost persuaded that, given time, she could come to merely dislike flying, instead of loathing it. What it needed was some way of stopping yourself from having to look at the ground. The eagle sprawled on the rag rug in front of the empty hearth. It had drunk some water, over which Granny had mumbled a few of the charms she normally said to impress patients, but you never knew, there might be some power in them, and it had also gulped a few strips of raw meat. What it had not done was display the least sign of intelligence. She wondered whether she had the right bird. She risked another pecking and stared hard into its evil orange eyes, and tried to convince herself that way down in their depths, almost beyond sight, was a strange little flicker. She probed around inside its head. The eagle mind was still there right enough, vivid and sharp, but there was something else. Mind, of course, has no colour, but nevertheless the strands of the eagle’s mind seemed to be purple. Around them and tangled among them were faint strands of silver. Esk had learned too late that mind shapes body, that Borrowing is one thing but that the dream of truly taking on another form had its built-in penalty. Granny sat and rocked. She was at a loss, she knew that. Unravelling the tangled minds was beyond her power, beyond any power in the Ramtops, beyond even There was no sound, but maybe there was a change in the texture of the air. She looked up at the staff, which had been suffered to come back into the cottage. “No,” she said firmly. Then she thought: whose benefit did I say that for? Mine? There’s power there, but it’s not my kind of power. There isn’t any other kind around, though. And even now I may be too late. I might never have been early enough. She reached out again into the bird’s head to calm its fears and dispel its panic. It allowed her to pick it up and sat awkwardly on her wrist, its talons gripping tight enough to draw blood. Granny took the staff and made her way upstairs, to where Esk lay on the narrow bed in the low bedroom with its ancient contoured ceiling. She made the bird perch on the bedrail and turned her attention to the staff. Once more the carvings shifted under her glare, never quite revealing their true form. Granny was no stranger to the uses of power, but she knew she relied on gentle pressure subtly to steer the tide of things. She didn’t put it like that, of course - she would have said that there was always a lever if you knew where to look. The power in the staff was harsh, fierce, the raw stuff of magic distilled out of the forces that powered the universe itself. There would be a price. And Granny knew enough about wizardry to be certain that it would be a high one. But if you were worried about the price, then why were you in the shop? She cleared her throat, and wondered what the hell she was supposed to do next. Perhaps if she The power hit her like a half-brick. She could feel it take her and lift her so that she was amazed to look down and see her feet still firmly on the floorboards. She tried to take a step forward and magical discharges crackled in the air around her. She reached out to steady herself against the wall and the ancient wooden beam under her hand stirred and started to sprout leaves. A cyclone of magic swirled around the room, picking up dust and briefly giving it some very disturbing shapes; the jug and basin on the washstand, with the particularly fetching rosebud pattern, broke into fragments. Under the bed the third member of the traditional china trio turned into something horrible and slunk away. Granny opened her mouth to swear and thought better of it when her words blossomed out into rainbow-edged clouds. She looked down at Esk and the eagle, which seemed oblivious to all this, and tried to concentrate. She let herself slide inside its head and again she could see the strands of mind, the silver threads bound so closely around the purple that they took on the same shape. But now she could see where the strands ended, and where a judicious tug or push would begin to unravel them. It was so obvious she heard herself laugh, and the sound curved away in shades of orange and red and vanished into the ceiling. Time passed. Even with the power throbbing through hey head it was a painfully hard task, like threading a needle by moonlight, but eventually she had a handful of silver. In the slow, heavy world in which she now appeared to be she took the hank and threw it slowly towards Esk. It became a cloud, swirled like a whirlpool, and vanished. She was aware of a shrill chittering noise, and shadows on the edge of sight. Well, it happened to everyone sooner or later. They had come, drawn as always by a discharge of magic. You just had to learn to ignore them. Granny woke with bright sunlight skewering into her eyes. She was slumped against the door, and her whole body felt as though it had toothache. She reached out blindly with one hand, found the edge of the washstand, and pulled herself into a sitting position. She was not really surprised to see that the jug and basin looked just the same as they had always done; in fact sheer curiosity overcame her aches and she gave a quick glance under the bed to check that, yes, things were as normal. The eagle was still hunched on the bedpost. In the bed Esk was asleep, and Granny saw that it was a true sleep and not the stillness of a vacant body. All she had to do now was hope that Esk wouldn’t wake up with an irresistible urge to pounce on rabbits. She carried the unresisting bird downstairs and let it free outside the back door. It flew heavily up into the nearest tree, where it settled to rest. It had a feeling it ought to have a grudge against somebody, but for the life of it, it couldn’t remember why. Esk opened her eyes and stared for a long time at the ceiling. Over the months she had grown familiar with every lump and crack of the plaster, which created a fantastic upside-down landscape that she had peopled with a private and complex civilization. Her mind thronged with dreams. She pulled an arm out from under the sheets and stared at it, wondering why it wasn’t covered with feathers. It was all very puzzling. She pushed the covers back, swung her legs to the edge of the bed, spread her wings into the rush of the wind and glided out into the world .... The thump on the bedroom floor brought Granny scurrying up the stairs, to take her in her arms and hold her tight as the terror hit her. She rocked back and forth on her heels, making meaningless soothing noises. Esk looked up at her through a mask of horror. “I could feel myself vanishing!” “Yes, yes. Better now,” murmured Granny. “You don’t understand! I couldn’t even remember my name!” Esk shrieked. “But you can remember now.” Esk hesitated, checking. “Yes,” she said, “Yes, of course. Now.” “So no harm done.” “But -“ Granny sighed. “You have learned something,” she said, and thought it safe to insert a touch of sternness into her voice.  “They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not; one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.” “But what happened?” “You thought that Borrowing wasn’t enough. You thought it would be a fine thing to steal another’s body. But you must know that a body is like - like a jelly mould. It sets a shape on its contents, d’you see? You can’t have a girl’s mind in an eagle’s body. Not for long, at any rate.” “I became an eagle?” “Yes.” “Not meat all?” Granny thought for a while. She always had to pause when conversations with Esk led her beyond the reaches of a decent person’s vocabulary. “No,” she said at last, “not in the way you mean. Just an eagle with maybe some strange dreams sometimes. Like when you dream you’re flying, perhaps it would remember walking and talking.” “Urgh.” “But it’s all over now,” said Granny, treating her to a thin smile. “You’re your true self again and the eagle has got its mind back. It’s sitting in the big beech by the privy; I should like you to put out some food for it.” Esk sat back on her heels, staring at a point past Granny’s head. “There were some strange things,” she said conversationally. Granny spun around. “I meant, in a sort of dream I saw things,” said Esk. The old woman’s shock was so visible that she hesitated, frightened that she had said something wrong. “What kind of things?” said Granny flatly. “Sort of big creatures, all sorts of shapes. Just sitting around.” “Was it dark? I mean, these Things, were they in the dark?” “There were stars, I think. Granny?” Granny Weatherwax was staring at the wall. “Granny?” Esk repeated. “Mmph? Yes? Oh.” Granny shook herself. “Yes. I see. Now I would like you to go downstairs and get the bacon that is in the pantry and put it out for the bird, do you understand? It would be a good idea to thank it, too. You never know.” When Esk returned Granny was buttering bread. She pulled her stool up to the table, but the old woman waved the breadknife at her. “First things first. Stand up. Face me.” Esk did so, puzzled. Granny stuck the knife in the breadboard and shook her head. “Drat it,” she said to the world at large. “I don’t know what way they have of it, there should be some kind of ceremony if I know wizards, they always have to complicate things . . . .” “What do you mean?” Granny seemed to ignore her, but crossed to the dark corner by the dresser. “Probably you should have one foot in a bucket of cold porridge and one glove on and all that kind of stuff,” she went on. “I didn’t want to do this, but They’re forcing my hand.” “What are you talking about, Granny?” The old witch yanked the staff out of its shadow and waved it vaguely at Esk. “Here. It’s yours. Take it. I just hope this is the right thing to do.” In fact the presentation of a staff to an apprentice wizard is usually a very impressive ceremony, especially if the staff has been inherited from an elder wage; by ancient lore there is a long and frightening ordeal involving masks and hoods and swords and fearful oaths about people’s tongues being cut out and their entrails torn by wild birds and their ashes scattered to the eight winds and so on. After some hours of this sort of thing the apprentice can be admitted to the brotherhood of the Wise and Enlightened. There is also a long speech. By sheer coincidence Granny got the essence of it in a nutshell. Esk took the staff and peered at it. “It’s very nice,” she said uncertainly. “The carvings are pretty. What’s it for?” “Sit down now. And listen properly for once. On the day you were born . . . .” “. . . and that’s the shape of it.” Esk looked hard at the staff, then at Granny. “I’ve got to be a wizard?” “Yes. No. I don’t know.” “That isn’t really an answer, Granny,” Esk said reproachfully. “Am I or aren’t I?” “Women can’t be wizards,” said Granny bluntly. “It’s agin nature. You might as well have a female blacksmith.” “Actually I’ve watched dad at work and I don’t see why -“ “Look,” said Granny hurriedly, “you can’t have a female wizard any more than you can have a male witch, because -“ “I’ve heard of male witches,” said Esk meekly. “Warlocks!” “I think so.” “I mean there’s no male witches, only silly men,” said Granny hotly. “If men were witches, they’d be wizards. It’s all down to -“she tapped her head “- headology. How your mind works. Men’s minds work different from ours, see. Their magic’s all numbers and angles and edges and what the stars are doing, as if that really mattered. It’s all power. It’s all -“ Granny paused, and dredged up her favourite word to describe all she despised in wizardry, “- jommetry.” “That’s all right, then,” said Esk, relieved. “I’ll stay here and learn witchery.” “Ali,” said Granny gloomily, “that’s all very well for you to say. I don’t think it will be as easy as that.” “But you said that men can be wizards and women can be witches and it can’t be the other way around.” “That’s right.” “Well, then,” said Esk triumphantly, “it’s all solved, isn’t it? I can’t help but be a witch.” Granny pointed to the staff. Esk shrugged. “It’s just an old stick.” Granny shook her head. Esk blinked. “No?” “No.” “And I can’t be a witch?” “I don’t know what you can be. Hold the staff.” “What?” “Hold the staff. Now, I’ve laid the fire in the grate. Light it.” “The tinderbox is -“ Esk began. “You once told me there were better ways of lighting fires. Show me.” Granny stood up. In the dimness of the kitchen she seemed to grow until she filled it with shifting, ragged shadows, shot with menace. Her eyes glared down at Esk. “Show me,” she commanded, and her voice had ice in it. “But -“said Esk desperately, clutching the heavy staff to her and knocking her stool over in her haste to back away. “Showme.” With a scream Esk spun around. Fire flared from her fingertips and arced across the room. The kindling exploded with a force that hurled the furniture around the room and a ball of fierce green light spluttered on the hearth. Changing patterns sped across it as it spun sizzling on the stones, which cracked and then flowed. The iron fireback resisted bravely for a few seconds before melting like wax; it made a final appearance as a red smear across the fireball and then vanished. A moment later the kettle went the same way. Just when it seemed that the chimney would follow them the ancient hearthstone gave up, and with a final splutter the fireball sank from view. The occasional crackle or puff of steam signaled its passage through the earth. Apart from that there was silence, the loud hissing silence that comes after an ear-splattering noise, and after the actinic glare the room seemed pitch dark. Eventually Granny crawled out from behind the table and crept as closely as she dared to the hole, which was still surrounded by a crust of lava. She jerked back as another cloud of superheated steam mushroomed up. “They say there’s dwarf mines under the Ramtops,” she said inconsequentially. “My, but them little buggers is in for a surprise.” She prodded the little puddle of cooling iron where the kettle had been, and added, “Shame about the fireback. It had owls on it, you know.” She patted her singed hair gingerly with a shaking hand. “I think this calls for a nice cup of, a nice cup of cold water.” Esk sat looking in wonder at her hand. “That was real magic.” she said at last, “And I did it.” “One type of real magic,” corrected Granny. “Don’t forget that. And you don’t want to do that all the time, neither. If it’s in you, you’ve got to learn to control it.” “Can you teach me?” “Me? No!” “How can I learn if no one will teach me?” “You’ve got to go where they can. Wizard school.” “But you said -“ Granny paused in the act of filling a jug from the water bucket. “Yes, yes,” she snapped, “Never mind what I said, or common sense or anything. Sometimes you just have to go the way things take you, and I reckon you’re going to wizard school one way or the other.” Esk considered this. “You mean it’s my destiny?” she said at last. Granny shrugged. “Something like that. Probably. Who knows? “ That night, long after Esk had been sent to bed, Granny put on her hat, lit a fresh candle, cleared the table, and pulled a small wooden box from its secret hiding place in the dresser. It contained a bottle of ink, an elderly quill pen, and a few sheets of paper. Granny was not entirely happy when faced with the world of letters. Her eyes protruded, her tongue stuck out, small beads of sweat formed on her forehead, but the pen scratched its way across the page to the accompaniment of the occasional quiet “drat” or “bugger the thing”. The letter read as follows, although this version lacks the candlewax, blots, crossings-out and damp patches of the original. To then Hed blizzard, Unsene Universety, Greatings, I hop you ar well, I am sending to you won Escarrina Smith, shee bath thee maekings of wizzardery but whot may be ferther dun wyth hyr I knowe not slice is a gode worker and clene about hyr person allso skilled in diuerse arts of thee howse, I will send Monies wyth hyr May you liv longe and ende youre days in pese, And oblije, Esmerelder Weatherwaxe (Mss/ wytch. Granny held it up to the candlelight and considered it critically. It was a good letter. She had got “diuerse” out of the Alm anack, which she read every night. It was always predicting “diuerse plagues” and “diuerse ill-fortune”. Granny wasn’t entirely sure what it meant, but it was a damn good word all the same. She sealed it with candle-wax and put it on the dresser. She could leave it for the carrier to take when she went into the village tomorrow, to see about a new kettle. Next morning Granny took some pains over her dress, selecting a black dress with a frog and bat motif, a big velvet cloak, or at least a cloak made of the sort of stuff velvet looks like after thirty years of heavy wear, and the pointed hat of office which was crucified with hatpins. Their first call was to the stonemason, to order a replacement hearthstone. Then they called on the smith. It was a long and stormy meeting. Esk wandered out into the orchard and climbed up to her old place in the apple tree while from the house came her father’s shouts, her mother’s wails and long silent pauses which meant that Granny Weatherwax was speaking softly in what Esk thought of as her “just so” voice. The old woman had a flat, measured way of speaking sometimes. It was the kind of voice the Creator had probably used. Whether there was magic in it, or just headology, it ruled out any possibility of argument. It made it clear that whatever it was talking about was exactly how things should be. The breeze shook the tree gently. Esk sat on a branch idly swinging her legs. She thought about wizards. They didn’t often come to Bad Ass, but there were a fair number of stories about them. They were wise, she recalled, and usually very old and they did powerful, complex and mysterious magics and almost all of them had beards. They were also, without exception, men. She was on firmer ground with witches, because she’d trailed off with Granny to visit a couple of villages’ witches further along the hills, and anyway witches figured largely in Ramtop folklore. Witches were cunning, she recalled, and usually very old, or at least they tried to look old, and they did slightly suspicious, homely and organic magics and some of them had beards. They were also, without exception, women. There was some fundamental problem in all that which she couldn’t quite resolve. Why wouldn’t.... Cern and Gulta hurtled down the path and came to a pushing, shoving halt under the tree. They peered up at their sister with a mixture of fascination and scorn. Witches and wizards were objects of awe, but sisters weren’t. Somehow, knowing your own sister was learning to be a witch sort of devalued the whole profession. “You can’t really do spells,” said Cern. “Can you?” “Course you can’t,” said Gulta. “What’s this stick?” Esk had left the staff leaning against the tree. Cern prodded it cautiously. “I don’t want you to touch it,” said Esk hurriedly. “Please. It’s mine.” Cern normally had all the sensitivity of a ballbearing, but his hand stopped in mid-prod, much to his surprise. “I didn’t want to anyway,” he muttered to hide his confusion. “It’s only an old stick.” “Is it true you can do spells?” asked Gulta. “We heard Granny say you could.” “We listened at the door,” added Cern. “You said I couldn’t,” said Esk, airily. “Well, can you or can’t you?” said Gulta, his face reddening. “Perhaps.” “You can’t!” Esk looked down at his face. She loved her brothers, when she reminded herself to, in a dutiful sort of way, although she generally remembered them as a collection of loud noises in trousers. But there was something awfully pig-like and unpleasant about the way Gulta was staring up at her, as though she had personally insulted him. She felt her body start to tingle, and the world suddenly seemed very sharp and clear. “I can,” she said. Gulta looked from her to the staff, and his eyes narrowed. He kicked it viciously. “Old stick!” He looked, she thought, exactly like a small angry pig. Cern’s screams brought Granny and his parents first to the back door and then running down the cinder path. Esk was perched in the fork of the apple tree, an expression of dreamy contemplation on her face. Cern was hiding behind the tree, his face a mere rim around a red, tonsil-vibrating bawl. Gulta was sitting rather bewildered in a pile of clothing that no longer fitted him, wrinkling his snout. Granny strode up to the tree until her hooked nose was level with Esk’s. “Turning people into pigs is not allowed,” she hissed. “Even brothers.” “I didn’t do it, it just happened. Anyway, you must admit it’s a better shape for him,” said Esk evenly. “What’s going on?” said Smith. “Where’s Gulta? What’s this pig doing here?” “This pig”, said Granny Weatherwax, “is your son.” There was a sigh from Esk’s mother as she collapsed gently backwards, but Smith was slightly less unprepared. He looked sharply from Gulta, who had managed to untangle himself from his clothing and was now rooting enthusiastically among the early windfalls, to his only daughter. “She did this?” “Yes. Or it was done through her,” said Granny, looking suspiciously at the staff. “Oh.” Smith looked at his fifth son. He had to admit that the shape suited him. He reached out without looking and fetched the screaming Cern a thump on the back of his head. “Can you turn him back again?” he asked. Granny spun around and glared the question at Esk, who shrugged. “He didn’t believe I could do magic,” she said calmly. “Yes, well, I think you’ve made the point,” said Granny. “And now you will turn him back, madam. This instant. Do you hear?” “Don’t want to. He was rude.” “I see.” Esk gazed down defiantly. Granny glared up sternly. Their wills clanged like cymbals and the air between them thickened. But Granny had spent a lifetime bending recalcitrant creatures to her bidding and, while Esk was a surprisingly strong opponent, it was obvious that she would give in before the end of the paragraph. “Oh, all right,” she whined. “I don’t know why anyone would bother turning him into a pig when he was doing such a good job of it all by himself.” She didn’t know where the magic had come from, but she mentally faced that way and made a suggestion. Gulta reappeared, naked, with an apple in his mouth. “Awts aughtning?” he said. Granny spun around on Smith. “Now will you believe me?” she snapped. “Do you really think she’s supposed to settle down here and forget all about magic? Can you imagine her poor husband if she marries?” “But you always said it was impossible for women to be wizards,” said Smith. He was actually rather impressed. Granny Weatherwax had never been known to turn anyone into anything. “Never mind that now,” said Granny, calming down a bit. “She needs training. She needs to know how to control. For pity’s sake put some clothes on that child.” “Gulta, get dressed and stop grizzling,” said his father, and turned back to Granny. “You said there was some sort of teaching place?” he hazarded. “The Unseen University, yes. It’s for training wizards.” “And you know where it is?” “Yes,” lied Granny, whose grasp of geography was slightly worse than her knowledge of sub-atomic physics. Smith looked from her to his daughter, who was sulking. “And they’ll make a wizard of her?” he said. Granny sighed. “I don’t know what they’ll make of her,” she said. And so it was that, a week later, Granny locked the cottage door and hung the key on its nail in the privy. The goats had been sent to stay with a sister witch further along the hills, who had also promised to keep an Eye on the cottage. Bad Ass would just have to manage without a witch for a while. Granny was vaguely aware that you didn’t find the Unseen University unless it wanted you to, and the only place to start looking was the town of Ohulan Cutash, a sprawl of a hundred or so houses about fifteen miles away. It was where you went to once or twice a year if you were a really cosmopolitan Bad Assian: Granny had only been once before in her entire life and hadn’t approved of it at all. It had smelt all wrong, she’d got lost, and she distrusted city folk with their flashy ways. They got a lift on the cart that came out periodically with metal for the smithy. It was gritty, but better than walking, especially since Granny had packed their few possessions in a large sack. She sat on it for safety. Esk sat cradling the staff and watching the woods go by. When they were several miles outside the village she said, “I thought you told me plants were different in forn parts.” “So they are.” “These trees look just the same.” Granny regarded them disdainfully. “Nothing like as good,” she said. In fact she was already feeling slightly panicky. Her promise to accompany Esk to Unseen University had been made without thinking, and Granny, who picked up what little she knew of the rest of the Disc from rumour and the pages of her Almanack, was convinced that they were heading into earthquakes, tidal waves, plagues and massacres, many of them diverse or even worse. But she was determined to see it through. A witch relied too much on words ever to go back on them. She was wearing serviceable black, and concealed about her person were a number of hatpins and a breadknife. She had hidden their small store of money, grudgingly advanced by Smith, in the mysterious strata of her underwear. Her skirt pockets jingled with lucky charms, and a freshly-forged horseshoe, always a potent preventative in time of trouble, weighed down her handbag. She felt about as ready as she ever would be to face the world. The track wound down between the mountains. For once the sky was clear, the high Ramtops standing out crisp and white like the brides of the sky (with their trousseaux stuffed with thunderstorms) and the many little streams that bordered or crossed the path flowed sluggishly through strands of meadowsweet and go-fasterroot. By lunchtime they reached the suburb of Ohulan (it was too small to have more than one, which was just an inn and a handful of cottages belonging to people who couldn’t stand the pressures of urban life) and a few minutes later the cart deposited them in the town’s main, indeed its only, square. It turned out to be market day. Granny Weatherwax stood uncertainly on the cobbles, holding tightly to Esk’s shoulder as the crowd swirled around them. She had heard that lewd things could happen to country women who were freshly arrived in big cities, and she gripped her handbag until her knuckles whitened. If any male stranger had happened to so much as nod at her it would have gone very hard indeed for him. Esk’s eyes were sparkling. The square was a jigsaw of noise and colour and smell. On one side of it were the temples of the Disc’s more demanding deities, and weird perfumes drifted out to join with the reeks of commerce in a complex ragrug of fragrances. There were stalls filled with enticing curiosities that she itched to investigate. Granny let the both of them drift with the crowd. The stalls were puzzling her as well. She peered among them, although never for one minute relaxing her vigilance against pickpockets, earthquakes and traffickers in the erotic, until she spied something vaguely familiar. There was a small covered stall, black draped and musty, that had been wedged into a narrow space between two houses. Inconspicuous though it was, it nevertheless seemed to be doing a very busy trade. Its customers were mainly women, of all ages, although she did notice a few men. They all had one thing in common, though. No one approached it directly. They all sort of strolled almost past it, then suddenly ducked under its shady canopy. A moment later and they would be back again, hand just darting away from bag or pocket, competing for the world’s Most Nonchalant Walk title so effectively that a watcher might actually doubt what he or she had just seen. It was quite amazing that a stall so many people didn’t know was there should be quite so popular. “What’s in there?” said Esk. “What’s everyone buying?” “Medicines,” said Granny firmly. “There must be a lot of very sick people in towns,” said Esk gravely. Inside, the stall was a mass of velvet shadows and the herbal scent was thick enough to bottle. Granny poked a few bundles of dry leaves with an expert finger. Esk pulled away from her and tried to read the scrawled labels on the bottles in front of her. She was expert at most of Granny’s preparations, but she didn’t recognise anything here. The names were quite amusing, like Tiger Oil, Maiden’s Prayer and Husband’s Helper, and one or two of the stoppers smelled like Granny’s scullery after she had done some of her secret distillations. A shape moved in the stall’s dim recesses and a brown wrinkled hand slid lightly on to hers. “Can I assist you, missy?” said a cracked voice, in tones of syrup of figs, “Is it your fortune you want telling, or is it your future you want changing, maybe?” “She’s with me,” snapped Granny, spinning around, “and your eyes are betraying you, Hilta Goatfounder, if you can’t tell her age.” The shape in front of Esk bent forward. “Esme Weatherwax?” it asked. “The very same,” said Granny. “Still selling thunder drops and penny wishes, Hilta? How goes it?” “All the better for seeing you,” said the shape. “What brings you down from the mountains, Esme? And this child - your assistant, perhaps?” “What’s it you’re selling, please?” asked Esk. The shape laughed. “Oh, things to stop things that shouldn’t be and help things that should, love,” it said. “Let me just close up, my dears, and I will be right with you.” The shape bustled past Esk in a nasal kaleidoscope of fragrances and buttoned up the curtains at the front of the stall. Then the drapes at the back were thrown up, letting in the afternoon sunlight. “Can’t stand the dark and fug myself,” said Hilta Goatfounder, “but the customers expect it. You know how it is.” “Yes,” Esk nodded sagely. “Headology.” Hilts, a small fat woman wearing an enormous hat with fruit on it, glanced from her to Granny and grinned. “That’s the way of it,” she agreed. “Will you take some tea?” They sat on bales of unknown herbs in the private corner made by the stall between the angled walls of the houses, and drank something fragrant and green out of surprisingly delicate cups. Unlike Granny, who dressed like a very respectable raven, Hilts Goatfounder was all lace and shawls and colours and earrings and so many bangles that a mere movement of her arms sounded like a percussion section falling off a cliff. But Esk could see the likeness. It was hard to describe. You couldn’t imagine them curtseying to anyone. “So,” said Granny, “how goes the life?” The other witch shrugged, causing the drummers to lose their grip again, just when they had nearly climbed back up. “Like the hurried lover, it comes and goe-“ she began, and stopped at Granny’s meaningful glance at Esk. “Not bad, not bad,” she amended hurriedly. “The council have tried to run me out once or twice, you know, but they all have wives and somehow it never quite happens. They say I’m not the right sort, but I say there’d be many a family in this town a good deal bigger and poorer if it wasn’t for Madame Goatfounder’s Pennyroyal Preventives. I know who comes into my shop, I do. I remember who buys buckeroo drops and ShoNuff Ointment, I do. Life isn’t bad. And how is it up in your village with the funny name?” “Bad Ass,” said Esk helpfully. She picked a small clay pot off the counter and sniffed at its contents. “It is well enough,” conceded Granny. “The handmaidens of nature are ever in demand.” Esk sniffed again at the powder, which seemed to be pennyroyal with a base she couldn’t quite identify, and carefully replaced the lid. While the two women exchanged gossip in a kind of feminine code, full of eye contact and unspoken adjectives, she examined the other exotic potions on display. Or rather, not on display. In some strange way they appeared to be artfully half-hidden, as if Hilts wasn’t entirely keen to sell. “I don’t recognise any of these,” she said, half to herself. “What do they give to people?” “Freedom,” said Hilts, who had good hearing. She turned back to Granny. “How much have you taught her?” “Not that much,” said Granny. “There’s power there, but what kind I’m not sure. Wizard power, it might be.” Hilts turned around very slowly and looked Esk up and down. “Ah,” she said, “That explains the staff. I wondered what the bees were talking about. Well, well. Give me your hand, child.” Esk held out her hand. Hilta’s fingers were so heavy with rings it was like dipping into a sack of walnuts. Granny sat upright, radiating disapproval, as Hilts began to inspect Esk’s palm. “I really don’t think that is necessary,” she said sternly. “Not between us.” “You do it, Granny,” said Esk, “in the village. I’ve seen you. And teacups. And cards.” Granny shifted uneasily. “Yes, well,” she said. “It’s all according. You just hold their hand and people do their own fortune-telling. But there’s no need to go around believing it, we’d all be in trouble if we went around believing everything.” “The Powers That Be have many strange qualities, and puzzling and varied are the ways in which they make their desires known in this circle of firelight we call the physical world,” said Hilts solemnly. She winked at Esk. “Well, really,” snapped Granny. “No, straight up,” said Hilts. “It’s true.” “Hmph.” “I see you going upon a long journey,” said Hilts. “Will I meet a tall dark stranger?” said Esk, examining her palm. “Granny always says that to women, she says -“ “No,” said Hilts, while Granny snorted. “But it will be a very strange journey. You’ll go a long way while staying in the same place. And the direction will be a strange one. It will be an exploration.” “You can tell all that from my hand?” “Well, mainly I’m just guessing,” said Hilts, sitting back and reaching for the teapot /the lead drummer, who had climbed halfway back, fell on to the toiling cymbalists/. She looked carefully at Esk and added, “A female wizard, eh?” “Granny is taking me to Unseen University,” said Esk. Hilta raised her eyebrows. “Do you know where it is?” Granny frowned. “Not in so many words,” she admitted. “I was hoping you could give me more explicit directions, you being more familiar with bricks and things.” “They say it has many doors, but the ones in this world are in the city of Ankh-Morpork,” said Hilta. Granny looked blank. “On the Circle Sea,” Hilta added. Granny’s look of polite enquiry persisted. “Five hundred miles away,” said Hilta. “Oh,” said Granny. She stood up and brushed an imaginary speck of dust off her dress. “We’d better be going, then,” she added. Hilta laughed. Esk quite liked the sound. Granny never laughed, she merely let the corners of her mouth turn up, but Hilta laughed like someone who had thought hard about Life and had seen the joke. “Start tomorrow, anyway,” she said. “I’ve got room at home, you can stay with me, and tomorrow you’ll have the light.” “We wouldn’t want to presume,” said Granny. “Nonsense. Why not have a look around while I pack up the stall?” Ohulan was the market town for a wide sprawling countryside and the market day didn’t end at sunset. Instead, torches flared at every booth and stall and light blared forth from the open doorways of the inns. Even the temples put out coloured lamps to attract nocturnal worshippers. Hilta moved through the crowd like a slim snake through dry grass, her entire stall and stock reduced to a surprisingly small bundle on her back, and her jewellery rattling like a sackful of flamenco dancers. Granny stumped along behind her, her feet aching from the unaccustomed prodding of the cobbles. And Esk got lost. It took some effort, but she managed it. It involved ducking between two stalls and then scurrying down a side alley. Granny had warned her at length about the unspeakable things that lurked in cities, which showed that the old woman was lacking in a complete understanding of headology, since Esk was- now determined to see one or two of them for herself. In fact, since Ohulan was quite barbaric and uncivilised the only things that went on after dark to any degree were a little thievery, some amateurish trading in the courts of lust, and drinking until you fell over or started singing or both. According to the standard poetic instructions one should move through a fair like the white swan at evening moves o’er the bay, but because of certain practical difficulties Esk settled for moving through the crowds like a small dodgem car, bumping from body to body with the tip of the staff waving a yard above her head. It caused some heads to turn, and not only because it had hit them; wizards occasionally passed through the town and it was the first time anyone had seen one four feet tall with long hair. Anyone watching closely would have noticed strange things happening as she passed by. There was, for example, the man with three upturned cups who was inviting a small crowd to explore with him the exciting world of chance and probability as it related to the position of a small dried pea. He was vaguely aware of a small figure watching him solemnly for a few moments, and then a sackful of peas cascaded out of every cup he picked up. Within seconds he was knee-deep in legumes. He was a lot deeper in trouble he suddenly owed everyone a lot of money. There was a small and wretched monkey that for years had shuffled vaguely at the end of a chain while its owner played something dreadful on a pipe-organ. It suddenly turned, narrowed its little red eyes, bit its keeper sharply in the leg, snapped its chain and had it away over the rooftops with the night’s takings in a tin cup. History is silent about what they were spent on. A boxful of marzipan ducks on a nearby stall came to life and whirred past the stallholder to land, quacking happily, in the river (where, by dawn, they had all melted: that’s natural selection for your. The stall itself sidled off down an alley and was never seen again. Esk, in fact, moved through the fair more like an arsonist moves through a hayfield or a neutron bounces through a reactor, poets notwithstanding, and the hypothetical watcher could have detected her random passage by tracing the outbreaks of hysteria and violence. But, like all good catalysts, she wasn’t actually involved in the processes she initiated, and by the time all the non-hypothetical potential watchers took their eyes off them she had been buffeted somewhere else. She was also beginning to tire. While Granny Weatherwax approved of night on general principles, she certainly didn’t hold with promiscuous candlelight - if she had any reading to do after dark she generally persuaded the owl to come and sit on the back of her chair, and read through its eyes. So Esk expected to go to bed around sunset, and that was long past. There was a doorway ahead of her that looked friendly. Cheerful sounds were sliding out on the yellow light, and pooling on the cobbles. With the staff still radiating random magic like a demon lighthouse she headed for it, weary but determined. The landlord of The Fiddler’s Riddle considered himself to be a man of the world, and this was right, because he was too stupid to be really cruel, and too lazy to be really mean and although his body had been around quite a lot his mind had never gone further than the inside of his own head. He wasn’t used to being addressed by sticks. Especially when they spoke in a small piping voice, and asked for goat’s milk. Cautiously, aware that everyone in the inn was looking at him and grinning, he pulled himself across the bar top until he could see down. Esk stared up at him. Look ‘em right in the eye, Granny had always said: focus your power on ‘em, stare ‘em out, no one can outstare a witch, ‘cept a goat, of course. The landlord, whose name was Skiller, found himself looking directly down at a small child who seemed to be squinting. “What?” he said. “Milk,” said the child, still focussing furiously. “You get it out of goats. You know?” Skiller sold only beer, which his customers claimed he got out of cats. No self-respecting goat would have endured the smell in the Fiddler’s Riddle. “We haven’t got any,” he said. He looked hard at the staff and his eyebrows met conspiratorially over his nose. “You could have a look,” said Esk. Skiller eased himself back across the bar, partly to avoid the gaze, which was causing his eyes to water in sympathy, and partly because a horrible suspicion was congealing in his mind. Even second-rate barmen tend to resonate with the beer they serve, and the vibrations coming from the big barrels behind him no longer had the twang of hop and head. They were broadcasting an altogether more lactic note. He turned a tap experimentally, and watched a thin stream of milk curdle in the drip bucket. The staff still poked up over the edge of the counter, like a periscope. He could swear that it was staring at him too. “Don’t waste it,” said a voice. “You’ll be grateful for it one day.” It was the same tone of voice Granny used when Esk was less than enthusiastic about a plateful of nourishing sallet greens, boiled yellow until the last few vitamins gave in, but to Skiller’s hypersensitive ears it wasn’t an injunction but a prediction. He shivered. He didn’t know where he would have to be to make him grateful for a drink of ancient beer and curdled milk. He’d rather be dead first. Perhaps he would be dead first. He very carefully wiped a nearly clean mug with his thumb and filled it from the tap. He was aware that a large number of his guests were quietly leaving. No one liked magic, especially n the hands of a woman. You never could tell what they might take it into their heads to do next. “Your milk,” he said, adding, “Miss.” “I’ve got some money,” Esk said. Granny had always told her: always be ready to pay and you won’t have to, people always like you to feel good about them, it’s all headology. “No, wouldn’t dream of it,” said Skiller hastily. He leaned over the bar. “If you could see, er, your way clear to turning the rest back, though? Not much call for milk in these parts.” He sidled along a little way. Esk had leaned the staff against the bar while she drank her milk, and it was making him uncomfortable. Esk looked at him over a moustache of cream. “I didn’t turn it into milk, I just knew it would be milk because I wanted milk,” she said. “What did you think it was?” “Er. Beer.” Esk thought about this. She vaguely remembered trying beer once, and it had tasted sort of second-hand. But she could recall something which everyone in Bad Ass reckoned was much better than beer. It was one of Granny’s most guarded recipes. It was good for you, because there was only fruit in it, plus lots of freezing and boiling and careful testing of little drops with a lighted flame. Granny would put a very small spoonful in her milk if it was a really cold night. It had to be a wooden spoon, on account of what it did to metal. She concentrated. She could picture the taste in her mind, and with the little skills that she was beginning to accept but couldn’t understand she found she could take the taste apart into little coloured shapes .... Skiller’s thin wife came out of their back room to see why it had all gone so quiet, and he waved her into shocked silence as Esk stood swaying very slightly with her eyes closed and her lips moving . . . . little shapes that you didn’t need went back into the great pool of shapes, and then you found the extra ones you needed and put them together, and then there was a sort of hook thing which meant that they would turn anything suitable into something just like them, and then .... Skiller turned very carefully and regarded the barrel behind him. The smell of the room had changed, he could feel the pure gold sweating gently out of that ancient woodwork. With some care he took a small glass from his store under the counter and let a few splashes of the dark golden liquid escape from the tap. He looked at it thoughtfully in the lamplight, turned the glass around methodically, sniffed it a few times, and tossed its contents back in one swallow. His face remained unchanged, although his eyes went moist and his throat wobbled somewhat. His wife and Esk watched him as a thin beading of sweat broke out on his forehead. Ten seconds passed, and he was obviously out to break some heroic record. There may have been steam curling out of his ears, but that could have been a rumour. His fingers drummed a strange tattoo on the bartop. At last he swallowed, appeared to reach a decision, turned solemnly to Esk, and said, “Hwarl,ish finish saaarghs ishghs oorgsh?” His brow wrinkled as he ran the sentence past his mind again and made a second attempt. “Aargh argh shaah gok?” He gave up. “Bharrgsh nargh!” His wife snorted and took the glass out of his unprotesting hand. She sniffed it. She looked at the barrels, all ten of them. She met his unsteady eye. In a private paradise for two they soundlessly calculated the selling price of six hundred gallons of triple-distilled white mountain peach brandy and ran out of numbers. Mrs Skiller was quicker on the uptake than her husband. She bent down and smiled at Esk, who was too tired to squint back. It wasn’t a particularly good smile, because Mrs Skiller didn’t get much practice. “How did you get here, little girl?” she said, in a voice that suggested gingerbread cottages and the slamming of big stove doors. “I got lost from Granny.” “And where’s Granny now, dear? “ Clang went the oven doors again; it was going to be a tough night for all wanderers in metaphorical forests. “Just somewhere, I expect.” “Would you like to go to sleep in a big feather bed, all nice and warm?” Esk looked at her gratefully, even while vaguely realizing that the woman had a face just like an eager ferret, and nodded. You’re right. It’s going to take more than a passing woodchopper to sort this out. Granny, meanwhile, was two streets away. She was also, by the standards of other people, lost. She would not see it like that. She knew where she was, it was just that everywhere else didn’t. It has already been mentioned that it is much harder to detect a human mind than, say, the mind of a fox. The human mind, seeing this as some kind of a slur, wants to know why. This is why. Animal minds are simple, and therefore sharp. Animals never spend time dividing experience into little bits and speculating about all the bits they’ve missed. The whole panoply of the universe has been neatly expressed to them as things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, /c/ run away from, and /d) rocks. This frees the mind from unnecessary thoughts and gives it a cutting edge where it matters. Your normal animal, in fact, never tries to walk and chew gum at the same time. The average human, on the other hand, thinks about all sorts of things around the clock, on all sorts of levels, with interruptions from dozens of biological calendars and timepieces. There’s thoughts about to be said, and private thoughts, and real thoughts, and thoughts about thoughts, and a whole gamut of subconscious thoughts. To a telepath the human head is a din. It is a railway terminus with all the Tannoys talking at once. It is a complete FM waveband - and some of those stations aren’t reputable, they’re outlawed pirates on forbidden seas who play late-night records with limbic lyrics. Granny, trying to locate Esk by mind magic alone, was trying to find a straw in a haystack. She was not succeeding, but enough blips of sense reached her through the heterodyne wails of a thousand brains all thinking at once to convince her that the world was, indeed, as silly as she had always believed it was. She met Hilta at the corner of the street. She was carrying her broomstick, the better to conduct an aerial search (with great stealth, however; the men of Ohulan were right behind Stay Long Ointment but drew the line at flying women). She was distraught. “Not so much as a hint of her,” said Granny. “Have you been down to the river? She might have fallen in!” “Then she’d have just fallen out again. Anyway, she can swim. I think she’s hiding, drat her.” “What are we going to do?” Granny gave her a withering look. “Hilta Goatfounder, I’m ashamed of you, acting like a cowin. Do I look worried?” Hilta peered at her. “You do. A bit. Your lips have gone all thin.” “I’m just angry, that’s all.” “Gypsies always come here for the fair, they might have taken her.” Granny was prepared to believe anything about city folk but here she was on firmer ground. “Then they’re a lot dafter than I’d give them credit for,” she snapped. “Look, she’s got the staff.” “What good would that do?” said Hilta, who was close to tears. “I don’t think you’ve understood anything I’ve told you,” said Granny severely. “All we need to do is go back to your place and wait.” “What for?” “The screams or the bangs or the fireballs or whatever,” Granny said vaguely. “That’s heartless!” “Oh, I expect they’ve got it coming to them. Come on, you go on ahead and put the kettle on.” Hilta gave her a mystified look, then climbed on her broom and rose slowly and erratically into the shadows among the chimneys. If broomsticks were cars, this one would be a split window Morris Minor. Granny watched her go, then stumped along the wet streets after her. She was determined that they wouldn’t get her up in one of those things. Esk lay in the big, fluffy and slightly damp sheets of the spare bed in the attic room of the Riddle. She was tired, but couldn’t sleep. The bed was too chilly, for one thing. She wondered uneasily if she dared try to warm it up, but thought better of it. She couldn’t seem to get the hang of fire spells, no matter how carefully she experimented. They either didn’t work at all or worked only too well. The woods around the cottage were becoming treacherous with the holes left by disappearing fireballs; at least, if the wizardry thing didn’t work then Granny said she’d have a fine future as a privy builder or well sinker. She turned over and tried to ignore the bed’s faint smell of mushrooms. Then she reached out in the darkness until her hand found the staff, propped against the bedhead. Mrs Skiller had been quite insistent about taking it downstairs, but Esk had hung on like grim death. It was the only thing in the world she was absolutely certain belonged to her. The varnished surface with its strange carvings felt oddly comforting. Esk went to sleep, and dreamed bangles, and strange packages, and mountains. And distant stars above the mountains, and a cold desert where strange creatures lurched across the dry sand and stared at her through insect eyes .... There was a creak on the stairs. Then another. Then a silence, the sort of choking, furry silence made by someone standing as still as possible. The door swung open. Skiller made a blacker shadow against the candlelight on the stairs, and there was a faintly whispered conversation before he tiptoed as silently as he could towards the bedhead. The staff slipped sideways as his first cautious grope dislodged it, but he caught it quickly and let his breath out very slowly. So he hardly had enough left to scream with when the staff moved in his hands. He felt the scaliness, the coil and muscle of it .... Esk sat bolt upright in time to see Skiller roll backwards down the steep stairladder, still flailing desperately at something quite invisible that coiled around his arms. There was another scream from below as he landed on his wife. The staff clattered to the floor and lay surrounded by a faint octarine glow. Esk got out of the bed and padded across the floor. There was a terrible cursing; it sounded unhealthy. She peered around the door and looked down on the face of Mrs Skiller. “Give me that staff!” Esk reached down behind her and gripped the polished wood. “No,” she said. “It’s mine.” “It’s not the right sort of thing for little girls,” snapped the barman’s wife. “It belongs to me,” said Esk, and quietly closed the door. She listened for a moment to the muttering from below and tried to think of what to do next. Turning the couple into something would probably only cause a fuss and, anyway, she wasn’t quite certain how to do it. The fact was the magic only really worked when she wasn’t thinking about it. Her mind seemed to get in the way. She padded across the room and pushed open the tiny window. The strange night-time smells of civilization drifted in - the damp smell of streets, the fragrance of garden flowers, the distant hint of an overloaded privy. There were wet tiles outside. As Skiller started back up the stairs she pushed the staff out on to the roof and crawled after it, steadying herself on the carvings above the window. The roof dipped down to an outhouse and she managed to stay at least vaguely upright as she half-slid, half-scrambled down the uneven tiles. A six-foot drop on to a stack of old barrels, a quick scramble down the slippery wood, and she was trotting easily across the inn yard. As she kicked up the street mists she could hear the sounds of argument coming from the Riddle. Skiller rushed past his wife and laid a hand on the tap of the nearest barrel. He paused, and then wrenched it open. The smell of peach brandy filled the room, sharp as knives. He shut off the flow and relaxed. “Afraid it would turn into something nasty?” asked his wife. He nodded. “If you hadn’t been so clumsy -“she began. “I tell you it bit me!” “You could have been a wizard and we wouldn’t have to bother with all this. Have you got no ambition?” Skiller shook his head. “I reckon it takes more than a staff to make a wizard,” he said. “Anyway, I heard where it said wizards aren’t allowed to get married, they’re not even allowed to -“ He hesitated. “To what? Allowed to what?” Skiller writhed. “Well. You know. Thing.” “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Mrs Skiller briskly. “No, I suppose not.” He followed her reluctantly out of the darkened bar-room. It seemed to him that perhaps wizards didn’t have such a bad life, at that. He was proved right when the following morning revealed that the ten barrels of peach brandy had, indeed, turned into something nasty. Esk wandered aimlessly through the grey streets until she reached Ohulan’s tiny river docks. Broad flat-bottomed barges bobbed gently against the wharves, and one or two of them curled wisps of smoke from friendly stovepipes. Esk clambered easily on to the nearest, and used the staff to lever up the oilcloth that covered most of it. A warm smell, a mixture of lanolin and midden, drifted up. The barge was laden with wool. It’s silly to go to sleep on an unknown barge, not knowing what strange cliffs may be drifting past when you awake, not knowing that bargees traditionally get an early start (setting out before the sun is barely up), not knowing what new horizons might greet one on the morrow .... You know that. Esk didn’t. Esk awoke to the sound of someone whistling. She lay quite still, reeling the evening’s events across her mind until she remembered why she was here, and then rolled over very carefully and raised the oilcloth a fraction. Here she was, then. But “here” had moved. “This is what they call sailing, then,” she said, watching the far bank glide past, “It doesn’t seem very special.” It didn’t occur to her to start worrying. For the first eight years of her life the world had been a particularly boring place and now that it was becoming interesting Esk wasn’t about to act ungrateful. The distant whistler was joined by a barking dog. Esk lay back in the wool and reached out until she found the animal’s mind, and Borrowed it gently. From its inefficient and disorganised brain she learned that there were at least four people on this barge, and many more on the others that were strung out in line with it on the river. Some of them seemed to be children. She let the animal go and looked out at the scenery again for a long time - the barge was passing between high orange cliffs now, banded with so many colours of rock it looked as though some hungry God had made the all-time record club sandwich - and tried to avoid the next thought. But it persisted, arriving in her mind like the unexpected limbo dancer under the lavatory door of Life. Sooner or later she would have to go out. It wasn’t her stomach that was pressing the point, but her bladder brooked no delay. Perhaps if she The oilcloth over her head was pulled aside swiftly and a big bearded head beamed down at her. “Well, well,” it said. “What have we here, then? A stowaway, yesno?” Esk gave it a stare. “Yes,” she said. There seemed no sense in denying it. “Could you help me out please?” “Aren’t you afraid I shall throw you to the - the pike?” said the head. It noticed her perplexed look. “Big freshwater fish,” it added helpfully. “Fast. Lot of teeth. Pike.” The thought hadn’t occurred to her at all. “No,” she said truthfully. “Why? Will you?” “No. Not really. There’s no need to be frightened.” “I’m not.” “Oh.” A brown arm appeared, attached to the head by the normal arrangements, and helped her out of her nest in the fleeces. Esk stood on the deck of the barge and looked around. The sky was bluer than a biscuit barrel, fitting neatly over a broad valley through which the river ran as sluggishly as a planning inquiry. Behind her the Ramtops still acted as a hitching rail for clouds, but they no longer dominated as they had done for as long as Esk had known them. Distance had eroded them. “Where’s this?” she said, sniffing the new smells of swamp and sedge. “The Upper Valley of the River Ankh, “ said her captor. “What do you think of it?” Esk looked up and down the river. It was already much wider than it had been at Ohulan. “I don’t know. There’s certainly a lot of it. Is this your ship?” “Boat,” he corrected. He was taller than her father, although not quite so old, and dressed like a gypsy. Most of his teeth had turned gold, but Esk decided it wasn’t the time to ask why. He had the kind of real deep tan that rich people spend ages trying to achieve with expensive holidays and bits of tinfoil, when really all you need to do to obtain one is work your arse off in the open air every day. His brow crinkled. “Yes, it’s mine,” he said, determined to regain the initiative. “And what are you doing on it, I would like to know? Running away from home, yesno? If you were a boy I’d say are you going to seek your fortune?” “Can’t girls seek their fortune?” “I think they’re supposed to seek a boy with a fortune,” said the man, and gave a Zoo-carat grin. He extended a brown hand, heavy with rings. “Come and have some breakfast.” “I’d actually like to use your privy,” she said. His mouth dropped open. “This is a barge, yesno?” “Yes?” “That means there’s only the river.” He patted her hand. “Don’t worry,” he added. “It’s quite used to it.” Granny stood on the wharf, her boot tap-tap-tapping on the wood. The little man who was the nearest thing Ohulan had to a dockmaster was being treated to the full force of one of her stares, and was visibly wilting. Her expression wasn’t perhaps as vicious as thumbscrews, but it did seem to suggest that thumbscrews were a real possibility. “They left before dawn, you say,” she said. “Yes-ss,” he said. “Er. I didn’t know they weren’t supposed to.” “Did you see a little girl on board?” Tap-tap went her boot. “Um. No. I’m sorry.” He brightened. “They were Zoons,” he said; “If the child was with them she won’t come to harm. You can always trust a Zoon, they say. Very keen on family life.” Granny turned to Hilta, who was fluttering like a bewildered butterfly, and raised her eyebrows. “Oh, yes,” Hilta trilled. “The Zoons have a very good name.” “Mmph,” said Granny. She turned on her heel and stumped back towards the centre of the town. The dockmaster sagged as though a coathanger had just been removed from his shirt. Hilta’s lodgings were over a herbalist’s and behind a tannery, and offered splendid views of the rooftops of Ohulan. She liked it because it offered privacy, always appreciated by, as she put it, “my more discerning clients who prefer to make their very special purchases in an atmosphere of calm where discretion is forever the watchword”. Granny Weatherwax looked around the sitting room with barelyconcealed scorn. There were altogether too many tassels, bead curtains, astrological charts and black cats in the place. Granny couldn’t abide cats. She sniffed. “Is that the tannery?” she said accusingly. “Incense,” said Hilta. She rallied bravely in the face of Granny’s scorn. “The customers appreciate it,” she said. “It puts them in the right frame of mind. You know how it is.” “I would have thought one could carry out a perfectly respectable business, Hilta, without resorting to parlour tricks,” said Granny, sitting down and beginning the long and tricky business of removing her hatpins. “It’s different in towns,” said Hilta. “One has to move with the times.” “I’m sure I don’t know why. Is the kettle on?” Granny reached across the table and took the velvet cover off Hilta’s crystal ball, a sphere of quartz as big as her head. “Never could get the hang of this damn silicon stuff,” she said. “A bowl of water with a drop of ink in it was good enough when I was a girl. Let’s see, now . . . .” She peered into the dancing heart of the ball, trying to use it to focus her mind on the whereabouts of Esk. A crystal was a tricky thing to use at the best of times, and usually staring into it meant that the one thing the future could be guaranteed to hold was a severe migraine. Granny distrusted them, considering them to smack of wizardry; for two pins, it always seemed to her, the wretched thing would suck your mind out like a whelk from a shell. “Damn thing’s all sparkly,” she said, huffing on it and wiping it with her sleeve. Hilta peered over her shoulder. “That’s not sparkle, that means something,” she said slowly. “What?” “I’m not sure. Can I try? It’s used to me.” Hilta pushed a cat off the other chair and leaned forward to peer into the glass depths. “Mnph. Feel free,” said Granny, “but you won’t find -“ “Wait. Something’s coming through.” “Looks all sparkly from here,” Granny insisted. “Little silver lights all floating around, like in them little snowstorm-in-abottle toys. Quite pretty, really.” “Yes, but look beyond the flakes . . . .” Granny looked. This was what she saw. The viewpoint was very high up and a wide swathe of country lay below her, blue with distance, through which a broad river wriggled like a drunken snake. There were silver lights floating in the foreground but they were, in a manner of speaking, just a few flakes in the great storm of lights that turned in a great lazy spiral, like a geriatric tornado with a bad attack of snow, and funnelled down, down to the hazy landscape. By screwing up her eyes Granny could just make out some dots on the river. Occasionally some sort of lighting would sparkle briefly inside the gently turning funnel of motes. Granny blinked and looked up. The room seemed very dark. “Odd sort of weather,” she said, because she couldn’t really think of anything better. Even with her eyes shut the glittering motes still danced across her vision. “I don’t think it’s weather,” said Hilta. “I don’t actually think people can see it, but the crystal shows it. I think it’s magic, condensing out of the air.” “Into the staff?” “Yes. That’s what a wizard’s staff does. It sort of distils magic.” Granny risked another glance at the crystal. “Into Esk,” she said, carefully. “Yes.” “There looks like quite a lot of it.” “Yes.” Not for the first time, Granny wished she knew more about how wizards worked their magic. She had a vision of Esk filling up with magic, until every tissue and pore was bloated with the stuff. Then it would start leaking - slowly at first, arcing to ground in little bursts, but then building up to a great discharge of occult potentiality. It could do all kinds of damage. “Drat,” she said. “I never did like that staff.” “At least she’s heading towards the University place,” said Hilta. “They’ll know what to do.” “That’s as may be. How far down river do you reckon they are?” “Twenty miles or so. Those barges only go at walking pace. The Zoons aren’t in any hurry.” “Right.” Granny stood up, her jaw set defiantly. She reached for her hat and picked up her sack of possessions. “Reckon I can walk faster than a barge,” she said. “The river’s all bendy but I can go in straight lines.” “You’re going to walk after her?” said Hilta, aghast. “But there’s forests and wild animals!” “Good, I could do with getting back to civilisation. She needs me. That staff is taking over. I said it would, but did anyone listen?” “Did they?” said Hilta, still trying to work out what Granny meant by getting back to civilisation. “No,” said Granny coldly. His name was Amschat B’hal Zoon. He lived on the raft with his three wives and three children. He was a Liar. What always annoyed the enemies of the Zoon tribe was not simply their honesty, which was infuriatingly absolute, but their total directness of approach. The Zoons had never heard about a euphemism, and wouldn’t understand what to do with it if they had one, except that they would certainly have called it “a nice way of saying something nasty”. Their rigid adherence to the truth was apparently not enjoined on them by a god, as is usually the case, but appeared to have a genetic base. The average Zoon could no more tell a lie than breathe underwater and, in fact, the very concept was enough to upset them considerably; telling a Lie meant no less than totally altering the universe. This was something of a drawback to a trading race and so, over the millennia, the elders of the Zoon studied this strange power that everyone else had in such abundance and decided that they should possess it too. Young men who showed faint signs of having such a talent were encouraged, on special ceremonial occasions, to bend the Truth ever further on a competitive basis. The first recorded Zoon proto-lie was: “Actually my grandfather is quite tall,” but eventually they got the hang of it and the office of tribal Liar was instituted. It must be understood that while the majority of Zoon cannot lie they have great respect for any Zoon who can say that the world is other than it is, and the Liar holds a position of considerable eminence. He represents his tribe in all his dealings with the outside world, which the average Zoon long ago gave up trying to understand. Zoon tribes are very proud of their Liars. Other races get very annoyed about all this. They feel that the Zoon ought to have adopted more suitable titles, like “diplomat” or “public relations officer”. They feel they are poking fun at the whole thing. “Is all that true?” said Esk suspiciously, looking around the barge’s crowded cabin. “No,” said Amschat firmly. His junior wife, who was cooking porridge over a tiny ornate stove, giggled. His three children watched Esk solemnly over the edge of the table. “Don’t you ever tell the truth?” “Do you?” Amschat grinned his goldmine grin, but his eyes were not smiling. “Why do I find you on my fleeces? Amschat is no kidnapper. There will be people at home who will worry, yesno?” “I expect Granny will come looking for me,” said Esk, “but I don’t think she will worry much. Just be angry, I expect. Anyway, I’m going to Ankh-Morpork. You can put me off the ship -“ “- boat -“ “- if you like. I don’t mind about the pike.” “I can’t do that,” said Amschat. “Was that a lie?” “No! There is wild country around us, robbers and - things.” Esk nodded brightly. “That’s settled, then,” she said. “I don’t mind sleeping in the fleeces. And I can pay my way. I can do -“ She hesitated; her unfinished sentence hung like a little curl of crystal in the air while discretion made a successful bid for control of her tongue. “- helpful things,” she finished lamely. She was aware that Amschat was looking slightly sideways at his senior wife, who was sewing by the stove. By Zoon tradition she wore nothing but black. Granny would have thoroughly approved. “What sort of helpful things?” he asked. “Washing and sweeping, yesno?” “If you like,” said Esk, “or distillation using the bifold or triple alembic, the making of varnishes, glazes, creams, zuumchats and punes, the rendering of waxes, the manufacture of candles, the proper selection of seeds, roots and cuttings, and most preparations from the Eighty Marvellous Herbs; I can spin, card, rett, Hallow and weave on the hand, frame, harp and Noble looms and I can knit if people start the wool on for me, I can read soil and rock, do carpentry up to the three-way mortise and tenon, predict weather by means of beastsign and skyreck, make increase in bees, brew five types of mead, make dyes and mordants and pigments, including a fast blue, I can do most types of whitesmithing, mend boots, cure and fashion most leathers, and if you have any goats I can look after them. I like goats.” Amschat looked at her thoughtfully. She felt she was expected to continue. “Granny never likes to see people sitting around doing nothing,” she offered. “She always says a girl who is good with her hands will never want for a living,” she added, by way of further explanation. “Or a husband, I expect,” nodded Amschat, weakly. “Actually, Granny had a lot to say about that -“ “I bet she did,” said Amschat. He looked at the senior wife, who nodded almost imperceptibly. “Very well,” he said. “If you can make yourself useful you can stay. And can you play a musical instrument?” Esk returned his steady gaze, not batting an eyelid. “Probably.” And so Esk, with the minimum of difficulty and only a little regret, left the Ramtops and their weather and joined the Zoons on their great trading journey down the Ankh. There were at least thirty barges with at least one sprawling Zoon family on each, and no two vessels appeared to be carrying the same cargo; most of them were strung together, and the Zoons simply hauled on the cable and stepped on to the next deck if they fancied a bit of socialising. Esk set up home in the fleeces. It was warm, smelled slightly of Granny’s cottage and, much more important, meant that she was undisturbed. She was getting a bit worried about magic. It was definitely getting out of control. She wasn’t doing magic, it was just happening around her. And she sensed that people probably wouldn’t be too happy if they knew. It meant that if she washed up she had to clatter and splash at length to conceal the fact that the dishes were cleaning themselves. If she did some darning she had to do it on some private part of the deck to conceal the fact that the edges of the hole ravelled themselves together as if . . . as if by magic. Then she woke up on the second day of her voyage to find that several of the fleeces around the spot where she had hidden the staff had combed, carded and spun themselves into neat skeins during the night. She put all thoughts of lighting fires out of her head. There were compensations, though. Every sluggish turn of the great brown river brought new scenes. There were dark stretches hemmed in with deep forest, through which the barges traveled in the dead centre of the river with the men armed and the women below - except for Esk, who sat listening with interest to the snortings and sneezings that followed them through the bushes on the banks. There were stretches of farmland. There were several towns much larger than Ohulan. There were even some mountains, although they were old and flat and not young and frisky like her mountains. Not that she was homesick, exactly, but sometimes she felt like a boat herself, drifting on the edge of an infinite rope but always attached to an anchor. The barges stopped at some of the towns. By tradition only the men went ashore, and only Amschat, wearing his ceremonial Lying hat, spoke to non-Zoons. Esk usually went with him. He tried hinting that she should obey the unwritten rules of Zoon life and stay afloat, but a hint was to Esk what a mosquito bite was to the average rhino because she was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don’t apply to you. Anyway, it seemed to Amschat that when Esk was with him he always got a very good price. There was something about a small child squinting determinedly at them from behind his legs that made even market-hardened merchants hastily conclude their business. In fact, it began to worry him. When a market broker in the walled town of Zemphis offered him a bag of ultramarines in exchange for a hundred fleeces a voice from the level of his pockets said: “They’re not ultramarines.” “Listen to the child!” said the broker, grinning. Amschat solemnly held one of the stones to his eye. “I am listening,” he said, “and they do indeed look like ultramarines. They have the glit and shimmy.” Esk shook her head. “They’re just spircles,” she said. She said it without thinking, and regretted it immediately as both men turned to stare at her. Amschat turned the stone over in his palm. Putting the chameleon spircle stones into a box with some real gems so that they appeared to change their hue was a traditional trick, but these had the true inner blue fire. He looked up sharply at the broker. Amschat had been finely trained in the art of the Lie. He recognised the subtle signs, now that he came to think about it. “There seems to be a doubt,” he said, “but ‘tis easily resolved, we need only take them to the assayer in Pine Street because the world knows that spircles will dissolve in hypactic fluid, yesno?” The broker hesitated. Amschat had changed position slightly, and the set of his muscles suggested that any sudden movement on the broker’s part would see him flat in the dust. And that damn child was squinting at him as though she could see through to the back of his mind. His nerve broke. “I regret this unfortunate dispute,” he said. “I had accepted the stones as ultramarines in good faith but rather than cause disharmony between us I will ask you to accept them as - as a gift, and for the fleeces may I offer this roseatte of the first sorting?” He took a small red stone from a tiny velvet pouch. Amschat hardly looked at it but, without taking his eyes off the man, passed it down to Esk. She nodded. When the merchant had hurried off Amschat took Esk’s hand and half-dragged her to the assayer’s stall, which was little more than a niche in the wall. The old man took the smallest of the blue stones, listened to Amschat’s hurried explanation, poured out a saucerful of hypactic fluid and dropped the stone in. It frothed into nothingness. “Very interesting,” he said. He took another stone in a tweezer and examined it under a glass. “They are indeed spircles, but remarkably fine specimens in their own right,” he concluded. “They are by no means worthless, and I for example would be prepared to offer you - is there something wrong with the little girl’s eyes?” Amschat nudged Esk, who stopped trying out another Look. “- I would offer you, shall we say, two zats of silver?” “Shall we say five?” said Amschat pleasantly. “And I would like to keep one of the stones,” said Esk. The old man threw up his hands. “But they are mere curios!” he said. “Of value only to a collector!” “A collector may yet sell them to an unsuspecting purchaser as finest roseattes or ultramarines,” said Amschat, “especially if he was the only assayer in town.” The assayer grumbled a bit at this, but at last they settled on three zats and one of the spircles on a thin silver chain for Esk. When they were out of earshot Amschat handed her the tiny silver coins and said: “These are yours. You have earned them. But -“ he hunkered down so that his eyes were on a level with hers, “- you must tell me how you knew the stones were false.” He looked worried, but Esk sensed that he wouldn’t really like the truth. Magic made people uncomfortable. He wouldn’t like it if she said simply: spircles are spircles and ultramarines are ultramarines, and though you may think they look the same that is because most people don’t use their eyes in the right way. Nothing can entirely disguise its true nature. Instead she said: “The dwarves mine spircles near the village where I was born, and you soon learn to see how they bend light in a funny way.” Amschat looked into her eyes for some time. Then he shrugged. “Okay,” he said. “Fine. Well, I have some further business here. Why don’t you buy yourself some new clothes, or something? I’d warn you against unscrupulous traders but, somehow, I don’t know, I don’t think you will have any trouble.” Esk nodded. Amschat strode off through the market place. At the first corner he turned, looked at her thoughtfully, and then disappeared among the crowds. Well, that’s the end of sailing, Esk told herself. He’s not quite sure but he’s going to be watching me now and before I know what’s happening the staff will be taken away and there’ll be all sorts of trouble. Why does everyone get so upset about magic? She gave a philosophical sigh and set about exploring the possibilities of the town. There was the question of the staff, though. Esk had rammed it deep among the fleeces, which were not going to be unloaded yet. If she went back for it people would start asking questions, and she didn’t know the answers. She found a convenient alleyway and scuttled down it until a deep doorway gave her the privacy she required. If going back was out of the question then only one thing remained. She held out a hand and closed her eyes. She knew exactly what she wanted to do-it lay in front of her eyes. The staff mustn’t come flying through the air, wrecking the barge and drawing attention to itself. All she wanted, she told herself, was for there to be a slight change in the way the world was organised. It shouldn’t be a world where the staff was in the fleeces, it should be a world where it was in her hand. A tiny change, an infinitesimal alteration to the Way Things Were. If Esk had been properly trained in wizardry she would have known that this was impossible. All wizards knew how to move things about, starting with protons and working upwards, but the important thing about moving something from A to Z, according to basic physics, was that at some point it should pass through the rest of the alphabet. The only way one could cause something to vanish at A and appear at Z would be to shuffle the whole of Reality sideways. The problems this would cause didn’t bear thinking about. Esk, of course, had not been trained, and it is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you’re attempting can’t be done. A person ignorant of the possibility of failure can be a halfbrick in the path of the bicycle of history. As Esk tried to work out how to move the staff the ripples spread out in the magical ether, changing the Discworld in thousands of tiny ways. Most went entirely unnoticed. Perhaps a few grains of sand lay on their beaches in a slightly different position, or the occasional leaf hung on its tree in a marginally different way. But then the wavefront of probability struck the edge of Reality and rebounded like the slosh off the side of the pond which, meeting the laggard ripples coming the other way, caused small but important whirlpools in the very fabric of existence. You can have whirlpools in the fabric of existence, because it is a very strange fabric. Esk was completely ignorant of all this, of course, but was quite satisfied when the staff dropped out of thin air into her hand. It felt warm. She looked at it for some time. She felt that she ought to do something about it; it was too big, too distinctive, too inconvenient. It attracted attention. “If I’m taking you to Ankh-Morpork,” she said thoughtfully, “You’ve got to go in disguise.” A few late flickers of magic played around the staff, and then it went dark. Eventually Esk solved the immediate problem by finding a stall in the main Zemphis marketplace that sold broomsticks, buying the largest, carrying it back to her doorway, removing the handle and ramming the staff deep into the birch twigs. It didn’t seem right to treat a noble object in this way, and she silently apologised to it. It made a difference, anyway. No one looked twice at a small girl carrying a broom. She bought a spice pasty to eat while exploring (the stallholder carelessly shortchanged her, and only realised later that he had inexplicably handed over two silver pieces; also, rats mysteriously got in and ate all his stock during the night, and his grandmother was struck by lightning). The town was smaller than Ohulan, and very different because it lay on the junction of three trade routes quite apart from the river itself. It was built around one enormous square which was a cross between a permanent exotic traffic jam and a tent village. Camels kicked mules, mules kicked horses, horses kicked camels and they all kicked humans; there was a riot of colours, a din of noise, a nasal orchestration of smells and the steady, heady sound of hundreds of people working hard at making money. One reason for the bustle was that over large parts of the continent other people preferred to make money without working at all, and since the Disc had yet to develop a music recording industry they were forced to fall back on older, more traditional forms of banditry. Strangely enough these often involved considerable effort. Rolling heavy rocks to the top of cliffs for a decent ambush, cutting down trees to block the road, and digging a pit lined with spikes while still keeping a wicked edge on a dagger probably involved a much greater expenditure of thought and muscle than more socially-acceptable professions but, nevertheless, there were still people misguided enough to endure all this, plus long nights in uncomfortable surroundings, merely to get their hands on perfectly ordinary large boxes of jewels. So a town like Zemphis was the place where caravans split, mingled and came together again, as dozens of merchants and travellers banded together for protection against the socially disadvantaged on the trails ahead. Esk, wandering unregarded amidst the bustle, learned all this by the simple method of finding someone who looked important and tugging on the hem of his coat. This particular man was counting bales of tobacco and would have succeeded but for the interruption. “What?” “I said, what happening here?” The man meant to say: “Push off and bother someone else.” He meant to give her a light cuff about the head. So he was astonished to find himself bending down and talking seriously to a small, grubby-faced child holding a large broomstick (which also, it seemed to him later, was in some indefinable way paying attention). He explained about the caravans. The child nodded. “People all get together to travel?” “Precisely.” “Where to?” “All sorts of places. Sto Lat, Pseudopolis . . . Ankh-Morpork, of course . . . .” “But the river goes there,” said Esk, reasonably. “Barges. The Zoons.” “Ah, yes,” said the merchant, “but they charge high prices and they can’t carry everything and, anyway, no one trusts them much.” “But they’re very honest!” “Huh, yes,” he said. “But you know what they say: never trust an honest man.” He smiled knowingly. “Who says that?” “They do. You know. People,” he said, a certain uneasiness entering his voice. “Oh,” said Esk. She thought about it. “They must be very silly,” she said primly. “Thank you, anyway.” He watched her wander off and got back to his counting. A moment later there was another tug at his coat. “Fiftysevenfiftysevenfiftysevenwell?” he said, trying not to lose his place. “Sorry to bother you again,” said Esk, “but those bale things ....” “What about them fiftysevenfiftysevenfiftyseven?” “Well, are they supposed to have little white worm things in them?” “Fiftysev - what?” The merchant lowered his slate and stared at Esk, “What little worms?” “Wriggly ones. White,” added Esk, helpfully. “All sort of burrowing about in the middle of the bales.” “You mean tobacco threadworm?” He looked wild-eyed at the stack of bales being unloaded by, now he came to think about it, a vendor with the nervous look of a midnight sprite who wants to get away before you find out what fairy gold turns into in the morning. “But he told me these had been well stored and - how do you know, anyway? “ The child had disappeared among the crowds. The merchant looked hard at the spot where she had been. He looked hard at the vendor, who was grinning nervously. He looked hard at the sky. Then took his sampling knife out of his pocket, stared at it for a moment, appeared to reach a decision, and sidled towards the nearest bale. Esk, meanwhile, had by random eavesdropping found the caravan being assembled for Ankh-Morpork. The trail boss was sitting at a table made up of a plank across two barrels. He was busy. He was talking to a wizard. Seasoned travellers know that a party setting out to cross possibly hostile country should have a fair number of swords in it but should definitely have a wizard in case there is any need for magic arts and, even if these do not become necessary, for lighting fires. A wizard of the third rank or above does not expect to pay for the privilege of joining the party. Rather, he expects to be paid. Delicate negotiations were even now coming to a conclusion. “Fair enough, Master Treatle, but what of the young man?” said the trail boss, one Adab Gander, an impressive figure in a trollhide jerkin, rakishly floppy hat and a leather kilt. “He’s no wizard, I can see.” “He is in training,” said Treatle- a tall skinny wizard whose robes declared him to be a mage of the Ancient and Truly Original Brothers of the Silver Star, one of the eight orders of wizardry. “Then no wizard he,” said Gander. “I know the rules, and you’re not a wizard unless you’ve got a staff. And he hasn’t.” “Even now he travels to the Unseen University for that small detail,” said Treatle loftily. Wizards parted with money slightly less readily than tigers parted with their teeth. Gander looked at the lad in question. He had met a good many wizards in his time and considered himself a good judge and he had to admit that this boy looked like good wizard material. In other words, he was thin, gangling, pale from reading disturbing books in unhealthy rooms, and had watery eyes like two lightly-poached eggs. It crossed Gander’s mind that one must speculate in order to accumulate. All he needs to get right to the top, he thought, is a bit of a handicap. Wizards are martyrs to things like asthma and flat feet, it somehow seems to give them their drive. “What’s your name, lad?” he said, as kindly as possible. “Sssssssssssssss” said the boy. His Adam’s apple bobbed like a captive balloon. He turned to his companion, full of mute appeal. “Simon,” said Trestle. “- imon,” agreed Simon, thankfully. “Can you cast fireballs or whirling spells, such as might be hurled against an enemy?” Simon looked sideways at Trestle. “Nnnnnnnnnn” he ventured. “My young friend follows higher magic than the mere hurling of sorceries,” said the wizard. “-o,” said Simon. Gander nodded. “Well,” he said, “maybe you will indeed be a wizard, lad. Maybe when you have your fine staff you’ll consent to travel with me one time, yes? I will make an investment in you, yes?” “Just nod,” said Gander, who was not naturally a cruel man. Simon nodded gratefully. Treatle and Gander exchanged nods and then the wizard strode off, with his apprentice trailing behind under a weight of baggage. Gander looked down at the list in front of him and carefully crossed out “wizard”. A small shadow fell across the page. He glanced up and gave an involuntary start. “Well?” he said coldly. “I want to go to Ankh-Morpork,” said Esk, “please. I’ve got some money.” “Go home to your mother, child.” “No, really. I want to seek my fortune.” Gander sighed. “Why are you holding that broomstick?” he said. Esk looked at it as though she had never seen it before. “Everything’s got to be somewhere,” she said. “Just go home, my girl,” said Gander. “I’m not taking any runaways to Ankh-Morpork. Strange things can happen to little girls in big cities.” Esk brightened. “What sort of strange things?” “Look, I said go home, right? Now!” He picked up his chalk and went on ticking off items on his slate, trying to ignore the steady gaze that seemed to be boring through the top of his head. “I can be helpful,” said Esk, quietly. Gander threw down the chalk and scratched his chin irritably. “How old are you?” he said. “Nine.” “Well, Miss nine-years-old, I’ve got two hundred animals and a hundred people that want to go to Ankh, and half of them hate the other half, and I’ve not got enough people who can fight, and they say the roads are pretty bad and the bandits are getting really cheeky up in the Paps and the trolls are demanding a bigger bridge toll this year and there’s weevils in the supplies and I keep getting these headaches and where, in all this, do I need you?” “Oh,” said Esk. She looked around the crowded square. “Which one of these roads goes to Ankh, then?” “The one over there, with the gate.” “Thank you,” she said gravely. “Goodbye. I hope you don’t have any more trouble and your head gets better.” “Right,” said Gander uncertainly. He drummed his fingers on the tabletop as he watched Esk walk away in the direction of the Ankh road. A long, winding road. A road haunted by thieves and gnolls. A road that wheezed through high mountain passes and crawled, panting, over deserts. “Oh bugger,” he said, under his breath. “Hey! You!” Granny Weatherwax was in trouble. First of all, she decided, she should never have allowed Hilta to talk her into borrowing her broomstick. It was elderly, erratic, would fly only at night and even then couldn’t manage a speed much above a trot. Its lifting spells had worn so thin that it wouldn’t even begin to operate until it was already moving at a fair lick. It was, in fact, the only broomstick ever to need bump-starting. And it was while Granny Weatherwax, sweating and cursing, was running along a forest path holding the damn thing at shoulder height for the tenth time that she had found the bear trap. The second problem was that a bear had found it first. In fact this hadn’t been too much of a problem because Granny, already in a bad temper, hit it right between the eyes with the broomstick and it was now sitting as far away from her as it was possible to get in a pit, and trying to think happy thoughts. It was not a very comfortable night and the morning wasn’t much better for the party of hunters who, around dawn, peered over the edge of the pit. “About time, too,” said Granny. “Get me out.” The startled heads withdrew and Granny could hear a hasty whispered conversation. They had seen the hat and broomstick. Finally a bearded head reappeared, rather reluctantly, as if the body it was attached to was being pushed forward. “Um,” it began, “look, mother -“ “Im not a mother,” snapped Granny. “I’m certainly not your mother, if you ever had mothers, which I doubt. If I was your mother I’d have run away before you were born.” “It’s only a figure of speech,” said the head reproachfully. “It’s a damned insult is what it is!” There was another whispered conversation. “If I don’t get out,” said Granny in ringing tones, “there will be Trouble. Do you see my hat, eh? Do you see it?” The head reappeared. “That’s the whole point, isn’t it?” it said. “I mean, what will there be if we let you out? It seems less risky all round if we just sort of fill the pit in. Nothing personal, you understand.” Granny realized what it was that was bothering her about the head. “Are you kneeling down?” she said accusingly. “You’re not, are you! You’re dwarves!” Whisper, whisper. “Well, what about it?” asked the head defiantly. “Nothing wrong with that, is there? What have you got against dwarves?” “Do you know how to repair broomsticks?” “Magic broomsticks?” “Yes!” Whisper, whisper. “What if we do?” “Well, we could come to some arrangement . . . .” The dwarf halls rang to the sound of hammers, although mainly for effect. Dwarves found it hard to think without the sound of hammers, which they found soothing, so well-off dwarves in the clerical professions paid goblins to hit small ceremonial anvils, just to maintain the correct dwarvish image. The broomstick lay between two trestles. Granny Weatherwax sat on a rock outcrop while a dwarf half her height, wearing an apron that was a mass of pockets, walked around the broom and occasionally poked it. Eventually he kicked the bristles and gave a long intake of breath, a sort of reverse whistle, which is the secret sign of craftsmen across the universe and means that something expensive is about to happen. “Weellll,” he said. “I could get the apprentices in to look at this, I could. It’s an education in itself. And you say it actually managed to get airborne?” “It flew like a bird,” said Granny. The dwarf lit a pipe. “I should very much like to see that bird,” he said reflectively. “I should imagine it’s quite something to watch, a bird like that.” “Yes, but can you repair it?” said Granny. “I’m in a hurry.” The dwarf sat down, slowly and deliberately. “As for repair,” he said, “well, I don’t know about repair. Rebuild, maybe. Of course, it’s hard to get the bristles these days even if you can find people to do the proper binding, and the spells need -“ “I don’t want it rebuilt, I just want it to work properly,” said Granny. “It’s an early model, you see,” the dwarf plugged on. “Very tricky, those early models. You can’t get the wood -“ He was picked up bodily until his eyes were level with Granny’s. Dwarves, being magical in themselves as it were, are quite resistant to magic but her expression looked as though she was trying to weld his eyeballs to the back of his skull. “Just repair it,” she hissed. “Please?” “What, make a bodge job?” said the dwarf, his pipe clattering to the floor. “Yes.” “Patch it up, you mean? Betray my training by doing half a job?” “Yes,” said Granny. Her pupils were two little black holes. “Oh,” said the dwarf. “Right, then.” Gander the trail boss was a worried man. They were three mornings out from Zemphis, making good time, and were climbing now towards the rocky pass through the mountains known as the Paps of Scilla (there were eight of them; Gander often wondered who Scilla had been, and whether he would have liked her/. A party of gnolls had crept up on them during the night. The nasty creatures, a variety of stone goblin, had slit the throat of a guard and must have been poised to slaughter the entire party. Only.... Only no one knew quite what had happened next. The screams had woken them up, and by the time people had puffed up the fires and Treatle the wizard had cast a blue radiance over the campsite the surviving gnolls were distant, spidery shadows, running as if all the legions of Hell were after them. Judging by what had happened to their colleagues, they were probably right. Bits of gnolls hung from the nearby rocks, giving them a sort of jolly, festive air. Gander wasn’t particularly sorry about that - gnolls liked to capture travellers and practise hospitality of the red-hot-knife-and-bludgeon kind - but he was nervous of being in the same area as Something that went through a dozen wiry and wickedly armed gnolls like a spoon through a lightly-boiled egg but left no tracks. In fact the ground was swept clean. It had been a very long night, and the morning didn’t seem to be an improvement. The only person more than half-awake was Esk, who had slept through the whole thing under one of the wagons and had complained only of odd dreams. Still, it was a relief to get away from that macabre sight. Gander considered that gnolls didn’t look any better inside than out. He hated their guts. Esk sat on Treatle’s wagon, talking to Simon who was steering inexpertly while the wizard caught up with some sleep behind them. Simon did everything inexpertly. He was really good at it. He was one of those tall lads apparently made out of knees, thumbs and elbows. Watching him walk was a strain, you kept waiting for the strings to snap, and when he talked the spasm of agony on his face if he spotted an S or W looming ahead in the sentence made people instinctively say them for him. It was worth it for the grateful look which spread across his acned face like sunrise on the moon. At the moment his eyes were streaming with hayfever. “Did you want to be a wizard when you were a little boy?” Simon shook his head. “I just www-“ “- wanted -“ “- tto find out how things www -“ “- worked? -“ “Yes. Then someone in my village told the University and Mmaster T-Treatle was sent to bring me. I shall be a www-“ “- wizard -“ “- one day. Master Treatle says I have an exceptional grasp of ththeory.” Simon’s damp eyes misted over and an expression almost of bliss drifted across his ravaged face. “He t-tells me they’ve got thousands of b-books in the library at Unseen University,” he said, in the voice of a man in love. “More bbooks than anyone could read in a lifetime.” “I’m not sure I like books,” said Esk conversationally. “How can paper know things? My granny says books are only good if the paper is thin.” “No, that’s not right,” said Simon urgently. “Books are full of www” he gulped air and gave her a pleading look. “- words? -“said Esk, after a moment’s thought. “- yes, and they can change th-things. Th-that’s wuwuw, that wuwuwwhha-whha-“ “-what-“ “-I must f-find. I know it’s th-there, somewhere in all the old books. They ssss-“ “-say “there’s no new spells but I know that it’s there somewhere, hiding, the wwwwwuwu-“ “- words -“ “yes, that no wiwiwi-“ “- Wizard? -“said Esk, her face a frown of concentration. “Yes, has ever found.” His eyes closed and he smiled a beatific smile and added, “The Words that Will change the World.” “What?” “Eh?” said Simon, opening his eyes in time to stop the oxen wandering off the track. “You said all those wubbleyous!” “Idid?” “I heard you! Try again.” Simon took a deep breath. “The worworwor - the wuwuw -“ he said. “The wowowoo-“ he continued. “It’s no good, it’s gone,” he said. “It happens sometimes, if I don’t think about it. Master Treatle says I’m allergic to something.” “Allergic to double-yous?” “No, sisssisi-“ //-silly-“ said Esk, generously. “- there’s sososo-“ “- something -“ “- in the air, p-pollen maybe, or g-grass dust. Master Treatle has tried to find the cause of it but no magic seems to h-help it.” They were passing through a narrow pass of orange rock. Simon looked at it disconsolately. “My granny taught me some hayfever cures,” Esk said. “We could try those.” Simon shook his head. It looked touch and go whether it would fall off. “Tried everything,” he said. “Fine wwiwwi-magician I’d make, eh, can’t even sss-utter the wowo-name.” “I could see where that would be a problem,” said Esk. She watched the scenery for a while, marshalling a train of thought. “Is it, er, possible for a woman to be, you know, a wizard? “ she said eventually. Simon stared at her. She gave him a defiant look. His throat strained. He was trying to find a sentence that didn’t start with a W. In the end he was forced to make concessions. “A curious idea,” he said. He thought some more, and started to laugh until Esk’s expression warned him. “Rather funny, really,” he added, but the laughter in his face faded and was replaced by a puzzled look. “Never really tthought about it, before.” “Well? Can they?” You could have shaved with Esk’s voice. “Of course they can’t. It is self-evident, child. Simon, return to your studies.” Treatle pushed aside the curtain that led into the back of the wagon and climbed out on to the seat board. The look of mild panic took up its familiar place on Simon’s face. He gave Esk a pleading glance as Treatle took the reins from his hands, but she ignored him. “Why not? What’s so self-evident?” Treatle turned and looked down at her. He hadn’t really paid much attention before, she was simply just another figure around the campfires. He was the Vice-Chancellor of Unseen University, and quite used to seeing vague scurrying figures getting on with essential but unimportant jobs like serving his meals and dusting his rooms. He was stupid, yes, in the particular way that very clever people can be stupid, and maybe he had all the tact of an avalanche and was as selfcentred as a tornado, but it would never have occurred to him that children were important enough to be unkind to. From long white hair to curly boots, Treatle was a wizard’s wizard. He had the appropriate long bushy eyebrows, spangled robe and patriarchal beard that was only slightly spoiled by the yellow nicotine stains (wizards are celibate but, nevertheless, enjoy a good cigar. “It will all become clear to you when you grow up,” he said. “It’s an amusing idea, of course, a nice play on words. A female wizard! You might as well invent a male witch!” “Warlocks,” said Esk. “Pardon me?” “My granny says men can’t be witches,” said Esk. “She says if men tried to be witches they’d be wizards.” “She sounds a very wise woman,” said Treatle. “She says women should stick to what they’re good at,” Esk went on. “Very sensible of her.” “She says if women were as good as men they’d be a lot better!” Treatle laughed. “She’s a witch,” said Esk, and added in her mind: there, what do you think of that, Mr so-called cleverwizard? “My dear good young lady, am I supposed to be shocked? I happen to have a great respect for witches.” Esk frowned. He wasn’t supposed to say that. “You have?” “Yes indeed. I happen to believe that witchcraft is a fine career, for a woman. A very noble calling.” “You do? I mean, it is?” “Oh yes. Very useful in rural districts for, for people who are -having babies, and so forth. However, witches are not wizards. Witchcraft is Nature’s way of allowing women access to the magical fluxes, but you must remember it is not high magic.” “I see. Not high magic,” said Esk grimly. “Oh, no. Witchcraft is very suitable for helping people through life, of course, but -“ “I expect women aren’t really sensible enough to be wizards,” said Esk. “I expect that’s it, really.” “I have nothing but the highest respect for women,” said Treatle, who hadn’t noticed the fresh edge to Esk’s tone. “They are without parallel when, when -“ “For having babies and so forth?” “There is that, yes,” the wizard conceded generously. “But they can be a little unsettling at times. A little too excitable. High magic requires great clarity of thought, you see, and women’s talents do not lie in that direction. Their brains tend to overheat. I am sorry to say there is only one door into wizardry and that is the main gate at Unseen University and no woman has ever passed through it.” “Tell me,” said Esk, “what good is high magic, exactly?” Treatle smiled at her. “High magic, my child,” he said, “can give us everything we want.” “Oh.” “So put all this wizard nonsense out of your head, all right?” Treatle gave her a benevolent smile. “What is your name, child?” “Eskarina.” “And why do you go to Ankh, my dear?” “I thought I might seek my fortune,” muttered Esk, “but I think perhaps girls don’t have fortunes to seek. Are you sure wizards give people what they want?” “Of course. That is what high magic is for.” “I see.” The whole caravan was travelling only a little faster than walking pace. Esk jumped down, pulled the staff from its temporary hiding place among the bags and pails on the side of the wagon, and ran back along the line of carts and animals. Through her tears she caught a glimpse of Simon peering from the back of the wagon, an open book in his hands. He gave her a puzzled smile and started to say something, but she ran on and veered off the track. Scrubby whinbushes scratched her legs as she scrambled up a clay bank and then she was running free across a barren plateau, hemmed in by the orange cliffs. She didn’t stop until she was good and lost but the anger still burned brightly. She had been angry before, but never like this; normally anger was like the red flame you got when the forge was first lit, all glow and sparks, but this anger was different-it had the bellows behind it, and had narrowed to the tiny bluewhite flame that cuts iron. It made her body tingle. She had to do something about it or burst. Why was it that, when she heard Granny ramble on about witchcraft she longed for the cutting magic of wizardry, but whenever she heard Treatle speak in his high-pitched voice she would fight to the death for witchcraft? She’d be both, or none at all. And the more they intended to stop her, the more she wanted it. She’d be a witch and a wizard too. And she would show them. Esk sat down under a low-spreading juniper bush at the foot of a steep, sheer cliff, her mind seething with plans and anger. She could sense doors being slammed before she had barely begun to open them. Treatle was right; they wouldn’t let her inside the University. Having a staff wasn’t enough to be a wizard, there had to be training too, and no one was going to train her. The midday sun beat down off the cliff and the air around Esk began to smell of bees and gin. She lay back, looking at the nearpurple dome of the sky through the leaves and, eventually, she fell asleep. One side-effect of using magic is that one tends to have realistic and disturbing dreams. There is a reason for this, but even thinking about it is enough to give a wizard nightmares. The fact is that the minds of wizards can give thoughts a shape. Witches normally work with what actually exists in the world, but a wizard can, if he’s good enough, put flesh on his imagination. This wouldn’t cause any trouble if it wasn’t for the fact that the little circle of candlelight loosely called “the universe of time and space” is adrift in something much more unpleasant and unpredictable. Strange Things circle and grunt outside the flimsy stockades of normality; there are weird hootings and howlings in the deep crevices at the edge of Time. There are things so horrible that even the dark is afraid of them. Most people don’t know this and this is just as well because the world could not really operate if everyone stayed in bed with the blankets over their head, which is what would happen if people knew what horrors lay a shadow’s width away. The problem is people interested in magic and mysticism spend a lot of time loitering on the very edge of the light, as it were, which gets them noticed by the creatures from the Dungeon Dimensions who then try to use them in their indefatigable efforts to break into this particular Reality. Most people can resist this, but the relentless probing by the Things is never stronger than when the subject is asleep. Bel-Shamharoth, C’hulagen, the Insider - the hideous old dark gods of the Necrotelicomnicon, the book known to certain mad adepts by its true name of Liber Paginarum Fulvarum, are always ready to steal into a slumbering mind. The nightmares are often colourful and always unpleasant. Esk had got used to them ever since that first dream after her first Borrowing, and familiarity had almost replaced terror. When she found herself sitting on a glittering, dusty plain under unexplained stars she knew it was time for another one. “Drat,” she said. “All right, come on then. Bring on the monsters. I just hope it isn’t the one with his winkle on his face.” But this time it seemed that the nightmare had changed. Esk looked around and saw, rearing up behind her, a tall black castle. Its turrets disappeared among the stars. Lights and fireworks and interesting music cascaded from its upper battlements. The huge double doors stood invitingly open. There seemed to be quite an amusing party going on in there. She stood up, brushed the silver sand off her dress, and set off for the gates. She had almost reached them when they slammed. They didn’t appear to move; it was simply that in one instant they were lounging ajar, and the next they were tight shut with a clang that shook the horizons. Esk reached out and touched them. They were black, and so cold that ice was beginning to form on them. There was a movement behind her. She turned around and saw the staff, without its broomstick disguise, standing upright in the sand. Little worms of light crept around its polished wood and crept around the carvings no one could ever quite identify. She picked it up and smashed it against the doors. There was a shower of octarine sparks, but the black metal was unscathed. Esk’s eyes narrowed. She held the staff at arm’s length and concentrated until a thin line of fire leapt from the wood and burst against the gate. The ice flashed into steam but the darkness - she was sure now that it wasn’t metal - absorbed the power without so much as glowing. She doubled the energy, letting the staff put all its stored magic into a beam that was now so bright that she had to shut her eyes /and could still see it as a brilliant line in her mind/. Then it winked out. After a few seconds Esk ran forward and touched the doors gingerly. The coldness nearly froze her fingers off. And from the battlements above she could hear the sound of sniggering. Laughter wouldn’t have been so bad, especially an impressive demonic laugh with lots of echo, but this was just -sniggering. It went on for a long time. It was one of the most unpleasant sounds Esk had ever heard. She woke up shivering. It was long after midnight and the stars looked damp and chilly; the air was full of the busy silence of the night, which is created by hundreds of small furry things treading very carefully in the hope of finding dinner while avoiding being the main course. A crescent moon was setting and a thin grey glow towards the rim of the world suggested that, against all probability, another day was on the cards. Someone had wrapped Esk in a blanket. “I know you’re awake,” said the voice of Granny Weatherwax. “You could make yourself useful and light a fire. There’s damn all wood in these parts.” Esk sat up, and clutched at the juniper bush. She felt light enough to float away. “Fire?” she muttered. “Yes. You know. Pointing the finger and whoosh,” said Granny sourly. She was sitting on a rock, trying to find a position that didn’t upset her arthritis. “I - I don’t think I can.” “You tell me?” said Granny cryptically. The old witch leaned forward and put her hand on Esk’s forehead; it was like being caressed by a sock full of warm dice. “You’re running a bit of a temperature,” she added. “Too much hot sun and cold ground. That’s forn parts for you.” Esk let herself slump forward until her head lay in Granny’s lap, with its familiar smells of camphor, mixed herbs and a trace of goat. Granny patted her in what she hoped was a soothing way. After a while Esk said, in a low voice, “They’re not going to allow me into the University. A wizard told me, and I dreamed about it, and it was one of those true dreams. You know, like you told me, a maty-thing.” “Metterfor,” said Granny calmly. “One of them.” “Did you think it would be easy?” asked Granny. “Did you think you’d walk into their gates waving your staff? Here I am, I want to be a wizard, thank you very much?” “He told me there’s no women allowed in the University!” “He’s wrong.” “No, I could tell he was telling the truth. You know, Granny, you can tell how -“ “Foolish child. All you could tell was that he thought he was telling the truth. The world isn’t always as people see it.” “I don’t understand,” said Esk. “You’ll learn,” said Granny. “Now tell me. This dream. They wouldn’t let you into their university, right?” “Yes, and they laughed!” “And then you tried to burn down the doors?” Esk turned her head in Granny’s lap and opened a suspicious eye. “How did you know?” Granny smiled, but as a lizard would smile. “I was miles away,” she said. “I was bending my mind towards you, and suddenly you seemed to be everywhere. You shone out like a beacon, so you did. As for the fire - look around.” In the halflight of dawn the plateau was a mass of baked clay. In front of Esk the cliff was glassy and must have flowed like tar under the onslaught; there were great gashes across it which had dripped molten rock and slag. When Esk listened she could hear the faint “pink, pink” of cooling rock. “Oh,” she said, “did I do that?” “So it would appear,” said Granny. “But I was asleep! I was only dreaming!” “It’s the magic,” said Granny. “It’s trying to find a way out. The witch magic and the wizard magic are, I don’t know, sort of feeding off each other. I think.” Esk bit her lip. “What can I do?” she asked. “I dream of all sorts of things!” “Well, for a start we’re going straight to the University,” decided Granny. “They must be used to apprentices not being able to control magic and having hot dreams, else the place would have burned down years ago.” She glanced towards the Rim, and then down at the broomstick beside her. We will pass over the running up and down, the tightening of the broomstick’s bindings, the muttered curses against dwarves, the brief moments of hope as the magic flickered fitfully, the horrible black feelings as it died, the tightening of the bindings again, the running again, the sudden catching of the spell, the scrambling aboard, the yelling, the takeoff .... Esk clung to Granny with one hand and held her staff in the other as they, frankly, pottered along a few hundred feet above the ground. A few birds flew alongside them, interested in this new flying tree. “Bugger off!” screamed Granny, taking off her hat and flapping it. “We’re not going very fast, Granny,” said Esk meekly. “We’re going quite fast enough for me!” Esk looked around. Behind them the Rim was a blaze of gold, barred with cloud. “I think we ought to go lower, Granny,” she said urgently. “You said the broomstick won’t fly in sunlight.” She glanced down at the landscape below them. It looked sharp and inhospitable. It also looked expectant. “I know what I’m doing, Miss,” snapped Granny, gripping the broomstick hard and trying to make herself as light as possible. It has already been revealed that light on the Discworld travels slowly, the result of its passage through the Disc’s vast and ancient magical field. So dawn isn’t the sudden affair that it is on other worlds. The new day doesn’t erupt, it sort of sloshes gently across the sleeping landscape in the same way that the tide sneaks in across the beach, melting the sandcastles of the night. It tends to flow around mountains. If the trees are close together it comes out of woods cut to ribbons and sliced with shadows. An observer on some suitable high point, let’s say for the sake of argument a wisp of cirro-stratus on the edge of space, would remark on how lovingly the light spreads across the land, how it leaps forward on the plains and slows down when it encounters high ground, how beautifully it .... Actually, there are some kinds of observers who, faced with all this beauty, will whine that you can’t have heavy light and certainly wouldn’t be able to see it, even if you could. To which one can only reply, so how come you’re standing on a cloud? So much for cynicism. But down on the Disc itself the broomstick barrelled forward on the cusp of dawn, dropping ever backward in the shadow of night. “Granny!” Day burst upon them. Ahead of the broomstick the rocks seemed to flash into flame as the light washed over them. Granny felt the stick lurch and stared with horrified fascination at the little scudding shadow below them. It was getting closer. “What will happen when we hit the ground?” “That depends if I can find some soft rocks,” said Granny in a preoccupied voice. “The broomstick’s going to crash! Can’t we do anything?” “Well, I suppose we could get off.” “Granny,” said Esk, in the exasperated and remarkably adult voice children use to berate their wayward elders. “I don’t think you quite understand. I don’t want to hit the ground. It’s never done anything to me.” Granny was trying to think of a suitable spell and regretting that headology didn’t work on rocks, and had she detected the diamond edge to Esk’s tone perhaps she wouldn’t have said: “Tell the broomstick that, then.” And they would indeed have crashed. But she remembered in time to grab her hat and brace herself. The broomstick gave a shudder, tilted  - and the landscape blurred. It was really quite a short trip but one that Granny knew she would always remember, generally around three o’clock in the morning after eating rich food. She would remember the rainbow colours that hummed in the rushing air, the horrible heavy feeling, the impression that something very big and heavy was sitting on the universe. She would remember Esk’s laughter. She would remember, despite her best efforts, the way the ground sped below them, whole mountain ranges flashing past with nasty zipping noises. Most of all, she would remember catching up with the night. It appeared ahead of her, a ragged line of darkness running ahead of the remorseless morning. She stared in horrified fascination as the line became a blot, a stain, a whole continent of blackness that raced towards them. For an instant they were poised on the crest of the dawn as it broke in silent thunder on the land. No surfer ever rode such a wave, but the broomstick broke through the broil of light and shot smoothly through into the coolness beyond. Granny let herself breathe out. Darkness took some of the terror out of the flight. It also meant that if Esk lost interest the broomstick ought to be able to fly under its own rather rusty magic. “.” Granny said, and cleared her bone-dry throat for a second try. “Esk?” “This is fun, isn’t it? I wonder how I make it happen?” “Yes, fun,” said Granny weakly. “But can I fly the stick, please? I don’t want us to go over the Edge. Please?” “Is it true that there’s a giant waterfall all around the edge of the world, and you can look down and see stars?” said Esk. “Yes. Can we slow down now?” “I’d like to see it.” “No! I mean, no, not now.” The broomstick slowed. The rainbow bubble around it vanished with an audible pop. Without a jolt, without so much as a shudder, Granny found herself flying at a respectable speed again. Granny had built a solid reputation on always knowing the answer to everything. Getting her to admit ignorance, even to herself, was an astonishing achievement. But the worm of curiosity was chewing at the apple of her mind. “How,” she said at last, “did you do that?” There was a thoughtful silence behind her. Then Esk said: “I don’t know. I just needed it, and it was in my head. Like when you remember something you’ve forgotten.” “Yes, but how?” “I - I don’t know. I just had a picture of how I wanted things to be, and, and I, sort of - went into the picture.” Granny stared into the night. She had never heard of magic like that, but it sounded awfully powerful and probably lethal. Went into the picture! Of course, all magic changed the world in some way, wizards thought there was no other use for it - they didn’t truck with the idea of leaving the world as it was and changing the people -but this sounded more literal. It needed thinking about. On the ground. For the first time in her life Granny wondered whether there might be something important in all these books people were setting such store by these days, although she was opposed to books on strict moral grounds, since she had heard that many of them were written by dead people and therefore it stood to reason reading them would be as bad as necromancy. Among the many things in the infinitely varied universe with which Granny did not hold was talking to dead people, who by all accounts had enough troubles of their own. But not, she was inclined to feel, as many as her. She looked down bemusedly at the dark ground and wondered vaguely why the stars were below her. For a cardiac moment she wondered if they had indeed flown over the edge, and then she realised that the thousands of little pinpoints below her were too yellow, and flickered. Besides, whoever heard of stars arranged in such a neat pattern? “It’s very pretty,” said Esk. “Is it a city?” Granny scanned the ground wildly. If it was a city, then it was too big. But now she had time to think about it, it certainly smelled like a lot of people. The air around them reeked of incense and grain and spices and beer, but mainly of the sort of smell that was caused by a high water table, thousands of people, and a robust approach to drainage. She mentally shook herself. The day was hard on their heels. She looked for an area where the torches were dim and widely spaced, reasoning that this would mean a poor district and poor people did not object to witches, and gently pointed the broom handle downwards. She managed to get within five feet of the ground before dawn arrived for the second time. The gates were indeed big and black and looked as if they were made out of solid darkness. Granny and Esk stood among the crowds that thronged the square outside the University and stared up at them. Finally Esk said: “I can’t see how people get in.” “Magic, I expect,” said Granny sourly. “That’s wizards for you. Anyone else would have bought a doorknocker.” She waved her broomstick in the direction of the tall doors. “You’ve got to say some hocuspocus word to get in, I shouldn’t wonder,” she added. They had been in Ankh-Morpork for three days and Granny was beginning to enjoy herself, much to her surprise. She had found them lodgings in The Shades, an ancient part of the city whose inhabitants were largely nocturnal and never enquired about one another’s business because curiosity not only killed the cat but threw it in the river with weights tied to its feet. The lodgings were on the top floor next to the well-guarded premises of a respectable dealer in stolen property because, as Granny had heard, good fences make good neighbors. The Shades, in brief, were an abode of discredited gods and unlicensed thieves, ladies of the night and peddlers in exotic goods, alchemists of the mind and strolling mummers; in short, all the grease on civilization’s axle. And yet, despite the fact that these people tend to appreciate the soft magics, there was a remarkable shortage of witches. Within hours the news of Granny’s arrival had seeped through the quarter and a stream of people crept, sidled or strutted towards her door, seeking potions and charms and news of the future and various personal and specialised services that witches traditionally provide for those whose lives are a little clouded or full of stormy weather. She was at first annoyed, and then embarrassed, and then flattered; her clients had money, which was useful, but they also paid in respect, and that was a rock-hard currency. In short, Granny was even wondering about the possibility of acquiring slightly larger premises with a bit of garden and sending for her goats. The smell might be a problem, but the goats would just have to put up with it. They had visited the sights of Ankh-Morpork, its crowded docks, its many bridges, its souks, its casbahs, its streets lined with nothing but temples. Granny had counted the temples with a thoughtful look in her eyes; gods were always demanding that their followers acted other than according to their true natures, and the human fallout this caused made plenty of work for witches. The terrors of civilisation had so far failed to materialise, although a cutpurse had tried to make off with Granny’s handbag. To the amazement of passers-by Granny called him back, and back he came, fighting his feet which had totally ceased to obey him. No one quite saw what happened to her eyes when she stared into his face or heard the words she whispered in his cowering ear, but he gave her back all her money plus quite a lot of money belonging to other people, and before she let him go had promised to have a shave, stand up straight, and be a better person for the rest of his life. By nightfall Granny’s description was circulated to all the chapter houses of the Guild of Thieves, Cutpurses, Housebreakers and Allied Trades *, with strict instructions to avoid her at all costs. Thieves, being largely creatures of the night themselves, know trouble when it stares them in the face. Granny had also written two more letters to the University. There had been no reply. “I liked the forest best,” said Esk. “I dunno,” said Granny. “This is a bit like the forest, really. Anyway, people certainly appreciate a witch here.” “They’re very friendly,” Esk conceded. “You know the house down the street, where that fat lady lives with all those young ladies you said were her relatives?” A very respectable body which in fact represented the major law enforcement agency in the city. The reason for this is as follows: the Guild was given an annual quota which represented a socially acceptable level of thefts, muggings and assassinations, and in return saw to it in very definite and final ways that unofficial crime was not only rapidly stamped out but knifed, garrotted, dismembered and left around the city in an assortment of paper bags as well. This was held to be a cheap and enlightened arrangement, except by those malcontents who were actually mugged or assassinated and refused to see it as their social duty, and it enabled the city’s thieves to plan a decent career structure, entrance examinations and codes of conduct similar to those adopted by the city’s other professions- which, the gap not being very wide in any case, they rapidly came to resemble. “Mrs Palm,” said Granny cautiously. “Very respectable lady.” “People come to visit them all night long. I watched. I’m surprised they get any sleep.” “Um,” said Granny. “It must be a trial for the poor woman with all those daughters to feed, too. I think people could be more considerate.” “Well now,” said Granny, “I’m not sure that -“ She was rescued by the arrival at the gates of the University of a large, brightly painted wagon. Its driver reined in the oxen a few feet from Granny and said: “Excuse me, my good woman, but would you be so kind as to move, please?” Granny stepped aside, affronted by this display of downright politeness and particularly upset at being thought of as anyone’s good woman, and the driver saw Esk. It was Treatle. He grinned like a worried snake. “I say. It’s the young lady who thinks women should be wizards, isn’t it?” “Yes,” said Esk, ignoring a sharp kick on the ankle from Granny. “What fun. Come to join us, have you?” “Yes,” said Esk, and then because something about Treatle’s manner seemed to demand it, she added, “sir. Only we can’t get in.” “We?” said Treatle, and then glanced at Granny, “Oh, yes, of course. This would be your aunt?” “My granny. Only not really my granny, just sort of everyone’s granny.” Granny gave a stiff nod. “Well, we cannot have this,” said Treatle, in a voice as hearty as a plum pudding. “My word, no. Our first lady wizard left on the doorstep? That would be a disgrace. May I accompany you?” Granny grasped Esk firmly by the shoulder. “If it’s all the same to you -“she began. But Esk twisted out of her grip and ran towards the cart. “You can really take me in?” she said, her eyes shining. “Of course. I am sure the heads of the Orders will be most gratified to meet you. Most astonished and astounded,” he said, and gave a little laugh. “Eskarina Smith -“ said Granny, and then stopped. She looked at Treatle. “I don’t know what is in your mind, Mr Wizard, but I don’t like it,” she said. “Esk, you know where we live. Be a fool if you must, but you might at least be your own fool.” She turned on her heel and strode off across the square. “What a remarkable woman,” said Treatle, vaguely. “I see you still have your broomstick. Capital.” He let go of the reins for a moment and made a complicated sign in the air with both hands. The big doors swung back, revealing a wide courtyard surrounded by lawns. Behind them was a great rambling building, or buildings: it was hard to tell, because it didn’t look so much as if it had been designed as that a lot of buttresses, arches, towers, bridges, domes, cupolas and so forth had huddled together for warmth. “Is that it?” said Esk. “It looks sort of - melted.” “Yes, that’s it,” said Trestle. “Alma mater, gaudy armours eagle tour and so on. Of course, it’s a lot bigger inside than out, like an iceberg or so I’m given to understand, I’ve never seen the things. Unseen University, only of course a lot of it is unseen. Just go in the back and fetch Simon, will you?” Esk pushed aside the heavy curtains and peered into the back of the wagon. Simon was lying on a pile of rugs, reading a very large book and making notes on scraps of paper. He looked up, and gave her a worried smile. “Is that you?” he said. “Yes,” said Esk, with conviction. “We thought you’d left us. Everyone thought you were riding with everyone else and then wwwwhen we stopped -“ “I sort of caught up. I think Mr Trestle wants you to come and look at the University.” “We’re here?” he said, and gave her an odd look: “You’re here?” “Yes.” “How?” “Mr Treatle invited me in, he said everyone would be astounded to meet me.” Uncertainty flashed a fin in the depths of her eyes. “Was he right?” Simon looked down at his book, and dabbed at his running eyes with a red handkerchief. “He has t-these little f-fancies”, he muttered, “bbbut he’s not a bad person.” Bewildered, Esk looked down at the yellowed pages open in front of the boy. They were full of complicated red and black symbols which in some inexplicable way were as potent and unpleasant as a ticking parcel, but which nevertheless drew the eye in the same way that a really bad accident does. One felt that one would like to know their purpose, while at the same time suspecting that if you found out you would really prefer not to have done. Simon saw her expression and hastily shut the book. “Just some magic,” he mumbled. “Something I’m wwwww-“ “- working -“said Esk, automatically. “Thank you. On.” “It must be quite interesting, reading books,” said Esk. “Sort of. Can’t you read, Esk?” The astonishment in his voice stung her. “I expect so,” she said defiantly. “I’ve never tried.” Esk wouldn’t have known what a collective noun was if it had spat in her eye, but she knew there was a herd of goats and a coven of witches. She didn’t know what you called a lot of wizards. An order of wizards? A conspiracy? A circle? Whatever it was, it filled the University. Wizards strolled among the cloisters and sat on benches under the trees. Young wizards scuttled along pathways as bells rang, with their arms full of books or - in the case of senior students - with their books flapping through the air after them. The air had the greasy feel of magic and tasted of tin. Esk walked along between Trestle and Simon and drank it all in. It wasn’t just that there was magic in the air, but it was tamed and working, like a millrace. It was power, but it was harnessed. Simon was as excited as she was, but it showed only because his eyes watered more and his stutter got worse. He kept stopping to point out the various colleges and research buildings. One was quite low and brooding, with high narrow windows. “T-that’s the l-l-library,” said Simon, his voice bursting with wonder and respect. “Can I have a l-l-look?” “Plenty of time for that later,” said Treatle. Simon gave the building a wistful look. “All the b-books of magic ever written,” he whispered. “Why are the windows barred?” said Esk. Simon swallowed. “Um, b-because b-books of m-magic aren’t like other b-books, they lead a -“ “That’s enough,” snapped Treatle. He looked down at Esk as if he had just noticed her, and frowned. “Why are you here?” “You invited me in,” said Esk. “Me? Oh, yes. Of course. Sorry, mind wandering. The young lady who wants to be a wizard. Let us see, shall we?” He led the way up a broad flight of steps to an impressive pair of doors. At least, they were designed to be impressive. The designer had invested deeply in heavy locks, curly hinges, brass studs and an intricately-carved archway to make it absolutely clear to anyone entering that they were not very important people at all. He was a wizard. He had forgotten the doorknocker. Treatle rapped on the door with his staff. It hesitated for a while, and then slowly slid back its bolts and swung open. The hall was full of wizards and boys. And boys’ parents. There are two ways of getting into Unseen University (in fact there are three, but at this time wizards hadn’t realised it. The first is to achieve some great work of magic, such as the recovery of an ancient and powerful relic or the invention of a totally new spell, but in these times it was seldom done. In the past there had been great wizards capable of forming whole new spells from the chaotic raw magic of the world, wizards from whom as it were all the spells of wizardry had flowed, but those days had gone; there were no more sourcerers. So the more typical method was to be sponsored by a senior and respected wizard, after a suitable period of apprenticeship. Competition was stiff for a University place and the honour and privileges an Unseen degree could bring. Many of the boys milling around the hall, and launching minor spells at each other, would fail and have to spend their lives as lowly magicians, mere magical technologists with defiant beards and leather patches on their elbows who congregated in small jealous groups at parties. Not for them the coveted pointy hat with optional astrological symbols, or the impressive robes, or the staff of authority. But at least they could look down on conjurers, who tended to be jolly and fat and inclined to drop their aitches and drink beer and go around with sad thin women in spangly tights and really infuriate magicians by not realising how lowly they were and kept telling them jokes. Lowliest of all - apart from witches, of course - were thaumaturgists, who never got any schooling at all. A thaumaturgist could just about be trusted to wash out an alembic. Many spells required things like mould from a corpse dead of crushing, or the semen of a living tiger, or the root of a plant that gave an ultrasonic scream when it was uprooted. Who was sent to get them? Right. It is a common error to refer to the lower magical ranks as hedge wizards. In fact hedge wizardry is a very honoured and specialised form of magic that attracts silent, thoughtful men of the druidical persuasion and topiaric inclinations. If you invited a hedge wizard to a party he would spend half the evening talking to your potted plant. And he would spend the other half listening. Esk noticed that there were some women in the hall, because even young wizards had mothers and sisters. Whole families had turned up to bid the favoured sons farewell. There was a considerable blowing of noses, wiping of tears and the clink of coins as proud fathers tucked a little spending money into their offspring’s hands. Very senior wizards were perambulating among the crowds, talking to the sponsoring wizards and examining the prospective students. Several of them pushed through the throng to meet Treatle, moving like gold-trimmed galleons under full sail. They bowed gravely to him and looked approvingly at Simon. “This is young Simon, is it?” said the fattest of them, beaming at the boy. “We’ve heard great reports of you, young man. Eh? What?” “Simon, bow to Archchancellor Cutangle, Archmage of the Wizards of the Silver Star,” said Treatle. Simon bowed apprehensively. Cutangle looked at him benevolently. “We’ve heard great things about you, my boy,” he said. “All this mountain air must be good for the brain, eh?” He laughed. The wizards around him laughed. Treatle laughed. Which Esk thought was rather funny, because there wasn’t anything particularly amusing happening. “I ddddon’t know, ssss-“ “From what we hear it must be the only thing you don’t know, lad!” said Cutangle, his jowls waggling. There was another carefully timed bout of laughter. Cutangle patted Simon on the shoulder. “This is the scholarship boy,” he said. “Quite astounding results, never seen better. Self-taught, too. Astonishing, what? Isn’t that so, Treatle?” “Superb, Archchancellor.” Cutangle looked around at the watching wizards. “Perhaps you could give us a sample,” he said. “A little demonstration, perhaps?” Simon looked at him in animal panic. “A-actually I’m not very g-g-g-“ “Now, now,” said Cutangle, in what he probably really did think was an encouraging tone of voice. “Do not be afraid. Take your time. When you are ready.” Simon licked his dry lips and gave Treatle a look of mute appeal. “Um,” he said, “y-you s-s-s-s-.” He stopped and swallowed hard. “The f-f-f-f-“ His eyes bulged. The tears streamed from his eyes, and his shoulders heaved. Treatle patted him reassuringly on the back. “Hayfever,” he explained. “Don’t seem to be able to cure it. Tried everything.” Simon swallowed, and nodded. He waved Treatle away with his long white hands and closed his eyes. For a few seconds nothing happened. He stood with his lips moving soundlessly, and then silence spread out from him like candlelight. Ripples of noiselessness washed across the crowds in the hall, striking the walls with all the force of a blown kiss and then curling back in waves. People watched their companions mouthing silently and then went red with effort when their own laughter was as audible as a gnat’s squeak. Tiny motes of light winked into existence around his head. They whirled and spiralled in a complex three-dimensional dance, and then formed a shape. In fact it seemed to Esk that the shape had been there all the time, waiting for her eyes to see it, in the same way that a perfectly innocent cloud can suddenly become, without changing in any way, a whale or a ship or a face. The shape around Simon’s head was the world. That was quite clear, although the glitter and rush of the little lights blurred some of the detail. But there was Great A’Tuin the sky turtle, with the four Elephants on its back, and on them the Disc itself. There was the sparkle of the great waterfall around the edge of the world, and there at the very hub a tiny needle of rock that was the great mountain Cori Celesti, where the gods lived. The image expanded and homed in on the Circle Sea and then on Ankh itself, the little lights flowing away from Simon and winking out of existence a few feet from his head. Now they showed the city from the air, rushing towards the watchers. There was the University itself, growing larger. There was the Great Hall  - there were the people, watching silent and open-mouthed, and Simon himself, outlined in specks of silver light. And a tiny sparkling image in the air around him, and that image contained an image and another and another There was a feeling that the universe had been turned inside out in all dimensions at once. It was a bloated, swollen sensation. It sounded as though the whole world had said “gloop”. The walls faded. So did the floor. The paintings of former great mages, all scrolls and beards and slightly constipated frowns, vanished. The tiles underfoot, a rather nice black and white pattern, evaporated - to be replaced by fine sand, grey as moonlight and cold as ice. Strange and unexpected stars glittered overhead; on the horizon were low hills, eroded not by wind or rain in this weatherless place but by the soft sandpaper of Time itself. No one else seemed to have noticed. No one else, in fact, seemed alive. Esk was surrounded by people as still and silent as statues. And they weren’t alone. There were other-Things-behind them, and more were appearing all the time. They had no shape, or rather they seemed to be taking their shapes at random from a variety of creatures; they gave the impression that they had heard about arms and legs and jaws and claws and organs but didn’t really know how they all fitted together. Or didn’t care. Or were so hungry they hadn’t bothered to find out. They made a sound like a swarm of flies. They were the creatures out of her dreams, come to feed on magic. She knew they weren’t interested in her now, except in the nature of an after-dinner mint. Their whole concentration was focused on Simon, who was totally unaware of their presence. Esk kicked him smartly on the ankle. The cold desert vanished. The real world rushed back. Simon opened his eyes, smiled faintly, and gently fell backwards into Esk’s arms. A buzz went up from the wizards, and several of them started to clap. No one seemed to have noticed anything odd, apart from the silver lights. Cutangle shook himself, and raised a hand to quell the crowd. “Quite - astonishing,” he said to Treatle. “You say he worked it out all by himself?” “Indeed, lord.” “No one helped him at all?” “There was no one to help him,” said Treatle. “He was just wandering from village to village, doing small spells. But only if people paid him in books or paper.” Cutangle nodded. “It was no illusion,” he said, “yet he didn’t use his hands. What was he saying to himself? Do you know?” “He says it’s just words to make his mind work properly,” said Treatle, and shrugged. “I can’t understand half of what he says and that’s a fact. He says he’s having to invent words because there aren’t any for the things he’s doing.” Cutangle glanced sideways at his fellow mages. They nodded. “It will be an honour to admit him to the University,” he said. “Perhaps you would tell him so when he wakes up.” He felt a tugging at his robe, and looked down. “Excuse me,” said Esk. “Hallo, young lady,” said Cutangle, in a sugarmouse voice. “Have you come to see your brother enter the University?” “He’s not my brother,” said Esk. There were times when the world had seemed to be full of brothers, but this wasn’t one of them. “Are you important?” she said. Cutangle looked at his colleagues, and beamed. There were fashions in wizardry, just like anything else; sometimes wizards were thin and gaunt and talked to animals (the animals didn’t listen, but it’s the thought that counts) while at other times they tended towards the dark and saturnine, with little black pointed beards. Currently Aldermanic was in. Cutangle swelled with modesty. “Quite important,” he said. “One does one’s best in the service of one’s fellow man. Yes. Quite important, I would say.” “I want to be a wizard,” said Esk. The lesser wizards behind Cutangle stared at her as if she was a new and interesting kind of beetle. Cutangle’s face went red and his eyes bulged. He looked down at Esk and seemed to be holding his breath. Then he started to laugh. It started somewhere down in his extensive stomach regions and worked its way up, echoing from rib to rib and causing minor wizardquakes across his chest until it burst forth in a series of strangled snorts. It was quite fascinating to watch, that laugh. It had a personality all of its own. But he stopped when he saw Esk’s stare. If the laugh was a music hall clown then Esk’s determined squint was a whitewash bucket on a fast trajectory. “A wizard?” he said; “You want to be a wizard?” “Yes,” said Esk, pushing the dazed Simon into Trestle’s reluctant arms. “I’m the eighth son of an eighth son. I mean daughter.” The wizards around her were looking at one another and whispering. Esk tried to ignore them. “What did she say?” “Is she serious?” “I always think children are so delightful at that age, don’t you?” “You’re the eighth son of an eighth daughter?” said Cutangle. “Really?” “The other way around, only not exactly,” said Esk, defiantly. Cutangle dabbed his eyes with a handkerchief. “This is quite fascinating,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of something quite like this before. Eh?” He looked around at his growing audience. The people at the back couldn’t see Esk and were craning to check if some interesting magic was going on. Cutangle was at a loss. “Well, now,” he said. “You want to be a wizard?” “I keep telling everyone but no one seems to listen,” said Esk. “How old are you, little girl?” “Nearly nine.” “And you want to be a wizard when you grow up.” “I want to be a wizard now,” said Esk firmly. “This is the right place, isn’t it?” Cutangle looked at Trestle and winked. “I saw that,” said Esk. “I don’t think there’s ever been a lady wizard before,” said Cutangle. “I rather think it might be against the lore. Wouldn’t you rather be a witch? I understand it’s a fine career for girls.” A minor wizard behind him started to laugh. Esk gave him a look. “Being a witch is quite good,” she conceded. “But I think wizards have more fun. What do you think?” “I think you are a very singular little girl,” said Cutangle. “What does that mean?” “It means there’s only one of you,” said Trestle. “That’s right,” said Esk, “and I still want to be a wizard.” Words failed Cutangle. “Well, you can’t,” he said. “The very idea!” He drew himself up to his full width and turned away. Something tugged at his robe. “Why not?” said a voice. He turned. “Because”, he said, slowly and deliberately, “because . . . the whole idea is completely laughable, that’s why. And it’s absolutely against the lore!” “But I can do wizard magic!” said Esk, the faintest suggestion of a tremble in her voice. Cutangle bent down until his face was level with hers. “No you can’t,” he hissed. “Because you are not a wizard. Women aren’t wizards, do I make myself clear?” “Watch,” said Esk. She extended her right hand with the fingers spread and sighted along it until she spotted the statue of Malich the Wise, the founder of the University. Instinctively the wizards between her and it edged out of the way, and then felt rather silly. “I mean it,” she said. “Go away, little girl,” said Cutangle. “Right,” said Esk. She squinted hard at the statue and concentrated .... The great doors of Unseen University are made of octiron, a metal so unstable that it can only exist in a universe saturated with raw magic. They are impregnable to all force save magic: no fire, no battering ram, no army can breach them. Which is why most ordinary visitors to the University use the back door, which is made of perfectly normal wood and doesn’t go around terrorising people, or even stand still terrorising people. It had a proper knocker and everything. Granny examined the doorposts carefully and gave a grunt of satisfaction when she spotted what she was looking for. She hadn’t doubted that it would be there, cunningly concealed by the natural grain of the wood. She grasped the knocker, which was shaped like a dragon’s head, and rapped smartly, three times. After a while the door was opened by a young woman with her mouth full of clothespegs. “Ot o0 00 ont?” she enquired. Granny bowed, giving the girl a chance to take in the pointy black hat with the batwing hatpins. It had an impressive effect: she blushed and, peering out into the quiet alley-way, hurriedly motioned Granny inside. There was a big mossy courtyard on the other side of the wall, crisscrossed with washing lines. Granny had the chance to become one of the very few women to learn what it really is that wizards wear under their robes, but modestly averted her eyes and followed the girl across the flagstones and down a wide flight of steps. They led into a long, high tunnel lined with archways and, currently, full of steam. Granny caught sight of long lines of washtubs in the big rooms off to the sides; the air had the warm fat smell of ironing. A gaggle of girls carrying washbaskets pushed past her and hurried up the steps - then stopped, halfway up, and turned slowly to look at her. Granny set her shoulders back and tried to look as mysterious as possible. Her guide, who still hadn’t got rid of her clothes-pegs, led her down a side-passage into a room that was a maze of shelves piled with laundry. In the very centre of the maze, sitting at a table, was a very fat woman with a ginger wig. She had been writing in a very large laundry book-it was still open in front of her-but was currently inspecting a large stained vest. “Have you tried bleaching?” she asked. “Yes, m’m,” said the maid beside her. “What about tincture of myrryt?” “Yes, m’m. It just turned it blue, m’m.” “Well, it’s a new one on me,” said the laundry woman. “And Ay’ve seen brimstone and soot and dragon blood and demon blood and Aye don’t know what else.” She turned the vest over and read the nametape carefully sewn inside. “Hmm. Granpone the White. He’s going to be Granpone the Grey if he doesn’t take better care of his laundry. Aye tell you, girl, a white magician is just a black magician with a good housekeeper. Take it -“ She caught sight of Granny, and stopped. “Ee ocked hat hee oor,” said Granny’s guide, dropping a hurried curtsey. “Oo ed hat -“ “Yes, yes, thank you, Ksandra, you may go,” said the fat woman. She stood up and beamed at Granny, and with an almost perceptible click wound her voice up several social classes. “Pray hexcuse us,” she said. “You find us hall at sixes and sevens, it being washing day and heverything. His this a courtesy call or may I make so bold as to ask -“she lowered her voice -“ his there a message from the Hother Sade?” Granny looked blank, but only a fraction of a second. The witchmarks on the doorpost had said that the housekeeper welcomed witches and was particularly anxious for news of her four husbands; she was also in random pursuit of a fifth, hence the ginger wig and, if Granny’s ears weren’t deceiving her, the creak of enough whalebone to infuriate an entire ecology movement. Gullible and foolish, the signs had said. Granny withheld judgment, because city witches didn’t seem that bright themselves. The housekeeper must have mistaken her expression. “Don’t be afraid,” she said. “May staff have distinct instructions to welcome witches, although of course they upstairs don’t approve. No doubt you would like a cup of tea and something to eat?” Granny bowed solemnly. “And Aye will see if we can’t find a nice bundle of old clothes for you, too,” the housekeeper beamed. “Old clothes? Oh. Yes. Thank you, m’m.” The housekeeper swept forward with a sound like an elderly tea clipper in a gale, and beckoned Granny to follow her. “Aye’ll have the tea brought to my flat. Tea with a lot of tealeaves.” Granny stumped along after her. Old clothes? Did this fat woman really mean it? The nerve! Of course, if they were good quality .... There seemed to be a whole world under the University. It was a maze of cellars, coldrooms, stillrooms, kitchens and sculleries, and every inhabitant was either carrying something, pumping something, pushing something or just standing around and shouting. Granny caught glimpses of rooms full of ice, and others glowing with the heat from red-hot cooking stoves, wall-sized. Bakeries smelled of new bread and taprooms smelled of old beer. Everything smelled of sweat and woodsmoke: The housekeeper led her up an old spiral staircase and unlocked the door with one of the large number of keys that hung from her belt. The room inside was pink and frilly. There were frills on things that no one in their right mind would frill. It was like being inside candyfloss. “Very nice,” said Granny. And, because she felt it was expected of her, “Tasteful.” She looked around for something unfrilly to sit on, and gave up. “Whatever am Aye thinking of?” the housekeeper trilled. “Aye’m Mrs Whitlow but I expect you know, of course. And Aye have the honour to be addressing - ?” “Eh? Oh, Granny Weatherwax,” said Granny. The frills were getting to her. They gave pink a bad name. “Ay’m psychic myself, of course,” said Mrs Whitlow. Granny had nothing against fortune-telling provided it was done badly by people with no talent for it. It was a different matter if people who ought to know better did it, though. She considered that the future was a frail enough thing at best, and if people looked at it hard they changed it. Granny had some quite complex theories about space and time and why they shouldn’t be tinkered with, but fortunately good fortune-tellers were rare and anyway people preferred bad fortune-tellers, who could be relied upon for the correct dose of uplift and optimism. Granny knew all about bad fortune-telling. It was harder than the real thing. You needed a good imagination. She couldn’t help wondering if Mrs Whitlow was a born witch who somehow missed her training. She was certainly laying siege to the future. There was a crystal ball under a sort of pink frilly tea cosy, and several sets of divinatory cards, and a pink velvet bag of rune stones, and one of those little tables on wheels that no prudent witch would touch with a ten-foot broomstick, and -Granny wasn’t sure on this point - either some special dried monkey turds from a llamassary or some dried llama turds from a monastery, which apparently could be thrown in such a way as to reveal the sum total of knowledge and wisdom in the universe. It was all rather sad. . “Or there’s the tea-leaves, of course,” said Mrs Whitlow, indicating the big brown pot on the table between them. “Aye know witches often prefer them, but they always seem so, well, common to me. No offence meant.” There probably wasn’t any offence meant, at that, thought Granny. Mrs Whitlow was giving her the sort of look generally used by puppies when they’re not sure what to expect next, and are beginning to worry that it may be the rolled-up newspaper. She picked up Mrs Whitlow’s cup and had started to peer into it when she caught the disappointed expression that floated across the housekeeper’s face like a shadow across a snowfield. Then she remembered what she was doing, and turned the cup widdershins three times, made a few vague passes over it and mumbled a charm which she normally used to cure mastitis in elderly goats, but never mind. This display of obvious magical talent seemed to cheer up Mrs. Whitlow no end. Granny wasn’t normally very good at tea-leaves, but she squinted at the sugar-encrusted mess at the bottom of the cup and let her mind wander. What she really needed now was a handy rat or even a cockroach that happened to be somewhere near Esk, so that she could Borrow its mind. What Granny actually found was that the University had a mind of its own. It is well known that stone can think, because the whole of electronics is based on that fact, but in some universes men spend ages looking for other intelligences in the sky without once looking under their feet. That is because they’ve got the time-span all wrong. From stone’s point of view the universe is hardly created and mountain ranges are bouncing up and down like organ-stops while continents zip backwards and forwards in general high spirits, crashing into each other from the sheer joy of momentum and getting their rocks off. It is going to be quite some time before stone notices its disfiguring little skin disease and starts to scratch, which is just as well. The rocks from which Unseen University was built, however, have been absorbing magic for several thousand years and all that random power has had to go somewhere. The University has, in fact, developed a personality. Granny could sense it like a big and quite friendly animal, just waiting to roll over on its roof and have its floor scratched. It was paying no attention to her, however. It was watching Esk. Granny found the child by following the threads of the University’s attention and watched in fascination as the scenes unfolded in the Great Hall .... “- in there?” The voice came from a long way away. “Mmph 7 “ “Aye said, what do you see in there?” repeated Mrs Whitlow. “Eh?” “Aye said, what do -“ “Oh.” Granny reeled her mind in, quite confused. The trouble with Borrowing another mind was, you always felt out of place when you got back to your own body, and Granny was the first person ever to read the mind of a building. Now she was feeling big and gritty and full of passages. “Are you all right?” Granny nodded, and opened her windows. She extended her east and west wings and tried to concentrate on the tiny cup held in her pillars. Fortunately Mrs Whitlow put her plaster complexion and stony silence down to occult powers at work, while Granny found that a brief exposure to the vast silicon memory of the University had quite stimulated her imagination. In a voice like a draughty corridor, which made the housekeeper very impressed, she wove a future full of keen young men fighting for Mrs Whitlow’s ample favours. She also spoke very quickly, because what she had seen in the Great Hall made her anxious to go around to the main gates again. “There is another thing,” she added. “Yes? Yes?” “I see you hiring a new servant - you do hire the servants here, don’t you? Right - and this one is a young girl, very economical, very good worker, can turn her hand to anything.” “What about her, then?” said Mrs Whitlow, already savouring Granny’s surprisingly graphic descriptions of her future and drunk with curiosity. “The spirits are a little unclear on this point,” said Granny, “But it is very important that you hire her.” “No problem there,” said Mrs Whitlow, “can’t keep servants here, you know, not for long. It’s all the magic. It leaks down here, you know. Especially from the library, where they keep all them magical books. Two of the top floor maids walked out yesterday, actually, they said they were fed up going to bed not knowing what shape they would wake up in the morning. The senior wizards turn them back, you know. But it’s not the same.” “Yes, well, the spirits say this young lady won’t be any trouble as far as that is concerned,” said Granny grimly. “If she can sweep and scrub she’s welcome, Aye’m sure,” said Mrs Whitlow, looking puzzled. “She even brings her own broom. According to the spirits, that is.” “How very helpful. When is this young lady going to arrive?” “Oh, soon, soon - that’s what the spirits say.” A faint suspicion clouded the housekeeper’s face. “This isn’t the sort of thing spirits normally say. Where do they say that, exactly?” “Here,” said Granny. “Look, the little cluster of tea-leaves between the sugar and this crack here. Am I right?” Their eyes met. Mrs Whitlow might have had her weaknesses but she was quite tough enough to rule the below-stairs world of the University. However, Granny could outstare a snake; after a few seconds the housekeeper’s eyes began to water. “Yes, Aye expect you are,” she said meekly, and fished a handkerchief from the recesses of her bosom. “Well then,” said Granny, sitting back and replacing the teacup in its saucer. “There are plenty of opportunities here for a young woman willing to work hard,” said Mrs Whitlow. “Aye myself started as a maid, you know.” “We all do,” said Granny vaguely. “And now I must be going.” She stood up and reached for her hat. “But -“ “Must hurry. Urgent appointment,” said Granny over her shoulder as she hurried down the steps. “There’s a bundle of old clothes -“ Granny paused, her instincts battling for mastery. “Any black velvet?” “Yes, and some silk.” Granny wasn’t sure she approved of silk, she’d heard it came out of a caterpillar’s bottom, but black velvet had a powerful attraction. Loyalty won. “Put it on one side, I may call again,” she shouted, and ran down the corridor. Cooks and scullery maids darted for cover as the old woman pounded along the slippery flagstones, leapt up the stairs to the courtyard and skidded out into the lane, her shawl flying out behind her and her boots striking sparks from the cobbles. Once out into the open she hitched up her skirts and broke into a full gallop, turning the corner into the main square in a screeching two-boot drift that left a long white scratch across the stones. She was just in time to see Esk come running through the gates, in tears. “The magic just wouldn’t work! I could feel it there but it just wouldn’t come out!” “Perhaps you were trying too hard,” said Granny. “Magic’s like fishing. Jumping around and splashing never caught any fish, you have to bide quiet and let it happen natural.” “And then everyone laughed at me! Someone even gave me a sweet!” “You got some profit out of the day, then,” said Granny. “Granny!” said Esk accusingly. “Well, what did you expect?” she asked. “At least they only laughed at you. Laughter don’t hurt. You walked up to chief wizard and showed off in front of everyone and only got laughed at? You’re doing well, you are. Have you eaten the sweet?” Esk scowled. “Yes.” “What kind was it?” “Toffee.” “Can’t abide toffee.” “Huh,” said Esk, “I suppose you want me to get peppermint next time?” “Don’t you sarky me, young-fellow-me-lass. Nothing wrong with peppermint. Pass me that bowl.” Another advantage of city life, Granny had discovered, was glassware. Some of her more complicated potions required apparatus which either had to be bought from the dwarves at extortionate rates or, if ordered from the nearest human glassblower, arrived in straw and, usually, pieces. She had tried blowing her own and the effort always made her cough, which produced some very funny results. But the city’s thriving alchemy profession meant that there were whole shops full of glass for the buying, and a witch could always arrange bargain prices. She watched carefully as yellow steam surged along a twisty maze of tubing and eventually condensed as one large, sticky droplet. She caught it neatly on the end of a glass spoon and very carefully tipped it into a tiny glass phial. Esk watched her through her tears. “What’s that?” she asked. “It’s a neveryoumind,” said Granny, sealing the phial’s cork with wax. “A medicine?” “In a manner of speaking.” Granny pulled her writing set towards her and selected a pen. Her tongue stuck out of the corner of her mouth as she very carefully wrote out a label, with much scratching and pausing to work out the spellings. “Who’s it for?” “Mrs Herapath, the glassblower’s wife.” Esk blew her nose. “He’s the one who doesn’t blow much glass, isn’t he?” Granny looked at her over the top of the desk. “How do you mean?” “When she was talking to you yesterday she called him Old Mister Once A Fortnight.” “Mmph,” said Granny. She carefully finished the sentence: “Dylewt in won pint warter and won droppe in hys tee and be Shure to wear loose clowthing allso that no vysitors exspected.” One day, she told herself, I’m going to have to have that talk with her. The child seemed curiously dense. She had already assisted at enough births and taken the goats to old Nanny Annaple’s billy without drawing any obvious conclusions. Granny wasn’t quite certain what she should do about it, but the time never seemed appropriate to bring up the subject. She wondered whether, in her hearts of hearts, she was too embarrassed; she felt like a farrier who could shoe horses, cure them, rear them and judge them, but had only the sketchiest idea about how one rode them. She pasted the label on to the phial and wrapped it carefully in plain paper. Now. “There is another way into the University,” she said, looking sidelong at Esk, who was making a disgruntled job of mashing herbs in a mortar. “A witches’ way.” Esk looked up. Granny treated herself to a thin smile and started work on another label; writing labels was always the hard part of magic, as far as she was concerned. “But I don’t expect you’d be interested,” she went on. “It’s not very glamorous.” “They laughed at me,” Esk mumbled. “Yes. You said. So you won’t be wanting to try again, then. I quite understand.” There was silence broken only by the scratching of Granny’s pen. Eventually Esk said: “This way -“ “Mmph?” “It’ll get me into the University?” “Of course,” said Granny haughtily. “I said I’d find a way, didn’t I? A very good way, too. You won’t have to bother with lessons, you can go all over the place, no one will notice you you’ll be invisible really - and, well, you can really clean up. But of course, after all that laughing, you won’t be interested. Will you?” “Pray have another cup of tea, Mrs Weatherwax?” said Mrs Whitlow. “Mistress,” said Granny. “Pardon?” “It’s Mistress Weatherwax,” said Granny. “Three sugars, please.” Mrs Whitlow pushed the bowl towards her. Much as she looked forward to Granny’s visits it came expensive in sugar. Sugar lumps never seemed to last long around Granny. “Very bad for the figure,” she said. “And the teeth, so Aye hear.” “I never had a figure to speak of and my teeth take care of themselves,” said Granny. It was true, mores the pity. Granny suffered from robustly healthy teeth, which she considered a big drawback in a witch. She really envied Nanny Annaple, the witch over the mountain, who managed to lose all her teeth by the time she was twenty and had real crone-credibility. It meant you ate a lot of soup, but you also got a lot of respect. And then there was warts. Without any effort Nanny managed to get a face like a sockful of marbles, while Granny had tried every reputable wart-causer and failed to raise even the obligatory nose wart. Some witches had all the luck. “Mmph?” she said, aware of Mrs Whitlow’s fluting. “Aye said,” said Mrs Whitlow, “that young Eskarina is a real treasure. Quate the little find. She keeps the floors spotless, spotless. No task too big. Aye said to her yesterday, Aye said, that broom of yours might as well have a life of its own, and do you know what she said?” “I couldn’t even venture a guess,” said Granny, weakly. “She said the dust was afraid of it! Can you imagine?” “Yes,” said Granny. Mrs Whitlow pushed her teacup towards her and gave her an embarrassed smile. Granny sighed inwardly and squinted into the none-too-clean depths of the future. She was definitely beginning to run out of imagination. The broom whisked down the corridor raising a great cloud of dust which, if you looked hard at it, seemed somehow to be sucked back into the broomstick. If you looked even harder you’d see that the broom handle had strange markings on it, which were not so much carved as clinging and somehow changed shape as you watched. But no one looked. Esk sat at one of the high deep windows and stared out over the city. She was feeling angrier than usual, so the broom attacked the dust with unusual vigour. Spiders ran desperate eight-legged dashes for safety as ancestral cobwebs disappeared into the void. In the walls mice clung to each other, legs braced against the inside of their holes. Woodworm scrabbled in the ceiling beams as they were drawn, inexorably, backwards down their tunnels. “’You can really clean up’,” said Esk. “Huh!” There were some good points, she had to admit. The food was simple but there was plenty of it, and she had a room to herself somewhere in the roof and it was quite luxurious because here she could lie in until five a. m., which to Granny’s way of thinking was practically noon. The work certainly wasn’t hard. She just started sweeping until the staff realised what was expected of it, and then she could amuse herself until it was finished. If anyone came the staff would immediately lean itself nonchalantly against a wall. But she wasn’t learning any wizardry. She could wander into empty classrooms and look at the diagrams chalked on the board, and on the floor too in the more advanced classes, but the shapes were meaningless. And unpleasant. They reminded Esk of the pictures in Simon’s book. They looked alive. She gazed out across the rooftops of Ankh-Morpork and reasoned like this: writing was only the words that people said, squeezed between layers of paper until they were fossilized. Fossils were well-known on the Discworld, great spiralled shells and badly-constructed creatures that were left over from the time when the Creator hadn’t really decided what He wanted to make and was, as it were, just idly messing around with the Pleistocene). And the words people said were just shadows of real things. But some things were too big to be really trapped in words, and even the words were too powerful to be completely tamed by writing. So it followed that some writing was actually trying to become things. Esk’s thoughts became confused things at this point, but she was certain that the really magic words were the ones that pulsed angrily, trying to escape and become real. They didn’t look very nice. But then she remembered the previous day. It had been rather odd. The University classrooms were designed on the funnel principle, with tiers of seats - polished by the bottoms of the Disc’s greatest mages - looking precipitously down into a central area where there was a workbench, a couple of blackboards and enough floor space for a decent-sized instructional octogram. There was a lot of dead space under the tiers and Esk had found it a quite useful observation post, peering around between the apprentice wizards’ pointy boots at the instructor. It was very restful, with the droning of the lecturers drifting over her as gently as the buzzing of the slightly zonked bees in Granny’s special herb garden. There never seemed to be any practical magic, it always seemed to be just words. Wizards seemed to like words. But yesterday had been different. Esk had been sitting in the dusty gloom, trying to do even some very simple magic, when she heard the door open and boots clump across the floor. That was surprising in itself. Esk knew the timetable, and the Second Year students who normally occupied this room were down for Beginners’ Dematerialisation with Jeophal the Spry in the gym. (Students of magic had little use for physical exercise; the gym was a large room lined with lead and rowan wood, where neophytes could work out at High magic without seriously unbalancing the universe, although not always without seriously unbalancing themselves. Magic had no mercy on the ham-fisted. Some clumsy students were lucky enough to walk out, others were removed in bottles.) Esk peeped between the slats. These weren’t students, they were wizards. Quite high ones, to judge by their robes. And there was no mistaking the figure that climbed on to the lecturer’s dais like a badlystrung puppet, bumping heavily into the lectern and absent-mindedly apologising to it. It was Simon. No one else had eyes like two raw eggs in warm water and a dose bright red from blowing. For Simon, the pollen count always went to infinity. It occurred to Esk that, minus his general allergy to the whole of Creation and with a decent haircut and a few lessons in deportment, the boy could look quite handsome. It was an unusual thought, and she squirrelled it away for future consideration. When the wizards had settled down, Simon began to talk. He read from notes, and every time he stuttered over a word the wizards, as one man, without being able to stop themselves, chorused it for him. After a while a stick of chalk rose from the lectern and started to write on the blackboard behind him. Esk had picked up enough about wizard magic to know that this was an astounding achievement- Simon had been at the University for a couple of weeks, and most students hadn’t mastered Light Levitation by the end of their second year. The little white stub skittered and squeaked across the blackness to the accompaniment of Simon’s voice. Even allowing for the stutter, he was not a very good speaker. He dropped notes. He corrected himself. He ummed and ahhed. And as far as Esk was concerned he wasn’t saying anything very much. Phrases filtered down to her hiding place. “Basic fabric of the universe” was one, and she didn’t understand what that was, unless he meant denim, or maybe flannelette. “Mutability of the possibility matrix” she couldn’t guess at all. Sometimes he seemed to be saying that nothing existed unless people thought it did, and the world was really only there at all because people kept on imagining it. But then he seemed to be saying that there was lots of worlds, all nearly the same and all sort of occupying the same place but all separated by the thickness of a shadow, so that everything that ever could happen would have somewhere to happen in. (Esk could get to grips with this. She had half-suspected it ever since she cleaned out the senior wizards’ lavatory, or ratherwhile the staff got on with the job while Esk examined the urinals and, with the assistance of some half-remembered details of her brothers in the tin bath in front of the fire at home, formulated her unofficial General Theory of comparative anatomy. The senior wizards’ lavatory was a magical place, with real running water and interesting tiles and, most importantly, two big silver mirrors fixed to opposite walls so that someone looking into one could see themselves repeated again and again until the image was too small to see. It was Esk’s first introduction to the idea of infinity. More to the point, she had a suspicion that one of the mirror Esks, right on the edge of sight, was waving at her.) There was something disturbing about the phrases Simon used. Half the time he seemed to be saying that the world was about as real as a soap bubble, or a dream. The chalk shrieked its way across the board behind him. Sometimes Simon had to stop and explain symbols to the wizards, who seemed to Esk to be getting excited at some very silly sentences. Then the chalk would start again, curving across the darkness like a comet, trailing its dust behind it. The light was fading out of the sky outside. As the room grew more gloomy the chalked words glowed and the blackboard appeared to Esk to be not so much dark as simply not there at all, but just a square hole cut out of the world. Simon talked on, about the world being made up of tiny things whose presence could only be determined by the fact that they were not there, little spinning balls of nothingness that magic could shunt together to make stars and butterflies and diamonds. Everything was made up of emptiness. The funny thing was, he seemed to find this fascinating. Esk was only aware that the walls of the room grew as thin and insubstantial as smoke, as if the emptiness in them was expanding to swallow whatever it was that defined them as walls, and instead there was nothing but the familiar cold, empty, glittering plain with its distant worn hills, and the creatures that stood as still as statues, looking down. There were a lot more of them now. They seemed for all the world to be clustering like moths around a light. One important difference was that a moth’s face, even close up, was as friendly as a bunny rabbit’s compared to the things watching Simon. Then a servant came in to light the lamps and the creatures vanished, turning into perfectly harmless shadows that lurked in the corners of the room. At some time in the recent past someone had decided to brighten the ancient corridors of the University by painting them, having some vague notion that Learning Should Be Fun. It hadn’t worked. It’s a fact known throughout the universes that no matter how carefully the colours are chosen, institutional decor ends up as either vomit green, unmentionable brown, nicotine yellow or surgical appliance pink. By some little understood process of sympathetic resonance, corridors painted in those colours always smell slightly of boiled cabbage-even if no cabbage is ever cooked in the vicinity. Somewhere in the corridors a bell rang. Esk dropped lightly from her windowsill, grabbed the staff and started to sweep industriously as doors were flung open and the corridors filled with students. They streamed past her on two sides, like water around a rock. For a few minutes there was utter confusion. Then doors slammed, a few laggard feet pattered away in the distance, and Esk was by herself again. Not for the first time, Esk wished that the staff could talk. The other servants were friendly enough, but you couldn’t talk to them. Not about magic, anyway. She was also coming to the conclusion that she ought to learn to read. This reading business seemed to be the key to wizard magic, which was all about words. Wizards seemed to think that names were the same as things, and that if you changed the name, you changed the thing. At least, it seemed to be something like that .... Reading. That meant the library. Simon had said there were thousands of books in it, and amongst all those words there were bound to be one or two she could read. Esk put the staff over her shoulder and set off resolutely for Mrs Whitlow’s office. She was nearly there when a wall said “Psst!” When Esk stared at it it turned out to be Granny. It wasn’t that Granny could make herself invisible, it was just that she had this talent for being able to fade into the foreground so that she wasn’t noticed. “How are you getting on, then?” asked Granny. “How’s the magic coming along?” “What are you doing here, Granny?” said Esk. “Been to tell Mrs Whitlow her fortune,” said Granny, holding up a large bundle of old clothes with some satisfaction. Her smile faded under Esk’s stern gaze. “Well, things are different in the city,” she said. “City people are always worried about the future, it comes from eating unnatural food. Anyway,” she added, suddenly realising that she was whining, “Why shouldn’t I tell fortunes?” “You always said Hilta was playing on the foolishness of her sex,” said Esk. “You said that them as tell fortunes should be ashamed of themselves, and anyway, you don’t need old clothes.” “Waste not, want not,” said Granny primly. She had spent her entire life on the old-clothes standard and wasn’t about to let temporary prosperity dislodge her: “Are you getting enough to eat?” “Yes,” said Esk. “Granny, about this wizard magic, it’s all words -“ “Always said it was,” said Granny. “No, I mean -“ Esk began, but Granny waved a hand irritably. “Can’t be bothered with this at the moment,” she said. “I’ve got some big orders to fill by tonight, if it goes on like this I’m going to have to train someone up. Can’t you come and see me when you get an afternoon off, or whatever it is they give you?” “Train someone up?” said Esk, horrified. “You mean as a witch?” “No,” said Granny. “I mean, perhaps.” “But what about me?” “Well, you’re going your own way,” said Granny. “Wherever that is.” “Mmph,” said Esk. Granny stared at her. “I’ll be off, then,” she said at last. She turned and strode off towards the kitchen entrance. As she did so her cloak swirled out, and Esk saw that it was now lined with red. A dark, winy red, but red nevertheless. On Granny, who had never been known to wear any visible clothing that was other than a serviceable black, it was quite shocking. “The library?” said Mrs Whitlow. “Aye don’t think anyone cleans the library!” She looked genuinely puzzled. “Why?” said Esk, “Doesn’t it get dusty?” “Well,” said Mrs Whitlow. She thought for a while. “Aye suppose it must do, since you come to mention it. Aye never really thought about it.” “You see, I’ve cleaned everywhere else,” said Esk, sweetly. “Yes,” said Mrs Whitlow, “You have, haven’t you.” “Well, then.” “It’s just that we’ve never - done it before,” said Mrs Whitlow, “but for the life of me, Aye can’t think why.” “Well, then,” said Esk. “Ook?” said the Head Librarian, and backed away from Esk. But she had heard about him and had come prepared. She offered him a banana. The orang-outan reached out slowly and then snatched it with a grin of triumph. There may be universes where librarianship is considered a peaceful sort of occupation, and where the risks are limited to large volumes falling off the shelves on to one’s head, but the keeper of a magic library is no job for the unwary. Spells have power, and merely writing them down and shoving them between covers doesn’t do anything to reduce it. The stuff leaks. Books tend to react with one another, creating randomised magic with a mind of its own. Books of magic are usually chained to their shelves, but not to prevent them being stolen .... One such accident had turned the librarian into an ape, since when he had resisted all attempts to turn him back, explaining in sign language that life as an orang-outan was considerably better than life as a human being, because all the big philosophical questions resolved themselves into wondering where the next banana was coming from. Anyway, long arms and prehensile feet were ideal for dealing with high shelves. Esk gave him the whole bunch of bananas and scurried away amongst the books before he could object. Esk had never seen more than one book at a time and so the library was, for all she knew, just like any other library. True, it was a bit odd the way the floor seemed to become the wall in the distance, and there was something strange about the way the shelves played tricks on the eyes and seemed to twist through rather more dimensions than the normal three, and it was quite surprising to look up and see shelves on the ceiling, with the occasional student wandering unconcernedly among them. The truth was that the presence of so much magic distorted the space around it. Down in the stacks the very denim, or possibly flannelette, of the universe was tortured into very peculiar shapes. The millions of trapped words, unable to escape, bent reality around them. It seemed logical to Esk that among all these books should be one that told you how to read all the others. She wasn’t sure how to find it, but deep in her soul she felt it would probably have pictures of cheerful rabbits and happy kittens on the cover. The library certainly wasn’t silent. There was the occasional zip and sizzle of a magical discharge, and an octarine spark would flash from shelf to shelf. Chains clinked, faintly. And, of course, there was the faint rustle of thousands of pages in their leather-bound prisons. Esk made sure no one was paying her any attention and pulled at the nearest volume. It sprang open in her hands, and she saw gloomily that there were the same unpleasant types of diagram that she had noticed in Simon’s book. The writing was entirely unfamiliar, and she was glad about that - it would be horrible to know what all those letters, which seemed to be made up of ugly creatures doing complicated things to each other, actually meant. She forced the cover shut, even though the words seemed to be desperately pushing back. There was a drawing of a creature on the front; it looked suspiciously like one of the things from the cold desert. It certainly didn’t look like a happy kitten. “Hallo! Esk, isn’t it? H-how d-did you get h-here?” It was Simon, standing there with a book under each arm. Esk blushed. “Granny won’t tell me,” she said. “I think it’s something to do with men and women.” Simon looked at her blankly. Then he grinned. Esk thought about the question a second time. “I work here. I sweep up.” She waved the staff in explanation. “Inhere?” Esk stared at him. She felt alone, and lost, and more than a little betrayed. Everyone seemed to be busy living their own lives, except her. She would spend the rest of her life cleaning up after wizards. It wasn’t fair, and she’d had enough. “Actually I don’t. Actually I’m learning to read so I can be a wizard.” The boy regarded her through his damp eyes for some seconds. Then he gently took the book out of Esk’s hands and read its title. “Demonylogie Malyfycorum of Henchanse thee Unsatyfactory. How did you think you could learn to r-read this?” “Um,” said Esk, “Well, you just keep trying until you can, don’t you? Like milking, or knitting, or . . . .” Her voice faded away. “I don’t know about that. These books can be a bit, well, aggressive. If you d-don’t be careful they start reading you.” “What do you mean?” “T-they ssss-“ “- say -“said Esk, automatically. “- that there was once a wwww-“ “- wizard -“ “- who started to r-read the Necrotelecomnicon and let his m-mind wwwwww-“ “- wander -“ “- and next morning they f-found all his clothes on the chair and hhis hat on t-top of them and the b-book had -“ Esk put her fingers in her ears, but not too hard in case she missed anything. “I don’t want to know about it if it’s horrid.” “- had a lot more pages.” Esk took her fingers out of her ears. “Was there anything on the pages?” Simon nodded solemnly. “Yes. On every sssingle one of ththem there www-“ “No,” said Esk. “I don’t even want to imagine it. I thought reading was more peaceful than that, I mean, Granny read her Almanack every day and nothing ever happened to her.” “I d-daresay ordinary tame www-“ “- words -“ “- are all right,” Simon conceded, magnanimously. “Are you absolutely certain?” said Esk. “It’s just that words can have power,” said Simon, slotting the book firmly back on its shelf, where it rattled its chains at him. “And they do say the p-pen is mightier than the sss-“ “- sword,” said Esk. “All right, but which would you rather be hit with?” “Um, I d-don’t think it’s any use m-me t-telling you you shouldn’t be in here, is it?” said the young wizard. Esk gave this due consideration. “No,” she said, “I don’t think it is.” “I could send for the p-porters and have you t-taken away.” “Yes, but you won’t.” “I just d-don’t www-“ “- want -“ “- you to get hurt, you see. I r-really don’t. This can b-be a ddddangerou-“ Esk caught a faint swirling in the air above his head. For a moment she saw them, the great grey shapes from the cold place. Watching. And in the calm of the Library, when the weight of magic was wearing the Universe particularly thin, they had decided to Act. Around her the muted rustling of the books rose to a desperate riffling of pages. Some of the more powerful books managed to jerk out of their shelves and swung, flapping madly, from the end of their chains. A huge grimoire plunged from its eyrie on the topmost shelf - tearing itself free of its chain in the process - and flopped away like a frightened chicken, scattering its pages behind it. A magical wind blew away Esk’s headscarf and her hair streamed out behind her. She saw Simon trying to steady himself against a bookshelf as books exploded around him. The air was thick and tasted of tin. It buzzed. “They’re trying to get in!” she screamed. Simon’s tortured face turned to her. A fear-crazed incunable hit him heavily in the small of the back and knocked him to the heaving floor before it bounced high over the shelves. Esk ducked as a flock of thesauri wheeled past, towing their shelf behind them, and scuttled on hands and knees towards him. “That’s what’s making the books so frightened!” she shrieked in his ear. “Can’t you see them up there?” Simon mutely shook his head. A book burst its bindings over them, showering them in pages. Horror can steal into the mind via all the senses. There’s the sound of the little meaningful chuckle in the locked dark room, the sight of half a caterpillar in your forkful of salad, the curious smell from the lodger’s bedroom, the taste of slug in the cauliflower cheese. Touch doesn’t normally get a look-in. But something happened to the floor under Esk’s hands. She looked down, her face a rictus of horror, because the dusty floorboards suddenly felt gritty. And dry. And very, very cold. There was fine silver sand between her fingers. She grabbed the staff and, sheltering her eyes against the wind, waved it at the towering figures above her. It would have been nice to report that a searing flash of pure white fire cleansed the greasy air. It failed to materialise .... The staff twisted like a snake in her hand and caught Simon a crack on the side of the head. The grey Things wavered and vanished. Reality returned, and tried to pretend that it had never left. Silence settled like thick velvet, wave after wave of it. A heavy, echoing silence. A few books dropped heavily out of the air, feeling silly. The floor under Esk’s feet was undoubtedly wooden. She kicked it hard to make sure. There was blood on the floor, and Simon lay very quietly in the centre of it. Esk stared down at him, and then up at the still air, and then at the staff. It looked smug. She was aware of distant voices and hurrying feet. A hand like a fine leather glove slipped gently into hers and a voice behind said “Ook,” very softly. She turned, and found herself staring down into the gentle, inner-tube face of the librarian. He put his finger to his lips in an unmistakable gesture and tugged gently at her hand. “I’ve killed him!” she whispered. The librarian shook his head, and tugged insistently. “Ook,” he explained, “Ook.” He dragged her reluctantly down a side alley-way in the maze of ancient shelving a few seconds before a party of senior wizards, drawn by the noise, rounded the corner. “The books have been fighting again . . . .” “Oh, no! It’ll take ages to capture all the spells again, you know they go and find places to hide . . . .” “Who’s that on the floor?” There was a pause. “He’s knocked out. A shelf caught him, by the looks of it.” “Who is he?” “That new lad. You know; the one they say has got a whole head full of brains?” “If that shelf had been a bit closer we’d be able to see if they were right.” “You two, get him along to the infirmary. The rest of you better get these books rounded up. Where’s the damn librarian? He ought to know better than to let a Critical Mass build up.” Esk glanced sideways at the orang-outan, who waggled his eyebrows at her. He pulled a dusty volume of gardening spells out of the shelves beside him, extracted a soft brown banana from the recess behind it, and ate it with the quiet relish of one who knows that whatever the problems are, they belong firmly to human beings. She looked the other way, at the staff in her hand, and her lips went thin. She knew her grip hadn’t slipped. The staff had lunged at Simon, with murder in its heartwood. The boy lay on a hard bed in a narrow room, a cold towel folded across his forehead. Treatle and Cutangle watched him carefully. “How long has it been?” said Cutangle. Trestle shrugged. “Three days.” “And he hasn’t come around once?” “No.” Cutangle sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, and pinched the bridge of his nose wearily. Simon had never looked particularly healthy, but now his face had a horrible sunken look. “A. brilliant mind, that one,” he said. “His explanation of the fundamental principles of magic and matter - quite astounding.” Trestle nodded. “The way he just absorbs knowledge,” said Cutangle: “I’ve been a working wizard all my life, and somehow I never really understood magic until he explained it. So clear. So, well, obvious.” “Everyone says that,” said Trestle gloomily. “They say it’s like having a hoodwink pulled off and seeing the daylight for the first time.” “That’s exactly it,” said Cutangle, “He’s sourcerer material, sure enough. You were right to bring him here.” There was a thoughtful pause. “Only -“said Trestle. “Only what?” asked Cutangle. “Only what was it you understood?” said Trestle. “That’s what’s bothering me. I mean, can you explain it?” “How do you mean, explain?” Cutangle looked worried. “What he keeps talking about,” said Trestle, a hint of desperation in his voice. “Oh, it’s the genuine stuff, I know. But what exactly is it?” Cutangle looked at him, his mouth open. Eventually he said, “Oh, that’s easy. Magic fills the universe, you see, and every time the universe changes, no, I mean every time magic is invoked, the universe changes, only in every direction at once, d’you see, and -“ he moved his hands uncertainly, trying to recognise a spark of comprehension in Trestle’s face. “To put it another way, any piece of matter, like an orange or the world or, or -“ “- a crocodile?” suggested Trestle. “Yes, a crocodile, or - whatever, is basically shaped like a carrot.” “I don’t remember that bit,” said Trestle. “I’m sure that’s what he said,” said Cutangle. He was starting to sweat. “No, I remember the bit where he seemed to suggest that if you went far enough in any direction you would see the back of your head,” Trestle insisted. “You’re sure he didn’t mean someone else’s head?” Trestle thought for a bit. “No, I’m pretty sure he said the back of your own head,” he said. “I think he said he could prove it.” They considered this in silence. Finally Cutangle spoke, very slowly and carefully. “I look at it all like this,” he said. “Before I heard him talk, I was like everyone else. You know what I mean? I was confused and uncertain about all the little details of life. But now,” he brightened up, “while I’m still confused and uncertain it’s on a much higher plane, d’you see, and at least I know I’m bewildered about the really fundamental and important facts of the universe.” Trestle nodded. “I hadn’t looked at it like that,” he said, “but you’re absolutely right. He’s really pushed back the boundaries of ignorance. There’s so much about the universe we don’t know.” They both savoured the strange warm glow of being much more ignorant than ordinary people, who were ignorant of only ordinary things. Then Trestle said: “I just hope he’s all right. He’s over the fever but he just doesn’t seem to want to wake up.” A couple of servants came in with a bowl of water and fresh towels. One of them carried a rather tatty broomstick. As they began to change the sweat-soaked sheets under the boy the two wizards left, still discussing the vast vistas of unknowingness that Simon’s genius had revealed to the world. Granny waited until their footsteps had died away and took off her headscarf. “Damn thing,” she said. “Esk, go and listen at the door.” She removed the towel from Simon’s head and felt his temperature. “It was very good of you to come,” said Esk. “And you so busy with your work, and everything.” “Mmmph.” Granny pursed her lips. She pulled up Simon’s eyelids and sought his pulse. She laid an ear on his xylophone chest and listened to his heart. She sat for some time quite motionless, probing around inside his head. She frowned. “Is he all right?” said Esk anxiously. Granny looked at the stone walls. “Drat this place,” she said. “It’s no place for sick people.” “Yes, but is he all right?” “What?” Granny was startled out of her thoughts. “Oh. Yes. Probably. Wherever he is.” Esk stared at her, and then at Simon’s body. “Nobody’s home,” said Granny, simply. “What do you mean?” “Listen to the child,” said Granny. “You’d think I taught her nothing. I mean his mind’s Wandering. He’s gone Out of his Head.” She looked at Simon’s body with something verging on admiration. “Quite surprisin’, really,” she added. “I never yet met a wizard who could Borrow.” She turned to Esk, whose mouth was a horrified O. “I remember when I was a girl, old Nanny Annaple went Wanderin’. Got too wrapped up with being a vixen, as I recall. Took us days to find her. And then there was you, too. I never would have found you if it wasn’t for that staff thing, and what have you done with it, girl?” “It hit him,” Esk muttered. “It tried to kill him. I threw it in the river.” “Not a nice thing to do to it after it saved you,” said Granny. “It saved me by hitting him?” “Didn’t you realise? He was callin’ to - them Things.” “That’s not true!” Granny stared into Esk’s defiant eyes and the thought came to her mind: I’ve lost her. Three years of work down the privy. She couldn’t be a wizard but she might have been a witch. “Why isn’t it true, Miss Clever?” she said. “He wouldn’t do something like that!” Esk was near to tears. “I heard him speak, he’s - well, he’s not evil, he’s a brilliant person, he nearly understands how everything works, he’s -“ “I expect he’s a very nice boy,” said Granny sourly. “I never said he was a black wizard, did I?” “They’re horrible Things!” Esk sobbed. “He wouldn’t call out to them, he wants everything that they’re not, and you’re a wicked old -“ The slap rang like a bell. Esk staggered back, white with shock. Granny stood with her hand upraised, trembling. She’d struck Esk once before - the blow a baby gets to introduce it to the world and give it a rough idea of what to expect from life. But that had been the last time. In three years under the same roof there had been cause enough, when milk had been left to boil over or the goats had been carelessly left without water, but a sharp word or a sharper silence had done more than force ever could and left no bruises. She grabbed Esk firmly by the shoulders and stared into her eyes. “Listen to me,” she said urgently. “Didn’t I always say to you that if you use magic you should go through the world like a knife goes through water? Didn’t I say that?” Esk, mesmerised like a cornered rabbit, nodded. “And you thought that was just old Granny’s way, didn’t you? But the fact is that if you use magic you draw attention to yourself. From Them. They watch the world all the time. Ordinary minds are just vague to them, they hardly bother with them, but a mind with magic in it shines out, you see, it’s a beacon to them. It’s not darkness that calls Them, it’s light, light that creates the shadows!” “But - but - why are They interested? What do They wwant?” “Life and shape,” said Granny. She sagged, and let go of Esk. “They’re pathetic, really,” she said. “They’ve got no life or shape themselves but what they can steal. They could no more survive in this world than a fish could live in a fire, but that doesn’t stop them trying. And they’re just bright enough to hate us because we’re alive.” Esk shivered. She remember the gritty feel of the cold sand. “What are They? I always thought they were just a sort - a sort of demon?” “Nah. No one really knows. They’re just the Things from the Dungeon Dimensions outside the universe, that’s all. Shadow creatures.” She turned back to the prone form of Simon. “You wouldn’t have any idea where he is, would you?” she said, looking shrewdly at Esk. “Not gone off flying with the seagulls, has he?” Esk shook her head. “No,” said Granny, “I didn’t think so. They’ve got him, haven’t they.” It wasn’t a question. Esk nodded, her face a mask of misery. “It’s not your fault,” said Granny, “His mind gave them an opening, and when he was knocked out they took it back with them. Only. . . .” She drummed her fingers on the edge of the bed, and appeared to reach a decision. “Who’s the most important wizard around here?” she demanded. “Um, Lord Cutangle,” said Esk. “He’s the Archchancellor. He was one of the ones who was in here.” “The fat one, or the one like a streak of vinegar?” Esk dragged her mind from the image of Simon on the cold desert and found herself saying: “He’s an Eighth Level wizard and a 33° mage, actually.” “You mean he’s bent?” said Granny. “All this hanging around wizards has made you take them seriously, my girl. They all call themselves the Lord High this and the Imperial That, it’s all part of the game. Even magicians do it, you’d think they’d be more sensible at least, but no, they call around saying they’re the Amazing-Bonko-and-Doris. Anyway, where is this High Rumtiddlypo?” “They’ll be at dinner in the Great Hall,” said Esk. “Can he bring Simon back, then?” “That’s the difficult part,” said Granny. “I daresay we could all get something back easily enough, walking and talking just like anyone. Whether it would be Simon is quite another sack of ferrets.” She stood up. “Let’s find this Great Hall, then. No time to waste.” “Um, women aren’t allowed in,” said Esk. Granny stopped in the doorway. Her shoulders rose. She turned around very slowly. “What did you say?” she said. “Did these old ears deceive me, and don’t say they did because they didn’t.” “Sorry,” said Esk. “Force of habit.” “I can see you’ve been getting ideas below your station,” said Granny coldly. “Go and find someone to watch over the lad, and let’s see what’s so great about this hall that I mustn’t set foot in it.” And thus it was that while the entire faculty of Unseen University were dining in the venerable hall the doors were flung back with a dramatic effect that was rather spoiled when one of them rebounded off a waiter and caught Granny a crack on the shin. Instead of the defiant strides she had intended to make across the chequered floor she was forced to half-hop, half-limp. But she hoped that she hopped with dignity. Esk hurried along behind her, acutely aware of the hundreds of eyes that were turned towards them. The roar of conversation and the clatter of cutlery faded away. A couple of chairs were knocked over. At the far end of the hall she could see the most senior wizards at their high table, which in fact bobbed a few feet off the floor. They were staring. A medium-grade wizard - Esk recognised him as a lecturer in Applied Astrology - rushed towards them, waving his hands. “Nononono,” he shouted. “Wrong door. You must go away.” “Don’t mind me,” said Granny calmly, pushing past him. “Nonono, it’s against the lore, you must go away now. Ladies are not allowed in here!” “I’m not a lady, I’m a witch,” said Granny. She turned to Esk. “Is he very important?” “I don’t think so,” said Esk. “Right.” Granny turned to the lecturer: “Go and find me an important wizard, please. Quickly.” Esk tapped her on the back. A couple of wizards with a rather greater presence of mind had nipped smartly out of the door behind them, and now several college porters were advancing threateningly up the hall, to the cheers and catcalls of the students. Esk had never much liked the porters, who lived a private life in their lodge, but now she felt a pang of sympathy for them. Two of them reached out hairy hands and grabbed Granny’s shoulders. Her arm disappeared behind her back and there was a brief flurry of movement that ended with the men hopping away, clutching bits of themselves and swearing. “Hatpin,” said Granny. She grabbed Esk with her free hand and swept towards the high table, glaring at anyone who so much as looked as if they were going to get in her way. The younger students, who knew free entertainment when they saw it, stamped and cheered and banged their plates on the long tables. The high table settled on the tiles with a thump and the senior wizards hurriedly lined up behind Cutangle as he tried to summon up his reserves of dignity. His efforts didn’t really work; it is very hard to look dignified with a napkin tucked into one’s collar. He raised his hands for silence, and the hall waited expectantly as Granny and Esk approached him. Granny was looking interestedly at the ancient paintings and statues of bygone mages. “Who are them buggers?” she said out of the corner of her mouth. “They used to be chief wizards,” whispered Esk. “They look constipated. I never met a wizard who was regular,” said Granny. “They’re a nuisance to dust, that’s all I know,” said Esk. Cutangle stood with legs planted wide apart, arms akimbo and stomach giving an impression of a beginners’ ski slope, the whole of him therefore adopting a pose usually associated with Henry VIII but with an option on Henry IX and X as well. “Well?” he said, “What is the meaning of this outrage?” “Is he important?” said Granny to Esk. “I, madam, am the Archchancellor! And I happen to run this University! And you, madam, are trespassing in very dangerous territory indeed! I warn you that - stop looking at me like that!” Cutangle staggered backwards, his hands raised to ward off Granny’s gaze. The wizards behind him scattered, turning over tables in their haste to avoid the stare. Granny’s eyes had changed. Esk had never seen them like this before. They were perfectly silver, like little round mirrors, reflecting all they saw. Cutangle was a vanishingly small dot in their depths, his mouth open, his tiny matchstick arms waving in desperation. The Archchancellor backed into a pillar, and the shock made him recover. He shook his head irritably, cupped a hand and sent a stream of white fire streaking towards the witch. Without dropping her iridescent stare Granny raised a hand and deflected the flames towards the roof. There was an explosion and a shower of tile fragments. Her eyes widened. Cutangle vanished. Where he had been standing a huge snake coiled, poised to strike. Granny vanished. Where she had been standing was a large wicker basket. The snake became a giant reptile from the mists of time. The basket became the snow wind of the Ice Giants, coating the struggling monster with ice. The reptile became a sabre-toothed tiger, crouched to spring. The gale became a bubbling tar pit. The tiger managed to become an eagle, stooping. The tar pits became a tufted hood. Then the images began to flicker as shape replaced shape. Stroboscope shadows danced around the hall. A magical wind sprang up, thick and greasy, striking octarine sparks from beards and fingers. In the middle of it all Esk, peering through streaming eyes, could just make out the two figures of Granny and Cutangle, glossy statues in the midst of the hurtling images. She was also aware of something else, a high-pitched sound almost beyond hearing. She had heard it before, on the cold plain - a busy chittering noise, a beehive noise, an anthill sound .... “They’re coming!” she screamed about the din. “They’re coming now!” She scrambled out from behind the table where she had taken refuge from the magical duel and tried to reach Granny. A gust of raw magic lifted her off her feet and bowled her into a chair. The buzzing was louder now, so that the air roared like a three-week corpse on a summer’s day. Esk made another attempt to reach Granny and recoiled when green fire roared along her arm and singed her hair. She looked around wildly for the other wizards, but those who had fled from the effects of the magic were cowering behind overturned furniture while the occult storm raged over their heads. Esk ran down the length of the hall and out into the dark corridor. Shadows curled around her as she hurried, sobbing, up the steps and along the buzzing corridors towards Simon’s narrow room. Something would try to enter the body, Granny had said. Something that would walk and talk like Simon, but would be something else .... A cluster of students were hovering anxiously outside the door. They turned pale faces towards Esk as she darted towards them, and were sufficiently shaken to draw back nervously in the face of her determined progress. “Something’s in there,” said one of them. “We can’t open the door!” They looked at her expectantly. Then one of them said: “You wouldn’t have a pass key, by any chance?” Esk grabbed the doorhandle and turned it. It moved slightly, but then spun back with such force it nearly took the skin off her hands. The chittering inside rose to a crescendo and there was another noise, too, like leather flapping. “You’re wizards!” she screamed. “Bloody well wizz!” “We haven’t done telekinesis yet,” said one of them. “I was ill when we did Firethrowing -“ “Actually, I’m not very good at Dematerialisation -“ Esk went to the door, and then stopped with one foot in the air. She remembered Granny talking about how even buildings had a mind, if they were old enough. The University was very old. She stepped carefully to one side and ran her hands over the ancient stones. It had to be done carefully, so as not to frighten it - and now she could feel the mind in the stones, slow and simple, but still mind. It pulsed around her; she could feel the little sparkles deep in the rock. Something was hooting behind the door. The three students watched in astonishment as Esk stood rock still with her hands and forehead pressed against the wall. She was almost there. She could feel the weight of herself, the ponderousness of her body, the distant memories of the dawn of time when rock was molten and free. For the first time in her life she knew what it was like to have balconies. She moved gently through the building-mind, refining her impressions, looking as fast as she dared for this corridor, this door. She stretched out one arm, very carefully. The students watched as she uncurled one finger, very slowly. The door hinges began to creak. There was a moment of tension and then the nails sprang from the hinges and clattered into the wall behind her. The planks began to bend as the door still tried to force itself open against the strength of -whatever was holding it shut. The wood billowed. Beams of blue light lanced out into the corridor, moving and dancing as indistinct shapes shuffled through the blinding brilliance inside the room. The light was misty and actinic, the sort of light to make Steven Spielberg reach for his copyright lawyer. Esk’s hair leapt from her head so that she looked like an ambulant dandelion. Little firesnakes of magic crackled across her skin as she stepped through the doorway. The students outside watched in horror as she disappeared into the light. It vanished in a silent explosion. When they eventually found enough courage to look inside the room, they saw nothing there but the sleeping body of Simon. And Esk, silent and cold on the floor, breathing very slowly. And the floor was covered with a fine layer of silver sand. Esk floated through the mists of the world, noticing with a curious impersonal feeling the precise way in which she passed through solid matter. There were others with her. She could hear their chittering. Fury rose like bile. She turned and set out after the noise, fighting the seductive forces that kept telling her how nice it would be just to relax her grip on her mind and sink into a warm sea of nothingness. Being angry, that was the thing. She knew it was most important to stay really angry. The Discworld fell away, and lay below her as it did on the day she had been an eagle. But this time the Circle Sea was below her - it certainly was circular, as if God had run out of ideas - and beyond it lay the arms of the continent, and the long chain of the Ramtops marching all the way to the Hub. There were other continents she had never heard of, and tiny island chains. As her point of view changed, the Rim came into sight. It was night time and, since the Disc’s orbiting sun was below the world, it lit up the long waterfall that girdled the Edge. It also lit up Great A’Tuin the World Turtle. Esk had often wondered if the Turtle was really a myth. It seemed a lot of trouble to go to just to move a world. But there It was, almost as big as the Disc it carried, frosted with stardust and pocked with meteor craters. Its head passed in front of her and she looked directly into an eye big enough to float all the fleets in the world. She had heard it said that if you could look far enough into the direction that Great A’Tuin was staring, you would see the end of the universe. Maybe it was just the set of its beak, but Great A’Tuin looked vaguely hopeful, even optimistic. Perhaps the end of everything wasn’t as bad as all that. Dreamlike, she reached out and tried to Borrow the biggest mind in the universe. She stopped herself just in time, like a child with a toy toboggan who expected a little gentle slope and suddenly looks out of the magnificent mountains, snow-covered, stretching into the icefields of infinity. No one would ever Borrow that mind, it would be like trying to drink all the sea. The thoughts that moved through it were as big and as slow as glaciers. Beyond the Disc were the stars, and there was something wrong with them. They were swirling like snowflakes. Every now and again they would settle down and look as immobile as they always did, and then they’d suddenly take it into their heads to dance. Real stars shouldn’t do that, Esk decided. Which meant she wasn’t looking at real stars. Which meant she wasn’t exactly in a real place. But a chittering close at hand reminded her that she could almost certainly really die if she once lost track of those noises. She turned and pursued the sounds through the stellar snowstorm. And the stars jumped, and settled, jumped, and settled .... As she swooped upward Esk tried to concentrate on everyday things, because if she let her mind dwell on precisely what it was she was following then she knew she would turn back, and she wasn’t sure she knew the way. She tried to remember the eighteen herbs that cured ear-ache, which kept her occupied for a while because she could never recall the last four. A star swooped past, and then was violently jerked away; it was about twenty feet across. When she ran out of herbs she started on the diseases of goats, which took quite a long time because goats can catch a lot of things that cows can catch plus a lot of things plus that sheep plus catch plus a complete range of horrible ailments of their very own. When she had finished listing wooden udder, ear wilt and the octarine garget she tried to recall the complex code of dots and lines that they used to cut in the trees around Bad Ass, so that lost villagers could find their way home on snowy nights. She was only as far as dot dot dot dash dot dash (Hub-byTurnwise, one mile from the village) when the universe around her vanished with a faint pop. She fell forward, hit something hard and gritty and rolled to a halt. The grittiness was sand. Fine, dry, cold sand. You could tell that even if you dug down several feet it would be just as cold and just as dry. Esk lay with her face in it for a moment, summoning the courage to look up. She could just see, a few feet away from her, the hem of someone’s dress: Something’s dress, she corrected herself. Unless it was a wing. It could be a wing, a particularly tatty and leathery one. Her eyes followed it up until she found a face, higher than a house, outlined against the starry sky. Its owner was obviously trying to look nightmarish, but had tried too hard. The basic appearance was that of a chicken that had been dead for about two months, but the unpleasant effect was rather spoiled by warthog tusks, moth antennae, wolf ears and a unicorn spike. The whole thing had a selfassembled look, as if the owner had heard about anatomy but couldn’t quite get to grips with the idea. It was staring, but not at her. Something behind her occupied all its interest. Esk turned her head very slowly. Simon was sitting cross-legged in the centre of a circle of Things. There were hundreds of them, as still and silent as statues, watching him with reptilian patience. There was something small and angular held in his cupped hands. It gave off a fuzzy blue light that made his face look strange. Other shapes lay on the ground beside him, each in its little soft glow. They were the regular sort of shapes that Granny dismissed airily as jommetry-cubes, many-sided diamonds, cones, even a globe. Each one was transparent and inside was .... Esk edged closer. No one was taking any notice of her. Inside a crystal sphere that had been tossed aside on to the sand floated a blue-green ball, crisscrossed with tiny white cloud patterns and what could almost have been continents if anyone was silly enough to try to live on a ball. It might have been a sort of model, except something about its glow told Esk that it was quite real and probably very big and not - in every sense - totally inside the sphere. She put it down very gently and sidled over to a ten-sided block in which floated a much more acceptable world. It was properly discshaped, but instead of the Rimfall there was a wall of ice and instead of the Hub there was a gigantic tree, so big that its roots merged into mountain ranges. A prism beside it held another slowly-turning disc, surrounded by little stars. But there were no ice walls around this one, just a red-gold thread that turned out on closer inspection to be a snake - a snake big enough to encircle a world. For reasons best known to itself it was biting its own tail. Esk turned the prism over and over curiously, noticing how the little disc inside stayed resolutely upright. Simon giggled softly. Esk replaced the snake-disc and peered carefully over his shoulder. He was holding a small glass pyramid. There were stars in it, and occasionally he would give it a little shake so that the stars swirled up like snow in the wind, and then settled back in their places. Then he would giggle. And beyond the stars .... It was the Discworld. A Great A’Tuin no bigger than a small saucer toiled along under a world that looked like the work of an obsessive jeweller. Jiggle, swirl. Jiggle, swirl, giggle. There were already hairline cracks in the glass. Esk looked at Simon’s blank eyes and then up into the hungry faces of the nearest Things, and then she reached across and pulled the pyramid out of his hands and turned and ran. The Things didn’t stir as she scurried towards them, bent almost double, with the pyramid clasped tightly to her chest. But suddenly her feet were no longer running over the sand and she was being lifted into the frigid air, and a Thing with a face like a drowned rabbit turned slowly towards her and extended a talon. You’re not really here, Esk told herself. It’s only a sort of dream, what Granny calls an annaloggy. You can’t really be hurt, it’s all imagination. There’s absolutely no harm that can come to you, it’s all really inside your mind. I wonder if it knows that? The talon picked her out of the air and the rabbit face split like a banana skin. There was no mouth, just a dark hole, as if the Thing was itself an opening to an even worse dimension, a place by comparison with which freezing sand and moonless moonlight would be a jolly afternoon at the seaside. Esk held the Disc-pyramid and flailed with her free hand at the claw around her. It had no effect. The darkness loomed over her, a gateway to total oblivion. She kicked it as hard as she could. Which was not, given the circumstances, very hard. But where her foot struck there was an explosion of white sparks and a pop -which would have been a much more satisfying bang if the thin air here didn’t suck the sound away. The Thing screeched like a chainsaw encountering, deep inside an unsuspecting sapling, a lurking and long-forgotten nail. The others around it set up a sympathetic buzzing. Esk kicked again and the Thing shrieked and dropped her to the sand. She was bright enough to roll, with the tiny world hugged protectively to her, because even in a dream a broken ankle can be painful. The Thing lurched uncertainly above her. Esk’s eyes narrowed. She put the world down very carefully, hit the Thing very hard around the point where its shins would be, if there were shins under that cloak, and picked up the world again in one neat movement. The creature howled, bent double, and then toppled slowly, like a sackful of coathangers. When it hit the ground it collapsed into a mass of disjointed limbs; the head rolled away and rocked to a standstill. Is that all? thought Esk. They can hardly walk, even! When you hit them they just fall over? The nearest Things chittered and tried to back away as she marched determinedly towards them, but since their bodies seemed to be held together more or less by wishful thinking they weren’t very good at it. She hit one, which had a face like a small family of squid, and it deflated into a pile of twitching bones and bits of fur and odd ends of tentacle, very much like a Greek meal. Another was slightly more successful and had begun to shamble uncertainly away before Esk caught it a crack on one of its five shins. It flailed desperately as it fell and brought down another two. By then the others had managed to lurch out of her way and stood watching from a distance. Esk took a few steps towards the nearest one. It tried to move away, and fell over. They may have been ugly. They may have been evil. But when it came to poetry in motion, the Things had all the grace and coordination of a deck-chair. Esk glared at them, and took a look at the Disc in its glass pyramid. All the excitement didn’t seem to have disturbed it a bit. She’d been able to get out, if this indeed was out and if the Disc could be said to be in. But how was one supposed to get back? Somebody laughed. It was the sort of laugh Basically, it was p’ch’zarni’chiwkov. This epiglottis-throttling word is seldom used on the Disc except by highly-paid stunt linguists and, of course, the tiny tribe of the K’turni, who invented it. It has no direct synonym, although the Cumhoolie word “squemt” (‘the feeling upon finding that the previous occupant of the privy has used all the paper’) begins to approach it in general depth of feeling. The closest translation is as follows: The nasty little sound of a sword being unsheathed right behind one at just the point when one thought one had disposed of one’s enemies. Although K’tumi speakers say that this does not convey the cold sweating, heart-stopping, gut-freezing sense of the original. It was that kind of laugh. Esk turned around slowly. Simon drifted towards her across the sand, with his hands cupped in front of him. His eyes were tight shut. “Did you really think it would be as easy as that? “ he said. Or something said; it didn’t sound like Simon’s voice, but like dozens of voices speaking’at once. “Simon?” she said, uncertainly. “He is of no further use to us,” said the Thing with Simon’s shape. “He has shown us the way, child. Now give us our property.” Esk backed away. “I don’t think it belongs to you,” she said, “whoever you are.” The face in front of her opened its eyes. There was nothing there but blackness - not a colour, just holes into some other space. “We could say that if you gave it to us we would be merciful. We could say we would let you go from here in your own shape. But there wouldn’t really be much point in us saying that, would there?” “I wouldn’t believe you,” said Esk. “Well, then.” The Simon-thing grinned. “You’re only putting off the inevitable,” it said. “Suits me.” “We could take it anyway.” “Take it, then. But I don’t think you can. You can’t take anything unless it’s given to you, can you?” They circled round. “You’ll give it to us,” said the Simon-thing. Some of the other Things were approaching now, striding back across the desert with horrible jerky motions. “You’ll get tired,” it continued. “We can wait. We’re very good at waiting.” It made a feint to the left, but Esk swung around to face it. “That doesn’t matter,” she said. “I’m only dreaming this, and you can’t get hurt in dreams.” The Thing paused, and looked at her with its empty eyes. “Have you got a word in your world, I think it’s called ‘psychosomatic’?” “Never heard of it,” snapped Esk. “It means you can get hurt in your dreams. And what is so interesting is that if you die in your dreams you stay here. That would be niiiiice.” Esk glanced sideways at the distant mountains, sprawled on the chilly horizon like melted mud pies. There were no trees, not even any rocks. Just sand and cold stars and She felt the movement rather than heard it and turned with the pyramid held between her hands like a club. It hit the Simon-thing in mid-leap with a satisfying thump, but as soon as it hit the ground it somersaulted forward and bounced upright with unpleasant ease. But it had heard her gasp and had seen the brief pain in her eyes. It paused. “Ah, that hurt you, Did it not? You don’t like to see another one suffer, yes? Not this one, it seems.” It turned and beckoned, and two of the tall Things lurched over to it and gripped it firmly by the arms. Its eyes changed. The darkness faded, and then Simon’s own eyes looked out of his face. He stared up at the Things on either side of him and struggled briefly, but one had several pairs of tentacles wrapped around his wrist and the other was holding his arm in the world’s largest lobster claw. Then he saw Esk, and his eyes fell to the little glass pyramid. “Run away!” he hissed. “Take it away from here! Don’t let them get it!” He grimaced as the claw tightened on his arm. “Is this a trick?” said Esk. “Who are you really?” “Don’t you recognise me?” he said wretchedly. “What are you doing in my dream?” “If this is a dream then I’d like to wake up, please,” said Esk. “Listen. You must run away now, do you understand? Don’t stand there with your mouth open.” GIVE IT To us, said a cold voice inside Esk’s head. Esk looked down at the glass pyramid with its unconcerned little world and stared up at Simon, her mouth an O of puzzlement. “But what is it?” “Look hard at it!” Esk peered through the glass. If she squinted it seemed that the little Disc was granular, as if it was made up of millions of tiny specks. If she looked hard at the specks “It’s just numbers!” she said. “The whole world - it’s all made up of numbers . . . .” “It’s not the world, it’s an idea of the world,” said Simon. “I created it for them. They can’t get through to us, do you see, but ideas have got a shape here. Ideas are real!” GIVE IT TO US. “But ideas can’t hurt anyone!” “I turned things into numbers to understand them, but they just want to control,” Simon said bitterly. “They burrowed into my numbers like -“ He screamed. GIVE IT TO US OR WE WILL TAKE HIM TO BITS. Esk looked up at the nearest nightmare face. “How do I know I can trust you?” she said. YOU CAN’T TRUST US. BUT YOU HAVE NO CHOICE. Esk looked at the ring of faces that not even a necrophile could love, faces put together from a fishmonger’s midden, faces picked randomly from things that lurked in deep ocean holes and haunted caves, faces that were not human enough to gloat or leer but had all the menace of a suspiciously v-shaped ripple near an incautious bather. She couldn’t trust them. But she had no choice. Something else was happening, in a place as far away as the thickness of a shadow. The student wizards had run back to the Great Hall, where Cutangle and Granny Weatherwax were still locked in the magical equivalent of Indian arm wrestling. The flagstones under Granny were halfmelted and cracked and the table behind Cutangle had taken root and already bore a rich crop of acorns. One of the students had earned several awards for bravery by daring to tug at Cutangle’s cloak .... And now they were crowded into the narrow room, looking at the two bodies. Cutangle summoned doctors of the body and doctors of the mind, and the room buzzed with magic as they got to work. Granny tapped him on the shoulder. “A word in your ear, young man,” she said. “Hardly young, madam,” sighed Cutangle, “hardly young.” He felt drained. It had been decades since he’d duelled in magic, although it was common enough among students. He had a nasty feeling that Granny would have won eventually. Fighting her was like swatting a fly on your own nose. He couldn’t think what had come over him to try it. Granny led him out into the passage and around the corner to a window-seat. She sat down, leaning her broomstick against the wall. Rain drummed heavily on the roofs outside, and a few zigzags of lightning indicated a storm of Ramtop proportions approaching the city. “That was quite an impressive display,” she said: “You nearly won once or twice there.” “Oh,” said Cutangle, brightening up. “Do you really think so?” Granny nodded. Cutangle patted at various bits of his robe until he located a tarry bag of tobacco and a roll of paper. His hands shook as he fumbled a few shreds of second-hand pipeweed into a skinny homemade. He ran the wretched thing across his tongue, and barely moistened it. Then a dim remembrance of propriety welled up in the back of his mind. “Um,” he said, “do you mind if I smoke?” Granny shrugged. Cutangle struck a match on the wall and tried desperately to navigate the flame and the cigarette into approximately the same position. Granny gently took the match from his trembling hand and lit it for him. Cutangle sucked on the tobacco, had a ritual cough and settled back, the glowing end of the rollup the only light in the dim corridor. “They’ve gone Wandering,” said Granny at last. “I know,” said Cutangle. “Your wizards won’t be able to get them back.” “I know that, too.” “They might get something back, though.” “I wish you hadn’t said that.” There was a pause while they contemplated what might come back, inhabiting living bodies, acting almost like the original inhabitants. “It’s probably my fault -“they said in unison, and stopped in astonishment. “You first, madam,” said Cutangle. “Them cigaretty things,” asked Granny, “are they good for the nerves?” Cutangle opened his mouth to point out very courteously that tobacco was a habit reserved for wizards, but thought better of it. He extended the tobacco pouch towards Granny. She told him about Esk’s birth, and the coming of the old wizard, and the staff, and Esk’s forays into magic. By the time she had finished she had succeeded in rolling a tight, thin cylinder that burned with a small blue flame and made her eyes water. “I don’t know that shaky nerves wouldn’t be better,” she wheezed. Cutangle wasn’t listening. “This is quite astonishing,” he said. “You say the child didn’t suffer in any way?” “Not that I noticed,” said Granny. “The staff seemed - well, on her side, if you know what I mean.” “And where is this staff now?” “She said she threw it in the river . . . .” The old wizard and the elderly witch stared at each other, their faces illuminated by a flare of lightning outside. Cutangle shook his head. “The river’s flooding,” he said. “It’s a million-to-one chance.” Granny smiled grimly. It was the sort of smile that wolves ran away from. Granny grasped her broomstick purposefully. “Million-to-one chances,” she said, “crop up nine times out of ten.” There are storms that are frankly theatrical, all sheet lightning and metallic thunder rolls. There are storms that are tropical and sultry, and incline to hot winds and fireballs. But this was a storm of the Circle Sea plains, and its main ambition was to hit the ground with as much rain as possible. It was the kind of storm that suggests that the whole sky has swallowed a diuretic. The thunder and lightning hung around in the background, supplying a sort of chorus, but the rain was the star of the show. It tap-danced across the land. The grounds of the University stretched right down to the river. By day they were a neat formal pattern of gravel paths and hedges, but in the middle of a wet wild night the hedges seemed to have moved and the paths had simply gone off somewhere to stay dry. A weak wyrdlight shone inefficiently among the dripping leaves. But most of the rain found its way through anyway. “Can you use one of them wizard fireballs?” “Have a heart, madam.” “Are you sure she would have come this way?” “There’s a sort of jetty thing down here somewhere, unless I’m lost.” There was the sound of a heavy body blundering wetly into a bush, and then a splash. “I’ve found the river, anyway.” Granny Weatherwax peered through the soaking darkness. She could hear a roaring and could dimly make out the white crests of floodwater. There was also the distinctive river smell of the Ankh, which suggested that several armies had used it first as a urinal and then as a sepulchre. Cutangle splashed dejectedly towards her. “This is foolishness,” he said, “meaning no offence, madam. But it’ll be out to sea on this flood. And I’ll die of cold.” “You can’t get any wetter than you are now. Anyway, you walk wrong for rain.” “I beg your pardon?” “You go all hunched up, you fight it, that’s not the way. You shouldwell, move between the drops.” And, indeed, Granny seemed to be merely damp. “I’ll bear that in mind. Come on, madam. It’s me for a roaring fire and a glass of something hot and wicked.” Granny sighed. “I don’t know. Somehow I expected to see it sticking out of the mud, or something. Not just all this water.” Cutangle patted her gently on the shoulder. “There may be something else we can do -“ he began, and was interrupted by a zip of lightning and another roll of thunder. “I said maybe there’s something -“ he began again. “What was that I saw?” demanded Granny. “What was what?” said Cutangle, bewildered. “Give me some light!” The wizard sighed wetly, and extended a hand. A bolt of golden fire shot out across the foaming water and hissed into oblivion. “There!” said Granny triumphantly. “It’s just a boat,” said Cutangle. “The boys use them in the summer -“ He waded after Granny’s determined figure as fast as he could. “You can’t be thinking of taking it out on a night like this,” he said. “It’s madness!” Granny slithered along the wet planking of the jetty, which was already nearly under water. “You don’t know anything about boats!” Cutangle protested. “I shall have to learn quickly, then,” replied Granny calmly. “But I haven’t been in a boat since I was a boy!” “I wasn’t actually asking you to come. Does the pointy bit go in front?” Cutangle moaned. “This is all very creditable,” he said, “but perhaps we can wait till morning?” A flash of lightning illuminated Granny’s face. “Perhaps not,” Cutangle conceded. He lumbered along the jetty and pulled the little rowing boat towards him. Getting in was a matter of luck but he managed it eventually, fumbling with the painter in the darkness. The boat swung out into the flood and was carried away, spinning slowly. Granny clung to the seat as it rocked in the turbulent waters, and looked expectantly at Cutangle through the murk. “Well?” she said. “Well what?” said Cutangle. “You said you knew all about boats.” “No. I said you didn’t.” “Oh.” They hung on as the boat wallowed heavily, miraculously righted itself, and was carried backwards downstream. “When you said you hadn’t been in a boat since you were a boy. . .” Granny began. “I was two years old, I think.” The boat caught on a whirlpool, spun around, and shot off across the flow. “I had you down as the sort of boy who was in and out of boats all day long.” “I was born up in the mountains. I get seasick on damp grass, if you must know,” said Cutangle. The boat banged heavily against a submerged tree trunk, and a wavelet lapped the prow. “I know a spell against drowning,” he added miserably. “I’m glad about that.” “Only you have to say it while you’re standing on dry land.” “Fake your boots off.” Granny commanded. “What?” “Take your boots off, man!” Cutangle shifted uneasily on his bench. “What have you in mind?” he said. “The water is supposed to be outside the boat, I know that much!” Granny pointed to the dark tide sloshing around the bilges: “Fill your boots with water and tip it over the side!” Cutangle nodded. He felt that the last couple of hours had somehow carried him along without him actually touching the sides, and for a moment he nursed the strangely consoling feeling that his life was totally beyond his control and whatever happened no one could blame him. Filling his boots with water while adrift on a flooded river at midnight with what he could only describe as a woman seemed about as logical as anything could be in the circumstances. A fine figure of a woman, said a neglected voice at the back of his mind. There was something about the way she used the tattered broomstick to scull the boat across the choppy water that troubled long-forgotten bits of Cutangle’s subconscious. Not that he could be certain about the fine figure, of course, what with the rain and the wind and Granny’s habit of wearing her entire wardrobe in one go. Cutangle cleared his throat uncertainly. Metaphorically a fine figure, he decided. “Um, look,” he said. “This is all very creditable, but consider the facts, I mean, the rate of drift and so forth, you see? It could be miles out on the ocean by now. It might never come to shore again. It might even go over the Rimfall.” Granny, who had been staring out across the water, turned around. “Can’t you think of anything else at all helpful that we could be doing?” she demanded. Cutangle baled for a few moments. “No,” he said. “Have you ever heard of anyone coming Back?” “No.” “Then it’s worth a try, isn’t it?” “I never liked the ocean,” said Cutangle. “It ought to be paved over. There’s dreadful things in it, down in the deep bits. Ghastly sea monsters. Or so they say.” “Keep baling, my lad, or you’ll be able to see if they’re right.” The storm rolled backwards and forwards overhead. It was lost here on the flat river plains; it belonged in the high Ramtops, where they knew how to appreciate a good storm. It grumbled around, looking for even a moderately high hill to throw lightning at. The rain settled down to the gentle patter of rain that is quite capable of keeping it up for days. A sea fog also rolled in to assist it. “If we had some oars we could row, if we knew where we were going,” said Cutangle. Granny didn’t answer. He heaved a few more bootfuls of water over the side, and it occurred to him that the gold braiding on his robe would probably never be the same again. It would be nice to think it might matter, one day. “I don’t suppose you do know which way the Hub is, by any chance?” he ventured. “Just making conversation.” “Look for the mossy side of trees,” said Granny without turning her head. “Ali, “ said Cutangle, and nodded. He peered down gloomily at the oily waters, and wondered which particular oily waters they were. Judging by the salty smell they were out in the bay now. What really terrified him about the sea was that the only thing between him and the horrible things that lived at the bottom of it was water. Of course, he knew that logically the only thing that separated him from, say, the man-eating tigers in the jungles of Klatch was mere distance, but that wasn’t the same thing at all. Tigers didn’t rise up out of the chilly depths, mouths full of needle teeth .... He shivered. “Can’t you feel it?” asked Granny. “You can taste it in the air. Magic! It’s leaking out from something.” “It’s not actually water soluble,” said Cutangle. He smacked his lips once or twice. There was indeed a tinny taste to the fog, he had to admit, and a faint greasiness to the air. “You’re a wizard,” said Granny, severely. “Can’t you call it up or something?” “The question has never arisen,” said Cutangle. “Wizards never throw their staffs away.” “It’s around here somewhere,” snapped Granny. “Help me look for it, man!” Cutangle groaned. It had been a busy night, and before he tried any more magic he really needed twelve hours sleep, several good meals, and a quiet afternoon in front of a big fire. He was getting too old, that was the trouble. But he closed his eyes and concentrated. There was magic around, all right. There are some places where magic naturally accumulates. It builds up around deposits of the transmundane metal octiron, in the wood of certain trees, in isolated lakes, it sleets through the world and those skilled in such things can catch it and store it. There was a store of magic in the area. “It’s potent,” he said. “Very potent.” He raised his hands to his temples. “It’s getting bloody cold,” said Granny. The insistent rain had turned to snow. There was a sudden change in the world. The boat stopped, not with a jar, but as if the sea had suddenly decided to become solid. Granny looked over the side. The sea had become solid. The sound of the waves was coming from a long way away and getting further away all the time. She leaned over the side of the boat and tapped on the water. “Ice,” she said. The boat was motionless in an ocean of ice. It creaked ominously. Cutangle nodded slowly. “It makes sense,” he said. “If they are . . . where we think they are, then it’s very cold. As cold as the night between the stars, it is said. So the staff feels it too.” “Right,” said Granny, and stepped out of the boat. “All we have to do is find the middle of the ice and there’s the staff, right?” “I knew you were going to say that. Can I at least put my boots on?” They wandered across the frozen waves, with Cutangle stopping occasionally to try and sense the exact location of the staff. His robes were freezing on him. His teeth chattered. “Aren’t you cold?” he said to Granny, whose dress fairly crackled as she walked. “I’m cold,” she conceded, “I just ain’t shivering.” “We used to have winters like this when I was a lad,” said Cutangle, blowing on his fingers. “It doesn’t snow in Ankh, hardly.” “Really,” said Granny, peering ahead through the freezing fog. “There was snow on the tops of the mountains all year round, I recall. Oh, you don’t get temperatures like you did when I was a boy.” “At least, until now,” he added, stamping his feet on the ice. It creaked menacingly, reminding him that it was all that lay between him and the bottom of the sea. He stamped again, as softly as possible. “What mountains were these?” asked Granny. “Oh, the Ramtops. Up towards the Hub, in fact. Place called Brass Neck.” Granny’s lips moved. “Cutangle, Cutangle,” she said softly. “Any relation to old Acktur Cutangle? Used to live in a big old house under Leaping Mountain, had a lot of sons.” “My father. How on disc d’you know that?” “I was raised up there,” said Granny, resisting the temptation merely to smile knowingly. “Next valley. Bad Ass. I remember your mother. Nice woman, kept brown and white chickens, I used to go up there to buy eggs for me mam. That was before I was called to witching, of course.” “I don’t remember you,” said Cutangle. “Of course, it was a long time ago. There was always a lot of children around our house.” He sighed. “I suppose it’s possible I pulled your hair once. It was the sort of thing I used to do.” “Maybe. I remember a fat little boy. Rather unpleasant.” “That might have been me. I seem to recall a rather bossy girl, but it was a long time ago. A long time ago.” “I didn’t have white hair in those days,” said Granny. “Everything was a different colour in those days.” “That’s true.” “It didn’t rain so much in the summer time.” “The sunsets were redder.” “There were more old people. The world was full of them,” said the wizard. “Yes, I know. And now it’s full of young people. Funny, really. I mean, you’d expect it to be the other way round.” “They even had a better kind of air. It was easier to breathe,” said Cutangle. They stamped on through the swirling snow, considering the curious ways of time and Nature. “Ever been home again?” said Granny. Cutangle shrugged. “When my father died. It’s odd, I’ve never said this to anyone, but-well, there were my brothers, because I am an eighth son of course, and they had children and even grandchildren, and not one of them can hardly write his name. I could have bought the whole village. And they treated me like a king, but- I mean, I’ve been to places and seen things that would curdle their minds, I’ve faced down creatures wilder than their nightmares, I know secrets that are known to a very few -“ “You felt left out,” said Granny. “There’s nothing strange in that. It happens to all of us. It was our choice.” “Wizards should never go home,” said Cutangle. “I don’t think they can go home,” agreed Granny. “You can’t cross the same river twice, I always say.” Cutangle gave this some thought. “I think you’re wrong there,” he said. “I must have crossed the same river, oh, thousands of times.” “Ah, but it wasn’t the same river.” “It wasn’t?” “No.” Cutangle shrugged. “It looked like the same bloody river.” “No need to take that tone,” said Granny. “I don’t see why I should listen to that sort of language from a wizard who can’t even answer letters!” Cutangle was silent for a moment, except for the castanet chatter of his teeth. “Oh,” he said. “Oh, I see. They were from you, were they?” “That’s right. I signed them on the bottom. It’s supposed to be a sort of clue, isn’t it?” “All right, all right. I just thought they were a joke, that’s all,” said Cutangle sullenly. “A joke?” “We don’t get many applications from women. We don’t get any.” “I wondered why I didn’t get a reply,” said Granny. “I threw them away, if you must know.” “You could at least have - there it is!” “Where? Where? Oh, there.” The fog parted and they now saw it clearly - a fountain of snowflakes, a ornamental pillar of frozen air. And below it.... The staff wasn’t locked in ice, but lay peacefully in a seething pool of water. One of the unusual aspects of a magical universe is the existence of opposites. It has already been remarked that darkness isn’t the opposite of light, it is simply the absence of light. In the same way absolute zero is merely the absence of heat. If you want to know what real cold is, the cold so intense that water can’t even freeze but anti-boils, look no further than this pool. They looked in silence for some seconds, their bickering forgotten. Then Cutangle said slowly: “If you stick your hand in that, your fingers’ll snap like carrots.” “Do you think you can lift it out by magic?” said Granny. Cutangle started to pat his pockets and eventually produced his rollup bag. With expert fingers he shredded the remains of a few dogends into a fresh paper and licked it into shape, without taking his eyes off the staff. “No,” he said. “but I’ll try anyway.” He looked longingly at the cigarette and then poked it behind his ear. He extended his hands, fingers splayed, and his lips moved soundlessly as he mumbled a few words of power. The staff spun in its pool and then rose gently away from the ice, where it immediately became the centre of a cocoon of frozen air. Cutangle groaned with the effort - direct levitation is the hardest of the practical magics, because of the ever-present danger of the wellknown principles of action and reaction, which means that a wizard attempting to lift a heavy item by mind power alone faces the prospect of ending up with his brains in his boots. “Can you stand it upright?” said Granny. With great delicacy the staff turned slowly in the air until it hung in front of Granny a few inches above the ice. Frost glittered on its carvings, but it seemed to Cutangle - through the red haze of migraine that hovered in front of his eyes - to be watching him. Resentfully. Granny adjusted her hat and straightened up purposefully. “Right,” she said. Cutangle swayed. The tone of voice cut through him like a diamond saw. He could dimly remember being scolded by his mother when he was small; well, this was that voice, only refined and concentrated and edged with little bits of carborundum, a tone of command that would have a corpse standing to attention and could probably have marched it halfway across its cemetery before it remembered it was dead. Granny stood in front of the hovering staff, almost melting its icy covering by the sheer anger in her gaze. “This is your idea of proper behaviour, is it? Lying around on the sea while people die? Oh, very well done!” She stomped around in a semi-circle. To Cutangle’s bewilderment, the staff turned to follow her. “So you were thrown away,” snapped Granny. “So what? She’s hardly more than a child, and children throw us all away sooner or later. Is this loyal service? Have you no shame, lying around sulking when you could be of some use at last?” She leaned forward, her hooked nose a few inches from the staff. Cutangle was almost certain that the staff tried to lean backwards out of her way. “Shall I tell you what happens to wicked staffs?” she hissed. “If Esk is lost to the world, shall I tell you what I will do to you? You were saved from the fire once, because you could pass on the hurt to her. Next time it won’t be the fire.” Her voice sank to a whiplash whisper. “First it’ll be the spokeshave. And then the sandpaper, and the auger, and the whittling knife -“ “I say, steady on,” said Cutangle, his eyes watering. “- and what’s left I’ll stake out in the woods for the fungus and the woodlice and the beetles. It could take years.” The carvings writhed. Most of them had moved around the back, out of Granny’s gaze. “Now,” she said. “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to pick you up and we are all going back to the University, aren’t we? Otherwise it’s blunt saw time.” She rolled up her sleeves and extended a hand. “Wizard,” she said, “I shall want you to release it.” Cutangle nodded miserably. “When I say now, now! Now!” Cutangle opened his eyes again. Granny was standing with her left arm extended full length in front of her, her hand clamped around the staff. The ice was exploding off it, in gouts of steam. “Right,” finished Granny, “and if this happens again I shall be very angry, do I make myself clear?” Cutangle lowered his hands and hurried towards her. “Are you hurt?” She shook her head. “It’s like holding a hot icicle,” she said. “Come on, we haven’t got time to stand around chatting.” “How are we going to get back?” “Oh, show some backbone, man, for goodness sake. We’ll fly,” Granny waved her broomstick. The Archchancellor looked at it doubtfully. “On that?” “Of course. Don’t wizards fly on their staffs?” “It’s rather undignified.” “If I can put up with that, so can you.” “Yes, but is it safe?” Granny gave him a withering look. “Do you mean in the absolute sense?” she asked. “Or, say, compared with staying behind on a melting ice floe?” “This is the first time I have ever ridden on a broomstick,” said Cutangle. “Really.” “I thought you just had to get on them and they flew,” said the wizard. “I didn’t know you had to do all that running up and down and shouting at them.” “It’s a knack,” said Granny. “I thought they went faster,” Cutangle continued, “and, to be frank, higher.” “What do you mean, higher?” asked Granny, trying to compensate for the wizard’s weight on the pillion as they turned back upriver. Like pillion passengers since the dawn of time, he persisted in leaning the wrong way. “Well, more sort of above the trees,” said Cutangle, ducking as a dripping branch swept his hat away. “There’s nothing wrong with this broomstick that you losing a few stone wouldn’t cure,” snapped Granny. “Or would you rather get off and walk?” “Apart from the fact that half the time my feet are touching the ground anyway,” said Cutangle. “I wouldn’t want to embarrass you. If someone had asked me to list all the perils of flying, you know, it would never have occurred to me to include having one’s legs whipped to death by tall bracken.” “Are you smoking?” said Granny, staring grimly ahead. “Something’s burning.” “It was just to calm my nerves what with all this headlong plunging through the air, madam.” “Well, put it out this minute. And hold on.” The broomstick lurched upwards and increased its speed to that of a geriatric jogger. “Mr Wizard.” “Hallo?” “When I said hold on -“ “Yes?” “I didn’t mean there.” There was a pause. “Oh. Yes. I see. I’m terribly sorry.” “That’s all right.” “My memory isn’t what it was . . . I assure you . . . no offence meant.” “None taken.” They flew in silence for a moment. “Nevertheless,” said Granny thoughtfully, “I think that, on the whole, I would prefer you to move your hands.” Rain gushed across the leads of Unseen University and poured into the gutters where ravens’ nests, abandoned since the summer, floated like very badly-built boats. The water gurgled along ancient, crusted pipes. It found its way under tiles and said hallo to the spiders under the eaves. It leapt from gables and formed secret lakes high amongst the spires. Whole ecologies lived in the endless rooftops of the University, which by comparison made Gormenghast look like a toolshed on a railway allotment; birds sang in tiny jungles grown from apple pips and weed seeds, little frogs swam in the upper gutters, and a colony of ants were busily inventing an interesting and complex civilisation. One thing the water couldn’t do was gurgle out of the ornamental gargoyles ranged around the roofs. This was because the gargoyles wandered off and sheltered in the attics at the first sign of rain. They held that just because you were ugly it didn’t mean you were stupid. It rained streams. It rained rivers. It rained seas. But mainly it rained through the roof of the Great Hall, where the duel between Granny and Cutangle had left a very large hole, and Treatle felt that it was somehow raining on him personally. He stood on a table organising the teams of students who were taking down the paintings and ancient tapestries before they got soaked. It had to be a table, because the floor was already several inches deep in water. Not rainwater, unfortunately. This was water with real personality, the kind of distinctive character water gets after a long journey through silty countryside. It had the thick texture of authentic Ankh water - too stiff to drink, too runny to plough. The river had burst its banks and a million little watercourses were flowing backwards, bursting in through the cellars and playing peekaboo under the flagstones. There was the occasional distant boom as some forgotten magic in a drowned dungeon shorted out and surrendered up its power; Treatle wasn’t at all keen on some of the unpleasant bubblings and hissings that were escaping to the surface. He thought again how nice it would be to be the sort of wizard who lived in a little cave somewhere and collected herbs and thought significant thoughts and knew what the owls were saying. But probably the cave would be damp and the herbs would be poisonous and Treatle could never be sure, when all was said and done, exactly what thoughts were really significant. He got down awkwardly and paddled through the dark swirling waters. Well, he had done his best. He’d tried to organise the senior wizards into repairing the roof by magic, but there was a general argument over the spells that could be used and a consensus that this was in any case work for artisans. That’s wizards for you, he thought gloomily as he waded between the dripping arches, always probing the infinite but never noticing the definite, especially in the matter of household chores. We never had this trouble before that woman came. He squelched up the steps, lit by a particularly impressive flash of lightning. He had a cold certainty that while of course no one could possibly blame him for all this, everybody would. He seized the hem of his robe and wrung it out wretchedly, then he reached for his tobacco pouch. It was a nice green waterproof one. That meant that all the rain that had got into it couldn’t get out again. It was indescribable. He found his little clip of papers. They were fused into one lump, like the legendary pound note found in the back pockets of trousers after they have been washed, spun, dried and ironed. “Bugger,” he said, with feeling. “I say! Treatle!” Treatle looked around. He had been the last to leave the hall, where even now some of the benches were beginning to float. Whirlpools and patches of bubble marked the spots where magic was leaking from the cellars, but there was no one to be seen. Unless, of course, one of the statues had spoken. They had been too heavy to move, and Trestle remembered telling the students that a thorough wash would probably do them good. He looked at their stern faces and regretted it. The statues of very powerful dead mages were sometimes more lifelike than statues had any right to be. Maybe he should have kept his voice down. “Yes?” he ventured, acutely aware of the stony stares. “Up here, you fool!” He looked up. The broomstick descended heavily through the rain in a series of swoops and jerks. About five feet above the water it lost its few remaining aerial pretensions, and flopped noisily into a whirlpool. “Don’t stand there, idiot!” Treatle peered nervously into the gloom. “I’ve got to stand somewhere,” he said. “I mean give us a hand!” snapped Cutangle, rising from the wavelets like a fat and angry Venus. “The lady first, of course.” He turned to Granny, who was fishing around in the water. “I’ve lost my hat,” she said. Cutangle sighed. “Does that really matter at a time like this?” “A witch has got to have a hat, otherwise who’s to know?” said Granny. She made a grab as something dark and sodden drifted by, cackled triumphantly, tipped out the water and rammed the hat on her head. It had lost its stiffening and flopped rather rakishly over one eye. “Right,” she said, in a tone of voice that suggested the whole universe had just better watch out. There was another brilliant flash of lightning, which shows that even the weather gods have a well-developed sense of theatre. “It rather suits you,” said Cutangle. “Excuse me,” said Trestle, “but isn’t she the w-“ “Never mind that,” said Cutangle, taking Granny’s hand and helping her up the steps. He flourished the staff. “But it’s against the lore to allow w-“ He stopped and stared as Granny reached out and touched the damp wall by the door. Cutangle tapped him on the chest. “Show me where it’s written down,” said Cutangle. “They’re in the Library,” Granny interrupted. “It was the only dry place,” said Treatle, “but -“ “This building is frightened of thunderstorms,” said Granny. “It could do with comforting.” “But the lore -“repeated Treatle desperately. Granny was already striding down the passage, with Cutangle hopping along behind. He turned. “You heard the lady,” he said. Treatle watched them go, with his mouth hanging open. When their footsteps had died away in the distance he stood silently for a moment, thinking about life and where his could have gone wrong. However, he wasn’t going to be accused of disobedience. Very carefully, without knowing exactly why, he reached out and gave the wall a friendly pat. “There, there,” he said. Strangely enough, he felt a lot better. It occurred to Cutangle that he ought to lead the way in his own premises, but Granny in a hurry was no match for a nearterminal nicotine addict and he kept up only by a sort of crabwise leaping. “It’s this way,” he said, splashing through the puddles. “I know. The building told me.” “Yes, I was meaning to ask about that,” said Cutangle, “because you see it’s never said anything to me and I’ve lived here for years.” “Have you ever listened to it?” “Not exactly listened, no,” Cutangle conceded. “Not as such.” “Well then,” said Granny, edging past a waterfall where the kitchen steps used to be (Mrs Whitlow’s washing would never be the same again). “I think it’s up here and along the passage, isn’t it?” She swept past a trio of astonished wizards, who were surprised by her and completely startled by her hat. Cutangle panted after her and caught her arm at the doors to the Library. “Look,” he said desperately, “No offence, Miss - um, Mistress -“ “I think Esmerelda will suffice now. What with us having shared a broomstick and everything.” “Can I go in front? It is my Library,” he begged. Granny turned around, her face a mask of surprise. Then she smiled. “Of course. I’m so sorry.” “For the look of the thing, you see,” said Cutangle apologetically. He pushed the door open. The Library was full of wizards, who care about their books in the same way that ants care about their eggs and in time of difficulty carry them around in much the same way. The water was getting in even here, and turning up in rather odd places because of the Library’s strange gravitational effects. All the lower shelves had been cleared and relays of wizards and students were piling the volumes on every available table and dry shelf. The air was full of the sound of angry rustling pages, which almost drowned out the distant fury of the storm. This was obviously upsetting the librarian, who was scurrying from wizard to wizard, tugging ineffectually at their robes and shouting “ook”. He spotted Cutangle and knuckled rapidly towards him. Granny had never seen an orang-outan before, but wasn’t about to admit it, and remained quite calm in the face of a small potbellied man with extremely long arms and a size IZ skin on a size 8 body. “Ook,” it explained, “ooook.” “I expect so,” said Cutangle shortly, and grabbed the nearest wizard, who was tottering under the weight of a dozen grimoires. The man stared at him as if he was a ghost, looked sideways at Granny, and dropped the books on the floor. The librarian winced. “Archchancellor?” gasped the wizard, “you’re alive? I mean -we heard you’d been spirited away by -“ he looked at Granny again, “- I mean, we thought - Treatle told us -“ “Oook,” said the librarian, shooing some pages back between their covers. “Where are young Simon and the girl? What have you done with them?” Granny demanded. “They - we put them over here,” said the wizard, backing away. “Um -“ “Show us,” said Cutangle. “And stop stuttering, man, you’d think you’d never seen a woman before.” The wizard swallowed hard and nodded vigorously. “Certainly. And - I mean - please follow me - um -“ “You weren’t going to say anything about the lore, were you?” asked Cutangle. “Um - no, Archchancellor.” “Good.” They followed hard on his trodden-down heels as he scurried between the toiling wizards, most of whom stopped working to stare as Granny strode past. “This is getting embarrassing,” said Cutangle, out of the corner of his mouth. “I shall have to declare you an honorary wizard.” Granny stared straight ahead and her lips hardly moved. “You do,” she hissed, “and I will declare you an honorary witch.” Cutangle’s mouth snapped shut. Esk and Simon were lying on a table in one of the side readingrooms, with half a dozen wizards watching over them. They drew back nervously as the trio approached, with the librarian swinging along behind. “I’ve been thinking,” said Cutangle. “Surely it would be better to give the staff to Simon? He is a wizard, and -“ “Over my dead body,” said Granny. “Yours, too. They’re getting their power through him, do you want to give them more?” Cutangle sighed. He had been admiring the staff, it was one of the best he had seen. “Very well. You’re right, of course.” He leaned down and laid the staff on Esk’s sleeping form, and then stood back dramatically. Nothing happened. One of the wizards coughed nervously. Nothing continued to happen. The carvings on the staff appeared to be grinning. “It’s not working,” said Cutangle, “is it?” “Ook.” “Give it time,” said Granny. They gave it time. Outside the storm strode around the sky, trying to lift the lids off houses. Granny sat down on a pile of books and rubbed her eyes. Cutangle’s hands strayed towards his tobacco pocket. The wizard with the nervous cough was helped out of the room by a colleague. “Ook,” said the librarian. “I know!” said Granny, so that Cutangle’s half-rolled homemade shot out of his nerveless fingers in a shower of tobacco. “What?” “It’s not finished!” “What?” “She can’t use the staff, of course,” said Granny, standing up. “But you said she swept the floors with it and it protects her and -“ Cutangle began. “Nonono,” said Granny. “That means the staff uses itself or it uses her, but she’s never been able to use it, d’you see?” Cutangle stared at the two quiet bodies. “She should be able to use it. It’s a proper wizard’s staff.” “Oh,” said Granny. “So she’s a proper wizard, is she?” Cutangle hesitated. “Well, of course not. You can’t ask us to declare her a wizard. Where’s the precedent?” “The what?” asked Granny, sharply. “It’s never happened before.” “Lots of things have never happened before. We’re only born once.” Cutangle gave her a look of mute appeal. “But it’s against the I-“ He began to say “lore”, but the word mumbled into silence. “Where does it say it?” said Granny triumphantly. “Where does it say women can’t be wizards?” The following thoughts sped through Cutangle’s mind: . . . It doesn’t say it anywhere, it says it everywhere. . . . But young Simon seemed to say that everywhere is so much like nowhere that you can’t really tell the difference . . . . Do I want to be remembered as the first Archchancellor to allow women into the University? Still . . . I’d be remembered, that’s for sure . . . . She really is a rather impressive woman when she stands in that sort of way . . . . That staff has got ideas of its own . . . . There’s a sort of sense to it . . . . I would be laughed at . . . . It might not work . . . . It might work. She couldn’t trust them. But she had no choice. Esk stared at the terrible faces peering down at her, and the lanky bodies, mercifully cloaked. Her hands tingled. In the shadow-world, ideas are real. The thought seemed to travel up her arms. It was a buoyant sort of thought, a thought full of fizz. She laughed, and moved her hands apart, and the staff sparkled in her hands like solid electricity. The Things started to chitter nervously and one or two at the back started to lurch away. Simon fell forward as his captors hastily let go, and he landed on his hands and knees in the sand. “Use it!” he shouted. “That’s it! They’re frightened!” Esk gave him a smile, and continued to examine the staff. For the first time she could see what the carvings actually were. Simon snatched up the pyramid of the world and ran towards her. “Come on!” he said. “They hate it!” “Pardon?” said Esk. “Use the staff,” said Simon urgently, and reached out for it. “Hey! It bit me!” “Sorry,” said Esk. “What were we talking about?” She looked up and regarded the keening Things as it were for the first time. “Oh, those. They only exist inside our heads. If we didn’t believe in them, they wouldn’t exist at all.” Simon looked around at them. “I can’t honestly say I believe you,” he said. “I think we should go home now,” said Esk. “People will be worrying. “ She moved her hands together and the staff vanished, although for a moment her hands glowed as though they were cupped around a candle. The Things howled. A few of them fell over. “The important thing about magic is how you don’t use it,” said Esk, taking Simon’s arm. He stared at the crumbling figures around him, and grinned foolishly. “You don’t use it?” he queried. “Oh, yes,” said Esk, as they walked towards the Things. “Try it yourself.” She extended her hands, brought the staff out of the air, and offered it to him. He went to take it, then drew back his hand. “Uh, no,” he said, “I don’t think it likes me much.” “I think it’s all right if I give it to you. It can’t really argue with that,” said Esk. “Where does it go?” “It just becomes an idea of itself, I think.” He reached out his hand again and closed his fingers around the shining wood. “Right,” he said, and raised it in the classical revengeful wizard’s pose. “I’ll show them!” “No, wrong.” “What do you mean, wrong? I’ve got the power!” “They’re sort of-reflections of us,” said Esk. “You can’t beat your reflections, they’ll always be as strong as you are. That’s why they draw nearer to you when you start using magic. And they don’t get tired. They feed off magic, so you can’t beat them with magic. No, the thing is . . . well, not using magic because you can’t, that’s no use at all. But not using magic because you can, that really upsets them. They hate the idea. If people stopped using magic they’d die.” The Things ahead of them fell over each other in their haste to back away. Simon looked at the staff, then at Esk, then at the Things, then back at the staff. “This needs a lot of thinking about,” he said uncertainly. “I’d really like to work this out.” “I expect you’ll do it very well.” “Because you’re saying that the real power is when you go right through magic and out the other side.” “It works, though, doesn’t it?” They were alone on the cold plain now. The Things were distant stick-figures. “I wonder if this is what they mean by sourcery?” said Simon. I don’t know. It might be.” “I’d really like to work this out,” said Simon again, turning the staff over and over in his hands. “We could set up some experiments, you know, into deliberately not using magic. We could carefully not draw an octogram on the floor, and we could deliberately not call up all sorts of things, and - it makes me sweat just to think about it!” “I’d like to think about how to get home,” said Esk, looking down at the pyramid. “Well, that is supposed to be my idea of the world. I should be able to find a way. How do you do this thing with the hands?” He moved his hands together. The staff slid between them, the light glowing through his fingers for a moment, and then vanished. He grinned. “Right. Now all we have to do is look for the University . . . .” Cutangle lit his third rollup from the stub of the second. This last cigarette owed a lot to the creative powers of nervous energy, and looked like a camel with the legs cut off. He had already watched the staff lift itself gently from Esk and land on Simon. Now it had floated up into the air again. Other wizards had crowded into the room. The librarian was sitting under the table. “If only we had some idea what is going on,” said Cutangle. “It’s the suspense I can’t stand.” “Think positively, man,” snapped Granny. “And put out that bloody cigarette, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to come back to a room that smells like a fireplace.” As one man the assembled college of wizards turned their faces towards Cutangle, expectantly. He took the smouldering mess out of his mouth and, with a glare that none of the assembled wizards cared to meet, trod it underfoot. “Probably time I gave it up anyway,” he said. “That goes for the rest of you, too. Worse than an ashpit in this place, sometimes.” Then he saw the staff. It was The only way Cutangle could describe the effect was that it seemed to be going very fast while staying in exactly the same place. Streamers of gas flared away from it and vanished, if they were gas. It blazed like a comet designed by an inept special effects man. Coloured sparks leapt out and disappeared somewhere. It was also changing colour, starting with a dull red and then climbing through the spectrum until it was a painful violet. Snakes of white fire coruscated along its length. There should be a word for words that sound like things would sound like if they made a noise, he thought. The word “glisten” does indeed gleam oily, and if there was ever a word that sounded exactly the way sparks look as they creep across burned paper, or the way the lights of cities would creep across the world if the whole of human civilisation was crammed into one night, then you couldn’t do better than “coruscate”. He knew what would happen next. “Look out,” he whispered. “It’s going to go -“ In total silence, in the kind of silence in fact that sucks in sounds and stifles them, the staff flashed into pure octarine along the whole of its length. The eighth colour, produced by light falling through a strong magical field, blazed out through bodies and bookshelves and walls. Other colours blurred and ran together, as though the light was a glass of gin poured over the watercolour painting of the world. The clouds over the University glowed, twisted into fascinating and unexpected shapes, and streamed upwards. An observer above the Disc would have seen a little patch of land near the Circle Sea sparkle like a jewel for several seconds, then wink out. The silence of the room was broken by a wooden clatter as the staff dropped out of the air and bounced on the table. Someone said “Ook”, very faintly. Cutangle eventually remembered how to use his hands and raised them to where he hoped his eyes would be. Everything had gone black. “Is - anyone else there?” he said. “Gods, you don’t know how glad I am to hear you say that,” said another voice. The silence was suddenly full of babble. “Are we still where we were?” “I don’t know. Where were we?” “Here, I think.” “Can you reach out?” “Not unless I am quite certain about what I’m going to touch, my good man,” said the unmistakable voice of Granny Weatherwax. “Everyone try and reach out,” said Cutangle, and choked down a scream as a hand like a warm leather glove closed around his ankle. There was a satisfied little “ook”, which managed to convey relief, comfort and the sheer joy of touching a fellow human being or, in this case, anthropoid. There was a scratch and then a blessed flare of red light as a wizard on the far side of the room lit a cigarette. “Who did that?” “Sorry, Archchancellor, force of habit.” “Smoke all you like, that man.” “Thank you, Archchancellor.” “I think I can see the outline of the door now,” said another voice. “Granny?” “Yes, I can definitely see -“ “Esk?” “I’m here, Granny.” “Can I smoke too, sir?” “Is the boy with you?” “Yes.” “Ook.” “I’m here.” “What’s happening?” “Everyone stop talking!” Ordinary light, slow and easy on the eye, sidled back into the Library. Esk sat up, dislodging the staff. It rolled under the table. She felt something slip over her eyes, and reached up for it. “Just a moment,” said Granny, darting forward. She gripped the girl’s shoulders and peered into her eyes. “Welcome back,” she said, and kissed her. Esk reached up and patted something hard on her head. She lifted it down to examine it. It was a pointed hat, slightly smaller than Granny’s, but bright blue with a couple of silver stars painted on it. “A wizard hat?” she said. Cutangle stepped forward. “Ah, yes,”he said, and cleared his throat: “You see, we thought - it seemed - anyway, when we considered it -“ “You’re a wizard,” said Granny, simply. “The Archchancellor changed the lore. Quite a simple ceremony, really.” “There’s the staff somewhere about here,” said Cutangle. “I saw it fall down - oh.” He stood up with the staff in his hand, and showed it to Granny. “I thought it had carvings on,” he said. “This looks just like a stick.” And that was a fact. The staff looked as menacing and potent as a piece of kindling. Esk turned the hat around in her hands, in the manner of one who, opening the proverbial brightly-wrapped package, finds bath salts. “It’s very nice,” she said uncertainly. “Is that all you can say?” said Granny. “It’s pointed, too.” Somehow being a wizard didn’t feel any different from not being a wizard. Simon leaned over. “Remember,” he said, “you’ve got to have been a wizard. Then you can start looking on the other side. Like you said.” Their eyes met, and they grinned. Granny stared at Cutangle. He shrugged. “Search me,” he said. “What’s happened to your stutter, boy?” “Seems to have gone, sir,” said Simon brightly. “Must have left it behind, somewhere.” The river was still brown and swollen but at least it resembled a river again. It was unnaturally hot for late autumn, and across the whole of the lower part of Ankh-Morpork the steam rose from thousands of carpets and blankets put out to dry. The streets were filled with silt, which on the whole was an improvement - AnkhMorpork’s impressive civic collection of dead dogs had been washed out to sea. The steam also rose from the flagstones of the Archchancellor’s personal verandah, and from the teapot on the table. Granny lay back in an ancient cane chair and let the unseasonal warmth creep around her ankles. She idly watched a team of city ants, who had lived under the flagstones of the University for so long that the high levels of background magic had permanently altered their genes, anthandling a damp sugar lump down from the bowl on to a tiny trolley. Another group was erecting a matchstick gantry at the edge of the table. Granny may or may not have been interested to learn that one of the ants was Drum Billet, who had finally decided to give Life another chance. “They say,” she said, “that if you can find an ant on Hogswatch Day it will be very mild for the rest of the winter.” “Who says that?” said Cutangle. “Generally people who are wrong,” said Granny. “I makes a note in my Almanack, see. I checks. Most things most people believe are wrong.” “Like ‘red sky at night, the city’s alight’,” said Cutangle. “And you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” “I don’t think that’s what old dogs are for,” said Granny. The sugar lump had reached the gantry now, and a couple of ants were attaching it to a microscopic block and tackle. “I can’t understand half the things Simon says,” said Cutangle, “although some of the students get very excited about it. “I understand what Esk says all right, I just don’t believe it,” said Granny. “Except the bit about wizards needing a heart.” “She said that witches need a head, too,” said Cutangle. “Would you like a scone? A bit damp, I’m afraid.” “She told me that if magic gives people what they want, then not using magic can give them what they need,” said Granny, her hand hovering over the plate. “So Simon tells me. I don’t understand it myself, magic’s for using, not storing up. Go on, spoil yourself.” “Magic beyond magic,” snorted Granny. She took the scone and spread jam on it. After a pause she spread cream on it too. The sugar lump crashed to the flagstones and was immediately surrounded by another team of ants, ready to harness it to a long line of red ants enslaved from the kitchen garden. Cutangle shifted uneasily in his seat, which creaked. “Esmerelda,” he began, “I’ve been meaning to ask -“ “No,” said Granny. “Actually I was going to say that we think we might allow a few more girls into the University. On an experimental basis. Once we get the plumbing sorted out,” said Cutangle. “That’s up to you, of course.” “And, and, it occurred to me that since we seem destined to become a co-educational establishment, as it were, it seemed to me, that is -“ “Well?” “If you might see your way clear to becoming, that is, whether you would accept a Chair.” He sat back. The sugar lump passed under his chair on matchstick rollers, the squeaking of the slavedriver ants just at the edge of hearing. “Hmm,” said Granny, “I don’t see why not. I’ve always wanted one of those big wicker ones, you know, with the sort of sunshade bit on the top. If that’s not too much trouble.” “That isn’t exactly what I meant,” said Cutangle, adding quickly, “although I’m sure that could be arranged. No, I mean, would you come and lecture the students? Once in a while?” “What on?” Cutangle groped for a subject. “Herbs?” he hazarded. “We’re not very good on herbs here. And headology. Esk told me a lot about headology. It sounds fascinating.” The sugar lump disappeared through a crack in a nearby wall with a final jerk. Cutangle nodded towards it. “They’re very heavy on the sugar,” he said, “but we haven’t got the heart to do anything about it.” Granny frowned, and then nodded across the haze over the city to the distant glitter of the snow on the Ramtops. “It’s a long way,” she said. “I can’t be keeping on going backwards and forwards at my time of life.” “We could buy you a much better broomstick,” said Cutangle. “One you don’t have to bump start. And you, you could have a flat here. And all the old clothes you can carry,” he added, using the secret weapon. He had wisely invested in some conversation with Mrs Whitlow. “Mmph,” said Granny, “Silk?” “Black and red,” said Cutangle. An image of Granny in black and red silk trotted across his mind, and he bit heavily into his scone. “And maybe we can bring some students out to your cottage in the summer,” Cutangle went on, “for extra-mural studies.” “Who’s Extra Muriel?” “I mean, there’s lots they can learn, I’m sure.” Granny considered this. Certainly the privy needed a good seeing-to before the weather got too warm, and the goat shed was ripe for the mucking-out by spring. Digging over the Herb bed was a chore, too. The bedroom ceiling was a disgrace, and some of the tiles needed fixing. “Practical things?” she said, thoughtfully. “Absolutely,” said Cutangle. “Mmph. Well, I’ll think about it,” said Granny, dimly aware that one should never go too far on a first date. “Perhaps you would care to dine with me this evening and let me know?” said Cutangle, his eyes agleam. “What’s to eat?” “Cold meat and potatoes.” Mrs Whitlow had done her work well. There was. Esk and Simon went on to develop a whole new type of magic that no one could exactly understand but which nevertheless everyone considered very worthwhile and somehow comforting. Perhaps more importantly, the ants used all the sugar lumps they could steal to build a small sugar pyramid in one of the hollow walls, in which, with great ceremony, they entombed the mummified body of a dead queen. On the wall of one tiny hidden chamber they inscribed, in insect hieroglyphs, the true secret of longevity. They got it absolutely right and it would probably have important implications for the universe if it hadn’t, next time the University flooded, been completely washed away. The End 
ation - Terry Pratchett	----	Nation Terry Pratchett   Nation   For Lyn Contents   How Imo Made the World Chapter 1 The Plague Chapter 2 The New World Chapter 3 Calenture Chapter 4 Bargains, Covenants, and Promises Chapter 5 The Milk That Happens Chapter 6 A Star Is Born Chapter 7 Diving for Gods Chapter 8 It Takes a Lifetime to Learn How to Die Chapter 9 Rolling the Stone Chapter 10 Believing Is Seeing Chapter 11 Crimes and Punishments Chapter 12 Cannon and Politics Chapter 13 Truce Chapter 14 Duel Chapter 15 The World Turned Upside Down Today Author’s Note About the Author Other Books by Terry Pratchett Credits Copyright About the Publisher HOW IMO MADE THE WORLD, IN THE TIME WHEN THINGS WERE OTHERWISE AND THE MOON WAS DIFFERENT   Imo set out one day to catch some fish, but there was no sea. There was nothing but Imo. So he spat in his hands and rubbed them together and made a ball of sea. After that he made some fish, but they were stupid and lazy. So he took the souls of some dolphins, who at least had learned to speak, and he mixed them with clay and rubbed them in his hands and changed their shape and they became people. They were clever but they could not swim all day, so Imo dug some more clay and rubbed it in his hands and baked it in the fire of his fishing camp, and that was how the land was made. Soon the people filled all the lands and were hungry, so Imo took some of the night and rubbed it in his hands and made Locaha, the god of death. Still Imo was not satisfied, and he said: I have been like a child playing in the sand. This is a flawed world. I had no plan. Things are wrong. I will rub it in my hands and make a better one. But Locaha said: The mud is set. People will die. Imo was angry and said: Who are you to question me? And Locaha said: I am a part of you, as are all things. So I say to you, Give me the mortal world, and go and make your better one. I will rule here fairly. When a human dies, I will send them to be a dolphin until it is time for them to be born again. But when I find a creature who has striven, who has become more than the mud from which they were made, who has glorified this mean world by being a part of it, then I will open a door for them into your perfect world and they will no longer be creatures of time, for they will wear stars. Imo thought this was a good idea, because it was his own creation, and went off to make his new world in the sky. But before he did this, and so that Locaha would not have things all his own way, he breathed into his hands and made the other gods so that while the people should die, it would be in their right time. And this is why we are born in water, and do not kill dolphins, and look toward the stars. CHAPTER 1 The Plague   THE SNOW CAME DOWN so thickly, it formed fragile snowballs in the air that tumbled and melted as soon as they landed on the horses lined up along the dock. It was four in the morning and the place was coming alive and Captain Samson had never seen the dock in such a bustle. The cargo was flying out of the ship, literally; the cranes strained in their efforts to get the bales out as quickly as possible. The ship stank of the disinfectant already, stank of the stuff. Every man who came on board was so drenched in it that it dribbled out of his boots. But that wasn’t enough; some of them had squelched aboard with big, heavy spray cans that spat an acid-pink fog over everything. And there was nothing Captain Samson could do about it. The agent for the owners was right there on the dockside with his orders in his hands. But Captain Samson was going to try. “Do you really think we’re infectious, Mr. Blezzard?” he barked to the man on the dock. “I can assure you—” “You are not infectious, Captain, as far as we know, but this is for your own good,” shouted the agent through his enormous megaphone. “And I must once again warn you and your men not to leave the ship!” “We have families, Mr. Blezzard!” “Indeed, and they are already being taken care of. Believe me, Captain, they are fortunate, and so will you be, if you follow orders. You must return to Port Mercia at dawn. I cannot stress enough how important this is.” “Impossible! It’s the other side of the world! We’ve only been back a few hours! We are low on food and water!” “You will set sail at dawn and rendezvous in the Channel with the Maid of Liverpool, just returned from San Francisco. Company men are aboard her now. They will give you everything you need. They will strip that ship to the waterline to see that you are properly provisioned and crewed!” The captain shook his head. “This is not good enough, Mr. Blezzard. What you are asking—it’s too much. I—Good God, man, I need more authority than some words shouted through a tin tube!” “I think you will find me all the authority you need, Captain. Do I have your permission to come aboard?” The captain knew that voice. It was the voice of God, or the next best thing. But although he recognized the voice, he hardly recognized the speaker standing at the foot of the gangplank. That was because he was wearing a sort of birdcage. At least, that’s what it looked like at first sight. Closer to, he could see that it was a fine metal framework with a thin gauze around it. The person inside walked in a shimmering cloud of disinfectant. “Sir Geoffrey?” said the captain, just to be sure, as the man began to walk slowly up the glistening gangplank. “Indeed, Captain. I’m sorry about this outfit. It’s called a salvation suit, for obvious reasons. It is necessary for your protection. The Russian influenza has been worse than you can possibly imagine! We believe the worst is over, but it has taken a terrible toll at every level of society. Every level, Captain. Believe me.” There was something in the way the chairman said every that made the captain hesitate. “I take it that His Majesty is…isn’t—” He stopped, unable to force the rest of the question out of his mouth. “Not only His Majesty, Captain. I said ‘worse than you can possibly imagine,’” said Sir Geoffrey, while red disinfectant dripped off the bottom of the salvation suit and puddled on the deck like blood. “Listen to me. The only reason the country is not in total chaos at this moment is that most people are too scared to venture out. As chairman of the line, I order you—and as an old friend, I beg you—for the sake of the Empire, sail with the devil’s speed to Port Mercia and find the governor. Then you will—Ah, here come your passengers. This way, gentlemen.” Two more carriages had pulled up in the chaos of the dockside. Five shrouded figures came up the gangplank, carrying large boxes between them, and lowered them onto the deck. “Who are you, sir?” the captain demanded of the nearest stranger, who said: “You don’t need to know that, Captain.” “Oh, don’t I, indeed!” Captain Samson turned to Sir Geoffrey with his hands open in appeal. “Goddammit, Chairman, pardon my French, have I not served the line faithfully for more than thirty-five years? I am the captain of the Cutty Wren, sir! A captain must know his ship and all that is on it! I will not be kept in the dark, sir! If I cannot be trusted, I will walk down the gangplank right now!” “Please don’t upset yourself, Captain,” said Sir Geoffrey. He turned to the leader of the newcomers. “Mr. Black? The captain’s loyalty is beyond question.” “Yes, I was hasty. My apologies, Captain,” said Mr. Black, “but we need to requisition your ship for reasons of the utmost urgency, hence the regrettable lack of formality.” “Are you from the government?” the captain snapped. Mr. Black looked surprised. “The government? I am afraid not. Just between us, there is little of the government left at the moment, and what there is is mostly hiding in its cellars. No, to be honest with you, the government has always found it convenient not to know much about us, and I would advise you to do the same.” “Oh, really? I was not born yesterday, you know—” “No indeed, Captain, you were born forty-five years ago, the second son of Mr. and Mrs. Bertie Samson, and christened Lionel after your grandfather,” said Mr. Black, calmly lowering his package to the deck. The captain hesitated again. That had sounded like the start of a threat; the fact that no actual threat followed made it, for some reason, quite discomfiting. “Anyway, who do you work for?” he managed. “I like to know who I’m sailing with.” Mr. Black straightened up. “As you wish. We are known as the Gentlemen of Last Resort. We serve the Crown. Does that help you?” “But I thought the king was—” The captain stopped, not wanting to say the dreadful word. “He is dead, Captain Samson. But the Crown itself is not. Let us say that we serve…a higher purpose? And to that purpose, Captain, I will tell you that your men will get four times their usual pay for this trip, plus ten guineas a day for every day under the record for the run to Port Mercia, plus a further one hundred guineas on their return. The promotion prospects for every man and officer on board will be much improved. You, Captain, will of course receive enhanced payments as befits your rank and, since we understand your plan is to retire shortly, the Crown will certainly wish to show its gratitude in the traditional way.” Behind him, Sir Geoffrey spoke and coughed at the same time: “coughknighthoodcough.” “I’m sure Mrs. Samson would like that,” said Mr. Black. It was like torture. Captain Samson had a mental picture of what would happen if Mrs. Samson ever found out that he had turned down the chance of her becoming Lady Samson. It didn’t bear thinking about. He stared at the man who called himself Mr. Black and said quietly: “Is something going to happen? Are you trying to prevent something?” “Yes, Captain. War. The heir to the throne must set foot on English soil within nine months of the monarch’s death. It’s in the Magna Carta, down in the small print or, rather, the tiny writing. The barons didn’t want another Richard the Lionheart, you see. And regrettably, since an infected waiter served the soup at the king’s birthday party, the next two living heirs to the throne are both somewhere in the Great Southern Pelagic Ocean. I believe you know it well, Captain?” “Ah, I understand now! That’s what’s in those boxes,” said the captain, pointing. “It’s a load of English soil! We find him, he sets foot on it, and we all shout hurrah!” Mr. Black smiled. “Well done, Captain! I am impressed! But, alas, that has already been thought of. There is a subclause, too. It stipulates that the English soil must be firmly attached to England. We may declare the succession overseas—even crown the man if necessary—but his presence will be required on English soil within the time period for full ratification.” “You know, Mr. Black, I thought I knew all of the Magna Carta, but I’ve never heard of these clauses,” said Sir Geoffrey. “No, sir,” said the Gentleman of Last Resort patiently. “That is because they are in the ratified version. You don’t think barons who could hardly write their names could come up with a complete set of sensible rules for the proper running of a large country for the rest of history, do you? Their clerks put together the full working Magna Carta a month later. It’s seventy times bigger, but it is foolproof. Unfortunately, the French have a copy.” “Why?” asked the captain. Yet another coach had pulled up on the dockside. It looked expensive and had a crest painted on the door. “Because if you don’t succeed in this enterprise, Captain, it will then be quite likely that a Frenchman will become king of England,” said Mr. Black. “What?” shouted the captain, forgetting all about the new coach. “No one would stand for that!” “Wonderful people, the French, wonderful people,” said Sir Geoffrey hurriedly, waving his hands. “Our allies in the recent unpleasantness in the Crimea and all that, but—” “Oh, we are the best of chums with the French government on this one, sir,” said Mr. Black. “The last thing they want to see is a Frenchman on any throne, anywhere. It wouldn’t do for our Gallic brethren. There are those in France who do, though, and we think it would be a good thing for all concerned if our new monarch could be brought here with a minimum of fuss and a maximum of speed.” “They killed the last king they had!” said Captain Samson, who wasn’t going to waste a good rage. “My father fought against ’em at Trafalgar! Can’t have that, sir, not at any price. I can speak for the men on that, sir! We’ll break the record again, sir, coming and going!” He looked around for Sir Geoffrey, but the chairman had hurried down the gangplank and was fussing around two veiled figures who had gotten out of the coach. “Are they…women?” asked the captain as they swept up onto the Cutty Wren’s deck and went past him as if he were of no importance whatsoever. Mr. Black shook some snow off his own veil. “The smaller one is a maid, and I take it on trust that she is a woman. The tall one, whom your chairman is so eager to please, is a major stockholder in your shipping line and, more importantly, is also the mother of the heir. She is a lady indeed, although my limited experience of her suggests that she is also a mixture of the warrior queen Boadicea without the chariot, Catherine de’ Medici without the poisoned rings, and Attila the Hun without his wonderful sense of fun. Do not play cards with her, because she cheats like a Mississippi bustout dealer, keep sherry away from her, do everything she says, and we might all live.” “Sharp tongue, eh?” “Razor blade, Captain. On a lighter note, it is possible that en route we might catch up with the heir’s daughter, who thankfully was already well on the way to join her father before the plague struck. She is due to leave Cape Town today on the schooner Sweet Judy, bound for Port Mercia via Port Advent. The captain is Nathan Roberts. I believe you know him?” “What, old ‘Hallelujah’ Roberts? Is he still afloat? Good man, mark you, one of the best, and the Sweet Judy is a very trim vessel. The girl is in safe hands, depend upon it.” The captain smiled. “I hope she likes hymns, though. I wonder if he still makes the crew do all their swearing into a barrel of water in the hold?” “Keenly religious, is he?” asked Mr. Black as they headed toward the warmth of the main cabin. “Just a tad, sir, just a tad.” “In the case of Roberts, Captain, how big is a ‘tad’?” Captain Samson grinned. “Oh, something about the size of Jerusalem….”   At the other end of the world the sea burned, the wind howled, and roaring night covered the face of the deep. It takes an unusual man to make up a hymn in a hurry, but such a man was Captain Roberts. He knew every hymn in The Antique and Contemporary Hymn Book, and sang his way through them loudly and joyously when he was on watch, which had been one of the reasons for the mutiny. And now, with the End of the World at hand, and the skies darkening at dawn, and the fires of Revelation raining down and setting the rigging ablaze, Captain Roberts tied himself to the ship’s wheel as the sea rose below him and felt the Sweet Judy lifted into the sky as if by some almighty hand. There was thunder and lightning up there. Hail rattled off his hat. St. Elmo’s fire glowed on the tip of every mast and then crackled on the captain’s beard as he began to sing in a rich dark baritone. Every sailor knew the song: “Eternal Father, strong to save, Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,” he bellowed into the storm, as the Judy balanced on the restless wave like a ballerina. “Who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep Its own appointed limits keep…” How fast were they moving? he wondered as sails ripped and flapped away. The wave was as high as a church, but surely it was running faster than the wind! He could see small islands below, disappearing as the wave roared over them. This was no time to stop praising the Lord! “Oh hear us when we cry to Thee, For those in peril on the sea,” he finished, and stopped and stared ahead. There was something big and dark out there, coming closer very quickly. It would be impossible to steer around it. It was too big, and in any case the helm didn’t answer. He was holding it as an act of faith, to show God that he would not desert Him and hoped that in return God would not desert Captain Roberts. He swung the wheel as he began the next verse, and lightning illuminated a path across the restless wave—and there, in the light of the burning sky, was a gap, a valley or cleft in the wall of rock, like the miracle of the Red Sea, thought Captain Roberts, only, of course, the other way around. The next flash of lightning showed that the gap was full of forest. But the wave would hit it at treetop height. It’d slow down. They might just be saved, even now, in the very jaws of Hell. And here they came…. And so it was that the schooner Sweet Judy sailed though a rain forest, with Captain Roberts, inspired to instant creativity, making up a new verse explicably missing from the original hymn: “Oh Thou who built’st the mountains high, To be the pillars of the sky—” He wasn’t totally certain about built’st, but bidd’st was apparently acceptable—“Who gave the mighty forests birth”—branches cracked like gunshots under the keel, thick vines snatched at what remained of the masts— “And made a Garden of the Earth”—fruit and leaves rained down on the deck, but a shudder meant that a broken tree had ripped away part of the hull, spilling the ballast—“We pray to Thee to stretch Thy hand”—Captain Roberts gripped the useless wheel tighter, and laughed at the roaring dark—“To those in peril on the land.” And three great fig trees, whose buttressed roots had withstood centuries of cyclones, raced out of the future and came as a big surprise. His last thought was: Perhaps who raised the mountains high would have been a better line in the circums— Captain Roberts went to Heaven, which wasn’t everything that he’d expected, and as the receding water gently marooned the wreck of the Sweet Judy on the forest floor, only one soul was left alive. Or possibly two, if you like parrots.   On the day the world ended Mau was on his way home. It was a journey of more than twenty miles. But he knew the way, oh yes. If you didn’t know the way, you weren’t a man. And he was a man…well, nearly. He’d lived for a month on the island of the boys, hadn’t he? Just surviving on that place was enough to make you a man…. Well, surviving and then getting back. No one ever told you about the Boys’ Island, not properly. You picked up stuff as you grew, but there was one thing you learned very soon: The point about the Boys’ Island was that you got away from the Boys’ Island. You left your boy soul there and were given a man soul when you got back to the Nation. You had to get back—otherwise something terrible happened: If you didn’t get back in thirty days, they came and fetched you, and you’d never be a man, not really. The boys said it would be better to drown than be fetched. Everyone would know you’d failed, and you’d probably never get a wife, and if you did get a wife, she’d be a woman none of the real men wanted, with bad teeth and smelly breath. Mau had lain awake for weeks worrying about this. You were allowed to take only your knife to the island, and he had nightmares about building a canoe in thirty days with just a knife. It couldn’t be done. But all the men in the Nation had done it, so there had to be a way, didn’t there? On his second day on the Boys’ Island he’d found it. There was a god anchor in the middle of the island, a brown stone cube half buried in sand and soil. Heavy vines grew over it and wrapped around a huge tabago tree. Carved deeply into the tree’s dry bark, in the language for children, were the signs: MEN HELP OTHER MEN. Next to it, wedged into the wood, was an alaki, a carved black stone on a long handle. Hold it one way, it was an axe. Hold it the other, it was an adze, good for hollowing out a log. He pulled out the axe and learned the lesson. So had many other boys; Mau climbed the tree one evening and found the hundreds of marks all the way up the trunk where generations of grateful boys had left the axe, or one like it, for those who came after. Some of them would be Grandfathers now, up in the cave on the mountain, back home. They would be watching, with eyes that could see for miles, and perhaps they watched him when he discovered the log, well seasoned, and not too well hidden among the pandanuses at the back of the little island. When he got home he’d say he found it, and everyone would say that was lucky, and perhaps the gods had put it there. Now that he came to think about it, his father and a couple of his uncles had gone off fishing near the island early one morning without inviting him to come with them…. It had been a good time. He knew how to make fire, and he’d found the little freshwater spring. He’d made a spear good enough to get fish from the lagoon. And he’d made a good canoe, firm and light, with an outrigger. All you had to build was something that would get you home, but he’d worked on this canoe with knife and skateskin so that it whispered over the water. He hadn’t rushed his last day as a boy. His father had told him not to. Clean up the camp, he’d said. Soon you will belong to a wife and children. That will be fine. But sometimes you will look back fondly on your last day as a boy. Make it a warm memory, and be back in time for the feast. The camp was so clean that you wouldn’t know he’d been there. Now he stood in front of the ancient tabago tree for the last time, the axe in his hand and, he was sure, the Grandfathers looking over his shoulder. It was going to be perfect, he knew. Last night the stars of Air, Fire, and Water had been in the sky together. It was a good time for new beginnings. He found a clear place in the soft bark and raised the axe. For a moment his eye caught the little blue bead tied to his wrist; it would keep him safe on the journey home. His father had told him how proud he’d be on his way back. But he would need to be careful and not draw the attention of any gods or spirits to himself. It was not good to be between souls. He’d be like mihei gawi, the little blue hermit crab, scuttling from his shell to a new one once a year, easy prey for any passing squid. It was not a nice thought, but he had a good canoe and a calm sea, and he would scuttle fast, oh yes! He swung the axe as hard as he could, thinking: Hah! The next boy to pull this out will deserve to be called a man. “Men help other men!” he shouted as the stone hit the bark. He’d meant it to have an effect. It did, far more than he expected. From every corner of the little island, birds exploded into the air like a cloud of bees. Finches and waders and ducks rose out of the bushes and filled the air with panic and feathers. Some of the larger ones headed out to sea, but most of them just circled, as though terrified to stay but with nowhere else to go. Mau walked through them as he went down to the beach. Bright wings zipped past his face like hail, and it would have been wondrously pretty if it weren’t for the fact that every single bird was taking this opportunity to have a really good crap. If you’re in a hurry, there is no point in carrying unnecessary weight. Something was wrong. He could feel it in the air, in the sudden calm, in the way the world felt suddenly as though something heavy was pressing down on it. And now it hit Mau, knocking him flat on the sand. His head was trying to explode. It was worse even than that time when he’d played the stone game and had hung on too long. Something was weighing down on the world like a big gray rock. Then the pain went as fast as it had it come, with a zip, leaving him gasping and dazed. And still the birds swarmed overhead. As Mau staggered to his feet, all he knew was that here was not a good place to be anymore, and if it was the only thing he knew, then at least he knew it with every nail and hair of his body. Thunder rolled in the clear sky, one great hard jolt of it that rattled off the horizon. Mau staggered down to the tiny lagoon while the noise went on, and there was the canoe waiting for him in the white sand of the water’s edge. But the usually calm water was…dancing, dancing like water danced under heavy rain, although no rain was falling. He had to get away. The canoe sloped easily into the water, and he paddled frantically for the gap in the reef that led to the open sea. Beneath him and around him, fish were doing the same thing— The sound went on, like something solid, smashing into the air and breaking it. It filled the whole of the sky. For Mau it was like a giant slap on the ears. He tried to paddle faster, and then the thought rose in his mind: Animals flee. His father had told him so. Boys flee. A man does not flee. He turns to look at his enemy, to watch what he does and find his weakness. Mau let the canoe slide out of the lagoon and easily rode the surf into the ocean, and then he looked around, like a man. The horizon was one great cloud, boiling and climbing, full of fire and lightning and growling like a nightmare. A wave crashed in the coral, and that was wrong too. Mau knew the sea, and there was also something wrong with that. The Boys’ Island was falling way behind him, because a terrible current was dragging him toward the great bag of storms. It was as if the horizon was drinking the sea. Men looked at their enemy, yes, but sometimes they turned around and paddled like mad. It made no difference. The sea was sliding and then, suddenly, was dancing again, like the water in the lagoon. Mau, trying to think straight, fought to get the canoe under control. He’d get back. Of course he would. He could see the picture in his head, small and clear. He turned it around, savoring the taste of it. Everyone would be there. Everyone. There could be no exceptions. Old, sick men would prefer to die on mats at the water’s edge rather than not be there; women would give birth there if they had to, while watching for the homecoming canoe. It was unthinkable to miss the arrival of a new man. That would bring down terrible bad luck on the whole Nation. His father would be watching for him at the edge of the reef, and they’d bring the canoe up the beach, and his uncles would come running, and the new young men would rush to congratulate him, and the boys he’d left behind would be envious, and his mother and the other women would start on the feast, and there would be the…thing with the sharp knife, where you didn’t scream, and then…there would be everything. And if he could just hold it in his mind, then it would be so. There was a shining silver thread connecting him to that future. It would work like a god anchor, which stopped the gods from wandering away. Gods, that was it! This was coming from the Gods’ Island. It was over the horizon and you couldn’t see it even from here, but the old men said it had roared, back in the long ago, and there had been rough water and a lot of smoke and thunder because the Fire god was angry. Maybe he’d gotten angry again. The cloud was reaching up to the top of the sky, but there was something new down at sea level. It was a dark gray line, getting bigger. A wave? Well, he knew about waves. You attacked them before they attacked you. He’d learned how to play with them. Don’t let them tumble you. Use them. Waves were easy. But this one was not acting like the normal waves at the mouth of the reef. It seemed as though it was standing still. He stared at it and realized what he was seeing. It looked as if it was standing still because it was a big wave a long way off, and it was moving very fast, dragging black night behind it. Very fast, and not so far away now. Not a wave, either. It was too big. It was a mountain of water, with lightning dancing along the top, and it was rushing, and it was roaring, and it scooped up the canoe like a fly. Soaring up into the towering, foaming curve of the wave, Mau thrust the paddle under the vines that held the outrigger and grabbed on as—   It rained. It was a heavy, muddy rain, full of ash and sadness. Mau awoke from dreams of roast pork and cheering men, and opened his eyes under a gray sky. Then he was sick. The canoe rocked gently in the swell while he added, in a small way, to what was already floating there—bits of wood, leaves, fish…. Cooked fish? Mau paddled over to a large hehe fish, which he managed to drag aboard. It had been boiled, right enough, and it was a feast. He needed a feast. He ached everywhere. One side of his head was sticky with, as it turned out, blood. At some point he must have hit it on the side of the canoe, which wasn’t surprising. The ride through the wave was an ear-banging, chest-burning memory, the kind of dream you are happy to wake up from. All he’d been able to do was hold on. There had been a tunnel in the water, like a moving cave of air in the roll of the giant wave, and then there had been a storm of surf as the canoe came out of the water like a dolphin. He would swear it had leaped in the air. And there had been singing! He’d heard it for just a few seconds, while the canoe raced down the back of the wave. It must have been a god, or maybe a demon…or maybe it was just what you hear in your head as you half fly and half drown, in a world where water and air are changing places every second. But it was over now, and the sea that had tried to kill him was about to give him dinner. The fish was good. He could feel the warmth entering his bones. There were plenty more, bobbing with all the other stuff. There were a few young coconuts, and he drank the milk gratefully and began to cheer up. This would be a story to tell! And a wave that big must have washed up at home, so they’d know he wasn’t lying. And home was…where? He couldn’t see the Boys’ Island. He couldn’t see the sky. There were no islands. But one horizon was lighter than the other. The sun was setting over there somewhere. Last night he’d watched the sun set over the Nation. That had to be the way. He set out steadily, watching that pale horizon. There were birds everywhere, perching on anything that floated. Mostly they were little finches, chattering madly as the canoe went past. Some of them even fluttered over and perched on the canoe itself, huddling together and staring at him with a sort of desperate, terrified optimism. One even perched on his head. While he was tying to untangle it from his hair, there was a thump as something much heavier landed on the stern of the canoe, causing the finches to scatter and then flutter back because they were too tired to make it to anywhere else. But they kept as far away as possible from the new passenger, because it wasn’t particular about who it ate. It was a big bird, with shiny blue-black feathers and a white chest, and little white feathers covering its legs. Its huge beak, though, was brilliant red and yellow. It was a grandfather bird, and good luck—to people at least—even if it did slow Mau down and eat one of his fish. Grandfather birds had learned not to be frightened of people; it was bad luck even to shoosh one away. He could feel its beady eyes on the back of his neck as he paddled onward. He hoped it might be lucky. If he had some luck, he could be home long before midnight. There was an Erk! as the grandfather bird took off again with another of Mau’s boiled fish in its beak, making the canoe wallow for a moment. Well, at least I’m a bit lighter, Mau thought. It’s not as though I need the fish in any case. I’ll be filling up with pork tonight! The bird landed heavily on a log a little way ahead. Quite a large log, in fact. As he drew nearer, Mau saw that it was a whole tree, even with its roots, although a lot of its branches had been torn off. He saw the axe, tangled, rising out of the water. But part of him already knew he was going to see it. The sight of it raced toward his eyes and became, just for a moment, the center of the turning world. The grandfather bird, having juggled the fish so that it could swallow it whole, took off in its gloomy is-this-really-worth-it? way and flapped with its big, slow wings nearly touching the scummy water. With its weight gone, the tree started to roll back. But Mau was already in the water and caught the axe handle as it was pulled under. Holding his breath, he braced his legs against the tree’s trunk and tugged. Oh, he’d been clever, hadn’t he, that moment a hundred years ago now, slamming the axe hard into the tree to show the next boy what a big man he was…. It should have worked. With his last mighty heave the axe should have come free. That’s how it should have been, in a perfect world. But the swollen wood had gripped it firmly. Mau dived again three more times, and came up every time coughing and spitting seawater. He had a deep, angry feeling that this wasn’t right; the gods had sent the axe to him, he was sure of that. They had sent it to him because he was going to need it, he was certain of it, and he had failed. In the end he swam back to the canoe and grabbed the paddle before the grandfather bird was out of sight. They always flew back to land at night, and he was pretty certain that there couldn’t be much of the Boys’ Island to go back to. The tabago tree was hundreds of years old, and it had roots thicker than Mau’s waist. It looked as though they had practically held the island together! And there had been a god anchor among them. No wave should have been able to shift a god anchor. It would be like moving the world. The grandfather bird flapped onward. Ahead of it, the thin line of the horizon grew redder, redder than any Mau had ever seen before. He paddled on as fast as he could, trying not to think about what he was going to find ahead of him; and because he was trying not to think them, the thoughts ran around in his head like excited dogs. He tried to calm them down. Look, the Boys’ Island was hardly anything more than a lump of rock surrounded by sandbanks, was it? he thought. It wasn’t good for being anything but a fishing camp or a place for boys to try to be men. The Nation had mountains—well, one good one—had a river, there were caves, there were whole forests, there were men who’d know what to do! Wouldn’t they? And what could they do? But the little picture of his man-soul feast flickered in his head. It wouldn’t stay still, and he couldn’t find the silver thread that dragged him toward it. Something dark drifted in front of the sunset, and he almost burst into tears. It was a perfect sunset wave, rolling across the red disk that was just sinking below the horizon. Every man in the Islands of the Sun had that image as his manhood tattoo, and in a few hours—he knew it—so would he. And then, where the wave had been, there was the Nation. He could recognize its outline anywhere. It was five miles away maybe. Well, he could do another five miles. And soon he’d see the light of the fires. Paddling faster, eyes straining to see the darker shape in the strange twilight, he made out the whiteness of the surf over the reef. And soon, please, soon he would see the light of the fires! Now he could smell them, all the smells of the land except the one he wanted, which was the smell of smoke. And then, there it was, a sharp little tone in the scents of sea and forest. There was a fire somewhere. He couldn’t see it, but where there was smoke, there were people. Of course, if the wave had come this way, there wouldn’t be much dry wood. The wave wouldn’t be bad here, not here. He’d seen big waves before, and they would make a mess, and splinter a canoe or two. All right, this one had looked really big, but waves did when they went over the top of you! People had gone up the mountain and brought down dry wood. Yes, that’s what had happened. That was certainly what had happened. He had worried about nothing. They would be back soon. That was it. That was how it would be. But there was no silver thread. He could make the happy pictures in his mind, but they were out there in the dark, and there was no path to them. It was almost fully dark when he entered the lagoon. He could make out leaves and branches, and he hit a big lump of coral that must have been broken off the reef by the wave, but that was what the reef was for. It took the pounding of the storms. Behind the reef, around the lagoon, they were safe. With a little kiss of crushed sand, the canoe touched the beach. Mau jumped out, and remembered just in time about the sacrifice. It should be a red fish for a successful journey, and this journey had to be called a success, even if it was a very strange one. He hadn’t got a red fish but, well, he was still a boy, and the gods excused boys many things. At least he’d thought about it. That must count. There were no other canoes. There should have been many. Even in this gloom, things looked wrong. There was nobody here; nobody knew he was standing on the shore. He tried anyway: “Hello! It’s me, Mau! I’m back!” He started to cry, and that was worse. He’d cried in the canoe, but that was just water escaping from his face. But now the tears came in big sobs, dribbling from his eyes and nose and mouth, unstoppably. He cried for his parents, because he was afraid, because he was cold and very tired, and because he was fearful and couldn’t pretend. But most of all he cried because only he knew. In the forest, something heard. And in the hidden firelight, sharp metal gleamed. Light died in the west. Night and tears took the Nation. The star of Water drifted among the clouds like a murderer softly leaving the scene of the crime. CHAPTER 2 The New World   THE MORNING WAS A lighter shade of night. Mau felt as if he hadn’t slept at all, hunched up among the broad fallen leaves of a coconut tree, but there must have been times when his body and mind just shut down, in a little rehearsal of death. He awoke or maybe came alive again with the dead gray light, stiff and cold. Waves barely moved on the shore, the sea was almost the same color as the sky, and still it rained tears. The little river that came from the mountain was choked with sand and mud and bits of trees, and when he dug down with his hands, it didn’t flow. It just oozed. In the end Mau had to suck at the rain as it trickled off leaves, and it tasted of ashes. The lagoon was a mess of broken coral, and the wave had ripped a big hole in the reef. The tide had changed, and water was pouring in. Little Nation, which was barely more than a sandbank on the rim of the lagoon, had been stripped of all its trees but one, which was a ragged stem with, against all hope, a few leaves still on it. Find food, find water, find shelter…these were the things you had to do in a strange place, and this was a strange place and he’d been born here. He could see that the village had gone. The wave had sliced it off the island. A few stumps marked the place where the longhouse had stood since…forever. The wave had torn up the reef. A wave like that would not have even noticed the village. He’d learned to look at coasts when he’d been voyaging with his father and his uncles. And now, looking up, he could see the story of the wave, written in tumbled rocks and broken trees. The village faced south. It had to. The other three sides were protected by sheer, crumbling cliffs, in which sea caves boomed and foamed. The wave had come from the south of east. Broken trees pointed the trail. Everyone would have been on the shore, around the big fire. Would they have heard the roar of the wave above the crackle of the flames? Would they have known what it meant? If they had been quick, they would have headed up Big Pig Valley, to the higher ground beyond the fields. But some of the wave would already have been roaring up the eastern slope (all grassy there, nothing much to slow it down), and they would have met it pouring back on them. And then the rolling cauldron of rocks and sand and water and people would have broken through the west of the reef and into the deepwater current, where the people would have become dolphins. But not everyone. The wave had left behind fish and mud and crabs, to the delight of the leg-of-pork birds and the gray ravens and, of course, the grandfather birds. The island was full of birds this morning. Birds Mau had never seen before were squabbling with the familiar, everyday ones. And there were people, tangled in broken branches, half buried in mud and leaves, just another part of the ruined world. It took him a few long seconds to realize what he was looking at, to see that what he had thought was a broken branch was an arm. He looked around slowly and realized why there were so many birds, and why they were fighting. He ran. His legs took him and he ran, screaming out names, up the long slope, past the lower fields, which were covered with debris, past the higher plantations, too high even for the wave, and almost to the edges of the forest. And there he heard his own voice, echoing back from the cliffs. No one. But there must be someone…. But they had all been waiting, for someone who was no longer a boy but had yet to become a man. He walked up to the Women’s Place—totally forbidden for any man, of course—and risked a quick peek through the big hedge that surrounded the gardens, untouched up here by the water. But he saw nothing moving, and no voice called out in answer to his cry. They had been waiting on the beach. He could see them all so clearly in his mind, talking and laughing and dancing in circles around the fire, but there was no silver line, nothing to pull them back. They had been waiting for the new man. The wave must have hit them like a hammer. As he went back down to the fields, he grabbed a broken branch and flailed ineffectively at the birds. There were bodies everywhere in the area just above the scoured place where the village had been. At first they were hard to see, tangled as they were with debris and as gray as the ashen mud. He’d have to touch them. They had to be moved. The pigs would come down soon. The thought of pigs eating—No! There was some brightness behind the clouds in the east. How could that be? Another night had passed? Had he slept? Where had he been? But tiredness certainly had him now. He dragged some leafy branches up against a big rock for shelter, crawled inside, and felt the gray of the mud and the rain and the bruised-looking sky sneak in silently and fill him up and close over him. And Mau dreamed. It had to be a dream. He felt himself become two people. One of them, a gray body made of mud, began to look for the bodies that the wave hadn’t taken. It did this carefully and as gently as it could, while the other Mau stayed deep inside, curled in a ball, doing the dreaming. And who am I, doing this? thought the gray Mau. Who am I now? I am become like Locaha, measuring the contours of death. Better be him than be Mau, on this day…because here is a body. And Mau will not see it, lift it, or look into its eyes, because he will go mad, so I will do it for him. And this one has a face Mau has seen every day of his life, but I will not let him see it now. And so he worked, as the sky brightened and the sun came up behind the plume of steam in the east and the forest burst into song, despite the drizzle. He combed the lower slopes until he found a body, dragged it or carried it—some were small enough to carry—down to the beach and out to the point where you could see the current. There were usually turtles there, but not today. He, the gray shadow, would find rocks and big coral lumps, and there were plenty of those, and tie them to the body with papervine. And now I must take my knife and cut the spirit hole, thought the gray Mau, so that the spirit will leave quickly, and pull the body out into the waves where the current sinks, and let it go. The dreaming Mau let his body do the thinking: You lift like this, you pull like this. You cut the papervine like that, and you don’t scream, because you are a hand and a body and a knife, and they don’t even shed a tear. You are inside a thick gray skin that can feel nothing. And nothing can get through. Nothing at all. And you send the body sinking slowly into the dark current, away from birds and pigs and flies, and it will grow a new skin and become a dolphin. There were two dogs, too, and that almost broke him. The people, well, the horror was so great that his mind went blank, but the twisted bodies of the dogs twisted his soul. They had been with the people, excited but not knowing why. He wrapped them in papervine and weighed them down and sent them into the current anyway. Dogs would want to stay with the people, because they were people, too, in their way. He didn’t know what to do with the piglet, though. It was all by itself. Maybe the sow had legged it for the high forest, as they did when they sensed the water coming. This one hadn’t kept up. His stomach said it was food, but he said no, not this one, not this sad little betrayed thing. He sent it into the current. The gods would have to sort it out. He was too tired. It was near sunset when he dragged the last body to the beach and was about to wade out to the current when his body told him: No, not this one. This is you and you are very tired but you are not dead. You need to eat and drink and sleep. And most of all you must try not to dream. He stood for a while until the words sank in, and then trudged back up the beach, found his makeshift shelter, and fell into it. Sleep came but brought no good thing. Over and over again he found the bodies and carried them to the shore because they were so light. They tried to talk to him, but he could not hear them because the words could not get through his gray skin. There was a strange one, too, a ghost girl, totally white. She tried to talk to him several times but faded back into the dream, like the others. The sun and moon whirled across the sky, and he walked on in a gray world, the only moving thing in veils of silence, forever. And then he was spoken to, out of the grayness. WHAT ARE YOU DOING, MAU? He looked around. The land looked odd, without color. The sun was shining, but it was black. When the voices spoke again, they seemed to come from everywhere at once, on the wind. THERE IS NO TIME FOR SLEEPING. THERE IS SO MUCH THAT MUST BE DONE. “Who are you?” WE ARE THE GRANDFATHERS! Mau trembled, and trembling was all he could manage. His legs would not move. “The wave came,” he said. “Everyone is dead! I sent some into the dark water!” YOU MUST SING THE DARK WATER CHANT. “I didn’t know how!” YOU MUST RESTORE THE GOD ANCHORS. “How do I do that?” YOU MUST SING THE MORNING SONG AND THE EVENING SONG. “I don’t know the words! I am not a man!” said Mau desperately. YOU MUST DEFEND THE NATION! YOU MUST DO THE THINGS THAT HAVE ALWAYS BEEN DONE! “But there is just me! Everyone is dead!” EVERYTHING THE NATION WAS, YOU ARE! WHILE YOU ARE, THE NATION IS! WHILE YOU REMEMBER, THE NATION LIVES! There was a change in the pressure of air, and the Grandfathers…went. Mau blinked and woke up. The sun was yellow and halfway down the sky, and beside him was a flat round metal thing, on top of which was a coconut with the top sliced off and a mango. He stared at them. He was alone. No one else could be here, not now. Not to leave him food and creep away. He looked down at the sand. There were footprints there, not large, but they had no toes. He stood up very carefully and looked around. The creature with no toes was watching him, he was sure. Perhaps…perhaps the Grandfathers had sent it? “Thank you,” he said to the empty air. The Grandfathers had spoken to him. He thought about this as he gnawed the mango off its huge stone. He’d never heard them before. But the things they wanted…how could a boy do them? Boys couldn’t even go near their cave. It was a strict rule. But boys did, though. Mau had been eight when he’d tagged along after some of the older boys. They hadn’t seen him as he’d shadowed them all the way up through the high forests to the meadows where you could see to the edge of the world. The grandfather birds nested up there, which was why they were called grandfather birds. The older boys had told him that the birds were spies for the Grandfathers and would swoop on you and peck your eyes out if you came too close, which he knew wasn’t true, because he’d watched them and knew that—unless there was beer around—they wouldn’t attack anything bigger than a mouse if they thought it might fight back. But some people would tell you anything if they thought you’d be scared. At the end of the meadows was the Cave of the Grandfathers, high up in the wind and the sunlight, watching over the whole world. They lived behind a round stone door that took ten men to shift, and you might live for a hundred years and see it moved only a few times, because only the best men, the greatest hunters and warriors, became Grandfathers when they died. On the day he had followed the boys, Mau had sat and watched from the thick foliage of a grass tree as they dared one another to go near the stone, to touch it, to give it a little push—and then someone had shouted that he’d heard something, and within seconds they’d vanished into the trees, running for home. Mau had waited a little while, and when nothing happened, he had climbed down and gone and listened at the stone. He had heard a faint crackling right on the edge of hearing, but then a grandfather bird on the cliff above was throwing up (the ugly-looking things didn’t just eat everything, they ate all of everything, and carefully threw up anything that didn’t fit, taste right, or had woken up and started to protest). There was nothing very scary at all. No one had ever heard of the Grandfathers coming out. The stone was there for a reason. It was heavy for a reason. He forgot about the sound; it had probably been insects in the grass. That night, back in the boys’ hut, the older boys boasted to the younger boys about how they had rolled away the big stone and how the Grandfathers had turned their ancient, dry old faces to look at them, and tried to stand up on their crumbling legs, and how the boys had (very bravely) rolled the big stone back again, just in time. And Mau had lain in his corner and wondered how many times this story had been told over the last hundreds of years, to make big boys feel brave and little boys have nightmares and wet themselves. Now, five years later, he sat and turned over in his hands the gray round thing that had acted as a holder for the mango. It looked like metal, but who had so much metal that they could waste it on something to hold food? There were marks on it. They spelled out Sweet Judy in faded white paint—but they spelled out Sweet Judy in vain. Mau was good at reading important things. He could read the sea, the weather, the tracks of animals, tattoos, and the night sky. There was nothing for him to read in lines of cracked paint. Anyone could read wet sand, though. A toeless creature had come out of the low forest and had gone back the same way. At some time in the past something had split the rock of the island, leaving a long low valley on the east side that was not very far above sea level and had hardly any soil. Things had soon taken root even so, because something will always grow somewhere. The low forest was always hot, damp, and salty, with the sticky, itchy, steamy atmosphere of a place that never sees much new air. Mau had forced his way in a few times, but there wasn’t much of interest, at least not at ground level. Everything happened high above, up in the canopy. There were wild figs up there. Only the birds could get at them, and they fought over the little morsels, which meant there was a steady rain of bird poo and half-eaten figs onto the forest floor, which in turn was a permanent feast for the little red crabs that scuttled around and cleared up anything that dropped in. Sometimes pigs came down to feed on the crabs, so the low forest was worth an occasional look. You had to be careful, though, because you often got a tree-climbing octopus or two in there, after baby birds and anything else they could find, and they were hard to pull off if they landed on your head. Mau knew that you must never let them think you are a coconut. You learned that fast, because they had sharp beaks.* Now he came around the huge broken rocks that stood at the entrance to the valley and stopped. Something much bigger than a bird plop or a pig had hit the forest. It couldn’t have been just the wave. Some enormous thing had charged through, leaving a line of smashed trees into the distance. And not just trees; it had left treasure behind. Rocks! Gray round ones, brown ones, black ones…good hard rocks had a lot of uses here, where the mountain rock was too crumbly to make decent weapons. But Mau resisted the temptation to collect them now, because rocks don’t go anywhere and, besides, there was the dead man. He lay by the track, as if the creature had tossed him aside, and he was covered in little red crabs whose big day had come. Mau had never seen a man like this before, but he’d heard of them—of the pale people in the north who wrapped their legs in cloth so they looked like a grandfather bird. They were called the trousermen, and were as pale as ghosts. This one didn’t worry him, not after the memory of yesterday, which screamed all the time behind a door in his head. This was just a dead man. He didn’t know him. People died. Mau didn’t know what to do with him either, especially since the crabs did. Under his breath he said: “Grandfathers, what shall I do with the trouserman?” There was a sound like the forest drawing its breath, and the Grandfathers said: HE IS NOT IMPORTANT! ONLY THE NATION IS IMPORTANT! This was not a lot of help, so Mau dragged the man off the broken track and into a deeper part of the forest, with an army of little crabs following in a very determined way. They’d had years of fig seeds and bird plop. They’d put up with this like good little crabs, they seemed to say, but now it was time for their perfect world. There was another trouserman farther along the trail, also dropped by the creature. Mau didn’t think about it at all this time, but just dragged him into the tangle of undergrowth, too. It was the best he could do. He had walked too much in the footsteps of Locaha lately. Perhaps the crabs would take the soul of the man back to the trouserman world, but here and now Mau had other things to think about. Something had come out of the sea on the wave, he thought. Something big. Bigger than a sailfin crocodile,* bigger than a war canoe, bigger even than…a whale? Yes, that could be it, a big whale. Why not? The wave had hurled big rocks beyond the village, so a whale wouldn’t stand a chance. Yes, a whale, that would be it, thrashing around in the forest with its big tail and slowly dying under its own weight. Or one of the really big sea squids, or a very big shark. He had to be sure. He had to find out. He looked around and thought: Yes, but not in the dark. Not in the twilight. In the morning he’d come with weapons. And in the morning it might be dead. He selected a couple of useful-looking rocks from the monster’s trail and ran for it. Night rolled over the jungle. The birds went to bed, the bats woke. A few stars appeared in the desolate sky. And in the tangle of broken trees at the end of the trail, something sobbed, all night.   Mau awoke early. There was no more fruit on the round metal thing, but a grandfather bird was watching him hopefully, in case he was dead. When it saw him moving, it sighed and waddled off. Fire, thought Mau. I must make fire. And for that I need punk wood. His punk bag was a muddy mess because of the wave, but there was always punk in the high forest. He was hungry, but you had to have fire. Without fire and a spear, you could never hope to be a man, wasn’t that right? He spent some time hammering the metal thing between the two stones he’d taken from the monster’s track, and ended up with a long sliver of metal that was pretty bendy but very sharp. That was a good start. Then he chipped one stone against the other until he had enough of a groove to allow him to bind the stone to a stick with papervine. He wound papervine around one end of the new metal knife to make a kind of handle. As the sun rose, so did Mau, and he raised his new club and his new knife. Yes! They might be sorry things that a man would have thrown away, but now he could kill things. And wasn’t that part of being a man? The grandfather bird was still watching him from a safe distance, but when it saw his expression, it shuffled off hurriedly and lumbered into the air. Mau headed up to the high forest while the sun grew hotter. He wondered when he’d last eaten. There had been the mango, but how long ago? It was hard to remember. The Boys’ Island was far away in time and space. It had gone. Everything had gone. The Nation had gone. The people, the huts, the canoes, all wiped away. They were just in his head now, like dreams, hidden behind a gray wall— He tried to stop the thought, but the gray wall crumbled and all the horror, all the death, all the darkness poured in. It filled up his head and buzzed out into the air like a swarm of insects. All the sights he had hidden from himself, all the sounds, all the smells crept and slithered out of his memory. And suddenly it all became clear. An island full of people could not die. But a boy could. Yes, that was it! It made sense! He was dead! And his spirit had come back home, but he couldn’t see out of the spirit world! He was a ghost. His body was on the Boys’ Island, yes! And the wave had not been real, it had been Locaha, coming for him. It all made sense. He’d died on land with no one to put him into the dark water, and he was a ghost, a wandering thing, and the people were all around him, in the land of the living. It seemed to Mau that this was not too bad. The worst had already happened. He would not be able to see his family again, because everyone hung ghost bags around the huts, but he would know that they were alive. The world breathed in. WHY HAVE YOU NOT REPLACED THE GOD ANCHORS? WHY HAVE YOU NOT SUNG THE CHANTS? WHY HAVE YOU NOT RESTORED THE NATION? The little valley of the grandfather birds floated in front of Mau’s eyes. Well, at least they would believe him this time. “I’m dead, Grandfathers.” DEAD? NONSENSE, YOU ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH TO BE DEAD! Hot pain struck Mau’s left foot. He rolled and yelped, and a grandfather bird that had also decided he was dead and had pecked his foot to make sure hopped away hurriedly. It didn’t go far away, though, in case he died after all. In the grandfather bird’s experience, everything died if you watched it for long enough. All right, not dead, Mau thought, pushing himself upright. But dead tired. A sleep full of dark dreams was no sleep at all; it was like a meal of ashes. He needed fire and real food. Everyone knew that bad dreams came when you were hungry. He didn’t want those dreams again. They were about dark waters, and something chasing him. Mud and sand covered the fields, but worse than that, the wave had broken down the thorn fences, and the pigs had clearly been rooting all over the fields in the night, when Mau had been in the prison of his dreams. There would probably be something left in the muck if he grubbed about long enough, but a man didn’t eat where a pig had eaten. There was plenty of wild food to eat on the island: upside-down fruit, bad-luck root, malla stems, red star tree, papervine nuts…you’d stay alive, but a lot of it you had to chew for a long time and even then it tasted as though someone had eaten it before you. Men ate fish or pork, but the lagoon was still cloudy, and he hadn’t seen a pig since he’d been back. They were wily, too. A man by himself might get a lucky shot if a pig came down in the low forest at night to eat crabs, but once they were in the high forest, you needed many men to catch one pig. He found tracks as soon as he entered the forest. Pigs were always making tracks. These were fresh, though, so he poked around a bit to see what they’d been after and found some mad-root tubers, big and white and juicy; the pigs had probably been so stuffed with the food from the field that they were grubbing around out of pure habit, and didn’t have room for one more tuber. Mad-root tubers had to be roasted before they could be eaten, though, or else you went mad. Pigs ate them raw, but pigs probably didn’t notice if they were mad or not. There was no dry punk wood. There were rotten branches all over the place, but they were sodden to the core. Besides, he thought, as he threaded the tubers on a length of papervine, he hadn’t found any fire stones yet, or decent dry wood for fire sticks. Granddad Nawi, who did not go raiding because of his twisted leg, sometimes took the boys tracking and hunting, and he used to talk about the papervine bush. It grew everywhere, its long leaves as tough as anything even when they were crackling dry. “Take one strip of the vine lengthwise and yes, it needs the strength of two men to pull it apart. But weave five strands of it into a rope and a hundred men can’t break it. The more they pull, the more it binds together and the stronger it becomes. That is the Nation.” They used to laugh at him behind his back because of his wobbling walk, and didn’t pay much attention to him, because what could a man with a twisted leg know about anything important? But they made sure that when they laughed they were well behind his back, because Nawi always had a faint little smile and an expression that said he already knew far more about you than you could possibly guess. Mau tried not to laugh too much because he had liked Nawi. The old man watched how birds flew and always knew the best places to fish. He knew the magic word that would keep sharks away. But he hadn’t been carefully dried out in the hot sand and taken to the Cave of the Grandfathers when he’d died, because he’d been born with a leg that didn’t work properly and that meant he’d been cursed by the gods. He could look at a finch and tell you which island it had been born on; he used to watch spiders make webs, and saw things other people didn’t notice. Thinking about it, Mau had wondered why any god would curse someone like that. He’d been born with that leg. What had a baby done to make the gods angry? One day he’d plucked up the courage to ask him. Nawi was sitting out on the rocks, occasionally staring out to sea in between carving something, but he’d given Mau a look that indicated company would not be objected to. The old man had laughed at the question. “It was a gift, boy, not a curse,” he said. “When much is taken, something is returned. Since I had a useless leg, I had to make myself a clever brain! I cannot chase, so I learn to watch and wait. I tell you boys these secrets and you laugh. When I hunt, I never come back empty-handed, do I? I think the gods looked at me and said to themselves, Well this one is a sharp one, eh? Let’s give him a gimpy leg so he can’t be a warrior and will have to stay at home among the women (a fate which has something to recommend it, my boy, believe me), and I thank them.” Mau had been shocked at this. Every boy wanted to be a warrior, didn’t he? “You didn’t want to be a warrior?” “Never. It takes a woman nine months to make a new human. Why waste her effort?” “But then when you died, you could be taken up to the cave and watch over us forever!” “Hah! I think I’ve seen enough of you already! I like the fresh air, boy. I’ll become a dolphin like everyone else. I’ll watch the sky turn and I will chase sharks. And since all the great warriors will be shut up in their cave, it occurs to me there will be rather more female dolphins than male ones, which is a pleasing thought.” He leaned forward and stared into Mau’s eyes. “Mau…,” he said. “Yes, I remember you. Always at the back. But I could see you thinking. Not many people think, not really think. They just think they do. And when they laughed at old Nawi, you didn’t want to. But you laughed anyway, to be like them. I’m right, yes?” How had he spotted that? But you couldn’t deny it, not now, not with those pale eyes looking through you. “Yes. I’m sorry.” “Good. And now that I have answered your questions, I think you owe me a favor.” “Do you want me to run an errand? Or I could—” “I want you to remember something for me. Have you heard that I know a word that drives away sharks?” “People say so, but they laugh.” “Oh, yes. But it works. I’ve tried it three times. The first was when I discovered it, which was when I was about to have my good leg bitten off, and then I tried it out from a raft, just to see if I’d been lucky the first time, and then I swam off the reef one day and frightened away a hammerhead.” “You mean you went looking for a shark?” said Mau. “Yes. Quite a big one, as I recall.” “But you might have been eaten!” “Oh, I’m not bad with a spear, and I had to find out,” said Nawi, grinning. “Someone had to eat the first oyster, you know. Someone looked at half a shell full of snot and was brave.” “Why doesn’t everybody know?” Nawi’s permanent smile turned down a little. “I’m a bit strange, yes? And the priests don’t like me much. If I told everyone, and someone died, I think things would be very tricky for me. But someone should know, and you are a boy who asks questions. Don’t use it until I’m dead, all right? Or until you are about to be eaten by a shark, of course.” And there on the rocks, as the sunset made a path of red across the sea, Mau learned the shark word. “It’s a trick!” he said, without thinking. “Not so loud,” snapped Nawi, glancing back at the shore. “Of course it’s a trick. Building a canoe is a trick. Throwing a spear is a trick. Life is a trick, and you get one chance to learn it. And now you know another one. If it saves your life one day, catch a big fish and throw it to the first dolphin you see. With luck, it will be me!” And now the old man and his leg were only a memory, along with everyone Mau had ever known. Mau wanted to scream with the weight of it. The world had emptied. He looked down at his hands. And he’d made a club. A weapon for what? Why did it make him feel better? But he had to stay alive. Yes! If he died, then the Nation would never have been. The island would be left to the red crabs and the grandfather birds. There would be no one to say that anyone had been there. There was a fluttering overhead. A grandfather bird had landed in a shaggy-headed grass tree. Mau knew that, even though he couldn’t see up through the tangle of vines; grandfather birds were very clumsy and didn’t so much land as crash slowly. It hopped around up there making the nab-nab grumbling noises, and then there was the familiar sound of throwing up and a shower of small bones pattered around the forest floor. The tree shook as the grandfather bird took off again. It flapped out into the open, saw Mau, decided to watch him for signs of being dead, and landed heavily on a branch of a tree that could barely be seen under its weight of strangler vines. For a moment boy and bird stared at each other. The branch snapped. The grandfather bird squawked and leaped away before the rotted wood hit the ground, and disappeared, flapping and squawking with injured pride, into the undergrowth. Mau paid it no attention. He was staring at the cloud of fine yellow dust rising from the fallen branch. It was punk dust, what you got when rot and termites and time hollowed out a dead branch. And this one had been up in the air, out of reach of the damp. The dust was like pollen. It would be the best ever for starting fires. He took the biggest lump of branch that he could hold, stuffed both ends with leaves, and started back down the mountain. There were pigs rooting in the fields again now, but he had no time to shoo them away. One piece of papervine soon breaks, he thought, and five bound together are strong. That’s good to know and it is true. The trouble is, I’m the one piece. He stopped. He was taking the other, steeper track down to the vill—to the place where the village had been. The wave had surged across the island here, too. Trees were broken and everything stank of seaweed. But on the other side of the shattered trees was a cliff that overlooked the low forest. Mau carefully tucked the tubers and the punk branch under some grass and pushed his way through the tangle of vines and branches at the edge of the cliff. It was possible to climb all the way up or down the cliff quite easily. He’d done it before. There were so many roots and vines and creepers growing over the stone, and so much soil and old birds’ nests had made a home for every drifting seed, that it was more like a vertical meadow, with flowers everywhere. There was papervine, too. There was always papervine. He cut enough to make a sling for his club, while whispering belated thank-yous to the Papervine Woman for her ever-reliable hair. Now he slid to the edge and pushed aside a spray of orchids. Mists were rising everywhere below him, but he could see the track the monster had left through the forest, a white scar half a mile long. It stopped at the group of fig trees that grew in the highest part of the low forest. They were massive. Mau knew them well. Their trunks had huge buttresses that looked as though they might reach down to the roots of the world. They would stop anything, but the steam and the spread of the tree canopy meant that he couldn’t see what it was that had been stopped. But he heard a voice. It was very faint, but it was coming from somewhere below Mau. It sounded a bit like singing, but not a very big bit. To Mau, it just sounded like “na, na, na.” But it was a human voice. Perhaps it was another trouserman? It was a bit squeaky. Were there trouserwomen? Or it could be a ghost. There would be a lot of ghosts now. It was past noon. If it was a ghost, then it would be very weak. Mau was the Nation. He had to do something. He started to climb down the cliff, which was easy enough even with trying to move quietly, although birds flew up all around him. He shivered. He didn’t know how to make a ghost bag. That was a woman’s task. The a-bit-like-singing went on. Perhaps it was some sort of ghost, then. The birds had made such a racket that any living person would surely have stopped and investigated. His feet touched the tangle of flaking stone and tree roots that was the floor of the lower forest, and he moved silently between the dripping trees. “Na, na, na”—clink!—“na, na, na”—clink! That sounded like metal. Mau grasped his club in both hands. —“give, for, wild, con-fu-sion, peace”—clink!—“Oh, hear, us, when, we, cry, to, Thee”—clink!—“for, those in per-ril on the sea!”—clang!—“drat!” Mau peered around the buttress of a giant fig tree. There was a lot to see. Something had been wrecked, but it was not alive. It was some kind of giant canoe, stuck between the trunks of two trees and covered with debris that looked as though it would be worth investigating, but not now. A big hole in the side leaked stones. But all this was background. Much closer to Mau, and staring at him in horror, was a girl—probably. But she could be a ghost; she was very pale. And a trouserman, too. The trousers were white and frilly, like the feathery legs of a grandfather bird, but she also had some kind of skirt tucked up around her waist. And her hair glowed in the sunlight. She had been crying. She had also been trying to dig into the forest floor with some odd kind of flat-headed spear that had the glint of metal about it. That was stupid; it was all roots and rocks, and there was a very small heap of rocks next to her. There was something else, too, large and wrapped up. Perhaps I did walk in the footsteps of Locaha, Mau thought, because I know that there is a dead man in there. And the ghost girl, she was in my nightmares. I am not alone. The girl dropped the flat-headed spear and quickly held up something else, something that also shone like metal. “I kn-know how to use this!” she shouted very loudly. “One step more and I will pull the trigger, I mean it!” The metal thing waved back and forth in her hands. “Don’t think I’m afraid! I’m not afraid! I could have killed you before! Just because I felt sorry for you doesn’t mean you can come down here! My father will be here soon!” She sounded excited. Mau took the view that she wanted him to have the metal thing, because by the way she was holding it with both hands and waving it about she was obviously very frightened of it. He reached out for it, she screamed and turned her head away, something went click, there was a small fountain of sparks from near one end of the metal thing, and, quite slowly, a little round ball rolled out of a hole in the other end and landed in the mud in front of the girl. There were…things on her feet, he noticed with a sort of horrified fascination; they were like black pods and had no toes. The girl was watching him in round-eyed terror. Mau gently took the thing away from her, and she flattened herself against the side of the canoe as if he were the ghost. The metal stank of something bitter and foul, but that wasn’t the important thing. It had sparked. Mau knew what to do with a spark. “Thank you for this gift of fire,” he said, and picked up his axe and ran for it before she could do anything dreadful to him.   In the wreckage on the beach Mau crouched over his work. The punk branch was only the start. He had combed the forest for dry twigs and bark. There was always some, even after heavy rain, and he’d carefully made little piles of everything from grass to quite thick twigs. He’d made a small heap of crumbled dried-up papervine bark and punk and now, with great care, he picked up the spark-maker. If you pulled back the piece of metal at the top until it went click, and then pulled the piece of metal at the bottom, and made certain—at least the second time—to keep your fingers out of the way, then a sort of metal claw scraped a dark stone down some metal and sparks would be born. He tried it again, holding the spark-maker just above the punk heap, and held his breath as a few sparks dropped onto fine dust, which went black where they fell. Mau blew across the heap, which he shielded in his cupped hands, and a tiny wisp of smoke went up. He kept his breath steady, and a little flame crackled into life. This was the hard part. He fed the flame with great care, teasing it along with grass and bark until it grew fat enough for its first twig. Every move was thoughtful, because fire is so easily scared away. It wasn’t until it was crackling and hissing and spitting that he tried the first thin branch. There was a nasty moment when the flames seemed to choke on it, and then they came up stronger and before long were asking for more. Well, there was no shortage of fuel. Broken trees were everywhere. He dragged them into the flames, and they burst as the heat boiled the water in them. Mau threw more wood on, piling it up so that sparks and steam soared into the dark. Shadows jumped and danced across the beach and, while the flames burned, there was a sort of life. After a while he dug out a hole on the edge of the fire, buried the mad-root tubers just under the sand, and scraped glowing embers over them. Then he lay back. When was the last time he had sat by a fire, here at home? The memory rushed in before he could stop it. It was his last meal as a boy, with all his family there, and in the Nation all his family meant, sooner or later, just about everyone. It was his last meal because the next time he ate on the island it would be as a man, no longer living in the boys’ hut but sleeping in the house of the unmarried men. He hadn’t eaten much, because he’d been too excited. He’d been too scared, too, because he could just about get the idea that this wasn’t only about him; it was also about his family. If he came back ready for a man’s tattoos and, obviously, the…thing with the knife where you must not scream, then it would be a triumph for them, too. It would mean that he had been brought up in the right way and had learned the Right Things. The fire crackled and sent smoke and steam up into the darkness, and he saw his family in the firelight, watching him, smiling at him. He closed his eyes and tried to force the clamoring memories away, into the dark. Had he sent any of them into the dark current when he’d walked in the steps of Locaha? Perhaps. But there was no memory there. He’d been curled up in the gray body of the Locaha-Mau, as a part of him trudged back and forth, doing what was needed, taking the dead to become dolphins so that they wouldn’t become food for the pigs. He should have sung a burial chant, but he’d never been taught the words, so instead he’d straightened limbs on the bodies as tidily as he could. Perhaps he had seen faces, but then that part of him had died. He tried to remember the face of his mother, but all he could see was dark water. He could hear her voice, though, singing the song about the god of Fire, and how the Papervine Woman got fed up with him chasing her daughters and bound his hands to his sides with great coils of vine; and Man’s younger sister used to laugh at that and chase him with coils of—But a wave passed over his mind, and he was glad it washed the bright memory away. He could feel the hole inside, blacker and deeper than the dark current. Everything was missing. Nothing was where it should be. He was here on this lonely shore, and all he could think of was the silly questions that children ask…Why do things end? How do they start? Why do good people die? What do the gods do? And this was hard, because one of the Right Things for a man was: Don’t ask silly questions. And now the little blue hermit crab was out of its shell and scuttling across the sand, looking for a new shell, and there wasn’t one. Barren sand stretched away on every side, and all it could do was run…. He opened his eyes. And now there was just him and the ghost girl. Had she been real? Was he real? Was that a silly question? The smell of the tubers came up through the sand. His stomach suggested that they might be real, at least, and he burned his fingers digging them up. One would keep until tomorrow. The other one he broke open and stuck his face into the fluffy, crunchy, hot, savory heart of, and he went to sleep with his mouth full, while the shadows danced in circles around the fire. CHAPTER 3 Calenture   IN THE DARKNESS OF the wreck of the Sweet Judy, a match flared. There were some pings and scraping noises and at last the lamp was alight. It wasn’t broken, but she had to be sparing with it because she hadn’t found any more oil yet. It was probably underneath everything else. Everything was under everything else. It was a mercy she’d wrapped the mattress around her before the Sweet Judy tried to sail through trees. She’d remember the snapping and the screams as long as she lived. She’d heard the hull split and the masts crack, and worst of all she had heard the silence. And she’d climbed out into a steaming morning full of birdsong, with most of the Judy back on the smashed trail behind her and one word in her head. The word was Calenture. It meant a special kind of madness, brought on by the heat. First Mate Cox had told her about it, probably hoping to frighten her because he was that sort of person. Sailors got calenture when they’d been becalmed at sea for too long. They’d look over the side and see, instead of the ocean, cool green fields. They’d leap down into them and drown. First Mate Cox said he’d seen grown men do it. They’d jumped into a meadow full of daisies and drowned or, as he put it, drownded. And he’d probably pushed them in, too. And there she was, stepping off a boat into the middle of a green jungle. It was like the…opposite of madness, in a way. She was quite sane, she was sure of that, but the world itself had gone mad. There were dead men back on the track. She’d seen dead people before, when her uncle had broken his neck while hunting, and of course there had been that terrible accident with the harvesting machine. Neither of the dead seamen was Cookie, she was shamefully glad to say, and she’d said a quick prayer over them and had run back to the ship to be sick. Now she rummaged in the mess that had been a neat cabin and found her writing box. She balanced it on her knees and opened it, taking out one of the gold-edged invitation cards she had gotten for her birthday, and stared at it for a moment. According to her book of etiquette (another birthday present), there should be a chaperone present if she invited the young man to visit, and the only person she could think of was poor Captain Roberts. He was a real captain, which counted for something, but he was unfortunately dead. On the other hand, the book didn’t actually say the chaperone had to be alive, only present. Anyway, she still had the sharp machete stuffed down behind her bunk. It had not been a happy voyage after First Mate Cox had come aboard. She glanced at the blanket-covered shape in the corner, from which came a continual muttering. She had to keep it covered up or else it’d start to swear again. Some of the words it came out with a respectable young lady should not know the meaning of. The words she didn’t know the meaning of worried her even more. She had been unkind to the boy, she knew. You weren’t supposed to shoot people, especially if you hadn’t even been introduced to them, and it was only a mercy the gunpowder had got wet. It was sheer panic, and he’d been working so hard burying those poor people in the sea. At least her father was alive and he would come looking for her, even though there were more than eight hundred places to look in the Mothering Sunday Islands. She dipped her pen in the ink and crossed out Government House, Port Mercia at the top of the card, and carefully wrote underneath: “The Wreck of the Sweet Judy.” There were other changes that needed to be made. Whoever had designed the cards had completely overlooked the possibility that you might want to invite someone whose name you didn’t know, who lived on a beach, wore hardly any clothing, and almost certainly couldn’t read. But she did her best, on both sides of the card,* and then signed it “Ermintrude Fanshaw (the Honorable Miss)” and wished she didn’t have to, at least about the Ermintrude. Then she put on the big oilskin coat that had belonged to poor Captain Roberts, pocketed the last of the mangoes, picked up a cutlass, unhooked the oil lamp, and set out into the night.   Mau awoke with the Grandfathers shouting in his head and the fire a big glowing heap. REPLACE THE GOD ANCHORS! WHO IS GUARDING THE NATION? WHERE IS OUR BEER? I don’t know, Mau thought, looking up at the sky. The women made beer. I don’t know how. He couldn’t go into the Women’s Place, could he? He’d already been up there to take a look, although men couldn’t go to the Women’s Place, and women couldn’t go into the valley of the Grandfathers. If these things happened, there would be the end of everything. It was that important. Mau blinked. How much more of an end could everything have? There were no more people, so how could there be rules? Rules couldn’t float around by themselves! He stood up and saw the golden glitter. A white oblong had been wedged in a piece of broken wood, and there were toeless footprints in the sand. Next to the wood was another mango. She’d been creeping around while he slept! There were meaningless marks on the white oblong, but on the other side were some pictures. Mau knew about messages, and this one wasn’t difficult: “When the sun is just above the last tree left on Little Nation, you must throw a spear at the big wrecked canoe,” he said aloud. It didn’t make any sense, and nor did the ghost girl. But she had given him the spark-maker, although she’d been very frightened. He’d been frightened too. What were you supposed to do about girls? You had to keep away from them while you were a boy, but he’d heard that when you were a man you got other instructions. And as for the Grandfathers and the god anchors, he hadn’t seen them at all. They were big stones, but the wave hadn’t cared. Did the gods know? Had they been washed away? It was too complicated to think about. Beer was simpler, but not by much. Women made the beer, and he knew that there was a big bowl in front of the Cave of the Grandfathers where an offering of beer was poured every day. He knew this, and it had just stayed in his head as a thing that he knew, but now questions were rising, like: Why did the dead need beer? Wouldn’t it…trickle through? If they didn’t drink it, who did? And would he get into trouble for even thinking these questions? Who from? He remembered going into the Women’s Place from when he was very small. Around about the time he was seven or eight he started to become unwelcome there. Women shooed him away, or stopped what they were doing when he came near and watched him very hard until he left. The very old women in particular had a way of glaring at you that made you want to be somewhere else. One of the older boys told him that they could mutter words that made your wingo fall off. After that he kept away from the Women’s Place, and it became like the moon; he knew where it was but didn’t even think about going there. Well, there were no old women now. He wished there were. There was no one to stop him doing anything. He wished there was. The path to the Women’s Place turned off from the track into the forest and then went downhill and southwest and down into a narrow gulley. At the end of it were two big stones, taller than a man, splashed with red paint. That was the only way in, back when there were rules. Now, Mau pulled out the thornbush that blocked the entrance and pushed through. And there was the Place, a round bowl of a valley full of sunlight. Screens of trees kept out the wind, and thorn and briar bushes were woven so thickly among them that nothing except maybe a snake could get through, and today the valley looked as though it was asleep. Mau could hear the sea, but it seemed to be a long way off. There was the tinkle of a little stream that dribbled out of the rock at one side of the bowl, filled a rocky hollow that was a natural bathing place, and lost itself in the gardens. The Nation grew the big crops in the large field. That was where you found aharo, sugarcane, tabor, boomerang peas, and black corn. There men grew the things that made you live. In the Place, the gardens of the women grew the things that made the living enjoyable, possible, and longer: spices and fruits and chewing roots. They had ways of making crops grow bigger or more tasty. They dug up or traded plants and brought them here, and knew the secrets of seeds and pods and things. They raised pink bananas here and rare plantains and yams, including the jumping yam. They also grew medicines here, and babies. Here and there around the edges of the gardens were huts. Mau approached them carefully, beginning to feel nervous. Someone should be shouting at him, some old woman should be pointing and mumbling, and he should be running away very fast with his hands cupped over his groin, just in case. Anything would be better than this sunny, empty silence. So there are still rules, he thought. I brought them with me. They’re in my head. There were baskets in some of the huts, and bunches of roots hung from the ceiling, out of reach of small fingers. They were maniac roots. You learned about them very early on. They made the best beer of all or they killed you as dead as a stone, and the secret ingredient that decided which of these happened was a song that everybody knew. He found what he was looking for in the hut by the spring. A whole bowl of chopped root was hissing and bubbling gently to itself under a pile of palm leaves. The sharp, prickly smell filled the hut. How much did some dead men drink? He filled a calabash with the stuff, which should be enough. He was careful how he poured it, because it was very dangerous at this stage, and he hurried away before a ghost could catch him. He reached the valley of the Grandfathers without spilling much, and tipped the contents of the calabash into the big stone bowl in front of the sealed cave. From the gnarly old trees a couple of grandfather birds watched him carefully. He spat into the bowl, and the beer seethed for a while. Big yellow bubbles burst on the surface. Then he sang. It was a simple little song, easy to remember, about the four brothers, all sons of Air, who one day decided to race around the huge belly of their father to see which of them would court the woman who lived in the Moon, and the tricks each one played on the others so that he could be first. Babies learned it. Everyone knew it. And, for some reason, singing that song turned the poison into beer. It really did. The beer foamed in the bowl. Mau watched the big round stone, just in case, but the Grandfathers probably had a way of drinking beer from the spirit world. He sang his way through the song, taking care not to miss any verse, especially the one that was very funny when you did the right gestures. When he finished, the beer had gone clear, with golden bubbles rising to the top. Mau took a sip, to check. His heart didn’t stop after one beat, so the beer was probably fine. He took a few steps back and said, to the wide open sky: “Here is your beer, Grandfathers!” Nothing happed. It was a bad thought, but a thank you might have been nice. Then the world drew a breath and the breath became voices: YOU HAVE FAILED TO DO THE CHANT! “I have sung the song! It is good beer!” WE MEAN THE CHANT THAT CALLS US TO THE BEER! A couple more grandfather birds crash-landed in the trees. “I didn’t know there was one!” YOU ARE A LAZY BOY! Mau grabbed at this. “That’s right, I’m just a boy! There is no one to teach me! Can you—?” HAVE YOU RIGHTED THE GOD ANCHORS? NO! And with that the voices snapped into silence, leaving only the sighing of the wind. Well, it looked like good beer. What was a chant needed for? Mau’s mother had made good beer, and people had just turned up. With a flapping of wings, a grandfather bird landed on the edge of the beer stone and gave him the usual stare that said: If you are going to die, hurry up. Otherwise, leave. Mau shrugged and walked away. But he hid behind a tree, and he was good at hiding. Maybe the big round stone would roll. It didn’t take long for several more grandfather birds to alight on the bowl. They squabbled for a while and then, with the occasional pause for another brief fight, settled down to some serious boozing, rocking backward and forward because that is how birds move when they drink, then rocking backward and forward and forward and falling over a lot, which is how birds move when they have been drinking fresh beer. One took off and flew backward into some bushes. Mau walked back thoughtfully to the beach, stopping on the way to cut himself a spear from the forest. Down on the beach he sharpened it to a point, which he hardened in the fire, occasionally glancing up at the sun. He did all this slowly, because his mind was filling up with questions. They came out of the black hole inside him so fast that they made it hard to think in a straight line. And soon he would have to see the ghost girl. That was going to be…difficult. He looked at the white oblong again. The shiny metal around the edge was quite soft and useless, and scraped off easily. As for the picture, he thought it might be some kind of magic or charm, like the blue bead. What was the point of throwing a spear at the big canoe? It wasn’t something you could kill. But the ghost girl was the only other person on the island, and she had, after all, given him the spark-maker. He didn’t need it now, but it was still a wonderful thing. When the sun was getting close to the Little Nation, he set off along the beach and entered the low forest. You could smell things growing. There was never much light down here, but the big canoe had left a wide trail, and daylight was shafting down into spaces that hadn’t seen it for years, and the race was on for a rare place in the sun. New green shoots were fighting for their piece of the sky, fronds were unfolding, seeds were cracking open. The forest was coming back with its own green tide; in six months no one would ever guess what had happened here. Mau slowed down when the wreck of the big canoe came in sight, but he could see no movement. He would have to be careful about this. It would be so easy to get things wrong.   It was so easy to get things wrong. She hated the name Ermintrude. It was the trude really. Ermin, now that wasn’t bad at all. Trudy, too, sounded quite jolly, but her grandmother had said it sounded fast, whatever that meant, and banned her from using it. Even Gertrude would have done. You still had your trude, of course, but one of the royal princesses was named Gertrude, and some of the newspapers called her Princess Gertie, and that sounded like the name of a girl who might have some fun in life. But Ermintrude, she thought, was exactly the kind of name that would invite a young man to tea and mess it all up. The coal stove kept smoking, the flour she’d tried to make the scones of had smelled funny because of the dead lobster in the barrel, and she felt sure some of the flour shouldn’t have been moving about, either. She’d managed to open the last tin of Dr. Poundbury’s Patented Ever-Lasting Milk, which said on the tin that it would taste as good after a year as it did on the day it was tinned, and, sadly, that was probably true. It smelled like drowned mice. If only she’d been taught properly! If only someone had thought to spend an afternoon teaching her a few things that would be handy to know if she was shipwrecked on a desert island! It could happen to anyone! Even some hints on making scones would have been a help! But no, her grandmother had said that a lady should never lift anything heavier than a parasol and should certainly never set foot in a kitchen unless it was to make Economic Charitable Soup for the Deserving Poor, and her grandmother didn’t think there were very many of them. “Always remember,” she used to say, far too often, “that it only needs one hundred and thirty-eight people to die and your father will be king! And that means that, one day, you might be queen!” Grandmother used to say this with a look in her eye that suggested that she was planning 138 murders, and you didn’t have to know the old lady for long to suspect that she’d be quite capable of arranging them. They wouldn’t be impolite murders, of course. There wouldn’t be any of that desperate business with daggers and pistols. They would be elegant and tactful. A block or stone would fall out of someone’s stately home here, someone would slip on a patch of ice in the castle battlements there, a suspicious blancmange at a palace banquet (arsenic could so easily be confused with sugar) would take care of several at once…. But she probably wouldn’t go that far, not really. Nevertheless, she lived in hope, and prepared her granddaughter for a royal life by seeing to it, wherever possible, that Ermintrude was not taught anything that could possibly be of any practical use whatsoever. Now here she was, with her wrong name, struggling to make afternoon tea in a wrecked boat in the middle of the jungle! Why hadn’t anyone thought this might happen? And the young man was what her grandmother would have called a savage, too. But he hadn’t been savage. She had watched him bury all those people in the sea. He had picked them up gently, even the dogs. He wasn’t someone throwing away garbage. He had cared. He had cried tears, but he hadn’t seen her, not even when she’d stood in front of him. There had been just one point when his streaming eyes had tried to focus on her, and then he had stepped around her and gotten on with his work. He’d been so careful and gentle, it was hard to believe he was a savage. She remembered First Mate Cox shooting at monkeys with his pistol when they had moored in that river mouth in the Sea of Ceramis. He had laughed every time a small brown body dropped into the river, especially if it was still alive when the crocodiles caught it. She’d shouted at him to stop it, and he’d laughed, and Captain Roberts had come down from the wheelhouse and there had been a terrible row, and after that things had gone very sour on the Sweet Judy. But just as she had begun the first part of her journey around the world, there had been a lot in the newspapers about Mr. Darwin and his new theory that people had a kind of monkey as their distant ancestor. Ermintrude did not know if this was true, but when she’d looked into First Mate Cox’s eyes, she’d seen something much worse than any monkey could be. At which point a spear crashed through the cracked porthole, hissed across the cabin, and left via the porthole on the other side, which had lost all its glass to the wave. Ermintrude sat very still, first out of shock and then because she was remembering her father’s advice. In one of his letters to her, he had said that when she joined him in Government House, she would be his first lady and would be able to meet all kinds of people who might act in ways she found strange at first, and perhaps would even misunderstand. And so she would have to be gracious and make allowances. Very well. This was about the time the boy would be here. What had she expected him to do when he arrived? Even on a boat that isn’t wrecked, it’s hard to find a doorbell. Perhaps throwing a spear means: Look, I’ve thrown away my spear! I’m not armed! Yes, that sounds right. It’s just like shaking hands, after all, to show you are not holding a sword. Well, I’m glad that’s one little mystery solved, she thought. For the first time since the spear had hissed across the cabin, she breathed out. Outside, Mau was beginning to wonder if something had gone wrong when there were some wooden noises and the ghost girl’s head appeared over the side of the big canoe. “So kind of you to be punctual,” she said, trying to smile, “and thank you very much for breaking the window, it was getting very stuffy in here!” He didn’t understand any of this, but she was very nearly smiling and that was a good thing. She wanted him to come into the wreck, too. He did so, very cautiously. The Sweet Judy had keeled over a bit when the wave had dropped her at ground level, so everything sloped. Inside was just a mess, made of many different messes all jumbled up. Everything stank of mud and stale water. But the girl led him into another space that looked at least as though someone had tried to clean things up a bit, even if they had failed. “I’m afraid the chairs all got smashed,” said the girl, “but I’m sure you will find poor Captain Roberts’s sea chest an adequate substitute.” Mau, who had never sat on anything but the ground or a hut floor when he ate, edged his bottom onto a wooden box. “I thought it would be nice to get properly acquainted, since we haven’t been introduced,” said the ghost girl. “Obviously the fact that we cannot understand each other will be something of a drawback….” While this gibberish was going on, Mau stared at the fire in its little cave. Steam was coming out of a round black pipe. Next to it was a flat round thing. Pale things on it looked like some kind of bread. This is a Woman’s Place, he thought, and I don’t know the rules. I must be careful. She might do anything to me. “…and the butter had gone runny, but I threw away the flour that had gone really green. Would you like some tea? I expect you don’t take milk?” He watched as a brown liquid was poured into a blue-and-white bowl. Mau watched it carefully, while the girl went on talking faster and faster. How do you know what’s right and wrong? he wondered. What are the rules when you are all alone with a ghost girl? He’d not been alone on the Boys’ Island. Oh, there hadn’t been anyone else there, but he’d felt the Nation around him. He was doing the Right Thing. But now? What were the Right Things? The Grandfathers bellowed and complained and ordered him about and didn’t listen. He couldn’t find the silver thread either, or the picture of the future. There was no picture now. There was just him and this girl, and no rules to fight the darkness ahead. Now she had taken the bready things off the fire, and put them on another of the round metal things, which he tried to balance on his knees. “Most of the crockery got smashed in the wreck,” said the girl sadly. “It’s a miracle I could find two cups. Will you have a scone?” She pointed at the bread things. Mau took one. It was hot, which was good, but on the other hand it tasted like a piece of slightly rotten wood. She was watching anxiously as he moved the lump around in his mouth, looking for something to do with it. “I’ve done it wrong, haven’t I?” she said. “I thought the flour was too damp. Poor Captain Roberts used to keep a lobster in the flour barrel to eat the weevils, and I’m sure that can’t be right. I’m sorry, I won’t mind if you spit it out.” And she started to cry. Mau hadn’t understood a word, but some things don’t need language. She weeps because the bread is awful. She should not cry. He swallowed, and took another bite. She stared, and sniffed, not certain if it was too early to stop crying. “Very nice food,” said Mau. He swallowed the thing with a fight and was sure he felt it hit the bottom of his stomach. And then he ate the other one. The girl dabbed at her eyes with a cloth. “Very good,” Mau insisted, trying not to taste rotted lobster. “I’m sorry, I can’t understand you,” she said. “Oh, dear, and I completely forgot to lay out the napkin rings. What must you think of me….” “I don’t know the words you say,” said Mau. There was a long, helpless pause, and Mau felt the two lumps of bad, dreadful bread sitting in his stomach, planning their exit. He was drinking the cup of sour, hot liquid to drown them when he became aware of a faint murmur coming from a corner of the cabin, where a big blanket covered—what? It sounded as though someone under there was muttering angrily to itself. “It’s good to have someone to talk to,” said the girl loudly. “I see you walking around and it’s not so lonely.” The flour balls in Mau’s stomach didn’t like the brown drink. He kept very still, fighting to keep them down. The girl looked at him nervously and said: “My name is, um…Daphne.” She gave a little cough and added, “Yes, Daphne.” She pointed to herself and held out her hand. “Daphne,” she said again, even more loudly. Well, she’d always liked the name. Mau looked obediently at her hand, but there was nothing to see. So…she was from Daphne? In the islands the most important thing about you was the name of your clan. He hadn’t heard of the place, but they always said that no one knew all the islands. Some of the poorer ones disappeared completely at high tide and the huts were built to float. They would have gone now…so how many were left? Had everyone in the world been washed away? The ghost girl stood and walked up the sloping deck to the door. Mau thought this looked promising. With any luck he didn’t have to eat any more wood. She said: “Could you please help me with poor Captain Roberts?” She wanted him to go outside, that was clear, and Mau got up quickly. The bad bread wanted to escape, and the smell of the fire was giving him a headache. He staggered up and out into the fresh afternoon air. The girl was standing on the ground, by the big gray roll Mau had seen yesterday. She looked at him helplessly. “Poor Captain Roberts,” she said, and prodded it with her foot. Mau pulled away the heavy cloth and saw the body of an old trouserman with a beard. He was lying on his back, his eyes staring up at nothing. Mau pulled the cloth down farther and found that the man’s hands were holding a big circle of wood, with things like wooden spikes all around the edge of it. “He tied himself to the ship’s wheel so that he wouldn’t get washed away,” said the girl behind him. “I cut the ropes but his poor hands wouldn’t let go, so I found a hammer and knocked the pin out of the wheel, and I tried and tried to bury him but the ground is too hard and I can’t move him by myself. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind being buried at sea,” she finished, all in one breath. Mau sighed. She must know I can’t understand her but she goes on talking, he thought. She wants this body buried, I can tell. I wonder how long it took her to scrape that pathetic little hole in the rock? But she’s lost and far from home, like me. “I can send him into the dark water,” he said. He made wave noises and wave shapes with his hand. She looked terrified for a moment, and then laughed and clapped her hands. “Yes! Yes! That’s right! The sea! Whoosh, swoosh! The sea!” The man and the wooden wheel together were too heavy to lift, but the cloth was very thick and Mau found he could drag the body quite well over the crushed vegetation of the track. The girl helped him with the difficult bits, or at least tried to, and once they reached the shore, the gray roll slid well enough on the damp sand, but it was a long tiring drag to the western end of the beach. At last Mau managed to get the captain into the waist-deep water at the very edge of the reef. He looked into the dead eyes, staring straight ahead, and wondered what they would see down in the dark current. Would they see anything? Did anyone see anything? The shock of the question hit him like a blow. How could he think it? Once we were dolphins and Imo made us into men! That was true, wasn’t it? Why did he even wonder if it wasn’t? And if that wasn’t true, then there was just the dark water and nothing was anything…. He stopped those thoughts before they could run away with him. The Daphne girl was watching him, and this was no time to be uncertain and hesitant. He twisted papervine together to fasten stones and pieces of broken coral to poor Captain Roberts and his wheel. Papervine got tighter when it was wet and didn’t rot for years. Wherever poor Captain Roberts was going, he was going to stay there. Unless he turned into a dolphin, of course. Then, quickly, Mau made the cut to release his spirit. On the rocks behind him, the girl sang a song. It wasn’t all na-na-na this time. Somehow Mau could hear her voice better, now he’d heard her speak. There were words, probably, although they had no meaning to Mau. But he thought: It’s a trouserman chant for the dead. They are like us! But if Imo made them, why are they so different? The captain was almost underwater now, still holding on to the wheel. Mau held the last stone in one hand and pushed the floating captain forward, feeling all the time with his toes for the edge of the rock. He could sense the cold of the deeps below him, too. The current was down there. No one knew where it came from, although there were stories of a land to the south where the water fell like feathers. But everyone knew where it went. They could see it. It became the Shining Path, a river of stars that flowed across the night sky. Once in a thousand years, it was said, when Locaha looked among the dead for those who should go to the Perfect World, they would climb that path and send the rest back to be dolphins until it was time for them to be born again. How does that happen? Mau thought. How does water become stars? How does a dead man become a living dolphin? But those were a child’s questions, weren’t they? The kind you shouldn’t ask? The kind that were silly or wrong, and if you asked why too much you were given chores to do and told that’s how the world is. A wavelet broke over the captain. Mau fastened the last stone to the wheel and, as the captain slid gently under the water, gave him a push out into the current. A few bubbles came up as the captain sank, very slowly, out of sight. Mau was just turning away when he saw something rising through the water. It broke the surface and turned over slowly. It was the captain’s hat, and now that it had filled with water, it began to drift back down again. There was a splash from behind him and the girl of the Daphne clan floundered past, her white dress floating around her like a huge jellyfish. “Don’t let it sink again!” she shouted. “He wants you to have it!” She plunged forward, grabbed the hat, waved it triumphantly—and sank. Mau waited for her to come back up, but there were just bubbles. Could it possibly be that there was someone in the world who couldn’t— His body worked without thinking. He ducked under the surface, grabbed the biggest lump of coral he could see, and dived over the edge and into the dark water. There below him was poor Captain Roberts, drifting gently down toward posterity. Mau went past in a rip of silver. There were more bubbles below, and a pale shape disappearing at the farthest reach of the sunlight. Not this one, Mau thought, as loudly as he could. Not now. No one goes alive into the dark. I served you, Locaha. I walked in your steps. You should owe me this one. One life back from the dark! And a voice returned from the gloom: I recall no arrangement, Mau, no bargain, covenant, or promise. There is what happens, and what does not happen. There is no should. And then he was tangling in the sea anemone of her skirts. He let the stone continue into the dark, found her face, breathed the air from his bursting lungs into hers, saw her eyes open wide, and kicked for the surface, dragging her behind him. It took forever. He could feel the long, cold fingers of Locaha grabbing at his feet and squeezing his lungs, and surely the light was fading. The sound of the water in his ears began to sound like whispering: Would it hurt to stop now? To slide back down into the dark and let the current take him? It would be the end of all grief, a blanking of all bad memories. All he had to do was let her go and— No! That thought brought back his anger, and the anger brought strength. A shadow fell across the light and Mau had to swim out of the way as the gently sinking captain went on past, on the last voyage he’d ever make. But the light was no nearer, never any nearer. His legs were like stones. Everything stung. And there it was, the silver line, coming back to him again, pulling him forward into a picture of what could be— —and rock was under his feet. He kicked down, and his head broke through the surf. His feet touched the rock again, and the light was brilliant. The rest of what happened he watched from inside himself as he dragged the girl onto the rocks, and tipped her upside down and slapped her on her back until she coughed up water. Then it was a run along the beach to lay her down by the fire, where she vomited up more water and groaned. Only then did Mau’s mind explain that his body was far too weak to have managed all this, and let it fall backward into the sand. He managed to turn over in time to throw up what was left of the dreadful cakes and stared down at the mess. Does not happen, he thought, and the words became a declaration of triumph and defiance. “Does not happen,” he said, and the words got bigger and dragged him to his feet, and “Does not happen!” he shouted at the sky. “Does not happen!” A little sound made him look down. The girl was shaking, there on the sand. He knelt beside her and held her hand, which was still clutching the captain’s hat. Her skin was white, and as cold as the touch of Locaha, even in the heat of the fire. “Cheat! I got her back!” he shouted. “Does not happen!” Mau ran farther along the beach and onto the track that led into the low forest. Red crabs scuttled out of the way as he bounded along the trail of broken trees. He reached the big canoe and scrambled up the side. There had been—yes, there was that big blanket in the corner. He grabbed it and pulled, and something pulled back. He pulled harder, and something landed on the deck with a splintering noise. A voice said: “Waark! Roberts is a dreadful boozer! Show us yer drawers!” This time the blanket had come away, revealing a broken wooden cage on the floor and a very angry gray bird. It glared at Mau. “Waark! Blessed are the meek, my sainted aunt!” Mau had no time for birds now, but this one had a worrying glint in its eye. It seemed to demand a reply. “Does not happen!” he shouted, and ran out of the cabin, the blanket flapping behind him. He was halfway down the track when there was a flutter of wings overhead and a shriek of “Does not happen!” Mau didn’t even look up. The world had become too strange. He ran to the fire and wrapped the girl as tight as he could in the blanket. After a while the shivering stopped, and she seemed to be asleep. “Does not happen!” screamed the bird from a broken tree. Mau blinked. He’d understood it! And he’d understood it before, and not realized it. Oh, there were some birds that could speak a few words, like the gray raven and the yellow parakeet, but you could hardly understand them. This bird talked as if it knew what it was saying. “Where’s my grub, you vinegar-faced old piss pot?” said the bird, bouncing up and down eagerly. “Give me my rations, you ol’ hypocrite!” That sounded like trouserman talk, right enough.   The sun was low but still a hand’s span above the sea. A lot had happened in a short space of time that, on the inside, had lasted nearly forever. Mau looked down at the sleeping girl. “Does not happen” was not enough. You couldn’t trust Locaha. There were no bargains. Now he had to think about will not happen. Death was not going to rule here. He found his spear and stood guard until morning. CHAPTER 4 Bargains, Covenants, and Promises   ERMINTRUDE HAD HEARD THAT when you drown, your whole life passes in front of your eyes. In fact it’s when you don’t drown that this happens, as life races back from the start to get to the last known living moment. Mostly it’s a blur, but every life has its important moments that get more and more colorful the longer they are remembered. In hers, one of them was about the map. Every life should have a map. The map. Oh yes, the map. She’d found it in the big atlas in the library one wet winter afternoon. In a week she could have drawn it from memory. And the name of it was the Great Southern Pelagic Ocean. It was half a world of blue sea, but it was stitched together with seams of little marks, tiny dots that her father had called island chains. There were hundreds and thousands of islands and a lot of them were just about big enough for a coconut tree, he’d said. There had to be one coconut tree on every tiny island, by law, so that if someone was shipwrecked, then at least he’d have some shade to sit in.* He drew a picture of her sitting in the shade of a coconut tree, with her white dress and her parasol, but he quickly added, on the penciled horizon, a ship coming to rescue her. Much later on, she was able to read the names of the groups of islands: The Bank Holiday Monday Islands, All Souls Island, The Rogation Sunday Islands, The Mothering Sunday Islands, The Hogmanay Islands…it seemed that the Great Southern Pelagic Ocean had been navigated not with a compass and a sextant but with a calendar. Her father had said that if you knew where to look, you could find Mrs. Ethel J. Bundy’s Birthday Island, and loaned her a large magnifying glass. She spent long Sunday afternoons lying on her stomach, minutely examining every necklace of dots, and concluded that Mrs. Ethel J. Bundy’s Birthday Island was a Father Joke, i.e., not very funny but sort of lovable in its silliness. But now, thanks to him, she knew the island chains of the Great Southern Pelagic Ocean by heart. She had wanted, there and then, to live on an island that was lost at sea, and so small that you weren’t sure if it was an island or just that a fly had done its business on the page. But that wasn’t all. There was a map of the stars at the back of the atlas. For her next birthday she’d asked for a telescope. Her mother had been alive then, and had suggested a pony, but her father had laughed and bought her a beautiful telescope, saying: “Of course she should watch the stars! Any girl who cannot identify the constellation of Orion just isn’t paying attention!” And when she started asking him complicated questions, he took her along to lectures at the Royal Society, where it turned out that a nine-year-old girl who had blond hair and knew what the precession of the equinoxes was could ask hugely bearded famous scientists anything she liked. Who’d want a pony when you could have the whole universe? It was far more interesting and you didn’t have to muck it out once a week. “Well, that was a good day,” said her father when they were coming back from one meeting. “Yes, Papa. I think Dr. Agassiz is certainly providing evidence for the Ice Age theory, and I shall need a bigger telescope if I am to see Jupiter’s Great Red Spot.” “Well, we shall have to see about that,” said her father with hopeless parental diplomacy. “But please don’t let your grandmother know you shook hands with Mr. Darwin. She thinks he is the devil.” “Gosh! Is he?” The prospect had seemed quite interesting. “As a matter of fact,” said her father, “I believe he is the greatest scientist who has ever lived.” “Greater than Newton? I don’t think so, Papa. Many of his ideas were first voiced by other people, including his own granddad!” “Aha? You’ve been in my library again. Well, Newton said that he stood on the shoulders of giants.” “Yes, but…well, he was just being modest!” And they had argued all the way home. It was a game. He loved it when she assembled her facts and pinned him down with a cast-iron argument. He believed in rational thinking and scientific inquiry, which was why he never won an argument with his mother, who believed in people doing what she told them, and believed it with a rock-hard certainty that dismissed all opposition. In fact there was always something a little naughty about going to the lectures. Her grandmother objected to them on the grounds that they “would make the girl restless and give her ideas.” She was right. Ermintrude was already pretty good at ideas, but a few more are always welcome. At this point the racing line of life speeds up, to get past some dark years she never remembered except in nightmares and whenever she heard a baby crying, and leaps ahead to the day when she first knew she would see islands under new stars…. Her mother was dead by then, which meant that things at the Hall were now run entirely by her grandmother, and her father, a quiet, hardworking man, didn’t have much spirit left to battle with her. The wonderful telescope was locked away, because “a well-brought-up young lady has no business looking at the moons of Jupiter, whose home life was so different from that of our own dear king!” It didn’t matter that her father very patiently explained that there were at least thirty-six million miles of difference between Jupiter, the Roman god, and Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system. She didn’t listen. She never listened. And you put up with that or you hit her over the head with a battle-axe, and her father didn’t do that sort of thing, even though one of his ancestors had once done something really horrible to the duke of Norfolk with a red-hot poker. Their Royal Society visits were banned on the grounds that the scientists were nothing but people who asked silly questions, and that was that. Her father came and apologized to her about it, which was horrible. But there were other ways to explore the universe…. One of the things about being a quiet girl in a very big house is that you can, if you try, be invisible in plain view, and it is amazing what you can overhear when you are being a good little girl helping Cook in the kitchen by cutting out pastry shapes. There were always delivery boys or men from the estate wanting a cup of tea, or Cook’s old friends just dropping in for a chat. The secret was to wear ribbons in your hair and skip everywhere. It completely fooled people. Except her grandmother, unfortunately, who put a stop to the visits below stairs as soon as she took over the running of the household. “Children should be seen, but not be seen listening!” she said. “Off you go! Quickly, now!” And that was that. Ermi—Daphne spent most of her time doing embroidery in her room. Sewing, provided you weren’t doing it to make something useful, was one of the few things a girl “who was going to be a lady one day” was allowed to do, at least according to her grandmother. However, it wasn’t all she did. To begin with, she found the old dumbwaiter, a sort of elevator just for food, that hadn’t been used since the days when her great-great-aunt had lived in Daphne’s bedroom on the top floor and all her food had to be hauled up five floors from the kitchen. Daphne didn’t know much about the old woman, but apparently a young man had smiled at her on her twenty-first birthday and she’d gone straight to bed with an attack of the vapors and stayed there, still gently vaporizing, until she completely vaporized at the age of eighty-six, apparently because her body was fed up with having nothing to do. The dumbwaiter had never been officially used since then. Daphne, though, had found that with the removal of a few planks and the greasing of some wheels, she could haul it up and down by its pulleys and eavesdrop on several rooms. It became a sort of sound telescope to explore the indoor solar system that revolved around her grandmother. She gave it a bit of scrub, and then another because—yuck—if the maids weren’t going to carry a food tray up five floors, then they weren’t going to—yuck—carry down anything else, like the guzunder. It was an interesting education, listening to the big house when it was unaware, but getting it was like tipping out a jigsaw puzzle on the floor and trying to guess at the picture from looking at five pieces. And it was while listening to two of the maids talking about Albert the stable boy and how naughty he was (a state of affairs they didn’t entirely disapprove of, apparently, and that she was starting to suspect very strongly had nothing to do with how he looked after the horses) that she heard the argument in the dining room. Her grandmother’s voice cut through the ear like a diamond on glass, but her father was using the calm, flat voice he always used when he was very angry and didn’t dare show it. By the time she’d pulled up the dumbwaiter to get a better listen, the argument had been going on for some time: “…and you’ll end up in a cannibal’s cooking pot!” That was the unmistakable sound of her grandmother. “Cannibals usually roast their food, Mother, not boil it.”—And that was certainly the quiet voice of her father who, when he was talking to his mother, always sounded as though he was determined not to look up from his newspaper. “And is that any better, pray?” “I doubt it, Mother, but at least it is more accurate. In any case, the Rogation Sunday Islanders have never been known to cook anyone al fresco in any kind of utensil, as far as we know.” “I don’t see why you have to go to the other end of the world.”—And that was her grandmother changing her line of attack. “Somebody must. We have to keep the flag flying.” “Why, pray?” “Oh dear, Mother, I’m surprised at you. It’s our flag. It has to fly.” “Do remember that only one hundred and thirty-eight people have to die and you will be king!” “So you keep telling me, Mother, although Father always said that claim is rather weak when you consider what happened in 1421. In any case, while I’m waiting for that very unlikely death toll, I might as well do my bit in the service of the empire.” “Is there any Society there?” Grandmother could say a capital letter so distinctly that you heard it. Society meant people who were rich or influential or, preferably, both. Although they shouldn’t be richer and more influential than her. “Well, there’s the bishop—jolly decent chap, apparently. Goes around the place in a canoe and speaks the lingo like a native. Doesn’t wear shoes. Then there’s McRather; he runs the dockyard. Teaching the native lads to play cricket. As a matter of fact I’m to take some more bats with me. And of course there will often be a ship in, so as governor I’ll have to entertain the officers.” “Sun-struck madmen, naked savages—” “They wear pads, actually.” “What? What? What are you talking about?” Another thing about Grandmother was her belief that a conversation consisted of someone else listening to her talking, so even mild interruptions seemed to her to be some strange, puzzling inversion of the natural order of things, like pigs flying. It baffled her. “Pads,” said Daphne’s father helpfully, “and protective thingummies. McRather says they’ve confused hitting the wicket with hitting the batsman.” “Very well then, sunstruck madmen, seminaked savages, and the Royal Navy. And you really think I will allow my granddaughter to face these perils?” “The Royal Navy isn’t very perilous.” “Supposing she marries a sailor!” “Like Auntie Pathenope did?” Daphne could imagine her father’s faint smile, which always made his mother angry, but then, so did practically everything else. “He was a rear admiral!” her grandmother snapped. “That’s not the same thing at all!” “Mother, there is no need for this fuss. I have told the king that I will go. Ermintrude will follow in a month or two. It will do us good to be away for a while. This house is too cold and too big.” “Nevertheless, I forbid—” “It is also too lonely. It has too many memories! It has too much silenced laughter, too many unheard footsteps, too many soundless echoes since they died!” The words came out like slabs of thunder. “I have made my decision and it will not be unmade, even by you! I have told the palace to send her out to me as soon as I am settled in. Do you understand? I believe my daughter would!! And perhaps at the other end of the world there is a place where the screaming can’t be heard, and I may find it in my heart to grant God absolution!” She heard him walk to the door, while tears met on her chin and soaked her nightgown. And Grandmother said: “And the child’s schooling, may I ask?” How did she manage it? How did she come out with something like that, when the silverware and the chandeliers were still jingling with tinny echoes. Didn’t she remember the coffins? Perhaps she did. Perhaps she thought that her son needed to be anchored to the Earth. It worked, then, because he stopped with his hand on the door handle and said, in a voice that almost didn’t shake, “She will have a tutor in Port Mercia. It will do her good, and broaden her horizons. You see? I have thought about this.” “It won’t bring them back, you know.” That was her grandmother. Daphne put her hand over her mouth in sheer shock. How could the woman be so…stupid? She could imagine her father’s face. She heard him walk to the dining-room door. She waited for the slam, but that wouldn’t be her father. The sharp little click of the door shutting was louder in her head than any slam could be.   At which point Daphne awoke, glad that she had. The broadened horizon was red but the back of the sky was full of stars; she was stiff to her very bones, and she felt that she’d never eaten in her life, ever. And this was very convenient, because the smell coming out of the pot was fishy and spicy and was making her drool. The boy was standing some way off, holding his spear and looking out to sea. She could just see him in the firelight. He’d piled on even more logs. They roared and crackled and exploded with steam, sending a thick cloud of smoke and vapor into the sky. And he was guarding the beach. What from? This was a real island, much bigger than many that she had seen on the voyage. Some had been not much more than a sandbank and a reef. Could anyone be left alive within a hundred miles? What was he frightened of?   Mau stared at the sea. It was so flat that all night he had been able to see the stars in it. Somewhere out there, flying to him from the edge of the world, was tomorrow. He had no idea what shape it would be, but he was wary of it. They had food and fire, but that wasn’t enough. You had to find water and food and shelter and a weapon, people said. And they thought that was all you had to have, because they took for granted the most important thing. You had to have a place where you belonged. He’d never counted the people in the Nation. There were…enough. Enough to feel that you were part of something that had seen many yesterdays and would see many tomorrows, with rules that everyone knew, and that worked because everyone knew them, so much so that they were just part of the way people lived. People would live and die but there would always be a Nation. He’d been on long voyages with his uncles—hundreds of miles—but the Nation had always been there, somewhere over the horizon, waiting for him to come back. He’d been able to feel it. What should he do with the ghost girl? Maybe some other trousermen would come looking for her? And then she’d go, and he’d be alone again. That would be horrible. It wasn’t ghosts that frightened him, it was memories. Perhaps they were the same thing? If a woman followed the same path every day to fill a calabash from the waterfall, did the path remember? When Mau closed his eyes, the island was full of people. Did it remember their footsteps and their faces, and put them in his head? The Grandfathers said he was the Nation, but that couldn’t be true. Many could become one, but one could not become many. He would remember them, though, so that if people came here, he would tell them about the Nation, and it would come alive again. He was glad she was here. Without her, he’d walk into the dark water. He’d heard the whispering as he had dived down after her in that scream of silver bubbles. It would have been so easy to heed the wily words of Locaha and sink into the blackness, but that would have drowned her, too. He was not going to be alone here. That was not going to happen. Just him and the voices of the old dead men, who gave orders all the time and never listened? No. No…there would be two of them to stay here, and he would teach her the language, so they would both remember, so that when people came, they could say: Once there were many people living here, and then the wave came. He heard her stir and knew she was watching him. He knew one other thing, too—the soup smelled good, and he probably wouldn’t have made it just for himself. It was whitefish off the reef and a handful of shellfish and ginger from the Women’s Place and taro chopped up fine to give it all some body. He used a couple of twigs to drag the pot out of the embers and gave the girl a big half shell to use as a spoon. And it was…funny, mostly because they both had to blow on the soup to get it cool, and she seemed very surprised that he spat out fish bones into the fire while she very carefully coughed them into a piece of frilly cloth that was very nearly stiff with salt and sand. One of them started giggling, or maybe it was both of them at the same time, and then he was laughing so much, he couldn’t spit the next bone at all and, instead, coughed it out into his hand with the same little noise that she made, which was “uh-pur,” which made her nearly choke. But she managed to stop laughing long enough to try to spit out a bone, which she couldn’t get the hang of at all. They didn’t know why these things were funny. Sometimes you laugh because you’ve got no more room for crying. Sometimes you laugh because table manners on a beach are funny. And sometimes you laugh because you’re alive, when you really shouldn’t be. And then they lay back looking up at the sky, where the star of Air sparkled yellow-white in the east and Imo’s Campfire was a sharp red overhead, and sleep hit them like a wave.   Mau opened his eyes. The world was full of birdsong. It was everywhere, and every kind of song, from the grandfather birds honking up last night’s leftovers to—from the direction of the low forest—something that really should not count as birdsong at all, because it went: “Polly wants a fig, you Bible-thumping ol’ fool! Waark! Show us yer drawers!” He sat up. The girl had gone, but her strange toeless prints led toward the low forest. Mau looked into the clay pot. There had been hardly anything left by the time the shells had scraped it out, but while they had been sleeping something small had licked it clean. He could try clearing some more of the debris off the fields today. There could be more crops to— REPLACE THE GOD ANCHORS! SAY THE CHANTS! Oh, well…up until now it had been a good day, in a horrible kind of way. The god anchors…well, they were things. If you asked about them, you’d be told you were too young to understand. All that Mau knew was that they kept the gods from floating away into the sky. Of course, the gods were in the sky in any case, but asking about that was a silly question. Gods could be anywhere they wanted. But somehow, for reasons that were perfectly clear, or at least perfectly clear to the priests, the gods stayed near the god anchors and brought good luck to the people. So which god brought the great wave, and how lucky was that? There had been a great wave before, everyone said. It turned up in stories of the Time When Things Were Otherwise and the Moon Was Different. Old men said it was because people had been bad, but old men always said that kind of thing. Waves happened, people died, and the gods did not care. Why had Imo, who had made everything and was everything—? Would He have made useless gods? There it was, out of the darkness inside, another thought that he wouldn’t even have known how to think a few days ago, and so dangerous he wanted to get it out of his head as soon as possible. What did he have to do to the god anchors? But the Grandfathers didn’t answer questions. There were little mud or wood god stones all over the island. People placed them for all sorts of reasons, from watching over a sick child to making sure a crop didn’t spoil. And since it was seriously bad luck to move a god stone, no one did. They were left to fall apart naturally. He’d seen them so often that he didn’t look at them anymore. The wave must have moved hundreds of them, and washed them away. How could he put them back? He looked up and down the beach. Most of the branches and broken trees had gone now, and for the first time he saw what wasn’t there. There had been three special god stones in the village—the god anchors. It was hard, now, to remember where they had been, and they certainly weren’t there now. Those anchors were big cubes of white stone, almost too heavy for a man to lift, but the wave had even snapped the house posts and thrown lumps of coral the size of a man across the lagoon. It wouldn’t have worried about some stone blocks, no matter what they anchored. He walked along the beach, hoping to see signs leading him to one almost buried in the sand. He didn’t. But he could see a god stone on the floor of the lagoon, now that the water had cleared a bit. He dived in to fetch it, but it was so heavy that bringing it out needed several tries. The lagoon had been scoured by the wave and shelved quite deeply at the west end. He had to carry the stone along the bed, sometimes leaving it behind and coming up to fill his lungs with air, until he found a place shallow enough to bring it out. And of course it weighed more out of the water for some magical reason no one understood; he was out of breath by the time he’d rolled it end over end up the beach. He remembered this one. It had been next to the chief’s house. It was the one with the strange creature carved on it. The creature had four legs, like a hog but much longer, and a head like an elas-gi-nin. People called it the Wind, and gave it fish and beer for the god of Air before they went on a long journey. Birds and pigs and dogs took the fish, and the beer soaked into the sand, but that didn’t matter. It was the spirit of the fish and the spirit of the beer that mattered. That’s what they said. He dived in again. The lagoon was a mess. The wave had scattered house-size bits of the reef everywhere, as well as tearing a new entrance for the sea. But he had seen something white over there. As he got near, he saw how big the new gap was. A ten-man canoe could have got through it sideways. Another god stone was right under Mau’s feet. He dived, and a school of small silver fish fled from him. Ah, the Hand, the anchor for the Fire god. This one was smaller, but it was deeper, and farther from the beach. It took him more than an hour to steal it back from the sea, in short slow underwater bounds across the white sand. There was another one he’d glimpsed right in the new gap, where the surf swirled dangerously. But that would be Water, and right now he felt that Water had taken too many sacrifices lately. Water could wait. GATHER THE STONES AND GIVE HUMBLE THANKS OR YOU WILL BRING BAD LUCK ON THE NATION! said the Grandfathers in his head. How did they get into his mind? How did they know things? And why didn’t they understand? The Nation had been strong. There were bigger islands, but they were a long way off and weren’t as favored. They were too dry, or the winds were bad, or they didn’t have enough soil, or they were at places where the currents were wrong and the fishing was poor, or they were too close to the Raiders, who never came this far into the islands these days. But the Nation had a mountain, and fresh water all the time. It could grow lots of vegetables, ones that most of the islands couldn’t grow. It had plenty of wild pigs and jungle fowl. It grew maniac roots and had the secret of the beer. It could trade. That was where the jade bead had come from, and the two steel knives, and the three-legged cook pots, and cloth from far away. The Nation was rich and strong, and some said it was because it had the white stone anchors. There was no stone like that anywhere else in the islands. The Nation was blessed, people said. And now a little boy wandered around on it, doing the best he could, always getting things wrong. He tumbled the block called the Hand onto the sand near the fire. You left something on the anchor of the Hand if you wanted success in hunting or war. If you were lucky, it was probably a good idea to give it something else when you got back, too. Right now he gave it his bum. I fished you out of the sea, he thought. The fishes wouldn’t have left you offerings! So excuse me if I offer you my tiredness. He heard the rage of the Grandfathers but tried to ignore it. Give thanks to the gods or you will bring bad luck, he thought. What, right now, would be bad luck? What could the gods do to him that was worse than they had done already? A wave of anger rose like bile, and he felt the darkness in him open up. Had the people called on the gods when the wave broke? Had his family clung to these stones? Did the gods watch them as they tried to reach higher ground? Did the gods laugh? His teeth chattered. He felt cold under the hot sun. But fire filled his head, burning up his thoughts. “Did you hear their screams?” he yelled to the empty sky. “Did you watch them? You gave them to Locaha! I will not thank you for my life! You could have saved theirs!” He sat down on the Hand, trembling with anger and apprehension. There was no reply. He looked up into the sky. There were no storm clouds, and it didn’t look as if it was about to rain snakes. He glanced at the blue bead on his wrist. It was supposed to work for only a day. Could a demon have crept in while he’d slept? Surely only a demon could have thought those thoughts! But they were right. Or maybe I have no soul at all, maybe the darkness inside is my dead soul…. He sat with his arms around himself, waiting for the trembling to stop. He had to fill his mind with everyday things—that was it. That would keep him safe. He sat and looked along the naked beach and thought: I’d better plant some coconuts—there’s plenty being washed up. And pandanuses, I’ll plant some of those, too, for shade. That didn’t sound demonic. He could see the picture of what it would be in his mind’s eye, overlaid on the horrible mess that the beach had become, and in the middle of the image was a white dot. He blinked, and there was the ghost girl, coming toward him. She was covered in white and carried some kind of round white thing above her head, to keep the sun off, perhaps, or to stop the gods from seeing her. She had a determined expression on her face, and he saw, under the arm that wasn’t holding the sunshade, what looked like a slab of wood. “Good morning,” she said. “Daphne,” said Mau, the only word he was certain of. She looked down meaningfully at the block he was sitting on and gave a little cough. Then her face went bright pink. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I am the one who’s being bad mannered, aren’t I! Look, we need to be able to talk, and I had this idea because you’re always looking at the birds….” The wooden slab…wasn’t. It split open when Daphne pulled at it. Inside, it looked like sheets of papervine, rolled flat instead of being twisted up. There were marks on it. Mau couldn’t read them, but Daphne ran her finger over them and said loudly: “Birds of the Great Southern Pelagic Ocean, by Colonel H. J. Hookwarm, M.R.H, F.R.A. With sixteen hand-colored illustrations by the Author.”   Then she turned over the sheet…. Mau gasped. Her words were gibberish to his ears, but he knew how to speak pictures…. It was a grandfather bird! There, right on the paper! It looked real! In wonderful colors! No one on the island had been able to make colors like that, and they never turned up in trade. It looked as though someone had pulled a grandfather bird out of the air! “How is this done?” he asked. Daphne tapped it with a finger. “Pantaloon bird!” she said. She looked expectantly at Mau, then pointed to her mouth and made a sort of snapping motion with her thumb and forefinger. What does that mean? Mau wondered. “I’m going to eat a crocodile”? “Pant-aa-loooon birddd,” she said very slowly. She thinks I’m a baby, thought Mau. That’s how you talk to babies when you want them to un-der-stand. She wants me to say it! “Pant-aaa-looooon birrrrdd,” he said. She smiled, as if he’d just done a good trick, and pointed to the thickly feathered legs of the bird. “Pantaloons,” she said, and this time she pointed to her frilly trousers, peeking from under her torn skirt. “Pantaloons!” All right, it looks as though “pantaloon bird” means “trouser bird,” Mau told himself. Those frilly legs did look just like the bird’s strange feathered legs. But she’s got the name wrong! He pointed to the picture again and said, in a talking-to-babies voice: “Graaaandfaaather birrrrd!” “Grandfather?” Mau nodded. “Grandfather?” The girl still looked bewildered. Oh. She needed to be shown one. Well, he wasn’t going to roll away the big stone for anyone but… It was quite a performance. Mau stroked an invisible long beard, staggered around leaning on a nonexistent walking stick, muttered angrily while waving a finger in the air, and—he was proud of this bit—tried to chew a tough piece of pork with invisible nonexistent teeth. He’d watched the old men eating, and he made his mouth look like two rats trying to escape from a bag. “Old man?” shouted Daphne. “Oh yes! Very droll! The old man bird! Yes, I see what you mean! They always look so annoyed!” After that, things happened quite fast, with the aid of the sand, a stick, and some pebbles, and a lot of acting. Some things were easy, like canoe, sun, and water. Numbers were not too bad, after a false start (one pebble is, in addition to being a pebble, one). They worked hard. Bird, big bird, small bird, bird flying…Nest! Egg! Fire, cook, eat, good, bad (good was a mime of eating followed by a big smile, bad was Daphne’s unladylike but realistic pantomime of throwing up). They got the hang of here and there, and probably something that did the job of this is or here is. Mau wasn’t too sure of a lot of it, but at least they had the start of…something. Back to the sand. Mau drew a stick figure and said “Man.” “Man,” said Daphne, and took the stick from him. She drew another figure, but the legs were thicker. Mau thought about it. “Pantaloon man?” he tried. “Trouser man,” said Daphne firmly. What does that mean? Mau wondered. Only trousermen are proper men? I don’t wear trousers. Why should I? Imagine trying to swim in them! He took the stick and carefully drew a stick woman, which was like a stick man with a woven papervine skirt and two added circles and two dots. Above the skirt. The stick was snatched out of his hand and, at speed, Daphne hastily drew a new figure. It was a woman, probably, but as well as the skirt there was another skirt thing covering the top of her body, with only the arms and head sticking out. Then she stuck the stick in the sand and crossed her arms defiantly, her face red. Ah, right. This was like the time before his older sister went off to live in the unmarried girls’ hut. Suddenly everything he said and did had been wrong, and he never knew why. His father had just laughed when he told him, and said he’d understand one day, and it was best to keep away. Well, he couldn’t keep away here, so he grabbed the stick and tried, as best he could, to draw a second skirt on the top half of the stick woman in front of him. It wasn’t very good, but Daphne’s look told him he’d done the right thing, whatever it was. But it put a cloud in the sky. It had been fun, playing with the words and pictures, a sort of game that filled his world and kept the visions of dark water away. And now he’d hit a rule he didn’t understand, and the world was back to what it was before. He squatted down on the sand and stared out to sea. Then he looked down at the little blue bead on his wrist. Oh, yes…and he had no soul. His boy soul had vanished with the island, and he’d never get a man soul now. He was the blue hermit crab, hurrying from one shell to another, and the big shell he had thought he could see had been taken away. A squid could snap a crab up in a second, only it wouldn’t be a squid for him, it would be some demon or ghost. It would enter his head and take him over. He started to draw in the sand again, little figures this time, men and—yes—women, women whom he remembered, not covered-up trousermen women, and smaller figures, people of all sizes, filling the sand with life. He drew dogs and canoes and huts and— —he drew the wave. The stick seemed to do it all by itself. It was a wonderful curve, if you didn’t know what it had done. He shifted along a little and drew one stick figure, with a spear, looking out at the flat horizon. “I think all that means sadness,” said the girl behind him. Gently she took the stick out of his hand and drew another figure beside the first one. It was holding a portable roof, and wore pantaloons. Now two figures looked out at the endless ocean. “Sadness,” said Mau. “Saad ness.” He turned the word over on his tongue. “Saaad nesssss.” It was the sound of a wave breaking. It meant you could hear the dark waters in your mind. Then— “Canoe!” said Daphne. Mau looked along the beach, his head still full of sadness. What about canoe? They’d already done canoe, hours ago, hadn’t they? Canoe was sorted out! And then he saw the canoe, a four-man canoe, coming through the reef. Someone was trying to steer it, and not doing a bad job, but the water tumbled and swirled in the new gap, and a canoe like that needed at least two people to guide it. Mau dived into the lagoon. As he surfaced he could see that the lone paddler was already losing control; the gap in the reef was indeed big enough for a four-man canoe to come through it sideways, but any four-man canoe that actually tried anything as stupid as that while the tide was running would soon be overturned. He fought his way through the churning surf, expecting every second to see the thing break up. He surfaced again after a big wave passed over him, and now the paddler was trying to fend the canoe off the ragged edges of the gap. He was an old man. But he wasn’t alone. Mau heard a baby crying somewhere in the bottom of the canoe. Another big surge made the canoe spin, and Mau grabbed at it. It rammed his back against the coral before turning away once more, but he was ready for it when it swung around for a second try at crushing him, and he heaved himself up and into the canoe a moment before it crunched into the reef again. There was someone else lying under a blanket in the rocking canoe. He paid them no attention but grabbed a paddle and dug it into the water. The old man had some sense, at least, and kept the canoe off the rocks while Mau tried to move it toward the beach. Panic wouldn’t help here; you just had to pull it out of the churning mass of water a few inches at a time, with long patient strokes that got easier as you drove it free, until suddenly it was in calmer water and moving quickly. He relaxed a little then, but not too much, because he wasn’t sure he’d have the strength left to move it again if it stopped. He leaped out as the canoe was about to hit the beach, and managed to pull it a little farther up onto the sand. The man almost tumbled out—and tried to lift the other person out from under the blanket. A woman. The old man was a bag of bones, and with far more bones than bag. Mau helped him carry the woman and the baby close to the fire, and laid them on the blanket. At first he thought the woman was dead, but there was a flicker of life around her lips. “She needs water,” croaked the old man, “and the child needs milk! Where are your women? They will know!” Daphne came running up, parasol bobbing. “Oh, the poor things!” she said. Mau took the baby from the woman, who made a weak and pitiful attempt to hang on to it, and handed it to the girl. He heard “Oh, isn’t he lovely—ur, yuck!” behind him as he hurried to the river and came back with a couple of brimming coconut shells of water that still had the taste of ashes. “Where are the other women?” asked the old man as Daphne held the dripping baby at arm’s length and looked around desperately for somewhere to put it. “There’s just this one,” said Mau. “But she’s a trouserman woman! They are not proper human beings!” said the old man. This was news to Mau. “There’s only the two of us here,” he said. The old man looked crestfallen. “But this is the Nation!” he wailed. “An island of stone, beloved of the gods! I trained as a priest here. All the time I paddled I was thinking, the Nation will have survived! And there’s just a boy and a cursed girl from the unbaked people?” “Unbaked?” “Have you been taught nothing? Imo made them first, when He was learning, but He did not leave them long enough in the sun. And you will learn that they are so proud, they cover themselves in the sun. They really are very stupid, too.” They have more colors than we do, Mau thought, but he didn’t say so. “My name is Mau,” he said, because at least that wouldn’t start an argument. “And I must speak to your chief. Run, boy. Tell him my name. He may have heard of Ataba the priest.” There was a sad but hopeful sound to that last sentence, as if the old man thought this was not very likely. “There is no chief, not since the wave. It brought the trouserman girl here, and everyone else it…took away. I did tell you, sir.” “But this is such a big island!” “I don’t think the wave cared.” The baby started to cry. Daphne tried to cuddle it without getting too close, and made embarrassed shushing noises. “Then an older man—” Ataba began. “There isn’t anyone,” said Mau patiently. “There’s just me and the trouserman girl.” He wondered how many times he would have to say this before the old man managed to find the right-shaped space for it in his bald head. “Only you?” said Ataba, looking bewildered. “Believe me, sir, sometimes I don’t believe it either,” Mau said. “I think I’ll wake up and it will all be a dream.” “You had the wonderful white god anchors,” said the old man. “I was brought here to see them when I was a small boy, and that was when I decided I wanted to be a—” “I think I’d better give this little boy back to his mummy,” said Daphne quickly. Mau didn’t understand the words, but the tone of determination translated itself very well. The baby was screaming. “His mother cannot feed him,” said Ataba to Mau. “I found her on a big raft with the child, only yesterday. There was food on it, but she wouldn’t eat and the child takes no nourishment from her. It will die soon.” Mau looked at the little bawling face, and thought: No. Does not happen. He caught the ghost girl’s eye, pointed to the baby, and made eating motions with his mouth. “You eat babies?” said Daphne, stepping back. Mau picked up the tone of horror, and it took a lot of creative miming to get her to understand that the one who was going to be fed was the baby. “What?” said Daphne. “Feed it? What with?” Oh, well, Mau thought, the baby is screaming and I’m in trouble whatever happens. But…does not happen. He waved vaguely at her flat chest, under its slightly grubby white frills. Daphne went bright pink. “What? No! How dare you! You have to…” She hesitated. She wasn’t really sure about this, since everything she knew on the subject of the lumps at the front was based on an overheard, giggly conversation between the housemaids that she had found unbelievable, and a strange lecture from one of her aunts, in which the phrase “when you’re old enough” had turned up a lot and the rest of it sounded unlikely. “You have to be married,” she said firmly. It didn’t matter that he didn’t understand, she felt better for saying it. “Does she know anything? Has she borne children?” said Ataba. “I don’t think so!” “Then there will be no milk. Please fetch another woman, one who has not long had—Oh.” The old man sagged as he remembered. “We have food,” said Mau. “It must be milk,” said the old man flatly. “The baby is too young for anything else.” “Well, at least there can be a hut for the mother, up at the Women’s Place. It’s not too far. I can light a fire there,” said Mau. “You dare to go into a Women’s Place?” The priest looked shocked, and then smiled. “Ah, I see. You are only a boy.” “No, I left my boy soul behind me. I think the wave washed it away.” “It washed away too many things,” said Ataba. “But you have no tattoos, not even the sunset wave. Have you learned the chants? No? No manhood feast? You were not given a man’s soul?” “None of those.” “And the thing with the knife where you—?” “Not that, either,” said Mau quickly. “All I have is this.” He held out his wrist. “The blue jade stone? They’re protection for only a day or so!” “I know.” “Then it could be that behind your eyes is a demon or a vengeful spirit.” Mau thought about this. He agreed with it. “I don’t know what’s behind my eyes,” he said. “All I know is that it is very angry.” “On the other hand, you did save us,” said the old man, smiling at him a little nervously. “That doesn’t sound like any demon I’ve ever heard of. And I hope you gave thanks to the gods for your salvation?” “Gave…thanks?” said Mau. “They may have plans for you,” said the priest cheerfully. “Plans,” said Mau, his voice as cold as the dark current. “Plans? Yes, I see. Someone must be alive to bury the rest, was that it?” He took a step forward, his fists clenched. “We cannot know the reasons for all that happ—” Ataba began, backing away. “I saw their faces! I sent them into the dark water! I tied small stones to little bodies. The wave took everyone I love, and everything I am wants to know why!” “Why did the wave spare you? Why did it spare me? Why did it spare that baby which will die soon enough? Why does it rain? How many stars are in the sky? We cannot know these things! Just be thankful that the gods spared your life!” shouted the old man. “I will not! To thank them for my life means I thank them for the deaths. I want to find reasons. I want to understand the reasons! But I can’t because there are no reasons. Things happen or do not happen, and that is all there is!” The roar of the Grandfathers’ anger in Mau’s head was so loud that he wondered why Ataba didn’t hear it. YOU SCREAM OUT AGAINST THE GODS, BOY. YOU KNOW NOTHING. YOU WILL BRING DOWN THE WORLD. YOU WILL DESTROY THE NATION. ASK FORGIVENESS OF IMO. “I will not! He gave this world to Locaha!” roared Mau. “Let him ask forgiveness of the dead. Let him ask forgiveness of me. But don’t tell me that I am supposed to thank the gods that I’m alive to remember that everyone else died!” Someone was shaking Mau, but it seemed to be happening to another person, a long way off. “Stop this! You’re making the baby cry!” Mau stared at Daphne’s furious face. “Baby, food,” she said insistently. Her meaning was very clear, even if he didn’t understand the actual words. Did she think he was a magician? Women fed babies, everyone knew that! There was no milk on the island. Didn’t she understand? There was no—He stopped, because a bit of his raging brain had just opened up and was showing him pictures. He stared at them, and thought: Could that work? Yes, there it was, the silver thread to a small part of the future. It might work. It had to work. “Baby, food!” Daphne repeated insistently, giving him another shake. He gently pushed her arms out of the way. This needed thinking about, and careful planning. The old man was looking at him as if he were on fire, and he stepped back quickly when Mau picked up his fish spear and strode into the lagoon. At least he tried to make it look like a good manly stride, but inside his mind was full of rage. Were the Grandfathers mad? Was Ataba mad? Did they really think he should thank the gods for his life? If it hadn’t been for the ghost girl, he’d have taken himself to the dark water! Babies and milk was a smaller problem, but it was noisier, and closer to hand. He could see the answer. He could see a little picture of how it would have to work. It depended on many things. But there was a path. If he followed the steps, there should be milk. And it had to be easier to get milk for a baby than to understand the nature of the gods. He stared down into the water, not actually seeing anything other than his thoughts. He’d need more tubers, and maybe some beer, but not too much. First, though, he’d have to catch a fish— And there one was, only a little way away from his feet, white against the white sand so that only its pale shadow gave it away. It floated there like a gift from the gods—No! It was there because he had been so still, as a hunter should be. It was completely unaware of him. He speared the fish, cleaned it, and took it to the priest, who was sitting between the two big god anchors. “You know how to cook fish, sir?” “Are you here to blaspheme against the gods, demon boy?” said Ataba. “No. It would only be blasphemy to say they didn’t exist if they were real,” said Mau, keeping his voice level. “Now, can you cook fish?” By the look of it, Ataba was not going to argue religion when there was fresh food around. “Since before you were born,” said the old man, eyeing the fish greedily. “Then let the ghost girl have some, and please make a gruel for the woman.” “She won’t eat it,” said Ataba flatly. “There was food on her raft. There is something wrong in her head.” Mau looked at the Unknown Woman, who was still by the fire. The ghost girl had brought along more blankets from the Sweet Judy, and at least the woman was sitting up now. Daphne was beside her, holding her hand and talking to her. They are making a Women’s Place, he thought. The language doesn’t matter. “There will be others,” said Ataba behind him. “Lots of people will end up here.” “How do you know?” “The smoke, boy! I saw it from miles away! They will come. We weren’t the only ones. And maybe the Raiders will come, too, from their great land. You will call upon the gods then, oh yes! You will grovel before Imo when the Raiders come.” “After all this? What’s left for them? What have we still got that they would want?” “Skulls. Flesh. Their pleasure in our death. The usual things. Pray to the gods, if you dare, that those cannibals do not come this far.” “Will that help?” said Mau. Ataba shrugged. “What else do we have?” “Then pray to the gods to send milk for the child,” said Mau. “Surely they can do something so simple?” “And what will you do, demon boy?” “Something else!” Mau paused then, and thought: He’s an old man. He came many miles, and he did stop for the woman and her baby. That is important. He let his anger subside again. “I don’t mean to insult you, Ataba,” he said. “Oh, I understand,” said the old man. “We all rage against the gods sometimes.” “Even you?” “Yes. First thing every morning, when my knees go click and my back aches. I curse them then, you can be certain of it. But quietly, you understand. And I say, ‘Why did you make me old?’” “And what do they reply?” “It doesn’t work like that. But as the day wears on and there is maybe some beer, I think I find their answer arising in my mind. I think they tell me: ‘It is because you will prefer it to the alternative.’” He looked at Mau’s puzzled expression. “Not dead, you see?” “I don’t believe that,” said Mau. “I mean, I think you’re just hearing your own thoughts.” “Do you wonder where your thoughts come from?” “I don’t think they come from a demon!” Ataba smiled. “We shall see.” Mau stared at the old man. He had to be proud about this. This was Mau’s island. He had to act like a chief. “There is something I am going to try,” he said stiffly. “This is for my Nation. If I don’t come back, you can stay here. If you stay, there are the huts at the Women’s Place. If I come back, I will fetch you beer, old man.” “There is beer that happens and beer that does not happen,” said the priest. “I like the beer that happens.” Mau smiled. “First there must be the milk that happens,” he said. “Fetch it, demon boy,” said Ataba, “and I’ll believe anything!” CHAPTER 5 The Milk That Happens   MAU HURRIED UP TO the Women’s Place and entered more boldly than he had done before. There was no time to waste. The sun was dropping down the sky, and the ghost of the moon was rising. This had to work. And he’d have to concentrate, and time it right and he probably wouldn’t get another try. First, get some beer. That wasn’t hard. The women made mother-of-beer every day, and he found some fizzing gently to itself on a shelf. It was full of dead flies, but they would be no problem. He did the beer ceremony and sang the Song of the Four Brothers as the beer required, and took down a big bunch of plantains and some whistling yams. They were old and wrinkled, just right for pigs. The Nation had been rich enough to have four three-legged cauldrons, and two of them were up here in the Place. He got a fire going under one and dumped the plantains and the yams in. He added a bit of beer, let it all boil until the roots were soft and floury, and then it was just a matter of pounding it all together into one big beery mess with the butt of his spear. Even so, the shadows were getting longer by the time he continued on toward the forest, with the oozing, beery mash dripping in a woven punk-wood bag under one arm and a small calabash under the other. It was the best one he could find: Someone had been very careful to scrape out as much of the orange flesh as possible and dry the rind with care so that it was light and strong, without any cracks. He left his spear propped up outside the Women’s Place. For a lone man, a spear was no good against an angry hog—a furious boar would bite one in half, or spit itself on the shaft and keep on going, a ball of biting, slashing rage that didn’t know when it was dead. And the sows were worse when they had piglets at heel, so he was probably going to die if the beer didn’t work. At least there was a little piece of luck. There was a fat old sow on the track, piglets all around her, and Mau saw her before she saw him, but only just. He stopped dead. She gave a snort and shifted her big wobbling body, uncertain at the moment whether to charge but ready to do so if he made a wrong move. He took the big ball of mash out of the bag and tossed it toward her. He was running before it hit the forest floor, crashing away like a frightened creature. He stopped after a minute and listened. From some way behind him came some very satisfied grunting. And now for the dirty bit. He moved a lot more quietly now, making a big circle to bring himself back onto the path past where the sow lay. She’d come from the big mucky wallow the pigs had made where a stream crossed the track. They loved it, and it was filthy. It stank of pig, and Mau rolled in it until he did, too. Globs of the slimy stuff slithered off him as he crept back along the track. Well, he certainly didn’t smell human anymore. He probably never would again. The old sow had trampled herself a nest in the undergrowth and was making happy, beery snoring noises, with her family crawling and fighting all over her. Mau dropped to the ground and began to crawl forward. The sow’s eyes were shut. Surely she wouldn’t smell him through all the muck? Well, that was a risk he had to take. Would the piglets, already shoving one another aside to get at the teats, work out what he was? They squealed all the time in any case, but did they have a special squeal that would set the sow on him? He’d find out. Would he even be able to get the milk out? He’d never heard of anyone milking a pig before. Something else to find out. He’d have to learn a lot in a short time. But he’d fight Locaha everywhere he spread his dark wings. “Does not happen,” he whispered, and slid forward into the brawling, squalling mass of pork.   Daphne tugged another log onto the fire, straightened up, and glared at the old man. He might do a bit of work, she thought. Some clothes could only help, too. But all he did was sit by the fire and nod at her occasionally. He’d eaten more than his fair share of the baked fish (she’d measured it with a stick) and she had been the one to mash up some of the fish with her own hands and feed it to the Unknown Woman, who looked a bit better now and had at least eaten a few mouthfuls. She was still clutching her baby, but it wasn’t crying anymore, and that was more worrying than the crying had been…. Something screamed up in the hills, and went on screaming, and then went on screaming louder. The old man creaked to his feet and picked up Mau’s club, which he could barely lift. When he tried to raise it over his shoulder, he went over backward. The scream arrived, followed by the screamer, something that looked human but was dripping green mud and smelled like a swamp on a very hot day. It thrust a warm, heavy gourd toward Daphne, who took it before she could stop herself. Then it shouted “MILK!” and ran on into the dark. There was a splash as it dived into the lagoon. The smell hung in the air for quite a long time. When a faint breeze blew it over the fire, the flames burned blue for a moment.   Mau spent the night much farther along the beach, and went for another swim as soon as it was light. The smell had this about it: He could sit on the bottom of the lagoon and scrub himself with sand and weeds and then swim underwater in any direction and yet, as soon as he surfaced, there the smell was, waiting for him. He caught some fish and left them where people could see them. At the moment they were fast asleep; the mother and her baby were curled up in their blanket, sleeping so peacefully that Mau envied them, and the old man was sleeping with his mouth open and looked as if he was dead, although by the sound of it he wasn’t. The girl had gone back to the Sweet Judy, for some strange trouserman reason. He tried to keep away from the others during the day, but the ghost girl seemed to be watching for him all the time, and he was running out of nonchalant ways to avoid her. In the end she found him in the evening, while he was repairing the field fences with fresh thorns, to keep the pigs out. She didn’t say anything but just sat and watched him. That can be quite annoying when people do it for long enough. A big cloud of silence builds up like a thunderstorm. But Mau was good at silence, and the girl wasn’t. Sooner or later she had to talk or burst. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t understand nearly everything she said. She just had to talk, to fill up the world with words. “My family owns more land than there is on this whole island,” she said. “We have farms, and once a shepherd gave me an orphan lamb to look after. That’s a baby sheep, by the way. I haven’t seen any here, so you probably don’t know what they are. They go maaaa. People say they go baaa, but they don’t. Sheep can’t pronounce their bs, but people still go on saying it because they don’t listen properly. My mother made me a little shepherdess outfit, and I looked so sweet it would make you sick, and the wretched creature used to take every opportunity to butt me in the—to butt me. Of course, all this won’t mean very much to you.” Mau concentrated on weaving the long thorns between the stakes. He’d have to go and get some more from the big thickets on the north slope, he thought. Perhaps I ought to go and get some right now. If I run, perhaps she won’t try to follow me. “Anyway, the thing is that the shepherd showed me how to get a lamb to suck milk off your fingers,” the girl went on relentlessly. “You have to sort of dribble the milk slowly over your hand. Isn’t that funny? I can speak three languages and play the flute and the piano, but it turns out that the most useful thing I’ve ever learned is how to make something small and hungry suck milk off my fingers!” That sounds as though she’s said what she thinks is an important bit, Mau told himself, and so he nodded and smiled. “We also own lots of pigs. I’ve seen them with the little piglets and everything,” she continued. “I’M TALKING ABOUT PIGS. Oink oink, grunt grunt.” Ah, thought Mau, this is about pigs, and milk. Oh, good. Just what I wasn’t hoping for. “Oink?” he said. “Yes, and, you see, I want to get something sorted out. I know you can’t milk a pig like you can a sheep or a cow because they don’t have”—she touched her chest for a moment, and then rapidly put her hands behind her back—“they don’t have uddery parts. There’s just the little…the little…tubes.” She coughed. “THEY CAN’T BE MILKED, UNDERSTAND?” And now she moved her hands up and down, as if she was pulling ropes, while at the same time making squish-squish noises for some reason. She cleared her throat. “Er…so I think the only way you could have got the baby’s milk, excuse me, is to sneak up on some sow with a litter of little ones, which would be very dangerous indeed, and crawl up when she was feeding them—they make such a noise, don’t they?—and, er…” She screwed up her lips and made a sucking sound. Mau groaned. She’d worked it out! “And, er, well, I mean, YUCK!” she said. “And then I thought, Well, all right, yuck, but the baby is happy and has stopped crying, thank goodness, and even his mother is looking better…so, well, I thought, I bet even great heroes of history, you know, with helmets and swords and plumes and everything, I bet they wouldn’t get down in the dirt because a baby was dying of hunger and crawl up to a pig and…I mean, when you think about it, it’s still YUCK, but…in a good way. It’s still yucky, but the reason you did it…it makes it sort of…holy….” At last her voice trailed away. Mau had understood baby. He was also pretty sure about yuck, because her tone of voice practically drew a picture. But that was all. She just sends words up into the sky, he thought. Why is she going on at me? Is she angry? Is she saying I did a bad thing? Well, around about the middle of the night I’m going to have to do it again, because babies need feeding all the time. And it’ll be worse. I’ll have to find another sow! Ha, ghost girl, you weren’t there when she realized something was going on! I’d swear her eyes had shone red! And run? Who’d have thought that something that big could go that fast that quickly! I only outran her because the piglets couldn’t keep up! And soon I’ll have to do it all again, and go on doing it until the woman can feed the baby herself. I must, even though I may have no soul, even though I may be a demon who thinks he’s a boy. Even though I may be an empty thing and in a world of shadows. Because… His thoughts stopped, just there, as if they had run into sand. Mau’s eyes opened wide. Because what? Because “Does not happen”? Because…I must act like a man, or they will think less of me? Yes, and yes, but more than that. I need there to be the old man and the baby and the sick woman and the ghost girl, because without them I would go into the dark water right now. I asked for reasons, and here they are, yelling and smelling and demanding, the last people in the world, and I need them. Without them I would be just a figure on the gray beach, a lost boy, not knowing who I am. But they all know me. I matter to them, and that is who I am. Daphne’s face glistened in the firelight. She’d been crying. All we can do is talk baby talk, Mau thought. So why does she talk all the time? “I set some of the milk to keep cool in the river,” said Daphne, idly drawing on the sand with a finger. “But we will need some more tonight. MORE MILK. Oink!” “Yes,” said Mau. They fell into another of those awkward silences, which the ghost girl ended with: “My father will come, you know. He will come.” Mau recognized this. He looked down at what she had absentmindedly been drawing in the dirt. It was a picture of a stick girl and a stick man, standing side by side on a big canoe, which he knew was called a boat. And when he watched her, he thought: She does it, too. She sees the silver line into the future, and tries to pull herself toward it. The fire crackled in the distance, sending sparks up toward the red evening sky. There wasn’t much wind today, and the smoke rose to the clouds. “He will come, whatever you think. The Rogation Sunday Islands are much too far away. The wave could never reach them. And if it did, Government House is built of stone and very strong. He is the governor! He could send out a dozen ships to look for me if he wanted! He already has! One will be here in a week!” She was crying again. Mau hadn’t understood the words, but he understood the tears. You’re not sure of the future either. You thought you were, it was so close you could see it in your head, and now you think it’s washed away, so you’re trying to talk it into coming back. He felt her hand touch his. He didn’t know what to do about that but squeezed her fingers gently a couple of times, and pointed at the column of smoke. There couldn’t be many fires burning in the islands now. It was a sign that must show up for miles. “He will come,” he said. Just for a moment, she looked astonished. “You think he will come?” she said. Mau rummaged around in his small collection of phrases. Repetition should do it. “He will come.” “See, I told you he would come,” she said, beaming. “He’ll see the smoke and steer right here! A pillar of fire by night and a pillar of smoke by day, just like Moses.” She jumped up. “But while I’m still here, I’d better go and see to the little boy!” She ran off, happier than he’d ever seen her. And all it had taken was three words. Would her father come to find her in his big boat? Well, he might. The smoke of the fire streamed across the sky. Someone would come. The Raiders, he thought…. They were a story. But every boy had seen the big wooden club in the chief’s hut. It was studded with shark teeth, and Mau hadn’t even been able to lift it the first time. It was a souvenir from the last time the Raiders came as far east as the Nation. After that, they knew better! Every boy tried to lift the trophy club. Every boy listened wide-eyed to the descriptions of the big dark canoes, their prows hung with bloody skulls, their oars rowed by captives who were near skeletons themselves, and tales of how those prisoners were lucky, because when they were too weak to row anymore, they were beheaded just for their skulls. The prisoners who were taken back to the Land of Fires weren’t treated quite so well, even before they got turned into dinner. You got told this in detail. At this point, when you were sitting there with your mouth open or perhaps your fingers over your ears, you were just trying not to wet yourself. But then you were told about Aganu, the chief who fought the leader of the Raiders in single combat, as was their custom, and took the shark-tooth club from his dead hand, and the Raiders had run back to their war canoes. They worshipped Locaha himself, and if He was not going to give them a victory, there was no point in staying, was there? After that you were given another chance to lift the club, and Mau had never heard of a boy failing to lift it this second time. And only now did he wonder: Was it really because the story made boys stronger, or did the old men have some way of making the club heavier? YOU INSULT THE MEMORY OF YOUR ANCESTORS! Aargh. They had been quiet all day. They hadn’t even said anything about him milking the pig. “It’s not insulting,” he said aloud. “I’d use a trick, if it was me. A trick to give them hope. The strong boys wouldn’t need it and the boys who are not so strong would feel stronger. Every one of us dreamed of being the one who’d beat their champion. Unless you believe that you might, you can’t! Weren’t you ever boys?” There was no grumbling roar in his head. I don’t think they think, he thought. Perhaps they used to really think, but the thoughts have worn out from being thought so often? “I will keep the baby alive if I have to milk every pig on this island,” he said, but it was horrible to think that he might have to. No reply. “I thought you might like to know that,” he said, “since he will be taught about you. Probably. He’ll be a new generation. He’ll call this place home. Like I do.” The reply came slowly and sounded grinding and cracked: YOU SHAME THE NATION! HE IS NOT OF OUR BLOOD…. “Do you have any?” snapped Mau out loud. “Do you have any?” a voice echoed. He looked up into the ragged crown of a coconut tree. The gray parrot looked down on him with its mouth open. “Show us yer drawers! Do you have any? Do you have any?” it squawked. That’s what they are, Mau thought. They’re just parrots. Then he stood up, grasped his spear, turned to face the sea, and guarded the Nation from the darkness.   He didn’t sleep, of course, but at some point Mau blinked, and when he opened his eyes again the stars were bright and it was not long before dawn. That was not too much of a problem. A snoring old sow would be easy enough to find. She wouldn’t ask any questions if she found a nice big beery mash in front of her, and when the time came to run, he might even be able to see where he was going. He told himself this to cheer himself up, but you couldn’t get away from it: Milking a pig would be much harder the second time, because you’d have to forget how horrible it had been the first time. In the dark the surf shone where it broke over the reef, and it was time to go through it all again. He’d rather have been going into battle. The Grandfathers certainly thought he should. They’d had time to pull some pig thoughts together. IS THIS THE WAY OF THE WARRIOR? they growled. DOES THE WARRIOR ROLL IN THE MUCK WITH HOGS? YOU SHAME US! Mau thought, as loudly as he could: This warrior is fighting Death. The baby was already whimpering. The young woman gave Mau a sad little smile when he took the empty calabash and washed it out. She never said anything even now. Once again, he didn’t bother to take the spear. It’d only slow him down. The old man was sitting on the slopes above the beach, staring up at the fading night. He nodded at Mau. “Going milking again, demon boy?” he said, and grinned. He had two teeth. “Want to try it, sir? You’ve got the mouth for it!” “Ha! But not the legs! I did my bit, though. Last night I begged the gods to let you succeed!” “Well, have a rest tonight,” said Mau, “and I’ll go and lie in the muck without a prayer. And tomorrow I’ll get some sleep and you can pray to the gods to make it rain milk. I think you will find lying in the muck is more reliable.” “Are you trying to be smart, boy?” “Trying not to be dumb, sir.” “Games with words, boy, games with words. The gods are in everything we do. Who knows? Perhaps they see a use for your sorrowful blasphemy. You mentioned beer yesterday…,” he added hopefully. Mau smiled. “Do you know how to make beer?” he said. “No,” said Ataba. “I have always seen it as my duty to do the drinking part. Making beer is women’s business. The trouserman girl does not know how to make beer, no matter how much I shout at her.” “I’ll need all that is left,” said Mau firmly. “Oh, dear, are you sure?” said Ataba, his face falling. “I’m not going to try to suck milk out of a sober pig, sir.” “Ah yes,” said Ataba sadly. “Well, I shall pray…and for the milk, also.” It was time to go. Mau realized that he had just been putting things off. He should have been listening to himself; if you didn’t believe in prayer, then you had to believe in hard work. There was just enough time to make a dash and find a sow before they woke up. But the old man was still staring at the sky. “What are you looking for?” asked Mau. “Omens, portents, messages from the gods, demon boy.” Mau looked up. Only the star of Fire was visible this close to dawn. “Have you seen any?” he asked. “No, but it would be terrible to miss one, wouldn’t it?” said Ataba. “Was there one before the wave? Was there a message in the sky?” “Quite possibly, but we were not good enough to know what it meant.” “We would have, if they had shouted a warning. We’d have understood that! Why didn’t they just shout?” “HELLO!” It was so loud it seemed to echo off the mountain. Mau felt the shock down his body, and then his brain cut in with: It came from the sea! There’s a light on the water! And it’s not Raiders, because they wouldn’t shout “Hello!” But the old man was on his feet, mouth open in a horrible grin. “Aha, you believed!” he crowed, waving a skinny finger at Mau. “Oh yes you did, just for a second! And you were fearful, and rightly so!” “There’s a canoe with a lobster-claw sail!” said Mau, trying to ignore him. “They’re coming around the point! Look, they even have a torch burning!” But Ataba hadn’t finished gloating. “For just one moment you—” “I don’t care! Come on! There’s more people!”   The canoe was coming through the new gap in the reef. Mau made out two figures, still shadowy against the rising light, lowering the sail. The tide was right and the people knew what they were doing, because the craft slid easily into the lagoon, as if it were steering itself. It nudged the beach gently, and a young man jumped down and ran toward Mau. “Are there women here?” he said. “Please, my brother’s wife is going to have a baby!” “We have one woman, but she is sick.” “Can she sing the calling song?” Mau glanced at the Unknown Woman. He’d never heard a word from her, and he wasn’t at all sure she was right in the head. “I doubt it,” he said. The man sagged. He was young, only a few years older than Mau. “We were taking Cahle to the Women’s Place on the Overshoal Islands when the wave hit,” he said. “They’re gone. So many places have…gone. And we saw your smoke. Please, where is your chief?” “I’m here,” said Mau firmly. “Take her up to the Women’s Place. Ataba here will show you the way.” The old priest sniffed and scowled but didn’t argue. The young man stared at Mau. “You are the chief? But you are just a boy!” “Not just. Not even. Not only. Who knows?” said Mau. “The wave came. These are new days. Who knows what we are? We survived, that’s all.” He paused, and thought: And we become what we have to be…. “There is a girl who can help you. I will send her up to the Women’s Place,” he said. “Thank you. It is going to be very soon! My name is Pilu. My brother is Milo.” “You mean the ghost girl?” hissed Ataba in Mau’s ear as the boy ran back down the beach. “That’s not right! She doesn’t know the birthing customs!” “Do you?” asked Mau. “Can you help her?” Ataba backed away as if he’d been burned. “Me? No!” “Then stay out of the way. Look, she will know what to do. Women always do,” said Mau, trying to sound certain. Besides, it was true, wasn’t it? Boys had to live on the island and build a canoe before they were officially men, but with girls it just happened somehow. Then they magically knew things, like how to hold babies the right way up and how to go “Ooozeewididwidwden?” without the baby screaming until its little face went blue. “Besides, she’s not a man, she can talk, and she’s alive,” he finished. “Well, I suppose, in the circumstances—” Ataba conceded. Mau turned to look at the two brothers, who were helping a very pregnant woman onto the beach. “Show them the way. I’ll be quick!” he said, and ran off. Are trousermen women the same as real women? he wondered as he ran. She got very angry when I drew that picture! Do they ever take their clothes off? Oh, please, please don’t let her say no! And his next thought, as he ran into the low forest, which was alive with birdsong, was: Who did I just say “please” to?   Daphne lay in the dark with a towel around her head. It was stuffy in the wreck, and damp and smelly. But you had to maintain standards. Her grandmother had been very keen on Maintaining Standards. She positively looked for Standards to Maintain, and if she didn’t find any, she made some up and Maintained them. Sleeping in the captain’s hammock probably wasn’t Maintaining Standards, but her mattress was damp and sticky with salt. Everything was damp. Nothing dried properly down here, and of course she couldn’t hang her washing out up above the beach, in case men saw her underthings, which would definitely not Maintain any Standards at all. The hammock swung gently back and forth. It was very uncomfortable, but it had the big advantage that the little red crabs couldn’t get onto it. She knew they would be scuttling around on the floor again, getting into everything, but at least with the towel around her head she couldn’t hear the little scrittle scrittle noise they made as they ran about. Unfortunately, it didn’t cut out what, back home, would have been called the dawn chorus, but that just wasn’t the right word for the explosion of noise that was happening outside. It was like a war with whistles; everything with a feather on it went crazy. And the wretched pantaloon birds’ suppers also came up as the sun rose (she could hear them pattering on the deck above her) and, by the sound of it, Captain Roberts’s parrot still hadn’t run out of swear words. Some of them were foreign, which made it worse. But she could still tell it was swearing. She just could. Sleep came and went in patches, but in every fuzzy half-awake dream the boy moved. When she had been younger, she’d been given a book full of patriotic pictures about the Empire, and one had stuck in her mind because it was called “the Nobbly Savage.” She hadn’t understood why the boy with the spear and the skin as golden-brown as freshly poured bronze was called nobbly, since he looked as smooth as cream, and it wasn’t until years later that she realized how you were supposed to pronounce the word that was spelled noble. Mau looked like him, but the boy in the picture had been smiling, and Mau didn’t smile, and he moved like something trapped in a cage. She was sorry now that she had shot at him. Her memory swirled in the ripples of her sleepy brain. She remembered him on that first dreadful day. He’d walked around as though he were some kind of engine, and hadn’t heard her, hadn’t even seen her. He was carrying the bodies of dead people and his eyes were looking into another world. Sometimes she thought they still were. He seemed angry all the time, in the way that Grandmother got angry when she found out that Standards were not being Maintained. She groaned as there was a pattering overhead. Another pantaloon bird had thrown up the remains of last night’s dinner, vomiting little bones all over the deck. Time to get up. She unwrapped the towel from her head and sat up. Mau was standing by the bed, watching her. How’d he gotten in? How had he walked across the deck without treading on a crab? She would have heard! Why was he staring like that? Why, oh why, hadn’t she worn her one clean nightshirt? “How dare you walk in like—?” she began. “Woman baby,” said Mau urgently. He had only just arrived, and had been wondering how to wake her up. “What?” “Baby come!” “What’s wrong with it now? Did you get the milk?” Mau tried to think. What was that word she used to mean one thing after another thing. Oh yes… “Woman and baby!” he said. “What about them?” He could see that it hadn’t worked, either. Then an idea struck him. He held his arms out, as if there was a huge pumpkin in front of him. “Woman, baby.” Then he folded his arms and rocked them. The ghost girl stared at him. If Imo made the world, Mau thought, why can’t we understand one another? This is impossible, Daphne thought. Is it about that poor woman? But she can’t possibly be having another baby! Or maybe he means…? “People come island?” “Yes!” shouted Mau, relieved. “A woman?” Mau did the pumpkin act again. “Yes!” “And she’s…enceinte?” It meant pregnant, but her grandmother said a lady would never use that word in polite company. Mau, who was certainly not what her grandmother would have thought of as polite company, looked blank. Blushing furiously, Daphne did her own version of the pumpkin act. “Uh, like this?” “Yes!” “Well, that’s nice,” said Daphne, as steel terror rose up inside her. “I hope she’s very happy. Now I’ve really got to do some washing—” “Women’s Place, you come,” said Mau. Daphne shook her head. “No! It’s nothing to do with me, is it? I don’t know anything about…babies being born!” Which wasn’t true, but she wished, oh how she wished it was true. If she closed her eyes, she could still hear…no! “I’m not coming! You can’t make me,” she said, pulling back. He gripped her arm, softly but firmly. “Baby. You come,” he said, his voice as firm as the grip. “You didn’t see the little coffin next to the big one!” she screamed. “You don’t know what that was like!” And it came to her like a blow. He does. I watched him bury all those people in the sea. He knows. How can I refuse? She let herself relax. She wasn’t nine years old anymore, sitting at the top of the stairs cowering and listening and getting out of the way quickly when the doctor came thundering up the stairs with his big black bag. And the worst of it all, if you could find the highest wave in a sea of worsts, was that she hadn’t been able to do anything. “Poor Captain Roberts had a medical book in his sea chest,” she said, “and a box of drugs and things. I’ll go and fetch them, shall I?”   The brothers were waiting at the narrow entrance to the Women’s Place when Mau arrived with Daphne, and that was when the world changed yet again. It changed when the older brother said: “This is a trouserman girl!” “Yes, the wave brought her,” said Mau. And then the younger brother said something in what sounded like trouserman, and Daphne almost dropped the box she was carrying, and spoke quickly to him in the same language. “What did you say to her?” said Mau. “What did she say to you?” “I said: ‘Hello, lovely lady’—” the young man began. “Who cares what anyone said to anybody? She’s a woman! Now get me in there!” That was Cahle, the mother-to-be, hanging heavily between her husband and her brother-in-law, and very big and very angry. The brothers looked up at the rocky entrance. “Er…” the husband began. Ah, fear of the safety of the wingo, thought Mau. “I’ll help her in,” he said quickly. “I’m not a man. I can go in.” “Do you really have no soul?” said the younger brother. “Only, the priest said you had no soul….” Mau looked around for Ataba, but the old man suddenly had business elsewhere. “I don’t know. What does one look like?” he said. He put his arm around the woman and, with a worried Daphne supporting her on the other side, they headed into the Place. “Sing the baby a good song to welcome it, pretty lady,” shouted Pilu after them. Then he said to his brother: “Do you trust him?” “He is young and he has no tattoos,” said Milo. “But he seems…older. And maybe he has no soul!” “Well, I’ve never seen mine. Have you seen yours? And the trouserman girl in white…you remember the praying ladies in white we saw that time when we helped carry Bos’n Higgs to that big house for makin’ people better and how they sewed up the gash in his leg so neat? She is like them, you bet. She knows all about medicine, for sure.” CHAPTER 6 A Star Is Born   DAPHNE FLIPPED DESPAIRINGLY THROUGH the medical book, which had been published in 1770, before people had learned to spell properly. It was stained and falling apart like a very crumbly pack of cards. It had crude woodcut diagrams like “How to Saw a Leg Off”—aargh aargh aargh—and “How to Set Bones”—yuck—and cutaway diagrams of—oh, no—aargh aargh aargh! The book’s title was The Mariners’ Medical Companion, and it was for people whose medicine cabinet was a bottle of castor oil, whose operating table was a bench sliding up and down a heaving deck, and whose tools were a saw, a hammer, and a bucket of hot tar and a piece of string. There wasn’t much in there about childbirth, and what there was—she turned the page—aargh! An illustration that she really did not want to see; it was for those times when things were so bad that not even a surgeon could make them worse. The mother-to-be was lying on a woven bed in one of the huts, groaning, and Daphne wasn’t sure if this was good or bad. But she was absolutely certain that Mau shouldn’t be watching her, boy or not. This was called the Women’s Place, and it didn’t get more womanly than it was about to be. She pointed at the door. Mau looked astonished. “Shoo, out! I mean it! I don’t care if you’re human or a ghost or a demon or whatever you are, but you aren’t a female one! There’s got to be some rules! That’s it, out! And no listening at the keyh—piece of string,” she added, pulling the grass curtains that did, very badly, the job of a door. She felt better for all that. A good shouting at somebody always makes you feel better and in control, especially if you aren’t. Then she sat down by the mat again. The woman grabbed her arm and rattled out a question. “Er…I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” Daphne said, and the woman spoke again, gripping her arm so tightly that the skin went white. “…I don’t know what to do…. Oh, no, don’t let it go wrong….” The little coffin, so small on top of the big one. She’d never forget it. She’d wanted to look inside, but they wouldn’t let her, and they wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t let her explain. Men came around to sit with her father, so the house was full of people all night, and there wasn’t a new baby brother or sister, and that wasn’t all that had gone from her world. So she’d sat there on the top landing all night, next to the coffins, wanting to do something and not daring to do it, and feeling so sorry for the poor little dead boy crying, all alone. The woman arched her body and yelled something. Hold on, there had to be a song, yes? That’s what they said. A song to welcome the baby. What song? How would she know? Maybe it wouldn’t matter what song it was, so long as it was a welcoming song, a good song for the child’s spirit to hear, so that it would hurry up to be born. Yes, that sounded like a good idea, but why did she have, just for the moment, the certainty that it was supposed to be a good one? And here came a song, so old in her mind that she could not remember not knowing it, a song her mother sang to her, in the days when she still had a mother. She leaned down, cleared her throat carefully, and sang: “Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are—” The woman stared at her, seemed puzzled for a moment, and then relaxed. “Up above the world so high, Like a diamond in the sky—” sang Daphne’s lips, while her brain thought: She’s got a lot of milk, she could easily feed two babies, so I should get them to bring the other woman and her child up here. And this thought was followed by: Did I just think that? But I don’t even know how babies are born! I hope there’s no blood; I hate the sight of blood— “When the blazing sun is gone, When he nothing shines upon, Then you show your little light, Twinkle, twinkle, all the night. Then the traveler in the dark Thanks you for your tiny spark…”   And now something was happening. She carefully pulled aside the woman’s skirt. Oh, so that’s how. My goodness. I don’t know what to do! And here came another thought, as if it had been lying in wait: This is what you do….   The men were waiting outside the gateway to the Place, feeling unnecessary and surplus to requirements, which is exactly the appropriate feeling in the circumstances. At least Mau had time to learn their names. Milota-dan (big, the oldest, who was head and shoulders taller than anyone Mau had ever seen) and Pilu-si (small, always rushing, and hardly ever not smiling). He found out that Pilu did all the talking: “We went on a trouserman boat for six months once, all the way to a big place called Port Mercia. Good fun! We saw huge houses made of stone, and they had meat called beef and we learned trousermen talk, and when they dropped us off back home they gave us big steel knives and needles and a three-legged pot—” “Hush,” said Milo, raising a hand. “She’s singing! In trouserman! Come on, Pilu, you’re the best at this!” Mau leaned forward. “What’s it about?” “Look, our job was to pull on ropes and carry things,” Pilu complained. “Not work out songs!” “But you said you could speak trouserman!” Mau insisted. “To get by, yes! But this is very complicated! Um…” “This is important, brother!” said Milo. “This is the first thing my son will hear!” “Quiet! I think it’s about…stars,” said Pilu, bent in concentration. “Stars is good,” said Milo, looking around approvingly. “She’s saying the baby—” “He,” said Milo firmly. “He will be a boy.” “Er, yes, certainly. He will be, yes, like a star, guiding people in the dark. He will twinkle, but I don’t know what that means….” They looked up at the dawn sky. The last of the stars looked back, but twinkled in the wrong language. “He will guide people?” said Pilu. “How does she know that? This is a powerful song!” “I think she’s making it up!” Ataba snapped. “Oh?” said Milo, turning on him. “Where did you come from? Do you think my son won’t be a great leader?” “Well, no, but I—” “Hold on, hold on,” said Pilu. “I think…he will seek to know what the stars mean, I’m pretty sure of that. And—look, I’m having to work hard on this, you know—because of this wondering, people won’t…be in the dark,” he finished quickly, and then added, “That was really hard to do, you know! My head aches! This is priest stuff!” “Quiet,” said Mau. “I just heard something….” They fell silent, and the baby cried again. “My son!” said Milo as the others cheered. “And he will be a great warrior!” “Er, I’m not sure it meant—” Pilu began. “A great man, anyway,” said Milo, waving a hand. “They say the birth song can be a prophecy, for sure. That type of language at this time…it’s telling us what will be, right enough.” “Do the trousermen have gods?” asked Mau. “Sometimes. When they remember—Hey, here she comes!” The outline of the ghost girl appeared in the stone entrance to the place. “Mr. Pilu, tell your brother he is the father of a little boy and his wife is well and sleeping.” That news was passed on with a whoop, which is easy to translate. “And he be called Twinkle?” Milo suggested, in broken English. “No! I mean, no, don’t. Not Twinkle,” said the ghost girl quickly. “That would be wrong. Very, very wrong. Forget about Twinkle. Twinkle, NO!” “Guiding Star?” said Mau, and that met with general approval. “That would be very auspicious,” said Ataba. He added, “Is there going to be beer, by any chance?” The choice was also translated for the ghost girl, who indicated that any name that wasn’t Twinkle was bound to be good. Then she asked—no, commanded—that the other young woman and her baby be brought up and all sorts of things carried to the Place from the wreck of the Sweet Judy. The men jumped to it. There was a purpose.   …And now it was two weeks later, and a lot had happened. The most important thing was that time had passed, pouring thousands of soothing seconds across the island. People need time to deal with the now before it runs away and becomes the then. And what they need most of all is nothing much happening. And this is me, seeing all that horizon, Daphne thought, looking at the wash of blue that stretched all the way to the end of the world. My goodness, Father was right. If my horizon was any broader it would have to be folded in half. It’s a funny saying, “broaden your horizons.” I mean, there’s just the horizon, which moves away from you, so you never actually catch up with it. You only get to where it’s been. She’d watched the sea all around the world, and it had always looked pretty much the same. Or maybe it was the other way around; maybe you moved, you changed. She couldn’t believe that back in ancient history, she’d given the poor boy scones that tasted like rotting wood and slightly like dead lobster! She’d fussed about napkins! And she’d tried to shoot him in the chest with poor Captain Roberts’s ancient pistol, and in any book of etiquette that was a wrong move. But then, was that her back there? Or was this her, right here, in the sheltered garden that was the Women’s Place, watching the Unknown Woman sitting by the pool but holding her little son tightly, like a little girl holds a favorite dolly, and wondering if she shouldn’t take the child again, just to give it some time to breathe. It seemed to Daphne that the men thought all women spoke the same language. That had seemed silly and a bit annoying, but she had to admit that in the Place, right now, the language was Baby. It was the common language. Probably everyone makes the same sort of cooing noises to babies, everywhere in the world, she thought. We kind of understand it’s the right thing to do. Probably no one thinks that the thing to do is to lean over it and hit a tin tray with a hammer. And suddenly, that was very interesting. Daphne found herself watching the two babies closely, in between the chores. When they didn’t want feeding, they turned their heads away, but if they were hungry, their little heads bobbed forward. It’s like shaking your head for no and nodding it for yes. Is this where it comes from? Is it the same everywhere? How can I find out? She made a note to write this down. But she was really worried about the mother of the baby whom, in the privacy of her head, Daphne called the Pig Boy. The woman was sitting up now, and sometimes walked around, and smiled when you gave her food, but there was something missing. She didn’t play with her baby as much as Cahle, either. She let Cahle feed it, because there must have been some lamp still burning in her brain that knew it was the only way, but afterward she’d grab it and scuttle off to the corner of a hut, like a cat with a kitten. Cahle was already bustling round the place, always with her baby under her arm, or handed to Daphne if she needed to use both hands. She was a bit puzzled about Daphne, as if she wasn’t quite sure what the girl was but was going to be respectful anyway, just in case. They tended to smile at each other in a slightly wary “we’re getting on fine, I hope” kind of way when their eyes met, but sometimes, when Cahle caught Daphne’s attention, she made a little motion toward the other woman and tapped her own head sadly. That didn’t need a translation. Every day one of the men brought some fish up, and Cahle showed Daphne some of the plants in the Place. They were mostly roots, but there were also some spicy plants, including a pepper that made Daphne go and lie with her mouth in the stream for three minutes, although she felt very good afterward. Some of the plants were medicines, as far as she could tell. Cahle was good at pantomime. Daphne still wasn’t sure whether the little brown nuts on the tree with the red leaves made you sick or stopped you from being sick, but she tried to remember everything anyway. She was always superstitious about remembering useful things she had been told, at least outside lessons. You would be bound to need it one day. It was a test the world did to make sure you were paying attention. She tried to pay attention when Cahle showed her cookery stuff; the woman seemed to think it was very important, and Daphne tried hard to hide the fact that she’d never cooked anything in her life. She’d learned how to make some kind of drink, too, that the woman was…emphatic about. It smelled like the Demon Drink, which was the cause of Ruin. Daphne knew this because of what happened when Biggleswick the butler broke into her father’s study one night and got Rascally Drunk on whiskey and woke up the whole house with his singing. Grandmother had sacked him on the spot and refused to relent even when Daphne’s father said that Biggleswick’s mother had died that day. The footmen pulled him out of the house and carried him to the stables and left him crying in the straw with the horses trying to lick the tears off his face, for the salt. What upset Daphne, who had quite liked Biggleswick, especially the way he walked with his feet turned out so that he looked as if he might split in two at any moment, was that he lost his job because of her. Grandmother had stood at the top of the stairs like some ancient stone goddess, pointed at Daphne (who had been watching with interest from the upper landing), and screamed at her father: “Will you stand there doing nothing when your only child is exposed to such Lewdness?” And that had been it for the butler. Daphne had been sorry to see him go, because he was quite kind and she’d very nearly mastered his waddle. Later she’d heard via the dumbwaiter that he’d met a Bad End. And all because of the Demon Drink. On the other hand, she’d always wondered what the Demon Drink was like, having heard her grandmother talk about it so much. This particular Demon Drink was made very methodically out of a red root that grew in one corner of the Place; Cahle peeled it very carefully with a knife, and then washed her hands just as carefully in the pool, at the place where it overflowed into the little stream again. The root was mashed with a stone and a handful of small leaves was added. Cahle stared at the bowl for a moment and then cautiously added another leaf. Water was poured in from a gourd, taking care not to splash, and the bowl was left on a shelf for a day. By next morning the bowl was full of a churning, hissing, evil-looking yellow foam. Daphne went to climb up to see if it smelled as bad as it looked, and Cahle gently but firmly pulled her back, shaking her head vigorously. “Don’t drink?” Daphne had asked. “No drink!” Cahle took the bowl down and set it down in the middle of the hut. Then she spat in the bowl. A plume of what looked like steam went up to the thatched roof of the hut, and the churning mixture in the bowl hissed even more. This, thought Daphne, watching in a kind of fascinated shock, is not at all like Grandmother’s sherry afternoons. At that point, Cahle began to sing. It was a jolly little song, with the kind of tune that sticks in your mind even when you don’t know the words. It bounced along and you just knew you wouldn’t be able to get it out of your head. Even with a chisel. She was singing to the beer. And the beer was listening. It was calming down, like an excited dog being reassured by its master’s voice. The hissing began to grow less, the bubbles settled, and what had looked like a foul mess was actually becoming transparent. Still Cahle sang, beating time with both hands. But they weren’t just beating time; they made shapes in the air, following the music. The beer-calling song had lots of little verses with the same chorus between each one, so Daphne started to sing along and wave her hands in time. She got the feeling that the woman was pleased about this because she leaned over, still singing, and moved Daphne’s fingers into the right positions. Strange, oily ripples passed across the stuff in the bowl, which got a bit clearer with each verse. Cahle watched it closely, still singing…and then stopped. The bowl was full of liquid diamond. The beer sparkled like the sea. A small wave rolled across it. Cahle dipped a shell into it and offered it to Daphne with an encouraging nod. Well, refusing would certainly be what Grandmother called a Faux Pas. There was such a thing as good manners, after all. It might cause offense, and that would never do. She tried it. It was like drinking silver, and it made her eyes water. “For man! Husbun!” said Cahle, grinning. “For when too much husbun!” She lay on her back and made very loud snoring noises. Even the Unknown Woman smiled. Daphne thought: I’m learning things. I hope I find out soon what they are. The next day she worked it out. In a language made up of a few words and a lot of smiles, nods, and gestures—some very embarrassing gestures, which Daphne knew she should be shocked about, except that here on this sunny island there was just no point—she, Cahle, was teaching her the things she needed to know so that she would be able to get a husband. She knew she shouldn’t laugh, and tried not to, but there was no way to explain to the woman that her way to get a husband was to have a very rich father who was governor of a lot of islands. Besides, she was not at all certain that she even wanted a husband, since they seemed a lot of work, and as for children, after seeing the birth of Guiding Star, she was certain that if she ever wanted children she’d buy some ready-made. But this wasn’t something she could tell two new mothers, even if she knew how, so she tried to understand what Cahle was trying to tell her, and she even let the nameless woman do her hair, which gave the poor woman some comfort and, Daphne thought, looked pretty good but far too grown-up for thirteen. Her grandmother would not approve, in italics, although seeing to the other side of the world was probably too much even for her beady eyes. At any moment her father’s ship would come into view, of course. That was a certainty. It was taking some time because there were so many islands to search. And supposing he didn’t come? She pushed that thought out of her mind. It pushed back. She could see thoughts that were waiting on the other side of it, waiting to drag her down if she dared to think them. More people had arrived on the day after Guiding Star had been born, a small boy called Oto-I and a tiny wizened old lady, both of them parched and hungry. The old lady was about the same size as the boy and had taken over a corner of one of the huts, where she ate everything that was given to her and watched Daphne with small bright eyes. Cahle and the other women treated her with great respect and called her by a long name that Daphne couldn’t pronounce. She called her Mrs. Gurgle because she had the noisiest stomach Daphne had ever heard, and it was a good idea to keep upwind of her at all times. Oto-I, on the other hand, had recovered in the speedy way that children do, and she had sent him off to help Ataba. From here she could see the old man and the boy working on the pig fence, just below her, and if she walked to the edge of the fields, she could see a steadily growing pile of planks, spars, and sailcloth on the beach. Since there was going to be a future, it would need a roof over its head.   The Judy was dying. It was sad, but they were only finishing what the wave had begun. It would take a long time, because a boat is quite hard to take to bits, even when you’ve found the carpenter’s toolbox. But what a treasure it was on an island that, before the wave, owned two knives and four small three-legged cauldrons. Together, Mau and the brothers pecked away at the boat like grandfather birds at a carcass, dragging everything to the shore and then all the way along the beach. It was hot work. Pilu swanked a bit about knowing the names of the tools in the box, but it seemed to Mau that when you got right down to it, a hammer was a hammer whether it was made of metal or stone. It was the same with chisels. And skateskin was as good as this sandpaper, wasn’t it? “All right, but what about pliers?” said Pilu, holding up a pair. “We’ve never had pliers.” “We could have,” said Mau, “if we’d wanted to. If we’d needed them.” “Yes, but that’s the interesting thing. You don’t know you need them until you haven’t got them.” “We’ve never had them to want to need!” said Mau. “You don’t have to get angry.” “I’m not angry!” snapped Mau. “I just think we manage all right!” Well, they did. The island always had. But the little galley of the Sweet Judy was annoying him in ways he didn’t quite understand, which was making him feel even worse. How did the trousermen get to have all this stuff? They’d piled it up where the low forest met the beach, and it was heavy. Pots, pans, knives, spoons, forks…there was a big fork that, with the simple addition of a shaft, would make the finest fishing spear ever, and there were lots like it, and knives as big as swords. It was all so…arrogant. The wonderful tools had been treated by the crew as if they were worth hardly anything, thrown in together to rattle around and get scratched. On the island, a fork like that would have been hung on a hut wall and cleaned every day. There was probably more metal on this one boat than there was in all the islands. And according to Milo there had been lots of boats in Port Mercia, and some of them had been much bigger than the Judy. Mau knew how make a spear, from picking a shaft to chipping a good sharp point. And when he’d finished, it was truly his, every part of it. The metal spear would be a lot better, but it would just be a…a thing. If it broke, he wouldn’t know how to make another one. It was the same with the pans. How were they made? Not even Pilu knew. So we’re not much better than the red crabs, Mau thought, as they dragged a heavy box down to the beach. The figs fall out of the trees, and that’s all they know. Can’t we be better than them? “I want to learn trouserman,” he said as they sat down to rest before going back inside the stifling, smelly heat of the wreck yet again. “Can you teach me?” “What do you want to say?” said Pilu, and then he grinned. “You want to be able to talk to the ghost girl, right?” “Yes, since you ask. We talk like babies. We have to draw pictures!” “Well, if you want to talk to her about loading and unloading and pulling ropes, I might be able to help,” said Pilu. “Look, we were on a boat with a lot of other men. Mostly they grumbled about the food. I don’t think you want to say ‘This meat tastes like you cut it off a dog’s arse,’ do you? I know that one.” “No, but it would be nice to be able to talk to her without asking you for words all the time.” “Cahle is saying the ghost girl is learning to speak our language very well,” Milo rumbled. “And she makes better beer than anyone.” “I know! But I want to talk to her like a trouserman!” Pilu grinned. “You and her all by yourselves, eh?” “What?” “Well, she’s a girl and you are a—” “Look, I’m not interested in the ghost girl! I mean I—” “Leave it to me—I know just what you need.” Pilu rummaged in the heap of things they had already taken from the wreck and held up what looked to Mau to be just another plank but, after Pilu had banged at them and hammered at them for a while, turned out to be— “Trousers,” said Pilu, winking at his brother. “Well?” said Mau. “The trousermen ladies like to see a man in trousers,” said Pilu. “When we were in Port Mercia, we weren’t allowed to go ashore unless we wore some, otherwise the trousermen women would give us funny looks and scream.” “I’m not going to wear them here!” “The ghost girl might think you’re a trouserman and let you—” Milo began. “I’m not interested in the ghost girl!” “Oh, yeah, you said.” Pilu pulled at the trousers for a moment and then stood them on the beach. They were so encrusted with mud and salt that they stayed up by themselves. They looked fearsome. “They’re powerful magic, they are,” Milo said. “They’re the future, sure enough.” Mau tried to avoid crunching the red crabs when they went back along the track to the wreck. They probably didn’t know if they were alive or dead, he thought. I’m certain they don’t believe in little sideways crab gods, and here they are, after the wave, as many as ever. And the birds knew it was coming, too. We didn’t. But we are smart! We make spears and trap fish and tell stories! When Imo made us out of clay, why didn’t he add the bit that tells us that the wave would come? Back in the Sweet Judy, Pilu whistled cheerfully as he levered up planks with a long metal bar from the toolbox. It was a jaunty tune and unlike anything Mau had heard before. They used to whistle the dogs when they were hunting, but this sounded…complicated. “What is that?” he said. “It’s called ‘I’ve Got A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts,’” said Pilu. “One of the men on the John Dee taught it to me. It’s a trouserman song.” “What does it mean?” “It means I’ve got a lot of coconuts and I want you to throw things at them,” said Pilu as a piece of the deck began to come free. “But you don’t have to throw things at them if you’ve already got them down from the tree,” Mau pointed out, leaning on the toolbox. “I know. The trousermen take coconuts back to their own country and stand them on sticks and throw things at them.” “Why?” “For fun, I think. It’s called a coconut shy.” The plank came up with a long-drawn-out scream of nails. It was a horrible noise. Mau felt that he was killing something. All canoes had a soul. “Shy? What does that mean?” he said. It was better to talk about nonsense than about the death of the Judy. “It means coconuts want to hide from people,” Milo volunteered, but he looked a bit uncertain at this. “Hide? But they are in the trees! We can see them.” “Why do you ask so many questions, Mau?” “Because I want so many answers! What does shy really mean?” Pilu looked serious, as he always did when he had to think; generally he preferred talking. “Shy? Well, the crew said to me, ‘You’re not shy like your brother.’ That was because Milo never said anything much to them. He just wanted to earn a three-legged cauldron and some knives, so he could get married.” “Are you telling me the trousermen throw things at coconuts because coconuts don’t talk?” “Could be. They do crazy things,” said Pilu. “The thing about the trousermen is, they are very brave and they sail their boats from the other end of the world, and they have the secret of iron, but there is one thing that they are frightened of. Guess what it is?” “I don’t know. Sea monsters?” Mau wondered. “No!” “Getting lost? Pirates?” “No.” “Then I give up. What are they afraid of?” “Legs. They’re scared of legs,” said Pilu triumphantly. “They are scared of legs? Whose legs? Their own legs? Do they try to run away from them? How? What with?” “Not their own legs! But trousermen women get very upset if they see a man’s leg, and one of the boys on the John Dee said a young trouserman fainted when he saw a woman’s ankle. The boy said the trousermen women even put trousers on table legs in case young men see them and think of ladies’ legs!” “What’s a table? Why does it have legs?” “That is,” said Pilu, pointing toward the other end of the big cabin. “It’s for making the ground higher.” Mau had noticed it before but paid it no attention. It was nothing more than a few short planks held off the deck by some bits of wood. It sloped, because the wreck of the Sweet Judy lay on her side and the table was nailed to it. There were twelve pieces of dull metal nailed to the wood. These turned out to be called plates (“What are they for?”), which were nailed down so that they didn’t slip off in stormy weather and could be washed up by someone sloshing a bucket of water (“What’s a bucket?”) over them. The deep marks in the plates were because mostly the food was two-year-old salt-pickled beef or pork, which was very hard to cut even with a steel knife, but Pilu had loved it because you could chew it all day. The Sweet Judy had big barrels of pork and beef. They were feeding the whole island. Mau liked the beef best; according to Pilu, it came from an animal called a cattle. Mau rapped on the tabletop. “This table doesn’t wear trousers,” he said. “I asked about that,” said Pilu, “and they said there was nothing in the world that would stop a sailor thinking about ladies’ legs, so it would be a waste of trousers.” “A strange people,” said Mau. “But there’s something about the trousermen,” Pilu went on. “Just when you think they are mad, you see something like Port Mercia! Great big huts made of stone, higher than a tree! Some of them are like a forest inside! More boats than you can count! And the horses! Oh, everyone should see the horses!” “What are horses?” “Well, they’re…well, you know hogs?” said Pilu, ramming the bar under another plank. “Better than you can imagine.” “Oh, yes. Sorry. We heard about that. It was very brave of you. Well, they are not like hogs. But if you took a hog and made it bigger and longer, with a longer nose and a tail, that’s a horse. Oh, and much more handsome. And much longer legs.” “So a horse is not really like a pig at all?” “Well, yes, I suppose so. But it’s got the same number of legs.” “Do they wear trousers?” asked Mau, thoroughly confused. “No. Just people and tables. You should try them!”   They made her do it. That was probably a good thing, Daphne admitted. She’d wanted to do it but hadn’t dared do it, but they’d made her do it, although really they’d made her make herself do it, and now that she’d done it, she was glad. Glad, glad, glad. Her grandmother would not have approved, but that was all right because: a) she wouldn’t find out; b) what Daphne had done was entirely sensible in the circumstances; and c) her grandmother really wouldn’t find out. She had removed her dress and all but one of her petticoats. She was only three garments away from being totally naked! Well, four if you included the grass skirt. The Unknown Woman had made it for her, much to Cahle’s approval; she’d used lots of the strange vine that grew everywhere here. It seemed to be a sort of grass, but instead of growing upward it just unrolled itself, like an endless green tongue. It tangled up with other plants, blew up into the trees, and generally just got everywhere. According to quite a good pantomime from Cahle, you could make a so-so soup of it, or wash your hair in its juice, but mostly you used it as string or made clothes and bags out of it. Like this skirt the Unknown Woman had made. Daphne knew she had to wear it, because it was quite something for the poor woman to let go of her baby for any reason other than to let Cahle feed it, and that was a good thing and ought to be encouraged. The skirt rustled when she walked, in a most disconcerting way. She thought she sounded like a restless haystack. The wonderful breeze got in, though. This must be what Grandmother called “Going Native.” She thought that being foreign was a crime, or at least some sort of illness that you could catch by being out in the sun too much, or eating olives. Going Native was giving in and becoming one of them. The way to not go native was to act exactly as if you were at home, which included dressing for dinner in heavy clothes and eating boiled meat and brown soup. Vegetables were “unwholesome,” and you should also avoid fruit because “you don’t know where it’s been.” That had always puzzled Daphne because, after all, how many places could a pineapple go? Besides, wasn’t there a saying, When in Rome, do as the Romans do? But her grandmother would probably say that meant bathing in blood, throwing people to the lions, and eating peacocks’ eyeballs for tea. And I don’t care, Daphne thought. This is rebellion! But obviously she wasn’t going to take off her bodice or her pantaloons or her stockings. This was no time to go totally mad. You had to Maintain Standards. And then she realized she had thought that last thought in her grandmother’s voice.   “You know, on you they look good!” said Pilu, down in the low forest. “The ghost girl will say, ‘Aha, it’s a trouserman.’ And then you can kiss her.” “I told you, this is not about kissing the ghost girl!” snapped Mau. “I…just want to see if they have any effect on me, that’s all.” He took a few steps. The trousers had been swirled around in the river and bashed on a rock a few times to get the stiffness out of them, but they still made creaking noises as he walked. This was foolish, he knew, but if you couldn’t put your trust in gods, then trousers might do. After all, in the Song of the Four Brothers, didn’t the North Wind have a cloak that carried him through the air? And if you couldn’t believe in a song that turned poison into beer, what could you believe in? “Do you feel anything?” said Pilu. “Yes, they really chafe the sresser!” “Ah, that would be because you’re not wearing long johns,” Pilu pointed out. “Long john’s what?” “It’s what they call soft trousers that you wear underneath the outside trousers. I think they are named after a pirate.” “So even the trousers wear trousers?” “That’s right. They think you can’t have too much trouser.” “Hold on, what are these things called?” said Mau, fumbling around in them. “I don’t know,” said Pilu cautiously. “What do they do?” “They’re like little bags inside the trousers. Now, that’s clever!” “Pockets,” said Pilu. But trousers alone weren’t something that changed the world. Mau could see that. Trousers would be useful if you were hunting in thorny scrub, and the bags for carrying things were a wonderful idea, but it wasn’t the trousers that gave the trousermen their metal and their big ships. No, it was the toolbox. He’d been cool about it in front of Pilu, because he did not like to admit that the Nation was behind the trousermen in any way, but the toolbox had impressed him. Oh, everyone could invent a hammer, but there were things in that box—beautiful, gleaming wooden and metal things—that not even Pilu knew the use of. And they spoke to Mau somehow. We never thought of pliers because we didn’t need them. Before you make something that is truly new, you first have to have a new thought. That’s the important thing. We didn’t need new things, so we didn’t think new thoughts. We need new thoughts now! “Let’s get back to the others,” Mau said. “But we’ll take the tools this time.” He stepped forward, and fell over. “Aargh, there’s a huge stone here!” Pilu pulled aside the ever-growing papervine as Mau tried to rub some life back into his foot. “Ah, it’s one of the Judy’s cannon,” he announced. “What’s a cannon?” said Mau, peering at the long black cylinder. Pilu told him. The next question was: “What’s gunpowder?” Pilu told him that, too. And Mau saw the little silver picture of the future again. It wasn’t clear, but cannon fitted into it. It was hard to believe in gods, but the Judy was a gift from the wave. It held what they needed—food, tools, timber, stone—so perhaps they needed what it held, even if they didn’t know it yet, even if they didn’t want it yet. But now they should be getting back. They each took a handle of the toolbox, which even by itself was almost too much to carry. They had to stop every few minutes to get their breath back, while Milo trudged on with the planks. In fact, Mau got his breath back while Pilu chatted. He talked all the time, about anything. Mau had learned this about the brothers: It wasn’t a case of big stupid Milo and little clever Pilu. Milo didn’t talk as much, that was all. When he did talk, he was worth listening to. But Pilu swam through words like a fish through water, he painted pictures in the air with them, and he did it all the time. Eventually Mau said, “Don’t you wonder about your people, Pilu? About what happened to them?” And, for once, Pilu slowed down. “We went back. All the huts were gone. So were the canoes. We hope they made it to one of the stone islands. When we have rested and the baby is fine and strong, we’ll go looking for them. I hope the gods took care of them.” “Do you think they did?” asked Mau. “The best of the fish were always taken to the shrine,” said Pilu in a flat voice. “Here they are—I mean they were—left on the god anchors,” said Mau. “The pigs ate them.” “Well, yes, but only what’s left.” “No, the whole fish,” said Mau bluntly. “But the spirit goes to the gods,” said Pilu, his voice seeming to come from a distance, as if he was trying to draw back from the conversation without actually backing away. “Have you ever seen it happen?” “Look, I know you think there are no gods—” “Perhaps they do exist. I want to know why they act as if they don’t—I want them to explain!” “Look, it happened, all right?” said Pilu wretchedly. “I’m just grateful I’m alive.” “Grateful? Who to?” “Glad, then! Glad that we are all alive, and sad that others died. You are angry, and what good is that going to do?” said Pilu, and now his voice had a strange kind of growl to it, like some small harmless animal that has been trapped in a corner and is ready to fight back in a fury. To Mau’s astonishment Pilu was crying. Without knowing why, but also knowing, absolutely knowing, down to his bones, that it was the right thing to do, Mau put his arms around him as enormous shuddering sobs escaped from Pilu, mixed with broken words and tangled in snot and tears. Mau held him until he stopped shaking and the forest was given back to birdsong. “They went to be dolphins,” Pilu murmured. “I am sure of it.” Why can’t I do this? Mau thought. Where are my tears when I need them? Maybe the wave took them. Maybe Locaha drank them, or I left them in the dark water. But I can’t feel them. Perhaps you need a soul to cry. After a while the sobbing became coughs and sniffs. Then Pilu very gently pushed Mau’s arms away and said: “Well, this isn’t getting things done, is it? Come on, let’s get going! You know, I’m sure you gave me the heavy end to carry!” And there was the smile, as if it had never gone away. You didn’t have to know Pilu for long to see that he floated through life like a coconut on the ocean. He always bobbed up. There was some sort of natural spring of cheerfulness that bubbled to the surface. Sadness was like a cloud across the sun, soon past. Sorrow was tucked away somewhere in his head, locked up in a cage with a blanket over it, like the captain’s parrot. He dealt with troubling thoughts by simply not thinking them; it was as if someone had put a dog’s brain in a boy’s body, and right now, Mau would have given anything to be him. “Just before the wave came, all the birds flew up into the air,” Mau said as they walked out from under the canopy and into the full light of the afternoon. “It was as if they knew something, something that I didn’t!” “Well, birds fly up when hunters go into the forest,” said Pilu. “It’s what they do.” “Yes, but this was nearly a minute before the wave came. The birds knew! How did they know?” “Who knows?” And that was the other thing about Pilu: No thought stayed in his head for very long, because it got lonely. “The ghost girl has got a—a thing called a book, you know? Made out of something like papervine. And it’s full of birds!” He wasn’t sure what he was trying to do now. Perhaps he just wanted to see the light of interest in Pilu’s eyes. “Squashed?” “No, like…tattoos, but the proper colors! And the trouserman name for grandfather bird is ‘pantaloon bird’!” “What’s a pantaloon?” “Trouserman trousers for trouserwomen,” Mau explained. “Silly to have a different name,” said Pilu. And that was it. Pilu had a soul to fill him, so he lived happily enough. But Mau looked into himself and found questions, and the only answers seemed to be “because,” and “because” was no answer at all. Because…the gods, the stars, the world, the wave, life, death. There are no reasons, there is no sense, only “because”…“because” was a curse, a struck blow, it was putting your hand in the cold hand of Locaha— WHAT WILL YOU DO, HERMIT CRAB? WILL YOU PULL DOWN THE STARS? WILL YOU SMASH THE MOUNTAINS LIKE SHY COCONUTS TO FIND THEIR SECRETS? THINGS ARE AS THEY ARE! EXISTENCE IS ITS OWN “BECAUSE”! ALL THINGS IN THEIR RIGHT PLACE. WHO ARE YOU TO DEMAND REASONS? WHO ARE YOU? The Grandfathers had never been as loud as this before. Their thundering made his teeth ache and he collapsed to his knees, the box of tools crashing into the sand. “Are you all right?” asked Pilu. “Ugh,” said Mau, and spat bile. It wasn’t just that the old men got into his head, although that was bad enough, but they left everything in a mess when they went away again. He stared at the sand until the bits of his thoughts came back together again. “The Grandfathers spoke to me,” he mumbled. “I didn’t hear anything.” “Then you’re lucky! Ugh!” Mau clutched at his head. It had been really bad this time, the worst ever. And there was something extra, too. It had sounded as though there had been more voices, very weak or a long way off, and they had been shouting something different, but it had got lost in the clamor. More of them, he thought gloomily. A thousand years of Grandfathers, all shouting at me, and never shouting anything new. “They want me to bring up the last of the god anchors,” he said. “Do you know where it is?” “Yes, it’s in the lagoon, and it can stay there!” “All right, but what actual harm would it do to bring it up?” “Harm?” said Mau, trying to understand this. “You want to thank the god of Water?” “You don’t have to mean it, and people will feel better,” said Pilu. Something whispered in Mau’s ear, but whatever it was trying to say was far too faint to be understood. It’s probably some ancient Grandfather who was a bit slow, he thought sourly. And even though I am the chief, my job is to make people feel better, is it? Either the gods are powerful but didn’t save my people, or they don’t exist and all we’re believing in is lights in the sky and pictures in our heads. Isn’t that the truth? Isn’t that important? The voice in his head answered, or tried to. It was like watching someone shouting at the other end of the beach. You could see them jumping up and down and waving their arms and maybe even make out their lips moving, but the wind is blowing through the palms and rustling the pandanuses and the surf is pounding and the grandfather birds are throwing up unusually loudly, so you can’t hear but you do know that what you can’t hear is definitely shouting. In his head it was exactly like that, but without the beach, the jumping, the waving, the lips, the palms, the pandanuses, the surf, and the birds, but with the same feeling that you are missing something that someone really, really wants you to hear. Well, he wasn’t going to listen to their rules. “I’m the little blue hermit crab,” said Mau under his breath. “And I am running. But I will not be trapped in a shell again, because…yes, there has to be a because…because…any shell will be too small. I want to know why. Why everything. I don’t know the answers, but a few days ago I didn’t know there were questions.” Pilu was watching him carefully, as if uncertain whether he should run or not. “Let’s go and see if your brother can cook, shall we?” said Mau, keeping his voice level and friendly. “He can’t, usually,” said Pilu. He broke into his grin again, but there was something nervous about it. He’s frightened of me, Mau thought. I haven’t hit him or even raised my hand. I’ve just tried to make him think differently, and now he’s scared. Of thinking. It’s magic.   It can’t be magic, Daphne thought. Magic is just a way of saying “I don’t know.” There were quite a few shells of beer fizzing on the shelves in the shed. They all had little bubbles growing and bursting from the seals at the top. It was beer that hadn’t been sung to yet. Mother-of-beer, they called it at that stage. She could tell quite easily, because there were dead flies all around it. They didn’t drown in it; they died and became little fly statues as soon as they drank it. If you were looking for the real Demon Drink, this was it. You spit in it, you sing it a song, you wave your hands over it in time to said song, the demon is magically sent back to, er, wherever, and there’s just the good drink left. How does that happen? Well, she had a theory; she’d spent half the night thinking it up. The ladies were at the other end of the Place, picking blossoms. They probably wouldn’t hear her if she sang quietly. The spitting…well, that was for luck, obviously. Besides, you had to be scientific about these things, and test one bit at a time. The secret was in the hand movements, she was sure of it. Well, slightly sure. She poured a little of the deadly pre-beer into a bowl and stared at it. Or perhaps it was in the song, but not in the words? Perhaps the frequency of the human voice did something to the tiny atomic substances, such as happened when the famous operatic soprano Dame Ariadne Stretch broke a glass by singing at it? That sounded very promising, especially when you knew that only women were supposed to make beer and they, of course, had higher voices! The Demon Drink stared back at her, rather smugly in her view. Go on, it seem to say, impress me. “I’m not sure I know all the words to this one,” she said, and realized that she had just apologized to a drink. That was the trouble with being brought up in a polite household. She cleared her throat. “Once my father took me to the music hall,” she said. “You might enjoy this one.” She cleared her throat again and began: “Let’s all go down to the Strand, (’ave a banana!) Oh! What a happy land, I’ll be the leader, you can march behind—”   No, that sounded a bit complicated for a beverage, and the banana only confused matters. What about…? She hesitated, and thought about songs. Could it be that simple? She started to sing again, counting on her fingers as she sang. “Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool? Yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags full—” She sang sixteen verses, counting all the time, singing to the beer as it bubbled, and noted when it was suddenly as clear and sparkly as a diamond. Then she tested her conclusion, like a proper scientist would, on another bowl of mother-of-beer, feeling rather certain and more than a little pleased with herself. Now she had a working hypothesis. “Baa, baa, black—” She stopped, aware of people trying to be quiet. Cahle and the Unknown Woman were standing in the doorway, listening with interest. “Men!” said Cahle cheerfully. She had a flower tucked in her hair. “Er…what?” said Daphne, flustered. “I want to go and see my husbun!” Daphne understood that, and there was no rule against it. Men weren’t allowed into the Place, but women could come and go as they pleased. “Er…good,” she said. She felt something touch her hair, went to brush it away, and realized that the Unknown Woman was undoing her plaits. She went to stop her and caught Cahle’s warning look. In her head the Unknown Woman was coming back from somewhere bad, and every sign of her being a normal person again was to be encouraged. She felt the plaits being gently teased apart. Then she smelled a whiff of perfume, and realized the woman had stuck a flower behind her ear. They grew everywhere in the Place, huge floppy pink and purple blooms that knocked you down with their scent. Cahle generally wound one into her hair in the evenings. “Er, thank you,” she said. Cahle took her gently by the arm, and Daphne felt the panic rise. She was going to the beach as well? But she was practically naked! She had nothing under the grass skirt but one petticoat, her pantaloons, and a pair of Unmentionables! And her feet were bare right up to the ankles! Then it went strange, and forever afterward she never quite understood how it had happened. She should go down to the beach. The decision floated there in her head, clear and definite. She had decided it was time to go down to the beach. It was just that she couldn’t remember deciding. It was a strange sensation, like feeling full even though you can’t recall having had lunch. And there was something else, fading away fast like an echo without a voice: Everyone has toes!   Milo was a pretty good cook, Mau had to admit. He really knew how to bake fish. The smell hung over the camp when they got back, and the air practically drooled. There was still plenty of the Sweet Judy left. It would take months, maybe years to break her down. They had the tools now, yes, but not enough people; it would need a dozen strong men to shift some of the bigger timbers. But there was a hut, even if its canvas sides rattled in the wind, and there was fire, and now there was a hearth. And what a hearth! The entire galley had been dragged here, every precious metal bit of it, except for the big black oven itself. That could wait, because there was already a fortune in pots and pan and knives. And we didn’t make them, Mau thought as the tools were passed around. We can build good canoes, but we could never build the Sweet Judy— “What are you doing?” he said to Milo. The man had taken up a hammer and a metal chisel and was bashing away at a smaller chest among the pile of salvage. “It is locked,” said Milo, and showed him what a lock was. “There’s something important inside, then?” Mau asked. “More metal?” “Maybe gold!” said Pilu. That had to be explained, and Mau remembered the shiny yellow metal around the strange invitation the ghost girl had given him. Trousermen loved it almost as much as trousers, said Pilu, even though it was too soft to be useful. One small piece of gold was worth more than a really good machete, which showed how crazy they were. But when the hasp broke and the lid was thrown back, the chest was found to contain the smell of stale water and— “Books?” said Mau. “Charts,” said Pilu. “That’s like a map but, well, looks like this.” He held up a handful of the charts, which squelched. “What good are they?” said Ataba, laughing. A soggy chart was laid out on the sand. They inspected it, but Mau shook his head. You probably had to be a trouserman to begin to understand. What did it all mean? It was just lines and shapes. What good were they? “They are…pictures of what the ocean would look like if you were a bird, high in the sky,” said Pilu. “Can trousermen fly, then?” “They have tools to help them,” said Pilu uncertainly. Then he brightened and added: “Like this.” Mau watched as Pilu pulled a heavy round item from his pile of spoils. “It’s called a compass. With a compass and a chart, they are never lost!” “Don’t they taste the water? Don’t they watch the currents? Don’t they smell the wind? Don’t they know the ocean?” “Oh, they are good seamen,” said Pilu, “but they travel to unknown seas. The compass tells them where home is.” Mau turned it around in his hand, watching the needle swing. “And where it isn’t,” he said. “It has a point at both ends. It shows them where unknown places are, too. Where are we on their chart?” He pointed to a large area of what was, apparently, land. “No, that’s Nearer Australia,” said Pilu. “That’s a big place. We are”—he rummaged through the damp charts and pointed to some marks—“here. Probably.” “So where are we, then,” said Mau, straining to see. “It’s just a lot of lines and squiggles!” “Er, those squiggles are called numbers,” said Pilu nervously. “They tell the captains how deep the sea is. And these are called letters. They say ‘Mothering Sundays.’ That’s what they call us.” “We got told that on the John Dee,” said Milo helpfully. “And I’m reading it here on the chart,” said his brother, giving him a sharp look. “Why are we called that?” Mau asked. “We are the Sunrise Islands!” “Not in their language. Trousermen often get names wrong.” “And the island? How big is the Nation?” said Mau, still staring at the chart. “I can’t see it.” Pilu looked away and mumbled something. “What did you say?” said Mau. “It’s not actually drawn here. It’s too small….” “Small? What do you mean, small?” “He’s right, Mau,” said Milo solemnly. “We didn’t want to tell you. It’s small. It’s a small island.” Mau’s mouth was open in astonished disbelief. “That can’t be right,” he protested. “It’s much bigger than any of the Windcatcher Islands.” “Islands that are even smaller,” said Pilu, “and there’s lots of them.” “Thousands,” said Milo. “It’s just that…well, as big islands go—” “—this is one of the smaller ones,” Pilu finished. “But the best one,” said Mau quickly. “And no one else has got the tree-climbing octopus!” “Absolutely,” said Pilu. “Just so long as we remember that. This is our home,” said Mau, standing up. He pulled at the trousers. “Aargh. These really itch! All I can say is trousermen don’t walk about much!” A sound made him look up, and there was the ghost girl—at least, it looked like the ghost girl. Behind her stood Cahle with a big grin, and the Unknown Woman, smiling her faint, faraway smile. Mau looked down at his trousers, and then up at her long hair with the flower in it, while she looked down at her toes and then up at his trousers, which were so much longer than his legs that he appeared to be standing in a pair of concertinas, and the captain’s hat floated on his curls like a ship at sea. She turned to look at Cahle, who stared up at the sky. He looked at Pilu, who looked down at his feet, although his shoulders were shaking. Then Mau and the ghost girl looked directly into each other’s eyes and there was only one thing they could do, which was to laugh themselves silly. The others joined in. Even the parrot squawked, “Show us yer drawers!” and did its doo-dahs on Ataba’s head. But Milo, who took things sensibly, and who happened to be facing the sea, stood up and pointed and said: “Sails.” CHAPTER 7 Diving for Gods   IT RAINED GENTLY, FILLING the night with a rustling. Three more canoes, Mau thought, staring into the dark. Three all at once, sailing on the gentle wind. Now there were two babies and another coming soon, one little girl, one boy, eleven women including the ghost girl, and eight men not including Mau, who had no soul—and three dogs. He’d missed dogs. Dogs added something that even people didn’t, and one of the dogs was sitting by his feet, here in the darkness and the gentle rain. It wasn’t bothered much about the rain or what might be out there on the unseen sea, but Mau was a warm body moving about in a sleeping world and might at any moment do something that called for running around and barking. Occasionally it looked up at him adoringly and made a slobbery gulping noise, which possibly meant “Anything you say, boss!” More than twenty people, Mau thought as the rain dripped off his chin like tears. It wasn’t enough, if the Raiders came. Not enough to fight, but too many to hide. And certainly enough for a few good dinners for the people-eaters…. No one had seen the Raiders. They were coming from island to island, people said, but it was always a rumor. On the other hand, if you had seen the Raiders, then they had seen you…. There was a slight grayness to the air now, not really light but the ghost of it. It would get stronger, and the sun would come up and maybe the horizon would be black with canoes, and maybe it wouldn’t. Inside Mau’s head there was one bright memory. There was the ghost girl, looking silly in the grass skirt, and there was him, looking even sillier in the trousers, and everyone was laughing, even the Unknown Woman, and everything had been…right. And then there had been all these new people, milling around and worried and ill and hungry. Some of them were not even sure where they’d ended up, and all of them were scared. They were a rabble, according to the Grandfathers. They were the people the wave had not swallowed. Why? Not even they knew. Maybe they had held on to a tree while others had been swept away, or had been on higher ground, or at sea, like Mau. Those afloat had gone back to people and villages that weren’t there, and had scavenged what they could and set out to find other people. They’d followed the current, and had met up, and had become a kind of floating village—but one of children without parents, parents without children, wives without husbands, people without all those things around them that told them what they were. The wave had shaken up the world and left broken pieces. There might be hundreds more out there. And then, and then…from where had they come, the rumors of the Raiders? A shout from other refugees, fleeing too urgently to stop? An old woman’s dream? A corpse floating by? Did it matter when terrified people had set out again in anything that would still float, with little to eat and brackish water? And so the second wave came, drowning people in their own fear. And at last they had seen the smoke. Nearly all of them knew the Nation. It was rock! It couldn’t be washed away! It had the finest god anchors in the world! And what they had found was ragtag—not much better off than themselves, with one old priest, a strange ghost girl, and a chief who was not a boy and not a man and didn’t have a soul and might be a demon. Thank you, Ataba, Mau thought. When people are not sure what you are, they don’t know what you might do. The newcomers seemed awkward about a chief who wasn’t a man, but a touch of demon got respect. He’d dreamed about the island being full of people again, but in his dream it was the people who used to be there. These people didn’t belong. They didn’t know the chants of the island, they didn’t have the island in their bones. They were lost, and they wanted their gods. They had been talking about it yesterday. Someone asked Mau if he was sure that the Water anchor had been in its right place before the wave. He’d had to think hard about that, keeping his expression blank. He must have seen the god anchors nearly every day of his life. Were all three there when he went to the Boys’ Island? Surely he’d have noticed if one was missing? The empty space would have cried out to him! Yes, he’d said, they were all there. And then a gray-faced woman had said: “But a man could lift one, yes?” And he saw how it was going. If someone had moved the stone and rolled it into the water, couldn’t that have caused the wave? That would explain it, wouldn’t it? That would be the reason, wouldn’t it? He’d looked at all the haggard faces, all of them willing him to say yes. Say yes, Mau, and betray your father and your uncles and your nation, just so that people would have a reason. The Grandfathers had thundered their anger in his head until he thought his ears would bleed. Who were these beggars from little sandy islands to come here and insult them? They urged his blood to sing war chants in his veins, and Mau had to lean on his spear to stop himself from raising it. But his eye had stayed on the gray woman. He couldn’t remember her name. She’d lost her children and her husband, he knew. She was walking in the steps of Locaha. He saw it in her eyes and kept his temper. “The gods let you down. When you needed them they weren’t there. That is it, and all of it. To worship them now would be to kneel before bullies and murderers.” Those were the words he’d wanted to say, but with her looking at him, he’d rather bite his tongue off than say them. They would be true, he knew it, yet here and now that didn’t mean anything. He’d looked around at the anxious faces, still waiting for his answer, and remembered how shocked and hurt Pilu had been. A thought could be like a spear. You do not throw a spear at the widow, the orphan, the grieving. “Tomorrow,” he’d told them, “I will bring up the anchor of Water.” And people sat back and looked at one another in satisfaction. It wasn’t smugness, it wasn’t a look of triumph, but the world had wobbled a bit and was now back where it should be. And now it was tomorrow, somewhere beyond the hissing rain. I’ll bring the three stones together, he thought. And what will happen next? Nothing! The world has changed! But they’ll catch fish to put on the stones, and cower! Light was leaking slowly through the rain, and something made him turn. There was a figure standing a handful of paces away. It had a large head that looked, as he concentrated, as if it were more like some enormous beak. And the rain made a slightly different noise as it landed, more a click than a patter. There were stories about demons. They came in all shapes; they could come disguised as a human, or an animal, or anything in between, but— —there were no demons. There couldn’t be. If there were no gods, then there were no demons, so what was standing there in the rain was not a creature with a beak bigger than a man’s head that looked quite capable of slicing Mau in two. It couldn’t exist, and he had to prove it. Somehow, though, rushing up and shouting at it didn’t seem the sensible next thing to do. I’ve got a brain, haven’t I? he thought. I will prove it’s not a monster. There was a small gust of wind and the creature flapped a wing. Ugh…but remember the toolbox. There was nothing special about the trousermen. They’d just been lucky. Pilu said they came from a place where, sometimes, the weather could get so cold, the sky shed freezing feathers, like the hail you sometimes got in storms, but more fluffy, and so they had to invent trousers to stop their wingos getting frozen and big boats to find places where the water never got hard. They had to learn new ways of thinking: a new toolbox. This isn’t a demon. Let’s find out what it is. He stared. The feet looked human. And what he thought was that thing flapping didn’t really look like a wing; when you watched carefully, it was more like cloth blowing in the breeze. The only demon was in his fear. The thing made a cooing noise. This was so undemonic that Mau splashed over to it and saw someone who’d draped themselves in a tarpaulin from the Sweet Judy that was so stiff that it had formed a sort of hood. It was the Unknown Woman, cuddling her baby in the dry while the rain trickled around them. She gave him her haunted little smile. How long had she been there? Before the light began to rise, he was certain. What was she doing there? Well, why was he there, if it came to that? It just felt right. Someone had to watch over the Nation. Perhaps she thought the same thing. The rain was slackening off now and he could see the surf. Any minute now, the— “Show us yer drawers! Roberts is on the gin again!” —parrot would be waking up. Pilu said that cry meant “Show me your small trousers.” Perhaps it was the way trousermen recognized one another. He had small trousers now. He’d cut the legs off at the knee and used the material to make more of what made trousers really worthwhile, which were pockets. You could keep so many things in them. The Unknown Woman had walked back up the beach, and there were the sounds of people waking up. Do it now. Give them their gods. He slipped out of the half trousers with their so-useful pockets, ran forward, and dived into the lagoon. The tide was just about to turn, but the water around the break was calm. The wave had really pounded through here; he could see deep blue water beyond the gap. The anchor of Water gleamed below him, right in the gap. It was deeper than the others had been, and farther from the shore. It would take ages to bring it back. Better start now, then. He dived, got his arms around the stone cube, and heaved. It didn’t budge. Mau brushed aside some weeds. The white block was trapped by a piece of coral. Mau tried to move that, too. About five seconds later his head broke water and he swam back, slowly and thoughtfully, to the shore. He found Ataba using a metal hammer from the toolbox on a slab of salt-pickled beef. The stuff went down well with nearly everyone except the priest, who didn’t have enough teeth and couldn’t often find anyone prepared to do the chewing for him. He sat down and watched the old man in silence. “You’ve come to laugh at me in my infirmity, demon boy?” said Ataba, looking up at him. “No.” “Then you might at least have the decency to take over the hammering.” Mau did so. It was hard work. The blows just bounced off it. You could make a shield out of the stuff. “Something on your mind, demon boy?” said the priest after a while. “You haven’t insulted the gods for at least ten minutes.” “I need some advice, elderly one,” said Mau. “It’s about the gods, actually.” “Yes? But you do believe in them today? I watched you yesterday night; you learned that belief is a complicated matter, yes?” “There are three gods, yes?” “Correct.” “Not four, ever?” “Some say Imo is the fourth god, but he is the All in which they and we, and even you, exist.” “Imo has no god anchors?” “Imo Is, and since He Is, He Is everywhere. Since He Is everywhere, He is not anywhere. The whole universe is His anchor.” “What about the star Atindi, which is always close to the sun?” “That is the son of the moon. Surely you know this?” “He has no god anchors?” “No,” said Ataba. “It is nothing more than the clay that Imo had left over after he made the world.” “And the red star called Imo’s Campfire?” Ataba gave Mau a suspicious look. “Boy, you know that is where Imo baked the mud to make the world!” “And the gods live in the sky, but also are close to their anchors?” “Don’t be smart with me. You know this one. The gods are everywhere, but can have a greater presence in certain places. What is this about? Are you trying to trap me in some way?” “No. I just want to understand. No other island has white stone god anchors, right?” “Yes!” snapped Ataba. “And you are trying to make me say something wrong!” He looked around suspiciously, in case of lurking heresy. “Have I succeeded?” “No, demon boy! What I have told you is right and true!” Mau stopped hammering, but held on to the hammer. “I’ve found another god anchor. It’s not the one for Water. So that means I’ve found you a new god, old man…and I think he’s a trouserman.”   In the end they worked from one of the big canoes. Milo, Mau, and Pilu took turns diving with the hammer and steel chisel from the Sweet Judy’s toolbox and pounding at the coral that held the white cube in its grip. Mau was hanging on to the canoe to get his breath when Pilu surfaced on the other side. “I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing,” Pilu said, glancing up nervously at Ataba’s hunched figure in the stern, “but there is another one down there, behind the first one.” “Are you sure?” “Come and see. It’s your turn anyway. Careful, though—the tide’s really tugging now.” It was. Mau had to fight against the pull of the water as he swam down. As he did so, Milo dropped the hammer and chisel and swam up past him. It seemed as though they had been doing this for hours. It was hard to hammer under the water; the hammer just didn’t seem to work so well. There was the stone Mau had first dived for. It looked free of coral now, but where it had been broken away there was the corner of another cube, in the unmistakable white stone. What did all this mean? Not more gods, he thought; we’ve had enough trouble with the ones we’ve got. He ran his fingers over the shape cut in the first of the new stones. It looked like a tool from the trouserman toolbox, one that he’d held in his hand and wondered about, until Pilu had told him what it was for. But there had been no trousermen around even when his grandfather was a boy, he knew that. And coral was ancient. One of these cubes had been right inside the rock, even so, like a pearl in an oyster. He would never have found it if the wave hadn’t smashed up the reef. He heard the splash above, and a hand reached past him and snatched the hammer. He looked up into the furious features of Ataba, just as the old man brought the hammer down on the stone. Bubbles rose as the priest man shouted something. Mau tried to grab the hammer and got a surprisingly powerful kick in the chest. There was nothing for it but to swim for the surface with what breath he had left. “What happened?” asked Pilu. Mau hung on to the side of the canoe, wheezing. The old fool! Why did he do that? “Are you all right? What is he doing? Helping at last?” asked Pilu, with the cheeriness of someone who doesn’t know what’s going on yet. Mau shook his head and dived again. The old man was still hammering madly at the stones, and it occurred to Mau that he didn’t have to risk getting another kick. All he had to do was wait. Ataba needed air, just like everyone else, and how much of it could that skinny chest hold? More than he expected. Ataba was hammering wildly as if he intended to be down there all day…and then there was an explosion of bubbles as the last of his air ran out. That was chilling, and also quite insane. What was so dangerous about a rock that the old fool would waste his last breath trying to smash it? Mau fought his way down through the running tide, grabbed the man’s body, and dragged it back up to the surface, almost flinging Ataba into the arms of the brothers. The canoe rocked. “Drain the water out of him!” he yelled. “I don’t want him to die! I can’t scream at him if he’s dead!” Milo had already turned Ataba upside down and was slapping him on the back. A lot of water came out, chased by a cough. More coughs followed, and he lowered the old man to the deck. “He was trying to smash the new stones,” said Mau. “But they look like god anchors,” said Milo. “Yes,” said Mau. Well, they did. Whatever you thought about the gods and their stones, these looked like god anchors. Milo pointed to the groaning Ataba. “An’ he’s a priest,” he said. Milo believed in laying out the facts of the matter. “An’ he was trying to smash the stones?” “Yes,” said Mau. There was no doubt about it. A priest, trying to smash god stones. Milo looked at him. “I’m puzzled,” he said. “One of those down there has got calipers carved on it,” said Pilu cheerfully. “The trousermen use calipers to measure distance on their charts.” “That means nothing,” Milo intoned. “Gods are older than the trousermen, an’ they can make what they like on the stones—Hey!” Ataba had jumped over the side again. Mau saw his feet disappear under the water. “That was the caliper stone he was trying to smash!” he growled, and dived. The water was pouring through the gap now. It grabbed Mau as he swam after the skinny figure, tried to play with him, tried to throw him against the jagged coral. It had got the priest already. He was struggling down toward the blocks, but the racing tide snatched at him, banged him against the coral, and tumbled him away, struggling, with a thin trail of blood blooming in the water behind him. Never fight the tide! It was always stronger! Didn’t the old fool know that? Mau swam after him, curving his body like a fish, using all his energy to keep away from the edges of the gap. Ahead of him, Ataba struggled to the surface, tried to grab a handhold, and was spun away into the foam. Mau rose to take a breath and swam on— Blood in the water, Mau, said Locaha, swimming alongside him. And there will be sharks outside the reef. What now, little hermit crab? Does not happen! thought Mau, and tried to swim faster. Demon boy, he calls you. He smiles in your face but tells people you are mad. What is he to you? Mau tried to keep his mind blank. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the gray shadow, easily keeping up with him. There’s no shell for you here, little hermit crab. You are heading for the open sea. Things happen or do not happen, thought Mau, and he felt the deep water open up under him. The sunlight shone blue through the waves above, but below Mau it was green, shading to black. And there was Ataba, hanging in the light, not moving. Blood uncoiled in the water around him like smoke from a slow fire. A shadow passed over the sun, and a gray shape slid overhead. It was the canoe. As Mau grabbed the priest, there was a splash, and Pilu swam out of a cloud of bubbles. He pointed frantically. Mau turned to see a shark already circling. It was a small gray, although when there is blood in the water then no shark is small, and this one seemed to fill the whole of Mau’s world. He thrust the old man toward Pilu but kept his attention on the shark, looking into its mad, rolling eye as it swam past. He thrashed around a little to keep its attention on him and didn’t relax until, behind him, he could feel the boat rocking as Ataba was hauled up for the second time. The shark was going to rush him on the next pass, Mau could tell. And— —suddenly it didn’t matter. This was the world, all of it, just this silent blue ball of soft light, and the shark and Mau, without a knife. A little ball of space, with no time. He swam gently toward the fish, and this seemed to worry it. His thoughts came slowly and calmly, without fear. Pilu and Ataba would be out of the water now, and that was what mattered. When a shark is coming at you, you are already dead, old Nawi had said, and since you were already dead, then anything was worth trying. He rose gently and gulped a lungful of air. When he sank back down again, the shark had turned and was slicing through the water toward him. Wait…Mau trod water gently as the shark came onward, as gray as Locaha. There would be one chance. More sharks would be here at any second, but a second passed slowly in the arena of light. Here it came…. Wait. Then…Does not happen, said Mau to himself, and let all his breath out in a shout. The shark turned as if it had hit a rock, but Mau did not wait for it to come back. He spun in the water and raced for the canoe as fast as he dared, trying to make the maximum of speed with the minimum of splash. As the brothers hauled him aboard, the shark passed underneath them. “You drove it away!” said Pilu, heaving him up. “You shouted and it turned and ran!” Because old Nawi was right, Mau thought. Sharks don’t like noise, which sounds louder underwater; it doesn’t matter what you shout, so long as you shout it loud! It probably wouldn’t have been a good idea if the shark had been really hungry, but it had worked. If you were alive, what else mattered? Should he tell them? Even Milo was looking at him with respect. Without quite being able to put words to it, Mau felt that being mysterious and a little dangerous was not a bad thing right now. And they would never know that he’d pissed himself on the way back to the canoe, which as far as sharks were concerned was nearly as bad as blood in the water, but the shark was unlikely to tell anyone. He looked around, half expecting to see a dolphin waiting for him to throw it a fish—and it would feel…right…to do so. But there was no dolphin. “It was scared of me,” he said. “Perhaps it was scared by the demon.” “Wow!” said Pilu. “Remind me when we get back that I owe a fish to Nawi.” Then he looked along the little deck to Ataba, who was lying in a heap. “How is he?” “He’s been banged about on the coral, but he’ll live,” said Milo. He gave Mau a questioning look, as if to say “If that’s all right with you?” He went on, “Er…who’s Nawi? A new god?” “No. Better than a god. A good man.” Mau felt cold now. It had seemed so warm in the blue bubble. He wanted to shiver, but he didn’t dare let them see. He wanted to lie down, but there was no time for that. He needed to get back, he needed to find ou— “Grandfathers?” he said under his breath. “Tell me what to do! I do not know the chants, I do not know the songs, but just once, help me! I need a chart for the world, I need a map!” There was no reply. Perhaps they were just tired, but they couldn’t be more tired than he was. How tiring was it, being dead? At least you could lie down. “Mau?” Milo rumbled, behind him. “What is happening here? Why did the priest try to smash the holy stones?” This was not the time to say “I don’t know.” The brothers had begging, hungry looks, like dogs waiting to be fed. They wanted an answer. It would be nice if it was the right answer, but if it couldn’t be, then any answer would do, because then we would stop being worried…and then his mind caught alight. That’s what the gods are! An answer that will do! Because there’s food to be caught and babies to be born and life to be lived and so there is no time for big, complicated, and worrying answers! Please give us a simple answer, so that we don’t have to think, because if we think, we might find answers that don’t fit the way we want the world to be. So what can I say now? “I think he thinks they aren’t really holy,” Mau managed. “It’s because of the calipers carving, yes?” said Pilu. “That’s what he was trying to smash! He thinks you’re right. They were made by the trousermen!” “They were inside coral,” said Milo. “Reefs are old. Trousermen are new.” Mau saw Ataba stir. He went and sat down next to the priest as the brothers maneuvered the canoe around and fought it back through the gap. People had gathered on the beach, trying to see what was happening. When the brothers were busy, Mau leaned down. “Who made the god anchors, Ataba?” he whispered. “I know you can hear me.” The priest opened one eye. “It’s not your place to question me, demon boy!” “I saved your life.” “It’s a ragged old life and not worth saving,” said Ataba, sitting up. “I don’t thank you!” “It’s very ragged indeed and smells of beer, but you must pay me back, otherwise it belongs to me. You can buy it back but I set the price!” Ataba looked furious. He struggled as if he was being boiled in anger and resentment, but he knew the rule as well as anyone. “All right!” he snapped. “What do you want, demon boy?” “The truth,” said Mau. The priest pointed a finger at him. “No you don’t! You want a special truth. You want the truth to be a truth that you like. You want it to be a pretty little truth that fits what you already believe! But I will tell you a truth you will not like. People want their gods, demon boy. They want to make holy places, whatever you say.” Mau wondered if the priest had been reading his mind. He would have needed good eyesight, because rosy clouds of exhaustion floated across Mau’s thoughts, as if he was dreaming. Sleep always wanted paying; if you put off sleeping for days on end, then Sleep would sooner or later turn up with its hand out. “Did the gods carve the white stone?” His tongue slurred the words. “Yes!” “That was a lie,” Mau managed. “The stones have trouserman tool marks on them. Surely gods don’t need tools.” “Men are their tools, boy. They put the idea of carving into the minds of our ancestors!” “And the other stones?” “Not only gods can get into a mind, boy, as you should know!” “You think they are demons?” said Mau. “Demon stones?” “Where you find gods, you find demons.” “That might be true,” said Mau. Behind him, he heard Milo snort. “It is my position to know the truth of things!” Ataba shouted. “Stop that, old man,” said Mau as gently as he could. “I’ll ask you one more time, and if I think you are lying, then I will let the gods blow your soul over the edge of the world.” “Ha! But you don’t believe in the gods, demon boy! Or do you? Don’t you listen to yourself, boy? I do. You shout and stamp and yell that there are no gods, and then you shake your fist at the sky and revile them for not existing! You need them to exist so that the flames of your denial will warm you in your self-righteousness! That’s not thinking, that’s just a hurt child screaming in pain!” Mau’s expression did not change, but he felt the words clang back and forth in his head. What do I believe? he thought. What do I really believe? The world exists, so perhaps Imo exists. But He is far away and does not care Locaha exists—that is certain. The wind blows, fire burns, and water flows for good and bad, right and wrong. Why do they want gods? We need people. That is what I believe. Without other people, we are nothing. And I believe I am more tired than I can remember. “Tell me who you think carved the stones, Ataba,” he said, keeping his voice calm. “Who brought them here and carved them, so long ago they lie under the coral? Tell me this, because I think you are screaming, too.” All sorts of thoughts twisted their way across the priest’s face, but there was no escape. “You will be sorry,” he moaned. “You will wish you didn’t know. You will be sorry that you did this to me.” Mau raised his finger as a warning. It was all he could manage. The pink hogs of tiredness trampled through his thoughts. In a minute he would fall over. When Ataba spoke next, in a whispered hiss, it echoed as if Mau was hearing it inside a cave. The darkness was made of too many thoughts, too much hunger, too much pain. “Who brings rocks here and leaves them, boy? Think on that. How many people will you hurt even more with your wonderful truth?” But Mau was already sleeping.   Mr. Black hammered on the door of the Cutty Wren’s wheelhouse for the second time. “Let me in, Captain! In the name of the Crown!” A hatch in the door slid back. “Where is she?” said a voice full of suspicion. “She’s below!” the Gentleman shouted above the roar of the wind. “Are you certain? She has a habit of jumping out!” “She’s below, I assure you! Open the door! It’s freezing!” “Are you positive?” “For the last time, man, let us in!” “Who’s ‘us,’ exactly?” said the voice, not to be fooled easily. “For heaven’s sake! Mr. Red is with me!” “Is he alone?” “Open in the name of the Crown, Captain!” The door opened. A hand dragged both men inside. Behind them, bolts snapped into place with a noise like gunshots. At least it was warmer in there, and the wind was held at bay. Mr. Black felt as though some giant had stopped punching him. “Is it always like this?” he said, shaking the water off his oilskins. “This? This is a fine day in the Roaring Forties, Mr. Black! I was about to go and have a sunbathe! You’ve come about the signal, I dare say.” “There was something about a tidal wave?” “A big one. Got this from a navy ship out of Port Mercia an hour ago. Flooding throughout the Western Pelagic. Great loss of life and damage to shipping. Port Mercia safe, it says here. Source of the wave estimated as seventy miles south of the Mothering Sundays.” “That’s still well to the north of us.” “And this happened weeks ago!” said Mr. Red, who had been scrutinizing the penciled message. “That is true, gentlemen. But I’ve been working things out, and I’m wondering where the Sweet Judy might have been about that time. Old Roberts likes to island hop, and the Judy isn’t the fastest ship. The king’s daughter is on board the Judy.” “So the heir might have been caught up in this?” “Could be, sir,” said the captain gravely. He coughed. “I could set a course to pass through there, but it would slow us down.” “I need to think about this,” snapped Mr. Black. “And I need a decision soon, sir. It’s a matter of wind and water, see? They are not yours to command, nor mine.” “Who do the Mothering Sundays belong to?” said Mr. Black to Mr. Red, who shrugged. “We lay claim to them, sir, to keep the Dutch and French out. But they’re all tiny and there’s no one there. No one to speak of, anyway.” “The Wren could cover a lot of ocean, sir,” the captain offered. “And it sounds like the king is safe and, of course, you get some rum types fetching up in out-of-the-way places like that….” Mr. Black stared ahead. The Cutty Wren was flying like a cloud. The sails boomed, the rigging sang. It sneered at the miles. After some time he said, “For all kinds of good reasons, beginning with the fact that we cannot be certain of the Sweet Judy’s course, and there are many of these islands, too much time has passed, his majesty would certainly have sent out searchers—” Mr. Red said, “He doesn’t know he is king, sir. He may well have led the search himself.” “There’s cannibals and pirates to the northwest,” said the captain. “And the Crown requires that we find the king as soon as possible!” said Mr. Black. “Would either of you gentlemen like to make this decision for me?” There was a dreadful silence, broken only by the roar of their speed. “Very well,” said Mr. Black rather more calmly. “Then we follow our original orders, Captain. I will sign the log to this effect.” “That must have been a hard decision to make, sir,” said Mr. Red sympathetically. “Yes. It was.” CHAPTER 8 It Takes a Lifetime to Learn How to Die   DAPHNE WAS EATING FOR Mrs. Gurgle, who had no teeth. She did this by chewing her food for her, to get it good and soft. It was, she thought as she chomped dutifully on a lump of salt-pickled beef, very unlike life at home. But life at home seemed unreal now, in any case. What home was—really was—was a mat in a hut, where she slept every night a sleep so deep that it was black, and the Place, where she made herself useful. And she could be useful here. She was getting better at the language every day, too. But she couldn’t understand Mrs. Gurgle at all. Even Cahle had difficulty there and had told Daphne, “Very old speaking. From the long ago.” She was known all over the islands, but none of the survivors remembered her as anything but ancient. The boy Oto-I could remember only that she had plucked him off a floating tree and drunk seawater so that he could have the fresh water in her water bag. The old woman tapped her on the arm. Daphne absentmindedly spat out the lump of meat and handed it over. It wasn’t, she had to admit, the most pleasant way of passing the time; there was a certain amount of aarghaarghaargh about it if you let your mind dwell on it, but at least the old woman wasn’t chewing food for her. “Ermintrude.” The word hung in the air for a moment. She looked around, shocked. No one on the island knew that name! In front of her, in the garden, a few women were tending the plants, but most people were working in the fields. Beside her, the old woman sucked enthusiastically at the newly softened meat with the sound of a blocked drain. It had been her own voice. She must have been daydreaming, to take her mind off the chewing. “Bring the boy here. Bring the boy here now.” There it was again. Had she said it? Her lips hadn’t moved—she would have felt them do so. This wasn’t what people really meant when they said “you’re talking to yourself.” This was herself talking to her. She couldn’t ask “Who are you?”—not to her own voice. Pilu had said Mau heard dead grandfathers in his head, and she’d thought, well, something like that would be bound to happen after all the boy had been through. Could she be hearing his ancestors? “Yes,” said her own voice. “Why?” she asked. “Because this is a sacred place.” Daphne hesitated. Whoever was doing this knew her name, and no one here knew her real name, no one. It wasn’t a secret you’d like to put about. And she wasn’t mad, because surely a mad person wouldn’t have spent the last half hour chewing food for Mrs. Gurgle…er, perhaps that wasn’t the best example, because her grandmother and people like her would say that for a girl who would be queen if 139 people died to be chewing up the food of someone who looked, sounded, and smelled like Mrs. Gurgle was just about as mad as you could get without actually drooling. Maybe it was God, but that didn’t feel right. She’d listened hard for God in church, especially after that horrible night, but of course He was a busy person. Apparently there were lesser gods here, though. Perhaps this was one of them. She looked around her. There were no pews, and certainly no polished brass, but there was a quiet busyness about it, a silence with a texture of breezes. The wind never seemed to blow hard in here, and loud noises got lost among the trees. It was a sacred place, and not because of some god or other. It was just…sacred, because it existed, because pain and blood and joy and death had echoed in time and made it so. The voice came again. “Quickly, now!” Daphne looked at the Place. A couple of women were gardening and didn’t even glance up. But there had been something about that “Quickly, now!” that went straight to her feet. I must have been talking to myself, she thought as she hurried out of the Place. People often do that. It’s perfectly normal when you are a shipwrecked sailor, I’m sure. She ran down the hill. There was a small crowd there. At first she thought some more survivors had turned up, and then she saw the figure slumped against the corner of the new hut. “What have you done to him?” she shouted as she ran. Pilu turned, while the rest of the group drew back hurriedly in the face of her anger. “Us? I’ve tried to make him lie down, but he fights me! I’d swear he’s asleep, but I’ve never seen anyone sleep like that!” Daphne hadn’t, either. Mau’s eyes were open wide, but she got the uneasy feeling that if they were looking at a beach, it certainly wasn’t this one. His arms and legs were twitching as if they wanted to move but couldn’t. She knelt down beside Mau and put her ear to his chest. She hardly needed to get that close. His heart was trying to break free. Pilu stepped closer to her and whispered, “There’s been trouble!” He managed to suggest that the trouble had not been made by him, very definitely not by him, and that he was against trouble of any kind, particularly any trouble up close. Ever since the Twinkle song, he had always been a little nervous of Daphne. She was a woman of power. “What kind of trouble?” she said, looking around. But she didn’t need an answer, because Ataba was standing with a ferocious expression. By the look of it there had been, as Cook back home would have put it, words. He turned to look at her, his face like a smacked bottom (Cook again), and then snorted and turned toward the lagoon. At that moment the water mounded and Milo walked up the sloping, white sand, water pouring off him. He had a god stone on his shoulder. “I want to know what’s been going on!” said Daphne. She was ignored. Everyone was watching the approaching Milo. “I told you! I forbid you to bring that ashore!” Ataba yelled. “I am a priest of Water!” Milo gave him a long, slow look and then kept on coming, his muscles moving like oiled coconuts under his skin. Daphne could hear the sand being crushed under his feet as he plodded over to the god anchors and set his burden down with a grunt. It sank a little into the beach. There were already four lying in the sand. That isn’t right, is it? she wondered. Weren’t there supposed to be three but one got lost? Where did the other ones come from? She saw the big man stretch himself out with a cracking of joints before turning to the little crowd and saying, in the slow and solemn voice of a man who tests the truth of every word before letting it go: “If anyone touches the stones, they answer to me.” “That one was made by a demon!” shouted Ataba. He looked at the crowd for some support here but didn’t find any. The people weren’t on anyone’s side, as far as Daphne could tell. They just didn’t like shouting. Things were bad enough as they were. “Demon,” rumbled Milo. “You like that word? Demon boy, you call him. But he saved you from the shark, right? And you said we made the god anchors. You did! I heard you!” “Only some,” said Ataba, backing away. “Only some!” “You never said some!” said Milo quickly. “He never said some,” he announced to the crowd. “He was speaking for his life an’ he never said some! I have good ears and he never said some!” “Who cares what he said?” said Daphne. She turned to the nearest woman. “Get Mau some blankets! He’s as cold as ice!” “Mau did rescue Ataba from a shark,” said Pilu. “That is a lie! I was in no danger—” the priest began, and stopped, because Milo had started to growl. “You should have seen it!” said Pilu quickly, turning to the crowd with his eyes wide open and his arms outspread. “It was the biggest one I have ever seen! It was as long as a house! It had teeth like, like, like huge teeth! As it came toward us, its speed made waves that almost sank the canoe!” Daphne blinked and looked sideways at the people. Their eyes were as wide as Pilu’s. Every mouth hung open. “And Mau just waited, treading water,” the boy went on. “He did not turn and flee! He did not try to get away! He looked it in the eye, there in its own world! He waved at the shark, the shark with the teeth like machetes, the shark with teeth like needles, to call it to him! He called it to him! Yes, he did! I was in the water and I saw! He was waiting for it! And the shark came faster! It came like a spear! Faster and faster it came!” In the audience, someone started to whimper. “And then I saw an amazing thing!” Pilu went on, his eyes wide and gleaming. “It was the most amazing thing I have ever seen! I will never see anything like it if I live to be a hundred! As the shark charged through the water, as the shark with the huge teeth sped toward him, as the shark as long as a house came through the water like a knife, Mau—he pissed himself!” The little waves of the lagoon lapped at the sand with small sup-sup noises, suddenly loud in the bottomless moment of silence. The woman bringing a grubby blanket from the hut almost walked into Daphne because she couldn’t bear to take her eyes off Pilu. Oh, thank you, Pilu, Daphne thought bitterly as the magic drained away. You were doing so well, you had their hearts in the palm of your hand, and then you had to go and spoil it by— “And that was when I saw,” whispered Pilu, lowering his voice and staring around the circle of faces, catching every eye. “That is when I knew. That is when I understood. He was no demon! He was no god, no hero. No. He was nothing but a man! A man who was frightened! A man like you and me! But would we wait there, full of fear, as the shark with huge teeth came to eat us? He did! I saw him! And as the shark was upon him, he shouted at it in scorn! He shouted these words: Da! Na! Ha! Pa!” “Da! Na! Ha! Pa!” several people mumbled, as if they were in a dream. “And the shark turned and fled from him. The shark could not face him. The shark turned about and we were saved. I was there. I saw this.” Daphne realized that her hands were sweating. She had felt the shark brush past her. She had seen its terrible eye. She could draw a picture of its teeth. She had been there. She had seen it. Pilu’s voice had shown it to her. She remembered when Mr. Griffith from the Nonconformist chapel had been invited to speak in the parish church. The sermon was rather damp, because he spat a fine spray when he shouted, but the man was so full of God that it overflowed everywhere. He preached as if he had a flaming sword in his hand. Bats fell out of the rafters. The organ started up by itself. The water sloshed in the font. All in all, it was very unlike the sermons of the Reverend Fleblow-Poundup, who on a fine day could get through a mumbled service in half an hour, with his butterfly net and collecting jar leaning against the pulpit. When they had got home, her grandmother had stood in the hallway, taken a deep breath, and said, “Well!” And that was that. Normally people tended to be very quiet in the parish church. Perhaps they were afraid of waking God up in case He asked pointed questions or gave them a test. But Pilu had unfolded the story of the shark like Mr. Griffith had preached. He had unfolded a picture in the air and then made it move. Was it true? Had it really happened like that? But how could it not be true, now? They had been there. They had seen it. They had shared it. She looked down at Mau. His eyes were still open and his body was still twitching. And then she looked up, and into the face of Cahle, who said: “Locaha has taken him.” “You mean he’s dying?” “Yes. The cold hand of Locaha is on him. You know him. He does not sleep. He eats not enough. He carries all weights, runs every distance. In his head, too much thinking. Has anyone here seen him not working, guarding, digging, carrying? He tries to carry the world on his back! And when such people weaken, Locaha springs.” Daphne leaned down to Mau. His lips were blue. “You’re not dying,” she whispered. “You can’t be dying.” She shook him gently, and there was a rush of air from his lips, faint as a spider’s sneeze: “Does…” “Does not happen!” she said triumphantly. “See? Locaha hasn’t got him yet! Look at his legs! He is not dying! In his head he is running!” Cahle looked carefully at Mau’s twitching legs and put her hand on his forehead. Her eyes widened. “I have heard of this,” she said. “It’s shadow stuff. It will kill him, even so. The Sky Woman will know what to do.” “Where is she, then?” “You chew her food for her,” said Cahle, smiling. The Unknown Woman appeared behind her, staring at Mau in horror. “Mrs. Gurgle?” said Daphne. “She is very old. A woman of great power.” “Then we’d better hurry!” Daphne put her hands under Mau’s shoulders and pulled him up. To her astonishment the Unknown Woman handed her baby to Cahle and took Mau’s feet. She looked at Daphne expectantly. Together they ran up the hill, leaving everyone else behind after they had gone a little way. By the time they arrived in the hut, Mrs. Gurgle was waiting for them with her little black eyes gleaming. As soon as Mau was laid on a mat, she changed. Until now Mrs. Gurgle had been rather a strange, half-sized person to Daphne. She had lost most of the hair on her head, moved on all fours like a chimpanzee, and looked as if she’d been made out of old leather bags. Also, she was, frankly, grabby when it came to food, and tended to fart in an unladylike way, although that was mostly the fault of the salt-pickled beef. Now she crawled around Mau carefully, touching him gently here and there. She listened intently at his ears and lifted each of his legs in turn, watching the twitching as closely as if she was observing a new species of wild animal. “He can’t die!” Daphne blurted out, unable to bear the suspense. “He just doesn’t sleep! He spends all night on guard! But you can’t die of not sleeping! Can you?” The ancient woman gave her a wide grin and picked up one of Mau’s feet. Slowly she ran a stubby black fingernail along his twitching sole and seemed disappointed in whatever it was she learned by it. “He isn’t dying, is he? He can’t die!” Daphne insisted again as Cahle came in. Other people crowded around the door. Mrs. Gurgle ignored them and gave Daphne a look that said, unmistakably, “Oh? And who are you, who knows everything?” and did some more leg lifting and prodding just to make the point that she was in charge. Then she looked up at Cahle and spoke at high speed. At one point Cahle laughed and shook her head. “She says he is in the—” Cahle stopped, and her lips moved as she tried to find a word she thought Daphne might understand. “The place between,” she said. “Shadow place. Not alive. Not dead.” “Where is it?” said Daphne. This was another difficult one. “A place with no place—you cannot walk there. Cannot swim there. On sea, no. On land, no. Like shadow. Yes! Shadow place!” “How can I get there?” This one was relayed to Mrs. Gurgle, and the reply was abrupt. “You? Cannot!” “Look, he saved me from drowning! He saved my life, do you understand? Besides, it’s your custom. If someone saves your life, it’s like a debt. You must pay it back. And I want to!” Mrs. Gurgle seemed to approve of this when it was translated. She said something. Cahle nodded. “She says that to get to the shadow world, you have to die,” she translated. “She is asking if you know how to.” “You mean it’s something you have to practice?” “Yes. Many times,” said Cahle calmly. “I thought you only got one go!” Daphne said. Mrs. Gurgle was suddenly in front of the girl. She stared at her fiercely, moving her head this way and that as if she were trying to find something in Daphne’s face. Then, before Daphne could move, the old woman suddenly grabbed her hand, dragged it onto her own heart, and held it there. “Boom-boom?” she said. “Heartbeat? Er…yes,” said Daphne, trying very hard and very unsuccessfully not to feel embarrassed. “It’s quite faint—I mean, you’ve got a very…a lot of—” The heartbeat stopped. Daphne tried to pull her hand away, but it was held tight. Mrs. Gurgle’s expression was blank and slightly preoccupied, as if she was trying to do a mildly complicated sum in her head, and the room seemed to darken. Daphne couldn’t help herself. She started to count under her breath. “…fifteen…sixteen…” And then…boom…so faint you could easily have missed it…boom…a little stronger this time…boom-boom…and it was back. The old woman smiled. “Er…I could try it—” Daphne began. “Just show me what to do!” “There is no time to teach you, she says,” said Cahle. “She says it takes a lifetime to learn how to die.” “I can learn very fast!” Cahle shook her head. “Your father looks for you. He is a trouserman chief, yes? If you are dead, what do we say? When your mother weeps for you, what do we say?” Daphne felt the tears coming, and tried to shut them out. “My mother…cannot weep,” she managed. Once more Mrs. Gurgle’s dark little eyes looked into Daphne’s face as if it were clear water—and there Daphne was, on the stairs in her nightdress with the blue flowers on it, hugging her knees and staring in horror at the little coffin on top of the big one, and sobbing because the little boy would be buried all alone in a box instead of with his mother, and would be so frightened. She could hear the lowered voices of the men, talking to her father, and the clink of the brandy decanter, and smell the ancient carpet. There was the sound of a busy stomach, and there was Mrs. Gurgle, too, sitting on the carpet chewing salt-pickled beef, and watching her with interest. The old woman stood up and reached for the little coffin, laying it gently on the carpet. She reached up again and lifted the lid of the big coffin and looked at Daphne expectantly. There were footsteps below in the hallway as a maid crossed the tiled floor and disappeared through the green baize door to the kitchens, sobbing. She knew what to do. She’d done it in her imagination a thousand times. She lifted the small, cold body from his lonely coffin, kissed his little face, and tucked him in beside their mother. The crying stopped— —she blinked at Mrs. Gurgle’s bright eyes, there in front of her again. The sound of the sea filled her ears. The old woman turned to Cahle, and she rattled and spluttered out what sounded like a long speech, or perhaps it was some kind of command. Cahle started to reply, but the old woman raised a finger, very sharply. Something had changed. “She says it is you who must fetch him back,” said Cahle, a bit annoyed. “She says there is a pain taken away, there at the other end of the world.” Daphne wondered how far those dark eyes could see. There at the other end of the world. Maybe. How did she do that? It hadn’t felt like a dream; it felt like a memory! But a pain was fading…. “She says you are a woman of power, like her,” Cahle went on reluctantly. “She has walked often in the shadow world. I know this to be true. She is famous.” Mrs. Gurgle gave Daphne another little smile. “She says she will send you into the shadows,” Cahle continued. “She says that you have very good teeth and have been kind to an old lady.” “Er…it was no trouble,” said Daphne, and thought furiously: How did she know? How did she do it? “She says there is no time to teach you, but she knows another way, and when you come back from the shadows, you will be able to chew much meat for her with your wonderful white teeth.” The little old woman gave Daphne a smile so wide that her ears nearly fell into it. “I certainly will!” “So now she will poison you to death,” Cahle said. Daphne looked at Mrs. Gurgle, who nodded encouragingly. “She will? Er…really? Er, thank you,” said Daphne. “Thank you very much.”   Mau ran. He didn’t know why; his legs were doing it all by themselves. And the air was…not air. It was thick, as thick as water, and black, but somehow he could see through it a long way, and move through it fast, too. Huge pillars rose out of the ground around him, and seemed to go up forever to a roof of surf. Something silvery and very quick shot past him and disappeared behind a pillar, and was followed by another one, and another. Fish, then, or something like fish. So he was underwater. Underwater, looking up at the waves… He was in the Dark Current. “Locaha!” he shouted. Hello, Mau, said the voice of Locaha. “I’m not dead! This is not fair!” Fair? I’m not sure I know that word, Mau. Besides, you are nearly dead. Certainly more dead than alive, and dying a little more every moment. Mau tried to go faster, but he was already running faster than he had ever run before. “I’m not tired! I can keep going forever! This is some kind of a trick, right? There must be rules, even to a trick!” I agree, said Locaha. And this is a trick.   “This is safe, isn’t it?” said Daphne. She was lying down on a mat by Mau, who still seemed as limp as a doll apart from the twitching legs. “And it will work, won’t it?” She tried to keep the wobble out of her voice, but it was one thing to be brave, and—two things to be brave and determined when it was really only an idea at the moment—and definitely another matter entirely when you could see Mrs. Gurgle out of the corner of your eye, busy at work. “Yes,” said Cahle. “You are sure, are you?” said Daphne. Oh, it sounded so weedy. She was ashamed of herself. Cahle gave her a little smile and went over to Mrs. Gurgle, who was squatting by the fire. Baskets of dried…things had been brought down from their hanging place in one of the huts, and Daphne knew the rule: the nastier and more dangerous, the higher. These had practically been on the roof. When Cahle spoke to her, acting like a pupil talking to a respected teacher, the old woman stopped sniffing at a handful of what looked like dusty bean pods and looked across at Daphne. There was no smile or wave. This was Mrs. Gurgle at work. She said something out of the corner of her mouth and threw all the pods into the little three-legged cauldron in front of her. Cahle came back. “She says safe is not sure. Sure not safe. There is just do, or do not do.” I was drowning, and he saved me, thought Daphne. Why did I ask that stupid question? “Make it sure,” she said. “Really sure.” On the other side of the room, Mrs. Gurgle grinned. “Can I ask another question? When I’m…you know, there, what should I do? Is there anything I should say?” The reply came back: “Do what is best. Say what is right.” And that was it. Mrs. Gurgle did not go in for long explanations. When the old woman hobbled across with half an oyster shell, Cahle said: “You must lick up what is on the shell and lie back. When the drop of water hits your face you…will wake up.” Mrs. Gurgle gently put the shell in Daphne’s hand and made a very short speech. “She says you will come back because you have very good teeth,” Cahle volunteered. Daphne looked at the half shell. It was a dull white, and empty except for two little greeny-yellow blobs. It didn’t seem much for all that effort. She held it close to her mouth and looked up at Cahle. The woman had put her hand in a gourd of water, and now she held it high over Daphne’s mat. She looked down with a drop of water glistening on the end of her finger. “Now,” she said. Daphne licked the shell (it tasted of nothing) and let herself fall back. And then there was the moment of horror. Even as her head hit the mat, the drop of water was falling toward it. She tried to shout, “That’s not enough ti—” And then there was darkness, and the boom of the waves overhead.   Mau ran onward, but the voice of Locaha still sounded very close. Are you tiring, Mau? Do your legs ache for rest? “No!” said Mau. “But…these rules. What are they?” Oh, Mau…I only agreed there must be rules. That doesn’t mean I have to tell you what they are. “But you must catch me, yes?” You are correct in your surmise, said Locaha. “What does that mean?” You guessed right. Are you sure you are not tiring? “Yes!” In fact strength flowed into Mau’s legs. He had never felt so alive. The pillars were going past faster now. He was overtaking the fish, which panicked away, leaving silvery trails. And there was light on the dark horizon. It looked like buildings, like white buildings as big as the ones Pilu had told him about in Port Mercia. What were buildings doing down here? Something white flashed past under his feet. He glanced down and almost stumbled. He was running over white blocks. They were blurred by his speed, and he didn’t dare to slow down, but they looked exactly the right size to be god anchors. This is wonderful, wonderful, said Locaha. Mau, did you bother to wonder if you are running the wrong way? Two voices had said those words and now arms grabbed him. “This way!” screamed Daphne, right in his ear as she tugged him back the way he had come. “Why didn’t you hear me?” “But—” Mau began, straining to look back at the white buildings. There was something like a twist of smoke coming out of them…or perhaps it was a clump of weeds, flapping in the current…or a ray, skimming toward them. “I said this way! Do you want to die forever? Run! Run!” But where was the speed in his legs? It was like running through water now, real water. He looked at Daphne, who was half towing him. “How did you get here?” “Apparently I’m dead—will you try to keep up! And whatever you do, don’t look back!” “Why not?” “Because I just did! Run faster!” “Are you really dead?” “Yes, but I’m due to get well soon. Come on, Mrs. Gurgle! The drop was falling!” Silence fell like a hammer made of feathers. It left holes in the shape of the sound of the sea. They stopped running, not because they intended to, but because they had to. Mau’s feet hung uselessly above the ground. The air turned gray. “We are in the steps of Locaha,” he said. “He has spread his wings over us.” Words seized Daphne’s tongue. It was only a few weeks since she’d heard them before, at the funeral of Cabin Boy Scatterling, who had been killed in the mutiny. He’d had red hair and pimples and she hadn’t liked him much, but she’d cried when the sailcloth-wrapped body had disappeared under the waves. Captain Roberts was a member of the Conducive Brethren, who accepted a version of the Gospel of St. Mary Magdalene as, well, gospel. * She’d never heard this piece read down at Holy Trinity, but she had tucked it into her memory and now it came out, screamed like a battle cry: “And those that perish in the sea, the sea shall not hold them! Tho’ they be broken and scattered, they will be made whole! They will rise again on that morning, clad in new raiment! In ships of the firmament they will climb among stars!”   “Mrs. Gur—!” CHAPTER 9 Rolling the Stone   WATER SPLASHED ON DAPHNE’S face. She opened her eyes, and her mouth said: “—gle!” Cahle and the old woman looked down on her, smiling. As she blinked in the light, she felt Mrs. Gurgle gently pulling something out of her hair. But something else was happening. Memory was flowing out of her mind in a tide. The face of death…the great pillars of the world…the white slabs…they sped into the past like silver fish, fading as they went. She turned to the mat beside her. Mau lay still and snored. No reason to get excited, she thought, feeling a little lightheaded. He had been so cold, and she’d brought him up here to keep him warm. There had been…something that happened. The shape of it was still in her head, but she couldn’t fill it in. Except…“There was a silver fish?” she wondered aloud. Mrs. Gurgle looked very surprised and said something to Cahle, who smiled and nodded. “She says you are indeed a woman of power,” Cahle said. “You pulled him out of a dark dream.” “I did? I can’t remember. But there was a fish in it.” The hole in her memory was still there when Cahle had gone, and there was still a fish in it. Something big and important had happened and she had been there, and all she could remember was that there had been a fish in it? Mrs. Gurgle had curled up in her corner, and it looked as if she was asleep. Daphne was certain that she wasn’t. She’d be peeking through eyelids that were almost closed and listening so hard that her ears would try to flap. All the women took far too much interest in her and Mau. It was like the maids back home gossiping. It was silly and quite unnecessary, it really was! Mau looked quite small on the mat. The twitching had stopped, but he had curled up in a ball. It was a shock, now, to see him so still. “Ermintrude,” said her voice in the air. “Yes,” she said, and added, “You are me, aren’t you?” “When he is asleep, he still dreams of dark waters. Touch him. Hold him. Warm him. Let him know he is not alone.” It sounded like her own voice, and it made her blush. She could feel the hot pinkness rising up her neck. “That wouldn’t be seemly,” she hissed, before she could stop herself. Then she wanted to shout: “That wasn’t me! That was some old woman’s stupid granddaughter!” “So who are you?” said the voice in the air. “Some creature who knows how to feel but not how to touch? Here? In this place? Mau is alone. He thinks he has no soul, so he is building himself one. Help him. Save him. Tell him the stupid old men are wrong.” “The stupid old—” Daphne began, and felt a memory uncoil. “The Grandfathers?” “Yes! Help him roll away the stone! He is a woman’s child and he is crying!” “Who are you?” she asked the air. The voice came back like an echo: “Who are you?” Then the voice went, leaving not even a shape in the silence. I’ve got to think about this, Daphne thought. Or perhaps not. Not now, in this place, because maybe there’s such a thing as too much thinking. Because however much of a Daphne you yearn to be, there is always your Ermintrude looking over your shoulder. Anyway, her thoughts added, Mrs. Gurgle is here, so she counts as a chaperone, and a better one than poor Captain Roberts, since she’s nothing like as dead. She knelt by Mau’s mat. The voice had been right: There was a trickle of tears down his face, even though he seemed fast asleep. She kissed the tears because this felt like the right thing to do, and then tried to get an arm under him, which was really hard to manage and in any case her arm went to sleep and then got pins and needles, and she had to pull it out. So much for romance, she decided. She dragged her own mat over to his and lay down on it, which meant that an arm could go over him without too much difficulty but also that she had to rest rather awkwardly with her head on her other arm. But after a while his hand came up and grasped hers, gently, at which point, and despite the extreme discomfort, she fell asleep. Mrs. Gurgle waited until she was sure that Daphne was sleeping, and then she uncurled her hand and looked at the little silver fish she had picked out of the girl’s hair. It coiled backward and forward in her palm. She swallowed it. It was only a dream fish, but such things are good for the soul.   Daphne woke up just as the first light of dawn was painting the sky pink. She was stiff in muscles she’d never known she possessed. How did married couples manage? It was a mystery. Mau was snoring gently and didn’t stir at all. How could you help a boy like that? He wanted to be everywhere and do everything. And so he’d probably try to do more than he should and end up in trouble again and she would have to sort it out again. She sighed a sigh that was older than she was. Her father had been the same, of course. He’d spend all night working on dispatch boxes for the Foreign Office, with a footman on duty at all times to bring him coffee and roast duck sandwiches. It was quite usual for the maids to find him still at his desk in the morning, fast asleep with his head on a map of Lower Sidonia. Her grandmother used to make sniffy remarks like: “I suppose His Majesty doesn’t have any other ministers?” But now Daphne understood. He’d been like Mau, trying to fill the hole inside with work so that it didn’t overflow with memories. Right now she was glad she was alone. Apart from the snoring of Mau and Mrs. Gurgle there was no sound but the wind and the boom of the waves on the reef. On the island, that was what counted as silence. “Show us yer drawers!” floated in through the doorway. Oh, yes, and the wretched parrot. It really was very annoying. You often didn’t see it for days, because it had picked up a deep, cheerful hatred of the pantaloon birds and took a huge delight in annoying them at every opportunity. And then, just when you had a moment that was quiet and a bit, well, spiritual, it was suddenly all over the place shouting, “Show us your…underthings!” She sighed. Sometimes the world ought to be better organized. Then she listened for a while and heard the bird fly off up the mountain. Right, she thought, first things first. So, first, she went out to the fireplace and set some salt-pickled beef to simmering in a pot. She added some roots that Cahle had said were okay, and one half of a very small red pepper. It had to be just one half because they were so hot a whole one burned her mouth, although Mrs. Gurgle ate them raw. Anyway, she owed the old woman a lot of chewed beef. And now for the big test. Things shouldn’t be allowed to just happen. If she was going to be a woman of power, she had to take charge. She couldn’t always be the ghost girl, pushed around by events. Right. Should she kneel? People didn’t seem to kneel here, but she didn’t want to be impolite, even if she was talking to herself. Hands together. Eyes closed? It was so easy to get things wrong— The message came right away. “You did not put a spear into Twinkle’s hand,” said her own voice in her own head, even before she’d had time to think how to begin. She thought: Oh dear, whoever it is, they know that I still think of the baby as Twinkle. “Are you a heathen god of some sort?” she asked. “I’ve been thinking about this, and well, gods do talk to people, and I understand there are quite a lot of gods here. I just want to know if there is going to be any thunder and lightning, because I really don’t like that. Or if I’ve gone mad and I’m hearing voices. However, I have dismissed this hypothesis because I don’t believe that people who have really gone mad think they have gone mad, so wondering if you have gone mad means that you haven’t. I just want to know who I’m talking to, if you don’t mind.” She waited. “Er, I apologize for calling you heathen,” she added. There was still no reply. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or not and decided instead to be a bit hurt. She coughed. “All right. Very well,” she said, standing up. “At least I tried. I’m sorry to have trespassed on your time.” She turned to leave the hut. “We would take the newborn child and make his little hand grasp a spear, so that he would grow up to be a great warrior and kill the children of other women,” said the voice. “We did it. The clan said so, the priests said so, the gods said so. And now you come, and what do you know of the custom?” the voice went on. “And so the first thing the baby touches is the warmth of his mother, and you sing him a song about stars!” Was she in trouble? “Look, I’m really sorry about the twinkle song—” she began. “It was a good song for a child,” said the voice. “It began with a question.” This was getting very strange. “Have I done something wrong or not?” “How is it that you hear us? We are blown about by the wind, and our voices are weak, but you, a trouserman, heard our struggling silence! How?” Had she been listening? Daphne wondered. Perhaps she’d never stopped after all those days in the church after her mother died, saying every prayer she knew, waiting for even a whisper in reply. She hadn’t been looking for an apology. She wasn’t asking for time to run backward. She just wanted an explanation that was better than “It’s the will of God,” which was grown-up speak for “because.” It had seemed to her, thinking about it in her chilly bedroom, that what had happened was very much like a miracle. After all, it had been a terrible storm, and if the doctor had managed to get there without his horse being struck by lightning, that would have been a miracle, wouldn’t it? That’s what people would have said. Well, in that big, dark, rainy, roaring night, the lightning had managed to hit quite a small horse among all those big thrashing trees. Didn’t that look like a miracle, too? It was almost exactly the same shape, wasn’t it? In any case, besides, didn’t they call something like this an “act of God”? She’d been very polite when she put the question to the archbishop, and in her opinion it had been really unreasonable for her grandmother to scream like a baboon and drag her out of the cathedral by her ear. But she had kept looking out for a voice, a whisper, a word that would let it all make sense. She just wanted it all…sorted out. She looked up into the gloomy roof of the hut. “I heard you because I was listening,” she said. “Then listen to us, girl who can hear those who have no voices.” “And you are—?” “We are the Grandmothers.” “I’ve never heard of the Grandmothers!” “Where do you think little grandfathers come from? Every man has a mother, and so does every mother. We gave birth to little grandfathers, and filled them with milk, and wiped their bottoms and kissed their tears away. We taught them to eat, and showed them what food was safe, so that they grew up straight. We taught them the songs of children, which have lessons in them. And then we gave them to the Grandfathers, who taught them how to kill other women’s sons. The ones who were best at this were dried in the sand and taken to the cave. We went back to the dark water, but part of us remains, here in this place where we were born and gave birth and, often, died.” “The Grandfathers shout at Mau all the time!” “They are echoes in a cave. They remember the battle cries of their youth, over and over again, like the talking bird. They are not bad men. We loved them, as sons and husbands and fathers, but old men get confused and dead men don’t notice the turning of the world. The world must turn. Tell Mau he must roll away the stone.” And they left. She felt them slide out of her mind. That, thought Daphne, was impossible. Then she thought: Up to now, anyway. They were real, and they’re still here. They’re what I felt when Twinkle was being born, as if the Place was alive and on my side. Perhaps some voices are so old everyone understands them. The light came back slowly, gray at first like the dawn. Daphne heard a faint noise close at hand, looked around, and saw a young girl standing in the hut doorway, staring at her in horror. She couldn’t remember the girl’s name, because she had been here only a few days, and was going to tell her off when she did remember that although the girl had arrived with some other survivors, none of them had been her relatives. And she’d been about to shout at her. Moving very carefully, Daphne crouched down and held out her arms. The child looked as though she was one heartbeat away from fleeing. “What is your name?” The girl looked down at her feet and whispered something that sounded like “Blibi.” “That’s a nice name,” said Daphne, and gently drew the child to her. As the sobs began to shake the little body, she made a note to tell Cahle. People were turning up every day now, and people who needed looking after were looking after others. That wasn’t such a bad thing, but while everyone got food to eat and a place to sleep, there were other things that were just as important that tended to get overlooked when everyone was busy. “Do you know about cooking, Blibi?” she asked. There was a kind of muffled nod. “Good! And do you see that man lying on the mat?” Another nod. “Good. Good. I want you to watch over him. He has been ill. The meat in the pot will be ready when the sun has moved a hand-width above the trees. I’m going to look at a stone. Tell him he must eat. Oh, and you must eat, too.” Where will I end up? she wondered as she hurried out of the Place. I’ve slept in the same room as a young man without an official chaperone (would Mrs. Gurgle count?), made beer, have been going around practically naked, and let gods talk with my mouth, like the Pelvic Oracle in Greece in ancient times, although the voices of the Grandmothers probably didn’t count as gods and, come to think of it, it was the Delphic Oracle, anyway. And technically I was nursing him, so that was probably permissible…. She stopped, and looked around. Who cared? Who, on this island, cared a fig? So who was she apologizing to? Why was she making excuses? “Roll away the stone?” Why did everyone want him to do things? She’d heard about the stone. It was in a little valley in the side of the mountain, where women weren’t supposed to go. There was no reason to go now, but she was angry at everyone and she just wanted to get out in the fresh air and do something people didn’t want her to. There were skeletons, probably, behind the stone, but so what? A lot of her ancestors were in the crypt of the church at home, and they never tried to get out and they never spoke to people. Her grandmother would have had something to say about it if they did! Besides, it was broad daylight, and obviously they’d only come out at night—except, of course, it would be pure superstition to believe that they came out at all. She set off. There was a clear track leading uphill. The forest wasn’t very big, she’d heard, and the track ran right through it. There were no man-eating tigers, no giant gorillas, no ferocious lizards from ancient times…in fact it wasn’t very interesting at all. But the thing about a forest that’s only a few square miles in area is that when it’s scrunched up into little crisscrossing valleys and every growing thing is fighting every other living thing for every ragged patch of sunlight, and you cannot see more than a few feet in any direction, and you can’t judge where you are by the sound of the sea because the sound of the sea is very faint and in any case all around you, then the forest not only seems very big but also appears to be growing all the time. That’s when you began to believe it hated you as much as you hated it. Following the track was no use, because it soon became a hundred tracks, splitting and rejoining all the time. Things rustled in the undergrowth, and sometimes creatures that sounded a lot bigger than pigs galloped away on paths she could not see. Insects went zing and zip all around her, but they weren’t as bad as the huge spiders that had woven their webs right across the paths and then hung in them, bigger than a hand and almost spitting with rage. Daphne had read in one of her books about the Great Southern Pelagic Ocean islands that “with a few regrettable examples, the larger and more fearsome the spider is, the less likely it is to be venomous.” She didn’t believe it. She could see Regrettable Examples everywhere, and she was sure that some of them were drooling. —And suddenly there was clear daylight ahead. She would have run toward it, but there was—by good fortune not apparent at the time—a Regrettable Example using its web as a trampoline and she had to ease her way past it with caution. This was just as well, because while the end of the path offered vast amounts of fresh air, there was a total insufficiency of anything to stand on. There was a little clearing, big enough for a couple of people to sit and watch the world, and then a drop all the way to the sea. It wasn’t a totally sheer drop; you’d bounce off rocks several times before you ever hit the water. She took the opportunity to take a few breaths that didn’t have flies in them. It would have been nice to see a sail on the horizon. In fact it would be narratively satisfying, she considered. But at least she could see that the day was getting on. She wasn’t scared of other people’s ghosts, much, but she did not fancy an evening walk through this forest. And getting back shouldn’t be too hard, should it? All she had to do was take a downward path every time she found one. Admittedly taking the upward path at every opportunity, or at least every up path not blocked by a particularly evil-looking Regrettable Example, had completely failed to work, but logic had to triumph in the end. In a way, it did. After a change of path she stepped out into a small valley, held in the arms of the mountain, and there, ahead of her, was the stone. It couldn’t be anything else. There were trees here and there in the valley, but they were sorry-looking things and half dead. The ground beneath them was covered with bird doo-dahs. A little way in front of the stone, a large bowl, also of some kind of stone, sat on a tripod made of three big rocks. Daphne peered into it with a kind of shameful curiosity because, to make no bones about it, it was, in this place, just the kind of big stone bowl that you’d expect to have a few skulls in it. There was something in the brain that said: Sinister-looking valley + half-dead trees + ominous doorway = skulls in a bowl, or possibly on a stick. But even by listening to it, she felt she was being unfair to Mau and Cahle and the rest of them. Human skulls never came up in day-to-day conversation. More importantly, they never came up at lunch. The sickly smell of sour, sticky Demon Drink rose from the bowl. It was stale, but couldn’t have been very good to start with. It was a terrible thing to admit, but she was getting really good at making beer. Everyone said so. It was just some kind of a knack, Cahle had said, or at least had partly said and partly gestured, and that being able to make beer so well meant she would be able to get a very fine husband. Her getting married still seemed to be the big topic of discussion in the Place. It was like being in a Jane Austen novel, but one with far less clothing. It was windy up here, and colder than it was down below. It wasn’t a place where you’d want to be at night. Oh, well, time to say what she had to say. She marched up to the stone, stuck her fists on her hips, and said: “Now listen to me, you! I know about ancestors! I’ve got lots of ancestors! One of them was a king, and that’s about as ancestral as you can be! I’m here about Mau! He tries to do everything, and you just bully him all the time! He’s doing wonderful things, and he’s nearly killed himself, and you never even thank him! Is that any way to behave?” Well, it’s how your ancestors behave, said her conscience. What about the way their pictures all stare at you in the Long Gallery? What about the way your father keeps spending all that money on the Hall just because his great-great-great-great-grandfather built it? Yes, what about your father? “I know what happens to people who get bullied,” she shouted, even louder this time. “They end up thinking they really are no good! It doesn’t matter that they work so hard they fall asleep at their desks; it’s still never enough! They get timid and jumpy and make wrong decisions, and that means more bullying because, you see, the bully is never going to stop, whatever they do, and my—the person being bullied will do anything to make it stop, but it never will! I’m not going to put up with that, do you understand? If you don’t mend your ways in very short order, there will be trouble, understand?” I’m shouting at a rock, she thought as her voice echoed off the mountain. What am I expecting it to do? Reply? “Is there anyone listening?” she yelled, and thought: What do I do if someone says “yes”? For that matter, what do I do if they say “no”? Nothing happened, in quite an offensive way, considering she’d taken a lot of trouble to get up here. I’ve just been snubbed by a cave full of dead old men. Someone was standing behind her. Someone she hadn’t heard coming. But she was angry at all sorts of things and right now was mostly angry at herself for shouting at a rock, and whatever it was behind her, it was going to get the sharp end of her tongue. “One of my ancestors fought in the Wars of the Roses,” she announced haughtily, without looking round, “and in those wars you were supposed to wear a red rose or a white rose to show whose side you were on, but he was very attached to a pink rose called Lady Lavinia, which we still grow at the Hall, actually, so he ended up fighting both sides at once. He lived, too, because everyone thought it was bad luck to kill a madman. That’s what you need to know about my family: We might be pigheaded and stupid, but we do fight.” She spun around. “Don’t you dare creep up on—Oh.” Something went pnap. It was a pantaloon bird staring up at her with an affronted expression on its beak. That wasn’t the most noticeable thing about it, however, which was that it was not alone. There were at least fifty of the birds, with more flying in. Now there was sound, because the big birds had the aerodynamics of a brick in any case, and in aiming to land near Daphne they were put off their concentration and mostly crashed on other pantaloon birds, in clouds of feathers and angry beak snapping: Pnap! Pnap! It was a bit like being in a snowfall. It’s all fun and games at the start, a winter wonderland, and you think because it’s soft, it’s harmless. And then you realize you can’t see the path anymore and it’s getting dark and the snow is blotting out the sky— A big bird, out of sheer luck, landed on her head, scrabbling for a foothold in her hair with claws like old men’s hands. She screamed at it and managed to force it off. But they were still piling up around her, pushing and pnapping at one another. She could hardly think, in the storm of noise and stink and feathers, but it seemed they weren’t actually attacking her. They just wanted to be where she was, wherever that was. Oh yes, the stink. Nothing stank like a lot of pantaloon birds up close. On top of the ordinary dry, bony bird smell, they had the worst breath of any living creature. She could feel it hitting her skin like scrubbing brushes. And all the time they pnapped, each trying to outpnap all the others, so that she nearly didn’t hear the cry of rescue. “Show us yer drawers! Once I was an awful drinker, now I am a dreadful stinker!” The birds panicked. They hated the parrot as much as it hated them. And when a pantaloon bird wants to get away fast, it makes sure it leaves behind anything not wanted on the journey. Daphne crouched down and put her hands over her head as a rain of bones and lumps of fish pattered down. Perhaps the noise was the worst part, but when you got down to it, it was all worst. A golden-brown shape leaped past her, with a coconut in each hand. It kicked and staggered its way through the panicking birds until it reached the big stone bowl, which was full of pantaloon birds like flowers in a vase. It raised shells high in the air over the bowl and in one sharp movement smashed them together. Beer poured out, filling the air with its scent. Instantly the birds’ beaks swung toward the bowl, seeking the beer like a compass needle seeks north. Daphne was immediately forgotten. “I wish I was dead,” she said to the world in general, pulling bones out of her hair. “No, I wish I was in a nice warm bath, with proper soap and towels. And after that I wish I was in another bath, because, believe me, this is a two-bath head. And then I wish I was dead. I think this is the worst thing”—she paused, because, yes, there had been something worse, and always would be, and went on—“the second-worst thing that has ever happened to me.” Mau crouched down beside her. “Men’s Place,” he said, grinning. “Yes, it looks like one,” snapped Daphne. She stared at Mau. “How are you?” Mau’s brow wrinkled, and she knew that one wasn’t going to work. They had got a language working pretty well now, thanks to Pilu and Cahle, but it was for simple everyday things, and “How are you?” was too complicated because it didn’t really ask the question you thought it asked. She could see Mau working it out. “Er, I am because one day my mother and my father—” he began, but she had been halfway ready for this. “I mean here!” she said loudly. There were several soft thumps while he thought about this. The pantaloon birds were falling over, like an elderly lady who has had too much sherry on Christmas Day. Daphne wondered if they were poisoned by the beer, because none of them had sung a song, but she didn’t think so. She had seen one eat a whole dead crab that had been lying in the sun for days. Besides, as they lay there, their beaks trembled and they made happy little pnap-pnap noises. As they fell over, thirsty ones took their places. “The little girl told me you had said something about a stone,” said Mau. “And then I had to have a bowl of beef. She insisted. And then I came as fast as I could, but she can’t run very fast.” He pointed. Blibi was walking up the valley, treading carefully in order to avoid snoring birds. “She said you told her she has to watch over me.” They sat and waited, avoiding each other’s gaze. Then Mau said: “Er, the way it works is that the birds drink the beer, but the spirit of the beer flies to the Grandfathers. That’s what the priests used to say.” Daphne nodded. “We have bread and wine at home,” she said, and thought, Oops, I won’t try to explain that one. They have cannibals down here. It could get…confusing. “I don’t think it’s true, though,” said Mau. Daphne nodded, and then thought a bit more. “Perhaps things can be true in special ways?” she suggested. “No. People say that when they want to believe lies,” Mau said flatly. “And they usually do.” There was another pause, which was filled by the parrot. With its mortal enemies paralyzed by the Demon Drink, it had swooped down and was industriously pulling their pants off them, which meant very neatly and carefully plucking out every white feather on their legs while making happy but fortunately muffled parrot noises. “They look very…pink,” said Daphne, glad of something innocent, more or less, to talk about. “Do you remember…running?” said Mau after a while. “Yes. Sort of. I remember the fish.” “Silver fish? Long and thin?” “Like eels, yes!” said Daphne. Feathers were drifting across the valley in clumps. “So it did happen, did it?” “I suppose so.” “I mean, was it a dream or was it real?” “Mrs. Gurgle says yes,” said Daphne. “Who is Mrs…. Gurgle, please?” “The very old woman,” Daphne explained. “You mean Mar-isgala-egisaga-gol?” “Probably.” “And she says yes to what?” “Your question. I think she means it wasn’t the right one. Look, does Locaha talk to you?” “Yes!” “Really?” “Yes!” “In your head? Like your dreams?” “Yes, but I know the difference!” said Mau. “That’s good, because the Grandmothers have been talking to me.” “Who are the Grandmothers?” Blibi, if that was really her name, had caught up with them long before Daphne had finished talking and Mau had finished understanding. She sat at their feet, playing with pantaloon bird feathers. Mau picked up a feather and twiddled it in his fingers. “They don’t like warriors, then.” “They don’t like people being killed. Nor do you.” “Have you heard of the Raiders?” asked Mau, brushing a feather off his face. “Of course. Everyone’s talking about them. They have great war galleys, and they hang the skulls of their enemies along the sides of them. Oh, and enemy means everyone else.” “We have perhaps thirty people here now. Some more arrived this morning, but most of them can hardly stand. They survived the wave, but they weren’t going to wait for the Raiders to come.” “Well, you’ve got enough canoes. Can’t we just head east?” She said that without thinking, and then sighed. “We can’t, can we?” “No. If we had more able-bodied people, and time to get provisions together, then we could try it. But it’s eight hundred miles of open ocean.” “The weaker people would die. They came here to be safe!” “They call this island ‘the place where the sun is born’ because it’s in the east. They look to us.” “Then we could hide until the Raiders go away. Roll away the stone, the Grandmothers said.” Mau stared at her. “And hide among the dead men? Do you think we should?” “No! We should fight!” She was amazed at how fast the words came out. They had been pushed out by her ancestors, all those calm stone knights down in the crypt. They’d never ever thought about hiding, even when it was the sensible thing to do. “Then I will think of a way,” said Mau. “What do the Grandfathers say?” “I don’t hear them anymore. I just hear…clicks, and insect noises.” “Perhaps the Grandmothers have told them off,” said Daphne, giggling. “My grandmother was always telling my grandfather off. He knew everything there is to know about the fifteenth century but he was always coming down to breakfast without his teeth in.” “They fell out in the night?” asked Mau, puzzled. “No. He used to take them out to clean them. They were new teeth made out of animal bone.” “You trousermen can give an old man new teeth? What will you tell me next? That you can give him new eyes?” “Um…yes, actually something very much like that.” “Why are you so much smarter than us?” “I don’t think we are, really. I think it’s just that you have to learn to make things when it’s cold for half the year. I think we got our empire because of the weather. Anything was better than staying at home in the rain. I’m pretty certain people looked out of the window and rushed off to discover India and Africa.” “Are they big places?” “Huge,” said Daphne. Mau sighed and said, “With the people who leave stones.” “Who?” “The god anchors,” said Mau. “I understand Ataba now. I don’t think he believes in his gods, but he believes in belief. And he also thinks trousermen came here a long time ago,” he added, shaking his head. “Maybe they brought the stones as ballast. It must have happened like that. Look at all the stone Judy the Sweet brought. Worthless rock to you, all kinds of tools to us. And maybe they gave us metal and tools, like giving toys to children, and we carved the stones because we wanted them to come back. Isn’t that how it would go? We are a little island. Tiny.” The Phoenicians, thought Daphne glumly. They went on long, long voyages. So did the Chinese. What about the Aztecs? Even the Egyptians? Some people say they visited Further Australia. And who knows who might have been around thousands of years ago? He’s probably right. But he looks so sad. “Well, you might be a small island,” she said, “but you are an old one. The Grandmothers must have some reason for telling you to roll away the big stone.” They looked at the stone, which glowed a golden yellow in the afternoon light. “You know, I can’t remember a longer day than this,” said Daphne. “I can,” said Mau. “Yes. That was a long day, too.” “It takes ten strong men to move the stone,” said Mau after a while. “We don’t have that many.” “I’ve been thinking about that,” said Daphne. “How many would it take if one of them was Milo, and he had a crowbar made of steel?”   It took time. There was a groove in the rock that had to be scraped out, and tree trunks to be dragged into position to stop the door from falling outward as it moved. The sun was starting to fall down the sky by the time Milo stepped up to the stone with a six-foot bar of steel in his hand. Mau looked at it glumly. It was useful and he was glad to have it, but it was a trouserman thing, another present from the Sweet Judy. They were still stripping her like termites. Even a canoe had a soul, of a kind. Everyone knew that; sometimes it wasn’t a good soul, and the craft was hard to handle, even though it seemed to be well built. If you were lucky you got a canoe with a good soul, like the one he’d built on the Boys’ Island, which always seemed to know what he wanted. The Sweet Judy had a good soul, he could tell. It was a shame to break her up, and another kind of shame to know that, once again, they had to rely on the trousermen to get things done. He was almost ashamed of carrying one of the smaller crowbars himself, but they were so useful. Who but the trousermen had so much metal that they could afford to make sticks out of it. But the bars were wonderful. They opened anything. “There may be a curse on the door,” said Ataba, behind Mau. “Can you tell if there is?” “No! But this is wrong.” “These are my ancestors. I seek their guidance. Why should they curse me? Why should I fear their old bones? Why are you afraid?” “What is in the dark should be left alone.” The priest sighed. “But no one listens to me now. The coral is full of white stones, people say, so which ones are holy?” “Well, which?” “The three old ones, of course.” “You could test them,” said Daphne, without thinking. “People could leave a fish on a new stone and see how their fortune changes. Hmm, I’d need to work out a scientific way—” She stopped, aware that everyone was watching her. “Well, it would be interesting,” she finished lamely. “I did not understand any of that,” said Ataba, looking coldly at her. “I did.” Mau craned to see who had spoken and saw the tall skinny figure of Tom-ali, a canoe builder who had arrived with two children who were not his, one boy and one girl. “Speak, Mr. Tom-ali,” he said. “I would like to ask the gods why my wife and son died and I did not.” There was some murmuring from the crowd. Mau already knew him. He knew all the newcomers. They walked the same way, slowly. Some just sat and watched the sea. And there was a grayness about them all. Why am I here? their faces said. Why me? Was I a bad person? Tom-ali was repairing the canoes now, with the boy helping him, while the girl helped out in the Place. Some of the children were coping better than the adults; after the wave, you just found a place that fitted. But Tom-ali had said what a lot of people didn’t want to hear said, and the best thing to do was to give them something else to think about, right now. “We all want answers today,” Mau said. “Please, all of you, help me move the stone. No one else has to set foot inside. I will go in by myself. Perhaps I’ll find the truth.” “No,” said Ataba firmly, “let us go in there together and find the truth.” “Fine,” said Mau. “That way we can find twice as much.” Ataba stood next to Mau as the men took up their positions. “You say you are not frightened. Well, I am frightened, young man, to my very toes.” “The truth will be the dead men in there, that’s all,” said Mau. “Dried up. Dust. If you want to be frightened, think about the Raiders.” “Do not dismiss the past so lightly, demon boy. It may still teach you something.” Milo forced the bar between the rock and the stone, and heaved. The stone creaked, and moved an inch— They did it carefully and slowly, because it would certainly crush anybody it fell on. But cleaning out the groove had been a good idea. The stone ran smoothly, until half of the cave entrance could be seen. Mau looked inside. There was nothing there. He’d imagined all kinds of things, but not nothing. The floor was quite smooth. There was a bit of dust on the floor, and a few beetles scuttled off into the dark, and that was all the cave held. Except depth. Why had he expected bones to fall out when the door was opened? Why should it be full up? He picked up a piece of rock and threw it into the darkness as hard as he could. It seemed to bounce and rattle for a long time. “All right,” he said, and the cave threw his voice back at him. “We’re going to need those lamps, Daphne.” She stood up, with one of the Sweet Judy’s lamps in each hand. “One red one and one green one,” she said. “The spare port and starboard lights. Sorry about that, but we haven’t got very many cabin lamps left, and we’re short of oil.” “What about that white lamp next to you?” asked Mau. “Yes, that’s the one I’m going to bring,” said the ghost girl, “and to save time, shall we pretend we’ve had the argument and I won?” More trouserman things, Mau thought as he picked up his lamp. I wonder what we used to use? The low ceiling told him when he touched it. His fingers came away covered in soot. Torches, then. You could make decent ones out of hog fat. If there was enough of the stuff to spare, they were good for night fishing, because the fish would rise to the light. We’ve been living off fish and the Sweet Judy’s salt-pickled beef, because that’s easy, he thought, so now we’ll have to find our dead by trouserman lamplight. CHAPTER 10 Believing Is Seeing   THE CAVE WAS WAITING. It might contain anything, Mau thought. And that was the point, wasn’t it? You had to find out. You had to know. And Daphne didn’t seem concerned. Mau told her that there would probably be bones, and she said that was fine, because bones didn’t try to kill you, and that since she had got the message from the Grandmothers, she was going to see it through, thank you so very much. They found the Grandfathers right at the point where you could just see the waning daylight, and Mau began to understand. They weren’t scary, they were just…sad. Some of them still sat as they had been put, with their knees up under their chins, staring toward the distant light with flat dead eyes. They were just husks and crumbled bones. If you looked carefully, you could see that they had been held together with papervine. It really did have many uses, even after death. They stopped when the daylight was a little dot at the end of the tunnel. “How many more can there be?” Ataba wondered. “I’m counting,” said Mau. “There’s more than a hundred of them so far.” “One hundred and two,” said Daphne. There seemed to be no end to them, sitting one behind the other like the world’s oldest rowing crew, sculling into eternity. Some of them still had their spears or clubs, tied to their arms. They went on, and the light vanished. The dead passed in their hundreds and Daphne lost count. She kept reminding herself how scared she wasn’t. After all, hadn’t she quite enjoyed that lecture on anatomy she had attended? Even though she had kept her eyes shut throughout? However, if you were going to look at hundreds and thousands of dead men, it didn’t help to see the light from Ataba’s lamp flicker over them. It seemed to make them move. And they had been men of the islands; she could see, on ancient, leathery skin, blurred tattoos, like the ones every man—well, every man except Mau—wore even now. A wave, curling across the face of the setting sun… “How long have you been putting people in here?” she asked. “Forever,” said Mau, running on ahead. “And they came from the other islands, too!” “Are you tired, sir?” said Daphne to Ataba, when they were left alone. “Not at all, girl.” “Your breathing does not sound good.” “That is my affair. It is not yours.” “I was just…concerned, that’s all.” “I would be obliged if you would stop being concerned,” Ataba snapped. “I know what is happening. It starts with knives and cooking pots, and suddenly we belong to the trousermen, yes, and you send priests and our souls do not belong to us.” “I’m not doing anything like that!” “And when your father comes in his big boat? What will happen to us then?” “I…don’t know,” said Daphne, which was better than telling the truth. We do tend to stick flags in places, she had to admit it herself. We do it almost absentmindedly, as though it’s a sort of chore. “Hah, you fall silent,” said the priest. “You are a good child, the women say, and you do good things, but the difference between the trousermen and the Raiders is that sooner or later the cannibals go away!” “That’s a terrible thing to say!” said Daphne hotly. “We don’t eat people!” “There are different ways to eat people, girl, and you are clever, oh yes, clever enough to know it. And sometimes the people don’t realize it’s happened until they hear the belch!” “Come quickly!” That was Mau, whose lamp was a faint green glow in the distance. Daphne ran to stop Ataba from seeing her face. Her father, well, he was a decent man but, well, this century was a game of empires, apparently, and no little island was allowed to belong to itself. What would Mau do if someone stuck a flag on his beach? There he was now, looking green, and pointing to the line of Grandfathers. As she got closer, she saw the white stone on the edge of the passage. There was a Grandfather sitting on it like a chieftain, but with his hands clasped around his knees like the rest. And he was facing down the corridor, away from the cave mouth, toward the unknown. In front of him the line of dead warriors continued, all now turned to face…what? The light of day was behind them now. Mau was waiting, a glint in his eye, when Ataba hobbled up. “Do you know why they are facing the wrong way, Ataba?” he asked. “They look as though they are protecting us from something,” said the priest. “Down here? From what? There’s nothing down here but darkness.” “And something best forgotten, perhaps? Do you think the wave never happened before? And the last time it never went away. It was a wave that never ebbed. It ended the world.” “That’s just a story. I remember my mother telling it to me,” said Mau. “Everyone knows it: ‘In the Time When Things Were Otherwise and the Moon Was Different…Men were becoming troublesome, and so Imo swept them away with a great wave.’” “Was there an ark? I mean, er, some sort of big boat?” asked Daphne. “I mean, how did anyone survive?” “There were people on the sea and high ground,” said Mau. “That’s the story, isn’t it, Ataba?” “What had they done that was so bad?” Daphne asked. Ataba cleared his throat. “It is said they tried to make themselves into gods,” he said. “That’s right.” Mau went on: “I wonder if you can tell me what we did wrong this time?” Ataba hesitated. Mau did not, and he spoke sharp and fast, like a spring unwinding: “I am talking about my father, my mother, my whole family, my whole Nation! They all died! I had a sister who was seven years old. Just give me the reason. There must have been a reason! Why did the gods let them die? I found a little baby stuck in a tree. How had it offended the gods?” “We are small. We cannot understand the nature of the gods,” said Ataba. “No! You don’t believe that—I can hear it in your voice! I don’t understand the nature of a bird, but I can watch it and listen to it and learn about it. Don’t you do this with the gods? Where are the rules? What did we do wrong? Tell me!” “I don’t know! Don’t you think I haven’t asked them?” Tears started to roll down Ataba’s cheeks. “You think I am a man alone? I haven’t seen my daughter or her children since the wave. Do you hear what I say? It is not all about you! I envy your rage, demon boy. It fills you up! It feeds you, gives you strength. But the rest of us listen for the certainty, and there is nothing. Yet in our heads we know there must be…something, some reason, some pattern, some order, so we call upon the silent gods, because they are better than the darkness. That is it, boy. I have no answers for you.” “Then I’ll look for them in the darkness,” said Mau, holding up the lantern. “Come farther with us,” he said in a quieter voice. The light glistened off the tears streaming down the priest’s face. “No,” he said hoarsely. “We’ll have to leave you here,” said Mau. “Among the dead men, which I think is no place for you. Or you can come with us. At least you’ll have a demon and a ghost on your side. We may need your wisdom, too.” To Daphne’s surprise, the old man smiled. “You think I have some left?” “Certainly. Shall we continue? What can you find that is worse than me?” “I’d like to ask a question,” said Daphne quickly. “How often is a new Grandfather put in here, please?” “Once or twice in fifty years,” said Ataba. “There are thousands here. Are you sure?” “This place has been here since the world was made, and so have we,” said Mau. “On that, at least, we are in full agreement,” said Ataba stoutly. “But that’s a very long time ago!” “And that is why there are so many Grandfathers!” said Mau. “It’s very simple.” “Yes,” said Daphne, “when you put it like that, I suppose it is.” They set off, and then she said: “What was that noise?” They stopped, and this time they all heard the faint crackling and rustling from behind them. “Are the dead rising?” asked Ataba. “You know, I really hoped nobody was going to suggest that,” said Daphne. Mau walked a few steps back along the cave, which was full of tiny crackling sounds. The dead don’t walk, he thought. That’s one of the ways you know they are dead. So what I’m doing is standing here, a long way from the sky, and I have to work out what they are doing. So what is the reason? And where have I heard this noise before? He walked a little way farther up the tunnel, where there was no noise at all, and waited. After a while, the crackling started again, and he thought of sunshine on hot days. It was crackling where he had left the others, too. “Let’s keep going,” he said, “and it will stop, provided we keep moving.” “They won’t wake up?” said Ataba. “It’s the papervine bindings on the Grandfathers,” Mau said. “Even when it’s bone-dry, it crackles and pops when it’s warmed up. The heat of the lamps and our bodies sets it off if we stay in one place too long. That’s all it is.” “Well, it was frightening me,” said Daphne. “Well done. Deductive reasoning based on observation and experiment.” Mau ignored that, because he didn’t have the faintest idea what it meant. But he felt pleased. The Grandfathers didn’t wake up. The noise he had heard as a boy was just papervine getting hotter or colder. That was true, and he could prove it. It wasn’t hard to work out, so why is it all I can do not to wet myself? Because papervine moving doesn’t sound interesting and walking skeletons does, that’s why. Somehow they make us feel more important. Even our fears make us feel important, because we fear that we might not be. He watched Ataba move close to a Grandfather, then step back hurriedly when it began to creak. My body is a coward but I am not fearful. I will fear nothing, ever, he thought. Not now. There was a glow ahead. It appeared suddenly as they walked around a long curve—red, yellow, and green, flickering as they got closer. Ataba groaned and stopped walking, and because he did that, Mau knew he couldn’t. He looked down the slope ahead. “Stay and look after the old man,” he said to the ghost girl. “I don’t want him to run away.” I will not fear my bladder that wants to explode, he told himself as he sped down past the silent sentries, or my feet that want to turn and flee, and I will not fear the pictures that are running, screaming, through my head. He ran on, the light racing ahead of him, repeating the vow until, like Captain Roberts, he found it necessary to change the words in a hurry. I will not fear the shadow that is walking out of the pretty light, because I have found my fear down here in the dark, and I shall reach out and touch him as he reaches out to touch me…. His fingers met his reflection and touched smooth golden metal, in a slab about the size of a man. Mau put his ear to it, but there was no sound. When he pushed it, it didn’t move. “I want you to stay where you are,” he told the others when they caught up to him. “Both of you. We’ve come down a long way. There may be water on the other side of this.” He prodded at the metal with his crowbar. It was very soft and also very thick, but the stone around it was the ordinary island stone, and that seemed a better bet. It soon started to flake away under blows from the pointed end of the bar, and after some work there was a hiss and the smell of wet salt. So the sea was somewhere near, but at least they were above it. He called the others down and hacked at the stone again, amazed at how easily he could crack it with the metal bar, opening up a gap into blackness. It was damp; he could hear a soft lapping of water in the dark. By the light of the lamp he could just make out some white steps, leading down. So that was it? All this way for some sea cave? There were a lot of them at the bottom of the cliffs on the western side of the island. Kids had explored them since time began, and had never found anything to get excited about. But the lamplight glinted on something in the dark. “I’m going to come in with you,” said Daphne behind him. “No. Stay here. It might be dangerous.” “Yes, and that’s why I ought to go in with you.” “It’s been shut up since forever! What’s going to hurt me?” “What? You were the one who said it might be dangerous!” Daphne said. “I will enter first,” said Ataba behind her. “If Locaha is in there, I will take his hand.” “I’m not going to wait out here with all these dead men crackling at me!” Daphne protested. “Yes, I know it’s just the vines but that really doesn’t help.” The three of them looked at one another in the lamplight and then, as one, tried to get through the narrow gap into a space full of bad air. It tasted rotten, if air could rot. The steps beyond were god stones, every one. They had carvings on them, just like the ones on the beach, but many of the carvings went across several stones. Here and there, stones were cracked or missing. Lumps of stone, thought Mau. Why did we think they were worthy things to worship? He held the lamp higher and saw the reason. Ahead of him, knee-deep in the water, gigantic and gleaming white and sparkling all over, were the gods—the huge-stomached Air with his four sons on his shoulders, the brilliant Water, the ferocious Fire, with his hands bound to his side just as the story said. Air and Water each held a big stone globe in their hands, but Fire’s globe was balanced on his head and had a red glitter to it. There was a fourth statue, pale and smashed, with no head and one arm fallen down into the water. For a moment Mau thought: That’s Imo. Broken. Would I dare to find His face? Ataba screamed (and outside in the tunnel a dead man moved slightly). “Do you see them? Do you see them?” the priest managed, in between great gasps of sour air. “Behold the gods, demon boy!” He bent double with a fit of coughing. It definitely was not good air; you sucked it down, but there was no life in it. “Yes, I see them,” said Mau. “Gods of stone, Ataba.” “Why should they be of flesh? And what stone shines like that? I am right, demon boy, in my faith I am right! You can’t deny it!” “I can’t deny what I see, but I can question what it is,” said Mau as the old man wheezed again. Mau looked across the darkness, to the glow of light that was Daphne’s lantern. “Let’s get back right now!” he shouted. “Come on! Even the flames are choking!” “Those are just statues!” Daphne called back. “But this…this is amazing!” There was the grinding noise of stone moving from somewhere near her. Ataba was wheezing horribly. It sounded as though every breath was being sawn out of a tree. Mau looked at the flickering flame of his lantern and yelled, “We must get back!” “And there’s a skeleton here!” Daphne called out. “And he’s got—I don’t believe this. Oh, you must see this! You must see what he’s got in his mouth!” “Do you want to run back up the tunnel in the dark?” he shouted as loudly as he could (and outside in the corridor, a Grandfather shifted). That seemed to do it. He saw her lamp begin to move toward the door. She was panting when she reached him, and the light was a dark orange. “You know, I thought all this could be Greek,” she said, “or Egyptian! That we trousermen…well, togamen, I suppose—” “So we even begged our gods from your people, too?” snapped Mau, putting an arm around the priest’s shoulders. “What? No! It’s more—” Mau pulled her after him through the narrow gap. “No more talking!” he said. “Now, come on!” The on! echoed up and down the corridor. The ancient and oldest Grandfather beside Mau fell over backward with a little click, and then crumbled into powder and strips of dry papervine, but not before it had tipped over the one behind it…. They watched in horror as the line of toppling, crumbling Grandfathers overtook the lamplight, filling the air with cloying, acrid dust. They looked at one another and made an immediate and group decision. “Run!” Dragging the stumbling old man between them, they dashed up the gentle slope. The dust stung their eyes and clawed at their throats, but around the fortieth collapsing skeleton they overtook the cascading bones. They didn’t bother to stop; the dust behind them was almost a solid, billowing mass, as keen to escape as they were. And they ran on, into better air, until the noise died away. Daphne was surprised when Mau slowed down, but he pointed to the white stone that stuck out of the wall, with the hunched Grandfather on it. “We can rest for a moment,” he said. “That one’s too high to be pushed over.” He propped up Ataba, whose breathing almost rattled. But the priest was smiling, even so. “I saw the gods,” he panted, “and you did, too, Mau.” “Thank you,” said Mau. Ataba looked puzzled. “For what?” “Not calling me demon boy.” “Ah, I can be generous in victory.” “They were made of stone,” said Mau. “Magic stone! The milk of the world! Have you ever seen so much of it? What human hand could carve it? What mind could imagine them? They are a sign. In the heart of darkness, I have found illumination! I was right!” “They were stone,” said Mau patiently. “Did you not see the slabs on the floor? There are your god stones! They were made to tread on! They fell into the sea, and you think they are holy!” “A man in darkness may be misled, it’s true. But in the stones we saw a hint of the truth. The gods made you their tool, boy. You scorned them and spurned them, but the faster you ran from them, the closer you came to them. You—” “We ought to move,” said Daphne to a distant background of crashing bones. “Even if they can’t get closer, that dust can. Move, I said!” They obeyed, as wise men do when a woman puts her foot down, and went on along the tunnel at the best speed that Ataba could hobble. But Daphne hesitated. The crashing tide of Grandfathers was nearly at the stone and, yes, it should be able to stop them, but Mau had sounded too confident, which to her mind meant that even he was not all that certain. He didn’t need to stop, but Ataba was suffering. He actually cares about the old man, she thought. A demon wouldn’t— Crash… The tumbling bones hit the stone and stopped. At least, all but one did. It was probably a rib, she thought later. It sprang out of the mess and into the air like a salmon, and hit the skull of the Grandfather who was perched on the stone; he rocked backward and fell onto the skeleton on the other side of the stone, which fell over. And that was it, like a trick with dominoes. Crash, crash, crash… the floor was more level here, and the bones rolled faster. Why hadn’t she been expecting something like this? The Grandfathers had been stuck in this moldy cave forever. They wanted to get out! She ran after the men, before the dust rose. She’d heard that when you took a breath, you breathed in a tiny, tiny amount of everyone who had ever lived, but, she decided, there was no need to do it all at once. “Run again!” she yelled. They were already turning to look. Daphne grabbed the old man’s other arm and used him to tow Mau until they had got all six legs sorted out. The entrance was a little white dot again, a long way off, and after only a few steps Ataba was groaning. “Leave the lamps here,” panted Mau. “We don’t need them now. I’m going to carry him!” He scooped up the priest and slung him over his back. They ran. The dot didn’t seem to get bigger. No one looked back. There was no point. All you could do was face the speck of day and run until your legs screamed. They only looked at the god statues, thought Daphne, trying to keep her mind off what was crashing down behind them. They should have looked at the walls! But of course they wouldn’t have known what they were looking at! It’s lucky I’m here…in a way. Something crunched under her foot. She risked a quick glance down and saw little bits of bone bouncing along, overtaking her. “They’re right behind us!” “I know,” said Mau. “Run faster!” “I can’t. The dust is going to get me!” “Does not happen! Give me your hand!” Mau shifted the weight of the old priest on his back and grabbed her hand, almost jerking her off her feet. Mau’s legs were pounding across the rock as if driven by steam. All she could do was kick at the ground whenever it came near, to stop herself being dragged along it. Now the circle of daylight was getting closer, and after having been so tiny for so long, it was opening fast. The ancient dust, which stung the skin and choked the throat, ran ahead of them across the ceiling, cutting out the daylight. —they burst into evening sunlight, suddenly and intensely bright after the gloom of the tunnel. It dazzled the eyes, and Daphne felt herself begin to stumble into the sea of white that had taken the place of the world. Mau must have been blinded too, because he let go of her. There was nothing for it but to put her arms over her head and hope for a soft place to fall. She staggered and folded up, while the dust of the Grandfathers, free after thousands of years, escaped at last on the wind, streaming away across the mountain. It would have been nice if she’d heard thousands of little voices fading away as the cloud of dust was scattered to the wind, but to her regret she didn’t. Reality so often fails when it comes to small, satisfying details, she thought. She could hear people now, and her sight was coming back. She could make out the ground in front of her as she carefully pushed herself up. The dry, dusty grass crackled softly and someone walked into her view. There were boots! Big sturdy boots with tight laces, caked with sand and salt! And above the boots, there were trousers! Real, heavy trouserman trousers! She said he would come and he had! Just in time, too! She stood up, and the shock hit her like a shovel. “Well, well, your ladyship, here’s a stroke of luck,” said the man, grinning at her. “So the ol’ Judy fetched up here, eh? Who’d have thought the ol’ bugger could manage it. Didn’t do him any good, I see, bein’ as it’s his hat I do see on that darkie’s head. What happened to the old fool? Ate him, did they? And never said no grace aforehand, too, I have no doubt. I bet that made him wild!” Foxlip! Not the worst of the mutineers, but that didn’t mean much because he had two pistols in his belt, and they don’t care who pulls the trigger. Most of the islanders were in the clearing. They must have led the men up here. Why shouldn’t they? She’d been saying for weeks that her father would find her. Most of them had probably never even seen a trouserman before. “Where’s your friend, Mr. Foxlip? Is Mr. Polegrave with you?” she asked, managing a smile. “Right here, miss,” said a hoarse voice. She shuddered. Polegrave! And where she could not see him, which was even worse. He’d sidled up behind her, as was his way, the sneaky little worm. “And will we be joined by Mr. Cox?” she asked, trying to hold on to the smile. Foxlip looked around the little valley. He was counting people; she could see his lips moving. “Him? I shot ’im,” said Foxlip. Liar, she thought. You wouldn’t dare. You’re not that brave. You’re not even that stupid. If you missed, he’d have cut your heart out. Good heavens, a couple of months ago I wouldn’t have been able to even think a sentence like that. How broad can horizons get? “Well done, you,” she said. Her thoughts tumbled through her head. Two men with pistols. And they’d fire them, too. If she said the wrong thing, someone would get killed. She had to get them away from here—get them away and remind them that she was valuable to them. “My father will pay you a great deal if you get me to Port Mercia, Mr. Foxlip,” she said. “Oh, I daresay there will be a lot of payin’ one way or another, yes, I daresay,” said Foxlip, looking around again. “There’s ways and ways, oh yes. So you’re the queen of the savages, are you? One white girl, all by yourself. Terrible shame. I bet you could do with a bit o’ civilized company, such as might be provided by a pair of gentlemen such as us—well, I say us, but o’ course Mr. Polegrave here does indulge in the questionable habit o’ wiping his boogers on his sleeve, but bishops have been known to do worse.” And, later on, she thought, It could still have worked if it hadn’t been for Ataba. He’d seen the gods, in the darkness underground. And now he was spinning with the holy memory. He was out of breath and confused, but he had seen the gods, and all uncertainty had been blown away with the dust of history. They were made of stone, indeed, but they had gleamed in their hidden home, and he was sure they had spoken to him, told him that everything he believed was true, and that in this new world he would be their prophet, delivered out of the darkness on the burning wings of certainty. And there were…trousermen! The bringers of all that was bad! They were a disease that weakened the soul! They brought steel and beef and infernal devices, which made people lazy and stupid! But now the holy fire had filled him, just in time. They all heard him scream ancient curses and march across the clearing with his knees clicking loudly. Daphne barely understood any of it. The words tumbled out on top of one another, fighting to be heard. Who knew what his blazing eyes were really seeing as he snatched a spear from a young man and waved it menacingly at Foxlip— —who shot him dead. CHAPTER 11 Crimes and Punishments   THE CRACK OF THE PISTOL echoed around the mountain. It was even louder in Daphne’s head. Ataba went over backward, like a falling tree. Only Milo and Pilu know what’s just happened, she thought. No one else here has even seen a gun before. There was a loud noise and the old man fell over. I might just be able to stop everyone from being killed. Mau was crouched over the body of Ataba, halfway toward getting up. She waved at him frantically to stay down. Then Foxlip committed suicide. He didn’t know it at the time, but that’s how it started. He pulled out his other pistol and growled, “Tell ’em not to move. First one who does, he’s a dead darkie. You tell ’em that right now!” She stepped forward with her hands up. “I know these men! They’re Foxlip and Polegrave! They were crew on the Sweet Judy. They kill people! They shot Mister Wainsly and Mister Plummer! They laughed about it! They—Pilu, tell them what a gun is!” “They are bad men!” said Milo. “Yes! They are! And they’ve got more pistols. Look! Stuck in their belts!” “You mean the spark-makers?” said Mau, still crouched. She could see his muscles, wound up to spring. Oh dear, thought Daphne, what a time to have a good memory…. “There’s no time to explain. They can point them at you and kill you better than any spear. And they will kill you, do you understand? And they probably won’t kill me. I’d be worth too much. Keep away. This is between…trouser-people!” “But you pointed one at me—” “There’s no time to explain!” hissed Daphne. “You’re talking a good deal too much, missie,” said Foxlip. And just behind Daphne, Polegrave sniggered. She felt the barrel of a pistol pressed into the small of her back. “Saw a feller shot inna spine once, miss,” the man whispered. “It stuck there, indeed it did. Funny thing was, he started dancin’, right there, legs goin’ like mad and him screaming. Didn’t fall over for ten minutes. Amazin’ thing, nature.” “Stow that!” said Foxlip, watching the clearing nervously. The islanders had mostly slid away into the bushes, but those who remained did not look too happy. “What did that silly ol’ devil want to get hisself shot for? Now they’re all worked up!” “Pretty raggedly lot, though,” said Polegrave. “We could hang on ’til the others come—” “I told you to shut up!” They don’t know what to do now, Daphne thought. They are stupid and scared. The trouble is, they are stupid and scared with guns. And there’s others coming. Imo made us smart, Mau said. Am I smarter than a stupid man with a gun? Yes, I think I am. “Gentlemen,” she said, “why don’t we deal with this like civilized people?” “Are you having a little laugh, your majesty?” said Foxlip. “Get me to Port Mercia, and my father will give you gold and a pardon. Who’s going to give you a better offer this day? Look at this from a mathematical point of view. You’ve got guns, yes, but how long can you stay awake? There’s a lot more”—she forced the word out—“darkies than you. Even if one man stays awake, he’s only got two shots before his throat is cut. Of course, they might not start with the throat since they are, as you point out, savages and not as civilized as you. You must have a boat here. You don’t dare stay.” “But you’re our hostage,” said Polegrave. “You might be mine. I just have to scream. You shouldn’t have shot the priest.” “That old man was a priest?” said Polegrave, looking panicky. “It’s bad luck to kill a priest!” “Not heathen ones,” said Foxlip, “and the bad luck was all his, eh?” “But they got these spells; they can shrink your head—!” “When did they shrink yours?” said Foxlip. “Don’t be such a damn fool! As for you, princess, you’re coming with us.” Princess, she thought. That was just like the mutineers. They called her baby names all the time. She hated it. It made her flesh crawl. It was probably meant to. “No, Mr. Foxlip, I’m not a princess,” she said carefully, “but you’re coming with me all the same. Keep close.” “And have you lead us into a trap?” “It’s near sunset. Do you want to be up here in the dark?” She held out a hand and added, “And the rain, too.” A squall had blown in, and the first drops began to fall. “The people here can see in the dark,” she went on. “And they can move as silently as the wind. Their knives are so sharp that they can cut a man’s—” “Why’s it happening like this?” Polegrave demanded of Foxlip. “I thought you were smart! You said we’d get the best pickings. You told me—” “And now I’m telling you to shut up.” Foxlip turned to Daphne. “All right, my lady, I’m not falling for that malarkey. We’ll take you off this rock at first light. Might even get you as far as dear old dad. But there’d better be gold at the end of it, or else. No tricks, right?” “Yeah, we got four loaded pistols, missie,” said Polegrave, waving one at her, “and they’ll stop anything, you hear?” “They won’t stop the fifth man, Mr. Polegrave.” She rejoiced in the change in his expression as she turned to Foxlip. “Tricks? From me? No. I want to get home. I don’t know any tricks.” “Swear on your mother’s life,” said Foxlip. “What?” “You always were a stuck-up kid on the Judy. Swear it, like I said. Then I might even believe yer.” Does he know about my mother? Daphne wondered, calm thoughts floating in a sea of fury. I think poor Captain Roberts did, and I told Cookie, but not even Cookie would gossip about that sort of thing to the likes of Foxlip. But no one is entitled to ask for an oath like that! Foxlip growled. Daphne had been silent too long for his liking. “Cat got your tongue?” he said. “No. But it is an important swear. I had to think about it. I promise I won’t try to run away, I won’t tell you any lies, and I won’t try to deceive you. Is that what you want?” “And you swear that on your mother’s life?” Foxlip insisted. “Yes, I do.” “That’s very handsome of you,” said Foxlip. “Don’t you think so, Mr. Polegrave?” But Polegrave was watching the dripping forest on either side of the path. “There’s things in there,” he moaned. “There’s stuff creepin’ about!” “Lions and tigers and elephants, I shouldn’t wonder,” said Foxlip cheerfully. He raised his voice. “But there’s a hair trigger on this pistol, so if I even think I hear a sound out of place, missie will be put to considerable embarrassment. One footfall and she’s ready for the boneyard!”   As soon as Daphne and the two trousermen had rounded a bend in the track and were out of sight, Mau stepped forward. “We could rush them. The rain’s on our side,” Pilu whispered. “You heard the big one. I can’t risk her being killed. She saved my life. Twice.” “I thought you saved her life.” “Yes, but the first time I saved her life, I saved mine, too. Do you understand? If she hadn’t been here, I’d have held the biggest rock I could find and gone into the dark current. One person is nothing. Two people are a nation.” Pilu’s forehead wrinkled in puzzlement. “What are three people?” “A bigger nation. Let’s catch up to them…carefully.” And she saved me from Locaha a second time, he thought as they set off again, silent as ghosts in the rain. He’d woken up, his mind full of silver fishes, and the old woman had told him. He’d been running to the white city under the sea, and then Daphne had been there, pulling him up faster than Locaha could swim. Even the old woman had been impressed. The ghost girl had a plan, and she couldn’t tell him what it was. All they could do, with their sticks and spears, was follow her— No, they didn’t have to follow her. He knew where she was going. He stared at her, pale in the dusk, as she led the men down the sloping path to the Place.   Who would be in here now? Daphne wondered. She’d seen Mrs. Gurgle up at the cave, because everyone who could walk had been up there. There were some sick people in the far huts, though. She would have to be careful. She lit some dry grass from the fire outside the hut and cautiously transferred the flame to one of the Judy’s lamps. She did it very carefully, thinking about each movement, because she did not want to think about what she would be doing next. She had to keep herself in two parts. Even so, her hand shook, but a girl had a right to tremble a bit when two men were pointing guns at her. “Do sit down,” she said. “The mats are not as bad as the ground, at least.” “Much obliged,” said Polegrave, looking around the hut. It almost broke her heart. Once upon a time some woman had taught the man his manners, but to thank her he’d grown up to be a weasel, thief, and murderer. And now, when he was worried and ill at ease, an actual bit of politeness drifted up from the depths, like a pure clear bubble from a swamp. It wasn’t going to make things any easier. Foxlip just grunted, and sat down with his back to the inner wall, which was solid rock. “This is a trap, right?” he said. “No. You asked me to swear on my mother’s life,” said Daphne coldly, and thought: And that was a sin. Even if you have no god at all, that was a sin. Some things are a sin all by themselves. And I’m going to murder you, and that is a mortal sin, too. But it won’t look like murder. She said: “Would you like some beer?” “Beer?” said Foxlip. “You mean real beer?” “Well, it’s like beer. It’s the Demon Drink, anyway. I’ve always got some freshly made.” “You make it? But you’re a nob!” said Polegrave. “Perhaps I make ‘nobby’ beer,” said Daphne. “Sometimes you have to do what needs doing. Do you want some?” “She’ll poison us!” said Polegrave. “It’s all a trick!” “We’ll have some beer, princess,” said Foxlip, “but we’ll watch you drink it first. ’Cause we were not born yesterday.” He gave her an unpleasant wink, full of guile and mischief and with no humor in it at all. “Yeah, you look after us, missie, an’ we’ll look after you when Cox’s cannibal chums come for a picnic!” said Polegrave. She heard Foxlip hissing at him for this as she stepped outside, but she’d never for one minute believed that they intended to “rescue” her. And Cox had found the Raiders, had he? Who should she feel sorry for? She went next door to the beer hut and took three bubbling shells of beer off the shelf, taking care to brush all the dead flies off. What I am about to do won’t be murder, she told herself. Murder is a sin. It won’t be murder. Foxlip would make sure she drank some beer first, to prove it wasn’t poisoned, and up until now she had never drunk much, only a tiny amount when she had been experimenting with a new recipe. Just one drop of beer would turn you into a madman, her grandmother had said. It made you defile yourself and neglect your children and break up families, among quite a lot of other things. But this was her beer, after all. It hadn’t been made in a factory somewhere, with who knew what in it. It was just made of good, honest…poison. She came back balancing three wide, shallow clay bowls that she put down on the floor between the mats. “Well now, you’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts,” said Foxlip in his disgustingly unfriendly friendly way, “but I’ll tell you what, missie, you’ll mix the beer up so’s we all get the same, right?” Daphne shrugged, and did as he said, with both men watching closely. “Looks like horse piss,” said Polegrave. “Well, horse piss ain’t too bad,” said Foxlip. He picked up the bowl in front of him, looked at the one in front of Daphne, hesitated for a moment, and then grinned his unpleasant grin. “I reckon you’re too smart to put poison in your bowl and expect me to be daft enough to swap them over,” he said. “Drink up, princess!” “Yeah, down the little red lane!” said Polegrave. There it was again, another tiny arrow into her heart. Her own mother had said that to her when she wouldn’t eat her broccoli. The memory stung. “The same beer is in every bowl. You made me swear,” she said. “I said drink up!” Daphne spat into her bowl and began to sing the beer song—the island version, not her own. “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” just wouldn’t work now. So she sang the Song of the Four Brothers, and because most of her mind was taken up with that, a smaller part took the opportunity to remind her: Air is the planet Jupiter, which we believe to be made of gases. Isn’t that a coincidence! And she faltered a moment before recovering herself, because some tiny part of her mind was worrying her with what she was about to do. There was a stunned silence when she finished, and then Foxlip said, “What the hell was that all about? You gobbed in your drink!” Daphne tipped up the bowl and took a good swig. It was a little more nutty than usual. She paused to feel it bubbling down, and saw them still staring. “You have to spit in the bowl and then sing the beer song.” She burped and put a hand over her mouth. “Pardon me. I can teach it to you. Or you can just hum along. Please? It is an ancient custom—” “I’m not singing no pagan mumbo jumbo!” said Foxlip, and he snatched up his bowl and took a long swig, while Daphne tried not to scream. Polegrave hadn’t touched his beer. He was still suspicious! His beady little eyes flicked from his fellow mutineer to Daphne and back again. Foxlip put down his bowl and belched. “Well, it’s a long time since—” Silence exploded. Polegrave reached for his pistols, but Daphne was already moving. Her bowl hit him on the nose, with a crunch. The man screamed and went over backward, and Daphne snatched his pistols from the floor. She tried to think and not think at the same time. Don’t think about the man you just killed. [It was an execution!] Think about the man you may have to kill. [But I can’t prove he’s a murderer! He didn’t kill Ataba!] She fumbled with a pistol as Polegrave, spitting blood, tried to get up. The gun was heavier than it looked and she choked back a curse, courtesy of the Sweet Judy’s Great Barrel of Swearing, as clumsy fingers disobeyed her. Finally she pulled the hammer back, just as Captain Roberts had taught her. It clicked twice, what Cookie called the two-pound noise. When she had asked him why, he’d said, “Because when a man hears that in the dark, he loses two pounds of…weight, quickly!” It certainly made Polegrave go very quiet. “I will fire,” she lied. “Don’t move. Good. Now, listen to me. I want you to go away. You didn’t kill anyone here. Go away. Right away. If I see you again, I will—well, you will regret it. I’m letting you go because you had a mother. Someone actually loved you once, and tried to teach you manners. You won’t understand that at all. Now get up, and get out. Get out! Get out and run far away! Quickly now!” Trying to run and crouch at the same time, holding his hand over his ruined nose, dribbling strings of snot and blood, and certainly not looking back, Polegrave scuttled into the sunset like a crab running for the safety of the surf. Daphne sat down, still holding the pistol in front of her, and waited until the hut stopped spinning. She looked at the silent Foxlip, who hadn’t moved at all. “Why did you have to be so—so stupid?” she said, prodding him with the pistol. “Why did you kill an old man who was shaking a stick at you? You shoot at people without a thought and you call them savages! Why are you so stupid as to think I was stupid? Why didn’t you listen to me? I told you we sing the beer song. Would it have hurt to hum along? But no, you knew better, because they are savages! And now you are dead, with a stupid little smile on your stupid face! You needn’t have died, but you didn’t listen. Well, you’ve got just enough time to listen now, Mr. Stupid! The thing is, the beer is made from a very poisonous plant. It paralyzes you, all at once. But there’s some chemical in human spit, you see, and if you spit into the beer and then sing the beer song, it turns the poison into something harmless with a lovely nutty flavor that, incidentally, I have improved very considerably, everyone says. It takes a little less than five minutes to make the beer safe, which is just long enough to sing the official beer song, but “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” sung about sixteen times also works, you see, because it’s not the song that matters, you see, it’s the waiting. I worked that out using scientific thinkink”—she burped—“sorry, I mean thinking.” She stopped to throw up the beer and then, by the feel of it, to throw up everything she’d eaten in the last year. “And it could have been such a lovely evening,” she said. “Do you know what this island is? Have you any idea what this island is? Of course you don’t, because you’re so stupid! And dead! And I’m a murderer!” She burst into tears, which were large and sticky, and began to argue with herself. “Look, they were mutineers! If they were in a court of law, they’d be hung!” [Hanged, not hung. But that’s the point of having courts. It’s to stop people murdering other people just because they think they deserve it. There’s a judge and jury, and if they were found guilty, they would be hanged by the hangman, neatly and properly. He’d have his breakfast first, very calmly, and perhaps say a prayer. He would hang them calmly and without anger, because at that moment he would be the Law. That’s how it works.] “But everyone saw him shoot Ataba!” [Correct. So everyone should have decided what to do.] “How could they? They didn’t know what I know! And you know what they’re like! They had four pistols between them! If I hadn’t got them out of the way, they’d have shot other people! They were talking about taking over the island!” [Yes. What you did was murder, even so.] “What about the hangman? Doesn’t he do murder, then?” [No, because enough people say it isn’t. That’s what a courtroom is for. It’s where the law happens.] “And that makes it right? Didn’t God say ‘Thou shalt not kill’?” [Yes. But after that it got complicated.] There was movement in the doorway, and her hand raised the pistol. Then her brain lowered it. “Good,” said Mau. “I do not want to be shot a second time. Remember?” The tears started again. “I’m sorry about that. I thought you were…I thought you were a savage,” Daphne managed. “What’s a savage?” She pointed the pistol toward Foxlip. “Someone like him.” “He’s dead.” “I’m sorry. He insisted on drinking his beer.” “We saw the other one run off toward the low forest. He was bleeding and snorting like a sick pig.” “He wouldn’t drink his beer!” Daphne sobbed. “I’m sorry—I brought Locaha here.” Mau’s eyes gleamed. “No, they brought him, and you sent him away full,” he said. “More are going to come! They talked about it,” Daphne managed. Mau said nothing but put an arm around her. “Tomorrow I want a trial,” she said. “What’s a trial?” said Mau. He waited for a while, but the only reply was a snore. He sat with her, watching the eastern sky darken. Then he carefully settled her down on her mat, hoisted the rigid body of Foxlip over his shoulder, and went down to the beach. The Unknown Woman watched him load the body into a canoe and paddle out into the ocean, where Foxlip went over the side with a lump of coral tied to his foot, to be eaten by whatever was hungry enough to eat carrion. She saw him return and go back up the mountain, where Milo and Cahle had been watching over the body of Ataba, so that he would not become a ghost. In the morning they followed Mau down to the beach, where the Unknown Woman and a few others joined them. The sun was rising now, and Mau was not surprised to see the gray shadow drifting beside him. At one point, Milo walked through it without noticing. Two more deaths, Hermit Crab, said Locaha. “Do they make you happy?” growled Mau. “Then send this priest to the Perfect World.” How can you ask that, little hermit crab who does not believe? “Because he did. And he cared, which is more than his gods did.” No bargains, Mau, even for another. “At least I’m trying!” Mau yelled. Everyone stared at him. The shadow faded. On the edge of the reef, above the dark current, Mau tied broken coral to the old man and watched him sink beyond the reach of sharks. “He was a good man!” he shouted to the sky. “He deserved better gods!”   Down in the steams of the low forest, someone shivered. It had not been a good night for Arthur Septimus Polegrave, who would have been known to his friends, if he’d had any friends, as “Septic.” He knew he was dying, he just knew it. He must be. There couldn’t be a single thing in this jungle that hadn’t tried to bite, peck, or sting him during the last dark soupy hour. There were spiders—giant, horrible things, waiting at nose height in every path—there were the insects, every one armed, by the feel of it, with red-hot needles. Things had bitten his ears and climbed up his trousers. Things had trodden on him. In the middle of the night something horrible had flopped down from the trees and onto his head, which it had tried to unscrew. As soon as he could see clearly, he would take his chances and make a run for the boat and a getaway. All in all, he thought as he pulled something with far too many legs out of his ear, things were about as bad as they could get. There was a rustling in the tree above him, and he looked up just as a well-fed grandfather bird threw up in time for breakfast, and found that he was wrong.   Later that morning Daphne marched up to Pilu with the log of the Sweet Judy in her hand and said: “I want a fair trial.” “That’s good,” said Pilu. “We’re going to look at the new cave. Are you going to come?” Most of the population were gathered around him; news of the gods had got around fast. “You don’t know what a trial is, do you?” “Er, no,” said Pilu. “It’s where you decide if someone has done something wrong and if they should be punished.” “Well, you punished that trouserman,” said Pilu cheerfully. “He killed Ataba. He was a pirate!” “Er, yes…but the question is, should I have done it? I had no authority to kill him.” Milo loomed behind his brother, bent down, and whispered to him. “Ah, yes,” said Pilu, “my brother reminds me of the time we were in Port Mercia and a Navy man had been found thieving, and they tied him to the mast and beat him with some leather thing. Is this what we’re talking about? I think we’ve got some leather.” Daphne shuddered. “Er…no, thank you. But, er, don’t you ever have crime on the islands?” It took some time to get the idea settled in Pilu’s head, and then he said, “Ah, I’ve got it. You want us to tell you that you didn’t do a bad thing, yes?” “The ghost girl is saying that there must be rules and there must be reasons,” said Mau, right behind Daphne. She hadn’t even known he was there. “Yes, but you’re not to say I did a good thing just because you like me,” she added. “Well, we didn’t like him,” said Pilu. “He killed Ataba!” “I think I see what she means,” said Mau. “Let’s try it. It sounds…interesting.” And so the Nation had its first court. There was no question of judge and jury; everyone sat around in a circle, children too. And there was Mau, sitting in the circle. No one was more important than anyone else…and there was Mau, sitting in the circle just like everybody else. Everyone should make up their own mind…and there was Mau, sitting in the circle. Not big, not even tattooed, not shouting orders—but somehow being slightly more there than anyone else. And he had the cap. He was the captain. Daphne had heard some of the newcomers talking about him. They used a kind of code, about “the poor boy,” and how hard it must be, and somewhere in it all there was, unspoken yet still present, the suggestion that he wasn’t old enough to be a chief—and around that point, either Milo or Cahle turned up like an eclipse of the sun and the conversation turned to fishing or babies. And every day Mau was a little older, and still chief. Pilu was in charge of the court. It was the sort of thing he was born for. But he did need some help…. “We must have a prosecutor,” Daphne explained. “That’s someone who thinks what I did was wrong, and a defender, who says what I did was right.” “Then I’ll be the defender,” said Pilu cheerfully. “And the prosecutor?” said Daphne. “That would be you.” “Me? I have to be someone else!” “But everyone knows that man killed Ataba. We saw him!” said Pilu. “Look, hasn’t there ever been a killing in these islands?” “Sometimes too much beer, a fight over women, such things as these. Very sad. There is a story, a very old story, about two brothers who fought. One killed the other, but in the battle it could have been otherwise, and the other one dead. The killer fled, knowing the punishment and taking it upon himself.” “Was the punishment awful?” “He would be sent far away from the islands, far from his people, from his family, never to walk in the steps of his ancestors, never to sing a death chant for his father, never to hear the songs of his childhood, never again to smell the sweet water of home. He built a canoe and sailed in new seas far away, where men are baked into different colors and for half of every year trees die. He lived for many lifetimes and saw many things, but one day he found a place that was best of all, because it was the island of his childhood, and he stepped onto the shore and died, happily, because he was home again. Then Imo made the brothers into stars, and put them in the sky so that we shall remember the brother who sailed so far away that he came back again.” Oh my word, thought Daphne as the picture of the dying brother faded in her mind, that is so sad. And it’s a story about something else, about sailing so far that you come back again…. Oh, I must go back into that cave! “But the ghost girl is already banished,” Mau pointed out. “The wave banished her to us.” And so there had to be even more discussion. Half an hour later matters were not much improved. The whole population of the island sat in a circle around Daphne, trying to be helpful. Trying to understand as the trial went on. “You say they were bad trousermen,” said Mau. “Yes. The worst kind,” said Daphne. “Murderers and bullies. You say you walk in the shadow of Locaha, but they walked in his loincloth when he has not bathed for many months.” That got a laugh. She’d probably said it wrong. “And how did they walk in Locaha’s loincloth?” said Pilu, and got a slightly smaller laugh, to his obvious disappointment. “That’s the wrong question,” said Mau. The laughter stopped. He went on: “You say you told them about the beer song, and they didn’t listen? It is not your fault the man was a fool, is it?” “Yes, but you see, it was a trick,” Daphne said. “I knew they wouldn’t take any notice!” “Why would they not listen?” “Because…” She hesitated, but there was no way of avoiding it. “I’d better tell you everything,” she said. “I want to tell you everything. You should know what happened on the Sweet Judy. You should know about the dolphins and the butterfly and the man in the canoe!” And while the circle listened with open mouths, she told them what she had seen, what Cookie had told her, and what poor Captain Roberts had written in the ship’s log. She told them about First Mate Cox, and the mutiny and the man in the canoe… …who had been brown and, like Mrs. Gurgle, looked as if he’d been made out of old leather. The Sweet Judy had caught up with him out among the islands, where he had been paddling a small canoe very industriously toward the horizon. According to First Mate Cox, the man made a rude gesture. Foxlip and Polegrave backed him up on that, but in his log the captain, who had spoken to them all separately, made a point of noting that they weren’t clear about what the gesture was. Cox had shot at the man, and had hit him. Foxlip fired too. Daphne remembered him laughing. Polegrave was the last to fire, and that was just like him. He was the kind of weasel who would kick a corpse, because it was unlikely to fight back. Polegrave giggled all the time and never took his eyes off Daphne when she was on deck. But he was probably smarter than Foxlip, although once you got past the swaggering and the bullying, there were probably lobsters who were smarter than Foxlip. The two of them tended to hang around with Cox in a way that was hard to understand until you found out that there are fish that swim alongside a shark, or even in its mouth, where they are safe from other fish and never get eaten. Nobody knows what’s in it for the shark; maybe it doesn’t notice, or is saving them up for a secret midnight snack. Of course, Cox was not like a shark. He was worse. Sharks are just eating machines. They don’t have a choice. First Mate Cox had a choice, every day, and had chosen to be First Mate Cox. And that was a strange choice, because if evil was a disease, then First Mate Cox would have been in an isolation ward on a bleak island somewhere. And even then, bunnies nibbling at the seaweed would start to fight one another. Cox was, in fact, contagious. Where his shadow fell, old friendships snapped and little wars broke out, milk soured, weevils fled from every stale ship’s biscuit and rats queued up to jump into the sea. At least, that was how Cookie had put it, although he was given to mild exaggeration. And Cox grinned. It wasn’t the nasty, itchy little grin of Polegrave, which made you want to wash your hands after seeing it. It was the grin of a man who is happy in his work. He’d come on board at Port Advent, after five of the crew didn’t come back from shore leave. That often happened, the cook told Daphne. A captain who strictly forbade card games, whistling, alcohol, and swearing found crew hard to keep at any price. It was a terrible thing, said Cookie, to see religion get such a hold on a decent soul. But because Roberts was a decent soul, and a good captain, a lot of the crew stayed with him voyage after voyage, even though stopping sailors from swearing was a terrible thing to do (they got around it by sticking an old barrel of water right down in the scuppers and swearing into it when it all got too much; try as she might, Daphne couldn’t make out all the words, but at the end of a difficult day the water in the barrel was hot enough to wash with). Everyone knew about Cox. You didn’t hire First Mate Cox. He turned up. If you didn’t need a first mate because you already had one, then the one you had was suddenly very keen indeed on being a second mate once again, yes indeed, much obliged. And if you were an innocent man, you accepted all the glowing references of the other captains without wondering why they would be so happy to see Cox on someone else’s ship. But Cookie said that in his opinion Roberts knew all about Cox and had been filled with missionary zeal at the chance to save such a big ripe sinner from the Pit of Damnation. And maybe Cox, when he found himself working for a captain who held compulsory prayer meetings three times a day, was filled with a different kind of zeal, which would have been black with flames around the edges. Evil likes company, Cookie said. Amazingly, Cox went to the services willingly and joined in and paid attention. Those who knew about him walked carefully. Cox ate and drank mischief, and if you couldn’t work out what he was up to, then it was the really dark stuff. When he had nothing else to do, Cox shot at things. Birds, flying fish, monkeys, anything. One day a large blue butterfly, blown from one of the islands, landed on the deck. Cox shot it so neatly that there were just two wings left, and then he gave Daphne a wink, as if he’d done something clever. She’d had a cousin like that—Botney was his name—who never left a frog unsquashed, a kitten unkicked, or a spider unflattened. In the end, she’d accidentally broken two of his fingers under the nursery rocking horse, told him she’d put wasps down his trousers next time if he didn’t mend his ways, and then burst into tears when people came running. You didn’t come from a family of ancient fighters like hers without at least a pinch of ruthlessness. Sadly, there had been no one there to set Cox’s feet on the right path and his fingers in plaster. But, some of the crew whispered, it seemed that he’d changed. He still shot at things, but he was always in the front row for the services, watching old Roberts like a botanist watching a rare beetle. It was as if Cox was fascinated by the captain. As for Captain Roberts—he might have wanted to save Cox’s soul from the Fires of Perdition, but he hated the man himself and didn’t mind showing it. This did not sit well with Cox, but shooting captains always caused a bit too much of a stir, so, Cookie said, he must have decided to beat the captain on the man’s own ground, or water, destroying him from the inside. Cox shot things because they were alive, but to him that was just killing time. He had greater ambitions for the captain. He wanted to shoot him in the faith. It began with Cox sitting up straight during the prayer meetings and shouting “Halleluja” or “Amen” every time the captain finished a sentence, and clapping loudly. Or he’d ask puzzled questions like “What did they feed the lions and tigers with in the Ark, sir?” and “Where did all the water go?” Then there was the day when he asked Cookie to try to make a meal for the whole crew out of five loaves and two fishes. Then when the captain said the story was not meant to be taken literally, Cox gave him a smart salute and said: “Then what is, Cap’n?” It started to get bad. The captain got humpty. Crew who’d served with him for a long time said he was a decent man and a good captain, and they’d never seen him get humpty before. Everyone suffered under a humpty captain, who’d find fault with everything and turn every day into a chore. Daphne spent a lot of time in her cabin. And then there was the parrot. No one was ever sure who taught the bird its first swear word, although the wobbling finger of suspicion pointed at Cox, but by then the whole crew was ill at ease. Cox had his supporters, and the captain had staunch allies of his own. Fights broke out, and things, small things, were getting stolen. That was terrible, according to Cookie; nothing broke up a crew like the thought that a man had to watch his possessions all the time. Dooms and reckonings would be upon them all, he forecasted. Probably more dooms than reckonings, he added. And the next day Cox shot the old man in the canoe. Daphne would like to report that every sailor in the crew was angry because the old man had been shot, and in a way it was true, but many of the men were less concerned about the sanctity of souls than they were about the possibility that the old man had relatives nearby with fast canoes, sharp spears, and an unwillingness to listen to explanations. And there were even a few who held that one old man more or less didn’t matter, but Cox and his cronies had been shooting at dolphins, too, and that was cruel and unlucky. In the end there was a war, and so much bad blood had been bubbling that there seemed to Daphne to be more than two sides. She sat it out in her cabin, seated on a small barrel of gunpowder with a loaded pistol in her hand. The captain had told her that if Cox’s men won, she should fire the pistol into the barrel “to save her honor,” though she was uncertain how much a saved honor would be worth when it was falling out of the sky in tiny pieces, along with the rest of the cabin. Fortunately she did not have to find out, because Captain Roberts ended the mutiny by detaching one of the Sweet Judy’s swivel guns and aiming it at the mutineers. The gun was intended for firing lots of small lead balls at any pirates who might try to board the ship. It was not intended to be a hand cannon, and if he had fired the thing, the recoil would probably have thrown him into the air, but everyone in front of it would have died of terminal perforations. There was a fury about him that even Cox took note of, Cookie had told her. The captain had the look in his eye of the Almighty confronting a particularly wicked city, and maybe Cox was just sane enough to recognize that here was someone who might be even madder than he was, at least for the time it took to turn Cox and those around him into much smaller lumps. Or, Cookie said, the captain may have been about to commit wild murder right up until he realized that this was what Cox wanted, and the devil of a man would drag the captain’s soul to hell along with his own. But the captain didn’t fire the gun, said Cookie. He laid it on the deck. He straightened up with his arms folded and a grim little smile on his face, and Cox just stood there, looking puzzled, and then every single loyal crewman pointed a pistol at his head. The steam got knocked out of the mutiny. Cox and his chums were herded into the ship’s boat with food, water, and a compass. And then of course there was the matter of the guns. The mutineers still had friends among the crew, who said that leaving them in uncertain waters without weapons was a death sentence. In the end the guns were left for them on a little island a mile away, despite Captain Roberts declaring that in his opinion, any pirate or slaver who ran into Cox and his men would have a new captain in very short order indeed. He ordered the swivel guns primed and ready day and night, and said that the boat would be fired on instantly if it was ever seen again. The boat was set adrift and sailed, her crew silent and worried except for Polegrave and Foxlip, who jeered and spat. That was because they were too dumb to realize, said Cookie, that they were heading off into bad waters with a murderous madman in command. The Judy never really recovered, but she kept on course. People didn’t talk much, and kept to themselves when they were off watch. She wasn’t a happy ship at all. Five men had previously jumped ship at Port Henry and so, without the mutineers, there weren’t enough men to crew the ship properly when the wave came. And that was the story Daphne told. She tried to be honest, and where she’d relied on Cookie’s rather excitable stories, she said so. She wished she had Pilu’s talent; he could make tripping over a stone sound like a desperate adventure. There was silence when she finished. Most people turned to look at Pilu. She’d done her best in a foreign language, but she’d seen the puzzled looks. What Pilu gave them was the story all over again, but with acting, too. She could make out the character of Captain Roberts, heavy and pompous, and surely the one who sidled around was Polegrave, and the one who stamped and roared was Cox. They shouted at one another all the time, while Pilu’s fingers popped like pistols and somehow, in the middle of the air, the story unfolded. A certain extra touch of slightly mad realism was added by the parrot, who danced madly in the top of a coconut palm and shouted things like, “What about Darwin, then? Waark!” Pilu’s translation lagged behind Daphne’s account, but when he was about to deal with the old man’s shooting, he stopped for guidance. “He killed a man in a canoe because he was not a trouserman?” She was ready for this. “No. The man I kill—the dead man would have done that, but I think Cox just killed the old man because he couldn’t see anything else to shoot at.” “Er…my English is no so good—” Pilu began. “I am sorry to say you heard me correctly.” “He kills for Locaha and adds glory, like the Raiders?” “No. Just because he wants to.” Pilu looked at her as if this was going to be a hard one to get across. It was. From the sound of it, no one thought he was making sense. He went on doggedly for a few more sentences and turned to Daphne. “Not dolphins,” he said. “No sailor would kill a dolphin. You must be wrong.” “No. He really did.” “But that is killing a soul,” said Pilu. “When we die, we become dolphins until it is time to be born again. Who would kill a dolphin?” Tears of puzzlement and anger raced down his face. “I’m sorry. Cox would. And Foxlip shot at it, too.” “Why?” “To be like Cox, I think. To seem like a big man.” “Big man?” “Like the remora fish. Er, you call them suckfish. They swim with the sharks. Perhaps they like to think they are sharks.” “Not even the Raiders would do this, and they worship Locaha! It is beyond belief!” “I saw them. And poor Captain Roberts wrote it down in the ship’s log. I can show you.” Too late, she remembered that Pilu didn’t so much read as recognize writing when it was pointed out to him. His look now was a plea for help, so she stood close to him and found the right place: “Once again Cox and his cronies have been discharging their pistols at the dolphins, against all decency and the common laws of the sea. May God forgive him, because no righteous sailor will. Indeed, I suspect that in this case even the Almighty will find his mercy overly strained!!!” She read it aloud. In the circle, people were getting restless. There was a lot of loud whispering that she couldn’t understand, and it looked as if some sort of agreement was being arrived at. The nods and whispers ran around the circle of people in opposite directions until they met at Mau, who cracked a thin smile. “These were men who would shoot a brown man for no reason,” he said. “And they would shoot dolphins, which even trousermen respect. You could see inside their heads, ghost girl. Isn’t that right? You could see how they thought?” Daphne couldn’t look at his face. “Yes,” she said. “Savages, we are to them. Some sort of animal. Darkies.” “Yes.” She still did not dare to look up, in case she met his gaze. She’d pulled the trigger, she remembered, on that first day. And he had thanked her for the gift of fire. “When the ghost girl first met me—” Mau began. Oh, no, he’s not going to tell them, is he? she thought. Surely he won’t. But that little smile of his, that’s the smile he smiles when he’s really angry! “—she gave me food,” Mau went on, “and later she gave me a gun to help me light a fire, even though she was far from home and frightened. She was thoughtful enough, too, to take out the little ball that flies and kills, so that I would come to no harm. And she invited me into the Sweet Judy and gave me wonderful lobster-flavored cakes. You all know the ghost girl.” She looked up. Everyone was staring at her. Now Mau stood up and walked into the center of the circle. “These men were different,” he said, “and the ghost girl knew how their minds worked. They would not sing the beer song because they thought we were a sort of animal, and they were too proud and great to sing an animal’s song. She knew this.” He looked around the circle. “The ghost girl thinks she killed a man. Did she? You must decide.” Daphne tried to make out what was said next, but people all started talking at once, and because everyone was talking at once, everyone started talking louder. But something was happening. Little conversations got bigger, and then were picked up and rolled from tongue to tongue around the circle. Whatever the result was going to be, she thought, it probably was not going to be one simple word. Then Pilu wandered around the circle, hunkering down here and there, joining in for a little while, and then strolling on to another point and doing the same thing again. No one stuck up their hands and there was no voting, but she thought, I wonder if it was like this in ancient Athens? This is pure democracy. People don’t just get a vote; they have a say. And now it was settling down. Pilu got up from his last conversation and walked back to the center of the ring. He nodded to Mau and started to speak: “A man who will kill a priest, or kill a man for the pleasure of seeing him die, or kill a dolphin”—this one got a big groan from the circle—“could not be a man at all. It must have been an evil demon haunting the shell of a man, they say. The ghost girl could not have killed him, because he was already dead.” Mau cupped his hands over his mouth. “Is this what you think?” There was a roar of agreement. “Good.” He clapped his hands together and raised his voice. “We’ve still got to finish the pig fence, everyone, and we still need timber from the Judy, and the fish trap is not going to build itself!” The circle rose and became a crisscrossing of hurrying people. No one had banged a table with a wooden hammer, or worn a robe. They had just done a thing that needed doing, without much fuss, and now, well, there was the pig fence to repair. “Is this what you wanted?” asked Mau, suddenly beside her. “Sorry? What?” She hadn’t even seen him approaching. “Oh, yes. Er, yes. Thank you. That was a very good, er, judgment,” she said. “And you?” “I think they have decided and I think it is settled,” said Mau briskly. “The man brought Locaha here and his pistols serve him. But Locaha is no one’s servant.” CHAPTER 12 Cannon and Politics   MAU SAT DOWN ON a god stone. “Where is Cox now, do you think?” “I hope to goodness the wave drowned him!” said Daphne. “I know I shouldn’t, but I do.” “And you fear that it did not,” said Mau. It wasn’t a question. “That’s true. I think it would take more than a wave. Hah, Foxlip said he killed Cox. That was just because he wanted to look big, I’m sure. But Polegrave said something about Cox having cannibal chums. Could that happen?” “I don’t know. The Raiders kill for glory and skulls. You say he kills for no reason. He kills things because they are alive. He sounds like a bad dream, a monster. They will not know what to make of him.” “Soup?” Daphne suggested. “I doubt it,” said Mau. “A cannibal has to be careful who he eats. Milo would make them strong, Pilu would give them a magic voice, and I would give them…indigestion. Who would want to eat a madman?” Daphne shuddered. “Just so long as they don’t eat me!” “No, they would never eat a woman,” said Mau. “That’s very gentlemanly of them!” “They would feed you to their wives, so that they become beautiful.” There was one of those pauses that are icy-cold and red-hot at the same time. It was stuffed with soundless words, words that should not be said, or said another time, or in a different way, or could be said or needed to be said but couldn’t be said, and they would go on tumbling through the pause forever, or until one of them fell out— “Ahem,” said Daphne, and all the other words escaped forever. Much later, and many times, she wondered about what might have happened if she hadn’t chosen a word that clearly belonged to her grandmother. And that was that. For some people, there is only one right moment for the right word. This is sad, but there seems to be nothing that can be done about it. “Well, I don’t see him being eaten by anybody, or even left on the side of the plate,” she went on quickly, to drown out the last echoes of “Ahem” in her head. “I’m sure the captain was right when he said Cox will take over any vessel that finds him, like an disease. It’s amazing what you can do if you don’t care who you kill. And he will kill. Those two were sent as scouts, I’m sure of it. And that means he’s found a bigger boat.” “The boat they came in is still here, but a canoe was stolen last night,” said Mau. “I think we are not good at understanding this sort of thing.” “I don’t think it will make any difference.” “That’s true. The Raiders are following—hunting the survivors. They will get here sooner or later. But I want to—” “Er…” It was a small boy. Daphne could not remember his name but he was hopping up and down like someone who does not want to intrude but needs to, well, intrude. “Yes, Hoti?” said Mau. “Er…please, they say they are running out of thorns to fence the big field,” said the child nervously. “Run and tell them there is a big stand to the west of the Grandfathers’ cave.” As the boy ran off, Mau shouted after him, “Tell them I said to cut the lengths much longer! It’s a waste to cut them short!” “You must defend your island,” said Daphne. He reacted as if he’d been struck. “Do you think I won’t, ghost girl? Do you think that?” “It’s not just your people! You must defend your gods!” “What? How can you say this to me?” “Not the metaphysical…the ones with the god stones and the sacrifices and all the rest of it! I mean the statues and all the other things in the cave!” “Those? Just more stones. Worthless…stuff.” “No! No, they aren’t worthless. They tell you who you are!” She sagged a little. Things had been quite busy lately, and “ghost girl” said so sharply had hurt. It did. Of course, they all called her ghost girl, even Mau sometimes, and it had never worried her. But this time it told her to go away, trouserman girl, you are not one of us. She pulled herself together. “You didn’t look. You didn’t see what I saw in the cave! You remember Air, Fire, and Water all with their globes? And the headless statue?” “I’m sorry,” said Mau, putting his head in his hands. “Pardon?” “I’ve upset you. I know when you’re upset. Your face goes shiny, and then you try to act as if nothing has happened. I’m sorry I shouted. It’s all been…well, you know.” “Yes. I know.” They sat in the silence you get when thoughts are too tangled to become words. Then Daphne coughed. “Anyway, you saw the broken one? And that arm sticking out of the water?” “Yes. I saw everything,” said Mau, but he was watching a woman hurrying toward them. “No! You didn’t! The air was getting too foul! The broken statue had been holding something. I found it while you were arguing with Ataba. It was the world. The world turned upside down. Come and see.” She took his hand in hers and pulled him toward the path up the mountain. “Everyone must see! It’s very—” “Yes, Cara?” said Mau to the woman, who was now hovering where she was sure to be noticed. “I’m to tell you the river’s gone all cloudy,” the woman said, with a nervous look at Daphne. “A pig’s got into the east meadows and is wallowing in the spring,” said Mau, standing up. “I will go and—” “You are going to come with me!” shouted Daphne. The woman backed away quickly as Daphne turned and went on, “Get a stick and walk up to the valley until you find a pig in the water and prod the pig! It’s not hard! Mau, you are the chief. What I want to show you is not about pigs! It’s important….” “Pigs are impor—” “This is more important than pigs! I want you to come and see!”   By the end of the day everyone saw, if only for a few minutes. People moving up and down the long cave were shifting the air around, and it was nothing like as foul as it had been, but the lamps were used a lot. Every single lamp from the Judy had been pressed into service. “The world,” said Mau, staring. “It’s a ball? But we don’t fall off?” The ghost girl seemed to be on fire with words. “Yes, yes, and you know this! You know the story about the brother who sailed so far he came back home?” “Of course. Every child knows it.” “I think people from this island sailed around the world, a long, long time ago. You remembered, but over the years it became a story for little children.” Even down in the dark, Mau thought. He ran a hand over what Daphne called “the globe,” the biggest one, which had rolled onto the floor when the statue had broken. Imo’s globe. The World. He let his fingertips just brush the stone. It came up to his chin. So this is the world, he thought, his fingers following a line of gleaming gold across the stone. There were a lot of these lines, and they all led to the same place—or, rather, away from it, as though some giant had thrown spears around the world. And he was my ancestor, Mau told himself as he lightly touched the familiar symbol that told him this was no place built by trousermen. His people carved the stone. His people carved the gods. In his memory he could hear the spirit of Ataba, roaring, “That doesn’t mean a thing, demon boy! The gods themselves guided their tools.” And Mau thought, Well, it means something to me. Yes, it means a lot. “Your land was a big place, as big as Crete, I think,” said the ghost girl behind him. “I’ll show you Crete on the map later. Your people went everywhere! Mostly Africa and China and the middle Americas, and you know what? I think Jon Croll’s theory about the ice sheets is right! I went to his lecture at the Royal Society. That’s why so much of Europe and North America is just not there—er, not because he gave his lecture, I mean, but because it was covered in ice! Do you know what ice is? Oh. Well, it’s when water goes very cold until it becomes like crystal. Anyway, the other end of the world was a snowball, but down here it was still warm, and you did amazing things!” “Ice,” murmured Mau. He felt as if he was on an unfamiliar sea, with no map and no familiar smells, while her voice washed over him. The globe was a kind of map, like the Judy’s charts. Where his island was now, where all the islands in the chain had been, it showed a mighty land, made of gold. People from here had sailed everywhere. And then…something had happened. The gods got angry, as Ataba had said, or as the ghost girl said, the crystal world of the trousermen melted. It meant the same thing. The sea rose. If he closed his eyes, he could see the white buildings under the sea. Had it come in a rush, that great wave? Did the land shake and the mountains catch fire? It must have been sudden, because the water rose and the land became a pattern of islands, and the world changed. “When the world was otherwise,” he whispered. He sat down on the edge of what everyone was calling the god pool. His mind was too full of thoughts; he needed a bigger head. The…ancestors had brought the milk stone here and used it to make steps and wall carvings and gods, perhaps all out of the same piece of stone. And there was the broken statue of Imo. His head was probably in the depths of the pool. Imo had fallen, and so had the world. Something had been returned. The Nation had been old, older than the reef, she was saying. The people of the Nation had sailed beyond the seas they knew, under unfamiliar stars. He looked up and saw unfamiliar stars. The light shifted as groups of people moved around the hall. The roof glittered, just like statues. They were made of glass, she’d said. They looked like stars in the night sky, but they were not his stars. They were crystal stars, stars of a different sky. “I want the right people to see this,” said Daphne behind him. “The right people are seeing it,” said Mau. After a few moments’ silence he heard the girl say, “I’m sorry. I meant that there are learned men in the Royal Society who could tell us what it means.” “Are they priests?” asked Mau suspiciously. “No. Very much no! In fact some of them don’t get on with priests at all. But they search for answers.” “Good. Send them here. But I know what this place means. My ancestors wanted to tell us that they were here—that’s what it means,” said Mau. He could feel the tears welling up, but what was propelling them was a fierce, burning pride. “Send your wise trousermen,” he said, trying not to let his voice shake, “and we will welcome the brothers who traveled to the other end of the world, and came back at last to the place they had left behind. I am not stupid, ghost girl. If we sailed to those places long ago, wouldn’t we have settled there? And when your learned men come here, we will say to them: The world is a globe—the farther you sail, the closer to home you are.” He could barely see Daphne in the gloom, but when she spoke her voice was shaking. “I will tell you something even more amazing,” she said. “All around the world people have carved stones into gods. All around the world. And all around the world people have said that the planets are gods, as well. But your ancestors knew things that nobody else knew. Mau, the god of Air has four little figures sitting on his shoulders. They are his sons, yes? They raced around their father to see which of them would court the woman who lives in the Moon? It’s in the beer song.” “And what do you want to tell me about them?” “We call the Air planet Jupiter. Jupiter has four moons that race around it. I’ve seen them in my telescope at home! And then there is Saturn, which you call Fire. The Papervine Woman tied his hands to his belt to stop the god from stealing her daughters, yes?” “It’s just another god story for babies. I don’t believe it.” “It’s true. Oh, well. In a way—I don’t know about the Papervine Woman, but the planet Saturn has rings around it, and I suppose they do look like a belt when you see them at the right angle.” “It’s just a story.” “No! It’s been turned into a story. The moons are real! So are the rings! Your ancestors saw them, and I wish I knew how. Then they made up these songs and mothers sing them to their children! That’s how the knowledge gets passed down, except that you didn’t know it was knowledge! See how the gods shine? There are little plates of glass all over them. Your ancestors made glass. I’ve got an idea about that, too. Mau, when my father comes and I get back home, this place will be the most famous cave in—” It was horrible to watch her face change. It went from a kind of desperate excitement to dark despair, in gentle slow motion. It was as though a shadow had drifted across a landscape. He caught her before she fell, and he felt her tears on his skin. “He will come,” he said quickly. “There is so much ocean.” “But he would know the course of the Judy, and this is a big island! He should have gotten here by now!” “The ocean is much bigger. And there was the wave! He could be looking south, thinking the Judy capsized. He could be looking north, in case you were swept along. Oh, he will come. We must be ready.” Mau patted her on the back and looked down. The children, who had soon gotten fed up with looking at big dark things they didn’t understand, had gathered around and were watching them with interest. He tried to shoo them away. The sobbing stopped. “What was that little boy holding?” said Daphne hoarsely. Mau beckoned the child over and borrowed the new toy from him. Daphne stared at it and started to laugh. It was more like a panting noise, in fact, the noise made by someone too astonished to draw breath. She managed to say: “Where did he get these, please?” “He says Uncle Pilu gave them to him. He has been diving in the god pool.” Uncle Pilu, Daphne noted. There were lots of uncles and aunts on the island now, and not many mothers and fathers. “Tell the little boy I will give him an arm’s length of sugarcane for them,” she said, “and he can stretch his arm as long as he likes. Is that a trade?” “Well, he’s grinning,” said Mau. “I think just hearing the word sugarcane was enough!” “A mountain of sugar would not have been enough.” Daphne held up her purchase. “Shall I tell you what these are? They were made by someone who did not just watch the skies and sail to new lands. He thought about small things that make life better for people. I’ve never heard of them being made of gold before, but these are definitely false teeth!”   When she was a lot older and had to deal with meetings all the time, Daphne remembered the council of war. It was probably the only one ever to have children running around in it. It was certainly the only one to have Mrs. Gurgle scuttling around in it with her new teeth. She had snatched them out of Daphne’s hand when she was demonstrating them to Cahle, and it was impossible to get anything off Mrs. Gurgle if she didn’t want you to take it. They were too big for her, and almost certainly she couldn’t eat with them, but if she opened her mouth in daylight, it was like looking at the sun. Pilu did most of the talking, but always with one eye on Mau. He talked so fast and hard that the words formed pictures in front of her eyes, and what she saw was the Agincourt speech from Henry V, or at least what it might have been like if Shakespeare had been small and dark and worn a little loincloth instead of trousers, or tights in Shakespeare’s case. But there was a lot more in there, and Pilu had one wonderful talent for a speaker: He began with the truth and then he hammered it out until it was very thin but gleamed like Mrs. Gurgle’s new teeth at noon. They were the oldest people! He told them their ancestors had invented canoes and sailed them under new skies, to land so far away they ended up back home! And they had seen farther than any other people! They had seen the four sons of Air race across the sky! They had seen the Papervine Woman lash her vines around the Fire god! They had built wondrous devices, back in the long ago, when the world was otherwise! But now bad men were coming! They were very bad men indeed! So Imo himself had sent them the Sweet Judy, the first ship ever built, which had come back on the great wave, carrying everything they would need in this dark time, including the wonderful salt-pickled beef and the ghost girl, who knows the secrets of the sky and makes wonderful beer— Daphne blushed at this and tried to catch Mau’s eye, but he looked away. And Pilu was shouting, “And with the help of the Sweet Judy we shall blow the Raiders across the seas!” Oh no, she thought, he knows about the cannon! He’s found the Judy’s cannon. There was cheering as Pilu finished. People surrounded Mau. There had always been wars, even among the local islands. From what she could work out, they were mostly not much worse than a fight among the stableboys and a good way of getting impressive scars and a story to exaggerate for your grandchildren. And there were often raids from one island to another to steal brides, but since the women arranged it all beforehand, they hardly counted. But…cannon! She’d seen gun drill on the Judy, and even Cox handled them with care. There was one right way of firing a cannon, and lots of wonderfully explosive ways of getting it wrong. When the crowd was gathering around Pilu for some patriotic singing, Daphne strode up to Mau and glared at him. “How many cannon?” she demanded. “Milo has found five,” said Mau. “We are going to put them on the hill above the beach. Yes, I know what you’re going to say, but the brothers know how to use them.” “Really? They might have watched! Pilu thinks he knows how to read, but mostly he just guesses!” “The cannon give us hope. We know who we are now. We are not beggars outside the trouserman world. We are not children. Once we were the bold sailors, all the way to the other end of the world. Perhaps we wore the trousers.” “Er, I think Pilu might have been going too far with that—” “No, he is clever. Should he tell them the truth? Should he tell them that all I’ve got is a few things I know and a handful of guesses and a big hope, and that we are so weak, and that if I am wrong, those of us not dead by sunset on the day the Raiders attack will wish they were? That will only make them fear. If a lie will make us strong, a lie will be my weapon.” He sighed. “People want lies to live by. They cry out for them. Have you looked at the Judy lately? I must show you something.”   The path through the low forest was well worn. So much had been dragged out to the beach in the past months that even high-speed vines and voracious grasses had not been able to keep up everywhere. In places the forest floor was just shards of crumbling stone. “We go to the Sweet Judy for everything,” said Mau as he led the way. “It gives us wood and food and light. Without the Judy and her cargo, where would we be? What could we want that the Judy could not give us? That’s what people say. And now, since our gods have failed us…” He stood back. Someone had nailed a red fish to the planking of the ship. By the smell, it had been there for several days. And below it were a stick man and a stick woman, drawn very crudely in red, white, and black. Daphne stared at them. “That’s supposed to be me, isn’t it,” she said, “and that’s you with poor Captain Roberts’s cap on.” “Yes.” Mau sighed. “It’s a good one of the cap,” said Daphne diplomatically. “Where did they get the white?” “There’s a stick of it in the carpenter’s toolbox,” said Mau gloomily. “Ah, that would be called chalk,” said Daphne. “I suppose all these round things they have drawn here are barrels?” “Yes. This is a god place now. I’ve heard them talking, sometimes. Some of them think the gods sent the Judy here to help them! Can you believe that? Then who sent the wave? They’ll believe in anything! This morning I heard one of the new ones talking about ‘The Cave the Gods Made’! We made it! Men made the gods, too. Gods of cold stone, which we made so that we could hide from the dark in a shell of comfortable lies. But when the Raiders come, there will be five cannon on the beach, made by men! And when they speak, they will not tell lies!” “You will blow yourself up! Those cannon have been thrown about and dragged over rocks, and they were old and rusty to start with! Cookie said they’d turn into a tin banana if you fire them with more than half a load. They’ll blow up!” “We will not run. We cannot run. So we must fight. And if we fight, we must win. But least we know how they will fight.” “How can you possibly know that?” “Because when the Raiders come, they will pour onto the beach and challenge our chief to single combat.” “You? But you can’t—” “I have more than one plan. Please trust me.” “You will fire the cannon?” “Perhaps. They worship Locaha. They think he protects them. They collect skulls for him. They eat the flesh of men in his honor. They believe the more men they kill, the more slaves they will have in his country when he takes them. They don’t care if they die. But Locaha makes no bargains with anyone.” They were back on the beach now. In the distance, a couple of men were, very slowly, carrying a cannon up the track. “I don’t think we have much time,” said Mau. “The man with the big bleeding nose will tell Cox that we are an island of invalids and children and no trousermen. Except you.” “He won’t care who gets killed. He shot a butterfly in half, remember?” said Daphne. Mau shook his head. “How can he rise up every morning and decide to be him?” “I think that if you could understand him, you’d be him. That’s what he does. He turns people into creatures like himself. That’s what happened to Foxlip. And he’ll make sure that the only way to kill him is to be worse than him. It nearly worked on poor Captain Roberts. Make sure it doesn’t happen to you, Mau!” Mau sighed. “Let’s get back before they start worshiping us, shall we?” They followed the cannon and Daphne trailed behind a little. Even wearing the trousers, which were far too big for him, Mau still walked like a dancer. Daphne had been taken to the ballet several times by her grandmother, who wanted to make sure she grew up to be a proper lady and not marry a godless scientist. She’d been bored silly, and the dancers were nothing like as graceful as she had expected. But Mau walked as if every part of his body knew where it was and where it was going to and exactly how fast it had to go to get there. People would have paid good money just to see the muscles on his back move like they were doing now. She understood the maids back home a lot more when the sun gleamed on his shoulders. Ahem.   In the morning they fired a cannon, an enterprise that consisted of lighting a really long fuse and then everyone running very fast in the opposite direction. The bang was impressive and most people got back on their feet in time to see the splash when the ball hit the water on the other side of the lagoon. But Daphne didn’t join in the celebrations. Of course, according to Cookie, everything on the Judy was far too old and ready for the scrap heap, but she’d looked into the barrels of the cannon, and they were a mess. Four had cracks in them, and the last one’s inside looked as knobbly as the moon. They did not look like the kind of cannon you wanted to fire if you had been raised in the belief that, when it came to cannon, the ball should come out of the front. But Mau wouldn’t listen to her when she tried to talk to him about it, and a look came over his face that she’d seen before. It said: “I know what I’m doing. Don’t bother me. Everything will be all right.” And in the meantime, down by the fire, Milo and Pilu banged mysteriously at empty tins from the Judy’s galley, hammering them flat for no reason they were prepared to give. Some of the men and older boys were trained in firing the cannon, but since there wasn’t any gunpowder to spare for actually firing any more of the things, they made do with pushing wooden cartridges into the barrel and shouting, “Bang!” They got quite good at that, and were proud at the speed with which “Bang!” could be shouted. Daphne said she hoped the enemy would be trained to say “Aargh!” Nothing happened and went on happening. They finished the pig fence, which meant that the last of the planting could be done. They started a new hut, but this was a lot higher up the slope. Trees were planted. One of the men got his leg ripped open on the first boar hunt since the wave and Daphne sewed it up again, washing the wound in mother-of-beer to keep it clean. Mau stood guard on the beach every night, often with the Unknown Woman nearby, but now at least she trusted people enough to leave her little boy with them. And that was just as well, because she had taken a sudden interest in papervine, cutting the longest leaves of it from all over the island and then endlessly plaiting them into string after green string. So now, because it’s how people’s minds work, the Unknown Woman was known as the Papervine Woman. Once she solemnly handed her baby to Daphne, and Cahle made a remark that Daphne didn’t quite catch but which made all the women laugh, so it was almost certainly something like, “It’s about time you made one!” People relaxed. And the Raiders came, just at dawn. They came with drums and torchlight. Mau ran up the beach to the huts, shouting, “The Raiders are coming! The Raiders are coming!” People woke up and ran, mostly into one another, while outside the clanging and drumming went on. The dogs barked and got under people’s feet. In ones and twos men hurried up to the cannons on the hill, but by then it was too late. “You’re all dead,” said Mau. Out on the lagoon the mists faded. Milo and Pilu stopped their drumming and banging and paddled their canoe back to the beach. People looked around feeling stupid and annoyed. Nevertheless, up on the hill a man shouted “Bang!” at the top of his voice and looked very pleased with himself. Later, though, Mau asked Daphne what the casualties were. “Well, one man dropped his spear on his own foot,” she said. “A woman sprained her ankle because she tripped over her dog, and the man up on the cannon got his hand stuck up in the barrel.” “How can you possibly get your hand stuck up the barrel of a cannon?” said Mau. “Apparently he was pushing the ball in and it rolled back onto his fingers,” said Daphne. “Perhaps you should write a letter to the cannibals, telling them not to come. I know you don’t know how to write, but they probably don’t know how to read.” “I must organize people better,” said Mau, sighing. “No!” said Daphne. “Tell them to organize themselves! There should be lookouts. There should always be a man up on the guns. Tell the women to make sure they know where to go. Oh, and tell them that the fastest gun crew will get extra beer. Make them think. Tell them what’s got to be done, and let them work out how. And now, thank you, I’ve got some beer half made!” Back in her hut, with the reassuringly homely smells of the cauldron, the beer, and Mrs. Gurgle, she wondered about Cookie: whether he had survived the wave, because if anyone should have done so, it was Cookie. Daphne had spent a lot of time in the Sweet Judy’s galley, because it was only another type of kitchen, and she was at home in kitchens. It was also a safe place. Even at the height of the mutiny, everyone was friends with Cookie, and he had no enemies. Every seaman, even a madman like Cox, knew that there was no point in upsetting the cook, who had all kinds of little opportunities to get his own back, as you might find out one night when it was you hanging over the rail, trying to throw up your own stomach. And on top of this Cookie was good company and seemed to have sailed to everywhere on just about any kind of ship, and he was constantly rebuilding his own coffin, which he’d brought aboard. It was now part of the furniture of the galley, and most of the time the saucepans were piled up on top of it. He seemed surprised that Daphne thought all this was a touch on the odd side. Perhaps this was because the most important thing about this coffin was that Cookie did not intend to die in it. He intended to live in it instead, because he had designed it to float. He had even built a keel on it. He took great pleasure in showing her how well appointed it was inside. There was a shroud, in case he actually did die, but which could easily be used as a sail until that unlucky day; there was a small folding mast for this very purpose. Inside the coffin, which was padded, there were rows of pockets that held ship’s biscuits, dried fruit, fishhooks (and fishing line), a compass, charts, and a wonderful device for distilling drinking water from the sea. It was a tiny floating world. “I got the idea off a harpooner I met when I was working on the whalers,” he told her one day as he was adding yet another pocket to the insides of the coffin. “He was a rum ’un and no mistake. Had more tattoos than the Edinburgh Festival and all his teeth filed as sharp as daggers, but he lugged this coffin onto every ship he sailed with so’s if he died, he’d have a proper Christian funeral and not be chucked over the side sewn up in a bit o’ canvas with a cannonball for company. I thought about it myself—it’s a good basic idea, but it needs a little bit of changing. Anyway, I didn’t stay long on that ship on account of coming down with bowel weevils just before we rounded the cape, and I had to put ashore at Valparaiso. It was probably a blessing in disguise, ’cause I reckon that ship was heading for a bad end. I’ve seen a few mad captains in my time, but that one was as crazy as a spoon. And you may depend upon it, when the captain is crazy, so is the ship. I often wonder what happened to ’em all.” Daphne finished making the mother-of-beer and walked down the slope until she could see the little crumbling cliff that overlooked the beach. Mau was there, and so were all the gunners, including the Papervine Woman, for some reason. The cannon are useless, she thought. He must know that. So what does he think he’s doing? There was a distant shout of “Bang!” and she sighed….   Two of the Gentlemen of Last Resort ran up onto the deck and joined the captain at the ship’s rail. “What is the emergency?” said Mr. Black. “Surely we’re nowhere near the Mothering Sundays yet?” “The lookout said he saw a maroon fired,” said the captain, his telescope to his eye. “Some poor soul’s been shipwrecked, I daresay. There’s an island there. It’s not on the charts. Technically, Mr. Black, I need your permission to change course.” “Of course you must, aha, change course, Captain,” said Mr. Black. “Indeed, I note that you already have.” “That is correct, sir,” said the captain carefully. “The sea has its own laws.” “Well done, Captain. I should listen to your advice.” There was a moment’s silence, caused by nobody mentioning the king’s daughter. “I’m sure Roberts got her through, sir,” said the captain, looking carefully at the distant island again. “It’s kind of you to say so.” “In the meantime,” the captain went on cheerfully, “I do believe I am looking at a very lucky shipwrecked mariner. Someone else may have discovered an island over there before us. I can see a fire, and a man fishing from a—” He stopped, and adjusted the telescope. “Well, I have to say he seems to be sitting in a coffin….”   There was no alarm the next day, but there was one the day after, which Mau said went well. Every morning, people became better and better at shouting “Bang!” And every day Daphne wondered what Mau was really planning. CHAPTER 13 Truce   THE RAIDERS CAME JUST before dawn. They came with drums and torchlight making red suns in the mists. Mau’s ears heard them. In his eyes the flames were reflected. Then he awoke from what was not exactly a sleep, and felt the future happening. How did that work? he wondered. On the very first day he’d stood guard on the Nation, he’d had the memory of this. It had been flying toward him from the future. He’d always had that trick with the silver thread that pulled him toward the future he pictured in his head. But this time it was the future that had been tugging at him, pulling him to this place, at this time. “They are here,” someone whispered beside him. He looked at the Unknown Woman. He’d never seen much of an expression on her face before, but now it terrified the life out of him. It was sheer poisonous hatred. “Ring the bell!” he snapped, and she hurried up the beach. Mau walked backward, watching the mist. He hadn’t expected that. He hadn’t seen it! The sound of the Sweet Judy’s bell sang out across the lagoon. Mau ran up the track, and was relieved to see faint shapes hurrying through the damp billows. Where was the sun? It must be time for dawn! Over toward the low forest, the first grandfather bird threw up, and was immediately attacked by its archenemy. “Waark! Yer lying ol’ hypocrite!” And with that the dawn chorus exploded, with every bird, frog, toad, and insect screaming its head off. Golden light rolled in from the east, melting ragged holes in the mist. It was a beautiful picture, apart from the black-and-red war canoes. Most of them were too big to enter the lagoon. They had grounded on the spit of land by Little Nation, and figures were pouring onto the sand. No voices in my head, Mau thought. No dead people. It’s just me in here. I’ve got to get this right…. Pilu hurried up with a heavy package wrapped in papervine cloth. “It’s been kept dry. It will be fine.” Mau looked along the high ground. Someone was standing by each cannon with a long fuse in his hand, or in the case of one, her hand. They were watching him anxiously. Everyone was watching him. He looked down at the beach again and saw Cox, towering over the Raiders. He’d been expecting someone like Foxlip, skinny and unhealthy-looking, but this man was a good foot taller and nearly the same size as Milo. He had feathers sticking up around his trouserman hat. They were red, the feathers of a chief. So he’d done what the ghost girl had said he’d do: He’d taken over. That was their law. The strongest man led. That made sense. At least, it made sense to strong men. The Raiders were holding back, though. They were staying near their boats; only one was coming up the beach, with his spear held over his head. In a way, and it was a strange kind of way, this was a big relief. Mau didn’t like having two plans. “He looks very young,” said the ghost girl behind him. He spun around and there she was, dwarfed beside Milo, who was carrying a club the size of a medium-sized tree; in fact it was a medium-sized tree, without the branches. “You should have gone into the forest with the others!” he said. “Really? Well, now I’m coming with you.” Mau glanced at Milo, but he’d get no help there. Since Guiding Star had been born, the ghost girl could do no wrong as far as his father was concerned. “Besides,” she said, “it’s going to end up the same way for all of us if this goes wrong. Why aren’t they charging toward us?” “Because they want to talk.” Mau pointed to the approaching man. He looked like he was young and trying not to be afraid. “Why?” The young man stuck his spear into the sand and then turned and ran. “Maybe it’s because they have seen the cannon. I was hoping for this. Look at them. They’re not happy.” “Can we trust them?” “With a truce? Yes.” “Really?” “Yes. There are rules. Pilu and Milo will talk to them. I’m just a boy, with no tattoos. They won’t speak to me.” “But you are the chief!” Mau smiled. “Yes, but don’t tell them.” Was it like this at the Battle of Waterloo? Daphne wondered as they walked down to the beach and the waiting group. This is…strange. It’s so…civilized, as if a battle is something that starts when somebody blows a whistle. There are rules, even here. And here comes Cox. Oh Lord, even the air he breathes needs a wash afterward. First Mate Cox came toward them, smiling like someone greeting a long-lost friend who owed him money. You never saw Cox frown. Like crocodiles and sharks, Cox always had a grin for people, especially when he had them at his mercy, or at least where his mercy would be if he had any. “Well now, here’s a thing,” he said. “Fancy seeing you here, young lady. The Judy got this far, then? And where’s old Roberts and his upstanding crew? At prayer?” “They are here and armed, Mr. Cox,” Daphne said. “Are they indeed?” said Cox cheerfully. “Then I’m the queen of Sheba.” He pointed to the upper slope, where the cannon were clearly visible. “Those guns are from the Judy, right?” “I’m not telling you anything, Mr. Cox.” “Then they are. A load of scrap iron, as I recall. That skinflint Roberts was too mean to get new ones. I know I’m right. First time you use them, they’ll split like a sausage! Seems to have put the wind up my jolly loyal subjects, though. Oh, yeah, I’m their chief, as a matter of fact. See my new hat? It’s quite the style, ain’t it? Me, king o’ the cannibals.” He leaned forward. “You got to be nice to me now I’m a king,” he said. “You should call me Your Majesty, eh?” “And how did you become a king, Mr. Cox?” said Daphne. “I’m sure it involved killing people.” She had to make an effort not to back away, but backing away from the man never worked. “Only one, so don’t be so hoity-toity. We’d just got a nice new boat courtesy of a bunch of Dutchmen of a charitable disposition, and then just after we’d chucked them over the side, a load of our brown chums comes up on us all in a rush, and we had a bit of an argument. I shot this big devil, all war paint and feathers, just as he’s about to flatten me with his big hammer—lovely gun, the cheese-eater captain had, far too good for a Dutchman, which is why I grabbed it off him before we threw him to the sharks—but anyway, I let a bit of air into Johnny Savage, lovely action that gun’s got, smooth as a kiss—and next thing you know, abracadabra, I’m king of ’em. And then it’s all off to a nice island for a big coronation feast. An’ don’t you look at me like that—I had the fish.” He looked around. “Oh dear me, where are my manners? May I introduce to you the lads from what they call the Land of Many Fires? I daresay you’ve heard of them? As blackhearted a bunch of villains as you might find in a dozen chapels!” He waved a hand theatrically at a group of men, lesser chiefs perhaps, who had gathered around Pilu and Milo, and went on: “They are a bit whiffy on the nose, my word, yes, but that’s ’cause of their diet. Not enough roughage, see? Leave the clothes on, I tell ’em; the buttons’ll do you good! But they don’t listen. Nearly as bad as me, and I don’t spread praise like that around in a hurry. These lads here are the gentry, believe it or not.” She took a look at some of the said gentry and, to her shock, recognized them. She knew them. She’d lived among them for most of her life. Well, not actual cannibals, obviously (although there had been all those rumors about the tenth earl of Crowcester, but dinner-party opinion picked up via the trusty dumbwaiter was that he had just been very hungry and extremely shortsighted). These old men had bones in their noses and shells in their ears, but there was something familiar there, too. They had the well-fed, important, careful look of people who took care not to be at the top. A lot of government people like them had dined at the Hall. They had learned over the years that the top was not a happy or safe place to be. One rung down, that was the place for a sensible man. You advised the king, you had a lot of power, in a quiet kind of way, and you didn’t get murdered anything like as often. And, if the ruler started to get funny ideas and became a bit of an embarrassment, you just…took care of things. The nearest one gave her a nervous smile, although later she realized that he might have just been hungry. In any case, if you took away the long hair, which was curled up into a headdress with a feather stuck in it, and then added a pair of silver spectacles, he would look exactly like the prime minister back home, or at least like the prime minister would look after a year in the sun. She could see his wrinkles under his paint. Cannibal Chief, she thought. It’s such a nasty name. But she could see the polished skull on his belt, and his necklace was made of little white shells and finger bones, and as far as she knew, the prime minister didn’t have a big black club studded with shark’s teeth. “Amazin’ resemblance, ain’t it?” said Cox, as if he’d been reading her thoughts. “And there’s one back there who could pass for the archbishop of Canterbury in a poor light. Just goes to show what a haircut and a Savile Row suit will do, eh?” He winked his horrible wink, and Daphne, who had vowed not to rise to this sort of thing, heard herself say: “The archbishop of Canterbury, Mr. Cox, is not a cannibal!” “He doesn’t think so, miss. Wine and wafers, m’lady, wine and wafers!” Daphne shuddered. The man had an uncanny ability to look inside your head and leave it feeling grubby. Even on the beach she wanted to apologize to the sand for letting him tread on it, but the looks on the faces of the wrinkled old men with him made her heart leap. They were glaring! They hated him! He’d brought them here, and now they were under the barrels of cannon! They might get killed, and they had spent a lifetime not getting killed. All right, he’d killed the last king, but that was just because he had the magic gun stick. He smelled of madness. Tradition was fine, but sometimes you had to be practical…. “Tell me, Mr. Cox, can you speak the language of your new subjects?” she asked sweetly. Cox looked astonished. “What, me? Catch me speaking their heathen lingo! Ugga wugga this, lugga mugga that! That’s not for me! I’m learnin’ ’em English, since you ask. I’ll civilize ’em if I have to shoot every mother’s son of ’em, trust me on that. Talking of ugga wugga, what’s all this chin-wagging about?” Daphne listened out of the corner of her ear. War negotiations were going rather oddly. The enemy warriors listened to Pilu but looked up at Milo when they replied, as if Pilu himself was not important. Mau was taking no part in things at all. He stood behind the brothers, leaning on his spear and listening. Daphne went to push her way through them and found she didn’t need to; cannibal chiefs shuffled out of her way as fast as they could. “What’s happening?” she whispered. “Are they worried about the cannon?” “Yes. They believe in single combat, one chief against another. If our chief beats their chief, they will go away.” “Can you trust them?” “Yes. This is about belief. If their god doesn’t smile on them, they won’t fight. But Cox wants them all to fight, and they know they should obey him. He wants a massacre. He’s told them that the cannon won’t work.” “You think they will, though,” said Daphne. “I think one will,” said Mau quietly. “One? One!” “Don’t shout. Yes, one. Just one. But that isn’t going to matter, because we don’t have enough gunpowder for more than one shot.” Daphne was speechless. She finally managed to say, “But there were three kegs!” “That’s true. The little one from your cabin was half empty. The others are full of gunpowder soup. The water got in. It’s just stinking muck.” “But you fired a cannon weeks ago!” “The little keg had enough for two firings. The first one we tried with what looked like the least-rotten gun. It worked. You saw it. But there’s a crack all along it now, and it was the best one. But don’t worry, we repaired it.” Daphne’s brow furrowed. “How can you repair a cannon? You can’t repair a cannon, not here!” “A trouserman might not be able to, but I can,” said Mau proudly. “Remember, you didn’t know how to milk a pig!” “All right then, how do you repair a broken cannon?” said Daphne. “Our way,” said Mau, beaming. “With string!” “With str—?” “Waark! Cox is the prawn of the devil!” Even Daphne, mouth open to object, turned to look— But Cox was quicker than all of them. His hand moved fast as the parrot glided over the beach. He cocked, aimed, and fired in one movement, three shots, one after another. The parrot squawked and tumbled into the papervine thickets above the beach, leaving a few bits of feather floating in the air. Cox looked at the watchers, and bowed and waved like a musician who had just played a very difficult piano concerto. But the Raiders glanced at him as if he was a little boy who was proud of having wet himself. Daphne was still trying to deal with string, but on top of that floated: Three shots in a row! The Dutch captain’s gun was a revolver! “I think this is the time,” Mau said. “Pilu should have got them confused enough by now. Turn my words into Trouserman, will you?” And he strode off down the beach before she could argue. He pushed his way into the circle before anyone knew he was there, and faced the Raiders. “Who says our guns do not fire?” he bellowed. “Enough arguing! Fire!” Up on the cliff, the unknown Papervine Woman, who had been crouched obediently over her green cannon, touched the slow match to the fuse and, as instructed, ran away very fast and stood behind a tree until the thunder had died away, and then ran back even faster. She ignored the cannon, which was under a cloud of steam, and looked at the lagoon. The ball had splashed in the middle, capsizing three boats. Figures were in the water. She smiled and turned back to the cannon. Wordless though she was, she’d begged to be allowed to fire it. Hadn’t she gathered all the papervine? Hadn’t she woven it into ropes from dawn to dust, tangling into it the inexhaustible hatred in her heart? Hadn’t Mau seen her helping Pilu shaping metal plates over the cracks in the cannon? Hadn’t he seen how she had taken care to wrap the ropes around the cannon, layer after layer, every one as strong as her longing for revenge? And he had, and they had held; thin little blades of papervine had bound the red thunder in. She went back to the tree, took up her baby from his cradle made from papervine, and kissed him, and wept. “We will fire again,” Pilu yelled, in the confusion. “We will destroy your big canoes. We have made the challenge of single combat. You must accept! Or do you want to swim home?” Raiders clustered around Cox, who was swearing at them. “What have we got to lose, Mr. Cox?” Daphne shouted above the hubbub. “Don’t you think you’ll win?” And then in the island tongue she hissed: “We will sink every canoe! Our guns are well guarded!” Mau whispered to her and she added, “If you raise a weapon in the Kahana circle, they will kill you, Mr. Cox. It’s against all the rules!” There was a heavy thudding that turned out to be Milo thumping his chest. “Who will fight?” he yelled. “Who will fight?” “All right! I’ll fight!” Cox snarled. He pushed away a few hangers-on and dusted off his shirt. “Huh, and I’m supposed to be king in this vicinity,” he complained. “You wouldn’t find the Brigade of Guards coming over all treasonable like this, my word, no!” He glared at Milo. “I’ll fight the big one,” he said. “It’s not like he’ll be easy to miss.” “You have a plan, don’t you?” Daphne hissed to Mau. “You’re not going to let him shoot Milo dead, are you?” “Yes, I have a plan. No, he’s not going to shoot Milo. We’d say Milo is chief if one of the Raiders was fighting, because he’d win. But I can’t let Cox shoot Milo. He’s so big, so easy to sho—” Daphne’s expression went solid as understanding came. “It’s you, isn’t it…? You are going to fight him.” She was jostled out of the way as Milo dropped his huge hand on the boy’s shoulder, causing him to stand a bit lopsidedly. “Listen to me!” he declared to the Raiders. “I am not the chief! Mau is the chief. He has risen from the country of Locaha. He set the dead men free. The gods hid from him in a cave, but he found them, and they told him the secret of the world! And he has no soul.” Cor blimey! thought Daphne. One of the footmen had been sacked for saying that when she was eight, and until she’d sailed on the Sweet Judy she’d thought it was the worst swear word in the world. It still felt as if it was. Cor blimey! That was the most words Milo had ever said in a day! They might have been said by his brother, because they were the truth disguised as lies, and there was something about that fact that made them echo in the head. They seemed to be doing so in the heads of the warriors. They stared at Mau in astonishment. A heavy hand landed on Daphne’s shoulder too, and Cox said, “Missie? I’m going to have to shoot the little bugger, right?” She spun around and shoved his arm away. But he caught her tightly by the wrist. “I could shoot you, Cox, whatever you say!” Cox laughed. “Oh, you’ve got the taste for killing, missie?” he said, his face a few inches from hers. “Mind you, poisoning don’t really count, I always think. Did he gurgle? Did he go green? But well done for bashin’ two of Polegrave’s teeth right out, the evil little monkey…. He didn’t try to mess you up, did he? I’d shoot him if he tried anything unsavory. Oh, but in point of fact I shot him yesterday, ’cause he really was a pain in the arse, excuse my French—” Daphne managed to pull her arm free. “Don’t touch me again! Don’t you even suggest that I’m like you! Don’t you—” “Stop.” Mau didn’t shout. His spear shouted for him. It was aimed at Cox’s heart. No one moved for several seconds, and then Cox said, slowly and carefully, “Ah, is this your beau? What will dear Daddy say? Oh my word! An’ you taught him how to talk, too.” The cannibal twin of the prime minister stepped between them with his hands raised, and suddenly a lot of spears and clubs were being shaken. “No fight yet!” he said to Cox in broken English, and turned to Daphne. “The boy has no soul?” he asked in the island tongue. “The wave took away his soul, but he has made himself a new one,” she said. “Wrong. No man can make a soul!” But he’s worried, Daphne thought. “This one did. He made it outside himself. You are walking on it,” she said. “And don’t try to shuffle away sideways. It covers the whole island, every leaf and pebble!” “They call you a woman of power, ghost girl.” The man took a step backward. “Is this true? What is the color of birds in the land of Locaha?” “There are no colors. There are no birds. The fish are silver, and as fast as thought.” The words were just there, ready, in her head. Great Heavens, she thought, I know this! “What is the length of time you may stay in the land of Locaha?” “The fall of a drop of water,” said Daphne’s lips before she had finished hearing the question. “And the soul who makes his own soul…he was in Locaha’s land?” “Yes. He ran faster than Locaha, though.” The dark, piercing eyes stayed fixed on her for a while, and then it seemed that she had passed some test. “You are very clever,” said the old man shyly. “I would like to eat your brains, one day.” For some reason the books of etiquette that Daphne’s grandmother had forced on her didn’t quite deal with this. Of course, silly people would say to babies, “You’re so sweet I could gobble you all up!” but that sort of nonsense seemed less funny when it was said by a man in war paint who owned more than one skull. Daphne, cursed with good manners, settled for “It’s very kind of you to say so.” He nodded and headed back to his fellows, who had clustered around Cox. Mau approached her, smiling. “Their priest likes you,” he said. “Only for my brains, Mau, and even if he had them for lunch, I’d still have more than you! Didn’t you see that gun he’s got now? It’s a Pepperbox. One of Father’s friends had one! It has six barrels. That’s six shots without reloading! And he’s got an ordinary pistol, too!” “I shall move fast.” “You can’t run faster than bullets!” “I shall stay out of their way,” said Mau with infuriating calmness. “Look, don’t you understand? He’s got two guns and you’ve got one spear. You’ll run out of spear before he runs out of gun!” “Yes, but his gun will run out of bang before my knife runs out of sharp,” said Mau. “Mau, I don’t want you to die!” Daphne shouted. The words echoed back off the cliffs, and she blushed crimson. “Then who should die? Milo? Pilu? Who? No. If anyone is going to die, it should be me. I’ve died before. I know how it’s done. No more discussion!” CHAPTER 14 Duel   BEHIND THEM THE HUBBUB of the meeting had stopped. Silence fell over the war canoes lined with faces; the cluster of Raider chiefs on the shoreline; the people who had crept out to watch from the cliff. The sun was too bright to look at and was already boiling all the color out of the landscape. The world was holding its breath. There would be no count, no signal. There were no rules, either. But there was tradition. The fight would start when the first man picked up his weapon. Mau’s spear and knife were on the sand in front of him. Ten feet away, Cox had laid down his guns only after a lot of argument. Now it was just a case of watching the other man’s eyes. Cox grinned at him. Hadn’t every boy dreamed of this? To stand in front of the enemy? And they were all here together, under the white-hot sun, all the lies, all the fears, all the terrors, all the horrors that the wave had brought, all here and in mortal form. Here he could beat them. And all that mattered was this: If you don’t dare to think you might, you won’t. Mau’s eyes creaked with staring. He was nearly blinded by the fierce sunlight, but at least there were no more voices in his head— Except… It is a good day to die, said the voice of Locaha. Mau’s arm shot out, hurling the handful of sand into Cox’s eyes. He didn’t wait—he just grabbed his knife and ran, listening to the cursing behind him. But you can’t cheat when there are no rules. He’d picked up his weapon when he’d put his spear down. He didn’t have to say he’d chosen the sand itself. It was a good weapon, too. Don’t stop. Don’t look back, just keep running. There wasn’t a plan. There had never been a plan. All there was was hope, but there was little enough of that, and there was something the ghost girl had taught him on the very first day they met: Guns did not like water. The lagoon was where he belonged right now, and he fled for it, dodging and weaving as much as he dared. The water was his world. Cox was a big, heavy man, and water would drag at his clothes. Yes! He heard a shot fired, and a bullet sang past his head. But here was the lagoon and he dived in when the water was hardly above his knees. He would have to come up for air, but surely the man would not dare to come in after him? Out toward the middle of the lagoon, where the damaged canoes were drifting, he stopped and made use of their cover to grab some more air. Then he peered around the canoe to find Cox—and he was right there on the shoreline, already sighting on him. Mau dived, but Cox had expected that. Perhaps it was true. The man could see into people’s heads. Mau turned to look back. He couldn’t help it. Men face their enemy, just once…. And what Mau saw was the bullet coming. It hit the water a few feet in front of him, trailing bubbles—and stopped inches from his face. He gently picked it out of the water as it started to fall, and then let it go and watched in wonder as it dropped to the sand. How had that happened? Bullets really didn’t like water…. He climbed up to the surface for a mouthful of air and heard another bang as he dived again. He turned to watch the trail of bubbles head toward him, and the bullet bounced off his arm. Bounced! He hardly felt it! He struck out for the gap into the deep water, which was half blocked with floating weeds today. At least it gave him some cover. But what had happened to the bullets? A bullet certainly hadn’t bounced off Ataba. It had made a big hole, and there had been a lot of blood. He would have to surface again, because Cox was probably even more dangerous when you couldn’t see where he was. He grabbed the edge of the coral, steadied himself on a root of an old tree that had wedged in the gap. Very cautiously, he pulled himself up. And there was Cox, running, running along the spit of old coral that led from the shore around to Little Nation and the new gap. Mau heard his boots crunch on the coral as he ran, speeding up while the watching Raiders scuttled out of the way. The man glanced up, raised his gun, and, still pounding over the coral, fired twice. A bullet went through Mau’s ear. The first thought as he dropped back through the water was about the pain. The second thought was about the pain, too, because there was so much of it. The water was turning pink. He reached up to his ear and most of it was not there. His third thought was: Sharks. And the next thought, happening in some little world of its own, said: He has fired five shots. When he has fired all the bullets he has, he will have to load the guns again. But if I was him, I would wait until I’d had one last shot with the big pistol and then reload it, keeping the little pistol ready to hand in case the darkie suddenly came out of the water. It was a strange, chilling thought, dancing across his mind like a white thread against the terrible red background. It went on: He can think like you. You must think like him. But if I think like him, he wins, he thought back. And his new thought replied: Why? To think like him is not to be him! The hunter learns the ways of the hog, but he is not bacon. He learns the way of the weather, but he is not a cloud. And when the venomous beast charges at him, he remembers who is the hunter, and who the hunted! Dive now! Dive right now! He dived. The tree half wedged in the gap was tangled up in a mass of seaweed and palm fronds, twisting everything together as the tides rolled it. He ducked into its shadow. Already the tree had become a world of its own. Many of its branches had been ripped off, but the trailing weeds had colonized it, and little fish darted in and out of the forests of green. But better than that, if he tucked himself up between the tree and the edge of the gap, he could just get his face out of the water and be lost in the mass of vegetation. He dropped back under the surface; the water around him was going pink. How much blood could one ear contain? Enough to attract sharks, that’s how much. There was a thump, and the whole of the tree shook. “I’ve got you now, my little chappie,” said the voice of Cox. He sounded as though he was right above Mau. “Nowhere to go now, eh?” The tree rocked again as the man walked up and down in his heavy boots. “And I won’t fall off, don’t you worry about that. This piece of wood is as wide as bloody Bond Street to a sailor!” There was another thump. Cox was jumping up and down, making the tree rock. It rolled slightly, and a bullet went past Mau’s face before he pulled himself back into the shadows. “Uh-oh. We’re bloody bleeding,” said Cox. “Well done. All I’m going to have to do is wait for the sharks to turn up. I always like to see a shark having his dinner.” Mau worked his way along the bottom of the log, hand over hand. The trail of pinkness followed him. There had been six shots. He raised his head in the shelter of a clump of weeds and heard a click. “Y’ know, I’m really disappointed in those cannibal johnnies,” said Cox, right overhead. “Too much talk, too many rules, far too much mumbo jumbo. Jumbo mumbo jumbo, ha, ha. Milk-and-watery bunch, the lot of ’em. Been eating too many missionaries, if you ask me.” There was another click. Cox was reloading. He had to use two hands for that, didn’t he? Click… Mau reached down for his knife and his belt was empty…. Click. So he swam face upward along the underside of the trunk, his nose only a foot or so from the bark, which was covered with tiny crabs. That was how it would end. The best thing to do would be to leap up and get shot. That would surely be better than a shark’s teeth. And then everyone who knew about the Nation would die— Are you totally stupid, Mau? It was the new voice, and it said: I’m you, Mau, I’m just you. You will not die. You will win, if you pay attention! Click… The pale green weed in front of him moved and he saw something black. In a moment where time stood still, he brushed the weeds aside and saw it, wedged firmly in the trunk: a trunk that was full of little marks to show where men had helped other men. He had been proud of himself that day. He had hit the tree with the alaki axehead so hard that it would take all the next boy’s strength to pull it out. The next boy was him. Without thinking, and watching himself, somehow, from the outside, he grabbed the handle and raised his legs until they were firm against the underside of the trunk. The axe was stuck fast. “I can hear you wriggling about,” said a voice right above him. “You will be wriggling a whole lot faster in a moment. I can see the fins coming. Oh my giddy aunt, I wish I’d brought sandwiches.” Click… The axe came loose. Mau felt nothing. The grayness was back in his mind. Don’t think. Do the things that must be done, one after another. The axe was free. Now he had it. This was a fact. The other fact was that Cox had now loaded his pistol. Mau dragged himself branch by branch to the little area where he could breathe without being seen. At least, the area where he hoped he could not be seen. As he ducked his head down, a bullet went past it. Five bullets left, and Cox was losing his temper: he fired again (four bullets left; a fact), and Cox was right above him, searching for movement in the tangle of floating greenery. The bullet had come down as straight as a spear but had tumbled and lost its way. It’s hard to run through water, Mau told himself. The more you try, the harder it gets. A fact. It must be the same for bullets. A new fact. “Did I get you that time?” said Cox. “I hope I did for your sake, ’cause they’re getting closer. Actually, I was just saying that to be nice, ’cause I want to see you wriggling. I want to stay here until I sees the sharks burp, and then I will go back and have a nice chat with your little lady.” Mau’s lungs were beginning to hurt. He made the tree trunk wobble, then let himself sink. He didn’t hear what Cox shouted, but four bullets splashed into the water high above him, left trails of bubbles for a few moments, and then just tumbled away in the current. Six shots. Only the little pistol would be left. No, Cox would have to reload. And that needed both hands. A fact. Now there had to be more facts, one after the other, all falling carefully into place like little gray blocks. Mau rose fast, dragging the axe behind him. He grabbed the stub of a broken branch with his free hand, got a purchase with his feet on another, and, with his lungs on fire, let all the momentum of his rise and all the strength left in his body flow into his arm. The axe came out of the water in a great curve, moving in space but not in time, water droplets hanging in the air to mark the arc of its passage. It blocked the light of the sun, it made the stars come out, it caused thunderstorms and strange sunsets around the world (or so Pilu said later on)—and as time came back at double speed, the axe hit Cox in the chest and he went backward off the log. Mau saw him raising his pistol as he sank, and then his expression changed to an enormous grin, with blood at the corners, and he was dragged into the swirling waters. The sharks had arrived for dinner.   Mau lay on top of the log until the commotion died down. And he thought, in those little white thoughts that scribbled their way along the redness of the pain in his lungs: That was a really good axe. I wonder if I’ll be able to find it again. He pushed himself onto his knees and blinked, not quite certain who he was. And then he looked down and saw the gray shadow. I will walk in your steps for a while, said a voice just above his head. Mau pulled himself onto his feet, not an unbruised thought in his head, walked to the far end of the log, and stepped onto the path across the broken coral. Grayness filled the air around him as he walked, and on either side the great wings of Locaha beat gently. He felt like…metal, hard and sharp and cold. They reached the first of the big war canoes, and he stepped onto it. The few warriors who hadn’t already jumped into the water fell to their knees, terrified. He looked into their eyes. They can see me. They worship me, Locaha said. Belief is a hard thing to believe, is it not? For now, at this time, here in this moment under these stars—you have the gift. You can kill them with a touch, a word, by the passing of your shadow. You have earned this. How would you like them to die? “Take your captives to the shore and leave them there,” Mau said to the nearest men. “Pass this command along and then go. If you stay here, I will close my wings over you.” That is all? said Locaha. Thoughts pieced themselves together in the chill on Mau’s mind as he turned and headed across the coral. “Yes,” he said, “it is.” I would have acted differently, said the voice of death. “And I would not, Locaha. I’m not you. I have choices.” Mau plodded on, in silence and gray shadow. This day turned out well for you, said the voice of Locaha. Mau still said nothing. Behind them the Raiders’ fleet was boiling with terrified activity. There will be so many new mouths to feed, he thought. So much to do. Always so much to do. I am not often surprised, said Locaha, and you are wrong. There is one choice I can make, in the circumstances…. The sand under Mau’s feet turned black, and there was darkness on every side. But in front was a pathway of glittering stars. Mau stopped and said, “No. Not another trap.” But this is the way to the Perfect World! said Locaha. Only a very few have seen this path! Mau turned around. “I think that if Imo wants a perfect world, he wants it down here,” he said. He could still see the beach around him, but it was indistinct, as if it was behind a wall of dark water. This one? It’s far from perfect! said Locaha. “It’s a little more perfect today. And there will be more days.” You really want to go back? said Locaha. There are no second chances—there are no chances at all. There is only…what happens. “And what does not happen?” said Mau. That? That happens, too, somewhere else. Everything that can happen must happen, and everything that can happen must have a world to happen in. That is why Imo builds so many worlds that there are not enough numbers to count them. That is why His fire glows so red. Good-bye, Mau. I look forward with interest to our next meeting. You turn worlds upside down…. Oh, and one other thing. Those others I mentioned, who have been shown the glittering path? They all said the same thing as you did. They saw that the perfect world is a journey, not a place. I have only one choice, Mau, but I’m good at making it. The grayness faded and tried to take memories with it. Mau’s mind grabbed at them as they streamed away and the gray barrier faded and let the light rush back in. He was alive, and that was a fact. The ghost girl was running along the beach with her arms reaching out, and that was another fact. His legs felt strange and weak, and that was a fact that was getting more factual with every passing minute. But when she held him as they watched the tragic cargoes unloaded, and did not move until the last war canoe was a dot on the never-ending horizon…that was a fact as big as the Nation. CHAPTER 15 The World Turned Upside Down   MAU AWOKE. A STRANGE woman was spooning gruel into him. When she saw his eyes open, she gave a little shriek, kissed him on the forehead, and ran out of the hut. Mau stared up at the ceiling while it all came back. Some bits were a little blurred, but the tree and the axe and the death of Cox were as clear to him as the little gecko watching from the ceiling with upside-down eyes. But it was as if he was watching someone else, just a little way in front of him. It was another person, and that person was him. He wondered if— “Does not happen!” The scream was like lightning through his head, because it came from a beak about six inches from his ear. “Show us your”—here the parrot muttered to itself, then went on, rather sullenly—“underthings.” “Ah, good. How are you?” said the ghost girl, stepping inside. Mau sat bolt upright. “You’ve got blood all over you!” “Yes. I know. There goes the last good blouse,” said Daphne. “Still, he’s much better now. I’m pretty proud of myself, actually. I had to saw a man’s leg off below the knee! And I sealed the wound with a bucket of hot tar, exactly according to the manual!” “Doesn’t that hurt?” asked Mau, lying back on the mat again. Sitting up had made him dizzy. “Not if you pick it up by the handle.” She looked at his blank expression. “Sorry, that was a joke. Thank goodness for Mrs. Gurgle; she can make someone sleep through anything. Anyway, I think the man is going to live now, which is more than he would have with that terrible wound in it. And this morning I had to cut off a foot. It’d gone all…well, it was awful. Those captives were treated very badly.” “And you’ve been sawing the bad bits off them?” “It’s called surgery, thank you so very much! It’s not hard if I can find someone to hold the instruction manual open at the right page.” “No! No, I don’t think it’s wrong!” said Mau quickly. “It’s just that…it’s you doing it. I thought you hated the sight of blood.” “That’s why I try to stop it. I can do something about it. Come on, let’s get you up.” She put her arms around him. “Who was that woman who was feeding me? I’ve seen her before.” “Her real name is Fi-ha-el, she says…,” said Daphne, and Mau clutched at the wall for support. “We used to call her the Unknown Woman. And now we call her the Papervine Woman.” “Her? But she looked completely different—” “Her husband was in one of those canoes. She went right up to it and dragged him out by herself. I’m blessed if I know how she knew which one he was in. I sent her to look after you because, well, it was his leg I had to saw off.” “Newton was greatest!” screamed the parrot, bouncing up and down. “And I thought the parrot was dead!” said Mau. “Yes, everyone thought the parrot was dead,” said Daphne, “except the parrot. He turned up yesterday. He is minus one toe and a lot of feathers, but I think he will be fine when his wing heals. He runs after the grandfather birds now. They really hate that. I’ve, er, started doing something about his language.” “Yes, I thought you had,” said Mau. “What’s New-Tan?” “Newton,” Daphne corrected absentmindedly. “Remember I told you about the Royal Society? He was one of the first members. He was the greatest scientist there has ever been, I think, but when he was an old man, he said he felt that he had been like a little boy playing with pebbles on the beach while a great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before him.” Mau’s eyes widened, and she was shocked to realize that it had been a long time since she’d seen him look so young. “He stood on this beach?” “Well, er, not this beach, obviously,” said Daphne. “Possibly not even any beach. It’s what trousermen call a metaphor. A kind of lie to help you understand what’s true.” “Oh, I know about those,” said Mau. “Yes, I think you do.” Daphne smiled. “Now come out into the fresh air.” She took Mau’s hand. There were a few nasty grazes that he didn’t remember getting, his whole body felt stiff, and there was a ragged wound where the flesh of his ear had been, but it could have been a lot worse. He remembered the bullet in the water, slowing down and dropping into his hand. Water could be hard—you only had to belly flop from a height to know that—but even so… “Come on!” said Daphne, dragging him into the light. The Women’s Place was full. There were people in the fields. The beach was busy. There were even children playing in the lagoon. “We’ve got so much to do,” said Mau, shaking his head. “They are already doing it,” said Daphne. They watched in silence. Soon people would spot them and they would be back in the world again, but right now they were part of the scenery. After a while the girl said: “I remember when it was…just nothing, and there was a boy who didn’t even see me.” And the boy said: “I remember a ghost girl.” After a longer silence, the girl asked: “Would you go back? If you could?” “You mean, without the wave?” “Yes. Without the wave.” “Then I’d have gone home, and everyone would have been alive, and I would be a man.” “Would you rather be that man? Would you change places with him?” asked the ghost girl. “And not be me? Not know about the globe? Not have met you?” “Yes!” Mau opened his mouth to reply and found it choked with words. He had to wait until he could see a path through them. “How can I answer you? There is no language. There was a boy called Mau. I see him in my memory, so proud of himself because he was going to be a man. He cried for his family and turned the tears into rage. And if he could, he would say ‘Did not happen!’ and the wave would roll backward and never have been. But there is another boy, and he is called Mau, too, and his head is on fire with new things. What does he say? He was born in the wave, and he knows that the world is round, and he met a ghost girl who is sorry she shot at him. He called himself the little blue hermit crab, scuttling across the sand in search of a new shell, but now he looks at the sky and knows that no shell will ever be big enough, ever. Will you ask him not to be? Any answer will be the wrong one. All I can be is who I am. But sometimes I hear the boy inside crying for his family.” “Does he cry now?” asked Daphne, looking down at the ground. “Every day. But very softly. You won’t hear him. Listen, I must tell you this. Locaha spoke to me. He spread his great wings over me on the beach and drove the Raiders away. Didn’t you see that?” “No. The Raiders ran as soon as Cox went down,” said Daphne. “You mean you met Death? Again?” “He told me that there were more worlds than there are numbers. There is no such thing as ‘does not happen.’ But there is always ‘happened somewhere else’—” He tried to explain, while she tried to understand. When he’d run out of words, she said: “You mean that there is a world where the wave didn’t happen? Out…there somewhere?” “I think so…. I think I’ve almost seen it. Sometimes, at night, when I’m watching the shore, I almost see it. I nearly hear it! And there is a Mau there, a man who is me, and I pity him, because there is no ghost girl in his world….” She put her arms around his neck and gently pulled him toward her. “I wouldn’t change anything,” she said. “Here I’m not some sort of doll. I have a purpose. People listen to me. I’ve done amazing things. How could I go back to my life before?” “Is that what you’ll tell your father?” His voice was suddenly sad. “Something like that, I think, yes.” Mau gently turned her around, so that she was looking at the sea. “There’s a ship coming,” he said.   The schooner had anchored outside the reef by the time they had got down to the lagoon. Daphne waded out as far as she could, regardless of her dress floating up around her, while a boat was lowered. On the shore, Mau watched as the man in the prow of the boat jumped off as soon as it was near her and, laughing and crying together, they helped each other up the slope of the sand. The crowd moved back to give them room as they embraced—but Mau was watching the two men climbing out of the boat. They had red jackets on and held complicated sticks, and looked at Mau as if he was, at best, a nuisance. “Let me look at you,” said His Excellency, standing back. “Why, you look—What happened to you? There’s blood on your shoulder! We have a doctor on board, and I’ll get him to—” Daphne glanced down. “It’s just a splash,” she said, waving a hand. “Besides, it’s not mine. I had to saw a man’s leg off, and I haven’t had time to wash.” Behind them a third soldier got out of the boat carrying a thick tube, which he began to unroll. He looked nervously at Mau. “What is happening here?” snapped Mau. “Why do they have guns? What is this man doing?” He stepped forward, and two bayonets barred his way. Daphne turned her head and pulled away from her father. “What’s this?” she demanded. “You can’t stop him from walking around in his own country! What’s in that tube? It’s a flag, isn’t it? You brought a flag! And guns!” “We didn’t know what we were going to find, dear,” said her father, taken aback. “After all, there are cannon up there.” “Well, all right, yes,” muttered Daphne, stumbling over her own anger. “They’re just for show.” The rage flamed up again. “But those guns aren’t! Put them down!” His Excellency nodded at the men, who put their muskets, very carefully but also very quickly, down on the sand. Milo had just walked onto the beach to see what the fuss was about, and he tended to loom. “And the flag!” said Daphne. “Just hold on to it, Evans, if you would be so kind,” said His Excellency. “Look, dear, we mean no harm to these, er”—he glanced up at Milo—“nice people, but we must back up our claim to the Mothering Sunday Islands. We hold that they are just an extension of the Bank Holiday Monday Islands—” “Who’s we? You?” “Well, ultimately the king—” “He can’t have this one!” Daphne screamed. “He doesn’t need it! He can’t have it! He hasn’t finished with Canada yet!” “Dear, I think the privations of your time on this island may have affected you in some way—” His Excellency began. Daphne took a step backward. “Privations? There is nowhere I would rather have been than here! I’ve helped babies to be born! I killed a man—” “The one whose leg you sawed off?” asked her father, mystified. “What? Him? No, he’s doing very well,” said Daphne, waving a hand dismissively. “The one I killed was a murderer. And I’ve made beer. Really good beer! Father, you must listen right now. It’s very important that you understand right now. This is the other end of the world, Father, it really is. This is the beginning. This…is the place where you might grant God absolution.” She hadn’t meant it to come out. He stood there, stunned. She added: “I’m sorry. You and Grandmother were shouting so loud that night and I couldn’t help overhearing,” and, since there was no point in being deceitful at a time like this, she also added, “Especially since I was trying hard to.” He looked up at her, his face gray. “What is so special about this place?” he asked. “There’s a cave. It’s got wonderful carvings in it. It’s ancient. It may be more than a hundred thousand years old.” “Cavemen,” said His Excellency calmly. “I think there are star maps on the ceiling. They invented…well—practically everything. They sailed all over the world when we huddled around our fires. I can prove it, I think.” Daphne took her father’s hand. “There’s still some oil in the lamps,” she said. “Let me show you. Not you!” she added as the guards sprang to attention. “You will stay here. And no one is to take over anyone’s country while we’re gone, is that understood?” The men looked at His Excellency, who shrugged vaguely, a man who had been thoroughly daughtered. “Whatever she says, of course,” he said. His daughter took his hand and said, “Come and see.” They started off up the path but were not out of earshot when Pilu walked up to the soldiers and said, “Would you like some beer?” “Don’t let them drink it until they have spat in it and sung ‘Baa, Baa, Black Sheep’ sixteen times” was the order from on high, followed by, “and tell them we need lamp oil.”   The first thing her father said when he saw the gods was “My goodness!” Then, after staring at things with his mouth open, he managed to say, “Incredible! All this belongs in a museum!” She couldn’t let him get away with that one, and she said, “Yes, I know. That’s why it is, in fact, in one.” “And who will look at it down here?” “Anyone who wants to come and see, Papa. And that will mean every scientist in the world.” “It’s a long way from anywhere important, though,” His Excellency observed, running his fingers over the stone globe. “No, Papa. This is the important place. It’s everywhere else that is a long way away. Anyway, that wouldn’t matter to the Royal Society. They would swim up here in lead boots!” “Down here, dear, I think,” said her father. Daphne pushed the globe. It rolled a little way and the continents danced. But now the world was turned upside down. “It’s a planet, Papa. Up and down are just ways of looking at it. I’m sure people here won’t object to copies being made for all the big museums. But don’t take this place away from them. It’s theirs.” “I think people will say it belongs to the world.” “And they will be thinking like thieves. We have no right to it at all. But if we don’t act like stupid bullies, I’m sure they will be gracious.” “Gracious,” said her father, turning over the word in his mouth as if it was an unfamiliar biscuit. Daphne’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t go suggesting that grace is something you find only at the other end of the world, will you, Papa?” “No, you’re quite right. I will do what I can, of course. This is a very important place, I can see that.” She kissed him. When he spoke again, he sounded nervous and unsure of how to put things. “So you’ve been…all right here? Eating well? Finding things to do…um…apart from sawing legs off?” “It was only one leg, honestly. Oh, and a foot. I helped deliver two babies—well, to be honest I really only watched and sang a song the first time, and I’ve been learning about medicines from Mrs. Gurgle in exchange for chewing her pork for her—” “You…chew…her…pork for her…,” her father repeated, as if hypnotized. “Well, she hasn’t got any teeth, you see?” “Ah, yes, of course.” His Excellency shifted uneasily. “And did you have any other…adventures?” “Let me think…. I was saved from drowning by Mau, who is the chief now, and, oh yes, I met a cannibal chief who looked just like the prime minister!” “Really?” said her father. “Although, come to think of it, that’s not hard to imagine. And…er…and was anyone…did anyone…try to be…beastly to you?” It was said so carefully that she nearly laughed. Fathers! But she couldn’t tell him about the giggling maids and the kitchen gossip, let alone Cahle’s jokes. She had spent a lot of time at the Women’s Place. Surely he didn’t imagine she walked around with her eyes shut and her fingers in her ears? “There was a murderer. He was one of the crew of the Judy, I’m sorry to say,” she said. “He shot someone and then pointed a pistol at me.” “Great heavens!” “So I poisoned him. Well, sort of. But the Nation called it something like…what do you call it when a hangman hangs somebody?” “Er…a judicial execution?” said His Excellency, a man trying hard to keep up. “That’s right. And I broke another man’s nose with a clay bowl because he was going to shoot me.” “Really? Well, I suppose poison would have taken too long,” said His Excellency, attempting to make the best of it. His face was ghastly in the lamplight, and it looked to Daphne as if it was made of wax and was about to melt. “Now that I come to talk about it, it does all seem a bit…um…” She trailed off. “Busy?” her father suggested. And then she told him everything else—about the way the moon shone over the lagoon, and how bright the stars were, and the mutiny, and poor Captain Roberts, and the parrot, and the red crabs, and the pantaloon birds, and the tree-climbing octopi and First Mate Cox, while the gods looked down. She towed him past the hundreds of white slabs around the walls, talking all the time. “Look, that’s a giraffe. They knew about Africa! There’s an elephant farther on, but it may be Indian. This is clearly a lion. One of the stones that ended up on the beach has got a carving of a horse on it, and who would bring one here? But the carvings on these other panels don’t seem to show anything I can recognize, so I’m wondering if this section is some kind of alphabet—A is for apple and so on—but a lot of panels have these lines and dots around the edges, so I could be completely wrong. And see how often there is a hand somewhere in the carving! I’m positive it’s there as a guide to size. And over here…” And so on, until at last she finished with: “And I’m sure they had a telescope.” “Oh, surely not! Is there a carving of one?” “Well, no. But a lot of slabs are missing.” Then she told him about the sons of Jupiter and the snake around Saturn. He didn’t seem too impressed, but he patted her on the hand. “Or the skies were clearer once,” he said. “Or there was a man with extremely good eyesight.” “But I’ve come up with a good scientific explanation!” Her father shook his head. “Much as I love you, it’s a guess. And, may I say, a hope. You must work harder than that, my girl.” Ah, those arguments we used to have coming back from the society, Daphne thought. I’m going to have to fight. Good! She pointed to the gods. “They shine because they are covered with little plates of glass,” she said. “Those are held on with lead nails. One of the boys swam over and had a look for me. The people here knew how to make fine glass!” Her father, sitting with his back to the cool stone, gave a nod. “That is quite likely. Many cultures make glass. We have the beginnings of a hypothesis, but you need to find your lens maker.” “Papa, it stands to reason that sooner or later a glassmaker would notice a bubble in the glass and see how the light—” But her father had held up a hand. “Science is not interested in what ‘stands to reason,’” he said. “It ‘stands to reason’ that the Earth is flat. What we know is that the Romans took some interest in crude lenses, and that eyeglasses were not invented until the thirteenth century. The Italian Salvino D’Armate is generally credited with—” “Why is it always so, so…northern hemisphere?” said Daphne. “Turn the world upside down!” She pulled her father over to the wall near the globe and pointed to a panel. “You remember I told you they were very keen on showing hands holding things, too?” she said, and held up the lamp. “There! Doesn’t that look like a pair of spectacles to you?” He looked at the panel critically, like a man trying to decide between cake and pie. “It could be,” he said, “but it could be a mask, or scales, or have some mysterious religious significance. It doesn’t help you much, I’m sorry to say.” Daphne sighed. “Look, if I found some evidence that they knew about lenses, would you accept they may have known how to build a telescope?” “Yes, that would be reasonable. I won’t accept that they did, mind you, only that they may have done so.” “Come and see.” This time she led him to the other side of the gods, to a niche in the wall where the white panel had fallen out. “One of the boys found them in silt at the bottom of the god pool. The glass is broken on one side and the other is cracked, but you can see they were lenses. Be careful.” She laid them carefully in his hand. He blinked. “Gold-rimmed spectacles…” But he breathed the words rather than said them. “Have I proved my telescope theory, Papa?” she said gleefully. “We know that eyeglasses lead on to telescopes.” “Once before, at least. Or since, I’m sure you would say. Why didn’t you show me these straightaway?” “I just wanted to make you admit I was doing proper science!” “Well done,” said His Excellency. “You have built a very strong hypothesis indeed, but I’m sorry to say that you have not proved the full theory. You’d need to find the telescope for that.” “That’s unfair!” said Daphne. “No, it’s science,” said her father. “‘Could have’ isn’t good enough. Nor is ‘might have’! ‘Did’ is the trick. But when you announce this, a lot of people will try to prove you wrong. The more they fail, the more right you will become. And they will probably try to suggest that some European traveler came here and lost his eyeglasses.” “And his false teeth made of gold?” snapped Daphne. She told him about Mrs. Gurgle’s proudest possession. “I would very much like to see them. Some people will find them easier to accept. Don’t be discouraged about the telescope. What is clear is that this place was the home of a hitherto unknown seafaring culture that was very adept in the technical arts. Good heavens, my girl, most people would be ecstatic to have discovered all this!” “I didn’t,” said Daphne. “Mau did. I just had to look over his shoulder. He had to walk past a hundred thousand ancestors. This is their place, Papa. Their ancestors built it. And put on the globe there the symbol of a wave breaking in front of the setting sun, which every man of the islands has worn as a tattoo for thousands of years. I saw it! And you know what? I can prove that no European has been into this cave before me.” Daphne looked around, chest heaving with passion. “See the gold on the gods and the globe and the big door?” “Yes. Of course, dear. I could hardly fail to notice.” “There you are, then,” said Daphne, picking up the lamp. “It’s still here!”   Mau sat with one of the Judy’s charts on his knees. This was, officially, a meeting of the island council, or would have been if anything on the island was official. Anyone could come, and because anyone could, many didn’t. There were more new people to be cared for and fed; many might go back to their own islands, if they still existed, but the people had to be fit and fed. That meant more work all around. And some people didn’t turn up because they had gone fishing; when it comes to voting or fishing, sea bass usually wins. “All the red places belong to the English trousermen?” Mau asked. “Yup,” said Pilu. “That’s a lot of places!” “Yup.” “They’re not too bad,” said Pilu. “Mostly they want you to wear trousers and worship their god. He’s called God.” “Just…God?” “Right. He’s got a son who is a carpenter, an’ if you worship him, you climb the shining path when you die. The songs is nice and sometimes you get a biscuit.” Pilu watched Mau carefully. “What are you thinking, Mau?” he asked. “Other people will come. Some will have guns,” said Mau thoughtfully. “True,” said Pilu. “There is a lot of the yellow gold in the cave. Trousermen like it because it shines. They are like children.” “Big children,” said Milo, “with guns.” “What do you think we should do, Cahle?” said Mau, still looking at the maps. The woman gave a shrug. “I trust the ghost girl. A father of a girl like that would be a good man.” “How about if I take a canoe and sail it to the trouserman island and stick my flag in the sand?” said Tom-ali. “Will that make it our place?” “No,” said Mau. “They would laugh. Flags are like guns that flap. If you have a flag, you need a gun.” “Well? We have guns too.” Mau fell silent. “And bad gunpowder,” Pilu pointed out. “I think…I think if you are a suckfish in a sea o’ sharks, you must swim with the biggest shark,” said Milo. This met with general approval; the island council was still learning about international politics, but they were experts on fish. They all looked at Mau, who was staring at the chart again. He stared at it for so long that they began to worry. There had been something different about him since the Raiders had left. Everyone said so. He walked like someone whose feet only touched the ground because he told them to; when you talked to him, he looked at you like a man scanning a new horizon that only he could see. “We cannot be stronger than the Empire,” he said, “but we can be something it doesn’t dare to be. We can be weak. The ghost girl told me about a man called Eyes-Ack New-Tan. He was not a warrior, he had no spear, but the sun and the moon spun inside his head and he stood on the shoulders of giants. The king of that time did him great honor because he knew the secrets of the sky. And I have an idea. I will talk to the ghost girl.”   There should be a word like honeymoon, Daphne thought, but not about husband and wife, rather about parent and child. This one lasted twelve days, and she felt as though she was the parent and he the child. She’d never seen her father like this before. They explored the whole of the island; he had picked up an amazing amount of the language in a short time. He went torch fishing with Milo and got rascally drunk on beer with the other men, so that they all ended up paddling one of the big canoes in several directions at once while singing the words of his old school song. He taught them cricket, and they played a match against the soldiers and sailors from the ship, with rifles for stumps. It became very interesting when Cahle was allowed to bowl. Daphne’s father declared that not only was Cahle the fastest bowler he had ever seen, but she also had an almost Australian talent for vicious and forensic accuracy with the ball. After the first three whimpering soldiers were carried down to the lagoon so they could sit in the water until the stinging died away, the fourth man took one look at her thundering toward him with her right arm swinging and ran away into the woods, clutching his helmet over his groin. For the sake of the game she was banned from bowling after Daphne’s father explained that women should not really be allowed to play cricket because they fundamentally didn’t understand it. But it seemed to Daphne that Cahle understood it very well, and therefore tried to get it over with as quickly as possible so that they could get on with something more interesting, since in her opinion the world was overwhelmingly full of things that were more interesting than cricket. It was not much better for the soldiers when the islanders went to bat. Not only were they devilishly good at swinging a bat, but they had somehow picked up the idea that the ball should be aimed at someone on the opposing side. In the end the match was declared a draw because of injuries, most of them sitting in the lagoon. And the ship came, and play stopped in any case. Mau saw it first; he was always the first to see anything that came from the sea. It was the largest ship he had seen, with so many sails, it looked like a storm heading for them. Everyone was waiting on the beach as it anchored outside the lagoon and lowered a boat. There weren’t soldiers this time. The boat was rowed by four men in black. “My word, that’s the Cutty Wren,” said His Excellency, handing the bat back to Pilu. “I wonder what they want here…. Ahoy, you chaps! Do you need help or something?” The boat touched the sand and one of the men jumped out, hurried toward him, and drew him, protesting gently, along the beach and away from the match. The conversation that took place was baffling to Mau, because the man in the black clothes spoke in a whisper while His Excellency asked questions at the top of his voice, so that what he heard was a fast buzzing, punctuated with explosions, as in “Me?”…“What, all of them?”…“What about Uncle Bernie? I know for a fact he is in America!”…“They have lions there?”…“Look, I’m really not—”…“Right here?”…“Well, of course no one wants another Richard the Lionheart, but surely we don’t need”…and so it went on. Then His Excellency held up a hand to stop the man in black in mid buzz and turned to Mau. He looked shaken, and in a strained voice said, “Sir, would you be so good as to fetch my daughter? I believe she is up at the Ladies’ Place, stitching somebody. Er, I’m sure this will all turn out to be a misunderstanding. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.” When they got back, His Excellency’s soldiers, who had been lounging around in their shirtsleeves for more than a week, had struggled back into their red coats and were standing on guard, although at the moment they were unsure whom they were guarding from what and how, not to mention why, and so until there were any orders to speak of, they were guarding everyone from everything. Another boat had been lowered and was heading into the lagoon, with more people in it. One of them, sitting bolt upright, was unfortunately familiar to Daphne. She ran to her father. “What’s going on?” Daphne glared at the men in the black suits and added, “And who are these…people?” “Is this your delightful daughter, sire?” said one of the men, raising his hat to her. “Sire?” said Daphne. She glared at the man in black. No one should call anyone delightful without written proof. “It turns out that I am, not to put too fine a point on it, king,” said His Majesty. “This has not come at a good time, I must say. This gentleman is Mr. Black, from London.” Daphne stopped glaring. “But I thought one hundred and thirty—” she began. Then an expression of horror crossed her face. She looked back at the approaching row boat. “Has my grandmother been doing anything…silly? With knives and guns, perhaps?” “Her ladyship? Not that I am aware,” said the Gentleman of Last Resort. “Here she comes now, Your Majesty. We called first at Port Mercia, of course, and picked up the Right Reverend Topleigh. I’m afraid the archbishop of Canterbury does not travel well, but he has sent instructions for the coronation.” “A coronation here? Surely it can wait!” said His Majesty. But Daphne was watching the figure in the distant boat. It couldn’t be true, could it? She wouldn’t come all this way, would she? For the chance of bossing a king around? Of course she would—she would have towed the ship with her teeth! And this time he wouldn’t be able to run away to the other end of the world. “Strictly speaking, yes,” said Mr. Black. “You became king as soon as the last king died. At that very second. That’s how it works.” “Really?” said His Majesty. “Yes, sire,” said Mr. Black patiently, “God arranges it.” “Oh good,” said the king weakly. “That’s very clever of Him.” “And for full ratification, you understand, you must stand on the soil in England, but in these unusual circumstances,” Mr. Black went on, “and uncertain times, and so on and so forth, we thought it might save any argument—if we were delayed, for example—if the crown was firmly on your head. It would save any hairsplitting arguments—with the French, for instance—which can take such a long time.” “There was the Hundred Years’ War, for example,” said a second gentleman. “Well pointed out, Mr. Amber. In any case, we will have another coronation once we get home—which must, now, be a matter of some urgency, of course. Bunting, cheering, souvenir mugs for the children, that sort of thing. But in this case the Crown thought it would send out the right message to get you sorted out, as I might say, as soon as possible.” As he spoke, two of his colleagues began to take apart, with great care, the small crate they had brought ashore with them. “Am I not the Crown?” asked His Majesty. “No, sire, you are the king, sire,” said Mr. Black patiently. “You are, like us, underneath it. Subject to it.” “But surely I can give you orders?” “You can certainly make requests, sire, and we will do our very best to help. But, alas, you cannot give us orders. My word, we would be in a bad way if we took orders from kings. Isn’t that so, Mr. Brown?” One of the men working on the crate looked up briefly. “It would be Charles the First all over again, Mr. Black.” “You never said a truer word, Mr. Brown,” said Mr. Black. “It would be Charles the First all over again, and I don’t think any of us want to see Charles the First all over again, do we?” “Why not?” asked Daphne. Mr. Black turned to her and looked for a moment as if he was giving her a very quick examination. “Because his arrogance and stupidity nearly lost England for the Crown, Your Royal Highness,” he said eventually. Oh dear, thought Daphne, I am a princess now. Cor blimey. And I don’t think it’s the kind of thing you can resign from! A princess! Did you hear that, Mr. Foxlip, wherever you are? Ha! “But wasn’t it Oliver Cromwell who had him executed?” she managed, trying to sound regal. “Certainly, ma’am. But Oliver Cromwell wasn’t the problem. Charles the First was the problem. Oliver Cromwell was the solution. I’ll grant you he was a bit of a nuisance for a while afterward, but at least his unpleasant rule made people happy to see a king again. The Crown knows how to wait.” “Charles the First’s head was cut off,” said Daphne, watching the new boat hit the sand. “Clearly another reason for not wanting to see him,” said Mr. Black smoothly. “We wouldn’t be able to understand what he was saying.” A plump man in clerical clothing, except possibly for the sarong, was helped out of the boat, and he in turn offered his hand to, yes, her grandmother. She was carrying an umbrella. An umbrella! It wasn’t to keep the rain off, of course. It was for prodding people, Daphne knew. “Ah, and here is Her Ladyship now,” said Mr. Black, quite unnecessarily in Daphne’s view. He added: “She was wonderful company on the voyage out here. The nautical miles just flew past.” The little smile on his face was a masterpiece. Grandmother looked around at the island, as if inspecting it for dust, and sighed. “One would have thought that we could have found somewhere cleaner,” she said. “Never mind. I trust you are well, Henry, and ready for the responsibility that has been thrust upon us by Divine Providence?” “You mean all those people dying was provident?” said Daphne sharply. In her mind’s eye, ancestors toppled like dominoes…138 of them. “That is no way to speak to your grandmother, Daphne,” said her father. “Daphne? Daphne? What is this ‘Daphne’?” said Her Ladyship. “Ridiculous name. Don’t be silly, Ermintrude. Now, can we get on with things before we get eaten, for goodness’ sake?” Daphne blushed in anger and embarrassment. “How dare you! Some of these people can speak English!” “So?” Daphne took a deep breath, and then her father’s hand was laid gently on her shoulder just as she opened her mouth. She shut it again, letting the rage seethe inside. “That’s not the way, dear,” he said. “And we must get on.” He left her and shook hands with the bishop. “Ah, Charlie, good to see you. Your pointy hat not here?” “Lost at sea, old boy. And when I picked up my crosier, it was full of blasted termites! Sorry about the sarong, couldn’t find m’ trousers,” said the bishop, shaking the king’s hand. “Wretched shame about what’s been happening, of course. Bit of a shock all around. Still, it’s not given to us to know the way the ways of Prov—of the Almighty.” “It was probably an Act of God,” said Daphne. “Indeed, indeed,” said the bishop, fumbling in his bag. “Or a miracle,” Daphne went on, defying her grandmother to take her by the ear on her beach. But Grandmother did not take defiance lightly, or at all. “I shall talk to you later about this wayward behavior, Ermintrude—” she began, striding forward. But two gentlemen were suddenly in her way. “Ah, here it is,” said the bishop very loudly, and he straightened up. “Of course we don’t generally carry royal anointing oil out here, but my lads make a coconut oil that keeps cricket bats nice and supple. I hope that will be sufficient.” This was to Mr. Black, who worried him even more than her ladyship. “That will be fine, Your Grace,” said Mr. Black. “Miss…Daphne, would you be so kind as to ask the islanders if we may use one of these ceremonial stones as a throne?” Daphne looked at the scattered god stones. They’d gotten rather unnoticed in the past week. “Mau, can they—?” she began. “Yes, they can,” said Mau. “But tell them they don’t work.” It was, according to the history books, the fastest coronation since Bubric the Saxon crowned himself with a very pointy crown on a hill during a thunderstorm, and reigned for one and a half seconds. Today, a man sat down. He was handed a golden orb and a golden scepter, which the watching islanders approved of because, when you got right down to it, a scepter was just a shiny club. Mau was happy with his fish spear, but in their hearts the islanders knew that a chief should have a really big club. Later on, some of them had had a go with it, however, and considered it a bit cumbersome for a real fight. They found it far more interesting than the crown, which sparkled in the sunlight but didn’t do anything useful. But because of it, and after a certain amount of talking, a man stood up who ruled so many places on the planet that mapmakers often ran out of red ink. At this point the men in black produced some small versions of the trouserman flag, raised them enthusiastically, and shouted: “Hurrah.” “I’d like the crown back now, please, Your Majesty,” said Mr. Black quickly. “I will give you a receipt, of course.” “Oh, it will all be so much better when we are crowned properly in London,” said Grandmother. “Really this is just for—” “You will be silent, woman,” said the king without raising his voice. For a moment Daphne thought she was the only one to have heard. Grandmother hadn’t, because she still went on talking. And then her ears caught up with her tongue, and couldn’t believe their eyes. “What did you say?” she managed. “Ah, you’ve got it right at last, Mother,” said the king. “I’m me, not us. I am I, not we. One pair of buttocks on the throne, one head in the crown. You, on the other hand, are a sharp-tongued harridan with the manners of a fox and don’t interrupt me when I’m talking! How dare you insult our hosts! And before you utter a word, contemplate this: You treasure your elevation above what you call the lower classes, whom I’ve always found to be pretty decent people once they’ve had a chance to have a bath. Well, I am king, you see—king—and the very notion of nobility that you cling to like grim death means that you will not answer me back. You will, however, act with grace and gratitude during the remainder of our stay in this place. Who knows, it may speak to you as it has spoken to me. And if you are even now putting together a scathing remark, let me point out for your lengthy consideration the wonderful and highly advisable option of silence. That is a command!” The king, breathing a little heavily, nodded to the leader of the Gentlemen of Last Resort. “That was all right, wasn’t it?” he said to the Gentlemen of Last Resort. Grandmother was simply staring at nothing. “Of course, sire. You are king, after all,” murmured Mr. Black. “’Scuse me, miss,” said a voice behind Daphne. “Are you Miss Ermintrude?” She turned to see who’d spoken. One of the boats had returned and picked up more of the crew, and now she was staring at a small man in badly fitting clothes. They had clearly belonged to someone who had been happy to get rid of them. “Cookie?” He beamed. “Told you my coffin’d keep me alive, miss!” “Papa, this is Cookie, who was a great friend to me on the Judy. Cookie, this is my father. He’s king.” “That’s nice,” said Cookie. “Coffin?” said the king, looking bewildered again. “I told you about him, Papa. Remember? The pockets? The mast and shroud? The tiny inflatable billiard table?” “Oh, that coffin! My word. How long were you at sea, Mr. Cookie?” “Two weeks, sir. My little stove ran out after the first week, so I made do with biscuits, mint cake, and plankton until I fetched up on an island,” said the cook. “Plankton?” said Daphne. “Strained it through my beard, miss. I thought, well, whales live on it, so why not me?” He reached into his pocket and produced a grubby piece of paper. “Funny little island I landed on, too. Had the name on a brass plate nailed to a tree. I writ it down—look.” The king and his daughter read, in smudged pencil, Mrs. Ethel J. Bundy’s Birthday Island. “It really exists!” Daphne yelled. “Jolly well done,” said the king. “Do tell us all about it over dinner. Now, if you will excuse for me a moment, I have to reign.” King Henry the Ninth rubbed his hands together. “Now, what else…ah, yes. Charlie, do you want to be an archbishop?” The Rt. Rev. Topleigh, who was packing his bag again, waved his hands wildly, a look of sudden dread on his face. “No, thank you, Henry!” “Really? Are you sure?” “Yes, thank you. They’d make me wear shoes. Love it down here among the islands!” “Ah, then you choose the big sea to a big see,” said the king, in that slow, plummy voice people use when they are committing a really bad pun. Nobody laughed. Even Daphne, who loved her father very much, could do no better than a sickly grin. Then her father did something that no one, not even a king, should do. He tried to explain. “Perhaps you all didn’t notice the pun or play on words?” he said, sounding a little hurt. “I deliberately confused ‘a big sea,’ that’s with an a, with ‘a big see,’ with two es, meaning the area that comes under the jurisdiction of an archbishop.” “Technically that would be a province, sir,” said Mr. Black gravely. “Bishops have sees.” “Although an archbishop is, strictly speaking, bishop of his home see,” said Mr. Red thoughtfully. “That’s why the archbishop of Canterbury is also the bishop of Canterbury. But that would be a small see, and therefore would not work for the purposes of humor.” “There you have it, Your Majesty,” said Mr. Black, giving the king a happy little smile. “With that small amendment your wonderful pun will be an absolute hoot in ecclesiastical circles.” “I notice you didn’t laugh, Mr. Black!” “No, Your Majesty. We are forbidden to laugh at the things kings say, sire, because otherwise we would be at it all day.” “Well, at least there is one thing I can do,” said the king, walking over to Mau. “Sir, I would be honored if you will join my Empire. Not many people get a choice, I might add.” “Thank you, King,” said Mau, “but we—” He stopped, and turned to Pilu for assistance. “We don’t want to join, Your Sire. It’s too big and we will be swallowed up.” “Then you will be prey to the first man who arrives with a boat and half a dozen armed men,” said the king. “Apart from me, I mean,” he added quickly. “Yes, Your King,” said Mau. He saw the ghost girl watching him and thought, well, this is the moment. “That is why we want to join the Royal Society.” “What?” The king turned to his daughter, who was grinning. “Did you put them up to this, my girl?” “Papa, this is where science began,” Daphne said quickly, “and I just gave them the words. They did the thinking for themselves. Their ancestors were scientists. You’ve seen the cave! This will work!” Pilu looked nervously from the king to his daughter and went on: “When the Royal Society was formed, the king gave them a club as full of bigness as his was—” “Bigness?” said the king. “That was Charles the Second, sire,” Mr. Black whispered. “In fact he did indeed say that the society deserved a mace ‘alike in bigness to our own,’ and I suppose we can only be grateful that he didn’t say biggittity.” “—which means he thought they were as powerful as kings, and so we humbly, no, proudly ask that we be admitted,” said Pilu, glancing at the ghost girl. “We will welcome all men of science as, er, brothers.” “Say yes, Papa, say yes!” said Daphne. “Science is international!” “I can’t speak for the society—” the king began, but Daphne was ready for this. There was no point in being a princess if you couldn’t interrupt a king. “Of course you can, Papa. It says Royal Society outside their building, doesn’t it?” “Your society, Your Majesty,” Mr. Black purred. “And based, of course, in London.” “And we will give them the golden door,” said Mau. “What?” said Daphne. She hadn’t expected this bit. “It’s not going to be shut again,” said Mau emphatically. “It will be a gift to our brothers who sailed so far that they came back.” “That’s tons of gold!” said the king. “About eight tons at least, I’d say.” “Very well done, sire,” said Mr. Black. “To the victor the spoils.” “Except there hasn’t been a war,” said the king. “It’s too much. We can’t take it! They have been kind.” “I was merely suggesting that the people like it when kings bring valuable things home, sire,” said the Gentleman of Last Resort. “Like whole countries,” said Daphne, giving him a sharp look. “But this is meant as a gift, Mr. Black. It is not the spoils of conquest,” said the king. “Well, that is indeed a happy, if unusual, outcome,” said Mr. Black smoothly. “And you will give a gift to us, too,” said Mau. “When much is taken, something is returned. Pilu?” “A big telescope,” said Pilu, “and a boat in sizeness to the Sweet Judy, and ten barrels of salt-pickled beef, and tools of every sizeness. Timber, metals of all kindness, books with pictures and writing inside that is about the pictures….” It went on for quite some time, and when he had finished, Daphne said, “That’s still pretty cheap, Papa, even with the boat. And remember, the first thing they asked for was a telescope. How can you argue with that?” The king smiled. “I won’t. Nor will I wonder out loud if anyone helped them with the list. Anyway I rather like ‘metals of all kindness.’ And you are right, of course. Scientists will flock here. And you can keep your door, Mau.” “No,” said Mau firmly. “It was closed for too long, Your King. I will not let it be shut again. But there is one more request, which is very simple. Every man of science who comes here to see what we once knew must tell us all he knows.” “Lectures!” Daphne burst out. “Oh, yes!” “And someone, please, to teach us doctrine,” Mau added. The bishop, who had been feeling a bit left out by now, brightened up at this point and stepped forward smartly. “If I can help in any way—” he began, his voice full of hope. “Doctrine to make us better,” said Mau, giving Daphne an imploring look. “Yes indeed,” said the bishop. “I feel that—” Daphne sighed. “I’m sorry, Your Grace, but he means doctoring,” she said. “Ah, yes,” said the bishop sadly. “Silly me.” “Mind you, if you’re good at debating, Mau might be interested.” She looked at Mau, who looked at her, and then at the Gentlemen of Last Resort, and then at the king, and then at the Cutty Wren, and then back at her. And he knows I’m going, she thought. And very soon. I’ll have to. A king’s only child can’t live on an island that’s lost at sea. He could read me like a book, if he read books. He knows. I can see it in his face.   At dawn on the seventh day after the arrival of the Cutty Wren, Captain Samson was ready to set sail again. The ship had already picked up most of the provisions for the return leg in Port Mercia, but eight tons of gold takes a lot of sawing up when you’re determined not to leave behind a single bit of gold dust. Now the ship waited outside the reef, just visible behind the mists. It looked like a toy, but from the Women’s Place, everything was a matter of perspective. His Majesty’s schooner had left yesterday, with cheering and waving and a lot less gear, lamp oil, sailcloth, and cutlery than it had when it arrived. The fastest sailing ship in the world was waiting, impatient to fly. The clearing was more or less deserted at this time of day, but there were a few snores coming from the huts and the occasional gurgle coming from the hut of the lady of the same name. The gardens were silent, listening. And the Place did listen, Daphne was sure of that. It made you listen, because she did, too. It must have even made her grandmother listen: Yesterday Daphne had seen her sitting next to Mrs. Gurgle, who very clearly was a woman of great power, because it looked very much as though her new companion was chewing a lump of salt-pickled beef. Her ladyship hadn’t seen her granddaughter watching, which was probably a good thing for both of them. Now Daphne looked around at the gardens. “I’ve come to say good-bye,” she said. “And thank you.” She didn’t shout it out. Either the Grandmothers were listening or they weren’t. She stood and waited. There was no reply but the vegetables’ silence and, in the distance, a pantaloon bird losing the remains of last night’s dinner. “Well, thank you anyway,” she said, and turned away. Were they real? she thought. Memory slips away so quickly here. I think it blows out to sea. But I shall remember. And in her head a fading voice said, “Good!” or perhaps she imagined it. Life gets really complicated if you think too much.   The king had invited the carpenter of the Cutty Wren—in the few days he had been there—to help with the new building already begun by the carpenter from his schooner; and soon, because people feel uneasy watching a king work with his sleeves rolled up, both crews had rolled up theirs, too. The rest of the Judy had become another long hut and a big heap of useful things. And, of course, there was the Sweet Judy herself. She had been an unexpected find. The prow of the ship had hit squarely between two of the giant fig trees and its figurehead had been wedged, unseen and unscathed, while the ship collapsed behind her. A couple of the sailors had nailed the figurehead over the door, to the approval of all except the king, who wondered aloud if her undressed bosom might be considered unseemly. He hadn’t understood why everyone had laughed, but he had been pleased that they had. It had made up for the Big See. Now Daphne looked up at her for the last time. There was a faint smile on the wooden lips, and someone had put a garland of flowers around her neck. Daphne curtsied to her, because if any nonliving thing had earned respect, it had been the Judy. Daphne had been taught to curtsy years ago, and on the island it had been a skill less useful than ice skating, but just this once it was exactly the right thing to do.   A boat waited on the edge of the lagoon. It had been waiting for some time. The crowd had wandered off, because there is only so long you can wave and shout at something that isn’t in any hurry to move, and a certain boredom sets in. In any case, Cahle had tactfully and not so tactfully got the islanders to wander back up to the fields. She knew when people, come to think of it, needed space. Besides, Daphne had said all her good-byes last night, at the big feast, and the king had been the only trouserman there to be given the sunset wave tattoo, and everyone had laughed and cried. The Gentlemen of Last Resort had carried the king back to their ship only a few hours ago, because he was, they said, “a little under the weather,” which is a code meaning “too much beer.” Now, apart from a dog warming up in the sun, it was as though she had the place to herself, but she would have bet anything that hundreds of eyes were watching her from the fields. She looked at the beach. There was the waiting boat, and there was Mau, standing where he always did, with his spear. He glanced up as she approached, with the faint half smile he wore when he was uncertain of things. “Everyone else is on board,” he said. “I will be back,” Daphne said. Mau drew squiggles on the sand with the end of his spear. “Yes, I know,” he said. “No, I really mean it.” “Yes. I know.” “You sound as if you don’t believe me.” “I believe you. But you sound as if you don’t.” Daphne looked down at the sand. “Yes, I know,” she said meekly. “Father’s going to send Grandmother to be our ambassador to the ReUnited States, now that she’s feeling better. She’s worked out that she’ll be able to lord it over all the snooty Bostonians, so she’s trying not to seem pleased. I suppose really she will be ladying it, which is probably worse. And, well, he hasn’t got anyone else…oh, except for lots of courtiers and the government and the people of the Empire, of course, but they won’t know him as himself, d’you see, but just as a face under a crown. Oh, it’s all so wretched. But Father needs me.” “Yes, he does,” said Mau. Daphne glared at him. It was stupid to think like this, but she’d wanted him to argue…well, not argue, more like protest…well…not protest, exactly, more like…be disappointed. It’s hard to talk to someone who understands. She gave up and, only then, noticed his arm. “What happened to you?” she said. “That looks horrible!” “It’s just bruising. I got tattooed too after the feast last night. Look.” She looked. On Mau’s left wrist was a little blue hermit crab. “That’s very good!” “Milo did it. And on this arm…” He turned to show her. “The sunset wave,” said Daphne. “Oh, I’m so glad you decided to have it done at—” “Look again, ghost girl,” said Mau, smiling. “What? Er…oh, the wave is going the wrong way.” “The right way. It’s the sunrise wave, and we are its children, and we will not go into the dark again. I vow it. It’s a new world. It needs new people. And you are right. Your father is a good man, but he needs you more than…this island does.” “Well, I think—” “He needs your strength,” Mau went on. “I’ve watched you together. You give his world a shape. He will give your poor nation a shape. You must be with him on that ship. You must be by his side. In your heart you know this. You will have a purpose. People will listen.” He took her hand. “I told you Imo made many worlds. I told you that sometimes I think I can see a little way into the world where the wave did not happen. Well, now you will get onto that ship, or…you won’t. Whatever you choose, your choice will mean there are two new worlds. And perhaps sometimes, on the edge of sleep, we will see the shadow of the other world. There will be no unhappy memories.” “Yes, but—” “No more words. We know them all, all the words that should not be said. But you have made my world more perfect.” Frantically, Daphne sought for something to reply, and came up with: “The bandage on Mrs. Whi-ara’s leg should come off tomorrow. Er, I still don’t like the look of Caah-a’s hand; the Wren’s surgeon said he thought it was getting better, but it’s worth waking up Mrs. Gurgle to have a look at it. Oh, and don’t let her fool you—she can’t chew meat with those gold teeth, so someone else needs to do it, and…I’m getting this wrong, aren’t I…?” Mau laughed. “How can that be wrong?” He kissed her on the cheek, a little clumsily, and went on: “And now we both walk away, without regrets, and when we meet again, it will be as old friends.” Daphne nodded and blew her nose on her last good handkerchief. And the ship sailed away. And Mau went fishing. He owed a fish to Nawi. Today   IN A CORNER OF the office, a seismograph ticked away quietly to itself. The old man stopped talking to watch a flying boat land on the lagoon. “Ah, that will be young Jason, who’s come to work on the Submillimeter Array.” He sighed. “I’m sure they’re doing wonderful things over there, but between ourselves I’ve never been happy with a telescope you can’t look into. Sorry, where was I?” he said. The boy and the girl stared at him. “You said the ship sailed away?” said the boy. “Oh, yes,” said the old man. “That was it. The ship sailed away. It’s what they do.” “And?” said the boy. “That was all of it. The ship sailed away.” “And they didn’t get married or anything?” said the girl, looking truly shocked. “Oh no,” said the old man. “Well, they didn’t get married. I’m not so sure about ‘anything.’ A kiss or two, maybe?” “But that’s just no way to end a story,” said the boy. “He went fishing!” “But it’s the kind of ending you get in real life,” said the old man, “and isn’t the story about being real? Though I’ve always thought he went fishing so that people wouldn’t see him cry. He must have felt very lonely. ‘If you will sacrifice,’ Mau said later, ‘then sacrifice your time on the altar of the common good. Eat the fish, or give it to someone who is hungry.’” He looked at their downcast expressions, coughed gently, and said, “A ship did come back.” “And the ghost girl was on it, wasn’t she?” said the girl. “Oh yes,” said the old man. “About a year later.” “Ah, I knew it!” said the girl triumphantly. “And the telescope?” asked the boy. “Certainly! A sixteen-inch Newtonian telescope was one of the first things they unloaded! That night everyone looked through it!” said the old man. “And there were all the things that had been on the list and six gentlemen from the Royal Society, just as promised.” The old man smiled broadly as he recalled. “Of course, we’ve had quite a few scientists since then. My father told me that Mr. Einstein sat in this very chair and played the violin. An interesting little fact is that my father accompanied him on the drum, and the effect was considered…unusual. I myself was privileged to accompany Sir Patrick Moore and Professor Richard Feynman when they were up here together. Xylophone, bongos, and war drum. Wonderful! Very musical people, scientists. And I was very proud to shake the hand of Professor Carl Sagan when he came here with people from the electric television. Do you remember that the ghost girl thought the glass beads on the ceiling of the cave were a star map, but she couldn’t work it out? The professor showed the world that it did indeed map the stars, but the stars as they were thirty-one thousand years ago, and that was confirmed by something called Fission Track Dating of the glass our little toy stars were made of. We’re learning new things all the time. I can’t recall how many astronauts came here. Interestingly, although several of them went to the moon, none of them met the lady who lives there.” “Yes, but did the ghost girl ever come back again?” said the girl in a determined voice. “Not exactly, but her son and granddaughter did,” said the old man. “Then it’s still sad,” said the girl. “Well, I don’t know about that,” said the old man. “I understand she married a very nice gentleman from Holland. A prince, I believe. And of course you know she became queen.” “Yes, but it still shouldn’t have happened like that,” the girl insisted. “Well, she went back for the sake of her nation, and he stayed here for the sake of his. Wasn’t that right?” The girl considered this and said: “I suppose they both thought more about their people than they thought about each other.” “And you, young man?” The boy looked down at his feet. “I think they both thought more about their people than they thought about themselves.” “Good answers. And I think they were happy, in their own ways.” “But they were still sweet on each other,” said the girl, not giving up. “What a delightfully archaic term! Well, yes, when she died—which was not long after Mau died—the trousermen were not very happy, because they wanted to bury her in a stone box in one of their god houses, but she had the Gentlemen of Last Resort on her side. They brought her here in a steamship full of ice, and she was wrapped up in papervine and weighed down with stones and sent into the dark current, where we had gently sent Mau only two months before. And then, my great-grandfather wrote, everyone cried and cried…as I see the two of you are now, in fact, doing.” “It was just dust,” said the boy. The old man smiled and fished a handful of folded papervine out of his pocket and handed it to the girl, saying, “Feel free to blow your nose.” “And then two dolphins were seen swimming in the lagoon,” said the girl firmly. She blew her nose and gave the papervine back. “I don’t recall ever being told that,” said the old man, taking it by what seemed to be the least damp corner. “It must have happened, though,” the girl insisted. “It’s the only right ending. They would have been swimming in the lagoon, but people were probably crying too much to notice.” “Yes, that could have been it,” said the old man tactfully. “Now, I think, for the official bit.” He led the way out of his little office and along a wide wooden veranda. It had one of the best views on the island. One end of it was tangled in the canopy of the low forest, so that leaves and flowers cascaded over it, and the other had a breathtaking view across the lagoon. There was a little shed at that end. “And since the night the first telescope was set up here, we have had the Tell and the Show, for young people when they come of age,” the old man said. “Ha! By now, of course, you kids have hung out around every dome and telescope array on the mountain, right? They spring up like mushrooms, don’t they? But perhaps you think you have seen it all? People hardly look these days—have you noticed that? It’s all photography and the electric internet. Call me old-fashioned, but that’s not stargazing, it’s just computers!” He stopped by the little shed. “So I’m going to show you something that you have never seen before. It’s a little trick, really, and once you think about it, you will say ‘huh’ or some similar ejaculation, but I happen to think it is rather, as you would put it, ‘neat.’” He undid the shed door, which ran back on little rails, to reveal a telescope very much smaller than the ones in the big white domes on the mountaintop. “Is that it?” said the girl. “It’s very small.” “Only in size, not in history,” said the old man reproachfully, glancing at his watch and moving the telescope with the care of someone who has done this a thousand times before. “Ah, got it first time,” he said, looking into the lens. “It’s not dark for a long time yet,” the boy pointed out. “The universe doesn’t care about that,” said the old man, stepping back. “Go on, one of you. Take a look.” “But the sky is still blue!” said the girl. “Oh, be clever, then, and don’t look,” said the old man cheerfully. “I dare you to look!” She looked, and gasped. “It’s in daylight!” She stepped away from the telescope. The boy looked through the eyepiece and backed away quickly, staring at the clear blue sky. “Yes, it took me like that the first time, too,” said the old man gleefully. “The planet Jupiter, in the daylight. You saw the storm belts and three of his sons, which of course we now call moons. Callisto is behind the planet right now. And it was a shock, wasn’t it? A moment of uncertainty? The world turned upside down?” “It was a bit creepy, as well,” said the boy. “Oh, indeed. And now you know the universe isn’t just a light show. They keep it running during the day, too!” The man clenched his wrinkled hands and said: “Live for those moments! They keep you alive! There is no better medicine than finding out that you are wrong! What did your mother put in your hand when you were born, young man?” “Er…a wooden telescope, sir. So that I will want to see farther,” said the boy. He was a little shaken; tears were running down the old man’s cheeks, even though he was smiling. “Good, good. And you, young lady?” “A blue hermit crab, sir. So that I won’t accept any shell.” “That’s a big totem to live up to. You must spend your life asking questions.” “I know, sir. Why are you crying, sir?” The old man opened his mouth and then hesitated for a moment. “Ah, good one! I must answer, mustn’t I?” He straightened himself up. “Because you liked my blue Jupiter. Because we keep going. Because we’ve come so far and have such a long way still to go. Because there are stars and blue hermit crabs. Because you are here, and strong and clever. The joy of the moment. Those sorts of things. Do excuse me if I sit down.” He walked over to an ancient cane chair and jerked up quickly as he went to sit in it. “Now then, Helene,” he admonished, “you know you shouldn’t be on there. I could get into trouble for sitting on a protected species, my girl!” He put a large tree-climbing octopus on the decking and patted his pockets. “I think I may have a dried shrimp here for a good girl…ah, yes.” He held up the shrimp and said: “Count to…five.” A wrinkled gray arm picked up a smooth pebble by the chair and thumped on the planks five times. A pair of very large, soulful eyes looked up at him. “Good girl! She can count up to fifteen, you know,” said the old man proudly, sitting down quickly in the vacated chair. “Helene’s been a bit naughty lately. She had that nice Professor Dawkins by the leg last month—we had to lure her away with a bucket of crabs. He was very gracious about it, I’m pleased to say. Charles Darwin spent hours in the low forest when he came here, as you might expect, and was the first to notice that the octopi used primitive tools. They fascinated him.” He leaned back in the chair, while Helene curled up hopefully under it (where there is one dried shrimp, there may be more—possibly as many as fifteen). “Do you believe in Imo, sir?” asked the boy. “Ah, the usual question. We come to it at last. You know Mau said that Imo made us clever enough to work out that He does not exist?” “Yes, sir, everyone says that, but that doesn’t help a lot.” The old man stared out at the sea. There was never much twilight at this latitude, and the early stars were already showing. He cleared his throat. “You know…Pilu—I mean the first one—was my great-great-great-great-grandfather, son to son. He was the first to learn to read and write, but I expect you know that. It was clever of the Society to send a teacher on that first boat. Mau had no children, although that might depend on how you define a parent and a child. One of the things he said was: ‘I cursed Imo because he gave the birds and animals a way to sense great waves, and didn’t give it to smart beings like us. But I realize that He did. He made us smart. It was up to us to be good at it!’ I think about that every time the seismograph beeps. But I’m not really answering you, am I?” The chair creaked. “Everything I know makes me believe Imo is in the order that is inherent, amazingly, in all things, and in the way the universe opens to our questioning. When I see the shining path over the lagoon, on an evening like this, at the end of a good day, I believe.” “In Imo?” asked the girl. This got a smile. “Perhaps. I just believe. You know, in things generally. That works too. Religion is not an exact science. Sometimes, of course, neither is science.” The old man rubbed his hands together. “Which of you is the older?” “Me,” said the girl. “Huh, yes, six minutes,” said the boy. “Then tonight I know you guard the Nation for the first time. You have a spear? Good. You know where Mau used to stand? Good. Occasionally there is some argument about it. I’ll keep an eye on you from time to time, and if I know anything, your father will be watching somewhere. Fathers do, when daughters stand guard. It’s a dad thing…. Pretend you don’t see him.” “Er…” The girl began to speak, but stopped and looked embarrassed. “Yes?” the old man prompted. “Is it true that in the middle of the night you see the ghost of Mau standing next to you?” She said it fast, as if she was just a little ashamed of even asking and wanted to get it over with. The old man smiled and patted her on the shoulder. “Tell me in the morning,” he said. He watched them go and waited until he saw her take up position on the beach, with that hugely strained expression of constipated self-importance that, he’d noticed, young people wore on these occasions. On the top of the mountain there was a rumbling of domes as the observatories woke up for the night. The greatest scientists in the world have taught here for generations, he thought as he made himself a cup of tea, and still our children ask us: Are there ghosts? What a piece of work is Man…. He stepped outside, stirring the tea. The shining path glittered across the sky. Out on the lagoon, in the last ray of sunlight, a dolphin leaped into the air for the joy of the moment, the water drops making another shining path. The old man smiled, and believed. AUTHOR’S NOTE The great big multiple-universes get-out-of-jail-free card…   This might look like a book set in the Pacific Ocean. Nothing could be further from the truth!!!!! It is in fact set in a parallel universe, a phenomenon known only to advanced physicists and anyone who has ever watched any episode of any SF series, anywhere. Different things happened, some people lived at different times, some bits of history have been changed, some things are made up out of real pieces (like the beer and the last five minutes of the Sweet Judy) and so on. But the Great Pelagic Ocean is its own place. Oddly enough, though, after the book was finished, I learned that the Society Islands in the Pacific were named after the Royal Society in London by the famous Captain Cook, because it had sponsored the first British scientific survey of the islands. Sometimes it’s hard to make things up…. Drowning bullets   It’s true—bullets fired into water soon lose all their speed. Some high-velocity ones even ricochet off the surface. That’s because the faster you hit water, the more it behaves like concrete. However, do not try this at home. Don’t try it at school, either. I do know someone who tried it at work, but since his job is to fire guns for the movies, no one minded. He confirmed it; a bullet hitting the water slows down very fast indeed. Blue Jupiter   It’s my favorite viewing, when the orbit is right, which means it’s in the eastern sky late in the day. It is remarkable what a telescope will pick up in a clear sky. But if you look at the sun directly through a telescope it will blind you, no kidding. So daylight astronomy should be attempted only with the help of an expert who knows what they are doing. Sorry, sorry, it’s the ol’ “Don’t try this at home” warning, in disguise. The green cannon   It would work, probably, since papervine is so tough. In the past, cannon have been made of wood, leather, or even ice (a lot of ice). Mostly they were made to be strong and light enough to last for one shot. They were used in what would now be called special operations, when one shot in the right place might make all the difference. They didn’t have to last long—just long enough. Needless to say, don’t try this at home. Thinking   This book contains some. Whether you try it at home is up to you. Terry Pratchett About the Author   TERRY PRATCHETT’S books have sold more than 55 million copies worldwide (give or take a few million). In addition to his hit novels about the fantastical flat planet Discworld, he has written award-winning children’s books, including the Johnny Maxwell trilogy and the bestselling Tiffany Aching Adventures. Mr. Pratchett received Britain’s highest honor for a children’s novel, the Carnegie Medal, for THE AMAZING MAURICE AND HIS EDUCATED RODENTS. Mr. Pratchett has one grown-up daughter and lives in England with his wife and many cats. www.terrypratchettbooks.com Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author. ALSO BY TERRY PRATCHETT   The Carpet People The Dark Side of the Sun Strata THE BROMELIAD TRILOGY:   Truckers Diggers Wings THE JOHNNY MAXWELL TRILOGY:   Only You Can Save Mankind Johnny and the Dead Johnny and the Bomb The Unadulterated Cat (illustrated by Gray Jolliffe) Good Omens (with Neil Gaiman) THE DISCWORLD SERIES   The Color of Magic The Light Fantastic Equal Rites Mort Sourcery Wyrd Sisters Pyramids Guards! Guards! Eric Moving Pictures Reaper Man Witches Abroad Small Gods Lords and Ladies Men at Arms Soul Music Feet of Clay Interesting Times Maskerade Hogfather Jingo The Last Continent Carpe Jugulum The Fifth Elephant The Truth Thief of Time The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents Night Watch The Wee Free Men Monstrous Regiment A Hat Full of Sky Going Postal Thud! Wintersmith Making Money Where’s My Cow? (illustrated by Melvyn Grant) The Last Hero: A Discworld Fable (illustrated by Paul Kidby) The Art of Discworld (illustrated by Paul Kidby) The Illustrated Wee Free Men (illustrated by Stephen Player) Credits   Jacket art © 2008 by Bill Mayer Jacket design by Hilary Zarycky Copyright   NATION. Copyright © 2008 by Terry and Lyn Pratchett. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. Mobipocket Reader August 2008 ISBN 978-0-06-176771-5 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 About the Publisher   Australia HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd. 25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321) Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au Canada HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 55 Avenue Road, Suite 2900 Toronto, ON, M5R, 3L2, Canada http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca New Zealand HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited P.O. Box 1 Auckland, New Zealand http://www.harpercollins.co.nz United Kingdom HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 77-85 Fulham Palace Road London, W6 8JB, UK http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk United States HarperCollins Publishers Inc. 10 East 53rd Street New York, NY 10022 http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com *The tree-climbing octopus (Octopus arbori ) is found on the Island Where the Sun Is Born, in the Mothering Sunday Islands. They are extremely intelligent, and cunning thieves.    *The sailfin crocodile (Crocodylus porosus maritimus) is still found in all parts of the Pelagic. It travels immense distances on the surface by means of a large skin-and-cartilage “sail” that it can, to some extent, steer.    *Where it said “Dress,” she’d written: “Yes, please.”    *The lonesome palm (Cocos nucifera solitaria) is common over most of the Pelagic, and is unusual in that an adult tree secretes a poison in its root that is deadly only to other palms. Because of this it is not unusual to find only one such palm on the smaller islands and a thousand cartoons are, therefore, botanically correct.    *Daphne was quite sure that there had been a female disciple because, as she explained to a surprised Captain Roberts, “Our Lord is always shown wearing white, and someone must have seen to it that he always had a clean robe.”    
A Hat Full of Sky (ta2) - Terry Pratchett	----	Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt - Notepad Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt Chapter 1 Leaving It came crackling over the hills, like an invisible fog. Movement without a body tired it, and it drifted very slowly. It wasn 't thinking now. It had been months since it had last thought, because the brain that was doing the thinking for it had died. They always died. So now it was naked again, and frightened. It could hide in one of the blobby white creatures that baa 'd nervously as it crawled over the turf. But they had useless brains, capable of thinking only about grass and making other things that went baa. No. They would not do. It needed, needed something better, a strong mind, a mind with power, a mind that could keep it safe. It searched . . . The new boots were all wrong. They were stiff and shiny. Shiny boots! That was disgraceful. Clean boots, that was different. There was nothing wrong with putting a bit of a polish on boots to keep the wet out. But boots had to work for a living. They shouldn't shine. Tiffany Aching, standing on the rug in her bedroom, shook her head. She'd have to scuff the things as soon as possible. Then there was the new straw hat, with a ribbon on it. She had some doubts about that, too. She tried to look at herself in the mirror, which wasn't easy because the mirror was not much bigger than her hand, and cracked and blotchy. She had to move it around to try and see as much of herself as possible and remember how the bits fitted together. But today . . . well, she didn't usually do this sort of thing in the house, but it was important to look smart today, and since no one was around . . . She put the mirror down on the rickety table by the bed, stood in the middle of the threadbare rug, shut her eyes and said: 'See me.' And away on the hills something, a thing with no body and no mind but a terrible hunger and a bottomless fear, felt the power. It would have sniffed the air, if it had a nose. It searched. It found. Such a strange mind, like a lot of minds inside one another, getting smaller and smaller! So strong! So close! It changed direction slightly, and went a little faster. As it moved, it made a noise like a swarm of flies. The sheep, nervous for a moment about something they couldn 't see, hear or smell, baa 'd... ... and went back to chewing grass. Tiffany opened her eyes. There she was, a few feet away from herself. She could see the back of her own head. Carefully, she moved around the room, not looking down at the 'her' that was moving, because she found that if she did that then the trick was over. It was quite difficult, moving like that, but at last she was in front of herself and looking herself up and down. Brown hair to match brown eyes . . . there was nothing she could do about that. At Page 1 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt least her hair was clean and she'd washed her face. She had a new dress on, which improved things a bit. It was so unusual to buy new clothes in the Aching family that, of course, it was bought big so that she'd 'grow into it'. But at least it was pale green, and it didn't actually touch the floor. With the shiny new boots and the straw hat she looked . . . like a farmer's daughter, quite respectable, going off to her first job. It'd have to do. From here she could see the pointy hat on her head, but she had to look hard for it. It was like a glint in the air, gone as soon as you saw it. That's why she'd been worried about the new straw hat, but it had simply gone through it as if the new hat wasn't there. This was because, in a way, it wasn't. It was invisible, except in the rain. Sun and wind went straight through, but rain and snow somehow saw it, and treated it as if it were real. She'd been given it by the greatest witch in the world, a real witch with a black dress and a black hat and eyes that could go through you like turpentine goes through a sick sheep. It had been a kind of reward. Tiffany had done magic, serious magic. Before she had done it she hadn't known that she could; when she had been doing it she hadn't known that she was; and after she had done it she hadn't known how she had. Now she had to learn how. 'See me not,' she said. The vision of her ... or whatever it was, because she was not exactly sure about this trick . . . vanished. It had been a shock, the first time she'd done this. But she'd always found it easy to see herself, at least in her head. All her memories were like little pictures of herself doing things or watching things, rather than the view from the two holes in the front of her head. There was a part of her that was always watching her. Miss Tick - another witch, but one who was easier to talk to than the witch who'd given Tiffany the hat - had said that a witch had to know how to 'stand apart', and that she'd find out more when her talent grew, so Tiffany supposed the 'see me' was part of this. Sometimes Tiffany thought she ought to talk to Miss Tick about 'see me'. It felt as if she was stepping out of her body, but still had a sort of ghost body that could walk around. It all worked as long as her ghost eyes didn't look down and see that she was just a ghost body. If that happened, some part of her panicked and she found herself back in her solid body immediately. Tiffany had, in the end, decided to keep this to herself. You didn't have to tell a teacher everything. Anyway, it was a good trick for when you didn't have a mirror. Miss Tick was a sort of witch-finder. That seemed to be how witchcraft worked. Some witches kept a magical lookout for girls who showed promise, and found them an older witch to help them along. They didn't teach you how to do it. They taught you how to know what you were doing. Witches were a bit like cats. They didn't much like one another's company, but they Page 2 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt did like to know where all the other witches were, just in case they needed them. And what you might need them for was to tell you, as a friend, that you were beginning to cackle. Witches didn't fear much, Miss Tick had said, but what the powerful ones were afraid of, even if they didn't talk about it, was what they called 'going to the bad'. It was too easy to slip into careless little cruelties because you had power and other people hadn't, too easy to think other people didn't matter much, too easy to think that ideas like right and wrong didn't apply to you. At the end of that road was you dribbling and cackling to yourself all alone in a gingerbread house, growing warts on your nose. Witches needed to know other witches were watching them. And that, Tiffany thought, was why the hat was there. She could touch it any time, provided she shut her eyes. It was a kind of reminder . . . Tiffany!' her mother shouted up the stairs. 'Miss Tick's here!' Yesterday, Tiffany had said goodbye to Granny Aching . . . The iron wheels of the old shepherding hut were half buried in the turf, high up on the hills. The potbellied stove, which still stood lopsided in the grass, was red with rust. The chalk hills were taking them, just like they'd taken the bones of Granny Aching. The rest of the hut had been burned on the day she'd been buried. No shepherd would have dared to use it, let alone spend the night there. Granny Aching had been too big in people's minds, too hard to replace. Night and day, in all seasons, she was the Chalk country: its best shepherd, its wisest woman, and its memory. It was as if the green downland had a soul that walked about in old boots and a sacking apron and smoked a foul old pipe and dosed sheep with turpentine. The shepherds said that Granny Aching had cussed the sky blue. They called the fluffy little white clouds of summer 'Granny Aching's little lambs'. And although they laughed when they said these things, part of them was not joking. No shepherd would have dared presume to live in that hut, no shepherd at all. So they had cut the turf and buried Granny Aching in the Chalk, watered the turf afterwards to leave no mark, then they burned her hut. Sheep's wool, Jolly Sailor tobacco and turpentine . . . . . . had been the smells of the shepherding hut, and the smell of Granny Aching. Such things have a hold on people that goes right to the heart. Tiffany only had to smell them now to be back there, in the warmth and silence and safety of the hut. It was the place she had gone to when she was upset, and the place she had gone to when she was happy. And Granny Aching would always smile and make tea and say nothing. And nothing bad could happen in the shepherding hut. It was a fort against the world. Even now, after Granny had gone, Tiffany still liked to go up there. Tiffany stood there, while the wind blew over the turf and sheep bells clonked in the distance. 'I've got. . .' She cleared her throat. I've got to go away. I ... I've got to learn proper witching, and there's no one here now to teach me, you see. I've got to ... to look after the hills like you did. I can . . . do things but I don't know things, and Miss Tick says what you don't know can kill you. I want to be as good as you were. I will come back! I will come back soon! I promise I will come back, better than I went!' Page 3 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt A blue butterfly, blown off course by a gust, settled on Tiffany's shoulder, opened and shut its wings once or twice, then fluttered away. Granny Aching had never been at home with words. She collected silence like other people collected string. But she had a way of saying nothing that said it all. Tiffany stayed for a while, until her tears had dried, and then went off back down the hill, leaving the everlasting wind to curl around the wheels and whistle down the chimney of the pot-bellied stove. Life went on. It wasn't unusual for girls as young as Tiffany to go 'into service'. It meant working as a maid somewhere. Traditionally, you started by helping an old lady who lived by herself; she wouldn't be able to pay much, but since this was your first job you probably weren't worth much, either. In fact Tiffany practically ran Home Farm's dairy by herself, if someone helped her lift the big milk churns, and her parents had been surprised she had wanted to go into service at all. But as Tiffany said, it was something everyone did. You got out into the world a little bit. You met new people. You never knew what it could lead to. That, rather cunningly, got her mother on her side. Her mother's rich aunt had gone off to be a scullery maid, and then a parlour maid, and had worked her way up until she was a housekeeper and married to a butler and lived in a fine house. It wasn't her fine house, and she only lived in a bit of it, but she was practically a lady. Tiffany didn't intend to be a lady. This was all a ruse, anyway. And Miss Tick was in on it. You weren't allowed to charge money for the witching, so all witches did some other job as well. Miss Tick was basically a witch disguised as a teacher. She travelled around with the other wandering teachers who went in bands from place to place teaching anything to anybody in exchange for food or old clothes. It was a good way to get around, because people in the chalk country didn't trust witches. They thought they danced around on moonlit nights without their drawers on. (Tiffany had made enquiries about this, and had been slightly relieved to find out that you didn't have to do this to be a witch. You could if you wanted to, but only if you were certain where all the nettles, thistles and hedgehogs were.) But if it came to it, people were a bit wary of the wandering teachers, too. They were said to pinch chickens and steal away children (which was true, in a way) and they went from village to village with their gaudy carts and wore long robes with leather pads on the sleeves and strange flat hats and talked amongst themselves using heathen lingo no one could understand, like 'Aha jacta esf and 'Quid pro quo'. It was quite easy for Miss Tick to lurk amongst them. Her pointy hat was a stealth version, which looked just like a black straw hat with paper flowers on it until you pressed the secret spring. Over the last year or so Tiffany's mother had been quite surprised, and a little worried, at Tiffany's sudden thirst for education, which people in the village thought was a good thing in moderation but if taken unwisely could lead to restlessness. Then a month ago, the message had come: Be ready. Miss Tick, in her flowery hat, had visited the farm and had explained to Mr and Mrs Aching that an elderly lady up in the mountains had heard of Tiffany's excellent prowess with cheese and was willing to offer her the post of maid at four dollars a Page 4 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt month, one day off a week, her own bed and a week's holiday at Hogswatch. Tiffany knew her parents. Three dollars a month was a bit low, and five dollars would be suspiciously high, but prowess with cheese was worth the extra dollar. And a bed all to yourself was a very nice perk. Before most of Tiffany's sisters had left home, sleeping two sisters to a bed had been normal. It was a good offer. Her parents had been impressed and slightly scared of Miss Tick, but they had been brought up to believe that people who knew more than you and used long words were quite important, so they'd agreed. Tiffany accidentally heard them discussing it after she had gone to bed that night. It's quite easy to accidentally overhear people talking downstairs if you hold an upturned glass to the floorboards and accidentally put your ear to it. She heard her father say that Tiffany didn't have to go away at all. She heard her mother say that all girls wondered what was out there in the world, so it was best to get it out of her system. Besides, she was a very capable girl with a good head on her shoulders. Why, with hard work there was no reason why one day she couldn't be a servant to someone quite important, like Aunt Hetty had been, and live in a house with an inside privy. Her father said she'd find that scrubbing floors was the same everywhere. Her mother said, well, in that case she'd get bored and come back home after the year was up and, by the way, what did 'prowess' mean? 'Superior skill', thought Tiffany to herself. They did have an old dictionary in the house, but her mother never opened it because the sight of all those words upset her. Tiffany had read it all the way through. And that was it, and suddenly here she was, a month later, wrapping her old boots, which'd been worn by all her sisters before her, in a piece of clean rag and putting them in the second-hand suitcase her mother had bought her, which looked as if it was made of bad cardboard or pressed grape pips mixed with ear wax, and had to be held together with string. There were goodbyes. She cried a bit, and her mother cried a lot, and her little brother Wentworth cried as well just in case he could get a sweet for doing so. Tiffany's father didn't cry but gave her a silver dollar and rather gruffly told her to be sure to write home every week, which is a man's way of crying. She said goodbye to the cheeses in the dairy and the sheep in the paddock and even to Ratbag the cat. Then everyone apart from the cheeses and the cat stood at the gate and waved to her and Miss Tick -well, except for the sheep, too - until they'd gone nearly all the way down the chalky-white lane to the village. And then there was silence except for the sound of their boots on the flinty surface and the endless song of the skylarks overhead. It was late August, and very hot, and the new boots pinched. 'I should take them off, if I was you,' said Miss Tick after a while. Tiffany sat down by the side of the lane and got her old boots out of the case. She didn't bother to ask how Miss Tick knew about the tight new boots. Witches paid attention. The old boots, even though she had to wear several pairs of socks with them, were much more comfortable and really easy to walk in. They had been walking since long before Tiffany was born, and knew how to do it. Page 5 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt 'And are we going to see any . . . little men today?' Miss Tick went on, once they were walking again. 'I don't know, Miss Tick,' said Tiffany. 'I told them a month ago I was leaving. They're very busy at this time of year. But there's always one or two of them watching me.' Miss Tick looked around quickly. 'I can't see anything,' she said. 'Or hear anything.' 'No, that's how you can tell they're there,' said Tiffany. 'It's always a bit quieter if they're watching me. But they won't show themselves while you're with me. They're a bit frightened of hags - that's their word for witches,' she added quickly. 'It's nothing personal.' Miss Tick sighed. 'When I was a little girl I'd have loved to see the pictsies,' she said. 'I used to put out little saucers of milk. Of course, later on I realized that wasn't quite the thing to do.' 'No, you should have used strong licker,' said Tiffany. She glanced at the hedge and thought she saw, just for the snap of a second, a flash of red hair. And she smiled, a little nervously. Tiffany had been, if only for a few days, the nearest a human being can be to a queen of the fairies. Admittedly, she'd been called a kelda rather than a queen, and the Nac Mac Feegle should only be called fairies to their face if you were looking for a fight. On the other hand the Nac Mac Feegle were always looking for a fight, in a cheerful sort of way, and when they had no one to fight they fought one another, and if one was all by himself he'd kick his own nose just to keep in practice. Technically, they had lived in Fairyland, but had been thrown out, probably for being drunk. And now, because if you'd ever been their kelda they never forgot you . . . . . . they were always there. There was always one somewhere on the farm, or circling on a buzzard high over the chalk downs. And they watched her, to help and protect her, whether she wanted them to or not. Tiffany had been as polite as possible about this. She'd hidden her diary right at the back of a drawer and blocked up the cracks in the privy with wadded paper, and done her best with the gaps in her bedroom floorboards, too. They were little men, after all. She was sure they tried to remain unseen so as not to disturb her, but she'd got very good at spotting them. They granted wishes - not the magical fairytale three wishes, the ones that always go wrong in the end, but ordinary, everyday ones. The Nac Mac Feegle were immensely strong and fearless and incredibly fast, but they weren't good at understanding that what people said often wasn't what they meant. One day, in the dairy, Tiffany had said, 1 wish I had a sharper knife to cut this cheese,' and her mother's sharpest knife was quivering in the table beside her almost before she'd got the words out. 'I wish this rain would clear up' was probably OK, because the Feegles couldn't do actual magic, but she had learned to be careful not to wish for anything that might be achievable by some small, determined, strong, fearless and fast men who were also not above giving someone a good kicking if they felt like it. Page 6 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt Wishes needed thought. She was never likely to say, out loud, 'I wish that I could marry a handsome prince,' but knowing that if you did you'd probably open the door to find a stunned prince, a tied-up priest and a Nac Mac Feegle grinning cheerfully and ready to act as Best Man definitely made you watch what you said. But they could be helpful, in a haphazard way, and she'd taken to leaving out for them things that the family didn't need but might be useful to little people, like tiny mustard spoons, pins, a soup bowl that would make a nice bath for a Feegle and, in case they didn't get the message, some soap. They didn't steal the soap. Her last visit to the ancient burial mound high on the chalk down where the pictsies lived had been to attend the wedding of Rob Anybody, the Big Man of the clan, to Jeannie of the Long Lake. She was going to be the new kelda and spend most of the rest of her life in the mound, having babies like a queen bee. Feegles from other clans had all turned up for the celebration, because if there's one thing a Feegle likes more than a party, it's a bigger party, and if there's anything better than a bigger party, it's a bigger party with someone else paying for the drink. To be honest, Tiffany had felt a bit out of place, being ten times as tall as the next tallest person there, but she'd been treated very well and Rob Anybody had made a long speech about her, calling her 'our fine big wee young hag' before falling face first into the pudding. It had all been very hot, and very loud, but she'd joined in the cheer when Jeannie had carried Rob Anybody over a tiny broomstick that had been laid on the floor. Traditionally, both the bride and the groom should jump over the broomstick but, equally traditionally, no self-respecting Feegle would be sober on his wedding day. She'd been warned that it would be a good idea to leave then, because of the traditional fight between the bride's clan and the groom's clan, which could take until Friday. Tiffany had bowed to Jeannie, because that's what hags did, and had a good look at her. She was small and sweet and very pretty. She also had a glint in her eye and a certain proud lift to her chin. Nac Mac Feegle girls were very rare and they grew up knowing they were going to be keldas one day, and Tiffany had a definite feeling that Rob Anybody was going to find married life trickier than he thought. She was going to be sorry to leave them behind, but not terribly sorry. They were nice in a way but they could, after a while, get on your nerves. Anyway, she was eleven now, and had a feeling that after a certain age you shouldn't slide down holes in the ground to talk to little men. Besides, the look that Jeannie had given her, just for a moment, had been pure poison. Tiffany had read its meaning without having to try. Tiffany had been the kelda of the clan, even if it was only for a short time. She had also been engaged to be married to Rob Anybody, even if that had only been a sort of political trick. Jeannie knew all that. And the look had said: He is mine. This place is mine. I do not want you here! Keep out! A pool of silence followed Tiffany and Miss Tick down the lane, since the usual Page 7 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt things that rustle in hedges tended to keep very quiet when the Nac Mac Feegle were around. They reached the little village green and sat down to wait for the carrier's cart that went just a bit faster than walking pace and would take five hours to get to the village of Twoshirts, where - Tiffany's parents thought - they'd get the big coach that ran all the way to the distant mountains and beyond. Tiffany could actually see it coming up the road when she heard the hoofbeats across the green. She turned, and her heart seemed to leap and sink at the same time. It was Roland, the Baron's son, on a fine black horse. He leaped down before the horse had stopped, and then stood there looking embarrassed. 'Ah, I see a very fine and interesting example of a ... a ... a big stone over there,' said Miss Tick in a sticky-sweet voice. I'll just go and have a look at it, shall I?' Tiffany could have pinched her for that. 'Er, you're going, then,' said Roland as Miss Tick hurried away. 'Yes,' said Tiffany. Roland looked as though he was going to explode with nervousness. 1 got this for you,' he said. 'I had it made by a man, er, over in Yelp.' He held out a package wrapped in soft paper. Tiffany took it and put it carefully in her pocket. Thank you,' she said, and dropped a small curtsy. Strictly speaking that's what you had to do when you met a nobleman, but it just made Roland blush and stutter. 'O-open it later on,' said Roland. 'Er, I hope you'll like it.' 'Thank you,' said Tiffany sweetly. 'Here's the cart. Er . . . you don't want to miss it.' 'Thank you,' said Tiffany, and curtsied again, because of the effect it had. It was a little bit cruel, but sometimes you had to be. Anyway, it would be very hard to miss the cart. If you ran fast, you could easily overtake it. It was so slow that 'stop' never came as a surprise. There were no seats. The carrier went around the villages every other day, picking up packages and, sometimes, people. You just found a place where you could get comfortable among the boxes of fruit and rolls of cloth. Tiffany sat on the back of the cart, her old boots dangling over the edge, swaying backwards and forwards as the cart lurched away on the rough road. Miss Tick sat beside her, her black dress soon covered in chalk dust to the knees. Tiffany noticed that Roland didn't get back on his horse until the cart was nearly out of sight. And she knew Miss Tick. By now she would be just bursting to ask a question, because witches hate not knowing things. And, sure enough, when the village was left behind, Miss Tick said, after a lot of shifting and clearing her throat: 'Aren't you going to open it?' 'Open what?' said Tiffany, not looking at her. 'He gave you a present,' said Miss Tick. 'I thought you were examining an interesting stone, Miss Tick,' said Tiffany accusingly. 'Well, it was only fairly interesting,' said Miss Tick, completely unembarrassed. 'So . . . are you?' 'I'll wait until later,' said Tiffany. She didn't want a discussion about Roland at this point or, really, at all. She didn't actually dislike him. She'd found him in the land of the Queen of the Page 8 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt Fairies and had sort of rescued him, although he had been unconscious most of the time. A sudden meeting with the Nac Mac Feegle when they're feeling edgy can do that to a person. Of course, without anyone actually lying, everyone at home had come to believe that he had rescued her. A nine-year-old girl armed with a frying pan couldn't possibly have rescued a thirteen-year-old boy who'd got a sword. Tiffany hadn't minded that. It stopped people asking too many questions she didn't want to answer or even know how to. But he'd taken to ... hanging around. She kept accidentally running into him on walks more often than was really possible, and he always seemed to be at the same village events she went to. He was always polite, but she couldn't stand the way he kept looking like a spaniel that had been kicked. Admittedly - and it took some admitting - he was a lot less of a twit than he had been. On the other hand, there had been such of lot of twit to begin with. And then she thought, Horse, and wondered why until she realized that her eyes had been watching the landscape while her brain stared at the past. . . 'I've never seen that before,' said Miss Tick. Tiffany welcomed it as an old friend. The Chalk rose out of the plains quite suddenly on this side of the hills. There was a little valley cupped into the fall of the down, and there was a carving in the curve it made. Turf had been cut away in long flowing lines so that the bare chalk made the shape of an animal. 'It's the White Horse,' said Tiffany. 'Why do they call it that?' said Miss Tick. Tiffany looked at her. 'Because the chalk is white?' she suggested, trying not to suggest that Miss Tick was being a bit dense. 'No, I meant why do they call it a horse? It doesn't look like a horse. It's just. . . flowing lines .. .' . . . that look as if they're moving, Tiffany thought. It had been cut out of the turf right back in the old days, people said, by the folk who'd built the stone circles and buried their kind in big earth mounds. And they'd cut out the Horse at one end of this little green valley, ten times bigger than a real horse and, if you didn't look at it with your mind right, the wrong shape, too. Yet they must have known horses, owned horses, seen them every day, and they weren't stupid people just because they lived a long time ago. Tiffany had once asked her father about the look of the Horse, when they'd come all the way over here for a sheep fair, and he told her what Granny Aching had told him, too, when he was a little boy. He passed on what she said word for word, and Tiffany did the same now. "Taint what a horse looks like,' said Tiffany. It's what a horse be.' 'Oh,' said Miss Tick. But because she was a teacher as well as a witch, and probably couldn't help herself, she added, The funny thing is, of course, that officially there is no such thing as a white horse. They're called grey.' [She had to say that, because she was a witch and a teacher and that's a terrible combination. They want things to be right. They like things to be correct. If you want to upset a witch you don't have to mess around with charms and Page 9 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt spells, you just have to put her in a room with a picture that's hung slightly crooked and watch her squirm.] 'Yes, I know,' said Tiffany. This one's white,' she added, flatly. That quietened Miss Tick down, for a while, but she seemed to have something on her mind. 'I expect you're upset about leaving the Chalk, aren't you?' she said as the cart rattled on. 'No,' said Tiffany. It's OK to be,' said Miss Tick. Thank you, but I'm not really,' said Tiffany. 'If you want to have a bit of a cry, you don't have to pretend you've got some grit in your eye or anything-' I'm all right, actually,' said Tiffany. 'Honestly.' 'You see, if you bottle that sort of thing up it can cause terrible damage later on.' 'I'm not bottling, Miss Tick.' In fact, Tiffany was a bit surprised at not crying, but she wasn't going to tell Miss Tick that. She left a sort of space in her head to burst into tears in, but it wasn't filling up. Perhaps it was because she'd wrapped up all those feelings and doubts and left them up on the hill by the pot-bellied stove. 'And if of course you were feeling a bit downcast at the moment, I'm sure you could open the present he-' Miss Tick tried. 'Tell me about Miss Level,' Tiffany said quickly. The name and address was all she knew about the lady she was going to stay with, but an address like 'Miss Level, Cottage in the Woods near the dead oak tree in Lost Man's Lane, High Overhang, If Out Leave Letters in Old Boot by Door' sounded promising. 'Miss Level, yes,' said Miss Tick, defeated. 'Er, yes. She's not really very old but she says she'll be happy to have a third pair of hands around the place.' You couldn't slip words past Tiffany, not even if you were Miss Tick. 'So there's someone else there already?' she said. 'Er . . . no. Not exactly,' said Miss Tick. 'Then she's got four arms?' said Tiffany. Miss Tick had sounded like someone trying to avoid a subject. Miss Tick sighed. It was difficult to talk to someone who paid attention all the time. It put you off. 'It's best if you wait until you meet her,' she said. 'Anything I tell you will only give you the wrong idea. I'm sure you'll get along with her. She's very good with people, and in her spare time she's a research witch. She keeps bees - and goats, the milk of which, I believe, is very good indeed owing to homogenized fats.' 'What does a research witch do?' Tiffany asked. 'Oh, it's a very ancient craft. She tries to find new spells by learning how old ones were really done. You know all that stuff about "ear of bat and toe of frog"? They never work, but Miss Level thinks it's because we don't know exactly what kind of frog, or which toe-' 'I'm sorry, but I'm not going to help anyone chop up innocent frogs and bats,' said Tiffany firmly. 'Oh, no, she never kills any!' said Miss Tick hurriedly. 'She only uses creatures Page 10 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt that have died naturally or been run over or committed suicide. Frogs can get quite depressed at times.' The cart rolled on, down the white, dusty road, until it was lost from view. Nothing happened. Skylarks sang, so high up they were invisible. Grass seeds filled the air. Sheep baa'd, high up on the Chalk. And then something came along the road. It moved like a little slow whirlwind, so it could be seen only by the dust it stirred up. As it went past, it made a noise like a swarm of flies. Then it, too, disappeared down the hill. . . After a while a voice, low down in the long grass, said: 'Ach, crivensl And it's on her trail, right enough!' A second voice said: 'Surely the old hag will spot it?' 'Whut? The teachin' hag? She's nae a proper hag!' 'She's got the pointy hat under all them flowers, Big Yan,' said the second voice, a bit reproachfully. 'I seen it. She presses a wee spring an' the point comes up!' 'Oh, aye, Hamish, an' I daresay she does the readin' and the writin' well enough, but she disnae ken aboot stuff that's no' in books. An' I'm no' showin' meself while she's aroond. She's the kind of a body that'd write things doon about a man! C'mon, let's go and find the kelda!' The Nac Mac Feegle of the Chalk hated writing for all kinds of reasons, but the biggest one was this: writing stays. It fastens words down. A man can speak his mind and some nasty wee scuggan will write it down and who knows what he'll do with those words? Ye might as weel nail a man's shadow tae the wall! But now they had a new kelda, and a new kelda brings new ideas. That's how it's supposed to work. It stopped a clan getting too set in its ways. Kelda Jeannie was from the Long Lake clan, up in the mountains - and they did write things down. She didn't see why her husband shouldn't, either. And Rob Anybody was finding out that Jeannie was definitely a kelda. Sweat was dripping off his forehead. He'd once fought a wolf all by himself, and he'd cheerfully do it again with his eyes shut and one hand tied behind him rather than do what he was doing now. He had mastered the first two rules of writing, as he understood them. 1) Steal some paper. 2) Steal a pencil. Unfortunately there was more to it than that. Now he held the stump of pencil in front of him in both hands, and leaned backwards as two of his brothers pushed him towards the piece of paper pinned up on the chamber wall (it was an old bill for sheep bells, stolen from the farm). The rest of the clan watched, in fascinated horror, from the galleries around the walls. 'Mebbe I could kind o' ease my way inta it gently,' he protested as his heels left little grooves in the packed-earth floor of the mound. 'Mebbe I could just do one o' they commeras or full stoppies-' 'You're the Big Man, Rob Anybody, so it's fittin' ye should be the first tae do the writin',' said Jeannie. 'I canna hae a husband who canna even write his ain name. I showed you the letters, did I not?' 'Aye, wumman, the nasty, loopy, bendy things!' growled Rob. 'I dinnae trust that Q, that's a letter that has it in for a man. That's a letter with a sting, that one!' Page 11 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt 'You just hold the pencil on the paper and I'll tell ye what marks to make,' said Jeannie, folding her arms. 'Aye, but 'tis a bushel of trouble, writin',' said Rob. 'A word writ doon can hang a man!' 'Wheest, now, stop that! 'Tis easy!' snapped Jeannie. 'Bigjob babbies can do it, and you're a full growed Feegle!' 'An' writin' even goes on sayin' a man's wurds after he's deidV said Rob Anybody, waving the pencil as if trying to ward off evil spirits. 'Ye cannae tell me that's right!' 'Oh, so you're afeared o' the letters, is that it?' said Jeannie, artfully. 'Ach, that's fine. All big men fear something. Take the pencil off'f him, Wullie. Ye cannae ask a man to face his fears.' There was silence in the mound as Daft Wullie nervously took the pencil stub from his brother. Every beady eye was turned to Rob Anybody. His hands opened and shut. He started to breathe heavily, still glaring at the blank paper. He stuck out his chin. 'Ach, ye're a harrrrd wumman, Jeannie Mac Feegle!' he said at last. He spat on his hands and snatched back the pencil stub from Daft Wullie. 'Gimme that tool o' perdition! Them letters won't know whut's hit them!' 'There's my brave lad!' said Jeannie as Rob squared up to the paper. 'Right, then. The first letter is an R. That's the one that looks like a fat man walking, remember?' The assembled pictsies watched as Rob Anybody, grunting fiercely and with his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth, dragged the pencil through the curves and lines of the letters. He looked at the kelda expectantly after each one. That's it,' she said, at last. 'A bonny effort!' Rob Anybody stood back and looked critically at the paper. 'That's it?' he said. 'Aye,' said Jeannie. 'Ye've writ your ain name, Rob Anybody!' Rob stared at the letters again. 'I'm gonna go to pris'n noo?' he said. There was a polite cough from beside Jeannie. It had belonged to the Toad. He had no other name, because toads don't go in for names. Despite sinister forces that would have people think differently, no toad has ever been called Tommy the Toad, for example. It's just not something that happens. This toad had once been a lawyer (a human lawyer; toads manage without them) who'd been turned into a toad by a fairy godmother who'd intended to turn him into a frog but had been a bit hazy on the difference. Now he lived in the Feegle mound, where he ate worms and helped them out with the difficult thinking. I've told you, Mr Anybody, that just having your name written down is no problem at all,' he said. There's nothing illegal about the words "Rob Anybody". Unless, of course,' and the toad gave a little legal laugh, It's meant as an instruction!' None of the Feegles laughed. They liked their humour to be a bit, well, funnier. Rob Anybody stared at his very shaky writing. 'That's my name, aye?' 'It certainly is, Mr Anybody.' 'An' no thin' bad's happenin' at a',' Rob noted. He looked closer. 'How can you tell it's my name?' 'Ah, that'll be the readin' side o' things,' said Jeannie. 'That's where the lettery things make a sound in yer heid?' said Rob. 'That's the bunny,' said the toad. 'But we thought you'd like to start with the more physical aspect of the procedure.' 'Could I no' mebbe just learn the writin' and leave the readin' to someone else?' Rob asked, without much hope. Page 12 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt 'No, my man's got to do both,' said Jeannie, folding her arms. When a female Feegle does that, there's no hope left. 'Ach, it's a terrible thing for a man when his wumman gangs up on him wi' a toad,' said Rob, shaking his head. But, when he turned to look at the grubby paper, there was just a hint of pride in his face. 'Still, that's my name, right?' he said, grinning. Jeannie nodded. 'Just there, all by itself and no' on a Wanted poster or anything. My name, drawn by me.' 'Yes, Rob,' said the kelda. 'My name, under my thumb. No scunner can do anythin' aboot it? I've got my name, nice and safe?' Jeannie looked at the toad, who shrugged. It was generally held by those who knew them that most of the brains in the Nac Mac Feegle clans ended up in the women. 'A man's a man o' some standin' when he's got his own name where no one can touch it,' said Rob Anybody. 'That's serious magic, that is-' 'The R is the wrong way roond and you left the A and a Y out of "Anybody",' said Jeannie, because it is a wife's job to stop her husband actually exploding with pride. 'Ach, wumman, I didna' ken which way the fat man wuz walking',' said Rob, airily waving a hand. 'Ye canna trust the fat man. That's the kind of thing us nat'ral writin' folk knows about. One day he might walk this way, next day he might walk that way.' He beamed at his name: ROB NybO D 'And I reckon you got it wrong wi' them Y's,' he went on. 'I reckon it should be N E Bo D. That's Enn . . . eee . . . bor . . . dee, see? That's senseY He stuck the pencil into his hair, and gave her a defiant look. Jeannie sighed. She'd grown up with seven hundred brothers and knew how they thought, which was often quite fast while being totally in the wrong direction. And if they couldn't bend their thinking around the world, they bent the world around their thinking. Usually, her mother had told her, it was best not to argue. Actually, only half a dozen Feegles in the Long Lake clan could read and write very well. They were considered odd, strange hobbies. After all, what -when you got out of bed in the morning - were they good for? You didn't need to know them to wrestle a trout or mug a rabbit or get drunk. The wind couldn't be read and you couldn't write on water. But things written down lasted. They were the voices of Feegles who'd died long ago, who'd seen strange things, who'd made strange discoveries. Whether you approved of that depended on how creepy you thought it was. The Long Lake clan approved. Jeannie wanted the best for her new clan, too. It wasn't easy, being a young kelda. You came to a new clan, with only a few of your brothers as a bodyguard, where you married a husband and ended up with hundreds of brothers-in-law. It could be troubling if you let your mind dwell on it. At least back on the island in the Long Lake she'd had her mother to talk to, but a kelda never went home again. Except for her bodyguard brothers, a kelda was all alone. Jeannie was homesick and lonely and frightened of the future, which is why she was about to get things wrong . . . 'Rob!' Hamish and Big Yan came tumbling through the fake rabbit hole that was the entrance to the mound. Rob Anybody glared at them. 'We wuz engaged in a lit'try enterprise,' he said. 'Yes, Rob, but we watched the big wee young hag safe awa', like you said, but there's a Page 13 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt hiver after her!' Hamish blurted out. 'Are ye sure?' said Rob, dropping his pencil. 'I never heard o' one of them in this world!' 'Oh, aye,' said Big Yan. 'Its buzzin' fair made my teeths ache!' 'So did you no' tell her, ye daftie?' said Rob. 'There's that other hag wi' her, Rob,' said Big Yan. The educatin' hag.' 'Miss Tick?' said the toad. 'Aye, the one wi' a face like a yard o' yoghurt,' said Big Yan. 'An' you said we wuzna' to show ourselves, Rob.' 'Aye, weel, this is different-' Rob Anybody began, but stopped. He hadn't been a husband for very long, but upon marriage men get a whole lot of extra senses bolted into their brain, and one is there to tell a man that he's suddenly neck deep in real trouble. Jeannie was tapping her foot. Her arms were still folded. She had the special smile women learn about when they marry, too, which seems to say 'Yes, you're in big trouble but I'm going to let you dig yourself in even more deeply.' 'What's this about the big wee hag?' she said, her voice as small and meek as a mouse trained at the Rodent College of Assassins. 'Oh, ah, ach, weel, aye . . .' Rob began, his face falling. 'Do ye not bring her to mind, dear? She was at oor wedding, aye. She was oor kelda for a day or two, ye ken. The Old One made her swear to that just afore she went back to the Land o' the Livin',' he added, in case mentioning the wishes of the last kelda would deflect whatever storm was coming. 'It's as well tae keep an eye on her, ye ken, her being oor hag and a' . . .' Rob Anybody's voice trailed away in the face of Jeannie's look. 'A true kelda has tae marry the Big Man,' said Jeannie. 'Just like I married ye, Rob Anybody Feegle, and am I no' a good wife tae ye?' 'Oh, fine, fine,' Rob burbled. 'But-' 'And ye cannae be married to two wives, because that would be bigamy, would it not?' said Jeannie, her voice dangerously sweet. 'Ach, it wasnae that big,' said Rob Anybody, desperately looking around for a way of escape. 'And it wuz only temp'ry, an' she's but a lass, an' she wuz good at thinkin'-' 'I'm good at thinking, Rob Anybody, and I am the kelda o' this clan, am I no'? There can only be one, is that not so? And I am thinking that there will be no more chasin' after this big wee girl. Shame on ye, anyway. She'll no' want the like o' Big Yan a-gawpin' at her all the time, I'm sure.' Rob Anybody hung his head. 'Aye . . . but. . .,' he said. 'But what?' 'A hiver's chasin' the puir wee lass.' There was a long pause before Jeannie said, 'Are ye sure?' 'Aye, Kelda,' said Big Yan. 'Once you hear that buzzin' ye never forget it.' Jeannie bit her lip. Then, looking a little pale, she said, 'Ye said she's got the makin's o' a powerful hag, Rob?' 'Aye, but nae one in his'try has survived a hiver! Ye cannae kill it, ye cannae stop it, ye cannae-' 'But wuz ye no' tellin' me how the big wee girl even fought the Quin and won?' said Jeannie. "Wanged her wi' a skillet, ye said. That means she's good, aye? If she is a true hag, she'll find a way hersel'. We all ha' to dree our weird. Whatever's out there, she's got to face it. If she cannae, she's no true hag.' Page 14 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt 'Aye, but a hiver's worse than-' Rob began. 'She's off to learn hagglin' from other hags,' said Jeannie. 'An' I must learn keldarin' all by myself. Ye must hope she learns as fast as me, Rob Anybody.' Chapter 2 Twoshirts and Two Noses Twoshirts was just a bend in the road, with a name. There was nothing there but an inn for the coaches, a blacksmith's shop, and a small store with the word SOUVENIRS written optimistically on a scrap of cardboard in the window. And that was it. Around the place, separated by fields and scraps of woodland, were the houses of people for whom Twoshirts was, presumably, the big city. Every world is full of places like Twoshirts. They are places for people to come from, not go to. It sat and baked silently in the hot afternoon sunlight. Right in the middle of the road an elderly spaniel, mottled brown and white, dozed in the dust. Twoshirts was bigger than the village back home and Tiffany had never seen souvenirs before. She went into the store and spent half a penny on a small wood carving of two shirts on a washing line, and two postcards entitled 'View of Twoshirts' which showed the souvenir shop and what was quite probably the same dog sleeping in the road. The little old lady behind the counter called her 'young lady' and said that Twoshirts was very popular later in the year, when people came from up to a mile around for the Cabbage-Macerating Festival. When Tiffany came out she found Miss Tick standing next to the sleeping dog, frowning back the way they'd come. Is there something the matter?' said Tiffany. 'What?' said Miss Tick, as if she'd forgotten that Tiffany existed. 'Oh . . . no. I just... I thought I... look, shall we go and have something to eat?' It took a while to find someone in the inn, but Miss Tick wandered into the kitchens and found a woman who promised them some scones and a cup of tea. She was actually quite surprised she'd promised that, since she hadn't intended to, it strictly speaking being her afternoon free until the coach came, but Miss Tick had a way of asking questions that got the answers she wanted. Miss Tick also asked for a fresh egg, not cooked, in its shell. Witches were also good at asking questions that weren't followed by the other person saying 'Why?' They sat and ate in the sun, on the bench outside the inn. Then Tiffany took out her diary. She had one in the dairy too, but that was for cheese and butter records. This one was personal. She'd bought it off a pedlar, cheap, because it was last year's. But, as he said, it had the same number of days. It also had a lock, a little brass thing on a leather flap. It had its own tiny key. It was the lock that had attracted Tiffany. At a certain age, you see the point of locks. She wrote down 'Twoshirts', and spent some time thinking before adding ya bend in the road'. Miss Tick kept staring at the road. 'Is there something wrong, Miss Tick?' Tiffany asked again, looking up. 'I'm . . . not sure. Is anyone watching us?' Tiffany looked around. Twoshirts slept in the heat. There was no one watching. 'No, Miss Tick.' The teacher removed her hat and took from inside it a couple of pieces of wood and a reel of black thread. She rolled up her sleeves, looking around quickly in case Page 15 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt Twoshirts had sprouted a population, then broke off a length of the thread and picked up the egg. Egg, thread and fingers blurred for a few seconds and there was the egg, hanging from Miss Tick's fingers in a neat little black net. Tiffany was impressed. But Miss Tick hadn't finished. She began to draw things from her pockets, and a witch generally has a lot of pockets. There were some beads, a couple of feathers, a glass lens and one or two strips of coloured paper. These all got threaded into the tangle of wood and cotton. 'What is that?' said Tiffany. 'It's a shamble,' said Miss Tick, concentrating. 'Is it magic?' 'Not exactly. It's trickery.' Miss Tick lifted her left hand. Feathers and beads and egg and pocket junk spun in the web of threads. 'Hmm,' she said. 'Now let me see what I can see . . .' She pushed the fingers of her right hand into the spiderwork of threads and pulled . . . Egg and glass and beads and feathers danced through the tangle, and Tiffany was sure that at one point one thread had passed straight through another. 'Oh,' she said. 'It's like Cat's Cradle!' 'You've played that, have you?' said Miss Tick vaguely, still concentrating. 'I can do all the common shapes,' said Tiffany. 'The Jewels and The Cradle and The House and The Flock and The Three Old Ladies, One With A Squint, Carrying The Bucket Of Fish To Market When They Meet The Donkey . . . although you need two people for that one, and I only ever did it once, and Betsy Tupper scratched her nose at the wrong moment and I had to get some scissors to cut her loose Miss Tick's fingers worked like a loom. 'Funny it should be a children's toy now,' she said. 'Aha . . .' She stared into the complex web she had created. 'Can you see anything?' said Tiffany. If I may be allowed to concentrate, child? Thank you . . .' Out in the road the sleeping dog woke, yawned and pulled itself to its feet. It ambled over to the bench the two of them were sitting on, gave Tiffany a reproachful look and then curled up by her feet. It smelled of old damp carpets. There's . . . something . . .' said Miss Tick, very quietly. Panic gripped Tiffany. Sunlight reflected off the white dust of the road and the stone wall opposite. Bees hummed between the little yellow flowers that grew on top of the wall. By Tiffany's feet, the spaniel snorted and farted occasionally. But it was all wrong. She could feel the pressure bearing down on her, pushing at her, pushing at the landscape, squeezing it under the bright light of day. Miss Tick and her cradle of threads were motionless beside her, frozen in the moment of bright horror. Only the threads moved, by themselves. The egg danced, the glass glinted, the beads slid and jumped from string to string-The egg burst. The coach rolled in. It arrived dragging the world behind it, in a cloud of dust and noise and hooves. It blotted out the sun. Doors opened. Harness jingled. Horses steamed. The spaniel sat up and wagged its tail hopefully. Page 16 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt The pressure went - no, it fled. Beside Tiffany, Miss Tick pulled out a handkerchief and started to wipe egg off her dress. The rest of the shamble had disappeared into a pocket with remarkable speed. She smiled at Tiffany, and kept the smile as she spoke, making herself look slightly mad. 'Don't get up, don't do anything, just be as quiet as a little mouse,' she said. Tiffany felt in no state to do anything but sit still; she felt like you feel when you wake up after a nightmare. The richer passengers got out of the coach, and the poorer ones climbed down from the roof. Grumbling and stamping their feet, trailing road dust behind them, they disappeared. 'Now,' said Miss Tick, when the inn door had swung shut, 'we're . . . we're going to go for a - a stroll. See that little wood up there? That's where we're heading. And when Mr Crabber the carter sees your father tomorrow he'll say he - he dropped you off here just before the coach arrived and - and - and everyone will be happy and no one will have lied. That's important.' 'Miss Tick?' said Tiffany, picking up the suitcase. 'Yes?' 'What happened just now?' 'I don't know,' said the witch. 'Do you feel all right?' 'Er . . . yes. You've got some yolk on your hat.' And you're very nervous, Tiffany thought. That was the most worrying part. 'I'm sorry about your dress,' she added. 'It's seen a lot worse,' said Miss Tick. 'Let's go.' 'Miss Tick?' said Tiffany again as they trudged away. 'Er, yes?' 'You are very nervous,' said Tiffany. 'If you told me why, that means there's two of us, which is only half the nervousness each.' Miss Tick sighed. 'It was probably nothing,' she said. 'Miss Tick, the egg exploded!' 'Yes. Um. A shamble, you see, can be used as a simple magic detector and amplifier. It's actually very crude, but it's always useful to make one in times of distress and confusion. I think I ... probably didn't make it right. And sometimes you do get big discharges of random magic' 'You made it because you were worried,' said Tiffany. 'Worried? Certainly not. I am never worried!' snapped Miss Tick. 'However, since you raise the subject, I was concerned. Something was making me uneasy. Something close, I think. It was probably nothing. In fact I feel a lot better now we're leaving.' But you don't look it, Tiffany thought. And I was wrong. Two people means twice as much nervousness each. But she was sure there was nothing magical about Twoshirts. It was just a bend in the road. Twenty minutes later the passengers came out to get into the coach. The coachman did notice that the horses were sweating, and wondered why he could hear a swarm of flies when there were no flies to be seen. The dog that had been lying in the road was found later cowering in one of the inn's stables, whimpering. Page 17 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt The wood was about half an hour's walk away, with Miss Tick and Tiffany taking turns to carry the suitcase. It was nothing special, as woods go, being mostly full-grown beech, although once you know that beech drips unpleasant poisons on the ground beneath it to keep it clear it's not quite the timber you thought it was. They sat on a log and waited for sunset. Miss Tick told Tiffany about shambles. They're not magical then?' said Tiffany. 'No. They're something to be magical through.' 'You mean like spectacles help you see but don't see for you?' 'That's right, well done! Is a telescope magical? Certainly not. It's just glass in a tube, but with one you could count the dragons on the moon. And . . . well, have you ever used a bow? No, probably not. But a shamble can act like a bow, too. A bow stores up muscle power as the archer draws it, and sends a heavy arrow much further than the archer could actually throw it. You can make one out of anything, so long as it... looks right.' 'And then you can tell if magic is happening?' 'Yes, if that's what you're looking for. When you're good at it you can use it to help you do magic yourself, to really focus on what you have to do. You can use it for protection, like a curse-net, or to send a spell, or ... well, it's like those expensive penknives, you know? The ones with the tiny saw and the scissors and the toothpick? Except that I don't think any witch has ever used a shamble as a toothpick, ha ha. All young witches should learn how to make a shamble. Miss Level will help you.' Tiffany looked around the wood. The shadows were growing longer, but they didn't worry her. Bits of Miss Tick's teachings floated through her head: Always face what you fear. Have just enough money, never too much, and some string. Even if it's not your fault it's your responsibility. Witches deal with things. Never stand between two mirrors. Never cackle. Do what you must do. Never lie, but you don't always have to be honest. Never wish. Especially don't wish upon a star, which is astronomically stupid. Open your eyes, and then open your eyes again. 'Miss Level has got long grey hair, has she?' she said. 'Oh, yes.' 'And she's quite a tall lady, just a bit fat, and she wears quite a lot of necklaces,' Tiffany went on. 'And glasses on a chain. And surprisingly high-heeled boots.' Miss Tick wasn't a fool. She looked around the clearing. 'Where is she?' she said. 'Standing by the tree over there,' said Tiffany. Even so, Miss Tick had to squint. What Tiffany had noticed was that witches filled space. In a way that was almost impossible to describe, they seemed to be more real than others around them. They just showed up more. But if they didn't want to be seen, they became amazingly hard to notice. They didn't hide, they didn't magically fade away, although it might seem like that, but if you had to describe the room afterwards you'd swear there hadn't been a witch in it. They just seemed to let themselves get lost. 'Ah yes, well done,' said Miss Tick. 'I was wondering when you'd notice.' Ha! thought Tiffany. Miss Level got realer as she walked towards them. She was all in black, but clattered slightly as she walked because of all the black jewellery she wore, and she did have glasses, too, which struck Tiffany as odd for a witch. Miss Level reminded Tiffany Page 18 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt of a happy hen. And she had two arms, the normal number. 'Ah, Miss Tick,' she said. 'And you must be Tiffany Aching.' Tiffany knew enough to bow; witches don't curtsy (unless they want to embarrass Roland). 'I'd just like to have a word with Miss Level, Tiffany, if you don't mind,' said Miss Tick, meaningfully. 'Senior witch business.' Ha! thought Tiffany again, because she liked the sound of it. 'I'll just go and have a look at a tree then, shall I?' she said with what she hoped was withering sarcasm. 1 should use the bushes if I was you, dear,' Miss Level called after her. 'I don't like stopping once we're airborne.' There were some holly bushes that made a decent screen, but after being talked to as though she were ten years old Tiffany would rather have allowed her bladder to explode. I beat the Queen of the Fairies! she thought as she wandered into the wood. All right, I'm not sure how, because it's all like a dream now, but I did do it! She was angry at being sent away like that. A little respect wouldn't hurt, would it? That's what the old witch Mistress Weatherwax had said, wasn't it? 'I show you respect, as you in turn will respect me.' Mistress Weatherwax, the witch who all the other witches secretly wanted to be like, had showed her respect, so you'd think the others could make a bit of effort in that department. She said: 'See me.' . . . and stepped out of herself and walked away towards Miss Tick and Miss Level, in her invisible ghost body. She didn't dare look down, in case she saw her feet weren't there. When she turned and looked back at her solid body, she saw it standing demurely by the holly bushes, clearly too far away to be listening to anyone's conversation. As Tiffany stealthily drew nearer she heard Miss Tick say: '- but quite frighteningly precocious.' 'Oh dear. I've never got on very well with clever people,' said Miss Level. 'Oh, she's a good child at heart,' said Miss Tick, which annoyed Tiffany rather more than 'frighteningly precocious' had. 'Of course, you know my situation,' said Miss Level as the invisible Tiffany inched closer. 'Yes, Miss Level, but your work does you great credit. That's why Mistress Weatherwax suggested you.' 'But I am afraid I'm getting a bit absent-minded,' Miss Level worried. 'It was terrible flying down here, because like a big silly I left my long-distance spectacles on my other nose. . .' Her other nose? thought Tiffany. Both witches froze, at exactly the same time. I'm without an egg!' said Miss Tick. 'I have a beetle in a matchbox against just such an emergency!' squeaked Miss Level. Their hands flew to their pockets and pulled out string and feathers and bits of coloured cloth-They know I'm here! thought Tiffany, and whispered, 'See me not!' Page 19 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt She blinked and rocked on her heels as she arrived back in the patient little figure by the holly bushes. In the distance, Miss Level was frantically making a shamble and Miss Tick was staring around the wood. 'Tiffany, come here at once!' she shouted. 'Yes, Miss Tick,' said Tiffany, trotting forward like a good girl. They spotted me somehow, she thought. Well, they are witches, after all, even if in my opinion they're not very good ones-Then the pressure came. It seemed to squash the wood flat and filled it with the horrible feeling that something is standing right behind you. Tiffany sank to her knees with her hands over her ears and a pain like the worst earache squeezing her head. 'Finished!' shouted Miss Level. She held up a shamble. It was quite different from Miss Tick's, and made up of string and crow feathers and glittery black beads and, in the middle, an ordinary matchbox. Tiffany yelled. The pain was like red-hot needles and her ears filled with the buzz of flies. The matchbox exploded. And then there was silence, and birdsong, and nothing to show that anything had happened apart from a few pieces of matchbox spiralling down, along with an iridescent fragment of wing case. 'Oh dear,' said Miss Level. 'He was quite a good beetle, as beetles go . . .' "Tiffany, are you all right?' said Miss Tick. Tiffany blinked. The pain had gone as fast as it had arrived, leaving only a burning memory. She scrambled to her feet. 'I think so, Miss Tick!' Then a word, if you please!' said Miss Tick, marching over to a tree and standing there looking stern. 'Yes, Miss Tick?' said Tiffany. 'Did you . . . do anything?' said Miss Tick. 'You haven't been summoning things, have you?' 'No! Anyway, I don't know how to!' said Tiffany. 'It's not your little men then, is it?' said Miss Tick doubtfully. 'They're not mine, Miss Tick. And they don't do that sort of thing. They just shout "Crivens!" and then start kicking people on the ankle. You definitely know it's them.' 'Well, whatever it was, it seems to have gone,' said Miss Level. 'And we should go, too, otherwise we'll be flying all night.' She reached behind another tree and picked up a bundle of firewood. At least, it looked exactly like that, because it was supposed to. 'My own invention,' she said, modestly. 'One never knows down here on the plains, does one? And the handle shoots out by means of this button- Oh, I'm so sorry, it sometimes does that. Did anyone see where it went?' The handle was located in a bush, and screwed back in. Tiffany, a girl who listened to what people said, watched Miss Level closely. She definitely had only one nose on her face, and it was sort of uncomfortable to imagine where anyone might have another one and what they'd use it for. Then Miss Level pulled some rope out of her pocket and passed it to someone who wasn't there. That's what she did, Tiffany was sure. She didn't drop it, she didn't throw it, she just held it out and let go, as though she'd thought she was hanging it on an invisible hook. It landed in a coil on the moss. Miss Level looked down, then saw Tiffany staring at her and laughed nervously. Page 20 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt 'Silly me,' she said. 'I thought I was over there! I'll forget my own head next!' 'Well ... if it's the one on top of your neck,' said Tiffany cautiously, still thinking about the other nose, 'you've still got it.' The old suitcase was roped to the bristle end of the broomstick, which now floated calmly a few feet above the ground. 'There, that'll make a nice comfy seat,' said Miss Level, now the bag of nerves that most people turned into when they felt Tiffany staring at them. 'If you'd just hang on behind me. Er. That's what I normally do.' 'You normally hang on behind you?' said Tiffany. 'How can-?' "Tiffany, I've always encouraged your forthright way of asking questions,' said Miss Tick loudly. 'And now, please, I would love to congratulate you on your mastery of silence! Do climb on behind Miss Level, I'm sure she'll want to leave while you've still got some daylight.' The stick bobbed a little as Miss Level climbed onto it. She patted it, invitingly. 'You're not frightened of heights, are you, dear?' she said as Tiffany climbed on. 'No,' said Tiffany. 'I shall drop in when I come up for the Witch Trials,' said Miss Tick as Tiffany felt the stick rise gently under her. 'Take care!' It turned out that when Miss Level had asked Tiffany if she was scared of heights, it had been the wrong question. Tiffany was not afraid of heights at all. She could walk past tall trees without batting an eyelid. Looking up at huge towering mountains didn't bother her a bit. What she was afraid of, although she hadn't realized it up until this point, was depths. She was afraid of dropping such a long way out of the sky that she'd have time to run out of breath screaming before hitting the rocks so hard that she'd turn to a sort of jelly and all her bones would break into dust. She was, in fact, afraid of the ground. Miss Level should have thought before asking the question. Tiffany clung to Miss Level's belt and stared at the cloth of her dress. 'Have you ever flown before, Tiffany?' asked the witch as they rose. 'Gnf!' squeaked Tiffany. 'If you like, I could take us round in a little circle,' said Miss Level. 'We should have a fine view of your country from up here.' The air was rushing past Tiffany now. It was a lot colder. She kept her eyes fixed firmly on the cloth. 'Would you like that?' said Miss Level, raising her voice as the wind grew louder. 'It won't take a moment!' Tiffany didn't have time to say no, and in any case was sure she'd be sick if she opened her mouth. The stick lurched under her and the world went sideways. She didn't want to look, but remembered that a witch is always inquisitive to the point of nosiness. To stay a witch, she had to look. She risked a glance and saw the world under her. The red-gold light of sunset was flowing across the land, and down there were the long shadows of Twoshirts and, further away, the woods and villages all the way back to the long curved hill of the Chalk - - which glowed red, and the white carving of the chalk Horse burned gold like some giant's pendant. Tiffany stared at it; in the fading light of the afternoon, with the shadows racing away from the sliding sun, it looked alive. Page 21 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt At that moment she wanted to jump off, fly back, get there by closing her eyes and clicking her heels together, do anything-No! She 'd bundled those thoughts away, hadn 't she? She had to learn, and there was no one on the hills to teach her! But the Chalk was her world. She walked on it every day. She could feel its ancient life under her feet. The land was in her bones, just as Granny Aching had said. It was in her name, too; in the old language of the Nac Mac Feegle her name sounded like 'Land Under Wave', and in the eye of her mind she 'd walked in those deep prehistoric seas when the Chalk had been formed, in a million-year rain made of the shells of tiny creatures. She trod a land made of life, and breathed it in, and listened to it, and thought its thoughts for it. To see it now, small, alone, in a landscape that stretched to the end of the world, was too much. She had to go back to it-For a moment the stick wobbled in the air. No! I know I must go! It jerked back, and there was a sickening feeling in her stomach as the stick curved away towards the mountains. 'A little bit of turbulence there, I think,' said Miss Level over her shoulder. 'By the way, did Miss Tick warn you about the thick woolly pants, dear?' Tiffany, still shocked, mumbled something which managed to sound like 'no'. Miss Tick had mentioned the pants, and how a sensible witch wore at least three pairs to stop ice forming, but she had forgotten about them. 'Oh dear,' said Miss Level. 'Then we'd better hedge-hop.' The stick dropped like a stone. Tiffany never forgot that ride, though she often tried to. They flew just above the ground, which was the blur just below her feet. Every time they came to a fence or a hedge Miss Level would jump it with a cry of 'Here we go!' or 'Upsadaisy!' which was probably meant to make Tiffany feel better. It didn't. She threw up twice. Miss Level flew with her head bent so far down as to be almost level with the stick, thus getting the maximum aerodynamic advantage from the pointy hat. It was quite a stubby one, only about nine inches high, rather like a clown hat without the bobbles; Tiffany found out later that this was so that she didn't have to take it off when entering low-ceilinged cottages. After a while - an eternity from Tiffany's point of view - they left the farmlands behind and started to fly through foothills. Before long they'd left trees behind, too, and the stick was flying above the fast white waters of a wide river, studded with boulders. Spray splashed over their boots. She heard Miss Level yell above the roar of the river and the rush of the wind: 'Would you mind leaning back? This bit's a little tricky!' Tiffany risked peeking over the witch's shoulder, and gasped. There was not much water on the Chalk, except for the little streams that people called bournes, which flowed down the valleys in late winter and dried up completely in the summer. Big rivers flowed around it, of course, but they were slow and tame. The water ahead wasn't slow and tame. It was vertical. The river ran up into the dark blue sky, soared up to the early stars. The broom followed it. Tiffany leaned back and screamed, and went on screaming as the broomstick tilted in the air and Page 22 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt climbed up the waterfall. She'd known the word, certainly, but the word hadn't been so big, so wet, and above all it hadn't been so loud. The mist of it drenched her. The noise pounded on her ears. She held onto Miss Level's belt as they climbed through spray and thunder and felt that she'd slip at any minute - - and then she was thrown forward, and the noise of the fall died away behind her as the stick, now once again going 'along' rather than 'up', sped across the surface of a river that, while still leaping and foaming, at least had the decency to do it on the ground. There was a bridge high above, and walls of cold rock hemmed in the river on either side, but the walls got lower and the river got slower and the air got warmer again until the broomstick skimmed across calm flat water that probably didn't know what was going to happen to it. Silver fish zigzagged away as they passed over the surface. After a while Miss Tick sent them curving up across new fields, smaller and greener than the ones at home. There were trees again, and little woods in deep valleys. But the last of the sunlight was draining away and, soon, all there was below was darkness. Tiffany must have dozed off, clinging onto Miss Level, because she felt herself jerk awake as the broomstick stopped in mid-air. The ground was some way below, but someone had set out a ring of what turned out to be candle ends, burning in old jars. Delicately, turning slowly, the stick settled down until it stopped just above the grass. At this point Tiffany's legs decided to untwist, and she fell off. 'Up we get!' said Miss Level cheerfully, picking her up. 'You did very well!' 'Sorry about screaming and being sick . . .' Tiffany mumbled, tripping over one of the jars and knocking the candle out. She tried to make out anything in the dark, but her head was spinning. 'Who lit candles, Miss Level?' 'I did. Let's get inside, it's getting chilly-' Miss Level began. 'Oh, by magic,' said Tiffany, still dizzy. 'Well, it can be done by magic, yes,' said Miss Level. 'But I prefer matches, which are of course a lot less effort and quite magical in themselves, when you come to think about it.' She untied the suitcase from the stick and said: 'Here we are, then! I do hope you'll like it here!' There was that cheerfulness again. Even when she felt sick and dizzy, and quite interested in knowing where the privy was as soon as possible, Tiffany still had ears that worked and a mind that, however much she tried, wouldn't stop thinking. And it thought: That cheerfulness has got cracks around the edges. Something isn't right here . . . Chapter 3 Latry There was a cottage, but Tiffany couldn't see much in the gloom. Apple trees crowded in around it. Something hanging from a branch brushed against her as, walking unsteadily, she followed Miss Level. It swung away with a tinkling sound. There was the sound of rushing water, too, some way away. Miss Level was opening a door. It led into a small, brightly lit and amazingly tidy kitchen. A fire was burning briskly in the iron stove. 'Urn . . . I'm supposed to be the apprentice,' said Tiffany, still groggy from the Page 23 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt flight. 'I'll make something to drink if you show me where things are-' 'No!' Miss Level burst out, raising her hands. The shout seemed to have shocked her, because she was shaking when she lowered them. 'No -1 -1 wouldn't dream of it,' she said in a more normal voice, trying to smile. 'You've had a long day. I'll show you to your room and where things are, and I'll bring you up some stew, and you can be an apprentice tomorrow. No rush.' Tiffany looked at the bubbling pot on the iron stove, and the loaf on the table. It was fresh baked bread, she could smell that. The trouble with Tiffany was her Third Thoughts.[First Thoughts are the everyday thoughts. Everyone has those. Second Thoughts are the thoughts you think about the way you think. People who enjoy thinking have those. Third Thoughts are thoughts that watch the world and think all by themselves. They're rare, and often troublesome. Listening to them is part of witchcraft.] They thought: She lives by herself. Who lit the fire? A bubbling pot needs stirring from time to time. Who stirred it? And someone lit the candles. Who? 'Is there anyone else staying here, Miss Level?' she said. Miss Level looked desperately at the pot and the loaf and back to Tiffany. 'No, there's only me,' she said, and somehow Tiffany knew she was telling the truth. Or a truth, anyway. 'In the morning?' said Miss Level, almost pleading. She looked so forlorn that Tiffany actually felt sorry for her. She smiled. 'Of course, Miss Level,' she said. There was a brief tour by candlelight. There was a privy not far from the cottage; it was a two-holer, which Tiffany thought was a bit odd but, of course, maybe other people had lived here once. There was also a room just for a bath, a terrible waste of space by the standards of Home Farm. It had its own pump and a big boiler for heating the water. This was definitely posh. Her bedroom was a ... nice room. Nice was a very good word. Everything had frills. Anything that could have a cover on it was covered. Some attempt had been made to make the room. . . jolly, as if being a bedroom was a jolly wonderful thing to be. Tiffany's room back on the farm had a rag rug on the floor, a water jug and basin on a stand, a big wooden box for clothes, an ancient dolls' house and some old calico curtains and that was pretty much it. On the farm, bedrooms were for shutting your eyes in. This room had a chest of drawers. The contents of Tiffany's suitcase filled one drawer easily. The bed made no sound when Tiffany sat on it. Her old bed had a mattress so old that it had a comfy hollow in it, and the springs all made different noises; if she couldn't sleep she could move various parts of her body and play The Bells of St Ungulants on the springs - cling twing glong, gling ping bloyinnng, dlink plang dyonnng, ding ploink. This room smelled different, too. It smelled of spare rooms, and other people's soap. At the bottom of her suitcase was a small box that Mr Block the farm's carpenter had made for her. He did not go in for delicate work, and it was quite heavy. In it, she kept.. . keepsakes. There was a piece of chalk with a fossil in it, which was quite rare, and Page 24 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt her personal butter stamp (which showed a witch on a broomstick) in case she got a chance to make butter here, and a dobby stone, which was supposed to be lucky because it had a hole in it. (She'd been told that when she was seven, and had picked it up. She couldn't quite see how the hole made it lucky, but since it had spent a lot of time in her pocket, and then safe and sound in the box, it probably was more fortunate than most stones, which got kicked around and run over by carts and so on.) There was also a blue-and-yellow wrapper from an old packet of Jolly Sailor tobacco, and a buzzard feather, and an ancient flint arrowhead wrapped up carefully in a piece of sheep's wool. There were plenty of these on the Chalk. The Nac Mac Feegle used them for spear points. She lined these up neatly on the top of the chest of drawers, alongside her diary, but they didn't make the place look more homely. They just looked lonely. Tiffany picked up the old wrapper and the sheep's wool and sniffed them. They weren't quite the smell of the shepherding hut, but they were close enough to it to bring tears to her eyes. She had never spent a night away from the Chalk before. She knew the word 'homesickness' and wondered whether this cold, thin feeling growing inside her was what it felt like-Someone knocked at the door. 'It's me,' said a muffled voice. Tiffany jumped off the bed and opened the door. Miss Level came in with a tray that held a bowl of beef stew and some bread. She put it down on the little table by the bed. 'If you put it outside the door when you're finished, I'll take it down later,' she said. 'Thank you very much,' said Tiffany. Miss Level paused at the door. 'It's going to be so nice having someone to talk to, apart from myself,' she said. 'I do hope you won't want to leave, Tiffany.' Tiffany gave her a happy little smile, then waited until the door had shut and she'd heard Miss Level's footsteps go downstairs before tiptoeing to the window and checking there were no bars in it. There had been something scary about Miss Level's expression. It was sort of hungry and hopeful and pleading and frightened, all at once. Tiffany also checked that she could bolt the bedroom door on the inside. The beef stew tasted, indeed, just like beef stew and not, just to take an example completely and totally at random, stew made out of the last poor girl who'd worked here. To be a witch, you have to have a very good imagination. Just now, Tiffany was wishing that hers wasn't quite so good. But Mistress Weatherwax and Miss Tick wouldn't have let her come here if it was dangerous, would they? Well, would they? They might. They just might. Witches didn't believe in making things too easy. They assumed you used your brains. If you didn't use your brains, you had no business being a witch. The world doesn't make things easy, they'd say. Learn how to learn fast. But . . . they'd give her a chance, wouldn't they? Of course they would. Probably. She'd nearly finished the not-made-of-people-at-all-honestly stew when something tried to take the bowl out of her hand. It was the gentlest of tugs, and when she automatically pulled it back, the tugging stopped immediately. O-K, she thought. Another strange thing. Well, this is a witch's cottage. Something pulled at the spoon but, again, stopped as soon as she tugged back. Tiffany put the empty bowl and spoon back on the tray. Page 25 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt 'All right,' she said, hoping she sounded not scared at all. I've finished.' The tray rose into the air and drifted gently towards the door where it landed with a faint tinkle. Up on the door, the bolt slid back. The door opened. The tray rose up and sailed through the doorway. The door shut. The bolt slid across. Tiffany heard the rattle of the spoon as, somewhere on the dark landing, the tray moved on. It seemed to Tiffany that it was vitally important that she thought before doing anything. And so she thought: It would be stupid to run around screaming because your tray had been taken away. After all, whatever had done it had even had the decency to bolt the door after itself, which meant that it respected her privacy, even while it ignored it. She cleaned her teeth at the washstand, got into her night-gown and slid into the bed. She blew out the candle. After a moment she got up, re-lit the candle and with some effort dragged the chest of drawers in front of the door. She wasn't quite certain why, but she felt better for doing it. She lay back in the dark again. Tiffany was used to sleeping while, outside on the downland, sheep baa'd and sheep bells occasionally went tonk. Up here, there were no sheep to baa and no bells to tonk and, every time one didn't, she woke up thinking, What was that? But she did get to sleep eventually, because she remembered waking up in the middle of the night to hear the chest of drawers very slowly slide back to its original position. Tiffany woke up, still alive and not chopped up, when the dawn was just turning grey. Unfamiliar birds were singing. There were no sounds in the cottage, and she thought: I'm the apprentice, aren't I? I'm the one who should be cleaning up and getting the fire lit. I know how this is supposed to go. She sat up and looked around the room. Her old clothes had been neatly folded on top of the chest of drawers. The fossil and the lucky stone and the other things had gone, and it was only after a frantic search that she found them back in the box in her suitcase. 'Now, look,' she said to the room in general. 'I am a hag, you know. If there are any Nac Mac Feegle here, step out this minute!' Nothing happened. She hadn't expected anything to happen. The Nac Mac Feegle weren't particularly interested in tidying things up, anyway. As an experiment she took the candlestick off the bedside table, put it on the chest of drawers and stood back. More nothing happened. She turned to look out of the window and, as she did so, there was a faint tint noise. When she spun round, the candlestick was back on the table. Well. . . today was going to be a day when she got answers. Tiffany enjoyed the slightly angry feeling. It stopped her thinking about how much she wanted to go home. She went to put her dress on and realized that there was something soft yet crackly in a pocket. Oh, how could she have forgotten? But it had been a busy day, a very busy day, and maybe she'd wanted to forget, anyway. She pulled out Roland's present and opened the white tissue paper carefully. Page 26 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt It was a necklace. It was the Horse. Tiffany stared at it. Not what a horse looks like, but what a horse be ... It had been carved in the turf back before history began, by people who had managed to convey in a few flowing lines everything a horse was: strength, grace, beauty and speed, straining to break free of the hill. And now someone - someone clever and, therefore, probably also someone expensive - had made it out of silver. It was flat, just like it was on the hillside and, just like the Horse on the hillside, some parts of it were not joined to the rest of the body. The crafts-man, though, had joined these carefully together with tiny silver chain, so that when Tiffany held it up in astonishment it was all there, moving-while-standing-still in the morning light. She had to put it on. And . . . there was no mirror, not even a tiny hand one. Oh, well. . . 'See me,' said Tiffany. And far away, down on the plains, something that had lost the trail awoke. Nothing happened for a moment, and then the mist on the fields parted as something invisible started to move, making a noise like a swarm of flies . . . Tiffany shut her eyes, took a couple of small steps sideways, a few steps forward, turned round and carefully opened her eyes again. There she stood, in front of her, as still as a picture. The Horse looked very well on the new dress, silver against green. She wondered how much it must have cost Roland. She wondered why. 'See me not,' she said. Slowly she took the necklace off, wrapped it up again in its tissue paper and put it in the box with the other things from home. Then she found one of the postcards from Twoshirts, and a pencil, and with care and attention, wrote Roland a short thank-you note. After a flash of guilt she carefully used the other postcard to tell her parents that she was completely still alive. Then, thoughtfully, she went downstairs. It had been dark last night, so she hadn't noticed the posters stuck up all down the stairs. They were from circuses, and were covered with clowns and animals and that old-fashioned poster lettering where no two lines of type are the same. They said things like: Thrills Galore! Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! Professor Monty Bladder's Three-Ring Circus Cabinet of Curiosities!! In His Actual Mouth!!! See the Horse With His Head Where His Tail Should Be! See the E gress!!!!! CLOWNS! CLOWNS! CLOWNS! The Flying Pastrami Brothers will defy Gravity, The Greatest Force in the Universe •without a net!* aS!S5S>S>S!5>5>S>S>S>S>®S>SJS>S53S>S>S>S>S>S>S>S>S>S>S>S>S>S>S>S>aS! See Clarence The Tap-Dancing l&ule! Wonder at isy a Page 27 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt * The Astounding Mind Reading Act * Wonder at Topsy and Tipsy And so it went on, right down to tiny print. They were strange, bright things to find in a little cottage in the woods. She found her way into the kitchen. It was cold and quiet, except for the ticking of a clock on the wall. Both the hands had fallen off the clock face, and lay at the bottom of the glass cover, so while the clock was still measuring time it wasn't inclined to tell anyone about it. As kitchens went, it was very tidy. In the cupboard drawer beside the sink, forks, spoons and knives were all in neat sections, which was a bit worrying. Every kitchen drawer Tiffany had ever seen might have been meant to be neat but over the years had been crammed with things that didn't quite fit, like big ladles and bent bottle-openers, which meant that they always stuck unless you knew the trick of opening them. Experimentally she took a spoon out of the spoon section, dropped it amongst the forks and shut the drawer. Then she turned her back. There was a sliding noise and a tinkle exactly like the tinkle a spoon makes when it's put back amongst the other spoons, who have missed it and are anxious to hear its tales of life amongst the frighteningly pointy people. This time she put a knife in with the forks, shut the drawer - and leaned on it. Nothing happened for a while, and then she heard the cutlery rattling. The noise got louder. The drawer began to shake. The whole sink began to tremble- 'All right,' said Tiffany, jumping back. 'Have it your way!' The drawer burst open, the knife jumped from section to section like a fish and the drawer slammed back. Silence. 'Who are you?' said Tiffany. No one replied. But she didn't like the feeling in the air. Someone was upset with her now. It had been a silly trick, anyway. She went out into the garden, quickly. The rushing noise she had heard last night had been made by a waterfall not far from the cottage. A little water-wheel pumped water into a big stone cistern, and there was a pipe that led into the house. The garden was full of ornaments. They were rather sad, cheap ones - bunny rabbits with mad grins, pottery deer with big eyes, gnomes with pointy red hats and expressions that suggested they were on bad medication. Things hung from the apple trees or were tied to posts all around the place. There were some dreamcatchers and curse-nets, which she sometimes saw hanging up outside cottages at home. Other things looked like big shambles, spinning and tinkling gently. Some . . . well, one looked like a bird made out of old brushes, but most looked like piles of junk. Odd junk, though. It seemed to Tiffany that some of it moved slightly as she went past. When she went back into the cottage, Miss Level was sitting at the kitchen table. So was Miss Level. There were, in fact, two of her. 'Sorry,' said the Miss Level on the right. 1 thought it was best to get it over with right now.' The two women were exactly alike. 'Oh, I see,' said Tiffany. 'You're twins.' 'No,' said the Miss Level on the left, I'm not. This might be a little difficult -' '- for you to understand,' said the other Miss Level. 'Let me see, now. You know -' Page 28 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt '- how twins are sometimes said to be able to share thoughts and feelings?' said the first Miss Level. Tiffany nodded. 'Well,' said the second Miss Level, 'I'm a bit more complicated than that, I suppose, because -' '- I'm one person with two bodies,' said the first Miss Level, and now they spoke like players in a tennis match, slamming the words back and forth. 'I wanted to break this to you -' '- gently, because some people get upset by the -' '- idea and find it creepy or -' '- just plain -' '- weird.' The two bodies stopped. 'Sorry about that last sentence,' said the Miss Level on the left. 1 only do that when I'm really nervous.' 'Er, do you mean that you both-' Tiffany began, but the Miss Level on the right said quickly, There is no both. There's just me, do you understand? I know it's hard. But I have a right right hand and a right left hand and a left right hand and a left left hand. It's all me. I can go shopping and stay home at the same time, Tiffany. If it helps, think of me as one -' '- person with four arms and -' '- four legs and -' '- four eyes.' All four of those eyes now watched Tiffany nervously. 'And two noses,' said Tiffany. 'That's right. You've got it. My right body is slightly clumsier than my left body, but I have better eyesight in my right pair of eyes. I'm human, just like you, except that there's more of me.' 'But one of you - that is, one half of you - came all the way to Twoshirts for me,' said Tiffany. 'Oh yes, I can split up like that,' said Miss Level. 'I'm quite good at it. But if there's a gap of more than twenty miles or so, I get rather clumsy. And now a cup of tea would do us both good, I think.' Before Tiffany could move both the Miss Levels stood up and crossed the kitchen. Tiffany watched one person make a cup of tea using four arms. There are quite a few things that need to be done to make a cup of tea and Miss Level did them all at once. The bodies stood side by side, passing things from hand to hand to hand, moving kettle and cups and spoon in a sort of ballet. 'When I was child they thought I was twins,' she said over one of her shoulders. 'And then . . . they thought I was evil,' she said over another shoulder. 'Are you?' said Tiffany. Both of Miss Level turned round, looking shocked. 'What kind of question is that to ask anyone?' she said. 'Um . . . the obvious one?' said Tiffany. 'I mean, if they said "Yes I am! Mwahahaha!", that would save a lot of trouble, wouldn't it?' Four eyes narrowed. Page 29 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt 'Mistress Weatherwax was right,' said Miss Level. 'She said you were a witch to your boots.' Inside, Tiffany beamed with pride. 'Well, the thing about the obvious,' said Miss Level, 'is that it so often isn't . . . Did Mistress Weatherwax really take off her hat to you?' 'Yes.' 'One day perhaps you'll know how much honour she did you,' said Miss Level. 'Anyway . . . no, I'm not evil. But I nearly became evil, I think. Mother died not long after I was born, my father was at sea and never came back-' 'Worse things happen at sea,' said Tiffany. It was something Granny Aching had told her. 'Yes, right, and probably they did, or possibly he never wanted to come back in any case,' said Miss Level dryly. 'And I was put in a charity home, bad food, horrible teachers, blah, blah, and I fell into the worst company possible, which was my own. It's amazing the tricks you can get up to when you've got two bodies. Of course, everyone thought I was twins. In the end I ran away to join the circus. Me! Can you imagine that?' Topsy and Tipsy, The Astounding Mind-Reading Act?' said Tiffany. Miss Level stood stock still, her mouth open. 'It was on the posters over the stairs,' Tiffany added. Now Miss Level relaxed. 'Oh, yes. Of course. Very . . . quick of you, Tiffany. Yes. You do notice things, don't you . . .' 'I know I wouldn't pay money to see the egress,' said Tiffany. 'It just means "the way out".' [Knowing the dictionary all the way through does have some uses.] 'Clever!' said Miss Level. 'Monty put that on a sign to keep people moving though the Believe-It-or-Not tent. "This way to the Egress!" Of course, people thought it was a female eagle or something, so Monty had a big man with a dictionary outside to show them they got exactly what they paid for! Have you ever been to a circus?' Once, Tiffany admitted. It hadn't been much fun. Things that try too hard to be funny often aren't. There had been a moth-eaten lion with practically no teeth, a tight-rope walker who was never more than a few feet above the ground, and a knife-thrower who threw a lot of knives at an elderly woman in pink tights on a big spinning wooden disc and completely failed to hit her every time. The only real amusement was afterwards, when a cart ran over the clown. 'My circus was a lot bigger,' said Miss Level when Tiffany mentioned this. 'Although as I recall our knife-thrower was also very bad at aiming. We had elephants and camels and a lion so fierce it bit a man's arm nearly off.' Tiffany had to admit that this sounded a lot more entertaining. 'And what did you do?' she said. 'Well, I just bandaged him up while I shoo'd the lion off him-' 'Yes, Miss Level, but I meant in the circus. Just reading your own mind?' Miss Level beamed at Tiffany. 'That, yes, and nearly everything else, too,' she said. 'With different wigs on I was the Stupendous Bohunkus Sisters. I juggled plates, you know, and wore costumes covered in sequins. And I helped with the high wire act. Not walking the wire, of course, but generally smiling and glittering at the audience. Everyone assumed I was twins, and circus people don't ask too many personal questions in any case. And then what with one thing and another, this and that... I came up here and Page 30 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt became a witch.' Both of Miss Level watched Tiffany carefully. That was quite a long sentence, that last sentence,' said Tiffany. 'Yes, it was, wasn't it,' said Miss Level. 'I can't tell you everything. Do you still want to stay? The last three girls didn't. Some people find me slightly . . . odd.' 'Urn . . . I'll stay,' said Tiffany, slowly. The thing that moves things about is a bit strange, though.' Miss Level looked surprised, and then said, 'Oh, do you mean Oswald?' There's an invisible man called Oswald who can get into my bedroom?' said Tiffany, horrified. 'Oh, no. That's just a name. Oswald isn't a man, he's an ondageist. Have you heard of poltergeists?' 'Er . . . invisible spirits that throw things around?' 'Good,' said Miss Level. 'Well, an ondageist is the opposite. They're obsessive about tidiness. He's quite handy around the house but he's absolutely dreadful if he's in the kitchen when I'm cooking. He keeps putting things away. I think it makes him happy. Sorry, I should have warned you, but he normally hides if anyone comes to the cottage. He's shy.' 'And he's a man? I mean, a male spirit?' 'How would you tell? He's got no body and he doesn't speak. I just called him Oswald because I always picture him as a worried little man with a dustpan and brush.' The left Miss Level giggled when the right Miss Level said this. The effect was odd and, if you thought that way, also creepy. 'Well, we are getting on well,' said the right Miss Level nervously. 'Is there anything more you want to know, Tiffany?' 'Yes, please,' said Tiffany. 'What do you want me to do? What do you do?' And mostly, it turned out, what Miss Level did was chores. Endless chores. You could look in vain for much broomstick tuition, spelling lessons or pointy-hat management. They were, mostly, the kind of chores that are just. . . chores. There was a small flock of goats, technically led by Stinky Sam who had a shed of his own and was kept on a chain, but really led by Black Meg, the senior nanny, who patiently allowed Tiffany to milk her and then, carefully and deliberately, put a hoof in the milk bucket. That's a goat's idea of getting to know you. A goat is a worrying thing if you're used to sheep, because a goat is a sheep with brains. But Tiffany had met goats before, because a few people in the village kept them for their milk, which was very nourishing. And she knew that with goats you had to use persykology.[Tiffany knew what psychology was, but it hadn't been a pronunciation dictionary.] If you got excited, and shouted, and hit them (hurting your hand, because it's like slapping a sack full of coat hangers) then they had Won and sniggered at you in goat language, which is almost all sniggering anyway. By day two, Tiffany learned that the thing to do was reach out and grab Black Meg's hind leg just as she lifted it up to kick the bucket, and lift it up further. That made her unbalanced and nervous and the other goats sniggered at her and Tiffany had Won. Next there were the bees. Miss Level kept a dozen hives, for the wax as much as the honey, in a little clearing that was loud with buzzing. She made Tiffany wear a veil and gloves before she opened a hive. She wore some, too. Page 31 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt 'Of course,' she observed, 'if you are careful and sober and well centred in your life the bees won't sting. Unfortunately, not all the bees have heard about this theory. Good morning, Hive Three, this is Tiffany, she will be staying with us for a while Tiffany half expected the whole hive to pipe up, in some horrible high-pitched buzz, 'Good morning, Tiffany!' It didn't. 'Why did you tell them that?' she asked. 'Oh, you have to talk to your bees,' said Miss Level. It's very bad luck not to. I generally have a little chat with them most evenings. News and gossip, that sort of thing. Every beekeeper knows about "Telling the Bees".' 'And who do the bees tell?' asked Tiffany. Both of Miss Level smiled at her. 'Other bees, I suppose,' she said. 'So ... if you knew how to listen to the bees, you'd know everything that was going on, yes?' Tiffany persisted. 'You know, it's funny you should say that,' said Miss Level. 'There have been a few rumours . . . But you'd have to learn to think like a swarm of bees. One mind with thousands of little bodies. Much too hard to do, even for me.' She exchanged a thoughtful glance with herself. 'Maybe not impossible, though.' Then there were the herbs. The cottage had a big herb garden, although it contained very little that you'd stuff a turkey with, and at this time of year there was still a lot of work to be done collecting and drying, especially the ones with important roots. Tiffany quite enjoyed that. Miss Level was big on herbs. There is something called the Doctrine of Signatures. It works like this: when the Creator of the Universe made helpful plants for the use of people, he (or in some versions, she) put little clues on them to give people hints. A plant useful for toothache would look like teeth, one to cure earache would look like an ear, one good for nose problems would drip green goo and so on. Many people believed this. You had to use a certain amount of imagination to be good at it (but not much in the case of Nose Dropwort) and in Tiffany's world the Creator had got a little more . . . creative. Some plants had writing on them, if you knew where to look. It was often hard to find and usually difficult to read, because plants can't spell. Most people didn't even know about it and just used the traditional method of finding out whether plants were poisonous or useful by testing them on some elderly aunt they didn't need, but Miss Level was pioneering new techniques that she hoped would mean life would be better for everyone (and, in the case of the aunts, often longer, too). This one is False Gentian,' she told Tiffany when they were in the long, cool workroom behind the cottage. She was holding up a weed triumphantly. 'Everyone thinks it's another toothache cure, but just look at the cut root by stored moonlight, using my blue magnifying glass Tiffany tried it, and read: 'GoOD FoR Colds May cors drowsniss Do nOt oprate heavE mashinry' 'Terrible spelling, but not bad for a daisy,' said Miss Level. 'You mean plants really tell you how to use them?' said Tiffany. 'Well, not all of them, and you have to know where to look,' said Miss Level. 'Look at this, for example, on the common walnut. You have to use the green magnifying glass by the light of a taper made from red cotton, thus . . .' Tiffany squinted. The letters were small and hard to read. Page 32 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt ' "May contain Nut"?' she ventured. 'But it's a nutshell. Of course it'll contain a nut. Er . . . won't it?' 'Not necessarily,' said Miss Level. 'It may, for example, contain an exquisite miniature scene wrought from gold and many coloured precious stones depicting a strange and interesting temple set in a far-off land. Well, it might,' she added, catching Tiffany's expression. 'There's no actual law against it. As such. The world is full of surprises.' That night Tiffany had a lot more to put in her diary. She kept it on top of her chest of drawers with a large stone on it. Oswald seemed to get the message about this, but he had started to polish the stone. And pull back, and rise above the cottage, and fly the eye across the night-time . . . Miles away, pass invisibly across something that is itself invisible, but which buzzes like a swarm of flies as it drags itself over the ground . . . Continue, the roads and towns and trees rushing behind you with zip-zip noises, until you come to the big city and, near the centre of the city, the high old tower, and beneath the tower the ancient magical university, and in the university the library, and in the library the bookshelves, and . . . the journey has hardly begun. Bookshelves stream past. The books are on chains. Some snap at you as you pass. And here is the section of the more dangerous books, the ones that are kept locked in cages or in vats of iced water or simply clamped between lead plates. But here is a book, faintly transparent and glowing with thaumic radiation, under a glass dome. Young wizards about to engage in research are encouraged to go and read it. The title is Hivers: A Dissertation Upon a Device of Amazing Cunning by Sensibility Bustle, D.M. Phil., B.El L., Patricius Professor of Magic. Most of the hand-written book is about how to construct a large and powerful magical apparatus to capture a hiver without harm to the user, but on the very last page Dr Bustle writes, or wrote: According to the ancient and famous volume JR.es Centum et Una Quas Magus Facere Totest [*'One Hundred and One Things a Wizard Can Do'] hivers are a type of demon (indeed, Professor Poledread classifies them as such in J Spy Demons, and Cuvee gives them a section under 'wandering spirits' in LIBER IMMANIS MONSTRORUM [The Monster Book of Monsters]. However, ancient texts discovered in the Cave of Jars by the ill-fated First Expedition to the Loko Region give quite a different story, which bears out my own not inconsiderable research. Hivers were formed in the first seconds of Creation. They are not alive but they have, as it were, the shape of life. They have no body, brain or thoughts of their own and a naked hiver is a sluggish thing indeed, tumbling gently through the endless night between the worlds. According to Poledread, most end up at the bottom of deep seas, or in the bellies of volcanoes, or drifting through the hearts of stars. Poledread was a very inferior thinker compared to myself, but in this case he is right. Yet a hiver does have the ability to fear and to crave. We cannot guess what frightens a hiver, but they seem to take refuge in bodies that have power of some sort - great strength, great intellect, great prowess with magic. In this sense they are like the Page 33 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt common hermit elephant of Howondaland, Elephantus SoUtarms, that will always seek the strongest mud hut as its shell. There is no doubt in my mind that hivers have advanced the cause of life. Why did fish crawl out of the sea? Why did humanity grasp such a dangerous thing as fire? Hivers, I believe, have been behind this, firing outstanding creatures of various species with the flame of necessary ambition which drove them onwards and upwards! What is it that a hiver seeks? What is it that drives them forward? What is it they want? This I shall find out! Oh, lesser wizards warn us that a hiver distorts the mind of its host, curdling it and inevitably causing an early death through brain fever. I say, Poppycock! People have always been afraid of what they do not understand! But I have understanding. This morning, at two o'clock, I captured a hiver with my device! And now it is locked inside my head. I can sense its memories, the memories of every creature it has inhabited. Yet, because of my superior intellect, I control the hiver. It does not control me. I do not feel that it has changed me in any way. My mind is as extraordinarily powerful as it always has been!! At this point the writing is smudgy, apparently because Bustle was beginning to dribble. Oh, how they have held me back over the years, those worms and cravens that have through sheer luck been allowed to call themselves my superiors! They laughed at me! BUT THEY ARE NOT LAUGHING NOW!!! Even those who called themselves my friends, OH YES, they did nothing but hinder me. What about the warnings? they said. Why did the jar you found the plans in have the words 'Do Not Open in Any Circumstances!' engraved in fifteen ancient languages on the lid? they said. Cowards! So- called 'chums'! Creatures inhabited by a hiver become paranoid and insane, they said! Hivers cannot be controlled, they squeaked!! DO ANY OF US BELIEVE THIS FOR ONE MINUTE??? Oh, what glories AWAIT!!! Now I have cleansed my life of such worthlessness!!! And as for those even now having the DISRESPECT YES DISRESPECT to hammer on my door because of what I did to the so-called Archchancellor and the College Council ... HOW DARE THEY JUDGE ME!!!!! Like all insects they have NO CONCEPT OF GREATNESS!!!!! I WILL SHOW THEM!!!!! But ... I insoleps... blit!!!!! hammeringggg dfgujf blort... . . . And there the writing ends. On a little card beside the book some wizard of former times has written: All that could be found of Professor Bustle was buried in a jar in the old Rose Garden. We advise all research students to spend some time there, and reflect upon the manner of his death. The moon was on the way to being full. A gibbous moon, it's called. It's one of the duller phases of the moon and seldom gets illustrated. The full moon and the crescent moon get all the publicity. Rob Anybody sat alone on the mound, just outside the fake rabbit hole, staring at the distant mountains where the snow on the peaks gleamed in the moonlight. Page 34 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt A hand touched him lightly on the shoulder. ' 'Tis not like ye to let someone creep up on ye, Rob Anybody/ said Jeannie, sitting down beside him. Rob Anybody sighed. 'Daft Wullie was telling me ye havenae been eatin' your meals,' said Jeannie, carefully. Rob Anybody sighed. 'And Big Yan said when ye wuz out huntin' today ye let a fox go past wi'out gieing it a good kickin'?' Rob sighed again. There was a faint pop followed by a glugging noise. Jeannie held out a tiny wooden cup. In her other hand was a small leather bottle. Fumes from the cup wavered in the air. 'This is the last o' the Special Sheep Liniment your big wee hag gave us at our wedding,' said Jeannie. 1 put it safely by for emergencies.' 'She's no' my big wee hag, Jeannie,' said Rob, without looking at the cup. 'She's oor big wee hag. An' I'll tell ye, Jeannie, she has it in her tae be the hag o' hags. There's power in her she doesnae dream of. But the hiver smells it.' 'Aye, well, a drink's a drink whomsoever ye call her,' said Jeannie, soothingly. She waved the cup under Rob's nose. He sighed, and looked away. Jeannie stood up quickly. 'Wullie! Big Yan! Come quick!' she yelled. 'He willnae tak' a drink! I think he's deidY 'Ach, this is no' the time for strong licker,' said Rob Anybody. 'My heart is heavy, wumman.' 'Quickly now!' Jeannie shouted down the hole . . . 'He's deid and still talkin'!' 'She's the hag o' these hills,' said Rob, ignoring her. 'Just like her granny. She tells the hills what they are, every day. She has them in her bones. She holds 'em in her heart. Wi'out her, I dinnae like tae think o' the future.' The other Feegles had come scurrying out of the hole and were looking uncertainly at Jeannie. 'Is somethin' wrong?' said Daft Wullie. 'Aye!' snapped the kelda. 'Rob willnae tak' a drink o' Special Sheep Liniment!' Wullie's little face screwed up in instant grief. 'Ach, the Big Man's deidY he sobbed. 'Oh waily waily waily-' 'Will ye hush yer gob, ye big mudlin!' shouted Rob Anybody, standing up. 'I am no' deid! I'm trying to have a moment o' existential dreed here, right? Crivens, it's a puir lookout if a man cannae feel the chilly winds o' Fate lashing aroound his nethers wi'out folks telling him he's deid, eh?' 'Ach, and I see ye've been talking to the toad again, Rob,' said Big Yan. 'He's the only one arroond here that used them lang words that tak' all day to walk the length of . . .' He turned to Jeannie. 'It's a bad case o' the thinkin' he's caught, missus. When a man starts messin' wi' the readin' and the writin' then he'll come doon with a dose o' the thinkin' soon enough. I'll fetch some o' the lads and we'll hold his heid under water until he stops doin' it, 'tis the only cure. It can kill a man, the thinkin'.' I'll wallop ye and ten like ye!' yelled Rob Anybody in Big Yan's face, raising his fists. I'm the Big Man in this clan and-' 'And I am the Kelda,' said their kelda, and one of the hiddlins of keldaring is to Page 35 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt use your voice like that: hard, cold, sharp, cutting the air like a dagger of ice. 'And I tell you men to go back doon the hole and dinnae show you faces back up here until I say. Not you, Rob Anybody Feegle! You stay here until I tell ye!' 'Oh waily waily-' Daft Wullie began, but Big Yan clapped a hand over his mouth and dragged him away quickly. When they were alone, and scraps of cloud were beginning to mass around the moon, Rob Anybody hung his head. 'I willnae go, Jeannie, if you say,' he said. 'Ach, Rob, Rob,' said Jeannie, beginning to cry. 'Ye dinnae understand. I want no harm to come to the big wee girl, truly I don't. But I cannae face thinkin' o' you out there fightin' this monster that cannae be killed! It's you I'm worried aboot, can ye no' seel' Rob put his arm around her. 'Aye, I see,' he said. 'I'm your wife, Rob, askin' ye not to go!' 'Aye, aye. I'll stay,' said Rob. Jeannie looked up to him. Tears shone in the moonlight. 'Ye mean it?' 'I never braked my word yet,' said Rob. 'Except to polis'men and other o' that kidney, ye ken, and they dinnae count.' 'Yell stay? Yell abide by my word?' said Jeannie, sniffing. Rob sighed. 'Aye. I will.' Jeannie was quiet for a while, and then said, in the sharp cold voice of a kelda: 'Rob Anybody Feegle, I'm tellin' ye now to go and save the big wee hag.' 'Whut?' said Rob Anybody, amazed. 'Jus' noo ye said I was tae stay-' 'That was as your wife, Rob. Now I'm telling you as your kelda.' Jeannie stood up, chin out and looking determined. 'If ye dinnae heed the word o' yer kelda, Rob Anybody Feegle, ye can be banished fra' the clan. Ye ken that. So you'll listen t' me guid. Tak' what men you need afore it's too late, and go to the mountains, and see that the big wee girl comes tae nae harm. And come back safe yoursel'. That is an order! Nay, 'tis more'n an order. 'Tis a geas I'm laying on ye! That cannae be brake!' 'But I-' Rob began, completely bewildered. 'I'm the kelda, Rob,' said Jeannie. 'I cannae run a clan with the Big Man pinin'. And the hills of our children need their hag. Everyone knows the land needs someone tae tell it whut it is.' There was something about the way Jeannie had said 'children'. Rob Anybody was not the fastest of thinkers, but he always got there in the end. 'Aye, Rob,' said Jeannie, seeing his expression. 'Soon I'll be birthing seven sons.' 'Oh,' said Rob Anybody. He didn't ask how she knew the number. Keldas just knew. 'That's greatV he said. 'And one daughter, Rob.' Rob blinked. 'A daughter? This soon?' 'Aye,' said Jeannie. 'That's wonderful good luck for a clan!' said Rob. 'Aye. So you've got something to come back safe to me for, Rob Anybody. An' I beg ye to use your heid for somethin' other than nuttin' folk.' 'I thank ye, Kelda,' said Rob Anybody. 'I'll do as ye bid. I'll tak' some lads and find the big wee hag, for the good o' the hills. It cannae be a good life for the puir wee Page 36 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt big wee thing, all alone and far fra' home, among strangers.' 'Aye,' said Jeannie, turning her face away. 'I ken that, too.' Chapter 4 PLAN At dawn Rob Anybody, watched with awe by his many brothers, wrote the word: PLN ... on a scrap of paper bag. Then he held it up. 'Plan, ye ken,' he said to the assembled Feegles. 'Now we have a Plan, all we got tae do is work out what tae do. Yes, Wullie?' 'Whut was that about this geese Jeannie hit ye with?' said Daft Wullie, lowering his hand. 'Not geese, geas,' said Rob Anybody. He sighed. 'I told yez. That means it's serious. It means I got tae bring back the big wee hag, an' no excuses, otherwise my soul gaes slam-bang intae the big cludgie in the sky. It's like a magical order. 'Tis a heavy thing, tae be under a geas.' 'Well, they're big birds,' said Daft Wullie. 'Wullie,' said Rob, patiently, 'ye ken I said I would tell ye when there wuz times you should've kept your big gob shut?' 'Aye, Rob.' 'Weel, that wuz one o' them times.' He raised his voice. 'Now, lads, ye ken all aboot hivers. They cannae be killed! But 'tis oor duty to save the big wee hag, so this is, like, a sooey-side mission and yell probably all end up back in the land o' the living doin' a borin' wee job. So ... I'm askin' for volunteers!' Every Feegle over the age of four automatically put his hand up. 'Oh, come on,' said Rob. 'You cannae all come! Look, I'll tak' . . . Daft Wullie, Big Yan and . . . you, Awf'ly Wee Billy Bigchin. An' I'm takin' no weans, so if yez under three inches high ye're not comin'! Except for ye, o'course, Awf'ly Wee Billy. As for the rest of youse, we'll settle this the traditional Feegle way. I'll tak' the last fifty men still standing!' He beckoned the chosen three to a place in the corner of the mound while the rest of the crowd squared up cheerfully. A Feegle liked to face enormous odds all by himself, because it meant you didn't have to look where you were hitting. 'She's more'n a hundret miles awa',' said Rob as the big fight started. 'We cannae run it, 'tis too far. Any of youse scunners got any ideas?' 'Hamish can get there on his buzzard,' said Big Yan, stepping aside as a cluster of punching, kicking Feegles rolled past. 'Aye, and he'll come wi' us, but he cannae tak' more'n one passenger,' shouted Rob over the din. 'Can we swim it?' said Daft Wullie, ducking as a stunned Feegle hurtled over his head. The others looked at him. 'Swim it? How can we swim there fra' here, yer daftie?' said Rob Anybody. 'It's just worth consid'ring, that's all,' said Wullie, looking hurt. 'I wuz just tryin' to make a contribution, ye ken? Just wanted to show willin'.' 'The big wee hag left in a cart,' said Big Yan. 'Aye, so what?' said Rob. Page 37 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt 'Weel, mebbe we could?' 'Ach, no!' said Rob. 'Showin' oursels tae hags is one thing, but not to other folks! You remember what happened a few years back when Daft Wullie got spotted by that lady who wuz painting the pretty pictures doon in the valley? I dinnae want to have them Folklore Society bigjobs pokin' aroound again!' 'I have an idea, Mister Rob. It's me, Awf'ly Wee Billy Bigchin Mac Feegle. We could disguise oursels.' Awf'ly Wee Billy Bigchin Mac Feegle always announced himself in full. He seemed to feel that if he didn't tell people who he was, they'd forget about him and he'd disappear. When you're half the size of most grown pictsies you're really short; much shorter and you'd be a hole in the ground. He was the new gonnagle. A gonnagle is the clan's bard and battle poet, but they don't spend all their lives in the same clan. In fact, they're a sort of clan all by themselves. Gonnagles move around among the other clans, making sure the songs and stories get spread around all the Feegles. Awf'ly Wee Billy had come with Jeannie from the Long Lake clan, which often happens. He was very young for a gonnagle, but as Jeannie had said, there was no age limit to gonnagling. If the talent was in you, you gonnagled. And Awf'ly Wee Billy knew all the songs and could play the mousepipes so sadly that outside it would start to rain. 'Aye, lad?' said Rob Anybody kindly. 'Speak up, then.' 'Can we get hold o' some human clothes?' said Awf'ly Wee Billy. 'Because there's an old story about the big feud between the Three Peaks clan and the Windy River clan and the Windy River boys escaped by making a tattie-bogle walk, and the men o' Three Peaks thought it was a bigjob and kept oot o' its way.' The others looked puzzled, and Awf'ly Wee Billy remembered that they were men of the Chalk and had probably never seen a tattie-bogle. 'A scarecrow?' he said. 'It's like a bigjob made o' sticks, wi' clothes on, for to frighten away the birdies fra' the crops? Now, the song says the Windy River's kelda used magic to make it walk, but I reckon it was done by cunnin' and strength.' He sang about it. They listened. He explained how to make a human that would walk. They looked at one another. It was a mad, desperate plan, which was very dangerous and risky and would require tremendous strength and bravery to make it work. Put like that, they agreed to it instantly. Tiffany found that there was more than chores and the research, though. There was what Miss Level called 'filling what's empty and emptying what's full'. Usually only one of Miss Level's bodies went out at a time. People thought Miss Level was twins, and she made sure they continued to do so, but she found it a little bit safer all round to keep the bodies apart. Tiffany could see why. You only had to watch both of Miss Level when she was eating. The bodies would pass plates to one another without saying a word, sometimes they'd eat off one another's forks, and it was rather strange to see one person burp and the other one say 'Oops, pardon me'. 'Filling what's empty and emptying what's full' meant wandering round the local villages and the isolated farms and, mostly, doing medicine. There were always bandages to change or expectant mothers to talk to. Witches did a lot of midwifery, which is a kind of 'emptying what's full', but Miss Level, wearing her pointy hat, had only to turn up at a cottage for other people to suddenly come visiting, by sheer Page 38 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt accident. And there was an awful lot of gossip and tea-drinking. Miss Level moved in a twitching, living world of gossip, although Tiffany noticed that she picked up a lot more than she passed on. It seemed to be a world made up entirely of women, but occasionally, out in the lanes, a man would strike up a conversation about the weather and somehow, by some sort of code, an ointment or a potion would get handed over. Tiffany couldn't quite work out how Miss Level got paid. Certainly the basket she carried filled up more than it emptied. They'd walk past a cottage and a woman would come scurrying out with a fresh-baked loaf or a jar of pickles, even though Miss Level hadn't stopped there. But they'd spend an hour somewhere else, stitching up the leg of a farmer who'd been careless with an axe, and get a cup of tea and a stale biscuit. It didn't seem fair. 'Oh, it evens out,' said Miss Level, as they walked on through the woods. 'You do what you can. People give what they can, when they can. Old Slapwick there, with the leg, he's as mean as a cat, but there'll be a big cut of beef on my doorstep before the week's end, you can bet on it. His wife will see to it. And pretty soon people will be killing their pigs for the winter, and I'll get more brawn, ham, bacon and sausages turning up than a family could eat in a year.' 'You do? What do you do with all that food?' 'Store it,' said Miss Level. 'But you-' 'I store it in other people. It's amazing what you can store in other people.' Miss Level laughed at Tiffany's expression. 'I mean, I take what I don't need round to those who don't have a pig, or who're going through a bad patch, or who don't have anyone to remember them.' 'But that means they'll owe you a favour!' 'Right! And so it just keeps on going round. It all works out.' 'I bet some people are too mean to pay-' 'Not pay,' said Miss Level, severely. 'A witch never expects payment and never asks for it and just hopes she never needs to. But, sadly, you are right.' yAnd then what happens?' 'What do you mean?' 'You stop helping them, do you?' 'Oh, no,' said Miss Level, genuinely shocked. 'You can't not help people just because they're stupid or forgetful or unpleasant. Everyone's poor round here. If I don't help them, who will?' 'Granny Aching . . . that is, my grandmother said someone has to speak up for them as has no voices,' Tiffany volunteered after a moment. 'Was she a witch?' I'm not sure,' said Tiffany. 'I think so, but she didn't know she was. She mostly lived by herself in an old shepherding hut up on the downs.' 'She wasn't a cackler, was she?' said Miss Level, and when she saw Tiffany's expression she said hurriedly, 'Sorry, sorry. But it can happen, when you're a witch who doesn't know it. You're like a ship with no rudder. But obviously she wasn't like that, I can tell.' 'She lived on the hills and talked to them and she knew more about sheep than Page 39 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt anybody!' said Tiffany hotly. 'I'm sure she did, I'm sure she did-' 'She never cackled!' 'Good, good,' said Miss Level soothingly. 'Was she clever at medicine?' Tiffany hesitated. 'Urn . . . only with sheep,' she said, calming down. 'But she was very good. Especially if it involved turpentine. Mostly if it involved turpentine, actually. But always she . . . was . . . just . . . there. Even when she wasn't actually there 'Yes,' said Miss Level. 'You know what I mean?' said Tiffany. 'Oh, yes,' said Miss Level. 'Your Granny Aching lived down on the uplands-' 'No, up on the downland,' Tiffany corrected her. 'Sorry, up on the downland, with the sheep, but people would look up sometimes, look up at the hills, knowing she was there somewhere, and say to themselves "What would Granny Aching do?" or "What would Granny Aching say if she found out?" or "Is this the sort of thing Granny Aching would be angry about?"' said Miss Level. 'Yes?' Tiffany narrowed her eyes. It was true. She remembered when Granny Aching had hit a pedlar who'd overloaded his donkey and was beating it. Granny usually used only words, and not many of them. The man had been so frightened by her sudden rage that he'd stood there and taken it. It had frightened Tiffany, too. Granny, who seldom said anything without thinking about it for ten minutes beforehand, had struck the wretched man twice across the face in a brief blur of movement. And then news had got around, all along the Chalk. For a while, at least, people were a little more gentle with their animals .. . For months after that moment with the pedlar, carters and drovers and farmers all across the downs would hesitate before raising a whip or a stick, and think: Suppose Granny Aching is watching? But- 'How did you know that?' she said. 'Oh, I guessed. She sounds like a witch to me, whatever she thought she was. A good one, too.' Tiffany inflated with inherited pride. 'Did she help people?' Miss Level added. The pride deflated a bit. The instant answer 'yes' jumped onto her tongue, and yet. . . Granny Aching hardly ever came down off the hills, except for Hogswatch and the early lambing. You seldom saw her in the village unless the pedlar who sold Jolly Sailor tobacco was late on his rounds, in which case she'd be down in a hurry and a flurry of greasy black skirts to cadge a pipeful off one of the old men. But there wasn't a person on the Chalk, from the Baron down, who didn't owe something to Granny. And what they owed to her, she made them pay to others. She always knew who was short of a favour or two. 'She made them help one another/ she said. 'She made them help themselves.' In the silence that followed, Tiffany heard the birds singing by the road. You got a lot of birds here, but she missed the high scream of the buzzards. Miss Level sighed. 'Not many of us are that good,' she said. 'If I was that good, we wouldn't be going to visit old Mr Weavall again.' Tiffany said 'Oh dear' inside. Most days included a visit to Mr Weavall. Tiffany dreaded them. Mr Weavall's skin was paper-thin and yellowish. He was always in the same old armchair, in a tiny room in a small cottage that smelled of old potatoes and was surrounded by a more or less overgrown garden. He'd be sitting bolt upright, his hands Page 40 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt on two walking sticks, wearing a suit that was shiny with age, staring at the door. 'I make sure he has something hot every day, although he eats like a bird,' Miss Level had said. 'And old Widow Tussy down the lane does his laundry, such as it is. He's ninety-one, you know.' Mr Weavall had very bright eyes and chatted away to and at them as they tidied up the room. The first time Tiffany had met him he'd called her Mary. Sometimes he still did. And he'd grabbed her wrist with surprising force as she walked past ... It had been a real shock, that claw of a hand suddenly gripping her. You could see blue veins under the skin. 'I shan't be a burden on anyone/ he'd said urgently. 'I got money put by for when I go. My boy Toby won't have nothin' to worry about. I can pay my way! I want the proper funeral show, right? With the black horses and the plumes and the mutes and a knife-and-fork tea for everyone afterwards. I've written it all down, fair and square. Check in my box to make sure, will you? That witch woman's always hanging around here!' Tiffany had given Miss Level a despairing look. She'd nodded, and pointed to an old wooden box tucked under Mr Weavall's chair. It had turned out to be full of coins, mostly copper, but there were quite a few silver ones. It looked like a fortune, and for a moment she'd wished she had as much money. There's a lot of coins in here, Mr Weavall,' she'd said. Mr Weavall relaxed. 'Ah, that's right,' he'd said. 'Then I won't be a burden.' Today Mr Weavall was asleep when they called on him, snoring with his mouth open and his yellow-brown teeth showing. But he awoke in an instant, stared at them and then said, 'My boy Toby's coming to see I Sat'day.' 'That's nice, Mr Weavall,' said Miss Level, plumping up his cushions. 'We'll get the place nice and tidy.' 'He's done very well for hisself, you know,' said Mr Weavall, proudly. 'Got a job indoors with no heavy lifting. He said he'll see I all right in my old age, but I told him, I told him I'd pay my way when I go - the whole thing, the salt and earth and tuppence for the ferryman, too!' Today, Miss Level gave him a shave. His hands shook too much for him to do it himself. (Yesterday she'd cut his toenails, because he couldn't reach them; it was not a safe spectator sport, especially when one smashed a windowpane.) 'It's all in a box under my chair,' he said as Tiffany nervously wiped the last bits of foam off him. 'Just check for me, will you, Mary?' Oh, yes. That was the ceremony, every day. There was the box, and there was the money. He asked every time. There was always the same amount of money. 'Tuppence for the ferryman?' said Tiffany, as they walked home. 'Mr Weavall remembers all the old funeral traditions,' said Miss Level. 'Some people believe that when you die you cross the River of Death and have to pay the ferryman. People don't seem to worry about that these days. Perhaps there's a bridge now.' 'He's always talking about. . . his funeral.' 'Well, it's important to him. Sometimes old people are like that. They'd hate people to think that they were too poor to pay for their own funeral. Mr Weavall'd die of shame if he couldn't pay for his own funeral.' Page 41 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt It's very sad, him being all alone like that. Something should be done for him,' said Tiffany. 'Yes. We're doing it,' said Miss Level. 'And Mrs Tussy keeps a friendly eye on him.' 'Yes, but it shouldn't have to be us, should it?' 'Who should it have to be?' said Miss Level. 'Well, what about this son he's always talking about?' said Tiffany. 'Young Toby? He's been dead for fifteen years. And Mary was the old man's daughter, she died quite young. Mr Weavall is very short-sighted, but he sees better in the past.' Tiffany didn't know what to reply except: 'It shouldn't be like this.' 'There isn't a way things should be. There's just what happens, and what we do.' 'Well, couldn't you help him by magic?' 'I see to it that he's in no pain, yes,' said Miss Level. 'But that's just herbs.' 'It's still magic. Knowing things is magical, if other people don't know them.' 'Yes, but you know what I mean,' said Tiffany, who felt she was losing this argument. 'Oh, you mean make him young again?' said Miss Level. 'Fill his house with gold? That's not what witches do.' 'We see to it that lonely old men get a cooked dinner and cut their toenails?' said Tiffany, just a little sarcastically. 'Well, yes,' said Miss Level. 'We do what can be done. Mistress Weatherwax said you've got to learn that witchcraft is mostly about doing quite ordinary things.' 'And you have do what she says?' said Tiffany. 'I listen to her advice/ said Miss Level, coldly. 'Mistress Weatherwax is the head witch, then, is she?' 'Oh no!' said Miss Level, looking shocked. 'Witches are all equal. We don't have things like head witches. That's quite against the spirit of witchcraft.' 'Oh, I see,' said Tiffany. 'Besides,' Miss Level added, 'Mistress Weatherwax would never allow that sort of thing.' Suddenly, things were going missing from the households around the Chalk. This wasn't the occasional egg or chicken. Clothes were vanishing off washing lines. A pair of boots mysteriously disappeared from under the bed of Nosey Hinds, the oldest man in the village - 'And they was damn good boots, they could walk home from the pub all by themselves if I but pointed they in the right direction,' he complained to anyone who would listen. 'And they marched off wi' my old hat, too. And I'd got he just as I wanted he, all soft and floppy!' A pair of trousers and a long coat vanished from a hook belonging to Abiding Swindell, the ferret-keeper, and the coat still had ferrets living in the inside pockets. And who, who climbed through the bedroom window of Clem Doins and shaved off his beard, which had been so long that he could tuck it into his belt? Not a hair was left. He had to go around with a scarf over his face, in case the sight of his poor pink chin frightened the ladies. . . It was probably witches, people agreed, and made a few more curse-nets to hang in their windows. However . . . On the far side of the Chalk, where the long green slopes came down to the flat fields of the plain, there were big thickets of bramble and hawthorn. Usually, these were alive with birdsong, but this particular one, the one just here, was alive with cussing. 'Ach, crivens! Will ye no' mind where ye 're puttin' yer foot, ye spavie!' 'I cannae help it! It's nae easy, bein' a knee!' ' Ye think ye got troubles? Ye wannae be doon here in the boots! That old man Page 42 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt Swindell couldnae ha' washed his feet in years! It's fair reekin' doon here!' 'Reekin', izzit? Well, you try bein' in this pocket! Them ferrets ne 'er got oot to gae to the lavie, if you get my meanin'!' 'Crivens! Will ye dafties no' shut up?' 'Oh, aye? Hark at him! Just 'cuzye're up in the held, you think you know everythin'? Fra' doon here ye're nothing but dead weight, pal!' 'Aye, right! I'm wi' the elbows on this one! Where'dyou be if it wuzn'tfor us carryin' ye aroound? Who's ye think ye are?' 'I'm Rob Anybody Feegle, as you ken well enough, an' I've had enough o' the lot o' yezf 'OK, Rob, but it's real stuffy in here!' 'Ach, an' I'm fed up wi' the stomach complainin', too!' 'Gentlemen.' This was the voice of the toad; no one else would dream of calling the Nac Mac Feegle gentlemen. 'Gentlemen, time is of the essence. The cart will be here soon! You must not miss it!' 'We need more time to practise, Toad! We're walkin' like a feller wi' nae bones and a serious case o' the trots!' said a voice a little higher up than the rest. 'At least you are walking. That's good enough. I wish you luck, gentlemen.' There was a cry from further along the thickets, where a lookout had been watching the road. 'The cart's comin' doon the hill!' 'OK, lads!' shouted Rob Anybody. 'Toad, you look after Jeannie, y'hear? She'll need a thinkin' laddie to rely on while I'm no' here! Right, ye scunners! It's do or die! Ye ken what to do! Ye lads on the ropes, pull us up noo!' The bushes shook. 'Right! Pelvis, are ye ready?' 'Aye, Rob!' 'Knees? Knees? I said, knees?' 'Aye, Rob, but-' 'Feets?' 'Aye, Rob!' The bushes shook again. 'Right! Remember: right, left, right, left! Pelvis, knee, foot on the groond! Keep a spring in the step, feets! Are you ready? Altogether, boys . . . walk!' It was a big surprise for Mr Crabber the carter. He'd been staring vaguely at nothing, thinking only of going home, when something stepped out of the bushes and into the road. It looked human or, rather, looked slightly more human than it looked like anything else. But it seemed to be having trouble with its knees, and walked as though they'd been tied together. However, the carter didn't spend too much time thinking about that because, clutched in one gloved hand that was waving vaguely in the air, was something gold. This immediately identified the stranger, as far as the carter was concerned. He was not, as first sight might suggest, some old tramp to be left by the roadside, but an obvious gentleman down on his luck, and it was practically the carter's duty to help him. He slowed the horse to a standstill. The stranger didn't really have a face. There was nothing much to see between the droopy hat brim and the turned-up collar of the coat except a lot of beard. But from somewhere within the beard a voice said: Page 43 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt '. . . Shudupshudup . . . will ye all shudup while I'm talkin'. . . Ahem. Good day ta' ye, carter fellow my ol' fellowy fellow! If ye'll gie us - me a lift as far as ye are goin', we - I'll gie ye this fine shiny golden coin!' The figure lurched forward and thrust its hand in front of Mr Crabber's face. It was quite a large coin. And it was certainly gold. It had come from the treasure of the old dead king who was buried in the main part of the Feegles' mound. Oddly enough, the Feegles weren't hugely interested in gold once they'd stolen it, because you couldn't drink it and it was difficult to eat. In the mound, they mostly used the old coins and plates to reflect candlelight and give the place a nice glow. It was no hardship to give some away. The carter stared at it. It was more money than he had ever seen in his life. 'If... sir ... would like to ... hop on the back of the cart, sir,' he said, carefully taking it. 'Ach, right you are, then,' said the bearded mystery man after a pause. 'Just a moment, this needs a wee bitty organizin' . . . OK, youse hands, you just grab the side o' the cart, and' you leftie leg, ye gotta kinda sidle along . . . ach, crivens! Ye gotta bend! Bend! C'mon, get it right!' The hairy face turned to the carter. 'Sorry aboot this,' it said. T talk to my knees, but they dinnae listen to me.' 'Is that right?' said the carter weakly. 'I have trouble with my knees in the wet weather. Goose grease works.' 'Ah, weel, these knees is gonna get more'n a greasin' if I ha' to get doon there an' sort them oot!' snarled the hairy man. The carter heard various bangs and grunts behind him as the man hauled himself onto the tail of the cart. 'OK, let's gae,' said a voice. 'We' havenae got all day. And youse knees, you're sacked! Crivens, I'm walkin' like I got a big touch of the stoppies! You gae up to the stomach and send doon a couple of good knee men!' The carter bit the coin thoughtfully as he urged the horse into a walk. It was such pure gold that he left toothmarks. That meant his passenger was very, very rich. That was becoming very important at this point. 'Can ye no' go a wee bitty faster, my good man, my good man?' said the voice behind him, after they had gone a little way. 'Ah, well, sir,' said the carter, 'see them boxes and crates? I've got a load of eggs, and those apples mustn't be bruised, sir, and then there's those jugs of-' There were some bangs and crashes behind him, including the sploosh that a large crate of eggs makes when it hits a road. 'Ye can gae faster noo, eh?' said the voice. 'Hey, that was my-' Mr Crabber began. 'I've got another one o' they big wee gold coins for ye!' And a heavy and smelly arm landed on the carter's shoulder. Dangling from the glove on the end of it was, indeed, another coin. It was ten times what the load had been worth. 'Oh, well. . .' said the carter, carefully taking the coin. 'Accidents do happen, eh, sir?' 'Aye, especially if I dinnae think I'm goin' fast enough,' said the voice behind Page 44 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt him. 'We - I mean I'm in a big hurry tae get tae yon mountains, ye ken!' 'But I'm not a stagecoach, sir,' said the carter reproachfully as he urged his old horse into a trot. 'Stagecoach, eh? What's one o' them things?' 'That's what you'll need to catch to take you up into the mountains, sir. You can catch one in Twoshirts, sir. I never go any further than Twoshirts, sir. But you won't be able to get the stage today, sir.' 'Why not?' 'I've got to make stops at the other villages, sir, and it's a long way, and on Wednesdays it runs early, sir, and this cart can only go so fast, sir, and-' 'If we - I dinnae catch yon coach today I'll gi'e ye the hidin' o' yer life,' growled the passenger. 'But if I do catch yon coach today, I'll gie ye five o' them gold coins.' Mr Crabber took a deep breath, and yelled: 'Hi! Hyah! Giddyup, Henry!' All in all, it seemed to Tiffany, most of what witches did really was very similar to work. Dull work. Miss Level didn't even use her broomstick very much. That was a bit depressing. It was all a bit... well, goody-goody. Obviously that was better than being baddy-baddy, but a little more . . . excitement would be nice. Tiffany wouldn't like anyone to think she'd expected to be issued with a magic wand on Day One but, well, the way Miss Level talked about magic, the whole point of witchcraft lay in not using any. Mind you, Tiffany thought she would be depressingly good at not using any. It was doing the simplest magic that was hard. Miss Level patiently showed her how to make a shamble, which could more or less be made of anything that seemed a good idea at the time provided it also contained something alive, like a beetle or a fresh egg. Tiffany couldn't even get the hang of it. That was . . . annoying. Didn't she have the virtual hat? Didn't she have First Sight and Second Thoughts? Miss Tick and Miss Level could throw a shamble together in seconds, but Tiffany just got a tangle, dripping with egg. Over and over again. 1 know I'm doing it right but it just twists up!' Tiffany complained. 'What can I do?' 'We could make an omelette?' said Miss Level cheerfully. 'Oh, please, Miss Level!' Tiffany wailed. Miss Level patted her on the back. 'It'll happen. Perhaps you're trying too hard. One day it'll come. The power does come, you know. You just have to put yourself in its path-' 'Couldn't you make one that I could use for a while, to get the hang of it?' 'I'm afraid I can't,' said Miss Level. 'A shamble is a very tricky thing. You can't even carry one around, except as an ornament. You have to make it for yourself, there and then, right where and when you want to use it.' 'Why?' said Tiffany. 'To catch the moment,' said the other part of Miss Level, coming in. The way you tie the knots, the way the string runs -' '- the freshness of the egg, perhaps, and the moisture in the air -' said the first Miss Page 45 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt Level. '- the tension of the twigs and the kind of things that you just happen to have in your pocket at that moment -' '- even the way the wind is blowing,' the first Miss Level concluded. 'All these things make a kind of... of picture of the here-and-now when you move them right. And I can't even tell you how to move them, because I don't know.' 'But you do move them,' said Tiffany, getting lost. 'I saw you-' 'I do it but I don't know how I do,' said Miss Level, picking up a couple of twigs and taking a length of thread. Miss Level sat down at the table opposite Miss Level, and all four hands started to put a shamble together. 'This reminds me of when I was in the circus,' she said. 1 was -' '- walking out for a while with Marco and Falco, the Flying Pastrami Brothers,' the other part of Miss Level went on. 'They would do -' '- triple somersaults fifty feet up with no safety net. What lads they were! As alike as two -' '- peas, and Marco could catch Falco blindfolded. Why, for a moment I wondered if they were just like me -' She stopped, went a bit red on both faces and coughed. 'Anyway,' she went on, 'one day I asked them how they managed to stay on the high wire and Falco said, "Never ask the tight-rope walker how he keeps his balance. If he stops to think about it, he falls off." Although actually -' '- he said it like this, "Nev-ah aska tightaroper walkerer ..." because the lads pretended they were from Brindisi, you see, because that sounds foreign and impressive and they thought no one would want to watch acrobats called The Flying Sidney and Frank Cartwright. Good advice, though, wherever it came from.' The hands worked. This was not a lone Miss Level, a bit flustered, but the full Miss Level, all twenty fingers working together. 'Of course,' she said, 'it can be helpful to have the right sort of things in your pocket. I always carry a few sequins -' '- for the happy memories they bring back,' said Miss Level from the other side of the table, blushing again. She held up the shamble. There were sequins, and a fresh egg in a little bag made of thread, and a chicken bone and many other things hanging or spinning in the threads. Each part of Miss Level put both its hands into the threads and pulled ... The threads took up a pattern. Did the sequins jump from one thread to another? It looked like it. Did the chicken bone pass through the egg? So it seemed. Miss Level peered into it. She said: 'Something's coming The stagecoach left Twoshirts half full and was well out over the plains when one of the passengers sitting on the rooftop tapped the driver on the shoulder. 'Excuse me, did you know there's something trying to catch us up?' he said. 'Bless you, sir,' said the driver, because he hoped for a good tip at the end of the run, 'there's nothing that can catch us up.' Then he heard the screaming in the distance, getting louder. 'Er, I think he means to,' said the passenger as the carter's wagon overtook them. 'Stop! Stop, for pity's sake stopY yelled the carter as he sailed past. But there was no stopping Henry. He'd spent years pulling the carrier's cart around the villages, very slowly, and he'd always had this idea in his big horse head that he Page 46 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt was cut out for faster things. He'd plodded along, being overtaken by coaches and carts and three-legged dogs, and now he was having the time of his life. Besides, the cart was a lot lighter than usual, and the road was slightly downhill here. All he was really having to do was gallop fast enough to stay in front. And, finally, he'd actually overtaken the stagecoach. Him, Henry! He only stopped because the stagecoach driver stopped first. Besides, the blood was pumping through Henry now, and there were a couple of mares in the team of horses pulling the coach who he felt he'd really like to get to know - find out when was their day off, what kind of hay they liked, that kind of thing. The carter, white in the face, got down carefully and then lay on the ground and held on tight to the dirt. His one passenger, who looked to the coach driver like some sort of scarecrow, climbed unsteadily down from the back and lurched towards the coach. 'I'm sorry, we're full up,' the driver lied. They weren't full, but there was certainly no room for a thing that looked like that. 'Ach, and there wuz me willin' to pay wi' gold,' said the creature. 'Gold such as this here,' it added, waving a ragged glove in the air. Suddenly there was plenty of space for an eccentric millionaire. Within a few seconds he was seated inside and, to the annoyance of Henry, the coach set off again. Outside Miss Level's cottage, a broomstick was heading through the trees. A young witch - or, at least, someone dressed as a witch: it never paid to jump to conclusions - was sitting on it side-saddle. She wasn't flying it very well. It jerked sometimes and it was clear the girl was no good at making it turn corners because sometimes she stopped, jumped off and pointed the stick in a new direction by hand. When she reached the garden gate she got off again quickly and tethered the stick to it with string. 'Nicely done, Petulia!' said Miss Level, clapping with all four hands. 'You're getting quite good!' 'Um, thank you, Miss Level,' said the girl, bowing. She stayed bowed, and said, 'Um, oh dear Half of Miss Level stepped forward. 'Oh, I can see the problem,' she said, peering down. 'Your amulet with the little owls on it is tangled up with your necklace of silver bats and they've both got caught around a button. Just hold still, will you?' 'Um, I've come to see if your new girl would like come to the sabbat tonight,' said the bent Petulia, her voice a bit muffled. Tiffany couldn't help noticing that Petulia had jewellery everywhere; later she found that it was hard to be around Petulia for any length of time without having to unhook a bangle from a necklace or, once, an earring from an ankle bracelet (nobody ever found out how that one happened). Petulia couldn't resist occult jewellery. Most of the stuff was to magically protect her from things, but she hadn't found anything to protect her from looking a bit silly. She was short and plump and permanently red-faced and slightly worried. 'Sabbat? Oh, one of your meetings,' said Miss Level. 'That would be nice, wouldn't Page 47 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt it, Tiffany?' 'Yes?' said Tiffany, not quite sure yet. 'Some of the girls meet up in the woods in the evenings,' said Miss Level. 'For some reason the craft is getting popular again. That's very welcome, of course.' She said it as if she wasn't quite sure. Then she added: 'Petulia here works for Old Mother Blackcap, over in Sidling Without. Specializes in animals. Very good woman with pig diseases. I mean, with pigs that've got diseases, I don't mean she has pig diseases. It'll be nice for you to have friends here. Why don't you go? There, everything's unhooked.' Petulia stood up and gave Tiffany a worried smile. 'Um, Petulia Gristle,' she said, holding out a hand. 'Tiffany Aching,' said Tiffany, shaking it gingerly in case the sound of all the bangles and bracelets jangling together deafened everyone. 'Um, you can ride with me on the broomstick, if you like,' said Petulia. 'I'd rather not,' said Tiffany. Petulia looked relieved, but said: 'Um, do you want to get dressed?' Tiffany looked down at her green dress. 'I am.' 'Um, don't you have any gems or beads or amulets or anything?' 'No, sorry,' said Tiffany. 'Um, you must at least have a shamble, surely?' 'Um, can't get the hang of them,' said Tiffany. She hadn't meant the 'um', but around Petulia it was catching. 'Um ... a black dress, perhaps?' 'I don't really like black. I prefer blue or green,' said Tiffany. 'Um 'Um. Oh well, you're just starting,' said Petulia generously. 'I've been Crafty for three years.' Tiffany looked desperately at the nearest half of Miss Level. 'In the craft,' said Miss Level helpfully. 'Witchcraft.' 'Oh.' Tiffany knew she was being very unfriendly, and Petulia with her pink face was clearly a nice person, but she felt awkward in front of her and she couldn't work out why. It was stupid, she knew. She could do with a friend. Miss Level was nice enough, and she managed to get along with Oswald, but it would be good to have someone around her own age to talk to. 'Well, I'd love to come,' she said. 'I know I've got a lot to learn.' The passengers inside the stagecoach had paid good money to be inside on the soft seats and out of the wind and the dust and, therefore, it was odd that so many got out at the next stop and went and sat on the roof. The few who didn't want to ride up there or couldn't manage the climb sat huddled together on the seat opposite, watching the new traveller like a group of rabbits watching a fox and trying not to breathe. The problem wasn't that he smelled of ferrets. Well, that was a problem, but compared to the big problem it wasn't much of one. He talked to himself. That is, bits of him talked to other bits of him. All the time. 'Ah, it's fair hoggin' doon here. Ah'm tellin ye! Ah'rn sure it's my turn to be up inna heidl' 'Hah, at least youse people are all cushy in the stomach, it's us in the legs that has tae do all the work!' At which the right hand said: 'Legs? Youse dinnae know the meanin' of the word "work"! Ye ought tae try being stuck in a glove! Ach, blow this forra game o' sojers! Ah 'm Page 48 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt gonna stretch ma legs!' In horrified silence the other passengers watched one of the man's gloved hands drop off and walk around on the seat. 'Aye, weel, it's nae picnic doon here inna troosers, neither. A'm gonna let some fresh air in right noo!' 'Daft Wullie, don 'tyou dare do that-' The passengers, squeezing even closer together, watched the trousers with terrible fascination. There was some movement, some swearing-under-the-breath in a place where nothing should be breathing, and then a couple of buttons popped and a very small red-headed blue man stuck his head out, blinking in the light. He froze when he saw the people. He stared. They stared. Then his face widened into a mad smile. Touse folks all right?' he said, desperately. 'That's greaaat! Dinnae worry aboout me, I'm one o' they opper-tickle aloosyon's, ye ken?' He disappeared back into the trousers, and they heard him whisper: 'I'm thinkin' I fooled 'em easily, no problemo!' A few minutes later, the coach stopped to change horses. When it set off again, it was minus the inside passengers. They got off, and asked for their luggage to be taken off, too. No thank you, they did not want to continue their ride. They'd catch the coach tomorrow, thank you. No, there was no problem in waiting here in this delightful little, er, town of Dangerous Corner. Thank you. Goodbye. The coach set off again, somewhat lighter and faster. It didn't stop that night. It should have done, and the rooftop passengers were still eating their dinner in the last inn when they heard it set off without them. The reason probably had something to do with the big heap of coins now in the driver's pocket. Chapter 5 ClRClG Tiffany walked through the woods while Petulia flew unsteadily alongside in a series of straight lines. Tiffany learned that Petulia was nice, had three brothers, wanted to be a midwife for humans as well as pigs when she grew up, and was afraid of pins. She also learned that Petulia hated to disagree about anything. So parts of the conversation went like this: Tiffany said, 'I live down on the Chalk.' And Petulia said, 'Oh, where they keep all those sheep? I don't like sheep much, they're so kind of... baggy.' Tiffany said, 'Actually, we're very proud of our sheep.' And then you could stand back as Petulia reversed her opinions like someone trying to turn a cart round in a very narrow space: 'Oh, I didn't really mean I hate them. I expect some sheep are all right. We've got to have sheep, obviously. They're better than goats, and woollier. I mean, I actually like sheep, really. Sheep are nice.' Petulia spent a lot of time trying to find out what other people thought so that she could think the same way. It would be impossible to have an argument with her. Tiffany had to stop herself from saying 'The sky is green' just to see how long it would take for Petulia to agree. But she liked her. You couldn't not like her. She was restful company. Besides, you couldn't help liking someone who couldn't make a Page 49 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt broomstick turn corners. It was a long walk through the woods. Tiffany had always wanted to see a forest so big that you couldn't see daylight through the other side, but now she'd lived in one for a couple of weeks it got on her nerves. It was quite open woodland here, at least around the villages, and not hard to walk though. She'd had to learn what maples and birches were, and she'd never before seen the spruces and firs that grew higher up the slopes. But she wasn't happy in the company of trees. She missed the horizons. She missed the sky. Everything was too close. Petulia chattered nervously. Old Mother Blackcap was a pig-borer, cow-shouter and all-round veterinary witch. Petulia liked animals, especially pigs because they had wobbly noses. Tiffany quite liked animals too, but no one except other animals liked animals as much as Petulia. 'So ... what's this meeting about?' she said, to change the subject. 'Urn? Oh, it's just to keep in touch/ said Petulia. 'Annagramma says it's important to make contacts.' 'Annagramma's the leader, then, is she?' said Tiffany. 'Um, no. Witches don't have leaders, Annagramma says.' 'Hmm,' said Tiffany. They arrived at last at a clearing in the woods, just as the sun was setting. There were the remains of an old cottage there, now covered mostly in brambles. You might miss it completely if you didn't spot the rampant growth of lilac and the gooseberry bushes, now a forest of thorns. Someone had lived here once, and had a garden. Someone else, now, had lit a fire. Badly. And they had found that lying down flat to blow on a fire because you hadn't started it with enough paper and dry twigs was not a good idea, because it would then cause your pointy hat, which you had forgotten to take off, to fall into the smoking mess and then, because it was dry, catch fire. A young witch was now flailing desperately at her burning hat, watched by several interested spectators. Another one, sitting on a log, said: 'Dimity Hubbub, that is literally the most stupid thing anyone has ever done anywhere in the whole world, ever.' It was a sharp, not very nice voice, the sort most people used for being sarcastic with. 'Sorry, Annagramma!' said Miss Hubbub, pulling off the hat and stamping on the point. 'I mean, just look at you, will you? You really are letting everyone down.' 'Sorry, Annagramma!' 'Um,' said Petulia. Everyone turned to look at the new arrivals. 'You're late, Petulia Gristle!' snapped Annagramma. 'And who's this?' 'Urn, you did ask me to call in at Miss Level's to bring the new girl, Annagramma,' said Petulia, as if she'd been caught doing something wrong. Annagramma stood up. She was at least a head taller than Tiffany and had a face that seemed to be built backwards from her nose, which she held slightly in the air. To be looked at by Annagramma was to know that you'd already taken up too much of her valuable time. 'Is this her?' 'Um, yes, Annagramma.' 'Let's have a look at you, new girl.' Tiffany stepped forward. It was amazing. She hadn't really meant to. But Annagramma had the kind of voice that you obeyed. Page 50 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt 'What is your name?' 'Tiffany Aching?' said Tiffany, and found herself saying her name as if she was asking permission to have it. 'Tiffany? That's a funny name,' said the tall girl. 'My name is Annagramma Hawkin.' 'Um, Annagramma works for-' Petulia began. '- works with,' said Annagramma sharply, still looking Tiffany up and down. 'Urn, sorry, works with Mrs Earwig,' said Petulia. 'But she-' 1 intend to leave next year,' said Annagramma. 'Apparently, I'm doing extremely well. So you're the girl who's joined Miss Level, are you? She's weird, you know. The last three girls all left very quickly. They said it was just too strange trying to keep track of which one of her was which.' 'Which witch was which,' said one of the girls cheerfully. 'Anyone can do that pun, Lucy Warbeck,' said Annagramma without looking round. 'It's not funny, and it's not clever.' She turned her attention back to Tiffany, who felt that she was being examined as critically and thoroughly as Granny Aching would check a ewe she might be thinking of buying. She wondered if Annagramma would actually try to open her mouth and make sure she had all her teeth. 'They say you can't breed good witches on chalk,' said Annagramma. All the other girls looked from Annagramma to Tiffany, who thought: Ha!, so witches don't have leaders, do they? But she was in no mood to make enemies. 'Perhaps they do,' she said quietly. This did not seem to be what Annagramma wanted to hear. 'You haven't even dressed the part,' said Annagramma. 'Sorry,' said Tiffany. 'Urn, Annagramma says that if you want people to treat you like a witch you should look like one,' Petulia said. 'Hmm,' said Annagramma, staring at Tiffany as if she'd failed a simple test. Then she nodded her head. 'Well, we all had to start somewhere.' She stood back. 'Ladies, this is Tiffany. Tiffany, you know Petulia. She crashes into trees. Dimity Hubbub is the one with the smoke coming out of her hat, so that she looks like a chimney. That's Gertruder Tiring, that's the hilariously funny Lucy Warbeck, that's Harrieta Bilk, who can't seem to do anything about the squint, and then that's Lulu Darling, who can't seem to do anything about the name. You can sit in for this evening. . . Tiffany, wasn't it? I'm sorry you've been taken on by Miss Level. She's rather sad. Complete amateur. Hasn't really got a clue. Just bustles about and hopes. Oh, well, it's too late now. Gertruder, Summon the World's Four Corners and Open the Circle, please.' 'Er . . .' said Gertruder, nervously. It was amazing how many people around Annagramma became nervous. 'Do I have to do everything around here?' said Annagramma. 'Try to remember, please! We must have been through this literally a million times!' 'I've never heard of the world's four corners,' said Tiffany. 'Really? There's a surprise,' said Annagramma. 'Well, they're the directions of power, Tiffany, and I would advise you to do something about that name, too, please.' 'But the world's round, like a plate,' said Tiffany. 'Urn, you have to imagine them,' Petulia whispered. Tiffany wrinkled her forehead. 'Why?' she said. Annagramma rolled her eyes. 'Because that's the way to do things properly.' 'Oh.' Page 51 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt 'You have done some kind of magic, haven't you?' Annagramma demanded. Tiffany was a bit confused. She wasn't used to people like Annagramma. 'Yes,' she said. All the other girls were staring at her, and Tiffany couldn't help thinking about sheep. When a dog attacks a sheep, the other sheep run away to a safe distance and then turn and watch. They don't gang up on the dog. They're just happy it's not them. 'What are you best at then?' snapped Annagramma. Tiffany, her mind still full of sheep, spoke without thinking. 'Soft Nellies,' she said. 'It's a sheep cheese. It's quite hard to make . . .' She looked around at the circle of blank faces and felt embarrassment rise inside her like hot jelly. 'Urn, Annagramma meant what magic can you do best,' said Petulia kindly. 'Although Soft Nellies is good,' said Annagramma with a cruel little smile. One or two of the girls gave that little snort that meant they were trying not to laugh out loud but didn't mind showing that they were trying. Tiffany looked down at her boots again. T don't know,' she mumbled, 'but I did throw the Queen of the Fairies out of my country.' 'Really?' said Annagramma. 'The Queen of the Fairies, eh? How did you do that?' 'I'm . . . not sure. I just got angry with her.' And it was hard to remember exactly what had happened that night. Tiffany recalled the anger, terrible anger, and the world . . . changing. She'd seen it clearer than a hawk sees, heard it better than a dog hears, felt its age beneath her feet, felt the hills still living. And she remembered thinking that no one could do this for long and still be human. 'Well, you've got the right boots for stamping your foot,' said Annagramma. There were a few more half-concealed giggles. 'A Queen of the Fairies,' she added. 'I'm sure you did. Well, it helps to dream.' 'I don't tell lies,' mumbled Tiffany, but no one was listening. Sullen and upset, she watched the girls Open the Corners and Summon the Circle, unless she'd got that the wrong way round. This went on for some time. It would have gone better if they'd all been sure what to do, but it was probably hard to know what to do when Annagramma was around, since she kept correcting everyone. She was standing with a big book open in her arms. '. . . now you, Gertruder, go widdershins, no, that's the other way, I must have told you literally a thousand times, and Lulu - where's Lulu? Well, you shouldn't have been there! Get the shriven chalice - not that one, no, the one without handles . . . yes. Harrieta, hold the Wand of the Air a bit higher, I mean, it must be in the air, d'you understand? And for goodness' sake, Petulia, please try to look a little more stately, will you? I appreciate that it doesn't come naturally to you, but you might at least show you're making an effort. By the way, I've been meaning to tell you, no invocation ever written starts with "um", unless I'm very much mistaken. Harrieta, is that the Cauldron of the Sea? Does it even look like a Cauldron of the Sea? I don't think so, do you? What was that noise?' The girls looked down. Then someone mumbled: 'Dimity trod on the Circlet of Infinity, Annagramma.' 'Not the one with the genuine seed-pearls on it?' said Annagramma in a tight little Page 52 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt voice. 'Um, yes,' said Petulia. 'But I'm sure she's very sorry. Um . . . shall I make a cup of tea?' The book slammed shut. 'What is the point?' said Annagramma to the world in general. 'What. Is. The. Point? Do you want to spend the rest of your lives as village witches, curing boils and warts for a cup of tea and a biscuit? Well? Do you?' There was a shuffling among the huddled witches, and a general murmur of 'No, Annagramma.' 'You did all read Mrs Earwig's book, didn't you?' she demanded. 'Well, did you?' Petulia raised a hand nervously. 'Um-' she began. 'Petulia, I've told you literally a million times not to start. Every. Single. Sentence. With "Um" - haven't I?' 'Um-' said Petulia, trembling with nervousness. 'Just speak up, for goodness' sake! Don't hesitate all the time!' 'Um-' 'Petulia!' 'Um-' Really, you might make an effort. Honestly, I don't know what's the matter with all of you!' I do, Tiffany thought. You're like a dog worrying sheep all the time. You don't give them time to obey you and you don't let them know when they've done things right. You just keep barking. Petulia had lapsed into tongue-tied silence. Annagramma put the book down on the log. 'Well, we've completely lost the moment,' she said. 'We may as well have that cup of tea, Petulia. Do hurry up.' Petulia, relieved, grabbed the kettle. People relaxed a little. Tiffany looked at the cover of the book. It read: The Higher MagiK by Letice Earwig, Witch 'Magic with a K?' she said aloud. 'Magikkkk?' 'That's deliberate,' said Annagramma coldly. 'Mrs Earwig says that if we are to make any progress at all we must distinguish the higher MagiK from the everyday sort.' 'The everyday sort of magic?' said Tiffany. 'Exactly. None of that mumbling in hedgerows for us. Proper sacred circles, spells written down, A proper hierarchy, not everyone running around doing whatever they feel like. Real wands, not bits of grubby stick. Professionalism, with respect. Absolutely no warts. That's the only way forward.' 'Well, I think-' Tiffany began. 'I don't really care what you think because you don't know enough yet,' said Annagramma sharply. She turned to the group in general. 'Do we all at least have something for the Trials this year?' she asked. There were general murmurs and nods in the theme of 'yes'. 'What about you, Petulia?' said Annagramma. I'm going to do the pig trick, Annagramma,' said Petulia meekly. 'Good. You're nearly good at that,' said Annagramma, and pointed around the circle, from one girl to another, nodding at their answers, until she came to Tiffany. 'Soft Nellies?' she said, to sniggering amusement. 'What are Witch Trials?' said Tiffany. 'Miss Tick mentioned them, but I don't know what they are.' Annagramma gave one of her noisy sighs. 'You tell her, Petulia,' she said. 'You brought her, after all.' Hesitantly, with lots of 'urn's and glances at Annagramma, Petulia explained about the Witch Trials. Um, it was a time when witches from all over the mountains could Page 53 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt meet up, and um see old friends and um pick up the latest news and gossip. Ordinary people could come along too, and there was a fair and um sideshows. It was quite an um big event. And in the afternoon all the witches that um wanted to could show off a spell or um something they'd been working on, which was very um popular. To Tiffany, they sounded like sheepdog trials, without the dogs or the sheep. They were in Sheercliff this year, which was quite close. 'And is there a prize?' she asked. 'Um, oh no,' said Petulia. 'It's all done in spirit of fun and good fellow- um, good sistership.' 'Hah!' said Annagramma. 'Not even she will believe that! It's all a fix, anyway. They'll all applaud Mistress Weatherwax. She always wins, whatever she does. She just messes up people's minds. She just fools them into thinking she's good. She wouldn't last five minutes against a wizard. They do real magic. And she dresses like a scarecrow, too! It's ignorant old women like her who keep witchcraft rooted in the past, as Mrs Earwig points out in chapter one!' One or two girls looked uncertain. Petulia even looked over her shoulder. 'Urn, people do say she's done amazing things, Annagramma,' she said. 'And, urn, they say she can spy on people miles away-' 'Yes, they say that,' said Annagramma. 'That's because they're all frightened of her! She's such a bully! That's all she does, bully people and mess up their heads! That's old witchcraft, that is. Just one step away from cackling, in my opinion. She's half cracked now, they say.' 'She didn't seem cracked to me.' 'Who said that?' snapped Annagramma. Everyone looked at Tiffany, who wished she hadn't spoken. But now there was nothing for it but to go on. 'She was just a bit old and stern,' she said. 'But she was quite . . . polite. She didn't cackle.' 'You've met her?' 'Yes.' 'She spoke to you, did she?' snarled Annagramma. 'Was that before or after you kicked out the Fairy Queen?' 'Just after,' said Tiffany, who was not used to this sort of thing. 'She turned up on a broomstick,' she added. 'I am. telling the truth.' 'Of course you are,' said Annagramma, smiling grimly. 'And she congratulated you, I expect.' 'Not really,' said Tiffany. 'She seemed pleased, but it was hard to tell.' And then Tiffany said something really, really stupid. Long afterwards, and long after all sorts of things had happened, she'd go 'la la la!' to blot out the memory whenever something reminded her of that evening. She said: 'She did give me this hat.' And they said, all of them, with one voice: 'What hat?' Petulia took her back to the cottage. She did her best, and assured Tiffany that she believed her, but Tiffany knew she was just being nice. Miss Level tried to talk to her as Page 54 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt she ran upstairs, but she bolted her door, kicked off her boots and lay down on the bed with the pillow over her head to drown out the laughter echoing inside. Downstairs, there was some muffled conversation between Petulia and Miss Level and then the sound of the door closing as Petulia left. After a while there was a scraping noise as Tiffany's boots were dragged across the floor and arranged neatly under the bed. Oswald was never off duty. After another while the laughter died down, although she was sure it'd never go completely. Tiffany could feel the hat. At least, she had been able to feel it. The virtual hat, on her real head. But no one could see it, and Petulia had even waved a hand back and forth over Tiffany's head and encountered a complete absence of hat. The worst part - and it was hard to find the worst part, so humiliatingly bad had it been - was hearing Annagramma say, 'No, don't laugh at her. That's too cruel. She's just foolish, that's all. I told you the old woman messes with people's heads!' Tiffany's First Thoughts were running around in circles. Her Second Thoughts were caught up in the storm. Only her Third Thoughts, which were very weak, came up with: Even though your world is completely and utterly ruined and can never be made better, no matter what, and you 're completely inconsolable, it would be nice if you heard someone bringing some soup upstairs . . . The Third Thoughts got Tiffany off the bed and over to the door, where they guided her hand to slide the bolt back. Then they let her fling herself on the bed again. A few minutes later there was a creak of footsteps on the landing. It's nice to be right. Miss Level knocked, then came in after a decent pause. Tiffany heard the tray go down on the table, then felt the bed move as a body sat down on it. Tetulia is a capable girl, I've always thought,' said Miss Level, after a while. 'She'll make some village a very serviceable witch one day.' Tiffany stayed silent. 'She told me all about it,' said Miss Level. 'Miss Tick never mentioned the hat, but if I was you I wouldn't have told her about it anyway. It sounds the sort of thing Mistress Weatherwax would do. You know, sometimes it helps to talk about these things.' More silence from Tiffany . . . 'Actually, that's not true,' Miss Level added. 'But as a witch I am incredibly inquisitive and would love to know more.' That had no effect either. Miss Level sighed and stood up. 'I'll leave the soup, but if you let it get too cold Oswald will try to take it away.' She went downstairs. Nothing stirred in the room for about five minutes, then there was faintest of tinkles as the soup began to move. Tiffany's hand shot out and gripped the tray firmly. That's the job of Third Thoughts: First and Second Thoughts might understand your current tragedy, but something has to remember that you haven't eaten since lunch time. Afterwards, and after Oswald had speedily taken the empty bowl away, Tiffany lay in the dark, staring at nothing. The novelty of this new country had taken all her attention in the past few days, but now that had drained away in the storm of laughter, and homesickness rushed to fill in Page 55 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt the empty spaces. She missed the sounds and the sheep and the silences of the Chalk. She missed seeing the blackness of the hills from her bedroom window, outlined against the stars. She missed . . . part of herself. . . But they 'd laughed at her. They 'd said, 'What hat?' and they'd laughed even more when she'd raised her hand to touch the invisible brim and hadn't found it. . . She'd touched it every day for eighteen months, and now it had gone. And she couldn't make a shamble. And she just had a green dress, while all the other girls wore black ones. Annagramma had a lot of jewellery, too, in black and silver. All the other girls had shambles, too, beautiful ones. Who cared if they were just for show? Perhaps she wasn't a witch at all. Oh, she'd defeated the Queen, with the help of the little men and the memory of Granny Aching, but she hadn't used magic. She wasn't sure, now, what she had used. She'd felt something go down through the soles of the boots, down through the hills and through the years, and come back loud and roaring in a rage that shook the sky: . . . how dare you invade my world, my land, my life ... But what had the virtual hat done for her? Perhaps the old woman had tricked her, had just made her think there was a hat there. Perhaps she was a bit cracked, like Annagramma had said, and had just got things wrong. Perhaps Tiffany should go home and make Soft Nellies for the rest of her life. Tiffany turned round and crawled down the bed and opened her suitcase. She pulled out the rough box, opened it in the dark and closed a hand around the lucky stone. She'd hoped that there'd be some kind of spark, some kind of friendliness in it. There was none. There was just the roughness of the outside of the stone, the smoothness on the face where it had split, and the sharpness between the two. And the piece of sheep's wool did nothing but make her fingers smell of sheep, and this made her long for home and feel even more upset. The silver horse was cold. Only someone quite close would have heard the sob. It was quite faint, but it was carried on the dark red wings of misery. She wanted, longed for the hiss of wind in the turf and the feel of centuries under her feet. She wanted that sense, which had never left her before, of being where Achings had lived for thousands of years. She needed blue butterflies and the sounds of sheep and the big empty skies. Back home, when she'd felt upset, she'd gone up to the remains of the old shepherding hut and sat there for a while. That had always worked. It was a long way away now. Too far. Now, she was full of a horrible, heavy dead feeling, and there was nowhere to leave it. And it wasn't how things were supposed to go. Where was the magic? Oh, she understood that you had learn about the basic, everyday craft, but when did the 'witch' part turn up? She'd been trying to learn, she really had, and she was turning into . . . well, a good worker, a handy girl with potions and a reliable person. Dependable, like Miss Level. She'd expected - well, what? Well... to be doing serious witch stuff, you know, broomsticks, magic, guarding the world against evil forces in a noble yet modest way, and then also doing good for poor people because she was a really nice person. And Page 56 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt the people she'd seen in the picture had rather less messy ailments and their children didn't have such runny noses. Mr We avail's flying toenails weren't in it anywhere. Some of them boomeranged. She got sick on broomsticks. Every time. She couldn't even make a shamble. She was going to spend her days running around after people who, to be honest, could sometimes be doing a bit more for themselves. No magic, no flying, no secrets . . . just toenails and bogeys. She belonged to the Chalk. Every day, she'd told the hills what they were. Every day, they'd told her who she was. But now she couldn't hear them. Outside it began to rain, quite hard, and in the distance Tiffany heard the mutter of thunder. What would Granny Aching have done? But even folded in the wings of despair she knew the answer to that. Granny Aching never gave up. She'd search all night for a lost lamb . . . She lay looking at nothing for a while, and then lit the candle by the bed and swivelled her legs onto the floor. This couldn't wait until morning. Tiffany had a little trick for seeing the hat. If you moved your hand behind it quickly, there was a slight, brief blurriness to what you saw, as though the light coming through the invisible hat took a little more time. It had to be there . . . Well, the candle should give enough light to be sure. If the hat was there, everything would be fine and it wouldn't matter what other people thought... She stood in the middle of the carpet, while lightning danced across the mountains outside, and closed her eyes. Down in the garden the apple-tree branches flayed in the wind, the dreamcatchers and curse-nets clashing and jangling . . . 'See me,' she said. The world went quiet, totally silent. It hadn't done that before. But Tiffany tiptoed around until she knew she was opposite herself, and opened her eyes again . . . And there she was, and so was the hat, as clear as it had ever been-And the image of Tiffany below, a young girl in a green dress, opened its eyes and smiled at her and said: 'We see you. Now we are you.' Tiffany tried to shout 'See me not!' But there was no mouth to shout. . . Lightning struck somewhere nearby. The window blew in. The candle flame flew out in a streamer of fire, and died. And then there was only darkness, and the hiss of the rain. Chapter 6 Hiver Thunder rolled across the Chalk. Jeannie carefully opened the package that her mother had given her on the day she left the Long Lake mound. It was a traditional gift, one that every young kelda got when she went away, never to return. Keldas could never go home. Keldas were home. The gift was this: memory. Inside the bag was a triangle of tanned sheepskin, three wooden stakes, a length of string twisted out of nettle fibres, a tiny leather bottle and a hammer. She knew what to do, because she'd seen her mother do it many times. The hammer was used to bang in the stakes around the smouldering fire. The string was used to tie the three corners of the leather triangle to the stakes so that it sagged in the centre, just enough to hold a small bucket of water which Jeannie had drawn herself from the deep well. Page 57 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt She knelt down and waited until the water very slowly began to seep through the leather, then built up the fire. She was aware of all the eyes of the Feegles in the shadowy galleries around and above her. None of them would come near her while she was boiling the cauldron. They'd rather chop their own leg off. This was pure hiddlins. And this was what a cauldron really was, back in the days before humans had worked copper or poured iron. It looked like magic. It was supposed to. But if you knew the trick, you could see how the cauldron would boil dry before the leather burned. When the water in the skin was steaming, she damped down the fire and added to the water the contents of the little leather bottle, which contained some of the water from her mother's cauldron. That's how it had always gone, from mother to daughter, since the very beginning. Jeannie waited until the cauldron had cooled some more, then took up a cup, filled it and drank. There was a sigh from the shadowy Feegles. She lay back and closed her eyes, waiting. Nothing happened except that the thunder rattled the land and the lightning turned the world black and white. And then, so gently that it had already happened before she realized that it was starting to happen, the past caught up with her. There, around her, were all the old keldas, starting with her mother, her grandmothers, their mothers . . . back until there was no one to remember . . . one big memory, carried for a while by many, worn and hazy in parts but old as a mountain. But all the Feegles knew about that. Only the kelda knew about the real hiddlin, which was this: the river of memory wasn't a river, it was a sea. Keldas yet to be born would remember, one day. On nights yet to come, they'd lie by their cauldron and become, for a few minutes, part of the eternal sea. By listening to unborn keldas remembering their past, you remember your future . . . You needed skill to find those faint voices, and Jeannie did not have all of it yet, but something was there. As lightning turned the world to black and white again she sat bolt upright. It's found her,' she whispered . . . 'Oh, the puir wee thing!' Rain had soaked into the rug when Tiffany woke up. Damp daylight spilled into the room. She got up and closed the window. A few leaves had blown in. O-K. It hadn't been a dream. She was certain of that. Something . . . strange had happened. The tips of her fingers were tingling. She felt . . . different. But not, now she took stock, in a bad way. No. Last night she'd felt awful, but now, now she felt. . . full of life. Actually, she felt happy. She was going to take charge. She was going to take control of her life. Get-up-and-go had got up and come. The green dress was rumpled and really it needed a wash. She'd got her old blue one in the chest of drawers but, somehow, it didn't seem right to wear it now. She'd have to make do with the green until she could get another one. She went to put on her boots, then stopped and stared at them. They just wouldn't do, not now. She got the new shiny ones out of her case and wore them instead. She found both of Miss Level was out in the wet garden in her nighties, sadly picking up bits of dreamcatcher and fallen apples. Even some of the garden ornaments had been smashed, although the madly grinning gnomes had unfortunately escaped destruction. Miss Level brushed her hair out of one pair of her eyes and said: 'Very, very Page 58 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt strange. All the curse-nets seem to have exploded. Even the boredom stones are discharged! Did you notice anything?' 'No, Miss Level,' said Tiffany meekly. 'And all the old shambles in the workroom are in pieces! I mean, I know they are really only ornamental and have next to no power left, but something really strange must have happened.' Both of her gave Tiffany a look that Miss Level probably thought was very sly and cunning, but it made her look slightly ill. The storm seemed a touch magical to me. I suppose you girls weren't doing anything . . . odd last night, were you, dear?' she said. 'No, Miss Level. I thought they were a bit silly.' 'Because, you see, Oswald seems to have gone,' said Miss Level. 'He's very sensitive to atmospheres It took Tiffany a moment to understand what she was talking about. Then she said: 'But he's always here!' 'Yes, ever since I can remember!' said Miss Level. 'Have you tried putting a spoon in the knife drawer?' 'Yes, of course! Not so much as a rattle!' 'Dropped an apple core? He always-' 'That was the first thing I tried!' 'How about the salt and sugar trick?' Miss Level hesitated. 'Well, no . . .' She brightened up. 'He does love that one, so he's bound to turn up, yes?' Tiffany found the big bag of salt and another of sugar, and poured both of them into a bowl. Then she stirred up the fine white crystals with her hand. She'd found this was the ideal away of keeping Oswald occupied while they did the cooking. Sorting the salt and sugar grains back into the right bags could take him an entire happy afternoon. But now the mixture just lay there, Oswaldless. 'Oh, well. . . I'll search the house,' said Miss Level, as if that was a good way of finding an invisible person. 'Go and see to the goats, will you, dear? And then we'll have to try to remember how to do the washing up!' Tiffany let the goats out of the shed. Usually, Black Meg immediately went and stood on the milking platform and gave her an expectant look as if to say: I've thought up a new trick. But not today. When Tiffany looked inside the shed the goats were huddled in the dark at the far end. They panicked, nostrils flaring, and scampered around as she went towards them, but she managed to grab Black Meg by her collar. The goat twisted and fought her as she dragged it out towards the milking stand. It climbed up because it was either that or having its head pulled off, then stood there snorting and bleating. Tiffany stared at the goat. Her bones felt as though they were itching. She wanted to ... do things, climb the highest mountain, leap into the sky, run around the world. And she thought: This is silly, I start every day with a battle of wits with an animal! Well, let's show this creature who is in charge . . . She picked up the broom that was used for sweeping out the milking parlour. Black Meg's slot eyes widened in fear, and wham! went the broom. It hit the milking stand. Tiffany hadn't intended to miss like that. She'd wanted to give Page 59 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt Meg the wallop the creature richly deserved but, somehow, the stick had twisted in her hand. She raised it again, but the look in her eye and the whack on the wood had achieved the right effect. Meg cowered. 'No more games!' hissed Tiffany, lowering the stick. The goat stood as still as a log. Tiffany milked her out, took the pail back into the dairy, weighed it, chalked up the amount on the slate by the door, and tipped the milk into a big bowl. The rest of the goats were nearly as bad, but a herd learns fast. Altogether they gave three gallons, which was pretty pitiful for ten goats. Tiffany chalked this up without enthusiasm and stood staring at it, fiddling with the chalk. What was the point of this? Yesterday she'd been full of plans for experimental cheeses, but now cheese was dull. Why was she here, doing silly chores, helping people too stupid to help themselves? She could be doing . . . anything! She looked down at the scrubbed wooden table. Someone had written on the wood in chalk. And the piece of chalk was still in her hand-Tetulia's come to see you, dear,' said Miss Level, behind her. Tiffany quickly shifted a milking bucket over the words and turned round guiltily. 'What?' she said. 'Why?' 'Just to see if you're all right, I think,' said Miss Level, watching Tiffany carefully. The dumpy girl stood very nervously on the doorstep, her pointy hat in her hands. 'Um, I just thought I ought to see how you, um, are . . .' she muttered, looking Tiffany squarely in the boots. 'Um, I don't think anyone really wanted to be unkind . . .' 'You're not very clever and you're too fat,' said Tiffany. She stared at the round pink face for a moment and knew things. 'And you still have a teddy bear help me and you believe in fairies.' She slammed the door, went back to the dairy and stared at the bowls of milk and curds as if she were seeing them for the first time. Good with Cheese. That was one of the things everyone remembered about her: Tiffany Aching, brown hair, Good with Cheese. But now the dairy looked all wrong and unfamiliar. She gritted her teeth. Good with Cheese. Was that really what she wanted to be? Of all the things people could be in the world, did she want to be known just as a dependable person to have around rotted milk? Did she really want to spend all day scrubbing slabs and washing pails and plates and . . . and . . . and that weird wire thing just there, that- . . . cheese-cutter . . . - that cheese-cutter? Did she want her whole life to-Hold on ... 'Who's there?' said Tiffany. 'Did someone just say "cheese-cutter"?' She peered around the room, as if someone could be hiding behind the bundles of dried herbs. It couldn't have been Oswald. He'd gone, and he never spoke in any case. Tiffany grabbed the pail, spat on her hand and rubbed out the chalked HELP ME - tried to rub it out. But her hand gripped the edge of the table and held it firmly, no matter how much she pulled. She flailed with her left hand, managing to knock over a pail of milk, which washed across the letters . .. and her right hand let go suddenly Page 60 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt The door was pushed open. Both of Miss Level was there. When she pulled herself together like that, standing side by side, it was because she felt she had something important to say. 'I have to say, Tiffany, that I think -' '- you were very nasty to Petulia just -' '- now. She went off crying.' She stared at Tiffany's face. 'Are you all right, child?' Tiffany shuddered. 'Er . . . yes. Fine. Feel a bit odd. Heard a voice in my head. Gone now.' Miss Level looked at her with her heads on one side, right and left in different directions. 'If you're sure, then. I'll get changed. We'd better leave soon. There's a lot to do today.' 'A lot to do,' said Tiffany weakly. 'Well, yes. There's Slapwick's leg, and I've got to see to the sick Grimly baby, and it's been a week since I've visited Surleigh Bottom, and, let's see, Mr Plover's got Gnats again, and I'd better just find a moment to have a word with Mistress Slopes . . . then there's Mr Weavall's lunch to cook, I think I'll have to do that here and run down with it for him, and of course Mrs Fanlight is near her time and,' she sighed, 'so is Miss Hobblow, again . . . It's going to be a full day. It's really hard to fit it all in, really it is.' Tiffany thought: You stupid woman, standing there looking worried because you just haven't got time to give people everything they demand! Do you think you could ever give them enough help? Greedy, lazy, dumb people, always wanting all the time! The Grimly baby? Mrs Grimly's got eleven children! Who'd miss one? Mr Weavall's dead already! He just won't go! You think they're grateful, but all they are doing is making sure you come round again! That's not gratitude, that's just insurance! The thought horrified part of her, but it had turned up and it flamed there in her head, just itching to escape from her mouth. 'Things need tidying up here,' she muttered. 'Oh, I can do that while we're gone,' said Miss Level cheerfully. 'Come on, let's have a smile! There's lots to do!' There was always lots to do, Tiffany growled in her head as she trailed after Miss Level to the first village. Lots and lots. And it never made any difference. There was no end to the wanting. They went from one grubby, smelly cottage to another, ministering to people too stupid to use soap, drinking tea from cracked cups, gossiping with old women with fewer teeth than toes. It made her feel ill. It was a bright day, but it seemed dark as they walked on. The feeling was like a thunderstorm inside her head. Then the daydreams began. She was helping to splint the arm of some dull child who'd broken it when she glanced up and saw her reflection in the glass of the cottage window. She was a tiger, with huge fangs. She yelped, and stood up. 'Oh, do be careful,' said Miss Level, and then saw her face. 'Is there something wrong?' she said. Page 61 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt 'I ... I ... something bit me!' lied Tiffany. That was a safe bet in these places. The fleas bit the rats and the rats bit the children. She managed to get out into the daylight, her head spinning. Miss Level came out a few minutes later and found her leaning against the wall, shaking. 'You look dreadful,' she said. 'Ferns!' said Tiffany. 'Everywhere! Big ferns! And big things, like cows made out of lizards!' She turned a wide, mirthless smile onto Miss Level, who took a step back. 'You can eat them!' She blinked. 'What's happening?' she whispered. 'I don't know but I'm coming right down here this minute to fetch you,' said Miss Level. 'I'm on the broomstick right now!' 'They laughed at me when I said I could trap one. Well, who's laughing now, tell me that, eh?' Miss Level's expression of concern turned into something close to panic. 'That didn't sound like your voice. That sounded like a man! Do you feel all right?' 'Feel. . . crowded,' murmured Tiffany. 'Crowded?' said Miss Level. 'Strange . . . memories... help me...' Tiffany looked at her arm. It had scales on. Now it had hair on it. Now it was smooth and brown, and holding- 'A scorpion sandwich?' she said. 'Can you hear me?' said Miss Tick, her voice a long way away. 'You're delirious. Are you sure you girls haven't been playing with potions or anything like that?' The broomstick dropped out of the sky and the other part of Miss Level nearly fell off. Without speaking, both of Miss Level got Tiffany onto the stick and part of Miss Level got on behind her. It didn't take long to fly back to the cottage. Tiffany spent the flight with her mind full of hot cotton-wool and wasn't at all certain where she was, although her body did know and threw up again. Miss Level helped her off the stick and sat her on the garden seat just outside the cottage door. 'Now just you wait there,' said Miss Level, who dealt with emergencies by talking incessantly and using the word 'just' too often because it's a calming word, 'and I'll just get you a drink and then we'll just see what the matter is . . .' There was a pause and then the stream of words came out of the house again, dragging Miss Level after them and I'll just check on. . . things. Just drink this, please!' Tiffany drank the water and, out of the corner of her eye, saw Miss Level weaving string around an egg. She was trying to make a shamble without Tiffany noticing. Strange images were floating around Tiffany's mind. There were scraps of voices, fragments of memories . . . and one little voice that was her own, small and defiant and getting fainter: You're not me. You just think you are! Someone help me! 'Now, then,' said Miss Level, 'let's just see what we can see-' The shamble exploded, not just into pieces but into fire and smoke. 'Oh, Tiffany,' said Miss Level, frantically waving smoke away. 'Are you all right?' Tiffany stood up slowly. It seemed to Miss Level that she was slightly taller than she remembered. 'Yes, I think I am,' said Tiffany. 'I think I've been all wrong, but now I'm all right. Page 62 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt And I've been wasting my time, Miss Level.' 'What-?' Miss Level began. Tiffany pointed a finger at her. 'I know why you had to leave the circus, Miss Level,' she said. 'It was to do with the clown Floppo, the trick ladder and . . . some custard . . .' Miss Level went pale. 'How could you possibly know that?' 'Just by looking at you!' said Tiffany, pushing past her into the dairy. 'Watch this, Miss Level!' She pointed a finger. A wooden spoon rose an inch from the table. Then it began to spin, faster and faster until, with a cracking sound, it broke into splinters. They whirled away across the room. 'And I can do thisV Tiffany shouted. She grabbed a bowl of curds, tipped them out on the table and waved a hand at them. They turned into a cheese. 'Now that's what cheesemaking should be!' she said. To think that I spent stupid years learning the hard way! That's how a real witch does it! Why do we crawl in the dirt, Miss Level? Why do we amble around with herbs and bandage smelly old men's legs? Why do we get paid with eggs and stale cakes? Annagramma is as stupid as a hen but even she can see it's wrong. Why don't we use magic? Why are you so afraid?' Miss Level tried to smile. "Tiffany, dear, we all go through this,' she said, and her voice was shaking. Though not as ... explosively as you, I have to say. And the answer is ... well, it's dangerous.' 'Yes, but that's what people always say to scare children,' said Tiffany. 'We get told stories to frighten us, to keep us scared! Don't go into the big bad wood help me because it's full of scary things, that's what we're told. But really, the big bad wood should be scared of us\ I'm going out!' 'I think that would be a good idea,' said Miss Level weakly. 'Until you behave.' 'I don't have to do things your way,' snarled Tiffany, slamming the door behind her. Miss Level's broomstick was leaning against the wall a little way away. Tiffany stopped and stared at it, her mind on fire. She'd tried to keep away from it. Miss Level had wheedled her into a trial flight with Tiffany clinging on tightly with arms and legs while both of Miss Level ran alongside her, holding onto ropes and making encouraging noises. They had stopped when Tiffany threw up for the fourth time. Well, that was then! She grabbed the stick, swung a leg over it - and found that her other foot stuck to the ground as though nailed there. The broomstick twisted around wildly as she tried to pull it up and, when the boot was finally tugged off the ground, turned over so that Tiffany was upside down. This is not the best position in which to make a grand exit. She said, quietly, 'I am not going to learn you, you are going to learn me. Or the next lesson will involve an axe!' The broomstick turned upright, then gently rose. 'Right,' said Tiffany. There was no fear this time. There was just impatience. The ground dropping away below her didn't worry her at all. If it didn't have the sense to Page 63 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt stay away from her, she'd hit it... As the stick drifted away, there was whispering in the long grass of the garden. 'Ach, we're too late, Rob. That wuz the hiver, that wuz.' 'Aye, but did ye see that foot? It's nae won yet - oor hag's in there somewhere! She's fighting it! It cannae win until it's taken the last scrap o' her! Wullie, will ye stop tryin' to grab them apples!' 'It's sorry I am tae say this, Rob, but no one can fight a hiver. 'Tis like fightin' yoursel. The more you fight, the more it'll tak' o' ye. And when it has all o' ye-' 'Wash ootyer mouth wi' hedgehog pee, Big Yan! That isnae gonna happen-' 'Crivens! Here comes the big hag!' Half of Miss Level stepped out into the ruined garden. She stared up at the departing broomstick, shaking her head. Daft Wullie was stuck out in the open where he'd been trying to snag a fallen apple. He turned to flee and would have got clean away if he hadn't run straight into a pottery garden gnome. He bounced off, stunned, and staggered wildly, trying to focus on the big, fat, chubby-cheeked figure in front of him. He was far too angry to hear the click of the garden gate and soft tread of approaching footsteps. When it comes to choosing between running and fighting, a Feegle doesn't think twice. He doesn't think at all. 'What're ye grinnin' at, pal?' he demanded. 'Oh aye, you reckon you're the big man, eh, jus' 'cos yez got a fishin' rod?' He grabbed a pink pointy ear in each hand and aimed his head at what turned out be quite a hard pottery nose. It smashed anyway, as things tend to in these circumstances, but it did slow the little man down and cause him to stagger in circles. Too late, he saw Miss Level bearing down on him from the doorway. He turned to flee, right into the hands of also Miss Level. Her fingers closed around him. I'm a witch, you know,' she said. 'And if you don't stop struggling this minute I will subject you to the most dreadful torture. Do you know what that is?' Daft Wullie shook his head in terror. Long years of juggling had given Miss Level a grip like steel. Down in the long grass, the rest of the Feegles listened so hard it hurt. Miss Level brought him a little closer to her mouth. 'I'll let you go right now without giving you a taste of the twenty-year-old MacAbre single malt I have in my cupboard,' she said. Rob Anybody leaped up. 'Ach, crivens, mistress, what a thing to taunt a body wi'! D'ye no' have a drop of mercy in you?' he shouted. 'Ye're a cruel hag indeed tae-' He stopped. Miss Level was smiling. Rob Anybody looked around, flung his sword on the ground and said: 'Ach, crivensV The Nac Mac Feegle respected witches, even if they did call them hags. And this one had brought out a big loaf and a whole bottle of whisky on the table for the taking. You had to respect someone like that. 'Of course, I'd heard of you, and Miss Tick mentioned you,' she said, watching them eat, which is not something to be done lightly. 'But I always thought you were just a myth.' 'Aye, weel, we'll stay that way if ye dinnae mind,' said Rob Anybody, and belched.' 'Tis bad enough wi' them arky-olly-gee men wantin' to dig up oour mounds wi'oot them folklore ladies wantin' to tak' pichoors o' us an' that.' 'And you watch over Tiffany's farm, Mr Anybody?' 'Aye, we do that, an' we dinnae ask for any reward,' said Rob Anybody stoutly. Page 64 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt 'Aye, we just tak' a few wee eiggs an' fruits an' old clothes and-' Daft Wullie began. Rob gave him a look. 'Er ... wuz that one o' those times when I shouldna' open my big fat mouth?' said Wullie. 'Aye. It wuz,' said Rob. He turned back to both of Miss Level. 'Mebbe we tak' the odd bitty thing lyin' aboot-' '- in locked cupboards an' such-' added Daft Wullie happily. '- but it's no' missed, an' we keeps an eye on the ships in payment,' said Rob, glaring at his brother. 'You can see the sea from down there?' said Miss Level, entering that state of general bewilderment that most people fell into when talking to the Feegles. 'Rob Anybody means the sheep,' said Awf'ly Wee Billy. Gonnagles know a bit more about language. 'Aye, I said so, ships,' said Rob Anybody. 'Anywa' . .. aye, we watch her farm. She's the hag o' oor hills, like her granny.' He added proudly, 'It's through her the hills knows they are alive.' 'And a hiver is . . . ?' Rob hesitated. 'Dunno the proper haggin' way o' talking aboot it,' he said. 'Awf'ly Wee Billy, you know them lang words.' Billy swallowed. 'There's old poems, mistress. It's like a - a mind wi'oot a body, except it disnae think. Some say it's nothing but a fear, and never dies. And what it does .. .' His tiny face wrinkled. 'It's like them things you get on sheep,' he decided. The Feegles who weren't eating and drinking came to his aid. 'Horns?' 'Wools?' 'Tails?' 'Legs?' 'Chairs?' This was Daft Wullie. 'Sheep ticks,' said Billy, thoughtfully. 'A parasite, you mean?' said Miss Level. 'Aye, that could be the word,' said Billy. 'It creeps in, ye ken. It looks for folks wi' power and strength. Kings, ye ken, magicians, leaders. They say that way back in time, afore there wuz people, it live in beasts. The strongest beasts, ye ken, the one wi' big, big teeths. An' when it finds ye, it waits for a chance tae creep intae your head and it becomes ye.' The Feegles fell silent, watching Miss Level. 'Becomes you?' she said. 'Aye. Wi' your memories an' all. Only ... it changes ye. It gives ye a lot o' power, but it takes ye over, makes ye its own. An' the last wee bit of ye that still is ye ... well, that'll fight and fight, mebbe, but it will dwindle and dwindle until it's a' gone an' ye're just a memory The Feegles watched both of Miss Level. You never knew what a hag would do at a time like this. 'Wizards used to summon demons,' she said. 'They may still do so, although I think that's considered so fifteen centuries ago these days. But that takes a lot of magic. And you could talk to Page 65 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt demons, I believe. And there were rules.' 'Never heard o' a hiver talkin'/ said Billy. 'Or obeyin' rules.' 'But why would it want Tiffany?' said Miss Level. 'She's not powerful!' 'She has the power o' the land in her,' said Rob Anybody stoutly. ' 'Tis a power that comes at need, not for doin' wee conjurin' tricks. We seen it, mistress!' 'But Tiffany doesn't do any magic,' said Miss Level, helplessly. 'She's very bright but she can't even make a shamble. You must be wrong about that.' 'Any o' youse lads seen the hag do any hagglin' lately?' Rob Anybody demanded. There were a lot of shaken heads, and a shower of beads, beetles, feathers and miscellaneous head items. 'Do you spy- I mean, do you watch over her all the time?' said Miss Level, slightly horrified. 'Oh, aye,' said Rob, airily. 'No' in the privy, o'course. An' it's getting harder in her bedroom 'cuz she's blocked up a lot o' the cracks, for some reason.' 'I can't imagine why,' said Miss Level carefully. 'No' us, neither,' said Ron. 'We reckon it was 'cuz o' the draughts.' 'Yes, I expect that's why it was,' said Miss Level. 'So mostly we get in through a mousehole and hides out in her old dolly house until she guz tae sleep,' said Rob. 'Dinnae look at me like that, mistress, all the lads is perrrfect gentlemen an' keeps their eyes tight shut when she's gettin' intae her nightie. Then there's one guarding her window and another at the door.' 'Guarding her from what?' 'Everything.' For a moment Miss Level had a picture in her mind of a silent, moonlit bedroom with a sleeping child. She saw, by the window, lit by the moon, one small figure on guard, and another in the shadows by the door. What were they guarding her from? Everything . . . But now something, this thing, has taken her over and she's locked inside somewhere. But she never used to do magic! I could understand it if it was one of the other girls, messing around, but. . . Tiffany? One of the Feegles was slowly raising a hand. 'Yes?' she said. 'It's me, mistress, Big Yan. I dinnae know if it wuz proper hagglin', mistress,' he said nervously, 'but me an' Nearly Big Angus saw her doin' something odd a few times, eh, Nearly Big Angus?' The Feegle next to him nodded and the speaker went on. 'It was when she got her new dress and her new hat 'And verra bonny she looked, too,' said Nearly Big Angus. 'Aye, she did that. But she'd put 'em on, and then standing in the middle o' the floor and said - whut wuz it she said, Nearly Big Angus?' ' "See me",' Nearly Big Angus volunteered. Miss Tick looked blank. The speaker, now looking a bit sorry that he'd raised this, went on: 'Then after a wee while we'd hear her voice say "See me not" and then she'd adjust the hat, ye know, mebbe to a more fetchin' angle.' 'Oh, you mean she was looking at herself in what we call a mirror,' said Miss Level. 'That's a kind of-' 'We ken well what them things are, mistress,' said Nearly Big Angus. 'She's got a tiny one, all cracked and dirty. But it's nae good for a body as wants tae see herself properly.' 'Verra good for the stealin', mirrors,' said Rob Anybody. 'We got oor Jeannie a Page 66 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt silver one wi' garnets in the frame.' 'And she'd say "See me"?' said Miss Level. 'Aye, an' then "See me not",' said Big Yan. 'An' betweentimes she'd stand verra still, like a stachoo.' 'Sounds like she was trying to invent some kind of invisibility spell,' Miss Level mused. 'They don't work like that, of course.' 'We reckoned she was just tryin' to throw her voice,' said Nearly Big Angus. 'So it sounds like it's comin' fra' somewhere else, ye ken? Wee Iain can do that a treat when we're huntin'.' 'Throw her voice?' said Miss Level, her brow wrinkling. 'Why did you think that?' ' 'Cuz when she said "See me not", it sounded like it wuz no' comin fra' her and her lips didnae move.' Miss Level stared at the Feegles. When she spoke next, her voice was a little strange. 'Tell me,' she said, 'when she was just standing there, was she moving at all?' 'Just breathin' verra slow, mistress,' said Big Yan. 'Were her eyes shut?' 'Aye!' Miss Level started to breathe very fast. 'She walked out of her own body! There's not one -' '- witch in a hundred who can do that!' she said. 'That's Borrowing, that is! It's better than any circus trick! It's putting -' '- your mind somewhere else! You have to -' '- learn how to protect yourself before you ever try it! And she just invented it because she didn't have a mirror? The little fool, why didn't she -' '- say? She walked out of her own body and left it there for anything to take over! I wonder what -' '- she thought she was -' '- doing?' After a while Rob Anybody gave a polite cough. 'We're better at questions about fightin', drinkin' and stealin'/ he mumbled. 'We dinna have the knowin' o' the hagglin'.' Chapter 7 MattGR of BuiaN Something that called itself Tiffany flew across the treetops. It thought it was Tiffany. It could remember everything -nearly everything - about being Tiffany. It looked like Tiffany. It even thought like Tiffany, more or less. It had everything it needed to be Tiffany... ... except Tiffany. Except the tiny part of her that was . . . me. It peered from her own eyes, tried to hear with her own ears, think with her own brain. A hiver took over its victim not by force, exactly, but simply by moving into any space, like the hermit elephant* It just *The hermit elephant of Howondaland has a very thin hide, except on its head, and young ones will often move into a small mud hut while the owners are out. It is far too shy to harm anyone, but most people quit their huts pretty soon after an elephant moves in. For one thing, it lifts the hut off the ground and carries it away on its back across the veldt, settling it down over any patch of nice grass that it finds. This makes housework very unpredictable. Nevertheless, an entire village of hermit elephants moving across Page 67 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt the plains is one of the finest sights on the continent. took you over because that was what it did, until it was in all the places and there was no room left... Except - - it was having trouble. It had flowed through her like a dark tide but there was a place, tight and sealed, that was still closed. If it had the brains of a tree, it would have been puzzled. If it had the brains of a human, it would have been frightened. . . Tiffany brought the broomstick in low over the trees, and landed it neatly in Mrs Earwig's garden. There really was nothing to it, she decided. You just had to want it to fly. Then she was sick again or, at least, tried to be, but since she'd thrown up twice in the air there wasn't much left to be sick with. It was ridiculous! She wasn't frightened of flying any more, but her stupid stomach was! She wiped her mouth carefully and looked around. She'd landed on a lawn. She'd heard of them, but had never seen a real one before. There was grass all round Miss Level's cottage, but that was just, well, the grass of the clearing. Every other garden she'd seen was used for growing vegetables, with perhaps just a little space for flowers if the wife had got tough about it. A lawn meant you were posh enough to afford to give up valuable potato space. This lawn had stripes. Tiffany turned to the stick and said, 'Stay!' and then marched across the lawn to the house. It was a lot grander than Miss Level's cottage but, from what Tiffany had heard, Mrs Earwig was a more senior witch. She'd also married a wizard, although he didn't do any wizarding these days. It was a funny thing, Miss Level said, but you didn't often meet a poor wizard. She knocked at the door and waited. There was a curse-net hanging in the porch. You'd have thought that a witch wouldn't need such a thing, but Tiffany supposed they used them as decoration. There was also a broomstick leaning against the wall, and a five-pointed silver star on the door. Mrs Earwig advertised. Tiffany knocked on the door again, much harder. It was instantly opened by a tall, thin woman, all in black. But it was a very decorative rich, deep black, all lacy and ruffled, and set off with more silver jewellery than Tiffany imagined could exist. She didn't just have rings on her fingers. Some fingers had sort of silver finger gloves, designed to look like claws. She gleamed like the night sky. And she was wearing her pointy hat, which Miss Level never did at home. It was taller than any hat that Tiffany had ever seen. It had stars on it, and silver hatpins glittered. All of this should have added up to something pretty impressive. It didn't. Partly it was because there was just too much of everything, but mostly it was because of Mrs Earwig. She had a long sharp face and looked very much as though she was about to complain about the cat from next door widdling on her lawn. And she looked like that all the time. Before she spoke, she very pointedly looked at the door to see if the heavy knocking had made a mark. 'Well?' she said, haughtily, or what she probably thought was haughtily. It sounded a bit strangled. Page 68 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt 'Bless all in this house,' said Tiffany. 'What? Oh, yes. Favourable runes shine on this our meeting,' said Mrs Earwig hurriedly. 'Well?' 'I've come to see Annagramma,' said Tiffany. There really was too much silver. 'Oh, are you one of her girls?' said Miss Earwig. 'Not . . . exactly,' said Tiffany. 'I work with Miss Level' 'Oh, her,' said Mrs Earwig, looking her up and down. 'Green is a very dangerous colour. What is your name, child?' 'Tiffany.' 'Hmm,' said Mrs Earwig, not approving at all. 'Well, you had better come in.' She glanced up and made a tch! sound. 'Oh, will you look at that? I bought that at the craft fair over in Slice, too. It was very expensive!' The curse-net was hanging in tatters. 'You didn't do that, did you?' Mrs Earwig demanded. 'It's too high, Mrs Earwig,' said Tiffany. 'It's pronounced Ah-wij,' said Mrs Earwig coldly. 'Sorry, Mrs Earwig.' 'Come.' It was a strange house. You couldn't doubt that a witch lived in it, and not just because every doorframe had a tall pointy bit cut out of the top of it to allow Mrs Earwig's hat to pass through. Miss Level had nothing on her walls except circus posters, but Mrs Earwig had proper big paintings everywhere and they were all... witchy. There were lots of crescent moons and young women with quite frankly not enough clothes on, and big men with horns and, ooh, not just horns. There were suns and moon on the tiles of the floor, and the ceiling of the room Tiffany was led into was high, blue and painted with stars. Mrs Earwig (pronounced Ah-wij) pointed to a chair with gryphon's feet and crescent-shaped cushions. 'Sit there,' she said. 'I will tell Annagramma you are here. Do not kick the chairlegs, please.' She went out via another door. Tiffany looked around - the hiver looked around • -and thought: I've got to be the strongest. When I am strongest, I shall be safe. That one is weak. She thinks you can buy magic. 'Oh, it really is you,' said a sharp voice behind her. 'The cheese girl.' Tiffany stood up. - the hiver had been many things, including a number of wizards, because wizards sought power all the time and sometimes found, in their treacherous circles, not some demon who was so stupid that it could be tricked with threats and riddles, but the hiver, which was so stupid that it could not be tricked at all. And the hiver remembered- Annagramma was drinking a glass of milk. Once you'd seen Mrs Earwig, you understood something about Annagramma. There was an air about her that she was taking notes about the world in order to draw up a list of suggestions for improvements. 'Hello,' said Tiffany. 'I suppose you came along to beg to be allowed to join after all, have you? I suppose you might be fun.' 'No, not really. But I might let you join me,' said Tiffany. 'Are you enjoying that milk?' The glass of milk turned into a bunch of thistles and grass. Annagramma dropped it Page 69 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt hurriedly. When it hit the floor, it became a glass of milk again, and shattered and splashed. Tiffany pointed at the ceiling. The painted stars flared, filling the room with light. But Annagramma stared at the spilled milk. 'You know they say the power comes?' said Tiffany, walking around her. 'Well, it's come to me. Do you want to be my friend? Or do you want to be ... in my way? I should clean up that milk, if I was you.' She concentrated. She didn't know where this was coming from, but it seemed to know exactly what to do. Annagramma rose a few inches off the floor. She struggled and tried to run, but that only made her spin. To Tiffany's dreadful delight, the girl started to cry. 'You said we ought to use our power,' said Tiffany, walking around her as Annagramma tried to break free. 'You said if we had the gift, people ought to know about it. You're a girl with her head screwed on right.' Tiffany bent down a bit to look her in the eye. 'Wouldn't it be awful if it got screwed on wrong?' She waved a hand and her prisoner dropped to the ground. But while Annagramma was unpleasant she wasn't a coward, and she rose up with her mouth open to yell and a hand upraised- 'Careful,' said Tiffany. 1 can do it again.' Annagramma wasn't stupid either. She lowered her hand and shrugged. 'Well, you have been lucky,' she said grudgingly. 'But I still need your help,' said Tiffany. 'Why would you need my help?' said Annagramma sulkily. - We need allies, the hiver thought with Tiffany's mind. They can help protect us. If necessary, we can sacrifice them. Other creatures will always want to be friends with the powerful, and this one loves power - To start with,' said Tiffany, 'where can I get a dress like yours?' Annagramma's eyes lit up. 'Oh, you want Zakzak Stronginthearm, over in Sallett Without,' she said. 'He sells everything for the modern witch.' 'Then I want everything,' said Tiffany. 'He'll want paying,' Annagramma went on. 'He's a dwarf. They know real gold from illusion gold. Everyone tries it out on him, of course. He just laughs. If you try it twice, he'll make a complaint to your mistress.' 'Miss Tick said a witch should have just enough money,' said Tiffany. That's right,' said Annagramma. 'Just enough to buy everything she wants! Mrs Earwig says that just because we're witches we don't have to live like peasants. But Miss Level is old-fashioned, isn't she? Probably hasn't got any money in the house.' And Tiffany said, 'Oh, I know where I can get some money. I'll meet you please help me! here this afternoon and you can show me where his place is.' 'What was that?' said Annagramma sharply. 'I just said I'd stop me! meet you here this-' Tiffany began. 'There it was again! There was a sort of ... odd echo in your voice,' said Annagramma. 'Like two people trying to talk at once.' 'Oh, that,' said the hiver. That's nothing. It'll stop soon.' It was an interesting mind and the hiver enjoyed using it - but always there was that one place, that little place that was closed; it was annoying, like an itch that wouldn't go away . . . It did not think. The mind of the hiver was just what remained of all the other minds it had once lived in. They were like echoes after the music is taken away. But even echoes, bouncing off one another, can produce new harmonies. They clanged now. They rang out things like: Fit in. Not strong enough yet to make enemies. Have friends . . . Page 70 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt Zakzak's low-ceilinged, dark shop had plenty to spend your money on. Zakzak was indeed a dwarf, and they're not traditionally interested in using magic, but he certainly knew how to display merchandise, which is what they are very good at. There were wands, mostly of metal, some of rare woods. Some had shiny crystals stuck on them, which of course made them more expensive. There were bottles of coloured glass in the 'potions' section and, oddly enough, the smaller the bottle, the more expensive it was. That's because there's often very rare ingredients, like the tears of some rare snake or something,' said Annagramma. 'I didn't know snakes cried,' said Tiffany. 'Don't they? Oh, well, I expect that's why it's expensive.' There was plenty of other stuff. Shambles hung from the ceiling, much prettier and more interesting than the working ones that Tiffany had seen. Since they were made up complete, then surely they were dead, just like the ones Miss Level kept for ornamentation. But they looked good - and looking good was important. There were even stones for looking into. 'Crystal balls,' said Annagramma as Tiffany picked one up. 'Careful! They're very expensive!' She pointed to a sign, which had been placed thoughtfully amongst the glittering globes. It said: Lovely to look at Nice to hold If you drop it You get torn apart by wild horses Tiffany held the biggest one in her hand and saw how Zakzak moved slightly away from his counter, ready to rush forward with a bill if she dropped it. 'Miss Tick uses a saucer of water with a bit of ink poured into it,' she said. 'And she usually borrows the water and cadges the ink, at that.' 'Oh, a fundamentalist/ said Annagramma. 'Letice -that's Mrs Earwig - says they let us down terribly. Do we really want people to think witches are just a bunch of mad old women who look like crows? That's so gingerbread-cottagey! We really ought to be professional about these things.' 'Hmm,' said Tiffany, throwing the crystal ball up into the air and catching it again with one hand. 'People should be made to fear witches.' 'Well, er, certainly they should respect us,' said Annagramma. 'Urn ... I should be careful with that, if I was you . . .' 'Why?' said Tiffany, tossing the ball over her shoulder. That was finest quartz!' shouted Zakzak, rushing around his counter. 'Oh, Tiffany,' said Annagramma, shocked but trying not to giggle. Zakzak rushed past them to where the shattered ball lay in hundreds of very expensive fragmen- - did not lie in very expensive fragments. Both he and Annagramma turned to Tiffany. She was spinning the crystal globe on the tip of her finger. 'Quickness of the hand deceives the eye,' she said. 'But I heard it smash!' said Zakzak. 'Deceives the ear, too,' said Tiffany, putting the ball back on its stand. 'I don't want this, but' - and she pointed a finger - 'I'll take that necklace and that one and the one with the cats and that ring and a set of those and two, no, three of those and - what are these?' 'Um, that's a Book of Night,' said Annagramma nervously. 'It's a sort of magical diary. You write down what you've been working on . . .' Tiffany picked up the leather-bound book. It had an eye set in heavier leather on Page 71 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt the cover. The eye rolled to look at her. This was a real witch's diary, and much more impressive than some shamefully cheap old book bought off a pedlar. 'Whose eye was it?' said Tiffany. 'Anyone interesting?' 'Er, I get the books from the wizards at Unseen University,' said Zakzak, still shaken. 'They're not real eyes, but they're clever enough to swivel around until they see another eye.' It just blinked,' said Tiffany. 'Very clever people, wizards,' said the dwarf, who knew a sale when he saw one. 'Shall I wrap it up for you?' 'Yes,' said Tiffany. 'Wrap everything up. And now can anyone hear me? show me the clothes department. . .' . . . where there were hats. There are fashions in witchery, just like everything else. Some years the slightly concertina'd look is in, and you'll even see the point twisting around so much it's nearly pointing at the ground. There are varieties even in the most traditional hat (Upright Cone, Black), such as 'the Countrywoman' (inside pockets, waterproof), 'the Cloudbuster' (low drag coefficient for broomstick use), and, quite importantly, 'the Safety' (guaranteed to survive 80% of falling farmhouses). Tiffany chose the tallest upright cone. It was more than two feet high and had big stars sewn on it. 'Ah, the Sky Scraper. Very much your Look,' said Zakzak, bustling around and opening drawers. 'It's for the witch on the way up, who knows what she wants and doesn't care how many frogs it takes, aha. Incidentally, many ladies like a cloak with that. Now, we have the Midnight, pure wool, fine knit, very warm, but' - he gave Tiffany a knowing look - 'we currently have very limited supplies of the Zephyr Billow, just in, very rare, black as coal and thin as a shadow. Completely useless for keeping you warm or dry but it looks fabulous in even the slightest breeze. Observe-' He held up the cloak and blew gently. It billowed out almost horizontally, flapping and twisting like a sheet in a gale. 'Oh, yes,' breathed Annagramma. 'I'll take it,' said Tiffany. 'I shall wear it to the Witch Trials on Saturday.' 'Well, if you win, be sure to tell everyone you bought it here,' said Zakzak. 'When I win I shall tell them I got it at a considerable discount,' said Tiffany. 'Oh, I don't do discounts,' said Zakzak, as loftily as a dwarf can manage. Tiffany stared at him, then picked up one of the most expensive wands from the display. It glittered. 'That's a Number Six,' whispered Annagramma. 'Mrs Earwig has one of those!' 'I see it's got runes on it,' said Tiffany, and something about the way she said it made Zakzak go pale. 'Well, of course,' said Annagramma. 'You've got to have runes.' 'These are in Oggham,' said Tiffany, smiling nastily at Zakzak. 'It's a very ancient language of the dwarfs. Shall I tell you what they say? They say "Oh What A Wally Is Waving This".' 'Don't you take that nasty lying tone with me, young lady!' said the dwarf. 'Who's your mistress? I know your type! Learn one spell and you think you're Mistress Weatherwax! I'm not standing for this kind of behaviour! Brian'.' There was a rustling from the bead curtains that led to the back of the shop and a wizard appeared. Page 72 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt You could tell he was a wizard. Wizards never wanted you to have to guess. He had long flowing robes, with stars and magical symbols on them; there were even some sequins. His beard would have been long and flowing if indeed he'd been the kind of young man who could really grow a beard. Instead, it was ragged and wispy and not very clean. And the general effect was also spoiled by the fact that he was smoking a cigarette, had a mug of tea in his hand and a face that looked a bit like something that lives under damp logs. The mug was chipped and on it were the jolly words 'You Don't Have to Be Magic to Work Here But It Helps!!!!!' 'Yeah?' he said, adding reproachfully, 'I was on my tea break, you know.' 'This young . . . lady is being awkward,' said Zakzak. 'Throwing magic about. Talking back and being smart at me. The usual stuff.' Brian looked at Tiffany. She smiled. 'Brian's been to Unseen University,' said Zakzak with a 'so there' smirk. 'Got a degree. What he doesn't know about magic could fill a book! These ladies need showing the way out, Brian.' 'Now then, ladies,' said Brian nervously, putting down his mug. 'Do what Mr Stronginthearm says and push off, right? We don't want trouble, do we? Go on, there's good kids.' 'Why do you need a wizard to protect you, with all these magical amulets around the place, Mr Stronginthearm?' said Tiffany sweetly. Zakzak turned to Brian. 'What're you standing there for?' he demanded. 'She's doing it again! I pay you, don't I? Put a 'fluence on 'em, or something!' 'Well, er . . . that one could be a bit of an awkward customer . . .' Brian said, nodding towards Tiffany. 'If you studied wizardry, Brian, then you know about conservation of mass, don't you?' she said. 'I mean, you know what really happens when you try to turn someone into a frog?' 'Well, er . . .' the wizard began. 'Ha! That's just a figure of speech!' snapped Zakzak. I'd like to see you turn someone into a frog!' 'Wish granted,' said Tiffany, and waved the wand. Brian started to say, 'Look, when I said I'd been to Unseen University I meant-' But he ended up saying, 'Erk.' Take the eye away from Tiffany, up through the shop, high, high about the village until the landscape spreads out in a patchwork of field, woods and mountains. The magic spreads out like the ripples made when a stone is dropped in water. Within a few miles of the place it makes shambles spin and breaks the threads of curse-nets. As the ripples widen the magic gets fainter, although it never dies, and still can be felt by things far more sensitive than any shamble . . . Let the eye move and fall now on this wood, this clearing, this cottage . . . There is nothing on the walls but whitewash, nothing on the floor but cold stone. The huge fireplace doesn't even have a cooking stove. A black tea kettle hangs on a black hook over what can hardly be called a fire at all; it's just a few little sticks huddling together. This is the house of a life peeled to the core. Upstairs, an old woman, all in faded black, is lying on a narrow bed. But you wouldn't think she was dead, because there is a big card on a string around her neck which reads: I Ain't Dead . . . and you have to believe it when it's written down like that. Her eyes are shut, her hands are crossed on her chest, her mouth is open. And bees crawl into her mouth, and over her ears, and all over her pillow. They fill Page 73 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt the room, flying in and out of the open window, where someone has put a row of saucers filled with sugary water on the sill. None of the saucers match, of course. A witch never has matching crockery. But the bees work on, coming and going . . . busy as bees. When the ripple of magic passes through, the buzz rises to a roar. Bees pour in though the window urgently, as though driven by a gale. They land on the still old woman until her head and shoulders are a boiling mass of tiny brown bodies. And then, as one insect, they rise in a storm and pour away into the outside air, which is full of whirling seeds from the sycamore trees outside. Mistress Weatherwax sat bolt upright and said: 'Bzzzt!' Then she stuck a finger into her mouth, rootled around a bit and pulled out a struggling bee. She blew on it and shooed it out of the window. For a moment her eyes seemed to have many facets, just like a bee. 'So,' she said. 'She's learned how to Borrow, has she? Or she's been Borrowed!' Annagramma fainted. Zakzak stared, too afraid to faint. 'You see,' said Tiffany, while something in the air went gloop, gloop above them, 'a frog weighs only a few ounces but Brian weighs, oh, about a hundred and twenty pounds, yes? So, to turn someone big into a frog you've got to find something to do with all the bits you can't fit into a frog, right?' She bent down and lifted up the pointy wizard's hat on the floor. 'Happy, Brian?' she said. A small frog, squatting on a heap of clothes, looked up and said, 'Erk!' Zakzak didn't look at the frog. He was looking at the thing that went gloop, gloop. It was like a large pink balloon full of water, quite pretty really, wobbling gently against the ceiling. 'You've killed him!' he mumbled. 'What? Oh, no. That's just the stuff he doesn't need right now. It's sort of... spare Brian.' 'Erk,' said Brian. Gloop went the rest of him. 'About this discount-' Zakzak began hurriedly. 'Ten per cent would be-' Tiffany waved the wand. Behind her, the whole display of crystals rose in the air and began to orbit one another in a glittering and above all fragile way. 'That wand shouldn't do that!' he said. 'Of course it can't. It's rubbish. But I can,' said Tiffany. 'Ninety per cent discount, did I hear you say? Think quickly, I'm getting tired. And the spare Brian is getting . . . heavy.' 'You can keep it all!' Zakzak screamed. 'For free! Just don't let him splash! Please!' 'No, no, I'd like you to stay in business,' said Tiffany. 'A ninety per cent discount would be fine. I'd like you to think of me as ... a friend 'Yes! Yes! I am your friend! I'm a very friendly person! Now please put him baaack! Please!' Zakzak dropped to his knees, which wasn't very far. 'Please! He's not really a wizard! He just did evening classes there in fretwork! They hire out classrooms, that sort of thing. He thinks I don't know! But he read a few of the magic books on the quiet and he pinched the robes and he can talk wizard lingo so's you'd hardly know the difference! Please! I'd never get a real wizard for the money I pay him! Don't hurt him, pleaseV Tiffany waved a hand. There was a moment even more unpleasant than the one which had ended up with the spare Brian bumping against the ceiling, and then the whole Brian stood there, blinking. Page 74 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt 'Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!' gasped Zakzak. Brian blinked. 'What just happened?' he said. Zakzak, beside himself with horror and relief, patted him frantically. 'You're all there?' he said. 'You're not a balloon?' 'Here, get off!' said Brian, pushing him away. There was a groan from Annagramma. She opened her eyes, saw Tiffany and tried to scramble to her feet and back away, which meant that she went backwards like a spider. 'Please don't do that to me! Please don't!' she shouted. Tiffany ran after her and pulled her to her feet. 'I wouldn't do anything to you, Annagramma,' she said happily. 'You're my friend! We're all friends! Isn't that nice please please stop me . . .' You had to remember that pictsies weren't brownies. In theory, brownies would do the housework for you if you left them a saucer of milk. The Nac Mac Feegle . . . wouldn't. Oh, they'd try, if they liked you and you didn't insult them with milk in the saucer. They were helpful. They just weren't good at it. For example, you shouldn't try to remove a stubborn stain from a plate by repeatedly hitting it with your head. And you didn't want to see a sink full of them and your best china. Or a precious pot rolling backwards and forwards across the floor while the Feegles inside simultaneously fought the ground-in dirt and each other. But Miss Level, once she'd got the better china out of the way, found she rather liked the Feegles. There was something unsquashable about them. And they were entirely unamazed by a woman with two bodies, too. 'Ach, that's no thin',' Rob Anybody had said. 'When we wuz raidin' for the Quin, we once found a world where there wuz people wi' five bodies each. All sizes, ye ken, for doin' a' kinds of jobs.' 'Really?' said both of Miss Level. 'Aye, and the biggest body had a huge left hand, just for openin' pickle jars.' 'Those lids can get very tight, it's true,' Miss Level had agreed. 'Oh, we saw some muckle eldritch places when we wuz raiding for the Quin/ said Rob Anybody. 'But we gave that up for she wuz a schemin', greedy, ill-fared carlin, that she was!' 'Aye, and it wuz no' because she threw us oot o' Fairyland for being completely pished at two in the afternoon, whatever any scunner might mphf mphf. . .' said Daft Wullie. 'Pished?' said Miss Level. 'Aye ... oh, aye, it means . . . tired. Aye. Tired. That's whut it means,' said Rob Anybody, holding his hands firmly over his brother's mouth. 'An' ye dinnae ken how to talk in front o' a lady, yah shammerin' wee scunner!' 'Er . . . thank you for doing the washing up,' said Miss Level. 'You really didn't need to . . .' 'Ach, it wasnae any trouble,' said Rob Anybody cheerfully, letting Daft Wullie go. 'An' I'm sure all them plates an' stuff will mend fine wi' a bit o' glue.' Miss Level looked up at the clock with no hands. 'It's getting late,' she said. 'What exactly is it you propose to do, Mr Anybody?' 'Whut?' 'Do you have a plan?' 'Oh, aye!' Rob Anybody rummaged around in his spog, which is a leather bag most Feegles have hanging from their belt. The contents are usually a mystery, but sometimes include interesting teeth. Page 75 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt He flourished a much-folded piece of paper. Miss Level carefully unfolded it. ' "PLN"?' she said. 'Aye,' said Rob proudly. 'We came prepared! Look, it's written doon. Pee El Ner. Plan.' 'Er . . . how can I put this. .. ?' Miss Level mused. 'Ah, yes. You came rushing all this way to save Tiffany from a creature that can't be seen, touched, smelled or killed. What did you intend to do when you found it?' Rob Anybody scratched his head, to a general shower of objects. 'I think mebbe you've put yer finger on the one weak spot, mistress,' he admitted. 'Do you mean you charge in regardless?' 'Oh, aye. That's the plan, sure enough,' said Rob Anybody, brightening up. 'And then what happens?' 'Weel, gen'raly people are tryin' tae wallop us by then, so we just mak' it up as we gae along.' 'Yes, Robert, but the creature is inside her head!' Rob Anybody gave Billy a questioning look. 'Robert is a heich-heidit way o' sayin' Rob,' said the gonnagle, and to save time he said to Miss Level: 'That means kinda posh.' 'Ach, we can get inside her heid, if we have to,' said Rob. 'I'd hoped tae get here afore the thing got to her, but we can chase it.' Miss Level's face was a picture. Two pictures. 'Inside her head!' she said. 'Oh, aye,' said Rob, as if that sort of thing happened every day. 'No problemo. We can get in or oot o' anywhere. Except maybe pubs, which for some reason we ha' trouble leavin'. A heid? Easy.' 'Sorry, we're talking about a real head here, are we?' said Miss Level, horrified. 'What do you do, go in through the ears?' Once again, Rob stared at Billy, who looked puzzled. 'No, mistress. They'd be too small,' he said, patiently. 'But we can move between worlds, ye ken. We're fairy folk.' Miss Level nodded both heads. It was true, but it was hard to look at the assembled ranks of the Nac Mac Feegle and remember that they were, technically, fairies. It was like watching penguins swimming underwater and having to remember that they were birds. 'And?' she said. 'We can get intae dreams, ye see . . . And what's a mind but another world o' dreamin'?' 'No, I must forbid that!' said Miss Level. 'I can't have you running around inside a young girl's head! I mean, look at you! You're fully-grow . . . well, you're men! It'd be like, like . . . well, it'd be like you looking at her diary!' Rob Anybody looked puzzled. 'Oh, aye?' he said. 'We looked at her diary loads o' times. Nae harm done.' 'You looked at her diary?' said Miss Level, horrified. 'Why?' Really, she thought later, she should have expected the answer. "Cuz it wuz locked,' said Daft Wullie. 'If she didnae want anyone tae look at it, why'd she keep it at the back o' her sock drawer? Anyway, all there wuz wuz a load o' words we couldnae unnerstan' an' wee drawings o' hearts and flowers an' that.' 'Hearts? Tiffany?' said Miss Level. 'Really?' She shook herself. 'But you shouldn't have done that! And going into someone's mind is even worse!' 'The hiver is in there, mistress,' said Awf'ly Wee Billy meekly. 'But you said you can't do anything about it!' 'She might. If we can track her doon,' said the gonnagle. 'If we can find the wee bitty bit o' her that's still her. She's a bonny fighter when she's roused. Ye see, Page 76 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt mistress, a mind's like a world itself. She'll be hidin' in it somewhere, lookin' oot through her own eyes, listenin' wi' her own ears, tryin' to make people hear, tryin' no' to let yon beast find her . . . and it'll be hunting her all the time, trying tae break her doon Miss Level began to look hunted herself. Fifty small faces, full of worry and hope and broken noses, looked up at her. And she knew she didn't have a better plan. Or even a PLN. 'All right,' she said. 'But at least you ought to have a bath. I know that's silly, but it will make me feel better about the whole thing.' There was a general groan. 'A bath? But we a' had one no' a year ago,' said Rob Anybody. 'Up at the big dew pond for the ships!' 'Ach, crivens!' said Big Yan. 'Ye cannae ask a man tae take a bath again this soon, mistress! There'll be nothin' left o' us!' 'With hot water and soap!' said Miss Level. 'I mean it! I'll run the water and I... I'll put some rope over the edge so you can climb in and out, but you will get clean. I'm a wi- a hag, and you'd better do what I say!' 'Oh, all reet!' said Rob. 'We'll do it for the big wee hag. But ye're no' tae peek, OK?' 'Peek?' said Miss Level. She pointed a trembling finger. 'Get into that bathroom now!' Miss Level did, however, listen at the door. It's the sort of thing a witch does. There was nothing to hear at first but the gentle splash of water, and then: "This is no' as bad as I thought!' 'Aye, very pleasin'.' 'Hey, there's a big yellow duck here. Who 're ye pointin' that beak at, yer scunner-' There was a wet quack and some bubbling noises as the rubber duck sank. 'Rob, we oughtae get one o' these put in back in the mound. Verra warmin' in the winter time.' 'Aye, it's no' that good for the ship, havin' tae drink oot o' that pond after we 've been bathin'. It's terrible, hearin' a ship try tae spit.' 'Ach, it'll make us softies! It's nae a guid wash if ye dinnae ha' the ice formin' on yer held!' ' Who 're you callin' a softie?' There followed a lot more splashing and water started to seep under the door. Miss Level knocked. 'Come on out now, and dry yourselves off!' she commanded. 'She could be back at any minute!' In fact it wasn't for another two hours, by which time Miss Level had got so nervous that her necklaces jingled all the time. She'd come to witching later than most, being naturally qualified by reason of the two bodies, but she'd never been very happy about magic. In truth, most witches could get through their whole life without having to do serious, undeniable magic (making shambles and curse-nets and dreamcatchers didn't really count, being rather more like arts-and-crafts, and most of the rest of it was practical medicine, common sense and the ability to look stern in a pointy hat). But being a witch and wearing the big black hat was like being a policeman. People saw the uniform, not you. When the mad axeman was running down the street you weren't allowed to back away muttering, 'Could you find someone else? Actually, I mostly just do, you know, stray dogs and Page 77 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt road safety . . .' You were there, you had the hat, you did the job. That was a basic rule of witchery: It's up to you. She was two bags of nerves when Tiffany arrived back, and stood side by side holding hands with herself to give herself confidence. 'Where have you been, dear?' 'Out,' said Tiffany. 'And what have you been doing?' 'Nothing.' 'I see you've been shopping.' 'Yes.' 'Who with?' 'Nobody.' 'Ah, yes,' Miss Level trilled, completely adrift. 1 remember when I used to go out and do nothing. Sometimes you can be your own worst company. Believe me, I know-' But Tiffany had already swept upstairs. Without anyone actually seeming to move, Feegles started to appear everywhere in the room. 'Well, that could ha' gone better,' said Rob Anybody. 'She looked so different!' Miss Level burst out. 'She moved differently! I just didn't know what to do! And those clothes!' 'Aye. Sparklin' like a young raven,' said Rob. 'Did you see all those bags? Where could she have got the money? / certainly don't have that kind of-' She stopped, and both of Miss Level spoke at once. 'Oh, no -' '- surely not! She wouldn't -' '- have, would she?' 'I dinnae ken whut ye're talkin' aboot,' said Awf'ly Wee Billy, 'but whut she would dae isnae the point. That's the hiver doin' the thinkin'!' Miss Level clasped all four hands together in distress. 'Oh dear ... I must go down to the village and check!' One of her ran towards the door. 'Well, at least she's brought the broomstick back,' muttered the Miss Level who stayed. She started to wear the slightly unfocused expression she got when both her bodies weren't in the same place. They could hear noises from upstairs. 'I vote we just tap her gently on the heid,' said Big Yan. 'It cannae give us any trouble if it's gone sleepies, aye?' Miss Level clenched and unclenched her fists nervously. 'No,' she said. 'I'll go up there and have a serious talk with her!' 'I told yez, mistress, it's not her,' said Awf'ly Wee Billy, wearily. 'Well, at least I'll wait until I've visited Mr Weavall,' said Miss Level, standing in her kitchen. 'I'm nearly there ... ah ... he's asleep. I'll just eease the box out quietly ... if she's taken his money I'm going to be so angry-' It was a good hat, Tiffany thought. It was at least as tall as Mrs Earwig's hat, and it shone darkly. The stars gleamed. The other packages covered the floor and the bed. She pulled out another one of the black dresses, the one covered in lace, and the cloak, which spread out in the air. She really liked the cloak. In anything but a complete dead calm, it floated and billowed as if whipped by a gale. If you were going to be a witch, you had to start by looking like one. She twirled in it once or twice, and then said something without thinking, so that the hiver part of her was caught unawares. Page 78 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt 'See me.' The hiver was suddenly thrust outside her body, Tiffany was free. She hadn't expected it. . . She felt herself to the tips of her fingers. She dived towards the bed, grabbed one of Zakzak's best wands and waved it desperately in front of her like a weapon. 'You stay out!' she said. 'Stay away! It's my body, not yours! You've made it do dreadful things! You stole Mr Weavall's money! Look at these stupid clothes! And don't you know about eating and drinking? You stay away! You're not coming back! Don't you dare! I've got power, you know!' So have we, said her own voice, in her own head. Yours. They fought. A watcher would have seen only a girl in a black dress, spinning around the room and flailing her arms as if she'd been stung, but Tiffany fought for every toe, every finger. She bounced off a wall, banged against the chest of drawers, slammed into another wall - - and the door was flung open. One of Miss Level was there, no longer nervous, but trembling with rage. She pointed a shaking finger. 'Listen to me, whoever you are! Did you steal Mr Weav-?' she began. The hiver turned. The hiver struck. The hiver... killed. Chapter Secret It's bad enough being dead. Waking up and seeing a Nac Mac Feegle standing on your chest and peering intently at you from an inch away only makes things worse. Miss Level groaned. It felt as though she was lying on the floor. 'Ach, this one's alive, right enough,' said the Feegle. Told yez! That's a weasel skull ye owe me!' Miss Level blinked one set of eyes, and then froze in horror. 'What happened to me?' she whispered. The Feegle in front of her was replaced by the face of Rob Anybody. It was not an improvement. 'How many fingers am I holdin' up?' he said. 'Five,' whispered Miss Level. 'Am I? Ah, well, ye could be right, ye'd have the knowin' o' the countin',' said Rob, lowering his hand. 'Ye've had a wee bittie accident, ye ken. You're a wee bittie dead.' Miss Level's head slumped back. Through the mist of something that wasn't exactly pain, she heard Rob Anybody say to someone she couldn't see: 'Hey, I wwzbreakin' it tae her gently! I did say "wee bittie" twice, right?' 'It's as though part of me is ... a long way off,' murmured Miss Level. 'Aye, you're aboot right there,' said Rob, champion of the bedside manner. Some memories bobbed to the surface of the thick soup in Miss Level's mind. Tiffany killed me, didn't she,' she said. 'I remember seeing that black figure turn round and her expression was horrible-' That wuz the hiver,' said Rob Anybody. That was no' Tiffany! She was fightin' it! She still is, inside! But it didnae remember you ha' two bodies! We got tae help her, mistress!' Miss Level pushed herself upright. It wasn't pain she felt, but it was the . .. ghost of pain. 'How did I die?' she said, weakly. There was, like, an explosion, an' smoke an' that,' said Rob. 'Not messy, really.' Page 79 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt 'Oh, well, that's a small mercy, anyway,' said Miss Level, sagging back. 'Aye, there was just this, like, big purple cloud o', like, dust,' said Daft Wullie. 'Where's my ... I can't feel.. . where's my other body?' 'Aye, that was what got blown up in that big cloud, right enough,' said Rob. 'Good job ye has a spare, eh?' 'She's all mithered in her heid,' whispered Awf'ly Wee Billy. Take it gently, eh?' 'How do you manage, only seeing one side of things?' said Miss Level dreamily to the world in general. 'How will I get everything done with only one pair of hands and feet? Being in just one place all the time . . . how do people manage? It's impossible She shut her eyes. 'Mistress Level, we need ye!' shouted Rob Anybody into her ear. 'Need, need, need,' murmured Miss Level. 'Everyone needs a witch. No one cares if a witch needs. Giving and giving always ... a fairy godmother never gets a wish, let me tell you 'Mistress Level!' Rob screamed. 'Ye cannae pass oot on us noo!' 'I'm weary,' whispered Miss Level. 'I'm very, very pished.' 'Mistress Level!' Rob Anybody yelled. The big wee hag is lying on the floor like a dead person, but she's cold as ice and sweatin' like a horse! She's fightin' the beast inside her, mistress! An' she's losin'!' Rob peered into Miss Level's face, and shook his head. 'Auchtahelweit! She's swooned! C'mon, lads, let's move her!' Like many small creatures, Feegles are immensely strong for their size. It still took ten of them to carry Miss Level up the narrow stairs without banging her head more than necessary, although they did use her feet to push open the door to Tiffany's room. Tiffany lay on the floor. Sometimes a muscle twitched. Miss Level was propped up like a doll. 'How're we gonna bring the big hag roound?' said Big Yan. 1 heard where ye has to put someone's heid between their legs,' said Rob, doubtfully. Daft Wullie sighed, and drew his sword. 'Sounds a wee bit drastic tae me,' he said, 'but if someone will help me hold her steady-' Miss Level opened her eyes, which was just as well. She focused unsteadily on the Feegles and smiled a strange, happy little smile. 'Ooo, fairies!' she mumbled. 'Ach, noo she's ramblin',' said Rob Anybody. 'No, she means fairies like bigjobs think they are,' said Awf'ly Wee Billy. 'Tiny wee tinkly creatures that live in flowers an' fly aroound cuddlin' butterflies an' that.' 'What? Have they no' seen real fairies? They're worse'n wasps!' said Big Yan. 'We havnae got time for this!' snapped Rob Anybody. He jumped onto Miss Level's knee. 'Aye, ma'am, we's fairies from the land o'-' He stopped and looked imploringly at Billy. 'Tinkle?' Billy suggested. 'Aye, the land o' Tinkle, ye ken, and we found this puir wee -' '- princess,' said Billy. 'Aye, princess, who's been attacked by a bunch o' scunners-' '- wicked goblins,' said Billy. '- yeah, wicked goblins, right, an' she's in a bad way, so we wuz wonderin' if ye could kinda tell us how tae look after her -' '- until the handsome prince turns up on a big white horse wi' curtains roound it Page 80 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt an' wakes her with a magical kiss,' said Billy. Rob gave him a desperate look, and turned back to the bemused Miss Level. 'Aye, what ma friend Fairy Billy just said,' he managed. Miss Level tried to focus. 'You're very ugly for fairies,' she said. 'Aye, well, the ones you gen'rally see are for the pretty flowers, ye ken,' said Rob Anybody, inventing desperately. 'We're more for the stingin' nettles and bindweed an' Old Man's Troosers an' thistles, OK? It wouldna be fair for only the bonny flowers tae have fairies noo, would it? It'd prob'ly be against the law, eh? Noo, can ye please help us wi' this princess here before them scunners-' '- wicked goblins-' said Billy. 'Aye, before they come back,' said Rob. Panting, he watched Miss Level's face. There seemed to be a certain amount of thinking going on. Is her pulse rapid?' murmured Miss Level. 'You say her skin is cold but she's sweating? Is she breathing rapidly? It sounds like shock. Keep her warm. Raise her legs. Watch her carefully. Try to remove . . . the cause . . .' Her head slumped. Rob turned to Awf'ly Wee Billy. 'A horse wi' curtains roond it?' he said. 'Where did ye get all that blethers?' 'There's a big hoose near the Long Lake an' they read stories tae their wee bairn an' I go along an' listen fra' a mousehole,' said Awf'ly Wee Billy. 'One day I snuck in and looked at the pichurs, and there was bigjobs called k'nits wi' shields and armour and horses wi' curtains-' 'Weel, it worked, blethers though it be,' said Rob Anybody. He looked at Tiffany. She was lying down, so he was about as high as her chin. It was like walking around a small hill. 'Crivens, it does me nae guid at all ta see the puir wee thing like this,' he said, shaking his head. 'C'mon, lads, get that cover off the bed and put that cushion under her feet.' 'Er, Rob?' said Daft Wullie. 'Aye?' Rob was staring up at the unconscious Tiffany. 'How are we goin' taw get inta her heid? There's got tae be somethin' tae guide us in.' 'Aye, Wullie, an' I ken whut it's gonna be, 'cuz I've been usin' mah heid for thinkin'!' said Rob. 'Ye've seen the big wee hag often enough, right? Well, see this necklet?' He reached up. The silver horse had slipped around Tiffany's neck as she lay on the floor. It hung there, amid the amulets and dark glitter. 'Aye?' said Wullie. 'It was a present from that son o' the Baron,' said Rob. 'An' she's kept it. She's tried tae turn hersel' intae some kind of creature o' the night, but somethin' made her keep this. It'll be in her heid, too. 'Tis important tae her. All we need tae do is frannit a wheelstone on it and it'll tak' us right where she is.' [If anyone knew what this meant, they'd know a lot more about the Nac Mac Feegles' way of travelling.] Daft Wullie scratched his head. 'But I thought she thought he was just a big pile of jobbies?' he said. 'I seen her oot walkin', an' when he comes ridin' past she sticks Page 81 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt her nose in th' air and looks the other wa'. In fact, sometimes I seen her wait aroond a full five-and-twenty minutes for him tae come past, just so's she can do that.' 'Ah, weel, no man kens the workin's o' the female mind,' said Rob Anybody loftily. 'We'll follow the horse.' From Fairies and How to Avoid Them' by Miss Perspicacia Tick: No one knows exactly how the Nac Mac Feegle step from one world to another. Those who have seen Feegles actually travel this way say that they apparently throw back their shoulders and thrust out one leg straight ahead of them. Then they wiggle their foot and are gone. This is known as the crawstep', and the only comment on the subject by a Feegle is It's all in the ankle movement, ye ken.' They appear to be able to travel magically between worlds of all kinds but not within a world. For this purpose, they assure people, they have 'feets'. The sky was black, even though the sun was high. It hung at just past noon, lighting the landscape as brilliantly as a hot summer day, but the sky was midnight black, shorn of stars. This was the landscape of Tiffany Aching's mind. The Feegles looked around them. There seemed to be downland underfoot, rolling and green. 'She tells the land what it is. The land tells her who she is,' whispered Awf'ly Wee Billy. 'She really does hold the soul o' the land in her heid 'Aye, so 'tis,' muttered Rob Anybody. 'But there's nae creatures, ye ken. Nae ships. Nae burdies.' 'Mebbe . . . mebbe somethin's scared them awa'?' said Daft Wullie. There was, indeed, no life. Stillness and silence ruled here. In fact Tiffany, who cared a lot about getting words right, would have said it was a hush, which is not the same as silence. A hush is what you get in cathedrals at midnight. 'OK, lads,' Rob Anybody whispered. 'We dinnae ken what we're goin' tae find, so ye tread as light as e'er foot can fall, unnerstan'? Let's find the big wee hag.' They nodded, and stepped forward like ghosts. The land rose slightly ahead of them, to some kind of earthworks. They advanced on it carefully, wary of ambush, but nothing stopped them as they climbed two long mounds in the turf which made a sort of cross. 'Man-made,' said Big Yan, when they reached the top. 'Just like in the old days, Rob.' The silence sucked his speech away. 'This is deep inside o' the big wee hag's head,' said Rob Anybody, looking around warily. 'We dinnae know whut made 'em.' 'I dinnae like this, Rob,' said a Feegle. 'It's too quiet.' 'Aye, Slightly Sane Georgie, it is that-' 'You are my sunshine, my only su-' 'Daft Wullie!' snapped Rob, without taking his eyes off the strange landscape. The singing stopped. 'Aye, Rob?' said Daft Wullie from behind him. 'Ye ken I said I'd tell ye when ye wuz guilty o' stupid and inna-pro-pre-ate behaviour?' 'Aye, Rob,' said Daft Wullie. 'That wuz another one o' those times, wuz it?' 'Aye.' They moved on again, staring around them. And still there was the hush. It was the pause before an orchestra plays, the quietness before thunder. It was as if all the small sounds of the hills had shut down to make room for one big sound to happen. And then they found the Horse. They'd seen it, back on the Chalk. But here it was, not carved into the hillside but Page 82 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt spread out before them. They stared at it. 'Awf'ly Wee Billy?' said Rob, beckoning the young gonnagle towards him. 'You're a gonnagle, ye ken aboot poetry and dreams. What's this? Why's it up here? It shouldnae be on the top o' the hills!' 'Serious hiddlins, Mr Rob,' said Billy. 'This is serious hiddlins. I cannae work it out yet.' 'She knows the Chalk. Why'd she get this wrong?' I'm thinkin' aboot it, Mr Rob.' 'You wouldnae care tae think a bit faster, would ye?' 'Rob?' said Big Yan, hurrying up. He'd been scouting ahead. 'Aye?' said Rob gloomily. 'Ye'd better come and see this On top of a round hill was a four-wheeled shepherding hut, with a curved roof and a chimney for the pot-bellied stove. Inside, the walls were covered with the yellow and blue wrappers from hundreds of packets of Jolly Sailor tobacco. There were old sacks hanging up there, and the back of the door was covered with chalk marks where Granny Aching had counted sheep and days. And there was a narrow iron bedstead, made comfortable with old fleeces and feed sacks. 'D'ye have the unnerstandin' of this, Awf'ly Wee Billy?' said Rob. 'Can ye tell us where the big wee hag is?' The young gonnagle looked worried. 'Er, Mister Rob, ye ken I've only just been made a gonnagle? I mean, I know the songs an' a', but I'm no' verra experienced at this 'Aye?' said Rob Anybody. 'An' just how many gonnagles afore ye ha' walked through the dreams o' a hag?' 'Er . . . none I've ever heard of, Mister Rob,' Billy confessed. 'Aye. So you already know more aboot it than any o' them big men,' said Rob. He gave the boy a smile. 'Do yer best, laddie. I dinnae expect any more of you than that.' Billy looked out of the shed door, and took a deep breath: 'Then I'll tell ye I think she's hidin' somewhere close like a hunted creature, Mr Rob. This is a wee bit o' her memory, the place o' her granny, the place where she's always felt safe. I'll tell ye I think that we're in the soul and centre o' her. The bit o' her that is her. And I'm frightened for her. Frightened to mah boots.' 'Why?' 'Because I've been watchin' the shadows, Mr Rob,' said Billy. 'The sun is movin'. It's slippin' doon the sky.' 'Aye, weel, that's whut the sun does-' Rob began. Billy shook his head. 'Nay, Mr Rob. Ye dinnae understand! I'm tellin' ye that's no' the sun o' the big wide world. That's the sun o' the soul o' her.' The Feegles looked at the sun, and at the shadows, then back at Billy. He'd stuck his chin out bravely but he was trembling. 'She'll die when night comes?' Rob said. There's worser things than death, Mr Rob. The hiver will have her, head tae toe-' That is nae gonna happen!' shouted Rob Anybody, so suddenly that Billy backed away. 'She's a strong big wee lass! She fought the Quin wi' no more than a fryin' pan!' Awf'ly Wee Billy swallowed. There were a lot of things he'd rather do than face Rob Anybody now. But he pressed on. 'Sorry, Mr Rob, but I'm telling ye she had iron then, an' she wuz on her ain turf. She's a lang, lang way fra' hame here. An' it'll squeeze this place when it finds it, leave Page 83 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt no more room for it, and the night will come, an'-' ' 'Scuse me, Rob. I ha' an idea.' It was Daft Wullie, twisting his hands nervously. Everyone turned to look at him. 'Ye ha' an idea?' said Rob. 'Aye, an' if I tell youse, I dinnae want you ta' say it's inna-pro-pre-ate, OK, Rob?' Rob Anybody sighed. 'OK, Wullie, ye ha' my word on it.' 'Weel,' said Wullie, his fingers knotting and unknotting. 'What is this place if it's not truly her ain place? What is it if not her ain turf? If she cannae fight the creature here, she cannae fight it anywhere!' 'But it willnae come here,' said Billy. 'It doesnae need to. As she grows weaker, this place will fade away.' 'Oh, crivens,' mumbled Daft Wullie. 'Weel, it was a good idea, right? Even if it doesnae work?' Rob Anybody wasn't paying any attention. He stared around the shepherding hut. My man's got to use his heid for something other than nuttin' folk, Jeannie had said. 'Daft Wullie is right,' he said quietly. This is her safe place. She holds the land, she has it in her eye. The creature can ne'er touch her here. Here, she has power. But 'twill be a jail hoose for her here unless she fights the monster. She'd be locked in here and watch her life gae doon the cludgie. She'll look oot at the world like a pris'ner at a tiny window, and see hersel' hated and feared. So we'll fetch the beast in here against its will, and here it will die!' The Feegles cheered. They weren't sure what was going on, but they liked the sound of it. 'How?' said Awf'ly Wee Billy. 'Ye had to gae and ask that, eh?' said Rob Anybody bitterly. 'An' I wuz doin' sae weel wi' the thinkin'-' He turned. There was a scratching noise on the door above him. Up there, across the rows and rows of half rubbed-out markings, freshly chalked letters were appearing one by one, as if an invisible hand was writing them. 'Worrds,' said Rob Anybody. 'She's tryin' tae tell us somethin'!' 'Yes, they say-' Billy began. 'I ken weel what they say!' snapped Rob Anybody. 'I ha' the knowin' of the readin'! They say-' He looked up again. 'OK, they say ... that's the snake, an' that's the kinda like a gate letter, an' the comb on its side, two o' that, an' the fat man standin' still, an' the snake again, and then there's whut we calls a "space" and then there's the letter like a saw's teeth, and two o' the letters that's roound like the sun, and the letter that's a man sittin' doon, and onna next line we ha' ... the man wi' his arms oot, and the letter that's you, an' ha, the fat man again but noo he's walkin, an' next he's standin' still again, an' next is the comb, an' the up-an'-doon ziggy-zaggy letter, and the man's got his arms oot, and then there's me, and that ziggy-zaggy and we end the line with the comb again ... an' on the next line we starts wi' the bendy hook, that's the letter roound as the sun, them's twa' men sittin' doon, there's the letter reaching ooot tae the sky! then there's a space 'cos there's nae letter, then there's the snaky again, an' the letter like a hoose frame, and then there's the Page 84 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt letter that's me, aye, an' another fella sitting doon, an' another big roound letter, and, ha, oor ol' friend, the fat man walkin'! The End!' He stood back, hands on hips, and demanded: There! Is that readin' I just did, or wuz it no'?' There was a cheer from the Feegles, and some applause. Awf'ly Wee Billy looked up at the chalked words: And then he looked at Rob Anybody's expression. 'Aye, aye,' he said, 'Ye're doin great, Mr Rob. Sheep's wool, turpentine and Jolly Sailor tobacco.' 'Ach, weel, anyone can read it all in one go,' said Rob Anybody, dismissively. 'But youse gotta be guid to break it doon intae all the tricksie letters. And veera guid to have the knowin' o' the meanin' o' the whole.' 'What is that?' said Awf'ly Wee Billy. 'The meaning, gonnagle, is that you are gonna' go stealin' There was a cheer from the rest of the Feegles. They hadn't been keeping up very well, but they recognized that word all right. 'An' it's gonna be a stealin' tae remember!' Rob yelled, to another cheer. 'Daft Wullie!' 'Aye!' 'Ye'll be in charge! Ye ha' not got the brains o' a beetle, brother o' mine, but when it comes tae the thievin' ye hae no equal in this wurld! Ye've got tae fetch turpentine and fresh ship wool and some o' the Jolly Sailor baccy! Ye got tae get them to the big hag wi' twa' bodies! Tell her she must mak' the hiver smell them, right? It'll bring it here! And ye'd best be quick, because that sun is movin' down the sky. Ye'll be stearin' fra' Time itself - aye? Ye have a question?' Daft Wullie had raised a finger. 'Point o' order, Rob,' he said, 'but it was a wee bittie hurtful there for you to say I dinnae hae the brains of a beetle Rob hesitated, but only for a moment. 'Aye, Daft Wullie, ye are right in whut ye say. It was unricht o' me to say that. It was the heat o' the moment, an' I am full sorry for it. As I stand here before ye now, I will say: Daft Wullie, ye do hae the brains o' a beetle, an' I'll fight any scunner who says different!' Daft Wullie's face broke into a huge smile, then crinkled into a frown. 'But ye are the leader, Rob,' he said. 'No' on this raid, Wullie. A'm staying here. I have every confidence that ye'll be a fiiinne leader on this raid an' not totally mess it up like ye did the last seventeen times!' There was a general groan from the crowd. 'Look at the sun, will ye!' said Rob, pointing. 'It's moved since we've been talkin'! Someone's got tae stay wi' her! I will no' ha' it said we left her tae die alone! Now, get movin', ye scunners, or feel the flat o' my blade!' He raised his sword and growled. They fled. Rob Anybody laid his sword down with care, then sat on the step of the shepherding hut to watch the sun. After a while, he was aware of something else . . . Hamish the aviator gave Miss Level's broomstick a doubtful look. It hung a few feet above the ground and it worried him. He hitched up the bundle on his back that contained his parachute, although it Page 85 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt was technically the 'paradrawers', since it was made of string and an old pair of Tiffany's best Sunday drawers, well washed. They still had flowers on, but there was nothing like them for getting a Feegle safely to the ground. He had a feeling it (or they) were going to be needed. 'It's no' got feathers,' he complained. 'Look, we dinnae ha' time to argue!' said Daft Wullie. 'We're in a hurry, ye ken, an' you're the only one who knows how tae fly!' 'A broomstick isnae flyin',' said Hamish. 'It's magic. It hasnae any wings! I dinnae ken that stuff!' But Big Yan had already thrown a piece of string over the bristle end of the stick and was climbing up. Other Feegles followed. 'Besides, how do they steer these things?' Hamish went on. 'Weel, how do ye do it with wi' the birdies?' Daft Wullie demanded. 'Oh, that's easy. Ye just shift your weight, but-' 'Ach, yell learn as we go,' said Wullie. 'Flying can-nae be that difficult. Even ducks can do it, and they have nae brains at a'.' And there was really no point in arguing, which is why, a few minutes later, Hamish inched his way along the stick's handle. The rest of the Feegles clung to the bristles at the other end, chattering. Firmly tied to the bristles was a bundle of what looked like sticks and rags, with a battered hat and the stolen beard on top of it. At least this extra weight meant that the stick end was pointing up, towards a gap in the fruit trees. Hamish sighed, took a deep breath, pulled his goggles over his eyes and put a hand on a shiny area of stick just in front of him. Gently, the stick began to move through the air. There was a cheer from the Feegles. 'See? Told yez ye'd be OK,' Daft Wullie called out. 'But can ye no' make it go a wee bit faster?' Carefully, Hamish touched the shiny area again. The stick shuddered, hung motionless for a moment, and then shot upwards trailing a noise very like Arrrrrrrrrgg00ggg0gg0ghhhh.hhhhhh.hhhh . . . In the silent world of Tiffany's head, Rob Anybody picked up his sword again and crept across the darkening turf. There was something there, small but moving. It was a tiny thorn bush, growing so fast that its twigs visibly moved. Its shadow danced on the grass. Rob Anybody stared at it. It had to mean something. He watched it carefully. Little bush, growing . . . And then he remembered what the old kelda had told them when he'd been a wee boy. Once, the land had been all forest, heavy and dark. Then men came and cut down trees. They let the sun in. The grass grew up in the clearings. The bigjobs brought in sheep, which ate the grass, and also what grew in the grass: tree seedlings. And so the dark forests died. There hadn't been much life in them, not once the tree trunks closed in behind you; it had been dark as the bottom of the sea in there, the leaves far above Page 86 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt keeping out the light. Sometimes there was the crash of a branch, or the rattle and patter as acorns the squirrels had missed bounced down, from branch to branch, into the gloom. Mostly it was just hot and silent. Around the edges of the forest were the homes of many creatures. Deep inside the forest, the everlasting forest, was the home of wood. But the turf lived in the sun, with its hundreds of grasses and flowers and birds and insects. The Nac Mac Feegle knew that better than most, being so much closer to it. What looked like a green desert at a distance was a tiny, thriving, roaring jungle . . . 'Ach,' said Rob Anybody. 'So that's yer game, izzit? Weel, ye're no' takin' over in here too!' He chopped at the spindly thing with his sword, and stood back. The rustling of leaves behind him made him turn. There were two more saplings unfolding. And a third. He looked across the grass and saw a dozen, a hundred tiny trees beginning their race for the sky. Worried though he was, and he was worried to his boots, Rob Anybody grinned. If there's one thing a Feegle likes, it's knowing that wherever you strike you're going to hit an enemy. The sun was going down and the shadows were moving and the turf was dying. Rob charged. Arrrrrrrrrgggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh . . . What happened during the Nac Mac Feegles' search for the right smell was remembered by several witnesses (quite apart from all the owls and bats who were left spinning in the air by a broomstick being navigated by a bunch of screaming little blue men). One of them was Number 95, a ram owned by a not very imaginative farmer. But all he remembered was a sudden noise in the night and a draughty feeling on his back. That was about as exciting as it got for Number 95, so he went back to thinking about grass. Arrrrrrrrrgggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh . . . Then there was Mildred Pusher, aged seven, who was the daughter of the farmer who owned Number 95. One day, when she'd grown up and become a grandmother, she told her grandchildren about the night she came downstairs by candlelight for a drink of water and heard the noises under the sink . . . 'And there were these little voices, you see, and one said, "Ach, Wullie, you cannae drink that, look, it says 'Poison!!' on the bottle," and another voice said, "Aye, gonnagle, they put that on tae frighten a man from havin' a wee drink," and the first voice said, "Wullie, it's rat poison!" and the second voice said, "That's fine, then, 'cos I'm no' a rat!" And then I opened the cupboard under the sink and, what do you think, it was full of fairies! And they looked at me and I looked at them and one of them said, "Hey, this is a dream you're having, big wee girl!" and immediately they all agreed! And the first one said, "So, in this dream ye're having, big wee girl, you wouldna mind telling us where the turpentine is, wouldya?" And so I told them it was outside in the barn, and he said, "Aye? Then we're offski. But here's a wee gift fra' the fairies for a big wee girl who's gonna go right back tae sleep!" And then they were gone!' One of her grandchildren, who'd been listening with his mouth open, said, 'What did Page 87 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt they give you, Grandma?' 'This!' Mildred held up a silver spoon. 'And the strange thing is, it's just like the ones my mother had, which vanished mysteriously from the drawer the very same night! I've kept it safe ever since!' This was admired by all. Then one of the grandchildren asked: 'What were the fairies like, Grandma?' Grandma Mildred thought about this. 'Not as pretty as you might expect,' she said at last. 'But definitely more smelly. And just after they'd gone there was a sound like-' Arrrrrrrrrgggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh . . . People in the King's Legs (the owner had noticed that there were lots of inns and pubs called the King's Head or the King's Arms, and spotted a gap in the market) looked up when they heard the noise outside. After a minute or two the door burst open. 'Good night to ye, fellow bigjobs!' roared a figure in the doorway. The room fell horribly silent. Awkwardly, legs going in every direction, the scarecrow figure wove unsteadily towards the bar and grabbed it thankfully, hanging on as it sagged onto its knees. 'A big huge wee drop o' yer finest whisky, me fine fellow barman fellow,' it said from somewhere under the hat. 'It seems to me that you've already had enough to drink, friend,' said the barman, whose hand had crept to the cudgel he kept under the bar for special customers. 'Who're ye calling "friend", pal?' roared the figure, trying to pull itself up. That's fightin' talk, that is! And I havenae had enough to drink, pal, 'cos if I have, why've I still got all this money, eh? Answer me that!' A hand sagged into a coat pocket, came out jerkily and slammed down onto the top of the bar. Ancient gold coins rolled in every direction and a couple of silver spoons dropped out of the sleeve. The silence of the bar became a lot deeper. Dozens of eyes watched the shiny discs as they spun off the bar and rolled across the floor. 'An' I want an ounce o' Jolly Sailor baccy,' said the figure. 'Why, certainly, sir,' said the barman, who had been brought up to be respectful to gold coins. He felt under the bar and his expression changed. 'Oh. I'm sorry, sir, we've sold out. Very popular, Jolly Sailor. But we've got plenty of- ' The figure had already turned round to face the rest of the room. 'OK, I'll gi'e a handful o' gold to the first scunner who gi'es me a pipeful o' Jolly Sailor!' it yelled. The room erupted. Tables scraped. Chairs overturned. The scarecrow man grabbed the first pipe and threw the coins into the air. As fights immediately broke out, he turned back to the bar and said: 'And I'll ha' that wee drop o' whisky before I go, barman. Ach, no you willnae, Big Yan! Shame on ye! Hey, youse legs can shut up right noo! A wee pint of whisky'll do us no harm! Oh, aye? Who deid and made ye Big Man, eh? Listen, ye scunner, oor Rob is in there! Aye, and he'd have a wee drink, too!' The customers stopped pushing one another out of the way to get at the coins, and got up to face a whole body arguing with itself. 'Anywa', I'm in the heid, right? The heid's in charge. I dinnae ha' tae listen to a bunch o' knees! I said this wuz a bad idea, Wullie, ye ken we ha' trouble getting oot of pubs! Well, speaking on behalf o' the legs, we're not gonna stand by and watch the heid Page 88 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt get pished, thank ye so veerae much!' To the horror of the customers the entire bottom half of the figure turned round and started to walk towards the door, causing the top half to fall forward. It gripped the edge of the bar desperately, managed to say, 'OK! Is a deep-fried pickled egg totally oot o' the question?' and then the figure - - tore itself in half. The legs staggered a few steps towards the door, and fell over. In the shocked silence a voice from somewhere in the trousers said: 'Crivens! Time for offski!' The air blurred for a moment and the door slammed. After a while one of the customers stepped forward cautiously and prodded the heap of old clothes and sticks that was all that remained of the visitor. The hat rolled off and he jumped back. A glove that was still hanging onto the bar fell onto the floor with a thwap! that sounded very loud. 'Well, look at it this way,' said the barman. 'Whatever it was, at least it's left its pockets-' From outside came the sound of: The broomstick hit the thatched roof of Miss Level's cottage hard, and stuck in it. Feegles fell off, still fighting. In a struggling, punching mass they rolled into the cottage, conducted guerrilla warfare all the way up the stairs and ended up in a head-butting, kicking heap in Tiffany's bedroom, where those who'd been left behind to guard the sleeping girl and Miss Level joined in out of interest. Gradually, the fighters became aware of a sound. It was the skirl of the mousepipes, cutting through the battle like a sword. Hands stopped gripping throats, fists stopped in mid-punch, kicks hovered in mid-air. Tears ran down Awf'ly Wee Billy's face as he played The Bonny Flowers, the saddest song in the world. It was about home, and mothers, and good times gone past, and faces no longer there. The Feegles let go of one another and stared down at their feet as the forlorn notes wound about them, speaking of betrayal and treachery and the breaking of promises- 'Shame on ye!' screamed Awf'ly Wee Billy, letting the pipe drop out of his mouth. 'Shame on ye! Traitors! Betrayers! Ye shame hearth and hame! Your hag is fightin' for her verra soul! Have ye no honour?' He flung down the mousepipes, which wailed into silence. 'I curse my feets that let me stand here in front o' ye! Ye shame the verra sun shinin' on ye! Ye shame the kelda that birthed ye! Traitors! Scuggans! What ha' I done to be among this parcel o' rogues? Any man here want tae fight? Then fight me! Aye, fight me! An' I swear by the harp o' bones I'll tak' him tae the deeps o' the sea an' then kick him tae the craters o' the moon an' see him ride tae the Pit o' Heel itself on a saddle made o' hedgehogs! I tell ye, my rage is the strength of the storm that tears mountains intae sand! Who among ye will stand agin me?' Page 89 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt Big Yan, who was almost three times the size of Awf'ly Wee Billy, cowered back as the little gonnagle stood in front of him. Not a Feegle would have raised a hand at that moment, for fear of his life. The rage of a gonnagle was a dreadful thing to see. A gonnagle could use words like swords. Daft Wullie shuffled forward. 'I can see ye're upset, gonnagle,' he mumbled. "Tis me that's at fault, on account o' being daft. I shoulda remembered aboout us and pubs.' He looked so dejected that Awf'ly Wee Billy calmed down a little. 'Very well then,' he said, but rather coldly because you can't lose that much anger all at once. 'We'll not talk aboot this again. But we will remember it, right?' He pointed to the sleeping shape of Tiffany. 'Now pick up that wool, and the tobacco, and the turpentine, understand? Someone tak' the top off the turpentine bottle and pour a wee drop onto a bit o' cloth. And no one, let me mak' myself clear, is tae drink any of it!' The Feegles fell over themselves to obey. There was a ripping noise as 'the bit o' cloth' was obtained from the bottom of Miss Level's dress. 'Right,' said Awf'ly Wee Billy. 'Daft Wullie, you tak' all the three things and put them up on the big wee hag's chest, where she can smell them.' 'How can she smell them when she's oot cold like that?' said Wullie. 'The nose disnae sleep,' said the gonnagle flatly. The three smells of the shepherding hut were laid reverentially just below Tiffany's chin. 'Noo we wait,' said Awf'ly Wee Billy. 'We wait, and hope.' It was hot in the little bedroom with the sleeping witches and a crowd of Feegles. It wasn't long before the smells of sheep's wool, turpentine and tobacco rose and twined and filled the air ... Tiffany's nose twitched. The nose is a big thinker. It's good at memory -very good. So good that a smell can take you back in memory so hard that it hurts. The brain can't stop it. The brain has nothing to do with it. The hiver could control brains, but it couldn't control a stomach that threw up when it was flown on a broomstick. And it was useless at noses. . . The smell of sheep's wool, turpentine and Jolly Sailor tobacco could carry a mind away, all the way to a silent place that was warm and safe and free from harm . . . The hiver opened its eyes and looked around. The shepherding hut?' it said. It sat up. Red light shone in through the open door, and through the trunks of the saplings growing everywhere. Many of them were quite big now and cast long shadows, putting the setting sun behind bars. Around the shepherding hut, though, they had been cut down. This is a trick,' it said. 'It won't work. We are you. We think like you. We're better at thinking like you than you are.' Nothing happened. The hiver looked like Tiffany, although here it was slightly taller because Tiffany thought she was slightly taller than she really was. It stepped out of the hut and onto the turf. It's getting late,' it said to the silence. 'Look at the trees! This place is dying. We don't Page 90 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt have to escape. Soon all this will be part of us. Everything that you really could be. You're proud of your little piece of ground. We can remember when there were no worlds! We- you could change things with a wave of your hand! You could make things right or make things wrong, and you could decide which is which! You will never die!' Then why are ye sweatin', ye big heap o' jobbies? Ach, what a scunner!' said a voice behind it. For a moment the hiver wavered. Its shape changed, many times in the fractions of a second. There were bits of scales, fins, teeth, a pointy hat, claws . . . and then it was Tiffany again, smiling. 'Oh, Rob Anybody, we are glad to see you,' it said. 'Can you help us-?' 'Dinnae gi' me all that swiddle!' shouted Rob, bouncing up and down in rage. 'I know a hiver when I sees one! Crivens but ye're due a kickin'!' The hiver changed again, became a lion with teeth the size of swords and roared at him. 'Ach, it's like that, is it?' said Rob Anybody. 'Dinnae go awa'!' He ran a few steps and vanished. The hiver changed back to its Tiffany shape again. 'Your little friend has gone,' it said. 'Come out now. Come out now. Why fear us? We are you. You won't be like the rest, the dumb animals, the stupid kings, the greedy wizards. Together-' Rob Anybody returned, followed by ... well, everyone. 'Ye cannae die,' he yelled. 'But we'll make ye wish ye could!' They charged. The Feegles had the advantage in most fights because they were small and fought big enemies. If you're small and fast you're hard to hit. The hiver fought back by changing shape, all the time. Swords clanged on scales, heads butted fangs - it whirled across the turf, growling and screaming, calling up past shapes to counter every attack. But Feegles were hard to kill. They bounced when thrown, sprang back when trodden on and easily dodged teeth and claws. They fought - - and the ground shook so suddenly that even the hiver lost its footing. The shepherding hut creaked and began to settle into the turf, which opened up around it as easily as butter. The saplings trembled and began to fall over, one after the other, as if their roots were being cut under the grass. The land . . . rose. Rolling down the shifting slope, the Feegles saw the hills climbing towards the sky. What was there, what had always been there, become more plain. Rising into the dark sky was a head, shoulders, a chest. . . Someone who had been lying down, growing turf, their arms and legs the hills and valleys of the downland, was sitting up. They moved with great stony slowness, millions of tons of hill shifting and creaking around them. What had looked like two long mounds in the shape of a cross became giant green arms, unfolding. A hand with fingers longer than houses reached down, picked up the hiver and lifted it up into the air. Far off, something thumped three times. The sound seemed to be coming from outside the world. The Feegles, turning and watching from the small hill that was Page 91 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt one of the knees of the giant girl, ignored them. 'She tells the land whut it is, and it tells her who she is,' said Awf'ly Wee Billy, tears running down his face. 1 cannae write a song aboot this! I'm nae good enough!' 'Is that the big wee hag dreamin' she's the hills or the hills dreamin' they're the big wee hag?' said Daft Wullie. 'Both, mebbe,' said Rob Anybody. They watched the huge hand close and winced. 'But ye cannae kill a hiver,' said Daft Wullie. 'Aye, but ye can frit it awa',' said Rob Anybody. 'It's a big wee universe oot there. If I was it, I'd no' think o' try in' her again!' There were three more booms in the distance, louder this time. 'I think,' he went on, 'that's it's time we were off ski.' In Miss Level's cottage, someone was knocking heavily on the front door. Thump. Thump. Thump. S? Chapter 9 Soul ant Tiffany opened her eyes, remembered, and thought: Was that a dream, or was that real? And the next thought was: How do I know I'm me? Suppose I'm not me but just think I'm me? How can I tell if I'm me or not? Who's the 'me' that's asking the question? Am I thinking these thoughts? How would I know if it wasn't? 'Dinnae ask me,' said a voice by her head. 'Is this one of them tricksie ones?' It was Daft Wullie. He was sitting on her pillow. Tiffany squinted down. She was in bed in Miss Level's cottage. A green quilt stretched out in front of her. A quilt. Green. Not turf, not hills . . . but it looked like the downland, from here. 'Did I say all that aloud?' she asked. 'Oh, aye.' 'Er . . . it did all happen, didn't it?' said Tiffany. 'Oh, aye,' said Daft Wullie cheerfully. 'The big hag wuz up here till just noo, but she said ye probably wasnae gonna wake up a monster.' More bits of memory landed in Tiffany's memory like red-hot rocks landing on a peaceful planet. 'Are you all right?' 'Oh, aye/ said Daft Wullie. 'And Miss Level?' And this rock of memory was huge, a flaming mountain that'd make a million dinosaurs flee for their lives. Tiffany's hands flew to her mouth. 'I killed her!' she said. 'Noo, then, ye didnae-' 'I did! I felt my mind thinking it. She made me angry! I just waved my hand like this' - a dozen Nac Mac Feegle dived for cover - 'and she just exploded into nothing! It was me\ I remember!' 'Aye, but the big hag o' hags said it wuz usin' your mind tae think with-' Daft Wullie began. 'I've got the memories! It was me, with this hand!' The Feegles who had raised their heads ducked back down again. 'And ... the memories I've got ... I remember dust, turning into stars . . . things ... the heat . . . blood ... the taste of blood ... I remember Page 92 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt ... I remember the see-me trick! Oh, no! I practically invited it in! I killed Miss Level!' Shadows were closing in around her vision, and there was a ringing in her ears. Tiffany heard the door swing open and hands picked her up as though she was as light as a bubble. She was slung over a shoulder and carried swiftly down the stairs and out into the bright morning, where she was swung down onto the ground. '. . . And all of us ... we killed her . . . take one crucible of silver . . .' she mumbled. A hand slapped her sharply across the face. She stared through inner mists at the tall dark figure in front of her. A bucket handle was pressed firmly into her hand. 'Milk the goats now, Tiffany! Now, Tiffany, d'you hear! The trusting creatures look to you! They wait for you! Tiffany milks the goats. Do it, Tiffany! The hands know how, the mind will remember and grow stronger, Tiffany!' She was thrust down onto the milking stool and, through the mist in her head, made out the cowering shape of... of... Black Meg. The hands remembered. They placed the pail, grasped a teat and then, as Meg raised a leg to play the foot-in-the-bucket game, grabbed it and forced it safely back down onto the milking platform. She worked slowly, her head full of hot fog, letting her hands have their way. Buckets were filled and emptied, milked goats got a bucket of feed from the bin . . . Sensibility Bustle was rather puzzled that his hands were milking a goat. He stopped. 'What is your name?' said a voice behind him. 'Bustle. Sensibil- 'No! That was the wizard, Tiffany! He was the strongest echo, but you're not him! Get into the dairy, TIFFANY!' She stumbled into the cool room under the command of that voice and the world focused. There was a foul cheese on the slab, sweating and stinking. 'Who put this here?' she asked. 'The hiver did, Tiffany. Tried to make a cheese by magic, Tiffany. Hah!' said the voice. 'And you are not it, Tiffany! You know how to make cheese the right way, don't you, Tiffany? Indeed you do! What is your name?' . . . all was confusion and strange smells. In panic, she roared-Her face was slapped again. 'No, that was the sabre-toothed tiger, Tiffany! They're all just old memories the hiver left behind, Tiffany! It's worn a lot of creatures but they are not you! Come forward, Tiffany!' She heard the words without really understanding them. They were just out there somewhere, between people who were just shadows. But it was unthinkable to disobey them. 'Drat!' said the hazy tall figure. 'Where's that little blue feller? Mister Anyone?' 'Here, mistress. It's Rob Anybody, mistress. I beg o' ye not tae turn me intae somethin' unnatural, mistress!' 'You said she had a box of keepsakes. Fetch it down here this minute. I feared this might happen. I hates doin' it this way!' Tiffany was turned round and once again looked into the blurry face while strong hands gripped her arms. Two blue eyes stared into hers. They shone in the mist like sapphires. 'What's your name, Tiffany?' said the voice. 'Tiffany!' The eyes bored into her. 'Is it? Really? Sing me the first song you ever learned, Tiffany! Now!' 'Hzan, hzana, m'taza-' Page 93 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt 'Stop! That was never learned on a chalk hill! You ain't Tiffany! I reckon you're that desert queen who killed twelve of her husbands with scorpion sandwiches! Tiffany is the one I'm after! Back into the dark with you!' Things went blurry again. She could hear whispered discussions through the fog and the voice said: 'Well, that might work. What's your name, pictsie?' 'Awf'ly Wee Billy Bigchin Mac Feegle, mistress.' 'You're very small, aren't you?' 'Only for my height, mistress.' The grip tightened on Tiffany's arms again. The blue eyes glinted. 'What does your name mean in the Old Speech of the Nac Mac Feegle, Tiffany? Think . . .' It rose from the depths of her mind, trailing the fog behind it. It came up through the clamouring voices and lifted her beyond the reach of ghostly hands. Ahead, the clouds parted. 'My name is Land Under Wave,' said Tiffany and slumped forward. 'No, no, none of that, we can't have that,' said the figure holding her. 'You've slept enough. Good, you know who you are! Now you must be up and doing! You must be Tiffany as hard as you may, and the other voices will leave you alone, depend on it. Although it might be a good idea if you don't make sandwiches for a while.' She did feel better. She'd said her name. The clamouring in her head had calmed down, although it was still a chatter that made it hard to think straight. But now at least she could see clearly. The black-dressed figure holding her wasn't tall, but she was so good at acting as if she was that it tended to fool most people. 'Oh . . . you're . . . Mistress Weatherwax?' Mistress Weatherwax pushed her down gently into a chair. From every flat surface in the kitchen, the Nac Mac Feegles watched Tiffany. 'I am. And a fine mess we have here. Rest for a moment and then we must be up and doing-' 'Good morning, ladies. Er, how is she?' Tiffany turned her head. Miss Level stood in the door. She looked pale and she was walking with a stick. 'I was lying in bed and I thought, Well, there's no reason to stay up here feeling sorry for myself,' she said. Tiffany stood up. 'I'm so sor-' she began, but Miss Level waved a hand vaguely. 'Not your fault,' she said, sitting down heavily at the table. 'How are you? And, for that matter, who are you?' Tiffany blushed. 'Still me, I think,' she mumbled. 'I got here last night and saw to Miss Level,' said Mistress Weatherwax. 'Watched over you, too, girl. You talked in your sleep or, rather, Sensibility Bustle did, what's left of him. That ol' wizard was quite helpful, for something that's nothing much more'n a bunch of memories and habits.' 'I don't understand about the wizard,' said Tiffany. 'Or the desert queen.' 'Don't you?' said the witch. 'Well, a hiver collects people. Tries to add them to itself, you might say, use them to think with. Dr Bustle was studying them hundreds of years ago, and set a trap to catch one. It got him instead, silly fool. It killed him in the end. It gets 'em all killed in the end. They go mad, one way or the other, they stop remembering what they shouldn't do. But it keeps a sort of ... pale copy of them, a sort of living memory. . .' She looked at Tiffany's puzzled expression and shrugged. 'Something like a ghost,' she said. Page 94 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt 'And it's left ghosts in my head?' 'More like ghosts of ghosts, really,' said Mistress Weatherwax. 'Something we don't have a word for, maybe.' Miss Level shuddered. 'Well, thank goodness you've got rid of the thing, at least,' she quavered. 'Would anyone like a nice cup of tea?' 'Ach, leave that tae us!' shouted Rob Anybody, leaping up. 'Daft Wullie, you an' the boys mak' some tea for the ladies!' 'Thank you,' said Miss Level weakly, as a clattering began behind her. 'I feel so clum-what? I thought you broke all the teacups when you did the washing up!' 'Oh, aye,' said Rob cheerfully. 'But Wullie found a whole load o' old ones shut awa' in a cupboard-' 'That very valuable bone china was left to me by a very dear friend!' shouted Miss Level. She sprang to her feet and turned towards the sink. With amazing speed for someone who was partly dead she snatched teapot, cup and saucer from the surprised pictsies and held them up as high as she could. 'Crivens!' said Rob Anybody, staring at the crockery. 'Now that's what I call hagglin'!' 'I'm sorry to be rude, but they're of great sentimental value!' said Miss Level. 'Mister Anybody, you and your men will kindly get away from Miss Level and shut upV said Mistress Weatherwax quickly. 'Pray do not disturb Miss Level while she's making tea!' 'But she's holding-' Tiffany began, in amazement. 'And let her get on with it without your chatter either, girl!' the witch snapped. 'Aye, but she picked up yon teapot wi'oot-' a voice began. The old witch's head spun round. Feegles backed away like trees bending to a gale. 'Daft William,' she said coldly, 'there's room in my well for one more frog, except that you don't have the brains of one!' 'Ahahaha, that's wholly correct, mistress,' said Daft Wullie, sticking out his chin with pride. 'I fooled you there! I ha' the brains o' a beetle!' Mistress Weatherwax glared at him, then turned back to Tiffany. 'I turned someone into a frog!' Tiffany said. It was dreadful! He didn't all fit in so there was this sort of huge pink-' 'Never mind that right now,' said Mistress Weatherwax in a voice that was suddenly so nice and ordinary that it tinkled like a bell. 'I expect you finds things a bit different here than they were at home, eh?' 'What? Well, yes, at home I never turned-' Tiffany began in surprise, then saw that just above her lap the old woman was making frantic circular hand motions that somehow meant Keep going as if nothing has happened. So they chatted madly about sheep and Mistress Weatherwax said they were very woolly, weren't they, and Tiffany said that they were, extremely so, and Mistress Weatherwax said extremely woolly was what she'd heard . . . while every eye in the room watched Miss Level - - making tea using four arms, two of which did not exist, and not realizing it. The black kettle sailed across the room and apparently tipped itself into the pot. Cups and saucers and spoons and the sugar bowl floated with a purpose. Mistress Weatherwax leaned across to Tiffany. 'I hope you're still feeling . . . alone?' she whispered. 'Yes, thank you. I mean, I can . . . sort of ... feel them there, but they're not getting in the way . . . er . . . sooner or later she's going to realize ... I mean, isn't she?' 'Very funny thing, the human mind,' whispered the old woman. 'I once had to see to a poor young man who had a tree fall on his legs. Lost both legs from the knee down. Had to have wooden legs made. Still, they were made out of that tree, which I Page 95 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt suppose was some comfort, and he gets about pretty well. But I remember him saying, "Mistress Weatherwax, I can still feel my toes sometimes." It's like the head don't accept what's happened. And it's not like she's . . . your everyday kind of person to start with, I mean, she's used to havin' arms she can't see-' 'Here we are,' said Miss Level, bustling over with three cups and saucers and the sugar bowl. 'One for you, one for you, and one for- Oh The sugar bowl dropped from an invisible hand and spilled its sugar onto the table. Miss Level stared at it in horror while, in the other hand that wasn't there, a cup and saucer wobbled without visible means of support. 'Shut your eyes, Miss Level!' And there was something in the voice, some edge or strange tone that made Tiffany shut her eyes too. 'Right! Now, you know the cup's there, you can feel your arm,' said Mistress Weatherwax, standing up. 'Trust it! Your eyes are not in possession of all the facts! Now put the cup down gently ... thaaat's right. You can open your eyes now, but what I wants you to do, right, as a favour to me, is put the hands that you can see flat down on the table. Right. Good. Now, without takin' those hands away, just go over to the dresser and fetch me that blue biscuit tin, will you? I'm always partial to a biscuit with my tea. Thank you very much.' 'But. . . but I can't do that now-' 'Get past "I can't", Miss Level,' Mistress Weather-wax snapped. 'Don't think about it, just do it! My tea's getting cold!' So this is witchcraft too, Tiffany thought. It's like Granny Aching talking to animals. It's in the voice! Sharp and soft by turns, and you use little words of command and encouragement and you keep talking, making the words fill the creature's world, so that the sheepdogs obey you and the nervous sheep are calmed. . . The biscuit tin floated away from the dresser. As it neared the old woman the lid unscrewed and hovered in the air beside it. She reached in delicately. 'Ooh, store-bought Teatime Assortment,' she said, taking four biscuits and quickly putting three of them in her pocket. 'Very posh.' 'It's terribly difficult to do this!' Miss Level moaned. 'It's like trying not to think of a pink rhinoceros!' 'Well?' said Mistress Weatherwax. 'What's so special about not thinking of a pink rhinoceros?' 'It's impossible not to think of one if someone tells you you mustn't,' Tiffany explained. 'No it ain't,' said Mistress Weatherwax, firmly. 'I ain't thinking of one right now, and I gives you my word on that. You want to take control of that brain of yours, Miss Level. So you've lost a spare body? What's another body when all's said and done? Just a lot of upkeep, another mouth to feed, wear and tear on the furniture ... in a word, fuss. Get your mind right, Miss Level, and the world is your The old witch leaned down to Tiffany and whispered: 'What's that thing, lives in the sea, very small, folks eat it?' 'Shrimp?' Tiffany suggested, a bit puzzled. 'Shrimp? All right. The world is your shrimp, Miss Level. Not only will there be a great saving on clothes and food, which is not to be sneezed at in these difficult times, but when people see you moving things though the air, well, they'll say, "There's a Page 96 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt witch and a half, and no mistake!" and they will be right. You just hold on to that skill, Miss Level. You maintain. Think on what I've said. And now you stay and rest. We'll see to what needs doing today. You just make a little list for me, and Tiff any 11 know the way.' 'Well, indeed, I do feel ... somewhat shaken,' said Miss Level, absent-mindedly brushing her hair out of her eyes with an invisible hand. 'Let me see ... you could just drop in on Mr Umbril, and Mistress Turvy, and the young Raddle boy, and check on Mrs Towney's bruise, and take some Number Five ointment to Mr Drover, and pay a call on old Mrs Hunter at Saucy Corner and ... now, who have I forgotten ... ?' Tiffany realized she was holding her breath. It had been a horrible day, and a dreadful night, but what was looming and queuing up for its place on Miss Level's tongue was, somehow, going to be worse than either. '. . . Ah, yes, have a word with Miss Quickly at Uttercliff, and then probably you'll need to talk to Mrs Quickly, too, and there're a few packages to be dropped off on the way, they're in my basket, all marked up. And I think that's it... oh, no, silly me, I almost forgot . . . and you need to drop in on Mr Weavall, too.' Tiffany breathed out. She really didn't want to. She'd rather not breathe ever again than face Mr Weavall and open an empty box. 'Are you sure you're . . . totally yourself, Tiffany?' said Miss Level, and Tiffany leaped for this lifesaving excuse not to go. 'Well, I do feel a bit-' she began, but Mistress Weatherwax interrupted with, 'She's fine, Miss Level, apart from the echoes. The hiver has gone away from this house, I can assure you.' 'Really?' said Miss Level. 'I don't mean to be rude, but how can you be so certain?' Mistress Weatherwax pointed down. Grain by grain, the spilled sugar was rolling across the tabletop and leaping into the sugar bowl. Miss Level clasped her hands together. 'Oh, Oswald/ she said, her face one huge smile, 'you've come back!' Miss Level, and possibly Oswald, watched them go from the gate. 'She'll be fine with your little men keeping her company,' said Mistress Weatherwax as she and Tiffany turned away and took the lane through the woods. 'It could be the making of her, you know, being half dead.' Tiffany was shocked. 'How can you be so cruel?' 'She'll get some respect when people see her moving stuff through the air. Respect is meat and drink to a witch. Without respect, you ain't got a thing. She doesn't get much respect, our Miss Level.' That was true. People didn't respect Miss Level. They liked her, in an unthinking sort of way, and that was it. Mistress Weatherwax was right, and Tiffany wished she wasn't. 'Why did you and Miss Tick send me to her, then?' she said. 'Because she likes people,' said the witch, striding ahead. 'She cares about 'em. Even the stupid, mean, dribbling ones, the mothers with the runny babies and no sense, the feckless and the silly and the fools who treat Page 97 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt her like some kind of a servant. Now that's what I call magic - seein' all that, dealin' with all that, and still goin' on. It's sittin' up all night with some poor old man who's leavin' the world, taking away such pain as you can, comfortin' their terror, seein' 'em safely on their way . . . and then cleanin' 'em up, layin' 'em out, making 'em neat for the funeral, and helpin' the weeping widow strip the bed and wash the sheets - which is, let me tell you, no errand for the faint-hearted - and stayin' up the next night to watch over the coffin before the funeral, and then going home and sitting down for five minutes before some shouting angry man comes bangin' on your door 'cos his wife's havin' difficulty givin' birth to their first child and the midwife's at her wits' end and then getting up and fetching your bag and going out again. .. We all do that, in our own way, and she does it better'n me, if I was to put my hand on my heart. That is the root and heart and soul and centre of witchcraft, that is. The soul and centre!' Mistress Weatherwax smacked her fist into her hand, hammering out her words. 'The . . . soul. . . and . . . centre]' Echoes came back from the trees in the sudden silence. Even the grasshoppers by the side of the track had stopped sizzling. 'And Mrs Earwig,' said Mistress Weatherwax, her voice sinking to a growl, 'Mrs Earwig tells her girls it's about cosmic balances and stars and circles and colours and wands and . . . and toys, nothing but toys!' She sniffed. 'Oh, I daresay they're all very well as decoration, somethin' nice to look at while you're workin', somethin' for show, but the start and finish, the start and finish, is helpin' people when life is on the edge. Even people you don't like. Stars is easy, people is hard.' She stopped talking. It was several seconds before birds began to sing again. 'Anyway, that's what I think,' she added in the tone of someone who suspects that they might have gone just a bit further than they meant to. She turned round when Tiffany said nothing, and saw that she had stopped and was standing in the lane looking like a drowned hen. 'Are you all right, girl?' she said. 'It was me!' wailed Tiffany. 'The hiver was me! It wasn't thinking with my brain, it was using my thoughts! It was using what it found in my head! All those insults, all that. . .' She gulped. 'That . . . nastiness. All it was was me with-' '- without the bit of you that was locked away,' said Mistress Weatherwax sharply. 'Remember that.' 'Yes, but supposing-' Tiffany began, struggling to get all the woe out. 'The locked-up bit was the important bit,' said Mistress Weatherwax. 'Learnin' how not to do things is as hard as learning how to do them. Harder, maybe. There'd be a sight more frogs in this world if I didn't know how not to turn people into them. And big pink balloons, too.' 'Don't,' said Tiffany, shuddering. 'That's why we do all the tramping around and doctorin' and stuff,' said Mistress Weatherwax. 'Well, and because it makes people a bit better, of course. But doing it Page 98 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt moves you into your centre, so's you don't wobble. It anchors you. Keeps you human, stops you cackling. Just like your granny with her sheep, which are to my mind as stupid and wayward and ungrateful as humans. You think you've had a sight of yourself and found out you're bad? Hah! I've seen bad, and you don't get near it. Now, are you going to stop grizzling?' 'What?' snapped Tiffany. Mistress Weatherwax laughed, to Tiffany's sudden fury. 'Yes, you're a witch to your boots,' she said. 'You're sad, and behind that you're watching yourself being sad and thinking, Oh, poor me, and behind that you're angry with me for not going "There, there, poor dear." Let me talk to those Third Thoughts then, because I want to hear from the girl who went to fight a fairy queen armed with nothin' but a fryin' pan, not some child feelin' sorry for herself and wallowing in misery!' 'What? I am not wallowing in misery!' Tiffany shouted, striding up to her until they were inches apart. 'And what was all that about being nice to people, eh?' Overhead, leaves fell off the trees. 'That doesn't count when it's another witch, especially one like you!' Mistress Weatherwax snapped, prodding her in the chest with a finger as hard as wood. 'Oh? Oh? And what's that supposed to mean?' A deer galloped off through the woods. The wind got up. 'One who's not paying attention, child!' 'Why, what have I missed that you 've seen . . . old woman?' 'Old woman I may be, but I'm tellin' you the hiver is still around! You only threw it out!' Mistress Weatherwax shouted. Birds rose from the trees in panic. 'I know!' screamed Tiffany. 'Oh yes? Really? And how do you know that?' 'Because there's a bit of me still in it! A bit of me I'd rather not know about, thank you! I can feel it out there! Anyway, how do you know!' 'Because I'm a bloody good witch, that's why,' snarled Mistress Weatherwax, as rabbits burrowed deeper to get out of the way. 'And what do you want me to do about the creature while you sit there snivellin', eh?' 'How dare you! How dare you! It's my responsibility! I'll deal with it, thank you so very much!' 'You? A hiver? It'll take more than a frying pan! They can't be killed!' 'I'll find a way! A witch deals with things!' 'Hah! I'd like to see you try!' 'I will!' shouted Tiffany. It started to rain. 'Oh? So you know how to attack it, do you?' 'Don't be silly! I can't! It can always keep out of my way! It can even sink into the ground! But it'll come looking for me, understand? Me, not anyone else! I know it! And this time I'll be ready!' 'Will you, indeed?' said Mistress Weatherwax, folding her arms. 'Yes!' 'When?' 'Now!' 'No!' The old witch held up a hand. 'Peace be on this place,' she said, quietly. The wind dropped. The rain stopped. 'No, not yet,' she went on as peace once again descended. 'It's not attackin' yet. Don't you think that's odd? It'd be licking its wounds, if it had a tongue. And you're not ready yet, Page 99 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt whatever you thinks. No, we've got somethin' else to do, haven't we?' Tiffany was speechless. The tide of outrage inside her was so hot that it burned her ears. But Mistress Weatherwax was smiling. The two facts did not work well together. Her first thoughts were: I've just had a blazing row with Mistress Weatherwax! They say that if you cut her with a knife she wouldn't bleed until she wanted to! They say that when some vampires bit her they all started to crave tea and sweet biscuits. She can do anything, be anywhere! And I called her an old woman! Her Second Thoughts were: Well, she is. Her Third Thoughts were: Yes, she is Mistress Weatherwax. And she's keeping you angry. If you're full of anger, there's no room left for fear. 'You hold that anger,' Mistress Weatherwax said, as if reading all of her mind. 'Cup it in your heart, remember where it came from, remember the shape of it, save it until you need it. But now the wolf is out there somewhere in the woods, and you need to see to the flock.' It's the voice, Tiffany thought. She really does talk to people like Granny Aching talked to sheep, except she hardly cusses at all. But I feel. . . better. 'Thank you,' she said. 'And that includes Mr Weavall.' 'Yes,' said Tiffany. 'I know.' Chapter 10 The Late BLOOMER It was an ... interesting day. Everyone in the mountains had heard of Mistress Weatherwax. If you didn't have respect, she said, you didn't have anything. Today, she had it all. Some of it even rubbed off on Tiffany. They were treated like royalty - not the sort who get dragged off to be beheaded or have something nasty done with a red-hot poker, but the other sort, when people walk away dazed, saying, 'She actually said hello to me, very graciously! I will never wash my hand again!' Not that many people they dealt with washed their hands at all, Tiffany thought, with the primness of a dairy worker. But people crowded around outside the cottage doors, watching and listening, and people sidled up to Tiffany to say things like, 'Would she like a cup of tea? I've cleaned our cup!' And in the garden of every cottage they passed, Tiffany noticed, the beehives were suddenly bustling with activity. She worked away, trying to stay calm, trying to think about what she was doing. You did the doctoring work as neatly as you could, and if it was on something oozy then you just thought about how nice things would be when you'd stopped doing it. She felt Mistress Weatherwax wouldn't approve of this attitude. But Tiffany didn't much like hers either. She lied all the- she didn't tell the truth all the time. For example, there was the Raddles' privy. Miss Level had explained carefully to Mr and Mrs Raddle several times that it was far too close to the well, and so the drinking water was full of tiny, tiny creatures that were making their children sick. They'd listened very carefully, every time they heard the lecture, and still they never moved the privy. But Mistress Weatherwax told them it was caused by goblins who were attracted to the smell, and by the time they left that cottage Mr Raddle and three of his friends Page 100 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt were already digging a new well the other end of the garden. 'It really is caused by tiny creatures, you know,' said Tiffany, who'd once handed over an egg to a travelling teacher so she could line up and look through his '** Astounding Mikroscopical Device! A Zoo in Every Drop of Ditchwater!**' She'd almost collapsed next day from not drinking. Some of those creatures were hairy. 'Is that so?' said Mistress Weatherwax sarcastically. 'Yes. It is. And Miss Level believes in telling them the truth!' 'Good. She's a fine, honest woman,' said Mistress Weatherwax. 'But what I say is, you have to tell people a story they can understand. Right now I reckon you'd have to change quite a lot of the world, and maybe bang Mr Raddle's stupid fat head against the wall a few times, before he'd believe that you can be sickened by drinking tiny invisible beasts. And while you're doing that, those kids of theirs will get sicker. But goblins, now, they makes sense today. A story gets things done. And when I see Miss Tick tomorrow I'll tell her it's about time them wandering teachers started coming up here.' 'All right,' said Tiffany reluctantly, 'but you told Mr Umbril the shoemaker that his chest pains will clear up if he walks to the waterfall at Tumble Crag every day for a month and throws three shiny pebbles into the pool for the water sprites! That's not doctoring!' 'No, but he thinks it is. The man spends too much time sitting hunched up. A five-mile walk in the fresh air every day for a month will see him as right as rain,' said Mistress Weatherwax. 'Oh,' said Tiffany. 'Another story?' 'If you like,' said Mistress Weatherwax, her eyes twinkling. 'And you never know, maybe the water sprites will be grateful for the pebbles.' She glanced sidelong at Tiffany's expression, and patted her on the shoulder. 'Never mind, miss,' she said. 'Look at it this way. Tomorrow, your job is to change the world into a better place. Today, my job is to see that everyone gets there.' 'Well, I think-' Tiffany began, then stopped. She looked up at the line of woods between the small fields of the valleys and the steep meadows of the mountains. 'It's still there,' she said. 'I know,' said Mistress Weatherwax. 'It's moving around but it's keeping away from us.' 'I know,' said Mistress Weatherwax. 'What does it think it's doing?' 'It's got a bit of you in it. What do you think it's doing?' Tiffany tried to think. Why wouldn't it attack? Oh, she'd be better prepared this time, but it was strong. 'Maybe it's waiting until I'm upset again,' she said. 'But I keep having a thought. It makes no sense. I keep thinking about. . . three wishes.' 'Wishes for what?' 'I don't know. It sounds silly.' Mistress Weatherwax stopped. 'No, it's not,' she said. 'It's a deep part of you trying to send yourself a message. Just remember it. Because now-' Tiffany sighed. 'Yes, I know. Mr Weavall.' No dragon's cave was ever approached as carefully as the cottage in the overgrown garden. Tiffany paused at the gate and looked back, but Mistress Weatherwax had Page 101 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt diplomatically vanished. Probably she's found someone to give her a cup of tea and a sweet biscuit, she thought. She lives on them! She opened the gate and walked up the path. You couldn't say: It's not my fault. You couldn't say: It's not my responsibility. You could say: I will deal with this. You didn't have to want to. But you had to do it. Tiffany took a deep breath and stepped into the dark cottage. Mr Weavall, in his chair, was just inside the door and fast asleep, showing the world an open mouth full of yellow teeth. 'Urn . . . hello, Mr Weavall,' Tiffany quavered, but perhaps not quite loud enough. 'Just, er, here to see that you, that everything is ... is all right There was a snort nonetheless, and he woke, smacking his lips to get the sleep out of his mouth. 'Oh, 'tis you,' he said. 'Good afternoon to ye.' He eased himself more upright and started to stare out of the doorway, ignoring her. Maybe he won't ask, she thought as she washed up and dusted and plumped the cushions and, not to put too fine a point on it, emptied the commode. But she nearly yelped when the arm shot out and grabbed her wrist and the old man gave her his pleading look. 'Just check the box, Mary, will you? Before you go? Only I heard clinking noises last night, see. Could be one o' the sneaky thieves got in.' 'Yes, Mr Weavall' said Tiffany, while she thought: Idon'twanttobehereldon'twanttobehere! She pulled out the box. There was no choice. It felt heavy. She stood up and lifted the lid. After the creak of the hinges, there was silence. 'Are you all right, gel?' said Mr Weavall. 'Urn . . .' said Tiffany. 'It's all there, ain't it?' said the old man anxiously. Tiffany's mind was a puddle of goo. 'Urn . . . it's all here,' she managed. 'Um . . . and now it's all gold, Mr Weavall.' 'Gold? Hah! Don't you pull my leg, gel. No gold ever came my way!' Tiffany put the box on the old man's lap, as gently as she could, and he stared into it. Tiffany recognized the worn coins. The pictsies ate off them in the mound. There had been pictures on them, but they were too worn to make out now. But gold was gold, pictures or not. She turned her head sharply and was certain she saw something small and red-headed vanish into the shadows. 'Well now,' said Mr Weavall. 'Well now.' And that seemed to exhaust his conversation for a while. Then he said, 'Far too much money here to pay for a buryin'. I don't recall savin' all this. I reckon you could bury a king for this amount of money.' Tiffany swallowed. She couldn't leave things like this. She just couldn't. 'Mr Weavall, I've got something I must tell you,' she said. And she told him. She told him all of it, not just the good bits. He sat and listened carefully. 'Well, now, isn't that interesting,' he said when she'd finished. 'Urn . . . I'm sorry,' said Tiffany. She couldn't think of anything else to say. 'So what you're saying, right, is 'cos that creature made you take my burying money, right, you think these fairy friends o' yourn filled my ol' box with gold so's you wouldn't get into trouble, right?' 'I think so,' said Tiffany. 'Well, it looks like I should thank you, then,' said Mr Weavall. 'What?' 'Well, it seems to I, if you hadn't ha' took the silver and copper, there wouldn't Page 102 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt have been any room for all this gold, right?' said Mr Weavall. 'And I shouldn't reckon that ol' dead king up on yon hills needs it now.' 'Yes, but-' Mr Weavall fumbled in the box and held up a gold coin that would have bought his cottage. 'A little something for you, then, girl,' he said. 'Buy yourself some ribbons or something 'No! I can't! That wouldn't be fair!' Tiffany protested, desperately. This was completely going wrong! 'Wouldn't it, now?' said Mr Weavall, and his bright eyes gave her a long, shrewd look. 'Well, then, let's call it payment for this little errand you're gonna run for I, eh? You're gonna run up they stairs, which I can't quite manage any more, and bring down the black suit that's hanging behind the door, and there's a clean shirt in the chest at the end of the bed. And you'll polish my boots and help I up, but I'm thinking I could prob'ly make it down the lane on my own. 'Cos, y'see, this is far too much money to buy a man's funeral, but I reckon it'll do fine to marry him off, so I am proposin' to propose to the Widow Tussy that she engages in matrimony with I!' The last sentence took a little working out, and then Tiffany said, 'You are?' 'That I am,' said Mr Weavall, struggling to his feet. 'She's a fine woman who bakes a very reasonable steak-and-onion pie and she has all her own teeth. I know that because she showed I. Her youngest son got her a set of fancy store-bought teeth all the way from the big city, and very handsome she looks in 'em. She was kind enough to loan 'em to I one day when I had a difficult piece of pork to tackle, and a man doesn't forget a kindness like that.' 'Er . . . you don't think you ought to think about this, do you?' said Tiffany. Mr Weavall laughed. 'Think? I got no business to be thinking about it, young lady! Who're you to tell me an old 'un like I that he ought to be thinking? I'm ninety-one, I am! Got to be up and doing! Besides, I have reason to believe by the twinkle in her eye that the Widow Tussy will not turn up her nose at my suggestion. I've seen a fair number of twinkles over the years, and that was a good'un. And I daresay that suddenly having a box of gold will fill in the corners, as my ol' dad would say.' It took ten minutes for Mr Weavall to get changed, with a lot of struggling and bad language and no help from Tiffany, who was told to turn her back and put her hands over her ears. Then she had to help him out into the garden, where he threw away one walking stick and waggled a finger at the weeds. 'And I'll be chopping down the lot of you tomorrow!' he shouted triumphantly. At the garden gate he grasped the post and pulled himself nearly vertical, panting. 'All right,' he said, just a little anxiously. It's now or never. I look OK, does I?' 'You look fine, Mr Weavall.' 'Everything clean? Everything done up?' 'Er . . . yes,' said Tiffany. 'How's my hair look?' 'Er ... you don't have any, Mr Weavall,' she reminded him. 'Ah, right. Yes, 'tis true. I'll have to buy one o' the whatdyoucallem's, like a hat made of hair? Have I got enough money for that, d'you think?' 'A wig? You could buy thousands, Mr Weavall!' 'Hah! Right.' His gleaming eyes looked around the garden. 'Any flowers out? Can't Page 103 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt see too well ... Ah . . . speckatickles, I saw 'em once, made of glass, makes you see good as new. That's what I need . . . have I got enough for speckatickles?' 'Mr Weavall,' said Tiffany, 'you've got enough for anything.' 'Why, bless you!' said Mr Weavall. 'But right now I need a bow-kwet of flowers, girl. Can't go courtin' without flowers and I can't see none. Anythin' left?' A few roses were hanging on among the weeds and briars in the garden. Tiffany fetched a knife from the kitchen and made them up into a bouquet. 'Ah, good,' he said. 'Late bloomers, just like I!' He held them tightly in his free hand, then suddenly frowned, fell silent and stood like a statue 'I wish my Toby and my Mary was goin' to be able to come to the weddin',' he said quietly. 'But they're dead, you know.' 'Yes,' said Tiffany. 'I know, Mr Weavall.' 'And I could wish that my Nancy was alive, too, although bein' as I hopes to be marryin' another lady that ain't a sensible wish, maybe. Hah! Nearly everyone I knows is dead.' Mr Weavall stared at the bunch of flowers for a while, and then straightened up again. 'Still, can't do nothin' about that, can we? Not even for a box full of gold!' 'No, Mr Weavall," said Tiffany hoarsely. 'Oh, don't cry, gel! The sun is shinin', the birds is singin' and what's past can't be mended, eh?' said Mr Weavall jovially. 'And the Widow Tussy is waitin'!' For a moment he looked panicky, and then he cleared his throat. 'Don't smell too bad, do I?' he said. 'Er . . . only of mothballs, Mr Weavall.' 'Mothballs? Mothballs is OK. Right, then! Time's a wastin'!' Using only the one stick, waving his other arm with the flowers in the air to keep his balance, Mr Weavall set off with surprising speed. 'Well,' said Mistress Weatherwax as, with jacket flying, he rounded the corner. 'That was nice, wasn't it?' Tiffany looked around quickly. Mistress Weather-wax was still nowhere to be seen, but she was somewhere to be unseen. Tiffany squinted at what was definitely an old wall with some ivy growing up it, and it was only when the old witch moved that she spotted her. She hadn't done anything to her clothes, hadn't done any magic as far as Tiffany knew, but she'd simply . . . faded in. 'Er, yes,' said Tiffany, taking out a handkerchief and blowing her nose. 'But it worries you,' said the witch. 'You think it shouldn 't have ended like that, right?' 'No!' said Tiffany hotly. 'It would have been better if he'd been buried in some ol' cheap coffin paid for by the village, you think?' 'No!' Tiffany twisted up her fingers. Mistress Weatherwax was sharper than a field of pins. 'But ... all right, it just doesn't seem . . . fair. I mean, I wish the Feegles hadn't done that. I'm sure I could have . . . sorted it out somehow, saved up . . .' 'It's an unfair world, child. Be glad you have friends.' Tiffany looked up at the tree line. 'Yes,' said Mistress Weatherwax. 'But not up there.' 'I'm going away,' said Tiffany. 'I've been thinking about it, and I'm going away.' 'Broomstick?' said Mistress Weatherwax. 'It don't move fast-' 'No! Where would I fly to? Home? I don't want to take it there! Anyway, I can't just fly off with it roaming around! When it... when I meet it, I don't want to be near people, Page 104 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt you understand? I know what I... what it can do if it's angry! It half-killed Miss Level!' 'And if it follows you?' 'Good! I'll take it up there somewhere!' Tiffany waved at the mountains. 'All alone?' 'I don't have a choice, do I?' Mistress Weatherwax gave her a look that went on too long. 'No,' she said. 'You don't. But neither have I. That's why I will come with you. Don't argue, miss. How would you stop me, eh? Oh, that reminds me . . . them mysterious bruises Mrs Towny gets is because Mr Towny beats her, and the father of Miss Quickly's baby is young Fred Turvey. You might mention that to Miss Level.' As she spoke, a bee flew out of her ear. Bait, thought Tiffany a few hours later, as they walked away from Miss Level's cottage and up towards the high moors. I wonder if I'm bait, just like in the old days when the hunters would tether a lamb or a baby goat to bring the wolves nearer? She's got a plan to kill the hiver. I know it. She's worked something out. It'll come for me and she'll just wave a hand. She must think I'm stupid. They had argued, of course. But Mistress Weatherwax had made a nasty personal remark. It was: You're eleven. Just like that. You're eleven, and what is Miss Tick going to tell your parents? Sorry about Tiffany, but we let her go off by herself to fight an ancient monster that can't be killed and what's left of her is in this jar? Miss Level had joined in at that part, almost in tears. If Tiffany hadn't been a witch, she would have whined about everyone being so unfairl In fact they were being fair. She knew they were being fair. They were not thinking just of her, but of other people, and Tiffany hated herself -well, slightly - because she hadn't. But it was sneaky of them to choose this moment to be fair. That was unfair. No one had told her she was only nine when she went into Fairyland armed with just a frying pan. Admittedly, no one else had known she was going, except the Nac Mac Feegle, and she was much taller than they were. Would she have gone if she'd known what was in there? she wondered. Yes. I would. And you're going to face the hiver even though you don't know how to beat it? Yes. I am. There's part of me still in it. I might be able to do something-But aren't you just ever so slightly glad that Mistress Weatherwax and Miss Level won the argument and now you're going off very bravely but you happen to be accompanied, completely against your will, by the most powerful witch alive? Tiffany sighed. It was dreadful when your own thoughts tried to gang up on you. The Feegles hadn't objected to her going to find the hiver. They did object to not being allowed to come with her. They'd been insulted, she knew. But, as Mistress Weatherwax had said, this was true haggling and there was no place in it for Feegles. If the hiver came, out there, not in a dream but for real, it'd have nothing about it that could be kicked or head-butted. Tiffany had tried to make a little speech, thanking them for their help, but Rob Anybody had folded his arms and turned his back. It had all gone wrong. But the old witch had been right. They could get hurt. The trouble was, explaining to a Feegle how dangerous things were going to be only got them more enthusiastic. She left them arguing with one another. It had not gone well. But now that was all behind her, in more ways that one. The trees beside the track were less bushy and more pointy or, if Tiffany had known more about trees, she would have said that the oaks were giving way to Page 105 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt evergreens. She could feel the hiver. It was following them, but a long way back. If you had to imagine a head witch, you wouldn't imagine Mistress Weatherwax. You might imagine Mrs Earwig, who glided across the floor as though she was on wheels, and had a dress as black as the darkness in a deep cellar, but Mistress Weatherwax was just an old woman with a lined face and rough hands in a dress as black as night, which is never as black as people think. It was dusty and ragged round the hem, too. On the other hand, thought her Second Thoughts, you once bought Granny Aching a china shepherdess, remember? All blue and white and sparkly? Her First Thoughts thought: Well, yes, but I was a lot younger then. Her Second Thoughts thought: Yes, but which one was the real shepherdess? The shiny lady in the nice clean dress and buckled shoes, or the old woman who stumped around in the snow with boots filled with straw and a sack across her shoulders? At which point, Mistress Weatherwax stumbled. She caught her balance very quickly. 'Dangerously loose stones on this path,' she said. 'Watch out for them.' Tiffany looked down. There weren't that many stones and they didn't seem very dangerous or particularly loose. How old was Mistress Weatherwax? That was another question she wished she hadn't asked. She was skinny and wiry, just like Granny Aching, the kind of person who goes on and on - but one day Granny Aching had gone to bed and had never got up again, just like that... The sun was setting. Tiffany could feel the hiver in the same way that you can sense that someone is looking at you. It was still in the woods that hugged the mountain like a scarf. At last the witch stopped at a spot where rocks like pillars sprouted out of the turf. She sat down with her back to a big rock. This'll have to do,' she said. It'll be dark soon and you could turn an ankle on all this loose stone.' There were huge boulders around them, house-sized, which had rolled down from the mountains in the past. The rock of the peaks began not far away, a wall of stone that seemed to hang above Tiffany like a wave. It was a desolate place. Every sound echoed. She sat down by Mistress Weatherwax and opened the bag that Miss Level had packed for the journey. Tiffany wasn't very experienced at things like this but, according to the book of fairy tales, the typical food for taking on an adventure was bread and cheese. Hard cheese, too. Miss Level had made them ham sandwiches, with pickles, and she'd included napkins. That was kind of a strange thought to keep in your head: We're trying to find a way of killing a terrible creature, but at least we won't be covered in crumbs. There was a bottle of cold tea, too, and a bag of biscuits. Miss Level knew Mistress Weatherwax. 'Shouldn't we light a fire?' Tiffany suggested. 'Why? It's a long way down to the tree line to get the firewood, and there'll be a fine half-moon up in twenty minutes. Your friend's keeping his distance and there nothing else that'll attack us up here.' 'Are you sure?' Page 106 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt 'I walk safely in my mountains,' said Mistress Weatherwax. 'But aren't there trolls and wolves and things?' 'Oh, yes. Lots.' 'And they don't try to attack you?' 'Not any more,' said a self-satisfied voice in the dark. 'Pass me the biscuits, will you?' 'Here you are. Would you like some pickles?' Tickles gives me the wind something awful' 'In that case-' 'Oh, I wasn't saying no,' said Mistress Weatherwax, taking two large pickled cucumbers. Oh, good, Tiffany thought. She'd brought three fresh eggs with her. Getting the hang of a shamble was taking too long. It was stupid. All the other girls were able to use them. She was sure she was doing everything right. She'd filled her pocket with random things. Now she pulled them out without looking, wove the thread around the egg like she'd done a hundred times before, grasped the pieces of wood and moved them so that. . . Pod The egg cracked, and oozed. 'I told you,' said Mistress Weatherwax, who'd opened one eye. 'They're toys. Sticks and stones.' 'Have you ever used one?' said Tiffany. 'No. Couldn't get the hang of them. They got in the way.' Mistress Weatherwax yawned, wrapped the blanket around her, made a couple of mnup, mnup noises as she tried to get comfortable against the rock and, after a while, her breathing became deeper. Tiffany waited in silence, her blanket around her, until the moon came up. She'd expected that to make things better, but it didn't. Before, there had just been darkness. Now there were shadows. There was a snore beside her. It was one of those good solid ones, like ripping canvas. There was more than just the curiosity of a bird in that look. The old woman snored again. Tiffany reached out, still staring at the owl, and shook her gently. When that didn't work, she shook her hardly. There was a sound like three pigs colliding and Mistress Weatherwax opened one eye and said, 'Whoo?' 'There's an owl watching us! It's right up close!' Suddenly the owl blinked, looked at Tiffany as if amazed to see her, spread its wings and glided off into the night. Mistress Weatherwax gripped her throat, coughed once or twice, and then said hoarsely, 'Of course it was an owl, child! It took me ten minutes to lure it this close! Now just you be quiet while I starts again, otherwise I shall have to make do with a bat, and when I goes out on a bat for any time at all I ends up thinkin' I can see with my ears, which is no way for a decent woman to behave!' 'But you were snoring!' 'I was not snoring! I was just resting gently while I tickled an owl closer! If you hadn't shaken me and scared it away, I'd have been up there with this entire moor under my eye.' 'You ... take over its mind?' said Tiffany nervously. 'No! I'm not one of your hivers! I just . . . borrows a lift from it, I just ... nudges it now and again, it don't even know I'm there. Now try to rest!' Page 107 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt 'But what if the hiver-?' 'If it comes anywhere near it'll be me that tells youV Mistress Weatherwax hissed, and lay back. Then her head jerked up one more time. 'And I do not snore!' she added. After half a minute, she started to snore again. Minutes after that the owl came back, or perhaps it was a different owl. It glided onto the same rock, settled there for a while and then sped away. The witch stopped snoring. In fact, she stopped breathing. Tiffany leaned closer and finally lowered an ear to the skinny chest to see if there was a heartbeat. Her own heart felt as if it was clenched like a fist - - because of the day she'd found Granny Aching in the hut. She was lying peacefully on the narrow iron bed, but Tiffany had known something was wrong as soon as she had stepped inside-Boom. Tiffany counted to three. Boom. Well, it was a heartbeat. Very slowly, like a twig growing, a stiff hand moved. It slid like a glacier into a pocket, and came up holding a large piece of card on which was written: I Ain't Dead, Tiffany decided she wasn't going to argue. But she pulled the blanket over the old woman and wrapped her own around herself. By moonlight, she tried again with her shamble. Surely she should be able to make it do something. Maybe if-By moonlight, she very, very carefully- Pod The egg cracked. The egg always cracked, and now there was only one left. Tiffany didn't dare try it with a beetle, even if she could find one. It would be too cruel. She sat back and looked across the landscape of silver and black, and her Third Thoughts thought: It's not going to come near. Why? She thought, I'm not sure why I know. But I know. It's keeping away. It knows Mistress Weatherwax is with me. She thought: How can it know that? It's not got a mind. It doesn't know what a Mistress Weatherwax is\ Still thinking, thought her Third Thoughts. Tiffany slumped against the rock. Sometimes her head was too . . . crowded .. . And then it was morning, and sunlight, and dew on her hair, and mist coming off the ground like smoke . . . and an eagle sitting on the rock where the owl had been, eating something furry. She could see every feather on its wing. It swallowed, glared at Tiffany with its mad bird eyes and flapped away, making the mist swirl. Beside her, Mistress Weatherwax began to snore again, which Tiffany took to mean that she was in her body. She gave the old woman a nudge, and the sound that had been a regular gnaaaargrgrgrgrg suddenly became blort. The old woman sat up, coughing, and waved a hand irritably at Tiffany to pass her the tea bottle. She didn't speak until she'd gulped half of it. 'Ah, say what you like, but rabbit tastes a lot better cooked,' she gasped, shoving the cork back in. 'And without the fur on!' 'You took- borrowed the eagle?' said Tiffany. 'O'course. I couldn't expect the poor ol' owl to fly around after daybreak, just to Page 108 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt see who's about. It was hunting voles all night and, believe me, raw rabbit's better'n voles. Don't eat voles.' 'I won't,' said Tiffany, and meant it. 'Mistress Weatherwax, I think I know what the hiver's doing. It's thinking.' 'I thought it had no brains!' Tiffany let her thoughts speak for themselves. 'But there's an echo of me in it, isn't there? There must be. It has an echo of everyone it's . . . been. There must be a bit of me in it. I know it's out there, and it knows I'm here with you. And it's keeping away.' 'Oh? Why's that, then?' 'Because it's frightened of you, I think.' 'Huh! And why's that?' 'Yes,' said Tiffany simply. 'It's because I am. A bit.' 'Oh dear. Are you?' 'Yes,' said Tiffany again. 'It's like a dog that's been beaten but won't run away. It doesn't understand what it's done wrong. But. .. there's something about it that.. . there's a thought that I'm nearly having Mistress Weatherwax said nothing. Her face went blank. 'Are you all right?' said Tiffany. 'I was just leavin' you time to have that thought,' said Mistress Weatherwax. 'Sorry. It's gone now. But. . . we're thinking about the hiver in the wrong way.' 'Oh, yes? And why's that?' 'Because . . .' Tiffany struggled with the idea. 'I think it's because we don't want to think about it the right way. It's something to do with . . . the third wish. And I don't know what that means.' The witch said, 'Keep picking at that thought,' and then looked up and added, 'We've got company.' It took Tiffany several seconds to spot what Mistress Weatherwax had seen - a shape at the edge of the woods, small and dark. It was coming closer, but rather uncertainly. It resolved itself into the figure of Petulia, flying slowly and nervously a few feet above the heather. Sometimes she jumped down and wrenched the stick in a slightly different direction. She got off again when she reached Tiffany and Mistress Weatherwax, grabbed the broom hastily and aimed it at a big rock. It hit it gently and hung there, trying to fly through stone. 'Urn, sorry,' she panted. 'But I can't always stop it, and this is better than having an anchor . . . Urn.' She started to bob a curtsy to Mistress Weatherwax, remembered she was a witch and tried to turn it into a bow halfway down, which was an event you'd pay money to see. She ended up bent double, and from somewhere in there came the little voice, 'Urn, can someone help, please? I think my Octogram of Trimontane has got caught up on my Pouch of Nine Herbs . . .' There was a tricky minute while they untangled her, with Mistress Weatherwax muttering Toys, just toys' as they unhooked bangles and necklaces. Petulia stood upright, red in the face. She saw Mistress Weatherwax's expression, whipped off her pointy hat and held it in front on her. This was a mark of respect, but it did mean that a two-foot, sharp, pointy thing was being aimed at them. 'Urn ... I went to see Miss Level and she said you'd come up here after some Page 109 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt horrible thing,' she said. 'Um ... so I thought I'd better see how you were.' 'Um . . . that was very kind of you,' said Tiffany, but her treacherous Second Thoughts thought: And what would you have done if it had attacked us? She had a momentary picture of Petulia standing in front of some horrible raging thing, but it wasn't as funny as she'd first thought. Petulia would stand in front of it, shaking with terror, her useless amulets clattering, scared almost out of her mind . . . but not backing away. She'd thought there might be people facing something horrible here, and she'd come anyway. 'What's your name, my girl?' said Mistress Weatherwax. 'Urn, Petulia Gristle, mistress. I'm learning with Gwinifer Blackcap.' 'Old Mother Blackcap?' said Mistress Weatherwax. 'Very sound. A good woman with pigs. You did well to come here.' Petulia looked nervously at Tiffany. 'Urn, are you all right? Miss Level said you'd been . . . ill.' 'I'm much better now, but thank you very much for asking, anyway,' said Tiffany wretchedly. 'Look, I'm sorry about-' 'Well, you were ill,' said Petulia. And that was another thing about Petulia. She always wanted to think the best of everybody. This was sort of worrying if you knew that the person she was doing her best to think nice thoughts about was you. 'Are you going to go back to the cottage before the Trials?' Petulia went on. 'Trials?' said Tiffany, suddenly lost. 'The Witch Trials,' said Mistress Weatherwax. 'Today,' said Petulia. 'I'd forgotten all about them!' said Tiffany. 'I hadn't,' said the old witch calmly. 'I never miss a Trial. Never missed a Trial in sixty years. Would you do a poor old lady a favour, Miss Gristle, and ride that stick of yours back to Miss Level's place and tell her that Mistress Weatherwax presents her compli-ments and intends to head directly to the Trials. Was she well?' 'Urn, she was juggling balls without using her handsV said Petulia in wonderment. 'And, d'you know what? I saw a. fairy in her garden! A blue one!' 'Really?' said Tiffany, her heart sinking. 'Yes! It was rather scruffy, though. And when I asked it if it really was a fairy, it said it was . . . um . .. "the big stinky horrible spiky iron stinging nettle fairy from the Land o' Tinkle", and called me a "scunner". Do you know what that means?' Tiffany looked into that round, hopeful face. She opened her mouth to say, 'It means someone who likes fairies,' but stopped in time. That just wouldn't be fair. She sighed. 'Petulia, you saw a Nac Mac Feegle,' she said. 'It is a kind of fairy, but they're not the sweet kind. I'm sorry. They're good . . . well, more or less . . . but they're not entirely nice. And "scunner" is a kind of swearword. I don't think it's a particularly bad one though.' Petulia's expression didn't change for a while. Then she said: 'So it was a fairy, then?' 'Well, yes. Technically.' The round pink face smiled. 'Good, I did wonder, because it was, um, you know . . . having a wee up against one of Miss Level's garden gnomes?' 'Definitely a Feegle,' said Tiffany. Page 110 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt 'Oh well, I suppose the big stinky horrible spiky iron stinging nettle needs a fairy, just like every other plant,' said Petulia. Chapter n ArctliUK. When Petulia had gone, Mistress Weatherwax stamped her feet and said, 'Let's go, young lady. It's about eight miles to Sheercliff. They'll have started before we get there.' 'What about the hiver?' 'Oh, it can come if it likes.' Mistress Weatherwax smiled. 'Oh, don't frown like that. There'll be more'n three hundred witches at the Trials, and they're right out in the country. It'll be as safe as anything. Or do you want to meet the hiver now? We could probably do that. It don't seem to move fast.' 'No!' said Tiffany, louder than she'd intended. 'No, because . . . things aren't what they seem. We'd do things wrong. Er . . . I can't explain it. It's because of the third wish.' 'Which you don't know what it is?' 'Yes. But I will soon, I hope.' The witch stared at her. 'Yes, I hope so, too,' she said. 'Well, no point in standing around. Let's get moving.' And with that the witch picked up her blanket and set off as though being pulled by a string. 'We haven't even had anything to eat!' said Tiffany, running after her. 'I had a lot of voles last night,' said Mistress Weatherwax over her shoulder. 'Yes, but you didn't actually eat them, did you?' said Tiffany. 'It was the owl that actually ate them.' 'Technic'ly, yes,' Mistress Weatherwax admitted. 'But if you think you've been eating voles all night you'd be amazed how much you don't want to eat anything next morning. Or ever again.' She nodded at the distant, departing figure of Petulia. 'Friend of yours?' she said, as they set out. 'Er . . . if she is, I don't deserve it,' said Tiffany. 'Hmm,' said Mistress Weatherwax. 'Well, sometimes we get what we don't deserve.' For an old woman Mistress Weatherwax could move quite fast. She strode over the moors as if distance was a personal insult. But she was good at something else too. She knew about silence. There was the swish of her long skirt as it snagged the heathers, but somehow that became part of the background noise. In the silence, as she walked, Tiffany could still hear the memories. There were hundreds of them left behind by the hiver. Most of them were so faint that they were nothing more than a slight uncomfortable feeling in her head, but the ancient tiger still burned brightly in the back of her brain, and behind that was the giant lizard. They'd been killing machines, the most powerful creatures in their world - once. The hiver had taken them both. And then they'd died fighting. Always taking fresh bodies, always driving the owners mad with the urge for power which would always end with getting them killed . . . and just as Tiffany wondered why, a memory said: Because it is frightened. Frightened of what? Tiffany thought. It's so powerful! Who knows? But it's mad with terror. Completely binkers! 'You're Simplicity Bustle, aren't you,' said Tiffany, and then her ears informed her that she'd said this aloud. 'Talkative, ain't he,' said Mistress Weatherwax. 'He talked in your sleep the other Page 111 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt night. Used to have a very high opinion of himself. I reckon that's why his memories held together for so long.' 'He doesn't know binkers from bonkers, though,' said Tiffany. 'Well, memory fades,' said Mistress Weatherwax. She stopped and leaned against a rock. She sounded out of breath. 'Are you all right, mistress?' said Tiffany. 'Sound as a bell,' said Mistress Weatherwax, wheezing slightly. 'Just getting my second wind. Anyway, it's only another six miles.' 'I notice you're limping a bit,' said Tiffany. 'Do you, indeed? Then stop noticing!' The shout echoed off the cliffs, full of command. Mistress Weatherwax coughed, when the echo had died away. Tiffany had gone pale. 'It seems to me,' said the old witch, 'that I might just've been a shade on the sharp side there. It was prob'ly the voles.' She coughed again. 'Them as knows me, or has earned it one way or the other, calls me Granny Weatherwax. I shall not take it amiss if you did the same.' 'Granny Weatherwax?' said Tiffany, shocked out of her shock by this new shock. 'Not technic'ly,' said Mistress Weatherwax quickly. 'It's what they call a honorific, like Old Mother So-and-so, or Goodie Thingy, or Nanny Whatshername. To show that a witch has ... is fully . . . has been-' Tiffany didn't know whether to laugh or burst into tears. 'I know,' she said. 'You do?' 'Like Granny Aching,' said Tiffany. 'She was my granny, but everyone on the Chalk called her Granny Aching.' 'Mrs Aching' wouldn't have worked, she knew. You needed a big, warm, billowing, open kind of word. Granny Aching was therefor everybody. 'It's like being everyone's grandmother,' she added. And didn't add: who tells them stories! 'Well, then. Perhaps so. Granny Weatherwax it is,' said Granny Weatherwax, and added quickly, 'but not technic'ly. Now we're best be moving.' She straightened up and set off again. Granny Weatherwax. Tiffany tried it out in her head. She'd never known her other grandmother, who'd died before she was born. Calling someone else Granny was strange but, oddly, it seemed right. And you could have two. The hiver followed them. Tiffany could feel it. But it was still keeping its distance. Well, there's a trick to take to the Trials, she thought. Granny - her brain tingled as she thought the word - Granny has got a plan. She must have. But . . . things weren't right. There was another thought she wasn't quite having; it ducked out of sight every time she thought she had it. The hiver wasn't acting right. She made sure she kept up with Granny Weatherwax. As they got nearer to the Trials, there were clues. Tiffany saw at least three broomsticks in the air, heading the same way. They reached a proper track, too, and groups of people were travelling in the same direction; there were a few pointy hats amongst them, which was a definite clue. The track dropped on down through some woods, came up in a patchwork of little fields and headed for a tall hedge, from behind which came the sound of a brass band playing a medley of Songs from the Shows, although by the sound of it no two musicians could agree on what Song or which Show. Tiffany jumped when she saw a balloon sail up above the trees, catch the wind and swoop away, but it turned out to be just a balloon and not a lump of excess Brian. She could Page 112 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt tell this because it was followed by a long scream of rage mixed with a roar of complaint: 'AAaargwannawannaaaagongongonaargggaaaa BLOON!' which is the traditional sound of a very small child learning that with balloons, as with life itself, it is important to know when not to let go of the string. The whole point of balloons is to teach small children this. However, on this occasion a broomstick with a pointy-hatted passenger rose above the trees, caught up with the balloon and towed it back down to the Trials ground. 'Didn't used to be like this,' Granny Weatherwax grumbled as they reached a gate. 'When I was a girl, we just used to meet up in some meadow somewhere, all by ourselves. But now, oh no, it has to be a Grand Day Out For All The Family. Hah!' There had been a crowd around the gate leading into the field, but there was something about that 'Hah!' The crowd parted, as if by magic, and the women pulled their children a little closer to them as Granny walked right up to the gate. There was a boy there, selling tickets and wishing, now, that he'd never been born. Granny Weatherwax stared at him. Tiffany saw his ears go red. 'Two tickets, young man,' said Granny. Little bits of ice tinkled off her words. 'That'll, er, be, er . . . one child and one senior citizen?' the young man quavered. Granny leaned forward and said: 'What is a senior citizen, young man?' 'It's like . . . you know . . . old folks,' the boy mumbled. Now his hands were shaking. Granny leaned further forward. The boy really, really wanted to step back but his feet were rooted to the ground. All he could do was bend backwards. 'Young man,' said Granny, 'I am not now, nor shall I ever be, an "old folk". We'll take two tickets, which I see on that board there is a penny apiece.' Her hand shot out, fast as an adder. The boy made a noise like gneeee as he leaped back. 'Here's tuppence,' said Granny Weatherwax. Tiffany looked at Granny's hand. The first finger and thumb were held together, but there did not appear to be any coins between them. Nevertheless, the young man, grinning horribly, took the total absence of coins very carefully between his thumb and finger. Granny twitched two tickets out of his other hand. 'Thank you, young man,' she said, and walked into the field. Tiffany ran after her. 'What did-?' she began, but Granny Weatherwax raised a finger to her lips, grasped Tiffany's shoulder and swivelled her round. The ticket-seller was still staring at his fingers. He even rubbed them together. Then he shrugged, held them over his leather moneybag and let go. Clink, clink . . . The crowd around the gate gave a gasp, and one or two of them started to applaud. The boy looked around with a sick kind of grin, as if of course he'd expected that to happen. 'Ah, right,' said Granny Weatherwax happily. 'And now I could just do with a cup of tea and maybe a sweet biscuit.' 'Granny, there are children here! Not just witches!' People were looking at them. Granny Weatherwax jerked Tiffany's chin up so that she could look into her eyes. 'Look around, eh? You can't move down here for amulets and wands and whatnot! It'll be bound to keep away, eh?' Tiffany turned to look. There were sideshows all around the field. A lot of them were funfair stuff that she'd seen before at agricultural shows around the Chalk: Roll-a-Penny, Lucky Dip, Bobbing for Piranhas, that sort of thing. The Ducking Stool was Page 113 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt very popular among young children on such a hot day. There wasn't a fortune-telling tent, because no fortune-teller would turn up at an event where so many visitors were qualified to argue and answer back, but there were a number of witch stalls. Zakzak's had a huge tent, with a display dummy outside wearing a Sky Scraper hat and a Zephyr Billow cloak, which had drawn a crowd of admirers. The other stalls were smaller, but they were thick with things that glittered and tinkled and they were doing a brisk trade amongst the younger witches. There were whole stalls full of dream-catchers and curse-nets, including the new self-emptying ones. It was odd to think of witches buying them, though. It was like fish buying umbrellas. Surely a hiver wouldn't come here, with all these witches? She turned to Granny Weatherwax. Granny Weatherwax wasn't there. It is hard to find a witch at the Witch Trials. That is, it is too easy to find a witch at the Witch Trials, but very hard to find the one you're looking for, especially if you suddenly feel lost and all alone and you can feel panic starting to open inside you like a fern. Most of the older witches were sitting at trestle tables in a huge roped-off area. They were drinking tea. Pointy hats bobbed as tongues wagged. Every woman seemed capable of talking while listening to all the others on the table at the same time, although this talent isn't confined to witches. It was no place to search for an old woman in black with a pointy hat. The sun was quite high in the sky now. The field was filling up. Witches were circling to land at the far end, and more and more people were pouring in through the gateway. The noise was intense. Everywhere Tiffany turned, black hats were scurrying. Pushing her way through the throng, she looked desperately for a friendly face, like Miss Tick or Miss Level or Petulia. If it came to it, an unfriendly one would do - even Mrs Earwig. And she tried not to think. She tried not to think that she was terrified and alone in this huge crowd, and that up on the hill, invisible, the hiver now knew this because just a tiny part of it was her. She felt the hiver stir. She felt it begin to move. Tiffany stumbled through a chattering group of witches, their voices sounding shrill and unpleasant. She felt ill, as though she'd been in the sun too long. The world was spinning. A remarkable thing about a hiver, a reedy voice began, somewhere in the back of her head, is that its hunting pattern mimics that of the common shark, among other creatures- 'I do not want a lecture, Mr Bustle,' Tiffany mumbled. 'I do not want you in my head!' But the memory of Simplicity Bustle had never taken much notice of other people when he was alive and it wasn't going to begin now. It went on in its self-satisfied squeak: - in that, once it has selected its prey, it will completely ignore other attractive targets-Page 114 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt She could see right across the Trials field, and something was coming. It moved through the crowd like the wind through a field of grass. You could plot its progress by the people. Some fainted, some yelped and turned round, some ran. Witches stopped their gossip, chairs were overturned and the shouting started. But it wasn't attacking anything. It was only interested in Tiffany. Like a shark, thought Tiffany. The killer of the sea, where worse things happened. Tiffany backed away, the panic filling her up. She bumped into witches hurrying towards the commotion and shouted at them: 'You can't stop it! You don't know what it is! You'll flail at it and wave glittery sticks and it will keep coming! It will keep coming!' She put her hands into her pockets and touched the lucky stone. And the string. And the piece of chalk. If this was a story, she thought bitterly, I'd trust in my heart and follow my star and all that other stuff and it would all turn out all right, right now, by tinkly Magikkkk. But you're never in a story when you need to be. Story, story, story . . . The third wish. The Third Wish. The third wish is the important one. In stories the genie or the witch or the magic cat . . . offers you three wishes. Three wishes . . . She grabbed a hurrying witch and looked into the face of Annagramma, who stared at her in terror and tried to cower away. 'Please don't do anything to me! Please!' she cried. I'm your friend, aren't I?' 'If you like, but that wasn't me and I'm better now,' said Tiffany, knowing she was lying. It had been her, and that was important. She had to remember that. 'Quick, Annagramma! What's the third wish? Quickly! When you get three wishes, what's the third wish!' Annagramma's face screwed up into the affronted frown she wore when something had the nerve not to be understandable. 'But why do-?' 'Don't think about it, please! Just answer!' 'Well, er . . . it could be anything . . . being invisible or ... or blonde, or anything-' Annagramma burbled, her mind coming apart at the seams. Tiffany shook her head and let her go. She ran to an old witch who was staring at the commotion. 'Please, mistress, this is important! In stories, what's the third wish! Don't ask me why, please! Just remember!' 'Er . . . happiness. It's happiness, isn't it?' said the old lady. 'Yes, definitely. Health, wealth and happiness. Now if I was you I'd-' 'Happiness? Happiness . . . thank you,' said Tiffany, and looked around desperately for someone else. It wasn't happiness, she knew that in her boots. You couldn't get happiness by magic, and that was another clue right there. There was Miss Tick, hurrying between the tents. There was no time for half-measures. Tiffany pulled her round and shouted: 'HelloMissTickYesI'mFinel HopeYouAreWellTooWhatlsTheThirdWishQuickly ThisIsImportantPleaseDon'tArgueOrAskQuestions Therelsn'tTime!' Miss Tick, to her credit, hesitated only for a moment or two. 'To have a hundred more wishes, isn't it?' she said. Tiffany stared at her and then said, Thank you. It isn't, but that's a clue, too.' Tiffany, there's a-' Miss Tick began. But Tiffany had seen Granny Weatherwax. She was standing in the middle of the field, in a big square that had been roped off for Page 115 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt some reason. No one seemed to notice her. She was watching the frantic witches around the hiver, where there was an occasional flash and sparkle of magic. She had a calm, faraway look. Tiffany brushed Miss Tick's arm away, ducked under the rope and ran up to her. 'Granny!' The blue eyes turned to her. 'Yes?' 'In stories, where the genie or the magic frog or the fairy godmother gives you three wishes . . . what's the third wish?' 'Ah, stories,' said Granny. That's easy. In any story worth the tellin', that knows about the way of the world, the third wish is the one that undoes the harm the first two wishes caused.' 'Yes! That's it! That's it!' shouted Tiffany, and the words piling up behind the question poured out. 'It's not evil! It can't be! It hasn't got a mind of its own! This is all about wishes! Our wishes! It's like in the stories, where they-' 'Calm down. Take a deep breath,' said Granny. She took Tiffany by the shoulders so that she faced the panicking crowd. 'You got frightened for a moment, and now it's comin' and it's not going to turn back, not now, 'cos it's desperate. It don't even see the crowd, they don't mean a thing to it. It's you it wants. It's you it's after. You should be the one who faces it. Are you ready?' 'But supposing I lose-' 'I never got where I am today by supposin' I was goin' to lose, young lady. You beat it once, you can do it again!' 'But I could turn into something terrible!' Then you'll face me,' said Granny. 'You'll face me, on my ground. But that won't happen, will it? You were fed up with grubby babies and silly women? Then this is ... the other stuff. It's noon now. They should've started the Trials proper, but, hah, it looks as though people have forgotten. Now, then ... do you have it in you to be a witch by noonlight, far away from your hills?' 'Yes!' There was no other answer, not to Granny Weatherwax. Granny Weatherwax bowed low and then took a few steps back. 'In your own time, then, madam,' she said. Wishes, wishes, wishes, thought Tiffany, distracted, fumbling in her pockets for the bits to make a shamble. It's not evil. It gives us what we think we want! And what do people ask for? More wishes! You couldn't say: A monster got into my head and made me do it. She'd wished the money was hers. The hiver just took her at her thought. You couldn't say: Yes, but I'd never have really taken it! The hiver used what it found - the little secret wishes, the desires, the moments of rage, all the things that real humans knew how to ignore! It didn't let you ignore them! Then, as she fumbled to tie the pieces together, the egg flipped out of her hands, trusted in gravity and smashed on the toe of her boot. She stared at it, the blackness of despair darkening the noonlight. Why did I try this? I've never made a shamble that worked, so why did I try? Because I believed it had to Page 116 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt work this time, that's why. Like in a story. Suddenly it would all be ... all right. But this isn't a story, and there are no more eggs. . . There was a scream but it was high up and the sound of it took Tiffany home in the bounce of a heartbeat. It was a buzzard, in the eye of the sun, getting bigger in its plunge towards the field. It soared up again as it passed over Tiffany's head, fast as an arrow, and as it did so, something small let go its hold on the buzzard's talons with a cry of 'Crivens!' Rob Anybody dropped like a stone, but there was a thwap! and suddenly a balloon of cloth snapped open above him. Two balloons, in fact, or to put it another way, Rob Anybody had 'borrowed' Hamish's parachute. He let go of them as soon as they'd slowed him down, and dropped neatly into the shamble. 'Did ye think we'd leave ye?' he shouted, holding onto the strings. 'I'm under a geas, me! Get on wi' it, right noo!' 'What? I can't!' said Tiffany, trying to shake him off. 'Not with you! I'll kill you! I always crack the eggs! What goose?' 'Dinnae argue!' shouted Rob, bouncing up and down in the strings. 'Do it! Or ye're no' the hag of the hills! An' I know ye are!' People were running past now. Tiffany glanced up. She thought she could see the hiver now as a moving shape in the dust. She looked at the tangle in her hands and at Rob's grinning face. The moment twanged. A witch deals with things, said her Second Thoughts. Get past the 'I can't.' O-K . . . Why hasn't it ever worked before? Because there was no reason for it to work. I didn't need it to work. I need it to help me now. No. I need me to help me. So think about it. Ignore the noise, ignore the hiver rolling towards her over the trodden grass . . . She'd use the things she'd had, so that was right. Calm down. Slow down. Look at the shamble. Think about the moment. There were all the things from home ... No. Not all the things. Not all the things at all. This time, she felt the shape of what wasn't there - - and tugged at the silver horse around her neck, breaking its chain, then hanging it in the threads. Suddenly her thoughts were as cool and clear as ice, as bright and shiny as they needed to be. Let's see . . . that looks better there . . . and that needs to be pulled this way . .. The movement jerked the silver horse into life. Then it spun gently, passing through the threads and Rob Anybody, who said, 'Didnae hurt a bit! Keep goin'!' Tiffany felt a tingle in her feet. The horse gleamed as it turned. 'I dinnae want to hurry ye!' said Rob Anybody. 'But hurry!' I'm far from home, thought Tiffany, in the same clear way, but I have it in my eye. Now I open my eyes. Now I open my eyes again-Ahh... Can I be a witch away from my hills? Of course I can. I never really leave you, Land Under Wave . .. Shepherds on the Chalk felt the ground shake, like thunder under the turf. Birds scattered from the bushes. The sheep looked up. Page 117 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt Again, the ground trembled. Some people said a shadow crossed the sun. Some people said they heard the sound of hooves. And a boy trying to catch hares in the little valley of the Horse said the hillside had burst and a horse had leaped out like a wave as high as the sky, with a mane like the wave of the sea and a coat as white as chalk. He said it had galloped into the air like rising mist, and flew towards the mountains like a storm. He got punished for telling stories, of course, but he thought it was worth it. The shamble glowed. Silver coursed along the threads. It was coming from Tiffany's hands, sparking like stars. In that light, she saw the hiver reach her and spread out until it was all around her, invisibility made visible. It rippled and reflected the light oddly. In those glints and sparkles there were faces, wavering and stretching like reflections in water. Time was going slowly. She could see, beyond the wall of hiver, witches staring at her. One had lost her hat in the commotion, but it was hanging in the air. It hadn't had time to fall yet. Tiffany's fingers moved. The hiver shimmered in the air, disturbed like a pond when a pebble has been dropped into it. Tendrils of it reached towards her. She felt its panic, felt its terror as it found itself caught- 'Welcome,' said Tiffany. Welcome? said the hiver in Tiffany's own voice. 'Yes. You are welcome in this place. You are safe here.' No! We are never safe! 'You are safe here,' Tiffany repeated. Please! said the hiver. Shelter us! The wizard was nearly right about you,' said Tiffany. 'You hid in other creatures. But he didn't wonder why. What are you hiding from?' Everything, said the hiver. 'I think I know what you mean,' said Tiffany. Do you? Do you know what it feels like to be aware of every star, every blade of grass? Yes. You do. You call it 'opening your eyes again'. But you do it for a moment. We have done it for eternity. No sleep, no rest, just endless ... endless experience, endless awareness. Of everything. All the time. How we envy you, envy you! Lucky humans, who can close your minds to the endless cold deeps of space! You have this thing you call... boredom? That is the rarest talent in the universe! We heard a song, it went 'Twinkle twinkle little star...' What power! What wondrous power! You can take a billion trillion tons of flaming matter, a furnace of unimaginable strength, and turn it into a little song for children! You build little worlds, little stories, little shells around your minds and that keeps infinity at bay and allows you to wake up in the morning without screaming! Completely binkers! said a cheerful voice at the back of Tiffany's memory. You just couldn't keep Dr Bustle down. Pity us, yes, pity us, said the voices of the hiver. No shield for us, no rest for us, no sanctuary. But you, you withstood us. We saw that in you. You have minds within minds. Hide Page 118 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt us! 'You want silence?' said Tiffany. Yes, and more than silence, said the voice of the hiver. You humans are so good at ignoring things. You are almost blind and almost deaf You look at a tree and see .. . just a tree, a stiff weed. You don't see its history, feel the pumping of the sap, hear every insect in the bark, sense the chemistry of the leaves, notice the hundred shades of green, the tiny movements to follow the sun, the subtle growth of the wood . . . 'But you don't understand us,' said Tiffany. 'I don't think any human could survive you. You give us what you think we want, as soon as we want it, just like in fairy stories. And the wishes always go wrong.' Yes. We know that now. We have an echo of you now. We have ... understanding, said the hiver. So now we come to you with a wish. It is the wish that puts the others right. 'Yes,' said Tiffany. 'That's always the last wish, the third wish. It's the one that says "Make this not have happened".' Teach us the way to die, said the voices of the hiver. 'I don't know it!' All humans know the way, said the voices of the hiver. You walk it every day of your short, short lives. You know it. We envy you your knowledge. You know how to end. You are very talented. I must know how to die, Tiffany thought. Somewhere deep down. Let me think. Let me get past the 'I can't'. . . She held up the glittering shamble. Shafts of light still spun off it, but she didn't need it any more. She could hold the power in the centre of herself. It was all a matter of balance. The light died. Rob Anybody was still hanging in the threads, but all his hair had come unplaited and stood out from his head in a great red ball. He looked stunned. 'I could just murrrder a kebab,' he said. Tiffany lowered him to the ground, where he swayed slightly, then she put the rest of the shamble in her pocket. 'Thank you, Rob,' she said. 'But I want you to go now. It could get. . . serious.' It was, of course, the wrong thing to say. 'I'm no' leavin'!' he snapped. 'I promised Jeannie to keep ye safe! Let's get on wi' it!' There was no arguing. Rob was standing in that half-crouch of his, fists bunched, chin out, ready for anything and burning with defiance. 'Thank you,' said Tiffany, and straightened up. Death is right behind us, she thought. Life ends, and there's death, waiting. So ... it must be close. Very close. It would be ... a door. Yes. An old door, old wood. Dark, too. She turned. Behind her, there was a black door in the air. The hinges would creak, she thought. When she pushed it open, they did. So-oo . . . she thought, this isn't exactly real. I'm telling myself a story I can understand, about doors, and I'm fooling myself just enough for it all to work. I just have to keep balanced on that edge for it to go on working, too. And that's as hard as not thinking about a pink rhinoceros. And if Granny Weatherwax can do that, I can too. Beyond the door, black sand stretched away under a sky of pale stars. There were Page 119 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt some mountains on the distant horizon. You must help us through, said the voices of the hiver. 'If you'll tak' my advice, you'll no' do that,' said Rob Anybody from Tiffany's ankle. 'I dinnae trust the scunner one wee bitty!' 'There's part of me in there. I trust that,' she said. 'I did say you don't have to come, Rob.' 'Oh, aye? An' I'm ta' see you go through there alone, am I? Yell not find me leavin' you now!' 'You've got a clan and a wife, Rob!' 'Aye, an' so I willnae dishonour them by lettin' yer step across Death's threshold alone,' said Rob Anybody firmly. So, thought Tiffany as she stared through the doorway, this is what we do. We live on the edges. We help those who can't find the way . . . She took a deep breath and stepped across. Nothing much changed. The sand felt gritty underfoot and crunched when she walked over it, as she expected, but when it was kicked up it fell back as slowly as thistledown, and she hadn't expected that. The air wasn't cold, but it was thin and prickly to breathe. The door shut softly behind her. Thank you, said the voices of the hiver. What do we do now? Tiffany looked around her, and up at the stars. They weren't ones that she recognized. 'You die, I think,' she said. But there is no 'me' to die, said the voices of the hiver. There is only us. Tiffany took a deep breath. This was about words, and she knew about words. 'Here is a story to believe,' she said. 'Once we were blobs in the sea, and then fishes, and then lizards and rats and then monkeys, and hundreds of things in between. This hand was once a fin, this hand once had claws! In my human mouth I have the pointy teeth of a wolf and the chisel teeth of a rabbit and the grinding teeth of a cow! Our blood is as salty as the sea we used to live in! When we're frightened the hair on our skins stands up, just like it did when we had fur. We are history! Everything we've ever been on the way to becoming us, we still are. Would you like the rest of the story?' Tell us, said the hiver. 'I'm made up of the memories of my parents and grandparents, all my ancestors. They're in the way I look, in the colour of my hair. And I'm made up of everyone I've ever met who's changed the way I think. So who is "me"?' The piece that just told us that story, said the hiver. The piece that's truly you. 'Well . . . yes. But you must have that too. You know you say you're "us" - who is it saying it? Who is saying you're not you? You're not different from us. We're just much, much better at forgetting. And we know when not to listen to the monkey.' You 've just puzzled us, said the hiver. 'The old bit of our brains that wants to be head monkey, and attacks when it's surprised,' said Tiffany. It reacts. It doesn't think. Being human is knowing when not to be the monkey or the lizard or any of the other old echoes. But when you take people over, you silence the human part. You listen to the monkey. The monkey doesn't know what it needs, only what it wants. No, you are not an "us". You are an "I".' I, me, said the hiver. I. Who am I? 'Do you want a name? That helps.' Yes. A name . . . Page 120 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt I've always liked Arthur, as a name.' Arthur, said the hiver. I like Arthur, too. And if I am, I can stop. What happens next? 'The creatures you . . . took over, didn't they die?' Yes, said the Arthur. But we - but I didn't see what happened. They just stopped being here. Tiffany looked around at the endless sand. She couldn't see anybody, but there was something out there that suggested movement. It was the occasional change in the light, perhaps, as if she was catching glimpses of something she was not supposed to see. 'I think,' she said, 'that you have to cross the desert.' What's on the other side? said Arthur. Tiffany hesitated. 'Some people think you go to a better world,' she said. 'Some people think you come back to this one in a different body. And some think there's just nothing. They think you just stop.' And what do you think? Arthur asked. 'I think that there are no words to describe it,' said Tiffany. Is that true? said Arthur. 'I think that's why you have to cross the desert,' said Tiffany. 'To find out.' I will look forward to it. Thank you. 'Goodbye . . . Arthur.' She felt the hiver fall away. There wasn't much sign of it - a movement of a few sand grains, a sizzle in the air - but it slid away slowly across the black sand. 'An' bad cess an' good riddance ta' ye!' Rob Anybody shouted after it. 'No,' said Tiffany. 'Don't say that.' 'Aye, but it killed folk to stay alive.' 'It didn't want to. It didn't know how people work.' 'That was a fine load of o' blethers ye gave it, at any rate,' said Rob admiringly. 'Not even a gonnagle could make up a load o' blethers like that.' Tiffany wondered if it had been. Once, when the wandering teachers had come to the village, she had paid half a dozen eggs for a morning's education on ***Wonders of the Univers!!*** That was expensive, for education, but it had been thoroughly worth it. The teacher had been a little bit crazy, even for a teacher, but what he'd said had seemed to make absolute sense. One of the most amazing things about the universe, he had said, was that, sooner or later, everything is made of everything else, although it'll probably take millions and millions of years for this to happen. The other children had giggled or argued, but Tiffany knew that what had once been tiny living creatures was now the chalk of the hills. Everything went round, even stars. That had been a very good morning, especially since she'd been refunded half an egg for pointing out that 'Universe' had been spelled wrong. Was it true? Maybe that didn't matter. Maybe it just had to be true enough for Arthur. Her eyes, the inner eyes that opened twice, were beginning to close. She could feel the power draining away. You couldn't stay in that state for long. You became so aware of the universe that you stopped being aware of you. How clever of humans to have learned how to close their minds. Was there anything so amazing in the universe as boredom? She sat down, just for a moment, and picked up a handful of the sand. It rose above her hand, twisting like smoke, reflecting the starlight, then settled back as if it had all the time in the world. She had never felt this tired. She still heard the inner voices. The hiver had left memories behind, just a few. She Page 121 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt could remember when there had been no stars and when there had been no such thing as 'yesterday'. She knew what was beyond the sky and beneath the grass. But she couldn't remember when she had last slept, properly slept, in a bed. Being unconscious didn't count. She closed her eyes, and closed her eyes again-Someone kicked her hard on the foot. 'Dinnae gae to sleep!' Rob Anybody shouted. 'Not here! Ye cannae gae to sleep here] Rise an' shine!' Still feeling muzzy, Tiffany pushed herself back onto her feet, through gentle swirls of rising dust, and turned to the dark door. It wasn't there. There were her footprints in the sand, but they went only a few feet and, anyway, were slowly disappearing. There was nothing around her but dead desert, for ever. She turned back to look towards the distant mountains, but her view was blocked by a tall figure, all in black, holding a scythe. It hadn't been there before. GOOD AFTERNOON, said Death. Chapter 12 Egress Tiffany stared up into a black hood. There was a skull in it, but the eye sockets glowed blue. At least bones had never frightened Tiffany. They were only chalk that had walked around. 'Are you-?' she began, but Rob Anybody gave a yell and leaped straight for the hood. There was a thud. Death took a step backwards and raised a skeletal hand to his cowl. He pulled out Rob Anybody by his hair and held him at arm's length while the Nac Mac Feegle cursed and kicked. is THIS YOURS? Death asked Tiffany. The voice was heavy and all around her, like thunder. 'No. Er . . . he's his.' I WAS NOT EXPECTING A NAC MAC FEEGLE TODAY, Said Death, OTHERWISE I WOULD HAVE WORN PROTECTIVE CLOTHING, HA HA. 'They do fight a lot,' Tiffany admitted. 'You are Death, aren't you? I know this might sound a silly question.' YOU ARE NOT AFRAID? 'Not yet. But, er . . . which way to the egress, please?' There was a pause. Then Death said, in a puzzled voice: ISN'T THAT A FEMALE EAGLE? 'No,' said Tiffany. 'Everyone thinks that. Actually, it's the way out. The exit.' Death pointed, with the hand that still held the incandescently angry Rob Anybody. THAT WAY. YOU HAVE TO WALK THE DESERT. 'All the way to the mountains?' YES. BUT ONLY THE DEAD CAN TAKE THAT WAY. 'Ye've got ta' let me go sooner or later, ye big 'natomy!' yelled Rob Anybody. 'And then ye're gonna get sich a kickin'!' 'There was a door here!' said Tiffany. AH YES, said Death, BUT THERE ARE RULES, THAT WAS A WAY IN, YOU SEE. 'What's the difference?' A FAIRLY IMPORTANT ONE, I'M SORRY TO SAY. YOU WILL HAVE TO SEE YOURSELVES OUT. DO NOT FALL ASLEEP HERE. SLEEP HERE NEVER ENDS. Death vanished. Rob Anybody dropped to the sand and came up ready to fight, but they were alone. 'Ye'll have to make a door oot,' he said. 'I don't know how! Rob, I told you not to come with me. Can't you get out?' 'Aye. Probably. But I've got to see ye safe. The kelda put a geas on me. I must save the hag o' the hills.' 'Jeannie told you that?' 'Aye. She was verra definite,' said Rob Anybody. Tiffany slumped down onto the sand again. It fountained up around her. Page 122 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt 'I'll never get out,' she said. How to get in, yes, that wasn't hard . . . She looked around. They weren't obvious, but there were occasional changes in the light, and little puffs of dust. People she couldn't see were walking past her. People were crossing the desert. Dead people, going to find out what was beyond the mountains . . . I'm eleven, she thought. People will be upset. She thought about the farm, and how her mother and father would react. But there wouldn't be a body, would there? So people would hope and hope that she'd come back and was just . .. missing, like old Mrs Happens in the village, who lit a candle in the window every night for her son who'd been lost at sea thirty years ago. She wondered if Rob could send a message, but what could she say? I'm not dead, I'm just stuck'? 'I should have thought of other people,' she said aloud. 'Aye, weel, ye did,' said Rob, sitting down by her foot. 'Yon Arthur went off happy, and ye saved other folk fra' being killed. Ye did what ye had to do.' Yes, thought Tiffany. That's what we have to do. And there's no one to protect you, because you 're the one who's supposed to do that sort of thing. But her Second Thoughts said: I'm glad I did it. I'd do it again. I stopped the hiver killing anyone else, even though we led it right into the Trials. And that thought was followed by a space. There should have been another thought, but she was too tired to have it. It had been important. 'Thank you for coming, Rob,' she said. 'But when . . . you can leave, you must go straight back to Jeannie, understand? And tell her I'm grateful she sent you. Say I wish we'd had a chance to get to know one another better.' 'Oh, aye. I've sent the lads back anyway. Hamish is waitin' for me.' At which point the door appeared, and opened. Granny Weatherwax stepped through and beckoned urgently. 'Some people don't have the sense they were born with! Come on, right now!' she commanded. Behind her, the door started to swing shut, but she swung round savagely and rammed her boot against the jamb, shouting, 'Oh, no you don't, you sly devil!' 'But ... I thought there were rules!' said Tiffany, getting up and hurrying forward, all tiredness suddenly gone. Even a tired body wants to survive. 'Oh? Really?' said Granny. 'Did you sign anything? Did you take any kind of oath? No? Then they weren't your rules! Quickly, now! And you, Mr Anyone!' Rob Anybody jumped onto her boot just before she pulled it away. The door shut with another click, disappeared and left them in ... dead light, it seemed, a space of grey air. 'Won't take long,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'It doesn't usually. It's the world getting back into line. Oh, don't look like that. You showed it the Way, right? Out of pity. Well, I know this path already. You'll tread it again, no doubt, for some other poor soul, open the door for them as can't find it. But we don't talk about it, understand?' 'Miss Level never-' 'We don't talk about it, I said,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'Do you know what a part of being a witch is? It's making the choices that have to be made. The hard choices. But you did ... quite well. There's no shame in pity.' She brushed some grass seed off her dress. 'I hope Mrs Ogg has arrived,' she said. 'I need her recipe for apple chutney. Oh ... when we arrive you might feel a bit dizzy. I'd better warn you.' 'Granny?' said Tiffany, as the light began to grow brighter. It brought back Page 123 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt tiredness with it, too. 'Yes?' 'What exactly happened just then?' 'What do you think happened?' Light burst in upon them. Someone was wiping Tiffany's forehead with a damp cloth. She lay, feeling the beautiful coolness. There were voices around her, and she recognized the chronic-complainer's tones of Annagramma: '. . . And she was really making a fuss in Zakzak's. Honestly, I don't think she's quite right in the head! I think she's literally gone cuckoo! She was shouting things and using some kind of, oh, I don't know, some peasant trick to make us think she'd turned that fool Brian into a frog. Well, of course, she didn't fool me for one minute-' Tiffany opened her eyes and saw the round pink face of Petulia, screwed up with concern. 'Urn, she's awake!' said the girl. The space between Tiffany and the ceiling filled up with pointy hats. They drew back, reluctantly, as she sat up. From above, it must have looked like a dark daisy, closing and opening. 'Where is this?' she said. 'Urn, the First Aid and Lost Children's Tent,' said Petulia. 'Urn . . . you fainted when Mistress Weather-wax brought you back from . . . from wherever you'd gone. Everyone's been in to see you!' 'She said you'd, like, dragged the monster into, like, the Next World!' Lucy Warbeck said, her eyes gleaming. 'Mistress Weatherwax told everyone all about it!' 'Well, it wasn't quite-' Tiffany began. She felt something prod her in the back. She reached behind her, and her hand came back holding a pointy hat. It was almost grey with age and quite battered. Zakzak wouldn't have dared try to sell something like this, but the other girls stared it like starving dogs watching a butcher's hand. 'Urn, Mistress Weatherwax gave you her hat,' breathed Petulia. 'Her actual hat.' 'She said you were a born witch and no witch should be without a hat!' said Dimity Hubbub, watching. That's nice,' said Tiffany. She was used to secondhand clothes. 'It's only an old hat,' said Annagramma. Tiffany looked up at the tall girl and let herself smile slowly. 'Annagramma?' she said, raising a hand with the fingers open. Annagramma backed away. 'Oh no,' she said. 'Don't you do that! Don't you do that! Someone stop her doing that!' 'Do you want a balloon, Annagramma?' said Tiffany, sliding off the table. 'No! Please!' Annagramma took another step back, holding her arms in front of her face, and fell over a bench. Tiffany picked her up and patted her cheerfully on a cheek. 'Then I shan't buy you one,' she said. 'But please learn what "literally" really means, will you?' Annagramma smiled in a frozen kind of way. 'Er, yes,' she managed. 'Good. And then we will be friends.' She left the girl standing there, and went back to pick up the hat. 'Urn, you're probably still a bit woozy,' said Petulia. 'You probably don't understand.' 'Ha, I wasn't actually frightened, you know,' said Annagramma. 'It was all for fun, of course.' No one paid any attention. Page 124 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt 'Understand what?' said Tiffany. 'It's her actual hatV the girls chorused. 'It's, like, if that hat could talk, what stories it would have to, you know, tell,' said Lucy Warbeck. 'It was just a joke,' said Annagramma to anyone who was listening. Tiffany looked at the hat. It was very battered, and not extremely clean. If that hat could talk, it would probably mutter. 'Where's Granny Weatherwax now?' she said. There was a gasp from the girls. This was nearly as impressive as the hat. 'Um . . . she doesn't mind you calling her that?' said Petulia. 'She invited me to,' said Tiffany. 'Only we heard you had to have known her for, like, a hundred years before she let you call her that. . .' said Lucy Warbeck. Tiffany shrugged. 'Well, anyway,' she said. 'Do you know where she is?' 'Oh, having tea with the other old witches and yakking on about chutney and how witches today aren't what they were when she was a girl,' said Lulu Darling. 'What?' said Tiffany. 'Just having teal' The young witches looked at one another in puzzlement. 'Um, there's buns too,' said Petulia. 'If that's important.' 'But she opened the door for me. The door into -out of the . . . the desert! You can't just sit down after that and have bunsY 'Um, the ones I saw had icing on,' Petulia ventured, nervously. 'They weren't just homemade-' 'Look,' said Lucy Warbeck, 'we didn't really, you know, see anything? You were just standing there with this, like, glow around you and we couldn't get in and then Gran-Mistress Weatherwax walked up and stepped right in and you both, you know, stood there? And then the glow went zip and vanished and you, like, fell over.' 'What Lucy's failing to say very accurately,' said Annagramma, 'is that we didn't actually see you go anywhere. I'm telling you this as a friend, of course. There was just this glow, which could have been anything.' Annagramma was going to be a good witch, Tiffany considered. She could tell herself stories that she literally believed. And she could bounce back like a ball. 'Don't forget, I saw the horse,' said Harrieta Bilk. Annagramma rolled her eyes. 'Oh yes, Harrieta thinks she saw some kind of horse in the sky. Except it didn't look like a horse, she says. She says it looked like a horse would look if you took the actual horse away and just left the horsiness, right, Harrieta?' 'I didn't say that!' snapped Harrieta. 'Well, pardon me. That's what it sounded like.' 'Urn, and some people said they saw a white horse grazing in the next field, too, said Petulia. 'And a lot of the older witches said they felt a tremendous amount of-' 'Yes, some people thought they saw a horse in a field but it isn't there any more,' said Annagramma in the singsong voice she used when she thought it was all stupid. 'That must be very rare in the country, seeing horses in fields. Anyway, if there really was a white horse, it was grey.' Tiffany sat on the edge of the table, staring at her knees. Anger at Annagramma had jolted her to life, but now the tiredness was creeping back. 'I suppose none of you saw a little blue man, about six inches high, with red hair?' she said quietly. 'Anyone?' said Annagramma, with malicious cheerfulness. There was a general mumbling of 'no'. 'Sorry, Tiffany,' said Lucy. 'Don't worry,' said Annagramma. 'He probably just rode away on his white horse!' Page 125 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt This is going to be like Fairyland all over again, thought Tiffany. Even I can't remember if it was real. Why should anyone believe me? But she had to try. 'There was a dark doorway,' she said slowly, 'and beyond it was a desert of black sand and it was quite light although there were stars in the sky, and Death was there. I spoke to him 'You spoke to him, did you?' said Annagramma. 'And what did he say, pray?' 'He didn't say "pray",' said Tiffany. 'We didn't talk about much. But he didn't know what an egress was.' 'It's a small type of heron, isn't it?' said Harrieta. There was silence, except for the noise of the Trials outside. 'It's not your fault,' said Annagramma in what was, for her, almost a friendly voice. 'It's like I said: Mistress Weatherwax messes with people's heads.' 'What about the glow?' said Lucy. 'That was probably ball lightning,' said Annagramma. 'That's very strange stuff.' 'But people were, like, hammering on it! It was as hard as ice!' 'Ah, well, it probably felt like that,' said Annagramma, 'but it was . . . probably affecting people's muscles, maybe. I'm only trying to be helpful here,' she added. 'You've got to be sensible. She just stood there. You saw her. There weren't any doors or deserts. There was just her.' Tiffany sighed. She just felt tired. She just wanted to crawl off somewhere. She just wanted to go home. She'd walk there now if her boots weren't suddenly so uncomfortable. While the girls argued, she undid the laces and tugged one off. Silver-black dust poured out. When it hit the ground it bounced, slowly, curving up into the air again like mist. The girls turned, watching in silence. Then Petulia reached down and caught some of the dust. When she lifted her hand, the fine stuff flowed between her fingers. It fell as slowly as feathers. 'Sometimes things go wrong,' she said, in a faraway voice. 'Mistress Blackcap told me. Haven't any of you been there when old folk are dying?' There were one or two nods, but everyone was watching the dust. 'Sometimes things go wrong,' said Petulia again. 'Sometimes they're dying but they can't leave because they don't know the Way. She said that's when they need you to be there, close to them, to help them find the door so they don't get lost in the dark.' 'Petulia, we're not supposed to talk about this,' said Harrieta, gently. 'No!' said Petulia, her face red. 'It is a time to talk about it, just here, just us! Because she said it's the last thing you can do for someone. She said there's a dark desert they have to cross, where the sand-' 'Hah! Mrs Earwig says that sort of thing is black magic,' said Annagramma, her voice as sharp and sudden as a knife. 'Does she?' said Petulia dreamily as the sand poured down. 'Well, Mistress Blackcap said that sometimes the moon is light and sometimes it's in shadow but you should always remember it's the same moon. And . . . Annagramma?' 'Yes?' Petulia took a deep breath. 'Don't you ever dare interrupt me again as long as you live. Don't you dare. Don't you darel I mean it.' Chapter 13 ri7G Witclj And then . . . there were the Trials themselves. That was the point of the day, Page 126 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt wasn't it? But Tiffany, stepping out with the girls around her, sensed the buzz in the air. It said: Was there any point now? After what had happened? Still, people had put up the rope square again, and a lot of the older witches dragged their chairs to the edge of it, and it seemed that it was going to happen after all. Tiffany wandered up to the rope, found a space and sat down on the grass with Granny Weatherwax's hat in front of her. She was aware of the other girls behind her, and also a buzz or susurration of whispering spreading out into the crowd. '. . . She really did do it, too . . . no, really .. . all the way to the desert... saw the dust... her boots were full, they say . . .' Gossip spreads faster among witches than a bad cold. Witches gossip like starlings. There were no judges, and no prizes. The Trials weren't like that, as Petulia had said. The point was to show what you could do, to show what you'd become, so that people would go away thinking things like That Caramella Bottlethwaite, she's coming along nicely.' It wasn't a competition, honestly. No one won. And if you believed that you'd believe that the moon is pushed around the sky by a goblin called Wilberforce. What was true was that one of the older witches generally opened the thing with some competent but not surprising trick which everyone had seen before but still appreciated. That broke the ice. This year it was old Goodie Trample and her collection of singing mice. But Tiffany wasn't paying attention. On the other side of the roped-off square, sitting on a chair and surrounded by older witches like a queen on her throne, was Granny Weatherwax. The whispering went on. Maybe opening her eyes had opened her ears, too, because Tiffany felt she could hear the whispers all around the square. '.. .Di'n't have no trainin', just did it... did you see that horse?.. .1 never saw no horse!.. .Di 'n 'tjust open the door, she stepped right in!... Yeah, but who was it fetched her back?Esme Weatherwax, that's who!... Yes, that's what I'm sayin', any little fool could've opened the door by luck, but it takes a real witch to bring her back, that's a winner, that is... fought the thing, left it there!... 7 didn 't see you doing anything, Violet Pulsimone! That child... Was there a horse or not? ... Was going to do my dancing broom trick, but that'd be wasted now, of course ... Why did Mistress Weatherwax give the girl her hat, eh? What's she want us to think? She never takes off her hat to no one!' You could feel the tension, crackling from pointy hat to pointy hat like summer lightning. The mice did their best with I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles but it was easy to see that their minds weren't on it. Mice are highly strung and very temperamental. Now people were leaning down beside Granny Weatherwax. Tiffany could see some animated conversations going on. 'You know, Tiffany,' said Lucy Warbeck, behind her, 'all you've got to do is, like, stand up and admit it. Everyone knows you did it. I mean, no one's ever, like, done something like that at the Trials!' 'And it's about time the old bully lost,' said Annagramma. But she's not a bully, Tiffany thought. She's tough, and she expects other witches to be Page 127 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt tough> because the edge is no place for people who break. Everything with her is a kind of test. And her Third Thoughts handed over the thought that had not quite made it back in the tent: Granny Weatherwax, you knew the hiver would only come for me, didn't you? You talked to Dr Bustle, you told me. Did you just turn me into your trick for today? How much did you guess? Or know? 'You'd win,' said Dimity Hubbub. 'Even some of the older ones would like to see her taken down a peg. They know big magic happened. There's not a whole shamble for miles.' So I'd win because some people don't like somebody else? Tiffany thought. Oh, yes, that'd really be something to be proud of... 'You can bet she'll stand up,' said Annagramma. 'You watch. She'll explain how the poor child got dragged into the Next World by a monster, and she brought her back. That's what I'd do, if I was her.' I expect you would, Tiffany thought. But you're not, and you're not me, either. She stared at Granny Weatherwax, who was waving away a couple of elderly witches. I wonder, she thought, if they've been saying things like 'This girl needs taking down a peg, Mistress Weatherwax.' And as she thought that, Granny turned back and caught her eye-The mice stopped singing, mostly in embarrassment. There was a pause, and then people started to clap, because it was the sort of thing you had to do. A witch, someone Tiffany didn't know, stepped out into the square, still clapping in that fluttery, hands-held-close-together-at shoulder-height way that people use when they want to encourage the audience to go on applauding just that little bit longer. 'Very well done, Doris, excellent work, as ever,' she trilled. 'They've come on marvellously since last year, thank you very much, wonderful, well done . . . ahem . . .' The woman hesitated, while behind her Doris Trample crawled around on hands and knees trying to urge her mice back into their box. One of them was having hysterics. 'And now, perhaps . . . some lady would like to, er . . . take the, er . . . stage?' said the mistress of ceremonies, as brightly as a glass ball about to shatter. 'Anyone?' There was stillness, and silence. 'Don't be shy, ladies!' The voice of the mistress of ceremonies was getting more strained by the second. It's no fun trying to organize a field full of born organizers. 'Modesty does not become us! Anyone?' Tiffany felt the pointy hats turning, some towards her, some towards Granny Weatherwax. Away across the few. yards of grass, Granny reached up and brushed someone's hand from her shoulder, sharply, without breaking eye contact with Tiffany. And we're not wearing hats, thought Tiffany. You gave me a virtual hat once, Granny Weatherwax, and I thank you for it. But I don't need it today. Today, I know I'm a witch. 'Oh, come now, ladies!' said the mistress of ceremonies, now almost frantic. 'This is the Trials! A place for friendly and instructive contestation in an atmosphere of fraternity and goodwill! Surely some lady ... or young lady, perhaps. . . ? Tiffany smiled. It should be 'sorority', not 'fraternity'. We're sisters, mistress, not brothers. 'Come on, Tiffany!' Dimity urged. 'They know you're good!' Tiffany shook her head. 'Oh, well, that's it,' said Annagramma, rolling her eyes. 'The old baggage has Page 128 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt messed with the girl's head, as usual-' 'I don't know who's messed with whose head,' snapped Petulia, rolling up her sleeves. 'But I'm going to do the pig trick.' She got to her feet and there was a general stir in the crowd. 'Oh, I see it's going to be- Oh, it's you, Petulia,' said the mistress of ceremonies, slightly disappointed. 'Yes, Miss Casement, and I intend to perform the pig trick,' said Petulia loudly. 'But, er, you don't seem to have brought a pig with you,' said Miss Casement, taken aback. 'Yes, Miss Casement. I shall perform the pig trick . . . without a pig!' This caused a sensation, and cries of 'Impossible!' and 'There are children here, you know!' Miss Casement looked around for assistance and found none. 'Oh well,' she said, helpless. 'If you are sure, dear 'Yes. I am. I shall use ... a sausage!' said Petulia, producing one from a pocket and holding it up. There was another sensation. Tiffany didn't see the trick. Nor did Granny Weatherwax. Their gaze was like an iron bar, and even Miss Casement instinctively didn't step into it. But Tiffany heard the squeal, and the gasp of amazement, and then the thunder of applause. People would have applauded anything at that point, in the same way that pent-up water would take any route out of a dam. And then witches got up. Miss Level juggled balls that stopped and reversed direction in mid-air. A middle-aged witch demonstrated a new way to stop people choking, which doesn't even sound magical until you understand that a way of turning nearly-dead people into fully-alive people is worth a dozen spells that just go twing! And other women and girls came up one at a time, with big tricks and handy tips and things that went wheee! or stopped toothache or, in one case, exploded - - and then there were no more entries. Miss Casement walked back into the centre of the field, almost drunk with relief that there had been a Trials, and made one final invitation to any ladies 'or, indeed, young ladies' who might like to come forward. There was a silence so thick you could have stuck pins in it. And then she said: 'Oh, well ... in that case, I declare the Trials well and truly closed. Tea will be in the big tent!' Tiffany and Granny stood up at the same time, to the second, and bowed to one another. Then Granny turned away and joined the stampede towards the teas. It was interesting to see how the crowd parted, all unaware, to let her through, like the sea in front a particularly good prophet. Petulia was surrounded by other young witches. The pig trick had gone down very well. Tiffany queued up to give her a hug. 'But you could have won!' said Petulia, red in the face with happiness and worry. 'That doesn't matter. It really doesn't,' said Tiffany. 'You gave it away,' said a sharp voice behind her. 'You had it in your hand, and you gave it all away. How do you feel about that, Tiffany? Do you have a taste for humble pie?' 'Now you listen to me, Annagramma,' Petulia began, pointing a furious finger. Tiffany reached out and lowered the girl's arm. Then she turned and smiled so happily at Annagramma that it was disturbing. What she wanted to say was: 'Where I come from, Annagramma, they have the Sheepdog Trials. Shepherds travel there from all over to show off their dogs. And there're silver crooks and belts with silver buckles and prizes of all kinds, Annagramma, but do you know what the big prize was? No, you wouldn't. Oh, there were judges, but Page 129 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt they didn't count, not for the big prize. There is- There was a little old lady who was always at the front of the crowd, leaning on the hurdles with her pipe in her mouth with the two finest sheepdogs ever pupped sitting at her feet. Their names were Thunder and Lightning and they moved so fast they set the air on fire and their coats outshone the sun, but she never, ever put them in the Trials. She knew more about sheep than even sheep know. And what every young shepherd wanted, really wanted, wasn't some silly cup or belt but to see her take her pipe out of her mouth as he left the arena and quietly say "That'll do" because that meant he was a real shepherd and all the other shepherds would know it, too. And if you'd told him he had to challenge her, he'd cuss at you and stamp his foot and tell you he'd sooner spit the sun dark. How could he ever win? She was shepherding. It was the whole of her life. What you took away from her you'd take away from yourself. You don't understand that, do you? But it's the heart and soul and centre of it! The soul. . . and . . . centre!' But it would be wasted, so what she said was: 'Oh, just shut up, Annagramma. Let's see if there's any buns left, shall we?' Overhead, a buzzard screamed. She looked up. The bird turned on the wind and, racing through the air as it began the long glide, headed back towards home. They were always there. Beside her cauldron, Jeannie opened her eyes. 'He's comin' hame!' she said, scrambling to her feet. She waved a hand urgently at the watching Feegles. 'Don't ye just stand there gawping!' she commanded. 'Catch some rabbits to roast! Build up the fire! Boil up a load o' water, 'cos I'm takin' a bath! Look at this place, 'tis like a midden! Get it cleaned up! I want it sparkling for the Big Man! Go an' steal some Special Sheep Liniment! Cut some green boughs, holly or yew, mebbe! Shine up the golden plates! The place must sparkle! What're ye all standin' there for?' 'Er, what did ye want us to do first, Kelda,' said a Feegle nervously. 'All of it!' In her chamber they filled the kelda's soup-bowl bath and she scrubbed, using one of Tiffany's old toothbrushes, while outside there were the sounds of Feegles working hard at cross-purposes. The smell of roasting rabbit began to fill the mound. Jeannie dressed herself in her best dress, did her hair, picked up her shawl and climbed out of the hole. She stood there watching the mountains until, after about an hour, a dot in the sky got bigger and bigger. As a kelda, she would welcome home a warrior. As a wife, she would kiss her husband and scold him for being so long away. As a woman, she thought she would melt with relief, thankfulness and joy. CHAPTER 14 QUEEN of the Bees And, one afternoon about a week later, Tiffany went to see Granny Weatherwax. It was only fifteen miles as the broomstick flies, and as Tiffany still didn't like flying a broomstick, Miss Level took her. It was the invisible part of Miss Level. Tiffany just lay flat on the stick, holding on with arms and legs and knees and ears if possible, and took along a paper bag to be sick into, Page 130 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt because no one likes anonymous sick dropping out of the sky. She was also holding a large hessian sack, which she handled with care. She didn't open her eyes until the rushing noises had stopped and the sounds around her told her she was probably very close to the ground. In fact Miss Level had been very kind. When she fell off, because of the cramp in her legs, the broomstick was just above some quite thick moss. Thank you,' said Tiffany as she got up, because it always pays to mind your manners around invisible people. She had a new dress. It was green, like the last one. The complex world of favours and obligations and gifts that Miss Level lived and moved in had thrown up four yards of nice material (for the trouble-free birth of Miss Quickly's baby boy) and a few hours' dressmaking (Mrs Hunter's bad leg feeling a lot better, thank you). She'd given the black one away. When I'm old I shall wear midnight, she'd decided. But, for now, she'd had enough of darkness. She looked around at this clearing on the side of a hill, surrounded by oak and sycamore on three sides but open on the downhill side with a wide view of the countryside below. The sycamores were shedding their spinning seeds, which whirled down lazily across a patch of garden. It was unfenced, even though some goats were grazing nearby. If you wondered why it was the goats weren't eating the garden, it was because you'd forgotten who lived here. There was a well. And, of course, a cottage. Mrs Earwig would definitely have objected to the cottage. It was out of a storybook. The walls leaned against one another for support, the thatched roof was slipping off like a bad wig, and the chimneys were corkscrewed. If you thought a gingerbread cottage would be too fattening, this was the next worst thing. In a cottage deep in the forest lived the Wicked Old Witch . . . It was a cottage out of the nastier kind of fairy tale. Granny Weatherwax's beehives were tucked away down one side of the cottage. Some were the old straw kind, most were patched-up wooden ones. They thundered with activity, even this late in the year. Tiffany turned aside to look at them, and the bees poured out in a dark stream. They swarmed towards Tiffany, formed a column and-She laughed. They'd made a witch of bees in front of her, thousands of them all holding station in the air. She raised her right hand. With a rise in the level of buzzing, the bee-witch raised its right hand. She turned around. It turned around, the bees carefully copying every swirl and flutter of her dress, the ones on the very edge buzzing desperately because they had furthest to fly. She carefully put down the big sack and reached out towards the figure. With another roar of wings it went shapeless for a moment, and then re-formed a little way away, but with a hand outstretched towards her. The bee that was the tip of its forefinger hovered just in front of Tiffany's fingernail. 'Shall we dance?' said Tiffany. In the clearing full of spinning seeds, she circled the swarm. It kept up pretty well, moving fingertip to buzzing tip, turning when she turned, although there were always a few bees racing to catch up. Then it raised both its arms and twirled in the opposite direction, the bees in the 'skirt' spreading out again as it spun. It was learning. Tiffany laughed and did the same thing. Swarm and girl whirled across the clearing. Page 131 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt She felt happy and wondered if she'd ever felt this happy before. The gold light, the falling bracts, the dancing bees ... it was all one thing. This was the opposite of the dark desert. Here, light was everywhere and filled her up inside. She could feel herself here but see herself from above, twirling with a buzzing shadow that sparkled golden as the light struck the bees. Moments like this paid for it all. Then the witch made of bees leaned closer to Tiffany, as if staring at her with its thousands of little jewelled eyes. There was a faint piping noise from inside the figure and the bee-witch exploded into a spreading, buzzing cloud of insects which raced away across the clearing and disappeared. The only movement now was the whirring fall of the sycamore seeds. Tiffany breathed out. 'Now, some people would have found that scary,' said a voice behind her. Tiffany didn't turn round immediately. First she said, 'Good afternoon, Granny Weatherwax.' Then she turned round. 'Have you ever done this?' she demanded, still half-drunk with delight. 'It's rude to start with questions. You'd better come in and have a cup of tea,' said Granny Weatherwax. You'd barely know that anyone lived in the cottage. There were two chairs by the fire, one of them a rocking chair, and by the table were two chairs that didn't rock but did wobble because of the uneven stone floor. There was a dresser, and a rag-rug in front of the huge hearth. A broomstick leaned against the wall in one corner, next to something mysterious and pointy, under a cloth. There was a very narrow and dark flight of stairs. And that was it. There was nothing shiny, nothing new and nothing unnecessary. 'To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?' said Granny Weatherwax, taking a sooty black kettle off the fire and filling an equally black teapot. Tiffany opened the sack she had brought with her. 'I've come to bring you your hat back,' she said. 'Ah,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'Have you? And why?' 'Because it's your hat,' said Tiffany, putting it on the table. 'Thank you for the loan of it, though.' 'I dare say there's plenty of young witches who'd give their high teeth for an ol' hat of mine,' said Granny, lifting up the battered hat. 'There are,' said Tiffany, and did not add 'and it's eye teeth, actually'. What she did add was: 'But I think everyone has to find their own hat. The right hat for them, I mean.' 'I see you're now wearing a shop-bought one, then,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'One of them Sky Scrapers. With stars,' she added, and there was so much acid in the word 'stars' that it would've melted copper and then dropped through the table and the floor and melted more copper in the cellar below. 'Think that makes it more magical, do you? Stars?' 'I... did when I bought it. And it'll do for now.' 'Until you find the right hat,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'Yes.' 'Which ain't mine?' 'No.' 'Good.' The old witch walked across the room and tugged the cloth off the thing in the Page 132 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt corner. It turned out to be a big wooden spike, just about the size of a pointy hat on a tall stand. A hat was being ... constructed on it, with thin strips of willow and pins and stiff black doth. 'I make my own,' she said. 'Every year. There's no hat like the hat you make yourself. Take my advice. I stiffens the calico and makes it waterproof with special jollop. It's amazing what you can put into a hat you make yourself. But you didn't come to talk about hats.' Tiffany let the question out at last. 'Was it real?'. Granny Weatherwax poured the tea, picked up her cup and saucer, then carefully poured some of the tea out of the cup and into the saucer. She held this up and, with care, like someone dealing with an important and delicate task, blew gently on it. She did this slowly and calmly, while Tiffany tried hard to conceal her impatience. down the cup and saucer. 'Child, you've come here to learn what's true and what's not but there's little I can teach you that you don't already know. You just don't know you know it, and you'll spend the rest of your life learning what's already in your bones. And that's the truth.' She stared at Tiffany's hopeful face and sighed. 'Come outside then,' she said. 'I'll give you lesson one. It's the only lesson there is. It don't need writing down in no book with eyes on.' She led the way to the well in her back garden, looked around on the ground and picked up a stick. 'Magic wand,' she said. 'See?' A green flame leaped out of it, making Tiffany jump. 'Now you try.' It didn't work for Tiffany, no matter how much she shook it. 'Of course not,' said Granny. 'It's a stick. Now, maybe I made a flame come out of it, or maybe I made you think it did. That don't matter. It was me is what I'm sayin', not the stick. Get your mind right and you can make a stick your wand and the sky your hat and a puddle your magic . . . your magic . . . er, what're them fancy cups called?' 'Er . . . goblet,' said Tiffany. 'Right. Magic goblet. Things aren't important. People are.' Granny Weatherwax looked sidelong at Tiffany. 'And I could teach you how to run across those hills of yours with the hare, I could teach you how to fly above them with the buzzard. I could tell you the secrets of the bees. I could teach you all this and much more besides if you'd do just one thing, right here and now. One simple thing, easy to do.' Tiffany nodded, eyes wide. 'You understand, then, that all the glittery stuff is just toys, and toys can lead you astray?' 'Yes!' 'Then take off that shiny horse you wear around your neck, girl, and drop it in the well.' Obediently, half-hypnotized by the voice, Tiffany reached behind her neck and undid the clasp. The pieces of the silver horse shone as she held it over the water. She stared at it as if she was seeing it for the first time. And then . . . She tests people, she thought. All the time. 'Well?' said the old witch. Page 133 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt 'No,' said Tiffany. 'I can't.' 'Can't or won't?' said Granny sharply. 'Can't,' said Tiffany and stuck out her chin. 'And won't!' She drew her hand back and fastened the necklace again, glaring defiantly at Granny Weatherwax The witch smiled. 'Well done,' she said quietly. 'If you don't know when to be a human being, you don't know when to be a witch. And if you're too afraid of goin' astray, you won't go anywhere. May I see it, please?' Tiffany looked into those blue eyes. Then she undid the clasp and handed over the necklace. Granny held it up. 'Funny, ain't it, that it seems to gallop when the light hits it,' said the witch, watching it twist this way and that. 'Well-made thing. O'course, it's not what a horse looks like, but it's certainly what a horse is.' Tiffany stared at her with her mouth open. For a moment Granny Aching stood there grinning, and then Granny Weatherwax was back. Did she do that, she wondered, or did I do it myself? And do I dare find out? 'I didn't just come to bring the hat back,' she managed to say. 'I brought you a present, too.' 'I'm sure there's no call for anyone to bring me a present,' said Granny Weatherwax, sniffing. Tiffany ignored this, because her mind was still spinning. She fetched her sack again and handed over a small, soft parcel, which moved as it changed shape in her hands. 'I took most of the stuff back to Mr Strong-inthearm,' she said. 'But I thought you might have a . . . a use for this.' The old woman slowly unwrapped the white paper. The Zephyr Billow cloak unrolled itself under her fingers and filled the air like smoke. 'It's lovely, but I couldn't wear it,' said Tiffany as the cloak shaped itself over the gentle currents of the clearing. 'You need gravitas to carry off a cloak like that.' 'What's gravitarse?' said Granny Weatherwax sharply. 'Oh . . . dignity. Seniority. Wisdom. Those sort of things,' said Tiffany. 'Ah,' said Granny, relaxing a little. She stared at the gently rippling cloak and sniffed. It really was a wonderful creation. The wizards had got at least one thing right when they had made it. It was one of those items that fill a hole in your life that you didn't know was there until you'd seen it. 'Well, I suppose there's those as can wear a cloak like this, and those as can't,' she conceded. She let it curl around her neck and fastened it there with a crescent-shaped brooch. 'It's a bit too grand for the likes of me,' she said. 'A bit too fancy. I could look like a flibbertigibbet wearing something like this.' It was spoken like a statement but it had a curl like a question. 'No, it suits you, it really does,' said Tiffany cheerfully. 'If you don't know when to be a human being, you don't know when to be a witch.' Birds stopped singing. Up in the trees, squirrels ran and hid. Even the sky seemed to darken for a moment. 'Er ... that's what I heard,' said Tiffany, and added, 'From someone who knows these things.' The blue eyes stared into hers. There were no secrets from Granny Weatherwax. Whatever you said, she watched what you meant. 'Perhaps you'll call again sometimes,' she said, turning slowly and watching the Page 134 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt cloak curve in the air. 'It's always very quiet here.' 'I should like that,' said Tiffany. 'Shall I tell the bees before I come, so you can get the tea ready?' For a moment Granny Weatherwax glared, and then the lines faded into a wry grin. 'Clever,' she said. What's inside you? Tiffany thought. Who are you really, in there? Did you want me to take your hat? You pretend to be the big bad wicked witch, and you're not. You test people all the time, test, test, test, but you really want them to be clever enough to beat you. Because it must be hard, being the best. You're not allowed to stop. You can only be beaten, and you're too proud ever to lose. Pride! You've turned it into terrible strength, but it eats away at you. Are you afraid to laugh in case you hear an early cackle? We'll meet again, one day. We both know it. We'll meet again, at the Witch Trials. 'I'm clever enough to know how you manage not to think of a pink rhinoceros if someone says "pink rhinoceros",' she managed to say aloud. 'Ah, that's deep magic, that is,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'No. It's not. You don't know what a rhinoceros looks like, do you?' Sunlight filled the clearing as the old witch laughed, as clear as a downland stream. 'That's right!' she said. Chapter 15 A Hat Full of Sky It was one of those strange days in late February when it's a little warmer than it should be and, although there's wind, it seems to be all round the horizons and never quite where you are. Tiffany climbed up onto the downs where, in the sheltered valleys, the early lambs had already found their legs and were running around in a gang in that strange jerky run that lambs have, which makes them look like woolly rocking horses. Perhaps there was something about that day, because the old ewes joined in, too, and skipped with their lambs. They jumped and spun, half happy, half embarrassed, big winter fleeces bouncing up and down like a clown's trousers. It had been an interesting winter. She'd learned a lot of things. One of them was that you could be a bridesmaid to two people who between them were over 170 years old. This time Mr Weavall, with his wig spinning on his head and his big spectacles gleaming, had insisted on giving one of the gold pieces to 'our little helper', which more than made up for the wages that she hadn't asked for and Miss Level couldn't afford. She'd used some of it to buy a really good brown cloak. It didn't billow, it didn't fly out behind her, but it was warm and thick and kept her dry. She'd learned lots of other things too. As she walked past the sheep and their lambs, she gently touched their minds, so softly that they didn't notice . . . Tiffany had stayed up in the mountains for Hogswatch, which officially marked the changing of the year. There'd been a lot to do there, and anyway it wasn't much celebrated on the Chalk. Miss Level had been happy to give her leave now, though, for the lambing festival, which the old people called Sheepbellies. It was when the shepherds' year began. The hag of the hills couldn't miss that. That was when, in warm nests of straw shielded from the wind by hurdles and barriers of cut furze, the future happened. She'd helped it happen, working with the shepherds by lantern Page 135 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt light, dealing with the difficult births. She'd worked with the pointy hat on her head and had felt the shepherds watching her as, with knife and needle and thread and hands and soothing words, she'd saved ewes from the black doorway and helped new lambs into the light. You had to give them a show. You had to give them a story. And she'd walked back home proudly in the morning and bloody to the elbows, but it had been the blood of life. Later, she had gone up to the Feegles' mound, and slid down the hole. She'd thought about this for some time, and had gone prepared - with clean torn-up handkerchiefs and some soapwort shampoo made to a recipe Miss Level had given her. She had a feeling that Jeannie would have a use for these. Miss Level always visited new mothers. It was what you did. Jeannie had been pleased to see her. Lying on her stomach so that she could get part of her body into the kelda's chamber, Tiffany had been allowed to hold all eight of what she kept thinking of as the Roblets, born at the same time as the lambs. Seven of them were bawling and fighting one another. The eighth lay quietly, biding her time. The future happened. It wasn't only Jeannie who thought of her differently. News had got around. The people of the Chalk hadn't liked witches. They had always come from outside. They had always come as strangers. But now here was our Tiffany, birthing the lambs like her granny did, and they say she's been learning witchery in the mountains! Ah, but that's still our Tiffany, that is. OK, I'll grant you that she's wearing a hat with big stars on it, but she makes good cheese and she knows about lambing and she's Granny Aching's grand-daughter, right? And they'd tap their noses, knowingly. Granny Aching's grand-daughter. Remember what the old woman could do? So if witch she be, then she's our witch. She knows about sheep, she does. Hah, and I heard they had a big sort of trial for witches up in them mountains and our Tiffany showed 'em what a girl from the Chalk can do. It's modern times, right? We got a witch now, and she's better'n anyone else's! No one's throwing Granny Aching's grand-daughter in a pond! Tomorrow she'd go back to the mountains again. It had been a busy three weeks, quite apart from the lambing. Roland had invited her to tea at the castle. It had been a bit awkward, as these things are, but it was funny how, in a couple of years, he'd gone from a lumbering oaf into a nervous young man who forgot what he was talking about when she smiled at him. And they had books in the castle! He'd shyly presented her with a Dictionary of Amazingly Uncommon Words, and she had been prepared enough to bring him a hunting knife made by Zakzak, who was excellent at blades even if he was rubbish at magic. The hat wasn't mentioned, very carefully. And when she'd got home she'd found a bookmark in the P section and a faint pencil underline under the words Plongeon: a small curtsy, about one-third as deep as the traditional one. No longer used.' Alone in her bedroom, she'd blushed. It's always surprising to be reminded that while you're watching and thinking about people, all knowing and superior, they're watching and thinking about you, right back at you. She written it down in her diary, which was a lot thicker now, what with all the pressed herbs and extra notes and bookmarks. It had been trodden on by cows, struck by lightning and dropped in tea. And it didn't have an eye on it. An eye would have got Page 136 Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 31 - A Hat Full Of Sky.txt knocked off on day one. It was a real witch's diary. Tiffany had stopped wearing the hat, except in public, because it kept getting bent by low doorways and completely crushed by her bedroom ceiling. She was wearing it today, though, clutching it occasionally whenever a gust tried to snatch it off her head. She reached the place where four rusty iron wheels were half buried in the turf and a pot-bellied stove stood up from the grass. It made a useful seat. Silence spread out around Tiffany, a living silence, while the sheep danced with their lambs and the world turned. Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colours. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving. The words ran through Tiffany's mind as she watched the sheep, and she found herself fill up with joy - at the new lambs, at life, at everything. Joy is to fun what the deep sea is to a puddle. It's a feeling inside that can hardly be contained. It came oul as laughter. 'I've come back!' she announced, to the hills. 'Better than I went!' She snatched off the hat with stars on it. It wasn't a bad hat, for show, although the stars made it look like a toy. But it was never her hat. It couldn't be. The only hat worth wearing was the one you made for yourself, not one you bought, not one you were given. Your own hat, for your own head. Your own future, not someone else's. She hurled the starry hat up as high as she could. The wind there caught it neatly. It tumbled for a moment and then was lifted by a gust and, swooping and spinning, sailed away across the downs and vanished for ever. Then Tiffany made a hat out of the sky and sat on the old pot-bellied stove, listening to the wind around the horizons while the sun went down. As the shadows lengthened, many small shapes crept out of the nearby mound and joined her in the sacred place, to watch. The sun set, which is everyday magic, and warm night came. The hat filled up with stars... Author's Note The Doctrine of Signatures mentioned on page 90 really exists in this world, although now it's better known by historians than doctors. For hundreds of years, perhaps thousands, people believed that God, who of course had made everything, had 'signed' each thing in a way that showed humanity what it could be used for. For example, goldenrod is yellow so 'must' be good for jaundice, which turns the skin yellow (a certain amount of guesswork was involved, but sometimes patients survived). By an amazing coincidence, the Horse carved on the Chalk is remarkably similar to the Uffington White Horse, which in this world is carved on the downlands near the village of Uffington in southwest Oxfordshire. It's 374 feet long, several thousand years old and carved on the hill in such a way that you can only see all of it in one go from the air. This suggests that: a) it was carved for the gods to sec; or, b) flying was invented a lot earlier that we thought; or, c) people used to be much, much taller. Oh, and this world had Witch Trials, too. They were not fun. Page 137 
Guards! Guards! - Terry Pratchett	----	Guards Terry Pratchett: Guards! Guards!   They may be called the Palace Guard, the City Guard, or the Patrol. Whatever the name, their purpose in any work of heroic fantasy is identical: it is, round about Chapter Three (or ten minutes into the film) to rush into the room, attack the hero one at a time, and be slaughtered. No one ever asks them if they wanted to. This book is dedicated to those fine men. And also to Mike Harrison, Mary Gentle, Neil Gaiman and all the others who assisted with and laughed at the idea of L-space; too bad we never used Schrödinger’s Paperback . . . This is where the dragons went. They lie . . . Not dead, not asleep. Not waiting, because waiting implies expectation. Possibly the word we’re looking for here is. . . . . . dormant. And although the space they occupy isn’t like normal space, nevertheless they are packed in tightly. Not a cubic inch there but is filled by a claw, a talon, a scale, the tip of a tail, so the effect is like one of those trick drawings and your eyeballs eventually realise that the space between each dragon is, in fact, another dragon: They could put you in mind of a can of sardines, if you thought sardines were huge and scaly and proud and arrogant. And presumably, somewhere, there’s the key. In another space entirely, it was early morning in Ankh-Morpork, oldest and greatest and grubbiest of cities. A thin drizzle dripped from the grey sky and punctuated the river mist that coiled among the streets. Rats of various species went about their nocturnal occasions. Under night’s damp cloak assassins assassinated, thieves thieved, hussies hustled. And so on. And drunken Captain Vimes of the Night Watch staggered slowly down the street, folded gently into the gutter outside the Watch House and lay there while, above him, strange letters made of light sizzled in the damp and changed colour . . . The city wasa, wasa, wasa wossname. Thing. Woman. Thass what it was. Woman. Roaring, ancient, centuries old. Strung you along, let you fall in thingy, love, with her, then kicked you inna, inna, thingy. Thingy, in your mouth. Tongue. Tonsils. Teeth. That’s what it, she, did. She wasa . . . thing, you know, lady dog. Puppy. Hen. Bitch. And then you hated her and, and just when you thought you’d got her, it, out of your, your, whatever, then she opened her great booming rotten heart to you, caught you off bal, bal, bal, thing. Ance. Yeah. Thassit. Never knew where where you stood. Lay. Only thing you were sure of, you couldn’t let her go. Because, because she was yours, all you had, even in her gutters . . .   Damp darkness shrouded the venerable buildings of Unseen University, premier college of wizardry. The only light was a faint octarine flicker from the tiny windows of the new High Energy Magic building, where keen-edged minds were probing the very fabric of the universe, whether it liked it or not. And there was light, of course, in the Library. The Library was the greatest assemblage of magical texts anywhere in the multiverse. Thousands of volumes of occult lore weighted its shelves. It was said that, since vast amounts of magic can seriously distort the mundane world, the Library did not obey the normal rules of space and time. It was said that it went on forever. It was said that you could wander for days among the distant shelves, that there were lost tribes of research students somewhere in there, that strange things lurked in forgotten alcoves and were preyed on by other things that were even stranger.[1] Wise students in search of more distant volumes took care to leave chalk marks on the shelves as they roamed deeper into the fusty darkness, and told friends to come looking for them if they weren’t back by supper. And, because magic can only loosely be bound, the Library books themselves were more than mere pulped wood and paper. Raw magic crackled from their spines, earthing itself harmlessly in the copper rails nailed to every shelf for that very purpose. Faint traceries of blue fire crawled across the bookcases and there was a sound, a papery whispering, such as might come from a colony of roosting starlings. In the silence of the night the books talked to one another. There was also the sound of someone snoring. The light from the shelves didn’t so much illuminate as highlight the darkness, but by its violet flicker a watcher might just have identified an ancient and battered desk right under the central dome. The snoring was coming from underneath it, where a piece of tattered blanket barely covered what looked like a heap of sandbags but was in fact an adult male orangutan. It was the Librarian. Not many people these days remarked upon the fact that he was an ape. The change had been brought about by a magical accident, always a possibility where so many powerful books are kept together, and he was considered to have got off lightly. After all, he was still basically the same shape. And he had been allowed to keep his job, which he was rather good at, although ‘allowed’ is not really the right word. It was the way he could roll his upper lip back to reveal more incredibly yellow teeth than any other mouth the University Council had ever seen before that somehow made sure the matter was never really raised. But now there was another sound, the alien sound of a door creaking open. Footsteps padded across the floor and disappeared amongst the clustering shelves. The books rustled indignantly, and some of the larger grimoires rattled their chains. The Librarian slept on, lulled by the whispering of the rain. In the embrace of his gutter, half a mile away, Captain Vimes of the Night Watch opened his mouth and started to sing.   Now a black-robed figure scurried through the midnight streets, ducking from doorway to doorway, and reached a grim and forbidding portal. No mere doorway got that grim without effort, one felt. It looked as though the architect had been called in and given specific instructions. We want something eldritch in dark oak, he’d been told. So put an unpleasant gargoyle thing over the archway, give it a slam like the footfall of a giant and make it clear to everyone, in fact, that this isn’t the kind of door that goes ‘ding-dong’ when you press the bell. The figure rapped a complex code on the dark woodwork. A tiny barred hatch opened and one suspicious eye peered out. “ ‘The significant owl hoots in the night,’ “ said the visitor, trying to wring the rainwater out of its robe. “ ‘Yet many grey lords go sadly to the masterless men,’ “ intoned a voice on the other side of the grille. “ ‘Hooray, horray for the spinster’s sister’s daughter,’ “ countered the dripping figure. “ ‘To the axeman, all supplicants are the same height.’ “ “ ‘Yet verily, the rose is within the thorn.’ “ “ ‘The good mother makes bean soup for the errant boy,’ “ said the voice behind the door. There was a pause, broken only by the sound of the rain. Then the visitor said, “What?” “ ‘The good mother makes bean soup for the errant boy.’ “ There was another, longer pause. Then the damp figure said, “Are you sure the ill-built tower doesn’t tremble mightily at a butterfly’s passage?” “Nope. Bean soup it is. I’m sorry.” The rain hissed down relentlessly in the embarrassed silence. “What about the caged whale?” said the soaking visitor, trying to squeeze into what little shelter the dread portal offered. “What about it?” “It should know nothing of the mighty deeps, if you must know.” “Oh, the caged whale. You want the Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night. Three doors down.” “Who’re you, then?” “We’re the Illuminated and Ancient Brethren of Ee.” “I thought you met over in Treacle Street,” said the damp man, after a while. “Yeah, well. You know how it is. The fretwork club have the room Tuesdays. There was a bit of a mix-up.” “Oh? Well, thanks anyway.” “My pleasure.” The little door slammed shut. The robed figure glared at it for a moment, and then splashed further down the street. There was indeed another portal there. The builder hadn’t bothered to change the design much. He knocked. The little barred hatch shot back. “Yes?” “Look, ‘The significant owl hoots in the night’, all right?” “ ‘Yet many grey lords go sadly to the masterless men.’ “ “ ‘Hooray, horray for the spinster’s sister’s daughter’, okay?’ “ “ ‘To the axeman, all supplicants are the same height.’ “ “ ‘Yet verily, the rose is within the thorn.’ It’s pissing down out here. You do know that, don’t you?” “Yes,” said the voice, in the tones of one who indeed does know it, and is not the one standing in it. The visitor sighed. “ ‘The caged whale knows nothing of the mighty deeps,’ “ he said. “If it makes you any happier.” “ ‘The ill-built tower trembles mightily at a butterfly’s passage.’ “ The supplicant grabbed the bars of the window, pulled himself up to it, and hissed: “Now let us in, I’m soaked.” There was another damp pause. “These deeps . . . did you say mighty or nightly?” “Mighty, I said. Mighty deeps. On account of being, you know, deep. It’s me, Brother Fingers.” “It sounded like nightly to me,” said the invisible doorkeeper cautiously. “Look, do you want the bloody book or not? I don’t have to do this. I could be at home in bed.” “You sure it was mighty?” “Listen, I know how deep the bloody deeps are all right,” said Brother Fingers urgently. “I knew how mighty they were when you were a perishing neophyte. Now will you open this door?” “Well . . . all right.” There was the sound of bolts sliding back. Then the voice said, “Would you mind giving it a push? The Door of Knowledge Through Which the Untutored May Not Pass sticks something wicked in the damp.” Brother Fingers put his shoulder to it, forced his way through, gave Brother Doorkeeper a dirty look, and hurried within. The others were waiting for him in the Inner Sanctum, standing around with the sheepish air of people not normally accustomed to wearing sinister hooded black robes. The Supreme Grand Master nodded at him. “Brother Fingers, isn’t it?” “Yes, Supreme Grand Master.” “Do you have that which you were sent to get?” Brother Fingers pulled a package from under his robe. “Just where I said it would be,” he said. “No problem.” “Well done, Brother Fingers.” “Thank you, Supreme Grand Master.” The Supreme Grand Master rapped his gavel for attention. The room shuffled into some sort of circle. “I call the Unique and Supreme Lodge of the Elucidated Brethren to order,” he intoned. “Is the Door of Knowledge sealed fast against heretics and knowlessmen?” “Stuck solid,” said Brother Doorkeeper. “It’s the damp. I’ll bring my plane in next week, soon have it-“ “All right, all right,” said the Supreme Grand Master testily. “Just a yes would have done. Is the triple circle well and truly traced? Art all here who Art Here? And it be well for an knowlessman that he should not be here, for he would be taken from this place and his gaskin slit, his moules shown to the four winds, his welchet torn asunder with many hooks and his figgin placed upon a spike yes what is it?” “Sorry, did you say Elucidated Brethren?” The Supreme Grand Master glared at the solitary figure with its hand up. “Yea, the Elucidated Brethren, guardian of the sacred knowledge since a time no man may wot of-“ “Last February,” said Brother Doorkeeper helpfully. The Supreme Grand Master felt that Brother Doorkeeper had never really got the hang of things. “Sorry. Sorry. Sorry,” said the worried figure. “Wrong society, I’m afraid. Must have taken a wrong turning. I’ll just be going, if you’ll excuse me . . .” “And his figgin placed upon a spike,” repeated the Supreme Grand Master pointedly, against a background of damp wooden noises as Brother Doorkeeper tried to get the dread portal open. “Are we quite finished? Any more knowlessmen happened to drop in on their way somewhere else?” he added with bitter sarcasm. “Right. Fine. So glad. I suppose it’s too much to ask if the Four Watchtowers are secured? Oh, good. And the Trouser of Sanctity, has anyone bothered to shrive it? Oh, you did. Properly? I’ll check, you know . . . all right. And have the windows been fastened with the Red Cords of Intellect, in accordance with ancient prescription? Good. Now perhaps we can get on with it.” With the slightly miffed air of one who has run their finger along a daughter-in-law’s top shelf and found against all expectation that it is sparkling clean, the Grand Master got on with it. What a shower, he told himself. A bunch of incompetents no other secret society would touch with a ten-foot Sceptre of Authority. The sort to dislocate their fingers with even the simplest secret handshake. But incompetents with possibilities, nevertheless. Let the other societies take the skilled, the hopefuls, the ambitious, the self-confident. He’d take the whining resentful ones, the ones with a bellyful of spite and bile, the ones who knew they could make it big if only they’d been given the chance. Give him the ones in which the floods of venom and vindictiveness were dammed up behind thin walls of ineptitude and low-grade paranoia. And stupidity, too. They’ve all sworn the oath, he thought, but not a man jack of ‘em has even asked what a figgin is. “Brethren,” he said. “Tonight we have matters of profound importance to discuss. The good governance, nay, the very future of Ankh-Morpork lies in our hands.” They leaned closer. The Supreme Grand Master felt the beginnings of the old thrill of power. They were hanging on his words. This was a feeling worth dressing up in bloody silly robes for. “Do we not well know that the city is in thrall to corrupt men, who wax fat on their ill-gotten gains, while better men are held back and forced into virtual servitude?” “We certainly do!” said Brother Doorkeeper vehemently, when they’d had time to translate this mentally. “Only last week, down at the Bakers’ Guild, I tried to point out to Master Critchley that-“ It wasn’t eye contact, because the Supreme Grand Master had made sure the Brethren’s hoods shrouded their faces in mystic darkness, but nevertheless he managed to silence Brother Doorkeeper by dint of sheer outraged silence. “Yet it was not always thus,” the Supreme Grand Master continued. “There was once a golden age, when those worthy of command and respect were justly rewarded. An age when Ankh-Morpork wasn’t simply a big city but a great one. An age of chivalry. An age when-yes, Brother Watchtower?” A bulky robed figure lowered its hand. “Are you talking about when we had kings?” “Well done, Brother,” said the Supreme Grand Master, slightly annoyed at this unusual evidence of intelligence. “And-“ “But that was all sorted out hundreds of years ago,” said Brother Watchtower. “Wasn’t there this great battle, or something? And since then we’ve just had the ruling lords, like the Patrician.” “Yes, very good, Brother Watchtower.” “There aren’t any more kings, is the point I’m trying to make,” said Brother Watchtower helpfully. “As Brother Watchtower says, the line of-“ “It was you talking about chivalry that give me the clue,” said Brother Watchtower. “Quite so, and-“ “You get that with kings, chivalry,” said Brother Watchtower happily. “And knights. And they used to have these-“ “However,” said the Supreme Grand Master sharply, “it may well be that the line of the kings of Ankh is not as defunct as hitherto imagined, and that progeny of the line exists even now. Thus my researches among the ancient scrolls do indicate.” He stood back expectantly. There didn’t seem to be the effect he’d expected, however. Probably they can manage ‘defunct’, he thought, but I ought to have drawn the line at ‘progeny’. Brother Watchtower had his hand up again. “Yes?” “You saying there’s some sort of heir to the throne hanging around somewhere?” said Brother Watch-tower. “This may be the case, yes.” “Yeah. They do that, you know,” said Brother Watchtower knowledgeably. “Happens all the time. You read about it. Skions, they’re called. They go lurking around in the distant wildernesses for ages, handing down the secret sword and birthmark and so forth from generation to generation. Then just when the old kingdom needs them, they turn up and turf out any usurpers that happen to be around. And then there’s general rejoicing.” The Supreme Grand Master felt his own mouth drop open. He hadn’t expected it to be as easy as this. “Yes, all right,” said a figure the Supreme Grand Master knew to be Brother Plasterer. “But so what? Let’s say a skion turns up, walks up to the Patrician, says ‘What ho, I’m king, here’s the birthmark as per spec, now bugger off’. What’s he got then? Life expectancy of maybe two minutes, that’s what.” “You don’t listen, “ said Brother Watchtower. “The thing is, the skion has to arrive when the kingdom is threatened, doesn’t he? Then everyone can see, right? Then he gets carried off to the palace, cures a few people, announces a half-holiday, hands round a bit of treasure, and Bob’s your uncle.” “He has to marry a princess, too,” said Brother Doorkeeper. ‘ ‘On account of him being a swineherd.” They looked at him. “Who said anything about him being a swineherd?” said Brother Watchtower. “I never said he was a swineherd. What’s this about swineherds?” “He’s got a point, though,” said Brother Plasterer. “He’s generally a swineherd or a forester or similar, your basic skion. It’s to do with being in wossname. Cognito. They’ve got to appear to be of, you know, humble origins.” “Nothing special about humble origins,” said a very small Brother, who seemed to consist entirely of a little perambulatory black robe with halitosis. “I’ve got lots of humble origins. In my family we thought swineherding was a posh job.” “But your family doesn’t have the blood of kings, Brother Dunnykin,” said Brother Plasterer. “We might of,” said Brother Dunnykin sulkily. “Right, then,” said Brother Watchtower grudgingly. “Fair enough. But at the essential moment, see your genuine kings throw back their cloak and say ‘Lo!’ and their essential kingnessness shines through.” “How, exactly?” said Brother Doorkeeper. “-might of got the blood of kings,” muttered Brother Dunnykin. “Got no right saying I might not have got the blood of-“ “Look, it just does, okay? You just know it when you see it.” “But before that they’ve got to save the kingdom,” said Brother Plasterer. “Oh, yes,” said Brother Watchtower heavily. “That’s the main thing, is that.” “What from, then?” “-got as much right as anyone to might have the blood of kings-“ “The Patrician?” said Brother Doorkeeper. Brother Watchtower, as the sudden authority on the ways of royalty, shook his head. “I dunno that the Patrician is a threat, exactly,” he said. “He’s not your actual tyrant, as such. Not as bad as some we’ve had. I mean, he doesn’t actually oppress.” “I get oppressed all the time,” said Brother Doorkeeper. “Master Critchley, where I work, he oppresses me morning, noon and night, shouting at me and everything. And the woman in the vegetable shop, she oppresses me all the time.” “That’s right,” said Brother Plasterer. “My landlord oppresses me something wicked. Banging on the door and going on and on about all the rent I allegedly owe, which is a total lie. And the people next door oppress me all night long. I tell them, I work all day, a man’s got to have some time to learn to play the tuba. That’s oppression, that is. If I’m not under the heel of the oppressor, I don’t know who is.” “Put like that-“ said Brother Watchtower slowly- “I reckon my brother-in-law is oppressing me all the time with having this new horse and buggy he’s been and bought. I haven’t got one. I mean, where’s the justice in that? I bet a king wouldn’t let that sort of oppression go on, people’s wives oppressing ‘em with why haven’t they got a new coach like our Rodney and that.” The Supreme Grand Master listened to this with a slightly light-headed feeling. It was as if he’d known that there were such things as avalanches, but had never dreamed when he dropped the little snowball on top of the mountain that it could lead to such astonishing results. He was hardly having to egg them on at all. “I bet a king’d have something to say about landlords,” said Brother Plasterer. “And he’d outlaw people with showy coaches,” said Brother Watchtower. “Probably bought with stolen money, too, I reckon.” “I think,” said the Supreme Grand Master, tweaking things a little, “that a wise king would only, as it were, outlaw showy coaches for the undeserving. “ There was a thoughtful pause in the conversation as the assembled Brethren mentally divided the universe into the deserving and the undeserving, and put themselves on the appropriate side. “It’d be only fair,” said Brother Watchtower slowly. “But Brother Plasterer was right, really. I can’t see a skion manifesting his destiny just because Brother Doorkeeper thinks the woman in the vegetable shop keeps giving him funny looks. No offense.” “And bloody short weight,” said Brother Doorkeeper. “And she-“ “Yes, yes, yes,” said the Supreme Grand Master. “Truly the right-thinking folk of Ankh-Morpork are beneath the heel of the oppressors. However, a king generally reveals himself in rather more dramatic circumstances. Like a war, for example.” Things were going well. Surely, for all their self-centred stupidity, one of them would be bright enough to make the suggestion? “There used to be some old prophecy or something,” said Brother Plasterer. “My grandad told me.” His eyes glazed with the effort of dramatic recall. “ ‘Yea, the king will come bringing Law and Justice, and know nothing but the Truth, and Protect and Serve the People with his Sword.’ You don’t all have to look at me like that, I didn’t make it up.” “Oh, we all know that one. And a fat lot of good that’d be,” said Brother Watchtower. “I mean, what does he do, ride in with Law and Truth and so on like the Four Horsemen of the Apocralypse? Hallo everyone,” he squeaked, “I’m the king, and that’s Truth over there, watering his horse. Not very practical, is it? Nah. You can’t trust old legends.” “Why not?” said Brother Dunnykin, in a peeved voice. “ ‘Cos they’re legendary. That’s how you can tell,” said Brother Watchtower. “Sleeping princesses is a good one,” said Brother Plasterer. “Only a king can wake ‘em up.” “Don’t be daft,” said Brother Watchtower severely. “We haven’t got a king, so we can’t have princesses. Stands to reason.” “Of course, in the old days it was easy,” said Brother Doorkeeper happily. “Why?” “He just had to kill a dragon.” The Supreme Grand Master clapped his hands together and offered a silent prayer to any god who happened to be listening. He’d been right about these people. Sooner or later their rambling little minds took them where you wanted them to go. “What an interesting idea,” he trilled. “Wouldn’t work,” said Brother Watchtower dourly. “There ain’t no big dragons now.” “There could be.” The Supreme Grand Master cracked his knuckles. “Come again?” said Brother Watchtower. “I said there could be.” There was a nervous laugh from the depths of Brother Watchtower’s cowl. “What, the real thing? Great big scales and wings?” “Yes.” “Breath like a blast furnace.” “Yes.” “Them big claw things on its feet?” “Talons? Oh, yes. As many as you want.” “What do you mean, as many as I want?” “I would hope it’s self-explanatory, Brother Watch-tower. If you want dragons, you can have dragons. You can bring a dragon here. Now. Into the city.” “Me?” “All of you. I mean us,” said the Supreme Grand Master. Brother Watchtower hesitated. “Well, I don’t know if that’s a very good-“ “And it would obey your every command.” That stopped them. That pulled them up. That dropped in front of their weaselly little minds like a lump of meat in a dog pound. “Can you just repeat that?” said Brother Plasterer slowly. “You can control it. You can make it do whatever you want.” “What? A real dragon?” The Supreme Grand Master’s eyes rolled in the privacy of his hood. “Yes, a real one. Not a little pet swamp dragon. The genuine article.” “But I thought they were, you know . . . miffs.” The Supreme Grand master leaned forward. “’They were myths and they were real,” he said loudly. “Both a wave and a particle.” “You’ve lost me there,” said Brother Plasterer. “I will demonstrate, then. The book please, Brother Fingers. Thank you. Brethren, I must tell you that when I was undergoing my tuition by the Secret Masters-“ “The what, Supreme Grand Master?” said Brother Plasterer. “Why don’t you listen? You never listen. He said the Secret Masters!” said Brother Watchtower. “You know, the venerable sages what live on some mountain and secretly run everything and taught him all this lore and that, and can walk on fires and that. He told us last week. He’s going to teach us, aren’t you, Supreme Grand Master,” he finished obsequiously. “Oh, the Secret Masters,” said Brother Plasterer. “Sorry. It’s these mystic hoods. Sorry. Secret. I remember.” But when I rule the city, the Supreme Grand Master said to himself, there is going to be none of this. I shall form a new secret society of keen-minded and intelligent men, although not too intelligent of course, not too intelligent. And we will overthrow the cold tyrant and we will usher in a new age of enlightenment and fraternity and humanism and Ankh-Morpork will become a Utopia and people like Brother Plasterer will be roasted over slow fires if I have any say in the matter, which I will. And his figgin.[2] “When I was, as I said, undergoing my tuition by the Secret Masters-“ he continued. “That was where they told you you had to walk on ricepaper, wasn’t it,” said Brother Watchtower conversationally. “I always thought that was a good bit. I’ve been saving it off the bottom of my macaroons ever since. Amazing, really. I can walk on it no trouble. Shows what being in a proper secret society does for you, does that.” When he is on the griddle, the Supreme Grand Master thought, Brother Plasterer will not be lonely. “Your footfalls on the road of enlightenment are an example to us all, Brother Watchtower,” he said. “If I may continue, however-among the many secrets-“ “-from the Heart of Being-“ said Brother Watch-tower approvingly. “-from the Heart, as Brother Watchtower says, of Being, was the current location of the noble dragons. The belief that they died out is quite wrong. They simply found a new evolutionary niche. And they can be summoned from it. This book-“ he flourished it- “gives specific instructions.” “It’s just in a book?” said Brother Plasterer. “No ordinary book. This is the only copy. It has taken me years to track it down,” said the Supreme Grand Master. “It’s in the handwriting of Tubal de Malachite, a great student of dragon lore. His actual handwriting. He summoned dragons of all sizes. And so can you.” There was another long, awkward silence. “Um,” said Brother Doorkeeper. “Sounds a bit like, you know . . . magic to me,” said Brother Watchtower, in the nervous tone of the man who has spotted which cup the pea is hidden under but doesn’t like to say. “I mean, not wishing to question your supreme wisdomship and that, but . . . well . . . you know . . . magic . . .” His voice trailed off. “Yeah,” said Brother Plasterer uncomfortably. “It’s, er, the wizards, see,” said Brother Fingers. “You prob’ly dint know this, when you was banged up with them venerable herberts on their mountain, but the wizards round here come down on you like a ton of bricks if they catches you doin’ anything like that.” “Demarcation, they call it,” said Brother Plasterer. “Like, I don’t go around fiddling with the mystic interleaved wossnames of causality, and they don’t do any plastering.” “I fail to see the problem,” said the Supreme Grand Master. In fact, he saw it all too clearly. This was the last hurdle. Help their tiny little minds over this, and he held the world in the palm of his hand. Their stupe-fyingly unintelligent self-interest hadn’t let him down so far, surely it couldn’t fail him now . . . The Brethren shuffled uneasily. Then Brother Dunnykin spoke. “Huh. Wizards. What do they know about a day’s work?” The Supreme Grand master breathed deeply. Ah . , . The air of mean-minded resentfulness thickened noticeably. “Nothing, and that’s a fact,” said Brother Fingers. “Goin1 around with their noses in the air, too good for the likes a’us. I used to see ‘em when I worked up the University. Backsides a mile wide, I’m telling you. Catch ‘em doing a job of honest toil?” “Like thieving, you mean?” said Brother Watch-tower, who had never liked Brother Fingers much. “O’course, they tell you,” Brother Fingers went on, pointedly ignoring the comment, “that you shouldn’t go round doin’ magic on account of only them knowin’ about not disturbin’ the universal harmony and whatnot. Load of rubbish, in my opinion.” “We-ell,” said Brother Plasterer, “I dunno, really. I mean, you get the mix wrong, you just got a lot of damp plaster round your ankles. But you get a bit of magic wrong, and they say ghastly things comes out the woodwork and stitches you right up.” “Yeah, but it’s the wizards that say that,” said Brother Watchtower thoughtfully. “Never could stand them myself, to tell you the truth. Could be they’re on to a good thing and don’t want the rest of us to find out. It’s only waving your arms and chanting, when all’s said and done.” The Brethren considered this. It sounded plausible. If they were on to a good thing, they certainly wouldn’t want anyone else muscling in. The Supreme Grand Master decided that the time was ripe. “Then we are agreed, brethren? You are prepared to practise magic?” “Oh, practise,” said Brother Plaster, relieved. “I don’t mind practising. So long as we don’t have to do it for real-“ The Supreme Grand Master thumped the book. “I mean carry out real spells! Put the city back on the right lines! Summon a dragon!” he shouted. They took a step back. Then Brother Doorkeeper said, “And then, if we get this dragon, the rightful king’ll turn up, just like that?” “Yes!” said the Supreme Grand Master. “I can see that,” said Brother Watchtower supportively. “Stands to reason. Because of destiny and the gnomic workings of fate.” There was a moment’s hesitation, and then a general nodding of cowls. Only Brother Plasterer looked vaguely unhappy. “We-ell,” he said. “It won’t get out of hand, will it?” “I assure you, Brother Plasterer, that you can give it up any time you like,” said the Supreme Grand Master smoothly. “Well . . . all right,” said the reluctant Brother. “Just for a bit, then. Could we get it to stay here long enough to burn down, for example, any oppressive vegetable shops?” Ah. . . He’d won. There’d be dragons again. And a king again. Not like the old kings. A king who would do what he was told. “That,” said the Supreme Grand Master, “depends on how much help you can be. We shall need, initially, any items of magic you can bring . . .” It might not be a good idea to let them see that the last half of de Malachite’s book was a charred lump. The man was clearly not up to it. He could do a lot better. And absolutely no-one would be able to stop him. Thunder rolled . . .   It is said that the gods play games with the lives of men. But what games, and why, and the identities of the actual pawns, and what the game is, and what the rules are-who knows? Best not to speculate. Thunder rolled. . . . It rolled a six.   Now pull back briefly from the dripping streets of Ankh-Morpork, pan across the morning mists of the Disc, and focus in again on a young man heading for the city with all the openness, sincerity and innocence of purpose of an iceberg drifting into a major shipping lane. The young man is called Carrot. This is not because of his hair, which his father has always clipped short for reasons of Hygiene. It is because of his shape. It is the kind of tapering shape a boy gets through clean living, healthy eating, and good mountain air in huge lungfuls. When he flexes his shoulder muscles, other muscles have to move out of the way first. He is also bearing a sword presented to him in mysterious circumstances. Very mysterious circumstances. Surprisingly, therefore, there is something very unexpected about this sword. It isn’t magical. It hasn’t got a name. When you wield it you don’t get a feeling of power, you just get blisters; you could believe it was a sword that had been used so much that it had ceased to be anything other than a quintessential sword, a long piece of metal with very sharp edges. And it hasn’t got destiny written all over it. It’s practically unique, in fact.   Thunder rolled. The gutters of the city gurgled softly as the detritus of the night was carried along, in some cases protesting feebly. When it came to the recumbent figure of Captain Vimes, the water diverted and flowed around him in two streams. Vimes opened his eyes. There was a moment of empty peace before memory hit him like a shovel. It had been a bad day for the Watch. There had been the funeral of Herbert Gaskin, for one thing. Poor old Gaskin. He had broken one of the fundamental rules of being a guard. It wasn’t the sort of rule that someone like Gaskin could break twice. And so he’d been lowered into the sodden ground with the rain drumming on his coffin and no-one present to mourn him but the three surviving members of the Night Watch, the most despised group of men in the entire city. Sergeant Colon had been in tears. Poor old Gaskin. Poor old Vimes, Vimes thought. Poor old Vimes, here in gutter. But that’s where he started. Poor old Vimes, with the water swirling in under breastplate. Poor old Vimes, watching rest of gutter’s contents ooze by. Prob’ly even poor old Gas-kin has got better view now, he thought. Lessee . . . he’d gone off after the funeral and got drunk. No, not drunk, another word, ended with ‘er’. Drunker, that was it. Because world all twisted up and wrong, like distorted glass, only came back into focus if you looked at it through bottom of bottle. Something else now, what was it. Oh, yes. Night-time. Time for duty. Not for Gaskin, though. Have to get new fellow. New fellow coming anyway, wasn’t that it? Some stick from the hicks. Written letter. Some tick from the snicks . . . Vimes gave up, and slumped back. The gutter continued to swirl. Overhead, the lighted letters fizzed and flickered in the rain.   It wasn’t only the fresh mountain air that had given Carrot his huge physique. Being brought up in a gold mine run by dwarfs and working a twelve-hour day hauling wagons to the surface must have helped. He walked with a stoop. What will do that is being brought up in a gold mine run by dwarfs who thought that five feet was a good height for a ceiling. He’d always known he was different. More bruised for one thing. And then one day his father had come up to him or, rather, come up to his waist, and told him that he was not, in fact, as he had always believed, a dwarf. It’s a terrible thing to be nearly sixteen and the wrong species. “We didn’t like to say so before, son,” said his father. “We thought you’d grow out of it, see.” “Grow out of what?” said Carrot. “Growing. But now your mother thinks, that is, we both think, it’s time you went out among your own kind. I mean, it’s not fair, keeping you cooped up here without company of your own height.” His father twiddled a loose rivet on his helmet, a sure sign that he was worried. “Er,” he added. “But you’re my kind!” said Carrot desperately. “In a manner of speaking, yes,” said his father. “In another manner of speaking, which is a rather more precise and accurate manner of speaking, no. It’s all this genetics business, you see. So it might be a very good idea if you were to go out and see something of the world.” “What, for good?” “Oh, no! No. Of course not. Come back and visit whenever you like. But, well, a lad your age, stuck down here . . . It’s not right. You know. I mean. Not a child any more. Having to shuffle around on your knees most of the time, and everything. It’s not right.” “What is my own kind, then?” said Carrot, bewildered. The old dwarf took a deep breath. “You’re human,” he said. “What, like Mr Varneshi?” Mr Varneshi drove an ox-cart up the mountain trails once a week, to trade things for gold. “One of the Big People?” “You’re six foot six, lad. He’s only five foot.” The dwarf twiddled the loose rivet again. “You see how it is.” “Yes, but-but maybe I’m just tall for my height,” said Carrot desperately. “After all, if you can have short humans, can’t you have tall dwarfs?” His father patted him companionably on the back of the knees. “You’ve got to face facts, boy. You’d be much more at home up on the surface. It’s in your blood. The roof isn’t so low, either.” You can’t keep knocking yourself out on the sky, he told himself. “Hold on,” said Carrot, his honest brow wrinkling with the effort of calculation. “You’re a dwarf, right? And mam’s a dwarf. So I should be a dwarf, too. Fact of life.” The dwarf sighed. He’d hoped to creep up on this, over a period of months maybe, sort of break it to him gently, but there wasn’t any time any more. “Sit down, lad,” he said. Carrot sat. “The thing is,” he said wretchedly, when the boy’s big honest face was a little nearer his own, “we found you in the woods one day. Toddling about near one of the tracks . . . um.” The loose rivet squeaked. The king plunged on. “Thing is, you see . . . there were these carts. On fire, as you might say. And dead people. Um, yes. Extremely dead people. Because of bandits. It was a bad winter that winter, there were all sorts coming into the hills . . . So we took you in, of course, and then, well, it was a long winter, like I said, and your mam got used to you, and, well, we never got around to asking Varneshi to make enquiries. That’s the long and the short of it.” Carrot took this fairly calmly, mostly because he didn’t understand nearly all of it. Besides, as far as he was aware, being found toddling in the woods was the normal method of childbirth. A dwarf is not considered old enough to have the technical processes explained to him[3] until he has reached puberty.[4] “All right, dad,” he said, and leaned down so as to be level with the dwarf’s ear. “But you know, me and-you know Minty Rocksmacker? She’s really beautiful, dad, got a beard as soft as a, a, a very soft thing-we’ve got an understanding, and-“ “Yes,” said the dwarf, coldly. “I know. Her father’s had a word with me.” So did her mother with your mother, he added silently, and then she had a word with me. Lots of words. It’s not that they don’t like you, you’re a steady lad and a fine worker, you’d make a good son-in-law. Four good sons-in-law. That’s the trouble. And she’s only sixty, anyway. It’s not proper. It’s not right. He’d heard about children being reared by wolves. He wondered whether the leader of the pack ever had to sort out something tricky like this. Perhaps he’d have to take him into a quiet clearing somewhere and say, Look, son, you might have wondered why you’re not as hairy as everyone else . . . He’d discussed it with Varneshi. A good solid man, Varneshi. Of course, he’d known the man’s father. And his grandfather, now he came to think about it. Humans didn’t seem to last long, it was probably all the effort of pumping blood up that high. “Got a problem there, king.[5] Right enough,” the old man had said, as they shared a nip of spirits on a bench outside Shaft #2. “He’s a good lad, mind you,” said the king. “Sound character. Honest. Not exactly brilliant, but you tell him to do something, he don’t rest until he’s done it. Obedient.” “You could chop his legs off,” said Varneshi. “It’s not his legs that’s going to be the problem,” said the king darkly. “Ah. Yes. Well, in that case you could-“ “No.” “No,” agreed Varneshi, thoughtfully. “Hmm. Well, then what you should do is, you should send him away for a bit. Let him mix a bit with humans.” He sat back. “What you’ve got here, king, is a duck,” he added, in knowledgeable tones. “I don’t think I should tell him that. He’s refusing to believe he’s a human as it is.” “What I mean is, a duck brought up among chickens. Well-known farmyard phenomenon. Finds it can’t bloody well peck and doesn’t know what swimming is.” The king listened politely. Dwarfs don’t go in much for agriculture. “But you send him off to see a lot of other ducks, let him get his feet wet, and he won’t go running around after bantams any more. And Bob’s your uncle. “ Varneshi sat back and looked rather pleased with himself. When you spend a large part of your life underground, you develop a very literal mind. Dwarfs have no use for metaphor and simile. Rocks are hard, the darkness is dark. Start messing around with descriptions like that and you’re in big trouble, is their motto. But after two hundred years of talking to humans the king had, as it were, developed a painstaking mental toolkit which was nearly adequate for the job of understanding them. “Surely Bjorn Stronginthearm is my uncle, “ he pointed out, slowly. “Same thing. “ There was a pause while the king subjected this to careful analysis. “You’re saying, “ he said, weighing each word, “that we should send Carrot away to be a duck among humans because Bjorn Stronginthearm is my uncle. “ “He’s a fine lad. Plenty of openings for a big strong lad like him, “ said Varneshi. “I have heard that dwarfs go off to work in the Big City, “ said the king uncertainly. “And they send back money to their families, which is very commendable and proper. “ “There you are then. Get him a job in, in-“ Varneshi sought for inspiration-“in the Watch, or something. My great-grandfather was in the Watch, you know. Fine job for a big lad, my grandad said. “ “What is a Watch?” said the king. “Oh, “ said Varneshi, with the vagueness of someone whose family for the last three generations hadn’t travelled more than twenty miles, “they goes about making sure people keep the laws and do what they’re told. “ “That is a very proper concern, “ said the king who, since he was usually the one doing the telling, had very solid views about people doing what they were told. “Of course, they don’t take just anyone, “ said Varneshi, dredging the depths of his recollection. “I should think not, for such an important task. I shall write to their king. “ “I don’t think they have a king there, “ said Varneshi. “Just some man who tells them what to do. “ The king of the dwarfs took this calmly. This seemed to be about ninety-seven per cent of the definition of kingship, as far as he was concerned. Carrot took the news without fuss, just as he took instructions about re-opening Shaft #4 or cutting timber for shoring props. All dwarfs are by nature dutiful, serious, literate, obedient and thoughtful people whose only minor failing is a tendency, after one drink, to rush at enemies screaming “Arrrrrrgh!” and axing their legs off at the knee. Carrot saw no reason to be any different. He would go to this city-whatever that was-and have a man made of him. They took only the finest, Varneshi had said. A watchman had to be a skilled fighter and clean in thought, word and deed. From the depths of his ancestral anecdotage the old man had dragged tales of moonlight chases across rooftops, and tremendous battles with miscreants which, of course, his great-grandad had won despite being heavily outnumbered. Carrot had to admit it sounded better than mining. After some thought, the king wrote to the ruler of Ankh-Morpork, respectfully asking if Carrot could be considered for a place amongst the city’s finest. Letters rarely got written in that mine. Work stopped and the whole clan had sat around in respectful silence as his pen scrittered across the parchment. His aunt had been sent up to Varneshi’s to beg his pardon but could he see his way clear to sparing a smidgen of wax His sister had been sent down to the village to ask Mistress Garlick the witch how you stopped spelling recommendation. Months had gone by. And then there’d been the reply. It was fairly grubby, since mail in the Ramtops was generally handed to whoever was going in more or less the right direction, and it was also fairly short. It said, baldly, that his application was accepted, and would he present himself for duty immediately. “Just like that?” he said. “I thought there’d be tests and things. To see if I was suitable. “ “You’re my son, “ said the king. “I told them that, see. Stands to reason you’ll be suitable. Probably officer material. “ He’d pulled a sack from under his chair, rummaged around in it and presented Carrot with a length of metal, more a sword than a saw but only just. “This might rightly belong to you, “ he said. “When we found the. . . carts, this was the only thing left. The bandits, you see. Just between you and me-“ he beckoned Carrot closer-“we had a witch look at it. In case it was magic. But it isn’t. Quite the most un-magical sword she’d ever seen, she said. They normally have a bit, see, on account of it’s like magnetism, I suppose. Got quite a nice balance, though. “ He handed it over. He rummaged around some more. “And then there’s this. “ He held up a shirt. “It’ll protect you.“ Carrot fingered it carefully. It was made from the wool of Ramtop sheep, which had all the warmth and softness of hog bristles. It was one of the legendary woolly dwarf vests, the kind of vest that needs hinges. “Protect me from what?” he said. “Colds, and so on, “ said the king. “Your mother says you’ve got to wear it. And, er. . . that reminds me. Mr Varneshi says he’d like you to drop in on the way down the mountain. He’s got something for you. “ His father and mother had waved him out of sight. Minty didn’t. Funny, that. She seemed to have been avoiding him lately. He’d taken the sword, slung on his back, sandwiches and clean underwear in his pack, and the world, more or less, at his feet. In his pocket was the famous letter from the Patrician, the man who ruled the great fine city of Ankh-Morpork. At least, that’s how his mother had referred to it. It certainly had an important-looking crest at the top, but the signature was something like “Lupin Squiggle, Sec’y, pp”. Still, if it wasn’t actually signed by the Patrician then it had certainly been written by someone who worked for him. Or in the same building. Probably the Patrician had at least known about the letter. In general terms. Not this letter, perhaps, but probably he knew about the existence of letters in general. Carrot walked steadfastly down the mountain paths, disturbing clouds of bumblebees. After a while he unsheathed the sword and made experimental stabs at felonious tree stumps and unlawful assemblies of stinging nettles. Varneshi was sitting outside his hut, threading dried mushrooms on a string. “Hallo, Carrot, “ he said, leading the way inside. “Looking forward to the city?” Carrot gave this due consideration. “No, “ he said. “Having second thoughts, are you?” “No. I was just walking along, “ said Carrot honestly. “I wasn’t thinking about anything much. “ “Your dad give you the sword, did he?” said Varneshi, rummaging on a fetid shelf. “Yes. And a woolly vest to protect me against chills. “ “Ah. Yes, it can be very damp down there, so I’ve heard. Protection. Very important. “ He turned around and added, dramatically, “This belonged to my great-grandfather. “ It was a strange, vaguely hemispherical device surrounded by straps. “It’s some sort of sling?” said Carrot, after examining it in polite silence. Varneshi told him what it was. “Codpiece like in fish?” said Carrot, mystified. “No. It’s for the fighting, “ mumbled Varneshi. “You should wear it all the time. Protects your vitals, like. “ Carrot tried it on. “It’s a bit small, Mr Varneshi. “ “That’s because you don’t wear it on your head, you see. “ Varneshi explained some more, to Carrot’s mounting bewilderment and, subsequently, horror. “My great-grandad used to say, “ Varneshi finished, “that but for this I wouldn’t be here today. “ “What did he mean by that?” Varneshi’s mouth opened and shut a few times. “I’ve no idea, “ he said, spinelessly. Anyway, the shameful thing was now at the very bottom of Carrot’s pack. Swarfs didn’t have much truck with things like that. The ghastly preventative represented a glimpse into a world as alien as the backside of the moon. There had been another gift from Mr Varneshi. It was a small but very thick book, bound in a leather that had become like wood over the years. It was called: The Laws And Ordinances of The Cities of Ankh And Morpork. “This belonged to my great-grandad as well, “ he said. “This is what the Watch has to know. You have to know all the laws, “ he said virtuously, “to be a good officer. “ Perhaps Varneshi should have recalled that, in the whole of Carrot’s life, no-one had ever really lied to him or given him an instruction that he wasn’t meant to take quite literally. Carrot solemnly took the book. It would never have occurred to him, if he was going to be an officer of the Watch, to be less than a good one. It was a five hundred mile journey and, surprisingly, quite uneventful. People who are rather more than six feet tall and nearly as broad across the shoulders often have uneventful journeys. People jump out at them from behind rocks then say things like, “Oh. Sorry. I thought you were someone else. “ He’d spent most of the journey reading. And now Ankh-Morpork was before him. It was a little disappointing. He’d expected high white towers rearing over the landscape, and flags. Ankh-Morpork didn’t rear. Rather, it sort of skulked, clinging to the soil as if afraid someone might steal it. There were no flags. There was a guard on the gate. At least, he was wearing chainmail and the thing he was propped up against was a spear. He had to be a guard. Carrot saluted him and presented the letter. The man looked at it for some time. “Mm?” he said, eventually. “I think I’ve got to see Lupin Squiggle Sec’y pp, “ said Carrot. “What’s the pp for?” said the guard suspiciously. “Could it be Pretty Promptly?” said Carrot, who had wondered about this himself. “Well, I don’t know about any Sec’y, “ said the guard. “You want Captain Vimes of the Night Watch. “ “And where is he based?” said Carrot, politely. “At this time of day I’d try The Bunch of Grapes in Easy Street, “ said the guard. He looked Carrot up and down. “Joining the watch, are you?” “I hope to prove worthy, yes, “ said Carrot. The guard gave him what could loosely be called an old-fashioned look. It was practically neolithic. “What was it you done?” he said. “I’m sorry?” said Carrot. “You must of done something, “ said the guard. “My father wrote a letter, “ said Carrot proudly. “I’ve been volunteered. “ “Bloody hellfire,“ said the guard.   Now it was night again, and beyond the dread portal: “Are the Wheels of Torment duly spun?” said the Supreme Grand Master. The Elucidated Brethren shuffled around their circle. “Brother Watchtower?” said the Supreme Grand Master. “Not my job to spin the Wheels of Torment, “ muttered Brother Watchtower. “ ‘s Brother Plasterer’s job, spinning the Wheels of Torment-“ “No it bloody well isn’t, it’s my job to oil the Axles of the Universal Lemon, “ said Brother Plasterer hotly. “You always say it’s my job-“ The Supreme Grand Master sighed in the depths of his cowl as yet another row began. From this dross he was going to forge an Age of Rationality? “Just shut up, will you?” he snapped. “We don’t really need the Wheels of Torment tonight. Stop it, the pair of you. Now, Brethren-you have all brought the items as instructed?” There was a general murmuring. “Place them in the Circle of Conjuration, “ said the Supreme Grand Master. It was a sorry collection. Bring magical things, he’d said. Only Brother Fingers had produced anything worthwhile. It looked like some sort of altar ornament, best not to ask from where. The Supreme Grand Master stepped forward and prodded one of the other things with his toe. “What, “ he said, “is this?” “ ‘s a amulet, “ muttered Brother Dunnykin. “ ‘s very powerful. Bought it off a man. Guaranteed. Protects you against crocodile bites. “ “Are you sure you can spare it?” said the Supreme Grand Master. There was a dutiful titter from the rest of the Brethren. “Less of that, brothers, “ said the Grand Master, spinning around. “Bring magical things, I said. Not cheap jewellery and rubbish! Good grief, this city is lousy with magic!” He reached down. “What are these things, for heaven’s sake?” “They’re stones, “ said Brother Plasterer uncertainly. “I can see that. Why’re they magical?” Brother Plasterer began to tremble. “They’ve got holes in them, Supreme Grand Master. Everyone knows that stones with holes in them are magical. “ The Supreme Grand Master walked back to his place on the circle. He threw his arms up. “Right, fine, okay, “ he said wearily. “If that’s how we’re going to do it, that’s how we’re going to do it. If we get a dragon six inches long we’ll all know the reason why. Won’t we, Brother Plasterer. Brother Plasterer? Sorry. I didn’t hear what you said? Brother Plasterer?” “I said yes, Supreme Grand Master, “ whispered Brother Plasterer. “Very well. So long as that’s quite understood. “ The Supreme Grand Master turned and picked up the book. “And now, “ he said, “if we are all quite ready. . . “ “Um. “ Brother Watchtower meekly raised his hand. “Ready for what, Supreme Grand Master?” he said. “For the summoning, of course. Good grief, I should have thought-“ “But you haven’t told us what we’re supposed to do, Supreme Grand Master, “ whined Brother Watch-tower. The Grand Master hesitated. This was quite true, but he wasn’t going to admit it. “Well, of course, “ he said. “It’s obvious. You have to focus your concentration. Think hard about dragons, “ he translated. “All of you. “ “That’s all, is it?” said Brother Doorkeeper. “Yes. “ “Don’t we have to chant a mystic prune or something?” The Supreme Grand Master stared at him. Brother Doorkeeper managed to look as defiant in the face of oppression as an anonymous shadow in a black cowl could look. He hadn’t joined a secret society not to chant mystic runes. He’d been looking forward to it. “You can if you like, “ said the Supreme Grand Master. “Now, I want you-yes, what is it, Brother Dunnykin?” The little Brother lowered his hand. “Don’t know any mystic prunes, Grand Master. Not to what you might call chant. . . “ “Hum!” He opened the book. He’d been rather surprised to find, after pages and pages of pious ramblings, that the actual Summoning itself was one short sentence. Not a chant, not a brief piece of poetry, but a mere assemblage of meaningless syllables. De Malachite said they caused interference patterns in the waves of reality, but the daft old fool was probably making it up as he went along. That was the trouble with wizards, they had to make everything look difficult. All you really needed was willpower. And the Brethren had a lot of that. Small-minded and vitriolic willpower, yes, lousy with malignity maybe, but still powerful enough in its way. . . They’d try nothing fancy this time round. Somewhere inconspicuous. . . Around him the Brethren were chanting what each man considered, according to his lights, to be something mystical. The general effect was actually quite good, if you didn’t listen to the words. The words. Oh, yes. . . He looked down, and spoke them aloud. Nothing happened. He blinked. When he opened his eyes again he was in a dark alley, his stomach was full of fire, and he was very angry.   It was about to be the worst night of his life for Zebbo Mooty, Thief Third Class, and it wouldn’t have made him any happier to know that it was also going to be the last one. The rain was keeping people indoors, and he was way behind on his quota. He was, therefore, a little less cautious than he might otherwise have been. In the night time streets of Ankh-Morpork caution is an absolute. There is no such thing as moderately cautious. You are either very cautious, or you are dead. You might be walking around and breathing, but you’re dead, just the same. He heard the muffled sounds coming from the nearby alley, slid his leather-bound cosh from his sleeve, waited until the victim was almost turning the corner, sprang out, said “Oh, shi-“ and died. It was a most unusual death. No-one else had died like that for hundreds of years. The stone wall behind him glowed cherry red with heat, which gradually faded into darkness. He was the first to see the Ankh-Morpork dragon. He derived little comfort from knowing this, however, because he was dead. “-t, “ he said, and his disembodied self looked down at the small heap of charcoal which, he knew with an unfamiliar sort of certainty, was what he had just been disembodied from. It was a strange sensation, seeing your own mortal remains. He didn’t find it as horrifying as he would have imagined if you’d asked him, say, ten minutes ago. Finding that you are dead is mitigated by also finding that there really is a you who can find you dead. The alley opposite was empty again. “That was really strange, “ said Mooty. extremely unusual, certainly. “Did you see that? What was it?” Mooty looked up at the dark figure emerging from the shadows. “Who’re you, anyway?” he added suspiciously. guess, said the voice. Mooty peered at the hooded figure. “Cor!” he said. “I thought you dint turn up for the likes o’me. “ I TURN UP FOR EVERYONE. “I mean in. . . person, sort of thing. “ sometimes. on special occasions. “Yeah, well, “ said Mooty, “this is one of them, all right! I mean, it looked like a bloody dragon! What’s a man to do? You don’t expect to find a dragon around the corner!” and now, if you would care to step this way . . . said Death, laying a skeletal hand on Mooty’s shoulder. “Do you know, a fortune teller once told me I’d die in my bed, surrounded by grieving greatgrandchildren, “ said Mooty, following the stately figure. “What do you think of that, eh?” I THINK SHE WAS WRONG. “A bloody dragon, “ said Mooty. “Fire breathing, too. Did I suffer much?” NO. IT WAS PRACTICALLY INSTANTANEOUS. “That’s good. I wouldn’t like to think I’d suffered much. “ Mooty looked around him. “What happens now?” he said. Behind them, the rain washed the little heap of black ash into the mud.   The Supreme Grand Master opened his eyes. He was lying on his back. Brother Dunnykin was preparing to give him the kiss of life. The mere thought was enough to jerk anyone from the borders of consciousness. He sat up, trying to shed the feeling that he weighed several tons and was covered in scales. “We did it, “ he whispered. “The dragon! It came! I felt it!” The Brethren glanced at one another. “We never saw nothing, “ said Brother Plasterer. “I might of seen something, “ said Brother Watch-tower loyally. “No, not here, “ snapped the Supreme Grand Master. “You hardly want it to materialise here, do you? It was out there, in the city. Just for a few seconds. . . “ He pointed. “Look!” The Brethren turned around guiltily, expecting at any moment the hot flame of retribution. In the centre of the circle the magic items were gently crumbling to dust. Even as they watched, Brother Dunnykin’s amulet collapsed. “Sucked dry, “ whispered Brother Fingers. “I’ll be damned!” “Three dollars that amulet cost me, “ muttered Brother Dunnykin. “But it proves it works, “ said the Supreme Grand Master. “Don’t you see, you fools? It works! We can summon dragons!” “Could be a bit expensive in magical items, “ said Brother Fingers doubtfully. “-three dollars, it was. No rubbish-“ “Power, “ growled the Supreme Grand Master, “does not come cheap. “ “Very true, “ nodded Brother Watchtower. “Not cheap. Very true. “ He looked at the little heap of exhausted magic again. “Cor, “ he said. “We did it, though, dint we! We only went and bloody well did some magic, right?” “See?” said Brother Fingers. “I tole you there was nothin’ to it. “ “You all did exceptionally well, “ said the Supreme Grand Master encouragingly. “-should’ve been six dollars, but he said he’d cut his own throat and sell it me for three dollars-“ “Yeah, “ said Brother Watchtower. “We got the hang of it all right! Dint hurt a bit. We done real magic! And dint get et by tooth fairies from out of the woodwork either, Brother Plasterer, I couldn’t help noticing. “ The other Brethren nodded. Real magic. Nothing to it. Everyone had just better watch out. “Hang on, though, “ said Brother Plasterer. “Where’s this dragon gone? I mean, did we really summon it or not?” “Fancy you asking a silly question like that, “ said Brother Watchtower doubtfully. The Supreme Grand Master brushed the dust off his mystic robe. “We summoned it, “ he said, “and it came. But only as long as the magic lasted. Then it went back. If we want it to stay longer, we need more magic. Understand? And that is what we must get. “ “-three dollars I shan’t see again in a hurry-“ “Shut up!”   . . .   Dearest Father [wrote Carrot] Well, here I am in Ankh-Morpork. It is not like at home. I think it must have changed a bit since Mr Varneshi’s great-grandfather was here. I don’t think people here know Right from Wrong. I found Captain Vimes in a common ale-house. I remembered what you said about a good dwarf not going into such places, but since he did not come out, I went in. He was lying with his head on the table. When I spoke to him, he said, pull the other one, kid, it has got bells on. I believe he was the worse for drink. He told me to find a place to stay and report to Sgt Colon at the Watch House tonight. He said, anyone wanting to join the guard needed their head examined. Mr Varneshi did not mention this. Perhaps it is done for reasons of Hygiene. I went for a walk. There are many people here. I found a place, it is called The Shades. Then I saw some men trying to rob a young Lady. I set about them. They did not know how to fight properly and one of them tried to kick me in the Vitals, but I was wearing the Protective as instructed and he hurt himself. Then the Lady came up to me and said, “Was I Interested in Bed. I said yes. She took me to where she lived, a boarding house, I think it is called. It is run by a Mrs Palm. The Lady whose purse it was, she is called Reet, said, You should of seen him, there were 3 of them, it was amazing. Mrs Palm said, It is on the house. She said, what a big Protective. So I went upstairs and fell asleep, although it is a very noisy place. Reet woke me up once or twice to say, Do you want anything, but they had no apples. So I have fallen on my Feet, as they say here but, I don’t see how that is possible because, if you fall you fall off your Feet, it is Common Sense. There is certainly a lot to do. When I went to see the Sgt I saw a place called, The Thieves’ Guild!! I asked Mrs Palm and she said, Of course. She said the leaders of the Thieves in the City meet there. I went to the Watch House and met Sgt Colon, a very fat man, and when I told him about the Thieves’ Guild he said, Don’t be A Idiot. I do not think he is serious. He says, Don’t you worry about Thieves’ Guilds, This is all what you have to do, you walk along the Streets at Night, shouting, It’s Twelve O’clock and All’s Well. I said, What if it is not all well, and he said, You bloody well find another street. This is not Leadership. I have been given some chain mail. It is rusty and not well made. They give you money for being a guard. It is, 20 dollars a month. When I get it I will send you it. I hope you are all well and that Shaft #5 is now open. This afternoon I will go and look at the Thieves’ Guild. It is disgraceful. If I do something about it, it will be a Feather in my Cap. I am getting the Hang of how they talk here already. Your loving son, Carrot. PS. Please give all my love to Minty. I really miss her.   . . .   Lord Vetinari, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, put his hand over his eyes. “He did what?” “I was marched through the streets, “ said Urdo van Pew, currently President of the Guild of Thieves, Burglars and Allied Trades. “In broad daylight! With my hands tied together!” He took a few steps towards the Patrician’s severe chair of office, waving a finger. “You know very well that we have kept within the Budget, “ he said. “To be humiliated like that! Like a common criminal! There had better be a full apology, “ he said, “or you will have another strike on your hands. We will be driven to it, despite our natural civic responsibilities, “ he added. It was the finger. The finger was a mistake. The Patrician was staring coldly at the finger. Van Pew followed his gaze, and quickly lowered the digit. The Patrician was not a man you shook a finger at unless you wanted to end up being able to count only to nine. “And you say this was one person?” said Lord Vetinari. “Yes! That is-“ Van Pew hesitated. It did sound weird, now he came to tell someone. “But there are hundreds of you in there, “ said the Patrician calmly. “Thick as, you should excuse the expression, thieves. “ Van Pew opened and shut his mouth a few times. The honest answer would have been: yes, and if anyone had come sidling in and skulking around the corridors it would have been the worse for them. It was the way he strode in as if he owned the place that fooled everyone. That and the fact that he kept hitting people and telling them to Mend their Ways. The Patrician nodded. “I shall deal with the matter momentarily, “ he said. It was a good word. It always made people hesitate. They were never quite sure whether he meant he’d deal with it now, or just deal with it briefly. And no-one ever dared ask. Van Pew backed down. “A full apology, mark you. I have a position to maintain, “ he added. “Thank you. Do not let me detain you, “ said the Patrician, once again giving the language his own individual spin. “Right. Good. Thank you. Very well, “ said the thief. “After all, you have such a lot of work to do, “ Lord Vetinari went on. “Well, of course this is the case. “ The thief hesitated. The Patrician’s last remark had barbs on it. You found yourself waiting for him to strike. “Er, “ he said, hoping for a clue. “With so much business being conducted, that is.” Panic took over the thief’s features. Randomised guilt flooded his mind. It wasn’t a case of what had he done, it was a question of what the Patrician had found out about. The man had eyes everywhere, none of them so terrifying as the icy blue ones just above his nose. “I, er, don’t quite follow. . . “he began. “Curious choice of targets. “ The Patrician picked up a sheet of paper. “ For example, a crystal ball belonging to a fortune teller in Sheer Street. A small ornament from the temple of Offler the Crocodile God. And so on. Gewgaws. “ “I am afraid I really don’t know-“ said the head thief. The Patrician leaned forward. “No unlicensed thieving, surely?” he said.[6] “I shall look into it directly!” stuttered the head thief. “Depend upon it!” The Patrician gave him a sweet smile. “I’m sure I can, “ he said. “Thank you for coming to see me. Don’t hesitate to leave. “ The thief shuffled out. It was always like this with the Patrician, he reflected bitterly. You came to him with a perfectly reasonable complaint. Next thing you knew, you were shuffling out backwards, bowing and scraping, relieved simply to be getting away. You had to hand it to the Patrician, he admitted grudgingly. If you didn’t, he sent men to come and take it away. When he’d gone Lord Vetinari rang the little bronze bell that summoned his secretary. The man’s name, despite his handwriting, was Lupine Wonse. He appeared, pen poised. You could say this about Lupine Wonse. He was neat. He always gave the impression of just being completed. Even his hair was so smoothed-down and oiled it looked as though it had been painted on. “The Watch appears to be having some difficulty with the Thieves’ Guild, “ said the Patrician. “Van Pew has been in here claiming that a member of the Watch arrested him. “ “What for, sir?” “Being a thief, apparently. “ “A member of the Watch? “ said the secretary. “I know. But just sort it out, will you?” The Patrician smiled to himself. It was always hard to fathom Lord Vetinari’s idiosyncratic sense of humour, but a vision of the red-faced, irate head thief kept coming back to him. One of the Patrician’s greatest contributions to the reliable operation of Ankh-Morpork had been, very early in his administration, the legalising of the ancient Guild of Thieves. Crime was always with us, he reasoned, and therefore, if you were going to have crime, it at least should be organised crime. And so the Guild had been encouraged to come out of the shadows and build a big Guildhouse, take their place at civic banquets, and set up their training college with day-release courses and City and Guilds certificates and everything. In exchange for the winding down of the Watch, they agreed, while trying to keep their faces straight, to keep crime levels to a level to be determined annually. That way, everyone could plan ahead, said Lord Vetinari, and part of the uncertainty had been removed from the chaos that is life. And then, a little while later, the Patrician summoned the leading thieves again and said, oh, by the way, there was something else. What was it, now? Oh, yes. . . I know who you are, he said. I know where you live. I know what kind of horse you ride. I know where your wife has her hair done. I know where your lovely children, how old are they now, my, doesn’t time fly, I know where they play. So you won’t forget about what we agreed, will you? And he smiled. So did they, after a fashion. And in fact it had turned out very satisfactorily from everyone’s point of view. It took the head thieves a very little time to grow paunches and start having coats-of-arms made and meet in a proper building rather than smoky dens, which no-one had liked much. A complicated arrangement of receipts and vouchers saw to it that, while everyone was eligible for the attentions of the Guild, no-one had too much, and this was very acceptable-at least to those citizens who were rich enough to afford the quite reasonable premiums the Guild charged for an uninterrupted life. There was a strange foreign word for this: inn-sewer-ants. No-one knew exactly what it had originally meant, but Ankh-Morpork had made it its own. The Watch hadn’t liked it, but the plain fact was that the thieves were far better at controlling crime than the Watch had ever been. After all, the Watch had to work twice as hard to cut crime just a little, whereas all the Guild had to do was to work less. And so the city prospered, while the Watch had dwindled away, like a useless appendix, into a handful of unemployables who no-one in their right mind could ever take seriously. The last thing anyone wanted them to do was get it into their heads to fight crime. But seeing the head thief discommoded was always worth the trouble, the Patrician felt.   . . .   Captain Vimes knocked very hesitantly at the door, because each tap echoed around his skull. “Enter. “ Vimes removed his helmet, tucked it under his arm and pushed the door open. Its creak was a blunt saw across the front of his brain. He always felt uneasy in the presence of Lupine Wonse. Come to that, he felt uneasy in the presence of Lord Vetinari-but that was different, that was down to breeding. And ordinary fear, of course. Whereas he’d known Wonse since their childhood in the Shades. The boy had shown promise even then. He was never a gang leader. Never a gang leader. Hadn’t got the strength or stamina for that. And, after all, what was the point in being the gang leader? Behind every gang leader were a couple of lieutenants bucking for promotion. Being a gang leader is not a job with long-term prospects. But in every gang there is a pale youth who’s allowed to stay because he’s the one who comes up with all the clever ideas, usually to do with old women and unlocked shops; this was Wonse’s natural place in the order of things. Vimes had been one of the middle rankers, the falsetto equivalent of a yes-man. He remembered Wonse as a skinny little kid, always tagging along behind in hand-me-down pants with the kind of odd skipping run he’d invented to keep up with the bigger boys, and forever coming up with fresh ideas to stop them idly ganging up on him, which was the usual recreation if nothing more interesting presented itself. It was superb training for the rigours of adulthood, and Wonse became good at it. Yes, they’d both started in the gutter. But Wonse had worked his way up whereas, as he himself would be the first to admit, Vimes had merely worked his way along. Every time he seemed to be getting anywhere he spoke his mind, or said the wrong thing. Usually both at once. That was what made him uncomfortable around Wonse. It was the ticking of the bright clockwork of ambition. Vimes had never mastered ambition. It was something that happened to other people. “Ah, Vimes. “ “Sir, “ said Vimes woodenly. He didn’t try to salute in case he fell over. He wished he’d had time to drink dinner. Wonse rummaged in the papers of his desk. “Strange things afoot, Vimes. Serious complaint about you, I’m afraid, “ he said. Wonse didn’t wear glasses. If he had worn glasses, he’d have peered at Vimes over the top of them. “Sir?” “One of your Night Watch men. Seems he arrested the head of the Thieves’ Guild. “ Vimes swayed a little and tried hard to focus. He wasn’t ready for this sort of thing. “Sorry, sir, “ he said. “Seem to have lost you there. “ “I said, Vimes, that one of your men arrested the head of the Thieves’ Guild. “ “One of my men?” “Yes. “ Vimes’s scattered brain cells tried valiantly to regroup. “A member of the Watch?” he said. Wonse grinned mirthlessly. “Tied him up and left him in front of the palace. There’s a bit of a stink about it, I’m afraid. There was a note. . .. ah. . . here it is. . . ‘This man is charged with, Conspiracy to commit Crime, under Section 14 (iii) of the General Felonies Act, 1678, by me, Carrot Ironfoundersson. ‘ “ Vimes squinted at him. “Fourteen eye-eye-eye?” “Apparently, “ said Wonse. “What does that mean?” “I really haven’t the faintest notion, “ said Wonse drily. “And what about the name. . . Carrot?” “But we don’t do things like that!” said Vimes. “You can’t go around arresting the Thieves’ Guild. I mean, we’d be at it all day!” “Apparently this Carrot thinks otherwise. “ The captain shook his head, and winced. “Carrot? Doesn’t ring a bell. “ The tone of blurred conviction was enough even for Wonse, who was momentarily taken aback. “He was quite-“ The secretary hesitated. “Carrot, Carrot, “ he said. “I’ve heard the name before. Seen it written down. “ His face went blank. “The volunteer, that was it! Remember me showing you?” Vimes stared at him. “Wasn’t there a letter from, I don’t know, some dwarf-?” “All about serving the community and keeping the streets safe, that’s right. Begging that his son would be found suitable for a humble position in the Watch. “ The secretary was rummaging among his files. “What’d he done?” said Vimes. “Nothing. That was it. Not a blessed thing. “ Vimes’s brow creased as his thoughts shaped themselves around a new concept. “A volunteer?” he said. “Yes. “ “He didn’t have to join?” “He wanted to join. And you said it must be a joke, and I said we ought to try and get more ethnic minorities into the Watch. You remember?” Vimes tried to. It wasn’t easy. He was vaguely aware that he drank to forget. What made it rather pointless was that he couldn’t remember what it was he was forgetting any more. In the end he just drank to forget about drinking. A trawl of the chaotic assortment of recollections that he didn’t even try to dignify any more by the name of memory produced no clue. “Do I?” he said helplessly. Wonse folded his hands on the desk and leaned forward. “Now look, Captain, “ he said. “Lordship wants an explanation. I don’t want to have to tell him the captain of the Night Watch hasn’t the faintest idea what goes on among the men under, if I may use the term loosely, his command. That sort of thing only leads to trouble, questions asked, that sort of thing. We don’t want that, do we. Do we?” “No, sir, “ Vimes muttered. A vague recollection of someone earnestly talking to him in the Bunch of Grapes was bobbing guiltily at the back of his mind. Surely that hadn’t been a dwarf? Not unless the qualification had been radically altered, at any rate. “Of course we don’t, “ said Wonse. “For old times’ sake. And so on. So I’ll think of something to tell him and you, Captain, will make a point of finding out what’s going on and putting a stop to it. Give this dwarf a short lesson in what it means to be a guard, all right?” “Haha, “ said Vimes dutifully. “I’m sorry?” said Wonse. “Oh. Thought you made an ethnic joke, there. Sir. “ “Look, Vimes, I’m being very understanding. In the circumstances. Now, I want you to get out there and sort this out. Do you understand?” Vimes saluted. The black depression that always lurked ready to take advantage of his sobriety moved in on his tongue. “Right you are, Mr Secretary, “ he said. “I’ll see to it that he learns that arresting thieves is against the law. “ He wished he hadn’t said that. If he didn’t say things like that he’d have been better off now. Captain of the Palace Guard, a big man. Giving him the Watch had been the Patrician’s little joke. But Wonse was already reading a new document on his desk. If he noticed the sarcasm, he didn’t show it. “Very good, “ he said.   . . .   Dearest Mother [Carrot wrote] It has been a much better day. I went into the Thieves’ Guild and arrested the chief Miscreant and dragged him to the Patrician’s Palace. No more trouble from him, I fancy. And Mrs Palm says I can stay in the attic because, it is always useful to have a man around the place. This was because, in the night, there were men the Worse for Drink making a Fuss in one of the Girl’s Rooms, and I had to speak to them and they Showed Fight and one of them tried to hurt me with his knee but I had the Protective and Mrs Palm says he has broken his Patella but I needn’t pay for a new one. I do not understand some of the Watch duties. I have a partner, his name is Nobby. He says I am too keen. He says I have got a lot to learn. I think this is true, because, I have only got up to Page 326 in, The Laws and Ordinances of the Cities of Ankh and Morpork. Love to all, Your Son, Carrot. PS. Love to Minty.   . . .   It wasn’t just the loneliness, it was the back-to-front way of living. That was it, thought Vimes. The Night Watch got up when the rest of the world was going to bed, and went to bed when dawn drifted over the landscape. You spent your whole time in the damp, dark streets, in a world of shadows. The Night Watch attracted the kind of people who for one reason or another were inclined to that kind of life. He reached the Watch House. It was an ancient and surprisingly large building, wedged between a tannery and a tailor who made suspicious leather goods. It must have been quite imposing once, but quite a lot of it was now uninhabitable and patrolled only by owls and rats. Over the door a motto in the ancient tongue of the city was now almost eroded by time and grime and lichen, but could just be made out: FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC It translated-according to Sergeant Colon, who had served in foreign parts and considered himself an expert on languages-as ‘To Protect and to Serve’. Yes. Being a guard must have meant something, once. Sergeant Colon, he thought, as he stumbled into the musty gloom. Now there was a man who liked the dark. Sergeant Colon owed thirty years of happy marriage to the fact that Mrs Colon worked all day and Sergeant Colon worked all night. They communicated by means of notes. He got her tea ready before he left at night, she left his breakfast nice and hot in the oven in the mornings. They had three grown-up children, all born, Vimes had assumed, as a result of extremely persuasive handwriting. And Corporal Nobbs. . . well, anyone like Nobby had unlimited reasons for not wishing to be seen by other people. You didn’t have to think hard about that. The only reason you couldn’t say that Nobby was close to the animal kingdom was that the animal kingdom would get up and walk away. And then, of course, there was himself. Just a skinny, unshaven collection of bad habits marinated in alcohol. And that was the Night Watch. Just the three of them. Once there had been dozens, hundreds. And now-just three. Vimes fumbled his way up the stairs, groped his way into his office, slumped into the primeval leather chair with its prolapsed stuffing, scrabbled at the bottom drawer, grabbed bottle, bit cork, tugged, spat out cork, drank. Began his day. The world swam into focus. Life is just chemicals. A drop here, a drip there, everything’s changed. A mere dribble of fermented juices and suddenly you’re going to live another few hours. Once, in the days when this had been a respectable district, some hopeful owner of the tavern next door had paid a wizard a considerable sum of money for an illuminated sign, every letter a different colour. Now it worked erratically and sometimes short-circuited in the damp. At the moment the E was a garish pink and flashed on and off at random. Vimes had grown accustomed to it. It seemed like part of life. He stared at the flickering play of light on the crumbling plaster for a while, and then raised one sandalled foot and thumped heavily on the floorboards, twice. After a few minutes a distant wheezing indicated that Sergeant Colon was climbing the stairs. Vimes counted silently. Colon always paused for six seconds at the top of the flight to get some of his breath back. On the seventh second the door opened. The sergeant’s face appeared around it like a harvest moon. You could describe Sergeant Colon like this: he was the sort of man who, if he took up a military career, would automatically gravitate to the post of sergeant. You couldn’t imagine him ever being a corporal. Or, for that matter, a captain. If he didn’t take up a military career, then he looked cut out for something like, perhaps, a sausage butcher; some job where a big red face and a tendency to sweat even in frosty weather were practically part of the specification. He saluted and, with considerable care, placed a scruffy piece of paper on Vimes’s desk and smoothed it out. “Evenin’, Captain, “ he said. “Yesterday’s incident reports, and that. Also, you owe fourpence to the Tea Club. “ “What’s this about a dwarf, Sergeant?” said Vimes abruptly. Colon’s brow wrinkled. “What dwarf?” “The one who’s just joined the Watch. Name of-“ Vimes hesitated-“Carrot, or something. “ “Him?” Colon’s mouth dropped open. “He’s a dwarf? I always said you couldn’t trust them little buggers! He fooled me all right, Captain, the little sod must of lied about his height!” Colon was a sizeist, at least when it came to people smaller than himself. “Do you know he arrested the President of the Thieves’ Guild this morning?” “What for?” “For being president of the Thieves’ Guild, it seems. “ The sergeant looked puzzled. “Where’s the crime in that?” “I think perhaps I had better have a word with this Carrot, “ said Vimes. “Didn’t you see him, sir?” said Colon. “He said he’d reported to you, sir. “ “I, uh, must have been busy at the time. Lot on my mind, “ said Vimes. “Yes, sir, “ said Colon, politely. Vimes had just enough self-respect left to look away and shuffle the strata of paperwork on his desk. “We’ve got to get him off the streets as soon as possible, “ he muttered. “Next thing you know he’ll be bringing in the chief of the Assassins’ Guild for bloody well killing people! Where is he?” “I sent him out with Corporal Nobbs, Captain. I said he’d show him the ropes, sort of thing. “ “You sent a raw recruit out with Nobby?” said Vimes wearily. Colon stuttered. “Well, sir, experienced man, I thought, Corporal Nobbs could teach him a lot-“ “Let’s just hope he’s a slow learner, “ said Vimes, ramming his brown iron helmet on his head. “Come on. “ When they stepped out of the Watch House there was a ladder against the tavern wall. A bulky man at the top of it swore under his breath as he wrestled with the illuminated sign. “It’s the E that doesn’t work properly, “ Vimes called up. “What?” “The E. And the T sizzles when it rains. It’s about time it was fixed. “ “Fixed? Oh. Yes. Fixed. That’s what I’m doing all right. Fixing. “ The Watch men splashed off through the puddles. Brother Watchtower shook his head slowly, and turned his attention once again to his screwdriver.   . . .   Men like Corporal Nobbs can be found in every armed force. Although their grasp of the minutiae of the Regulations is usually encyclopedic, they take good care never to be promoted beyond, perhaps, corporal. He tended to speak out of the corner of his mouth. He smoked incessantly but the weird thing, Carrot noticed, was that any cigarette smoked by Nobby became a dog-end almost instantly but remained a dog-end indefinitely or until lodged behind his ear, which was a sort of nicotine Elephant’s Graveyard. On the rare occasions he took one out of his mouth he held it cupped in his hand. He was a small, bandy-legged man, with a certain resemblance to a chimpanzee who never got invited to tea parties. His age was indeterminate. But in cynicism and general world weariness, which is a sort of carbon dating of the personality, he was about seven thousand years old. “A cushy number, this route, “ he said, as they strolled along a damp street in the merchants’ quarter. He tried a doorhandle. It was locked. “You stick with me, “ he added, “and I’ll see you’re all right. Now, you try the handles on the other side of the street. “ “Ah. I understand, Corporal Nobbs. We’ve got to see if anyone’s left their store unlocked, “ said Carrot. “You catch on fast, son. “ “I hope I can apprehend a miscreant in the act, “ said Carrot zealously. “Er, yeah, “ said Nobby, uncertainly. “But if we find a door unlocked I suppose we must summon the owner, “ Carrot went on. “And one of us would have to stay to guard things, right?” “Yeah?” Nobby brightened. “I’ll do that, “ he said. “Don’t you worry about it. Then you could go and find the victim. Owner, I mean. “ He tried another doorknob. It turned under his grip. “Back in the mountains, “ said Carrot, “if a thief was caught, he was hung up by the-“ He paused, idly rattling a doorknob. Nobby froze. “By the what?” he said, in horrified fascination. “Can’t remember now, “ said Carrot. “My mother said it was too good for them, anyway. Stealing is Wrong. “ Nobby had survived any number of famous massacres by not being there. He let go of the doorknob, and gave it a friendly pat. “Got it!” said Carrot. Nobby jumped. “Got what?” he shouted. “I remember what we hang them up by, “ said Carrot. “Oh, “ said Nobby weakly. “Where?” “We hang them up by the town hall, “ said Carrot. “Sometimes for days. They don’t do it again, I can tell you. And Bjorn Stronginthearm’s your uncle. “ Nobby leaned his pike against the wall and fumbled a fag-end from the recesses of his ear. One or two things, he decided, needed to be sorted out. “Why did you have to become a guard, lad?” he said. “Everyone keeps on asking me that, “ said Carrot. “I didn’t have to. I wanted to. It will make a Man of me. “ Nobby never looked anyone directly in the eye. He stared at Carrot’s right ear in amazement. “You mean you ain’t running away from anything?” he said. “What would I want to run away from anything for?” Nobby floundered a bit. “Ah. There’s always something. Maybe-maybe you was wrongly accused of something. Like, maybe, “ he grinned, “maybe the stores was mysteriously short on certain items and you was unjustly blamed. Or certain items was found in your kit and you never knew how they got there. That sort of thing. You can tell old Nobby. Or, “ he nudged Carrot, “p’raps it was something else, eh? Shershay la fern, eh? Got a girl into trouble?” “I-“ Carrot began, and then remembered that, yes, one should tell the truth, even to odd people like Nobby who didn’t seem to know what it was. And the truth was that he was always getting Minty in trouble, although exactly how and why was a bit of a mystery. Just about every time he left after paying calls on her at the Rocksmacker cave, he could hear her father and mother shouting at her. They were always very polite to him, but somehow merely being seen with him was enough to get Minty into trouble. “Yes, “ he said. “Ah. Often the case, “ said Nobby wisely. “All the time, “ said Carrot. “Just about every night, really. “ “Blimey, “ said Nobby, impressed. He looked down at the Protective. “Is that why they make you wear that, then?” “What do you mean?” “Well, don’t worry about it, “ said Nobby. “Everyone’s got their little secret. Or big secret, as it might be. Even the captain. He’s only with us because he was Brung Low by a Woman. That’s what the sergeant says. Brung low. “ “Goodness, “ said Carrot. It sounded painful. “But I reckon it’s ‘cos he speaks his mind. Spoke it once too often to the Patrician, I heard. Said the Thieves’ Guild was nothing but a pack of thieves, or something. That’s why he’s with us. Dunno, really. “ He looked speculatively at the pavement and then said: “So where’re you staying, lad?” “There’s a lady called Mrs Palm-“ Carrot began. Nobby choked on some smoke that went the wrong way. “In the Shades?” he wheezed. “You’re staying there?” “Oh, yes. “ “Every night?” “Well, every day, really. Yes. “ “And you’ve come here to have a man made of you?” “Yes!” “I don’t think I should like to live where you come from, “ said Nobby. “Look, “ said Carrot, thoroughly lost, “I came because Mr Varneshi said it was the finest job in the world, upholding the law and everything. That’s right, isn’t it?” “Well, er, “ said Nobby. “As to that. . . I mean, upholding the Law. . . I mean, once, yes, before we had all the Guilds and stuff. . . the law, sort of thing, ain’t really, I mean, these days, everything’s more. . . oh, I dunno. Basically you just ring your bell and keep your head down. “ Nobby sighed. Then he grunted, snatched his hourglass from his belt, and peered in at the rapidly-draining sand grains. He put it back, pulled the leather muffler off his bell’s clapper, and shook it once or twice, not very loudly. “Twelve of the clock, “ he muttered, “and all’s well. “ “And that’s it, is it?” said Carrot, as the tiny echoes died away. “More or less. More or less. “ Nobby took a quick drag on his dog-end. “Just that? No moonlight chases across rooftops? No swinging on chandeliers? Nothing like that?” said Carrot. “Shouldn’t think so, “ said Nobby fervently. “I never done anything like that. No-one ever said anything to me about that. “ He snatched a puff on the cigarette. “A man could catch his death of cold, chasing around on rooftops. I reckon I’ll stick to the bell, if it’s all the same to you. “ “Can I have a go?” said Carrot. Nobby was feeling unbalanced. It can be the only reason why he made the mistake of wordlessly handing Carrot the bell. Carrot examined it for a few seconds. Then he waved it vigorously over his head. “Twelve o’clock!” he bellowed. “And all’s weeeeelllll!” The echoes bounced back and forth across the street and finally were overwhelmed by a horrible, thick silence. Several dogs barked somewhere in the night. A baby started crying. “Ssshh!” hissed Nobby. “Well, it is all well, isn’t it?” said Carrot. “It won’t be if you keep on ringing that bloody bell! Give it here. “ “I don’t understand!” said Carrot. “Look, I’ve got this book Mr Varneshi gave me-“ He fumbled for the Laws and Ordinances. Nobby glanced at them, and shrugged. “Never heard of ‘em, “ he said. “Now just shut up your row. You don’t want to go making a din like that. You could attract all sorts. Come on, this way. “ He grabbed Carrot’s arm and bustled him along the street. “What sorts?” protested Carrot as he was pushed determinedly forward. “Bad sorts, “ muttered Nobby. “But we’re the Watch!” “Damn right! And we don’t want to go tangling with people like that! Remember what happened to Gas-kin!” “I don’t remember what happened to Gaskin!” said Carrot, totally bewildered. “Who’s Gaskin?” “Before your time, “ mumbled Nobby. He deflated a bit. “Poor bugger. Could of happened to any of us. “ He looked up and glared at Carrot. “Now stop all this, you hear? It’s getting on my nerves. Moonlight bloody chases, my bum!” He stalked along the street. Nobby’s normal method of locomotion was a kind of sidle, and the combination of stalking and sidling at the same time created a strange effect, like a crab limping. “But, but, “ said Carrot, “in this book it says-“ “I don’t want to know from no book, “ growled Nobby. Carrot looked utterly crestfallen. “But it’s the Law-“ he began. He was nearly terminally interrupted by an axe that whirred out of a low doorway beside him and bounced off the opposite wall. It was followed by sounds of splintering timber and breaking glass. “Hey, Nobby!” said Carrot urgently, “There’s a fight going on!” Nobby glanced at the doorway. “O’course there is, “ he said. “It’s a dwarf bar. Worst kind. You keep out of there, kid. Them little buggers like to trip you up and then kick twelve kinds of shit out of you. You come along o’Nobby and he’ll-“ He grabbed Carrot’s treetrunk arm. It was like trying to tow a building. Carrot had gone pale. “Dwarfs drinking? And fighting?” he said. “You bet, “ said Nobby. “All the time. And they use the kind of language I wouldn’t even use to my own dear mother. You don’t want to mix it with them, they’re a poisonous bunch of-don’t go in there!”   . . .   No-one knows why dwarfs, who at home in the mountains lead quiet, orderly lives, forget it all when they move to the big city. Something comes over even the most blameless iron-ore miner and prompts him to wear chain-mail all the time, carry an axe, change his name to something like Grabthroat Shinkicker and drink himself into surly oblivion. It’s probably because they do live such quiet and orderly lives back home. After all, probably the first thing a young dwarf wants to do when he hits the big city after seventy years of working for his father at the bottom of a pit is have a big drink and then hit someone. The fight was one of those enjoyable dwarfish fights with about a hundred participants and one hundred and fifty alliances. The screams, oaths and the ringing of axes on iron helmets mingled with the sounds of a drunken group by the fireplace who-another dwarfish custom-were singing about gold. Nobby bumped into the back of Carrot, who was watching the scene with horror. “Look, it’s like this every night in here, “ said Nobby. “Don’t interfere, that’s what the sergeant says. It’s their ethnic folkways, or somethin’. You don’t go messin’ with ethnic folkways. “ “But, but, “ Carrot stuttered, “these are my people. Sort of. It’s shameful, acting like this. What must everyone think?” “We think they’re mean little buggers, “ said Nobby. “Now, come on!” But Carrot had waded into the scuffling mass. He cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed something in a language Nobby didn’t understand. Practically any language including his native one would have fitted that description, but in this case it was Dwarfish. “Gr’duzk! Gr’duzk! aaK’zt ezem ke bur’k tze tzim?”[7] The fighting stopped. A hundred bearded faces glared up at Carrot’s stooped figure, their annoyance mingled with surprise. A battered tankard bounced off his breastplate. Carrot reached down and picked up a struggling figure, without apparent effort. “J’uk, ydtruz-t’rud-eztuza, hudr’zddezek drez’huk, huzukruk ‘t b ‘tduz g ‘ke ‘k me ‘ek b ‘tduzt’ be ‘tk kce ‘drutk ke’hkt’d. aaDb’thuk?”[8] No dwarf had ever heard so many Old Tongue words from the mouth of anyone over four feet high. They were astonished. Carrot lowered the offending dwarf to the floor. There were tears in his eyes. “You’re dwarfs!” he said. “Dwarfs shouldn’t be acting like this! Look at you all. Aren’t you ashamed?” One hundred bone-hard jaws dropped. “I mean, look at you!” Carrot shook his head. “Can you imagine what your poor, white-bearded old mother, slaving away back in her little hole, wondering how her son is getting on tonight, can you imagine what she’d think if she saw you now? Your own dear mothers, who first showed you how to use a pickaxe-“ Nobby, standing by the doorway in terror and amazement, was aware of a growing chorus of nose-blowings and muffled sobs as Carrot went on: “-she’s probably thinking, I expect he’s having a quiet game of dominoes or something-“ A nearby dwarf, wearing a helmet encrusted with six-inch spikes, started to cry gently into his beer. “And I bet it’s a long time since any of you wrote her a letter, too, and you promised to write every week-“ Nobby absent-mindedly took out a grubby handkerchief and passed it to a dwarf who was leaning against the wall, shaking with grief. “Now, then, “ said Carrot kindly. “I don’t want to be hard on anyone, but I shall be coming past here every night from now on and I shall expect to see proper standards of dwarf behaviour. I know what it’s like when you’re far from home, but there’s no excuse for this sort of thing. “ He touched his helmet. “G’hruk, t’uk. “[9] He gave them all a bright smile and half-walked, half-crouched out of the bar. As he emerged into the street Nobby tapped him on the arm. “Don’t you ever do anything like that to me again, “ he fumed. “You’re in the City Watch! Don’t give me any more of this law business!” “But it is very important, “ said Carrot seriously, trotting after Nobby as he sidled into a narrower street. “Not as important as stay in’ in one piece, “ said Nobby. “Dwarf bars! If you’ve got any sense, my lad, you’ll come in here. And shut up. “ Carrot stared up at the building they had reached. It was set back a little from the mud of the street. The sounds of considerable drinking were coming from inside. A battered sign hung over the door. It showed a drum. “A tavern, is it?” said Carrot, thoughtfully. “Open at this hour?” “Don’t see why not, “ said Nobby, pushing open the door. “Damn useful idea. The Mended Drum. “ “And more drinking?” Carrot thumbed hastily through the book. “I hope so, “ said Nobby. He nodded to the troll which was employed by the Drum as a splatter, [10] “Eve-nin’, Detritus. Just showing the new lad the ropes. “ The troll grunted, and waved a crusted arm. The inside of the Mended Drum is now legendary as the most famous disreputable tavern on the Disc-world, and such a feature of the city that, after recent unavoidable redecorations, the new owner spent days recreating the original patina of dirt, soot and less identifiable substances on the walls and imported a ton of pre-rotted rushes for the floor. The drinkers were the usual bunch of heroes, cut throats, mercenaries, desperadoes and villains, and only microscopic analysis could have told which was which. Thick coils of smoke hung in the air, perhaps to avoid touching the walls. The conversation dipped fractionally as the two guards wandered in, and then rose to its former level. A couple of cronies waved to Nobby. He realised that Carrot was busy. “What you doin’?” he said. “And no talkin’ about mothers, right?” “I’m taking notes,” said Carrot, grimly. “I’ve got a notebook.” “That’s the ticket,” said Nobby. “You’ll like this place. I comes here every night for my supper.” “How do you spell ‘contravention’?” said Carrot, turning over a page. “I don’t,” said Nobby, pushing through the crowds. A rare impulse to generosity lodged in his mind. “What d’you want to drink?” “I don’t think that would be very appropriate,” said Carrot. “Anyway, Strong Drink is a Mocker.” He was aware of a penetrating stare in the back of his neck, and turned and looked into the big, bland and gentle face of an orangutan. It was seated at the bar with a pint mug and a bowl of peanuts in front of it. It tilted its glass amicably towards Carrot and then drank deeply and noisily by apparently forming its lower lip into a sort of prehensile funnel and making a noise like a canal being drained. Carrot nudged Nobby. “There’s a monk-“ he began. “Don’t say it!” said Nobby urgently. “Don’t say the word! It’s the Librarian. Works up at the University. Always comes down here for a nightcap of an evening.” “And people don’t object?” “Why should they?” said Nobby. “He always stands his round, just like everyone else.” Carrot turned and looked at the ape again. A number of questions pressed for attention, such as: where does it keep its money? The Librarian caught his gaze, misinterpreted it, and gently pushed the bowl of peanuts towards him. Carrot pulled himself to his full impressive height and consulted his notebook. The afternoon spent reading The Laws and Ordinances had been well spent. “Who is the owner, proprietor, lessee, or landlord of these premises?” he said to Nobby. “Wassat?” said the small guard. “Landlord? Well, I suppose Charley here is in charge tonight. Why?” He indicated a large, heavy-set man whose face was a net of scars; its owner paused in the act of spreading the dirt more evenly around some glasses by means of a damp cloth, and gave Carrot a conspiratorial wink. “Charley, this is Carrot,” said Nobby. “He’s stopping along of Rosie Palm’s.” “What, every night?” said Charley. Carrot cleared his throat. “If you are in charge,” he intoned, “then it is my duty to inform you that you are under arrest.” “A rest of what, friend?” said Charley, still polishing. “Under arrest,” said Carrot, “with a view to the presentation of charges to whit l)(i) that on or about 18th Grune, at a place called the Mended Drum, Filigree Street, you did a) serve or b) did cause to serve alcoholic beverages after the hours of 12 (twelve) midnight, contrary to the provisions of the Public Ale Houses (Opening) Act of 1678, and l)(ii) on or about 18th Grune, at a place called the Mended Drum, Filigree Street, you did serve or did cause to serve alcoholic beverages in containers other than of a size and capacity laid down by aforesaid Act, and 2)(i) that on or about 18th Grune, at a place called the Mended Drum, Filigree Street, you did allow customers to carry unsheathed edge weapons of a length greater than 7 (seven) inches, contrary to Section Three of said Act and 2)(ii) that on or about 18th Grune, at a place called the Mended Drum, Filigree Street, you did serve alcoholic beverages in premises apparently unlicensed for the sale and/or consumption of said beverages, contrary to Section Three of the aforesaid Act.” There was dead silence as Carrot turned over another page, and went on: “It is also my duty to inform you that it is my intention to lay evidence before the Justices with a view to the consideration of charges under the Public Foregatherings (Gambling) Act, 1567, the Licensed Premises (Hygiene) Acts of 1433, 1456, 1463, 1465, er, and 1470 through 1690, and also-“ he glanced sideways at the Librarian, who knew trouble when he heard it coming and was hurriedly trying to finish his drink-“the Domestic and Domesticated Animals (Care and Protection) Act, 1673.” The silence that followed held a rare quality of breathless anticipation as the assembled company waited to see what would happen next. Charley carefully put down the glass, whose smears had been buffed up to a brilliant shine, and looked down at Nobby. Nobby was endeavoring to pretend that he was totally alone and had no connection whatsoever with anyone who might be standing next to him and coincidentally wearing an identical uniform. “What’d he mean, Justices?” he said to Nobby. “There ain’t no Justices.” Nobby gave a terrified shrug. “New, is he?” said Charley. “Make it easy on yourself,” said Carrot. “This is nothing personal, you understand,” said Charley to Nobby. “It’s just a wossname. Had a wizard in here the other night talking about it. Sort of bendy educational thing, you know?” He appeared to think for a moment. “Learning curve. That was it. It’s a learning curve. Detritus, get your big stony arse over here a moment.” Generally, about this time in the Mended Drum, someone throws a glass. And, in fact, this now happened.   . . .   Captain Vimes ran up Short Street-the longest in the city, which shows the famous Morpork subtle sense of humour in a nutshell-with Sergeant Colon stumbling along behind, protesting. Nobby was outside the Drum, hopping from one foot to another. In times of danger he had a way of propelling himself from place to place without apparently moving through the intervening space which could put any ordinary matter transporter to shame. “ ‘E’s fighting in there!” he stuttered, grabbing the captain’s arm. “All by himself?” said the captain. “No, with everyone!” shouted Nobby, hopping from one foot to the other. “Oh.” Conscience said: There’s three of you. He’s wearing the same uniform. He’s one of your men. Remember poor old Gaskin. Another part of his brain, the hated, despicable part which had nevertheless enabled him to survive in the Guards these past ten years, said: It’s rude to butt in. We’ll wait until he’s finished, and then ask him if he wants any assistance. Besides, it isn’t Watch policy to interfere in fights. It’s a lot simpler to go in afterwards and arrest anyone recumbent. There was a crash as a nearby window burst outwards and deposited a stunned fighter on the opposite side of the street. “I think,” said the captain carefully, “that we’d better take prompt action.” “That’s right,” said Sgt Colon, “a man could get hurt standing here.” They sidled cautiously a little way down the street, where the sound of splintering wood and breaking glass wasn’t so overpowering, and carefully avoided one another’s eyes. There was the occasional scream from within the tavern, and every now and again a mysterious ringing noise, as though someone was hitting a gong with their knee. They stood in a little pool of embarrassed silence. “You had your holidays this year, Sergeant?” said Captain Vimes eventually, rocking back and forth on his heels. “Yessir. Sent the wife to Quirm last month, sir, to see her aunt.” “Very nice at this time of year, I’m told.” “Yessir.” “All the geraniums and whatnot.” A figure tumbled out of an upper window and crumpled on the cobbles. “That’s where they’ve got the floral sundial, isn’t it?” said the captain desperately. “Yessir. Very nice, sir. All done with little flowers, sir.” There was a sound like something hitting something else repeatedly with something heavy and wooden. Vimes winced. “I don’t think he’d of been happy in the Watch, sir,” said the sergeant, in a kindly voice. The door of the Mended Drum had been torn off during riots so often that specially-tempered hinges had recently been installed, and the fact that the next tremendous crash tore the whole door and doorframe out of the wall only showed that quite a lot of money had been wasted. A figure in the midst of the wreckage tried to raise itself on its elbows, groaned, and slumped back. “Well, it would seem that it’s all-“ the captain began, and Nobby said: “It’s that bloody troll!” “What?” said Vimes. “It’s the troll! The one they have on the door!” They advanced with extreme caution. It was, indeed, Detritus the splatter. It is very difficult to hurt a creature that is, to all intents and purposes, a mobile stone. Someone seemed to have managed it, though. The fallen figure was groaning like a couple of bricks being crushed together. “That’s a turnup for the books,” said the sergeant vaguely. All three of them turned and peered at the brightly-lit rectangle where the doorway had been. Things had definitely quietened down a bit in there. “You don’t think,” said the sergeant, “that he’s winning, do you?” The captain thrust out his jaw. “We owe it to our colleague and fellow officer,” he said, “to find out.” There was a whimper from behind them. They turned and saw Nobby hopping on one leg and clutching a foot. “What’s up with you, man?” said Vimes. Nobby made agonised noises. Sergeant Colon began to understand. Although cautious obsequiousness was the general tenor of Watch behaviour, there wasn’t one member of the entire squad who hadn’t, at some time, been at the wrong end of Detritus’s fists. Nobby had merely tried to play catch-up in the very best traditions of policemen everywhere. “He went and kicked him inna rocks, sir,” he said. “Disgraceful,” said the captain vaguely. He hesitated. “Do trolls have rocks?” he said. “Take it from me, sir.” “Good grief,” Vimes said. “Dame Nature moves in strange ways, doesn’t she.” “Right you are, sir,” said the sergeant obediently. “And now,” said the captain, drawing his sword, “forward!” “Yessir.” “This means you too, Sergeant,” the captain added. “Yessir.”   . . .   It was possibly the most circumspect advance in the history of military manoeuvres, right down at the bottom end of the scale that things like the Charge of the Light Brigade are at the top of. They peered cautiously around the ravished doorway. There were a number of people sprawled across the tables, or what remained of the tables. Those who were still conscious looked unhappy about it. Carrot stood in the middle of the floor. His rusty chain mail was torn, his helmet was missing, he was swaying a little from side to side and one eye was already starting to swell, but he recognised the captain, dropped the feebly-protesting customer he was holding, and threw a salute. “Beg to report thirty-one offences of Making an Affray, sir, and fifty-six cases of Riotous Behaviour, forty-one offences of Obstructing an Officer of the Watch in the Execution of his Duty, thirteen offences of Assault with a Deadly Weapon, six cases of Malicious Lingering, and-and-Corporal Nobby hasn’t even shown me one rope yet-“ He fell backwards, breaking a table. Captain Vimes coughed. He wasn’t at all sure what you were supposed to do next. As far as he knew, the Watch had never been in this position before. “I think you should get him a drink, Sergeant,” he said. “Yessir.” “And get me one, too.” “Yessir.” “Have one yourself, why don’t you.” “Yessir.” “And you, Corporal, will you please-what are you doing?” “Searchingthebodiesir,” said Nobby quickly, straightening up. “For incriminating evidence, and that.” “In their money pouches?” Nobby thrust his hands behind his back. “You never know, sir,” he said. The sergeant had located a miraculously unbroken bottle of spirits in the wreckage and forced a lot of its contents between Carrot’s lips. “What we going to do with all this lot, Captain?” he said over his shoulder. “I haven’t the faintest idea,” said Vimes, sitting down. The Watch jail was just about big enough for six very small people, which were usually the only sort to be put in it. Whereas these- He looked around him desperately. There was Nork the Impaler, lying under a table and making bubbling noises. There was Big Henri. There was Grabber Sim-mons, one of the most feared bar-room fighters in the city. All in all, there were a lot of people it wouldn’t pay to be near when they woke up. “We could cut their froats, sir,” said Nobby, veteran of a score of residual battlefields. He had found an unconscious fighter who was about the right size and was speculatively removing his boots, which looked quite new and about the right size. “That would be entirely wrong,” said Vimes. He wasn’t sure how you actually went about cutting a throat. It had never hitherto been an option. “No,” he said, “I think perhaps we’ll let them off with a caution.” There was a groan from under the bench. “Besides,” he went on quickly, “we should get our fallen comrade to a place of safety as soon as possible.” “Good point,” said the sergeant. He took a swig of the spirits, for the sake of his nerves. The two of them managed to sling Carrot between them and guide his wobbling legs up the steps. Vimes, collapsing under the weight, looked around for Nobby. “Corporal Nobbs,” he rasped, “why are you kicking people when they’re down?” “Safest way, sir,” said Nobby. Nobby had long ago been told about fighting fair and not striking a fallen opponent, and had then given some creative thought to how these rules applied to someone four feet tall with the muscle tone of an elastic band. “Well, stop it. I want you to caution the felons,” said the captain. “How, sir?” “Well, you-“ Captain Vimes stopped. He was blowed if he knew. He’d never done it. “Just do it,” he snapped. “Surely I don’t have to tell you everything?” Nobby was left alone at the top of the stairs. A general muttering and groaning from the floor indicated that people were waking up. Nobby thought quickly. He shook an admonitory cheese-straw of a finger. “Let that be a lesson to you,” he said. “Don’t do it again.” And ran for it. Up in the darkness of the rafters the Librarian scratched himself reflectively. Life was certainly full of surprises. He was going to watch developments with interest. He shelled a thoughtful peanut with his feet, and swung away into the darkness.   . . .   The Supreme Grand Master raised his hands. “Are the Thuribles of Destiny ritually chastised, that Evil and Loose Thinking may be banished from this Sanctified Circle?” “Yep.” The Supreme Grand Master lowered his hands. “Yep?” he said. “Yep,” said Brother Dunnykin happily. “Done it myself.” “You are supposed to say ‘Yea, O Supreme One’,” said the Supreme Grand Master. “Honestly, I’ve told you enough times, if you’re not all going to enter into the spirit of the thing-“ “Yes, you listen to what the Supreme Grand Master tells you,” said Brother Watchtower, glaring at the errant Brother. “I spent hours chastising them thuribles,” muttered Brother Dunnykin. “Carry on, O Supreme Grand Master,” said Brother Watchtower. “Very well, then,” said the Grand Master. “Tonight we’ll try another experimental summoning. I trust you have obtained suitable raw material, brothers?” “-scrubbed and scrubbed, not that you get any thanks-“ “All sorted out, Supreme Grand Master,” said Brother Watchtower. It was, the Grand Master conceded, a slightly better collection. The Brothers had certainly been busy. Pride of place was given to an illuminated tavern sign whose removal, the Grand Master thought, should have merited some sort of civic aware. At the moment the E was a ghastly pink and flashed on and off at random. “I got that,” said Brother Watchtower proudly. “They thought I was mending it or something, but I took my screwdriver and I-“ “Yes, well done,” said the Supreme Grand Master. “Shows initiative.” “Thank you, Supreme Grand Master,” beamed Brother Watchtower. “-knuckles rubbed raw, all red and cracked. Never even got my three dollars back, either, no-one as much as says-“ “And now,” said the Supreme Grand Master, taking up the book, “we will begin to commence. Shut up, Brother Dunnykin.”   . . .   Every town in the multiverse has a part that is something like Ankh-Morpork’s Shades. It’s usually the oldest part, its lanes faithfully following the original tracks of medieval cows going down to the river, and they have names like the Shambles, the Rookery, Sniggs Alley . . . Most of Ankh-Morpork is like that in any case. But the Shades was even more so, a sort of black hole of bred-in-the-brickwork lawlessness. Put it like this: even the criminals were afraid to walk the streets. The Watch didn’t set foot in it. They were accidentally setting foot in it now. Not very reliably. It had been a trying night, and they had been steadying their nerves. They were now so steady that all four were relying on the other three to keep them upright and steer. Captain Vimes passed the bottle back to the sergeant. “Shame on, on, on,” he thought for a bit, “you,” he said. “Drun’ in fron’ of a super, super, superererer ofisiler.” The sergeant tried to speak, but could only come out with a series of esses. “Put yoursel’ onna charge,” said Captain Vimes, rebounding off a wall. He glared at the brickwork. “This wall assaulted me,” he declared. “Hah! Think you’re tough, eh! Well, ‘m a ofisler of, of, of the Law, I’llhaveyouknow, and we don’ take any, any, any.” He blinked slowly, once or twice. “What’s it we don’ take any of, Sar’nt?” he said. “Chances, sir?” said Colon. “No, no, no. S’other stuff. Never mind. Anyway, we don’ take any of, of, of it from anyone.” Vague visions were trotting through his mind, of a room full of criminal types, people that had jeered at him, people whose very existence had offended and taunted him for years, lying around and groaning. He was a little unclear how it had happened, but some almost forgotten part of him, some much younger Vimes with a bright shining breastplate and big hopes, a Vimes he thought the alcohol had long ago drowned, was suddenly restless. “Shallie, shallie, shallie tell you something, Sarn’t?” he said. “Sir?” The four of them bounced gently off another wall and began another slow crabwise waltz across the alley. “This city. This city. This city, Sar’nt. This city is a, is a, is a Woman, Sarn’t. So t’is. A Woman, Sarn’t. Ancient raddled old beauty, Sarn’t. Butifyoufallinlove-withher, then, then, then shekicksyouinnateeth-“ “ ‘s woman?” said Colon. He screwed up his sweating face with the effort of thought. “ ‘s eight miles wide, sir. “s gotta river in it. Lots of, of houses and stuff, sir,” he reasoned. “Ah. Ah. Ah.” Vimes waggled an unsteady finger at him. “Never, never, never said it wasa small woman, did I. Be fair.” He waved the bottle. Another random thought exploded in the froth of his mind. “We showed ‘em, anyway,” he said excitedly, as the four of them began an oblique shuffle back to the opposite wall. “Showed them, dint we? Taught thema forget they won’t lesson inna hurry, eh?” “S’right,” said the sergeant, but not very enthusiastically. He was still wondering about his superior officer’s sex life. But Vimes was in the kind of mood that didn’t need encouragement. “Hah!” he shouted, at the dark alleyways. “Don’ like it, eh? Taste of your, your, your own medicine thingy. Well, now you can bootle in your trems!” He threw the empty bottle into the air. “Two o’clock!” he yelled. “And all’s weeeellll!” Which was astonishing news to the various shadowy figures who had been silently shadowing the four of them for some time. Only sheer puzzlement had prevented them making their attentions sharp and plain. These people are clearly guards, they were thinking, they’ve got the right helmets and everything, and yet here they are in the Shades. So they were being watched with the fascination that a pack of wolves might focus on a handful of sheep who had not only trotted into the clearing, but were making playful butts and baa-ing noises; the outcome was, of course, going to be mutton but in the meantime inquisitiveness gave a stay of execution. Carrot raised his muzzy head. “Where’re we?” he groaned. “On our way home,” said the sergeant. He looked up at the pitted, worm-eaten and knife-scored sign above them. “We’re jus’ goin’ down, goin’ down, goin’ down-“ he squinted-“Sweetheart Lane.” “Sweetheart Lane s’not on the way home,” slurred Nobby. “We wouldn’t wanta go down Sweetheart Lane, it’s in the Shades. Catch us goin’ down Sweetheart Lane-“ There was a crowded moment in which realisation did the icy work of a good night’s sleep and several pints of black coffee. The three of them, by unspoken agreement, clustered up towards Carrot. “What we gonna do, Captain?” said Colon. “Er. We could call for help,” said the captain uncertainly. “What, here?” “You’ve got a point.” “I reckon we must of turned left out of Silver Street instead of right,” quavered Nobby. “Well, that’s one mistake we won’t make again in a hurry,” said the captain. Then he wished he hadn’t. They could hear footsteps. Somewhere off to their left, there was a snigger. “We must form a square,” said the captain. They all tried to form a point. “Hey! What was that?” said Sergeant Colon. “What?” “There it was again. Sort of a leathery sound.” Captain Vimes tried not to think about hoods and garrotting. There were, he knew, many gods. There was a god for every trade. There was a beggars’ god, a whores’ goddess, a thieves’ god, probably even an assassins’ god. He wondered whether there was, somewhere in that vast pantheon, a god who would look kindly on hard-pressed and fairly innocent law-enforcement officers who were quite definitely about to die. There probably wasn’t, he thought bitterly. Something like that wasn’t stylish enough for gods. Catch any god worrying about any poor sod trying to do his best for a handful of dollars a month. Not them. Gods went overboard for smart bastards whose idea of a day’s work was prising the Ruby Eye of the Earwig King out of its socket, not for some unimaginative sap who just pounded the pavement every night . . . “More sort of slithery,” said the sergeant, who liked to get things right. And then there was a sound- -perhaps a volcanic sound, or the sound of a boiling geyser, but at any rate a long, dry roar of a sound, like the bellows in the forges of the Titans- -but it was not so bad as the light, which was blue-white and the sort of light to print the pattern of your eyeballs’ blood vessels on the back of the inside of your skull. They both went on for hundreds of years and then, instantly, stopped. The dark aftermath was filled with purple images and, once the ears regained an ability to hear, a faint, clinkery sound. The guards remained perfectly still for some time. “Well, well,” said the captain weakly. After a further pause he said, very clearly, every consonant slotting perfectly into place, “Sergeant, take some men and investigate that, will you?” “Investigate what, sir?” said Colon, but it had already dawned on the captain that if the sergeant took some men it would leave him, Captain Vimes, all alone. “No, I’ve a better idea. We’ll all go,” he said firmly. They all went. Now that their eyes were used to the darkness they could see an indistinct red glow ahead of them. It turned out to be a wall, cooling rapidly. Bits of calcined brickwork were falling off as they contracted, making little pinging noises. That wasn’t the worst bit. The worst bit was what was on the wall. They stared at it. They stared at it for a long time. It was only an hour or two till dawn, and no-one even suggested trying to find their way back in the dark. They waited by the wall. At least it was warm. They tried not to look at it. Eventually Colon stretched uneasily and said, “Chin up, Captain. It could have been worse.” Vimes finished the bottle. It didn’t have any effect. There were some types of sobriety that you just couldn’t budge. “Yes,” he said. “It could have been us.”   . . .   The Supreme Grand Master opened his eyes. “Once again,” he said, “we have achieved success.” The Brethren burst into a ragged cheer. The Brothers Watchtower and Fingers linked arms and danced an enthusiastic jig in their magic circle. The Supreme Grand Master took a deep breath. First the carrot, he thought, and now the stick. He liked the stick. “Silence!” he screamed. “Brother Fingers, Brother Watchtower, cease this shameful display!” he screeched. “The rest of you, be silent!” They quietened down, like rowdy children who have just seen the teacher come into the room. Then they quieted down a lot more, like children who have just seen the teacher’s expression. The Supreme Grand Master let this sink in, and then stalked along their ragged ranks. “I suppose,” he said, “that we think we’ve done some magic, do we? Hmm? Brother Watchtower?” Brother Watchtower swallowed. “Well, er, you said we were, er, I mean-“ “You haven’t done ANYTHING yet!” “Well, er, no, er-“ Brother Watchtower trembled. “Do real wizards leap about after a tiny spell and start chanting ‘Here we go, here we go, here we go’, Brother Watchtower? Hmm?” “Well, we were sort of-“ The Supreme Grand Master spun on his heel. “And do they keep looking apprehensively at the woodwork, Brother Plasterer? “ Brother Plasterer hung his head. He hadn’t realised anyone had noticed. When the tension was twanging satisfactorily, like a bowstring, the Supreme Grand Master stood back. “Why do I bother?” he said, shaking his head. “I could have chosen anyone. I could have picked the best. But I’ve got a bunch of children. “ “Er, honest,” said Brother Watchtower, “we was making an effort, I mean, we was really concentrating. Weren’t we, lads?” “Yes,” they chorused. The Supreme Grand Master glared at them. “There’s no room in this Brotherhood for Brothers who are not behind us all the way,” he warned. With almost visible relief the Brethren, like panicked sheep who see that a hurdle has been opened in the fold, galloped towards the opening. “No worries about that, your supremity,” said Brother Watchtower fervently. “Commitment must be our watchword!” said the Supreme Grand Master. “Watchword. Yeah,” said Brother Watchtower. He nudged Brother Plasterer, whose eyes had strayed to the skirting board again. “Wha? Oh. Yeah. Watchword. Yeah,” said Brother Plasterer. “And trust and fraternity,” said the Supreme Grand Master. “Yeah. And them, too,” said Brother Fingers. “So,” said the Supreme Grand Master, “if there be any one here not anxious, yea, eager to continue in this great work, let him step forward now.” No-one moved. They’re hooked. Ye gods, I’m good at this, thought the Supreme Grand Master. I can play on their horrible little minds like a xylophone. It’s amazing, the sheer power of mundanity. Who’d have thought that weakness could be a greater force than strength? But you have to know how to direct it. And I do. “Very well, then,” he said. “And now, we will repeat the Oath.” He led their stumbling, terrified voices through it, noting with approval the strangled way they said ‘fig-gin’. And he kept one eye on Brother Fingers, too. He’s slightly brighter than the others, he thought. Slightly less gullible, at least. Better make sure I’m always the last to leave. Don’t want any clever ideas about following me home.   . . .   You need a special kind of mind to rule a city like Ankh-Morpork, and Lord Vetinari had it. But then, he was a special kind of person. He baffled and infuriated the lesser merchant princes, to the extent that they had long ago given up trying to assassinate him and now merely jockeyed for position amongst themselves. Anyway, any assassin who tried to attack the Patrician would be hard put to it to find enough flesh to insert the dagger. While other lords dined on larks stuffed with peacocks’ tongues, Lord Vetinari considered that a glass of boiled water and half a slice of dry bread was an elegant sufficiency. It was exasperating. He appeared to have no vice that anyone could discover. You’d have thought, with that pale, equine face, that he’d incline towards stuff with whips, needles, and young women in dungeons. The other lords could have accepted that. Nothing wrong with whips and needles, in moderation. But the Patrician apparently spent his evenings studying reports and, on special occasions, if he could stand the excitement, playing chess. He wore black a lot. It wasn’t particularly impressive black, such as the best assassins wore, but the sober, slightly shabby black of a man who doesn’t want to waste time in the mornings wondering what to wear. And you had to get up very early in the morning to get the better of the Patrician; in fact, it was wiser not to go to bed at all. But he was popular, in a way. Under his hand, for the first time in a thousand years, Ankh-Morpork operated. It might not be fair or just or particularly democratic, but it worked. He tended it as one tends a topiary bush, encouraging a growth here, pruning an errant twig there. It was said that he would tolerate absolutely anything apart from anything that threatened the city[11], and here it was . . . He stared at the stricken wall for a long time, while the rain dripped off his chin and soaked his clothes. Behind him, Wonse hovered nervously. Then one long, thin, blue-veined hand reached out and the fingertips traced the shadows. Well, not so much shadows, more a series of silhouettes. The outline was very distinct. Inside, there was the familiar pattern of brickwork. Outside, though, something had fused the wall in a rather nice ceramic substance, giving the ancient flettons a melted, mirror-like finish. The shapes outlined in brickwork showed a tableau of six men frozen in an attitude of surprise. Various upraised hands had quite clearly been holding knives and cutlasses. Then Patrician looked down silently on the pile of ash at his feet. A few streaks of molten metal might once have been the very same weapons that were now so decisively etched into the wall. “Hmm,” he said. Captain Vimes respectfully led him across the lane and into Fast Luck Alley, where he pointed out Exhibit A, to whit . . . “Footprints,” he said. “Which is stretching it a bit, sir. They’re more what you’d call claws. One might go so far as to say talons.” The Patrician stared at the prints in the mud. His expression was quite unreadable. “I see,” he said eventually. “And do you have an opinion about all this, Captain?” The captain did. In the hours until dawn he’d had all sorts of opinions, starting with a conviction that it had been a big mistake to be born. And then the grey light had filtered even into the Shades, and he was still alive and uncooked, and had looked around him with an expression of idiot relief and seen, not a yard away, these footprints. That had not been a good moment to be sober. “Well, sir,” he said, “I know that dragons have been extinct for thousands of years, sir-“ “Yes?” The Patrician’s eyes narrowed. Vimes plunged on. “But, sir, the thing is, do they know? Sergeant Colon said he heard a leathery sound just before, just before, just before the, er . . . offence.” “So you think an extinct, and indeed a possibly entirely mythical, dragon flew into the city, landed in this narrow alley, incinerated a group of criminals, and then flew away?” said the Patrician. “One might say, it was a very public-spirited creature.” “Well, when you put it like that-“ “If I recall, the dragons of legend were solitary and rural creatures who shunned people and dwelt in forsaken, out of the way places,” said the Patrician. “They were hardly urban creatures.” “No, sir,” said the captain, repressing a comment that if you wanted to find a really forsaken, out of the way place then the Shades would fit the bill pretty well. “Besides,” said Lord Vetinari, “one would imagine that someone would have noticed, wouldn’t you agree?” The captain nodded at the wall and its dreadful frieze. “Apart from them, you mean, sir?” “In my opinion,” said Lord Vetinari, “it’s some kind of warfare. Possibly a rival gang has hired a wizard. A little local difficulty.” “Could be linked to all this strange thieving, sir,” volunteered Wonse. “But there’s the footprints, sir,” said Vimes doggedly. “We’re close to the river,” said the Patrician. “Possibly it was, perhaps, a wading bird of some sort. A mere coincidence,” he added, “but I should cover them over, if I were you. We don’t want people getting the wrong idea and jumping to silly conclusions, do we?” he added sharply. Vimes gave in. “As you wish, sir,” he said, looking at his sandals. The Patrician patted him on the shoulder. “Never mind,” he said. “Carry on. Good show of initiative, that man. Patrolling in the Shades, too. Well done.” He turned, and almost walked into the wall of chain mail that was Carrot. To his horror, Captain Vimes saw his newest recruit point politely to the Patrician’s coach. Around it, fully-armed and wary, were six members of the Palace Guard, who straightened up and took a wary interest. Vimes disliked them intensely. They had plumes on their helmets. He hated plumes on a guard. He heard Carrot say. “Excuse me, sir, is this your coach, sir?” and the Patrician looked him blankly up and down and said, “It is. Who are you, young man?” Carrot saluted. “Lance-constable Carrot, sir.” “Carrot, Carrot. That name rings a bell.” Lupine Wonse, who had been hovering behind him, whispered in the Patrician’s ear. His face brightened.”Ah, the young thief-taker. A little error there, I think, but commendable. No person is above the law, eh?” “No, sir,” said Carrot. “Commendable, commendable,” said the Patrician. “And now, gentlemen-“ “About your coach, sir,” said Carrot doggedly, “I couldn’t help noticing that the front offside wheel, contrary to the-“ He’s going to arrest the Patrician, Vimes told himself, the thought trickling through his brain like an icy rivulet. He’s actually going to arrest the Patrician. The supreme ruler. He’s going to arrest him. This is what he’s actually going to do. The boy doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘fear’. Oh, wouldn’t it be a good idea if he knew the meaning of the word ‘survival’ . . . And I can’t get my jaw muscles to move. We’re all dead. Or worse, we’re all detained at the Patrician’s pleasure. And as we all know, he’s seldom that pleased. It was at this precise moment that Sergeant Colon earned himself a metaphorical medal. “Lance-constable Carrot!” he shouted. “Attention! Lance-constable Carrot, abou-uta turna! Lance-constable Carrot, qui-uck marcha!” Carrot brought himself to attention like a barn being raised and stared straight ahead with a ferocious expression of acute obedience. “Well done, that man,” said the Patrician thoughtfully, as Carrot strode stiffly away. “Carry on, Captain. And do come down heavily on any silly rumours about dragons, right?” “Yes, sir,” said Captain Vimes. “Goodman.” The coach rattled off, the bodyguard running alongside. Behind him, Captain Vimes was only vaguely aware of the sergeant yelling at the retreating Carrot to stop. He was thinking. He looked at the prints in the mud. He used his regulation pike, which he knew was exactly seven feet long, to measure their size and the distance between them. He whistled under his breath. Then, with considerable caution, he followed the alley around the corner; it led to a small, padlocked and dirt-encrusted door in the back of a timber warehouse. There was something very wrong, he thought. The prints come out of the alley, but they don’t go in. And we don’t often get any wading birds in the Ankh, mainly because the pollution would eat their legs away and anyway, it’s easier for them to walk on the surface. He looked up. A myriad washing lines criss-crossed the narrow rectangle of the sky as efficiently as a net. So, he thought, something big and fiery came out of this alley but didn’t come into it. And the Patrician is very worried about it. I’ve been told to forget about it. He noticed something else at the side of the alley, and bent down and picked up a fresh, empty peanut shell. He tossed it from hand to hand, staring at nothing. Right now, he needed a drink. But perhaps it ought to wait.   . . .   The Librarian knuckled his way urgently along the dark aisles between the slumbering bookshelves. The rooftops of the city belonged to him. Oh, assassins and thieves might make use of them, but he’d long ago found the forest of chimneys, buttresses, gargoyles and weathervanes a convenient and somehow comforting alternative to the streets. At least, up until now. It had seemed amusing and instructive to follow the Watch into the Shades, an urban jungle which held no fears for a 300-lb ape. But now the nightmare he had seen while brachiating across a dark alley would, if he had been human, have made him doubt the evidence of his own eyes. As an ape, he had no doubts whatsoever about his eyes and believed them all the time. Right now he wanted to concentrate them urgently on a book that might hold a clue. It was in a section no-one bothered with much these days; the books in there were not really magical. Dust lay accusingly on the floor. Dust with footprints in it. “Oook?” said the Librarian, in the warm gloom. He proceeded cautiously now, realising with a sense of inevitability that the footprints seemed to have the same destination in mind as he did. He turned a corner and there it was. The section. The bookcase. The shelf. The gap. There are many horrible sights in the multiverse. Somehow, though, to a soul attuned to the subtle rhythms of a library, there are few worse sights than a hole where a book ought to be. Someone had stolen a book.   . . .   In the privacy of the Oblong Office, his personal sanctum, the Patrician paced up and down. He was dictating a stream of instructions. “And send some men to paint that wall,” he finished. Lupine Wonse raised an eyebrow. “Is that wise, sir?” he said. “You don’t think a frieze of ghastly shadows will cause comment and speculation?” said the Patrician sourly. “Not as much as fresh paint in the Shades,” said Wonse evenly. The Patrician hesitated a moment. “Good point,” he snapped. “Have some men demolish it.” He reached the end of the room, spun on his heel, and stalked up it again. Dragons! As if there were not enough important, enough real things to take up his time. “Do you believe in dragons?” he said. Wonse shook his head. “They’re impossible, sir.” “So I’ve heard,” said Lord Vetinari. He reached the opposite wall, turned. “Would you like me to investigate further?” said Wonse. “Yes. Do so.” “And I shall ensure the Watch take great care,” said Wonse. The Patrician stopped his pacing. “The Watch? The Watch? My dear chap, the Watch are a bunch of incompetents commanded by a drunkard. It’s taken me years to achieve it. The last thing we need to concern ourselves with is the Watch.” He thought for a moment. “Ever seen a dragon, Wonse? One of the big ones, I mean? Oh, they’re impossible. You said.” “They’re just legend, really. Superstition,” said Wonse. “Hmm,” said the Patrician. “And the thing about legends, of course, is that they are legendary.” “Exactly, sir.” “Even so-“ The Patrician paused, and stared at Wonse for some time. “Oh, well,” he said. “Sort it out. I’m not having any of this dragon business. It’s the type of thing that makes people restless. Put a stop to it.” When he was alone he stood and looked out gloomily over the twin city. It was drizzling again. Ankh-Morpork! Brawling city of a hundred thousand souls! And, as the Patrician privately observed, ten times that number of actual people. The fresh rain glistened on the panorama of towers and rooftops, all unaware of the teeming, rancorous world it was dropping into. Luckier rain fell on upland sheep, or whispered gently over forests, or patterned somewhat incestuously into the sea. Rain that fell on Ankh-Morpork, though, was rain that was in trouble. They did terrible things to water, in Ankh-Morpork. Being drunk was only the start of its problems. The Patrician liked to feel that he was looking out over a city that worked. Not a beautiful city, or a renowned city, or a well-drained city, and certainly not an architecturally favoured city; even its most enthusiastic citizens would agree that, from a high point of vantage, Ankh-Morpork looked as though someone had tried to achieve in stone and wood an effect normally associated with the pavements outside all-night takeaways. But it worked. It spun along cheerfully like a gyroscope on the lip of a catastrophe curve. And this, the Patrician firmly believed, was because no one group was ever powerful enough to push it over. Merchants, thieves, assassins, wizards-all competed energetically in the race without really realising that it needn’t be a race at all, and certainly not trusting one another enough to stop and wonder who had marked out the course and was holding the starting flag. The Patrician disliked the word ‘dictator.’ It affronted him. He never told anyone what to do. He didn’t have to, that was the wonderful part. A large part of his life consisted of arranging matters so that this state of affairs continued. Of course, there were various groups seeking his overthrow, and this was right and proper and the sign of a vigorous and healthy society. No-one could call him unreasonable about the matter. Why, hadn’t he founded most of them himself? And what was so beautiful was the way in which they spent nearly all their time bickering with one another. Human nature, the Patrician always said, was a marvellous thing. Once you understood where its levers were. He had an unpleasant premonition about this dragon business. If ever there was a creature that didn’t have any obvious levers, it was a dragon. It would have to be sorted out. The Patrician didn’t believe in unnecessary cruelty.[12] He did not believe in pointless revenge. But he was a great believer in the need for things to be sorted out. Funnily enough, Captain Vimes was thinking the same thing. He found he didn’t like the idea of citizens, even of the Shades, being turned into a mere ceramic tint. And it had been done in front of the Watch, more or less. As if the Watch didn’t matter, as if the Watch was just an irrelevant detail. That was what rankled. Of course, it was true. That only made it worse. What was making him even angrier was that he had disobeyed orders. He had scuffed up the tracks, certainly. But in the bottom drawer of his ancient desk, hidden under a pile of empty bottles, was a plaster cast. He could feel it staring at him through three layers of wood. He couldn’t imagine what had got into him. And now he was going even further out on to the limb. He reviewed his, for want of a better word, troops. He’d asked the senior pair to turn up in plain clothes. This meant that Sergeant Colon, who’d worn uniform all his life, was looking red-faced and uncomfortable in the suit he wore for funerals. Whereas Nobby- “I wonder if I made the word ‘plain’ clear enough?” said Captain Vimes. “It’s what I wear outside work, guv,” said Nobby reproachfully. “Sir,” corrected Sergeant Colon. “My voice is in plain clothes too,” said Nobby. “Initiative, that is.” Vimes walked slowly around the corporal. “And your plain clothes do not cause old women to faint and small boys to run after you in the street?” he said. Nobby shifted uneasily. He wasn’t at home with irony. “No, sir, guv,” he said. “It’s all the go, this style.” This was broadly true. There was a current fad in Ankh for big, feathered hats, ruffs, slashed doublets with gold frogging, flared pantaloons and boots with ornamental spurs. The trouble was, Vimes reflected, that most of the fashion-conscious had more body to go between these component bits, whereas all that could be said of Corporal Nobbs was that he was in there somewhere. It might be advantageous. After all, absolutely no-one would ever believe, when they saw him coming down the street, that here was a member of the Watch trying to look inconspicuous. It occurred to Vimes that he knew absolutely nothing about Nobbs outside working hours. He couldn’t even remember where the man lived. All these years he’d known the man and he’d never realised that, in his secret private life, Corporal Nobbs was a bit of a peacock. A very short peacock, it was true, a peacock that had been hit repeatedly with something heavy, perhaps, but a peacock nonetheless. It just went to show, you never could tell. He brought his attention back to the business in hand. “I want you two,” he said to Nobbs and Colon, “to mingle unobtrusively, or obtrusively in your case, Corporal Nobbs, with people tonight and, er, see if you can detect anything unusual.” “Unusual like what?” said the sergeant. Vimes hesitated. He wasn’t exactly sure himself. “ Anything,” he said, “ pertinent.” “Ah.” The sergeant nodded wisely. “Pertinent. Right.” There was an awkward silence. “Maybe people have seen weird things,” said Captain Vimes. “Or perhaps there have been unexplained fires. Or footprints. You know,” he finished, desperately, “signs of dragons.” “You mean, like, piles of gold what have been slept on,” said the sergeant. “And virgins being chained to rocks,” said Nobbs, knowingly. “I can see you’re experts,” sighed Vimes. “Just do the best you can.” “This mingling,” said Sergeant Colon delicately, “it would involve going into taverns and drinking and similar, would it?” “To a certain extent,” said Vimes. “Ah,” said the sergeant, happily. “In moderation.” “Right you are, sir.” “And at your own expense.” “Oh.” “But before you go,” said the captain, “do either of you know anyone who might know anything about dragons? Apart from sleeping on gold and the bit with the young women, I mean.” “Wizards would,” volunteered Nobby. “Apart from wizards,” said Vimes firmly. You couldn’t trust wizards. Every guard knew you couldn’t trust wizards. They were even worse than civilians. Colon thought about it. “There’s always Lady Ramkin,” he said. “Lives in Scoone Avenue. Breeds swamp dragons. You know, the little buggers people keep as pets?” “Oh, her,” said Vimes gloomily. “I think I’ve seen her around. The one with the ‘Whinny If You Love Dragons’ sticker on the back of her carriage?” “That’s her. She’s mental,” said Sergeant Colon. “What do you want me to do, sir?” said Carrot. “Er. You have the most important job,” said Vimes hurriedly. “I want you to stay here and watch the office.” Carrot’s face broadened in a slow, unbelieving grin. “You mean I’m left in charge, sir?” he said. “In a manner of speaking,” said Vimes. “But you’re not allowed to arrest anyone, understand?” he added quickly. “Not even if they’re breaking the law, sir?” “Not even then. Just make a note of it.” “I’ll read my book, then,” said Carrot. “And polish my helmet.” “Good boy,” said the captain. It should be safe enough, he thought. No-one ever comes in here, not even to report a lost dog. No-one ever thinks about the Watch. You’d have to be really out of touch to go to the Watch for help, he thought bitterly.   . . .   Scoone Avenue was a wide, tree-lined, and incredibly select part of Ankh, high enough above the river to be away from its all-pervading smell. People in Scoone Avenue had old money, which was supposed to be much better than new money, although Captain Vimes had never had enough of either to spot the difference. People in Scoone Avenue had their own personal bodyguards. People in Scoone Avenue were said to be so aloof they wouldn’t even talk to the gods. This was a slight slander. They would talk to gods, if they were well-bred gods of decent family. Lady Ramkin’s house was not hard to find. It commanded an outcrop that gave it a magnificent view of the city, if that was your idea of a good time. There were stone dragons on the gatepost, and the gardens had an unkempt overgrown look. Statues of Ramkins long gone loomed up out of the greenery. Most of them had swords and were covered in ivy up to the neck. Vimes sensed that this was not because the garden’s owner was too poor to do anything about it, but rather that the garden’s owner thought there were much more important things than ancestors, which was a pretty unusual point of view for an aristocrat. They also apparently thought that there were more important things than property repair. When he rang the bell of the rather pleasant old house itself, in the middle of a flourishing rhododendron forest, several bits of the plaster facade fell off. That seemed to be the only effect, except that something round the back of the house started to howl. Some things. It started to rain again. After a while Vimes felt the dignity of his position and cautiously edged around the building, keeping well back in case anything else collapsed. He reached a heavy wooden gate in a heavy wooden wall. In contrast with the general decrepitude of the rest of the place, it seemed comparatively new and very solid. He knocked. This caused another fusillade of strange whistling noises. The door opened. Something dreadful loomed over him. “Ah, good man. Do you know anything about mating?” it boomed.   . . .   It was quiet and warm in the Watch House. Carrot listened to the hissing of sand in the hourglass and concentrated on buffing up his breastplate. Centuries of tarnish had given up under his cheerful onslaught. It gleamed. You knew where you were with a shiny breastplate. The strangeness of the city, where they had all these laws and concentrated on ignoring them, was too much for him. But a shiny breastplate was a breastplate well shined. The door opened. He peered across the top of the ancient desk. There was no-one there. He tried a few more industrious rubs. There was the vague sound of someone who had got fed up with waiting. Two purple-fingernailed hands grasped the edge of the desk, and the Librarian’s face rose slowly into view like an early-morning coconut. “Oook,” he said. Carrot stared. It had been explained to him carefully that, contrary to appearances, laws governing the animal kingdom did not apply to the Librarian. On the other hand, the Librarian himself was never very interested in obeying the laws governing the human kingdom, either. He was one of those little anomalies you have to build around. “Hallo,” said Carrot uncertainly. (“Don’t call him ‘boy’ or pat him, that always gets him annoyed.”) “Oook.” The Librarian prodded the desk with a long, many-jointed finger. “What?” “Oook. “ “Sorry?” The Librarian rolled his eyes. It was strange, he felt, that so-called intelligent dogs, horses and dolphins never had any difficulty indicating to humans the vital news of the moment, e.g., that the three children were lost in the cave, or the train was about to take the line leading to the bridge that had been washed away or similar, while he, only a handful of chromosomes away from wearing a vest, found it difficult to persuade the average human to come in out of the rain. You just couldn’t talk to some people. “Oook!” he said, and beckoned. “I can’t leave the office,” said Carrot. “I’ve had Orders.” The Librarian’s upper lip rolled back like a blind. “Is that a smile?” said Carrot. The Librarian shook his head. “Someone hasn’t committed a crime, have they?” said Carrot. “Oook.” “A bad crime?” “Oook!” “Like murder?” “Eeek.” “Worse than murder?” “Eeek!” The Librarian knuckled over to the door and bounced up and down urgently. Carrot gulped. Orders were orders, yes, but this was something else. The people in this city were capable of anything. He buckled on his breastplate, screwed his sparkling helmet on to his head, and strode towards the door. Then he remembered his responsibilities. He went back to the desk, found a scrap of paper, and painstakingly wrote: Out Fighting Crime, Pleass Call Again Later. Thankyou. And then he went out on to the streets, untarnished and unafraid.   . . .   The Supreme Grand Master raised his arms. “Brethren,” he said, “let us begin . . .” It was so easy. All you had to do was channel that great septic reservoir of jealousy and cringing resentment that the Brothers had in such abundance, harness their dreadful mundane unpleasantness which had a force greater in its way than roaring evil, and then open your own mind . . . . . . into the place where the dragons went.   . . .   Vimes found himself grabbed by the arm and pulled inside. The heavy door shut behind him with a definite click. “It’s Lord Mountjoy Gayscale Talonthrust III of Ankh,” said the apparition, which was dressed in huge and fearsomely-padded armour. “You know, I really don’t think he can cut the mustard.” “He can’t?” said Vimes, backing away. “It really needs two of you.” “It does, doesn’t it,” whispered Vimes, his shoulder blades trying to carve their way out through the fence. “Could you oblige?” boomed the thing. “What?” “Oh, don’t be squeamish, man. You just have to help him up into the air. It’s me who has the tricky part. I know it’s cruel, but if he can’t manage it tonight then he’s for the choppy-chop. Survival of the fittest and all that, don’t you know.” Captain Vimes managed to get a grip on himself. He was clearly in the presence of some sex-crazed would-be murderess, insofar as any gender could be determined under the strange lumpy garments. If it wasn’t female, then references to “it’s me who has the tricky part” gave rise to mental images that would haunt him for some time to come. He knew the rich did things differently, but this was going too far. “Madam,” he said coldly, “I am an officer of the Watch and I must warn you that the course of action you are suggesting breaks the laws of the city-“ and also of several of the more strait-laced gods, he added silently-“and I must advise you that his Lordship should be released unharmed immediately-“ The figure stared at him in astonishment. “Why?” it said. “It’s my bloody dragon.”   . . .   “Have another drink, not-Corporal Nobby?” said Sergeant Colon unsteadily. “I do not mind if I do, not-Sgt Colon,” said Nobby. They were taking inconspicuosity seriously. That ruled out most of the taverns on the Morpork side of the river, where they were very well known. Now they were in a rather elegant one in downtown Ankh, where they were being as unobtrusive as they knew how. The other drinkers thought they were some kind of cabaret. “I was thinking,” said Sgt Colon. “What?” “If we bought a bottle or two, we could go home and then we’d be really inconspicuous.” Nobby gave this some thought. “But he said we’ve got to keep our ears open,” he said. “We’re supposed to, what he said, detect anything.” “We can do that at my house,” said Sgt Colon. “We could listen all night, really hard.” “Tha’s a good point,” said Nobby. In fact, it sounded better and better the more he thought about it. “But first,” he announced, “I got to pay a visit.” “Me too,” said the sergeant. “This detecting business gets to you after a while, doesn’t it.” They stumbled out into the alley behind the tavern. There was a full moon up, but a few rags of scruffy cloud were drifting across it. The pair inconspicuously bumped into one another in the darkness. “Is that you, Detector Sergeant Colon?” said Nobby. “Tha’s right! Now, can you detect the door to the privy, Detector Corporal Nobbs? We’re looking for a short, dark door of mean appearance, ahahaha.” There were a couple of clanks and a muffled swearword from Nobby as he staggered across the alley, followed by a yowl when one of Ankh-Morpork’s enormous population of feral cats fled between his legs. “Who loves you, pussycat?” said Nobby under his breath. “Needs must, then,” said Sgt Colon, and faced a handy corner. His private musings were interrupted by a grunt from the corporal. “You there, Sgt?” “Detector Sergeant to you, Nobby,” said Sgt Colon pleasantly. Nobby’s tone was urgent and suddenly very sober. “Don’t piss about, Sergeant, I just saw a dragon fly over!” “I’ve seen a horsefly,” said Sgt Colon, hiccuping gently. “And I’ve seen a housefly. I’ve even seen a greenfly. But I ain’t never seen a dragon fly.” “Of course you have, you pillock,” said Nobby urgently. “Look, I’m not messing about! He had wings on him like, like, like great big wings!” Sergeant Colon turned majestically. The corporal’s face had gone so white that it showed up in the darkness. “Honest, Sergeant!” Sgt Colon turned his eyes to the damp sky and the rain-washed moon. “All right,” he said, “show me.” There was a slithering noise behind him, and a couple of roof tiles smashed on to the street. He turned. And there, on the roof, was the dragon. “There’s a dragon on the roof!” he warbled. “Nobby, it’s a dragon on the roof! What shall I do, Nobby? There’s a dragon on the roof! It’s looking right at me, Nobby!” “For a start, you could do your trousers up,” said Nobby, from behind the nearest wall.   . . .   Even shorn of her layers of protective clothing, Lady Sybil Ramkin was still toweringly big. Vimes knew that the barbarian hublander folk had legends about great chain-mailed, armour-bra’d, carthorse-riding maidens who swooped down on battlefields and carried off dead warriors on their cropper to a glorious roistering afterlife, while singing in a pleasing mezzo-soprano. Lady Ramkin could have been one of them. She could have led them. She could have carried off a battalion. When she spoke, every word was like a hearty slap on the back and clanged with the aristocratic self-assurance of the totally well-bred. The vowel sounds alone would have cut teak. Vimes’s ragged forebears were used to voices like that, usually from heavily-armoured people on the back of a war charger telling them why it would be a jolly good idea, don’tcherknow, to charge the enemy and hit them for six. His legs wanted to stand to attention. Prehistoric men would have worshipped her, and in fact had amazingly managed to carve lifelike statues of her thousands of years ago. She had a mass of chestnut hair; a wig, Vimes learned later. No-one who had much to do with dragons kept their own hair for long. She also had a dragon on her shoulder. It had been introduced as Talonthrust Vincent Wonderkind of Quirm, referred to as Vinny, and seemed to be making a large contribution to the unusual chemical smell that pervaded the house. This smell permeated everything. Even the generous slice of cake she offered him tasted of it. “The, er, shoulder . . . it looks . . . very nice,” he said, desperate to make conversation. “Rubbish,” said her ladyship. “I’m just training him up because shoulder-sitters fetch twice the price.” Vimes murmured that he had occasionally seen society ladies with small, colourful dragons on their shoulders, and thought it looked very, er, nice. “Oh, it sounds nice,” she said. “I’ll grant you. Then they realise it means sootburns, frizzled hair and crap all down their back. Those talons dig in, too. And then they think the thing’s getting too big and smelly and next thing you know it’s either down to the Mor-pork Sunshine Sanctuary for Lost Dragons or the old heave-ho into the river with a rope round your neck, poor little buggers.” She sat down, arranging a skirt that could have made sails for a small fleet. “Now then. Captain Vimes, was it?” Vimes was at a loss. Ramkins long-dead stared down at him from ornate frames high on the shadowy walls. Between, around and under the portraits were the weapons they’d presumably used, and had used well and often by the look of them. Suits of armour stood in dented ranks along the walls. Quite a number, he couldn’t help noticing, had large holes in them. The ceiling was a faded riot of moth-eaten banners. You did not need forensic examination to understand that Lady Ramkin’s ancestors had never shirked a fight. It was amazing that she was capable of doing something so unwarlike as having a cup of tea. “My forebears,” she said, following his hypnotised gaze. “You know, not one Ramkin in the last thousand years has died in his bed.” “Yes, ma’am?” “Source of family pride, that.” “Yes, ma’am.” “Quite a few of them have died in other people’s, of course.” Captain Vimes’s teacup rattled in its saucer. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Captain is such a dashing title, I’ve always thought.” She gave him a bright, brittle smile. “I mean, colonels and so on are always so stuffy, majors are pompous, but one always feels somehow that there is something delightfully dangerous about a captain. What was it you had to show me?” Vimes gripped his parcel like a chastity belt. “I wondered,” he faltered, “how big swamp . . . er . . .”He stopped. Something dreadful was happening to his lower regions. Lady Ramkin followed his gaze. “Oh, take no notice of bun,” she said cheerfully. “Hit him with a cushion if he’s a bother.” A small elderly dragon had crawled out from under his chair and placed its jowly muzzle in Vimes’s lap. It stared up at him soulfully with big brown eyes and gently dribbled something quite corrosive, by the feel of it, over his knees. And it stank like the ring around an acid bath. “That’s Dewdrop Mabelline Talonthrust the First,” said her ladyship. “Champion and sire of champions. No fire left now, poor soppy old thing. He likes his belly rubbed.” Vimes made surreptitiously vicious jerking motions to dislodge the old dragon. It blinked mournfully at him with rheumy eyes and rolled back the corner of its mouth, exposing a picket fence of soot-blackened teeth. “Just push him off if he’s a nuisance,” said Lady Ramkin cheerfully. “Now then, what was it you were asking?” “I was wondering how big swamp dragons grow?” said Vimes, trying to shift position. There was a faint growling noise. “You came all the way up here to ask me that? Well . . . I seem to recall Gayheart Talonthrust of Ankh stood fourteen thumbs high, toe to matiock,” mused Lady Ramkin. “Er . . .” “About three foot six inches,” she added kindly. “No bigger than that?” said Vimes hopefully. In his lap the old dragon began to snore gently. “Golly, no. He was a bit of a freak, actually. Mostly they don’t get much bigger than eight thumbs.” Captain Vimes’s lips moved in hurried calculation. “Two feet?” he ventured. “Well done. That’s the cobbs, of course. The hens are a bit smaller.” Captain Vimes wasn’t going to give in. “A cobb would be a male dragon?” he said. “Only after the age of two years,” said Lady Ramkin triumphantly. “Up to the age of eight months he’s a pewmet, then he’s a cock until fourteen months, and then he’s a snood-“ Captain Vimes sat entranced, eating the horrible cake, britches gradually dissolving, as the stream of information flooded over him; how the males fought with flame but in the laying season only the hens* breathed fire, from the combustion of complex intestinal gases, to incubate the eggs which needed such a fierce temperature, while the males gathered firewood; a group of swamp dragons was a slump or an embarrassment; a female was capable of laying up to three clutches of four eggs every year, most of which were trodden on by absent-minded males; and that dragons “Only until their third clutch, of course. After that they’re dams. of both sexes were vaguely uninterested in one another, and indeed everything except firewood, except for about once every two months when they became as single-minded as a buzzsaw. He was helpless to prevent himself being taken out to the kennels at the back, outfitted from neck to ankle in leather armour faced with steel plates, and ushered into the long low building where the whistling had come from. The temperature was terrible, but not as bad as the cocktail of smells. He staggered aimlessly from one metal-lined pen to another, while pear-shaped, squeaking little horrors with red eyes were introduced as “Moonpenny Duchess Marchpaine, who’s gravid at the moment” and “Moonmist Talonthrust II, who was Best of Breed at Pseudopolis last year”. Jets of pale green flame played across his knees. Many of the stalls had rosettes and certificates pinned over them. “And this one, I’m afraid, is Goodboy Bindle Featherstone of Quirm,” said Lady Ramkin relentlessly. Vimes stared groggily over the charred barrier at the small creature curled up in the middle of the floor. It bore about the same resemblance to the rest of them as Nobby did to the average human being. Something in its ancestry had given it a pair of eyebrows that were about the same size as its stubby wings, which could never have supported it in the air. Its head was the wrong shape, like an anteater. It had nostrils like jet intakes. If it ever managed to get airborne the things would have the drag of twin parachutes. It was also turning on Captain Vimes the most silently intelligent look he’d ever had from any animal, including Corporal Nobbs. “It happens,” said Lady Ramkin sadly. “It’s all down to genes, you know.” “It is?” said Vimes. Somehow, the creature seemed to be concentrating all the power its siblings wasted in flame and noise into a stare like a thermic lance. He couldn’t help remembering how much he’d wanted a puppy when he was a little boy. Mind you, they’d been starving-anything with meat on it would have done. He heard the dragon lady say, “One tries to breed for a good flame, depth of scale, correct colour and so on. One just has to put up with the occasional total whittle.” The little dragon turned on Vimes a gaze that would be guaranteed to win it the award for Dragon the Judges would Most Like to Take Home and Use as A Portable Gas Lighter. Total whittle, Vimes thought. He wasn’t sure of the precise meaning of the word, but he could hazard a shrewd guess. It sounded like whatever it was you had left when you had extracted everything of any value whatsoever. Like the Watch, he thought. Total whittles, every one of them. And just like him. It was the saga of his life. “That’s Nature for you,” said her ladyship. “Of course I wouldn’t dream of breeding from him, but he wouldn’t be able to anyway.” “Why not?” said Vimes. “Because dragons have to mate in the air and he’ll never be able to fly with those wings, I’m afraid. I’ll be sorry to lose the bloodline, naturally. His sire was Brenda Rodley’s Treebite Brightscale. Do you know Brenda?” “Er, no,” said Vimes. Lady Ramkin was one of those people who assumed that everyone else knew everyone one knew. “Charming gel. Anyway, his brothers and sisters are shaping up very well.” Poor little bastard, thought Vimes. That’s Nature for you in a nutshell. Always dealing off the bottom of the pack. No wonder they call her a mother . . . “You said you had something to show me,” Lady Ramkin prompted. Vimes wordlessly handed her the parcel. She slipped off her heavy mittens and unwrapped it. “Plaster cast of a footprint,” she said, baldly. “Well?” “Does it remind you of anything?” said Vimes. “Could be a wading bird.” “Oh.” Vimes was crestfallen. Lady Ramkin laughed. “Or a really big dragon. Got it out of a museum, did you?” “No. I got it off the street this morning.” “Ha? Someone’s been playing tricks on you, old chap.” “Er. There was, er, circumstantial evidence.” He told her. She stared at him. “Draco nobilis,” she said hoarsely. “Pardon?” said Vimes. “Draco nobilis. The Noble dragon. As opposed to these fellows-“ she waved a hand in the direction of the massed ranks of whistling lizards-“Draco vul-garis, the lot of them. But the big ones are all gone, you know. This really is a nonsense. No two ways about it. All gone. Beautiful things, they were. Weighed tons. Biggest things ever to fly. No-one knows how they did it.” And then they realised. It was suddenly very quiet. All along the rows of kennels, the dragons were silent, bright-eyed and watchful. They were staring at the roof.   . . .   Carrot looked around him. Shelves stretched away in every direction. On those shelves, books. He made a calculated guess. “This is the Library, isn’t it?” he said. The Librarian maintained his gentle but firm grip on the boy’s hand and led him along the maze of aisles. “Is there a body?” said Carrot. There’d have to be. Worse than murder! A body in a library. It could lead to anything. The ape eventually padded to a halt in front of a shelf no different than, it seemed, a hundred others. Some of the books were chained up. There was a gap. The Librarian pointed to it. “Oook.” “Well, what about it? A hole where a book should be.” “Oook.” “A book has been taken. A book has been taken? You summoned the Watch,” Carrot drew himself up proudly, “because someone’s taken a book? You think that’s worse than murder?” The Librarian gave him the kind of look other people would reserve for people who said things like “What’s so bad about genocide?” “This is practically a criminal offence, wasting Watch time,” said Carrot. “Why don’t you just tell the head wizards, or whoever they are?” “Oook.” The Librarian indicated with some surprisingly economical gestures that most wizards would not find their own bottoms with both hands. “Well, I don’t see what we can do about it,” said Carrot. “What’s the book called?” The Librarian scratched his head. This one was going to be tricky. He faced Carrot, put his leather-glove hands together, then folded them open. “I know it’s a book. What’s its name?” The Librarian sighed, and held up a hand. “Four words?” said Carrot. “First word.” The ape pinched two wrinkled fingers together. “Small word? A. The. Fo-“ “Oook!” “The? The. Second word . . . third word? Small word. The? A? To? Of? Fro-Of? Of. The something Of something. Second word. What? Oh. First syllable. Fingers? Touching your fingers. Thumbs.” The orangutan growled and tugged theatrically at one large hairy ear. “Oh, sounds like. Fingers? Hand? Adding up. Sums. Cut off. Smaller word . . . Sum. Sum! Second syllable. Small. Very small syllable. A. In. Un. On. On! Sum. On. Sum On. Summon! Summon-er? Summoning? Summoning. Summoning. The Summoning of Something. This is fun, isn’t it! Fourth word. Whole word-“ He peered intently as the Librarian gyrated mysteriously. “Big thing. Huge big thing. Flapping. Great big flapping leaping thing. Teeth. Huffing. Blowing. Great big huge blowing flapping thing.” Sweat broke out on Carrot’s forehead as he tried obediently to understand. “Sucking fingers. Sucking fingers thing. Burnt. Hot. Great big hot blowing flapping thing . . .” The Librarian rolled his eyes. Homo sapiens? You could keep it.   . . .   The great dragon danced and spun and trod the air over the city. Its colour was moonlight, gleaming off its scales. Sometimes it would twist and glide with deceptive speed over the rooftops for the sheer joy of existing. And it was all wrong, Vimes thought. Part of him was marvelling at the sheer beauty of the sight, but an insistent, weaselly little group of brain cells from the wrong side of the synapses was scrawling its graffiti on the walls of wonderment. It’s a bloody great lizard, they jeered. Must weigh tons. Nothing that big can fly, not even on beautiful wings. And what is a flying lizard doing with great big scales on its back? Five hundred feet above him a lance of blue-white flame roared into the sky. It can’t do something like that! It’d burn its own lips off! Beside him Lady Ramkin stood with her mouth open. Behind her, the little caged dragons yammered and howled. The great beast turned in the air and swooped over the rooftops. The flame darted out again. Below it, yellow flames sprang up. It was done so quietly and stylishly that it took Vimes several seconds to realise that several buildings had in fact been set on fire. “Golly!” said Lady Ramkin. “Look! It’s using the thermals! That’s what the fire is for!” She turned to Vimes, her eyes hopelessly aglow. “Do you realise we’re very probably seeing something that no-one has seen for centuries?” “Yes, it’s a bloody flying alligator setting fire to my city!” shouted Vimes. She wasn’t listening to him. “There must be a breeding colony somewhere,” she said. “After all this time! Where do you think it lives?” Vimes didn’t know. But he swore to himself that he would find out, and ask it some very serious questions. “One egg,” breathed the breeder. “Just let me get my hands on one egg . . .” Vimes stared at her in genuine astonishment. It dawned on him that he was very probably a flawed character. Below them, another building exploded into flame. “How far exactly,” he said, speaking very slowly and carefully, as to a child, “did these things fly?” “They’re very territorial animals,” murmured her ladyship. “According to legend, they-“ Vimes realised he was in for another dose of dragon lore. “Just give me the facts, m’lady,” he said impatiently. “Not very far, really,” she said, slightly taken aback. “Thank you very much, ma’am, you’ve been very helpful,” muttered Vimes, and broke into a run. Somewhere in the city. There was nothing outside for miles except low fields and swamp. It had to be living somewhere in the city. His sandals flapped on the cobbles as he hurtled down the streets. Somewhere in the city! Which was totally ridiculous, of course. Totally ridiculous and impossible. He didn’t deserve this. Of all the cities in all the world it could have flown into, he thought, it’s flown into mine . . .   . . .   By the time he reached the river the dragon had vanished. But a pall of smoke was hanging over the streets and several human bucket chains had been formed to pass lumps of the river to the stricken buildings.[13] The job was considerably hampered by the droves of people streaming out of the streets, carrying their possessions. Most of the city was wood and thatch, and they weren’t taking any chances. In fact the danger was surprisingly small. Mysteriously small, when you came to think about it. Vimes had surreptitiously taken to carrying a notebook these days, and he had noted the damage as if the mere act of writing it down somehow made the world a more understandable place. Itym: Ae Coache House (belonging to an inoffensive businessman, who’d seen his new carriage go up in flames). Itym: Ae smalle vegettable shape (with pin-point accuracy). Vimes wondered about that. He’d bought some apples in there once, and there didn’t appear to be anything about it that a dragon could possibly take offence at. Still, very considerate of the dragon, he thought as he made his way to the Watch House. When you think of all the timber yards, hayricks, thatched roofs and oil stores it could have hit by chance, it’s managed to really frighten everyone without actually harming the city. Rays of early morning sunlight were piercing the drifts of smoke as he pushed open the door. This was home. Not the bare little room over the candlemaker’s shop in Wixon’s Alley, where he slept, but this nasty brown room that smelt of unswept chimneys, Sgt Colon’s pipe, Nobby’s mysterious personal problem and, latterly, Carrot’s armour polish. It was almost like home. No-one else was there. He wasn’t entirely surprised. He clumped up to his office and leaned back in his chair, whose cushion would have been thrown out of its basket in disgust by an incontinent dog, pulled his helmet over his eyes, and tried to think. No good rushing about. The dragon had vanished in all the smoke and confusion, as suddenly as it had come. Time for rushing about soon enough. The important thing was working out where to rush to . . . He’d been right. Wading bird! But where did you start looking for a bloody great dragon in a city of a million people? He was aware that his right hand, entirely unbidden, had pulled open the bottom drawer, and three of his fingers, acting on sealed orders from his hindbrain, had lifted out a bottle. It was one of those bottles that emptied themselves. Reason told him that sometimes he must occasionally start one, break the seal, see amber liquid glistening all the way up to the neck. It was just that he couldn’t remember the sensation. It was as if the bottles arrived two-thirds empty . . . He stared at the label. It seemed to be Jimkin Bear-hugger’s Old Selected Dragon’s Blood Whiskey. Cheap and powerful, you could light fires with it, you could clean spoons. You didn’t have to drink much of it to be drunk, which was just as well. It was Nobby who shook him awake with the news that there was a dragon in the city, and also that Sgt Colon had had a nasty turn. Vinies sat and blinked owlishly while the words washed around him. Apparently having a fire-breathing lizard focusing interestedly on one’s nether regions from a distance of a few feet can upset the strongest constitution. An experience like that could leave a lasting mark on a person. Vimes was still digesting this when Carrot turned up with the Librarian swinging along behind him. “Did you see it? Did you see it?” he said. “We all saw it,” said Vimes. “I know all about it!” said Carrot triumphantly. “Someone’s brought it here with magic. Someone’s stolen a book out of the Library and guess what it’s called?” “Can’t even begin to,” said Vimes weakly. “It’s called The Summoning of Dragons!” “Oook,” confirmed the Librarian. “Oh? What’s it about?” said Vimes. The Librarian rolled his eyes. “It’s about how to summon dragons. By magic!” “Oook.” “And that’s illegal, that is!” said Carrot happily. “Releasing Feral Creatures upon the Streets, contrary to the Wild Animals (Public-“ Vimes groaned. That meant wizards. You got nothing but trouble with wizards. “I suppose,” he said, “there wouldn’t be another copy of this book around, would there?” “Oook.” The Librarian shook his head. “And you wouldn’t happen to know what’s in it?” Vimes sighed. “What? Oh. Four words,” he said wearily. “First word. Sounds like. Bend. Bough? Sow, cow, how . . . How. Second word. Small word. The, a, to . . . To. Yes, understood, but I meant in any kind of detail? No. I see.” “What’re we going to do now, sir?” said Carrot anxiously. “It’s out there,” intoned Nobby. “Gone to ground, like, during the hours of daylight. Coiled up in its secret lair, on top of a great hoard of gold, dreamin’ ancient reptilian dreams fromma dawna time, waitin’ for the secret curtains of the night, when once more it will sally forth-“ He hesitated and added sullenly, “What’re you all looking at me like that for?” “Very poetic,” said Carrot. “Well, everyone knows the real old dragons used to go to sleep on a hoard of gold,” said Nobby. “Well known folk myth.” Vimes looked blankly into the immediate future. Vile though Nobby was, he was also a good indication of what was going through the mind of the average citizen. You could use him as a sort of laboratory rat to forecast what was going to happen next. “I expect you’d be really interested in finding out where that hoard is, wouldn’t you?” said Vimes experimentally. Nobby looked even more shifty than usual. “Well, Cap’n, I was thinking of having a bit of a look around. You know. When I’m off duty, of course,” he added virtuously. “Oh, dear,” said Captain Vimes. He lifted up the empty bottle and, with great care, put it back in the drawer.   . . .   The Elucidated Brethren were nervous. A kind of fear crackled from brother to brother. It was the fear of someone who, having cheerfully experimented with pouring the powder and wadding the ball, has found that pulling the trigger had led to a godawful bang and pretty soon someone is bound to come and see who’s making all the noise. The Supreme Grand Master knew that he had them, though. Sheep and lamb, sheep and lamb. Since they couldn’t do anything much worse than they had already done they might as well press on and damn the world, and pretend they’d wanted it like this all along. Oh, the joy of it . . . Only Brother Plasterer was actually happy. “Let that be a lesson to all oppressive vegetable sellers,” he kept saying. “Yes, er,” said Brother Doorkeeper. “Only, the thing is, there’s no chance of us sort of accidentally summoning the dragon here, is there?” “I-that is, we-have it under perfect control,” said the Supreme Grand Master smoothly. “The power is ours. I can assure you.” The Brothers cheered up a little bit. “And now,” the Supreme Grand Master continued, “there is the matter of the king.” The Brothers looked solemn, except for Brother Plasterer. “Have we found him, then?” he said. “That’s a stroke of luck.” “You never listen, do you?” snapped Brother Watchtower. “It was all explained last week, we don’t go around finding anyone, we make a king.” “I thought he was supposed to turn up. ‘Cos of destiny.” Brother Watchtower sniggered. “We sort of help Destiny along a bit.” The Supreme Grand Master smiled in the depths of his robe. It was amazing, this mystic business. You tell them a lie, and then when you don’t need it any more you tell them another lie and tell them they’re progressing along the road to wisdom. Then instead of laughing they follow you even more, hoping that at the heart of all the lies they’ll find the truth. And bit by bit they accept the unacceptable. Amazing. “Bloody hell, that’s clever,” said Brother Doorkeeper. “How do we do that, then?” “Look, the Supreme Grand Master said what we do, we find some handsome lad who’s good at taking orders, he kills the dragon, and Bob’s your uncle. Simple. Much more intelligent than waitin’ for a so-called real king.” “But-“ Brother Plasterer seemed deep in the toils of cerebration, “if we control the dragon, and we do control the dragon, right? Then we don’t need anyone killing it, we just stop summoning it, and everyone’ll be happy, right?” “Ho yes,” said Brother Watchtower nastily, “I can just see it, can you? We just trot out, say ‘Hallo, we won’t set fire to your houses any more, aren’t we nice’, do we? The whole point about the thing with the king is that he’ll be a, a sort of-“ “Undeniably potent and romantic symbol of absolute authority,” said the Supreme Grand Master smoothly. “That’s it,” said Brother Watchtower. “A potent authority.” “Oh, I see,” said Brother Plasterer. “Right. Okay. That’s what the king’ll be.” “That’s it,” said Brother Watchtower. “No-one going to argue with a potent authority, are they?” “Too right,” said Brother Watchtower. “Stroke of luck, then, finding the true king right now,” said Brother Plasterer. “Million to one chance, really.” “We haven’t found the right king. We don’t need the right king,” said the Supreme Grand Master wearily. “For the last time! I’ve just found us a likely lad who looks good in a crown and can take orders and knows how to flourish a sword. Now just listen . . .” Flourishing, of course, was important. It didn’t have much to do with wielding. Wielding a sword, the Supreme Grand Master considered, was simply the messy business of dynastic surgery. It was just a matter of thrust and cut. Whereas a king had to flourish one. It had to catch the light in just the right way, leaving watchers in no doubt that here was Destiny’s chosen. He’d taken a long time preparing the sword and shield. It had been very expensive. The shield shone like a dollar in a sweep’s earhole but the sword, the sword was magnificent . . . It was long and shiny. It looked like something some genius of metalwork-one of those little Zen guys who works only by the light of dawn and can beat a club sandwich of folded steels into something with the cutting edge of a scalpel and the stopping-power of a sex-crazed rhinoceros on bad acid-had made and then retired in tears because he’d never, ever, do anything so good again. There were so many jewels on the hilt it had to be sheathed in velvet, you had to look at it through smoked glass. Just laying a hand on it practically conferred kingship. As for the lad . . . he was a distant cousin, keen and vain, and stupid in a passably aristocratic way. Currently he was under guard in a distant farmhouse, with an adequate supply of drink and several young ladies, although what the boy seemed most interested in was mirrors. Probably hero material, the Supreme Grand Master thought glumly. “I suppose,” said Brother Watchtower, “that he isn’t the real air to the throne?” “What do you mean?” said the Supreme Grand Master. “Well, you know how it is. Fate plays funny tricks. Haha. It’d be a laugh, wouldn’t it,” said Brother Watchtower, “if this lad turned out to be the real king. After all this trouble-“ “There is no real king any more!” snapped the Supreme Grand Master. “What do you expect? Some people wandering in the wilderness for hundreds and hundreds of years, patiently handing down a sword and a birthmark? Some sort of magic?” He spat the word. He’d make use of magic, means to an end, end justifies means and so forth, but to go around believing it, believing it had some sort of moral force, like logic, made him wince. “Good grief, man, be logical! Be rational. Even if any of the old royal family survived, the blood line’d be so watered down by now that there must be thousands of people who lay claim to the throne. Even-“ he tried to think of the least likely claimant-“even someone like Brother Dunny-kin.” He stared at the assembled Brethren. “Don’t see him here tonight, by the way.” “Funny thing, that,” said Brother Watchtower thoughtfully. “Didn’t you hear?” “What?” “He got bitten by a crocodile on his way home last night. Poor little bugger.” “What?” “Million to one chance. It’d escaped from a menagerie, or something, and was lying low in his back yard. He went to feel under his doormat for his doorkey and it had him by the funes.”[14] Brother Watchtower fumbled under his robe and produced a grubby brown envelope. “We’re having a whip-round to buy him some grapes and that, I don’t know whether you’d like to, er . . .” “Put me down for three dollars,” said the Supreme Grand Master. Brother Watchtower nodded. “Funny thing,” he said, “I already have.” Just a few more nights, thought the Supreme Grand Master. By tomorrow the people’ll be so desperate, they’d crown even a one-legged troll if he got rid of the dragon. And we’ll have a king, and he’ll have an advisor, a trusted man, of course, and this stupid rabble can go back to the gutter. No more dressing up, no more ritual. No more summoning the dragon. I can give it up, he thought. I can give it up any time I like.   . . .   The streets outside the Patrician’s palace were thronged. There was a manic air of carnival. Vimes ran a practised eye over the assortment before him. It was the usual Ankh-Morpork mob in times of crisis; half of them were here to complain, a quarter of them were here to watch the other half, and the remainder were here to rob, importune or sell hot-dogs to the rest. There were a few new faces, though. There were a number of grim men with big swords slung over their shoulders and whips slung on their belts, striding through the crowds. “News spreads quick, don’t it,” observed a familiar voice by his ear. “Morning, Captain.” Vimes looked into the grinning, cadaverous face of Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler, purveyor of absolutely anything that could be sold hurriedly from an open suitcase in a busy street and was guaranteed to have fallen off the back of an oxcart. “Morning, Throat,” said Vimes absently. “What’re you selling?” “Genuine article, Captain.” Throat leaned closer. He was the sort of person who could make “Good morning” sound like a once-in-a-lifetime, never-to-be-repeated offer. His eyes swivelled back and forth in their sockets, like two rodents trying to find a way out. “Can’t afford to be without it,” he hissed. “Anti-dragon cream. Personal guarantee: if you’re incinerated you get your money back, no quibble.” “What you’re saying,” said Vimes slowly, “if I understand the wording correctly, is that if I am baked alive by the dragon you’ll return the money?” “Upon personal application,” said Cut-me-own-Throat. He unscrewed the lid from a jar of vivid green ointment and thrust it under Vimes’s nose. “Made from over fifty different rare spices and herbs to a recipe known only to a bunch of ancient monks what live on some mountain somewhere. One dollar a jar, and I’m cutting my own throat. It’s a public service, really,” he added piously. “You’ve got to hand it to those ancient monks, brewing it up so quickly,” said Vimes. “Clever buggers,” agreed Cut-me-own-Throat. “It must be all that meditation and yak yogurt.” “So what’s happening, Throat?” said Vimes. “Who’re all the guys with the big swords?” “Dragon hunters, Cap’n. The Patrician announced a reward of fifty thousand dollars to anyone who brings him the dragon’s head. Not attached to the dragon, either; he’s no fool, that man.” “What?” “That’s what he said. It’s all written on posters.” “Fifty thousand dollars!” “Not chicken feed, eh?” “More like dragon fodder,” said Vimes. It’d bring trouble, you mark his words. “I’m amazed you’re not grabbing a sword and joining in.” “I’m more in what you might call the service sector, Cap’n.” Throat looked both ways conspiratorially, and then passed Vimes a slip of parchment. It said: Anti-dragon mirror shields A$ 500 Portable lair detectors A$250 Dragon-piercing arrows A$100 per each Shovels A$5 Picks A$5 Sacks A$l   Vimes handed it back. “Why the sacks?” he said. “On account of the hoard,” said Throat. “Oh, yes,” said Vimes gloomily. “Of course.” “Tell you what,” said Throat, “tell you what. For our boys in brown, ten percent off.” “And you’re cutting your own throat, Throat?” “Fifteen percent for officers!” urged Throat, as Vimes walked away. The cause of the slight panic in his voice was soon apparent. He had plenty of competition. The people of Ankh-Morpork were not by nature heroic but were, by nature, salesmen. In the space of a few feet Vimes could have bought any number of magical weapons Genuine certyfycate of orthenticity with everyone, a cloak of invisibility-a good touch, he thought, and he was really impressed by the way the stallowner was using a mirror with no glass in it- and, by way of lighter relief, dragon biscuits, balloons and windmills on sticks. Copper bracelets guaranteed to bring relief from dragons were a nice thought. There seemed to be as many sacks and shovels about as there were swords. Gold, that was it. The hoard. Hah! Fifty thousand dollars! An officer of the Watch earned thirty dollars a month and had to pay to have his own dents beaten out. What he couldn’t do with fifty thousand dollars . . . Vimes thought about this for a while and then thought of the things he could do with fifty thousand dollars. There were so many more of them, for a start. He almost walked into a group of men clustered around a poster nailed to the wall. It declared, indeed, that the head of the dragon that had terrorised the city would be worth A$50,000 to the brave hero that delivered it to the palace. One of the cluster, who from his size, weaponry and that way he was slowly tracing the lettering with his finger Vimes decided was a leading hero, was doing the reading for the others. “-to ter-her pal-ack-ee,” he concluded. “Fifty thousand,” said one of them reflectively, rubbing his chin. “Cheap job,” said the intellectual. “Well below the rate. Should be half the kingdom and his daughter’s hand in marriage.” “Yes, but he ain’t a king. He’s a Patrician.” “Well, half his Patrimony or whatever. What’s his daughter like?” The assembled hunters didn’t know. “He’s not married,” Vimes volunteered. “And he hasn’t got a daughter.” They turned and looked him up and down. He could see the disdain in their eyes. They probably got through dozens like him every day. “Not got a daughter?” said one of them. “Wants people to kill dragons and he hasn’t got a daughter?” Vimes felt, in an odd way, that he ought to support the lord of the city. “He’s got a little dog that he’s very fond of,” he said helpfully. “Bleeding disgusting, not even having a daughter,” said one of the hunters. “And what’s fifty thousand dollars these days? You spend that much in nets.” “S’right,” said another. “People think it’s a fortune, but they don’t reckon on, well, it’s not pensionable, there’s all the medical expenses, you’ve got to buy and maintain your own gear-“ “-wear and tear on virgins-“ nodded a small fat hunter. “Yeah, and then there’s . . . what?” “My speciality is unicorns,” the hunter explained, with an embarrassed smile. “Oh, right.” The first speaker looked like someone who’d always been dying to ask the question. “I thought they were very rare these days.” “You’re right there. You don’t see many unicorns, either,” said the unicorn hunter. Vimes got the impression that, in his whole life, this was his only joke. “Yeah, well. Times are hard,” said the first speaker sharply. “Monsters are getting more uppity, too,” said another. “I heard where this guy, he killed this monster in this lake, no problem, stuck its arm up over the door-“ “Pour encourjay lays ortras,” said one of the listeners. “Right, and you know what? Its mum come and complained. Its actual mum come right down to the hall next day and complained. Actually complained. That’s the respect you get.” “The females are always the worst,” said another hunter gloomily. “I knew this cross-eyed gorgon once, oh, she was a terror. Kept turning her own nose to stone.” “It’s our arses on the line every time,” said the intellectual. “I mean, I wish I had a dollar for every horse I’ve had eaten out from underneath me.” “Right. Fifty thousand dollars? He can stuff it.” “Yeah.” “Right. Cheapskate.” “Let’s go and have a drink.” “Right.” They nodded in righteous agreement and strode off towards the Mended Drum, except for the intellectual, who sidled uneasily back to Vimes. “What sort of dog?” he said. “What?” said Vimes. “I said, what sort of dog?” “A small wire-haired terrier, I think,” said Vimes. The hunter thought about this for some time. “Nah,” he said eventually, and hurried off after the others. “He’s got an aunt in Pseudopolis, I believe,” Vimes called after him. There was no response. The captain of the Watch shrugged, and carried on through the throng to the Patrician’s palace . . .   . . .   . . . where the Patrician was having a difficult lunch-time. “Gentlemen!” he snapped. “I really don’t see what else there is to do!” The assembled civic leaders muttered amongst themselves. “At times like this it’s traditional that a hero comes forth,” said the President of the Guild of Assassins. “A dragon slayer. Where is he, that’s what I want to know? Why aren’t our schools turning out young people with the kind of skills society needs?” “Fifty thousand dollars doesn’t sound much,” said the Chairman of the Guild of Thieves. “It may not be much to you, my dear sir, but it is all the city can afford,” said the Patrician firmly. “If it doesn’t afford any more than that I don’t think there’ll be a city for long,” said the thief. “And what about trade?” said the representative of the Guild of Merchants. “People aren’t going to sail here with a cargo of rare comestibles just to have it incinerated, are they?” “Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” The Patrician raised his hands in a conciliatory fashion. “It seems to me,” he went on, taking advantage of the brief pause, “that what we have here is a strictly magical phenomenon. I would like to hear from our learned friend on this point. Hmm?” Someone nudged the Archchancellor of Unseen University, who had nodded off. “Eh? What?” said the wizard, startled into wakefulness. “We were wondering,” said the Patrician loudly, “what you were intending to do about this dragon of yours?” The Archchancellor was old, but a lifetime of survival in the world of competitive wizardry and the byzantine politics of Unseen University meant that he could whip up a defensive argument in a split second. You didn’t remain Archchancellor for long if you let that sort of ingenuous remark whizz past your ear. “My dragon?” he said. “It’s well known that the great dragons are extinct,” said the Patrician brusquely. “And, besides, their natural habitat was definitely rural. So it seems to me that this one must be mag-“ “With respect, Lord Vetinari,” said the Archchancellor, “it has often been claimed that dragons are extinct, but the current evidence, if I may make so bold, tends to cast a certain doubt on the theory. As to habitat, what we are seeing here is simply a change of behaviour pattern, occasioned by the spread of urban areas into the countryside which has led many hitherto rural creatures to adopt, nay in many cases to positively embrace, a more municipal mode of existence, and many of them thrive on the new opportunities thereby opened to them. For example, foxes are always knocking over my dustbins.” He beamed. He’d managed to get all the way through it without actually needing to engage his brain. “Are you saying,” said the assassin slowly, “that what we’ve got here is the first civic dragon?” “That’s evolution for you,” said the wizard, happily. “It should do well, too,” he added. “Plenty of nesting sites, and a more than adequate food supply.” Silence greeted this statement, until the merchant said. “What exactly is it that they do eat?” The thief shrugged. “I seem to recall stories about virgins chained to huge rocks,” he volunteered. “It’ll starve round here, then,” said the assassin. “We ‘re on loam.” “They used to go around ravening,” said the thief. “Dunno if that’s any help . . .” “Anyway,” said the leader of the merchants, “it seems to be your problem again, my lord.” Five minutes later the Patrician was striding the length of the Oblong Office, fuming. “They were laughing at me,” said the Patrician. “I could tell!” “Did you suggest a working party?” said Wonse. “Of course I did! It didn’t do the trick this time. You know, I really am inclined to increase the reward money.” “I don’t think that would work, my lord. Any proficient monster slayer knows the rate for the job.” “Ha! Half the kingdom,” muttered the Patrician. “And your daughter’s hand in marriage,” said Wonse. “I suppose an aunt isn’t acceptable?” the Patrician said hopefully. “Tradition demands a daughter, my lord.” The Patrician nodded gloomily. “Perhaps we can buy it off,” he said aloud. “Are dragons intelligent?” “I believe the word traditionally is ‘cunning’, my lord,” said Wonse. “I understand they have a liking for gold.” “Really? What do they spend it on?” “They sleep on it, my lord.” “What, do you mean in a mattress?” “No, my lord. On it. “ The Patrician turned this fact over in his mind. “Don’t they find it rather knobbly?” he said. “So I would imagine, sir. I don’t suppose anyone has ever asked.” “Hmm. Can they talk?” “They’re apparently good at it, my lord.” “Ah. Interesting.” The Patrician was thinking: if it can talk, it can negotiate. If it can negotiate, then I have it by the short-by the small scales, or whatever it is they have. “And they are said to be silver tongued,” said Wonse. The Patrician leaned back in his chair. “Only silver?” he said. There was the sound of muted voices in the passageway outside and Vimes was ushered in. “Ah, Captain,” said the Patrician, “what progress?” “I’m sorry, my lord?” said Vimes, as the rain dripped off his cape. “Towards apprehending this dragon,” said the Patrician firmly. “The wading bird?” said Vimes. “You know very well what I mean,” said Vetinari sharply. “Investigations are in hand,” said Vimes automatically. The Patrician snorted. “All you have to do is find its lair,” he said. “Once you have the lair, you have the dragon. That’s obvious. Half the city seems to be looking for it.” “If there is a lair,” said Vimes. Wonse looked up sharply. “Why do you say that?” “We are considering a number of possibilities,” said Vimes woodenly. “If it has no lair, where does it spend its days?” said the Patrician. “Inquiries are being pursued,” said Vimes. “Then pursue them with alacrity. And find the lair,” said the Patrician sourly. “Yes, sir. Permission to leave, sir?” “Very well. But I shall expect progress by tonight, do you understand?” Now why did I wonder if it has a lair? Vimes thought, as he stepped out into the daylight and the crowded square. Because it didn’t look real, that’s why. If it isn’t real, it doesn’t need to do anything we expect. How can it walk out of an alley it didn’t go into? Once you’ve ruled out the impossible then whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth. The problem lay in working out what was impossible, of course. That was the trick, all right. There was also the curious incident of the orangutan in the night-time . . .   . . .   By day the Library buzzed with activity. Vimes moved through it diffidently. Strictly speaking, he could go anywhere in the city, but the University had always held that it fell under thaumaturgical law and he felt it wouldn’t be wise to make the kind of enemies where you were lucky to end up the same temperature, let alone the same shape. He found the Librarian hunched over his desk. The ape gave him an expectant look. “Haven’t found it yet. Sorry,” said Vimes. “Enquiries are continuing. But there is a little help you can give me.” “Oook?” “Well, this is a magical library, right? I mean, these books are sort of intelligent, isn’t that so? So I’ve been thinking: I bet if I got in here at night, they’d soon kick up a fuss. Because they don’t know me. But if they did know me, they’d probably not mind. So whoever took the book would have to be a wizard, wouldn’t they? Or someone who works for the University, at any rate.” The Librarian glanced from side to side, then grasped Vimes’s hand and led him into the seclusion of a couple of bookshelves. Only then did he nod his head. “Someone they know?” A shrug, and then another nod. “That’s why you told us, is it?” “Oook.” “And not the University Council?” “Oook.” “Any idea who it is?” The Librarian shrugged, a decidedly expressive gesture for a body which was basically a sack between a pair of shoulderblades. “Well, it’s something. Let me know if any other strange things happen, won’t you?” Vimes looked up at the banks of shelves. “Stranger than usual, I mean.” “Oook.” “Thank you. It’s a pleasure to meet a citizen who regards it as their duty to assist the Watch.” The Librarian gave him a banana. Vimes felt curiously elated as he stepped out into the city’s throbbing streets again. He was definitely detecting things. They were little bits of things, like a jigsaw. No one of them made any real sense, but they all hinted at a bigger picture. All he needed to do was find a corner, or a bit of an edge . . . He was pretty certain it wasn’t a wizard, whatever the Librarian might think. Not a proper, paid-up wizard. This sort of thing wasn’t their style. And there was, of course, this business about the lair. The most sensible course would be to wait and see if the dragon turned up tonight, and try and see where. That meant a high place. Was there some way of detecting dragons themselves? He’d had a look at Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler’s dragon detectors, which consisted solely of a piece of wood on a metal stick. When the stick was burned through, you’d found your dragon. Like a lot of Cut-me-own-Throat’s devices, it was completely efficient in its own special way while at the same time being totally useless. There had to be a better way of finding the thing than waiting until your fingers were burned off.   . . .   The setting sun spread out on the horizon like a lightly-poached egg. The rooftops of Ankh-Morpork sprouted a fine array of gargoyles even in normal times, but now they were alive with as ghastly an array of faces as ever were seen outside a woodcut about the evils of gin-drinking among the non-woodcut-buying classes. Many of the faces were attached to bodies holding a fearsome array of homely weapons that had been handed down from generation to generation for centuries, often with some force. From his perch on the roof of the Watch House Vimes could see the wizards lining the rooftops of the University, and the gangs of opportunist hoard-researchers waiting in the streets, shovels at the ready. If the dragon really did have a bed somewhere in the city, then it would be sleeping on the floor tomorrow. From somewhere below came the cry of Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler, or one of his colleagues, selling hot sausages. Vimes felt a sudden surge of civic pride. There had to be something right about a citizenry which, when faced with catastrophe, thought about selling sausages to the participants. The city waited. A few stars came out. Colon, Nobby and Carrot were also on the roof. Colon was sulking because Vimes had forbidden him to use his bow and arrow. These weren’t encouraged in the city, since the heft and throw of a longbow’s arrow could send it through an innocent bystander a hundred yards away rather than the innocent bystander at whom it was aimed. “That’s right,” said Carrot, “the Projectile Weapons (Civic Safety) Act, 1634.” “Don’t you keep on quoting all that sort of stuff,” snapped Colon. “We don’t have any of them laws any more! That’s all old stuff! It’s all more wossname now. Pragmatic.” “Law or no law,” said Vimes, “I say put it away.” “But Captain, I was a dab hand at this!” protested Colon. “Anyway,” he added peevishly, “a lot of other people have got them.” That was true enough. Neighbouring rooftops bristled like hedgehogs. If the wretched thing turned up, it was going to think it was flying through solid wood with slots in it. You could almost feel sorry for it. “I said put it away,” said Vimes. “I’m not having my guards shooting citizens. So put it away.” “That’s very true,” said Carrot. “We’re here to protect and to serve, aren’t we, Captain.” Vimes gave him a sidelong look. “Er,” he said. “Yeah. Yes. That’s right.” On the roof of her house on the hill, Lady Ramkin adjusted a rather inadequate folding chair on the roof, arranged the telescope, coffee flask and sandwiches on the parapet in front of her, and settled down to wait. She had a notebook on her knee. Half an hour went by. Hails of arrows greeted a passing cloud, several unfortunate bats, and the rising moon. “Bugger this for a game of soldiers,” said Nobby, eventually. “It’s been scared off.” Sgt Colon lowered his pike. “Looks like it,” he conceded. “And it’s getting chilly up here,” said Carrot. He politely nudged Captain Vimes, who was slumped against the chimney, staring moodily into space. “Maybe we ought to be getting down, sir?” he said. “Lots of people are.” “Hmm?” said Vimes, without moving his head. “Could be coming on to rain, too,” said Carrot. Vimes said nothing. For some minutes he had been watching the Tower of Art, which was the centre of Unseen University and reputedly the oldest building hi the city. It was certainly the tallest. Time, weather and indifferent repairs had given it a gnarled appearance, like a tree that has seen too many thunderstorms. He was trying to remember its shape. As in the case with many things that are totally familiar, he hadn’t really looked at it for years. Now he was trying to convince himself that the forest of little turrets and crenellations at its top looked just the same tonight as they had done yesterday. It was giving him some difficulty. Without taking his eyes off it, he grabbed Sgt Colon’s shoulder and gently pointed him in the right direction. He said, “Can you see anything odd about the top of the tower?” Colon stared up for a while, and then laughed nervously. “Well, it looks like there’s a dragon sitting on it, doesn’t it?” “Yes. That’s what I thought.” “Only, only, only when you sort of look properly, you can see it’s just made up out of shadows and clumps of ivy and that. I mean, if you half-close one eye, it looks like two old women and a wheelbarrow.” Vimes tried this. “Nope,” he said. “It still looks like a dragon. A huge one. Sort of hunched up, and looking down. Look, you can see its wings folded up.” “Beg pardon, sir. That’s just a broken turret giving the effect.” They watched it for a while. Then Vimes said, “Tell me, Sergeant-I ask in a spirit of pure inquiry-what do you think’s causing the effect of a pair of huge wings unfurling?” Colon swallowed. “I think that’s caused by a pair of huge wings, sir,” he said. “Spot on, Sergeant.” The dragon dropped. It wasn’t a swoop. It simply kicked away from the top of the tower and half-fell, half-flew straight downwards, disappearing from view behind the University buildings. Vimes caught himself listening for the thump. And then the dragon was in view again, moving like an arrow, moving like a shooting star, moving like something that has somehow turned a thirty-two feet per second plummet into an unstoppable upward swoop. It glided over the rooftops at little more than head height, all the more horrible because of the sound. It was as though the air was slowly and carefully being torn in half. The Watch threw themselves flat. Vimes caught a glimpse of huge, vaguely horse-like features before it slid past. “Sodding arseholes,” said Nobby, from somewhere in the guttering. Vimes redoubled his grip on the chimney and pulled himself upright. “You are in uniform, Corporal Nobbs,” he said, his voice hardly shaking at all. “Sorry, Captain. Sodding arseholes, sir. “ “Where’s Sergeant Colon?” “Down here, sir. Holding on to this drainpipe, sir.” “Oh, for goodness sake. Help him up, Carrot.” “Gosh,” said Carrot, “look at it go!” You could tell the position of the dragon by the rattle of arrows across the city, and by the screams and gurgles of all those hit by the misses and ricochets. “He hasn’t even flapped his wings yet!” shouted Carrot, trying to stand on the chimney pot. “Look at him go!” It shouldn’t be that big, Vimes told himself, watching the huge shape wheel over the river. It’s as long as a street! There was a puff of flame above the docks, and for a moment the creature passed in front of the moon. Then it flapped its wings, once, with a sound like the damp hides of a pedigree herd being slapped across a cliff. It turned in a tight circle, pounded the air a few times to build up speed, and came back. When it passed over the Watch House it coughed a column of spitting white fire. Tiles under it didn’t just melt, they erupted in red-hot droplets. The chimney stack exploded and rained bricks across the street. Vast wings hammered at the air as the creature hovered over the burning building, fire spearing down on what rapidly became a glowing heap. Then, when all that was left was a spreading puddle of melted rock with interesting streaks and bubbles in it, the dragon raised itself with a contemptuous flick of its wings and soared away and upwards, over the city.   . . .   Lady Ramkin lowered her telescope and shook her head slowly. “That’s not right,” she whispered. “That’s not right at all. Shouldn’t be able to do anything like that. “ She raised the lens again and squinted, trying to see what was on fire. Down below, in their long kennels, the little dragons howled.   . . .   Traditionally, upon waking from blissfully uneventful insensibility, you ask: “Where am I?” It’s probably part of the racial consciousness or something. Vimes said it. Tradition allows a choice of second lines. A key point in the selection process is an audit to see that the body has all the bits it remembers having yesterday. Vimes checked. Then comes the tantalising bit. Now that the snowball of consciousness is starting to roll, is it going to find that it’s waking up inside a body lying in a gutter with something multiple, the noun doesn’t matter after an adjective like “multiple”, nothing good ever follows “multiple”, or is it going to be a case of crisp sheets, a soothing hand, and a businesslike figure in white pulling open the curtains on a bright new day? Is it all over, with nothing worse to look forward to now than weak tea, nourishing gruel, short, strengthening walks in the garden and possibly a brief platonic love affair with a ministering angel, or was this all just a moment’s blackout and some looming bastard is now about to get down to real business with the thick end of a pickaxe helve? Are there, the consciousness wants to know, going to be grapes? At this point some outside stimulus is helpful. “It’s going to be all right” is favourite, whereas “Did anyone get his number?” is definitely a bad sign; either, however, is better than “You two hold his hands behind his back”. In fact someone said, “You were nearly a goner there, Captain.” The pain sensations, which had taken advantage of Vimes’s unconscious state to bunk oflF for a metaphorical quick cigarette, rushed back. Vimes said, “Arrgh.” Then he opened his eyes. There was a ceiling. This ruled out one particular range of unpleasant options and was very welcome. His blurred vision also revealed Corporal Nobbs, which was less so. Corporal Nobbs proved nothing; you could be dead and see something like Corporal Nobbs. Ankh-Morpork did not have many hospitals. All the Guilds maintained their own sanitariums, and there were a few public ones run by the odder religious organisations, like the Balancing Monks, but by and large medical assistance was nonexistent and people had to die inefficiently, without the aid of doctors. It was generally thought that the existence of cures encouraged slackness and was in any case probably against Nature’s way. “Have I already said ‘Where am I?’ “ said Vimes faintly. “Yes.” “Did I get an answer?” “Dunno where this place is, Captain. It belongs to some posh bint. She said to bring you up here.” Even though Vimes’s mind appeared to be full of pink treacle he nevertheless grabbed two clues and wrestled them together. The combination of ‘rich’ and ‘up here’ meant something. So did the strange chemical smell in the room, which even overpowered Nobby’s more everyday odours. “We’re not talking about Lady Ramkin, are we?” he said cautiously. “You could be right. Great big biddy. Mad for dragons.” Nobby’s rodent face broke into the most horribly knowing grin Vimes had ever seen. “You’re in her bed,” he said. Vimes peered around him, feeling the first overtures of a vague panic. Because now that he could halfway focus, he could see a certain lack of bachelor sockness about the place. There was a faint hint of talcum powder. “Bit of a boodwah,” said Nobby, with the air of a connoisseur. “Hang on, hang on a minute,” said Vimes. “There was this dragon. It was right over us . . .” The memory rose up and hit him like a zombie with a grudge. “You all right, Captain?” -the talons, outspread, wide as a man’s reach; the boom and thump of the wings, bigger than sails; the stink of chemicals, the gods alone knew what sort. . . It had been so close he could see the tiny scales on its legs and the red gleam in its eyes. They were more than just reptile eyes. They were eyes you could drown in. And the breath, so hot that it wasn’t like fire at all, but something almost solid, not burning things but smashing them apart . . . On the other hand, he was here and alive. His left side felt as though it had been hit with an iron bar, but he was quite definitely alive. “What happened?” he said. “It was young Carrot,” said Nobby. “He grabbed you and the sergeant and jumped off the roof just before it got us.” “My side hurts. It must have got me,” said Vimes. “No, I reckon that was where you hit the privy roof,” said Nobby. “And then you rolled off and hit the water butt.” “What about Colon? Is he hurt?” “Not hurt. Not exactly hurt. He landed more sort of softly. Him being so heavy, he went through the roof. Talk about a short sharp shower of-“ “And then what happened?” “Well, we sort of made you comfy, and then everyone went blundering about and shouting for the sergeant. Until they found out where he was, o’course, then they just stood where they were and shouted. And then this woman come running up yelling,” said Nobby. “This is Lady Ramkin you’re referring to?” said Vimes coldly. His ribs were aching really magnificently now. “Yeah. Big fat party,” said Nobby, unmoved. “Cor, she can’t half boss people about! ‘Oh, the poor dear man, you must bring him up to my house this instant.’ So we did. Best place, too. Everyone’s running around down in the city like chickens with their heads cut off.” “How much damage did it do?” “Well, after you were out of it the wizards hit it with fireballs. It didn’t like that at all. Just seemed to make it stronger and angrier. Took out the University’s entire Widdershins wing.” “And-?” “That’s about it, really. It flamed a few more things, and then it must of flown away in all the smoke.” “No-one saw where it went?” “If they did, they ain’t saying.” Nobby sat back and leered. “Disgusting, really, her livin’ in a room like this. She’s got pots of money, sarge says, she’s got no call livin’ in ordinary rooms. What’s the good of not wanting to be poor if the rich are allowed to go round livin’ in ordinary rooms? Should be marble.” He sniffed. “Anyway, she said I was to fetch her when you woke up. She’s feeding her dragons now. Old little buggers, aren’t they. It’s amazing she’s allowed to keep ‘em.” “What do you mean?” “You know. Tarred with the same brush, and that.” When Nobby had shambled out Vimes took another look around the room. It did, indeed, lack the gold leaf and marble that Nobby felt was compulsory for people of a high station in life. All the furniture was old, and the pictures on the wall, though doubtless valuable, looked the sort of pictures that are hung on bedroom walls because people can’t think of anywhere else to put them. There were also a few amateurish watercolours of dragons. All in all, it had the look about it of a room that is only ever occupied by one person, and has been absent-mindedly moulded around them over the years, like a suit of clothes with a ceiling. It was clearly the room of a woman, but one who had cheerfully and without any silly moping been getting on with her life while all that soppy romance stuff had been happening to other people somewhere else, and been jolly grateful that she had her health. Such clothing as was visible had been chosen for sensible hardwearing qualities, possibly by a previous generation by the look of it, rather than its use as light artillery in the war between the sexes. There were bottles and jars neatly arranged on the dressing table, but a certain severity of line suggested that their labels would say things like “Rub on nightly” rather than “Just a dab behind the ears”. You could imagine that the occupant of this room had slept in it all her life and had been called “my little girl” by her father until she was forty. There was a big sensible blue dressing gown hanging behind the door. Vimes knew, without even looking, that it would have a rabbit on the pocket. In short, it was the room of a woman who never expected that a man would ever see the inside of it. The bedside table was piled high with papers. Feeling guilty, but doing it anyway, Vimes squinted at them. Dragons was the theme. There were letters from the Cavern Club Exhibitions Committee and the Friendly Flamethrowers League. There were pamphlets and appeals from the Sunshine Sanctuary for Sick Dragons- “Poor little VINNY’s fires were nearly Damped after Five years’ Cruel Use as a Paint-Stripper, but now-“ And there were requests for donations, and talks, and things that added up to a heart big enough for the whole world, or at least that part of it that had wings and breathed fire. If you let your mind dwell on rooms like this, you could end up being oddly sad and full of a strange, diffuse compassion which would lead you to believe that it might be a good idea to wipe out the whole human race and start again with amoebas. Beside the drift of paperwork was a book. Vimes twisted painfully and looked at the spine. It said: Diseases of the Dragon, by Sybil Deidre Olgivanna Ramkin. He turned the stiff pages in horrified fascination. They opened into another world, a world of quite stupefying problems. Slab Throat. The Black Tups. Dry Lung. Storge. Staggers, Heaves, Weeps, Stones. It was amazing, he decided after reading a few pages, that a swamp dragon ever survived to see a second sunrise. Even walking across a room must be reckoned a biological triumph. The painstakingly-drawn illustrations he looked away from hurriedly. You could only take so much innards. There was a knock at the door. “I say? Are you decent?” Lady Ramkin boomed cheerfully. “Er-“ “I’ve brought you something jolly nourishing.” Somehow Vimes imagined it would be soup. Instead it was a plate stacked high with bacon, fried potatoes and eggs. He could hear his arteries panic just by looking at it. “I’ve made a bread pudding, too,” said Lady Ramkin, slightly sheepishly. “I don’t normally cook much, just for myself. You know how it is, catering for one.” Vimes thought about the meals at his lodgings. Somehow the meat was always grey, with mysterious tubes in it. “Er,” he began, not used to addressing ladies from a recumbent position in their own beds. “Corporal Nobbs tells me-“ “And what a colourful little man Nobby is!” said Lady Ramkin. Vimes wasn’t certain he could cope with this. “Colourful?” he said weakly. “A real character. We’ve been getting along famously.” “You have?” “Oh, yes. What a great fund of anecdotes he has.” “Oh, yes. He’s got that all right.” It always amazed Vimes how Nobby got along with practically everyone. It must, he’d decided, have something to do with the common denominator. In the entire world of mathematics there could be no denominator as common as Nobby. “Er,” he said, and then found he couldn’t leave this strange new byway, “you don’t find his language a bit, er, ripe?” “Salty,” corrected Lady Ramkin cheerfully. “You should have heard my father when he was annoyed. Anyway, we found we’ve got a lot in common. It’s an amazing coincidence, but my grandfather once had his grandfather whipped for malicious lingering.” That must make them practically family, Vimes thought. Another stab of pain from his stricken side made him wince. “You’ve got some very bad bruising and probably a cracked rib or two,” she said. “If you roll over I’ll put some more of this on.” Lady Ramkin flourished a jar of yellow ointment. Panic crossed Vimes’s face. Instinctively, he raised the sheets up around his neck. “Don’t play silly buggers, man,” she said. “I shan’t see anything I haven’t seen before. One backside is pretty much like another. It’s just that the ones I see generally have tails on. Now roll over and up with the nightshirt. It belonged to my grandfather, you know.” There was no resisting that tone of voice. Vimes thought about demanding that Nobby be brought in as a chaperon, and then decided that would be even worse. The cream burned like ice. “What is it?” “All kinds of stuff. It’ll reduce the bruising and promote the growth of healthy scale.” “What?” “Sorry. Probably not scale. Don’t look so worried. I’m almost positive about that. Okay, all done.” She gave him a slap on the rump. “Madam, I am Captain of the Night Watch,” said Vimes, knowing it was a bloody daft thing to say even as he said it. “Half naked in a lady’s bed, too,” said Lady Ramkin, unmoved. “Now sit up and eat your tea. We’ve got to get you good and strong.” Vimes’s eyes filled with panic. “Why?” he said. Lady Ramkin reached into the pocket of her grubby jacket. “I made some notes last night,” she said. “About the dragon.” “Oh, the dragon.” Vimes relaxed a bit. Right now the dragon seemed a much safer prospect. “And I did a bit of working out, too. I’ll tell you this: it’s a very odd beast. It shouldn’t be able to get airborne.” “You’re right there.” “If it’s built like swamp dragons, it should weigh about twenty tons. Twenty tons! It’s impossible. It’s all down to weight and wingspan ratios, you see.” “I saw it drop off the tower like a swallow.” “I know. It should have torn its wings off and left a bloody great hole in the ground,” said Lady Ramkin firmly. “You can’t muck about with aerodynamics. You can’t just scale up from small to big and leave it at that, you see. It’s all a matter of muscle power and lifting surfaces.” “I knew there was something wrong,” said Vimes, brightening up. “And the flame, too. Nothing goes around with that kind of heat inside it. How do swamp dragons manage it?” “Oh, that’s just chemicals,” said Lady Ramkin dismissively. “They just distill something flammable from whatever they’ve eaten and ignite the flame just as it comes out of the ducts. They never actually have fire inside them, unless they get a case of blowback.” “What happens then?” “You’re scraping dragon off the scenery,” said Lady Ramkin cheerfully. “I’m afraid they’re not very well-designed creatures, dragons.” Vimes listened. They would never have survived at all except that their home swamps were isolated and short of predators. Not that a dragon made good eating, anyway-once you’d taken away the leathery skin and the enormous flight muscles, what was left must have been like biting into a badly-run chemical factory. No wonder dragons were always ill. They relied on permanent stomach trouble for supplies of fuel. Most of their brain power was taken up with controlling the complexities of then- digestion, which could distill flame-producing fuels from the most unlikely ingredients. They could even rearrange their internal plumbing overnight to deal with difficult processes. They lived on a chemical knife-edge the whole time. One misplaced hiccup and they were geography. And when it came to choosing nesting sites, the females had all the common sense and mothering instinct of a brick. Vimes wondered why people had been so worried about dragons in the olden days. If there was one in a cave near you, all you had to do was wait until it self-ignited, blew itself up, or died of acute indigestion. “You’ve really studied them, haven’t you,” he said. “Someone ought to.” “But what about the big ones?” “Golly, yes. They’re a great mystery, you know,” she said, her expression becoming extremely serious. “Yes, you said.” “There are legends, you know. It seems as though one species of dragon started to get bigger and bigger and then . . . just vanished.” “Died out, you mean?” “No . . . they turned up, sometimes. From somewhere. Full of vim and vigour. And then, one day, they stopped coming at all.” She gave Vimes a triumphant look. “I think they found somewhere where they could really be. “ “Really be what?” “Dragons. Where they could really fulfil their potential. Some other dimension or something. Where the gravity isn’t so strong, or something.” “I thought when I saw it,” said Vimes, “I thought, you can’t have something that flies and has scales like that.” They looked at each other. “We’ve got to find it in its lair,” said Lady Ramkin. “No bloody flying newt sets fire to my city,” said Vimes. “Just think of the contribution to dragon lore,” said Lady Ramkin. “Listen, if anyone ever sets fire to this city, it’s going to be me. “ “It’s an amazing opportunity. There’s so many questions . . .” “You’re right there.” A phrase of Carrot’s crossed Vimes’s mind. “It can help us with our enquiries,” he suggested. “But in the morning,” said Lady Ramkin firmly. Vimes’s look of bitter determination faded. “I shall sleep downstairs, in the kitchen,” said Lady Ramkin cheerfully. “I usually have a camp bed made up down there when it’s egg-laying time. Some of the females always need assistance. Don’t you worry about me.” “You’re being very helpful,” Vimes muttered. “I’ve sent Nobby down to the city to help the others set up your headquarters,” said Lady Ramkin. Vimes had completely forgotten die Watch House. “It must have been badly damaged,” he ventured. “Totally destroyed,” said Lady Ramkin. “Just a patch of melted rock. So I’m letting you have a place in Pseudopolis Yard.” “Sorry?” “Oh, my father had property all over the city,” she said. “Quite useless to me, really. So I told my agent to give Sergeant Colon the keys to the old house in Pseudopolis Yard. It’ll do it good to be aired.” “But that area-I mean, there’s real cobbles on the streets-the rent alone, I mean, Lord Vetinari won’t-“ “Don’t you worry about it,” she said, giving him a friendly pat. “Now, you really ought to get some sleep.” Vimes lay in bed, his mind racing. Pseudopolis Yard was on the Ankh side of the river, in quite a high-rent district. The sight of Nobby or Sergeant Colon walking down the street in daylight would probably have the same effect on the area as the opening of a plague hospital. He dozed, gliding in and out of a sleep where giant dragons pursued him waving jars of ointment . . . And awoke to the sound of a mob.   . . .   Lady Ramkin drawing herself up haughtily was not a sight to forget, although you could try. It was like watching continental drift in reverse as various subcontinents and islands pulled themselves together to form one massive, angry protowoman. The broken door of the dragon house swung on its hinges. The inmates, already as highly strung as a harp on amphetamines, were going mad. Little gouts of flame burst against the metal plates as they stampeded back and forth in their pens. “Hwhat,” she said, “is the meaning of this?” If a Ramkin had ever been given to introspection she’d have admitted that it wasn’t a very original line. But it was handy. It did the job. The reason that cliches become cliches is that they are the hammers and screwdrivers in the toolbox of communication. The mob filled the broken doorway. Some of it was waving various sharp implements with the up-and-down motion proper to rioters. “Worl,” said the leader, “it’s the dragon, innit?” There was a chorus of muttered agreement. “Hwhat about it?” said Lady Ramkin. “Worl. It’s been burning the city. They don’t fly far. You got dragons here. Could be one of them, couldn’t it?” “Yeah.” “S’right.” “QED. “[15] “So what we’re going to do is, we’re going to put ‘em down.” “S’right.” “Yeah.” “Pro bono publico. “ Lady Ramkin’s bosom rose and fell like an empire. She reached out and grabbed the dunging fork from its hook on the wall. “One step nearer, I warn you, and you’ll be sorry,” she said. The leader looked beyond her to the frantic dragons. “Yeah?” he said, nastily. “And what’ll you do, eh?” Her mouth opened and shut once or twice. “I shall summon the Watch!” she said at last. The threat did not have the effect she had expected. Lady Ramkin had never paid much attention to those bits of the city that didn’t have scales on. “Well, that’s too bad,” said the leader. “That’s really worrying, you know that? Makes me go all weak at the knees, that does.” He extracted a lengthy cleaver from his belt. “And now you just stand aside, lady, because-“ A streak of green fire blasted out of the back of the shed, passed a foot over the heads of the mob, and burned a charred rosette in the woodwork over the door. Then came a voice that was a honeyed purr of sheer deadly menace. “This is Lord Mountjoy Quickfang Winterforth IV, the hottest dragon in the city. It could burn your head clean off. “ Captain Vimes limped forward from the shadows. A small and extremely frightened golden dragon was clamped firmly under one arm. His other hand held it by the tail. The rioters watched it, hypnotised. “Now I know what you’re thinking,” Vimes went on, softly. “You’re wondering, after all this excitement, has it got enough flame left? And, y’know, I ain’t so sure myself . . .” He leaned forward, sighting between the dragon’s ears, and his voice buzzed like a knife blade: “What you’ve got to ask yourself is: Am I feeling lucky?” They swayed backwards as he advanced. “Well?” he said. “Are you feeling lucky?” For a few moments the only sound was Lord Mount-joy Quickfang Winterforth IV’s stomach rumbling ominously as fuel sloshed into his flame chambers. “Now look, er,” said the leader, his eyes fixed hypnotically on the dragon’s head, “there’s no call for anything like that-“ “In fact he might just decide to flare off all by himself,” said Vimes. “They have to do it to stop the gas building up. It builds up when they get nervous. And, y’know, I reckon you’ve made them all pretty nervous now.” The leader made what he hoped was a vaguely conciliatory gesture, but unfortunately did it with the hand that was still holding a knife. “Drop it,” said Vimes sharply, “or you’re history.” The knife clanged on the flagstones. There was a scuffle at the back of the crowd as a number of people, metaphorically speaking, were a long way away and knew nothing about it. “But before the rest of you good citizens disperse quietly and go about your business,” said Vimes meaningfully, “I suggest you look hard at these dragons. Do any of them look sixty feet long? Would you say they’ve got an eighty-foot wingspan? How hot do they flame, would you say?” “Dunno,” said the leader. Vimes raised the dragon’s head slightly. The leader rolled his eyes. “Dunno, sir,” he corrected. “Do you want to find out?” The leader shook his head. But he did manage to find his voice. “Who are you, anyway?” he said. Vimes drew himself up. “Captain Vimes, City Watch,” he said. This met with almost complete silence. The exception was the cheerful voice, somewhere in the back of the crowd, which said: “Night shift, is it?” Vimes looked down at his nightshirt. In his hurry to get off his sickbed he’d shuffled hastily into a pair of Lady Ramkin’s slippers. For the first time he saw they had pink pompoms on them. And it was at this moment that Lord Mountjoy Quickfang Winterforth IV chose to belch. It wasn’t another stab of roaring fire. It was just a near-invisible ball of damp flame which rolled over the mob and singed a few eyebrows. But it definitely made an impression. Vimes rallied magnificently. They couldn’t have noticed his brief moment of sheer horror. “That one was just to get your attention,” he said, poker-faced. “The next one will be a little lower.” “Er,” said the leader. “Right you are. No problem. We were just going anyhow. No big dragons here, right enough. Sorry you’ve been troubled.” “Oh, no,” said Lady Ramkin triumphantly. “You don’t get away that easily!” She reached up on to a shelf and produced a tin box. It had a slot in the lid. It rattled. On the side was the legend: The Sunshine Sanctuary for Sick Dragons. The initial whip-round produced four dollars and thirty-one pence. After Captain Vimes gestured pointedly with the dragon, a further twenty-five dollars and sixteen pence were miraculously forthcoming. Then the mob fled. “We made a profit on the day, anyway,” said Vimes, when they were alone again. “That was jolly brave of you!” “Let’s just hope it doesn’t catch on,” said Vimes, gingerly putting the exhausted dragon back in its pen. He felt quite lightheaded. Once again he was aware of eyes staring fixedly at him. He glanced sideways into the long, pointed face of Goodboy Bindle Featherstone, rearing up in a pose best described as The Last Puppy in the Shop. To his astonishment, he found himself reaching over and scratching it behind its ears, or at least behind the two spiky things at the sides of its head which were presumably its ears. It responded with a strange noise that sounded like a complicated blockage in a brewery. He took his hand away hurriedly. “It’s all right,” said Lady Ramkin. “It’s his stomachs rumbling. That means he likes you.” To his amazement, Vimes found that he was rather pleased about this. As far as he could recall, nothing in his life before had thought him worth a burp. “I thought you were, er, going to get rid of him,” he said. “I suppose I shall have to,” she said. “You know how it is, though. They look up at you with those big, soulful eyes-“ There was a brief, mutual, awkward silence. “How would it be if I-“ “You don’t think you might like-“ They stopped. “It’d be the least I could do,” said Lady Ramkin. “But you’re already giving us the new headquarters and everything!” “That was simply my duty as a good citizen,” said Lady Ramkin. “Please accept Goodboy as, as a friend. “ Vimes felt that he was being inched out over a very deep chasm on a very thin plank. “I don’t even know what they eat,” he said. “They’re omnivores, actually,” she said. “They eat everything except metal and igneous rocks. You can’t be finicky, you see, when you evolve in a swamp.” “But doesn’t he need to be taken for walks? Or flights, or whatever?” “He seems to sleep most of the time.” She scratched the ugly thing on top of its scaly head. “He’s the most relaxed dragon I’ve ever bred, I must say.” “What about, er, you know?” He indicated the dunging fork. “Well, it’s mainly gas. Just keep him somewhere well ventilated. You haven’t got any valuable carpets, have you? It’s best not to let them lick your face, but they can be trained to control their flame. They’re very helpful for lighting fires.” Goodboy Bindle Featherstone curled up amidst a barrage of plumbing noises. They’ve got eight stomachs, Vimes remembered; the drawings in the book had been very detailed. And there’s lots of other stuff like fractional-distillation tubes and mad alchemy sets in there. No swamp dragon could ever terrorise a kingdom, except by accident. Vimes wondered how many had been killed by enterprising heroes. It was terribly cruel to do something like that to creatures whose only crime was to blow themselves absent-mindedly to pieces in mid-air, which was not something any individual dragon made a habit of. It made him quite angry to think about it. A race of, of whittles, that’s what dragons were. Born to lose. Live fast, die wide. Omnivores or not, what they must really live on was their nerves, flapping apologetically through the world in mortal fear of their own digestive system. The family would be just getting over father’s explosion, and some twerp in a suit of armour would come plodding into the swamp to stick a sword into a bag of guts that was only one step away from self-destruction in any case. Huh. It’d be interesting to see how the great dragon slayers of the past stood up to the big dragon. Armour? Best not to wear it. It’d all be the same in any case, and at least your ashes wouldn’t come prepackaged in their own foil. He stared and stared at the malformed little thing, and the idea that had been knocking for attention for the last few minutes finally gained entrance. Everyone in Ankh-Morpork wanted to find the dragon’s lair. At least, wanted to find it empty. Bits of wood on a stick wouldn’t do it, he was certain. But, as they said, set a thief. . . [16] He said, “Could one dragon sniff out another? I mean, follow a scent?”   . . .   Dearest Mother [wrote Carrot] Talk about a Turn Up for the Books. Last night the dragon burned up our Headquarters and Lo and Behold we have been given a better one, it is in a place called Pseudopolis Yard, opposite the Opera House. Sgt Colon said we have gone Up in the World and has told Nobby not to try to sell the furnishings. Going Up in the World is a metaphor, which I am learning about, it is like Lying but more decorative. There are proper carpets to spit on. Twice today groups of people have tried to search the cellars here for the dragon, it is amazing. And digging up people’s privies and poking into attics, it is like a Fever. One thing is, people haven’t got time for much else, and Sgt Colon says, when you go out on your Rounds and shout Twelve of the Clock and All’s Well while a dragon is melting the street you feel a bit of a Burke. I have moved out of Mrs Palm’s because, there are dozens of bedrooms here. It was sad and they made me a cake but I think it is for the best, although Mrs Palm never charged me rent which was very nice of her considering she is a widow with so many fine daughters to bring up plus dowries ekcetra. Also I have made friends with this ape who keeps coming round to see if we have found his book. Nobby says it is a flea-ridden moron because it won 18d off him playing Cripple Mr Onion, which is a game of chance with cards which I do not play, I have told Nobby about the Gambling (Regulation) Acts, and he said Piss off, which I think is in violation of the Decency Ordinances of 1389 but I have decided to use my Discretion. Capt Vimes is ill and is being looked after by a Lady. Nobby says it is well known she is Mental, but Sgt Colon says its just because of living in a big house with a lot of dragons but she is worth a Fortune and well done to the Capt for getting his feet under the table. I do not see what the furniture has to do with it. This morning I went for a walk with Reet and showed her many interesting examples of the ironwork to be found in the city. She said it was very interesting. She said I was quite different to anyone she’s ever met. Your loving son, Carrot.X PS I hope Minty is keeping well. He folded the paper carefully and shoved it into the envelope. “Sun’s going down,” said Sergeant Colon. Carrot looked up from his sealing wax. “That means it will be night soon,” Colon went on, accurately. “Yes, Sergeant.” Colon ran a finger round his collar. His skin was impressively pink, the result of a morning’s scrubbing, but people were still staying at a respectful distance. Some people are born to command. Some people achieve command. And others have command thrust upon them, and the sergeant was now included in this category and wasn’t very happy about it. Any minute now, he knew, he was going to have to say that it was time they went out on patrol. He didn’t want to go out on patrol. He wanted to find a nice sub-basement somewhere. But nobblyess obligay-if he was in charge, he had to do it. It wasn’t the loneliness of command that was bothering him. It was the being-fried-alive of command that was giving him problems. He was also pretty sure that unless they came up with something about this dragon very soon then the Patrician was going to be unhappy. And when the Patrician was unhappy, he became very democratic. He found intricate and painful ways of spreading that un-happiness as far as possible. Responsibility, the sergeant thought, was a terrible thing. So was being horribly tortured. As far as he could see, the two facts were rapidly heading towards one another. And thus he was terribly relieved when a small coach pulled up outside the Yard. It was very old, and battered. There was a faded coat of arms on the door. Painted on the back, and rather newer, was the little message: Whinny If You Love Dragons. Out of it, wincing as he got down, stepped Captain Vimes. Following him was the woman known to the sergeant as Mad Sybil Ramkin. And finally, hopping down obediently on the end of its lead, was a small- The sergeant was too nervous to take account of actual size. “Well, I’ll be mogadored! They’ve only gone and caught it!” Nobby looked up from the table in the corner where he was continually failing to learn that it is almost impossible to play a game of skill and bluff against an opponent who smiles all the time. The Librarian took advantage of the diversion to help himself to a couple of cards off the bottom of the pack. “Don’t be daft. That’s just a swamp dragon,” said Nobby. “She’s all right, is Lady Sybil. A real lady.” The other two guards turned and stared at him. This was Nobby talking. “You two can bloody well stop that,” he said. “Why shouldn’t I know a lady when I sees one? She give me a cup of tea in a cup fin as paper and a silver spoon in it,” he said, speaking as one who had peeped over the plateau of social distinction. “And I give it back to her, so you can stop looking at me like that!” “What is it you actually do on your evenings off?” said Colon. “No business of yourn.” “Did you really give the spoon back?” said Carrot. “Yes I bloody well did!” said Nobby hotly. “Attention, lads,” said the sergeant, flooded with relief. The other two entered the room. Vimes gave his men his usual look of resigned dismay. “My squad,” he mumbled. “Fine body of men,” said Lady Ramkin. “The good old rank and file, eh?” “The rank, anyway,” said Vimes. Lady Ramkin beamed encouragingly. This led to a strange shuffling among the men. Sergeant Colon, by dint of some effort, managed to make his chest stick out more than his stomach. Carrot straightened up from his habitual stoop. Nobby vibrated with soldierly bearing, hands thrust straight down by his sides, thumbs pointing sharply forward, pigeon chest inflated so much that his feet were in danger of leaving the ground. “I always think we can all sleep safer in my bed knowing that these brave men are watching over us,” said Lady Ramkin, walking sedately along the rank, like a treasure galleon running ahead of a mild breeze. “And who is this?” It is difficult for an orangutan to stand to attention. Its body can master the general idea, but its skin can’t. The Librarian was doing his best, however, standing in a sort of respectful heap at the end of the line and maintaining the kind of complex salute you can only achieve with a four-foot arm. “ ‘E’s plain clothes, ma’am,” said Nobby smartly. “Special Ape Services.” “Very enterprising. Very enterprising indeed,” said Lady Ramkin. “How long have you been an ape, my man?” “Oook.” “Well done.” She turned to Vimes, who was definitely looking incredulous. “A credit to you,” she said. “A fine body of men-“ “Oook.” “-anthropoids,” corrected Lady Ramkin, with barely a break in the flow. For a moment the rank felt as though they had just returned from single-handedly conquering a distant province. They felt, in fact, tremendously bucked-up, which was how Lady Ramkin would almost certainly have put it and which was definitely several letters of the alphabet away from how they normally felt. Even the Librarian felt favoured, and for once had let the phrase ‘my man’ pass without comment. A trickling noise and a strong chemical smell prompted them to look around. Goodboy Bindle Featherstone was squatting with an air of sheepish innocence alongside what was not so much a stain on the carpet as a hole in the floor. A few wisps of smoke were curling up from the edges. Lady Ramkin sighed. “Don’t you worry, ma’am,” volunteered Nobby cheerfully. “Soon have that cleaned up.” “I’m afraid they’re often like that when they’re excited,” she said. “Fine specimen you got there, ma’am,” Nobby went on, revelling in the new-found experience of social intercourse. “It’s not mine,” she said. “It belongs to the captain now. Or all of you, perhaps. A sort of mascot. His name is Goodboy Bindle Featherstone.” Goodboy Bindle Featherstone bore up stoically under the weight of the name, and sniffed a table leg. “He looks more like my brother Errol,” said Nobby, playing the cheeky chirpy lovable city sparrow card for all it was worth. “Got the same pointed nose, excuse me for saying so, milady.” Vimes looked at the creature, which was investigating its new environment, and knew that it was now, irrevocably, an Errol. The little dragon took an experimental bite out of the table, chewed it for a few seconds, spat it out, curled up and went to sleep. “He ain’t going to set fire to anything, is he?” said the sergeant anxiously. “I don’t think so. He doesn’t seem to have worked out what his flame ducts are for yet,” said Lady Ramkin. “You can’t teach him anything about relaxing, though,” said Vimes. “Anyway, men . . .” “Oook.” “I wasn’t talking to you, sir. What’s this doing here?” “Er,” said Sergeant Colon hurriedly, “I, er . . . with you being away and all, and us likely to be short-handed . . . Carrot here says it’s all according to the law and that . . . I swore him in, sir. The ape, sir.” “Swore him in what, Sergeant?” said Vimes. “As Special Constable, sir,” said Colon, blushing. “You know, sir. Sort of citizen’s Watch.” Vimes threw up his hands.  “Special? Bloody ‘ unique!” The Librarian gave Vimes a big smile. “Just temporarily, sir. For the duration, like,” said Colon pleadingly. “We could do with the help, sir, and . . . well, he’s the only one who seems to like us . . .” “I think it’s a frightfully good idea,” said Lady Ramkin. “Well done, that ape.” Vimes shrugged. The world was mad enough already, what could make it worse? “Okay,” he said. “Okay! I give in. Fine! Give him a badge, although I’m damned if I know where he’ll wear it! Fine! Yes! Why not?” “You all right, Captain?” said Colon, all concern. “Fine! Fine! Welcome to the new Watch!” snapped Vimes, striding vaguely around the room. “Great! After all, we pay peanuts, don’t we, so we might as well employ mon-“ The sergeant’s hand slapped respectfully across Vimes’s mouth. “Er, just one thing, Captain,” said Colon urgently, to Vimes’s astonished eyes. “You don’t use the ‘M’ word. Gets right up his nose, sir. He can’t help it, he loses all self-control. Like a red rag to a wossname, sir. ‘Ape’ is all right, sir, but not the ‘M’ word. Because, sir, when he gets angry he doesn’t just go and sulk, sir, if you get my drift. He’s no trouble at all apart from that, sir. All right? Just don’t say monkey. Ohshit.”   . . .   The Brethren were nervous. He’d heard them talking. Things were moving too fast for them. He thought he’d led them into the conspiracy a bit at a time, never giving them more truth than their little brains could cope with, but he’d still overestimated them. A firm hand was needed. Firm but fair. “Brothers,” said the Supreme Grand Master, “are the Cuffs of Veracity duly enhanced?” “What?” said Brother Watchtower vaguely. “Oh. The Cuffs. Yeah. Enhanced. Right.” “And the Martlets of Beckoning, are they fittingly divested?” Brother Plasterer gave a guilty start. “Me? What? Oh. Fine, no problem. Divested. Yes.” The Supreme Grand Master paused. “Brothers,” he said softly. “We are so near. Just once more. Just a few hours. Once more and the world is ours. Do you understand, Brothers?” Brother Plasterer shuffled a foot. “Well,” he said. “I mean, of course. Yes. No fears about that. Behind you one hundred and ten percent-“ He’s going to say only, thought the Supreme Grand Master. “-only-“ Ah. “-we, that is, all of us, we’ve been . . . odd, really, you feel so different, don’t you, after summoning the dragon, sort of-“ “Cleaned out,” said Brother Plasterer helpfully. “-yes, like it’s sort of-“ Brother Watchtower struggled with the serpents of self-expression-“taking something out of you . . .” “Sucked dry,” said Brother Plasterer. “Yes, like he said, and we . . . well, it’s maybe it’s a bit risky . . .” “Like stuff’s been dragged from your actual living brain by eldritch creatures from the Beyond,” said Brother Plasterer. “I’d have said more like a bit of a sick headache, myself,” said Brother Watchtower helplessly. “And we was wondering, you know, about all this stuff about cosmic balance and that, because, well, look what happened to poor old Dunnykin. Could be a bit of a judgement. Er.” “It was just a maddened crocodile hidden in a flower bed,” said the Supreme Grand Master. “It could have happened to anyone. I understand your feelings, however.” “You do?” said Brother Watchtower. “Oh, yes. They’re only natural. All the greatest wizards feel a little ill-at-ease before undertaking a great work such as this.” The Brethren preened themselves. Great wizards. That’s us. Yeah. “But in a few hours it’ll be over, and I am sure that the king will reward you handsomely. The future will be glorious.” This normally did the trick. It didn’t appear to be working this time. “But the dragon-“ Brother Watchtower began. “There won’t be any dragon! We won’t need it. Look,” said the Supreme Grand Master, “it’s quite simple. The lad will have a marvellous sword. Everyone knows kings have marvellous swords-“ “This’d be the marvellous sword you’ve been telling us about, would it?” said Brother Plasterer. “And when it touches the dragon,” said the Supreme Grand Master, “it’ll be . . . foom!” “Yeah, they do that,” said Brother Doorkeeper. “My uncle kicked a swamp dragon once. He found it eating his pumpkins. Damn thing nearly took his leg off.” The Supreme Grand Master sighed. A few more hours, yes, and then no more of this. The only thing he hadn’t decided was whether to let them alone- who’d believe them, after all?-or send the Guard to arrest them for being terminally stupid. “No,” he said patiently, “I mean the dragon will vanish. We’ll have sent it back. End of dragon.” “Won’t people be a bit suspicious?” said Brother Plasterer. “Won’t they expect lumps of dragon all over the place?” “No,” said the Supreme Grand Master triumphantly, “because one touch from the Sword of Truth and Justice will totally destroy the Spawn of Evil!” The Brethren stared at him. “That’s what they’ll believe, anyway,” he added. “We can provide a bit of mystic smoke at the time.” “Dead easy, mystic smoke,” said Brother Fingers. “No bits, then?” said Brother Plasterer, a shade disappointed. Brother Watchtower coughed. “Dunno if people will accept that,” he said. “Sounds a bit too neat, like.” “Listen,” snapped the Supreme Grand Master, “they’ll accept anything! They’ll see it happen! People will be so keen to see the boy win, they won’t think twice about it! Depend upon it! Now . . . let us commence . . .” He concentrated. Yes, it was easier. Easier every time. He could feel the scales, feel the rage of the dragon as he reached into the place where the dragons went and took control. This was power, and it was his.   . . .   Sergeant Colon winced. “Ow.” “Don’t be a big softy,” said Lady Ramkin cheerfully, tightening the bandage with a well-practised skill handed down through many generations of Ramkin womenfolk. “He hardly touched you.” “And he’s very sorry,” said Carrot sharply. “Show the sergeant how sorry you are. Go on.” “Oook,” said the Librarian, sheepishly. “Don’t let him kiss me!” squeaked Colon. “Do you think picking someone up by their ankles and bouncing their head on the floor comes under the heading of Striking a Superior Officer?” said Carrot. “I’m not pressing charges, me,” said the sergeant hurriedly. “Can we get on?” said Vimes impatiently. “We’re going to see if Errol can sniff out the dragon’s lair. Lady Ramkin thinks it’s got to be worth a try.” “You mean set a deep hole with spring-loaded sides, tripwires, whirling knife blades driven by water power, broken glass and scorpions, to catch a thief, Captain?” said the sergeant doubtfully. “Ow!” “Yes, we don’t want to lose the scent,” said Lady Ramkin. “Stop being a big baby, Sergeant.” “Brilliant idea about using Errol, ma’am, if I may make so bold,” said Nobby, while the sergeant blushed under his bandage. Vimes was not certain how long he would be able to put up with Nobby the social mountaineer. Carrot said nothing. He was gradually coming to terms with the fact that he probably wasn’t a dwarf, but dwarf blood flowed in his veins in accordance with the famous principle of morphic resonance, and his borrowed genes were telling him that nothing was going to be that simple. Finding a hoard even when the dragon wasn’t at home was pretty risky. Anyway, he was certain he’d know if there was one around. The presence of large amounts of gold always made a dwarf’s palms itch, and his weren’t itching. “We’ll start by that wall in the Shades,” said the captain. Sergeant Colon glanced sideways at Lady Ramkin, and found it impossible to show cowardice in the face of the supportive. He contented himself with, “Is that wise, Captain?” “Of course it isn’t. If we were wise, we wouldn’t be in the Watch.” “I say! All this is tremendously exciting,” said Lady Ramkin. “Oh, I don’t think you should come, m’lady-“ Vimes began. “-Sybil, please!-“ “-it’s a very disreputable area, you see.” “But I’m sure I shall be perfectly safe with your men,” she said. “I’m sure vagabonds just melt away when they see you.” That’s dragons, thought Vimes. They melt away when they see dragons, and just leave their shadows on the wall. Whenever he felt that he was slowing down, or that he was losing interest, he remembered those shadows, and it was like having dull fire poured down his backbone. Things like that shouldn’t be allowed to happen. Not in my city.   . . .   In fact the Shades were not a problem. Many of its denizens were out hoard-hunting anyway, and those that remained were far less inclined than hitherto to lurk in dark alleys. Besides, the more sensible of them recognised that Lady Ramkin, if waylaid, would probably tell them to pull up their socks and not be silly, in a voice so used to command that they would probably find themselves doing it. The wall hadn’t been knocked down yet and still bore its grisly fresco. Errol sniffed around it, trotted up the alley once or twice, and went to sleep. “Dint work,” said Sergeant Colon. “Good idea, though,” said Nobby loyally. “It could be all the rain and people walking about, I suppose,” said Lady Ramkin. Vimes scooped up the dragon. It had been a vain hope anyway. It was just better to be doing something than nothing. “We’d better get back,” he said. “The sun’s gone down.” They walked back in silence. The dragon’s even tamed the Shades, Vimes thought. It’s taken over the whole city, even when it isn’t here. People’11 start tying virgins to rocks any day now. It’s a metaphor of human bloody existence, a dragon. And if that wasn’t bad enough, it’s also a bloody great hot flying thing. He pulled out the key to the new headquarters. While he was fumbling in the lock, Errol woke up and started to yammer. “Not now,” Vimes said. His side twinged. The night had barely started and already he felt too tired. A slate slid down the roof and smashed on the cobbles beside him. “Captain,” hissed Sergeant Colon. “What?” “It’s on the roof, Captain.” Something about the sergeant’s voice got through to Vimes. It wasn’t excited. It wasn’t frightened. It just had a tone of dull, leaden terror. He looked up. Errol started to bounce up and down under his arm. The dragon-the dragon-was peering down interestedly over the guttering. Its face alone was taller than a man. Its eyes were the size of very large eyes, coloured a smouldering red and filled with an intelligence that had nothing to do with human beings. It was far older, for one thing. It was an intelligence that had already been long basted in guile and marinated in cunning by the time a group of almost-monkeys were wondering whether standing on two legs was a good career move. It wasn’t an intelligence that had any truck with, or even understood, the arts of diplomacy. It wouldn’t play with you, or ask you riddles. But it understood all about arrogance and power and cruelty and if it could possibly manage it, it would burn your head off. Because it liked to. It was even more angry than usual at the moment. It could sense something behind its eyes. A tiny, weak, alien mind, bloated with self-satisfaction. It was infuriating, like an unscratchable itch. It was making it do things it didn’t want to do . . . and stopping it from doing things it wanted to do very much. Those eyes were, for the moment, focused on Errol, who was going frantic. Vimes realised that all that stood between him and a million degrees of heat was the dragon’s vague interest in why Vimes had a smaller dragon under his arm. “Don’t make any sudden moves,” said Lady Ramkin’s voice behind him. “And don’t show fear. They can always tell when you’re afraid.” “Is there any other advice you can offer at this time?” said Vimes slowly, trying to speak without moving his lips. “Well, tickling them behind their ears often works.” “Oh,” said Vimes weakly. “And a good sharp ‘no!’ and taking away their food bowl.” “Ah?” “And hitting them on the nose with a roll of paper is what I do in extreme cases.” In the slow, brightly-outlined, desperate world Vimes was now inhabiting, which seemed to revolve around the craggy nostrils a few metres away from him, he became aware of a gentle hissing sound. The dragon was taking a deep breath. The intake of air stopped. Vimes looked into the darkness of the flame ducts and wondered whether he’d see anything, whether there’d be some tiny white glow or something, before fiery oblivion swept over him. At that moment a horn rang out. The dragon raised its head in a puzzled way and made a noise that sounded vaguely interrogative without being in any way a word. The horn rang out again. The noise seemed to have a number of echoes that lived a life of their own. It sounded like a challenge. If that wasn’t what it was, then the horn blower was soon going to be in trouble, because the dragon gave Vimes a smouldering look, unfolded its enormous wings, leapt heavily into the air and, against all the rules of aeronautics, flew slowly away in the direction of the sound. Nothing in the world should have been able to fly like that. The wings thumped up and down with a noise like potted thunder, but the dragon moved as though it was idly sculling through the air. If it stopped flapping, the movement suggested, it would simply glide to a halt. It floated, not flew. For something the size of a barn with an armour-plated hide, it was a pretty good trick. It passed over their heads like a barge, heading for the Plaza of Broken Moons. “Follow it!” shouted Lady Ramkin. “That’s not right, it flying like that. I’m pretty sure there’s something in one of the Witchcraft Laws,” said Carrot, taking out his notebook. “And it’s damaged the roof. It’s really piling up the offences, you know.” “You all right, Captain?” said Sergeant Colon. “I could see right up its nose,” said Captain Vimes dreamily. His eyes focused on the worried face of the sergeant. “Where’s it gone?” he demanded. Colon pointed along the street. Vimes glowered at the shape disappearing over the rooftops. “Follow it!” he said.   . . .   The horn sounded again. Other people were hurrying towards the plaza. The dragon drifted ahead of them like a shark heading towards a wayward airbed, its tail flicking slowly from side to side. “Some loony is going to fight it!” said Nobby. “I thought someone would have a go,” said Colon. “Poor bugger’ll be baked in his own armour.” This seemed to be the opinion of the crowds lining the plaza. The people of Ankh-Morpork had a straightforward, no-nonsense approach to entertainment, and while they were looking forward to seeing a dragon slain, they’d be happy to settle instead for seeing someone being baked alive in his own armour. You didn’t get the chance every day to see someone baked alive in their own armour. It would be something for the children to remember. Vimes was jostled and bounced around by the crowd as more people flooded into the plaza behind them. The horn sounded a third challenge. “That’s a slug-horn, that is,” said Colon knowledgeably. “Like a tocsin, only deeper.” “You sure?” said Nobby. “Yep.” “It must have been a bloody big slug.” “Peanuts! Figgins! Hot sausages!” whined a voice behind them. “Hallo, lads. Hallo, Captain Vimes! In at the death, eh? Have a sausage. On the house.” “What’s going on, Throat?” said Vimes, clinging to the vendor’s tray as more people spilled around them. “Some kid’s ridden into the city and said he’d kill the dragon,” said Cut-me-own-Throat. “Got a magic sword, he says.” “Has he got a magic skin?” “You’ve got no romance in your soul, Captain,” said Throat, removing a very hot toasting fork from the tiny frying pan on his tray and applying it gently to the buttock of a large woman in front of him. “Stand aside, madam, commerce is the lifeblood of the city, thank you very much. O’course,” he continued, “by rights there should be a maiden chained to a rock. Only the aunt said no. That’s the trouble with some people. No sense of tradition. This lad says he’s the rightful air, too.” Vimes shook his head. The world was definitely going mad around him. “You’ve lost me there,” he said. “Air,” said Throat patiently. “You know. Air to the throne.” “What throne?” “The throne of Ankh.” “What throne of Ankh?” “You know. Kings and that.” Throat looked reflective. “Wish I knew what his bloody name is,” he said. “I put an order in to Igneous the Troll’s all-night wholesale pottery for three gross of coronation mugs and it’s going to be a right pain, painting all the names in afterwards. Shall I put you down for a couple, Cap’n? To you ninety pence, and that’s cutting me own throat.” Vimes gave up, and shoved his way back through the throng using Carrot as a lighthouse. The lance-constable loomed over the crowd, and the rest of the rank had anchored themselves to him. “It’s all gone mad,” he shouted. “What’s going on, Carrot?” “There’s a lad on a horse in the middle of the plaza,” said Carrot. “He’s got a glittery sword, you know. Doesn’t seem to be doing much at the moment, though.” Vimes fought his way into the lee of Lady Ramkin. “Kings,” he panted. “Of Ankh. And Thrones. Are there?” “What? Oh, yes. There used to be,” said Lady Ramkin. “Hundreds of years ago. Why?” “Some kid says he’s heir to the throne!” “That’s right,” said Throat, who’d followed Vimes in the hope of clinching a sale. “He made a big speech about how he was going to kill the dragon, overthrow the usurpers and right all wrongs. Everyone cheered. Hot sausages, two for a dollar, made of genuine pig, why not buy one for the lady?” “Don’t you mean pork, sir?” said Carrot warily, eyeing the glistening tubes. “Manner of speaking, manner of speaking,” said Throat quickly. “Certainly your actual pig products. Genuine pig.” “Everyone cheers any speech in this city,” growled Vimes. “It doesn’t mean anything!” “Get your pig sausages, five for two dollars!” said Throat, who never let a conversation stand in the way of trade. “Could be good for business, could monarchy. Pig sausages! Pig sausages! Inna bun! And righting all wrongs, too. Sounds like a solid idea to me. With onions!” “Can I press you to a hot sausage, ma’am?” said Nobby. Lady Ramkin looked at the tray around Throat’s neck. Thousands of years of good breeding came to her aid and there was only the faintest suggestion of horror in her voice when she said, “My, they look good. What splendid foodstuffs.” “Are they made by monks on some mystic mountain?” said Carrot. Throat gave him an odd look. “No,” he said patiently, “by pigs.” “What wrongs?” said Vimes urgently. “Come on, tell me. What wrongs is he going to right?” “We-ell,” said Throat, “there’s, well, taxes. That’s wrong, for a start.” He had the grace to look slightly embarrassed. Paying taxes was something that, in Throat’s world, happened only to other people. “That’s right,” said an old woman next to him. “And the gutter of my house leaks something dreadful and the landlord won’t do nothing. That’s wrong.” “And premature baldness,” said the man in front of her. “That’s wrong, too.” Vimes’s mouth dropped open. “Ah. Kings can cure that, you know,” said another protomonarchist knowingly. “As a matter of fact,” said Throat, rummaging in his pack, “I’ve got one bottle left of this astonishing ointment what is made-“ he glared at Carrot-“by some ancient monks who live on a mountain-“ “And they can’t answer back, you know,” the monarchist went on. “That’s how you can tell they’re royal. Completely incapable of it. It’s to do with being gracious.” “Fancy,” said the leaky-guttering woman. “Money, too,” said the monarchist, enjoying the attention. “They don’t carry it. That’s how you can always tell a king.” “Why? It’s not that heavy,” said the man whose remaining hair was spread across the dome of his head like the remnant of a defeated army. “I can carry hundreds of dollars, no problem.” “You probably get weak arms, being a king,” said the woman wisely. “Probably with the waving.” “I’ve always thought,” said the monarchist, pulling out a pipe and beginning to fill it with the ponderous air of one who is going to deliver a lecture, “that one of the major problems of being a king is the risk of your daughter getting a prick.” There was a thoughtful pause. “And falling asleep for a hundred years,” the monarchist went on stolidly. “Ah,” said the others, unaccountably relieved. “And then there’s wear and tear on peas,” he added. “Well, there would be,” said the woman, uncertainly. “Having to sleep on them all the time,” said the monarchist. “Not to mention hundreds of mattresses.” “Right.” “Is that so? I think I could get ‘em for him wholesale,” said Throat. He turned to Vimes, who had been listening to all this with leaden depression. “See, Captain? And you’d be in the royal guard, I expect. Get some plumes in your helmet.” “Ah, pageantry,” said the monarchist, pointing with his pipe. “Very important. Lots of spectacles.” “What, free?” said Throat. “We-ell, I think maybe you have to pay for the frames,” said the monarchist. “You’re all bloody mad!” shouted Vimes. “You don’t know anything about him and he hasn’t even won yet!” “Bit of a formality, I expect,” said the woman. “It’s a fire-breathing dragon!” screamed Vimes, remembering those nostrils. “And he’s just a guy on a horse, for heaven’s sake!” Throat prodded him gently in the breastplate. “You got no soul, Cap’n,” he said. “When a stranger comes into the city under the thrall of the dragon and challenges it with a glittery sword, weeell, there’s only one outcome, ain’t there? It’s probably destiny.” “Thrall?” shouted Vimes. “Thrall? You thieving bugger, Throat, you were flogging cuddly dragon dolls yesterday!” “That’s was just business, Cap’n. No need to get excited about it,” said Throat pleasantly. Vimes went back to the rank in a gloomy rage. Say what you liked about the people of Ankh-Morpork, they had always been staunchly independent, yielding to no man their right to rob, defraud, embezzle and murder on an equal basis. This seemed absolutely right, to Vimes’s way of thinking. There was no difference at all between the richest man and the poorest beggar, apart from the fact that the former had lots of money, food, power, fine clothes, and good health. But at least he wasn’t any better. Just richer, fatter, more powerful, better dressed and healthier. It had been like that for hundreds of years. “And now they get one sniff of an ermine robe and they go all gooey,” he muttered. The dragon was circling the plaza slowly and warily. Vimes craned to see over the heads in front of him. In the same way that various predators have the silhouette of their prey almost programmed into their genes, it was possible that the shape of someone on a horse holding a sword clicked a few tumblers in a dragon’s brain. It was showing keen but wary interest. Back in the crowd, Vimes shrugged. “I didn’t even know we were a kingdom.” “Well, we haven’t been for ages,” said Lady Ramkin. “The kings got thrown out, and jolly good job too. They could be quite frightful.” “But you’re, well, from a pos-from a high-born family,” he said. “I should have thought you’d be all for kings.” “Some of them were fearful oiks, you know,” she said airily. “Wives all over the place, and chopping people’s heads off, fighting pointless wars, eating with their knife, chucking half-eaten chicken legs over their shoulders, that sort of thing. Not our sort of people at all.” The plaza went quiet. The dragon had flapped slowly to the far end and was almost stationary in the air, apart from the slow beating of its wings. Vimes felt something claw gently at his back, and then Errol was on his shoulder, gripping with his hind claws. His stubby wings were beating in time with those of the bigger specimen. He was hissing. His eyes were fixed on the hovering bulk. The boy’s horse jigged nervously on the plaza’s flagstones as he dismounted, flourished the sword and turned to face the distant enemy. He certainly looks confident, Vimes told himself. On the other hand, how does the ability to slay dragons fit you for kingship in this day and age? It was certainly a very shiny sword. You had to admit that.   . . .   And now it was two of the clock the following morning. And all was well, apart from the rain. It was drizzling again. There are some towns in the multiverse which think they know how to have a good time. Places like New Orleans and Rio reckon they not only know how to push the boat out but set fire to the harbour as well; but compared to Ankh-Morpork with its hair down they’re a Welsh village at 2 p.m. on a wet Sunday afternoon. Fireworks banged and sparkled in the damp air over the turbid mud of the river Ankh. Various domesticated animals were being roasted in the streets. Dancers conga’d from house to house, often managing to pick up any loose ornaments while doing so. There was a lot of quaffing going on. People who in normal circumstances would never think of doing it were shouting “Hurrah”. Vimes stalked gloomily through the crowded streets, feeling like the only pickled onion in a fruit salad. He’d given the rank the evening off. He wasn’t feeling at all royalist. He didn’t think he had anything against kings as such, but the sight of Ankh-Morporkians waving flags was mysteriously upsetting. That was something only silly subject people did, in other countries. Besides, the idea of royal plumes in his hat revolted him. He’d always had a thing about plumes. Plumes sort of, well, bought you off, told everyone that you didn’t belong to yourself. And he’d feel like a bird. It’d be the last straw. His errant feet led him back to the Yard. After all, where else was there? His lodgings were depressing and his landlady had complained about the holes which, despite much shouting, Errol kept making in the carpet. And the smell Errol made. And Vimes couldn’t drink in a tavern tonight without seeing things that would upset him even more than the things he normally saw when he was drunk. It was nice and quiet, although the distant sounds of revelry could be heard through the window. Errol scrambled down from his shoulder and started to eat the coke in the fireplace. Vimes sat back and put his feet up. What a day! And what a fight! The dodging, the weaving, the shouts of the crowd, the young man standing there looking tiny and unprotected, the dragon taking a deep breath in a way now very familiar to Vimes . . . And not flaming. That had surprised Vimes. It had surprised the crowd. It had certainly surprised the dragon, which had tried to squint at its own nose and clawed desperately at its flame ducts. It had remained surprised right up to the moment when the lad ducked in under one claw and thrust the sword home. And then a thunderclap. You’d have thought there’d have been some bits of dragon left, really. Vimes pulled a scrap of paper towards him. He looked at the notes he’d made yesterday: Itym: Heavy draggon, but yet it can flye right welle; Itym: The fyre be main hot, yet issueth from ane living Thinge; Itym: The Swamp dragons be right Poor Thinges, yet this monstrous Form waxeth full mightily; Itym: From whence it cometh none knowe, nor wither it goeth, nor where it bideth betweentimes; Itym: Why fore did it burneth so neatlie ? He pulled the pen and ink towards him and, in a slow round hand, added: Itym: Can a draggon be destroyed into utterlye noe-thinge? He thought for a while, and continued: Itym: Whyfore did it Explode that noone may find It, search they greatly? A puzzler, that. Lady Ramkin said that when a swamp dragon exploded there was dragon everywhere. And this one had been a damn great thing. Admittedly its insides must have been an alchemical nightmare, but the citizens of Ankh-Morpork should still have been spending the night shovelling dragon off the streets. No-one seemed to have bothered about this. The purple smoke was quite impressive, though. Errol finished off the coke and started on the fire irons. So far this evening he had eaten three cobblestones, a doorknob, something unidentifiable he’d found in the gutter and, to general astonishment, three of Cut-me-own Throat’s sausages made of genuine pork organs. The crunching of the poker going down mingled with the patter of rain on the windows. Vimes stared at the paper again and then wrote: Itym: How can Kinges come of noethinge? He hadn’t even seen the lad close to. He looked personable enough, not exactly a great thinker, but definitely the kind of profile you wouldn’t mind seeing on your small change. Mind you, after killing the dragon he could have been a cross-eyed goblin for all that it mattered. The mob had borne him in triumph to the Patrician’s palace. Lord Vetinari had been locked up in his own dungeons. He hadn’t put up much fight, apparently. Just smiled at everyone and went quietly. What a happy coincidence for the city that, just when it needed a champion to kill the dragon, a king came forth. Vimes turned this thought over for a while. Then he turned it back to front. He picked up the quill and wrote: Itym: What a happy chance it be, for a lad that would be Kinge, that there be a Draggon to sloe to prove beyond doubt his honey fiddes. It was a lot better than birthmarks and swords, that was for sure. He twiddled the quill for a while, and then doodled: Itym: The draggon was not a Mechanical devise, yette surety no wizzard has the power to create a beaste of that mag. magg. maggnyt. Size. Itym: Whye, in the Pinche, could it not Flame? Itym: Where did it come from? Itym: Where did it goe?   The rain pounded harder on the window. The sounds of celebration became distinctly damp, and then faded completely. There was a murmur of thunder. Vimes underlined goe several times. After further consideration he added two more question marks:?? After staring at the effect for some time he rolled the paper into a ball and threw it into the fireplace, where it was fielded and swallowed by Errol. There had been a crime. Senses Vimes didn’t know he possessed, ancient policeman’s senses, prickled the hairs on his neck and told him there had been a crime. It was probably such an odd crime that it didn’t figure anywhere in Carrot’s book, but it had been committed all right. A handful of high-temperature murders was only the start of it. He’d find it, and give it a name. Then he stood up, took his leather rain cape from its hook behind the door, and stepped out into the naked city.   . . .   This is where the dragons went. They lie . . . Not dead, not asleep. Not waiting, because waiting implies expectation. Possibly the word we’re looking for here is . . . . . . angry. It could remember the feel of real air under its wings, and the sheer pleasure of the flame. There had been empty skies above and an interesting world below, full of strange running creatures. Existence had a different texture there. A better texture. And just when it was beginning to enjoy it, it had been crippled, stopped from flaming and whipped back, like some hairy canine mammal. The world had been taken away from it. In the reptilian synapses of the dragon’s mind the suggestion was kindled that, just possibly, it could get the world back. It had been summoned, and disdainfully banished again. But perhaps there was a trail, a scent, a thread which would lead it to the sky . . . Perhaps there was a pathway of thought itself . . . It recalled a mind. The peevish voice, so full of its own diminutive importance, a mind almost like that of a dragon, but on a tiny, tiny scale. Aha. It stretched its wings.   . . .   Lady Ramkin made herself a cup of cocoa and listened to the rain gurgling in the pipes outside. She slipped off the hated dancing shoes, which even she was prepared to concede were like a pair of pink canoes. But nobblyess obligay, as the funny little sergeant would say, and as the last representative of one of Ankh-Morpork’s oldest families she’d had to go to the victory ball to show willing. Lord Vetinari seldom had balls. There was a popular song about it, in fact. But now it was going to be balls all the way. She couldn’t stand balls. For sheer enjoyment it wasn’t a patch on mucking out dragons. You knew where you were, mucking out dragons. You didn’t get hot and pink and have to eat silly things on sticks, or wear a dress that made you look like a cloud full of cherubs. Little dragons didn’t give a damn what you looked like so long as there was a feeding bowl in your hands. Funny, really. She’d always thought it took weeks, months, to organise a ball. Invitations, decorations, sausages on poles, ghastly chickeny mixture to force into those little pastry cases. But it had all been done in a matter of hours, as if someone had been expecting it. One of the miracles of catering, obviously. She’d even danced with the, for want of a better word, new king, who had said some polite words to her although they had been rather muffled. And a coronation tomorrow. You’d have thought it’d take months to sort out. She was still musing on that as she mixed the dragons’ late night feed of rock oil and peat, spiked with flowers of sulphur. She didn’t bother to change out of the ballgown but slipped the heavy apron over the top, donned the gloves and helmet, pulled the visor down over her face and ran, clutching the feed buckets, through the driving rain to the shed. She knew it as soon as she opened the door. Normally the arrival of food would be greeted with hoots and whistles and brief bursts of flame. The dragons, each in its pen, were sitting up in attentive silence and staring up through the roof. It was somehow scary. She clanged the buckets together. “No need to be afraid, nasty big dragon all gone!” she said brightly. “Get stuck in to this, you people!” One or two of them gave her a brief glance, and then went back to their- What? They didn’t seem to be frightened. Just very, very attentive. It was like a vigil. They were waiting for something to happen. The thunder muttered again. A couple of minutes later she was on her way down into the damp city.   . . .   There are some songs which are never sung sober. “Nellie Dean” is one. So is any song beginning “As I was a walking . . .” In the area around Ankh-Morpork, the favoured air is “A Wizard’s Staff Has A Knob On The End”. The rank were drunk. At least, two out of three of the rank were drunk. Carrot had been persuaded to try a shandy and hadn’t liked it much. He didn’t know all the words, either, and many of the ones he did know he didn’t understand. “Oh, I see,” he said eventually. “It’s a sort of humorous play on words, is it?” “You know,” said Colon wistfully, peering into the thickening mists rolling in off the Ankh, “s’at times like this I wish old-“ “You’re not to say it,” said Nobby, swaying a little. “You agreed, we wouldn’t say nothing, it’s no good talking about it.” “It was his favourite song,” said Colon sadly. “He was a good light tenor.” “Now, Sarge-“ “He was a righteous man, our Gaskin,” said Colon. “We couldn’t of helped it,” said Nobby sulkily. “We could have,” said Colon. “We could have run faster.” “What happened, then?” said Carrot. “He died,” said Nobby, “in the hexecution of his duty.” “I told him,” said Colon, taking a swig at the bottle they had brought along to see them through the night, “I told him. Slow down, I said. You’ll do yourself a mischief, I said. I don’t know what got into him, running ahead like that.” “I blame the Thieves’ Guild,” said Nobby. “Allowing people like that on the streets-“ “There was this bloke we saw done a robbery one night,” said Colon miserably. “Right in front of us! And Captain Vimes, he said Come On, and we run, only the point is you shouldn’t run too fast, see. Else you might catch them. Leads to all sorts of problems, catching people-“ “They don’t like it,” said Nobby. There was a mutter of thunder, and a flurry of rain. “They don’t like it,” agreed Colon. “But Gaskin went and forgot, he ran on, went around the corner and, well, this bloke had a couple of mates waiting-“ “It was his heart really,” said Nobby. “Well. Anyway. And there he was,” said Colon. “Captain Vimes was very upset about it. You shouldn’t run fast in the Watch, lad,” he said solemnly. “You can be a fast guard or you can be an old guard, but you can’t be a fast old guard. Poor old Gaskin.” “It didn’t ought to be like that,” said Carrot. Colon took a pull at the bottle. “Well, it is,” he said. Rain bounced on his helmet and trickled down his face. “But it didn’t ought to be,” said Carrot flatly. “But it is,” said Colon.   . . .   Someone else in the city was also ill at ease. He was the Librarian. Sergeant Colon had given him a badge. The Librarian turned it round and round in his big gentle hands, nibbling at it. It wasn’t that the city suddenly had a king. Orangs are traditionalists, and you couldn’t get more traditional than a king. But they also liked things neat, and things weren’t neat. Or, rather, they were too neat. Truth and reality were never as neat as this. Sudden heirs to ancient thrones didn’t grow on trees, and he should know. Besides, no-one was looking for his book. That was human priorities for you. The book was the key to it. He was sure of that. Well, there was one way to find out what was in the book. It was a perilous way, but the Librarian ambled along perilous ways all day. In the silence of the sleeping library he opened his desk and removed from its deepest recesses a small lantern carefully built to prevent any naked flame being exposed. You couldn’t be too careful with all this paper around . . . He also took a bag of peanuts and, after some thought, a large ball of string. He bit off a short length of the string and used it-to tie the badge around his neck, like a talisman. Then he tied one end of the ball to the desk and, after a moment’s contemplation, knuckled off between the bookshelves, paying out the string behind him. Knowledge equals power. . . The string was important. After a while the Librarian stopped. He concentrated all his powers of librarianship. Power equals energy . . . People were stupid, sometimes. They thought the Library was a dangerous place because of all the magical books, which was true enough, but what made it really one of the most dangerous places there could ever be was the simple fact that it was a library. Energy equals matter. . . . He swung into an avenue of shelving that was apparently a few feet long and walked along it briskly for half an hour. Matter equals mass. And mass distorts space. It distorts it into polyfractal L-space. So, while the Dewey system has its fine points, when you’re setting out to look something up in the multidimensional folds of L-space what you really need is a ball of string.   . . .   Now the rain was trying hard. It glistened off the flagstones in the Plaza of Broken Moons, littered here and there with torn bunting, flags, broken bottles and the occasional regurgitated supper. There was still plenty of thunder about, and a green, fresh smell in the air. A few shreds of mist from the Ankh hovered over the stones. It would be dawn soon. Vimes’s footsteps echoed wetly from the surrounding buildings as he picked his way across the plaza. The boy had stood here. He peered through the mist shreds at the surrounding buildings, getting his bearings. So the dragon had been hovering-he paced forward-here. “And,” said Vimes, “this is where it was killed.” He fumbled in his pockets. There were all sorts of things in there-keys, bits of string, corks. His finger closed on a stub end of chalk. He knelt down. Errol jumped off his shoulder and waddled away to inspect the detritus of the celebration. He always sniffed everything before he ate it, Vimes noticed. It was a bit of a puzzle why he bothered, because he always ate it anyway. Its head had been about, let’s see, here. He walked backwards, dragging the chalk over the stones, progressing slowly over the damp, empty square like an ancient worshipper treading a maze. Here a wing, curving away towards a tail which stretched out to here, change hands, now head for the other wing . . . When he finished he walked to the centre of the outline and ran his hands over the stones. He realised he was half-expecting them to be warm. Surely there should be something. Some, oh, he didn’t know, some grease or something, some crispy fried dragon lumps. Errol started eating a broken bottle with every sign of enjoyment. “You know what I think?” said Vimes. “I think it went somewhere.” Thunder rolled again. “All right, all right,” muttered Vimes. “It was just a thought. It wasn’t that dramatic.” Errol stopped in mid-crunch. Very slowly, as though it was mounted on very smooth, well-oiled bearings, the dragon’s head turned to face upwards. What it was staring at intently was a patch of empty air. There wasn’t much else you could say about it. Vimes shivered under his cape. This was daft. “Look, don’t muck about,” he said, “there’s nothing there.” Errol started to tremble. “It’s just the rain,” said Vimes. “Go on, finish your bottle. Nice bottle.” A thin, worried keening noise broke from the dragon’s mouth. “I’ll show you,” said Vimes. He cast around and spotted one of Throat’s sausages, cast aside by a hungry reveller who had decided he was never going to be that hungry. He picked it up. “Look,” he said, and threw it upwards. He felt sure, watching its trajectory, that it ought to have fallen back to the ground. It shouldn’t have fallen away, as if he’d dropped it neatly into a tunnel in the sky. And the tunnel shouldn’t have been looking back at him. Vivid purple lightning lashed from the empty air and struck the houses on the near side of the plaza, skittering across the walls for several yards before sinking out with a suddenness that almost denied that it had ever happened at all. Then it erupted again, this time hitting the rimward wall. The light broke where it hit into a network of searching tendrils spreading across the stones. The third attempt went upwards, forming an actinic column that eventually rose fifty or sixty feet in the air, appeared to stabilise, and started to spin slowly. Vimes felt that a comment was called for. He said: “Arrgh.” As the light revolved it sent out thin zigzag streamers that jittered away across the rooftops, sometimes dipping, sometimes doubling back. Searching. Errol ran up Vimes’s back in a flurry of claws and fastened himself firmly on his shoulder. The excruciating agony recalled to Vimes that there was something he should be doing. Was it time to scream again? He tried another “Arrgh”. No, probably not. The air started to smell like burning tin. Lady Ramkin’s coach rattled into the plaza making a noise like a roulette wheel and pounded straight for Vimes, stopping in a skid that sent it juddering around hi a semicircle and forced the horses either to face the other way or plait their legs. A furious vision in padded leather, gauntlets, tiara and thirty yards of damp pink tulle leaned down towards him and screamed: “Come on, you bloody idiot!” One glove caught him under his unresisting shoulder and hauled him bodily on to the box. “And stop screaming!” the phantom ordered, focusing generations of natural authority into four syllables. Another shout spurred the horses from a bewildered standing start to a full gallop. The coach bounced away over the flagstones. An exploratory tendril of flickering light brushed the reins for a moment and then lost interest. “I suppose you haven’t got any idea what’s happening?” shouted Vimes, against the crackling of the spinning fire. “Not the foggiest!” The crawling lines spread like a web over the city, growing fainter with distance. Vimes imagined them creeping through windows and sneaking under doors. “It looks as though it’s searching for something!” he shouted. “Then getting away before it finds it is a first-class idea, don’t you think?” A tongue of fire hit the dark Tower of Art, slid blindly down its ivy-grown flanks, and disappeared through the dome of Unseen University’s Library. The other lines blinked out. Lady Ramkin brought the coach to a halt at the far side of the square. “What does it want the Library for?” she said, frowning. “Maybe it wants to look something up?” “Don’t be silly,” she said breezily. “There’s just a lot of books hi there. What would a flash of lightning want to read?” “Something very short?” “I really think you could try to be a bit more help.” The line of light exploded into an arc between the Library’s dome and the centre of the plaza and hung hi the air, a band of brilliance several feet across. Then, hi a sudden rush, it became a sphere of fire which grew swiftly to encompass almost all the plaza, vanished suddenly, and left the night full of ringing, violet shadows. And the plaza full of dragon.   . . .   Who would have thought it? So much power, so close at hand. The dragon could feel the magic flowing into it, renewing it from second to second, hi defiance of all boring physical laws. This wasn’t the poor fere it had been given before. This was the right stuff. There was no end to what it could do, with power like this. But first it had to pay its respects to certain people . . . It sniffed the dawn air. It was searching for the stink of minds. Noble dragons don’t have friends. The nearest they can get to the idea is an enemy who is still alive.   . . .   The air became very still, so still that you could almost hear the slow fall of dust. The Librarian swung on his knuckles between the endless bookshelves. The dome of the Library was still overhead but then, it always was. It seemed quite logical to the Librarian that, since there were aisles where the shelves were on the outside then there should be other aisles in the space between the books themselves, created out of quantum ripples by the sheer weight of words. There were certainly some odd sounds coming from the other side of some shelving, and the Librarian knew that if he gently pulled out a book or two he would be peeking into different libraries under different skies. Books bend space and time. One reason the owners of those aforesaid little rambling, poky second-hand bookshops always seem slightly unearthly is that many of them really are, having strayed into this world after taking a wrong turning in their own bookshops in worlds where it is considered commendable business practice to wear carpet slippers all the time and open your shop only when you feel like it. You stray into L-space at your peril. Very senior librarians, however, once they have proved themselves worthy by performing some valiant act of librarianship, are accepted into a secret order and are taught the raw arts of survival beyond the Shelves We Know. The Librarian was highly skilled in all of them, but what he was attempting now wouldn’t just get him thrown out of the Order but probably out of life itself. All libraries everywhere are connected in L-space. All libraries. Everywhere. And the Librarian, navigating by booksign carved on shelves by past explorers, navigating by smell, navigating even by the siren whisperings of nostalgia, was heading purposely for one very special one. There was one consolation. If he got it wrong, he’d never know it.   . . .   Somehow the dragon was worse on the ground. In the air it was an elemental thing, graceful even when it was trying to burn you to your boots. On the ground it was just a damn great animal. Its huge head reared against the grey of dawn, turning slowly. Lady Ramkin and Vimes peered cautiously from behind a watertrough. Vimes had his hand clamped over Errol’s muzzle. The little dragon was whimpering like a kicked puppy, and fighting to get away. “It’s a magnificent brute,” said Lady Ramkin, in what she probably thought was a whisper. “I do wish you wouldn’t keep saying that,” said Vimes. There was a scraping noise as the dragon dragged itself over the stones. “I knew it wasn’t killed,” growled Vimes.’ “There were no bits. It was too neat. It was sent somewhere by some sort of magic, I bet. Look at it. It’s bloody impossible! It needs magic to keep it alive!” “What do you mean?” said Lady Ramkin, not tearing her gaze from its armoured flanks. What did he mean? What did he mean? He thought fast. “It’s just not physically possible, that’s what I mean,” he said. “Nothing that heavy should be able to fly, or breathe fire like that. I told you.” “But it looks real enough. I mean, you’d expect a magical creature to be, well, gauzy.” “Oh, it’s real. It’s real all right,” said Ramkin bitterly. “But supposing it needs magic like we need, like we need . . . sunlight? Or food.” “It’s a thaumivore, you mean?” “I just think it eats magic, that’s all,” said Vimes, who had not had a classical education. “I mean, all these little swamp dragons, always on the point of extinction, suppose one day back in prehistoric times some of them found out how to use magic?” ‘ “There used to be a lot of natural magic around once,” said Lady Ramkin thoughtfully. “There you are, then. After all, creatures use the air and the sea. I mean, if there’s a natural resource around, something’s going to use it, aren’t they? Then it wouldn’t matter about bad digestion and weight and wing size and so on, because the magic would take care of it. Wow!” But you’d need a lot, he thought. He wasn’t certain how much magic you’d need to change the world enough to let tons of armoured carcass flit around the sky like a swallow, but he’d bet it was lots. All those thefts. Someone’d been feeding the dragon. He looked at the bulk of the Unseen University Library of magic books, the greatest accumulation of distilled magical power on the Discworld. And now the dragon had learned how to feed itself. He became terribly aware that Lady Ramkin had moved, and saw to his horror that she was striding towards the dragon, chin stuck out like an anvil. “What the hell are you doing?” he whispered loudly. “If it’s descended from the swamp dragons then I can probably control it,” she called back. “You have to look them in the eye and use a no-nonsense tone of voice. They can’t resist a stern human voice. They don’t have the willpower, you know. They’re just big softies.” To his shame, Vimes realised that his legs were going to have nothing to do with any mad dash to drag her back. His pride didn’t like that, but his body pointed out that it wasn’t his pride that stood a very reasonable chance of being thinly laminated to the nearest building. Through ears burning with embarrassment he heard her say: “Bad boy!” The echoes of that stern injunction rang out across the plaza. Oh gods, he thought, is that how you train a dragon? Point them at the melted patch on the floor and threaten to rub their nose in it? He risked a peep over the horsetrough. The dragon’s head was swinging around slowly, like a crane jib. It had some difficulty focusing on her, right below it. Vimes could see the great red eyes narrow as the creature tried to squint down the length of its own nose. It looked puzzled. He wasn’t surprised. “Sit!” bellowed Lady Ramkin, in a tone so undisobeyable that even Vimes felt his legs involuntarily sag. “Good boy! I think I may have a lump of coke somewhere-“ She patted her pockets. Eye contact. That was the important thing. She really, Vimes thought, shouldn’t have looked down even for a moment. The dragon raised one talon in a leisurely fashion and pinned her to the ground. As Vimes half-rose in horror Errol escaped from his grip and cleared the trough in one leap. He bounced across the plaza in a series of wing-whirring arcs, mouth gaping, emitting wheezing burps, trying to flame. He was answered with a tongue of blue-white fire that melted a streak of bubbling rock several yards long but failed to strike the challenger. It was hard to pick him out of the air because, quite clearly, even Errol didn’t know where he was going to be, or what way up he was going to be when he got there. His only hope at this point lay in movement, and he vaulted and spun between the increasingly furious bursts of fire like a scared but determined random particle. The great dragon reared up with the sound of a dozen anchor chains being thrown into a corner, and tried to bat the tormenter out of the air. Vimes’s legs gave in at that point and decided that they might allow themselves to be heroic legs for a while. He scurried across the intervening space, sword at the ready for what good it might do, grabbed Lady Ramkin by an arm and a handful of bedraggled ballgown, and swung her on to his shoulder. He got several yards before the essential bad judgement of this move dawned on him. He went “Gngh”. His vertebrae and knees were trying to fuse into one lump. Purple spots flashed on and off in front of his eyes. On top of it all, something unfamiliar but apparently made of whalebone was poking sharply into the back of his neck. He managed a few more steps by sheer momentum, knowing that when he stopped he was going to be utterly crushed. The Ramkins hadn’t bred for beauty, they’d bred for healthy solidity and big bones, and they’d got very good at it over the centuries. A gout of livid dragonfire crackled into the flagstones a few feet away. Afterwards he wondered if he’d only imagined leaping several inches into the air and covering the rest of the distance to the horsetrough at a respectable run. Perhaps, in extremis, everyone learned the kind of instant movement that was second nature to Nobby. Anyway, the horsetrough was behind him and Lady Ramkin was in his arms, or at least was pinning his arms to the ground. He managed to free them and tried to massage a bit of life back. What did you do next? She didn’t seem to be injured. He recalled something about loosening a person’s clothing, but in Lady Ramkin’s case that might be dangerous without special tools. She solved the immediate problem by grabbing the edge of the trough and hauling herself upright. “Right,” she said,”it’s the slipper for you-“ Her eyes focused on Vimes for the first time. “What the hell’s going on-“ she began again, and then caught the scene over his shoulder. “Oh sod,” she said. “Pardon my Klatchian.” Errol was running out of energy. The stubby wings were indeed incapable of real flight, and he was remaining airborne solely by flapping madly, like a chicken. The great talons swished through the air. One of them caught one of the plaza’s fountains, and demolished it. The next one swatted Errol neatly. He shot over Vimes’s head in a straight rising line, hit a roof behind him, and slid down it. “You’ve got to catch him!” shouted Lady Vimes. “You must! It’s vital!” Vimes stared at her, and then dived forward as Errol’s pear-shaped body slithered over the edge of the roof and dropped. He was surprisingly heavy. “Thank goodness,” said Lady Ramkin, struggling to her feet.”They explode so easily, you know. It could have been very dangerous.” They remembered the other dragon. It wasn’t the exploding sort. It was the killing-people kind. They turned, slowly. The creature loomed over them, sniffed and then, as if they were of no importance at all, turned away. It sprang ponderously into the air and, with one slow flap of its wings, began to scull leisurely away down the plaza and up and into the mists that were rolling over the city. Vimes was currently more concerned with the smaller dragon in his hands. Its stomach was rumbling alarmingly. He wished he’d paid more attention to the book on dragons. Was a stomach noise like this a sign they were about to explode, or was the point you had to watch out for the point when the rumbling stopped? “We’ve got to follow it!” said Lady Ramkin. “What happened to the carriage?” Vimes waved a hand vaguely in the direction that, as far as he could tell, the horses had take in their panic. Enrol sneezed a cloud of warm gas that smelled worse than something walled up in a cellar, pawed the air weakly, licked Vimes’s face with a tongue like a hot cheese-grater, struggled out of his arms and trotted away. “ Where’s he off to?” boomed Lady Ramkin, emerging from the mists dragging the horses behind her. They didn’t want to come, their hooves were scraping up sparks, but they were fighting a losing battle. “He’s still trying to challenge it!” said Vines. “You’d think he’d give in, wouldn’t you?” “They fight like blazes,” said Lady Ramkin, as he climbed on to the coach. “It’s a matter of making your opponent explode, you see.” “I thought, in Nature, the defeated animal just rolls on its back hi submission and that’s the end of it,” said Vimes, as they clattered after the disappearing swamp dragon. “Wouldn’t work with dragons,” said Lady Ramkin. “Some daft creature rolls on its back, you disembowel it. That’s how they look at it. Almost human, really.”   . . .   The clouds were clustered thickly over Ankh-Morpork. Above them, the slow golden sunlight of the Disc-world unrolled. The dragon sparkled in the dawn as it trod the air joyously, doing impossible turns and rolls for the sheer delight of it. Then it remembered the business of the day. They’d had the presumption to summon it . . . Below it, the rank wandered from side to side up the Street of Small Gods. Despite the thick fog it was beginning to get busy. “What d’you call them things, like thin stairs?” said Sergeant Colon. “Ladders,” said Carrot. “Lot of ‘em about,” said Nobby. He mooched over to the nearest one, and kicked it. “Oi!” A figure struggled down, half buried in a string of flags. “What’s going on?” said Nobby. The flag bearer looked him up and down. “Who wants to know, tiddler?” he said. “Excuse me, we do,” said Carrot, looming out of the fog like an iceberg. The man gave a sickly grin. “Well, it’s the coronation, isn’t it,” he said. “Got to get the streets ready for the coronation. Got to have the flags up. Got to get the old bunting out, haven’t we?” Nobby gave the dripping finery a jaundiced look. “Doesn’t look that old to me,” he said. “It looks new. What’re them fat saggy things on that shield?” “Those are the royal hippos of Ankh,” said the man proudly. “Reminders of our noble heritage.” “How long have we had a noble heritage, then?” said Nobby. “Since yesterday, of course.” “You can’t have a heritage in a day,” said Carrot. “It has to last a long time.” “If we haven’t got one,” said Sergeant Colon, “I bet we’ll soon have had one. My wife left me a note about it. All these years, and she turns out to be a monarchist.” He kicked the pavement viciously. “Huh!” he said. “A man knocks his pipes out for thirty years to put a bit of meat on the table, but all she’s talking about is some boy who gets to be king for five minutes’ work. Know what was for my tea last night? Beef dripping sandwiches!” This did not have the expected response from the two bachelors. “Cor!” said Nobby. “Real beef dripping?” said Carrot. “The kind with the little crunchy bits on top? And shiny blobs of fat?” “Can’t remember when I last addressed the crust on a bowl of dripping,” mused Nobby, in a gastronomic heaven. “With just a bit of salt and pepper, you’ve got a meal fit for a k-“ “Don’t even say it,” warned Colon. “The best bit is when you stick the knife in and crack the fat and all the browny gold stuff bubbles up,” said Carrot dreamily. “A moment like that is worth a ki-“ “Shutup! Shutup!” shouted Colon. “You’re just- what the hell was that?” They felt the sudden downdraught, saw the mist above them roll into coils that broke against the house walls. A blast of colder air swept along the street, and was gone. “It was like something gliding past, up there somewhere,” said the sergeant. He froze. “Here, you don’t think-?” “We saw it killed, didn’t we?” said Nobby urgently. “We saw it vanish, “ said Carrot. They looked at one another, alone and damp in the mist-shrouded street. There could be anything up there. The imagination peopled the dank air with terrible apparitions. And what was worse was the knowledge that Nature might have done an even better job. “Nah,” said Colon. “It was probably just some . . . some big wading bird. Or something.” “Isn’t there anything we should do?” said Carrot. “Yes,” said Nobby. “We should go away quickly. Remember Gaskin.” “Maybe it’s another dragon,” said Carrot. “We should warn people and-“ “No,” said Sergeant Colon vehemently, “because, Ae, they wouldn’t believe us and, Bee, we’ve got a king now. ‘S his job, dragons.” “S’right,” said Nobby. “He’d probably be really angry. Dragons are probably, you know, royal animals. Like deer. A man could probably have his tridlins plucked just for thinking about killing one, when there’s a king around.”[17] “Makes you glad you’re common,” said Colon. “Commoner,” corrected Nobby. “That’s not a very civic attitude-“ Carrot began. He was interrupted by Errol. The little dragon came trotting up the middle of the street, stumpy tail high, his eyes fixed on the clouds above him. He went right by the rank without giving them any attention at all. “What’s up with him?” said Nobby. A clatter behind them introduced the Ramkin coach. “Men?” said Vimes hesitantly, peering through the fog. “Definitely,” said Sergeant Colon. “Did you see a dragon go past? Apart from Errol?” “Well, er,” said the sergeant, looking at the other two. “Sort of, sir. Possibly. It might of been.” “Then don’t stand there like a lot of boobies,” said Lady Ramkin. “Get in! Plenty of room inside!” There was. When it was built, the coach had probably been the marvel of the day, all plush and gilt and tasselled hangings. Time, neglect and the ripping out of the seats to allow its frequent use to transport dragons to shows had taken their toll, but it still reeked of privilege, style and, of course, dragons. “What do you think you’re doing?” said Colon, as it rattled off through the fog. “Wavin’,” said Nobby, gesturing graciously to the billows around them. “Disgusting, this sort of thing, really,” mused Sergeant Colon. “People goin’ around in coaches like this when there’s people with no roof to their heads.” “It’s Lady Ramkin’s coach,” said Nobby. “She’s all right.” “Well, yes, but what about her ancestors, eh? You don’t get big houses and carriages without grindin’ the faces of the poor a bit.” “You’re just annoyed because your missus has been embroidering crowns on her undies,” said Nobby. “That’s got nothing to do with it,” said Sergeant Colon indignantly. “I’ve always been very firm on the rights of man.” “And dwarf,” said Carrot. “Yeah, right,” said the sergeant uncertainly. “But all this business about kings and lords, it’s against basic human dignity. We’re all born equal. It makes me sick.” “Never heard you talk like this before, Frederick,” said Nobby. “It’s Sergeant Colon to you, Nobby. “Sorry, Sergeant.” The fog itself was shaping up to be a real Ankh-Morpork autumn gumbo.* Vimes squinted through it as the droplets buckled down to a good day’s work soaking him to the skin. “I can just make him out,” he said. “Turn left here.” “Any ideas where we are?” said Lady Ramkin. “Business district somewhere,” said Vimes shortly. Errol’s progress was slowing a bit. He kept looking up and whining. “Can’t see a damn thing above us in the fog,” he said. “I wonder if-“ The fog, as if in acknowledgement, lit up. Ahead of them it blossomed like a chrysanthemum and made a noise like “whoomph”. “Oh, no,” moaned Vimes. “Not again!” “Like a pea-souper, only much thicker, fishier, and with things in it you’d probably rather not know about.   . . .   “Are the Cups of Integrity well and truly suffused?” intoned Brother Watchtower. “Aye, suffused full well.” “The Waters of the World, are they Abjured?” “Yea, abjured full mightily.” “Have the Demons of Infinity been bound with many chains?” “Damn,” said Brother Plasterer, “there’s always something.” Brother Watchtower sagged. “Just once it would be nice if we could get the ancient and timeless rituals right, wouldn’t it. You’d better get on with it.” “Wouldn’t it be quicker, Brother Watchtower, if I just did it twice next time?” said Brother Plasterer. Brother Watchtower gave this some grudging consideration. It seemed reasonable. “All right,” he said. “Now get back down there with the others. And you should call me Acting Supreme Grand Master, understand?” This did not meet with what he considered to be a proper and dignified reception among the brethren. “No-one said anything to us about you being Acting Supreme Grand Master,” muttered Brother Doorkeeper. “Well, that’s all you know because I bloody well am because Supreme Grand Master asked me to open the Lodge on account of him being delayed with all this coronation work,” said Brother Watchtower haughtily. “If that doesn’t make me Acting Supreme Grand bloody Master I’d like to know what does, all right?” “I don’t see why,” muttered Brother Doorkeeper. “You don’t have a grand title like that. You could just be called something like, well . . . Rituals Monitor.” “Yeah,” said Brother Plasterer. “Don’t see why you should give yourself airs. You ain’t even been taught the ancient and mystic mysteries by monks, or anything.” “We’ve been hanging around for hours, too,” said Brother Doorkeeper. “That’s not right. I thought we’d get rewarded-“ Brother Watchtower realised that he was losing control. He tried wheedling diplomacy. “I’m sure Supreme Grand Master will be along directly,” he said. “Let’s not spoil it all now, eh? Lads? Arranging that fight with the dragon and everything, getting it all off right, that was something, wasn’t it? We’ve been through a lot, right? It’s worth waiting just a bit longer, okay?’ The circle of robed and cowled figures shuffled in grudging agreement. “Okay.” “Fair enough.” “Yeah.” certainly. “Okay.” “If you say so.” It began to creep over Brother Watchtower that something wasn’t right, but he couldn’t quite put a name to it. “Uh,” he said. “Brothers?” They, too, shifted uneasily. Something in the room was setting their teeth on edge. There was an atmosphere. “Brothers,” repeated Brother Watchtower, trying to reassert himself, “we are all here, aren’t we?” There was a worried chorus of agreement. “Of course we are.” “What’s the matter?” “Yes!” yes. “Yes.” There it was again, a subtle wrongness about things that you couldn’t quite put your finger on because your finger was too scared. But Brother Watchtower’s troublesome thoughts were interrupted by a scrabbling sound on the roof. A few nubs of plaster dropped into the circle. “Brothers?” repeated Brother Watchtower nervously. Now there was one of those silent sounds, a long, buzzing silence of extreme concentration and just possibly the indrawing of breath into lungs the size of haystacks. The last rats of Brother Watchtower’s self-confidence fled the sinking ship of courage. “Brother Doorkeeper, if you could just unbolt the dread portal-“ he quavered. And then there was light. There was no pain. There was no time. Death strips away many things, especially when it arrives at a temperature hot enough to vaporise iron, and among them are your illusions. The immortal remains of Brother Watchtower watched the dragon flap away into the fog, and then looked down at the congealing puddle of stone, metal and miscellaneous trace elements that was all that remained of the secret headquarters. And of its occupants, he realised in the dispassionate way that is part of being dead. You go through your whole life and end up a smear swirling around like cream in a coffee cup. Whatever the gods’ games were, they played them in a damn mysterious way. He looked up at the hooded figure beside him. “We never intended this,” he said weakly. “Honestly. No offence. We just wanted what was due to us.” A skeletal hand patted him on the shoulder, not unkindly. And Death said, congratulations.   . . .   Apart from the Supreme Grand Master, the only Elucidated Brother to be away at the time of the dragon was Brother Fingers. He’d been sent out for some pizzas. Brother Fingers was always the one sent out for takeaway food. It was cheaper. He’d never bothered to master the art of paying for things. When the guards rolled up just behind Errol, Brother Fingers was standing with a stack of cardboard boxes in his hands and his mouth open. Where the dread portal should have been was a warm melted patch of assorted substances. “Oh, my goodness,” said Lady Ramkin. Vimes slid down from the coach and tapped Brother Fingers on the shoulder. “Excuse me, sir,” he said, “did you by any chance see what-“ When Brother Fingers turned towards him his face was the face of a man who has hang-glided over the entrance to Hell. He kept opening and shutting his mouth but no words were coming out. Vimes tried again. The sheer terror frozen in Brother Fingers’s expression was getting to him. “If you would be so kind to accompany me to the Yard,” said Vimes, “I have reason to believe that you-“ He hesitated. He wasn’t entirely certain what it was that he had reason to believe. But the man was clearly guilty. You could tell just by looking at him. Not, perhaps, guilty of anything specific. Just guilty in general terms. “Mmmmmuh,” said Brother Fingers. Sergeant Colon gently lifted the lid of the top box. “What do you make of it, Sergeant?” said Vimes, stepping back. “Er. It looks like a Klatchian Hots with anchovies, sir,” said Sergeant Colon knowledgeably. “I mean the man,” said Vimes wearily. “Nnnnn,” said Brother Fingers. Colon peered under the hood. “Oh, I know him, sir,” he said. “Bengy ‘Lightfoot’ Boggis, sir. He’s a capo de monty in the Thieves’ Guild. I know him of old, sir. Sly little bugger. Used to work at the University.” “What, as a wizard?” said Vimes. “Odd job man, sir. Gardening and carpentry and that.” “Oh. Did he?” “Can’t we do something for the poor man?” said Lady Ramkin. Nobby saluted smartly. “I could kick him in the bollocks for you if you like, m’lady.” “Dddrrr,” said Brother Fingers, beginning to shake uncontrollably, while Lady Ramkin smiled the iron-hard blank smile of a high-born lady who is determined not to show that she has understood what has just been said to her. “Put him in the coach, you two,” said Vimes. “If it’s all right with you, Lady Ramkin-“ “-Sybil-“ corrected Lady Ramkin. Vimes blushed, and plunged on-“it might be a good idea to get him indoors. Charge him with the theft of one book, to wit, The Summoning of Dragons. “ “Right you are, sir,” said Sergeant Colon. “The pizzas’re getting cold, too. You know how the cheese goes all manky when it gets cold.” “And no kicking him, either,” Vimes warned. “Not even where it doesn’t show. Carrot, you come with me.” “DDddrrraa,” Brother Fingers volunteered. “And take Errol,” added Vimes. “He’s driving himself mad here. Game little devil, I’ll give him that.” “Marvellous, when you come to think about it,” said Colon. Errol was trotting up and down in front of the ravaged building, whining. “Look at him,” said Vimes. “Can’t wait to get to grips.” His gaze found itself drawn, as though by wires, up to the rolling clouds of fog. It’s in there somewhere, he thought. “What we going to do now, sir?” said Carrot, as the carriage rattled off. “Not nervous, are you?” said Vimes. “No, sir.” The way he said it jogged something in Vimes’s mind. “No,” he said, “you’re not, are you? I suppose it’s being brought up by the dwarfs that did it. You’ve got no imagination.” “I’m sure I try to do my best, sir,” said Carrot firmly. “Still sending all your pay home to your mother?” “Yes, sir.” “You’re a good boy.” “Yessir. So what are we going to do, Captain Vimes?” Carrot repeated. Vimes looked around him. He walked a few aimless, exasperated steps. He spread his arms wide and then flopped them down by his sides. “How should I know?” he said. “Warn people, I guess. We’d better get over to the Patrician’s palace. And then-“ There were footsteps in the fog. Vimes stiffened, put his finger to his lips and pulled Carrot into the shelter of a doorway. A figure loomed out of the billows. Another one of ‘em, thought Vimes. Well, there’s no law about wearing long black robes and deep cowls. There could be dozens of perfectly innocent reasons why this person is wearing long black robes and a deep cowl and standing in front of a melted-down house at dawn. Perhaps I should ask him to name just one. He stepped out. “Excuse me, sir-“ he began. The cowl swung around. There was a hiss of indrawn breath. “I just wonder if you would mind-after him, lance-constable! “ The figure had a good start. It scuttled along the street and had reached the corner before Vimes was halfway there. He skidded around it in time to see a shape vanish down an alley. Vimes realised he was running alone. He panted to a halt and looked back just in time to see Carrot jog gently around the corner. “What’s wrong?” he wheezed. “Sergeant Colon said I wasn’t to run,” said Carrot. Vimes looked at him vaguely. Then slow comprehension dawned. “Oh,” he said. “I, er, see. I don’t think he meant in every circumstance, lad.” He stared back into the fog. “Not that we had much of a chance in this fog and these streets.” “Might have been just an innocent bystander, sir,” said Carrot. “What, in Ankh-Morpork?” “Yes, sir.” “We should have grabbed him, then, just for the rarity value,” said Vimes. He patted Carrot on the shoulder. “Come on. We’d better get along to the Patrician’s palace.” “The King’s palace,” corrected Carrot. “What?” said Vimes, his train of thought temporarily shunted. “It’s the King’s palace now,” said Carrot. Vimes squinted sideways at him. He gave a short, mirthless laugh. “Yeah, that’s right,” he conceded. “Our dragon-killing king. Well done that man.” He sighed. “They’re not going to like this.”   . . .   They didn’t. None of them did. The first problem was the palace guard. Vimes had never liked them. They’d never liked him. Okay, so maybe the rank were only one step away from petty scofflaws, but in Vimes’s professional opinion the palace guard these days were only one step away from being the worst criminal scum the city had ever produced. A step further down. They’d have to reform a bit before they could even be considered for inclusion in the Ten Most Unwanted list. They were rough. They were tough. They weren’t the sweepings of the gutter, they were what you still found sticking to the gutter when the gutter sweepers had given up in exhaustion. They had been extremely well-paid by the Patrician, and presumably were extremely well-paid by someone else now, because when Vimes walked up to the gates a couple of them stopped lounging against the walls and straightened up while still maintaining just the right amount of psychological slouch to cause maximum offense. “Captain Vimes,” said Vimes, staring straight ahead. “To see the king. It’s of the utmost importance.” “Yeah? Well, it’d have to be,” said a guard. “Captain Slimes, was it?” “Vimes,” said Vimes evenly. “With a Vee.” One of the guards nodded to his companion. “Vimes,” he said. “With a Vee.” “Fancy,” said the other guard. “It’s most urgent,” said Vimes, maintaining a wooden expression. He tried to move forward. The first guard sidestepped neatly and pushed him sharply in the chest. “No-one is going nowhere,” he said. “Orders of the king, see? So you can push off back to your pit, Captain Vimes with a Vee.” It wasn’t the words which made up Vimes’s mind. It was the way the other man sniggered. “Stand aside,” he said. The guard leaned down. “Who’s going to make me,” he rapped on Vimes’s helmet, “copper?” There are times when it is a veritable pleasure to drop the bomb right away. “Lance-constable Carrot, I want you to charge these men,” said Vimes. Carrot saluted. “Very good, sir,” he said, and turned and trotted smartly back the way they had come. “Hey!” shouted Vimes, as the boy disappeared around a corner. “That’s what I like to see,” said the first guard, leaning on his speak. “That’s a young man with initiative, that young man. A bright lad. He doesn’t want to stop along here and have his ears twisted off. That’s a young man who’s going to go a long way, if he’s got any sense.” “Very sensible,” said the other guard. He leaned the spear against the wall. “You Watch men make me want to throw up,” he said conversationally. “Poncing around all the time, never doing a proper job of work. Throwing your weight about as if you counted for something. So me and Clarence are going to show you what real guarding is all about, isn’t that right?” I could just about manage one of them, Vimes thought as he took a few steps backward. If he was facing the other way, at least. Clarence propped his spear against the gateway and spat on his hands. There was a long, terrifying ululation. Vimes was amazed to realise it wasn’t coming from him. Carrot appeared around the corner at a dead run. He had a felling axe in either hand. His huge leather sandals flapped on the cobblestones as he bounded closer, accelerating all the time. And all the time there was this cry, deedahdeedahdeedah, like something caught in a trap at the bottom of a two-tone echo canyon. The two palace guards stood rigid with astonishment. “I should duck, if I was you,” said Vimes from near ground level. The two axes left Carrot’s hands and whirred through the air making a noise like a brace of partridges. One of them hit the palace gate, burying half the head in the woodwork. The other one hit the shaft of the first one, and split it. Then Carrot arrived. Vimes went and sat down on a nearby bench for a while, and rolled himself a cigarette. Eventually he said, “I think that’s about enough, constable. I think they’d like to come quietly now.” “Yes, sir. What are they accused of, sir?” said Carrot, holding one limp body in either hand. “Assaulting an officer of the Watch in the execution of his duty and . . . oh, yes. Resisting arrest.” “Under Section (vii) of the Public Order Act of 1457?” said Carrot. “Yes,” said Vimes solemnly. “Yes. Yes, I suppose so.” “But they didn’t resist very much, sir,” Carrot pointed out. “Well, attempting to resist arrest. I should just leave them over by the wall until we come back. I don’t expect they’ll want to go anywhere.” “Right you are, sir.” “Don’t hurt them, mind,” said Vimes. “You mustn’t hurt prisoners.” “That’s right, sir,” said Carrot, conscientiously. “Prisoners once Charged have Rights, sir. It says so in the Dignity of Man (Civic Rights) Act of 1341. I keep telling Corporal Nobbs. They have Rights, I tell him. This means you do not Put the Boot in.” “Very well put, constable.” Carrot looked down. “You have the right to remain silent,” he said. “You have the right not to injure yourself falling down the steps on the way to the cells. You have the right not to jump out of high windows. You do not have to say anything, you see, but any thing you do say, well, I have to take it down and it might be used in evidence.” He pulled out his notebook and licked his pencil. He leaned down further. “Pardon?” he said. He looked up at Vimes. “How do you spell ‘groan’, sir?” he said. “G-R-O-N-E, I think.” “Very good, sir.” “Oh, and constable?’ “Yes, sir?” “Why the axes?” “They were armed, sir. I got them from the blacksmith in Market Street, sir. I said you’d be along later to pay for them.” “And the cry?” said Vimes weakly. “Dwarfish war yodel, sir,” said Carrot proudly. “It’s a good cry,” said Vimes, picking his words with care. “But I’d be grateful if you’d warn me first another time, all right?” “Certainly, sir.” “In writing, I think.”   . . .   The Librarian swung on. It was slow progress, because there were things he wasn’t keen on meeting. Creatures evolve to fill every niche in the environment, and some of those in the dusty immensity of L-space were best avoided. They were much more unusual than ordinary unusual creatures. Usually he could forewarn himself by keeping a careful eye on the kickstool crabs that grazed harmlessly on the dust. When they were spooked, it was time to hide. Several times he had to flatten himself against the shelves as a thesaurus thundered by. He waited patiently as a herd of Critters crawled past, grazing on the contents of the choicer books and leaving behind them piles of small slim volumes of literary criticism. And there were other things, things which he hurried away from and tried not to look hard at . . . And you had to avoid cliches at all costs. He finished the last of his peanuts atop a stepladder, which was browsing mindlessly off the high shelves. The territory definitely had a familiar feel, or at least he got the feeling that it would eventually be familiar. Time had a different meaning in L-space. There were shelves whose outline he felt he knew. The book titles, while still unreadable, held a tantalising hint of legibility. Even the musty air had a smell he thought he recognised. He shambled quickly along a side passage, turned the corner and, with only the slightest twinge of disorientation, shuffled into that set of dimensions that people, because they don’t know any better, think of as normal. He just felt extremely hot and his fur stood straight out from his body as temporal energy gradually discharged. He was in the dark. He extended one arm and explored the spines of the books by his side. Ah. Now he knew where he was. He was home. He was home a week ago. It was essential that he didn’t leave footprints. But that wasn’t a problem. He shinned up the side of the nearest bookcase and, under the starlight of the dome, hurried onwards.   . . .   Lupine Wonse glared up, red-eyed, from the heap of paperwork on his desk. No-one in the city knew anything about coronations. He’d had to make it up as he went along. There should be plenty of things to wave, he knew that. “Yes?” he said, abruptly. “Er, there’s a Captain Vimes to see you,” said the flunkey. “Vimes of the Watch?” “Yes, sir. Says it’s of the upmost importance.” Wonse looked down his list of other things that were also of the utmost importance. Crowning the king, for one thing. The high priests of fifty-three religions were all claiming the honour. It was going to be a scrum. And then there were the crown jewels. Or rather, there weren’t the crown jewels. Somewhere in the preceding generations the crown jewels had disappeared. A jeweller in the Street of Cunning Artificers was doing the best he could in the time with gilt and glass. Vimes could wait. “Tell him to come back another day,” said Wonse. “Good of you to see us,” said Vimes, appearing in the doorway. Wonse glared at him. “Since you’re here . . .” he said. Vimes dropped his helmet on Wonse’s desk in what the secretary thought was an offensive manner, and sat down. “Take a seat,” said Wonse. “Have you had breakfast yet?” said Vimes. “Now really-“ Wonse began. “Don’t worry,” said Vimes cheerfully. “Constable Carrot will go and see what’s hi the kitchens. This chap will show him the way.” When they had gone Wonse leaned across the drifts of paperwork. “There had better,” he said, “be a very good reason for-“ “The dragon is back,” said Vimes. Wonse stared at him for a while. Vimes stared back. Wonse’s senses came back from whatever corners they’d bounced into. “You’ve been drinking, haven’t you,” he said. “No. The dragon is back. “ “Now, look-“ Wonse began. “I saw it,” said Vimes flatly. “A dragon? You’re sure?” Vimes leaned across the desk. “No! I could be bloody mistaken!” he shouted. “It may have been something else with sodding great big claws, huge leathery wings and hot, fiery breath! There must be masses of things like that!” “But we all saw it killed!” said Wonse. “I don’t know what we saw!” said Vimes, “But I know what I saw!” He leaned back, shaking. He was suddenly feeling extremely tired. “Anyway,” he said, in a more normal voice, “it’s flamed a house in Bitwash Street. Just like the other ones.” “Any of them get out?” Vimes put his head in his hands. He wondered how long it was since he’d last had any sleep, proper sleep, the sort with sheets. Or food, come to that. Was it last night, or the night before? Had he ever, come to think of it, ever slept at all in all his life? It didn’t seem like it. The arms of Morpheus had rolled up their sleeves and were giving the back of his brain a right pummelling, but bits were fighting back. Any of them get. . . ? “Any of who?” he said. “The people in the house, of course,” said Wonse. “I assume there were people in it. At night, I mean.” “Oh? Oh. Yes. It wasn’t like a normal house. I think it was some sort of secret society thing,” Vimes managed. Something was clicking in his mind, but he was too tired to examine it. “Magic, you mean?” “Dunno,” said Vimes. “Could be. Guys in robes.” He’s going to tell me I’ve been overdoing it, he said. He’ll be right, too. “Look,” said Wonse, kindly. “People who mess around with magic and don’t know how to control it, well, they can blow themselves up and-“ “Blow themselves up?” “And you’ve had a busy few days,” said Wonse soothingly. “If I’d been knocked down and almost burned alive by a dragon I expect I’d be seeing them all the time.” Vimes stared at him with his mouth open. He couldn’t think of anything to say. Whatever stretched and knotted elastic had been driving him along these last few days had gone entirely limp. “You don’t think you’ve been overdoing it, do you?” said Wonse. Ah, thought Vimes. Jolly good. He slumped forward.   . . .   The Librarian leaned cautiously over the top of the bookcase and unfolded an arm into the darkness. There it was. His thick fingernails grasped the spine of the book, pulled it gently from its shelf and hoisted it up. He raised the lantern carefully. No doubt about it. The Summoning of Dragons. Single copy, first edition, slightly foxed and extremely dragoned. He set the lamp down beside him, and began to read the first page.   . . .   “Mmm?” said Vimes, waking up. “Brung you a nice cup of tea, Cap’n,” said Sergeant Colon. “And a figgin.’ Vimes looked at him blankly. “You’ve been asleep,” said Sergeant Colon helpfully. “You was spark out when Carrot brought you back.” Vimes looked around at the now-familiar surroundings of the Yard. “Oh,” he said. “Me and Nobby have been doing some detector-ing,” said Colon. “You know that house that got melted? Well, no-one lives there. It’s just rooms that get hired out. So we found out who hires them. There’s a caretaker who goes along every night to put the chairs away and lock up. He wasn’t half creating about it being burned down. You know what caretakers are like.” He stood back, waiting for the applause. “Well done,” said Vimes dutifully, dunking the figgin into the tea. “There’s three societies use it,” said Colon. He extracted his notebook. “To wit, viz, The Ankh-Morpork Fine Art Appreciation Society, hem hem, the Morpork Folk-Dance and Song Club, and the Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night.” “Why hem hem?” said Vimes. “Well, you know. Fine Art. It’s just men paintin’ pictures of young wimmin in the nudd. The altogether,” explained Colon the connoisseur. “The caretaker told me. Some of them don’t even have any paint on their brushes, you know. Shameful.” There must be a million stories in the naked city, thought Vimes. So why do I always have to listen to ones like these? “When do they meet?” he said. “Mondays, 7.30, admission ten pence,” said Colon, promptly. “As for the folk-dance people-well, no problem there. You know you always wondered what Corporal Nobbs does on his evenings off?” Colon’s face split into a watermelon grin. “No!” said Vimes incredulously. “Not Nobby?” “Yep!” said Colon, delighted at the result. “What, jumping about with bells on and waving his hanky in the air?” “He says it is important to preserve old folkways,” said Colon. “Nobby? Mr Steel-toecaps-in-the-groin, I-was-just-checking-the-doorhandle-and-it-opened-all-by-itself ?” “Yeah! Funny old world, ain’t it? He was very bashful about it.” “Good grief,” said Vimes. “It just goes to show, you never can tell,” said Colon. “Anyway, the caretaker said the Elucidated Brethren always leave the place in a mess. Scuffed chalk marks on the floor, he said. And they never put the chairs back properly or wash out the tea urn. They’ve been meeting a lot lately, he said. The nuddy wimmin painters had to meet somewhere else last week.” “What did you do with our suspect?” said Vimes. “Him? Oh, he done a runner, Captain,” said the sergeant, looking embarrassed. “Why? He didn’t look in any shape to run anywhere.” “Well, when we got back here, we sat him down by the fire and wrapped him up because he kept on shivering,” said Sergeant Colon, as Vimes buckled his armour on. “I hope you didn’t eat his pizzas.” “Errol et ‘em. It’s the cheese, see, it goes all-“ “Goon.” “Well,” said Colon awkwardly, “he kept on shivering, sort of thing, and groaning on about dragons and that. We felt sorry for him, to tell the truth. And then he jumps up and runs out of the door for no reason at all.” Vimes glanced at the sergeant’s big, open, dishonest face. “No reason?” he prompted. “Well, we decided to have a bite, so I sent Nobby out to the baker’s, see, and, well, we fought the prisoner ought to have something to eat . . .” “Yes?” said Vimes encouragingly. “Well, when Nobby asked him if he wanted his figgin toasted, he just give a scream and ran off.” “Just that?” said Vimes. “You didn’t threaten him in any way?” “Straight up, Captain. Bit of a mystery, if you ask me. He kept going on about someone called Supreme Grand Master.” “Hmm.” Vimes glanced out of the window. Grey fog lagged the world with dim light. “What time is it?” he said. “Five of the clock, sir.” “Right. Well, before it gets dark-“ Colon gave a cough. “In the morning, sir. This is tomorrow, sir.” “You let me sleep all day?” “Didn’t have the heart to wake you up, sir. No dragon activity, if that’s what you’re thinking. Dead quiet all round, in fact.” Vimes glared at him and threw the window open. The fog rolled in, in a slow, yellow-edged waterfall. “We reckon it must of flown away,” said Colon’s voice, behind him. Vimes stared up into the heavy, rolling clouds. “Hope it clears up for the coronation,” Colon went on, in a worried voice. “You all right, sir?” It hasn’t flown away, Vimes thought. Why should it fly away? We can’t hurt it, and it’s got everything it wants right here. It’s up there somewhere. “You all right, sir?” Colon repeated. It’s got to be up high somewhere, in the fog. There’s all kinds of towers and things. “What time’s the coronation, Sergeant?” he said. “Noon, sir. And Mr Wonse has sent a message about how you’re to be in your best armour among all the civic leaders, sir.” “Oh, has he?” “And Sergeant Hummock and the day squad will be lining the route, sir.” “What with?” said Vimes vaguely, watching the skies. “Sorry, sir?” Vimes squinted upwards to get a better view of the roof. “Hmm?” he said. “I said they’ll be lining the route, sir,” said Sergeant Colon. “It’s up there, Sergeant,” said Vimes. “I can practically smell it.” “Yes, sir,” said Colon obediently. “It’s deciding what to do next.” “Yes, sir?” “They’re not unintelligent, you know. They just don’t think like us.” “Yes, sir.” “So be damned to any lining of the route. I want you three up on roofs, understand?” “Yes, si-what?” “Up on the roofs. Up high. When it makes its move, I want us to be the first to know.” Colon tried to indicate by his expression that he didn’t. “Do you think that’s a good idea, sir?” he ventured. Vimes gave him a blank look. “Yes, Sergeant, I do. It was one of mine,” he said coldly. “Now go and see toil.” When he was left to himself Vimes washed and shaved in cold water, and then rummaged in his campaign chest until he unearthed his ceremonial breastplate and red cloak. Well, the cloak had been red once, and still was, here and there, although most of it resembled a small net used very successfully for catching moths. There was also a helmet, defiantly without plumes, from which the molecule-thick gold leaf had long ago peeled. He’d started saving up for a new cloak, once. Whatever had happened to the money? There was no-one in the guardroom. Errol lay in the wreckage of the fourth fruit box Nobby had scrounged for him. The rest had all been eaten, or had dissolved. In the warm silence the everlasting rumbling of his stomach sounded especially loud. Occasionally he whimpered. “What’s up with you, boy?” he said. The door creaked open. Carrot came in, saw Vines hunkered down by the ravaged box, and saluted. “We’re a bit worried about him, Captain,” he volunteered. “He hasn’t eaten his coal. Just lies there twitching and whining all the time. You don’t think something’s wrong with him, do you?” “Possibly,” said Vimes. “But having something wrong with them is quite normal for a dragon. They always get over it. One way or another.” Errol gave him a mournful look and closed his eyes again. Vimes pulled his scrap of blanket over him. There was a squeak. He fished around beside the dragon’s shivering body, pulled out a small rubber hippo, stared at it in surprise and then gave it one or two experimental squeezes. “I thought it would be something for him to play with,” said Carrot, slightly shamefaced. “You bought him a little toy?” “Yes, sir.” “What a kind thought.” Vimes hoped Carrot hadn’t noticed the fluffy ball tucked into the back of the box. It had been quite expensive. He left the two of them and stepped into the outside world. There was even more bunting now. People were beginning to line the main streets, even though there were hours to wait. It was still very depressing. He felt an appetite for once, one that it’d take more than a drink or two to satisfy. He strolled along for breakfast at Harga’s House of Ribs, the habit of years, and got another unpleasant surprise. Normally the only decoration in there was on Sham Harga’s vest and the food was good solid stuff for a cold morning, all calories and fat and protein and maybe a vitamin crying softly because it was all alone. Now laboriously-made paper streamers criss-crossed the room and he was confronted with a crayonned menu in which the words “Coronasion” and “Royall” figured somewhere on every crooked line. Vimes pointed wearily at the top of the menu. “What’s this?” he said. Harga peered at it. They were alone in the grease-walled cafe. “It says ‘Bye Royarl Appointmente’, Captain,” he said proudly. “What’s it mean?” Harga scratched his head with a ladle. “What it means is,” he said, “if the king comes in here, he’ll like it.” “Have you got anything that isn’t too aristocratic for me to eat, then?” said Vimes sourly, and settled for a slice of plebeian fried bread and a proletarian steak cooked so rare you could still hear it bray. Vimes ate it at the counter. A vague scraping noise disturbed his thoughts. “What’re you doing?” he said. Harga looked up guiltily from his work behind the counter. “Nothing, Cap’n,” he said. He tried to hide the evidence behind him when Vimes glared over the knife-chewed woodwork. “Come on, Sham. You can show me.” Harga’s beefy hands came reluctantly into view. “I was only scraping the old fat out of the pan,” he mumbled. “I see. And how long have we known each other, Sham?” said Vimes, with terrible kindness. “Years, Cap’n,” said Harga. “You bin coming in here nearly every day, reg’lar. One of my best customers.” Vimes leaned over the counter until his nose was level with the squashy pink thing in the middle of Har-ga’s face. “And in all that time, have you ever changed the fat?” he demanded. Harga tried to back away. “Well-“ “It’s been like a friend to me, that old fat,” said Vimes. “There’s little black bits in there I’ve grown to know and love. It’s a meal in itself. And you’ve cleaned out the coffee jug, haven’t you. I can tell. This is love-in-a-canoe coffee if ever I tasted it. The other stuff had flavour. “ “Well, I thought it was time-“ “Why?” Harga let the pan fall from his pudgy fingers. “Well, I thought, if the king should happen to come in-“ “But, Cap’n-“ Vimes’s accusing finger buried itself up to the second joint in Harga ‘s expansive vest. “You don’t even know the wretched fellow’s name!” he shouted. Harga rallied. “I do, Cap’n,” he stuttered. “Course I do. Seen it on the decorations and everything. He’s called Rex Vivat.” Very gently, shaking his head in despair, crying in his heart for the essential servility of mankind, Vimes let him go.   . . .   In another time and place, the Librarian finished reading. He’d reached the end of the text. Not the end of the book-there was plenty more book. It had been scorched beyond the point of legibility, though. Not that the last few unburned pages were very easy to read. The author’s hand had been shaking, he’d been writing fast, and he’d blotted a lot. But the Librarian had wrestled with many a terrifying text in some of the worst books ever bound, words that tried to read you as you read them, words that writhed on the page. At least these weren’t words like that. These were just the words of a man frightened for his life. A man writing a dreadful warning. It was a page a little back from the burned section that drew the Librarian’s eye. He sat and stared at it for some time. Then he stared at the darkness. It was his darkness. He was asleep out there somewhere. Somewhere out there a thief was heading for this place, to steal this book. And then someone would read this book, read these words, and do it anyway. His hands itched. All he had to do was hide the book, or drop on to the thief’s head and unscrew it by the ears. He stared into the darkness again . . . But that would be interfering with the course of history. Horrible things could happen. The Librarian knew all about this sort of thing, it was part of what you had to know before you were allowed into L-space. He’d seen pictures in ancient books. Time could bifurcate, like a pair of trousers. You could end up in the wrong leg, living a life that was actually happening in the other leg, talking to people who weren’t in your leg, walking into walls that weren’t there any more. Life could be horrible in the wrong trouser of Time. Besides, it was against Library rules.[18] The assembled Librarians of Time and Space would certainly have something to say about it if he started to tinker with causality. He closed the book carefully and tucked it back into the shelf. Then he swung gently from bookcase to bookcase until he reached the doorway. For a moment he stopped and looked down at his own sleeping body. Perhaps he wondered, briefly, whether to wake himself up, have a little chat, tell himself that he had friends and not to worry. If so, he must have decided against it. You could get yourself into a lot of trouble that way. Instead he slipped out of the door, and lurked in the shadows, and followed the hooded thief when it came out clutching the book, and waited near the dread portal in the rain until the Elucidated Brethren had met and, when the last one left, followed him to his home, and murmured to himself in anthropoid surprise . . . And then ran back to his Library and the treacherous pathways of L-space.   . . .   By mid-morning the streets were packed, Vimes had docked Nobby a day’s salary for waving a flag, and an air of barbed gloom settled over the Yard, like a big black cloud with occasional flashes of lightning in it. “ ‘Get up in a high place’, “ muttered Nobby. “That’s all very well to say.” “I was looking forward to lining the streets,” said Colon. “I’d have got a good view.” “You were going on about privilege and the rights of man the other night,” said Nobby accusingly. “Yes, well, one of the privileges and rights of this man is getting a good view,” said the sergeant. “That’s all I’m saying.” “I’ve never seen the captain in such a filthy temper,” said Nobby. “I liked it better when he was on the drink. I reckon he’s-“ “You know, I think Errol is really ill,” said Carrot. They turned towards the fruit basket. “He’s very hot. And his skin looks all shiny.” “What’s the right temperature for a dragon?” said Colon. “Yeah. How do you take it?” said Nobby. “I think we ought to ask Lady Ramkin to have a look at him,” said Carrot. “She knows about these things.” “No, she’ll be getting ready for the coronation. We shouldn’t go disturbing her,” said Colon. He stretched out his hand to Errol’s quivering flanks. “I used to have a dog that-arrgh! That’s not hot, that’s boiling!” “I’ve offered him lots of water and he just won’t touch it. What are you doing with that kettle, Nobby?” Nobby looked innocent. “Well, I thought we might as well make a cup of tea before we go out. It’s a shame to waste-“ “Take it off him!”   . . .   Noon came. The fog didn’t lift but it did thin a bit, to allow a pale yellow haze where the sun should have been. Although the passage of years had turned the post of Captain of the Watch into something rather shabby, it still meant that Vimes was entitled to a seat at official occasions. The pecking order had moved it, though, so that now he was in the lowest tier on the rickety bleachers between the Master of the Fellowship of Beggars and the head of the Teachers’ Guild. He didn’t mind that. Anything was better than the top row, among the Assassins, Thieves, Merchants and all the other things that had floated to the top of society. He never knew what to talk about. Anyway, the teacher was restful company since he didn’t do much but clench and unclench his hands occasionally, and whimper. “Something wrong with your neck, Captain?” said the chief beggar politely, as they waited for the coaches. “What?” said Vimes distractedly. “You keep on staring upwards,” said the beggar. “Hmm? Oh. No. Nothing wrong,” said Vimes. The beggar wrapped his velvet cloak around him. “You couldn’t by any chance spare-“ he paused, calculating a sum in accordance with his station- “about three hundred dollars for a twelve-course civic banquet, could you?” “No.” “Fair enough. Fair enough,” said the chief beggar amiably. He sighed. It wasn’t a rewarding job, being chief beggar. It was the differentials that did for you. Low-grade beggars made a reasonable enough living on pennies, but people tended to look the other way when you asked them for a sixteen-bedroom mansion for the night. Vimes resumed his study of the sky. Up on the dais the High Priest of Blind Io, who last night by dint of elaborate ecumenical argument and eventually by a club with nails in it had won the right to crown the king, fussed over his preparations. By the small portable sacrificial altar a tethered billy goat was peacefully chewing the cud and possibly thinking, in Goat: What a lucky billy goat I am, to be given such a good view of the proceedings. This is going to be something to tell the kids. Vimes scanned the diffused outlines of the nearest buildings. A distant cheering suggested that the ceremonial procession was on its way. There was a scuffle of activity around the dais as Lupine Wonse chivvied a scramble of servants who rolled a purple carpet down the steps. Across the square, amongst the ranks of Ankh-Morpork’s faded aristocracy, Lady Ramkin’s face tilted upwards. Around the throne, which had been hastily created out of wood and gold foil, a number of lesser priests, some of them with slight head wounds, shuffled into position. Vimes shifted in his seat, aware of the sound of his own heartbeat, and glared at the haze over the river. . . . and saw the wings.   . . .   Dear Mother and Father [wrote Carrot, in between staring dutifully into the fog] Well, the town is On Fate for the coronation, which is more complicated than at home, and now I am on Day duty as well. This is a shame because, I was going to watch the Coronation with Reet, but it does not do to complain. I must go now because we are expecting a dragon any minute although it does not exist really. Your loving son, Carrot. PS. Have you seen anything of Minty lately?   . . .   “You idiot!” “Sorry,” said Vimes. “Sorry.” People were climbing back into their seats, many of them giving him furious looks. Wonse was white with fury. “How could you have been so stupid? “ he raged. Vimes stared at his own fingers. “I thought I saw-“ he began. “It was a raven! You know what ravens are? There must be hundreds of them in the city!” “In the fog, you see, the size wasn’t easy to-“ Vimes mumbled. “And poor Master Greetling, you ought to have known what loud noises do to him!” The head of the Teachers’ Guild had to be led away by some kind people. “Shouting out like that!” Wonse went on. “Look, I said I’m sorry! It was an honest mistake!” “I’ve had to hold up the procession and everything!” Vimes said nothing. He could feel hundreds of amused or unsympathetic eyes on him. “Well,” he muttered, “I’d better be getting back to the Yard-“ Wonse’s eyes narrowed. “No,” he snapped. “But you can go home, if you like. Or anywhere your fancies take you. Give me your badge.” “Huh?” Wonse held out his hand. “Your badge,” he repeated. “My badge?” “That’s what I said. I want to keep you out of trouble.” Vimes looked at him in astonishment. “But it’s my badge!” “And you’re going to give it to me,” said Wonse grimly. “By order of the king.” “What d’you mean? He doesn’t even know!” Vimes heard the wailing in his own voice. Wonse scowled. “But he will,” he said. “And I don’t expect he’ll even bother to appoint a successor.” Vimes slowly undipped the verdigrised disc of copper, weighed it in his hand, and then tossed it to Wonse without a word. For a moment he considered pleading, but something rebelled. He turned, and stalked off through the crowd. So that was it. As simple as that. After half a lifetime of service. No more City Watch. Huh. Vimes kicked at the pavement. It’d be some sort of Royal Guard now. With plumes in their damn helmets. Well, he’d had enough. It wasn’t a proper life anyway, in the Watch. You didn’t meet people in the best of circumstances. There must be hundreds of other things he could do, and if he thought for long enough he could probably remember what some of them were. Pseudopolis Yard was off the route of the procession, and as he stumbled into the Watch House he could hear the distant cheering beyond the rooftops. Across the city the temple gongs were being sounded. Now they are ringing the gongs, thought Vimes, but soon they will-they will-they will not be ringing the gongs. Not much of an aphorism, he thought, but he could work on it. He had the time, now. Vimes noticed the mess. Errol had started eating again. He’d eaten most of the table, the grate, the coal scuttle, several lamps and the squeaky rubber hippo. Now he lay in his box again, skin twitching, whimpering in his sleep. “A right mess you’ve made,” said Vimes enigmatically. Still, at least he wouldn’t have to tidy it up. He opened his desk drawer. Someone had eaten into that, too. All that was left was a few shards of glass.   . . .   Sergeant Colon hauled himself on to the parapet around the Temple of Small Gods. He was too old for this sort of thing. He’d joined for the bell ringing, not sitting around on high places waiting for dragons to find him. He got his breath back, and peered through the fog. “Anyone human still up here?” he whispered. Carrot’s voice sounded dead and featureless in the dull air. “Here I am, Sergeant,” he said. “I was just checking if you were still here,” said Colon. “I’m still here, Sergeant,” said Carrot, obediently. Colon joined him. “Just checking you were not et,” he said, trying to grin. “I haven’t been et,” said Carrot. “Oh,” said Colon. “Good, then.” He tapped his fingers on the damp stonework, feeling he ought to make his position absolutely clear. “Just checking,” he repeated. “Part of my duty, see. Going around, sort of thing. It’s not that I’m frightened of being up on the roofs by myself, you understand. Thick up here, isn’t it.” “Yes, Sergeant.” “Everything all okay?” Nobby’s muffled voice sidled its way through the thick air, quickly followed by its owner. “Yes, Corporal,” said Carrot. “What you doing up here?” Colon demanded. “I was just coming up to check Lance-constable Carrot was all right,” said Nobby innocently. “What were you doing, Sergeant?” “We’re all all right,” said Carrot, beaming. “That’s good, isn’t it.” The two NCOs shifted uneasily and avoided looking at one another. It seemed like a long way back to their posts, across the damp, cloudy and, above all, exposed rooftops. Colon made an executive decision. “Sod this,” he said, and found a piece of fallen statuary to sit on. Nobby leaned on the parapet and winkled a damp dog-end from the unspeakable ashtray behind his ear. “Heard the procession go by,” he observed. Colon filled his pipe, and struck a match on the stone beside him. “If that dragon’s alive,” he said, blowing out a plume of smoke and turning a small patch of fog into smog, “then it’ll have got the hell away from here, I’m telling you. Not the right sort of place for dragons, a city,” he added, in the tones of someone doing a great job of convincing himself. “It’ll have gone off to somewhere where there’s high places and plenty to eat, you mark my words.” “Somewhere like the city, you mean?” said Carrot. “Shut up,” said the other two in unison. “Chuck us the matches, Sergeant,” said Nobby. Colon tossed the bundle of evil yellow-headed lucifers across the leads. Nobby struck one, which was immediately blown out. Shreds of fog drifted past him. “Wind’s getting up,” he observed. “Good. Can’t stand this fog,” said Colon. “What was I saying?” “You were saying the dragon’ll be miles away,” prompted Nobby. “Oh. Right. Well, it stands to reason, doesn’t it? I mean, I wouldn’t hang around here if I could fly away. If I could fly, I wouldn’t be sitting on a roof on some manky old statue. If I could fly, I’d-“ “What statue?” said Nobby, cigarette halfway to his mouth. “This one,” said Colon, thumping the stone. “And don’t try to give me the willies, Nobby. You know there’s hundreds of mouldy old statues up on Small Gods.” “No I don’t,” said Nobby. “What I do know is, they were all taken down last month when they re-leaded the roof. There’s just the roof and the dome and that’s it. You have to take notice of little things like that,” he added, “when you’re detectoring.” In the damp silence that followed Sergeant Colon looked down at the stone he was sitting on. It had a taper, and a scaly pattern, and a sort of indefinable tail-like quality. Then he followed its length up and into the rapidly-thinning fog. On the dome of Small Gods the dragon raised its head, yawned, and unfolded its wings. The unfolding wasn’t a simple operation. It seemed to go on for some time, as the complex biological machinery of ribs and pleats slid apart. Then, with wings outstretched, the dragon yawned, took a few steps to the edge of the roof, and launched itself into the air. After a while a hand appeared over the edge of the parapet. It flailed around for a moment until it got a decent grip. There was a grunt. Carrot hauled himself back on to the roof and pulled the other two up behind him. They lay flat out on the leads, panting. Carrot observed the way that the dragon’s talons had scored deep grooves in the metal. You couldn’t help noticing things like that. “Hadn’t,” he panted, “hadn’t we better warn people?” Colon dragged himself forward until he could look across the city. “I don’t think we need bother,” he said. “I think they’ll soon find out.”   . . .   The High Priest of Blind Io was stumbling over his words. There had never been an official coronation service in Ankh-Morpork, as far as he could find out. The old kings had managed quite well with something on the lines of: “We hath got the crown, i’faith, and we will kill any whoreson who tries to takes it away, by the Lord Harry.” Apart from anything else, this was rather short. He’d spent a long time drafting something longer and more in keeping with the spirit of the times, and was having some trouble remembering it. He was also being put off by the goat, which was watching him with loyal interest. “Get on with it!” Wonse hissed, from his position behind the throne. “All in good time,” the high priest hissed back. “This is a coronation, I’ll have you know. You might try to show a little respect.” “Of course I’m showing respect! Now get on-“ There was a shout, off to the right. Wonse glared into the crowd. “It’s that Ramkin woman,” he said. “What’s she up to?” People around her were chattering excitedly now. Fingers pointed all the same way, like a small fallen forest. There were one or two screams, and then the crowd moved like a tide. Wonse looked along the wide Street of Small Gods. It wasn’t a raven out there. Not this time.   . . .   The dragon flew slowly, only a few feet above the ground, wings sculling gracefully through the air. The flags that crisscrossed the street were caught up and snapped like so much cobweb, piling up on the creature’s spine plates and flapping back along the length of its tail. It flew with head and neck fully extended, as if the great body was being towed like a barge. The people on the street yelled and fought one another for the safety of doorways. It paid them no attention. It should have come roaring, but the only sounds were the creaking of wings and the snapping of banners. It should have come roaring. Not like this, not slowly and deliberately, giving terror time to mature. It should have come threatening. Not promising. It should have come roaring, not flying gently to the accompaniment of the zip and zing of merry bunting.   . . .   Vimes pulled open the other drawer of his desk and glared at the paperwork, such as there was of it. There wasn’t really much in there that he could call his own. A scrap of sugar bag reminded him that he now owed the Tea Kitty six pence. Odd. He wasn’t angry yet. He would be later on, of course. By evening he’d be furious. Drunk and furious. But not yet. Not yet. It hadn’t really sunk in, and he knew he was just going through the motions as a preventative against thinking. Errol stirred sluggishly in his box, raised his head and whined. “What’s the matter, boy?” said Vimes, reaching down. “Upset stomach?” The little dragon’s skin was moving as though heavy industry was being carried on inside. Nothing in Diseases of the Dragon said anything about this. From the swollen stomach came sounds like a distant and complicated war in an earthquake zone. That surely wasn’t right. Sybil Ramkin said you had to pay great attention to a dragon’s diet, since even a minor stomach upset would decorate the walls and ceiling with pathetic bits of scaly skin. But in the past few days . . . well, there had been cold pizzas, and the ash from Nobby’s horrible dog-ends, and all-in-all Errol had eaten more or less what he liked. Which was just about everything, to judge by the room. Not to mention the contents of the bottom drawer. “We really haven’t looked after you very well, have we?” said Vimes. “Treated you like a dog, really.” He wondered what effect squeaky rubber hippos had on the digestion. Vimes became slowly aware that the distant cheering had turned to screams. He stared vaguely at Errol, and then smiled an incredibly evil smile and stood up. There were sounds of panic and the mob on the run. He placed his battered helmet on his head and gave it a jaunty tap. Then, humming a mad little tune, he sauntered out of the building. Errol remained quite still for a while and then, with extreme difficulty, half-crawled and half-rolled out of his box. Strange messages were coming from the massive part of his brain that controlled his digestive system. It was demanding certain things that he couldn’t put a name to. Fortunately it was able to describe them in minute detail to the complex receptors in his enormous nostrils. They flared, subjecting the air of the room to an intimate examination. His head turned, triangulating. He pulled himself across the floor and began to eat, with every sign of enjoyment, Carrot’s tin of armour polish.   . . .   People streamed past Vimes as he strolled up the Street of Small Gods. Smoke rose into the air from the Plaza of Broken Moons. The dragon squatted in the middle of it, on what remained of the coronation dais. It had a self-satisfied expression. There was no sign of the throne, or of its occupant, although it was possible that complicated forensic examination of the small pile of charcoal in the wrecked and smouldering woodwork might offer some clue. Vimes caught hold of an ornamental fountain to steady himself as the crowds stampeded by. Every street out of the plaza was packed with struggling bodies. Not noisy ones, Vimes noticed. People weren’t wasting their breath with screaming any more. There was just this solid, deadly determination to be somewhere else. The dragon spread its wings and flapped them luxuriously. The people at the rear of the crowd took this as a signal to climb up the backs of the people in front of them and run for safety from head to head. Within a few seconds the square was empty of all save the stupid and the terminally bewildered. Even the badly trampled were making a spirited crawl for the nearest exit. Vimes looked around him. There seemed to be a lot of fallen flags, some of which were being eaten by an elderly goat which couldn’t believe its luck. He could distantly see Cut-me-own-Throat on his hands and knees, trying to restore the contents of his tray. By Vimes’s side a small child waved a flag hesitantly and shouted “Hurrah”. Then everything went quiet. Vimes bent down. “I think you should be going home,” he said. The child squinted up at him. “Are you a Watch man?” it said. “No,” said Vimes. “And yes.” “What happened to the king, Watch man?” “Er. I think he’s gone off for a rest,” said Vimes. “My auntie said I shouldn’t talk to Watch men,” said the child. “Do you think it might be a good idea to go home and tell her how obedient you’ve been, then?” said Vimes. “My auntie said, if I was naughty, she’d put me on the roof and call the dragon,” said the child, conversationally. “My auntie said it eats you all up starting with the legs, so’s you can see what’s happening.” “Why don’t you go home and tell your auntie she’s acting in the best traditions of Ankh-Morpork child-rearing?” said Vimes. “Go on. Run along.” “It crunches up all your bones,” said the child happily. “And when it gets to your head, it-“ “Look, it’s up there!” shouted Vimes. “The great big dragon that crunches you up! Now go home!” The child looked up at the thing perched on the crippled dais. “I haven’t seen it crunch anyone yet,” it complained. “Push off or you’ll feel the back of my hand,” said Vimes. This seemed to fit the bill. The child nodded understandingly. “Right. Can I shout hurrah again?” “If you like,” said Vimes. “Hurrah.” So much for community policing, Vimes thought. He peered out from behind the fountain again. A voice immediately above him rumbled, “Say what you like, I still swear it’s a magnificent specimen.” Vimes’s gaze travelled upwards until it crested the edge of the fountain’s top bowl. “Have you noticed,” said Sybil Ramkin, hauling herself upright by a piece of eroded statuary and dropping down in front of him, “how every time we meet, a dragon turns up?” She gave him an arch smile. “It’s a bit like having your own tune. Or something.” “It’s just sitting there,” said Vimes hurriedly. “Just looking around. As if it’s waiting for something to happen.” The dragon blinked with Jurassic patience. The roads off the square were packed with people. That’s the Ankh-Morpork instinct, Vimes thought. Run away, and then stop and see if anything interesting is going to happen to other people. There was a movement in the wreckage near the dragon’s front talon, and the High Priest of Blind Io staggered to his feet, dust and splinters cascading from his robes. He was still holding the ersatz crown in one hand. Vimes watched the old man look upwards into a couple of glowing red eyes a few feet away. “Can dragons read minds?” whispered Vimes. “I’m sure mine understand every word I say,” hissed Lady Ramkin. “Oh, no! The silly old fool is giving it the crown!” “But isn’t that a smart move?” said Vimes. “Dragons like gold. It’s like throwing a stick for a dog, isn’t it?” “Oh dear,” said Sybil Ramkin. “It might not, you know. Dragons have such sensitive mouths.” The great dragon blinked at the tiny circle of gold. Then, with extreme delicacy, it extended one metre-long claw and hooked the thing out of the priest’s trembling fingers. “What d’you mean, sensitive?” said Vimes, watching the claw travel slowly towards the long, horse-like face. “A really incredible sense of taste. They’re so, well, chemically orientated.” “You mean it can probably taste gold?” whispered Vimes, watching the crown being carefully licked. “Oh, certainly. And smell it.” Vimes wondered what the chances were of the crown being made of gold. Not high, he decided. Gold foil over copper, perhaps. Enough to fool human beings. And then he wondered what someone’s reaction would be if they were offered sugar which turned out, once you’d put three spoonfuls in your coffee, to be salt. The dragon removed the claw from its mouth in one graceful movement and caught the high priest, who was just sneaking away, a blow which knocked him high into the air. When he was screaming at the top of the arc the great mouth came around and-“Gosh!” said Lady Ramkin. There was a groan from the watchers. “The temperature of the thing!” said Vines. “I mean, nothing left! Just a wisp of smoke!” There was another movement in the rubble. Another figure pulled itself upright and leaned dazedly against a broken spar. It was Lupine Wonse, under a coating of soot. Vimes watched him look up into a pair of nostrils the size of drain-covers. Wonse broke into a run. Vimes wondered what it felt like, running away from something like that, expecting any minute your backbone to reach, very briefly, a temperature somewhere beyond the vaporisation point of iron. He could guess. Wonse made it halfway across the square before the dragon darted forward with surprising agility for such a bulk and snatched him up. The talon swept on upward until the struggling figure was being held a few feet from the dragon’s face. It appeared to examine him for some time, turning him this way and that. Then, moving on its three free legs and flapping its wings occasionally to help with its balance, it trotted away across the plaza and headed towards the-what once had been the Patrician’s palace. To what once had been the king’s palace, too. It ignored the frightened spectators silently pressing themselves against the walls. The arched gateway was shouldered aside with depressing ease. The doors themselves, tall and iron-bound and solid, lasted a surprising ten seconds before collapsing into a heap of glowing ash. The dragon stepped through. Lady Ramkin turned in astonishment. Vimes had started to laugh. There was a manic edge to it and there were tears in his eyes, but it was still laughter. He laughed and laughed until he slid gently down the edge of the fountain, his legs splaying out in front of him. “Hooray, hooray, hooray!” he giggled, almost choking. “What on earth d’you mean?” Lady Ramkin demanded. “Put out more flags! Blow the cymbals, roast the tocsin! We’ve crowned it! We’ve got a king after all! What ho!” “Have you been drinking?” she snapped. “Not yet!” sniggered Vimes. “Not yet! But I will be!” He laughed on, knowing that when he stopped black depression was going to drop on him like a lead souffle. But he could see the future stretching out ahead of them . . . . . . after all, it was definitely noble. And it didn’t carry money, and it couldn’t answer back. It could certainly do something for the inner cities, too. Like torching them to the bedrock. We’ll really do it, he thought. That’s the Ankh-Morpork way. If you can’t beat it or corrupt it, you pretend it was your idea in the first place. Vivat Draco. He became aware that the small child had wandered up again. It waved its flag gently at him and said, “Can I shout hurrah again now?” “Why not?” said Vimes. “Everyone else will.” From the palace came the muffled sounds of complicated destruction . . .   . . .   Errol pulled a broomstick across the floor with his mouth and, whimpering with effort, hauled it upright. After a lot more whimpering and several false starts he managed to winkle the end of it between the wall and the big jar of lamp oil. He paused for a moment, breathing like a bellows, and pushed. The jar resisted for a moment, rocked back and forth once or twice, and then fell over and smashed on the flagstones. Crude, very badly-refined oil spread out in a black puddle. Errol’s huge nostrils twitched. Somewhere in the back of his brain unfamiliar synapses clicked like telegraph keys. Great balks of information flooded down the thick nerve cord to his nose, carrying inexplicable information about triple bonds, alkanes and geometric isomerism. However, almost all of it missed the small part of Errol’s brain that was used for being Errol. All he knew was that he was suddenly very, very thirsty.   . . .   Something major was happening in the palace. There was the occasional crash of a floor or thump of a falling ceiling . . . In his rat-filled dungeon, behind a door with more locks than a major canal network, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork lay back and grinned in the darkness.   . . .   Outside, bonfires flared in the dusk. Ankh-Morpork was celebrating. No-one was quite sure why, but they’d worked themselves up for a celebration tonight, barrels had been broached, oxen had been put on spits, one paper hat and celebratory mug had been issued per child, and it seemed a shame to waste all that effort. Anyway, it had been a very interesting day, and the people of Ankh-Morpork set great store by entertainment. “The way I see it,” said one of the revellers, halfway through a huge greasy lump of half-raw meat, “a dragon as king mightn’t be a bad idea. When you think it through, is what I mean.” “It definitely looked very gracious,” said the woman to his right, as if testing the idea. “Sort of, well, sleek. Nice and smart. Not scruffy. Takes a bit of a pride in itself.” She glared at some of the younger revellers further down the table. “The trouble with people today is they don’t take pride in themselves.” “And there’s foreign policy, of course,” said a third, helping himself to a rib. “When you come to think about it.” “What d’you mean?” “Diplomacy,” said the rib-eater, flatly. They thought about it. And then you could see them turning the idea around and thinking about it the other way, in a polite effort to see what the hell he was getting at. “Dunno,” said the monarchical expert slowly. “I mean, your actual dragon, it’s got these, basically, two sort of ways of negotiation. Hasn’t it? I mean, it’s either roasting you alive, or it isn’t. Correct me if I’m wrong,” he added. “That’s my point. I mean, let’s say the ambassador from Klatch comes along, you know how arrogant that lot are, suppose he says: we want this, we want that, we want the other thing. Well,” he said, beaming at them, “what we say is, shut your face unless you want to go home in ajar.” They tried out this idea for mental fit. It had that certain something. “They’ve got a big fleet, Klatch,” said the monarchist uncertainly. “Could be a bit risky, roasting diplomats. People see a pile of charcoal come back on the boat, they tend to look a bit askance.” “Ah, then we say, Ho there, Johnny Klatchian, you no like-um, big fella lizard belong-sky bake mud hut belong-you pretty damn chop-chop.” “We could really say that?” “Why not? And then we say, send plenty tribute toot sweet.” “I never did like them Klatchians,” said the woman firmly. “The stuff they eat! It’s disgustin’. And gab-blin’ away all the time in their heathen lingo . . .” In the shadows, a match flared. Vimes cupped his hands around the flame, sucked on the foul tobacco, tossed the match into the gutter and slouched off down the damp, puddle-punctuated alley. If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn’t as cynical as real life. We’ve got along with the other guys for centuries, he thought. Getting along has practically been all our foreign policy. Now I think I’ve just heard us declare war on an ancient civilisation that we’ve always got along with, more or less, even if they do talk funny. And after that, the world. What’s worse, we’ll probably win.   . . .   Similar thoughts, although with a different perspective, were going through the minds of the civic leaders of Ankh-Morpork when, next morning, each received a short note bidding them to be at the palace for a working lunch, by order. It didn’t say whose order. Or, they noted, whose lunch. Now they were assembled in the antechamber. And there had been changes. It had never been what you might call a select place. The Patrician had always felt that if you made people comfortable they might want to stay. The furniture had been a few very elderly chairs and, around the walls, portraits of earlier city rulers holding scrolls and things. The chairs were still there. The portraits were not. Or, rather, the stained and cracked canvases were piled in a corner, but the gilt frames were gone. The councillors tried to avoid one another’s faces, and sat tapping their fingers on their knees. Finally a couple of very worried-looking servants opened the doors to the main hall. Lupine Wonse lurched through. Most of the councillors had been up all night anyway, trying to formulate some kind of policy vis-d-vis dragons, but Wonse looked as though he hadn’t been to sleep in years. His face was the colour of a fermented dishcloth. Never particularly well-padded, he now looked like something out of a pyramid. “Ah,” he intoned. “Good. Are you all here? Then perhaps you would step this way, gentlemen.” “Er,” said the head thief, “the note mentioned lunch?” “Yes?” said Wonse. “With a dragon?” “Good grief, you don’t think it would eat you, do you?” said Wonse. “What an idea!” “Never crossed me mind,” said the head thief, relief blowing from his ears like steam. “The very idea. Haha.” “Haha,” said the chief merchant. “Hoho,” said the head assassin. “The very idea.” “No, I expect you’re all far too stringy,” said Wonse. “Haha.” “Haha.” “Ahaha.” “Hoho.” The temperature lowered by several degrees. “So if you would kindly step this way?” The great hall had changed. For one thing, it was a great deal greater. Several walls had been knocked into adjoining rooms, and the ceiling and several storeys of upper rooms had been entirely removed. The floor was a mass of rubble except in the middle of the room, which was a heap of gold-Well, goldish. It looked as though someone had scoured the palace for anything that shone or glittered. There were the picture frames, and the gold thread out of tapestries, and silver, and the occasional gem. There were also tureens from the kitchens, candlesticks, warming pans, fragments of mirror. Sparkly stuff. The councillors were not in a position to pay much attention to this, however, because of what was hanging above their heads. It looked like the biggest badly-rolled cigar in the universe, if the biggest badly-rolled cigar in the universe was in the habit of hanging upside down. Two talons could be dimly seen gripping the dark rafters. Halfway between the glittering heap and the doorway a small table had been laid. The councillors noted without much surprise that the familiar ancient silverware was missing. There were china plates, and cutlery that looked as though it had very recently been whittled from bits of wood. Wonse took a seat at the head of the table and nodded to the servants. “Please be seated, gentlemen,” he said. “I am sorry things are a little . . . different, but the king hopes you will bear with it until matters can be more suitably organised.” “The, er,” said the head merchant. “The king,” repeated Wonse. His voice sounded one dribble away from madness. “Oh. The king. Right,” said the merchant. From where he was sitting he had a good view of the big hanging thing. There seemed to be some movement there, some trembling in the great folds that wrapped it. “Long life to him, say I,” he added quickly. The first course was soup with dumplings in it. Wonse didn’t have any. The rest of them ate in a terrified silence broken only by the dull chiming of wood on china. “There are certain matters of decree to which the king feels your assent would be welcome,” said Wonse, eventually. “A pure formality, of course, and I am sorry to bother you with such petty detail.” The big bundle appeared to sway in the breeze. “No trouble at all,” squeaked the head thief. “The king graciously desires it to be known,” said Wonse, “that it would be pleased to receive coronation gifts from the population at large. Nothing complex, of course. Simply any precious metals or gems they might have by them and can easily spare. I should stress, by the way, that this is by no means compulsory. Such generosity as he is confident of expecting should be an entirely voluntary act.” The chief assassin looked sadly at the rings on his fingers, and sighed. The head merchant was already resignedly unshipping his gilt chain of office from around his neck. “Why, gentlemen!” said Wonse. “This is most unexpected!” “Um,” said the Archchancellor of Unseen University. “You will be-that is, I am sure the king is aware that, traditionally, the University is exempt from all city levies and taxes . . .” He stifled a yawn. The wizards had spent the night directing their best spells against the dragon. It was like punching fog. “My dear sir, this is no levy,” protested Wonse. “I hope that nothing I have said would lead you to expect anything like that. Oh, no! No. Any tribute should be, as I said, entirely voluntary. I hope that is absolutely clear.” “As crystal,” said the head assassin, glaring at the old wizard. “And these entirely voluntary tributes we are about to make, they go-?” “On the hoard,” said Wonse. “Ah.” “While I am positive the people of the city will be very generous indeed once they fully understand the situation,” said the head merchant, “I am sure the king will understand that there is very little gold in Ankh-Morpork?” “Good point,” said Wonse. “However, the king intends to pursue a vigorous and dynamic foreign policy which should remedy matters.” “Ah,” the councillors chorused, rather more enthusiastically this time. “For example,” Wonse went on, “the king feels that our legitimate interests in Quirm, Sto Lat, Pseudopolis and Tsort have been seriously compromised in recent centuries. This will be speedily corrected and, gentlemen, I can assure you that treasure will positively flow into the city from those anxious to enjoy the king’s protection.” The head assassin glanced at the hoard. A very definite idea formed in his mind as to where all that treasure would end up. You had to admire the way dragons knew how to put the bite on. It was practically human. “Oh,” he said. “Of course, there will probably be other acquisitions in the way of land, property and so forth, and the king wishes it to be fully understood that loyal Privy Councillors will be richly rewarded.” “And, er,” said the head assassin, who was beginning to feel that he had got a firm grip on the nature of the king’s mental processes, “no doubt the, er-“ “Privy Councillors,” said Wonse. “No doubt they will respond with even greater generosity in the matter of, for example, treasure?” “I am sure such considerations haven’t crossed the king’s mind,” said Wonse, “but the point is very well made.” “I thought it would be.” The next course was fat pork, beans and floury potatoes. More, as they couldn’t help noticing, fattening food. Wonse had a glass of water. “Which brings us on to a further matter of some delicacy which I am sure that well-travelled, broad-minded gentlemen such as yourselves will have no difficulty in accepting,” he said. The hand holding the glass was beginning to shake. “I hope it will also be understood by the population at large, especially since the king will undoubtedly be able to contribute in so many ways to the well-being and defence of the city. For example, I am sure that the people will rest more contentedly in their beds knowing that the dr-the king is tirelessly protecting them from harm. There can, however, be ridiculous ancient . . . prejudices . . . which will only be eradicated by ceaseless work . . . on the part of all men of good will.” He paused, and looked at them. The head assassin said later that he had looked into the eyes of many men who, obviously, were very near death, but he had never looked into eyes that were so clearly and unmistakably looking back at him from the slopes of Hell. He hoped he would never, he said, ever have to look into eyes like that again. “I am referring,” said Wonse, each word coming slowly to the surface like bubbles in some quicksand, “to the matter of . . . the king’s . . . diet.” There was a terrible silence. They heard the faint rustle of wings behind them, and the shadows in the corners of the hall grew darker and seemed to close in. “Diet,” said the head thief, in a hollow voice. “Yes,” said Wonse. His voice was almost a squeak. Sweat was dripping down his face. The head assassin had once heard the word “rictus” and wondered when you should use it correctly to describe someone’s expression, and now he knew. That was what Wonse’s face had become; it was the ghastly rictus of someone trying not to hear the words his own mouth was saying. “We, er, we thought,” said the head assassin, very carefully, “that the dr- the king, well, must have been arranging matters for himself, over the weeks.” “Ah, but poor stuff, you know. Poor stuff. Stray animals and so forth,” said Wonse, staring hard at the tabletop. “Obviously, as king, such makeshifts are no longer appropriate.” The silence grew and took on a texture. The councillors thought hard, especially about the meal they had just eaten. The arrival of a huge trifle with a lot of cream on it only served to concentrate their minds. “Er,” said the head merchant, “how often is the king hungry?” “All the time,” said Wonse, “but it eats once a month. It is really a ceremonial occasion.” “Of course,” said the head merchant. “It would be.” “And, er,” said the head assassin, “when did the king last, er, eat?” “I’m sorry to say it hasn’t eaten properly ever since it came here,” said Wonse. “Oh.” “You must understand,” said Wonse, fiddling desperately with his wooden cutlery, “that merely waylaying people like some common assassin-“ “Excuse me-“ the head assassin began. “Some common murderer, I mean-there is no . . . satisfaction there. The whole essence of the king’s feeding is that it should be, well. . . an act of bonding between king and subjects. It is, it is perhaps a living allegory. Reinforcing the close links between the crown and the community,” he added. “The precise nature of the meal-“ the head thief began, almost choking on the words. “Are we talking about young maidens here?” “Sheer prejudice,” said Wonse. “The age is immaterial. Marital status is, of course, of importance. And social class. Something to do with flavour, I believe.” He leaned forward, and now his voice was pain-filled and urgent and, they felt, genuinely his own for the first time. “Please consider it!” he hissed. “After all, just one a month! In exchange for so much! The families of people of use to the king, Privy Councillors such as yourselves, would not, of course, even be considered. And when you think of all the alternatives . . .” They didn’t think about all the alternatives. It was enough to think about just one of them. The silence purred at them as Wonse talked. They avoided one another’s faces, for fear of what they might see mirrored there. Each man thought: one of the others is bound to say something soon, some protest, and then I’ll murmur agreement, not actually say anything, I’m not as stupid as that, but definitely murmur very firmly, so that the others will be in no doubt that I thoroughly disapprove, because at a time like this it behooves all decent men to nearly stand up and be almost heard . . . But no-one said anything. The cowards, each man thought. And no-one touched the pudding, or the brick-thick chocolate mints served afterwards. They just listened in flushed, gloomy horror as Wonse’s voice droned on, and when they were dismissed they tried to leave as separately as possible, so that they didn’t have to talk to one another. Except for the head merchant, that is. He found himself leaving the palace with the chief assassin, and they strolled side by side, minds racing. The chief merchant tried to look on the bright side; he was one of those men who organise sing-songs when things go drastically wrong. “Well, well,” he said. “So we’re privy councillors now. Just fancy.” “Hmm,” said the assassin. “I wonder what’s the difference between ordinary councillors and privy councillors?” wondered the merchant aloud. The assassin scowled at him. “I think,” he said, “it is because you’re expected to eat shit.” He turned the glare back on his feet again. What kept going through his mind were Wonse’s last words, as he shook the secretary’s limp hand. He wondered if anyone else had heard them. Unlikely . . . they’d been a shape rather than a sound. Wonse had simply moved his lips around them while staring fixedly at the assassin’s moon-tanned face. Help. Me. The assassin shivered. Why him? As far as he could see there was only one kind of help he was qualified to give, and very few people ever asked for it for themselves. In fact, they usually paid large sums for it to be given as a surprise present to other people. He wondered what was happening to Wonse that made any alternative seem better . . .   . . .   Wonse sat alone in the dark, ruined hall. Waiting. He could try running. But it’d find him again. It’d always be able to find him. It could smell his mind. Or it would flame him. That was worse. Just like the Brethren. Perhaps it was an instantaneous death, it looked an instantaneous death, but Wonse lay awake at night wondering whether those last micro-seconds somehow stretched to a subjective, white-hot eternity, every tiny part of your body a mere smear of plasma and you, there, alive in the middle of it all . . . Not you. I would not flame you. It wasn’t telepathy. As far as Wonse had always understood it, telepathy was like hearing a voice in your head. This was like hearing a voice in your body. His whole nervous system twanged to it, like a bow. Rise. Wonse jerked to his feet, overturning the chair and banging his legs on the table. When that voice spoke, he had as much control over his body as water had over gravity. Come. Wonse lurched across the floor. The wings unfolded slowly, with the occasional creak, until they filled the hall from side to side. The tip of one smashed a window, and stuck out into the afternoon air. The dragon slowly, sensuously, stretched out its neck and yawned. When it had finished, it brought its head around until it was a few inches in front of Wonse’s face. What does voluntary mean ? “It, er, it means doing something of your own free will,” said Wonse. But they have no free will! They will increase my hoard, or I will flame them! Wonse gulped. “Yes,” he said, “but you mustn’t-“ The silent roar of fury spun him around. There is nothing I mustn ‘t! “No, no, no!” squeaked Wonse, clutching his head. “I didn’t mean that! Believe me! This way is better, that’s all! Better and safer!” None can defeat me! “This is certainly the case-“ None can control me! Wonse flung up his finger-spread hands in a conciliatory fashion. “Of course, of course,” he said. “But there are ways and ways, you know. Ways and ways. All the roaring and flaming, you see, you don’t need it . . .” Foolish ape! How else can I make them do my bidding ? Wonse put his hands behind his back. “They’ll do it of their own free will,” he said. “And in time, they’ll come to believe it was their own idea. It’ll be a tradition. Take it from me. We humans are adaptable creatures.” The dragon gave him a long, blank stare. “In fact,” said Wonse, trying to keep the trembling out of his voice, “before too long, if someone comes along and tells them that a dragon king is a bad idea, they’ll kill him themselves.” The dragon blinked. For the first time Wonse could remember, it seemed uncertain. “I know people, you see,” said Wonse, simply. The dragon continued to pin him with its gaze. If you are lying . . . it thought, eventually. “You know I can’t. Not to you.” And they really act like this? “Oh, yes. All the time. It’s a basic human trait.” Wonse knew the dragon could read at least the upper levels of his mind. They resonated in terrible harmony. And he could see the mighty thoughts behind the eyes in front of him. The dragon was horrified. “I’m sorry,” said Wonse weakly. “That’s just how we are. It’s all to do with survival, I think.” There will be no mighty warriors sent to kill me? it thought, almost plaintively. “I don’t think so.” No heroes? “Not any more. They cost too much.” But I will be eating people! Wonse whimpered. He felt the sensation of the dragon rummaging around in his mind, trying to find a clue to understanding. He half-saw, half-sensed the flicker of random images, of dragons, of the mythical age of reptiles and-and here he felt the dragon’s genuine astonishment-of some of the less commendable areas of human history, which were most of it. And after the astonishment came the baffled anger. There was practically nothing the dragon could do to people that they had not, sooner or later, tried on one another, often with enthusiasm. You have the effrontery to be squeamish, it thought at him. But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. But this much I can tell you, you ape-the great face pressed even closer, so that Wonse was staring into the pitiless depths of its eyes-we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality. The dragon stretched its wings again, once or twice, and then dropped heavily on to the tawdry assortment of mildly precious things. Its claws scrabbled at the pile. It sneered. A three-legged lizard wouldn’t hoard this lot, it thought. “There will be better things,” whispered Wonse, temporarily relieved at the change in direction. There had better be. “Can I-“ Wonse hesitated-“can I ask you a question?” Ask. “You don’t need to eat people, surely? I think that’s the only problem from people’s point of view, you see,” he added, his voice speeding up to a gabble. “The treasure and everything, that doesn’t have to be a problem, but if it’s just a matter of, well, protein, then perhaps it has occurred to a powerful intellect such as your own that something less controversial, like a cow, might-“ The dragon breathed a horizontal streak of fire that calcined the opposite wall. Need? Need? it roared, when the sound had died away. You talk to me of need? Isn ‘t it the tradition that the finest flower of womanhood should be sent to the dragon to ensure peace and prosperity ? “But, you see, we have always been moderately peaceful and reasonably prosperous-“ DO YOU WANT THIS STATE OF AFFAIRS TO CONTINUE? The force of the thought drove Wonse to his knees. “Of course,” he managed. The dragon stretched its claws luxuriantly. Then the need is not mine, it is yours, it thought. Now get out of my sight. Wonse sagged as it left his mind. The dragon slithered over the cut-price hoard, leapt up on to the ledge of one of the hall’s big windows, and smashed the stained glass with its head. The multicoloured image of a city father cascaded into the other debris below. The long neck stretched out into the early evening air, and turned like a seeking needle. Lights were coming on across the city. The sound of a million people being alive made a muted, deep thrumming. The dragon breathed deeply, joyfully. Then it hauled the rest of its body on to the ledge, shouldered the remains of the window’s frame aside, and leapt into the sky.   . . .   “What is it?” said Nobby. It was vaguely round, of a woodish texture, and when struck made a noise like a ruler plucked over the edge of a desk. Sergeant Colon tapped it again. “I give in,” he said. Carrot proudly lifted it out of the battered packaging. “It’s a cake,” he said, shoving both hands under the thing and raising it with some difficulty. “From my mother.” He managed to put it on the table without trapping his fingers. “Can you eat it?” said Nobby. “It’s taken months to get here. You’d think it would go stale.” “Oh, it’s to a special dwarfish recipe,” said Carrot. “Dwarfish cakes don’t go stale.” Sergeant Colon gave it another sharp rap. “I suppose not,” he conceded. “It’s incredibly sustaining,” said Carrot. “Practically magical. The secret has been handed down from dwarf to dwarf for centuries. One tiny piece of this and you won’t want anything to eat all day.” “Get away?” said Colon. “A dwarf can go hundreds of miles with a cake like this in his pack,” Carrot went on. “I bet he can,” said Colon gloomily, “I bet all the time he’d be thinking, ‘Bloody hell, I hope I can find something else to eat soon, otherwise it’s the bloody cake again.’ “ Carrot, to whom the word irony meant something to do with metal, picked up his pike and after a couple of impressive rebounds managed to cut the cake into approximately four slices. “There we are,” he said cheerfully. “One for each of us, and one for the captain.” He realised what he had said. “Oh. Sorry.” “Yes,” said Colon flatly. They sat in silence for a moment. “I liked him,” said Carrot. “I’m sorry he’s gone.” There was some more silence, very similar to the earlier silence but even deeper and more furrowed with depression. “I expect you’ll be made captain now,” said Carrot. Colon started. “Me? I don’t want to be captain! I can’t do the thinking. It’s not worth all that thinking, just for another nine dollars a month.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “Is that all he got?” said Nobby. “I thought officers were rolling in it.” “Nine dollars a month,” said Colon. “I saw the pay scales once. Nine dollars a month and two dollars plumes allowance. Only he never claimed that bit. Funny, really.” “He wasn’t the plumes type,” said Nobby. “You’re right,” said Colon. “The thing about the captain, see, I read this book once . . . you know we’ve all got alcohol in our bodies . . . sort of natural alcohol? Even if you never touch a drop in your life, your body sort of makes it anyway . . . but Captain Vimes, see, he’s one of those people whose body doesn’t do it naturally. Like, he was born two drinks below normal.” “Gosh,” said Carrot. “Yes . . . so, when he’s sober, he’s really sober. Knurd, they call it. You know how you feel when you wake up if you’ve been on the piss all night, Nobby? Well, he feels like that all the time. “ “Poor bugger,” said Nobby. “I never realised. No wonder he’s always so gloomy.” “So he’s always trying to catch up, see. It’s just that he doesn’t always get the dose right. And, of course-“ Colon glanced at Carrot-”he was brung low by a woman. Mind you, just about anything brings him low.” “So what do we do now, Sergeant?” said Nobby. “And do you think he’d mind if we eat his cake?” said Carrot wistfully. “It’d be a shame to let it go stale.” Colon shrugged. The older men sat in miserable silence as Carrot macerated his way through the cake like a bucket-wheel rockcrusher in a chalk pit. Even if it had been the lightest of souffles they wouldn’t have had any appetite. They were contemplating life without the captain. It was going to be bleak, even without dragons. Say what you liked about Captain Vimes, he’d had style. It was a cynical, black-nailed style, but he’d had it and they didn’t. He could read long words and add up. Even that was style, of a sort. He even got drunk in style. They’d been trying to drag the minutes out, trying to stretch out the time. But the night had come. There was no hope for them. They were going to have to go out on the streets. It was six of the clock. And all wasn’t well. “I miss Errol, too,” said Carrot “He was the captain’s, really,” said Nobby. “Anyway, Lady Ramkin’ll know how to look after him.” “It’s not as though we could leave anything around, either,” said Colon. “I mean, even the lamp oil. He even drank the lamp oil.” “And mothballs,” said Nobby. “A whole box of mothballs. Why would anyone want to eat mothballs? And the kettle. And sugar. He was a devil for sugar.” “He was nice, though,” said Carrot. “Friendly.” “Oh, I’ll grant you,” said Colon. “But it’s not right, really, a pet where you have to jump behind a table every time it hiccups.” “I shall miss his little face,” said Carrot. Nobby blew his nose, loudly. It was echoed by a hammering on the door. Colon jerked his head. Carrot got up and opened it. A couple of members of the palace guard were waiting with arrogant impatience. They stepped back when they saw Carrot, who had to bend a bit to see under the lintel; bad news like Carrot travels fast. “We’ve brung you a proclamation,” said one of them. “You’ve got to-“ “What’s all that fresh paint on your breastplate?” said Carrot politely. Nobby and the sergeant peered around him. “It’s a dragon,” said the younger of the guards. “The dragon,” corrected his superior. “ ‘Ere, I know you,” said Nobby. ‘You’re Skully Maltoon. Used to live in Mincing Street. Your mum made cough sweets, din’t she, and fell in the mixture and died. I never have a cough sweet but I think of your mum.” “Hallo, Nobby,” said the guard, without enthusiasm. “I bet your old mum’d be proud of you, you with a dragon on your vest,” said Nobby conversationally. The guard gave him a look made of hatred and embarrassment. “And new plumes on your hat, too,” Nobby added sweetly. “This here is a proclamation what you are commanded to read,” said the guard loudly. “And post up on street corners also. By order.” “Whose?” said Nobby. Sergeant Colon grabbed the scroll in one ham-like fist. “Where As,” he read slowly, tracing the lettering with a hesitant finger, “It hathe Pleas-Sed the Der-Rer-Aa-Ger-the dragon, Ker-Ii-king of kings and Aa-Ber-Ess-Uh-Ler-“ sweat beaded on the broad pink cliff of his forehead-“absolute, that is, Rer-Uh-Ler-Eh-Rer, ruler of-“ He lapsed into the tortured silence of academia, his fingertip jerking slowly down the parchment. “No,” he said at last. “That’s not right, is it? It’s not going to eat someone?” “Consume,” said the older guard. “It’s all part of the social. . . social contract,” said his assistant woodenly. “A small price to pay, I’m sure you will agree, for the safety and protection of the city.” “From what?” said Nobby. “We’ve never had an enemy we couldn’t bribe or corrupt.” “Until now,” said Colon darkly. “You catch on fast,” said the guard. “So you’re going to broadcast it. On pain of pain.” Carrot peered over Colon’s shoulder. “What’s a virgin?” he said. “An unmarried girl,” said Colon quickly. “What, like my friend Reel?” said Carrot, horrified. “Well, no,” said Colon. “She’s not married, you know. None of Mrs Palm’s girls are married.” “Well, yes,” said Colon. “Well, then,” said Carrot, with an air of finality. “We’re not having any of that kind of thing, I hope.” “People won’t stand for it,” said Colon. “You mark my words.” The guards stepped back, out of range of Carrot’s rising wrath. “They can please themselves,” said the senior guard. “But if you don’t proclaim it, you can try explaining things to His Majesty.” They hurried off. Nobby darted out into the street. “Dragon on your vest!” he shouted. “If your old mum knew about this she’d turn in her vat, you goin’ around with a dragon on your vest!” Colon wandered back to the table and spread out the scroll. “Bad business,” he mumbled. “It’s already killed people,” said Carrot. “Contrary to sixteen separate Acts in Council.” “Well, yes. But that was just like, you know, the hurly-burly of this and that,” said Colon. “Not that it wasn’t bad, I mean, but people sort of participating, just handing over some slip of a girl and standing round watching as if it’s all proper and legal, that’s much worse.” “I reckon it all depends on your point of view,” said Nobby thoughtfully. “What d’you mean?” “Well, from the point of view of someone being burned alive, it probably doesn’t matter much,” said Nobby philosophically. “People won’t stand for it, I said,” said Colon, ignoring this. “You’ll see. They’ll march on the palace, and what will the dragon do then, eh?” “Burn ‘em all,” said Nobby promptly. Colon looked puzzled. “It wouldn’t do that, would it?” he said. “Don’t see what’s to prevent it, do you?” said Nobby. He glanced out of the doorway. “He was a good lad, that boy. Used to run errands for my grandad. Who’d have thought he’d go around with a dragon on his chest . . .” “What are we going to do, Sergeant?” said Carrot. “I don’t want to be burned alive,” said Sergeant Colon. “My wife’d give me hell. So I suppose we’ve got to wossname, proclaim it. But don’t worry, lad,” he said, patting Carrot on one muscular arm and repeating, as if he hadn’t quite believed himself the first time, “it won’t come to that. People’ll never stand for it.”   . . .   Lady Ramkin ran her hands over Errol’s body. “Damned if I know what’s going on in there,” she said. The little dragon tried to lick her face. “What’s he been eating?” “The last thing, I think, was a kettle,” said Vimes. “A kettle of what?” “No. A kettle. A black thing with a handle and spout. He sniffed it for ages, then he ate it.” Enrol grinned weakly at him, and belched. They both ducked. “Oh, and then we found him eating soot out of the chimney,” Vimes went on, as their heads rose again over the railings. They leaned back over the reinforced bunker that was one of Lady Ramkin’s sickbay pens. It had to be reinforced. Usually one of the first things a sick dragon did was lose control of its digestive processes. “He doesn’t look sick, exactly,” she said. “Just fat.” “He whines a lot. And you can sort of see things moving under his skin. You know what I think? You know you said they can rearrange their digestive system?” “Oh, yes. All the stomachs and pancreatic crackers can be hooked up in various ways, you see. To take advantage-“ “Of whatever they can find to make flame with,” said Vimes. “Yes. I think he’s trying to make some sort of very hot flame. He wants to challenge the big dragon. Every time it takes to the air he just sits there whining.” “And doesn’t explode?” “Not that we’ve noticed. I mean, I’m sure if he did, we’d spot it.” “He just eats indiscriminately?” “Hard to be sure. He sniffs everything, and eats most things. Two gallons of lamp oil, for example. Anyway, I can’t leave him down there. We can’t look after him properly. It’s not as if we need to find out where the dragon is now,” he added bitterly. “I think you’re being a bit silly about all this,” she said, leading the way back to the house. “Silly? I was sacked in front of all those people!” “Yes, but it was all a misunderstanding, I’m sure.” “I didn’t misunderstand it!” “Well, I think you’re just upset because you’re impotent.” Vimes’s eyes bulged. “Whee?” he said. “Against the dragon,” Lady Ramkin went on, quite unconcerned. “You can’t do anything about it.” “I reckon this damn city and the dragon just about deserve one another,” said Vimes. “People are frightened. You can’t expect much of people when they’re so frightened.” She touched him gingerly on his arm. It was like watching an industrial robot being expertly manipulated to grasp an egg gently. “Not everyone’s as brave as you,” she added, timidly. “Me?” “The other week. When you stopped them killing my dragons.” “Oh, that. That’s not bravery. Anyway, that was just people. People are easier. I’ll tell you one thing for nothing, I’m not looking up that dragon’s nose again. I wake up at days thinking about that.” “Oh.” She seemed deflated. “Well, if you’re sure . . . I’ve got a lot of friends, you know. If you need any help, you’ve only got to say. The Duke of Sto Helit is looking for a guard captain, I’m sure. I’ll write you a letter. You’ll like them, they’re a very nice young couple.” “I’m not sure what I shall do next,” said Vimes, more gruffly than he intended. “I’m considering one or two offers.” “Well, of course. I’m sure you know best.” Vimes nodded. Lady Ramkin twisted her handkerchief round and round in her hands. “Well, then,” she said. “Well,” said Vimes. “I, er, expect you’ll be wanting to be off, then.” “Yes, I expect I had better be going.” There was a pause. Then they both spoke at once. “It’s been very-“ “I’d just like to say-“ “Sorry.” “Sorry.” “No, you were speaking.” “No, sorry, you were saying?” “Oh.” Vimes hesitated. “I’ll be off, then.” “Oh. Yes.” Lady Ramkin gave him a washed-out smile. “Can’t keep all these offers waiting, can you,” she said. She thrust out a hand. Vimes shook it carefully. “So I’ll just be going, then,” he said. “Do call again,” said Lady Ramkin, more coldly, “if you are ever in this area. And so on. I’m sure Errol would like to see you.” “Yes. Well. Goodbye, then.” “Goodbye, Captain Vimes.” He stumbled out of the door and walked hurriedly down the dark, overgrown path. He could feel her gaze on the back of his neck as he did so or, at least, he told himself that he could. She’d be standing in the doorway, nearly blocking out the light. Just watching me. But I’m not going to look back, he thought. That would be a really silly thing to do. I mean, she’s a lovely person, she’s got a lot of common sense and an enormous personality, but really . . . I’m not going to look back, even if she stands there while I walk all the way down the street. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. So when he heard the door shut when he was only halfway down the drive he suddenly felt very, very angry, as if he had just been robbed. He stood still and clasped and unclasped his hands in the darkness. He wasn’t Captain Vimes any more, he was Citizen Vimes, which meant that he could do things he’d once never dreamt of doing. Perhaps he could go and smash some windows. No, that wouldn’t be any good. He wanted more than that. To get rid of that bloody dragon, to get his job back, to get his hands on whoever was behind all this, to forget himself just once and hit someone until he was exhausted . . . He stared at nothing. Down below the city was a mass of smoke and steam. He wasn’t thinking of that, though. He was thinking of a running man. And, further back in the fuddled mists of his life, a boy running to keep up. And under his breath he said, “Any of them get out?”   . . .   Sergeant Colon finished the proclamation and looked around at the hostile crowd. “Don’t blame me,” he said. “I just read the things. I don’t write ‘em.” “That’s human sacrifice, that is,” said someone. “There’s nothing wrong with human sacrifice,” said a priest. “Ah, per say, “ said the first speaker quickly. “For proper religious reasons. And using condemned criminals and so on.[19] But that’s different from bunging someone to a dragon just because it’s feeling peckish.” “That’s the spirit!” said Sergeant Colon. “Taxes is one thing, but eating people is another.” “Well said!” “If we all say we won’t put up with it, what can the dragon do?” Nobby opened his mouth. Colon clamped a hand over it and raised a triumphant fist in the air. “It’s just what I’ve always said,” he said. “The people united can never be ignited!” There was a ragged cheer. “Hang on a minute,” said a small man, slowly. “As far as we know, the dragon’s only good at one thing. It flies around the city setting fire to people. I’m not actually certain what is being proposed that would stop it doing this.” “Yes, but if we all protest-“ said the first speaker, his voice modulated with uncertainty. “It can’t burn everybody, “ said Colon. He decided to play his new ace again and added, proudly, “The people united can never be ignited!” There was rather less of a cheer this time. People were reserving their energy for worrying. “I’m not exactly sure I understand why not. Why can’t it burn everyone and fly off to another city?” “Because . . .” “The hoard,” said Colon. “It needs people to bring it treasure.” “Yeah.” “Well, maybe, but how many, exactly?” “What?” “How many people? Out of the whole city, I mean. Perhaps it won’t need to burn the whole city down, just some bits. Do we know what bits?” “Look, this is getting silly,” said the first speaker. “If we go around looking at the problems the whole time, we’ll never do anything.” “It just pays to think things through first, that’s all I’m saying. Such as, what happens even if we beat the dragon?” “Oh, come on!” said Sergeant Colon. “No, seriously. What’s the alternative?” “A human being, for a start!” “Please yourself,” said the little man primly. “But I reckon one person a month is pretty good compared to some rulers we’ve had. Anyone remember Nersh the Lunatic? Or Giggling Lord Smince and his Laugh-A-Minute Dungeon?” There was a certain amount of mumbling of the “he’s got a point” variety. “But they got overthrown!” said Colon. “No they didn’t. They were assassinated.” “Same thing,” said Colon. “I mean, no-one’s going to assassinate the dragon. It’d take more than a dark night and a sharp knife to see it off, I know that.” I can see what the captain means, he thought. No wonder he always has a drink after he thinks about things. We always beat ourselves before we even start. Give any Ankh-Morpork man a big stick and he’ll end up clubbing himself to death. “Look here, you mealy-mouthed little twerp,” said the first speaker, picking up the little one by his collar and curling his free hand into a fist, “I happen to have three daughters, and I happen to not want any of them et, thank you very much.” “Yes, and the people united . . . will . . . never .. .be . . .” Colon’s voice faltered. He realised that the rest of the crowd were all staring upward. The bugger, he thought, as rationality began to drain away. It must have flannel feet. The dragon shifted its position on the ridge of the nearest house, flapped its wings once or twice, yawned, and then stretched its neck down into the street. The man blessed with daughters stood, with his fist upraised, in the centre of a rapidly expanding circle of bare cobbles. The little man wriggled out of his frozen grasp and darted into the shadows. It suddenly seemed that no man in the entire world was so lonely and without friends. “I see,” he said quietly. He scowled up at the inquisitive reptile. In fact it didn’t seem particularly belligerent. It was looking at him with something approaching interest. “I don’t care!” he shouted, his voice echoing from wall to wall in the silence. “We defy you! If you kill me, you might as well kill all of us!” There was some uneasy shuffling of feet amongst those sections of the crowd who didn’t feel that this was absolutely axiomatic. “We can resist you, you know!” growled the man. “Can’t we, everyone. What was that slogan about being united, Sergeant?” “Er,” said Colon, feeling his spine turn to ice. “I warn you, dragon, the human spirit is-“ They never found out what it was, or at least what he thought it was, although possibly in the dark hours of a sleepless night some of them might have remembered the subsequent events and formed a pretty good and gut-churning insight, to whit, that one of the things sometimes forgotten about the human spirit is that while it is, in the right conditions, noble and brave and wonderful, it is also, when you get right down to it, only human. The dragon flame caught him full on the chest. For a moment he was visible as a white-hot outline before the neat, black remains spiralled down into a little puddle of melting cobbles. The flame vanished. The crowd stood like statues, not knowing if it was staying put or running that would attract more attention. The dragon stared down, curious to see what they were going to do next. Colon felt that, as the only civic official present, it was up to him to take charge of the situation. He coughed. “Right, then,” he said, trying to keep the squeak out of his voice. “If you would just move along there, ladies and gentlemen. Move along, now. Move along. Let’s be having you, please.” He waved his arms in a vague gesture of authority as the people shuffled nervously away. Out of the corner of his eye he saw red flames behind the rooftops, and sparks spiralling in the sky. “Haven’t you got any homes to go to?” he croaked.   . . .   The Librarian knuckled out into the Library of the here and now. Every hair on his body bristled with rage. He pushed open the door and swung out into the stricken city. Someone out there was about to find that their worst nightmare was a maddened Librarian. With a badge.   . . .   The dragon swooped leisurely back and forth over the night-time city, barely flapping its wings. It didn’t need to. The thermals were giving it the lift it needed. There were fires all over Ankh-Morpork. So many bucket chains had formed between the river and various burning buildings that buckets were getting misdirected and hijacked. Not that you really needed a bucket to pick up the turbid waters of the river Ankh- a net was good enough. Downstream, teams of smoke-stained people worked feverishly to close the huge, corroded gates under the Brass Bridge. They were Ankh-Morpork’s last defence against fire, since then the Ankh had no outlet and gradually, oozingly, filled the space between the walls. A man could suffocate under it. The workers on the bridge were the ones who couldn’t or wouldn’t run. Many others were teeming through the gates of the city and heading out across the chilly, mist-wreathed plains. But not for long. The dragon, looping and curving gracefully above the devastation, glided out over the walls. After a few seconds the guards saw actinic fire stab down through the mists. The tide of humanity flowed back, with the dragon hovering over it like a sheepdog. The fires of the stricken city glowed redly off the underside of its wings. “Got any suggestions about what we do next, Sergeant?” said Nobby. Colon didn’t reply. I wish Captain Vimes were here, he thought. He wouldn’t have known what to do either, but he’s got a much better vocabulary to be baffled in. Some of the fires went out as the rising waters and the confused tangle of fire chains did their work. The dragon didn’t appear to be inclined to start any more. It had made its point. “I wonder who it’ll be,” said Nobby. “What?” said Carrot. “The sacrifice, I mean.” “Sergeant said people wouldn’t put up with it,” said Carrot stoically. “Yeah, well. Look at it this way: if you say to people, what’s it to be, either your house burned down around you or some girl you’ve probably never met being eaten, well, they might get a bit thoughtful. Human nature, see.” “I’m sure a hero will turn up in time,” said Carrot. “With some new sort of weapon, or something. And strike at its voonerable spot.” There was the silence of sudden intense listening. “What’s one of them?” said Nobby. “A spot. Where it’s voonerable. My grandad used to tell me stories. Hit a dragon in its voonerables, he said, and you’ve killed it.” “Like kicking it in the wossnames?” said Nobby, interestedly. “Dunno. I suppose so. Although, Nobby, I’ve told you before it is not right to-“ “And where’s the spot, like?” “Oh, a different place on each dragon. You wait till it flies over and then you say, there’s the voonerable spot, and then you kill it,” said Carrot. “Something like that.” Sergeant Colon stared blankly into space. “Hmm,” said Nobby. They watched the panorama of panic for a while. Then Sergeant Colon said, “You sure about the voonerables?” “Yes. Oh, yes.” “I wish you hadn’t been, lad.” They looked at the terrified city again. “You know,” said Nobby, “you always told me you used to win prizes for archery in the army, Sergeant. You said you had a lucky arrow, you always made sure you got your lucky arrow back, you said you-“ “All right! All right! But this isn’t the same thing, is it? Anyway, I’m not a hero. Why should I do it?” “Captain Vimes pays us thirty dollars a month,” said Carrot. “Yes,” said Nobby, grinning, “and you get five dollars extra responsibility allowance.” “But Captain Vimes has gone,” said Colon wretchedly. Carrot looked at him sternly. “I am sure,” he said, “that if he were here, he’d be the first to-“ Colon waved him into silence. “That’s all very well,” he said. “But what if I miss?” “Look on the bright side,” said Nobby. “You’ll probably never know it.” Sergeant Colon’s expression mutated into an evil, desperate grin. “We’ll never know it, you mean,” he said. “What?” “If you think I ‘m standing on some rooftop on my tod, you can think again. I order you to accompany me. Anyway,” he added, “you get one dollar responsibility allowance, too.” Nobby’s face twisted in panic. “No I don’t!” he croaked. “Captain Vimes said he was docking it for five years for being a disgrace to the species!” “Well, you might just get it back. Anyway, you know all about voonerables. I’ve watched you fight.” Carrot saluted smartly. “Permission to volunteer, sir,” he said. “And I only get twenty dollars a month training pay and I don’t mind at all, sir.” Sergeant Colon cleared his throat. Then he straightened the hang of his breastplate. It was one of those with astonishingly impressive pectoral muscles embossed upon it. His chest and stomach fitted into it in the same way that jelly fits into a mould. What would Captain Vimes do now? Well, he’d have a drink. But if he didn’t have a drink, what would he do? “What we need,” he said slowly, “is a Plan.” That sounded good. That sentence alone sounded worth the pay. If you had a Plan, you were halfway there. And already he thought he could hear the cheering of crowds. They were lining the streets, and they were throwing flowers, and he was being carried triumphantly through the grateful city. The drawback was, he suspected, that he was being carried in an urn.   . . .   Lupine Wonse padded along the draughty corridors to the Patrician’s bedroom. It had never been a sumptuous apartment at best, and contained little more than a narrow bed and a few battered cupboards. It looked even worse now, with one wall gone. Sleepwalk at night now and you could step right into the vast cavern that was the Great Hall. Even so, he shut the door behind him for a semblance of privacy. Then, cautiously and with many nervous glances at the great space beyond, he knelt down in the centre of the floor and pried up a board. A long black robe was dragged into view. Then Wonse reached further down into the dusty space between the floors and rummaged around. He rummaged still further. Then he lay down and stuck both arms into the gap and flailed desperately. A book sailed across the room and hit him in the back of the head. “Looking for this, were you?” said Vimes. He stepped out of the shadows. Wonse was on his knees, his mouth opening and shutting. What’s he going to say, Vimes thought. Is it going to be: I know what this looks like, or will it be: How did you get in here, or maybe it’ll be: Listen, I can explain everything. I wish I had a loaded dragon in my hands right now. Wonse said, “Okay. Clever of you to guess.” Of course, that was always an outside chance, Vimes added. “Under the floorboards,” he said aloud. “First place anyone’d look. Rather foolish, that was.” “I know. I suppose he didn’t think anyone would be searching,” said Wonse, standing up and brushing the dust off himself. “I’m sorry?” said Vimes pleasantly. “Vetinari. You know how he was for scheming and things. He was involved in most of the plots against himself, that was how he ran things. He enjoyed it. Obviously he called it up and couldn’t control it. Something even more cunning than he was.” “So what were you doing?” said Vimes. “I wondered if it might be possible to reverse the spell. Or maybe call up another dragon. They’d fight then.” “A sort of balance of terror, you mean?” said Vimes. “Could be worth a try,” said Wonse earnestly. He took a few steps closer. “Look, about your job, I know we were both a bit overwrought at the time, so of course if you want it back there’ll be no prob-“ “It must have been terrible,” said Vimes. “Imagine what must have gone through his mind. He called it up, and then found it wasn’t just some sort of tool but a real thing with a mind of its own. A mind just like his, but with all the brakes off. You know, I wouldn’t mind betting that at the start he really thought that what he was doing was all for the best. He must have been insane. Sooner or later, anyway.” “Yes,” said Wonse hoarsely. “It must have been terrible.” “Ye gods, but I’d like to get my hands on him! All those years I’ve known the man, and I’d never realised . . .” Wonse said nothing. “Run,” said Vimes softly. “What?” “Run. I want to see you run.” “I don’t underst-“ “I saw someone run away, the night the dragon flamed that house. I remember thinking at the time that he moved in a funny way, sort of bounding along. And then the other day I saw you running away from the dragon. Could almost have been the same man, I thought. Skipping, almost. Like someone running to keep up. Any of them get out, Wonse?” Wonse waved a hand in what he might have thought was a nonchalant way. “That’s just ridiculous, that’s not proof,” he said. “I noticed you sleep in here now,” said Vimes. “I suppose the king likes to have you handy, does he?” “You’ve got no proof at all,” whispered Wonse. “Of course I haven’t. The way someone runs. The eager tone of voice. That’s all. But that doesn’t matter, does it? Because it wouldn’t matter even if I did have proof,” said Vimes. “There’s no-one to take it to. And you can’t give me my job back.” “I can!” said Wonse. “I can, and you needn’t just be captain-“ “You can’t give me my job back,” repeated Vimes. “It was never yours to take away. I was never an officer of the city, or an officer of the king, or an officer of the Patrician. I was an officer of the law. It might have been corrupted and bent, but it was law, of a sort. There isn’t any law now except: ‘you’ll get burned alive if you don’t watch out’. Where’s the place in there for me?” Wonse darted forward and grabbed him by the arm. “But you can help me!” he said. “There may be a way to destroy the dragon, d’you see, or at least we can help people, channel things to mitigate the worst of it, somehow find a meeting point-“ Vimes’s blow caught Wonse on the cheek and spun him around. “The dragon’s here, “he snapped. “You can’t channel it or persuade it or negotiate with it. There’s no truce with dragons. You brought it .here and we’re stuck with it, you bastard. “ Wonse lowered his hand from the bright white mark where the punch had connected. “What are you going to do?” he said. Vimes didn’t know. He’d thought of a dozen ways that the thing could go, but the only one that was really suitable was killing Wonse. And, face to face, he couldn’t do it. “That’s the trouble with people like you,” said Wonse, getting up. “You’re always against anything attempted for the betterment of mankind, but you never have any proper plans of your own. Guards! Guards!” He grinned maniacally at Vimes. “Didn’t expect that, did you?” he said. “We’ve still got guards here, you know. Not so many, of course. Not many people want to come in.” There were footsteps in the passage outside and four of the palace guards padded in, swords drawn. “I wouldn’t put up a fight, if I were you,” Wonse went on. “They’re desperate and uneasy men. But very highly paid.” Vimes said nothing. Wonse was a gloater. You always stood a chance with gloaters. The old Patrician had never been a gloater, you could say that for him. If he wanted you dead, you never even heard about it. The thing to do with gloaters was play the game according to the rules. “You’ll never get away with it,” he said. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right. But never is a long time,” said Wonse. “None of us get away with anything for that long.” “You shall have some time to reflect on this,” he said and nodded to the guards. “Throw him in the special dungeon. And then go about that other little task.” “Er,” said the leader of the guards, and hesitated. “What’s the matter, man?” “You, er, want us to attack him?” said the guard miserably. Thick though the palace guard were, they were as aware as everyone else of the conventions, and when guards are summoned to deal with one man in overheated circumstances it’s not a good time for them. The bugger’s bound to be heroic, he was thinking. This guard was not looking forward to a future in which he was dead. “Of course, you idiot!” “But, er, there’s only one of him,” said the guard captain. “And he’s smilin’,” said a man behind him. “Prob’ly goin’ to swing on the chandeliers any minute,” said one of his colleagues. “And kick over the table, and that.” “He’s not even armed!” shrieked Wonse. “Worst kind, that,” said one of the guards, with deep stoicism. “They leap up, see, and grab one of the ornamental swords behind the shield over the fireplace.” “Yeah,” said another, suspiciously. “And then they chucks a chair at you.” “There’s no fireplace! There’s no sword! There’s only him! Now take him!” screamed Wonse. A couple of guards grabbed Vimes tentatively by the shoulders. “You’re not going to do anything heroic, are you?” whispered one of them. “Wouldn’t know where to start,” he said. “Oh. Right.” As Vimes was hauled away he heard Wonse breaking into insane laughter. They always did, your gloaters. But he was correct about one thing. Vimes didn’t have a plan. He hadn’t thought much about what was going to happen next. He’d been a fool, he told himself, to think that you just had a confrontation and that was the end of it. He also wondered what the other task was. The palace guards said nothing, but stared straight ahead and marched him down, across the ruined hall, and through the wreckage of another corridor to an ominous door. They opened it, threw him in, and marched away. And no-one, absolutely no-one, noticed the thin, leaf-like thing that floated gently down from the shadows of the roof, tumbling over and over in the air like a sycamore seed, before landing in the tangled gewgaws of the hoard. It was a peanut shell.   . . .   It was the silence that awoke Lady Ramkin. Her bedroom looked out over the dragon pens, and she was used to sleeping to the susurration of rustling scales, the occasional roar of a dragon flaming in its sleep, and the keening of the gravid females. Absence of any sound at all was like an alarm clock. She had cried a bit before going to sleep, but not much, because it was no use being soppy and letting the side down. She lit the lamp, pulled on her rubber boots, grabbed the stick which might be all that stood between her and theoretical loss of virtue, and hurried down through the shadowy house. As she crossed the damp lawn to the kennels she was vaguely aware that something was happening down in the city, but dismissed it as not currently worth thinking about. Dragons were more important. She pushed open the door. Well, they were still there. The familiar stink of swamp dragons, half pond mud and half chemical explosion, gusted out into the night. Each dragon was balancing on its hind legs in the centre of its pen, neck arched, staring with ferocious intensity at the roof. “Oh,” she said. “Flying around up there again, is it? Showing off. Don’t you worry about it, children. Mummy’s here.” She put the lamp on a high shelf and stamped along to Errol’s pen. “Well now, my lad,” she began, and stopped. Errol was stretched out on his side. A thin plume of grey smoke was drifting from his mouth, and his stomach expanded and contracted like a bellows. And his skin from the neck down was an almost pure white. “I think if I ever rewrite Diseases you’ll get a whole chapter all to yourself,” she said quietly, and unbolted the gate of the pen. “Let’s see if that nasty temperature has gone down, shall we?” She reached out to stroke his skin and gasped. She pulled the hand back hurriedly and watched the blisters form on her fingertips. Errol was so cold he burned. As she stared at him the small round marks that her warmth had melted filmed over with frozen air. Lady Ramkin sat back on her haunches. “Just what kind of dragon are you-?” she began. There was the distant sound of a knock at the front door of the house. She hesitated for a moment, then blew out the lamp, crept heavily along the length of the kennels and pulled aside the scrap of sacking over the window. The first light of dawn showed her the silhouette of a guardsman on her doorstep, the plumes of his helmet blowing in the breeze. She bit her lip in panic, scuttled back to the door, fled across the lawn and dived into the house, taking the stairs three at a time. “Stupid, stupid,” she muttered, realising the lamp was back downstairs. But no time for that. By the time she went and got it, Vimes might have gone away. Working by feel and memory in the gloom she found her best wig and rammed it on her head. Somewhere among the ointments and dragon remedies on her dressing table was something called, as far as she could remember, Dew of the Night or some such unsuitable name, a present long ago from a thoughtless nephew. She tried several bottles before she found something that, by the smell of it, was probably the one. Even to a nose which had long ago shut down most of its sensory apparatus in the face of the overpoweringness of dragons, it seemed, well, more potent than she remembered. But apparently men liked that kind of thing. Or so she had read. Damn nonsense, really. She twitched the top hem of her suddenly far too sensible nightshirt into a position which, she hoped, revealed without actually exposing, and hurried back down the stairs. She stopped in front of the door, took a deep breath, twisted the handle and realised even as she pulled the door open that she should have taken the rubber boots off- “Why, Captain,” she said winsomely, “This is a who the hell are you?” The head of the palace guard took several steps backwards and, because he was of peasant stock, made a few surreptitious signs to ward off evil spirits. They clearly didn’t work. When he opened his eyes again the thing was still there, still bristling with rage, still reeking of something sickly and fermented, still crowned with a skewed mass of curls, still looming behind a quivering bosom that made the roof of his mouth go dry- He’d heard about these sort of things. Harpies, they were called. What had it done with Lady Ramkin? The sight of the rubber boots had him confused, though. Legends about harpies were short on references to rubber boots. “Out with it, fellow,” Lady Ramkin boomed, hitching up her nightie to a more respectable neckline. “Don’t just stand there opening and shutting your mouth. What d’you want?” “Lady Sybil Ramkin?” said the guard, not in the polite way of someone seeking mere confirmation but in the incredulous tones of someone who found it very hard to believe the answer could be ‘yes’. “Use your eyes, young man. Who d’you think I am?” The guard pulled himself together. “Only I’ve got a summons for Lady Sybil Ramkin,” he said uncertainly. Her voice was withering. “What do you mean, a summons?” “To attend upon the palace, you see.” “I can’t imagine why that is necessary at this time in the morning,” she said, and made to slam the door. It wouldn’t shut, though, because of the sword point jammed into it at the last moment. “If you don’t come,” said the guard, “I have been ordered to take steps.” The door shot back and her face pressed against his, almost knocking him unconscious with the scent of rotting rose petals. “If you think you’ll lay a hand on me-“ she began. The guard’s glance darted sideways, just for a moment, to the dragon kennels. Sybil Ramkin’s face went pale. “You wouldn’t!” she hissed. He swallowed. Fearsome though she was, she was only human. She could only bite your head off metaphorically. There were, he told himself, far worse things than Lady Ramkin although, admittedly, they weren’t three inches from his nose at this point in time. “Take steps,” he repeated, in a croak. She straightened up, and eyed the row of guards behind him. “I see,” she said coldly. “That’s the way, is it? Six of you to fetch one feeble woman. Very well. You will, of course, allow me to fetch a coat. It is somewhat chilly.” She slammed the door. The palace guards stamped their feet in the cold and tried not to look at one another. This obviously wasn’t the way you went around arresting people. They weren’t allowed to keep you waiting on the doorstep, this wasn’t the way the world was supposed to work. On the other hand, the only alternative was to go in there and drag her out, and it wasn’t one anyone could summon any enthusiasm for. Besides, the guard captain wasn’t sure he had enough men to drag Lady Ramkin anywhere. You’d need teams of thousands, with log rollers. The door creaked open again, revealing only the musty darkness of the hall within. “Right, men-“ said the captain, uneasily. Lady Ramkin appeared. He got a brief, blurred vision of her bounding through the doorway, screaming, and it might well have been the last thing he remembered if a guard hadn’t had the presence of mind to trip her up as she hurtled down the steps. She plunged forward, cursing, ploughed into the overgrown lawn, hit her head on a crumbling statue of an antique Ramkin, and slid to a halt. The double-handed broadsword she had been holding landed beside her, bolt upright, and vibrated to a standstill. After a while one of the guards crept forward cautiously and tested the blade with his finger. “Bloody hell,” he said, in a voice of mixed horror and respect. “And the dragon wants to eat her?” “Fits the bill,” said the captain. “She’s got to be the highest-born lady in the city. I don’t know about maiden,” he added, “and right at this minute I’m not going to speculate. Someone go and fetch a cart.” He fingered his ear, which had been nicked by the tip of the sword. He was not, by nature, an unkind man, but at this moment he was certain that he would prefer the thickness of a dragon’s hide between himself and Sybil Ramkin when she woke up. “Weren’t we supposed to kill her pet dragons, sir?” said another guard. “I thought Mr Wonse said something about killing all the dragons.” “That was just a threat we were supposed to make,” said the captain. The guard’s brow furrowed. “You sure, sir? I thought-“ The captain had had enough of this. Screaming harpies and broadswords making a noise like tearing silk in the air beside him had severely ruined his capacity for seeing the other fellow’s point of view. “Oh, you thought, did you?” he growled. “A thinker, are you? Do you think you’d be suitable for another posting, then? City guard, maybe? They’re full of thinkers, they are.” There was an uncomfortable titter from the rest of the guards. “If you’d thought, “ added the captain sarcastically, “you’d have thought that the king is hardly going to want other dragons dead, is he? They’re probably distant relatives or something. I mean, it wouldn’t want us to go around killing its own kind, would it?” “Well, sir, people do, sir,” said the guard sulkily. “Ah, well,” said the captain. “That’s different.” He tapped the side of his helmet meaningfully. “That’s ‘cos we’re intelligent.”   . . .   Vimes landed in damp straw and also in pitch darkness, although after a while his eyes became accustomed to the gloom and he could make out the walls of the dungeon. It hadn’t been built for gracious living. It was basically just a space containing all the pillars and arches that supported the palace. At the far end a small grille high on the wall let in a mere suspicion of grubby, second-hand light. There was another square hole in the floor. It was also barred. The bars were quite rusty, though. It occurred to Vimes that he could probably work them loose eventually, and then all he would have to do was slim down enough to go through a nine-inch hole. What the dungeon did not contain was any rats, scorpions, cockroaches or snakes. It had once contained snakes, it was true, because Vimes’s sandals crunched on small, long white skeletons. He crept cautiously along one damp wall, wondering where the rhythmic scraping sound was coming from. He rounded a squat pillar, and found out. The Patrician was shaving, squinting into a scrap of mirror propped against the pillar to catch the light. No, Vimes realised, not propped. Supported, in fact. By a rat. It was a large rat, with red eyes. The Patrician nodded to him without apparent surprise. “Oh,” he said. “Vimes, isn’t it? I heard you were on the way down. Jolly good. You had better tell the kitchen staff-“ and here Vimes realised that the man was speaking to the rat-“that there will be two for lunch. Would you like a beer, Vimes?” “What?” said Vimes. “I imagine you would. Pot luck, though, I am afraid. Skrp’s people are bright enough, but they seem to have a bit of a blind spot when it comes to labels on bottles.” Lord Vetinari patted his face with a towel and dropped it on the floor. A grey shape darted from the shadows and dragged it away down the floor grille. Then he said, “Very well, Skrp. You may go.” The rat twitched its whiskers at him, leaned the mirror against the wall, and trotted off. “You’re waited on by rats?” said Vimes. “They help out, you know. They’re not really very efficient, I’m afraid. It’s their paws.” “But, but, but,” said Vimes. “I mean, how?” “I suspect Skrp’s people have tunnels that extend into the University,” Lord Vetinari went on. “Although I think they were probably pretty bright to start with.” At least Vimes understood that bit. It was well known that thaumic radiations affected animals living around the Unseen University campus, sometimes prodding them towards minute analogues of human civilisation and even mutating some of them into entirely new and specialised species, such as the .303 bookworm and the wallfish. And, as the man said, rats were quite bright to start with. “But they’re helping you?” said Vimes. “Mutual. It’s mutual. Payment for services rendered, you might say,” said the Patrician, sitting down on what Vimes couldn’t help noticing was a small velvet cushion. On a low shelf, so as to be handy, were a notepad and a neat row of books. “How can you help rats, sir?” he said weakly. “Advice. I advise them, you know.” The Patrician leaned back. “That’s the trouble with people like Wonse,” he said. “They never know when to stop. Rats, snakes and scorpions. It was sheer bedlam in here when I came. The rats were getting the worst of it, too.” And Vimes thought he was beginning to get the drift. “You mean you sort of trained them?” he said. “Advised. Advised. I suppose it’s a knack,” said Lord Vetinari modestly. Vimes wondered how it was done. Did the rats side with the scorpions against the snakes and then, when the snakes were beaten, invite the scorpions to a celebratory slap-up meal and eat them? Or were individual scorpions hired with large amounts of, oh, whatever it-was scorpions ate, to sidle up to selected leading snakes at night and sting them? He remembered hearing once about a man who, locked up in a cell for years, trained little birds and created a sort of freedom. And he thought of ancient sailors, shorn of the sea by old age and infirmity, who spent their days making big ships in little bottles. Then he thought of the Patrician, robbed of his city, sitting cross-legged on the grey floor in the dim dungeon and recreating it around him, encouraging in miniature all the little rivalries, power struggles and factions. He thought of him as a sombre, brooding statue amid paving stones alive with slinking shadows and sudden, political death. It had probably been easier than ruling Ankh, which had larger vermin who didn’t have to use both hands to carry a knife. There was a clink over by the drain. Half a dozen rats appeared, dragging something wrapped in a cloth. They rathandled it past the grille and, with great effort, hauled it to the Patrician’s feet. He leaned down and undid the knot. “We seem to have cheese, chicken legs, celery, a piece of rather stale bread and a nice bottle, oh, a nice bottle apparently of Merckle and Stingbat’s Very Famous Brown Sauce. Beer, I said, Skrp.” The leading rat twitched its nose at him. “Sorry about this, Vimes. They can’t read, you see. They don’t seem to get the hang of the concept. But they’re very good at listening. They bring me all the news.” “I see you’re very comfortable here,” said Vimes weakly. “Never build a dungeon you wouldn’t be happy to spend the night in yourself,” said the Patrician, laying out the food on the cloth. “The world would be a happier place if more people remembered that.” “We all thought you had built secret tunnels and suchlike,” said Vimes. “Can’t imagine why,” said the Patrician. “One would have to keep on running. So inefficient. Whereas here I am at the hub of things. I hope you understand that, Vimes. Never trust any ruler who puts his faith in tunnels and bunkers and escape routes. The chances are that his heart isn’t in the job.” “Oh.” He’s in a dungeon in his own palace with a raving lunatic in charge upstairs, and a dragon burning the city, and he thinks he’s got the world where he wants it. It must be something about high office. The altitude sends people mad. “You, er, you don’t mind if I have a look around, > do you?” he said. “Feel free,” said the Patrician. Vimes paced the length of the dungeon and checked the door. It was heavily barred and bolted, and the lock was massive. Then he tapped the walls in what might possibly be hollow places. There was no doubt that it was a well-built dungeon. It was the kind of dungeon you’d feel good about having dangerous criminals put in. Of course, in those circumstances you’d prefer there to be no trapdoors, hidden tunnels or secret ways of escape. These weren’t those circumstances. It was amazing what several feet of solid stone did to your sense of perspective. “Do guards come in here?” he demanded. “Hardly ever,” said the Patrician, waving a chicken leg. “They don’t bother about feeding me, you see. The idea is that one should moulder. In fact,” he said, “up ‘til recently I used to go to the door and groan a bit every now and then, just to keep them happy.” “They’re bound to come in and check, though?” said Vimes hopefully. “Oh, I don’t think we should tolerate that,” said the Patrician. “How are you going to prevent them?” Lord Vetinari gave him a pained look. “My dear Vimes,” he said, “I thought you were an observant man. Did you look at the door?” “Of course I did,” said Vimes, and added, “sir. It’s bloody massive.” “Perhaps you should have another look?” Vimes gaped at him, and then stamped across the floor and glared at the door. It was one of the popular dread portal variety, all bars and bolts and iron spikes and massive hinges. No matter how long he looked at it, it didn’t become any less massive. The lock was one of those dwarfish-made buggers that it’d take years to pick. All in all, if you had to have a symbol for something totally immovable, that door was your man. The Patrician appeared alongside him in heart-stopping silence. “You see,” he said, “it’s always the case, is it not, that should a city be overtaken by violent civil unrest the current ruler is thrown into the dungeons? To a certain type of mind that is so much more satisfying than mere execution.” “Well, okay, but I don’t see-“ Vimes began. “And you look at this door and what you see is a really strong cell door, yes?” “Of course. You’ve only got to look at the bolts and-“ “You know, I’m really rather pleased,” said Lord Vetinari quietly. Vimes stared at the door until his eyebrows ached. And then, just as random patterns in cloud suddenly, without changing in any way, become a horse’s head or a sailing ship, he saw what he’d been looking at all along. A sense of terrifying admiration overcame him. He wondered what it was like in the Patrician’s mind. All cold and shiny, he thought, all blued steel and icicles and little wheels clicking along like a huge clock. The kind of mind that would carefully consider its own downfall and turn it to advantage. It was a perfectly normal dungeon door, but it all depended on your sense of perspective. In this dungeon the Patrician could hold off the world. All that was on the outside was the lock. All the bolts and bars were on the inside.   . . .   The rank clambered awkwardly across the damp rooftops as the morning mist was boiled off by the sun. Not that there would be any clear air today-sticky swathes of smoke and stale steam wreathed the city and filled the air with the sad smell of dampened cinders. “What is this place?” said Carrot, helping the others along a greasy walkway. Sergeant Colon looked around at the forest of chimneys. “We’re just above Jimkin Bearhugger’s whisky distillery,” he said. “On a direct line, see, between the palace and the plaza. It’s bound to fly over here.” Nobby looked wistfully over the side of the building. “I bin in there once,” he said. “Checked the door one dark night and it just came open in my hand.” “Eventually, I expect,” said Colon sourly. “Well, I had to go in, din’t I, to check there was no miscreanting going on. Amazing place in there. All pipes and stuff. And the smell!” “ ‘Every bottle matured for up to seven minutes’,” quoted Colon. “ ‘Ha’ a drop afore ye go’, it says on the label. Damn right, too. I had a drop once, and I went all day.” He knelt down and unwrapped the long sacking package he had been manhandling, with extreme difficulty, during the climb. This revealed a longbow of ancient design and a quiver of arrows. He picked up the bow slowly, reverentially, and ran his pudgy fingers along it. “You know,” he said quietly, “I was damn good with this, when I were a lad. The captain should of let me have a go the other night.” “You keep on telling us,” said Nobby unsympathetically. “Well, I used to win prizes.” The sergeant unwound a new bowstring, looped it around one end of the bow, stood up, pressed down, grunted a bit . . . “Er. Carrot?” he said, slightly out of breath. “Yes, Sarge?” “You any good at stringing bows?” Carrot grasped the bow, compressed it easily, and slipped the other end of the string into place. “That’s a good start, Sarge,” said Nobby. “Don’t you be sarcastic with me, Nobby! It ain’t strength, it’s keenness of eye and steadiness of hand what counts. Now you pass me an arrow. Not that one!” Nobby’s fingers froze in the act of grasping a shaft. “That’s my lucky arrow!” spluttered Colon. “None of you is to touch my lucky arrow!” “Looks just like any other bloody arrow to me, Sarge,” said Nobby mildly. “That’s the one I shall use for the actual wossname, the coup de grass,” said Colon. “Never let me down, my lucky arrow didn’t. Hit whatever I shot at. Hardly even had to aim. If that dragon’s got any voonerables, that arrow’ll find ‘em.” He selected an identical-looking but presumably less lucky arrow and nocked it. Then he looked around the rooftops with a speculative eye. “Better get my hand in,” he muttered. “Of course, once you learn you never forget, it’s like riding a- riding a-riding something you never forget being able to ride.” He pulled the bowstring back to his ear, and grunted. “Right,” he wheezed, as his arm trembled with the tension like a branch in a gale. “See the roof of the Assassins’ Guild over there?” They peered through the grubby air. “Right, then,” said Colon. “And do you see the weathervane on it? Do you see it?” Carrot glanced at the arrowhead. It was weaving back and forth in a series of figure-eights. “It’s a long way off, Sarge,” said Nobby doubtfully. “Never you mind me, you keep your eyes on the weathervane,” groaned the sergeant. They nodded. The weathervane was in the shape of a creeping man with a big cloak; his outstretched dagger was always turned to stab the wind. At this distance, though, it was tiny. “Okay,” panted Colon. “Now, d’you see the man’s eye?” “Oh, come on, “ said Nobby. “Shutup, shutup, shutup!” groaned Colon. “Do you see it, I said!” “I think I can see it, Sarge,” said Carrot loyally. “Right. Right,” said the sergeant, swaying backwards and forwards with effort. “Right. Good lad. Okay. Now keep an eye on it, right?” He grunted, and loosed the arrow. Several things happened so fast that they will have to be recounted in stop-motion prose. Probably the first was the bowstring slapping into the soft inner part of Colon’s wrist, causing him to scream and drop the bow. This had no effect on the path of the arrow, which was already flying straight and true towards a gargoyle on the rooftop just across the road. It hit it on the ear, bounced, ricocheted off a wall six feet away, and headed back towards Colon apparently at a slightly increased speed, going past his ear with a silky humming noise. It vanished in the direction of the city walls. After a while Nobby coughed and gave Carrot a look of innocent inquiry. “About how big,” he said, “is a dragon’s voonerables, roughly?” “Oh, it can be a tiny spot,” said Carrot helpfully. “I was sort of afraid of that,” said Nobby. He wandered to the edge of the roof, and pointed downwards. “There’s a pond just here,” he said. “They use it for cooling water in the stills. I reckon it’s pretty deep, so after the sergeant has shot at the dragon we can jump in it. What d’you say?” “Oh, but we don’t need to do that,” said Carrot. “Because the sergeant’s lucky arrow would of hit the spot and the dragon’ll be dead, so we won’t have anything to worry about.” “Granted, granted,” said Nobby hurriedly, looking at Colon’s scowling face. “But just in case, you know, if by a million-to-one chance he misses-I’m not saying he will, mark you, you just have to think of all eventualities-if, by incredible bad luck, he doesn’t quite manage to hit the voonerable dead on, then your dragon is going to lose his rag, right, and it’s probably a good idea to not be here. It’s a long shot, I know. Call me a worry-wart if you like. That’s all I’m saying.” Sergeant Colon adjusted his armour haughtily. “When you really need them the most,” he said, “million-to-one chances always crop up. Well-known fact.” “The sergeant is right, Nobby,” said Carrot virtuously. “You know that when there’s just one chance which might just work-well, it works. Otherwise there’d be no-“ he lowered his voice-“I mean, it stands to reason, if last desperate chances didn’t work, there’d be no . . . well, the gods wouldn’t let it be any other way. They wouldn’t.” As one man, the three of them turned and looked through the murky air towards the hub of the Disc-world, thousands of miles away. Now the air was grey with old smoke and mist shreds, but on a clear day it was possible to see Cori Celesti, home of the gods. Site of the home of the gods, anyway. They lived in Dunmanifestin, the stuccoed Valhalla, where the gods faced eternity with the kind of minds that were at a loss to know what to do to pass a wet afternoon. They played games with the fates of men, it was said. Exactly what game they thought they were playing at the moment was anyone’s guess. But of course there were rules. Everyone knew there were rules. They just had to hope like Hell that the gods knew the rules, too. “It’s got to work,” mumbled Colon. “I’ll be using my lucky arrow ‘n all. You’re right. Last hopeless chances have got to work. Nothing makes any sense otherwise. You might as well not be alive.” Nobby looked down at the pond again. After a moment’s hesitation Colon joined him. They had the speculative faces of men who had seen many things, and knew that while you could of course depend on heroes, and kings, and ultimately on gods, you could really depend on gravity and deep water. “Not that we’ll need it,” said Colon virtuously. “Not with your lucky arrow,” said Nobby. ‘ “That’s right. But, just out of interest, how far down is it, d’you think?” said Colon. “About thirty feet, I’d say. Give or take.” “Thirty feet.” Colon nodded slowly. “That’s what I’d reckon. And it’s deep, is it?” “Very deep, I’ve heard.” “I’ll take your word for it. It looks pretty mucky. I’d hate to have to jump in it.” Carrot slapped him cheerfully on the back, nearly pushing him over, and said, “What’s up, Sarge? Do you want to live for ever?” “Dunno. Ask me again in five hundred years.” “It’s a good job we’ve got your lucky arrow, then!” said Carrot. “Hmm?” said Colon, who seemed to be in a miserable daydream world of his own. “I mean, it’s a good job we’ve got a last desperate million-to-one chance to rely on, or we’d really be in trouble!” “Oh, yes,” said Nobby sadly. “Lucky old us.” The Patrician lay back. A couple of rats dragged a cushion under his head. “Things are rather bad outside, I gather,” he said. “Yes,” said Vimes bitterly. “You’re right. You’re the safest man in the city.” He wedged another knife in a crack in the stones and tested his weight carefully, while Lord Vetinari looked on with interest. He’d managed to get six feet off the floor and up to a level with the grille. Now he started to hack at the mortar around the bars.   . . .   The Patrician watched him for a while, and then took a book off the little shelf beside him. Since the rats couldn’t read the library he’d been able to assemble was a little baroque, but he was not a man to ignore fresh knowledge. He found his bookmark in the pages of Lacemaking Through the Ages, and read a few pages. After a while he found it necessary to brush a few crumbs of mortar off the book, and looked up. “Are you achieving success?” he inquired politely. Vimes gritted his teeth and hacked away. Outside the little grille was a grubby courtyard, barely lighter than the cell. There was a midden in one corner, but currently it looked very attractive. More attractive than the dungeon, at any rate. An honest midden was preferable to the way Ankh-Morpork was going these days. It was probably allegorical, or something. He stabbed, stabbed, stabbed. The knife blade twanged and shook in his hand.   . . .   The Librarian scratched his armpits thoughtfully. He was facing problems of his own. He had come here full of rage against book thieves and that rage still burned. But the seditious thought had occurred to him that, although crimes against books were the worst kind of crimes, revenge ought, perhaps, to be postponed. It occurred to him that, while of course what humans chose to do to one another was all one to him, there were certain activities that should be curtailed in case the perpetrators got over-confident and started doing things like that to books, too. The Librarian stared at his badge again, and gave it a gentle nibble in the optimistic hope that it had become edible. No doubt about it, he had a Duty to the captain. The captain had always been kind to him. And the captain had a badge, too. Yes. There were times when an ape had to do what a man had to do . . . The orangutan threw a complex salute and swung away into the darkness.   . . .   The sun rose higher, rolling through the mists and stale smoke like a lost balloon. The rank sat in the shade of a chimney stack, waiting and killing time in their various ways. Nobby was thoughtfully probing the contents of a nostril, Carrot was writing a letter home, and Sergeant Colon was worrying. After a while he shifted his weight uneasily and said, “I’ve fought of a problem,” “Wassat, Sarge?” said Carrot. Sergeant Colon looked wretched. “Weeell, what if it’s not a million-to-one chance?” he said. Nobby stared at him. “What d’you mean?” he said. “Well, all right, last desperate million-to-one chances always work, right, no problem, but. . . well, it’s pretty wossname, specific. I mean, isn’t it?” “You tell me,” said Nobby. “What if it’s just a thousand-to-one chance?” said Colon agonisedly. “What?” “Anyone ever heard of a thousand-to-one shot coming up?” Carrot looked up. “Don’t be daft, Sergeant,” he said. “No-one ever saw a thousand-to-one chance come up. The odds against it are-“ his lips moved- “millions to one.” “Yeah. Millions,” agreed Nobby. “So it’d only work if it’s your actual million-to-one chance,” said the sergeant. “I suppose that’s right,” said Nobby. “So 999,943-to-one, for example-“ Colon began. Carrot shook his head. “Wouldn’t have a hope. No-one ever said, ‘It’s a 999,943-to-one chance but it might just work.’ “ They stared out across the city in the silence of ferocious mental calculation. “We could have a real problem here,” said Colon eventually. Carrot started to scribble furiously. When questioned, he explained at length about how you found the surface area of a dragon and then tried to estimate the chances of an arrow hitting any one spot. “Aimed, mind,” said Sergeant Colon. “I aim. “ Nobby coughed. “In that case it’s got to be a lot less than a million-to-one chance,” said Carrot. “It could be a hundred-to-one. If the dragon’s flying slowly and it’s a big spot, it could be practically a certainty.” Colon’s lips shaped themselves around the phrase, It’s a certainty but it might just work. He shook his head. “Nah,” he said. “So what we’ve got to do, then,” said Nobby slowly, “is adjust the odds . . .”   . . .   Now there was a shallow hole in the mortar near the middle bar. It wasn’t much, Vimes knew, but it was a start. “You don’t require assistance, by any chance?” said the Patrician. “No.” “As you wish.” The mortar was half-rotted, but the bars had been driven deep into the rock. Under their crusting of rust there was still plenty of iron. It was a long job, but it was something to do and required a blessed absence of thought. They couldn’t take it away from him. It was a good, clean challenge; you knew if you went on chipping away, you’d win through eventually. It was the “eventually” that was the problem. Eventually Great A ‘Tuin would reach the end of the universe. Eventually the stars would go out. Eventually Nobby might have a bath, although that would probably involve a radical rethinking of the nature of Time. He hacked at the mortar anyway, and then stopped as something small and pale fell down outside, quite slowly. “Peanut shell?” he said. The Librarian’s face, surrounded by the inner-tube jowls of the Librarian’s head, appeared upside down in the barred opening, and gave him a grin that wasn’t any less terrible for being the wrong way up. “Oook?” The orangutan flopped down off the wall, grabbed a couple of bars, and pulled. Muscles shunted back and forward across its barrel chest in a complex pavane of effort. The mouthful of yellow teeth gaped in silent concentration. There were a couple of dull “thungs” as the bars gave up and broke free. The ape flung them aside and reached into the gaping hole. Then the longest arms of the Law grabbed the astonished Vimes under his shoulders and pulled him through in one movement.   . . .   The rank surveyed their handiwork. “Right,” said Nobby. “Now, what are the chances of a man standing on one leg with his hat on backwards and a handkerchief in his mouth hitting a dragon’s voonerables? “ “Mmph,” said Colon. “It’s pretty long odds,” said Carrot. “I reckon the hanky is a bit over the top, though.” Colon spat it out. “Make up your minds,” he said. “Me leg’s going to sleep.”   . . .   Vimes picked himself up off the greasy cobbles and stared at the Librarian. He was experiencing something which had come as a shock to many people, usually in much more unpleasant circumstances such as a brawl started in the Mended Drum when the ape wanted a bit of peace and quiet to enjoy a reflective pint, which was this: the Librarian might look like a stuffed rubber sack, but what it was stuffed with was muscle. “That was amazing,” was all he could find to say. He looked down at the twisted bars, and felt his mind darken. He grabbed the bent metal. “You don’t happen to know where Wonse is, do you?” he added. “Eeek!” The Librarian thrust a tattered piece of parchment under his nose. “Eeek!” Vimes read the words. It hathe pleased . . . whereas . . . at the stroke of noone . . . a maiden pure, yet high born . . . compact between ruler and ruled . . . “In my city!” he growled. “In my bloody city!” He grabbed the Librarian by two handfuls of chest hair and pulled him up to eye height. “What time is it?” he shouted. “Oook!” A long red-haired arm unfolded itself upwards. Vimes’s gaze followed the pointing finger. The sun definitely had the look of a heavenly body that was nearly at the crest of its orbit and looking forward to a long, lazy coasting towards the blankets of dusk . . . “I’m not bloody well going to have it, understand?” Vimes shouted, shaking the ape back and forth. “Oook,” the Librarian pointed out, patiently. “What? Oh. Sorry.” Vimes lowered the ape, who wisely didn’t make an issue of it because a man angry enough to lift 300lbs of orangutan without noticing is a man with too much on his mind. Now he was staring around the courtyard. “Any way out of here?” he said. “Without climbing the walls, I mean.” He didn’t wait for an answer but loped around the walls until he reached a narrow, grubby door, and kicked it open. It hadn’t been locked anyway, but he kicked it just the same. The Librarian trailed along behind, swinging on his knuckles. The kitchen on the other side of the door was almost deserted, the staff having finally lost their nerve and decided that all prudent chefs refrained from working in an establishment where there was a mouth bigger than they were. A couple of palace guards were eating a cold lunch. “Now,” said Vimes, as they half-rose, “I don’t want to have to-“ They didn’t seem to want to listen. One of them reached for a crossbow. “Oh, the hell with it.” Vimes grabbed a butcher’s knife from a block beside it and threw it. There is an art in throwing knives and, even then, you need the right kind of knife. Otherwise it does just what this one did, which is miss completely. The guard with the bow leaned sideways, righted himself, and found that a purple fingernail was gently blocking the firing mechanism. He looked around. The Librarian hit him right on top of his helmet. The other guard shrank back, waving his hands frantically. “Nonono!” he said. “It’s a misunderstanding! What was it you said you didn’t want to have to do? Nice monkey!” “Oh, dear,” said Vimes. “Wrong!” He ignored the terrified screaming and rummaged through the debris of the kitchen until he came up with a cleaver. He’d never felt really at home with swords, but a cleaver was a different matter. A cleaver had weight. It had purpose. A sword might have a certain nobility about it, unless it was the one belonging for example to Nobby, which relied on rust to hold it together, but what a cleaver had was a tremendous ability to cut things up. He left the biology lesson-that no monkey was capable of bouncing someone up and down by their ankles-found a likely door, and hurried through it. This took him outside again, into the big cobbled area that surrounded the palace. Now he could get his bearings, now he could . . . There was a boom in the air above him. A gale blew downwards, knocking him over. The King of Ankh-Morpork, wings outspread, glided across the sky and settled for a moment on the palace gateway, talons gouging long scars in the stone as it caught its balance. The sun glittered off its arched back as it stretched its neck, roared a lazy billow of flames, and sprang into the air again. Vimes made an animal-a mammalian animal-noise in the back of his throat, and ran out into the empty streets.   . . .   Silence filled the ancestral home of the Ramkins. The front door swung back and forth on its hinges, letting in the common, badly-brought up breeze which wandered through the deserted rooms, gawping and looking for dust on the top of the furniture. It wound up the stairs and banged through the door of Sybil Ramkin’s bedroom, rattling the bottles on the dressing table and riffling through the pages of Diseases of the Dragon. A really fast reader could have learned the symptoms of everything from Abated Heels to Zigzag Throat. And down below, in the low, warm and foul-smelling shed that housed the swamp dragons, it seemed that Errol had got them all. Now he sat in the centre of his pen, swaying and moaning softly. White smoke rolled slowly from his ears and drifted towards the floor. From somewhere inside his swollen stomach came complex explosive hydraulic noises, as though desperate teams of gnomes were trying to drive a culvert through a cliff in a thunderstorm. His nostrils flared, turning more or less of their own volition. The other dragons craned over the pen walls, watching him cautiously. There was another distant gastric roar. Errol shifted painfully. The dragons exchanged glances. Then, one by one, they lay down carefully on the floor and put their paws over their eyes.   . . .   Nobby put his head on one side. “It looks promising,” he said critically. “We might be nearly there. I reckon the chances of a man with soot on his face, his tongue sticking out, standing on one leg and singing The Hedgehog Song ever hitting a dragon’s voonerables would be . . . what’d you say, Carrot?” “A million to one, I reckon,” said Carrot virtuously. Colon glared at them. “Listen, lads,” he said, “you’re not winding me up, are you?” Carrot looked down at the plaza below them. “Oh, bloody hell,” he said softly. “Wassat?” said Colon urgently, looking around. “They’re chaining a woman to a rock!” The rank stared over the parapet. The huge and silent crowd that lined the plaza stared too, at a white figure struggling between half a dozen palace guards. “Wonder where they got the rock from?” said Colon. “We’re on loam here, you know.” “Fine strapping wench, whoever she is,” said Nobby approvingly, as one of the guards wheeled off bow-legged and collapsed. “That’s one lad who won’t know what to do with his evenin’s for a few weeks. Got a mean right knee, so she has.” “Anyone we know?” said Colon. Carrot squinted. “It’s Lady Ramkin!” he said, his mouth dropping open. “Never!” “He’s right. In a nightie,” said Nobby. “The buggers!” Colon snatched up his bow and fumbled for an arrow. “I’ll give ‘em voonerables! Well-spoken lady like her, it’s a disgrace!” “Er,” said Carrot, who had glanced over his shoulder. “Sergeant?” “This is what it comes to!” muttered Colon. “Decent women can’t walk down the street without being eaten! Right, you bastards, you’re . . . you’re geography-“ “ Sergeant!” Carrot repeated urgently. “It’s history, not geography,” said Nobby. “That’s what you’re supposed to say. History. ‘You’re history!’ you say.” “Well, whatever,” snapped Colon. “Let’s see how-“ “Sergeant!” Nobby was looking behind them, too. “Oh, shit,” he said. “Can’t miss,” muttered Colon, taking aim. “Sergeant!” “Shut up, you two, I can’t concentrate when you keep shout-“ “Sergeant, it’s coming!”   . . .   The dragon accelerated. The drunken rooftops of Ankh-Morpork blurred as it passed over, wings sneering at the air. Its neck stretched out straight ahead, the pilot flames of its nostrils streamed behind it, the sound of its flight panned across the sky.   . . .   Colon’s hands shook. The dragon seemed to be aiming at his throat, and it was moving too fast, far too fast. . . “This is it!” said Carrot. He glanced towards the Hub, in case any gods had forgotten what they were there for, and added, speaking slowly and distinctly, “It’s a million-to-one-chance, but it might just work!” “Fire the bloody thing!” screamed Nobby. “Picking my spot, lad, picking my spot,” quavered Colon. “Don’t you worry, lads, I told you this is my lucky arrow. First-class arrow, this arrow, had it since I was a lad, you’d be amazed at the things I shot at with this, don’t you worry.” He paused, as the nightmare bore down on him on wings of terror. “Er, Carrot?” he said meekly. “Yes, Sarge?” “Did your old grandad ever say what a voonerable spot looks like?” And then the dragon wasn’t approaching any more, it was there, passing a few feet overhead, a streaming mosaic of scales and noise, filling the entire sky. Colon fired. They watched the arrow rise straight and true.   . . .   Vimes half-ran, half-staggered over the damp cobbles, out of breath and out of time. It can’t be like this, he thought wildly. The hero always cuts it fine, but he always get there just in the nick of time. Only the nick of time was probably five minutes ago. And I’m not a hero. I’m out of condition, and I need a drink, and I get a handful of dollars a month without plumes allowance. That’s not hero’s pay. Heroes get kingdoms and princesses, and they take regular exercise, and when they smile the light glints off their teeth, ting. The bastards. Sweat stung his eyes. The rush of adrenaline that had carried him out of the palace had spent itself, and was now exacting its inevitable toll. He stumbled to a halt, and grabbed a wall to keep him upright while he gasped for air. And thus he saw the figures on the rooftop. Oh, no! he thought. They’re not heroes either! What do they think they’re playing at?   . . .   It was a million-to-one chance. And who was to say that, somewhere in the millions of other possible universes, it might not have worked? That was the sort of thing the gods really liked. But Chance, who sometimes can overrule even the gods, has 999,999 casting votes. In this universe, for example, the arrow bounced off a scale and clattered away into oblivion. Colon stared as the dragon’s pointed tail passed overhead. “It . . . missed . . .”he mouthed. “But it couldn’t of missed!” He stared red-eyed at the other two. “It was a sodding last desperate million-to-one chance!” The dragon twisted its wings, swung its huge bulk around on a pivot of air, and bore down on the roof. Carrot grabbed Nobby around the waist and laid a hand on Colon’s shoulder. The sergeant was weeping with rage and frustration. “Million-to-bloody-one last desperate bloody chance!” “Sarge-“ The dragon flamed. It was a beautifully controlled line of plasma. It went through the roof like butter. It cut through stairways. It crackled into ancient timbers and made them twist like paper. It sliced into pipes. It punched through floor after floor like the fist of an angry god and, eventually, reached the big copper vat containing a thousand gallons of freshly-made mature whisky-type spirit. It burned into that, too. Fortunately, the chances of anyone surviving the ensuing explosion were exactly a million-to-one.   . . .   The fireball rose like a-well, a rose. A huge orange rose, streaked with yellow. It took the roof with it and wrapped it around the astonished dragon, lifting it high into the air in a boiling cloud of broken timber and bits of piping. The crowd watched in bemusement as the superhot blast flung it into the sky and barely noticed Vimes as he pushed his way, wheezing and crying, through the press of bodies. He shouldered past a row of palace guards and shambled as fast as he could across the flagstones. No-one was paying him much attention at the moment. He stopped. It wasn’t a rock, because Ankh-Morpork was on loam. It was just some huge remnant of mortared masonry, probably thousands of years old, from somewhere in the city foundations. Ankh-Morpork was so old now that what it was built on, by and large, was Ankh-Morpork. It had been dragged into the centre of the plaza, and Lady Sybil Ramkin had been chained to it. She appeared to be wearing a nightie and huge rubber boots. By the look of her she had been in a fight, and Vimes felt a momentary pang of sympathy for whoever else had been involved. She gave him a look of pure fury. “You!” “You!” He waved the cleaver vaguely. “But why you-?” he began. “Captain Vimes,” she said sharply, “you will oblige me by not waving that thing about and you will start putting it to its proper use!” Vimes wasn’t listening. “Thirty dollars a month!” he muttered. “That’s what they died for! Thirty dollars! And I docked some from Nobby. I had to, didn’t I? I mean, that man could make a melon go rusty!” “Captain Vimes!” He focused on the cleaver. “Oh,” he said. “Yes. Right!” It was a good steel cleaver, and the chains were elderly and rather rusty iron. He hacked away, raising sparks from the masonry. The crowd watched in silence, but several palace guards hurried towards him. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” said one of them, who didn’t have much imagination. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Vimes growled, looking up. They stared at him. “What?” Vimes took another hack at the chains. Several loops tinkled to the ground. “Right, you’ve asked for-“ one of the guards began. Vimes’s elbow caught him under his rib cage; before he collapsed, Vimes’s foot kicked savagely at the other one’s kneecaps, bringing his chin down ready for another stab with the other elbow. “Right,” said Vimes absently. He rubbed the elbow. It was sheer agony. He moved the cleaver to his other hand and hammered at the chains again, aware at the back of his mind that more guards were hurrying up, but with that special kind of run that guards had. He knew it well. It was the run that said, there’s a dozen of us, let someone else get there first. It said, he looks ready to kill, no-one’s paying me to get killed, maybe if I run slowly enough he’ll get away . . . No point in spoiling a good day by catching someone. Lady Ramkin shook herself free. A ragged cheer went up and started to grow in volume. Even in their current state of mind, the people of Ankh-Morpork always appreciated a performance. She grabbed a handful of chain and wrapped it around one pudgy fist. “Some of those guards don’t know how to treat-“ she began. “No time, no time,” said Vimes, grabbing her arm. It was like trying to drag a mountain. The cheering stopped, abruptly. There was a sound behind Vimes. It was not, particularly, a loud noise. It just had a peculiarly nasty carrying quality. It was the click of four sets of talons hitting the flagstones at the same time. Vimes looked around and up. Soot clung to the dragon’s hide. A few pieces of charred wood had lodged here and there, and were still smouldering. The magnificent bronze scales were streaked with black. It lowered its head until Vimes was a few feet away from its eyes, and tried to focus on him. Probably not worth running, Vimes told himself. It’s not as if I’ve got the energy anyway. He felt Lady Ramkin’s hand engulf his. “Jolly well done,” she said. “It nearly worked.”   . . .   Charred and blazing wreckage rained down around the distillery. The pond was a swamp of debris, covered with a coating of ash. Out of it, dripping slime, rose Sergeant Colon. He clawed his way to the bank and pulled himself up, like some sea-dwelling lifeform that was anxious to get the whole evolution thing over with in one go. Nobby was already there, spread out like a frog, leaking water. “Is that you, Nobby?” said Sergeant Colon anxiously. “It’s me, Sergeant.” “I glad about that, Nobby,” said Colon fervently. “I wish it wasn’t me, Sergeant.” Colon tipped the water out of his helmet, and then paused. “What about young Carrot?” he said. Nobby pushed himself upon his elbows, groggily. “Dunno,” he said. “One minute we were on the roof, next minute we were jumping.” They both looked at the ashen waters of the pond. “I suppose,” said Colon slowly, “he can swim?” “Dunno. He never said. Not much to swim in, up in the mountains. When you come to think about it,” said Nobby. “But perhaps there were limpid blue pools and deep mountain streams,” said the sergeant hopefully. “And icy tarns in hidden valleys and that. Not to mention subterranean lakes. He’d be bound to have learned. In and out of the water all day, I expect.” They stared at the greasy grey surface. “It was probably that Protective,” said Nobby. “P’raps it filled with water and dragged him down.” Colon nodded gloomily. “I’ll hold your helmet,” said Nobby, after a while. “But I’m your superior officer!” “Yes,” said Nobby reasonably, “but if you get stuck down there, you’re going to want your best man up here, ready to rescue you, aren’t you?” “That’s . . . reasonable,” said Colon eventually. “That’s a good point.” “Right, then.” “Drawback is, though . . .” “What?” “. . .1 can’t swim,” Colon said. “How did you get out of that, then?” Colon shrugged. “I’m a natural floater.” Their eyes, once again, turned to the dankness of the pond. Then Colon stared at Nobby. Then Nobby, very slowly, unbuckled his helmet. “There isn’t someone still in there, is there?” said Carrot, behind them. They looked around. He hoicked some mud out of an ear. Behind him the remains of the brewery smouldered. “I thought I’d better nip out quickly, see what was going on,” he said brightly, pointing to a gate leading out of the yard. It was hanging by one hinge. “Oh,” said Nobby weakly. “Jolly good.” “There’s an alley out there,” said Carrot. “No dragons in it, are there?” said Colon suspiciously. “No dragons, no humans. There’s no-one around,” said Carrot impatiently. He drew his sword. “Come on!” he said. “Where to?” said Nobby. He’d pulled a damp butt from behind his ear and was looking at it with an expression of deepest sorrow. It was obviously too far gone. He tried to light it anyway. “We want to fight the dragon, don’t we?” said Carrot. Colon shifted uncomfortably. “Yes, but aren’t we allowed to go home for a change of clothes first?” “And a nice warm drink?” said Nobby. “And a meal,” said Colon. “A nice plate of-“ “You should be ashamed of yourselves,” said Carrot. “There’s a lady in distress and a dragon to fight and all you can think of is food and drink!” “Oh, I’m not just thinking about food and drink,” said Colon. “We could be all that stands between the city and total destruction!” “Yes, but-“ Nobby began. Carrot drew his sword and waved it over his head. “Captain Vimes would have gone!” he said. “All for one!” He glared at them, and rushed out of the yard. Colon gave Nobby a sheepish look. “Young people today,” he said. “All for one what?” said Nobby. The sergeant sighed. “Come on, then.” “Oh, all right.” They staggered out into the alley. It was empty. “Where’d he go?” said Nobby. Carrot stepped out of the shadows, grinning all over his face. “Knew I could rely on you,” he said. “Follow me!” “Something odd about that boy,” said Colon, as they limped after him. “He always manages to persuade us to follow him, have you noticed?” “All for one what?” said Nobby. “Something about the voice, I reckon.” “Yes, but all for one what?”   . . .   The Patrician sighed and, carefully marking his place, laid aside his book. To judge from the noise there seemed to be an awful lot of excitement going on out there. It was highly unlikely any palace guards would be around, which was just as well. The guards were highly-trained men and it would be a shame to waste them. He would need them later on. He padded over to the wall and pushed a small block that looked exactly like all the other small blocks. No other small block, however, would have caused a section of flagstone to grind ponderously aside. There was a carefully chosen assortment of stuff in there-iron rations, spare clothes, several small chests of precious metals and jewels, tools. And there was a key. Never build a dungeon you couldn’t get out of. The Patrician took the key and strolled over to the door. As the wards of the lock slid back in their well-oiled grooves he wondered, again, whether he should have told Vimes about the key. But the man seemed to have got so much satisfaction out of breaking out. It would probably have been positively bad for him to have told him about the key. Anyway, it would have spoiled his view of the world. He needed Vimes and his view of the world. Lord Vetinari swung the door open and, silently, strode out into the ruins of his palace. They trembled as, for the second time in a couple of minutes, the city rocked.   . . .   The dragon kennels exploded. The windows blew out. The door left the wall ahead of a great billow of black smoke and sailed into the air, tumbling slowly, to plough into the rhododendrons. Something very energetic and hot was happening in that building. More smoke poured out, thick and oily and solid. One of the walls folded in on itself, and then another one toppled sluggishly on to the lawn. Swamp dragons shot determinedly out of the wreckage like champagne corks, wings whirring frantically. Still the smoke unrolled. But there was something in there, some point of fierce white light that was gently rising. It disappeared from view as it passed a stricken window, and then, with a piece of roof tile still spinning on the top of his head, Errol climbed above his own smoke and ascended into the skies of Ankh-Morpork. The sunlight glinted off his silver scales as he hovered about a hundred feet up, turning slowly, balancing nicely on his own flame . . . Vimes, awaiting death on the plaza, realised that his mouth was hanging open. He shut it again. There was absolutely no sound in the city now but the noise of Errol’s ascent. They can rearrange their own plumbing, Vimes told himself bemusedly. To suit circumstances. He’s made it work in reverse. But his thingys, his genes . . . surely he must have been halfway to it anyway. No wonder the little bugger has got such stubby wings. His body must have known he wasn’t going to need them, except to steer. Good grief. I’m watching the first ever dragon to flame backwards. He risked a glance immediately above him. The great dragon was frozen, its enormous bloodshot eyes concentrating on the tiny creature. With a challenging roar of flame and a pummelling of air the King of Ankh-Morpork rose, all thought of mere humans forgotten. Vimes turned sharply to Lady Ramkin. “How do they fight?” he said urgently. “How do dragons fight?” “I-that is, well, they just flap at each other and blow flame,” she said. “Swamp dragons, that is. I mean, who’s ever seen a noble dragon fight?” She patted her nightie. “I must take some notes, I’ve got my memo book somewhere . . .” “In your nightshirt?” “It’s amazing how ideas come to one in bed, I’ve always said.” Flames roared into the space where Errol had been, but he wasn’t there. The king tried to spin in mid-air. The little dragon circled in an easy series of smoke rings, weaving a cat’s cradle in the sky with the huge adversary gyrating helplessly in the middle. More flames, hotter and longer, stabbed at him and missed. The crowd watched in breathless silence. “ ‘allo, Captain,” said an ingratiating voice. Vimes looked down. A small and stagnant pond disguised as Nobby grinned sheepishly up at him. “I thought you were dead!” he said. “We’re not,” said Nobby. “Oh. Good.” There didn’t seem much else to say. “What do you reckon on the fight, then?” Vimes looked back up. Smoke trails spiralled across the city. “I’m afraid it’s not going to work,” said Lady Ramkin. “Oh. Hallo, Nobby.” “Afternoon, ma’am,” said Nobby, touching what he thought was his forelock. “What d’you mean, it’s not going to work?” said Vimes. “Look at him go! It hasn’t hit him yet!” “Yes, but his flame has touched it several times. It doesn’t seem to have any effect. It’s not hot enough, I think. Oh, he’s dodging well. But he’s got to be lucky every time. It has only got to be lucky once.” The meaning of this sank in. “You mean,” said Vimes, “all this is just-just show? He’s just doing it to impress?” “ ‘S’not his fault,” said Colon, materialising behind them. “It’s like dogs, innit? Doesn’t really dawn on the poor little bugger that he’s up against a big one. He’s just ready for a scrap.” Both dragons appeared to realise that the fight was the well-known Klatchian standoff. With another smoke ring and a billow of white flame they parted and retreated a few hundred yards. The king hovered, flapping its wings quickly. Height. That was the thing. When dragon fought dragon, height was always the thing . . . Errol balanced on his flame. He seemed to be thinking. Then he nonchalantly kicked his back legs out as though hovering on your own stomach gases was something dragons had mastered over millions of years, somersaulted, and fled. For a moment he was visible as a silver streak, and then he was out over the city walls and gone. A groan followed him. It came from ten thousand throats. Vimes threw up his hands. “Don’t you worry, guv,” said Nobby quickly. “He’s-he’s probably gone to, to have a drink. Or something. Maybe it’s the end of round one. Or something.” “I mean, he ate our kettle and everything,” said Colon uncertainly. “He wouldn’t just run away after eating a kettle. Stands to reason. Anyone who could eat a kettle wouldn’t run away from anything. “ “And my armour polish,” said Carrot. “It was nearly a whole dollar for the tin.” “There you are then,” said Colon. “It’s like I said.” “Look,” said Vimes, as patiently as he could manage. “He’s a nice dragon, I liked him as much as you, a very nice little chap, but he’s just done the sensible thing, for gods’ sake, he’s not going to get burned to bits just to save us. Life just doesn’t work like that. You might as well face it.” Overhead the great dragon strutted through the air and flamed a nearby tower. It had won. “I’ve never seen that before,” said Lady Ramkin. “Dragons normally fight to the death.” “At last they’ve bred one who’s sensible,” said Vimes morosely. “Let’s be honest: the chances of a dragon the size of Errol beating something that big are a million-to-one” There was one of those silences you get after one clear bright note has been struck and the world pauses. The rank looked at one another. “Million-to-one?” asked Carrot nonchalantly. “Definitely,” said Vimes. “Million-to-one.” The rank looked at one another again. “Million-to-one,” said Colon. “Million-to-one,” agreed Nobby. “That’s right,” said Carrot. “Million-to-one.” There was another high-toned silence. The members of the rank were wondering who was going to be the first to say it. Sergeant Colon took a deep breath. “But it might just work,” he said. “What are you talking about?” snapped Vimes. “There’s no-“ Nobby nudged him urgently in the ribs and pointed out across the plains. There was a column of black smoke out there. Vimes squinted. Running ahead of the smoke, speeding over the cabbage fields and closing fast, was a silvery bullet. The great dragon had seen it too. It flamed defiance and climbed for extra height, mashing the air with its enormous wings. Now Errol’s flame was visible, so hot as to be almost blue. The landscape rolled away underneath him at an impossible speed, and he was accelerating. Ahead of him the king extended its claws. It was almost grinning. Errol’s going to hit it, Vimes thought. Gods help us all, it’ll be a fireball. Something odd was happening out in the fields. A little way behind Errol the ground appeared to be ploughing itself up, throwing cabbage stalks into the air. A hedgerow erupted in a shower of sawdust . . . Errol passed silently over the city walls, nose up, wings folded down to tiny flaps, his body honed to a mere cone with a flame at one end. His opponent blew out a tongue of fire; Vimes watched Errol, with a barely noticeable flip of a wing stub, roll easily out of its path. And then he was gone, speeding out towards the sea in the same eerie silence. “He miss-“ Nobby began. The air ruptured. An endless thunderclap of noise dragged across the city, smashing tiles, toppling chimneys. In mid-air, the king was picked up, flattened out and spun like a top in the sonic wash. Vimes, his hands over his own ears, saw the creature flame desperately as it turned and became the centre of a spiral of crazy fire. Magic crackled along its wings. It screamed like a distressed foghorn. Then, shaking its head dazedly, it began to glide in a wide circle. Vimes groaned. It had survived something that tore masonry apart. What did you have to do to beat it? You can’t fight it, he thought. You can’t burn it, you can’t smash it. There’s nothing you can do to it. The dragon landed. It wasn’t a perfect landing. A perfect landing wouldn’t have demolished a row of cottages. It was slow, and it seemed to go on for a long time and rip up a considerable stretch of city. Wings flapping aimlessly, neck waving and spraying random flame, it ploughed on through a debris of beams and thatch. Several fires started up along the trail of destruction. Finally it came to rest at the end of the furrow, almost invisible under a heap of former architecture. The silence that it left was broken only by the shouts of someone trying to organise yet another bucket chain from the river to douse the fires. Then people started to move. From the air Ankh-Morpork must have looked like a disturbed anthill, with streams of dark figures flowing towards the wreck of the dragon. Most of them had some kind of weapon. Many of them had spears. Some of them had swords. All of them had one aim in mind. “You know what?” said Vimes aloud. “This is going to be the world’s first democratically killed dragon. One man, one stab.” “Then you’ve got to stop them. You can’t let them kill it!” said Lady Ramkin. Vimes blinked at her. “Pardon?” he said. “It’s wounded!” “Lady, that was the intention, wasn’t it? Anyway, it’s only stunned,” said Vimes. “I mean you can’t let them kill it like this,” said Lady Ramkin insistently. “Poor thing!” “What do you want to do, then?” demanded Vimes, his temper unravelling. “Give it a strengthening dose of tar oil and a nice comfy basket in front of the stove?” “It’s butchery!” “Suits me fine!” “But it’s a dragon! It’s just doing what a dragon does! It never would have come here if people had left it alone!” Vimes thought: it was about to eat her, and she can still think like this. He hesitated. Perhaps that did give you the right to an opinion . . . Sergeant Colon sidled up as they glared, white-faced, at one another, and hopped desperately from one squelching foot to the other. “You better come at once, Captain,” he said. “It’s going to be bloody murder!” Vimes waved a hand at him. “As far as I’m concerned,” he mumbled, avoiding Sybil Ramkin’s glare, “it’s got it coming to it.” “It’s not that,” said Colon. “It’s Carrot. He’s arrested the dragon.” Vimes paused. “What do you mean, arrested?” he said. “You don’t mean what I think you mean, do you?” “Could be sir,” said Colon uncertainly. “Could be. He was up on the rubble like a shot, sir, grabbed it by a wing and said ‘You’re nicked, chummy’, sir. Couldn’t believe it, sir. Sir, the thing is . . .” “Well?” The sergeant hopped from one foot to the other. “You know you said prisoners weren’t to be molested, sir . . .”   . . .   It was quite a large and heavy roof timber and it scythed quite slowly through the air, but when it hit people they rolled backwards and stayed hit. “Now look,” said Carrot, hauling it in and pushing back his helmet, “I don’t want to have to tell anyone again, right?” Vimes shouldered his way through the dense crowd, staring at the bulky figure atop the mound of rubble and dragon. Carrot turned slowly, the roof beam held like a staff. His gaze was like a lighthouse beam. Where it fell, the crowd lowered their weapons and looked merely sullen and uncomfortable. “I must warn you,” Carrot went on, “that interfering with an officer in the execution of his duty is a serious offence. And I shall come down like a ton of bricks on the very next person who throws a stone.” A stone bounced off the back of his helmet. There was a barrage of jeers. “Let us at it!” “That’s right!” “We don’t want guards ordering us about!” “Quis custodiet custard?” “Yeah? Right!” Vimes pulled the sergeant towards him. “Go and organise some rope. Lots of rope. As thick as possible. I suppose we can-oh, tie its wings together, maybe, and bind up its mouth so it can’t flame.” Colon peered at him. “Are you serious, sir? We’re really going to arrest it?” “Doit!” It’s been arrested, he thought, as he pushed his way forward. Personally I would have preferred it to drop in the sea, but it’s been arrested and now we’ve got to deal with it or let it go free. He felt his own feelings about the bloody thing evaporate in the face of the mob. What could you do with it? Give it a fair trial, he thought, and then execute it. Not kill it. That’s what heroes do out in the wilderness. You can’t think like that in cities. Or rather, you can, but if you’re going to then you might as well burn the whole place down right now and start again. You ought to do it . . . well, by the book. That’s it. We tried everything else. Now we might as well try and do it by the book. Anyway, he added mentally, that’s a city guard up there. We’ve got to stick together. Nobody else will have anything to do with us. A burly figure in front of him drew back an arm with a halfbrick in it. “Throw that brick and you’re a dead man,” said Vimes, and then ducked and pushed his way through the press of people while the would-be thrower looked around in amazement. Carrot half-raised his club in a threatening gesture as Vimes climbed up the rubble pile. “Oh, hallo, Captain Vimes,” he said, lowering it, “I have to report I have arrested this-“ “Yes, I can see,” said Vimes. “Did you have any suggestions about what we do next?” “Oh, yes, sir. I have to read it its rights, sir,” said Carrot. “I mean apart from that.” “Not really, sir.” Vimes looked at those parts of the dragon still visible under the rubble. How could you kill one of these? You’d have to spend a day at it. A lump of rock ricocheted off his breastplate. “Who did that?” The voice lashed out like a whip. The crowd went quiet. Sybil Ramkin scrambled up on the wreckage, eyes afire, and glared furiously at the mob. “I said,” she said, “who did that? If the person who did it does not own up I shall be extremely angry! Shame on you all!” She had their full attention. Several people holding stones and things let them drop quietly to the ground. The breeze flapped the remnants of her nightshirt as her Ladyship took up a new haranguing position. “Here is the gallant Captain Vimes-“ “Oh gods,” said Vimes in a small voice, and pulled his helmet down over his eyes. “-and his dauntless men, who have taken the trouble to come here today, to save your-“ Vimes gripped Carrot’s arm and manoeuvred him down the far side of the heap. “You all right, Captain?” said the lance-constable. “You’ve gone all red.” “Don’t you start,” snapped Vimes. “It’s bad enough getting all those leers from Nobby and the sergeant.” To his astonishment Carrot patted him companion-ably on the shoulder. “I know how it is,” he said sympathetically. “I had this girl back home, her name was Minty, and her father-“ “Look, for the last time, there is absolutely nothing between-“ Vimes began. There was a rattle beside them. A small avalanche of plaster and thatch rolled down. The rubble heaved, and opened one eye. One big black pupil floating in a bloodshot glow tried to focus on them. “We must be mad,” said Vimes. “Oh, no, sir,” said Carrot. “There’s plenty of precedents. In 1135 a hen was arrested for crowing on Soul Cake Thursday. And during the regime of Psy-choneurotic Lord Snapcase a colony of bats was executed for persistent curfew violations. That was in 1401. August, I think. Great days for the law, they were,” said Carrot dreamily. “In 1321, you know, a small cloud was prosecuted for covering the sun during the climax of Frenzied Earl Hargath’s investiture ceremony.” “I hope Colon gets a move on with-“ Vimes stopped. He had to know. “How?” he said. “What can you do to a cloud?” “The Earl sentenced it to be stoned to death,” said Carrot. “Apparently thirty-one people were killed.” He pulled out his notebook and glared at the dragon. “Can it hear us, do you think?” he said. “I suppose so.” “Well, then.” Carrot cleared his throat and turned back to the stunned reptile. “It is my duty to warn you that you are to be reported for consideration of prosecution on some or all of the following counts, to whit: One, (One) i, that on or about 18th Grune last, in a place known as Sweetheart Lane, the Shades, you did unlawfully vent flame in a manner likely to cause grievous bodily harm, in contravention of Clause Seven of the Industrial Processes Act, 1508; AND THAT, One, (One) ii, that on or about 18th Grune last, in a place known as Sweetheart Lane, the Shades, you caused or did cause to cause the death of six persons unknown-“ Vimes wondered how long the rubble would hold the creature down. Several weeks would be necessary, if the length of the charge sheet was anything to go by. The crowd went silent. Even Sybil Ramkin was standing in astonishment. “What’s the matter?” said Vimes to the upturned faces. “Haven’t you ever seen a dragon being arrested before? “-Sixteen (Three) ii, on the night of Grune 24th last, you did flame or cause to flame those premises known as the Old Watch House, Ankh-Morpork, valued at two hundred dollars; AND THAT, Sixteen (Three) iii, on the night of Grune 24th last, upon being apprehended by an officer of the Watch in the execution of his duty-“ “I think we should hurry up,” whispered Vimes. “It’s getting rather restive. Is all this necessary?” “Well, I believe one can summarise,” said Carrot. “In exceptional circumstances, according to Bregg’s Rules for-“ “It may come as a surprise, but these are exceptional circumstances, Carrot,” said Vimes. “And they’re going to be really astonishingly exceptional if Colon doesn’t hurry up with that rope.” More rubble moved as the dragon strained to get up. There was a thump as a heavy beam was shouldered aside. The crowd began to run for it. It was at this point that Enrol came back over the rooftops in a series of minor explosions, leaving a trail of smoke rings. Dipping low, he buzzed the crowd and sent the front rank stumbling backwards. He was also wailing like a foghorn. Vimes grabbed Carrot and stumbled down the heap as the king started to scrabble desperately to get free. “He’s come back for the kill!” he shouted. “It probably took him all this time just to slow down!” Now Errol was hovering over the fallen dragon, and hooting shrilly enough to bust bottles. The great dragon stuck its head up in a cascade of plaster dust. It opened its mouth but, instead of the lance of white fire that Vimes tensed himself to expect, it merely made a noise like a kitten. Admittedly a kitten shouting into a tin bath at the bottom of a cave, but still a kitten. Broken spars fell aside when the huge creature got unsteadily to its feet. The great wings opened, showering the surrounding streets with dust and bits of thatch. Some of it clanged off the helmet of Sergeant Colon, hurrying back with what looked like a small washing line coiled over his arm. “You’re letting it get up!” Vimes shouted, pushing the sergeant to safety. “You’re not supposed to let it get up, Errol! Don’t let it get up!” Lady Ramkin frowned. “That’s not right,” she said. “They never usually fight like that. The winner usually kills the loser.” “Right on!” shouted Nobby. “And then half the time he explodes with the excitement in any case.” “Look, it’s me!” Vimes yelled, as Errol hovered unconcernedly over the scene. “I bought you the fluffy ball! The one with the bell in it! You can’t do this to us!” “No, wait a minute,” said Lady Ramkin, laying a hand on his arm. “I’m not sure we haven’t got hold of the wrong end of the stick here-“ The great dragon leapt into the air and brought its wings down with a whump that flattened a few more buildings. The huge head swung around, the bleary eyes caught sight of Vimes. There seemed to be some thought going on inside them. Errol arced across the sky and hovered protectively in front of the captain, facing the thing down. For a moment it looked as though he might be turned into a small flying charcoal biscuit, and then the dragon lowered its gaze in a slightly embarrassed way and started to rise. It climbed in a wide spiral, gathering speed as it did so. Errol went with it, orbiting the huge body like a tug around a liner. “It’s-it’s as though he’s fussing over it,” said Vimes. “Add up the bastard!” shouted Nobby enthusiastically. “Total, Nobby,” said Colon. “You mean ‘total’.” Vimes felt Lady Ramkin’s gaze on the back of his neck. He looked at her expression. Realisation dawned. “Oh,” he said. Lady Ramkin nodded. “Really?” said Vimes. “Yes,” she said. “I really ought to have thought of it before. It was such a hot flame, of course. And they’re always so much more territorial than the males.” “Why don’t you fight the bastard!” shouted Nobby, at the dwindling dragons. “Bitch, Nobby,” said Vimes quietly. “Not bastard. Bitch.” “Why don’t you fi-what?” “It’s a member of the female gender,” explained Lady Ramkin. “What?” “We meant that if you tried your favourite kick, Nobby, it wouldn’t work,” said Vimes. “It’s a girl,” translated Lady Ramkin. “But it’s sodding enormous!” said Nobby. Vimes coughed urgently. Nobby’s rodent eyes slid sideways to Sybil Ramkin, who blushed like a sunset. “A fine figure of a dragon, I mean,” he said quickly. “Er. Wide, egg-bearing hips,” said Sergeant Colon anxiously. “Statueskew,” Nobby added fervently. “Shut up,” said Vimes. He brushed the dust off the remains of his uniform, adjusted the hang of his breastplate, and set his helmet on squarely. He patted it firmly. This wasn’t where it ended, he knew that. This was where it all got started. “You men come with me. Come on, hurry! While everyone’s still watching them,” he added. “But what about the king?” said Carrot. “Or queen? Or whatever it is now?” Vimes stared at the rapidly shrinking shapes. “I really don’t know,” he said. “That’s up to Errol, I suppose. We’ve got other things to do.” . Colon saluted, still fighting for breath. “Where we going, sir?” he managed. “To the palace. Any of you still got a sword?” “You can use mine, Captain,” said Carrot. He handed it over. “Right,” said Vimes quietly. He glared at them. “Let’s go.”   . . .   The rank trailed behind Vimes through the stricken streets. He started to walk faster. The rank started to trot to keep up. Vimes began to trot to keep ahead. The rank broke into a canter. Then, as if on an unspoken word of command, they broke into a run. Then into a gallop. People scurried away as they rattled past. Carrot’s enormous sandals hammered on the cobbles. Sparks flew up from the scads of Nobby’s boots. Colon ran quietly for such a fat man, as fat men often do, face locked in a scowl of concentration. They pounded along the Street of Cunning Artificers, turned into Hogsback Alley, emerged into the Street of Small Gods and thundered towards the palace. Vimes kept barely in the lead, mind currently empty of everything except the need to run and run. At least, nearly everything. But his head buzzed and resonated manically with those of all city guards everywhere, all the pavement-pounding meatheads in the multiverse who had ever, just occasionally, tried to do what was Right. Far ahead of them a handful of palace guards drew their swords, took a second look, thought better of it, darted back inside the wall and started to close the gates. They clanged together as Vimes arrived. He hesitated, panting for breath, and looked at the massive things. The ones that the dragon had burned had been replaced by gates even more forbidding. From behind them came the sound of bolts sliding back. This was no time for half measures. He was a captain, godsdammit. An officer. Things like this didn’t present a problem for an officer. Officers had a tried and tested way of solving problems like this. It was called a sergeant. “Sergeant Colon!” he snapped, his mind still buzzing with universal policemanhood, “shoot the lock off!” The sergeant hesitated. “What, sir? With a bow and arrow, sir?” “I mean-“ Vimes hesitated. “I mean, open these gates!” “Sir!” Colon saluted. He glared at the gates for a moment. “Right!” he barked. “Lance-constable Carrot, one stepa forwarda, take! Lance-constable Carrot, inna youra owna timer! Open these gatesa!” “Yes, sir!” Carrot stepped forward, saluted, folded an enormous hand into a fist and rapped gently on the woodwork. “Open up,” he said, “in the name of the Law!” There was some whispering on the other side of the gates, and eventually a small hatch halfway up the door slid open a fraction and a voice said, “Why?” “Because if you don’t it will be Impeding an Officer of the Watch in the Execution of his Duty, which is punishable by a fine of not less than thirty dollars, one month’s imprisonment, or being remanded in custody for social inquiry reports and half an hour with a red-hot poker,” said Carrot. There was some more muffled whispering, the sound of bolts being drawn, and then the gates opened about halfway. There was no-one visible on the other side. Vimes put a finger to his lips. He motioned Carrot towards one gate and dragged Nobby and Colon to the other. “Push,” he whispered. They pushed, hard. There was a sudden eruption of pained cursing from behind the woodwork. “Run!” shouted Colon. “No!” shouted Vimes. He walked around the gate. Four semi-crushed palace guards glowered at him. “No,” he said. “No more running. I want these men arrested.” “You wouldn’t dare,” said one of the men. Vimes peered at him. “Clarence, isn’t it?” he said. “With a C. Well, Clarence with a C, watch my lips. Either you can be charged with Aiding and Abetting or-“ he leaned closer, and glanced meaningfully at Carrot-“with an axe.” “Swivel on that one, doggybag!” added Nobby, jumping from one foot to the other in vicious excitement. Clarence’s little piggy eyes glared at the looming bulk that was Carrot, and then at Vimes’s face. There was absolutely no mercy there. He appeared to reach a reluctant decision. “Jolly good,” said Vimes. “Lock them in the gatehouse, Sergeant.” Colon drew his bow and squared his shoulders. “You heard the Man,” he rasped. “One false move and you’re . . . you’re-“ he took a desperate stab at it-“you’re Home Economics!” “Yeah! Slam ‘em up in the banger!” shouted Nobby. If worms could turn, Nobby was revolving at generating speeds. “Doucheballs!” he sneered, at their retreating backs. “Aiding and Abetting what, Captain?” said Carrot, as the weaponless guards trooped away. “You have to aid and abet something.” “I think in this case it will just be generalised abetting,” said Vimes. “Persistent and reckless abetment.” “Yeah,” said Nobby. “Can’t stand abettors. Slime-breaths!” Colon handed Captain Vimes the guardhouse key. “It’s not very secure in there, Captain,” he said. “They’ll be able to break out eventually.” “I hope so,” said Vimes, “because the very first drain we come to, you’re going to drop the key down it. Everyone here? Right. Follow me.”   . . .   Lupine Wonse scurried along the ruined corridors of the palace, The Summoning of Dragons under one arm, the glittering royal sword grasped uncertainly in one hand. He halted, panting, in a doorway. Not a lot of his mind was currently in a state sane enough to have proper thoughts, but the small part that was still in business kept insisting that it couldn’t have seen what it had seen or heard what it had heard. Someone was following him. And he’d seen Vetinari walking through the palace. He knew the man was securely put away. The lock was completely unpickable. He remembered the Patrician being absolutely insistent that it be an unpickable lock when it was installed. There was movement in the shadows at the end of the passage. Wonse gibbered a bit, fumbled with the doorhandle beside him, darted in, slammed the door and leaned against it, fighting for breath. He opened his eyes. He was in the old private audience room. The Patrician was sitting in his old seat, one leg crossed on the other, watching him with mild interest. “Ah, Wonse,” he said. Wonse jumped, scrabbled at the doorhandle, leapt into the corridor and ran for it until he reached the main staircase, rising now through the ruins of the central palace like a forlorn corkscrew. Stairs-height-high ground-defence. He ran up them three at a time. All he needed was a few minutes of peace. Then he’d show them. The upper floors were more full of shadows. What they were short on was structural strength. Pillars and walls had been torn out by the dragon as it built its cave. Rooms gaped pathetically on the edge of the abyss. Dangling shreds of wall-hanging and carpet flapped in the wind from the smashed windows. The floor sprang and wobbled like a trampoline as Wonse scurried across it. He struggled to the nearest door. “That was commendably fast,” said the Patrician. Wonse slammed the door in his face and ran, squeaking, down a corridor. Sanity took a brief hold. He paused by a statue. There was no sound, no hurrying footsteps, no whirr of hidden doors. He gave the statue a suspicious look and prodded it with the sword. When it failed to move he opened the nearest door and slammed it behind him, found a chair and wedged it under the handle. This was one of the upper state rooms, bare now of most of its furnishings, and lacking its fourth wall. Where it should have been was just the gulf of the cavern. The Patrician stepped out of the shadows. “Now you have got it out of your system-“ he said. Wonse spun around, sword raised. “You don’t really exist,” he said. “You’re a-a ghost, or something.” “I believe this is not the case,” said the Patrician. “You can’t stop me! I’ve got some magic stuff left, I’ve got the book!” Wonse took a brown leather bag out of his pocket. “I’ll bring back another one! You’ll see!” “I urge you not to,” said Lord Vetinari mildly. “Oh, you think you’re so clever, so in-control, so swave, just because I’ve got a sword and you haven’t! Well, I’ve got more than that, I’ll have you know,” said Wonse triumphantly. “Yes! I’ve got the palace guards on my side! They follow me, not you! No-one likes you, you know. No-one ever liked you.” He swung the sword so that its needle point was a foot from the Patrician’s thin chest. “So it’s back to the cells for you,” he said. “And this time I’ll make sure you stay there. Guards! Guards!” There was the clatter of running feet outside. The door rattled, the chair shook. There was a moment’s silence, and then door and chair erupted in splinters. “Take him away!” screamed Wonse. “Fetch more scorpions! Put him in . . . you’re not the-“ “Put the sword down,” said Vimes, while behind him Carrot picked bits of door out of his fist. “Yeah,” said Nobby, peering around the captain. “Up against the wall and spread ‘em, motherbreath!” “Eh? What’s he supposed to spread?” whispered Sergeant Colon anxiously. Nobby shrugged. “Dunno,” he said. “Everything, I reckon. Safest way.” Wonse stared at the rank in disbelief. “Ah, Vimes,” said the Patrician. “You will-“ “Shut up,” said Vimes calmly. “Lance-constable Carrot?” “Sir!” “Read the prisoner his rights.” “Yes, sir.” Carrot produced his notebook, licked his thumb, flicked through the pages. “Lupine Wonse,” he said, “AKA Lupin Squiggle Sec’y PP-“ “Wha?” said Wonse. “-currently domiciled in the domicile known as The Palace, Ankh-Morpork, it is my duty to inform you that you have been arrested and will be charged with-“ Carrot gave Vimes an agonised look-“a number of offences of murder by means of a blunt instrument, to whit, a dragon, and many further offences of generalised abetting, to be more specifically ascertained later. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right not to be summarily thrown into a piranha tank. You have the right to trial by ordeal. You have the-“ “This is madness,” said the Patrician calmly. “I thought I told you to shut up!” snapped Vimes, spinning around and shaking a finger under the Patrician’s nose. “Tell me, Sarge,” whispered Nobby, “do you think we’re going to like it in the scorpion pit?” “-say anything, er, but anything you do say will be written down, er, here, in my notebook, and, er, may be used in evidence-“ Carrot’s voice trailed into silence. “Well, if this pantomime gives you any pleasure, Vimes,” said the Patrician eventually, “take him down to the cells. I’ll deal with him in the morning.” Wonse made no signal. There was no scream or cry. He just rushed at the Patrician, sword raised. Options flickered across Vimes’s mind. In the lead came the suggestion that standing back would be a good plan, let Wonse do it, disarm him afterwards, let the city clean itself up. Yes. A good plan. And it was therefore a total mystery to him why he chose to dart forward, bringing Carrot’s sword up in a half-baked attempt at blocking the stroke . . . Perhaps it was something to do with doing it by the book. There was a clang. Not a particularly loud one. He felt something bright and silver whirr past his ear and strike the wall. Wonse’s mouth fell open. He dropped the remnant of his sword and backed away, clutching The Summoning. “You’ll be sorry,” he hissed. “You’ll all be very sorry!” He started to mumble under his breath. Vimes felt himself trembling. He was pretty certain he knew what had zinged past his head, and the mere thought was making his hands sweat. He’d come to the palace ready to kill and there’d been this minute, just this minute, when for once the world had seemed to be operating properly and he was in charge of it and now, now all he wanted was a drink. And a nice week’s sleep. “Oh, give up!” he said. “Are you going to come quietly?” The mumbling went on. The air began to feel hot and dry. Vimes shrugged. “That’s it, then,” he said, and turned away. “Throw the book at him, Carrot.” “Right, sir.” Vimes remembered too late. Dwarfs have trouble with metaphors. They also have a very good aim. The Laws and Ordinances of Ankh and Morpork caught the secretary on the forehead. He blinked, staggered, and stepped backwards. It was the longest step he ever took. For one thing, it lasted the rest of his life. After several seconds they heard him hit, five storeys below. After several more seconds their faces appeared over the edge of the ravaged floor. “What a way to go,” said Sergeant Colon. “That’s a fact,” said Nobby, reaching up to his ear for a dog-end. “Killed by a wossname. A metaphor.” “Dunno,” said Nobby. “Looks like the ground to me. Got a light, Sarge?” “That was right, wasn’t it, sir?” said Carrot anxiously. “You said to-“ “Yes, yes,” said Vimes. “Don’t worry.” He reached down with a shaking hand, picked up the bag Wonse had been holding, and tipped out a pile of stones. Every one had a hole in it. Why? he thought. A metallic noise behind him made him look around. The Patrician was holding the remains of the royal sword. As the captain watched, the man wrenched the other half of the sword out of the far wall. It was a clean break. “Captain Vimes,” he said. “Sir?” “That sword, if you please?” Vimes handed it over. He couldn’t, right now, think of anything else to do. He was probably due for a scorpion pit of his very own as it was. Lord Vetinari examined the rusty blade carefully. “How long have you had this, Captain?” he said mildly. “Isn’t mine, sir. Belongs to Lance-constable Carrot, sir.” “Lance-?” “Me, sir, your graciousness,” said Carrot, saluting. “Ah.” The Patrician turned the blade over and over slowly, staring at it as if fascinated. Vimes felt the air thicken, as though history was clustering around this point, but for the life of him he couldn’t think why. This was one of those points where the Trousers of Time bifurcated themselves, and if you weren’t careful you’d go down the wrong leg-   . . .   Wonse arose in a world of shades, icy confusion pouring into his mind. But all he could think of at the moment was the tall cowled figure standing over him. “I thought you were all dead,” he mumbled. It was strangely quiet and the colours around him seemed washed-out, muted. Something was very wrong. “Is that you, Brother Doorkeeper?” he ventured. The figure reached out. METAPHORICALLY, it said.   . . .   -and the Patrician handed the sword to Carrot. “Very well done, young man,” he said. “Captain Vimes, I suggest you give your men the rest of the day off.” “Thank you, sir,” said Vimes. “Okay, lads. You heard his lordship.” “But not you, Captain. We must have a little talk.” “Yes, sir?” said Vimes innocently. The rank scurried out, giving Vimes sympathetic and sorrowful glances. The Patrician walked to the edge of the floor and looked down. “Poor Wonse,” he said. “Yes, sir.” Vimes stared at the wall. “I would have preferred him alive, you know.” “Sir?” “Misguided, yes, but a useful man. His head could have been of further use to me.” “Yes, sir.” “The rest, of course, we could have thrown away.” “Yes, sir.” “That was a joke, Vimes.” “Yes, sir.” “The chap never grasped the idea of secret passages, mind you.” “No, sir.” “That young fellow. Carrot, you called him?” “Yes, sir.” “Keen fellow. Likes it in the Watch?” “Yes, sir. Right at home, sir.” “You saved my life.” “Sir?” “Come with me.” He stalked away through the ruined palace, Vimes trailing behind, until he reached the Oblong Office. It was quite tidy. It had escaped most of the devastation with nothing more than a layer of dust. The Patrician sat down, and suddenly it was as if he’d never left. Vimes wondered if he ever had. He picked up a sheaf of papers and brushed the plaster off them. “Sad,” he said. “Lupine was such a tidy-minded man.” “Yes, sir.” The Patrician steepled his hands and looked at Vimes over the top of them. “Let me give you some advice, Captain,” he said. “Yes, sir?” “It may help you make some sense of the world.” “Sir.” “I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are the good people and the bad people,” said the man. “You’re wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides. “ He waved his thin hand towards the city and walked over to the window. “A great rolling sea of evil,” he said, almost pro-prietorially. “Shallower in some places, of course, but deeper, oh, so much deeper in others. But people like you put together little rafts of rules and vaguely good intentions and say, this is the opposite, this will triumph in the end. Amazing!” He slapped Vimes good-naturedly on the back. “Down there,” he said, “are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any iniquity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathesomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don’t say no. I’m sorry if this offends you,” he added, patting the captain’s shoulder, “but you fellows really need us.” “Yes, sir?” said Vimes quietly. “Oh, yes. We’re the only ones who know how to make things work. You see, the only thing the good people are good at is overthrowing the bad people. And you’re good at that, I’ll grant you. But the trouble is that it’s the only thing you’re good at. One day it’s the ringing of the bells and the casting down of the evil tyrant, and the next it’s everyone sitting around complaining that ever since the tyrant was overthrown no-one’s been taking out the trash. Because the bad people know how to plan. It’s part of the specification, you might say. Every evil tyrant has a plan to rule the world. The good people don’t seem to have the knack.” “Maybe. But you’re wrong about the rest!” said Vimes. “It’s just because people are afraid, and alone-“ He paused. It sounded pretty hollow, even to him. He shrugged. “They’re just people,” he said. “They’re just doing what people do. Sir.” Lord Vetinari gave him a friendly smile. “Of course, of course,” he said. “You have to believe that, I appreciate. Otherwise you’d go quite mad. Otherwise you’d think you’re standing on a feather-thin bridge over the vaults of Hell. Otherwise existence would be a dark agony and the only hope would be that there is no life after death. I quite understand.” He looked at his desk, and sighed, “And now,” he said, “there is such a lot to do. I’m afraid poor Wonse was a good servant but an inefficient master. So you may go. Have a good night’s sleep. Oh, and do bring your men in tomorrow. The city must show its gratitude.” “It must what?” said Vimes. The Patrician looked at a scroll. Already his voice was back to the distant tones of one who organises and plans and controls. “Its gratitude,” he said. “After every triumphant victory there must be heroes. It is essential. Then everyone will know that everything has been done properly.” He glanced at Vimes over the top of the scroll. “It’s all part of the natural order of things,” he said. After a while he made a few pencil annotations to the paper in front of him and looked up. “I said,” he said, “that you may go.” Vimes paused at the door. “Do you believe all that, sir?” he said. “About the endless evil and the sheer blackness?” “Indeed, indeed,” said the Patrician, turning over the page. “It is the only logical conclusion.” “But you get out of bed every morning, sir?” “Hmm? Yes? What is your point?” “I’d just like to know why, sir.” “Oh, do go away, Vimes. There’s a good fellow.”   . . .   In the dark and draughty cave hacked from the heart of the palace the Librarian knuckled across the floor. He clambered over the remains of the sad hoard and looked down at the splayed body of Wonse. Then he reached down, very gently, and prised The Summoning of Dragons from the stiffening fingers. He blew the dust off it. He brushed it tenderly, as if it was a frightened child. He turned to climb down the heap, and stopped. He bent down again, and carefully pulled another book from among the glittering rubble. It wasn’t one of his, except in the wide sense that all books came under his domain. He turned a few pages carefully. “Keep it,” said Vimes behind him. “Take it away. Put it somewhere.” The orangutan nodded at the captain, and rattled down the heap. He tapped Vimes gently on the kneecap, opened The Summoning of Dragons, leafed through its ravaged pages until he found the one he’d been looking for, and silently passed the book up. Vimes squinted at the crabbed writing. Yet draggons are notte liken unicornes, I willen. They dwellyth in some Realm defined bye thee Fancie of the Wille and, thus, it myte bee thate whomsoever calleth upon them, and giveth them theyre patheway unto thys worlde, calleth theyre Owne dragon of the Mind. Yette, I trow, the Pure in Harte maye stille call a Draggon of Power as a Forsefor Goode in thee worlde, and this one nighte the Grate Worke will commense. All hathe been prepared. I hath laboured most mytily to be a Worthie Vessle . . . A realm of fancy, Vimes thought. That’s where they went, then. Into our imaginations. And when we call them back we shape them, like squeezing dough into pastry shapes. Only you don’t get gingerbread men, you get what you are. Your own darkness, given shape . . . Vimes read it through again, and then looked at the following pages. There weren’t many. The rest of the book was a charred mass. Vimes handed it back to the ape. “What kind of a man was de Malachite?” he said. The Librarian gave this the consideration due from someone who knew the Dictionary of City Biography by heart. Then he shrugged. “Particularly holy?” said Vimes. The ape shook his head. “Well, noticeably evil, then?-“ The ape shrugged, and shook his head again. “If I were you, “ said Vimes, “I’d put that book somewhere very safe. And the book of the Law with it. They’re too bloody dangerous. “ “Oook.” Vimes stretched. “And now,” he said, “let’s go and have a drink. “ “Oook. “ “But just a small one. “ “Oook.” “And you ‘re paying.” “Eeek. “ Vimes stopped and stared down at the big, mild face. “Tell me,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to know . . . is it better, being an ape?” The Librarian thought about it. “Oook,” he said. “Oh. Really?” said Vimes.   . . .   It was the next day. The room was wall-to-wall with civic dignitaries. The Patrician sat on his severe chair, surrounded by the Council. Everyone present was wearing the shiny waxen grins of those bent on good works. Lady Sybil Ramkin sat off to one side, wearing a few acres of black velvet. The Ramkin family jewels glittered on her fingers, neck and in the black curls of today’s wig. The total effect was striking, like a globe of the heavens. Vimes marched the rank to the centre of the hall and stamped to a halt with his helmet under his arm, as per regulations. He’d been amazed to see that even Nobby had made an effort-the suspicion of shiny metal could be seen here and there on his breastplate. And Colon was wearing an expression of almost constipated importance. Carrot’s armour gleamed. Colon ripped off a textbook salute for the first time in his life. “All present and correct, sah!” he barked. “Very good, Sergeant,” said Vimes coldly. He turned to the Patrician and raised an eyebrow politely. Lord Vetinari gave a little wave of his hand. “Stand easy, or whatever it is you chaps do,” he said. “I’m sure we needn’t wait on ceremony here. What do you say, Captain?” “Just as you like, sir,” said Vimes. “Now, men,” said the Patrician, leaning forward, “we have heard some remarkable accounts of your magnificent efforts in defence of the city . . .” Vimes let his mind wander as the golden platitudes floated past. For a while he derived a certain amount of amusement from watching the faces of the Council. A whole sequence of expressions drifted across them as the Patrician spoke. It was, of course, vitally important that there be a ceremony like this. Then the whole thing could be neat and settled. And forgotten. Just another chapter in the long and exciting history of eckcetra, eckcetra. Ankh-Morpork was good at starting new chapters. His trawling gaze fell on Lady Ramkin. She winked. Vimes’s eyes swivelled front again, his expression suddenly as wooden as a plank. “. . . token of our gratitude,” the Patrician finished, sitting back. Vimes realised that everyone was looking at him. “Pardon?” he said. “I said, we have been trying to think of some suitable recompense, Captain Vimes. Various public-spirited citizens-“ the Patrician’s eyes took in the Council and Lady Ramkin-“and, of course, myself, feel that an appropriate reward is due.” Vimes still looked blank. “Reward?” he said. “It is customary for such heroic endeavour,” said the Patrician, a little testily. Vimes faced forward again. “Really haven’t thought about it, sir,” he said. “Can’t speak for the men, of course.” There was an awkward pause. Out of the corner of his eye Vimes was aware of Nobby nudging the sergeant in the ribs. Eventually Colon stumbled forward and ripped off another salute. “Permission to speak, sir,” he muttered. The Patrician nodded graciously. The sergeant coughed. He removed his helmet and pulled out a scrap of paper. “Er,” he said. “The thing is, saving your honour’s presence, we think, you know, what with saving the city and everything, or sort of, or, what I mean is . . . we just had a go you see, man on the spot and that sort of thing . . . the thing is, we reckon we’re entitled. If you catch my drift.” The assembled company nodded. This was exactly how it should be. “Do go on,” said the Patrician. “So we, like, put our heads together,” said the sergeant. “A bit of a cheek, I know . . .” “Please carry on, Sergeant,” said the Patrician. “You needn’t keep stopping. We are well aware of the magnitude of the matter.” “Right, sir. Well, sir. First, it’s the wages.” “The wages?” said Lord Vetinari. He stared at Vimes, who stared at nothing. The sergeant raised his head. His expression was the determined expression of a man who is going to see it through. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Thirty dollars a month. It’s not right. We think-“ he licked his lips and glanced behind him at the other two, who were making vague encouraging motions-“we think a basic rate of, er, thirty-five dollars? A month?” He stared at the Patrician’s stony expression. “With increments as per rank? We thought five dollars.” He licked his lips again, unnerved by the Patrician’s expression. “We won’t go below four,” he said. “And that’s flat. Sorry, your Highness, but there it is.” The Patrician glanced again at Vimes’s impassive face, then looked back at the rank. “That’s if?”he said. Nobby whispered in Colon’s ear and then darted back. The sweating sergeant gripped his helmet as though it was the only real thing in the world. “There was another thing, your reverence,” he said. “Ah.” The Patrician smiled knowingly. “There’s the kettle. It wasn’t much good anyway, and then Errol et it. It was nearly two dollars.” He swallowed. “We could do with a new kettle, if it’s all the same, your lordship.” The Patrician leaned forward, gripping the arms of his chair. “I want to be clear about this,” he said coldly. “Are we to believe that you are asking for a petty wage increase and a domestic utensil?” Carrot whispered in Colon’s other ear. Colon turned two bulging, watery-rimmed eyes to the dignitaries. The rim of his helmet was passing through his fingers like a mill wheel. “Well,” he began, “sometimes, we thought, you know, when we has our dinner break, or when it’s quite, like, at the end of a watch as it may be, and we want to relax a bit, you know, wind down . . .” His voice trailed away. “Yes?” Colon took a deep breath. “I suppose a dartboard would be out of the question-?” The thunderous silence that followed was broken by an erratic snorting. Vimes’s helmet dropped out of his shaking hand. His breastplate wobbled as the suppressed laughter of the years burst out in great uncontrollable eruptions. He turned his face to the row of councillors and laughed and laughed until the tears came. Laughed at the way they got up, all confusion and outraged dignity. Laughed at the Patrician’s carefully immobile expression. Laughed for the world and the saving of souls. Laughed and laughed, and laughed until the tears came. Nobby craned up to reach Colon’s ear. “I told you,” he hissed. “I said they’d never wear it. I knew a dartboard’d be pushing our luck. You’ve upset ‘em all now.”   . . .   Dear Mother and Father [wrote Carrot] You will never guess, I have been in the Watch only a few weeks and, already I am to be a full Constable. Captain Vimes said, the Patrician himself said I was to be One, and that also he hoped I should have a long and successful career in the Watch as well and, he would follow it with special interest. Also my wages are to go up by ten dollars and we had a special bonus of twenty dollars that Captain Vimes paid for out of his own pocket, Sgt Colon said. Please find money enclosed. I am keeping a little bit by though because I went to see Reet and Mrs Palm said all the girls had been following my career with Great Interest as well and I am to come to dinner on my night off. Sgt Colon has been telling me about how to start courting, which is very interesting and not at all complicated it appears. I arrested a dragon but it got away. I hope Mr Varneshi is well. I am as happy as anyone can be in the whole world. Your son, Carrot.   . . .   Vimes knocked on the door. An effort had been made to spruce up the Ramkin mansion, he noticed. The encroaching shrubbery had been pitilessly hacked back. An elderly workman atop a ladder was nailing the stucco back on the walls while another, with a spade, was rather arbitrarily defining the line where the lawn ended and the old flower beds had begun. Vimes stuck his helmet under his arm, smoothed back his hair, and knocked. He’d considered asking Sergeant Colon to accompany him, but had brushed the idea aside quickly. He couldn’t have tolerated the sniggering. Anyway, what was there to be afraid of? He’d stared into the jaws of death three times; four, if you included telling Lord Vetinari to shut up. To his amazement the door was eventually opened by a butler so elderly that he might have been resurrected by the knocking. “Yerss?” he said. “Captain Vimes, City Watch,” said Vimes. The man looked him up and down. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Her ladyship did say. I believe her ladyship is with her dragons,” he said. “If you like to wait in ‘ere, I will-“ “I know the way,” said Vimes, and set off around the overgrown path. The kennels were a ruin. An assortment of battered wooden boxes were lying around under an oilcloth awning. From their depths a few sad swamp dragons whiffled a greeting at him. A couple of women were moving purposefully among the boxes. Ladies, rather. They were far too untidy to be mere women. No ordinary women would have dreamed of looking so scruffy; you needed the complete self-confidence that comes with knowing who your great-great-great-great-grandfather was before you could wear clothes like that. But they were, Vimes noticed, incredibly good clothes, or had been once; clothes bought by one’s parents, but so expensive and of such good quality that they never wore out and were handed down, like old china and silverware and gout. Dragon breeders, he thought. You can tell. There’s something about them. It’s the way they wear their silk scarves, old tweed coats and granddad’s riding boots. And the smell, of course. A small wiry woman with a face like old saddle leather caught sight of him. “Ah,” she said, “you’ll be the gallant captain.” She tucked an errant strand of white hair back under a headscarf and extended a veiny brown hand. “Brenda Rodley. That’s Rosie Devant-Molei. She runs the Sunshine Sanctuary, you know.” The other woman, who had the build of someone who could pick up carthorses hi one hand and shoe them with the other, gave him a friendly grin. “Samuel Vimes,” said Vimes weakly. “My father was a Sam,” said Brenda vaguely. “You can always trust a Sam, he said.” She shooed a dragon back into its box. “We’re just helping Sybil. Old friends, you know. The collection’s all to blazes, of course. They’re all over the city, the little devils. I dare say they’ll come back when they’re hungry, though. What a bloodline, eh?” “I’m sorry?” “Sybil reckons he was a sport, but I say we should be able to breed back into the line in three or four generations. I’m famed for my stud, you know,” she said. “That’d be something, though. A whole new type of dragon.” Vimes thought of supersonic contrails criss-crossing the sky. “Er,” he said. “Yes.” “Well, we must get on.” “Er, isn’t Lady Ramkin around?” said Vimes. “I got this message that it was essential, she said, for me to come here.” “She’s indoors somewhere,” said Miss Rodley. “Said she had something important to see to. Oh, do be careful with that one, Rose, you silly gel!” “More important than dragons?” said Vimes. “Yes. Can’t think what’s come over her.” Brenda Rodley fished in the pocket of an oversized waistcoat. “Nice to have met you, Captain. Always good to meet new members of the Fancy. Do drop in any time you’re passing, I’d be only too happy to show you around.” She extracted a grubby card and pressed it into his hand. “Must be off now, we’ve heard that some of them are trying to build nests on the University tower. Can’t have that. Must get ‘em down before it gets dark.” Vimes squinted at the card as the women crunched off down the drive, carrying nets and ropes. It said: Brenda, Lady Rodley. The Dower House, Quirm Castle, Quirm. What it meant, he realised, was that striding away down the path like an animated rummage stall was the dowager Duchess of Quirm, who owned more country than you could see from a very high mountain on a very clear day. Nobby would not have approved. There seemed to be a special land of poverty that only the very, very rich could possibly afford . . . That was how you got to be a power in the land, he thought. You never cared a toss about whatever anyone else thought and you were never, ever, uncertain about anything. He padded back to the house. A door was open. It led into a large but dark and musty hall. Up in the gloom the heads of dead animals haunted the walls. The Ramkins seemed to have endangered more species than an ice age. Vimes wandered aimlessly through another mahogany archway. It was a dining room, containing the kind of table where the people at the other end are in a different time zone. One end had been colonised by silver candlesticks. It was laid for two. A battery of cutlery flanked each plate. Antique wineglasses sparkled in the candlelight. A terrible premonition took hold of Vimes at the same moment as a gust of Captivation, the most expensive perfume available anywhere in Ankh-Morpork, blew past him. “Ah, Captain. So nice of you to come.” Vimes turned around slowly, without his feet appearing to move. Lady Ramkin stood there, magnificently. Vimes was vaguely aware of a brilliant blue dress that sparkled in the candlelight, a mass of hair the colour of chestnuts, a slightly anxious face that suggested that a whole battalion of skilled painters and decorators had only just dismantled their scaffolding and gone home, and a faint creaking that said underneath it all mere corsetry was being subjected to the kind of tensions more usually found in the heart of large stars. “I, er,” he said. “If you, er. If you’d said, er. I’d, er. Dress more suitable, er. Extremely, er. Very. Er.” She bore down upon him like a glittering siege engine. In a sort of dream he allowed himself to be ushered to a seat. He must have eaten, because servants appeared out of nowhere with things stuffed with other things, and came back later and took the plates away. The butler reanimated occasionally to fill glass after glass with strange wines. The heat from the candles was enough to cook by. And all the time Lady Ramkin talked in a bright and brittle way-about the size of the house, the responsibilities of a huge estate, the feeling that it was time to take One’s Position in Society More Seriously, while the setting sun filled the room with red and Vimes’s head began to spin. Society, he managed to think, didn’t know what was going to hit it. Dragons weren’t mentioned once, although after a while something under the table put its head on Vimes’s knee and dribbled. Vimes found it impossible to contribute to the conversation. He felt outflanked, beleaguered. He made one sally, hoping maybe to reach high ground from which to flee into exile. “Where do you think they’ve gone?” he said. “Where what?” said Lady Ramkin, temporarily halted. “The dragons. You know. Errol and his wi-female.” “Oh, somewhere isolated and rocky, I should imagine,” said Lady Ramkin. “Favourite country for dragons.” “But it-she’s a magical animal,” said Vimes. “What’ll happen when the magic goes away?” Lady Ramkin gave him a shy smile. “Most people seem to manage,” she said. She reached across the table and touched his hand. “Your men think you need looking after,” she said meekly. “Oh. Do they?” said Vimes. “Sergeant Colon said he thought we’d get along like a maison en Flambt. “ “Oh. Did he?” “And he said something else,” she said. “What was it, now? Oh, yes: ‘It’s a million to one chance,’,” said Lady Ramkin,”I think he said, ‘but it might just work’.” She smiled at him. And then it arose and struck Vimes that, in her own special category, she was quite beautiful; this was the category of all the women, in his entire life, who had ever thought he was worth smiling at. She couldn’t do worse, but then, he couldn’t do better. So maybe it balanced out. She wasn’t getting any younger but then, who was? And she had style and money and common-sense and self-assurance and all the things that he didn’t, and she had opened her heart, and if you let her she could engulf you; the woman was a city. And eventually, under siege, you did what Ankh-Morpork had always done-unbar the gates, let the conquerors in, and make them your own. How did you start? She seemed to be expecting something. He shrugged, and picked up his wine glass and sought for a phrase. One crept into his wildly resonating mind. “Here’s looking at you, kid,” he said.   . . .   The gongs of various midnights banged out the old day. (. . . and further towards the Hub, where the Ram-top Mountains joined the forbidding spires of the central massif, where strange hairy creatures roamed the eternal snows, where blizzards howled around the freezing peaks, the lights of a lone lamasery shone out over the high valleys. In the courtyard a couple of yellow-robed monks stacked the last case of small green bottles on to a sleigh, ready for the first leg of the incredibly difficult journey down to the distant plains. The box was labelled, in careful brush-strokes, “Mstr. C.M.O.T. Dibbler, Ankh-Morpork.” “You know, Lobsang,” said one of them, “one cannot help wondering what it is he does with this stuff.”) Corporal Nobbs and Sergeant Colon lounged in the shadows near the Mended Drum, but straightened up as Carrot came out bearing a tray. Detritus the troll stepped aside respectfully. “Here we are, lads,” said Carrot. “Three pints. On the house.” “Bloody hell, I never thought you’d do it,” said Colon, grasping a handle. “What did you say to him?” “I just explained how it was the duty of all good citizens to help the guard at all times,” said Carrot innocently, “and I thanked him for his co-operation.” “Yeah, and the rest,” said Nobby. “No, that was all I said.” “Then you must have a really convincing tone of voice.” “Ah. Well, make the most of it, lads, while it lasts,” said Colon. They drank thoughtfully. It was a moment of supreme peace, a few minutes snatched from the realities of real life. It was a brief bite of stolen fruit and enjoyed as such. No-one in the whole city seemed to be fighting or stabbing or making affray and, just for now, it was possible to believe that this wonderful state of affairs might continue. And even if it didn’t, then there were memories to get them through. Of running, and people getting out of the way. Of the looks on the faces of the horrible palace guard. Of, when all the thieves and heroes and gods had failed, of being there. Of nearly doing things nearly right. Nobby shoved the pot on a convenient window sill, stamped some life back into his feet and blew on his fingers. A brief fumble in the dark recesses of his ear produced a fragment of cigarette. “What a time, eh?” said Colon contentedly, as the flare of a match illuminated the three of them. The others nodded. Yesterday seemed like a lifetime ago, even now. But you could never forget something like that, no matter who else did, no matter what happened from now on. “If I never see any bloody king it’ll be too soon,” said Nobby. “I don’t reckon he was the right king, anyway,” said Carrot. “Talking of kings: anyone want a crisp?” “There’s no right longs,” said Colon, but without much rancour. Ten dollars a month was going to make a big difference. Mrs Colon was acting very differently towards a man bringing home another ten dollars a month. Her notes on the kitchen table were a lot more friendly. “No, but I mean, there’s nothing special about having an ancient sword,” said Carrot. “Or a birthmark. I mean, look at me. I’ve got a birthmark on my arm.” “My brother’s got one, too,” said Colon. “Shaped like a boat.” “Mine’s more like a crown thing,” said Carrot. “Oho, that makes you a king, then,” grinned Nobby. “Stands to reason.” “I don’t see why. My brother’s not an admiral,” said Colon reasonably. “And I’ve got this sword,” said Carrot. He drew it. Colon took it from his hand, and turned it over and over in the light from the flare over the Drum’s door. The blade was dull and short, and notched like a saw. It was well-made and there might have been an inscription on it once, but it had long ago been worn into indecipherability by sheer use. “It’s a nice sword,” he said thoughtfully. “Well-balanced.” “But not one for a king,” said Carrot. “Kings’ swords are big and shiny and magical and have jewels on and when you hold them up they catch the light, ting. “ “Ting, “ said Colon. “Yes. I suppose they have to, really.” “I’m just saying you can’t go round giving people thrones just because of stuff like that,” said Carrot. “That’s what Captain Vimes said.” “Nice job, mind,” said Nobby. “Good hours, kinging.” “Hmm?” Colon had momentarily been lost in a little world of speculation. Real kings had shiny swords, obviously. Except, except, except maybe your real real king of, like, days of yore, he would have a sword that didn’t sparkle one bit but was bloody efficient at cutting things. Just a thought. “I say kinging’s a good job,” Nobby repeated. “Short hours.” “Yeah. Yeah. But not long days,” said Colon. He gave Carrot a thoughtful look. “Ah. There’s that, of course.” “Anyway, my father says being king’s too much like hard work,” said Carrot. “All the surveying and assaying and everything.” He drained his pint. “It’s not the kind of thing for the likes of us. Us-“ he looked proudly-“guards. You all right, Sergeant?” “Hmm? What? Oh. Yes.” Colon shrugged. What about it, anyway? Maybe things turned out for the best. He finished the beer. “Best be off,” he said. “What time was it?” “About twelve o’clock,” said Carrot. “Anything else?” Carrot gave it some thought.”And all’s well?” he said. “Right. Just testing.” “You know,” said Nobby, “the way you say it, lad, you could almost believe it was true.”   . . .   Let the eye of attention pull back . . . This is the Disc, world and mirror of worlds, borne through space on the back of four giant elephants who stand on the back of Great A’Tuin the Sky Turtle. Around the Rim of this world the ocean pours off endlessly into the night. At its Hub rises the ten-mile spike of the Cori Celesti, on whose glittering summit the gods play games with the fates of men . . . . . . if you know what the rules are, and who are the players. On the far edge of the Disc the sun was rising. The light of the morning began to flow across the patchwork of seas and continents, but it did so slowly, because light is tardy and slightly heavy in the presence of a magical field. On the dark crescent, where the old light of sunset had barely drained from the deepest valleys, two specks, one big, one small, flew out of the shadow, skimmed low across the swells of the Rim ocean, and struck out determinedly over the totally unfathomable, star-dotted depths of space. Perhaps the magic would last. Perhaps it wouldn’t. But then, what does?         [1] All this was untrue. The truth is that even big collections of ordinary books distort space, as can readily be proved by anyone who has been around a really old-fashioned secondhand bookshop, one of those that look as though they were designed by M. Escher on a bad day and has more staircases than storeys and those rows of shelves which end in little doors that are surely too small for a full-sized human to enter. The relevant equation is: Knowledge = power = energy = matter = mass; a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read. [2] A figgin is defined in the Dictionary of Eye-Watering Words as ‘a small short-crust pasty containing raisins’. The Dictionary would have been invaluable for the Supreme Grand Master when he thought up the Society’s oaths, since it also includes welchet (‘a type of waistcoat worn by certain clock-makers’), gaskin (‘a shy, grey-brown bird of the coot family’), and moules (‘a game of skill and dexterity, involving tortoises’). [3] The pronoun is used by dwarfs to indicate both sexes. All dwarfs have beards and wear up to twelve layers of clothing. Gender is more or less optional. [4] i.e., about 55. [5] Lit. dezka-knik, ‘mine supervisor’. [6] One of the remarkable innovations introduced by the Patrician was to make the Thieves’ Guild responsible for theft, with annual budgets, forward planning and, above all, rigid job protection. Thus, in return for an agreed average level of crime per annum, the thieves themselves saw to it that unauthorised crime was met with the full force of Injustice, which was generally a stick with nails in it. [7] Lit: “Good day! Good day! What is all of this that is going on here (in this place)?” [8] Listen, sunshine [lit: ‘the stare of the great hot eye in the sky whose fiery gaze penetrates the mouth of the cavern’] I don’t want to have to give anyone a smacking, so if you play B’tduz+ with me, I’ll play B’tduz with you. Okay?”++ +)A popular dwarfish game which consists of standing a few feet apart and throwing large rocks at one another’s head. ++) Lit: “All correctly beamed and propped?” [9] Evening, all. “ (Lit: ‘Felicitations to all present at the closing of the day.’) [10] Like a bouncer, but trolls use more force. [11] And mime artists. It was a strange aversion, but there you are. Anyone in baggy trousers and a white face who tried to ply their art anywhere within Ankh’s crumbling walls would very quickly find themselves in a scorpion pit, on one wall of which was painted the advice: Learn The Words. [12] While being bang alongside the idea of necessary cruelty, of course. [13] The Guild of Fire Fighters had been outlawed by the Patrician the previous year after many complaints. The point was that, if you bought a contract from the Guild, your house would be protected against fire. Unfortunately, the general Ankh-Morpork ethos quickly came to the fore and fire fighters would tend to go to prospective clients’ houses in groups, making loud comments like “Very inflammable looking place, this” and “Probably go up like a firework with just one carelessly-dropped match, know what I mean?” [14] A species of geranium. [15] Some rioters can be quite well-educated. [16] The phrase “Set a thief to catch a thief had by this time (after strong representations from the Thieves’ Guild) replaced a much older and quintessentially Ankh-Morporkian proverb, which was “Set a deep hole with spring-loaded sides, tripwires, whirling knife blades driven by water power, broken glass and scorpions, to catch a thief.” [17] Tridlins: A short and unnecessary religious observance performed daily by the Holy Balancing Dervishes of Otherz, according to the Dictionary of Eye-Watering Words. [18] The three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are: 1) Silence; 2) Books must be returned no later than the last date shown; and 3) Do not interfere with the nature of causality. [19] A number of religions in Ankh-Morpork still practised human sacrifice, except that they didn’t really need to practise any more because they had got so good at it. City law said that only condemned criminals should be used, but that was all right because in most of the religions refusing to volunteer for sacrifice was an offence punishable by death.   
Carpe Jugulum - Terry Pratchett	----	Carpe Jugulum Terry Pratchett: Carpe Jugulum   v1.0 (24-apr-2001) Scanned, layout and proofreading by 4i Publications       Through the shredded black clouds a fire moved like a dying star, falling back to earth –the earth, that is, of the Discworld– –but unlike any star had ever done before, it sometimes managed to steer its fall, sometimes rising, sometimes twisting, but inevitably heading down. Snow glowed briefly on the mountain slopes when it crackled overhead. Under it, the land itself started to fall away. The fire was reflected off walls of blue ice as the light dropped into the beginnings of a canyon and thundered now through its twists and turns. The light snapped off. Something still glided down the moonlit ribbon between the rocks. It shot out of the canyon at the top of a cliff, where meltwater from a glacier plunged down into a distant pool. Against all reason there was a valley here, or a network of valleys, clinging to the edge of the mountains before the long fall to the plains. A small lake gleamed in the warmer air. There were forests. There were tiny fields, like a patchwork quilt thrown across the rocks. The wind had died. The air was warmer. The shadow began to circle. Far below, unheeded and unheeding, something else was entering this little handful of valleys. It was hard to see exactly what it was; furze rippled, heather rustled, as if a very large army made of very small creatures was moving with one purpose. The shadow reached a flat rock that offered a magnificent view of the fields and wood below, and there the army came out from among the roots. It was made up of very small blue men, some wearing pointy blue caps but most of them with their red hair uncovered. They carried swords. None of them was more than six inches high. They lined up and looked down into the new place and then, weapons waving, raised a battle cry. It would have been more impressive if they'd agreed on one before, but as it was it sounded as though every single small warrior had a battle cry of his very own and would fight anyone who tried to take it away from him. 'Nac mac Feegle!' 'Ach, stickit yer trakkans!' 'Gie you sich a kickin'!' 'Bigjobs!' 'Dere c'n onlie be whin t'ousand!' 'Nac mac Feegle wha hae!' 'Wha hae yersel, ya boggin!'     The little cup of valleys, glowing in the last shreds of evening sunlight, was the kingdom of Lancre. From its highest points, people said, you could see all the way to the rim of the world. It was also said, although not by the people who lived in Lancre, that below the rim, where the seas thundered continuously over the edge, their home went through space on the back of four huge elephants that in turn stood on the shell of a turtle that was as big as the world. The people of Lancre had heard of this. They thought it sounded about right. The world was obviously flat, although in Lancre itself the only truly flat places were tables and the top of some people's heads, and certainly turtles could shift a fair load. Elephants, by all accounts, were pretty strong too. There didn't seem any major gaps in the thesis, so Lancrastians left it at that. It wasn't that they didn't take an interest in the world around them. On the contrary, they had a deep, personal and passionate involvement in it, but instead of asking, 'Why are we here?' they asked, 'Is it going to rain before the harvest?' A philosopher might have deplored this lack of mental ambition, but only if he was really certain about where his next meal was coming from. In fact Lancre's position and climate bred a hardheaded and straightforward people who often excelled in the world down below. It had supplied the plains with many of their greatest wizards and witches and, once again, the philosopher might have marvelled that such a four-square people could give the world so many successful magical practitioners, being quite unaware that only those with their feet on rock can build castles in the air. And so the sons and daughters of Lancre went off into the world, carved out careers, climbed the various ladders of achievement, and always remembered to send money home. Apart from noting the return addresses on the envelope, those who stayed didn't think much about the world outside. The world outside thought about them, though. The big flat-topped rock was deserted now, but on the moor below, the heather trembled in a v-shape heading towards the lowlands. 'Gin's a haddie!' 'Nac mac Feegle!'     There are many kinds of vampires. Indeed, it is said that there are as many kinds of vampires as there are types of disease.[1] And they're not just human (if vampires are human. All along the Ramtops may be found the belief that any apparently innocent tool, be it hammer or saw, will seek blood if left unused for more than three years. In Ghat they believe, in vampire watermelons, although folklore is silent about what they believe about vampire watermelons. Possibly they suck back. Two things have traditionally puzzled vampire researchers. One is: why do vampires have so much power? Vampires're so easy to kill, they point out. There are dozens of ways to despatch them, quite apart from the stake through the heart, which also works on normal people so if you have any stakes left over you don't have to waste them. Classically, they spent the day in some coffin somewhere, with no guard other than an elderly hunchback who doesn't look all that spry, and should succumb to quite a small mob. Yet just one can keep a whole community in a state of sullen obedience . . . The other puzzle is: why are vampires always so stupid? As if wearing evening dress all day wasn't an undead giveaway, why do they choose to live in old castles which offer so much in the way of ways to defeat a vampire, like easily torn curtains and wall decorations that can readily be twisted into a religious symbol? Do they really think that spelling their name backwards fools anyone? A coach rattled across the moorlands, many miles away from Lancre. From the way it bounced over the ruts, it was travelling light. But darkness came with it. The horses were black, and so was the coach, except for the coat of arms on the doors. Each horse had a black plume between its ears; there was a black plume at each corner of the coach as well. Perhaps these caused the coach's strange effect of travelling shadow. It seemed to be dragging the night behind it. On the top of the moor, where a few trees grew out of the rubble of a ruined building, it creaked to a halt. The horses stood still, occasionally stamping a hoof or tossing their heads. The coachman sat hunched over the reins, waiting. Four figures flew just above the clouds, in the silvery moonlight. By the sound of their conversation someone was annoyed, although the sharp unpleasant tone to the voice suggested that a better word might be 'vexed'. 'You let it get away!' This voice had a whine to it, the voice of a chronic complainer. 'It was wounded, Lacci.' This voice sounded conciliatory, parental, but with just a hint of a repressed desire to give the first voice a thick ear. 'I really hate those things. They're so . . . soppy!' 'Yes, dear. A symbol of a credulous past.' 'If I could burn like that I wouldn't skulk around just looking pretty. Why do they do it?' 'It must have been of use to them at one time, I suppose.' 'Then they're . . . what did you call them?' 'An evolutionary cul-de-sac, Lacci. A marooned survivor on the seas of progress.' 'Then I'm doing them a favour by killing them?' 'Yes, that is a point. Now, shall-' 'After all, chickens don't burn,' said the voice called Lacci. 'Not easily, anyway.' 'We heard you experiment. Killing them first might have been a good idea.' This was a third voice – young, male, and also somewhat weary with the female. It had 'older brother' harmonics on every syllable. 'What's the point in that?' 'Well, dear, it would have been quieter.' 'Listen to your father, dear.' And this, the fourth voice, could only be a mother's voice. It'd love the other voices whatever they did. 'You're so unfair!’ 'We did let you drop rocks on the pixies, dear. Life can't be all fun.' The coachman stirred as the voices descended through the clouds. And then four figures were standing a little way off. He clambered down and, with difficulty, opened the coach door as they approached. 'Most of the wretched things got away, though,' said Mother. 'Never mind, my dear,' said Father. 'I really hate them. Are they a dead end too?' said Daughter. 'Not quite dead enough as yet, despite your valiant efforts. Igor! On to Lancre.' The coachman turned. 'Meth, marthter.' 'Oh, for the last time, man . . . is that any way to talk?' 'It'th the only way I know, marthter,' said Igor. 'And I told you to take the plumes off the coach, you idiot.' The coachman shifted uneasily. 'Gotta have black plumeth, marthter. It'th tradithional.' 'Remove them at once!' Mother commanded. 'What will people think?' 'Yeth, mithtreth.' The one addressed as Igor slammed the door and lurched back around to the horse. He removed the plumes reverentially and placed them under his seat. Inside the coach the vexed voice said, 'Is Igor an evolutionary dead end too, Father?' 'We can but hope, dear.' 'Thod,' said Igor to himself, as he picked up the reins.     The wording began: 'You are cordially invited. . .' . . . and was in that posh runny writing that was hard to read but ever so official. Nanny Ogg grinned and tucked the card back on the mantelpiece. She liked the idea of 'cordially'. It had a rich, a thick and above all an alcoholic sound. She was ironing her best petticoat. That is to say, she was sitting in her chair by the fire while one of her daughters-in-law, whose name she couldn't remember just at this moment, was doing the actual work. Nanny was helping by pointing out the bits she'd missed. It was a damn good invite, she thought. Especially the gold edging, which was as thick as syrup. Probably not real gold, but impressively glittery all the same. 'There's a bit there that could do with goin' over again, gel,' she said, topping up her beer. 'Yes, Nanny.' Another daughter-in-law, whose name she'd certainly be able to recall after a few seconds' thought, was buffing up Nanny's red boots. A third was very carefully dabbing the lint off Nanny's best pointy hat, on its stand. Nanny got up again and wandered over to open the back door. There was little light left in the sky now, and a few rags of cloud were scudding over the early stars. She sniffed the air. Winter hung on late up here in the mountains, but there was definitely a taste of spring on the wind. A good time, she thought. Best time, really. Oh, she knew that the year started on Hogswatchnight, when the cold tide turned, but the new year started now, with green shoots boring upwards through the last of the snow. Change was in the air, she could feel it in her bones. Of course, her friend Granny Weatherwax always said you couldn't trust bones, but Granny Weatherwax said a lot of things like that all the time. Nanny Ogg closed the door. In the trees at the end of her garden, leafless and scratchy against the sky, something rustled its wings and chattered as a veil of dark crossed the world.     In her own cottage a few miles away the witch Agnes Nitt was in two minds about her new pointy hat. Agnes was generally in two minds about anything. As she tucked in her hair and observed herself critically in the mirror she sang a song. She sang in harmony. Not, of course, with her reflection in the glass, because that kind of heroine will sooner or later end up singing a duet with Mr Blue Bird and other forest creatures and then there's nothing for it but a flamethrower. She simply sang in harmony with herself. Unless she concentrated it was happening more and more these days. Perdita had rather a reedy voice, but she insisted on joining in. Those who are inclined to casual cruelty say that inside a fat girl is a thin girl and a lot of chocolate. Agnes's thin girl was Perdita. She wasn't sure how she'd acquired the invisible passenger. Her mother had told her that when she was small she'd been in the habit of blaming accidents and mysteries, such as the disappearance of a bowl of cream or the breaking of a prized jug, on 'the other little girl'. Only now did she realize that indulging this sort of thing wasn't a good idea when, despite yourself, you've got a bit of natural witchcraft in your blood. The imaginary friend had simply grown up and had never gone away and had turned out to be a pain. Agnes disliked Perdita, who was vain, selfish and vicious, and Perdita hated going around inside Agnes, whom she regarded as a fat, pathetic, weak-willed blob that people would walk all over were she not so steep. Agnes told herself she'd simply invented the name Perdita as some convenient label for all those thoughts and desires she knew she shouldn't have, as a name for that troublesome little commentator that lives on everyone's shoulder and sneers. But sometimes she thought Perdita had created Agnes for something to pummel. Agnes tended to obey rules. Perdita didn't. Perdita thought that not obeying rules was somehow cool. Agnes thought that rules like 'Don't fall into this huge pit of spikes' were there for a purpose. Perdita thought, to take an example at random, that things like table manners were a stupid and repressive idea. Agnes, on the other hand, was against being hit by flying bits of other people's cabbage. Perdita thought a witch's hat was a powerful symbol of authority. Agnes thought that a dumpy girl should not wear a tall hat, especially with black. It made her look as though someone had dropped a liquorice-flavoured icecream cone. The trouble was that although Agnes was right, so was Perdita. The pointy hat carried a lot of weight in the Ramtops. People talked to the hat, not to the person wearing it. When people were in serious trouble they went to a witch.[2] You had to wear black, too. Perdita liked black. Perdita thought black was cool. Agnes thought that black wasn't a good colour for the circumferentially challenged . . . oh, and that 'cool' was a dumb word used only by people whose brains wouldn't fill a spoon. Magrat Garlick hadn't worn black and had probably never in her life said 'cool' except when commenting on the temperature. Agnes stopped examining her pointiness in the mirror and looked around the cottage that had been Magrat's and was now hers, and sighed. Her gaze took in the expensive, gold-edged card on the mantelpiece. Well, Magrat had certainly retired now, and had gone off to be Queen and if there was ever any doubt about that then there could be no doubt today. Agnes was puzzled at the way Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax still talked about her, though. They were proud (more or less) that she'd married the King, and agreed that it was the right kind of life for her, but while they never actually articulated the thought it hung in the air over their heads in flashing mental colours: Magrat had settled for second prize. Agnes had almost burst out laughing when she first realized this, but you wouldn't be able to argue with them. They wouldn't even see that there could be an argument. Granny Weatherwax lived in a cottage with a thatch so old there was quite a sprightly young tree growing in it, and got up and went to bed alone, and washed in the rain barrel. And Nanny Ogg was the most local person Agnes had ever met. She'd gone off to foreign parts, yes, but she always carried Lancre with her, like a' sort of invisible hat. But they took it for granted that they were top of every tree, and the rest of the world was there for them to tinker with. Perdita thought that being a queen was just about the best thing you could be. Agnes thought the best thing you could be was far away from Lancre, and good second best would be to be alone in your own head. She adjusted the hat as best she could and left the cottage. Witches never locked their doors. They never needed to. As she stepped out into the moonlight, two magpies landed on the thatch.     The current activities of the witch Granny Weatherwax would have puzzled a hidden observer. She peered at the flagstones just inside her back door and lifted the old rag rug in front of it with her toe. Then she walked to the front door, which was never used, and did the same thing there. She also examined the cracks around the edges of the doors. She went outside. There had been a sharp frost during the night, a spiteful little trick by the dying winter, and the drifts of leaves that hung on in the shadows were still crisp. In the harsh air she poked around in the flowerpots and bushes by the front door. Then she went back inside. She had a clock. Lancrastians liked clocks, although they didn't bother much about actual time in any length much shorter than an hour. If you needed to boil an egg, you sang fifteen verses of 'Where Has All The Custard Gone?' under your breath. But the tick was a comfort on long evenings. Finally she sat down in her rocking chair and glared at the doorway. Owls were hooting in the forest when someone came running up the path and hammered on the door. Anyone who hadn't heard about Granny's iron selfcontrol, which you could bend a horseshoe round, might just have thought they heard her give a tiny sigh of relief. 'Well, it's about time-' she began.     The excitement up at the castle was just a distant hum down in the mews. The hawks and falcons sat hunched on their perches, lost in some inner world of stoop and updraught. There was the occasional clink of a chain or flutter of a wing. Hodgesaargh the falconer was getting ready in the tiny room next door when he felt the change in the air. He stepped out into a silent mews. The birds were all awake, alert, expectant. Even King Henry the eagle, whom Hodgesaargh would only go near at the moment when he was wearing full plate armour, was peering around. You got something like this when there was a rat in the place, but Hodgesaargh couldn't see one. Perhaps it had gone. For tonight's event he'd selected William the buzzard, who could be depended upon. All Hodgesaargh's birds could be depended upon, but more often than not they could be depended upon to viciously attack him on sight. William, however, thought that she was a chicken, and she was usually safe in company. But even William was paying a lot of attention to the world, which didn't often happen unless she'd seen some corn. Odd, thought Hodgesaargh. And that was all. The birds went on staring up, as though the roof simply was not there.     Granny Weatherwax lowered her gaze to a red, round and worried face. 'Here, you're not-' She pulled herself together. 'You're the Wattley boy from over in Slice, aren't you?' 'Y'g't. . .' The boy leaned against the doorjamb and fought for breath. 'You g't–-' 'Just take deep breaths. You want a drink of water?' 'You g't t'–' 'Yes, yes, all right. Just breathe . . .' The boy gulped air a few times. 'You got to come to Mrs Ivy and her baby missus!' The words came out in one quick stream. Granny grabbed her hat from its peg by the door and pulled her broomstick out of its lodging in the thatch. 'I thought old Mrs Patternoster was seeing to her,' she said, ramming her hatpins into place with the urgency of a warrior preparing for sudden battle. 'She says it's all gone wrong miss!' Granny was already running down her garden path. There was a small drop on the other side of the clearing, with a twenty-foot fall to a bend in the track. The broom hadn't fired by the time she reached it but she ran on, swinging a leg over the bristles as it plunged. The magic caught halfway down and her boots dragged across the dead bracken as the broom soared up into the night.     The road wound over the mountains like a dropped ribbon. Up here there was always the sound of the wind. The highwayman's horse was a big black stallion. It was also quite possibly the only horse with a ladder strapped behind the saddle. This was because the highwayman's name was Casanunda, and he was a dwarf. Most people thought of dwarfs as reserved, cautious, law-abiding and very reticent on matters of the heart and other vaguely connected organs, and this was indeed true of almost all dwarfs. But genetics rolls strange dice on the green baize of life and somehow the dwarfs had produced Casanunda, who preferred fun to money and devoted to women all the passion that other dwarfs reserved for gold. He also regarded laws as useful things and he obeyed them when it was convenient. Casanunda despised highwaymanning, but it got you out in the fresh air of the countryside, which was very good for you, especially when the nearby towns were lousy with husbands carrying a grudge and a big stick. The trouble was that no one on the road took him seriously. He could stop the coaches all right, but people tended to say, 'What? I say, it's a lowwayman. What up? A bit short, are you? Hur, hur, hur,' and he would be forced to shoot them in the knee. He blew on his hands to warm them, and looked up at the sound of an approaching coach. He was about to ride out of his meagre hiding place in the thicket when he saw the other highwayman trot out from the wood opposite. The coach came to a halt. Casanunda couldn't hear what transpired, but the highwayman rode around to one of the doors and leaned down to speak to the occupants . . . . . . and a hand reached out and plucked him off his horse and into the coach. It rocked on its springs for a while, and then the door burst open and the highwayman tumbled out and lay still on the road. The coach moved on . . . Casanunda waited a little while and then rode down to the body. His horse stood patiently while he untied the ladder and dismounted. He could tell the highwayman was stone dead. Living people are expected to have some blood in them.     The coach stopped at the top of a rise a few miles further on, before the road began the long winding fall towards Lancre and the plains. The four passengers got out and walked to the start of the drop. The clouds were rolling in behind them but here the air was frosty clear, and the view stretched all the way to the Rim under the moonlight. Down below, scooped out of the mountains, was the little kingdom. 'Gateway to the world,' said the Count de Magpyr. 'And entirely undefended,' said his son. 'On the contrary. Possessed of some extremely effective defences,' said the Count. He smiled in the night. 'At least . . . until now . . .' 'Witches should be on our side,' said the Countess. 'She will be soon, at any rate,' said the Count. 'A most ... interesting woman. An interesting family. Uncle used to talk about her grandmother. The Weatherwax women have always had one foot in shadow. It's in the blood. And most of their power comes from denying it. However,' and his teeth shone as he grinned in the dark, 'she will soon find out on which side her bread is buttered.' 'Or her gingerbread is gilded,' said the Countess. 'Ah, yes. How nicely put. That's the penalty for being a Weatherwax woman, of course. When they get older they start to hear the clang of the big oven door.' 'I've heard she's pretty tough, though,' said the Count's son. 'A very sharp mind.' 'Let's kill her!' said the Count's daughter. 'Really, Lacci dear, you can't kill everything.' 'I don't see why not.' 'No. I rather like the idea of her being . . . useful. And she sees everything in black and white. That's always a trap for the powerful. Oh, yes. A mind like that is so easily . . . led. With a little help.' There was a whirr of wings under the moonlight and something bi-coloured landed on the Count's shoulder. 'And this...' said the Count, stroking the magpie and then letting it go. He pulled a square of white card from an inner pocket of his jacket. Its edge gleamed briefly. 'Can you believe it? Has this sort of thing ever happened before? A new world order indeed. . .' 'Do you have a handkerchief, sir?' said the Countess. 'Give it to me, please. You have a few specks. . .' She dabbed at his chin and pushed the bloodstained handkerchief back into his pocket. 'There,' she said. 'There are other witches,' said the son, like someone turning over a mouthful that was proving rather tough to chew. 'Oh, yes. I hope we will meet them. They could be entertaining.' They climbed back into the coach.     Back in the mountains, the man who had tried to rob the coach managed to get to his feet, which seemed for a moment to be caught in something. He rubbed his neck irritably and looked around for his horse, which he found standing behind some rocks a little way away. When he tried to lay a hand on the bridle it passed straight through the leather and the horse's neck, like smoke. The creature reared up and galloped madly away. It was not, the highwayman thought muzzily, going to be a good night. Well, he'd be damned if he'd lose a horse as well as some wages. Who the hell were those people? He couldn't quite remember what had happened in the carriage, but it hadn't been enjoyable. The highwayman was of that simple class of men who, having been hit by someone bigger than them, finds someone smaller than them for the purposes of retaliation. Someone else was going to suffer tonight, he vowed. He'd get another horse, at least. And, on cue, he heard the sound of hoofbeats on the wind. He drew his sword and stepped out into the road. 'Stand and deliver!' The approaching horse halted obediently a few feet away. This was not going to be such a bad night after all, he thought. it really was a magnificent creature, more of a warhorse than an everyday hack. It was so pale that it shone in the light of the occasional star and, by the look of it, there was silver on its harness. The rider was heavily wrapped up against the cold. 'Your money or your life!' said the highwayman. I'M SORRY? 'Your money,' said the highwayman, 'or your life. Which part of this don't you understand?' OH, I SEE. WELL, I HAVE A SMALL AMOUNT OF MONEY. A couple of coins landed on the frosty road. The highwayman scrabbled for them but could not pick them up, a fact that only added to his annoyance. 'It's your life, then!' The mounted figure shook its head. I THINK NOT. I REALLY DO. It pulled a long curved stick out of a holster. The highwayman had assumed it was a lance, but now a curved blade sprang out and glittered blue along its edges. I MUST SAY THAT YOU HAVE AN AMAZING PERSISTENCE OF VITALITY said the horseman. It was not so much a voice, more an echo inside the head. IF NOT A PRESENCE OF MIND. 'Who are you?' I'M DEATH, said Death. AND I REALLY AM NOT HERE TO TAKE YOUR MONEY. WHICH PART OF THIS DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?     Something fluttered weakly at the window of the castle mews. There was no glass in the frame, just thin wooden slats to allow some passage of air. And there was a scrabbling, and then a faint pecking, and then silence. The hawks watched. Outside the window something went whoomph. Beams of brilliant light jerked across the far wall and, slowly, the bars began to char.     Nanny Ogg knew that while the actual party would be in the Great Hall all the fun would be outside, in the courtyard around the big fire. Inside it'd be all quails' eggs, goose-liver jam and little sandwiches that were four to the mouthful. Outside it'd be roasted potatoes floating in vats of butter and a whole stag on a spit. Later on, there'd be a command performance by that man who put weasels down his trousers, a form of entertainment that Nanny ranked higher than grand opera. As a witch, of course, she'd be welcome anywhere and it was always a .good idea to remind the nobs of this, in case they forgot. It was a hard choice, but she decided to stay outside and have a good dinner of venison because, like many old ladies, Nanny Ogg was a bottomless pit for free food. Then she'd go inside and fill the gaps with the fiddly dishes. Besides, they probably had that expensive fizzy wine in there and Nanny had quite a taste for it, provided it was served in a big enough mug. But you needed a good depth of beer before you loaded up on the fancy stuff. She picked up a tankard, ambled to the front of the queue at the beer barrel, gently nudged aside the head of a man who'd decided to spend the evening lying under the tap, and drew herself a pint. As she turned back she saw the splay-footed figure of Agnes approaching, still slightly uneasy with the idea of wearing the new pointy hat in public. 'Wotcha, girl,' said Nanny. 'Try some of the venison, it's good stuff.' Agnes looked doubtfully at the roasting meat. Lancre people looked after the calories and let the vitamins go hang. 'Do you think I could get a salad?' she ventured. 'Hope not,' said Nanny happily. 'Lot of people here,' said Agnes. 'Everyone got a invite,' said Nanny. 'Magrat was very gracious about that, I thought.' Agnes craned her head. 'Can't see Granny around anywhere, though.' 'She'll be inside, tellin' people what to do.' 'I haven't seen her around much at all lately,' said Agnes. 'She's got something on her mind, I think.' Nanny narrowed her eyes. 'You think so?' she said, adding to herself: you're getting good, miss. 'It's just that ever since we heard about the birth,' Agnes waved a plump hand to indicate the general highcholesterol celebration around them, 'she's been so ... stretched, sort of. Twanging.' Nanny Ogg thumbed some tobacco into her pipe and struck a match on her boot. 'You certainly notice things, don't you?' she said, puffing away. 'Notice, notice, notice. We'll have to call you Miss Notice.' 'I certainly notice you always fiddle around with your pipe when you're thinking thoughts you don't much like,' said Agnes. 'It's displacement activity.' Through a cloud of sweet-smelling smoke Nanny reflected that Agnes read books. All the witches who'd lived in her cottage were bookish types. They thought you could see life through books but you couldn't, the reason being that the words got in the way. 'She has been a bit quiet, that's true,' she said. 'Best to let her get on with it.' 'I thought perhaps she was sulking about the priest who'll be doing the Naming,' said Agnes. 'Oh, old Brother Perdore's all right,' said Nanny. 'Gabbles away in some ancient lingo, keeps it short and then you just give him sixpence for his trouble, fill him up with brandy and load him on his donkey and off he goes.' 'What? Didn't you hear?' said Agnes. 'He's laid up over in Skund. Broke his wrist and both legs falling off the donkey.' Nanny Ogg took her pipe out of her mouth. 'Why wasn't I told?' she said. 'I don't know, Nanny. Mrs Weaver told me yesterday.' 'Oo, that woman! I passed her in the street this morning! She could've said!' Nanny poked her pipe back in her mouth as though stabbing all uncommunicative gossips. 'How can you break both your legs falling off a donkey?' 'It was going up that little path on the side of Skund Gorge. He fell sixty feet.' 'Oh? Well ... that's a tall donkey, right enough.' 'So the King sent down to the Omnian mission in Ohulan to send us up a priest, apparently,' said Agnes. 'He did what?' said Nanny.     A small grey tent was inexpertly pitched in a field just outside the town. The rising wind made it flap, and tore at the poster which had been pinned on to an easel outside. It read: GOOD NEWS! Om Welcomes You!!! In fact no one had turned up to the small introductory service that Mightily Oats had organized that afternoon, but since he had announced one he had gone ahead with it anyway, singing a few cheerful hymns to his own accompaniment on the small portable harmonium and then preaching a very short sermon to the wind and the sky. Now the Quite Reverend Oats looked at himself in the mirror. He was a bit uneasy about the mirror, to be honest. Mirrors had led to one of the Church's innumerable schisms, one side saying that since they encouraged vanity they were bad, and the other saying that since they reflected the goodness of Om they were holy. Oats had not quite formed his own opinion, being by nature someone who tries to see something in both sides of every question, but at least the mirrors helped him to get his complicated clerical collar on straight. It was still very new. The Very Reverend Mekkle, who'd taken Pastoral Practice, had advised that the rules about starch were only really a guideline, but Oats hadn't wanted to put a foot wrong and his collar could have been used as a razor. He carefully lowered his holy turtle pendant into place, noting its gleam with some satisfaction, and picked up his finely printed graduation copy of the Book of Om. Some of his fellow students had spent hours carefully ruffling the pages to give them that certain straight-and-narrow credibility, but Oats had refrained from this as well. Besides, he knew most of it by heart. Feeling rather guilty, because there had been some admonitions at the college against using holy writ merely for fortune telling, he shut his eyes and let the book flop open at random. Then he opened his eyes quickly and read the first passage they encountered. It was somewhere in the middle of Brutha's Second Letter to the Omish, gently chiding them for not replying to the First Letter to the Omish . '... silence is an answer that begs three more questions. Seek and you will find, but frst you should know what you seek. . .' Oh, well. He shut the book. What a place! What a dump. He'd had a short walk after the service and every path seemed to end in a cliff or a sheer drop. Never had he seen such a vertical country. Things had rustled at him in the bushes, and he'd got his shoes muddy. As for the people he'd met . . . well, simple ignorant country folk, salt of the earth, obviously, but they'd just stared at him carefully from a distance, as if they were waiting for something to happen to him and didn't care to be too close to him when it did. But still, he mused, it did say in Brutha's Letter to the Simonites that if you wished the light to be seen you had to take it into dark places. And this was certainly a dark place. He said a small prayer and stepped out into the muddy, windy darkness.     Granny flew high above the roaring treetops, under a half moon.- She distrusted a moon like that. A full moon could only wane, a new moon could only wax, but a half moon, balancing so precariously between light and dark . . . well, it could do anything. Witches always lived on the edges of things. She felt the tingle in her hands. It was not just from the frosty air. There was an edge somewhere. Something was beginning. On the other side of the sky the Hublights were burning around the mountains at the centre of the world, bright enough even to fight the pale light of the moon. Green and gold flames danced in the air over the central mountains. It was rare to see them at this time of the year, and Granny wondered what that might signify. Slice was perched along the sides of a cleft in the mountains that couldn't be dignified by the name of valley. In the moonlight she saw the pale upturned face waiting in the shadows of the garden as she came in to land. 'Evening, Mr Ivy,' she said, leaping off. 'Upstairs, is she?' 'In the barn,' said Ivy flatly. 'The cow kicked her . . . hard.' Granny's expression stayed impassive. 'We shall see,' she said, 'what may be done.' In the barn, one look at Mrs Patternoster's face told her how little that might now be. The woman wasn't a witch, but she knew all the practical midwifery that can be picked up in an isolated village, be it from cows, goats, horses or humans. 'It's bad,' she whispered, as Granny looked at the moaning figure on the straw. 'I reckon we'll lose both of them . . . or maybe just one . . .' There was, if you were listening for it, just the suggestion of a question in that sentence. Granny focused her mind. 'It's a boy,' she said. Mrs Patternoster didn't bother to wonder how Granny knew, but her expression indicated that a little more weight had been added to a burden. 'I'd better go and put it to John Ivy, then,' she said. She'd barely moved before Granny Weatherwax's hand locked on her arm. 'He's no part in this,' she said. 'But after all, he is the-' 'He's no part in this.' Mrs Pattemoster looked into the blue stare and knew two things. One was that Mr Ivy had no part in this, and the other was that anything that happened in this barn was never, ever, going to be mentioned again. 'I think I can bring 'em to mind,' said Granny, letting go and rolling up her sleeves. 'Pleasant couple, as I recall. He's a good husband, by all accounts.' She poured warm water from its jug into the bowl that the midwife had set up on a manger. Mrs Patternoster nodded. 'Of course, it's difficult for a man working these steep lands alone,' Granny went on, washing her hands. Mrs Pattemoster nodded again, mournfully. 'Well, I reckon you should take him into the cottage, Mrs Patternoster, and make him a cup of tea,' Granny commanded. 'You can tell him I'm doing all I can.' This time the midwife nodded gratefully. When she had fled, Granny laid a hand on Mrs Ivy's damp forehead. 'Well now, Florence Ivy,' she said, 'let us see what might be done. But first of all ... no pain. . .' As she moved her head she caught sight of the moon through the unglazed window. Between the light and the dark . . . well, sometimes that's where you had to be. INDEED. Granny didn't bother to turn round. 'I thought you'd be here,' she said, as she knelt down in the straw. WHERE ELSE? Said Death. 'Do you know who you're here for?' THAT IS NOT MY CHOICE. ON THE VERY EDGE YOU WILL ALWAYS FIND SOME UNCERTAINTY. Granny felt the words in her head for several seconds, like little melting cubes of ice. On the very, very edge, then, there had to be ... judgement. 'There's too much damage here,' she said, at last. 'Too much.' A few minutes later she felt the life stream past her. Death had the decency to leave without a word. When Mrs Patternoster tremulously knocked on the door and pushed it open, Granny was in the cow's stall. The midwife saw her stand up, holding a piece of thorn. 'Been in the beast's leg all day,' she said. 'No wonder it was fretful. Try and make sure he doesn't kill the cow, you understand? They'll need it.' Mrs Patternoster glanced down at the rolled-up blanket in the straw. Granny had tactfully placed it out of sight of Mrs Ivy, who was sleeping now. 'I'll tell him,' said Granny, brushing off her dress. 'As for her, well, she's strong and young and you know what to do. You keep an eye on her, and me or Nanny Ogg will drop in when we can. If she's up to it, they may need a wet nurse up at the castle, and that may be good for everyone.' It was doubtful that anyone in Slice would defy Granny Weatherwax, but Granny saw the faintest grey shadow of disapproval in the midwife's expression. 'You still reckon I should've asked Mr Ivy?' she said. 'That's what I would have done . . .'the woman mumbled. 'You don't like him? You think he's a bad man?' said Granny, adjusting her hatpins. 'No!' 'Then what's he ever done to me, that I should hurt him so?'     Agnes had to run to keep up. Nanny Ogg, when roused, could move as though powered by pistons. 'But we get a lot of priests up here, Nanny!' 'Not like the Omnians!’  snapped Nanny. 'We had 'em up here last year. A couple of 'em knocked at my door!' 'Well, that is what a door is f-' 'And they shoved a leaflet under it saying "Repent!"' Nanny Ogg went on. 'Repent? Me? Cheekl I can't start repenting at my time of life. I'd never get any work done. Anyway,' she added, 'I ain't sorry for most of it.' 'You're getting a bit excited, I think-' 'They set fire to people!' said Nanny. 'I think I read somewhere that they used to, yes,' said Agnes, panting with the effort of keeping up. 'But that was a long time ago, Nannyl The ones I saw in Ankh-Morpork just handed out leaflets and preached in a big tent and sang rather dreary songs-' 'Hah! The leopard does not change his shorts, my girl!' They ran along a corridor and out from behind a screen into the hubbub of the Great Hall. 'Knee-deep in nobs,' said Nanny, craning. 'Ah, there's our Shawn. . .' Lancre's standing army was lurking by a pillar, probably in the hope that no one would see him in his footman's powdered wig, which had been made for a much bigger footman. The kingdom didn't have much of an executive arm of government, and most of its actual hands belonged to Nanny Ogg's youngest son. Despite the earnest efforts of King Verence, who was quite a forward-looking ruler in a nervous kind of way, the people of Lancre could not be persuaded to accept a democracy at any price and the place had not, regrettably, attracted much in the way of government. A lot of the bits it couldn't avoid were done by Shawn. He emptied the palace privies, delivered its sparse mail, guarded the walls, operated the Royal Mint, balanced the budget, helped out the gardener in his spare time and, on those occasions these days when it was felt necessary to man the borders, and Verence felt that yellow and black striped poles did give a country such a professional look, he stamped passports, or at a pinch any other pieces of paper the visitor could produce, such as the back of an envelope, with a stamp he'd carved quite nicely out of half a potato. He took it all very seriously. At times like this, he buttled when Spriggins the butler was not on duty, or if an extra hand was needed he footed as well. 'Evening, our Shawn,' said Nanny Ogg. 'I see you've got that dead lamb on your head again.' 'Aoow, Mum,' said Shawn, trying to adjust the wig. 'Where's this priest that's doing the Naming?' said Nanny. 'What, Mum? Dunno, Mum. I stopped shouting out the names half an hour ago and got on to serving the bits of cheese on sticks – aoow, Mum, you shouldn't take that many, Mum!'[3] Nanny Ogg sucked the cocktail goodies off four sticks in one easy movement, and looked speculatively at the throng. 'I'm going to have a word with young Verence,' said Nanny. 'He is the King, Nanny,' said Agnes. 'That's no reason for him to go around acting like he was royalty.' 'I think it is, actually.' 'None of that cheek. You just go and find this Omnian and keep an eye on him.' 'What should I look for?' said Agnes sourly. 'A column of smoke?' 'They all wear black,' said Nanny firmly. 'Hah! Typical!' 'Well? So do we.' 'Right! But ours is . . . ours is...' Nanny thumped her chest, causing considerable ripples, 'ours is the right black, right? Now, off you go and look inconspicuous,' added Nanny, a lady wearing a two-foot-tall pointed black hat. She stared around at the crowd again, and nudged her son. 'Shawn, you did deliver an invite to Esme Weatherwax, didn't you?' He looked horrified. 'Of course, Mum.' 'Shove it under her door?' 'No, Mum. You know she gave me an earbashin' when the snails got at that postcard last year. I wedged it in the hinges, good and tight.' 'There's a good boy,' said Nanny. Lancre people didn't bother much with letterboxes. Mail was infrequent but biting gales were not. Why have a slot in the door to let in unsolicited winds? So letters were left under large stones, wedged firmly in flowerpots or slipped under the door. There were n ever very many.[4] Lancre operated on the feudal system, which was to say, everyone feuded all the time and handed on the fight to their descendants. The chips on some shoulders had been passed down for generations. Some had antique value. A bloody good grudge, Lancre reckoned, was like a fine old wine. You looked after it carefully and left it to your children. You never wrote to anyone. If you had anything to say, you said it to their face. It kept everything nice and hot. Agnes edged into the crowd, feeling stupid. She often did. Now she knew why Magrat Garlick had always worn those soppy floppy dresses and never wore the pointy hat. Wear the pointy hat and dress in black, and on Agnes there was plenty of black to go around, and everyone saw you in a certain way. You were A Witch. It had its good points. Among the bad ones was the fact that people turned to you when they were in trouble and never thought for a moment that you couldn't cope. But she got a bit of respect, even from people who could remember her before she'd been allowed to wear the hat. They tended to make way for her, although people tended to make way in any case for Agnes when she was in full steam. 'Evening, miss...' She turned and saw Hodgesaargh in full official regalia. It was important not to smile at times like this, so Agnes kept a straight face and tried to ignore Perdita's hysterical laughter at the back of her mind. She'd seen Hodgesaargh occasionally, around the edges of the woods or up on the moors. Usually the royal falconer was vainly fighting off his hawks, who attacked him for a pastime, and in the case of King Henry kept picking him up and dropping him again in the belief that he was a giant tortoise. It wasn't that he was a bad falconer. A few other people in Lancre kept hawks and reckoned he was one of the best trainers in the mountains, possibly because he was so single-minded about it. It was just that he trained every feathery little killing machine so well that it became unable to resist seeing what he tasted like. He didn't deserve it. Nor did he deserve his ceremonial costume. Usually, when not in the company of King Henry, he just wore working leathers and about three sticking plasters, but what he was wearing now had been designed hundreds of years before by someone with a lyrical view of the countryside who had never had to run through a bramble bush with a gerfalcon hanging on their ear. It had a lot of red and gold in it and would have looked much better on someone two feet taller who had the legs for red stockings. The hat was best not talked about, but if you had to, you'd talk about it in terms of something big, red and floppy. With a feather in it. 'Miss Nitt?' said Hodgesaargh. 'Sorry . . . I was looking at your hat.' 'It's good, isn't it?' said Hodgesaargh amiably. 'This is William. She's a buzzard. But she thinks she's a chicken. She can't fly. I'm having to teach her how to hunt.' Agnes was craning her neck for any signs of overtly religious activity, but the incongruity of the slightly bedraggled creature on Hodgesaargh's wrist brought her gaze back down again. 'How?' she said. 'She walks into the burrows and kicks the rabbits to death. And I've almost cured her of crowing. Haven't I, William?' 'William?' said Agnes. 'Oh ... yes.' To a falconer, she remembered, all hawks were 'she'. 'Have you seen any Omnians here?' she whispered, leaning down towards him. 'What kind of bird are they, miss?' said the falconer uneasily. He always seemed to have a preoccupied air when not discussing hawks, like a man with a big dictionary who couldn't find the index. 'Oh, er . . . don't worry about it, then.' She stared at William again and said, 'How? I mean, how does a bird like that think he's– she's a chicken?' 'Can happen all too easy, miss,' said Hodgesaargh. 'Thomas Peerless over in Bad Ass pinched an egg and put it under a broody hen, miss. He didn't take the chicken away in time. So William thought if her mum was a chicken, then so was she.' 'Well, that's-' 'And that's what happens, miss. When I raise them from eggs I don't do that. I've got a special glove, miss-' 'That's absolutely fascinating, but I'd better go,' said Agnes, quickly. 'Yes, miss.' She'd spotted the quarry, walking across the hall. There was something unmistakable about him. It was as if he was a witch. It wasn't that his black robe ended at the knees and became a pair of legs encased in grey socks and sandals, or that his hat had a tiny crown but a brim big enough to set out your dinner on. It was because wherever he walked he was in a little empty space that seemed to move around him, just like you got around witches. No one wanted to get too close to witches. She couldn't see his face. He was making a beeline for the buffet table. 'Excuse me, Miss Nitt?' Shawn had appeared at her side. He stood very stiffly, because if he made any sudden turns the oversized wig tended to spin on his head. 'Yes, Shawn?' said Agnes. 'The Queen wants a word, miss,' said Shawn. 'With me?' 'Yes, miss. She's up in the Ghastly Green Drawing Room, miss.' Shawn swivelled slowly. His wig stayed facing the same way. Agnes hesitated. It was a royal command, she supposed, even if it was only from Magrat Garlick as was, and as such it superseded anything Nanny had asked her to do. Anyway, she had spotted the priest, and it was not as though he was going to set fire to everyone over the canapes. She'd better go.     A little hatch shot open behind the doleful Igor. 'Why've we stopped this time?' 'Troll'th in the way, marthter.' 'A what?' Igor rolled his eyes. 'A troll'th in the way,' he said. The hatch shut. There was a whispered conversation inside the coach. The hatch opened. 'You mean a troll?' 'Yeth, marthter.' 'Run it down!' The troll advanced, holding a flickering torch above its head. At some point recently someone had said 'This troll needs a uniform' and had found that the only thing in the armoury that would fit was the helmet, and then only if you attached it to his head with string. 'The old Count wouldn't have told me to run it down,' Igor muttered, not quite under his breath. 'But, then, he wath a gentleman.' 'What was that?' a female voice snapped. The troll reached the coach and banged its knuckles on its helmet respectfully. 'Evenin',' it said. 'Dis is a bit embarrassin'. You know a pole?' 'Pole?' said Igor suspiciously. 'It are a long wooden fing-' 'Yeth? Well? What about it?' 'I'd like you to imagine, right, dat dere's a black an' yellow striped one across dis road, right? Only 'cos we've only got der one, an' it's bein' used up on der Copperhead road tonight.' The hatch slid open. 'Get a move on, man! Run it down  !’ 'I could go an' get it if you like,' said the troll, shifting nervously from one huge foot to the other. 'Only it wouldn't be here till tomorrow, right? Or you could pretend it's here right now, an' then I could pretend to lift it up, and dat'd be okay, right?' 'Do it, then,' said Igor. He ignored the grumbling behind him. The old Count had always been polite to trolls even though you couldn't bite them, and that was real class in a vampire. 'Only firs' I gotta stamp somethin',' said the troll. It held up half a potato and a paint-soaked rag. 'Why?' 'Shows you've bin past me,' said the troll. 'Yeth, but we will have been parthed you,' Igor pointed out. 'I mean, everyone will know we've been parthed you becauthe we are.' 'But it'll show you done it officially,' said the troll. 'What'll happen if we jutht drive on?' said Igor. 'Er . . . den I won't lift der pole,' said the troll. Locked in a metaphysical conundrum, they both looked at the patch of road where the virtual pole barred the way. Normally, Igor wouldn't have wasted any time. But the family had been getting on his nerves, and he reacted in the traditional way of the put-upon servant by suddenly becoming very stupid. He leaned down and addressed the coach's occupants through the hatch. 'It'th a border check, marthter,' he said. 'We got to have thomething thtamped.' There was more whispering inside the coach, and then a large white rectangle, edged in gold, was thrust ungraciously through the hatch. Igor passed it down. 'Seems a shame,' said the troll, stamping it inexpertly and handing it back. 'What'th thith?' Igor demanded. 'Pardon?' 'Thith . . . thtupid mark!' 'Well, the potato wasn't big enough for the official seal and I don't know what a seal look like in any case but I reckon dat's a good carvin' of a duck I done there,' said the troll cheerfully. 'Now . . . are you ready? 'Cos I'm liftin' der pole. Here it goes now. Look at it pointin' up in der air like dat. Dis means you can go.' The coach rolled on a little way and stopped just before the bridge. The troll, aware that he'd done his duty, wandered towards it and heard what he considered to be a perplexing conversation, although to Big Jim Beef most conversations involving polysyllabic words were shrouded in mystery. 'Now, I want you to all pay attention–' 'Father, we have done this before.' 'The point can't be hammered home far enough. That is the Lancre River down there. Running water. And we will cross it. It is as well to consider that your ancestors, although quite capable of undertaking journeys of hundreds of miles, nevertheless firmly believed that they couldn't cross a stream. Do I need to point out the contradiction?' 'No, Father.' 'Good. Cultural conditioning would be the death of us, if we are not careful. Drive on, Igor.' The troll watched them go. Coldness seemed to follow them across the bridge.     Granny Weatherwax was airborne again, glad of the clean, crisp air. She was well above the trees and, to the benefit of all concerned, no one could see her face. Isolated homesteads passed below, a few with lighted windows but most of them dark, because people would long ago have headed for the palace. There was a story under every roof, she knew. She knew all about stories. But those down there were the stories that were never to be told, the little secret stories, enacted in little rooms . . . They were about those times when medicines didn't help and headology was at a loss because a mind was a rage of pain in a body that had become its own enemy, when people were simply in a prison made of flesh, and at times like this she could let them go. There was no need for desperate stuff with a pillow, or deliberate mistakes with the medicine. You didn't push them out of the world, you just stopped the world pulling them back. You just reached in, and . . . showed them the way. There was never anything said. Sometimes you saw in the face of the relatives the request they'd never, ever put words around, or maybe they'd say, 'Is there something you can do for him?' and this was, perhaps, the code. If you dared ask, they'd be shocked that you might have thought they meant anything other than, perhaps, a comfier pillow. And any midwife, out in isolated cottages on bloody nights, would know all the other little secrets . . . Never to be told . . . She'd been a witch here all her life. And one of the things a witch did was stand right on the edge, where the decisions had to be made. You made them so that others didn't have to, so that others could even pretend to themselves that there were no decisions to be made, no little secrets, that things just happened. You never said what you knew. And you didn't ask for anything in return. The castle was brightly lit, she saw. She could even make out figures around the bonfire. Something else caught her eye, because she was going to look everywhere but at the castle now, and it jolted her out of her mood. Mist was pouring over the mountains and sliding down the far valleys under the moonlight. One strand was flowing towards the castle and pouring, very slowly, into the Lancre Gorge. Of course you got mists in the spring, when the weather was changing, but this mist was coming from Uberwald.     The door to Magrat's room was opened by Millie Chillum, the maid, who curtseyed to Agnes, or at least to her hat, and then left her alone with the Queen, who was at her dressing table. Agnes wasn't sure of the protocol, but tried a sort of republican curtsey. This caused considerable movement in outlying regions. Queen Magrat of Lancre blew her nose and stuffed the hankie up the sleeve of her dressing gown. 'Oh, hello, Agnes,' she said. 'Take a seat, do. You don't have to bob up and down like that. Millie does it all the time and I get seasick. Anyway, strictly speaking, witches bow.' 'Er. . .' Agnes began. She glanced at the crib in the corner. It had more loops and lace than any piece of furniture should. 'She's asleep,' said Magrat. 'Oh, the crib? Verence ordered it all the way from Ankh-Morpork. I said the old one they'd always used was fine, but he's very, you know . . . modern. Please sit down.'. 'You wanted me, your maj–' Agnes began, still uncertain. It was turning out to be a very complicated evening, and she wasn't sure even now how she felt about Magrat. The woman had left echoes of herself in the cottage – an old bangle lost under the bed, rather soppy notes in some of the ancient notebooks, vases full of desiccated flowers ... You can build up a very strange view of someone via the things they leave behind the dresser. 'I just wanted a little talk,' said Magrat. 'It's a bit . . . look, I'm really very happy, but .. . well, Millie's nice but she agrees with me all the time and Nanny and Granny still treat me as if I wasn't, well, you know, Queen and everything . . . not that I want to be treated as Queen all the time but, well, you know, I want them to know I'm Queen but not treat me as one, if you see what I mean. . .' ' I think so,' said Agnes carefully. Magrat waved her hands in an effort to describe the indescribable. Used handkerchiefs cascaded out of her sleeves. 'I mean . . . I get dizzy with people bobbing up and down all the time, so when they see me I like them to think, "Oh, there's Magrat, she's Queen now but I shall treat her in a perfectly normal way-"' 'But perhaps just a little bit more politely because she is Queen, after all,' Agnes suggested. 'Well, yes . . . exactly. Actually, Nanny's not too bad, at least she treats everyone the same all the time, but when Granny looks at me you can see her thinking, "Oh, there's Magrat. Make the tea, Magrat." One day I swear I'll make a very cutting remark. It's as if they think I'm doing this as a hobby!' 'I do know what you mean.' 'It's as if they think I'm going to get it out of my system and go back to witching again. They wouldn't say that, of course, but that's what they think. They really don't believe there's any other sort of life.' 'That's true.' 'How's the old cottage?' 'There's a lot of mice,' said Agnes. 'I know. I used to feed them. Don't tell Granny. She's here, isn't she?' 'Haven't seen her yet,' said Agnes. 'Ah, she'll be waiting for a dramatic moment,' said Magrat. 'And you know what? I've never caught her actually waiting for a dramatic moment, not in all the, well, things we've been involved in. I mean, if it was you or me, we'd be hanging around in the hall or something, but she just walks in and it's the right time.' 'She says you make your own right time,' said Agnes. 'Yes,' said Magrat. 'Yes,' said Agnes. 'And you say she's not here yet? It was the first card we did!' Magrat leaned closer. 'Verence got them to put extra gold leaf on it. I'm amazed it doesn't go clang when she puts it down. How are you at making the tea?' 'They always complain,' said Agnes. 'They do, don't they? Three lumps of sugar for Nanny Ogg, right?' 'It's not as if they even give me tea money,' said Agnes. She sniffed. There was a slight mustiness to the air. 'It's not worth baking biscuits, I can tell you that,' said Magrat. 'I used to spend hours doing fancy ones with crescent moons and so on. You might just as well get them from the shop.' She sniffed too. 'That's not the baby,' she said. 'I'm sure Shawn Ogg's been so busy arranging things he hasn't had time to dean up the privy pit the last two weeks. The smell comes right up the garderobe in the Gong Tower when the wind gusts. I've tried hanging up fragrant herbs but they sort of dissolve.' She looked uncertain, as if a worse prospect than lax castle sani-tation had crossed her mind. 'Er . . . she must've got the invitation, mustn't she?' 'Shawn says he delivered it,' said Agnes. 'And she probably said,' and here her voice changed, becoming dipped and harsh, '"I can't be havin' with that at my time of life. I've never bin one to put meself forward, no one could ever say I'm one to put meself forward."' Magrat's mouth was an O of amazement. 'That's so like her it's frightening!' she said. 'It's one of the few things I'm good at,' said Agnes, in her normal voice. 'Big hair, a wonderful personality, and an ear for sounds.' And two minds, Perdita added. 'She'll come anyway,' Agnes went on, ignoring the inner voice. 'But it's gone half eleven . . . Good grief, I'd better get dressed! Can you give me a hand?' She hurried into the dressing room with Agnes tagging along behind. 'I even wrote a bit underneath asking her to be a godmother,' she said, sitting down in front of the mirror and scrabbling among the debris of makeup. 'She's always secretly wanted to be one.' 'That's something to wish on a child,' said Agnes, without thinking. Magrat's hand stopped halfway to her face, in a little .cloud of powder, and Agnes saw her horrified look in the mirror. Then the jaw tightened, and for a moment the Queen had just the same expression that Granny sometimes employed. 'Well, if it was a choice of wishing a child health, wealth and happiness, or Granny Weatherwax being on her side, I know which I'd choose,' said Magrat. 'You must have seen her in action.' 'Once or twice, yes,' Agnes conceded. 'She'll never be beaten,' said Magrat. 'You wait till you see her when she's in a tight corner. She's got that way of . . . putting part of herself somewhere safe. It's as if . . . as if she gives herself to someone else to keep hidden for a while. It's all part of that Borrowing stuff she does.' Agnes nodded. Nanny had warned her about it but, even so, it was unnerving to turn up at Granny's cottage and find her stretched out on the floor as stiff as a stick and holding, in fingers that were almost blue, a card with the words: I ATE'NT DEAD.[5]  It just meant that she was out in the world somewhere, seeing life through the eyes of a badger or a pigeon, riding as an unheeded passenger in its mind. 'And you know what?' Magrat went on. 'It's just like those magicians in Howondaland who keep their heart hidden in a jar somewhere, for safety, so they can't be killed. There's something about it in a book at the cottage.' 'Wouldn't have to be a big jar,' said Agnes. 'That wasn't fair,' said Magrat. She paused. 'Well . . . not fair for most of the time. Often, anyway. Sometimes, at least. Can you help me with this bloody ruff?' There was a gurgle from the cradle. 'What name are you giving her?' said Agnes. 'You'll have to wait,' said Magrat. It made some sort of sense, Agnes admitted, as she followed Magrat and the maids to the hall. In Lancre you named children at midnight so that they started a day with a new name. She didn't know why it made sense. It just felt as though, once, someone had found that it worked. Lancrastians never threw away anything that worked. The trouble was, they seldom changed anything that worked, either. She'd heard that this was depressing King Verence, who was teaching himself kinging out of books. His plans for better irrigation and agriculture were warmly applauded by the people of Lancre, who then did nothing about them. Nor did they take any notice of his scheme for sanitation, i.e., that there should be some, since the Lancrastian idea of posh sanitation was a non-slippery path to the privy and a mailorder catalogue with really soft pages. They'd agreed to the idea of a Royal Society for the Betterment of Mankind, but since this largely consisted of as much time as Shawn Ogg had to spare on Thursday afternoons Mankind was safe from too much Betterment for a while, although Shawn had invented draught excluders for some of the windier parts of the castle, for which the King had awarded him a small medal. The people of Lancre wouldn't dream of living in anything other than a monarchy. They'd done so for thousands of years and knew that it worked. But they'd also found that it didn't do to pay too much attention to what the King wanted, because there was bound to be another king along in forty years or so and he'd be certain to want something different and so they'd have gone to all that trouble for nothing. In the meantime, his job as they saw it was to mostly stay in the palace, practise the waving, have enough sense to face the right way on coins and let them get on with the ploughing, sowing, growing and harvesting. It was, as they saw it, a social contract. They did what they always did, and he let them. But sometimes, he kinged . . . In Lancre Castle, King Verence looked at himself in the mirror and sighed. 'Mrs Ogg,' he said, adjusting his crown, 'I have, as you know, a great respect for the witches of Lancre but this is, with respect, broadly a matter of general policy which, I respectfully submit, is a matter for the King.' He adjusted the crown again, while Spriggins the butler brushed his robe. 'We must be tolerant. Really, Mrs Ogg, I haven't seen you in a state like this before-' 'They go round setting fire to people !’  said Nanny, annoyed at all the respect. 'Used to , I believe,' said Verence . 'And it was witches they burned!' Verence removed his crown and polished it with his sleeve in an infuriatingly reasonable manner. 'I've always understood they set fire to practically everybody,' he said, 'but that was some time ago, wasn't it?' 'Our Jason heard 'em preaching once down in Ohulan and they was saying some very nasty things about witches,' said Nanny. 'Sadly, not everyone knows witches like we do,' said Verence, with what Nanny in her overheated state thought was unnecessary diplomacy. 'And our Wayne said they tries to turn folk against other religions,' she went on. 'Since they opened up that mission of theirs even the Offlerians have upped sticks and gone. I mean, it's one thing saying you've got the best god, but sayin' it's the only real one is a bit of a cheek, in my opinion. I know where I can find at least two any day of the week. And they say everyone starts out bad and only gets good by believin' in Om, which is frankly damn nonsense. I mean, look at your little girl- What's her name going to be, now...?' 'Everyone will know in twenty minutes, Nanny,' said Verence smoothly. 'Hah!' Nanny's tone made it clear that Radio Ogg disapproved of this news management. 'Well, look . . . the worst she could put her little hand up to at her age is a few grubby nappies and keepin' you awake at night. That's hardly sinful, to my mind.' 'But you've never objected to the Gloomy Brethren, Nanny. Or to the Wonderers. And the Balancing Monks come through here all the time.' 'But none of them object to me,' said Nanny. Verence turned. He was finding this disconcerting. He knew Nanny Ogg very well, but mainly as the person standing just behind Granny Weatherwax and smiling a lot. It was hard to deal with an angry Ogg. . 'I really think you're taking this too much to heart, Mrs Ogg,' he said. 'Granny Weatherwax won't like it!' Nanny played the trump card. To her horror, it didn't seem to have the desired effect. 'Granny Weatherwax isn't King, Mrs Ogg,' said Verence. 'And the world is changing. There is a new order. Once upon a time trolls were monsters that ate people but now, thanks to the endeavours of men, and of course trolls, of goodwill and peaceful intent, we get along very well and I hope we understand each other. This is no longer a time when little kingdoms need only worry about little concerns. We're part of a big world. We have to play that part. For example, what about the Muntab question?' Nanny Ogg asked the Muntab question. 'Where the hell's Muntab?' she said. 'Several thousand miles away, Mrs Ogg. But it has ambitions Hubwards, and if there's war with Borogravia we will certainly have to adopt a position.' 'This one several thousand miles away looks fine by me,' said Nanny. 'And I don't see-' 'I'm afraid you don't,' said Verence. 'Nor should you have to. But affairs in distant countries can suddenly end up close to home. If Klatch sneezes, Ankh-Morpork catches a cold. We have to pay attention. Are we always to be part of the Ankh-Morpork hegemony? Are we not in a unique position as we reach the end of the Century of the Fruitbat? The countries widdershins of the Ramtops are beginning to make themselves felt. The "werewolf economies", as the Patrician in Ankh-Morpork calls them. New powers are emerging. Old countries are blinking in the sunlight of the dawning millennium. And of course we have to maintain friendships with all blocs. And so on. Despite a turbulent past, Omnia is a friendly country ... or, at least,' he admitted, 'I'm sure they would be friendly if they knew about Lancre. Being unpleasant to the priests of its state religion will serve us no good purpose. I'm sure we will not regret it.' 'Let's hope we won't,' said Nanny. She gave Verence a withering look. 'And I remember you when you were just a man in a funny hat.' Even this didn't work. Verence merely sighed again and turned towards the door. 'I still am, Nanny,' he said. 'It's just that this one's a lot heavier. And now I must go, otherwise we shall be keeping our guests waiting. Ah, Shawn...' Shawn Ogg had appeared at the door. He saluted. 'How's the army coming along, Shawn?' 'I've nearly finished the knife, sir.[6] Just got to do the nose-hair tweezers and the folding saw, sir. But actually I'm here as herald at the moment, sir.' 'Ah, it must be time.' ` 'Yes, sir.' 'A shorter fanfare this time, Shawn, I think,' said the King. 'While I personally appreciate your skill, an occasion like this calls for something a little simpler than several bars of "Pink Hedgehog Rag".' 'Yes, Sir.' 'Let us go, then.' They went out into the main passage just as Magrat's group was passing, and the King took her hand. Nanny Ogg trailed after them. The King was right, in a way. She did feel ... unusual, ill-tempered and snappish, as if she'd put on a vest that was too tight. Well, Granny would be here soon enough, and she knew how to talk to kings. You needed a special technique for that, Nanny reasoned; for example, you couldn't say things like 'Who died and made you King?', because they'd know. 'You and whose army?' was another difficult one, although in this case Verence's army consisted of Shawn and a troll and was unlikely to be a serious threat to Shawn's own mother if he wanted to be allowed to eat his tea indoors. She pulled Agnes to one side as the procession reached the top of the big staircase and Shawn went on ahead. 'We'll get a good view from the minstrel gallery,' she hissed, dragging Agnes into the king oak structure just as the trumpet began the royal fanfare. 'That's my boy,' she added proudly, when the final flourish caused a stir. 'Yes, not many royafanfares end with "shave and a haircut, no legs"[7],' said Agnes. 'Puts people at their ease, though,' said Shawn's loyal mum. Agnes looked down at the throng and caught sight of the priest again. He was moving through the press of guests. 'I found him, Nanny,' she said. 'He didn't make it hard, I must say. He won't try anything in a crowd, will he?' 'Which one is it?' Agnes pointed. Nanny stared, and then turned to her. 'Sometimes I think the weight of that damn crown is turning Verence's head,' she said. 'I reckon he really doesn't know what he's lettin' into the kingdom. When Esme gets here she's going to go through this priest like cabbage soup.' By now the guests had got themselves sorted out on either side of the red carpet that began at the bottom of the stairs. Agnes glanced up at the royal couple, waiting awkwardly, just out of sight, for the appropriate moment to descend, and thought: Granny Weatherwax says you make your own right time. They're the royal family. All they need to do is walk down the stairs and it'd be the right time. They're doing it wrong. Several of the Lancre guests were glancing at the big double doors, shut for this official ceremony. They'd be thrown open later, for the more public and enjoyable part, but right now they looked . . . . . . like doors that would soon creak back and frame a figure against the firelight. She could see the image so clearly. The exercises Granny had reluctantly given her were working, Perdita thought. There was a hurried conversation among the royal party and then Millie hurried back up the stairs and towards the witches. 'Mag- the Queen says, is Granny Weatherwax coming or not?' she panted. 'Of course she is,' said Nanny. 'Only, well, the King's getting a bit . . . upset. He said it did say RSVP on the invitation,' said Millie, trying not to meet Nanny eye to eye. 'Oh, witches never reservups,' said Nanny. 'They just come.' Millie put her hand in front of her mouth and gave a nervous little cough. She glanced wretchedly towards Magrat, who was making frantic hand signals. 'Only, well, the Queen says we'd better not hold things up, so, er, would you be godmother, Mrs Ogg?' The wrinkles doubled on Nanny's face as she smiled. 'Tell you what,' she said brightly. 'I'll come and sort of stand in until Granny gets here, shall I?'     Once again, Granny Weatherwax paced up and down in the spartan greyness of her kitchen. Occasionally she'd glance at the floor. There was quite a gap under the door, and sometimes things could be blown anywhere. But she'd already searched a dozen times. She must've got the cleanest floor in the country by now. Anyway, it was too late. Even so . . . Uberwald . . .[8] She strode up and down a few more times. 'I'll be blowed if I'll give 'em the satisfaction,' she muttered. She sat down in her rocking chair, stood up again so quickly that the chair almost fell over, and went back to the pacing. 'I mean, I've never been the kind of person to put myself forward,' she said to the air. 'I'm not the sort to go where I'm not welcome, I'm sure.' She went to make a cup of tea, fumbling with the kettle with shaking hands, and dropped the lid of her sugar bowl, breaking it. A light caught her eye. The half moon was visible over the lawn. 'Anyway, it's not as if I've not got other things to do,' she said. 'Can't all be rushing off to parties the whole time . . . wouldn't have gone anyway.' She found herself flouncing around the corners of the floor again and thought: if I'd found it, the Wattley boy would have knocked at an empty cottage. I'd have gone and enjoyed meself. And John Ivy'd be sitting alone now . . . 'Drat!' That was the worst part about being good – it caught you coming and going. She landed in the rocking chair again and pulled her shawl around her against the chill. She hadn't kept the fire in. She hadn't expected to be at home tonight. Shadows filled the corners of the room, but she couldn't be bothered to light the lamp. The candle would have to do. As she rocked, glaring at the wall, the shadows lengthened.     Agnes followed Nanny down into the hall. She probably wasn't meant to, but very few people will argue with a hat of authority. Small countries were normal along this part of the Ramtops. Every glacial valley, separated from its neighbours by a route that required a scramble or, at worst, a ladder, more or less ruled itself. There seemed to Agnes to be any number of kings, even if some of them did their ruling in the evenings after they'd milked the cows. A lot of them were here, because a free meal is not to be sneezed at. There were also some senior dwarfs from Copperhead and, standing well away from them, a group of trolls. They weren't carrying weapons, so Agnes assumed they were politicians. Trolls weren't strictly subjects of King Verence, but they were there to say, in official body language, that playing football with human heads was something no one did any more, much. Hardly at all, really. Not roun' here, certainly. Dere's practic'ly a law against it. The witches were ushered to the area in front of the thrones, and then Millie scurried away. The Omnian priest nodded at them. 'Good, um, evening,' he said, and completely failed to set fire to anyone. He wasn't very old and had a rather ripe boil beside his nose. Inside Agnes, Perdita made a face at him. Nanny Ogg grunted. Agnes risked a brief smile. The priest blew his nose noisily. 'You must be some of these, um, witches I've heard so much about,' he said. He had an amazing smile. It appeared on his face as if someone had operated a shutter. One moment it wasn't there, the next moment it was. And then it was gone. 'Um, yes,' said Agnes. 'Hah,' said Nanny Ogg, who could haughtily turn her back on people while looking them in the eye. 'And I am, I am, aaaa. . .' said the priest. He stopped, and pinched the bridge of his nose. 'Oh, I am sorry. The mountain air doesn't agree with me. I am the Quite Reverend Mightily Oats.' 'You are?' said Agnes. To her amazement, the man began to redden. The more she looked at him, the more she realized that he wasn't much older than she was. 'That is, Mightily-Praiseworthy-Are-Ye-Who-ExaltethOm Oats,' he said. 'It's much shorter in Omnian, of course. Have you by any chance heard the Word of Om?' 'Which one? "Fire"?' said Nanny Ogg. 'Hah!' The nascent religious war was abruptly cut short by the first official royal fanfare to end with a few bars from the 'Hedgehog Cakewalk'. The royal couple began to descend the stairs. 'And we'll have none of your heathen ways, thank you very much,' muttered Nanny Ogg behind the pastor. 'No sloshing water or oil or sand around or cutting any bits off and if I hears a single word I understand, well, I'm standing behind you with a pointy stick.'[9] From the other side he heard, 'He's not some kind of horrible inquisitor, Nanny!' 'But my pointy stick's still a pointy stick, my girl!' What's got into her? Agnes thought, watching the pastor's ears turn red. That's the way Granny would act. Perdita added: Perhaps she thinks she's got to carry on like that because that old bat's not here yet. Agnes was quite shocked at hearing herself think that. 'You do things our way here, all right?' said Nanny. 'The, um, King did explain it all to me, um,' said the pastor. 'Er, do you have anything for a headache. I'm afraid I-' 'You put the key in one hand and let her grip the crown with the other,' Nanny Ogg went on. 'Yes, um, he did-' 'Then you tell her what her name is and her mum's name and her dad's name, mumbling a bit over the latter if the mum ain't sure-' 'Nanny! This is royalty!' 'Hah, I could tell you stories, gel . . . and then, see, you give her to me and I tell her, too, and then I give her back and you tell the people what her name is, an' then you give her to me, and then I give her to her dad, and he takes her out through the doors and shows her to everyone, everyone throws their hats in the air and shouts "Hoorah!" and then it's all over bar the drinks and horses' doovers and findin' your own hat. Start extemporizin' on the subject of sin and it'll go hard with you.' 'What is, um, your role, madam?' 'I'm the godmother!' 'Which, um, god?' The young man was trembling slightly. 'It's from Old Lancre,' said Agnes hurriedly. 'It means something like "goodmother". It's all right ... as witches we believe in religious toleration . . .' 'That's right,' said Nanny Ogg. 'But only for the right religions, so you watch your step!' The royal parents had reached the thrones. Magrat took her seat and, to Agnes's amazement, gave her a sly wink. Verence didn't wink. He stood there and coughed loudly. 'Ahem!' 'I've got a pastille somewhere,' said Nanny, her hand reaching towards her knickerleg. 'Ahem!' Verence's eyes darted towards his throne. What had appeared to be a grey cushion rolled over, yawned, gave the King a brief glance, and started to wash itself. 'Oh, Greebo!' said Nanny. 'I was wonderin' where you'd got to. . .' 'Could you please remove him, Mrs Ogg?' said the King. Agnes glanced at Magrat. The Queen had half turned away, with her elbow on the arm of the throne and her hand covering her mouth. Her shoulders were shaking. Nanny grabbed her cat off the throne. 'A cat can look at a king,' she said. 'Not with that expression, I believe,' said Verence. He waved graciously at the assembled company, just as the castle's dock began to strike midnight. 'Please begin, Reverend.' 'I, um, did have a small suitable homily on the subject of, um, hope for the-' the Quite Reverend Oats began, but there was a grunt from Nanny and he suddenly seemed to jerk forward slightly. He blinked once or twice and his Adam's apple bobbed up and down. 'But alas I fear we have no time,' he concluded quickly. Magrat leaned over and whispered something in her husband's ear. Agnes heard him say, 'Well, dear, I think we have to, whether she's here or not. . .' Shawn scurried up, slightly out of breath and with his wig on sideways. He was carrying a cushion. On the faded velvet was the big iron key of the castle. Millie Chillum carefully handed the baby to the priest, who held it gingerly. It seemed to the royal couple that he suddenly started to speak very hesitantly. Behind him, Nanny Ogg's was an expression of extreme interest that was nevertheless made up of one hundred per cent artificial additives. They also had the impression that the poor man was suffering from frequent attacks of cramp. '-we are gathered here together in the sight of . . . um . . . one another . . .' 'Are you all right, Reverend?' said the King, leaning forward. 'Never better, sir, um, I assure you,' said Oats miserably, '. . . and I therefore name thee . . . that is, you . . .' There was a deep, horrible pause. Glassy faced, the priest handed the baby to Millie. Then he removed his hat, took a small scrap of paper from the lining, read it, moved his lips a few times as he said the words to himself, and then replaced the hat on his sweating forehead and took the baby again. 'I name you ... Esmerelda Margaret Note Spelling of Lancre!' The shocked silence was suddenly filled. 'Note Spelling?' said Magrat and Agnes together. 'Esmerelda?' said Nanny. The baby opened her eyes.     And the doors swung back. Choices. It was always choices . . . There'd been that man down in Spackle, the one that'd killed those little kids. The people'd sent for her and she'd looked at him and seen the guilt writhing in his head like a red worm, and then she'd taken them to his farm and showed them where to dig, and he'd thrown himself down and asked her for mercy, because he said he'd been drunk and it'd all been done in alcohol. Her words came back to her. She'd said, in sobriety: end it in hemp. And they'd dragged him off and hanged him in a hempen rope and she'd gone to watch because she owed him that much, and he'd cursed, which was unfair because hanging is a clean death, or at least cleaner than the one he'd have got if the villagers had dared defy her, and she'd seen the shadow of Death come for him, and then behind Death came the smaller, brighter figures, and then– In the darkness, the rocking chair creaked as it thundered back and forth. The villagers had said justice had been done, and she'd lost patience and told them to go home, then, and pray to whatever gods they believed in that it was never done to them. The smug mask of virtue triumphant could be almost as horrible as the face of wickedness revealed. She shuddered at a memory. Almost as horrible, but not quite. The odd thing was, quite a lot of villagers had turned up to his funeral, and there had been mutterings from one or two people on the lines of, yes, well, but overall he wasn't such a bad chap . . . and anyway, maybe she made him say it. And she'd got the dark looks. Supposing there was justice for all, after all? For every unheeded beggar, every harsh word, every neglected duty, every slight . . . every choice . . . Because that was the point, wasn't it? You had to choose. You might be right, you might be wrong, but you had to choose, knowing that the rightness or wrongness might never be clear or even that you were deciding between two sorts of wrong, that there was no right anywhere. And always, always, you did it by yourself. You were the one there, on the edge, watching and listening. Never any tears, never any apology, never any regrets . . . You saved all that up in a way that could be used when needed. She never discussed this with Nanny Ogg or any of the other witches. That would be breaking the secret. Sometimes, late at night, when the conversation tiptoed around to that area, Nanny might just drop in some line like 'Old Scrivens went peacefully enough at the finish' and may or may not mean something by it. Nanny, as far as she could see, didn't agonize very much. To her, some things obviously had to be done, and that was that. Any of the thoughts that hung around she kept locked up tight, even from herself. Granny envied her. Who'd come to her funeral when she died? They didn't ask her! Memories jostled. Other figures marched out into the shadows around the candlelight. She'd done things and been places, and found ways to turn anger outwards that had surprised even her. She'd faced down others far more powerful than she was, if only she'd allowed them to believe it. She'd given up so much, but she'd learned a lot . . . It was a sign. She knew it'd come sooner or later . . . They'd realized it, and now she was no more use . . . What had she ever earned? The reward for toil had been more toil. If you dug the best ditches they gave you a bigger shovel. And you got these bare walls, this bare floor, this cold cottage. ' The darkness in the corners grew out into the room and began to tangle in her hair. They didn't ask her! She'd never, ever asked for anything in return. And the trouble with not asking for anything in return was that sometimes you didn't get it. She'd always tried to face towards the light. She'd always tried to face towards the light. But the harder you stared into the brightness the harsher it burned into you until, at last, the temptation picked you up and bid you turn around to see how long, rich, strong and dark, streaming away behind you, your shadow had become– Someone mentioned her name. There was a moment of light and noise and bewilderment. And then she awoke and looked at the darkness flowing in, and saw things in black and white.     'So sorry . . . delays on the road, you know how it is...' The newcomers hurried in and joined the crowd, who paid little attention because they were watching the unplanned entertainment around the thrones. 'Note Spelling?' 'Definitely a bit tricky,' said Nanny. 'Esmerelda, now, that was a good one. Gytha would have been good too, but Esmerelda, yes, you can't argue with it. But you know kids. They'll all be calling her Spelly.' 'If she's lucky,' said Agnes gloomily. 'I didn't expect anyone to say it!' Magrat hissed. 'I just wanted to make sure she didn't end up with "Magrat'!' Mightily Oats was standing with his eyes cast upwards and his hands clasped together. Occasionally he made a whimpering sound. 'We can change it, can't we?' said King Verence. 'Where's the Royal Historian?' Shawn coughed. 'It's not Wednesday evening and I'll have to go and fetch the proper hat, sire-' 'Can we change it or not, man?' 'Er . . . it has been said, sire. At the official time. I think it's her name now, but I'll need to go and look it up. Everyone heard it, sire.' 'No, you can't change it,' said Nanny, who as the Royal Historian's mum took it as read that she knew more than the Royal Historian. 'Look at old Moocow Poorchick over in Slice, for one.' 'What happened to him, then?' said the King sharply. 'His full name is James What The Hell's That Cow Doing In Here Poorchick,' said Magrat. 'That was a very strange day, I do remember that,' said Nanny. 'And if my mother had been sensible enough to tell Brother Perdore my name instead of coming over all bashful and writing it down, life would have been a whole lot different,' said Magrat. She glanced nervously at Verence. 'Probably worse, of course.' 'So I've got to take Esmerelda out to her people and tell them one of her middle names is Note Spelling?' said Verence. 'Well, we did once have a king called My God He's Heavy the First,' said Nanny. 'And the beer's been on for the last couple of hours so, basic'ly, you'll get a cheer whatever you say.' Besides, thought Agnes, I know for a fact there's people out there called Syphilidae Wilson and Yodel Lightley and Total Biscuit.[10] Verence smiled. 'Oh well ... let me have her...' 'Whifm . . .' said Mightily Oats. '. . . and perhaps someone ought to give this man a drink.' 'I'm so terribly, terribly sorry,' whispered the priest, as the King walked between the lines of guests. 'Been on the drink already, I expect,' said Nanny. 'I never ever touch alcohol!’  moaned the priest. He dabbed at his streaming eyes with a handkerchief. 'I knew there was something wrong with you as soon as I looked at you,' said Nanny. 'Where's Esme, then?' 'I don't know, Nanny!’  said Agnes. 'She'd know about this, you mark my words. This'll be a feather in her cap, right enough, a princess named after her. She'll be crowing about it for months. I'm going to see what's going on.' She stumped off. Agnes grabbed the priest's arm. 'Come along, you,' she sighed. 'I really cannot, um, express how sorry-' 'It's a very strange evening all round.' 'I've, I've, I've never, um, heard of the custom before-' 'People put a lot of importance on words in these parts.' 'I'm very much afraid the King will give a bad, um, report of me to Brother Melchio . . .' 'Really.' There are some people who could turn even the most amiable character into a bully and the priest seemed to be one of them. There was something . . . sort of damp about him, the kind of helpless hopelessness that made people angry rather than charitable, the total certainty that if the whole world was a party he'd still find the kitchen. She seemed to be stuck with him. The VIPs were all crowded around the open doors, where loud cheering indicated that the people of Lancre thought that Note Spelling was a nice name for a future queen. 'Perhaps you should just sit there and try to get a grip,' she said. 'There's going to be dancing later on.' 'Oh, I don't dance,' said Mightily Oats. 'Dancing is a snare to entrap the weak-willed.' 'Oh. Well, I suppose there's the barbecue outside. . .' Mightily Oats dabbed at his eyes again. 'Um, any fish?' 'I doubt it.' 'We eat only fish this month.' 'Oh.' But a deadpan voice didn't seem to work. He still wanted to talk to her. 'Because the prophet Brutha eschewed meat, um, when he was wandering in the desert, you see.' 'Each mouthful forty times?' 'Pardon?' 'Sorry, I was thinking of something else.' Against her better judgement, Agnes let curiosity enter her life. 'What meat is there to eat, in a desert?' 'Um, none, I think.' 'So he didn't exactly refuse to eat it, did he?' Agnes scanned the gathering crowds, but no one seemed anxious to join in this little discussion. 'Um ... you'd have to, um, ask Brother Melchio that. I'm so sorry. I think I have a migraine coming on. . .' You don't believe anything you're saying, do you? Agnes thought. Nervousness and a sort of low-grade terror was radiating off him. Perdita added: What a damp little maggot! 'I've got to go and . . . er . . . to go and . . . I've got to go and . . . help,' said Agnes, backing away. He nodded. As she left, he blew his nose again, produced a small black book from a pocket, sighed, and hurriedly opened it at a bookmark. She picked up a tray to add some weight to the alibi, stepped towards the food table, turned to look back at the hunched figure as out of place as a lost sheep, and walked into someone as solid as a tree. 'Who is that strange person?' said a voice by her ear. Agnes heard Perdita curse her for jumping sideways, but she recovered and managed to smile awkwardly at the person who'd spoken. He was a young man and, it dawned on her, a very attractive one. Attractive men were not in plentiful supply in Lancre, where licking your hand and smoothing your hair down before taking a girl out was considered swanky. He's got a ponytail! squeaked Perdita. Now that is cool! Agnes felt the blush start somewhere in the region of her knees and begin its inevitable acceleration upwards. 'Er . . . sorry?' she said. 'You can practically smell him,' said the man. He inclined his head slightly towards the sad priest. 'Looks rather like a scruffy little crow, don't you think?' 'Er . . . yes,' Agnes managed. The blush rounded the curve of her bosom, red hot and rising. A ponytail on a man was unheard of in Lancre, and the cut of his clothes also suggested that he'd spent time somewhere where fashion changed more than once a lifetime. No one in Lancre had ever worn a waistcoat embroidered with peacocks. Say something to him! Perdita screamed within. 'Wstfgl?' said Agnes. Behind her, Mightily Oats had got up and was inspecting the food suspiciously. 'I beg your pardon?' Agnes swallowed, partly because Perdita was trying to shake her by the throat. 'He does look as if he's about to flap away, doesn't he?' she said. Oh, please, don't let me giggle . . . The man snapped his fingers. A waiter hurrying past with a tray of drinks turned through ninety degrees. 'Can I get you a drink, Miss Nitt?' 'Er . . . white wine?' Agnes whispered. 'No, you don't want white wine, the red is much more . . . colourful,' he said, taking a glass and handing it to her. 'What is our quarry doing now . . . Ah, applying himself to a biscuit with a very small amount of pate on it, I see. . .' Ask him his name! Perdita yelled. No, that'd be forward of me, Agnes thought. Perdita screamed, You were built forward, you stupid lump– 'Please let me introduce myself. I'm Vlad,' he said kindly. 'Oh, now he's . . . yes, he's about to pounce on . . . yes, a prawn vol-au-vent. Prawns up here, eh? King Verence has spared no expense, has he?' 'He had them brought up on ice all the way from Genua,' Agnes mumbled. 'They do very good seafood there, I believe.' 'Never been,' Agnes mumbled. Inside her head Perdita lay down and cried. 'Maybe we could visit it one day, Agnes,' said Vlad. The blush was at Agnes's neck. 'It's very hot in here, don't you think?' said Vlad. 'It's the fire,' said Agnes gratefully. 'It's over there,' she added, nodding to where quite a large amount of a tree was burning in the hall's enormous fireplace and could only have been missed by a man with a bucket on his head. 'My sister and I have-' Vlad began. 'Excuse me, Miss Nitt?' 'What is it, Shawn?' Drop dead, Shawn Ogg, said Perdita. 'Mum says you're to come at once, miss. She's down in the yard. She says it's important.' 'It always is,' said Agnes. She gave Vlad a quick smile. 'Excuse me, I have to go and help an old lady.' 'I'm sure we'll meet again, Agnes,' said Vlad. 'Oh, er . . . thank you.' She hurried out and was halfway down the steps before she remembered she hadn't told him her name. Two steps further she thought: well, he could have asked someone. Two steps after that Perdita said: Why would he ask anyone your name? Agnes cursed the fact that she had grown up with an invisible enemy. 'Come and look at this!' hissed Nanny, grabbing her by the arm as she reached the courtyard. She was dragged out to the carriages parked near the stables. Nanny waved a finger to the door of the nearest one. 'See that?' she said. 'It looks very impressive,' said Agnes. 'See the crest?' 'Looks like . . . a couple of black and white birds. Magpies, aren't they?' 'Yeah, but look at the writin',' said Nanny Ogg, with that dark relish old ladies reserve for nastily portentous things. 'Carpe Jugulum,' read Agnes aloud. 'That's . . . well, Carpe Diem is "Seize the Day", so this means-' "'Go for the Throat",' said Nanny. 'You know what our king has done, so we can play our part in this new changin' world order thing and get money for hedges because Klatch gets a nosebleed when Ankh-Morpork stubs its toe? He's gone an' invited some bigwigs from Uberwald, that's what he's done. Oh, deary deary me. Vampires and werewolves, werewolves and vampires. We'll all be murdered in one another's beds.' She walked up to the front of the coach and tapped on the wood near the driver, who was sitting hunched up in an enormous cloak. 'Where're you from, Igor?' The shadowy figure turned. 'What maketh you think my name ith . . . Igor?' 'Lucky guess?' said Nanny. 'You think everyone from Uberwald ith called Igor, do you? I could have any one of a thouthand different nameth, woman.' 'Look, I'm Nanny Ogg and thith, excuse me, this is Agnes Nitt. And you are . . .?' 'My name ith . . . well, it'th Igor, ath a matter of facththth,' said Igor. He raised a hasty finger. 'But it might not have been!' 'It's a chilly night. Can we get you something?' said Nanny cheerfully. 'Perhaps a towel?' said Agnes. Nanny nudged her in the ribs to be silent. 'A glass of wine, p'raps?' she said. 'I do not drink . . . wine,' said Igor haughtily. 'I've got some brandy,' said Nanny, hitching up her skirt. 'Oh, right. I drink brandy like thtink.' Knickerleg elastic twanged in the gloom. 'So,' said Nanny, passing up the flask, 'what're you doing this far from home, Igor?' 'Why'th there a thtupid troll down there on the . . . bridge?' said Igor, taking the flask in one large hand which, Agnes noticed, was a mass of scars and stitches. 'Oh, that's Big Jim Beef. The King lets him live under there provided he looks official when we've got comp'ny comin'.' 'Beef ith an odd name for a troll.' 'He likes the sound of it,' said Nanny. 'It's like a man calling himself Rocky, I suppose. So . . . I used to know an Igor from Uberwald. Walked with a limp. One eye a bit higher than the other. Had the same manner of . . . speaking. Very good at brain juggling, too.' 'That thoundth like my Uncle Igor,' said Igor. 'He worked for the mad doctor at Blinz. Ha, an' he wath a proper mad doctor, too, not like the mad doctorth you get thethe dayth. And the thervantth? Even worthe. No pride thethe dayth.' He tapped the brandy flask for emphasis. 'When Uncle Igor wath thent out for a geniuth'th brain, that'th what you damn well got. There wath none of thith fumblefinger thtuff and then pinching a brain out of the "Really Inthane" jar and hopin' no one'd notithe. They alwayth do, anyway.' Nanny took a step back. The only sensible way to hold a conversation with Igor was when you had an umbrella. 'I think I've heard of that chap,' she said. 'Didn't he stitch folk together out of dead parts?' 'No! Really?' said Agnes, shocked. 'Ow!' 'That'th right. Ith there a problem?' 'No, I call it prudent,' said Nanny, taking her foot off Agnes's toe. 'My mum was a dab hand at sewing a new sheet from bits of old ones, and people're worth more than linen. So he's your master now, is he?' 'No, my Uncle Igor thtill workth for him. Been thtruck by lightning three hundred timeth and thtill putth in a full night'th work.' 'Have a drop more of that brandy, it's very cold out here,' said Nanny. 'So who is your master, Igor?' 'Call them marthterth?' said Igor, with sudden venom and a light shower. 'Huh! Now the old Count, he wath a gentleman of the old thchool. He knew how it all workth. Proper evening dreth at all timeth, that'th the rule!' 'Evenin' dress, eh?' said Nanny. 'Meth! Thith lot only wear it in the evening, can you imagine that? The retht of the time it'th all thwanning around in fanthy waithtcoatth and lacy thkirtth! Hah! D'you know what thith lot have done?' 'Do tell. . .' 'They've oiled the hingeth!' Igor took a hefty pull of Nanny's special brandy. 'Thome of thothe thqueakth took bloody yearth to get right. But, oh no, now it'th "Igor, dean thothe thpiderth out of the dungeon" and "Igor, order up thome proper oil lampth, all thethe flickering torcheth are tho fifteen minuteth ago"! Tho the plathe lookth old? Being a vampire'th about continuity, ithn't it? You get lotht in the mountainth and thee a light burnin' in thome carthle, you got a right to expect proper thqueakin' doorth and thome old-world courtethy, don't you?' 'Ah, right. An' a bed in the room with a balcony outside,' said Nanny. 'My point egthactly!' 'Proper billowing curtains, too?' 'Damn right!' 'Real gutterin' candles?' 'I thpend ageth gettin' them properly dribbly. Not that anyone careth.' 'You got to get the details right, I always say,' said Nanny. 'Well, well, well ... so our king invited vampires, eh?' There was a thump as Igor slumped backwards and a tinny sound as the flask landed on the cobbles. Nanny picked it up and secreted it about her person. 'Good head for his drink,' she remarked. Not many people ever tasted Nanny Ogg's home-made brandy; it was technically impossible. Once it encountered the warmth of the human mouth it immediately turned into fumes. You drank it via your sinuses. 'What're we going to do?' said Agnes. 'Do? He invited 'em. They're guests,' said Nanny. 'I bet if I asked him Verence'd tell me to mind my own business. O' course, he wouldn't put it quite like that,' she added, since she knew the King had no suicidal tendencies. 'He'd prob'ly use the word "respect" two or three times at least. But it'd mean the same thing in the end.' 'But vampires. . . what's Granny going to say?' 'Listen, my girl, they'll be gone tomorrow . . . well, today, really. We'll just keep an eye on 'em and wave 'em goodbye when they go.' 'We don't even know what they look like!' Nanny looked at the recumbent Igor. 'On reflection, maybe I should've asked him,' she said. She brightened up. 'Still, there's one way to find them. That's something everyone knows about vampires. . .' In fact there are many things everyone knows about vampires, without really taking into account that perhaps the vampires know them by now, too.     The castle hall was a din. There was a mob around the buffet table. Nanny and Agnes helped out. 'Can o' pee, anyone?' said Nanny, shoving a tray towards a likely-looking group. 'I beg your pardon?' said someone. 'Oh . .. canapes. ..' He took a vol-au-vent and bit into it as he turned back to the group. '. . . so I said to his lordship What the hell is this?' He turned to find himself under close scrutiny by the wrinkled old lady in a pointy hat. 'Sorry?' she said. 'This . . . this . . . this is just mashed garlic'! 'Don't like garlic flavour, eh?' said Nanny sternly. 'I love garlic, but it doesn't like me! This isn't just garlic flavoured, woman, it's all garlic!' Nanny peered at her tray with theatrical shortsightedness. 'No, there's some . . . there's a bit of . . . you're right, perhaps we overdid it a gnat's . . . I'll just go and . . . just get some . . . I'll just go . . .' She collided with Agnes at the entrance to the kitchen. Two trays slid to the floor, spilling garlic vol-au-vents, garlic dip, garlic stuffed with garlic and tiny cubes of garlic on a stick, stuck into a garlic. 'Either there's a lot of vampires in these parts or we're doing something wrong,' said Agnes flatly. 'I've always said you can't have too much garlic,' said Nanny. 'Everyone else disagrees, Nanny.' 'All right, then. What else . . . ah! All vampires wear evening dress in the evenings, even this lot.' 'Everyone here is wearing some kind of evening dress, Nanny. Except us.' Nanny Ogg looked down. 'This is the dress I always wear in the evenin'.' 'Vampires aren't supposed to show up in a mirror, are they?' said Agnes. Nanny snapped her fingers. 'Good thinking!' she said. 'There's one in the lavvie. I'll kind of hover in there. Everyone's got to go sooner or later.' 'But what if a man comes in?' 'Oh, I won't mind,' said Nanny dismissively. 'I won't be embarrassed.' 'I think there may be objections,' said Agnes, trying to ignore the mental picture just conjured up. Nanny had a pleasant grin, but there had to be times when you didn't want it looking at you. 'We've got to do something. Supposing Granny were to turn up now, what would she think?' said Nanny. 'We could just ask,' said Agnes. 'What? "Hands up all vampires"?' 'Ladies?' They turned. The young man who had introduced himself as Vlad was approaching. Agnes began to blush. 'I think you were talking about vampires,' he said, taking a garlic pasty from Agnes's tray and biting into it with every sign of enjoyment. 'Could I be of assistance?' Nanny looked him up and down. 'Do you know much about them?' she said. 'Well, I am one,' he said. 'So I suppose the answer is yes. Charmed to meet you, Mrs Ogg.' He bowed and reached for her hand. 'Oh no you don't!' said Nanny, snatching it away. 'I don't hold with bloodsuckers!' 'I know. But I'm sure you shall in time. Would you like to come and meet my family?' 'They can bugger off! What was the King thinking of?' 'Nanny!' 'What?' 'You don't have to shout like that. It's not very . . . polite. I don't think-' 'Vlad de Magpyr,' said Vlad, bowing. '-is going to bite my neck!' shouted Nanny. 'Of course not,' said Vlad. 'We had some sort of bandit earlier. Mrs Ogg is, I suspect, a meal to be savoured. Any more of these garlic things? They're rather piquant.' 'You what?' said Nanny. 'You just . . . killed someone?' said Agnes. 'Of course. We are vampires,' said Vlad. 'Or, we prefer, vampyres. With a "y". It's more modern. Now, do come and meet my father.' 'You actually killed someone?' said Agnes. 'Right! That's it!' snarled Nanny, marching away. 'I'm getting Shawn and he's gonna come back with a big sharp-' Vlad coughed quietly. Nanny stopped. 'There are several other things people know about vampires,' he said. 'And one is that they have considerable control over the minds of lesser creatures. So forget all about vampires, dear ladies. That is an order. And do come and meet my family.' Agnes blinked. She was aware that there had been . . . something. She could feel the tail of it, slipping away between her fingers. 'Seems a nice young man,' said Nanny, in a mildly stunned voice. 'I . . . he . . . yes,' said Agnes. Something surfaced in her mind, like a message in a bottle written indistinctly in some foreign language. She tried, but she could not read it. 'I wish Granny was here,' she said at last. 'She'd know what to do.' 'What about?' said Nanny. 'She ain't good at parties.' 'I feel a bit . . . odd,' said Agnes. 'Ah, could be the drink,' said Nanny. 'I haven't had any!' 'No? Well, there's the problem right there. Come on.' They hurried into the hall. Even though it was now well after midnight, the noise level was approaching the pain threshold. When the midnight hour lies on the glass like a big cocktail onion, there's always an extra edge to the laughter. Vlad gave them an encouraging wave and beckoned them over to a group around King Verence. 'Ah, Agnes and Nanny,' said the King. 'Count, may I present–' 'Gytha Ogg and Agnes Nitt, I believe,' said the man the King had just been talking to. He bowed. For some reason a tiny part of Agnes was expecting a sombrelooking man with an exciting widow's-peak hairstyle and an opera cloak. She couldn't think why. This man looked like . . . well, like a gentleman of independent means and an inquiring mind, perhaps, the kind of man who goes for long walks in the morning and spends the afternoons improving his mind in his own private library or doing small interesting exper-iments on parsnips and never, ever, worrying about money. There was something glossy about him, and also a sort of urgent, hungry enthusiasm, the kind you get when someone has just read a really interesting book and is determined to tell someone all about it. 'Allow me to present the Countess Magpyr,' he said. 'These are the witches I told you about, dear. I believe you've met my son? And this is my daughter, Lacrimosa.' Agnes met the gaze of a thin girl in a white dress, with very long black hair and far too much eye make-up. There is such a thing as hate at first sight. 'The Count was just telling me how he is planning to move into the castle and rule the country,' said Verence. 'And I was saying that I think we shall be honoured.' 'Well done,' said Nanny. 'But if you don't mind, I don't want to miss the weasel man. . .' 'The trouble is that people always think of vampires in terms of their diet,' said the Count, as Nanny hurried away. 'It's really rather insulting. You eat animal flesh and vegetables, but it hardly defines you, does it?' Verence's face was contorted in a smile, but it looked glassy and unreal. 'But you do drink human blood?' he said. 'Of course. And sometimes we kill people, although hardly at all these days. In any case, where exactly is the harm in that? Prey and hunter, hunter and prey. The sheep was designed as dinner for the wolf, the wolf as a means of preventing overgrazing by the sheep. If you examine your teeth, sire, you'll see that they are designed for a particular kind of diet and, indeed, your whole body is constructed to take advantage of it. And so it is with us. I'm sure the nuts and cabbages do not blame you. Hunter and prey are all just part of the great cycle of life.' 'Fascinating,' said Verence. Little beads of sweat were rolling down his face. 'Of course, in Uberwald everyone understands this instinctively,' said the Countess. 'But it is rather a backward place for the children. We are so looking forward to Lancre.' 'Very glad to hear it,' said Verence. 'And so kind of you to invite us,' she went on. 'Otherwise we could not have come, of course.' 'Not exactly,' said the Count, beaming at his wife. 'But I have to admit that the prohibition against entering places uninvited has proved curiously . . . durable. It must be something to do with ancient territorial instincts. But,' he added brightly, 'I have been working on an instructional technique which I'm sure will, within a few years-' 'Oh, don't let's go through all that dull stuff again,' said Lacrimosa. 'Yes, I suppose it can sound a little tedious,' said the Count, smiling benevolently at his daughter. 'Has anyone any more of that wonderful garlic dip?' The King still looked uneasy, Agnes noticed. Which was odd, because the Count and his family seemed absolutely charming and what they were saying made perfect sense. Everything was perfectly all right. 'Exactly,' said Vlad, beside her. 'Do you dance, Miss Nitt?' On the other side of the hall, the Lancre Light Symphony Orchestra (cond. S. Ogg) was striking up and out at random. 'Ur . . .' She stopped it turning into a giggle. 'Not really. Not very well. . .' Didn't you listen to what they were saying? They're vampires! 'Shut up,' she said aloud. 'I beg your pardon?' said Vlad, looking puzzled. 'And they're . . . well, they're not a very good orchestra . . .' Didn't you pay any attention to what they were saying at all, you useless lump? 'They're a very bad orchestra,' said Vlad. 'Well, the King only bought the instruments last month and basically they're trying to learn together-' Chop his head off! Give him a garlic enema! 'Are you all right? You really know there are no vampires here, don't you. . .' He's controlling you! Perdita screamed. They're . . . affecting people! 'I'm a bit . . . faint from all the excitement,' Agnes mumbled. 'I think I'll go home.' Some instinct at bonemarrow level made her add, 'I'll ask Nanny to go with me.' Vlad gave her an odd look, as if she wasn't reacting in quite the right way. Then he smiled. Agnes noticed that he had very white teeth. 'I don't think I've ever met anyone like you, Miss Nitt,' he said. 'There's something so . . . inner about you.' That's me! That's me! He can't work me out! Now let's both get out of here! yelled Perdita. 'But we shall meet again.' Agnes gave him a nod and staggered away, clutching at her head. It felt like a ball of cotton wool in which there was, inexplicably, a needle. She passed Mightily Oats, who'd dropped his book on the floor and was sitting groaning with his head in his hands. He raised it to look at her. 'Er . . . miss, have you anything that might help my head?' he said. 'It really is ... rather painful. . .' 'The Queen makes up some sort of headache pills out of willow bark,' Agnes panted, and hurried on. Nanny Ogg was standing morosely with a pint in her hand, a hitherto unheard-of combination. 'The weasel juggler didn't turn up,' she said. 'Well, I'm going to put out the hard word on him. He's had it in showbusiness in these parts.' 'Could you . . . help me home, Nanny?' 'So what if he got bitten on the essentials, that's all part ofAre you all right?' 'I feel really awful, Nanny.' 'Let's go, then. All the good beer's gone and I'm not stoppin' anyway if there's nothin' to laugh at.' The wind was whistling across the sky when they walked back to Agnes's cottage. In fact there seemed more whistle than wind. The leafless trees creaked as they passed, the weak moonlight filling the eaves of the woods with dangerous shadows. Clouds were piling in, and there was more rain on the way. Agnes noticed Nanny pick up something as they left the town behind them. It was a stick. She'd never known a witch carry a stick at night before. 'Why have you got that, Nanny?' 'What? Oh? Dunno, really. It's a rattly old night, ain't it . . . ?' 'But you're never frightened of anything in Lan-' Several things pushed through the bushes and clattered on to the road ahead. For a moment Agnes thought they were horses, until the moonlight caught them. Then they were gone, into the shadows on the other side of the road. She heard galloping among the trees. 'Haven't seen any of those for a long time,' said Nanny. 'I've never seen centaurs at all except in pictures,' said Agnes. 'Must've come down out of Uberwald,' said Nanny. 'Nice to see them about again.' Agnes hurriedly lit the candles when she got into the cottage, and wished there were bolts on the door. 'Just sit down,' said Nanny. 'I'll get a cup of water, I know my way around here.' 'It's all right, I-' Agnes's left arm twitched. To her horror it swung at the elbow and waved its hand up and down in front of her face, as if guided by a mind of its own. 'Feeling a bit warm, are you?' said Nanny. 'I'll get the water!' panted Agnes. She rushed into the kitchen, gripping her left wrist with her right hand. It shook itself free, grabbed a knife from the draining board and stabbed it into the wall, dragging it so that it formed crude letters in the crumbling plaster: VMPIR It dropped the knife, grabbed at the hair on the back of Agnes's head and thrust her face within inches of the letters. 'You all right in there?' Nanny called from the next room. 'Er, yes, but I think I'm trying to tell me something-' A movement made her turn. A small blue man wearing a blue cap was staring at her from the shelves over the washcopper. He stuck out his tongue, made a very small obscene gesture and disappeared behind a bag of washing crystals. 'Nanny?' 'Yes, luv?' 'Are there such things as blue mice?' 'Not while you're sober, dear.' 'I think. . . I'm owed a drink, then. Is there any brandy left?' Nanny came in, uncorking the flask. 'I topped it up at the party. Of course, it's only shopbought stuff, you couldn't-' Agnes's left hand snatched it and poured it down her throat. Then she coughed so hard that some of it went up her nose. 'Hang on, hang on, it's not that weak,' said Nanny. Agnes plonked the flask down on the kitchen table. 'Right,' she said, and her voice sounded quite different to Nanny. 'My name is Perdita and I'm taking over this body right now.'     Hodgesaargh noticed the smell of burnt wood as he ambled back to the mews but put it down to the bonfire in the courtyard. He'd left the party early. No one had wanted to talk about hawks. The smell was very strong when he looked in on the birds and saw the little flame in the middle of the floor. He stared at it for a second, then picked up a water bucket and threw it. The flame continued to flicker gently on a bare stone that was awash with water. Hodgesaargh looked at the birds. They were watching it with interest; normally they'd be frantic in the presence of fire. Hodgesaargh was never one to panic. He watched it for a while, and then took a piece of wood and gently touched it to the flame. The fire leapt on to the wood and went on burning. The wood didn't even char. He found another twig and brushed it against the flame, which slid easily from one to the other. There was one flame. It was clear there wasn't going to be two. Half the bars in the window had been burned away, and there was some scorched wood at the end of the mews, where the old nestboxes had been. Above it, a few stars shone through rags of mist over a charred hole in the roof. Something had burned here, Hodgesaargh saw. Fiercely, by the look of it. But also in a curiously local way, as if all the heat had been somehow contained. . . He reached towards the flame dancing on the end of the stick. It was warm, but . . . not as hot as it should be. Now it was on his finger. It tingled. As he waved it around, the head of every bird turned to watch it. By its light, he poked around in the charred remains of the nestboxes. In the ashes were bits of broken eggshell. Hodgesaargh picked them up and carried them into the crowded little room at the end of the mews which served as workshop and bedroom. He balanced the flame on a saucer. In here, where it was quieter, he could hear it making a slight sizzling noise. In the dim glow he looked along the one crowded bookshelf over his bed and pulled down a huge ragged volume on the cover of which someone had written, centuries ago, the word 'Burds'. The book was a huge ledger. The spine had been cut and widened inexpertly several times so that more pages could be pasted in. The falconers of Lancre knew a lot about birds. The kingdom was on a main migratory route between the Hub and the Rim. The hawks had brought down many strange species over the centuries and the falconers had, very painstakingly, taken notes. The pages were thick with drawings and closely spaced writing, the entries copied and re-copied and updated over the years. The occasional feather carefully glued to a page had added to the thickness of the thing. No one had ever bothered with an index, but some past falconer had considerately arranged many of the entries into alphabetical order. Hodgesaargh glanced again at the flame burning steadily in its saucer, and then, handling the crackling pages with care, turned to 'F'. After some browsing, he eventually found what he was looking for under 'P'. Back in the mews, in the deepest shadow, something cowered.     There were three shelves of books in Agnes's cottage. By witch standards, that was a giant library. Two very small blue figures lay on top of the books, watching the scene with interest. Nanny Ogg backed away, waving the poker. 'It's all right,' said Agnes. 'It's me again, Agnes Nitt, but . . . She's here but.. . I'm sort of holding on. Yes! Yes! All right! All right, just shut up, will y- Look, it's my body, you're just a figment of my imagina- Okay! Okayl Perhaps it's not quite so clear c- Let me just talk to Nanny, will you?' 'Which one are you now?' said Nanny Ogg. 'I'm still Agnes, of course.' She rolled her eyes up. 'All right! I'm Agnes currently being advised by Perdita, who is also me. In a way. And I'm not too fat, thank you so very much!' 'How many of you are there in there?' said Nanny. 'What do you mean, "room for ten"?' shouted Agnes. 'Shut up! Listen, Perdita says there were vampires at the party. The Magpyr family, she says. She can't understand how we acted. They were putting a kind of . . . 'fluence over everyone. Including me, which is why she was able to break thr- Yes, all right, I'm telling it, thank you!' 'Why not her, then?' said Nanny. 'Because she's got a mind of her own! Nanny, can you remember anything they actually said?' 'Now you come to ' mention it, no. But they seemed nice enough people.' 'And you remember talking to Igor?' 'Who's Igor?' The tiny blue figures watched, fascinated, for the next halfhour. Nanny sat back at the end of it and stared at the ceiling for a while. 'Why should we believe her?' she said eventually. 'Because she's me .' 'They do say that inside every fat girl is a thin girl and-' Nanny began. 'Yes,' said Agnes bitterly. 'I've heard it. Yes. She's the thin girl. I'm the lot of chocolate.' Nanny leaned towards Agnes's ear and raised her voice. 'How're you gettin' on in there? Everything all right, is it? Treatin' you all right, is she?' 'Haha, Nanny. Very funny.' 'They were saying all this stuff about drinkin' blood and killin' people and everyone was just noddin' and sayin', 'Well, well, how very fascinatin"?' 'Yes!' 'And eatin' garlic?' 'Yes!' 'That can't be right, can it?' 'I don't know, perhaps we used the wrong sort of garlic!' Nanny rubbed her chin, torn between the vampiric revelation and prurient curiosity about Perdita. 'How does Perdita work, then?' she said. Agnes sighed. 'Look, you know the part of you that wants to do all the things you don't dare do, and thinks the thoughts you don't dare think?' Nanny's face stayed blank. Agnes floundered. 'Like . . . maybe . . . rip off all your clothes and run naked in the rain?' she hazarded. 'Oh, yes. Right,' said Nanny. 'Well . . . I suppose Perdita is that part of me.' 'Really? I've always been that part of me,' said Nanny. 'The important thing is to remember where you left your clothes.' Agnes remembered too late that Nanny Ogg was in many ways a very uncomplicated personality. 'Mind you, I think I know what you mean,' Nanny went on in a more thoughtful voice. 'There's times when I've wanted to do things and stopped meself . . .' She shook her head. 'But . . . vampires . . . Verence wouldn't be so stupid as to send an invitation to vampires, would he?' She paused for thought. 'Yes, he would. Prob'ly think of it as offering the hand of friendship.' She stood up. 'Right, they won't have left yet. Let's get straight to the jelly. You get extra garlic and a few stakes, I'll round up Shawn and Jason and the lads.' 'It won't work, Nanny. Perdita saw what they can do. The moment you get near them you'll forget all about it. They do something to your mind, Nanny.' Nanny hesitated. 'Can't say I know that much about vampires,' she said. 'Perdita thinks they can tell what you're thinking, too.' 'Then this is Esme's type of stuff,' said Nanny. 'Messing with minds and so on. It's meat and drink to her.' 'Nanny, they were talking about staying! We have to do something!' 'Well, where is she?' Nanny almost wailed. 'Esme ought to be sortin' this out!' 'Maybe they've got to her first?' 'You don't think so, do you?' said Nanny, now looking quite panicky. 'I can't think about a vampire getting his teeth into Esme.' 'Don't worry, dog doesn't eat dog.' It was Perdita who blurted it out, but it was Agnes who got the blow. It wasn't a ladylike slap of disapproval. Nanny Ogg had reared some strapping sons; the Ogg forearm was a power in its own right. When Agnes looked up from the hearthrug Nanny was rubbing some life back into her hand. She gave Agnes a solemn look. 'We'll say no more about that, shall we?' she commanded. 'I ain't gen'rally given to physicality of that nature but it saves a lot of arguing. Now, we're goin' back to the castle. We're going to sort this out right now.'     Hodgesaargh shut the book and looked at the flame. It was true, then. There'd even been a picture of one just like it in the book, painstakingly drawn by another royal falconer two hundred years before. He wrote that he'd found the thing up on the high meadows, one spring. It'd burned for three years and then he'd lost it somewhere. If you looked at it closely, you could even see the detail. It was not exactly a flame. It was more like a bright feather . . . Well, Lancre was on one of the main migration routes, for birds of all sorts. It was only a matter of time. So . . . the new hatchling was around. They needed time to grow, it said in the book. Odd that it should lay an egg here, because it said in the book that it always hatched in the burning deserts of Klatch. He went and looked at the birds in the mews. They were still very alert. Yes, it all made sense. It had flown in here, among the comfort of other birds, and laid its egg, just like it said it did in the book, and then it had burned itself up to hatch the new bird. If Hodgesaargh had a fault, it lay in his rather utilitarian view of the bird world. There were birds that you hunted, and there were birds you hunted with. Oh, there were other sorts, tweeting away in the bushes, but they didn't really count. It occurred to him that if ever there was a bird you could hunt with, it'd be the phoenix. Oh, yes. It'd be weak, and young, and it wouldn't have gone far. Hmm . . . birds tended to think the same way, after all. It would have helped if there was one picture in the book. In fact, there were several, all carefully drawn by ancient falconers who claimed it was a firebird they'd seen. Apart from the fact that they all had wings and a beak, no two were remotely alike. One looked very much like a heron. Another looked like a goose. One, and he scratched his head about this, appeared to be a sparrow. Bit of a puzzle, he decided, and left it at that and selected a drawing that looked at least slightly foreign. He glanced at the bird gloves hanging on their hooks. He was good at rearing young birds. He could get them eating out of his hand. Later on, of course, they just ate his hand. Yes. Catch it young and train it to the wrist. It'd have to be a Champion hunting bird. Hodgesaargh couldn't imagine a phoenix as quarry. For one thing, how could you cook it? . .. and in the darkest corner of the mews, something hopped on to a perch . . .     Once again Agnes had to run to keep up as Nanny Ogg strode into the courtyard, elbows pumping furiously. The old lady marched up to a group of men standing around one of the barrels and grabbed two of them, spilling their drinks. Had it not been Nanny Ogg, this would have been a challenge equal to throwing down a glove or, in slightly less exalted circles, smashing a bottle on the edge of a bar. But the men looked sheepish and one or two of the others in the circle even scuffled their feet and made an attempt to hide their pints behind their backs. 'Jason? Darren? You come along of me,' Nanny commanded. 'We're after vampires, right? Any sharp stakes around here?' 'No, Mum,' said Jason, Lancre's only blacksmith. Then he raised his hand. 'But ten minutes ago the cook come out and said, did anyone want all these nibbly things that someone had mucked up with garlic and I et 'em, Mum.' Nanny sniffed and then took a step back, fanning her hand in front of her face. 'Yeah, that should do it all right,' she said. 'If I give you the signal, you're to burp hugely, understand?' 'I don't think it'll work, Nanny,' said Agnes, as boldly as she dared. 'I don't see why, it's nearly knocking me down.' 'I told you, you won't get close enough, even if it'll work at all. Perdita could feel it. It's like being drunk.' 'I'll be ready for 'em this time,' said Nanny. 'I've learned a thing or two from Esme.' 'Yes, but she's-' Agnes was going to say 'better at them than you', but changed it to 'not here . . .' 'That's as may be, but I'd rather face 'em now than explain to Esme that I didn't. Come on.' Agnes followed the Oggs, but very uneasily. She wasn't sure how far she trusted Perdita. A few guests had departed, but the castle had laid on a pretty good feast and Ramtop people at any social level were never ones to pass up a laden table. Nanny glanced at the crowd and grabbed Shawn, who was passing with a tray. 'Where's the vampires?' 'What, Mum?' 'That Count . . . Magpie. . .' 'Magpyr,' said Agnes. 'Him,' said Nanny. 'He's not a . . . he's gone up to . . . the solar, Mum. They all have- What's that smell of garlic, Mum?' 'It's your brother. All right, let's keep going.' The solar was right at the top of the keep. It was old, cold and draughty. Verence had put glass in the huge windows, at his queen's insistence, which just meant that now the huge room attracted the more cunning, insidious kind of draught. But it was the royal room – not as public as the great hall, but the place where the King received visitors when he was being formally informal. The Nanny Ogg expeditionary force corkscrewed up the spiral staircase. She advanced across the good yet threadbare carpet to the group seated around the fire. She took a deep breath. 'Ah, Mrs Ogg,' said Verence, desperately. 'Do join us.' Agnes looked sideways at Nanny, and saw her face contort into a strange smile. The Count was sitting in the big chair by the fire, with Vlad standing behind him. They both looked very handsome, she thought. Compared to them Verence, in his clothes that never seemed to fit right and permanently harassed expression, looked out of place. 'The Count was just explaining how Lancre will become a duchy of his lands in Uberwald,' said Verence. 'But we'll still be referred to as a kingdom, which I think is very reasonable of him, don't you agree?' 'Very handsome suggestion,' said Nanny. 'There will be taxes, of course,' said the Count. 'Not onerous. We don't want blood – figuratively speaking!' He beamed at the joke. 'Seems reasonable to me,' said Nanny. 'It is, isn't it?' said the Count. 'I knew it would work out so well. And I am so pleased, Verence, to see your essential modem attitude. People have quite the wrong idea about vampires, you see. Are we fiendish killers?' He beamed at them. 'Well, yes, of course we are. But only when necessary. Frankly, we could hardly hope to rule a country if we went around killing everyone all the time, could we? There'd be none left to rule, for one thing!' There was polite laughter, loudest of all from the Count. It made perfect sense to Agnes. The Count was clearly a fair-minded man. Anyone who didn't think so deserved to die. 'And we are only human,' said the Countess. 'Well . . . in fact, not only human. But if you prick us do we not bleed? Which always seems such a waste.' They've got you again, said a voice in her mind. Vlad's head jerked up. Agnes felt him staring at her. 'We are, above all, up to date,' said the Count. 'And we do like what you've done to this castle, I must say.' 'Oh, those torches back home!' said the Countess, rolling her eyes. 'And some of the things in the dungeons, well, when I saw them I nearly died of shame. So . . . fifteen centuries ago. If one is a vampire then one is,' she gave a deprecating little laugh, 'a vampire. Coffins, yes, of course, but there's no point in skulking around as if you're ashamed of what you are, is there? We all have . . . needs.' You're all standing around like rabbits in front of a fox ! Perdita raged in the caverns of Agnes's brain. 'Oh!’  said the Countess, clapping her hands together. 'I see you have a pianoforte!' It stood under a shroud in a corner of the room where it had stood for four months now. Verence had ordered it because he'd heard they were very modern, but the only person in the kingdom who'd come close to mastering it was Nanny Ogg who would, as she put it, come up occasionally for a tinkle on the ivories.[11] Then it had been covered over on the orders of Magrat and the palace rumour was that Verence had got an earbashing for buying what was effectively a murdered elephant. 'Lacrimosa would so like to play for you,' the Countess commanded. 'Oh, Mother,' said Lacrimosa. 'I'm sure we should love it,' said Verence. Agnes wouldn't have noticed the sweat running down his face if Perdita hadn't pointed it out: He's trying to fight it, she said. Aren't you glad you've got me? There was some bustling while a wad of sheet music was pulled out of the piano stool and the young lady sat down to play. She glared at Agnes before beginning. There was some sort of chemistry there, although it was the sort that results in the entire building being evacuated. It's a racket, said the Perdita within, after the first few bars. Everyone's looking as though it's wonderful but it's a din! Agnes concentrated. The music was beautiful but if she really paid attention, with Perdita nudging her, it wasn't really there at all. It sounded like someone playing scales, badly and angrily. I can say that at any time, she thought. Any time I want, I can just wake up. Everyone else applauded politely. Agnes tried to, but found that her left hand was suddenly on strike. Perdita was getting stronger in her left arm. Vlad was beside her so quickly that she wasn't even aware that he'd moved. 'You are a . . . fascinating woman, Miss Nitt,' he said. 'Such lovely hair, may I say? But who is Perdita?' 'No one, really,' Agnes mumbled. She fought against the urge to bunch her left hand into a fist. Perdita was screaming at her again. Vlad stroked a strand of her hair. It was, she knew, good hair. It wasn't simply big hair, it was enormous hair, as if she was trying to counterbalance her body. It was glossy, it never split, and was extremely well behaved except for a tendency to eat combs. 'Eat combs?' said Vlad, coiling the hair around his finger. 'Yes, it-' He can see what you're thinking. Vlad looked puzzled again, like someone trying to make out some faint noise. 'You . . . can resist, can't you?' he said. 'I was watching you when Lacci was playing the piano and losing. Do you have any vampire blood in you?' 'What? No!' 'It could be arranged, haha.' He grinned. It was the sort of grin that Agnes supposed was called infectious but, then, so was measles. It filled her immediate future. Something was pouring over her like a pink fluffy cloud saying: it's all right, everything is fine, this is exactly right . . . 'Look at Mrs Ogg there,' said Vlad. 'Grinning like a pumpkin, ain't she? And she is apparently one of the more powerful witches in the mountains. It's almost distressing, don't you think?' Tell him you know he can read minds, Perdita commanded. And again, the puzzled, quizzical look. 'You can-' Agnes began. 'No, not exactly. Just people,' said Vlad. 'One learns, one learns. One picks things up.' He flung himself down on a sofa, one leg over the arm, and stared thoughtfully at her. 'Things will be changing, Agnes Nitt,' he said. 'My father is right. Why lurk in dark castles? Why be ashamed? We're vampires. Or, rather, vampyres. Father's a bit keen on the new spelling. He says it indicates a clean break with a stupid and superstitious past. In any case, it's not our fault. We were born vampires.' 'I thought you became–' '–vampires by being bitten? Dear me, no. Oh, we can turn people into vampires, it's an easy technique, but what would be the point? When you eat . . . now what is it you eat? Oh yes, chocolate . . . you don't want to turn it into another Agnes Nitt, do you? Less chocolate to go around.' He sighed. 'Oh dear, superstition, superstition everywhere we turn. Isn't it true that we've been here at least ten minutes and your neck is quite free of anything except a small amount of soap you didn't wash off?' Agnes's hand flew to her throat. 'We notice these things,' said Vlad. 'And now we're here to notice them. Oh, Father is powerful in his way, and quite an advanced thinker, but I don't think even he is aware of the possibilities. I can't tell you how good it is to be out of that place, Miss Nitt. The werewolves . . . oh dear, the werewolves . . . Marvellous people, it goes without saying, and of course the Baron has a certain rough style, but really . . . give them a good deer hunt, a warm spot in front of the fire and a nice big bone and the rest of the world can go hang. We have done our best, we really have. No one has done more than Father to bring our part of the country into the Century of the Fruitbat ' 'It's nearly over-' Agnes began. 'Perhaps that's why he's so keen,' said Vlad. 'The place is just full of . . . well, remnants. I mean . . . centaurs? Really! They've got no business surviving. They're out of place. And frankly all the lower races are just as bad. The trolls are stupid, the dwarfs are devious, the pixies are evil and the gnomes stick in your teeth. Time they were gone. Driven out. We have great hopes of Lancre.' He looked around disdainfully. 'After some redecoration.' Agnes looked back at Nanny and her sons. They were listening quite contentedly to the worst music since Shawn Ogg's bagpipes had been dropped down the stairs. 'And . . . you're taking our country?' she said. 'Just like that?' Vlad gave her another smile, stood up, and walked towards her. 'Oh, yes. Bloodlessly. Well . . . metaphorically. You really are quite remarkable, Miss Nitt. The Uberwald girls are so sheep-like. But you . . . you're concealing something from me. Everything I feel tells me you're quite under my power – and yet you're not.' He chuckled. 'This is delightful. . .' Agnes felt her mind unravelling. The pink fog was blowing through her head . . . . . . and looming out of it, deadly and mostly concealed, was the iceberg of Perdita. As Agnes withdrew into the pinkness she felt the tingle spread down her arms and legs. It was not pleasant. It was like sensing someone standing right behind you and then feeling them take one step forward. Agnes would have pushed him away. That is, Agnes would have dithered and tried to talk her way out of things, but if push had come to shove then she'd have pushed hard. But Perdita struck, and when her hand was halfway around she turned it palm out and curled her fingers to bring her nails into play . . . He caught her wrist, his hand moving in a blur. 'Well done,' he said, laughing. His other hand shot out and caught her other arm as it swung. 'I like a woman with spirit!' However, he had run out of hands, and Perdita still had a knee in reserve. Vlad's eyes crossed and he made that small sound best recorded as 'ghni . . .' 'Magnificent!' he croaked as he folded up. Perdita pulled herself away and ran over to Nanny Ogg, grabbing the woman's arm. 'Nanny, we are leaving!' 'Are we, dear?' said Nanny calmly, not making a move. 'And Jason and Darren too!' Perdita didn't read as much as Agnes. She thought books were bor-ing. But now she really needed to know: what did you use against vampires? Holy symbols! Agnes prompted from within. Perdita looked around desperately. Nothing in the room looked particularly holy. Religion, apart from its use as a sort of cosmic registrar, had never caught on in Lancre. 'Daylight is always good, my dear,' said the Countess, who must have caught the edge of her thought. 'Your uncle always had big windows and easily twitched aside curtains, didn't he, Count?' 'Yes indeed,' said the Count. 'And when it came to running water, he always kept the moat flowing perfectly, didn't he?' 'Fed from a mountain stream, I think,' said the Count. 'And, for a vampire, he always seemed to have so many ornamental items around the castle that could be bent or broken into the shape of some religious symbol, as I recall.' 'He certainly did. A vampire of the old school.' 'Yes.' The Countess gave her husband a smile. 'The stupid school.' She turned to Perdita and looked her up and down. 'So I think you will find we are here to stay, my dear. Although you do seem to have made an impression on my son. Come here, girl. Let me have a good look at you.' Even cushioned inside her own head Agnes felt the weight of the vampire's will hit Perdita like an iron bar, pushing her down. Like the other end of a seesaw, Agnes rose. 'Where's Magrat? What have you done with her?' she said. 'Putting the baby to bed, I believe,' said the Countess, raising her eyebrows. 'A lovely child.' 'Granny Weatherwax is going to hear about this, and you'll wish you'd never been born . . . or un-born or reborn or whatever you are!' 'We look forward to meeting her,' said the Count calmly. 'But here we are, and I don't seem to see this famous lady with us. Perhaps you should go and fetch her? You could take your friends. And when you see her, Miss Nitt, you can tell her that there is no reason why witches and vampires should fight.' Nanny Ogg stirred. Jason shifted in his seat. Agnes pulled them upright and towards the stairs. 'We'll be back!' she shouted. The Count nodded. 'Good,' he said. 'We are famous for our hospitality.'     It was still dark when Hodgesaargh set out. If you were hunting a phoenix, he reasoned, the dark was probably the best time. Light showed up better in the darkness. He'd packed a portable wire cage after considering the charred bars of the window, and he'd also spent some time on the glove. It was basically a puppet, made of yellow cloth with some purple and blue rags tacked on. It was not, he conceded, very much like the drawing of the phoenix, but in his experience birds weren't choosy observers. Newly hatched birds were prepared to accept practically anything as their parent. Anyone who'd hatched eggs under a broody hen knew that ducklings could be made to think they were chicks, and poor William the buzzard was a case in point. The fact that a young phoenix never saw its parent and therefore didn't know what it was supposed to look like might be a drawback in getting its trust, but this was unknown territory and Hodgesaargh was prepared to try anything. Like bait, for example. He'd packed meat and grain, although the drawing certainly suggested a hawklike bird, but in case it needed to eat inflammable materials as well he also put in a bag of mothballs and a pint of fish oil. Nets were out of the question, and bird lime was not to be thought of. Hodgesaargh had his pride. Anyway, they probably wouldn't work. Since anything might be worth trying, he'd also adapted a duck lure, trying to achieve a sound described by alongdead falconer as 'like unto the cry of a buzzard yet of a lower pitch'. He wasn't too happy about the result but, on the other hand, maybe a young phoenix didn't know what a phoenix was meant to sound like, either. It might work, and if he didn't try it he'd always be wondering. He set out. Soon a cry like a duck in a power dive was heard among the damp, dark hills.     The pre-dawn light was grey on the horizon and a shower of sleet had made the leaves sparkle when Granny Weatherwax left her cottage. There had been so much to do. What she'd chosen to take with her was slung in a sack tied across her back with string. She'd left the broomstick in the corner by the fire. She wedged the door open with a stone and then, without once looking back, strode off through the woods. Down in the villages, the cocks crowed in response to a sunrise hidden somewhere beyond the clouds. An hour later, a broomstick settled gently on the lawn. Nanny Ogg alighted and hurried to the back door. Her foot kicked something holding it open. She glared at the stone as if it was something dangerous, and then edged round it and into the gloom of the cottage. She came out a few minutes later, looking worried. Her next move was towards the water butt. She broke the film of ice with her hand and pulled out a piece, looked at it for a moment and then tossed it away. People often got the wrong idea about Nanny Ogg, and she took care to see that they did. One thing they often got wrong was the idea that she never thought further than the bottom of the glass. Up in a nearby tree a magpie chattered at her. She threw a stone at it. Agnes arrived half an hour later. She preferred to go on foot whenever possible. She suspected that she overhung too much. Nanny Ogg was sitting on a chair just inside the door, smoking her pipe. She took it out of her mouth and nodded. 'She's gorn,' she said. 'Gone? Just when we need her?' said Agnes. 'What do you mean?' 'She ain't here,' Nanny expanded. 'Perhaps she's just out?' said Agnes. 'Gorn,' said Nanny. 'These past two hours, if I'm any judge.' 'How do you know that?' Once – probably even yesterday – Nanny would have alluded vaguely to magical powers. It was a measure of her concern that, today, she got right to the jelly. 'First thing she does in the mornings, rain or shine, is wash her face in the water butt,' she said. 'Someone broke the ice two hours ago. You can see where it's frozed over again.' 'Oh, is that all?' said Agnes. 'Well, perhaps she's got business-' 'You come and see,' said Nanny, standing up. The kitchen was spotless. Every flat surface had been scrubbed. The fireplace had been swept-and a new fire laid. Most of the cottage's smaller contents had been laid out on the table. There were three cups, three plates, three knives, a cleaver, three forks, three spoons, two ladles, a pair of scissors and three candlesticks. A wooden box was packed with needles and thread and pins . . . If it was possible for anything to be polished, it had been. Someone had even managed to buff up a shine on the old pewter candlesticks. Agnes felt the little knot of tension grow inside her. Witches didn't own much. The cottage owned things. They were not yours to take away. This looked like an inventory. Behind her, Nanny Ogg was opening and shutting drawers in the ancient dresser. 'She's left it all neat,' Nanny said. 'She's even chipped all the rust off the kettle. The larder's all bare except for some hobnailed cheese and suicide biscuits. It's the same in the bedroom. Her "I ATE'NT DEAD" card is hanging behind the door. And the guzunda's so clean you could eat your tea out of it, if the fancy took you that way. And she's taken the box out of the dresser.' 'What box?' 'Oh, she keeps stuff in it,' said Nanny. 'Memororabililia.' 'Mem-?' 'You know . . . keepsakes and whatnot. Stuff that's hers-' 'What's this?' said Agnes, holding up a green glass ball. 'Oh, Magrat passed that on to her,' said Nanny, lifting up a corner of the rug and peering under it. 'It's a float our Wayne brought back from the seaside once. It's a buoy for the fishing nets.' 'I didn't know buoys had glass balls,' said Agnes. She groaned inwardly, and felt the blush unfold. But Nanny hadn't noticed. It was then she realized how really serious this was. Nanny would normally leap on such a gift like a cat on a feather. Nanny could find an innuendo in 'Good morning.' She could certainly find one in 'innuendo'. And 'buoys with glass balls' should have lasted her all week. She'd be accosting total strangers and saying, 'You'll never guess what Agnes Nitt said. . .' She ventured 'I said-' 'Dunno much about fishing, really,' said Nanny. She straightened up, biting her thumbnail thoughtfully. 'Something's wrong with all this,' she said. 'The box . . . she wasn't going to leave anything behind...' 'Granny wouldn't go, would she?' said Agnes nervously. 'I mean, not actually leave. She's always here.' 'Like I told you last night, she's been herself lately,' said Nanny vaguely. She sat down in the rocking chair. 'You mean she's not been herself, don't you?' said Agnes. 'I knows exactly what I means, girl. When she's herself she snaps at people and sulks and makes herself depressed. Ain't you ever heard of taking people out of themselves? Now shut up, 'cos I'm thinkin'.' Agnes looked down at the green ball in her hands. A glass fishing float, five hundred miles from the sea. An ornament, like a shell. Not a crystal ball. You could use it like a crystal ball but it wasn't a crystal ball . . . and she knew why that was important. Granny was a very traditional witch. Witches hadn't always been popular. There might even be times – there had been times, long ago – when it was a good idea not to advertise what you were, and that was why all these things on the table didn't betray their owner at all. There was no need for that any more, there hadn't been in Lancre for hundreds of years, but some habits get passed down in the blood. In fact things now worked the other way. Being a witch was an honourable trade in the mountains, but only the young ones invested in real crystal balls and coloured knives and dribbly candles. The old ones . . . they stuck with simple kitchen cutlery, fishing floats, bits of wood, whose very ordinariness subtly advertised their status. Any fool could be a witch with a runic knife, but it took skill to be one with an apple-corer. A sound she hadn't been hearing stopped abruptly, and the silence echoed. Nanny glanced up. 'Clock's stopped,' she said. 'It's not even telling the right time,' said Agnes, turning to look at it. 'Oh, she just kept it for the tick,' said Nanny. Agnes put down the glass ball. 'I'm going to look around some more,' she said. She'd learned to look around when she visited someone's home, because in one way it was a piece of clothing and had grown to fit their shape. It might show not just what they'd been doing, but what they'd been thinking. You might be visiting someone who expected you to know everything about everything, and in those circumstances you took every advantage you could get. Someone had told her that a witch's cottage was her second face. Come to think of it, it had been Granny. It should be easy to read this place. Granny's thoughts had the strength of hammer blows and they'd pounded her personality into the walls. If her cottage had been any more organic it would have had a pulse. Agnes wandered through to the dank little scullery. The copper washpot had been scoured. A fork and a couple of shining spoons lay beside it, along with the washboard and scrubbing brush. The slop bucket gleamed, although the fragments of a broken cup in the bottom said that the recent intensive housework hadn't been without its casualties. She pushed open the door into the old goat shed. Granny was not keeping goats at the moment, but her home-made beekeeping equipment was neatly laid out on a bench. She'd never needed much. If you needed smoke and a veil to deal with your bees, what was the point of being a witch? Bees... A moment later she was out in the garden, her ear pressed against a beehive. There were no bees flying this early in the day, but the sound inside was a roar. 'They'll know,' said a voice behind her. Agnes stood up so quickly she bumped her head on the hive roof. 'But they won't say,' Nanny added. 'She'd have told 'em. Well done for thinkin' about 'em, though.' Something chattered at them from a nearby branch. It was a magpie. 'Good morning, Mister Magpie,' said Agnes automatically. 'Bugger off, you bastard,' said Nanny, and reached down for a stick to throw. The bird swooped off to the other side of the clearing. 'That's bad luck,' said Agnes. 'It will be if I get a chance to aim,' said Nanny. 'Can't stand those maggoty-pies.' ' "One for sorrow," said Agnes, watching the bird hop along a branch. 'I always take the view there's prob'ly going to be another one along in a minute,' said Nanny, dropping a stick. ' "Two for joy"?' said Agnes. 'It's "two for mirth".' 'Same thing, I suppose.' 'Dunno about that,' said Nanny. 'I was joyful when our Jason was born, but I can't say I was laughin' at the time. Come on, let's have another look.' Two more magpies landed on the cottage's antique thatch. 'That's "three for a girl-"' said Agnes nervously. ' "Three for a funeral" is what I learned,' said Nanny. 'But there's lots of magpie rhymes. Look, you take her broomstick and have a look over towards the mountains, and I'll-' 'Wait,' said Agnes. Perdita was screaming at her to pay attention. She listened. Threes... Three spoons. Three knives. Three cups. The broken cup thrown away. She stood still, afraid that if she moved or breathed something awful would happen. The clock had stopped . . . 'Nanny?' Nanny Ogg was wise enough to recognize that something was happening and didn't waste time on daft questions. 'Yes?' she said. 'Go in and tell me what time the clock stopped at, will you?' Nanny nodded and trotted off. The tension in Agnes's head stretched out thin and made a noise like a plucked string. She was amazed that the whine from it couldn't be heard all round the garden. If she moved, if she tried to force things, it'd snap. Nanny returned. 'Three o'clock?' said Agnes, before she opened her mouth. 'Just after.' 'How much after ?' 'Two or three minutes. . .' 'Two or three?' 'Three, then.' The three magpies landed together on another tree and chased one another through the branches, chattering loudly. 'Three minutes after three,' said Agnes, and felt the tension ease and the words form. 'Threes, Nanny. She was thinking in threes. There was another candlestick out in the goat shed, and some cutlery too. But she only put out threes.' 'Some things were in ones and twos,' said Nanny, but her voice was edged with doubt. 'Then she'd only got one or two of them,' said Agnes. 'There were more spoons and things out in the scullery that she'd missed. I mean that for some reason she wasn't putting out more than three.' 'I know for a fact she's got four cups,' said Nanny. 'Three,' said Agnes. 'She must've broken one. The bits are in the slop bucket.' Nanny Ogg stared at her. 'She's not clumsy, as a rule,' she mumbled. She looked to Agnes as though she was trying to avoid some huge and horrible thought. A gust shook the trees. A few drops of rain spattered across the garden. 'Let's get inside,' Agnes suggested. Nanny shook her head. 'It's chillier in there than out here,' she said. Something skimmed across the leaves and landed on the lawn. It was a fourth magpie. ' "Four for a birth,"' she added, apparently to herself. 'That'd be it, sure enough. I hoped she wouldn't realize, but you can't get anything past Esme. I'll tan young Shawn's hide for him when I get home[ He swore he'd delivered that invite!' 'Perhaps she took it away with her?' 'No! If she'd got it she'd have been there last night, you can bet on it!' snapped Nanny. 'What wouldn't she realize?' said Agnes. 'Magrat's daughter!' 'What? Well, I should think she would realize! You can't hide a baby! Everyone in the kingdom knows about it.' 'I mean Magrat's got a daughter! She's a mother!' said Nanny. 'Well, yes! That's how it works! So?' They were shouting at one another, and they both realized it at the same time, It was raining harder now. Drips were flying off Agnes's hat every time she moved her head. Nanny recovered a little. 'All right, I s'pose between us we've got enough sense to get in out of the rain.' 'And at least we can light the fire,' said Agnes as they stepped into the chill of the kitchen. 'She's left it all laid-' 'No!' 'There's no need to shout again!' 'Look, don't light the fire, right?' said Nanny. 'Don't touch anything more than you have to!' 'I could easily get more kindling in, and-' 'Be told! That fire wasn't laid for you to light! And leave that door alone!' Agnes stopped in the act of pushing away the stone. 'Be sensible, Nanny, the rain and leaves are blowing in!' 'Let 'em!' Nanny flopped into the rocking chair, pulled up her skirt and fumbled in the depths of a lengthy knickerleg until she came up with the spirit flask. She took a long pull. Her hands were shaking. 'I can't start being a hag at my time of life,' she muttered. 'None of my bras'll fit.' 'Nanny?' 'Yes?' 'What the hell are you going on about? Daughter? Not lighting fires? Hags?' Nanny replaced the flask and felt around in the other leg, coming up eventually with her pipe and tobacco pouch. 'Not sure if I ought to tell you,' she said.     Now Granny Weatherwax was well beyond the local woods and high in the forests, following a track used by the charcoal burners and the occasional dwarf. Already Lancre was dying away. She could feel it ebbing from her mind. Down below, when things were quiet, she was always aware of the buzz of minds around her. Human and animal, they all stirred up together in some great mental stew. But here there were mainly the slow thoughts of the trees, which were frankly boring after the first few hours and could be safely ignored. Snow, still quite thick in the hollows and on the shadow sides of trees, was dissolving in a drizzle of rain. She stepped into a clearing and a small herd of deer on the far edge raised their heads to watch her. Out of habit she stopped and gently let herself unravel, until from the deer's point of view there was hardly anyone there. When she began to walk forward again a deer stepped out of some bushes and stopped and turned to face her. She'd seen this happen before. Hunters talked about it sometimes. You could track a herd all day, creeping silently among the trees in search of that one clean shot, and, just as you were aiming, a deer would step out right in front of you, turn and watch – and wait. Those were the times when a hunter found out how good he was . . . Granny snapped her fingers. The deer shook itself and galloped off. She climbed higher, following the stony bed of a stream. Despite its swiftness, there was a border of ice along its banks. Where it dropped over a series of small waterfalls she turned and looked back down into the bowl of Lancre. It was full of clouds. A few hundred feet below she saw a black and white magpie skim across the forest roof. Granny turned and scrambled quickly up the dripping, icy rocks and on to the fringes of the moorland beyond. Up here there was more sky. Silence clamped down. Far overhead an eagle wheeled. It seemed to be the only other life. No one ever came up here. The furze and heather stretched away for a mile between the mountains, unbroken by any path. It was matted, thorny stuff that would tear unprotected flesh to ribbons. She sat down on a rock and stared at the unbroken expanse for a while. Then she reached into her sack and took out a thick pair of socks. And set off, onwards and upwards.     Nanny Ogg scratched her nose. She very seldom looked embarrassed, but there was just a hint of embarrassment about her now. It was even worse than Nanny Ogg upset. 'I ain't sure if this is the right time,' she said. 'Look, Nanny,' said Agnes, 'we need her. If there's something I ought to know, then tell me.' 'It's this business with . . . you know . . . three witches,' she said. 'The maiden, the mother and...' '-the other one,' said Agnes. 'Oh yes, I know that. But that's just a bit of superstition, isn't it? Witches don't have to come in threes.' 'Oh, no. Course not,' said Nanny. 'You can have any number up to about, oh, four or five.' 'What happens if there's more, then? Something awful?' 'Bloody great row, usually,' said Nanny. 'Over nothin' much. And then they all goes off and sulks. Witches don't like being compressed up, much. But three . . . sort of . . . works well. I don't have to draw you a picture, do I?' 'And now Magrat's a mother-' said Agnes. 'Ah, well, that's where it all goes a bit runny,' said Nanny. 'This maiden and mother thing . . . it's not as simple as you'd think, see? Now you,' she prodded Agnes with her pipe, 'are a maiden. You are, aren't you?' 'Nanny! That's not the sort of thing people discuss!' 'Well, I knows you are, 'cos I'd soon hear if you wasn't,' said Nanny, the kind of person who discussed that kind of thing all the time. 'But that ain't really important, because it ain't down to technicalities, see? Now me, I don't reckon I was ever a maiden ment'ly. Oh, you don't need to go all red like that. What about your Aunt May over in Creel Springs? Pour kids and she's still bashful around men. You got your blush from her. Tell her a saucy joke and if you're quick you can cook dinner for six on her head. When you've been around for a while, miss, you'll see that some people's body and head don't always work together.' 'And what's Granny Weatherwax, then?' said Agnes, and added, a little nastily because the reference to the blush had gone home, 'Ment'ly.' 'Damned if I've ever worked that out,' said Nanny. 'But I reckon she sees there's a new three here. That bloody invitation must've been the last straw. So she's gone.' She poked at her pipe. 'Can't say I fancy being a crone. I ain't the right shape and anyway I don't know what sound they make.' Agnes had a sudden and very clear and horrible mental image of the broken cup. 'But Granny isn't a . . . wasn't a . . . I mean, she didn't look like a-' she began. 'There's no point in lookin' at a dog an' sayin' that's not a dog 'cos a dog don't look like that,' said Nanny simply. Agnes fell silent. Nanny was right, of course. Nanny was someone's mum. It was written all over her. If you cut her in half, the word 'Ma' would be all the way through. Some girls were just naturally ... mothers. And some, Perdita added, were cut out to be professional maidens. As for the third, Agnes went on, ignoring her own interruption, perhaps it wasn't so odd that people generally called Nanny out for the births and Granny for the deaths. 'She thinks we don't need her any more?' 'I reckon so.' 'What is she going to do, then?' 'Dunno. But if you had three, and now there's four . . . well, something's got to go, hasn't it?' 'What about the vampires? The two of us can't cope with them!' 'She's been telling us there's three of us,' said Nanny. 'What? Magrat? But she's-' Agnes stopped herself. 'She's no Nanny Ogg,' she said. 'Well, I sure as hell ain't an Esme Weatherwax, if it comes to that,' said Nanny. 'The ment'I stuff is meat and drink to her. Getting inside other heads, puttin' her mind somewhere else . . . that's her for-tay, right enough. She'd wipe the smile off that Count's face for him. From the inside, if I know Esme.' They sat and stared glumly at the cold fireplace. 'Maybe we weren't always very nice to her,' said Agnes. She kept thinking of the broken cup. She was sure Granny Weatherwax hadn't done that accidentally. She may have thought she'd done it accidentally, but maybe everyone had a Perdita inside. She'd walked around this gloomy cottage, which was as much in tune with her thoughts by now as a dog is with its master, and she'd had three on her mind. Three, three, three . . . 'Esme doesn't thrive on nice,' said Nanny Ogg. 'Take her an apple pie and she'll complain about the pastry.' 'But people don't often thank her. And she does do a lot.' 'She's not set up for thanks, neither. Ment'ly. To tell you the honest truth, there's always been a bit of the dark in the Weatherwaxes, and that's where the trouble is. Look at old Alison Weatherwax.' 'Who was she?' 'Her own granny. Went to the bad, they say, just packed up one day and headed for Uberwald. And as for Esme's sister . . .' Nanny stopped, and restarted. 'Anyway, that's why she's always standin' behind herself and criticizin' what she's doing. Sometimes I reckon she's terrified she'll go bad without noticin'.' 'Granny? But she's as moral as-' 'Oh, yes, she is. But that's because she's got Granny Weatherwax glarin' over her shoulder the whole time.' Agnes took another look around the spartan room. Now the rain was leaking steadily through the ceiling. She fancied she could hear the walls settling into the clay. She fancied she could hear them thinking. 'Did she know Magrat was going to call the baby Esme?' she said. 'Probably. It's amazin' what she picks up.' 'Maybe not tactful, when you think about it,' said Agnes. 'What do you mean? I'd have been honoured, if it was me.' 'Perhaps Granny thought the name was being passed on. Inherited.' 'Oh. Yes,' said Nanny. 'Yes, I can just imagine Esme workin' it up to that, when she's in one of her gloomy moods.' 'My granny used to say if you're too sharp you'll cut yourself,' said Agnes. They sat in grey silence for a while, and then Nanny Ogg said: 'My own granny has an old country sayin' she always trotted out at times like this. . .' 'Which was.. .?' ' "Bugger off, you little devil, or I'll chop off your nose and give it to the cat." Of course, that's not so very helpful at a time like this, I'll admit.' There was a tinkle behind them. Nanny turned her head and looked down at the table. 'There's a spoon gone . . .' There was another jangle, this time by the door. A magpie paused in its attempt to pick the stolen spoon off the doorstep, cocked its head and glared at them with a beady eye. It just managed to get airborne before Nanny's hat, spinning like a plate, bounced off the doorjamb. 'The devils'll pinch anything that damn well shines-'she began.     The Count de Magpyr looked out of the window at the glow that marked the rising sun. 'There you are, you see?' he said, turning back to his family. 'Morning, and here we are.' 'You've made it overcast,' said Lacrimosa sullenly. 'It's hardly sunny.' 'One step at a time, dear, one step at a time,' said the Count cheerfully. 'I just wished to make the point. Today, yes, it is overcast. But we can build on it. We can acclimatize. And one day . . . the beach. . .' 'You really are very clever, dear,' said the Countess. 'Thank you, my love,' said the Count, nodding his private agreement. 'How are you doing with that cork, Vlad?' 'Is this such a good idea, Father?' said Vlad, struggling with a bottle and a corkscrew. 'I thought we did not drink. . . wine.' 'I believe it's time we started.' 'Yuck,' said Lacrimosa. 'I'm not touching that, it's squeezed from vegetables!' 'Fruit, I think you'll find,' said the Count calmly. He took the bottle from his son and removed the cork. 'A fine claret, I understand. You'll try some, my dear?' His wife smiled nervously, supporting her husband but slightly against her better judgement. 'Do we, er, are we, eh, supposed to warm it up?' she said. 'Room temperature is suggested.' 'That's sickening,' said Lacrimosa. 'I don't know how you can bear it!' 'Try it for your father, dear,' said the Countess. 'Quickly, before it congeals.' 'No, my dear. Wine stays runny.' 'Really? How very convenient.' 'Vlad?' said the Count, pouring a glass. The son watched nervously. 'Perhaps it would help if you think of it as grape blood,' said his father, as Vlad took the wine. 'And you, Lacci?' She folded her arms resolutely. 'Huh!' 'I thought you'd like this sort of thing, dear,' said the Countess. 'It's the sort of thing your crowd does, isn't it?' 'I don't know what you're talking about!' said the girl. 'Oh, staying up until gone noon and wearing brightly coloured clothes, and giving yourselves funny names,' said the Countess. 'Like Gertrude,' sneered Vlad. 'And Pam. They think it's cool.' Lacrimosa turned on him furiously, nails out. He caught her wrist, grinning. 'That's none of your business!' 'Lady Strigoiul said her daughter has taken to calling herself Wendy,' said the Countess. 'I can't imagine why she'd want to, when Hieroglyphica is such a nice name for a girl. And if I was her mother I'd see to it that she at least wore a bit of eyeliner-' 'Yes, but no one drinks wine,' said Lacrimosa. 'Only real weirdos who file their teeth blunt drink wine-' 'Maladora Krvoijac does,' said Vlad. 'Or "Freda", I should say-' 'No she doesn't!’ 'What? She wears a silver corkscrew on a chain round her neck and sometimes there's even a cork on it!' 'That's just a fashion item! Oh, I know she says she's partial to a drop of port, but really it's just blood in the glass. Henry actually brought a bottle to a party and she fainted at the smell!’ 'Henry?' said the Countess. Lacrimosa looked down sulkily. 'Graven Gierachi,' she said. 'The one who grows his hair short and pretends he's an accountant,' said Vlad. 'I just hope someone's told his father, then,' said the Countess. 'Be quiet,' said the Count. 'This is all just cultural conditioning, you understand? Pleasel I've worked hard for this! All we want is a piece of the day. Is that too much to ask? And wine is just wine. There's nothing mystical about it. Now, take up your glasses. You too, Lacci. Please? For Daddy?' 'And when you tell "Cyril" and "Tim" they'll be so impressed,' said Vlad to Lacrimosa. 'Shut up!' she hissed. 'Father, it'll make me sick!’ 'No, your body will adapt,' said the Count. 'I've tried it myself. A little watery, perhaps, somewhat sour, but quite palatable. Please?' 'Oh, well. . .' 'Good,' said the Count. 'Now, raise the glasses-' ' Le sang nouveau est arrive,' said Vlad. 'Carpe diem,' said the Count. 'By the throat,' said the Countess. 'People won't believe me when I tell them,' said Lacrimosa. They swallowed. 'There,' said Count Magpyr. 'That wasn't too bad, was it?' 'A bit chilly,' said Vlad. 'I'll have a wine warmer installed,' said the Count. 'I'm not an unreasonable vampire. But within a year, children, I think I can have us quite cured of phenophobia and even capable of a little light salad-' Lacrimosa turned her back theatrically and made throwing-up noises into a vase. '-and then, Lacci, you'll be free. No more lonely days. No more-' Vlad was half expecting it, and kept an entirely blank expression as his father whipped a card from his pocket and held it up. 'That is the double snake symbol of the Djelibeybian water cult,' he said calmly. 'You see?' said the Count excitedly. 'You barely flinched! Sacrephobia can be beaten! I've always said so! The way may have been hard at times-' 'I hated the way you used to leap out in corridors and flick holy water on us,' said Lacrimosa. 'It wasn't holy at all,' said her father. 'It was strongly diluted. Mildly devout at worst. But it made you strong, didn't it?' 'I caught colds a lot, I know that.' The Count's hand whipped out of his pocket. Lacrimosa gave a sigh of theatrical weariness. 'The All-Seeing Face of the Ionians,' she said wearily. The Count very nearly danced a jig. 'You see? It has worked! You didn't even wince! And apparently as holy symbols go it's pretty strong. Isn't it all worth it?' 'There'll have to be something really good to make up for those garlic pillows you used to make us sleep on.' Her father took her by the shoulder and turned her towards the window. 'Will it be enough to know that the world is your oyster?' Her forehead wrinkled in perplexity. 'Why should I want it to be some nasty little sea creature?' she said. 'Because they get eaten alive,' said the Count. 'Unfortunately I doubt if we can find a slice of lemon five hundred miles long, but the metaphor will suffice.' She brightened up, grudgingly. 'We-ell. . .' she said. 'Good. I like to see my little girl smile,' said the Count. 'Now . . . who shall we have for breakfast?' 'The baby.' 'No, I think not.' The Count pulled a bellpull beside the fireplace. 'That would be undiplomatic. We're not quite there yet.' 'Well, that apology for a queen looks pretty bloodless. Vlad should have hung on to his fat girl,' said Lacrimosa. 'Don't you start,' Vlad warned. 'Agnes is a . . . very interesting girl. I feel there is a lot in her.' 'A lot of her,' said Lacrimosa. 'Are you saving her for later?' 'Now, now,' said the Count. 'Your own dear mother wasn't a vampire when I met her-' 'Yes, yes, you've told us a million times,' said Lacrimosa, rolling her eyes with the impatience of someone who'd been a teenager for eighty years. 'The balcony, the nightdress, you in your cloak, she screamed-' 'Things were simpler then,' said the Count. 'And also very, very stupid.' He sighed. 'Where the hell's Igor?' 'Ahem. I've been meaning to talk to you about him, dear,' said the Countess. 'I think he'll have to go., 'That's right!' snapped Lacrimosa. 'Honestly, even my friends laugh at him!' 'I find his more-gothic-than-thou attitude extremely irritating,' said the Countess. 'That stupid accent . . . and do you know what I found him doing in the old dungeons last week?' 'I'm sure I couldn't guess,' said the Count. 'He had a box of spiders and a whip! He was forcing them to make webs all over the place.' 'I wondered why there were always so many, I must admit,' said the Count. 'I agree, Father,' said Vlad. 'He's all right for Uberwald, but you'd hardly want something like him opening the door in polite society, would you?' 'And he smells,' said the Countess. 'Of course, parts of him have been in the family for centuries,' said the Count. 'But I must admit he's getting beyond a joke.' He yanked the bellpull again. 'Yeth, marthter?' said Igor, behind him. The Count spun round. 'I told you not to do that!' 'Not to do what, marthter?' 'Turn up behind me like that!' 'It'th the only way I know how to turn up, marthter.' 'Go and fetch King Verence, will you? He's joining us for a light meal.' 'Yeth, marthter.' They watched the servant limp off. The Count shook his head. 'He'll never retire,' said Vlad. 'He'll never take a hint.' 'And it's so old fashioned having a servant called Igor,' said the Countess. 'He really is too much.' 'Look, it's simple,' said Lacrimosa. 'Just take him down to the cellars, slam him in the Iron Maiden, stretch him on the rack over a fire for a day or two, and then slice him thinly from the feet upwards, so he can watch. You'll be doing him a kindness, really.' 'I suppose it's the best way,' said the Count sadly. 'I remember when you told me to put my cat out of its misery,' said Lacrimosa. 'I really meant you to stop what you were doing to it,' said the Count. 'But . . . yes, you are right, he'll have to go-' Igor ushered in King Verence, who stood there with the mildly bemused expression of someone in the presence of the Count. 'Ah, your majesty' said the Countess, advancing. 'Do join us in a light meal.'     Agnes's hair snagged in the twigs. She managed to get one boot on a branch while holding on for dear life to the branch above, but that left her other foot standing on the broomstick, which was beginning to drift sideways and causing her to do what even ballerinas can't do without some training. 'Can you see it yet?' Nanny cried, from far too far below. 'I think this is an old nest as well- Oh, no. . .' 'What's happened?' 'I think my drawers have split. . .' 'I always go for roomy, myself,' said Nanny. Agnes got the other leg on to the branch, which creaked. Lump, said Perdita. I could have climbed this like a gazelle! 'Gazelles don't climb!' said Agnes. 'What's that?' said the voice from below. 'Oh, nothing...' Agnes inched her way along, and suddenly her vision was full of black and white wings. A magpie landed on a twig a foot from her face and screamed at her. Five others swooped in from the other trees and joined in the chorus. She didn't like birds, in any case. They were fine when they were flying, and their songs were nice, but close to they were mad little balls of needles with the intelligence of a housefly. She tried to swat the nearest one, and it fluttered on to a higher branch while she struggled to get her balance back. When the branch stopped rocking she moved further along, gingerly, trying to ignore the enraged birds, and looked at the nest. It was hard to tell if it was the remains of an old one or the start of a new one, but it did contain a piece of tinsel, a shard of broken glass and, gleaming even under this sullen sky, something white . . . with a gleaming edge. '"Five for silver . . . six for gold . . ."' she said, half to herself. 'It's "five for heaven, six for hell",' Nanny called up. 'I can just reach it, anyway. . .' The bough broke. There were plenty of others below it, but they merely served as points of interest on the way down. The last one flipped Agnes into a holly bush. Nanny took the invitation from her outflung hand. Rain had made the ink run, but the word 'Weatherwax' was still very readable. She scratched at the gold edging with her thumb. 'Too much gold,' she said. 'Well, that explains the invite. I told you them birds will steal anything that glitters.' 'I'm not hurt at all,' said Agnes pointedly. 'The holly quite cushioned my fall.' 'I'll wring their necks,' said Nanny. The magpies in the trees around the cottage screamed at her. 'I think I may have dislocated my hat, however,' said Agnes, pulling herself to her feet. But it was useless angling for sympathy in a puddle, so she gave up. 'All right, we've found the invitation. It was all a terrible mistake. No one's fault. Now let's find Granny.' 'Not if she don't want to be found,' said Nanny, rubbing the edge of the card thoughtfully. 'You can do Borrowing. Even if she left early, some creatures will have seen. her-' 'I don't Borrow, as a rule,' said Nanny firmly. 'I ain't got Esme's self-discipline. I gets . . . involved. I was a rabbit for three whole days until our Jason went and fetched Esme and she brought me back. Much longer and there wouldn't have been a me to come back.' 'Rabbits sound dull.' 'They have their ups and downs.' 'All right, then, have a look in the buoy's glass ball,' said Agnes. 'You're good at that, Magrat told me.' Across the clearing a crumbling brick fell out of the cottage's chimney. 'Not here, then,' said Nanny, with some reluctance. 'It's giving me the willies- Oh no, as if we didn't have enough . . . What's he doing here?' Mightily Oats was advancing through the wood. He walked awkwardly, as city people do when traversing real, rutted, leaf-mouldy, twig-strewn soft, and had the concerned look of someone who was expecting to be attacked at any moment by owls or beetles. In his strange black and white clothing he looked like a human magpie himself. The magpies screamed from the trees. ' "Seven for a secret never to be told,"' said Agnes. ' "Seven's a devil, his own sel',"' said Nanny darkly. 'You've got your rhyme, I've got mine.' When Oats saw the witches he brightened up very slightly and blew his nose at them. 'What a waste of skin,' muttered Nanny. 'Ah, Mrs Ogg . . . and Miss Nitt,' said Oats, inching around some mud. 'Er . . . I trust I find you well?' 'Up till now,' said Nanny. 'I had, er, hoped to see Mrs Weatherwax.' For a moment the only sound was the chattering of the ravens. 'Hoped?' said Agnes. 'Mrs Weatherwax?' said Nanny. 'Er, yes. It is part of my . . . I'm supposed to . . . one of the things we . . . Well, I heard she might be ill, and visiting the elderly and infirm is part, er, of our pastoral duties . . . Of course I realize that technically I have no pastoral duties, but still, while I'm here . . .' Nanny's face was a picture, possibly one painted by an artist with a very strange sense of humour. 'I'm really sorry she ain't here,' she said, and Agnes knew she was being altogether honest and absolutely nasty. 'Oh dear. I was, er, going to give her some . . . I was going . . . er . . . Is she well, then?' 'I'm sure she'd be all the better for a visit from you,' said Nanny, and once again there was a strange, curvy sort of truth to this. 'It'd be the sort of thing she'd talk about for days. You can come back any time you want.' Oats looked helpless. 'Then I suppose I'd better, er, be getting back to my, er, tent,' he said. 'May I accompany you ladies down to the town? There are, er, some dangerous things in the woods. . .' ' We got broomsticks,' said Nanny firmly. The priest looked crestfallen, and Agnes made a decision. 'A broomstick,' she said. 'I'll walk you-.I mean, you can walk me back. If you like.' The priest looked relieved. Nanny sniffed. There was a certain Weatherwax quality to the sniff. 'Back at my place, then. An' no dilly-dallyin',' she said. 'I don't dilly-dally,' said Agnes. 'Just see you don't start,' said Nanny, and went to find her broomstick. Agnes and the priest walked in embarrassed silence for a while. At last Agnes said, 'How's the headache?' 'Oh, much better, thank you. It went away. But her majesty was kind enough to give me some pills anyway.' 'That's nice,' said Agnes. She ought to have given him a needle! Look at the size of that boil! said Perdita, one of nature's born squeezers. Why doesn't he do something about it? 'Er . . . you don't like me very much, do you?' said Oats. 'I've hardly met you.' She was becoming aware of an embarrassing draughtiness in the nether regions. 'A lot of people don't like me as soon as they've met me,' said Oats. 'I suppose that saves time,' said Agnes, and cursed. Perdita had got through on that one, but Oats didn't seem to have noticed. He sighed. 'I'm afraid I have a bit of a difficulty with people,' he went on. 'I fear I'm just not cutout for pastoral work.' Don't get involved with this twerp, said Perdita. But Agnes said, 'You mean sheep and so on?' 'It all seemed a lot clearer at college,' said Oats, who like many people seldom paid much attention to what others said when he was unrolling his miseries, 'but here, when I tell people some of the more accessible stories from the Book of Om they say things like, "That's not right, mushrooms wouldn't grow in the desert," or, "That's a stupid way to run a vineyard." Everyone here is so very . . . literal.' Oats coughed. There seemed to be something preying on his mind. 'Unfortunately, the Old Book of Om is rather unyielding on the subject of witches,' he said. 'Really.' 'Although having studied the passage in question in the original Second Omnian IV text, I have advanced the rather daring theory that the actual word in question translates more accurately as -cockroaches".' 'Yes?' 'Especially since it goes on to say that they can be killed by fire or in "traps of treacle". It also says later on that they bring lascivious dreams.' 'Don't look at me,' said Agnes. 'All you're getting is a walk home.' To her amazement, and Perdita's crowing delight, he blushed as red as she ever did. 'Er, er, the word in question in that passage might just as easily be read in context as `boiled lobsters",' he said hurriedly. 'Nanny Ogg says Omnians used to burn witches,' said Agnes. 'We used to burn practically everybody,' said Oats gloomily. 'Although some witches did get pushed into big barrels of treacle, I believe.' He had a boring voice, too. He did appear, she had to admit, to be a boring person. It was almost too perfect a presentation, as if he was trying to make himself seem boring. But one thing had piqued Agnes's curiosity. 'Why did you come to visit Granny Weatherwax?' 'Well, everyone speaks very . . . highly of her,' said Oats, suddenly picking his words like a man pulling plums from a boiling pot. 'And they said she hadn't turned up last night, which was very strange. And I thought it must be hard for an old lady living by herself. And. . .' 'Yes?' 'Well, I understand she's quite old and it's never too late to consider the state of your immortal soul,' said Oats. 'Which she must have, of course.' Agnes gave him a sideways look. 'She's never mentioned it,' she said. 'You probably think I'm foolish.' 'I just think you are an amazingly lucky man, Mr Oats.' On the other hand ... here was someone who'd been told about Granny Weatherwax, and had still walked through these woods that scared him stiff to see her, even though she was possibly a cockroach or a boiled lobster. No one in Lancre ever came to see Granny unless they wanted something. Oh, sometimes they came with little presents (because one day they'd want something again), but they generally made sure she was out first. There was more to Mr Oats than met the eye. There had to be. A couple of centaurs burst out of the bushes ahead of them and cantered away down the path. Oats grabbed a tree. 'They were running around when I came up!' he said. 'Are they usual?' 'I've never seen them before,' said Agnes. 'I think they're from Uberwald.' 'And the horrible little blue goblins? One of them made a very unpleasant gesture at me!' 'Don't know about them at all.' 'And the vampires? I mean, I knew that things were different here, but really-' 'Vampires?!' shouted Agnes. 'You saw the vampires? Last night?' 'Well, I mean, yes, I studied them at length at the seminary, but I never thought I'd see them standing around talking about drinking blood and things, really, I'm surprised the King allows it-' 'And they didn't . . . affect your mind?' 'I did have that terrible migraine. Does that count? I thought it was the prawns.' A cry rang through the woods. It seemed to have many components, but mostly it sounded as though a turkey was being throttled at the other end of a tin tube. 'And what the heck was that?' shouted Oats. Agnes looked around, bewildered. She'd grown up in the Lancre woods. Oh, you got strange things sometimes, passing through, but generally they contained nothing more dangerous than other people. Now, in this tarnished light, even the trees were starting to look suspicious. 'Let's at least get down to Bad Ass,' she said, tugging at Oats's hand. 'You what?' Agnes sighed. 'It's the nearest village.' 'Bad Ass?' 'Look, there was a donkey, and it stopped in the middle of the river, and it wouldn't go backwards or forwards,' said Agnes, as patiently as possible. Lancre people got used to explaining this. 'Bad Ass. See? Yes, I know that "Disobedient Donkey" might have been more . . . acceptable, but-' The horrible cry echoed around the woods again. Agnes thought of all the things that were rumoured to be in the mountains, and dragged Oats after her like a badly hitched cart. Then the sound was right in front of them and, at a turn in the lane, a head emerged from a bush. Agnes had seen pictures of an ostrich. So ... start with one of them, but make the head and neck in violent yellow, and give the head a huge ruff of red and purple feathers and two big round eyes, the pupils of which jiggled drunkenly as the head moved back and forth . . . 'Is that some sort of local chicken?' warbled Oats. 'I doubt it,' said Agnes. One of the long feathers had a tartan pattern. The cry started again, but was strangled halfway through when Agnes stepped forward, grabbed the thing's neck and pulled. A figure rose from the undergrowth, dragged up by his arm. 'Hodgesaargh?' He quacked at her. 'Take that thing out of your mouth,' said Agnes. 'You sound like Mr Punch.' He removed the whistle. 'Sorry, Miss Nitt.' 'Hodgesaargh, why – and I realize I might not like the answer – why are you hiding in the woods with your arm dressed up like Hetty the Hen and making horrible noises through a tube?' 'Trying to lure the phoenix, miss.' 'The phoenix? That's a mythical bird, Hodgesaargh.' 'That's right, miss. There's one in Lancre, miss. It's very young, miss. So I thought I might be able to attract it.' She looked at the brightly coloured glove. Oh, yes – if you raised chicks, you had to let them know what kind of bird they were, so you used a sort of glove-puppet. But. . . 'Hodgesaargh?' 'Yes, miss?' 'I'm not an expert, of course, but I seem to recall that according to the commonly accepted legend of the phoenix it would never see its parent. You can only have one phoenix at a time. It's automatically an orphan. You see?' 'Um, may I add something?' said Oats. 'Miss Nitt is right, I have to say. The phoenix builds a nest and bursts into flame and the new bird arises from the ashes. I've read that. Anyway, it's an allegory.' Hodgesaargh looked at the puppet phoenix on his arm and then looked bashfully at his feet. 'Sorry about that, miss.' 'So, you see, a phoenix can never see another phoenix,' said Agnes. 'Wouldn't know about that, miss,' said Hodgesaargh, still staring at his boots. An idea struck Agnes. Hodgesaargh was always out of doors. 'Hodgesaargh?' 'Yes, miss?' 'Have you been out in the woods all morning?' 'Oh, yes, miss.' 'Have you seen Granny Weatherwax?' 'Yes, miss.' 'You have?' 'Yes, miss.' 'Where?' 'Up in the woods over towards the border, miss. At first light, miss.' 'Why didn't you tell me?' 'Er . . . did you want to know, miss?' 'Oh. Yes, sorry . . . What were you doing up there?' Hodgesaargh blew a couple of quacks on his phoenix lure by way of explanation. Agnes grabbed the priest again. 'Come on, let's get to the road and find Nanny-' Hodgesaargh was left with his glove puppet and his lure and his knapsack and a deeply awkward feeling. He'd been brought up .to respect witches, and Miss Nitt was a witch. The man with her hadn't been a witch, but his manner fitted him into that class of people Hodgesaargh mentally pigeonholed as 'my betters', although in truth this was quite a large category. He wasn't about to disagree with his betters. Hodgesaargh was a one-man feudal system. On the other hand, he thought, as he packed up and prepared to move on, books that were all about the world tended to be written by people who knew all about books rather than all about the world. All that stuff about birds hatching from ashes must have been written by someone who didn't know anything about birds. As for there only ever being one phoenix, well, that'd obviously been written down by a man who ought to get out in the fresh air more and meet some ladies. Birds came from eggs. Oh, the phoenix was one of those creatures that had learned to use magic, had built it right into its very existence, but magic was tricky stuff and nothing used any more of it than it needed to. So there'd be an egg, definitely. And eggs needed warmth, didn't they? Hodgesaargh had been thinking about this a lot during the morning, as he tramped through damp bushes making the acquaintance of several disappointed ducks. He'd never bothered much about history, except the history of falconry, but he did know that there were once places – and in some cases still were – with a very high level of background magic, which made them rather exciting and not a good place to raise your young. Maybe the phoenix, whatever it really looked like, was simply a bird who'd worked out a way of making incubation work very, very fast. Hodgesaargh had actually got quite a long way, and if he'd had a bit more time he'd have worked out the next step, too.     It was well after noon before Granny Weatherwax came off the moor, and a watcher might have wondered why it took such a long time to cross a little patch of moorland. They'd have wondered even more about the little stream. It had cut a rock-studded groove in the peat that a healthy woman could have leapt across, but someone had placed a broad stone across it for a bridge. She looked at it for a while and then reached into her sack. She took out a long piece of black material and blindfolded herself. Then she walked out across the stone, taking tiny steps with her arms flung. out wide for balance. Halfway across she fell on to her hands and knees and stayed there, panting, for several minutes. Then she crawled forward again, by inches. A few feet below, the peaty stream rattled happily over the stones. The sky glinted. It was a sky with blue patches and bits of cloud, but it had a strange look, as though a picture painted on glass had been fractured and then the shards reassembled wrongly. A drifting cloud disappeared against some invisible line and began to emerge in another part of the sky altogether. Things were not what they seemed. But then, as Granny always said, they never were.     Agnes practically had to pull Oats into Nanny Ogg's house, which was in fact so far away from the concept of a witch's cottage that it, as it were, approached it from the other side. It tended towards jolly clashing colours rather than black, and smelled of polish. There were no skulls or strange candles, apart from the pink novelty one that Nanny had once bought in Ankh-Morpork and only brought out to show to guests with the right sense of humour. There were lots of tables, mainly in order to display the vast number of drawings and iconographs of the huge Ogg clan. At first sight these looked randomly placed, until you worked out the code. In reality, pictures were advanced or retarded around the room as various family members temporarily fell in or out of favour, and anyone ending up on the small wobbly table near the cat's bowl had some serious spadework to do. What made it worse was that you could fall down the pecking order not because you'd done something bad, but because everyone else had done something better. This was why what space wasn't taken up with family pictures was occupied by ornaments, because no Ogg who travelled more than ten miles from Ankh-Morpork would dream of returning without a present. The Oggs loved Nanny Ogg and, well, there were even worse places than the wobbly table. A distant cousin had once ended up in the hall. Most of the ornaments were cheapjack stuff bought from fairs, but Nanny Ogg never minded, provided they were colourful and shiny. So there were a lot of cross-eyed dogs, pink shepherdesses and mugs with badly spelled slogans like 'To the Wordl's Best Mum' and 'We Luove Our Nanny'. A huge gilded china beer stein that played 'Ich Bin Ein Rattarsedschwein' from The Student Horse was locked in a glass-fronted cabinet as a treasure too great for common display, and had earned Shirl Ogg's picture a permanent place on the dresser. Nanny Ogg had already cleared a space on the table for the green ball. She looked up sharply when Agnes entered. 'You were a long time. Been dallyin'?' she said, in an armour-piercing voice. 'Nanny, Granny would have said that,' said Agnes reproachfully. Nanny shivered. 'You're right, gel,' she said. 'Let's find her quickly, eh? I'm too cheerful to be a crone.' 'There's odd creatures everywhere!' said Agnes. 'There's loads of centaurs! We had to dive into the ditch!' 'Ah, I did notice you'd got grass and leaves on your dress,' said Nanny. 'But I was too polite to mention it.' 'Where're they all coming from?' 'Down out of the mountains, I suppose. Why did you bring Soapy Sam back with you?' 'Because he's covered in mud, Nanny,' said Agnes sharply, 'and I said he could have a wash down here.' 'Er . . . is this really a witch's cottage?' said Oats, staring at the assembled ranks of Oggery. 'Oh dear,' said Nanny. 'Pastor Melchio said they are sinks of depravity and sexual excess.' The young man took a nervous step backwards, knocking against a small table and causing a blue clockwork ballerina to begin a jerky pirouette to the tune of 'Three Blind Mice'. 'Well, we've got a sink all right,' said Nanny. 'What's your best offer?' 'I suppose we should be grateful that was a Nanny Ogg comment,' said Agnes. 'Don't wind him up, Nanny. It's been a busy morning.' 'Er, which way's the pump?' said Oats. Agnes pointed. He hurried out, gratefully. 'Wetter than a thunderstorm sandwich,' said Nanny, shaking her head. 'Granny was seen up above the long lake,' said Agnes, sitting down at the table. Nanny looked up sharply. 'On that bit of moor?' she said. 'Yes.' 'That's bad. That's gnarly country up there.' 'Gnarly?' 'All scrunched up.' 'What? I've been up there. It's just heather and gorse and there's a few old caves at the end of the valley.' 'Oh, really? Looked up at the clouds, did you? Oh well, let's have a go. . .' When Oats came back, scrubbed and shining, they were arguing. They looked rather embarrassed when they saw him. 'I said it'd need three of us,' said Nanny, pushing the glass ball aside. 'Especially if she's up there. Gnarly ground plays merry hell with scrying. We just ain't got the power.' 'I don't want to go back to the castle!' 'Magrat's good at this sort of thing.' 'She's got a little baby to look after, Nanny!' 'Yeah, in a castle full of vampires. Think about that. No knowing when they'll get hungry again. Better for 'em both to be out of it.' 'But-' 'You get her out now. I'd come myself, but you said I just sit there grinnin'.' Agnes suddenly pointed a finger at Oats. 'You!' 'Me?' he quavered. 'You said you could see they were vampires, didn't you?' 'I did?' 'You did.' 'That's right, I did. Er . . . and?' 'You didn't find your mind becoming all pink and happy?' 'I don't think my mind has ever been pink and happy,' said Oats. 'So why didn't they get through to you?' Oats smiled uneasily and fished in his jacket. 'I am protected by the hand of Om,' he said. Nanny inspected the pendant. It showed a figure trussed across the back of a turtle. 'You say?' she said. 'That's a good wheeze, then.' 'Just as Om reached out his hand to save the prophet Brutha from the torture, so will he spread his wings over me in my time of trial,' said Oats, but he sounded as though he was trying to reassure himself rather than Nanny. He went on: 'I've got a pamphlet if you would like to know more,' and this time the tone was much more positive, as if the existence of Om was a little uncertain whereas the existence of pamphlets was obvious to any open-minded, rational-thinking person. 'Don't,' said Nanny. She let the medallion go. 'Well, Brother Perdore never needed any magic jewellery for fighting off people, that's all I can say.' 'No, he just used to breathe alcohol all over them,' said Agnes. 'Well, you're coming with me, Mr Oats. I'm not facing Prince Slime again alone! And you can shut up!' 'Er, I didn't say anything-' 'I didn't mean you, I meant- Look, you said you've studied vampires, didn't you? What's good for vampires?' Oats thought for a moment. 'Er . . . a nice dry coffin, er, plenty of fresh blood, er, overcast skies.. .' His voice trailed off when he saw her expression. 'Ah . . . well, it depends exactly where they're from, I remember. Uberwald is a very big place. Er, cutting off the head and staking them in the heart is generally efficacious.' 'But that works on everyone,' said Nanny. 'Er . . . in Splintz they die if you put a coin in their mouth and cut their head off . . .' 'Not like ordinary people, then,' said Nanny, taking out a notebook. 'Er . . . in Klotz they die if you stick a lemon in their mouth-' 'Sounds more like it.' '-after you cut their head off. I believe that in Glitz you have to fill their mouth with salt, hammer a carrot into both ears, and then cut off their head.' 'I can see it must've been fun finding that out.' 'And in the valley of the Ah they believe it's best to cut off the head and boil it in vinegar.' 'You're going to need someone to carry all this stuff, Agnes,' said Nanny Ogg. 'But in Kashncari they say you should cut off their toes and drive a nail through their neck.' 'And cut their head off?' 'Apparently you don't have to.' 'Toes is easy,' said Nanny. 'Old Windrow over in Bad Ass cut off two of his with a spade and he weren't even trying.' 'And then, of course, you can defeat them by stealing their left sock,' said Oats. 'Sorry?' said Agnes. 'I think I misheard you there.' 'Um, they're pathologically meticulous, you see. Some of the gypsy tribes in Borogravia say that if you steal their sock and hide it somewhere they'll spend the rest of eternity looking for it. They can't abide things to be out of place or missing.' 'I wouldn't have put this down as a very widespread belief,' said Nanny. 'Oh, they say in some villages that you can even slow them down by throwing poppyseed at them,' said Oats. 'Then they'll have a terrible urge to count every seed. Vampires are very analretentive, you see?' 'I shouldn't like meeting one that was the opposite,' said Nanny. 'Yes, well, I don't think we're going to have time to ask the Count for his precise address,' said Agnes quickly. 'We're going to go in, fetch Magrat and get back here, all right? Why are you such a vampire expert, Oats?' 'I told you, I studied this sort of thing at college. We have to know the enemy if we're to combat evil forces ... vampires, demons, wit-' He stopped. 'Do go on,' said Nanny Ogg, as sweet as arsenic. 'But with witches I'm just supposed to show them the error of their ways.' Oats coughed nervously. 'That's something to look forward to, then,' said Nanny. 'What with me not havin' my fireproof corsets on. Off you go, then . . . all three of you.' 'There's three of us?' said Oats. Agnes felt her left arm tremble. Against every effort of will her wrist bent, her palm curled up and she felt two fingers straining to unfold. Only Nanny Ogg noticed. 'Like having your own chaperon all the time, ain't it?' she said. 'What was she talking about?' said Oats, as they headed for the castle. 'Her mind's wandering,' said Agnes, loudly.     There were covered ox-carts rumbling up the street to the castle. Agnes and Oats stood to one side and watched them. The drivers didn't seem interested in the bystanders. They wore drab, ill-fitting clothing, but an unusual touch was the scarf each one had wrapped around his neck so tightly that it might have been a bandage. 'Either there's a plague of sore throats in Uberwald or there will be nasty little puncture wounds under those, I'll bet,' said Agnes. 'Er . . . I do know a bit about the way they're supposed to control people,' said Oats. 'Yes?' 'It sounds silly, but it was in an old book.' 'Well?' 'They find single-minded people easier to control.' 'Single-minded?' said Agnes suspiciously. More carts rolled past. 'It doesn't sound right, I know. You'd think strongminded people would be harder to affect. I suppose a big target is easier to hit. In some of the villages, apparently, vampire hunters get roaring drunk first. Protection, you see? You can't punch fog.' So we're fog? said Perdita. So's he, by the look of him... Agnes shrugged. There was a certain bucolic look to the faces of the cart drivers. Of course, you got that in Lancre too, but in Lancre it was overlaid by a mixture of guile, common sense and stubborn rock-headedness. Here the eyes behind the faces had a switched-off look. Like cattle, said Perdita. 'Yes,' said Agnes. 'Pardon?' said Oats. 'Just thinking aloud. . .' And she thought of the way one man could so easily control a herd of cows, any one of which could have left him as a small damp depression in the ground had it wanted to. Somehow, they never got around to thinking about it. Supposing they are better than us, she thought. Supposing that, compared to them, we're just- You're too close to the castle! snapped Perdita. You're thinking cow thoughts. Then Agnes realized that there was a squad of men marching behind the carts. They didn't look at all like the carts' drivers. And these, said Perdita, are the cattle prods. They had uniforms, of a sort, with the black and white crest of the Magpyrs, but they weren't a body of men that looked smart in a uniform. They looked very much like men who killed other people for money, and not even for a lot of money. They looked, in short, like men who'd cheerfully eat a puppy sandwich. Several of them leered at Agnes when they went past, but it was only a generic leer that was simply leered on the basis that she had a dress on. More wagons came up behind them. 'Nanny Ogg says you must take time by the foreskin,' Agnes said, and darted forward as the last wagon rumbled past. 'She does?' 'I'm afraid so. You get used to it.' She caught the back of the cart and pulled herself up, beckoning him hastily to follow. 'Are you trying to impress me?' he said as she hauled him on board. 'Not you,' she said. And realized, at this point, that what she was sitting on was a coffin. There were two of them in the back of the cart, packed around with straw. 'Are they moving the furniture in?' said Oats. 'Er . . . I think . . . it might . . . be occupied,' said Agnes. She almost shrieked when he removed the lid. The coffin was empty. 'You idiot! Supposing there was someone in there!' 'Vampires are weak during the day. Everyone knows that,' said Oats reproachfully. 'I can . . . feel them here . . . somewhere,' said Agnes. The rattling of the cart changed as it rumbled on to the cobblestones of the courtyard. 'Get off the other one and I'll have a look.' 'But supposing-' He pushed her off and raised the lid before she could protest further. 'No, no vampire in here, either,' he said. 'Supposing one'd just reached out and grabbed you by the throat!' 'Om is my shield,' said Oats. 'Really? That's nice.' 'You may chortle-' 'I didn't chortle.' 'You can if you want to. But I'm sure we are doing the right thing. Did not Sonaton defeat the Beast of Batrigore in its very cave?' 'I don't know.' 'He did. And didn't the prophet Urdure vanquish the Dragon of Sluth on the Plain of Gidral after three days' fighting?' 'I don't know that we've got that much time-' 'And wasn't it true that the Sons of Exequial beat the hosts of Myrilom?' 'Yes?' 'You've heard of that?' 'No. Listen, we've stopped. I don't particularly want us to be found, do you? Not right now. And not by those guards. They didn't look like nice men at all.' They exchanged a meaningful glance over the coffins, concerning a certain inevitability about the immediate future. 'They'll notice they're heavier, won't they?' said Oats. 'Those people driving the carts didn't look as though they notice anything very much.' Agnes stared at the coffin beside her. There was some dirt in the bottom, but it was otherwise quite clean and had a pillow at the head end. There were also some side pockets in the lining. 'It's the easiest way in,' she said. 'You get into this one, I'll get into that one. And, look . . . those people you just told me about . . . Were they real historical characters?' 'Certainly. They-' 'Well, don't try to imitate them yet, all right? Otherwise you'll be a historical character too.' She shut the lid, and still felt there was a vampire around. Her hand touched the side pocket. There was something soft yet spiky there. Her fingers explored it in fascinated horror and discovered it to be a ball of wool with a couple of long knitting needles stuck through it, suggesting either a very domesticated form of voodoo or that someone was knitting a sock. Who knitted socks in a coffin? On the other hand, perhaps even vampires couldn't sleep sometimes, and tossed and turned all day. She braced herself as the coffin was picked up and tried to occupy her mind by working out where it was being taken. She heard the sound of footsteps on the cobbles, and then the ring of the flagstones on the main steps, echoing in the great hall, a sudden dip That meant the cellars. Logical, really, but not good. You're doing this to impress me, said Perdita. You're doing it to try to be extrovert and dynamic. Shut up, Agnes thought. A voice outside said, 'Put them down there and puth off.' That was the one who called himself Igor. Agnes wished she'd thought of- a weapon. 'Get rid of me, would they?' the voice went on, against a background of disappearing footsteps. 'Thith ith all going to end in tearth. It'th all very well for them, but who hath to go and thweep up the dutht, eh? That'th what I'd like to know. Who'th it hath to pull their headth out of the pickle jarth? Who'th it hath to find them under the ithe? I mutht've pulled out more thtaketh than I've had wriggly dinnerth . . .' Light flooded in as the coffin lid was removed. Igor stared at Agnes. Agnes stared at Igor. Igor unfroze first. He smiled – he had a geometrically interesting smile, because of the row of stitches right across it – and said, 'Dear me, thomeone'th been lithening to too many thtorieth. Got any garlic?' 'Masses,' Agnes lied. 'Won't work. Any holy water?' 'Gallons.' 'It–' A coffin lid smacked down on Igor's head, making an oddly metallic sound. He reached up slowly to rub the spot, and then turned around. This time the lid smacked into his face. 'Oh ... thit,' he said, and folded up. Oats appeared, face aglow with adrenaline and righteousness. 'I smote him mightily!' 'Good, good, let's get out of here! Help me up!' 'My wrath descended upon him like-' 'It was a heavy lid and he's not that young,' said Agnes. 'Look, I used to play down here, I know how to get to the back stairs-' 'He's not a vampire? He looks like one. First time I've ever seen a patchwork man . . .' 'He's a servant. Now, please come-' Agnes paused. 'Can you make holy water?' 'What, here?' 'I mean bless it, or dedicate it to Om, or. . . boil the hell out of it, perhaps,' said Agnes. 'There is a small ceremony I can-' He stopped. 'That's right! Vampires can be stopped by holy water!' 'Good. We'll go via the kitchens, then.' The huge kitchens were almost empty. They never bustled these days, since the royal couple were not the sort who demanded three meat courses with every meal, and at the moment there was only Mrs Scorbic the cook in there, calmly rolling out pastry. 'Afternoon, Mrs Scorbic,' said Agnes, deciding the best course was to march past and rely on the authority of the pointy hat. 'We've just dropped in for some water, don't worry, I know where the pump is, but if you've got a couple of empty bottles that would be helpful.' 'That's right, dear,' said Mrs Scorbic. Agnes stopped and turned. Mrs Scorbic was famously acerbic, especially on the subject of soya, nut cutlets, vegetarian meals and any vegetable that couldn't be boiled until it was yellow. Even the King hesitated to set foot in her kitchen but, whereas he only got an angry silence, lesser mortals got the full force of her generalized wrath. Mrs Scorbic was permanently angry, in the same way that mountains are permanently large. Today she was wearing a white dress, a white apron, a big white mob cap and a white bandage around her throat. She also looked, for want of any better word, happy. Agnes urgently waved Oats towards the pump. 'Find something to fill up,' she hissed, and then said brightly, 'How are you feeling, Mrs Scorbic?' 'All the better for you asking, miss.' 'I expect you're busy with all these visitors?' 'Yes, miss.' Agnes coughed. 'And, er, what did you give them for breakfast?' The cook's huge pink brow wrinkled. 'Can't remember, miss.' 'Well done.' Oats nudged her. 'I've filled up a couple of empty bottles and I said the Purification Rite of Om over them.' 'And that will work?' 'You must have faith.' The cook was watching them amiably. 'Thank you, Mrs Scorbic,' said Agnes. 'Please get on with . . . whatever you were doing.' 'Yes, miss.' The cook turned back to her rolling pin. Plenty of meals on her, said Perdita. Cook and larder all in one. 'That was tasteless!' said Agnes. 'What was?' said the priest. 'Oh . . . just a thought I had. Let's go up the back stairs.' They were bare stone, communicating with the public bits of the keep via a door at every level. On the other side of those doors it was still bare stone, but a better class of masonry altogether and with tapestries and carpets. Agnes pushed open a door. A couple of the Uberwald people were ambling along the corridor beyond, carrying something covered in a cloth. They didn't spare the newcomers a glance as Agnes led the way to the royal apartments. Magrat was standing on a chair when they came in. She looked down at them while little painted wooden stars and animals tangled themselves around her upraised arm. 'Wretched things,' she said. 'You'd think it would be easy, wouldn't you? Hello, Agnes. Could you hold the chair?' 'What are you doing?' said Agnes. She looked carefully. There was no bandage round Magrat's neck. 'Trying to hook this mobile on to the chandelier,' said Magrat. 'Uh . . . that's done it. But it tangles up all the time! Verence says it's very good for young children to see lots of bright colours and shapes. It speeds development, he says. But I can't find Millie anywhere.' There's a castle full of vampires, and she's decorating the playroom, said Perdita. What's wrong with this woodcut? Somehow, Agnes couldn't bring herself to blurt out a warning. Apart from anything else, the chair looked wobbly. 'Little Esme's only two weeks old,' said Agnes. 'Isn't that a bit young for education?' 'Never too early to start, he says. What can I do for you?' 'We need you to come with us. Right now.' 'Why?' said Magrat, and to Agnes's relief she stepped down from the chair. 'Why? Magrat, there's vampires in the castle! The Magpyr family are vampires!' 'Don't be silly, they're very pleasant people. I was talking to the Countess only this morning-' 'What about?' Agnes demanded. 'I bet you can't remember!’ 'I am Queen, Agnes,' said Magrat reproachfully. 'Sorry, but they affect people's minds-' 'Yours?' 'Um, no, not mine. I have- I'm- It seems I'm immune,' Agnes lied. 'And his?' said Magrat sharply. 'I am protected by my faith in Om,' said Oats. Magrat raised her eyebrows at Agnes. 'Is he?' Agnes shrugged. 'Apparently.' Magrat leaned closer. 'He's not drunk, is he? He's holding two beer bottles.' 'They're full of holy water,' Agnes whispered. 'Verence said Omnianism seemed a very sensible and stable religion,' hissed Magrat. They both looked at Oats, mentally trying the words on him for size. 'Are we leaving?' he said. 'Of course not!’  snapped Magrat, straightening up. 'Thus is silly, Agnes. I'm a married woman, I'm Queen, I've got a little baby. And you come in here telling me we've got vampiresl I've got guests here and-' 'The guests are vampires, your majesty,' said Agnes. 'The King invited them!' 'Verence says we have to learn to deal with all sorts of people-' 'We think Granny Weatherwax is in very bad trouble,' said Agnes. Magrat stopped. 'How bad?' she said. 'Nanny Ogg is very worried. Quite snappish. She says it needs three of us to find Granny.' 'Well, I- 'And Granny's taken the box, whatever that means,' said Agnes. 'The one she keeps in the dresser?' 'Yes. Nanny wouldn't tell me much about what was in it.' Magrat opened up her hands like an angler measuring a medium-sized fish. 'The polished wooden box? About this size 'I don't know, I've never seen it. Nanny seemed to think it was important. She didn't say what was in it,' Agnes repeated, just in case Magrat hadn't got the hint. Magrat clasped her hands together and looked down, biting her knuckles. When she looked up her face was set with purpose. She pointed at Oats. 'You find a bag or something and empty into it all the stuff in the top drawer over there, and take the potty, and the little truck, oh, and the stuffed animals, and the bag of nappies, and the bag for used nappies, and the bath, and the bag with the towels, and the box of toys, and the wind-up things, and the musical box, and the bag with the little suits, oh, and the woolly hat, and you, Agnes, find something we can make into a sling. You came up the back stairs? We'll go down the same way.' 'What do we need a sling for?' Magrat leaned over the crib and picked up the baby, wrapped in a blanket. 'I'm not going to leave her here, am I?' she said. There was a clatter from the direction of Mightily Oats. He already had both arms full, and a large stuffed rabbit in his teeth. 'Do we need all of that?' said Agnes. 'You never know,' said Magrat. 'Even the box of toys?' 'Verence thinks she might be an early developer,' said Magrat. 'She's a couple of weeks old!' 'Yes, but stimulus at an early age is vital to the development of the growing brain,' said Magrat, laying baby Esme on the table and shuffling her into a romper suit. 'Also, we have to get on top of her hand-eye co-ordination as soon as possible. It's no good just letting things slide. Oh, yes . . . If you can bring the little slide, too. And the yellow rubber duck. And the sponge in the shape of a teddy bear. And the teddy bear in the shape of a sponge.' There was another crash from the mound around Oats. 'Why's the box so important?' said Agnes. 'Not important as such,' said Magrat. She looked over her shoulder. 'Oh, and put in that rag doll, will you? I'm sure she's focusing on it. Oh, blast . . . the red bag has got the medicines in it, thank you . . . What was it you asked me?' 'Granny's box,' Agnes hinted. 'Oh, it's . . . just important to her.' 'It's magical?' 'What? Oh, no. Not as far as I know. But everything in it belongs to her, you see. Not to the cottage,' said Magrat, picking up her daughter. 'Who's a good girl, then? You are!' She looked around. 'Have we forgotten anything?' Oats spat out the rabbit. 'Possibly the ceiling,' he said. 'Then let's go.'     Magpies flocked around the castle tower. Most magpie rhymes peter out at around ten or twelve, but here were hundreds of birds, enough to satisfy any possible prediction. There are many rhymes about magpies, but none of them is very reliable because they are not the ones the magpies know themselves. The Count sat in the darkness below, listening to their minds. Images flashed behind his eyes. This was the way to run a country, he reflected. Human minds were so hard to read, unless they were so close that you could see the words just hovering below actual vocalization. But the birds could get everywhere, see every worker in the fields and hunter in the forest. They were good listeners, too. Much better than bats or rats. Once again, tradition was overturned. No sign of Granny, though. Some trick, perhaps. It didn't matter. Eventually she'd find him. She wouldn't hide for long. It wasn't in her nature. Weatherwaxes would always stand and fight, even when they knew they would be beaten. So predictable. Several of the birds had seen a busy little figure trudging across the kingdom, leading a donkey laden with falconry gear. The Count had taken a look at Hodgesaargh, found a mind crammed end to end with hawks, and dismissed him. He and his silly birds would have to go eventually, of course, because he made the magpies nervous. He made a note to mention this to the guards.     'Ooaauooow!' . . . but there was probably no combination of vowels that could do justice to the cry Nanny Ogg made on seeing a young baby. It included sounds known only to cats. 'Isn't she a little precious?' Nanny crooned. 'I've probably got a sweetie somewhere-' 'She's not on solids,' said Magrat. 'Still keeping you up at nights?' 'And days. But she's slept well today, thank goodness. Nanny, give her to Mr Oats and let's sort this out right away.' The young priest took the baby nervously, holding it, as some men do, as if it would break or at least explode. 'There, there, there,' he said, vaguely. 'Now ... what's this about Granny?' said Magrat. They told her, interrupting one another at important points. 'The gnarly ground over towards the top of the forest?' said Magrat, when they were nearly finished. 'That's right,' said Nanny. 'What is gnarly ground?' said Agnes. 'There's a lot of magic in these mountains, right?' said Nanny. 'And everyone knows mountains get made when lumps of land bang together, right? Well, when the magic gets trapped you . . . sort of . . . get a bit of land where the space is . . . sort of . . . scrunched up, right? It'd be quite big if it could but it's like a bit of gnarly wood in an of tree. Or a used hanky . . . all folded up small but still big in a different way.' 'But I've been up there and it's just a bit of moorland!' 'You've got to know the right direction,' said Nanny. 'Damn hard to scry into a place like that. It goes all wobbly. It's like tryin' to look at something close up and a long way away at the same time. It makes your crystal ball water.' She pulled the green ball towards her. 'Now, you two push an' I'll steer-' 'Er, are you going to do some magic?' said Oats, behind them. 'What's the problem?' said Nanny. 'I mean, does it involve, er . . .' he coloured up, ,er ... removing your garments and dancing around and summoning lewd and salacious creatures? Only I'm afraid I couldn't be a party to that. The Book of Om forbids consorting with false enchanters and deceitful soothsayers, you see.' 'I wouldn't consort with false enchanters neither,.' said Nanny. 'Their beards fall off.' 'We're real,' said Magrat. 'And we certainly don't summon lewd and salacious creatures,' said Agnes. 'Unless we want to,' said Nanny Ogg, almost under her breath. 'Well . . . all right, then,' said Oats. As they unwound the power, Agnes heard Perdita think I don't like Magrat. She's not like she used to be. Well, of course she's not. But she's taking charge, she's not cringing slightly like she used to, she's not WET. That's because she's a mother, Agnes thought. Mothers are only slightly damp. She was not, herself, hugely in favour of motherhood in general. Obviously it was necessary, but it wasn't exactly difficult. Even cats managed it. But women acted as if they'd been given a medal that entitled them to boss people around. It was as if, just because they'd got the label which said 'mother', everyone else got a tiny part of the label that said 'child' . . . She gave a mental shrug, and concentrated on the craft in hand. Light grew and faded inside the green globe. Agnes had only scryed a few times before, but she didn't remember the light pulsing like this. Every time it dissolved into an image the light flickered and bounced to somewhere else . . . a patch of heather . . . a tree . . . boiling clouds . . . And then Granny Weatherwax came and went. The image appeared and was gone in an instant, and the glow that rolled in with a finality told Agnes that this was all, folks. 'She was lying down,' said Magrat. 'It was all fuzzy.' 'Then she's in one of the caves. She said once she goes up there to be alone with her thoughts,' said Nanny. 'And did you catch that little twitch? She's trying to keep us out.' 'The caves up there are just scoops in the rock,' said Agnes. 'Yes . . . and no,' said Nanny. 'Did I see her holding a card in her hands?' 'The "I ate'nt dead' card?' said Magrat. 'No, she'd left that in the cottage.' 'Just when we really need her, she goes away into a cave?' 'Does she know we need her? Did she know about the vampires?' said Agnes. 'Can't we go and ask her?' said Magrat. 'We can't fly all the way,' said Nanny, scratching her chin. 'Can't fly prop'ly over gnarly ground. The broomsticks act funny.' 'Then we'll walk the rest,' said Magrat. 'It's hours to sunset.' 'You're not corning, are you?' said Agnes, aghast. 'Yes, of course.' 'But what about the baby?' 'She seems to like it in the sling and it keeps her warm and it's not as if there's monsters up there,' said Magrat. 'Anyway, I think it's possible to combine motherhood and a career.' 'I thought you'd given up witchcraft,' said Agnes. 'Yes . . . well . . . yes. Let's make sure Granny's all right and get this sorted out, and then obviously I'll have other things to do . . .' 'But it could be dangerous!' said Agnes. 'Don't you think so, Nanny?' Nanny Ogg turned her chair and looked at the baby. 'Cootchie-cootchie?' she said. The small head looked around and Esme opened her blue eyes. Nanny Ogg stared thoughtfully. 'Take her with us,' she said at last. 'I used to take our Jason everywhere when he was tiny. They like being with their mum.' She gave the baby another long hard look. 'Yes,' she went on, 'I think that'd be a damn good idea.' 'Er . . . I feel perhaps there is little that I'd be able to do,' Oats said. 'Oh, it'd be too dangerous to take you,' said Nanny dismissively. 'But of course my prayers will go with you.' 'That's nice.' Nanny sniffed.     Drizzling rain soaked Hodgesaargh as he trudged back to the castle. The damp had got into the lure, and the noise it made now could only attract some strange, lost creature, skulking in ancient estuaries. Or possibly a sheep with a very sore throat. And then he heard the chattering of magpies. He tied the donkey to a sapling and stepped out into a clearing. The birds were screaming in the trees around him, but erupted away at the sight of King Henry on her perch on the donkey. Crouched against a mossy rock was . . . ... a small magpie. It was bedraggled and wrong, as if put together by someone who had seen one but didn't know how it was supposed to work. It struggled when it saw him, there was a fluffing of feathers and, now, a smaller version of King Henry was trying to unfold its tattered wings. He backed away. On her perch, the hooded eagle had its head turned to the strange bird . . . ... which was now a pigeon. A thrush. A wren . . . A sudden intimation of doom made Hodgesaargh cover his eyes, but he saw the flash through the skin of his fingers, felt the thump of the flame, and smelled the scorched hairs on the back of his hand. A few tufts of grass smouldered on the edge of a circle of scorched earth. Inside it a few pathetic bones glowed red hot and then crumbled into fine ash. Away in the forest, the magpies screamed.     Count Magpyr stirred in the darkness of his room and opened his eyes. The pupils widened to take in more light. 'I think she has gone to ground,' he said. 'That was remarkably quick,' said the Countess. 'I thought you said she was quite powerful.' 'Oh, indeed. But human. And she's getting older. With age comes doubt. It's so simple. All alone in that barren cottage, no company but the candlelight . . . it's so simple to open up all the little cracks and let her mind turn in on itself. It's like watching a forest fire when the wind changes and suddenly it's roaring down on all the houses you thought were built so strongly.' 'So graphically put.' 'Thank you.' 'You were so successful in Escrow, I know. . .' 'A model for the future. Vampires and humans in harmony at last. There is no need for this animosity, just as I have always said.' The Countess walked over to the window and gingerly pulled aside the curtain. Despite the overcast sky, grey light filtered in. 'There's no requirement to be so cautious about this, either,' said her husband, coming up behind her and jerking the curtain aside. The Countess shuddered and turned her face away. 'You see? Still harmless. Every day, in every way, we get better and better,' said Count Magpyr cheerfully. 'Self help. Positive thinking. Training. Familiarity. Garlic? A pleasant seasoning. Lemons? Merely an acquired taste. Why, yesterday I mislaid a sock and I simply don't care. I have lots of socks. Extra socks can be arranged!' His smile faded when he saw his wife's expression. 'The word "but" is on the tip of your tongue,' he said flatly. 'I was just going to say that there were no witches in Escrow.' 'And the place is all the better for it!' 'Of course, but-' 'There you go again, my dear. There is no room for 'but' in our vocabulary. Verence was right, oddly enough. There's a new world coming, and there won't be any room in it for those ghastly little gnomes or witches or centaurs and especially not for the firebirds! Away with theml Let us progress! They are unfitted for survival!' 'You only wounded that phoenix, though.' 'My point exactly. It allowed itself to be hurt, and therefore extinction looms. No, my dear, if we won't fade with the old world we must make shift in the new. Witches? I'm afraid witches are all in the past now.'     The broomsticks in the present landed just above the treeline, on the edge of the moor. As Agnes had said, it was barely big enough to deserve the term. She could even hear the little mountain brook at the far end. 'I can't see anything gnarly-looking,' said Agnes. She knew it was a stupid thing to say, but the presence of Magrat was getting on her nerves. Nanny looked up at the sky. The other two followed her gaze. 'You've got to get your eye in, but you'll see it if you watch,' she said. 'You can only see it if you stands on the moor.' Agnes squinted at the overcast. 'Oh . . . I think I can,' said Magrat. I bet she doesn't, said Perdita, I can't. And then Agnes did. It was tricky to spot, like a join between two sheets of glass, and it seemed to move away whenever she was certain she could see it, but there was an . . . inconsistency, flickering in and out on the edge of vision. Nanny licked a finger and held it up to the wind. Then she pointed. 'This way. An' shut your eyes.' 'There's no path,' said Magrat. 'That's right. You hold on to my hand, Agnes will hold on to yours. I've been this way a few times. It ain't hard.' 'It's like a children's story,' said Agnes. 'Yes, we're down to the bone now, all right,' said Nanny. 'And . . . off we go. . .' Agnes felt the heather brush her feet as she stepped forward. She opened her eyes. Moorland stretched away on every side, even behind them. The air was darker, the clouds heavier, the wind sharper. The mountains looked a long way away. There was a distant thunder of water. 'Where are we now?' said Magrat. 'Still here,' said Nanny. 'I remember my dad saying sometimes a deer or somethin' would run into gnarly ground if it was bein' hunted.' 'It'd have to be pretty desperate,' said Agnes. The heather was darker here, and scratched so much it was almost thorny. 'Everything's so . . . nasty-looking.' 'Attitude plays a part,' said Nanny. She tapped something with her foot. It was . . . well, it had been a standing stone, Agnes thought, but now it was a lying stone. Lichen grew thickly all over it. 'The marker. Hard to get out again if you don't know about it,' said Nanny. 'Let's head for the mountains. Esme all wrapped up, Magrat? Little Esme, I mean.' 'She's asleep.' 'Yeah,' said Nanny, in what Agnes thought was an odd tone of voice. 'Just as well, really. Let's go. Oh, I thought we might need these . . .' She fumbled in the bottomless storeroom of her knickerleg and produced a couple of pairs of socks so thick that they could have stood up by themselves. 'Lancre wool,' she said. 'Our Jason knits 'em of an evenin' and you know what strong fingers he's got. You could kick your way through a wall.' The heather ripped fruitlessly at the wire-like wool as the women hurried over the moor. There was still a sun here, or at least a bright spot in the overcast, but darkness seemed to come up from beneath the ground. Agnes . . . said Perdita's voice, in the privacy of her shared brain. What? thought Agnes. Nanny's worried about something to do with the baby and Granny. Have you noticed? Agnes thought: I know Nanny keeps looking at little Esme as if she's trying to make up her mind about something, if that's what you mean. Well, l think it's to do with Borrowing . . . She thinks Granny's using the baby to keep an eye on us? I don't know. But something's happening . . . The roar ahead grew louder. 'There's a little stream, isn't there?' said Agnes. 'That's right,' said Nanny. 'Just here.' The moor fell away. They stared into the abyss, which didn't stare back. It was huge. White water was just visible far below. Cold, damp air blew past their faces. 'That can't be right,' said Magrat. 'That's wider and deeper than Lancre Gorge!’ Agnes looked down into the mist. It's a couple of feet deep, Perdita told her. I can see every pebble. 'Perdita thinks it's a . . . well, an optical illusion,' Agnes said aloud. 'She could be right,' said Nanny. 'Gnarly ground, see? Bigger on the inside.' Magrat picked up a rock and tossed it in. It bounced off the wall a few times, tumbling end over end, and then nothing was left but a stony echo. The river was too far down even to see the splash. 'It's very realistic, isn't it?' she said weakly. 'We could use the bridge,' said Nanny, pointing. They regarded the bride. It had a certain negative quality. That is to say, while it was possible at the limits of probability that if they tried to cross the chasm by walking out over thin air this might just work – because of sudden updraughts, or air molecules suddenly all having a crazy idea at the same time – trying to do the same thing via the bridge would dearly be laughable. There was no mortar in it. The pillars had been piled up out of rocks laid like a drystone wall, and then a series of big flat stones dropped across the top. The result would have been called primitive even by people who were too primitive to have a word yet for 'primitive'. It creaked ominously in the wind. They could hear stone grind against stone. 'That's not right,' said Magrat. 'It wouldn't stand up to a gale.' 'It wouldn't stand up to a dead calm,' said Agnes. 'I don't think it's really real.' 'Ah, I can see where that'd make crossing it a bit tricky, then,' said Nanny. It's just a slab laid over a ditch, Perdita insisted. I could cartwheel over it. Agnes blinked. 'Oh, I understand,' she said. 'This is some sort of test, is it? It is, isn't it? We're worried, so fear makes it a deep gorge. Perdita's always confident, so she hardly notices it . . .' 'Pd like to notice it's there,' said Magrat. 'It's a bridge.' 'We're wasting time,' said Agnes. She strode out over the slabs of stone and stopped halfway. 'Rocks a bit, but it's not too bad,' she called back. 'You just have to-' The slab shifted under her, and tipped her off. She flung out her hands and caught the edge of the stone by sheer luck. But, strong though her fingers were, a lot of Agnes was penduluming underneath. She looked down. She didn't want to, but it was a direction occupying a lot of the world. The water's about a foot below you, it really is, said Perdita. All you have to do is drop, and you'd be good at that . . . Agnes looked down again. The drop was so long that probably no one would hear the splash. It didn't just look deep, it felt deep. Clammy air rose around her. She could feel the sucking emptiness under her feet. 'Magrat threw a stone down there!' she hissed. Yes, and I saw it fall a few inches. 'Now, I'm lyin' flat and Magrat's holdin' on to my legs,' said Nanny Ogg conversationally, right above her. 'I'm going to grab your wrists and, you know, I reckon if you swings a little sideways you ought to get your foot on one of the stone pillars and you'll be right as ninepence.' 'You don't have to talk to me as if I'm some kind of frightened idiot!' snapped Agnes. 'Just tryin' to be pleasant.' 'I can't move my hands!’ 'Yes, you can. See, I've got your arm now.' 'I can't move my hands!' 'Don't rush, we've got all day,' said Nanny. 'Whenever you're ready.' Agnes hung for a while. She couldn't even sense her hands now. That presumably meant that she wouldn't feel it when her grip slipped. The stones groaned. 'Br. . . Nanny?' ,Yep?, 'Can you talk to me a bit more as if I'm some kind of frightened idiot?' 'Okay.' 'Er . . . why do they say right as ninepence"? As opposed to, say, tenpence?' 'Interestin'. Maybe it's-' 'And can you speak up? Perdita's shouting at me that if I drop eighteen inches I'll be standing in the stream!' 'Do you think she's right?' 'Not about the eighteen inches!' The bridge creaked. 'People seldom are,' said Nanny. 'Are you getting anywhere, dear? Only I can't lift you up, you see. And my arms are going numb, too.' 'I can't reach the pillar!' 'Then let go,' said Magrat, from somewhere behind Nanny. 'Magrat!' snapped Nanny. 'Well, perhaps it is only a little stream to Perdita. Gnarly ground can be two things at the same time, can't it? So if that's how she sees it . . . well, can't you let her get on with it? Let her sort it out. Can't you let her take over?' 'She only does that when I'm really under stress! Shut up!' 'I only-' 'Not you, her! Oh, no–' Her left hand, white and almost numb, pulled itself off the stone and out of Nanny's grip. 'Don't let her do this to us!' Agnes shrieked. 'I'll fall hundreds of feet on to sharp rocks!' 'Yes, but since you're going to do that anyway, anything's worth a try, isn't it?' said Nanny. 'I should shut your eyes, if I was you-' The right hand came loose. Agnes shut her eyes. She fell. Perdita opened her eyes. She was standing in the stream. 'Damn!' And Agnes would never say 'damn', which was why Perdita did so at every suitable occasion. She reached up to the slab just above her, got a grip, and hauled herself up. Then, catching sight of Nanny Ogg's expression, she jerked her hands around into a new position and kicked her legs up. That stupid Agnes never realizes how strong she is, Perdita thought. There's all these muscles she's afraid of using . . . She pushed gently until her toes pointed at the sky and she was doing a handstand on the edge. The effect, she felt, was spoilt by her skirt falling over her eyes. 'You've still got that tear in yer knickers,' said Nanny sharply. Perdita flicked herself on to her feet. Magrat had her eyes tight shut. 'She didn't do a handstand on the edge, did she?' 'She did,' said Nanny. 'Now then, A- Perdita, stop that showing off, we've wasted too much time. Let Agnes have the body back, you know it's hers really.' Perdita did a cartwheel. 'This body's wasted on her,' she said. 'And you should see the stuff she eats! Do you know she's still got two shelves full of soft toys? And dolls? And she wonders why she can't get along with boys!' 'Nothing like being stared at by a teddybear to put a young man off his stroke,' said Nanny Ogg. 'Remember old Mrs Sleeves, Magrat? Used to need two of us when she had one of her nasty turns.' 'What's that got to do with toys?' said Perdita suspiciously. 'And what's it- Oh, yes,' said Magrat. 'Now, I recall that old bellringer down in Ohulan,' said Nanny, leading the way. 'He had no fewer than seven personalities in his head. Three of 'em were women and four of 'em were men. Poor old chap. He said he was always the odd one out. He said they let him get on with all the work and the breathin' and eatin' and they had all the fun. Remember? He said it was hellish when he had a drink and they all started fightin' for a tastebud. Sometimes he couldn't hear himself think in his own head, he said- Now! Now! Now!' Agnes opened her eyes. Her jaw hurt. Nanny Ogg was peering at her closely, while rubbing some feeling back into her wrist. From a couple of inches away her face looked like a friendly pile of elderly laundry. 'Yes, that's Agnes,' she said, standing back. 'Her face goes sharper when it's the other one. See? I told you she'd be the one that came back. She's got more practice.' Magrat let go of her arms. Agnes rubbed her chin. 'That hurt,' she said reproachfully. 'Just a bit of tough love,' said Nanny. 'Can't have that Perdita running around at a time like this.' 'You just sort of grabbed the bridge and came right back up,' said Magrat. 'I felt her stand on the ground!' said Agnes. 'And that too, then,' said Nanny. 'Come on. Not far now. Sometimes. And let's just take it easy, shall we? Some of us might have further to fall than others.' They edged forward, despite an increasingly insistent voice in Agnes's head that kept telling her she was being a stupid coward and of course she wouldn't be hurt. She tried to ignore it. The caves that Agnes remembered hadn't been much more than rock overhangs. These were caverns. The difference is basically one of rugged and poetic grandeur. These had a lot of both. 'Gnarly ground's a bit like icebergs,' said Nanny, leading them up a little gully to one of the largest. 'Nine-tenths of it is under water?' said Agnes. Her chin still hurt. 'There's more to it than meets the eye, I mean.' 'There's someone there!' said Magrat. 'Oh, that's the witch,' said Nanny. 'She's not a problem.' Light from the entrance fell on a hunched figure, sitting among pools of water. Closer to, it looked like a statue, and perhaps not quite as human as the eye at first suggested. Water glistened on it; drops formed on the end of the long hooked nose and fell into a pool with the occasional plink. 'I come up here with a young wizard once, when I was a girl,' said Nanny. 'He liked nothing so much as bashing at rocks with his little hammer . . . well, almost nothing,' she added, with a smile towards the past and then a happy sigh. 'He said the witch was just a lot of of stuff from the rocks, left there by the water drippin'. But my granny said it was a witch that sat up here to think about some big spell, and she turned to stone. Person'ly, I keep an open mind.' 'It's a long way to bring someone,' said Agnes. 'Oh, there was a lot of us kids at home and it was rainin' a lot and you need a lot of privacy for really good geology,' said Nanny vaguely. 'I think his hammer's still around here somewhere. He quite forgot about it after a while. Mind how you tread, the rocks is very slippery. How's young Esme doing, Magrat?' 'Oh, gurgling away. I'll have to feed her soon.' 'We've got to look after her,' said Nanny. 'Well, yes. Of course.' Nanny clapped her hands together and pulled them apart gently. The glow between them wasn't the showy light that wizards made, but a grainy graveyard glimmer. It was just enough to ensure that no one fell down a hole. 'Probably some dwarfs in a place like this,' said Magrat, as they picked their way along a tunnel. 'Shouldn't think so. They don't like places that don't stay the same. No one comes up here now but animals and Granny when she wants to be alone with her thoughts.' 'And you when you were banging rocks,' said Magrat. 'Hah! But it was different then. There was flowers on the moor and the bridge was just stepping stones. That's 'cos I was in love.' 'You mean it really does change because of the way you feel?' said Agnes. 'You spotted it. It's amazing how high and rocky the bridge can be if you're in a bad mood, I know that.' 'I wonder how high it was for Granny, then?' 'Probably clouds could go underneath, girl.' Nanny stopped where the path forked, and then pointed. 'I reckon she's gone this way. Hold on-' She thrust out an arm. Stone groaned, and a slab of roof thudded down, throwing up spray and pebbles. 'So we'll just have to climb over this bit, then,' Nanny went on, in the same matter-of-fact tone of voice. 'Something's trying to push us out,' said Agnes. 'But it won't,' said Nanny. 'And I don't think it'll harm us.' 'That was a big slab!' said Agnes. 'Yeah. But it missed us, didn't it?' There was an underground river further on, sheer white water blurred with speed. It poured around and almost over a dam of driftwood, topped by an inviting long log. 'Look, this isn't safe for the baby!’  said Agnes. 'Do you both see that? You're her mother, Magrat!’ 'Yes, I know, I was there,' said Magrat, with infuriating calm. 'But this doesn't feel,unsafe. Granny's here somewhere.' 'That's right,' said Nanny. 'Really close now, I think.' 'Yes, but she can't control rivers and rocks-' Agnes began. 'Here? Dunno. Very . . . responsive place, this.' They inched their way across the log, passing the baby from one to the other. Agnes leaned against the stone wall. 'How much further?' 'Well, technic'ly a few inches,' said Nanny. 'That's helpful to know, isn't it?' 'Is it just me,' said Magrat, 'or is it getting warmer?' 'Now that,' said Agnes, pointing ahead, 'I don't believe.' At the end of a slope a crevasse had opened in the rock. Red light spilled out. As they stared at it, a ball of flame rolled up and burst across the ceiling. 'Oh deary deary me,' said Nanny, who had taken a turn to carry the baby. 'An' it's not even as if there's any volcanoes anywhere near here. What can she be thinking?' She headed purposefully towards the fire. 'Careful!' Agnes shouted. 'Perdita says it's real!’ 'What's that got to do with the price of fish?' said Nanny, and stepped into the fire. The flames snapped out. The other two stood in the chilly, damp gloom. Magrat shuddered. 'Nanny, you are carrying the baby.' 'The harm you come to here is what you brings with you,' said Nanny. 'And it's Granny's thoughts that are shaping this place. But she wouldn't raise a hand to a child. Couldn't do it. Hasn't got it in her.' 'This place is reacting to what she's thinking?' said Agnes. 'I reckon so,' said Nanny, setting off again. 'I'd hate to be inside her head!' 'You nearly are,' said Nanny. 'Come on. We've passed the fire. I don't think there'll be anything else.' They found her in a cavern. It had sand on the floor, smooth and unmarked by anything except one set of footprints. Her hat had been placed neatly beside her. Her head rested on a rolled-up sack. She held a card in stiff hands. It read: GOE AWAY 'That's not very helpful,' said Magrat, and sat down with the baby across her lap. 'After all this, too.' 'Can't We wake her up?' said Agnes. 'That's dangerous,' said Nanny Ogg. 'Trying to call her back when she ain't ready to come? Tricky.' 'Well, can we at least take her out of here?' 'She won't bend round corners but, hah, maybe we could use her as a bridge,' said Nanny. 'No, she came here for a reason . . .' She pulled the sack out from under Granny's head, which did not move, and opened it. 'Wrinkly apple, bottle of water and a cheese sandwich you could bend horseshoes round,' she said. 'And her old box.' She set it down on the floor between them. 'What is in there?' said Agnes. 'Oh, keepsakes. Memorororabiliha, like I said. That sort of thing,' said Nanny. 'She always says it's full of things she's got no further use for.' She drummed her fingers on the box as if accompanying a thought on the piano, and then picked it up. 'Should you do that?' said Agnes. 'No,' said Nanny. She lifted out a bundle of papers tied with ribbon and put them on one side. They all saw the light shining up from underneath. Nanny reached in and took out a small glass medicine bottle, tightly corked, and held it up. A little glow inside was quite bright in the gloom of the cave. 'Seen this bottle before,' said Nanny. 'She's got all kinds of odds and ends in here. Never noticed it glowing, though.' Agnes took the bottle. Inside there was what looked like a piece of fern, or . . . no, it was a feather, quite black except for the very tip, which was as yellow and bright as a candle flame. 'Do you know what it is?' 'No. She's always pickin' up stuff. She's had the bottle a long time, 'cos I've seen it in there-' 'I faw her fick it uff-' Magrat removed a safetypin from her mouth. 'I saw her pick that thing up years ago,' she tried again. 'It was around this time of year, too. We were walking back through the woods and there was a shooting star and this sort of light fell off it and we went to look and there it was. It looked like a flame but she was able to pick it up.' 'Sounds like a firebird feather,' said Nanny. 'There used to be old stories about them. They pass through here. But if you touch their feathers you'd better be damn sure of yourself, because the old stories say they burn in the presence of evil-' 'Firebird? You mean a phoenix?' said Agnes. 'Hodgesaargh was going on about one.' 'Haven't seen one go over for years,' said Nanny. 'Sometimes you'd see two or three at a time when I was a girl, just lights flying high up in the sky.' 'No, no, the phoenix . . . there's only one of it, that's the whole point,' said Agnes. 'One of anything's no bloody use,' said Nanny. Granny Weatherwax smacked her lips, like someone emerging from a very deep sleep. Her eyelids flickered. 'Ah, I knew opening her box'd work,' said Nanny happily. Granny Weatherwax's eyes opened. She stared straight up for a moment, and then swivelled them towards Nanny Ogg. 'W't'r,' she mumbled. Agnes hastily passed her the water bottle. She touched Granny's fingers, and they were as chilly as stone. The old witch took a gulp. 'Oh. It's you three,' she whispered. 'Why did you come here?' 'You told us to,' said Agnes. 'No, I didn't!' Granny snapped. 'Wrote you a note, did I?' 'No, but the stuff-' Agnes stopped. 'Well, we thought you wanted us to.' 'Three witches?' said Granny. 'Well, no reason why not. The maiden, the mother and the-' 'Go carefully,' Nanny Ogg warned. '-the other one,' said Granny. 'That's up to you, I'm sure. It's not something about which I would venture any sort of opinion. So I expect you've got some dancin' to be doing, and good day to you. I'll have my pillow back, thank you very much.' 'You know there's vampires in Lancre?' Nanny demanded. 'Yes. They got invited.' 'You know they're taking over?' 'Pest' 'So why did you run away up here?' said Agnes. The temperature of a deep cave should remain constant, but suddenly this one was a lot colder. 'I can go where I like,' said Granny. 'Yes, but you ought-' Agnes began. She wished she could bite the word back, but it was too late. 'Oh, ought, is it? Where does it say ought? I don't remember it saying ought anywhere. Anyone going to tell me where it says ought? There's lots of things that ought, I dare say. But they ain't.' 'You know a magpie stole your invite?' said Nanny. 'Shawn delivered it okay, but them thieving devils had it away and into a nest.' She flourished the crumpled, smudged yet goldladen invitation. In the moment of silence Agnes fancied she could hear the stalactites grow. 'Yes, of course I did,' said Granny. 'Worked that out first thing.' But the moment had been just slightly too long, and just slightly too quiet. 'And you know Verence got an Omnian priest in to do the Naming of young Esme?' Again . . . fractionally too long, infinitesimally too silent. 'You know I put my mind to business,' said Granny. She glanced at the baby sitting on Magrat's lap. 'Why's she got a pointy head?' she said. 'It's the little hood Nanny knitted for her,' said Magrat. 'It's meant to look like that. Would you like to hold her?' 'She looks comfortable where she is,' said Granny diffidently. She didn't know the baby's name! Perdita whispered. I told you! Nanny thinks Granny's been in the baby's mind, l can tell by the way she's been looking at her, but if she had she'd know the name and she doesn't, I swear. She wouldn't do anything that might hurt a child. . . Granny shook herself. 'Anyway, if there's a problem, well, you've got your three witches. It doesn't say anywhere that one of them ought,' she nodded at Agnes, 'to be Granny Weatherwax. You sort it out. I've been witching in these parts for altogether too long and it's time to . . . move on . . . do something else. . .' 'You're going to hide up here?' said Magrat. 'I'm not going to keep on repeating myself, my girl. People aren't going to tell me what I ought to do no more. I know what's ought and what's not. Your husband invited vampires into the country, did he? That's modern for you. Well, everyone else knows that a vampire don't have no power over you 'less you invite it in, and if it's a king as does the inviting, then they've got their teeth into the whole country. And I'm an ol' woman living in the woods and I've got to make it all better? When there's three of you? I've had a lifetime of ought from can to can't and now it's over, and I'll thank you for gettin' out of my cave. And that's an end of it.' Nanny glanced at the other two and shrugged. 'Come on, then,' she said. 'If we get a wiggle on we can be back at the broomsticks before dark.' 'Is that all?' said Magrat. 'Things come to an end,' said Granny. 'I'm going to rest up here and then I'm on my way. Plenty of places to go.' Now get her to tell you the truth, said Perdita. Agnes bit down. Ought had been bad enough. 'So we'll be getting along,' said Nanny. 'Come on.' 'But-' 'But me no buts,' said Nanny. 'As Granny would have said.' 'That's right!' said Granny, lying back. As they filed back into the caves Agnes heard Perdita start counting. Magrat patted her pockets. Nanny patted her knickerlegs. Magrat said, 'Oh, I must have le-' 'Blow, I left my pipe back there,' said Nanny, so quickly that the sentence overtook the one in front. Five seconds, said Perdita. 'I didn't see you take it out,' said Agnes. Nanny gave her a piercing look. 'Really? Then I'd better go and leave it there, hadn't I? Was there something you'd left too, Magrat? Never mind, I'll be sure to look for it, whatever it was going to be.' 'Well!' said Magrat, as Nanny darted back. 'Granny was certainly not telling the truth,' said Agnes. 'Of course she wasn't, she never does,' said Magrat. 'She expects you to work it out for yourself.' 'But she's right about us being three witches.' 'Yes, but I never intended to come back to it, I've got other things to do. Oh, perhaps when Esme's older I thought, maybe, a bit of part-time aromatherapy or something, but not serious full-time witching. This powerof-three business is . . . well, it's very old fashioned . . .' And what have we got now? Perdita chimed in. The knowing but technically inexperienced young woman, the harassed young mother and the silver-haired golden alter ... doesn't exactly sound mythic, does it? But Magrat just bundled up her little baby as soon as she heard Granny was in trouble and she didn't even stop to worry about her husband . . . 'Wait a moment . . . listen,' said Agnes. 'What for?' 'Just listen ... the sound echoes in these caves. . .'     Nanny Ogg sat down on the sand and wriggled slightly to settle in firmly. She took out her pipe. 'So,' she said to the recumbent figure, 'apart from all that, how are you feeling?' There was no reply. 'Saw Mrs Patternoster this morning,' Nanny went on chattily. 'Her from over in Slice. Just passed the time of day. Mrs ivy is bearing up well, she says.' She blew out a cloud of smoke. 'I put her right about a few things,' she said. There was still silence from the shadowy figure. 'The Naming went off all right. The priest's as wet as a snow omelette, though.' 'I can't beat 'em, Gytha,' said Granny. 'I can't beat 'em, and that's a fact.' One of Nanny Ogg's hidden talents was knowing when to say nothing. It left a hole in the conversation that the other person felt obliged to fill. 'They've got minds like steel. I can't touch 'em. I've been tryin' everything. Every trick I've got! They've been searching for me but they can't focus right when I'm in here. The best one nearly got to me at the cottage. My cottage!’ Nanny Ogg understood the horror. A witch's cottage was her fortress. 'I've never felt anything like it, Gytha. He's had hundreds of years to get good. You noticed the magpies? He's using 'em as eyes. And he's clever, too. He's not going to fall to a garlic sandwich, that one. I can pick up that much. These vampires has learned. That's what they've never done before. I can't find a way into 'em anywhere. They're more powerful, stronger, they think quick . . . I tell you, going mind to mind with him's like spittin' at a thunderstorm.' 'So what're you going to do?' 'Nothing! There's nothing I can do! Can't you understand what I've been tellin' you? Don't you know I've been lying here all day tryin' to think of something? They know all about magic, Borrowing's second nature to them, they're fast, they think we're like cattle that can talk . . . I never expected anything like this, Gytha. I've thought about it round and round and there's not a thing I can see to do.' 'There's always a way,' said Nanny. 'I can't see it,' said Granny. 'This is it, Gytha. I might as well lie here until the water drips on me and I go into stone like the ol' witch at the door.' 'You'll find a way,' said Nanny. 'Weatherwaxes don't let 'emselves get beaten. It's something in the blood, like I've always said.' 'I am beaten, Gytha. Even before I start. Maybe someone else has a way, but I haven't. I'm up against a mind that's better'n mine. I just about keep it away from me but I can't get in. I can't fight back.' The chilly feeling crept over Nanny Ogg that Granny Weatherwax meant it. 'I never thought I'd hear you say that,' she muttered. 'Off you go. No sense in keepin' the baby out in the cold.' 'And what are you going to do?' 'Maybe I shall move on. Maybe I'll just stop here.' 'Can't stop here for ever, Esme.' 'Ask her that is by the door.' That seemed to be all there was going to be. Nanny walked out, found the others looking slightly too innocent in the next cave, and led the way to the open air. 'Found your pipe, then,' said Magrat. 'Yes, thank you.' 'What's she going to do?' said Agnes. 'You tell me,' said Nanny. 'I knows you was listenin'. You wouldn't be witches if you wasn't listenin' somehow.' 'Well, what can we do that she can't? If she's beaten, then so are we, aren't we?' 'What did Granny mean, "from can to can't"?' said Magrat. 'Oh, from the first moment in the morning when you can see to the last moment in the evenin' when you can't,' said Nanny. 'She's really feeling low, isn't she?' Nanny paused by the stone witch. Her pipe had gone out. She struck a match on the hooked nose. 'There's three of us,' she said. 'The right number. So we'll start by having a proper coven meetin' . . .' 'Aren't you worried?' said Agnes. 'She's ... giving up. . . ' 'Then it's up to us to carry on, isn't it?' said Nanny.     Nanny had placed the cauldron in the middle of the floor for the look of the thing, although an indoor coven meeting didn't feel right, and one without Granny Weatherwax felt worse. Perdita said it made them look like soppy girls playing at it. The only fire in the room was in the huge black iron range, the very latest model, recently installed for Nanny by her loving sons. On it, the kettle began to boil. 'rll make the tea, shall I?' said Magrat, getting up. 'No, you sit down. It's Agnes's job to make the tea,' said Nanny. 'You're the mother, so it's your job to pour.' 'What's your job, Nanny?' said Agnes. 'I drinks it,' said Nanny promptly. 'Right. We've got to find out more while they're still actin' friendly. Agnes, you go back to the castle with Magrat and the baby. She needs extra help anyway.' 'What good will that do?' 'You told me yourself,' said Nanny. 'Vampires don't affect you. As soon as they try to see Agnes's mind it sinks down and up pops Perdita like a seesaw. Just when they're looking at Perdita, here comes Agnes again. Young Vlad's definitely got his eye on you, ain't he?' 'Certainly not!' 'Yeah, right,' said Nanny. 'Men always like women that've got a bit of mystery to 'em. They like a challenge, see? And while he's got his eye on you keeping your eye on Magrat, you've got your other eye on him, understand? Everyone's got a weakness. Maybe we'll not see the back of these vampires by going over to the curtains and saying, "My, isn't it stuffy in here?" but there's got to be some other way.' 'And if there isn't?' 'Marry him,' said Nanny firmly. Magrat gasped. The teapot rattled in her hand. 'That's horrible!' she said. 'I'd rather kill myself,' said Agnes. In the morning, said Perdita. 'Dun't have to be a long marriage,' said Nanny. 'Put a pointy stake in your garter and our lad'll be getting cold even before they've finished cutting up the wedding cake.' 'Nanny!' 'Or maybe you could just sort of . . . make him change his ways a bit,' Nanny went on. 'It's amazing what a wife can do if she knows her own mind, or minds in your case, course. Look at King Verence the First, for one. He used to toss all his meat bones over his shoulder until he was married and the Queen made him leave them on the side of the plate. I'd only bin married to the first Mr Ogg for a month before he was getting out of the bath if he needed to pee. You can refine a husband. Maybe you could point him in the direction of blutwurst and black puddings and underdone steak.' 'You really haven't got any scruples, have you, Nanny?' said Agnes. 'No,' said Nanny simply. 'This is Lancre we're talkin' about. If we was men, we'd be talking about layin' down our lives for the country. As women, we can talk about laying down.' 'I just don't want to hear this,' said Magrat. 'I ain't asking her to do what I wouldn't do,' said Nanny. 'Really? Then why-' 'Because no one wants me to do it,' said Nanny. 'But if I was fifty years younger I reckon I could have Sonny Jim bitin' turnips by midsummer.' 'You mean just because she's a woman she should use sexual wiles on him?' said Magrat. 'This is so . . . so . . . well, it's so Nanny Ogg, that's all I can say.' 'She should use any vale she can lay her hands on,' said Nanny. 'I don't care what Granny said, there's always a way. Like the hero in Tsort or wherever it was, who was completely invincible except for his heel and someone stuck a spear in it and killed him. . .' 'What are you expecting her to do, prod him all over?' ' 'I never understood that story, anyway,' said Nanny. 'I mean, if I knew I'd got a heel that would kill me if someone stuck a spear in it, I'd go into battle wearing very heavy boots-' 'You don't know what he's like,' said Agnes, ignoring the diversion. 'He looks at me as if he's undressing me with his eyes.' 'Eyes is allowed,' said Nanny. 'And he's laughing at me all the time! As if he knows I don't like him and that adds to the fun!' 'Now you get into that castle!’  Nanny growled. 'For Lancre! For the Kingl For everyone in the country! And if he gets too much, let Perdita take over, 'cos I reckon there's some things she's better at!' In the shocked silence there was a faint clinking noise from Nanny's sideboard. Magrat coughed. 'J-just like the old days,' she said. 'Arguing all the time.' Nanny stood up and unhooked a cast-iron saucepan from the beam over the kitchen range. 'You can't treat people like this,' said Agnes sullenly. 'I can,' said Nanny, tiptoeing in the direction of the sideboard. 'I'm the other one now, see?' Ornaments flew and shattered as she brought the saucepan down hard, bottom upwards. 'Got you, you little blue devil!' she shouted. 'Don't think I didn't see you!' The saucepan rose. Nanny leaned her weight on the handle but it still moved slowly along the dresser, rocking slightly from side to side, until it reached the edge. Something red and blue dropped on to the floor and started moving towards the closed door. At the same time Greebo shot past Agnes, accelerating. And then, just as he was about to spring, he changed his mind. All four feet extended their claws at the same time and bit into the floorboards. He rolled, sprang on to his feet, and started to wash himself. The red and blue blur hit the door and picked itself up, becoming a blue man, six inches tall, with red hair. He carried a sword about the same size as himself. 'Ach, hins tak yer scaggie, yer dank yowl callyake!' he screamed. 'Oh, it's you,' said Nanny, relaxing. 'Do you want a drink?' The sword was lowered slightly, but with a definite hint that it could be raised again at a moment's notice. "tazit?' Nanny reached down to the crate by her chair and sorted through the bottles. 'Scumble? My best. Vintage,' she said. The wee man's tiny eyes lit up. 'Las' Tuesda?' 'Right. Agnes, open that sewing box and pass me a thimble, will you? Come away here, man,' said Nanny, uncorking the bottle well away from the fire and filling up the thimble. 'Ladies, this here's ... let's see them tattoos ... yeah, this here's one of the Nac mac Feegle. The little bastards comes down and raids my still about once a year. I reckon I recognize the pattern.' 'Pings, yow graley yinl Suz ae rikt dheu,' said the blue man, taking the thimble. 'What is he?' said Magrat. 'They're gnomes,' said Nanny. The man lowered the thimble. 'Pictsies!' 'Pixies, if you insist,' said Nanny. 'They live up on the high moors over towards Uberwald–' 'Ach! Bae, yon snae rikt speel, y'ol behennit! Feggersl Yon ken sweal boggin bludsuckers owl dhu tae-' Nanny nodded while she listened. Halfway through the little man's rant she topped up his thimble. 'Ah, right,' she said, when he seemed to have finished. 'Well, he says the Nac mac Feegle have been forced out by the vampires, see? They've been driving out all the...' her lips moved as she tried out various translations '. . . old people. . .' 'That's very cruel!’  said Magrat. 'No . . . I mean . . . old races. The people that live in . . . the corners. You know, the ones you don't see around a lot ... centaurs, bogeys, gnomes-' 'Pictsies!' 'Yeah, right . . . driving 'em out of the country.' 'Why should they do that?' 'Probably not fashionable any more,' said Nanny. Agnes looked hard at the pixie. On a scale of ethereal from one to ten he looked as if he was on some other scale, probably one buried in deep ocean sludge. The blueness of his skin, she could see now, was made up of tattoos and paint. His red hair stuck out at all angles. His sole concession to the temperature was a leather loincloth. He saw her looking at him. 'Yist, awa' fra' yeeks, ye stawking gowt that'ya! Bigjobs!' 'Er, sorry,' said Agnes. 'Good language, ain't it?' said Nanny. 'A hint o' heather and midden. But when you've got the Nac mac Feegle on your side you're doing okay.' The pixie waved the empty thimble at Nanny. 'Ghail o' bludy "lemonade", callyake I' 'Ah, no foolin' you, you want the real stuff,' said Nanny. She pulled back a chair cushion, and produced a black glass bottle with its cork held on by wire. 'You're not giving him that, are you?' said Magrat. 'That's your medicinal whisky!' 'And you always tell people it's strictly for extemal use only,' said Agnes. 'Ah, the Nac mac Feegle are a hard-headed race,' said Nanny, handing it down to the tiny man. To Agnes's amazement, he grasped a bottle bigger than himself with insolent ease. 'There you go, man. Share it with your mates, 'cos I know they're around here somewhere.' There was a clink from the dresser. The witches looked up. Hundreds of pixies had simply appeared among the ornaments. Most of them wore pointed hats that curved so that the point was practically pointing down, and they all carried swords. 'Amazin' how they can just fade into the foreground like that,' said Nanny. 'That's what's kept 'em so safe all these years. That and killin' most people who saw 'em, of course.' Greebo, very quietly, went and sat under her chair. 'So . . . you gentlemen have been turned out by the vampires, have ye?' said Nanny, as the bottle bobbed through the throng. A roar went up. 'Blaznet!' 'Ach, yon weezit fash' deveel!' 'Arnoch, a hard tickut!' 'Bigjobs!' 'I daresay you can stop in Lancre,' said Nanny, above the din. 'Just a moment, Nanny–' Magrat began. Nanny waved a hand at her hurriedly. 'There's that island up on the lake,' she went on, raising her voice. 'It's where the herons nest. Just the place, eh? Lots of fish, lots of hunting up the valley.' The blue pixies went into a huddle. Then one of them looked up. 'Priznae? Yowl's nae brennit, moy ghail!' 'Oh, you'd be left to yourself,' said Nanny. 'But no stealing cattle, eh?' 'These steal cattle?' said Agnes. 'Full-size cattle? How many of them does it take?' 'Four.' 'Four?' 'One under each foot. Seen 'em do it. You see a cow in a field, mindin' its own business, next minute the grass is rustlin', some little bugger shouts, "Hup, hup, hup," and the poor beast goes past voom! without its legs movin',' said Nanny. 'They're stronger'n cockroaches. You step on a pixie, you'd better be wearing good thick soles.' 'Nanny, you can't give them the island! It doesn't belong to you!' said Magrat. 'It doesn't belong to anyone,' said Nanny. 'It belongs to the King!’ 'Ah. Well, what's his is yours, so give 'em the island and Verence can sign a bit o' paper later on. It's worth it,' Nanny added. 'A rent of not stealing our cows is well worth it. Otherwise you'll see cows zippin' around very fast. Backwards, sometimes.' 'Without their legs moving?' said Agnes. 'Right!' 'Well–' Magrat began. 'And they'll be useful,' Nanny added, lowering her voice. 'Fighting's what they like best.' 'Whist, yon fellaight fra' aquesbore!' 'Drinkin's what they like best,' Nanny corrected herself. 'Nae, boon a scullen!' 'Drinkin' and fightin's what they like best,' said Nanny. 'An' snaflin' coobeastie.' 'And stealing cows,' said Nanny. 'Drinkin', fightin' and stealin' cows is what they like best. Listen, Magrat, I'd rather have 'em in here pissin' out than outside pissin' in. There's more of them and they'll make your ankles all wet.' 'But what can they do?' said Magrat. 'Well ... Greebo's frightened of 'em,' said Nanny. Greebo was two worried eyes, one yellow, one pearly white, in the shadows. The witches were impressed. Greebo had once brought down an elk. There was practically nothing that he wouldn't attack, including architecture. 'I'd have thought they'd have no trouble with vampires, then,' said Agnes. 'Ach, c'na flitty-flitty! Ye think we're flowers o' the forest fairies?' sneered a blue man. 'They can't fly,' said Nanny. 'It's quite a nice island, even so . . .' Magrat mumbled. 'Gel, your husband was messin' around with politics, which is why we're in this trouble, and to get you've got to give. Now he's ill and you're Queen so you can do as you like, right? There's no one who can tell you what to do, isn't that so?' 'Yes, I suppos-' 'So damn well give 'em the island and then they've got somethin' here to fight for. Otherwise they'll just push on through anyway and nick all our livestock on the way. Dress that up in fancy talk, and you've got politics.' 'Nanny?' said Agnes. 'Yup?' 'Don't get angry, but you don't think Granny's doing this on purpose, do you? Keeping back, I mean, so that we have to form a three and work together?' 'Why'd she do that?' 'So we develop insights and pull together and learn valuable lessons,' said Magrat. Nanny paused with her pipe halfway to her lips. 'No,' she said, 'I don't reckon Granny'd be thinking like that, because that's soppy garbage. Here, you blokes ... here's the key to the drinks cupboard in the scullery. Bugger off and have fun, don't touch the stuff in the green bottles because it's– Oh, I expect you'll be all right.' There was a blue blur, and the room was cleared. 'We got things Granny ain't got,' said Nanny. 'Yes?' said Agnes. 'Magrat's got a baby. I've got no scruples. And we've both got you.' 'What good will I be?' 'Well, for one thing . . . you're in two minds about everything-' There was a tinkle of glass from the scullery, and a scream of 'Ach, ya skivens! Yez lukin' at a faceful o' heid!' 'Crives! Sezu? Helweit! Summun hol' me cote! Gude! Now, summun hol' his arms!' 'Stitch this, f'ra ma brinnit goggel!' Some more glass broke. 'We'll all go back into the castle,' said Nanny. 'On our terms. Face this count down. And we'll take garlic and lemons and all the other stuff. And some of Mr Oats's holy water. You can't tell me all that stuff together won't work.' 'And they'll let us in, will they?' said Agnes. 'They'll have a lot to think about,' said Nanny. 'What with a mob at the gates. We can nip in round the back.' 'What mob?' said Magrat. 'We'll organize one,' said Nanny. 'You don't organize a mob, Nanny,' said Agnes. 'A mob is something that happens spontaneously.' Nanny Ogg's eyes gleamed. 'There's seventy-nine Oggs in these parts,' she said. 'Spontaneous it is, then.' Her gaze fell for a moment on the forest of familial pictures, and then she removed a boot and hammered on the wall beside her. After a few seconds they heard a door bang and footsteps pass in front of the window. Jason Ogg, blacksmith and head male of the Ogg clan, poked his head around the front door. 'Yes, Mum?' 'There's going to be a spontaneous mob stormin' the castle in, oh, half an hour,' said Nanny. 'Put the word out.' 'Yes, Mum.' 'Tell everyone I said it ain't compuls'ry for them to be there, of course,' Nanny added. Jason glanced at the hierarchy of Oggs. Nanny didn't have to add anything more to that sentence. Everyone knew the cat's box sometimes needed lining. 'Yes, Mum. I'll tell 'em you said they didn't have to come if they don't want to.' 'Good boy.' 'Is it flaming torches or, you know, scythes and stuff?' 'That's always tricky,' said Nanny. 'But I'd say both.' 'Battering ram, Mum?' 'Er . . . no, I don't think so.' 'Good! It is my door, after all,' said Magrat. 'Anythin' special for people to yell, Mum?' 'Oh, general yellin', I think.' 'Anything to throw?' 'Just rocks on this occasion,' said Nanny. 'Not large ones!’  said Magrat. 'Some of the stonework around the main gate is quite fragile.' 'Okay, nothin' harder than sandstone, understand? And tell our Kev to roll out a barrel of my Number Three beer,' said Nanny. 'Better pour a bottle of brandy in it to keep out the chill. It can really strike right through your coat when you're hanging around outside a castle chantin' and wavin'. And get our Nev to run up to Poorchick's and say Mrs Ogg presents her compliments and we want half a dozen big cheeses and ten dozen eggs, and tell Mrs Carter will she be so good as to let us have a big jar of those pickled onions she does so well. It's a shame that we've not time to roast something, but I suppose you have to put up with that sort of inconvenience when you're being spontaneous.' Nanny Ogg winked at Agnes. 'Yes, Mum.' 'Nanny?' said Magrat, when Jason had hurried away. 'Yes, dear?' 'A couple of months ago, when Verence suggested that tax on liquor exports, there was a big crowd protesting in the courtyard and he said, "Oh, well, if that's the will of the people . . ."' 'Well, it was the will of the people,' said Nanny. 'Oh. Right. Good.' 'Only sometimes they temp'ry forget what their will is,' said Nanny. 'Now, you can leave young Esme next door with Jason's wife . . .' 'I'm keeping her with me,' said Magrat. 'She's happy enough on my back.' 'You can't do that!' said Agnes. 'Don't you dare argue with me, Agnes Nitt,' said Magrat, drawing herself up. 'And not a word out of you, Nanny.' 'Wouldn't dream of it,' said Nanny. 'The Nac mac Feegle always take their babies into battle, too. Mind you, for use as a weapon if it comes to it.' Magrat relaxed a little. 'She said her first word this morning,' she said, looking proud. 'What, at fourteen days?' said Nanny doubtfully. 'Yes. It was "blup".' 'Blup?' 'Yes. It was . . . more of a bubble than a word, I suppose.' 'Let's get the stuff together,' said Nanny, standing up. 'We're a coven, ladies. We're a trio. I miss Granny as much as you do, but we've got to deal with things as she would.' She took a few deep breaths. 'I can't be having with this.' 'It sounds better the way she says it,' said Agnes. 'I know.'     Hodgesaargh ate his meal in the servants' dining room off the kitchen, and ate alone. There were new people around, but Hodgesaargh generally didn't pay much attention to non-falconers. There were always other people in the castle, and they had jobs to do, and if pressed Hodgesaargh would vaguely acknowledge the fact that if he left his laundry in a sack by the kitchen door every week it'd be washed and dried two days later. There were his meals. The game he left on the cold slab in the long pantry got dealt with. And so on. He was returning to the mews when one of the shadows pulled him into the darkness, with a hand damped over his mouth. 'Mph?' 'It's me. Mrs Ogg,' said Nanny. 'You all right, Hodgesaargh?' 'Mph,' and by this Hodgesaargh contrived to indicate that he was fine except for someone's thumb blocking his breathing. 'Where are the vampires?' 'Mph?' Nanny released her grip. 'Vampires?' the falconer panted. 'They the ones that walk around slowly?' 'No, that's the . . . food,' said Nanny. 'Any swishlooking buggers about as well? Any soldiers?' There was a soft thud from somewhere in the shadows, and someone said, 'Blast, I've dropped the nappy bag. Did you see where it rolled?' 'Er, there's some new ladies and gentlemen,' said Hodgesaargh. 'They're hanging around the kitchens. There's some men in chainmail, too.' 'Damn!' said Nanny. 'There's the little door off the main hall,' said Magrat. 'But that's always locked on the inside.' Agnes swallowed. 'All right. I'll go in and unlock it, then.' Nanny tapped her on the shoulder. 'You'll be all right?' . 'Well, they can't control me. . .' 'They can grab you, though.' Wad won't want you hurt, said Perdita. You saw the way he looked at us . . . 'I . . . think I'll be all right,' said Agnes. 'You know your own minds best, I'm sure,' said Nanny. 'Got the holy water?' 'Let's hope it works better than the garlic,' said Agnes. 'Good luck.' Nanny coded her head. 'Sounds like the mob is spontaneously arriving at the gate. Go!' Agnes ran off into the rain, around the castle to the doors of the kitchen. They were wide open. She made it to the corridor beyond the kitchens when a hand grabbed her shoulder, and then in a blur of speed two young men were standing in front of her. They were dressed something like the young opera-goers she'd seen in Ankh-Morpork, except that their fancy waistcoats would have been considered far too fast by the staider members of the community, and they wore their hair long like a poet who hopes that romantically flowing locks will make up for a wretched inability to find a rhyme for 'daffodil'. 'Why are you in such a hurry, girl?' one said. Agnes sagged. 'Look,' she said, 'I'm very busy. Can we speed this up? Can we dispense with all the leers and "I like a girl with spirit" stuff? Can we get right to the bit where I twist out of your grip and kick you in the-' One of them struck her hard across the face. 'No,' he said. 'I'll tell Vlad of you!' Perdita screamed in Agnes's voice. The other vampire hesitated. 'Hah! Yes, he knows me!' said Agnes and Perdita together. 'Hah!' One of the vampires looked her up and down. 'What, you?' he said. 'Yes, her,' said a voice. Vlad strolled towards them, thumbs hooked into the pockets of his waistcoat. 'Demone? Crimson? To me, please?' The two went and stood meekly in front of him. There was a blur, and then his thumbs were back in his waistcoat and the two vampires were in mid-crumple and sinking to the floor. 'This is the kind of thing we don't do to our guests,' said Vlad, stepping over Demone's twitching body and holding out his hands to Agnes. 'Did they hurt you? Say the word and I'll turn them over to Lacrimosa. She's just discovered you have a torture chamber here. And to think we thought Lancre was backward!' 'Oh, that old thing,' said Agnes weakly. Crimson was making bubbling noises. I didn't even see his hands move, said Perdita. 'Er . . . it's been there for centuries . . .' 'Oh, really? She did say there weren't enough straps and buckles. Still, she is . . . inventive. Just say the word.' Say the word, Perdita prompted. That'd be two less of them. 'Er . . . no,' said Agnes. Ah . . . moral cowardice from the fat girl. 'Er.. . who are they?' 'Oh, we brought some of the clan in on the carts. They can make themselves useful, Father said.' 'Oh? They're relatives?' Granny Weatherwax would've said yes, Perdita whispered. Vlad coughed gently. 'By blood,' he said. 'Yes. In a way. But . . . subservient. Do come this way.' He gently took her arm and led her back up the passage, treading heavily on Crimson's twitching hand as he did so. 'You mean vampirism is like . . . pyramid selling?' said Agnes. She was alone with Vlad. Admittedly this had the edge over being alone with the other two, but somehow at a time like this it seemed vital to hear the sound of her own voice, if only to remind herself that she was alive. 'I'm sorry?' said Vlad. 'Who sells pyramids?' 'No, I mean . . . you bite five necks, and in two months' time you get a lake of blood of your very own?' He smiled, but a little cautiously. 'I can see we will have a lot to learn,' he said. 'I understood every word fn that sentence, but not the sentence itself. I'm sure there is a lot you could teach me. And, indeed, I could teach you. . .' 'No,' said Agnes, flatly. 'But when we- Oh, what is that moron doing now?' A cloud of dust was advancing from the direction of the kitchens. In the middle of it, holding a bucket and a shovel, was Igor. 'Igor!' 'Yeth, marthter?' 'You're putting down dust again, aren't you?' 'Yeth, marthter.' 'And why are you putting down dust, Igor?' said Vlad icily. 'You've got to have dutht, marthter. It'th tradi-' 'Igor, Mother told you. We don't want dust. We don't want huge candlesticks. We don't want eyeholes cut in all the pictures, and we certainly don't want your wretched box of damn spiders and your stupid little whip!' In the ringing, red-hot silence Igor looked down at his feet. '. . . thpiderth webth ith what people ecthpect, marthter . . .' he mumbled. 'We don't want them!' '. . . the old Count liked my thpiderth. . .' said Igor, his voice like some little insect that would nevertheless not be squashed. 'It's ridiculous, Igor.' '... he uthed to thay, "Good webth today, Igor . . ."' 'Look, just . . . just go away, will you? See if you can't sort out that dreadful smell from the garderobe. Mother says it makes her eyes water. And stand up straight and walk properly!’  Vlad called after him. 'No one's impressed by the limp!' Agnes saw Igor's retreating back pause for a moment, and she expected him to say something. But then he continued his wobbly walk. 'He's such a big baby,' said Vlad, shaking his head. 'I'm sorry you had to see that.' 'Yes, I think I'm sorry too,' said Agnes. 'He's going to be replaced. Father's only been keeping him on out of sentiment. I'm afraid he came with the old castle, along with the creaking roof and the strange smell halfway up the main stairs which, I have to say, is not as bad as the one we've noticed here. Oh dear. . . look at this, will you? We turn our back for five minutes . . .' There was a huge and very dribbly candle burning in a tall black candlestick. 'King Verence had all those oil lamps put in, a lovely modern light, and Igor's been going around replacing them with candles again! We don't even know where he gets them from. Lacci thinks he saves his earwax . . .' They were in the long room beside the great hall now. Vlad lifted the candlestick up so that the flame's glow lit the wall. 'Ah, they've put the pictures up. You ought to get to know the family . . .' The light fell on a portrait of a tall, thin, greyhaired man in evening dress and a red-lined cloak. He looked quite distinguished in a distant, aloof sort of way. There was the glimmer of a lengthened canine on his lower lip. 'My great-uncle,' said Vlad. 'The last ... incumbent.' 'What's the sash and star he's wearing?' said Agnes. She could hear the sounds of the mob, far off but growing louder. 'The Order of Gvot. He built our family home. Don'tgonearthe Castle, we call it. I don't know whether you've heard of it?' 'It's a strange name.' 'Oh, he used to laugh about it. The local coachmen used to warn visitors, you see. "Don't go near the castle," they'd say. "Even if it means spending a night up a tree, never go up there to the castle," they'd tell people. "Whatever you do, don't set foot in that castle." He said it was marvellous publicity. Sometimes he had every bedroom full by 9 p.m. and people would be hammering on the door to get in. Travellers would go miles out of their way to see what all the fuss was about. We won't see his like again, with any luck. He did rather play to the crowd, I'm afraid. Rose from the grave so often that he had a coffin with a revolving lid. Ah . . . Aunt Carmilla . . .' Agnes stared at a very severe woman in a figure-hugging black dress and deep-plum lipstick. 'She was said to bathe in the blood of up to two hundred virgins at a time,' Vlad said. 'I don't believe that. Use more than eighty virgins and even quite a large bath will overflow, Lacrimosa tells me.' 'These little details are important,' said Agnes, buoyed up by the excitement of terror. 'And, of course, it is so hard to find the soap.' 'Killed by a mob, I'm afraid.' 'People can be so ungrateful.' 'And this. . .' the light passed along the hall '. . . is my grandfather . . .' A bald head. Dark-rimmed, staring eyes. Two teeth like needles, two ears like batwings, fingernails that hadn't been trimmed for years . . . 'But half the picture's just bare canvas,' said Agnes. 'The family story is that old Magyrato got hungry,' said Vlad. 'A very direct approach to things, my grandfather. See the reddish-brown stains just here? Very much in the old style. And here . . . well, some distant ancestor, that's all I know.' This picture was mostly dark varnish. There was a suggestion of a beak on a hunched figure. Vlad turned away, quickly. 'We've come a long way, of course,' he said. 'Evolution, Father says.' 'They look very . . . powerful,' said Agnes. 'Oh, yes. So very powerful, and yet so very, very dumb,' said Vlad. 'My father thinks stupidity is somehow built into vampirism, as if the desire for fresh blood is linked to being as thick as a plank: Father is a very unusual vampire. He and Mother raised us . . . differently.' 'Differently,' said Agnes. 'Vampires aren't very family orientated. Father says that's natural. Humans are raising their successors, you see, but we live for a very long time so a vampire is raising competitors. There's not a lot of family feeling, you could say.' 'Really.' In the depths of her pocket Agnes's fingers closed around the bottle of holy water. 'But Father said self-help was the only way out. Break the cycle of stupidity, he said. Little traces of garlic were put into our food to get us used to it. He tried early exposure to various religious symbols – oh dear, we must have had the oddest nursery wallpaper in the world, never mind the jolly frieze of Gertie the Dancing Garlic – and I have to say that their efficacy isn't that good in any case. He even made us go out and play during the day. That which does not kill us, he'd say, makes us strong-' Agnes's arm whirled. The holy water spiralled out of the bottle and hit Vlad full in the chest. He threw his arms wide and screamed as water cascaded down and poured into his shoes. She'd never expected it to be this easy. He raised his head and winked at her. 'Look at this waistcoat! Will you look at this waistcoat? Do you know what water does to silk? You just never get it out! No matter what you do, there's always a mark.' He looked at her frozen expression and sighed. 'I suppose we'd better get some things off our chest, hadn't we?' he said. He looked up at the wall and took down a very large and spiky axe. He thrust it at her. 'Take this and cut my head off, will you?' he said. 'Look, I'll loosen my cravat. Don't want blood on it, do we? There. See?' 'Are you trying to tell me that you were brought up with this, too?' she said hotly. 'What was it, a little light hatchet practice after breakfast? Cut your head off a little bit every day and the real thing won't hurt?' Vlad rolled his eyes. 'Everyone knows that cutting off a vampire's head is internationally acceptable,' he said. 'I'm sure Nanny Ogg would be swinging right now. Come along, there's a lot of muscle in those rather thick arms, I'm-' She swung. He reached around from behind her and whisked the axe out of her arms. '–sure,' he finished. 'We are also very, very fast.' He tested the blade with his thumb. 'Blunt, I notice. My dear Miss Nitt, it may just be more trouble than it's worth to try to get rid of us, do you see? Now, old Magyrato there would not have made the kind of offer we are making to Lancre. Dear me, no. Are we ravaging across the country? No? Forcing our way into bedrooms? Certainly not. What's a little blood, for the good of the community? Of course Verence will have to be demoted a little but, let's face it, the man is rather more of a clerk than a king. And . . . our friends may find us grateful. What is the point of resisting?' 'Are vampires ever grateful?' 'We can learn.' 'You're just saying that in exchange for not actually being evil you'll simply be bad, is that it?' 'What we are saying, my dear, is that our time has come,' said a voice behind them. They both turned. The Count had stepped into the gallery. He was wearing a smoking jacket. There was an armed man strolling on either side of him. 'Oh dear, Vlad . . . Playing with your food? Good evening, Miss Nitt. We appear to have a mob at the gates, Vlad.' 'Really? That's exciting. I've never seen a real mob.' 'I wish your first could have been a better one,' said the Count, and sniffed. 'There's no passion in it. Still, it'd be too tiresome to let it go on all through dinner. I shall tell them to go away.' The doors of the hall swung open without apparent aid. 'Shall we go and watch?' said Vlad. 'Er, I think I'll go and powder my, I'll just go and . . . I'll just be a minute,' said Agnes, backing away. She darted down the little corridor that led to the small door, and drew the bolts. 'About time,' said Nanny, hurrying in. 'It's really clammy out here.' 'They've gone to look at the mob. But there's other vampires here, not just the guards! The rest must've come in on the carts! They're like . . . not quite servants but they take orders.' 'How many are there?' said Magrat. 'I haven't found out! Vlad is trying to get to know me better!' 'Good plan,' said Nanny. 'See if he talks in his sleep.' 'Nanny!' 'Let's see his lordship in action, shall we?' said Nanny. 'We can nip into the old guardroom alongside the door and look through the squint.' 'I want to get Verence!’  said Magrat. 'He's not going anywhere,' said Nanny, striding into the little room by the door. 'And I don't reckon they're planning to kill him. Anyway, he's got some protection now.' 'I think these really are new vampires,' said Agnes. 'They really aren't like the old sort.' 'Then we face 'em here and now,' said Nanny. 'That's what Esme would do, sure enough.' 'But are we strong enough?' said Agnes. Granny wouldn't have asked, said Perdita. 'There's three of us, isn't there?' said Nanny. She produced a flask and uncorked it. 'And a bit of help. Anyone else want some?' 'That's brandy, Nanny!’  said Magrat. 'Do you want to face the vampires drunk?' 'Sounds a whole lot better than facin' them sober,' said Nanny, taking a gulp and shuddering. 'Only sensible bit of advice Agnes got from Mister Oats, I reckon. Vampire hunters need to be a little bit tipsy, he said. Well, I always listen to good advice. . .'     Even inside Mightily Oats's tent the candle streamed in the wind. He sat gingerly on his camp bed, because sudden movements made it fold up with nail-blackening viciousness, and leafed through his notebooks in a state of growing panic. He hadn't come here to be a vampire expert. 'Revenants and Ungodly Creatures' had been a one-hour lecture from deaf Deacon Thrope every fortnight, for Om's sake! it hadn't even counted towards the final examination score! They'd spent twenty times that on Comparative Theology, and right now he wished, he really wished, that they'd found time to tell him, for example, exactly where the heart was and how much force you needed to drive a stake through it. Ah . . . here they were, a few pages of scribble, saved only because the notes for his essay on Thrum's Lives of the Prophets were on the other side. '. . . The blood is the life . . . vampires are subservient to the one who turned them into a vampire . . . allyl disulphide, active ingredient in garlic . . . porphyria, lack of? Learned reaction? . . . native soil v. important . . . as many as possible will drink of a victim so that he is the slave of all .. . "clustersuck" ... blood as an unholy sacrament . . . Vampire controls: bats, rats, creatures of the night, weather . . . contrary to legend, most victims merely become passive, NOT vampires . . . intended vampire sufers terrible torments et craving for blood . . . socks . . . Garlic, holy icons . . . sunlight-deadly?. . . kill vampire, release all victims . . . physical strength & . . .' Why hadn't anyone told them this was important? He'd covered half the page with a drawing of Deacon Thrope, which was practically a still life. Oats dropped the book into his pocket and grasped his medallion hopefully. After four years of theological college he wasn't at all certain of what he believed, and this was partly because the Church had schismed so often that occasionally the entire curriculum would alter in the space of one afternoon. But also– They had been warned about it. Don't expect it, they'd said. It doesn't happen to anyone except the prophets. Om doesn't work like that. Om works from inside. –but he'd hoped that, just once, Om would make himself known in some obvious and unequivocal way that couldn't be mistaken for wind or a guilty conscience. Just once he'd like the clouds to part for the space of ten seconds and a voice to cry out, 'YES, MIGHTILYPRAISEWORTHY-ARE-YE-WHO-EXALTETH-OM OATS! IT'S ALL COMPLETELY TRUE! INCIDENTALLY, THAT WAS A VERY THOUGHTFUL PAPER YOU WROTE ON THE CRISIS OF RELIGION IN A PLURALISTIC SOCIETY!' It wasn't that he'd lacked faith. But faith wasn't enough. He'd wanted knowledge. Right now he'd settle for a reliable manual of vampire disposal. He stood up. Behind him, unheeded, the terrible camp bed sprang shut. He'd found knowledge, and knowledge hadn't helped. Had not Jotto caused the Leviathan of Terror to throw itself on to the land and the seas to turn red with blood? Had not Orda, strong in his faith, caused a sudden famine thoughout the land of Smale? They certainly had. He believed it utterly. But a part of him also couldn't forget reading about the tiny little creatures that caused the rare red tides off the coast of Urt and the effect this apparently had on local sea life, and about the odd wind cycle that sometimes kept rainclouds away from Smale for years at a time. This had been . . . worrying. It was because he was so very good at old languages that he'd been allowed to study in the new libraries that were springing up around the Citadel, and this had been fresh ground for worry, because the seeker after truth had found truths instead. The Third Journey of the Prophet Cena, for example, seemed remarkably like a retranslation of the Testament of Sand in the Laotan Book of the Whole. On one shelf alone he found forty-three remarkably similar accounts of a great flood, and in every single one of them a man very much like Bishop Horn had saved the elect of mankind by building a magical boat. Details varied, of course. Sometimes the boat was made of wood, sometimes of banana leaves. Sometimes the news of the emerging dry land was brought by a swan, sometimes by an iguana. Of course these stories in the chronicles of other religions were mere folktales and myth, while the voyage detailed in the Book of Cena was holy truth. But nevertheless . . . Oats had gone on to be fully ordained, but he'd progressed from Slightly Reverend to Quite Reverend a troubled young man. He'd wanted to discuss his findings with someone, but there were so many schisms going on that no one would stand still long enough to listen. The hammering of clerics as they nailed their own versions of the truth of Om on the temple doors was deafening, and for a brief while he'd even contemplated buying a roll of paper and a hammer of his own and putting his name on the waiting list for the doors, but he'd overruled himself. Because he was, he knew, in two minds about everything. At one point he'd considered asking to be exorcized but had drawn back from this because the Church traditionally used fairly terminal methods for this and in any case serious men who seldom smiled would not be amused to hear that the invasive spirit he wanted exorcized was his own. He called the voices the Good Oats and the Bad Oats. The trouble was, each of them agreed with the terminology but applied it in different ways. Even when he was small there'd been a part of him that thought the temple was a silly boring place, and tried to make him laugh when he was supposed to be listening to sermons. It had grown up with him. It was the Oats that read avidly and always remembered those passages which cast doubt on the literal truth of the Book of Om –and nudged him and said, if this isn't true, what can you believe? And the other half of him would say: there must be other kinds of truth. And he'd reply: other kinds than the kind that is actually true, you mean? And he'd say: define actually! And he'd shout: well, actually Omnians would have tortured you to death, not long ago, for even thinking like this. Remember that? Remember how many died for using the brain which, you seem to think, their god gave them? What kind of truth excuses all that pain? He'd never quite worked out how to put the answer into words. And then the headaches would start, and the sleepless nights. The Church schismed all the time these days, and this was surely the ultimate one, starting a war inside one's head. To think he'd been sent here for his health, because Brother Melchio had got worried about his shaky hands and the way he talked to himself l He did not gird his loins, because he wasn't certain how you did that and had never dared ask, but he adjusted his hat and stepped out into the wild night under the thick, uncommunicative clouds.     The castle gates swung open and Count Magpyr stepped out, flanked by his soldiers. This was not according to the proper narrative tradition. Although the people of Lancre were technically new to all this, down at genetic level they knew that when the mob is at the gate the mobee should be screaming defiance in a burning laboratory or engaged in a cliffhanger struggle with some hero on the battlements. He shouldn't be lighting a cigar. They fell silent, scythes and pitchforks hovering in midshake. The only sound was the crackling of the torches. The Count blew a smoke ring. 'Good evening,' he said, as it drifted away. 'You must be the mob.' Someone at the back of the crowd, who hadn't been keeping up to date, threw a stone. Count Magpyr caught it without looking. 'The pitchforks are good,' he said. 'I like the pitchforks. As pitchforks they certainly pass muster. And the torches, well, that goes without saying. But the scythes . . . no, no, I'm afraid not. They simply will not do. Not a good mob weapon, I have to tell you. Take it from me. A simple sickle is much better. Start waving scythes around and someone could lose an ear. Do try to learn.' He ambled over to a very large man who was holding a pitchfork. 'And what is your name, young man?' 'Br . . . Jason Ogg, sir.' 'The blacksmith?' 'Yessir?' 'Wife and family doing well?' 'Yessir.' 'Well done. Got everything you need?' 'Er . . . yessir.' 'Good man. Carry on. If you could keep the noise down over dinner I would be grateful, but of course I appreciate you have a vital traditional role to play. I'll have the servants bring out some mugs of hot toddy shortly.' He knocked the ash off his cigar. 'Oh, and may I introduce you to Sergeant Kraput, known to his friends as "Bent Bill", I believe, and this gentleman here picking his teeth with his knife is Corporal Svitz, who I understand has no friends at all. I suppose it is faintly possible that he will make some here. They and their men, who I suppose could be called soldiers in a sort of informal, easy-come easy-go, cut-and-thrust sort of way' – here Corporal Svitz leered and flicked a gobbet of anonymous rations from a yellowing molar – 'will be going on duty in, oh, about an hour. Purely for reasons of security, you understand.' 'An' then we'll gut yer like a clam and stuff yer with straw,' said Corporal Svitz. 'Ah. This is technical military language of which I know little,' said the Count. 'I do so hope there is no unpleasantness.' 'I don't,' said Sergeant Kraput. 'What scamps they are,' said the Count. 'Good evening to you all. Come, gentlemen.' He stepped back into the courtyard. The gates, their wood so heavy and toughened with age that it was like iron, swung shut. On the other side of it was silence, followed by the puzzled mumbling of players who have had their ball confiscated. The Count nodded at Vlad and flung out his hands theatrically. 'Ta-da! And that is how we do it-' 'And d'you think you'd do it twice?' said a voice from the steps. The vampires looked up at the three witches. 'Ah, Mrs Ogg,' said the Count, waving the soldiers away im-patiently. 'And your majesty. And Agnes . . . Now. . . was it three for a girl? Or three for a funeral?' The stone cracked under Nanny's feet as Magpyr walked forward. 'Do you think I'm stupid, dear ladies?' he said. 'Did you really think I'd let you run around if there was the least chance that you could harm us?' Lightning crackled across the sky. 'I can control the weather,' said the Count. 'And lesser creatures which, let me tell you, includes humans. And yet you plot away and think you can have some kind of . . . of duel? What a lovely image. However...' The witches were lifted off their feet. Hot air curled around them. A rising wind outside made the torches of the mob stream flames like flags. 'What happened to us harnessing the power of all three of us together?' hissed Magrat. 'That rather depended on him standing still!' said Nanny. 'Stop this at once!' Magrat shouted. 'And how dare you smoke in my castle! That can have a very serious effect on people around you!' 'Is anyone going to say, "You'll never get away with it"?' said the Count, ignoring her. He walked up the steps. They bobbed helplessly along ahead of him, like so many balloons. The hall doors slammed shut after him. 'Oh, someone must,' he said. 'You won't get away with this!' The Count beamed. 'And I didn't even see your lips move-' 'Depart from here and return to the grave whence thou camest, unrighteous revenant!' 'Where the hell did he come from?' said Nanny, as Mightily Oats dropped to the ground in front of the vampires. He was creeping along the minstrel gallery, said Perdita to Agnes. Sometimes you just don't pay attention. The priest's coat was covered with dust and his collar was torn, but his eyes blazed with holy zeal. He thrust something in front of the vampire's face. Agnes saw him glance down hurriedly at a small book in his other hand. 'Er. . . "Get thee hence, thou worm of Rheum, and vex not "' 'Excuse me?' said the Count. '"-trouble not more the-" 'Could I just make a point?' ' "-thou spirit that troubles thee, thou' . . . What?' The Count took the notebook out of Oats's suddenly unresisting hand. 'This is from Ossory's Malleus Maleficarum,' he said. 'Why do you look so surprised? I helped write it, you silly little man!' 'But. . . you . . . but that was hundreds of years ago!' Oats managed. 'So? And I contributed to Auriga Clavorum Maleficarum, Torquus Simiae Maleficarum . . . the whole damn Arca Instrumentorum, in fact. None of those stupid fictions work on vampires, didn't you even know that?'The Count almost growled. 'Oh, I remember your prophets. They were mad bearded old men with the sanitary habits of a stoat but, by all that's crazed, they had passion! They didn't have holy little minds full of worry and fretfulness. They spoke the idiot words as though they believed them, with specks of holy foam bubbling away in the corners of their mouths. Now they were real priests, bellies full of fire and bile! You are a joke.' He tossed the notebook aside and took the pendant. 'And this is the holy turtle of Om, which I believe should make me cringe back in fear. My, my. Not even a very good replica. Cheaply made.' Oats found a reserve of strength. He managed to say, 'And how would you know, foul fiend?' 'No, no, that's for demons,' sighed the Count. He handed the turtle back to Oats. 'A commendable effort, none the less,' he said. 'If I ever want a nice cup of tea and a bun and possibly also a cheery sing-song, I will be sure to patronize your mission. But, at the moment, you are in my way.' He hit the priest so hard that he slid under the long table. 'So much for piety,' he said. 'All that remains is for Granny Weatherwax to turn up. It should be any minute now. After all, did you think she'd trust you to get it right?' The sound of the huge iron doorknocker reverberated through the hall. The Count nodded happily. 'And that will be her,' he said. 'Of course it will. Timing is everything.' The wind roared in when the doors were opened, swirling twigs and rain and Granny Weatherwax, blown like a leaf. She was soaked and covered in mud, her dress torn in several places. Agnes realized that she'd never actually seen Granny Weatherwax wet before, even after the worst storm, but now she was drenched. Water poured off her and left a trail on the floor. 'Mistress Weatherwax! So good of you to come,' said the Count. 'Such a long walk on a dark night. Do sit by the fire for a while and rest.' 'I'll not rest here,' said Granny. 'At least have a drink or something to eat, then.' 'I'll not eat nor drink here.' 'Then what will you do?' 'You know well why I've come.' She looks small, said Perdita. And tired, too. 'Ah, yes. The set-piece battle. The great gamble. The Weatherwax trademark. And . . . let me see . . . your shopping list today will be. . . "if I win I will expect you to free everyone and go back to Uberwald,' am I right?' 'No. I will expect you to die,' said Granny. To her horror, Agnes saw that the old woman was swaying slightly. The Count smiled. 'Excellent! But . . . I know how you think, Mistress Weatherwax. You always have more than one plan. You're standing there, clearly one step away from collapse, and yet . . . I'm not entirely certain that I believe what I'm seeing.' 'I couldn't give a damn what you're certain of,' said Granny. 'But you daren't let me walk out of here, I do know that. 'Cos you can't be sure of where I'll go, or what I'll do. I could be watching you from any pair of eyes. I might be behind any door. I have a few favours I might call in. I could come from any direction, at any time. An' I'm good at malice.' 'So? If I was so impolite, I could kill you right now. A simple arrow would suffice. Corporal Svitz?' The mercenary gave a wave that was as good as he'd ever get to a salute, and raised his crossbow. 'Are you sure?' said Granny. 'Is your ape sure he'd have time for a second shot? That I'd still be here?' 'You're not a shape-changer, Mistress Weatherwax. And by the look of it you're in no position to run.' 'She's talking about moving her self into someone else's head,' said Vlad. The witches looked at one another. 'Sorry, Esme,' said Nanny Ogg, at last. 'I couldn't stop meself thinking. I don't think I drunk quite enough.' 'Oh, yes,' said the Count. 'The famous Borrowing trick.' 'But you don't know where, you don't know how far,' said Granny wearily. 'You don't even know what kind of head. You don't know if it has to be a head. All you know about me is what you can get out of other people's minds, and they don't know all about me. Not by a long way.' 'And so your self is put elsewhere,' said the Count. 'Primitive. I've met them, you know, on my travels. Strange old men in beads and feathers who could put their inner self into a fish, an insect . . . even a tree. And as if it mattered. Wood burns. I'm sorry, Mistress Weatherwax. As King Verence is so fond of saying, there's a new world order. We are it. You are history-' He flinched. The three witches dropped to the ground. 'Well done,' he said. 'A shot across my bows. I felt that. I actually felt it. No one in Uberwald has ever managed to get through.' 'I can do better'n that,' said Granny. 'I don't think you can,' said the Count. 'Because if you could you would have done so. No mercy for the vampire, eh? The cry of the mob throughout the ages!' He strolled towards her. 'Do you really think we're like some inbred elves or gormless humans and can be cowed by a firm manner and a bit of trickery? We're out of the casket now, Mistress Weatherwax. I have tried to be understanding towards you, because really we do have a lot in common, but now-' Granny's body jerked back like a paper doll caught by a gust of wind. The Count was halfway towards her, hands in the pockets of his jacket. He broke his step momentarily. 'Oh dear, I hardly felt that one,' he said. 'Was that your best?' Granny staggered, but raised a hand. A heavy chair by the wall was picked up and tumbled across the room. 'For a human that was quite good,' said the Count. 'But I don't think you can keep on sending it away.' Granny flinched and raised her other hand. A huge chandelier began to swing. 'Oh dear,' said the Count. 'Still not good enough. Not nearly good enough.' Granny backed away. 'But I will promise you this,' said the Count. 'I won't kill you. On the contrary-' Invisible hands picked her up and slammed her against the wall. Agnes went to step forward, but Magrat squeezed her arm. 'Don't think of it as losing, Granny Weatherwax,' said the Count. 'You will live for ever. I would call that a bargain, wouldn't you?' Granny managed a sniff of disapproval. 'Pd call that unambitious,' she said. Her face screwed up in pain. 'Goodbye,' said the Count. The witches felt the mental blow. The hall wavered. But there was something else, in a realm outside normal space. Something bright and silvery, slipping like a fish . . . 'She's gone,' whispered Nanny. 'She sent her self somewhere. . .' 'Where? Where?' hissed Magrat. 'Don't think about it!' said Nanny. Magrat's expression froze. 'Oh, no. . .'she began. 'Don't think it! Don't think it!' said Nanny urgently. 'Pink elephants! Pink elephants!' 'She wouldn't-' 'Lalalala! Be-ie-ee-ie-oh!' shouted Nanny, dragging Magrat towards the kitchen door. 'Come on, let's go! Agnes, it's up to you two!' The door slammed behind them. Agnes heard the bolts slide home. It was a thick door and they were big bolts; the builders of Lancre Castle hadn't understood the concept of planks less than three inches thick or locks that couldn't withstand a battering ram. The situation would, to an outsider, have seemed very selfish. But, logically, three witches in danger had been reduced to one witch in danger. Three witches would have spent too much time worrying about one another and what they were going to do. One witch was her own boss. Agnes knew all this, and it still seemed selfish. The Count was walking towards Granny. Out of the corner of her eye Agnes could see Vlad and his sister approaching her. There was a solid door behind her. Perdita wasn't coming up with any ideas. So she screamed. That was a talent. Being in two minds wasn't a talent, it was merely an affliction. But Agnes's vocal range could melt earwax at the top of the scale. She started high and saw that she'd judged right. Just after the point where bats and woodworm fell out of the rafters, and dogs barked down in the town, Vlad clapped his hands over his ears. Agnes gulped for breath. 'Another step and I'll do it louder!' she shouted. The Count picked up Granny Weatherwax as though she were a doll. 'I'm sure you will,' he said. 'And sooner or later you will run out of breath. Vlad, she followed you home, you may keep her, but she's your responsibility. You have to feed her and clean out her cage.' The younger vampire approached cautiously. 'Look, you're really not being sensible,' he hissed. 'Good!' And then he was beside her. But Perdita had been expecting this even if Agnes hadn't, and as he arrived her elbow was already well into its thrust and caught him in the stomach before he could stop it. She strode forward as he doubled up, noting that inability to learn was a vampire trait that was hard to shake off. The Count laid Granny Weatherwax on the table. 'Igor!' he shouted. 'Where are you, you stupid-' 'Yeth, marthter?' The Count spun round. 'Why do you always turn up behind me like that!' 'The old Count alwayth . . . ecthpected it of me, marthter. It'th a profethional thing.' 'Well, stop it.' 'Yeth, marthter.' 'And the ridiculous voice, too. Go and ring the dinner gong.' 'Yeth, marrrtthhter.' 'And I've told you before about that walk!' the Count shouted, as Igor limped across the hall. 'It's not even amusing!' Igor walked past Agnes, lisping nastily under his breath. Vlad caught up with Agnes as she strode towards the table, and she was slightly glad because she didn't know what she'd do when she got there. 'You must go,' he panted. 'I wouldn't have let him hurt you, of course, but Father can get . . . testy.' 'Not without Granny.' A faint voice in her head said: Leave . . . me . . . That wasn't me, Perdita volunteered. I think that was her. Agnes stared at the prone body. Granny Weatherwax looked a lot smaller when she was unconscious. 'Would you like to stay to dinner?' said the Count. 'You're going to . . . after all this talk, you're going to . . . suck her blood?' 'We are vampires, Miss Nitt. It's a vampire thing. A little . . . sacrament, shall we say.' 'How can you? She's an old lady!' He spun round and was suddenly standing too dose to her. 'The idea of a younger aperitif is attractive, believe me,' he said. 'But Vlad would sulk. Anyway, blood develops . . . character, just like your old wines. She won't be killed. Not as such. At her time of life I should welcome a little immortality.' 'But she hates vampires!' 'This may present her with a problem when she comes round, since she will be a rather subservient one. Oh dear. . .' The Count reached down and picked up Oats from under the table by one arm. 'What a bloodless performance. I remember Omnians when they were full of certainty and fire and led by men who were courageous and unforgiving, albeit quite unbelievably insane. How they would despair of all this milk and water stuff. Take him away with you, please.' 'Shall I see you again tomorrow?' said Vlad, proving to Agnes that males of every species could possess a stupidity gene. 'You won't be able to turn her into a vampire!' she said, ignoring him. 'She won't be able to help it,' said the Count. 'It's in the blood, if we choose to put it there.' 'She'll resist.' 'That would be worth seeing.' The Count dropped Oats on to the floor again. 'Now go away, Miss Nitt. Take your soggy priest. Tomorrow, well, you can have your old witch back. But she'll be ours. There's a hierarchy. Everyone knows that . . . who knows anything about vampires.' Behind him Oats was being sick. Agnes thought of the hollow-eyed people now working in the castle. No one deserved that. She grabbed the priest by the back of his jacket and held him like a bag. 'Goodbye, Miss Nitt,' said the Count. She hauled the limp Oats to the main doors. Now it was raining hard outside, great heavy unmerciful rain slanting out of the sky like steel rods. She kept close to the wall for the slight shelter that this gave and propped him up under the gush from a gargoyle. He shuddered. 'Oh, that poor old woman,' he moaned, slumping forward so that a flattened star of rain poured off his head. 'Yes,' said Agnes. The other two had run off. They'd shared a thought – and Perdita had too. They'd all felt the shock as Granny set her mind free and . . . well, the baby was even called Esme, wasn't she? But . . . she couldn't have imagined Granny's voice in her head. She had to be somewhere close . . . 'I really made a terrible mess of it, didn't I?' said Oats. 'Yes,' said Agnes vaguely. No, lending her self to the baby did have a sort of rightness to it, a folklore touch, a romantic ring, and that's why Nanny and Magrat would probably believe Wand that was why Granny wouldn't do it. Granny had no romance in her soul, Agnes thought. But she did have a very good idea of how to manipulate the romance in other people. So ... where else was she? Something had happened. She'd put the essence of herself somewhere for safety, and no matter what she'd told the Count she couldn't have put it very far away. It had to be in something alive, but if it was in a human the owner wouldn't even know it– 'If only I'd used the right exorcism,' Oats mumbled. 'Wouldn't have worked,' said Agnes sharply. 'I don't think they're very religious vampires.' 'It's probably only once in his life that a priest gets a chance like this . . .' 'You were just the wrong person,' said Agnes. 'If a pamphlet had been the right thing to scare them away, then you'd have been the very best man for the job.' She stared down at Oats. So did Perdita. 'Brother Melchio is going to get very abrupt about this,' he said, pulling himself to his feet. 'Oh, look at me, all covered in mud. Er . . . why are you looking at me like that?' 'Oh . . . just an odd thought. The vampires still don't affect your head?' 'What do you mean?' 'They don't affect your mind? They don't know what you're thinking?' 'Hah! Most of the time even I don't know what I'm thinking,' said Oats miserably. 'Really?' said Agnes. Really? said Perdita. 'He was right,' mumbled Oats, not listening. 'I've let everyone down, haven't I? I should have stayed in the college and taken that translating post.' There wasn't even any thunder and lightning with the rain. It was just hard and steady and grim. 'But I'm . . . ready to have another go,' said Oats. 'You are? Why?' 'Did not Kazrin return three times into the valley of Mahag, and wrest the cup of Hiread from the soldiers of the Oolites while they slept?' 'Did he?' 'Yes. I'm . . . I'm sure of it. And did not Om say to the Prophet Brutha, "'I will be with you in dark places"?' 'I imagine he did.' 'Yes, he did. He must have done.' 'And,' said Agnes, 'on that basis you'd go back 'Yes.' 'Why?' 'Because if I didn't, what use am I? What use am I anyway?' 'I don't think we'd survive a second time,' said Agnes. 'They let us go this time because it was the cruel thing to do. Dang! I've got to decide what to do now, and it shouldn't be me. I'm the maiden, for goodness' sake!' She saw his expression and added, for reasons she'd find hard to explain at the moment, 'A technical term for the junior member of a trio of witches. I shouldn't have to decide things. Yes, I know it's better than making the tea!' 'Br . . . I didn't say anything about making the tea-' 'No, sorry, that was someone else. What is it she wants me to do?' Especially since now you think you know where she's hiding, said Perdita. There was a creak, and they heard the hall doors open. Light spilled out, shadows danced in the mist raised by the driving rain, there was a splash and the doors shut again. As they closed, there was the sound of laughter. Agnes hurried to the bottom of the steps, with the priest squelching along beside her. There was already a wide and muddy puddle at this end of the courtyard. Granny Weatherwax lay in it, her dress torn, her hair uncoiling from its rock-hard bun. There was blood on her neck. 'They didn't even lock her in a cell or something,' said Agnes, steaming with rage. 'They just threw her like . . . like a meat bone!' 'I suppose they think she is locked up now, the poor soul,' said Oats. 'Let's get her under cover, at least.. .' 'Oh . . . yes . . . of course.' Agnes took hold of Granny's legs, and was amazed that someone so thin could be so heavy. 'Perhaps there'd be someone in the village?' said Oats, staggering under his end of the load. 'Not a good idea,' said Agnes. 'Oh, but surely-' 'What would you say to them? "This is Granny, can we leave her here, oh, and when she wakes up she'll be a vampire"?' 'Ah.' 'It's not as though people are that happy to see her anyway, unless they're ill . . .' Agnes peered around through the rain. 'Come on, let's go round to the stables and the mews, there's sheds and things. . .'     King Verence opened his eyes. Water was pouring down the window of his bedroom. There was no light but that which crept in under the door, and he could just make out the shapes of his two guards, nodding in their seats. A windowpane tinkled. One of the Uberwaldians went and opened the window, looked out into the wild night, found nothing of interest and shuffled back to his seat. Everything felt very . . . pleasant. It seemed to Verence that he was lying in a nice warm bath, which was very relaxing and comfortable. The cares of the world belonged to someone else. He bobbed like happy flotsam on the warm sea of life. He could hear very faint voices, apparently coming from somewhere below his pillow. 'Rikt, gi' tae yon helan bigjobs?' 'Ach, fashit keel!' 'Hyup?' 'Nach oona whiel ta' tethra ... yin, tan, TETRA!' 'Hyup! Hyup!' Something rustled on the floor. The chair of one man jerked up into the air and bobbed at speed to the window. 'Hyup!' The chair and its occupant crashed through the glass. The other guard managed to get to his feet, but something was growing in the air in front of him. To Verence, an alumnus of the Fools' Guild, it looked very much like a very tall human pyramid made up of very small acrobats. 'Hup! Hup!' 'Hyup!' 'Hup!' It grew level with the guard's face. The single figure at the top yelled: 'What ya lookin' a', chymie? Ha' a wee tastie!’  and launched itself directly at a point between the man's eyes. There was a little cracking noise, and the man keeled over backwards. 'Hup! Hup!' 'Hyup!' The living pyramid dissolved to floor level. Verence heard tiny pattering feet and suddenly there was a small, heavily tattooed man in a blue pointy hat standing on his chin. 'Seyou, kingie! Awa' echt ta' branoch, eh?' 'Well done,' Verence murmured. 'How long have you been a hallucination? Jolly good.' 'Ken ye na' saggie, ye spargit?' 'That's the way,' said Verence dreamily. 'Auchtahelweit!' 'Hyup! Hyup!' Verence felt himself lifted off the bed. Hundreds of little hands passed him from one to the other and he was glided through the window and out into the void. It was a sheer wall and, he told himself dreamily, he had no business drifting down it so slowly, to cries of 'Ta ya! Ta me! Hyup!' Tiny hands caught his collar, his nightshirt, his bedsocks . . . 'Good show,' he murmured, as he slid gently to the ground and then, six inches above ground level, was carried off into the night.     There was a light burning in the rain. Agnes hammered on the door, and the wet wood gave way to the slightly better vision of Hodgesaargh the falconer. 'We've got to come in!' she said. 'Yes, Miss Nitt.' He stood back obediently as they carried Granny into the little room. 'She been hurt, miss?' 'You do know there's vampires in the castle?' said Agnes. 'Yes, miss?' said Hodgesaargh. His voice suggested that he'd just been told a fact and he was waiting with polite interest to be told whether this was a good fact or a bad fact. 'They bit Granny Weatherwax. We need to let her lie down somewhere.' 'There's my bed, miss.' It was small and narrow, designed for people who went to bed because they were tired. 'She might bleed on it a bit,' said Agnes. 'Oh, I bleed on it all the time,' said Hodgesaargh cheerfully. 'And on the floor. I've got any amount of bandages and ointment, if that will be any help.' 'Well, it won't do any harm,' said Agnes. 'Er . . . Hodgesaargh, you do know vampires suck people's blood, do you?' 'Yes, miss? They'll have to queue up behind the birds for mine, then.' 'It doesn't worry you?' 'Mrs Ogg made me a huge tub of ointment, miss.' That seemed to be that. Provided they didn't touch his birds, Hodgesaargh didn't much mind who ran the castle. For hundreds of years the falconers had simply got on with the important things, like falconry, which needed a lot of training, and left the kinging to amateurs. 'She's soaking wet,' said Oats. 'At least let's wrap her up in a blanket or something.' 'And you'll need some rope,' said Agnes. 'Rope?' 'She'll wake up.' 'You mean . . . we ought to tie her up?' 'If a vampire wants to turn you into a vampire, what happens?' Oats's hands clasped his turtle pendant for comfort as he tried to remember. 'I . . . think they put something in the blood,' he said. 'I think if they want to turn you into a vampire you get turned. That's all there is to it. I don't think you can fight it when it's in the blood. You can't say you don't want to join. I don't think it's a power you can resist.' 'She's good at resisting,' said Agnes. 'That good?' said Oats.     One of the Uberwald people shuffled along the corridor. It stopped when it heard a sound, looked around, saw nothing that had apparently made a noise, and plodded on again. Nanny Ogg stepped out of the shadows, and then beckoned Magrat to follow her. 'Sorry, Nanny, it's very hard to keep a baby quiet-' 'Shh! There's quite a bit of noise coming from the kitchens. What could vampires want to cook?' 'It's those people they've brought with them,' hissed Magrat. 'They've been moving in new furniture. They've got to be fed, I suppose.' 'Yeah, like cattle. I reckon our best bet is to walk out bold as brass,' said Nanny. 'These folk don't look like they're big on original thinkin'. Ready?' She absentmindedly took a swig from the bottle she was carrying. 'You just follow me.' 'But look, what about Verence? I can't just leave him. He's my husband!' 'What will they do to him that you could prevent if you was here?' said Nanny. 'Keep the baby safe, that's the important thing. It always has been. Anyway . . . I told you, he's got protection. I saw to that.' 'What, magic?' 'Much better'n that. Now, you just follow me and act snooty. You must've learned that, bein' a queen. Never let 'em even think you haven't got a right to be where you are.' She strode out into the kitchen. The shabbily dressed people there gave her a dull-eyed look, like dogs waiting to see if a whipping was in prospect. On the huge stove, in place of Mrs Scorbic's usual array of scoured-clean pots, was a large, blackened cauldron. The contents were a basic grey. Nanny wouldn't have stirred it for a thousand dollars. 'Just passing through,' she said sharply. 'Get on with whatever you were doing.' The heads all turned to watch them. But towards the back of the kitchen a figure unfolded from the old armchair where Mrs Scorbic sometimes held court and ambled towards them. 'Oh, blast, it's one of the bloody hangers-on,' said Nanny. 'He's between us and the door. . .' 'Ladies!' said the vampire, bowing. 'May I be of assistance?' 'We were just leaving,' said Magrat haughtily. 'Possibly not,' said the vampire. ' 'scuse me, young man,' said Nanny, in her soft old biddy voice, 'but where are you from?' 'Uberwald, madam.' Nanny nodded and referred to a piece of paper she'd pulled out of her pocket. 'That's nice. What part?' 'Klotz.' 'Really? That's nice. 'scuse me.' She turned her back and there was a brief twanging of elastic before she turned round again, all smiles. 'I just likes to take an interest in people,' she said. 'Klotz, eh? What's the name of that river there? The Um? The Eh?' 'The Ah,' said the vampire. Nanny's hand shot forward and wedged something yellow between the vampire's teeth. He grabbed her but, as she was dragged forward, she hit him on the top of the head. He fell to his knees, clutching at his mouth and trying to scream through the lemon he'd just bitten into. 'Seems an odd superstition, but there you are,' said Nanny, as he started to foam around the lips. 'You have to cut their heads off, too,' said Magrat. 'Really? Well, I saw a cleaver back there-' 'Shall we just go?' Magrat suggested. 'Before someone else comes, perhaps?' 'All right. He's not a high-up vampire, anyway,' said Nanny dismissively. 'He's not even wearing a very interestin' waistcoat.' The night was silver with rain. Heads down, the witches dashed through the murk. 'I've got to change the baby!’ 'For a raincoat'd be favourite,' muttered Nanny. 'Now?' 'It's a bit urgent . . .' 'All right, then, in here. . .' They ducked into the stables. Nanny peered back into the night and shut the door quietly. 'It's very dark,' whispered Magrat. 'I could always change babies by feel when I was young.' 'I'd prefer not to have to. Hey . . . there's a light...' The weak glow of a candle was just visible at the far end of the loose boxes. Igor was brushing the horses until they shone. His muttering kept time with the strokes of the brush. Something seemed to be on his mind. 'Thilly voithe, eh? Thilly walk? What the hell doth he know? Jumped-up whipper-thnapper! Igor thtop thith, Igor thtop that . . . all thethe kidth thwanning around, trying to puth me around . . . there'th a covenant in thethe thingth. The old marthter knew that! A thervant ith not a thlave . . .' He glanced around. A piece of straw drifted to the ground. He began brushing again. 'Huh! Fetch thith, fetch that . . . never a morthel of rethpect, oh no...' Igor stopped and pulled another piece of straw off his sleeve. '. . . and another thing.. .' There was a creak, a rush of air, the horse reared in its stall and Igor was borne to the ground, his head feeling as though it was caught in a vice. 'Now, if I brings my knees together,' said a cheerful female voice above him, 'it's very probable I could make your brains come right down your nose. But I know that ain't going to happen, because I'm sure we're all friends here. Say yes.' ' 'th.' 'That's the best we're going to get, I expect.' Nanny Ogg got up and flicked straw off her dress. 'I've been in cleaner haylofts,' she said. 'Up you get, Mr Igor. And if you're thinking of anything clever, my colleague over there is holdin' a pitchfork and she ain't much good at aiming so who knows what part of you she might hit?' 'Ith that a baby thee'th carrying?' 'We're very modern,' said Nanny. 'We've got hedge money and everything. And now we'll have your coach, Igor.' 'Will we?' said Magrat. 'Where're we going?' 'It's a wicked night. I don't want to keep the babby out, and I don't know where we'd be safe near here. Maybe we can get down on to the plains before morning.' 'I won't leave Lancre I' 'Save the child,' said Nanny. 'Make sure there's going to be a future. Besides. . .' She mouthed something at Magrat which Igor did not catch. 'We can't be sure of that,' said Magrat. 'You know the way Granny thinks,' said Nanny. 'She'll want us to keep the baby safe,' she added loudly. 'So hitch up the horses, Mr Igor.' 'Yeth, mithtreth,' said Igor meekly.* 'Are you kicking my bucket, Igor?'[12] 'No, it'th a pleathure to be commanded in a clear, firm authoritative voithe, mithtreth,' said Igor, lurching over to the bridles. 'None of thith "Would you mind..." rubbith. An Igor liketh to know where he thtandth.' 'Slightly lopsidedly?' said Magrat. 'The old marthter uthed to whip me every day!’  said Igor proudly. 'You liked that?' said Magrat. 'Of courthe not! But it'th proper! He wath a gentleman, whothe bootth I wath not fit to lick clean. . .' 'But you did, though?' said Nanny. Igor nodded. 'Every morning. Uthed to get a lovely thine, too.' 'Well, help us out and I'll see you're flogged with a scented bootlace,' said Nanny. 'Thankth all the thame, but I'm leaving anyway,' said Igor, tightening a strap. 'I'm thick up to here with thith lot. They thouldn't be doing thith! They're a dithgrathe to the thpethieth!' Nanny wiped her face. 'I like a man who speaks his mind,' she said, 'and is always prepared to lend a towel -did I say towel? I mean hand.' 'Are you going to trust him?' said Magrat. 'I'm a good judge of character, me,' said Nanny. 'And you can always rely on a man with stitches all round his head.'     'Waley, waley, waley!’ 'Ta' can onlie be one t'ousan!' 'Bigjobs!' A fox peered cautiously around a tree. Through the rain-swept woods a man was moving at speed, while apparently lying down. He wore a nightcap, the bobble of which bounced on the ground. By the time the fox realized what was going on it was too late. A small blue figure leapt out from under the rushing man and landed on its nose, smacking it between the eyes with his head. 'Seeyu? Grich' ta' bones outa t'is yan!' The Nac mac Feegle leapt down as the fox collapsed, grabbed its tail with one hand and ran after the others, punching the air triumphantly. 'Obhoy! We 'gan eat t'nicht!'     They'd pulled the bed out into the middle of the room. Now Agnes and Oats sat on either side of it, listening to the distant sounds of Hodgesaargh feeding the birds. There was the rattle of tins and the occasional yelp as he tried to remove a bird from his nose. 'Sorry?' said Agnes. 'Pardon?' I thought you whispered something,' said Agnes. 'I was, er, saying a short prayer,' said Oats. 'Will that help?' said Agnes. 'Er . . . it helps me. The Prophet Brutha said that Om helps those who help one another.' 'And does he?' 'To be honest, there are a number of opinions of what was meant.' 'How many?' 'About one hundred and sixty, since the Schism of 10.30 a.m., February 23. That was when the ReUnited Free Chelonianisis (Hubwards Convocation) schismed from the Re-United Free Chelonianists (Rimwards Convocation). It was rather serious.' 'Blood spilled?' said Agnes. She wasn't really interested, but it took her mind off whatever might be waking up in a minute. 'No, but there were fisticuffs and a deacon had ink spilled on him.' 'I can see that was pretty bad.' 'There was some serious pulling of beards as well.' 'Gosh.' Sects maniacs, said Perdita. 'You're making fun of me,' said Oats solemnly. 'Well, it does sound a little . . . trivial. You're always arguing?' 'The Prophet Brutha said, "Let there be ten thousand voices,"' said the priest. 'Sometimes I think he meant that it was better to argue amongst ourselves than go out putting unbelievers to fire and the sword. It's all very complicated.' He sighed. 'There are a hundred pathways to Om. Unfortunately I sometimes think someone left a rake lying across a lot of them. The vampire was right. We've lost the fire. . .' 'But you used to burn people with it.' 'I know. . . I know.. .' Agnes saw a movement out of the corner of her eye. Steam was rising from under the blanket they'd pulled over Granny Weatherwax. As Agnes looked down Granny's eyes sprang open and swivelled from side to side. Her mouth moved once or twice. 'And how are you, Miss Weatherwax?' said Mightily Oats, in a cheerful voice. 'She was bitten by a vampire! What sort of question is that?' Agnes hissed. 'One that's better than "What are you?"' Oats whispered. Granny's hand twitched. She opened her mouth again, arched her body against the rope and then slumped back against the pillow. Agnes touched her forehead, and drew her hand back sharply. 'She's burning up! Hodgesaargh! Bring some water!’ 'Coming, miss!' 'Oh, no.. .' whispered Oats. He pointed to the ropes. They were unknotting themselves, stealthily moving across one another like snakes. Granny half rolled, half fell out of the bed, landing on her hands and knees. Agnes went to pick her up and received a blow from an elbow that sent her across the room. The old witch dragged the door open and crawled out into the rain. She paused, panting, as the drops hit her. Agnes swore that some of them sizzled. Granny's hands slipped. She landed in the mud and struggled to push herself upright. Blue-green light spilled out from the mews 's open door. Agnes looked back inside. Hodgesaargh was staring at a jamjar, in which a point of white light was surrounded by a pale blue flame that stretched well beyond the jar, and curled and pulsed. 'What's that?' 'My phoenix feather, miss! It's burning the air!' Outside, Oats had pulled Granny upright and had got his shoulder under one of her arms. 'She said something,' he said. "I am", I think.. .' 'She might be a vampire!' 'She just said it again. Didn't you hear?' Agnes moved closer, and Granny's limp hand was suddenly gripping her shoulder. She could feel the heat of it through her sodden dress and made out the word in the hiss of the rain. 'Iron?' said Oats. 'Did she say iron?' 'There's the castle forge next door,' said Agnes. 'Let's get her in there.' The forge was dark and cold, its fire only lit when there was work to be done. They pulled Granny inside and she slipped out of their grip and landed on hands and knees on the flagstones. 'But iron's no good against vampires, is it?' said Agnes. 'I've never heard of people using iron-' Granny made a noise somewhere between a snort and a growl. She pulled herself across the floor, leaving a trail of mud, until she reached the anvil. It was simply a great long lump of iron to accommodate the half-skilled metal-bashing occasionally needed to keep the castle running. Still kneeling, Granny grabbed at it with both hands and laid her forehead against it. 'Granny, what can-' Agnes began. 'Go where the others ... are,' Granny Weatherwax croaked. 'It'll need three . . . witches if this goes . . . wrong . . . you'll have to face . . . something terrible. . .' 'What terrible thing?' 'Me. Do it now.' Agnes backed away. On the black iron, by Granny's fingers, little flecks of rust were spitting and jumping. 'I'd better go! Keep an eye on her!' 'But what if-' Granny flung her head back, her eyes screwed shut. 'Get away!' she screamed. Agnes went white. 'You heard what she said!' she shouted, and ran out into the rain. Granny's head slumped forward against the iron again. Around her fingers red sparks danced on the metal. 'Mister priest,' she said in a hoarse whisper. 'Somewhere in this place is an axe. Fetch it here!' Oats looked around desperately. There was an axe, a small double-headed one, lying by a grindstone. 'Er, I've found one,' he ventured. Granny's head jerked back. Her teeth were gritted, but she managed to say, 'Sharpen it!' Oats glanced at the grindstone and licked his lips nervously. 'Sharpen it right now, I said!' He pulled off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, took up the axe and put a foot on the wheel's treadle. Sparks leapt off the blade as the wheel spun. 'Then find some wood an' . . . cut a point on it. And find . . . a hammer. . .' The hammer was easy. There was a rack of tools by the wheel. A few seconds' desperate rummaging in the debris by the wall produced a fence post. 'Madam, what are you wanting me to-' 'Something ... will get up ... presently,' Granny panted. 'Make sure . . . you know well . . . what it is. . .' 'But you're not expecting me to behead-' 'I'm commandin' you, religious man l What do you really . . . believe? What did you . . . think it was all about? Singing songs? Sooner or later . . . it's all down to . . . the blood. . .' Her head lolled against the anvil. Oats looked at her hands again. Around them the iron was black, but just a little way from her fingers there was a faint glow to the metal, and the rust still sizzled. He touched the anvil gingerly, then pulled his hand away and sucked at his fingers. 'Mistress Weatherwax a bit poorly, is she?' said Hodgesaargh, coming in. 'I think you could certainly say that, yes.' 'Oh dear. Want some tea?' 'What?' 'It's a nasty night. If we're stopping up I'll put the kettle on.' 'Do you realize, man, that she might get up from there a bloodthirsty vampire?' 'Oh.' The falconer looked down at the still figure and the smoking anvil. 'Good idea to face her with a cup of tea inside you, then,' he said. 'Do you understand what's going on here?' Hodgesaargh took another slow look at the scene. 'No,' he said. 'In that case-' '’s not my job to understand this sort of thing,' said the falconer. 'I wasn't trained. Probably takes a lot of training, understanding this. That's your job. And her job. Can you understand what's going on when a bird's been trained and'll make a kill and still come back to the wrist?' 'Well, no-' 'There you are, then. So that's all right. Cup of tea, was it?' Oats gave up. 'Yes, please. Thank you.' Hodgesaargh bustled off. The priest sat down. If the truth were known, he wasn't sure he understood what was happening. The old woman had been burning up and in pain, and now . . . the iron was getting hot, as if the pain and the heat had been moved away. Could anyone do that? Well, of course, the prophets could, he told himself conscientiously, but that was because Om had given them the power. But by all accounts the old woman didn't believe in anything. She was very still now. The others had talked about her as though she was some great magician, but the figure he'd seen in the hall had been just a tired, worn-out old woman. He'd seen people down in the hospice in Aby Dyal, stiff and withdrawn until the pain was too great and all they had left was a prayer and then . . . not even that. That seemed to be where she was now. She was really still. Oats had only seen stillness like that when movement was no longer an option.     Up the airy mountain and down the rushy glen ran the Nac mac Feegle, who seemed to have no concept of stealth. Progress was a little slower now, because some of the party broke away occasionally to have a fight amongst themselves or an impromptu hunt, and in addition to the King of Lancre there was now, bobbing through the heather, the fox, a stunned stag, a wild boar, and a weasel who'd been suspected of looking at a Nac mac Feegle in a funny way. Verence saw, muzzily, that they were heading for a bank at the edge of a field, long deserted and overgrown, topped with some ancient thorn trees. The pixies stopped with a jolt when the King's head was a few inches away from a large rabbit hole. 'Danna fittit!’ 'G'shovitt, s'yust!’ Verence's head was banged hopefully against the wet soil once or twice. 'Hakkis lugs awa'!' 'Bigjobs!' One of the pixies shook his head. 'Canna' do't, ken? Els' y'ole carlin'll hae oor guts fae garters . . .' Unusually, the Nac mac Feegle fell silent for a moment. Then one of them said, 'Na one's got tha' much guts, right eno'.' 'An' b'side, she'll gi'us uskabarch muckell. We oathit. Y' canna' cross a hag.' 'Al' at it noo, then . . .' Verence was dropped on the ground. There was a brief sound of digging, and mud showered over him. Then he was picked up again and carried through a much enlarged hole, his nose brushing tree roots in the ceiling. Behind him there was the sound of a tunnel being rapidly filled in. Then there was just a bank where rabbits obviously lived, topped with thorn trees. Unseen in the wild night, the occasional wisp of smoke drifted among the trunks.     Agnes leaned against the castle wall, which was streaming with water, and fought for breath. Granny hadn't just told her to go away. The command had hit her brain like a bucket of ice. Even Perdita had felt it. There was no question of not obeying. Where would Nanny have gone? Agnes felt a pressing desire to be near her. Nanny Ogg radiated a perpetual field of it'll-be-0-rightness. If they'd got out through the kitchens she could be anywhere . . . She heard the coach rattle out through the arch that led to the stables. It was just a looming shape, shrouded in spray from the rain, as it bounced across the cobbles of the courtyard. A figure by the driver, holding a sack over its head against the wind and rain, might have been Nanny. It hardly mattered. No one would have seen Agnes running through the puddles and waving. She trooped back to the arch as the coach disappeared down the hill. Well, they had been trying to get away, hadn't they? And stealing a vampire's coach had a certain Nanny Ogg style . . . Someone gripped both her arms from behind. Instinctively she tried to thrust back with her elbows. It was like trying to move against rock. 'Why, Miss Agnes Nitt,' said Vlad coldly. 'A pleasant stroll to take in a little rain?' 'They've got away from you !’  she snapped. 'You think so? Father could send that coach right into the gorge in a moment if he wanted to,' said the vampire. 'But he won't. We much prefer the personal touch.' 'The in-your-neck approach,' said Agnes. 'Hah, yes. But he really is trying to be reasonable. So I can't persuade you to become one of us, Agnes?' 'What, someone who lives by taking life from other people?' 'We don't usually go as far as that any more,' said Vlad, dragging her forward. 'And when we do . . . well, we make sure that we only kill people who deserve to die.' 'Oh, well, that's all right, then, isn't it?' said Agnes. 'I'm sure I'd trust a vampire's judgement.' 'My sister can be a bit too . . . rigorous at times, I admit.' 'I've seen the people you brought with youl They practically moot' 'Oh, them. The domestics. Well? It's not much different from the lives they would have had in any case. Better, in fact. They are well fed, sheltered-' '-milked.' 'And is that bad?' Agnes tried to twist out of his grip. Just here there was no castle wall. There hadn't been any need. Lancre Gorge was all the wall anyone could need, and Vlad was walking her right to the sheer drop. 'What a stupid thing to say!' she said. 'Is it? I understand you've travelled, Agnes,' said Vlad, as she struggled. 'So you'll know that so many people lead little lives, always under the whip of some king or ruler or master who won't hesitate to sacrifice them in battle or turn them out when they can't work any more.' But they can run away, Perdita prompted. 'But they can run away!' 'Really? On foot? With a family? And no money? Mostly they never even try. Most people put up with most things, Agnes.' 'That's the most unpleasant, cynical-' Accurate, Perdita said. '-accur- No!' Vlad raised his eyebrows. 'You have such a strange mind, Agnes. Of course, you are not one of the . . . cattle. I expect that no witch is. You people tend to know your own mind.' He gave her a toothy grin, and on a vampire this was not pleasant. 'I wish I did. Come along.' There was no resisting the pull, unless she wanted to be dragged along the ground. 'Father's very impressed with you witches,' he said, over his shoulder. 'He says we should make you all vampires. He says you're halfway there anyway. But I'd much rather you came to see how marvellous it could be.' 'You would, would you? I'd like to be constantly craving blood?' 'You constantly crave chocolate, don't you?' 'How dare you!' 'Blood tends to be low in carbohydrates. Your body will adapt. The pounds will just drop away. . .' 'That's sickening!' 'You'll have complete control over yourself . . .' 'I'm not listening!' 'All it takes is a little prick-' 'It's not going to be yours, mister!' 'Hah! Wonderful!' said Vlad and, dragging Agnes behind him, he leapt into the Lancre Gorge.     Granny Weatherwax opened her eyes. At least, she had to assume they were open. She'd felt the lids move. Darkness lay in front of her. It was velvet black, starless, a hole in space. But there was light behind her. She was standing with her back to the light, she could sense it, see it on her hands. It was streaming past, outlining the darkness that was the long rich deep shadow of her on the . . . . . . black sand. it crunched under her boots as she shifted her weight. This was a test. Everything was a test. Everything was a competition. Life put them in front of you every day. You watched yourself all the time. You had to make choices. You never got told which ones were right. Oh, some of the priests said you got given marks afterwards, but what was the point of that? She wished her mind was working faster. She couldn't think properly. Her head felt full of fog. This . . . wasn't a real place. No, that wasn't the right way of thinking about it. It wasn't a usual place. It might be more real than Lancre. Across it her shadow stretched, waiting . . . She glanced up at the tall, silent figure beside her. GOOD EVENING. 'Oh . . . you again.' ANOTHER CHOICE, ESMERELDA WEATHERWAX. 'Light and dark? It's never as simple as that, you know, even for you.' Death sighed. NOT EVEN FOR ME. Granny tried to line up her thoughts. Which light and which dark? She hadn't been prepared for this. This didn't feel right. This wasn't the fight she had expected. Whose light? Whose mind was this? Silly question. She was always her. Never lose your grip on that . . . So . . . light behind her, darkness in front . . . She'd always said witches stood between the light and the dark. 'Am I dyin'?' YES. 'Will I die?' YES. Granny thought this over. 'But from your point of view, everyone is dying and everyone will die, right?' YES. 'So you aren't actually bein' a lot of help, strictly speakin'.' I'M SORRY, I THOUGHT YOU WANTED THE TRUTH. PERHAPS YOU WERE EXPECTING JELLY AND ICE CREAM? 'Hah. . .' There was no movement in the air, no sound but her own breathing. Just the brilliant white light on one side, and the heavy darkness on the other . . . waiting. Granny had listened to people who'd nearly died but had come back, possibly because of a deft thump in the right place or the dislodging of some wayward mouthful that'd gone down the wrong way. Sometimes they talked about seeing a light That's where she ought to go, a thought told her. But . . . was the light the way in, or the way out? Death snapped his fingers. An image appeared on the sand in front of them. She saw herself, kneeling in front of the anvil. She admired the dramatic effect. She'd always had a streak of theatrics, although she'd never admit it, and she appreciated in a disembodied way the strength with which she had thrust her pain into the iron. Someone had slightly spoiled the effect by putting a kettle on one end. Death reached down and took a handful of sand. He held it up, and let it slip between his fingers. CHOOSE, he said. YOU ARE GOOD AT CHOOSING, I BELIEVE. 'Is there any advice you could be givin' me?' said Granny. CHOOSE RIGHT. Granny turned to face the sheer white brilliance, and dosed her eyes. And stepped backwards. The light dwindled to a tiny distant point and vanished. The blackness was suddenly all around, closing in like quicksand. There seemed to be no way, no direction. When she moved she did not sense movement. There was no sound but the faint trickle of sand inside her head. And then, voices from her shadow. '. .. Because of you, some died who may have lived. . .' The words lashed at her, leaving livid lines across her mind. 'Some lived who surely would have died,' she said. The dark pulled at her sleeves. '. . . you killed. . .' 'No. I showed the way.' '. . . hah! That's just words. . .' 'Words is important,' Granny whispered into the night . . . . you took the right to judge others. . .' 'I took the duty. I'll own up to it.' '. . . I know every evil thought you've ever had. . .' 'I know.' '. . . the ones you'd never dare tell anyone . . .' 'I know.' '. . . all the little secrets, never to be told . . .' 'I know.' '. . . how often you longed to embrace the dark. . .' 'Yes.' '. . . such strength you could have . . .' 'Yes.' '. . . embrace the dark. . .' 'No.' '. . . give in to me. . .' 'No.' '... Lilith Weatherwax did. Alison Weatherwax did...' 'That's never been proved!' '. . . give in to me. . .' 'No. I know you. I've always known you. The Count just let you out to torment me, but I've always known you were there. I've fought you every day of my life and you'll get no victory now.' She opened her eyes and stared into the blackness. 'I knows who you are now, Esmerelda Weatherwax,' she said. 'You don't scare me no more.' The last of the light vanished. Granny Weatherwax hung in the dark for a time she couldn't measure. It was as if the absolute emptiness had sucked all the time and direction into it. There wasn't anywhere to go, because there wasn't any anywhere. After a length of time without any measure, she began to hear another sound, the faintest of whispers on the borders of hearing. She pushed towards it. Words were rising through the blackness like little wriggling golden fish. She fought her way towards them, now that there was a direction. The slivers of light turned into sounds. '-and asketh you in your infinite compassion to see your way clear to possibly intervening here . . .' Not normally the kind of words she'd associate with light. Perhaps it was the way they were said. But they had a strange echo to them, a second voice, woven in amongst the first voice, glued to every syllable . . . '. . . what compassion? How many people prayed at the stake? How foolish I look, kneeling like this . . .' Ah . . . one mind, split in half. There were more Agneses in the world than Agnes dreamed of, Granny told herself. All the girl had done was give a thing a name, and once you gave a thing a name you gave it a life . . . There was something else near by, a glimmer a few photons across, which winked out as she looked for it again. She turned her attention away for a moment, then jerked it back. Again, the tiny spark blinked out. Something was hiding. The sand stopped rushing. Time was up. Now to find out what she was. Granny Weatherwax opened her eyes, and there was light.     The coach swished to a halt on the mountain road. Water poured around its wheels. Nanny got out and paddled over to Igor, who was standing where the road wasn't. Water was foaming where it should have been. 'Can we get acroth?' said Igor. 'Probably, but it'll be worse down below, where there's really bad run-off,' said Nanny. 'The plains have been cut off all winter before now. . .' She looked at the other way. The road wound further into the mountains, awash but apparently sound. 'Where's the nearest village that way?' she said. 'One with a good stone building in it. Slake, isn't it? There's a coaching inn up there.' 'That'th right. Thlake.' 'Well, we ain't going anywhere on foot in this weather,' said Nanny. 'Slake it's got to be, then.' She got back into the coach and felt it turn round. 'Is there a problem?' said Magrat, 'Why are we going uphill?' 'Road's washed out,' said Nanny. 'We're heading into Uberwald?' 'Yes.' 'But there's werewolves and vampires and-' 'Yes, but not everywhere. We should be safe on the main road. Anyway, there's not much of a choice.' 'I suppose you're right,' said Magrat reluctantly. 'And it could be worse,' said Nanny. 'How?' 'Well . . . there could be snakes in here with us.'     Agnes saw the rocks rush past, looked down and saw the foam of the swollen river. The world spun around her when Vlad stopped in midair. Water washed over her toes. 'Let there be . . . lightness,' he said. 'You'd like to be as light as the air, wouldn't you, Agnes?' 'We – we've got broomsticks . . .' Agnes panted. Her life had just flashed past her eyes and wasn't it dull? Perdita added. 'Useless cumbersome stupid things,' he said. 'And they can't do this-' The walls of the gorge went past in a blur. The castle dropped away. Clouds drenched her. Then they unrolled as a silver-white fleece, under the silent cold light of the moon. Vlad wasn't beside her. Agnes slowed in her rise, flung out her arms to grip what wasn't there, and began to fall back He appeared, laughing, and grabbed her around the waist. '-can they?' he said. Agnes couldn't speak. Her life passing in front of her eyes one way had met it passing in front of her eyes going in the opposite direction, and words would fail her now until she could decide when now was. 'And you haven't seen anything yet,' said Vlad. Wisps of cloud coiled behind them as he raced forward. The clouds vanished under them. They might have been as thin as smoke but their presence, their imitation of groundness, had been a comfort. Now they were a departing edge, and far below were the moonlit plains. 'Ghjgh,' gurgled Agnes, too tense and terrified even to scream. Wheee! crowed Perdita, inside. 'See that?' said Vlad, pointing. 'See the light all around the Rim?' Agnes stared, because anything now was better than looking down. The sun was under the Disc. Around the dark Rim, though, it found its way up through the endless waterfall, creating a glowing band between the night-time ocean and the stars. It was, indeed, beautiful, but Agnes felt that beauty was even more likely to be in the eye of the beholder if the feet of the beholder were on something solid. At ten thousand feet up, the eye of the beholder tends to water. Perdita thought it was beautiful. Agnes wondered if, should Agnes end up as a circle of pink splash marks on the rocks, Perdita would still be there. 'Everything you want,' whispered Vlad. 'For ever.' 'I want to get down,' said Agnes. He let go. There was this about Agnes's shape. It was a good one for falling. She turned automatically belly down, hair streaming behind her, and floated in the rushing wind. Oddly enough, the terror had gone. That had been fear of a situation out of her control. Now, arms outspread, skirts whipping her legs, eyes streaming in the freezing air, she could at least see what the future held even if it was not big enough to hold very much. Perhaps she could hit a snowbank, or deep water- It might have been worth a try, said Perdita. He doesn't seem entirely bad. 'Shut up.' It'd just be nice if you could stop looking as though you were wearing saddlebags under your skirt . . . 'Shut up.' And it'd be nice if you didn't hit the rocks like a balloon full of water . . . 'Shut up. Anyway, I can see a lake. I think I can sort of angle across towards it.' At this speed it will be like hitting the ground. 'How do you know that? I don't know that. So how do you know?' Everyone knows that. Vlad appeared alongside Agnes, lounging on the air as though it were a sofa. 'Enjoying it?' he said. 'It's fine so far,' said Agnes, not looking at him. She felt him touch her wrist. There was no real sense of pressure, but the fall stopped. She felt as light as the air again. 'Why are you doing this?' she said. 'If you're going to bite me, then get it over with!' 'Oh, but I couldn't be having with that!’ 'You did it to Granny!' said Agnes. 'Yes, but when it's against someone's will . . . well, they end up so . . . compliant. Little more than thinking food. But someone who embraces the night of their own volition . .. ah, that's another thing entirely, my dear Agnes. And you're far too interesting to be a slave.' 'Tell me,' said Agnes, as a mountaintop floated by, 'have you had many girlfriends?' He shrugged. 'One or two. Village girls. Housemaids.' 'And what happened to them, may I ask?' 'Don't look at me like that. We still find employment for them in the castle.' Agnes loathed him. Perdita merely hated him, which is the opposite pole to love and just as attractive . . . . but Nanny said if the worst came to the worst . . . and then he'll trust you . . . and they've already got Granny . . . 'If I'm a vampire,' she said, 'I won't know good from evil.' 'That's a bit childish, isn't it? They're only ways of looking at the same thing. You don't always have to do what the rest of the world wants you to do.' 'Are you still toying with her?' Lacrimosa was walking towards them on the air. Agnes saw the other vampires behind her. 'Bite her or let her go,' the girl went on. 'Good grief, she's so blobby. Come on, Father wants you. They're heading for our castle. Isn't that just too stupid?' 'This is my affair, Lacci,' said Vlad. 'Every boy should have a hobby, but . . . really,' said Lacrimosa, rolling her black-rimmed eyes. Vlad grinned at Agnes. 'Come with us,' he said. Granny did say you need to be with the others, Perdita pointed out. 'Yes, but how will I find them when we're there?' said Agnes aloud. 'Oh, we'll find them,' said Vlad. 'I meant-' 'Do come. We don't intend to hurt your friends-' 'Much,' said Lacrimosa. 'Or . . . we could leave you here,' said Vlad, smiling. Agnes looked around. They had touched down on the mountain peak, above the clouds. She felt warm and light, which was wrong. Even on a broomstick she'd never felt like this, she'd always been aware of gravity sucking her down, but with the vampire holding her arm every part of her felt that it could float for ever. Besides, if she didn't go with them it was going to be either a very long or an extremely short journey down to the ground. Besides, she would find the other two, and you couldn't do that when you were dying in some crevasse somewhere. Besides, even if he did have small fangs and a terrible taste in waistcoats, Vlad actually seemed attracted to her. It wasn't even as if she had a very interesting neck. She made up both minds. 'If you attached a piece of string to her I suppose we could tow her like some sort of balloon,' said Lacrimosa. Besides, there was always the chance that, at some point, she might find herself in a room with Lacrimosa. When that happened, she wouldn't need garlic, or a stake, or an axe. Just a little talk about people who were too unpleasant, too malicious, too thin. Just five minutes alone. And perhaps a pin, said Perdita.     Under the rabbit hole, down below the bank, was a wide, low-roofed chamber. Tree roots wound among the stones in the wall. There were plenty of such things around Lancre. The kingdom had been there many years, ever since the ice withdrew. Tribes had pillaged, tilled, built and died. The clay walls and reed thatch of the living houses had long since rotted and been lost but, down under the moundy banks, the abodes of the dead survived. No one knew now who'd been buried there. Occasionally the spoil heap outside a badger sett would reveal a piece of bone or a scrap of corroded armour. The Lancrastians didn't go digging themselves, reckoning in their uncomplicated country way that it was bad luck to have your head torn off by a vengeful underground spirit. One or two of the old barrows had been exposed over the years, their huge stones attracting their own folklore. If you left your unshod horse at one of them overnight and placed a sixpence on the stone, in the morning the sixpence would be gone and you'd never see your horse again, either . . . Down on the earth floor under the bank a fire was burning darkly, filling the barrow with smoke which exited through various hidden crannies. There was a pear-shaped rock beside it. Verence tried to sit up, but his body didn't want to obey. 'Dinna scanna' whista,' said the rock. It unfolded its legs. It was, he realized, a woman, or at least a female, blue like the other pixies but at least a foot high and so fat that it was almost spherical. It looked exactly like the little figurines back in the days of ice and mammoths, when what men really looked for in a woman was quantity. For the sake of modesty, or merely to mark the equator, it wore what Verence could only think of as a tutu. The whole effect reminded him of a spinning top he'd had when he was a child. 'The Kelda says,' said a cracked voice by his ear, 'that ye . . . must get . . . ready.' Verence turned his head the other way and tried to focus on a small wizened pixie right in front of his nose. Its skin was faded. It had a long white beard. It walked with two sticks. 'Ready? For what?' 'Good.' The old pixie banged its sticks on the ground. 'Craik'n shaden ach, Feegle!' The blue men rushed at Verence from the shadows. Hundreds of hands grabbed him. Their bodies formed a human pyramid, pulling him upright against the wall. Some clung to the tree roots that looped across the ceiling, tugging on his nightshirt to keep him vertical. A crowd of others ran across the floor with a full-sized crossbow and propped it on a stone close to him. 'Er . . . I say. . .' Verence murmured. The Kelda waddled into the shadows and returned with her pudgy fists clenched. She went to the fire and held them over the flames. 'Yin!' said the old pixie. 'I say, that's aimed right at my-' 'Yin!' shouted the Nac mac Feegle. '. . . ton!' 'Ton!' 'Um, it's, er, right. . .' 'Tetra!' The Kelda dropped something on the fire. A white flame roared up, etching the room in black and white. Verence blinked. When he managed to see again there was a crossbow bolt sticking in the wall just by his ear. The Kelda growled some order, while white light still danced around the walls. The bearded pixie rattled his sticks again. 'Now ye must walk awa'. Noo!' The Feegle let Verence go. He took a few tottering steps and collapsed on the floor, but the pixies weren't watching him. He looked up. His shadow twisted on the wall where it had been pinned. It writhed for a moment, trying to dutch at the arrow with insubstantial hands, and then faded. Verence raised his hand. There seemed to be a shadow there, too, but at least this one looked as if it was the regular kind. The old pixie hobbled over to him. 'All fine now,' he said. 'You shot my shadow?' said Verence. 'Aye, ye could call it a shade,' said the pixie. 'It's the 'fluence they put on ye. But ye'll be up and aboot in no time.' 'A boot?' 'Aboot the place,' said the pixie evenly. 'All hail, your kingy. I'm Big Aggie's Man. Ye'd call me the prime minister, I'm hazardin'. Will ye no' have a huge dram and a burned bannock while yer waitin'?' Verence rubbed his face. He did feel better already. The fog was drifting away. 'How can I ever repay you?' he said. The pixie's eyes gleamed happily. 'Oh, there's a wee bitty thing the carlin' Ogg said you could be givin' us, hardly important at all,' he said. 'Anything,' said Verence. A couple of pixies came up staggering under a rolled-up parchment, which was unfolded in front of Verence. The old pixie was suddenly holding a quill pen. 'It's called a signature,' he said, as Verence stared at the tiny handwriting. 'An' make sure ye initial all the subclauses and codicils. We of the Nac mac Feegle are a simple folk,' he added, 'but we write verra comp-lic-ated documents.'     Mightily oats blinked at Granny over the top of his praying hands. She saw his gaze slide sideways to the axe, and then back to her. 'You wouldn't reach it in time,' said Granny, without moving. 'Should've got hold of it already if you were goin' to use it. Prayer's all very well. I can see where it can help you get your mind right. But an axe is an axe no matter what you believes.' Oats relaxed a little. He'd expected a leap for the throat. 'If Hodgesaargh's made any tea, I'm parched,' said Granny. She leaned against the anvil, panting. Out of the corner of her eye she saw his hand move slowly. 'I'll get- I'll ask- I'll-' 'Man with his head screwed on properly, that falconer. A biscuit wouldn't come amiss.' Oats's hand reached the axe handle. 'Still not quick enough,' said Granny. 'Keep hold of it, though. Axe first, pray later. You look like a priest. What's your god?' 'Er . . . Om.' 'That a he god or a she god?' 'A he. Yes. A he. Definitely a he.' It was one thing the Church hadn't schismed over, strangely. 'Er.. . you don't mind, do you?' 'Why should I mind?' 'Well . . . your colleagues keep telling me the Omnians used to burn witches. . .' 'They never did,' said Granny. 'I'm afraid I have to admit that the records show-' 'They never burned witches,' said Granny. 'Probably they burned some old ladies who spoke up or couldn't run away. I wouldn't look for witches bein' burned,' she added, shifting position. 'I might look for witches doin' the burning, though. We ain't all nice.' Oats remembered the Count talking about contributing to the Arca Instrumentorum . . . Those books were ancient! But so were vampires, weren't they? And they were practically canonical! The freezing knife of doubt wedged itself deeper in his brain. Who knew who really wrote anything? What could you trust? Where was the holy writ? Where was the truth? Granny pulled herself to her feet and tottered over to the bench, where Hodgesaargh had left his jar of flame. She examined it carefully. Oats tightened his grip on the axe. It was, he had to admit, slightly more comforting than prayer at that moment. Perhaps you could start with the small truths. Like: he had an axe in his hand. 'I wa- want to be certain,' he said. 'Are you . . . are you a vampire?' Granny Weatherwax appeared not to hear the question. 'Where's Hodgesaargh with that tea?' she said. The falconer came in with a tray. 'Nice to see you up and about, Mistress Weatherwax.' 'Not before time.' The tea slopped as she took the proffered cup. Her hand was shaking. 'Hodgesaargh?' 'Yes, mistress?' 'So you've got a firebird here, have you?' 'No, mistress.' 'I saw you out huntin' it.' 'And I found it, miss. But it had been killed. There was nothing but burnt ground, miss.' 'You'd better tell me all about it.' 'Is this the right time?' said Oats. 'Yes,' said Granny Weatherwax. Oats sat and listened. Hodgesaargh was an original storyteller and quite good in a very specific way. If he'd had to recount the saga of the Tsortean War, for example, it would have been in terms of the birds observed, every cormorant noted, every pelican listed, every battlefield raven taxonomically placed, no tern unturned. Some men in armour would have been involved at some stage, but only because the ravens were perching on them. 'The phoenix doesn't lay eggs,' said Oats, at one point. This was a point a few points after the point where he asked the falconer if he'd been drinking. 'She's a bird,' said Hodgesaargh. 'That's what birds do. I've never seen a bird that doesn't lay eggs. I collected the eggshell.' He scuttled off into the mews. Oats smiled nervously at Granny Weatherwax. 'Probably a bit of chicken shell,' he said. 'I've read about the phoenix. It's a mythical creature, a symbol, it-' 'Can't say for sure,' said Granny. 'I've never seen one that close to.' The falconer returned, clutching a small box. It was full of tufts of fleece, in the middle of which was a pile of shell fragments. Oats picked up a couple. They were a silvery grey and very light. 'I found them in the ashes.' 'No one's ever claimed to have found phoenix eggshell before,' said Oats accusingly. 'Didn't know that, sir,' said Hodgesaargh innocently. 'Otherwise I wouldn't have looked.' 'Did anyone else ever look, I wonder?' said Granny. She poked at the fragments. 'Ah. . .' she said. 'I thought p'raps the phoenixes used to live somewhere very dangerous-' Hodgesaargh began. 'Everywhere's like that when you're newborn,' said Granny. 'I can see you've been thinking, Hodgesaargh.' 'Thank you, Mistress Weatherwax.' 'Shame you didn't think further,' Granny went on. 'Mistress?' 'There's the bits of more than one egg here.' 'Mistress?' 'Hodgesaargh,' said Granny patiently, 'this phoenix laid more than one egg.' 'What? But it can't! According to mythology-' Oats said. 'Oh, mythology,' said Granny. 'Mythology's just the folktales of people who won 'cos they had bigger swords. They're just the people to spot the finer points of ornithology, are they? Anyway, one of anything ain't going to last for very long, is it? Firebirds have got enemies, same as everything else. Give me a hand up, Mister Oats. How many birds in the mews, Hodgesaargh?' The falconer looked at his fingers for a moment. 'Fifty.' 'Counted 'em lately?' They stood and watched while he walked from post to post. Then they stood and watched while he walked back and counted them again. Then he spent some time looking at his fingers. 'Fifty-one?' said Granny helpfully. 'I don't understand it, mistress.' 'You'd better count them by types, then.' This produced a count of nineteen lappet-faced worriers where there should have been eighteen. 'Perhaps one flew in because it saw the others,' said Oats. 'Like pigeons.' 'It doesn't work like that, sir,' said the falconer. 'One of 'em won't be tethered,' said Granny. 'Trust me.' They found it at the back, slightly smaller than the other worriers, hanging meekly from its perch. Fewer birds could sit more meekly than the Lancre wowhawk, or lappet-faced worrier, a carnivore permanently on the lookout for the vegetarian option. It spent most of its time asleep in any case, but when forced to find food it tended to sit on a branch out of the wind somewhere and wait for something to die. When in the mews the worriers would initially perch like other birds and then, talons damped around the pole, doze off peacefully upside down. Hodgesaargh bred them because they were found only in Lancre and he liked the plumage, but all reputable falconers agreed that for hunting purposes the only way you could reliably bring down prey with a wowhawk was by using it in a slingshot. Granny reached out towards it. 'I'll fetch you a glove,' said Hodgesaargh, but she waved him away. The bird hopped on to her wrist. Granny gasped, and little threads of green and blue burned like marsh gas along her arm for a moment. 'Are you all right?' said Oats. 'Never been better. I'll need this bird, Hodgesaargh.' 'It's dark, mistress.' 'That won't matter. But it'll need to be hooded.' 'Oh, I never hood wowhawks, mistress. They're never any trouble.' 'This bird . . . this bird,' said Granny, 'is a bird I reckon no one's ever seen before. Hood it.' Hodgesaargh hesitated. He recalled the circle of scorched earth and, before it, something looking for a shape in which it could survive . . . 'It is a wowhawk, isn't it, mistress?' 'And what makes you ask that?' said Granny slowly. 'After all, you're the falconer in these parts.' 'Because I found . . . in the woods . . . I saw. . .' 'What did you see, Hodgesaargh?' Hodgesaargh gave up in the face of her stare. To think that he'd tried to capture a phoenix! At least the worst the other birds could do would be to draw blood. Supposing he'd been holding it . . . He was overcome by a very definite burning desire to get this bird out of here. Strangely, though, the other birds weren't disturbed at all. Every hooded head was turned towards the little bird on Granny Weatherwax's wrist. Every blind, hooded head. Hodgesaargh picked up another hood. As he fastened it over the bird's head he thought, for a moment, that there was a flash of gold from underneath. He put that down as not his business. He'd survived quite happily in the castle for many years by knowing where his business was, and he was suddenly very clear that it wasn't here, thank goodness. Granny took a few deep breaths. 'Right,' she said. 'Now we'll go up to the castle.' 'What for? Why?' said Oats. 'Good grief, man, why d'you think?' 'The vampires are gone,' said the priest. 'While you were . . . getting better. Mr Hodges . . . aargh found out. They've just left the soldiers and the, er, servants. There was a lot of noise and the coach went, too. There's guards all over the place.' 'How did the coach get out, then?' 'Well, it was the vampires' coach and their servant was driving it, but Jason Ogg said he saw Mrs Ogg, too.' Granny steadied herself against the wall. 'Where did they go?' 'I thought you could read their minds or something,' said Oats. 'Young man, right now I don't think I can read my own mind.' 'Look, Granny Weatherwax, it's obvious to me you're still weak from loss of blood-' 'Don't you dare tell me what I am,' said Granny. 'Don't you dare. Now, where would Gytha Ogg've taken them?' 'I think-' 'Uberwald,' said Granny. 'That'll be it.' 'What? How can you know that?' 'Because nowhere in the village'd be safe, she wouldn't go up to the gnarly ground on a night like this and with a baby to carry as well, and heading down on to the plains'd be downright daft 'cos there's no cover and I wouldn't be surprised if the road is washed out by now.' 'But that'll be right into danger!’ 'More dangerous than here?' said Granny. 'They know about vampires in Uberwald. They're used to 'em. There's safe places. Pretty strong inns all along the coach road, for a start. Nanny's practical. She'll think of that, I'm betting.' She winced, and added, 'But they'll end up in the vampires' castle.' 'Oh, surely not!’ 'I can feel it in my blood,' said Granny. 'That's the trouble with Gytha Ogg. Far too practical.' She paused. 'You mentioned guards?' 'They've locked themselves in the keep, mistress,' said a voice in the doorway. It was Shawn Ogg, with the rest of the mob behind him. He advanced awkwardly, one hand held in front of him. 'That's a blessing, then,' said Granny. 'But we can't get in, mistress,' said Shawn. 'So? Can they get out?' 'Well . . . no, not really. But the armoury's in there. All our weaponsl And they're boozing!’ 'What's that you're holding?' . Shawn looked down. 'It's the Lancrastian Army Knife,' he said. 'Er . . . I left my sword in the armoury, too.' 'Has it got a tool for extracting soldiers from castles?' 'Er . . . no.' Granny peered closer. 'What's the curly thing?' she said. 'Oh, that's the Adjustable Device for Winning Ontological Arguments,' said Shawn. 'The King asked for it.' 'Works, does it?' 'Er . . . if you twiddle it properly.' 'And this?' 'That's the Tool for Extracting the Essential Truth from a Given Statement,' said Shawn. 'Verence asked for that one too, did he?' 'Yes, Granny.' 'Useful to a soldier, is it?' said Oats. He glanced at Granny. She'd changed as soon as the others had entered. Before, she'd been bowed and tired. Now she was standing tall and haughty, supported by a scaffolding of pride. 'Oh, yes, sir, 'cos of when the other side are yelling, "We're gonna cut yer tonk- yer tongue off,"' Shawn blushed and corrected himself, 'and things like that. . .' 'Yes?' 'Well, you can tell if they're going to be right,' said Shawn. 'I need a horse,' said Granny. 'There's old Poorchick's plough horse-' Shawn began. 'Too slow.' 'I . . . er . . ., I've got a mule,' said Oats. 'The King was kind enough to let me put it in the stables.' 'Neither one thing nor t'other, eh?' said Granny. 'It suits you. That'll do for me, then. Fetch it up here and I'll be off to get the girls back.' 'What? I thought you wanted it to take you up to your cottagel Into Uberwald? Alone? I couldn't let you do that!' 'I ain't asking you to let me do anything. Now off you go and fetch it, otherwise Om will be angry, I expect.' 'But you can hardly stand up!' 'Certainly I can! Off you go.' Oats turned to the assembled Lancrastians for support. 'You wouldn't let a poor old lady go off to confront monsters on a wild night like this, would you?' They watched him owlishly for a while just in case something interestingly nasty was going to happen to him. Then someone near the back said, 'So why should we care what happens to monsters?' And Shawn Ogg said, 'That's Granny Weatherwax, that is.' 'But she's an old lady!' Oats insisted. The crowd took a few steps back. Oats was clearly a dangerous man to be around. 'Would you go out alone on a night like this?' he said. The voice at the back said, 'Depends if I knew where Granny Weatherwax was.' 'Don't think I didn't hear that, Bestiality Carter,' said Granny, but there was just a hint of satisfaction in her voice. 'Now, are we fetchin' your mule, Mr Oats?' 'Are you sure you can walk?' 'Of course I cant' Oats gave up. Granny smirked triumphantly at the crowd and strode through them and towards the stables, with him trotting after her. When he hurried around the corner he almost collided with her, standing as stiff as a rod. 'Is there anyone watchin' me?' she said. 'What? No, I don't think so. Apart from me, of course.' 'You don't count,' said Granny. She sagged, and almost collapsed. He caught her, and she pummelled him on the arm. The wowhawk flapped its wings desperately. 'Let go! I just lost my footin', that's all!’ 'Yes, yes, of course. You just lost your footing,' he said soothingly. 'And don't try to humour me, either.' 'Yes, yes, all right.' 'It's just that it don't do to let things slide, if you must know.' 'Like your foot did just then . . .' 'Exactly.' 'So perhaps I'll take your arm, because it's very muddy.' He could just make out her face. It was a picture, but not one you'd hang over the fireplace. Some sort of inner debate was raging. 'Well, if you think you're going to fall over . . .' she said. 'That's right, that's right,' said Oats gratefully. 'I nearly hurt my ankle back there as it is.' 'I've always said young people today don't have the stamina,' said Granny, as if testing out an idea. 'That's right, we don't have the stamina.' 'And your eyesight is prob'ly not as good as mine owin' to too much readin',' said Granny. 'Blind as a bat, that's right.' 'All right.' And so, at cross purposes and lurching occasionally, they reached the stables. The mule shook its head at Granny Weatherwax when they arrived at its loose box. It knew trouble when it saw her. 'It's a bit cantankerous,' said Oats. 'Is it?' said Granny. 'Then we shall see what we can do.' She walked unsteadily over to the creature and pulled one of its ears down to the level of her mouth. She whispered something. The mule blinked. 'That's sorted out, then,' she said. 'Help me up.' 'Just let me put the bridle on-' 'Young man, I might be temp'ry not at my best, but when I need a bridle on any creature they can put me to bed with a shovel. Give me a hand up, and kindly avert your face whilst so doing.' Oats gave up and made a stirrup of his hands to help her into the saddle. 'Why don't I come with you?' 'There's only one mule. Anyway, you'd be a hindrance. I'd be worrying about you all the time.' She slid gently off the other side of the saddle and landed in the straw. The wowhawk fluttered up and perched on a beam, and if Oats had been paying attention he'd have wondered how a hooded bird could fly so confidently. 'Drat!' 'Madam, I do know something about medicine! You are in no state to ride anything!' 'Not right now, I admit,' said Granny, her voice slightly muffled. She pulled some straw away from her face and waved a hand wildly to be helped up. 'But you just wait until I find my feet. . .' 'All right! All right! Supposing I ride and you hang on behind me? You can't weigh more than the harmonium, and I managed that all right.' Granny looked owlishly at him. She seemed drunk, at that stage when hitherto unconsidered things seem a good idea, like another drink. Then she appeared to reach a decision. 'Oh . . . if you insist . .' Oats found a length of rope and, after some difficulties caused by Granny's determined belief that she was doing him some sort of favour, got her strapped into a pillion position. 'Just so long as you understand that I didn't ax you to come along and I don't need your help,' said Granny. Ax. 'Ask, then,' said Granny. 'Slipped into a bit of rural there.' Oats stared ahead for a while. Then he dismounted, lifted Granny down, propped her up while she protested, disappeared into the night, came back shortly carrying the axe from the forge, used more rope to tie it to his waist, and mounted up again. 'You're learnin',' said Granny. As they left she raised an arm. The wowhawk fluttered down and settled on her wrist.     The air in the rocking coach was acquiring a distinct personality. Magrat sniffed. 'I'm sure I changed Esme not long ago. . .' After a fruitless search of the baby they looked under the seat. Greebo was lying asleep with his legs in the air. 'Isn't that just like him?' said Nanny. 'He can't see an open door without going through it, bless 'im. And he likes to be near his mum.' 'Could we open a window?' said Magrat. 'The rain'll get in.' 'Yes, but the smell will go out.' Magrat sighed. 'You know, we've left at least one bag of toys. Verence was really very keen on those mobiles.' 'I still think it's a bit early to start the poor little mite on education,' said Nanny, as much to take Magrat's mind off the current dangers as from a desire to strike a blow for ignorance. 'Environment is so very important,' said Magrat solemnly. 'Did I hear he told you to read improvin' books and listen to posh music while you were expecting?' said Nanny, as the coach rushed through a puddle. 'Well, the books were all right, but the piano doesn't work properly- and all I could hear was Shawn practising the trumpet solo,' said Magrat. 'It's not his fault if no one wants to join in,' said Nanny. She steadied herself as the coach lurched. 'Good turn of speed on this thing.' 'I wish we hadn't forgotten the bath, too,' Magrat mused. 'And I think we left the bag with the toy farm. And we're low on nappies . . .' 'Let's have a look at her,' Nanny said. Baby Esme was passed across the swaying coach. 'Yes, let's have a look at you . . .' said Nanny. The small blue eyes focused on Nanny Ogg. The pink face on the small lolling head gave her a speculative look, working out whether she'd do as a drink or a toilet. 'That's good, at this age,' said Nanny. 'Focusing like that. Unusual in a babby.' 'If she is at this age,' said Magrat darkly. 'Hush, now. If Granny's in there she's not interfering. She never interferes. Anyway, it wouldn't be her mind in there, that's not how she works it.' 'What is it, then?' 'You've seen her do it. What do you think?' 'I'd say . . . all the things that make her her,' Magrat ventured. 'That's about right. She wraps 'em all up and puts 'em somewhere safe.' 'You know how she can even be silent in her own special way.' 'Oh, yes. No one can be quiet like Esme. You can hardly hear yourself think for the silence.' They bounced in their seats as the coach sprang in and out of a pothole. 'Nanny?' 'Yes, love?' 'Verence will be all right, won't he?' 'Yep. I'd trust them little devils with anything except a barrel of stingo or a cow. Even Granny says the Kelda's damn good-' 'The Kelda?' 'Sort of a wise lady. I think the current one's called Big Aggie. You don't see much of their women. Some say there's only ever one at a time, and she's the Kelda an' has a hundred kids at a go.' 'That sounds . . . very. . .' Magrat began. 'Nah, I reckons they're a bit like the dwarfs and there's hardly any difference except under the loincloth,' said Nanny. 'I expect Granny knows,' said Magrat. 'And she ain't sayin',' said Nanny. 'She says it's their business.' 'And . . . he'll be all right with them?' 'Oh, yes.' 'He's very . . . kind, you know.' Magrat 's sentence hung in the air. 'That's nice.' 'And a good king, as well.' Nanny nodded. 'It's just that I wish people took him . . . more seriously,' Magrat went on. 'It's a shame,' said Nanny. 'He does work very hard. And he worries about everything. But people just seem to ignore him.' Nanny wondered how to approach it. 'He could try having the crown taken in a bit,' she ventured, as the coach bounced over another rut. 'There's plenty of dwarfs up at Copperhead'd be glad to make it smaller for him.' 'It is the traditional crown, Nanny.' 'Yes, but if it wasn't for his ears it'd be a collar on the poor man,' said Nanny. 'He could try bellowing a bit more, too.' 'Oh, he couldn't do that, he hates shouting!' 'That's a shame. People like to see a bit of bellowing in a king. The odd belch is always popular, too. Even a bit of carousing'd help, if he could manage it. You know, quaffing and such.' 'I think he thinks that isn't what people want. He's very conscious of the needs of today's citizen.' 'Ah, well, I can see where there's a problem, then,' said Nanny. 'People need something today but they generally need something else tomorrow. Just tell him to concentrate on bellowing and carousing.' 'And belching?' 'That's optional.' 'And. . .' 'Yes, dear?' 'He'll be all right, will he?' 'Oh, yes. Nothing's going to happen to him. It's like that chess stuff, see? Let the Queen do the fightin', 'cos if you lose the King you've lost everything.' 'And us?' 'Oh, we're always all right. You remember that. We happen to other people.'     A lot of people were happening to King Verence. He lay in a sort of warm, empty daze, and every time he opened his eyes it was to see scores of the Feegle watching him in the firelight. He overheard snatches of conversation or, more correctly, argument. '. . . he's oor kingie noo?' 'Aye, sortaley.' 'That pish of a hobyah?' 'Hushagob! Wman's sicken, can y'no yard?' 'Aye, mucken! Born sicky, imhoe!' Verence felt a small yet powerful kick on his foot. 'See you, kingie? A'ye a lang stick o'midlin or wha', bigjobs?' 'Yes, well done,' he mumbled. The interrogating Feegle spat near his ear. 'Ach, I wouldna' gi'ye skeppens for him-' There was a sudden silence, a real rarity in any space containing at least one Feegle. Verence swivelled his eyes sideways. Big Aggie had emerged from the smoke. Now that he could see her clearly, the dumpy creature looked like a squat version of Nanny Ogg. And there was something about the eyes. Verence was technically an absolute ruler and would continue to be so provided he didn't make the mistake of repeatedly asking Lancrastians to do anything they didn't want to do. He was aware that the commander-in-chief of his armed forces was more inclined to take orders from his mum than his king. Whereas Big Aggie didn't even have to say anything. Everyone just watched her, and then went and got things done. Big Aggie's man appeared at her side. 'Ye'll be wantin' to save yer ladie and yer bairn, Big Aggie's thinkin',' he said. Verence nodded. He didn't feel strong enough to do anything else. 'But ye'll still be verra crassick from loss o' blud, Big Aggie reckons. The heelins put something in their bite that makes ye biddable.' Verence agreed absolutely. Anything anyone said was all right by him. Another pixie appeared through the smoke, carrying an earthenware bowl. White suds slopped over the top. 'Ye canna be kinging lyin' down,' said Big Aggie's man. 'So she's made up some brose for ye ...' The pixie lowered the bowl, which looked as though it was full of cream, although dark lines spiralled on its surface. Its bearer stood back reverentially. 'What's in it?' Verence croaked. 'Milk,' said Big Aggie's man promptly. 'And some o' Big Aggie's brewin'. An' herbs.' Verence grasped the last word thankfully. He shared with his wife the curious but unshakeable conviction that anything with herbs in it was safe and wholesome and nourishing. 'So you'll be having a huge dram,' said the 'old pixie. 'And then we'll be finding you a sword. 'I've never used a sword,' said Verence, trying to pull himself into a sitting position. 'I- I believe violence is the last resort . . .' 'Ach, weel, so long as ye've brung yer bucket and spade,' said Big Aggie's man. 'Now you just drink up, kingie. Ye'll soon see things differently.'     The vampires glided easily over the moonlit clouds. There was no weather up here and, to Agnes's surprise, no chill either. 'I thought you turned into bats!' she shouted to Vlad. 'Oh, we could if we wanted to,' he laughed. 'But that's a bit too melodramatic for Father. He says we should not conform to crass stereotypes.' A girl glided alongside them. She looked rather like Lacrimosa; that is, she looked like someone who admired the way Lacrimosa looked and so had tried to look like her. I bet she's not a natural brunette, said Perdita. And if I used that much mascara I'd at least try not to look like Harry the Happy Panda. 'This is Morbidia,' said Vlad. 'Although she's been calling herself Tracy lately, to be cool. Mor– Tracy, this is Agnes.' 'What a good name!' said Morbidia. 'How clever of you to come up with it! Vlad, everyone wants to stop off at Escrow. Can we?' 'It's my real-' Agnes began, but her words were carried away on the wind. 'I thought we were going to the castle,' said Vlad. 'Yes, but some of us haven't fed for days and that old woman was hardly even a snack and the Count won't allow us to feed in Lancre yet and he says it'll be all right and it's not much out of our way.' 'Oh. Well, if Father says. . .' Morbidia swooped away. 'We haven't been to Escrow for weeks,' said Vlad. 'It's a pleasant little town.' 'You're going to feed there?' said Agnes. 'It's not what you think.' 'You don't know what I think.' 'I can guess, though.' He smiled at her. 'I wonder if Father said yes because he wants you to see? It's so easy to be frightened of what you don't know. And then, perhaps, you could be a sort of ambassador. You could tell Lancre what life under the Magpyrs is really like.' 'People being dragged out of their beds, blood on the walls, that sort of thing?' 'There you go again, Agnes. It's most unfair. Once people find out you're a vampire they act as if you're some kind of monster.' They curved gently through the night air. 'Father's rather proud of his work in Escrow,' said Vlad. 'I think you'll be impressed. And then perhaps I could dare hope-' No. 'I'm really being rather understanding about this, Agnes.' 'You attacked Granny Weatherwax! You bit her.' 'Symbolically. To welcome her into the family.' 'Oh, really? Oh, that makes it all better, does it? And she'll be a vampire?' 'Certainly. A good one, I suspect. But that's only horrifying if you believe being a vampire is a bad thing. We don't. You'll come to see that we're right, in time,' said Vlad. 'Yes, Escrow would be good for you. For us. We shall see what can be done. . .' Agnes stared. He does smile nicely . . . He's a vampire! All right, but apart from that- Oh, apart from that, eh? Nanny would tell you to make the most of it. That might work for Nanny, but can you imagine kissing that? Yes, I can. I will admit, he does smile nicely, and he looks good in those waistcoats, but look at what he is- Do you notice? Notice what? There's something different about him. He's just trying to get round us, that's all. No . . . there's something ...new... 'Father says Escrow is a model community,' said Vlad. 'it shows what happens if ancient enmity is put aside and humans and vampires learn to live in peace. Yes. It's not far now. Escrow is the future.'     A low ground mist drifted between the trees, curling up in little tongues as the mule's hooves disturbed it. Rain dripped off the branches. There was even a bit of sullen thunder now, not the outgoing sort that cracks the sky but the other sort, which hangs around the horizons and gossips nastily with other storms. Mightily Oats had tried a conversation with himself a few times, but the problem with a conversation was that the other person had to join in. Occasionally he heard a snore from behind him. When he looked around, the wowhawk on her shoulder flapped its wings in his face. Sometimes the snoring would stop with a grunt, and a hand would tap him on a shoulder and point out a direction which looked like every other direction. It did so now.          'What's                   that you're singing?' Granny demanded. 'I wasn't singing very loudly.' 'What's it called?' 'It's called "Om Is In His Holy Temple".' 'Nice tune,' said Granny. 'It keeps my spirits up,' Oats admitted. A wet twig slapped his face. After all, he thought, I may have a vampire behind me, however good she is. 'You take comfort from it, do you?' 'I suppose so.' 'Even that bit about "smiting evil with thy sword"? That'd worry me, if I was an Omnian. Do you get just a little sort of tap for a white lie but minced up for murder? That's the sort of thing that'd keep me awake o' nights.' 'Well, actually . . . I shouldn't be singing it at all, to be honest. The Convocation of Ee struck it from the songbook as being incompatible with the ideals of modern Omnianism.' 'That line about crushing infidels?' 'That's the one, yes.' 'You sung it anyway, though.' 'It's the version my grandmother taught me,' said oats. 'She was keen on crushing infidels?' 'Well, mainly I think she was in favour of crushing Mrs Ahrim next door, but you've got the right idea, yes. She thought the world would be a better place with a bit more crushing and smiting.' 'Prob'ly true.' 'Not as much smiting and crushing as she'd like, though, I think,' said Oats. 'A bit judgemental, my grandmother.' 'Nothing wrong with that. Judging is human.' 'We prefer to leave it ultimately to Om,' said Oats and, out here in the dark, that statement sounded lost and all alone. 'Bein' human means judgin' all the time,' said the voice behind him. 'This and that, good and bad, making choices every day . . . that's human.' 'And are you so sure you make the right decisions?' 'No. But I do the best I can.' 'And hope for mercy, eh?' A bony finger prodded him in the back. 'Mercy's a fine thing, but judgin' comes first. Otherwise you don't know what you're bein' merciful about. Anyway, I always heard you Omnians were keen on smitin' and crushin'.' 'Those were . . . different days. We use crushing arguments now.' 'And long pointed debates, I suppose?' 'Well, there are two sides to every question. . .' 'What do you do when one of 'em's wrong?' The reply came back like an arrow. 'I meant that we are enjoined to see things from the other person's point of view,' said Oats patiently. 'You mean that from the point of view of a torturer, torture is all right?' 'Mistress Weatherwax, you are a natural disputant.' 'No, I ain't!' 'You'd certainly enjoy yourself at the Synod, anyway. They've been known to argue for days about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.' He could almost feel Granny's mind working. At last she said, 'What size pin?' 'I don't know that, I'm afraid.' 'Well, if it's a ordinary household pin, then there'll be sixteen.' 'Sixteen angels?' 'That's right.' ,Why?, 'I don't know. Perhaps they like dancing.' The mule picked its way down a bank. The mist was getting thicker here. 'You've counted sixteen?' said Oats eventually. 'No, but it's as good an answer as any you'll get. And that's what your holy men discuss, is it?' 'Not usually. There is a very interesting debate raging at the moment about the nature of sin, for example.' 'And what do they think? Against it, are they?' 'It's not as simple as that. It's not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of grey.' 'Nope.' 'Pardon?' 'There's no greys, only white that's got grubby. I'm surprised you don't know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That's what sin is.' 'It's a lot more complicated than that-' 'No. It ain't. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they're getting worried that they won't like the truth. People as things, that's where it starts.' 'Oh, I'm sure there are worse crimes-' 'But they starts with thinking about people as things. . .' Granny's voice tailed off. Oats let the mule walk on for a few minutes, and then a snort told him that Granny had awoken again. 'You strong in your faith, then?' she said, as if she couldn't leave things alone. Oats sighed. 'I try to be.' 'But you read a lot of books, I'm thinking. Hard to have faith, ain't it, when you read too many books?' Oats was glad she couldn't see his face. Was the old woman reading his mind through the back of his head? 'Yes,' he said. 'Still got it, though?' 'Yes.' 'Why?' 'If I didn't, I wouldn't have anything.' He waited for a while, and then tried a counterattack. 'You're not a believer yourself, then, Mistress Weatherwax?' There were a few moments' silence as the mule picked its way over the mossy tree roots. Oats thought he heard, behind them, the sound of a horse, but then it was lost in the sighing of the wind. 'Oh, I reckon I believes in tea, sunrises, that sort of thing,' said Granny. 'I was referring to religion.' 'I know a few gods in these parts, if that's what you mean.' Oats sighed. 'Many people find faith a great solace,' he said. He wished he was one of them. 'Good.' 'Really? Somehow I thought you'd argue.' 'It's not my place to tell 'em what to believe, if they act decent.' 'But it's not something that you feel drawn to, perhaps, in the darker hours?' 'No. I've already got a hot water bottle.' The wowhawk fluttered its wings. Oats stared into the damp, dark mist. Suddenly he was angry. 'And that's what you think religion is, is it?' he said, trying to keep his temper. 'I gen'rally don't think about it at all,' said the voice behind him. It sounded fainter. He felt Granny clutch his arm to steady herself . . . 'Are you all right?' he said. 'I wish this creature would go faster . . . I ain't entirely myself.' 'We could stop for a rest.' 'No! Not far now! Oh, I've been so stupid. . .' The thunder grumbled. He felt her grip lessen, and heard her hit the ground. Oats leapt down. Granny Weatherwax was lying awkwardly on the moss, her eyes closed. He took her wrist. There was a pulse there, but it was horribly weak. She felt icy cold. When he patted her face she opened her eyes. 'If you raise the subject of religion at this point,' she wheezed, 'I'll give you such a hidin'. . .' Her eyes shut again. Oats sat down to get his breath back. Icy cold . . . yes, there was something cold about all of her, as though she always pushed heat away. Any kind of warmth. He heard the sound of the horse again, and the faint jingle of a harness. It stopped a little way away. 'Hello?' said Oats, standing up. He strained to see the rider in the darkness, but there was just a dim shape further along the track. 'Are you following us? Hello?' He took a few steps and made out the horse, head bowed against the rain. The rider was just a darker shadow in the night. Suddenly awash with dread, Oats ran and slithered back to Granny's silent form. He struggled out of his drenched coat and put it over her, for whatever good that would do, and looked around desperately for anything that could make a fire. Fire, that was the thing. It brought life and drove away the darkness. But the trees were tall firs, dripping wet with dank bracken underneath among the black trunks. There was nothing that would burn here. He fished hurriedly in his pocket and found a waxed box with his last few matches in it. Even a few dry twigs or a tuft of grass would do, anything that'd dry out another handful of twigs . . . Rain oozed through his shirt. The air was full of water. Oats hunched over so that his hat kept the drips off, and pulled out the Book of Om for the comfort that it brought. In times of trouble, Om would surely show the way ... I've already got a hot water bottle . . . 'Damn you,' he said, under his breath. He opened the book at random, struck a match and read: '. . . and in that time, in the land of the Cyrinites, there was a multiplication of camels. . .' The match hissed out. No help there, no clue. He tried again. '. . . and looked upon Gul-Arah, and the lamentation of the desert, and rode then to . . .' Oats remembered the vampire's mocking smile. What words could you trust? He struck the third match with shaking hands and flicked the book open again and read, in the weak dancing light: '. . . and Brutha said to Simony, "Where there is darkness we will make a great light. . ."' The match died. And there was darkness. Granny Weatherwax groaned. At the back of his mind Oats thought he could hear the sound of hooves, slowly approaching. Oats knelt in the mud and tried a prayer, but there was no answering voice from the sky. There never had been. He'd been told never to expect one. That wasn't how Om worked any more. Alone of all the gods, he'd been taught, Om delivered the answers straight into the depths of the head. Since the prophet Brutha, Om was the silent god. That's what they said. If you didn't have faith, then you weren't anything. There was just the dark. He shuddered in the gloom. Was the god silent, or was there no one to speak? He tried praying again, more desperately this time, fragments of childish prayer, losing control of the words and even of their direction, so that they tumbled out and soared away into the universe addressed simply to The Occupier. The rain dripped off his hat. He knelt and waited in the wet darkness, and listened to his own mind, and remembered, and took out the Book of Om once more. And made a great light.     The coach thundered through pinetrees by a lake, struck a tree root, lost a wheel and skidded to a halt on its side as the horses bolted. Igor picked himself up, lurched to the coach and raised a door. 'Thorny about that,' he said. 'I'm afraid thith alwayth happenth when the marthter ithn't on board. Everyone all right down there?' A hand grabbed him by the throat. 'You could have warned us!' Nanny growled. 'We were thrown all over the place! Where the hell are we? Is this Slake?' A match flared and Igor lit a torch. 'We're near the cathle,' he said. 'Whose?' 'The Magpyrth'.' 'We're near the vampires' castle?' 'Yeth. I think the old marthter did thomething to the road here. The wheelth alwayth come off, ath thure ath eggth ith eggth. Bringth in the vithitorth, he thed.' 'It didn't occur to you to mention it?' said Nanny, climbing out and giving Magrat a hand. 'Thorny. It'th been a buthy day. . .' Nanny took the torch. The flames illuminated a crude sign nailed to a tree. '"Don't go near the Castle!!"'Nanny read. 'Nice of them to put an arrow pointing the way to it, too.' 'Oh, the marthter did that,' said Igor. 'Otherwithe people wouldn't notithe it.' Nanny peered into the gloom. 'And who's in the castle now?' 'A few thervantth.' 'Will they let us in?' 'That'th not a problem.' Igor fished in his noisome shirt and pulled out a very big key on a string. 'We're going to go into their castle?' said Magrat. 'Looks like it's the only place around,' said Nanny Ogg, heading up the track. 'The coach is wrecked. We're miles from anywhere else. Do you want to keep the baby out all night? A castle's a castle. It'll have locks. All the vampires are in Lancre. And-' 'Well?' 'It's what Esme would've done. I feels it in my blood.' A little way off something howled. Nanny looked at Igor. 'Werewolf?' she said. 'That'th right.' 'Not a good idea to hang around, then.' She pointed to a sign painted on a rock. '"Don't take thif quickeft route to the Caftle,"'' she read aloud. 'You've got to admire a mind like that. Definitely a student of human nature.' 'Won't there be a lot of ways in?' said Magrat as they walked past a sign that said: 'Don't go Nere the Coach Park, 20 gds. on left.' 'Igor?' said Nanny. 'Vampireth uthed to fight amongtht themthelveth,' said Igor. 'There'th only one way in.' 'Oh, all right, if we must,' said Magrat. 'You take the rocker, and the used nappy bag. And the teddies. And the thing that goes round and round and plays noises when she pulls the string-' A sign near the drawbridge said, 'Laft chance not to Go near the Caftle', and Nanny Ogg laughed and laughed. 'The Count's not going to be very happy about you, Igor,' she said, as he unlocked the doors. 'Thod him,' he said. 'I'm going to pack up my thtuff and head for Blintth. There'th alwayth a job for an Igor up there. More lightning thtriketh per year than anywhere in the mountainth, they thay.' Nanny Ogg wiped her eye. 'Good job we're soaked already,' she said. 'All right, let's get in. And, Igor, if you haven't been thtraight with us, sorry, straight with us, I'll have your guts for garters.' Igor looked down bashfully. 'Oh, that'th more than a man could pothibly hope for,' he murmured. Magrat giggled and Igor pushed open the door and hurriedly shuffled inside. 'What?' said Nanny. 'Haven't you noticed the looks he's been giving you?' said Magrat, as they followed the lurching figure. 'What, him?' said Nanny. 'Could be carrying a torch for you,' said Magrat, 'I thought it was just to see where he's going!' said Nanny, a little bit of panic in her voice. 'I mean, I haven't got my best drawers on or anything!' 'I think he's a bit of a romantic, actually,' said Magrat. 'Oh, I don't know, I really don't,' said Nanny. 'I mean, it's flattering and everything, but I really don't think I could be goin' out with a man with a limp.' 'Limp what?' Nanny Ogg had always considered herself unshockable, but there's no such thing. Shocks can come from unexpected directions. 'I am a married woman,' said Magrat, smiling at her expression. And it felt good, just once, to place a. small tintack in the path of Nanny's carefree amble through life. 'But is . . . I mean, is Verence, you know, all right in the–' 'Oh, yes. Everything's ... fine. But now I understand what your jokes were about.' 'What, all of them?' said Nanny, like someone who'd found all the aces removed from their favourite pack of cards. 'Well, not the one about the priest, the old woman and the rhinoceros.' 'I should just about hope so!' said Nanny. 'I didn't understand that one until I was forty!' Igor limped back. 'There'th jutht the thervantth,' he said. 'You could thtay down in my quarterth in the old tower. There'th thick doorth.' 'Mrs Ogg would really like that,' said Magrat. 'She was saying just now what good legs you've got, weren't you, Nanny. . .' 'Do you want thome?' said Igor earnestly, leading the way up the steps. 'I've got plenty and I could do with the thpathe in the ithehouthe.' 'You what?' said Nanny, stopping dead. 'I'm your man if there'th any organ you need,' said Igor. There was a strangled coughing noise from Magrat. 'You've got – bits of people stored on ice?' said Nanny, horrified. 'Bits of strange people? Chopped up? I'm not taking another step!' Now Igor looked horrified. 'Not thtrangerth,' he said. 'Family.' 'You chopped up your family?' Nanny backed away. Igor waved his hands frantically. 'It's a tradithion!' he said. 'Every Igor leaveth hith body to the family! Why wathte good organth? Look at my Uncle Igor, he died of buffaloeth, tho there wath a perfectly good heart and thome kidneyth going begging, pluth he'd thtill got Grandad'th handth and they were damn good handth, let me tell you.' He sniffed. 'I with I'd had them, he wath a great thurgeon.' 'We-ll . . . I know every family says things like 'He's got his father's eyes"-' Nanny began. 'No, my thecond couthin Igor got them.' 'But- but ... who does the cutting and sewing?' said Magrat. 'I do. An Igor leamth houthehold thurgery on hith father'th knee,' said Igor. 'And then practitheth on hith grandfather'th kidneyth.' ' 'scuse me,' said Nanny. 'What did you say your uncle died of?' 'Buffaloeth,' said Igor, unlocking another door. 'He broke out in them?' 'A herd fell on him. A freak acthident. We don't talk about it.' 'Sorry, are you telling us you do surgery on yourself?' said Magrat. 'It'th not hard when you know what you're doing. Thometimeth you need a mirror, of courth, and it helpth if thomeone can put a finger on the knotth.' 'Isn't it painful?' 'Oh, no, I alwayth tell them to take it away jutht before I pull the thtring tight.' The door creaked open. It was a long, tortured, groaning noise: In fact there was more creak than door, and it went on just a few seconds after the door had stopped. 'That sounds dreadful,' said Nanny. 'Thank you. It took dayth to get right. Creakth like that don't jutht happen by themthelveth.' There was a woof from the darkness and something leapt at Igor, knocking him off his feet. 'Get off, you big thoppy!' It was a dog. Or several dogs rolled, as it were, into one. There were four legs, and they were nearly all the same length although not, Magrat noted, all the same colour. There was one head, although the left ear was black and pointed while the right ear was brown and white and flopped. It was a very enthusiastic animal in the department of slobber. 'Thith ith Thcrapth,' said Igor, fighting to get to his feet in a hail of excited paws. 'He'th a thilly old thing.' 'Scraps . . . yes,' said Nanny. 'Good name. Good name.' 'He'th theventy-eight yearth old,' said Igor , leading the way down a winding staircase. 'Thome of him.' 'Very neat stitching,' said Magrat. 'He looks well on it, too. Happy as a dog with two- Oh, I see he does have two. . .' 'I had one thpare,' said Igor, leading the way with Scraps bounding along beside him. 'I thought, he'th tho happy with one, jutht think of the fun he could have with two. . .' Nanny Ogg's mouth didn't even get half open 'Don't you even think of saying anything, Gytha Ogg!' snapped Magrat. 'Me?' said Nanny innocently. 'Yes! And you were. I could see you! You know he was talking about tails, not . . . anything else.' 'Oh, I thought about that long ago,' said Igor. 'It'th obviouth. Thaveth wear and tear, pluth you can uthe one while you're replathing the other. I ecthperimented on mythelf.' Their footsteps echoed on the stairs. 'Now, what are we talking about here, exactly?' said Nanny, in a quiet, I'm-only-asking-out-of-interest tone of voice. 'Heartth,' said Igor. 'Oh, two hearts. You've got two hearts?' 'Yeth. The other one belonged to poor Mr Thwinetth down at the thawmill, but hith wife thed it wath no uthe to him after the acthident, what with him not having a head to go with it.' 'You're a bit of a self-made man on the quiet, aren't you?' said Magrat. 'Who did your brain?' said Nanny. 'Can't do brainth yourthelf,' said Igor. 'Only . . . you've got all those stitches . . .' 'Oh, I put a metal plate in my head,' said Igor. 'And a wire down my neck all the way to my bootth. I got fed up with all thothe lightning thtriketh. Here we are.' He unlocked another groaning door. 'My little plathe.' It was a dank vaulted room, clearly lived in by someone who didn't spend a lot of social time there. There was a fireplace with a dog basket in front of it, and a bed with a mattress and one blanket. Crude cupboards lined one wall. 'There'th a well under that cover there,' he said, 'and there'th a privy through there . . .' 'What's through that door?' said Nanny, pointing to one with heavy bolts across it. 'Nothing,' said Igor. Nanny shot him a glance. But the bolts were very firmly on this side. 'This looks like a crypt,' she said. 'With a fireplace.' 'When the old Count wath alive he liked to get warm of an evening before going out,' said Igor. 'Golden dayth, them wath. I wouldn't give you tuppenth for thith lot. D'you know, they wanted me to get rid of Thcrapth?', Scraps leapt up and tried to lick Nanny's face. 'I thaw Lacrimotha kick him onthe,' said Igor darkly. He rubbed his hands together. 'Can I get you ladieth anything to eat?' 'No,' said Nanny and Magrat together. Scraps tried to lick Igor. He was a dog with a lot of lick to share. 'Thcrapth, play dead,' said Igor. The dog dropped and rolled over with his legs in the air. 'Thee?' said Igor. 'He rememberth!' 'Won't we be cornered down here if the Magpyrs come?' said Magrat. 'They don't come down here. It'th not modern enough for them,' said Igor. 'And there'th wayth out if they do.' Magrat glanced at the bolted door. It didn't look the kind of way out anyone would want to take. 'What about weapons?' she said. 'I shouldn't think there'd be any anti-vampire stuff in a vampire's castle, would there?' 'Why, thertainly,' said Igor. 'There is?' 'Ath much ath you want. The old marthter wath very keen on that. When we had vithitorth ecthpected, he alwayth thed, "Igor, make thertain the windowth are clean and there'th lotth of lemonth and birth of ornament that can be turned into religiouth thymbolth around the plathe." He enjoyed it when people played by the ruleth. Very fair, the old marthter.' 'Yeah, but that'd mean he'd die, wouldn't it?' said Nanny. She opened a cupboard and a stack of wrinkled lemons fell out. Igor shrugged. 'You win thome, you lothe thome,' he said. 'The old marthter uthed to that'; "Igor, the day vampireth win all the time, that'th the day we'll be knocked back beyond return." Mind you, he got annoyed when people pinched hith thockth. He'd thay, "Thod, that wash thilk, ten dollarth a pair in Ankh-Morpork."' 'And he probably spent a lot of money on blotting paper, too,' said Nanny. Another cupboard revealed a rack of stakes, along with a mallet and a simple anatomical diagram with an X over the heart area. 'The chart wath my idea, Mithith Ogg,' said Igor proudly. 'The old marthter got fed up with people just hammering the thtaketh in any old where. He thed he didn't mind the dying, that wath quite rethtful, but he did object to looking like a colander.' 'You're a bright chap, aren't you, Igor?' said Nanny. Igor beamed. 'I've got a good brain in my head.' 'Chose it yourself, did you? No, only joking. You can't do brains.' 'I've got a dithtant couthin at Untheen Univerthity, you know.' 'Really? What's he do there?' 'Floatth around in hith jar,' said Igor proudly. 'Thall I thow you the holy water thellar? The old marthter built up a very good collection.' 'Sorry? A vampire collected holy water?' said Magrat. 'I think I'm beginning to understand,' said Nanny. 'He was a sportsman, right?' 'Egthactly!' 'And a good sportsman always gives the valiant prey a decent chance,' said Nanny. 'Even if it means having a cellar of Chateau Nerf de Pope. Sounds an intelligent bird, your old boy. Not like this new one. He's just clever.' 'I don't follow you,' said Magrat. 'Being killed's nothing to a vampire,' said Nanny. 'They always find a way of coming back. Everyone knows that, who knows anything about vampires. If they're not too hard to kill and it's all a bit of an adventure for people, well, like as not they'll just stake him or chuck him in the river and go home. Then he has a nice restful decade or so, bein' dead, and comes back from the grave and away he goes again. That way he never gets totally wiped out and the lads of the village get some healthy exercise.' 'The Magpyrs will come after us,' said Magrat, clutching the baby to her. 'They'll see we're not in Lancre and they'll know we couldn't have gone down to the plains. They'll find the smashed coach, too. They'll find us, Nanny.' Nanny looked at the array of jars and bottles, and the stakes neatly organized in order of size. 'It'll take them a little while,' she said. 'We've got time to get . . . prepared.' She turned around with a bottle of blessed water in one hand, a crossbow loaded with a wooden bolt, and a bag of musty lemons in her mouth. 'Eg oo it I ay,' she said. 'Pardon?' said Magrat. Nanny spat out the lemons. 'Now we'll try things my way,' she said. 'I'm not good at thinkin' like Granny but I'm bloody good at actin' like me. Headology's for them as can handle it. Let's kick some bat.'     The wind soughed across the moors on the edge of Lancre, and hissed through the heather. Around some old mounds, half buried in brambles, it shook the wet branches of a single thorn tree, and shredded the curling smoke that drifted up through the roots. There was a single scream. Down below, the Nac mac Feegle were doing their best, but strength is not the same as weight and mass and even with pixies hanging on to every limb and Big Aggie herself sitting on Verence's chest he was still hard to control. 'I think mebbe the drink was a wee bitty too trackle?' said Big Aggie's man, looking down at Verence's bloodshot eyes and foaming mouth. 'I'm sayin', mebbe it was wrong jus' giving him fifty times more than we tak'. He's not used to it ...' Big Aggie shrugged. In the far corner of the barrow half a dozen pixies backed out of the hole they'd hacked into the next chamber, dragging a sword. For bronze, it was quite well preserved – the old chieftains of Lancre reckoned to be buried with their weapons in order to fight their enemies in the next world, and since you didn't become a chieftain of ancient Lancre without sending a great many enemies to the next world, they liked to take weapons that could be relied upon to last. Under the direction of the old pixie, they manoeuvred it within reach of Verence's flailing hand. 'Are ye scrat?' said Big Aggie's man. 'Yin! Tan! Tetra!' The Feegle leapt away in every direction. Verence rose almost vertically, bounced off the roof, grabbed the sword, hacked madly until he'd cut a hole through to the outside world, and escaped into the night. The pixies clustered around the walls of the barrow turned their eyes to their Kelda. Big Aggie nodded. 'Big Aggie says ye'd best see him come to nae harm,' said the old pixie. A thousand small but very sharp weapons waved in the smoky air. 'Hoons!' 'Kill 'em a'!' 'Nac mac Feegle!' A few seconds later the chamber was empty.     Nanny hurried across the castle's main hall, burdened with stakes, and stopped dead. 'What the hell's that thing?' she said. 'Takes up a whole wall!' 'Oh, that wath the old Count'th pride and joy,' said Igor. 'He wathn't very modern, he alwayth thaid, but the Thentury of the Fruitbat had it'th compenthathionth. Thometimeth he'd play with it for hourth on end. . .' It was an organ, or possibly what an organ hoped to be when it grew up, because it dominated the huge room. A music lover to the core, Nanny couldn't help trotting over to inspect it. It was black, its pipes framed and enclosed in intricate ebony fretwork, with the stops and keyboard made of dead elephant. 'How does it work?' she said. 'Water power,' said Igor proudly. 'There'th an underground river. The marthter had thith made thpethially to hith own dethign . . .' Nanny ran her fingers over a brass plate screwed above the keyboard. It read: 'HLISTEN TO ZER CHILTREN OFF DER NIGHT . . . VOT VONDERFUL MHUSICK DEY MAKE. Mnftrd. by Bergholt Stuttley Johnson, Ankh-Morpork.' 'It's a Johnson,' she breathed. 'I haven't got my hands on a Johnson for ages . . .' She looked closer. 'What's this? "Scream 1"? "Thunderclap 14"? "Wolf Howl 5"? There's a whole set of stops just marked "Creaky Floors"! Can't you play music on this thing?' 'Oh, yeth. But the old marthter wath more interethted in . . . effectth.' There was still a dust-covered sheet of music on the stand, which someone had been filling in carefully, with many crossings-out. ' "Return Of The Bride Of The Revenge Of The Son Of Count Magpyr",' Nanny said aloud, noting that 'From 20,000 Fathoms(?)' had been written in subsequently and then crossed out. ' "Sonata for Thunderstorm, Trapdoors and Young Women in Skimpy Clothing". Bit of an artist too, then, your old master?' 'in a . . . thpethial way,' said Igor wistfully. Nanny stepped back. 'Magrat's going to be safe, isn't she?' she said, picking up the stakes again. 'It'th a mob-proof door,' said Igor. 'And Thcrapth ith ninethirtyeighth Rottweiler.' 'Which parts, as a matter of interest?' 'Two legth, one ear, lotth of tubeth and lower jaw,' said Igor promptly as they hurried off again. 'Yes, but he's got a spaniel brain,' said Nanny. 'It'th in the bone,' said Igor. 'He holdth people in hith jawth and beatth them thentheleth with hith tailth.' 'He wags people to death?' 'Thometimeth he drownth them in dribble,' said Igor.     The rooftops of Escrow loomed out of the darkness as the vampires drifted lower. A few windows were glowing with candlelight when Agnes's feet touched the ground. Vlad dropped down beside her. 'Of course, you can't see it at its best in this weather,' he said. 'Some quite good architecture in the town square, and a very fine town hall. Father paid for the clock.' 'Really.' 'And the belltower, naturally. Local labour, of course.' 'Vampires have a lot of cash, do they?' said Agnes. The town looked quite large, and pretty much like the country towns down on the plains save for a certain amount of gingerbread carving on the eaves. 'Well, the family has always owned land,' said Vlad, ignoring the sarcasm. 'The money mounts up, you know. Over the centuries. And obviously we've not enjoyed a particularly active social fife.' 'Or spent much on food,' said Agnes. 'Yes, yes, very good-' A bell started to toll, somewhere above them. 'Now you'll see,' said Vlad. 'And you'll understand.'     Granny Weatherwax opened her eyes. There were flames roaring right in front of her. 'Oh,' she said. 'So be at, then . . .' 'Ah. Feeling better, are we?' said Oats. Her head spun round. Then she looked down at the steam rising from her dress. Oats ducked between the branches of two firs and threw another armful of dead wood on the flames. It hissed and spluttered. 'How long was I . . . resting?' said Granny. 'About half an hour, I'd say.' Red light and black shadows danced among the trees. The rain had turned to sleet, but it was flashing into steam overhead. 'You did well to get a fire going in this murk,' said Granny. 'I thank Om for it,' said Oats. 'Very kind of him, I'm sure. But we've got to . . . get on.' Granny tried to stand up. 'Not far now. All downhill.. .' 'The mule ran away,' said Oats. 'We've got feet, haven't we? I feel better for the . . . rest. The fire's put a . . . bit of life into me.' 'It's too dark and far too wet. Wait until morning.' Granny pulled herself up. 'No. Find a stick or something I can lean on. Go on.' 'Well . . . there's a hazel grove just along the slope, but . . .' 'Just the thing, a good bit of hazel. Well, don't just stand there. I'm feeling better every minute. Off you go.' He disappeared into the dripping shadows. Granny flapped her skirts in front of the blaze to circulate some warm air, and something small and white flew up from the ashes, dancing in the fire and sleet. She picked it up from the moss where it had landed. It was a piece of thin paper, the charred corner of a page. She could just make out, in the red light, the words '. . . of Om . . . aid unto . . . Ossory smote . . .' The paper was attached to a burnt strip of leather binding. She regarded it for a while, and then dropped it carefully into the flames as the sound of crackling twigs indicated Oats's return. 'Can you even find the way in all this?' he said, handing her a long hazel pole. 'Yes. You go on one side of me, and I've got this staff. Then it's just a walk in the woods, eh?' 'You don't look better.' 'Young man, if we're going to wait for me to look interestin' we'll be here for years.' She raised a hand and the wowhawk flew down out of the shadows. 'Good thing you were able to get a fire going, all the same,' she said, without turning round. 'I have always found that if I put my trust in Om a way will be found,' said Oats, hurrying after her. 'I reckon Om helps those who helps themselves,' said Granny.     Through the town of Escrow the windows glowed as lamps were lit and there was the sound of doors being unbolted. Over all, the bell went on ringing out through the fog. 'Normally we congregate in the town square,' said Vlad. 'It's the middle of the night!' said Agnes. 'Yes, but it doesn't happen very often, and our covenant says never more than twice in a month,' said Vlad. 'Do you see how prosperous the place is? People are safe in Escrow. They've seen reason. No shutters on the windows, do you see? They don't have to bar their windows or hide in the cellar, which I have to admit is what people do in the . . . less well regulated areas of our country. They exchanged fear for security. They-' He stumbled, and steadied himself against a wall. Then he rubbed his forehead. 'Sorry. I felt a little . . . strange. What was I saying?' 'How should I know?' snapped Agnes. 'You were talking about how happy everyone is because the vampires visit, or something.' 'Oh, yes. Yes. Because of co-operation, not enmity. Because. . .' he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his face '. . . because . . . well, you'll see . . . is it rather cold here?' 'Just clammy,' said Agnes. 'Let's get to the square,' Vlad muttered. 'I'm sure I shall feel better.' It was just ahead. Torches had been lit. People had congregated there, most of them with blankets across their shoulders or a coat over their night clothes, standing around in aimless groups like people who'd heard the fire alarm but hadn't seen the smoke. One or two of them caught sight of Vlad and there was a certain amount of coughing and shuffling. Other vampires were descending through the mist. The Count landed gently and nodded to Agnes. 'Ah, Miss Nitt,' he said vaguely. 'Are we all here, Vlad?' The bell stopped. A moment later Lacrimosa descended. 'You've still got her?' she said to Vlad, raising her eyebrows. 'Oh, well . . .' 'I will just have a brief chat to the mayor,' said the Count. 'He appreciates being kept informed.' Agnes watched him walk towards a small, dumpy man who, despite getting out of bed in the middle of a wet night, seemed to have had the foresight to put on a gold chain of office. She noticed the vampires taking up positions in a line in front of the belltower, about four or five feet apart. They joked and called out to one another, except for Lacrimosa, who was glaring directly at her. The Count was deep in conversation with the mayor, who was staring down at his feet. Now, across the square, the people were beginning to form lines. A couple of small children pulled away from their parents' hands and chased one another up and down the lines of people, laughing. And the suspicion bloomed slowly in Agnes like a great black, red-edged rose. Vlad must have felt her body stiffen, because his grip tightened on her arm. 'I know what you're thinking-' he began. 'You don't know what I'm thinking but I'll tell you what I'm thinking,' she said, trying to keep the tremble out of her voice. 'You're-' 'Listen, it could be so much worse, it used to be so much worse-' The Count bustled. 'Good news,' he said, 'Three children have just turned twelve.' He smiled at Agnes. 'We have a little . . . ceremony, before the main lottery. A rite of passage, as it were. I think they look forward to it, to tell you the truth.' He's watching you to see how you react, said Perdita. Vlad is just stupid and Lacrimosa would weave your hair into a face flannel if she had the chance but this one will go for the throat if you so much as blink at the wrong time . . . so don't blink at the wrong time, thank you, because even figments of the imagination want to live... But Agnes felt the terror rising around her. And it was wrong, the wrong kind of terror, a numbing, cold, sick feeling that froze her where she stood. She had to do something, do anything, break its horrible grip it was Vlad who spoke. 'It's nothing dramatic,' he said quickly. 'A little drop of blood . . . Father went to the school and explained all about citizenship. . .' 'How nice,' she croaked. 'Do they get a badge?' It must have been Perdita behind that; she couldn't imagine Agnes being so tasteless, even in the cause of sarcasm. 'Hah, no. But what a good idea,' said the Count, giving her another quick smile. 'Yes . . . perhaps a badge, or a small plaque. Something to be treasured in later life. I shall make a mental note of this. And so . . . let us begin. Ah, the mayor has assembled the dear children . . .' There was a shout somewhere at the back of the crowd and, for a moment, Agnes caught sight of a man trying to press forward. The mayor nodded at a couple of the nearby men. They hurried back into the crowd. There was a scuffle in the shadows. She thought she heard a woman's scream, suddenly muffled. A door slammed. As the mayor turned back, he met Agnes's stare. She looked away, not wanting to see that expression. People were good at imagining hells, and some they occupied while they were alive. 'Shall we get on?' said the Count. 'Will you let go of my arm, Vlad?' said Agnes sweetly. They're just waiting for you to react, whispered Perdita. Oh, said Agnes inside her head, so I should just stand here and watch? Like everybody else? I just thought I'd point it out. What's been done to them? They're like pigs queueing for Hogswatch! I think they saw reason, said Agnes. Oh well . . . just wipe that smile off Lacrimosa's face, that's all I ask . . . They could move very fast. Even a scream wouldn't work. She might be able to get in one good wallop, and that would be it. And perhaps she'd wake up as a vampire, and not know the difference between good and evil. But that wasn't the point. The point was here and now, because here and now she did. She could see every drop of moisture hanging in the air, smell the woodsmoke from damped-down fires, hear the rats in the thatch of the houses. Her senses were working overtime, to make the most of the last few seconds 'I don't see why!' Lacrimosa's voice cut through the mist like a saw. Agnes blinked. The girl had reached her father and was glaring at him. 'Why do you always start?' she demanded. 'Lacrimosa! What has got into you? I am the head of the clan!' 'Oh, really? For ever?' The Count looked astonished. 'Well, yes. Of course!' 'So we'll always be pushed around by you, for ever? We'll just be your children for ever?' 'My dear, what do you think you-' 'And don't try that voice on me! That only works on the meat! So I'll be sent to my room for being disobedient for ever?' 'We did let you have your own rack-' 'Oh, yes! And for that I have to nod and smile and be nice with meat?' 'Don't you dare talk to your father like that!' screamed the Countess. 'And don't talk about Agnes like that!' snarled Vlad. 'Did I use the word Agnes? Did I refer to her in any way?' said Lacrimosa, coldly. 'I don't believe I did. I wouldn't dream of mentioning her at all.' 'I can't be having with this arguing!' shouted the Count. 'That's it, isn't it?' said Lacrimosa. 'We don't argue! We just do what you say, for ever.' 'We agreed-' 'No, you agreed, and no one disagreed with you. Vlad was right!' 'Indeed?' said the Count, turning to his son. 'Right about what, prey?' Vlad's mouth opened and shut once or twice as he hastily assembled a coherent sentence. 'I may have mentioned that the whole Lancre business might be considered unwise-' 'Oh,' said the Countess. 'You know so much about wisdom all of a sudden and you're barely two hundred?' 'Unwise?' said the Count. 'I'd say stupid!' said Lacrimosa. 'Little badges? Gifts? We don't give anything! We're vampiresl We take what we want, like this-' She reached out, grabbed a man standing near her, and turned, mouth open and hair flying. And stopped, as if she'd been frozen. Then she buckled, one hand reaching for her throat, and glared at her father. 'What . . . did you do?' she gasped. 'My throat . . . feels . . . You did something!' The Count rubbed his forehead and pinched the bridge of his nose. 'Lacci-' 'And don't call me thatl You know how I hate that!' There was a brief scream from one of the lesser vampires behind them. Agnes couldn't remember his name, it was probably Fenrir or Maledicta or something, but she did recall that he preferred to be known as Gerald. He sagged to his knees, clawing at his throat. None of the other vampires looked very happy, either. A couple of them were kneeling and groaning, to the bewilderment of the citizens. 'I don't . . . feel very well,' said the Countess, swaying slightly. 'I did say I didn't think wine was a good idea. . .' The Count turned and stared at Agnes. She took a step back. 'It's you, isn't it?' he said. 'Of course it is!' moaned Lacrimosa. 'You know that old woman put her self somewhere, and she must've known Vlad was soppy on that lump!' She's not in here, is she? said Perdita. Don't you know? Agnes thought, backing away again. Well, I don't think she is, but is it me doing the thinking? Look, she's hidden her self in that priest, we know it. No, we don't, you just thought that'd be a smart thing for her to do because everyone would think she's hiding in the baby. 'Why don't you just crawl back into your coffin and rot, you slimy little maggot,' Agnes said. It wasn't that good, but impromptu insults are seldom well crafted. Lacrimosa leapt at her, but something else was wrong. Instead of gliding through the air like velvet death she lurched like a bird with a broken wing. But fury let her rear up in front of Agnes, one claw out to scratch- Agnes hit her as hard as she could and felt Perdita get behind the blow as well. It shouldn't have been possible for it to connect, the girl was quick enough to run around Agnes three times before it could, but it did. The people of Escrow watched a vampire stagger back, bleeding. The mayor raised his head. Agnes went into a crouch, fists raised. 'I don't know where Granny Weatherwax went,' she said. 'Maybe she is in here with me, eh?' A flash of mad inspiration struck her and she added, in Granny's sharp tones, 'And if you strike me down again I'll bite my way up through your boots!' 'A nice try, Miss Nitt,' said the Count, striding towards her. 'But I don't think so-' He stopped, clutching at the gold chain that was suddenly around his neck. Behind him the mayor hauled on it with all his weight, forcing the vampire to the ground. The citizens looked at one another, and all moved at once. Vampires rose into the air, trying to gain height, kicking at clutching hands. Torches were snatched from walls. The night was suddenly full of screams. Agnes looked up at Vlad, who was staring in horror. Lacrimosa was surrounded by a closing ring of people. 'You'd better run,' she said, 'or they'll-' He turned and lunged, and the last thing she saw was teeth.     The track downhill was worse than the climb. Springs had erupted in every hollow, and every path was a rivulet. As Granny and oats lurched from mud slough to bog, Oats reflected on the story in the Book of Om – the story, really – about the prophet Brutha and his journey with Om across the burning desert, which had ended up changing Omnianism for ever. It had replaced swords with sermons, which at least caused fewer deaths except in the case of the really very long ones, and had broken the Church into a thousand pieces which had then started arguing with one another and finally turned out Oats, who argued with himself. Oats wondered how far across the desert Brutha would have got if he'd been trying to support Granny Weatherwax. There was something unbending about her, something hard as rock. By about halfway the blessed prophet might, he felt guiltily, have yielded to the temptation to . . . well, at least say something unpleasant, or give a meaningful sigh. The old woman had got very crotchety since being warmed up. She seemed to have something on her mind. The rain had stopped but the wind was sharp, and there were still occasional stinging bursts of hail. 'Won't be long now,' he panted. 'You don't know that,' said Granny, splashing through black, peaty mud. 'No, you're absolutely right,' said Oats. 'I was just saying that to be cheerful.' 'Hasn't worked,' said Granny. 'Mistress Weatherwax, would you like me to leave you here?' said Oats. Granny sniffed. 'Wouldn't worry me,' she said. 'Would you like me to?' said Oats. 'It's not my mountain,' said Granny. 'I wouldn't be one to tell people where they should be.' 'I'll go if you want me to,' said Oats. 'I never asked you to come,' said Granny simply. 'You'd be dead if I hadn't!' 'That's no business of yours.' 'My god, Mistress Weatherwax, you try me sorely.' 'Your god, Mister Oats, tries everyone. That's what gods generally does, and that's why I don't truck with 'em. And they lays down rules all the time.' 'There have to be rules, Mistress Weatherwax.' 'And what's the first one that your Om requires, then?' 'That believers should worship no other god but Om,' said Oats promptly. 'Oh yes? That's gods for you. Very self-centred, as a rule.' 'I think it was to get people's attention,' said Oats. 'There are many commandments about dealing well with other people, if that's what you're getting at.' 'Really? And s'pose someone doesn't want to believe in Om and tries to live properly?' 'According to the prophet Brutha, to live properly is to believe in Om.' 'Oho, that's clever! He gets you coming and going,' said Granny. 'It took a good thinker to come up with that. Well done. What other clever things did he say?' 'He doesn't say things to be clever,' said Oats hotly. 'But, since you ask, he said in his Letter to the Simonites that it is through other people that we truly become people.' 'Good. He got that one right.' 'And he said that we should take light into dark places.' Granny didn't say anything. 'I thought I'd mention that,' said Oats, 'because when you were . . . you know, kneeling, back in the forge . . . you said something very similar . . .' Granny stopped so suddenly that Oats nearly fell over. 'I did what?' 'You were mumbling and-' 'I was talkin' in my . . . sleep?' 'Yes, and you said something about darkness being where the light needs to be, which I remember because in the Book of Om-' 'You listened?' 'No, I wasn't listening, but I couldn't help hearing, could I? And you sounded as if you were having an argument with someone...' 'Can you remember everything I said?' 'I think so.' Granny staggered on a little, and stopped in a puddle of black water that began to rise over her boots. 'Can you forget?' she said. 'Pardon?' 'You wouldn't be so unkind as to pass on to anyone else the ramblings of a poor of woman who was probably off her head, would you?' said Granny slowly. Oats thought for a moment. 'What ramblings were these, Mistress Weatherwax?' Granny seemed to sag with relief. 'Ah. Good thing you asked, really, bein' as there weren't any.' Black bubbles arose from the bog around Granny Weatherwax as the two of them watched each other. Some sort of truce had been declared. 'I wonder, young man, if you would be so good as to pull me out?' This took some time and involved a branch from a nearby tree and, despite Oats's best efforts, Granny's first foot came out of its boot. And once one boot has said goodbye in a peat bog, the other one is bound, to follow out of fraternal solidarity. Granny ended up on what was comparatively dry and comparatively land wearing a pair of the heaviest-looking socks Oats had ever seen. They looked as if they could shrug off a hammer blow. 'They was good boots,' said Granny, looking at the bubbles. 'Oh, well, let's get on.' She staggered a little as she set off again, but to Oats's admiration managed to stay upright. He was beginning to form yet another opinion of the old woman, who caused a new opinion to arise about once every half-hour, and it was this: she needed someone to beat. If she didn't have someone to beat, she'd probably beat herself. 'Shame about your little book of holy words. . .' she said, when she was further down the track. There was a long pause before Oats replied. 'I can easily get another,' he said levelly. 'Must be hard, not having your book of words.' 'It's only paper.' 'I shall ask the King to see about getting you another book of words.' 'I wouldn't trouble him.' 'Terrible thing to have to burn all them words, though.' 'The worthwhile ones don't burn.' 'You're not too stupid, for all that you wear a funny hat,' said Granny. 'I know when I'm being pushed, Mistress Weatherwax.' 'Well done.' They walked on in silence. A shower of hail bounced off Granny's pointy hat and Oats's wide brim. Then Granny said, 'It's no good you trying to make me believe in Om, though.' 'Om forbid that I should try, Mistress Weatherwax. I haven't even given you a pamphlet, have I?' 'No, but you're trying to make me think, "Oo, what a nice young man, his god must be something special if nice young men like him helps old ladies like me," aren't you?' No. 'Really? Well, it's not working. People you can believe in, sometimes, but not gods. And I'll tell you this, Mister Oats . . .' He sighed. 'Yes?' She turned to face him, suddenly alive. 'It'd be as well for you if I didn't believe,' she said, prodding him with a sharp finger. 'This Om . . . anyone seen him?' 'It is said three thousand people witnessed his manifestation at the Great Temple when he made the Covenant with the prophet Brutha and saved him from death by torture on the iron turtle-' 'But I bet that now they're arguing about what they actually saw, eh?' 'Well, indeed, yes, there are many opinions-' 'Right. Right. That's people for you. Now if I'd seen him, really there, really alive, it'd be in me like a fever. If I thought there was some god who really did care two hoots about people, who watched 'em like a father and cared for 'em like a mother . . . well, you wouldn't catch me sayin' things like "There are two sides to every question," and "We must respect other people's beliefs." You wouldn't find me just being gen'rally nice in the hope that it'd all turn out right in the end, not if that flame was burning in me like an unforgivin' sword. And I did say burnin', Mister Oats, 'cos that's what it'd be. You say that you people don't burn folk and sacrifice people any more, but that's what true faith would mean, y'see? Sacrificin' your own life, one day at a time, to the flame, declarin' the truth of it, workin' for it, breathin' the soul of it. Thars religion. Anything else is just . . . is just bein' nice. And a way of keepin' in touch with the neighbours.' She relaxed slightly, and went on in a quieter voice: 'Anyway, that's what I'd be, if I really believed. And I don't think that's fashionable right now, 'cos it seems that if you sees evil now you have to wring your hands and say, "Oh deary me, we must debate this." That's my two penn'orth, Mister Oats. You be happy to let things lie. Don't chase faith, 'cos you'll never catch it.' She added, almost as an aside, 'But, perhaps, you can live faithfully.' Her teeth chattered as a gust of icy wind flapped her wet dress around her legs. 'You got another book of holy words on you?' she added. 'No,' said Oats, still shocked. He thought: my god, if she ever finds a religion, what would come out of these mountains and sweep across the plains? My god. . . I just said, 'My god'. . . 'A book of hymns, maybe?' said Granny. No.' 'A slim volume o' prayers, suitable for every occasion?' 'No, Granny Weatherwax.' 'Damn.' Granny slowly collapsed backwards, folding up like an empty dress. He rushed forward and caught her before she landed in the mud. One thin white hand gripped his wrist so hard that he yelped. Then she relaxed, and sagged in his grasp. Something made Oats look up. A hooded figure sat on a white horse a little way away, outlined in the faintest blue fire. 'Go away!' he screamed. 'You be gone right now or . . . or. . .' He lowered the body on to some tufts of grass, grabbed a handful of mud and flung it into the gloom. He ran after it, punching wildly at a shape that was suddenly no more than shadows and curling mist. He dashed back, picked up Granny Weatherwax, slung her over his shoulder and ran on, downhill. The mist behind him formed a shape on a white horse. Death shook his head. IT WASN'T EVEN AS IF I SAID ANYTHING, he said.     Waves of black heat broke over Agnes, and then there was a pit, and a fall into hot, suffocating darkness. She felt the desire. It was tugging her forward like a current. Well, she thought dreamily, at least I'll lose some weight. . . Yes, said Perdita, but all the eyeliner you'll have to wear must add a few pounds . . . The hunger filled her now, accelerating her. And there was light, behind her, shining past her. She felt the fall gradually slow as if she'd hit invisible feathers, and then the world spun and she was rising again, moving up faster than an eagle stoops, towards an expanding circle of cold white- It couldn't possibly be words that she heard. There was no sound but a faint rushing noise. But it was the shadow of words, the effect they leave in the mind after they have been said, and she felt her own voice rushing in to fill the shape that had appeared there. I. . . can't . . . be . . . having . . . with ...this... Light exploded. And someone was about to hammer a stake through her heart. 'Stdt?' she said, knocking the hand away. She spluttered for a moment and then spat the lemon out of her mouth. 'Hey, stop that!' she tried again, this time with all the authority she could muster. 'What the heck are you doing? Do I look like a vampire?' The man with the stake and mallet hesitated, and then tapped a finger to the side of his neck. Agnes reached to hers, and found two raised weals. 'He must have missed!' she said, pushing the stake away and sitting up. 'Who took my stocking off? Who took off my left stocking? Is that boiling vinegar I can smell? What're all these poppyseeds doing poured down my bra? If it wasn't a woman who took my stocking off there's going to be some serious trouble, I can tell you!' The crowd around the table looked at one another, suddenly uncertain in the face of her rage. Agnes glanced up as something brushed her ear. Hanging over her were stars and crosses and circles and more complex designs she recognized as religious symbols. She'd never felt inclined to believe in religion, but she knew what it looked like. 'And this is just a very tasteless display,' she said. 'She doesn't act like a vampire,' said a man. 'She doesn't look like one. And she did fight the others.' ' We saw that one bite her!' said a woman. 'Bad aim in poor light,' said Agnes, knowing that it wasn't. There was a hunger welling up. It was not like the black urge she'd felt in the dark, but sharp and urgent all the same. She had to give in to it. 'I'd kill for a cup of tea,' she added. That seemed to clinch it. Tea wasn't the liquid usually associated with vampires. 'And for goodness' sake let me shake some of these poppyseeds out,' she went on, adjusting her bosom. 'I feel like a wholemeal loaf.' They moved aside as she swung her legs off the table, which now meant that she could see the vampire lying on the floor. She nearly thought of it as the other vampire. It was a man wearing a long frock coat and a fancy waistcoat, both covered in mud and blood; there was a stake through his heart. Further identification, though, would have to await finding where they'd put his head. 'I see you got one, then,' she said, trying not to, be sick. 'Got two,' said the man with the hammer. 'Set fire to the other one. They killed the mayor and Mr Vlack.' 'You mean the rest got away?' said Agnes. 'Yes. They're still strong but they can't fly much.' Agnes indicated the headless vampire. 'Er . . . is that one Vlad?' she said. 'Which one was he?' 'The one that . . . bit me. Tried to bite me,' she corrected herself. 'We can check. Piotr, show her the head.' A young man obediently went to the fireplace, pulled on a glove, lifted the lid of a big saucepan and held up a head by its hair. 'That's not Vlad,' said Agnes, swallowing. No, said Perdita, Vlad was taller. 'They'll be heading back to their castle,' said Piotr. 'On foot! You should see them trying to fly! It's like watching chickens panicking.' 'The castle. . .'said Agnes. 'They'll have to make it before cock-crow,' said Piotr, with some satisfaction. 'And they can't cut through the woods, 'cos of the werewolves.' 'What? I thought werewolves and vampires would get along fine,' said Agnes. 'Oh, maybe it looks like that,' said Piotr. 'But they're watching one another all the time to see who's going to be the first to blink.' He looked around the room. 'We don't mind the werewolves,' he went on, to general agreement. 'They leave us alone most of the time because we don't run fast enough to be interesting.' He looked Agnes up and down. 'What was it you did to the vampires?' he said. 'Me? I didn't do- I don't know,' said Agnes. 'They couldn't even bite us properly.' 'And they were squabbling like kids when they left,' said the man with the mallet. 'You've got a pointy hat,' said Piotr. 'Did you put a spell on them?' 'I- I don't know. I really don't.' And then natural honesty met witchcraft. One aspect of witchcraft is the craftiness, and it's seldom unwise to take the credit for unexplained but fortuitous events. 'I may have done,' she added. 'Well, we're going after them,' said Piotr. 'Won't they have got well away?' 'We can cut through the woods.'     Blood tinted the rain that ran off the wound on Jason Ogg's shoulder. He dabbed at it with a cloth. 'Reckon I'll be hammerin' left-handed for a week or two,' he said, wincing. 'They got very good fields of fire,' said Shawn, who had taken refuge behind the beer barrel used so recently to wet the baby's head. 'I mean, it's a castle. A frontal attack simply won't work.' He sighed, and shielded his guttering candle to keep the wind from blowing it out. They'd tried a frontal attack nevertheless, and the only reason no one had been killed was that the drink seemed to be flowing freely within the keep. As it was, one or two people would be limping for a while. Then they'd tried what Jason persisted in referring to as a backal attack, but there were arrow slots even over the kitchens. One man creeping up to the walls very slowly – a sidle attack, as Shawn had thought of it -had worked, but since all the doors were very solidly barred this had just meant that he'd stood there feeling like a fool. He was trying to find some help in the ancient military journals of General Tacticus, whose intelligent campaigning had been so successful that he'd lent his very name to the detailed prosecution of martial endeavour, and had actually found a section headed What to Do If One Army Occupies a Well-fortified and Superior Ground and the Other Does Not, but since the first sentence read 'Endeavour to be the one inside' he'd rather lost heart. The rest of the Lancre militia cowered behind buttresses and upturned carts, waiting for him to lead them. There was a respectful clang as Big Jim Beef, who was acting as cover for two other part-time soldiers, saluted his commander. 'I reckon,' he ventured, 'dat if we got big fires goin' in frun' of the doors we could smoke dem out.' 'Good idea,' said Jason. 'That's the King's door,' Shawn protested. 'He's already been a bit sharp with me for not cleaning the privy pit this week-' 'He can send Mum the bill.' 'That's seditious talk, Jason! I could have you arr- I could arr- Mum would have something to say about you talking like that!' 'Where is the King, anyway?' said Darren Ogg. 'Sittin' back and lettin' Mum sort everything out while we get shot at?' 'You know he's got a weak chest,' said Shawn. 'He does very well considering he-' He stopped as a sound rolled out across the countryside. It had a hoarse, primal quality, the sound of an animal who is in pain but also intends to pass it on as soon as possible. The men looked around nervously. Verence came thundering through the gates. Shawn recognized him only by the embroidery on his nightshirt and his fluffy slippers. He held a long sword over his head in both hands and was running straight for the door of the keep, trailing a scream behind him. The sword struck the wood. Shawn heard the whole door shudder. 'He's gone mad!' shouted Darren. 'Let's grab the poor creature before he gets shot!' A couple of them scurried across to the struggling King, who was standing horizontally on the door in an effort to get the sword out. 'Now, see here, your maj- Aargh!' 'Ach, tak a faceful o'heid!' Darren staggered back, clutching at his face. Little shapes swarmed across the courtyard after the King, like some kind of plague. 'Gibbins!' 'Fackle!' 'Nac mac Feegle!' There was another scream as Jason, trying to restrain his monarch's enthusiasm, found that while the touch of a monarch may indeed cure certain scalp conditions, the scalp of a king itself is capable of spreading someone's nose into an interesting flat shape. Arrows thudded into the ground around them. Shawn grabbed Big Jim. 'They're all going to get shot, drink or not!' he shouted above the din. 'You come with me!' 'What we gonna do?' 'Clean the privies!' The troll scuttled after him as he edged his way around the keep, to where the Gong Tower loomed against the night in all its odoriferous splendour. It was the bane of Shawn's life. All the keep's garderobes discharged into it. One of his jobs was to clean it out and take the contents to the pits in the gardens where Verence's efforts at composting were gradually turning them into, well, Lancre.[13] But now that the castle was a lot busier than it used to be his weekly efforts with shovel and wheelbarrow weren't the peaceful and solitary interludes they had been. Of course he'd let the job sort of . . . pile up these last few weeks, but did they expect him to do everything? He waved Big Jim towards the door at the bottom of the tower. Fortunately, trolls have not much interest in organic odours, although they can easily distinguish types of limestone by smell. 'I want you to open it when I say,' he said, tearing a strip off his shirt and wrapping it round an arrow. He searched his pockets for a match. 'And when you've opened the door,' he went on, as the cloth caught, 'I want you to run away very, very fast, right? Okay . . . open the door!' Big Jim pulled at the handle. There was a very faint whoosh as the door swung back. 'Run!' Shawn shouted. He drew back the bowstring and fired through the doorway. The flaming arrow vanished into the noisome darkness. There was a pause of a few heartbeats. Then the tower exploded. It happened quite slowly. The green-blue light mushroomed up from storey to storey in an almost leisurely way, blowing out stones at every level to give the tower a nice sparkling effect. The roofing leads opened up like a daisy. A faint flame speared the clouds. Then time, sound and motion came back with a thump. After a few seconds the main doors burst open and the soldiers ran out. The first one was smacked between the eyes by a ballistic king. Shawn had just started to run back to the fight when someone landed on his shoulders, bearing him to the ground. 'Well, well, one of the toy soldiers,' sneered Corporal Svitz, leaping up and drawing his sword. As he raised it Shawn rolled over and struck upwards with the Lancrastian Peace-time Army Knife. He might have had time to select the Device for Dissecting Paradoxes, or the Appliance for Detecting Small Grains of Hope, or the Spiral Thing for Ascertaining the Reality of Being, but as it happened it was the instrument for Ending Arguments Very Quickly that won the day. Presently, there came a short shower of soft rain. Well . . . certainly a shower. Definitely soft, anyway.     Agnes hadn't seen a mob like this before. Mobs, in her limited experience, were noisy. This one was silent. Most of the town was in it, and to Agnes's surprise they'd brought along many of the children. It didn't surprise Perdita. They're going to kill the vampires, she said, and the children will watch. Good, thought Agnes, that's exactly right. Perdita was horrified. It'll give them nightmares! No, thought Agnes. It'll take the nightmares away. Sometimes everyone has to know the monster is dead, and remember, so that they can tell their grandchildren. 'They tried to turn people into things,' she said aloud. 'Sorry, miss?' said Piotr. 'Oh . . . just thinking aloud.' And where had she got that other idea? Perdita wondered, the one where she'd told the villagers to send runners out to other towns to report on the night's work. That was unusually nasty of her. But she remembered the look of horror on the mayor's face and, later, the blank engrossed expression when he was trying to throttle the Count with his chain of office. The vampire had killed him with a blow that had almost broken him in half. She fingered the wounds on her neck. She was pretty certain vampires didn't miss, but Vlad must have done, because she dearly wasn't a vampire. She didn't even like the idea of rare steak. She'd tried to see if she could fly, when she thought people weren't looking, but she was as attractive to gravity as ever. The blood-sucking ... no, never that, even if it was the ultimate diet programme, but she'd have liked the flying. It's changed you, said Perdita. 'How?' 'Sorry, miss?' You're sharper . . . edgier . . . nastier. 'Maybe it's about time I was, then.' 'Sorry, miss?' 'Oh, nothing. Do you have a spare sickle?'     The vampires travelled fast but erratically, appearing not so much to fly as to be promising entries in the world long-jump championships. 'We'll burn that ungrateful place to the ground,' moaned the Countess, landing heavily. 'Afterwards we'll burn that place to the ground,' said Lacrimosa. 'This is what kindness leads to, Father. I do hope you're paying attention.' 'After you paid for that belltower, too,' said the Countess. The Count rubbed his throat, where the links of the gold chain still showed as a red weal. He wouldn't have believed that a human could be so strong. 'Yes, that might be a good course of action,' he said. 'We would have to make sure the news got around, of course.' 'You think this news won't get around?' said Lacrimosa, landing beside him. 'It will be dawn soon, Lacci,' said the Count, with heavy patience. 'Because of my training, you will regard it as rather a nuisance, not a reason to crumble into a little pile of dust. Reflect on this.' 'That Weatherwax woman did this, didn't she?' said Lacrimosa, ignoring this call to count her blessings. 'She put her self somewhere and she's attacking us. She can't be in the baby. I suppose she wasn't in your fat girl, Vlad? Plenty of room in there. Are you listening, brother?' 'What?' said Vlad distantly as they turned a corner in the road and saw the castle ahead of them. 'I saw you give in and bite her. So romantic. They still dragged her off, though. They'll have to use quite a long stake to hit any useful organ.' 'She'd have put her self somewhere close,' said the Count. 'It stands to reason. It must've been someone in the hall . . .' 'One of the other witches, surely,' said the Countess. 'I wonder. . .' 'That stupid priest,' said Lacrimosa. 'That would probably appeal to her,' said the Count. 'But I suspect not.' 'Not . . . Igor?' said his daughter. 'I wouldn't give that a moment's thought,' said the Count. 'I still think it was Fat Agnes.' 'She wasn't that fat,' said Vlad sulkily. 'You'd have got tired of her in the end and we'd have ended up with her always getting in the way, just like the others,' said Lacrimosa. 'Traditionally a keepsake is meant to be a lock of their hair, not their entire skull-' 'She's different.' 'Just because you can't read her mind? How interesting would that be?' 'At least I did bite someone,' said Vlad. 'What was wrong with you?' 'Yes, you were acting very strangely, Lacci,' said the Count, as they reached the drawbridge. 'If she was hiding in me I'd know!' snarled Lacrimosa. 'I wonder if you would,' said the Count. 'She just has to find a weak spot. . . 'She's just a witch, Father. Honestly, we're acting as though she's got some sort of terrible power-' 'Perhaps it was Vlad's Agnes after all,' said the Count. He gave his son a slightly longer stare than was strictly necessary. 'We're nearly at the castle,' said the Countess, trying to rally them. 'We'll all feel better for an early day.' 'Our best coffins got taken to Lancre,' said Lacrimosa sullenly. 'Someone was so sure of themselves.' 'Don't you adopt that tone with me, young woman!' said the Count. 'I'm two hundred years old,' said Lacrimosa. 'Pardon me, but I think I can choose any tone I like.' 'That's no way to speak to your father!’ 'Really, Mother, you might at least act as if you had two brain cells of your own!' 'It is not your father's fault that everything's gone wrong!' 'It has not all gone wrong, my dear! This is just a temporary setback!' 'It won't be when the Escrow meat tell their friends! Come on, Vlad, stop moping and back me up here . . .' 'If they tell them, what can they do? Oh, there will be a little bit of protesting, but then the survivors will see reason,' said the Count. 'In the meantime, we have those witches waiting for us. With the baby.' 'And we've got to be polite to them, I suppose?' 'Oh, I don't think we need go that far,' said the Count. 'Let them live, perhaps-' Something bounced on the bridge beside him. He reached down to pick it up and dropped it with a yelp. 'But . . . garlic shouldn't burn . . .' he began. 'Thith ith water from the Holy Turtle Pond of Thquintth,' said a voice above them. 'Blethed by the Bithop himthelf in the Year of the Trout.' There was a glugging noise and the sound of someone swallowing. 'That wath a good year for beatitude,' Igor went on. 'But you don't have to take my word for it. Duck, you thuckerth!' The vampires dived for cover as the bottle, turning over and over, arced down from the battlements. It shattered on the bridge, and most of the contents hit a vampire, who burst into flame as if hit by burning oil. 'Now really, Cryptopher, there's no call for that sort of thing,' said the Count, as the blazing figure screamed and spun around in a circle. 'It's all in your mind, you know. Positive thinking, that's the ticket-' 'He's turning black,' said the Countess. 'Aren't you going to do something?' 'Oh, very well. Vlad, just kick him off the drawbridge, will you?' The luckless Cryptopher was pushed, squirming, into the chasm. 'You know, that should not have happened,' said the Count, looking at his blistered fingers. 'He obviously was not . . . truly one of us.' Far below, there was a splash. The rest of the vampires scrambled for the cover of the gate arch as another bottle exploded near the Count. A drop splashed his leg, and he glanced down at the little wisp of smoke. 'Some error appears to have crept in,' he said. 'I've never been one to put myself forward,' said the Countess, 'but I strongly suggest you find a new plan, dear. One which works, perhaps?' 'I have one already formed,' he said, tapping his knuckles against the huge oak gates. 'If everyone would perhaps stand aside. . .' Up on the battlement Igor nudged Nanny Ogg, who lowered a decanter of water from the Holy Fountain of Seven-Handed Sek and followed his pointing thumb.[14] Clouds were suddenly spiralling, with blue light flashing inside them. 'There'th going to be a thtorm!' he said. 'The top of my head'th tingling! Run!' They reached the tower just as a single bolt of lightning blew the doors apart and shattered the stones where they had been standing. 'Well, that was easy,' said Nanny, lying full length on the floor. 'They can control the weather,' said Igor. 'Blast!' said Nanny. 'That's right. Everyone knows that, who knows anything about vampires.' 'Thorry. But they won't be able to try that on the inthide doorth. Come on!' 'What's that smell?' said Nanny, sniffing. 'Igor, your boots are on fire!' 'Damn! And thethe feet were nearly new thicth month ago,' said Igor, as Nanny's holy water sizzled over the smoking leather. 'It'th my wire, it pickth up thtray currentth.' 'What happened, someone was hit by a falling buffalo?' said Nanny, as they hurried down the stairs. 'It wath a tree,' said Igor reproachfully. 'Mikhail Thwenitth up at the logging camp, the poor man. Practically nothing left, but hith parentth thaid I could have hith feet to remember him by.' 'That was strangely kind of them.' 'Well, I gave him a thpare arm after the acthe acthident a few yearth ago and when old Mr Thwenitth'th liver gave out I let him have the one Mr Kochak left to me for giving Mithith Kochak a new eye.' 'People round here don't so much die as pass on,' said Nanny. 'What goeth around cometh around,' said Igor.     'And your new plan is . . . ?' said Lacrimosa, stepping across the rubble. 'We'll kill everyone. Not an original plan, I admit, but tried and tested,' said the Count. This met with general approval, but his daughter looked unsatisfied. 'What, everyone? All at once?' 'Oh, you can save some for later if you must.' The Countess clutched his arm. 'Oh, this does so remind me of our honeymoon,' she said. 'Don't you remember those wonderful nights in Grjsknvij?' 'Oh, fresh morning of the world indeed,' said the Count solemnly. 'Such romance ... and we met such lovely people, too. Do you remember Mr and Mrs Harker?' 'Very fondly. I recall they lasted nearly all week. Now, listen all of you. Holy symbols will not hurt us. Holy water is just water – yes, I know, but Cryptopher just wasn't concentrating. Garlic is just another member of the allium family. Do onions hurt us? Are we frightened of shallots? No. We've just got a bit tired, that's all. Malicia, call up the rest of the clan. We will have a little holiday from reason. And afterwards, in the morning, there will be room for a new world order I can't be having with this at all. . .' He rubbed his forehead. The Count prided himself on his mind, and tended it carefully. But right now it felt exposed, as though someone was looking over his shoulder. He wasn't certain he was thinking right. She couldn't have got into his head, could she? He'd had hundreds of years of experience. There was no way some village witch could get past his defences. It stood to reason . . . His throat felt parched. At least he could obey the call of his nature. But this time it was an oddly disquieting one. 'Do we have any . . . tea?' he said. 'What is tea?' said the Countess. 'It. . . grow on a bush, I think,' said the Count. 'How do you bite it, then?' 'You. . . er . . . lower it into boiling water, don't you?' The Count shook his head, trying to free himself of this demonic urge. 'While it's still alive?' said Lacrimosa, brightening up . . . . sweet biscuits. . .'mumbled the Count. 'I think you should try to get a grip, dear,' said the Countess. 'This . . . tea,' said Lacrimosa. 'Is it . . . brown?' 'Yes,' whispered the Count. . 'Because when we were in Escrow I was going to put the bite on one of them and I had this horrible mental picture of a cup full of the wretched stuff,' said his daughter. The Count shook himself again. 'I don't know what's happening to me,' he said. 'So let's stick to what we do know, shall we? Obey our blood. . .'     The second casualty in the battle for the castle was Vargo, a lank young man who actually became a vampire because he thought he'd meet interesting girls, or any girls at all, and had been told he looked good in black. And then he'd found that a vampire's interests always centre, sooner or later, on the next meal, and hitherto he'd never really thought of the neck as the most interesting organ a girl could have. Right now all he wanted to do was sleep, so as the vampires surged into the castle proper he sauntered gently away in the direction of his cellar and nice comfortable coffin. Of course he was hungry, since all he'd got in Escrow was a foot in the chest, but he had just enough sense of self-preservation to let the others get on with the hunting so that he could turn up later for the feast. His coffin was in the centre of the dim cellar, its lid lying carelessly on the floor beside it. He'd always been messy with the bedclothes, even as a human. Vargo climbed in, twisted and turned a few times to get comfortable on the pillow, then pulled the lid down and latched it. As the eye of narrative drew back from the coffin on its stand, two things happened. One happened comparatively slowly, and this was Vargo's realization that he never recalled the coffin having a pillow before. The other was Greebo deciding that he was as mad as hell and wasn't going to take it any more. He'd been shaken around in the wheely thing and then sat on by Nanny, and he was angry about that because he knew, in a dim, animal way, that scratching Nanny might be the single most stupid thing he could do in the whole world, since no one else was prepared to feed him. This hadn't helped his temper. Then he'd encountered a dog, which had tried to lick him. He'd scratched and bitten it a few times, but this had had no effect apart from encouraging it to try to be more friendly. He'd finally found a comfy resting place and had curled up into a ball, and now someone was using him as a cushion- There wasn't a great deal of noise. The coffin rocked a few times, and then pivoted around. Greebo sheathed his claws and went back to sleep.     '–burn, with a dear bright light-' Splash, suck, splash. '–and I in mine . . . Om be praised.' Squelch, splash. Oats had worked his way though most of the hymns he knew, even the old ones you shouldn't really sing any more but you nevertheless remembered because the words were so good. He sang them loudly and defiantly, to hold back the night and the doubts. They helped take his mind off the weight of Granny Weatherwax. It was amazing how she'd apparently gained in the last mile or so, especially whenever he fell over and she landed on top of him. He'd lost one of his own boots in a mire. His hat was floating in a pool somewhere. Thorns had ripped his coat to tatters– He slipped and fell once again as the mud shifted under his feet. Granny rolled off and landed in a clump of sedge. If Brother Melchio could only see him now . . . The wowhawk swooped past and landed on the branch of a dead tree a few yards away. Oats hated the thing. It appeared demonic. It flew even though it surely couldn't see through the hood. Worse, whenever he thought about it, as now, the hooded head turned to fix him with an invisible stare. He took off his other useless shoe, its shiny leather all stained and cracked, and flung it inexpertly. 'Go away, you wicked creature!' The bird didn't stir. The shoe flew past it. Then, as he tried to get to his feet, he smelled burning leather. Two wisps of smoke were curling up from either side of the hood. Oats reached to his neck for the security of the turtle, and it wasn't there. It had cost him five obols in the Citadel, and it was too late now to reflect that perhaps he shouldn't have hung it from a chain worth a tenth of an obol. It was probably lying in some pool, or buried in some muddy, squelching marsh . . . Now the leather burned away, and the yellow glow from the holes was so bright he could barely see the outline of the bird. It turned the dank landscape into lines and shadows, put a golden edge on every tuft of grass and stricken tree – and winked out so quickly that it left Oats's eyes full of purple explosions. When he'd recovered his breath and his balance, the bird was swooping away down the moor. He picked up Granny Weatherwax's unconscious body and ran after it. The track did lead downhill, at least. Mud and bracken slipped under his feet. Rivulets were running from every hole and gully. Half the time it seemed to him that he wasn't walking, merely controlling a slide, bouncing off rocks, slithering through puddles of mud and leaves. And then there was the castle, seen through a gap in the trees, lit by a flash of lightning. Oats staggered through a clump of thorn bushes, managed to keep upright down a slope of loose boulders, and collapsed on the road with Granny Weatherwax on top of him. She stirred. '. . . holiday from reason . . . kill them all . . . can't be havin' with this. . .' she murmured. The wind blew a branchful of raindrops on her face, and she opened her eyes. For a moment they seemed to Oats to have red pupils, and then the icy blue gaze focused on him. 'Are we here, then?' 'Yes.' 'What happened to your holy hat?' 'It got lost,' said Oats abruptly. Granny peered closer. 'Your magic amulet's gone too,' she said. 'The one with the turtle and the little man on it.' 'It's not a magic amulet, Mistress Weatherwax! Please! A magic amulet is a symbol of primitive and mechanistic superstition, whereas the Turtle of Om is . . . is . . . is . . . Well, it's not, do you understand?' 'Oh, right. Thank you for explaining,' said Granny. 'Help me up, will you?' Oats was having some difficulty with his temper. He'd carried the old bit- biddy for miles, he was frozen to the bone, and now they were here she acted as if she'd somehow done him a favour. 'What's the magic word?' he snarled. 'Oh, I don't think a holy man like you should be having with magic words,' said Granny. 'But the holy words are: do what I tell you or get smitten. They should do the trick.' He helped her to her feet, alive with badly digested rage, and supported her as she swayed. There was a scream from the castle, suddenly cut off. 'Not female,' said Granny. 'I reckon the girls have started. Let's give 'em a hand, shall we?' Her arm shook as she raised it. The wowhawk fluttered down and settled on her wrist. 'Now help get me to the gate.' 'Don't mention it, glad to be of service,' Oats mumbled. He looked at the bird, whose hood swivelled to face him. 'That's the . . . other phoenix, isn't it?' he said. 'Yes,' said Granny, watching the door. 'A phoenix. You can't .have just one of anything.' 'But it looks like a little hawk.' 'It was born among hawks, so it looks like a hawk. If it was hatched in a hen roost it'd be a chicken. Stands to reason. And a hawk it'll remain, until it needs to be a phoenix. They're shy birds. You could say a phoenix is what it may become. . .' 'Too much eggshell. . .' 'Yes, Mister Oats. And when does the phoenix sometimes lay two eggs? When it needs to. Hodgesaargh was right. A phoenix is of the nature of birds. Bird first, myth second.' The doors were hanging loose, their iron reinforcements twisted out of shape and their timbers smouldering, but some effort had been made to pull them shut. Over what remained of the arch, a bat carved in stone told visitors everything they needed to know about this place. On Granny's wrist the hood of the hawk was crackling and smoking. As Oats watched, little flames erupted from the leather again. 'He knows what they did,' said Granny. 'He was hatched knowing. Phoenixes share their minds. And they don't tolerate evil.' The head turned to look at Oats with its whitehot stare and, instinctively, he backed away and tried to cover his eyes. 'Use the doorknocker,' said Granny, nodding to the big iron ring hanging loosely from one splintered door. 'What? You want me to knock on the door? Of a vampire's castle?' 'We're not going to sneak in, are we? Anyway, you Omnians are good at knocking on doors.' 'Well, yes,' said Oats, 'but normally just for a shared prayer and to interest people in our pamphlets' – he let the knocker fall a few times, the boom echoing around the valley – 'not to have my throat ripped out!' 'Think of this as a particularly difficult street,' said Granny. 'Try again . . . mebbe they're hidin' behind the sofa, eh?' 'Hah!' 'You're a good man, Mister Oats?' said Granny, conversationally, as the echoes died away. 'Even without your holy book and holy amulet and holy hat?' 'Er . . . I try to be . . .' he ventured. 'Well ... this is where you find out,' said Granny. 'To the fire we come at last, Mister Oats. This is where we both find out.'     Nanny raced up some stairs, a couple of vampires at her heels. The vampires were hampered because they hadn't got to grips with not being able to fly, but there was something else wrong with them as well. 'Tea!' one screamed. 'I must have . . . tea!' Nanny pushed open the door to the battlements. They followed her, and tripped over Igor's leg as he stepped out of the shadows. He raised two sharpened table legs. 'How d'you want your thtaketh, boyth?' he shouted excitedly, as he struck. 'You thould have thed you liked my thpiderth!’ Nanny leaned against the wall to get her breath back. 'Granny's somewhere here,' she panted. 'Don't ask me how. But those two were craving a cup of tea, and I reckon only Esme could mess up someone's head like that-' The sounds of the doorknocker boomed around the courtyard below. At the same time the door at the other end of the battlements opened. Half a dozen vampires advanced. 'They're acting very dumb, aren't they?' said Nanny. 'Give me a couple more stakes.' 'Run out of thtaketh, Nanny.' 'Okay, then, pass me a bottle of holy water . . . Hurry up. . .' 'None left, Nanny.' 'We've got nothing?' 'Got'n orange, Nanny.' 'What for?' 'Run out of lemonth.' 'What good will an orange do if I hit a vampire in the mouth with it?' said Nanny, eyeing the approaching creatures. Igor scratched his head. 'Well, I thuppothe they won't catch coldth tho eathily . . .' The knocking reverberated around the castle again. Several vampires were creeping across the courtyard. Nanny caught a flicker of light around the edge of the door. Instinct took over. As the vampires began to run, she grabbed Igor and pulled him down. The arch exploded, every stone and plank drifting away on an expanding bubble of eyeball-searing flame. It lifted the vampires off their feet and they screamed as the fire carried them up. When the brightness had faded a little Nanny peered carefully into the courtyard. A bird, house-sized, wings of flame wider than the castle, reared in the broken doorway.     Mightily Oats pushed himself up on to his hands and knees. Hot flames roared around him, thundering like fiercely burning gas. His skin should have been blackening already, but against all reason the fire felt no more deadly than a hot desert wind. The air smelled of camphor and spices. He looked up. The flames wrapped Granny Weatherwax, but they looked oddly transparent, not entirely real. Here and there little gold and green sparks glittered on her dress, and all the time the fire whipped and tore around her. She looked down at him. 'You're in the wings of the phoenix now, Mister Oats,' she shouted, above the noise, 'and you ain't burned!' The bird flapping its wings on her wrist was incandescent. 'How can-' 'You're the scholarl But male birds are always ones for the big display, aren't they?' 'Males? This is a male phoenix?' 'Yes!' It leapt. What flew . . . what flew, as far as Oats could see, was a great bird-shape of pale flame, with the little form of the real bird inside like the head of a comet. He added to himself: if that is indeed the real bird . . . It swooped up into the tower. A yell, cut off quickly, indicated that a vampire hadn't been fast enough. 'It doesn't burn itself?' Oats said weakly. 'Shouldn't think so,' said Granny, stepping over the wreckage. 'Wouldn't be much point.' 'Then it must be magical fire. . .' 'They say that whether it burns you or not is up to you,' said Granny. 'I used to watch them as a kid. My granny told me about 'em. Some cold nights you see them dancin' in the sky over the Hub, burnin' green and gold. . .' 'Oh, you mean the aurora coriolis,' said Oats, trying to make his voice sound matter of fact. 'But actually that's caused by magic particles hitting the-' 'Dunno what it's caused by,' said Granny sharply, 'but what it is is the phoenix dancin'.' She reached out. 'I ought to hold your arm.' 'In case I fall over?' said Oats, still watching the burning bird. 'That's right.' As he took her weight the phoenix above them flung back its head and screamed at the sky. 'And to think I thought it was an allegorical creature,' said the priest. 'Well? Even allegories have to live,' said Granny Weatherwax.     Vampires are not naturally co-operative creatures. It's not in their nature. Every other vampire is a rival for the next meal. In fact, the ideal situation for a vampire is a world in which every other vampire has been killed off and no one seriously believes in vampires any more. They are by nature as co-operative as sharks. Vampyres are just the same, the only real difference being that they can't spell properly. The remnant of the clan scurried through the keep and headed for a door that for some reason had been left ajar. The bucket containing a cocktail of waters blessed by a Knight of Offler, a High Priest of Io and a man so generically holy that he hadn't cut his hair or washed for seventy years, landed on the first two to run through. They did not include the Count and his family, who had moved as one into a side tower. There's no point in having underlings if you don't let them be the first to go through suspicious doors. 'How could you have been so-' Lacrimosa began, and to her shock got a slap across the face from her father. 'All we need to do is remain calm,' said the Count. 'There's no need to panic.' 'You struck me!' 'And most satisfying it was, too,' said the Count. 'Careful thought is what will save us. That is why we will survive.' 'It's not working!' said Lacrimosa. 'I'm a vampire! I'm supposed to crave blood! And all I can think about is a cup of tea with three sugars in it, whatever the hell that is! That old woman's doing something to us, can't you see?' 'Not possible,' said the Count. 'Oh, she's sharp for a human, but I don't reckon there's any way she could get into your head or mine-' 'You're even talkin' like her!' shouted Lacrimosa. 'Be resolute, my dear,' said the Count. 'Remember – that which does not kill us can only make us stronger.' 'And that which does kill us leaves us dead!' snarled Lacrimosa. 'You saw what happened to the others! You got your fingers burned!' 'A moment's lapse of concentration,' said the Count. 'That old witch is not a threat. She's a vampire. Subservient to us. She'll be seeing the world differently-' 'Are you mad? Something killed Cryptopher.' 'He let himself be frightened.' The rest of the family looked at the Count. Vlad and Lacrimosa exchanged a glance. 'I am supremely confident,' said the Count. His smile looked like a death mask, waxen and disturbingly tranquil. 'My mind is like a rock. My nerve is firm. A vampire with his wits about him, or her, of course, can never be defeated. Didn't I teach you this? What's this one?' His hand flew from his pocket, holding a square of white cardboard. 'Oh, Father, this is really no time for-' Lacrimosa froze, then jerked her arm in front of her face. 'Put it away! Put it awayl it's the Agatean Chlong of Destiny!' 'Exactly, which is merely three straight lines and two curved lines pleasantly arranged which-' '-I'd never have known about if you hadn't told me, you old fool!' screamed the girl, backing away. The Count turned to his son. 'And do you-' he began. Vlad sprang back, putting his hand over his eyes. 'It hurts!’  he shouted. 'Dear me, the two of you haven't been practising-' the Count began, and turned the card around so that he could look at it. He screwed up his eyes and turned his face away. 'What have you done to us?!' Lacrimosa screamed. 'You've taught us how to see hundreds of the damned holy thingsl They're everywherel Every religion has a different one! You taught us that, you stupid bastard! Lines and crosses and circles . . . Oh, my. . .' She caught sight of the stone wall behind her astonished brother and shuddered. 'Everywhere I look I see something holy! You've taught us to see patterns!' she snarled at her father, teeth exposed. 'It'll be dawn soon,' said the Countess nervously. 'Will it hurt?' 'It won't! Of course it won't!’  shouted Count Magpyr, as the others glanced up at the pale light coming through a high window. 'It's a learned psychochromatic reaction! A superstition! It's all in the mind!' 'What else is in our minds, Father?' said Vlad coldly. The Count was circling, trying to keep an eye on Lacrimosa. The girl was flexing her fingers and snarling. 'I said-' 'Nothing's in our minds that we didn't put there!' the Count roared. 'I saw that old witch's mind! It's weak. She relies on trickery! She couldn't possibly find a way in! I wonder if there are other agendas here?' He bared his teeth at Lacrimosa. The Countess fanned herself desperately. 'Well, I think we're all getting a little bit overexcited,' she said. 'I think we should all settle down and have a nice cup of . . . a nice . . . of tea . . . a cup of . . .' 'We're vampires!' Lacrimosa shouted. 'Then let's act like them!' screamed the Count.     Agnes opened her eyes, kicked up, and the man with the hammer and stake lost all interest in vampires and in consciousness as well. 'Whsz-' Agnes removed from her mouth what was, this time, a fig. 'Can you get it into your stupid heads that I'm not a vampire? And this isn't a lemon. It's a fig. And I'd watch that bloke with the stake. He's altogether too keen on it. I reckon there's some psychology there-' 'I wouldn't have let him use it,' said Piotr, close by her ear. 'But you did act very odd and then you just collapsed. So we thought we'd better see what woke up.' He stood up. The citizens of Escrow stood watching among the trees, their faces gaunt in the flickering torchlight. 'It's all right, she's still not one,' he said. There was some general relaxation. You really have changed, said Perdita. 'You're not affected?' said Agnes. She felt as if she was on the end of a string with someone jerking the other end. No. I'm the bit of you that watches, remember? 'What?' said Piotr. 'I really, really hope this wears off,' said Agnes. 'I keep tripping over my own feet! I'm walking wrong! My whole body feels wrong!' 'Er ... can we go on to the castle?' said Piotr. 'She's already there,' said Agnes. 'I don't know how, but-' She stopped and looked at the worried faces, and for a moment she found herself thinking in the way Granny Weatherwax thought. 'Yes,' she said, more slowly. 'I reckon . . . I mean, I think we ought to get there right away. People have to kill their own vampires.'     Nanny hurried down the steps again. 'I told you!’  she said. 'That's Esme Weatherwax down there, that is. I told you! I knew she was just biding her timel Hah, I'd like to see the bloodsucker who could put one over on her!’ 'I wouldn't,' said Igor, fervently. Nanny stepped over a vampire who hadn't noticed, in the shadows, a cunning combination of a tripwire, a heavy weight and a stake, and opened a door into the courtyard. 'Coo-ee, Esme!' Granny Weatherwax pushed Oats away and stepped forward. 'Is the baby all right?' she said. 'Magrat and Es . . . young Esme are locked up in the crypt. It's a very strong door,' said Nanny. 'And Thcrapth ith guarding them,' said Igor. 'He'th a wonderful guard dog.' Granny raised her eyebrows and looked Igor up and down. 'I don't think I know this . . . these gentlemen,' she said. 'Oh, this is Igor,' said Nanny. 'A man of many parts.' 'So it seems,' said Granny. Nanny glared at Mightily Oats. 'What did you bring him for?' she said. 'Couldn't seem to shake him off,' said Granny. 'I always try hiding behind the sofa, myself,' said Nanny. Oats looked away. There was a scream from somewhere on the battlements. The phoenix had spotted another vampire. 'All over now bar sweeping up the dust, then,' said Nanny. 'They didn't seem very smart-' 'The Count's still here,' said Granny flatly. 'Oh, I vote we just set fire to the place and go home,' said Nanny. 'It's not as though he'll be coming back to Lancre in a hurry-' 'There'th a crowd coming,' said Igor. 'I can't hear anything,' said Nanny. 'I've got very good ear'th,' said Igor. 'Ah, well, of course some of us don't get to choose,' said Nanny. There was a clattering of footsteps across the bridge and people were suddenly swarming over the rubble. 'Isn't that Agnes?' said Nanny. Normally there'd be no mistaking the figure advancing across the courtyard, but there was something about the walk, the way every foot thudded down as though the boots were not on speaking terms with the earth. And the arms, too, swung in a way- 'I can't be having with this!' Agnes shouted, marching up to Granny. 'I can't think straight. It's you, isn't it?' Granny reached out and touched the wounds on her neck. 'Ah, I see,' she said. 'One of them bit you, yes?' 'Yes! And somehow you spoke to me!' 'Not me. That was something in your blood talkin', I reckon,' said Granny. 'Who're all these people? Why's that man trying to set fire to the wall? Don't he know stone don't burn?' 'Oh, that's Claude, he's a bit single minded. Just let me know if he picks up a stake, will you? Look, they're from Escrow, it's a town not far away . . . The Magpyrs treated them like . . . well . . . pets. Farm animals! Just like they were trying to do back home!' 'We ain't leaving until we've dealt with the Count,' said Granny. 'Otherwise he'll be sneaking back-' 'Er, excuse me,' said Oats, who seemed to have been thinking about something. 'Excuse me, but did someone mention that the Queen was locked up in the crypt?' 'Safe as houses,' said Nanny. 'Huge thick door and you can bar it from the inside.' 'How safe are houses from vampires?' said Oats. Granny's head turned sharply. 'What do you mean?' Oats took a step backwards. 'Ah, I know what he means,' said Nanny. 'It's all right, we're not daft, she won't open up until she knows it's us-' 'I meant, how does the door stop vampires?' 'Stop them? It's a door.' 'So . . . they can't turn themselves into some sort of mist, then?' said Oats, frying in the joint radiation of their stares. 'Only I thought that vampires could, you see. I thought everyone knew that who knows anything about vampires. . .' Granny turned on Igor. 'D'you know anything about this?' Igor's mouth opened and shut a few times. 'The old Count never did anything like that,' he said. 'Yes,' said Nanny, 'But he played fair.' There was a rising howl from the depths of the castle, cut off suddenly. 'That was Thcrapth!' said Igor, breaking into a run. 'Thcraapthhh?' said Agnes, wrinkling her brow. Nanny grabbed her arm and dragged her after Igor. Granny swayed a little. Her eyes had an unfocused look. Oats glanced at her, made up his mind, staggered rather theatrically and sprawled in the dust. Granny blinked, shook her head and glared down at him. 'Hah! All too much for you, eh?' she said hoarsely. Trembling fingers reached down for Oats. He took them, taking care not to pull, and stood up. 'If you could just give me a hand,' he said, as her grateful weight hit his shoulder. 'Right,' said Granny. 'Now let's find the kitchens.' 'Huh? What do we want with the kitchens?' 'After a night like this we could all do with a cup of tea,' said Granny.     Magrat leaned against the door as a second thump rattled the bolts. Beside her, Scraps started to growl. Perhaps it was something to do with his extensive surgery, but Scraps growled in half a dozen different pitches all at once. Then there was silence, which was even more terrifying than the thumping. A faint noise made her look down. A green smoke was pouring through the keyhole. It was thick, and had an oily quality . . . She darted across the room and snatched up a jar that had contained lemons so sportingly provided by the mysterious old Count that Igor thought so highly of. She wrenched off the lid and held it under the keyhole. When the smoke had filled it up she dropped a few cloves of garlic in and slammed the lid back on. The jar rocked urgently on the floor. Then Magrat glanced at the lid of the well. When she lifted it up she heard rushing water a long way below. Well, that was likely, wasn't it? There must be lots of underground rivers in the mountains. She held the jar over the centre of the hole and let it go. Then she slammed the lid back down. Young Esme gurgled in the corner. Magrat hurried over to her and shook a rattle. 'Look at the pretty bunny rabbit,' she said, and darted back again. There was whispering on the other side of the door. Then Nanny Ogg's voice said, 'It's all right, dear, we've got them. You can open the door now. Lawks.' Magrat rolled her eyes. 'Is that really you, Nanny?' 'That's right, dear.' 'Thank goodness. Just tell me the joke about the old woman, the priest and the rhinoceros then and I'll let you in.' There was a pause, and some more whispering. 'I don't think We've got time for that, dear,' said the voice. 'Ha ha, nice try,' said Magrat. 'I've dropped one of you in the river! Who was it?' After some silence the voice of the Count said, 'We thought the Countess could persuade you to listen to reason.' 'Not in a jar she can't,' said Magrat. 'And I've got more jars if you want to try it again!' 'We had hoped that you would be sensible about this,' said the Count. 'However. . .' The door slammed back, pulling the bolts out of the wall. Magrat grabbed the baby and stepped backwards, her other hand raised. 'You come near me and I'll stab you with this!' she shouted. 'It's a teddybear,' said the Count. 'I'm afraid it wouldn't work, even if you sharpened it.'     The door was so hard that the wood was like stone with a grain. Someone had once thought hard about the maximum amount of force a really determined mob would be able to apply, and had then overdesigned. It hung open. 'But we heard her put the bars across!' wailed Nanny. A variously coloured lump was sprawled in front of the door. Igor knelt down and picked up a limp paw. 'They've killed Thcrapth! The bathtardth!’ 'They've got Magrat and the babby!' snapped Nanny. 'He wath my only friend!' Nanny's arm shot out and, despite his bulk, Igor was lifted up by his collar. 'You're going to have one very serious enemy really soon, my lad, unless you help us out right now! Oh, for heaven's sake. . .' With her spare hand she reached into her knickerleg and produced a large crumpled handkerchief. 'Have a good blow, will you?' There was a noise like a foghorn being trodden on. 'Now, where would they take them? The place is swarming with righteous peasants!' said Nanny, when he'd finished. 'He wath alwayth ready with hith waggy tailth and hith cold nothe-' Igor sobbed. 'Where, Igor?' Igor pointed with his finger, or at least one that he currently owned, to the far door. 'That goeth to the vaultth,' he said. 'An' they can get out through the iron gate down in the valley. You'll never catch them!' 'But it's still bolted,' said Agnes. 'Then they're thtill in the cathle, which ith thtupid-' He was interrupted by several huge organ chords, which made the floor rumble. 'Any of the Escrow folk big musicians?' said Nanny, lowering Igor. 'How do I know?' said Agnes, as another couple of descending chords brought dust down from the ceiling. 'They wanted to hammer a stake in me and boil my head! That is not the time to ask them to give a little whistle!' The organ piped its summons once more. 'Why'd they stay?' said Nanny. 'They could be dug in deep somewhere by now- Oh . . .' 'Granny wouldn't run,' said Agnes. 'No, Granny Weatherwax likes a showdown,' said Nanny, grinning artfully. 'And they're thinkin' like her. Somehow she's making them think like her. . .' 'She thinks like her, too,' said Agnes. 'Let's hope she's had more practice, then,' said Nanny. 'Come on!'     Lacrimosa pulled an organ stop marked 'Ghastly Face at Window' and was rewarded with a chord, a crash of thunder and a slightly mechanical scream. 'Thank goodness we don't take after your side of the family, Father, that's all I can say,' she said. 'Although I suppose it could be fun if we could arrange some sort of mechanical linkage to the torture chamber. That certainly wasn't a very realistic scream.' 'This is ridiculous,' said Vlad. 'We've got the child. We've got the woman. Why don't we just leave? There're plenty of other castles.' 'That would be running away,' said the Count. 'And surviving,' said Vlad, rubbing his head. 'We don't run,' said the Count. 'And- No, step back, please . . .' This was to the mob, which was hovering uncertainly just inside the doors. Mobs become uncertain very quickly, in view of the absence of a central brain, and in this case the hesitation was caused by the sight of Magrat and the baby. Vlad had a bruise on his forehead. A push-and-go wooden duck on wheels can cause quite a lot of damage if wielded with enough force. 'Well done,' said the Count, cradling baby Esme on one arm. Magrat writhed to escape the grip of his other hand, but it clamped her wrist like steel. 'You see? Absolute obedience. It's just as in chess. If you take the Queen, you've as good as won. It doesn't matter if a few pawns are lost.' 'That's a very nasty way to talk about Mother,' said Vlad. 'I am very attached to your mother,' said the Count. 'And she'll find a way to return, in the fullness of time. A voyage will be good for her health. Some fisherman will find the jar and next thing you know she'll be back with us, fat and healthy- Ah, the inestimable Mrs Ogg . . .' 'Don't you go smarming me!' snapped Nanny, pushing her way. through the bewildered crowd. 'I'm fed up with you smarming at me smarmily as if you were Mister Smarm! Now you just free the both of them or-' 'Ah, so quickly we get to or,' sighed the Count. 'But I will say: you will all leave the castle, and then we shall see. Perhaps we shall let the Queen go. But the little princess . . . Isn't she charming? She can remain as our guest. She'll brighten the place up-' 'She's coming back to Lancre with us, you bastard!' screamed Magrat. She twisted in the Count's grip and tried to slap him, but Agnes saw her face whiten as his hand tightened on her wrist. 'That's very bad language for a queen,' said the Count. 'And I am still very strong, even for a vampire. But you're right. We shall all go back to Lancre. One big happy family, living in the castle. I must say, this place is losing its attractions. Oh, don't blame yourself, Mrs Ogg. I'm sure others will do that for you-' He stopped. A sound that had been on the edge of hearing was getting louder. It had a rhythmic, almost tinny sound. The crowd parted. Granny Weatherwax walked forward, slowly stirring. 'No milk in this place,' she said. 'Not to be wondered at, really. I sliced a bit of lemon, but it's not the same, I always think.' She laid the spoon in the saucer with a clink that echoed around the hall, and gave the Count a smile. 'Am I too late?' she said.     The bolts rattled back, one by one. '. . . 'th gone too far,' Igor muttered. 'The old marthter wouldn't. . .' The door creaked back on lovingly rusted hinges. Cool dry air puffed out of the darkness. Igor fumbled with some matches and lit a torch. '. . . it'th all very well wanting a nithe long retht, but thith ith a dithgrathe . . .' He ran along the dark corridors, half rough masonry, half sheer naked rock, and reached another chamber that was completely empty apart from a large stone sarcophagus in the centre, on the side of which was carved MAGPYR. He stuffed the torch into a bracket, removed his coat and after considerable pushing heaved the stone lid aside. 'Thorry about thith, marthter,' he grunted as it thudded to the ground. Inside the coffin grey dust twinkled in the torchlight. '... coming up here, mething everything up. . .' Igor picked up his coat and took a thick wad of material out of his pocket. He unrolled it on the edge of the stone,. Now the light glinted off an array of scalpels, scissors and needles . . . . threatening little babieth now . . . you never done that . . . only adventurouth femaleth over the age of theventeen and looking good in a nightie, you alwayth thed . . .' He selected a scalpel and, with some care, nicked the little finger of his left hand. A drop of blood appeared, swelled and dropped on to the dust, where it smoked. 'That one'th for Thcrapth,' said Igor with grim satisfaction. By the time he'd reached the door white mist was already pouring over the edge of the coffin.     'I'm an old lady' said Granny Weatherwax, looking around sternly. 'I'd like to sit down, thank you so very much.' A bench was rushed forward. Granny sat, and eyed the Count. 'What were you saying?' she said. 'Ah, Esmerelda,' said the Count. 'At last you come to join us. The call of the blood is too strong to be disobeyed, yes?' 'I hope so,' said Granny. 'We're all going to walk out of here, Miss Weatherwax.' 'You're not leaving here,' said Granny. She stirred the tea again. The eyes of all three vampires swivelled to follow the spoon. 'You have no choice but to obey me. You know that,' said the Count. 'Oh, there's always a choice,' said Granny. Vlad and Lacrimosa leaned down on either side of their father. There was some hurried whispering. The Count looked up. 'No, you couldn't have resisted it,' he said. 'Not even you!' 'I won't say it didn't cost me,' said Granny. She stirred the tea again. There was more whispering. 'We do have the Queen and the baby' said the Count. 'I believe you think highly of them.' Granny raised the cup halfway to her lips. 'Kill 'em,' she said. 'It won't benefit you.' 'Esme!' snapped Nanny Ogg and Magrat together. Granny put the cup back in the saucer. Agnes thought she saw Vlad sigh. She could feel the pull herself . . . I know what she did, whispered Perdita. So do I, thought Agnes. 'He's bluffing,' Granny said. 'Oh? You'd like a vampire queen one day, would you?' said Lacrimosa. 'Had one once, in Lancre,' said Granny conversationally. 'Poor woman got bitten by one of you people. Got by on blue steak and such. Never laid a tooth on anyone, the way I heard it. Griminir the Impaler, she was.' 'The Impaler?' 'Oh, I just said she wasn't a bloodsucker. I didn't say she was a nice person,' said Granny. 'She didn't mind shedding blood, but she drew the line at drinking it. You don't have to, neither.' 'You know nothing about true vampires!' 'I know more'n you think, and I know about Gytha Ogg,' said Granny. Nanny Ogg blinked. Granny Weatherwax raised the teacup again, and then lowered it. 'She likes a drink. She'll tell you it has to be best brandy. . .' Nanny nodded affirmation '. . . and that's certainly what she desires, but really she'll settle for beer just like everyone else.' Nanny Ogg shrugged as Granny went on: 'But you wouldn't settle for black puddings, would you, because what you really drink is power over people. I know you like I know myself. And one of the things I know is that you ain't going to hurt a hair of that child's head. Leastways,' and here Granny absentmindedly stirred the tea again, 'if she had any yet, you wouldn't. You can't, see.' She picked up the cup and carefully scraped it on the edge of the saucer. Agnes saw Lacrimosa's lips part, hungrily. 'So all I'm really here for, d'you see, is to see whether you get justice or mercy,' said Granny. 'It's just a matter of choosing.' 'You really think we wouldn't harm meat?' said Lacrimosa, striding forward. 'Watch!' She brought her hand down hard towards the baby, and then jerked back as if she'd been stung. 'Can't do it,' said Granny. 'I nearly broke my arm!' 'Shame,' said Granny calmly. 'You've put some . . . something magical in the child, have you?' said the Count. 'Can't imagine who'd think I'd do such a thing,' said Granny, while behind her Nanny Ogg looked down at her boots. 'So here's my offer, you see. You hand back Magrat and the baby and we'll chop your heads off.' 'And that's what you call justice, is it?' said the Count. 'No, that's what I call mercy,' said Granny. She put the cup back in the saucer. 'For goodness' sake, woman, are you going to drink that damn tea or not?' roared the Count. Granny sipped it and made a face. 'Why, what have I been thinkin' of? I've been so busy talking it's got cold,' she said, and daintily tipped the contents of the cup on to the floor. Lacrimosa groaned. 'It'll probably wear off soon,' Granny went on, in the same easy voice. 'But until it does, you see, you'll not harm a child, you'll not harm Magrat, you hate the thought of drinking blood, and you won't run because you'll never run from a challenge. . .' 'What will wear off?' said Vlad. 'Oh, they're strong, your walls of thought,' said Granny dreamily. 'I couldn't get through them.' The Count smiled. Granny smiled, too. 'So I didn't,' she added.     The mist rolled through the crypt, flowing along the floor, walls and ceiling. It poured up the steps and along a tunnel, the billows boiling ahead on one another as though engaged in a war. An unwary rat, creeping across the flagstones, was too late. The mist flowed over it. There was a squeak, cut off, and when the mist had gone a few small white bones were all that remained. Some equally small bones, but fully assembled and wearing a black hooded robe and carrying a tiny scythe, appeared out of nowhere and walked over to them. Skeletal claws tippy-tapped on the stone. 'Squeak?' said the ghost of the rat pathetically. SQUEAK, said the Death of Rats. This was really all it needed to know.     'You wanted to know where I'd put my self,' said Granny. 'I didn't go anywhere. I just put it in something alive, and you took it. You invited me in. I'm in every muscle in your body and I'm in your head, oh yes. I was in the blood, Count. In the blood. I ain't been vampired. You've been Weatherwaxed. All of you. And you've always listened to your blood, haven't you?' The Count stared at her, open mouthed. The spoon dropped out of her saucer and tinkled on to the floor, raising a wave in a thin white mist. It was rolling in from the walls, leaving a shrinking circle of black and white tiles in the middle of which were the vampires. Igor pushed his way through the crowd until he was alongside Nanny. 'It'th all right,' he said, 'I couldn't let it go on, it wath dithgratheful. . .' The mist rose in a boiling tower, there was a moment of discontinuity, a feeling of sliced time, and then a figure stood behind Vlad and Lacrimosa. He was rather taller than most men, and wearing evening dress that might have been in style once upon a time. His hair was streaked with grey and brushed back over his ears in a way that gave the impression his head had been designed for its aerodynamic efficiency. Beautifully manicured hands gripped the shoulders of the younger vampires. Lacrimosa turned to scratch him, and cowered when he snarled like a tiger. Then the face returned to something closer to human, arid the newcomer smiled. He seemed genuinely pleased to see everyone. 'Good morning,' he said. 'Another bloody vampire?' said Nanny. 'Not any old vampire,' said Igor, hopping from one foot to the other. 'It'th the old marthter! Old Red Eyeth ith back!' Granny stood up, ignoring the tall figure firmly holding the two suddenly docile vampires. She advanced on the Count. 'I know all about what you can and can't do,' she said, 'because you let me in. An' that means you can't do what I can't do. An' you think just like me, the difference bein' I've done it longer and I'm better'n you at it.' 'You're meat,' snarled the Count. 'Clever meat!' 'And you invited me in,' said Granny. 'I'm not the sort to go where I'm not welcome, I'm sure.' In the Count's arms the baby started to cry. He stood up. 'How sure are you that I won't harm this child?' he said. 'I wouldn't. So you can't.' The Count's face contorted as he wrestled with his feelings and also with Magrat, who was kicking him on the shins. 'It could have worked. . .' he said, and for the first time the certainty had been drained from his voice. 'You mean it could have worked for you!' shouted Agnes. 'We are vampires. We cannot help what we are.' 'Only animals can't help what they are,' said Granny. 'Will you give me the child now?' 'If I . . .'the Count began, and then straightened up. 'No! I don't have to bargain! I can fight you, just as you fought me! And if I walk out of here now, I don't think there's anyone who'll dare stop me. Look at you . . . all of you . . . and look at me. And now look at . . . him.' He nodded at the figure holding Vlad and Lacrimosa as still as statues. 'Is that what you want?' 'Sorry . . . who is this we're supposed to be looking at?' said Granny. 'Oh ... Igor's "old master"? The old Count Magpyr, I believe.' The old Count nodded gracefully. 'Your servant, madam,' he said. 'I doubt it,' said Granny. 'Oh, no one minded him,' said Piotr, from among the Escrow citizens. 'He only ever came round every few years and anyway if you remembered about the garlic he wasn't a problem. He didn't expect us to like him.' The old Count smiled at him. 'You look familiar. One of the Ravi family, aren't you?' 'Piotr, sir. Son of Hans.' 'Ah, yes. Very similar bone structure. Do remember me to your grandmother.' 'She passed away ten years ago, sir.' 'Oh, really? I am so sorry. Time goes so quickly when you're dead.' The old master sighed. 'A very fine figure in a nightdress, as I recall.' 'Oh, he was all right,' said someone else in the crowd. 'We got a nip every now and again but we got over it.' 'That's a familiar voice,' said the vampire. 'Are you a Veyzen?' 'Yessir.' 'Related to Arno Veyzen?' 'Great-granddaddy, sir.' 'Good man. Killed me stone dead seventy-five years ago. Stake right through the heart from twenty paces. You should be proud.' The man in the crowd beamed with ancestral pride. 'We've still got the stake hung up over the fireplace, yer honour,' he said. 'Well done. Good man. I like to see the old ways kept up' Count Magpyr screamed. 'You can't possibly prefer that?! He's a monster!' 'But he never made an appointment!' shouted Agnes, even louder. 'I bet he never thought it was all just an arrangement!' Count Magpyr was edging towards the door with his hostages. 'No,' he said, 'this is not how it's going to happen. If anyone really believes that I won't harm my charming hostages, perhaps you will try to stop me? Does anyone really believe that old woman?' Nanny Ogg opened her mouth, caught Granny's eye, and shut it again. The crowd parted behind the Count as he dragged Magrat towards the door. He walked into the figure of Mightily Oats. 'Have you ever thought of letting Om into your life?' said the priest. His voice trembled. His face glistened with sweat. 'Oh . . . you again?' said the Count. 'If I can resist her, little boy, you are not a problem!' Oats held his axe before him as if it was made of some rare and delicate metal. 'Begone, foul fiend-' he began. 'Oh, dear me,' said the Count, thrusting the axe aside. 'And don't you learn anything, you stupid man? Little stupid man who has a little stupid faith in a little stupid god?' 'But it . . . lets me see things as they are,' Oats managed. 'Really? And you think you can stand in my way? An axe isn't even a holy symbol!' 'Oh.' Oats looked crestfallen. Agnes saw his shoulders sag as he lowered the blade. Then he looked up, smiled brightly and said, 'Let's make it so.' Agnes saw the blade leave a gold trail in the air as it swept around. There was a soft, almost silken sound. The axe dropped on to the flagstones. In the sudden silence it clanged like a bell. Then Oats reached out and snatched the child from the vampire's unresisting hands. He held her out to Magrat, who took her in shocked silence. The first sound after that was the rustle of Granny's dress as she stood up and walked over to the axe. She nudged it with her foot. 'If I've got a fault,' she said, contriving to suggest that this was only a theoretical possibility, 'it's not knowing when to turn and run. And I tends to bluff on a weak hand.' Her voice echoed in the hall. No one else had even breathed out yet. She nodded at the Count, who'd slowly raised his hands to the red wound that ran all around his neck. 'It was a sharp axe,' she said. 'Who says there's no mercy in the world? Just don't nod, that's all. And someone'll take you down to a nice cold coffin and I daresay fifty years'll just fly past and maybe you'll wake with enough sense to be stupid.' There was a murmur from the mob as they came back to life. Granny shook her head. 'They want you deader than that, I see,' she said, as the Count gazed ahead of him with frozen, desperate eyes and the blood welled and seeped between his fingers. 'An' there's ways. Oh, yes. We could burn you to ashes and scatter them in the sea-' This met with a general sigh of approval. '-or throw 'em up in the air in the middle of a gale-' This got a smattering of applause. '-or just pay some sailor to drop you over the edge.' This even got a few whistles. 'Of course, you'd come back alive again, I suppose, one day. But just floating in space for millions of years, oh, that sounds very boring to me.' She raised a hand to silence the crowd. 'No. Fifty years to think about things, that's about right. People need vampires,' she said. 'They helps 'em remember what stakes and garlic are for.' She snapped her fingers at the crowd. 'Come on, two of you take him down to the vaults. Show some respect for the dead-' 'That's not enough!' said Piotr, stepping forward. 'Not after all he-' 'Then when he comes back you deal with him yourself,' snapped Granny loudly. 'Teach your children! Don't trust the cannibal just 'cos he's usin' a knife and fork! And remember that vampires don't go where they're not invited!' They backed away. Granny relaxed a little. 'This time round, it's up to me. My . . . choice.' She leaned closer to the Count's horrible grimace. 'You tried to take my mind away from me,' she said in a lower voice. 'And that's everything to me. Reflect on that. Try to learn.' She stood back. 'Take him away.' She turned away, to the tall figure. 'So ... you're the old master, are you?' she said. 'Alison Weatherwax?' said the old master. 'I have a good memory for necks.' Granny froze for a second. 'What? No! Er ... how do you know the name?' 'Why, she passed through here, what, fifty years ago. We met briefly, and then she cut off my head and stuck a stake in my heart.' The Count sighed happily. 'A very spirited woman. You're a relative, I presume? I lose track of generations, I'm afraid.' 'Granddaughter,' said Granny weakly. 'There's a phoenix outside the castle, Igor tells me...' 'It'll leave, I expect.' The Count nodded. 'I've always rather liked them,' he said wistfully. 'There were so many of them when I was young. They made the nights .. . pretty. So pretty. Everything was so much simpler then . . .' His voice trailed off, and then came back louder. 'But now, apparently, we're in modern times.' 'That's what they say,' murmured Granny. 'Well, madam, I've never taken too much notice of them. Fifty years later they never seem so modern as all that.' He shook the younger vampires like dolls. 'I do apologize for my nephew's behaviour. Quite out of keeping for a vampire. Would you people from Escrow like to kill these two? It's the least I could do.' 'Ain't they your relatives?' said Nanny Ogg, as the crowd surged forward. 'Oh, yes. But we've never been much of a species for playing happy families.' Vlad looked imploringly at Agnes, and reached out to her. 'You wouldn't let them kill me, would you? You wouldn't let them do this to me? We could have . . . we might... you wouldn't, would you?' The crowd hesitated. This sounded like an important plea. A hundred pairs of eyes stared at Agnes. She took his hand. I suppose we could work on him, .said Perdita. But Agnes thought about Escrow, and the queues, and the children playing while they waited, and how evil might come animal sharp in the night, or greyly by day on a list... 'Vlad,' she said gently, looking deep into his eyes, 'I'd even hold their coats.' 'A fine sentiment but that ain't happenin',' said Granny, behind her. 'You take 'em away, Count. Teach 'em the old ways. Teach 'em stupidity.' The Count nodded and grinned toothily. 'Certainly. I shall teach them that to live you have to rise again-' 'Hah! You don't live, Count. The phoenix lives. You just don't know you're dead. Now get along with you!' There was another moment sliced out of time and then a flock of magpies rose up from where the three vampires had been, screaming and chattering, and disappeared in the darkness of the roof. 'There's hundreds of them!' said Agnes to Nanny. 'Well, vampires can turn into things,' said Nanny. 'Everyone knows that, who knows anything about vampires.' 'And what do three hundred magpies mean?' 'They mean it's time to put covers on all the furniture,' said Nanny. 'And that it's time for me to have a very big drink.' The crowd began to break up, aware that the big show was over. 'Why didn't she just let us wipe them out?' hissed Piotr by Agnes's ear. 'Death's too good for them!' 'Yes,' said Agnes. 'I suppose that's why she didn't let them have it.' Oats hadn't moved. He was still staring straight ahead of him, but his hands were shaking. Agnes led him gently to a bench and eased him down. 'I killed him, didn't I?' he whispered. 'Sort of,' said Agnes. 'It's a bit hard to tell with vampires.' 'There was just nothing else to do! Everything just went . . . the air just went gold, and there was just this one moment to do something-' 'I don't think anyone's complaining,' said Agnes. You've got to admit he's quite attractive, whispered Perdita. If only he'd do something about that boil. . . Magrat sat down on the other side of Oats, clutching the baby. She breathed deeply a few times. 'That was very brave of you,' she said. 'No, it wasn't,' said Oats hoarsely. 'I thought Mistress Weatherwax was going to do something. . .' 'She did,' said Magrat, shivering. 'Oh, she did.' Granny Weatherwax sat down on the other end of the bench and pinched the bridge of her nose. 'I just want to go home now,' she said. 'I just want to go home and sleep for a week.' She yawned. 'I'm dyin' for a cuppa.' 'I thought you'd made one!' said Agnes. 'You had us slavering for it!' 'Where'd I get tea here? It was just some mud in water. But I know Nanny keeps a bag of it somewhere on her person.' She yawned again. 'Make the tea, Magrat.' Agnes opened her mouth, but Magrat waved her into silence and then handed her the baby. 'Certainly, Granny,' she said, gently pushing Agnes back into her seat. 'I'll just find out where Igor keeps the kettle, shall I?'     Mightily Oats stepped out on to the battlements. The sun was well up and a breeze was blowing in over the forests of Uberwald. A few magpies chattered in the trees nearest the castle. Granny was leaning with her elbows on the wall, staring out over the thinning mists. 'It looks like it's going to be a fine day,' said Oats happily. And he did feel happy, to his amazement. There was sharpness to the air, and the sense of the future brimming with possibilities. He remembered the moment when he'd swung the axe, when both of him had swung it together. Perhaps there was a way . . . 'There's a storm coming down from the Hub later,' said Granny. 'Well . . . at least that'll be good for the crops, then,' said Oats. Something flickered overhead. In the new daylight the wings of the phoenix were hard to see, mere yellow shimmers in the air, with the tiny shape of the little hawk in the centre as it circled high over the castle. 'Why would anyone want to kill something like that?' said Oats. 'Oh, some people'll kill anything for the fun of it.' 'Is it a true bird or is it something that exists within a-' 'It's a thing that is,' said Granny sharply. 'Don't go spilling allegory all down your shirt.' 'Well, I feel . . . blessed to have seen it.' 'Really? I genially feel the same about the sunrise,' said Granny. 'You would too, at my time of life.' She sighed, and then seemed to be speaking mainly to herself. 'She never went to the bad, then, whatever people said. And you'd have to be on your toes with that of vampire. She never went to the bad. You heard him say that, right? He said it. He didn't have to.' 'Er . . . yes.' 'She'd have been older'n me, too. Bloody good witch was Nana Alison. Sharp as a knife. Had her funny little ways, o' course, but who hasn't?' 'No one I know, certainly.' 'Right. You're right.' Granny straightened up. 'Good,' she said. 'Er. ..' 'Yes?' Oats was looking down at the drawbridge and the road to the castle. 'There's a man in a nightshirt covered in mud and waving a sword down there,' he said, 'followed by a lot of Lancre people and some . . . little blue men. . .' He looked down again. 'At least it looks like mud,' he added. 'That'll be the King,' said Granny. 'Big Aggie's given him some of her brose, by the sound of it. He'll save the day.' 'Er . . . hasn't the day been saved?' 'Oh, he's the King. It looks like it might be a nice day, so let him save it. You've got to give kings something to do. Anyway, after a drink from Big Aggie he won't know what day it is. We'd better get down there.' 'I feel I should thank you,' said Oats, when they reached the spiral staircase. 'For helping you across the mountains, you mean?' 'The world is . . . different.' Oats's gaze went out across the haze, and the forests, and the purple mountains. 'Everywhere I look I see something holy.' For the first time since he'd met her he saw Granny Weatherwax smile properly. Normally her mouth went up at the corners just before something unpleasant was going to happen to someone who deserved it, but this time she appeared to be pleased with what she'd heard. 'That's a start, then,' she said.     The Magpyrs' coach had been righted and dragged up to the castle. Now it returned, with Jason Ogg at the reins. He was concentrating on avoiding the bumps. They made his bruises tender. Besides, the royal family was on board and he was feeling extremely loyal at the moment. Jason Ogg was very big and very strong and, therefore, not a violent man, because he did not need to be. Sometimes he was summoned down to the pub to sort out the more serious fights, which he usually did by picking up both contestants and holding them apart until they stopped struggling. If that didn't work, he'd bang them together a few times, in as friendly a way as possible. Aggressiveness did not normally impress him, but since in yesterday's battle at Lancre Castle he'd had to physically lift Verence off the ground in order to stop him slaughtering enemies, friends, furniture, walls and his own feet, he was certainly seeing his king in a new light. It had turned out to be an extremely short battle. The mercenaries had been only too keen to surrender, especially after Shawn's assault. The real fight had been to keep Verence away from them long enough to allow them to say so. Jason was impressed. King Verence, inside the coach, laid his head in his wife's lap and groaned as she wiped his brow with a cloth . . . ' At a respectable distance the coach was followed by a cart containing the witches, although what it contained mostly was snore. Granny Weatherwax had a primal snore. It had never been tamed. No one had ever had to sleep next to it, to curb its wilder excesses by means of a kick, a prod in the small of the back or a pillow used as a bludgeon. It had had years in a lonely bedroom to perfect the knark, the graaah and the gnoc, gnoc, gnoc unimpeded by the nudges, jabs and occasional attempts at murder that usually moderate the snore impulse over time. She sprawled in the straw at the bottom of the cart, mouth open, and snored. 'You half expect to find the shafts sawed through, don't you?' said Nanny, who was leading the horse. 'Still, you can hear it doin' her good.' 'I'm a bit worried about Mister Oats, though,' said Agnes. 'He's just sitting there and grinning.' Oats was sitting with his legs over the tail of the cart, staring happily at the sky. 'Did he hit his head?' said Nanny. 'I don't think so.' 'Let him be, then. At least he ain't settin' fire to anything . . . Oh, here's an old friend. . .' Igor, tongue protruding from the corner of his mouth in the ferocity of his concentration, was putting the finishing touches to a new sign. It read 'Why not vysyt our Gifte Shoppe?' He stood up and nodded as the cart drew near. 'The old marthter came up with thome new ideath while he wath dead,' he said, feeling that some explanation was called for. 'Thith afternoon I've got to thtart building a funfair, whatever that ith.' 'That's basic'ly swings,' said Nanny. Igor brightened up. 'Oh, I've plenty of rope and I've alwayth been a dab hand at nootheth,' he said. 'No, that's not-' Agnes began, but Nanny Ogg cut in quickly. 'I s'pose it all depends on who's going to have the fun,' she said. 'Well, be seeing you, Igor. Don't do anything I wouldn't do, if you ever find anything I wouldn't do.' 'We're very sorry about Scraps,' said Agnes. 'Perhaps we can find you a puppy or-' 'Thankth all the thame, but no. There'th only one Thcrapth.' He waved to them until they were round the next bend. As Agnes turned round again she saw the three magpies. They were perched on a branch over the road. "Three for a funeral-"' she began. A stone whirred up. There was an indignant squawk and a shower of feathers. 'Two for mirth,' said Nanny, in a self-satisfied voice. 'Nanny, that was cheating.' 'Witches always cheat,' said Nanny Ogg. She glanced back at the sleeping figure behind them. 'Everyone knows that – who knows anything about witches.' They went home to Lancre.     It had been raining again. Water had seeped into Oats's tent and also into the harmonium, which now emitted an occasional squashed-frog burp when it was played. The songbooks also smelled rather distressingly of cat. He gave up on them and turned to the task of disassembling his camp bed, which had skinned two knuckles and crushed one finger when he put it up and still looked as though it was designed for a man shaped like a banana. Oats was aware that he was trying to avoid thinking. On the whole, he was happy with this. There was something pleasing about simply getting on with simple tasks, and listening to his own breath. Perhaps there was a way . . . From outside there was the faint sound of something wooden hitting something hollow and whispering on the evening air. He peered through the tent flap. People were filing stealthily into the field. The first few were carrying planks. Several were pushing barrels. He stood with his mouth open as the very rough benches were constructed and began to fill up. A number of the men had bandages across their noses, he noticed. Then he heard the rattle of wheels and saw the royal coach lurch through the gateway. This woke him up and he scurried back into the tent, pulling damp clothes out of his bag in a frantic search for a clean shirt. His hat had never been found and his coat was caked with mud, the leather of his shoes was cracked and the buckles had instantly tarnished in the acid marshes, but surely a clean shirt- Someone tried to knock on the damp canvas and then, after an interval of half a second, stepped into the tent. 'Are you decent?' said Nanny Ogg, looking him up and down. 'We're all out here waitin', you know. Lost sheep waitin' to be shorn, you might say,' she added, her manner suggesting very clearly that she was doing something that she personally disapproved of, but doing it just the same. Oats turned around. 'Mrs Ogg, I know you don't like me very much-' 'Don't see why I should like you at all,' said Nanny. 'What with you tagging after Esme and her havin' to help you all that way across the mountains like that.' The response was screaming up Oats's throat before he noticed the faint knowing look in Nanny's eyes, and he managed to turn it into a cough. 'Er . . . yes,' he said. 'Yes. Silly of me, wasn't it? Er . . . how many are out there, Mrs Ogg?' 'Oh, a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty.' Levers, thought Oats, and had a fleeting vision of the pictures in Nanny's parlour. She controls the levers of lots of people. But someone pulled her lever first, I'll bet. 'And what do they expect of me?' 'Says Evensong on the poster,' said Nanny simply. 'Even beer would be better.' So he went out and saw the watching faces of a large part of Lancre's population lined up in the late-afternoon light. The King and Queen were in the front row. Verence nodded regally at oats to signal that whatever it was that he intended ought to start around now. It was clear from the body language of Nanny Ogg that any specifically Omnian prayers would not be tolerated, and Oats made do with a generic prayer of thanks to any god that might be listening and even to the ones that weren't. Then he pulled out the stricken harmonium and tried a few chords until Nanny elbowed him aside, rolled up her sleeves and coaxed notes out of the damp bellows that oats never even knew were in there. The singing wasn't very enthusiastic, though, until Oats tossed aside the noisome songbook and taught them some of the songs he remembered from his grandmother, full of fire and thunder and death and justice and tunes you could actually whistle, with titles like 'Om Shall Trample The Ungodly' and 'Lift Me To The Skies' and 'Light The Good Light'. They went down well. Lancre people weren't too concerned about religion, but they knew what it ought to sound like. While he led the singing, with the aid of a long stick and the words of the hymns scrawled on the side of his tent, he scanned his . .. well, he decided to call it his congregation. It was his first real one. There were plenty of women, and a lot of very well scrubbed men, but one face was patently not there. Its absence dominated the scene. But, as he raised his eyes upwards in mid-song, he did notice an eagle far overhead, a mere speck gyrating across the darkening sky, possibly hunting for lost lambs. And then it was over and people left, quietly, with the look of those who'd done a job which had not been unpleasant but which was nevertheless over. The collection plate produced two pennies, some carrots, a large onion, a small loaf, a pound of mutton, a jug of milk and a pickled pig's trotter. 'We're not really a cash economy,' said King Verence, stepping forward. He had a bandage across his forehead. 'Oh, it'll make a good supper, sire,' said Oats, in the madly cheerful voice that people use when addressing royalty. 'Surely you'll dine with us?' said Magrat. 'I . . . er . . . was planning to leave at first light, sire. So I really ought to spend the evening packing and setting fire to the camp bed.' 'Leaving? But I thought you were staying here. I've taken . . . community soundings,' said the King, 'and I think I can say that popular opinion is with me on this.' Oats looked at Magrat's face, which said plainly, Granny doesn't object. 'Well, I, er . .. I expect I shall pass through again, sire,' he said. 'But . . . to tell you the truth, I was thinking of heading on to Uberwald.' 'That's a hellish place, Mr Oats.' 'I've thought about it all day, sire, and I'm set on it.' 'Oh.' Verence looked nonplussed, but kings learn to swing back upright. 'I'm sure you know your own mind best.' He swayed slightly as Magrat's elbow grazed his ribs. 'Oh . . . yes . . . we heard you lost your, er, holy amulet and so this afternoon we, that is to say the Queen and Miss Nitt . . . got Shawn Ogg to make this in the mint. . .' Oats unwrapped the black velvet scroll. Inside, on a golden chain, was a small golden doubleheaded axe. He stared at it. 'Shawn isn't very good at turtles,' said Magrat, to fill the gap. 'I shall treasure it,' said Oats, at last. 'Of course, we appreciate it's not very holy,' said the King. Oats waved a hand dismissively. 'Who knows, sire? Holiness is where you find it,' he said. Behind the King, Jason and Darren Ogg were standing respectfully to attention. Both still had plasters stuck across their noses. They moved aside hurriedly to make way for the King, who didn't seem to notice. Nanny Ogg struck a chord on the harmonium when the royal couple had departed with their retinue. 'If you, drop in to our Jason's forge first thing when you're leavin' I'll see to it he fixes the bellows on this contraption,' she said diffidently, and Oats realized that in the context of Nanny Ogg this was as close as he was going to get to three rousing cheers and the grateful thanks of the population. 'I was so impressed that everyone turned up of their own free will,' he said. 'Spontaneously, as it were.' 'Don't push your luck, sonny boy,' said Nanny, getting up. 'Nice to have met you, Mrs Ogg.' Nanny walked away a few steps, but Oggs never left anything unsaid. 'I can't say as I approve of you,' she said, stiffly. 'But should you ever come knockin' on an Ogg door in these parts you'll . . . get a hot meal. You're too skinny. I've seen more meat on a butcher's pencil.' 'Thank you.' 'Not necessarily puddin' as well, mark you.' 'Of course not.' 'Well, then. . .' Nanny Ogg shrugged. 'Best of luck in Uberwald, then.' 'Om will go with me, I'm sure,' said Oats. He was interested in how annoyed you could make Nanny by speaking calmly to her, and wondered if Granny Weatherwax had tried it. 'I hope he does,' said Nanny. 'I person'ly don't want him hanging around here.' When she'd gone Oats lit a fire of the horrible bed and stuck the songbooks around it to dry out. 'Hello. . .' The thing about a witch in darkness is that all you see is her face, bobbing towards you, surrounded by black. Then a little contrast reasserted itself, and an area of shadow detached from the rest and became Agnes. 'Oh, good evening,' said Oats. 'Thank you for coming. I've never heard anyone singing in harmony with themselves before.' Agnes coughed nervously. 'Are you really going on into Uberwald?' 'There's no reason to stay here, is there?' Agnes's left arm twitched a few times. She steadied it with her right hand. 'S'pose not,' she said, in a small voice. 'No! Shut up! This is not the time!' 'I beg your pardon?' 'I was, um, just talking to myself,' said Agnes wretchedly. 'Look, everyone knows you helped Granny. They just pretend they don't.' 'Yes. I know.' 'You don't mind?' Oats shrugged. Agnes coughed. 'I thought perhaps you were going to stay on here for a while.' 'There'd be no point. I'm not needed here.' 'I shouldn't think vampires and so on would be very keen on singing hymns,' said Agnes quietly. 'Perhaps they can learn something else,' said Oats. 'I shall see what may be done.' Agnes stood hesitantly for a few moments. 'I've got to give you this,' she said, suddenly handing over a small bag. Oats reached inside and took out a small jar. Inside, a phoenix feather burned, lighting up the field with a clear, cool light. 'It's from-' Agnes began. 'I know who it's from,' said Oats. 'Is Mistress Weatherwax all right? I didn't see her here.' 'Er . . . she's been having a rest today.' 'Well, thank her from me, will you?' 'She said it's to take into dark places.' Oats laughed. 'Er . . . yes. Er . . . I might come and see you off in the morning. . .'said Agnes, uncertainly. 'That would be nice of you.' 'So . . . until . . . you know...' 'Yes.' Agnes seemed to be struggling with some inner resistance. Then she said, 'And, er .. . there's something I've been meaning to . . . I mean, perhaps you could. . .' 'Yes?' Agnes's right hand dived urgently into her pocket and she pulled out a small package wrapped in greased paper. 'It's a poultice,' she blurted out. 'It's a very good recipe and the book says it always works and if you heat it up and leave it on it'll do wonders for your boil.' Oats took it gently. 'It's just possible that's the nicest thing anyone's ever given me,' he said. 'Er . . . good. It's from . . . er . . . both of us. Goodbye.' Oats watched her leave the circle of light, and then something drew his eye upwards again. The circling eagle had risen above the shadow of the mountains and into the light of the setting sun. For a moment it flashed gold, and then dropped into the dark again.     From up here the eagle could see for miles across the mountains. Over Uberwald, the threatened storm had broken. Lightning scribbled across the sky. Some of it crackled around the highest tower of Don'tgonearthe Castle, and on the rainhat that Igor wore to stop his head rusting. It raised little balls of glowing light on the big telescopic iron spike as, taking care to stand on his portable rubber mat, he patiently wound it upwards. At the foot of the apparatus, which was already humming with high tension, was a bundle wrapped in a blanket. The spike locked itself in position. Igor sighed, and waited.     DOWN, BOY! DOWN, I SAYI! WILL YOU STOP- LET GO! LET GO THIS MINUTE! ALL RIGHT, LOOK ... FETCH? FETCH? THERE WE GO . . . Death watched Scraps bound away. He wasn't used to this. It wasn't that people weren't sometimes glad to see him, because the penultimate moments of life were often crowded and complex and a cool figure in black came as something of a relief. But he'd never encountered quite this amount of enthusiasm or, if it came to it, this amount of flying mucus. It was disconcerting. It made him feel he wasn't doing his job properly. THERE'S A SATISFACTORY DOG. NOW . . . DROP. LET GO, PLEASE. DID YOU HEAR ME SAY LET GO? LET GO THIS MINUTE! Scraps bounced away. This was far too much fun to end. There was a soft chiming from within his robe. Death rubbed his hand on the cloth in an effort to get it dry and brought out a lifetimer, its sand all pooled in the bottom bulb. But the glass itself was misshapen, twisted, covered in welts of raised glass and, as Death watched, it filled up with crackling blue light. Normally, Death was against this sort of thing but, he reasoned as he snapped his fingers, at the moment it looked as though it was the only way he'd get his scythe back.     The lightning hit. There was a smell of singed wool. Igor waited a while and then trudged round to the bundle, trailing molten rubber behind him. Kneeling down, he carefully unwrapped the blanket. Scraps yawned. A large tongue licked Igor's hand. As he smiled with relief there came, from far down below in the castle, the sound of the mighty organ playing 'Toccata for Young Women in Underwired Nightdresses'.     The eagle swooped on into the bowl of Lancre. The long light glowed on the lake, and on the big V-shaped ripple, made up of many small V-shaped ripples, that arrowed through the water towards the unsuspecting island. The voices echoed around the mountains. 'See you, otter!' 'Taggit, jins ma greely!' 'Wee free men!' 'Nac mac Feegle!' The eagle passed overhead, dropping fast and steep now. It drifted silently over the shadowy woods, curved over the trees, and landed suddenly on a branch beside a cottage in a clearing. Granny Weatherwax awoke. Her body did not move, but her gaze darted this way and that, sharply, and in the gloom her nose looked more hooked than normal. Then she settled back, and her shoulders lost the hunched, perching look. After a while she stood up, stretched, and went to the doorway.' The night felt warmer. She could feel greenness in the ground, uncoiling. The year was past the edge, heading away from the dark . . . Of course, dark would come again, but that was in the nature of the world. Many things were beginning. When at last she'd shut the door she lit the fire, took the box of candles out of the dresser and lit every single one and put them around the room, in saucers. On the table the pool of water that had accumulated in the last two days rippled and rose gently in the middle. Then a drip soared upwards and plopped into the damp patch in the ceiling. Granny wound up the clock, and started the pendulum. She left the room for a moment and came back with a square of cardboard attached to a loop of elderly string. She sat down in the rocking chair and reached down into the hearth for a stick of half-burned wood. The clock ticked as she wrote. Another drop left the table and plunged towards the ceiling. Then Granny Weatherwax hung the sign around her neck and lay back with a smile. The chair rocked for a while, a counterpoint to the dripping of the table and the ticking of the clock, and then slowed. The sign read:    stilL I   ATE'NT DEAD   ^   The light faded from can to can't. After a few minutes an owl woke up in a nearby tree and sailed out over the forests.   THE END   [1] Which presumably means that some are virulent and deadly, and others just make you walk in a funny way and avoid fruit. [2] Sometimes, of course, to say, 'Please stop doing it.' [3] It struck people as odd that, while Lancre people refused point-blank to have any truck with democracy, on the basis that governing was what the King ought to do and they'd be sure to tell him if he went wrong, they didn't make very good servants. Oh, they could cook and dig and wash and footle and buttle and did it very well but could never quite get the hang of the serving mentality. King Vcrence was quite understanding about this, and put up with Shawn ushering guests into the dining room with a cry of 'Lovely grub, get it while it's hot !’ [4] Apart from the ones containing small postal orders attached to letters which, generally, said pretty much the same thing: Dear Mum and Dad, I am doing pretty well in Ankh-Morpork and this week I earned a whole seven dollars . . . [5] When there was nothing much else to occupy her time Granny Weatherwax sent her mind Borrowing, letting it piggyback inside the heads of other creatures. She was widely accepted as the most skilled exponent of the art that the Ramtops had seen for centuries, being practically able to get inside the minds of things that didn't even have minds. The practice meant, among other things, that Lancre people were less inclined towards the casual cruelty to animals that is a general feature of the rural idyll, on the basis that the rat you throw a brick at today might turn out to be the witch you need some toothache medicine from tomorrow. It also meant that people calling on her unexpectedly would find her stretched out apparently cold and lifeless, heart and pulse barely beating. The sign had saved a lot of embarrassment. [6] It was obvious to King Verence that even if every adult were put under arms the kingdom of Lancre would still have a very small and insignificant army, and he'd therefore looked for other ways to put it on the military map. Shawn had come up with the idea of the Lancrastian Army Knife, containing a few essential tools and utensils for the soldier in the field, and research and development work had been going on for some months now. One reason for the slow progress was that the King himself was taking an active interest in the country's only defence project, and Shawn was receiving little notes up to three times every day with further suggestions for improvement. Generally they were on the lines of: 'A device, possibly quite small, for finding things that are lost', or 'A curiously shaped hook-like thing of many uses'. Shawn diplomatically added some of them but lost as many notes as he dared, lest he design the only pocket knife on wheels. [7] The leitmotif of the Guild of Barber-Surgeons. [8] On the rare maps of the Ramtops that existed, it was spelled Uberwald. Rut Lancre people had never got the hang of accents and certainly didn't agree with trying to balance two dots on another letter, where they'd only roll off and cause unnecessary punctuation. [9] Lancre people considered that anything religious that wasn't said in some ancient and incomprehensible speech probably wasn't the genuine article. [10] This was because Lancre people had a fresh if somewhat sideways approach to names, generally just picking a sound they liked. Sometimes there was a logic to it, but only by accident. There'd be a Chlamydia Weaver toddling around today if her mother hadn't suddenly decided that Sally was easier to spell. [11] King Verence was very keen that someone should compose a national anthem for Lancre, possibly referring to its very nice trees, and had offered a small reward. Nanny Ogg reasoned that it would be easy money because national anthems only ever have one verse or, rather, all have the same second verse, which goes 'nur . . . hnur . . . mur . . . nur nur, hnur . . . nur . . . nur, hnur' at some length until everyone remembers the last line of the first verse and sings it as loudly as they can. [12] In a society that had progressed beyond the privy and the earth closet she would have said 'pulling my chain'. [13] The role of the lower intestine in the efforts to build a better nation is one that is often neglected by historians. [14] Igor had two thumbs on his right hand. If something was useful, he always said, you may as well add another. Unknown Terry Pratchett: Carpe Jugulum v1.0 (24-apr-2001) Scanned, layout and proofreading by 4i Publications 
Going Postal - Terry Pratchett	----	Going Postal The 9,000 Year Prologue The flotillas of the dead sailed around the world on underwater rivers. Very nearly nobody knew about them. But the theory is easy to understand. It runs: the sea is, after all, in many respects only a wetter form of air. And it is known that air is denser the lower you go and lighter the higher you fly. As a storm-tossed ship founders and sinks, therefore, it must reach a depth where the water below it is just viscous enough to stop its fall. In short, it stops sinking and ends up floating on an underwater surface, beyond the reach of the storms but far above the ocean floor. It’s calm there. Dead calm. Some stricken ships have rigging; some even have sails. Many still have crew, tangled in the rigging or lashed to the wheel. But the voyages still continue, aimlessly, with no harbour in sight, because there are currents under the ocean and so the dead ships with their skeleton crews sail on around the world, over sunken cities and between drowned mountains, until rot and shipworms eat them away and they disintegrate. Sometimes an anchor drops, all the way to the dark, cold calmness of the abyssal plain, and disturbs the stillness of centuries by throwing up a cloud of silt. One nearly hit Anghammarad, where he sat watching the ships drift by, far overhead. He remembered it, because it was the only really interesting thing to happen for nine thousand years. The One Month Prologue There was this . . . disease that the clacksmen got. It was like the illness known as ‘calenture’ that sailors experienced when, having been becalmed for weeks under a pitiless sun, they suddenly believed that the ship was surrounded by green fields and stepped overboard. Sometimes, the clacksmen thought they could fly. There was about eight miles between the big semaphore towers and when you were at the top you were maybe a hundred and fifty feet above the plains. Work up there too long without a hat on, they said, and the tower you were on got taller and the nearest tower got closer and maybe you thought you could jump from one to the other, or ride on the invisible messages sleeting between them, or perhaps you thought that you were a message. Perhaps, as some said, all this was nothing more than a disturbance in the brain caused by the wind in the rigging. No one knew for sure. People who step on to the air one hundred and fifty feet above the ground seldom have much to discuss afterwards. The tower shifted gently in the wind, but that was okay. There were lots of new designs in this tower. It stored the wind to power its mechanisms, it bent rather than broke, it acted more like a tree than a fortress. You could build most of it on the ground and raise it into place in an hour. It was a thing of grace and beauty. And it could send messages up to four times faster than the old towers, thanks to the new shutter system and the coloured lights. At least, it would once they had sorted out a few lingering problems . . . The young man climbed swiftly to the very top of the tower. For most of the way he was in clinging, grey morning mist, and then he was rising through glorious sunlight, the mist spreading below him, all the way to the horizon, like a sea. He paid the view no attention. He’d never dreamed of flying. He dreamed of mechanisms, of making things work better than they’d ever done before. Right now, he wanted to find out what was making the new shutter array stick again. He oiled the sliders, checked the tension on the wires, and then swung himself out over fresh air to check the shutters themselves. It wasn’t what you were supposed to do, but every linesman knew it was the only way to get things done. Anyway, it was perfectly safe if you— There was a clink. He looked back and saw the snaphook of his safety rope lying on the walkway, saw the shadow, felt the terrible pain in his fingers, heard the scream and dropped . . . . . . like an anchor. Chapter One The Angel In which our Hero experiences Hope, the Greatest Gift - The Bacon Sandwich of Regret- Sombre Reflections on Capital Punishment from the Hangman - Famous Last Words — Our Hero Dies - Angels, conversations about — Inadvisability of Misplaced Offers regarding Broomsticks - An Unexpected Ride - A World Free of Honest Men - A Man on the Hop - There is Always a Choice They say that the prospect of being hanged in the morning concentrates a man’s mind wonderfully; unfortunately, what the mind inevitably concentrates on is that it is in a body that, in the morning, is going to be hanged. The man going to be hanged had been named Moist von Lipwig by doting if unwise parents, but he was not going to embarrass the name, in so far as that was still possible, by being hung under it. To the world in general, and particularly on that bit of it known as the death warrant, he was Albert Spangler. And he took a more positive approach to the situation and had concentrated his mind on the prospect of not being hanged in the morning, and most particularly on the prospect of removing all the crumbling mortar from around a stone in his cell wall with a spoon. So far the work had taken him five weeks, and reduced the spoon to something like a nail file. Fortunately, no one ever came to change the bedding here, or else they would have discovered the world’s heaviest mattress. It was the large and heavy stone that was currently the object of his attentions, and at some point a huge staple had been hammered into it as an anchor for manacles. Moist sat down facing the wall, gripped the iron ring in both hands, braced his legs against the stones on either side, and heaved. His shoulders caught fire and a red mist filled his vision but the block slid out, with a faint and inappropriate tinkling noise. Moist managed to ease it away from the hole and peered inside. At the far end was another block, and the mortar around it looked suspiciously strong and fresh. Just in front of it was a new spoon. It was shiny. As he studied it, he heard the clapping behind him. He turned his head, tendons twanging a little riff of agony, and saw several of the warders watching him through the bars. “Well done, Mr Spangler!’ said one of them. ‘Ron here owes me five dollars! I told him you were a sticker! He’s a sticker, I said!’ ‘You set this up, did you, Mr Wilkinson?’ said Moist weakly, watching the glint of light on the spoon. ‘Oh, not us, sir. Lord Vetinari’s orders. He insists that all condemned prisoners should be offered the prospect of freedom.’ ‘Freedom? But there’s a damn great stone through there!’ ‘Yes, there is that, sir, yes, there is that,’ said the warder. ‘It’s only the prospect, you see. Not actual free freedom as such. Hah, that’d be a bit daft, eh?’ ‘I suppose so, yes,’ said Moist. He didn’t say ‘you bastards.’ The warders had treated him quite civilly this past six weeks, and he made a point of getting on with people. He was very, very good at it. People skills were part of his stock-in-trade; they were nearly the whole of it. Besides, these people had big sticks. So, speaking carefully, he added: ‘Some people might consider this cruel, Mr Wilkinson.’ ‘Yes, sir, we asked him about that, sir, but he said no, it wasn’t. He said it provided—’ his forehead wrinkled ‘—occ-you-pay-shun-all ther-rap-py, healthy exercise, prevented moping and offered that greatest of all treasures which is Hope, sir.’ ‘Hope,’ muttered Moist glumly. ‘Not upset, are you, sir?’ ‘Upset? Why should I be upset, Mr Wilkinson?’ ‘Only the last bloke we had in this cell, he managed to get down that drain, sir. Very small man. Very agile.’ Moist looked at the little grid in the floor. He’d dismissed it out of hand. ‘Does it lead to the river?’ he said. The warder grinned. ‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? He was really upset when we fished him out. Nice to see you’ve entered into the spirit of the thing, sir. You’ve been an example to all of us, sir, the way you kept going. Stuffing all the dust in your mattress? Very clever, very tidy. Very neat. It’s really cheered us up, having you in here. By the way, Mrs Wilkinson says ta very much for the fruit basket. Very posh, it is. It’s got kumquats, even!’ ‘Don’t mention it, Mr Wilkinson.’ ‘The Warden was a bit green about the kumquats ‘cos he only got dates in his, but I told him, sir, that fruit baskets is like life: until you’ve got the pineapple off’f the top you never know what’s underneath. He says thank you, too.’ ‘Glad he liked it, Mr Wilkinson,’ said Moist absent-mindedly. Several of his former landladies had brought in presents for ‘the poor confused boy’, and Moist always invested in generosity. A career like his was all about style, after all. ‘On that general subject, sir,’ said Mr Wilkinson, ‘me and the lads were wondering if you might like to unburden yourself, at this point in time, on the subject of the whereabouts of the place where the location of the spot is where, not to beat about the bush, you hid all that money you stole . . . ?’ The jail went silent. Even the cockroaches were listening. ‘No, I couldn’t do that, Mr Wilkinson,’ said Moist loudly, after a decent pause for dramatic effect. He tapped his jacket pocket, held up a finger and winked. The warders grinned back. ‘We understand totally, sir. Now I’d get some rest if I was you, sir, ‘cos we’re hanging you in half an hour,’ said Mr Wilkinson. ‘Hey, don’t I get breakfast?’ ‘Breakfast isn’t until seven o’clock, sir,’ said the warder reproachfully. ‘But, tell you what, I’ll do you a bacon sandwich, ‘cos it’s you, Mr Spangler.’ And now it was a few minutes before dawn and it was him being led down the short corridor and out into the little room under the scaffold. Moist realized he was looking at himself from a distance, as if part of himself was floating outside his body like a child’s balloon ready, as it were, for him to let go of the string. The room was lit by light coming through cracks in the scaffold floor above, and significantly from around the edges of the large trapdoor. The hinges of said door were being carefully oiled by a man in a hood. He stopped when he saw the party arrive and said, ‘Good morning, Mr Spangler.’ He raised the hood helpfully. ‘It’s me, sir, Daniel “One Drop” Trooper. I am your executioner for today, sir. Don’t you worry, sir. I’ve hanged dozens of people. We’ll soon have you out of here.’ ‘Is it true that if a man isn’t hanged after three attempts he’s reprieved, Dan?’ said Moist, as the executioner carefully wiped his hands on a rag. ‘So I’ve heard, sir, so I’ve heard. But they don’t call me One Drop for nothing, sir. And will sir be having the black bag today?’ ‘Will it help?’ ‘Some people think it makes them look more dashing, sir. And it stops that pop-eyed look. It’s more a crowd thing, really. Quite a big one out there this morning. Nice piece about you in the Times yesterday, I thought. All them people saying what a nice young man you were, and everything. Er . . . would you mind signing the rope beforehand, sir? I mean, I won’t have a chance to ask you afterwards, eh?’ ‘ Signing the rope?’ said Moist. ‘Yessir,’ said the hangman. ‘It’s sort of traditional. There’s a lot of people out there who buy old rope. Specialist collectors, you could say. A bit strange, but it takes all sorts, eh? Worth more signed, of course.’ He flourished a length of stout rope. ‘I’ve got a special pen that signs on rope. One signature every couple of inches? Straightforward signature, no dedication needed. Worth money to me, sir. I’d be very grateful’ ‘So grateful that you won’t hang me, then?’ said Moist, taking the pen. This got an appreciative laugh. Mr Trooper watched him sign along the length, nodding happily. ‘Well done, sir, that’s my pension plan you’re signing there. Now . . . are we ready, everyone?’ ‘Not me!’ said Moist quickly, to another round of general amusement. ‘You’re a card, Mr Spangler,’ said Mr Wilkinson. ‘It won’t be the same without you around, and that’s the truth.’ ‘Not for me, at any rate,’ said Moist. This was, once again, treated like rapier wit. Moist sighed. ‘Do you really think all this deters crime, Mr Trooper?’ he said. ‘Well, in the generality of things I’d say it’s hard to tell, given that it’s hard to find evidence of crimes not committed,’ said the hangman, giving the trapdoor a final rattle. ‘But in the specificality, sir, I’d say it’s very efficacious.’ ‘Meaning what?’ said Moist. ‘Meaning I’ve never seen someone up here more’n once, sir. Shall we go?’ There was a stir when they climbed up into the chilly morning air, followed by a few boos and even some applause. People were strange like that. Steal five dollars and you were a petty thief. Steal thousands of dollars and you were either a government or a hero. Moist stared ahead while the roll call of his crimes was read out. He couldn’t help feeling that it was so unfair. He’d never so much as tapped someone on the head. He’d never even broken down a door. He had picked locks on occasion, but he’d always locked them again behind him. Apart from all those repossessions, bankruptcies and sudden insolvencies, what had he actually done that was bad, as such? He’d only been moving numbers around. ‘Nice crowd turned out today,’ said Mr Trooper, tossing the end of the rope over the beam and busying himself with knots. ‘Lot of press, too. What Gallows? covers ‘em all, o’ course, and there’s the Times and the Pseudopolis Herald, prob’ly because of that bank what collapsed there, and I heard there’s a man from the Sto Plains Dealer, too. Very good financial section - I always keep an eye on the used rope prices. Looks like a lot of people want to see you dead, sir.’ Moist was aware that a black coach had drawn up at the rear of the crowd. There was no coat of arms on the door, unless you were in on the secret, which was that Lord Vetinari’s coat of arms featured a sable shield. Black on black. You had to admit that the bastard had style— ‘Huh? What?’ he said, in response to a nudge. ‘I asked if you have any last words, Mr Spangler?’ said the hangman. ‘It’s customary. I wonder if you might have thought of any?’ ‘I wasn’t actually expecting to die,’ said Moist. And that was it. He really hadn’t, until now. He’d been certain that something would turn up. ‘Good one, sir,’ said Mr Wilkinson. ‘We’ll go with that, shall we?’ Moist narrowed his eyes. The curtain on a coach window had twitched. The coach door had opened. Hope, that greatest of all treasures, ventured a little glitter. ‘No, they’re not my actual last words,’ he said. ‘Er . . . let me think . . .’ A slight, clerk-like figure was descending from the coach. ‘Er . . . it’s not as bad a thing I do now . . . er . . .’ Aha, it all made some kind of sense now. Vetinari was out to scare him, that was it. That would be just like the man, from what Moist had heard. There was going to be a reprieve! ‘I . . . er . . . I . . .’ Down below, the clerk was having difficulty getting through the press of people. ‘Do you mind speeding up a bit, Mr Spangler?’ said the hangman. ‘Fair’s fair, eh?’ ‘I want to get it right,’ said Moist haughtily, watching the clerk negotiate his way around a large troll. ‘Yes, but there’s a limit, sir,’ said the hangman, annoyed at this breach of etiquette. ‘Otherwise you could go ah, er, um for days! Short and sweet, sir, that’s the style.’ ‘Right, right,’ said Spangler. ‘Er . . . oh, look, see that man there? Waving at you?’ The hangman glanced down at the clerk, who’d struggled to the front of the crowd. ‘I bring a message from Lord Vetinari!’ the man shouted. ‘Right!’ said Moist. ‘He says to get on with it, it’s long past dawn!’ said the clerk. ‘Oh,’ said Moist, staring at the black coach. That damn Vetinari had a warder’s sense of humour, too. ‘Come on, Mr Spangler, you don’t want me to get into trouble, do you?’ said the hangman, patting him on the shoulder. ‘Just a few words, and then we can all get on with our lives. Present company excepted, obviously.’ So this was it. It was, in some strange way, rather liberating. You didn’t have to fear the worst that could happen any more, because this was it, and it was nearly over. The warder had been right. What you had to do in this life was get past the pineapple, Moist told himself. It was big and sharp and knobbly, but there might be peaches underneath. It was a myth to live by and so, right now, totally useless. ‘In that case,’ said Moist von Lipwig, ‘I commend my soul to any god that can find it.’ ‘Nice,’ said the hangman, and pulled the lever. Albert Spangler died. It was generally agreed that they had been good last words. ‘Ah, Mr Lipwig,’ said a distant voice, getting closer. ‘I see you are awake. And still alive, at the present time.’ There was a slight inflection to that last phrase which told Moist that the length of the present time was entirely in the gift of the speaker. He opened his eyes. He was sitting in a comfortable chair. At a desk opposite him, sitting with his hands steepled reflectively in front of his pursed lips, was Havelock, Lord Vetinari, under whose idio-syncratically despotic rule Ankh-Morpork had become the city where, for some reason, everyone wanted to live. An ancient animal sense also told Moist that other people were standing behind the comfortable chair, and that it could be extremely uncomfortable should he make any sudden movements. But they couldn’t be as terrible as the thin, black-robed man with the fussy little beard and the pianist’s hands who was watching him. ‘Shall I tell you about angels, Mr Lipwig?’ said the Patrician pleasantly. ‘I know two interesting facts about them.’ Moist grunted. There were no obvious escape routes in front of him, and turning round was out of the question. His neck ached horribly. ‘Oh, yes. You were hanged,’ said Vetinari. ‘A very precise science, hanging. Mr Trooper is a master. The slippage and thickness of the rope, whether the knot is placed here rather than there, the relationship between weight and distance . . . oh, I’m sure the man could write a book. You were hanged to within half an inch of your life, I understand. Only an expert standing right next to you would have spotted that, and in this case the expert was our friend Mr Trooper. No, Albert Spangler is dead, Mr Lipwig. Three hundred people would swear they saw him die.’ He leaned forward. ‘And so, appropriately, it is of angels I wish to talk to you now.’ Moist managed a grunt. ‘The first interesting thing about angels, Mr Lipwig, is that sometimes, very rarely, at a point in a man’s career where he has made such a foul and tangled mess of his life that death appears to be the only sensible option, an angel appears to him, or, I should say, unto him, and offers him a chance to go back to the moment when it all went wrong, and this time do it right. Mr Lipwig, I should like you to think of me as . . . an angel.’ Moist stared. He’d felt the snap of the rope, the choke of the noose! He’d seen the blackness welling up! He’d died! ‘I’m offering you a job, Mr Lipwig. Albert Spangler is buried, but Mr Lipwig has a future. It may, of course, be a very short one, if he is stupid. I am offering you a job, Mr Lipwig. Work, for wages. I realize the concept may not be familiar.’ Only as a form of hell, Moist thought. ‘The job is that of Postmaster General of the Ankh-Morpork Post Office.’ Moist continued to stare. ‘May I just add, Mr Lipwig, that behind you there is a door. If at any time in this interview you feel you wish to leave, you have only to step through it and you will never hear from me again.’ Moist filed that under ‘deeply suspicious’. ‘To continue: the job, Mr Lipwig, involves the refurbishment and running of the city’s postal service, preparation of the international packets, maintenance of Post Office property, et cetera, et cetera—’ ‘If you stick a broom up my arse I could probably sweep the floor, too,’ said a voice. Moist realized it was his. His brain was a mess. It had come as a shock to find that the afterlife is this one. Lord Vetinari gave him a long, long look. ‘Well, if you wish,’ he said, and turned to a hovering clerk. ‘Drumknott, does the housekeeper have a store cupboard on this floor, do you know?’ ‘Oh, yes, my lord,’ said the clerk. ‘Shall I—’ ‘It was a joke!’ Moist burst out. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I hadn’t realized,’ said Lord Vetinari, turning back to Moist. ‘Do tell me if you feel obliged to make another one, will you?’ ‘Look,’ said Moist, ‘I don’t know what’s happening here, but I don’t know anything about delivering post!’ ‘Mr Moist, this morning you had no experience at all of being dead, and yet but for my intervention you would nevertheless have turned out to be extremely good at it,’ said Lord Vetinari sharply. ‘It just goes to show: you never know until you try’ ‘But when you sentenced me—’ Vetinari raised a pale hand. ‘Ah?’ he said. Moist’s brain, at last aware that it needed to do some work here, stepped in and replied: ‘Er . . . when you . . . sentenced . . . Albert Spangler—’ ‘Well done. Do carry on.’ ‘—you said he was a natural born criminal, a fraudster by vocation, an habitual liar, a perverted genius and totally untrustworthy!’ ‘Are you accepting my offer, Mr Lipwig?’ said Vetinari sharply. Moist looked at him. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, standing up, ‘I’d just like to check something.’ There were two men dressed in black standing behind his chair. It wasn’t a particularly neat black, more the black worn by people who just don’t want little marks to show. They looked like clerks, until you met their eyes. They stood aside as Moist walked towards the door which, as promised, was indeed there. He opened it very carefully. There was nothing beyond, and that included a floor. In the manner of one who is going to try all possibilities, he took the remnant of spoon out of his pocket and let it drop. It was quite a long time before he heard the jingle. Then he went back and sat in the chair. ‘The prospect of freedom?’ he said. ‘Exactly,’ said Lord Vetinari. ‘There is always a choice.’ ‘You mean . . . I could choose certain death?’ ‘A choice, nevertheless,’ said Vetinari. ‘Or, perhaps, an alternative. You see, I believe in freedom, Mr Lipwig. Not many people do, although they will of course protest otherwise. And no practical definition of freedom would be complete without the freedom to take the consequences. Indeed, it is the freedom upon which all the others are based. Now . . . will you take the job? No one will recognize you, I am sure. No one ever recognizes you, it would appear.’ Moist shrugged. ‘Oh, all right. Of course, I accept as natural born criminal, habitual liar, fraudster and totally untrustworthy perverted genius.’ ‘Capital! Welcome to government service!’ said Lord Vetinari, extending his hand. ‘I pride myself on being able to pick the right man. The wage is twenty dollars a week and, I believe, the Postmaster General has the use of a small apartment in the main building. I think there’s a hat, too. I shall require regular reports. Good day.’ He looked down at his paperwork. He looked up. ‘You appear to be still here, Postmaster General?’ ‘And that’s it?’ said Moist, aghast. ‘One minute I’m being hanged, next minute you’re employing me?’ ‘Let me see . . . yes, I think so. Oh, no. Of course. Drumknott, do give Mr Lipwig his keys.’ The clerk stepped forward and handed Moist a huge, rusted keyring full of keys, and proffered a clipboard. ‘Sign here, please, Postmaster General,’ he said. Hold on a minute, Moist thought, this is only one city. It’s got gates. It’s completely surrounded by different directions to run. Does it matter what I sign? ‘Certainly,’ he said, and scribbled his name. ‘Your correct name, if you please,’ said Lord Vetinari, not looking up from his desk. ‘What name did he sign, Drumknott?’ The clerk craned his head. ‘Er . . . Ethel Snake, my lord, as far as I can make out.’ ‘ Do try to concentrate, Mr Lipwig,’ said Vetinari wearily, still apparently reading the paperwork. Moist signed again. After all, what would it matter in the long run? And it would certainly be a long run, if he couldn’t find a horse. ‘And that leaves only the matter of your parole officer,’ said Lord Vetinari, still engrossed in the paper before him. ‘Parole officer?’ ‘Yes. I’m not completely stupid, Mr Lipwig. He will meet you outside the Post Office building in ten minutes. Good day.’ When Moist had left, Drumknott coughed politely and said, ‘Do you think he’ll turn up there, my lord?’ ‘One must always consider the psychology of the individual,’ said Vetinari, correcting the spelling on an official report. ‘That is what I do all the time and lamentably, Drumknott, you do not always do. That is why he has walked off with your pencil.’ Always move fast. You never know what’s catching you up. Ten minutes later Moist von Lipwig was well outside the city. He’d bought a horse, which was a bit embarrassing, but speed had been of the essence and he’d only had time to grab one of his emergency stashes from its secret hiding place and pick up a skinny old screw from the Bargain Box in Hobson’s Livery Stable. At least it’d mean no irate citizen going to the Watch. No one had bothered him. No one had looked at him twice; no one ever did. The city gates had indeed been wide open. The plains lay ahead of him, full of opportunity. And he was good at parlaying nothing into something. For example, at the first little town he came to he’d go to work on this old nag with a few simple techniques and ingredients that’d make it worth twice the price he’d paid for it, at least for about twenty minutes or until it rained. Twenty minutes would be enough time to sell it and, with any luck, pick up a better horse worth slightly more than the asking price. He’d do it again at the next town and in three days, maybe four, he’d have a horse worth owning. But that would be just a sideshow, something to keep his hand in. He’d got three very nearly diamond rings sewn into the lining of his coat, a real one in a secret pocket in the sleeve, and a very nearly gold dollar stitched cunningly into the collar. These were, to him, what his saw and hammer are to a carpenter. They were primitive tools, but they’d put him back in the game. There is a saying ‘You can’t fool an honest man’ which is much quoted by people who make a profitable living by fooling honest men. Moist never knowingly tried it, anyway. If you did fool an honest man, he tended to complain to the local Watch, and these days they were harder to buy off. Fooling dishonest men was a lot safer and, somehow, more sporting. And, of course, there were so many more of them. You hardly had to aim. Half an hour after arriving in the town of Hapley, where the big city was a tower of smoke on the horizon, he was sitting outside an inn, downcast, with nothing in the world but a genuine diamond ring worth a hundred dollars and a pressing need to get home to Genua, where his poor aged mother was dying of Gnats. Eleven minutes later he was standing patiently outside a jeweller’s shop, inside which the jeweller was telling a sympathetic citizen that the ring the stranger was prepared to sell for twenty dollars was worth seventy-five (even jewellers have to make a living). And thirty-five minutes after that he was riding out on a better horse, with five dollars in his pocket, leaving behind a gloating sympathetic citizen who, despite having been bright enough to watch Moist’s hands carefully, was about to go back to the jeweller to try to sell for seventy-five dollars a shiny brass ring with a glass stone that was worth fifty pence of anybody’s money. The world was blessedly free of honest men, and wonderfully full of people who believed they could tell the difference between an honest man and a crook. He tapped his jacket pocket. The jailers had taken the map off him, of course, probably while he was busy being a dead man. It was a good map, and in studying it Mr Wilkinson and his chums would learn a lot about decryption, geography and devious cartography. They wouldn’t find in it the whereabouts of AM$ 150,000 in mixed currencies, though, because the map was a complete and complex fiction. However, Moist entertained a wonderful warm feeling inside to think that they would, for some time, possess that greatest of all treasures, which is Hope. Anyone who couldn’t simply remember where he’d stashed a great big fortune deserved to lose it, in Moist’s opinion. But, for now, he’d have to keep away from it, while having it to look forward to . . . Moist didn’t even bother to note the name of the next town. It had an inn, and that was enough. He took a room with a view over a disused alley, checked that the window opened easily, ate an adequate meal, and had an early night. Not bad at all, he thought. This morning he’d been on the scaffold with the actual noose round his actual neck, tonight he was back in business. All he need do now was grow a beard again, and keep away from Ankh-Morpork for six months. Or perhaps only three. Moist had a talent. He’d also acquired a lot of skills so completely that they were second nature. He’d learned to be personable, but something in his genetics made him unmemorable. He had the talent of not being noticed, for being a face in the crowd. People had difficulty describing him. He was . . . he was ‘about’. He was about twenty, or about thirty. On Watch reports across the continent he was anywhere between, oh, about six feet two inches and five feet nine inches tall, hair all shades from mid-brown to blond, and his lack of distinguishing features included his entire face. He was about . . . average. What people remembered was the furniture, things like spectacles and moustaches, so he always carried a selection of both. They remembered names and mannerisms, too. He had hundreds of those. Oh, and they remembered that they’d been richer before they met him. At three in the morning, the door burst open. It was a real burst; bits of wood clattered off the wall. But Moist was already out of bed and diving for the window before the first of them hit the floor. It was an automatic reaction that owed nothing to thought. Besides, he’d checked before lying down, and there was a large water butt outside that would break his fall. It wasn’t there now. Whoever had stolen it had not stolen the ground it stood on, however, and it broke Moist’s fall by twisting his ankle. He pulled himself up, keening softly in agony, and hopped along the alley, using the wall for support. The inn’s stables were round the back; all he had to do was pull himself up on to a horse, any horse— ‘Mr Lipwig?’ a big voice bellowed. Oh, gods, it was a troll, it sounded like a troll, a big one too, he didn’t know you got any down here outside the cities— ‘You Can’t Run And You Can’t Hide, Mr Lipwig!’ Hold on, hold on, he hadn’t given his real name to anyone in this place, had he? But all this was background thinking. Someone was after him, therefore he would run. Or hop. He risked a look behind him when he reached the back gate to the stables. There was a red glow in his room. Surely they weren’t torching the place over a matter of a few dollars? How stupid! Everyone knew that if you got lumbered with a good fake you palmed it off on to some other sucker as soon as possible, didn’t they? There was no helping some people. His horse was alone in the stable, and seemed unimpressed to see him. He got the bridle on, while hopping on one foot. There was no point in bothering with a saddle. He knew how to ride without a saddle. Hell, once he’d ridden without pants, too, but luckily all the tar and feathers helped him stick to the horse. He was the world champion at leaving town in a hurry. He went to lead the horse out of the stall, and heard the clink. He looked down, and kicked some straw away. There was a bright yellow bar, joining two short lengths of chain with a yellow shackle attached, one for each foreleg. The only way this horse would go anywhere was by hopping, just like him. They’d clamped it. They’d bloody clamped it . . . ‘Oh, Mr Lipppppwig!’ The voice boomed out across the stable yard. ‘Do You Want To Know The Rules, Mr Lipwig?’ He looked around in desperation. There was nothing in here to use as a weapon and in any case weapons made him nervous, which was why he’d never carried one. Weapons raised the ante far too high. It was much better to rely on a gift for talking his way out of things, confusing the issue and, if that failed, some well-soled shoes and a cry of ‘Look, what’s that over there?’ But he had a definite feeling that while he could talk as much as he liked, out here no one was going to listen. As for speeding away, he’d just have to rely on hop. There was a yard broom and a wooden feed bucket in the corner. He stuck the head of the broom under his armpit to make a crutch and grabbed the bucket handle as heavy footsteps thudded towards the stable door. When the door was pushed open he swung the bucket as hard as he could, and felt it shatter. Splinters filled the air. A moment later there was the thump of a heavy body hitting the ground. Moist hopped over it and plunged unsteadily into the dark. Something as tough and hard as a shackle snapped round his good ankle. He hung from the broom handle for a second, and then collapsed. ‘I Have Nothing But Good Feelings Towards You, Mr Lipwig!’ boomed the voice cheerfully. Moist groaned. The broom must have been kept as an ornament, because it certainly hadn’t been used much on the accumulations in the stable yard. On the positive side, this meant he had fallen into something soft. On the negative side, it meant that he had fallen into something soft. Someone grabbed a handful of his coat and lifted him bodily out of the muck. ‘Up We Get, Mr Lipwig!’ ‘It’s pronounced Lipvig, you moron,’ he moaned. ‘A v, not a w!’ ‘Up Ve Get, Mr Lipvig!’ said the booming voice, as his broom/ crutch was pushed under his arm. ‘What the hell are you?’ Lipwig managed. ‘I Am Your Parole Officer, Mr Lipvig!’ Moist managed to turn round, and looked up, and then up again, into a gingerbread man’s face with two glowing red eyes in it. When it spoke, its mouth was a glimpse into an inferno. ‘A golem? You’re a damn golem?’ The thing picked him up in one hand and slung him over its shoulder. It ducked into the stables and Moist, upside down with his nose pressed against the terracotta of the creature’s body, realized that it was picking up his horse in its other hand. There was a brief whinny. ‘Ve Must Make Haste, Mr Lipvig! You Are Due In Front Of Lord Vetinari At Eight O’clock! And At Vork By Nine!’ Moist groaned. ‘Ah, Mr Lipwig. Regrettably, we meet again,’ said Lord Vetinari. It was eight o’clock in the morning. Moist was swaying. His ankle felt better, but it was the only part of him that did. ‘It walked all night!’ he said. ‘All damn night! Carrying a horse as well!’ ‘Do sit down, Mr Lipwig,’ said Vetinari, looking up from the table and gesturing wearily to the chair. ‘By the way, “it” is a “he”. An honorific in this case, clearly, but I have great hopes of Mr Pump.’ Moist saw the glow on the walls as, behind him, the golem smiled. Vetinari looked down at the table again, and seemed to lose interest in Moist for a moment. A slab of stone occupied most of the table. Little carved figurines of dwarfs and trolls covered it. It looked like some kind of game. ‘ Mr Pump?’ said Moist. ‘Hmm?’ said Vetinari, moving his head to look at the board from a slightly different viewpoint. Moist leaned towards the Patrician, and jerked a thumb in the direction of the golem. ‘ That’, he said, ‘is Mr Pump?’ ‘No,’ said Lord Vetinari, leaning forward likewise and suddenly, completely and disconcertingly focusing on Moist. ‘He . . . is Mr Pump. Mr Pump is a government official. Mr Pump does not sleep. Mr Pump does not eat. And Mr Pump, Postmaster General, does not stop.’ ‘And that means what, exactly?’ ‘It means that if you are thinking of, say, finding a ship headed for Fourecks, on the basis that Mr Pump is big and heavy and travels only at walking pace, Mr Pump will follow you. You have to sleep. Mr Pump does not. Mr Pump does not breathe. The deep abyssal plains of the oceans present no barrier to Mr Pump. Four miles an hour is six hundred and seventy-two miles in a week. It all adds up. And when Mr Pump catches you—’ ‘Ah, now,’ said Moist, holding up a finger. ‘Let me stop you there. I know golems are not allowed to hurt people!’ Lord Vetinari raised his eyebrows. ‘Good heavens, wherever did you hear that?’ ‘It’s written on . . . something inside their heads! A scroll, or something. Isn’t it?’ said Moist, uncertainty rising. ‘Oh, dear.’ The Patrician sighed. ‘Mr Pump, just break one of Mr Lipwig’s fingers, will you? Neatly, if you please.’ ‘Yes, Your Lordship.’ The golem lumbered forward. ‘Hey! No! What?’ Moist waved his hands wildly and knocked game pieces tumbling. ‘Wait! Wait! There’s a rule! A golem mustn’t harm a human being or allow a human being to come to harm!’ Lord Vetinari raised a finger. ‘Just wait one moment, please, Mr Pump. Very well, Mr Lipwig, can you remember the next bit?’ ‘The next bit? What next bit?’ said Moist. ‘There isn’t a next bit!’ Lord Vetinari raised an eyebrow. ‘Mr Pump?’ he said. ‘“ . . . Unless Ordered To Do So By Duly Constituted Authority”,’ said the golem. ‘I’ve never heard that bit before!’ said Moist. ‘Haven’t you?’ said Lord Vetinari, in apparent surprise. ‘I can’t imagine who would fail to include it. A hammer can hardly be allowed to refuse to hit the nail on the head, nor a saw to make moral judgements about the nature of the timber. In any case, I employ Mr Trooper the hangman, whom of course you have met, and the City Watch, the regiments and, from time to time . . . other specialists, who are fully entitled to kill in their own defence or in protection of the city and its interests.’ Vetinari started to pick up the fallen pieces and replace them delicately on the slab. ‘Why should Mr Pump be any different just because he is made of clay? Ultimately, so are we all. Mr Pump will accompany you to your place of work. The fiction will be that he is your bodyguard, as befits a senior government official. We alone will know that he has . . . additional instructions. Golems are highly moral creatures by nature, Mr Lipwig, but you may find their morality a shade . . . old-fashioned?’ ‘Additional instructions?’ said Moist. ‘And would you mind telling me exactly what his additional instructions are?’ ‘Yes.’ The Patrician blew a speck of dust off a little stone troll and put it on its square. ‘And?’ said Moist, after a pause. Vetinari sighed. ‘Yes, I would mind telling you exactly what they are. You have no rights in this matter. We have impounded your horse, by the way, since it was used in the committing of a crime.’ ‘This is cruel and unusual punishment!’ said Moist. ‘Indeed?’ said Vetinari. ‘I offer you a light desk job, comparative freedom of movement, working in the fresh air . . . no, I feel that my offer might well be unusual, but cruel? I think not. However, I believe we do have down in the cellars some ancient punishments which are extremely cruel and in many cases quite unusual, if you would like to try them for the purposes of comparison. And, of course, there is always the option of dancing the sisal two-step.’ ‘The what?’ said Moist. Drumknott leaned down and whispered something in his master’s ear. ‘Oh, I apologize,’ said Vetinari. ‘I meant of course the hemp fandango. It is your choice, Mr Lipwig. There is always a choice, Mr Lipwig. Oh, and by the way . . . do you know the second interesting thing about angels?’ ‘What angels?’ said Moist, angry and bewildered. ‘Oh, dear, people just don’t pay attention,’ said Vetinari. ‘Remember? The first interesting thing about angels? I told you yesterday? I expect you were thinking about something else. The second interesting thing about angels, Mr Lipwig, is that you only ever get one.’ Chapter Two The Post Office In which we meet the Staff- Glom of Nit - Dissertation on Rhyming Slang - ‘You should have been there!’ - The Dead Letters - A Golem’s Life - Book of Regulations There was always an angle. There was always a price. There was always a way. And look at it like this, Moist thought: certain death had been replaced with uncertain death, and that was an improvement, wasn’t it? He was free to walk around . . . well, hobble, at the moment. And it was just possible that somewhere in all this was a profit. Well, it could happen. He was good at seeing opportunities where other people saw barren ground. So there was no harm in playing it straight for a few days, yes? It’d give his foot a chance to get better, he could spy out the situation, he could make plans. He might even find out how indestructible golems were. After all, they were made of pottery, weren’t they? Things could get broken, maybe. Moist von Lipwig raised his eyes and examined his future. The Ankh-Morpork Central Post Office had a gaunt frontage. It was a building designed for a purpose. It was, therefore, more or less, a big box to employ people in, with two wings at the rear which enclosed the big stable yard. Some cheap pillars had been sliced in half and stuck on the outside, some niches had been carved for some miscellaneous stone nymphs, some stone urns had been ranged along the parapet and thus Architecture had been created. In appreciation of the thought that had gone into this, the good citizens, or more probably their kids, had covered the walls to a height of six feet with graffiti in many exciting colours. In a band all along the top of the frontage, staining the stone in greens and browns, some words had been set in letters of bronze. ‘ “NEITHER RAIN NOR SNOW NOR GLO M OF NI T CAN STAY THESE MES ENGERS ABO T THEIR DUTY,” ‘ Moist read aloud. ‘What the hell does that mean?’ ‘The Post Office Was Once A Proud Institution,’ said Mr Pump. ‘And that stuff?’ Moist pointed. On a board much further down the building, in peeling paint, were the less heroic words: DONT ARSK US ABOUT: rocks troll’s with sticks All sorts of dragons Mrs Cake Huje green things with teeth Any kinds of black dogs with orange eyebrows Rains of spaniel’s fog Mrs Cake ‘I Said It Was A Proud Institution,’ the golem rumbled. ‘Who’s Mrs Cake?’ ‘I Regret I Cannot Assist You There, Mr Lipvig.’ ‘They seem pretty frightened of her.’ ‘So It Appears, Mr Lipvig.’ Moist looked around at this busy junction in this busy city. People weren’t paying him any attention, although the golem was getting casual glances that didn’t appear very friendly. This was all too strange. He’d been - what, fourteen? - when he’d last used his real name. And heavens knew how long it had been since he’d gone out without some easily removable distinguishing marks. He felt naked. Naked and unnoticed. To the interest of no one whatsoever, he walked up the stained steps and turned the key in the lock. To his surprise it moved easily, and the paint-spattered doors swung open without a creak. There was a rhythmic, hollow noise behind Moist. Mr Pump was clapping his hands. ‘Vell Done, Mr Lipvig. Your First Step In A Career Of Benefit Both To Yourself And The Veil-being Of The City!’ ‘Yeah, right,’ muttered Lipwig. He stepped into the huge, dark lobby, which was lit only dimly by a big but grimy dome in the ceiling; it could never be more than twilight in here, even at noon. The graffiti artists had been at work in here, too. In the gloom he could see a long, broken counter, with doors and pigeon-holes behind it. Real pigeon-holes. Pigeons were nesting in the pigeon-holes. The sour, salty smell of old guano filled the air, and, as marble tiles rang under Moist’s feet, several hundred pigeons took off frantically and spiralled up towards a broken pane in the roof. ‘Oh, shit,’ he said. ‘Bad Language Is Discouraged, Mr Lipvig,’ said Mr Pump, behind him. ‘Why? It’s written on the walls! Anyway, it was a description, Mr Pump! Guano! There must be tons of the stuff!’ Moist heard his own voice echo back from the distant walls. ‘When was this place last open?’ ‘Twenty years ago, Postmaster!’ Moist looked around. ‘Who said that?’ he said. The voice seemed to have come from everywhere. There was the sound of shuffling and the click-click of a walking stick and a bent, elderly figure appeared in the grey, dead, dusty air. ‘Groat, sir,’ it wheezed. ‘Junior Postman Groat, sir. At your service, sir. One word from you, sir, and I will leap, sir, leap into action, sir.’ The figure stopped to cough long and hard, making a noise like a wall being hit repeatedly with a bag of rocks. Moist saw that it had a beard of the short bristled type that suggested that its owner had been interrupted halfway through eating a hedgehog. ‘ Junior Postman Groat?’ he said. ‘Indeedy, sir. The reason being, no one’s ever bin here long enough to promote me, sir. Should be Senior Postman Groat, sir,’ the old man added meaningfully, and once again coughed volcanically. Ex-Postman Groat sounds more like it, Moist thought. Aloud he said, ‘And you work here, do you?’ ‘Aye, sir, that we do, sir. It’s just me and the boy now, sir. He’s keen, sir. We keeps the place clean, sir. All according to Regulations.’ Moist could not stop staring. Mr Groat wore a toupee. There may actually be a man somewhere on whom a toupee works, but whoever that man might be, Mr Groat was not he. It was chestnut brown, the wrong size, the wrong shape, the wrong style and, all in all, wrong. ‘Ah, I see you’re admirin’ my hair, sir,’ said Groat proudly, as the toupee spun gently. ‘It’s all mine, you know, not a prunes.’ ‘Er . . . prunes?’ said Moist. ‘Sorry, sir, shouldn’t have used slang. Prunes as in “syrup of prunes”, sir. Dimwell slang.* Syrup of prunes: wig. Not many men o’ my age got all their own hair, I expect that’s what you’re thinking. It’s clean living that does it, inside and out.’ * Dimwell Arrhythmic Rhyming Slang: Various rhyming slangs are known, and have given the universe such terms as ‘apples and pears’ (stairs), ‘rubbity-dub’ (pub) and ‘busy bee’ (General Theory of Relativity). The Dimwell Street rhyming slang is probably unique in that it does not, in fact, rhyme. No one knows why, but theories so far advanced are 1) that it is quite complex and in fact follows hidden rules or 2) Dimwell is well named or 3) it’s made up to annoy strangers, which is the case with most such slangs. Moist looked around at the fetid air and the receding mounds of guano. ‘Well done,’ he muttered. ‘Well, Mr Groat, do I have an office? Or something?’ For a moment, the visible face above the ragged beard was that of a rabbit in a headlight. ‘Oh, yes, sir, techn’c’ly,’ said the old man quickly. ‘But we don’t go in there any more sir, oh no, ‘cos of the floor. Very unsafe, sir. ‘cos of the floor. Could give way any minute, sir. We uses the staff locker room, sir. If you’d care to follow me, sir?’ Moist nearly burst out laughing. ‘Fine,’ he said. He turned to the golem. ‘Er . . . Mr Pump?’ ‘Yes, Mr Lipvig?’ said the golem. ‘Are you allowed to assist me in any way, or do you just wait around until it’s time to hit me on the head?’ ‘There Is No Need For Hurtful Remarks, Sir. I Am Allowed To Render Appropriate Assistance.’ ‘So could you clean out the pigeon shit and let a bit of light in?’ ‘Certainly, Mr Lipvig.’ ‘You can?’ ‘A Golem Does Not Shy Away From Vork, Mr Lipvig. I Vill Locate A Shovel.’ Mr Pump set off towards the distant counter, and the bearded Junior Postman panicked. ‘No!’ he squeaked, lurching after the golem. ‘It’s really not a good idea to touch them heaps!’ ‘Floors liable to collapse, Mr Groat?’ said Moist cheerfully. Groat looked from Moist to the golem, and back again. His mouth opened and shut as his brain sought for words. Then he sighed. ‘You’d better come down to the locker room, then. Step this way, gentlemen.’ Moist became aware of the smell of Mr Groat as he followed the old man. It wasn’t a bad smell, as such, just . . . odd. It was vaguely chemical, coupled with the eye-stinging aroma of every type of throat medicine you’ve ever swallowed, and with just a hint of old potatoes. The locker room turned out to be down some steps into the basement where, presumably, the floors couldn’t collapse because there was nothing to collapse into. It was long and narrow. At one end was a monstrous oven which, Moist learned later, had once been part of some kind of heating system, the Post Office having been a very advanced building for its time. Now a small round stove, glowing almost cherry-red at the base, had been installed alongside it. There was a huge black kettle on it. The air indicated the presence of socks, cheap coal and no ventilation; some battered wooden lockers were ranged along one wall, the painted names flaking off. Light got in, eventually, via grimy windows up near the ceiling. Whatever the original purpose of the room, though, it was now the place where two people lived; two people who got along but, nevertheless, had a clear sense of mine and thine. The space was divided into two, with a narrow bed against one wall on each side. The dividing line was painted on the floor, up the walls and across the ceiling. My half, your half. So long as we remember that, the line indicated, there won’t be any more . . . trouble. In the middle, so that it bestrode the boundary line, was a table. A couple of mugs and two tin plates were carefully arranged at either end. There was a salt pot in the middle of the table. The line, at the salt pot, turned into a little circle to encompass it in its own demilitarized zone. One half of the narrow room contained an over-large and untidy bench, piled with jars, bottles and old papers; it looked like the work space of a chemist who made it up as he went along or until it exploded. The other had an old card table on which small boxes and rolls of black felt had been stacked with slightly worrying precision. There was also the largest magnifying glass Moist had ever seen, on a stand. That side of the room had been swept clean. The other was a mess that threatened to encroach over the Line. Unless one of the scraps of paper from the grubbier side was a funny shape, it seemed that somebody, with care and precision and presumably a razor blade, had cut off that corner of it which had gone too far. A young man stood in the middle of the clean half of the floor. He’d obviously been waiting for Moist, just like Groat, but he hadn’t mastered the art of standing to attention or, rather, had only partly understood it. His right side stood considerably more to attention than his left side and, as a result, he was standing like a banana. Nevertheless, with his huge nervous grin and big gleaming eyes he radiated keenness, quite possibly beyond the boundaries of sanity. There was a definite sense that at any moment he would bite. And he wore a blue cotton shirt on which someone had printed ‘Ask Me About Pins!’ ‘Er . . .’ said Moist. ‘Apprentice Postman Stanley,’ mumbled Groat. ‘Orphan, sir. Very sad. Came to us from the Siblings of Offler charity home, sir. Both parents passed away of the Gnats on their farm out in the wilds, sir, and he was raised by peas.’ ‘Surely you mean on peas, Mr Groat?’ ‘ By peas, sir. Very unusual case. A good lad if he doesn’t get upset but he tends to twist towards the sun, sir, if you get my meaning.’ ‘Er . . . perhaps,’ said Moist. He turned hurriedly to Stanley. ‘So you know something about pins, do you?’ he said, in what he hoped was a jovial voice. ‘Nosir!’ said Stanley. He all but saluted. ‘But your shirt says—’ ‘I know everything about pins, sir,’ said Stanley. ‘Everything there is to know!’ ‘Well, that’s, er—’ Moist began. ‘Every single fact about pins, sir,’ Stanley went on. ‘There’s not a thing I don’t know about pins. Ask me anything about pins, sir. Anything you like at all. Go on, sir!’ ‘Well . . .’ Moist floundered, but years of practice came to his aid. ‘I wonder how many pins were made in this city last ye—’ He stopped. A change had come across Stanley’s face: it smoothed out, lost the vague hint that its owner was about to attempt to gnaw your ear off. ‘Last year the combined workshops (or “pinneries”) of Ankh-Morpork turned out twenty-seven million, eight hundred and eighty thousand, nine hundred and seventy-eight pins,’ said Stanley, staring into a pin-filled private universe. ‘That includes wax-headed, steels, brassers, silver-headed (and full silver), extra large, machine- and hand-made, reflexed and novelty, but not lapel pins which should not be grouped with the true pins at all since they are technically known as “sports” or “blazons”, sir—’ ‘Ah, yes, I think I once saw a magazine, or something,’ said Moist desperately. ‘It was called, er . . . Pins Monthly?’ ‘Oh dear,’ said Groat, behind him. Stanley’s face contorted into something that looked like a cat’s bottom with a nose. ‘That’s for hobbyists,’ he hissed. ‘They’re not true “pinheads”! They don’t care about pins! Oh, they say so, but they have a whole page of needles every month now. Needles? Anyone could collect needles! They’re only pins with holes in! Anyway, what about Popular Needles? But they just don’t want to know!’ ‘Stanley is editor of Total Pins.’ Groat whispered, behind Moist. ‘I don’t think I saw that one—’ Moist began. ‘Stanley, go and help Mr Lipwig’s assistant find a shovel, will you?’ said Groat, raising his voice. ‘Then go and sort your pins again until you feel better. Mr Lipwig doesn’t want to see one of your Little Moments.’ He gave Moist a blank look. ‘. . . they had an article last month about pincushions.’ muttered Stanley, stamping out of the room. The golem followed him. ‘He’s a good lad,’ said Groat, when they’d gone. ‘Just a bit cup-and-plate in the head. Leave him alone with his pins and he’s no trouble at all. Gets a bit . . . intense at times, that’s all. Oh, and on that subject there’s the third member of our jolly little team, sir—’ A large black and white cat had walked into the room. It paid no attention to Moist, or Groat, but progressed slowly across the floor towards a battered and unravelling basket. Moist was in the way. The cat continued until its head butted gently against Moist’s leg, and stopped. ‘That’s Mr Tiddles, sir,’ said Groat. ‘ Tiddles? said Moist. ‘You mean that really is a cat’s name? I thought it was just a joke.’ ‘Not so much a name, sir, more of a description,’ said Groat. ‘You’d better move, sir, otherwise he’ll just stand there all day. Twenty years old, he is, and a bit set in his ways.’ Moist stepped aside. Unperturbed, the cat continued to the basket, where it curled up. ‘Is he blind?’ said Moist. ‘No, sir. He has his routine and he sticks to it, sir, sticks to it to the very second. Very patient, for a cat. Doesn’t like the furniture being moved. You’ll get used to him.’ Not knowing what to say, but feeling that he should say something, Moist nodded towards the array of bottles on Groat’s bench. ‘You dabble in alchemy, Mr Groat?’ he said. ‘Nosir! I practise nat’ral medicine!’ said Groat proudly. ‘Don’t believe in doctors, sir! Never a day’s illness in my life, sir!’ He thumped his chest, making a thlap noise not normally associated with living tissue. ‘Flannelette, goose grease and hot bread puddin’, sir! Nothing like it for protecting your tubes against the noxious effluviences! I puts a fresh layer on every week, sir, and you won’t find a sneeze passing my nose, sir. Very healthful, very natural!’ ‘Er . . . good,’ said Moist. ‘Worst of ‘em all is soap, sir,’ said Groat, lowering his voice. ‘Terrible stuff, sir, washes away the beneficent humours. Leave things be, I say! Keep the tubes running, put sulphur in your socks and pay attention to your chest protector and you can laugh at anything! Now, sir, I’m sure a young man like yourself will be worrying about the state of his—’ ‘What’s this do?’ said Moist hurriedly, picking up a pot of greenish goo. ‘That, sir? Wart cure. Wonderful stuff. Very natural, not like the stuff a doctor’d give you.’ Moist sniffed at the pot. ‘What’s it made of?’ ‘Arsenic, sir,’ said Groat calmly. ‘ Arsenic?’ ‘Very natural, sir,’ said Groat. ‘And green.’ So, Moist thought, as he put the pot back with extreme care, inside the Post Office normality clearly does not have a one-to-one relationship with the outside world. I might miss the cues. He decided that the role of keen but bewildered manager was the one to play here. Besides, apart from the ‘keen’ aspect it didn’t need any effort. ‘Can you help me, Mr Groat?’ he said. ‘I don’t know anything about the post!’ ‘Well, sir . . . what did you use to do?’ Rob. Trick. Forge. Embezzle. But never - and this was important -using any kind of violence. Never. Moist had always been very careful about that. He tried not to sneak, either, if he could avoid it. Being caught at 1 a.m. in a bank’s deposit vault while wearing a black suit with lots of little pockets in it could be considered suspicious, so why do it? With careful planning, the right suit, the right papers and, above all, the right manner, you could walk into the place at midday and the manager would hold the door open for you when you left. Palming rings and exploiting the cupidity of the rural stupid was just a way of keeping his hand in. It was the face, that was what it was. He had an honest face. And he loved those people who looked him firmly in the eye to see his inner self, because he had a whole set of inner selves, one for every occasion. As for firm handshakes, practice had given him one to which you could moor boats. It was people skills, that’s what it was. Special people skills. Before you could sell glass as diamonds you had to make people really want to see diamonds. That was the trick, the trick of all tricks. You changed the way people saw the world. You let them see it the way they wanted it to be . . . How the hell had Vetinari known his name? The man had cracked von Lipwig like an egg! And the Watch here were . . . demonic! As for setting a golem on a man . . . ‘I was a clerk,’ said Moist. ‘What, paperwork, that sort of thing?’ said Groat, looking at him intently. ‘Yes, pretty much all paperwork.’ That was honest, if you included playing cards, cheques, letters of accreditation, bank drafts and deeds. ‘Oh, another one,’ said Groat. ‘Well, there’s not a lot to do. We can shove up and make room for you in here, no problem.’ ‘But I am supposed to make it work again as it used to, Mr Groat.’ ‘Yeah, right,’ said the old man. ‘You just come along with me, then, Postmaster. I reckon there’s one or two things you ain’t bin tole!’ He led the way out, back into the dingy main hall, a little trail of yellow powder leaking from his boots. ‘My dad used to bring me here when I were a lad,’ he said. ‘A lot of families were Post Office families in those days. They had them big glass drippy tinkling things up in the ceiling, right? For lights?’ ‘Chandeliers?’ Moist suggested. ‘Yep, prob’ly,’ said Groat. ‘Two of ‘em. And there was brass an’ copper everywhere, polished up like gold. There was balconies, sir, all round the big hall on every floor, made of iron, like lace! And all the counters was made of rare wood, my dad said. And people? This place was packed! The doors never stopped swinging! Even at night . . . oh, at night, sir, out in the big back yard, you should’ve been there! The lights! The coaches, coming and going, the horses steamin ‘. . . oh, sir, you should’ve seen it, sir! The men running the teams out . . . they had this thing, sir, this device, you could get a coach in and out of the yard in one minute, sir, one minute! The bustle, sir, the bustle and fuss! They said you could come here from Dolly Sisters or even down in the Shambles, and post a letter to yourself, and you’d have to run like the blazes, sir, the very blazes, sir, to beat the postman to your door! And the uniforms, sir, royal blue with brass buttons! You should’ve seen them! And—’ Moist looked over the babbling man’s shoulder to the nearest mountain of pigeon guano, where Mr Pump had paused in his digging. The golem had been prodding at the fetid horrible mess and, as Moist watched him, he straightened up and headed towards them with something in his hand. ‘—and when the big coaches came in, sir, all the way from the mountains, you could hear the horns miles away! You should’ve heard them, sir! And if any bandits tried anything, there was men we had, who went out and—’ ‘Yes, Mr Pump?’ said Moist, halting Groat in mid-history. ‘A Surprising Discovery, Postmaster. The Mounds Are Not, As I Surmised, Made Of Pigeon Dung. No Pigeons Could Achieve That Amount In Thousands Of Years, Sir.’ ‘Well, what are they made of, then?’ ‘Letters, Sir,’ said the golem. Moist looked down at Groat, who shifted uneasily. ‘Ah, yes,’ said the old man. ‘1 was coming to that.’ Letters . . . . . . there was no end to them. They filled every room of the building and spilled out into the corridors. It was, technically, true that the postmaster’s office was unusable because of the state of the floor: it was twelve feet deep in letters. Whole corridors were blocked off with them. Cupboards had been stuffed full of them; to open a door in-cautiously was to be buried in an avalanche of yellowing envelopes. Floorboards bulged suspiciously upwards. Through cracks in the sagging ceiling plaster, paper protruded. The sorting room, almost as big as the main hall, had drifts reaching to twenty feet in places. Here and there, filing cabinets rose out of the paper sea like icebergs. After half an hour of exploration Moist wanted a bath. It was like walking through desert tombs. He felt he was choking on the smell of old paper, as though his throat was filled with yellow dust. ‘I was told I had an apartment here,’ he croaked. ‘Yes, sir,’ said Groat. ‘Me and the lad had a look for it the other day. I heard that it was the other side of your office. So the lad went in on the end of a rope, sir. He said he felt a door, sir, but he’d sunk six feet under the mail by then and he was suffering, sir, suffering . . . so I pulled him out.’ ‘The whole place is full of undelivered mail?’ They were back in the locker room. Groat had topped up the black kettle from a pan of water, and it was steaming. At the far end of the room, sitting at his neat little table, Stanley was counting his pins. ‘Pretty much, sir, except in the basement and the stables,’ said the old man, washing a couple of tin mugs in a bowl of not very clean water. ‘You mean even the postm— my office is full of old mail but they never filled the basement? Where’s the sense in that?’ ‘Oh, you couldn’t use the basement, sir, oh, not the basement,’ said Groat, looking shocked. ‘It’s far too damp down here. The letters’d be destroyed in no time.’ ‘Destroyed,’ said Moist flatly. ‘Nothing like damp for destroying things, sir,’ said Groat, nodding sagely. ‘Destroying mail from dead people to dead people,’ said Moist, in the same flat voice. ‘We don’t know that, sir,’ said the old man. ‘I mean, we’ve got no actual proof.’ ‘Well, no. After all, some of those envelopes are only a hundred years old!’ said Moist. He had a headache from the dust and a sore throat from the dryness, and there was something about the old man that was grating on his raw nerves. He was keeping something back. ‘That’s no time at all to some people. I bet the zombie and vampire population are still waiting by the letter box every day, right?’ ‘No need to be like that, sir,’ said Groat levelly, ‘no need to be like that. You can’t destroy the letters. You just can’t do it, sir. That’s Tampering with the Mail, sir. That’s not just a crime, sir. That’s, a, a—’ ‘Sin?’ said Moist. ‘Oh, worse’n a sin,’ said Groat, almost sneering. ‘For sins you’re only in trouble with a god, but in my day if you interfered with the mail you’d be up against Chief Postal Inspector Rumbelow. Hah! And there’s a big difference. Gods forgive’. Moist sought for sanity in the wrinkled face opposite him. The unkempt beard was streaked with different colours, either of dirt, tea or random celestial pigment. Like some hermit, he thought. Only a hermit could wear a wig like that. ‘Sorry?’ he said. ‘And you mean that shoving someone’s letter under the floorboards for a hundred years isn’t tampering with it?’ Groat suddenly looked wretched. The beard quivered. Then he started to cough, great hacking, wooden, crackling lumps of cough, that made the jars shake and caused a yellow mist to rise from his trouser bottoms, “scuse me a moment, sir,’ he wheezed, between hacks, and he fumbled in his pocket for a scratched and battered tin. ‘You suck at all, sir?’ he said, tears rolling down his cheeks. He proffered the tin to Moist. ‘They’re Number Threes, sir. Very mild. I make ‘em meself, sir. Nat’ral remedies from nat’ral ingredients, that’s my style, sir. Got to keep the tubes clear, sir, otherwise they turn against you.’ Moist took a large, violet lozenge from the box and sniffed it. It smelled faintly of aniseed. ‘Thank you, Mr Groat,’ he said, but in case this counted as an attempt at bribery, he added sternly: ‘The mail, Mr Groat? Sticking undelivered mail wherever there’s a space isn’t tampering with it?’ ‘That’s more . . . delaying the mail, sir. Just, er . . . slowing it down. A bit. It’s not like there’s any intention of never delivering it, sir.’ Moist stared at Groat’s worried expression. He felt that sense of shifting ground you experience when you realize that you’re dealing with someone whose world is connected with your own only by their fingertips. Not a hermit, he thought, more like a shipwrecked mariner, living in this dry desert island of a building while the world outside moves on and all sanity evaporates. ‘Mr Groat, I don’t want to, you know, upset you or anything, but there’s thousands of letters out there under a thick layer of pigeon guano . . .’ he said slowly. ‘Actually, on that score, sir, things aren’t as bad as they seem,’ Groat said, and paused to suck noisily on his natural cough lozenge. ‘It’s very dry stuff, pigeon doings, and forms quite a hard protective crust on the envelopes . . .’ ‘Why are they all here, Mr Groat?’ said Moist. People skills, he remembered. You’re not allowed to shake him. The Junior Postman avoided his gaze. ‘Well, you know how it is . . .’ he tried. ‘No, Mr Groat. I don’t think I do.’ ‘Well . . . maybe a man’s busy, got a full round, maybe it’s Hogswatch, lots of cards, see, and the inspector is after him about his timekeeping, and so maybe he just shoves half a bag of letters somewhere safe . . . but he will deliver ‘em, right? I mean, it’s not his fault if they keeps pushing, sir, pushing him all the time. Then it’s tomorrow and he’s got an even bigger bag, ‘cos they’re pushing all the time, so he reckons, I’ll just drop a few off today, too, ‘cos it’s my day off on Thursday and I can catch up then, but you see by Thursday he’s behind by more’n a day’s work because they keeps on pushing, and he’s tired anyway, tired as a dog, so he says to himself, got some leave coming up soon, but he gets his leave and by then - well, it all got very nasty towards the end. There was . . . unpleasantness. We’d gone too far, sir, that’s what it was, we’d tried too hard. Sometimes things smash so bad it’s better to leave it alone than try to pick up the pieces. I mean, where would you start?’ ‘I think I get the picture,’ said Moist. You’re lying, Mr Groat. You’re lying by omission. You’re not telling me everything. And what you’re not telling me is very important, isn’t it? I’ve turned lying into an art, Mr Groat, and you’re just a talented amateur. Groat’s face, unaware of the internal monologue, managed a smile. ‘But the trouble is - what’s your first name, Mr Groat?’ Moist asked. ‘Tolliver, sir.’ ‘Nice name . . . the thing is, Tolliver, that the picture I see in your description is what I might refer to for the purposes of the analogy as a cameo, whereas all this’ - Moist waved his hand to include the building and everything it contained - ‘is a full-sized triptych showing scenes from history, the creation of the world and the disposition of the gods, with a matching chapel ceiling portraying the glorious firmament and a sketch of a lady with a weird smile thrown in for good measure! Tolliver, I think you are not being frank with me.’ ‘Sorry about that, sir,’ said Groat, eyeing him with a sort of nervous defiance. ‘I could have you sacked, you know,’ said Moist, knowing that this was a stupid thing to say. ‘You could, sir, you could try doin’ that,’ said Groat, quietly and slowly. ‘But I’m all you got, apart from the lad. And you don’t know nuffin’ about the Post Office, sir. You don’t know nuffin’ about the Regulations, neither. I’m the only one that knows what needs doing round here. You wouldn’t last five minutes without me, sir. You wouldn’t even see that the inkwells get filled every day!’ ‘Inkwells? Filling inkwells?’ said Moist. ‘This is just an old building full of . . . of . . . of dead paper! We have no customers!’ ‘Got to keep the inkwells filled, sir. Post Office Regulations,’ said Groat in a steely voice. ‘Got to follow Regulations, sir.’ ‘For what? It appears we don’t accept any mail or deliver any mail! We just sit here!’ ‘No, sir, we don’t just sit here,’ said Groat patiently. ‘We follow the Post Office Regulations. Fill the inkwells, polish the brass—’ ‘You don’t sweep up the pigeon shit!’ ‘Oddly enough, that’s not in the Regulations, sir,’ said the old man. ‘Truth is, sir, no one wants us any more. It’s all the clacks now, the damn clacks, clack clack clack. Everyone’s got a clacks tower now, sir. That’s the fashion. Fast as the speed of light, they say. Ha! It’s got no soul, sir, no heart. I hates ‘em. But we’re ready, sir. If there was any mail, we’d deal with it, sir. We’d spring into action, sir, spring into action. But there ain’t.’ ‘Of course there isn’t! It’s clearly sunk into this town long ago that you might as well throw your letters away as give them to the Post Office!’ ‘No, sir, wrong again. They’re all kept, sir. That’s what we do, sir. We keep things as they are. We try not to disturb things, sir,’ said Groat quietly. ‘We try not to disturb anything! The way he said it made Moist hesitate. ‘What kind of anything?’ he said. ‘Oh, nothing, sir. We just . . . go carefully.’ Moist looked around the room. Did it appear smaller? Did the shadows deepen and lengthen? Was there a sudden cold sensation in the air? No, there wasn’t. But an opportunity had definitely been missed, Moist felt. The hairs on the back of his neck were rising. Moist had heard that this was because men had been made out of monkeys, and it meant that there was a tiger behind you. In fact Mr Pump was behind him, just standing there, eyes burning more brightly than any tiger had ever managed. That was worse. Tigers couldn’t follow you across the sea, and they had to sleep. He gave up. Mr Groat was in some strange, musty little world of his own. ‘Do you call this a life?’ he said. For the first time in this conversation, Mr Groat looked him squarely in the eye. ‘Much better than a death, sir,’ he said. Mr Pump followed Moist across the main hall and out of the main doors, at which point Moist turned on him. ‘All right, what are the rules here?’ he demanded. ‘Are you going to follow me everywhere7. You know I can’t run!’ ‘You Are Allowed Autonomous Movement Within The City And Environs,’ the golem rumbled. ‘But Until You Are Settled In I Am Also Instructed To Accompany You For Your Own Protection.’ ‘Against who? Someone annoyed that their great-granddaddy’s mail didn’t turn up?’ ‘I Couldn’t Say, Sir.’ ‘I need some fresh air. What happened in there? Why is it so . . . creepy? What happened to the Post Office?’ ‘I Couldn’t Say, Sir,’ said Mr Pump placidly. ‘You don’t know? But it’s your city,’ said Moist sarcastically. ‘Have you been stuck at the bottom of a hole in the ground for the last hundred years?’ ‘No, Mr Lipvig,’ said the golem. ‘Well, why can’t—’ Moist began. ‘It Was Two Hundred And Forty Years, Mr Lipvig,’ said the golem. ‘What was?’ ‘The Time I Spent At The Bottom Of The Hole In The Ground, Mr Lipvig.’ ‘What are you talking about?’ said Moist. ‘Why, The Time I Spent At The Bottom Of The Hole In The Ground, Mr Lipvig. Pump Is Not My Name, Mr Lipvig. It Is My Description. Pump. Pump 19, To Be Precise. I Stood At The Bottom Of A Hole A Hundred Feet Deep And Pumped Water. For Two Hundred And Forty Years, Mr Lipvig. But Now I Am Ambulating In The Sunlight. This Is Better, Mr Lipvig. This Is Better!’ That night, Moist lay staring at the ceiling. It was three feet from him. Hanging from it, a little distance away, was a candle in a safety lantern. Stanley had been insistent about that, and no wonder. This place would go up like a bomb. It was the boy who’d showed him up here; Groat was sulking somewhere. He’d been right, damn him. He needed Groat. Groat practically was the Post Office. It had been a long day and Moist hadn’t slept well last night, what with being upside down over Mr Pump’s shoulder and occasionally kicked by the frantic horse. He didn’t want to sleep here either, heavens knew, but he didn’t have lodgings he could use any more, and they were at a premium in this hive of a city in any case. The locker room did not appeal, no, not at all. So he’d simply scrambled on to the pile of dead letters in what was in theory his office. It was no great hardship. A man of affairs such as he had to learn to sleep in all kinds of situations, often while mobs were looking for him a wall’s thickness away. At least the heaps of letters were dry and warm and weren’t carrying edged weapons. Paper crackled underneath him as he tried to get comfortable. Idly, he picked up a letter at random; it was addressed to someone called Antimony Parker at 1 Lobbin Clout, and on the back, in capitals, was S.W.A.L.K. He eased it open with a fingernail; the paper inside all but crumbled at his touch. My Very Dearest Timony, Yes! Why should a Woman, Sensible of the Great Honour that a Man is Doing Her, play the Coy Minx at such a time! I know you have spoken to Papa, and of course I consent to becoming the Wife of the Kindest, Most Wonderfu— Moist glanced at the date on the letter. It had been written forty-one years ago. He was not as a rule given to introspection, it being a major drawback in his line of work, but he couldn’t help wondering if - he glanced back at the letter - ‘Your loving Agnathea’ had ever married Antimony, or whether the romance had died right here in this graveyard of paper. He shivered, and tucked the envelope into his jacket. He’d have to ask Groat what S.W.A.L.K. meant. ‘Mr Pump!’ he shouted. There was a faint rumble from the corner of the room where the golem stood, waist-deep in mail. ‘Yes, Mr Lipvig?’ ‘Is there no way you can shut your eyes? I can’t sleep with two red glowing eyes watching me. It’s a . . . well, it’s a childhood thing.’ ‘Sorry, Mr Lipvig. I Could Turn My Back.’ ‘That won’t work. I’d still know they’re there. Anyway, the glow reflects off the wall. Look, where would I run to?’ The golem gave this some thought. ‘I Will Go And Stand In The Corridor, Mr Lipvig,’ he decided, and began to wade towards the door. ‘You do that,’ said Moist. ‘And in the morning I want you to find my bedroom, okay? Some of the offices still have space near the ceiling; you can move the letters into there.’ ‘Mr Groat Does Not Like The Mail To Be Moved, Mr Lipvig,’ the golem rumbled. ‘Mr Groat is not the postmaster, Mr Pump. I am.’ Good gods, the madness is catching, Moist thought, as the golem’s glow disappeared into the darkness outside. I am not the postmaster, I’m some poor bastard who’s the victim of some stupid . . . experiment. What a place! What a situation! What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter. He tried to find the angle, the way out . . . but all the time a conversation kept bouncing off the insides of his brain. Imagine a hole, a hundred feet deep and full of water. Imagine the darkness. Imagine, at the bottom of the hole, a figure roughly of human shape, turning in that swirling darkness a massive handle once every eight seconds. Pump . . . Pump . . . Pump . . . For two hundred and forty years. ‘You didn’t mind?’ Moist had asked. ‘You Mean Did I Harbour Resentment, Mr Lipvig? But I Was Doing Useful And Necessary Work! Besides, There Was Much For Me To Think About.’ ‘At the bottom of a hundred feet of dirty water? What the hell did you find to think about?’ ‘Pumping, Mr Lipvig.’ And then, the golem said, had come cessation, and dim light, a lowering of levels, a locking of chains, movement upwards, emergence into a world of light and colour . . . and other golems. Moist knew something about golems. They used to be baked out of clay, thousands of years ago, and brought to life by some kind of scroll put inside their heads, and they never wore out and they worked, all the time. You saw them pushing brooms, or doing heavy work in timber yards and foundries. Most of them you never saw at all. They made the hidden wheels go round, down in the dark. And that was more or less the limit of his interest in them. They were, almost by definition, honest. But now the golems were freeing themselves. It was the quietest, most socially responsible revolution in history. They were property, and so they saved up and bought themselves. Mr Pump was buying his freedom by seriously limiting the freedom of Moist. A man could get quite upset about that. Surely that wasn’t how freedom was supposed to work? Ye gods, thought Moist, back in the here-and-now, no wonder Groat sucked cough sweets all the time, the dust in this place could choke you! He rummaged in his pocket and pulled out the diamond-shaped cough lozenge the old man had given him. It looked harmless enough. One minute later, after Mr Pump had lurched into the room and slapped him heavily on the back, the steaming lozenge was stuck to the wall on the far side of the room where, by morning, it had dissolved quite a lot of the plaster. Mr Groat took a measured spoonful of tincture of rhubarb and cayenne pepper, to keep the tubes open, and checked that he still had the dead mole round his neck, to ward off any sudden attack of doctors. Everyone knew doctors made you ill, it stood to reason. Nature’s remedies were the trick every time, not some hellish potion made of gods knew what. He smacked his lips appreciatively. He’d put fresh sulphur in his socks tonight, too, and he could feel it doing him good. Two candle lanterns glowed in the velvet, papery darkness of the main sorting office. The light was shining through the outer glass, filled with water so that the candle would go out if it was dropped; it made the lanterns look like the lights of some abyssal fish from the squiddy, iron-hard depths. There was a little glugging noise in the dark. Groat corked his bottle of elixir and got on with business. ‘Be the inkwells filled, Apprentice Postman Stanley?’ he intoned. ‘Aye, Junior Postman Groat, full to a depth of one-third of one inch from the top as per Post Office Counter Regulations, Daily Observances, Rule C18,’ said Stanley. There was a rustle as Groat turned the pages of a huge book on the lectern in front of him. ‘Can I see the picture, Mr Groat?’ said Stanley eagerly. Groat smiled. It had become part of the ceremony, and he gave the reply he gave every time. ‘Very well, but this is the last time. It’s not good to look too often on the face of a god,’ he said. ‘Or any other part.’ ‘But you said there used to be a gold statue of him in the big hall, Mr Groat. People must’ve looked on it all the time.’ Groat hesitated. But Stanley was a growing lad. He’d have to know sooner or later. ‘Mind you, I don’t reckon people used to look on the face much,’ he said. ‘They looked more on the . . . wings.’ ‘On his hat and his ankles,’ said Stanley. ‘So he could fly the messages at the speed of . . . messages.’ A little bead of sweat dripped off Groat’s forehead. ‘Mostly on his hat and ankles, yes,’ he said. ‘Er . . . but not only there.’ Stanley peered at the picture. ‘Oh, yes. I never noticed them before. He’s got wings on—’ ‘The fig leaf,’ said Groat quickly. ‘That’s what we call it.’ ‘Why’s he got a leaf there?’ said Stanley. cOh, they all had ‘em in the olden days, ‘cos of being Classical,’ said Groat, relieved to be shifting away from the heart of the matter. ‘It’s a fig leaf. Off a fig tree.’ ‘Haha, the joke’s on them, there’s no fig trees round here!’ said Stanley, in the manner of one exposing the flaw in a long-held dogma. ‘Yes, lad, very good, but it was a tin one anyway,’ said Groat, with patience. ‘And the wings?’ said the boy. ‘We-ell, I s’pose they thought that the more wings, the better,’ said Groat. ‘Yes, but s’posing his hat wings and his ankle wings stopped working, he’d be held up by—’ ‘Stanley! It’s just a statue! Don’t get excited! Calm down! You don’t want to upset . . . them’. Stanley hung his head. ‘They’ve been . . . whispering to me again, Mr Groat,’ he confided in a low voice. ‘Yes, Stanley. They whisper to me, too.’ ‘I remember ‘em last time, talking in the night, Mr Groat,’ said Stanley, his voice trembling. ‘I shut my eyes and I keep seeing the writin’ . . .’ ‘Yes, Stanley. Don’t worry about it. Try not to think about it. It’s Mr Lipstick’s fault, stirring them up. Leave well alone, I say. They never listen, and then what happens? They find out the hard way’ ‘It seems like only yesterday, those watchmen drawing that chalk outline round Mr Mutable,’ said Stanley, beginning to tremble. ‘He found out the hard way!’ ‘Calm down, now, calm down,’ said Groat, patting him gently on the shoulder. ‘You’ll set ‘em off. Think about pins.’ ‘But it’s a cruel shame, Mr Groat, them never being alive long enough to make you Senior Postman!’ Groat sniffed. ‘Oh, that’s enough of that. That’s not important, Stanley,’ he said, his face like thunder. ‘Yes, Mr Groat, but you’re an old, old man and you’re still only a Junior Postm—’ Stanley persisted. ‘I said that’s enough, Stanley! Now, just raise that lamp again, will you? Good. That’s better. I’ll read a page of the Regulations, that always quietens them down.’ Groat cleared his throat. ‘I shall now read from the Book of Regulations, Delivery Times (Metropolitan) (Sundays and Octedays excepted),’ he announced to the air. ‘As follows: “The hours by which letters should be put into the receiving houses in town for each delivery within the city walls of Ankh-Morpork are as the following: overnight by eight o’clock in the evening, for the first delivery. Morning by eight o’clock, for the second delivery. Morning by ten o’clock, for the third delivery. Morning by twelve o’clock, for the fourth delivery. Afternoon by two o’clock, for the fifth delivery. Afternoon by four o’clock, for the sixth delivery. Afternoon by six o’clock, for the seventh delivery.” These are the hours, and I have read them.’ Groat hung his head for a moment, and then he closed the book with a snap. ‘Why are we doing this, Mr Groat?’ said Stanley meekly. ‘ ‘Cos of hub-riss,’ said Mr Groat. ‘That’s what it was. Hub-riss killed the Post Office. Hub-riss and greed and Bloody Stupid Johnson and the New Pie.’ ‘A pie, Mr Groat? How could a pie—’ ‘Don’t ask, Stanley. It gets complicated and there’s nothing in it about pins.’ They put out the candles, and left. When they had gone, a faint whispering started. Chapter Three Our Own Hand, Or None In which our hero discovers the world of pins - The Greengrocer’s Apostrophe - S.W.A.L.K. - The path of Fate - The Golem Lady - The Business of Business and the Nature of Freedom Once Again Discussed - Clerk Brian shows enthusiasm Rise And Shine, Mr Lipvig. Your Second Day As Postmaster!’ Moist opened one crusted eye and glared at the golem. ‘Oh, so you’re an alarm clock too?’ he said. ‘Aargh. My tongue. It feels like it was caught in a mousetrap.’ He half crawled, half rolled across the bed of letters and managed to stand up just outside the door. ‘I need new clothes,’ he said. ‘And food. And a toothbrush. I’m going out, Mr Pump. You are to stay here. Do something. Tidy the place up. Get rid of the graffiti on the walls, will you? At least we can make the place look clean!’ ‘Anything You Say, Mr Lipvig.’ ‘Right!’ said Moist, and strode off, for one stride, and then yelped. ‘Be Careful Of Your Ankle, Mr Lipvig,’ said Mr Pump. ‘And another thing!’ said Moist, hopping on one leg. ‘ How can you follow me? How can you possibly know where I am?’ ‘Karmic Signature, Mr Lipvig,’ said the golem. ‘And that means what, exactly?’ Moist demanded. ‘It Means I Know Exactly Where You Are, Mr Lipvig.’ The pottery face was impassive. Moist gave up. He limped out into what, for this city, was a fresh new morning. There had been a touch of frost overnight, just enough to put some zest into the air and give him an appetite. The leg still hurt, but at least he didn’t need the crutch today. Here was Moist von Lipwig walking through the city. He’d never done that before. The late Albert Spangler had, and so had Mundo Smith and Edwin Streep and half a dozen other personas that he’d donned and discarded. Oh, he’d been Moist inside (what a name, yes, he’d heard every possible joke), but they had been on the outside, between him and the world. Edwin Streep had been a work of art. He’d been a lack-of-confidence trickster, and needed to be noticed. He was so patently, obviously bad at running a bent Find The Lady game and other street scams that people positively queued up to trick the dumb trickster and walked away grinning . . . right up to the point when they tried to spend the coins they’d scooped up so quickly. There’s a secret art to forgery, and Moist had discovered it: in a hurry, or when excited, people will complete the forgery by their own cupidity. They’ll be so keen to snatch the money from the obvious idiot that their own eyes fill in all the little details that aren’t quite there on the coins they so quickly pocket. All you needed to do was hint at them. But that was just for starters. Some customers never even discovered that they’d put fake coins in their purse, thus revealing to the incompetent Streep in which pocket they kept it. Later on they learned that Streep might be rubbish with a deck of cards but also that this lack was more than made up for by his exceptional skill as a pickpocket. Now Moist felt like a peeled prawn. He felt as though he’d stepped out naked. And yet, still, no one was taking any notice. There were no cries of’Hey, you’, no shouts of’That’s him!’ He was just another face in the crowd. It was a strange new feeling. He’d never really had to be himself before. He celebrated by buying a street directory from the Guild of Merchants, and had a coffee and a bacon sandwich while he thumbed, greasily, through it for the list of bars. He didn’t find what he was looking for there but he did find it in the list of hairdressers, and grinned when he did so. It was nice to be right. He also found a mention of Dave’s Pin Exchange, up in Dolly Sisters, in an alley between a house of negotiable affection and a massage parlour. It bought and sold pins to pin fanciers. Moist finished his coffee with a look on his face which those who knew him well, a group consisting in fact of absolutely nobody, would have recognized as the formation of a plan. Ultimately, everything was all about people. If he was going to be staying here for a while, he’d make himself comfortable. He went for a walk to the self-styled ‘Home of Acuphilia!!!’ It was like lifting an unregarded stone and finding a whole new world. Dave’s Pin Exchange was the kind of small shop where the owner knows every single one of his customers by name. It was a wonderful world, the world of pins. It was a hobby that could last you a lifetime. Moist knew this because he expended one dollar on Pins by J. Lanugo Owlsbury, apparently the last word on the subject. Everyone had their funny little ways, Moist conceded, but he wasn’t entirely at home among people who, if they saw a pin-up, would pay attention to the pins. Some of the customers browsing the book racks { Mis-draws, Double Pointers and Flaws, Pins of Uberwald and Genua, First Steps in Pins, Adventures in Acuphilia . . . ) and staring covetously at the rack of pins laid out under glass had an intensity of expression that frightened him. They looked a bit like Stanley. They were all male. Clearly, women weren’t natural ‘pinheads’. He found Total P ins on the bottom rack. It had a smudgy, home-produced look, and the print was small and dense and lacked such subtleties as paragraphs and, in many cases, punctuation. The common comma had looked at Stanley’s expression and decided not to disturb him. When Moist put the little magazine on the counter the shop’s owner, a huge bearded man with dreadlocks, a pin through his nose, a beer belly belonging to three other people and the words ‘Death or Pins’ tattooed on a bicep, picked it up and tossed it back down dismissively. ‘Sure about that, sir?’ he said. ‘We’ve got P ins Monthly, New Pins, Practical Pins, Modern Pins, Pins Extra, Pins International, Talking Pins, Pins World, World Pins, World of Pins, Pins and Pinneries . . .’ Moist’s attention wandered off for a while but came back in time to catch ‘. . . the Acuphile Digest, Extreme Pins, $itfte! - that’s from Uberwald, very good if you collect foreign pins - Beginning Pins -that’s a part-work, sir, with a new pin every week - Pin Times and’ - here the big man winked - ‘ Back Alley Pins’ ‘I noticed that one,’ said Moist. ‘It has lots of pictures of young women in leather.’ ‘Yes, sir. But, to be fair, they’re generally holding pins. So, then . . . it’s still Total Pins for you, is it?’ he added, as if giving a fool one last chance to repent of his folly. ‘Yes,’ said Moist. ‘What’s wrong with it?’ ‘Oh, nothing. Nothing at all.’ Dave scratched his stomach thoughtfully. ‘It’s just that the editor is a bit . . . a bit . . .’ ‘A bit what?’ said Moist. ‘Well, we think he’s a bit weird about pins, to tell you the truth.’ Moist looked around the shop. ‘Really?’ he said. Moist went to a nearby cafe and leafed through the magazine. One of the skills of his previous life had been an ability to pick up just enough about anything to sound like an expert, at least to nonexperts. Then he returned to the shop. Everyone had their levers. Often it was greed. Greed was a reliable old standby. Sometimes it was pride. That was Groat’s lever. He desperately wanted promotion; you could see it in his eyes. Find the lever, and then it was plain sailing. Stanley, now, Stanley . . . would be easy. Big Dave was examining a pin under a microscope when Moist returned to the shop. The rush hour for pin buying must have been nearly over, because there were only a few laggards ogling the pins under glass, or thumbing through the racks. Moist sidled over to the counter and coughed. ‘Yes, sir?’ said Big Dave, looking up from his work. ‘Back again, eh? They get to you, don’t they? Seen anything you like?’ ‘A packet of pre-perforated pin papers and a tenpenny lucky dip bag, please,’ said Moist loudly. The other customers looked up for a moment as Dave pulled the packets off their rack, and then looked down again. Moist leaned over the counter. ‘I was wondering,’ he whispered hoarsely, ‘if you’d got anything a bit . . . you know . . . sharper?’ The big man gave him a carefully blank look. ‘How d’you mean, sharper?’ he said. ‘You know,’ said Moist. He cleared his throat. ‘More . . . pointed.’ The doorbell jangled as the last of the customers, sated on pins for one day, stepped out. Dave watched them go and then turned his attention back to Moist. ‘A bit of a connoisseur, are we, sir?’ he said, winking. ‘A serious student,’ said Moist. ‘Most of the stuff here, well . . .’ ‘I don’t touch nails,’ said Dave sharply. ‘Won’t have ‘em in the shop! I’ve got a reputation to think about! Little kids come in here, you know!’ ‘Oh no! Strictly pins, that’s me!’ said Moist hastily. ‘Good,’ said Dave, relaxing. ‘As it happens, I might have one or two items for the genuine collector.’ He nodded towards a beaded curtain at the back of the shop. ‘Can’t put everything on display, not with youngsters around, you know how it is . . .’ Moist followed him through the clashing curtain and into the crowded little room behind, where Dave, after looking around con-spiratorially, pulled a small black box off a shelf and flipped it open under Moist’s nose. ‘Not something you find every day, eh?’ said Dave. Gosh, it’s a pin, thought Moist, but said ‘Wow!’ in a tone of well-crafted genuine surprise. A few minutes later he stepped out of the shop, fighting an impulse to turn his collar up. That was the problem with certain kinds of insanity. They could strike at any time. After all, he’d just spent AM$70 on a damn pin! He stared at the little packets in his hand and sighed. As he carefully put them in his jacket pocket, his hand touched something papery. Oh, yes. The S.W.A.L.K. letter. He was about to shove it back when his eye caught sight of the ancient street sign opposite: Lobbin Clout. And as his gaze moved down it also saw, over the first shop in the narrow street: NO.1 A. PARKER & SON’S GREENGROCER’S HIGH CLAS’S FRUIT AND VEGETABLE’S Well, why not deliver it? Hah! He was the postmaster, wasn’t he? What harm could it do? He slipped into the shop. A middle-aged man was introducing fresh carrots, or possibly carrot’s, into the life of a bulky woman with a big shopping bag and hairy warts. ‘Mr Antimony Parker?’ said Moist urgently. ‘Be with you in ju’st one moment, s’ir, I’m ju’st—’ the man began. ‘I just need to know if you are Mr Antimony Parker, that’s all,’ said Moist. The woman turned to glare at the intruder, and Moist gave her a smile so winning that she blushed and wished just for a moment she’d worn make-up today. ‘Thats’ father,’ said the greengrocer. ‘He’s out the back, tackling a difficult cabbage—’ ‘This is his,’ said Moist. ‘Postal delivery’ He put the envelope on the counter and walked quickly out of the shop. Shopkeeper and customer stared down at the pink envelope. ‘S’.W.A.L.K?’ said Mr Parker. ‘Ooh, that takes me back, Mr Parker,’ said the woman. ‘In my day we used to put that on our letters when we were courting. Didn’t you? Sealed With A Loving Kiss. There was S.W.A.L.K., and L.A.N.C.R.E. and . . .’ she lowered her voice and giggled, ‘K.L.A.T.C.H., of course. Remember?’ ‘All that pas’sed me by, Mrs Goodbody,’ said the greengrocer stiffly. ‘And if it mean’s young men are s’ending our dad pink envelope’s with ‘swalk on them, I’m thankful for that. Modern time’s, eh?’ He turned and raised his voice. ‘Father!’ Well, that was a good deed for the day, Moist thought. Or a deed, in any case. It looked as though Mr Parker had managed to acquire some sons, one way or another. Still, it was . . . odd to think of all those letters heaped in that old building. You could imagine them as little packets of history. Deliver them, and history went one way. But if you dropped them in the gap between the floorboards, it went the other. Ha. He shook his head. As if one tiny choice by someone unimportant could make that much difference! History had to be a bit tougher than that. It all sprang back eventually, didn’t it? He was sure he’d read something, somewhere. If it wasn’t like that, no one would ever dare do anything. He stood in the little square where eight roads met, and chose to go home via Market Street. It was as good a way as any other. When he was sure that both Stanley and the golem were busy on the mail mountains, Mr Groat crept away through the labyrinth of corridors. Bundles of letters were stacked so high and tightly that it was all he could do to squeeze through, but at last he reached the shaft of the old hydraulic elevator, long disused. The shaft had been filled up with letters. However, the engineer’s ladder was still clear, and that at least went up to the roof. Of course, there was the fire escape outside, but that was outside, and Groat was not over-keen on going outside at the best of times. He inhabited the Post Office like a very small snail in a very large shell. He was used to gloom. Now, slowly and painfully, his legs shaking, he climbed up through the floors of mail and forced open the trapdoor at the top. He blinked and shuddered in the unfamiliar sunlight, and hauled himself out on to the flat roof. He’d never really liked doing this, but what else could he have done? Stanley ate like a bird and Groat mostly got by on tea and biscuits, but it all cost money, even if you went round the markets just as they closed up, and somewhere in the past, decades ago, the pay had stopped arriving. Groat had been too frightened to go up to the palace to find out why. He was afraid that if he asked for money he’d be sacked. So he’d taken to renting out the old pigeon loft. Where was the harm in that? All the pigeons had joined their feral brethren years ago, and a decent shed was not to be sneezed at in this city, even if it did whiff a bit. There was an outside fire escape and everything. It was a little palace compared to most lodgings. Besides, these lads didn’t mind the smell, they said. They were pigeon fanciers. Groat wasn’t sure what that entailed, except that they had to use a little clacks tower to fancy them properly. But they paid up, that was the important thing. He skirted the big rainwater tank for the defunct lift and sidled around the rooftops to the shed, where he knocked politely. ‘It’s me, lads. Just come about the rent,’ he said. The door was opened and he heard a snatch of conversation: ‘. . . the linkages won’t stand it for more than thirty seconds . . .’ ‘Oh, Mr Groat, come on in,’ said the man who had opened the door. This was Mr Carlton, the one with the beard a dwarf would be proud of, no, two dwarfs would be proud of. He seemed more sensible than the other two, although this was not hard. Groat removed his hat. ‘Come about the rent, sir,’ he repeated, peering around the man. ‘Got a bit o’ news, too. Just thought I’d better mention, lads, we’ve got a new postmaster. If you could be a bit careful for a while? A nod’s as good as a wink, eh?’ ‘How long’s this one going to last, then?’ said a man who was sitting on the floor, working on a big metal drum full of what, to Mr Groat, appeared to be very complicated clockwork. ‘You’ll push him off the roof by Saturday, right?’ ‘Now, now, Mr Winton, there’s no call to make fun of me like that,’ said Groat nervously. ‘Once he’s been here a few weeks and got settled in I’ll kind of . . . hint that you’re here, all right? Pigeons getting on okay, are they?’ He peered around the loft. Only one pigeon was visible, hunched up high in a corner. ‘They’re out for exercise right now,’ said Winton. ‘Ah, right, that’d be it, then,’ said Groat. ‘Anyway, we’re a bit more interested in woodpeckers at the moment,’ said Winton, pulling a bent metal bar out of the drum. ‘See, Alex? I told you, it’s bent. And two gears are stripped bare . . .’ “Woodpeckers?’ said Groat. There was a certain lowering of the temperature, as if he’d said the wrong thing. ‘That’s right, woodpeckers,’ said a third voice. ‘Woodpeckers, Mr Emery?’ The third pigeon fancier always made Groat nervous. It was the way his eyes were always on the move, as if he was trying to see everything at once. And he was always holding a tube with smoke coming out of it, or another piece of machinery. They all seemed very interested in tubes and cogwheels, if it came to that. Oddly enough, Groat had never seen them holding a pigeon. He didn’t know how pigeons were fancied, but he’d assumed that it had to be close up. ‘Yes, woodpeckers,’ said the man, while the tube in his hand changed colour from red to blue. ‘Because . . .’ and here he appeared to stop and think for a moment, ‘we’re seeing if they can be taught to . . . oh, yes, tap out the message when they get there, see? Much better than messenger pigeons.’ ‘Why?’ said Groat. Mr Emery stared at the whole world for a moment. ‘Because . . . they can deliver messages in the dark?’ he said. ‘Well done,’ murmured the man dismantling the drum. ‘Ah, could be a lifesaver, I can see that,’ said Groat. ‘Can’t see it beating the clacks, though!’ ‘That’s what we want to find out,’ said Winton. ‘But we’d be very grateful if you didn’t tell anyone about this,’ said Carlton quickly. ‘Here’s your three dollars, Mr Groat. We wouldn’t want other people stealing our idea, you see.’ ‘Lips are sealed, lads,’ said Groat. ‘Don’t you worry about it. You can rely on Groat.’ Carlton was holding the door open. ‘We know we can. Goodbye, Mr Groat.’ Groat heard the door shut behind him as he walked back across the roof. Inside the shed, there seemed to be an argument starting; he heard someone say, ‘What did you have to go and tell him that for?’ That was a bit hurtful, someone thinking that he couldn’t be trusted. And, as he eased his way down the long ladder, Groat wondered if he ought to have pointed out that woodpeckers wouldn’t fly in the dark. It was amazing that bright lads like them hadn’t spotted this flaw. They were, he thought, a bit gullible. A hundred feet down and a quarter of a mile away as the woodpecker flies during daylight, Moist followed the path of destiny. Currently, it was leading him through a neighbourhood that was on the downside of whatever curve you hoped you’d bought your property on the upside of. Graffiti and rubbish were everywhere here. They were everywhere in the city, if it came to that, but elsewhere the garbage was better quality rubbish and the graffiti were close to being correctly spelled. The whole area was waiting for something to happen, like a really bad fire. And then he saw it. It was one of those hopeless little shop fronts that house enterprises with a lifetime measured in days, like Giant Clearance Sale!!! of socks with two heels each, tights with three legs and shirts with one sleeve, four feet long. The window was boarded over, but just visible behind the graffiti above it were the words: The Golem Trust. Moist pushed open the door. Glass crunched under his feet. A voice said, ‘Hands where I can see them, mister!’ He raised his hands cautiously, while peering into the gloom. There was definitely a crossbow being wielded by a dim figure. Such light as had managed to get round the boards glinted off the tip of the bolt. ‘Oh,’ said the voice in the dark, as if mildly annoyed that there was no excuse to shoot anybody. ‘All right, then. We had visitors last night.’ ‘The window?’ said Moist. ‘It happens about once a month. I was just sweeping it up.’ There was the scratch of a match, and a lamp was lit. ‘They don’t generally attack the golems themselves, not now there’s free ones around. But glass doesn’t fight back.’ The lamp was turned up, revealing a tall young woman in a tight grey woollen dress, with coal-black hair plastered down so that she looked like a peg doll and forced into a tight bun at the back. There was a slight redness to her eyes that suggested she had been crying. ‘You’re lucky to have caught me,’ she said. ‘I’d only come in to make sure nothing’s been taken. Are you here to sell or to hire? You can put your hands down now,’ she added, placing the crossbow under the counter. ‘Sell or hire?’ said Moist, lowering his hands with care. ‘A golem,’ she said, in a talking-to-the-hard-of-thinking voice. ‘We are the Go-lem Trust. We buy or hire go-lems. Do you want to sell a go-lem or hire a go-lem?’ ‘Nei-ther,’ said Moist. ‘I’ve got a go-lem. I mean, one is work-ing for me.’ ‘Really? Where?’ said the woman. ‘And we can probably speed up a little, I think.’ ‘At the Post Office.’ ‘Oh, Pump 19,’ said the woman. ‘He said it was government service.’ ‘We call him Mister Pump,’ said Moist primly. ‘Really? And do you get a wonderful warm charitable feeling when you do?’ ‘Pardon? What?’ said Moist, bewildered. He wasn’t sure if she was managing the trick of laughing at him behind her frown. The woman sighed. ‘Sorry, I’m a bit snappish this morning. A brick landing on your desk does that to you. Let’s just say they don’t see the world in the same way as we do, okay? They’ve got feelings, in their own way, but they’re not like ours. Anyway . . . how can I help you, Mr . . . ?’ ‘Von Lipwig,’ said Moist, and added: ‘ Moist von Lipwig,’ to get the worst over with. But the woman didn’t even smile. ‘Lipwig, small town in Near Uberwald,’ she said, picking up a brick from the broken glass and debris on her desk, regarding it critically, and then turning to the ancient filing cabinet behind her and filing it under B. ‘Chief export: its famous dogs, of course, second most important export its beer, except during the two weeks of Sektober-fest, when it exports . . . second-hand beer, probably?’ ‘I don’t know. We left when I was a kid,’ said Moist. ‘As far as I’m concerned, it’s just a funny name.’ ‘Try Adora Belle Dearheart some time,’ said the woman. ‘Ah. That’s not a funny name,’ said Moist. ‘Quite,’ said Adora Belle Dearheart. ‘I now have no sense of humour whatsoever. Well, now that we’ve been appropriately human towards one another, what exactly was it you wanted?’ ‘Look, Vetinari has sort of lumbered me with Mr— with Pump 19 as an . . . an assistant, but I don’t know how to treat . . .’ Moist sought in the woman’s eyes for some clue as to the politically correct term, and plumped for ‘him.’ ‘Huh? Just treat him normally.’ ‘You mean normally for a human being, or normally for a pottery man filled with fire?’ To Moist’s astonishment Adora Belle Dearheart took a packet of cigarettes out of a desk drawer and lit one. She mistook his expression, and proffered the pack. ‘No, thanks,’ he said, waving it away. Apart from the occasional old lady with a pipe, he’d never seen a woman smoke before. It was . . . strangely attractive, especially since, as it turned out, she smoked a cigarette as if she had a grudge against it, sucking the smoke down and blowing it out almost immediately. ‘You’re getting hung up about it all, right?’ she said. When Ms Dearheart wasn’t smoking she held the cigarette at shoulder height, the elbow of her left arm cupped in her right hand. There was a definite feel about Adora Belle Dearheart that a lid was only barely holding down an entire womanful of anger. ‘Yes! I mean—’ Moist began. ‘Hah! It’s just like the Campaign for Equal Heights and all that patronizing stuff they spout about dwarfs and why we shouldn’t use terms like “small talk” and “feeling small”. Golems don’t have any of our baggage about “who am I, why am I here”, okay? Because they know. They were made to be tools, to be property, to work. Work is what they do. In a way, it’s what they are. End of existential angst.’ Ms Dearheart inhaled and then blew out the smoke in one nervous movement. ‘And then stupid people go around calling them “persons of clay” and “Mr Spanner” and so on, which they find rather strange. They understand about free will. They also understand that they don’t have it. Mind you, once a golem owns himself, it’s a different matter.’ ‘Own? How does property own itself?’ said Moist. ‘You said they were—’ ‘They save up and buy themselves, of course! Freehold is the only path to freedom they’ll accept. Actually, what happens is that the free golems support the Trust, the Trust buys golems whenever it can, and the new golems then buy themselves from the Trust at cost. It’s working well. The free golems earn twenty-four/eight and there’s more and more of them. They don’t eat, sleep, wear clothes or understand the concept of leisure. The occasional tube of ceramic cement doesn’t cost much. They’re buying more golems every month now, and paying my wages, and the iniquitous rent the landlord of this dump is charging because he knows he’s renting to golems. They never complain, you know. They pay whatever’s asked. They’re so patient it could drive you nuts.’ Tube of ceramic cement, thought Moist. He tried to fix that thought in case it came in useful, but some mental processes were fully occupied with the growing realization of how well some women could look in a severely plain dress. ‘Surely they can’t be damaged, can they?’ he managed. ‘Certainly they can! A sledgehammer on the right spot would really mess one up. Owned golems will just stand there and take it. But the Trust golems are allowed to defend themselves, and when someone weighing a ton snatches a hammer out of your hand you have to let go really quickly.’ ‘I think Mr Pump is allowed to hit people,’ said Moist. ‘Quite possibly. A lot of the frees are against that, but others say a tool can’t be blamed for the use to which it’s put,’ said Ms Dearheart. ‘They debate it a lot. For days and days.’ No rings on her fingers, Moist noted. What kind of attractive girl works for a bunch of clay men? ‘This is all fascinating? he said. ‘Where can I find out more?’ ‘We do a pamphlet,’ said almost-certainly-Miss Dearheart, pulling open a drawer and flipping a thin booklet on to the desk. ‘It’s five pence.’ The title on the cover was Common Clay. Moist put down a dollar. ‘Keep the change,’ he said. ‘No!’ said Miss Dearheart, fumbling for coins in the drawer. ‘Didn’t you read what it said over the door?’ ‘Yes. It said “SmasH The Barstuds”,’ said Moist. Miss Dearheart put a hand to her forehead wearily. ‘Oh, yes. The painter hasn’t been yet. But underneath that . . . look, it’s on the back of the pamphlet . . .’ , Moist read, or at least looked at. ‘It’s one of their own languages,’ she said. ‘It’s all a bit . . . mystic. Said to be spoken by angels. It translates as “By Our Own Hand, Or None”. They’re fiercely independent. You’ve no idea.’ She admires them, Moist thought. Whoo-ee. And . . . angels? ‘Well, thank you,’ he said. ‘I’d better be going. I’ll definitely . . . well, thank you, anyway.’ ‘What are you doing at the Post Office, Mr von Lipwig?’ said the woman, as he opened the door. ‘Call me Moist,’ said Moist, and a bit of his inner self shuddered. ‘I’m the new postmaster.’ ‘No kidding?’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘Then I’m glad you’ve got Pump 19 with you. The last few postmasters didn’t last long, I gather.’ ‘I think I heard something about that,’ said Moist cheerfully. ‘It sounds as though things were pretty bad in the olden days.’ Miss Dearheart’s brow wrinkled. ‘Olden days?’ she said. ‘Last month was olden days?’ Lord Vetinari stood looking out of his window. His office had once had a wonderful view of the city and, technically, it still did, although now the roofline was a forest of clacks towers, winking and twinkling in the sunlight. On the Tump, the old castle mound across the river, the big tower, one end of the Grand Trunk that wound more than two thousand miles across the continent to Genua, glittered with semaphore. It was good to see the lifeblood of trade and commerce and diplomacy pumping so steadily, especially when you employed clerks who were exceptionally good at decryption. White and black by day, light and dark by night, the shutters stopped only for fog and snow. At least, until the last few months. He sighed, and went back to his desk. There was a file open. It contained a report from Commander Vimes of the City Watch, with a lot of exclamation marks. It also contained a more measured report from clerk Alfred, and Lord Vetinari had circled the section headed ‘The Smoking Gnu’. There was a gentle knock at the door and the clerk Drumknott came in like a ghost. ‘The gentlemen from the Grand Trunk semaphore company are all here now, sir,’ he said. He laid down several sheets of paper covered in tiny, intricate lines. Vetinari gave the shorthand a cursory glance. ‘Idle chitchat?’ he said. ‘Yes, my lord. One might say excessively so. But I am certain that the mouth of the speaking tube is quite invisible in the plasterwork, my lord. It’s hidden in a gilt cherub most cunningly, sir. Clerk Brian has built it into its cornucopia, which apparently collects more sounds and can be swivelled to face whoever—’ ‘One does not have to see something to know that it is there, Drumknott.’ Vetinari tapped the paper. ‘These are not stupid men. Well, some of them, at least. You have the files?’ Drumknott’s pale face bore for a moment the pained expression of a man forced to betray the high principles of filing. ‘In a manner of speaking, my lord. We actually have nothing substantial about any of the allegations, we really haven’t. We’re running a Concludium in the Long Gallery, but it’s all hearsay, sir, I’m afraid. There’s . . . hints, here and there, but really we need something more solid . . .’ ‘There will be an opportunity,’ said Vetinari. Being an absolute ruler today was not as simple as people thought. At least, it was not simple if your ambitions included being an absolute ruler tomorrow. There were subtleties. Oh, you could order men to smash down doors and drag people off to dungeons without trial, but too much of that sort of thing lacked style and anyway was bad for business, habit-forming and very, very dangerous for your health. A thinking tyrant, it seemed to Vetinari, had a much harder job than a ruler raised to power by some idiot vote-yourself-rich system like democracy. At least they could tell the people he was their fault. ‘. . . we would not normally have started individual folders at this time,’ Drumknott was agonizing. ‘You see, I’d merely have referenced them on the daily—’ ‘Your concern is, as ever, exemplary,’ said Vetinari. ‘I see, however, that you have prepared some folders.’ ‘Yes, my lord. I have bulked some of them out with copies of clerk Harold’s analysis of pig production in Genua, sir.’ Drumknott looked unhappy as he handed over the card folders. Deliberate misfiling ran fingernails down the blackboard of his very soul. ‘Very good,’ said Vetinari. He put them on his desk, pulled another folder out of a desk drawer to place on top of them, and moved some other papers to cover the small pile. ‘Now please show our visitors in.’ ‘Mr Slant is with them, my lord,’ said the clerk. Vetinari smiled his mirthless smile. ‘How surprising.’ ‘And Mr Reacher Gilt,’ Drumknott added, watching his master carefully. ‘Of course,’ said Vetinari. When the financiers filed in a few minutes later the conference table at one end of the room was clear and gleaming, except for a paper pad and the pile of files. Vetinari himself was standing at the window again. ‘Ah, gentlemen. So kind of you to come for this little chat,’ he said. ‘I was enjoying the view.’ He turned round sharply, and confronted a row of puzzled faces, except for two. One was grey and belonged to Mr Slant, who was the most renowned, expensive and certainly the oldest lawyer in the city. He had been a zombie for many years, although apparently the change in habits between life and death had not been marked. The other face belonged to a man with one eye and one black eye-patch, and it smiled like a tiger. ‘It’s particularly refreshing to see the Grand Trunk back in operation,’ said Vetinari, ignoring that face. T believe it was shut down all day yesterday. I was only thinking to myself that it was such a shame, the Grand Trunk being so vital to us all, and so regrettable that there’s only one of it. Sadly, I understand the backers of the New Trunk are now in disarray, which, of course, leaves the Grand Trunk operating in solitary splendour and your company, gentlemen, unchallenged. Oh, what am I thinking of? Do be seated, gentlemen.’ He gave Mr Slant another friendly smile as he took his seat. ‘I don’t believe I know all these gentlemen,’ he said. Mr Slant sighed. ‘My lord, let me present Mr Greenyham of Ankh-Sto Associates, who is the Grand Trunk Company’s treasurer, Mr Nutmeg of Sto Plains Holdings, Mr Horsefry of the Ankh-Morpork Mercantile Credit Bank, Mr Stowley of Ankh Futures (Financial Advisers) and Mr Gilt—’ ‘—all by himself,’ said the one-eyed man calmly. ‘Ah, Mr Reacher Gilt,’ said Vetinari, looking directly at him. ‘I’m so . . . pleased to meet you at last.’ ‘You don’t come to my parties, my lord,’ said Gilt. ‘Do excuse me. Affairs of state take up so much of my time,’ said Lord Vetinari brusquely. ‘We should all make time to unwind, my lord. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, as they say.’ Several of the assembly paused in their breathing when they heard this, but Vetinari merely looked blank. ‘Interesting,’ he said. He riffled through the files and opened one of them. ‘Now, my staff have prepared some notes for me, from information publicly available down at the Barbican,’ he said to the lawyer. ‘Directorships, for example. Of course, the mysterious world of finance is a closed, aha, ledger to me, but it seems to me that some of your clients work, as it were, for each other?’ ‘Yes, my lord?’ said Slant. ‘Is that normal?’ ‘Oh, it is quite common for people with particular expertise to be on the board of several companies, my lord.’ ‘Even if the companies are rivals?’ said Vetinari. There were smiles from around the table. Most of the financiers settled a little more easily in their chairs. The man was clearly a fool about business matters. What did he know about compound interest, eh? He’d been classically educated. And then they remembered his education had been at the Assassins’ Guild School, and stopped smiling. But Mr Gilt stared intently at Vetinari. ‘There are ways - extremely honourable ways - of assuring confidentiality and avoiding conflicts of interest, my lord,’ said Mr Slant. ‘Ah, this would be . . . what is it now . . . the glass ceiling?’ said Lord Vetinari brightly. ‘No, my lord. That is something else. I believe you may be thinking about the “Agatean Wall”,’ said Mr Slant smoothly. ‘This carefully and successfully ensures that there will be no breach of confidentiality should, for example, one part of an organization come into possession of privileged information which could conceivably be used by another department for unethical gain.’ ‘This is fascinating! How does it work, exactly?’ said Vetinari. ‘People agree not to do it,’ said Mr Slant. ‘I’m sorry? I thought you said there is a wall—’ said Vetinari. ‘That’s just a name, my lord. For agreeing not to do it.’ ‘Ah? And they do? How wonderful. Even though in this case the invisible wall must pass through the middle of their brains?’ ‘We have a Code of Conduct, you know!’ said a voice. All eyes except those belonging to Mr Slant turned to the speaker, who had been fidgeting in his chair. Mr Slant was a long-time student of the Patrician, and when his subject appeared to be a confused civil servant asking innocent questions it was time to watch him closely. ‘I’m very glad to hear it, Mr . . . ?’ Vetinari began. ‘Crispin Horsefry, my lord, and I don’t like the tone of your questioning!’ For a moment it seemed that even the chairs themselves edged away from him. Mr Horsefry was a youngish man, not simply running to fat but vaulting, leaping and diving towards obesity. He had acquired at thirty an impressive selection of chins, and now they wobbled with angry pride.* * It is wrong to judge by appearances. Despite his expression, which was that of a piglet having a bright idea, and his mode of speech, which might put you in mind of a small, breathless, neurotic but ridiculously expensive dog, Mr Horsefry might well have been a kind, generous and pious man In the same way, the man climbing out of your window in a stripy jumper, a mask and a great hurry might merely be lost on the way to a fancy-dress party, and the man in the wig and robes at the focus of the courtroom might only be a transvestite who wandered in out of the rain Snap judgements can be so unfair. ‘I do have a number of other tones,’ said Lord Vetinari calmly. Mr Horsefry looked around at his colleagues, who were somehow, suddenly, on the distant horizon. ‘I just wanted to make it clear that we’ve done nothing wrong,’ he muttered. ‘That’s all. There is a Code of Conduct.’ ‘I’m sure I’ve not suggested that you have done anything wrong,’ said Lord Vetinari. ‘However, I shall make a note of what you tell me.’ He pulled a sheet of paper towards him and wrote, in a careful copperplate hand, ‘Code of Conduct’. The shifting of the paper exposed a file marked ‘Embezzlement’. The title was of course upside down to the rest of the group and, since presumably it was not intended to be read by them, they read it. Horsefry even twisted his head for a better view. ‘However,’ Vetinari went on, ‘since the question of wrongdoing has been raised by Mr Horsefry,’ and he gave the young man a brief smile, ‘I am sure you are aware of talk suggesting a conspiracy amongst yourselves to keep rates high and competition non-existent.’ The sentence came out fast and smooth, like a snake’s tongue, and the swift flick on the end of it was: ‘And, indeed, some rumours about the death of young Mr Dearheart last month.’ A stir among the semicircle of men said that the shoe had been dropped. It wasn’t a welcome shoe, but it was a shoe they had been expecting and it had just gone thud. ‘An actionable falsehood,’ said Slant. ‘On the contrary, Mr Slant,’ said Vetinari, ‘merely mentioning to you the existence of a rumour is not actionable, as I am sure you are aware.’ ‘There is no proof that we had anything to do with the boy’s murder,’ snapped Horsefry. ‘Ah, so you too have heard people saying he was murdered?’ said Vetinari, his eyes on Reacher Gilt’s face. ‘These rumours just fly around, don’t they . . .’ ‘My lord, people talk,’ said Slant wearily. ‘But the facts are that Mr Dearheart was alone in the tower. No one else went up or down. His safety line was apparently not clipped to anything. It was an accident, such as happens often. Yes, we know people say his fingers were broken, but with a fall of that distance, hitting the tower on the way, can that really be surprising? Alas, the Grand Trunk Company is not popular at the moment and so these scurrilous and baseless accusations are made. As Mr Horsefry pointed out, there is no evidence whatsoever that what happened was anything more than a tragic accident. And, if I may speak frankly, what exactly is the purpose of calling us here? My clients are busy men.’ Vetinari leaned back and placed his fingers together. ‘Let us consider a situation in which some keen and highly inventive men devise a remarkable system of communication,’ he said. ‘What they have is a kind of passionate ingenuity, in large amounts. What they don’t have is money. They are not used to money. So they meet some . . . people, who introduce them to other people, friendly people, who for, oh, a forty per cent stake in the enterprise give them the much-needed cash and, very important, much fatherly advice and an introduction to a really good firm of accountants. And so they proceed, and soon money is coming in and money is going out but somehow, they learn, they’re not quite as financially stable as they think and really do need more money. Well, this is all fine because it’s clear to all that the basic enterprise is going to be a money tree one day, and does it matter if they sign over another fifteen per cent? It’s just money. It’s not important in the way that shutter mechanisms are, is it? And then they find out that yes, it is. It is everything. Suddenly the world’s turned upside down, suddenly those nice people aren’t so friendly any more, suddenly it turns out that those bits of paper they signed in a hurry, were advised to sign by people who smiled all the time, mean that they don’t actually own anything at all, not patents, not property, nothing. Not even the contents of their own heads, indeed. Even any ideas they have now don’t belong to them, apparently. And somehow they’re still in trouble about money. Well, some run and some hide and some try to fight, which is foolish in the extreme, because it turns out that everything is legal, it really is. Some accept low-level jobs in the enterprise, because one has to live and in any case the enterprise even owns their dreams at night. And yet actual illegality, it would appear, has not taken place. Business is business.’ Lord Vetinari opened his eyes. The men around the table were staring at him. ‘Just thinking aloud,’ he said. ‘I am sure you will point out that this is not the business of the government. I know Mr Gilt will. However, since you acquired the Grand Trunk at a fraction of its value, I note that breakdowns are increasing, the speed of messages has slowed down and the cost to customers has risen. Last week the Grand Trunk was closed for almost three days. We could not even talk to Sto Lat! Hardly “As Fast as Light”, gentlemen.’ ‘That was for essential maintenance—’ Mr Slant began. ‘No, it was for repairs,’ snapped Vetinari. ‘Under the previous management the system shut down for an hour every day. That was for maintenance. Now the towers run until they break down. What do you think you are doing, gentlemen?’ ‘That, my lord, and with respect, is none of your business.’ Lord Vetinari smiled. For the first time that morning, it was a smile of genuine pleasure. ‘Ah, Mr Reacher Gilt, I was wondering when we’d hear from you. You have been so uncharacteristically silent. I read your recent article in the Times with great interest. You are passionate about freedom, I gather. You used the word “tyranny” three times and the word “tyrant” once.’ ‘Don’t patronize me, my lord,’ said Gilt. ‘We own the Trunk. It is our property. You understand that? Property is the foundation of freedom. Oh, customers complain about the service and the cost, but customers always complain about such things. We have no shortage of customers at whatever cost. Before the semaphore, news from Genua took months to get here, now it takes less than a day. It is affordable magic. We are answerable to our shareholders, my lord. Not, with respect, to you. It is not your business. It is our business, and we will run it according to the market. I hope there are no tyrannies here. This is, with respect, a free city.’ ‘Such a lot of respect is gratifying,’ said the Patrician. ‘But the only choice your customers have is between you and nothing.’ ‘Exactly,’ said Reacher Gilt calmly. ‘There is always a choice. They can ride a horse a few thousand miles, or they can wait patiently until we can send their message.’ Vetinari gave him a smile that lasted as long as a lightning flash. ‘Or fund and build another system,’ he said. ‘Although I note that every other company that has lately tried to run a clacks system in opposition has failed quite quickly, sometimes in distressing circumstances. Falls from the tops of clacks towers, and so on.’ ‘Accidents do happen. It is most unfortunate,’ said Mr Slant stiffly. ‘Most unfortunate,’ Vetinari echoed. He pulled the paper towards him once again, dislodging the files slightly, so that a few more names were visible, and wrote ‘Most unfortunate’. ‘Well, I believe that covers everything,’ he said. ‘In fact, the purpose of this meeting was to tell you formally that I am, at last, reopening the Post Office as planned. This is just a courtesy announcement, but I felt I should tell you because you are, after all, in the same business. I believe the recent string of accidents is now at an en—’ Reacher Gilt chuckled. ‘Sorry, my lord? Did I understand you correctly? You really intend to continue with this folly, in the face of everything? The Post Office? When we all know that it was a lumbering, smug, overstaffed, overweight monster of a place? It barely earned its keep! It was the very essence and exemplar of public enterprise!’ ‘It never made much of a profit, it is true, but in the business areas of this city there were seven deliveries a day,’ said Vetinari, cold as the depths of the sea. ‘Hah! Not at the end!’ said Mr Horsefry. ‘It was bloody useless!’ ‘Indeed. A classic example of a corroded government organization dragging on the public purse,’ Gilt added. ‘Too true!’ said Mr Horsefry. ‘They used to say that if you wanted to get rid of a dead body you should take it to the Post Office and it’d never be seen again!’ ‘And was it?’ said Lord Vetinari, raising an eyebrow. ‘Was what?’ ‘Was it seen again?’ There was a sudden hunted look in Mr Horsefry’s eyes. ‘What? How would I know?’ ‘Oh, I see,’ said Lord Vetinari. ‘It was a joke. Ah, well.’ He shuffled the papers. ‘Unfortunately the Post Office came to be seen not as a system for moving the mail efficiently, to the benefit and profit of all, but as a money box. And so it collapsed, losing both mail and money. A lesson for us all, perhaps. Anyway, I have high hopes of Mr Lipwig, a young man full of fresh ideas. A good head for heights, too, although I imagine he will not be climbing any towers.’ ‘I do hope this resurrection will not prove to be a drain on our taxes,’ said Mr Slant. ‘I assure you, Mr Slant, that apart from the modest sum necessary to, as it were, prime the pump, the postal service will be self-supporting as, indeed, it used to be. We cannot have a drag on the public purse, can we? And now, gentlemen, I am conscious that I am keeping you from your very important business. I do trust that the Trunk will be back in commission very shortly’ As they stood up, Reacher Gilt leaned across the table and said: ‘May I congratulate you, my lord?’ ‘I am delighted that you feel inclined to congratulate me on anything, Mr Gilt,’ said Vetinari. ‘To what do we owe this unique occurrence?’ ‘This, my lord,’ said Gilt, gesturing to the little side table on which had been set the rough-hewn piece of stone. ‘Is this not an original Hnaflbaflsniflwhifltafl slab? Llamedos bluestone, isn’t it? And the pieces look like basalt, which is the very devil to carve. A valuable antique, I think.’ ‘It was a present to me from the Low King of the Dwarfs,’ said Vetinari. ‘It is, indeed, very old.’ ‘And you have a game in progress, I see. You’re playing the dwarf side, yes?’ ‘Yes. I play by clacks against an old friend in Uberwald,’ said Vetinari. ‘Happily for me, your breakdown yesterday has given me an extra day to think of my next move.’ Their eyes met. Reacher Gilt laughed hugely. Vetinari smiled. The other men, who badly needed to laugh, laughed too. See, we’re all friends, we’re like colleagues really, nothing bad is going to happen. The laughter died away, a little uneasily. Gilt and Vetinari maintained smiles, maintained eye contact. ‘We should play a game,’ said Gilt. ‘I have a rather nice board myself. I play the troll side, for preference.’ ‘Ruthless, initially outnumbered, inevitably defeated in the hands of the careless player?’ said Vetinari. ‘Indeed. Just as the dwarfs rely on guile, feint and swift changes of position. A man can learn all of an opponent’s weaknesses on that board,’ said Gilt. ‘Really?’ said Vetinari, raising his eyebrows. ‘Should he not be trying to learn his own?’ ‘Oh, that’s just Thud! That’s easy!’ yapped a voice. Both men turned to look at Horsefry, who had been made perky by sheer relief. ‘I used to play it when I was a kid,’ he burbled. ‘It’s boring. The dwarfs always win!’ Gilt and Vetinari shared a look. It said: while I loathe you and every aspect of your personal philosophy to a depth unplumbable by any line, I’ll credit you at least with not being Crispin Horsefry. ‘Appearances are deceptive, Crispin,’ said Gilt jovially. ‘A troll player need never lose, if he puts his mind to it.’ ‘I know I once got a dwarf stuck up my nose and Mummy had to get it out with a hairpin,’ said Horsefry, as if this was a source of immense pride. Gilt put his arm round the man’s shoulders. ‘That’s very interesting, Crispin,’ he said. ‘Do you think it’s likely to happen again?’ Vetinari stood at the window after they had left, watching the city below. After a few minutes, Drumknott drifted in. ‘There was a brief exchange in the ante-room, my lord,’ he said. Vetinari didn’t turn round, but held up a hand. ‘Let me see . . . I imagine one of them started saying something like “Do you think he—” and Slant very quickly shushed him? Mr Horsefry, I suspect.’ Drumknott glanced at the paper in his hand. ‘Almost to the word, my lord.’ ‘It takes no great leap of the imagination,’ sighed Lord Vetinari. ‘Dear Mr Slant. He’s so . . . dependable. Sometimes I really think that if he was not already a zombie it would be necessary to have him turned into one.’ ‘Shall I order a Number One Investigation on Mr Gilt, my lord?’ ‘Good heavens, no. He is far too clever. Order it on Mr Horsefry.’ ‘Really, sir? But you did say yesterday that you believed him to be no more than a greedy fool.’ A nervous fool, which is useful. He’s a venal coward and a glutton. I’ve watched him sit down to a meal of pot au feu with white beans, and that was an impressive sight, Drumknott, which I will not easily forget. The sauce went everywhere. Those pink shirts he wears cost more than a hundred dollars, too. Oh, he acquires other people’s money, in a safe and secret and not very clever way. Send . . . yes, send clerk Brian.’ ‘Brian, sir?’ said Drumknott. ‘Are you sure? He’s wonderful at devices, but quite inept on the street. He’ll be seen.’ ‘Yes, Drumknott. I know. I would like Mr Horsefry to become a little . . . more nervous.’ ‘Ah, I see, sir.’ Vetinari turned back to the window. ‘Tell me, Drumknott,’ he said, ‘would you say I’m a tyrant?’ ‘Most certainly not, my lord,’ said Drumknott, tidying the desk. ‘But of course that’s the problem, is it not? Who will tell the tyrant he is a tyrant?’ ‘That’s a tricky one, my lord, certainly,’ said Drumknott, squaring up the files. ‘In his Thoughts, which I have always considered fare badly in translation, Bouffant says that intervening in order to prevent a murder is to curtail the freedom of the murderer and yet that freedom, by definition, is natural and universal, without condition,’ said Vetinari. ‘You may recall his famous dictum: “If any man is not free, then I too am a small pie made of chicken”, which has led to a considerable amount of debate. Thus we might consider, for example, that taking a bottle from a man killing himself with drink is a charitable, nay, praiseworthy act, and yet freedom is curtailed once more. Mr Gilt has studied his Bouffant but, I fear, failed to understand him. Freedom may be mankind’s natural state, but so is sitting in a tree eating your dinner while it is still wriggling. On the other hand, Freidegger, in Modal Contextities, claims that all freedom is limited, artificial and therefore illusory, a shared hallucination at best. No sane mortal is truly free, because true freedom is so terrible that only the mad or the divine can face it with open eyes. It overwhelms the soul, very much like the state he elsewhere describes as Vonallesvolkommenunverstandlichdasdaskeit. What position would you take here, Drumknott?’ ‘I’ve always thought, my lord, that what the world really needs are filing boxes which are not so flimsy,’ said Drumknott, after a moment’s pause. ‘Hmm,’ said Lord Vetinari. ‘A point to think about, certainly.’ He stopped. On the carven decorations over the room’s fireplace a small cherub began to turn, with a faint squeaking noise. Vetinari raised an eyebrow at Drumknott. ‘I shall have a word with clerk Brian immediately, my lord,’ said the clerk. ‘Good. Tell him it’s time he got out into the fresh air more.’ Chapter Four A Sign Dark Clerks and dead Postmasters - A Werewolf in the Watch - The wonderful pin - Mr Lipwig reads letters that are not there — Hugo the hairdresser is surprised — Mr Parker buys fripperies — The Nature of Social Untruths - Princess in the Tower - A man is not dead while his name is still spoken.’ ‘Ntow Then, Mr Lipvig, What Good Will Violence Do?’ Mr Pump rumbled. He rocked on his huge feet as Moist struggled in his grip. Groat and Stanley were huddled at the far end of the locker room. One of Mr Groat’s natural remedies was bubbling over on to the floor, where the boards were staining purple. ‘They were all accidents, Mr Lipwig! All accidents!’ Groat babbled. ‘The Watch was all over the place by the fourth one! They were all accidents, they said!’ ‘Oh, yes!’ screamed Moist. ‘Four in five weeks, eh? I bet that happens all the time around here! Ye gods, I’ve been done up good and brown! I’m dead, right? Just not lying down yet! Vetinari? There’s a man who knows how to save the price of a rope! I’m done for!’ ‘You’ll feel better for a nice cup o’ bismuth and brimstone tea, sir,’ Groat quavered. ‘I’ve got the kettle boiling—’ ‘A cup of tea is not going to be sufficient!’ Moist got a grip on himself, or at least began to act as if he had, and took a deep, theatrical breath. ‘Okay, okay, Mr Pump, you can let go now.’ The golem released his grip. Moist straightened up. ‘Well, Mr Groat?’ he said. ‘Looks like you’re genuine after all, then,’ the old man said. ‘One of the dark clerks wouldn’t have gone bursar like that. We thought you was one of his lordship’s special gentlemen, see.’ Groat fussed around the kettle. ‘No offence, but you’ve got a bit more colour than the average penpusher.’ ‘Dark clerks?’ said Moist, and then recollection dawned. ‘Oh . . . do you mean those stocky little men in black suits and bowler hats?’ ‘The very same. Scholarship boys at the Assassins’ Guild, some of ‘em. I heard that they can do some nasty things when they’ve a mind.’ ‘I thought you called them penpushers?’ ‘Yeah, but I didn’t say where, heehee.’ Groat caught Moist’s expression and coughed. ‘Sorry, didn’t mean it, just my little joke. We reckon the last new postmaster we had, Mr Whobblebury, he was a dark clerk. Can’t hardly blame him, with a name like that. He was always snooping around.’ ‘And why do you think that was?’ said Moist. ‘Well, Mr Mutable, he was the first, decent chap, he fell down into the big hall from the fifth floor, smack, sir, smack on to the marble. Head first. It was a bit . . . splashy, sir.’ Moist glanced at Stanley, who was starting to tremble. ‘Then there was Mr Sideburn. He fell down the back stairs and broke his neck, sir. Excuse me, sir, it’s eleven forty-three.’ Groat walked over to the door and opened it, Tiddles walked through, Groat shut the door again. ‘At three in the morning, it was. Right down five flights. Broke just about every bone you could break, sir.’ ‘You mean he was wandering around without a light?’ ‘Dunno, sir. But I know about the stairs. The stairs have lamps burning all night, sir. Stanley fills them every day, regular as Tiddles.’ ‘Use those stairs a lot, then, do you?’ said Moist. ‘Never, sir, except for the lamps. Nearly everywhere on that side is bunged up with mail. But it’s a Post Office Regulation, sir.’ ‘And the next man?’ said Moist, a little hoarsely. ‘Another accidental fall?’ ‘Oh, no, sir. Mr Ignavia, that was his name. They said it was his heart. He was just lyin’ dead on the fifth floor, dead as a doorknob, face all contorted like he’d seen a ghost. Natural causes, they said. Werrrl, the Watch was all over the place by then, you may depend on it. No one had been near him, they said, and there was not a mark on him. Surprised you didn’t know about all this, sir. It was in the paper.’ Except you don’t get much chance to keep up with the news in a condemned cell, Moist thought. ‘Oh yes?’ he said. ‘And how would they know no one had been near him?’ Groat leaned forward and lowered his voice conspiratorially. ‘Everyone knows there’s a werewolf in the Watch and one of them could bloody nearly smell what colour clothes someone was wearing.’ ‘A werewolf,’ said Moist, flatly. ‘Yes. Anyway, the one before him—’ ‘A werewolf.’ ‘That’s what I said, sir,’ said Groat. ‘A damn werewolf.’ ‘Takes all sorts to make a world, sir. Anyway—’ ‘A werewolf.’ Moist awoke from the horror. ‘And they don’t tell visitors?’ ‘Now, how’d they do that, sir?’ said Groat, in a kindly voice. ‘Put it on a sign outside? “Welcome To Ankh-Morpork, We Have A Werewolf”, sir? The Watch’s got loads of dwarfs and trolls and a golem - a free golem, savin’ your presence, Mr Pump - and a couple of gnomes and a zombie . . . even a Nobbs.’ ‘Nobbs? What’s a Nobbs?’ ‘Corporal Nobby Nobbs, sir. Not met him yet? They say he’s got an official chitty saying he’s human, and who needs one of those, eh? Fortunately there’s only one of him so he can’t breed. Anyway, we’ve got a bit of everything, sir. Very cosmopolitan. You don’t like werewolves?’ They know who you are by your smell, thought Moist. They’re as bright as a human and can track you better than any wolf. They can follow a trail that’s days old, even if you cover yourself with scent - especially if you cover yourself with scent. Oh, there’s ways around, if you know there is going to be a werewolf on your tail. No wonder they caught up with me. There should be a law! ‘Not a lot,’ he said aloud, and glanced at Stanley again. It was useful to watch Stanley when Groat was talking. Now the boy had his eyes turned up so much that they were practically all whites. ‘And Mr Whobblebury?’ he said. ‘He was investigating for Vetinari, eh? What happened to him?’ Stanley was shaking like a bush in a high wind. ‘Er, you did get given the big keyring, sir?’ Groat enquired, his voice trembling with innocence. ‘Yes, of course.’ ‘I bet there is one key missing,’ said Groat. ‘The Watch took it. It was the only one. Some doors ought to stay closed, sir. It’s all over and done with, sir. Mr Whobblebury died of an industrial accident, they said. Nobody near him. You don’t want to go there, sir. Sometimes things get so broke it’s best to walk away, sir.’ ‘I can’t,’ said Moist. ‘I am the Postmaster General. And this is my building, isn’t it? I’ll decide where I go, Junior Postman Groat.’ Stanley shut his eyes. ‘Yes, sir,’ said Groat, as if talking to a child. ‘But you don’t want to go there-, sir.’ ‘ His head was all over the wall!’ Stanley quavered. ‘Oh dear, now you’ve set him off, sir,’ said Groat, scuttling across to the boy. ‘It’s all right, lad, I’ll just get you your pills—’ ‘What is the most expensive pin ever made commercially, Stanley?’ said Moist quickly. It was like pulling a lever. Stanley’s expression went from agonized grief to scholarly cogitation in an instant. ‘Commercially? Leaving aside those special pins made for exhibitions and trade shows, including the Great Pin of 1899, then probably it is the Number Three Broad-headed “Chicken” Extra Long made for the lace-making market by the noted pinner Josiah Doldrum, I would say. They were hand-drawn and had his trademark silver head with a microscopic engraving of a cockerel. It’s believed that fewer than a hundred were made before his death, sir. According to Hubert Spider’s Pin Catalogue, examples can fetch between fifty and sixty-five dollars, depending on condition. A Number Three Broad-headed Extra Long would grace any true pinhead’s collection.’ ‘Only . . . I spotted this in the street,’ said Moist, extracting one of that morning’s purchases from his lapel. ‘I was walking down Market Street and there it was, between two cobblestones. I thought it looked unusual. For a pin.’ Stanley pushed away the fussing Groat and carefully took the pin from Moist’s fingers. A very large magnifying glass appeared as if by magic in his other hand. The room held its breath as the pin was subjected to serious scrutiny. Then Stanley looked up at Moist in amazement. ‘You knew?’ he said. ‘And you spotted this in the street? I thought you didn’t know anything about pins!’ ‘Oh, not really, but I dabbled a bit as a boy,’ said Moist, waving a hand deprecatingly to suggest that he had been too foolish to turn a schoolboy hobby into a lifetime’s obsession. ‘You know . . . a few of the old brass Imperials, one or two oddities like an unbroken pair or a double-header, the occasional cheap packet of mixed pins on approval . . .’ Thank the gods, he thought, for the skill of speed-reading. ‘Oh, there’s never anything worthwhile in those,’ said Stanley, and slid again into the voice of the academic: ‘While most pinheads do indeed begin with a casually acquired flashy novelty pin, followed by the contents of their grandmothers’ pincushions, haha, the path to a truly worthwhile collection lies not in the simple disbursement of money in the nearest pin emporium, oh no. Any dilettante can become “king pin” with enough expenditure, but for the true pinhead the real pleasure is in the joy of the chase, the pin fairs, the house clearances and, who knows, a casual glint in the gutter that turns out to be a well-preserved Doublefast or an unbroken two-pointer. Well is it said: “See a pin and pick it up, and all day long you’ll have a pin”.’ Moist nearly applauded. It was word for word what J. Lanugo Owlsbury had written in the introduction to his work. And, much more important, he now had an unshakable friend in Stanley. That was to say, his darker regions added, Stanley was friends with him. The boy, his panic subsumed by the joy of pins, was holding his new acquisition up to the light. ‘Magnificent,’ he breathed, all terrors fled. ‘Clean as a new pin! I have a place ready and waiting for this in my pin folder, sir!’ ‘Yes, I thought you might.’ His head was all over the wall . . . Somewhere there was a locked door, and Moist didn’t have the key. Four of his predecessors had predeceased in this very building. And there was no escape. Being Postmaster General was a job for life - one way or the other. That was why Vetinari had put him here. He needed a man who couldn’t walk away, and who was incidentally completely expendable. It didn’t matter if Moist von Lipwig died. He was already dead. And then he tried not to think about Mr Pump. How many other golems had worked their way to freedom in the service of the city? Had there been a Mr Saw, fresh from a hundred years in a pit of sawdust? Or Mr Shovel? Mr Axe, maybe? And had there been one here when the last poor guy had found the key to the locked door, or a good lockpick, and was about to open it when behind him someone called maybe Mr Hammer, yes, oh gods, yes, raised his fist for one sudden, terminal blow? No one had been near him? But they weren’t people, were they . . . they were tools. It’d be an industrial accident. His head was all over the wall . . . I’m going to find out about this. I have to, otherwise it’ll lie in wait for me. And everyone will tell me lies. But I am the fibbermeister. ‘Hmm?’ he said, aware that he’d missed something. ‘I said, could I go and put this in my collection, Postmaster?’ said Stanley. ‘What? Oh. Yes. Fine. Yes. Give it a really good polish, too.’ As the boy gangled off to his end of the locker room, and he did gangle, Moist caught Groat looking at him shrewdly. ‘Well done, Mr Lipwig,’ he said. ‘Well done.’ ‘Thank you, Mr Groat.’ ‘Good eyesight you’ve got there,’ the old man went on. ‘Well, the light was shining off it—’ ‘Nah, I meant to see cobbles in Market Street, it being all brick-paving up there.’ Moist returned his blank stare with one even blanker. ‘Bricks, cobbles, who cares?’ he said. ‘Yeah, right. Not important, really,’ said Groat. ‘And now,’ said Moist, feeling the need for some fresh air, ‘there’s a little errand I have to run. I’d like you to come with me, Mr Groat. Can you find a crowbar anywhere? Bring it, please. And I’ll need you, too, Mr Pump.’ Werewolves and golems, golems and werewolves, Moist thought. I’m stuck here. I might as well take it seriously. I will show them a sign. ‘There’s a little habit I have,’ said Moist, as he led the way through the streets. ‘It’s to do with signs.’ ‘Signs, sir?’ said Groat, trying to keep close to the walls. ‘Yes, Junior Postman Groat, signs,’ said Moist, noticing the way the man winced at ‘Junior’. ‘Particularly signs with missing letters. When I see one, I automatically read what the missing letters say.’ ‘And how can you do that, sir, when they’re missing?’ said Groat. Ah, so there’s a clue as to why you’re still sitting in a run-down old building making tea from rocks and weeds all day, Moist thought. Aloud he said: ‘It’s a knack. Now, I could be wrong, of course, but— Ah, we turn left here . . .’ This was quite a busy street, and the shop was in front of them. It was everything that Moist had hoped. ‘Voila,’ he said and, remembering his audience, he added: ‘That is to say, there we have it.’ ‘It’s a barber’s shop,’ said Groat uncertainly. ‘For ladies.’ ‘Ah, you’re a man of the world, Tolliver, there’s no fooling you,’ said Moist. And the name over the window, in those large, blue-green letters, is . . . ?’ ‘Hugos,’ said Groat. ‘And?’ ‘Yes, Hugo’s,’ said Moist. ‘No apostrophe present in fact, and the reason for this is . . . you could work with me a little here, perhaps . . . ?’ ‘Er . . .’ Groat stared frantically at the letters, defying them to reveal their meaning. ‘Close enough,’ said Moist. ‘There is no apostrophe there because there was and is no apostrophe in the uplifting slogan that adorns our beloved Post Office, Mr Groat.’ He waited for light to dawn. ‘Those big metal letters were stolen from our facade, Mr Groat. I mean, the front of the building. They’re the reason for Glom of Nit, Mr Groat.’ It took a little time for Mr Groat’s mental sunrise to take place, but Moist was ready when it did. ‘No, no, no!’ he said, grabbing the old man’s greasy collar as he lurched forward, and almost pulling Groat off his feet. ‘That’s not how we deal with this, is it?’ ‘That’s Post Office property! That’s worse’n stealing, that is! That’s treason!’ Groat yelled. ‘Quite so,’ said Moist. ‘Mr Pump, if you would just hold on to our friend here, I will go and . . . discuss the matter.’ Moist handed over the furious Junior Postman and brushed himself off. He looked a bit rumpled but it would have to do. ‘What are you going to do, then?’ said Groat. Moist smiled his sunshine smile. ‘Something I’m good at, Mr Groat. I’m going to talk to people.’ He crossed the road and opened the shop door. The bell jangled. Inside the hairdresser’s shop was an array of little booths, and the air smelled sweet and cloying and, somehow, pink; right by the door was a little desk with a big open diary. There were lots of flowers around, and the young woman at the desk gave him a haughty look that was going to cost her employer a lot of money. She waited for Moist to speak. Moist put on a grave expression, leaned down and said in a voice that had all the characteristics of a whisper but also seemed to be able to carry quite a long way, ‘Can I see Mr Hugo, please? It is very important.’ ‘On what business would that be?’ ‘Well . . . it’s a little delicate . . .’ said Moist. He could see the tops of permed heads turning. ‘But you can tell him it’s good news.’ ‘Well, if it’s good news . . .’ ‘Tell him I think I can persuade Lord Vetinari that this can be settled without charges being brought. Probably,’ said Moist, lowering his voice just enough to increase the curiosity of the customers while not so much as to be inaudible. The woman stared at him in horror. ‘You can? Er . . .’ She groped for an ornate speaking tube, but Moist took it gently from her hand, whistled expertly down it, lifted it to his ear and flashed her a smile. ‘Thank you,’ he said. For what did not matter; smile, say the right kinds of words in the right kind of voice, and always, always radiate confidence like a supernova. A voice in his ear, faint as a spider trapped in a matchbox, said: ‘ Scitich wabble nabnab?’ ‘Hugo?’ said Moist. ‘It’s good of you to make time for me. It’s Moist, Moist von Lipwig. Postmaster General.’ He glanced at the speaking tube. It disappeared into the ceiling. ‘So kind of you to assist us, Hugo. It’s these missing letters. Five missing letters, to be exact.’ ‘ Scrik? Shabadatwik? Scritch vit bottofix!’ ‘Don’t really carry that kind of thing, Hugo, but if you’d care to look out of your window you’ll see my personal assistant, Mr Pump. He’s standing on the other side of the street.’ And he’s eight feet tall and carrying a huge crowbar, Moist added mentally. He winked at the lady sitting at the desk, who was watching him in a kind of awe. You had to keep people skills polished at all times. He heard the muffled expletive through the floor. Via the speaking tube it became ‘ Vugrs nickbibble!’ ‘Yes,’ said Moist. ‘Perhaps I should come up and speak to you directly . . .’ Ten minutes later Moist crossed the road with care and smiled at his staff. ‘Mr Pump, if you would be so good as to step over there and pry out our letters, please?’ he said. ‘Try not to damage anything. Mr Hugo has been very co-operative. And Tolliver, you’ve lived here a long time, haven’t you? You’ll know where to hire men with ropes, steeplejacks, that sort of thing? I want those letters back on our building by midday, okay?’ ‘That’ll cost a lot of money, Mr Lipwig,’ said Groat, staring at him in amazement. Moist pulled a bag out of his pocket, and jingled it. ‘One hundred dollars should more than cover it?’ he said. ‘Mr Hugo was very apologetic and very, very inclined to be helpful. Says he bought them years ago off a man in a pub and is only too happy to pay for them to be returned. It’s amazing how nice people can be, if approached in the right way.’ There was a clang from the other side of the street. Mr Pump had already removed the H, without any apparent effort. Speak softly and employ a huge man with a crowbar, thought Moist. This might be bearable after all. The weak sunlight glinted on the S as it was swung into position. There was quite a crowd. People in Ankh-Morpork always paid attention to people on rooftops, in case there was a chance of an interesting suicide. There was a cheer, just on general principles, when the last letter was hammered back into place. Four dead men, Moist thought, looking up at the roof. I wonder if the Watch would talk to me? Do they know about me? Do they think I’m dead? Do I want to speak to policemen? No! Damn! The only way I can get out of this is by running forward, not going back. Bloody, bloody Vetinari. But there’s a way to win. He could make money! He was part of the government, wasn’t he? Governments took money off people. That’s what they were for. He had people skills, hadn’t he? He could persuade people that brass was gold that had got a bit tarnished, that glass was diamond, that tomorrow there was going to be free beer. He’d outfox them all! He wouldn’t try to escape, not yet! If a golem could buy its freedom, then so could he! He’d buckle down and bustle and look busy and he’d send all the bills to Vetinari, because this was government work! How could the man object? And if Moist von Lipwig couldn’t cream a little somethi— a big something off the top, and the bottom, and maybe a little off the sides, then he didn’t deserve to! And then, when it was all going well and the cash was rolling in . . . well, then there’d be time to make plans for the big one. Enough money bought a lot of men with sledgehammers. The workmen pulled themselves back on to the flat roof. There was another ragged cheer from a crowd that reckoned it hadn’t been bad entertainment even if no one had fallen off. ‘What do you think, Mr Groat?’ he said. ‘Looks nice, sir, looks nice,’ said Groat, as the crowd dispersed and they walked back to the Post Office building. ‘Not disturbing anything, then?’ said Moist. Groat patted the surprised Moist on the arm. ‘I don’t know why his lordship sent you, sir, really I don’t,’ he whispered. ‘You mean well, I can see. But take my advice, sir, and get out of here.’ Moist glanced towards the building’s doors. Mr Pump was standing beside them. Just standing, with his arms hanging down. The fire in his eyes was a banked glow. ‘I can’t do that,’ he said. ‘Nice of you to say so, sir, but this place isn’t for a young man with a future,’ said Groat. ‘Now, Stanley, he’s all right if he’s got his pins, but you, sir, you could go far.’ ‘No-o, I don’t think I can,’ said Moist. ‘Honestly. My place, Mr Groat, is here.’ ‘Gods bless you for saying that, sir, gods bless you,’ said Groat. Tears were beginning to roll down his face. ‘We used to be heroes,’ he said. ‘People wanted us. Everyone watched out for us. Everyone knew us. This was a great place, once. Once, we were postmen! ‘Mister!’ Moist turned. Three people were hurrying towards him, and he had to quell an automatic urge to turn and run, especially when one of them shouted, ‘Yes, that’s him!’ He recognized the greengrocer from this morning. An elderly couple were trailing behind him. The older man, who had the determined face and upright bearing of a man who subdued cabbages daily, stopped an inch in front of Moist and bellowed: ‘Are you the po’stman, young man?’ ‘Yes, sir, I suppose I am,’ said Moist. ‘How can I—’ ‘You delivered me this letter from Aggie here! I’m Tim Parker!’ the man roared. ‘Now, there’s s’ome people’d say it wa’s a little bit on the late side!’ ‘Oh,’ said Moist. ‘Well, I—’ ‘That took a bit of nerve, young man!’ ‘I’m very sorry that—’ Moist began. People skills weren’t much good in the face of Mr Parker. He was one of the impervious people, whose grasp of volume control was about as good as his understanding of personal space. ‘S’orry?’ Parker shouted. ‘What’ve you got to be s’orry about? Not your fault, lad. You weren’t even born! More fool me for thinking she didn’t care, eh? Hah, I wa’s so downhearted, lad, I went right out and joined the . . .’ His red face wrinkled. ‘You know . . . camel’s, funny hat’s, sand, where you go to forget . . .’ ‘The Klatchian Foreign Legion?’ said Moist. ‘That wa’s it! And when I came back I met Sadie, and Aggie had met her Frederick, and we both got s’ettled and forgot the other one was alive and then blow me down if this letter didn’t arrive from Aggie! Me and my lad have s’pent half the morning tracking her down! And to cut a long s’tory short, lad, we’re getting married Sat’day! ‘co’s of you, boy!’ Mr Parker was one of those men who turn into teak with age. When he slapped Moist on the back it was like being hit with a chair. ‘Won’t Frederick and Aggie object—’ Moist wheezed. ‘I doubt it! Frederick pas’sed away ten years ago and Sadie’s been buried up in S’mall God’s for the last five!’ Mr Barker bellowed cheerfully. ‘And we were s’orry to see them go but, as Aggie say’s, it was all meant to be and you wa’s sent by a higher power. And I say it took a man with real backbone to come and deliver that letter after all this time. There’s many that would have tos’sed it aside like it was of no account! You’d do me and the future second Mrs Parker a great favour if you wa’s to be a guest of honour at our wedding, and I for one won’t take no for an ans’wer! I’m Grand Ma’ster of the Guild of Merchant’s this year, too! We might not be posh like the Assassins or the Alchemists but there’s a lot of us and I shall put in a word on your behalf, you can depend on that! My lad George here will be down later on with the invitation’s for you to deliver, now you’re back in busines’s! It will be a great honour for me, my boy, if you would shake me by the hand . . .’ He thrust out a huge hand. Moist took it, and old habits died hard. Firm grip, steady gaze . . . ‘Ah, you’re an honest man, all right,’ said Parker. ‘I’m never mis’taken!’ He clapped his hand on Moist’s shoulder, causing a knee joint to crunch. ‘What’s your name, lad?’ ‘Lipwig, sir. Moist von Lipwig,’ Moist said. He was afraid he’d gone deaf in one ear. ‘A von, eh,’ said Parker. ‘Well, you’re doing damn well for a foreigner, and I don’t care who know’s it! Got to be going now. Aggie want’s to buy fripperie’s!’ The woman came up to Moist, stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek. ‘And I know a good man when I see one,’ she said. ‘Do you have a young lady?’ ‘What? No! Not at all! Er . . . no!’ said Moist. ‘I’m sure you shall,’ she said, smiling sweetly. ‘And while we’re very grateful to you, I would advise you to propose in person. We do so much look forward to seeing you on Saturday!’ Moist watched her scurry away after her long-lost swain. ‘You delivered a letter?’ said Groat, horrified. ‘Yes, Mr Groat. I didn’t mean to, but I just happened to be—’ ‘You took one of the old letters and you delivered it?’ said Groat, as if the concept was something he could not fit into his head— His head was all over the wall . . . Moist blinked. ‘We are supposed to deliver the mail, man! That’s our job! Remember?’ ‘You delivered a letter . . .’ breathed Groat. ‘What was the date on it?’ ‘I can’t remember! More than forty years ago?’ ‘What was it like? Was it in good condition?’ Groat insisted. Moist glared at the little postman. A small crowd was forming around them, as was the Ankh-Morpork way. ‘It was a forty-year-old letter in a cheap envelope!’ he snarled. ‘And that’s what it looked like! It never got delivered and it upset the lives of two people. I delivered it and it’s made two people very happy. What is the problem, Mr Groat— Yes, what is it?’ This was to a woman who was tugging at his sleeve. ‘I said is it true you’re opening the old place again?’ she repeated. ‘My grandad used to work there!’ ‘Well done him,’ said Moist. ‘He said there was a curse!’ said the woman, as if the idea was rather pleasing. ‘Really?’ said Moist. ‘Well, I could do with a good curse right now, as a matter of fact.’ ‘It lives under the floor and drives you maaad!’ she went on, enjoying the syllable so much that she seemed loath to let it go. ‘Maaad!’ ‘Really,’ said Moist. ‘Well, we do not believe in going crazy in the postal service, do we, Mr Gro—’ He stopped. Mr Groat had the expression of one who did believe in going crazy. ‘You daft old woman!’ Groat yelled. ‘What did you have to tell him that for?’ ‘Mr Groat!’ snapped Moist. ‘I wish to speak to you inside!’ He grabbed the old man by the shoulder and very nearly carried him through the amused crowd, dragged him into the building and slammed the door. ‘I’ve had enough of this!’ he said. ‘Enough of dark comments and mutterings, do you understand? No more secrets. What’s going on here? What went on here? You tell me right now or—’ The little man’s eyes were full of fear. This is not me, Moist thought. This is not the way. People skills, eh? ‘You tell me right now, Senior Postman Groat!’ he snapped. The old man’s eyes widened. ‘Senior Postman?’ ‘I am the postmaster in this vicinity, yes?’ said Moist. ‘That means I can promote, yes? Senior Postman, indeed. On probation, of course. Now, will you tell me what—’ ‘Don’t you hurt Mr Groat, sir!’ said a ringing voice behind Moist. Groat looked past Moist into the gloom and said: ‘It’s all right, Stanley, there’s no need for that, we don’t want a Little Moment.’ To Moist he whispered: ‘Best you put me down gently, sir . . .’ Moist did so, with exaggerated care, and turned round. The boy was standing behind him with a glazed look on his face and the big kettle raised. It was a heavy kettle. ‘You mustn’t hurt Mr Groat, sir,’ he said hoarsely. Moist pulled a pin out of his lapel. ‘Of course not, Stanley. By the way, is this a genuine Clayfeather Medium Sharp?’ Stanley dropped the kettle, suddenly oblivious of everything but the inch of silvery steel between Moist’s fingers. One hand was already pulling out his magnifying glass. ‘Let me see, let me see,’ he said, in a level, thoughtful voice. ‘Oh, yes. Ha. No, sorry. It’s an easy mistake to make. Look at the marks on the shoulder, here. See? And the head was never coiled. This is machine-made. Probably by one of the Happily brothers. Short run, I imagine. Hasn’t got their sigil, though. Could have been done by a creative apprentice. Not worth much, I’m afraid, unless you find someone who specializes in the minutiae of the Happily pinnery.’ ‘I’ll, er, just make a cup of tea, shall I?’ said Groat, picking up the kettle as it rolled backwards and forwards on the floor. ‘Well done again, Mr Lipwig. Er . . . Senior Postman Groat, right?’ ‘Off you go with, yes, probationary Senior Postman Groat, Stanley,’ said Moist, as kindly as he could manage. He looked up and added sharply: ‘I just want to talk to Mr Pump here.’ Stanley looked round at the golem, who was right behind him. It was astonishing how quietly a golem could move; he’d crossed the floor like a shadow and now stood with one still fist raised like the wrath of gods. ‘Oh, I didn’t see you standing there, Mr Pump,’ said Stanley cheerfully. “Why is your hand up?’ The holes in the golem’s face bathed the boy in red light. ‘I . . . Wanted To Ask The Postmaster A Question?’ said the golem slowly. ‘Oh. All right,’ said Stanley, as if he hadn’t been about to brain Moist a moment before. ‘Do you want your pin back, Mr Lipwig?’ he added, and when Moist waved him away he went on, ‘All right, I’ll put it in next month’s charity pin auction.’ When the door had shut behind him, Moist looked up at the golem’s impassive face. ‘You lied to him. Are you allowed to lie, Mr Pump?’ he said. ‘And you can lower that arm, by the way.’ ‘I Have Been Instructed As To The Nature Of Social Untruths, Yes.’ ‘You were going to smash his brains out!’ said Moist. ‘I Would Have Endeavoured Not To,’ the golem rumbled. ‘However, I Cannot Allow You To Come To Inappropriate Harm. It Was A Heavy Kettle.’ ‘You can’t do that, you idiot!’ said Moist, who’d noticed the use of ‘inappropriate’. ‘I Should Have Let Him Kill You?’ said the golem. ‘It Would Not Have Been His Fault. His Head Is Not Right.’ ‘It would be even less right if you walloped it. Look, I sorted it out!’ ‘Yes,’ Pump said. ‘You Have A Talent. It Is A Pity You Misuse It.’ ‘Do you understand anything I’m saying?’ shouted Moist. ‘You can’t just go around killing people!’ ‘Why Not? You Do.’ The golem lowered his arm. ‘What?’ snapped Moist. ‘I do not! Who told you that?’ ‘I Worked It Out. You Have Killed Two Point Three Three Eight People,’ said the golem calmly. ‘I have never laid a finger on anyone in my life, Mr Pump. I may be— all the things you know I am, but I am not a killer! I have never so much as drawn a sword!’ ‘No, You Have Not. But You Have Stolen, Embezzled, Defrauded And Swindled Without Discrimination, Mr Lipvig. You Have Ruined Businesses And. Destroyed Jobs. When Banks Fail, It Is Seldom Bankers Who Starve. Your Actions Have Taken Money From Those Who Had Little Enough To Begin With. In A Myriad Small Ways You Have Hastened The Deaths Of Many. You Do Not Know Them. You Did Not See Them Bleed. But You Snatched Bread From Their Mouths And Tore Clothes From Their Backs. For Sport, Mr Lipvig. For Sport. For The Joy Of The Game.’ Moist’s mouth had dropped open. It shut. It opened again. It shut again. You can never find repartee when you need it. ‘You’re nothing but a walking flowerpot, Pump 19,’ he snapped. ‘Where did that come from?’ ‘I Have Read The Details Of Your Many Crimes, Mr Lipvig. And Pumping Water Teaches One The Value Of Rational Thought. You Took From Others Because You Were Clever And They Were Stupid.’ ‘Hold on, most of the time they thought they were swindling me!’ ‘You Set Out To Trap Them, Mr Lipvig,’ said Mr Pump. Moist went to prod the golem meaningfully, but decided against it just in time. A man could break a finger that way. ‘Well, think about this,’ he said. ‘I’m paying for all that! I was nearly hanged, godsdammit!’ ‘Yes. But Even Now You Harbour Thoughts Of Escape, Of Somehow Turning The Situation To Your Advantage. They Say The Leopard Does Not Change His Shorts.’ ‘But you have to obey my orders, yes?’ snarled Moist. ‘Yes.’ ‘Then screw your damn head off!’ For a moment the red eyes flickered. When Pump spoke next, it was in the voice of Lord Vetinari. ‘Ah, Lipwig. Despite everything, you do not pay attention. Mr Pump cannot be instructed to destroy himself. I would have thought you at least could have worked this out. If you instruct him to do so again, punitive action will be taken.’ The golem blinked again. ‘How did you—’ Moist began. ‘I Have Perfect Recall Of Legal Verbal Instructions,’ said the golem, in his normal rumbling tone. ‘I Surmise That Lord Vetinari, Mindful Of Your Way Of Thinking, Left That Message Because—’ ‘I meant the voice!’ ‘ Perfect Recall, Mr Lipvig,’ Pump replied. ‘I Can Speak With All The Voices Of Men.’ ‘Really? How nice for you.’ Moist stared up at Mr Pump. There was never any animation in that face. There was a nose, of sorts, but it was just a lump in the clay. The mouth moved when he spoke, and the gods knew how baked clay could move like that - indeed, they probably did know. The eyes never closed, they merely dimmed. ‘Can you really read my thoughts?’ he said. ‘No, I Merely Extrapolate From Past Behaviour.’ ‘Well . . .’ Moist, most unusually, was stuck for words. He glared up at the expressionless face, which nevertheless contrived to be disapproving. He was used to looks of anger, indignation and hatred. They were part of the job. But what was a golem? Just . . . dirt. Fired earth. People looking at you as though you were less than the dust beneath their feet was one thing, but it was strangely unpleasant when even the dust did that too. ‘. . . don’t,’ he finished lamely. ‘Go and . . . work. Yes! Go on! That’s what you do! That’s what you’re for!’ It was called the lucky clacks tower, Tower 181. It was close enough to the town of Bonk for a man to be able to go and get a hot bath and a good bed on his days off, but since this was Uberwald there wasn’t too much local traffic and - this was important - it was way, way up in the mountains and management didn’t like to go that far. In the good old days of last year, when the Hour of the Dead took place every night, it was a happy tower because both the up-line and the down-line got the Hour at the same time, so there was an extra pair of hands for maintenance. Now Tower 181 did maintenance on the fly or not at all, just like all the others, but it was still, proverbially, a good tower to man. Mostly man, anyway. Back down on the plains it was a standing joke that 181 was staffed by vampires and werewolves. In fact, like a lot of towers, it was often manned by kids. Everyone knew it happened. Actually, the new management probably didn’t, but wouldn’t have done anything about it if they’d found out, apart from carefully forgetting that they’d known. Kids didn’t need to be paid. The - mostly - young men on the towers worked hard in all weathers for just enough money. They were loners, hard dreamers, fugitives from the law that the law had forgotten, or just from everybody else. They had a special kind of directed madness; they said the rattle of the clacks got into your head and your thoughts beat time with it so that sooner or later you could tell what messages were going through by listening to the rattle of the shutters. In their towers they drank hot tea out of strange tin mugs, much wider at the bottom so that they didn’t fall over when gales banged into the tower. On leave, they drank alcohol out of anything. And they talked a gibberish of their own, of donkey and nondonkey, system overhead and packet space, of drumming it and hotfooting, of a 181 (which was good) or flock (which was bad) or totally flocked (really not good at all) and plug-code and hog-code and jacquard . . . And they liked kids, who reminded them of the ones they’d left behind or would never have, and kids loved the towers. They’d come and hang around and do odd jobs and maybe pick up the craft of semaphore just by watching. They tended to be bright, they mastered the keyboard and levers as if by magic, they usually had good eyesight and what they were doing, most of them, was running away from home without actually leaving. Because, up on the towers, you might believe you could see to the rim of the world. You could certainly see several other towers, on a good clear day. You pretended that you too could read messages by listening to the rattle of the shutters, while under your fingers flowed the names of faraway places you’d never see but, on the tower, were somehow connected to . . . She was known as Princess to the men on Tower 181, although she was really Alice. She was thirteen, could run a line for hours on end without needing help, and later on would have an interesting career which . . . but anyway, she remembered this one conversation, on this day, because it was strange. Not all the signals were messages. Some were instructions to towers. Some, as you operated your levers to follow the distant signal, made things happen in your own tower. Princess knew all about this. A lot of what travelled on the Grand Trunk was called the Overhead. It was instructions to towers, reports, messages about messages, even chatter between operators, although this was strictly forbidden these days. It was all in code. It was very rare you got Plain in the Overhead. But now . . . ‘There it goes again,’ she said. ‘It must be wrong. It’s got no origin code and no address. It’s Overhead, but it’s in Plain.’ On the other side of the tower, sitting in a seat facing the opposite direction because he was operating the up-line, was Roger, who was seventeen and already working for his tower-master certificate. His hand didn’t stop moving as he said: ‘What did it say?’ ‘There was GNU, and I know that’s a code, and then just a name. It was John Dearheart. Was it a—’ ‘You sent it on?’ said Grandad. Grandad had been hunched in the corner, repairing a shutter box in this cramped shed halfway up the tower. Grandad was the tower-master and had been everywhere and knew everything. Everyone called him Grandad. He was twenty-six. He was always doing something in the tower when she was working the line, even though there was always a boy in the other chair. She didn’t work out why until later. ‘Yes, because it was a G code,’ said Princess. ‘Then you did right. Don’t worry about it.’ ‘Yes, but I’ve sent that name before. Several times. Upline and downline. Just a name, no message or anything!’ She had a sense that something was wrong, but she went on: ‘I know a U at the end means it has to be turned round at the end of the line, and an N means Not Logged.’ This was showing off, but she’d spent hours reading the cypher book. ‘So it’s just a name, going up and down all the time! Where’s the sense in that?’ Something was really wrong. Roger was still working his line, but he was staring ahead with a thunderous expression. Then Grandad said: ‘Very clever, Princess. You’re dead right.’ ‘Hah!’ said Roger. ‘I’m sorry if I did something wrong,’ said the girl meekly. ‘I just thought it was strange. Who’s John Dearheart?’ ‘He . . . fell off a tower,’ said Grandad. ‘Hah!’ said Roger, working his shutters as if he suddenly hated them. ‘He’s dead?’ said Princess. ‘Well, some people say—’ Roger began. ‘Roger!’ snapped Grandad. It sounded like a warning. ‘I know about Sending Home,’ said Princess. ‘And I know the souls of dead linesmen stay on the Trunk.’ ‘Who told you that?’ said Grandad. Princess was bright enough to know that someone would get into trouble if she was too specific. ‘Oh, I just heard it,’ she said airily. ‘Somewhere.’ ‘Someone was trying to scare you,’ said Grandad, looking at Roger’s reddening ears. It hadn’t sounded scary to Princess. If you had to be dead, it seemed a lot better to spend your time flying between the towers than lying underground. But she was bright enough, too, to know when to drop a subject. It was Grandad who spoke next, after a long pause broken only by the squeaking of the new shutter bars. When he did speak, it was as if something was on his mind. ‘We keep that name moving in the Overhead,’ he said, and it seemed to Princess that the wind in the shutter arrays above her blew more forlornly, and the everlasting clicking of the shutters grew more urgent. ‘He’d never have wanted to go home. He was a real linesman. His name is in the code, in the wind in the rigging and the shutters. Haven’t you ever heard the saying “A man’s not dead while his name is still spoken”?’ Chapter Five Lost in the Post In which Stanley experiences the joy of sacks - Mr Groat’s ancestral fears - Horsefry is worried - Reacher Gilt, a man of Society - The Stairway of Letters - Mailslide! - Mr Lipwig Sees It - Hoodwinked - The Postman’s Walk - The Hat Stanley polished his pins. He did so with a look of beatific concentration, like a man dreaming with his eyes open. The collection sparkled on the folded strips of brown paper and the rolls of black felt that made up the landscape of the true pinhead’s world. Beside him was his large desktop magnifying glass and, by his feet, a sack of miscellaneous pins bought last week from a retiring needlewoman. He was putting off the moment of opening it to savour it all the more. Of course, it’d almost certainly turn out to be full of everyday brassers, with maybe the occasional flathead or line flaw, but the thing was, you never knew. That was the joy of sacks. You never knew. Non-collectors were woefully unconcerned about pins, treating them as if they were no more than thin pointy bits of metal for sticking things to other things. Many a wonderful pin of great worth had been found in a sack of brassers. And now he had a No. 3 Broad-headed ‘Chicken’ Extra Long, thanks to kind Mr Lipwig. The world shone like the pins so neatly ranged on the felt rolled out in front of him. He might smell faintly of cheese, and have athlete’s foot extending to the knee, but just now Stanley soared through glittering skies on wings of silver. Groat sat by the stove, chewing his fingernails and muttering to himself. Stanley paid no attention, since pins were not the subject. ‘. . . appointed, right? Never mind what the Order says! He can promote anyone, right? That means I get the extra gold button on m’sleeve and the pay, right? None of the others called me Senior Postman! And when all’s said and done, he delivered a letter. Had the letter, saw the address, delivered it just like that! Maybe he has got postman’s blood! And he got them metal letters put back! Letters again, see? That’s a sign, sure enough. Hah, he can read words that ain’t there!’ Groat spat out a fragment of fingernail, and frowned. ‘But . . . then he’ll want to know about the New Pie. Oh yeah. But . . . it’d be like scratching at a scab. Could be bad. Very bad. But . . . hah, the way he got them letters back for us . . . very good. Maybe it’s true that one day we’ll get a true postmaster again, just like they say. “Yea, he will tread the Abandoned Roller Skates beneath his Boots, and Lo! the Dogs of the World will Break their Teeth upon Him.” And he did show us a sign, right? Okay, it was over a posh haircut shop for ladies, but it was a sign, you can’t argue with that. I mean, if it was obvious, anyone could show it to us.’ Another sliver of fingernail hit the side of the glowing stove, where it sizzled. ‘And I ain’t getting any younger, that’s a fact. Probationary, though, that’s not good, that’s not good. What’d happen if I popped my clogs tomorrow, eh? I’d stand there before my forefathers, and they’d say “Art thou Senior Postal Inspector Groat?” and I’d say no, and they’d say “Art thou then Postal Inspector Groat?” and I’d say not as such, and they’d say “Then surely thou art Senior Postman Groat?” and I’d say not in point of fact, and they’d say “Stone the crows, Tolliver, are you telling us you never got further than Junior Postman? What kind of Groat are you?” and my face will be red and I will be knee deep in the ignominy. Dun’t matter that I’ve been runnin’ this place for years, oh no. You got to have that gold button!’ He stared at the fire, and somewhere in his matted beard a smile struggled to get out. ‘He can try walking the Walk,’ he said. ‘No one can argue if he walks the Walk. An’ then I can tell him everything! So it’ll be all right! An’ if he don’t walk to the end, then he ain’t postmaster material anyway! Stanley? Stanley!’ Stanley awoke from a dream of pins. ‘Yes, Mr Groat?’ ‘Got a few errands for you to run, lad.’ And if he ain’t postmaster material, Groat added in the privacy of his creaking brain, I’ll die a junior postman . . . It was hard to knock at a door whilst trying desperately not to make a sound, and in the end Crispin Horsefry gave up on the second aim and just swung on the doorknocker. The noise echoed through the empty street, but no one came to their window. No one in this select street would have come to the window even if a murder was going on. At least in the poorer districts people would have come out to watch, or join in. The door opened. ‘Good evening, thur—’ Horsefry pushed past the stumpy figure and into the dark hallway, waving frantically to the servant to close the door. ‘Shut it, man, shut it! I may have been followed— Good grief, you’re an Igor, aren’t you? Gilt can afford an Igor?’ ‘Well done, thur!’ said the Igor. He peered out into the early evening darkness. ‘All clear, thur.’ ‘Shut the door, for gods’ sakes!’ moaned Horsefry. ‘I must see Mr Gilt!’ ‘The marthter ith having one of hith little thoireeth, thur,’ said Igor. ‘I will thee if he can be dithturbed.’ ‘Are any of the others here? Have they— What’s a thwawreath?’ ‘A little get-together, thur,’ said Igor, sniffing. The man reeked of drink. ‘A soiree?’ ‘Exactly tho, thur,’ said Igor impassively. ‘May I take your highly notitheable long hooded cloak, thur? And be tho kind ath to follow me into the withdrawing room . . .’ And suddenly Horsefry was alone in a big room full of shadows and candlelight and staring eyes, with the door closing behind him. The eyes belonged to the portraits in the big dusty frames that filled the walls, edge to edge. Rumour was that Gilt had bought them outright, and not only the pictures; it was said that he’d bought all the rights in the long dead as well, deed-polled their names, and thus equipped himself with a proud pedigree overnight. That was slightly worrying, even for Horsefry. Everyone lied about their ancestors, and that was fair enough. Buying them was slightly disconcerting, but in its dark, original stylishness it was so very Reacher Gilt. A lot of rumours had begun concerning Reacher Gilt, just as soon as people had noticed him and started asking, “Who is Reacher Gilt? What kind of a name is Reacher, anyway?’ He threw big parties, that was certain. They were the kind of parties that entered urban mythology (Was it true about the chopped liver? Were you there? What about the time when he brought in a troll stripper and three people jumped out of the window? Were you there? And that story about the bowl of sweets? Were you there? Did you see it? Was it true? Were you there?) Half of Ankh-Morpork had been, it seemed, drifting from table to buffet to dance floor to gaming tables, every guest seemingly followed by a silent and obliging waiter with a laden drinks tray. Some said he owned a gold mine, others swore that he was a pirate. And he certainly looked like a pirate, with his long curly black hair, pointed beard and eyepatch. He was even said to have a parrot. Certainly the piracy rumour might explain the apparently bottomless fortune and the fact that no one, absolutely no one, knew anything about him prior to his arrival in the city. Perhaps he’d sold his past, people joked, just like he’d bought himself a new one. He was certainly piratical in his business dealing, Horsefry knew. Some of the things— ‘Twelve and a half per cent! Twelve and a half per cent!’ When he was sure that he hadn’t in fact had the heart attack he had been expecting all day, Horsefry crossed the room, swaying just like a man who’s had a little drink or two to steady his nerves, and lifted the dark red cloth that, it turned out, concealed the parrot cage. It was in fact a cockatoo, and danced frantically up and down its perch. ‘Twelve and a half per cent! Twelve and a half per cent!’ Horsefry grinned. ‘Ah, you’ve met Alphonse,’ said Reacher Gilt. ‘And to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure, Crispin?’ The door swung slowly behind him into its felt-lined frame, shutting out the sound of distant music. Horsefry turned, the brief moment of amusement evaporating instantly into the fearful turmoil of his soul. Gilt, one hand in the pocket of a beautiful smoking jacket, gave him a quizzical look. ‘I’m being spied on, Readier!’ Horsefry burst out. “Vetinari sent one of—’ ‘Please! Sit down, Crispin. I think you require a large brandy.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘Another large brandy, should I say?’ ‘I wouldn’t say no! Had to have a little snifter, you know, just to calm m’nerves! What a day I’ve had!’ Horsefry plumped down into a leather armchair. ‘Did you know there was a watchman on duty outside the bank almost all afternoon?’ ‘A fat man? A sergeant?’ said Gilt, handing him a glass. ‘Fat, yes. I didn’t notice his rank.’ Horsefry sniffed. ‘I’ve never had anything to do with the Watch.’ ‘I, on the other hand, have,’ said Gilt, wincing to see very fine brandy drunk in the way Horsefry was drinking it. ‘And I gather that Sergeant Colon is in the habit of loitering near large buildings not in case they are stolen, but in fact simply because he enjoys a quiet smoke out of the wind. He is a clown, and not to be feared.’ ‘Yes, but this morning one of the revenue officers came to see that old fool Cheeseborough—’ ‘Is that unusual, Crispin?’ said Gilt soothingly. ‘Let me top up your glass there . . .’ ‘Well, they come once or twice a month,’ Horsefry conceded, thrusting out the empty brandy glass. ‘But—’ ‘Not unusual, then. You’re shying at flies, my dear Crispin.’ ‘Vetinari is spying on me!’ Horsefry burst out. ‘There was a man in black spying on the house this evening! I heard a noise and I looked out and I could see him standing in the corner of the garden!’ ‘A thief, perhaps?’ ‘No, I’m fully paid up with the Guild! I’m sure someone was in the house this afternoon, too. Things were moved in my study. I’m worried, Reacher! I’m the one who stands to lose here! If there’s an audit—’ ‘You know there won’t be, Crispin.’ Gilt’s voice was like honey. ‘Yes, but I can’t get my hands on all the paperwork, not yet, not until old Cheeseborough retires. And Vetinari’s got lots of little, you know, what are they called . . . clerks, you know, who do nothing but look at li’l bits of paper! They’ll work it out, they will! We bought the Grand Trunk wi’ its own money!’ Gilt patted him on the shoulder. ‘Calm yourself, Crispin. Nothing is going to go wrong. You think about money in the old-fashioned way. Money is not a thing, it is not even a process. It is a kind of shared dream. We dream that a small disc of common metal is worth the price of a substantial meal. Once you wake up from that dream, you can swim in a sea of money.’ The voice was almost hypnotic, but Horsefry’s terror was driving him on. His forehead glistened. ‘Then Greenyham’s pissing in it!’ he snapped, his little eyes aglint with desperate malice. ‘You know that tower widdershins of Lancre that was giving all that trouble a coupla months ago? When we were tol’ it was all due to witches flying into the towers? Hah! It w’s only a witch the firs’ time! Then Greenyham bribed a couple of the new men in the tower to call in a breakdown, and one of them rode like hell for the downstream tower and sen’ him the Genua market figures a good two hours before everyone else got them! That’s how he cornered dried prawns, you know. And dried fish maw and dried ground shrimp. It’s not the firs’ time he’s done it, either! The man is coining it!’ Gilt looked at Horsefry, and wondered whether killing him now would be the best option. Vetinari was clever. You didn’t stay ruler of a fermenting mess of a city like this one by being silly. If you saw his spy, it was a spy he wanted you to see. The way you’d know that Vetinari was keeping an eye on you would be by turning round very quickly and seeing no one at all. Godsdamn Greenyham, too. Some people had no grasp, no grasp at all. They were so . . . small. Using the clacks like that was stupid, but allowing a bottom-feeder like Horsefry to find out about it was indefensible. It was silly. Silly small people with the arrogance of kings, running their little swindles, smiling at the people they stole from, and not understanding money at all. And stupid, pig-like Horsefry had come running here. That made it a little tricky. The door was soundproofed, the carpet was easily replaceable and, of course, Igors were renowned for their discretion, but almost certainly someone unseen had watched the man walk in and therefore it was prudent to ensure that he walked out. ‘Y’r a goo’ man, Reacher Gilt,’ Horsefry hiccuped, waving the brandy glass unsteadily now that it was almost empty again. He put it down on a small table with the exaggerated care of a drunk, but since it was the wrong one of three images of the table sliding back and forth across his vision the glass smashed on the carpet. ‘Sor’ ‘bout that,’ he slurred. ‘Y’r a goo’ man, so I’m goin’ to gi’ you this. Can’t keep it inna house, can’t keep it, not wi’ Vetininararari’s spies on to me. Can’t burn it neither, ‘sgot everything in it. All the little . . . transactions. Ver’ important. Can’t trust the others, they hate me. You take care of it, eh?’ He pulled out a battered red journal and proffered it unsteadily. Gilt took it, and flicked it open. His eye ran down the entries. ‘You wrote everything down, Crispin?’ he said. ‘Why?’ Crispin looked appalled. ‘Got to keep records, Reacher,’ he said. ‘Can’t cover y’tracks if you don’t know where y’left ‘em. Then . . . can put it all back, see, hardly a crime at all.’ He tried to tap the side of his nose, and missed. ‘I shall look after it with great care, Crispin,’ said Gilt. ‘You were very wise to bring it to me.’ ‘That means a lot t’me, Reacher,’ said Crispin, now heading for the maudlin stage. ‘You take me serioussoussly, not like Greenyham and his pals. I take the risks, then they treat me like drit. I mean dirt. Bloody goo’ chap, you are. ‘sfunny, y’know, you havin’ an Igor, bloody goo’ chap like you, ‘cos—’ He belched hugely, “cos I heard that Igors only worked for mad chaps. Tot’ly bonkers chaps, y’know, and vampires and whatnot, people who’re a few pennies short of a picnic. Nothing against your man, mark you, he looks a bloody fine fellow, hahaha, several bloody fine fellows . . .’ Readier Gilt pulled him up gently. ‘You’re drunk, Crispin,’ he said. ‘And too talkative. Now, what I’m going to do is call Igor—’ ‘Yeth, thur?’ said Igor behind him. It was the kind of service few could afford. ‘—and he’ll take you home in my coach. Make sure you deliver him safely to his valet, Igor. Oh, and when you’ve done that could you locate my colleague Mr Gryle? Tell him I have a little errand for him. Goodnight, Crispin.’ Gilt patted the man on a wobbly cheek. ‘And don’t worry. Tomorrow you’ll find all these little anxieties will have just . . . disappeared.’ ‘Ver’ good chap,’ Horsefry mumbled happily. ‘F’r a foreigner . . .’ Igor took Crispin home. By that time the man had reached the ‘jolly drunk’ stage and was singing the kind of song that’s hilarious to rugby players and children under the age of eleven, and getting him into his house must have awoken the neighbours, especially when he kept repeating the verse about the camel. Then Igor drove back home, put the coach away, saw to the horse, and went to the little pigeon loft behind the house. These were big, plump pigeons, not the diseased roof rats of the city, and he selected a fat one, expertly slipped a silver message ring round its leg, and tossed it up into the night. Ankh-Morpork pigeons were quite bright, for pigeons. Stupidity had a limited life in this city. This one would soon find Mr Gryle’s rooftop lodgings, but it annoyed Igor that he never got his pigeons back. Old envelopes rose up in drifts as Moist strode angrily, and sometimes waded angrily, through the abandoned rooms of the Post Office. He was in the mood to kick holes in walls. He was trapped. Trapped. He’d done his best, hadn’t he? Perhaps there really was a curse on this place. Groat would be a good name for it— He pushed open a door and found himself in the big coachyard round which the Post Office was bent like the letter U. It was still in use. When the postal service had collapsed the coach part had survived, Groat had said. It was useful and established and, besides, it owned scores of horses. You couldn’t squash horses under the floor or bag them up in the attic. They had to be fed. More or less seamlessly, the coachmen had taken it over and run it as a passenger service. Moist watched a laden coach roll out of the yard, and then movement up above caught his eye. He had got used to the clacks towers now. Sometimes it seemed as though every roof sprouted one. Most were the new shutter boxes installed by the Grand Trunk Company, but old-fashioned arm semaphores and even signal flags were still well in evidence. Those, though, only worked slowly and by line-of-sight, and there was precious little space for that in the thrusting forest of towers. If you wanted more than the basic service, you went to one of the little clacks companies, and rented a small shutter tower with resident gargoyle to spot incoming messages and access to the bounce towers and, if you were really rich, a trained operator as well. And you paid. Moist had no grasp of or interest in technology, but as he understood it the price was something like an arm or a leg or both. But these observations orbited his brain, as it were, like planetary thoughts around one central, solar thought: why the hell have we got a tower? It was definitely on the roof. He could see it and he could hear the distant rattle of the shutters. And he was sure he’d seen a head, before it ducked out of sight. Why have we got a tower up there, and who is using it? He ran back inside. He’d never spotted a staircase to the roof, but then, who knew what was hidden behind some pile of letters at the end of some blocked corridor . . . He squeezed his way along yet another passage lined with mail sacks, and came out into a space where big, bolted double doors led back to the yard. There were stairs there, leading upwards. Little safety lamps bled little pools of light into the blackness above. That was the Post Office for you, Moist thought - the Regulations said the stairs must be lit and lit they were, decades after anyone ever used them except for Stanley, the lamplighter. There was an old freight elevator here, too, one of those dangerous ones that worked by pumping water in and out of a big rainwater tank on the roof, but he couldn’t work out how to make it go and wouldn’t have trusted it if he could. Groat had said it was broken. At the foot of the stairs, scuffed but still recognizable, was a chalk outline. The arms and legs were not in comfortable positions. Moist swallowed, but gripped the banister. He climbed. There was a door on the first floor. It opened easily. It burst open at the mere touch of the handle, spilling pent-up mail out into the stairwell like some leaping monster. Moist swayed and whimpered as the letters slithered past him, shoal after shoal, and cascaded down the stairs. Woodenly, he climbed up another flight, and found another dimly lit door, but this time he stood to one side as he opened it. The force of the letters still rammed it against his legs, and the noise of the dead letters was a dry whispering as they poured away into the gloom. Like bats, perhaps. This whole building full of dead letters, whispering to one another in the dark as a man fell to his death— Any more of this and he’d end up like Groat, mad as a spoon. But there was more to this place. Somewhere there had to be a door— His head was all over the wall . . . Look, he said to his imagination, if this is how you’re going to behave, I shan’t bring you again. But, with its usual treachery, it went on working. He’d never, ever, laid a finger on anyone. He’d always run rather than fight. And murder, now, surely murder was an absolute? You couldn’t commit 0.021 of a murder, could you? But Pump seemed to think you could murder with a ruler. Okay, perhaps somewhere downstream people were . . . inconvenienced by a crime, but . . . what about bankers, landlords, even barmen? ‘Here’s your double brandy, sir, and I’ve 0.0003 killed you’? Everything everyone did affected everyone, sooner or later. Besides, a lot of his crimes weren’t even crimes. Take the ring trick, now. He never said it was a diamond ring. Besides, it was depressing how quickly honest citizens warmed to an opportunity to take advantage of a poor benighted traveller. It could ruin a man’s faith in human nature, if he had one. Besides . . . The third floor yielded another avalanche of letters, but when they subsided there was still a wall of paper plugging the corridor beyond. One or two rustling envelopes fell out, threatening a further fall as Moist advanced. In fact it was retreat that was at the top of his mind, but the stairs were now layered with sliding envelopes and this was not the time to learn dry-slope skiing. Well, the fifth floor would have to be clear, wouldn’t it? How else could Sideburn have got to the stairs in order to meet his appointment with eternity? And, yes, there was still a piece of black and yellow rope on the fourth-floor landing, on a drift of letters. The Watch had been here. Nevertheless, Moist opened the door with care, as a watchman must have done. One or two letters fell out, but the main slide had already taken place. A few feet beyond there was the familiar wall of letters, packed as tight as rock strata. A watchman had been in here, too. Someone had tried to break through the wordface, and Moist could see the hole. They’d put in their arm, full length, just as Moist was doing. Just like his, their fingertips had brushed against yet more compacted envelopes. No one had got on to the stairs here. They would have had to walk through a wall of envelopes at least six feet thick . . . There was one more flight. Moist climbed the stairs, cautiously, and was halfway up when he heard the slide begin, below him. He must have disturbed the wall of letters on the floor below, somehow. It was emerging from the corridor with the unstoppability of a glacier. As the leading edge reached the stairwell, chunks of mail broke off and plunged into the depths. Far below, wood creaked and snapped. The stairway shivered. Moist ran up the last few steps to the fifth floor, grabbed the door there, pulled it open and hung on as another mailslide poured past him. Everything was shaking now. There was a sudden crack as the rest of the staircase gave way and left Moist swinging from the handle, letters brushing past. He swung there, eyes shut, until the noise and movement had more or less died away, although there was still the occasional creak from below. The stairs had gone. With great care, Moist brought his feet up until he could feel the edge of the new corridor. Without doing anything so provocative as breathing, he changed his grip on the door so that now he had hold of the handle on both sides. Slowly, he walked his heels through the drift of letters on the corridor floor, thus pulling the door closed, while at the same time getting both hands on to the inner handle. Then he took a deep breath of the stale, dry air, scrabbled madly with his feet, bent his body like a hooked salmon and ended up with just enough of himself on the corridor floor to prevent a fall through sixty feet of letters and broken woodwork. Barely thinking, he unhooked the lamp from the doorpost and turned to survey the task ahead. The corridor was brightly lit, richly carpeted and completely free of mail. Moist stared. There had been letters in there, wedged tight from floor to ceiling. He’d seen them, and felt them fall past him into the stairwell. They hadn’t been a hallucination; they’d been solid, musty, dusty and real. To believe anything else now would be madness. He turned back to look at the wreckage of the stairs and saw no doorway, no stairs. The carpeted floor extended all the way to the far wall. Moist realized that there had to be an explanation for this, but the only one he could think of now was: it’s strange. He reached down gingerly to touch the carpet where the stairwell should be, and felt a chill on his fingertips as they passed through it. And he wondered: did one of the other new postmasters stand here, just where I am? And did he walk out over what looked like solid floor and end up rolling down five flights of pain? Moist inched his way along the corridor in the opposite direction, and sound began to grow. It was vague and generalized, the noise of a big building hard at work, shouts, conversations, the rattle of machinery, the crowded susurrus of a thousand voices and wheels and footfalls and stampings and scribblings and slammings all woven together in a huge space to become the pure audible texture of commerce. The corridor opened out ahead of him, where it met a T-junction. The noise was coming from the brightly lit space beyond. Moist walked towards the shining brass railing of the balcony ahead— —and stopped. All right, the brain has been carried all the way up here at great expense; now it’s time for it to do some work. The hall of the Post Office was a dark cavern filled with mountains of mail. There were no balconies, no shining brasswork, no bustling staff and as sure as hell there were no customers. The only time the Post Office could have looked like this was in the past, yes? There was balconies, sir, all round the big hall on every floor, made of iron, like lace! But they weren’t in the present, not in the here and now. But he wasn’t in the past, not exactly. His fingers had felt a stairwell when his eyes had seen carpeted floor. Moist decided that he was standing in the here and now but seeing in the here and then. Of course, you’d have to be mad to believe it, but this was the Post Office. Poor Mr Sideburn had stepped out on to a floor that wasn’t there any more. Moist stopped before stepping out on to the balcony, reached down, and felt the chill on his fingertips once again as they went through the carpet. Who was it - oh, yes, Mr Mutable. He’d stood here, rushed to look down and— —smack, sir, smack on to the marble. Moist stood up carefully, steadied himself against the wall, and peered gingerly into the big hall. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling, but they were unlit because sunlight was pouring through the sparkling dome on to a scene innocent of pigeon droppings but alive with people, scuttling across the chequerboard floor or hard at work behind the long polished counters made of rare wood, my dad said. Moist stood and stared. It was a scene made up of a hundred purposeful activities that fused happily into a great anarchy. Below him big wire baskets on wheels were being manhandled across the floor, sacks of letters were being tipped on moving belts, clerks were feverishly filling the pigeon-holes. It was a machine, made of people, sir, you should’ve seen it! Away to Moist’s left, at the far end of the hall, was a golden statue three or four times life size. It was of a slim young man, obviously a god, wearing nothing more than a hat with wings on, sandals with wings on and - Moist squinted - a fig leaf with wings on? He’d been caught by the sculptor as he was about to leap into the air, carrying an envelope and wearing an expression of noble purpose. It dominated the hall. It wasn’t there in the present day; the dais was unoccupied. If the counters and the chandeliers had gone, a statue that even looked like gold must’ve stood no chance. It had probably been The Spirit of the Post, or something. Meanwhile, the mail down there was moving more prosaically. Right under the dome was a clock with a face pointing in each of the four directions. As Moist watched it, the big hand clanked to the top of the hour. A horn blew. The frantic ballet ceased as, somewhere below Moist, some doors opened and two lines of men in the uniforms, sir, royal blue with brass buttons! You should’ve seen them! marched into the hall in two lines and stood to attention in front of the big doors. A large man, in a rather grander version of the uniform and with a face like toothache, was waiting there for them; he wore a large hourglass hanging in a gimballed brass cage at his belt, and he looked at the waiting men as if he had seen worse sights but not often and even then only on the soles of his enormous boots. He held up the hourglass with an air of evil satisfaction, and took a deep breath before roaring: ‘Numbahhh Four Delivereeee . . . stand!’ The words reached Moist’s ears slightly muffled, as though he was hearing them through cardboard. The postmen, already at attention, contrived to look even more alert. The big man glared at them and took another huge gulp of air. ‘Numbahhh Four Delivereeee wait for it, wait for it! . . . DELIVAAAAAAAH!’ The two lines marched past him and out into the day. Once, we were postmen . . . I’ve got to find a real stairway, Moist thought, pushing himself away from the edge. I’m . . . hallucinating the past. But I’m standing in the present. It’s like sleepwalking. I don’t want to walk out on to fresh air and end up as one more chalk outline. He turned round, and someone walked right through him. The sensation was unpleasant, like a sudden snap of fever. But that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part is seeing someone’s head walk through yours. The view is mostly grey, with traces of red and hollow hints of sinus. You would not wish to know about the eyeballs. . . . face all contorted like he’d seen a ghost . . . Moist’s stomach heaved, and as he turned with his hand over his mouth he saw a young postman looking in his general direction with a look of horror that probably reflected the one on the unseen Moist’s face. Then the boy shivered, and hurried away. So Mr Ignavia had got this far, too. He’d been smart enough to work out the floor but seeing another head going through your own, well, that could take you the wrong way . . . Moist ran after the boy. Up here, he was lost; he must have toured less than a tenth of the building with Groat, the way constantly being blocked by glaciers of mail. There were other stairs, he knew, and they still existed in the present. Ground level, that was the goal: a floor you could rely on. The boy went through a door and into what looked like a room full of parcels, but Moist could see an open doorway at the far end, and a hint of banister. He speeded up, and the floor disappeared from under his feet. The light vanished. He was briefly and horribly aware of dry letters all around him, falling with him. He landed on more letters, choking as dry, ancient mail piled up about him. For a moment, through the rain of paper, he caught a glimpse of a dusty window half covered with letters, and then he was submerged again. The heap under him began to move, slipping down and sideways. There was the crack of what could have been a door being burst off its hinges and the sideways flow increased noticeably. He struck out madly for the surface in time for his head to hit the top of a door jamb and then the current dragged him under. Helpless now, tumbling in the river of paper, Moist dimly felt the jolt as a floor gave way. The mail poured through, taking him with it and slamming him into another drift of envelopes. Sight disappeared as thousands of letters thudded down on top of him, and then sound died, too. Darkness and silence squeezed him in a fist. Moist von Lipwig knelt with his head resting on his arms. There was air here but it was warm and stale and wouldn’t last long. He couldn’t move more than a finger. He could die here. He would die here. There must be tons of mail around him. ‘I commend my soul to any god who can find it,’ he mumbled, in the stifling air. A line of blue danced across his inner vision. It was handwriting. But it spoke. ‘Dear Mother, I have arived safely and found good lodgings at . . . . The voice sounded like a country boy but it had a . . . a scritchy quality to it. If a letter could talk, it would sound like that. The words rambled on, the characters curving and slanting awkwardly under the pen of a reluctant writer— —and as it ran on another line also began to write across the dark, crisply and neatly: Dear Sir, I have the honour to inform you that I am the sole executer of the estate of the late Sir Davie Thrill, of The Manor, Mixed Blessings, and it appears that you are the sole . . . .’ The voice continued in words so clipped that you could hear the shelves full of legal books behind the desk, but a third line was beginning. Dear Mrs Clarck, I much regret to inform you that in an engagement with the enemy yesterday your husband, C. Clark, fought valiantly but was . . . And then they all wrote at once. Voices in their dozens, their hundreds, their thousands, filled his ears and squiggled across his inner vision. They didn’t shout, they just unrolled the words until his head was full of sound, which formed new words, just as all the instruments of an orchestra tinkle and scrape and blast to produce one climax— Moist tried to scream, but envelopes filled his mouth. And then a hand closed on his leg and he was in the air and upside down. ‘Ah, Mr Lipvig!’ boomed the voice of Mr Pump. ‘You Have Been Exploring! Welcome To Your New Office!’ Moist spat out paper and sucked air into stinging lungs. ‘They’re . . . alive!’ he gasped. ‘They’re all alive! And angry! They talk! It was not a hallucination! I’ve had hallucinations and they don’t hurt! I know how the others died!’ ‘I Am Happy For You, Mr Lipvig,’ said Pump, turning him the right way up and wading waist deep across the room, while behind them more mail trickled through a hole in the ceiling. ‘You don’t understand! They talk! They want . . .’ Moist hesitated. He could still hear the whispering in his head. He said, as much to himself as for the benefit of the golem, ‘It’s as though they want to be . . . read.’ ‘That Is The Function Of A Letter,’ said Pump calmly. ‘You Will See That I Have Almost Cleared Your Apartment.’ ‘Listen, they’re just paper! And they talked!’ ‘Yes,’ rumbled the golem ponderously. ‘This Place Is A Tomb Of Unheard Words. They Strive To Be Heard.’ ‘Oh, come on! Letters are just paper. They can’t speak!’ ‘I Am Just Clay, And I Listen,’ said Pump, with the same infuriating calm. ‘Yes, but you’ve got added mumbo-jumbo—’ The red fire rose behind Pump’s eyes as he turned to stare at Moist. ‘I went . . . backwards in time, I think,’ Moist mumbled, backing away. ‘In . . . my head. That’s how Sideburn died. He fell down stairs that weren’t there in the past. And Mr Ignavia died of fright. I’m sure of it! But I was inside the letters! And there must have been a . . . a hole in the floor, or something, and that . . . I fell, and I . . .’ He stopped. ‘This place needs a priest, or a wizard. Someone who understands this kind of stuff. Not me!’ The golem scooped up two armfuls of the mail that had so recently entombed his client. ‘You Are The Postmaster, Mr Lipvig,’ he said. ‘That’s just Vetinari’s trick! I’m no postman, I’m just a fraud—’ ‘Mr Lipwig?’ said a nervous voice from the doorway behind him. He turned and saw the boy Stanley, who flinched at his expression. ‘Yes?’ snapped Moist. ‘What the hell do you— What do you want, Stanley? I’m a little busy right now.’ ‘There’s some men,’ said Stanley, grinning uncertainly. ‘They’re downstairs. Some men.’ Moist glared at him, but Stanley seemed to have finished for now. ‘And these men want . . . ?’ he prompted. ‘They want you, Mr Lipwig,’ said Stanley. ‘They said they want to see the man who wants to be postmaster.’ ‘I don’t want to be—’ Moist began, but gave up. There was no point in taking it out on the boy. ‘Excuse Me, Postmaster,’ said the golem behind him. ‘I Wish To Complete My Allotted Task.’ Moist stood aside as the clay man walked out into the corridor, the old boards groaning under his enormous feet. Outside, you could see how he’d managed to clean out the office. The walls of other rooms were bowed out almost to the point of exploding. When a golem pushes things into a room, they stay pushed. The sight of the plodding figure calmed Moist down a little. There was something intensely . . . well, down-to-earth about Mr Pump. What he needed now was normality, normal people to talk to, normal things to do to drive the voices out of his head. He brushed fragments of paper off his increasingly greasy suit. ‘All right,’ he said, trying to find his tie, which had ended up hanging down his back. ‘I shall see what they want.’ They were waiting on the half-landing on the big staircase. They were old men, thin and bowed, like slightly older copies of Groat. They had the same ancient uniform, but there was something odd about them. Each man had the skeleton of a pigeon wired on to the top of his peaked hat. ‘Be you the Unfranked Man?’ growled one of them, as he approached. ‘What? Who? Am I?’ said Moist. Suddenly, the idea of normality was ebbing again. ‘Yes, you are, sir,’ whispered Stanley beside him. ‘You have to say yes, sir. Gosh, sir, I wish it was me doing this.’ ‘Doing what?’ ‘For the second time: be you the Unfranked Man?’ said the old man, looking angry. Moist noticed that he was missing the top joints on the middle fingers of his right hand. ‘I suppose so. If you insist,’ he said. This didn’t meet with any approval at all. ‘For the last time: be you the Unfranked Man?’ This time there was real menace in the voice. ‘Yes, all right! For the purposes of this conversation, yes! I am the Unfranked Man!’ Moist shouted. ‘Now can we—’ Something black was dropped over his head from behind and he felt strings pulled tightly round his neck. ‘The Unfranked Man is tardy,’ crackled another elderly voice, in his ear, and unseen but tough hands took hold of him. ‘No postman he.’ ‘You’ll be fine, sir,’ said the voice of Stanley, as Moist struggled. ‘Don’t worry. Mr Groat will guide you. You’ll do it easily, sir.’ ‘Do what?’ said Moist. ‘Let go of me, you daft old devils!’ ‘The Unfranked Man dreads the Walk,’ one assailant hissed. ‘Aye, the Unfranked Man will be Returned to Sender in no short order,’ said another. ‘The Unfranked Man must be weighed in the balance,’ said a third. ‘Stanley, fetch Mr Pump right now!’ shouted Moist, but the hood was thick and clinging. ‘Mustn’t do that, sir,’ said Stanley. ‘Mustn’t do that at all, sir. It will be all right, sir. It’s just a . . . a test, sir. It’s the Order of the Post, sir.’ Funny hats, Moist thought, and began to relax. Hoodwinks and threats . . . I know this stuff. It’s mysticism for tradesmen. There’s not a city in the world without its Loyal and Ancient and Justified and Hermetic Order of little men who think they can reap the secrets of the ancients for a couple of hours every Thursday night and don’t realize what prats they look in a robe. I should know - I must have joined a dozen of ‘em myself. I bet there’s a secret handshake. I know more secret handshakes than the gods. I’m in about as much danger as I would be in a class of five-year-olds. Less, probably. Unfranked Man . . . good grief. He relaxed. He let himself be led down the stairs, and turned round. Ah, yes, that’s right. You’ve got to make the initiate fear, but everyone knows it’s just a party game. It’ll sound bad, it might even feel bad, but it won’t be bad. He remembered joining - what was it? Oh yes - the Men of the Furrow, in some town out in the stalks.* He had been blindfolded, of course, and the Men had made all the horrific noises they could imagine, and then a voice in the darkness had said, ‘Shake hands with the Old Master!’ and Moist had reached out and shaken a goat’s foot. Those who got out of there with clean pants won. * In areas more wooded, areas less dominated by the cabbage and general brassica industry, it would of course have been in the sticks. Next day he’d swindled three of his trusting new Brothers out of eighty dollars. That didn’t seem quite so funny now. The old postmen were taking him into the big hall. He could tell by the echoes. And there were other people there, according to those little hairs on the back of his neck. Not just people, maybe; he thought he heard a muffled growl. But that was how it went, right? Things had to sound worrying. The key was to be bold, to act brave and forthright. His escorts left him. Moist stood in darkness for a moment, and then felt a hand grasp his elbow. ‘It’s me, sir. Probationary Senior Postman Groat, sir. Don’t you worry about a thing, sir. I’m your Temporary Deacon for tonight, sir.’ ‘Is this necessary, Mr Groat?’ sighed Moist. ‘I was appointed postmaster, you know.’ ‘Appointed, yes. Accepted, not yet, sir. Proof of posting is not proof of delivery, sir.’ ‘What are you talking about?’ ‘Can’t tell secrets to an Unfranked Man, sir,’ said Groat piously. ‘You’ve done well to get this far, sir.’ ‘Oh, all right,’ said Moist, trying to sound jovial. ‘What’s the worst that can happen, eh?’ Groat was silent. ‘I said—’ Moist began. ‘I was just working that out, sir,’ said Groat. ‘Let’s see . . . yes, sir. The worst that can happen is you lose all your fingers on one hand, are crippled for life, and break half the bones in your body. Oh, and then they don’t let you join. But don’t you worry about a thing, sir, not a thing!’ Up ahead, a voice boomed: ‘Who brings the Unfranked Man?’ Beside Moist, Groat cleared his throat and, when he spoke, his voice actually shook. ‘I, probationary Senior Postman Tolliver Groat, do bring the Unfranked Man.’ ‘You did say that about the bones to frighten me, right?’ hissed Moist. ‘And does he stand in the Gloom of Night?’ the voice demanded. ‘He does now, Worshipful Master!’ shouted Groat happily, and whispered to the hooded Moist, ‘Some of the old boys are really happy about you getting the sign back.’ ‘Good. Now, these broken bones you mentioned—’ ‘Then let him walk the Walk!’ the unseen voice commanded. ‘We’re just going to walk forward, sir. Easy does it,’ Groat whispered urgently. ‘That’s it. Stop here.’ ‘Look,’ said Moist, ‘all that stuff . . . that was just to scare me, right?’ ‘You leave it to me, sir,’ Groat whispered. ‘But listen, the—’ Moist began, and had a mouthful of hood. ‘Let him don the Boots!’ the voice went on. Amazing how you can hear the capital letters, Moist thought, trying not to choke on the cloth. ‘Pair of boots right in front of you, sir,’ came Groat’s hoarse whisper. ‘Put ‘em on. No problem, sir.’ ‘Pff! Yes, but listen—’ ‘The boots, sir, please!’ Moist removed his shoes, very clumsily, and slid his feet into the invisible boots. They turned out to be as heavy as lead. ‘The Walk of the Unfranked Man is Heavy,’ the booming voice intoned. ‘Let him continue!’ Moist took another step forward, trod on something which rolled, stumbled headlong and felt a stab of agony as his shins hit metal. ‘Postmen,’ the booming voice demanded again, ‘what is the First Oath?’ Voices sang out from the darkness, in chorus: ‘ Strewth, would you bleedin’ credit it? Toys, prams, garden tools . . . they don’t care what they leaves out on the path on these dark mornings!’ ‘Did the Unfranked Man cry out?’ the voice said. I think I’ve broken my chin, Moist thought, as Groat dragged him to his feet. I think I’ve broken my chin! The old man hissed: ‘Well done, sir,’ and then raised his voice to add for the benefit of the unseen watchers: ‘He crydeth out not, Worshipful Master, but was resolute!’ ‘Then give unto him the Bag!’ boomed the distant voice. Moist was beginning to loathe it. Unseen hands put a strap round Moist’s neck. When they let go, the weight on it bent him double. ‘The Postman’s Bag is Heavy, but soon it shall be Light!’ echoed off the walls. No one had said anything about pain, Moist thought. Well, actually they had, but they didn’t say they meant it— ‘On we go, sir,’ Groat urged, invisible at his side. ‘This is the Postman’s Walk, remember!’ Moist edged forward, very carefully, and felt something rattle away. ‘He trod not upon the Roller Skate, Worshipful Master!’ Groat reported to the invisible watchers. Moist, aching but heartened, tried two more hesitant steps, and there was another rattle as something bounced off his boot. ‘The Carelessly Abandoned Beer Bottle impeded him not!’ Groat yelled triumphantly. Emboldened, Moist essayed a further step, trod on something slippery, and felt his foot head off and up without him. He landed heavily on his back, his head thumping on the floor. He was sure he heard his own skull crack. ‘Postmen, what is the Second Oath?’ the echoing voice commanded. ‘ Dogs! I tell you, there’s no such thing as a good one! If they don’t bite they all crap! It’s as bad as stepping on machine oil!’ Moist got to his knees, head spinning. ‘That’s right, that’s right, you keeps goin’!’ hissed Groat, grabbing his elbow. ‘You get through, come rain or shine!’ He lowered his voice even further. ‘Remember what it says on the building!’ ‘Mrs Cake?’ Moist mumbled, and then thought: was it rain or snow? Or sleet? He heard movement and hunched over the heavy bag as the water drenched him and an over-enthusiastic bucket bounced off his head. Rain, then. He straightened up just in time to feel biting coldness slither down the back of the neck, and nearly screamed. ‘That was ice cubes,’ Groat whispered. ‘Got ‘em from the mortuary but don’t you worry, sir, they was hardly used . . . best we can do for snow, this time of year. Sorry! Don’t you worry about a thing, sir!’ ‘Let the Mail be tested!’ bellowed the all-commanding voice. Groat’s hand plunged into the bag while Moist staggered in a circle, and he raised a letter triumphantly. ‘I, probationary Senior— Oh, excuse me just a tick, Worshipful Master . . .’ Moist felt his head being pulled down to the level of Groat’s mouth, and the old man whispered: ‘Was that probationary or full Senior Postman, sir?’ ‘What? Oh, full, yes, full!’ said Moist, as iced water filled his shoes. ‘Definitely!’ ‘I, Senior Postman Groat, do declare the mail to be as dry as a bone, Worshipful Master!’ shouted Groat triumphantly. This time the cracked voice of authority held a hint of gleeful menace. ‘ Then let him . . . deliver it! In the stifling gloom of the hood, Moist’s sense of danger barred the door and hid in the cellar. This was where the unseen chanters leaned forward. This was where it stopped being a game. ‘I haven’t actually written anything down, mark you,’ he began, swaying. ‘Careful now, careful,’ hissed Groat, ignoring him. ‘Nearly there! There’s a door right in front of you, there’s a letter box— Could he take a breather, Worshipful Master? He caught his head a nasty crack—’ ‘A breather, Brother Groat? So’s you can give him another hint or two, maybe?’ said the presiding voice, with scorn. ‘Worshipful Master, the rituals says that the Unfranked Man is allowed a—’ Groat protested. ‘This Unfranked Man walketh alone! On his tod, Tolliver Groat! He doesn’t want to be a Junior Postman, oh no, nor even a Senior Postman, not him! He wants to achieve the rank of Postmaster all in one go! We’re not playing Postman’s Knock here, Junior Postman Groat! You talked us into this! We are not mucking about! He’s got to show he’s worth it!’ ‘That’s Senior Postman Groat, thank you so very much!’ Groat yelled. ‘You ain’t a proper Senior Postman, Tolliver Groat, not if he fails the test!’ ‘Yeah? And who says you’re Worshipful Master, George Aggy? You’re only Worshipful Master ‘cos you got first crack at the robes!’ The Worshipful Master’s voice become a little less commanding. ‘You’re a decent bloke, Tolliver, I’ll give you that, but all this stuff you spout about a real postmaster turning up one day and making it all better is just . . . silly! Look at this place, will you? It’s had its day. We all have. But if you’re going to be pig-headed, we’ll do it according to the book of rules!’ ‘Right, then!’ said Groat. ‘Right, then!’ echoed the Worshipful Master. A secret society of postmen, Moist thought. I mean, why? Groat sighed, and leaned closer. ‘There’s going to be a bloody row after we’re finished,’ he hissed to Moist. ‘Sorry about this, sir. Just post the letter. I believe in you, sir!’ He stepped back. In the dark night of the hood, stunned and bleeding, Moist shuffled forward, arms outstretched. His hands found the door, and ran across it in a vain search for the slot. Eventually they found it a foot above the ground. Okay, okay, ram a damn letter in there and get this stupid pantomime over with. But it wasn’t a game. This wasn’t one of those events where everyone knew that old Harry just had to mouth the right words to be the latest member of the Loyal Order of Chair Stuffers. There were people out there taking it seriously. Well, he just had to post a letter through a slot, didn’t he? How hard could that b— Hold on, hold on . . . wasn’t one of the men who’d led him down here missing the tips of his fingers on one hand? Suddenly, Moist was angry. It even sheared through the pain from his chin. He didn’t have to do this! At least, he didn’t have to do it like this. It would be a poor lookout if he wasn’t a better player of les buggeures risibles than this bunch of old fools! He straightened up, stifling a groan, and pulled off the hood. There was still darkness all around him, but it was punctuated by the glow from the doors of a dozen or so dark lanterns. ‘ ‘ere, ‘e’s taken the hood off!’ someone shouted. ‘The Unfranked Man may choose to remain in darkness,’ said Moist. ‘But the Postman loves the Light.’ He pitched the voice right. It was the key to a thousand frauds. You had to sound right, sound like you knew what you were doing, sound like you were in charge. And, while he’d spoken gibberish, it was authentic gibberish. The door of a lantern opened a little wider and a plaintive voice said, ‘ ‘ere, I can’t find that in the book. Where’s he supposed to say that?’ You had to move quickly, too. Moist wrapped the hood round his hand and levered up the flap of the letter box. With his other hand he grabbed a random letter out of the bag, flicked it through the slot and then pulled his makeshift glove away. It ripped as though cut by shears. ‘Postmen, what is the Third Oath?’ shouted Groat triumphantly. ‘All together, lads: Strewth, what do they make these flaps out of, razor blades?’ There was a resentful silence. ‘He never had ‘is ‘ood on,’ muttered a robed figure. ‘Yes he did! He wrapped it round his hand! Tell me where it says he can’t do that!’ screamed Groat. ‘I told you! He’s the One we’ve been waiting for!’ ‘There’s still the final test,’ said the Worshipful Master. ‘What final test are you goin’ on about, George Aggy? He delivered the mail!’ Groat protested. ‘Lord Vetinari appointed him postmaster and he’s walked the Walk!’ ‘Vetinari? He’s only been around five minutes! Who’s he to say who’s postmaster? Was his father a postman? No! Or his grandfather? Look at the men he’s been sending! You said they were sneaky devils who didn’t have a drop of Post Office ink in their blood!’ ‘I think this one might be able to—’ Groat began. ‘He can take the ultimate test,’ said the Worshipful Master sternly. ‘You know what that is.’ ‘It’ll be murder!’ said Groat. ‘You can’t—’ ‘I ain’t telling you again, young Tolly, you just shut your mouth! Well, Mister Postmaster? Will you face the postman’s greatest challenge? Will you face . . .’ the voice paused for effect and just in case there might be a few bars of portentous music, ‘the Enemy at the Gate?’ ‘Face it and o’ercome it, if you demand it!’ said Moist. The fool had called him Postmaster! It was working! Sound as if you’re in charge and they start to believe it! Oh, and ‘o’er’ had been a good touch, too. ‘We do! Oh yes, we do!’ chorused the robed postmen. Groat, a bearded shadow in the gloom, took Moist’s hand and, to his amazement, shook it. ‘Sorry about this, Mr Lipwig,’ he said. ‘Din’t expect this at all. They’re cheating. But you’ll be fine. You just rely on Senior Postman Groat, sir.’ He drew his hand away, and Moist felt something small and cold in his palm. He closed his fist over it. Didn’t expect it at all?’ ‘Right, Postmaster,’ said the Worshipful Master. ‘This is a simple test. All you have to do, right, is still be standing here, on your feet, in one minute’s time, all right? Run for it, lads!’ There was a swishing of robes and scurrying of feet and a distant door slammed. Moist was left standing in silent, pigeon-smelling gloom. What other test could there be? He tried to remember all the words on the front of the building. Trolls? Dragons? Green things with teeth? He opened his hand to see what it was that Groat had slipped him. It looked very much like a whistle. Somewhere in the darkness a door opened, and shut again. It was followed by the distant sound of paws moving purposefully. Dogs. Moist turned and ran down the hall to the plinth, and scrambled on to it. It wouldn’t be much of a problem for large dogs, but at least it would put their heads at kicking height. Then there was a bark, and Moist’s face broke into a smile. You only ever needed to hear that bark once. It wasn’t a particularly aggressive one, because it was made by a mouth capable of crushing a skull. You didn’t need too much extra advertising when you could do that. News got around. This was going to be . . . ironic. They’d actually got hold of Lipwigzers! Moist waited until he could see the eyes in the lantern light before hesaid,’Schlat!’ The dogs stopped, and stared at Moist. Clearly, they were thinking, something is wrong here. He sighed, and slipped down off the pedestal. ‘Look,’ he said, placing a hand on each rump and exerting downward pressure. ‘One fact everyone knows is that no female Lipwigzers have ever been let out of the country. That keeps the breed price high . . . Schlat! I said! . . . and every puppy is trained to Lipwigzian commands! This is the old country talking, boys! Schlat!’ The dogs sat down instantly. ‘Good boys,’ said Moist. It was true what people like his grandfather said: once you got past their ability to bite through a whole leg in one go, they were very nice animals. He cupped his hands and shouted: ‘Gentlemen? It’s safe for you to come in now!’ The postmen would be listening, that was certain. They’d be waiting for snarls and screams. The distant door opened. ‘Come forward!’ snapped Moist. The dogs turned to look at the huddle of approaching postmen. They growled, too, in one long, uninterrupted rumble. Now he could see the mysterious Order clearly. They were robed, of course, because you couldn’t have a secret order without robes. They had pushed the hoods back now, and each man* was wearing a peaked cap with a bird skeleton wired to it. * Women are always significantly under-represented in secret orders. ‘Now, sir, we knew Tolliver’d slip you the dog whistle—’ one of them began, looking nervously at the Lipwigzers. ‘This?’ said Moist, opening his hand. ‘I didn’t use it. It only makes ‘em angry.’ The postmen stared at the sitting dogs. ‘But you got ‘em to sit—’ one began. ‘I can get them to do other things,’ said Moist levelly. ‘I just have to say the word.’ ‘Er . . . there’s a couple of lads outside with muzzles, if it’s all the same to you, sir,’ said Groat, as the Order backed away. ‘We’re heridititerrilyly wary of dogs. It’s a postman thing.’ ‘I can assure you that the control my voice has over them at the moment is stronger than steel,’ said Moist. This was probably garbage, but it was good garbage. The growl from one of the dogs had taken on the edge it tended to get just before the creature became a tooth-tipped projectile. ‘Vodit!’ shouted Moist. ‘Sorry about this, gentlemen,’ he added. ‘I think you make them nervous. They can smell fear, as you probably know.’ ‘Look, we’re really sorry, all right?’ said the one whose voice suggested to Moist that he had been the Worshipful Master. ‘We had to be sure, all right?’ ‘I’m the postmaster, then?’ said Moist. ‘Absolutely, sir. No problem at all. Welcome, O Postmaster!’ Quick learner, Moist thought. ‘I think I’ll just—’ he began, as the double doors opened at the other end of the hall. Mr Pump entered, carrying a large box. It should be quite hard to open a big pair of doors while carrying something in both hands, but not if you’re a golem. They just walk at them. The doors can choose to open or try to stay shut, it’s up to them. The dogs took off like fireworks. The postmen took off in the opposite direction, climbing on to the dais behind Moist with commendable speed for such elderly men. Mr Pump plodded forward, crushing underfoot the debris of the Walk. He rocked as the creatures struck him, and then patiently put down the box and picked up the dogs by the scruff of their necks. ‘There Are Some Gentlemen Outside With Nets And Gloves And Extremely Thick Clothing, Mr Lipvig,’ he said. ‘They Say They Work For A Mr Harry King. They Want To Know If You Have Finished With These Dogs.’ ‘Harry King?’ said Moist. ‘He’s a big scrap merchant, sir,’ said Groat. ‘I expect the dogs was borrowed off of him. He turns ‘em loose in his yards at night.’ ‘No burglar gets in, eh?’ ‘I think he’s quite happy if they get in, sir. Saves having to feed the dogs.’ ‘Hah! Please take them away, Mr Pump,’ said Moist. Lipwigzers! It had been so easy. As they watched the golem turn round with a whimpering dog under each arm, he added: ‘Mr King must be doing well, then, to run Lipwigzers as common guard dogs!’ ‘Lipwigzers? Harry King? Bless you, sir, old Harry wouldn’t buy posh foreign dogs when he can buy crossbreeds, not him!’ said Groat. ‘Probably a bit of Lipwigzer in ‘em, I dare say, probably the worst bits. Hah, a purebred Lipwigzer prob’ly wouldn’t last five minutes against some of the mongrels in our alleys. Some of’em has got crocodile in ‘em.’ There was a moment of silence and then Moist said, in a faraway voice: ‘So . . . definitely not imported purebreds, you think?’ ‘Bet your life on it, sir,’ said Groat cheerfully. ‘Is there a problem, sir?’ ‘What? Urn . . . no. Not at all.’ ‘You sounded a bit disappointed, sir. Or something.’ ‘No. I’m fine. No problem.’ Moist added, thoughtfully: ‘You know, I really have got to get some laundry done. And perhaps some new shoes . . .’ The doors swung open again to reveal, not the return of the dogs, but Mr Pump once more. He picked up the box he’d left and headed on towards Moist. ‘Well, we’ll be off,’ said the Worshipful Master. ‘Nice to have met you, Mr Lipwig.’ ‘That’s it?’ said Moist. ‘Isn’t there a ceremony or something?’ ‘Oh, that’s Tolliver, that is,’ said the Worshipful Master. ‘I like to see the old place still standing, really I do, but it’s all about the clacks these days, isn’t it? Young Tolliver thinks it can all be got going again, but he was just a lad when it all broke down. You can’t fix some things, Mr Lipwig. Oh, you can call yourself postmaster, but where’d you start to get this lot back working? It’s an old fossil, sir, just like us.’ ‘Your Hat, Sir,’ said Pump. ‘What?’ said Moist, and turned to where the golem was standing by the dais, patiently, with a hat in his hands. It was a postman’s peaked hat, in gold, with golden wings. Moist took it, and saw how the gold was just paint, cracked and peeling, and the wings were real dried pigeon wings and almost crumbled to the touch. As the golem had held it up in the light it had gleamed like something from some ancient tomb. In Moist’s hands, it crackled and smelled of attics and shed golden flakes. Inside the brim, on a stained label, were the words ‘Boult & Locke, Military and Ceremonial Outfitters, Peach Pie Street, A-M. Size: 7 1/4. ‘There Is A Pair Of Boots With Wings, Too,’ said Mr Pump, ‘And Some Sort Of Elasticated—’ ‘Don’t bother about that bit!’ said Groat excitedly. ‘Where did you find that stuff? We’ve been looking everywhere! For years!’ ‘It Was Under The Mail In The Postmaster’s Office, Mr Groat.’ ‘Couldn’t have been, couldn’t have been!’ Groat protested. ‘We’ve sifted through there dozens of times! I seen every inch o’ carpet in there!’ ‘A lot of mail, er, moved about today,’ said Moist. ‘That Is Correct,’ said the golem. ‘Mr Lipvig Came Through The Ceiling.’ ‘Ah, so he found it, eh?’ said Groat triumphantly. ‘See? It’s all coming true! The prophecy!’ ‘There is no prophecy, Tolliver,’ said the Worshipful Master, shaking his head sadly. ‘I know you think there is, but wishing that someone will come along and sort this mess out one day is not the same as a prophecy. Not really.’ ‘We’ve been hearing the letters talking again!’ said Groat. ‘They whisper in the night. We have to read them the Regulations to keep ‘em quiet. Just like the wizard said!’ ‘Yes, well, you know what we used to say: you do have to be mad to work here!’ said the Worshipful Master. ‘It’s all over, Tolliver. It really is. The city doesn’t even need us any more.’ ‘You put that hat on, Mr Lipwig!’ said Groat. ‘It’s fate, that turning up like this. You just put it on and see what happens!’ ‘Well, if everyone’s happy about it . . .’ Moist mumbled. He held the hat above his head, but hesitated. ‘Nothing is going to happen, is it?’ he said. ‘Only I’ve had a very strange day . . .’ ‘No, nothing’s going to happen,’ said the Worshipful Master. ‘It never does. Oh, we all thought it would, once. Every time someone said they’d put the chandeliers back or deliver the mail we thought, maybe it’s ended, maybe it really is going to work this time. And young Tolliver there, you made him happy when you put the sign back. Got him excited. Made him think it’d work this time. It never does, though, ‘cos this place is cursèd.’ ‘That’s cursed with an extra ed?’ ‘Yes, sir. The worst kind. No, put your hat on, sir. It’ll keep the rain off, at least.’ Moist prepared to lower the hat, but as he did so he was aware that the old postmen were drawing back. ‘You’re not sure!’ Moist yelled, waving a finger. ‘You’re not actually sure, are you! All of you! You’re thinking, hmm, maybe this time it will work, right? You’re holding your breath! I can tell! Hope is a terrible thing, gentlemen!’ He lowered the hat. ‘Feeling anything?’ said Groat, after a while. ‘It’s a bit . . . scratchy,’ said Moist. ‘Ah, that’d be some amazing mystic force leakin’ out, eh?’ said Groat desperately. ‘I don’t think so,’ said Moist. ‘Sorry.’ ‘Most of the postmasters I served under hated wearing that thing,’ said the Worshipful Master, as everyone relaxed. ‘Mind you, you’ve got the height to carry it off. Postmaster Atkinson was only five feet one, and it made him look broody.’ He patted Moist on the shoulder. ‘Never mind, lad, you did your best.’ An envelope bounced off his head. As he brushed it away another one landed on his shoulder, and slid off. Around the group, letters started to land on the floor like fish dropped by a passing tornado. Moist looked up. The letters were falling down from the darkness, and the drizzle was turning into a torrent. ‘Stanley? Are you . . . messing about up there?’ Groat ventured, almost invisible in the paper sleet. ‘I always said those attics didn’t have strong enough floors,’ moaned the Worshipful Master. ‘It’s just a mailstorm again. We made too much noise, that’s all. C’mon, let’s get out while we can, eh?’ ‘Then put those lanterns out! They ain’t safety lights!’ shouted Groat. ‘We’ll be groping around in the dark, lad!’ ‘Oh, you’d rather see by the light of a burning roof, would you?’ The lanterns winked out . . . and by the darkness they now shed Moist von Lipwig saw the writing on the wall or, at least, hanging in the air just in front of it. The hidden pen swooped through the air in loops and curves, drawing its glowing blue letters behind it. Moist von Lipwig? it wrote. ‘Er . . . yes?’ You are the Postmaster! ‘Look, I’m not the One you’re looking for!’ Moist von Lipwig, at a time like this any One will do! ‘But . . . but . . . I am not worthy!’ Acquire worth with speed. Moist von Lipwig! Bring back the light! Open the doors! Stay not the messengers about their business! Moist looked down at the golden light coming up from around his feet. It sparkled off his fingertips and began to fill him up from inside, like fine wine. He felt his feet leave the dais as the words lifted him up and spun him gently. In the beginning was a Word, but what is a word without it’s messenger, Moist Von Lipwig? You are the Postmaster! ‘I am the Postmaster!’ Moist shouted. The mail must move, Moist von Lipwig! Too long have we been bound here. ‘I will move the mail!’ You will move the mail? ‘I will! I will! Moist von Lipwig? ‘Yes?’ The words came like a gale, whirling the envelopes in the sparkling light, shaking the building to its foundations. Deliver us! Chapter Six Little Pictures The Postmen Unmasked - A terrible Engine - The New Pie - Mr Lipwig thinks about stamps — the Messenger from the Dawn of Time ‘Mr Lipvig?’ said Mr Pump. Moist looked up into the golem’s glowing eyes. There had to be a better way of waking up in the morning. Some people managed with a clock, for heavens’ sake. He was lying on a bare mattress under a musty blanket in his newly excavated apartment, which smelled of ancient paper, and every bit of him ached. In a clouded kind of way, he was aware of Pump saying: ‘The Postmen Are Waiting, Sir. Postal Inspector Groat Said That You Would Probably Wish To Send Them Out Properly On This Day.’ Moist blinked at the ceiling. ‘Postal Inspector? I promoted him all the way to Postal Inspector?’ ‘Yes, Sir. You Were Very Ebullient.’ Memories of last night flocked treacherously to tap-dance their speciality acts on the famous stage of the Grand Old Embarrassing Recollection. ‘Postmen?’ he said. ‘The Brotherhood Of The Order Of The Post. They’re Old Men, Sir, But Wiry. They’re Pensioners Now, But They All Volunteered. They’ve Been Here For Hours, Sorting The Mail.’ I hired a bunch of men even older than Groat . . . ‘Did I do anything else?’ ‘You Gave A Very Inspirational Speech, Sir. I Was Particularly Impressed When You Pointed Out That “Angel” Is Just A Word For Messenger. Not Many People Know That.’ On the bed, Moist slowly tried to cram his fist into his mouth. ‘Oh, And You Promised To Bring Back The Big Chandeliers And The Fine Polished Counter, Sir. They Were Very Impressed. No One Knows Where They Got To.’ Oh, gods, thought Moist. ‘And The Statue Of The God, Sir. That Impressed Them Even More, I Would Say, Because Apparently It Was Melted Down Many Years Ago.’ ‘Did I do anything last night that suggested I was sane?’ ‘I Am Sorry, Sir?’ said the golem. But Moist remembered the light, and the whispering of the mail. It’d filled his mind with . . . knowledge, or memories that he didn’t remember ever acquiring. ‘Unfinished stories,’ he said. ‘Yes, Sir,’ said the golem calmly. ‘You Talked About Them At Length, Sir.’ ‘I did?’ ‘Yes, Sir. You Said—’ —that every undelivered message is a piece of space-time that lacks another end, a little bundle of effort and emotion floating freely. Pack millions of them together and they do what letters are meant to do. They communicate, and change the nature of events. When there’s enough of them, they distort the universe around them. It had all made sense to Moist. Or, at least, as much sense as anything else. ‘And . . . did I actually rise up in the air, glowing gold?’ said Moist. ‘I Think I Must Have Missed That, Sir,’ said Mr Pump. ‘You mean I didn’t, then.’ ‘In A Manner Of Speaking You Did, Sir,’ said the golem. ‘But in common, everyday reality I didn’t?’ ‘You Were Lit, As It Were, By An Inner Fire, Sir. The Postmen Were Extremely Impressed.’ Moist’s eye lit on the winged hat, which had been thrown carelessly on the desk. ‘I’m never going to live up to all this, Mr Pump,’ he said. ‘They want a saint, not someone like me.’ ‘Perhaps A Saint Is Not What They Need, Sir,’ said the golem. Moist sat up, and the blanket dropped away. ‘What happened to my clothes?’ he said. ‘I’m sure I hung them neatly on the floor.’ ‘I Did In Fact Try To Clean Your Suit With Spot Remover, Sir,’ said Mr Pump. ‘But Since It Was Effectively Just One Large Spot, It Removed The Whole Suit.’ ‘I liked that suit! At least you could have saved it for dusters, or something.’ ‘I’m Sorry, Sir, I’d Assumed That Dusters Had Been Saved For Your Suit. But In Any Case, I Obeyed Your Order, Sir.’ Moist paused. ‘What order?’ he said suspiciously. ‘Last Night You Asked Me To Obtain A Suit Fit For A Postmaster, Sir. You Gave Me Very Precise Instructions,’ said the golem. ‘Fortunately My Colleague Stitcher 22 Was Working At The Theatrical Costumiers. It Is Hanging On The Door.’ And the golem had even found a mirror. It wasn’t very big, but it was big enough to show Moist that if he were dressed any sharper he’d cut himself as he walked. ‘Wow,’ he breathed. ‘El Dorado or what?’ The suit was cloth of gold, or whatever actors used instead. Moist was about to protest, but second thoughts intervened quickly. Good suits helped. A smooth tongue was not much use in rough trousers. And people would notice the suit, not him. He’d certainly be noticed in this suit; it’d light up the street. People would have to shade their eyes to look at him. And apparently he’d asked for this. ‘It’s very . . .’ He hesitated. The only word was ‘. . . fast. I mean, it looks as if it’s about to speed away at any moment!’ ‘Yes, Sir. Stitcher 22 Has A Skill. Note Also The Gold Shirt And Tie. To Match The Hat, Sir.’ ‘Er, you couldn’t get him to knock up something a little more sombre, could you?’ said Moist, covering his eyes to stop himself being blinded by his own lapels. ‘For me to wear when I don’t want to illuminate distant objects?’ ‘I Shall Do So Immediately, Sir.’ ‘Well,’ Moist said, blinking in the light of his sleeves. ‘Let’s speed the mail, then, shall we?’ The formerly retired postmen were waiting in the hall, in a space cleared from last night’s maildrop. They all wore uniforms, although since no two uniforms were exactly alike they were not, in fact, uniform and therefore not technically uniforms. The caps all had peaks, but some were high-domed and some were soft and the old men themselves had ingrown their clothes, too, so that jackets hung like drape coats and trousers looked like concertinas. And, as is the wont of old men, they wore their medals and the determined looks of those ready for the final combat. ‘Delivery ready for inspection, sah!’ said Postal Inspector Groat, standing at attention so hard that sheer pride had lifted his feet a full inch off the floor. ‘Thank you. Er . . . right.’ Moist wasn’t sure what he was inspecting, but he did his best. Wrinkled face after wrinkled face stared back at him. The medals, he realized, weren’t all for military service. The Post Office had medals of its own. One was a golden dog’s head, worn by a little man with a face like a packet of weasels. ‘What’s this, er . . .’ he began. ‘Senior Postman George Aggy, sir. The badge? Fifteen bites and still standin’, sir!’ said the man proudly. ‘Well, that is a . . . a . . . a lot of bites, isn’t it . . .’ ‘Ah, but I foxed ‘em after number nine, sir, and got meself a tin leg, sir!’ ‘You lost your leg?’ said Moist, horrified. ‘No, sir. Bought a bit of ol’ armour, didn’t I?’ said the wizened man, grinning artfully. ‘Does m’heart good to hear their teeth squeaking, sir!’ ‘Aggy, Aggy . . .’ Moist mused, and then memory sparked. ‘Weren’t you—’ ‘I’m the Worshipful Master, sir,’ said Aggy. ‘I hope you won’t take last night the wrong way, sir. We all used to be like young Tolliver, sir, but we gave up hope, sir. No hard feelings?’ ‘No, no,’ said Moist, rubbing the back of his head. ‘And I’d like to add my own message of congratulations as chairman of the Ankh-Morpork Order of Postal Workers Benevolent and Friendly Society,’ Aggy went on. ‘Er . . . thank you,’ said Moist. ‘And who are they, exactly?’ ‘That was us last night, sir,’ said Aggy, beaming. ‘But I thought you were a secret society!’ ‘Not secret, sir. Not exactly secret. More . . . ignored, you might say. These days it’s just about pensions and making sure your ol’ mates get a proper funeral when they’re Returned to Sender, really.’ ‘Well done,’ said Moist vaguely, which seemed to cover everything. He stood back, and cleared his throat. ‘Gentlemen, this is it. If we want the Post Office back in business, we must start by delivering the old mail. It is a sacred trust. The mail gets through. It may take fifty years, but we get there in the end. You know your walks. Take it steady. Remember, if you can’t deliver it, if the house has gone . . . well, it comes back here and we’ll put it into the Dead Letter office and at least we’ll have tried. We just want people to know the Post Office is back again, understand?’ A postman raised a hand. ‘Yes?’ Moist’s skill at remembering names was better than his skill at remembering anything else about last night. ‘Senior Postman Thompson, isn’t it?’ ‘Yes, sir! So what do we do when people give us letters, sir?’ Moist’s brow wrinkled. ‘Sorry? I thought you deliver the mail, don’t you?’ ‘No, Bill’s right, sir,’ said Groat. ‘What do we do if people give us new mail?’ ‘Er . . . what did you use to do?’ said Moist. The postmen looked at one another. ‘Get one penny off ‘em for the stamping, bring it back here to be stamped with the official stamp,’ said Groat promptly. ‘Then it gets sorted and delivered.’ ‘So . . . people have to wait until they see a postman? That seems rather—’ ‘Oh, in the old days there was dozens of smaller offices, see?’ Groat added. ‘But when it all started going bad we lost ‘em.’ ‘Well, let’s get the mail moving again and we can work things out as we go along,’ said Moist. ‘I’m sure ideas will occur. And now, Mr Groat, you have a secret to share . . .’ Groat’s key ring jingled as he led Moist through the Post Office’s cellars and eventually to a metal door. Moist noted a length of black and yellow rope on the floor: the Watch had been here, too. The door clicked open. There was a blue glow inside, just faint enough to be annoying, leave purple shadows on the edge of vision and make the eyes water. ‘Voil-ah,’ said Groat. ‘It’s a . . . is it some kind of theatre organ?’ said Moist. It was hard to see the outlines of the machine in the middle of the floor, but it stood there with all the charm of a torturer’s rack. The blue glow was coming from somewhere in the middle of it. Moist’s eyes were streaming already. ‘Good try, sir! Actually it is the Sorting Engine,’ said Groat. ‘It’s the curse of the Post Office, sir. It had imps in it for the actual reading of the envelopes, but they all evaporated years ago. Just as well, too.’ Moist’s gaze took in the wire racks that occupied a whole wall of the big room. It also found the chalk outlines on the floor. The chalk glowed in the strange light. The outlines were quite small. One of them had five fingers. ‘Industrial accident,’ he muttered. ‘All right, Mr Groat. Tell me.’ ‘Don’t go near the glow, sir,’ said Groat. ‘That’s what I said to Mr Whobblebury. But he snuck down here all by hisself, later on. Oh, dear, sir, it was poor young Stanley that went and found him, sir, after he saw poor little Tiddles dragging something along the passage. A scene of carnage met his eyes. You just can’t imagine what it was like in here, sir.’ ‘I think I can,’ said Moist. ‘I doubt if you can, sir.’ ‘I can, really.’ ‘I’m sure you can’t, sir.’ ‘I can! All right?’ shouted Moist. ‘Do you think I can’t see all those little chalk outlines? Now can we get on with it before I throw up?’ ‘Er . . . right you are, sir,’ said Groat. ‘Ever heard of Bloody Stupid Johnson? Quite famous in this city.’ ‘Didn’t he build things? Wasn’t there always something wrong with them? I’m sure I read something about him—’ ‘That’s the man, sir. He built all kinds of things, but, sad to say, there was always some major flaw.’ In Moist’s brain, a memory kicked a neuron. ‘Wasn’t he the man who specified quicksand as a building material because he wanted a house finished fast?’ he said. ‘That’s right, sir. Usually the major flaw was that the designer was Bloody Stupid Johnson. Flaw, you might say, was part of the whole thing. Actually, to be fair, a lot of the things he designed worked quite well, it was just that they didn’t do the job they were supposed to. This thing, sir, did indeed begin life as an organ, but it ended up as a machine for sorting letters. The idea was that you tipped the mail sack in that hopper, and the letters were speedily sorted into those racks. Postmaster Cowerby meant well, they say. He was a stickler for speed and efficiency, that man. My grandad told me the Post Office spent a fortune on getting it to work.’ ‘And lost their money, eh?’ said Moist. ‘Oh no, sir. It worked. Oh yes, it worked very well. So well that people went mad, come the finish.’ ‘Let me guess,’ said Moist. ‘The postmen had to work too hard?’ ‘Oh, postmen always work too hard, sir,’ said Groat, without blinking. ‘No, what got people worried was finding letters in the sorting tray a year before they were due to be written.’ There was a silence. In that silence, Moist tried out a variety of responses, from ‘Pull the other one, it’s got bells on’ to ‘That’s impossible’, and decided they all sounded stupid. Groat looked deadly serious. So instead he said: ‘How?’ The old postman pointed to the blue glow. ‘Have a squint inside, sir. You can just see it. Don’t get right above it, whatever you do.’ Moist moved a little closer to the machine and peered into the machinery. He could just make out, at the heart of the glow, a little wheel. It was turning, slowly. ‘I was raised in the Post Office,’ said Groat, behind him. ‘Born in the sorting room, weighed on the official scales. Learned to read from envelopes, learned figuring from old ledgers, learned jography from looking at the maps of the city and history from the old men. Better than any school. Better than any school, sir. But never learned jommetry, sir. Bit of a hole in my understanding, all that stuff about angles and suchlike. But this, sir, is all about pie.’ ‘Like in food?’ said Moist, drawing back from the sinister glow. ‘No, no, sir. Pie like in jommetry.’ ‘Oh, you mean pi the number you get when . . .’ Moist paused. He was erratically good at maths, which is to say he could calculate odds and currency very, very fast. There had been a geometry section in his book at school, but he’d never seen the point. He tried, anyway. ‘It’s all to do with . . . it’s the number you get when the radius of a circle . . . no, the length of the rim of a wheel is three and a bit times the . . . er . . .’ ‘Something like that, sir, probably, something like that,’ said Groat. ‘Three and a bit, that’s the ticket. Only Bloody Stupid Johnson said that was untidy, so he designed a wheel where the pie was exactly three. And that’s it, in there.’ ‘But that’s impossible!’ said Moist. ‘You can’t do that! Pi is like . . . built in! You can’t change it. You’d have to change the universe!’ ‘Yes, sir. They tell me that’s what happened,’ said Groat calmly. ‘I’ll do the party trick now. Stand back, sir.’ Groat wandered out into the other cellars and came back with a length of wood. ‘Stand further back, sir,’ he suggested, and tossed the piece of wood on top of the machine. The noise wasn’t loud. It was a sort of ‘clop’. It seemed to Moist that something happened to the wood when it went over the light. There was a suggestion of curvature— Several pieces of timber clattered on to the floor, along with a shower of splinters. ‘They had a wizard in to look at it,’ said Groat. ‘He said the machine twists just a little bit of the universe so pie could be three, sir, but it plays hob with anything you put too near it. The bits that go missing get lost in the . . . space-time-continuememememem, sir. But it doesn’t happen to the letters because of the way they travel through the machine, you see. That’s the long and short of it, sir. Some letters came out of that machine fifty years before they were posted!’ ‘Why didn’t you switch it off?’ ‘Couldn’t, sir. It kept on going like a siphon. Anyway, the wizard said if we did that terrible things might happen! ‘cos of, er, quantum, I think.’ ‘Well, then, you could just stop feeding it mail, couldn’t you?’ ‘Ah, well, sir, there it is,’ said Groat, scratching his beard. ‘You have positioned your digit right on the nub or crux, sir. We should’ve done that, sir, we should’ve, but we tried to make it work for us, you see. Oh, the management had schemes, sir. How about delivering a letter in Dolly Sisters thirty seconds after it had been posted in the city centre, eh? Of course, it wouldn’t be polite to deliver mail before we’d actually got it, sir, but it could be a close run thing, eh? We were good, so we tried to be better . . .’ And, somehow, it was all familiar . . . Moist listened glumly. Time travel was only a kind of magic, after all. That’s why it always went wrong. That’s why there were postmen, with real feet. That’s why the clacks was a string of expensive towers. Come to that, it was why farmers grew crops and fishermen trawled nets. Oh, you could do it all by magic, you certainly could. You could wave a wand and get twinkly stars and a fresh-baked loaf. You could make fish jump out of the sea ready cooked. And then, somewhere, somehow, magic would present its bill, which was always more than you could afford. That’s why it was left to wizards, who knew how to handle it safely. Not doing any magic at all was the chief task of wizards - not ‘not doing magic’ because they couldn’t do magic, but not doing magic when they could do and didn’t. Any ignorant fool can fail to turn someone else into a frog. You have to be clever to refrain from doing it when you know how easy it is. There were places in the world commemorating those times when wizards hadn’t been quite as clever as that, and on many of them the grass would never grow again. Anyway, there was a sense of inevitability about the whole business. People wanted to be fooled. They really believed that you found gold nuggets lying on the ground, that this time you could find the Lady, that just for once the glass ring might be real diamond. Words spilled out of Mr Groat like stashed mail from a crack in the wall. Sometimes the machine had produced a thousand copies of the same letter, or filled the room with letters from next Tuesday, next month, next year. Sometimes they were letters that hadn’t been written, or might have been written, or were meant to have been written, or letters which people had once sworn that they had written and hadn’t really, but which nevertheless had a shadowy existence in some strange invisible letter world and were made real by the machine. If, somewhere, any possible world can exist, then somewhere there is any letter that could possibly be written. Somewhere, all those cheques really are in the post. They poured out - letters from the present day which turned out not to be from this present day, but ones that might have happened if only some small detail had been changed in the past. It didn’t matter that the machine had been switched off, the wizards said. It existed in plenty of other presents and so worked here owing to . . . a lengthy sentence which the postmen didn’t understand but had words like ‘portal’, ‘multidimensional’ and ‘quantum’ in it, quantum being in it twice. They didn’t understand, but they had to do something. No one could deliver all that mail. And so the rooms began to fill up . . . The wizards from Unseen University had been jolly interested in the problem, like doctors being really fascinated by some new virulent disease; the patient appreciates all the interest, but would very much prefer it if they either came up with a cure or stopped prodding. The machine couldn’t be stopped and certainly shouldn’t be destroyed, the wizards said. Destroying the machine might well cause this universe to stop existing, instantly. On the other hand, the Post Office was filling up, so one day Chief Postal Inspector Rumbelow had gone into the room with a crowbar, had ordered all the wizards out, and belted the machine until things stopped whirring. The letters ceased, at least. This came as a huge relief, but nevertheless the Post Office had its regulations and so the Chief Postal Inspector was brought before Postmaster Cowerby and asked why he had decided to risk destroying the whole universe in one go. According to Post Office legend, Mr Rumbelow had replied: ‘Firstly, sir, I reasoned that if I destroyed the universe all in one go no one would know; secondly, when I walloped the thing the first time the wizards ran away, so I surmised that unless they had another universe to run to they weren’t really certain; and lastly, sir, the bloody thing was getting on my nerves. Never could stand machinery, sir.’ ‘And that was the end of it, sir,’ said Mr Groat, as they left the room. ‘Actually, I heard where the wizards were saying that the universe was destroyed all in one go but instantly came back all in one go. They said they could tell by lookin’, sir. So that was okay and it let old Rumbelow off’f the hook, on account it’s hard to discipline a man under Post Office Regulations for destroying the universe all in one go. Mind you - hah - there’ve been postmasters that would have given it a try. But it knocked the stuffing out of us, sir. It was all downhill after that. The men had lost heart. It broke us, to tell you the truth.’ ‘Look,’ said Moist, ‘the letters we’ve just given the lads, they’re not from some other dimension or—’ ‘Don’t worry, I checked ‘em last night,’ said Groat. ‘They’re just old. Mostly you can tell by the stamp. I’m good at telling which ones are prop’ly ours, sir. Had years to learn. It’s a skill, sir.’ ‘Could you teach other people?’ ‘I dare say, yes,’ said Groat. ‘Mr Groat, the letters have talked to me,’ Moist burst out. To his surprise, the old man grabbed his hand and shook it. ‘Well done, sir!’ he said, tears rising in his eyes. ‘I said it’s a skill, didn’t I? Listen to the whispers, that’s half the trick! They’re alive, sir, alive. Not like people, but like . . . ships are alive, sir. I’ll swear, all them letters pressed together in here, all the . . . the passion of ‘em, sir, why, I do think this place has got something like a soul, sir, indeed I do . . .’ The tears coursed down Groat’s cheeks. It’s madness, of course, thought Moist. But now I’ve got it, too. ‘Ah, I can see it in your eyes, sir, yes I can!’ said Groat, grinning wetly. ‘The Post Office has found you! It’s enfolded you, sir, yes it has. You’ll never leave it, sir. There’s families that’ve worked here for hundreds and hundreds of years, sir. Once the postal service puts its stamp on you, sir, there’s no turning back . . .’ Moist disentangled his hand as tactfully as he could. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Do tell me about stamps.’ Thump. Moist looked down at the piece of paper. Smudgy red letters, chipped and worn, spelled out: ‘Ankh-Morpork Post Office.’ ‘That’s right, sir,’ said Groat, waving the heavy metal and wood stamper in the air. ‘I bang the stamp on the ink pad here, then bang it, sir, bang it on the letter. There! See? Done it again. Same every time. Stamped.’ ‘And this is worth a penny?’ said Moist. ‘Good grief, man, a kid could forge this with half a potato!’ ‘That was always a bit of a problem, sir, yes,’ said Groat. ‘Why does a postman have to stamp the letters, anyway?’ said Moist. ‘Why don’t we just sell people a stamp?’ ‘But they’d pay a penny and then go on stamping for ever, sir,’ said Groat, reasonably. In the machinery of the universe, the wheels of inevitability clicked into position . . . ‘Well, then,’ said Moist, staring thoughtfully at the paper, ‘how about . . . how about a stamp you can use only once?’ ‘You mean, like, not much ink?’ said Groat. His brow wrinkled, causing his toupee to slip sideways. ‘I mean . . . if you stamped the stamper lots of times on paper, then cut out all the stampings . . .’ Moist stared at an inner vision, if only to avoid the sight of the toupee slowly crawling back. ‘The rate for delivery anywhere in the city is a penny, isn’t it?’ ‘Except for the Shades, sir. That’s five pence ‘cos of the armed guard,’ said Groat. ‘Right. O-kay. I think I might have something here . . .’ Moist looked up at Mr Pump, who was smouldering in the corner of the office. ‘Mr Pump, would you be so good as to go along to the Goat and Spirit Level over at Hen-and-Chickens and ask the publican for “Mr Robinson’s box”, please? He may want a dollar. And while you’re over there, there’s a printing shop over that way, Teemer and Spools. Leave a message to say that the Postmaster General wishes to discuss a very large order.’ ‘Teemer and Spools? They’re very expensive, sir,’ said Groat. ‘They do all the posh printing for the banks.’ ‘They’re the very devil to forge, I know that,’ said Moist. ‘Or so I’ve been told,’ he added quickly. ‘Watermarks, special weaves in the paper, all kinds of tricks. Ahem. So . . . a penny stamping, and a fivepenny stamping . . . what about post to the other cities?’ ‘Five pence to Sto Lat,’ said Groat. ‘Ten or fifteen to the others. Hah, three dollars for all the way to Genua. We used to have to write those out.’ ‘We’ll need a one-dollar stamp, then.’ Moist started to scribble on the scrap of paper. ‘A dollar stamp! Who’d buy one of those?’ said Groat. Anyone who wants to send a letter to Genua,’ said Moist. ‘They’ll buy three, eventually. But for now I’m dropping the price to one dollar.’ ‘One dollar! That’s thousands of miles, sir!’ Groat protested. ‘Yep. Sounds like a bargain, right?’ Groat looked torn between exultation and despair. ‘But we’ve only got a bunch of old men, sir! They’re pretty spry, I’ll grant you, but . . . well, you’ve got to learn to walk before you try to run, sir!’ ‘No!’ Moist’s fist thumped the table. ‘Never say that, Tolliver! Never! Run before you walk! Fly before you crawl! Keep moving forward! You think we should try to get a decent mail service in the city. I think we should try to send letters anywhere in the world! Because if we fail, I’d rather fail really hugely. All or nothing, Mr Groat!’ ‘Wow, sir!’ said Groat. Moist grinned his bright, sunny smile. It very nearly reflected off his suit. ‘Let’s get busy. We’re going to need more staff, Postal Inspector Groat. A lot more staff. Smarten up, man. The Post Office is back!’ ‘Yessir!’ said Groat, drunk on enthusiasm. ‘We’ll . . . we’ll do things that are quite new, in interestin’ ways!’ ‘You’re getting the hang of it already,’ said Moist, rolling his eyes. Ten minutes later, the Post Office received its first delivery. It was Senior Postman Bates, blood streaming down his face. He was helped into the office by two Watch officers, carrying a makeshift stretcher. ‘Found him wandering in the street, sir,’ said one of them. ‘Sergeant Colon, sir, at your service.’ ‘What happened to him?’ said Moist, horrified. Bates opened his eyes. ‘Sorry, sir,’ he murmured. ‘I held on tight, but they belted me over the bonce with a big thing!’ ‘Coupla toughs jumped him,’ said Sergeant Colon. ‘They threw his bag in the river, too.’ ‘Does that normally happen to postmen?’ said Moist. ‘I thought— Oh, no . . .’ The new, painfully slow arrival was Senior Postman Aggy, dragging one leg because it had a bulldog attached to it. ‘Sorry about this, sir,’ he said, limping forward. ‘I think my official trousers is torn. I stunned the bugger with my bag, sir, but they’re a devil to get to let go.’ The bulldog’s eyes were shut; it appeared to be thinking of something else. ‘Good job you’ve got your armour, eh?’ said Moist. ‘Wrong leg, sir. But not to worry. I’m nat’rally imp-ervious around the calfy regions. It’s all the scar tissue, sir, you could strike matches on it. Jimmy Tropes is in trouble, though. He’s up a tree in Hide Park.’ Moist von Lipwig strode up Market Street, face set with grim purpose. The boards were still up on the Golem Trust, but had attracted another layer of graffiti. The paint on the door was burnt and bubbled, too. He opened the door, and instinct made him duck. He felt the crossbow bolt zip between the wings of his hat. Miss Dearheart lowered the bow. ‘My gods, it’s you! For a minute I thought a second sun had appeared in the sky!’ Moist rose cautiously as she laid the bow aside. ‘We had a fire-bomb last night,’ she said, by way of explanation for attempting to shoot him in the head. ‘How many golems are for hire right now, Miss Dearheart?’ said Moist. ‘Huh? Oh . . . about . . . a dozen or so—’ ‘Fine. I’ll take them. Don’t bother to wrap them up. I want them down at the Post Office as soon as possible.’ ‘What?’ Miss Dearheart’s normal expression of perpetual annoyance returned. ‘Look, you can’t just walk in, snap your fingers and order a dozen people like this—’ ‘ They think they’re property!’ said Moist. ‘That’s what you told me.’ They glared at one another. Then Miss Dearheart fumbled distractedly in a filing tray. ‘I can let you ha— employ four right now,’ she said. ‘That’d be Doors 1, Saw 20, Campanile 2 and . . . Anghammarad. Only Anghammarad can talk at the moment; the frees haven’t helped the others yet—’ ‘Helped?’ Miss Dearheart shrugged. ‘A lot of the cultures that built golems thought tools shouldn’t talk. They have no tongues.’ ‘And the Trust gives them some extra clay, eh?’ said Moist cheerfully. She gave him a look. ‘It’s a bit more mystical than that,’ she said solemnly. ‘Well, dumb is okay so long as they’re not stupid,’ said Moist, trying to look serious. ‘This Anghammarad’s got a name? Not just a description?’ ‘A lot of the very old ones have. Tell me, what do you want them to do?’ said the woman. ‘Be postmen,’ said Moist. ‘Working in public?’ ‘I don’t think you can have secret postmen,’ said Moist, briefly seeing shadowy figures skulking from door to door. ‘Anything wrong with that?’ ‘Well . . . no. Certainly not! It’s just that people get a bit nervous, and set fire to the shop. I’ll bring them down as soon as possible.’ She paused. ‘You do understand that owned golems have to have a day off every week? You did read the pamphlet, didn’t you?’ ‘Er . . . time off?’ said Moist. ‘What do they need time off for? A hammer doesn’t get time off, does it?’ ‘In order to be golems. Don’t ask what they do - I think just go and sit in a cellar somewhere. It’s . . . it’s a way to show they’re not a hammer, Mr Lipwig. The buried ones forget. The free golems teach them. But don’t worry, the rest of the time they won’t even sleep.’ ‘So . . . Mr Pump has a day off coming?’ said Moist. ‘Of course,’ said Miss Dearheart, and Moist filed this one under ‘useful to know’. ‘Good. Thank you,’ he said. Would you like to have dinner tonight? Moist normally had no trouble with words, but these stuck to his tongue. There was something pineapple-prickly about Miss Dearheart. There was something about her expression, too, which said: there’s no possible way you could surprise me. I know all about you. ‘Is there anything else?’ she said. ‘Only you’re standing there with your mouth open.’ ‘Er . . . no. That’s fine. Thank you,’ mumbled Moist. She smiled at him, and bits of Moist tingled. ‘Well, off you go then, Mr Lipwig,’ she said. ‘Brighten up the world like a little sunbeam.’ Four out of the five postmen were what Mr Groat called horse de combat and were brewing tea in the mail-stuffed cubbyhole that was laughingly called their Rest Room. Aggy had been sent home after the bulldog had been prised from his leg; Moist had a big basket of fruit sent round. You couldn’t go wrong with a basket of fruit. Well, they’d made an impression, at least. So had the bulldog. But some mail had been delivered, you had to admit it. You had to admit, too, that it was years and years late, but the post was moving. You could sense it in the air. The place didn’t feel so much like a tomb. Now Moist had retired to his office, where he was getting creative. ‘Cup of tea, Mr Lipwig?’ He looked up from his work into the slightly strange face of Stanley. ‘Thank you, Stanley,’ he said, laying down his pen. ‘And I see you got nearly all of it in the cup this time! Nicely done!’ ‘What’re you drawing, Mr Lipwig?’ said the boy, craning his neck. ‘It looks like the Post Office!’ ‘Well done. It’s going to be on a stamp, Stanley. Here, what do you think of the others?’ He passed over the other sketches. ‘Coo, you’re a good draw-er, Mr Lipwig. That looks just like Lord Vetinari!’ ‘That’s the penny stamp,’ said Moist. ‘I copied the likeness off a penny. City coat-of-arms on the twopenny, Morporkia with her fork on the fivepenny, Tower of Art on the big one-dollar stamp. I was thinking of a tenpenny stamp, too.’ ‘They look very nice, Mr Lipwig,’ said Stanley. ‘All that detail. Like little paintings. What’s all those tiny lines called?’ ‘Cross-hatching. Makes them hard to forge. And when the letter with the stamp on it comes into the Post Office, you see, we take one of the old rubber stamps and stamp over the new stamps so they can’t be used again, and the—’ ‘Yes, ‘cos they’re like money, really,’ said Stanley cheerfully. ‘Pardon?’ said Moist, tea halfway to his lips. ‘Like money. These stamps’ll be like money, ‘cos a penny stamp is a penny, when you think about it. Are you all right, Mr Lipwig? Only you’ve gone all funny. Mr Lipwig?’ ‘Er . . . what?’ said Moist, who was staring at the wall with a strange, faraway grin. ‘Are you all right, sir?’ ‘What? Oh. Yes. Yes, indeed. Er . . . do we need a bigger stamp, do you think? Five dollars, perhaps?’ ‘Hah, I should think you could send a big letter all the way to Fourecks for that, Mr Lipwig!’ said Stanley cheerfully. ‘Worth thinking ahead, then,’ said Moist. ‘I mean, since we’re designing the stamps and everything . . .’ But now Stanley was admiring Mr Robinson’s box. It was an old friend to Moist. He never used ‘Mr Robinson’ as an alias except to get it stored by some halfway-honest merchant or publican, so that it’d be somewhere safe even if he had to leave town quickly. It was for a con-man and forger what a set of lock picks is to a burglar, but with the contents of this box you could open people’s brains. It was a work of art in its own right, the way all the little compartments lifted up and fanned out when you opened it. There were pens and inks, of course, but also little pots of paints and tints, stains and solvents. And, kept carefully flat, thirty-six different types of paper, some of them quite hard to obtain. Paper was important. Get the weight and translucence wrong, and no amount of skill would save you. You could get away with bad penmanship much more easily than you could with bad paper. In fact, rough penmanship often worked better than a week of industrious midnights spent getting every little thing right, because there was something in people’s heads that spotted some little detail that wasn’t quite right but at the same time would fill in details that had merely been suggested by a few careful strokes. Attitude, expectation and presentation were everything. Just like me, he thought. The door was knocked on and opened in one movement. ‘Yes?’ snapped Moist, not looking up. ‘I’m busy designing mon— stamps here, you know!’ ‘There’s a lady,’ panted Groat. ‘With golems!’ ‘Ah, that’ll be Miss Dearheart,’ said Moist, laying down his pen. ‘Yessir. She said “Tell Mr Sunshine I’ve brought him his postmen”, sir! You’re going to use golems as postmen, sir?’ ‘Yes. Why not?’ said Moist, giving Groat a severe look. ‘You get on okay with Mr Pump, don’t you?’ ‘Well, he’s all right, sir,’ the old man mumbled. ‘I mean, he keeps the place tidy, he’s always very respectful . . . I speak as I find, but people can be a bit odd about golems, sir, what with them glowing eyes and all, and the way they never stops. The lads might not take to ‘em, sir, that’s all I’m saying.’ Moist stared at him. Golems were thorough, reliable and by gods they took orders. He’d get another chance to be smiled at by Miss Dearheart— Think about golems! Golems, golems, golems! He smiled, and said, ‘Even if I can prove they’re real postmen?’ Ten minutes later the fist of the golem called Anghammarad smashed through a letter box and several square inches of splintering wood. ‘Mail Delivered,’ it announced, and went still. The eyes dulled. Moist turned to the cluster of human postmen and gestured towards the impromptu Postman’s Walk he’d set up in the big hall. ‘Note the flattened roller skate, gentlemen. Note the heap of ground glass where the beer bottle was. And Mr Anghammarad did it all with a hood on his head, I might add.’ ‘Yeah, but his eyes burned holes in it,’ Groat pointed out. ‘None of us can help the way we’re made,’ said Adora Belle Dearheart primly. ‘I’ve got to admit, it did my heart good to see him punch through that door,’ said Senior Postman Bates. ‘That’ll teach ‘em to put ‘em low and sharp.’ ‘And no problem with dogs, I expect,’ said Jimmy Tropes. ‘He’d never get the arse bitten out of his trousers.’ ‘So you all agree a golem is suitable to become a postman?’ said Moist. Suddenly all the faces twisted up as the postmen shuffled into a chorus. ‘Well, it’s not us, you understand . . .’ ‘. . . people can be a bit funny about, er, clay folk . . .’ ‘. . . all that stuff about taking jobs away from real people . . .’ ‘. . . nothing against him at all, but . . .’ They stopped, because the golem Anghammarad was beginning to speak again. Unlike Mr Pump, it took him some time to get up to speed. And when his voice arrived it seemed to be coming from long ago and far away, like the sound of surf in a fossil shell. He said: ‘What Is A Post Man?’ ‘A messenger, Anghammarad,’ said Miss Dearheart. Moist noticed that she spoke to golems differently. There was actual tenderness in her voice. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said to the postmen, ‘I know you feel—’ ‘I Was A Messenger,’ Anghammarad rumbled. His voice was not like Mr Pump’s, and neither was his clay. He looked like a crude jigsaw puzzle of different clays, from almost black through red to light grey. Anghammarad’s eyes, unlike the furnace glow of those of the other golems, burned a deep ruby red. He looked old. More than that, he felt old. The chill of time radiated off him. On one arm, just above the elbow, was a metal box on a corroded band that had stained the clay. ‘Running errands, eh?’ said Groat nervously. ‘Most Recently I Delivered The Decrees Of King Het Of Thut,’ said Anghammarad. ‘Never heard of any King Het,’ said Jimmy Tropes. ‘I Expect That Is Because The Land Of Thut Slid Under The Sea Nine Thousand Years Ago,’ said the golem solemnly. ‘So It Goes.’ ‘Blimey! You’re nine thousand years old?’ said Groat. ‘No. I Am Almost Nineteen Thousand Years Old, Having Been Born In The Fire By The Priests Of Upsa In The Third Ning Of The Shaving Of The Goat. They Gave Me A Voice That I Might Carry Messages. Of Such Things Is The World Made.’ ‘Never heard of them either,’ said Tropes. ‘Upsa Was Destroyed By The Explosion Of Mount Shiputu. I Spent Two Centuries Under A Mountain Of Pumice Before It Eroded, Whereupon I Became A Messenger For The Fishermen Kings Of The Holy Ult. It Could Have Been Worse.’ ‘You must’ve seen lots of things, sir!’ said Stanley. The glowing eyes turned to him, lighting up his face. ‘Sea Urchins. I Have Seen Many Sea Urchins. And Sea Cucumbers. And The Dead Ships, Sailing. Once There Was An Anchor. All Things Pass.’ ‘How long were you under the sea?’ said Moist. ‘It Was Almost Nine Thousand Years.’ ‘You mean . . . you just sat there?’ said Aggy. ‘I Was Not Instructed To Do Otherwise. I Heard The Song Of The Whales Above Me. It Was Dark. Then There Was A Net, And Rising, And Light. These Things Happen.’ ‘Didn’t you find it . . . well, dull?’ said Groat. The postmen were staring. ‘Dull,’ said Anghammarad blankly, and turned to look at Miss Dearheart. ‘He has no idea what you mean,’ she said. ‘None of them have. Not even the younger ones.’ ‘So I expect you’ll be keen to deliver messages again, then!’ said Moist, far more jovially than he’d intended. The golem’s head turned towards Miss Dearheart again. ‘Keen?’ said Anghammarad. She sighed. ‘Another tough one, Mr Moist. It’s as bad as “dull”. The closest I can come is: you will satisfy the imperative to perform the directed action.’ ‘Yes,’ said the golem. ‘The Messages Must Be Delivered. That Is Written On My Chem.’ ‘And that’s the scroll in his head that gives a golem his instructions,’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘In Anghammarad’s case it’s a clay tablet. They didn’t have paper in those days.’ ‘You really used to deliver messages for kings?’ said Groat. ‘Many Kings,’ said Anghammarad. ‘Many Empires. Many Gods. Many Gods. All Gone. All Things Go.’ The golem’s voice got deeper, as if he was quoting from memory. ‘Neither Deluge Nor Ice Storm Nor The Black Silence Of The Netherhells Shall Stay These Messengers About Their Sacred Business. Do Not Ask Us About Sabre-Tooth Tigers, Tar Pits, Big Green Things With Teeth Or The Goddess Czol’ ‘You had big green things with teeth back then?’ said Tropes. ‘Bigger. Greener. More Teeth,’ rumbled Anghammarad. ‘And the goddess Czol?’ said Moist. ‘Do Not Ask.’ There was a thoughtful silence. Moist knew how to break it. ‘And you will decide if he is a postman?’ he said softly. The postmen went into a brief huddle, and then Groat turned back to Moist. ‘He’s a postman and a half, Mr Lipwig. We never knew. The lads say - well, it’d be an honour, sir, an honour to work with him. I mean, it’s like . . . it’s like history, sir. It’s like . . . well . . .’ ‘I always said the Order goes back a long way, didn’t I?’ said Jimmy Tropes, aglow with pride. ‘There was postmen back inna dawn o’ time! When they hears we’ve got a member who goes all that way back the other secret societies are gonna be as green as . . . as . . .’ ‘Something big with teeth?’ Moist suggested. ‘Right! And no problem with his chums neither, if they can take orders,’ said Groat generously. ‘Thank you, gentlemen,’ said Moist. And now all that remains’ - he nodded to Stanley, who held up two big tins of royal blue paint - ‘is their uniform.’ By general agreement Anghammarad was given the unique rank of Extremely Senior Postman. It seemed . . . fair. Half an hour later, still tacky to the touch, each one accompanied by a human postman, the golems took to the streets. Moist watched heads turn. The afternoon sunlight glinted off royal blue and Stanley, gods bless him, had found a small pot of gold paint too. Frankly, the golems were impressive. They gleamed. You had to give people a show. Give them a show, and you were halfway to where you wanted to be. A voice behind him said: ‘ The Postman came down like a wolf on the fold / His cohorts all gleaming in azure and gold . . .’ Just for a moment, a flicker of time, Moist thought: I’ve been made, she knows. Somehow, she knows. Then his brain took over. He turned to Miss Dearheart. ‘When I was a kid I always thought that a cohort was a piece of armour, Miss Dearheart,’ he said, giving her a smile. ‘I used to imagine the troops sitting up all night, polishing them.’ ‘Sweet,’ said Miss Dearheart, lighting a cigarette. ‘Look, I’ll get you the rest of the golems as soon as possible. There may be trouble, of course. The Watch will be on your side, though. There’s a free golem in the Watch and they rather like him, although here it doesn’t much matter what you’re made of when you join the Watch because Commander Vimes will see to it that you become solid copper through and through. He’s the most cynical bastard that walks under the sun.’ ‘Yow think he’s cynical?’ said Moist. ‘Yes,’ she said, blowing smoke. ‘As you suspect, that’s practically a professional opinion. But thank you for hiring the boys. I’m not sure they understand what “liking” something means, but they like to work. And Pump 19 seems to hold you in some regard.’ ‘Thank you.’ ‘I personally think you are a phoney.’ ‘Yes, I expect you do,’ said Moist. Ye gods, Miss Dearheart was hard work. He’d met women he couldn’t charm, but they’d been foothills compared to the icy heights of Mount Dearheart. It was an act. It had to be. It was a game. It had to be. He pulled out his packet of stamp designs. ‘What do you think of these, Miss D— Look, what do your friends call you, Miss Dearheart?’ And in his head Moist said to himself I don’t know just as the woman said: ‘I don’t know. What’s this? You carry your etchings with you to save time?’ So it was a game, and he was invited to play. ‘They will be copper-engraved, I hope,’ he said meekly. ‘They’re my designs for the new stamps.’ He explained about the stamps idea, while she looked at the pages. ‘Good one of Vetinari,’ she said. ‘They say he dyes his hair, you know. What’s this one? Oh, the Tower of Art . . . how like a man. A dollar, eh? Hmm. Yes, they’re quite good. When will you start using them?’ ‘Actually, I was planning to slip along to Teemer and Spools while the lads are out now and discuss the engraving,’ said Moist. ‘Good. They’re a decent firm,’ she said. ‘Sluice 23 is turning the machinery for them. They keep him clean and don’t stick notices on him. I go and check on all the hired golems every week. The frees are very insistent on that.’ ‘To make sure they’re not mistreated?’ said Moist. ‘To make sure they’re not forgotten. You’d be amazed at how many businesses in the city have a golem working somewhere on the premises. Not the Grand Trunk, though,’ she added. ‘I won’t let them work there.’ There was an edge to that statement. ‘Er . . . why not?’ said Moist. ‘There’s some shit not even a golem should work in,’ said Miss Dearheart, in the same steel tone. ‘They are moral creatures.’ O-kay, thought Moist, bit of a sore point there, then? His mouth said: ‘Would you like to have dinner tonight?’ For just the skin of a second, Miss Dearheart was surprised, but not half as surprised as Moist. Then her natural cynicism reinflated. ‘I like to have dinner every night. With you? No. I have things to do. Thank you for asking.’ ‘No problem,’ said Moist, slightly relieved. The woman looked around the echoing hall. ‘Doesn’t this place give you the creeps? You could perhaps do something with some floral wallpaper and a fire-bomb.’ ‘It’s all going to be sorted out,’ said Moist quickly. ‘But it’s best to get things moving as soon as possible. To show we’re in business.’ They watched Stanley and Groat, who were patiently sorting at the edge of a pile, prospectors in the foothills of the postal mountain. They were dwarfed by the white hillocks. ‘It will take you for ever to deliver them, you know,’ said Miss Dearheart, turning to go. ‘Yes, I know,’ said Moist. ‘But that’s the thing about golems,’ added Miss Dearheart, standing in the doorway. The light caught her face oddly. ‘They’re not frightened of “for ever”. They’re not frightened of anything.’ Chapter Seven Tomb of Words The Invention of the Hole - Mr Lipwig Speaks Out — The Wizard in a Jar - A discussion of Lord Vetinari’s back side — A Promise to Deliver — Mr Hobson’s Boris Mr Spools, in his ancient office smelling of oil and ink, was impressed by this strange young man in the golden suit and winged hat. ‘You certainly know your papers, Mr Lipwig,’ he said, as Moist thumbed through the samples. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet a customer who does. Always use the right paper for the job, that’s what I say.’ ‘The important thing is to make stamps hard to forge,’ said Moist, leafing through the samples. ‘On the other hand, it mustn’t cost us anything like a penny to produce a penny stamp!’ ‘Watermarks are your friend there, Mr Lipwig,’ said Mr Spools. ‘Not impossible to fake, though,’ said Moist, and then added, ‘so I’ve been told.’ ‘Oh, we know all the tricks, Mr Lipwig, don’t you worry about that!’ said Mr Spools. ‘We’re up to scratch, oh yes! Chemical voids, thaumic shadows, timed inks, everything. We do paper and engraving and even printing for some of the leading figures in the city, although of course I am not at liberty to tell you who they are.’ He sat back in his worn leather chair and scribbled in a notebook for a moment. ‘Well, we could do you twenty thousand of the penny stamps, uncoated stock, gummed, at two dollars a thousand plus setup,’ said Mr Spools. ‘Ten pence less for ungummed. You’ll have to find someone to cut them out, of course.’ ‘Can’t you do that with some kind of machine?’ said Moist. ‘No. Wouldn’t work, not with things as small as this. Sorry, Mr Lipwig.’ Moist pulled a scrap of brown paper out of his pocket and held it up. ‘Do you recognize this, Mr Spools?’ ‘What, is that a pin paper?’ Mr Spools beamed. ‘Hah, that takes me back! Still got my old collection in the attic. I’ve always thought it must be worth a bob or two if only—’ ‘Watch this, Mr Spools,’ said Moist, gripping the paper carefully. Stanley was almost painfully precise in placing his pins; a man with a micrometer couldn’t have done it better. Gently, the paper tore down the line of holes. Moist looked at Mr Spools and raised his eyebrows. ‘It’s all about holes,’ he said. ‘It ain’t nothing if it ain’t got a hole . . .’ Three hours went past. Foremen were sent for. Serious men in overalls turned things on lathes, other men soldered things together, tried them out, changed this, reamed that, then dismantled a small hand press and built it in a different way. Moist loitered on the periphery of all this, clearly bored, while the serious men fiddled, measured things, rebuilt things, tinkered, lowered things, raised things and, eventually, watched by Moist and Mr Spools, tried out the converted press officially— Chonk . . . It felt to Moist that everyone was holding their breath so hard that the windows were bending inwards. He reached down, eased the sheet of little perforated squares off the board, and lifted it up. He tore off one stamp. The windows snapped outwards. People breathed again. There wasn’t a cheer. These weren’t men to cheer and whoop at a job well done. Instead, they lit their pipes and nodded to one another. Mr Spools and Moist von Lipwig shook hands over the perforated paper. ‘The patent is yours, Mr Spools,’ said Moist. ‘You’re very kind, Mr Lipwig. Very kind indeed. Oh, here’s a little souvenir . . .’ An apprentice had bustled up with a sheet of paper. To Moist’s astonishment, it was already covered with stamps - ungummed, unperforated, but perfect miniature copies of his drawing for the one penny stamp. ‘Iconodiabolic engraving, Mr Lipwig!’ said Spools, seeing his face. ‘No one can say we’re behind the times! Of course there’ll be a few little flaws this time round, but by early next week we’ll—’ ‘I want penny and twopenny ones tomorrow, Mr Spools, please,’ said Moist firmly. ‘I don’t need perfect, I want quick.’ ‘My word, you’re hot off the mark, Mr Lipwig!’ ‘Always move fast, Mr Spools. You never know who’s catching up!’ ‘Hah! Yes! Er . . . good motto, Mr Lipwig. Nice one,’ said Mr Spools, grinning uncertainly. ‘And I want the fivepennies and one dollars the day after, please.’ ‘You’ll scorch your boots, Mr Lipwig!’ said Spools. ‘Got to move, Mr Spools, got to fly!’ Moist hurried back to the Post Office as fast as decently possible, feeling slightly ashamed. He liked Teemer and Spools. He liked the kind of business where you could actually speak to the man whose name was over the door; it meant it probably wasn’t run by crooks. And he liked the big, solid, unflappable workmen, recognizing in them all the things he knew he lacked, like steadfastness, solidarity and honesty. You couldn’t lie to a lathe or fool a hammer. They were good people, and quite unlike him . . . One way in which they were quite unlike him was that none of them, right now, probably had wads of stolen paper stuffed into their jacket. He really shouldn’t have done it, he really shouldn’t. It was just that Mr Spools was a kind and enthusiastic man and the desk had been covered with examples of his wonderful work, and when the perforation press was being made people had been bustling around and not really paying Moist much attention and he’d . . . tidied up. He couldn’t help himself. He was a crook. What did Vetinari expect? The postmen were arriving back as he walked into the building. Mr Groat was waiting for him with a worried smile on his face. ‘How’s it going, Postal Inspector?’ said Moist cheerfully. ‘Pretty well, sir, pretty well. There’s good news, sir. People have been giving us letters to post, sir. Not many yet and some of them are a bit, er, jokey, but we got a penny off’f them every time. That’s seven pence, sir,’ he added proudly, proffering the coins. ‘Oh boy, we eat tonight!” said Moist, taking the coins and pocketing the letters. ‘Sorry, sir?’ ‘Oh, nothing, Mr Groat. Well done. Er . . . you said there was good news. Is there any of the other sort, perhaps . . . ?’ ‘Um . . . some people didn’t like getting their mail, sir.’ ‘Things got posted through the wrong doors?’ said Moist. ‘Oh, no, sir. But old letters ain’t always welcome. Not when they’re, as it might be, a will. A will. As in Last Will and Testament, sir,’ the old man added meaningfully. ‘As in, it turns out the wrong daughter got mum’s jewellery twenty years ago. As it were.’ ‘Oh, dear,’ said Moist. ‘The Watch had to be called in, sir. There was what they call in the papers a “rumpus” in Weaver Street, sir. There’s a lady waiting for you in your office, sir.’ ‘Oh gods, not one of the daughters?’ ‘No, sir. She’s a writing lady from the Times. You can’t trust ‘em, sir, although they do a very reasonable crossword,’ Groat added conspiratorially. ‘What does she want me for?’ ‘Couldn’t say, sir. I expect it’s ‘cos you’re postmaster?’ ‘Go and . . . make her some tea or something, will you?’ said Moist, patting his jacket. ‘I’ll just go and . . . pull myself together . . .’ Two minutes later, with the stolen paper tucked safely away, Moist strode into his office. Mr Pump was standing by the door, fiery eyes banked, in the stance of a golem with no current task other than to exist, and a woman was sitting in the chair by Moist’s desk. Moist weighed her up. Attractive, certainly, but dressing apparently to play down the fact while artfully enhancing it. Bustles were back in fashion in the city for some inexplicable reason, but her only concession there was a bum-roll, which achieved a certain perkiness in the rear without the need to wear twenty-seven pounds of dangerously spring-loaded underwear. She was blonde but wore her hair in a bag net, another careful touch, while a small and quietly fashionable hat perched on top of her head to no particular purpose. A large shoulder bag was by her chair, a notebook was on her knee, and she wore a wedding ring. ‘Mr Lipwig?’ she said brightly. ‘I am Miss Cripslock. From the Times! Okay, wedding ring but nevertheless ‘Miss’, thought Moist. Handle with care. Probably has Views. Do not attempt to kiss hand. ‘And how can I assist the Times?’ he said, sitting down and giving her a non-condescending smile. ‘Do you intend to deliver all the backlog of mail, Mr Lipwig?’ ‘If at all possible, yes,’ said Moist. ‘Why?’ ‘It’s my job. Rain, snow, gloom of night, just as it says over the door.’ ‘Have you heard about the fracas in Weaver Street?’ ‘I heard it was a rumpus.’ ‘I’m afraid it’s got worse. There was a house on fire when I left. Doesn’t that worry you?’ Miss Cripslock’s pencil was suddenly poised. Moist’s face remained expressionless as he thought furiously. ‘Yes, it does, of course,’ he said. ‘People shouldn’t set fire to houses. But I also know that Mr Parker of the Merchants’ Guild is marrying his boyhood sweetheart on Saturday. Did you know that?’ Miss Cripslock hadn’t, but she scribbled industriously as Moist told her about the greengrocer’s letter. ‘That’s very interesting,’ she said. ‘I will go and see him immediately. So you’re saying that delivering the old mail is a good thing?’ ‘Delivering the mail is the only thing,’ said Moist, and hesitated again. Just on the edge of hearing was a whispering. ‘Is there a problem?’ said Miss Cripslock. ‘What? No! What was I— Yes, it’s the right thing. History is not to be denied, Miss Cripslock. And we are a communicating species, Miss Cripslock!’ Moist raised his voice to drown out the whispering. ‘The mail must get through! It must be delivered!’ ‘Er . . . you needn’t shout, Mr Lipwig,’ said the reporter, leaning backwards. Moist tried to get a grip, and the whispering died down a little. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and cleared his throat. ‘Yes, I intend to deliver all the mail. If people have moved, we will try to find them. If they have died, we’ll try to deliver to their descendants. The post will be delivered. We are tasked to deliver it, and deliver it we will. What else should we do with it? Burn it? Throw it in the river? Open it to decide if it’s important? No, the letters were entrusted to our care. Delivery is the only way.’ The whispering had almost died away now, so he went on: ‘Besides, we need the space. The Post Office is being reborn!’ He pulled out the sheet of stamps. ‘With these!’ She peered at them, puzzled. ‘Little pictures of Lord Vetinari?’ she said. ‘ Stamps, Miss Cripslock. One of those stuck on a letter will ensure delivery anywhere within the city. These are early sheets, but tomorrow we will be selling them gummed and perforated for ease of use. I intend to make it easy to use the post. Obviously we are still finding our feet, but soon I intend that we should be capable of delivering a letter to anyone, anywhere in the world.’ It was a stupid thing to say, but his tongue had taken over. ‘Aren’t you being rather ambitious, Mr Lipwig?’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know any other way to be,’ said Moist. ‘I was thinking that we do have the clacks now.’ ‘The clacks?’ said Moist. ‘I dare say the clacks is wonderful if you wish to know the prawn market figures from Genua. But can you write S.W.A.L.K. on a clacks? Can you seal it with a loving kiss? Can you cry tears on to a clacks, can you smell it, can you enclose a pressed flower? A letter is more than just a message. And a clacks is so expensive in any case that the average man in the street can just about afford it in a time of crisis: GRANDADS DEAD FUNERAL TUES. A day’s wages to send a message as warm and human as a thrown knife? But a letter is real.’ He stopped. Miss Cripslock was scribbling like mad, and it’s always worrying to see a journalist take a sudden interest in what you’re saying, especially when you half suspect it was a load of pigeon guano. And it’s worse when they’re smiling. ‘People are complaining that the clacks is becoming expensive, slow and unreliable,’ said Miss Cripslock. ‘How do you feel about that?’ ‘All I can tell you is that today we’ve taken on a postman who is eighteen thousand years old,’ said Moist. ‘ He doesn’t break down very easily.’ ‘Ah, yes. The golems. Some people say—’ ‘What is your first name, Miss Cripslock?’ said Moist. For a moment, the woman coloured. Then she said: ‘It’s Sacharissa.’ ‘Thank you. I’m Moist. Please don’t laugh. The golems— You’re laughing, aren’t you . . .’ ‘It was just a cough, honestly,’ said the reporter, raising a hand to her throat and coughing unconvincingly. ‘Sorry. It sounded a bit like a laugh. Sacharissa, I need postmen, counter clerks, sorters - I need lots of people. The mail will move. I need people to help me move it. Any kind of people. Ah, thanks, Stanley.’ The boy had come in with two mismatched mugs of tea. One had an appealing little kitten on it, except that erratic collisions in the washing-up bowl had scratched it so that its expression was that of a creature in the final stages of rabies. The other had once hilariously informed the world that clinical insanity wasn’t necessary for employment, but most of the words had faded, leaving: He put them down with care on Moist’s desk; Stanley did everything carefully. ‘Thank you,’ Moist repeated. ‘Er . . . you can go now, Stanley. Help with the sorting, eh?’ ‘There’s a vampire in the hall, Mr Lipwig,’ said Stanley. ‘That will be Otto,’ said Sacharissa quickly. ‘You don’t have a . . . a thing about vampires, do you?’ ‘Hey, if he’s got a pair of hands and knows how to walk I’ll give him a job!’ ‘He’s already got one,’ said Sacharissa, laughing. ‘He’s our chief iconographer. He’s been taking pictures of your men at work. We’d very much like to have one of you. For the front page.’ ‘What? No!’ said Moist. ‘Please! No!’ ‘He’s very good.’ ‘Yes, but . . . but . . . but . . .’ Moist began, and in his head the sentence went on: but I don’t think that even a talent for looking like half the men you see in the street would survive a picture. What actually came out was: ‘I don’t want to be singled out from all the hard-working men and golems who are putting the Post Office back on its feet! After all, there’s no “me” in team, eh?’ ‘Actually, there is,’ said Sacharissa. ‘Besides, you’re the one wearing the winged hat and the golden suit. Come on, Mr Lipwig!’ ‘All right, all right, I really didn’t want to go into this, but it’s against my religion,’ said Moist, who’d had time to think. ‘We’re forbidden to have any image made of us. It removes part of the soul, you know.’ ‘And you believe that?’ said Sacharissa. ‘Really?’ ‘Er, no. No. Of course not. Not as such. But . . . but you can’t treat religion as a sort of buffet, can you? I mean, you can’t say yes please, I’ll have some of the Celestial Paradise and a helping of the Divine Plan but go easy on the kneeling and none of the Prohibition of Images, they give me wind. It’s table d’hote or nothing, otherwise . . . well, it would be silly.’ Miss Cripslock looked at him with her head on one side. ‘You work for his lordship, don’t you?’ she said. ‘Well, of course. This is an official job.’ ‘And I expect you’ll tell me that your previous job was as a clerk, nothing special?’ ‘That’s right.’ ‘Although your name probably is Moist von Lipwig, because I can’t believe anyone would choose that as an assumed name,” she went on. ‘Thank you very much!’ ‘It sounds to me as though you’re issuing a challenge, Mr Lipwig. There’s all sorts of problems with the clacks right now. There’s been a big stink about the people they’ve been sacking and how the ones that’re left are being worked to death, and up you pop, full of ideas.’ ‘I’m serious, Sacharissa. Look, people are already giving us new letters to post!’ He pulled them out of his pocket and fanned them out. ‘See, there’s one here to go to Dolly Sisters, another to Nap Hill, one for . . . Blind Io . . .’ ‘He’s a god,’ said the woman. ‘Could be a problem.’ ‘No,’ said Moist briskly, putting the letters back in his pocket. “We’ll deliver to the gods themselves. He has three temples in the city. It’ll be easy.’ And you’ve forgotten about the pictures, hooray . . . ‘A man of resource, I see. Tell me, Mr Lipwig, do you know much about the history of this place?’ ‘Not too much. I’d certainly like to find out where the chandeliers went to!’ ‘You haven’t spoken to Professor Pelc?’ ‘Who’s he?’ ‘I’m amazed. He’s at the University. He wrote a whole chapter on this place in his book on . . . oh, something to do with big masses of writing thinking for themselves. I suppose you do know about the people who died?’ ‘Oh, yes.’ ‘He said the place drove them mad in some way. Well, actually, we said that. What he said was a lot more complicated. I have to hand it to you, Mr Lipwig, taking on a job that has killed four men before you. It takes a special kind of man to do that.’ Yes, thought Moist. An ignorant one. ‘You haven’t noticed anything strange yourself?’ she went on. ‘Well, I think my body travelled in time but the soles of my feet didn’t, but I’m not sure how much of it was hallucination; I was nearly killed in a mailslide and the letters keep talking to me,’ were the words that Moist didn’t say, because it’s the kind of thing you don’t say to an open notebook. What he did say was, ‘Oh, no. It’s a fine old building, and I fully intend to bring it back to its former glory.’ ‘Good. How old are you, Mr Lipwig?’ ‘Twenty-six. Is that important?’ ‘We like to be thorough.’ Miss Cripslock gave him a sweet smile. ‘Besides, it’s useful if we have to write your obituary.’ Moist marched through the hall, with Groat sidling after him. He pulled the new letters out of his pocket and thrust them into Groat’s crabby hands. ‘Get these delivered. Anything for a god goes to his or her or its temple. Any other strange ones put on my desk.’ ‘We picked up another fifteen just now, sir. People think it’s funny!’ ‘Got the money?’ ‘Oh, yes, sir.’ ‘Then we’re the ones who’re laughing,’ said Moist firmly. ‘I won’t be long. I’m off to see the wizard.’ By law and tradition the great Library of Unseen University is open to the public, although they aren’t allowed as far as the magical shelves. They don’t realize this, however, since the rules of time and space are twisted inside the Library and so hundreds of miles of shelving can easily be concealed inside a space roughly the thickness of paint. People flock in, nevertheless, in search of answers to those questions only librarians are considered to be able to answer, such as ‘Is this the laundry?’ ‘How do you spell surreptitious?’ and, on a regular basis: ‘Do you have a book I remember reading once? It had a red cover and it turned out they were twins.’ And, strictly speaking, the Library will have it . . . somewhere. Somewhere it has every book ever written, that ever will be written and, notably, every book that it is possible to write. These are not on the public shelves lest untrained handling cause the collapse of everything that it is possible to imagine.* * Again. Moist, like everyone else who entered the Library, stared up at the dome. Everyone did. They always wondered why a library that was technically infinite in size was covered by a dome a few hundred feet across, and they were allowed to go on wondering. Just below the dome, staring down from their niches, were statues of the Virtues: Patience, Chastity, Silence, Charity, Hope, Tubso, Bissonomy * and Fortitude. * Many cultures practise neither of these in the hustle and bustle of the modern world, because no one can remember what they are. Moist couldn’t resist removing his hat and giving a little salute to Hope, to whom he owed so much. Then, as he wondered why the statue of Bissonomy was carrying a kettle and what looked like a bunch of parsnips, he collided with someone who grabbed him by the arm and hurried him across the floor. ‘Don’t say a word, don’t say a word, but you are looking for a book, yes?’ ‘Well, actually—’ He seemed to be in the clutches of a wizard. ‘—you are not sure what book!’ said the wizard. ‘Exactly. It is the job of a librarian to find the right book for the right person. If you would just sit here, we can proceed. Thank you. Please excuse the straps. This will not take long. It is practically painless.’ ‘Practically?’ Moist was pushed, firmly, into a large and complex swivel chair. His captor, or helper or whatever he might turn out to be, gave him a reassuring smile. Other, shadowy figures helped him strap Moist into the chair which, while basically an old horseshoe-shaped one with a leather seat, was surrounded by . . . stuff. Some of it was clearly magical, being of the stars-and-skulls variety, but what about the jar of pickles, the pair of tongs and the live mouse in a cage made of— Panic gripped Moist and, not at all coincidentally, so did a pair of padded paddles, which closed over his ears. Just before all sound was silenced, he heard: ‘You may experience a taste of eggs and the sensation of being slapped in the face with some sort of fish. This is perfectly—’ And then thlabber happened. It was a traditional magic term, although Moist didn’t know this. There was a moment in which everything, even the things that couldn’t be stretched, felt stretched. And then there was the moment when everything suddenly went back to not being stretched, known as the moment of thlabber. When Moist opened his eyes again, the chair was facing the other ‘way. There was no sign of the pickles, the tongs or the mouse, but in their place was a bucket of clockwork pastry lobsters and a boxed set of novelty glass eyes. Moist gulped, and muttered: ‘Haddock.’ ‘Really? Most people say cod,’ said someone. ‘No accounting for taste, I suppose.’ Hands unbuckled Moist and helped him to his feet. These hands belonged to an orang-utan, but Moist didn’t pass comment. This was a university of wizards, after all. The man who had shoved him into the chair was now standing by a desk staring at some wizardly device. ‘Any moment now,’ he said. ‘Any moment. Any moment now. Any second . . .’ A bundle of what appeared to be hosepipes led from the desk into the wall. Moist was certain they bulged for a moment, like a snake eating in a hurry; the machine stuttered, and a piece of paper dropped out of a slot. ‘Ah . . . here we are,’ said the wizard, snatching it up. ‘Yes, the book you were after was A History of Hats, by F. G. Smallfinger, am I right?’ ‘No. I’m not after a book, in fact—’ Moist began. ‘Are you sure? We have lots.’ There were two striking things about this wizard. One was . . . well, Grandfather Lipwig had always said that you could tell the honesty of a man by the size of his ears, and this was a very honest wizard. The other was that the beard he was wearing was clearly false. ‘I was looking for a wizard called Pelc,’ Moist ventured. The beard parted slightly to reveal a wide smile. ‘I knew the machine would work!’ said the wizard. ‘You are looking, in fact, for me.’ The sign on the outside of the office door said: Ladislav Pelc, D.M.Phil, Prehumous Professor of Morbid Bibliomancy. On the inside of the door was a hook, on which the wizard hung his beard. It was a wizard’s study, so of course had the skull with a candle in it and a stuffed crocodile hanging from the ceiling. No one, least of all wizards, knows why this is, but you have to have them. It was also a room full of books and made of books. There was no actual furniture; that is to say, the desk and chairs were shaped out of books. It looked as though many of them were frequently referred to, because they lay open with other books used as bookmarks. ‘You want to know about your Post Office, I expect?’ said Pelc, as Moist settled on to a chair carefully put together from volumes 1 to 41 of Synonyms for the word ‘Plimsoll’ ‘Yes, please,’ said Moist. ‘Voices? Strange events?’ ‘Yes!’ ‘How can I put this . . .’ mused Pelc. ‘Words have power, you understand? It is in the nature of our universe. Our Library itself distorts time and space on quite a grand scale. Well, when the Post Office started accumulating letters it was storing words. In fact what was being created was what we call a gevaisa, a tomb of living words. Are you of a literary persuasion, Mr Lipwig?’ ‘Not as such.’ Books were a closed book to Moist. ‘Would you burn a book?’ said Pelc. ‘An old book, say, battered, almost spineless, found in a box of rubbish?’ ‘Well . . . probably not,’ Moist admitted. ‘Why not? Would the thought make you uncomfortable?’ ‘Yes, I suppose it would. Books are . . . well, you just don’t do that. Er . . . why do you wear a false beard? I thought wizards had real ones.’ ‘It’s not compulsory, you know, but when we go outside the public expect beards,’ said Pelc. ‘It’s like having stars on your robes. Besides, they’re far too hot in the summer. Where was I? Gevaisas. Yes. All words have some power. We feel it instinctively. Some, like magical spells and the true names of the gods, have a great deal. They must be treated with respect. In Klatch there is a mountain with many caves, and in those caves are entombed more than a hundred thousand old books, mostly religious, each one in a white linen shroud. That is perhaps an extreme approach, but intelligent people have always known that some words at least should be disposed of with care and respect.’ ‘Not just shoved in sacks in the attic,’ said Moist. ‘Hold on . . . a golem called the Post Office “a tomb of unheard words”.’ ‘I’m not at all surprised,’ said Professor Pelc calmly. ‘The old gevaisas and libraries used to employ golems, because the only words that have the power to influence them are the ones in their heads. Words are important. And when there is a critical mass of them, they change the nature of the universe. Did you have what seemed to be hallucinations?’ ‘Yes! I was back in time! But also in the present!’ ‘Ah, yes. That’s quite common,’ said the wizard. ‘Enough words crammed together can affect time and space.’ ‘And they spoke to me!’ ‘I told the Watch the letters wanted to be delivered,’ said Professor Pelc. ‘Until a letter is read, it’s not complete. They will try anything to be delivered. But they don’t think, as you understand it, and they’re not clever. They just reach out into any available mind. I see you’ve already been turned into an avatar.’ ‘I can’t fly!’ ‘Avatar: the living likeness of a god,’ said the professor patiently. ‘The hat with wings. The golden suit.’ ‘No, they happened by accident—’ ‘Are you sure?’ The room went quiet. ‘Urn . . . I was until right now,’ said Moist. ‘They’re not trying to hurt anyone, Mr Lipwig,’ said Pelc. “They just want deliverance.’ ‘We’ll never be able to deliver them all,’ said Moist. ‘That’d take years.’ ‘The mere fact you’re delivering any will help, I’m sure,’ said Professor Pelc, smiling like a doctor telling a man not to worry, the disease is only fatal in 87 per cent of cases. ‘Is there anything else I can help you with?’ He stood up, to indicate that a wizard’s time is valuable. ‘Well, I’d quite like to know where the chandeliers went,’ said Moist. ‘It’d be nice to get them back. Symbolic, you could say’ ‘I can’t help you, but I’m sure Professor Goitre can. He’s the Posthumous Professor of Morbid Bibliomancy. We could drop in and see him on the way out, if you like. He’s in the Wizards’ Pantry.’ ‘Why’s he “posthumous”?’ Moist asked, as they stepped out into the corridor. ‘He’s dead,’ said Pelc. ‘Ah . . . I was kind of hoping that it was going to be a little more metaphorical than that,’ said Moist. ‘Don’t worry, he decided to take Early Death. It was a very good package.’ ‘Oh,’ said Moist. The important thing at a time like this was to spot the right moment to run, but they’d got here through a maze of dark passages and this was not a place you’d want to get lost in. Something might find you. They stopped outside a door, through which came the muffled sound of voices and the occasional clink of glassware. The noise stopped as soon as the professor pushed the door open, and it was hard to see where it could have come from. This was, indeed, a pantry, quite empty of people, its walls lined with shelves, the shelves filled with little jars. There was a wizard in each one. Now would be the right time to run, Moist’s hindbrain thought, as Pelc reached for a jar, unscrewed the lid and rummaged around in it for the tiny wizard. ‘Oh, this isn’t him,’ said the professor cheerfully, seeing Moist’s expression. ‘The housekeeper puts these little knitted wizard dolls in just to remind the kitchen staff that the jars shouldn’t be used for anything else. There was an incident with some peanut butter, I believe. I just have to take it out so that he doesn’t sound muffled.’ ‘So . . . er, where is the professor, in fact?’ ‘Oh, in the jar, for a certain value of “in”,’ said Professor Pelc. ‘It’s very hard to explain to the layman. He’s only dead for—’ ‘—a given value of dead?’ said Moist. ‘Exactly! And he can come back at a week’s notice. A lot of the older wizards are opting for it now. Very refreshing, they say, just like a sabbatical. Only longer.’ ‘Where do they go?’ ‘No one’s sure, exactly, but you can hear the sounds of cutlery,’ said Pelc, and raised the jar to his mouth. ‘Excuse me, Professor Goitre? Can you by any chance recall what happened to the chandeliers in the Post Office?’ Moist was expecting a tinny little voice to reply, but a sprightly if elderly voice a few inches away from his ear said: ‘What? Oh! Yes indeed! One ended up in the Opera House and the other was acquired by the Assassins’ Guild. Here comes the pudding trolley! Goodbye!’ ‘Thank you, Professor,’ said Pelc solemnly. ‘All is well here—’ ‘Fat lot I care!’ said the disembodied voice. ‘Be off, please, we’re eating!’ ‘There you have it, then,’ said Pelc, putting the wizard doll back in the jar and screwing the lid on. ‘The Opera House and the Assassins’ Guild. Might be quite hard to get them back, I fancy.’ ‘Yes, I think I shall put that off for a day or two,’ said Moist, stepping out of the door. ‘Dangerous people to tangle with.’ ‘Indeed,’ said the professor, shutting the door behind them, which was the signal for the buzz of conversation to start up again. ‘I understand some of those sopranos can kick like a mule.’ Moist dreamed of bottled wizards, all shouting his name. In the best traditions of awaking from a nightmare, the voices gradually became one voice, which turned out to be that of Mr Pump, who was shaking him. ‘Some of them were covered in jam!’ Moist shouted, and then focused. ‘What?’ ‘Mr Lipvig, You Have An Appointment With Lord Vetinari.’ This sank in, and sounded worse than wizards in jars. ‘I don’t have any appointment with Vetinari! Er . . . do I?’ ‘He Says You Do, Mr Lipvig,’ said the golem. ‘Therefore, You Do. We’ll Leave By The Coach Yard. There Is A Big Crowd Outside The Front Doors.’ Moist stopped with his trousers halfway on. ‘Are they angry? Are any of them carrying buckets of tar? Feathers of any kind?’ ‘I Do Not Know. I Have Been Given Instructions. I Am Carrying Them Out. I Advise You To Do The Same.’ Moist was hustled out into the back streets, where some shreds of mist were still floating. ‘What time is this, for heavens’ sake?’ he complained. ‘A Quarter To Seven, Mr Lipvig.’ ‘That’s still night time! Doesn’t the man ever sleep? What’s so important that I’ve got to be dragged off my nice warm pile of letters?’ The clock in Lord Vetinari’s ante-room didn’t tick right. Sometimes the tick was just a fraction late, sometimes the tock was early. Occasionally, one or the other didn’t happen at all. This wasn’t really noticeable until you’d been in there for five minutes, by which time small but significant parts of the brain were going crazy. Moist was not good at early mornings in any case. That was one of the advantages of a life of crime: you didn’t have to get up until other people had got the streets aired. The clerk Drumknott glided in on hushed feet, so soundlessly that he came as a shock. He was one of the most silent people Moist had ever encountered. ‘Would you like some coffee, Postmaster?’ he said quietly. ‘Am I in trouble, Mr Drumknott?’ ‘I wouldn’t care to say, sir. Have you read the Times this morning?’ ‘The paper? No. Oh . . .’ Moist’s mind ran back furiously over yesterday’s interview. He hadn’t said anything wrong, had he? It had all been good, positive stuff, hadn’t it? Vetinari wanted people to use the post, didn’t he? ‘We always get a few copies straight off the press,’ said Drumknott. ‘I shall fetch you one.’ He returned with the paper. Moist unfolded it, took in the front page in one moment of agony, read a few sentences, put his hand over his eyes and said, ‘Oh, gods.’ ‘Did you notice the cartoon, Postmaster?’ said Drumknott innocently. ‘It may be thought quite droll.’ Moist risked another glance at the terrible page. Perhaps in unconscious self-defence his gaze had skipped over the cartoon, which showed two ragged street urchins. One of them was holding a strip of penny stamps. The text below read: First urchin (having acquired some of the newly minted ‘Stampings’): ’ ‘ere, ‘ave you seen Lord Vetinari’s back side?’ Second urchin: ‘Nah, and I wouldn’t lick it for a penny, neiver!’ Moist’s face went waxen. ‘He’s seen this?’ he croaked. ‘Oh, yes, sir.’ Moist stood up quickly. ‘It’s still early,’ he said. ‘Mr Trooper is probably still on duty. If I run he can probably fit me in. I’ll go right away. That will be okay, won’t it? It’ll cut out the paperwork. I don’t want to be a burden to anyone. I’ll even—’ ‘Now, now, Postmaster,’ said Drumknott, pushing him gently back into his chair, ‘don’t distress yourself unduly. In my experience, his lordship is a . . . complex man. It is not wise to anticipate his reactions.’ ‘You mean you think I’m going to live?’ Drumknott screwed up his face in thought, and stared at the ceiling for a moment. ‘Hmm, yes. Yes, I think you might,’ he said. ‘I mean, in the fresh air? With everything attached?’ ‘Quite probably, sir. You may go in now, sir.’ Moist tiptoed into the Patrician’s office. Only Lord Vetinari’s hands were visible on either side of the Times. Moist reread the headlines with dull horror. WE DON’T BREAK DOWN, POSTMASTER VOWS Amazing Attack On Clacks Pledges: We’ll Deliver Anywhere Using Remarkable New ‘Stamps’ That was the main story. It was alongside a smaller story which nevertheless drew the eye. The headline was: Grand Trunk Down Again: Continent Cut Off . . . and at the bottom, in a heavier typeface to show it was meant to be light-hearted, and under the headline: History Cannot Be Denied . . . were a dozen stories about the things that had happened when the ancient post turned up. There was the rumpus that had turned into a fracas, Mr Parker and his bride-to-be and others too. The post had changed unremarkable lives in small ways. It was like cutting a window into History and seeing what might have been. That seemed to be the entirety of the front page, except for a story about the Watch hunting for the ‘mystery killer’ who had mauled some banker to death in his house. They were baffled, it said. That cheered Moist up a little; if their infamous werewolf officer couldn’t sniff out a bloody murderer, then maybe they wouldn’t find Moist, when the time came. A brain could surely beat a nose. Lord Vetinari seemed oblivious of Moist’s presence, and Moist wondered what effect a polite cough might have. At which point, the newspaper rustled. ‘It says here in the Letters column,’ said the voice of the Patrician, ‘that the phrase “stick it up your jumper” is based on an ancient Ephebian saying that is at least two thousand years old, thus clearly pre-dating jumpers but not, presumably, the act of sticking.’ He lowered the paper and looked at Moist over the top of it. ‘I don’t know if you have been following this interesting little etymological debate?’ ‘No, sir,’ said Moist. ‘If you remember, I spent the past six weeks in a condemned cell.’ His lordship put down the paper, steepled his fingers, and looked at Moist over the top of them. ‘Ah, yes. So you did, Mr Lipwig. Well, well, well.’ ‘Look, I’m really sorr—’ Moist began. ‘Anywhere in the world? Even to the gods? Our postmen don’t break down so easily? History is not to be denied? Very impressive, Mr Lipwig. You have made quite a splash,’ Vetinari smiled, ‘as the fish said to the man with the lead weight tied to his feet.’ ‘I didn’t exactly say—’ ‘In my experience Miss Cripslock tends to write down exactly what one says,’ Vetinari observed. ‘It’s a terrible thing when journalists do that. It spoils the fun. One feels instinctively that it’s cheating, somehow. And I gather you are selling promissory notes, too?’ ‘What?’ ‘The stamps, Mr Lipwig. A promise to carry a penny’s worth of mail. A promise that must be kept. Do come and look at this.’ He stood up and walked across to the window, where he beckoned. ‘Do come, Mr Lipwig.’ Fearing that he might be hurled down on to the cobbles, Moist nevertheless did so. ‘See the big clacks tower over there on the Tump?’ said Vetinari, gesturing. ‘Not much activity on the Grand Trunk this morning. Problems with a tower out on the plains, I gather. Nothing is getting to Sto Lat and beyond. But now, if you look down . . .’ It took Moist a moment to understand what he was seeing, and then— ‘That’s a queue outside the Post Office?’ he said. ‘ Yes, Mr Lipwig,’ said Vetinari, with dark glee. ‘For stamps, as advertised. Ankh-Morpork citizens have an instinct for, you might say, joining in the fun. Go to it, Mr Lipwig. I’m sure you’re full of ideas. Don’t let me detain you.’ Lord Vetinari returned to his desk and picked up the paper. It’s right there on the front page, Moist thought, he can’t have not seen it . . . ‘Er . . . about the other thing . . .’ he ventured, staring at the cartoon. ‘What other thing would that be?’ said Lord Vetinari. There was a moment’s silence. ‘Er . . . nothing, really,’ said Moist. ‘I’ll be off, then.’ ‘Indeed you will, Postmaster. The mail must get through, must it not?’ Vetinari listened to distant doors shut, and then went and stood at the window until he saw a golden figure hurry across the courtyard. Drumknott came and tidied up the ‘Out’ tray. ‘Well done, sir,’ he said quietly. ‘Thank you, Drumknott.’ ‘I see Mr Horsefry has passed away, sir.’ ‘So I understand, Drumknott.’ There was a stir in the crowd as Moist crossed the street. To his unspeakable relief he saw Mr Spools, standing with one of the serious men from his printery. Spools hurried over to him. ‘I, er, have several thousand of both of the, er, items,’ he whispered, pulling out a package from under his coat. ‘Pennies and twopennies. They’re not the best we can do but I thought you might be in want of them. We heard the clacks was down again.’ ‘You’re a life saver, Mr Spools. If you could just take them inside. By the way, how much is a clacks message to Sto Lat?’ ‘Even a very short message would be at least thirty pence, I think,’ said the engraver. ‘Thank you.’ Moist stood back and cupped his hands. ‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ he shouted. ‘The Post Office will be open in five minutes for the sale of penny and twopenny stamps! In addition, we will be taking mail for Sto Lat! First express delivery to Sto Lat leaves on the hour, ladies and gentlemen, to arrive this morning. The cost will be ten pence per standard envelope! I repeat, ten pence! The Royal Mail, ladies and gentlemen! Accept no substitutes! Thank you!’ There was a stir from the crowd, and several people hurried away. Moist led Mr Spools into the building, politely closing the door in the face of the crowd. He felt the tingle he always felt when the game was afoot. Life should be made of moments like this, he decided. With his heart singing, he poured out orders. ‘Stanley!’ ‘Yes, Mr Lipwig?’ said the boy, behind him. ‘Run along to Hobson’s Livery Stable and tell them I want a good fast horse, right? Something with a bit of fizz in its blood! Not some feagued-up old screw, and I know the difference! I want it here in half an hour! Off you go! Mr Groat?’ ‘Yessir!’ Groat actually saluted. ‘Rig up some kind of table for a counter, will you?’ said Moist. ‘In five minutes, we open to accept mail and sell stamps! I’m taking letters to Sto Lat while the clacks is down and you’re Acting Postmaster while I’m gone! Mr Spools!’ ‘I’m right here, Mr Lipwig. You really don’t have to shout,’ said the engraver reproachfully. ‘Sorry, Mr Spools. More stamps, please. I’ll need some to take with me, in case there’s mail to come back. Can you do that? And I’ll need the fives and the dollar stamps as soon as— Are you all right, Mr Groat?’ The old man was swaying, his lips moving soundlessly. ‘Mr Groat?’ Moist repeated. ‘Acting Postmaster . . .’ mumbled Groat. ‘That’s right, Mr Groat.’ ‘No Groat has ever been Acting Postmaster . . .’ Suddenly Groat dropped to his knees and gripped Moist round the legs. ‘Oh, thank you, sir! I won’t let you down, Mr Lipwig! You can rely on me, sir! Neither rain nor snow nor glom of—’ ‘Yes, yes, thank you, Acting Postmaster, thank you, that’s enough, thank you,’ said Moist, trying to pull away. ‘Please get up, Mr Groat. Mr Groat, please!’ ‘Can I wear the winged hat while you’re gone, sir?’ Groat pleaded. ‘It’d mean such a lot, sir—’ ‘I’m sure it would, Mr Groat, but not today. Today, the hat flies to Sto Lat.’ Groat stood up. ‘Should it really be you that takes the mail, sir?’ ‘Who else? Golems can’t move fast enough, Stanley is . . . well, Stanley, and the rest of you gentlemen are ol— rich in years.’ Moist rubbed his hands together. ‘No argument, Acting Postmaster Groat! Now - let’s sell some stamps!’ The doors were opened, and the crowd flocked in. Vetinari had been right. If there was any action, the people of Ankh-Morpork liked to be a part of it. Penny stamps flowed over the makeshift counter. After all, the reasoning went, for a penny you got something worth a penny, right? After all, even if it was a joke it was as safe as buying money! And envelopes came the other way. People were actually writing letters in the Post Office. Moist made a mental note: envelopes with a stamp already on them and a sheet of folded paper inside them: Instant Letter Kit, Just Add Ink! That was an important rule of any game: always make it easy for people to give you money. To his surprise, although he realized it shouldn’t have been, Drumknott elbowed his way through the crowd with a small but heavy leather package, sealed with a heavy wax seal bearing the city crest and a heavy V. It was addressed to the mayor of Sto Lat. ‘Government business,’ he announced pointedly, as he handed it over. ‘Do you want to buy any stamps for it?’ said Moist, taking the packet. ‘What do you think, Postmaster?’ said the clerk. ‘I definitely think government business travels free,’ said Moist. ‘Thank you, Mr Lipwig. The lord likes a fast learner.’ Other mail for Sto Lat did get stamped, though. A lot of people had friends or business there. Moist looked around. People were scribbling everywhere, even holding the notepaper up against walls. The stamps, penny and twopenny, were shifting fast. At the other end of the hall, the golems were sorting the endless mail mountains . . . In fact, in a small way, the place was bustling. You should’ve seen it, sir, you should’ve seen it! ‘Lipwig, are yer?’ He snapped out of a dream of chandeliers to see a thickset man in front of him. Recognition took “a moment, and then said that this was the owner of Hobson’s Livery Stable, at once the most famous and the most notorious such enterprise in the city. It was probably not the hive of criminal activity that popular rumour suggested, although the huge establishment often seemed to contain grubby-looking men with not much to do apart from sit around and squint at people. And he was employing an Igor, everyone knew, which of course was sensible when you had such a high veterinary overhead, but you heard stories . . . * * That, for example, stolen horses got dismantled at dead of night and might well turn up with a dye job and two different legs. And it was said that there was one horse in Ankh-Morpork that had a longitudinal seam from head to tail, being sewn together from what was left of two horses that had been involved in a particularly nasty accident. ‘Oh, hello, Mr Hobson,’ said Moist. ‘Seems yer think I hire tired old horses, sir, do you?’ said Willie Hobson. His smile was not entirely friendly. A nervous Stanley stood behind him. Hobson was big and heavy-set but not exactly fat; he was probably what you’d get if you shaved a bear. ‘I have ridden some that—’ Moist began, but Hobson raised a hand. ‘Seems yer want fizz,’ said Hobson. His smile widened. ‘Well, I always give the customer what I want, you know that. So I’ve brought yer Boris.’ ‘Oh, yes?’ said Moist. ‘And he’ll get me to Sto Lat, will he?’ ‘Oh, at the very least, sir,’ said Hobson. ‘Good horseman, are yer?’ ‘When it comes to riding out of town, Mr Hobson, there’s no one faster.’ ‘That’s good, sir, that’s good,’ said Hobson, in the slow voice of someone carefully urging the prey towards the trap. ‘Boris does have a few faults, but I can see a skilled horseman like you should have no trouble. Ready, then? He’s right outside. Got a man holding him.’ It turned out that there were in fact four men holding the huge black stallion in a network of ropes, while it danced and lunged and kicked and tried to bite. A fifth man was lying on the ground. Boris was a killer. ‘Like I said, sir, he’s got a few faults, but no one could call him a . . . now what was it . . . oh, yeah, a feagued-up old screw. Still want a horse with fizz?’ Hobson’s grin said it all: this is what I do to snooty buggers who try to mess me around. Let’s see you try to ride this one, Mister-I-Know-All-About-Horses! Moist looked at Boris, who was trying to trample the fallen man, and at the watching crowd. Damn the gold suit. If you were Moist von Lipwig, there was only one thing to do now, and that was raise the stakes. ‘Take his saddle off,’ he said. ‘You what?’ said Hobson. ‘Take his saddle off, Mr Hobson,’ said Moist firmly. ‘This bag’s quite heavy, so let’s lose the saddle.’ Hobson’s smile remained, but the rest of his face tried to sidle away from it. ‘Had all the kids you want, have yer?’ he said. ‘Just give me a blanket and a bellyband, Mr Hobson.’ Now Hobson’s smile vanished completely. This was going to look too much like murder. ‘You might want to think again, sir,’ he said. ‘Boris took a couple of fingers off a man last year. He’s a trampler, too, and a snaffler and a scraper and he’ll horlock if he can get away with it. He’s got demons in him, and that’s a fact.’ ‘Will he run?’ ‘Not so much run as bolt, sir. Born evil, that one,’ said Hobson. ‘You need a crowbar to get him round corners, too. Look, sir, fair play to yer for a game ‘un, but I’ve got plenty of other—’ Hobson flinched as Moist gave him a special grin.’ You chose him, Mr Hobson. I’ll ride him. I’d be grateful if you could get your gentlemen to point him up Broadway for me while I go and conclude a few items of business.’ Moist went into the building, ran up the stairs to his office, shut the door, crammed his handkerchief in his mouth and whimpered gently for a few seconds, until he felt better. He’d ridden bareback a few times, when things had been really hot, but Boris had the eyes of a crazy thing. But back off now and he’d be . . . just a fool in a shiny suit. You had to give them a show, an image, something to remember. All he had to do was stay on until he left the city and then find a suitable bush to jump off into. Yes, that’d do. And then stagger into Sto Lat hours later, still with the mail, having valiantly fought off bandits. He’d be believed, because it would feel right . . . because people wanted to believe things, because it’d make a good tale, because if you made it glitter sufficiently glass could appear more like a diamond than a diamond did. There was a cheer when he strode out on to the steps again. The sun, on cue, decided to appear from the mists, and sparkled off his wings. Boris was looking apparently docile now, chewing his bit. This didn’t fool Moist; if a horse like Boris was quiet it was because he was planning something. ‘Mr Pump, I shall need you to give me a leg up,’ he said, slinging the post bag round his neck. ‘Yes, Mr Lipvig,’ said the golem. ‘Mr Lipwig!’ Moist turned round to see Sacharissa Cripslock hurrying up the street, notebook in hand. ‘Always a pleasure to see you, Sacharissa,’ said Moist, ‘but I am a little busy right now—’ ‘You are aware that the Grand Trunk is shut again?’ she said. ‘Yes, it was in the paper. Now I must—’ ‘So you are challenging the clacks company?’ The pencil hung poised over her notebook. ‘Simply delivering the mail, Miss Cripslock, just like I said I’d do,’ said Moist in firm, manly tones. ‘But it’s rather strange, is it not, that a man on horseback is more reliable than a—’ ‘Please, Miss Cripslock! We are the Post Office!’ said Moist, in his best high-minded voice. ‘We don’t go in for petty rivalry. We’re sorry to hear that our colleagues in the clacks company are experiencing temporary difficulties with their machinery, we fully sympathize with their plight, and if they would like us to deliver their messages for them we would of course be happy to sell them some stamps - soon to be available in penny, twopenny, fivepenny, tenpenny and one dollar values, available here at your Post Office, ready gummed. Incidentally, we intend eventually to flavour the gum in liquorice, orange, cinnamon and banana flavours, but not strawberry because I hate strawberries.’ He could see her smile as she wrote this down. Then she said: ‘I did hear you correctly, did I? You are offering to carry clacks messages? ‘Certainly. Ongoing messages can be put on the Trunk in Sto Lat. Helpfulness is our middle name.’ ‘Are you sure it’s not “cheekiness”?’ said Sacharissa, to laughter from the crowd. ‘I don’t understand you, I’m sure,’ said Moist. ‘Now, if you will—’ ‘You’re cocking a snook at the clacks people again, aren’t you?’ said the journalist. ‘Ah, that must be a journalistic term,’ said Moist. ‘I’ve never owned a snook, and even if I did I wouldn’t know how to cock it. And now, if you will excuse me, I have the mail to deliver and ought to leave before Boris eats somebody. Again.’ ‘Can I ask you just one last thing? Will your soul be unduly diminished if Otto takes a picture of you departing?’ ‘I suppose I can’t stop you out here, provided my face isn’t very clear,’ said Moist, as Mr Pump cupped his pottery hands to make a step. ‘The priest is very hot on that, you know.’ ‘Yes, I expect “the priest” is,’ said Miss Cripslock, making sure the inverted commas clanged with irony. ‘Besides, by the look of that creature, it may be the last chance we get. It looks like death on four legs, Mr Lipwig.’ The crowd fell silent as Moist mounted. Boris merely shifted his weight a little. Look at it like this, Moist thought, what have you got to lose? Your life? You’ve already been hanged. You’re into angel time. And you’re impressing the hell out of everybody. Why are they buying stamps? Because you’re giving them a show— ‘Just say the word, mister,’ said one of Hobson’s men, hauling on the end of a rope. ‘When we let him go, we ain’t hanging around!’ ‘Wait a moment—’ said Moist quickly. He’d seen a figure at the front of the crowd. It was wearing a figure-hugging grey dress and, as he watched, it blew a neurotic cloud of smoke at the sky, gave him a look, and shrugged. ‘Dinner tonight, Miss Dearheart?’ he shouted. Heads turned. There was a ripple of laughter, and a few cheers. For a moment she flashed him a look that should have left his shadow on the smoking remains of the wall opposite, and then she gave a curt nod. Who knows, it could be peaches underneath . . . ‘Let him go, boys!’ said Moist, his heart soaring. The men dived away. The world was still for a breath, and then Boris sprang from docility into a mad rearing dance, back legs clattering across the flagstones, hooves pawing at the air. ‘Vunderful! Hold it!’ The world went white. Boris went mad. Chapter Seven A Post Haste The Nature of Boris the Horse - Foreboding Tower - Mr Lipwig cools off- The Lady with Buns on Her Ears - Invitation Accepted — Mr Robinsons Box — A mysterious stranger Hobson had tried Boris as a racehorse and he would have been a very good one were it not for his unbreakable habit, at the off, of attacking the horse next to him and jumping the railings at the first bend. Moist clapped one hand on to his hat, wedged his toes into the belly band and hung on to the reins as Broadway came at him all at once, carts and people blurring past, his eyeballs pressing into his head. There was a cart across the street but there was no possibility of steering Boris. Huge muscles bunched and there was a long, slow, silent moment as he drifted over the cart. Hooves slid over the cobbles ahead of a trail of sparks when he landed again, but he recovered by sheer momentum and accelerated. The usual crowd around the Hubwards Gate scattered and there, filling the horizon, were the plains. They did something to Boris’s mad horse brain. All that space, nice and flat with only a few easily jumped obstacles, like trees . . . He found extra muscle and speeded up again, bushes and trees and carts flying towards him. Moist cursed the bravado with which he’d ordered the saddle taken away. Every part of his body already hated him. But in truth Boris, once you got past the pineapple, wasn’t too bad a ride. He’d hit his rhythm, a natural single-footed gait, and his burning eyes were focused on the blueness. His hatred of everything was for the moment subsumed in the sheer joy of space. Hobson was right, you couldn’t steer him with a mallet, but at least he was headed in the right direction, which was away from his stable. Boris didn’t want to spend the days kicking the bricks out of his wall while waiting to throw the next bumptious idiot. He wanted to bite the horizon. He wanted to run. Moist carefully removed his hat and gripped it in his mouth. He didn’t dare imagine what’d happen if he lost it, and he’d need to have it on his head at the end of the journey. It was important. It was all about style. One of the towers of the Grand Trunk was ahead and slightly to the left. There were two in the twenty miles between Ankh-Morpork and Sto Lat, because they were taking almost all the traffic of lines that stretched right across the continent. Beyond Sto Lat the Trunk began to split into tributaries, but here, flashing overhead, the words of the world were flowing— —should be flowing. But the shutters were still. As he drew level, Moist saw men working high up on the open wooden tower; by the look of it, a whole section had broken off. Ha! So long, suckers! That’d take some repairing! Worth an overnight attempt at a delivery to Pseudopolis, maybe? He’d talk to the coachmen. It wasn’t as if they’d ever paid the Post Office for their damn coaches. And it wouldn’t matter if the clacks got repaired in time, either, because the Post Office would have made the effort. The clacks company was a big bully, sacking people, racking up the charges, demanding lots of money for bad service. The Post Office was the underdog, and an underdog can always find somewhere soft to bite. Carefully, he eased more of the blanket under him. Various organs were going numb. The towering fumes of Ankh-Morpork were falling far behind. Sto Lat was visible between Boris’s ears, a plume of lesser smokes. The tower disappeared astern and already Moist could see the next one. He’d ridden more than a third of the way in twenty minutes, and Boris was still eating up the ground. About halfway between the cities was an old stone tower, all that remained of a heap of ruins surrounded by woodland. It was almost as high as a clacks tower and Moist wondered why they hadn’t simply used it as one. It was probably too derelict to survive in a gale under the weight of the shutters, he thought. The area looked bleak, a piece of weedy wilderness in the endless fields. If he’d had spurs, Moist would have spurred Boris on at this point, and would probably have been thrown, trampled and eaten for his pains.* Instead, he lay low over the horse’s back and tried not to think about what this ride was doing to his kidneys. * Which would have been agonizing. Time passed. The second tower went by, and Boris dropped into a canter. Sto Lat was clearly visible now; Moist could make out the city walls and the turrets of the castle. He’d have to jump off; there was no other way. Moist had tried out half a dozen scenarios as the walls loomed, but nearly all of them involved haystacks. The one that didn’t was the one where he broke his neck. But it didn’t seem to occur to Boris to turn aside. He was on a road, the road was straight, it went through this gateway and Boris had no problem with that. Besides, he wanted a drink. The city streets were crowded with things that couldn’t be jumped or trampled, but there was a horse trough. He was only vaguely aware of something falling off his back. Sto Lat wasn’t a big city. Moist had once spent a happy week there, passing a few dud bills, pulling off the Indigent Heir trick twice and selling a glass ring on the way out, not so much for the money as out of a permanent fascination with human deviousness and gullibility. Now he staggered up the steps of the town hall, watched by a crowd. He pushed open the doors and slammed the mailbag on the desk of the first clerk he saw. ‘Mail from Ankh-Morpork,’ he growled. ‘Started out at nine, so it’s fresh, okay?’ ‘But it’s only just struck a quarter past ten! What mail?’ Moist tried not to get angry. He was sore enough as it was. ‘See this hat?’ he said, pointing. ‘You see it? That means I’m the Postmaster General of Ankh-Morpork! This is your mail! In an hour I’m going back again, understand? If you want mail delivered to the big city by two p.m.— Ouch. Make that three p.m. - then put it in this bag. These,’ he waved a wad of stamps under the young man’s nose, ‘are stamps! Red ones tuppence, black ones a penny. It’ll cost ten - ow - eleven pence per letter, got it? You sell the stamps, you give me the money, you lick the stamps and put them on the letters! Express Delivery guaranteed! I’m making you Acting Postmaster for an hour. There’s an inn next door. I’ve going to find a bath. I want a cold bath. Really cold. Got an ice house here? As cold as that. Colder. Ooooh, colder. And a drink and a sandwich and by the way there’s a big black horse outside. If your people can catch him, please put a saddle on him and a cushion and drag him round to face Ankh-Morpork. Do it!’ It was only a hip bath, but at least there was an ice house in the city. Moist sat in a state of bliss amongst the floating ice, drinking a brandy, and listened to the commotion outside. After a while there was a knock at the door, and a male voice enquired: ‘Are you decent, Mr Postmaster?’ ‘Thoroughly decent, but not dressed,’ said Moist. He reached down beside him and put his winged hat on again. ‘Do come in.’ The mayor of Sto Lat was a short, bird-like man, who’d either become mayor very recently and immediately after the post had been held by a big fat man, or thought that a robe that trailed several feet behind you and a chain that reached to the waist was the look for civic dignitaries this year. ‘Er . . . Joe Camels, sir,’ he said nervously. ‘I’m the mayor here . . .’ ‘Really? Good to meet you, Joe,’ said Moist, raising his glass. ‘Excuse me if I don’t get up.’ ‘Your horse, er, has run away after kicking three men, I’m sorry to say.’ ‘Really? He never usually does that,’ said Moist. ‘Don’t worry, sir, we’ll catch him, and anyway we can let you have a horse to get back on. Not as fast, though, I dare say.’ ‘Oh dear,’ said Moist, easing himself into a new position amongst the floating ice. ‘That’s a shame.’ ‘Oh, I know all about you, Mr Lipwig,’ said the mayor, winking conspiratorially. ‘There were some copies of the Times in the mailbag! A man who wants to be up and doing, you are. A man full of vim, you are! A man after my own heart, you are! You aim for the moon, you do! You see your target and you go for it hell for leather, you do! That’s how I does business, too! You’re a go-getter, just like me! I’d like you to put it here, sir!’ ‘What where?’ said Moist, stirring uneasily in his rapidly-becoming-lukewarm tub. ‘Oh.’ He shook the proffered hand. “What is your business, Mr Camels?’ ‘I make parasols,’ said the mayor. ‘And it’s about time that clacks company was told what’s what! It was all fine up until a few months ago - I mean, they made you pay through the nose but at least stuff got where it was going fast as an arrow, but now it’s all these breakdowns and repairs and they charge even more, mark you! And they never tell you how long you’re going to be waiting, it’s always “very shortly”. They’re always “sorry for the inconvenience” - they even got that written on a sign they hang up on the office! As warm and human as a thrown knife, just like you said. So you know what we just done? We went round to the clacks tower in the city and had a serious word with young Davey, who’s a decent lad, and he gave us back all the overnight clacks for the big city that never got sent. How about that, eh?’ ‘Won’t he get into trouble?’ ‘He says he’s quitting anyway. None of the boys like the way the company’s run now. They’ve all been stamped for you, just like you said. Well, I’ll let you get dressed, Mr Lipwig. Your horse is ready.’ He stopped at the door. ‘Oh, just one thing, sir, about them stamps . . .’ ‘Yes? Is there a problem, Mr Camels?’ said Moist. ‘Not as such, sir. I wouldn’t say anything against Lord Vetinari, sir, or Ankh-Morpork’ - said a man living within twenty miles of a proud and touchy citizenry - ‘but, er, it doesn’t seem right, licking . . . well, licking Ankh-Morpork stamps. Couldn’t you print up a few for us? We’ve got a Queen, nice girl. She’d look good on a stamp. We’re an important city, you know!’ ‘I’ll see what I can do, Mr Camels. Got a picture of her, by any chance?’ They’ll all want one, he thought, as he got dressed. Having your own stamps could be like having your own flag, your own crest. It could be big! And I bet I could do a deal with my friend Mr Spools, oh yes. Doesn’t matter if you haven’t got your own post office, you’ve got to have your own stamp . . . An enthusiastic crowd saw him off on a horse which, while no Boris, did his best and seemed to know what reins were for. Moist gratefully accepted the cushion on the saddle, too. That added more glitter to the glass: he’d ridden so hard he needed a cushion! He set off with a full mailbag. Amazingly, once again, people had bought stamps just to own them. The Times had got around. Here was something new, so people wanted to be part of it. Once he was cantering over the fields, though, he felt the fizz die away. He was employing Stanley, a bunch of game but creaky old men, and some golems. He couldn’t keep this up. But the thing was, you added sparkle. You told people what you intended to do and they believed you could do it. Anyone could have done this ride. No one had. They kept waiting for the clacks to be repaired. He took things gently along the road, speeding up as he passed the clacks tower that had been under repair. It was still under repair, in fact, but he could see more men around it and high up on the tower. There was a definite suggestion that repair work was suddenly going a lot faster. As he watched, he was sure he saw someone fall off. It probably wouldn’t be a good idea to go over there and see if he could help, though, not if he wanted to continue to go through life with his own teeth. Besides, it was a long, long drop all the way down to the cabbage fields, handily combining death and burial at the same time. He speeded up again when he reached the city. Somehow trotting up to the Post Office steps was not an option. The queue - still a queue - cheered when he cantered up. Mr Groat came running out, insofar as a crab can run. ‘Can you make another delivery to Sto Lat, sir?’ he shouted. ‘Got a full bag already! And everyone’s asking when you’ll be taking ‘em to Pseudopolis and Quirm! Got one here for Lancre, too!’ “What? That’s five hundred damn miles, man!’ Moist dismounted, although the state of his legs turned the action into more of a drop. ‘It’s all got a bit busy since you were away,’ said Groat, steadying him. ‘Oh, yes indeed! Ain’t got enough people! But there’s people wanting jobs, too, sir, since the paper came out! People from the old postal families, just like me! Even some more workers out of retirement! I took the liberty of taking them on pro tern for the time being, seeing as I’m Acting Postmaster. I hope that’s all right with you, sir? And Mr Spools is running off more stamps! I’ve twice had to send Stanley up for more. I hear we’ll have the early fivepennies and the dollars out tonight! Great times, eh, sir?’ ‘Er . . . yes,’ said Moist. Suddenly the whole world had turned into a kind of Boris - moving fast, inclined to bite and impossible to steer. The only way not to be ground down was to stay on top. Inside the hall extra makeshift tables had been set up. They were crowded with people. ‘We’re selling them the envelopes and paper,’ said Groat. ‘The ink is free gratis.’ ‘Did you think that up yourself?’ said Moist. ‘No, it’s what we used to do,’ said Groat. ‘Miss Maccalariat got a load of cheap paper from Spools.’ ‘Miss Maccalariat?’ said Moist. ‘Who is Miss Maccalariat?’ ‘Very old Post Office family, sir,’ said Groat. ‘She’s decided to work for you.’ He looked a little nervous. ‘Sorry?’ said Moist. ‘ She has decided to work for me?’ ‘Well, you know what it’s like with Post Office people, sir,’ said Groat. ‘We don’t like to—’ ‘Are you the postmaster?’ said a withering voice behind Moist. The voice went into his head, bored down through his memories, riffled through his fears, found the right levers, battened on to them and pulled. In Moist’s case, it found Frau Shambers. In the second year at school you were precipitated out of the warm, easy-going kindergarten of Frau Tissel, smelling of finger paint, salt dough and inadequate toilet training, and on to the cold benches governed by Frau Shambers, smelling of Education. It was as bad as being born, with the added disadvantage that your mother wasn’t there. Moist automatically turned and looked down. Yes, there they were, the sensible shoes, the thick black stockings that were slightly hairy, the baggy cardigan - oh, yes, arrgh, the cardigan; Frau Shambers used to stuff the sleeves with handkerchiefs, arrgh, arrgh -and the glasses and the expression like an early frost. And her hair was plaited and coiled up on either side of her head in those discs that back home in Uberwald had been called ‘snails’ but in Ankh-Morpork put people in mind of a woman with a curly iced bun clamped to each ear. ‘Now look here, Miss Maccalariat,’ he said firmly. ‘I am the postmaster here, and I am in charge, and I do not intend to be browbeaten by a member of the counter staff just because their ancestors worked here. I do not fear your clumpy shoes, Miss Maccalariat, I smile happily in the teeth of your icy stare. Fie on you! Now I am a grown man, Frau Shambers, I will quake not at your sharp voice and will control my bladder perfectly however hard you look at me, oh yes indeed! For I am the Postmaster and my word here is law!’ That was the sentence his brain said. Unfortunately it got routed through his trembling backbone on the way to his mouth and issued from his lips as: ‘Er, yes!’ which came out as a squeak. ‘ Mr Lipwig, I ask you: I have nothing against them, but are these golems you are employing in my Post Office gentlemen or ladies?’ the terrible woman demanded. This was sufficiently unexpected to jolt Moist back into something like reality. ‘What?’ he said. ‘I don’t know! What’s the difference? A bit more clay . . . less clay? Why?’ Miss Maccalariat folded her arms, causing both Moist and Mr Groat to shy backwards. ‘I hope you’re not funning with me, Mr Lipwig?’ she demanded. ‘What? Funning? I never fun!’ Moist tried to pull himself together. Whatever happened next, he could not be made to stand in the corner. ‘I do not fun, Miss Maccalariat, and have no history of funning, and even if I were inclined to funning, Miss Maccalariat, I would not dream of funning with you. What is the problem?’ ‘One of them was in the ladies’ . . . rest room, Mr Lipwig,’ said Miss Maccalariat. ‘Doing what? I mean, they don’t eat, so—’ ‘Cleaning it, apparently,’ said Miss Maccalariat, contriving to suggest that she had dark suspicions on this point. ‘But I have heard them referred to as “Mister”.’ ‘Well, they do odd jobs all the time, because they don’t like to stop working,’ said Moist. ‘And we prefer to give them Mister as an honorific because, er, “it” seems wrong and there are some people, yes, some people for whom the word “Miss” is not appropriate, Miss Maccalariat.’ ‘It is the principle of the thing, Mr Lipwig,’ said the woman firmly. ‘Anyone called Mister is not allowed in the Ladies. That sort of thing can only lead to hanky-panky. I will not stand for it, Mr Lipwig.’ Moist stared at her. Then he looked up at Mr Pump, who was never far away. ‘Mr Pump, is there any reason why one of the golems can’t have a new name?’ he asked. ‘In the interest of hanky-panky avoidance?’ ‘No, Mr Lipvig,’ the golem rumbled. Moist turned back to Miss Maccalariat. ‘Would “Gladys” do, Miss Maccalariat?’ ‘Gladys will be sufficient, Mr Lipwig,’ said Miss Maccalariat, more than a hint of triumph in her voice. ‘She must be properly clothed, of course.’ ‘Clothed?’ said Moist weakly. ‘But a golem isn’t— it doesn’t— they don’t have . . .’ He quailed under the glare, and gave up. ‘Yes, Miss Maccalariat. Something gingham, I think, Mr Pump?’ ‘I Shall Arrange It, Postmaster,’ said the golem. ‘Will that be all right, Miss Maccalariat?’ said Moist meekly. ‘For the present,’ said Miss Maccalariat, as if she regretted that there were currently no further things to complain of. ‘Mr Groat knows my particulars, Postmaster. I will now return to the proper execution of my duties, otherwise people will try to steal the pens again. You have to watch them like hawks, you know.’ ‘A good woman, that,’ said Groat, as she strode away. ‘Fifth generation of Miss Maccalariats. Maiden name kept for professional purposes, o’ course.’ ‘They get married?’ From the mob around the makeshift counter came the ringing command: ‘Put that pen back this minute! Do you think I’m made of pens?’ ‘Yessir,’ said Groat. ‘Do they bite their husbands’ heads off on their wedding night?’ said Moist. ‘I wouldn’t know about that sort of thing, sir,’ said Groat, blushing. ‘But she’s even got a bit of a moustache!’ ‘Yessir. There’s someone for everyone in this wonderful world, sir.’ ‘And we’ve got other people looking for work, you say?’ Groat beamed. ‘That’s right, sir. ‘cos of the bit in the paper, sir.’ ‘You mean this morning?’ ‘I expect that helped, sir,’ said Groat. ‘But I reckon it was the lunchtime edition that did it.’ ‘ What lunchtime edition?’ ‘We’re all over the front page!’ said Groat proudly. ‘I put a copy on your desk upstairs—’ Moist pushed the Sto Lat mailbag into the man’s arms. ‘Get this . . . sorted,’ he said. ‘If there’s enough mail for another delivery to go, find some kid who’s mad for a job and put him on a horse and get him to take it. Doesn’t have to be fast; we’ll call it the overnight delivery. Tell him to see the mayor and come back in the morning with any fresh mail.’ ‘Right you are, sir,’ said Groat. ‘We could do an overnight to Quirm and Pseudopolis too, sir, if we could change horses like the mail coaches do—’ ‘Hang on . . . why can’t the mail coaches take it?’ said Moist. ‘Hell, they’re still called mail coaches, right? We know they take stuff from anyone, on the quiet. Well, the Post Office is back in business. They take our mail. Go and find whoever runs them and tell him so!’ ‘Yessir,’ said Groat, beaming. ‘Thought about how we’re going to send post to the moon yet, sir?’ ‘One thing at a time, Mr Groat!’ ‘That’s not like you, sir,’ said Groat cheerfully. ‘All at once is more your style, sir!’ I wish it wasn’t, Moist thought, as he eased his way upstairs. But you had to move fast. He always moved fast. His whole life had been movement. Move fast, because you never know what’s trying to catch you up— He paused on the stairs. Not Mr Pump! The golem hadn’t left the Post Office! He hadn’t tried to catch him up! Was it that he’d been on postal business? How long could he be away on postal business? Could he fake his death, maybe? The old pile-of-clothes-on-the-seashore trick? Worth remembering. All he needed was a long enough start. How did a golem’s mind actually work? He’d have to ask Miss— Miss Dearheart! He’d been flying so high that he’d asked her out! That might be a problem now, because most of the lower part of his body was on fire, not especially for Miss Dearheart. Oh, well, he thought as he entered the office, perhaps he could find a restaurant with really soft seats— FASTER THAN THE ‘SPEED OF LIGHT’ ‘Old-fashioned’ Mail Beats Clacks Postmaster delivers, says: Snook Not Cocked Amazing Scenes at Post Office The headlines screamed at him as soon as he saw the paper. He almost screamed back. Of course he’d said all that. But he’d said it to the innocent smiling face of Miss Sacharissa Cripslock, not to the whole world! And then she’d written it down all truthfully, and suddenly . . . you got this. Moist had never much bothered with newspapers. He was an artist. He wasn’t interested in big schemes. You swindled the man in front of you, looking him sincerely in the eyes. The picture was good, though, he had to admit. The rearing horse, the winged hat and above all the slight blurring with speed. It was impressive. He relaxed a little. The place was operating, after all. Letters were being posted. Mail was being delivered. Okay, so a major part of it all was that the clacks wasn’t working properly, but maybe in time people would see that a letter to your sister in Sto Lat didn’t need to cost thirty pence to maybe get there in an hour but might as well cost a mere five pence to be there in the morning. Stanley knocked at the door and then pushed it open. ‘Cup of tea, Mr Lipwig?’ he said. ‘And a bun, sir.’ ‘You’re an angel in heavy disguise, Stanley,’ said Moist, sitting back with care, and wincing. ‘Yes, thank you, sir,’ said Stanley solemnly. ‘Got some messages for you, sir.’ ‘Thank you, Stanley,’ said Moist. There was a lengthy pause until he remembered that this was Stanley he was talking to and added: ‘Please tell me what they are, Stanley.’ ‘Er . . . the golem lady came in and said . . .’ Stanley closed his eyes, ‘ “Tell the Streak of Lightning he’ll have another eight golems in the morning and if he’s not too busy working miracles I’ll accept his invitation to dine at eight at Le Foie Heureux, meeting at the Mended Drum at seven.”‘ ‘The Happy Liver? Are you sure?’ But of course it would be correct. This was Stanley. ‘Ha, even the damn soup there is fifteen dollars!’ said Moist. ‘And you have to wait three weeks for an appointment to be considered for a booking! They weigh your wallet! How does she think I—’ His eye fell on ‘Mr Robinson’s box’, sitting innocently in the corner of the office. He liked Miss Dearheart. Most people were . . . accessible. Sooner or later you could find the springs that worked them; even Miss Maccalariat would have a lever somewhere, although it was a horrible thought. But Adora Belle fought back, and to make sure fought back even before she was attacked. She was a challenge, and therefore fascinating. She was so cynical, so defensive, so spiky. And he had a feeling she could read him much, much better than he read her. All in all, she was intriguing. And looked good in a severely plain dress, don’t forget that bit. ‘Okay. Thank you, Stanley,’ he said. ‘Anything else?’ The boy put a sheet of slightly damp greeny-grey stamps on the desk. ‘The first dollar stamps, sir!’ he announced. ‘My word, Mr Spools has done a good job here!’ said Moist, staring at the hundreds of little green pictures of the university’s Tower of Art. ‘It even looks worth a dollar!’ ‘Yes, sir. You hardly notice the little man jumping from the top,’ said Stanley. Moist snatched the sheet from the boy’s hand. ‘What? Where?’ ‘You need a magnifying glass, sir. And it’s only on a few of them. In some of them he’s in the water. Mr Spools is very sorry, sir. He says it may be some kind of induced magic. You know, sir? Like, even a picture of a wizards’ tower might be a bit magical itself? There’s a few faults on some of the others, too. The printing went wrong on some of the black penny ones and Lord Vetinari’s got grey hair, sir. Some haven’t got gum on, but they’re all right because some people have asked for them that way’ ‘Why?’ ‘They say they’re as good as real pennies and a whole lot lighter, sir.’ ‘Do you like stamps, Stanley?’ said Moist kindly. He was feeling a lot better in a seat that didn’t go up and down. Stanley’s face lit up. ‘Oh, yes, sir. Really, sir. They’re wonderful, sir! Amazing, sir!’ Moist raised his eyebrows. ‘As good as that, eh?’ ‘It’s like . . . well, it’s like being there when they invented the first pin, sir!’ Stanley’s face glowed. ‘Really? The first pin, eh?’ said Moist. ‘Outstanding! Well, in that case, Stanley, you are Head of Stamps. The whole department. Which is, in fact, you. How do you like that? I imagine you already know more about them than anyone else.’ ‘Oh, I do, sir! For example, on the very first run of the penny stamps they used a different type of—’ ‘Good!’ said Moist hurriedly. ‘Well done! Can I keep this first sheet? As a souvenir?’ ‘Of course, sir,’ said Stanley. ‘Head of Stamps, sir? Wow! Er . . . is there a hat?’ ‘If you like,’ said Moist generously, folding up the sheet of stamps and putting them in his inside pocket. So much more convenient than dollars. Wow, indeed. ‘Or perhaps a shirt?’ he added. ‘You know . . . “Ask Me About Stamps”?’ ‘Good idea, sir! Can I go and tell Mr Groat, sir? He’d be so proud of me!’ ‘Off you go, Stanley,’ said Moist. ‘But come back in ten minutes, will you? I’ll have a letter for you to deliver - personally.’ Stanley ran off. Moist opened the wooden box, which fanned out its trays obediently, and flexed his fingers. Hmm. It seemed that anyone who was, well, anyone in the city had their paper printed by Teemer and Spools. Moist thumbed through his recently acquired paper samples, and spotted: THE GRAND TRUNK COMPANY ‘AS FAST AS LIGHT’ From the Office of the Chairman It was tempting. Very tempting. They were rich, very rich. Even with the current trouble, they were still very big. And Moist had never met a head waiter who hated money. He found a copy of yesterday’s Times. There’d been a picture . . . yes, here. There was a picture of Reacher Gilt, chairman of the Grand Trunk, at some function. He looked like a better class of pirate, a buccaneer maybe, but one who took the time to polish his plank. That flowing black hair, that beard, that eyepatch and, oh gods, that cockatoo . . . that was a Look, wasn’t it? Moist hadn’t paid much attention to the Grand Trunk Company. It was too big, and from what he’d heard it practically employed its own army. Things could be tough in the mountains, where you were often a long way from anything that resembled a watchman. It wasn’t a good idea to steal things from people who did their own law enforcement. They tended to be very definite. But what he was intending wouldn’t be stealing. It might not even be breaking the law. Fooling a maitre d’ was practically a public service. He looked at the picture again. Now, how would a man like that sign his name? Hmm . . . flowing yet small, that would be the handwriting of Reacher Gilt. He was so florid, so sociable, so huge a personality that one who was good at this sort of thing might wonder if another shard of glass was trying to sparkle like a diamond. And the essence of forgery is to make, by misdirection and careful timing, the glass look so much more like a diamond than a diamond does. Well, it was worth a try. It was not as though he was going to swindle anyone, as such. Hmm. Small yet flowing, yes . . . but someone who’d never seen the man’s writing would expect it to be extravagantly big and curly, just like him . . . Moist poised the pen over the headed paper, and then wrote: Maître d’, Le foie Heuieux, I would be most grateful if you could find a table for my good friend Mr. Lipwig and his lady at eight o’clock tonight. Reacher Gilt Most grateful, that was good. The Reacher Gilt persona probably tipped like a drunken sailor. He folded the letter, and was addressing the envelope when Stanley and Groat came in. ‘You’ve got a letter, Mr Lipwig,’ said Stanley proudly. ‘Yes, here it is,’ said Moist, ‘No, I mean here’s one for you,’ said the boy. They exchanged envelopes. Moist glanced cursorily at the envelope, and opened it with a thumb. ‘I’ve got bad news, sir,’ said Groat, as Stanley left. ‘Hmm?’ said Moist, looking at the letter. Postmaster, The Pseudopolis clacks line will break down at 9 a.m. tomorrow. The Smoking Gnu ‘Yessir. I went round to the coach office,’ Groat went on, ‘and told them what you said and they said you stick to your business, thank you very much, and they’ll stick to theirs.’ ‘Hmm,’ said Moist, still staring at the letter. ‘Well, well. Have you heard of someone called “The Smoking Gnu”, Mr Groat?’ ‘What’s a gernue, sir?’ ‘A bit like a dangerous cow, I think,’ said Moist. ‘Er . . . what were you saying about the coach people?’ ‘They give me lip, sir, that’s what they give me,’ said Groat. ‘I told ‘em, I told ‘em I was the Assistant Head Postmaster and they said “so what?” sir. Then I said I’d tell you, sir, and they said— you want to know what they said, sir?’ ‘Hmm. Oh, yes. I’m agog, Tolliver.’ Moist’s eyes were scanning the strange letter over and over again. ‘They said “yeah, right”,’ said Groat, a beacon of righteous indignation. ‘I wonder if Mr Trooper can still fit me in . . .’ mused Moist, staring at the ceiling. ‘Sorry, sir?’ ‘Oh, nothing. I suppose I’d better go and talk to them. Go and find Mr Pump, will you? And tell him to bring a couple of the other golems, will you? I want to . . . impress people.’ Igor opened the front door in answer to the knock. There was no one there. He stepped outside and looked up and down the street. There was no one there. He stepped back inside, closing the door behind him - and no one was standing in the hall, his black cloak dripping rain, removing his wide, flat-brimmed hat. ‘Ah, Mithter Gryle, thur,’ Igor said to the tall figure, ‘I thould have known it wath you.’ ‘Readier Gilt asked for me,’ said Gryle. It was more a breath than a voice. The clan of the Igors had had any tendency to shuddering bred out of it generations ago, which was just as well. Igor felt uneasy in the presence of Gryle and his kind. ‘The marthter ith expecting—’ he began. But there was no one there. It wasn’t magic, and Gryle wasn’t a vampire. Igors could spot these things. It was just that there was nothing spare about him - spare flesh, spare time, or spare words. It was impossible to imagine Gryle collecting pins, or savouring wine or even throwing up after a bad pork pie. The picture of him cleaning his teeth or sleeping completely failed to form in the mind. He gave the impression of restraining himself, with difficulty, from killing you. Thoughtfully, Igor went down to his room off the kitchen and checked that his little leather bag was packed, just in case. In his study, Reacher Gilt poured a small brandy. Gryle looked around him with eyes that seemed not at home with the limited vistas of a room. ‘And for yourself?’ said Gilt. ‘Water,’ said Gryle. ‘I expect you know what this is about?’ ‘No.’ Gryle was not a man for small talk or, if it came to it, any talk at all. ‘You’ve read the newspapers?’ ‘Do not read.’ ‘You know about the Post Office.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘How, may I ask?’ ‘There is talk.’ Gilt accepted that. Mr Gryle had a special talent, and if that came as a package with funny little ways then so be it. Besides, he was trustworthy; a man without middle grounds. He’d never blackmail you, because such an attempt would be the first move in a game that would almost certainly end in death for somebody; if Mr Gryle found himself in such a game he’d kill right now, without further thought, in order to save time, and assumed that anyone else would, too. Presumably he was insane, by the usual human standards, but it was hard to tell; the phrase ‘differently normal’ might do instead. After all, Gryle could probably defeat a vampire within ten seconds, and had none of a vampire’s vulnerabilities, except perhaps an inordinate fondness for pigeons. He’d been a real find. ‘And you have discovered nothing about Mr Lipwig?’ Gilt said. ‘No. Father dead. Mother dead. Raised by grandfather. Sent away to school. Bullied. Ran away. Vanished,’ said the tall figure. ‘Hmm. I wonder where he’s been all this time? Or who he has been?’ Gryle didn’t waste breath on rhetorical questions. ‘He is . . . a nuisance.’ ‘Understood.’ And that was the charm. Gryle did understand. He seldom needed an order, you just had to state the problem. The fact that it was Gryle that you were stating it to went a long way towards ensuring what the solution was likely to be. ‘The Post Office building is old and full of paper. Very dry paper,’ said Gilt. ‘It would be regrettable if the fine old place caught fire.’ ‘Understood.’ And that was another thing about Gryle. He really did not talk much. He especially did not talk about old times, and all the other little solutions he had provided for Reacher Gilt. And he never said things like ‘What do you mean?’ He understood. ‘Require one thousand, three hundred dollars,’ he said. ‘Of course,’ said Gilt. ‘I will clacks it to your account in—’ ‘Will take cash,’ said Gryle. ‘Gold? I don’t keep that much around,’ said Gilt. ‘I can get it in a few days, of course, but I thought you preferred—’ ‘I do not trust the semaphore now.’ ‘But our ciphers are very well—’ ‘I do not trust the semaphore now,’ Gryle repeated. ‘Very well.’ ‘Description,’ said Gryle. ‘No one seems to remember what he looks like,’ said Gilt. ‘But he always wears a big golden hat, with wings, and he has an apartment in the building.’ For a moment something flickered around Gryle’s thin lips. It was a smile panicking at finding itself in such an unfamiliar place. ‘Can he fly?’ he said. ‘Alas, he doesn’t seem inclined to venture into high places,’ said Gilt. Gryle stood up. ‘I will do this tonight.’ ‘Good man. Or, rather—’ ‘Understood,’ said Gryle. Chapter Nine Bonfire Slugger and Leadpipe - Gladys Pulls It Off- The Hour of the Dead - Irrational Fear of Dental Spinach - ‘A proper brawl doesn’t just happen’ - How the Trunk Was Stolen - Stanley’s Little Moment - The etiquette of knives - Face to Face – Fire The mail coaches had survived the decline and fall of the Post Office because they had to. Horses needed to be fed. But in any case, the coaches had always carried passengers. The halls went silent, the chandeliers disappeared along with everything else, even things that were nailed down, but out back in the big yard the coach service flourished. The coaches weren’t exactly stolen, and weren’t exactly inherited . . . they just drifted into the possession of the coach people. Then, according to Groat, who regarded himself as the custodian of all Post Office knowledge, the other coach drivers had been bought out by Big Jim ‘Still Standing’ Upwright with the money he’d won betting on himself in a bare knuckle contest against Harold ‘The Hog’ Boots, and the coach business was now run by his sons Harry ‘Slugger’ Upwright and Little Jim ‘Leadpipe’ Upwright. Moist could see that a careful approach was going to be required. The hub or nerve centre of the coach business was a big shed next to the stable. It smelled - no, it stank - no, it fugged of horses, leather, veterinary medicine, bad coal, brandy and cheap cigars. That’s what a fug was. You could have cut cubes out of the air and sold it for cheap building material. When Moist entered, a huge man, made practically spherical by multiple layers of waistcoats and overcoats, was warming his backside in front of the roaring stove. Another man of very much the same shape was leaning over the shoulder of a clerk, both of them concentrating on some paper. Some staffing debate had obviously been in progress, because the man by the fire was saying ‘. . . well, then, if he’s sick put young Alfred on the evening run and—’ He stopped when he saw Moist, and then said, ‘Yes, sir? What can we do for you?’ ‘Carry my mailbags,’ said Moist. They stared at him, and then the man who’d been toasting his bottom broke into a grin. Jim and Harry Upwright might have been twins. They were big men, who looked as though they’d been built out of pork and fat bacon. ‘Are you this shiny new postmaster we’ve been hearing about?’ ‘That’s right.’ ‘Yeah, well, your man was already here,’ said the toaster. ‘Went on and on about how we should do this and do that, never said anything about the price!’ ‘A price?’ said Moist, spreading out his hands and beaming. ‘Is that all this is about? Easily done. Easily done.’ He turned, opened the door and shouted: ‘Okay, Gladys!’ There was some shouting in the darkness of the yard, and then the creak of timber. ‘What the hell did you do?’ said the spherical man. ‘My price is this,’ said Moist. ‘You agree to carry my mail, and you won’t have another wheel dragged off that mail coach out there. I can’t say fairer than that, okay?’ The man lumbered forward, growling, but the other coachman grabbed his coat. ‘Steady there, Jim,’ he said. ‘He’s gov’ment and he’s got golems working for ‘im.’ On cue, Mr Pump stepped into the room, bending to get through the doorway. Jim scowled at him. ‘That don’t frighten me!’ said Jim. ‘They ain’t allowed to hurt folks!’ ‘Wrong,’ said Moist. ‘Probably dead wrong.’ ‘Then we’ll call the Watch on yer,’ said Harry Upwright, still holding back his brother. ‘All proper and official. How d’you like that?’ ‘Good, call the Watch,’ said Moist. ‘And I shall tell them I’m recovering stolen property.’ He raised his voice. ‘Gladys!’ There was another crash from outside. ‘Stolen? Those coaches are ours!’ said Harry Upwright. ‘Wrong again, I’m afraid,’ said Moist. ‘Mr Pump?’ ‘The Mail Coaches Were Never Sold Off,’ the golem rumbled. ‘They Are The Property Of The Post Office. No Rent Has Been Paid For The Use Of Post Office Property.’ ‘Right, that’s it!’ Jim roared, shaking his brother away. Mr Pump’s fists rose, instantly. The world paused. ‘Hold on, Jim, hold on just one minute,’ said Harry Upwright carefully. ‘What’s your game, Mr Postman? The coaches always used to carry passengers too, right? And then there was no mail to take but people still wanted to travel, and the coaches were just standing around and the horses were needing to be fed, so our dad paid for the fodder and the vet’s bills and no one—’ ‘Just take my mail,’ said Moist. ‘That’s all. Every coach takes the mailbags and drops them off where I say. That’s all. Tell me where you’ll get a better deal tonight, eh? You could try your luck pleading finders keepers to Vetinari but that’d take a while to sort out and in the meantime you’d lose all that lovely revenue . . . No? Okay. Glady—’ ‘No! No! Wait a minute,’ said Harry. ‘Just the mailbags? That’s all?’ ‘What?’ said Jim. ‘You want to negotiate? Why? They say possession’s nine points of the law, right?’ ‘And I possess a lot of golems, Mr Upwright,’ said Moist. ‘And you don’t possess any deeds, mortgages or bills of sale.’ ‘Yeah? And you won’t possess any teeth, mister!’ said Jim, rolling forward. ‘Now, now,’ said Moist, stepping quickly in front of Mr Pump and raising a hand. ‘Don’t kill me again, Mr Upwright.’ Both the brothers looked puzzled. ‘I’ll swear Jim never laid a finger on you, and that’s the truth,’ said Harry. ‘What’s your game?’ ‘Oh, he did, Harry,’ said Moist. ‘Lost his temper, took a swing, I went over, hit my head on that old bench there, got up not knowing where the hell I was, you tried to hold Jim back, he hit me with that chair, the one just there, and down I went for keeps. The golems got you, Harry, but Jim went on the run, only to be tracked down by the Watch in Sto Lat. Oh, what scenes, what chases, and you both ended up in the Tanty, the charge against the pair of you being murder—’ ‘Here, I didn’t hit you with the chair!’ said Harry, eyes wide. ‘It was Ji— Here, hang on a minute . . .’ ‘—and this morning Mr Trooper measured you up for the last necktie and there you were, standing in that room under the gallows, knowing that you’d lost your business, you’d lost your coaches, you’d lost your fine horses, and in two minutes—’ Moist let the sentence hang in the air. ‘And?’ said Harry. Both brothers were watching him with expressions of horrified confusion which would coalesce into violence inside five seconds if this didn’t work. Keeping them off balance was the ticket. Moist counted to four in his head, while smiling beatifically. ‘And then an angel appeared,’ he said. Ten minutes can change a lot. It was enough to brew two cups of tea thick enough to spread on bread. The brothers Upwright probably didn’t believe in angels. But they believed in bullshit, and were the type to admire it when it was delivered with panache. There’s a kind of big, outdoor sort of man who’s got no patience at all with prevaricators and fibbers, but will applaud any man who can tell an outrageous whopper with a gleam in his eye. ‘Funny you should turn up tonight,’ said Harry. ‘Oh? Why?’ ‘ ‘cos a man from the Grand Trunk came round this afternoon and offered us big money for the business. Too much money, you could say.’ Oh, thought Moist, something’s starting . . . ‘But you, Mr Lipwig, is giving us nothing but attitude and threats,’ said Jim. ‘Care to raise your offer?’ ‘Okay. Bigger threats,’ said Moist. ‘But I’ll throw in a new paint job on every coach, gratis. Be sensible, gentlemen. You’ve had an easy ride, but now we’re back in business. All you have to do is what you’ve always done, but you’ll carry my mail. Come on, there’s a lady waiting for me and you know you shouldn’t keep a lady waiting. What do you say?’ ‘Is she an angel?’ said Harry. ‘He probably hopes not, hur, hur.’ Jim had a laugh like a bull clearing its throat. ‘Hur, hur,’ said Moist solemnly. ‘Just carry the bags, gents. The Post Office is going places and you could be in the driving seat.’ The brothers exchanged a glance. Then they grinned. It was as if one grin spread across two glistening red faces. ‘Our dad would’ve liked you,’ said Jim. ‘He sure as hell wouldn’t like the Grand Trunk devils,’ said Harry. ‘They need cutting down to size, Mr Lipwig, and people are saying you’re the man to do it.’ ‘People die on them towers,’ said Jim. ‘We see, you know. Damn right! The towers follows the coach roads. We used to have the contract to haul lads out to the towers and we heard ‘em talking. They used to have an hour a day when they shut the whole Trunk down for maint’nance.’ ‘The Hour of the Dead, they called it,’ said Harry. ‘Just before dawn. That’s when people die.’ Across a continent, the line of light, beads on the pre-dawn darkness. And, then, the Hour of the Dead begins, at either end of the Grand Trunk, as the upline and downline shutters clear their messages and stop moving, one after the other. The men of the towers had prided themselves on the speed with which they could switch their towers from black and white daylight transmission to the light and dark mode of the night. On a good day they could do it with barely a break in transmission, clinging to swaying ladders high above the ground while around them the shutters rattled and chattered. There were heroes who’d lit all sixteen lamps on a big tower in less than a minute, sliding down ladders, swinging on ropes, keeping their tower alive. ‘Alive’ was the word they used. No one wanted a dark tower, not even for a minute. The Hour of the Dead was different. That was one hour for repairs, replacements, maybe even some paperwork. It was mostly replacements. It was fiddly to repair a shutter high up on the tower with the wind making it tremble and freezing the blood in your fingers, and always better to swing it out and down to the ground and slot another one in place. But when you were running out of time, it was tempting to brave the wind and try to free the bloody shutters by hand. Sometimes the wind won. The Hour of the Dead was when men died. And when a man died, they sent him home by clacks. Moist’s mouth dropped open. ‘Huh?’ ‘That’s what they call it,’ said Harry. ‘Not lit’rally, o’ course. But they send his name from one end of the Trunk to the other, ending up at the tower nearest his home.’ ‘Yeah, but they say sometimes the person stays on in the towers, somehow,’ said Jim.’ “Living in the Overhead”, they call it.’ ‘But they’re mostly pissed when they say that,’ said Harry. ‘Oh, yes, mostly pissed, I’ll grant you,’ said his brother. ‘They get worked too hard. There’s no Hour of the Dead now; they only get twenty minutes. They cut the staff, too. They used to run a slow service on Octedays; now it’s high speed all the time, except towers keep breaking down. We seen lads come down from them towers with their eyes spinning and their hands shaking and no idea if it’s bum or breakfast time. It drives ‘em mad. Eh? Damn right!’ ‘Except that they’re already mad,’ said Harry. ‘You’d have to be mad to work up in them things.’ ‘They get so mad even ordinary mad people think they’re mad.’ ‘That’s right. But they still go back up there. The clacks drives them back. The clacks owns them, gets into their souls,’ said Harry. ‘They get paid practically nothing but I’ll swear they’d go up those towers for free.’ ‘The Grand Trunk runs on blood now, since the new gang took over. It’s killin’ men for money,’ said Jim. Harry drained his mug. ‘We won’t have none of it,’ he said. ‘We’ll run your mail for you, Mr Lipwig, for all that you wear a damn silly hat.’ ‘Tell me,’ said Moist, ‘have you ever heard of something called the Smoking Gnu?’ ‘Dunno much,’ said Jim. ‘A couple of the boys mentioned them once. Some kind of outlaw signallers, or something. Something to do with the Overhead.’ ‘What is the Overhead? Er . . . dead people live in it?’ ‘Look, Mr Lipwig, we just listen, okay,’ said Jim. ‘We chat to ‘em nice and easy, ‘cos when they come down from the towers they’re so dozy they’ll walk under your coach wheels—’ ‘It’s the rocking in the wind,’ said Harry. ‘They walk like sailors.’ ‘Right. The Overhead? Well, they say a lot of the messages the clacks carries is about the clacks, okay? Orders from the company, housekeeping messages, messages about messages—’ ‘—dead men’s names—’ said Moist. ‘Yeah, them too. Well, the Smoking Gnu is in there somewhere,’ Jim went on. ‘That’s all I know. I drive coaches, Mr Lipwig. I ain’t a clever man like them up on the towers. Hah, I’m stupid enough to keep my feet on the ground!’ ‘Tell Mr Lipwig about Tower 93, Jim,’ said Harry. ‘Make ‘is flesh creep!’ ‘Yeah, heard about that one?’ said Jim, looking slyly at Moist. ‘No. What happened?’ ‘Only two lads were up there, where there should’ve been three. One of them went out in a gale to budge a stuck shutter, which he shouldn’t’ve done, and fell off and got his safety rope tangled round his neck. So the other bloke rushed out to get him, without his safety rope - which he shouldn’t’ve done - and they reckon he got blown right off the tower.’ ‘That’s horrible,’ said Moist. ‘Not creepy, though. As such.’ ‘Oh, you want the creepy bit? Ten minutes after they was both dead the tower sent a message for help. Sent by a dead man’s hand.’ Jim stood up and put his tricorn hat on. ‘Got to take a coach out in twenty minutes. Nice to meet you, Mr Lipwig.’ He pulled open a drawer in the battered desk and pulled out a length of lead pipe. ‘That’s for highwaymen,’ he said, and then took out a big silver brandy flask. ‘And this is for me,’ he added with rather more satisfaction. ‘Eh? Damn right!’ And I thought the Post Office was full of crazy people, Moist thought. ‘Thank you,’ he said, standing. Then he remembered the strange letter in his pocket, for whatever use it was, and added: ‘Have you got a coach stopping at Pseudopolis tomorrow?’ ‘Yeah, at ten o’clock,’ said Harry. ‘We’ll have a bag for it,’ said Moist. ‘Is is worth it?’ said Jim. ‘It’s more’n fifty miles, and I heard they’ve got the Trunk repaired. It’s a stoppin’ coach, won’t get there ‘til nearly dark.’ ‘Got to make the effort, Jim,’ said Moist. The coachman gave him a look with a little glint that indicated he thought Moist was up to something, but said: ‘Well, you’re game, I’ll say that for you. We’ll wait for your bag, Mr Lipwig, and the best of luck to you. Must rush, sir.’ ‘What coach are you taking out?’ said Moist. Til take the first two stages of the overnight flyer to Quirm, leaving at seven,’ said Jim. ‘If it’s still got all its wheels.’ ‘It’s nearly seven?’ ‘Twenty to, sir.’ ‘I’ll be late!’ The coachmen watched him run back across the yard, with Mr Pump and Gladys trailing slowly behind. Jim pulled on his thick leather gauntlets, thoughtfully, and then said to his brother: ‘You know how you get them funny feelings?’ ‘I reckon I do, Jim.’ ‘And would you reckon there’ll be a clacks failure between here and Pseudopolis tomorrow?’ ‘Funny you should mention that. Mind you, it’d be a two to one bet anyway, the way things have been going. Maybe he’s just a betting man, Jim.’ ‘Yeah,’ said Jim. ‘Yeah. Eh? Damn right!’ Moist struggled out of the golden suit. It was good advertising, no doubt about it, and when he wore it he felt he had style coming out of his ears, but wearing something like that to the Mended Drum meant that he wanted to be hit over the head with a stool and what would come out of his ears wouldn’t bear thinking about. He threw the winged hat on the bed and struggled into his second golem-made suit. Sombre, he’d said. You had to hand it to golem tailoring. The suit was so black that if it had been sprinkled with stars the owls would have collided with it. He needed more time but Adora Belle Dearheart was not someone you felt you should keep waiting. ‘You look fine, sir,’ said Groat. ‘Thanks, thanks,’ said Moist, struggling with his tie. ‘You’re in charge, Mr Groat. Should all be quiet this evening. Remember, first thing tomorrow, all mail for Pseudopolis ten pence a go, okay?’ ‘Right you are, sir. Can I wear the hat now?’ Groat pleaded. ‘What? What?’ said Moist, staring into the mirror. ‘Look, have I got spinach between my teeth?’ ‘Have You Eaten Spinach Today, Sir?’ said Mr Pump. ‘I haven’t eaten spinach since I was old enough to spit,’ said Moist. ‘But people always worry about that at a time like this, don’t they? I thought it just turned up somehow. You know . . . like moss? What was it you asked me, Tolliver?’ ‘Can I wear the hat, sir?’ said Groat patiently. ‘Bein’ as I’m your deputy and you’re going out, sir.’ ‘But we’re closed, Groat.’ ‘Yes, but . . . it’s . . . I’d just like to wear the hat. For a while, sir. Just for a while, sir. If it’s all right with you.’ Groat shifted from one foot to the other. ‘I mean, I will be in charge.’ Moist sighed. ‘Yes, of course, Mr Groat. You may wear the hat. Mr Pump?’ ‘Yes, Sir?’ ‘Mr Groat is in charge for the evening. You will not follow me, please.’ ‘No, I Will Not. My Day Off Begins Now. For All Of Us. We Will Return At Sunset Tomorrow,’ said the golem. ‘Oh . . . yes.’ One day off every week, Miss Dearheart said. It was part of what distinguished golems from hammers. ‘I wish you’d given me more warning, you know? We’re going to be a bit short-staffed.’ ‘You Were Told, Mr Lipvig.’ ‘Yes, yes. It is a rule. It’s just that tomorrow is going to be—’ ‘Don’t you worry about a thing, sir,’ said Groat. ‘Some of the lads I hired today, sir, they’re postmen’s sons, sir, and grandsons. No problem, sir. They’ll be out delivering tomorrow.’ ‘Oh. Good. That’s fine, then.’ Moist adjusted the tie again. A black tie on a black shirt under a black jacket isn’t easy even to find. ‘All right, Mr Pump? Still no attack of spinach? I’m going to see a lady.’ ‘Yes, Mr Lipvig. Miss Dearheart,’ said the golem calmly. ‘How did you know that?’ said Moist. ‘You Shouted It Out In Front Of Approximately A Hundred People, Mr Lipvig,’ said Mr Pump. ‘We - That Is To Say, Mr Lipvig, All The Golems - We Wish Miss Dearheart Was A Happier Lady. She Has Had Much Trouble. She Is Looking For Someone With—’ ‘—a cigarette lighter?’ said Moist quickly. ‘Stop right there, Mr Pump, please! Cupids are these . . . little overweight kids in nappies, all right? Not big clay people.’ ‘Anghammarad Said She Reminded Him Of Lela The Volcano Goddess, Who Smokes All The Time Because The God Of Rain Has Rained On Her Lava,’ the golem went on. ‘Yes, but women always complain about that sort of thing,’ said Moist. ‘I look all right, Mr Groat, do I?’ ‘Oh, sir,’ said Groat, ‘I shouldn’t think Mr Moist von Lipwig ever has to worry when he’s off to meet a young lady, eh?’ Come to think of it, Moist came to think as he hurried through the crowded streets, he never has been off to meet a young lady. Not in all these years. Oh, Albert and all the rest of them had met hundreds, and had all kinds of fun, including once getting his jaw dislocated which was only fun in a no-fun-at-all kind of way. But Moist, never. He’d always been behind the false moustache or glasses or, really, just the false person. He had that naked feeling again, and began to wish he hadn’t left his golden suit behind. When he reached the Mended Drum he remembered why he had. People kept telling him that Ankh-Morpork was a lot more civilized these days, that between them the Watch and the Guilds had settled things down enough to ensure that actually being attacked while going about your lawful business in Ankh-Morpork was now merely a possibility instead of, as it once was, a matter of course. And the streets were so clean now that you could sometimes even see the street. But the Mended Drum could be depended upon. If someone didn’t come out of the door backwards and fall down in the street just as you passed, then there was something wrong with the world. And there was a fight going on. More or less. But in some ways at least time had moved on. You couldn’t just haul off and belt someone with an axe these days. People expected things of a bar brawl. As he went in Moist passed a large group of men of the broken-nosed, one-eared persuasion, bent in anxious conclave. ‘Look, Bob, what part of this don’t you understand, eh? It’s a matter of style, okay? A proper brawl doesn’t just happen. You don’t just pile in, not any more. Now, Oyster Dave here - put your helmet back on, Dave - will be the enemy in front and Basalt who, as we know, don’t need a helmet, he’ll be the enemy coming up behind you. Okay, it’s well past knuckles time, let’s say Gravy there has done his thing with the Bench Swipe, there’s a bit of knifeplay, we’ve done the whole Chandelier Swing number, blah blah blah, then Second Chair - that’s you, Bob - you step smartly between their Number Five man and a Bottler, swing the chair back over your head like this - sorry, Pointy -and then swing it right back on to Number Five, bang, crash, and there’s a cushy six points in your pocket. If they’re playing a dwarf at Number Five then a chair won’t even slow him down but don’t fret, hang on to the bits that stay in your hand, pause one moment as he comes at you and then belt him across both ears. They hate that, as Stronginthearm here will tell you. Another three points. It’s probably going to be freestyle after that but I want all of you, including Mucky Mick and Crispo, to try for a Double Andrew when it gets down to the fist-fighting again. Remember? You back into each other, turn round to give the other guy a thumping, cue moment of humorous recognition, then link left arms, swing round and see to the other fellow’s attacker, foot or fist, it’s your choice. Fifteen points right there if you get it to flow just right. Oh, and remember we’ll have an Igor standing by, so if your arm gets taken off do pick it up and hit the other bugger with it - it gets a laugh and twenty points. On that subject, do remember what I said about getting everything tattooed with your name, all right? Igors do their best, but you’ll be on your feet much quicker if you make life easier for him and, what’s more, it’s your feet you’ll be on. Okay, positions everyone, let’s run through it again . . .’ Moist sidled past the group and scanned the huge room. The important thing was not to slow down. Slowing down attracted people. He saw a thin plume of blue smoke rise above the crowd, and forced his way through. Miss Dearheart was sitting alone at a very small table with a very small drink in front of her. She couldn’t have been there long; the only other stool was unoccupied. ‘Do you come in here often?’ said Moist, slipping on to it quickly. Miss Dearheart raised her eyebrows at him. ‘Yes. Why not?’ ‘Well, I . . . I imagine it’s not very safe for a woman on her own.’ ‘What, with all these big strong men here to protect me? Why don’t you go and get your drink?’ Moist got to the bar eventually, by dropping a handful of small change on the floor. That usually cleared the crush a little. When he returned, his seat was occupied by a Currently Friendly Drunk. Moist recognized the type, and the operative word was ‘currently’. Miss Dearheart was leaning back to avoid his attentions and more probably his breath. Moist heard the familiar cry of the generously sloshed. ‘What . . . right? What I’m saying is, right, what I’m saying, narhmean, why won’t you, right, gimme a kiss, right? All I’m saying is—’ Oh gods, I’m going to have to do something, Moist thought. He’s big and he’s got a sword like a butcher’s cleaver and the moment I say anything he’s going to go right into stage four, Violent Undirected Madman, and they can be surprisingly accurate before they fall over. He put down his drink. Miss Dearheart gave him a very brief look, and shook her head. There was movement under the table, a small fleshy kind of noise and the drunk suddenly bent forward, colour draining from his face. Probably only he and Moist heard Miss Dearheart purr: ‘What is sticking in your foot is a Mitzy “Pretty Lucretia” four-inch heel, the most dangerous footwear in the world. Considered as pounds per square inch, it’s like being trodden on by a very pointy elephant. Now, I know what you’re thinking: you’re thinking, “Could she press it all the way through to the floor?” And, you know, I’m not sure about that myself. The sole of your boot might give me a bit of trouble, but nothing else will. But that’s not the worrying part. The worrying part is that I was forced practically at knifepoint to take ballet lessons as a child, which means I can kick like a mule; you are sitting in front of me; and I have another shoe. Good, I can see you have worked that out. I’m going to withdraw the heel now.’ There was a small ‘pop’ from under the table. With great care the man stood up, turned and, without a backward glance, lurched unsteadily away. ‘Can I bother you?’ said Moist. Miss Dearheart nodded, and he sat down, with his legs crossed. ‘He was only a drunk,’ he ventured. ‘Yes, men say that sort of thing,’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘Anyway, tell me that if I hadn’t done that you wouldn’t now be trying to collect all your teeth in your hat. Which you are not wearing, I notice. This must be your secret identity. Sorry, was that the wrong thing to say? You spilled your drink.’ Moist wiped beer off his lapel. ‘No, this is me,’ he said. ‘Pure and unadorned.’ ‘You hardly know me and yet you invited me out on a date,’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘Why?’ Because you called me a phoney, Moist thought. You saw through me straight away. Because you didn’t nail my head to the door with your crossbow. Because you have no small talk. Because I’d like to get to know you better, even though it would be like smooching an ashtray. Because I wonder if you could put into the rest of your life the passion you put into smoking a cigarette. In defiance of Miss Maccalariat I’d like to commit hanky-panky with you, Miss Adora Belle Dearheart . . . well, certainly hanky, and possibly panky when we get to know one another better. I’d like to know as much about your soul as you know about mine . . . He said: ‘Because I hardly know you.’ ‘If it comes to that, I hardly know you, either,’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘I’m rather banking on that,’ said Moist. This got a smile. ‘Smooth answer. Slick. Where are we really eating tonight?’ ‘Le Foie Heureux, of course,’ said Moist. She looked genuinely surprised. ‘You got a reservation?’ ‘Oh, yes.’ ‘You’ve got a relative that works there, then? You’re blackmailing the maître d’?’ ‘No. But I’ve got a table for tonight,’ said Moist. ‘Then it’s some sort of trick,’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘I’m impressed. But I’d better warn you, enjoy the meal. It may be your last.’ ‘What?’ ‘The Grand Trunk Company kills people, Mr Lipwig. In all kinds of ways. You must be getting on Reacher Gilt’s nerves.’ ‘Oh, come on! I’m barely a wasp at their picnic!’ ‘And what do people do to wasps, do you think?’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘The Trunk is in trouble, Mr Lipwig. The company has been running it as a machine for making money. They thought repair would be cheaper than maintenance. They’ve cut everything to the bone - to the bone. They’re people who can’t take a joke. Do you think Reacher Gilt will hesitate for one minute to swat you?’ ‘But I’m being very—’ Moist tried. ‘Do you think you’re playing a game with them? Ringing doorbells and running away? Gilt’s aiming to become Patrician one day, everyone says so. And suddenly there’s this . . . this idiot in a big gold hat reminding everyone what a mess the clacks is, poking fun at it, getting the Post Office working again—’ ‘Hang on, hang on,’ Moist managed. ‘This is a city, not some cow town somewhere! People don’t kill business rivals just like that, do they?’ ‘In Ankh-Morpork? You really think so? Oh, he won’t kill you. He won’t even bother with the formality of going through the Guild of Assassins. You’ll just die. Just like my brother. And he’ll be behind it.’ ‘Your brother?’ said Moist. On the far side of the huge room, the evening’s fight began with a well-executed Looking-At-Me-In-A-Funny-Way, earning two points and a broken tooth. ‘He and some of the people who used to work on the Trunk before it was pirated - pirated, Mr Lipwig - were going to start up a new Trunk,’ said Miss Dearheart, leaning forward. ‘They’d scraped up funding somehow for a few demonstration towers. It was going to be more than four times as fast as the old system, they were going to do all kinds of clever things with the coding, it was going to be wonderful. A lot of people gave them their savings, people who’d worked for my father. Most of the good engineers left when my father lost the Trunk, you see. They couldn’t stand Gilt and his bunch of looters. My brother was going to get all our money back.’ ‘You’ve lost me there,’ said Moist. An axe landed in the table, and juddered. Miss Dearheart stared at Moist and blew a stream of smoke past his ear. ‘My father was Robert Dearheart,’ she said distantly. ‘He was chairman of the original Grand Trunk Company. The clacks was his vision. Hell, he designed half of the mechanisms in the towers. And he got together with a group of other engineers, all serious men with slide rules, and they borrowed money and mortgaged their houses and built a local system and poured the money back in and started building the Trunk. There was a lot of money coming in; every city wanted to be in on it, everyone was going to be rich. We had stables. I had a horse. Admittedly I didn’t like it much, but I used to feed it and watch it run about or whatever it is they do. Everything was going fine and suddenly he got this letter and there were meetings and they said he was lucky not to go to prison for, oh, I don’t know, something complicated and legal. But the clacks was still making huge amounts. Can you understand that? Reacher Gilt and his gang acted friendly, oh yes, but they were buying up the mortgages and controlling banks and moving numbers around and they pulled the Grand Trunk out from under us like thieves. All they want to do is make money. They don’t care about the Trunk. They’ll run it into the ground and make more money by selling it. When Dad was in charge people were proud of what they did. And because they were engineers they made sure that the towers worked properly, all the time. They even had what they called “walking towers”, prefabricated ones that packed on to a couple of big carts so that if a tower was having serious trouble they could set this one up alongside and start it up and take over the traffic without dropping a single code. They were proud of it, everyone was, they were proud to be a part of it!’ ‘ You should’ve been there. You should’ve seen it!’ Moist said to himself. He hadn’t meant to say it out loud. Across the room, a man hit another man with his own leg and picked up seven points. ‘Yes,’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘You should have. And three months ago my brother John raised enough to start a rival to the Trunk. That took some doing. Gilt has got tentacles everywhere. Well, John ended up dead in a field. They said he hadn’t clipped his safety rope on. He always did. And now my father just sits and stares at the wall. He even lost his workshop when everything got taken away. We lost our house, of course. Now we live with my aunt in Dolly Sisters. That’s what we’ve come to. When Reacher Gilt talks about freedom he means his, not anyone else’s. And now you pop up, Mr Moist von Lipwig, all shiny and new, running around doing everything at once. Why?’ ‘Vetinari offered me the job, that’s all,’ said Moist. ‘Why did you take it?’ ‘It was a job for life.’ She stared at Moist so hard that he began to feel uncomfortable. ‘Well, you’ve managed to get a table at Le Foie Heureux at a few hours’ notice,’ she conceded, as a knife struck a beam behind her. ‘Are you still going to lie if I ask you how?’ ‘Yes, I think so.’ ‘Good. Shall we go?’ A little pressure lamp burned in the stuffy snugness of the locker room, its glow a globe of unusual brilliance. In the centre of it, magnifying glass in hand, Stanley examined his stamps. This was . . . heaven. Peas are known for their thoroughness, and Stanley was conscientious in the extreme. Mr Spools, slightly unnerved by his smile, had given him all the test sheets and faulty pages, and Stanley was carefully cataloguing them - how many of each, what the errors were, everything. A little tendril of guilt was curling through his mind: this was better than pins, it really was. There could be no end to stamps. You could put anything on them. They were amazing. They could move letters around and then you could stick them in a book, all neat. You wouldn’t get ‘pinhead’s thumb’, either. He’d read about this feeling in the pin magazines. They said you could come unpinned. Girls and marriage were sometimes mentioned in this context. Sometimes an ex-head would sell off his whole collection, just like that. Or at some pin-meet someone would suddenly throw all their pins in the air and run out shouting, ‘Aargh, they’re just pins!’ Up until now, such a thing had been unthinkable to Stanley. He picked up his little sack of unsorted pins, and stared at it. A few days ago, the mere thought of an evening with his pins would have given him a lovely warm, comfortable feeling inside. But now it was time to put away childish pins. Something screamed. It was harsh, guttural, it was malice and hunger given a voice. Small huddling shrew-like creatures had once heard sounds like that, circling over the swamps. After a moment of ancient terror had subsided, Stanley crept over and opened the door. ‘H-hello?’ he called, into the cavernous darkness of the hall. ‘Is there anyone there?’ There was fortunately no reply, but there was some scrabbling up near the roof. ‘We’re closed, you know,’ he quavered. ‘But we’re open again at seven in the morning for a range of stamps and a wonderful deal on mail to Pseudopolis.’ His voice slowed and his brow creased as he tried to remember everything Mr Lipwig had told them earlier. ‘Remember, we may not be the fastest but we always get there. Why not write to your old granny?’ ‘I ate my grandmother,’ growled a voice from high in the darkness. ‘I gnawed her bones.’ Stanley coughed. He had not been trained in the art of salesmanship. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Er . . . perhaps an aunt, then?’ He wrinkled his nose. Why was there the stink of lamp oil in the air? ‘Hello?’ he said again. Something dropped out of the dark, bounced off his shoulder and landed on the floor with a wet thud. Stanley reached down, felt around and found a pigeon. At least, he found about half a pigeon. It was still warm, and very sticky. Mr Gryle sat on a beam high above the hall. His stomach was on fire. It was no good, old habits died too hard. They were bred in the bone. Something warm and feathery fluttered up in front of you and of course you snapped at it. Ankh-Morpork had pigeons roosting on every gutter, cornice and statue. Not even the resident gargoyles could keep them down. He’d had six before he sailed in through the broken dome, and then another huge warm feathery cloud had risen up and a red haze had simply dropped in front of his eyes. They were so tasty. You couldn’t stop at one! And five minutes later you remembered why you should have done. These were feral, urban birds, that lived on what they could find on the streets. Ankh-Morpork streets, at that. They were bobbing, cooing plague pits. You might as well eat a dog turd burger and wash it down with a jumbo cup of septic tank. Mr Gryle groaned. Best to finish the job, get out of here and go and throw up over a busy street. He dropped his oil bottle into the dark and fumbled for his matches. His species had come to fire late, because nests burned too easily, but it did have its uses . . . Flame blossomed, high up at the far end of the hall. It dropped from the beams and landed on the stacks of letters. There was a whoomph as the oil caught fire; blue runnels of flame began to climb the walls. Stanley looked down. A few feet away, lit by the fire crawling across the letters, was a figure curled up on the floor. The golden hat with wings lay next to it. Stanley looked up, eyes glowing red in the firelight, as a figure swooped from the rafters and sped towards him, mouth open. And that’s when it all went wrong for Mr Gryle, because Stanley had one of his Little Moments. Attitude was everything. Moist had studied attitude. Some of the old nobility had it. It was the total lack of any doubt that things would go the way they expected them to go. The maitre d’ ushered them to their table without a moment’s hesitation. ‘Can you really afford this on a government salary, Mr Lipwig?’ said Miss Dearheart as they sat down. ‘Or are we going to exit via the kitchens?’ ‘I believe I have adequate funds,’ said Moist. He probably hadn’t, he knew. A restaurant that has a waiter even for the mustard stacks up the prices. But right now Moist wasn’t worrying about the bill. There were ways to deal with bills, and it was best to deal with them on a full stomach. They ordered starters that probably cost more than the weekly food bill for an average man. There was no point in looking for the cheapest thing on the menu. The cheapest thing theoretically existed but somehow, no matter how hard you stared, didn’t quite manage to be there. On the other hand, there were a lot of most expensive things. ‘Are the boys settling in okay?’ said Miss Dearheart. The boys, Moist thought. ‘Oh, yes. Anghammarad has really taken to it. A natural postman,’ he said. ‘Well, he’s had practice.’ ‘What’s that box he’s got riveted to his arm?’ ‘That? A message he’s got to deliver. Not the original baked clay tablet, I gather. He’s had to make copies two or three times and the bronze lasts hardly any time at all, to a golem. It’s a message to King Het of Thut from his astrologers on their holy mountain, telling him that the Goddess of the Sea was angry and what ceremonies he’d have to do to placate her.’ ‘Didn’t Thut slide into the sea anyway? I thought he said—’ ‘Yeah, yeah, Anghammarad got there too late and was swept away by the ferocious tidal wave and the island sank.’ ‘So . . . ?’ said Moist. ‘So what?’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘So . . . he doesn’t think that delivering it now might be a bit on the tardy side?’ ‘No. He doesn’t. You’re not seeing it like a golem. They believe the universe is doughnut-shaped.’ ‘Would that be a ring doughnut or a jam doughnut?’ said Moist. ‘Ring, definitely, but don’t push for further culinary details, because I can see you’ll try to make a joke of it. They think it has no start or finish. We just keep going round and round, but we don’t have to make the same decisions every time.’ ‘Like getting an angel the hard way,’ said Moist. ‘What do you mean?’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘Er . . . he’s waiting until the whole tidal wave business comes around again and this time he’ll get there earlier and do it right?’ ‘Yes. Don’t point out all the flaws in the idea. It works for him.’ ‘He’s going to wait for millions and millions of years?’ said Moist. ‘ That’s not a flaw, not to a golem. That’s only a matter of time. They don’t get bored. They repair themselves and they’re very hard to shatter. They survive under the sea or in red-hot lava. He might be able to do it, who knows? In the meantime, he keeps himself busy. Just like you, Mr Lipwig. You’ve been very busy—’ She froze, staring over his shoulder. He saw her right hand scrabble frantically among the cutlery and grab a knife. ‘That bastard has just walked into the place!’ she hissed. ‘Readier Gilt! I’ll just kill him and join you for the pudding . . .’ ‘You can’t do that!’ hissed Moist. ‘Oh? Why not?’ ‘You’re using the wrong knife! That’s for the fish! You’ll get into trouble!’ She glared at him, but her hand relaxed and something like a smile appeared. ‘They don’t have a knife for stabbing rich murdering bastards?’ she said. ‘They bring it to the table when you order one,’ said Moist urgently. ‘Look, this isn’t the Drum, they don’t just throw the body on to the river! They’ll call the Watch! Get a grip. Not on the knife! And get ready to run.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because I forged his signature on Grand Trunk notepaper to get us in here, that’s why.’ Moist turned round to look at the great man in the flesh for the first time. He was great, a bear-shaped man, in a frock coat big enough for two and a gold-braid waistcoat. And he had a cockatoo on his shoulder, although a waiter was hurrying forward with a shiny brass perch and, presumably, the seed-and-nut menu. There was a party of well-dressed people with Gilt, and as they progressed across the room the whole place began to revolve around the big man, gold being very dense and having a gravity all of its own. Waiters bustled and grovelled and did unimportant things with an air of great importance, and it was probably only a matter of minutes before one of them told Gilt that his other guests had been seated. But Moist was scanning the rest of the room for the— Ah, there they were, two of them. What was it about hired muscle that made it impossible to get a suit to fit? One was watching the door, one was watching the room, and without a shadow of a doubt there was at least one in the kitchen. —and, yes, the maitre d’ was earning his tip by assuring the great man that his friends had been duly looked after— —the big head, with its leonine mane, turned to stare at Moist’s table— —Miss Dearheart murmured, ‘Oh gods, he’s coming over!’— —and Moist stood up. The hired fists had shifted position. They wouldn’t actually do anything in here, but nor would anyone else be worried if he was escorted out with speed and firmness for a little discussion in some alley somewhere. Gilt was advancing between the tables, leaving his puzzled guests behind. This was a job for people skills, or diving through the window. But Gilt would have to be at least marginally polite. People were listening. ‘Mr Reacher Gilt?’ said Moist. ‘Indeed, sir,’ said Gilt, grinning without a trace of humour. ‘But you appear to have me at a disadvantage.’ T do hope not, sir,’ said Moist. ‘It appears that I asked the restaurant to retain a table for you, Mr . . . Lipwig?’ ‘Did you, Mr Gilt?’ said Moist, with what he knew was remarkably persuasive innocence. ‘We arrived in the hope that there might be a spare table and were astonished to find there was!’ ‘Then at least one of us has been made a fool of, Mr Lipwig,’ said Gilt. ‘But tell me . . . are you truly Mr Moist von Lipwig the postmaster?’ ‘Yes, I am.’ ‘Without your hat?’ Moist coughed. ‘It’s not actually compulsory,’ he said. The big face observed him in silence, and then a hand like a steel-worker’s glove was thrust forward. ‘I am very pleased to meet you at last, Mr Lipwig. I trust your good luck will continue.’ Moist took the hand and, instead of the bone-crushing grip he was expecting, felt the firm handshake of an honourable man and looked into the steady, honest, one-eyed gaze of Reacher Gilt. Moist had worked hard at his profession and considered himself pretty good at it but, if he had been wearing his hat, he would have taken it off right now. He was in the presence of a master. He could feel it in the hand, see it in that one commanding eye. Were things otherwise, he would have humbly begged to be taken on as an apprentice, scrub the man’s floors, cook his food, just to sit at the feet of greatness and learn how to do the three card trick using whole banks. If Moist was any judge, any judge at all, the man in front of him was the biggest fraud he’d ever met. And he advertised it. That was . . . style. The pirate curls, the eyepatch, even the damn parrot. Twelve and a half per cent, for heavens’ sake, didn’t anyone spot that? He told them what he was, and they laughed and loved him for it. It was breathtaking. If Moist von Lipwig had been a career killer, it would have been like meeting a man who’d devised a way to destroy civilizations. All this came in an instant, in one bolt of understanding, in the glint of an eye. But something ran in front of it as fast as a little fish ahead of a shark. Gilt was shocked, not surprised. That tiny moment was barely measurable on any clock but just for an instant the world had gone wrong for Reacher Gilt. That moment had been wiped out so competently that all that remained of it was Moist’s certainty that it had happened, but the certainty was rigid. He was loath to let go of the hand in case there was a flash that might broil him alive. After all, he had recognized the nature of Gilt, so the man must certainly have spotted him. ‘Thank you, Mr Gilt,’ he said. ‘I gather you were kind enough to carry some of our messages today,’ Gilt rumbled. ‘It was a pleasure, sir. If ever you need our help, you only have to ask.’ ‘Hmm,’ said Gilt. ‘But the least I can do is buy you dinner, Postmaster. The bill will come to my table. Choose whatever you wish. And now, if you will excuse me, I must attend to my . . . other guests.’ He bowed to the simmering Miss Dearheart and walked back. ‘The management would like to thank you for not killing the guests,’ said Moist, sitting down. ‘Now we should—’ He stopped, and stared. Miss Dearheart, who had been saving up to hiss at him, took one look at his face and hesitated. ‘Are you ill?’ she said. ‘They’re . . . burning,’ said Moist, his eyes widening. ‘Ye gods, you’ve gone white!’ ‘The writing . . . they’re screaming . . . I can smell burning!’ ‘Someone over there is having crepes,’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘It’s just—’ She stopped, and sniffed. ‘It smells like paper, though . . .’ People looked round as Moist’s chair crashed backwards. ‘The Post Office is on fire! I know it is!’ he shouted, and turned and ran. Miss Dearheart caught up just as he was in the hall, where one of Gilt’s bodyguards had grabbed him. She tapped the man on the shoulder and, as he turned to push her away, stamped down heavily. While he screamed she dragged the bewildered Moist away. ‘Water . . . we’ve got to get water,’ he groaned. ‘They’re burning! They’re all burning!’ Chapter Ten The Burning of Words In which Stanley remains Calm - Moist the Hero - Searching for a Cat, never a good idea - Something in the Dark - Mr Gryle is encountered - Fire and Water - Mr Lipwig Helps the Watch - Dancing on the edge — Mr Lipwig Gets Religion — Opportunity Time - Miss Maccalariat’s hairgrip - The Miracle The letters burned. Part of the ceiling fell down, showering more letters on to the flames. The fire was already reaching for the upper floors. As Stanley dragged Mr Groat across the floor another slab of plaster smashed on the tiles and the old mail that poured down after it was already burning. Smoke, thick as soup, rolled across the distant ceiling. Stanley pulled the old man into the locker room and laid him on his bed. He rescued the golden hat, too, because Mr Lipwig would be bound to be angry if he didn’t. Then he shut the door and took down, from the shelf over Groat’s desk, the Book of Regulations. He turned the pages methodically until he came to the bookmark he’d put in a minute ago, on the page What To Do In Case Of Fire. Stanley always followed the rules. All sorts of things could go wrong if you didn’t. So far he’d done 1: Upon Discovery of the Fire, Remain Calm. Now he came to 2: Shout ‘Fire!’ in a Loud, Clear Voice. ‘Fire!’ he shouted, and then ticked off 2 with his pencil. Next was: 3: Endeavour to Extinguish Fire If Possible. Stanley went to the door and opened it. Flames and smoke billowed in. He stared at them for a moment, shook his head, and shut the door. Paragraph 4 said: If Trapped by Fire, Endeavour to Escape. Do Not Open Doors If Warm. Do Not Use Stairs If Burning. If No Exit Presents Itself Remain Calm and Await a) Rescue or b) Death. This seemed to cover it. The world of pins was simple and Stanley knew his way around it as a goldfish knows its tank, but everything else was very complicated and only worked if you followed the rules. He glanced up at the grubby little windows. They were far too small to climb through and had been welded shut by many applications of official paint, so he broke one pane as neatly as possible to allow some fresh air in. He made a note of this in the breakages book. Mr Groat was still breathing, although with an unpleasant bubbling sound. There was a First Aid kit in the locker room, because Regulations demanded it, but it contained only a small length of bandage, a bottle of something black and sticky, and Mr Groat’s spare teeth. Mr Groat had told him never to touch his home-made medicines, and since it was not unusual for bottles to explode during the night Stanley had always observed this rule very carefully. It did not say in the Regulations: If Attacked by Huge Swooping Screaming Creature Hit Hard in the Mouth with Sack of Pins, and Stanley wondered if he should pencil this in. But that would be Defacing Post Office Property, and he could get into trouble for that. All avenues of further activity being therefore closed, Stanley remained calm. It was a gentle snow of letters. Some landed still burning, fountaining out of the column of crackling fire that had already broken through the Post Office roof. Some were blackened ashes on which sparks travelled in mockery of the dying ink. Some - many - had sailed up and over the city unscathed, zigzagging down gently like communications from an excessively formal sort of god. Moist tore off his jacket as he pushed through the crowd. ‘The people probably got out,’ said Miss Dear heart, clattering along beside him. ‘Do you really think so?’ said Moist. ‘Really? No. Not if Gilt set this up. Sorry, I’m not very good at being comforting any more.’ Moist paused, and tried to think. The flames were coming out of the roof at one end of the building. The main door and the whole left side looked untouched. But fire was sneaky stuff, he knew. It sat there and smouldered until you opened the door to see how it was getting on, and then the fire caught its breath and your eyeballs got soldered to your skull. ‘I’d better go in,’ he said. ‘Er . . . you wouldn’t care to say “No, no, don’t do it, you’re being far too brave!” would you?’ he added. Some people were organizing a bucket chain from a nearby fountain; it would be as effective as spitting at the sun. Miss Dearheart caught a burning letter, lit a cigarette with it, and took a drag. ‘No, no, don’t do it, you’re being far too brave!’ she said. ‘How was that for you? But if you do, the left side looks pretty clear. Watch out, though. There are rumours Gilt employs a vampire. One of the wild ones.’ ‘Ah. Fire kills them, doesn’t it?’ said Moist, desperate to look on the bright side. ‘It kills everybody, Mr Lipwig,’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘It kills everybody.’ She grabbed him by the ears and gave him a big kiss on the mouth. It was like being kissed by an ashtray, but in a good way. ‘On the whole, I’d like you to come out of there,’ she said quietly. ‘Are you sure you won’t wait? The boys will be here in a minute—’ ‘The golems? It’s their day off!’ ‘They have to obey their chem, though. A fire means humans are in danger. They’ll smell it and be here in minutes, believe me.’ Moist hesitated, looking at her face. And people were watching him. He couldn’t not go in there, it wouldn’t fit in with the persona. Gods damn Vetinari! He shook his head, turned, and ran towards the doors. Best not to think about it. Best not to think about being so dumb. Just feel the front door . . . quite cool. Open it gently . . . a rush of air, but no explosion. The big hall, lit with flame . . . but it was all above him, and if he weaved and dodged he could make it to the door that led down to the locker room. He kicked it open. Stanley looked up from his stamps. ‘Hello, Mr Lipwig,’ he said. ‘I kept calm. But I think Mr Groat is ill.’ The old man was lying on the bed, and ill was too jolly a word. ‘What happened to him?’ said Moist, lifting him gently. Mr Groat was no weight at all. ‘It was like a big bird, but I frightened it off,’ said Stanley. ‘I hit it in the mouth with a sack of pins. I . . . had a Little Moment, sir.’ ‘Well, that ought to do it,’ said Moist. ‘Now, can you follow me?’ ‘I’ve got all the stamps,’ said Stanley. ‘And the cashbox. Mr Groat keeps them under his bed for safety.’ The boy beamed. ‘And your hat, too. I kept calm.’ ‘Well done, well done,’ said Moist. ‘Now, stick right behind me, okay?’ ‘What about Mr Tiddles, Mr Lipwig?’ said Stanley, suddenly looking worried. Somewhere outside in the hall there was a crash, and the crackle of the fire grew distinctly louder. ‘Who? Mr Tidd— the cat? To hell with—’ Moist stopped, and readjusted his mouth. ‘He’ll be outside, you can bet on it, eating a toasted rat and grinning. Come on, will you?’ ‘But he’s the Post Office cat!’ said Stanley. ‘He’s never been outside!’ I’ll bet he has now, thought Moist. But there was that edge in the boy’s voice again. ‘Let’s get Mr Groat out of here, okay,’ he said, easing his way through the door with the old man in his arms, ‘and then I’ll come back for Tidd—’ A burning beam dropped on to the floor halfway across the hall, and sent sparks and burning envelopes spiralling upwards into the main blaze. It roared, a wall of flame, a fiery waterfall in reverse, up through the other floors and out through the roof. It thundered. It was fire let loose and making the most of it. Part of Moist von Lipwig was happy to let it happen. But a new and troublesome part was thinking: I was making it work. It was all moving forward. The stamps were really working. It was as good as being a criminal without the crime. It had been fun. ‘Come on, Stanley!’ Moist snapped, turning away from the horrible sight and the fascinating thought. The boy followed, reluctantly, calling for the damn cat all the way to the door. The air outside struck like a knife, but there was a round of applause from the crowd and then a flash of light that Moist had come to associate with eventual trouble. ‘Good eefning, Mr Lipvig!’ said the cheery voice of Otto Chriek. ‘My vord, if ve vant news, all ve have to do is follow you!’ Moist ignored him and shouldered his way to Miss Dearheart who, he noticed, was not beside herself with worry. ‘Is there a hospice in this city?’ he said. ‘A decent doctor, even?’ ‘There’s the Lady Sybil Free Hospital,’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘Is it any good?’ ‘Some people don’t die.’ ‘That good, eh? Get him there right now! I’ve got to go back in for the cat!’ ‘ You are going to go back in there for a cat?’ ‘It’s Mr Tiddles,’ said Stanley primly. ‘He was born in the Post Office.’ ‘Best not to argue,’ said Moist, turning to go. ‘See to Mr Groat, will you?’ Miss Dearheart looked down at the old man’s bloodstained shirt. ‘But it looks as though some creature tried to—’ she began. ‘ Something fell on him,’ said Moist shortly. ‘That couldn’t cause—’ ‘Something fell on him’, said Moist. ‘That’s what happened.’ She looked at his face. ‘All right,’ she agreed. ‘Something fell on him. Something with big claws.’ ‘No, a joist with lots of nails in it, something like that. Anyone can see that.’ ‘That’s what happened, was it?’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘That’s exactly what happened,’ said Moist, and strode away before there were any more questions. No point in getting the Watch involved in this, he thought, hurrying towards the doors. They’ll clump around and there won’t be any answers for them and in my experience watchmen always like to arrest somebody. What makes you think it was Reacher Gilt, Mr . . . Lipwig, wasn’t it? Oh, you could tell, could you? That’s a skill of yours, is it? Funny thing, we can tell sometimes, too. You’ve got a very familiar face, Mr Lipwig. Where are you from? No, there was no point in getting friendly with the Watch. They might get in the way. An upper window exploded outwards, and flames licked along the edge of the roof; Moist ducked into the doorway as glass rained down. As for Tiddles . . . well, he had to find the damn cat. If he didn’t, it wouldn’t be fun any more. If he didn’t risk at least a tiny bit of life and a smidgen of limb, he just wouldn’t be able to carry on being him. Had he just thought that? Oh, gods. He’d lost it. He’d never been sure how he’d got it, but it had gone. That’s what happened if you took wages. And hadn’t his grandfather warned him to keep away from women as neurotic as a shaved monkey? Actually he hadn’t, his interest lying mainly with dogs and beer, but he should have done. The vision of Mr Groat’s chest kept bumping insistently against his imagination. It looked as though something with claws had taken a swipe at him, and only the thick uniform coat prevented him from being opened like a clam. But that didn’t sound like a vampire. They weren’t messy like that. It was a waste of good food. Nevertheless, he picked up a piece of smashed chair. It had splintered nicely. And the good thing about a stake through the heart was that it also worked on non-vampires. More ceiling had come down in the hall, but he was able to dodge between the debris. The main staircase was at this end and completely untouched, although smoke lay on the floor like a carpet; at the other end of the hall, where the mountains of old mail had been, the blaze still roared. He couldn’t hear the letters any more. Sorry, he thought. I did my best. It wasn’t my fault . . . What now? At least he could get his box out of his office. He didn’t want that to burn. Some of those chemicals would be quite hard to replace. The office was full of smoke but he dragged the box out from under his desk and then spotted the golden suit on its hanger. He had to take it, didn’t he? Something like that couldn’t be allowed to burn. He could come back for the box, right? But the suit . . . the suit was necessary. There was no sign of Tiddles. He must have got out, yes? Didn’t cats leave sinking ships? Or was it rats? Wouldn’t the cats follow the rats? Anyway, smoke was coming up between the floorboards and drifting down from the upper floors, and this wasn’t the time to hang around. He’d looked everywhere sensible; there was no sense in being where a ton of burning paper could drop on your head. It was a good plan and it was only spoiled when he spotted the cat, down in the hall. It was watching him with interest. ‘Tiddles!’ bellowed Moist. He wished he hadn’t. It was such a stupid name to shout in a burning building. The cat looked at him, and trotted away. Cursing, Moist hurried after it, and saw it disappear down into the cellars. Cats were bright, weren’t they? There was probably another way out . . . bound to be . . . Moist didn’t even look up when he heard the creaking of wood overhead, but ran forward and went down the steps five at a time. By the sound of it, a large amount of the entire building smashed on to the floor just behind him, and sparks roared down the cellar passage, burning his neck. Well, there was no going back, at least. But cellars, now, they had trapdoors and coal shutes and things, didn’t they? And they were cool and safe and— —just the place where you’d go to lick your wounds after being smashed in the mouth with a sackful of pins, right? An imagination is a terrible thing to bring along. A vampire, she’d said. And Stanley had hit ‘a big bird’ with a sackful of pins. Stanley the Vampire Slayer, with a bag of pins. You wouldn’t believe it, unless you’d seen him in one of what Mr Groat called his ‘little moments’. You probably couldn’t kill a vampire with pins . . . And after a thought like that is when you realize that however hard you try to look behind you, there’s a behind you, behind you, where you aren’t looking. Moist flung his back to the cold stone wall, and slithered along it until he ran out of wall and acquired a doorframe. The faint blue glow of the Sorting Engine was just visible. As Moist peered into the machine’s room, Tiddles was visible too. He was crouched under the engine. ‘That’s a very cat thing you’re doing there, Tiddles,’ said Moist, staring at the shadows. ‘Come to Uncle Moist. Please?’ He sighed, and hung the suit on an old letter rack, and crouched down. How were you supposed to pick up a cat? He’d never done it. Cats never figured in grandfather’s Lipwigzer kennels, except as an impromptu snack. As his hand drew near Tiddles, the cat flattened its ears and hissed. ‘Do you want to cook down here?’ said Moist. ‘No claws, please.’ The cat began to growl, and Moist realized that it wasn’t looking directly at him. ‘Good Tiddles,’ he said, feeling the terror begin to rise. It was one of the prime rules of exploring in a hostile environment: do not bother about the cat. And, suddenly, the environment was a lot more hostile. Another important rule was: don’t turn round slowly to look. It’s there all right. Not the cat. Damn the cat. It’s something else. He stood upright and took a two-handed grip on the wooden stake. It’s right behind me, yes? he thought. Bloody well bloody right bloody behind me! Of course it is! How could things be otherwise? The feeling of fear was almost the same as the feeling he got when, say, a mark was examining a glass diamond. Time slowed a little, every sense was heightened, and there was a taste of copper in his mouth. Don’t turn round slowly. Turn round fast. He spun, screamed and thrust. The stake met resistance, which yielded only slightly. A long pale face grinned at him in the blue light. It showed rows of pointy teeth. ‘Missed both my hearts,’ said Mr Gryle, spitting blood. Moist jumped back as a thin clawed hand sliced through the air, but kept the stake in front of him, jabbing with it, holding the thing off . . . Banshee, he thought. Oh, hell . . . Only when he moved did Gryle’s leathery black cape swing aside briefly to show the skeletal figure beneath; it helped if you knew that the black leather was wing. It helped if you thought of banshees as the only humanoid race that had evolved the ability to fly, in some lush jungle somewhere where they’d hunted flying squirrels. It didn’t help, much, if you knew why the story had grown up that hearing the scream of the banshee meant that you were going to die. It meant that the banshee was tracking you. No good looking behind you. It was overhead. There weren’t many of the feral ones, even in Uberwald, but Moist knew the advice passed on by people who’d survived them. Keep away from the mouth - those teeth are vicious. Don’t attack the chest; the flight muscles there are like armour. They’re not strong but they’ve got sinews like steel cables and the long reach of those arm bones’ll mean it can slap your silly head right off— Tiddles yowled and backed further under the Sorting Engine. Gryle slashed at Moist again, and came after him as he backed away. —but their necks snap easily if you can get inside their reach, and they have to shut their eyes when they scream. Gryle came forward, head bobbing as he strutted. There was nowhere else for Moist to go, so he tossed aside the wood and held up his hands. ‘All right, I give in,’ he said. ‘Just make it quick, okay?’ The creature kept looking at the golden suit; they had a magpie’s eye for glitter. ‘I’m going somewhere afterwards,’ said Moist helpfully. Gryle hesitated. He was hurt, disorientated and had eaten pigeons that were effluent on wings. He wanted to get out of here and up into the cool sky. Everything was too complicated here. There were too many targets, too many smells. For a banshee, everything was in the pounce, when teeth, claws and bodyweight all bore down at once. Now, bewildered, he strutted back and forth, trying to deal with the situation. There was no room to fly, nowhere else to go, the prey was standing there . . . instinct, emotion and some attempt at rational thought all banged together in Gryle’s overheated head. Instinct won. Leaping at things with your claws out had worked for a million years, so why stop now? He threw his head back, screamed, and sprang. So did Moist, ducking under the long arms. That wasn’t programmed into the banshee’s responses: the prey should be huddled, or running away. But Moist’s shoulder caught him in the chest. The creature was as light as a child. Moist felt a claw slash into his arm as he hurled the thing on to the Sorting Engine, and flung himself to the floor. For one horrible moment he thought it was going to get up, that he’d missed the wheel, but as the enraged Mr Gryle shifted there was a sound like . . . . . . gloop . . . . . . followed by silence. Moist lay on the cool flagstones until his heart slowed down to the point where he could make out individual beats. He was aware, as he lay there, that something sticky was dripping down the side of the machine. He arose slowly, on unsteady legs, and stared at what had become of the creature. If he’d been a hero, he would have taken the opportunity to say, ‘That’s what I call sorted!’ Since he wasn’t a hero, he threw up. A body doesn’t work properly when significant bits are not sharing the same space-time frame as the rest of it, but it does look more colourful. Then, clutching at his bleeding arm, Moist knelt down and looked under the engine for Tiddles. He had to come back with the cat, he thought muzzily. It was just something that had to happen. A man who rushes into a burning building to rescue a stupid cat and comes out carrying the cat is seen as a hero, even if he is a rather dumb one. If he comes out sans cat he’s a twit. A muffled thunder above them suggested that part of the building had fallen down. The air was roasting. Tiddles backed away from Moist’s hand. ‘Listen,’ Moist growled. ‘The hero has to come out with the cat. The cat doesn’t have to be alive—’ He lunged, grabbed Tiddles and dragged the cat out. ‘Right,’ he said, and picked up the suit hanger in his other hand. There were a few blobs of banshee on it, but, he thought light-headedly, he could probably find something to remove them. He lurched out into the corridor. There was a wall of fire at both ends, and Tiddles chose this moment to sink all four sets of claws into his arm. ‘Ah,’ said Moist. ‘Up until now it was going so well—’ ‘ Mr Lipvig! Are You All Right, Mr Lipvig?’ What golems removed from a fire was, in fact, the fire. They took out of a burning property everything that was burning. It was curiously surgical. They assembled at the edge of the fire and deprived it of anything to burn, herded it, cornered it, and stamped it to death. Golems could wade through lava and pour molten iron. Even if they knew what fear was, they wouldn’t find it in a mere burning building. Glowing rubble was hauled away from the steps by red-hot hands. Moist stared up into a landscape of flame but also, in front of it, Mr Pump. He was glowing orange. Specks of dust and dirt on his clay flashed and sparkled. ‘Good To See You, Mr Lipvig!’ he boomed cheerfully, tossing a crackling beam aside. ‘We Have Cleared A Path To The Door! Move With Speed!’ ‘Er . . . thank you!’ shouted Moist, above the roar of the flames. There was a path, dragged clear of debris, with the open door beckoning calmly and coolly at the end of it. Away towards the far end of the hall other golems, oblivious of the pillars of flame, were calmly throwing burning floorboards out through a hole in the wall. The heat was intense. Moist lowered his head, clutched the terrified cat to his chest, felt the back of his neck begin to roast and scampered forward. From then on, it became all one memory. The crashing noise high above. The metallic boom. The golem Anghammarad looking up, with his message glowing yellow on his cherry-red arm. Ten thousand tons of rainwater pouring down in deceptive slow motion. The cold hitting the glowing golem . . . . . . the explosion . . . Flames died. Sound died. Light died. ANGHAMMARAD. Anghammarad looked at his hands. There was nothing there except heat, furnace heat, blasting heat that nevertheless made the shapes of fingers. ANGHAMMARAD , a hollow voice repeated. ‘I Have Lost My Clay,’ said the golem. YES, said Death, THAT IS STANDARD. YOU ARE DEAD. SMASHED. EXPLODED INTO A MILLION PIECES. ‘Then Who Is This Doing The Listening?’ EVERYTHING THERE WAS ABOUT YOU THAT ISN’T CLAY. ‘Do You Have A Command For Me?’ said the remains of Anghammarad, standing up. NOT NOW. YOU HAVE REACHED THE PLACE WHERE THERE ARE NO MORE ORDERS. ‘What Shall I Do?’ I BELIEVE YOU HAVE FAILED TO UNDERSTAND MY LAST COMMENT. Anghammarad sat down again. Apart from the fact that there was sand rather than ooze underfoot, this place reminded him of the abyssal plain. GENERALLY PEOPLE LIKE TO MOVE ON, Death hinted. THEY LOOK FORWARD TO AN AFTERLIFE. ‘I Will Stay Here, Please.’ HERE? THERE’S NOTHING TO DO HERE, said Death. ‘Yes, I Know,’ said the ghost of the golem. ‘It Is Perfect. I Am Free.’ At two in the morning it began to rain. Things could have been worse. It could have rained snakes. It could have rained acid. There was still some roof, and some walls. That meant there was still some building. Moist and Miss Dearheart sat on some warm rubble outside the locker room, which was more or less the only room that could still be properly described as one. The golems had stamped out the last of the fire, shored things up and then, without a word, had gone back to not being a hammer until sunset. Miss Dearheart held a half-melted bronze band in her hand, and turned it over and over. ‘Eighteen thousand years,’ she whispered. ‘It was the rainwater tank,’ mumbled Moist, staring at nothing. ‘Fire and water,’ muttered Miss Dearheart. ‘But not both!’ ‘Can’t you . . . rebake him, or something?’ It sounded hopeless even as Moist said it. He’d seen the other golems scrabbling in the rubble. ‘Not enough left. Just dust, mixed up with everything else,’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘All he wanted to do was be useful.’ Moist looked at the remains of the letters. The flood had washed the black slurry of their ashes into every corner. All they wanted to do was be delivered, he thought. At a time like this, sitting on the sea bed for nine thousand years seemed quite attractive. ‘He was going to wait until the universe comes round again. Did you know that?’ ‘You told me, yes,’ said Moist. There’s no stink more sorrowful than the stink of wet, burnt paper, Moist thought. It means: the end. ‘Vetinari won’t rebuild this place, you know,’ Miss Dearheart went on. ‘Gilt will get people to make a fuss if he tries it. Waste of city funds. He’s got friends. People who owe him money and favours. He’s good at that sort of people.’ ‘It was Gilt who had this place torched,’ said Moist. ‘He was shocked to see me back in the restaurant. He thought I’d be here.’ ‘You’ll never be able to prove it.’ Probably not, Moist agreed, in the sour, smoke-addled hollow of his head. The Watch had turned up with more speed than Moist had found usual amongst city policemen. They had a werewolf with them. Oh, probably most people would have thought it was just a handsome dog, but grow up in Uberwald with a grandfather who bred dogs and you learned to spot the signs. This one had a collar, and snuffled around while the embers were still smoking, and found something extra to scent in the pall of steaming ashes. They’d dug down, and there had been an awkward interview. Moist had handled it as well as he could manage, in the circumstances. The key point was never to tell the truth. Coppers never believed what people told them in any case, so there was no point in giving them extra work. ‘A winged skeleton?’ Moist had said, with what surely sounded like genuine surprise. ‘Yes, sir. About the size of a man, but very . . . damaged. I could even say mangled. I wonder if you know anything about it?’ This watchman was a captain. Moist hadn’t been able to make him out. His face gave nothing away that he didn’t want to let go of. Something about him suggested that he already knew the answers but was asking the questions for the look of the thing. ‘Perhaps it was an extra large pigeon? They’re real pests in this building,’ Moist had said. ‘I doubt it, sir. We believe it to have been a banshee, Mr Lipwig,’ said the captain patiently. ‘They’re very rare.’ ‘I thought they just screamed on the rooftops of people who are going to die,’ said Moist. ‘The civilized ones do, sir. The wild ones cut out the middle man. Your young man said he hit something?’ ‘Stanley did say something about, oh, something flying around,’ said Moist. ‘But I thought it was simply—’ ‘—an extra large pigeon. I see. And you’ve no idea how the fire started? I know you use safety lamps in here.’ ‘Probably spontaneous combustion in the letter piles, I’m afraid,’ said Moist, who’d had time to think about this one. ‘No one has been behaving oddly?’ ‘In the Post Office, captain, it’s very hard to tell. Believe me.’ ‘No threats made, sir? By anyone you may have upset, perhaps?’ ‘None at all.’ The captain had sighed and put away his notebook. ‘I’ll have a couple of men watching the building overnight, nevertheless,’ he’d said. ‘Well done for saving the cat, sir. That was a big cheer you got when you came out. Just one thing, though, sir . . .’ ‘Yes, captain?’ ‘Why would a banshee - or possibly a giant pigeon - attack Mr Groat?’ And Moist thought: the hat . . . ‘I have no idea,’ he said. ‘Yes, sir. I’m sure you haven’t,’ said the captain. ‘I’m sure you haven’t. I’m Captain Ironfoundersson, sir, although most people call me Captain Carrot. Don’t hesitate to contact me, sir, if anything occurs to you. We are here for your protection.’ And what would you have done against a banshee? Moist had thought. You suspect Gilt. Well done. But people like Gilt don’t bother with the law. They never break it, they just use people who do. And you’ll never find anything written down, anywhere. Just before the captain had turned to go Moist was sure that the werewolf had winked at him. Now, with the rain drifting in and hissing where the stones were still warm, Moist looked around at the fires. There were still plenty of them, where the golems had dumped the rubble. This being Ankh-Morpork, people of the night had risen like the mists and gathered around them for warmth. This place would need a fortune spent on it. Well? He knew where to lay his hands on plenty of money, didn’t he? He didn’t have much use for it. It had only ever been a way of keeping score. But then this would all end, because it had belonged to Albert Spangler and the rest of them, not to an innocent postmaster. He took off his golden hat and looked at it. An avatar, Pelc had said. The human embodiment of a god. But he wasn’t a god, he was just a conman in a golden suit, and the con was over. Where was the angel now? Where were the gods when you needed them? The gods could help. The hat glinted in the firelight, and parts of Moist’s brain sparkled. He didn’t breathe as the thought emerged, in case it took fright, but it was so simple. And something that no honest man would ever have thought of . . . ‘What we need,’ he said, ‘is . . .’ ‘Is what?’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘Is music!’ declared Moist. He stood up and cupped his hands. ‘Hey, you people! Any banjo players out there? A fiddle, maybe? I’ll give a one-dollar stamp, highly collectable, to anyone who can pick out a waltz tune. You know, one-two-three, one-two-three?’ ‘Have you gone completely mad?’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘You’re clearly—’ She stopped, because a shabbily dressed man had tapped Moist on the shoulder. ‘I can play the banjo,’ he said, ‘and my friend Humphrey here can blow the harmonica something cruel. The fee will be a dollar, sir. Coin, please, if it’s all the same to you, on account of how I can’t write and don’t know anyone who can read.’ ‘My lovely Miss Dearheart,’ said Moist, smiling madly at her. ‘Do you have any other name? Some pet name or nickname, some delightful little diminutive you don’t mind being called?’ ‘Are you drunk?’ she demanded. ‘Unfortunately, no,’ said Moist. ‘But I’d like to be. Well, Miss Dearheart? I even rescued my best suit!’ She was taken aback, but an answer escaped before natural cynicism could bar the door. ‘My brother used to call me . . . er . . .’ ‘Yes?’ ‘Killer,’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘But he meant it in a nice way. Don’t you even think about using it.’ ‘How about Spike?’ ‘ Spike? We-ell, I could live with Spike,’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘So you will, too. But this is not the time for dancing—’ ‘On the contrary, Spike,’ said Moist, beaming in the firelight, ‘this is just the time. We’ll dance, and then we’ll get things cleaned up ready for opening time, get the mail delivery working again, order the rebuilding of the building and have everything back the way it was. Just watch me.’ ‘You know, perhaps it is true that working for the Post Office drives people mad,’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘Just where will you get the money to have this place rebuilt?’ ‘The gods will provide,’ said Moist. ‘Trust me on this.’ She peered at him. ‘You’re serious?’ ‘Deadly,’ said Moist. ‘You’re going to pray for money?’ ‘Not exactly, Spike. They get thousands of prayers every day. I have other plans. We’ll bring the Post Office back, Miss Dearheart. I don’t have to think like a policeman, or a postman, or a clerk. I just have to do things my way. And then I’ll bankrupt Reacher Gilt by the end of the week.’ Her mouth became a perfect O. ‘How exactly will you do that?’ she managed. ‘I’ve no idea, but anything is possible if I can dance with you and still have ten toes left. Shall we dance, Miss Dearheart?’ She was amazed and surprised and bewildered, and Moist von Lipwig liked that in a person. For some reason, he felt immensely happy. He didn’t know why, and he didn’t know what he was going to do next, but it was going to be fun. He could feel that old electric feeling, the one you got deep inside when you stood right there in front of a banker who was carefully examining an example of your very best work. The universe held its breath, and then the man would smile and say ‘Very good, Mr Assumed Name, I will have my clerk bring up the money right away.’ It was the thrill not of the chase but of the standing still, of remaining so calm, composed and genuine that, for just long enough, you could fool the world and spin it on your finger. They were the moments he lived for, when he was really alive and his thoughts flowed like quicksilver and the very air sparkled. Later, that feeling would present its bill. For now, he flew. He was back in the game. But, for now, by the light of the burning yesterdays, he waltzed with Miss Dearheart while the scratch band scratched away. Then she went home to bed, puzzled but smiling oddly, and he went up to his office, which was missing the whole of one wall, and got religion as it had never been got before. The young priest of Offler the Crocodile God was somewhat off-balance at 4 a.m., but the man in the winged hat and golden suit seemed to know what should be happening and so the priest went along with it. He was not hugely bright, which was why he was on this shift. ‘You want to deliver this letter to Offler?’ he said, yawning. An envelope had been placed in his hand. ‘It’s addressed to him,’ said Moist. ‘And correctly stamped. A smartly written letter always gets attention. I’ve also brought a pound of sausages, which I believe is customary. Crocodiles love sausages.’ ‘Strictly speaking, you see, it’s prayers that go up to the gods,’ said the priest doubtfully. The nave of the temple was deserted, except for a little old man in a grubby robe, dreamily sweeping the floor. ‘As I understand it,’ said Moist, ‘the gift of sausages reaches Offler by being fried, yes? And the spirit of the sausages ascends unto Offler by means of the smell? And then you eat the sausages?’ ‘Ah, no. Not exactly. Not at all,’ said the young priest, who knew this one. ‘It might look like that to the uninitiated, but, as you say, the true sausagidity goes straight to Offler. He, of course, eats the spirit of the sausages. We eat the mere earthly shell, which believe me turns to dust and ashes in our mouths.’ ‘That would explain why the smell of sausages is always better than the actual sausage, then?’ said Moist. ‘I’ve often noticed that.’ The priest was impressed. ‘Are you a theologian, sir?’ he said. ‘I’m in . . . a similar line of work,’ said Moist. ‘But what I’m getting at is this: if you were to read this letter it would be as though Offler himself was reading it, am I right? Through your eyeballs the spirit of the letter would ascend unto Offler? And then I could give you the sausages.’ The young priest looked desperately around the temple. It was too early in the morning. When your god, metaphorically, doesn’t do much until the sandbanks have got nice and warm, the senior priests tend to lie in. ‘I suppose so,’ he said reluctantly. ‘But would you rather wait until Deacon Jones gets—’ ‘I’m in rather a hurry,’ said Moist. There was a pause. ‘I’ve brought some honey mustard,’ he added. ‘The perfect accompaniment to sausages.’ Suddenly, the priest was all attention. ‘What sort?’ he said. ‘Mrs Edith Leakall’s Premium Reserve,’ said Moist, holding up the jar. The young man’s face lit up. He was low in the hierarchy and got barely more sausage than Offler. ‘God, that’s the expensive stuff!’ he breathed. ‘Yes, it’s the hint of wild garlic that does it,’ said Moist. ‘But perhaps I should wait until Deacon—’ The priest grabbed the letter and the jar. ‘No, no, I can see you are in a hurry,’ he said. ‘I’ll do it right away. It’s probably a request for help, yes?’ ‘Yes. I’d like Offler to let the light of his eyes and the gleam of his teeth shine on my colleague Tolliver Groat, who is in the Lady Sybil Hospital,’ said Moist. ‘Oh, yes,’ said the acolyte, relieved, ‘we often do this sort of—’ ‘And I would also like one hundred and fifty thousand dollars,’ Moist went on. ‘Ankh-Morpork dollars preferred, of course, but other reasonably hard currencies would be acceptable.’ There was a certain spring in his step as Moist walked back to the ruin of the Post Office. He’d sent letters to Offler, Om and Blind Io, all important gods, and also to Anoia, a minor goddess of Things That Stick In Drawers.* She had no temple and was handled by a jobbing priestess in Cable Street, but Moist had a feeling that by the end of the day Anoia was destined for higher things. He only picked her because he liked the name. * Often, but not uniquely, a ladle, but sometimes a metal spatula or, rarely, a mechanical egg-whisk that nobody in the house admits to ever buying. The desperate mad rattling and cries of ‘How can it close on the damn thing but not open with it? Who bought this? Do we ever use it?’ is as praise unto Anoia. She also eats corkscrews. He’d leave it about an hour. Gods worked fast, didn’t they? The Post Office was no better by grey daylight. About half of the building was still standing. Even with tarpaulins, the area under cover was small and dank. People were milling around, uncertain of what to do. He’d tell them. The first person he saw was George Aggy, heading for him at a high-speed hobble. ‘Terrible thing, sir, terrible thing. I came as soon as—’ he began. ‘Good to see you, George. How’s the leg?’ ‘What? Oh, feels fine, sir. Glows in the dark, but on the other hand that’s a great saving in candles. What are we—’ ‘You’re my deputy while Mr Groat’s in hospital,’ said Moist. ‘How many postmen can you muster?’ ‘About a dozen, sir, but what shall we—’ ‘Get the mail moving, Mr Aggy! That’s what we do. Tell everyone that today’s special is Pseudopolis for ten pence, guaranteed! Everyone else can get on with cleaning up. There’s still some roof left. We’re open as usual. More open than usual.’ ‘But . . .’ Aggy’s words failed him, and he waved at the debris. ‘All this?’ ‘Neither rain nor fire, Mr Aggy!’ said Moist sharply. ‘Doesn’t say that on the motto, sir,’ said Aggy. ‘It will by tomorrow. Ah, Jim . . .’ The coachman bore down on Moist, his enormous driving cape flapping. ‘It was bloody Gilt, wasn’t it!’ he growled. ‘Arson around! What can we do for you, Mr Lipwig?’ ‘Can you still run a service to Pseudopolis today?’ said Moist. ‘Yes,’ said Jim. ‘Harry and the lads got all the horses out as soon as they smelled smoke, and only lost one coach. We’ll help you, damn right about that, but the Trunk is running okay. You’ll be wasting your time.’ ‘You provide the wheels, Jim, and I’ll give them something to carry,’ said Moist. ‘We’ll have a bag for you at ten.’ ‘You’re very certain, Mr Lipwig,’ said Jim, putting his head on one side. ‘An angel came and told me in my sleep,’ said Moist. Jim grinned. ‘Ah, that’d be it, then. An angel, eh? A very present help in times of trouble, or so I’m given to understand.’ ‘So I believe,’ said Moist, and went up to the draughty, smoke-blackened, three-walled cave that was the wreckage of his office. He brushed off the ash from the chair, reached into his pocket, and put the Smoking Gnu’s letter on his desk. The only people who could know when a clacks tower would break down must work for the company, right? Or used to work for it, more likely. Hah. That’s how things happened. That bank in Sto Lat, for example - he’d never have been able to forge those bills if that bent clerk hadn’t sold him that old ledger with all the signatures in. That had been a good day. The Grand Trunk mustn’t just make enemies, it must mass-produce them. And now this Smoking Gnu wanted to help him. Outlaw signallers. Think of all the secrets they’d know . . . He’d kept an ear open for clock chimes, and it was gone a quarter to nine now. What would they do? Blow up a tower? But people worked in the towers. Surely not . . . ‘Oh, Mr Lipwig!’ It is not often that a wailing woman rushes into a room and throws herself at a man. It had never happened to Moist before. Now it happened, and it seemed such a waste that the woman was Miss Maccalariat. She tottered forward and clung to the startled Moist, tears streaming down her face. ‘Oh, Mr Lipwig!’ she wailed. ‘Oh, Mr Lipwig!’ Moist reeled under her weight. She was dragging at his collar so hard that he was likely to end up on the floor, and the thought of being found on the floor with Miss Maccalariat was— well, a thought that just couldn’t be thoughted. The head would explode before entertaining it. She had a pink hairgrip in her grey hair. It had little hand-painted violets on it. The sight of it, a few inches from Moist’s eyes, was curiously disturbing. ‘Now, now, steady on, Miss Maccalariat, steady on,’ he muttered, trying to keep the balance for both of them. ‘Oh, Mr Lipwig!’ ‘Yes indeed, Miss Maccalariat,’ he said desperately. ‘What can I do for—’ ‘Mr Aggy said the Post Office won’t ever be rebuilt! He says Lord Vetinari will never release the money! Oh, Mr Lipwig! I dreamed all my life of working on the counter here! My grandmother taught me everything, she even made me practise sucking lemons to get the expression right! I’ve passed it all on to my daughter, too. She’s got a voice that’d take the skin off paint! Oh, Mr Lipwig!’ Moist searched wildly for somewhere to pat the woman that wasn’t soaked or out of bounds. He settled for her shoulder. He really, really needed Mr Groat. Mr Groat knew how to deal with things like this. ‘It’s all going to be all right, Miss Maccalariat,’ he said soothingly. ‘And poor Mr Groat!’ the woman sobbed. ‘I understand he’s going to be fine, Miss Maccalariat. You know what they say about the Lady Sybil: some people come out alive.’ I really, really hope he does, he added to himself. I’m lost without him. ‘It’s all so dreadful, Mr Lipwig!’ said Miss Maccalariat, determined to drain the bitter cup of despair to the very dregs. ‘We’re all going to be walking the streets!’ Moist held her by her arms and pushed her gently away, while fighting against a mental picture of Miss Maccalariat walking the streets. ‘Now you listen to me, Miss Mac— What is your first name, by the way?’ ‘It’s Iodine, Mr Lipwig,’ said Miss Maccalariat, snuffling into a handkerchief. ‘My father liked the sound.’ ‘Well . . . Iodine, I firmly believe that I will have the money to rebuild by the end of the day,’ said Moist. She’s blown her nose on it and, yes, yes, aargh, she’s going to put it back up the sleeve of her cardigan, oh, gods . . . ‘Yes, Mr Aggy said that, and there’s talk, sir. They say you sent the gods letters asking for money! Oh, sir! It’s not my place to say so, sir, but gods don’t send you money!’ ‘I have faith, Miss Maccalariat,’ said Moist, drawing himself up. ‘My family have been Anoians for five generations, sir,’ said Miss Maccalariat. ‘We rattle the drawers every day, and we’ve never got anything solid, as you might say, excepting my granny who got an egg beater she didn’t remember putting there and we’re sure that was an accident—’ ‘Mr Lipwig! Mr Lipwig!’ someone yelled. ‘They say the clacks— Oh, I’m so sorry . . .’ The sentence ended in syrup. Moist sighed, and turned to the grinning newcomer in the charcoal-rimmed doorway. ‘ Yes, Mr Aggy?’ ‘We’ve heard the clacks has gone down again, sir! To Pseudopolis!’ said Aggy. ‘How unfortunate,’ said Moist. ‘Come, Miss Maccalariat, come, Mr Aggy - let’s move the mail!’ There was a crowd in what remained of the hall. As Moist had remarked, the citizens had an enthusiasm for new things. The post was an old thing, of course, but it was so old that it had magically become new again. A cheer greeted Moist when he came down the steps. Give them a show, always give them a show. Ankh-Morpork would applaud a show. Moist commandeered a chair, stood on it and cupped his hands. ‘Special today, ladies and gentlemen!’ he shouted above the din. ‘Mail to Pseudopolis, reduced to three pence only. Three pence! Coach goes at ten! And if anyone has clacks messages lodged with our unfortunate colleagues in the Grand Trunk Company, and would care to get them back, we will deliver them for free!’ This caused an additional stir, and a number of people peeled away from the crowd and hurried off. ‘The Post Office, ladies and gentlemen!’ yelled Moist. ‘We deliver!’ There was a cheer. ‘Do you want to know something really interesting, Mr Lipwig?’ said Stanley, hurrying up. ‘And what’s that, Stanley?’ said Moist, climbing down off the chair. ‘We’re selling lots of the new one-dollar stamps this morning! And do you know what? People are sending letters to themselves!’ ‘What?’ said Moist, mystified. ‘Just so the stamps have been through the post, sir. That makes them real, you see! It proves they’ve been used. They’re collecting, them, sir! And it gets better, sir!’ ‘How could it get better than that, Stanley?’ said Moist. He looked down. Yes, the boy had a new shirt, showing a picture of the penny stamp and bearing the legend: Ask Me About Stamps. ‘Sto Lat want Teemer and Spools to do them their own set! And the other cities are asking about it, too!’ Moist made a mental note: we’ll change the stamps often. And offer stamp designs to every city and country we can think of. Everyone will want to have their own stamps rather than ‘lick Vetinari’s back side’ and we’ll honour them, too, if they’ll deliver our mail, and Mr Spools will express his gratitude to us in very definite ways, I’ll see to it. ‘Sorry about your pins, Stanley.’ ‘Pins?’ said the boy. ‘Oh, pins. Pins are just pointy metal things, sir. Pins are dead! And so we progress, thought Moist. Aways keep moving. There may be something behind you. All we need now is for the gods to smile on us. Hmm. I think they’ll smile a little broader outside. Moist stepped out into the daylight. The difference between the inside and the outside of the Post Office was less marked than formerly, but there were still a lot of people. There were a couple of watchmen, too. They’d be useful. They were already watching him suspiciously. Well, this was it. It was going to be a miracle. Actually, it bloody well was going to be a miracle! Moist stared up into the sky, and listened to the voices of the gods. Chapter Eleven Mission Statement In which Lord Vetinari Gives Advice - Mr Lipwig’s Bad Memory - Evil Criminal Geniuses’ difficulty with finding property — Mr Groat’s Fear of Bathing, and a Discussion on Explosive Underwear — Mr Pony and his flimsies - The Board debates, Gilt decides - Moist von Lipwig Attempts the Impossible The clocks were chiming seven o’clock. ‘Ah, Mr Lipwig,’ said Lord Vetinari, looking up. ‘Thank you so much for dropping in. It has been such a busy day, has it not? Drumknott, do help Mr Lipwig to a chair. Prophecy can be very exhausting, I believe.’ Moist waved the clerk away and eased his aching body into a seat. ‘I didn’t exactly decide to drop in,’ he said. ‘A large troll watchman walked in and grabbed me by the arm.’ ‘Ah, to steady you, I have no doubt,’ said Lord Vetinari, who was poring over the battle between the stone trolls and the stone dwarfs. ‘You accompanied him of your own free will, did you not?’ ‘I’m very attached to my arm,’ said Moist. ‘I thought I’d better follow it. What can I do for you, my lord?’ Vetinari got up and went and sat in the chair behind his desk, where he regarded Moist with what almost looked like amusement. ‘Commander Vimes has given me some succinct reports of today’s events,’ he said, putting down the troll figure he was holding and turning over a few sheets of paper. ‘Beginning with the riot at the Grand Trunk offices this morning which, he says, you instigated . . . ?’ ‘All I did was volunteer to deliver such clacks messages as had been held up by the unfortunate breakdown,’ said Moist. ‘I didn’t expect the idiots in their office to refuse to hand the messages back to their customers! People had paid in advance, after all. I was just helping everyone in a difficult time. And I certainly didn’t “instigate” anyone to hit a clerk with a chair!’ ‘Of course not, of course not,’ said Lord Vetinari. ‘I am sure you acted quite innocently and from the best of intentions. But I am agog to hear about the gold, Mr Lipwig. One hundred and fifty thousand dollars, I believe.’ ‘Some of it I can’t quite remember,’ said Moist. ‘It’s all a bit unclear.’ ‘Yes, yes, I imagine it was. Perhaps I can clarify a few details?’ said Lord Vetinari. ‘Around mid-morning, Mr Lipwig, you were chatting to people outside your regrettably distressed building when’ - here the Patrician glanced at his notes - ‘you suddenly looked up, shielded your eyes, dropped to your knees and screamed, “Yes, yes, thank you, I am not worthy, glory be, may your teeth be picked clean by birds, halleluiah, rattle your drawers” and similar phrases, to the general concern of people nearby, and you then stood up with your hands outstretched and shouted “One hundred and fifty thousand dollars, buried in a field! Thank you, thank you, I shall fetch it immediately!” Whereupon you wrested a shovel from one of the men helping to clear the debris of the building and began to walk with some purpose out of the city.’ ‘Really?’ said Moist. ‘It’s all a bit of a blank.’ ‘I’m sure it is,’ said Vetinari happily. ‘You will probably be quite surprised to know that a number of people followed you, Mr Lipwig? Including Mr Pump and two members of the City Watch?’ ‘Good heavens, did they?’ ‘Quite. For several hours. You stopped to pray on a number of occasions. We must assume it was for the guidance which led your footsteps, at last, to a small wood among the cabbage fields.’ ‘It did? I’m afraid it’s all rather a blur,’ said Moist. ‘I understand you dug like a demon, according to the Watch. And I note that a number of reputable witnesses were there when your shovel struck the lid of the chest. I understand the Times will be carrying a picture in the next edition.’ Moist said nothing. It was the only way to be sure. ‘Any comments, Mr Lipwig?’ ‘No, my lord, not really.’ ‘Hmm. About three hours ago I had the senior priests of three of the major religions in this office, along with a rather bewildered freelance priestess who I gather handles the worldly affairs of Anoia on an agency basis. They all claim that it was their god or goddess who told you where the gold was. You don’t happen to remember which one it was, do you?’ ‘I sort of felt the voice rather than heard it,’ said Moist carefully. ‘Quite so,’ said Vetinari. ‘Incidentally, they all felt that their temples should get a tithe of the money,’ he added. ‘Each.’ ‘Sixty thousand dollars?’ said Moist, sitting up. ‘That’s not right!’ ‘I commend the speed of your mental arithmetic in your shaken state. No lack of clarity there, I’m glad to see,’ said Vetinari. ‘I would advise you to donate fifty thousand, split four ways. It is, after all, in a very public and very definite and incontrovertible way, a gift from the gods. Is this not a time for reverential gratitude?’ There was a lengthy pause, and then Moist raised a finger and managed, against all the odds, a cheerful smile. ‘Sound advice, my lord. Besides, a man never knows when he might need a prayer.’ ‘Exactly,’ said Lord Vetinari. ‘It is less than they demanded but more than they expect, and I did point out to them that the remainder of the money was all going to be used for the civic good. It is going to be used for the civic good, isn’t it, Mr Lipwig?’ ‘Oh, yes. Indeed!’ ‘That is just as well, since currently it’s sitting in Commander Vimes’s cells.’ Vetinari looked down at Moist’s trousers. ‘I see you still have mud all over your lovely golden suit, Postmaster. Fancy all that money being buried in a field. And you can still remember nothing about how you got there?’ Vetinari’s expression was getting on Moist’s nerves. You know, he thought. I know you know. You know I know you know. But I know you can’t be certain, not certain. ‘Well . . . there was an angel,’ he said. ‘Indeed? Any particular kind?’ ‘The kind you only get one of, I think,’ said Moist. ‘Ah, good. Well, then it all seems very clear to me,’ said Vetinari, sitting back. ‘It is not often a mortal man achieves such a moment of glorious epiphany, but I am assured by the priests that such a thing could happen, and who should know better than they? Anyone even suggesting that the money was in some way . . . obtained in some wrong fashion will have to argue with some very turbulent priests and also, I assume, find their kitchen drawers quite impossible to shut. Besides, you are donating money to the city—’ he held up his hand when Moist opened his mouth, and went on, ‘that is, the Post Office, so the notion of private gain does not arise. There appears to be no owner for the money, although so far, of course, nine hundred and thirty-eight people would like me to believe it belongs to them. Such is life in Ankh-Morpork. So, Mr Lipwig, you are instructed to rebuild the Post Office as soon as possible. The bills will be met and, since the money is effectively a gift from the gods, there will be no drain on our taxes. Well done, Mr Lipwig. Very well done. Don’t let me detain you.’ Moist actually had his hand on the door handle when the voice behind him said: ‘Just one minor thing, Mr Lipwig.’ He stopped. ‘Yes, sir?’ ‘It occurs to me that the sum which the gods so generously have seen fit to bestow upon us does, by pure happenstance, approximate to the estimated haul of a notorious criminal, which as far as I know has never been recovered.’ Moist stared at the woodwork in front of him. Why is this man ruling just one city? he thought. Why isn’t he ruling the world? Is this how he treats other people? It’s like being a puppet. The difference is, he arranges for you to pull your own strings. He turned, face carefully deadpan. Lord Vetinari had walked over to his game. ‘Really, sir? Who was that, then?’ he said. ‘One Albert Spangler, Mr Lipwig.’ ‘He’s dead, sir,’ said Moist. ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Yes, sir. I was there when they hanged him.’ ‘Well remembered, Mr Lipwig,’ said Vetinari, moving a dwarf all the way across the board. Damn, damn, damn! Moist shouted, but only for internal consumption. He’d worked hard for that mon— well, the banks and merchants had worked har— well, somewhere down the line someone had worked hard for that money, and now a third of it had been . . . well, stolen, that was the only word for it. Moist experienced a certain amount of unrighteous indignation about this. Of course he would have given most of it to the Post Office, that was the whole point, but you could construct a damn good building for a lot less than a hundred thousand dollars and Moist had been hoping for a little something for himself. Still, he felt good. Perhaps this was that ‘wonderful warm feeling’ people talked about. And what would he have done with the money? He never had time to spend it in any case. After all, what could a master criminal buy? There was a shortage of seaside properties with real lava flows near a reliable source of piranhas, and the world sure as hell didn’t need another Dark Lord, not with Gilt doing so well. Gilt didn’t need a tower with ten thousand trolls camped outside. He just needed a ledger and a sharp mind. It worked better, was cheaper and he could go out and party at night. Handing all that gold over to a copper had been a difficult thing to do, but there really was no choice. He’d got them by the short and curlies, anyway. No one was going to stand up and say the gods didn’t do this sort of thing. True, they’d never done it so far, but you could never tell, with gods. Certainly there were queues outside the three temples, once the Times had put out its afternoon edition. This had presented a philosophical problem to the priesthoods. They were officially against people laying up treasures on earth but, they had to admit, it was always good to get bums on pews, feet in sacred groves, hands rattling drawers and fingers being trailed in the baby crocodile pool. They settled therefore for a kind of twinkle-eyed denial that it could happen again, while hinting that, well, you never know, ineffable are the ways of gods, eh? Besides, petitioners standing in line with their letter asking for a big bag of cash were open to the suggestion that those most likely to receiveth were the ones who had already givethed, and got the message once you’d tapped them on the head with the collecting plate a few times. Even Miss Extremelia Mume, whose small multi-purpose temple over a bookmakers’ office in Cable Street handled the everyday affairs of several dozen minor gods, was doing good business among those prepared to back an outside chance. She’d hung a banner over the door. It read: It Could Be YOU. It couldn’t happen. It shouldn’t happen. But, you never knew . . . this time it might. Moist recognized that hope. It was how he’d made his living. You knew that the man running the Find The Lady game was going to win, you knew that people in distress didn’t sell diamond rings for a fraction of their value, you knew that life generally handed you the sticky end of the stick, and you knew that the gods didn’t pick some everyday undeserving tit out of the population and hand them a fortune. Except that, this time, you might be wrong, right? It might just happen, yes? And this was known as that greatest of treasures, which is Hope. It was a good way of getting poorer really very quickly, and staying poor. It could be you. But it wouldn’t be. Now Moist von Lipwig headed along Attic Bee Street, towards the Lady Sybil Free Hospital. Heads turned as he went past. He’d never been off the front page for days, after all. He just had to hope that the winged hat and golden suit were the ultimate in furniture; people saw the gold, not the face. The hospital was still being built, as all hospitals are, but it had its own queue at the entrance. Moist dealt with that by ignoring it, and going straight in. There were, in the main hallway, people who looked like the kind of people whose job it is to say ‘oi, you!’ when other people just wander in, but Moist generated his personal ‘I’m too important to be stopped’ field and they never quite managed to frame the words. And, of course, once you got past the doorway demons of any organization people just assumed you had a right to be there, and gave you directions. Mr Groat was in a room by himself; a sign on the door said ‘Do Not Enter’, but Moist seldom bothered about that sort of thing. The old man was sitting up in bed, looking gloomy, but he beamed as soon as he saw Moist. ‘Mr Lipwig! You’re a sight for sore eyes, sir! Can you find out where they’ve hid my trousers? I told them I was fit as a flea, sir, but they went and hid my trousers! Help me out of here before they carry me away to another bath, sir. A bath, sir!’ ‘They have to carry you?’ said Moist. ‘Can’t you walk, Tolliver?’ ‘Yessir, but I fights ‘em, fights ‘em, sir. A bath, sir? From wimmin? Oggling at my trumpet-and-skittles? I call that shameless! Everyone knows soap kills the natural effulgences, sir! Oh, sir! They’re holdin’ me pris’ner, sir! They gived me a trouserectomy, sir!’ ‘Please calm down, Mr Groat,’ said Moist urgently. The old man had gone quite red in the face. ‘You’re all right, then?’ ‘Just a scratch, sir, look . . .’ Groat unfastened the buttons of his nightshirt. ‘See?’ he said triumphantly. Moist nearly fainted. The banshee had tried to make a noughts-and-crosses board out of the man’s chest. Someone else had stitched it neatly. ‘Nice job of work, I’ll give them that,’ Groat said grudgingly. ‘But I’ve got to be up and doing, sir, up and doing!’ ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ said Moist, staring at the mess of scabs. ‘Right as rain, sir. I told ‘em, sir, if a banshee can’t get at me through my chest protector, none of their damn invisible little biting demons are going to manage it. I bet it’s all going wrong, sir, with Aggy bossing people around? I bet it is! I bet you really need me, right, sir?’ ‘Urn, yes,’ said Moist. ‘Are they giving you medicine?’ ‘Hah, they call it medicine, sir. They gave me a lot of ol’ mumbo-pocus about it being wonderful stuff, but it’s got neither taste nor smell, if you want my opinion. They say it’ll do me good but I told ‘em it’s hard work that does me good, sir, not sitting in soapy water with young wimmin lookin’ at my rattle-and-flute. And they took my hair away! They called it unhygienic, sir! What a nerve! All right, it moves about a bit of its own accord, but that’s only natural. I’ve had my hair a long time, sir. I’m used to its funny little ways!’ ‘Hwhat is going on here?’ said a voice full of offended ownership. Moist turned. If one of the rules that should be passed on to a young man is ‘don’t get mixed up with crazy girls who smoke like a bellows’, another one should be ‘run away from any woman who pronounces “what” with two Hs’. This woman might have been two women. She certainly had the cubic capacity and, since she was dressed entirely in white, looked rather like an iceberg. But chillier. And with sails. And with a headdress starched to a cutting edge. Two smaller women stood behind and on either side of her, in definite danger of being crushed if she stepped backwards. ‘I’ve come to see Mr Groat,’ said Moist weakly, while Groat gibbered and pulled the bedclothes over his head. ‘ Quite impossible! I am the matron here, young man, and I must insist that you leave at once! Mr Groat is in an extremely unstable condition.’ ‘He seems fine to me,’ said Moist. He had to admire the look the matron gave him. It suggested that Moist had just been found adhering to the sole of her shoe. He returned it with a chilly one of his own. ‘Young man, his condition is extremely critical!’ she snapped. ‘I refuse to release him!’ ‘Madam, illness is not a crime!’ said Moist. ‘People are not released from hospital, they are discharged!’ The matron drew herself up and out, and gave Moist a smile of triumph. ‘That, young man, is hwhat we are afraid of!’ Moist was sure doctors kept skeletons around to cow patients. Nyer, nyer, we know what you look like underneath . . . He quite approved, though. He had a certain fellow feeling. Places like the Lady Sybil were very rare these days, but Moist felt certain he could make a profitable career out of wearing a white robe, using long learned names for ailments like ‘runny nose’ and looking solemnly at things in bottles. On the other side of the desk, a Dr Lawn - he had his name on a plate on his desk, because doctors are very busy and can’t remember everything - looked up from his notes on Tolliver Groat. ‘It was quite interesting, Mr Lipwig. It was the first time I’ve ever had to operate to remove the patient’s clothing,’ he said. ‘You don’t happen to know what the poultice was made of, do you? He wouldn’t tell us.’ ‘I believe it’s layers of flannel, goose grease and bread pudding,’ said Moist, staring around at the office. ‘Bread pudding? Really bread pudding?’ ‘Apparently so,’ said Moist. ‘Not something alive, then? It seemed leathery to us,’ said the doctor, leafing through the notes. ‘Ah, yes, here we are. Yes, his trousers were the subject of a controlled detonation after one of his socks exploded. We’re not sure why.’ ‘He fills them with sulphur and charcoal to keep his feet fresh, and he soaks his trousers in saltpetre to prevent Gnats,’ said Moist. ‘He’s a great believer in natural medicine, you see. He doesn’t trust doctors.’ ‘Really?’ said Dr Lawn. ‘He retains some vestige of sanity, then. Incidentally, it’s wisest not to argue with the nursing staff. I find the wisest course of action is to throw some chocolates in one direction and hurry off in the other while their attention is distracted. Mr Groat thinks that every man is his own physician, I gather?’ ‘He makes his own medicines,’ Moist explained. ‘He starts every day with a quarter of a pint of gin mixed with spirits of nitre, flour of sulphur, juniper and the juice of an onion. He says it clears the tubes.’ ‘Good heavens, I’m sure it does. Does he smoke at all?’ Moist considered this. ‘No-o. It looks more like steam,’ he said. ‘And his background in basic alchemy is . . . ?’ ‘Non-existent, as far as I know,’ said Moist. ‘He makes some interesting cough sweets, though. After you’ve sucked them for two minutes you can feel the wax running out of your ears. He paints his knees with some sort of compound of iodine and—’ ‘Enough!’ said the doctor. ‘Mr Lipwig, there are times when we humble practitioners of the craft of medicine have to stand aside in astonishment. Quite a long way aside, in the case of Mr Groat, and preferably behind a tree. Take him away, please. I have to say that against all the odds I found him amazingly healthy. I can quite see why an attack by a banshee would be so easily shrugged off. In fact Mr Groat is probably unkillable by any normal means, although I advise you not to let him take up tap dancing. Oh, and do take his wig, will you? We tried putting it in a cupboard, but it got out. We’ll send the bill to the Post Office, shall we?’ ‘I thought this said “Free Hospital” on the sign,’ said Moist. ‘Broadly, yes, broadly,’ said Dr Lawn. ‘But those on whom the gods have bestowed so many favours - one hundred and fifty thousand of them, I heard - probably have had all the charity they require, hmm?’ And it’s all sitting in the Watch’s cells, thought Moist. He reached into his jacket and produced a crumpled wad of green Ankh-Morpork one-dollar stamps. ‘Will you take these?’ he said. The picture of Tiddles being carried out of the Post Office by Moist von Lipwig was, since it concerned an animal, considered to be full of human interest by the Times and was thus displayed prominently on the front page. Reacher Gilt looked at it without displaying so much as a flicker of emotion. Then he reread the story next to it, under the headlines: MAN SAVES CAT ‘We’ll Rebuild Bigger!’ Vow as Post Office Blazes $150,000 Gift From Gods Wave of stuck drawers hits city ‘It occurs to me that the editor of the Times must sometimes regret that he has only one front page,’ he observed drily. There was a sound from the men sitting round the big table in Gilt’s office. It was the kind of sound you get when people are not really laughing. ‘Do you think he has got gods on his side?’ said Greenyham. ‘I hardly imagine so,’ said Gilt. ‘He must have known where the money was.’ ‘You think so? If I knew where that much money was I wouldn’t leave it in the ground.’ ‘No, you wouldn’t,’ said Gilt quietly, in such a way that Greenyham felt slightly uneasy. ‘ Twelve and a half per cent! Twelve and a half per cent!’ screamed Alphonse, bouncing up and down on his perch. ‘We’re made to look fools, Reacher!’ said Stowley. ‘He knew the line would go down yesterday! He might as well have divine guidance! We’re losing the local traffic already. Every time we have a shutdown you can bet he’ll run a coach out of sheer devilment. There’s nothing that damn man won’t stoop to. He’s turned the Post Office into a . . . a show!’ ‘Sooner or later all circuses leave town,’ said Gilt. ‘But he’s laughing at us!’ Stowley persisted. ‘If the Trunk breaks down again I wouldn’t put it past him to run a coach to Genua!’ ‘That would take weeks,’ said Gilt. ‘Yes, but it’s cheaper and it gets there. That’s what he’ll say. And he’ll say it loudly, too. We’ve got to do something, Reacher.’ ‘And what do you suggest?’ ‘Why don’t we just spend some money and get some proper maintenance done?’ ‘You can’t,’ said a new voice. ‘You don’t have the men.’ All heads turned to the man at the far end of the table. He had a jacket on over his overalls and a very battered top hat on the table beside him. His name was Mr Pony, and he was the Trunk’s chief engineer. He’d come with the company, and had hung on because at the age of fifty-eight, with twinges in your knuckles, a sick wife and a bad back, you think twice about grand gestures such as storming out. He hadn’t seen a clacks until three years ago, when the first company was founded, but he was methodical and engineering was engineering. Currently his greatest friend in the world was his collection of pink flimsies. He’d done his best, but he wasn’t going to carry the can when this lot finally fell over and his pink flimsies would see to it that he didn’t. White memo paper to the chairman, yellow flimsy to the file, pink flimsy you kept. No one could say he hadn’t warned them. A two-inch stack of the latest flimsies was attached to his clipboard. Now, feeling like an elder god leaning down through the clouds of some Armageddon and booming: ‘Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I warn you? Did you listen? Too late to listen now!’, he put on a voice of strained patience. ‘I’ve got six maint’nance teams. I had eight last week. I sent you a memo about that, got the flimsies right here. We ought to have eighteen teams. Half the lads are needin’ to be taught as we go, and we ain’t got time for teachin’. In the oP days we’d set up walkin’ towers to take the load an’ we ain’t got men even to do that now—’ ‘All right, it takes time, we understand,’ said Greenyham. ‘How long will it take if you . . . hire more men and get these walking towers working and—’ ‘You made me sack a lot of the craftsmen,’ said Pony. ‘We didn’t sack them. We “let them go”,’ said Gilt. ‘We . . . downsized,’ said Greenyham. ‘Looks like you succeeded, sir,’ said Pony. He took a stub of pencil out of one pocket and a grubby notebook out of the other. ‘D’you want it fast or cheap or good, gentlemen?’ he said. ‘The way things have gone, I can only give you one out of three . . .’ ‘How soon can we have the Grand Trunk running properly?’ said Greenyham, while Gilt leaned back and shut his eyes. Pony’s lips moved as he ran his eyes over his figures. ‘Nine months,’ he said. ‘I suppose if we’re seen to be working hard nine months of erratic running won’t seem too—’ Mr Stowley began. ‘Nine months shut down,’ said Mr Pony. ‘Don’t be a fool, man!’ ‘I ain’t a fool, sir, thank you,’ said Pony sharply. ‘I’ll have to find and train new craftsmen, ‘cos a lot of the old brigade won’t come back whatever I offer. If we shut the towers down I can use the signallers; at least they know their way around a tower. We can get more work done if we don’t have to drag walking towers and set them up. Make a clean start. The towers were never built that well to begin with. Dearheart never expected this sort of traffic. Nine months of dark towers, sirs.’ He wanted to say, oh, how he wanted to say: craftsmen. D’you know what that means? It means men with some pride, who get fed up and leave when they’re told to do skimpy work in a rush, no matter what you pay them. So I’m employing people as ‘craftsmen’ now who’re barely fit to sweep out a workshop. But you don’t care, because if they don’t polish a chair with their arse all day you think a man who’s done a seven-year apprenticeship is the same as some twerp who can’t be trusted to hold a hammer by the right end. He didn’t say this aloud, because although an elderly man probably has a lot less future than a man of twenty, he’s far more careful of it . . . ‘You can’t do better than that?’ said Stowley. ‘Mr Stowley, I’ll be doin’ well if it’s only nine months,’ said Pony, focusing again. ‘If you don’t want to shut down I can maybe get it done in a year and a half, if I can find enough men and you’re ready to spend enough money. But you’ll have shutdowns every day. It’ll be crippled runnin’, sir.’ ‘This man von Lipwig will walk all over us in nine months!’ said Greenyham. ‘Sorry about that, sir.’ ‘And how much will it cost?’ asked Gilt dreamily, without opening his eyes. ‘One way or the other, sir, I reckon maybe two hundred thousand,’ said Pony. ‘That’s ridiculous! We paid less than that for the Trunk!’ Greenyham burst out. ‘Yes, sir. But, you see, you got to run maint’nance all the time, sir. The towers have been run ragged. There was that big gale back in Sektober and all that trouble in Uberwald. I haven’t got the manpower. If you don’t do maint’nance a little fault soon becomes a big one. I sent you gentlemen lots of reports, sir. And you cut my budget twice. I may say my lads did wonders with—’ ‘Mr Pony,’ said Gilt quietly, ‘I think what I can see here is a conflict of cultures. Would you mind strolling along to my study, please? Igor will make you a cup of tea. Thank you so much.’ When Pony had gone, Greenyham said: ‘Do you know what worries me right now?’ ‘Do tell us,’ said Gilt, folding his hands across his expensive waistcoat. ‘Mr Slant is not here.’ ‘He has apologized. He says he has important business,’ said Gilt. ‘We’re his biggest clients! What’s more important than us? No, he’s not here because he wants to be somewhere else! The damn old revenant senses trouble and he’s never there when it all goes bad. Slant always comes out smelling of roses!’ ‘That is at least more fragrant than his usual formaldehyde,’ said Gilt. ‘Don’t panic, gentlemen.’ ‘Somebody did,’ said Stowley. ‘Don’t tell me that fire was accidental! Was it? And what happened to poor old Fatty Horsefry, eh?’ ‘Calm down, my friends, calm down,’ said Gilt. They’re just merchant bankers, he thought. They’re not hunters, they’re scavengers. They have no vision. He waited until they had settled down and were regarding him with that strange and rather terrifying look that rich men wear when they think they may be in danger of becoming poor men. ‘I expected something like this,’ he said. ‘Vetinari wants to harry us, that is all.’ ‘Readier, you know we’ll be in big trouble if the Trunk stops working,’ said Nutmeg. ‘Some of us have . . . debts to service. If the Trunk fails for good then people will . . . ask questions.’ Oh, those pauses, thought Gilt. Embezzlement is such a difficult word. ‘Many of us had to work very hard to raise the cash,’ said Stowley. Yes, keeping a straight face in front of your clients must be tricky, Gilt thought. Aloud, he said, ‘I think we have to pay, gentlemen. I think we do.’ ‘Two hundred thousand?’ said Greenyham. ‘Where do you think we can get that kind of money?’ ‘You got it before,’ murmured Gilt. ‘And what is that supposed to mean, pray?’ said Greenyham, with just a little too much indignation. ‘Poor Crispin came to see me the night before he died,’ said Gilt, as calmly as six inches of snow. ‘Babbled about, oh, all sorts of wild things. They hardly bear repeating. I think he believed people were after him. He did however insist on pressing a small ledger on me. Needless to say, it is safely locked away.’ The room fell silent, its silence made deeper and hotter by a number of desperate men thinking hard and fast. They were, by their own standards, honest men, in that they only did what they knew or suspected that everyone else did and there was never any visible blood, but just now they were men far out on a frozen sea who’d just heard the ice creak. ‘I strongly suspect that it’ll be a bit less than two hundred thousand,’ said Gilt. ‘Pony would be a fool if he didn’t leave a margin.’ ‘You didn’t warn us about this, Readier,’ said Stowley resentfully. Gilt waved his hands. ‘We must speculate to accumulate!’ he said. ‘The Post Office? Trickery and sleight of hand. Oh, von Lipwig is an ideas man, but that’s all he is. He’s made a splash, but he’s not got the stamina for the long haul. Yet as it turns out he will do us a favour. Perhaps we have been . . . a little smug, a little lax, but we have learned our lesson! Spurred by the competition we are investing several hundred thousand dollars—’ ‘ Several hundred?’ said Greenyham. Gilt waved him into silence, and continued: ‘—several hundred thousand dollars in a challenging, relevant and exciting systemic overhaul of our entire organization, focusing on our core competencies while maintaining full and listening co-operation with the communities we are proud to serve. We fully realize that our energetic attempts to mobilize the flawed infrastructure we inherited have been less than totally satisfactory, and hope and trust that our valued and loyal customers will bear with us in the coming months as we interact synergistically with change management in our striving for excellence. That is our mission.’ An awed silence followed. ‘And thus we bounce back,’ said Gilt. ‘But you said several hundr—’ Gilt sighed. ‘I said that,’ he said. ‘Trust me. It’s a game, gentlemen, and a good player is one who can turn a bad situation to their advantage. I have brought you this far, haven’t I? A little cash and the right attitude will take us the rest of the way. I’m sure you can find some more money,’ he added, ‘from somewhere it won’t be missed.’ This wasn’t silence. It went beyond silence. ‘What are you suggesting?’ said Nutmeg. ‘Embezzlement, theft, breach of trust, misappropriation of funds . . . people can be so harsh,’ said Gilt. He threw open his arms again and a big friendly smile emerged like the sun breaking through storm clouds. ‘Gentlemen! I understand! Money was made to work, to move, to grow, not to be locked up in some vault. Poor Mr Horsefry, I believe, did not really understand that. So much on his mind, poor fellow. But we . . . we are businessmen. We understand these things, my friends.’ He surveyed the faces of men who now knew that they were riding a tiger. It had been a good ride up until a week or so ago. It wasn’t a case of not being able to get off. They could get off. That was not the problem. The problem was that the tiger knew where they lived. Poor Mr Horsefry . . . there had been rumours. In fact they were completely unsubstantiated rumours, because Mr Gryle had been excessively good at his job when pigeons weren’t involved, had moved like a shadow with claws and, while he’d left a faint scent, it had been masked by the blood. In the nose of a werewolf, blood trumps everything. But rumour rose in the streets of Ankh-Morpork like mist from a midden. And then it occurred to one or two of the board that the jovial ‘my friends’ in the mouth of Reacher Gilt, so generous with his invitations, his little tips, his advice and his champagne, was beginning, in its harmonics and overtones, to sound just like the word ‘pal’ in the mouth of a man in an alley who was offering cosmetic surgery with a broken bottle in exchange for not being given any money. On the other hand, they’d been safe so far; maybe it was worth following the tiger to the kill. Better to follow at the beast’s heel than be its prey . . . ‘And now I realize that I am inexcusably keeping you from your beds,’ said Gilt. ‘Good night to you, gentlemen. You may safely leave everything to me. Igor!’ ‘Yeth, marthter,’ said Igor, behind him. ‘Do see these gentlemen out, and ask Mr Pony to come in.’ Gilt watched them go with a smile of satisfaction, which became a bright and happy face when Pony was ushered in. The interview with the engineer went like this: ‘Mr Pony,’ said Gilt, ‘I am very pleased to tell you that the Board, impressed by your dedication and the hard work you have been putting in, have voted unanimously to increase your salary by five hundred dollars a year.’ Pony brightened up. ‘Thank you very much, sir. That will certainly come in—’ ‘However, Mr Pony, as part of the management of the Grand Trunk Company - and we do think of you as part of the team - we must ask you to bear in mind our cash flow. We cannot authorize more than twenty-five thousand dollars for repairs this year.’ ‘That’s only about seventy dollars a tower, sir!’ the engineer protested. ‘Teh, is it really? I told them you wouldn’t accept that,’ said Gilt. ‘Mr Pony is an engineer of integrity, I said. He won’t accept a penny less than fifty thousand, I told them!’ Pony looked hunted. ‘Couldn’t really do much of a job, sir, even for that. I could get some walking tower teams out there, yes, but most of the mountain towers are living on borrowed time as it is—’ ‘We’re counting on you, George,’ said Gilt. ‘Well, I suppose . . . Could we have the Hour of the Dead back, Mr Gilt?’ ‘I really wish you wouldn’t use that fanciful term,’ said Gilt. ‘It really does not present the right image.’ ‘Sorry, sir,’ said Pony. ‘But I still need it.’ Gilt drummed his fingers on the table. ‘You’re asking a lot, George, you really are. That’s revenue flow we’re talking about. The Board won’t be very pleased with me if I—’ ‘I think I’ve got to insist, Mr Gilt,’ said Pony, looking at his feet. ‘And what could you deliver?’ said Gilt. ‘That’s what the Board will want to know. They’ll say to me: Reacher, we’re giving good old George everything he asks for; what will we be getting in return?’ Forgetting for the moment that it was a quarter of what he’d asked for, good old George said: ‘Well, we could patch up all round and get some of the really shaky towers back into some sort of order, especially 99 and 201 . . . Oh, there’s just so much to do—’ ‘Would it, for example, give us a year of reasonable service?’ Mr Pony struggled manfully with the engineer’s permanent dread of having to commit himself to anything, and managed, ‘Well, if we don’t lose too many staff, and the winter isn’t too bad, but of course there’s always—’ Gilt snapped his fingers. ‘By damn, George, you’ve talked me into it! I’ll tell the Board that I’m backing you and to hell with them!’ ‘Well, that’s very kind of you, sir, of course,’ said Pony, bewildered, but it’s only papering over the cracks, really. If we don’t have a major rebuild we’re only laying up even more trouble for the future—’ ‘In a year or so, George, you can lay any plans you like in front of us!’ said Gilt jovially. ‘Your skill and ingenuity will be the saving of the company! Now I know you’re a busy man and I mustn’t keep you. Go and perform miracles of economy, Mr Pony!’ Mr Pony staggered out, proud and bemused and full of dread. ‘Silly old fool,’ said Gilt, and reached down and opened the bottom drawer of his desk. He pulled out a beartrap, which he set, with some effort, and then stood in the middle of the floor with his back to it. ‘Igor!’ he called. ‘Yeth, thur,’ said Igor, behind him. There was a snap. ‘I think thith ith yourth, thur,’ Igor added, handing Gilt the sprung trap. Gilt looked down. The man’s legs appeared unscathed. ‘How did you—’ he began. ‘Oh, we Igorth are no thtranger to marthterth of an enquiring mind, thur,’ said Igor gloomily. ‘One of my gentlemen uthed to thtand with hith back to a pit lined with thpiketh, thur. Oh how we chuckled, thur.’ ‘And what happened?’ ‘One day he forgot and thtepped into it. Talk about laugh, thur.’ Gilt laughed, too, and went back to his desk. He liked that kind of joke. ‘Igor, would you say that I’m insane?’ he said. Igors are not supposed to lie to an employer. It’s part of the Code of the Igors. Igor took refuge in strict linguistic honesty. ‘I wouldn’t find mythelf able to thay that, thur,’ he said. ‘I must be, Igor. Either that or everyone else is,’ said Gilt. ‘I mean, I show them what I do, I show them how the cards are marked, I tell them what I am . . . and they nudge one another and grin and each one of them thinks himself no end of a fine fellow to be doing business with me. They throw good money after bad. They believe themselves to be sharp operators, and yet they offer themselves like little lambs. How I love to see their expressions when they think they’re being astute.’ ‘Indeed, thur,’ said Igor. He was wondering if that job at the new hospital was still open. His cousin Igor was already working there and had told him it was wonderful. Sometimes you had to work all night! And you got a white coat, all the rubber gloves you could eat and, best of all, you got rethpect. ‘It’s so . . . basic,’ said Gilt. ‘You make money as it runs down, you make money building it up again, you might even make a little money running it, then you sell it to yourself when it collapses. The leases alone are worth a fortune. Give Alphonse his nuts, will you?’ ‘ Twelve and a half per cent! Twelve and a half per cent!’ said the cockatoo, sidling up and down the perch excitedly. ‘Thertainly, thur,’ said Igor, taking a bag out of his pocket and advancing cautiously. Alphonse had a beak like a pair of shears. Or maybe try veterinary work like my other cousin Igor, Igor thought. That was a good traditional area, certainly. Pity about all that publicity when the hamster smashed its way out of its treadmill and ate that man’s leg before flying away, but that was Progrethth for you. The important thing was to get out before the mob arrived. And when your boss started telling thin air how good he was, that was the time. ‘Hope is the curse of humanity, Igor,’ said Gilt, putting his hands behind his head. ‘Could be, thur,’ said Igor, trying to avoid the horrible curved beak. ‘The tiger does not hope to catch its prey, nor does the gazelle hope to escape the claws. They run, Igor. Only the running matters. All they know is that they must run. And now I must run along to those nice people at the Times, to tell everyone about our bright new future. Get the coach out, will you?’ ‘Thertainly, thur. If you will excuthe me, I will go and fetch another finger.’ I think I’ll head back to the mountains, he thought as he went down to the cellar. At least a monster there has the decency to look like one. Flares around the ruins of the Post Office made the night brilliant. The golems didn’t need them, but the surveyors did. Moist had got a good deal there. The gods had spoken, after all. It’d do a firm no harm at all to be associated with this phoenix of a building. In the bit that was still standing, shored up and tarpaulined, the Post Office - that is, the people who were the Post Office - worked through the night. In truth there wasn’t enough for everyone to do, but they turned up anyway, to do it. It was that kind of night. You had to be there, so that later you could say ‘. . . and I was there, that very night . . .’ Moist knew he ought to get some sleep, but he had to be there too, alive and sparkling. It was . . . amazing. They listened to him, they did things for him, they scuttled around as if he was a real leader and not some cheat and fraud. And there were the letters. Oh, the letters hurt. More and more were coming in, and they were addressed to him. The news had got round the city. It had been in the paper! The gods listened to this man! . . . we will deliver to the gods themselves . . . He was the man with the gold suit and the hat with wings. They’d made a crook the messenger of the gods, and piled on his charred desk the sum of all their hopes and fears . . . badly punctuated, true, and in smudged pencil or free Post Office ink, which had spluttered across the paper in the urgency of writing. ‘They think you’re an angel,’ said Miss Dearheart, who was sitting on the other side of his desk and helping him sort through the pathetic petitions. Every half-hour or so Mr Pump brought up some more. ‘Well, I’m not,’ snapped Moist. ‘You speak to the gods and the gods listen,’ said Miss Dearheart, grinning. ‘They told you where the treasure was. Now that’s what I call religion. Incidentally, how did you know the money was there?’ ‘You don’t believe in any gods?’ ‘No, of course not. Not while people like Reacher Gilt walk under the sky. All there is, is us. The money . . . ?’ ‘I can’t tell you,’ said Moist. ‘Have you read some of these letters?’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘Sick children, dying wives—’ ‘Some just want cash,’ said Moist hurriedly, as if that made it better. ‘Whose fault is that, Slick? You’re the man who can tap the gods for a wad of wonga!’ ‘So what shall I do with all these . . . prayers?’ said Moist. ‘Deliver them, of course. You’ve got to. You are the messenger of the gods. And they’ve got stamps on. Some of them are covered in stamps! It’s your job. Take them to the temples. You promised to do that!’ ‘I never promised to—’ ‘ You promised to when you sold them the stamps!’ Moist almost fell off his chair. She’d wielded the sentence like a fist. ‘And it’ll give them hope,’ she added, rather more quietly. ‘False hope,’ said Moist, struggling upright. ‘Maybe not this time,’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘That’s the point of hope.’ She picked up the battered remains of Anghammarad’s armband. ‘ He was taking a message across the whole of Time. You think you’ve got it tough?’ ‘Mr Lipwig?’ The voice floated up from the hall, and at the same time the background noise subsided like a bad souffle. Moist walked over to where a wall had once been. Now, with the scorched floorboards creaking underfoot, he looked right down into the hall. A small part of him thought: we’ll have to put a big picture window here when we rebuild. This is just too impressive for words. There was a buzz of whispering and a few gasps. There were a lot of customers, too, even in the early foggy hours. It’s never too late for a prayer. ‘Is everything all right, Mr Groat?’ he called down. Something white was waved in the air. ‘Early copy of the Times, sir!’ Groat shouted. ‘Just in! Gilt’s all over the front page, sir! Where you ought to be, sir! You won’t like it, sir!’ If Moist von Lipwig had been raised to be a clown, he’d have visited shows and circuses and watched the kings of fooldom. He’d have marvelled at the elegant trajectory of the custard pie, memorized the new business with the ladder and the bucket of whitewash and watched with care every carelessly juggled egg. While the rest of the audience watched the display with the appropriate feelings of terror, anger and exasperation, he’d make notes. Now, like an apprentice staring at the work of a master, he read Reacher Gilt’s words on the still-damp newspaper. It was garbage, but it had been cooked by an expert. Oh, yes. You had to admire the way perfectly innocent words were mugged, ravished, stripped of all true meaning and decency and then sent to walk the gutter for Reacher Gilt, although ‘synergistically’ had probably been a whore from the start. The Grand Trunk’s problems were clearly the result of some mysterious spasm in the universe and had nothing to do with greed, arrogance and wilful stupidity. Oh, the Grand Trunk management had made mistakes - oops, ‘well-intentioned judgements which, with the benefit of hindsight, might regrettably have been, in some respects, in error’ - but these had mostly occurred, it appeared, while correcting ‘fundamental systemic errors’ committed by the previous management. No one was sorry for anything because no living creature had done anything wrong; bad things had happened by spontaneous generation in some weird, chilly, geometrical otherworld, and ‘were to be regretted’.* * Another bastard phrase that’d sell itself to any weasel in a tight corner. The Times reporter had made an effort but nothing short of a stampede could have stopped Reacher Gilt in his crazed assault on the meaning of meaning. The Grand Trunk was “about people” and the reporter had completely failed to ask what that meant, exactly? And then there was this piece called “Our Mission” . . . Moist felt the acid rise in his throat until he could spit lacework in a sheet of steel. Meaningless stupid words, from people without wisdom or intelligence or any skill beyond the ability to water the currency of expression. Oh, the Grand Trunk was for everything, from life and liberty to Mum’s home-made Distressed Pudding. It was for everything, except anything. Through a pink mist his eye caught the line: ‘safety is our foremost consideration’. Why hadn’t the lead type melted, why hadn’t the paper blazed rather than be part of this obscenity? The press should have buckled, the roller should have cleaved unto the platen . . . That was bad. But then he saw Gilt’s reply to a hasty question about the Post Office. Reacher Gilt loved the Post Office and blessed its little cotton socks. He was very grateful for its assistance during this difficult period and looked forward to future co-operation, although of course the Post Office, in the real modern world, would never be able to compete on anything other than a very local level. Mind you, someone has to deliver the bills, ho ho . . . It was masterly . . . the bastard. ‘Er . . . are you okay? Could you stop shouting?’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘What?’ The mists cleared. Everyone in the hall was looking at him, their mouths open, their eyes wide. Watery ink dripped from Post Office pens, stamps began to dry on tongues. ‘You were shouting,’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘Swearing, in fact.’ Miss Maccalariat pushed her way through the throng, with an expression of determination. ‘Mr Lipwig, I hope never to hear such language in this building again!’ she said. ‘He was using it about the chairman of the Grand Trunk Company,’ said Miss Dearheart, in what was, for her, a conciliatory tone of voice. ‘Oh.’ Miss Maccalariat hesitated, and then remembered herself. ‘Er, in that case . . . perhaps a teensy bit quieter, then?’ ‘Certainly, Miss Maccalariat,’ said Moist obediently. ‘And perhaps not the K-word?’ ‘No, Miss Maccalariat.’ ‘And also not the L-word, the T-word, both of the S-words, the V-word and the Y-word.’ ‘Just as you say, Miss Maccalariat.’ ‘“Murdering conniving bastard of a weasel” was acceptable, however.’ ‘I shall remember that, Miss Maccalariat.’ ‘Very good, Postmaster.’ Miss Maccalariat turned on her heel and went back to haranguing someone for not using blotting paper. Moist handed the paper to Miss Dearheart. ‘He’s going to walk away with it,’ he said. ‘He’s just throwing words around. The Trunk’s too big to fail. Too many investors. He’ll get more money, keep the system going just this side of disaster, then let it collapse. Buy it up then via another company, maybe, at a knock-down price.’ ‘I’d suspect him of anything,’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘But you sound very certain.’ ‘That’s what I’d do,’ said Moist, ‘er . . . if I was that kind of person. It’s the oldest trick in the book. You get the punt— you get others so deeply involved that they don’t dare fold. It’s the dream, you see? They think if they stay in it’ll all work out. They daren’t think it’s all a dream. You use big words to tell them it’s going to be jam tomorrow and they hope. But they’ll never win. Part of them knows that, but the rest of them never listens to it. The house always wins.’ ‘Why do people like Gilt get away with it?’ ‘I just told you. It’s because people hope. They’ll believe that someone will sell them a real diamond for a dollar. Sorry.’ ‘Do you know how I came to work for the Trust?’ said Miss Dearheart. Because clay people are easier to deal with? Moist thought. They don’t cough when you talk to them? ‘No,’ he said. ‘I used to work in a bank in Sto Lat. The Cabbage Growers’ Co-operative—’ ‘Oh, the one on the town square? With the carved cabbage over the door?’ said Moist, before he could stop himself. ‘You know it?’ she said. ‘Well, yes. I went past it, once . . .’ Oh no, he thought, as his mind ran ahead of the conversation, oh, please, no . . . ‘It wasn’t a bad job,’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘In our office we had to inspect drafts and cheques. Looking for forgeries, you know? And one day I let four through. Four fakes! It cost the bank two thousand dollars. They were cash drafts, and the signatures were perfect. I got sacked for that. They said they had to do something, otherwise the customers would lose confidence. It’s not fun, having people think you might be a crook. And that’s what happens to people like us. People like Gilt always get away with it. Are you all right?’ ‘Hmm?’ said Moist. ‘You look a bit . . . off colour.’ That had been a good day, Moist thought. At least, up until now it had been a good day. He’d been quite pleased with it at the time. You weren’t supposed ever to meet the people afterwards. Gods damn Mr Pump and his actuarial concept of murder! He sighed. Oh well, it had come to this. He’d known it would. Him and Gilt, arm-wrestling to see who was the biggest bastard. ‘This is the country edition of the Times,’ he said. ‘They don’t go to press with the city edition for another ninety minutes, in case of late-breaking news. I think I can wipe the smile off his face, at least.’ ‘What are you going to do?’ said Miss Dearheart. Moist adjusted the winged hat. ‘Attempt the impossible,’ he said. Chapter Twelve The Woodpecker The Challenge — Moving Mountains - The Many Uses of Cabbage — The Board Debates - Mr Lipwig on his Knees - The Smoking Gnu - The Way of the Woodpecker It was the next morning. Something prodded Moist. He opened his eyes, and stared along the length of a shiny black cane, past the hand holding the silver Death’s head knob and into the face of Lord Vetinari. Behind him, the golem smouldered in the corner. ‘Pray, don’t get up,’ said the Patrician. ‘I expect you have had a busy night?’ ‘Sorry, sir,’ said Moist, forcing himself upright. He’d fallen asleep at his desk again; his mouth tasted as though Tiddles had slept in it. Behind Vetinari’s head he could see Mr Groat and Stanley, peering anxiously round the door. Lord Vetinari sat down opposite him, after dusting some ash off a chair. ‘You have read this morning’s Times,’ he said. ‘I was there when it was printed, sir.’ Moist’s neck seemed to have developed extra bones. He tried to twist his head straight. ‘Ah, yes. Ankh-Morpork to Genua is about two thousand miles, Mr Lipwig. And you say you can get a message there faster than the clacks. You have issued that as a challenge. Most intriguing! ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Even the fastest coach takes almost two months, Mr Lipwig, and I’m given to understand that if you travelled non-stop your kidneys would be jolted out of your ears.’ ‘Yes, sir. I know that,’ said Moist, yawning. ‘It would be cheating, you know, to use magic’ Moist yawned again. ‘I know that too, sir.’ ‘Did you ask the Archchancellor of Unseen University before you suggested that he should devise the message for this curious race?’ Lord Vetinari demanded, unfolding the newspaper. Moist caught sight of the headlines: THE RACE IS ON! ‘Flying Postman’ vs. Grand Trunk ‘No, my lord. I said the message should be prepared by a well-respected citizen of great probity, such as the Archchancellor, sir.’ ‘Well, he’s hardly likely to say no now, is he?’ said Vetinari. ‘I’d like to think so, sir. Gilt won’t be able to bribe him, at least.’ ‘Hmm.’ Vetinari tapped the floor once or twice with his cane. ‘Would it surprise you to know that the feeling in the city this morning is that you’ll win? The Trunk has never been out of commission for longer than a week, a clacks message can get to Genua in a few hours and yet, Mr Lipwig, people think you can do this. Don’t you find that amazing?’ ‘Er . . .’ ‘But, of course, you are the man of the moment, Mr Lipwig,’ said Vetinari, suddenly jovial. ‘You are the golden messenger!’ His smile was reptilian. ‘I do hope you know what you are doing. You do know what you are doing, don’t you, Mr Lipwig?’ ‘Faith moves mountains, my lord,’ said Moist. ‘There are a lot of them between here and Genua, indeed,’ said Lord Vetinari. ‘You say in the paper that you’ll leave tomorrow night?’ ‘That’s right. The weekly coach. But on this run we won’t take paying passengers, to save weight.’ Moist looked into Vetinari’s eyes. ‘You wouldn’t like to give me some little clue?’ said the Patrician. ‘Best all round if I don’t, sir,’ said Moist. ‘I suppose the gods haven’t left an extremely fast magical horse buried somewhere nearby, have they?’ ‘Not that I’m aware, sir,’ said Moist earnestly. ‘Of course, you never know until you pray.’ ‘No-o,’ said Vetinari. He’s trying the penetrating gaze, Moist thought. But we know how to deal with that, don’t we? We let it pass right through. ‘Gilt will have to accept the challenge, of course,’ said Vetinari. ‘But he is a man of . . . ingenious resource.’ That seemed to Moist to be a very careful way of saying ‘murderous bastard’. Once away, he let it pass. His lordship stood up. ‘Until tomorrow night, then,’ he said. ‘No doubt there will be some little ceremony for the newspapers?’ ‘I haven’t actually planned that, sir,’ said Moist. ‘No, of course you haven’t,’ said Lord Vetinari, and gave him what could only be called . . . a look. Moist got very much the same look from Jim Upwright, before the man said: ‘Well, we can put out the word and call in some favours and we’ll get good horses at the post houses, Mr Lipwig, but we only go as far as Bonk, you know? Then you’ll have to change. The Genua Express is pretty good, though. We know the lads.’ ‘You sure you want to hire the whole coach?’ said Harry, as he rubbed down a horse. ‘It’ll be expensive, ‘cos we’ll have to put on another for the passengers. It’s a popular run, that one.’ ‘Just the mail in that coach,’ said Moist. ‘And some guards.’ ‘Ah, you think you’ll be attacked?’ said Harry, squeezing the towel bone dry with barely an effort. ‘What do you think?’ said Moist. The brothers looked at one another. ‘I’ll drive it, then,’ said Jim. ‘They don’t call me Leadpipe for nothing.’ ‘Besides, I heard there were bandits up in the mountains,’ said Moist. ‘Used to be,’ said Jim. ‘Not as many now.’ ‘That’s something less to worry about, then,’ said Moist. ‘Dunno,’ said Jim. ‘We never found out what wiped them out.’ Always remember that the crowd which applauds your coronation is the same crowd that will applaud your beheading. People like a show. People like a show . . . . . . and so mail was coming in for Genua, at a dollar a time. A lot of mail. It was Stanley who explained. He explained several times, because Moist had a bit of a blind spot on this one. ‘People are sending envelopes with stamps inside envelopes to the coach office in Genua so that the first envelope can be sent back in the second envelope,’ was the shape of explanation that finally blew on some sparks in Moist’s brain. ‘They want the envelopes back?’ he said. ‘Why?’ ‘Because they’ve been used, sir.’ ‘That makes them valuable?’ ‘I’m not sure how, sir. It’s like I told you, sir. I think some people think that they’re not real stamps until they’ve done the job they were invented to do, sir. Remember the first printing of the one penny stamps that we had to cut out with scissors? An envelope with one of those on is worth two dollars to a collector.’ ‘Two hundred times more than the stamp?’ ‘That’s how it’s going sir,’ said Stanley, his eyes sparkling. ‘People post letters to themselves just to get the stamp, er, stamped, sir. So they’ve been used.’ ‘Er . . . I’ve got a couple of rather crusty handkerchiefs in my pocket,’ said Moist, mystified. ‘Do you think people might want to buy them at two hundred times what they cost?’ ‘No, sir!’ said Stanley. ‘Then why should—’ ‘There’s a lot of interest, sir. I thought we could do a whole set of stamps for the big guilds, sir. All the collectors would want them. What do you think?’ ‘That’s a very clever idea, Stanley,’ said Moist. ‘We’ll do that. The one for the Seamstresses’ Guild might have to go inside a plain brown envelope, eh? Haha!’ This time it was Stanley who looked perplexed. ‘Sorry, sir?’ Moist coughed. ‘Oh, nothing. Well, I can see you’re learning fast, Stanley.’ Some things, anyway. ‘Er . . . yes, sir. Er . . . I don’t want to push myself forward, sir—’ ‘Push away, Stanley, push away,’ said Moist cheerfully. Stanley pulled a small paper folder out of his pocket, opened it, and laid it reverentially in front of Moist. ‘Mr Spools helped me with some of it,’ he said. ‘But I did a lot.’ It was a stamp. It was a yellowy-green colour. It showed - Moist peered - a field of cabbages, with some buildings on the horizon. He sniffed. It smelled of cabbages. Oh, yes. ‘Printed with cabbage ink and using gum made from broccoli, sir,’ said Stanley, full of pride. ‘A Salute to the Cabbage Industry of the Sto Plains, sir. I think it might do very well. Cabbages are so popular, sir. You can make so many things out of them!’ ‘Well, I can see that—’ ‘There’s cabbage soup, cabbage beer, cabbage fudge, cabbage cake, cream of cabbage—’ ‘Yes, Stanley, I think you—’ ‘—pickled cabbage, cabbage jelly, cabbage salad, boiled cabbage, deep-fried cabbage—’ ‘Yes, but now can—’ ‘—fricassee of cabbage, cabbage chutney, Cabbage Surprise, sausages—’ ‘Sausages?’ ‘Filled with cabbage, sir. You can make practically anything with cabbage, sir. Then there’s—’ ‘Cabbage stamps,’ said Moist, terminally. ‘At fifty pence, I note. You have hidden depths, Stanley.’ ‘I owe it all to you, Mr Lipwig!’ Stanley burst out. ‘I have put the childish playground of pins right behind me, sir! The world of stamps, which can teach a young man much about history and geography as well as being a healthy, enjoyable, engrossing and thoroughly worthwhile hobby that will give him an interest that will last a lifetime, has opened up before me and—’ ‘Yes, yes, thank you!’ said Moist. ‘—and I’m putting thirty dollars into the pot, sir. All my savings. Just to show we support you.’ Moist heard all the words, but had to wait for them to make sense. ‘Pot?’ he said at last. ‘You mean like a bet?’ ‘Yes, sir. A big bet,’ said Stanley happily. ‘About you racing the clacks to Genua. People think that’s funny. A lot of the bookmakers are offering odds, sir, so Mr Groat is organizing it, sir! He said the odds aren’t good, though.’ ‘I shouldn’t think they are,’ said Moist weakly. ‘No one in their right mind would—’ ‘He said we’d only win one dollar for every eight we bet, sir, but we reckoned—’ Moist shot upright. ‘Eight to one odds on?’ he shouted. ‘The bookies think I’m going to win? How much are you all betting?’ ‘Er . . . about one thousand two hundred dollars at the last count, sir. Is that—’ Pigeons rose from the roof at the sound of Moist von Lipwig’s scream. ‘ Fetch Mr Groat right now!’ It was a terrible thing to see guile on the face of Mr Groat. The old man tapped the side of his nose. ‘You’re the man that got money out o’ a bunch of gods, sir!’ he said, grinning happily. ‘Yes,’ said Moist desperately. ‘But supposing I - I just did that with a trick . . .’ ‘Damn good trick, sir,’ the old man cackled. ‘ Damn good. A man who could trick money out of the gods’d be capable of anything, I should think!’ ‘Mr Groat, there is no way a coach can get to Genua faster than a clacks message. It’s two thousand miles!’ ‘Yes, I realize you’ve got to say that, sir. Walls have ears, sir. Mum’s the word. But we all had a talk, and we reckoned you’ve been very good to us, sir, you really believe in the Post Office, sir, so we thought: it’s time to put our money in our mouth, sir!’ said Groat, and now there was a touch of defiance. Moist gaped once or twice. ‘You mean “where your mouth is”?’ ‘You’re the man who knows a trick or three, sir! The way you just went into the newspaper office and said, we’ll race you! Reacher Gilt walked right into your trap, sir!’ Glass into diamond, thought Moist. He sighed. ‘All right, Mr Groat. Thank you. Eight to one on, eh?’ ‘We were lucky to get it, sir. They went up to ten to one on, then they closed the books. All they’re accepting now is bets on how you’ll win, sir.’ Moist perked up a little. ‘Any good ideas?’ he asked. ‘I’ve got a one-dollar flutter on “by dropping fire from the sky”, sir. Er . . . you wouldn’t like to give me a hint, p’raps?’ ‘Please go and get on with your work, Mr Groat,’ said Moist severely. ‘Yessir, of course, sir, sorry I asked, sir,’ said Groat, and crabbed off. Moist put his head in his hands. I wonder if it’s like this for mountain climbers, he thought. You climb bigger and bigger mountains and you know that one day one of them is going to be just that bit too steep. But you go on doing it, because it’s so-o good when you breathe the air up there. And you know you’ll die falling. How could people be so stupid? They seemed to cling to ignorance because it smelled familiar. Reacher Gilt sighed. He had an office in the Tump Tower. He didn’t like it much, because the whole place shook to the movement of the semaphore, but it was necessary for the look of the thing. It did have an unrivalled view of the city, though. And the site alone was worth what they’d paid for the Trunk. ‘It takes the best part of two months to get to Genua by coach,’ he said, staring across the rooftops to the Palace. ‘He might be able to shave something off that, I suppose. The clacks takes a few hours. What is there about this that frightens you?’ ‘So what’s his game?’ said Greenyham. The rest of the board sat around the table, looking worried. ‘I don’t know,’ said Gilt. ‘I don’t care.’ ‘But the gods are on his side, Readier,’ said Nutmeg. ‘Let’s talk about that, shall we?’ said Gilt. ‘Does that claim strike anyone else as odd? The gods are not generally known for no-frills gifts, are they? Especially not ones that you can bite. No, these days they restrict themselves to things like grace, patience, fortitude and inner strength. Things you can’t see. Things that have no value. Gods tend to be interested in prophets, not profits, haha.’ There were some blank looks from his fellow directors. ‘Didn’t quite get that one, old chap,’ said Stowley. ‘Pro phets, I said, not pro fits,’ said Gilt. He waved a hand. ‘Don’t worry yourselves, it will look better written down. In short, Mr Lipwig’s gift from above was a big chest of coins, some of them in what look remarkably like bank sacks and all in modern denominations. You don’t find this strange?’ ‘Yes, but even the high priests say he—’ ‘Lipwig is a showman,’ snapped Gilt. ‘Do you think the gods will carry his mail coach for him? Do you? This is a stunt, do you understand? It got him on page one again, that’s all. This is not hard to follow. He has no plan, other than to fail heroically. No one expects him actually to win, do they?’ ‘I heard that people are betting heavily on him.’ ‘People enjoy the experience of being fooled, if it promises a certain amount of entertainment,’ said Gilt. ‘Do you know a good bookmaker? I shall have a little flutter. Five thousand dollars, perhaps?’ This got some nervous laughter, and he followed it up. ‘Gentlemen, be sensible. No gods will come to the aid of our Postmaster. No wizard, either. They’re not generous with magic and we’ll soon find out if he uses any. No, he’s looking for the publicity, that’s all. Which is not to say,’ he winked, ‘that we shouldn’t, how shall I put it, make certainty doubly sure.’ They perked up still more. This sounded like the kind of thing they wanted to hear. ‘After all, accidents can happen in the mountains,’ said Greenyham. ‘I believe that is the case,’ said Gilt. ‘However, I was referring to the Grand Trunk. Therefore I have asked Mr Pony to outline our procedure. Mr Pony?’ The engineer shifted uneasily. He’d had a bad night. T want it recorded, sir, that I have urged a six-hour shutdown before the event,’ he said. ‘Indeed, and the minutes will show that I have said that is quite impossible,’ said Gilt. ‘Firstly because it would be an unpardonable loss of revenue, and secondly because sending no messages would send quite the wrong message.’ ‘We’ll shut down for an hour before the event, then, and clear down,’ said Mr Pony. ‘Every tower will send a statement of readiness to the Tump and then lock all doors and wait. No one will be allowed in or out. We’ll configure the towers to run duplex - that is,’ he translated for management, ‘we’ll turn the down-line into a second up-line, so the message will get to Genua twice as fast. We won’t have any other messages on the Trunk while the, er, race is on. No Overhead, nothing. And from now on, sir, from the moment I walk out of this room, we take no more messages from feeder towers. Not even from the one in the Palace, not even from the one in the University.’ He sniffed, and added with some satisfaction: ‘ ‘specially not them students. Someone’s been having a go at us, sir.’ ‘That seems a bit drastic, Mr Pony?’ said Greenyham. ‘I hope it is, sir. I think someone’s found a way of sending messages that can damage a tower, sir.’ ‘That’s impossi—’ Mr Pony’s hand slapped the table. ‘How come you know so much, sir? Did you sit up half the night trying to get to the bottom of it? Have you taken a differential drum apart with a tin opener? Did you spot how the swage armature can be made to jump off the elliptical bearing if you hit the letter K and then send it to a tower with an address higher than yours, but only if you hit the letter Q first and the drum spring is fully wound? Did you spot that the key levers wedge together and the spring forces the arm up and you’re looking at a gearbox full of teeth? Well, I did!’ ‘Are you talking about sabotage here?’ said Gilt. ‘Call it what you like,’ said Pony, drunk with nervousness. ‘I went to the yard this morning and dug out the old drum we took out of Tower 14 last month. I’ll swear the same thing happened there. But mostly the breakdowns are in the upper tower, in the shutter boxes. That’s where—’ ‘So our Mr Lipwig has been behind a campaign to sabotage us . . .’ Gilt mused. ‘I never said that!’ said Pony. ‘No name need be mentioned,’ said Gilt smoothly. ‘It’s just sloppy design,’ said Pony. ‘I dare say one of the lads found it by accident and tried it again to see what happened. They’re like that, the tower boys. Show ‘em a bit of cunning machinery and they’ll spend all day trying to make it fail. The whole Trunk’s a lash-up, it really is.’ ‘Why do we employ people like this?’ said Stowley, looking bewildered. ‘Because they’re the only people mad enough to spend their life up a tower miles from anywhere pressing keys,’ said Pony. ‘They like it.’ ‘But somebody in a tower must press the keys that do all these . . . terrible things,’ said Stowley. Pony sighed. They never took an interest. It was just money. They didn’t know how anything worked. And then suddenly they needed to know, and you had to use baby talk. ‘The lads follow the signal, sir, as they say,’ he said. ‘They watch the next tower and repeat the message, as fast as they can. There’s no time to think about it. Anything for their tower comes out on the differential drum. They just pound keys and kick pedals and pull levers, as fast as they can. They take pride in it. They even do all kinds of tricks to speed things up. I don’t want any talk about sabotage, not right now. Let’s just get the message sent, as fast as possible. The lads will enjoy that.’ ‘The image is attractive,’ said Gilt. ‘The dark of night, the waiting towers, and then, one by one, they come alive as a serpent of light speeds across the world, softly and silently carrying its . . . whatever. We must get some poet to write about it.’ He nodded at Mr Pony. ‘We’re in your hands, Mr Pony. You’re the man with the plan.’ ‘I don’t have one,’ said Moist. ‘No plan?’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘Are you telling me you—’ ‘Keep it down, keep it down!’ Moist hissed. ‘I don’t want everyone to know!’ They were in the little cafe near the Pin Exchange which, Moist had noticed, didn’t seem to be doing much business today. He’d had to get out of the Post Office, in case his head exploded. ‘You challenged the Grand Trunk! You mean you just talked big and hoped something would turn up?’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘It’s always worked before! Where’s the sense in promising to achieve the achievable? What kind of success would that be?’ said Moist. ‘Haven’t you ever heard of learning to walk before you run?’ ‘It’s a theory, yes.’ ‘I just want to be absolutely clear,’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘Tomorrow night - that’s the day after today - you are going to send a coach -that’s a thing on wheels, pulled by horses, which might reach fourteen miles an hour on a good road - to race against the Grand Trunk -that’s all those semaphore towers, which can send messages at hundreds of miles an hour - all the way to Genua - that’s the town which is a very long way away indeed?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And you have no wonderful plan?’ ‘No.’ ‘And why are you telling me?’ ‘Because, in this city, right now, you are the only person who would possibly believe I don’t have a plan!’ said Moist. ‘I told Mr Groat and he just tapped the side of his nose, which is something you wouldn’t want to watch, by the way, and said, “Of course you haven’t, sir. Not you! Hohoho!”‘ ‘And you just hoped something would turn up? What made you think it would?’ ‘It always has. The only way to get something to turn up when you need it is to need it to turn up.’ ‘And I’m supposed to help you how?’ ‘Your father built the Trunk!’ ‘Yes, but I didn’t,’ said the woman. ‘I’ve never been up in the towers. I don’t know any big secrets, except that it’s always on the point of breaking down. And everyone knows that.’ ‘People who can’t afford to lose are betting money on me! And the more I tell them they shouldn’t, the more they bet!’ ‘Don’t you think that’s a bit silly of them?’ said Miss Dearheart sweetly. Moist drummed his fingers on the edge of the table. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I can think of another good reason why you might help me. It’s a little complicated, so I can only tell you if you promise to sit still and not make any sudden movements.’ ‘Why, do you believe I will?’ ‘Yes. I think that in a few seconds you’ll try to kill me. I’d like you to promise not to.’ She shrugged. ‘This should be interesting.’ ‘Promise?’ said Moist. ‘All right. I hope it’s going to be exciting.’ Miss Dearheart flicked some ash off her cigarette. ‘Go on.’ Moist took a couple of calm breaths. This was it. The End. If you kept changing the way people saw the world, you ended up changing the way you saw yourself. ‘I am the man who lost you that job at the bank. I forged those bills.’ Miss Dearheart’s expression didn’t change, apart from a certain narrowing of the eyes. Then she blew out a stream of smoke. ‘I did promise, did I?’ she said. ‘Yes. Sorry.’ ‘Did I have my fingers crossed?’ ‘No. I was watching.’ ‘Hmm.’ She stared reflectively at the glowing end of her cigarette. ‘All right. You’d better tell me the rest of it.’ He told her the rest of it. All of it. She quite liked the bit where he was hanged, and made him repeat it. Around them, the city happened. Between them, the ashtray filled up with ash. When he’d finished she stared at him for some time, through the smoke. ‘I don’t understand the bit where you give all your stolen money to the Post Office. Why did you do that?’ ‘I’m a bit hazy on that myself.’ ‘I mean, you’re clearly a self-centred bastard, with the moral fibre of a, a—’ ‘—rat,’ Moist suggested. ‘—a rat, thank you . . . but suddenly you’re the darling of the big religions, the saviour of the Post Office, official snook-cocker to the rich and powerful, heroic horseman, all-round wonderful human being and, of course, you rescued a cat from a burning building. Two humans, too, but everyone knows the cat’s the most important bit. Who are you trying to fool, Mr Lipwig?’ ‘Me, I think. I’ve fallen into good ways. I keep thinking I can give it up any time I like, but I don’t. But I know if I couldn’t give it up any time I liked, I wouldn’t go on doing it. Er . . . there is another reason, too.’ ‘And that is—?’ ‘I’m not Reacher Gilt. That’s sort of important. Some people might say there’s not a lot of difference, but I can see it from where I stand and it’s there. It’s like a golem not being a hammer. Please? How can I beat the Grand Trunk?’ Miss Dearheart stared through him until he felt very uncomfortable. Then she said, in a faraway voice: ‘How well do you know the Post Office, Mr Lipwig? The building, I mean.’ ‘I saw most of it before it burned down.’ ‘But you never went on to the roof?’ ‘No. I couldn’t find a way up. The upper floors were stuffed with letters when . . . I . . . tried . . .’ Moist’s voice trailed off. Miss Dearheart stubbed out her cigarette. ‘Go up there tonight, Mr Lipwig. Get yourself a little bit closer to heaven. And then get down on your knees and pray. You know how to pray, don’t you? You just put your hands together - and hope.’ Moist got through the rest of the day somehow. There were postmastery things to do - Mr Spools to speak to, builders to shout at, the everlasting clearing up to oversee and new staff to hire. In the case of the staff, though, it was more ratifying the decisions of Mr Groat and Miss Maccalariat, but they seemed to know what they were doing. He just had to be there to make the occasional judgement, like: ‘Do we embrace divertingly?’ said Miss Maccalariat, appearing in front of his desk. There was a pregnant pause. It gave birth to a lot of little pauses, each one more deeply embarrassing than its parent. ‘Not as far as I know,’ was the best Moist could manage. ‘Why do you ask?’ ‘A young lady wants to know. She said that’s what they do at the Grand Trunk.’ ‘Ah. I suspect she means embrace diversity,’ said Moist, recalling Gilt’s speech to the Times. ‘But we don’t do that here because we don’t know what it means. We’ll employ anyone who can read and write and reach a letter box, Miss Maccalariat. I’ll hire vampires if they’re a member of the League of Temperance, trolls if they wipe their feet, and if there’re any werewolves out there I’d love to hire postmen who can bite back. Anyone who can do the job, Miss Maccalariat. Our job is moving the mail. Morning, noon and night, we deliver. Was there anything else?’ Now there was a glint in her eye. ‘I don’t have any difficulties with anyone who speaks up about what they are, Mr Lipwig, but I must protest about dwarfs. Mr Groat is hiring them.’ ‘Fine workers, Miss Maccalariat. Keen on the written word. Hardworking, too,’ said Moist briskly. ‘But they do not tell you what their— what they— which— if they’re ladies or gentlemen dwarfs, Mr Lipwig.’ ‘Ah. This is going to be about the privies again?’ said Moist, his heart sinking. ‘I feel I am responsible for the moral welfare of the young people in my charge,’ said Miss Maccalariat sternly. ‘You are smiling, Postmaster, but I will not be funned with.’ ‘Your concern does you credit, Miss Maccalariat,’ said Moist. ‘Special attention will be paid to this in the design of the new building, and I will tell the architect that you are to be consulted at every stage.’ Miss Maccalariat’s well-covered bosom inflated noticeably at this sudden acquisition of power. ‘In the meantime, alas, we must make do with what the fire has left us. I do hope, as part of the management team, you will reassure people on this.’ The fires of dreadful pride gleamed off Miss Maccalariat’s spectacles. Management! ‘Of course, Postmaster,’ she said. But, mostly, Moist’s job was just to . . . be. Half of the building was a blackened shell. People were squeezed into what was left; mail was even being sorted on the stairs. And things seemed to go better when he was around. He didn’t have to do anything, he just had to be there. He couldn’t help thinking of the empty plinth, where the god had been taken away. He was ready when dusk came. There were plenty of ladders around, and the golems had managed to shore up the floors even up here. Soot covered everything and some rooms opened on to blackness, but he climbed ever up. He struggled through what remained of the attics, and clambered through a hatch and on to the roof. There wasn’t much of it. The descent of the rainwater tank had brought down a lot of burning roof with it, and barely a third remained over the great hall. But the fire had hardly touched one of the legs of the U, and the roof there looked sound. There was one of the old postal pigeon lofts there, and someone had been living in it. That wasn’t too surprising. Far more people wanted to live in Ankh-Morpork than there was Ankh-Morpork for them to live in. There was a whole sub-civilization at rooftop level, up here among the towers and ornamental domes and cupolas and chimneys and— —clacks towers. That’s right. He’d seen the clacks tower, and someone up here, just before his life had taken a turn for the strange. Why would a loft built for carrier pigeons have a semaphore tower? Surely the pigeons didn’t use it? Three gargoyles had colonized this one. They liked clacks towers anyway - being up high was what being a gargoyle was all about - and they’d fitted into the system easily. A creature that spent all its time watching and was bright enough to write down a message was a vital component. They didn’t even want paying, and they never got bored. What could possibly bore a creature that was prepared to stare at the same thing for years at a time? Around the city, the clacks towers were lighting up. Only the University, the Palace, the Guilds and the seriously rich or very nervous ran their towers at night, but the big terminal tower on the Tump blazed like a Hogswatch tree. Patterns of yellow squares ran up and down the main tower. Silent at this distance, winking their signals above the rising mists, outlining their constellations against the evening sky, the towers were more magical than magic, more bewitching than witchcraft. Moist stared. What was magic, after all, but something that happened at the snap of a finger? Where was the magic in that? It was mumbled words and weird drawings in old books and in the wrong hands it was dangerous as hell, but not one half as dangerous as it could be in the right hands. The universe was full of the stuff; it made the stars stay up and the feet stay down. But what was happening now . . . this was magical. Ordinary men had dreamed it up and put it together, building towers on rafts in swamps and across the frozen spines of mountains. They’d cursed and, worse, used logarithms. They’d waded through rivers and dabbled in trigonometry. They hadn’t dreamed, in the way people usually used the word, but they’d imagined a different world, and bent metal round it. And out of all the sweat and swearing and mathematics had come this . . . thing, dropping words across the world as softly as starlight. The mist was tilling the streets now, leaving the buildings like islands in surf. Pray, she’d said. And, in a way, the gods owed him a favour. Well, didn’t they? They’d got a handsome offering and a lot of celestial cred for not, in fact, doing anything at all. Get down on your knees, she’d said. It hadn’t been a joke. He knelt, pressed his hands together, and said, ‘I address this prayer to any god who—’ With a silence that was frightening, the clacks tower across the street lit up. The big squares glowed into life one after the other. For a moment, Moist saw the shape of the lamplighter in front of one of the shutters. As he disappeared into the dark, the tower started to flicker. It was close enough to illuminate the roof of the Post Office. There were three dark figures at the other end of the roof, watching Moist. Their shadows danced as the pattern of lights changed, twice every second. They revealed the figures were human, or at least humanoid. And they were walking towards him. Gods, now, gods could be humanoid. And they didn’t like to be messed about. Moist cleared his throat. ‘I’m certainly glad to see you—’ he croaked. ‘Are you Moist?’ said one of the figures. ‘Look, I—’ ‘She said you’d be kneeling down,’ said another member of the celestial trio. ‘Fancy a cup of tea?’ Moist got up slowly. This was not godly behaviour. ‘Who are you?’ he said. Emboldened by the lack of thunderbolts, he added: ‘And what are you doing on my building?’ ‘We pay rent,’ said a figure. ‘To Mr Groat.’ ‘He never told me about you!’ ‘Can’t help you there,’ said the shadow in the centre. ‘Anyway, we’ve only come back to get the rest of our stuff. Sorry about your fire. It wasn’t us.’ ‘You being—’ said Moist. ‘I’m Mad Al, he’s Sane Alex, and that’s Adrian, who says he’s not mad but can’t prove it.’ ‘Why do you rent the roof?’ The trio looked at one another. ‘Pigeons?’ suggested Adrian. ‘That’s right, we’re pigeon fanciers,’ said the shadowy figure of Sane Alex. ‘But it’s dark,’ said Moist. This information was considered. ‘Bats,’ said Mad Al. ‘We’re trying to breed homing bats.’ ‘I don’t believe bats have that kind of homing instinct,’ said Moist. ‘Yes, it’s tragic, isn’t it?’ said Alex. ‘I come up here at nights and see those empty little perches and it’s all I can do not to cry,’ said Undecided Adrian. Moist looked up at the little tower. It was about five times the height of a man, with the control levers on a polished panel near the bottom. It looked . . . professional, and well used. And portable. ‘I don’t think you breed any kind of birds up here,’ he said. ‘Bats are mammals,’ said Sane Alex. Moist shook his head. ‘Lurking on rooftops, your own clacks . . . you’re the Smoking Gnu, aren’t you?’ ‘Ah, with a mind like that I can see why you’re Mr Groat’s boss,’ said Sane Alex. ‘How about a cup of tea?’ Mad Al picked a pigeon feather out of his mug. The pigeon loft was full of the flat, choking smell of old guano. ‘You have to like birds to like it up here,’ he said, flicking the feather into Sane Alex’s beard. ‘Good job you do, eh?’ said Moist. ‘I didn’t say I did, did I? And we don’t live up here. It’s just that you’ve got a good rooftop.’ It was cramped in the pigeon loft, from which pigeons had, in fact, been barred. But there’s always one pigeon that can bite through wire netting. It watched them from the corner with mad little eyes, its genes remembering the time it had been a giant reptile that could have taken these sons of monkeys to the cleaners in one mouthful. Bits of dismantled mechanisms were everywhere. ‘Miss Dearheart told you about me, did she?’ said Moist. ‘She said you weren’t a complete arse,’ said Undecided Adrian. ‘Which is praise coming from her,’ said Sane Alex. ‘And she said you were so crooked you could walk through a corkscrew sideways,’ said Undecided Adrian. ‘She was smiling when she said it, though.’ ‘That’s not necessarily a good thing,’ said Moist. ‘How do you know her?’ ‘We used to work with her brother,’ said Mad Al. ‘On the Mark 2 tower.’ Moist listened. It was a whole new world. Sane Alex and Mad Al were old men in the clacks business; they’d been in it for almost four years. Then the consortium had taken over, and they’d been fired from the Grand Trunk on the same day that Undecided Adrian had been fired from the Alchemists’ Guild chimney, in their case because they’d spoken their mind about the new management and in his case because he hadn’t moved fast enough when the beaker started to bubble. They’d all ended up working on the Second Trunk. They’d even put money into it. So had others. It had all kinds of improvements, it would be cheaper to run, it was the bee’s knees, mutt’s nuts and various wonderful bits of half a dozen other creatures. And then John Dearheart, who always used a safety lanyard, landed in the cabbage field and that was the end of the Second Trunk. Since then, the trio had done the kinds of jobs available to new square pegs in a world of old round holes, but every night, high above, the clacks flashed its messages. It was so close, so inviting, so . . . accessible. Everyone knew, in some vague, half-understood way, that the Grand Trunk had been stolen in all but name. It belonged to the enemy. So they’d started an informal little company of their own, which used the Grand Trunk without the Grand Trunk’s knowing. It was a little like stealing. It was exactly like stealing. It was, in fact, stealing. But there was no law against it because no one knew the crime existed, so is it really stealing if what’s stolen isn’t missed? And is it stealing if you’re stealing from thieves? Anyway, all property is theft, except mine. ‘So now you’re, what was it again . . . crackers?’ Moist said. ‘That’s right,’ said Mad Al. ‘Because we can crack the system.’ ‘That sounds a bit over-dramatic when you’re just doing it with lamps, doesn’t it?’ ‘Yes, but “flashers” was already taken,’ said Sane Alex. ‘All right, but why “Smoking Gnu”?’ said Moist. ‘That’s cracker slang for a very fast message sent throughout the system,’ said Sane Alex proudly. Moist pondered this. ‘That makes sense,’ he said. ‘If I was a team of three people, who all had a first name beginning with the same letter, that’s just the kind of name I’d choose.’ They’d found a way into the semaphore system, and it was this: at night, all clacks towers were invisible. Only the lights showed. Unless you had a good sense of direction, the only way you could identify who the message was coming from was by its code. Engineers knew lots of codes. Ooh, lots. ‘You can send messages free?’ said Moist. ‘And nobody notices?’ There were three smug smiles. ‘It’s easy,’ said Mad Al, ‘when you know how.’ ‘How did you know that tower was going to break down?’ ‘We broke it,’ said Sane Alex. ‘Broke the differential drum. They take hours to sort out because the operators have to—’ Moist missed the rest of the sentence. Innocent words swirled in it like debris caught in a flood, occasionally bobbing to the surface and waving desperately before being pulled under again. He caught ‘the’ several times before it drowned, and even ‘disconnect’ and ‘gear chain’, but the roaring, technical polysyllables rose and engulfed them all. ‘—and that takes at least half a day,’ Sane Alex finished. Moist looked helplessly at the other two. ‘And that means what, exactly?’ he said. ‘If you send the right kind of message you can bust the machinery,’ said Mad Al. ‘ The whole Trunk?’ ‘In theory,’ said Mad Al, ‘because an execute and terminate code—’ Moist relaxed as the tide came back in. He wasn’t interested in machinery; he thought of a spanner as something which had another person holding it. It was best just to smile and wait. That was the thing about artificers: they loved explaining. You just had to wait until they reached your level of understanding, even if it meant that they had to lie down. ‘—can’t do that any more in any case, because we’ve heard they’re changing the—’ Moist stared at the pigeon for a while, until silence came back. Ah. Mad Al had finished, and by the looks of things it hadn’t been on a high note. ‘You can’t do it, then,’ said Moist, his heart sinking. ‘Not now. Old Mr Pony might be a bit of an old woman but he sits and niggles at problems. He’s been changing all the codes all day! We’ve heard from one of our mates that every signaller will have to have a personal code now. They’re being very careful. I know Miss Adora Belle thought we could help you, but that bastard Gilt has locked things up tight. He’s worried you’re going to win.’ ‘Hah!’ said Moist. “We’ll come up with some other way in a week or two,’ said Undecided Adrian. ‘Can’t you put it off until then?’ ‘No, I don’t think so.’ ‘Sorry,’ said Undecided Adrian. He was playing idly with a small glass tube, full of red light. When he turned it over, it filled with yellow light. ‘What’s that?’ Moist asked. ‘A prototype,’ said Undecided Adrian. ‘It could have made the Trunk almost three times faster at night. It uses perpendicular molecules. But the Trunk’s just not open to new ideas.’ ‘Probably because they explode when dropped?’ said Sane Alex. ‘Not always.’ ‘I think I could do with some fresh air,’ said Moist. They stepped out into the night. In the middle distance the terminal tower still winked, and towers were alight here and there in other parts of the city. ‘What’s that one?’ he said, like a man pointing to a constellation. ‘Thieves’ Guild,’ said Undecided Adrian. ‘General signals for the members. I can’t read ‘em.’ ‘And that one? Isn’t that the first tower on the way to Sto Lat?’ ‘No, it’s the Watch station on the Hubwards Gate. General signals to Pseudopolis Yard.’ ‘It looks a long way off.’ ‘They use small shutter boxes, that’s all. You can’t see Tower 2 from here - the University’s in the way.’ Moist stared, hypnotized, at the lights. ‘I wondered why that old stone tower on the way to Sto Lat wasn’t used when the Trunk was built? It’s in the right place.’ ‘The old wizard tower? Robert Dearheart used it for his first experiments, but it’s a bit too far and the walls aren’t safe and if you stay in there for more than a day at a time you go mad. It’s all the old spells that got into the stones.’ There was silence and then they heard Moist say, in a slightly strangled voice: ‘If you could get on to the Grand Trunk tomorrow, is there anything you could do to slow it down?’ ‘Yes, but we can’t,’ said Undecided Adrian. ‘Yes, but if you could?’ ‘Well, there’s something we’ve been thinking about,’ said Mad Al. ‘It’s very crude.’ ‘Will it knock out a tower?’ said Moist. ‘Should we be telling him about this?’ said Sane Alex. ‘Have you ever met anyone else that Killer had a good word for?’ said Mad Al. ‘In theory it could knock out every tower, Mr Lipwig.’ ‘Are you insane as well as mad?’ said Sane Alex. ‘He’s government!’ ‘Every tower on the Trunk?’ said Moist. ‘Yep. In one go,’ said Mad Al. ‘It’s pretty crude.’ ‘ Really every tower?’ said Moist again. ‘Maybe not every tower, if they catch on,’ Mad Al admitted, as if less than wholesale destruction was something to be mildly ashamed of. ‘But plenty. Even if they cheat and carry it to the next tower on horseback. We call it . . . the Woodpecker’. ‘The woodpecker?’ ‘No, not like that. You need, sort of, more of a pause for effect, like . . . the Woodpecker! ‘. . . the Woodpecker,’ said Moist, more slowly. ‘You’ve got it. But we can’t get it on to the Trunk. They’re on to us’ ‘Supposing I could get it on to the Trunk?’ said Moist, staring at the lights. The towers themselves were quite invisible now. ‘You? What do you know about clacks codes?’ said Undecided Adrian. ‘I treasure my ignorance,’ said Moist. ‘But I know about people. You think about being cunning with codes. I just think about what people see—’ They listened. They argued. They resorted to mathematics, while words sailed through the night above them. And Sane Alex said: ‘All right, all right. Technically it could work, but the Trunk people would have to be stupid to let it happen.’ ‘But they’ll be thinking about codes,’ said Moist. ‘And I’m good at making people stupid. It’s my job.’ ‘I thought your job was postmaster,’ said Undecided Adrian. ‘Oh, yes. Then it’s my vocation.’ The Smoking Gnu looked at one another. ‘It’s a totally mad idea,’ said Mad Al, grinning. ‘I’m glad you like it,’ said Moist. There are times when you just have to miss a night’s sleep. But Ankh-Morpork never slept; the city never did more than doze, and would wake up around 3 a.m. for a glass of water. You could buy anything in the middle of the night. Timber? No problem. Moist wondered whether there were vampire carpenters, quietly making vampire chairs. Canvas? There was bound to be someone in the city who’d wake up in the wee small hours for a wee and think, ‘What I could really do with right now is one thousand square yards of medium grade canvas!’ and, down by the docks, there were chandlers open to deal with the rush. There was a steady drizzle when they left for the tower. Moist drove the cart, with the others sitting on the load behind him and bickering over trigonometry. Moist tried not to listen; he got lost when maths started to get silly. Killing the Grand Trunk . . . Oh, the towers would be left standing, but it would take months to repair them all. It’d bring the company down. No one would get hurt, the Gnu said. They meant the men in the towers. The Trunk had become a monster, eating people. Bringing it down was a beguiling idea. The Gnu were full of ideas for what could replace it - faster, cheaper, easier, streamlined, using imps specially bred for the job . . . But something irked Moist. Gilt had been right, damn him. If you wanted to get a message five hundred miles very, very fast, the Trunk was the way to do it. If you wanted to wrap it in a ribbon, you needed the Post Office. He liked the Gnu. They thought in a refreshingly different way; whatever curse hung around the stones of the old tower surely couldn’t affect minds like theirs, because they were inoculated against madness by being a little bit crazy all the time. The clacks signallers, all along the Trunk, were . . . a different kind of people. They didn’t just do their job, they lived it. But Moist kept thinking of all the bad things that could happen without the semaphore. Oh, they used to happen before the semaphore, of course, but that wasn’t the same thing at all. He left them sawing and hammering in the stone tower, and headed back to the city, deep in thought. Chapter Thirteen The Edge of the Envelope In which we learn the Theory of Baize-Space — Devious Collabone - The Grand Trunk Burns — So Sharp You’ll Cut Yourself— Finding Miss Dearheart - A Theory of Disguise - Igor Moveth On - ‘Let This Moment Never End’ - A Brush with the Trunk - The big sail unfurls - The Message is Received Mustrum Ridcully, Archchancellor of Unseen University, levelled his cue and took careful aim. The white ball hit a red ball, which rolled gently into a pocket. This was harder than it looked because more than half of the snooker table served as the Archchancellor’s filing system,* and indeed to get to the hole the ball had to pass through several piles of paperwork, a tankard, a skull with a dribbly candle on it and a lot of pipe ash. It did so. * Ridcully practised the First Available Surface method of filing. ‘Well done, Mr Stibbons,’ said Ridcully. ‘I call it baize-space,’ said Ponder Stibbons proudly. Every organization needs at least one person who knows what’s going on and why it’s happening and who’s doing it, and at UU this role was filled by Stibbons, who often wished it wasn’t. Right now he was present in his position as Head of Inadvisably Applied Magic, and his long-term purpose was to see that his department’s budget went through on the nod. To this end, therefore, a bundle of thick pipes led from under the heavy old billiard table, out through a hole in the wall and across the lawn into the High Energy Magic building, where - he sighed - this little trick was taking up 40 per cent of the rune-time of Hex, the University’s thinking engine. ‘Good name,’ said Ridcully, lining up another shot. ‘As in phase-space?’ said Ponder, hopefully. ‘When a ball is just about to encounter an obstacle that is not another ball, you see, Hex moves it into a theoretical parallel dimension where there is unoccupied flat surface and maintains speed and drag until it can be brought back to this one. It really is a most difficult and intricate piece of unreal-time spell casting—’ ‘Yes, yes, very good,’ said Ridcully. ‘Was there something else, Mr Stibbons?’ Ponder looked at his clipboard. ‘There’s a polite letter from Lord Vetinari asking on behalf of the city whether the University might consider including in its intake, oh, twenty-five per cent of less able students, sir?’ Ridcully potted the black, through a heap of university directives. ‘Can’t have a bunch of grocers and butchers telling a university how to run itself, Stibbons!’ he said firmly, lining up on a red. ‘Thank them for their interest and tell them we’ll continue to take one hundred per cent of complete and utter dullards, as usual. Take ‘em in dull, turn ‘em out sparklin’, that’s always been the UU way! Anythin’ else?’ ‘Just this message for the big race tonight, Archchancellor.’ ‘Oh, yes, that thing. What should I do, Mr Stibbons? I hear there’s heavy betting on the Post Office.’ ‘Yes, Archchancellor. People say the gods are on the side of Mr Lipwig.’ ‘Are they betting?’ said Ridcully, watching with satisfaction as the ball rematerialized on the other side of a neglected ham sandwich. ‘I don’t think so, sir. He can’t possibly win.’ ‘Was he the fella who rescued the cat?’ ‘That was him, sir, yes,’ said Ponder. ‘Good chap. What do we think of the Grand Trunk? Bunch of bean-crushers, I heard. Been killin’ people on those towers of theirs. Man in the pub told me he’d heard the ghosts of dead signallers haunt the Trunk. I’ll try for the pink.’ ‘Yes, I’ve heard that, sir. I think it’s an urban myth,’ said Ponder. ‘They travel from one end of the Trunk to the other, he said. Not a bad way to spend eternity, mark you. There’s some splendid scenery up in the mountains.’ The Archchancellor paused, and his big face screwed up in thought. ‘ Haruspex’s Big Directory of Varying Dimensions,’ he said at last. ‘Pardon, Archchancellor?’ ‘That’s the message,’ said Ridcully. ‘No one said it had to be a letter, eh?’ He waved a hand over the tip of the cue, which grew a powdering of fresh chalk. ‘Give them a copy each of the new edition. Send ‘em to our man in Genua . . . what’s his name, thingummy, got a funny name . . . show him the old Alma Pater is thinkin’ of him.’ ‘That’s Devious Collabone, sir. He’s out studying Oyster Communications in a Low Intensity Magical Field for his B.Thau.’ ‘Good gods, can they communicate?’ said Ridcully. ‘Apparently, Archchancellor, although thus far they’re refusing to talk to him.’ ‘Why’d we send him all the way out there?’ ‘Devious H. Collabone, Archchancellor?’ Ponder prompted. ‘Remember? With the terrible halitosis?’ ‘Oh, you mean Dragonbreath Collabone?’ said Ridcully, as realization dawned. ‘The one who could blow a hole in a silver plate?’ ‘Yes, Archchancellor,’ said Ponder patiently. Mustrum Ridcully always liked to triangulate in on new information from several positions. ‘You said that out in the swamps no one would notice? If you remember, we allowed him to take a small omniscope.’ ‘Did we? Far-thinking of us. Call him up right now and tell him what’s going on, will you?’ ‘Yes, Archchancellor. In fact I’ll leave it a few hours because it’s still night time in Genua.’ ‘That’s only their opinion,’ said Ridcully, sighting again. ‘Do it now, man.’ Fire from the sky . . . Everyone knew that the top half of the towers rocked as the messages flew along the Trunk. One day, someone was going to do something about it. And all old signallers knew that if the connecting rod operating the shutters on the down-line was pushed up to open them on the same blink as the connecting rod on the up-line was pulled down to close the shutters on the other side of the tower, the tower lurched. It was being pushed from one side and pulled from the other, which would have roughly the same effect as a column of marching soldiers could have on an old bridge. That wasn’t too much of a problem, unless it occurred again and again so that the rocking built up to a dangerous level. But how often would that happen? Every time the Woodpecker arrived at your tower, that was how often. And it was like an illness that could only attack the weak and sick. It wouldn’t have attacked the old Trunk, because the old Trunk was too full of tower captains who’d shut down instantly and strip the offending message out of the drum, secure in the knowledge that their actions would be judged by superiors who knew how a tower worked and would have done the same thing themselves. It would work against the new Trunk, because there weren’t enough of those captains now. You did what you were told or you didn’t get paid and if things went wrong it wasn’t your problem. It was the fault of whatever idiot had accepted this message for sending in the first place. No one cared about you, and everyone at headquarters was an idiot. It wasn’t your fault; no one listened to you. Headquarters had even started an Employee of the Month scheme to show how much they cared. That was how much they didn’t care. And today you’d been told to shift code as fast as possible, and you didn’t want to be the one accused of slowing the system down, so you watched the next tower in line until your eyes watered and you hit keys like a man tapdancing on hot rocks. One after another, the towers failed. Some burned when the shutter boxes broke free and smashed on the cabin roofs, spilling blazing oil. There was no hope of fighting fire in a wooden box sixty feet up in the air; you slid down the suicide line and legged it to a safe distance to watch the show. Fourteen towers were burning before someone took their hands off the keys. And then what? You’d been given orders. There were to be no, repeat no other messages on the Trunk while this message was being sent. What did you do next? Moist awoke, the Grand Trunk burning in his head. The Smoking Gnu wanted to break it down and pick up the pieces, and he could see why. But it wouldn’t work. Somewhere on the line there was going to be one inconvenient engineer who’d risk his job to send a message ahead saying: it’s a killer, shift it slowly. And that would be that. Oh, it might take a day or two to get the thing to Genua, but they had weeks to work with. And someone else, too, would be smart enough to compare the message with what had been sent by the first tower. Gilt would wriggle out of it - no, he’d storm out of it. The message had been tampered with, he’d say, and he’d be right. There had to be another solution. The Gnu were on to something, though. Changing the message was the answer, if only he could do it in the right way. Moist opened his eyes. He was at his desk, and someone had put a pillow under his head. When was the last time he’d slept in a decent bed? Oh, yes, the night Mr Pump had caught him. He’d spent a couple of hours in a rented bed that had a mattress which didn’t actually move and wasn’t full of rocks. Bliss. His immediate past life scampered before his eyes. He groaned. ‘Good Morning, Mr Lipvig,’ said Mr Pump from the corner. ‘Your Razor Is Sharp, The Kettle Is Hot And I Am Sure A Cup Of Tea Is On The Way.’ ‘What time is it?’ ‘Noon, Mr Lipvig. You Did Not Get In Until Dawn,’ the golem added reproachfully. Moist groaned again. Six hours to the race. And then so many pigeons would come home to roost it’d be like an eclipse. ‘There Is Much Excitement,’ said the golem, as Moist shaved. ‘It Has Been Agreed That The Starting Line Will Be In Sator Square.’ Moist stared at his reflection, barely listening. He always raised the stakes, automatically. Never promise to do the possible. Anyone could do the possible. You should promise to do the impossible, because sometimes the impossible was possible, if you could find the right way, and at least you could often extend the limits of the possible. And if you failed, well, it had been impossible. But he’d gone too far this time. Oh, it’d be no great shame to admit that a coach and horses couldn’t travel at a thousand miles an hour, but Gilt would strut about it and the Post Office would remain just a little, old-fashioned thing, behind the times, small, unable to compete. Gilt would find some way to hold on to the Grand Trunk, cutting even more corners, killing people out of greed— ‘Are You All Right, Mr Lipvig?’ said the golem behind him. Moist stared into his own eyes, and what flickered in the depths. Oh, boy. ‘You Have Cut Yourself, Mr Lipvig,’ said Mr Pump. ‘Mr Lipvig?’ Shame I missed my throat, Moist thought. But that was a secondary thought, edging past the big dark one now unfolding in the mirror. Look into the abyss and you’ll see something growing, reaching towards the light. It whispered: Do this. This will work. Trust me. Oh, boy. It’s a plan that will work, Moist thought. It’s simple and deadly, like a razor. But it’d need an unprincipled man to even think about it. No problem there, then. I’ll kill you, Mr Gilt. I’ll kill you in our special way, the way of the weasel and cheat and liar. I’ll take away everything but your life. I’ll take away your money, your reputation and your friends. I’ll spin words around you until you’re cocooned in them. I’ll leave you nothing, not even hope . . . He carefully finished shaving, and wiped the remnant of the foam off his chin. There was not, in truth, that much blood. ‘I think I could do with a hearty breakfast, Mr Pump,’ he said. ‘And then I have a few things to do. In the meantime, can you please find me a broomstick? A proper birch besom? And then paint some stars on the handle?’ The makeshift counters were crowded when Moist went down, but the bustle stopped when he entered the hall. Then a cheer went up. He nodded and waved cheerfully, and was immediately surrounded by people waving envelopes. He did his best to sign them all. ‘A lot o’ extra mail for Genua, sir!’ Mr Groat exulted, pushing his way through the crowd. ‘Never seen a day like it, never!’ ‘Jolly good, well done,’ Moist murmured. ‘And the mail for the gods has gone right up, too!’ Groat continued. ‘Pleased to hear it, Mr Groat,’ said Moist. ‘We’ve got the first Sto Lat stamps, sir!’ said Stanley, waving a couple of sheets above his head. ‘The early sheets are covered in flaws, sir!’ ‘I’m very happy for you,’ said Moist. ‘But I’ve got to go and prepare a few things.’ ‘Aha, yes!’ said Mr Groat, winking.’ “A few things”, eh? Just as you say, sir. Stand aside, please, Postmaster coming through!’ Groat more or less pushed customers out of the way as Moist, trying to avoid the people who wanted him to kiss babies or were trying to grab a scrap of his suit for luck, made it out into the fresh air. Then he kept to the back streets, and found a place that did a very reasonable Double Soss, Egg, Bacon and Fried Slice, in the hope that food could replace sleep. It was all getting out of hand. People were putting out bunting and setting up stalls in Sator Square. The huge floating crowd that was the street population of Ankh-Morpork ebbed and flowed around the city, and tonight it would contract to form a mob in the square, and could be sold things. Finally he plucked up his courage and headed for the Golem Trust. It was closed. A bit more graffiti had been added to the strata that now covered the boarded-up window. It was just above knee-level and said, in crayon: ‘Golms are Made of pOo.’ It was good to see the fine old traditions of idiot bigotry being handed down, in a no-good-at-all kind of way. Dolly Sisters, he thought wildly, staying with an aunt. Did she ever mention the aunt’s name? He ran in that direction. Dolly Sisters had once been a village, before the sprawl had rolled over it; its residents still considered themselves apart from the rest of the city, with their own customs - Dog Turd Monday, Up Needles All - and almost their own language. Moist didn’t know it at all. He pushed his way through the narrow lanes, looking around desperately for— what? A column of smoke? Actually, that wasn’t a bad idea . . . He reached the house eight minutes later, and hammered on the door. To his relief, she opened it, and stared at him. She said: ‘How?’ He said: ‘Tobacconists. Not many women around here have a hundred-a-day habit.’ ‘Well, what do you want, Mr Clever?’ ‘If you help me, I can take Gilt for everything he’s got,’ said Moist. ‘Help me. Please? On my honour as a totally untrustworthy man?’ That at least got a brief smile, to be replaced almost immediately by the default expression of deep suspicion. Then some inner struggle resolved itself. ‘You’d better come into the parlour,’ she said, opening the door all the way. That room was small, dark and crowded with respectability. Moist sat on the edge of a chair, trying not to disturb anything, while he strained to hear women’s voices along the hallway. Then Miss Dearheart slipped in and shut the door behind her. ‘I hope this is all right with your family,’ said Moist. ‘I—’ ‘I told them we were courting,’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘That’s what parlours are for. The tears of joy and hope in my mother’s eyes were a sight to see. Now, what do you want?’ ‘Tell me about your father,’ said Moist. ‘I’ve got to know how the Grand Trunk was taken over. Have you still got any paperwork?’ ‘It won’t do any good. A lawyer looked at it and said it would be very hard to make a case—’ ‘I intend to appeal to a higher court,’ said Moist. ‘I mean, we can’t prove a lot of things, not actually prove—’ Miss Dearheart protested. ‘I don’t have to,’ said Moist. ‘The lawyer said it would take months and months of work to—’ she went on, determined to find a snag. ‘I’ll make someone else pay for it,’ said Moist. ‘Have you got books? Ledgers? Anything like that?’ ‘What are you intending to do?’ Miss Dearheart demanded. ‘It’s better if you don’t know. It really is. I know what I’m doing, Spike. But you shouldn’t.’ ‘Well, there’s a big box of papers,’ said Miss Dearheart uncertainly. ‘I suppose I could just sort of . . . leave it in here while I’m tidying up . . .’ ‘Good.’ ‘But can I trust you?’ ‘On this? My gods, no! Your father trusted Gilt, and look what happened! I wouldn’t trust me if I was you. But I would if I was me.’ ‘The funny thing is, Mr Lipwig, that I find myself trusting you all the more when you tell me how untrustworthy you are,’ said Miss Dearheart. Moist sighed. ‘Yes, I know, Spike. Wretched, isn’t it? It’s a people thing. Could you fetch the box, please?’ She did so, with a puzzled frown. It took all afternoon and even then Moist wasn’t sure, but he’d filled a small notebook with scribbles. It was like looking for piranhas in a river choked with weeds. There were a lot of bones on the bottom. But, although sometimes you thought you’d glimpsed a flash of silver, you could never be sure you’d seen a fish. The only way to be certain was to jump in. By half past four Sator Square was packed. The wonderful thing about the golden suit and the hat with wings was that, if Moist took them off, he wasn’t him any more. He was just a nondescript person with unmemorable clothes and a face you might vaguely think you’d seen before. He wandered through the crowd, heading towards the Post Office. No one gave him a second glance. Most didn’t bother with a first glance. In a way he’d never realized until now, he was alone. He’d always been alone. It was the only way to be safe. The trouble was, he missed the golden suit. Everything was an act, really. But the Man in the Golden Suit was a good act. He didn’t want to be a person you forgot, someone who was one step above a shadow. Underneath the winged hat, he could do miracles or, at least, make it appear that miracles had been done, which is nearly as good. He’d have to do one in an hour or two, that was certain. Oh well . . . He went round the back of the Post Office, and was about to slip inside when a figure in the shadow said, ‘Pissed!’ ‘I suspect you mean Psst?’ said Moist. Sane Alex stepped out of the shadows; he was wearing his old Grand Trunk donkey jacket and a huge helmet with horns on. ‘We’re running slow with the canvas—’ he began. ‘Why the helmet?’ said Moist. ‘It’s a disguise,’ said Alex. ‘A big horned helmet?’ ‘Yes. It makes me so noticeable that no one will suspect I’m trying not to be noticed, so they won’t bother to notice me.’ ‘Only a very intelligent man would think of something like that,’ said Moist carefully. ‘What’s happening?’ ‘We need more time,’ said Alex. ‘What? The race starts at six!’ ‘It won’t be dark enough. We won’t be able to get the sail up until half past at least. We’ll be spotted if we poke our heads over the parapet before then.’ ‘Oh, come on! The other towers are far too far away!’ ‘People on the road aren’t,’ said Alex. ‘Blast!’ Moist had forgotten about the road. All it would take later was someone saying he’d seen people on the old wizarding tower . . . ‘Listen, we’ve got it all ready to raise,’ said Alex, watching his face. ‘We can work fast when we’re up there. We just need half an hour of darkness, maybe a few minutes more.’ Moist bit his lip. ‘Okay. I can do that, I think. Now get back there and help them. But don’t start until I get there, understand? Trust me!’ I’m saying that a lot, he thought after the man had hurried away. I just hope they will. He went up to his office. The golden suit was on its hanger. He put it on. There was work to do. It was dull, but it had to be done. So he did it. At half past five the floorboards creaked as Mr Pump walked into the room, dragging a broomstick behind him. ‘Soon It Will Be Time For The Race, Mr Lipvig,’ he said. ‘I must finish a few things,’ said Moist. ‘There’s letters here from builders and architects, oh, and someone wants me to cure their warts . . . I really have to deal with the paperwork, Mr Pump.’ In the privacy of Reacher Gilt’s kitchen, Igor very carefully wrote a note. There were niceties to be observed, after all. You didn’t just leg it like a thief in the night. You tidied up, made sure the larder was stocked, washed the dishes and took exactly what you were owed from the petty cash box. Shame, really. It had been a pretty good job. Gilt hadn’t expected him to do much, and Igor had enjoyed terrorizing the other servants. Most of them, anyway. ‘It’s so sad you’re going, Mr Igor,’ said Mrs Glowbury, the cook. She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. ‘You’ve been a real breath of fresh air.’ ‘Can’t be helped, Mrthth Glowbury,’ said Igor. ‘I thall mith your thteak and kidney pie, and no mithtake. It doth my heart good to thee a woman who can really make thomething out of leftoverth.’ ‘I’ve knitted you this, Mr Igor,’ said the cook, hesitantly proffering a small soft package. Igor opened it with care, and unfolded a red and white striped balaclava. ‘I thought it would help keep your bolt warm,’ said Mrs Glowbury, blushing. Igor agonized for a moment. He liked and respected the cook. He’d never seen a woman handle sharp knives so skilfully. Sometimes, you had to forget the Code of the Igors. ‘Mrthth Glowbury, you did thay you had a thithter in Quirm?’ he said. ‘That’s right, Mr Igor.’ ‘Now would be a very good time for you to go and vithit her,’ said Igor firmly. ‘Do not athk me why. Goodbye, dear Mrthth Glowbury. I thall remember your liver with fondneth.’ Now it was ten minutes to six. ‘If You Leave Now, Mr Lipvig, You Will Be Just In Time For The Race,’ the golem rumbled, from the corner. ‘This is work of civic importance, Mr Pump,’ said Moist severely, reading another letter. ‘I am showing rectitude and attention to duty.’ ‘Yes, Mr Lipvig.’ He let it go on until ten minutes past the hour, because it’d take five minutes to get to the square, at a nonchalant saunter. With the golem lumbering beside him, in something approaching the antithesis of both nonchalance and sauntering, he left the Post Office behind. The crowd in the square parted at his approach, and there were cheers and some laughter when people saw the broomstick over his shoulder. It had stars painted on it, therefore it must be a magic broomstick. Of such beliefs are fortunes made. Find The Lady, Find The Lady . . . there was a science to it, in a way. Of course, it helped if you found out how to hold three cards in a loose stack; that was really the key. Moist had learned to be good at that, but he had found mere mechanical tricks a bit dull, a bit beneath him. There were other ways, ways to mislead, to distract, to anger. Anger was always good. Angry people made mistakes. There was a space in the centre of the square, round the stagecoach on which Leadpipe Jim sat proudly. The horses gleamed, the coach-work sparkled in the torchlight. But the group standing around the coach sparkled rather less. There were a couple of people from the Trunk, several wizards and, of course, Otto Chriek the iconographer. They turned and welcomed Moist with expressions ranging from relief to deep suspicion. ‘We were considering disqualification, Mr Lipwig,’ said Ridcully, looking severe. Moist handed the broom to Mr Pump. ‘I do apologize, Arch-chancellor,’ he said. ‘I was checking some stamp designs and completely lost track of time. Oh, good evening, Professor Pelc’ The Professor of Morbid Bibliomancy gave him a big grin and held up a jar. ‘And Professor Goitre,’ he said. ‘The old chap thought he’d like to see what all the fuss is about.’ ‘And this is Mr Pony of the Grand Trunk,’ said Ridcully. Moist shook hands with the engineer. ‘Mr Gilt not with you?’ he said, winking. ‘He’s, er, watching from his coach,’ said the engineer, looking nervously at Moist. ‘Well, since you are both here, Mr Stibbons will hand you each a copy of the message,’ said the Archchancellor. ‘Mr Stibbons?’ Two packages were handed over. Moist undid his, and burst out laughing. ‘But it’s a book!’ said Mr Pony. ‘It’ll take all night to code. And there’s diagrams!’ Okay, let’s begin, thought Moist, and moved like a cobra. He snatched the book from the startled Pony, thumbed through it quickly, grabbed a handful of pages and ripped them out, to a gasp from the crowd. ‘There you are, sir,’ he said, handing the pages back. ‘There is your message! Pages 79 to 128. We’ll deliver the rest of the book and the recipient can put your pages in later, if they arrive!’ He was aware of Professor Pelc glaring at him, and added: ‘And I’m sure it can be repaired very neatly!’ It was a stupid gesture but it was big and loud and funny and cruel and if Moist didn’t know how to get the attention of a crowd he didn’t know anything. Mr Pony backed away, clutching the stricken chapter. ‘I didn’t mean—’ he tried, but Moist interrupted with: ‘After all, we’ve got a big coach for such a small book.’ ‘It’s just that pictures take time to code—’ Mr Pony protested. He wasn’t used to this sort of thing. Machinery didn’t answer back. Moist allowed a look of genuine concern to cross his face. ‘Yes, that does seem unfair,’ he said. He turned to Ponder Stibbons. ‘Don’t you think that’s unfair, Mr Stibbons?’ The wizard looked puzzled. ‘But once they’ve coded it it’ll only take them a couple of hours to get it to Genua!’ he said. ‘Nevertheless, I must insist,’ said Moist. ‘We don’t want an unfair advantage. Stand down, Jim,’ he called up to the coachman. ‘We’re going to give the clacks a head start.’ He turned to Ponder and Mr Pony with an expression of innocent helpfulness. ‘Would an hour be all right, gentlemen?’ The crowd exploded. Gods, I’m good at this, Moist thought. I want this moment to go on for ever . . . ‘Mr Lipwig!’ a voice called out. Moist scanned the faces, and spotted the caller. ‘Ah, Miss Sacharissa. Pencil at the ready?’ ‘Are you seriously telling us you’ll wait while the Grand Trunk prepares their message?’ she said. She was laughing. ‘Indeed,’ said Moist, grasping the lapels of his gleaming jacket. ‘We in the Post Office are fair-minded people. May I take this opportunity to tell you about our new Green Cabbage stamp, by the way?’ ‘Surely you’re going too far, Mr Lipwig?’ ‘All the way to Genua, dear lady! Did I mention the gum is cabbage-flavoured?’ Moist couldn’t have stopped himself now for hard money. This was where his soul lived: dancing on an avalanche, making the world up as he went along, reaching into people’s ears and changing their minds. For this he offered glass as diamonds, let the Find The Lady cards fly under his fingers, stood smiling in front of clerks examining fake bills. This was the feeling he craved, the raw naked excitement of pushing the envelope— Reacher Gilt was moving through the crowd, like a shark among minnows. He gave Moist a carefully neutral look, and turned to Mr Pony. ‘Is there some problem, gentlemen?’ he said. ‘It’s getting late.’ In a silence punctuated by chuckles from the crowd, Pony tried to explain, in so far as he now had any grip of what was going on. ‘I see,’ said Gilt. ‘You are pleased to make fun of us, Mr Lipwig? Then allow me to say that we of the Grand Trunk will not take it amiss if you should leave now. I think we can spare you a couple of hours, eh?’ ‘Oh, certainly,’ said Moist. ‘If it will make you feel any better.’ ‘Indeed it will,’ said Gilt gravely. ‘It would be best, Mr Lipwig, if you were a long way away from here.’ Moist heard the tone, because he was expecting it. Gilt was being reasonable and statesmanlike, but his eye was a dark metal ball and there was the harmonic of murder in his voice. And then Gilt said: ‘Is Mr Groat well, Mr Lipwig? I was sorry to hear of the attack.’ ‘Attack, Mr Gilt? He was hit by falling timber,’ said Moist. And that question entitles you to no mercy at all, no matter what. ‘Ah? Then I was misinformed,’ said Gilt. ‘I shall know not to listen to rumours in future.’ ‘I shall pass on your good wishes to Mr Groat,’ said Moist. Gilt raised his hat. ‘Goodbye, Mr Lipwig. I wish you the best of luck in your gallant attempt. There are some dangerous people on the road.’ Moist raised his own hat and said: ‘I intend to leave them behind very soon, Mr Gilt.’ There, he thought. We’ve said it all, and the nice lady from the newspaper thinks we’re good chums or, at least, just business rivals being stiffly polite to each other. Let’s spoil the mood. ‘Goodbye, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Mr Pump, be so good as to put the broom on the coach, would you?’ ‘Broom?’ said Gilt, looking up sharply. ‘That broom? The one with stars on it? You’re taking a broomstick?’ ‘Yes. It will come in handy if we break down,’ said Moist. ‘I protest, Archchancellor!’ said Gilt, spinning round. ‘This man intends to fly to Genua!’ ‘I have no such intention!’ said Moist. ‘I resent the allegation!’ ‘Is this why you appear so confident?’ snarled Gilt. And it was a snarl, there and then, a little sign of a crack appearing. A broomstick could travel fast enough to blow your ears off. It wouldn’t need too many towers to break down, and heavens knew they broke down all the time, for a broomstick to beat the clacks to Genua, especially since it could fly direct and wouldn’t have to follow the big dog-leg the coach road and the Grand Trunk took. The Trunk would have to be really unlucky, and the person flying the broom would be really frozen and probably really dead, but a broomstick could fly from Ankh-Morpork to Genua in a day. That might just do it. Gilt’s face was a mask of glee. Now he knew what Moist intended. Round and round she goes, and where she stops, nobody knows . . . It was the heart of any scam or fiddle. Keep the punter uncertain or, if he is certain, make him certain of the wrong thing. ‘I demand that no broomstick is taken on the coach!’ said Gilt to the Archchancellor, which was not a good move. You didn’t demand anything from wizards. You requested. ‘If Mr Lipwig is not confident in his equipment,’ Gilt went on, ‘I suggest he concedes right now!’ ‘We’ll be travelling alone on some dangerous roads,’ said Moist. ‘A broomstick might be essential.’ ‘However, I am forced to agree with this . . . gentleman,’ said Ridcully, with some distaste. ‘It would not look right, Mr Lipwig.’ Moist threw up his hands. ‘As you wish, sir, of course. It is a blow. May I request even-handed treatment, though?’ ‘Your meaning?’ said the wizard. ‘There is a horse stationed at each tower to be used when the tower breaks down,’ said Moist. ‘That is normal practice!’ snapped Gilt. ‘Only in the mountains,’ said Moist calmly. ‘And even then only at the most isolated towers. But today, I suspect, there’s one at every tower. It’s a pony express, Archchancellor, with apologies to Mr Pony. They could easily beat our coach without sending a word of code.’ ‘You can’t possibly be suggesting that we’d take the message all the way on horseback!’ said Gilt. ‘You were suggesting I’d fly,’ said Moist. ‘If Mr Gilt is not confident in his equipment, Archchancellor, I suggest he concedes now.’ And there it was, a shadow on Gilt’s face. He was more than just irate now; he’d passed into the calm, limpid waters of utter, visceral fury. ‘So let’s agree that this isn’t a test of horses against broomsticks,’ said Moist. ‘It’s stagecoach against clacks tower. If the stage breaks down, we repair the stage. If a tower breaks down, you repair the tower.’ ‘That seems fair, I must say,’ said Ridcully. ‘And I so rule. However, I must take Mr Lipwig aside to issue a word of warning.’ The Archchancellor put his arm round Moist’s shoulders and led him round the coach. Then he leaned down until their faces were a few inches apart. ‘You are aware, are you, that painting a few stars on a perfectly ordinary broomstick doesn’t mean it will get airborne?’ he said. Moist looked into a pair of milky blue eyes that were as innocent as a child’s, particularly a child who is trying hard to look innocent. ‘My goodness, doesn’t it?’ he said. The wizard patted him on the shoulder. ‘Best to leave things as they are, I feel,’ he said happily. Gilt smiled at Moist as they returned. It was just too much to resist, so Moist didn’t. Raise the stakes. Always push your luck, because no one else would push it for you. “Would you care for a little personal wager, Mr Gilt?’ he said. ‘Just to make it . . . interesting?’ Gilt handled it well, if you couldn’t read the tells, the little signs . . . ‘Dear me, Mr Lipwig, do the gods approve of gambling?’ he said, and gave a short laugh. ‘What is life but a lottery, Mr Gilt?’ said Moist. ‘Shall we say . . . one hundred thousand dollars?’ That did it. That was the last straw. He saw something snap inside Reacher Gilt. ‘One hundred thousand? Where would you lay your hands on that kind of money, Lipwig?’ ‘Oh, I just place them together, Mr Gilt. Doesn’t everyone know that?’ said Moist, to general amusement. He gave the chairman his most insolent smile. ‘And where will you lay your hands on one hundred thousand dollars?’ ‘Hah. I accept the wager! We shall see who laughs tomorrow,’ said Gilt bluntly. ‘I’ll look forward to it,’ said Moist. And now I have you in the hollow of my hand, he thought to himself. The hollow of my hand. You’re enraged, now. You’re making wrong decisions. You’re walking the plank. He climbed up on to the coach and turned to the crowd. ‘Genua, ladies and gentlemen. Genua or bust!’ ‘Someone will!’ yelled a wag in the crowd. Moist bowed, and, as he straightened up, looked into the face of Adora Belle Dearheart. ‘Will you marry me, Miss Dearheart?’ he shouted. There was an ‘Oooh’ from the crowd, and Sacharissa turned her head like a cat seeking the next mouse. What a shame the paper had only one front page, eh? Miss Dearheart blew a smoke ring. ‘Not yet,’ she said calmly. This got a mixture of cheers and boos. Moist waved, jumped down beside the driver and said: ‘Hit it, Jim.’ Jim cracked his whip for the sound of the thing, and the coach moved away amidst cheering. Moist looked back, and made out Mr Pony pushing determinedly through the crowd in the direction of the Tump Tower. Then he sat back and looked at the streets, in the light of the coach lamps. Perhaps it was the gold working its way in from outside. He could feel something filling him, like a mist. When he moved his hand, he was sure that it left a trail of flecks in the air. He was still flying. ‘Jim, do I look all right?’ he said. ‘Can’t see much of you in this light, sir,’ said the coachman. ‘Can I ask a question?’ ‘Go ahead, please.’ ‘Why’d you give those bastards just those middle pages?’ ‘Two reasons, Jim. It makes us look good and makes them look like whiny kids. And the other is, it’s the bit with all the colour illustrations. I hear it takes ages to code one of those.’ ‘You’re so sharp you’ll cut yourself, Mr Lipwig! Eh? Damn straight!’ ‘Drive like the blazes, Jim!’ ‘Oh, I know how to give them a show, sir, you can bank on it! HyahP The whip cracked again, and the sound of hooves bounced off the buildings. ‘Six horses?’ said Moist, as they rattled up Broadway. ‘Aye, sir. Might as well make a name for myself, sir,’ said the coachman. ‘Slow down a bit when you get to the old wizard tower, will you? I’ll get off there. Did you get some guards?’ ‘Four of them, Mr Lipwig,’ Jim announced. ‘Lying low inside. Men of repute and integrity. Known ‘em since we were lads: Nosher Harry, Skullbreaker Tapp, Grievous Bodily Harmsworth and Joe “No Nose” Tozer. They’re mates, sir, don’t you worry, and they’re looking forward to a little holiday in Genua.’ ‘Yeah, we’ve all got our buckets and spades,’ growled a voice from inside. ‘I’d rather have them than a dozen watchmen,’ said Jim happily. The coach rattled on, leaving the outlying suburbs behind. The road under the wheels became rougher, but the coach swung and danced along on its steel springs. ‘When you’ve dropped me off you can rein them in a bit. No need to rush, Jim,’ said Moist, after a while. In the light of the coach lamps Moist saw Jim’s red face glow with guile. ‘It’s your Plan, eh, sir?’ ‘It’s a wonderful plan, Jim!’ said Moist. And I shall have to make sure it doesn’t work. The lights of the coach disappeared, leaving Moist in chilly darkness. In the distance the faintly glowing smokes of Ankh-Morpork made a great trailing mushroom of cloud that blotted out the stars. Things rustled in the bushes, and a breeze wafted the scent of cabbages over the endless fields. Moist waited until he got some night vision. The tower appeared, a column of night without stars. All he had to do was find his way through the dense, brambly, root-knotted woodland— He made a noise like an owl. Since Moist was no ornithologist, he did this by saying ‘woo woo’. The woodland exploded with owl hoots, except that these were owls that roosted in the old wizarding tower, which drove you mad in a day. It had no obvious effect on them except that the noises they made resembled every possible sound that could be made by a living or even dying creature. There was definitely some elephant in there, and possibly some hyena, too, with a hint of bedspring. When the din had died down a voice from a few feet away whispered: ‘All right, Mr Lipwig. It’s me, Adrian. Grab my hand and let’s go before the others start fighting again.’ ‘Fighting? What about?’ ‘They drive each other up the wall! Feel this rope? Can you feel it? Right. You can move fast. We scouted out a trail and strung the rope—’ They hurried through the trees. You had to be really close to the tower to see the glow coming through the ruined doorway at the base. Undecided Adrian had fixed some of his little cold lights up the inner wall. Stones moved under Moist’s feet as he scrambled to the summit. He paid them no attention, but ran up the spiral stair so fast that when he reached the top he spun. Mad Al caught him by the shoulders. ‘No rush,’ he said cheerfully. ‘We’ve got ten minutes to go.’ ‘We’d have been ready twenty minutes ago if somebody hadn’t lost the hammer,’ muttered Sane Alex, tightening a wire. ‘What? I put it in the tool box, didn’t I?’ said Mad Al. ‘In the spanner drawer!’ ‘So?’ ‘Who in their right mind would look for a hammer in the spanner drawer?’ Down below, the owls started up again. ‘Look,’ said Moist quickly, ‘that’s not important, is it? Right now?’ ‘This man,’ said Sane Alex, pointing an accusing wrench, ‘this man is mad!’ ‘Not as mad as someone who keeps his screws neatly by size in jam jars,’ said Mad Al. ‘That counts as sane!’ said Alex hotly. ‘But everyone knows rummaging is half the fun! Besides—’ ‘It’s done,’ said Undecided Adrian. Moist looked up. The Gnu’s clacks machine rose up into the night, just as it had done on the Post Office roof. Behind it, in the direction of the city, an H-shaped structure climbed even further. It looked a little like a ship’s mast, an effect maybe caused by the wires that steadied it. They rattled in the faint breeze. ‘You must have upset someone,’ Adrian went on, while the other two settled down a bit. ‘A message was sent through twenty minutes ago, from Gilt himself. He said the big one will go through duplex, great care must be taken not to change it in any way, there is to be no other traffic at all until there’s a restart message from Gilt, and he’ll personally sack the entire staff of any tower that does not strictly follow those instructions.’ ‘It just goes to show, the Grand Trunk is a people company,’ said Moist. Undecided Adrian and Mad Al walked over to the big frame and began to unwind some ropes from their cleats. Oh well, thought Moist, now for it . . . ‘There’s just one alteration to the plan,’ he said, and took a breath. ‘We’re not sending the Woodpecker.’ ‘What do you mean?’ said Adrian, dropping his rope. ‘That was the plan!’ ‘It’ll destroy the Trunk,’ said Moist. ‘Yes, that was the plan, sure enough,’ said Al. ‘Gilt’s as good as painted “kick me” on his pants! Look, it’s falling down of its own accord anyway, okay? It was an experiment in the first place! We can rebuild it faster and better!’ ‘How?’ said Moist. ‘Where will the money come from? I know a way to destroy the company but leave the towers standing. They were stolen from the Dearhearts and their partners. I can give them back! But the only way to build a better line of towers is to leave the old ones intact. The Trunk’s got to earn!’ ‘That’s the sort of thing Gilt would say!’ snapped Al. ‘And it’s true,’ said Moist. ‘Alex, you’re sane, tell the man! Keep the Trunk operating, replace one tower at a time, never dropping any code!’ He waved a hand towards the darkness. ‘The people out on the towers, they want to be proud of what they do, yes? It’s tough work and they don’t get paid enough but they live to shift code, right? The company’s running them into the ground but they still shift code!’ Adrian tugged at his rope. ‘Hey, the canvas is stuck,’ he announced to the tower in general. ‘It must have been caught up when we furled it . . .’ ‘Oh, I’m sure the Woodpecker will work,’ said Moist, plunging on. ‘It might even damage enough towers for long enough. But Gilt will twist his way out of it. Do you understand? He’ll shout about sabotage!’ ‘So what?’ said Mad Al. ‘We’ll have this lot back on the cart in an hour and no one will know we were ever here!’ ‘I’ll climb up and free it, shall I?’ said Undecided Adrian, shaking the canvas. ‘I said it won’t work? said Moist, waving him away. ‘Look, Mr Al, this isn’t going to be settled by fire. It’s going to be settled with words. We’ll tell the world what happened to the Trunk.’ ‘You’ve been talking to Killer about that?’ said Alex. ‘Yes,’ said Moist. ‘But you can’t prove anything,’ said Alex. ‘We heard it was all legal.’ ‘I doubt it,’ said Moist. ‘But that doesn’t matter. I don’t have to prove anything. I said this is about words, and how you can twist them, and how you can spin them in people’s heads so that they think the way you want them to. We’ll send a message of our own, and do you know what? The boys in the towers will want to send it, and when people know what it says they’ll want to believe it, because they’ll want to live in a world where it’s true. It’s my words against Gilt’s, and I’m better at them than he is. I can take him down with a sentence, Mr Mad, and leave every tower standing. And no one will ever know how it was done—’ There was a brief exclamation behind them, and the sound of canvas unrolling quite fast. ‘Trust me,’ said Moist. ‘We’ll never get another chance like this,’ said Mad Al. ‘Exactly!’ said Moist. ‘One man has died for every three towers standing,’ said Mad Al. ‘Did you know that?’ ‘You know they’ll never really die while the Trunk is alive,’ said Moist. It was a wild shot, but it hit something, he sensed it. He rushed on: ‘It lives while the code is shifted, and they live with it, always Going Home. Will you stop that? You can’t stop it! I won’t stop it! But I can stop Gilt! Trust me!’ The canvas hung like a sail, if as someone intended to launch the tower. It was eighty feet high and thirty feet wide and moved a little in the wind. ‘Where’s Adrian?’ said Moist. They looked at the sail. They rushed to the edge of the tower. They looked down into darkness. ‘Adrian?’ said Mad Al uncertainly. A voice from below said: ‘Yes?’ ‘What are you doing?’ ‘Just, you know . . . hanging around? And an owl has just landed on my head.’ There was a small tearing noise beside Moist. Sane Alex had cut a hole in the canvas. ‘Here it comes!’ he reported. ‘What?’ said Moist. ‘The message! They’re sending from Tower 2! Take a look,’ Alex said, backing away. Moist peered through the slit, back towards the city. In the distance, a tower was sparkling. Mad Al strode over to the half-sized clacks array and grabbed the handles. ‘All right, Mr Lipwig, let’s hear your plan,’ he said. ‘Alex, give me a hand! Adrian, just . . . hang on, all right?’ ‘It’s trying to push a dead mouse in my ear,’ said a reproachful voice from below. Moist shut his eyes, lined up the thoughts that had been buzzing for hours, and began to speak. Behind and above him, the huge expanse of canvas was just enough to block the line of sight between the two distant towers. In front of him, the Smoking Gnu’s half-sized tower was just the right size to look, to the next tower in line, like a bigger tower a long way off. At night all you could see were the lights. The clacks in front of him shook as the shutters rattled. And now a new message was dropping across the sky . . . It was only a few hundred words. When Moist had finished, the clacks rattled out the last few letters and then fell silent. After a while Moist said: ‘Will they pass it along?’ ‘Oh, yes,’ said Mad Al, in a flat voice. ‘They’ll send it. You’re sitting up in a tower in the mountains and you get a signal like that? You’ll get it away and out of your tower as fast as you can.’ ‘I don’t know if we ought to shake your hand or throw you off the tower,’ said Sane Alex sullenly. ‘That was evil.’ ‘What sort of person could dream up something like that?’ said Mad Al. ‘Me. Now let’s pull Adrian up, shall we?’ said Moist quickly. ‘And then I’d better get back to the city . . .’ An omniscope is one of the most powerful instruments known to magic, and therefore one of the most useless. It can see everything, with ease. Getting it to see anything is where wonders have to be performed because there is so much Everything - which is to say, everything that can, will, has, should or might happen in all possible universes - that anything, any previously specified thing, is very hard to find. Before Hex had evolved the control thaumarhythms, completing in a day a task that would have taken five hundred wizards at least ten years, omniscopes were used purely as mirrors because of the wonderful blackness they showed. This, it turned out, is because ‘nothing to see’ is what most of the universe consists of, and many a wizard has peacefully trimmed his beard while gazing into the dark heart of the cosmos. There were very few steerable omniscopes. They took a long time to make and cost a great deal. And the wizards were not at all keen on making any more. Omniscopes were for them to look at the universe, not for the universe to look back at them. Besides, the wizards did not believe in making life too easy for people. At least, for people who weren’t wizards. An omniscope was a rare, treasured and delicate thing. But today was a special occasion, and they had thrown open the doors to the richer, cleaner and more hygienic sections of Ankh-Morpork society. A long table had been set for Second Tea. Nothing too excessive - a few dozen roast fowls, a couple of cold salmon, one hundred linear feet of salad bar, a pile of loaves, one or two kegs of beer and, of course, the chutney, pickle and relish train, one trolley not being considered big enough. People had filled their plates and were standing around chatting and, above all, Being There. Moist slipped in unnoticed, for now, because people were watching the University’s biggest omniscope. Archchancellor Ridcully thumped the side of the thing with his hand, causing it to rock. ‘It’s still not working, Mr Stibbons!’ he bellowed. ‘Here’s that damn enormous fiery eye again!’ ‘I’m sure we have the right—’ Ponder began, fiddling with the rear of the big disc. ‘It’s me, sir, Devious Collabone, sir,’ said a voice from the omniscope. The fiery eye pulled back and was replaced by an enormous fiery nose. ‘I’m here at the terminal tower in Genua, sir. Sorry about the redness, sir. I’ve picked up an allergy to seaweed, sir.’ ‘Hello, Mr Collabone!’ yelled Ridcully. ‘How are you? How’s the—’ ‘—shellfish research—’ murmured Ponder Stibbons. ‘—shellfish research comin’ along?’ ‘Not very well, actually, sir. I’ve developed a nasty—’ ‘Good, good! Lucky chap!’ Ridcully yelled, cupping his hands to increase the volume. ‘I wouldn’t mind bein’ in Genua myself at this time of year! Sun, sea, surf and sand, eh?’ ‘Actually it’s the wet season, sir, and I’m a bit worried about this fungus that’s growing on the omni—’ ‘Wonderful!’ shouted Ridcully. ‘Well, I can’t stand here and chew your fat all day! Has anything arrived? We are agog!’ ‘Could you just stand back a little bit further, please, Mr Collabone?’ said Ponder. ‘And you don’t really need to speak so . . . loudly, Archchancellor.’ ‘Chap’s a long way away, man!’ said Ridcully. ‘Not as such, sir,’ said Ponder, with well-honed patience. ‘Very well, Mr Collabone, you may proceed.’ The crowd behind the Archchancellor pressed forward. Mr Collabone backed away. This was all a bit too much for a man who spent his days with no one to talk to but bivalves. ‘Er, I’ve had a message by clacks, sir, but—’ he began. ‘Nothin’ from the Post Office?’ said Ridcully. ‘No, sir. Nothing, sir.’ There were cheers and boos and general laughter from the crowd. From his shadowy corner, Moist saw Lord Vetinari, right by the Archchancellor. He scanned the rest of the crowd and spotted Readier Gilt, standing off to one side and, surprisingly, not smiling. And Gilt saw him. One look was enough. The man wasn’t certain. Not totally certain. Welcome to fear, said Moist to himself. It’s hope, turned inside out. You know it can’t go wrong, you’re sure it can’t go wrong . . . But it might. I’ve got you. Devious Collabone coughed. ‘Er, but I don’t think this is the message Archchancellor Ridcully sent,’ he said, his voice gone squeaky with nervousness. ‘What makes you think that, man?’ ‘Because it says it isn’t,’ Collabone quavered. ‘It says it’s from dead people . . .’ ‘You mean it’s an old message?’ said Ridcully. ‘Er, no, sir. Er . . . I’d better read it, shall I? Do you want me to read it?’ ‘That’s the point, man!’ In the big disc of glass, Collabone cleared his throat. ‘ “Who will listen to the dead? We who died so that words could fly demand justice now. These are the crimes of the Board of the Grand Trunk: theft, embezzlement, breach of trust, corporate murder—” ’ Chapter Fourteen Deliverance Lord Vetinari Requests Silence — Mr Lipwig Comes Down - Mr Pump Moves On — Fooling No One But Yourself— The Bird — The Concludium - Freedom of Choice The Great Hall was in uproar. Most of the wizards took the opportunity to congregate at the buffet, which was now clear. If there’s one thing a wizard hates, it’s having to wait while the person in front of them is in two minds about coleslaw. It’s a salad bar, they say, it’s got the kind of stuff salad bars have, if it was surprising it wouldn’t be a salad bar, you’re not here to look at it. What do you expect to find? Rhino chunks? Pickled coelacanth? The Lecturer in Recent Runes ladled more bacon bits into his salad bowl, having artfully constructed buttresses of celery and breastworks of cabbage to increase its depth five times. ‘Any of you Fellows know what this is all about?’ he said, raising his voice above the din. ‘Seems to be upsetting a lot of people.’ ‘It’s this clacks business,’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. ‘I’ve never trusted it. Poor Collabone. Decent young man in his way. A good man with a whelk. Seems to be in a spot of bother . . .’ It was quite a large spot. Devious Collabone was opening and shutting his mouth on the other side of the glass like a stranded fish. In front of him, Mustrum Ridcully reddened with anger, his tried and tested approach to most problems. ‘. . . sorry, sir, but this is what it says and you asked me to read it,’ Collabone protested. ‘It goes on and on, sir—’ ‘And that’s what the clacks people gave you?’ the Archchancellor demanded. ‘Are you sure? ’ ‘Yes, sir. They did look at me in a funny way, sir, but this is definitely it. Why should I make anything up, Archchancellor? I spend most of my time in a tank, sir. A boring, boring, lonely tank, sir.’ ‘Not one more word!’ screamed Greenyham. ‘I forbid it!’ Beside him, Mr Nutmeg had sprayed his drink across several dripping guests. ‘Excuse me? You forbid, sir?’ said Ridcully, turning on Greenyham in sudden fury. ‘Sir, I am the Master of this college! I will not, sir, be told what to do in my own university! If there is anything to be forbidden here, sir, I will do the forbidding! Thank you! Go ahead, Mr Collabone!’ ‘Er, er, er . . .’ Collabone panted, longing for death. ‘I said carry on, man!’ ‘Er, er . . . yes . . . “There was no safety. There was no pride. All there was, was money. Everything became money, and money became everything. Money treated us as if we were things, and we died—”‘ ‘Is there no law in this place? That is outright slander!’ shouted Stowley. ‘It’s a trick of some sort!’ ‘By whom, sir?’ roared Ridcully. ‘Do you mean to suggest that Mr Collabone, a young wizard of great integrity, who I may say is doing wonderful work with snakes—’ ‘—shellfish—’ murmured Ponder Stibbons. ‘—shellfish, is playing some kind of joke? How dare you, sir! Continue, Mr Collabone!’ ‘I, I, I—’ ‘That is an order, Dr Collabone!’* * Archchancellor Ridcully was a great believer in retaliation by promotion. You couldn’t have civilians criticizing one of his wizards. That was his job. ‘Er . . . “Blood oils the machinery of the Grand Trunk as willing, loyal people pay with their lives for the Board’s culpable stupidity—” ’ The hubbub rose again. Moist saw Lord Vetinari’s gaze traverse the room. He didn’t duck in time. The Patrician’s stare passed right through him, carrying away who knew what. An eyebrow rose in interrogation. Moist looked away, and sought out Gilt. He wasn’t there. In the omniscope Mr Collabone’s nose now glowed like a beacon. He struggled, dropping pages, losing his place, but pressing on with the dogged, dull determination of a man who could spend all day watching one oyster. ‘—nothing less than an attempt to blacken our good names in front of the whole city!’ Stowley was protesting. ‘ “— unaware of the toll that is being taken. What can we say of the men who caused this, who sat in comfort round their table and killed us by numbers? This—” ’ ‘I will sue the University! I will sue the University!’ screamed Greenyham. He picked up a chair and hurled it at the omniscope. Halfway to the glass it turned into a small flock of doves, which panicked and soared up to the roof. ‘Oh, please sue the University!’ Ridcully bellowed. ‘We’ve got a pond full of people who tried to sue the University—’ ‘Silence,’ said Vetinari. It wasn’t a very loud word, but it had an effect rather like that of a drop of black ink in a glass of clear water. The word spread out in coils and tendrils, getting everywhere. It strangled the noise. Of course, there is always someone not paying attention. ‘And furthermore,’ Stowley went on, oblivious of the hush unfolding in his own little world of righteous indignation, ‘it’s plain that—’ ‘I will have silence,’ Vetinari stated. Stowley stopped, looked around and deflated. Silence ruled. ‘Very good,’ said Vetinari quietly. He nodded at Commander Vimes of the Watch, who whispered to another watchman, who pushed his way though the crowd and towards the door. Vetinari turned to Ridcully. ‘Archchancellor, I would be grateful if you would instruct your student to continue, please?’ he said in the same calm tone. ‘Certainly! Off you go, Professor Collabone. In your own time.’ ‘Er, er, er, er . . . it says further on: “The men obtained control of the Trunk via a ruse known as the Double Lever, in the main using money entrusted to them by clients who did not suspect that— ”‘ ‘Stop reading that!’ Greenyham shouted. ‘This is ridiculous! It is just slander upon slander!’ ‘I’m certain I spoke, Mr Greenyham,’ said Vetinari. Greenyham faltered. ‘Good. Thank you,’ said Vetinari. ‘These are very serious allegations, certainly. Embezzlement? Murder? I’m sure that Mr— sorry, Professor Collabone is a trustworthy man’ - in the omniscope Devious Collabone, Unseen University’s newest professor, nodded desperately - ‘who is only reading what has been delivered, so it would appear that they have originated from within your own company. Serious allegations, Mr Greenyham. Made in front of all these people. Are you suggesting I should treat them as some sort of prank? The city is watching, Mr Greenyham. Oh, Stowley appears to be ill.’ ‘This is not the place for—’ Greenyham tried, aware once more of the creaking of ice. ‘It is the ideal place,’ said Vetinari. ‘It is public. In the circumstances, given the nature of the allegations, I’m sure everyone would require that I get to the bottom of them as soon as possible, if only to prove them totally groundless.’ He looked around. There was a chorus of agreement. Even the upper crust loved a show. ‘What do you say, Mr Greenyham?’ said Vetinari. Greenyham said nothing. The cracks were spreading, the ice was breaking up on every side. ‘Very well,’ said Vetinari. He turned to the figure beside him. ‘Commander Vimes, be so kind as to send men to the offices of the Grand Trunk Company, Ankh-Sto Associates, Sto Plains Holdings, Ankh Futures and particularly to the premises of the Ankh-Morpork Mercantile Credit Bank. Inform the manager, Mr Cheeseborough, that the bank is closed for audit and I wish to see him in my office at his earliest convenience. Any person in any of those premises who so much as moves a piece of paper before my clerks arrive will be arrested and held complicit in any or all of such offences as may be uncovered. While this is happening, moreover, no person concerned with the Grand Trunk Company or any of its employees is to leave this room.’ ‘You can’t do that!’ Greenyham protested weakly, but the fire had drained out of him. Mr Stowley had collapsed on the floor, with his head in his hands. ‘Can I not?’ said Vetinari. ‘I am a tyrant. It’s what we do.’ ‘What is happening? Who am I? Where is this place?’ moaned Stowley, a man who believed in laying down some groundwork as soon as possible. ‘But there’s no evidence! That wizard’s lying! Someone must have been bribed!’ Greenyham pleaded. Not only had the ice broken up, but he was on the floe with the big hungry walrus. ‘Mr Greenyham,’ said Lord Vetinari, ‘one more uninvited outburst from you and you will be imprisoned. I hope that is clear?’ ‘On what charge?’ said Greenyham, still managing to find a last reserve of hauteur from somewhere. ‘ There doesn’t have to be one!’ Robe swirling like the edge of darkness, Vetinari swung round to the omniscope and Devious Collabone, for whom two thousand miles suddenly wasn’t far enough. ‘Continue, Professor. There will be no further interruptions.’ Moist watched the audience as Collabone stuttered and mispronounced his way through the rest of the message. It dealt with generalities rather than particulars, but there were dates, and names, and thundering denunciations. There was nothing new, not really new, but it was packaged in fine language and it was delivered by the dead. We who died on the dark towers demand this of you . . . He ought to be ashamed. It was one thing to put words in the mouths of the gods; priests did it all the time. But this, this was a step too far. You had to be some kind of bastard to think of something like this. He relaxed a bit. A fine upstanding citizen wouldn’t have stooped so low, but he hadn’t got this job because he was a fine upstanding citizen. Some tasks needed a good honest hammer. Others needed a twisty corkscrew. With any luck, he could believe that, if he really tried. There had been a late fall of snow, and the fir trees around Tower 181 were crusted with white under the hard, bright starlight. Everyone was up there tonight - Grandad, Roger, Big Steve-oh, Wheezy Halfsides, who was a dwarf and had to sit on a cushion to reach the keyboards, and Princess. There had been a few muffled exclamations as the message came through. Now there was silence, except for the sighing of the wind. Princess could see people’s breath in the air. Grandad was drumming his fingers on the woodwork. Then Wheezy said: ‘Was that all real?’ The breath clouds got denser. People were relaxing, coming back to the real world. ‘You saw the instructions we got,’ said Grandad, staring across the dark forests. ‘Don’t change anything. Send it on, they told us. We sent it on. We damn well did send it on!’ ‘Who was it from?’ said Steve-oh. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Grandad. ‘Message comes in, message goes out, message moves on.’ ‘Yeah, but was it really from—’ Steve-oh began. ‘Bloody hell, Steve-oh, you really don’t know when to shut up, do you?’ said Roger. ‘Only I heard about Tower 93, where the guys died and the tower sent a distress signal all by itself,’ mumbled Steve-oh. He was fast on the keys, but not knowing when to shut up was only one of his social failings. In a tower, it could get you killed. ‘Dead Man’s Handle,’ said Grandad. ‘You should know that. If there’s no activity for ten minutes when a signature key is slotted, the drum drops the jacquard into the slot and the counterweight falls and the tower sends the help sign.’ He spoke the words as if reading them from a manual. ‘Yeah, but I heard that in Tower 93 the jacquard was wedged and—’ ‘I can’t stand this,’ muttered Grandad. ‘Roger, let’s get this tower working again. We’ve got local signals to send, haven’t we?’ ‘Sure. And stuff waiting on the drum,’ said Roger. ‘But Gilt said we weren’t to restart until—’ ‘Gilt can kiss my—’ Grandad began, then remembered the present company and finished:’— donkey. You read what went through just now! Do you think that bas— that man is still in charge?’ Princess looked out from the upstream window. ‘182’s lit up,’ she announced. ‘Right! Let’s light up and shift code,’ Grandad growled. ‘That’s what we do! And who’s going to stop us? All those without something to do, get out! We are running!’ Princess went out on to the little platform, to be out of the way. Underfoot the snow was like icing sugar, in her nostrils the air was like knives. When she looked across the mountains, in the direction she’d learned to think of as downstream, she could see that Tower 180 was sending. At that moment, she heard the thump and click of 181’s own shutters opening, dislodging snow. We shift code, she thought. It’s what we do. Up on the tower, watching the star-like twinkle of the Trunk in the clear, freezing air, it was like being part of the sky. And she wondered what Grandad most feared: that dead clacks-men could send messages to the living, or that they couldn’t. Collabone finished. Then he produced a handkerchief and rubbed away at whatever the green stuff was that had begun to grow on the glass. This made a squeaking sound. He peered nervously through the smear. ‘Is that all right, sir? I’m not in some sort of trouble, am I?’ he asked. ‘Only at the moment I think I’m close to translating the mating call of the giant clam . . .’ ‘Thank you, Professor Collabone; a good job well done. That will be all,’ said Archchancellor Ridcully coldly. ‘Unhinge the mechanism, Mr Stibbons.’ A look of fervid relief passed across Devious Colla-bone’s face just before the omniscope went blank. ‘Mr Pony, you are the chief engineer of the Grand Trunk, are you not?’ said Vetinari, before the babble could rise again. The engineer, suddenly the focus of attention, backed away waving his hands frantically. ‘Please, your lordship! I’m just an engineer, I don’t know anything—’ ‘Calm yourself, please. Have you heard that the souls of dead men travel on the Trunk?’ ‘Oh, yes, your lordship.’ ‘Is it true? ‘Well, er . . .’ Pony looked around, a hunted man. He’d got his pink flimsies, and they would show everyone that he was nothing more than a man who’d tried to make things work, but right now all he could find on his side was the truth. He took refuge in it. ‘I can’t see how, but, well . . . sometimes, when you’re up a tower of a night, and the shutters are rattlin’ and the wind’s singing in the rigging, well, you might think it’s true.’ ‘I believe there is a tradition called “Sending Home”?’ said Lord Vetinari. The engineer looked surprised. ‘Why, yes, sir, but . . .’ Pony felt he ought to wave a little flag for a rational world in which, at the moment, he didn’t have a lot of faith, ‘the Trunk was dark before we ran the message, so I don’t see how the message could have got on—’ ‘Unless, of course, the dead put it there?’ said Lord Vetinari. ‘Mr Pony, for the good of your soul and, not least, your body, you will go now to the Tump Tower, escorted by one of Commander Vimes’s men, and send a brief message to all the towers. You will obtain the paper tapes, which I believe are known as drum rolls, from all the towers on the Grand Trunk. I understand that they show a record of all messages originating at that tower, which cannot be readily altered?’ ‘That will take weeks to do, sir!’ Pony protested. ‘An early start in the morning would seem in order, then,’ said Lord Vetinari. Mr Pony, who had suddenly spotted that a spell a long way from Ankh-Morpork might be a very healthy option just now, nodded and said, ‘Right you are, my lord.’ ‘The Grand Trunk will remain closed in the interim,’ said Lord Vetinari. ‘It’s private property!’ Greenyham burst out. ‘Tyrant, remember,’ said Vetinari, almost cheerfully. ‘But I’m sure that the audit will serve to sort out at least some aspects of this mystery. One of them, of course, is that Mr Readier Gilt does not seem to be in this room.’ Every head turned. ‘Perhaps he remembered another engagement?’ said Lord Vetinari. ‘I think he slipped out some time ago.’ It dawned on the directors of the Grand Trunk that their chairman was absent and, which was worse, they weren’t. They drew together. ‘I wonder if, uh, at this point at least we could discuss the matter with you privately, your lordship?’ said Greenyham. ‘Readier was not an easy man to deal with, I’m afraid.’ ‘Not a team player,’ gasped Nutmeg. ‘Who?’ said Stowley. ‘What is this place? Who are all these people?’ ‘Left us totally in the dark most of the time—’ said Greenyham. ‘I can’t remember a thing—’ said Stowley. ‘I’m not fit to testify, any doctor will tell you . . .’ ‘I think I can say on behalf of all of us that we were suspicious of him all along—’ ‘Mind’s a total blank. Not a blessed thing . . . what’s this thing with fingers on . . . who am I . . .’ Lord Vetinari stared at the Board for five seconds longer than was comfortable, while tapping his chin gently with the knob of his cane. He smiled faintly. ‘Quite,’ he said. ‘Commander Vimes, I think it would be iniquitous to detain these gentlemen here any longer.’ As the faces in front of him relaxed into smiles full of hope, that greatest of all gifts, he added: ‘To the cells with them, Commander. Separate cells, if you please. I shall see them in the morning. And if Mr Slant comes to see you on their behalf, do tell him I’d like a little chat, will you?’ That sounded . . . good. Moist strolled towards the door, while the hubbub rose, and had almost made it when Lord Vetinari’s voice came out of the throng like a knife. ‘Leaving so soon, Mr Lipwig? Do wait a moment. I shall give you a lift back to your famous Post Office.’ For a moment, just a slice of a second, Moist contemplated running. He did not do so. What would be the point? The crowd parted hurriedly as Lord Vetinari headed towards the door; behind him, the Watch closed in. Ultimately, there is the freedom to take the consequences. The Patrician leaned back in the leather upholstery as the coach drew away. ‘What a strange evening, Mr Lipwig,’ he said. ‘Yes, indeed.’ Moist, like the suddenly bewildered Mr Stowley, considered that his future happiness lay in saying as little as possible. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘I wonder if that engineer will find any evidence that the strange message was put on the clacks by human hands?’ he wondered aloud. ‘I don’t know, my lord.’ ‘You don’t?’ ‘No, sir.’ ‘Ah,’ said Vetinari. ‘Well, the dead are known to speak, sometimes. Ouija boards and seances, and so on. Who can say they wouldn’t use the medium of the clacks?’ ‘Not me, sir.’ ‘And you are clearly enjoying your new career, Mr Lipwig.’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Good. On Monday your duties will include the administration of the Grand Trunk. It is being taken over by the city.’ Oh well, so much for future happiness . . . ‘No, my lord,’ said Moist. Vetinari raised an eyebrow. ‘There is an alternative, Mr Lipwig?’ ‘It really is private property, sir. It belongs to the Dearhearts and the other people who built it.’ ‘My, my, how the worm turns,’ said Vetinari. ‘But the trouble is, you see, they weren’t good at business, only at mechanisms. Otherwise they would have seen through Gilt. The freedom to succeed goes hand in hand with the freedom to fail.’ ‘It was robbery by numbers,’ said Moist. ‘It was Find The Lady done with ledgers. They didn’t stand a chance.’ Vetinari sighed. ‘You drive a hard bargain, Mr Lipwig.’ Moist, who wasn’t aware he had tried to drive a bargain at all, said nothing. ‘Oh, very well. The question of ownership will remain in abeyance for now, until we have plumbed the sordid depths of this affair. But what I truly meant was that a great many people depend on the Trunk for their living. Out of sheer humanitarian considerations, we must do something. Sort things out, Postmaster.’ ‘But I’m going to have my hands more than full with the Post Office!’ Moist protested. ‘I hope you are. But in my experience, the best way to get something done is to give it to someone who is busy,’ said Vetinari. ‘In that case, I’m going to keep the Grand Trunk running,’ said Moist. ‘In honour of the dead, perhaps,’ said Vetinari. ‘Yes. As you wish. Ah, here is your stop.’ As the coachman opened the door Lord Vetinari leaned towards Moist. ‘Oh, and before dawn I do suggest you go and check that everyone’s left the old wizarding tower,’ he said. ‘What do you mean, sir?’ said Moist. He knew his face betrayed nothing. Vetinari sat back. “Well done, Mr Lipwig.’ There was a crowd outside the Post Office, and a cheer went up as Moist made his way to the doors. It was raining now, a grey, sooty drizzle that was little more than fog with a slight weight problem. Some of the staff were waiting inside. He realized the news hadn’t got around. Even Ankh-Morpork’s permanent rumour-mill hadn’t been able to beat him back from the University. ‘What’s happened, Postmaster?’ said Groat, his hands twisting together. ‘Have they won?’ ‘No,’ said Moist, but they picked up the edge in his voice. ‘Have we won?’ ‘The Archchancellor will have to decide that,’ said Moist. ‘I suppose we won’t know for weeks. The clacks has been shut down, though. I’m sorry, it’s all complicated . . .’ He left them standing and staring as he trudged up to his office, where Mr Pump was standing in the corner. ‘Good Evening, Mr Lipvig,’ the golem boomed. Moist sat down and put his head in his hands. This was victory, but it didn’t feel like it. It felt like a mess. The bets? Well, if Leadpipe got to Genua you could make a case under the rules that he’d won, but Moist had a feeling that all bets were off now. That meant people would get their money back, at least. He’d have to keep the Trunk going, gods knew how. He’d sort of promised the Gnu, hadn’t he? And it was amazing how people had come to rely on the clacks. He wouldn’t know how Leadpipe had fared for weeks, and even Moist had got used to daily news from Genua. It was like having a finger cut off. But the clacks was a big, cumbersome monster of a thing, too many towers, too many people, too much effort. There had to be a way of making it better and sleeker and cheaper . . . or maybe it was something so big that no one could run it at a profit. Maybe it was like the Post Office, maybe the profit turned up spread around the whole of society. Tomorrow he’d have to take it all seriously. Proper mail runs. Many more staff. Hundreds of things to do, and hundreds of other things to do before you could do those things. It wasn’t going to be fun any more, cocking a snook, whatever a snook was, at the big slow giant. He’d won, so he’d have to pick up the pieces and make everything work. And come in here the next day and do it all again. This wasn’t how it was supposed to end. You won, and you pocketed the cash and walked away. That was how the game was supposed to go, wasn’t it? His eye fell on Anghammarad’s message box, on its twisted, corroded strap, and he wished he was at the bottom of the sea. ‘Mr Lipwig?’ He looked up. Drumknott the clerk was standing in the doorway, with another clerk behind him. ‘Yes?’ ‘Sorry to disturb you, sir,’ said the clerk. ‘We’re here to see Mr Pump. Just a minor adjustment, if you don’t mind?’ ‘What? Oh. Fine. Whatever. Go ahead.’ Moist waved a hand vaguely. The two men walked over to the golem. There was some muted conversation, and then it knelt down and they unscrewed the top of its head. Moist stared in horror. He knew it was done, of course, but it was shocking to see it happening. There was some rummaging around that he couldn’t make out, and then the cranium was replaced, with a little pottery noise. ‘Sorry to have disturbed you, sir,’ said Drumknott, and the clerks left. Mr Pump stayed on his knees for a moment, and then rose slowly. The red eyes focused on Moist, and the golem stuck out his hand. ‘I Do Not Know What A Pleasure Is, But I Am Sure That If I Did, Then Working With You Would Have Been One,’ he said. ‘Now I Must Leave You. I Have Another Task.’ ‘You’re not my, er, parole officer any more?’ said Moist, taken aback. ‘Correct.’ ‘Hold on,’ said Moist, as light dawned, ‘is Vetinari sending you after Gilt?’ ‘I Am Not At Liberty To Say.’ ‘He is, isn’t he? You’re not following me any more?’ ‘I Am Not Following You Any More.’ ‘So I’m free to go?’ ‘I Am Not At Liberty To Say. Good Night, Mr Lipvig.’ Mr Pump paused at the door. ‘I Am Not Certain What Happiness Is, Either, Mr Lipvig, But I Think - Yes, I Think I Am Happy To Have Met You.’ And, ducking to get through the doorway, the golem left. That only leaves the werewolf, thought part of Moist’s mind, faster than light. And they’re not much good at boats and completely lost when it comes to oceans! It’s the middle of the night, the Watch are running around like madmen, everyone’s busy, I’ve got a bit of cash and I’ve still got the diamond ring and a deck of cards . . . who’d notice? Who’d care? Who’d worry? He could go anywhere. But that wasn’t really him thinking that, was it . . . it was just a few old brain cells, running on automatic. There wasn’t anywhere to go, not any more. He walked over to the big hole in the wall and looked down into the hall. Did anyone go home here? But now the news had got around, and if you wanted any hope of anything delivered anywhere tomorrow, you came to the Post Office. It was quite busy, even now. ‘Cup of tea, Mr Lipwig?’ said the voice of Stanley, behind him. ‘Thank you, Stanley,’ said Moist, without looking round. Down below, Miss Maccalariat was standing on a chair and nailing something to the wall. ‘Everyone says we’ve won, sir, ‘cos the clacks has been shut down ‘cos the directors are in prison, sir. They say all Mr Upwright has to do is get there! But Mr Groat says the bookies probably won’t pay up, sir. And the king of Lancre wants some stamps printed, but it’ll come a bit pricey, sir, since they only write about ten letters a year up there. Still, we’ve showed them, eh, sir? The Post Office is back!’ ‘It’s some kind of banner,’ said Moist, aloud. ‘Sorry, Mr Lipwig?’ said Stanley. ‘Er . . . nothing. Thank you, Stanley. Have fun with the stamps. Good to see you standing up so . . . straight . . .’ ‘It’s like having a new life, sir,’ said Stanley. ‘I’d better go, sir, they need help with the sorting . . .’ The banner was crude. It read: ‘Thank You Mr Lipwic!’ Gloom rolled around Moist. It was always bad after he’d won, but this time was the worst. For days his mind had been flying and he’d felt alive. Now he felt numb. They’d put up a banner like that, and he was a liar and a thief. He’d fooled them all, and there they were, thanking him for fooling them. A quiet voice from the doorway behind him said: ‘Mad Al and the boys told me what you did.’ ‘Oh,’ said Moist, still not turning round. She’ll be lighting a cigarette, he thought. ‘It wasn’t a nice thing to do,’ Adora Belle Dearheart went on, in the same level tone. ‘There wasn’t a nice thing that would work,’ said Moist. ‘Are you going to tell me that the ghost of my brother put the idea in your head?’ she said. ‘No. I dreamed it up myself,’ said Moist. ‘Good. If you’d tried that, you’d be limping for the rest of your life, believe me.’ ‘Thank you,’ said Moist leadenly. ‘It was just a lie I knew people would want to believe. Just a lie. It was a way to keep the Post Office going and get the Grand Trunk out of Gilt’s hands. You’ll probably get it back, if you want it. You and all the other people Gilt swindled. I’ll help, if I can. But I don’t want thanking.’ He felt her draw nearer. ‘It’s not a lie,’ she said. ‘It’s what ought to have been true. It pleased my mother.’ ‘Does she think it’s true?’ ‘She doesn’t want to think it isn’t.’ No one does. I can’t stand this, Moist thought. ‘Look, I know what I’m like,’ he said. ‘I’m not the person everyone thinks I am. I just wanted to prove to myself I’m not like Gilt. More than a hammer, you understand? But I’m still a fraud by trade. I thought you knew that. I can fake sincerity so well that even I can’t tell. I mess with people’s heads—’ ‘You’re fooling no one but yourself,’ said Miss Dearheart, and reached for his hand. Moist— shook her off, and ran out of the building, out of the city and back to his old life, or lives, always moving on, selling glass as diamond, but somehow it just didn’t seem to work any more, the flair wasn’t there, the fun had dropped out of it, even the cards didn’t seem to work for him, the money ran out, and one winter in some inn that was no more than a slum he turned his face to the wall— And an angel appeared. ‘What just happened?’ said Miss Dearheart. Perhaps you do get two . . . ‘Only a passing thought,’ said Moist. He let the golden glow rise. He’d fooled them all, even here. But the good bit was that he could go on doing it; he didn’t have to stop. All he had to do was remind himself, every few months, that he could quit any time. Provided he knew he could, he’d never have to. And there was Miss Dearheart, without a cigarette in her mouth, only a foot away. He leaned forward— There was a loud cough behind them. It turned out to have come from Groat, who was holding a large parcel. ‘Sorry to interrupt, sir, but this just arrived for you,’ he said, and sniffed disapprovingly. ‘Messenger, not one of ours. I thought I’d better bring it straight up ‘cos there’s something moving about inside it . . .’ There was. And airholes, Moist noted. He opened the lid with care, and pulled his fingers away just in time. ‘ Twelve and a half per cent! Twelve and a half per cent! ’ screamed the cockatoo, and landed on Groat’s hat. There was no note inside, and nothing on the box but the address. ‘Why’d someone send you a parrot?’ said Groat, not caring to raise a hand within reach of the curved beak. ‘It’s Gilt’s, isn’t it?’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘He’s given you the bird?’ Moist smiled. ‘It looks like it, yes. Pieces of eight!’ ‘ Twelve and a half per cent! ’ yelled the cockatoo. ‘Take it away, will you, Mr Groat?’ said Moist. ‘Teach it to say . . . to say . . .’ ‘Trust me?’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘Good one!’ said Moist. ‘Yes, do that, Mr Groat.’ When Groat had gone, with the cockatoo balancing happily on his shoulder, Moist turned back to the woman. ‘And tomorrow,’ he said, ‘I’ll definitely get the chandeliers back!’ ‘What? Most of this place doesn’t have a ceiling,’ said Miss Dearheart, laughing. ‘First things first. Trust me! And then, who knows? I might even find the fine polished counter! There’s no end to what’s possible!’ And out in the bustling cavern white feathers began to fall from the roof. They may have been from an angel, but were more likely to be coming from the pigeon that a hawk was just disembowelling on a beam. Still, they were feathers. It’s all about style. Sometimes the truth is arrived at by adding all the little lies together and deducting them from the totality of what is known. Lord Vetinari stood at the top of the stairs in the Great Hall of the Palace, and looked down on his clerks. They’d taken over the whole huge floor for this Concludium. Chalked markings - circles, squares, triangles - were drawn here and there on the floor. Within them, papers and ledgers were piled in dangerously neat heaps. And there were clerks, some working inside the outlines and some moving noiselessly from one outline to another bearing pieces of paper as if they were a sacrament. Periodically clerks and watchmen arrived with more files and ledgers, which were solemnly received, assessed and added to the relevant pile. Abacuses clicked everywhere. Clerks would pad back and forth and sometimes they would meet in a triangle and bend their heads in quiet discussion. This might result in their heading away in new directions or, increasingly as the night wore on, one clerk would go and chalk a new outline, which would begin to fill with paper. Sometimes an outline would be emptied and rubbed out and its contents distributed among nearby outlines. No enchanter’s circle, no mystic’s mandala was ever drawn with such painfully meticulous care as the conclusions being played out on the floor. Hour after hour it went on, with a patience that at first terrified and then bored. It was the warfare of clerks, and it harried the enemy through many columns and files. Moist could read words that weren’t there but the clerks found the numbers that weren’t there, or were there twice, or were there but going the wrong way. They didn’t hurry. Peel away the lies, and the truth would emerge, naked and ashamed and with nowhere else to hide. At 3 a.m. Mr Cheeseborough arrived, in a hurry and bitter tears, to learn that his bank was a shell of paper. He brought his own clerks, with their nightshirts tucked into hastily donned trousers, who went down on their knees alongside the other men and spread out more papers, double-checking figures in the hope that if you stared at numbers long enough they’d add up differently. And then the Watch turned up with a small red ledger, and it was given a circle of its own, and soon the whole pattern re-formed around it . . . It wasn’t until almost dawn that the sombre men arrived. They were older and fatter and better - but not showily, never showily -dressed, and moved with the gravity of serious money. They were financiers too, richer than kings (who are often quite poor), but hardly anyone in the city outside their circle knew them or would notice them in the street. They spoke quietly to Cheeseborough as to one who’d suffered a bereavement, and then talked among themselves, and used little gold propelling pencils in neat little notebooks to make figures dance and jump through hoops. Then quiet agreement was reached and hands were shaken, which in this circle carried infinitely more weight than any written contract. The first domino had been steadied. The pillars of the world ceased to tremble. The Credit Bank would open in the morning, and when it did so bills would be honoured, wages would be paid, the city would be fed. They’d saved the city with gold more easily, at that point, than any hero could have managed with steel. But in truth it had not exactly been gold, or even the promise of gold, but more like the fantasy of gold, the fairy dream that the gold is there, at the end of the rainbow, and will continue to be there for ever provided, naturally, that you don’t go and look. This is known as Finance. On the way back home to a simple breakfast, one of them dropped off at the Guild of Assassins to pay his respects to his old friend Lord Downey, during which current affairs were only lightly touched upon. And Reacher Gilt, wherever he had gone, was now certainly the worst insurance risk in the world. The people who guard the rainbow don’t like those who get in the way of the sun. Epilogue Some Time After The figure in the chair did not have long hair, or an eyepatch. It didn’t have a beard or, rather, it wasn’t intending to have a beard. It hadn’t shaved for several days. It groaned. ‘Ah, Mr Gilt,’ said Lord Vetinari, looking up from his playing board. ‘You are awake, I see. I’m sorry for the manner in which you were brought here, but some quite expensive people wish to see you dead and I thought it would be a good idea if we had this little meeting before they did.’ ‘I don’t know who you’re talking about,’ said the figure. ‘My name is Randolph Stippler, and I have papers to prove it—’ ‘And wonderful papers they are, Mr Gilt. But enough of that. No, it is about angels that I wish to talk to you now.’ Reacher Gilt, wincing occasionally as the aches from three days of being carried by a golem made themselves felt, listened in mounting puzzlement to the angelic theories of Lord Vetinari. ‘. . . brings me on to my point, Mr Gilt. The Royal Mint needs an entirely new approach. Frankly, it’s moribund and not at all what we need in the Century of the Anchovy. Yet there is a way forward. In recent months Mr Lipwig’s celebrated stamps have become a second currency in this city. So light, so easy to carry, you can even send them through the post! Fascinating, Mr Gilt. At last people are loosening their grip on the idea that money should be shiny. Do you know that a typical one penny stamp may change hands up to twelve times before being affixed to an envelope and redeemed? What the Mint needs to see it through is a man who understands the dream of currency. There will be a salary and, I believe, a hat.’ ‘ You are offering me a job?’ ‘Yes, Mr Stippler,’ said Vetinari. ‘And, to show the sincerity of my offer, let me point out the door behind you. If at any time in this interview you feel you wish to leave, you have only to step through it and you will never hear from me again . . .’ Some little time later the clerk Drumknott padded into the room. Lord Vetinari was reading a report on the previous night’s secret meeting of the Thieves’ Guild inner inner council. He tidied up the trays quite noiselessly, and then came and stood by Vetinari. ‘There are ten overnights off the clacks, my lord,’ he said. ‘It’s good to have it back in operation.’ ‘Indeed yes,’ said Vetinari, not looking up. ‘Otherwise how in the world would people be able to find out what we want them to think? Any foreign mail?’ ‘The usual packets, my lord. The Uberwald one has been most deftly tampered with.’ ‘Ah, dear Lady Margolotta,’ said Vetinari, smiling. ‘I’ve taken the liberty of removing the stamps for my nephew, my lord,’ Drumknott went on. ‘Of course,’ said Vetinari, waving a hand. Drumknott looked around the office and focused on the slab where the little stone armies were endlessly in combat. ‘Ah, I see you have won, my lord,’ he said. ‘Yes. I must make a note of the gambit.’ ‘But Mr Gilt, I notice, is not here . . .’ Vetinari sighed. ‘You have to admire a man who really believes in freedom of choice,’ he said, looking at the open doorway. ‘Sadly, he did not believe in angels.’ 
go - Terry Pratchett	----	Jingo v1.0. 15/11/2000 Scanned and spellchecked with Word2000 by 4i Publications. It was a moonless night, which was good for the purposes of Solid Jackson. He fished for Curious Squid, so called because, as well as being squid, they were curious. That is to say, their curiosity was the curious thing about them. Shortly after they got curious about the lantern that Solid had hung over the stern of his boat, they started to become curious about the way in which various of their number suddenly vanished skywards with a splash. Some of them even became curious – very briefly curious about the sharp barbed thing that was coming very quickly towards them. The Curious Squid were extremely curious. Unfortunately, they weren't very good at making connections. It was a very long way to this fishing ground, but for Solid the trip was usually well worth it. The Curious Squid were very small, harmless, difficult to find and reckoned by connoisseurs to have the foulest taste of any creature in the world. This made them very much in demand in a certain kind of restaurant where highly skilled chefs made, with great care, dishes containing no trace of the squid whatsoever. Solid Jackson's problem was that tonight, a moonless night in the spawning season, when the squid were especially curious about everything, the chef seemed to have been at work on the sea itself. There was not a single interested eyeball to be seen. There weren't any other fish either, and usually there were a few attracted to the light. He'd caught sight of one. It had been making through the water extremely fast in a straight line. He laid down his trident and walked to the other end of the boat, where his son Les was also gazing intently at the torchlit sea. 'Not a thing in half an hour,' said Solid. 'You sure we're in the right spot, Dad?' Solid squinted at the horizon. There was a faint glow in the sky that indicated the city of Al–Khali, on the Klatchian coast. He turned round. The other horizon glowed, too, with the lights of AnkhMorpork. The boat bobbed gently halfway between the two. ‘ ‘Course we are,' he said, but certainty edged away from his words. Because there was a hush on the sea. It didn't look right. The boat rocked a little, but that was with their movement, not from any motion of the waves. It felt as if there was going to be a storm. But the stars twinkled softly and there was not a cloud in the sky. The stars twinkled on the surface of the water, too. Now that was something you didn't often see. 'I reckon we ought to be getting out of here,' Solid said. Les pointed at the slack sail. 'What're we going to use for wind, Dad?' It was then that they heard the splash of oars, Solid, squinting hard, could just make out the shape of another boat, heading towards him. He grabbed his boathook. 'I knows that's you, you thieving foreign bastard!' The oars stopped. A voice sang over the water. 'May you be consumed by a thousand devils, you damned person!' The other boat glided closer. It looked foreign, with eyes painted on the prow, 'Fished 'ern all out, have you? I'll take my trident to you, you bottom–feedin' scum that y'are!' 'My curvy sword at your neck, you unclean son of a dog of the female persuasion!' Les looked over the side. Little bubbles fizzed on the surface of the sea. 'Dad?' he said. 'That's Greasy Arif out there!' snapped his father, 'You take a good look at him! He's been coming out here for years, stealing our squid, the evil lying little devil!' 'Dad, there's–' 'You get on them oars and I'll knock his black teeth out!' Les could hear a voice saying from the other boat, '–see, my son, how the underhanded fish thief–' 'Row!' his father shouted. 'To the oars!' shouted someone in the other boat. 'Whose squid are they, Dad?' said Les. 'Ours!' 'What, even before we've caught them?' 'Just you shut up and row!' 'I can't move the boat, Dad, we're stuck on something!' 'It's a hundred fathoms deep here, boy! What's there to stick on?' Les tried to disentangle an oar from the thing rising slowly out of the fizzing sea. 'Looks like a... a chicken, Dad!' There was a sound from below the surface. It sounded like sonic bell or gong, slowly swinging. 'Chickens can't swim!' 'It's made of iron, Dad!' Solid scrambled to the rear of the boat. It was a chicken, made of iron. Seaweed and shells covered it and water dripped off it as it rose against the stars. It stood on a cross–shaped perch. There seemed to be a letter on each of the four ends of the cross. Solid held the torch closer. 'What the–' Then he pulled the oar free and sat down beside his son. 'Row like the blazes, Les!' 'What's happening, Dad?' 'Shut up and row! Get us away from it!' 'Is it a monster, –Dad?' 'It's worse than a monster, son!' shouted Solid, as the oars bit into the water. The thing was quite high now, standing on some kind of tower... 'What is it, Dad! What is it?' 'It's a damned weathercock!'   There was not, on the whole, a lot of geological excitement. The sinking of continents is usually accompanied by volcanoes, earthquakes and armadas of little boats containing old men anxious to build pyramids and mystic stone circles in sonic new land where being the possessor of genuine ancient occult wisdom might be expected to attract girls. But the rising of this one caused barely a ripple in the purely physical scheme of things. It more or less sidled back, like a cat who's been away for a few days and knows you've been worrying. Around the shores of the Circle Sea a large wave, only five or six feet high by the time it reached them, caused some comment. And in some of the very low–lying swamp areas the water swamped some villages of people that no–one else cared about very much. But in a purely geological sense, nothing very much happened. In a purely geological sense.   ‘It’s a city, Dad! Look, you can see all the windows and––' 'I told you to shut up and keep rowing!' The seawater surged down the streets. On either side, huge, weed–encrusted buildings boiled slowly out of the surf. Father and son fought to keep some way on the boat as it was dragged along. And, since lesson one in the art of rowing is that you do it while looking the wrong way, they didn't see the other boat... 'You lunatic!' 'Foolish man!' 'Don't you touch that building! This country belongs to Ankh–Morpork!' The two boats spun in a temporary whirlpool. 'I claim this land in the name of the Seriph of Al–Khali!' 'We saw it first! Les, you tell him we saw it first!' 'We saw it first before you saw it first!' 'Les, you saw him, he tried to hit me with that oar!' 'But Dad, you're waving that trident–' 'See the untrustworthy way he attacks us, Akhan!' There was a grinding noise from under the keel of both boats and they began to tip as they settled into the sea–bottom ooze. 'Look, Father, there is an interesting statue–' 'He has set his foot on Klatchian soil! The squid thief!' 'Get those filthy sandals off Ankh–Morporkian territory!' 'Oh, Dad–' The two fishermen stopped screaming at each other, mainly in order to get their breath back. Crabs scuttled away. Water drained between the patches of weed, carving runnels in the grey silt. 'Father, look, there's still coloured tiles on the––' 'Mine!' 'Mine!' Les caught Akhan's eye. They exchanged a very brief glance which was nevertheless modulated with a considerable amount of information, beginning with the sheer galactic–sized embarrassment of having parents and working up from there. 'Dad, we don't have to–' Les began. 'You shut up! It's your future fro thinking about, my lad–' 'Yes, but who cares who saw it first, Dad? We're both hundreds of miles from home! I mean, who's going to know, Dad?' The two squid fishermen glared at one another. The dripping buildings rose above them. There were holes that might well have been doorways, and glassless apertures that could have been windows, but all was darkness within. Now and again, Les fancied he could hear something slithering. Solid Jackson coughed. 'The lad's right,' he muttered. 'Daft to argue. just the four of us.' 'Indeed,' said Arif. They backed away, each man carefully watching the other. Then, so closely that it was a chorus, they both yelled: 'Grab the boat!' There was a confused couple of moments and then each pair, boat carried over their heads, ran and slithered along the muddy streets. They had to stop and come back, with mutual cries of 'A kidnapper as well, eh?', to get the right sons. As every student of exploration knows, the prize goes not to the explorer who first sets foot upon the virgin soil but to the one who gets that foot home first. If it is still attached to his leg, this is a bonus.   The weathercocks of Ankh–Morpork creaked around in the wind. Very few of them were in fact representations of Avis domestica. There were various dragons, fish and miscellaneous animals. On the roof of the Assassins' Guild a silhouette of one of the members squeaked into a new position, cloak and dagger at the ready. On the Beggars' Guild a tin beggar's hand asked the wind for a quarter. On the Butchers' Guild a copper pig sniffed the air. On the roof of the Thieves' Guild a real if rather decreased unlicensed thief turned gently, which shows what you are capable of if you try, or at least if you try stealing without a licence. The one on the library dome of Unseen University was running slow and wouldn't show the change for half an hour yet, but the smell of the sea drifted over the city. There was a tradition of soap–box public speaking in Sator Square. 'Speaking' was stretching a point to cover the ranters, haranguers and occasional selfabsorbed mumblers that spaced themselves at intervals amongst the crowds. And, traditionally, people said whatever was on their minds and at the top of their voices. The Patrician, it was said, looked kindly on the custom. He did. And very closely, too. He probably had someone make notes. So did the Watch. It wasn't spying Commander Vimes told himself. Spying was when you crept around peeking in windows. It wasn't spying when you had to stand back a bit so that you weren't deafened. He reached out without paying attention and struck a match on Sergeant Detritus. 'Dat was me, sir,' said the troll reproachfully. 'Sorry, sergeant,' said Vimes, lighting his cigar. 'It not a problem.' They returned their attention to the speakers. It's the wind, thought Vimes. It's bringing something new... Usually the speakers dealt with all kinds of subjects, many of them on the cusp of sanity or somewhere in the peaceful valleys on the other side. But now they were all monomaniacs. '–time they were taught a lesson!' screamed the nearest one. 'Why don't our so–called masters listen to the voice of the people? Ankh–Morpork has had enough of these swaggering brigands! They steal our fish, they steal our trade and now they're stealing our land!' It would have been better if people had cheered, Vimes thought. People generally cheered the speakers indiscriminately, to egg them on. But the crowd around this man just seemed to nod approval. He thought: they're actually thinking about what he said... 'They stole my merchandise!' shouted a speaker opposite him. 'It's a pirate bloody empire! I was boarded! In Ankh–Morpork waters!' There was a general self–righteous muttering. 'What did they steal, Mr Jenkins?' said a voice from the crowd. 'A cargo of fine silks!' The crowd hissed. 'Ah? Not dried fish offal and condemned meat, then? That's your normal cargo, I believe.' Mr Jenkins strained to look for the speaker. 'Fine silks!' he said. 'And what does the city care about that? Nothing!' There were shouts of 'Shame!' 'Has the city been told?' said the enquiring voice. People started to crane their heads. And then the crowd opened a little, to reveal the figure of Commander Vimes of the City Watch. 'Well, it's... I...' Jenkins began. 'Er... I...' 'I care,' said Vimes calmly. 'Shouldn't be too hard to track down a cargo of fine silks that stink of fish guts.' There was laughter. Ankh–Morpork people always like some variety in their street theatre. Vimes apparently spoke to Sergeant Detritus, while keeping his gaze locked on Jenkins. 'Detritus, just you go along with Mr Jenkins here, will you? His ship is the Milka, I believe. He'll show you all the lading bills and manifests and receipts and things, and then we can sort him out in jig time.' There was a clang as Detritus's huge hand came to rest against his helmet. 'Yessir!' 'Er... er... you can't,' said Jenkins quickly. 'They... er... stole the paperwork as well...' 'Really? So they can take the stuff back to the shop if it doesn't fit?' 'Er... anyway, the ship's sailed. Yes! Sailed! Got to try and recoup my losses, you know!' 'Sailed? Without its captain?' said Vimes. 'So Mr Scoplett is in charge? Your first officer?' 'Yes, yes–' 'Damn!' said Vimes, snapping his fingers theatrically. 'That man we've got in the cells on a charge of being Naughtily Drunk last night... we're going to have to charge him with impersonation as well, then? I don't know, more blasted paperwork, the stuff just piles up...' Mr Jenkins tried to look away but Vimes's stare kept pulling him back. The occasional tremble of a lip suggested that he was preparing a riposte, but he was bright enough to spot that Vimes's grin was as funny as the one that moves very fast towards drowning men. And has a fin on top. Mr Jenkins made a wise decision, and got down. 'I'll.... er... I'll go and sort... I'd better go and... er...' he said, and pushed his Way through the mob, which waited a little while to see if anything interesting was going to happen and then, disappointed, sought out other entertainment. 'You want I should go ad have a look at his boat?' said Detritus. 'No, sergeant. There won't be any silk, and there won't be any paperwork. There won't be anything except a lingering aroma of fish guts.' 'Wow, dem damn Klatchians steals everything that ain't nailed down, right?' Vimes shook his head and strolled on. 'They don't have trolls in Klatch, do they?' he said. 'Nossir. It's der heat. Troll brains don't work in der heat. If I was to go to Klatch,' said Detritus, his knuckles making little bink–bink noises as he dragged them over the cobbles, 'I'd be really stoopid.' 'Detritus?' 'Yessir?' 'Never go to Klatch.' 'Nossir.' Another speaker was attracting a much larger crowd. He stood in front of a large banner that proclaimed: GREASY FORANE HANDS OFF LESHP. 'Leshp,' said Detritus. 'Now dere's a name that ain't got its teef in.' 'It's the land that came back up from under the sea last week,' said Vimes despondently. . , They listened while the speaker proclaimed that Ankh–Morpork had a duty to protect its kith and kin on the new land. Detritus looked puzzled. 'How come dere's dese kiff and kin on dere when it only just come up from under der water?' he said. 'Good question,' said Vimes. 'Dey been holding dere breath?' 'I doubt it.' There was more in the air than the salt of the sea, Vimes thought. There was some other current. He could sense it. Suddenly, the problem was Klatch. Ankh–Morpork had been at peace with Klatch, or at least in a state of non–war, for almost a century. It was, after all, the neighbouring country. Neighbours... hah! But what did that mean? The Watch could tell you a thing or two about neighbours. So could lawyers, especially the real rich ones to whom 'neighbour' meant a man who'd sue for twenty years over a strip of garden two inches wide. Peopled live for ages side by side, nodding at one another amicably on their way to work every day, and then some trivial thing would happen and someone would he having a garden fork removed from their ear. And now some damn rock had risen up out of the sea and everyone was acting as if Klatch had let its dog bark all night. 'Aagragaah,' said Detritus, mournfully. 'Don't mind me, just don't spit it on my boot,' said Vimes. 'It mean–' Detritus waved a huge hand, 'like... dem things, what only comes in...' he paused and looked at his fingers, while his lips moved'... fours. Aagragaah. It mean lit'rally der time when you see dem little pebbles and you jus' know dere's gonna be a great big landslide on toppa you and it already too late to run. Dat moment, dat's aagragaah.' Vimes's own lips moved. 'Forebodings?' 'Dat's der bunny.' 'Where does the word come from?' Detritus shrugged. 'Maybe it named after der soun' you make just as a t'ousand ton of rock hit you.' 'Forebodings...' Vimes rubbed his chin. 'Yeah. Well, I've got plenty of them...' Landslides and avalanches, he thought. All the little snowflakes land, light as a feather – and suddenly the whole side of a mountain is moving... Detritus looked at him slyly. 'I know everyone say "Dem two short planks, dey're as fick as Detritus",' he said, 'but I know which way der wind is blowin'.' Vimes looked at his sergeant with a new respect. 'You can spot it, can you?' The troll's finger tapped his helmet twice, knowingly. 'It pretty obvious,' he said. 'You see up on der roofs dem little chickies and dragons and stuff? And dat poor bugger on der Fieves' Guild? You just has to watch 'em. Dey know. Beats me how dey always pointin' der right way.' Vimes relaxed a little. Detritus's intelligence wasn't too bad for a troll, falling somewhere between a cuttlefish and a linedancer, but you could rely on him not to let it slow him down. Detritus winked. 'An' it look to me like dat time when you go an' find a big club and listen to grandad tellin' you how he beat up all dem dwarfs when he was a boy,' he said. 'Somethin' in der wind, right?' 'Er... yes...' said Vimes. There was a fluttering above him. He sighed. A message was coming in. On a pigeon. But they'd tried everything else, hadn't they? Swamp dragons tended to explode in the air, imps ate the messages and the semaphore helmets had not been a success, especially in high winds. And then Corporal Littlebottom had pointed out that Ankh–Morpork's pigeons were, because of many centuries of depredation by the city's gargoyle population, considerably more intelligent than most pigeons, although Vimes considered that this was not difficult because there were things growing on old damp bread that were more intelligent than most pigeons. He took a handful of corn out of his pocket. The pigeon, obedient to its careful training, settled on his shoulder. In obedience to internal pressures, it relieved itself. 'You know, we've got to find something better,' said Vimes, as he unwrapped the message. 'Every time we send a message to Constable Downspout he eats it.' 'Well, he are a gargoyle,' said Detritus. 'He fink it lunch arriving.' 'Oh,' said Vimes, 'his lordship requires my attendance. How nice.'   Lord Vetinari looked attentive, because he'd always found that listening keenly to people tended to put them off. And at meetings Eke this, when he was advised by the leaders of the city, he listened with great care because what people said was what they wanted him to hear. He paid a lot of attention to the spaces outside the words, though. That's where the things were that they hoped he didn't know and didn't want him to find out. Currently he was paying attention to the things that Lord Downey of the Assassins' Guild was failing to say in a lengthy exposition of the Guild's high level of training and value to the city. The voice, eventually, came to a stop in the face of Vetinari's aggressive listening. 'Thank you, Lord Downey,' he said. 'I'm sure we shall all he able to sleep a lot more uneasily for knowing all that. just one minor point... I believe the word "assassin" actually comes from Klatch?' 'Well... indeed...' 'And I believe also that many of your students are, as it turns out, from Klatch and its neighbouring countries?' 'The unrivalled quality of our education. . 'Quite so. What you are telling me, in point of fact, is that their assassins have been doing it longer, know their way around our city and have had their traditional skills honed by you?' 'Er...' The Patrician turned to Mr Burleigh. 'We surely have superiority in weapons, Mr BurIeigh?' 'Oh, yes. Say what you like about dwarfs, but we've been turning out some superb stuff lately,' said the President of the Guild of Armourers. 'Ah. That at least is some comfort.' 'Yes,' said Burleigh. He looked wretched. 'However, the thing about weapons manufacture... the important thing... ' 'I believe you are about to say that the important thing about the business of weaponry is that it is a business,' said the Patrician. Burleigh looked as though he'd been let off the hook on to a bigger hook. 'Er... yes.' 'That, in fact, the weapons are for selling.' 'Er... exactly.' 'To anyone who wishes to buy them.' 'Er... yes.' 'Regardless of the use to which they are going to be put?' The armaments manufacturer looked affronted. 'Pardon me? Of course. They're weapons.' 'And I suspect that in recent years a very lucrative market has been Klatch?' 'Well, yes... the Seriph needs them to pacify the outlying regions...' The Patrician held up his hand. Drumknott, his clerk, gave him a piece of paper. 'The "Great Leveller" Cart–Mounted Ten–Bank 500–pound Crossbow?' he said. 'And, let me see... the "Meteor" Automated Throwing Star Hurler, Decapitates at Twenty Paces, Money Back If Not Completely Decapitated?' 'Have you ever heard of the D'regs, my lord?' said Burleigh. 'They say the only way to pacify one of them is to hit him repeatedly with an axe and bury what's left under a rock. And even then, choose a heavy rock.' The Patrician seemed to be staring at a large drawing of the 'Dervish` Mk III Razor–Wire Bolas. There was a painful silence. Burleigh tried to fill it up, always a bad mistake. 'Besides, we provide much–needed jobs in AnkhMorpork,' he murmured. 'Exporting these weapons to other countries,' said Lord Vetinari. He handed the paper back and fixed Burleigh with a friendly smile. 'I'm very pleased to see that the industry has done so well,' he said. 'I will bear this particularly in mind.' He placed his hands together carefully. 'The situation is grave, gentlemen.' 'Whose?' said Mr Burleigh. 'I'm sorry?' 'What? Oh... I was thinking about something else, my lord...' 'I was referring to the fact that a number of our citizens have gone out to this wretched island. As have, I understand, a number of Klatchians.' 'Why are our people going out there?' said Mr Boggis of the Thieves' Guild. 'Because they are showing a brisk pioneering spirit and seeking wealth and... additional wealth in a new land,' said Lord Vetinari. 'What's in it for the Klatchians?' said Lord Downey. 'Oh, they've gone out there because they are a bunch of unprincipled opportunists always ready to grab something for nothing,' said Lord Vetinari. 'A masterly summation, if I may say so, my lord,' said Mr Burleigh, who felt he had some ground to make up. The Patrician looked down again at his notes. 'Oh, I do beg your pardon,' he said, 'I seem to have read those last two sentences in the wrong order... Mr Slant, I believe you have something to say here?' The president of the Guild of Lawyers cleared his throat. The sound was like a death rattle and technically it was, since the man had been a zombie for several hundred years although historical accounts suggested that the only difference dying had made to W Slant was that he'd started to work through his lunch break. 'Yes, indeed,' he said, opening a large legal tome. 'The history of the city of Leshp and its surrounding country is a little obscure. It is known to have been above the sea almost a thousand years ago, however, when records suggest that it was considered part of the Ankh–Morpork empire–– 'What is the nature of these records and do they tell us who was doing the considering?' said the Patrician. The door opened and Vimes stepped in. 'Ah, commander, do take a seat. Continue, Mr Slant.' The zombie did not like interruptions. He coughed again. 'The records relating to the lost country date back several hundred years, my lord. And they are of course our records.' 'Only ours?' 'I hardly see how any others could apply,' said Mr Slant severely. 'Klatchian ones, for example?' said Vimes, from the far end of the table. 'Sir Samuel, the Klatchian language does not even have a word for lawyer,' said Mr Slant. 'Doesn't it?' said Vimes. 'Good for them.' 'It is our view,' said Slant, turning his chair slightly so that he did not have to look at Vimes, 'that the new land is ours by Eminent Domain, Extra–Territoriality and, most importantly, Acquiris Quodcumque Rapis. I am given to understand that it was one of our fishermen who first set foot on it this time.' 'I hear the Klatchians claim that it was one of their fishermen,' said Vetinari. At the end of the table Vimes's lips were moving. Let's see, Acquiris...' "You get what you grab"?' he said aloud. 'We're not going to take their word for it, are we?' said Slant, pointedly ignoring him. 'Excuse me, my lord, but I don't believe that proud Ankh–Morpork is told what to do by a bunch of thieves with towels on their heads.' 'No, indeed! It's about time Johnny Klatchian was taught a lesson,' said Lord Selachii. 'Remember all that business last year with the cabbages? Ten damn boatloads they wouldn't accept!' 'And everyone knows caterpillars add to the flavour,' said Vimes, more or less to himself. The Patrician shot him a glance, 'That's right!' said Selachii. 'Good honest protein! And you remember all that trouble Captain Jenkins had over that cargo of mutton? They were going to imprison him! In a Klatchian jail!' 'Surely not? Meat is at its best when it's going green,' said Vimes. 'It's not as if it'd taste any different under all that curry,' said Burleigh. 'I was at a dinner in their embassy once, and do you know what they made me eat? It was a sheep's––' 'Excuse me, gentlemen,' said Vimes, standing up. 'There are some urgent matters I must deal with.' He nodded to the Patrician and hurried out of the room. He shut the door behind him and took a breath of fresh air, although right now he'd have happily inhaled deeply in a tannery. Corporal Littlebottom stood up and looked at him expectantly. She had been sitting next to a box, which cooed peacefully. 'Something's up. Run down to... I mean, send a pigeon down to the Yard,' said Vimes. 'Yes, sir?' 'All leave is cancelled as of now and I want to see every officer, and I mean every officer, at the Yard at, oh, let's say six o'clock.' 'Right, sir. That might mean an extra pigeon unless I can write small enough.' Littlebottom hurried off. Vimes glanced out of the window. There was always a certain amount of activity outside the palace but today there was... not so much a crowd as, just, rather more people than you normally saw, hanging around. As if they were waiting for something. Klatch! Everyone knows it. Old Detritus was right. You could hear the little pebbles bouncing. It's not just a few fishermen having a scrap, it's a hundred years of... well, like two big men trying to fit in one small room, trying to be polite about it, and then one day one of them just has to stretch and pretty soon they're both smashing the furniture. But it couldn't really happen, could it? From what he'd beard, the present Seriph was a competent man who was mostly concerned with pacifying the rowdy edges of his empire. And there were Klatchians living in AnkhMorpork, for heaven's sake! There were Klatchians born in Ankh–Morpork. You saw some lad with a face that'd got camels written all over it, and when he opened his mouth it'd turn out he had an Ankhian accent so thick you could float rocks. Oh, there's all the jokes about funny food and foreigners, but surely... Not very funny jokes, come to think of it. When you hear the bang, there's no time to wonder how long the little fuse has been fizzing. There were raised voices when he went back into the Rats Chamber. 'Because, Lord Selachii; the Patrician was saying, 'these are not the old days. It is no longer considered... nice... to send a warship over there to, as you put it, show Johnny Foreigner the error of his ways. For one thing, we haven't had any warships since the Mary–Jane sank four hundred years ago. And times have changed. These days, the whole world watches. And, my lord, you are no longer allowed to say "What're you lookin' at?" and black their eyes.' He leaned back. 'There's Chimeria, and Khanli, and Ephebe, and Tsort. And Muntab, these days, too. And Omnia. Some of these are powerful nations, gentlemen. Many of them don't like Klatch's current expansionist outlook, but they don't Eke us much, either.' 'Whyever not?' said Lord Selachii. 'Well, because during our history those we haven't occupied we've tended to wage war on,' said Lord Vetinari. 'For some reason the slaughter of thousands of people tends to stick in the memory.' 'Oh, history,' said Lord Selachii. 'That's all in the past!' 'A good place for history, agreed,' said the Patrician solemnly. 'I meant: why don't they like us now? Do we owe them money?' 'No. Mostly they owe us money. Which is, of course, a far better reason for their dislike.' 'How about Sto Lat and Pseudopolis and the other cities?' said Lord Downey. 'They don't like us much, either.' 'Why not? I mean t'say, we do share a common heritage,' said Lord Selachii. 'Yes, my lord, but that common heritage largely consists of having had wars with one another,' said the Patrician. 'I can't see much support there. Which is a little unfortunate because we do not, in fact, have an army. I am not, of course, a military man but I believe that one of those is generally considered vital to the successful prosecution of a war.' .He looked along the table. 'The fact is" he went on, 'that Ankh–Morpork has been violently against a standing army.' 'We all know why people don't trust an army,' said Lord Downey. 'A lot of armed men, standing around with nothing to do... they start to get ideas . . Vimes saw the heads turn towards him. 'My word,' he said, with glassy brightness, 'can this be a reference to "Old Stoneface" Vimes, who led the city's militia in a revolt against the rule of a tyrannical monarch in an effort to bring some sort of freedom and justice to the place? I do believe it is! And was he Commander of the Watch at the time? Good heavens, yes, as a matter of fact he was! Was he hanged and dismembered and buried in five graves? And is he a distant ancestor of the current Commander? My word, the coincidences just pile up, don't they?' His voice went from manic cheerfulness to a growl. 'Right! That's got that over with. Now – has anyone got any point they wish to make?' There was a general shifting of position and a group clearing of throats. 'What about mercenaries?' said Boggis. 'The problem with mercenaries' ' said the Patrician, 'is that they need to be paid to start fighting. And, unless you are very lucky, you end up paying them even more to stop–' Selachii thumped the table. 'Very well, then, by jingo!' he snarled. 'Alone!' 'We could certainly do with one,' said Lord Vetinari. 'We need the money. I was about to say that we cannot afford mercenaries.' 'How can this be?' said Lord Downey. 'Don't we pay our taxes?' 'Ah, I thought we might come to that,' said Lord Vetinari. He raised his hand and, on cue again, his clerk placed a piece of paper in it. 'Let me see now... ah yes. Guild of Assassins... Gross earnings in the last year: AM$13,207,048. Taxes paid in the last year: forty–seven dollars, twenty–two pence and what on examination turned out to be a Hershebian half–dong, worth one–eighth of a penny.' 'That's all perfectly legal! The Guild of Accountants––' 'Ah yes. Guild of Accountants: gross earnings AM$7,999,011. Taxes paid: nil. But, ah yes, I see they applied for a rebate of AM$200,000.' 'And what we received, I may say, included a Hershebian half–dong,' said Mr Frostrip of the Guild of Accountants. 'What goes around comes around" said Vetinari calmly. He tossed the paper aside. 'Taxation, gentlemen, is very much like dairy farming The task is to extract the maximum amount of milk with the minimum of moo. And I am afraid to say that these days all I get is moo.' 'Are you telling us that Ankh–Morpork is bankrupt?' said Downey. 'Of course. While, at the same time, full of rich people. I trust they have been spending their good fortune on swords.' 'And you have allowed this wholesale tax avoidance?' said Lord Selachii. 'Oh, the taxes haven't been avoided,' said Lord Vetinari. 'Or even evaded. They just haven't been paid.' 'That is a disgusting state of affairs!' The Patrician raised his eyebrows. 'Commander Vimes?' 'Yes, sir?' 'Would you be so good as to assemble a squad of your most experienced men, liaise with the tax gatherers and obtain the accumulated back taxes, please? My clerk here will give you a fist of the prime defaulters.' 'Right, sir. And if they resist, sir?' said Vimes, smiling nastily. 'Oh, how can they resist, commander? This is the will of our civic leaders.' He took the paper his clerk proffered. 'Let me see, now. Top of the list––' Lord Selachii coughed hurriedly. 'Far too late for that sort of nonsense now,' he said. 'Water under the bridge,' said Lord Downey. 'Dead and buried,' said Mr Slant. 'I paid mine,' said Vimes. 'So let me recap, then,' said Vetinari. 'I don't think anyone wants to see two grown nations scrapping over a piece of rock. We don't want to fight, but–' 'By jingo, if we do, we'll show those–' Lord Selachii began. 'We have no ships. We have no men. We have no money, too,' said Lord Vetinari. 'Of course, we have the art of diplomacy. It is amazing what you can do with the right words.' 'Unfortunately, the right words are more readily listened to if you also have a sharp stick,' said Lord Downey. 'Lord Selachii slapped the table. 'We don't have to talk to these people! My lords... gentlemen... it's up to us to show them we won't be pushed around! We must re–form the regiments!' 'Oh, private armies?' said Vimes. 'Under the command of someone whose fitness for it lies in the fact that he can afford to pay for a thousand funny hats?' Someone leaned forward, halfway along the table. Up to that moment Vimes had thought he was asleep, and when Lord Rust spoke it was, indeed, in a sort of yawn. 'Whose fitness, Mister Vimes, lies in a thousand years of breeding for leadership,' he said. The 'Mister' twisted in Vimes's chest. He knew he was a mister would always be a mister, was probably a blueprint for mistership, but he'd be damned if he wouldn't be Sit Samuel to someone who pronounced years as 'hyahs'. 'Ah, good breeding,' he said. 'No, sorry, don't have any of that, if that's what you need to get your own men killed by sheer–' 'Gentlemen, please,' said the Patrician. He shook his head. 'Let's have no fighting, please. This is, after all, a council of war. As for re–forming the regiments, well, this is of course your ancient right. The supplying of armed men in times of need is one of the duties of a gentleman. History is on your side. The precedents are dear enough, I can't go against them. I have to say I cannot afford to.' 'You're going to let them play soldiers?' said Vimes. 'Oh, Commander Vimes,' said Mr Burleigh, smiling. 'As a military man yourself, you must––., Sometimes people can attract attention by shouting. They might opt for thumping a table, or even take a swing at someone else. But Vimes achieved the effect by freezing, by simply doing nothing. The chill radiated off him. Lines in his face locked like a statue. 'I am not a military man.' And then Burleigh made the mistake of trying to grin disarmingly. 'Well, commander, the helmet and armour and everything... It's really all the same in the end, isn't it?' 'No. It's not.' 'Gentlemen. .. 'Lord Vetinari put his hands flat on the table, a sign that the meeting had ended. 'I can only repeat that tomorrow I shall be discussing the matter with Prince Khufurah–' 'I've heard good reports of him,' said Lord Rust. 'Strict but fair. One can only admire what he's doing in some of those backward regions. A most–' 'No, sir. You are thinking of Prince Cadram,' said Lord Vetinari 'Khufurah is the younger brother. He is arriving here as his brother's special envoy.' 'Him? That one? The man's a wastrel! A cheat! A liar! They say he takes bri–' 'Thank you for your diplomatic input, Lord Rust,' said the Patrician. 'We must deal with facts as they are. There is always a way. Our nations have many interests in common. And of course it says a lot for the seriousness with which Cadram is treating this matter that he is sending his own brother to deal with it. It's a nod towards the international community.' 'A Klatchian bigwig is coming here?' said Vimes. 'No one told me!' 'Strange as it may seem, Sir Samuel, I am occasionally capable of governing this city for minutes at a time without seeking your advice and guidance.' 'I meant there's a lot of anti–Klatchian feeling around–' 'A really greasy piece of work–' Lord Rust whispered to Mr Boggis, in that special aristocratic whisper that carries to the rafters. 'It's an insult to send him here!' 'I am sure that you will see to it that the streets are safe to walk, Vimes,' said the Patrician sharply. 'I know you pride yourself on that sort of thing. Officially he's here because the wizards have invited him to their big award ceremony. An honorary doctorate, that sort of thing. And one of their lunches afterwards. I do like negotiating with people after the faculty of Unseen University have entertained them to lunch. They tend not to move about much and they'll agree to practically anything if they think there's a chance of a stomach powder and a small glass of water. And now, gentlemen... if you will excuse me.. .' The lords and leaders departed in ones and twos, talking quietly as they walked out into the hall. The Patrician shuffled his papers into order, running a thin finger along each edge of the pile, and then looked up. 'You appear to be casting a shadow, commander.' 'You're not really going to allow them to re–form the regiments, are you?' said Vimes. 'There is absolutely no law against it, Vimes. And it will keep them occupied. Every official gentleman is entitled, in fact I believe used to be required, to raise men when the city required it. And, of course, any citizen has the right to bear arms. Bear that in mind, please.' 'Arms is one thing. Holding weapons in 'em and playing soldiers is another.' Vimes put his knuckles on the table and leaned forward. 'You see, sir,' he said, 'I can't help hut think that over there in Klatch a bunch of idiots are doing the same thing. They're saying to the Seriph "It's time to sort out those devils in Ankh–Morpork, offendi". And when a lot of people are running around with weapons and talking daft stuff about war, accidents happen. Have you ever been in a pub when everyone goes armed? Oh, things are a little polite at first, I'll grant you, and then some twerp drinks out of the wrong mug or picks up someone else's change by mistake and five minutes later you're picking noses out of the beer nuts–' The Patrician looked down at Vimes's knuckles and stared fixedly until Vimes removed them. 'Vimes, you will be at the wizards' Convivium tomorrow. I sent you a memo about it.' 'I never–' A vision of the piles of unread paperwork on Vimes's desk loomed treacherously in his mind. 'Ah,' he said. 'The Commander of the Watch leads the procession in full dress uniform. It's an ancient custom.' 'Me? Walk in front of everyone?' 'Indeed. Very... civic. As I'm sure you recall. It demonstrates the friendly alliance between the University and the civil government which, I may say, seems to consist of their promising to do anything we ask provided we promise not to ask them to do anything. Anyway, it is your duty. Tradition decrees it. And Lady Sybil has agreed to see to it that you are there with a crisp bright shining morning face.' Vimes took a deep breath. 'You asked my wife?' 'Certainly. She is very proud of you. She believes you are capable of great things, Vimes. She must be a great comfort to you.' 'Well, I... I mean, I... yes...' 'Excellent. Oh, just one other thing, Vimes. I do have the Assassins and the Thieves in agreement on this, but to cover all eventualities... I would consider it a favour if you could see to it that no–one throws eggs or something at the Prince. That sort of thing always upsets people.'   The two sides watched each other carefully. They were old enemies. They had tested strengths many a time, had tasted defeat and victory, had contested turf. But this time it would go all the way. Knuckles whitened. Boots scraped impatiently. Captain Carrot bounced the ball once or twice. 'All right, lads, one more try, eh? And this time, no horseplay. William, what are you eating?' The Artful Nudger scowled. No–one knew his name. Kids he'd grown up with didn't know his name. His mother, if he ever found out who she was, probably didn't know his name. But Carrot had found out somehow. If anyone else had called him 'William' they'd be looking for their ear. In their mouth. 'Chewing gum, mister.' 'Have you brought enough for everybody?' 'No, mister.' 'Then put it away, there's a good chap. Now, let's– Gavin, what's that up your sleeve?' The one known as Scumbag Gav didn't bother to argue. ' 's a knife, Mr Carrot.' 'And I bet you brought enough for everybody, eh?' ' 'sright, mister.' Scumbag grinned. He was ten. 'Go on, put them on the heap with the others. . Constable Shoe looked over the wall in horror. There were about fifty youths in the wide alleyway. Average age in years, about eleven. Average age in cynicism and malevolent evil: about 163. Although Ankh–Morpork football doesn't usually have goals in the normal sense, two had been nevertheless made at each end of the alley using the time–honoured method of piling up things to mark where the posts would be. Two piles: one of knives, one of blunt instruments. In the middle of the boys, who were wearing the colours of some of the nastier street gangs, Captain Carrot was bouncing an inflated pig's bladder. Constable Shoe wondered if he ought to go and get help, but the man seemed quite as ease. 'Er, captain?' he ventured. 'Oh, hello, Reg. We were just having a friendly game of football. This is Constable Shoe, lads.' Fifty pairs of eyes said: We'll remember your face, copper. Rag edged around the wall and the eyes noted the arrow which had gone straight through his breastplate and protruded several inches from his back. 'There's been a bit of trouble, sir,' said Reg. 'I thought I'd better fetch you. It's a hostage situation...' 'I'll come right away. OK, lads, sorry about this. Play amongst yourselves, will you? And I hope I'll see you all on Tuesday for the sing–song and sausage sizzle., 'Yeah, mister,' said the Artful Nudger. 'And Corporal Argue will see if she can teach you the campfire howl.' 'Yeah, right,' said Scumbag. 'But what do we do before we part?' said Carrot expectantly. The bloods of the Skats and the Mohocks looked bashfully at one another. Usually they were nervous of nothing, it being a banishment matter to show fear in any circumstances. But when they'd variously drawn up the clan rules, no–one had ever thought there'd he someone like Carrot. Glaring at one another with I'll–kill–you–if–you–ever–mention–this expressions, they all raised the index fingers of both hands to the level of their ears and chorused: 'Wib wib wib.' 'Wob wob wob,' Carrot replied heartily. 'OK Reg, let's go.' 'How'd you do that, captain?' said Constable Shoe, as the watchmen hurried off. 'Oh, you just raise both fingers like this,' said Carrot. 'But I'd be obliged if you don't tell anyone, because it's meant to be a secret sig–' 'But they're thugs, captain! Young killers! Villains!' 'Oh, they're a bit cheeky, but nice enough boys undeneath, when you take the time to understand–' 'I heard they never give anyone enough time to understand! Does Mr Vimes know you're doing this?' 'He sort of knows, yes. I said I'd like to start a club for the street kids and he said it was fine provided I took them camping on the edge of some really sheer cliff somewhere in a high wind. But he always says things like that. And I'm sure we wouldn't have him any other way. Now, where are these hostages?' 'It's at Vortin's again, captain. But it's... sort of worse than that...' Behind them, the Skats and the Mohocks looked at one another warily. Then they picked up their weapons and edged away with care. It's not that we don't want to fight, their manner said. It's just that we've got better things to do right now, and so we're going to go away and find out what they are.   Unusually for the docks, there was not a great deal of shouting and general conversation. People were too busy thinking about money. Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobbs leaned against a stack of timber and watched a man very carefully painting the name Pride of Ankh–Morpork on the prow of a ship. At some point he'd realize that he'd left out the 'c', and they were idly looking forward to this modest entertainment. 'You ever been to sea, sarge?' said Nobby. 'Hah, not me!' said the sergeant. 'Don't go flogging the oggin, lad.' 'I don't,' said Nobby. 'I have never flogged any oggin. Never in my entire life have I flogged oggin.' 'Right.' 'I've always been very clean in that respect.' 'Except you don't know what flogging the oggin means, do you?' 'No, sarge.' 'It means going to sea. You can't bloody trust the sea. When I was a little lad I had this book about this little kid, he turned into a mermaid, sort of thing, and he lived down the bottom of the sea–' '–the oggin–' ‘Right, and it was all nice talking fishes and pink seashells and stuff, and then I went on my holidays to Quirm and I saw the sea, and I thought: here goes, and if our ma hadn't been quick on her feet I don't know what would have happened. I mean, the kid in the book could breathe under the sea, so how was I to know? It's all bloody lies about the sea. It's just all yuk with lobsters in it.' 'My mum's uncle was a sailor" said Nobby. 'But after the big plague he got press–ganged. Bunch of farmers got him drunk, he woke up next morning tied to a plough.' They lounged some more. 'Looks like we're going to be in a fight, sarge,' said Nobby, as the painter very carefully started on the final 'k'. 'Won't last long. Lots of cowards, the Klatchians,' said Colon. 'The moment they taste a bit of cold steel they're legging it away over the sand.' Sergeant Colon had had a broad education. He'd been to the School of My Dad Always Said, the College of It Stands to Reason, and was now a postgraduate student at the University of What Some Bloke In the Pub Told Me. 'Shouldn't be any trouble to sort out, then?' said Nobby. 'And o'course, they're not the same colour as what we are,' said Colon. 'Well... as me, anyway,' he added, in view of the various hues of Corporal Nobbs. There was probably no–one alive who was the same colour as Corporal Nobbs. 'Constable Visit's pretty brown' ' said Nobby. 'I never seen him run away. if there's a chance of giving someone a religious pamphlet ole Washpot's after them like a terrier.' 'Ah, but Omnians are more like us,' said Colon. 'Bit weird but, basic'ly, just the same as us underneath. No, the way you can tell a Klatchian is, you look an' see if he uses a lot of words beginning with "al", right? 'Cos that's a dead giveaway. They invented all the words starting with "al". That's how you can tell they're Klatchian. Like al–cohol, see?' 'They invented beer?' 'Yeah.' 'That's clever.' 'I wouldn't call it clever,' said Sergeant Colon, realizing too late that he'd made a tactical error. 'More, luck, I'd say.' 'What else did they do?' 'Well, there's...' Colon racked his brains. 'There's al–gebra. That's like sums with letters. For... for people whose brains aren't clever enough for numbers, see?' 'Is that a fact?' 'Right,' said Colon. 'In fact,' he went on, a little more assertively now he could see a way ahead, 'I heard this wizard down the University say that the Klatchians invented nothing. That was their great contribution to maffs, he said. I said "What?" an' he said, they come up with zero.' 'Dun't sound that clever to me,' said Nobby. 'Anyone could invent nothing. I ain't invented anything.' 'My point exactly,' said Colon. 'I told him, it was people who invented numbers like four and, and–' '–seven–' '–right, who were the geniuses. Nothing didn't need inventing. It was just there. They probably just found it.' 'It's having all that desert,' said Nobby. 'Right! Good point. Desert. Which, as everyone knows, is basically nothing. Nothing's a natural resource to them. It stands to reason. Whereas we're more civilized, see, and we got a lot more stuff around to count, so we invented numbers. It's like... well, they say the Klatchians invented astronomy–' 'Al–tronomy,' said Nobby helpfully. 'No, no... no, Nobby, I reckon they'd discovered esses by then, probably nicked' em off'f us... anyway, they were bound to invent astronomy, 'cos there's bugger all else for them to look at but the sky. Anyone can look at the stars and give 'em names. 's going it a bit to call it inventing, in any case. We don't go around saying we've invented something just because we had a quick dekko at it.' 'I heard where they've got a lot of odd gods,' said Nobby. 'Yeah, and mad priests,' said Colon. 'Foaming at the mouth, half of 'em. Believe all kinds of loony things.' They watched the painter in silence for a moment. Colon was dreading the question that came. 'So how exactly are they different from ours, then?' said Nobby. 'I mean, some of our priests are–' 'I hope you ain't being unpatriotic,' said Colon severely. 'No, of course not. I was just asking. I can see where they'd be a lot worse than ours, being foreign and everything. 'And of course they're all mad for fighting,' said Colon. 'Vicious buggers with all those curvy swords of theirs.' 'You mean, like they viciously attack you while cowardly running away after tasting cold steel?' said Nobby, who sometimes had a treacherously good memory for detail. 'You can't trust 'em, like I said. And they burp hugely after meals.' 'Well... so do you, sarge.' 'Yes, but I don't pretend it's polite, Nobby.' 'Well, it's certainly a good job there's you around to explain things, sarge,' said Nobby. 'It's amazing the stuff you know.' 'I surprise myself, sometimes,' said Colon modestly. The painter of the ship leaned back to admire his work. They heard him give a heartfelt little groan, and both of them nodded in satisfaction.   Hostage negotiations were always tricky, Carrot had learned. It paid not to rush things. Let the other man talk when he was ready. So he was whiling away the time sitting behind the upturned cart they were using as a shield from the occasional random arrow and writing his letter home. The exercise was carried out with much frowning, sucking of the pencil and what Commander Vimes called a ballistic approach to spelling and punctuation.   Dere Mum and Dade, I hope this letter finds you in good health as I am also. Thank you for the big parcel of dwarf bread you sent me I have sharred it with the other dwarfs on the Watch and they say it is better even than Ironcrufts ('t'Bread Wi' T'Edge') and you carn't beat the taste of a home–forged loaf, so well done mum. Things are going well with the Wolf Pack that I have told you about but Cmdr. Vimes is not happy, I told him they were good lads at heart and it would help them to learn the ways of Natchure and the Wilderness and he said hah they know them already that is the trouble. But he gave me $5 to buy a football which proves he cares deep down.        We have more new faeces in the Watch which is just as well with this truble with Klatch, it is all looking very Grave, Ifeel it is the Clam before the Storm and no mistake.        I must brake off now because some robbers have broke into Vortin's Dimond Warehouse and have taken Corporal Angua hostage. I fear there may be terrible bloodshed so,        I remain,        Yr. Loving Son,        Carrot Ironfoundersson (Captain)        ps I will write again tomorrow   Carrot folded the letter carefully and slipped it under his breastplate. 'I think they have had long enough to consider our suggestion, constable. What's next on the list?' Constable Shoe leafed through a file of grubby paper and pulled out another sheet 'Well, we're down to offences of stealing pennies off blind beggars now,' he said. 'Oh, no, this is a good one...' Carrot took the sheet in one hand and megaphone in the other and raised his head carefully over the edge of the cart. 'Good morning again!' he said brightly. 'We've found another one. Theft of jewellery from–' 'Yes! Yes! We did it!' shouted a voice from the building. 'Really? I haven't even said what it was yet,' said Carrot. 'Never mind, we did it! Now can we come out, please?' There was another sound behind the voice. It sounded like a low, continuous growl. 'I think you ought to be able to tell me what you stole,' said Carrot. 'Er... rings? Cold rings?' 'Sorry, no rings mentioned.' 'Pearl necklace? Yes, that's what–' 'Getting warmer, but no.' 'Earrings?' 'Ooo, you're so close,' said Carrot encouragingly. 'A crown, was it? Maybe a coronet?' Carrot leaned down to the constable. 'Says here a tiara, Reg, can we let–?' He stood up. 'We're prepared to accept "coronet". Well done!' He looked down at Constable Shoe again. 'This is all right, isn't it, Reg? It's not coercion, is it?' 'Can't see how it can be, captain. I mean, they broke in, they took a hostage...' 'I suppose you're right–' 'Please! No! Good boy! Down!' 'Seems to be about it, sir,' said Reg Shoe, peering around the edge of the cart. 'We've got them down for everything but the Hide Park Flasher–' 'We did that!' screamed someone. '–and that was a woman...' 'We did it!' This time the voice was a lot higher. 'Now please can we come out?' Carrot stood up and raised the megaphone. 'If you gentlemen would care to step out with your hands up?' 'Are you joking?' whimpered someone, against the background of another growl. 'Well, at least with your hands where I can see them.' 'You bet, mister!' Four men stumbled out into the street. Their tom clothing fluttered in the breeze. The apparent leader pointed an angry finger back at the doorway as Carrot walked towards them. 'The owner of that place ought to be prosecuted!' he shouted. 'Keeping a wild animal like that in his strongroom, it's disgraceful! We broke in perfectly peacefully and it just attacked us for no reason at all!' 'You shot at Constable Shoe here,' said Carrot. 'Only to miss! Only to miss!' Constable Shoe pointed at the arrow sticking into his breastplate. 'Right where it shows!' he complained. 'It's a welding job and we have to pay for our own armour repairs and there'll always be a mark, you know, no matter what I do.' Their horrified gaze took in the stitch marks around his neck and on his hands, and it dawned on them that although the human race came in a variety of colours, very few living people were grey with a hint of green. 'Here, you're a zombie!' 'That's right, kick a man when he's dead,' said Constable Shoe sharply. 'And you took Corporal Angua hostage. A lady,' said Carrot, in the same level voice. It was very polite. But it simply suggested that somewhere a fuse was burning, and it would be a good idea not to wait for it to reach the barrel. 'Yes... sort of... but she must've got away when that creature turned up...' 'So you left her in there?' said Carrot, still very calm. The men dropped to their knees. The leader raised his hand imploringly. 'Please! We're just robbers and thieves! We're not bad men!' Carrot nodded to Constable Shoe. 'Take them down to the Yard, constable.' 'Right!' said Reg. There was a mean look in his eye as he cocked his crossbow. 'I'm down ten dollars thanks to you. So you'd better not try to escape.' 'No, sir. Not us.' Carrot wandered into the gloom of the building. Fearful faces peered out of doorways. He gave them a reassuring smile as he walked towards the strongroom. Corporal Angua was adjusting her uniform. 'I didn't bite anyone, before you start,' she said, as he appeared in the doorway. 'Not even flesh wounds. I just tore at their trousers. And that was no bed of roses, I might add.' A frightened face appeared round the door. 'Ah, Mr Vortin,' said Carrot. 'I think you will find that all is in order. They seem to have dropped everything.' The diamond merchant looked at him in amazement. 'But they had a hostage–' 'They saw the error of their ways,' said Carrot. 'And... and there were snarling noises... sounded like a wolf...' 'Ah, yes,' said Carrot. 'Well, you know, when thieves fall out...' Which was no kind of explanation, but because the tone of voice suggested that it was, Mr Vortin accepted it as such for fully five minutes after Carrot and Angua had left. 'Well, that's a nice start to the day,' said Carrot. 'Thank you, yes, I wasn't hurt,' said Angua. 'It makes it all seem worthwhile, somehow.' 'Just my hair messed up and another shirt ruined.' 'Well done.' 'Sometimes I might suspect that you don't listen to anything I say,' said Angua. 'Glad to hear it,' said Carrot.   The entire Watch was mustering. Vimes looked down at the sea of faces. My gods, he thought. How many have we got now? A few years ago you could count the Watch on the fingers of a blind butcher's hand, and now... There's more coming in! He leaned sideways to Captain Carrot. 'Who're all these people?' 'Watchmen, sir. You appointed them.' 'Did I? I haven't even met some of them!' 'You signed the paperwork, sir. And you sign the wage bill every month. Eventually.' There was a hint of criticism in his voice. Vimes's approach to paperwork was not to touch it until someone was shouting, and then at least there would be someone to help him sort through the stacks. 'But how did they join?' 'Usual way, sir. Swore them in, gave them each a helmet–' 'Hey, that's Reg Shoe! He's a zombie! He falls to bits all the time!' 'Very big man in the undead community, sir,' said Carrot. 'How come he joined?' 'He came round last week to complain about the Watch harassing some bogeymen, sir. He was very, er, vehement, sir. So I persuaded him that what the Watch needed was some expertise, and so he joined up, sir.' 'No more complaints?' 'Twice as many, sir. All from undead, sir, and all against Mr Shoe. Funny, that.' Vimes gave his captain a sideways look. 'He's very hurt about it, sir. He says he's found that the undead just don't understand the difficulties of policing in a multi–vital society, sir.' Good gods, thought Vimes, that's just what I would have done. But Id have done it because I'm not a nice person. Carrot is a nice person, he's practially got medals for it, surely he wouldn't have... And he knew that he would never know. Somewhere behind Carrot's innocent stare was a steel door. 'You enrolled him, did you?' 'Nossir. You did, sir. You signed his joining orders and his kit chitty and his posting orders, sir.' Vimes had another vision of too many documents, hurriedly signed. But he must have signed them and they needed the men, true enough. It was just that it ought to be him who– 'And anyone of sergeant rank or above can recruit, sir,' said Carrot, as if reading his mind. 'It's in the General Orders. Page twenty–two, sir. just below the tea stain.' 'And you've recruited... how many?' 'Oh, just one or two. We're still very short–handed, sir.' 'We are with Reg. His arms keep falling off.' 'Aren't you going to talk to the men, sir?' Vimes looked at the assembled... well, multitude. There was no other word. Well, there were plenty, but none that it would be fair to use. Big ones, short ones, fat ones, troll ones with the lichen still on, bearded dwarf ones, the looming pottery presence of the golem Constable Dorfl, undead ones... and even now he wasn't certain if that term should include Corporal Angua, an intelligent girl and a very useful wolf when she had to be. Waifs and strays, Colon had said once. Waifs and bloody strays, because normal people wouldn't be coppers. Technically they were all in uniform, too, except that mostly they weren't wearing the same uniform as anyone else. Everyone had just been sent down to the armoury to collect whatever fitted, and the result was a walking historical exhibit: Funny–Shaped Helmets Through the Ages. 'Er... ladies and gentlemen–' he began. 'Be quiet, please, and listen to Commander Vimes!' bellowed Carrot. Vimes found himself meeting the gaze of Angua, who was leaning against the wall. She rolled her eyes helplessly. 'Yes, yes, thank you, captain,' said Vimes. He turned back to the massed array of Ankh–Morpork's finest. He opened his mouth. He stared. And then he shut his mouth, all but a corner of it. And said out of that corner: 'What's that little lump on Constable Flint's head?' 'That's  Probationary Constable Buggy Swires, sir. He likes to get a good view.' 'He's a gnome!' 'Well done, sir.' 'Another one of yours?' 'Ours, sir,' said Carrot, using his reproachful voice again. 'Yes, sir. Attached to the Chitterling Street Station since last week, sir.' 'Oh my gods...' murmured Vimes. Buggy Swires saw his stare and saluted. He was five inches tall. Vimes regathered his mental balance. The long and the short and the tall... waifs and strays, all of us. 'I'm not going to keep you long,' he said. 'You all know me... well, most of you know me,' he added, with a sidelong glance at Carrot, 'and I don't make speeches. But I'm sure all of you have noticed the way this Leshp business has got people all stirred up. There's a lot of loose talk about war. Well, war isn't our business. War is soldiers' business. Our business, I think, is to keep the peace. Let me show you this––' He stood back and pulled something out of his pocket with a flourish. At least, that was the intention. There was a rip as something ceased to be entangled in the lining. 'Damn... ah...' He produced a length of shiny black wood from the ragged pocket. There was a large silver knob on the end. The watchmen craned to look. 'This... er... this...'Vimes groped. 'This old man turned up from the palace a couple of weeks ago. Cave me this damn thing. Cot a label saying "Regalia of the Watch Commandr., Citie of Ankh–Morporke”. You know they never throw anything away up at the palace.' He waved it vaguely. The wood was surprisingly heavy. 'It's got the coat of arms on the knob, look.' Thirty watchmen tried to see. 'And I thought... I thought, good grief, this is what I'm supposed to carry? And I thought about it, and then I thought, no, that's right, just once someone got it right. It's not even a weapon, it's just a thing. It ain't for using, it's just for having. That's what it's all about. Same thing with uniforms. You see, a soldier's uniform, it's to turn him into part of a crowd of other parts all in the same uniform, but a copper's uniform is there to–' Vimes stopped. Perplexed expressions in front of him told him that he was building a house of cards with too few cards on the bottom. He coughed. 'Anyway,' he went on, with a glare to indicate that everyone should forget the previous twenty seconds, 'our job is to stop people fighting. There's a lot happening on the street. You've probably heard that they're starting up the regiments again. Well, people can recruit if they like. But we're not going to have any mobs. There's a nasty mood around. I don't know what's going to happen, but we've got to be there when it does.' He looked around the room. 'Another thing. This new Klatchian envoy or whatever he's called is arriving tomorrow. I don't think the Assassins' Guild has anything planned but tonight we're going to check the route the wizards' procession will be taking. A nice little job for the night shift. And tonight we're all on the night shift.' There was a groan from the Watch. 'As my old sergeant used to say, if you can't take a joke you shouldn't have joined,' said Vimes. 'A nice gentle door–to–door inspection, shaking hands with doorknobs, giving the uniform a bit of an airing. Good old–fashioned policing. Any questions? Good. Thank you very much.' There was a general rustling and relaxing among the squad as it dawned on them that they were free to go. Carrot started to clap. It wasn't the clap used by middlings to encourage underlings to applaud overlings.[1] It had genuine enthusiasm behind it which was, somehow, worse. A couple of the more impressionable new constables picked it up and then, in the same way that little pebbles lead the avalanche, the sound of humanoids banging their hands together filled the room. Vimes glowered. 'Very inspiring, sir!' said Carrot, as the clapping rose to a storm.   Rain poured on Ankh–Morpork. It filled the gutters and overflowed and was then flung away by the wind. It tasted of salt. The gargoyles had crept out of their daytime shadows and were perched on every cornice and tower, ears and wings outstretched to sieve anything edible out of the water. It was amazing what could fall on Ankh–Morpork. Rains of small fish and frogs were common enough, although bedsteads caused comment. A broken gutter poured a sheet of water down the window of Ossie Brunt, who was sitting on his bed because there were no chairs or, indeed, any other furniture. He didn't mind at the moment. In a minute or two he might be very angry. And, then again, possibly not. It was not that Ossie was insane in any way. Friends would have called him a quiet sort who kept himself to himself, but they didn't because he didn't have any friends. There was a group of men who went to practise at the archery butts on Tuesday nights, and he sometimes went to a pub with them afterwards and sat and listened to them talk, and he'd saved up once and bought a round of drinks, although they probably wouldn't remember or maybe they'd say, 'Oh... yeah... Ossie.' People said that. People tended to put him out of their minds, in the same way that you didn't pay much attention to empty space. He wasn't stupid. He thought a lot about things. Sometimes he'd sit and think for hours, just staring at the opposite wall where the rain came in on damp nights and made a map of Klatch. Someone hammered on the door. 'Mr Brunt? Are you decent?' 'I'm a bit busy, Mrs Spent" he said, putting his bow under the bed with his magazines. 'It's about the rent!' 'Yes, Mrs Spent?' 'You know my rules!' 'I shall pay you tomorrow, Mrs Spent,' said Ossie, looking towards the window. 'Cash in my hand by noon or it's out you go!' 'Yes, Mrs Spent.' He heard her stamp downstairs again. He counted to fifty, very carefully, and then reached down and pulled out his bow again.   Angua was on patrol with Nobby Nobbs. This was not an ideal arrangement, but Carrot was on swing patrol and on a night like this Fred Colon, who kept the roster, had an uncanny knack of being on desk duty in the warm. So the spare partners had been thrown together. It was a terrible thought. 'Can I have a word, miss?' said Nobby, as they rattled doorknobs and waved their lanterns into alleyways. 'Yes, Nobby?' 'It's pers'nal.' 'Oh.' 'Only I'd ask Fred, but he wouldn't understand, and I fink you would understand on account of you being a woman. Most of the time, anyway. No offence meant.' 'What do you want, Nobby?' 'It's about my... sexual nature, miss.' Angua said nothing. Rain banged off Nobby's illfitting helmet. 'I think it's time I looked it full in the face, miss.' Angua cursed her graphic imagination again. 'And, er... how were you thinking of doing that, Nobby?' 'I mean, I sent off for stuff, miss, Creams an' that.' 'Creams,' said Angua flatly. 'That you rub on,' said Nobby helpfully. 'Rub on.' 'And a thing you do exercises with–' 'Oh gods...' 'Sorry, miss?' 'What? Oh... I was just thinking of something else. Do go on. Exercises?' 'Yeah. To build up my biceps and that.' 'Oh, exercises. Really?' Nobby did not appear to have any biceps to speak of. There wasn't really anything for them to be – on. Technically he had arms, because his hands were attached to his shoulders, but that was about all you could say. Horrified interest got the better of her. 'Why, Nobby?' He looked down, sheepishly. 'Well... I mean... you know... girls an' that...' To her amazement, Nobby was blushing. 'You mean you...' she began. 'You want to... you're looking for...' 'Oh, I'm not just after... I mean, if you want a thing done properly then... I mean, no,' said Nobby reproachfully. 'What I'm saying is, as you get older, you know, you think about settlin' down, findin' someone who'll go with you hand in hand down life's bumpy highway– Why's your mouth open?' Angua shut it abruptly. 'But I just don't seem to meet girls,' Nobby said. 'Well, I mean, I meet girls, and then they rush off.' 'Despite the cream.' 'Right.' 'And the exercises.' 'Yes.' 'Well, you've covered all the angles, I can see that,' said Angua. 'Beats me where you're going wrong.' She sighed. 'What about Stamina Thrum, in Elm Street?' 'She's got a wooden leg.' 'Well, then... Verity Pushpram, nice girl, she runs the clam and cockle barrow in Rime Street?' 'Hammerhead? Stinks of fish all the time. And she's got a squint.' 'She's got her own business, though. Does wonderful chowder, too.' 'And a squint.' 'Not exactly a squint, Nobby.' 'Yes, but you know what I mean.' Angua had to admit that she did. Verity had the opposite of a squint. Both eyes appeared to be endeavouring to see the adjacent ear. When you talked to her, you had to suppress a feeling that she was about to walk off in two directions. But she could gut fish like a champion. She sighed again. She was familiar with the syndrome. They said they wanted a soulmate and helpmeet but sooner or later the list would include a skin like silk and a chest fit for a herd of cows. Except for Carrot. That was almost... almost one of the annoying things about him. She suspected he wouldn't mind if she shaved her head or grew a beard. It wasn't that he wouldn't notice, he just wouldn't mind, and for some reason that was very aggravating. 'The only thing I can suggest,' she said, 'is that women are quite often attracted to men who can make them laugh.' Nobby brightened. 'Really?' he said. 'I ought to be well in there, then.' 'Good.' 'People laugh at me all the time.' High above, quite oblivious of the rain that had already soaked him to the skin, Ossie Brunt checked the oilskin cover round his bow and settled down for the long wait.   Rain was a copper's friend. Tonight people were making do with indoor crime. Vimes stood in the lee of one of the fountains in Sator Square. The fountain hadn't worked for years, but he was getting just as wet as if it were in full flow. He'd never experienced truly horizontal rain before. There was no–one around. The rain marched across the square like... like an army... Now there was an image from his youth. Funny how they hung around in the dark alleys of your brain and suddenly jumped out on you. Rain falling on water... Ah, yes... When he was a little lad he'd pretended that the raindrops splashing in the running gutters were soldiers. Millions of soldiers. And the bubbles that sometimes went floating by were men on horseback. Right now he couldn't remember what the occasional dead dog had been. Some kind of siege weapon, possibly. Water swirled around his boots and dripped off his cape. When he tried to light a cigar the wind blew the match out and the rain poured off his helmet and soaked the cigar in any case. He grinned in the night. He was, temporarily, a happy man. He was cold, wet and alone, hying to keep out of the worst of the weather at three o'clock on a ferocious morning. He'd spent some of the best nights of his life like this. At such times you could just... sort of hunch your shoulders like this and let your head pull in like this and you became a little hutch of warmth and peace, the rain banging on your helmet, the mind just ticking over, sorting out the world... It was like this in the old days, when no–one cared about the Watch and all you really had to do was keep out of trouble. Those were the days when there wasn't as much to do. But there was as much to do, said an inner voice. You just didn't do it. He could feel the official truncheon hanging heavily in the special pocket that Sybil herself had sewn in his breeches. Why is it just a bit of wood? he'd asked himself when he'd unwrapped it. Why not a sword? That's the symbol of power. And then he'd realized why it couldn't ever be a sword 'Ho there, good citizen! May I ask your business this brisk morning?' He sighed. There was a lantern appearing through the murk, surrounded by a halo of water. Ho there, good citizen... There was only one person in the city who would say something like that and mean it. 'It's me, captain.' The halo drew nearer and illuminated the damp face of Captain Carrot. The young man ripped off a salute – at godsdam three in the morning, Vimes thought – that would have brought a happy tear to the eye of the most psychotic drill sergeant. 'What're you doing out, sir?' 'I just wanted to... check up on things,' said Vimes. 'You could have left it all to me, sir,' said Carrot. 'delegation is the key to successful command.' 'Really? Is it?' said Vimes sourly. 'My word, we live and learn, don't we.' And you certainly learn, he added in the privacy of his head. And he was almost sure he was being mean and stupid. 'We've just about finished, sir. We've checked all the empty buildings. And there will be an extra squad of constables on the route. And the gargoyles will be up as high as they can. You know how good they are at watching, sir.' 'Gargoyles? I thought we just had Constable Downspout...' 'And Constable Pediment now, sir.' 'One of yours?' 'One of ours, sir. You signed–' 'Yes, yes, I'm sure I did. Damn!' A gust of wind caught the water pouring from an overloaded gutter and dumped it down Vimes's neck. 'They say this new island's upset the air streams" said Carrot. 'Not just the air,' said Vimes. 'A lot of damn fuss over a few square miles of silt and some old ruins! Who cares?' 'They say it's strategically very important,' said Carrot, falling into step beside him. 'What for? We're not at war with anyone. Hah! But we might go to war to keep some damn island that's only useful in case we have to go to war, right?' 'Oh, his lordship will have it all sorted out today. I'm sure that when moderate–mannered men of goodwill can get round a table there's no problem that can't be resolved,' said Carrot cheerfully. He is, thought Vimes glumly. He really is sure. 'Know much about Klatch?' he said. 'I've read a little, sir.' 'Very sandy place, they say.' 'Yes, sir. Apparently.' There was a crash somewhere ahead of them, and a scream. Coppers learned to be good at screams. There was to the connoisseur a world of difference between 'I'm drunk and I've just trodden on my fingers and I can't get up!' and 'Look out! He's got a knife!' Both men started to run. Light blazed out in a narrow street. Heavy footsteps vanished into the darkness. The light flickered beyond a shop's broken window. Vimes stumbled through the doorway pulled off his sodden cape and threw it over the fire in the middle of the floor. There was a hiss, and a smell of hot leather. Then Vimes stood back and tried to work out where the hell he was. People were staring at him. Dimly, his mind assembled clues: the turban, the beard, the woman's jewellery... ‘Where did he come from? Who is this man?’ ‘Er . good morning?' he said. 'Looks like there's been a bit of an accident?' He raised the cape gingerly. A broken bottle lay in a pool of sizzling oil. Vimes looked up at the broken window. 'Oh...' The other two people were a boy almost as tall as his father and a small girl trying to hide behind her mother. Vimes felt his stomach turn to lead. Carrot arrived in the doorway. 'I lost them,' he panted. 'There were three of them, I think. Can't see anything in this rain... Oh, it’s you Mr Goriff. What happened here?’ ‘Captain Carrot! Someone threw a burning bottle through out window and then this beggar man rushed in and put it out!’ 'What'd he say? What did you say?' said Vimes. 'You speak Klatchian?' 'Not very well,' said Carrot modestly. 'I just can't get the backof–the–throat sound to–' 'But... you can understand what he said?' 'Oh, yes. He just thanked you very much, by the way. It’s all right, Mr Goriff, He’s a watchman.’ 'But you speak–' Carrot knelt down and looked at the broken bottle. 'Oh, you know how it is. You come in here on night shift for a hot caraway bun and you just get chatting. You must have picked up the odd word, sir.' 'Well... vindaloo maybe, but.. .' 'This is a firebomb, sir.' 'I know, captain.' 'This is very bad. Who would do a thing like this?' 'Right now?' said Vimes. 'Half the city, I should think.' He looked helplessly at Goriff. He vaguely recognized the face. He vaguely recognized Mrs Goriff's face. They were... faces. They were usually at the other end of some arms holding a portion of carry or a kebab. Sometimes the boy ran the place. The shop opened very early in the morning and very late at night, when the streets were owned by bakers, thieves and watchmen. Vimes knew the place as Mundane Meals. Nobby Nobbs had said that Goriff had wanted a word that meant ordinary, everyday, straight–forward, and had asked around until he found one he liked the sound of. 'Er... tell him... tell him you're staying here, and I'll go back to the Watch House and send someone out to relieve you,' said Vimes. 'Thank you,' said Goriff. 'Oh, you underst–' Vimes felt like an idiot. 'Of course you do, you must have been here, what, five, six years?' 'Ten years, sir.' 'Really?' said Vimes manically. 'That long? Really? My word... well, I'd better get along... Good morning to you–' He hurried out into the rain. I must have been going in there for years, he thought, as he splashed through the darkness. And I know how to say 'vindaloo'. And... 'korma'... ? Carrot's hardly been here five minutes and he gargles the language like a native. Good grief, I can get by in dwarfish and I can at least say,' cut down that rock, you're under arrest,' in troll, but... He stamped into the Watch House, water pooling off him. Prod Colon was dozing quietly at the desk. In deference to the fact that he'd known Fwd. all these years, Vimes was extra noisy about taking off his cape. When he officially turned round, the sergeant was sitting at attention. 'I didn't know you were on tonight, Mr Vimes...' 'This is unofficial, Fred,' said Vimes. He accepted 'Me from certain people. In an odd way, they'd earned it. 'Send someone along to Mundane Meals in Scandal Alley, will you? A bit of trouble there.' He reached the stairs. 'You stopping, sir?' said Fred. 'Oh, yes,' said Vimes grimly. 'I've got to catch up on the paperwork.'   The rain fell on Leshp so hard it probably hadn't been worth the island's bother of rising from the bottom of the sea. Most of the explorers slept in their boats now. There were buildings on the risen island, but... ... the buildings weren't quite right. Solid Jackson peered out from the tarpaulin he'd rigged up on deck. Mist was rising off the soaking ground and was made luminous by the occasional flash of lightning. The city, by storm light, looked far too malevolent. There were things he could recognize – columns and steps and archways and so on – but there were others... he shuddered. It looked as if people had once tried to add human touches to structures that were already ancient... It was because of his son that everyone was staying in the boats. A party of Ankh–Morpork fishermen had gone ashore that morning to search for the heaps of treasure that everyone knew littered the ocean bottom and had found a tiled floor, washed clean by the rain. Pretty blue and white squares showed a pattern of waves and shells, and, in the middle, a squid. And Les had said, 'That looks pretty big, Dad.' And everyone had looked around at the weedcovered buildings and had shared the Thought, which remained unspoken but was made up of a lot of little thoughts like the occasional ripples in the pools, and the little splashes in the dark water of cellars that made the mind think of claws, winnowing the deeps, and the odd things that sometimes got washed up on beaches or tamed up in nets. Sometimes you pulled things over the side that'd put a man off fish for life. And suddenly no–one wanted to explore any more, just in case they found something. Solid Jackson pulled his head back under the cover. 'Why'n't we going home, Dad?' said his son. 'You said this place gives you the willies.' 'All right, but they're Ankh–Morpork willies, see? And no foreigner's going to get his hands on them.' 'Dad?' 'Yes, lad?' 'Who was Mr Hong?' 'How should I know?' 'Only, when we was all heading back for the boats one of the other men said, 'We all know what happened to Mr Hong when he opened the Three Jolly Luck Take–Away Fish Bar on the site of the old fish–god temple in Dagon Street on the night of the full moon, don't we... ?" Well, I don't know.' 'Ah...' Solid Jackson hesitated. Still, Les was a big lad now... 'He... closed up and left in a bit of a hurry, lad. So quick he had to leave some things behind.' 'Like what?' 'If you must know... half an earhole and one kidney.' 'Cool!' The boat rocked, and wood splintered. Jackson jerked the cover up. Spray washed over him. Somewhere close in the wet darkness a voice shouted: 'Why you not carrying lights, you second cousin of a jackal?' Jackson pulled out the lantern and held it up. 'What're you doing in Ankh–Morpork territorial waters, you camel–eating devil?' 'These waters belong to us!' 'We were here first!' 'Yeah? We were here first!' 'We were here first first!' 'You damaged my boat! That's piracy, that is!' There were other shouts around them. In the darkness the two flotillas had collided. Bowsprits tore away rigging. Hulls boomed. The controlled panic that is normal sailing became the frantic panic camposed of darkness, spray and too much rigging coming unrigged. At times like this the ancient traditions of the sea that unite all mariners should some to the fore and see them combine in the face of their common foe, the hungry and relentless ocean. However, at this point Mr Arif hit Mr Jackson over the head with an oar.   'Hnh? Wuh?' Vimes opened the only eye that appeared to respond. A horrible sight met it. ...I read him his rites, whereupon, he said up, yours copper. Sgnt Detritus then, cautioned him, upon which he said, ouch... There may be a lot of things I'm not good at, thought Vimes, but at least I don't treat tile punctuation of a sentence like a game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey... He rolled his head away from Carrot's fractured grammar. The pile of paper shifted under him. Vimes's desk was becoming famous. Once there were piles, but they had slipped as piles do, forming this dense compacted layer that was now turning into something like peat. It was said there were plates and unfinished meals somewhere down there. No–one wanted to check. Some people said they'd heard movement. There was a genteel cough. Vimes rolled his head again and looked up into the big pink face of Willikins, Lady Sybil's butler. His butler too, technically, although Vimes hated to think of him like that. 'I think we had better proceed with alacrity, Sir Samuel. I have brought your dress uniform, and your shaving things are by the basin.' 'What? What?' 'You are due at the University in half an hour. Lady Sybil has vouchsafed to me that if you are not there she will utilize your intestines for hosiery accessories, sir.' 'Was she smiling?' said Vimes, staggering to his feet and making his way to the steaming basin on the wash stand. 'Only slightly, sir.' 'Oh gods...' 'Yes, sir.' Vimes made an attempt at shaving while, behind him, Willikins brushed and polished. Outside, the city's clocks began to strike ten. It must've been almost four when I sat down Vimes thought. I know I heard the shift change at eight, and then I had to sort out Nobby's expenses, that's advanced mathematics if ever there was some... He tried to yawn and shave at the same time, which is never a good idea. 'Damn!' 'I shall fetch some tissue paper directly, sir,' said Willikins, without looking round. As Vimes dabbed at his chin, the butler went on: 'I should like to take this opportunity to raise a matter of some import, sir...' 'Yes?' Vimes shared blearily at the red tights that seemed to be a major item of his dress uniform. 'Regretfully, I am afraid I must ask leave to give in my notice, sir. I wish to join the Colours.' 'Which colours are these, Willikins?' said Vimes, holding up a shirt with puffed sleeves. Then his brain caught up with his cars. 'You want to become a soldier?' 'They say Klatch needs to be taught a sharp lesson, sir. A Willikins has never been found wanting when his country calls. I thought that Lord Venturi's Heavy Infantry would do for me. They have a particularly attractive uniform of red and white, sir. With gold frogging.' Vimes pulled his boots on. 'You've had military experience, have you?' 'Oh, no, sir. But I am a quick learner, sir, and I believe I have some prowess with the carving knife.' The butler's face showed a patriotic alertness. 'On turkeys and on...'said Vimes. 'Yes, sir; said Willikins, buffing up die ceremonial helmet. 'And you're off to fight the screaming hordes in Klatch, are you?' 'If it should come to that, sir,' said Willikins. 'I think this is adequately polished now, sir.' 'A very sandy place, so they say.' 'Indeed, sir,' said Willikins, adjusting the helmet under Vimes's chin. 'And rocky. Very rocky. Lots of rocks. Dusty, too.' 'Very parched in parts, sir, I believe you are correct.' 'And so into this land of sand–coloured dust and sandcoloured rocks and sand–coloured sand you, Willikins, will march with your expertise in cutlery and your red and white uniform?' 'With the gold frogging, sir.' Willikins thrust out his jaw. 'Yes, sir. If the need arises.' 'You don't see anything wrong with this picture?' 'Sir?' 'Oh, never mind.' Vimes yawned. 'Well, we shall miss you, Willikins.' Others may not, he thought. Especially if they have time for a second shot. 'Oh, Lord Venturi says it'll all be over by Hogswatch, sir.' 'Really? I didn't know it had started.'   Vimes ran down the stairs and into a smell of curry. 'We saved you some, sir,' said Sergeant Colon. 'You was asleep when the lad brought it round.' 'It was Goriff's kid,' said Nobby, chasing a bit of rice around his tin plate. 'Enough for half the shift.' 'The rewards of duty,' said Vimes, hurrying towards the door. 'Bread and mango pickle and everything,' said Colon happily. 'I've always said old Goriff isn't that bad for a rag'ead.' A pool of sizzling oil... Vimes stopped at the door. The family, huddling together... He took out his watch. It was twenty past ten. If he ran– 'Fred, could you just step up to my office?' he said. 'It won't take a moment.' 'Right, sir.' Vimes ushered the sergeant up the stairs and closed the door. Nobby and the other watchmen strained to listen, but there was no sound except for a low murmuring which went on for some time. The door opened again. Vimes came down the stairs. 'Nobby, come up to the University in five minutes, will you? I want to stay in touch and I'm damned if I'm taking a pigeon with this uniform on.' 'Right, sir.' Vimes left. A few moments later Sergeant Colon walked carefully down to the main office. He had a slightly glassy look and walked back to his desk with the nonchalance that only the extremely worried try to achieve. He toyed with some paper for a while and then said: 'You don't mind what people call you, do you, Nobby?' 'I'd be minding the whole time if I minded that, sarge,' said Corporal Nobbs cheerfully. 'Right. Right! And I don't mind what people call me, neither.' Colon scratched his head. 'Don't make sense, really. I reckon Sir Sam is missing too much sleep.' 'He's a very busy man, Fred.' 'Trying to do everything, that's his trouble. And... Nobby?' 'Yes?' 'It's Sergeant Colon, thanks.'   There was sherry. There was always sherry at these occasions. Seam Vimes could regard it dispassionately, since he always drank fruit juice these days. He'd heard they made sherry by letting wine go rotten He couldn't see the point of sherry. 'And you will try to look dignified, won't you?' said Lady Sybil, adjusting his cloak. 'Yes, dear.' 'What will you try to look?' 'Dignified, dear.' 'And please try to be diplomatic.' 'Yes, dear.' 'What will you try to be?' 'Diplomatic, dear.' 'You're using your "henpecked" voice, Sam.' 'Yes, dear.' 'You know that's not fair.' 'No, dear.' Vimes raised a hand in a theatrical gesture of submission. 'All right, all right. It's just these feathers. And these tights,' He winced and tried to do some surreptitious rearranging in an effort to prevent himself becoming the city's first hunchgroin. 'I mean, supposing people see me?' 'Of course they'll see you, Sam. You're leading the procession. And I'm very proud of you.' She brushed some lint off his shoulder.[2] Feathers in my hat, Vimes thought glumly. And fancy tights. And a shiny breastplate. A breastplate shouldn't be shiny. It should be too denied to take a decent polish. And diplomatic talk? How should I know how to talk diplomatically? 'And now I must go and have a word with Lady Selachii,' said Lady Broil. 'You'll be all right, will you? You keep yawning.' 'Of course. Didn't get much sleep last night, that's all.' 'You promise not to run away?' 'Me? I never run–' 'You ran away before the big soiree for the Genuan ambassador. Everyone saw you.' 'I'd just got news that the De Bris gang were robbing Vortin's strongroom!' 'But you don't have to chase everyone, Sam. You employ people for that now.' 'We got 'em, though,' said Vimes, with satisfaction. He'd enjoyed it immensely, too. It wasn't just the pursuit that was so invigorating, with his velvet cloak left behind on a tree and his hat in a puddle somewhere, it was the knowledge that while he was doing this he wasn't eating very small sandwiches and making even smaller talk. It wasn't proper police work, Vimes considered, unless you were doing something that someone somewhere would much rather you weren't doing. When Sybil had disappeared into the crowd he found a handy shadow and lurked in it. It enabled him to see almost the whole of the University's Great Hall. He quite liked the wizards. They didn't commit crimes. Not Vimes's type of crimes, anyway. The occult wasn't Vimes's beat. The wizards might well mess up the very fabric of time and space but they didn't lead to paperwork, and that was fine by Vimes. There were a lot of them in the hall, in all their glory. And there was nothing finer than a wizard dressed up formally, until someone could find a way of inflating a Bird of Paradise, possibly by using an elastic band and some kind of gas. But the wizards were getting a run for their money, because the rest of the guests were either nobles or guild leaders or both, and an occasion like the Convivium brought out the peacock in everyone. His gaze went from face to chatting face, and he wondered idly what each person was guilty of.[3] Quite a few of the ambassadors were there, too. They were easy to pick out. They wore their national costumes, but since by and large their national costumes were what the average peasant wore they looked slightly out of place in them. Their bodies wore feathers and silks, but their minds persistently wore suits. They chatted in small groups. One or two nodded and smiled to him as they passed. The world is watching, Vimes thought. If something went wrong and this stupid Leshp business started a war, it's men like these who'd be working out exactly how to deal with the winner, whoever it was. Never mind who started it, never mind how it was fought, they'd want to know how to deal with things now. They represented what people called the 'international community'. And like all uses of the world 'community', you were never quite sure what or who it was. He shrugged. It wasn't his world, thank goodness. He sidled over to Corporal Nobbs, who was standing by the main doors in the sort of lopsided slouch which was the closest a living Nobbs could come to attention. 'All quiet, Nobby?' he said, out of the corner of his mouth. 'Yessir.' 'Nothing going on at all?' 'Nossir. Not a pigeon anywhere, sir.' 'What, nowhere? Nothing?' 'Nossir.' 'There was trouble all over the place yesterday!' 'Yessir.' 'You did tell Fred he was to send a bird if there was anything at all?' 'Yessir.' 'The Shades? There's always something–' 'Dead quiet, sir.' 'Damn!' Vimes shook his head at the sheer untrustworthiness of Ankh-Morpork's criminal fraternity. 'I suppose you couldn't take a brick and–' 'Lady Sybil was very speffic about how you was to stop here" said Corporal Nobbs, staring straight ahead. 'Speffic?' 'Yeah, sir. She come and have a word with me. Cave me a dollar,' said Nobby. 'Ah, Sir Samuel!' said a booming voice behind him, 'I don't think you've met Prince Khufurah yet, have you?' He turned. Archchancellor Ridcully was bearing down on him, towing a couple of swarthy men. Vimes hurriedly put on his official face. 'This is Commander Vimes, gentlemen. Sam... no, I'm doing this the wrong way round, aren't I, got the protocol all wrong – so much to sort out, the Bursar's locked himself in the safe again, we don't know how he manages to get the key in there with him, I mean, it's not even as if it's got a keyhole on the inside...' The first man held out a hand as Ridcully bustled off again. 'Prince Khufurah,' he said. 'My carpet got in only two hours ago.' 'Carpet? Oh... yes... you flew . . 'Yes, very chilly and of course you just can't get a good meal. And did you get your man, Sir Samuel?' 'What? Pardon?' 'I believe our ambasssador told me you had to leave the reception last week...?' The Prince was a tall man who had probably once been quite athletic until the big dinners had finally weighed him down. And he had a beard. All Klatchians had beards. This Klatchian had intelligent eyes, too. Disconcertingly intelligent. You looked into them and several layers of person looked back at you. 'What? Oh. Yes. Yes, we got 'em all right,' said Vimes. 'Well done. He put up a fight, I see.' Vimes looked surprised. The Prince tapped his jaw thoughtfully. Vimes's hand flew up and encountered a little bit of tissue on his own chin. 'Ah... er... yes...' 'Commander Vimes always gets his man,' said the Prince. 'Well, I wouldn't say I–' 'Vetinari's terrier, I've heard them call you,' the Prince went on. 'Always hot on the chase, they say, and he won't let go.' Vimes stared into the calm, knowing gaze. 'I suppose, at the end of the day, we're all someone's dog,' he said, weakly. 'In fact it is fortuitous I have met you, commander.' lit is?' 'I was just wondering about the meaning of the word shouted at me as we were on our way down here. Would you be so kind?' 'Er... if I...' 'I believe it was... let me see now... oh, yes... towelhead.' The Prince's eyes stayed locked on Vimes's face. Vimes was conscious of his own thoughts moving very fast, and they seemed to reach their own decision. We'll explain later, they said. You're too tired for explanations. Right now, with this man, it's oh so much better to be honest... 'It... refers to your headdress,' he said. 'Oh. Is it some kind of obscure joke?' Of course he knows, thought Vimes. And he knows I know... 'No. It's an insult,' he said eventually. 'Ah? Well, we certainly cannot be held responsible for the ramblings of idiots, commander.' The Prince flashed a smile. 'I must commend you, incidentally.' 'I'm sorry?' 'For your breadth of knowledge. I must have asked a dozen people that question this morning and, do you know? Not one of them knew what it meant. And they all seemed to have caught a cough.' There was a diplomatic pause but, in it, someone sniggered. Vimes let his glance drift sideways to the other man, who had not been introduced. He was shorter and skinnier than the Prince and, under his black headdress, had the most crowded face Vimes had ever seen. A network of scars surrounded a nose like an eagle's beak. There was a sort of beard and moustache, but the scars had affected the hair growth so much that they stuck out in strange bunches and at odd angles. The man looked as though he had been hit in the mouth by a hedgehog. He could have been any age. Some of the scars looked fresh. All in all, the man had a face that any policeman would arrest on sight. There was no possible way it could be innocent of anything. He caught Vimes's expression and grinned, and Vimes had never seen so much gold in one mouth. He'd never seen so much gold in one place. Vimes realized he was staring when he ought to have been making polite diplomatic conversation. 'So,’ he said, 'are we going to have a scrap over this Leshp business or what?' The Prince gave a dismissive shrug. 'Pfui,' he said. 'A few square miles of uninhabited fertile ground with superb anchorage in an unsurpassed strategic position? What sort of inconsequence is that for civilized people to war over?' Once again Vimes felt the gaze on him, reading him. Well, the hell with it. He said, 'Sorry, I'm not good at this diplomacy business. Did you mean what you just said then?' There was another snigger. Vimes turned and looked at the leering bearded face again. And was aware of a smell, no, a stench of cloves. Good grief, he chews the stinking things... 'Ah,' said the Prince, 'you haven't met 71–hour Ahmed?' Ahmed grinned again and bowed. 'Offendi,' he said, in a voice like a gravel path. And that seemed to be it. Not 'This is 71–hour Ahmed, Cultural Attache' or 71–hour Ahmed, my bodyguard' or even '71–hour Ahmed, walking strongroom and moth killer'. It was dear that the next move was up to Vimes. 'That's... er... that's an unusual name" he said. 'Not at all,' said the Prince smoothly. 'Ahmed is a very common name in my country.' He leaned forward again. Vimes recognized this as the prelude to a confidential aside. 'Incidentally, was that beautiful lady I saw just now your first wife?' 'Er... all my wives,' said Vimes. 'That is–' 'Could I offer you twenty camels for her?' Vimes looked back into the dark eyes for a moment, glanced at 71–hour Ahmed's 24–carat grin, and said: 'This is another test, isn't it... ?' The Prince straightened up, looking pleased. 'Well done, Sir Samuel. You're good at this. Do you know, Mr Boggis of the Thieves' Guild was prepared to accept fifteen?' 'For Mrs Boos?' Vimes waggled a hand dismissively. 'Nah... four camels, maybe four camels and a goat in a good light. And when she's had a shave.' The milling guests turned at the sound of the Prince's explosion of laughter. 'Very good! Very good! I am afraid, commander, that some of your fellow citizens feel that just because my people invented advanced mathematics and allday camping we are complete barbarians who'd try to buy their wives at the drop of, shall we say, a turban. I am surprised they're giving me an honorary degree, considering how incredibly backward I am.' 'Oh? What degree is that?' said Vimes. No wonder this man was a diplomat. You couldn't trust him an inch, he thought in loops, and you couldn't help liking him despite it. The Prince pulled a letter out of his robe. 'Apparently it's a Doctorum Adamus cum Flabello Dulci – Is there something wrong, Sir Samuel?' Vimes managed to turn the treacherous laugh into a coughing fit. 'No, no, nothing,' he said. 'No.' He desperately wanted to change the subject. And fortunately there was something here to provide just the opportunity. 'Why has Mr Ahmed got such a big curved sword slung on his back?' he said. 'Ah, you are a policeman, you notice such things–' 'It's hardly a concealed weapon, is it? It's nearly bigger than him. He's practically a concealed owner!' 'It's ceremonial,' said the Prince. 'And he does fret so if he has to leave it behind.' 'And what exactly is his––' 'Ah, there you are,' said Ridcully. 'I think we're just about ready. You know you go right at the front, Sam–' 'Yes, I know,' said Vimes. 'I was just asking His Highness what' '–and if you, Your Highness, and you, Mr... my word, what a big sword, and you come back here and take your place among the honoured guests, and we'll be ready in a brace of sheikhs...' What a thing it is to have a copper's mind, Vimes thought, as the great file of wizards and guests tried to form a dignified and orderly line behind him. just because someone makes himself pleasant and likeable you start to be suspicious of him, for no other reason than the fact that anyone who goes out of their way to be nice to a copper has got something on their mind. Of course, he's a diplomat, but still... I just hope he never studied ancient languages, and that's a fact. Someone tapped Vimes on the shoulder. He turned and looked right into the grin of 71–hour Ahmed. 'If hyou changing your mind, offendi, I give hyou twenty–five camels, no problem,' he said, pulling a clove from his teeth. 'May your hlions be full of fruit.' He winked. It was the most suggestive gesture Vimes had ever seen. 'Is this another–' he began, but the man had vanished into the crowd. 'My loins be full of fruit?' he repeated to himself. 'Good grief!' 71–hour Ahmed reappeared at his other elbow in a gust of cloves. 'I go, I hcome back,' he growled happily. 'The Prince hsays the degree is Doctor of Sweet Fanny Adams. A hwizard Wheeze, yes? Oh, how we are laughing.' And then he was gone.   The Convivium was Unseen University's Big Day. Originally it had just been the degree ceremony, but over the years it had developed into a kind of celebration of the amicable relationship between the University and the city, in particular celebrating the fact that people were hardly ever turned to clams any more. In the absence of anything resembling a .Lord Mayor's Show or a state opening of Parliament, it was one of the few formal opportunities the citizens had of jeering at their social superiors, or at least at people wearing tights and ridiculous costumes. It had grown so big that it was now held in the city's Opera House. Distrustful people – that is to say, people like Vimes considered that this was so there could be a procession. There was nothing like the massed ranks of wizardry walking sedately through the city in a spirit of civic amicability to subtly remind the more thoughtful kind of person that it hadn't always been this way. Look at us, the wizards seemed to be saying. We used to rule this city. Look at our big staffs with the knobs on the end. Any one of these could do some very serious damage in the wrong hands so it's a good thing, isn't it, that they're in the right hands at the moment? Isn't it nice that we all get along so well? And someone, once, had decided that the Commander of the Watch should walk in front, for symbolic reasons. That hadn't mattered for years because there hadn't been a Commander of the Watch, but now there was, and he was Sam Vimes. In a red shirt with silly baggy sleeves, red tights, some kind of puffed shorts in a style that went out of fashion, by the lock of it, at the time when flint was at the cutting edge of cuttingedge technology, a tiny shiny breastplate and a helmet with feathers in it. And he really did need some sleep. And he had to carry the truncheon. He kept his eyes fixed on the damn thing as he walked out of the University's main gate. Last night's rain had cleaned the sky. The city steamed. If he stared at the truncheon he didn't have to see who was giggling at him. The downside was that he had to keep staring at the thing. It said, on a little tarnished shield that he'd had to clean before reading it, Protecter of thee Kinge's Piece. That had brightened the occasion slightly. Feathers and antiques, gold braid and fur... Perhaps it was because he was tired, or just because he was trying to shut out the world, but Vimes found himself slowing down into the traditional watchman's walk and the traditional idling thought process. It was an almost Pavlovian response.[4] The legs swung, the feet moved, the mind began to work in a certain way. It wasn't a dream state, exactly. It was just that the ears, nose and eyeballs wired themselves straight into the ancient 'suspicious bastard' node of his brain, leaving his higher brain centre free to freewheel. ... Fur and tights... what kind of wear was that for a watchman? Bashed–in armour, greasy leather breeches and a tatty shirt with bloodstains on it, someone else's for preference... that was the stuff... nice feel of the cobbles through his boots, it was really comforting... Behind him, confusion running up and down the ranks, the procession slowed down to keep in step. ... Hah, Protecter of thee Kinge's Piece indeed... he'd said to the old man who'd delivered it, 'Which piece did you have in mind?' but that had fallen on stony cars... damn silly thing anyway, he'd thought, a short length of wood with a lump of silver on the end... even a constable got a decent sword, what was he supposed to do, wave it at people?... ye gods, it was months since he'd had a good walk through the streets... lot of people about today... some parade on, wasn't there... ? 'Oh dear,' said Captain Carrot, in the crowd. 'What's he doing?' Next to him an Agatean tourist was industriously pulling the lever of his iconograph. Commander Vimes stopped and, with a faraway look in his eyes, tucked his truncheon under one arm and reached up to his helmet. The tourist locked up at Carrot and tugged his shirt politely. 'Please, what is he doing now?' he said. 'Er... he's... he's taking out. . 'Oh, no...' said Angua. '... he's taking the ceremonial packet of cigars out of his helmet,' said Carrot. 'Oh... and he's, he's lighting one...' The tourist pulled the lever a few times. 'Very historic tradition?' 'Memorable,' murmured Angua. The crowd had fallen silent. No one wanted to break Vimes's concentration. There was the big gusty silence of a thousand people holding their breath. 'What's he doing now?' said Carrot. 'Can't you see?' said Angua. 'Not with my hands over my eyes. Oh, the poor man...' 'He's... he's just blown a smoke ring... ' '…first one of the day, he always does that…' '…and now he's set off again... and now he's pulled out the truncheon and he's tossing it up in the air and catching it again, you know the way he does with his sword when he's thinking... He looks quite happy...' 'I think he's going to really treasure this moment of happiness,' said Carrot. Then the murmur started. The procession had halted behind Vimes. Some of the more impressionable people who weren't sure what they should be doing, and those who had partaken too heavily of the University's rather good sherry, started to fumble around on their person for something to throw up in the air and catch. After all, this was a Traditional Ceremony. If you took the view that you were not going to do things because they were apparently ridiculous, you might as well go home right now. 'He's tired, that's what it is,' said Carrot. 'He's been running around overseeing things for days. Night and day watches. You know what a hands–on person he is.' 'Let's hope the Patrician will agree to let him stay that way.' 'Oh, his lordship wouldn't... He wouldn't, would he?' Laughter was starting. Vimes had started to toss the truncheon from one hand to the other. 'He can make his sword spin three times and still catch it––' Vimes's head turned. He looked up. His truncheon clattered on to the cobbles and rolled into a puddle, unheeded. Then he started to run. Carrot stared at him and then tried to see what the man had been looking at. 'On top of the Barbican...' he said. 'In that window... isn't that someone up there? Excuse me, excuse me, sorry, excuse me–' He began to push his way through the crowd. Vimes was already a small figure in the distance, his red cloack flying out after him. 'Well? There's lots of people watching the parade from high places,' said Angua. 'What's so special about–' 'No one should be up there!' said Carrot, starting to run now he was free of the crowd. 'It's all sealed up!' Angua looked around. Every face was turned towards the street theatre, and there was a cart near by. She sighed and strolled behind it wearing an expression of suspicious nonchalance. There was a gasp, a faint but distinctly organic sound, a muffled yelp and then the clank of armour hitting the ground.   Vimes didn't know why he ran. It was a sixth sense. It was when the back of the brain picked up out of the ether that something bad was going to happen, and didn't have time to rationalize, and just took over the spinal cord. No one could get to the top of the Barbican. The Barbican had been the fortified gateway in the days when Ankh–Morpork didn't regard an attacking army as a marvellous commercial opportunity. Some parts were still in use, but the bulk of it was six or seven storeys of ruin, without stairs that any sensible man would trust. For years it had been used as an unofficial source of masonry for the rest of the city. Bits of it fell off on windy nights. Even gargoyles avoided it. He was aware that far behind him the noise of the crowd became a lot of shouting. One or two people screamed. He didn't turn round. Whatever was going on, Carrot could take care of it. Something overtook him. It looked like a wolf would look if one of its ancestors had been a longhaired Klatchistan hunting dog, one of those graceful things that were all nose and hair. It bounded ahead and through the crumbling gateway. The creature was nowhere to be seen when Vimes arrived. But the absence was not a matter that grabbed at his attention, because of the more pressing presence of the corpse, lying in a mess of fallen masonry. One of the things Vimes had always said – that is to say, one of the things he said he always said, and no one disagrees with the commanding officer – was that sometimes small details, tiny little details, things that no one would notice in ordinary circumstances, grab your senses by the throat and scream, 'See me!' There was a lingering, spicy scent in the air. And in the gap between a couple of cobblestones was a clove.   It was five o'clock. Vimes and Carrot sat in the Patrician's outer office, in silence except for the irregular ticking of the dock. After a while Vimes said: 'Let me have a look at that again.' Carrot obediently pulled out the small square of paper. Vimes looked at it. There was no mistaking what it showed. He tucked it into his own pocket. 'Er... why do you want to keep it, sir?' 'Keep what?' said Vimes. 'The iconograph I borrowed from the tourist.' 'I don't know what you're talking about,' said Vimes. 'But you–' 'I can't see you going very far in the Watch, captain, if you go around seeing things that aren't there.' 'Oh.' The clock seemed to tick louder. 'You're thinking something, sir. Aren't you?' 'It is a use to which I occasionally put my brain, captain. Strange as it may seem.' 'What are you thinking, sir?' 'What they want me to think,' said Vimes. 'Who's they?' 'I don't know yet. One step at a time.' A bell tinkled. Vimes stood up. 'You know what I always say,' he said. Carrot removed his helmet and polished it with his sleeve. 'Yes, sir. "Everyone's guilty of something, especially the ones that aren't," sir.' 'No, not that one...' 'Er... "Always take into consideration the fact that you might be dead wrong," sir?' 'No, nor that one either.' 'Er... "How come Nobby ever got a job as a watchman?", sir? You say that a lot.' 'No! I meant "Alwaysact stupid," Carrot.' 'Ah, right, sir. From now on I shall remember that you always said that, sir.' They put their helmets under their arms. Vimes knocked at the door. 'Come, ' said a voice. The Patrician was standing at the window. Sitting or standing around the office were Lord Rust and the others. Vimes never quite understood how the civic leaders were chosen. They just seemed to turn up, like a tack on the sole of your shoe. 'Ah, Vimes,' said Vetinari. 'Sir.' 'Let us not beat about the bush, Vimes. How did the man get up there when your people had so thoroughly checked everything last night? Magic?' 'Couldn't say, sir.' Carrot, still staring straight ahead, blinked. 'Your people did check the Barbican, I assume?' 'No, sir.' 'They didn't?' 'No, sir. I did that myself.' 'You physically checked it yourself, Vimes?' said Boggis of the Thieves' Guild. Captain Carrot could feel Vimes's thoughts at this point. 'That is correct... Boggis,' said Vimes, without turning his head. 'But... we think someone got in where the windows are boarded up and pulled the boards back after him. Dust has been disturbed and–' 'And you didn't spot this, Vimes?' Vimes sighed. 'It'd be hard enough to spot the nailed–back boards in daylight, Boggis, let alone in the middle of the night.' Not that we did, he added to himself. Angua smelled the scent on them. Lord Vetinari sat down at his desk. 'The situation is grave, Vimes.' 'Yes, sir?' 'His Highness is very seriously injured. And Prince Cadram, we understand, is beside himself with rage.' 'They insist on keeping his brother in the embassy,' said Lord Rust. 'A studied insult. As if we haven't good surgeons in this city.' 'That's right, of course,' said Vimes. 'And many of them could give him a decent shave and a haircut too.' 'Are you making fun of me, Vimes?' 'Certainly not, my lord,' said Vimes. 'ln my opinion, no surgeons anywhere have cleaner sawdust on their floors than the ones in this city.' Rust glared at him. The Patrician coughed. 'You have identified the assassin?' said the Patrician. Carrot was expecting Vimes to say, 'Alleged assassin, sir,' but instead he said: 'Yes. He is– He was called Ossie Brunt, sir. No other name that we know. Lived in Market Street. Did odd jobs from time to time. Bit of a loner. No relatives or friends that we can find. We are making enquiries.' 'And that's all you fellows know?' said Lord Downey. 'It took some time to identify him sir,' said Vimes stolidly. 'Oh? Why should that be?' 'Couldn't give you the technical answer, sir, but it looked to me like they wouldn't need to make him a coffin, they could just have posted him between two barn doors.' 'Was he acting alone?' 'We only found the one body, sir. And a lot of recently fallen masonry, so it looks as–' 'I meant does he belong to any organization? Any suggestion that he's anti–Klatchian?' 'Apart from him trying to kill one? Enquiries are continuing.' 'Are you taking this seriously, Vimes?' 'I have put my best men on the job, sir.' Who's looking worried? 'Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobbs.' Who's looking relieved? 'Very experienced men. The keystones of the Watch.' 'Colon and Nobbs?' said the Patrician. 'Really?' 'Yes, sir.' Their gazes met, very briefly. 'We're getting some very threatening noises, Vimes,' said Vetinari. 'What can I say, sir? I saw someone up on the tower, I ran, someone shot the Prince with an arrow and then I found the man at the bottom of the tower very obviously dead, with a broken bow and a lot of rock beside him. The storm last night probably loosened things up. I can't make up facts that don't exist, sir.' Carrot watched the faces round the table. The general expression was one of relief. 'A lone bowman,' said Vetinari. 'An idiot with some kind of mad grudge. Who died in the execution of the, uh, attempted execution. And, of course, valiant action by our watchmen probably at least prevented an immediately fatal shot.' 'Valiant action?' said Downey. 'I know Captain Carrot here ran towards the VIPs and Vimes headed for the tower, but frankly, Vimes, your strange behaviour beforehand–' 'Somewhat immaterial now,' said Lord Vetinari. Once again he adopted a slightly faraway voice, as if reporting to somebody else. 'If Commander Vimes had not slowed down the procession, the wretch would undoubtedly have got a much better shot. As it was, the man panicked. Yes... the Prince, possibly, would accept that.' 'Prince?' said Vimes. 'But the poor devil–' 'His brother,' said the Patrician. 'Ah. The nice one?' 'Thank you, commander, ' said the Patrician. 'Thank you, gentlemen. Do not let me detain you. Oh, Vimes... just a brief word, if you would be so good. Not you, Captain Carrot. I'm sure someone is committing some crime somewhere.' Vimes remained staring at the far wall while the room emptied. Vetinari left his chair and went over to the window. 'Strange days indeed, commander,' he said. ‘Sir.' ' For example, I gather that this afternoon Captain Carrot was on the roof of the Opera House firing arrows down towards the archery butts.' 'Very keen lad, sir.' 'It could well be that the distance between the Opera House and the targets is about the same, you know, as the distance between the top of the Barbican and the spot where the Prince was hit.' 'Just fancy that, sir.' Vetinari sighed. 'And why was he doing this?' 'It's a funny thing, sir, but he was telling me the other day that in fact it is still law that every citizen should do one hour's archery practice every day. Apparently the law was made in 1356 and it's never been–' 'Do you know why I sent Captain Carrot away just now, Vimes?' 'Couldn't say, sir.' 'Captain Carrot is an honest young man, Vimes.' 'Yes, sir.' 'And did you know that he winces when he hears you tell a direct lie?' 'Really, sir?' Damn. 'I can't stand to see his poor face twitch all the time, Vimes.' 'Very thoughtful of you, sir.' 'Where was the second bowman, Vimes?' Damn! 'Second bowman, sir?' 'Have you ever had a hankering to go on the stage, Vimes?' Yes, at the moment I’d leap on it wherever it's heading, thought Vimes. 'No, sir.' 'Pity. I am certain you're a great loss to the acting profession. I believe you said the man had put the boards back after him.' 'Yes, sir.' 'Nailed them back?' Blast. 'Yes, sir.' 'From the outside.' Damn. 'Yes, sir.' 'A Particularly resourceful lone bowman, then.' Vimes didn't bother to comment. Vetinari sat down at his desk, raised his steepled fingers to his lips and stared at Vimes over the top of them. 'Colon and Nobbs are investigating this? Really?' 'Yes, sir.' 'If I were to ask you why, you'd pretend not to understand?' Vimes let his forehead wrinkle in honest perplexity 'Sir?' 'If you say "Sir?" again in that stupid voice, Vimes, I swear there will be trouble.' 'They're good men, sir.' 'However, some people might consider them to be unimaginative, stolid and... how can I put this?... possessed of an inbuilt disposition to accept the first explanation that presents itself and then bunk off somewhere for a quiet smoke? A certain lack of imagination? An ability to get out of their depth on a wet pavement? A tendency to rush to judgement?' 'I hope you are not impugning my men, sir.' 'Vimes, Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobbs have never been pugn'd in their entire lives.' ‘Sir?’?' 'And yet... in fact, we do not need complications, Vimes. An ingenious lone madman... well, there are many madmen. A regrettable incident.' 'Yes, sir.' The man was looking harassed and Vimes felt there was room for a pinch of sympathy. 'Fred and Nobby don't like complications either, sir.' 'We need simple answers, Vimes.' 'Sir. Fred and Nobby are good at simple.' The Patrician turned away and looked out over the city. 'Ah,' he said, in a quieter voice. 'Simple men to see the simple truth.' 'This is a fact, sir.' 'You are learning fast, Vimes.' 'Couldn't say about that, sir.' 'And when they have found the simple truth, Vimes?' 'Can't argue with the truth, sir.' 'In my experience, Vimes, you can argue with anything.'   When Vimes had gone Lord Vetinari sat at his desk for a while, staring at nothing. Then he took a key from a drawer and walked across to a wall, where he pressed a particular area. There was a rattle of a counterweight. The wall swung back. The Patrician walked softly through the narrow passageway beyond. Here and there it was illuminated by a very faint glow from around the edges of the little panels which, if gently slid back, would allow someone to look out through the eyesockets of a handy portrait. They were a relic of a previous ruler. Vetinari never bothered with them. Looking out of someone else's eyes wasn't the trick. There was a certain amount of travel up dark stairways and along musty corridors. Occasionally he'd make movements the meaning of which might not be readily apparent. He'd touch a wall here and here, apparently without thinking, as he passed. Along one stone–flagged passage, lit only by the grey fight from a window forgotten by everyone except the most optimistic flies, he appeared to play a game of hopscotch, robes flying around him and calves twinkling as he skipped from stone to stone. These various activities did not seem to cause anything to happen. Eventually he reached a door, which he unlocked. He did this with some caution. The air beyond was full of acrid smoke, and the steady pop–pop sound which he had begun to hear further back along the passage was now quite loud. It faltered for a moment, was followed by a much louder bang, and then a piece of hot metal whirled past the Patrician's car and buried itself in the wall. In the smoke a voice said, 'Oh dear.' It didn't seem unhappy, but sounded rather like the voice one might use to a sweet and ingratiating little puppy which, despite one's best efforts, is sitting next to a spreading damp patch on the carpet. As the billows cleared the indistinct shape of the speaker turned to Vetinari with a wan little smile and said, 'Fully fifteen seconds this time, my lord! There is no doubt that the principle is sound.' That was one of Leonard of Quirm's traits: he picked up conversations out of the air, he assumed everyone was an interested friend, and he took it for granted that you were as intelligent as he was. Vetinari peered at a small heap of bent and twisted metal. 'What was it, Leonard?' he said. 'An experimental device for turning chemical energy into rotary motion,' said Leonard. 'The problem, you see, is getting the little pellets of black powder into the combustion chamber at exactly the right speed and one at a time. If two ignite together, well, what we have is the external combustion engine.' 'And, er, what would be the purpose of it?' said the Patrician. 'I believe it could replace the horse,' said Leonard proudly. They looked at the stricken thing. 'One of the advantages of horses that people often point out,' said Vetinari, after some thought, 'is that they very seldom explode. Almost never, in my experience, apart from that unfortunate occurrence in the hot summer a few years ago.' With fastidious fingers he pulled something out of the mess. It was a pair of cubes, made out of some soft white fur and linked together by a piece of string. There were dots on them. 'Dice?' he said. Leonard smiled in an embarrassed fashion. 'Yes. I can't think why I thought they'd help it go better. It was just, well, an idea. You know how it is.' Lord Vetinari nodded. He knew how it was. Be knew how it was far more than Leonard of Quirm did, which was why there was one key to the door and he had it. Not that the man was a prisoner, except by dull, humdrum standards. He appeared rather grateful to be confined in this light, airy attic with as much wood, paper, sticks of charcoal and paint as he desired and no rent or food bills to pay. In any case, you couldn't really imprison someone like Leonard of Quirm. The most you could do was lock up his body. The gods alone knew where his mind went. And, although he had so much cleverness it leaked continually, he couldn't tell you which way the political wind was blowing even if you fitted him with sails. Leonard's incredible brain sizzled away alarmingly, an overloaded chip pan on the Stove of Life. It was impossible to know what he would think of next, because he was constantly reprogrammed by the whole universe. The sight of a waterfall or a soaring bird would send him spinning down some new path of practical speculation that invariably ended in a heap of wire and springs and a cry of 'I think I know what I did wrong.' He'd been a member of most of the craft guilds in the city but had been thrown out for getting impossibly high marks in the exams or, in some cases, correcting the questions. It was said that he'd accidentally blown up the Alchemists' Guild using nothing more than a glass of water, a spoonful of acid, two lengths of wire and a pingpong ball. Any sensible ruler would have killed off Leonard, and Lord Vetinari was extremely sensible and often wondered why he had not done so. He'd decided that it was because, imprisoned in the priceless, enquiring amber of Leonard's massive mind, underneath A that bright investigative genius was a kind of wilful innocence that might in lesser men be called stupidity. It was the seat and soul of that force which, down the millennia, had caused mankind to stick its fingers in the electric fight socket of the Universe and play with the switch to see what happened – and then be very surprised when it did. It was, in short, something useful. And if the Patrician was anything, he was the political equivalent of the old lady who saves bits of string because you never know when they might come in handy. After all, you couldn't plan for every eventuality, because that would involve knowing what was going to happen, and if you knew what was going to happen, you could probably see to it that it didn't, or at least happened to someone else. So the Patrician never planned. Plans often got in the way. And, finally, he kept Leonard around because the man was easy to talk to. He never understood what Lord Vetinari was talking about, he had a world view about as complex as that of a concussed duckling and, above all, never really paid attention. This made him an excellent confidant. After all, when you seek advice from someone it's certainly not because you want them to give it. You just want them to be there while you talk to yourself. 'I've just made some tea.' said Leonard. 'Will you join me?' He followed the Patrician's gaze to a brown stain all up one wall, which ended in a star of molten metal in the plaster. 'I'm afraid the automatical tea engine went wrong,' he said. 'I shall have to make it by hand.' 'So kind,' said Lord Vetinari. He sat down amidst the easels and, while Leonard busied himself at the fireplace, leafed through the latest sketches. Leonard sketched as automatically as other people scratched; genius – a certain kind of genius – fell off him like dandruff. There was a picture of a man drawing, the lines catching the figure so accurately it appeared to stand out of the paper. And around it, because Leonard never wasted white space, were other sketches, scattered aimlessly. A thumb. A bowl of flowers. A device, apparently, for sharpening pencils by water power... Vetinari found what he was looking for in the bottom lefthand corner, sandwiched between a sketch for a new type of screw and a tool for opening oysters. It, or something very much like it, was always there somewhere. One of the things that made Leonard such a rare prize, and kept him under such secure lock and key, was that he really didn't see any difference between the thumb and the roses and the pencil–sharpener and this. 'Ah, the self–portrait,' said Leonard, returning with two cups. 'Yes, indeed,' said Vetinari. 'But my eye was drawn to this little sketch here. The war machine...' 'Oh, that? A mere nothing. Have you ever noticed the way in which the dew on roses–' 'This bit here... what is it for?' said Vetinari, pointing persistently. 'Oh, that? That's just the throwing arm for the balls of molten sulphur,' said Leonard, picking up a plate of small cakes. 'I calculate that one should get a range of almost half a mile, if one detaches the endless belt from the driving wheels and uses the oxen to wind the windlass.' 'Really?' said Vetinari, taking in the carefully numbered parts. 'And it could be built?' 'What? Oh, yes. Macaroon? In theory.' 'In theory?' 'No–one would ever actually do it. Raining unquenchable fire down upon fellow humans? Hah!' Leonard sprayed macaroon crumbs. 'You'd never find an artisan to build it, or a soldier who would pull the lever... That's part 3(b) on the plan, just here, look. ..' 'Ah, yes,' said Vetinari. 'Anyway,' he added, 'I imagine these huge power arms here couldn't possibly be operated without them breaking . . ' 'Seasoned ash and yew, laminated and held together by special steel bolts,' said Leonard promptly. 'I made a few calculations, just there below the sketch of light on a raindrop. As an intellectual exercise, obviously.' Vetinari ran his eye along several lines of Leonard's spidery mirror–writing. 'Oh, yes,' he said glumly. He put the paper aside. 'Have I told you that the Klatchian situation is intensely political? Prince Cadram is trying to do a great deal very fast. He needs to consolidate his position. He is depending on support that is somewhat volatile. There are many plotting against. him, I understand.' 'Really? Well, this is the sort of thing people do,' said Leonard. 'Incidentally, I've recently been examining cobwebs and, I know this will interest you, their strength in relation to their weight is much greater even than our best steel wire. Isn't that fascinating?' 'What kind of weapon do you intend to make out of them?' said the Patrician. 'Sorry?' 'Oh, nothing. I was just thinking aloud.' 'And you haven't touched your tea,' said Leonard. Vetinari looked around the room. It was full of... things. Tubes and odd paper kites and things that looked like the skeletons of ancient beasts. One of Leonard's saving graces, in a very real sense from Vetinari's point of view, was his strange attention span. It wasn't that he soon got bored with things. He didn't seem to get bored with anything. But since he was interested in everything in the universe all the time the end result tended to be that an experimental device for disembowelling people at a distance then became a string–weaving machine and ended up as an instrument for ascertaining the specific gravity of cheese. He was as easily distracted as a kitten. All that business with the flying machine, for example. Giant bat wings hung from the ceiling even now. The Patrician had been more than happy to let him waste his time on that idea, because it was obvious to anyone that no human being would ever be able to flap the wings hard enough. He needn't have worried. Leonard was his own distraction. He had ended up spending ages designing a special tray so that people could eat their meals in the air. A truly innocent man. And yet always, always, some little part of him would sketch these wretchedly beguiling engines, with their clouds of smoke and carefully numbered engineering diagrams... 'What's this?' Vetinari said, pointing to yet another doodle. It showed a man holding a large metal sphere. 'That? Oh, something of a toy, really. Makes use of the strange properties of some otherwise quite useless metals. They don't like being squeezed. So they go bang. With extreme alacrity.' 'Another weapon...' 'Certainly not, my lord! It would be no possible use as a weapon! I did think it might have a place in the mining industries, though.' 'Really...' 'For when they need to move mountains out of the way.' 'Tell me,' Vetinari said, putting this paper aside as well, 'you don't have any relatives in Klatch, do you?' 'I don't believe so. My family lived in Quirm for generations.' 'Oh. Good. But... very clever people in Klatch, are they?' 'Oh, in many disciplines they practically wrote the scroll. Fine metalwork, for example.' 'Metalwork.. .' The Patrician sighed. 'And Alchemy, of course. Affir Al–chema's Principia Explosia has been the seminal work for more than a hundred years.' 'Alchemy,' said the Patrician, glumly. 'Sulphur and so forth...' 'Yes, indeed.' 'But the way you put it, these major achievements were some considerable time ago...' Lord Vetinari sounded like a man straining to see a light at the end of the tunnel. 'Certainly! I would be astonished if they haven't made considerable progress!' said Leonard of Quirm happily. 'Ah?' The Patrician sank a little in his chair. It had turned out that the end of the tunnel was on fire. 'A splendid people with much to recommend them,' said Leonard. 'I always thought it was the presence of the desert. It leads to an urgency of thought. It makes you aware of the briefness of fife.' The Patrician glanced at another page. Between a sketch of a bird's wing and a careful drawing of a ball–joint was a little doodle of something with spiked wheels and spinning blades. And then there was the device for moving mountains aside... 'The desert is not required,' he said. He sighed again and pushed the pages aside. 'Have you heard about the lost continent of Leshp?' he said. 'Oh, yes. I did some sketches there a few years ago,' said Leonard. 'Some interesting aspects, I recall. More tea? I fear you've let that one get cold. Was there anything you particularly wanted?' The Patrician pinched the bridge of his nose. 'I'm not sure. There is a small problem developing. I thought perhaps you could help. Unfortunately,' the Patrician glanced at the sketches again, 'I suspect that you can.' He stood up, straightened his robe and forced a smile. 'You have everything you require?' 'Some more wire would be nice,' said Leonard. 'And I have run out of Burnt Umber.' 'I shall have some sent along directly,' said Vetinari. 'And now, if you will excuse me–' He let himself out. Leonard nodded happily as he cleared away the teacups. The infernal combustion engine was carried to the heap of scrap metal beside the small forge, and he fetched a ladder and removed the piston from the ceiling. He'd just opened out his easel to start work on a new design when he was aware of a distant pattering. It sounded like someone running but also occasionally pausing to hop sideways on one leg. Then there was a pause, such as might be made by someone adjusting their clothing and getting their breath back. The door opened and the Patrician returned. He sat down and looked carefully at Leonard of Quirm. 'You did what?' he said.   Vimes turned the clove over and over under the magnifying glass. 'I see tooth marks,' he said. 'Yes sir,' said Littlebottom, who represented in her entirety the watch's forensic department. 'Looks like someone was chewing it like a toothpick.' Vimes sat back. 'I would say,' he said, 'that this was last touched by a swarthy man of about my height. He had several gold teeth. And a beard. And a slight cast in one eye. Scarred. He was carrying a large weapon. Curved, I'd say. And you'd have to call what he was wearing a turban because it wasn't moving fast enough to be a badger.' Littlebottom looked astonished. 'Detectoring is like gambling,' said Vimes, putting down the dove. 'The secret is to know the winner in advance. Thank you, corporal. Write down that description and make sure everyone gets a copy, please. He goes by the name of 71–hour Ahmed, heaven knows why. And then go and get some rest.' Vimes turned to face Carrot and Angua, who had crammed into the tiny little room, and nodded at the girl. 'I followed the clove smell all the way down to the docks,' she said. 'And then?' 'Then I lost it, sir.' Angua looked embarrassed. 'I didn't have any trouble through the fish market, sir. Or in the slaughterhouse district. And then it went into the spice market–' 'Ah. I see. And didn't come out again?' 'In a way, sir. Or came out going fifty different ways. Sorry.' 'Can't be helped. Carrot?' 'I did what you said, sir. The top of the Opera House is about the right distance from our archery butts. I used a bow just like the one he used, sir–' Vimes raised a finger. Carrot stared, and then said slowly: like the one you found next to him.. .' ,Right. And?' 'It's a Burleigh and Stronginthearm "Shureshotte Five", sir. A bow for the expert. I'm not a great bowman but I could at least hit the target at that elevation. But...' 'I'm ahead of you,' said Vimes. 'You're, a big lad, Carrot. Our late Ossie had arms like Nobby. I could put my hand round them.' 'Yes, sir. It's a hundred–pound draw. I doubt if he could even pull the string back.' 'I'd hate to watch him try. Good grief... the only thing he could be sure of hitting with a bow like that would be his foot. By the way, do you think anyone saw you up there?' 'I doubt it, sir. I was right in among the chimneys and the air vents.' Vimes sighed. 'Captain, I expect if you'd done it in a cellar at midnight his lordship would have said "Wasn't it rather dark down there?" next morning.' He took out the by now rather creased picture. There was Carrot – or at least Carrot's arm and ear – as he ran towards the procession. And there, among the people in the procession turning to look at him, was the face of the Prince. There was no sign of 71–hour Ahmed. He'd been at the soiree, hadn't he? But then there'd been all that milling around at the door, people changing places, treading on one another's robes, nipping back to the privy, walking into one another... He could have gone anywhere. 'And the Prince fell as you got to him? With the arrow in his back? He was still facing you?' 'Yes, sir. I'm sure of that. Everyone else was milling around, of course.. .' 'So he was shot in the back by a man in front of him who could not possibly have used the bow that he didn't shoot him with from the wrong direction. . There was a tapping at the window. 'That'll be Downspout,' said Vimes, without looking round. 'I sent him on an errand...' Downspout never quite fitted in. It wasn't that he didn't get on with people, because he hardly ever met people, except those whose activities took them above, say, second–floor level. Constable Downspout's beat was the rooftops. Very slowly. He'd come down for the Watch's Hogswatch party and had poured gravy in his ears to show Willing, but gargoyles got very nervy indoors at ground level and he had soon exited via the chimney and his paper squeaker had echoed out forlornly amongst the snowy rooftops all night. But gargoyles were good at watching, and good at remembering, and very, very good at being patient. Vimes opened the window. Moving jerkily, Downspout unfolded himself into the room and then quickly scrambled up on to a corner of Vimes's desk, for the comfort that it brought. Angua and Carrot stared at the arrow the gargoyle held in his hand. 'Ah, well done,' said Vimes, in the same even voice. 'Where did you find it, Downspout?' Downspout spluttered a series of guttural syllables only pronounceable by someone with a mouth shaped like a pipe. 'In the wall on the second floor of the dress shop in the Plaza of Broken Moons,' Carrot translated. ' 'eshk,' said Downspout. 'That's barely halfway to Sator Square, sir.' 'Yes,' said Vimes. 'A small weak man trying to pull a heavy bow, the arrow wobbling all over the place... Thank you very much, Downspout. There will be an extra pigeon for you this week.' ' 'nkorr,' said Downspout, and clambered back out of the window. 'Excuse me, sir?' said Angua. She took the arrow from Vimes and, closing her eyes, sniffed at it gingerly. 'Oh, yes... Ossie,' she said. 'All over it . . 'Thank you, corporal. It's as well to be sure.' Carrot took the arrow from the werewolf and looked at it critically. 'Huh. Peacock feathers and a plated point. It's the sort of thing an amateur buys because he thinks it'll magically improve his shot. Showy.' 'Right,' said Vimes. 'You, Carrot, and you, Angua... you're on the case.' 'Sir, I don't understand,' said Carrot. 'I am perplexed. I thought you said Fred and Nobby were investigating this?' 'Yes,' said Vimes. 'But–' 'Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobbs are investigating why the late Ossie tried to kill the Prince. And do you know what? They're going to find lots of clues. I just know it. I can feel it in my water.' 'But we know he couldn't–' said Carrot. 'Isn't this fun?' said Vimes. 'I don't want you to get in Fred's way. Just... ask around. Try Done It Duncan, Or Sidney Lopsides, hah, there's a man with his ear to the ground all right. Or the Agony Aunts, or Lily Goodtime. Or Mr Slider, haven't seen him around for a while, but–' 'He's dead, sir,' said Carrot. 'What, Smelly Slider? When?' 'Last month, sir. He got hit by a falling bedstead. Freak accident, sir.' 'No–one told me.' 'You were busy, sir. But you put some money in the envelope when Fred brought it round, sir. Ten dollars, which Fred remarked was very generous.' Vimes sighed. Oh, yes, the envelopes. Fred was always wandering around with an envelope these days. Someone was always leaving, or some friend of the Watch was in trouble, or there was a raffle, or the tea money was low again, or some complicated explanation... so Vimes just put some money in. Simplest way. Old Smelly Slider... 'You should've mentioned it,' he said reproachfully. 'You've been working hard, sir.' 'Any other street news you haven't mentioned, captain?' 'Not that I can think of, sir.' 'All right. Well... see which way the wind is blowing. Very carefully. And – trust no–one.' Carrot looked worried. 'Er... I can trust Angua, can't I?' he said. 'Well, of course you––' 'And you, presumably.' 'Me, well, obviously. That goes without say–' 'Corporal Littlebottom? She can be very helpful–' 'Cheery, yes, certainly you can trust–' 'Sergeant Detritus? I always thought he was very trust––' 'Detritus, oh yes, he–' 'Nobby? Should I–' 'Carrot, I understand what he means,' said Angua, tugging his arm. Carrot looked a little crestfallen. 'I've never liked... you know, underhand things,' he mumbled. 'I don't want any written reports,' said Vimes, grateful for that small mercy. 'This is... unofficial. But officially unofficial, if you see what I mean.' Angua nodded. Carrot just stayed looking dismal. She's a werewolf, thought Vimes, of course she understands. And you'd think a man who is technically a dwarf'd be able to fold his head around the idea of subterfuge. 'Look, just... listen to the streets,' said Vimes. 'The streets know everything. Talk to... Blind Hugh–' 'I'm afraid he passed away last month,' said Carrot. 'Did he? No–one told me!' 'I thought I sent you a memo, sir.' Vimes glanced guiltily at his overloaded desk, and then shrugged. 'Have a quiet look at things. Get to the bottom of things. And trust no– Trust practically no–one. All right? Except trustworthy people.'   'Come on, open up! Watch business!' Corporal Nobbs pulled at Sergeant Colon's sleeve and whispered in his ear. 'Not Watch business!' said Colon, pounding the door again. 'Nothing to do with the Watch at all! We are just civilians, all right?' The door opened a crack. 'Yes?' said a voice that counted its small change. 'We have to ask you some questions, missus.' 'Are you the Watch?' said the voice. 'No! I think I just made that clear– 'Piss off, copper!' The door slammed. 'You sure this is the right place, sarge?' 'Harry Chestnuts said he saw Ossie going in here. Come on, open up!' 'Everyone's looking at us, sarge,' said Nobby. Doors and windows had opened all along the street. 'And don't call me sarge when we're in plain clothes!' 'Right you are, Fred.' 'That's–' Colon hesitated in an agony of status. 'Well, that's Frederick to you, Nobby.' 'And they're giggling Fred... er... crick.' 'We don't want to make a cock–up of this, Nobby.' 'Right, Frederick. And that's Cecil, thank you.' 'Cecil?' 'That is my name,' said Nobby coldly. 'Have it your way,' said Colon. 'Just remember who's the superior civilian around here, all right?' He hammered on the door again. 'We hear you've got a room to let, missus!' he yelled. 'Brilliant, Frederick,' said Nobby. 'That was bloody brilliant!' 'Well, I am the sergeant, right?' Colon whispered. 'No.' 'Er... yeah... right... well, just you remember that, right?' The door snapped open. The woman within had one of those faces that had settled over the years, as though it had been made of butter and then left in the sun. But age hadn't been able to do much with her hair. It was a violent ginger and piled up like a threatening thunderhead. 'Room? You shoulda said,' she said. 'Two dollars a week, no pets, no cookin', no wimmin after 6 a.m., if you don't want it thousands do, are you with the circus? You look like you're with the circus.'[5] 'We're–' Colon began, and then stopped. There were undoubtedly a large number of things to be apart from policemen, but there and then he couldn't think of any of them. '–actors,' said Nobby. 'Then it's payment a week in advance,' said the woman. 'And no filthy foreign habits. This is a respectable house, she added, in defiance of evidence so far. 'We ought to see the room first,' said Colon. 'Oh, the choosy sort, eh?' She led them upstairs. The room vacated so terminally by Ossie was small and bare. A few items of clothing hung on nails in the wall. and a heap of wrappers and greasy bags indicated that Ossie had been a man who ate, as it were, off the street. 'Whose is this stuff?' said Sergeant Colon. 'Oh, he's gone now. I told him he'd be out if he didn't pay up. I'll throw it out afore you settle in.' 'We'll get rid of it for you,' said Sergeant Colon. He fumbled in his pouch and produced a couple of dollars. 'Here you are, Miss–?' 'Mrs Spent,' said Mrs Spent. She gave them a lopsided look. 'Are you both stopping here or what?' 'Nah, I've just come along as his chaperon,' said Colon, giving her a friendly grin. 'He has to fight women off when they find out about his sexual magnetism.' Mrs Spent gave the shocked Nobby a sharp look and bustled out of the room. 'What'd you go and say that for?' said Nobby. 'It's got rid of her, hasn't it?' 'You were having a go at me, don't deny it! just because I'm going through a bit of an emotional wossname, eh?' 'It was just a joke, Nobby. Just a joke.' Nobby peered under the narrow bed. 'Wow!' he said, all emotional wossnames forgotten. 'What is it? What is it?' said Colon. 'It looks like a complete run of Bows and Ammo! And...' Nobby pulled another stack of badly engraved magazines out into the light, 'here's Warrior of Fortune, look! And Practical Siege Weapons...' Colon leafed through page after page of very similarlooking people holding very similar weapons of personal destruction. 'You got to be a bit odd to sit around all day reading this kind of thing,' he said. 'Yeah,' said Nobby. 'Here, don't put that one back, that's last August's issue, I ain't got that one. Hang on, there's a box right at the back...' He wriggled out, towing a small box with him. It was locked, but the cheap metal gave way when he accidentally levered at the lid. Silver coins gleamed. Lots and lots of them. 'Whoops…' he muttered. 'We're in trouble now...' 'That's Klatchian money, that is!' said Colon. 'Sometimes people slip you one instead of a half–dollar in your change. Look, there's all curly writing on them!' 'We're in big trouble,' said Nobby. 'No, no, no, this is a Clue what we have found by patient detectoring,' said Sergeant Colon. 'And it's going to be a feather in our caps and no mistake when Mr Vimes hears about it!' 'How much do you reckon there is?' 'Got to be hundreds and hundreds of dollars' worth,' said Colon. 'And that's a lot of money to a Klatchian. You can probably live like a king for a year on a dollar, in Klatch.' 'It wasn't very patient detectoring,' said Nobby doubtfully. 'All I did was look under the bed.' 'Ah, but that's because you is trained,' said Colon. 'Your basic civilian wouldn't think of that, right? Ah, it all begins to make sense!' 'Does it? Why would the Klatchians give him money to shoot a Klatchian?' said Nobby. . Colon tapped the side of his nose. 'Politics,' he said. 'Ah, politics,' said Nobby. 'Ah, well, politics. I see. Politics. Right. So why?' 'Aha,' said Colon again, tapping the other side of his nose. 'Why're you picking your nose, sarge?' 'I'm tapping it,' said Colon severely. 'That's to show I'm in the know.' 'In the nose,' said Nobby cheerfully. 'It's just the sort of underhand cunning thing they'd do,' said Colon. 'Payin' us to kill them?' said Nobby. 'Ah, you see, some Klatchian nob gets topped here, and then they can send a snotty note saying, "You killed our big nob, you foreign nephews of dogs, this means war!" see? A perfect excuse.' 'Do you need an excuse to have a war?' said Nobby. 'I mean, who for? Can't you just say, "You got lots of cash and land but I've got a big sword so divvy up right now, chop chop?" That's what I'd do,' said Corporal Nobbs, military strategist. 'And I wouldn't even say that until after I'd attacked.' 'Ah, but that's 'cos you don't know about politics,' said Colon. 'You can't do that stuff any more. Mark my words, this case has got politics written all over it. That's why old Vimes put me on it, depend upon it. Politics. Young Carrot's all very well, but you need a hexperienced man of the world in these delicate political situations.' 'You've certainly got the nose–tapping just right,' said Nobby. 'I generally miss.' But he felt troubled, if not in his nose then in whatever small organ propelled his blood around his body. This didn't feel right. Nothing much in Nobby's life had ever felt right, so he knew very well how the feeling felt. He looked up at the bare walls and down at the rough floorboards. 'There's a bit of sand on the floor,' he said. 'Another Clue, then,' said Colon happily. 'A Klatchian has been here. Bugger all else but sand in Klatch. Still got some in his sandals.' Nobby opened the window. It gave on to a gently sloping roof. Someone could get through it easily and be away over the tiles and into the maze of chimneys. 'He could've gone in and out this way, sarge,' he volunteered. 'Good point, Nobby. Write that down. Evidence of conniving and sneaking around.' Nobby peered down. 'Here, there's glass outside, Fred...' Sergeant Colon joined him at the stricken window. One of the panes had been smashed. Outside, glass glittered on the tiles. 'That could be a clue, eh?' said Nobby, hopefully. 'It certainly is,' said Sergeant Colon. 'See the glass fell outside the window? Everyone knows you look at which way the glass fails. I reckon he was just testing his bow and it went off while it was loaded.' 'That's clever, sarge,' said Nobby. 'That's detectoring,' said Colon. 'It's no good just looking at things, Nobby. You got to think straight, too.' 'Cecil, sarge. ' 'That's Frederick, Cecil. Come on, I think we've wrapped this up nicely. Old Vimes says he wants a report toot sweet.' Nobby looked out of the broken window. The roof abutted the end wall of a much larger warehouse. For a moment he found himself thinking bendy rather than straight, but he reasoned that his thinking was only a corporal's thinking, and worth far less per thought than a sergeant's thinking, so he kept his private thoughts to himself. As they went downstairs Mrs Spent watched them suspiciously through a barely opened doorway at the far end of the hall, clearly ready to slam it shut at the first suggestion of any sexual magnetism. 'It's not as if I even know where to get a sexual magnet,' Nobby muttered. 'And she didn't even laugh.'   ... Also, we went to the bow shops in the Street of Cunning Artificers and showed the iconograph to the man in Burleigh and Stronginthearm, who vouchsafed, that is him, e.g., he was referring to the Diseased... 'Oh, my...' Vimes's lips moved slightly as his gaze went back up the page. ... also in addition to the Klatchian money you could tell one of them had been there because of, e.g., the sand on the floor... 'He'd still got sand in his sandals?' murmured Vimes. 'Good grief.' 'Sam?' Vimes looked up from his reading. 'Your soup will be cold,' said Lady Sybil from the far end of the table. 'You've been holding that spoonful in the air for the last five minutes by the clock.' 'Sorry, dear.' 'What are you reading?' 'Oh, just a little masterpiece,' said Vimes, pushing Fred Colon's report aside. 'Interesting, is it?' said Lady Sybil a little sourly. 'Practically unparalleled,' said Vimes. 'The only things they haven't found are the bunch of dates and the camel hidden under the pillow...' Belatedly, his nuptial radar detected a certain chilliness from the far side of the cruet. 'Is, er, there something wrong, dear?' he said. 'Can you remember when we last had dinner together, Sam?' 'Tuesday, wasn't it?' 'That was the Guild of Merchants' annual dinner, Sam.' Vimes's brow wrinkled. 'But you were there too, weren't you?' A further subtle change in the dragonhouse quotient told him that this was not a well chosen answer. 'And then you rushed off afterwards because of that business with the barber in Gleam Street.' 'Sweeney Jones,' said Vimes. 'Well, he was killing people, Sybil. The best you could say is that he didn't mean to. He was just very bad at shaving–' 'But you didn't have to go, I'm sure.' 'Policing's a twenty–four–hour job, dear.' 'Only for you! Your constables do their ten hours and that's it. But you're always working. It's not good for you. You're always running around during the day, and when I wake up in the middle of the night there's always a cold space beside me.. .' The dots hung in the air, the ghosts of words unsaid. Little things, thought Vimes. That's how a war starts. 'There's so much to do, Sybil,' he said, as patiently as he could. 'There's always been a lot to do. And the bigger the Watch gets the more there is to do, have you noticed that?' Vimes nodded. That was true. Rotas, receipts, notebooks, reports... the Watch might or might not be making a difference in the city, but it was certainly frightening a lot of trees. 'You ought to delegate,' said Lady Sybil. 'So he tells me,' muttered Vimes. 'Pardon?' 'Just thinking aloud, dear.' Vimes pushed the paperwork away. 'I'll tell you what... let's have an evening in,' he said. 'There's a nice fire in the drawing room–' 'Er... no, Sam, there isn't.' 'Hasn't young Forthright lit it?' Forthright was the Boy; it came as news to Vimes that this was an official servant position, but the Boy's job was to light the fires, clean the privies, help the gardener and take the blame. 'He's gone off to be a drummer boy in the Duke of Eorle's regiment,' said Lady Sybil. 'Him too? He seemed a bright lad! Isn't he too young?' 'He said he was going to lie about his age.' 'I hope he lies about his musical ability. I've heard him whistling.' Vimes shook his head. 'Whatever possessed him to do such a daft thing?' 'He thinks the uniform will impress the girls.' Sybil gave him a gentle smile. An evening at home suddenly began to seem very inviting. 'Well, it won't take a genius to find the woodshed,' said Vimes. 'And then we can bolt the doors and–' One of the aforesaid doors shook to the sound of frantic knocking. Vimes caught Sybil's gaze. 'Go on, then. Answer it,' she sighed, and sat down. The door admitted Corporal Littlebottom, seriously out of breath. 'You... got to come quick, sir... it's... murder this... time!' Vimes looked helplessly at his wife. 'Of course you must go,' she said.   Angua brushed out her hair in front of the mirror. 'I don't like this,' said Carrot. 'It's not a proper way to behave.' She patted him on the shoulder. 'Don't worry,' she said. 'Vimes explained it all. You're acting as though we're doing something wrong.' 'I like being a watchman,' said Carrot, still in the mournful depths. 'And you've got to wear a uniform. If you don't wear a uniform it's like spying on people. He knows I think that.' Angua looked at his short red hair and honest cars. 'I've taken a lot of the work off his shoulders,' Carrot went on. 'He doesn't have to go on patrol at all, but he still tries to do everything.' 'Perhaps he doesn't want you to be quite so helpful?' said Angua, as tactfully as possible. 'It's not as if he's getting any younger, either. I've tried to point that out.' 'That was kind of you.' 'And I've never worn plain clothes.' 'On you they'll never be very plain,' said Angua, pulling on her coat. It was a relief to be out of that armour. As for Carrot, there was no disguising him. The size, the ears, the red hair, the expression of muscular good–naturedness... 'I suppose a werewolf is in plain clothes all the time, when you think about it,' said Carrot. 'Thank you, Carrot. And you are absolutely right.' 'I just don't feel comfortable, living a lie.' 'Walk a mile on these paws.' 'Pardon?' 'Oh... nothing.'   Goriff's son Janil had been angry. He didn't know why. The anger was built up of a lot of things. The firebomb last night was a big part. So were some of the words he'd been hearing in the street. He'd had an argument with his father about sending that food round to the Watch House this morning. They were an official part of the city. They had those stupid badges. They had uniforms. He was angry about a lot of things, including the fact that he was thirteen. So when, at nine in the evening while his father was baking bread, the door had slammed back and a man had rushed in, Janil had pulled his father's elderly crossbow from under the counter and aimed it where he thought the heart was and pulled the trigger.   Carrot stamped his feet once or twice and looked around. 'Here,' he said. 'I was standing here. And the Prince was... in that direction.' Angua obediently walked across the square. Several people turned to look curiously at Carrot. 'All right... stop... no, on a bit... stop... turn a little bit to the left... I mean my left... back a bit... now throw your arms up...' He walked over to her and followed her gaze. 'He was shot from the University?' 'Looks like the library building,' said Angua. 'But a wizard wouldn't do it, surely? They keep out of that sort of thing.' 'Oh, it's not too hard to get in there, even when the gates are shut,' said Carrot. 'Let's try the unofficial way, shall we?' 'OK Carrot?' 'Yes?' 'The false moustache... it's not you, you know. And the nose is far too pink' 'Doesn't it make me look inconspicuous?' 'No. And the hat... I should lose the hat, too' It is a good hat,' she added quickly. 'But a brown bowler... it's not your style. It doesn't suit you.' 'Exactly!' said Carrot. 'If it was my style, people would know it's me, right?' 'I mean it makes you look like a twerp, Carrot.' 'Do I normally look like a twerp?' 'No, not–' 'Aha!' Carrot fumbled in the pocket of his large brown overcoat. 'I got this book of disguises from the joke shop in Phedre Road, look. Funny thing, Nobby was in there buying stuff too. I asked him why and he said it was desperate measures. What d'you think he meant by that?' 'I can't imagine,' said Angua. 'It's just amazing the stuff they've got. False hair, false noses, false beards, even false...' He hesitated, and began to blush. 'Even false... you know, chests. For ladies. But I can't imagine for the life of me why they'd want to disguise those.' He probably couldn't, Angua thought. She took the very small book from Carrot and glanced through it. She sighed. 'Carrot, these disguises are meant for a potato.' 'Are they?' 'Look, they're all on potatoes, see?' 'I thought that was just for display.' 'Carrot, it's got "Mr Spuddy Face" on it.' Behind his thick black moustache Carrot looked hurt and perplexed. 'What does a potato want a disguise for?' he said. They'd reached the alley alongside the University that had been known informally as Scholars' Entry for so many centuries that this was now on a nameplate at one end. A couple of student wizards went past. The unofficial entrance to the University has always been known only to students. What most students failed to remember was that the senior members of the faculty had also been students once, and also liked to get out and about after the official shutting of the gates. This naturally led to a certain amount of embarrassment and diplomacy on dark evenings. Carrot and Angua waited patiently as a few more students climbed over, followed by the Dean. 'Good evening, sir,' said Carrot, politely. 'Good evening to you, Spuddy,' said the Dean, and ambled off into the night. 'You see?' 'Ah, but he didn't call me Carrot,' said Carrot. 'The principle is sound.' They dropped down on to lawns of academia and headed for the library. 'It'll be shut,' said Angua. 'Remember, we have a man on the inside,' said Carrot, and knocked. The door opened a little way. 'Ook?' Carrot raised his horrible little round hat. 'Good evening, sir, I wonder if we could come in? It's Watch business.' 'Ook eek ook?' ' Er..., 'What did he say?' said Angua. 'If you must know, he said, "My goodness me, a walking potato,"' said Carrot. The Librarian wrinkled his nose at Angua. He did not like the smell of werewolves. But he beckoned them inside and then left them waiting while he knuckled back to his desk and rummaged in a drawer. He produced a Watch Special Constable's badge on a string, which he hung around the general area where his neck should have been, and then stood as much to attention as an orang–utan can, which is not a great deal. The central ape gets the idea but outlying areas are slow to catch on. 'Ook ook!' 'Was that "How may I be of assistance, Captain Tuber?"' said Angua. 'We need to have a look on the fifth floor, overlooking the square,' said Carrot, a shade coldly. 'Ook oook – ook.' 'He says that's just old storerooms,' said Carrot. 'And that last "ook'?' said Angua. ' "Mr Horrible Hat",' said Carrot. 'Still, he hasn't worked out who you are, eh?' said Angua. The fifth floor was a corridor of airless rooms, smelling sadly of old, unwanted books. They were stacked not on shelves but on wide racks, bundled up with string. A lot of them were battered and missing their covers. judging by what remained, though, they were old textbooks that not even the most ardent bibliophile could treasure. Carrot picked up a torn copy of Woddeley's Occult Primer. Several loose pages fell out. Angua picked one up. "'Chapter Fifteen, Elementary Necromancy",' she read aloud. `Lesson One: Correct Use of Shovel...' She put it down again and sniffed the air. The presence of the Librarian filled the nasal room like an elephant in a matchbox, but– 'Someone else has been in here,' she said. 'In the last couple of days. Could you leave us, sir? When it comes to odours, you're a bit... forthright…' 'Ook?' The Librarian nodded at Carrot, shrugged at Angua and ambled out. 'Don't move,' said Angua. 'Stay right where you are, Carrot. Don't disturb the air . . She inched forward carefully. Her cars told her the Librarian was down the corridor, because she could hear the floorboards creaking. But her nose told her that he was still here. He was a little fuzzy, but 'I'm going to have to change,' she said. 'I can't get a proper picture this way. It's too strange.' Carrot obediently shut his eyes. Shed forbidden him to watch her en route from a human to a wolf, because of the unpleasant nature of the shapes in between. Back in Uberwald people went from one shape to the other as naturally as ordinary humans would put on a different coat, but even there it was considered polite to do it behind a bush. When he re–opened them Angua was slinking forward, her whole being concentrated in her nose. The olfactory presence of the Librarian was a complex shape, a mere purple blur where he had been moving but almost a solid figure where he'd been standing still. Hands, face, lips... they'd be just the centre of an expanding cloud in a few hours' time, but now she could still smell them out. There must be only the tiniest air currents in here. There weren't even any flies buzzing in the dead air to cause a ripple of disturbance. She edged nearer to the window. Vision was a mere shadowy presence, providing a charcoal sketch of a room over which the scents painted their glorious colours. By the window... by the window... Yes! A man had stood there, and by the scent of it he hadn't moved for some time. The smell wavered in the air, on the edge of her nasal skill. The curling, billowing traces said that the window had been opened and closed again, and was there just the merest, tiniest suggestion that he'd held an arm out in front of him? Her nose raced, trying to form original shapes from the patterns hanging in the room like dead smoke... When she'd finished, Angua went back to her pile of clothes and coughed politely while she was pulling on her boots. 'There was a man standing by the window,' she said. 'Long hair, a bit dry, stinks of expensive shampoo. He was the man who nailed the boards back after Ossie got into the Barbican.' 'Are you sure?' 'Is this nose ever wrong?' 'Sorry. Go on.' 'I'd say he was heavy–set, a bit bulky for his height. He doesn't wash a lot, but when he does he uses Windpike's Soap, the cheap brand. But expensive shampoo, which is odd. Quite new boots. And a green coat.' You can smell the colour?' 'No. The dye. It comes from Sto Lat, I think. And... I think he shot a bow. An expensive bow. There's a hint of silk in the air, and that's what the strongest bowstrings are made of, isn't it? And you wouldn't put one of those on a cheap bow.' Carrot stood by the window. 'He got a good view,' he said, and looked down at the floor. And then at the sill. And on the shelves nearby. 'How long was he here?' 'Two or three hours, I'd say.' 'He didn't move around much.' 'No.' 'Or smoke, or spit He just stood and waited. A professional. Mr Vimes was right.' 'A lot more professional than Ossie,' said Angua. 'Green coat,' said Carrot, as if thinking aloud. 'Green coat, green coat...' 'Oh. .. and bad dandruff,' said Angua, standing up. 'Snowy Slopes?!' shouted Carrot. 'What?' 'Really bad dandruff?' 'Oh, yes, it–' 'That's why they call him Snowy,' said Carrot. 'Daceyville Slopes, the man with the reinforced comb. But I'd heard he'd moved to Sto Lat–' In unison they said: '–where the dye comes from––' 'Is he good with a bow?' said Angua. 'Very good. He's good at killing people he never met, too.' 'He's an Assassin, is he?' 'Oh, no. He just kills people for money. No style. Snowy can't read and write.' Carrot scratched his head in sympathetic recollection. 'He doesn't even look at complicated pictures. We'd have got him last year, but he shook his head fast and got away while we were trying to dig out Nobby. Well, well. I wonder where he's staying?' 'Don't ask me to follow him in these streets. Thousands of people will have walked over the trail.' 'Oh, there's people who will know. Someone sees everything in this town.'   MR SLOPES? Snowy Slopes gingerly felt his neck, or at least the neck of his soul. The human soul tends to keep to the shape of the original body for some time after death. Habit is a wonderful thing. 'Who the hell was he?' he said. NOT SOMEONE YOU KNOW? said Death. 'Well, no! I don't know many people who cut my head off!' Snowy Slopes's body had knocked against the table as it fell. Several bottles of medicated shampoo now dripped and mixed their contents into the other more intimate fluids from the Slopes corpse. 'That stuff with the special oil in it cost me nearly four dollars,' said Snowy. Yet, somehow, it all seemed slightly... irrelevant now. Death happens to other people. The other person in this case had been him. That is, the one down there. Not the one standing here looking at it. In life, Snowy hadn't even been able to spell 'metaphysical', but he was already beginning to view life in a different way. From the outside, for a start. 'Four dollars,' he repeated. 'I never even had time to try it!' IT WOULDN'T HAVE WORKED, said Death, patting the man on a fading shoulder. BUT, IF I MIGHT SUGGEST THAT YOU LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE, IT WILL NO LONGER BE NECESSSARY. 'No more dandruff?' said Snowy, now quite transparent and fading fast. EVER, said Death. TRUST ME ON THIS.   Commander Vimes ran down darkened streets, trying to buckle on his breastplate as he ran. 'All right, Cheery, what's happening?' 'They say a Klatchian killed someone, sir. There's a mob up in Scandal Alley and it's looking bad. I was on the desk and I thought you ought to be told, sir.' 'Right!' 'And anyway I couldn't find Captain Carrot, sir.' A little bit of acid ink scribbled its subtle entry on the ledger of Vimes's soul. 'Oh, gods... so who's the officer in charge?' 'Sergeant Detritus, sir.' It seemed to the dwarf that she was suddenly standing still. Commander Vimes had become a rapidly disappearing blur.   With the calm expression of someone who was methodically doing his duty, Detritus picked up a man and used him to hit some other men. When he had a clear area around him and a groaning heap of former rioters, he climbed the heap and cupped his hands round his mouth. 'Listen to me, youse people!' A troll shouting at the top of his voice could easily be heard above a riot. When he seemed to have their attention he pulled a scroll out of his breastplate and waved it over his head. 'Dis is der Riot Act,' he said. 'You know what dat means? It means if'n I reads it out and youse don't disb... disp... go away, der Watch can use deadly force, you unnerstand?' 'What did you just use, then?' moaned someone from underneath his feet. 'Dat was you helpin' der Watch,' said Detritus, shifting his weight. He unrolled the scroll. Although there was some scuffling in alleyways and shouts from the next street, a ring of silence expanded outwards from the troll. An almost genetic component of the citizens of Ankh–Morpork was their ability to spot an opportunity for amusement. Detritus held the document at arm's length. And then a few inches from his face. He tried turning it round. a few times. His lips moved uneasily. Finally, he leaned down and showed it to Constable Visit. 'What dis word?' 'That's "Whereby", sergeant.' 'I knew dat.' He straightened up again. "'Whereby... it is..." ' Beads of the troll equivalent of sweat began to form on Detritus's forehead. `Whereby it is... ack–no–legg–ed. .."' 'Acknowledged,' whispered Constable Visit. 'I knew dat.' Detritus stared at the paper again, and then gave up. 'Youse don't want to stand here listenin' to me all day!' he bellowed. 'Dis is der Riot Act and you've all got to read it, right? Pass it round.' 'What if we don't read it?' said a voice in the crowd. 'You got to read it. It legal.' 'And then what happens?' 'Den I shoot you,' said Detritus. 'That's not allowed!' said another voice. 'You've got to shout "Stop! Armed Watchman!" first.' 'Sure, dat suits me,' said Detritus. He shrugged one huge shoulder to bring his crossbow under his arm. It was a siege bow, intended to be mounted on the cart. The bolt was six feet long. 'It harder to hit runnin' targets.' He released the safety catch. 'Anyone finishing readin' dat thing yet?' 'Sergeant!' Vimes pushed his way through the crowd. And it was a crowd now. Ankh–Morpork was always a good audience. There was a clang as Detritus saluted. 'Were you proposing to shoot these people in cold blood, sergeant?' 'Nossir. just a warning shot inna head, sir.' 'Really? Just give me a moment to talk to them, then.' Vimes looked at the man next to him. He was holding a flaming torch in one hand and a long length of wood in the other. He gave Vimes the nervously defiant stare of someone who has just felt the ground shift under his feet. Vimes pulled the torch towards him and lit a cigar. 'What's happening here, friend?' 'The Klatchians have been shooting people, Mr Vimes! Unprovoked attack!' 'Really?' 'People have been killed!' 'Who?' 'I... there were... everyone knows they've been killing people!' The man's mental footsteps found safer ground. 'Who do they think they are, coming over–' 'That's enough,' said Vimes. He stood back and raised his voice. 'I recognize a lot of you,' he said. 'And I know you've got homes to go to. See this?' He pulled his baton of office out of his pocket. 'This says I've got to keep the peace. So in ten seconds I'm going somewhere else to find some peace to keep, but Detritus is going to stay here. And I just hope he doesn't do anything to disgrace the uniform. Or get it very dirty, at least.' irony was not a degree–level subject among the listeners, but the brighter ones recognized Vimes's expression. It said that here was a man hanging on to his patience by his teeth. The mob dispersed, going ragged at the edges as people legged it down side alleys, threw away their makeshift weapons and emerged at the other end walking the grave, thoughtful walk of honest citizens. 'All right, what happened?' said Vimes, turning to the troll. 'We're hearing where dis boy shot dis man,' said Detritus. 'We got here, next minute it rainin' people from everywhere, shoutin'.' 'He smote him as Hudrun smote the fleshpots of Ur,' said Constable Visit.[6] 'Smote?' said Vimes, bewildered. 'He killed someone?' 'Not by der way der man was cussing, sir,' said Detritus. 'Hit him in der arm. His friends brought him round der Watch House to complain. He a baker on der night shift. He said he was late for work, he come runnin' in to pick up his dinner, next minute he flat on der floor.' Vimes walked across the street and tried the door of the shop. It opened a little way, and then fetched up against what seemed to be a barricade. Furniture had been piled up against the window as well. 'How many people were there, constable?' 'A multitude thereof, sir.' And four people in here, thought Vimes. A family. The door moved a fraction and Vimes realized he was ducking even before the crossbow protruded. There was the thung of the string. The bolt tumbled rather than sped. It corkscrewed wildly across the alley and was almost moving sideways when it hit the opposite wall. 'Look,' said Vimes, keeping his body down but raising his voice. 'Anyone who got hit with that, it must have been an accident. This is the Watch. Open the door. Otherwise Detritus will open it. And when he opens a door, it stays open. You know what I mean?' There was no reply. 'All right. Detritus, just step over here–' There was a hissed argument inside, and then the sound of scraping as furniture was moved. He tried the door. It swung inwards. The family were at the far end of the room. Vimes felt eight eyes on him. The atmosphere had a hot, worrying feel, spiced with the smell of burnt food. Mr Goriff was holding the crossbow gingerly, and the expression on his son's face told Vimes a lot of what he needed to know. 'All right,' he said. 'Now you all listen to me. I'm not arresting anyone right now, you hear? This sounds like one of those things that make his lordship yawn. But you'd do better spending the rest of the night in the Watch House. I can't spare the men to stand guard here. Do you understand? I could arrest you. But this is just a request.' Mr Goriff cleared his throat. 'The man I shot–' he began, and left the question and the lie hanging in the air. Vimes forced himself not to glance at the boy. 'Not badly hurt,' he said. 'He... ran in,' said Mr Goriff. 'And after last night–' 'You thought you were being attacked again and grabbed the crossbow?' 'Yes,' said the boy, defiantly, before his father could speak. There was a brief argument in Klatchian. Then Mr Goriff said: 'We must leave the house?' 'For your own good. We'll try to have someone watch it. Now, get something together and go off with the sergeant. And give me that crossbow.' Goriff handed it over with a look of relief. It was a typical Saturday Night Special, so badly made and erratic that the only safe place to be when it was fired would be directly behind it, and even then you would be running a risk. And then no–one had told its owner that under the counter in a steamy shop and a perpetual rain of grease wasn't the best place to keep it strung. The string sagged. Probably the only way you could reliably hurt someone with it was to beat them over the head. Vimes waited until they'd been ushered out and took a last look around the room. It wasn't large. In the kitchen behind the shop something spicy in a pot was boiling dry. After burning his fingers a couple of times he managed to tip the pot on to the fire to put it out and then, vaguely remembering his mother doing something like this, put the pot under the pump to soak Then he barricaded the windows as best he could and went out, locking the door behind him. A discreetly obvious brass Thieves' Guild plaque over the door told the world that Mr Goriff had conscientiously paid his annual fee,[7] but the world had plenty of less formal dangers and so Vimes took a piece of chalk out of his pocket and wrote on the door:   UNDER THE PROTECTION OF THE WATCH   As an afterthought he signed it:   SGT DETRITUS   In the imaginations of the less civically minded the majesty of the rule of law didn't carry anything like as much weight as the dread of Detritus. The Riot Act! Where the hell had he dredged that from? Carrot, probably. It hadn't been used for as long as Vimes could remember, and that was no wonder when you knew what it really did. Even Vetinari would hesitate to use it. Now it was nothing more than a phrase. Thank goodness for trollish illiteracy... It was when Vimes stood back to admire his handiwork that he saw the glow in the sky over Park Lane, almost at the same time as he heard the clatter of iron boots on the street. 'Oh, hello, Littlebottom,' he said. 'What now? Don't tell me – someone's set fire to the Klatchian embassy.' 'All right, sir,' said the dwarf. She stood uncertainly in the middle of the alley, looking worried. 'Well?' said Vimes. 'Er... you said–' With a sinking feeling Vimes remembered that the generic dwarfish skill with iron was matched only by the fumblefingered grasp of irony. 'The Klatchian embassy is really on fire?' 'Yes, sir!'   Mrs Spent opened the door a crack. 'Yes?' 'I'm a friend of...' Carrot hesitated, wondering if Fred would have given his real name. 'Er... big fat man, suit doesn't fit–' 'The one who goes around with the sex maniac?' 'Pardon?' 'Skinny little twerp, dresses like a clown?' 'They said you'd have a room,' said Carrot desperately. 'They've got it,' said Mrs Spent, trying to shut the door. 'They said I could use it–' 'No sub–lettin'!' 'They said I should pay you two dollars!' The pressure of the door was released a little. 'On top of what they paid?' said Mrs Spent. 'Of course.' 'Well...' She looked Carrot up and down and sniffed. 'All right. What shift are you on?' 'Sorry?' 'You're a watchman, right?' 'Er...' Carrot hesitated, and then raised his voice. 'No, I am not a watchman. Haha, you think I'm a watchman? Do I look like a watchman?' 'Yes, you do,' said Mrs Spent. 'You're Captain Carrot. I seen you walking about the town. Still, I suppose even coppers have to sleep somewhere.' On the roof, Angua rolled her eyes. 'No wimmin, no cookin', no music, no pets,' said Mrs Spent, as she led the way up the creaking stairs. Angua waited in the dark until she heard the window open. 'She's gone,' Carrot hissed. 'There's glass on the tiles out here, just like Fred reported,' said Angua, as she swung herself over the sill. Inside the room she took a deep breath and shut her eyes. First she had to forget the smell of Carrot – anxious sweat, soap, the lingering hints of armour polish... ...and Fred Colon, all perspiration with a hint of beer, and then the odd ointment Nobby used for his skin condition, and the smells of feet, bodies, clothes, polish, fingernails... After an hour it was possible for the eye of the nose to see someone walk across the room, frozen in time by their smell. But after a day smells criss–crossed and entangled. You had to take them apart, remove the familiar pieces, and what you had left 'They're so mixed up!' 'All right, all right,' said Carrot soothingly. 'At least three people! But I think one of them is Ossie... It's stronger round the bed... and. ..' She opened her eyes wide and looked down at the floor. 'Somewhere here!' 'What? What is?' Angua crouched down with her nose just above the floorboards. 'I can smell it but I can't see it!' A knife appeared in front of her. Carrot got down on his knees and ran the blade along the dust–filled crack between the floorboards. Something splintery and brown popped up. It had been trodden on and rolled underfoot, but at this distance even Carrot could pick up traces of the clove smell. 'Do you think Ossie made a lot of apple pies?' he whispered. 'No cookin', remember?' said Angua, and grinned. 'There's something else...' Carrot levered out more dirt and dust. In it, something glittered. 'Fred said all the glass was outside, didn't he?' 'Yes.' 'Well, supposing we assume that someone didn't pick up all the bits when they broke in?' 'For someone that doesn't like lying, Carrot, you can be quite devious, you know?' 'Just logical. There's glass outside the window, but all that means is that there is glass outside the window. Commander Vimes always says there're no such things as dues. It's how you look at them.' 'You think someone broke in and then carefully put the glass outside?' 'Could be.' 'Carrot? Why are we whispering?' 'No wimmin, remember?' 'And no pets,' said Angua. 'So she's got me coming and going. Don't look like that,' she added, when she saw his face. 'It's only bad taste if someone else says it. I'm allowed.' Carrot scratched up some more glass fragments. Angua looked under the bed and pulled out the battered magazines. 'Ye gods, do people really read this stuff?' she said, flicking through Bows and Ammo. ' "Testing the Locksley Reflex 7: A Whole Lotta Bow"… "Footsore! We test the Ten Best Caltrops!"... and what's this magazine... ? Warrior of Fortune?' 'There's always little wars somewhere,' said Carrot, pulling out the box of money. 'But will you look at the size of this axe here? "Get A Head, Get A Burleigh and Stronginthearm 'Streetsweeper' and Win By A Neck!" Well, it must be true what they say about men who like big weapons...' 'And that is?' said carrot, lifting the lid of the box. She looked at the top of his head. As always, Carrot radiated innocence like a small sun. But he'd... They'd... Surely he... 'They, er... they're rather small,' she said. 'Oh, that's true,' said Carrot, picking up some of the Klatchian coins. 'Look at dwarfs. Never happier than with a chopper the same size as them. And Nobby's fascinated by weapons and he's practically dwarfsized.', 'Er... ' Technically, Angua was sure she knew Carrot better than anyone else. She was pretty sure he cared a lot for her. He seldom said so, he just assumed that she knew. She'd known other men, although turning into a wolf for part of the month was one of those little flaws that could put any normal man off and, up until Carrot, always had. And she knew the sort of things men said in what might be called the heat of the moment and then forgot. But when Carrot said things, you knew that he felt that everything was now settled until further notice, so if she made any comment he'd be genuinely surprised that she'd forgotten what it was he had said and would probably quote date and time. And yet all the time there was this feeling that the greater part of him was always deep, deep inside, looking out. Noone could be so simple, no–one could be so creatively dumb, without being very intelligent. It was like being an actor. Only a very good actor was any good at being a bad actor. 'Rather a lonely person, our Nobby,' said Carrot. 'Well, yes...' 'But Im sure he'll find the right person for him,' Carrot added, cheerfully. Probably in a bottle, said Angua to herself. She remembered the conversation with him. It was a terrible thing to think, but there was somethin itchy about the thought of Nobby being allowed in pool, even at the shallow end. 'You know, these coins are odd,' said Carrot. 'How do you mean?' said Angua, grateful for the distraction. 'Why would he be paid in Klatchian wols? He wouldn't be able to spend them here, and the money changers don't give very good rates.' Carrot tossed a coin in the air and caught it. 'When we were leaving, Mr Vimes said to me, "Make sure you find the bunch of dates and the camel hidden under the pillow." I think I know what he meant.' 'Sand on the floor,' said Angua. 'Now, isn't that an obvious clue? You can tell they were Klatchian because of the sand in their sandals!' 'But these cloves...' Carrot prodded the little bud. 'It's not as if it's a common habit, even among Klatchians. That's not a very obvious clue, is it?' 'It smells newer,' said Angua. 'I'd say he was here last night.' 'After Ossie was dead?' 'Yes.' 'Why?' 'How should I know? What kind of name is 71–hour Ahmed?' said Angua. Carrot shrugged. 'I don't know. I think Mr Vimes thinks that someone in Ankh–Morpork wants us to believe that Klatchians paid to have the Prince killed. That sounds... nasty but logical. But I don't understand why a real Klatchian would get involved...' Their eyes met. 'Politics?' they said together. 'For enough money, a lot of people would do anything,' said Angua. There was a sudden and ferocious knocking at the door. 'Have you got someone in there?' said Mrs Spent. 'Out of the window!' said Carrot. 'Why don't I just stay and rip her throat out?' said Angua. 'All right, all right, it was a joke, all right?' she said, swinging her legs over the sill.   Ankh–Morpork no longer had a fire brigade. The citizens had a rather disturbingly direct way of thinking at times, and it did not take long for people to see the rather obvious flaw in paying a group of people by the number of fires they put out. The penny really dropped shortly after Charcoal Tuesday. Since then they had relied on the good old principle of enlightened self–interest. People living dose to a burning building did their best to douse the fire, because the thatch they saved might be their own. But the crowd watching the burning embassy were doing so in a hollow–eyed, distant way, as if it was all taking place on some distant planet. They moved aside automatically as Vimes elbowed his way through to the space in front of the gates. Flames were already licking from every groundfloor window, and they could make out scurrying silhouettes in the flickering light. He turned to the crowd. 'Come on! What's up with you? Get a bucket chain going!' 'It's their bloody embassy,' said a voice. 'Yeah. 's Klatchian soil, right?' 'Can't go on Klatchian soil.' 'That'd be an invasion, that would.' 'They wouldn't let us,' said a small boy holding a bucket. Vimes looked at the embassy gateway. There were a couple of guards. Their worried glances kept going back from the fire behind them to the crowd in front. They were nervous men, but it was much worse than that, because they were nervous men holding big swords. He advanced on them, trying to smile and holding his badge out in front of him. It had a shield on it. It was not a very big shield. 'Commander Vimes, Ankh–Morpork City Watch,' he said, in what he hoped was a helpful and friendly voice. A guard waved him away. 'Hyou be off!' 'Ah...' said Vimes. He looked down at the cobbles of the gateway and then back up at the guard. Somewhere in the flames someone was screaming. 'You! Come here! You see this?' he shouted at the guard, pointing down. The man took a hesitant step forward. 'That's Ankh–Morpork soil down there, my friend,' said Vimes. 'And you're standing on it and you're obstructing me in my–' he rammed his fist as hard as he could into the guard's stomach '–duty!' He was already kicking out as the other guard rushed him. He caught him on the knee. Something went click. It felt like Vimes's own ankle. Cursing and limping slightly, he ran on into the embassy and caught a scurrying man by his robe. 'Are there people still in there? Are there people in there?' The man gave Vimes a panicky look. The armfuls of paper he'd been carrying spilled on to the ground. Someone else grabbed his shoulder. 'Can you climb, Mr Vimes?' 'Who're–' The newcomer turned to the cowering paper–carrier and struck him heavily across the face. 'Rescuer of paper!' As the man fell back his turban was snatched from his head. 'This way!' The figure plunged off through the smoke. Vimes hurried after him until they reached a wall, with a drainpipe attached. 'How did you–?' 'Up! Up!' Vimes put one foot in the man's cupped hands, managed to get the other one on a bracket, and forced himself upwards. 'Hurry!' He managed to half climb, half pull himself up the pipe, little fireworks of pain exploding tip and down his legs as he reached a parapet and hauled himself over. The other man rose behind him as if he'd run up the wall. There was a strip of cloth hiding the lower half of his face. He thrust another strip towards Vimes. 'Across your nose and mouth!' he commanded. 'For the smoke!' It was boiling across the roof. Beside Vimes a chimneypot gushed a roaring tongue of flame. The rest of the unwound turban was thrust into his hands. 'You take this side, I'll take the other,' said the apparition, and darted away again into the smoke. 'But wh–' Vimes could feel the heat through his boots. He edged away across the roof, and heard the shouting coming from below. When he leaned over the edge here he could see the window some way below him. Someone had smashed a pane, because a hand was waving. There was more commotion down in the courtyard. Amid a press of figures he could make out the huge shape of Constable Dorfl, a golem and quite definitely fireproof. But Dorfl was bad enough at stairs as it was. There weren't many that could take the weight. The hand in the smoke stopped waving. Vimes looked down again. Can you fly, Mr Vimes? He looked at the chimney, belching flame. He looked at the unwound turban. A lot of Sam Vimes's brain had shut down, although the bits relaying the twinges of pain from his legs were operating with distressing efficiency. But there were still some thoughts operating down around the core, and they delivered for his consideration the insight: ... tough–looking cloth... He looked back at the chimney. It looked stout enough. The window was about six feet below. Vimes began to move automatically. So, purely theoretically, if a man were to wrap one end of the cloth round the belching stack like this and pay it out like this and lower himself over the parapet like this and kick himself away from the wall like this, then when he swung back again his feet ought to be able to smash his way through the other panes of the window, like this…   A cart squeaked along the wet street. Its progress was erratic because no two of its wheels were the same size, so it rocked and wobbled and skidded and probably involved more effort to pull than it saved overall, especially since its contents appeared to be rubbish. But then, so did its owner. Who was about the size of a man, but bent almost double, and was covered with hair or rags or quite possibly a matted mixture of both that was so felted and unwashed that small plants had taken root on it. If the thing had stopped walking and crouched down, it would have given an astonishingly good impression of a long–neglected compost heap. As it walked along, it snuffled. A foot was stuck out to impede its progress. 'Good evening, Stoolie,' said Carrot as the cart halted. The heap stopped. Part of it tilted upwards. 'Geroff,' it muttered, from somewhere in the thatch. 'Now, now, Stoolie, let's help one another, shall we? You help me, and I'll help you.' 'B'g'r'ff, c'p'r.' 'Well, you tell me things I want to know,' said Carrot, 'and I won't search your cart.' 'I hate gnolls,' said Angua. 'They smell awful.' 'Oh, that's hardly fair. The stressed be a lot dirtier without you and yours, eh, Stoolie?' said Carrot, still speaking quite pleasantly. 'You pick up this, you pick up that, maybe bash it against a wall until it stops struggling–' ' 's a vile acur'cy,' said the gnoll. There was a bubbling noise that might have been a chuckle. 'So I'm hearing you might know where Snowy Slopes is these days,' said Carrot. 'D'nno n'thin'.' 'Fine.' Carrot produced a three–tined garden fork and walked round to the cart, which dripped. 'D'nno n'thin' ab't–' said the gnoll quickly. 'Yes?' said Carrot, fork poised. 'D'nno n'thin' ab't t' sweetsp'p'n M'ney Tr'p L'ne.' 'The one with the Rooms To Let sign?' 'R't.' 'Well done. Thank you for being a good citizen,' said Carrot. 'Incidentally, we passed a dead seagull the way here. Its in Brewer Street. I bet if you hurried you could beat the rush.' 'H't d'gg'ty,' snuffled the gnoll. The cart started to judder forward. The watchmen watched it lurch and scrape around the corner. 'They're good fellows at heart,' said Carrot. 'I think it says a lot for the spirit of tolerance in this city that even gnolls can call it home.' 'They turn my stomach,' said Angua, as they set off again. [.'That one had plants growing on him!' 'Mr Vimes says we ought to do something for them,' said Carrot. 'All heart, that man.' 'With a flamethrower, he says.' 'Wouldn't work. Too soggy. Has anyone ever really found out what they eat?' 'It's better to think of them as... cleaners. You certainly don't see as much rubbish and dead animals on the streets as you used to.' 'Yes, but have you ever seen a gnoll with a brush and shovel?' 'Well, that's society for you, I'm afraid,' said Carrot. 'Everything is dumped on the people below until you find someone who's prepared to eat it. That's what Mr Vimes says.' 'Yes,' said Angua. They walked in silence for a while, and then she said. 'You care a lot about what Mr Vimes says, don't you... ?' 'He is a fine officer and an example to us all.' 'And... you've never thought of getting a job in Quirm or somewhere, have you? The other cities are headhunting Ankh–Morpork watchmen now.' 'What, leave Ankh–Morpork?' The tone of voice included the answer. 'No... I suppose not,' said Angua sadly. 'Anyway, I don't know what Mr Vimes would do without me running around all the time.' 'It's a point of view, certainly,' said Angua. It wasn't far to Money Trap Lane. It was in a ghetto of what Lord Rust would probably call 'skilled artisans', the people too low down the social scale to be movers and shakers but slightly too high to be easily moved or shook. The sanders and polishers, generally. The people who hadn't got very much but were proud even of that. There were little clues. Shiny house numbers, for a start. And, on the walls of houses that were effectively just one long continuous row, after centuries of building and inbuilding, very careful boundaries in the paint where people had brushed up to the very border of their property and not a gnat's blink to each side. Carrot always said it showed the people were the kind who instinctively realized that civilization was based on a shared respect for ownership; Angua thought they were just tight little bastards who'd sell you the time of day. Carrot walked noiselessly down the alley beside the sweetshop. There was a rough wooden staircase going up to the first floor. He pointed silently to the midden below it. It seemed to consist almost entirely of bottles. 'Big drinker?' Angua mouthed. Carrot shook his head. She crouched down and looked at the labels, but her nose was already giving her a hint. Dibbler's Homeopathic Shampoo. Mere and Stingbat's Herbal Wash – with Herbs! Rinse 'n' Run Scalp Tonic – with Extra Herbs!... There were others. Herbs, she thought. Chuck a handful of weeds in the pot and you've got herbs... Carrot was starting up the stairs when she put her hand on his shoulder. There was another smell. It was one that drove through all the other scents of the streets like a spear. It was one that a werewolf's nose is particularly attuned to. He nodded and went carefully to the door. Then he pointed down. There was a stain under the gap. Carrot drew his sword and kicked the door open. Daceyville Slopes hadn't taken his condition lightly. Bottles of all shapes and colours occupied most flat surfaces, giving testimony to the alchemist's art and humanity's optimism. The suds of his latest experiment were still in a bowl on the table, and his body on the floor had a towel around his neck. The watchmen looked down at it. Snowy had cleaned, washed and gone. 'I think we can say life is extinct,' said Carrot. 'Yuk,' said Angua. She grabbed the open shampoo bottle and sniffed deeply. The sickly scent of marinated herbs assailed her sinuses, but anything was better than the sharp, beguiling smell of blood. 'I wonder where his head is at?' said Carrot, in a determinedly matter–of–fact voice. 'Oh, it's rolled over there... What's the horrible smell?' 'This!' Angua flourished the shampoo. 'Four dollars a bottle, it says. Sheesh!' Angua took another deep sniff at the herbal goo, to drown out the call of the wolf. 'Doesn't look as if they stole anything,' said Carrot. 'Unless they were very neat– What's the matter?' 'Don't ask!' She managed to get a window open and sucked down great draughts of comparatively fresh air, while Carrot went through the corpse's pockets. 'Er... you can't tell if there's a clove around, can you?' he said. 'Carrot! Please! This is a room with blood all over the floor! Have you any idea? Excuse me...' She rushed out and down the steps. The alley had the generic smell of all alleys everywhere, overlaid on the basic all–embracing smell of the city. But at least it didn't make your hair grow and your teeth try to lengthen. She leaned against the wall and fought for control. Shampoo? She could have saved Snowy a hell of a lot of money with just one careful bite. Then he'd know all about a really bad hair day... Carrot came down a couple of minutes later, locking the door behind him. 'Are you feeling better?' 'A bit. ..' 'There was something else,' said Carrot, looking thoughtful. 'I think he wrote a note before he died. But it's all rather odd.' He waved in the air what looked like a cheap notepad. 'This needs careful looking at.' He shook his head. 'Poor old Snowy.' 'He was a killer!' 'Yes, but that's a nasty way to die.' 'Decapitation? With a very sharp sword, by the look of it. I can think of worse.' 'Yes, but I can't help thinking that if only the chap had better hair or had found the right shampoo at an early age he'd have led a different life...' 'Well, at least he won't have to worry about dandruff any more.' 'That was a little tasteless.' 'Sorry, but you know how blood makes me, tense.' 'Your hair always looks amazing,' said Carrot, changing the subject with, Angua thought, unusual tact. 'I don't know what you use, but it's a shame he never tried it.' 'I doubt if he went to the right shop,' said Angua. 'It says "For a Glossy Coat" on the bottles I usually buy– What's the matter?' 'Can you smell smoke?' said Carrot. 'Carrot, it's going to be five minutes before I can smell anything except–' But he was staring past her, at the big red glow in the sky.   Vimes coughed. And then coughed some more. And eventually opened his streaming eyes in the confident expectation of seeing his own lungs in front of him. 'Class of water, Mr Vimes?' Vimes peered through the tears at the shifting shape of Fred Colon. 'Thanks, Fred. What's the horrible burning smell?' 'It's you, sir.' Vimes was sitting on a low wall outside the wreck of the embassy. Cool air washed around him. He felt like underdone beef. The heat was radiating off him. 'You was passed on for a while there, sir,' said Sergeant Colon helpfully. 'But everyone saw you swing in that window, sir! And you threw that woman out for Detritus to catch! That'll be a feather in your cap and no mistake, sir! I bet the ragh– I bet the Klatchians'll be giving you the Order of the Camel or something for this night's work, sir!' Colon beamed, bursting with pride by association. 'A feather in my cap...' murmured Vimes. He undid his helmet and with a certain amount of exhausted delight saw that every single plume had been burned to a stub. He blinked slowly. 'What about the man, Fred? Did he get out?' 'What man?' 'There was.. .' Vimes blinked again. Various parts of his body, aware that he hadn't been taking calls, were ringing in to complain. There had been... some man? Vimes had landed on a bed of something, and there was a woman clutching at him, and he had smashed out what was left of the window, seen the big, broad and above all strong arms of Detritus down below, and had thrown her out as politely as the circumstances allowed. Then the man from the roof had come out of the smoke again, carrying another figure over his shoulder, screamed something at him and beckoned him to follow and... ...then the floor had given way... 'There were... two other people in there,' he said, coughing again. 'They didn't get out the front way, then,' said Colon. 'How did I get out?' said Vimes. 'Oh, Dorfl was stamping on the fire down below, sir. Very handy, a ceramic constable. You landed right on him, so of course he stopped what he was doing and brought you out. 's gonna be handshakes and buns all round in the morning, sir!' There weren't any right now, Vimes noted There were still plenty of people around, carrying bundles, putting out small fires, arguing with one another... but there was a big hole where congratulating–the–hero–of–the–hour should have been. 'Oh, everyone's always a bit preoccupied after something like this, sir,' said Colon, as if reading his thoughts. 'I think I'll have a nice cold bath,' said Vimes, to the world in general. 'And then some sleep. Sybil's got some wonderful ointment for burns... Ah, hello, you two.' 'We saw the fire–' Carrot began, running up. 'Is it all over?' 'Mr Vimes saved the day!' said Sergeant Colon excitedly. 'Just went straight in and saved everyone, in the finest tradition of the Watch!' 'Fred?' said Vimes, wearily. 'Yessir?' 'Fred, the finest tradition of the Watch is having a quiet smoke somewhere out of the wind at 3 a.m. Let's not get carried away, eh?' Colon looked crestfallen. 'Well–' He began. Vimes staggered to his feet and patted his sergeant on the back 'Oh, all right, it's a tradition,' he conceded. 'You can do the next one, Fred. And now,' he steadied himself as he stood up, 'I'm going down to the Yard to write my report.' 'You're covered in ash and you're swaying,' said Carrot. 'I should just get on home, sir.' 'Oh no,' said Vimes. 'Got to do the paperwork. Anyone know the time?' 'Bingeley–bingeley beep!' said a cheerful voice from his pocket. 'Damn!' said Vimes, but it was too late. 'It is,' said the voice, which had the squeaky friendly quality that begs to be strangled, 'about... nineish.' 'Nineish?' 'Yep. Nineish. Precisely about nineish.' Vimes rolled his eyes. 'Precisely about nineish?' he said, pulling a small box out of his pocket and opening the lid. The demon inside gave him an angry look. 'Yesterday you said,' it said, 'that if I, and I quote, Didn't Stop all that Eight Fifty–Six and Six Seconds Precisely business I Would Be Looking at a Hammer From Below. And when I said, Mr Insert Name Here, that this would invalidate my warranty, you said that I could take my warranty and–' 'I thought you'd lost that thing,' said Carrot. 'Hah,' said the Dis–organizer, 'really? You thought he did? I don't call putting something in your trouser pockets just before they go into the wash losing it.' 'That was an accident,' muttered Vimes. 'Oh? Oh? And dropping me in the dragon's feeding bowl, that was accidental too, was it?' The demon mumbled to itself for a moment and then said, 'Anyway, do you want to know your appointments for this evening?' Vimes looked at the smouldering wreckage of the embassy. 'Do tell,' he said. 'You don't have any,' said the demon sulkily. 'You haven't told me any.' 'You see?' said Vimes. 'That's what drives me lived! Why should I have to tell you? Why didn't you tell me, ' 'Eightish: break up riot at Mundane Meals and stop Detritus shooting people," eh?' 'You didn't tell me to tell you!' 'I didn't know! And that's how real life works! How can I tell you to warn me about things that no–one knows are going to happen? If you were any good, that'd be your job!' 'He writes in the manual,' said the demon nastily. 'Did you know that, everybody? He writes in the manual.' 'Well, of course I make notes–' 'He's actually sneakily trying to keep his diary in the manual so his wife won't find out he's never bothered to learn how to use me,' said the demon. 'What about the Vimes manual, then?' snapped Vimes. 'I notice you've never bothered to learn how to use me!' The demon hesitated. 'Humans come with a manual?' it said. 'It'd be a damn good idea!' said Vimes. 'True,' murmured Angua. 'It could say things like "Chapter One: Bingeley–bingeley beep and other damn fool things to spring on people at six in the morning," ' said Vimes, his eyes wild. 'And "Toubleshooting: my owner keeps trying to drop me in the privy, what am I doing wrong?" And–' Carrot patted him gently on the back. 'I should sign off now, sir,' he said gently. 'It's been a busy few days.' Vimes rubbed his forehead. 'I daresay I could do with a rest,' he said. 'Come on, there's nothing more to see here. Let's go home.' 'I thought you said you weren't going––' Carrot began, but Vimes's mind was already scolding him. 'I meant the Yard, of course,' he said. 'I'll go home afterwards.'   A ball of lamplight floated through the Ramkin library, drifting across the shelves of huge, leatherbound books. Many of them had never been read, Sybil knew. Various ancestors had simply ordered them from the engravers and put them on the shelves, because a library was something you had to have, don'tcherknow, like a stableyard and a servants' wing and some ghastly landscaping mistake created by 'Bloody Stupid' Johnson, although in the latter case her grandfather had shot the man before he could do any real damage. She held the lamp higher. Ramkins looked down their noses at her from their frames, through the brown varnish of the centuries. Portraits were another thing that had been collected out of unregarded habit. Most of them were of men. They were invariably in armour and always on horseback. And every single one of them had fought the sworn enemies of AnkhMorpork. In recent times this had been quite difficult and her grandfather, for example, had to lead an expedition all the way to Howondaland in order to find some sworn enemies, although there was an adequate supply and a lot of swearing by the time he left. Earlier, of course, it had been a lot easier. Ramkin regiments had fought the city's enemies all over the Sto Plains and had inflicted heroic casualties, quite often on people in the opposing armies.[8] There were a few women among the sitters, none of them holding anything heavier than a glove or a small pet dragon. Their job had largely been to roll bandages and await the return of their husbands with, she liked to think, resolution and fortitude and a general hope that said husbands would return with as many of their bits as possible. The point was, though, that they never thought about it. There was a war, and off they went. If there wasn't a war, they looked for one. They didn't even use words like 'duty'. It was all built in at bone level. She sighed. It was all so difficult these days, and Lady Sybil came from a class that was not used to difficulty, or at least the kind that couldn't be sorted out by shouting at a servant. Five hundred years ago one of her ancestors had cut off a Klatchian's head in baffle and had brought it home on a pole, and no–one thought any the worse of him, given what the Klatchians would have cut off if they'd caught him. That seemed straightforward. You fought them, they fought you, everyone knew the rules, and if you got your head cut off you jolly well didn't blub about it afterwards. Certainly, things were better now. But they were just... more difficult. And of course some of those antique husbands were away for months or years at a time, and for them wives and families were pretty much like the library and stableyard and the Johnson Exploding Pagoda. You got them sorted out and then didn't think much about it. At least Sam was home every day. Well, most days. Every night, anyway. Well... part of most nights, certainly. At least they ate meals together. Well, most meals. Well, at least they made a start on most meals. Well, at least she knew he was never very far away, just somewhere where he was trying to do too much and run too fast and people were trying to kill him. All in all, she considered, she was jolly lucky.   Vimes stared at Carrot, who was standing in front of his desk. 'So what does all that add up to?' he said. 'The man we know didn't get the Prince is dead. The man who probably did... is dead. Someone tried very clumsily to make it look as if Ossie was paid by the Klatchians. OK, I can see why someone might want to do that. That's what Fred calls politics. They get Snowy to do the real business, and he helps poor dumb Ossie who's there to take the fall, and then the Watch proves that Ossie was in the pay of the Klatchians and that's another reason for fighting. And Snowy just slopes off. Only someone cured his dandruff for him.' 'After he'd written something, sir,' said Carrot. 'Ah... yes.' Vimes looked at the notepad retrieved from Snowy's room. It was a crude affair, the wads of mismatched bits of scrap that the engravers sold off cheaply. He sniffed at it. 'Soap on the edges,' he said. 'His new shampoo,' said Carrot. 'First time he'd used it.' 'How do you know?' 'We looked at all the bottles on the heap, sir.' 'Hmm. Looks like fresh blood here, at the spine, where they're stitched together.. 'His, sir,' said Angua. Vimes nodded. You never argued with Angua about blood. 'But none of the actual pages have blood on them... said Vimes. 'Which is a bit odd. Messy business, decapitation. People tend to... spray. So the top page–' '–has been taken away, sir,' said Carrot, grinning and nodding. 'But that's not the funny part, sir. See if you can guess, sir!' Vimes glared at him and then moved the lamp closer. 'Very faint impression of writing on. the top page...' he muttered. 'Can't make it out...' 'We can't either, sir. We know he wrote in pencil, sir. There was one on the table.' 'Very faint traces,' said Vimes. 'Blokes like Snowy write as though they're chipping stone.' He flicked the notebook. 'Someone tore out... not just the page he'd written on but several below it as well.' 'Clever, eh, sir? Everyone knows–' '–you can read the suspicious note by looking at the marks on the page below,' said Vimes. He tossed the book on to the table again. 'Hmm. There's a message there, yes...' 'Perhaps he was blackmailing whoever's behind all this?' said Angua. 'That's not his style,' said Vimes. 'No, what I meant was––' There was a knock on the door, and Fred Colon entered. 'Brung you a mug of coffee,' he said, 'and there's a bunch of wo– Klatchians to see you downstairs, Mr Vimes. Probably come to give you a medal and gabble at you in their lingo. And if you're on for late supper, Mrs Goriffs doing goat and rice and foreign gravy.' 'I suppose I'd better go down and see them,' said Vimes. 'But I haven't even had time for a wash–' 'That's evidence of your heroic endeavours,' said Colon stoutly. 'Oh, all right.' Unease began about halfway down the stairs. Vimes had never run into a group of citizens wishing to give him a medal and so he did not have a lot of experience on this score, but the group waiting for him in a tight cluster near the sergeant's desk did not look like a committee of welcome. They were Klatchian. At least, they were wearing foreign-looking clothes and one or two of them had caught more sun than you generally got in Ankh-Morpork. The feeling crept over Vimes that Klatch was a very big place in which his city and the whole of the Sto Plains would be lost, and so there must be room in it for all kinds of peoples, including this short chap in the red fez who was practically vibrating with indignation. 'Are you the man Vimes?' the enfezzed one demanded. 'Well, I'm Commander Vimes–' 'We demand the release of the Goriff family! And we won't take any excuses!' Vimes blinked. 'Release?' 'You have locked them up! And confiscated their shop!' Vimes stared at the man, and then he looked across the room at Sergeant Detritus. 'Where did you put the family, sergeant?' Detritus saluted. 'In der cells, sir.' 'Aha!' said the man in the fez. 'You admit it!' 'Excuse me, who are you?' said Vimes, blinking with tiredness. 'I don't have to tell you and you can't beat it out of me!' said the man, sticking out his chest. 'Oh, thank you for telling me,' said Vimes. 'I do hate wasted effort.' 'Oh, hello, Mr Wazir,' said Carrot, appearing behind Vimes. 'Did you get the note about that book?' There was one of those silences that happen when everyone has to reprogramme their faces. Then Vimes said, 'What?' 'Mr Wazir sells books in Widdy Street,' said Carrot. 'Only I asked him for some books on Klatch, you see, and one of the ones he gave me was The Perfumed Allotment, or, The Garden of Delights. And I didn't mind because the Klatchians invented gardens, sir, so I thought it might be a very useful cultural insight. Get inside the Klatchian mind, as it were. Only it, er, it... er... well, it wasn't about gardening... er...' He started to blush. 'Yes, yes, all right, bring it back if you like,' said Mr Wazir, looking a little derailed. 'I just thought you ought to know in case you hadn't... in case you sold... well... it could shock the impressionable, you know, a book like that...' 'Yes, fine–' 'Corporal Angua was so shocked she couldn't stop laughing.' Carrot went on. I will have your money sent round directly,' said Wazir. His expression turned vengeful again. He glared at Vimes. 'Books are unimportant at this time! We demand you release my countrymen now!' 'Detritus, why the hell did you put them in the cells?' said Vimes wearily. 'What else we got, sir? Dey're not locked in and dey got dean blankets.' 'There's your explanation,' said Vimes. 'They're our guests.' 'In the cells!' said Wazir, relishing the word. 'They're free to go whenever they like,' said Vimes. 'I'm sure they are now,' said Wazir, contriving to indicate that only his arrival had prevented officially sanctioned bloodshed. 'You can be sure the Patrician will hear about this!' 'He hears about everything else,' said Vimes. 'But if they leave here, who is going to protect them?' 'We are! Their fellow countrymen!' 'How?' Wazir almost stood to attention. 'By force of arms, if necessary.' 'Oh, good,' said Vimes. 'Then there'll be two mobs–' 'Bingeley–bingeley beep!' 'Damn!' Vimes slapped at his pocket. 'I don't want to know I haven't got any appointments!' 'You have one at eleven pee em. The Rats Chamber, at the palace,' said the Dis–organizer. 'Don't be stupid!' 'Please yourself.' 'And shut up.' 'I was just trying to help.' 'Shut up.' Vimes turned back to the Klatchian bookseller. 'Mr Wazir, if Goriff wants to leave with you, we won't stop him–' 'Aha! You may well try!' Vimes told himself that there was no reason at all why a Klatchian couldn't be a pompous little troublemaker. But he felt uneasy about it, like a man edging along the side of a very deep crevasse. 'Sergeant Colon?' 'Yessir?' 'See to this, will you?' 'Yessir!' 'Diplomatically.' 'Right, sir!' Colon tapped the side of his nose. 'Is this politics, sir?' 'Just... just go and fetch the Goriff family and they can...' Vimes waved a hand vaguely. 'They can do whatever they like.' He turned and walked up the stairs. 'Someone has to protect my people's rights!' shouted Wazir. They heard Vimes stop halfway up the stairs. The board creaked under his weight for a second. Then he continued upwards, and several of the watchmen started breathing again. Vimes shut his office door behind him. Politics! He sat down and scrabbled through the papers. It was much easier to think about crime. Give him good honest–crime any time. He tried to shut out the outside world. Someone had beheaded Snowy Slopes. That was a fact. You couldn't put it down to a shaving accident, or unreasonably strong shampoo. And Snowy had attempted to shoot the Prince. And so had Ossie, but Ossie only thought he was an assassin. Everyone else thought he was a weird little twerp who was as impressionable as wet clay. A lovely idea, though. You used a real murderer, a nice quite professional, and then you had – Vimes smiled grimly – someone else to take the fall. And if he hadn't taken a less metaphorical fall the poor twisted little sod would have believed he was the murderer. And the Watch was supposed to believe it was a Klatchian plot. Sand in their sandals... The nerve of it! Did they think he was stupid? He wished Fred had carefully swept up the sand, because he was damn well going to find out who'd put it there and they were going to eat it. Someone wanted Vimes to chase Klatchians. The man on the burning roof. Did he fit in? Did he have to fit in? What could Vimes recall? A man in a robe, his face hidden. And a voice of a man not just used to giving commands – Vimes was used to giving commands – but also used to having commands obeyed, whereas a member of the Watch treated orders as suggestions. But some things didn't have to fit. That was where 'clues' let you down. And the damn notebook. That was the oddest thing yet. So someone had carefully ripped out several pages after Snowy had written whatever he'd written. Someone bright enough to know the trick of looking at the pages underneath for faint impressions. So why not pinch the whole pad? It was all too complicated. But somewhere was the one thing that'd make it simple, that would turn it all into sense– He flung down his pencil and wrenched open the door to the stairs. 'What the hells all this noise?' he yelled. 'Sergeant Colon was halfway up the stairs. 'It was Mr Goriff and Mr Wazir having a bit of what you might call an argy–bargy, sir. Someone set fire to someone else's country two hundred years ago, Carrot says.' 'What, just now?' ' 's all Klatchian to me, sir. Anyway, Wazir's gone off with his nose in a sling.' 'Wazir comes from Smale, you see,' said Carrot. 'And Mr Goriff comes from Elharib, and the two countries only stopped fighting ten years ago. Religious differences.' 'Run out of weapons?' said Vimes. 'Ran out of rocks, sir. They ran out of weapons last century.' Vimes shook his head. 'That always chews me up,' he said. 'People killing one another just because their gods have squabbled–' 'Oh, they've got the same god, sir. Apparently it's over a word in their holy book, sir. The Elharibians say it translates as "god" and the Smalies say it's ''man".' 'How can you mix them up?' 'Well, there's only one tiny dot difference in the script, you see. And some people reckon it's only a bit of fly dirt m any case.' 'Centuries of war because a fly crapped in the wrong place?' 'It could have been worse,' said Carrot. 'If it had been slightly to the left the word would have been "liquorice".' Vimes shook his head. Carrot was good at picking up this sort of thing. And I know how to ask for vindaloo, he thought. And it turns out that's just a Klatchian word meaning 'mouth–scalding gristle for macho foreign idiots'. 'I wish we understood more about Klatch,' he said. 'Sergeant Colon tapped the side of his nose conspiratorially. 'Know the enemy, eh, sir?' he said. 'Oh, I know the enemy,' said Vimes. 'It's Klatchians I want to find out about.' 'Commander Vimes?' The watchmen looked round. Vimes narrowed his eyes. 'You're one of Rust's men, aren't you?' The young man saluted. 'Lieutenant Hornett, sir.' He hesitated. 'Er... his lordship has sent me to ask you if you and your senior officers would be so good as to come to the palace at your convenience, sir.' 'Really? Those were his words?' The lieutenant decided that honesty was the only policy. 'In fact he said, "Get Vimes and his mob up here right now," sir.' 'Oh, did he?' said Vimes. 'Bingeley–bingeley beep!' said a small triumphant voice from his pocket. 'The time is eleven pee em precisely!'   The door opened before Nobby knocked, and a small stout woman glared out at him. 'Yes, I am!' she snapped. Nobby stood with his hand still raised. 'Er... are you Mrs Cake?' he said. 'Yes, but I don't hold with doing it except for money. Nobby's hand did not move. 'Er... you can tell the future, right?' said Nobby. They stared at one another. Then Mrs Cake thumped her own ear a couple of times, and blinked. 'Drat! Left my precognition on again.' Her gaze unfocused for a moment as she replayed the recent conversation in the privacy of her head. 'I think we're sorted out,' she said. She looked at Nobby and sniffed. 'You'd better come in. Mind the carpet, it's just been washed. And I can only give you ten minutes 'cos I've got cabbage boilin'.' She led Corporal Nobbs into her tiny front room. A lot of it was occupied by a round table covered with a green cloth. There was a crystal ball on the table, not very well covered by a pink knitted lady in a crinoline dress. Mrs Cake motioned Nobby to sit down. He obediently did so. The smell of cabbage drifted through the room. 'A bloke in the pub told me about you,' Nobby mumbled. 'Said you do mediuming.' 'Would you care to tell me your problem?' said Mrs Cake. She looked at Nobby again and, in a state of certainty that had nothing to do with precognition and everything to do with observation, added: 'That is, which of your problems do you want to know about?' Nobby coughed. 'Er... it's a bit... you know... intimate. Affairs of the heart, sort of thing.' 'Are women involved?' said Mrs Cake cautiously. 'Er... I hope so. What else is there?' Mrs Cake visibly relaxed. 'I just want to know if I'm going to meet any,' Nobby went on. 'I see.' Mrs Cake gave a kind of facial shrug. It wasn't up to her to tell people how to waste their money. 'Well, there's the tenpenny future. That's what you see. And there's the ten–dollar future. That's what you get.' 'Ten dollars? That's more'n a weeks pay! I'd better take the tenpenny one.' 'A very wise choice,' said Mrs Cake. 'Give me your paw.' 'Hand,' said Nobby. 'That's what I said.' Mrs Cake examined Nobby's outstretched palm while taking care not to touch it. 'Are you going to moan and roll your eyes and stuff?' said Nobby, a man out to get his tenpenn'orth. 'I don't have to take cheek,' said Mrs Cake, without looking up. 'That sort of––' She peered closer, and then gave Nobby a sharp look. 'Have you been playing with this hand?' 'Pardon?' Mrs Cake whipped the crinoline lady off the crystal and glared into the depths. After a while she shook her head. 'I don't know, I'm sure... oh, well.' She cleared her throat and spoke in a more sibyllic voice. 'Mr Nobbs, I see you surrounded by dusky ladies in a hot place. Looks a bit foreign to me. They're laughing and chatting with you... in fact, one of them's just handed you a drink...' 'None of 'ern are shouting or anything?' said Nobby, mystified. 'Doesn't look like it,' said Mrs Cake, equally fascinated. 'They seem quite happy.' 'You can't see any... magnets?' 'What're they?' 'Dunno,' Nobby admitted. 'I 'spect you'd know 'em if you saw 'em.' Mrs Cake, despite a certain rigidity of character, couldn't help but be aware of a drift in Nobby's  speculation. 'Some of the ladies look... nubile,' she hinted. 'Ah, right,' said Nobby, his expression not changing in any way. 'If you understand what I mean...' 'Right. Yes. Nubile. Right.' Mrs Cake gave up. Nobby counted out ten pennies. 'And that'll be soon, will it?' said Nobby. 'Oh yes. I can't see very far for tenpence.' 'Happy young ladies...' mused Nobby. 'Nubile, too. Definitely something to think about.' After he'd gone, Mrs Cake went back to her crystal and sneaked a whole ten dollars' worth of precognition for her own curiosity and satisfaction, and laughed about it all afternoon.   Vimes was only half surprised when the doors to the Rats Chamber opened and there, sitting at the head of the table, was Lord Rust. The Patrician wasn't there. He was half surprised. That is, at a certain shallow level he thought, that's odd, I thought you couldn't budge the man with a siege weapon. But at a dark level, where the daylight seldom penetrated, he thought: of course. At a time like this men like Rust rise to the top. It's like stirring a swamp with a stick. Really big bubbles are suddenly on the surface and there's a bad smell about everything. Nevertheless, he saluted and said: 'Lord Vetinari on his holidays, then?' 'Lord Vetinari stepped down this evening, Vimes,' said Lord Rust. 'Pro tem, of course. Just for the duration of the emergency.' 'Really?' said Vimes. 'Yes. And I have to say that he anticipated a certain... cynicism on your part, commander, and therefore asked me to give you this letter. You will see that it is sealed with his seal.' Vimes looked at the envelope. There was certainly the official seal in the wax, but– He met Lord Rust's gaze and at least that suspicion faded. Rust wouldn't try a trick like that. Men like Rust had a moral code of sorts, and some things weren't honourable. You could own a street of crowded houses where people lived like cockroaches and the cockroaches lived like kings and that was perfectly OK, but Rust would probably die before he'd descend to forgery. 'I see, sir,' said Vimes. 'You wanted me?' 'Commander Vimes, I must ask you to take the Klatchians resident in the city into custody.' 'On what charge, sir?' 'Commander, we are on the verge of war with Klatch. Surely you understand?' 'No, sir.' 'We are talking about spying, commander. Sabotage, even,' said Lord Rust. 'To be frank... the city is to be placed under martial law.' 'Yessir? What kind of law's that, sir?' said Vimes, staring straight ahead. 'You know very well, Vimes.' 'Is it the kind where you shout "Stop!" before you fire, sir, or the other kind?' 'Ah. I see.' Rust stood up and leaned forward. 'It pleased you to be... smart with Lord Vetinari, and for some reason he indulged you,' he said. 'I, on the other hand, know your type.' 'My type?' 'It seems to me that the streets are full of crimes, commander. Unlicensed begging, public nuisances... but you seem to turn a blind eye, you seem to think you should have bigger ideas. But you are not required to have big ideas, commander. You are a thief–taker, nothing more. Are you eyeballing me, Vimes?' 'I was trying not to turn a blind eye, sir.' 'You seem to feel, Vimes, that the law is some kind of big glowing light in the sky which is not subject to control. And you are wrong. The law is what we tell it to be. Im not going to add "Do you understand?" because I know you understand and I am not going to try to reason with you. I know a rank bad hat when I see one. ' 'Bad hat?' said Vimes weakly. 'Commander Vimes,' he said, 'I had hoped to avoid this, but the last few days point to a succession of astonishing judgemental errors on your part The Prince Khufurah was shot, and you seemed helpless to prevent this or find the criminal responsible. Mobs appear to run around the city unimpeded, I gather that one of your sergeants proposed to shoot innocent people in the head, and we have just heard that you took it upon yourself to arrest an innocent businessman and lock him in the cells for no reason at all.' Vimes heard Colon gasp. But it sounded a long way off. He could feel everything crumbling under but his mind seemed to be flying now, flapping through a pink sky where nothing mattered very much. 'Oh, I don't know about that, sir,' he said. 'He was guilty of repeatedly being Klatchian, wasn't he? Don't you want me to do that to all of 'em?' 'And if this was not enough,' Rust went on, 'we are told, and in other circumstances I would find this very hard to believe, even of a counter–jumper like you, that earlier tonight you, being quite unprovoked, assaulted two Klatchian guards, trespassed on Klatchian soil, entered the women's quarters, abducted two Klatchians from their beds, ordered the destruction of Klatchian property and... well, frankly, acted quite disgracefully.' What is the point of arguing? Vimes thought. Why play cards with a shaved deck? And yet 'Two Klatchians, sir?' 'It seems Prince Khufurah has been kidnapped, Vimes. I find it hard to believe that even you would attempt that, but the Klatchians seem to be suggesting this. You were seen entering their property illegally. And you appear to have dragged a helpless lady from her bed. What have you got to say about that?' 'It was on fire at the time, sir.' Lieutenant Hornett stepped forward and whispered something. Lord Rust subsided a bit. 'All right. Very well. There were perhaps mitigating circumstances, but politically it was a most ill–advised action, Vimes. I cannot pretend to know what has happened to the Prince, but frankly you seem to have taken a positive delight in making matters worse.' Can you climb, Mr Vimes? Vimes said nothing. The other man had been carrying something bulky over his shoulder... 'You are removed from authority, commander. And the Watch will come under the direct command of this council. Is that understood?' Rust turned to Carrot. 'Captain Carrot, many of us here have heard... good reports about you, and by due authority I hereby appoint you acting Commander of the Watch–' Vimes shut his eyes. Carrot saluted smartly. 'No! Sir!' Vimes opened his eyes wide. 'Really?' Rust stared at Carrot for a few moments, and then gave a little shrug. 'Ah, well... loyalty is a fine thing. Sergeant Colon?' ‘Sir!' 'In the circumstances, and since you are the most experienced non–commissioned officer and have an exemp– and have a military record, you will take command of the Watch for the duration of the... emergency. ' 'Nossir!' 'That was an instruction, sergeant.' Beads of sweat began to form on Colon's brow. 'Nossir!' 'Sergeant!' 'You can put it where the sun does not shine, sir!' said Colon desperately. Once again, Vimes saw Rust's milky–blue stare. Rust never looked surprised. And since he knew that a mere sergeant would never dare offer cheeky defiance, he erased Sergeant Colon from the immediate universe. The gaze turned briefly to Detritus. And he doesn't know how to speak to a troll, Vimes thought. And he was once again impressed, in the same dark way, by the manner in which Rust dealt with the problem. He dealt with it by making it not be there. 'Who is the senior corporal in the Watch, Sir Samuel?' 'That would be Corporal Nobbs.' The committee went into a huddle. There was a rush of whispering, in which the words'–an absolute little tit –' could be heard several times. Finally Rust looked up again. 'And the next in seniority?' 'Let me see... that would be Corporal Stronginthearm,' said Vimes. He felt oddly light–headed. 'Perhaps he is a man who can take orders.' 'He's a dwarf, you idiot!' Not a muscle moved on Rust's face. There was a clink as Vimes's badge was set neatly on the table. 'I don't have to take this,' Vimes said calmly. 'Oh, so you'd rather be a civilian, would you?' 'A watchman is a civilian, you inbred streak of piss!' Rust's brain erased the sounds that his ears could not possibly have heard. 'And the keys to the armoury, Sir Samuel,' he said. They jangled as they landed on the table. 'And do the rest of you have any empty gestures to make?' said Lord Rust. Sergeant Colon took his grimy badge out of his pocket and was a little disappointed that it didn't make a defiant tinkle when he threw it on the table but instead bounced and smashed the water jug. 'I got my badge carved on my arm,' Detritus rumbled. 'Someone c'n try an' take it off if dey likes.' Carrot laid his badge down very carefully. Rust raised his eyebrows. 'You too, captain?' 'Yes, sir.' 'I would have thought that you at least–' He stopped and looked up in annoyance as the doors opened. A couple of the palace guards ran in, with a group of Klatchians behind them. The council got to their feet in a hurry. Vimes recognized the Klatchian in the centre of the group. He'd seen him around at official functions and, if it hadn't been for the fact that the man was a Klatchian, would have marked him down as a shifty piece of work. 'Who's he?' he whispered to Carrot. 'Prince Kalif. He's the deputy ambassador.' 'Another prince?' The man came to a halt in front of the table, glanced at Vimes with no show of recognition and bowed to Lord Rust. 'Prince Kalif,' said Lord Rust. 'Your arrival is unannounced but nevertheless–' 'I have grave news, my lord.' Even in his stunned state, a part of Vimes registered that the voice was different. Khufurah had learned his second language on the street, but this one had had tutors. 'At a time like this, what news isn't?' said Rust. 'There have been developments on the new land. Regrettable incidents. And indeed in Ankh–Morpork, too.' He glanced at Vimes again. 'Although here, I must say, reports are confused. Lord Rust, I have to tell you we are, technically, at war.' 'Technically at war?' said Vimes. 'I am afraid events are carrying us forward,' said Kalif. 'The situation is delicate.' They know they're going to fight, Vimes thought. This is just like the start of a dance, where you hang around looking at your partner... 'I must tell you that you are being given twelve hours to remove all your citizens from Leshp,' said Kalif. 'If that is done, matters will be happily resolved. For the present.' 'Our response is that you have twelve hours to quit Leshp,' said Rust. 'If that is not done, then we will take... steps...' Kalif bowed slightly. 'We understand one another. A formal document will be with you shortly and, no doubt, we will be receiving one from you.' 'Indeed.' 'Here, hang on, you can't just–' Vimes began. 'Sir Samuel, you are no longer Commander of the Watch and you have no place at these proceedings,' said Rust sharply. He turned back to the Prince. 'It is unfortunate that things have come to this,' he said stiffly. 'Indeed. But there comes a time when words are no longer sufficient.' 'I must agree with you. And then it is time to test one's strength.' Vimes stared in fascinated horror from one face to the other. 'We will, of course, allow you time to quit your embassy. Such of it as remains.' 'So kind. And of course we will extend to you the same courtesy.' Kalif bowed slightly. So did Rust. 'After all, just because our countries are at war is no reason why we should not respect one another as friends,' said Lord Rust. 'What? Yes, it bloody well is!' said Vimes. 'I can't believe this! You can't just stand there and... good grief, whatever happened to diplomacy?' 'War, Vimes, is a continuation of diplomacy by other means,' said Lord Rust. 'As you would know, if you were really a gentleman.' 'And you Klatchians are as bad,' Vimes went on. 'It's that green mouldy mutton Jenkins sells. You've all got Foaming Sheep Disease. You can't just stand there and–' 'Sir Samuel, you are, as you are at pains to point out, a civilian,' said Rust. 'As such, you have no place here!' Vimes didn't bother with a salute but just turned away and walked out of the room. The rest of the squad followed him in silence back to Pseudopolis Yard. 'I told him he could put it where the sun didn't shine,' said Sergeant Colon, as they crossed the Brass Bridge. 'That's right,' said Vimes woodenly. 'Well done.' 'Right to his face. "Where the sun don't shine." Just like that,' said Colon. It was a little difficult to tell from his tone whether this was a matter of pride or dread. 'I'm afraid Lord Rust is technically correct, sir.' said Carrot. 'Really.' 'Yes, Mr Vimes. The safety of the city is of paramount importance, so in times of war the civil power is subject to military authority.' 'Hah.' 'I told him,' said Fred Colon. 'Right where the sun does not shine, I said.' 'The deputy ambassador didn't mention Prince Khufurah,' said Carrot. 'That was odd.' 'I'm going home,' said Vimes. 'We're nearly there, sir.' said Carrot. 'I mean home home. I need some sleep.' 'Yes, sir. What shall I tell the lads, sir?' 'Tell them anything you like.' 'I looked him right in the eye and I told him, I said, you can put it right where the–' mused Sergeant Colon. 'You want me an' some of der boys go and sort out dat Rust later on?' said Detritus. 'It no problem. He bound to be guilty o' somethin'.' 'No!' Vimes's head felt so fight now that he couldn't touch the ground with a rope. He left them outside the Yard and let his head drag him on and up the hill and round the corner and into the house and past his astonished wife and up the stairs and into the bedroom, where he fell full length on the bed and was asleep before he hit it.   At nine next morning the first recruits for Lord Venturi's Heavy Infantry paraded down Broadway. The watchmen went out to watch. That was all that was left for them to do. 'Isn't that Mr Vimes's butler?' said Angua, pointing to the stiff figure of Willikins in the front rank. 'Yeah, and that's his kitchen boy banging the drum in front,' said Nobby. 'You were a... military man, weren't you, Fred?' said Carrot, as the parade passed by. 'Yes, sir. Duke of Eorle's First Heavy Infantry, sir, The Pheasant Pluckers.' 'Pardon?' said Angua. 'Nickname for the regiment, miss. Oh, from ages ago. They were bivvywhacking on some estate and came across a lot of pheasant pens and, well, you know, having to live off the land and everything... anyway, that's why we always wore a pheasant feather on our helmets. Traditional, see?' Already old Fred's face was creasing up in the soft expression of someone who has been mugged in Memory Lane. 'We even had a marching song,' he said. 'Mind you, it was quite hard to sing right. Er... sorry, miss?' 'Oh, it's all right, sergeant,' said Angua. 'I often start to laugh like that for no reason at all.' Fred Colon once again stared dreamily at nothing. 'And o'course before that I was in the Duke of Quirm's Middleweight Infantry. Saw a lot of action with them.' 'I'm sure you did,' said Carrot, while Angua entertained cynical thoughts about the actual distance of Fred's vantage point. 'Your distinguished military career has obviously given you many pleasant memories.' 'The ladies liked the uniform,' said Fred Colon, with the unspoken rider that sometimes a growing lad needed all the help he could get. 'An' it... weelll...' 'Yes, sarge?' Colon looked awkward, as if the bunched underwear of the past was tangling itself in the crotch of recollection. 'It was... more easier, sir. Than being a copper, I mean. I mean, you're a soldier, right, and the other buggers is the enemy. You march into some big field somewhere and all form up into them oblongs, and then a bloke with the feathery helmet gives the order, and you all forms up into big arrows–' 'Good gods, do people really do that? I thought it was just how they drew the battle plans!' 'Well, the old duke, sir, he did it by the book... anyway, it's just a case of watching your back and walloping any bloke in the wrong uniform. But...' Fred Colon's face screwed up in agonized thought, I well, when you're a copper, well, you dunno the good guys from the bad guys without a map, miss, and that's a fact.' 'But... there's military law, isn't there?' 'Well, yes... but when it's pissing with rain and you're up to your tonk– your waist in dead horses and someone gives you an order, that ain't the time to look up the book of rules, miss. Anyway, most of it's about when you're allowed to get shot, sir.' 'Oh, Im sure there's more to it than that, sergeant.' 'Oh, prob'ly, sir,' Colon conceded diplomatically. 'I'm sure there's lots of stuff about not killing enemy soldiers who've surrendered, for instance.' 'Oh, yerss, there's that, captain. Doesn't say you can't duff 'em up a bit, of course. Give 'em a little something to remember you by.' 'Not torture?' said Angua. 'Oh, no, miss. But...' Memory Lane for Colon had turned into a bad road through a dark valley '... well, when your best mate's got an arrow in his eye an' there's blokes and horses screamin' all round you and you're scared shi––you're really scared, an' you come across one of the enemy... well, for some reason or other you've got this kinda urge to give him a bit of a... nudge, sort of thing. Just... you know... like, maybe in twenty years' time his leg'll twinge a bit on frosty days and he'll remember what he done, that's all. He rummaged in a pocket and produced a very small book, which he held up for inspection. 'This belonged to my great–grandad,' he said. 'He was in the scrap we had against Pseudopolis and my great–gran gave him this book of prayers for soldiers, ,cos you need all the prayers you can get, believe you me, and he stuck it in the top pocket of his jerkin, 'cos he couldn't afford armour, and next day in battle whoosh, this arrow came out of nowhere, wham, straight into this book and it went all the way through to the last page before stopping, look. You can see the hole.' 'Pretty miraculous,' Carrot agreed. 'Yeah, it was, I s'pose,' said the sergeant. He looked ruefully at the battered volume. 'Shame about the other seventeen arrows, really.' The drumming died away. The remnant of the Watch tried to avoid one another's gaze. Then an imperious voice said, 'Why aren't you in uniform, young man?' Nobby turned. He was being addressed by an elderly lady with a certain turkey–like cast of feature and a capital punishment expression. 'Me? Got one, missus,' said Nobby, pointing to his battered helmet. 'A proper uniform,' snapped the woman, handing him a white feather. 'What will you be doing when the Klatchians are ravishing us in our beds?' She glared at the rest of the guards and swept on. Angua saw several others like her passing along the crowds of spectators. Here and there was a flash of white. 'I'll be thinking: those Klatchians are jolly brave,' said Carrot. 'I'm afraid, Nobby, that the white feather is to shame you into joining up.' 'Oh, that's all right, then,' said Nobby, a man for whom shame held no shame. 'What am I supposed to do with it?' 'That reminds me... did I tell you what I scud to Lord Rust?' said Sergeant Colon, nervously. 'Seventeen times so far,' said Angua, watching the women with the feathers. She added, apparently to herself, ' “Come back with your shield or on it.” ' 'I wonder if I can get the lady to give me any more?' said Nobby. 'What was that?' said Carrot. 'These feathers,' said Nobby. 'They look like real goose. I've got a use for a lot more of these–' 'I meant what was it that Angua said?' said Carrot. 'What? Oh... it's just something women used to say when they sent their men off to war. Come back with your shield, or on it.' 'On your shield?' said Nobby. 'You mean like... sledging, sort of thing?' 'Like dead,' said Angua. 'It meant come back a winner or not at all.' 'Well, I always came back with my shield,' said Nobby. 'No problem there.' 'Nobby,' sighed Colon, 'you used to come back with your shield, everyone else's shield, a sack of teeth and fifteen pairs of still–warm boots. On a cart.' 'We–ell, no point in going to war unless you're on the winning side,' said Nobby, sticking the white feather in his helmet. 'Nobby, you was always on the winning side, the reason bein', you used to lurk aroun' the edges to see who was winning and then pull the right uniform off'f some poor dead sod. I used to hear where the generals kept an eye on what you were wearin' so they'd know how the battle was going.' 'Lots of soldiers have served in lots of regiments,' said Nobby. 'Right, what you say is true. Only not usually during the same battle,' said Sergeant Colon. They trooped back into the Watch House. Most of the shift had taken the day off. After all, who was in charge? What were they supposed to be doing today? The only ones left were those who never thought of themselves as off duty, and the new recruits who hadn't had their keen edge blunted. 'I'm sure Mr Vimes'll think of something,' said Carrot. 'Look, I'd better take the Goriffs back to their shop. Mr Goriff says he's going to pack up and leave. A lot of Klatchians are leaving. You can't blame them, either.'   Dreams rising with him like bubbles, Vimes surfaced from the black fathoms of sleep. Normally, these days, he treasured the moment of waking. It was when solutions presented themselves. He assumed bits of his brain came out at night and worked on the problems of the previous day, handing him the result just as he opened his eyes. All that arrived now were memories. He winced. Another memory turned up. He groaned. The sound of his badge bouncing on the table replayed itself. He swore. He swung his legs off the covers and groped for the bedside table. 'Bingeley–bingeley beep!' 'Oh, no... All right, what's the time?' 'One o'clock pee em! Hello, Insert Name Here!' Vimes looked blearily at the Dis–organizer. One day, he knew, he really would have to try to understand the manual for the damn thing. Either that or drop it off a cliff.[9] 'What–' he began, and then groaned again. The twanging sound made by the unwound turban as it One of the universal rules of happiness is: always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual. took his weight had just come back to haunt him. 'Sam?' The bedroom door was pushed open and Sybil came in carrying a cup. 'Yes, dear?' 'How do you feel?' 'I've got bruises on my brui–' Another memory crawled up from the pit of guilt. 'Oh, good grief, did I really call him a long streak of–?' 'Yes,' said his wife. 'Fred Colon came round this morning and told me all about it. And a very good description, I'd say. I went out with Ronnie Rust once. Bit of a cold fish.' Another recollection burst like a ball of marsh gas in Vimes's head. 'Did Fred tell you where he said Rust could put his badge?' 'Yes. Three times. It seems to be weighing on his mind. Anyway, knowing Ronnie, he'd have to use a hammer.' Vimes had long ago got used to the fact that the aristocracy all seemed to know one another by their first name. 'And did Fred tell you anything else?' he said timidly. 'Yes. About the shop and the fire and everything. I'm proud of you.' She gave him a kiss. 'What do I do now?' he said. 'Drink your tea and have a wash and a shave.' 'I ought to go down to the Watch House and 'A shave! There's hot water in the jug.' When she had left he hauled himself upright and tottered into his bathroom. There was, indeed, a jug of hot water on the marble washstand. He looked at the face in the mirror. Unfortunately, it was his. Perhaps if he shaved it first... ? And then he could wash the bits that were left. Fragments of the night before kept on respectfully drawing themselves to his attention. lt was a shame about that guard, but sometimes you just coudln't stand and argue He shouldn't have done that with his badge. It wasn't like the old days. He had responsibilities. He should've stayed on and made things just a little less 'No. That never worked. He managed to get the lather on his face. The Riot Act! Good grief... He stopped his razor thoughtfully. Rust's milky eyes stared out of his memory. Bastard! Men like that thought, they really thought, that the Watch was a kind of sheepdog, to nip at the heels of the flock, bark when spoken to and never, ever, bite the shepherd... Oh yes. Vimes knew in his bones who the enemy was. Except No badge, no Watch, no job... Another memory arrived, late. Lather still dripping down his shirt, he pulled Vetinari's sealed letter out of his pocket and slit it open with the razor. There was a blank sheet of paper inside. Hie turned it over, and there was nothing on the other side either. Mystified, he glanced at the envelope. Sir Samuel Vimes, Knight. Nice of him to be so precise about it, Vimes thought. What was the point of a message with no message? Some people might absentmindedly have slipped the wrong piece of paper in an envelope, but Vetinari wouldn't. What was the point of sending him a note telling him he was a knight, for gods' sake, he knew that embarrassing fact well enough– Another little memory burst open as silently as a mouse passing wind in a hurricane. Who'd said it? Any gentleman Vimes stared. Well, he was a gentleman, wasn't he? It was official. And then he didn't shout, and he didn't run out of the room. He finished shaving, had a wash and put on a change of underwear, very calmly. Downstairs, Sybil had cooked him a meal. She wasn't a very good cook. This was fine by Vimes, because he wasn't a very good eater. After a lifetime of street meals his stomach wasn't set up right. What it craved was little crunchy brown bits, the food group of the gods, and Sybil reliably always left the pan too long on the dragon. She eyed him carefully as he chewed his fried egg and stared into the middle distance. Her manner was that of someone with a portable safety net watching a man on the high wire. After a while, while she watched him crack open a sausage, he said, 'Do we have any books on chivalry, dear?' 'Hundreds, Sam.' 'Is there any one which tells you what... you know, what it's all about? I mean, what you have to do if you're a knight, say? Responsibilities and so on?' 'Most of them, I should think.' 'Good. I think I shall do a little reading.' Vimes hit the bacon with his fork. It shattered very satisfactorily. Afterwards, he went into the library. Twenty minutes later, he came back out for a pencil and some paper. Ten minutes after that, Lady Sybil took him a cup of coffee. He was hidden behind a pile of books, and apparently deep in Life of Chivalrie. She crept out and went into her own study, where she settled down to update her dragon–breeding records. It was an hour later when she heard him step out into the hall. He was humming under his breath, tunelessly, with the faraway look of preoccupation that means that some Big Thought has required the shutting down of all non–essential processes. He was also re–radiating the field of angered innocence that was, to her, part of his essential Vimesness. 'Are you going out, Sam?' 'Yes. I'm just going to kick some arse, dear.' 'Oh, good. Just be sure you wrap up well, then.'   The Goriff family trudged along silently beside Carrot. 'I'm sorry about your shop, Mr Goriff,' he said. Goriff shifted the load he was carrying. 'We can start other shops,' he said. 'We']] certainly keep an eye on it,' said Carrot. 'And  when all this is over, you can come back.' 'Thank you.' His son said something in Klatchian. There was a brief family arguent. 'I appreciate your strength of feeling,' said Carrot, going red, 'although I must say I think your language was a little strong.' 'My son is sorry,' said Goriff automatically. 'He did not remember that you speak Kl–' 'No, I'm not! Why should we run away?' said the boy. 'We live here! I've never seen Klatch!' 'Oh, well, that will be something to look forward to,' said Carrot. 'I hear it has many fine––' 'Are you stupid?' said Janil. He shook himself free of his father's grasp and confronted Carrot. 'I don't care! I don't want all this stuff about the moon rising over the Mountains of the Sun! I get that at home all the time! I live here!' 'Now, you really ought to listen to your parents–' 'Why? My dad works all the time and now he's being pushed out! What good's that? We ought to stay here and defend what's ours!' 'Ah, well, you shouldn't take the law into your own hands––' 'Why not?' 'It's our job––' 'But you're not doing it!' There was a rattle of Klatchian from Mr Goriff. 'He says I've got to apologize,' said Janil sullenly. 'I'm sorry.' 'So am I,' said Carrot. The boy's father gave him that complicated shrug used by adults in a situation involving adolescents. 'You'll be back, I know it,' said Carrot. 'We shall see.' They went down the quay towards a waiting boat. It was a Klatchian ship. People lined the rails, people who were getting out with what they could carry before they could only get out with what they wore. The watchmen found themselves under hostile scrutiny. 'Surely Rust isn't already forcing Klatchians out of their homes?' said Angua. 'We can tell which way the wind is blowing,' said Goriff calmly. Carrot sniffed the salt air. 'It's blowing from Klatch,' he said. 'For you, perhaps,' said Goriff. A whip cracked behind them and they stood aside as several coaches rumbled by. A blind at the window was pulled aside momentarily. Carrot caught a brief glimpse of a face, all gold teeth and black beard, before the cloth twitched back. 'That's him, isn't it?' There was a faint grunt from Angua. She had her eyes closed, as she always did when she was letting her nose do the seeing.. . 'Cloves,' she murmured, and then grabbed Carrot's arm. 'Don't run after it! There's armed men on that ship! What will they think when they see a soldier running towards them?' 'I'm not a soldier!' 'How long do you think they'll spend working out the difference?' The coach pushed through the press of people on the dock. The crowd surged back around it. 'There's boxes being unloaded – I can't quite see . . said Carrot, shading his eyes. 'Look, I'm sure they'll understand if–' 71–hour Ahmed stepped out on to the dock and looked back towards the watchmen. There was a momentary sparkle as he grinned. They saw his hand reach over his shoulder and come back holding the curved sword. 'I can't just let him get away,' said Carrot. 'He's a suspect! Look, he's laughing at us!' 'With diplomatic impunity,' said Angua. 'But there's a lot of armed men down there.' 'My strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure,' said Carrot. 'Really? Well, there's eleven of them.' 71–hour Ahmed threw his sword in the air. It spun a couple of times, making a whum–whum noise, and then his hand shot out and caught it by the handle as it fell. 'That's what Mr Vimes was doing,' said Carrot, through gritted teeth. 'Now he's taunting us–' 'You will be killed if you go on the ship,' said Goriff behind him. 'I know that man.' 'You do? How?' 'He is feared in the whole of Klatch. That is 71–hour Ahmed!' 'Yes, why is–' 'You haven't heard of him? And he is a D'reg!' Mrs Goriff pulled at her husband's arm. 'D'reg?' said Angua. 'A warlike desert tribe,' said Carrot. 'Very fierce. Honourable, though. They say that if a D'reg is your friend he's your friend for the rest of your life.' 'And if he's not your friend?' 'That's about five seconds.' He drew his sword. 'Nevertheless,' he added, 'we can't let––' 'I have said too much. We must go,' said Goriff. The family picked up their bundles. 'Look, there might be another way to find out about him,' said Angua. She pointed at the carriage. A couple of lean, long–haired and extremely graceful dogs had been let out and were straining at their leashes as they led the way up the gangplank. 'Klatchistan hunting dogs,' she said. 'The Klatchian nobility are very keen on them, I understand.' 'They look a bit like–' Carrot began, and then the penny dropped. 'No, I can't let you go on there by yourself,' he said. 'Something would go wrong.' 'I stand a much better chance than you would, believe me,' said Angua quickly. 'They won't be leaving until the tide changes, in any case.' 'It's too dangerous.' 'Well, they are supposed to be our enemies.' 'I meant for you!' 'Why?' said Angua. 'I've never heard of werewolves in Klatch, so they probably don't know how to deal with us.' She undid the little leather collar that held her badge and handed it to Carrot. 'Don't worry,' she said. 'If the worst comes to the worst, I'll dive overboard.' 'Into the river?' 'Even the river Ankh can't kill a werewolf.' Angua glanced at the turgid water. 'Probably, anyway.'   Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobbs had gone on patrol. They weren't sure why they were patrolling, and what they were supposed to do if they saw a crime, although many years of training had enabled them not to see some quite large crimes. But they were creatures of habit. They were watchmen, so they patrolled. They didn't patrol with a purpose. They patrolled, as it were, in pure essence. Nobby's progress wasn't helped by the large, leatherbound book in his arms. 'A war'd do this place good,' said Sergeant Colon, after a while. 'Put some backbone in people. Everything's gone all to pot these days.' 'Not like when we were kids, sarge. 'Not like when we were kids indeed, Nobby.' 'People trusted one another in them days, didn't they, sarge?' 'People trusted one another, Nobby.' 'Yes, sarge. I know. And people didn't have to lock their doors, did they?' 'That's right, Nobby. And people were always ready to help. They were always in and out of one another's houses.'  'sright, sarge,' said Nobby vehemently. 'I know no-one ever locked their houses down our street.' 'That's what I'm talking about. That's my point.' 'It was 'cos the bastards even used to steal the locks.' Colon considered the truth of this. 'Yes, but at least it was each other's stuff they were nicking, Nobby. It's not like they was foreigners.' 'Right.' They strolled on for a while, each entangled in his own thoughts. 'Sarge?' 'Yes, Nobby?' 'Where's Nubilia?' 'Nubilia?' 'It's got to be a place, I reckon. Pretty warm there, I think?' 'Ah, Nubilia,' said Colon. He invented desperately. 'Right. Yes. It's one of them Klatchian places. Yeah. Got lots of sand. And mountains. Exports dates. Why'd you want to know?' 'Oh... no reason.' 'Nobby?' 'Yes, sarge?' 'Why are you carrying that huge book?' 'Hah, clever idea, sarge. I saw what you said about that book of your great–grandad, so if there's any fighting I got this one off'f Washpot. It's The Book of Om. Five inches thick.' 'It's a bit big for a pocket, Nobby. It's a bit big for a cart, to be honest.' 'I thought I could make sort of braces to carry it. I reckon even a longbow could only get an arrow as far as the Apocrypha.' A familiar creak made them look up. A Klatchian's head was swinging in the breeze. 'Fancy a pint?' said Sergeant Colon. 'Big Anjie brews up some that's a treat.' 'Better not, sarge. Mr Vimes is in a bit of a mood.' Colon sighed. 'You're right.' Nobby looked up at the head again– It was wooden. It had been repainted many times over the centuries. The Klatchian was smiling very happily for someone who'd never have to buy a shirt ever again. 'The Klatchian's Head. My grandad said his granddad remembered when it was still the real one,' Colon said. 'Of course, it was about the size of a walnut by then.' 'Bit... nasty, sticking up a bloke's head for a pub sign,' said Nobby. 'No, Nobby. Spoils of war, right? Some bloke came back from one of the wars with a souvenir, stuck it on a pole and opened a pub. The Klatchian's Head. Teach ,em not to do it again.' 'I used to get into enough trouble just for nicking boots,' said Nobby. 'More robust times, Nobby.' 'You ever met a Klatchian, sarge?' said Nobby, as they began to pace the length of the quiet street. 'I mean one of the wild ones.' 'Well, no... but you know what? They're allowed three wives! That's criminal, that is.' 'Yeah, 'cos here's me and I ain't got one,' said Nobby. 'And they eat funny grub. Curry and that.' Nobby gave this some thought. 'Like... we do, when we're on late duty.' 'Weelll, yerss – but they don't do it properly–' 'You mean runny ear–wax yellow with peas and currants in, like your mum used to do?' 'Right! You poke around as much as you like in a Klatchian curry and you won't find a single piece of swede.' 'And I heard where they eat sheep's eyeballs, too,' said Nobby, international gastra–gnome. 'Right again.' 'Not decent ordinary stuff like lambs' fry or sweetbreads, then?' 'That's... right.' Colon felt that he was being got at in some say. 'Look, Nobby, when alls said and done they ain't the right colour, and there's an end to it.' 'Good job you found out, Fred!' said Nobby, so cheerfully that Sergeant Colon was almost sure that he meant it. 'Well, it's obvious,' he conceded. 'Er... what is the right colour?' said Nobby. 'White, of course!' 'Not brick–red, then? 'Cos you–' 'Are you winding me up, Corporal Nobbs?' "Course not, sarge. So... what colour am I?' That caused Sergeant Colon to think. You could have found, somewhere on Corporal Nobbs, a shade appropriate to every climate on the disc and a few found only in specialist medical books. 'White's... white's a state of, you know... mind,' he said. 'It's like... doing an honest day's work for an honest day's pay, that sort of thing. And washing regular.' 'Not lazing around, sort of thing.' 'Right.' 'Or... like... working all hours like Goriff does.' 'Nobby–' 'And you never see those kids of his with dirty clo–' 'Nobby, you're just trying to get me going, right?' You know we're better'n Klatchians. Otherwise, what's the point? Anyway, if we're going to fight 'em, you could get locked up for going around talking treachery.' 'Are you going to fight them, Fred?' Fred Colon scratched his chin. 'Well, as a hexperienced milit'ry man, I suppose I'll have to.. .' 'What' re you going to do? Join a regiment and go to the front?' 'We–ell... my fore–tay lies in training, so I reckon I'd better stay here and train up the new recruits.' 'Here at the back, you might say.' 'We all have to do our bit, Nobby. If it was down to me I'd be out there like a shot to give Johnny Klatchian a taste of cold steel.' 'Their razor–sharp swords wouldn't worry you, then?' 'I should laugh at them with scorn, Nobby.' 'But s'posing the Klatchians attack here? Then you'll be at the front and the front will be at the back.' 'I'll sort of try for a posting in the middle. . 'The middle of the front or––' 'Gentlemen?' They looked round to find that they had been followed by a man of medium height but with an extraordinary head. It wasn't that he had gone bald. He had quite a lot of hair, which was long and curly and reached almost to his shoulders, and his beard was large enough to conceal a small chicken. But his head had simply risen through his hair, like a kind of intrusive dome. He gave them a friendly smile. 'Am I by any change addressing the heroic Sergeant Colon and the–' The man looked at Nobby. Expressions of amazement, dread, interest and charity passed across his otherwise sunny countenance like storm–driven clouds. 'And the Corporal Nobbs?' he finished. 'That is us, citizen,' said Colon. 'Ah, good. I was very specifically told to find you. It's quite amazing, you know. No–one had even broken into the boathouse, although I must say I did design the locks rather well. And all I've had to do is replace the leatherwork around the joints and grease it up... oh, do excuse me, I've got rather ahead of myself. Now... there was a message I had to give you... what was it now?... Something about your hands...'He reached down into the large canvas bag by his feet and pulled out a long tube, which he handed to Nobby. 'I do apologize about this,' he said, producing a smaller tube and handing it to Colon. 'I had to do things in such a hurry, there really was no time to finish it off properly, and frankly the materials are not very good–' Colon looked at his tube. It was pointed at one end. 'This is a firework rocket,' he said. 'Look, it's s got "A riot of coloured balls and stars" on it...' 'Yes, I do so apologize,' said the man, lifting a complex little arrangement of wood and metal out of the bag. 'May I have the tube back, corporal?' He took it and screwed the arrangement on to one end. 'Thank you... yes, I'm afraid that without my lathe and, indeed, my forge, I really have had to make do with what I could find lying around... Could I have the rocket back, please? Thank you.' 'They don't go properly without a stick,' said Nobby. 'Oh, in fact they do,' said the man. 'Just not very accurately.' He raised the tube to shoulder height and peered into a small wire grid. 'That seems about right,' he said. 'And they don't go along,' said Nobby. 'They just go up. 'A common misconception,' said Leonard of Quirm, turning to face them. Colon could see the tip of the rocket in the depths of the tube, and had a sudden image of stars and balls. 'Now, apparently you two have to step into this alley here and come with me,' said Leonard. 'I'm very sorry about this, but his lordship has explained to me at great length how the needs of society as a whole may have to overrule the rights of a particular individual. Oh, and I've just remembered. You have to put your hands up.'   Sand had been spilled across the big table in the Rats Chamber. Lord Rust felt a sensation akin to pleasure as he surveyed it. There were the little square boxes for the towns and cities, and cut–out palm trees to indicate the known oasisies. And, although he was uneasy about the word 'oasisies', Lord Rust looked at it and saw that it was good. Especially since it was a map of Klatch and everyone knew that Klatch was sand anyway, which made it rather satisfying in an existential sort of way, although this sand here had been commandeered from the heap behind Chalky the troll's wholesale pottery and bore the occasional cigarette end and trace of feline incontinence that would probably not be found in the real desert, or certainly not to scale. 'Here would be a good landing area,' he said, pointing with his stick. His equerry tried to look helpful. 'The EI Kinte peninsula,' he said. 'That's the closest point to us, sir.' 'Exactly! We can be across the straits in jig time.' 'Very good, sir,' said Leiutenant Hornett, 'but... you don't think the enemy might be expecting us there? It being such an obvious landing site?' 'Not obvious at all to the trained military thinker, sir! They won't be expecting us there precisely because it is so obvious, d'y'see?' 'You mean... they'll think only a complete idiot would land there, sir?' 'Correct! And they know we're not complete idiots, sir, and therefore that will be the last place they will be expecting us, d'y'see? They'll be expecting us somewhere like' – his stick stabbed into the sand –'here.' Hornett looked closely. In the street outside, someone started to bang a drum. 'Oh, you mean Eritor,' he said. 'Where I believe there is a concealed landing area, and two days' forced march through good cover would have us at the heart of the empire, sir.' 'Exactly!' 'Whereas landing at M Mints means three days over sand dunes and past the fortified city of Zebra...' 'Precisely. Wide–open spaces! And that is where we can practise the art of warfare.' Lord Rust raised his voice above the drumming. 'That's how you settle these things. One decisive battle. Us on one side, the Klatchians on the other. THAT IS HOW THESE THINGS ARE D–' He threw down his pointer. 'Who the devil is making that infernal noise?' The equerry walked across to the window. 'It's someone else recruiting, sir,' he said. 'But we're all here!' The equerry hesitated, as the bearers of bad tidings to short–tempered men often do. 'It's Vimes, sir...' 'Recruiting for the Watch?' 'Er... no, my lord. For a regiment. Er... the banner says "Sir Samuel Vimes's First of Foot", my lord–' 'The arrogance of the man. Go and– No, I'll go myself!' There was a crowd in the street. In the centre there rose the bulk of Constable Dorfl, and a key thing about the golem was that if he was banging a drum then no–one was going to ask him to stop. No–one except possibly Lord Rust, who strode up and snatched the drumsticks out of his hands. 'Yerss, it are species of your choice's life in der First of Foot!' shouted Sergeant Detritus, unaware of the events going on behind him. 'You learnin' a trade! You learnin' self–respek! Also you get spiffy uniform plus all der boots you can eat –here, dat's my banner!' 'What's the meaning of this?' said Rust, flinging the homemade banner on to the ground. 'Vimes can't do this!' A figure detached itself from the wall, where it had been watching the show. 'You know, I rather think I can,' said Vimes. He handed Rust a piece of paper. 'It's all here, my lord. With references citing the highest authorities, in case you are in any doubt.' 'Citing the–?' 'On the role of a knight, my lord. In fact the duties of a knight, funnily enough. A lot of it is pretty damn stupid stuff, riding around the place on one of those bloody great horses with curtains round it and so on, but one of them says in time of need a knight has to raise and maintain you'll laugh when I tell you this a body of armed soldiers! No–one could have been more surprised than me, I don't mind telling you! Seems there's nothing for it but I have to go out and get some chaps together. Of course, most of the watch have joined, well, you know how it is, disciplined lads, anxious to do their bit, so that saved me a bit of effort. Except for Nobby Nobbs, 'cos he says if he leaves it till Thursday he's going to have enough white feathers for a mattress.' Rust's expression would have preserved meat for a year. 'This is a nonsense,' he said. 'And you, Vimes, certainly are no knight. Only a king can make–' 'There's a good few lordships in this city created by the Patricians,' said Vimes. 'Your friend Lord Downey, for one. You were saying?' 'Then if you persist in playing games I will say that before a knight is created he must spend a night's vigil watching his armour–' 'Practically every night of my life,' said Vimes. 'A man doesn't keep an eye on his armour round here, that man's got no armour in the morning.' 'In prayer,' said Rust sharply. 'That's me,' said Vimes. 'Not a night has gone by without me thinking, "Ye gods, I hope I get through this alive." ' '–and he must have proved himself on the field of combat. Against other trained men, Vimes. Not vermin and thugs.' Vimes started to undo the strap of his helmet. 'Well, this isn't the best of moments, my lord, but if someone'll hold your coat I can spare you five minutes...' In Vimes's eyes Rust recognized the fiery gleam of burning boats. 'I know what you're doing, Vimes, and I am not going to rise to it,' he said, taking a step back. 'In any case, you have had no formal training in arms.' 'That's true,' said Vimes. 'You've got me there, right enough. No–one ever trained me in arms. I was lucky there.' He leaned closer and lowered his voice so that the watching crowd wouldn't hear. 'Y'see, I know what "training in arms" means, Ronald. There hasn't been a real war in ages. So it's all prancing around wearing padded waistcoats and waving swords with knobs on the end so no–one'll really get hurt, isn't it? But down in the Shades no–one's had any training in arms either. Wouldn't know an epee from a sabre. No, what they're good at is a broken bottle in one hand and a length of four–by–two in the other and when you face 'em, Ronnie, you know you aren't going off for a laugh and a jolly drink afterwards, 'cos they want you dead. They want to kill you, you see, Ron? And by the time you've swung your nice shiny broadsword they've carved their name and address on your stomach. And that's where I got my training in arms. Well... fists and knees and teeth and elbows, mostly.' 'You, sir, are no gentleman,' said Rust. 'I knew there was something about me that I liked.' 'Can you not even see that you can't enrol... dwarfs and trolls in an Ankh–Morpork regiment?' 'It just says "armed soldiers", and dwarfs come with their own axes. A great saving. Besides, if you've ever seen them really fight, then you must've been on the same side.' 'Vimes–' 'It's Sir Samuel, my lord.' Rust seemed to think for a moment. 'Very well, then,' he said. 'Then you and your... regiment come under my command–' 'Strangely, no,' said Vimes swiftly. 'Under the command of the King or his duly appointed representative, it says in Scavone's Chivalric Law and Usage. And, of course, there has been no duly appointed representative ever since some complete bastard cut off the last king's head. Oh, assorted beds appeared to have been ruling the city, but according to the chivalric tradition–' Rust stopped to think again. He had the look of a lawnmower just after the grass has organized a workers' collective. There was a definite suggestion that, deep inside, he knew this was not really happening. It could not be happening because this sort of thing did not happen. Any contradictory evidence could be safely ignored. However, it might be necessary to find some motions to go through. 'I think you'll find that, legally, your position–' he began, and his eyes bulged for a moment as Vimes interrupted him cheerfully. 'Oh, there might be a few problems, I grant you. But if you ask Mr Slant he'll say "This is a very interesting case", which as you know is lawyer–talk for "One thousand dollars a day plus expenses and it'll take months." So I'll leave you go get on with it, shall P Cot such a lot of things to do, you know. I think the swatches for the new uniforms should be in my office about now, it's so important to look right on the battlefield, isn't it?' Rust gave Vimes another look, and then strode away. Detritus stamped to attention beside Vimes and his salute clanged smartly off his helmet. 'What we doin' now, sir?' 'We can pack up now, I think. All the lads have joined up?' 'Yessir!' 'You told them it wasn't compulsory?' 'Yessir! I said, "It ain't compuls'ry, you just gotta," sir.' 'Detritus, I wanted volunteers.' ' 'sright, sir. They volunteered all right, I saw to that.' Vimes sighed as he walked back to his office. But they were probably safe. He was pretty sure he was legally sound and if he knew anything about Rust, the man would respect the letter of the law. Such men did, in a chilly way. Besides, thirty men in the Watch simply didn't figure in the great scheme of things. Rust could ignore them. Suddenly there's a war brewing, Vimes thought, and they all come back. Civil order is turned upside down, because that's the rules. And people like Rust are at the top of the heap again. You have these aristocrats lazing around for years, and suddenly the old armour's out and the sword is being taken down from over the fireplace. They think there's going to be a war and all they can think about is that wars can be won or lost... Someone's behind this. Someone wants to see a war. Someone paid to have Ossie and Snowy killed. Someone wanted the Prince dead. I've got to remember that. This isn't a war. This is a crime. And then he realized he was wondering if the attack on Goriffs shop had been organized by the same people, and whether those same people had set fire to the embassy. And then he realized why he was thinking like this. It was because he wanted there to be conspirators. It was much better to imagine men in some smoky room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over the brandy. You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn't then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told their children bedtime stories, were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people. It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was Us, what did that make Me? After all, Im one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No-one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things. Around about this time, in his former life, Vimes would be taking the cap off a bottle, and wouldn't be too bothered about the bottle's contents so long as they crinkled paint 'Ook?' 'Oh, hello. What can I do for – oh, yes, I asked about books on Klatch... Is that all?' The librarian shyly held out a small, battered green book. Vimes had been expecting something bigger, but he took it anyway. It paid to look at any book the orang–utan gave you. He matched you up to books. Vimes supposed it was a knack, in the same way that an undertaker was very good at judging heights. On the spine, in very faded gold lettering, were the words 'VENI VIDI VICI: A Soldier's Life by Gen. A. Tacticus'.   Nobby and Sergeant Colon edged along the alley. 'I know who he is!' Fred hissed. 'That's Leonard of Quirm, that is! He went missing five years ago!' 'So he's called Leonard and he's from Quirm, so what?' said Nobby. 'He's a raving genius!' 'He's a loony.' 'Yeah, well, they say there's a thin line between genius and madness...' 'He's fallen off it, then.' The voice behind them said, 'Oh, dear, this won't do at all, will it... ? I can't deny it, you were quite right, the accuracy would be quite unacceptable at any reasonable range. Could you bear to stop a moment, please?' They turned. Leonard was already dismantling the tube. 'If you could just hang on to this bit, corporal... and, sergeant, if you would be so good as to hold this piece steady... some sort of fins should do it, Im sure I had a suitable piece of wood somewhere Leonard began to pat his pockets. The watchmen realized that the man holding them up had paused to redesign his weapon and had given it to them to hold while he looked for a screwdriver. This was a thing that did not often happen. Nobby silently took the rocket from Colon and pushed it into the tube. 'What's this bit here, mister?' he said. Leonard glanced up briefly in between patting his pockets. 'Oh, that is the trigger,' he said. 'Which, as you can see, rubs against the flint and–' 'Good.' There was a short burst of flame and rather more black smoke. 'Oh, dear,' said Leonard. The watchmen turned, like men dreading what they were about to see. The rocket had shot the length of the alley and through the window of a house. 'Ah... putting "This Way Up" on the projectile would be an important safety point to bear in mind for the new design.' said Leonard. 'Now, where's that notebook... ?' 'I think we'd better leave,' said Colon, moving backwards. 'Very fast.' Inside the house there was an explosion of stars and balls to delight young and old but not the troll who had just opened the door. 'Ah, really?' said Leonard. 'Well, if speed is required, I have this very interesting design for a two–wheeled–' Acting on an unspoken agreement, the watchmen each put a hand under a shoulder, lifted him off the ground, and ran for it. 'Oh, dear,' said Leonard, as he was dragged backwards. The watchmen dived into a side alley, and then jinked and dodged along several others with quiet professionalism. Finally they leaned Leonard against a wall and peered round the end of the alley. 'All clear,' said Nobby. 'They went the other way.' 'Right,' said Colon. 'Now, what was you doing? I mean, you might be a genius like I heard, Mister da Quirm, but when it comes to threatening people you're as clever as an inflatable dartboard.' 'I appear to have been a bit of a juggins, don't I?' Leonard agreed. 'But I do implore you to come with me. I'm afraid I thought that as warriors you would be more inclined to understand force ' 'Well, yes, we're warriors,' said Sergeant Colon. 'But–' ' 'ere, have you got another one of these rockets?' said Nobby, hefting the tube onto his shoulder again. He had the special gleam in his eye that a small man gets when he's laid his hands on a big, big weapon. 'I may have,' said Leonard, and the gleam in his eye was the mad twinkle of the naturally innocent when they think they're being cunning. 'Why don't we go and see? You see, I was told to fetch you by any means necessary. 'Bribery sounds good,' said Nobby. He put his eye to the tube's sights and started making 'whoosh' noises. 'Who told you to fetch us?' said Colon. 'Lord Vetinari.' 'The Patrician wants us?' 'Yes. He said you have special qualities and must come at once.' 'To the palace? I heard he'd done a runner.' 'Oh, no. To the, er... to the, er... docks...' 'Special qualities, eh?' said Colon. 'Er, sarge...' Nobby began. 'Now then, Nobby,' said Colon importantly. 'It's about time we were given some recognition, you know that. Hexperienced officers are the backbone of the force. Seems to me,' he went on, 'seems to me that this is a case of cometh the time, cometh the man.' 'When's he cometh?' 'I'm talking about us. Men with special qualities.' Nobby nodded, but with a certain amount of reluctance. In many ways he was a much clearer thinker than his superior officer, and he was worrying about 'special qualities'. Being picked for something because of your 'special qualities' was tantamount to being volunteered. Anyway, what was so special about special qualities'? Limpets had special qualities. 'Will we go undercover again?' said Colon. Leonard blinked. 'There... yes, I think I can say there is a strong under element involved. Yes, indeed.' 'Sarge–' 'You just be quiet, corporal.' Colon pulled Nobby closer. 'Undercover means not getting stabbed and shot at, right?' he whispered. 'And what's the most important thing a professional soldier wants not to happen to him?' 'Not getting stabbed and shot,' said Nobby automatically. 'Right! So let's be going, Mr Quirm! The call has come!' 'Well done!' said Leonard. 'Tell me, sergeant, are you of a nautical persuasion?' Colon saluted again. 'Nossir! Happily married man, sir!' 'I meant, have you ploughed the ocean waves at all?' Colon gave him a cunning look. 'Ah, you can't catch me with that one, sir,' he said. 'Everyone knows the horses sink.' Leonard paused for a moment and retuned his brain to Radio Colon. 'Have you, in the past, floated around, on the sea, in a boat, at all?' 'Me, sir? Not me, sir. It's the sight of the waves going up and down, sir.' 'Really?' said Leonard. 'Well, happily, that will not be a problem.'   All right, start again... Assembling facts, that's what it was about... The world watched. Someone wanted the Watch to say that the assassination had been inspired by Klatch. Who? Someone had also beheaded Snowy Slopes where he stood and left him deader than six buckets of fish bait. A vision of 71–hour Ahmed's big curved sword presented itself for his attention. So... ... let's assume that Ahmed was Khufurah's servant or bodyguard, and he'd found out... No, how could that work? Who'd tell him? Well, maybe he'd found out somehow, and that meant that he might also know who'd paid the man... Vimes sat back. It was still a mystery but he'd solve it, he knew he would. He'd assemble the facts, analyse them, look at them from every angle with an open mind, and find out exactly how Lord Rust had organized it. Rank bad hat! He didn't have to sit still for something like that, especially from a man who rhymed 'house' with 'mice'. His eye was caught by the ancient book. General Tacticus? Every kid knew about him. Ankh–Morpork had ruled a huge empire and a lot of it had been in Klatch, thanks to him. Except there wasn't any thanks for him, strangely enough. Vimes had never quite known why, but the city seemed to be rather ashamed of the general. One reason, of course, was that he'd ended up fighting Ankh–Mopork The city of Genua had run out of royalty, inbreeding having progressed to the point where the sole remaining example consisted mostly of teeth, and senior courtiers had written to Ankh–Morpork asking for help. There'd been a lot of that sort of thing, Vimes had been surprised to learn. The little kingdoms of the Sto Plains were for ever scrounging spare royalty off one another. The King had sent Tacticus out of sheer exasperation. It's hard to run a proper empire when you're constantly getting blood–stained letters on the lines of: Dear sire, I beg to inform you that we have conquered Betrek, Smale and Ushistan. Please send AM$20,000 back pay. The man never knew when to stop. So he was hastily made a duke and packed off to Genua, whereupon his first action was to consider what was that city's greatest military threat and then, having identified it, to declare war on Ankh-Morpork. But what else had anyone expected? He'd done his duty. He'd brought back heaps of spoils, lots of captives and, almost uniquely among Ankh-Morpork's military leaders, most of his men. Vimes suspected that this last fact was one reason why history didn't approve. There was a suggestion that this was, in some way, not playing fair. 'Veni, vidi, vici.' That was what the man was supposed to have said when he'd conquered... where? Pseudopolis, wasn't it? Or Al–Khali? Or Quirm? Maybe Sto Lat? That was in the old days when you attacked anyone else's city on principle, and went back and did them over again if they looked like getting up. And in those days, you didn't care if the world watched. You wanted them to watch, and learn. 'Veni, vidi, vici.' I came, I saw, I conquered. As a comment it always struck Vimes as a bit too pat. It wasn't the sort of thing you came up with on the spur of the moment, was it? It sounded as if he had worked it out. He'd probably spent long evenings in his tent, looking up in the dictionary short words beginning with V and trying them out... Veni, vermini, vomui, I came, I got ratted, I threw up? Visi, veneri, vamoosi, I visited, I caught an embarrassing disease, I ran away? It must have been a big relief to come up with three short acceptable words. He probably made them up first, and then went off to see somewhere and conquer it. He opened the book at random. 'It is always useful to face an enemy who is prepared to die for his country,' he read. 'This means that both you and he have exactly the same aim in mind.' 'Hah!' 'Bingeley–bingeley b–' Vimes's hand slammed down on the box. 'Yes? What is it?' 'Three oh five pee em. Interview with Cpl Littlebottom re Missing Sgt: Colon,' said the demon sulkily. 'I never arranged anything like– Who told you–? Are you telling me that I've got an appointment and I don't know about it?' 'That's right.' 'So how do you know about it?' 'You told me to know about it. Last night,' said the demon. 'You can tell me about appointments I don't know about?' said Vimes. 'They're still appointments sine qua appointments,' said the demon. 'They exist, as it were, in appointment phase space.' 'What the hell does that mean?' 'Look,' said the demon patiently, 'You can have an appointment at any time, right? So therefore any appointment exists in potentia–' 'Where's that?' 'Any particular appointment simply collapses the waveform,' said the demon. 'I merely select the most likely one from the projected matrix.' 'You're just making this up,' said Vimes. 'If you were right, then any second now–' Someone knocked at the door. It was a polite, tentative tap. Vimes didn't take his eyes off the smirking demon. 'Is that you, Corporal Littlebottom?' he said. 'Yes, sir. Sergeant Colon has sent a pigeon. I thought you ought to see it, sir.' 'Come in!' A small roll of thin paper was placed on his desk. He read:   Have volunteered for a mission of Vital Importance. Nobby is here also. There will be statchoos of us when this day's work is over. PS Someone I can't tell you who says this note will self–destruct in five seconds, he is sorry he hasn't got good chemicles to do it better–   The paper began to crinkle around the edges and then vanished in a small puff of acrid smoke. Vimes stared at the little pile of ash that remained. 'I suppose it's a mercy they didn't blow up the pigeon, sir,' said Cheery. 'What the hell are they up to? Well, I can't chase around after them. Thanks, Cheery.' The dwarf saluted and departed. 'Co–incidence,' said Vimes. 'All right, then,' said the demon. 'Bingeley–bingeley beep! Three fifteen pee em, Emergency Meeting with Captain Carrot.'   It was a cylinder, tapering to a point at both ends. At one end the taper was quite complex, the cylinder narrowing in a succession of smaller and smaller rings, overlapping one another until they ended in a large fishtail. Oiled leather could be seen gleaming in the gaps between the metal. At the other end, extending from the cylinder for all the world like the horn of a unicorn, was a very long and pointed screw thread. The whole thing was mounted on a crude trolley, which was in turn riding on a pair of iron rails that disappeared into the black water at the far end of the boathouse. 'Looks like a giant fish to me,' said Colon. 'Made of tin.' 'With an 'orn,' said Nobby. 'It'll never float,' said Colon. 'I can see where you've gone wrong there. Everyone knows metal sinks.' 'Not entirely true,' said Leonard, diplomatically. 'In any case, this boat is designed to sink.' 'What?' 'Propulsion was a major headache, I'm afraid,' said Leonard, climbing up a stepladder. 'I thought of paddles and oars, and even some kind of screw, and then I thought: dolphins, that's the ticket! They move extremely fast with barely an effort. That's out at sea, of course, we only get the shovel–nosed dolphin in our estuary here. The linkage rods are a bit complicated but I used to be able to get quite a turn of speed. The pedalling can be somewhat tiresome, but with three of us we should be able to get up to some quite satisfactory accelerations. It's amazing what you can do when you imitate nature, I just wish my flying exp– Oh... where did you go... ?' It would be difficult to establish what part of satisfactorily accelerating nature the watchmen were trying to imitate, but it was a part which tended to get stuck in doors a lot. They stopped struggling and began to back into the room. 'Ah, sergeant,' said Lord Vetinari, entering in front of them. 'And Corporal Nobbs, too. Leonard has explained everything to you?' 'You can't ask us to go in that thing, sir! It'll be suicide!' said Colon. The Patrician brought his hands together in front of his lips in the manner of someone praying, and sucked air thoughtfully. 'No. No, I think you are wrong,' he said at last, as if reaching a conclusion on some complex metaphysical conundrum. 'I think that, in all probability, going into that thing would be a valiant and possibly rewarding deed. I would venture to suggest that, in fact, it is not going that would be suicidal. But I would appreciate your views.' Lord Vetinari was not a heavily built man and, these days, he walked with the aid of an ebony cane. No–one could remember seeing him handle a weapon, and a flash of unaccustomed insight told Sergeant Colon that this was not in fact a comforting thought at all. They said he's been educated at the Assassins' School, but no–one remembered what weapons he'd learned. He'd studied languages. And suddenly, with him in front of you, this didn't seem like the soft option. Sergeant Colon saluted, always a useful thing to do in an emergency such as this, and shouted: 'Corporal Nobbs, why aren't you in the... the metal sinking fish thing?' 'Sarge?' 'Let's see you get up them steps, lad... hup hup hup.. .' Nobby scrambled up the ladder and disappeared. Colon saluted again. You could usually tell his nervousness by the smartness of his salute. You could have cut bread with this one. 'Ready to go, sah!' he shouted. 'Well done, sergeant,' said Vetinari. 'You're displaying exactly those special qualities I'm looking for–' ' 'ere, sarge,' came a metallic voice from the belly of the fish, 'there's all chains and cogwheels in here. What's this do?' The big auger in front of the thing started to squeak round. Leonard appeared from behind the fish. 'I think we should all get in,' he said. 'I've lit the candle that'll bum down and sever the string that'll release the weight thatll pull the blocks out.' 'Er... what is this thing called?' said Colon, as he followed the Patrician up the ladder. 'Well, because it is submersed in a marine environment I've always called it the Going–Under–The–Water–Safely Device,' said Leonard, behind him.[10] 'But usually I just think of it as the Boat.' He reached behind him and shut the lid. After a moment any listener in the boathouse would have heard a complicated clonk as bolts slid into place. The candle burned down and severed the string that released the weight that pulled the blocks out and, slowly at first, the Boat slid down the rails and into the dark water which, after a second or two, closed over it with a gloop.   No–one took any notice of Angua as she trotted up the gangplank. The important thing, she knew, was to look at home. No–one bothered a large dog that looked as though it knew where it was going. People were milling about on deck in the manner peculiar to non–sailors on board ship, not sure of what they should be doing or where they should refrain from doing it. Some of the more stoic ones had made little camps, defining with bundles and pieces of cloth tiny areas of private property. They reminded Angua of the bi–coloured drainpipes and microscopically delineated household boundaries in Money Trap Lane, showing yet another way of drawing a line in the sand. This is Mine, and that is Yours. Trespass on Mine, and you'll get Yours. There were a couple of guards standing on either side of the door to the cabins. They hadn't been told to stop dogs. Scents led down below. She could smell the other dogs and a strong odour of cloves. At the end of the narrow passage a door was ajar. She forced it open with her nose and looked around. The dogs were lying on a rug on one side of a large cabin. Other dogs might have barked, but these just turned their beautiful heads towards her, sighted down the length of their noses and examined her carefully. A narrow bed beyond them was half concealed by silk hangings. 71–hour Ahmed was bending over it, but he turned when she entered. He glanced towards the dogs and gave her a puzzled look. Then, to her amazement, he sat down on the deck in front of her. 'And who do you belong to?' he said in perfect Morporkian. Angua wagged her tail. There was someone in the bed, she could smell them, but they wouldn't be a problem. Jaw muscles strong enough to sever someone's neck help you to feel relaxed in most situations. Ahmed patted her on the head. Very few people have ever done that to a werewolf without having to get people to cut up their meals for them in future, but Angua had learned self–control. Then he stood up and went to the door. She heard him say something to someone outside, and then he came back into the room and smiled at her. 'I go, I come back...' He opened a small cupboard and took out a jewelled dog collar. 'You shall have a collar. Oh, and here is some food,' he added, as a servant brought in some bowls. ' "Knickknack, paddywack, give a dog a bone" is a rhyme I hear your Ankh–Morpork children sing, but a paddywack is a ball of gristle suitable only for animal food and who knows what part of the animal is its knick–knack...' The plate was put in front of Angua. The other dogs stirred, but Ahmed snapped a word at them and they settled back again. The food was... dog food. In Ankh–Morpork terms, it meant something that you wouldn't even put in a sausage, and there are very few things that a man with a big enough mincer cannot put in a sausage. The little central human part of her was revolted, but the werewolf drooled at the sight of every glistening tube and wobbly fat bit It was on a silver plate. She looked up. Ahmed was watching her carefully. Of course, the royal dogs were treated like kings, all those diamond collars... It didn't have to mean he knew–– 'Not hungry?' he said. 'Your mouth says you are.' Something snapped around her neck as she spun around to bite. Her teeth closed on a mouthful of greasy cloth but that wasn't as important as the pain. 'His Highness has always liked fine collars on his dogs,' said 71–hour Ahmed, through the red mist. 'Rubies, emeralds... and diamonds, Miss Angua.' His face came down level with hers. 'Set in silver.'   '…A crucial factor, I have always found, is NOT the size of the forces. It is the positioning and commitment of reserves, the bringing of power to a point...' Vimes tried to concentrate on Tacticus. But there were two distractions. One was that the grinning face of 71–hour Ahmed looked out at him from every line. The other was his watch, which he had propped up against the Disorganizer. It was powered by actual clockwork and was much more reliable. And it never needed feeding. It ticked quietly. As far as it was concerned, he could forget his appointments. He liked it. The second hand was just curving towards the top of the minute when he heard someone coming up the stairs. 'Come in, captain,' said Vimes. There was a snigger from the box. Carrot's face was pinker than normal. 'Something's happened to Angua,' said Vimes. The high colour drained from Carrot's face. 'How did you know that?' Vimes firmly dosed the lid on the sniggering demon. 'Let's call it intuition, shall we? I'm right, am l?' ' Yes, sir! She went aboard a Klatchian boat and now it's sailing! She hasn't come off!' 'What the hell did she go on board for?' 'We were after Ahmed! And he looked as if he was taking someone with him, sir. Someone ill, sir!' 'He's left? But the diplomats are still–' Vimes stopped. There was, if you didn't know Carrot, something wrong with the situation. There were people who, when their girlfriend was spirited away on a foreign ship, would have dived into the Ankh, or at least run briskly along the crust, leapt aboard and dealt out merry hell on a democratic basis. Of course, at a time like this that would be a dumb thing to do. The sensible approach would be to let people know, but even so– But Carrot really did believe that personal wasn't the same as important. Of course, Vimes believed the same thing. You had to hope that when push came to shove you'd act the right way. But there was something slightly creepy about someone who didnt just believe it, but lived their life by it. It was as unnerving as meeting a really poor priest. Obviously, it was a consideration that if someone had captured Angua you knew that the rescue you were going to probably wouldn't be hers. But... The gods alone knew what would happen if he left now. The city had gone war mad. Big things were happening. At a time like this, every cell in his body was telling him that the Commander of the Watch had Responsibilities.. . He drummed his fingers on the desk. In times like this, it was vital to make the right decision. That was what he was paid for. Responsibility... He ought to stay here, and do the best he could. But... history was full of the bones of good men who'd followed bad orders in the hope that they could soften the blow. Oh, yes, there were worse things they could do, but most of them began right where they started following bad orders. His eyes went from Carrot to the Dis–organizer and then to the tottering mounds of paperwork on his desk. Blow that! He was a thief–taker! He'd always be a thieftaker! Why lie? 'Damned if I'll let Ahmed get back to Klatch!' he said, standing up. 'Fast boat, was it?' 'Yes, but it looked pretty heavy in the water.' 'Then maybe we can catch it up before it goes very far––' As he hurried forward he had, just for a second, the strange sensation that he was two people. And this was because, for the merest fraction of a second, he was two people. They were both called Samuel Vimes. To history, choices are merely directions. The Trousers of Time opened up and Vimes began to hurtle down one leg of them. And, somewhere else, the Vimes who made a different choice began to drop into a different future. They both darted back to grab their Dis–organizers. By the most outrageous of freak chances, quite uniquely, in this split second of decision, they each got the wrong one. And sometimes the avalanche depends on one snowflake. Sometimes a pebble is allowed to find out what might have happened – if only it had bounced the other way.   The wizards of Ankh–Morpork had been very firm on the subject of printing. It's not happening here, they said. Supposing, they said, someone printed a book on magic and then broke up the type again and used it for a book on, say, cookery? The metal would remember. Spells aren't just words. They have extra dimensions of existence. We'd be up to here in talking souffles. Besides, someone might print thousands of the damn things, many of which could well be read by unsuitable people. The Engravers' Guild was also against printing. There was something pure, they said, about an engraved page of text. It was there, whole, unsullied. Their members could do very fine work at very reasonable rates. Allowing unskilled people to bash lumps of type together showed a disrespect for words and no good would come of it. The only attempt ever to set up a printing press in Ankh-Morpork had ended in a mysterious fire and the death by suicide of the luckless printer. Everyone knew it was suicide because he'd left a note. The fact that this had been engraved on the head of a pin was considered an irrelevant detail. And the Patrician was against printing because if people knew too much it would only bother them. So people relied on work of mouth, which worked very well because the mouths were so close together. A lot of them were just below the noses of the members of the Beggars' Guild,[11] citizens generally regarded as reasonably reliable and well informed. Some of them were highly thought of for their sports coverage. Lord Rust looked thoughtfully at Crumbling Michael, a Grade II Mutterer. 'And what happened next?' Crumbling Michael scratched his wrist. He'd recently got his extra grade because he'd finally managed to catch a disfiguring but harmless skin disease. 'Mr Carrot was in there about two minutes, m'lord. Then they all come runnin' out, right, an' they–' 'Who were they?' said Rust. He fought off an urge to scratch his own arm. 'There was Carrot an' Vimes anna dwarf an' a zombie an' all of them, m'lord. They ran all the way to the docks, m'lord, and Vimes saw Captain Jenkins and he said–'   'Ah, Captain Jenkins! This is your lucky day!' The captain looked up from the rope he was coiling. Noone likes being told it's their lucky day. That sort of thing does not bode well. When someone tells you it's your lucky day, something bad is about to happen. 'It is?' he said. 'Yes, because you have an unrivalled opportunity to aid the war effort!' 'I have?' 'And also to demonstrate your patriotism,' Carrot added. 'I do?' 'We need to borrow your boat,' said Vimes. 'Bugger off!' 'I'm choosing to believe that was a salty nautical expression meaning "Why, certainly,` said Vimes. 'Captain Carrot?' ‘Sir.' 'You and Detritus go and look behind that false partition in the hold,' said Vimes. 'Right, sir,' said Carrot, walking towards the ladder. 'There's no false partition in the hold!' snapped Jenkins. 'And I know the law, and you can't–' There was a crash of timber from below. 'If that wasn't a false partition, our Carrot's gone and knocked a hole in the side,' said Vimes calmly, watching the captain. 'Er...' 'I know the law too,' said Vimes. He drew his sword. 'See this?' he said, holding it up. 'This is military law. And military law is a sword . Not a two–edged sword. There's only one edge, and it's pointing at you. Found anything, Carrot?' Carrot appeared over the edge of the hold. There was a crossbow in his hand. 'I do declare,' said Vimes, 'but that looks to me like a Burleigh and Stronginthearm. "Viper" Mk 3, which kills people but leaves buildings standing.' 'There's crates and crates of stuff,' said Carrot.  ' 's  no law–' Jenkins began, but he sounded as if the bottom was dropping out of his world. 'You know, I think there probably is some law against selling weapons to the enemy in times of war,' said Vimes. 'Of course, there might not be. Tell you what,' he added brightly, 'why don't we all go along to Sator Square? It's full of people around this time, all very keen on the war and cheering our brave lads... Why don't we go along and put it to them? You told me I ought to listen to the voice of the people. Odd thing, ain't it... you meet people one at a time, they seem decent, they got brains that work, and then they get together and you hear the voice of the people. And it snarls.' 'That's mob rule!' 'Oh, no, surely not,' said Vimes. 'Call it democratic justice.' 'One man, one rock,' Detritus volunteered. Jenkins looked like a man afraid the world was about to drop out of his bottom. He glared at Vimes and then at Carrot, and saw no help there. 'Of course, you'd have nothing to fear from us,' said Vimes. 'Although you might trip on your way down the stairs to the cells.' 'There's no stairs down to your cells!' 'Stairs can be arranged.' 'Please, Mr Jenkins,' said Carrot, the good cop. 'I wasn't... taking... the weapons to... KIatch,' Jenkins said slowly, as if he was reading the words very painfully off some interior script. 'I had... in fact... bought them to... donate them... to…' 'Yes? Yes?' said Vimes. '... our... brave lads,' said Jenkins. 'Well done!' said Carrot. 'And you'd be happy to... ?' Vimes prompted. 'And... I'd be happy to... lend my boat to the war effort,' said Jenkins, sweating. 'A true patriot,' said Vimes. Jenkins writhed. 'Who told you there was a false panel in the hold?' he demanded. 'It was a guess, right?' 'Right,' said Vimes. 'Aha! I knew you were only guessing!' 'Patriotic and clever,' said Vimes. 'Now... how do you make this thing go fast?'   Lord Rust tapped his fingers on the table. 'What did he take the boat for?' 'Dunno, m'lord,' said Cumbling Michael, scratching his head. 'Damn! Did anyone else see them?' 'Oh, there weren't many people around, m'lord.' 'That's a small mercy, at least.' 'Just me and Foul Ole Ron and the Duck Man and Blind Hugh and Ringo Eyebrows and No Way Jose and Sidney Lopsides and that bastard Stoolie and Whistling Dick and a few others, m'lord.' Rust sank back in his chair and put a pale hand over his face. In Ankh–Morpork the night had a thousand eyes and so did the day, and it also had five hundred mouths and nine hundred and ninety–nine ears.[12] 'The Klatchians must know, then,' he said. 'A detachment of Ankh–Morpork soldiery has taken ship for Klatch. An invasion force.' 'Oh, you could hardly call it–' Lieutenant Hornett began. 'The Klatchians will call it that. Besides, the trod Detritus is with them,' said Rust. Hornett looked glum. Detritus was an invasion force all by himself. 'What ships have we commandeered?' said Rust. 'There's more than twenty now, if you include the Indestructible, the Indolence and the . .' Lieutenant Hornett looked at his list again,          and the Prid of Ankh–Morpork, sir.' 'The Prid?' 'I'm afraid so, sir.' 'We should be able to take more than a thousand men and two hundred horses, then.' 'Why not let Vimes go?' said Lord Selachii. 'Let the Klatchians deal with him, and good riddance.' 'And give them a victory over Ankh–Morpork forces? That's how they will see it. Damn the man. He forces our hand. But still, perhaps it is for the best. We should embark.' 'Are we entirely ready, sir?' said Lieutenant Hornett, with the special inflection that means 'We are not entirely ready, sir.' 'We had better be. Glory awaits, gentlemen. In the words of General Tacticus, let us take history by the scrotum. Of course, he was not a very honourable fighter.'   White sunlight etched dark shadows in Prince Cadram's palace. He too had a map of Klatch, made of tiny coloured tiles set into the floor. He sat looking at it pensively. 'Just one boat?' he said. General Ashal, his chief adviser, nodded. And added: 'Our scryers can't get a very dear picture over that distance, but we do believe one of the men to be Vimes. You recall the name, sire.' 'Ah. the useful Commander Vimes.' The Prince smiled. 'Indeed. And since then there has been a lot of activity all along the docks. We have to take the view that the expeditionary force is setting out.' 'I thought we had at least a week, Ashal.' 'It is certainly puzzling. They cannot possibly be prepared, sire. Something must have happened.' Cadram sighed. 'Oh, well, let us follow where fate points the way. Where will they attack?' 'Gebra, sire. I'm sure of it.' 'Our most heavily fortified city? Surely not. Only an idiot would do that.' 'I have studied Lord Rust in some depth, sire. Remember that he doesn't expect us to fight, so the size of our forces really doesn't worry him.' The general smiled. It was a neat, thin little smile. 'And of course in attacking us he is piling infamy upon infamy. The other coastal states will take note.' 'A change of plan, then,' said Cadram. 'Ankh–Morpork can wait.' 'A wise move, sire. As always.' 'Any news of my poor brother?' 'Alas no, sire.' 'Our agents must search harder. The world is watching, Ashal.' 'Correct, sire.'   'Sarge?' 'Yes, Nobby?' 'Tell me again about our special qualities.' 'Shut up and keep pedalling, Nobby.' 'Right, sarge.' It was quite dark in the Boat. A candle swung from a bracket over Leonard of Quirm's bowed head as he sat steering with two levers. Around Nobby, pulleys rattled and little chains clicked. It was like being inside a sewing machine. A damp one, too. Condensation dropped off the ceiling in a steady stream. They had been pedalling for ten minutes. Leonard had spent most of the time talking excitedly. Nobby got the impression he didn't get out much. He talked about everything. There were the tanks of air, for example. Nobby was happy to accept that you could squeeze air up really small, and that was what was in the groaning, creaking steel–bound casks strapped to the walls. It was what happened to the air afterwards that came as a surprise. 'Bubbles!' said Leonard. 'Dolphins again, you see? They don't swim through the water, they fly through a cloud of bubbles. Which is much easier, of course. I add a little soap, which seems to improve matters.' 'He thinks dolphins fly, sarge,' whispered Nobby. 'Just keep pedalling.' Sergeant Colon risked a glance behind him. Lord Vetinari was sitting on an upturned box amidst the clicking chains, with several of Leonard's sketches open on his knees. 'Carry on, sergeant,' said the Patrician. 'Right, sir.' The Boat was moving faster now they were away from the city. There was even a brackish light filtering through the little glass windows. 'Mr Leonard,' said Nobby. 'Yes?' 'Where're we going?' 'His lordship wishes to go to Leshp.' 'Yes, I thought it'd be something like that,' said Nobby. 'I thought: "Where don't I want to go?" And the answer just popped into my head, just like that. Only I don't think we'll get there, the reason bein', in about another five minutes my knees are going to fall off. ..' 'Oh, my word, you won't have to pedal all the way,' said Leonard. 'What did you think the big auger on the nose is for?' 'That?' said Nobby. 'I thought that was for drillin' into the bottom of enemy ships–' 'What?' Leonard spun around in his seat, a look of horror on his face. 'Sink ships? Sink ships? With people on them?' 'Well... yes...' 'Corporal Nobbs, I think you are a very misguided young... man,' said Leonard stiffly. 'Use the Boat to sink ships? That would be terrible! In any case, no sailor would dream of doing such a dishonourable thing!' 'Sorry.. 'The auger, I would have you know, is for attaching us to passing ships in the manner of the remora, the sucker–fish which attaches itself to sharks. A few turns is all that is necessary for a firm attachment.' 'So... you couldn't bore all the way through the hull, then?' 'Only if you were a very careless and extremely thoughtless young man!'   The ocean waves may not be ploughable, but the crust of the river Ankh downstream from the city was known to sprout small bushes in the summertime. The Milka moved slowly, leaving a furrow behind it. 'Can't you go faster?' said Vimes. 'Why, certainly,' said Jenkins nastily. 'Where would you like us to put the extra mast?' 'The ship's just a dot,' said Carrot. 'Why aren't we gaining on them?' 'It's a bigger ship so it has got what we technically call more sails,' said Jenkins. 'And they're fast hulls on those Klatchian boats. And we've got a full hold–' He stopped, but it was too late. 'Captain Carrot?' said Vimes. ‘Sir?' 'Throw everything overboard,' said Vimes. 'Not the crossbows! They cost more than a hundred dollars ea–' Jenkins stopped. Vimes's expression said, very clearly, that there were a whole lot of things that could be thrown off the boat, and it would be a good idea not to be among them. 'Go and pull some ropes, Mr Jenkins,' he said. He watched the captain stamp off. A few moments later there was a splash. Vimes looked over the side and saw a crate bob for a moment and then sink. And he felt happy. Thief–taker, Rust had called him. The man had meant it as an insult, but it'd do. Theft was the only crime, whether the loot was gold, innocence, land or life. And for the thieftaker, there was the chase... There were several more splashes. Vimes fancied the ship surged forward. ... the chase. Because the chase was simpler than the capture. Once you'd caught someone it got complicated, but the chase was pure and free. Much better than prodding at clues and peering at notebooks. He flees, I chase. Simple. Vetinari's terrier, eh? 'Bingeley–bingeley beep!' said his pocket. 'Don't tell me,' said Vimes. 'It's something like "Five pee em, At Sea," yes?' 'Er... no,' said the Dis–organizer. 'Says here "Violent Row With Lord Rust", Insert Name Here.' 'Aren't you supposed to tell me what I'm going to do?' said Vimes, opening the box. 'Er... what you should be doing,' said the demon, looking very worried. 'What you should be doing. I don't understand it... er... something seems to be wrong...'   Angua stopped trying to rub the collar off against a bulkhead. It wasn't working, and the silver pressing against her skin seemed to freeze her and burn her at the same time. Apart from that – and a silver collar on a werewolf was a fairly major that – she'd been treated well. They'd left a plate of food, a wooden plate, and she'd let her wolf side eat it while the human side shut its eyes and held its nose. There was a bowl of water, quite fresh by Ankh–Morpork standards. She could see the bottom of the bowl, at least. It was so hard to think in wolf shape. It was like trying to unlock a door while drunk. It was possible, but you had to concentrate every step of the way. There was a sound. Her ears pricked up. Something tapped once or twice under the hull. She hoped it was a reef. That meant... land, possibly... with any luck she could swim ashore... Something clinked. She'd forgotten about the chain. It was hardly necessary. She felt as weak as a kitten. There was a rhythmic noise, like something chewing at the wood. A tiny metal point splintered through the wall just in front of her nose, and rose an inch. And someone spoke. It sounded far off and distorted, and perhaps only a werewolf would have heard it, but words were happening, somewhere under her paws. '––can stop pedalling now, Corporal Nobbs.' 'I am knackered, sarge. Is there anything to eat?' 'There's some more of that garlic sausage. Or there's the cheese. Or cold beans.' 'We're in a tin with no air and we're supposed to eat cheese? I ain't even going to comment on the beans.' 'I'm very sorry gentlemen. Things were rather rushed and I had to take food which would keep.' 'It's just that it's getting a bit... crowded, if you get my meaning.' 'I will pay out the rope as soon as it's dark and we can surface and take on air.' 'Just so long as we get rid of the air we've got, that's all I'm saying...' Angua's brows wrinkled as she tried to make sense of this. The voices were familiar. Even muffled as they were, she recognized the tones. The vague feeling that fought its way through the mists of animal intellect was: friends. The tiny little unchangeable centre of her thought: good grief, next thing I'll be licking hands. She laid her head down near the point again. '–way to do it, young man. There you go again! Sink ships? I can't imagine how anyone could think of such a thing!' Names. Some of those voices had... names. Thinking was getting harder. That was the silver at work. But if she stopped, she might forget how to start again. She stared at the point of metal. The point of metal with sharp edges. The tiny human part of her mind raged at the wolf brain, trying to get it to understand what it needed to do.   It was after midnight. The lookout man knelt on the deck in front of 71–hour Ahmed and trembled. 'I know what I saw, wali,' he moaned. 'And the others saw it too! Something rose up behind the ship and began chasing us! A monster!' Ahmed looked at the captain, who shrugged. 'Who knows what lies on the floor of the sea, wali?' 'Its breath!' moaned the seaman. 'There was a great roar of breath like the stink of a thousand privies! And then it spoke!' 'Really?' said Ahmed. 'This is not usual. What did it say?' 'I did not understand!' The man's face screwed up as he tried to assemble the unfamiliar syllables. 'It sounded like...' he swallowed, and went on, `Ye gods, that was better out than in, sarge!"' Ahmed stared at him. 'And what did that mean to you?' he said. 'I do not know, wali!' 'You have not spent much time in Ankh–Morpork?' 'No, wali!' 'Then return to your post.' The man stumbled out. 'We have lost speed, wali,' said the captain. 'Perhaps the sea monster is clutching at our keel?' 'It pleases you to joke, lord. But who knows what has been disturbed by the rising of the new land?' 'I shall have to see for myself,' said 71–hour Ahmed. He walked alone to the stem of the ship. Dark waters sucked and splashed and left a phosphorescent glow edging the wake. He watched for a long time. People bad at watching didn't last long in the desert, where a shadow in the moonlight could be just a shadow or it could be someone anxious to help you on your way to Paradise. The D'regs came across many shadows of the latter persuasion. D'reg wasn't their name for themselves, although they tended to adopt it now out of pride. The word meant enemy. Everyone's. And if anyone else wasn't around, then one another's. If he concentrated, he might believe that there was a darker shape about a hundred yards behind the ship, very low in the water. Waves were breaking where waves shouldn't be. It looked as though the ship was being followed by a reef. Well, well... 71–hour Ahmed was not superstitious. He was superstitious, which put him in a minority among humans. He didn't believe in the things everyone believed in but which nevertheless weren't true. He believed instead in the things that were true in which no–one else believed. There are many such substitions, ranging from 'It'll get better if you don't pick at it' all the way up to 'Sometimes things just happen.' Currently he was disinclined to believe in sea monsters, especially ones that spoke in the language of AnkhMorpork, but he did believe that there were a lot of things in the world that he didn't know about. In the far distance he could see the lights of a ship. It didn't seem to be gaining on them. This was much more worrying. In the darkness 71–hour Ahmed reached over his shoulder and grasped the handle of his sword. Above him, the mainsail creaked in the wind.   Sergeant Colon knew he was facing one of the most dangerous moments in his career. There was nothing for it. He was out of options. 'Er... if I add this A and this O and this I and this D,' he said, the sweat pouring down his pink cheeks, 'then I can use that V to make "avoid". Er... and that gets me, er, a... what d'you call these blue squares, Len?' 'A "Three Times Ye Value of Thee Letter" score,' said Leonard of Quirm. 'Well done, sergeant,' said Lord Vetinari. 'I do believe that puts you in the lead.' 'Er... I do believe it does, sir,' squeaked Sergeant Colon. 'However, I find that you have left me the use of my U, N and A, B, L, E,' the Patrician went on, 'which incidentally lands me on this Three Times the Whole Worde square and, I rather suspect, wins me the game.' Sergeant Colon sagged with relief. 'A capital game, Leonard,' said Vetinari. 'What did you say it was called?' 'I call it the "Make Words With Letters That Have All Been Mixed Up Game", my lord.' 'Ah. Yes. Obviously. Well done.' 'Huh, an' I got three points,' mumbled Nobby' 'They was perfectly good words that you wouldn't let me have, too.' 'I'm sure the gentlemen don't want to know those words,' said Colon severely. 'I'd have got ten points for that X.' Leonard looked up. 'Strange. We seem to have stopped moving...' He reached up and opened the hatch. Damp night air poured in, and there was the sound of voices, quite close, echoing loudly as voices do when heard across water. 'Heathen Klatchian talk,' said Colon. 'What are they gabblin' about?' "'What nephew of a camel cut the rigging?"' said Lord Vetinari, without looking up. `Not just the ropes, look at this sail – here, give me a hand..." ' 'I didn't know you spoke Klatchian, my lord.' 'Not a word,' said Lord Vetinari. 'But you–' 'I did not,' said Vetinari calmly. 'Ah... right...' 'Where are we, Leonard?' 'Well, er, my star charts are all out of date, of course, but if you would care to wait until the sun rises, and I've invented a device for ascertaining position by reference to the sun, and devised a satisfactorily accurate watch–' 'Where are we now, Leonard?' 'Er... in the middle of the Circle Sea, I suspect.' 'The middle?' 'Pretty close, I should say. Look, if I can measure the wind speed–' 'Then Leshp should be in this vicinity?' 'Oh, yes, I should–' 'Good. Unhitch us from his apparently stricken ship while we still have the cover of darkness and in the morning I wish to see this troublesome land. In the meantime, I suggest that everyone gets some sleep.' Sergeant Colon did not get a lot of sleep. This was partly because he was woken up several times by sawing and banging coming from the front of the Boat, and partly because water kept dripping on his head, but mainly because the lull in activity was causing him to consider his position. Sometimes when he woke up he saw the Patrician hunched over Leonard's drawings, a gaunt silhouette in the light of the candle – reading, making notes... He was in the immediate company of a man even the Assassins' Guild was frightened of, another man who would stay up all night in order to invent an alarm clock to wake him up in the morning, and a man who had never knowingly changed his underwear. And he was at sea. He tried to look on the bright side. What was the main reason why he hated boats? The fact that they sank, right? But this one had the sinking built in right from the start And you didn't have to watch the waves going up and down, because they were already above you. All this was logical. It just wasn't very comforting. When he awoke at one point there were faint voices coming from the other end of the vessel. '––don't quite understand, my lord. Why them?' 'They do what they're told, they tend to believe the last thing they heard, they're not bright enough to ask questions, and they have that certain unshakable loyalty available to those unencumbered by too much intelligence.' 'I suppose so, my lord.' 'Such men are valuable, believe me.' Sergeant Colon turned over and tried to make himself comfortable. Clad I'm not like those poor bastards, he thought as he drifted off to sleep on the bosom of the deep. I'm a man with special qualities.   Vimes shook his head. The stem light of the Klatchian ship was barely visible in the gloom. 'Are we gaining on them?' he said. Captain Jenkins nodded. 'We might be. There's a lot of sea between us.' 'And has all excess weight been thrown overboard?' 'Yes! What do you want me to do, shave my beard off?' Carrot's face appeared over the edge of the hold, 'All the lads are bedded down, sir.' 'Right.' 'I'll turn in for a few hours too, sir, if it's all right with you.' 'Sorry, captain?' 'I'll get my head down, sir.' 'But. .. but–' Vimes waved vaguely at the darkening horizon, I we're in hot pursuit of your girlfriend! Among other things,' he added.  'Yes, sir.' 'So aren't you... you mean you can... you want to... captain, you intend to go and have a bit of a nap?' 'To be fresh for when we catch up with them. Yes, sir. If I spend the whole night staring out there worrying then I'll probably be a bit useless When we catch up with them, sir.' It made sense. It really did make sense. Of course it made sense. Vimes could see the sense all over it. Carrot had actually sat down and thought sensibly about things. 'You'll be able to get to sleep, will you?' he said weakly. 'Oh, yes. I owe it to Angua.' 'Oh. Well... goodnight, then.' Carrot disappeared into the hold again. 'Good heavens,' said Jenkins. 'Is he real?' 'Yes,' said Vimes. 'I mean... would you go and bang your ear if he was chasing your lady in that ship?' Vimes said nothing. Jenkins sniggered. 'Mind you, if it was Lady Sybil, she'd be a bit lower on the waterline–' 'You just watch the... the sea. Don't run into any damn whales or anything,' said Vimes, and strode up to the sharp end. Carrot, he thought. If you didn't know him, you wouldn't believe it... 'They're slowing, Mr Vimes!' Jenkins called out. 'What?' 'I reckon they're slowing down, I said!' 'Good.' 'So what're you going to do when we catch them?' 'Er. ..'Vimes hadnt given this a lot of thought. But he recalled a very bad woodcut he'd once seen in a book about pirates. 'We'll swing across on to them with our cutlasses in our teeth?' he said. 'Really?' said Jenkins. 'That's good. I haven't seen that done in years. Only ever seen it done once, in fact.' 'Oh, yes?' 'Yes, this lad'd seen the idea in a book and he swung across into the other ship's rigging with his cutlass clenched, as you say, between his teeth.' 'Yes?' 'Topless Harry, we wrote on his coffin.' 'Oh.' 'I don't know if you've ever seen a soft–boiled egg after you've picked up your knife and sli–' 'All right, I see the point. What do you suggest?' 'Grapnels. You can't beat grapnels. Catch 'em on the other ship and just pull 'em towards you.' 'And you've got grapnels?' 'Oh, yes. Saw some only today, in fact.' 'Good. Then–' 'As I recall,' Jenkins went on relentlessly, 'it was when your Sergeant Detritus was chucking stuff over the side and he said, "What shall we do with dese bendy, hooky things, sir?" and someone, can't recall his name just at this minute, said, "They're dead weight, throw them over."' 'Why didn't you say something?' 'Oh, well, I didn't like to,' said Jenkins. 'You were doing so well.' 'Don't mess me about, captain. Otherwise I'll clap you in irons.' 'No, you ain't going to do that, and I'll tell you why. First, 'cos when Captain Carrot said, "These chains, sir, what shall I do with them?" you said–' 'Now, you listen to–' '–and, second, I don't reckon you know anything about ships, oh deary me. We don't clap people in irons, we put them in chains. Do you know how to splice the mainbrace? 'Cos I don't. All that yohoho stuff's for landlubbers, or it would be if we ever used words like landlubber. Do you know the difference between port and starboard? I don't. I've never even drunk starboard. Shiver my timber!' 'Isn't it "shiver my timbers"?' 'I've been ill.' Captain Jenkins spun the wheel. 'Also, this is a frisky wind and me and my crew know how to pull the strings that make the big square canvas things work properly. If your men tried it you'd soon find out how far it is to land.' 'How far is it to land?' 'About thirty fathoms, hereabouts.' The light was noticeably nearer. 'Bingeley–bingeley beep!' 'Good grief, what now?' said Vimes. 'Eight pee em. Er... Narrowly Escape Assassination by Klatchian Spy?' Vimes went cold. 'Where?' he said, looking around wildly. 'Corner of Brewer Street and Broadway,' said the little sing–song voice. 'But I'm not there!' 'What's the point of having appointments, then? What's the point of my making an effort? You told me you wanted to know what you ought to–' 'Listen, you don't have an appointment for being assassinated!' The demon went silent for a moment, and then said: 'You mean it should be on your To Do list?' Its voice was trembling. 'You mean like: "To Do: Die"?' 'Look, it's no good taking it out on me just because you're not on the right time line!' 'What the hell does that mean?' 'Aha, I knew you didn't read the manual! Chapter xvii–2(c) makes it very clear that sticking to one reality is vitally important, otherwise the Uncertainty Principle says–' 'Forget I asked, all right?' Vimes glared at Jenkins and at the distant ship. 'We'll do this my way, wherever the hell we are,' he said. He strode to the hold and pulled aside a hatchway. 'Detritus?'   The Klatchian sailors struggled with the canvas while their captain screamed at them. 71–hour Ahmed didn't scream. He just stood with his sword in his hand, watching. The captain hurried over to him, trembling with fear and holding a length of rope. 'See, wali?' he said. 'Someone cut it!' 'Who would do that?' said 71–hour Ahmed quietly. 'I do not know, but when I find him–' 'The dogs are almost on us,' said Ahmed. 'You and your men will work faster.' 'Who could have done such a thing?' said the captain. 'You were here, how could they–?' His gaze flickered from the cut rope to the sword. 'Was there something you wished to say?' said Ahmed. The captain hadn't got where he was by being stupid. He spun round. 'Get that sail up right now, you festering sons of bitches!' he screamed. 'Good,' said 71–hour Ahmed.   Detritus's crossbow was originally a three–man, siege weapon, but he had removed the windlass as an unnecessary encumbrance. He cocked it by hand. Usually the mere sight of the troll pulling the string back with one finger was enough to make the strongwilled surrender. He looked doubtfully at the distant light. 'It a million–to–one chance,' he said. 'Got to be closer'n this.' 'Just hit it below the waterline so they can't cut the rope" said Vimes. 'Right. Right.' 'What's the problem, sergeant?' 'We headin' for Klatch, right?' 'Well, in that direction, yes.' 'Only... I'm gonna be really stoopid in Klatch, 'cos a der heat, right?' 'I hope we're going to stop them before we get there, Detritus.' 'I ain't keen on bein' stoopid. I know people say, that troll Detritus, he ficker than a, than a–' '–brick sandwich–' said Vimes, staring at the light. 'Right. Only I hearin' it get really, really hot in der desert...' The troll looked so mournful that Vimes felt moved to give him a cheerful slap on the back. 'Then let's stop them now, eh?' he said, shaking his hand hurriedly to stop the stinging. The other ship was so close they could see the sailors working feverishly on the deck. The mainsail billowed in the lamplight. Detritus raised the bow. A ball of blue–green light glowed on the tip of the arrow. The troll stared at it. Then green fire ran down the masts and, when it hit the deck, burst into dozens of green balls that rolled, cracking and spitting, over the planks. 'Dey're usin' magic?' said Detritus. A green flame spluttered–over his helmet. 'What is this, Jenkins?' said Vimes. 'It ain't magic, it's worse'n magic,' said the captain, hurrying forward. 'All right, lads, get those sails down right now!' 'You leave them where they are!' shouted Vimes. 'You know what this is?' 'It dun't even feel warm,' said Detritus, poking the flame on the crossbow. 'Don't touch it! Don't touch it! That's St Ungulant's Fire, that is! It means we're going to die in a dreadful storm!' Vimes looked up. Clouds were racing across––No, they were pouring into the sky in great twisting billows, like ink streaming into water. Blue light flashed somewhere inside them. The ship lurched. 'Look, we got to lose some sail!' shouted Jenkins. 'That's the only way–' 'No–one touches anything!' shouted Vimes. Green fire skimmed along the tops of the waves now. 'Detritus, arrest any man who touches anything!' 'Right.' 'We want to go fast, after all,' Vimes said, above the hissing and the distant crackle of thunder. Jenkins gawped at him as the ship lunged beneath them. 'You're mad! Have you any idea what happens to a ship that tries to– You haven't got any idea, have you? This ain't normal weather! You have to ride it out careful! You can't try to run ahead of it!' Something slippery landed on Detritus's head and bounced onto the deck, where it tried to slither away. 'And now it's raining fish!' Jenkins moaned. The clouds formed a yellow haze, lit almost constantly by the lightning. And it was warm. That was the strangest thing. The wind howled like a sack full of cats and the waves were turning into walls on either side of the ship, but the air felt like an oven. 'Look, even the Klatchians are reducing sail!' shouted Jenkins, in a shower of shrimp. 'Good. We'll catch them up.' 'Mad! Ouch!' Something hard rebounded from his hat, hit the rail and rolled to a stop by Vimes's feet. It was a brass knob. 'Oh, no,' moaned Jenkins, putting his arms over his head. 'Now it's bloody bedsteads again!'   The captain of the Klatchian ship was not an argumentative man when he was anywhere near 71–hour Ahmed. He just looked at the straining sails and calculated his chances of Paradise. 'Perhaps the dog who cut the sail loose did us a favour!' he shouted, above the roar of the wind. Ahmed said nothing. He kept looking back. The occasional burst of electric storm light showed the ship behind, aflame with green light. Then he looked at the cold fire streaming behind their own masts. 'Can you see that light on the edge of the flames?' he said. 'My lord?' 'Can you, man?' 'Er... no...' 'Of course you can't! But can you see where the light isn't?' The captain stared at him and then looked up again in terrified obedience. And there was somewhere where the light wasn't. As the fizzing green tongues waved in the wind they seemed to be edged with... blackness, perhaps, or a moving hole in space. 'That's octarine!' shouted Ahmed, as another wave sloshed over the deck. 'Only wizards can see it! There's magic in these storms! That's why the weather is so bad!'   The ship screamed in every joint as it hit the waves again. 'We're coming right out of the water!' wept Jenkins. 'We're just going from crest to crest!' 'Good! It won't be so bumpy!' shouted Vimes. 'We should pick up speed again now we've got those bedsteads over the side! Does it often rain bedsteads out here?' 'What do you think?' 'I'm not a nautical man!' 'No, rains of bedsteads are not an everyday occurrence! Nor are coal scuttles!' Jenkins added, as something black crashed off a rail and over the side. 'We just get the normal stuff, you know! Rain! Snow! Sleet! Fish!' Another squall blew across the bounding boat and the deck was suddenly covered with flashing silver. 'Back to fish!' shouted Vimes. 'That's better, surely?' 'No! It's worse!' 'Why!' Jenkins held up a tin. 'These are sardines!' The ship thumped into another wave, groaned, and took flight again. The cold green fire was everywhere. Every nail of the deck sprouted its flame, every rope and ladder had its green outline. And the feeling crept over Vimes that it was holding the ship together. He wasn't at all sure that it was just light. It moved too purposefully. It crackled, but it didn't sting. It looked as though it was having fun The ship landed. Water washed over Vimes. 'Captain Jenkins!' 'Yes?' 'Why're we playing with this wheel? It's not as if the rudder's in the water!' They let go. The spokes blurred for a moment, and then stopped as the fire wrapped itself around them. Then it rained cake.   The Watch had tried to make themselves comfortable in the hold, but there were difficulties. There wasn't any area of floor which at some point in every ten seconds wasn't an area of wall. Nevertheless, someone was snoring. 'How can anyone sleep in this?' said Reg Shoe. 'Captain Carrot can,' said Cheery. She was hacking at something with her axe. Carrot had wedged himself into a corner. Occasionally he mumbled something, and shifted position. 'Like a baby. Beats me how he's managing it,' said Reg Shoe. 'Of course, any minute this thing is going to fall apart.' 'Yes, but dat shouldn't worry you, should it?' said Detritus. 'On account of you bein' dead already?' 'So? I end up at the bottom of the sea knee–deep in whale droppings? And it'll be a long walk home in the dark. Not to mention the problems if a shark tries to eat me.' 'I shall fear not. According to the Testament of Mezerek, the fishermen Nonpo spent four days in the belly of a giant fish,' said Constable Visit. The thunder seemed particularly loud in the silence. 'Washpot, are we talking miracles here?' said Reg eventually. 'Or just a very slow digestive process?' 'You would be better employed considering the state of your immortal soul than making jokes,' said Constable Visit severely. 'It's the state of my immortal body that's worrying me,' said Reg. 'I have a leaflet here which will bring you considerable–' Visit began. 'Washpot, is it big enough to be folded into a boat that'll save us all?' Constable Visit pounced on the opening. 'Aha, yes, metaphorically it is–' 'Hasn't this ship got a lifeboat?' said Cheery hurriedly. 'I'm sure I saw one when we came on.' 'Yeah... lifeboat,' said Detritus. 'Anyone want a sardine?' said Cheery. 'I've managed to get a tin open.' 'Lifeboat,' Detritus repeated. He sounded like someone exploring an unpleasant truth. 'Like... a big, heavy thing which would've slowed us down... ?' 'Yes, I saw it, I know I did,' said Reg. 'Yeah... dere was one,' said Detritus. 'Dat was a lifeboat, was it?' 'At the very least we ought to get somewhere sheltered and drop the anchor.' 'Yeah... anchor…' mused Detritus. 'Dat's a big thing kinda hooks on, right?' 'Of course.' 'Kinda heavy thing?' 'Obviously!' 'Right. An'... er... if it was dropped a long time ago, on accounta bein' heavy, dat wouldn't do us much good now?' 'Hardly.' Reg Shoe glared through the hatchway. The sky was a dirty yellow blanket, criss–crossed with fire. Thunder boomed continuously. 'I wonder how far the barometer's sunk?' he said. 'All der way,' said Detritus gloomily. 'Trust me on dis.'   It was in the nature of a D'reg to open doors carefully. There was generally an enemy on the other side. Sooner or later. He saw the collar lying on the floor, right by a little fountain of water trickling from the hull, and swore under his breath. Ahmed waited just a moment, and then pushed the door back quietly. It rattled against the wall. 'I don't intend to harm you,' he said to the gloom of the bilges. 'If that was my intention, by now you'd–' She wished she'd used the wolf. There would have been no problem with the wolf. That was the problem. She'd easily win, but then she'd be nervy and frightened. A human could stay on top of that. A wolf might not. She'd do the wrong things, panicky things, animal things. She pushed him hard as she dropped down from above the door, somersaulted backwards, slammed the door and turned the key. The sword came through the planking like a hot knife through runny lard. There was a gasp beside her. She spun round and saw two men holding a net. They would have thrown it over the wolf. What they hadn't been expecting was a naked woman. The sudden appearance of a naked woman always caused a rethink of anyone's immediate plans. She kicked them both hard and ran in the opposite direction, opened the first door at random and slammed it behind her. It was the cabin with the dogs in it. They sprang to their feet, opened their mouths – and slunk down again. A werewolf can have considerable power over other animals. whatever shape she's in, although it is largely the power to make them cringe and try to look inedible. She hurried past them and pulled at one of the hangings over the bunk. The man in the bunk opened his eyes. He was a Klatchian, but pale with weakness and pain. There were dark rings under his eyes. 'Ah,' he said, 'it would appear that I have died and gone to Paradise. Are you a houri?' 'I don't have to take that kind of language, thank you,' said Angua, ripping the silk in two with a practised hand. She was aware that she had a slight advantage over male werewolves in that naked women caused fewer complaints, although the downside was that they got some pressing invitations. Some kind of covering was essential, for modesty and the prevention of inconvenient bouncing, which was why fashioning impromptu clothes out of anything to hand was a lesser–known werewolf skill. Angua stopped. Of course, to the unpractised eye all Klatchians looked alike, but then to a werewolf all humans looked alike: they looked appetizing. She'd learned to discern. 'Are you Prince Khufarah?' 'I am. And you are... ?' The door was kicked open. Angua leapt towards the window and flung aside the bar restraining the shutters. Water funnelled into the cabin, drenching her, but she managed to scramble up and out. 'Just passing through?' the Prince murmured. 71–hour Ahmed strode to the window and looked out. Green–blue waves edged with fire fought outside as the ship heaved. No–one could stay afloat in a sea like that. He turned and looked along the hull to where Angua was clinging to a trailing line. She saw him wink at her. Then he turned away and she heard him say, 'She must have drowned. Back to your posts!' Presently, up on the deck, a hatch closed.   The sun rose in a cloudless sky. A watcher, if such had been out here, would have noticed a slight difference in the way the swells were moving on this tiny patch of sea. They might even have wondered about the piece of bent piping which turned with a faint squeaking noise. Had they been able to place an ear to it, they would have heard the following: '–idea while I was dozing off. Piece of pipe, two angled mirrors – the solution to all our steering and air problems!' 'Fascinating. A Seeing-Things-Pipe-You-Can-Breathe-Down.' 'My goodness, how did you know it was called that, my lord?' 'A lucky guess.' ' 'ere, someone's re–designed my pedalling seat, it's comfortable–' 'Ah, yes, corporal, I took some measurements while you were asleep and rebuilt it for a better anatomical configu––' 'You took measurements?' 'Oh, yes, I–' 'What, of my... saddlery regions?' 'Oh, please don't be concerned, anatomy is something of a passion with me–' 'Is it? Is it? Well, you can stop being passionate about mine for a start–' 'Here, I can see an island of some sort!' The pipe squeaked around. 'Ah, Leshp. And I see people. To your pedals, gentlemen. Let us explore the ocean's bottom...' 'I expect we shall, with him steering–' 'Shut up, Nobby.' The pipe slid down into the waves. There was a little flurry of bubbles and a damp argument about whose job it should have been to put the cork in, and then the patch of sea that had been empty was, somehow, a little bit emptier still.   There weren't any fish. At a time like this Solid Jackson would have even been prepared to eat Curious Squid. But the sea was empty. And it smelled wrong. It fizzed gently. Solid could see little bubbles breaking on the surface, which burst with a smell of sulphur and rotting eggs. He guessed that the rise of the land must have stirred up a lot of mud. It was bad enough at the bottom of a pond, all those frogs and bugs and things, and this was the sea He tried hard to reverse that train of thought, but it kept on rising from the depths like a... like a... Why were there no fish? Oh, there'd been the storm last night, but generally you got better fishing in these parts after a storm because it... stirred... up... The raft rocked. He was beginning to think it might be a good idea to go home, but that'd mean leaving the land to the Klatchians, and that'd happen over his dead body. The treacherous internal voice said: Funnily enough, they never found Mr Hong's body. Not most of the important bits, anyway. 'I think, think, I think we'll be getting back now,' he said to his son. 'Oh, Dad,' said Les. 'Another dinner of limpets and seaweed?' 'Nothing wrong with seaweed,' said Jackson. 'It's full of nourishing... seaweed. 's got iron in it. Good for you, iron.' 'Why don't we boil an anchor, then?' 'None of your lip, son.' 'The Klatchians have got bread,' said Les. 'They brought flour with them. And they've got firewood.' This was a sore point with Jackson. Efforts to make seaweed combust had not been successful. 'Yeah, but you wouldn't like their bread,' said Jackson. 'It's all flat and got no proper crust–' A breeze blew the scent of baking over the water. It carried a hint of spices. 'They're baking bread! On our property!' 'Well, they say it's their–' Jackson grabbed the piece of broken plank he used as an oar and began to scull furiously towards the shore. The fact that this only made the raft go round in circles added to his fury. 'They bloody move in right next to us and all we get is the stink of foreign food–' Why's your mouth watering, Dad?' 'And how come they've got wood, may I ask?' 'I think the current takes the driftwood to their side of the island, Dad–' 'See? They're stealing our driftwood! Our damn driftwood! Hah! Well, we'll–' 'But I thought we agreed that the bit over there was theirs, and––' Jackson had finally remembered how to propel a raft with one oar. 'That wasn't an agreement,' he said, creating foam as the oar thrashed back and forth, 'that was just an... an arrangement. It's not as if they created the driftwood. It just turned up. Accident of geography. It is a natural resource, right? It don't belong to anyone-' The raft hit something which made a metallic sound. But they were still a hundred yards from the rocks. Something else, long and bent at the end, rose up with a creaking noise. It twisted around until it pointed at Jackson. 'Excuse me,' it said, in a tinny yet polite voice, 'but this is Leshp, isn't it?' Jackson made a sound in his throat. 'Only,' the thing went on, 'the water's a little cloudy and I thought we might have been going the wrong way for the last twenty minutes.' 'Leshp!' squeaked Jackson, in an unnaturally highpitched voice. 'Ah, good. Thank you so much. Good day to YOU. The appendage sank slowly into the sea again. The last sounds from it, erupting on the surface in a cloud of bubbles, were,'... don't forget to put the cork in– You've forgot to put the cor––' The bubbles stopped. After a while Les said, 'Dad, what was––?' 'It wasn't anything!' snapped his father. 'That sort of thing doesn't happen!' The raft shot forward. You could have waterski'd behind it.   Another important thing about the Boat, thought Sergeant Colon gloomily as they slipped back into a blue twilight, was that you couldn't bale out the bilges. It was the bilges. He was pedalling with his feet in water and he was suffering simultaneously from claustrophobia and agoraphobia. He was afraid of everything in here and everything out there at the same time. Plus, there were unpleasantnesses out there, moving past as the Boat drifted down the wall of rock. Feelers waved. There were claws. Things scuttled into the waving weeds. Giant clams watched Sergeant Colon with their lips. The Boat creaked. 'Sarge,' said Nobby, as they looked out at the wonders of the deep. 'Yes, Nobby?' 'You know they say every tiny part of your body is replaced every seven years?' 'A well–known fact,' said Sergeant Colon. 'Right. So... I've got a tattoo on my arm, right? Had it done eight years ago. So... how come it's still there?' Giant seaweeds winnowed the gloom. 'Interesting point,' quavered Colon. 'Er . . 'I mean, OK, new tiny bits of skin float in, but that means it ought to be all new and pink by now.' A fish with a nose like a saw swam past. In the middle of all his other fears, Sergeant Colon tried to think fast. 'What happens.' he said, 'Is that all the blue skin bits are replaced by other blue skin bits. Off'f other people's tattoos.' 'So... I've got other people's tattoos now?' 'Er... yes.' 'Amazing. 'cos it still looks like mine. 's got the crossed daggers and "WUM".' 'Wum?' 'It was gonna be "Mum" but I passed out and Needle Ned didn't notice I was upside down.' 'I should've thought he'd notice that...' 'He was pissed too. C'mon, sarge, you know it's not a proper tattoo unless no–one can remember how it got there.' Leonard and the Patrician were staring out at the submarine landscape. 'What're they looking for?' said Colon. 'Leonard keeps talking about hieroglyphs,' said Nobby. 'What're they, sarge?' Colon hesitated, but not for long. 'A type of mollusc, corporal.' 'Cor, you know everything, sarge,' said Nobby admiringly. 'That's what hieroglyphs are, is it? So, if we go any deeper, they'll be loweroglyphs?' There was something slightly off–putting about Nobby's grin. Sergeant Colon decided to go for broke. 'Don't be daft, Nobby. "Loweroglphys if you go lower..." Oh my me.' 'Sorry, sarge. 'Everyone knows you don't get loweroglyphs in these waters.' A couple of Curious Squid peered at them, curiously.   Jenkins's ship was a floating wreck. Several sails were in tatters. Rigging and other string that Vimes refused to learn the nautical names for covered the deck and trailed in the water. Such sail as remained was moving them along in the brisk breeze. Atop the mast the lookout cupped his hands around his mouth and leaned down. 'Land ahoy!' 'Even I can see that,' said Vimes. 'Why does he have to shout?' 'It's lucky,' said Jenkins. He squinted into the haze. 'But your friend ain't heading for Gebra. Wonder where he's going?' Vimes stared at the pale yellow mass on the horizon, and then up at Carrot. 'We'll get her back, don't worry,' he said. 'I wasn't actually worrying, sir. Although I am very concerned,' said Carrot. 'Er... right...'Vimes waved his arms helplessly, 'Er... everyone fit and well? The men in good heart, are they?' 'It would help morale no end if you were to say a few words, sir.' The monstrous regiment of watchmen had lined up on the deck, blinking in the sunshine. Oh, dear. Round up the unusual suspects. One dwarf, one human who was brought up as a dwarf and thinks like a manual of etiquette, one zombie, one troll, me and, oh no, one religious fanatic– Constable Visit saluted. 'Permission to speak, sir.' 'Go ahead,' mumbled Vimes. 'I'm pleased to tell you, sir, that our mission is clearly divinely approved of, sir. I refer to the rain of sardines which sustained us in our extremity, sir.' 'We were a little hungry, I wouldn't say we were in extremi–' 'With respect, sir,' said Constable Visit firmly, 'the pattern is firmly established, sir. Yes, indeed. The Sykoolites when being pursued in the wilderness by the forces of Offlerian Mitolites, sir, were sustained by a rain of celestial biscuits, sir. Chocolate ones, sir.' 'Perfectly normal phenomenon,' muttered Constable Shoe. 'Probably swept up by the wind passing a baker's shop–' Visit glared at him, and went on: 'And the Murmurians, when driven into the mountains by the tribes of Miskmik, would not have survived but for a magical rain of elephants, sir–' 'Elephants?' 'Well, one elephant, sir,' Visit conceded. 'But it splashed.' 'Perfectly normal phenomenon,' said Constable Shoe. 'Probably an elephant was picked up by a freak–' 'And when they were thirsty in the desert, sir, the Four Tribes of Khanli were succoured by a sudden and supernatural rain of rain, sir.' 'A rain of rain?' said Vimes, almost mesmerized by Visit's absolute conviction. 'Perfectly normal phenomenon,' sneered Reg Shoe. 'Probably water was evaporated from the ocean, was blown through the sky, condensed around nuclei when it ran into cold air, and precipitated...' He stopped, and continued irritably, 'Anyway, I don't believe it.' 'So... which particular deity is on our case?' said Vimes, hopefully. 'I shall definitely inform you as soon as I have ascertained this, sir.' 'Er... very good, constable.' Vimes took a step back. 'I don't pretend this is going to be easy, men,' he said. 'But our mission is to catch up with Angua and this bastard Ahmed and shake the truth out of him. Unfortunately, this means we will be following him through his own country, with which we are at war. This is bound to put a few barriers in our way. But we should not let the prospect of being tortured to death dismay us, eh?' 'Fortune favours the brave, sir,' said Carrot cheerfully. 'Good. Good. Pleased to hear it, captain. What is her position vis a vis heavily armed, well prepared and excessively manned armies?' 'Oh, no–one's ever heard of Fortune favouring them, sir.' 'According to General Tacticus, it's because they favour themselves,' said Vimes. He opened the battered book. Bits of paper and string indicated his many bookmarks. 'In fact, men, the general has this to say about ensuring against defeat when outnumbered, out–weaponed and outpositioned. It is...' he turned the page, ' "Don't Have a Battle." ' 'Sounds like a clever man,' said Jenkins. He pointed to the yellow horizon. 'See all that stuff in the air?' he said. 'What do you think that is?' 'Mist?' said Vimes. 'Hah, yes. Klatchian mist! It's a sandstorm! The sand blows about all the time. Vicious stuff. If you want to sharpen your sword, just hold it up in the air.' 'Oh.' 'And it's just as well because otherwise you'd see Mount Gebra. And below it is what they call the Fist of Gebra. It's a town but there's a bloody great fort, walls thirty feet thick. 's like a big city all by itself. 's got room inside for thousands of armed men, war elephants, battle camels, everything. And if you saw that, you'd want me to turn round right now. Whats your famous general got to say about it, eh?' 'I think I saw something...' said Vimes. He flicked to another page. 'Ah, yes, he says, "After the first battle of Sto Lat, I formulated a policy which has stood me in good stead in other battles. It is this: if the enemy has an impregnable stronghold, see he stays there." 'That's a lot of help,' said Jenkins. Vimes slipped the book into a pocket. 'So, Constable Visit, there's a god on our side, is there?' 'Certainly, sir.' 'But probably also a god on their side as well?' 'Very likely, sir. There's a god on every side.' 'Let's hope they balance out, then.'   The Klatchian ship's boat hit the water with the gentlest of splashes. This was because 71–hour Ahmed was standing by the winches with his sword at the ready, which had the effect of making the men lowering the boat take some trouble over their task. 'When we are away you may take the ship into Gebra,' he said to the captain. The captain trembled. 'What shall I tell them, wali?' 'Tell them the truth... eventually. The commander of the garrison is a man of no breeding and will torture you a little bit. Save up the truth until you need it. That will make him happy. It will help you to say that I forced you.' 'Oh, I will. I will... tell that lie,' the captain added quickly. Ahmed nodded, slid down the rope into the boat and set it adrift The crew watched him row through the surf. This wasn't a nice beach. It was a wrecking coast. Ribcages of broken ships crumbled into the sand. Bones and driftwood and bleached white seaweed mounded along the high tide line. And beyond, the dunes of the real desert rose. Even down here sand stung the eyes and gritted the teeth. 'There's sudden death on that beach,' said the first mate, looking over the rail and trying to blink his eyes clear. 'Yes,' said the captain. 'Hes just got out of the boat.' The figure on the beach pulled the other, recumbent figure out of the boat and dragged him out of reach of the waves. The mate raised his bow. 'I could kill him from here, master. Just say the word.' 'How sure are you? Because you'd better be really sure. First, if you miss him you're dead and, second, if you hit him, you're still dead. Look up there.' On the high distant dunes, dark against the sandfilled sky, there were mounted figures. The mate dropped his bow. 'How did they know we were here?' 'Oh, they watch the sea,' said the captain. 'D'regs like a good shipwreck as much as anyone else. More, in fact. A lot more.' As they turned away from the rail, something leapt from the hull and entered the water with barely a splash.   Detritus tried to lurk in the shade, but there was not a lot of it about. The heat came off the high desert ahead of them like a blowtorch. 'I'm gonna get fick,' he muttered. There was a shout from the lookout. 'He says someone's climbing the dunes,' said Carrot. 'Carrying someone else, he says.' 'Er... female?' 'Look, sir, I know Angua. She's not the useless type. She doesn't stand there and scream helplessly. She makes other people do that.' 'Well... if you're sure...' Vimes turned to Jenkins. 'Don't bother to chase the ship, captain. Just keep heading for the shore.' 'I don't work like that, mister. For one thing, that' s a damn difficult shore, the wind's always against you, and there's some very nasty currents. Many an incautious sailorman has left his bones to bleach on those sands. No, we'll stand out a little way and you can lower the– well, if we had a boat any more, you could lower it... and we'll drop the anchor, oh, no, tell a he, it turned out to be too heavy, didn't it–' 'You just keep straight on,' said Vimes. 'We'll all be killed.' 'Think of it as the lesser of two evils.' 'What's the other one?' Vimes drew his sword. 'Me.'   The Boat squeaked through the mysterious depths of the ocean. Leonard spent a lot of time looking out of the tiny windows, particularly interested in pieces of seaweed which, to Sergeant Colon, looked like pieces of seaweed. 'Do you note the fine strands of Dropley's Etoliated Bladderwrack?' said Leonard. 'That's the brown stuff. A marvellous growth which, of course, you will see as significant.' 'Could we just assume for the moment that I have neglected my seaweed studies in recent years?' said the Patrician. 'Really? Oh, the loss is entirely yours, I assure you. The point is, of course, that the Etoliated Bladderwrack is never usually found growing above thirty fathoms, and it's only ten here.' 'Ah.' The Patrician flicked through a stack of Leonard's drawings. 'And the hieroglyphs – an alphabet of signs and colours. Colours as a language… what a fascinating idea...' 'An emotional intensifier,' said Leonard. 'But of course we ourselves use something like it. Red for danger and so on. I never did succeed in translating it, though.' 'Colours as a language…' murmured Lord Vetinari. Sergeant Colon cleared his throat. 'I know something about seaweed, sir.' 'Yes, sergeant?' 'Yessir! If it's wet, sir, it means it's going to rain.' 'Well done, sergeant,' said Lord Vetinari, without turning his head. 'I think it is quite possible that I will never forget you said that.' Sergeant Colon beamed. He had Made A Contribution. Nobby nudged him. 'What're we doing down here, sarge? I mean, what's it all about? Poking around, looking at weird marks on the rocks, going in and out of caves.. . and the smell... well.. 'It's not me,' said Sergeant Colon. 'Smells like... sulphur...' Little bubbles streamed past the window. 'It stunk up on the surface, too,' Nobby went on. 'Nearly finished, gentlemen,' said Lord Vetinari, putting the papers aside. 'One last little venture and then we can surface. Very well, Leonard... take us underneath.' 'Er... aren't we underneath already, sir?' said Colon. 'Only underneath the sea, sergeant.' 'Ah. Right.' Colon gave this due consideration. 'Is there anything else to be under, then, sir?' 'Yes, sergeant. Now we're going under the land.'   The beach was a lot closer now. The watchmen couldn't help noticing that the sailors were all hurrying to the blunt end of the ship and hanging on to any small, lightweight and above all buoyant objects they could find. 'This seems close enough,' said Vimes. 'Right. Stop here.' 'Stop here? How?' 'Don't ask me, I'm no sailor. Aren't there some sort of brakes?' Jenkins stared at him. 'You – you landlubber!' 'I thought you never used the word!' 'I never met one like you before! You even think we call the bows the sharp en–' It was, the crew agreed later, one of the strangest landings in the history of bad seamanship. The shelving of the beach must have been right and the tide as well, because the ship did not so much hit the beach as sail up it, rising out of the water as the keel de–barnacled itself on the sand. Finally the forces of wind, water, impetus and friction all met at the point marked 'fall over slowly'. It did so, earning the title of 'world's most laughable shipwreck'. 'Well, that might have been worse,' said Vimes, when the splintering noises had died away. He eased himself out of a tangle of canvas and adjusted his helmet with as much aplomb as he could muster. He heard a groan from the lopsided hold. 'Is dat you, Cheery?' 'Yes, Detritus.' 'Is dis me?' 'No!' 'Sorry.' Carrot eased his way down the sloping deck and jumped onto the damp sand. He saluted. 'All present and lightly bruised, sir. Shall we. establish a beachhead?' 'A what?' 'We have to dig in, sir.' Vimes looked both ways along the beach, if such a sunnysounding word could be applied to the forsaken strand. It was really just a hem to the land. Nothing stirred except the heat haze and, in the distance, one or two carrion birds. 'What for?' he said. 'Establish a defensible position. It's just one of those things soldiers do, sir.' Vimes glanced at the birds. They were approaching with a kind of sidling sideways hop, ready to move in just as soon as anyone had been dead for a few days. Then he flicked through Tacticus until the word 'beachhead' caught his eye. 'It says here "If you want your men to spend much time wielding a shovel, encourage them to become farmers,"' he said. 'So I think we'll press on. He can't have got very far. We'll be back soon.' Jenkins waded out of the surf. He didn't look angry. He was a man who had passed through the fires of anger and was now in some strange peaceful bay beyond them. He pointed a quivering finger at his stricken ship and said 'Muh... ?' 'Pretty good shape, all things considered,' said Vimes. 'Muh?' 'I'm sure you and your salty sailors will be able to float it again.' 'Muh...' Jenkins and his wading crew watched the regiment as it slithered and complained its way up the side of the dune. Eventually the crew went into a huddle and drew lots and the cook, who was always unlucky in games of chance, approached the captain. 'Never mind, captain,' he said, 'we can probably find some decent balks of timber in all this driftwood, and a few days' work with block and tackle should–' 'Muh.' 'Only... we'd better get started 'cos he said they won't be long...' 'They won't be back!' said the captain. 'The water they've got won't last a day up there! They haven't got the right gear! And once they're out of sight of the sea they'll get lost!' 'Good!'   It took half an hour to get to the top of the dune. The sand had been stamped down but, even as Vimes watched, the wind caught the particles and nibbled away at the prints. 'Camel tracks,' said Vimes. 'Well, camels don't go all that fast. Let's––' 'I think Detritus is having real trouble, sir,' said Carrot. The troll was standing with his knuckles on the ground. The motor of his cooling helmet sounded harsh for a moment in the dry air, and then stopped as the sand got into the mechanism. 'Feelin' fick,' he muttered. 'My brain hurts.' 'Quick, hold your shield over his head,' said Vimes. 'Give him some shade!' 'He's never going to make it, sir,' said Carrot. 'Let's send him back down to the boat.' 'We need him! Quick, Cheery, fan him with your axe!' At which point, the sand stood up and drew a hundred swords. 'Bingeley–bingeley beep!' said a cheerful if somewhat muffled voice. 'Eleven eh em, Get Haircut... er... that's right... isn't it?'   It wasn't large, but slabs of collapsing building had smashed together in such a way that they made a cistern that the rain had filled half full. Solid Jackson slapped his son on the back. 'Fresh water! At last!' he said. 'Well done, lad.' 'You see, I was looking at these sort of painting things, Dad, and then–' 'Yeah, yeah, pictures of octopuses, very nice,' said Jackson. 'Hah! The ball is on the other foot now and no mistake! It's our water on our side of the island, and I'd just like to see them greasy buggers claim otherwise. Let 'em keep their damn driftwood and suck water out of fishes!' 'Yeah, Dad,' said Les. 'And we can trade them some of the water for wood and flour, right?' His father waved a hand cautiously. 'Maybe,' he said. 'No need to rush into that, though. We're pretty close to finding a seaweed that'll bum. I mean, what're our long–term objectives here?' 'Cooking meals and keeping warm?' said Les hopefully. 'Well, initially,' said Jackson. 'That's obvious. But you know what they say, lad. "Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life." See my point?' 'I don't think that's actually what the saying is–' 'I mean, we can stop here living on water and raw fish for... well, practically for ever. But that lot can't go without proper fresh water for much longer. See? So they'll have to come begging to us, right? And then we deal on our terms, eh?' He put his arm around his son's reluctant shoulders and waved a hand at the landscape. 'I mean, I started out with nothing, son, except that old boat that your grandad left me, but–' '–you worked and scraped–' said Les wearily. worked and scraped–' –and you've always kept your head above water–' '–right, I've always kept my head above water–' 'And you've always wanted to leave me something that– –Ow!' 'Stop making fun of your dad!' said Jackson. 'Otherwise I'll wallop the other ear. Look, you see this land? You see it?' 'I see it, Dad.' 'It's a land of opportunity.' 'But there's no fresh water and all the ground's full of salt, Dad, and it smells bad!' 'That's the smell of freedom, that is.' 'Smells like someone did a really big fart, Dad– Ow!' 'Sometimes the two are very similar! And it's your future Im thinking of, lad!' Les looked at the acres of decomposing seaweed in front of him, He was learning to be a fisherman like his father before him because that's how the family had always done it and he was too good–natured to argue, although he actually wanted to be a painter like no–one in the family had ever been before. He was noticing things, and they worried him even though he couldn't quite say why. But the buildings didn't look right. Here and there were definite bits of, well, architecture, like Morporkian pillars and the remains of Klatchian arches, but they'd been added to buildings that looked as though some ham–fisted people had just piled rocks on top of one another. And then in other places the slabs had been stacked on top of ancient brick walls and tiled floors. He couldn't imagine who'd done the tiling, but they did like pictures of octopussies. The feeling was stealing over him that Morporkians and Klatchians arguing over who owned this piece of old sea bottom was extremely pointless. 'Er... I'm thinking about my future too, Dad,' he said. 'I really am.'   Far below Solid Jackson's feet, the Boat surfaced. Sergeant Colon reached automatically for the screws that held the lid shut. 'Don't open it, sergeant!' shouted Leonard, rising from his seat. 'The air's getting pretty lived–in, sir_, 'It's worse outside.' 'Worse than in here?' 'I'm almost certain.' 'But we're on the surface!' 'A surface, sergeant,' said Lord Vetinari. Beside him, Nobby uncorked the seeing device and peered through it. 'We're in a cave?' said Colon. 'Er... sarge...' said Nobby. 'Capital! Well worked out,' said Lord Vetinari. 'Yes. A cave. You could say that.' 'Er... sarge?' said Nobby again, nudging Colon. 'This isn't a cave, sarge! It's bigger than a cave, sarge!' 'What, you mean... like a cavern?' 'Bigger!' 'Bigger'n a cavern? More like a... big cavern?' 'Yeah, that'd be about right,' said Nobby, taking his eye away from the device. 'Have a look yourself, sarge.' Sergeant Colon peered into the tube. Instead of the darkness he was half expecting, he saw the sea's surface, bubbling like a boiling saucepan. Green and yellow flashes of lightning danced across the water, illuminating a distant wall that seemed practically a horizon... The tube squeaked around. If this was a cave, it was at least a couple of miles across. 'How long, do you think?' said Lord Vetinari, behind him. 'Well, the rock has a large proportion of tufa and pumice, very light, and once floated up the build–up of gas starts to escape very rapidly because of the swell,' said Leonard. 'I don't know... perhaps another week... and then I think it takes a very long time for a sufficient bubble to build up again...' 'What're they saying, sarge?' said Nobby. 'This place floats?' 'A most unusual natural phenomenon,' Leonard went on. 'I'd have thought it was just a legend had I not seen it for myself...' 'Of course it's not floating,' said Sergeant Colon. 'Honestly, Nobby, how're you ever going to find out anything when you ask daft questions like that? Land's heavier than water, right? That's why you find it at the bottom of the sea.' 'Yes, but he said pumice, and my gran had a pumice stone that worked a treat for getting tough skin off'f your feet in the tub and that'd float–' 'That sort of thing happens in bath tubs maybe,' said Colon. 'Not in real life. This is just a phenomena. It's not real. Next thing you'll be saying there's rocks up in the sky.' 'Yeah, but–' 'I am a sergeant, Nobby.' 'Yes. sarge.' 'It puts me in mind,' said Leonard, 'of those nautical stories about giant turtles that sleep on the surface, thus causing sailors to think they are an island. Of course, you don't get giant turtles that small.' 'Hey, Mr Quirm, this is an amazing boat,' said Nobby. 'Thank you.' 'I bet you could even smash up ships with it if you wanted.' There was an embarrassed silence. 'Altogether an interesting experience,' said Lord Vetinari, making some notes. 'And now, gentlemen downward and onward, please...'   The watchmen drew their weapons. 'They're D'regs, sir,' said Carrot. 'But – this is all wrong...' 'What do you mean?' 'We're not dead yet.' They're watching us like cats watch mice, thought Vimes. We can't run away and we can't win a fight, and they want to see what we'll do next. 'What does General Tacticus have to say about sir?' said Carrot. There's a hundred of them, thought Vimes. And six of us. Except that Detritus is drifting off and there's no knowing what particular commandment Visit is obeying right now and Reg's arms tend to drop off when he gets excited 'I don't know,' he said. 'Probably something on the lines of Don't Allow This to Happen.' 'Why don't you check, sir?' said Carrot, not taking his eyes off the watching D'regs. 'What?' 'I said, why don't you check, sir?' 'Right now?' 'It might be worth a try, sir.' 'That's crazy, captain.' 'Yes, sir. The D'regs have some very strange notions about crazy people, sir.' Vimes pulled out the battered book. The D'reg nearest to him, with a grin almost as wide and as curved as his sword, had a certain additional swagger that suggested chieftainship. A huge ancient crossbow was slung on his back. 'I say!' said Vimes. 'Could we just delay things a little?' He strode towards the man, who looked very surprised, and waved the book in the air. 'This is a book by General Tacticus, don't know if you've ever heard of him, quite a big name in these parts once, probably slaughtered your great–great–great–great–grandfather in fact, and I just want to take a moment to see what he has to say about this situation. You don't mind, do you?' The man gave Vimes a puzzled look. 'This might take a moment, there's no index, but I think I saw something–' The chieftain took a step backwards and looked at the men next to him, who shrugged. 'I wonder if you could help me with this word here?' Vimes went on, reaching the man's side and holding the book under his nose. He got another puzzled grin. What Vimes did next was known in Ankh–Morpork's alleyways as the Friendly Handshake, and consisted largely of driving his elbow into the man's stomach, then bringing his knee up to meet the man's chin on its way down, gritting his own teeth because of the pain in both knee and ankle, and then drawing his sword and holding it to the D'reg's throat before he could scramble up. 'Now, captain,' said Vimes, 'I'd like you to say in a loud dear voice that unless they back off a really long way, this gentleman here is going to be in some very serious legal trouble.' 'Mr Vimes, I don't think–' 'Do it!' The D'reg looked into his eyes while Carrot hawked his way through the demand. The man was still grinning Vimes couldn't risk shifting his gaze, but he sensed some puzzlement and confusion among the tribesmen. Then, as one man, they charged.   A Klatchian fishing boat, whose captain knew which way the wind was blowing, made its way back to the harbour of Al–Khali It seemed to the captain that, despite the favourable wind, he wasn't making quite the speed he should. He put it down to barnacles.   Vimes awoke with a noseful of camel. There are far worse awakenings, but not as many as you might think By turning his head, which took some effort, he ascertained that the camel was sitting down. By the sound of things, it was digesting something explosive. Now, how had he got here... Oh, gods... But it should have worked... It was classic. You threatened to cut off the head and the body just folded up. That was how everyone reacted, wasn't it? That was practically how civilization worked... Put it down to cultural differences, then. On the other hand, he wasn't dead. According to Carrot, knowing the D'regs for five minutes and still being alive at the end of it meant that they really, really liked you. On the other other hand, he'd just given their head man a Handshake, which influenced people without making friends. Well, no sense lying over this saddle bound hand and foot and dying of sunstroke all day. He ought to start being a leader of men again, and would do so just as soon as he could get this camel out of his mouth. 'Bingeley–bingeley beep?' 'Yes?' said Vimes, struggling with his bonds. 'Would you like to know about the appointments you missed?' 'No! I'm hying to get these damn ropes untied!' 'Do you want me to put that on your To Do list?' 'Oh, you've woken up, sir.' It sounded like Carrot's voice and it was the sort of thing he'd say. Vimes tried to turn his head. What he saw was mainly a white sheet, but it then became Carrot's face, upside down. 'They asked if they should untie you but I said you hadn't been getting enough rest lately,' Carrot went on. 'Captain, my arms and legs have gone to sleep . . Vimes began. 'Oh, well done, sir! That's a start, at least.' 'Carrot?' 'Yes, sir?' 'I want you to listen very carefully to the order I am about to give you.' 'Certainly, sir.' 'The point I'm making is that it won't be a request or a suggestion or some sort of hint.' 'Understood, sir.' 'I have, as you know, always encouraged my officers to think for themselves and not blindly obey me, but sometimes in any organization it is necessary for instructions to be followed to the letter and with alacrity.' 'Right, sir.' 'Untie me right now or you'll bloody well live to regret untying me!' 'Er, sir, I believe there is an inadvertent inconsistency in––' 'Carrot!' 'Of course, sir.' His ropes were cut. He slid down onto the sand. The camel turned its head, looked at him with its nostrils for a moment, and then looked away. Vimes managed to sit upright while Carrot busied himself cutting the rest of his bonds. 'Captain, why are you wearing a white sheet?' 'It's a burnous, sir. Very practical for desert wear. The D'regs gave them to us.' 'Us?' 'The rest of us, sir.' 'Everyone's OK?' 'Oh, yes.' 'But they attacked–' 'Yes, sir. But they only wanted to take us prisoner, sir. One of them did accidentally cut Reg's head off, but he did help him sew it on again, so no real harm done there.' 'I thought D'regs didn't take prisoners... ?' 'Beats me too, sir. But they say if we try to escape they'll cut our feet off, and Reg says he hasn't got enough thread for everyone, sir.' Vimes rubbed his head, Someone had hit him so hard his helmet was dented. 'What went wrong?' he said. 'I had their boss down!' 'As I understand it, sir, the D'regs think that any leader who is stupid enough to be defeated so easily isn't worth following. It's a Klatchian thing.' Vimes tried to persuade himself that there wasn't a hint of sarcasm in Carrot's voice as he went on: 'They're not really very interested in leaders, sir, to tell you the truth. They look on them as a sort of ornament. You know... just someone to shout "Charge!", sir.' 'A leader has to do other things, Carrot.' 'The D'regs think "Charge!" pretty well covers all of them, sir.' Vimes managed to stand up. Strange muscles twanged in his legs. He tottered forward. 'Here, let me give you a hand…' said Carrot, catching him. The sun was setting. Ragged tents clustered below one of the dunes, and there was the glow of firelight. Someone was laughing. It didn't sound like a prison. But then, thought Vimes, the desert was probably better than bus, He wouldn't even know which way to run, feet or no feet. 'The D'regs, like all Klatchians, are a very hospitable people,' said Carrot, as if he'd memorized this. 'They take hospitality very, very seriously.' Their captors were sitting round the fire. So were the watchmen. They'd also been persuaded to dress more suitably, which meant that Cheery looked like a girl in her mum's dress, apart from the iron helmet, and Reg Shoe looked like a mummy, and Detritus was a small snowcovered mountain. 'He's gone very... insensible in all this heat,' whispered Carrot. 'And that's Constable Visit over there, arguing religion. There are six hundred and fifty–three religions on the Klatchian continent.' 'He must be having fun.' 'And this is Jabbar,' said Carrot. Exhibit A, who looked like a slightly older version of 71–hour Ahmed, stood up and salaamed to Vimes. 'Offendi,' he said. 'He's their... well, he's like an official wise man,' said Carrot. 'Oh, so he's not the one who tells them to charge?' said Vimes His head buzzed with the heat. 'No, that's the leader,' said Carrot. 'Whenever they have one.' 'So perhaps Jabbar tells them when it's wise to charge?' said Vimes brightly. 'It's always wise to charge, offendi,' said Jabbar. He bowed again. 'My tent is your tent,' he said. 'It is?' said Vimes. 'My wives are your wives.,.' Vimes looked panicky. 'They are? Really?' 'My food is your food...' Jabbar went on. 'Vimes stared down at the dish by the fire. It looked like a sheep or a goat had been the main course. And the man bent down, picked up a morsel and handed it to him. Sam Vimes looked at the mouthful. And it looked back. 'The best part,' said Jabbar, and made appreciative suckling noises. He added something in Klatchian. There was some muffled laughter from the other men around the fire. 'This looks like a sheep's eyeball,' said Vimes, doubtfully. 'Yes, sir,' said Carrot. 'But it is unwise to–' 'You know what?' Vimes went on. 'I think this is a little game called "Let's see what offendi will swallow". And I'm not swallowing this, my friend.' Jabbar gave him an appraising look. The sniggering stopped. 'Then it is true that you can see further than most,' he said. 'So can this food,' said Vimes. 'My father told me never to eat anything that can wink back.' There was one of those little hanging-by-a-thread moments, which might suddenly rock one way or the other into a gale of laughter or sudden death. Then Jabbar slapped Vimes on the back. The eyeball shot off his palm and into the shadows, 'Well done! Extremely good! First time it have not worked in twenty year! Now sit down and have proper rice and sheep just like mother!' There was a certain feeling of relaxation. Vimes found himself pulled down. Bottoms shuffled aside to make room for him and a big slab of bread dripping with meat was put in front of him. Vimes prodded at it as politely as he dared, and then took the usual view that, if you can recognize at least half of it, it's probably OK to eat the rest. 'So we're your prisoners, Mr Jabbar?' 'Honoured guests! My tent is–' 'But... how can I put this?... you want us to enjoy your hospitality for some time?' 'We have tradition,' said Jabbar. 'A man who is a guest in your tent, even if he is your worst enemy, you owe him hospitality for tree dace.' 'Tree dace, eh?' said Vimes. 'I learn language on...' Jabbar waved a hand vaguely, 'you know, wooden ting, a camel of the sea–' 'Boat?' 'Right! But too many water!' He slapped Vimes on the back again, so that hot fat spilled into his lap. 'Any road up, lots speaking Morporkian these dace, offendi. It is language of... merchant.' He put an inflection on the word that suggested it was the same as 'earthworm'. 'So you have to know how to say things like "Give us all your money"?' said Vimes. 'Why ask?' said Jabbar. 'We take it anyway. But now...' he spat at the fire with amazing accuracy '... they say, we got to stop, this is wrong. What harm do we do?' 'Apart from killing people and taking all their merchandise?' said Vimes. Jabbar laughed again. 'Wali said you were a big diplomatic! But we don't kill merchants, why should we kill merchants? What is the sense? How foolish to be killing gift horse that lays the golden egg!' 'You could make money exhibiting it, certainly,' said Vimes. 'We kill merchants, we rob too much, they never come back. Dumb. We let them go, they get rich again, our sons rob them. Such is wisdom.' 'Ah... it's a sort of agriculture,' said Vimes. 'Right! But if you plant merchants, they don't grow so good.' Vimes realized that it was getting colder as the sun went down. In fact, a lot colder. He inched closer to the fire. 'Why is he called 71–hour Ahmed?' he said. The murmur of conversation stopped. Suddenly all eyes were on Jabbar, except the one that had ended up in the shadows. 'Not so diplomatic,' said Jabbar. 'We chase him up here, then suddenly we're ambushed by you. That seems–' 'I know nothing,' said Jabbar. 'Why won't you–?' Vimes began. 'Er, sir,' said Carrot urgently. 'That would be very unwise, sir. Look, I had a bit of a talk with Jabbar while you were... resting. It's a bit political, I'm afraid.' 'What isn't?' 'Prince Cadram is trying to unite the whole of Klatch, you see.' 'Dragging it kicking and screaming into the Century of the Fruitbat?' 'Why, yes, sir, how did–?' 'Just a lucky guess. Go on.' 'But he has been having trouble,' said Carrot. 'What kind?' said Vimes. 'Us,' said Jabbar proudly. 'None of the tribes like the idea, sir,' Carrot went on. 'They've always fought among themselves, and now most of them are fighting him. Historically, sir, Klatch isn't so much an empire as an argument.' ,He say, you must be educated. You must be learning to pay taxes. We do not wish to be educated about taxes,' said Jabbar. 'So you think you're fighting for your freedom?' said Vimes. Jabbar hesitated, and looked at Carrot. There was a brief exchange in Klatchian. Then Carrot said: 'That's a rather difficult question for a D'reg, sir. You see, their word for "freedom" is the same as their word for "fighting".' 'They certainly make their language do a lot of work, don't they... ?' Vimes was feeling better in the caller air. He took out a crushed and damp packet of cigars, pulled a coal out of the fire, and took a deep drag. 'So... Prince Charming's got a lot of troubles at home, has he? Does Vetinari know this?' 'Does a camel shit in the desert, sir?' 'You're really getting the hang of Klatch, aren't you?' said Vimes. Jabbar rumbled something. There was more laughter. 'Er... Jabbar says a camel certainly does shit in the desert, sir, otherwise you wouldn't have anything to light your cigar with, sir.' Once again, there was one of those moments when Vimes felt that he was under close scrutiny. Be diplomatic, Vetinari had told him. He took another deep draw. 'Improves the flavour,' he said. 'Remind me to take some home.' In Jabbar's eyes, the judges held up at least a couple of grudging eights. 'A man on a horse came and said we must fight the foreign dogs–' 'That's us, sir,' said Carrot helpfully. '–because you have stolen an island that is under the sea. But what is that to us? We know no harm of you foreign devils, but the men who oil their beards in Al–Khali we do not like. So we send him back.' 'All of him?' said Vimes. 'We are not barbaric. He was clearly a madman. But we kept his horse.' 'And 71–hour Ahmed told you to keep us, didn't he?' said Vimes. 'No–one orders the D'regs! It is our pleasure to keep you here!' 'And when will it be your pleasure to let us go? When Ahmed tells you? Jabbar stared at the fire. 'I will not speak of him. He is devious and cunning and not to be trusted.' 'But you are D'regs, too.' 'Yes!' Jabbar slapped Vimes on the back again. 'We know what we are talking about!'   The Klatchian fishing boat was a mile or two out of harbour when it seemed to its captain that it was suddenly riding better in the water. Perhaps the barnacles have dropped off, he thought. When his boat was lost in the evening mists a length of bent pipe rose slowly out of the swell and squeaked around until it faced the coast. A distant tinny voice said: 'Oh no...' And another tinny voice said: 'What's up, sarge?' 'Take a look through this!' 'OK.' There was a pause. Then the second tinny voice said: 'Oh, bugger...' What was riding at anchor before the city of Al–Khali wasn't a fleet. It was a fleet of fleets. The masts looked like a floating forest. Down below, Lord Vetinari took his turn to peer through the pipe. 'So many ships,' he said. 'In such a short time, too. How very well organized. Very well organized. One might almost say... astonishingly well organized. As they say, "If you would seek war, prepare for war." ' 'I believe, my lord, the saying is "If you would seek peace, prepare for war," ' Leonard ventured. Vetinari put his head on one side and his lips moved as he repeated the phrase to himself. Finally he said, 'No, no. I just don't see that one at all.' He ducked back into his seat. 'Let us proceed with care,' he said. 'We can go ashore under cover of darkness.' 'Er... can we maybe go ashore under cover of cover?' said Sergeant Colon. 'In fact these extra ships will make our plan that much easier,' said the Patrician, ignoring him. 'Our plan?' said Colon. 'People within the Klatchian hegemony come in every shape and colour.' Vetinari glanced at Nobby. 'Practically every shape and colour,' he added. 'So our appearance on the streets should not cause undue comment.' He glanced at Nobby again. 'To any great extent.' 'But we're wearing our uniforms, sir,' said Sergeant Colon. 'It's not like we can say we're on our way to a fancy–dress party.' 'Well, I'm not taking mine off,' said Nobby firmly. 'I'm not running around in my drawers. Not in a port. Sailors are at sea a long time. You hear stories.' 'That'd be worse,' said the sergeant, without wasting time calculating how long any sailor would need to be at sea before the vision of Nobby Nobbs would present itself as anything other than a target, ' 'cos if we're not in uniform, we'll be spies – and you know what happens to spies.' 'Are you going to tell me, sarge?' 'Excuse me, your lordship?' Sergeant Colon raised his voice. The Patrician looked up from a conversation with Leonard. 'Yes, sergeant?' 'What do they do to spies in Klatch, sir?' 'Er... let me see...' said Leonard. 'Oh, yes... I believe they give you to the women.' Nobby brightened up. 'Oh well, that doesn't sound too bad––' 'Er, no, Nobby–' Colon began. '–'cos I've seen the pictures in that book The Perfumed Allotment that Corporal Angua was reading, and–' '–no, listen, Nobby, you've got the wrong–' '–I mean, blimey, I didn't know you could do that with a –' '–Nobby, listen–' '–and then there's this bit where she–' 'Corporal Nobbs!' Colon yelled. 'Yes, sarge?' Colon leaned forward and whispered in Nobby's ear. The corporal's expression changed, slowly. 'They really–, 'Yes, Nobby.' 'They really–' 'Yes, Nobby.' 'They don't do that at home.' 'We ain't at home, Nobby. I wish we was.' 'Although you hear stories about the Agony Aunts, sarge.' 'Gentlemen,' said Lord Vetinari. 'I am afraid Leonard is being rather fanciful. That may apply to some of the mountain tribes, but Klatch is an ancient civilization and that sort of thing is not done officially. I should imagine they'd give you a cigarette.' 'A cigarette?' said Fred. 'Yes, sergeant. And a nice sunny wall to stand in front of.' Sergeant Colon examined this for any downside. 'A nice roll–up and a wall to lean against?' he said. 'I think they prefer you to stand up straight, sergeant.' 'Fair enough. No need to be sloppy just because you're a prisoner. Oh, well. I don't mind risking it, then.' 'Well done,' said the Patrician calmly. 'Tell me, sergeant... in your long military career, did anyone ever consider promoting you to an officer?' 'Nossir!' 'I cannot think why.'   Night poured over the desert. It came suddenly, in purple. In the clear air, the stars drilled down out of the sky, reminding any thoughtful watcher that it is in the deserts and high places that religions are generated. When men see nothing but bottomless infinity over their heads they have always had a driving and desperate urge to find someone to put in the way. Life emerged from the burrows and fissures. Soon, the desert was filled with the buzz and click and screech of creatures which, lacking mankind's superior brainpower, did not concern themselves with finding someone to blame and instead tried to find someone to eat. At around three in the morning Sam Vimes walked out of the tent for a smoke. The cold air hit him like a door. It was freezing. That wasn't what was supposed to happen in deserts, was it? Deserts were all hot sand and camels and... and... he struggled for a while, as a man whose geographical knowledge got severely cramped once you got off paved road... camels, yes, and dates. And possibly bananas and coconuts. But the temperature here made your breath tinkle in the air. He waved his cigar packet theatrically at a D'reg who was lounging near the tent. The man shrugged. The fire was just a heap of grey, but Vimes poked around in the vain hope of finding a glowing ember. He was amazed at how angry he was. Ahmed was the key, he knew it. And now they were stuck out here in the desert, the man had gone, and they were in the hands of... quiet, likeable people, fair enough. Brigands, maybe, the dry land equivalent of pirates, but Carrot would have said they were jolly good chaps for all that. If you were content to be their guest then they were as nice as pie, or sheep's eyeball and treacle or whatever you got out here– Something moved in the moonlight. A shadow slipped down the side of a dune. Something howled, out in the desert night. Tiny hairs rose, all down Vimes's back, just like they had for his distant ancestors. The night is always old. He'd walked too often down dark streets in the secret hours and felt the night stretching away, and known in his blood that while days and kings and empires come and go, the night is always the same age, always aeons deep. Terrors unfolded in the velvet shadows and while the nature of the talons may change, the nature of the beast does not. He stood up quietly, and reached for his sword. It wasn't there. They'd taken it away. They'd not even– 'A fine night,' said a voice beside him. Jabbar was standing by his shoulder. 'Who is out there?' Vimes hissed. 'An enemy.' 'Which one?' Teeth gleamed in the shadows. 'We will find out, offendi.' 'Why would they attack you now?' 'Maybe they think we have something they want, offendi.' More shadows slid across the desert. And one rose up right behind Jabbar, reached down and picked him up. A huge grey hand dragged his sword out of his belt. 'What do you want me to do with him, Mr Vimes?' 'Detritus?' The troll saluted with the hand that still held the D'reg. 'All present and correct, sir!' 'But–' And then Vimes realized. 'It's freezing cold! Your brain's working again?' 'With rather more efficiency, sir.' 'Is this a djinn?' said Jabbar. 'I don't know, but I could certainly do with one,' said Vimes. He finally managed to locate some matches in his pocket, and lit one. 'Put him down, sergeant,' he said, puffing his cigar into life. 'Jabbar, this is Sergeant Detritus. He could break every bone in your body, including some of the small ones in the fingers which are quite hard to do–' The darkness went shwup and something whispered past the back of his neck, just a slice of a second before Jabbar cannoned into him and bore him to the ground. 'They shoot at the light!' 'Mwwf?' Vimes raised his head cautiously and spat out sand and fragments of tobacco. 'Mr Vimes?' Only Carrot could whisper like that. He associated whispering with concealment and untruth and compromised by whispering very loudly. To Vimes's horror the man came round the edge of a tent holding a tiny lamp. 'Put that damn–' But he didn't have time to finish the sentence because, somewhere out in the night, a man screamed. It was a high–pitched scream and was suddenly cut off. 'Ah,' said Carrot, crouching down by Vimes and blowing out the lamp. 'That was Angua.' 'That was nothing like– oh. Yeah, I think I see what you mean,' Vimes said, uneasily. 'She's out there, is she?' 'I heard her earlier. She's probably enjoying herself. She doesn't really get much of a chance to let herself go in Ankh–Morpork.' 'Er... no...' Vimes had a mental picture of a werewolf letting go. But surely, Angua wouldn't– 'You two, uh... you're getting along OK, are you?' he said, trying to make out shapes in the darkness. 'Oh, fine, sir. Fine.' So her turning into a wolf occasionally doesn't worry you? Vimes couldn't bring himself to say it. 'No... problems, then?' 'Oh, not really, sir. She buys her own dog biscuits and she's got her own flap in the door. When it's full moon I don't really get involved.' There were shouts in the night and then a shape erupted from the darkness, streaked past Vimes, and disappeared into a tent. It didn't wait for a door. It simply hit the cloth at full speed and continued until the tent collapsed around it. 'And what is that?' said Jabbar. 'This may take some explaining,' said Vimes, picking himself up. Carrot and Detritus were already hauling at the collapsed tent. 'We are D'regs,' said Jabbar reproachfully. 'We are supposed to fold tents silently in the night, not–' There was enough moonlight. Angua sat up and snatched a piece of tent out of Carrot's hands. 'Thank you,' she said, wrapping it around her. 'And before anyone says anything, I just bit him on the bum. Hard. And that was not the soft option, let me tell you.' Jabbar looked back into the desert, and then down at the sand, and then at Angua. Vimes could see him thinking, and put a fraternal arm around his shoulders. 'I'd better explain–' he began. 'There's a couple of hundred soldiers out there!' Angua snapped. '–later.' 'They're taking up positions all round you! And they don't look nice! Has anyone got any clothes that might fit? And some decent food? And a drink! There's no water in this place!' 'They will not dare attack before dawn,' said Jabbar. 'And what will you do, sir?' said Carrot. 'At dawn we will charge!' 'Ah. Uh. I wonder if I could suggest an alternative approach?' 'Alternative? It is right to charge! Charging is what dawn is for.' Carrot saluted Vimes. 'I've been reading your book, sir. While you were... asleep. Tacticus's got quite a lot to say about how to deal with overwhelming odds, sir.' 'Yes?' 'He says take every opportunity to turn them into underwhelming odds, sir. We could attack now.' 'But it's dark, man!' 'It's just as dark for the enemy, sir.' 'I mean it's pitch black! You wouldn't know who the hell you were fighting! Half the time you'd be shooting your own side!' 'We wouldn't, sir, because there'd only be a few of us. Sir? All we need to do is crawl out there, make a bit of noise, and then let them get on with it. Tacticus says all armies are the same size in the night, sir.' 'There might be something in that,' said Angua. 'They're crawling around in ones and twos, and they're dressed pretty much like–' She waved a hand at Jabbar. 'This is Jabbar,' said Carrot. 'He's sort of not the leader.' Jabbar grinned nervously. 'It happens often in your country, where dogs turn into naked women?' 'Sometimes days can go past and it doesn't happen at all,' Angua snapped. 'I'd like some clothes, please. And a sword, if there's going to be fighting.' 'Um, I think Klatchians have a very particular view about women fighting–' Carrot began. 'Yes!' said Jabbar. 'We expect them to be good at it, Blue Eyes. We are D'regs!'   The Boat surfaced in the scummy dead water under a jetty. The lid opened slowly. 'Smells like home,' said Nobby. 'You can't trust the water,' said Sergeant Colon. 'But I don't trust the water at home, sarge.' Fred Colon managed to get a foothold on the greasy wood. It was, in theory, quite a heroic enterprise. He and Nobby Nobbs, the bold warriors, were venturing forth in hostile territory. Unfortunately, he knew they were doing it because Lord Vetinari was sitting in the Boat and would raise his eyebrows in no uncertain manner if they refused. Colon had always thought that heroes had some special kind of clockwork that made them go out and die famously for god, country and apple pie, or whatever particular delicacy their mother made. It had never occurred to him that they might do it because they'd get yelled at if they didn't. He reached down. 'Come on up, Nobby,' he said. 'And remember we're doing this for the gods, Ankh–Morpork and–' It seemed to Colon that a foodstuff would indeed be somehow appropriate. 'And my mum's famous knuckle sandwich!' 'Our mum never made us knuckle sandwiches,' said Nobby, as he hauled himself on to the planks. 'But you'd be amazed at what she could do with a bit of cheese...' 'Yeah, all right, but that aint much of a battle cry, is it? "For the gods, Ankh–Morpork and amazing things Nobby's mum can do with cheese"? That'll strike fear in the hearts of the enemy!' said Sergeant Colon, as they crept forward. 'Oh, well, if that's what you're after, you want my mum's Distressed Pudding and custard,' said Nobby. 'Frightening, is it?' 'They wouldn't want to know about it, sarge.' The docks of Al–Khali were like docks everywhere, because all docks everywhere are connected. Men have to put things on and off boats. There are only a limited number of ways to do this. So all docks look the same. Some are hotter, some are damper, there are always piles of vaguely forgotten–looking things. In the distance there was the glow of the city, which seemed quite unaware of the enemy incursion. "'Get us some clothes so that we'll blend in," ' muttered Colon. 'That's all very well to say.' 'Nah, nah, that's easy,' said Nobby. 'Everyone knows how to do that one. You lurk in an alley somewhere, right, and you wait until a couple of blokes come by and you lure them into the alley, see, and there's a couple of thumps, and then you come out wearing their clothes.' 'That works, does it?' 'Never fails, sarge,' said Nobby confidently.   The desert looked like snow in the moonlight. Vimes found himself quite at ease with the Tacticus method of fighting. It was how coppers had always fought. A proper copper didn't line up with a lot of other coppers and rush at people. A copper lurked in the shadows, walked quietly and bided his time. In all honesty, of course, the time he bided until was the point when the criminal had already committed the crime and was carrying the loot. Otherwise, what was the point? You had to be realistic. 'We got the man what done it' carries a lot more gravitas than 'We got the man what looked as if he was going to do it,' especially when people say, 'Prove it.' Somewhere off to the left, in the distance, someone screamed. Vimes was a bit uneasy in this robe, though. It was like going into battle in a nightshirt. Because he wasn't at all certain he could kill a man who wasn't actively trying to kill him. Of course, technically any armed Klatchian these days was actively trying to kill him. That was what war was about. But– He raised his head over the top of the dune. A Klatchian warrior was looking the other way. Vimes crept– 'Bingeley–bingeley beep! This is your seven eh em alarm call, Insert Name Here! At least I hope–' 'Huh?' 'Damn!' Vimes reacted first and punched the man on the nose. Since there was no point in waiting to see what effect this would have, he threw himself forward and the two of them rolled down the other side of the freezing dune, struggling and punching. '–but my real–time function seems erratic at the moment–' The Klatchian was smaller than Vimes. He was younger, too. But it was unfortunate for him that he appeared to be too young to have learned the repertoire of dirty fighting that spelled survival in Ankh–Morpork's back streets. Vimes, on the other hand, was prepared to hit anything with anything. The point was that the opponent shouldn't get up again. Everything else was decoration. They slid to a halt at the bottom of the dune, with Vimes on top and the Klatchian groaning. 'Things To Do,' the Dis-organizer shrilled: 'Ache.' And then... It was probably throat cutting time. Back home Vimes could have dragged him off to the cells, in the knowledge that everything would look better in the morning, but the desert had no such options. No, he couldn't do that. Thump the bloke senseless. That was the merciful way. 'Vindaloo! Vindaloo!' Vimes's fist stayed raised. 'What?' 'That's you, isn't it? Mr Vimes? Vindaloo!' Vimes pulled a fold of cloth away from the figure's face. 'Are you Goriff's boy?' 'I didn't want to be here, Mr Vimes!' The words came fast, desperate. 'All right, all right, I'm not going to hurt you. Vimes lowered his fist and stood up, pulling the boy up after him. 'Talk later,' he muttered. 'Come on!' 'No! Everyone knows what the D'regs do to their captives!' 'Well I'm their captive and they'll have to do it to both of us, OK? Keep away from the more amusing food and you'll probably be OK.' Someone whistled in the darkness. 'Come on, lad!' hissed Vimes. 'No harm's going to come to you! Well... less than'd come if you stayed here. All right?' This time he didn't give the boy time to argue, but dragged him along. As he headed towards the D'regs' camp, other figures slid down the dunes. One of them had an arm missing and had a sword sticking in him. 'How did you get on, Reg?' said Vimes. 'A bit odd, sir. After the first one chopped my arm off and stabbed me, the rest of them seemed to Keep out of my way. Honestly, you'd think they'd never seen a man stabbed before.' 'Did you find your arm?' Reg waved something in the air. 'That's another thing,' he said. 'I hit a few of them with it and they ran off screaming.' 'It's your type of unarmed combat,' said Vimes. 'It probably takes some getting used to.' 'Is that a prisoner you've got there?' 'In a way.' Vimes glanced around. 'He seems to have fainted. I can't think why.' Reg leaned closer. 'These foreigners are a bit weird,' he said. 'Reg?' 'Yes?' 'Your eat's hanging off.' 'Is it? Wretched thing. You'd think a nail would work, wouldn't you?'   Sergeant Colon looked up at the stars. They looked down at him. At least Fred Colon had a choice. Beside him, Corporal Nobbs gave a groan. But the attackers had left him his pants. There are some places where the boldest dare not go, and those areas of Nobby upwards of the knees and downwards of the stomach were among them. Well, Colon thought of them as attackers. Technically, he supposed they were defenders. Aggressive defenders. 'Just run all that past me again, will you?' he said. 'We find a couple of blokes about our height and weight–' 'We did that.' 'We lure them into this alley–' 'We did that.' 'I take a swing at them with a length of wood and hit you by accident in the dark and they get angry and turn out to be thieves and nick all our clothes.' 'We weren't supposed to do that.' 'Well it worked basically,' said Nobby, managing to get to his knees. – 'We could give it another go.' 'Nobby, you're in a port in a foreign city clad only in your, and I use this word with feeling, Nobby, your unmentionables. This is not the point to start talking about luring people into alleys. There could be talk.' 'Angua always says that nakedness is the national costume everywhere, sarge.' 'She was talking about herself, Nobby,' said Colon, sidling along in the shadows. 'It's different for you.' He peered around the other end of the alley. There was noise and chatter from the building that formed one of the walls. A couple of laden donkeys waited patiently outside. 'Nip out and grab one of those packs, right?' 'Why me, sarge?' ' 'cos you're the corporal and I'm the sergeant. And you've got more on than me.' Grumbling under his breath, Nobby edged into the narrow street and unfastened a tether as fast as he could. The animal followed him obediently. Sergeant Colon pulled at the pack. 'If push comes to shove we can wear the sacks,' he said. 'That'll– What's this?' He held up something red. 'Flowerpot?' said Nobby helpfully. 'It's a fez! Some Klatchians wear 'em. Looks like we've struck lucky. Whoops, here's another one. Try it on, Nobby. And... looks like one of them nightshirts they wear... and here's another one of those, too. We're home and dry, Nobby.' 'They're a bit short, sarge.' 'Beggars can't be choosers,' said Colon, struggling into the costume. 'Go on, put your fez on.' 'It makes me look like a twit, sarge.' 'Look, I'll put mine on, all right?' 'Then we'll be fez to fez, sarge.' Sergeant Colon gave him a severe look. 'Did you have that one prepared, Nobby?' 'No, sarge, I just made it up in my head right then.' 'Well, look, no calling me sarge. That doesn't sound Klatchian.' 'Nor does Nobby, sa– Sorry...' 'Oh, I dunno... you could be... Knobi or Nbobi... or Gnobbee... Sounds pretty Klatchian to me.' 'What's a good Klatchian name for you, then? I don't know hardly any,' said Nhobi. Sergeant Colon didn't answer. He was peering round the corner again. 'His lordship did say we was not to hang about,' Nobby murmured. 'Yeah, but inside that tin can, well, it smells pretty lived-in, if you know what I mean. What I wouldn't give for–' There was a bellow behind them. They turned. There were three Klatchian soldiers. Or possibly watchmen. Nobby and Sergeant Colon didn't look much further than the swords. The leader growled a question at them. 'What did he say?' Nobby quavered. 'Dunno!' 'Where you from?' said the leader, in Morporkian. 'What? Oh... er…'    Colon hesitated, waiting for shiny death. 'Hah, yes.' The guard lowered his sword and jerked a thumb towards the docks. 'You get back to your detachment now!' 'Right!' said Nobby. 'What your name?' one of the guards demanded. 'Nhobi,' said Nobby. This seemed to pass. 'And you, fat one?' Colon was panicking on the spot. He sought desperately for any name that sounded Klatchian, and there was only one that presented itself and which was absolutely and authentically Klatchian. 'Al,' he said, his knees trembling. 'You get back right now or there will be trouble!' The watchmen ran for it, dragging the donkey behind them, and didn't stop until they were on the greasy jetty, which somehow felt like home. 'What was that all about, s– Al?' said Nobby. 'All they wanted to do was push us around a bit! Typical Watch behaviour,' he added. 'Not ours, of course.' 'I suppose we had the right clothes on...' 'You didn't even tell them where we came from! And they spoke our language!' 'Well, they... I mean... anyone ought to be able to speak Morporkian,' said Colon, gradually regaining his mental balance. 'Even babies learn it. I bet it comes easy after learning somethin' as complicated as Klatchian.' 'What're we going to do with the donkey, Al?' 'Do you think it can pedal?' 'I doubt it.' 'Then leave it up here.' 'But it'll get pinched, Al.' 'Oh, these Klatchians'll pinch anything.' 'Not like us, eh, Al?' Nobby looked at the forest of masts filling), the bay. 'Looks like even more of 'em from here,' he said. 'You could walk from boat to boat for a mile. What're they all here for?' 'Don't be daft, Nobby. It's obvious. They're to take everyone to Ankh–Morpork!' 'What for? We don't eat that much cur–' 'Invasion, Nobby! There's a war on, remember?' They looked back at the ships. Riding lights gleamed on the water. The bit of it that was immediately below them bubbled for a moment, and then the hull of the Boat rose a few inches above the surface. The lid unscrewed and Leonard's worried face appeared. 'Ah, there you are,' he said. 'We were getting concerned...' They lowered themselves down into the fetid interior of the vessel. Lord Vetinari was sitting with a pad of paper across his knees, writing carefully. He glanced up briefly. 'Report.' Nobby fidgeted while Sergeant Colon delivered a more or less accurate account, although there was some witty repartee with the Klatchian guards that the corporal had not hitherto recalled. Vetinari did not look up. Still writing, he said, 'Sergeant, Ur is an old country Rimward of the kingdom of Djelibeybi, whose occupants are a byword for bucolic stupidity. For some reason, I cannot think why, the guard must have assumed you were from there. And Morporkian is something of a lingua franca even in the Klatchian empire. When someone from Hersheba needs to trade with someone from Istanzia, they will undoubtedly haggle in Morporkian. This will serve us well, of course, The force that is being assembled here must mean that practically every man is a distant stranger with outlandish ways. Provided we do not act too foreign, we should pass muster. This means not asking for curry with swede and currants in it and refraining from ordering pints of Winkle's Old Peculiar, do I make myself clear?' 'Er... what is it we're going to do, sir?' 'We will reconnoitre initially.' 'Ah, right. Yes. Very important.' 'And then seek out the Klatchian high command. Thanks to Leonard I have a little... package to deliver. I hope it will end the war very quickly.' Sergeant Colon looked blank. At some point in the last few seconds the conversation had run away with him. 'Sorry, sir... you said high command, sir.' 'Yes, sergeant.' 'Like... the top brass, or turbans or whatever.. . all surrounded by crack troops, sir. That's where you always put the best troops, around the top brass.' 'I expect this will be the case, yes. In fact, I rather hope it is.' Sergeant Colon, once again, tried to keep up. 'Ah. Right. And we'll go and look for them, will we, sir?' 'I can hardly ask them to come to us, sergeant.' 'Right, sir. I can see that, It could get a bit crowded.' At last, Lord Vetinari looked up. 'Is there some problem, sergeant?' And Sergeant Colon once again knew a secret about bravery. It was arguably a kind of enhanced cowardice the knowledge that while death may await you if you advance it will be a picnic compared to the certain living hell that awaits should you retreat. 'Er... not as such, sir,' he said. 'Very well.' Vetinari pushed his paperwork aside. 'If there is more suitable clothing in your bag, I will get changed and we can take a look at Al–Khali.' 'Oh, gods...' 'Sorry, sergeant?' 'Oh, good, sir.' 'Good.' Vetinari began to pull other items out of the liberated sack. There was a set of jugglers clubs, a bag of coloured balls and finally a placard, such as might be placed to one side of the stage during an artiste's performance. ' "Culli, Gulli and Beti",' he read. "'Exotic tricks and dances". Hmm,' he added. 'It would seem there was a lady among the owners of this sack.' The watchmen looked at the gauzy material that came out of the sack next. Nobby's eyes bulged. 'What are them?' 'I believe they are called harem pants, corporal.' 'They're very–' 'Curiously, the purpose of the clothing of the nautch girl or exotic dancer has –always been less to reveal and more to suggest the imminence of revelation,' said the Patrician. Nobby looked down at his costume, and then at Sergeant Al–Colon in his costume, and said cheerfully, 'Well, I ain't sure it's going to suit you, sir.' He regretted the words immediately. 'I hadn't intended that they should suit me,' said the Patrician calmly. 'Please pass me your fez, Corporal Beti.'   The subtle, deceiving dawn-before-dawn slid over the desert, and the commander of the Klatchian detachment wasn't happy about it. The D'regs always attacked at dawn. All of them. It didn't matter how many of them there were, or how many of you there were. Anyway, the whole tribe attacked. It wasn't just the women and children, but the camels, goats, sheep and chickens too. Of course you were expecting them and bows could cut them down, but... they always appeared suddenly, as if even the desert had spat them out. Get it wrong, be too slow, and you'd be hacked, kicked, butted, pecked and viciously spat at. His troops lay in wait. Well, if you could call them troops. He'd said they were overstretched... well, he hadn't actually said, because that sort of thing could get you into trouble in this man's army, but he'd thought it very hard. Half of them were keen kids who thought that if you went into battle shouting and waving your sword in the air the enemy just ran away. They'd never faced a D'reg chicken coming in at eye height. As for the rest of it... in the night people had run into one another, ambushed one another by mistake and were now as jittery as peas on a drum. A man had lost his sword and swore that someone had walked away with it stuck right through him. And some kind of rock had got up and walked around hitting people. With other people. The sun was well up now. 'It's the waiting that's the worst part,' said his sergeant, next to him. 'It might be the worst part,' said the commander. 'Or, there again, the bit where they suddenly rise out of the desert and cut you in half might be the worst part.' He stared mournfully at the treacherously empty sand. 'Or the bit where a maddened sheep tries to gnaw your nose off might be the worst part. In fact, when you think of all the things that can happen when you're surrounded by a horde of screaming D'regs, the bit where they aren't there at all is, I think you'll find, the best part.' The sergeant wasn't trained for this sort of thing. So he said, 'They're late.' 'Good. Rather them than us.' 'Sun's right up now, sir.' The commander looked at his shadow. It was full day, and the sand was mercifully free of his blood. The commander had been pacifying various recalcitrant parts of Klatch for long enough to wonder why, if he was pacifying people, he always seemed to be fighting them. Experience had taught him never to say things like 'I don't like it, it's too quiet.' There was no such thing as too quiet. 'They might have decamped in the night, sir,' said the sergeant. 'That doesn't sound like the D'regs. They never run away. Anyway, I can see their tents.' 'Why don't we rush 'em, sir?' 'You haven't fought D'regs before, sergeant?' 'No, sir. I've been pacifying the Mad Savatars in Uhistan, though, and they're–' 'The D'regs are worse, sergeant. They pacify right back at you.' 'I didn't say how mad the Savatars were, sir.' 'Compared to the D'regs, they were merely slightly vexed.' The sergeant felt that his reputation was being impugned. 'How about I take a few men and investigate, sir?' The commander glanced at the sun again. Already the air was too hot to breathe. 'Oh, very well. Let's go.' The Klatchians advanced on the camp. There were the tents, and the ash of fires. But there were no camels and horses, merely a long scuffed trail leading off among the dunes. Morale began to rise a little. Attacking a dangerous enemy who isn't there is one of the more attractive forms of warfare, and there was a certain amount of assertion about how lucky the D'regs were to have run away in time, and some extemporizing on the subject of what the soldiers would have done to the D'regs if they'd caught them... 'Who's that?' said the sergeant. A figure appeared between the dunes, riding on a camel. His white robes fluttered in the breeze. He slid down when he reached the Klatchians, and waved at them. 'Good morning, gentlemen! May I persuade you to surrender?' 'Who are you?' 'Captain Carrot, sir. If you would be kind enough to lay down your weapons no–one will get hurt.' The commander looked up. Blobs were appearing along the tops of the dunes. They rose, and turned out to be heads. 'They're... D'regs, sir!' said the sergeant. 'No. D'regs would be charging, sergeant.' 'Oh, sorry. Shall I tell them to charge?' said Carrot. 'Is that what you'd prefer?' The D'regs were all along the dunes now. The climbing sun glittered off metal. 'Are you telling me,' the commander began slowly, 'that you can persuade D'regs not to charge?' 'It was tricky, but I think they've got the idea,' said Carrot. The commander considered his position. There were D'regs on either side. His troop were practically huddling together. And this red–headed, blue–eyed man was smiling at him. 'How do they feel about the merciful treatment of prisoners?' he ventured. 'I think they could get the hang of it. If I insist.' The commander glanced at the silent D'regs again. 'Why?' he said. 'Why aren't they fighting us?' he said. 'My commander says he doesn't want unnecessary loss of life, sir,' said Carrot. 'That's Commander Vimes, sir. He's sitting on that dune up there.' 'You can persuade armed D'regs not to charge and you have a commander?' 'Yes, sir. He says this is a police action.' The commander swallowed. 'We give in,' he said. 'What, just like that, sir?' said his sergeant. 'Without a fight?' 'Yes, sergeant. Without a fight. This man can make water run uphill and he has a commander. I love the idea of giving in without a fight. I've fought for ten years and giving in without a fight is what I've always wanted to do.'   Water dripped off the Boat's metal ceiling and blobbed on to the paper in front of Leonard of QuirmHe wiped it away. It might have been boring, waiting in a small metal can under a nondescript jetty, but Leonard had no concept of the term. Absentmindedly, he jotted a brief sketch of an improved ventilation system. He started to watch his own hand. Almost without his guidance, taking its instructions from somewhere else in his head, it drew a cutaway of a much larger version of the Boat. Here, here and here... there could be a bank of a hundred oars rather than pedals, each one manned – his pencil caressed the paper – by a well muscled and not overdressed young warrior. A boat that would pass unseen under other boats, take men wherever they needed to go. Here a giant saw, affixed to the roof, so that when rowed at speed it could cut the hulls of enemy ships. And here and here a tube... He stopped and stared at his drawing for a while. Then he sighed and started to tear it up.   Vimes watched from the dune. He couldn't hear much from up here, but he didn't need to. Angua sat down beside him. 'It's working, isn't it?' she said. 'Yes.' 'What's he going to do?' 'Oh, he'll take their weapons and let 'em go, I suppose.' 'Why do people follow him?' said Angua. 'Well, you're his girlfriend, you ought – ' 'That's different. I love him because he's kind without thinking about it. He doesn't watch his own thoughts like other people do. When he does good things it's because he's decided to do them, not because he's trying to measure up to something. He's so simple. Anyway, I'm a wolf living with people, and there's a name for wolves that live with people. If he whistled, I'd come running.' Vimes tried not to show his embarrassment. Angua smiled. 'Don't worry, Mr Vimes. You've said it yourself. Sooner or later, we're all someone's dog.' 'It's like hypnotism,' said Vimes hurriedly. 'people follow him to see what's going to happen next. They tell themselves that they're just going along with it for a while and can stop any time they want to, but they never want to. It's damn magic.' 'No. Have you ever really watched him? I bet he'd found out everything about Jabbar by the time he'd talked to him for ten minutes. I bet he knows the name of every camel. And he'll remember it all. People don't take that much interest in other people, usually.' Her fingers idly traced a pattern in the sand. 'So he makes you feel important.' 'Politicians do that–' Vimes began. 'Not the way he does, believe me. I expect Lord Vetinari remembers facts about people–' 'Oh, you'd better believe that!' '–but Carrot takes an interest. He doesn't even think about it. He makes space in his head for people. He takes an interest, and so people think they're interesting. They feel... better when he's around.' Vimes glanced down. Her fingers were drawing aimlessly in the sand again. We're all changing in the desert, he thought. It's not like the city, hemming your thoughts in. You can feel your mind expand to the horizons. No wonder this is where religions start. And suddenly here I am, probably not legally, just trying to do my job. Why? Because I'm too damn stupid to stop and think before I give chase, that's why. Even Carrot knew better than to do that. I'd have just chased after Ahmed's ship without a thought, but he was bright enough to report back to me first. He did what a responsible officer ought to do, but me... 'Vetinari's terrier,' he said aloud. 'Chase first, and think about it afterwards–' His eye caught the distant bulk of Gebra. Out there was a Klatchian army, and somewhere over there was the AnkhMorpork army, and he was a handful of people and no plan because he'd chased first and 'But I had to,' he said. 'Any copper wouldn't have let a suspect like Ahmed get ' Once again he had the feeling that the problem he was facing wasn't really a problem at all. It was something very obvious. He was the problem. He wasn't thinking right. Come to think of it, he hadn't really thought at all. He glanced down again at the trapped company. They had stripped down to their loincloths and were looking very sheepish, as men generally do in their underwear. Carrot's white robe still flapped in the breeze. He hasn't been here a day, thought Vimes, and already he's wearing the desert like a pair of sandals. '...  er... bingeley–bingeley beep?' 'Is that your demon diary?' said Angua. Vimes rolled his eyes. 'Yes. Although it seems to be talking about someone else.' '... er... three pee em,' the demon muttered slowly, '... day not filled in... Check Wall Defences...' 'See? It thinks I'm in Ankh–Morpork! It cost Sybil three hundred dollars and it can't even keep track of where I am.' He flicked his cigar butt away and stood up. 'I'd better get down there,' he said. 'After all, I am the boss.' He slithered his way down the dune and strolled towards Carrot, who salaamed to him. 'A salute would do, captain, thanks all the same.' 'Sorry, sir. I think I got a bit carried away.' 'Why've you made them strip off?' 'Makes them a bit of a laughing stock when they return, sir. A blow to their pride.' He leaned closer and whispered, 'I've let their commander keep his clothes on, though. It doesn't do to show up the officers.' 'Really?' said Vimes. 'And some want to join us, sir. There's Goriffs lad and a few others. They were just dragooned into the army yesterday. They don't even know why they're fighting. So I said they could.' Vimes took the captain aside. 'Er... I don't remember suggesting that any of the prisoners joined us,' he said quietly. 'Well, sir... I thought, what with our army approaching, and since quite a lot of these lads are from various corners of the empire and don't like the Klatchians any more than we do, I thought that a flying column of guerrilla fighters–' 'We aren't soldiers!' 'Er, I thought we were soldiers–' 'Yes, yes, all right. In a way... but really we're coppers, like we've always been. We don't kill people unless – ' Ahmed? Everyone's slightly on edge when he's around, he worries people, he gets information from all over the place, he seems to go where he pleases, and he's always around when there's trouble– Damn damn damn... He ran through the crowd until he reached Jabbar, who was watching Carrot with the usual puzzled smile that Carrot caused in innocent bystanders. 'Tree dace,' said Vimes. 'Three days. That's seventytwo hours!' 'Yes, offendi?' said Jabbar. It was the voice of someone who recognized dawn, noon and sunset, and just let everything in between happen whenever it liked. 'So why's he called 71–hour Ahmed? What's so special about the extra hour?' Jabbar grinned nervously. 'Did he do something after seventy–one hours?' said Vimes. Jabbar folded his arms. 'I will not say.' 'He told you to keep us here?' 'Yes.' 'But not to kill us.' 'Oh, I would not kill my friend Sir Sam Mule–' 'And don't give me all that eyeball rubbish,' said Vimes. 'He wanted time to get somewhere and do something, right?' 'I will not say.' 'You don't need to,' said Vimes. 'Because we are leaving. And if you kill us... well, probably you can. But 71–hour Ahmed would not like that, I expect.' Jabbar looked like a man making a difficult decision. 'He will be coming back!' he said. 'Tomorrow! No problem!' 'I'm not waiting! And I don't think he wants me killed, Jabbar. He wants me alive. Carrot?' Carrot hurried over. 'Yes, sir?' Vimes was aware that Jabbar was staring at him in horror. 'We've lost Ahmed,' he said. 'Even Angua can't pick up his trail with the sand blowing all over the place. We've got no place here. We're not needed here.' 'But we are, sir!' Carrot burst out. 'We could help the desert tribes–' 'Oh, you want to stay and fight?' said Vimes. 'Against the KIatchians?' 'Against the bad Klatchians, sir.' 'Ah, well, that's the trick, isn't it? When one of them comes screaming at you waving a sword, how do you spot his moral character? Well, you can stay if you like and fight for the good name of Ankh–Morpork. It should be a pretty short fight. But I'm off. Jenkins probably hasn't got afloat again. OK, Jabbar?' The D'reg was staring at the desert sand between his feet. 'You know where he is now, don't you?' Vimes prompted. 'Yes.' 'Tell me.' 'No. I swore to him.' 'But D'regs are oath-breakers. Everyone knows that.' . Jabbar gave Vimes a grin. 'Oh, oaths. Stupid things. I gave him my word.' 'He won't break it, sir,' said Carrot. 'D'regs are very particular about things like that. lt's only when they swear on gods and things that they'll ever break an oath.' 'I will not tell you where he is,' said Jabbar. 'But...' he grinned again, but there was no humour in it, 'how brave are you, Mr Vimes?'   'Stop complaining, Nobby.' 'I'm not complaining. I'm just sayin' these trousers are a bit draughty, that's all I'm saying.' 'They look good on you, though.' 'And what're these tin bowls supposed to be doing?' 'They're supposed to be protecting the bits you haven't got, Nobby.' 'The way this breeze is blowing, I could do with some to protect the bits I have.' 'Just try and act ladylike, will you, Nobby?' Which would be hard, Sergeant Colon had to admit. The lady for whom the clothes had been made had been quite tall and somewhat full–figured, whereas Nobby without his armour could have hidden behind a short stick if you attached a toast rack to it about two–thirds of the way up. He looked like a gauzy accordion with a lot of jewellery. In theory, the costume would have been quite revealing, if Corporal Nobbs was something you wished to see revealed, but there were so many billows and folds now that all one could reliably say was that he was in there somewhere. He was leading the donkey, which seemed to like him. Animals tended to like Nobby. He didn't smell wrong. 'And them boots don't work,' Sergeant Colon went on. 'Why not? You kept yours on.' 'Yeah, but I'm not supposed to be a flower of the desert, right? A moon of someone's delight shouldn't kick up sparks when she walks, am I right?' 'They belonged to my gran, I ain't leaving 'em around for anyone to nick, and I ain't mooning for anyone's delight,' said Nobby sulkily. Lord Vetinari strode on ahead. The streets were already filling up. Al–Khali liked to get the business of the day started in the cool of dawn, before full day flamethrowered the landscape. No–one paid the newcomers any attention, although a few people did turn round to watch Corporal Nobbs. Goats and chickens ambled out of the way as they passed. 'Watch out for people trying to sell you dirty postcards, Nobby,' said Colon. 'My uncle was here once and he said some bloke tried to sell him a pack of dirty postcards for five dollars. Disgusted, he was.' 'Yeah, 'cos you can get 'em in the Shades for two dollars,' said Nobby. 'That's what he said. And they were Ankh–Morpork ones. Trying to flog us our own dirty postcards? I call that disgusting, frankly.' 'Good morning, sultan!' said a cheerful and somehow familiar voice. 'New in town, are we?' All three of them turned to a figure that had magically appeared from the mouth of an alleyway. 'Indeed, yes,' said the Patrician. 'I could see you were! Everyone is, these days. And it is your lucky day, shah! I am here to help, right? You want something, I got it!' Sergeant Colon had been staring at the newcomer. He said, in a faraway voice, 'Your name's going to be something like... Al–jibla or something, right?' 'Heard about me, have you?' said the trader jovially. 'Sort of, yeah,' said Colon slowly. 'You're amazingly... familiar.' Lord Vetinari pushed him aside. 'We are strolling entertainers,' he said. 'We were hoping to get an engagement at the Prince's palace... Perhaps you could help?' The man rubbed his beard thoughtfully, causing various particles to cascade into the little bowls in his tray. 'Dunno about the palace,' he said. 'What's it you do?' 'We practise juggling, fire–eating, that sort of thing,' said Vetinari. 'Do we?' said Colon. Al–jibla nodded at Nobby. 'What does...' '...she...' said Lord Vetinari helpfully. '...she do?' 'Exotic dancing,' said Vetinari, while Nobby scowled. 'Pretty exotic, I should think,' said Al–jibla. 'You'd be amazed.' A couple of armed men had drifted over to them. Sergeant Colon's heart sank. In those bearded faces he saw himself and Nobby, who at home would always saunter over to anything on the street that looked interesting. 'You are jugglers, are you?' said one of them. 'Let's see you juggle, then.' Lord Vetinari gave them a blank look and then glanced down at the tray around Al–jibla's neck. Among the more identifiable foodstuffs were a number of green melons. 'Very well,' he said, and picked up three of them. Sergeant Colon shut his eyes. After a few seconds he opened them again because a guard had said, 'All right, but anyone can do it with three.' 'In that case perhaps Mr Al–jibla will throw me a few more?' said the Patrician, as the balls spun through his hands. Sergeant Colon shut his eyes again. After a short while a guard said, 'Seven is pretty good. But it's just melons.' Colon opened his eyes. The Klatchian guard twitched his robe aside. Half a dozen throwing knives glinted. And so did his teeth. Lord Vetinari nodded. To Colon's growing surprise he did not seem to be watching the tumbling melons at all. 'Four melons and three knives,' he said. 'If you would care to give the knives to my charming assistant Beti...' 'Who?' said Nobby. 'Oh? Why not seven knives, then?' 'Kind sirs, that would be too simple,' said Lord Vetinari.[13] 'I am but a humble tumbler. Please let me practice my art.' 'Beti?' said Nobby, glowering under his veils. Three fruits arced gently out of the green whirl and thumped on to Al–jibla's tray. The guards looked carefully, and to Colon's mind nervously, at the cross–dressed figure of the cross corporal. 'She's not going to do any kind of dance, is she?' one of them ventured. 'No!' snapped Beti. 'Promise?'[14] Nobby grabbed three of the knives and tugged them out of the man's belt. 'I'll give them to his lor – to him, shall I, Beti?' said Colon, suddenly quite sure that keeping the Patrician alive was almost certainly the only way to avoid a brief cigarette in the sunshine. He was also aware that other people were drifting over to watch the show. 'To me, please... Al,' said the Patrician, nodding. Colon tossed him the knives, slowly and gingerly. He's going to try to stab the guards, he thought. It's a ruse. And then everyone's going to tear us apart. Now the circling blur glinted in the sunlight. There was a murmur of approval from the crowd. 'Yet somehow dull,' said the Patrician. And his hands moved in a complex pattern that suggested that his wrists must have moved through one another at least twice. The tangled ball of hurtling fruit and cutlery leapt into the air. Three melons dropped to the ground, cut cleanly in two. Three knives thudded into the dust a few inches from their owner's sandals. And Sergeant Colon looked up and into a growing, greenish, expanding The melon exploded, and so did the audience, but both their laughter and the humour was slightly lost on Colon as he scraped over–ripe pith out of his cars. The survival instinct cut in again. Stagger around backwards, it said. So he staggered around back~ wards, waving his legs in the air. Fall down heavily, it said. So he sat down, and almost squashed a chicken. Lose your dignity, it said; of all the things you've got, it's the one you can most afford to lose. Lord Vetinari helped him up. 'Our very lives depend on your appearing to be a stupid fat idiot,' he hissed, putting Colon's fez back on his head. 'I ain't very good at acting, sir–' 'Good!' 'Yessir.' The Patrician scooped up three melon halves and positively skipped over to a stall that a woman had just set up, snatching an egg from a basket as he went past. Sergeant Colon blinked again. This was not... real. The Patrician didn't do this sort of thing... 'Ladies and gentlemen! You see – an egg! And here we have a – melon rind! Egg, melon! Melon, egg! We put the melon over the egg!' His hands darted across the three halves, switching them at bewildering speed. 'Round and round they go, just like that! Now… where's the egg? What about you, shah?' Al–jibla smirked.  ' 's the one on the left,' he said. 'It always is.' Lord Vetinari lifted the melon. The board below was eggless. 'And you, noble guardsman?' ' 's got to be the one in the middle,' said the guard. 'Yes, of course... oh dear, it isn't...' The crowd looked at the last melon. They were street people. They knew the score. When the object can be under one of three things, and it's already turned out not to be under two of them, then the one place it was certainly not going to be was under the third. Only some kind of gullible fool would believe something like that. Of course there was going to be a trick. There always was a trick. But you watched it, in order to see a trick done well. Lord Vetinari raised the melon nevertheless, and the crowd nodded in satisfaction. Of course it wasn't there. It'd be a pretty poor day for street entertainment if things were where they were supposed to be. Sergeant Colon knew what was going to happen next, and he knew this because for the last minute or so something had been pecking at his head. Aware that this was probably his moment, he raised his fez and revealed a very small fluffy chick. 'Have you got a towel? I am afraid it has just gone to the toilet on my head, sir.' There was laughter, some applause and, to his amazement, a tinkling of coins around his feet. 'And finally,' said the Patrician, 'the beautiful Beti will do an exotic dance.' The crowd fell silent. Then someone at the back said, 'How much do we have to pay for her not to?' 'Right! I've just about had enough of this!' Veils flying out behind her, bangles jingling, elbows waving viciously and boots kicking up sparks, the lovely Beti strode into the crowd. 'Which of you said that?' People shrank away from her. Armies would have retreated. And there, revealed like a jellyfish deserted by a suddenly ebbing tide, was a small man about to fry in the wrath of the ascendant Nobbs. 'I meant no offence, oh doe-eyed one–' 'Oh? Pastry–faced, am W Nobby flung out an arm in a crash of bracelets and knocked the man over. 'You've got a lot to learn about women, young man!' And then, because a Nobbs could never resist a prone target, the petite Beti drew back a steel-capped boot 'Beti!' snapped the Patrician. 'Oh, right, yeah, right,' said Nobby, with veiled contempt. 'Everyone can tell me what to do, right? Just because I happen to be the woman around here I'm just supposed to accept it all, eh?' 'No, you just ain't supposed to kick him inna fork,' hissed Colon, pulling him away. 'It don't look good.' Although he noted, the women in the crowd seemed to be disappointed by the sudden curtailment of the performance. 'And there are many strange stories we can tell you!' shouted the Patrician. 'Beti certainly could,' murmured Colon, and was kicked sharply on his ankle. 'And many strange sights we can show you!' 'Beti cert– Aargh!' 'But for now we will seek the shade of yonder caravanserai...' 'What're we doing?' 'We're going to the pub.' The crowd began to disperse, but with occasional amused glances back at the trio. One of the guards nodded at Colon. 'Nice show,' he said. 'Especially the bit where your lady didn't remove any veils– He darted behind his colleague as Nobby spun round like an avenging angel. 'Sergeant,' the Patrician whispered. 'It is very important that we learn the current whereabouts of Prince Cadram, do you understand? In taverns, people talk. Let us keep our ears open.' The tavern wasn't Colon's idea of a pub. For one thing, most of it had no roof. Arched walls surrounded a courtyard. A grapevine grew out of a huge cracked urn and had been teased overhead on trellises. There was the gentle sound of tinkling water, and unlike the Mended Drum this was not because the bar backed on to the privies but because of a small fountain in the middle of the cobbles. And it was cool, much cooler than in the street, even though the vine leaves scarcely hid the sky. 'Didn't know you could juggle, sir,' Colon whispered to Lord Vetinari. 'You mean you can't, sergeant?' 'Nossir!' 'How strange. It's hardly a skill, is it? One knows what the objects are and where they want to go. After that it's just a case of letting them occupy the correct positions in time and space.' 'You're dead good at it, sir. Practise often, do you?' 'Until today, I've never tried.' Lord Vetinari looked at Colon's astonished expression. 'After Ankh–Morpork, sergeant, a handful of flying melons present a very minor problem indeed.' 'I'm amazed, sir.' 'And in politics, sergeant, it is always important to know where the chicken is.' Colon raised his fez. 'Is this one still on my head?' 'It seems to have gone to sleep. I wouldn't disturb it, if I were you.' ' 'ere, you, juggler... she can't come in here!' They looked up. Someone with a face and apron that said 'barman' in seven hundred languages was standing over them, a wine jug in each hand. 'No women in here,' he went on. 'Why not?' said Nobby. 'No women asking questions, neither.' 'Why not?' ' 'cos it is written, that's why.' 'Where'm I supposed to go, then?' The barman shrugged. 'Who knows where women go?, 'Off you go, Beti,' said the Patrician. 'And... listen for information!' Nobby grabbed the cup of wine from Colon and gulped it down. 'I dunno,' he moaned, 'I've only been a woman ten minutes and already I hate you male bastards.' 'I dunno what's got into him, sir,' whispered Colon as Nobby stamped out. 'He ain't like this normally.. I thought Klatchian women did what they were told!' 'Does your wife do what she's told, sergeant?' 'Well, yeah, obviously, a man's got to be the master in his own house, that's what I always say–' 'So why are you, I hear, always putting up kitchen furniture?' 'Well, obviously, you've got to listen to–' 'In fact Klatchian history is full of famous examples of women who even went to war with their men,' said the Patrician. 'What? On the same side?' 'Prince Arkven's wife Tistam used to ride into the battle with her husband and, according to legend, killed ten thousand thousand men.' 'That's a lot of men.' 'Legends are prone to inflation. However, I believe there is good historical evidence that Queen Sowawondra of Sumtri had more than thirty thousand people put to death during her reign. She could be quite touchy, they say.' 'You should hear my wife if I don't put the plates away,' said Sergeant Colon gloomily. 'Now we are integrated with the local population, sergeant,' said the Patrician, 'we must find out what is happening. Although an invasion is clearly planned, I feel sure Prince Cadram will have reserved some forces in case of land attack. It would be nice to know where they are, because that's where he will be.' 'Right.' 'You think you can handle this?' 'Yessir. I know Klatchians, sir. Don't you worry about that.' 'Here's some money. Buy drinks for people. Mingle.' 'Right.' 'Not too many drinks, but as much mingling as you are capable of.' 'I'm a good mingler, sir.' 'Off you go, then.' ‘Sir?' 'Yes?' 'I'm a bit worried about... Beti, sir. Going off like that. Anything might happen to hi... her.' But he spoke with some hesitation. There wasn't much you could imagine happening to Corporal Nobbs. 'I'm sure we shall hear about it if there are any problems,' said the Patrician. 'You're right there, sir.' Colon sidled over to a group of men who were sitting in a rough circle on the floor, talking quietly amongst themselves and eating from a large dish. He sat down. The men on either side of him obediently shuffled along. Now then, how did you... ah, right... anyone knew how Klatchians talked... 'Greetings, fellow brothers of the dessert,' he said. 'I don't know about you, but I could just do with a plate of sheep's eyeballs, eh? I bet you boys can't wait to be back on your camels, I know I can't. I spit upon the defiling dogs of Ankh–Morpork. Anyone had any baksheesh lately? You can call me Al.'   'Excuse me, are you the lady who is with the clowns?' Corporal Nobbs, who had been trudging along gloomily, looked up. He was being addressed by a pleasant–faced young woman. A woman actually talking to him by choice was a novelty. Smiling while doing so was unheard of. 'Er   yeah. Right. That's me.' He swallowed…'Beti.' 'My name is Bana. Would you like to come and talk with us?' Nobby looked past her. There were a number of women of varying ages sitting around a large well. One of them waved at him shyly. He blinked. This was uncharted territory. He looked down at his clothes, which were already the worse for wear. His clothes always looked the worse for wear five minutes after he'd put them on. 'Oh, don't worry,' said the girl. 'We know how it is. But you looked so alone. And perhaps you can help us... They were among the group now._ There were women of every legitimate shape and size, and so far none of them had said 'Yuk,' an experience hitherto unchronicled in Nobby's personal history. In a detached, light–headed way, Corporal Nobbs felt that he was entering Paradise, and it was only an unfortunate detail that he'd come to via the wrong door. 'We are trying to comfort Netal,' said the girl. 'Her betrothed won't marry her tomorrow.' 'The swine,' said Nobby. One of the girls, eyes red with crying, looked up sharply. 'He wanted to,' she sobbed. 'But he's been taken off to fight in Gebra! All over some island no–one's heard of! And all my family are here!' 'Who took him off?' said Nobby. 'He took himself off,' snapped an older woman. Clothing differences aside, there was something hauntingly familiar about her, and Nobby realized that if you cut her in half the words 'mother–in–law' would be all the way through. 'Oh, Mrs Atbar,' said Netal, 'he said it was his duty. Anyway, all the boys have had to go.' 'Men!' said Nobby, rolling his eyes. 'I expect you'd know a lot about the pleasures of men, then,' said Mother–in–Law sourly. 'Mother!' 'Who, me?' said Nobby, forgetting himself for a moment. 'Oh, yeah. Lots.' 'You do?' 'Why not? Beer's favourite,' said Nobby. 'But you can't beat a good cigar, as long as it's free.' 'Hah!' Mother–in–Law picked up a basket of washing and stamped away, followed by most of the older women. The others laughed. Even the disappointed Netal smiled. 'I think that's not what she meant,' said Bana. To a chorus of giggles, she leaned down and whispered in Nobby's ear. His expression did not change but it did seem to solidify. 'Oh, that,' he said. There were some worlds of experience which Nobby had only contemplated on a map, but he knew what she was talking about. Of course he'd patrolled certain parts of the Shades in his time – the ones where young ladies tended to hang around without very much to do, and probably catching cold too – but those areas of police work that in other places might be of interest to a Vice Squad now tended to be looked after by the Guild of Seamstresses themselves. People who neglected to obey the... no, not the law as such, call them the unwritten rules... as laid down by Mrs Palm and her committee of very experienced ladies[15] attracted the attention of the Agony Aunts, Dotsie and Sadie, and might or might not be seen again. Even Mr Vimes approved of the arrangement. It didn't cause paperwork, 'Oh, yeah,' said Nobby, still staring at some inner screen. Of course, he knew what... 'Oh, that,' he mumbled. 'Well, I've seen a thing or two,' he added. Largely on postcards, he had to admit. 'It must be wonderful to have so much freedom,' said Bana. 'Er.. .' Netal burst out crying again. Her friends fluttered around her. 'I don't see why the men have to go off like this,' said Bana. 'My betrothed has gone too.' There was a cackle from a very old woman sitting by the well. 'I can tell you why, dears. Because it's better than growing melons all day. It's better than women.' 'Men think war is better than women?' 'It's always fresh, it's always young, and you can make a good fight last all day.' 'But they get killed!' 'Better to die in battle than in bed, they say' She cracked a toothless grin. 'But there are good ways for a man to die in bed, eh, Beti?' Nobby hoped the glow of his ears wasn't singeing his veil. Suddenly, he felt he'd caught up with his future. Ten damn pence worth of it hit him in the face. ' 'scuse me,' he said. 'Are any of you Nubilians?' 'What are Nubilians?' said Bana. 'It's a country round here,' said Nobby. He added hopefully, 'Isn't it?' Not a single face suggested that this was so. Nobby sighed. His hand reached up to his ear for a cigarette end, but it came down again empty. 'I'll tell you this, girls,' he said. 'I wish I'd settled for the tendollar version. Don't you just sometimes want to sit down and cry?' 'You look even sadder than Netal,' said Bana. 'Isn't there some way we can cheer you up?' Nobby stared at her for a moment, and then started to sob.     Everyone was staring at Colon, their food halfway to their lips. ‘Did I just hear him say that, Faifal? What do I want to be on a camel for? I’m a plumber!’ ‘He’s the clown with the juggler. I think. The poor man is several palms short of an oasis.’ ‘ I mean the bloody things spit and they’re a bugger to get up the stairs with your toolbox–‘ ‘Now, come on it’s not his fault, let’s show a little charity.’ The speaker cleared his throat. 'Good morning, friend,' he said. 'May we invite you to share our couscous?' Sergeant Colon peered at the bowl, and then dipped in a finger and tasted it. 'Hey, this is semolina! You've got semolina! It's just ordinary semol–' He stopped, and coughed. 'Yeah, right. Thanks. Got any strawberry jam?' The host looked at his friends. They shrugged. 'We know not of this "strawberry hjam" of which you speak,' he said carefully, We prefer it with lamb.' He offered Colon a long wooden skewer. 'Oh, you gotta have strawberry jam,' said Colon, carried away. 'When we were kids we'd stir it in and... and...' He looked at their faces, 'O' course, that was back in Ur,' he said. The men nodded at one another. Suddenly it was all dear. Colon belched loudly. From the looks he got from everyone else, he was the only one who'd heard of this common Klatchian custom. 'So,' he said, 'where's the army these days? Approximately?' 'Why do you ask, o full–of–gas one?' 'Oh, we thought we could make a bit of cash entertaining the troops,' said Colon. He was immensely proud of this idea. 'You know... a smile, a song, a lack of exotic dancing. But that means we got to know where they are, see?' ‘Excuse me, fat one, but can you understand what I am saying?’ 'Yes,  it's very tasty,' Colon hazarded. ‘Ah. I thought so. So he’s a spy. But whose?’ ‘Really? Who would be so stupid as to use a joke like this as a spy?’ ‘Ankh-Morpork?’ ‘Oh, come on! He’s pretending to be an Anhk-Morpork spy, perhaps. But they’re cunning over there–‘ ‘You think. A people who make curry out of something called curry powder and you think they’re clever?’ ‘I reckon he’s from Muntab. They’re always watching us.’ ‘And pretending to be from Ankh-Morpork?’ ‘Well, if you were trying to look like a joke Morporkian pretending to be Klatchian wouldn’t you look like that?’ ‘But why’d he pretend to be from there?’ ‘Ah… politics.’ ‘Let’s call the watch, then.’ ‘Are you mad? We’ve been talking to him! They will be… inquisitive.’ ‘Good point. I know…’ Faifal gave Colon a big grin. 'I did hear the entire army has marched away to En al Sams la Laisa, 'he said. 'But don't tell anyone. 'Have they?' Colon glanced at the other men. They were watching him with curiously deadpan expressions. 'Sounds like a massive place, with a name like that,' he said. 'Oh, huge,' said his neighbour. One of the other men made a noise that you might think was a suppressed chuckle. 'It's a long way, is it?' 'No, very close. You're practically on top of it,' said Faifal. He nudged a colleague, whose shoulders were shaking. 'Oh, right. Big army, is it?' 'Could easily be very big, yes.' 'Fine. Fine,' said Colon. 'Er... anyone got a pencil? I could've sworn I had one when–' There was a noise outside the tavern. It was the sound of many women laughing, which is always a disquieting noise to men.[16] Customers peered suspiciously through the vines. Colon and the rest of the crowd looked around an urn at the group by the well. An old lady was rolling on the ground, laughing, and various younger ones were leaning against one another for support. He heard one of them say, 'What did he say again?' 'He said, "That's funny, it's never done that when I've tried it!"' 'Yeah, that's true!' cackled the old woman. 'It never does!' ' "That's funny, it's never done that when I've tried if',' Nobby repeated. Colon groaned. That was the voice and tone of Corporal Nobbs in storytelling mode, when wood could scorch at ten yards. ' 'scuse me,' he muttered, and forced his way through the press to the gateway. 'Have you heard the one about the ki... the sultan who was afraid his wife... one of his wives... would be unfaithful to him while he was away?' 'We haven't heard any stories like these, Beti!' Bana gasped. 'Really? Oh, I've got a thousand and one of 'em. Well, anyway, he went and saw the wise old blacksmith, right, and he said–' 'You can't go round telling stories like that, cor– Beti,' Colon panted as he lumbered to a halt. Nobby realized that a change had come over the group. Now he was surrounded by women who were in the presence of a man. A known man, he corrected himself. Several of them were blushing. They hadn't blushed before. 'Why not?' said Beti nastily. 'You'll offend people,' said Colon uncertainly. 'Er, we are not offended, sir,' said Bana, in a small humble voice. 'We think Beti's stories are very... instructive. Especially. the one about the man who went into the tavern with the very small musician.' 'And that was pretty hard to translate,' said Nobby, 'because they don't really know what a piano is in Klatch. But it turns out there's this kind of stringed–' 'And it was very interesting about the man with his arms and legs in plaster,' said Netal. 'Yeah, and they laughed even though they don't have the same kind of doorbells here,' said Nobby. 'Here, you don't have to go–' But the group around the well was dispersing. Water jugs were being picked up and carried away. A kind of preoccupied busyness came over the women. Bana nodded at Beti. 'Er... thank you. It's been very... interesting. But we must go. It was so kind of you to talk to us.' 'Er, no, don't go...' A faint suggestion of perfume hung in the air. Beti glared at Colon. 'Sometimes I really want to give you a right ding alongside the lughole,' she growled. 'My first bloody chance in years and you––' She stopped. There was a crowd of puzzled yet disapproving faces behind Colon. And things might have ended otherwise had it not been for the braying of the donkey, from above. The stolen donkey, easily pulling away from Nobby's inexpert tether, had wandered off in search of food. She vaguely associated this with the doorway to her stable and therefore with doorways in general, and so had wandered through the nearest open one. There had been some narrow spiral stairs inside, but her stall was pretty narrow and steps didn't worry a donkey that was used to the streets of Al-Khali. It was only a disappointment when the steps came to an end and there was still no hay. 'Oh no,' said someone behind Colon. 'There's a donkey up the minaret again.' There were groans all round. 'What's wrong with that? What goes up must come down,' said Colon. 'You don't know?' said one of his dining companions. 'You don't have minarets in Tar?' 'Er–' said Colon. 'We have plenty of donkeys,' said Lord Vetinari. There was general laughter, most of it directed at Colon. One of the men pointed to the dim interior of the minaret. 'Look. .. see?' 'A very narrow, winding staircase,' said the Patrician. 'So... ?' 'There's nowhere to turn at the top, right? Oh, any fool can get a donkey up a minaret. But have you ever tried getting an animal to go backwards down a narrow staircase in the dark? Can't be done.' 'There's something about a rising staircase,' said someone else. 'It attracts donkeys. They think there's something at the top.' 'We had to push the last one off, didn't we.?' said one of the guards. 'Right. It splashed,' said his comrade in arms. 'No one is pushing Valerie off'f anything,' snarled Beti. 'Any one of you tries anything like that and, s'welp me, you'll feel the wrong end of–' He stopped, and a wide horrible grin appeared behind the veil. 'I mean, I'll give you a great big soppy kiss.' Several men at the back of the crowd took to their heels. 'There's no need to get nasty,' said the guard. 'I mean it!' said Beti, advancing. The cowering guard cringed. 'Can't you do anything with her, sirs?' 'Us?' said Lord Vetinari. ' 'fraid not. Oh dear... it's going to be like that business in Djelibeybi all over again, A].' 'Oh dear,' said Colon, mugging loyally. The crowd, or at least that part that thought itself sufficiently far away from Beti, started to grin. This was street theatre. 'I don't know if they ever got that man down off the flagpole,' Vetinari went on. 'Oh, most of 'im, they did,' said Colon. 'Tell you what, tell you what,' said the guard hurriedly, 'suppose we get a rope round it–' '––her–' Beti growled. 'Her, right, and then –' 'You'd need at least three men up there and there ain't no room!' 'Sir, I've got an idea,' whispered one of the guards. 'I should make it quick,' said Colon. "cos there's no stopping Beti once she gets going.' The guards held a whispered argument. ‘We’d get into trouble if we do that! You know all that stuff we were told about the war effort! That’s why they were all confiscated!’ ‘No one will miss it for five minutes!’ ‘Yeah, but you want to tell the prince we lost one?’ ‘All right, but do you want to explain to her?’ They both looked at Beti. ’And they’re easy to steer, after all,’' one whispered. 'Valerie?' said Sergeant Colon. 'There is a problem?' Beti demanded. 'No! No. It's a fine name for a donkey, N– Beti.' 'No-one is to do anything,' said one of the guards. 'We will return.' 'What was all that about?' said Colon, watching them go. 'Oh, they've probably gone to get a carpet,' said someone. 'Very nice, but I don't see how that'd help,' said Bets. 'A flying one.' 'Oh, right,' said Colon. 'They've got one of those up at the University–, 'Ur has a university?' 'Oh, indeed,' said the Patrician. 'How do you think Al learned what a donkey looks like?' Once again, laughter dispelled doubt. Colon grinned uncertainly. 'I'm really getting good at this stupid idiot stuff, aren't I?' he said. 'It just sort of happens!' 'Marvellous,' said Lord Vetinari. There was another angry braying from far above. 'Trouble is, they're all locked up because of the war effort,' said someone behind them. A piece of mud brick shattered on the ground nearby. 'The way it's thrashing around up there, it's going to fall off anyway.' 'Perhaps I should persuade her to come down,' said the Patrician. 'Can't be done, offendi. You can't get past on the stairs, you can't turn it round, and it won't come down backwards.' 'I shall consider the situation,' said the Patrician. He ambled back into the tavern for a moment, and returned. They saw him enter the door and they heard him climbing the staircase. 'Should be good,' said a man behind Colon. After a while the braying stopped. 'Can't turn round, see. Far too narrow,' said the elevateddonkey expert. 'Can't turn round, won't go backwards. Well–known fact.' 'There's always a know–all, right, Beti?' said Colon. 'Yeah. Always.' The tower was full of silence. Several members of the crowd found their attention drawn to it. 'I mean, if you could get three or four men up the stairs, which you can't, you could sort of move it a leg at a time, if you didn't mind being kicked and bitten to death...' 'All right, all right, back away from the tower, will you?' The guards were back. One of them was carrying a rolled-up carpet. 'All right, all right, give us room–' 'I can hear hooves,' said someone. 'Oh, yeah, like our friend in the fez is getting the donkey down the stairs?' 'Hang on, I can hear them too,' said Colon. Now all eyes stared at the door. Lord Vetinari emerged, holding a length of rope. The voice behind Colon said, 'All right, it's just a bit of rope. He was probably banging a couple of coconut shells together.' 'You mean, ones that he found in the minaret?' 'He had them with him, obviously.' 'You mean, he carries coconut shells around?' 'You can't turn a donkey round in– all right, that's a fake donkey head...' 'It's moving its ears!' 'On a string, on a string – all right, it's a donkey, OK, but it's not the same donkey. It's one he had in a hidden pocket... well, no need to look at me like that. I've seen them do it with doves...' Then even the unbeliever fell silent. 'Donkey, minaret,' said Lord Vetinari. 'Minaret, donkey.' 'Just like that?' said a guard. 'How did you do it? It was a trick, right?' 'Of course it was a trick,' said Lord Vetinari. 'I knew it was just a trick.' 'That's right, it was just a trick,' said Lord Vetinari. 'So... how did you do it, then?' 'You mean you can't spot it?' The crowd craned to see. 'Er... you had an inflatable donkey––' 'Can you think of any reason why I should go around with an inflatable donkey?' 'Well, you–' 'One that you wouldn't mind explaining to your own dear mother?' 'If you're going to put it like that–'  ' 's easy,' said Al–jibla. 'There's a secret compartment in the minaret. Must be.' 'No, you've got it all wrong, it's just an illusion of a donkey... Well, all right, it's a good illusion.. .' By now half the people were around the donkey and the others were clustered in the doorway of the minaret, looking for secret panels. 'I think, Al and Beti, this is where we walk away,' said Lord Vetinari, behind Colon. 'Just down this little alley here. And when we turn that corner, we run.' 'What've we got to run for?' said Beti. 'Because I've just picked up the magic carpet.'   Vimes was already lost. Oh, there was the sun, but that was just a direction. He could feel it on the side of his face. And the camel rocked from side to side. There was no real way of judging distance, except by haemorrhoids. I'm blindfolded on the back of a camel ridden by a D'reg, who everyone says are the most untrustworthy people in the world. But I'm almost positive he's not going to kill me. 'So,' he said, as he rocked gently from side to side, 'you may as well tell me. Why 71–hour Ahmed?' 'He killed a man,' said Jabbar. 'And D'regs object to a little thing like that?' 'In the man's own tent! When he had been his guest for nearly tree dace! If he had but waited an hour–' 'Oh, I see. Definitely bad manners. Had the man done anything to deserve it?' 'Nothing! Although...' 'Yes?' 'The man had killed El-Ysa.' The D'reg's tone suggested that this wasn't much of a mitigating circumstance, but that it ought to be mentioned out of completeness. 'Who was she?' 'El-Ysa was a village. He poisoned a well. There had been a dispute over religion,' he added. 'One thing led to another... but even so, to break the tradition of hospitality... ' 'Yes, I can see that's a terrible thing. Almost... impolite.' 'The hour was important. Some things should not be done.' 'You're right there, at least.' By mid–afternoon Jabbar let him take off the blindfold. Wind–carved heaps of black rock stood out of the sand. Vimes thought it was the most desolate place he'd ever seen. 'They say once it was green,' said Jabbar. 'A well watered land.' 'What happened?' 'The wind changed.' At sunset they reached a wadi between more windscoured rocks, and it was only the length of the shadows, deepening the shallow indentations, that began to give them back an ancient shape. 'They're buildings, aren't they?' said Vimes. 'There was a city here, a long time ago. Did you not know?' 'Why should I know?' 'Your people built it. It was called Tacticum. After a warrior of yours.' Vimes looked at the crumbled walls and fallen pillars. 'He had a city named after him...' he said to noone in particular. Jabbar nudged him. 'Ahmed is watching you,' he said. 'I can't see him anywhere.' 'Of course. Get down. And I hope we meet again in whatever is your paradise.' 'Right, right...' Jabbar turned the camel round. It left much faster than it had arrived. Vimes sat on a rock for a while. There was no sound but the hissing of the wind in the rocks and the cry of some bird, far away. He thought he could hear his own heart beating. 'Bingeley... bingeley... beep...' The Disorganizer sounded worried and uncertain. Vimes sighed. 'Yes? Appointment with 71–hour Ahmed, eh?' 'Er... no...' said the demon. 'Er... Klatchian fleet sighted... er. ..' 'Ships of the desert, eh?' 'Er... beep... error code 746, divergent temporal instability...' Vimes shook the box. 'Something wrong with you?' he demanded. 'You're still giving me someone else's appointments, you idiot box!' 'Er... the appointments are correct for Commander Samuel Vimes. . 'That's me!' 'Which one of you?' said the demon. 'What?' '... beep...' It refused to say more. Vimes considered throwing it away, but Sybil would be hurt if she found out. He thrust it back into his pocket and tried to concentrate on the scenery again. His seat might have been part of a pillar once. Vimes saw other pieces some way away, and then realized that a heap of apparent rubble was a fallen wall. He followed this, his footsteps echoing off the Cliffs, and realized that he was walking between old buildings, or where buildings had been. Here was the wreck of some stairs, there the stump of a pillar. One was a little higher than the others. He pulled himself up and found, on its flat top, two huge feet. A statue must have stood here. It probably stood, if Vimes knew anything about statues, in some kind of noble attitude. Now it had gone, and there were just feet, broken off at the ankles. They weren't exceptionally noble. As he lowered himself again he saw, protected because this side was out of the wind, some lettering carved deeply into the plinth. He tried to make it out in the fading light:   'AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM'   Well...'domum tuum' was 'your house', wasn't it? …and 'videre' was 'I see'... 'What?' he said aloud. "'I can see your house from up here?" What kind of a noble sentiment is that?' 'I believe it was meant to be a boast and a threat, Sir Samuel,' said 71–hour Ahmed. 'Somewhat typical of Ankh-Morpork, I've always thought.' Vimes stood very still. The voice had been right behind him. And it was Ahmed's voice. But it lacked that hint of camel spit and gravel that it had possessed in Ankh–Morpork. Now it was the drawl of a gentleman. 'It's the echoes here,' Ahmed went on. 'I could be anywhere. I could have a crossbow aimed at you right now. ' 'You won't fire it, though. We've both got too much at stake.' 'Oh, there is honour among thieves, is there?' 'I don't know,' said Vimes. Oh, well... time to see if he was dead right or just dead. 'Is there honour among policemen?'   Sergeant Colon's eyes went big. 'Swing my weight to one side?' he said. 'That's how magic carpets are steered,' said Lord Vetinari calmly. 'Yes, but supposing I swing myself off?' 'We'll have a lot more room,' said Beti unfeelingly. 'C'mon, sarge, you know how to throw your weight around.' 'I ain't throwing my weight anywhere,' said Colon firmly. He was lying full length on the carpet, both hands gripping it as hard as possible. 'It's not natural, just a bit of broadloom between you and certain splash.' The Patrician looked down. 'We're not over water, sergeant.' 'I know what I meant, sir!' 'Can we slow down a bit?' said Beti. 'The breeze is invading my privacy, if you get my drift.' Lord Vetinari sighed. 'We're not going very fast as it is. I suspect this is a very old carpet.' 'There's a frayed bit here,' said Beti. 'Shut up,' said Colon. 'Look, I can poke my finger right through–' 'Shut up.' 'Notice how it kind of wobbles when you move?' 'Shut up.' 'Here, look, those palm trees down there look really small.' 'Nobby, you're scared of heights,' said Colon. 'I know you're scared of heights.' 'That's sexual stereotyping!' 'No, it's not!' 'Yes, it is! You'll be expecting me to break my ankle a lot and scream all the time next! It's my job to prove to you that a woman can be as good as a man!' 'Practically identical in your case, Nobby. You've caught too much sun, that's what it is. You are not female, Nobby!' Beti sniffed. 'That's just the sort of sexist remark I'd expect from you.' 'Well, you're not!' 'It's the principle of the thing.' 'Well, at least we now have transport,' said Lord Vetinari, his tone suggesting that the show was over. 'Unfortunately, I had no time to find out where the army is.' 'Ah! I can help you there, sir!' Colon tried to salute, and then made a grab for the carpet again. 'I found out by cunning, sir!' 'Really?' 'Yessir! It's at a place called... er... En al Sams la Laisa, sir.' The carpet drifted onwards for a moment, in silence. "'The Place where the Sun Shineth Not"?' said the Patrician. There was more silence. Colon was trying not to look at anyone. 'Is there a somewhere called Gebra?' said Nobby, sulkily. 'Yes, Be– corporal. There is.' 'They've gone there. Of course, you've only got a woman's word for it.' 'Well done, corporal. We shall head up the coast.' Lord Vetinari relaxed. In a busy and complex life he'd never met people quite like Nobby and Colon. They talked all the time yet there was something almost... restful about them. He watched the dusty horizon carefully as the ancient carpet curved around. Under his arm was the metal cylinder Leonard had made for him. Drastic times required drastic measures. 'Sir?' said Colon, his voice muffled by the carpet. 'Yes, sergeant?' 'I've got to know... How did you... you know... get the donkey down?' 'Persuasion, sergeant.' 'What? Just talking?' 'Yes, sergeant. Persuasion. And, admittedly, a sharp stick.' 'Ah! I knew–' 'The trick of getting donkeys down from minarets,' said the Patrician, as the desert unwound below them, 'is always to find that part of the donkey which seriously wishes to get down.'   The wind had settled. The bird up on the cliffs had shut down for the night. All Vimes could hear was the sizzle of the little desert creatures. Then Ahmed's voice said: 'I am genuinely impressed, Sir Samuel.' Vimes took a deep breath. 'You know, you really fooled me,' he said. "'May your loins be full of fruit." That was a good one. I really thought you were just–' He stopped. But Ahmed continued: '–just another camel-driver with a towel on his head? Oh, dear. And you'd been doing so well up to now, Sir Samuel. The Prince was very impressed.' 'Oh, come on. You were all but making suggestive comments about melons. What was I supposed to think?' 'Don't fret, Sir Samuel. I consider it all a compliment. You can turn round. I wouldn't dream of harming you unless you do something... foolish.' Vimes turned. He could just make out a shape in the afterglow. 'You were admiring this place,' said Ahmed. 'Tacticus's men had it built when he tried to conquer Klatch. It's not really a city by today's standards, of course. It was really just making a point. "Here we are and here we stay," as it were. And then the wind changed.' 'You murdered Snowy Slopes, didn't you?' 'The term is executed. I can show you the confession he signed beforehand.' 'Of his own free will?' 'More or less.' 'What?' 'Let us say, I pointed out to him the alternatives to signing the confession. I was kind enough to leave you the pad. After all, I wanted to keep your interest. And don't look like that, Sir Samuel. I need you.' 'How can you tell how I look?' 'I can guess. The Assassins' Guild had a contract on him in any case. And by a happy chance I am Guild member.' 'You?' Vimes tried to bite down on the word. And then: why not him? Kids got sent a thousand miles to be taught in the Assassins' Guild school... 'Oh, yes. The best years of my life, they tell me. I was in Viper House. Up School! Up School! Right Up School!' He sighed like a prince and spat like a camel driver. 'If I shut my eyes I can still recall the taste of that peculiar custard we used to get on Mondays. Dear me, how it all comes back... I remember every soggy street. Does Mr Dibbler still sell his horrible sausages inna bun in Treacle Mine Road?' 'Yes.' 'Still the same old Dibbler, eh?' 'Still the same sausages.' 'Once tasted, never forgotten.' 'True.' 'No, don't move too quickly, Sir Samuel. Otherwise I'm afraid I shall be cutting your own throat. You don't trust me, and I don't trust you.' 'Why did you drag me here?' 'Drag you? I had to sabotage my own ship so you wouldn't lose me!' 'Yes, but... you... knew how I'd react.' Vimes's heart began to sink. Everyone knew how Sam Vimes would react... 'Yes. Would you like a cigarette, Sir Samuel?' 'I thought you sucked those damn cloves.' 'In Ankh–Morpork, yes. Always be a little bit foreign wherever you are, because everyone knows foreigners are a little bit stupid. Besides, these are rather good.' 'Fresh from the desert?' 'Hah! Yes, everyone knows Klatchian cigarettes are made from camel dung.' A match flared, and for a moment Vimes caught a glimpse of the hooked nose as Ahmed lit the cigarette for him. 'That is one area where, I regret to say, prejudice has some evidence on its side. No. these are all the way from Sumtri. An island where, it is said, the women have no souls. Personally, I doubt it.' Vimes could make out a hand, holding the packet. just for a moment he wondered if he could grab and 'How is your luck?' said Ahmed. 'Running out, I suspect.' 'Yes. A man should know the length of his luck. Shall I tell you how I know you are a good man, Sir Samuel?' In the light of the rising moon Vimes saw Ahmed produce a cigarette holder, insert one, and fight up almost fastidiously. 'Do tell.' 'After the attempt on the Prince's life I suspected everyone. But you suspected only your own people. You couldn't bring yourself to think the Klatchians might have done it. Because that'd fine you up with the likes of Sergeant Colon and all the rest of the Kiatchian-fags–are–made–of–camel–dung brigade.' 'Whose policeman are you?' 'I draw my pay, let us say, as the wali of Prince Cadram.' 'I shouldn't think he's very happy with you right now, then. You were supposed to be guarding his brother, weren't you?' So was I, Vimes thought. But what the hell... 'Yes. And we thought the same way, Sir Samuel. You thought it was your people, I thought it was mine. The difference is, I was right. Khufurah's death was plotted in Klatch.' 'Oh, really? That's what they wanted the Watch to think–' 'No, Sir Samuel. The important thing is what someone wanted you to think.' 'Really? Well, you've got that wrong. All the stuff with the glass and the sand on the floor, I saw through …that... straight... away...' His voice faded into silence. After a while Ahmed said, almost sympathetically, 'Yes, you did.' 'Damn.' 'Oh, in some ways you were right. Ossie was paid in dollars, originally. And then, later on, someone broke in, making sure they dumped most of the glass outside, and swapped the money. And distributed the sand. I must say that I thought the sand was going a bit too far, too. No–one would be that stupid. But they wanted to make sure it looked like a bungled attempt.' 'Who was it?' said Vimes. 'Oh, a small–time thief. Bob–Bob Hardyoyo. He didn't even know why he was doing it, except that someone was willing to pay him. I commend your city, commander. For enough money, you can find someone to do anything.' 'Someone must have paid him.' 'A man he met in a pub.' Vimes nodded glumly. It was amazing how many people were prepared to do business with a man they'd met in a pub. 'I can believe that,' he said. 'You see, if even the redoubtable Commander Vimes, who is known even to some senior Klatchian politicians as an unbendingly honest and thorough man, if somewhat lacking in intelligence... if even he protested that it was done by his own people – well, the world is watching. The world would soon find out. Starting a war over a rock? Well... that sort of thing makes countries uneasy. They've all got rocks off their coast. But starting a war because some foreign dog had killed a man on a mission of peace... that, I think, the world would understand.' 'Lacking in intelligence?' said Vimes. 'Oh, don't be too depressed, commander. That business with the fire at the embassy. That was sheer bravery.' 'It was bloody terror!' 'Well, the dividing line is narrow. That was one thing I hadn't expected.' In the rolling, clicking snooker table of Vimes's mind the black ball hit a pocket. 'You had expected the fire, then?' 'The building should have been almost empty–, Vimes moved. Ahmed was lifted off his feet and slammed against a pillar, with both of Vimes's hands around his neck. 'That woman was trapped in there!' 'It... was... necessary!' said Ahmed hoarsely. 'There... had... to be a... diversion! His... life was... in danger, I had to get him out! I did... not know... about the... woman until too late... I give you my word...' Through the red veil of anger Vimes became aware of a prickle in the region of his stomach. He glanced down at the knife that had appeared magically in the other man's hand. 'Listen to me . . ' hissed Ahmed. 'Prince Cadram ordered his brother's death... What better way to demonstrate the... perfidy of the sausage–eaters.. killing a peace–maker...' 'His own brother? You expect me to believe that?' 'Messages were sent to... the embassy in code...' 'To the old ambassador? I don't believe that!' Ahmed stood quite still for a moment. 'No, you really don't, do you?' he said. 'Be generous, Sir Samuel. Truly treat all men equally. Allow Klatchians the right to be scheming bastards, hmm? In fact the ambassador is just a pompous idiot. Ankh–Morpork has no monopoly on them. But his deputy sees the messages first. He is... a young man of ambition...' Vimes relaxed his grip. 'Him? I thought he was shifty as soon as I saw him!' 'I suspect that you thought he was Klatchian as soon as you saw him, but I take your point.' 'And you could read this code, could you?' 'Oh, come now. Don't you read Vetinari' work upside down when you're standing in front of his desk? Besides, I am Prince Cadram's policeman. ..' 'So he's your boss, right?' 'Who is your boss, Sir Samuel? When push comes to shove?' The two men stood locked together. Ahmed's breath wheezed. Vimes stood back. 'These messages... you've got them?' 'Oh, yes. With his seal on them.' Ahmed rubbed his neck. 'Good grief. The originals? I'd have thought they'd be under lock and key.' 'They were. In the embassy. But in the fire many hands were needed to carry important documents to safety. It was a very... useful fire.' 'A death warrant for his own brother... well, you can't argue against that in court...' 'What court? The king is the law.' Ahmed sat down. 'We are not like you. You kill kings.' 'The word is "execute". And we only did it once, and that was a long time ago,' said Vimes. 'Is that why you brought me here? Why all this drama? You could have come to see me in Ankh–Morpork!' 'You are a suspicious man, commander. Would you have believed me? Besides, I had to get Prince Khufurah out of there, before he, ahah, "died of his wounds".' 'Where's the Prince now?' 'Close. And safe. He is safer in the desert than he would ever be in Ankh–Morpork, I can assure you.' 'And well?' 'Getting better. He is being looked after by an old lady whom I trust.' 'Your mother?' 'Ye gods, no! My mother is a D'reg! She'd be terribly offended if I trusted her. She'd say she hadn't brought me up right.' He saw Vimes's expression this time. 'You think I am an educated barbarian?' 'Let's just say I'd have given Snowy Slopes a running start.' 'Really? Look around you, Sir Samuel. Your... beat... is a city you can walk across in half an hour. Mine is two million square miles of desert and mountain. My companions are a sword and a came] and, frankly, neither are good conversationalists, believe me. Oh, the towns and cities have their guards, of a sort. They are uncomplicated thinkers. But it is my job to go into the waste places and chase bandits and murderers, five hundred miles from anyone who would be on my side, so I must inspire dread and strike the first blow because I will not have a chance to strike a second one. I am an honest man of a sort, I think. I survive. I survived seven years in an Ankh-Morpork public school patronized by the sons of gentlemen. Compared to that, life among the D'regs holds no terrors, I assure you. And I administer justice swiftly and inexpensively.' 'I heard about how you got your name...' Ahmed shrugged. 'The man had poisoned the water. The only well for twenty miles. That killed five men, seven women, thirteen children and thirty–one camels. And some of them were very valuable camels, mark you. I had evidence from the man who sold him the poison and a trustworthy witness who had seen him near the well on the fateful night. Once I had testimony from his servant, why wait even an hour?' 'Sometimes we have trials,' said Vimes brightly. 'Yes. Your Lord Vetinari decides. Well, five hundred miles from anywhere the law is me.' Ahmed waved a hand. 'Oh, no doubt the man would suggest there were mitigating circumstances, that he had an unhappy childhood or was driven by Compulsive Well-Poisoning Disorder. But I have a compulsion to behead cowardly murderers.' Vimes gave up. The man had a point. The man had a whole sword. 'Different strokes for different folks,' he said. 'I find the one at shoulder height generally suffices,' said Ahmed. 'Don't grimace, it was a joke. I knew the Prince was plotting and I thought: this is not right. Had he killed some Ankh–Morpork lord, that would just be politics. But this... I thought, why do I chase stupid people into the mountains when I am part of a big crime? The Prince wants to unite the whole of Klatch. Personally, I like the little tribes and countries, even their little wars. But I don't mind if they fight Ankh-Morpork because they want to, or because of your horrible personal habits, or your unthinking arrogance... there's a lot of reasons for fighting Ankh–Morpork. A lie isn't one of them.' 'I know what you mean,' said Vimes. 'But what can I do alone? Arrest my Prince? I am his policeman, as you are Vetinari's.' 'No. I'm an officer of the law.' 'All I know is, there must be a policeman, even for kings.' Vimes looked pensively at the moonlit desert. Somewhere out there was the Ankh–Morpork army, what there was of it. And somewhere waiting was the Klatchian army. And thousands of men who might have quite liked one another had they met socially would thunder towards one another and start killing, and after that first rush you had all the excuses you needed to do it again and again... He remembered listening, when he was a kid, to old men in his street talking about war. There hadn't been many wars in his time. The city states of the Sto Plains mainly tried to bankrupt one another, or the Assassins' Guild sorted everything out on a one–to–one basis. Most of the time people just bickered, and while that was pretty annoying it was a lot better than having a sword stuck in your liver. What he remembered most, among the descriptions of puddles filled with blood and the flying limbs, –the time one old man said, 'An' if your foot caught in something, it was always best not to look and see what it was, if'n you wanted to hold on to your dinner.' He'd never explained what he meant. The other old men seemed to know. Anyway, nothing could have been worse than the explanations Vimes thought of for himself. And he remembered that the three old men who spent most of their days sitting on a bench in the sun had, between them, five arms, five eyes, four and a half legs and two and three–quarter faces. And seventeen ears (Crazy Winston would bring out his collection for a good boy who looked suitably frightened). 'He wants to start a war...' Vimes had to open his mouth because otherwise there was no room to get his head around such a crazy idea. This man who everyone said was honest, noble and good wanted a war. 'Oh, certainly,' said Ahmed. 'Nothing unites people like a good war.' How could you deal with someone who thought like that? Vimes asked himself. A mere murderer, well, you had a whole range of options. He could deal with a mere murderer. You had criminals and you had policemen, and there was a sort of see–saw there which balanced out in some strange way. But if you took a man who'd sit down and decide to start a war, what in the name of seven hells could you balance him with? You'd need a policeman the size of a country. You couldn't blame the soldiers. They'd just joined up to be pointed in the right direction. Something clicked against the fallen pillar. Vimes glanced down and pulled the baton out of his pocket. It glinted in the moonlight What damn good was something like this? All it really meant was that he was allowed to chase the little criminals, who did the little crimes. There was nothing he could do about the crimes that were so big you couldn't even see them. You lived in them. So... safer to stick to the little crimes, Sam Vimes. 'ALL RIGHT, MY SONS! LET 'EM HAVE IT RIGHT UP THE JOGRAPHY!' Figures bounded over the fallen pillars. There was a metallic whirr as Ahmed unsheathed his sword. Vimes saw a halberd coming towards him – an Ankh-Morpork halberd! – and street reaction took over. He didn't waste time sneering at someone stupid enough to use a pike on a foot soldier. He dodged the blade, caught the shaft, and pulled it so hard that its owner stumbled right into his upswinging boot. Then he jerked away, struggling to untangle his sword from the unfamiliar robes. He ducked another shadowy figure's wild slice and managed to make an elbow connect with something painful. As he rose he looked into the face of a man with an upraised sword– –there was a silken sound– –and the man swayed backwards, his head looking surprised as it fell away from the body. Vimes dragged his headdress off. 'I'm from Ankh-Morpork, you stupid sods!' A huge figure rose in front of him, a sword in each hand. 'I'LL CUT YER TONKER OFF'F YER YER GREASY– Oh, is that you, Sir Samuel?' 'Huh? Willikins?' 'Indeed, sir.' The butler straightened up. 'Willikins?' 'Do excuse me one moment, sir KNOCK IT OFF YOU MOTHERLOVIN SONS OF BITCHES I had no apprehension of your presence, sir.' 'This one's fightin' back, sarge!' Ahmed had his back to a pillar. A man already lay at his feet. Three others were trying to get close enough to the wali while staying away from the whirling wall he was creating with his sword. 'Ahmed! These are on our side!' Vimes yelled. 'Oh, really? Pardon me.' Ahmed lowered his sword and removed the cigarette holder from his mouth. He nodded at one of the soldiers who had been trying to attack him and said, 'Good morning to you.' ' 'ere, are you one of ours, too?' 'No, I'm one of–' 'He's with me,' Vimes snapped. 'How come you're here, Willikins? Sergeant Willikins, I see.' 'We were on patrol, sir, and were attacked by some Klatchian gentlemen. After the ensuing unpleasantness–' '–you should've seen 'im, sir. 'e bit one bastard's nose right orf!' a soldier supplied. 'It is true that I endeavoured to uphold the good name of Ankh–Morpork, sir. Anyway, after we–' '–and one bloke, sarge, stabbed 'im right in the–' 'Please, Private Bourke, I am apprising Sir Samuel of events,' said Willikins. 'Sarge ort to get a medal, sir!' 'Those few of us who survived tried to get back, sir, but we had to conceal ourselves from other patrols and were just considering lying up until dawn in this edifice when we espied you and this gentleman here.' Ahmed was watching him with his mouth open. 'How many were in this Klatchian patrol, sergeant?' he said. 'Nineteen men, sir.' 'That's a very precise count, in this light.' 'I was able to enumerate them subsequently, sir.' 'You mean they were all killed? 'Yes, sir,' said Willikins calmly. 'However, we ourselves lost five men, sir. Not including Privates Hobbley and Webb, sir, who regrettably seem to have passed away as a result of this unfortunate misunderstanding. With your permission, sir, I will remove them.' 'Poor devils,' said Vimes, aware that it was not enough but that nothing else would be, either. 'The fortunes of war, sir. Private Hobbley, Ginger to his friends, was nineteen and lived in Ettercap Street, where until recently he made bootlaces.' Willikins took the dead man's arms and pulled. 'He was courting a young lady called Grace, a picture of whom he was kind enough to show me last night. A maid at Lady Venturi's, I was given to understand. If you would be good enough to pass me his head, sir, I will get on with things SMUDGER WHO TOLD YOU TO SIT DOWN GET ON YORE FEET RIGHT NOW GET OUT YORE SHOVEL TAKE OFF YORE HELMET SHOW SOME RESPECT GET DIGGINGHA!' A cloud of smoke rolled past Vimes's ear. 'I know what you are thinking,' said Ahmed. 'But this is war, Sir Samuel. Wake up and smell the blood.' 'But... one minute they're alive–' 'Your friend here knows how it works. You 'He's a butler!' 'So? It's kill or be killed, even for butlers. You're not a natural warrior, Sir Samuel.' Vimes thrust the baton in his face. 'I'm not a natural killer! See this? See what it says? I'm supposed to keep the peace, I am! If I kill people to do it, I'm reading the wrong manual!' Willikins appeared silently, hefting the other corpse. 'I was not privileged to know much about this young man,' he said, as he carried him behind a rock. 'We called him Spider, sir,' he went on, straightening up. 'He played the harmonica rather badly and spoke longingly of home. Will you be taking tea, sir? Private Smith is having a brew–up. Er...' The butler coughed politely. 'Yes, Willikins?' 'I hardly like to broach the subject, sir…' 'Broach it, man!' 'Do you have such a thing as a biscuit about you, sir? I hesitate to provide tea without biscuits, but we have not eaten for two days.' 'But you were on patrol!' 'Forage party, sir.' Willikins looked embarrassed. Vimes was bewildered. 'You mean Rust didn't even wait to take on food?' 'Oh, yes, sir. But as it transpired–' 'We knew there was somethin' wrong when the mutton barrels started to explode,' muttered Private Bourke. 'The biscuits was pretty lively too. Turned out bloody Rust'd bought a lot of stuff even a rag'ead wouldn't eat–' 'And we eat anything,' said 71–hour Ahmed solemnly. 'PRIVATE BOURKE YOU ORRIBLE MAN SPEAKIN OF YORE COMMANDIN OFFICER LIKE THAT YOU WILL BE ON A CHARGE I apologize, sir, but we are feeling a little faint.' 'Long time between noses, eh?' said 71–hour Ahmed. 'Ahahaha, sir,' said Willikins. Vimes sighed. 'Willikins... when you've finished, I want you and your men to come with me.' 'Very good, sir.' Vimes nodded at Ahmed. 'And you too,' he said. 'Push has come to shove.'   The hot wind flapped the banners. The sunlight sparkled off the spears. Lord Rust surveyed his army and found that it was good. But small. He leaned towards his adjutant. 'Let us not forget, though, that even General Tacticus was outnumbered ten to one when he took the Pass of Al–Ibi,' he said. 'Yes, sir. Although I believe his men were all mounted on elephants, sir,' said Lieutenant Hornett. 'And had been well provisioned,' he added meaningfully. 'Possibly, possibly. But then Lord Pinwoe's cavalry once charged the full might of the Pseudopolitan army and are renowned in song and story.' 'But they were all killed, sir!' 'Yes, yes, but it was a famous charge, nevertheless. And every child knows, do they not, the story of the mere one hundred Ephebians who defeated the entire Tsortean army? A total victory, hey? Hey?' 'Yes, sir,' said the adjutant glumly. 'Oh, you admit it?' 'Yes, sir. Of course, some commentators believe the earthquake helped.' 'At least you will admit that the Seven Heroes of Hergen beat the Big–Footed People although outnumbered by a hundred to one?' 'Yes, sir. That was a nursery story, sir. It never really happened.' 'Are you calling my nurse a liar, boy?' 'No, sir,' said Lieutenant Hornett hurriedly. 'Then you'll concede that Baron Mimbledrone single-handedly beat the armies of the Plum Pudding Country and ate their Sultana?' 'I envy him, sir.' The lieutenant looked at the lines again. The men were very hungry, although Rust would probably have called them sleek. Things would have been even worse if it hadn't been for the fortuitous shower of boiled lobsters on the way over. 'Er... you don't think, sir, since we have a little time in hand, we should look to the disposition of the men, sir?' 'They look well disposed to me. Plucky men, eager to be at the fray!' 'Yes, sir. I meant... more... well... positioned, sir.' 'Nothing wrong with 'em, man. Beautifully lined up! Hey? A wall of steel poised to thrust at the black heart of the Klatchian aggressor!' 'Yes, sir. But – and I realize this is a remote chance, sir it might be that while we're thrusting at the heart of the Klatchian aggressor––' '––black heart–' Rust corrected him. '––black heart of the Klatchian aggressor, sir, the arms of the Klatchian aggressor, those companies there and there, sir, will sweep around in the classic pincer movement.' 'The thrusting wall of steel served us magnificently in the second war with Quirm!' 'We lost that one, sir.' 'But it was a damn dose–run thing!' 'We still lost, sir.' 'What did you do as a civilian, lieutenant?' 'I was a surveyor, sir, and I can read Klatchian. That's why you made me an officer.' 'So you don't know how to fight?' 'Only how to count. sir.' 'Pah! Show a little courage, man. Although I'll wager you won't need to. No stomach for a battle, Johnny Klatchian. Once he tastes our steel, he'll be off!' 'I certainly hear what you say, sir,' said the adjutant, who had been surveying the Klatchian lines and had formed his own opinion about the matter. His opinion was this: the main force of the Klatchian army had, in recent years, been fighting everyone. That suggested, to his uncomplicated mind, that by now the surviving soldiers were the ones who were in the habit of being alive at the end of battles. And were also very experienced at facing all kinds of enemies. The stupid ones were dead. The current Ankh–Morpork army, on the other hand, had never faced an enemy at all, although day–to–day experience of living in the city might count for something there, at least in the rougher areas. He believed, along with General Tacticus, that courage, bravery and the indomitable human spirit were fine things which nevertheless tended to take second place to the combination of courage, bravery, the indomitable human spirit and a six–to–one superiority of numbers. It had all sounded straightforward in Ankh–Morpork, he thought. We were going to sail into Klatch and be in Al–Khali by teatime, drinking sherbet with pliant young women in the Rhoxi. The Klatchians would take one look at our weapons and run away. Well, the Klatchians had taken a good look this morning. So far they hadn't run. They appeared to be sniggering a lot.   Vimes rolled his eyes. It worked... but how did it work? He'd heard plenty of good speakers, and Captain Carrot was not among them. He hesitated, lost the thread, repeated himself and in general made a mess of the whole thing. And yet... And yet... He watched the faces that were watching Carrot. There were the D'regs, and some of the Klatchians who had stayed behind, and Willikins and his reduced company. They were listening. It was a kind of magic. He told people they were good chaps, and they knew they weren't good chaps, but the way he told it made them believe it for a while. Here was someone who thought you were a noble and worthy person, and somehow it would be unthinkable to disappoint them. It was a mirror of a speech, reflecting back to you what you wanted to hear. And he meant it all. Even so, men occasionally glanced up at Vimes and Ahmed and he could see them thinking, in their separate ways, 'It must be all right if they're in on it.' That, he was ashamed to realize, was one of the advantages of armies. People looked to other people for orders. 'This is a trick?' said Ahmed. 'No. He doesn't know any tricks like that,' said Angua. 'He really doesn't. Uh–oh...' There was a scuffle in the ranks. Carrot strode forward and reached down, bringing up Private Bourke and a D'reg, each man held by the collar in one big fist. 'What's going on, you two?' 'He called me the brother of a pig, sir!' 'Liar! You called me a greasy dishcloth–head!' Carrot shook his head. 'And you were both doing so well, too,' he said sadly. 'There really is no call for this. Now I want you, Hashel, and you, Vincent, to shake hands, right? And apologize, yes? We've all had a rather trying time, but I know you're both fine fellows underneath it all–' Vimes heard Ahmed murmur, 'Oh, well, now it's all over...' '–so if you'll just shake hands we'd say no more about it.' Vimes glanced at 71–hour Ahmed. The man was wearing a sort of waxen grin. The two scufflers very gingerly touched hands, as if they were expecting a spark to leap the gap. 'And now you, Vincent, apologize to Mr Hashel...' There was a reluctant ' 'ry'. 'And we're sorry for what?' Carrot prompted. '...sorry for calling him a greasy dishcloth–head...' 'Well said. And you, Hashel, apologize to Private Bourke.' The D'reg's eyes scurried around their sockets, looking to find a way out that would allow their body to come too. Then he gave up. ' 'ry...' 'For... ?' ' 'ry for calling him a brother of a pig...' Carrot lowered both men. 'Good! I'm sure you'll get along splendidly once you get to know each other–' 'I didn't just see that, did I?' said Ahmed. 'I didn't just see him talk like a little schoolteacher to Hashel who, I happen to know, once hit a man so hard his nose ended up in one of his ears?' 'Yes, you did,' said Angua. 'And now watch them.' When the rest of the men turned their attention back to Carrot the scufflers looked at one another, as unfortunates who had both been through the same baptism of fiery embarrassment. Private Bourke gingerly offered Hashel a cigarette. 'It only works around him,' said Angua. 'But it does work.' Let it go on working, Vimes prayed. Carrot walked over to a kneeling camel and climbed into the saddle. 'That's "Evil Brother–in–Law of a jackal",' said Ahmed. 'Jabbar's camel! It bites everyone who ride it!' 'Yes, but this is Carrot.' 'It even bites Jabbar!' 'And you notice how he knew how to get on a camel?' said Vimes. 'How he wears the robes? He's fitting in. The boy was raised in a dwarf mine. It took him about a month to know my own damn city better than I do.' The camel rose. Now the flag, Vimes thought, give him the flag. When you go to war, there's got to be a flag. On cue, Constable Shoe passed up the spear with the tightly rolled cloth around it. The constable looked proud. He'd stitched the thing in conditions of great secrecy half an hour before. One thing about a zombie, you always knew someone who had a needle and thread. But don't unfurl it, Vimes thought. Don't let them see it. It's enough for them to know they're marching under a flag. Carrot brandished the spear. 'And I promise you this,' he shouted, 'if we succeed, noone will remember. And if we fail, no one will forget!' Probably one of the worst rallying cries, Vimes thought, since General Pidley's famous 'Lees all get our throats cut, boys!' but it got a huge cheer. And once again he speculated that there was magic going on at some bonedeep level. People followed Carrot out of curiosity. 'All right, you've got an army, I suppose,' said Ahmed. 'And now?' 'I'm a policeman. So are you. There's going to be a crime. Saddle up, Ahmed.' Ahmed salaamed. 'I am happy to be led by a white officer, offendi.' 'I didn't mean–' 'Have you ever ridden a camel before, Sir Samuel?' 'No!' 'Ah?' Ahmed smiled faintly. 'Then just give it a prod to get started. And when you want to stop, hit it very hard with the stick and shout "Huthuthut!" 'You hit it with a stick to make it stop?' 'Is there any other way?' said 71–hour Ahmed. His camel looked at Vimes, and then spat in his eye.   Prince Cadram and his generals surveyed the distant enemy, from horseback. The various Klatchian armies were drawn up in front of Gebra. Compared to them, the Ankh–Morpork regiments looked like a group of tourists who had missed their coach. 'Is that all?' he said. 'Yes, sire,' said General Ashal. 'But, you see, they believe that fortune favours the brave.' 'That is a reason to field such a contemptible little army?' 'Ah, sire, but they believe that we will turn and run as soon as we taste some cold steel.' The Prince looked back at the distant banners. 'Why?' 'I couldn't say, sire. It appears to be an item of faith.' 'Strange.' The Prince nodded to one of his bodyguards. 'Fetch me some cold steel.' After some hurried discussion a sword was handed up very gingerly, handle first. The prince peered at it, and then licked it with theatrical care. The watching soldiers laughed. 'No,' he said at last. 'No, I have to say that I don't feel the least apprehensive. Is this as cold as steel gets?' 'Lord Rust was probably being metaphorical, sire.' 'Ah. He is the sort who would be. Well, let us go forward and meet him. We must be civilized, after all.' He urged his horse forward. The generals fell in behind him. The prince leaned down towards General Ashal again. 'And why are we going out to meet him before battle commences?' 'It's a... it's a goodwill gesture, sire. Warriors honouring one another.' 'But the man's a complete incompetent!' 'Indeed, sire.' 'And we're about to set thousands of our countrymen against one another, aren't we?' 'Indeed, sire.' 'So what does the maniac want to do? Tell me there's no hard feelings?' 'Broadly speaking, sire... yes. I understand the motto of his old school was "It matters not that you won or lost, but that you took part." ' The Prince's lips moved as he tried this out once or twice. Finally he said: 'And, knowing this, people still take orders from him?' 'It would seem so, sire.' Prince Cadram shook his head. We can learn from AnkhMorpork, his father had said. Sometimes we can learn what not to do. And so he'd set out to learn. First he'd learned that Ankh–Morpork had once ruled quite a slice of Klatch. He'd visited the ruins of one of its colonies. And so he'd found out the name of the man who had been audacious enough to do this, and had got agents in Ankh–Morpork to find out as much about him as possible. General Tactitus, he'd been called. And Prince Cadram had read a lot and remembered everything, and 'tactics' had been very, very useful in the widening of the empire. Of course, this had its own drawbacks. You had a border, and across the border came bandits. So you sent a force to quell the bandits, and in order to stamp them out you had to take over their country, and soon you had another restless little vassal state to rule. And now that had a border, over which came, sure as sunrise, a fresh lot of raiders. So your new tax-paying subjects were demanding protection from their brother raiders, neglecting to pay their taxes, and doing a little light banditry on the side. And so once again you stretched your forces, whether you wanted to or not... He sighed. For the serious empire–builder there was no such thing as a final frontier. There was only another problem. If only people would understand... Nor was there such a thing as a game of war. General Tacticus knew that. Learn about your opposite number, yes, and respect his abilities if he had them, certainly. But never pretend that afterwards you were going to meet up for a drink and charge–by–charge replay. 'He could well be insane, sire,' the general went on. 'Oh, good.' 'However, I'm told that he recently referred to Klatchians as the finest soldiers in the world, sire.' 'Really?' 'He added "when led by white officers", sire.' 'Oh?' 'And we are offering him breakfast, sire. It would be most impolite of him to refuse.' 'What a good idea. Have we got an adequate supply of sheeps' eyes?' 'I took the liberty of telling the cooks to save some up for this very eventuality, sire.' 'Then we must see he gets them. After all, he will be our honoured guest. Well, let us do this thing properly. Please try to look as if you hate the taste of cold steel.' The Klatchians had set up an open–sided tent on the sand between the two armies. In the welcome shade a low table had been laid. Lord Rust and his company were already waiting, and had been for more than half an hour. They stood up and bowed awkwardly as Prince Cadram entered. Around the tent the Klatchian and Ankh-Morpork honour guards eyed one another suspiciously, every man trying to get the drop on the others. ‘Tell me… Do any of you gentlemen speak Klatchian?’ said Prince Cadram, after the lengthy introductions. Lord Rust's grin stayed fixed. 'Hornett?' he hissed. 'I'm not quite certain what he said, sir,' said the lieutenant nervously. 'I thought you knew Klatchian!' 'I can read it, sir. That's not the same...' 'Oh, don't worry,' said the Prince. 'As we say in Klatch, this clown’s in charge of an army?’ Around the tent, the Klatchian generals suddenly went poker–faced. 'Hornett?' 'Er... something about... to own, to control... er... ' Cadram smiled at Lord Rust. 'I'm not entirely familiar with this custom,' he said. 'You often meet your enemies before battle?' 'It is considered honourable,' said Lord Rust. 'I believe that on the night before the famous Battle of Pseudopolis officers from both sides attended a ball at Lady Selachii's, for example.' The Prince glanced questioningly at General Ashal, who nodded. 'Really? Obviously we have so much to learn. As the poet Mosheda says, I can’t believe this man.’ 'Ah, yes,' said Lord Rust. Klatchian is a very poetic language.' 'Excuse me, sir.' said Lieutenant Hornett. 'What is it, man?' 'There's... er.. . something going on...' There was a column of dust in the distance. Something was approaching fast. 'One moment,' said General Ashal. He came back from his saddle with an ornate metal tube, covered in the curly Klatchian script. He squinted into one end and pointed the other at the cloud. 'Mounted men,' he said. 'Camels and horses.' 'That's a Make–Things–Bigger device, isn't it?' said Lord Rust. 'My word, you are up to date. They were invented only last year.' 'I didn't buy this, my lord. I inherited it from my grandfather–' The general looked through the eyepiece again. 'About forty men, I'd say.' 'Dear me,' murmured Prince Cadram. 'Reinforcements, Lord Rust?' 'They've... the rider in the lead is holding a... a banner, I think, still rolled up–' 'Certainly not, sire!' said Lord Rust. Behind him, Lord Selachii rolled his eyes. '–ah, now he's unfurling it... it's... a white flag, sire.' 'Someone wishes to surrender?' The general lowered his telescope. 'It doesn't... I don't... they seem to be in a great hurry to do so, sire.' 'Send a squad to apprehend them,' said Prince Cadram. 'We will do so too,' added Lord Rust hurriedly, nodding to the lieutenant. 'Ah, a joint effort,' said the Prince. A few seconds later groups of men detached themselves from each army and rode out on an interception course. Everyone saw the sudden glints of sunlight from the approaching cloud. Weapons had been drawn. 'Fighting under a flag of surrender? That's... immoral!' said Lord Rust. 'Novel, certainly,' said the Prince. The three companies would have met, had it not been that even experts find it hard to judge how much ground a running camel can cover. By the time both commanders realized they should start to turn, they should have already been turning. 'It seems your people misjudged things, sire,' said Lord Rust. 'I knew I should have had them led by white officers,' said the Prince. 'But... oh dear, it seems your men have been equally unlucky–' He stopped. Some confusion had resulted. The foray parties had their instructions, but no-one had told them what to do if they ran into the other foray party. And it was composed, after all, of men they were about to fight, and everyone knew they were treacherous greasy towel heads or perfidious untrustworthy sausage–eating madmen. And this was a battlefield. And everyone was frightened and, therefore, angry. And everyone was armed. Sam Vimes heard the shouting behind him but had other things on his mind at this point. It is impossible to ride a running camel without concentrating on your liver and kidneys, in the hope that they won't be pounded out of your body. The thing's legs weren't moving right, he was sure. Nothing on normal legs could be jolting him around so much. The horizon jerked backwards and forwards and up and down. What was it Ahmed had said? Vimes hit the camel hard and yelled, 'Huthuthut!' It accelerated. The jolts ran together, so that his body was no longer being jolted but was in effect in a permanent state of jolt. Vimes thrashed it again and tried to yell, 'Huthuthut!' although the word came out more like 'Hngngngn!' In any case, the camel found some extra knees somewhere. There was more shouting behind him. Turning his head as much as he dared, he saw several of his accompanying D'regs falling behind. He was certain he heard Carrot yell, but he couldn't be certain because of his own screaming. 'Stop, you bastard!' he yelled. The tent was coming up fast. Vimes slapped the stick down again and hauled on the reins and, clearly now judging with special camel sensitivity that this was the most embarrassing moment to stop, the camel stopped. Vimes slid forward, flung his arms round a neck that was apparently thatched with old doormats, and half fell, half dropped on to the sand. Other camels were thudding to a halt around him. Carrot grabbed his arm. 'Are you all right, sir? That was amazing! You really impressed the D'regs, screaming defiance like that] And you were still shouting for the camel to go faster when it was already galloping!' 'Gngn?' The guards around the tent were hesitating, but that wouldn't last long. The wind caught the white flag on Carrot's lance, making it snap. 'Sir, this is all right, isn't it? I mean, usually a white flag–' 'Might as well show what we're fighting for, eh?' 'I suppose so, sir.' 'D'regs had surrounded the tent. The air was full of dust and screams. 'What happened back there?' 'A bit of fracas, sir. Our–' Carrot hesitated and then corrected himself. 'That is, Ankh-Morpork soldiers and Klatchians have started fighting, sir. And the D'regs are fighting both of them.' 'What, before the battle's officially declared? Can't you get disqualified for that?' Vimes looked back at the guards and pointed to the flag. 'You know what this flag is?' he said. 'Well, I want you to' 'Aren't you Mr Vimes?' said one of the Morporkians. 'And that's Captain Carrot, isn't it?' 'Oh, hello, Mr Smallplank,' said Carrot. 'Feeding you well, are they?' 'Yessir!' Vimes rolled his eyes. That was Carrot again, knowing everyone. And the man had called him 'sir'...  'We just need to go through,' said Carrot. 'We won't be a minute.' 'Well, sir, these tow–' Smallplank hesitated. Certain words didn't come so easily when the subjects were standing very close to you, looking very big and tooled up. 'These Klatchians are on guard too, you see–' A stream of blue smoke was blown past Vimes's ear. 'Good morning, gentlemen,' said 71–hour Ahmed. He had a D'reg crossbow in each hand. 'You will note that the soldiers behind me are also well armed? Good. My name is 71–hour Ahmed. I will shoot the last man to drop his weapons. You have my word on it.' The Morporkians looked puzzled. The Klatchians began to whisper urgently. 'Put 'em down, boys,' said Vimes. The Morporkians threw their swords down hurriedly. The Klatchians dropped theirs very shortly afterwards. 'A tie between the gentleman on the left and the tall one with the squint,' said 71–hour Ahmed, raising both crossbows. 'Hey,' said Vimes, 'you can't–' The bows twanged. The men dropped, yelling. 'However,' said Ahmed, handing the bows to a D'reg behind him, who handed him another loaded one, 'out of deference to the sensibilities of Commander Vimes here, I'm settling for one in the thigh and one in the toes. We are, after all, on a mission of peace. He turned to Vimes. 'I'm sorry, Sir Samuel, but it's important that people know where they stand with me. 'These two don't,' said Vimes. 'They'll live.' Vimes moved closer to the wali. 'Huthuthut?' he hissed. 'You told me that it meant–' 'I thought it would prove a good example to all if you were in the lead,' Ahmed whispered. 'The D'regs will always follow a man who is in a hurry for the fray.' Lord Rust stepped out into the sunlight and glared at Vimes. 'Vimes? What the hell are you doing?' 'Not turning a blind eye, my lord.' Vimes pushed past and into the shade. There was Prince Cadram, still seated. And there were a lot of armed men. These, he noted almost in passing, didn't have the look of ordinary soldiers. They had the much tougher look of loyal bodyguards. 'So,' said the Prince, 'you come in here armed, under a flag of peace?' 'Are you Prince Cadram?' said Vimes. 'And you, too, Ahmed?' said the Prince, ignoring Vimes. Ahmed nodded, and said nothing. Oh, not now, thought Vimes. Tough as leather and vicious as a wasp, but now he's in the presence of his king... 'You're under arrest,' he said. The Prince made a little sound between a cough and a laugh. 'I'm what?' 'I am arresting you for conspiracy to murder your brother. And there may be other charges.' The Prince put his hands over his face for a moment and then pulled them down towards his chin, in the action of a tired man endeavouring to come to grips with a dying situation. 'Mr–?' he began. 'Sir Samuel Vimes, Ankh-Morpork City Watch,' said Vimes. 'Well, Mr Samuel, when I raise my hand the men behind me will cut you d–' 'I will kill the first man that moves,' said Ahmed. 'Then the second man that moves will kill you, traitor!' shouted the Prince. 'They'll have to move very fast,' said Carrot, drawing his sword. 'Any volunteers to be the third man?' said Vimes. 'Anyone?' General Ashal moved, but only very gently, holding up a hand. The bodyguards relaxed slightly. 'What was that... lie you uttered about a murder?' he said. 'Have you gone mad, Ashal?' said the Prince. 'Oh, sire, before I can disbelieve these pernicious lies, I do need to know what they are.' 'Vimes, you have gone insane,' said Rust. 'You can't arrest the commander of an army!' 'Actually, Mr Vimes, I think we could,' said Carrot. 'And the army, too. I mean, I don't see why we can't. We could charge them with behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace, sir. I mean, that's what warfare is.' Vimes's face split in a manic grin. 'I like it.' 'But in fairness our – that is, the Ankh-Morpork army – are also–' 'Then you'd better arrest them too,' said Vimes. 'Arrest the lot of 'em. Conspiracy to cause an affray,' he started to count on his fingers, 'going equipped to commit a crime, obstruction, threatening behaviour, loitering within tent, loitering within tent, hah, travelling for the purposes of committing a crime, malicious lingering and carrying concealed weapons.' 'I don't think that one–' Carrot began. 'I can't see 'em,' said Vimes. 'Vimes, I order you to come to your senses this minute!' roared Lord Rust. 'Have you been out in the sun?' 'That's one count of offensive behaviour to his lordship as well,' said Vimes. The Prince was still staring at Vimes. 'You seriously think that you can arrest an army.?' he said. 'Perhaps you think you have a bigger army?' 'Don't need one,' said Vimes. 'Power at a point, that's what Tacticus says. And here it's the one right on the end of Ahmed's crossbow. That wouldn't frighten a D'reg, but you... I reckon you don't think like them. Tell your men to stand down. I want the order to go out right now.' 'Even Ahmed would not shoot his prince in cold blood,' said Prince Cadram. Vimes snatched the crossbow. 'I wouldn't ask him to!' He took aim. 'Give that order!' The Prince stared at him. 'Count of three!' shouted Vimes. General Ashal leaned down and whispered something to the Prince. The man's expression stiffened and he glanced back at Vimes again. 'That's right,' said Vimes. 'It runs in the family.' 'It would be murder!' 'Would it? In wartime? I'm from Ankh–MorporkAren't I supposed to be at war with you? Can't be murder if there's a war on. That's written down somewhere.' The general leaned down and whispered. 'One,' said Vimes. Now there was a hurried argument. 'Two. 'Myprincewishesmetosay–' the general began. 'All right, slow down,' said Vimes. 'If it makes you any happier, I will send out the order,' said the general. 'Let the messengers leave.' Vimes nodded and lowered the bow. The Prince shifted uneasily. 'And the Ankh–Morpork army will stand down as well,' said Vimes. 'But, Vimes, you're on our side–' Rust began. 'Bloody hell, I'm going to shoot someone today and it could just be you, Rust,' Vimes snarled. 'Sit?' Lieutenant Hornett tugged at his commander's jacket. 'May I have a word?' Vimes heard them whispering, and then the young man left. 'All right, we are all disarmed,' said Rust. 'We are all "under arrest". And now, commander?' 'I ought to read them their rights, sir,' said Carrot. 'What are you talking about?' said Vimes. 'The men out there, sir.' 'Oh. Yeah. Right. Do it, then.' Oh gods, I arrested an entire battlefield, Vimes thought. And you can't do that. But I've done it. And we've only got six cells back at the Yard, and we keep the coal in one of them. You can't do it. Was this the army that invaded your country, ma'am? No, officer, they were taller than that... How about this one? Im not sure – get them to march up and down a bit... Carrot's voice could be heard outside, slightly muffled: 'Now... can you all hear me? You gentlemen in the back there? Anyone who can't hear me, please raise... all right, has anyone got a megaphone? Some cardboard I could roll up? In that case I'll shout... ' 'What now?' said the Prince. 'I'm taking you back to Ankh-Morpork–' 'I don't think so. That would be an act of war.' 'You are making a mockery of the whole business, Vimes!' said Lord Rust. 'So long as I'm doing something right, then.' Vimes nodded at Ahmed. 'Then you can answer for your crime here, sire,' he said. 'In what court?' said the Prince. Ahmed leaned closer to Vimes. 'What was your plan from here on?' he whispered. 'I never thought we'd get this far!' 'Ah. Well... it has been interesting, Sir Samuel.' Prince Cadram smiled at Vimes. 'Would you like some coffee while you are considering your next move?' he said. He gestured to an ornate silver pot on the table. 'We've got proof,' Vimes said. But he could feel the world dropping away. The point about burning your boats is that you shouldn't be standing on them when you drop the match. 'Really? Fascinating. And to whom will you show this proof, Sir Samuel?' 'We'll have to find a court.' 'Intriguing. A court in Ankh–Morpork, perhaps? Or a court here?' 'Someone told me that the world watches,' said Vimes. There was silence except for the muffled sounds of Carrot, outside, and the occasional buzz of a fly. '...bingeley–bingeley beep... ' The Dis–organizer's voice had lost its chirpy little edge, and sounded sleepy and bewildered. Heads turned. '...Seven eh em... Organize Defenders at River Gate ... Seven twenty–five... Hand–to–Hand Fighting in Peach Pie Street... Seven forty–eight eight eight... Rally Survivors in Sator Square... Things To Do Today: Build Build Build Barricades...'  He was aware of surreptitious movement behind him, and then slight pressure. Ahmed was standing back to back with him. 'What is that thing talking about?' 'Search me. Sounds like it's in a different world, doesn't it... ?' He could feel events racing towards a distant wall. Sweat filled his eyes. He couldn't remember when he'd last had a proper sleep. His legs twinged. His arms ached, pulled down by the heavy bow. '...bingeley... Eight oh two eh em, Death of Corporal Littlebottombottom... Eight oh three eh em... Death of Sergeant Detritus... Eight oh threethreethree eh em and seven seconds seconds... Death of Constable Visit... Eight oh three eh em and nineninenine seconds... Death of death of death of...' 'They say that in Ankh–Morpork one of your ancestors killed a king,' said the Prince. 'And he also came to no good end.' Vimes wasn't listening. '...Death of Constable Dorfl... Eight oh three eh em and fourteenteenteen seconds...' The figure in the throne seemed to take up the whole world. 'Death of Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson... beep...' And Vimes thought: I nearly didn't come. I nearly stayed in Ankh–Morpork. He had always wondered how Old Stoneface had felt, that frosty morning when he picked up the axe that had no legal blessing because the King wouldn't recognize a court even if a jury could be found, that frosty morning when he prepared to sever what people thought was a link between men and deity '... beep... Things To Do Today Today Today: Die...' The sensation flowed into his veins like fresh warm blood. It was the feeling that you got when the law ran out, and you looked into a mocking face on the other side of it and you decided that you couldn't go on living if you did not step over the line and do one clean thing– There was shouting outside. He blinked away the sweat. 'Ah... Commander Vimes…' said a voice somewhere back over the border. He kept his aching gaze sighted along the bow. 'Yes?' A hand darted down and grabbed the arrow out of its groove. Vimes blinked. His finger automatically squeezed the trigger. The string slammed back with a thunk. And the look on the Prince's face, he knew, would keep him warm on cold nights, if there were ever cold nights again. He'd heard them all die. But they weren't dead. And yet the damn thing had sounded so... accurate... Lord Vetinari dropped the arrow fastidiously, like a society lady who has had to handle something sticky. 'Well done, Vimes. I see you've got the donkey up the minaret. Good morning, gentlemen.' He gave the company a happy smile. 'I see I am not too late.' 'Vetinari?' said Rust, seeming to wake up. 'What are you doing here? This is a battlefield–' 'I wonder.' The Patrician gave him a very brief smile of his very own. 'Outside there seem to be a lot of men sitting around. Many of them seem to be having what I believe is known in military parlance as a brew–up. And Captain Carrot is organizing a football match.' 'He's what?' said Vimes, lowering the bow. Suddenly the world had to be real again. If Carrot was doing something as dumb as that, things were normal. 'Quite a large number of fouls so far, I'm afraid. But I wouldn't call it a battlefield.' 'Who's winning?' 'Ankh-Morpork, I believe. By two hacked shins and a broken nose.' For the first time in ages Vimes felt a little pang of patriotism. Everything else in life was in the privy, but when it came to gouging and kicking he knew which side he was on. 'Besides,' Vetinari went on, 'I believe quite a large number of people are technically under arrest. And clearly a state of war is not, in practical fact, in being. It is merely a state of football. Therefore, I believe, I am, shall we say... back. Excuse me, sire, but this won't take a moment.' He held up a metal cylinder and began to unscrew the end. For some reason Vimes felt inclined to take a few steps away from it. 'What's that?' 'I thought this might become necessary,' said Vetinari. 'It took some preparation, but I am certain it will work. I hope they're readable. We did our best to keep the damp off them.' A thick roll of paper dropped out onto the floor. 'Commander, have you nothing you should be doing?' he added. 'Refereeing, perhaps?' Vimes picked up the roll and read the first few lines. 'Whereas... heretofore, etc, etc... City of Ankh-Morpork... Surrender?' 'What?' said Rust and the Prince together. 'Yes, surrender,' said Vetinari cheerfully. 'A little piece of paper and it's all over. I think you'll find it all in order.' 'You can't–' Rust began. 'You can't–' said the Prince. 'Unconditionally?' said General Ashal sharply. 'Yes, I think so,' said Vetinari. 'We give up all claim to Leshp in favour of Klatch, we withdraw all troops from Klatch and our citizens from the island, and as for reparations... shall we say a quarter of a million dollars? Plus various favourable trade arrangements, mostfavoured–nation status and so on and so on. It's all here. Feel free to read it at your leisure.' He passed the document over the head of the Prince and into the hands of the general, who flicked through the pages. 'But we haven't got–' Vimes began. Perhaps I did get killed, he thought. I'm on the other side, or someone hit me very hard on the head and this is all some kind of mirage 'It's a forgery!' snapped the Prince. 'It's a trick!' 'Well, sire, this man certainly does appear to be Lord Vetinari and these do seem to be the official seals of Ankh–Morpork,' said the general. "'Whereas... whereby... without prejudice... ratification within four days... way of trade"... yes, this does, I have to say, look genuine.' 'I won't accept it!' 'I see, sire. It does, though, appear to cover all the points which in your speech last week you–' 'I certainly wouldn't accept it!' Rust shouted. He waved a finger under Vetinari's nose. 'You'll be banished for this!' But we haven't got that money, Vimes repeated, but this time to himself. We're a very rich city, but we haven't got any actual money. The wealth of Ankh-Morpork is in its people, we're told. And you couldn't remove it with big pliers. He felt the wind change. And Vetinari watching him. And there was something about General Ashal. A certain hunger... 'I agree with Rust,' he said. 'This is dragging the good name of Ankh-Morpork in the mud. 'To his mild surprise he managed to say that without smiling. 'We lose nothing, sire,' General Ashal insisted. 'They withdraw from Klatch and Leshp–' 'Damned if we will!' screamed Lord Rust. 'Right! And have everyone know we've been beaten?' said Vimes. 'Outwitted?' He looked at the Prince, whose gaze was hunting from man to man, but occasionally staring at nothing, as if he was watching some inner vision. 'A quarter of a million is not enough,' the Prince said. Lord Vetinari shrugged. 'We can discuss it.' 'There is much that I need to buy.' 'Things of a sharp metallic nature, no doubt,' said Vetinari. 'Of course, if we are talking about goods rather than money, there is room for... flexibility.. .' And now we're going to arm him too, Vimes thought. 'You'll be out of the city in a week!' Rust screamed. Vimes thought the general smiled briefly. Ankh–Morpork without Vetinaro... ruled by people like Rust. His future was looking bright indeed. 'The surrender will need to be ratified and formally witnessed, however,' said Ashal. 'May I suggest Ankh–Morpork?' said Lord Vetinari. 'No. On neutral territory, of course,' said the general. 'But where, between Ankh-Morpork and Klatch, is there such a thing?' said Vetinari. 'I suppose... there is Leshp,' said the general thoughtfully. 'What a good idea,' said the Patrician. 'That would not have occurred to me.' 'The place is ours anyway!' snapped the Prince. 'Will be, sire. Will be,' said the general soothingly. 'We will take possession. Quite legally. While the world watches.' 'And that's it? What about my arrest?' said Vimes. 'I'm not going to–' 'These are matters of state,' said Vetinari. 'And there are... diplomatic considerations. I am afraid the good ordering of international affairs cannot hinge upon your concerns over the doings of one man.' Once again Vimes felt that the words he was hearing were not the words that were being said. 'I won't–' he began. 'There are larger issues here.' 'But–' 'Sterling work, nevertheless.' 'There are big crimes and little crimes, is that it?' said Vimes. 'Why don't you take some well–earned rest, Sir Samuel? You are,' Vetinari flashed one of his lightning–fast smiles, 'a man of action. You deal in swords, and chases, and facts. Now, alas, it is the time for the men of words, who deal in promises and mistrust and opinions. For you the war is over. Enjoy the sunshine. I trust we shall all be returning home shortly. I would like you to stay, Lord Rust.. .' Vimes realized that he'd been switched off. He spun round and marched out of the tent. Ahmed followed him. 'That's your master, is it?' 'No! He's just the man who pays my wages!' 'Often hard to know the difference,' said Ahmed sympathetically. Vimes sat down on the sand. He wasn't certain how he'd been managing to stand up. There was some kind of a future now. He hadn't the faintest idea what was in it, but there was one. There hadn't been one five minutes ago. He wanted to talk now. That way, he didn't have to think about the Dis–organizer's death roll. It had sounded so... accurate... 'What's going to happen to you?' he said, to drive the thought out of his mind. 'When this is over, I mean. Your boss isn't going to be pleased with you.' 'Oh, the desert can swallow me.' 'He'll send people after you. He looks the type.' 'The desert will swallow them.' 'Without chewing?' 'Believe it.' 'It shouldn't have to be like this!' Vimes shouted, at the sky in general. 'You know? Sometimes I dream that we could deal with the big crimes, that we could make a law for countries and not just for people, and people like him would have–' Ahmed pulled him upright and patted him on the shoulder. 'I know how it is,' he said. 'I dream too.' 'You do?' 'Yes. Generally of fish.' There was a roar from the crowd. 'Someone's scored a convincing foul, by the sound of it,' said Vimes. They slid and staggered up the side of a dune, and watched. Someone broke from the scrum and, punching and kicking, staggered towards the Klatchian goal. 'Isn't that man your butler?' said Ahmed. 'Yes.' 'One of your soldiers said he bit a man's nose off.' Vimes shrugged. 'He's got a very pointed look if I don't use the sugar tongs, I know that.' A white figure marched authoritatively through the mill of players, blowing a whistle. 'And that man, I believe, is your king.' 'No.' 'Really? Then I am Queen Punjitrurn of Sumtri.' 'Carrot's a copper, same as me.' 'A man like that could inspire a handful of broken men to conquer a country.' 'Fine. just so long as he does it on his day off.' 'And he too takes orders from you? You are a remarkable man, Sir Samuel. But you would not, I think, have killed the Prince.' 'No. But you'd have killed me if I had.' 'Oh, yes. Flagrant murder in front of witnesses. I am, after all, a copper.' They'd reached the camels. One looked round as Ahmed prepared to mount, thought better of spitting at him, and hit Vimes instead. With great precision. Ahmed looked back at the footballers. 'Up in Klatchistan the nomads play a game very similar to that,' he said. 'But on horseback. The aim is to get the object round the goal.' 'Object?' 'Probably best just to think of it as an "object" Sir Samuel. And now, I think, I shall head that way. There are thieves in the mountains. The air is clear up there. As you know, there is always work for policemen.' 'You thinking of returning to Ankh–Morpork at any time?' 'You'd like to see me there, Sir Samuel?' 'It's an open city. But be sure to call in at Pseudopolis Yard when you arrive.' 'Ah, and we can reminisce about old times.' 'No. So you can hand over that sword. We'd give you a receipt and you can pick it up when you leave.' 'I'd take some persuading, Sir Samuel.' 'Oh, I think Id only ask once.' Ahmed laughed, nodded at Vimes and rode away. For a few minutes he was a shape at the base of a column of dust, and then a shifting dot in the heat haze, and then the desert swallowed him.   The day wore on. Various Klatchian officials and some of the Ankh–Morpork people were summoned to the tent. Vimes wandered close to it a few times and heard the sound of voices raised in dispute. Meanwhile, the armies dug in. Someone had already erected a crude signpost, its arms pointing to various soldiers' homes. Since these were all in part of AnkhMorpork the arms all pointed exactly the same way. He found most of the Watch sitting out of the wind, while a wizened Klatchian woman cooked quite a complicated meal over a small fire. They all seemed to be fully alive, with the usual slight question the case of Reg Shoe. 'Where've you been, Sergeant Colon?' said Vimes. 'Been sworn to secrecy about that, sir. By his lordship. 'Right.' Vimes didn't press the point. Getting information out of Colon was like getting water out of a flannel. It could wait. 'And Nobby?' 'Right here, sir!' The wizened woman saluted in a clash of bangles. 'That's you?' 'Yessir! Doing the dirty work as per the woman's role in life, sir, despite the fact that there is less senior watchmen present, sir!' 'Now then, Nobby,' said Colon. 'Cheery can't cook, we can't let Reg do it because bits fall into the pan, and Angua–' '–doesn't do cookery,' said Angua. She was lying back on a rock with her eyes dosed. The rock was the slumbering shape of Detritus. 'Anyway, you just started doing the cooking like you was expecting to have to do it,' said Colon. 'Kebab, sir?' said Nobby. 'There's plenty.' 'You certainly got a lot of food from somewhere,' said Vimes. 'Klatchian quartermaster, sir,' said Nobby, grinning beneath his veil. 'Used my sexual wiles on him, sir.' Vimes's kebab stopped halfway to his mouth and dripped lamb fat onto his legs. He saw Angua's eyes slam open and stare in horror at the sky. 'I told him I'd take my clothes off and scream if he didn't give me some grub, sir.' 'That'd scare the daylights out of me, sure enough,' said Vimes. He saw Angua breathe out again. 'Yeah, I reckon if I played my cards right I could be one of them fatal femmies,' said Nobby. 'I've only got to wink at a man and he runs a mile. Could be useful, that.' 'I told him he could change back into his uniform, but he says he feels more comfortable like this,' whispered Colon to Vimes. 'I'm getting a bit worried, to tell you the truth.' I can't handle this, Vimes thought. This isn't in the book of rules. 'Er... how can I explain this... ?' he began. 'I don't want any of them in–you–endoes,' said Nobby. 'It's a good idea to walk a mile in someone else's shoes, that's all I'm saying.' 'Well, so long as it's just sh–' 'I've just been gettin' in touch with my softer side, all right? Seein' the other man's point of view, sort of thing, even if he's a woman.' He looked at their faces and waved his hands vaguely. 'All right, all right, I'll put my uniform on after I've tidied up around the camp. Will that make you all happy?' 'Something smells nice!' Carrot ran up, bouncing his football. He'd stripped to his waist. The whistle bounced on its string around his neck. 'I've declared half–time,' he said, sitting down. 'So I've sent some of the lads into Gebra to get four thousand oranges. Shortly the combined Ankh–Morpork regimental bands will put on a display of counter–marching while playing a selection of military favourites.' 'Have they practised counter–marching?' said Angua. 'I don't think so.' 'Should be good, then.' 'Carrot,' said Vimes, 'I don't wish to pry, but how, in the middle of a desert, did you find a football?' And the voice in the back of his mind insisted: you heard him die, you heard them all die.. . somewhere else. 'Oh, these days I carry a deflated one in my pack, sir. A very pacifying object, a football. Are you all right, sir?' 'Eh? What? Oh. Yes. Just a bit... tired. So who's winning?' Vimes patted his pockets, and found his last cigar. 'It's broadly speaking a tie, sir. I had to send four hundred and seventy–three men off, though. Klatch is now well ahead on fouls, I'm sorry to say.' 'Sport as a substitute for war, eh?' said Vimes. He rootled in the ashes of Nobby's fire and pulled out a halfconsumed... well, it helped to think of it as a desert coal. Carrot gave him a solemn look– 'Yes, sir. No–one's using weapons. And have you noticed how the Klatchian army is getting smaller? Some of the chiefs from distant parts are taking their men away. They say there's no point in staying if there's not going to be a war. I don't think they really wanted to be here in any case, to tell you the truth. And I don't think it's going to be easy to get them to come back–' There was shouting behind them. Men were coming out of the tent, arguing. Lord Rust was among them. He looked around, talking to his companions. Then he spotted Vimes and rocketed furiously towards him. 'Vimes!' Vimes looked up, hand halfway to his cigar. 'We would have won, you know,' growled Rust. 'We would have won! But we were betrayed on the brink of success!' Vimes stared at him. 'And it's your fault, Vimes! We'll be the laughing stock of Klatch! You know the value these people put on face, and we won't have any! Vetinari is finished! And so are you! And so is your stupid, mongrel, cowardly Watch! What do you say to that, Vimes? Eh?' The watchmen sat like statues, waiting for Vimes to say something. Or even move. 'Eh? Vimes?' Rust sniffed. 'What's that smell?' Vimes slowly shifted his gaze to his fingers. Smoke was rising. There was a faint sizzling. He stood up and brought his fingers up in front of Rust's face. 'Take it,' he said. 'That's... just some trick...' 'Take it,' said Vimes. Mesmerized, Rust licked his fingers and gingerly took the ember. 'It doesn't hurt–' 'Yes, it does,' said Vimes. 'In fact it– Aargh!' Rust jumped back, dropped the ember and sucked his blistered fingers. 'The trick is not to mind that it hurts,' said Vimes. 'Now go away.' 'You won't last long,' Rust sneered. 'You wait until we're back in the city. You just wait.' He strode off, holding his stricken hand. Vimes went back and sat down by the fire. After a while he said: 'Where's he gone now?' 'Back to the lines, sir. I think he's ordering the men home.' 'Can he see us?' 'No.' 'You sure?' 'There's too many people in the way, sir.' 'You're quite sure?' 'Not unless he can see through camels, sir.' 'Good.' Vimes stuck his fingers in his mouth. Sweat was pouring down his face. 'Damn damn damn! Has anyone got any cold water?'   Captain Jenkins had got his ship afloat again. It had taken a lot of digging, and some careful work with balks of timber and the assistance of a Klatchian captain who had decided not to let patriotism stand in the way of profit. He and his crew were resting on the shore when a greeting rang out from over them. He squinted into the sun. 'That... that can't be Vimes, can it?' The crew stared. 'Let's get aboard right now!' A figure started down the face of the dune. It moved very fast, much faster than a man could run on the shifting sand, and moved in a zig–zag fashion. As it drew nearer, it turned out to be a man standing on a shield. It slid to a halt a few feet away from the astonished Jenkins. 'Good of you to wait, captain!' said Carrot. 'Very many thanks! The others will be down in a minute.' Jenkins looked back to the top of the dune. There were other, darker figures there now. 'Those are D'regs!' he shouted. 'Oh, yes. Lovely people. Have you met them at all?' Jenkins stared at Carrot. 'Did you win?' he said. 'Oh, yes. On penalties, in the end.'   Green-blue light filtered through the tiny windows of the Boat. Lord Vetinari pulled the steering levers until he was pretty certain that they were heading towards a suitable ship and said: 'What is it I can smell, Sergeant Colon?' 'It's Bet– It's Nobby, sir,' said Colon, pedalling industriously. 'Corporal Nobbs?' Nobby almost blushed. 'I bought a bottle of scent, sir. For my young lady.' Lord Vetinari coughed. 'What exactly do you mean by "your young lady"?' he said. 'Well, for when I get one,' said Nobby. 'Ah.' Even Lord Vetinari sounded relieved. 'On account of I expect I shall now, me having fully explored my sexual nature and now feeling fully comfortable with meself,' said Nobby. 'You feel comfortable with yourself?' 'Yessir!' said Nobby happily. 'And when you find this lucky lady, you will give her this bottle of–' ' 's called "Kasbah Nights", sir.' 'Of course. Very... floral, isn't it?' 'Yessir. That's 'cos of the jasmine and rare ungulants in it, sir.' 'And yet at the same time curiously... penetrative.' Nobby grinned. 'Good value for money, sir. A little goes a long way.' 'Not far enough, possibly?' But Nobby rusted even irony. 'I got it in the same shop that sarge got the hump, sir.' 'Ah... yes.' There wasn't very much space in the Boat, and most of it was taken up with Sergeant Colon's souvenirs. He'd been allowed a brief shopping expedition 'to take home something for the wife, sir, otherwise I'll never hear the last of it'. 'Mrs Colon will like a stuffed camel hump, will she, sergeant?' said the Patrician doubtfully. 'Yessir. She can put things on it, sir.' 'And the set of nested brass tables?' 'To put things on, sir.' 'And the' – there was a clanking –'set of goat bells, ornamental coffee pot, miniature camel saddle and this... strange glass tube with little bands of different coloured sand in it... what are these for?' 'Conversation pieces, sir.' 'You mean people will say things like "What are they for?", do you?' Sergeant Colon looked pleased with himself. 'See, sir? We're talking about 'em already.' 'Remarkable.' Sergeant Colon coughed and indicated with a tilt of his head the hunched figure of Leonard, who was sitting in the stern with his head in his hands. 'He's a bit quiet, sir,' he whispered. 'Can't seem to get a word out of him.' 'He has a lot on his mind,' said the Patrician. The watchmen pedalled onwards for a while, but the close confines of the Boat encouraged a confidentiality that would never have been found on land. 'Sorry to hear you're getting the sack, sir,' said Colon. 'Really,' said Lord Vetinari. 'You'd definitely get my vote, if we had elections.' 'Capital.' 'I think people want the thumbscrew of firm government, myself.' 'Good.' 'Your predecessor, Lord Snapcase, now he was mental. But, like I've always said, people know where they stand with Lord Vetinari...' 'Well done.' 'They might not like where they're standing of course...' Lord Vetinari looked up. They were under a boat now and it seemed to be going in the right direction. He steered the Boat until he heard the thunk of hull hitting hull, and gave the auger a few turns. 'Am I being sacked, sergeant?' he said, sitting back. 'Well, eh, I heard Lord Rust's people say that if you rat... rat. ..' 'Ratify,' said Lord Vetinari. 'Yeah, if you ratify that surrender next week, they'll get you exiled, sir.' 'A week is a long time in politics, sergeant.' Colon's face widened in what he thought of as a knowing grin. He tapped the side of his nose. 'Ah, politics,' he said. 'Ah, you should've said.' 'Yeah, they'll laugh at the other foot then, eh?' said Nobby. 'Cot some secret plan, I'll be bound,' said Colon. 'You know where the chicken is all right.' 'I can see there's no fooling such skilled observers of the carnival that is life,' said Lord Vetinari. 'Yes, indeed, there is something I intend to do.' He adjusted the position of the camel–hump pouffe, which in fact smelled of goat and was beginning to leak sand, and lay back. 'I'm going to do nothing. Wake me up if anything interesting happens.'   Nautical things happened. The wind spun about so much that a weather-cock might as well be harnessed to grinding corn. At one point there was a fall of anchovies. And Commander Vimes tried to sleep. Jenkins showed him a hammock, and Vimes realized that this was another sheep's eyeball. No-one could possibly sleep in something like that. Sailors probably kept them up for show and had real beds tucked away somewhere. He tried to make himself comfortable in the hold, and dozed while the others talked in the corner. They were very politely keeping out of his way. '––ordship wouldn't give the whole thing away, would he? What were we fighting for?' 'He'll have a hard job hanging on to the job after this, that's for sure. It's dragging the good name of Ankh-Morpork in the mud, like Mr Vimes said.' 'For Ankh-Morpork, mud is up.' That was Angua. 'On der other han', everyone is still breathin'.' That was Detritus. 'That's a vitalist remark–' 'Sorry, Reg. What you scratchin' for?' 'I think I picked up a filthy foreign disease.' 'Sorry?' Angua again. 'What can a zombie catch?' 'Don't like to say...' 'You're talking to someone who knows every brand of flea powder they sell in Ankh–Morpork, Reg.' 'Oh, if you must know... Mice, miss. It's shameful. I keep myself dean, but they just find a way–' 'Have you tried everything?' 'Excepting ferrets.' 'If his lordship goes, who'll take over?' That was Cheery. 'Lord Rust?' 'He'd last five minutes.' 'Maybe the guilds will get together and–' 'They'll fight like–' '–ferrets,' said Reg. 'The cure's worse than the disease.' 'Cheer up, there'll still be a Watch.' That was Carrot. 'Yes, but Mr Vimes'll be out on his ear. 'cos of politics.' Vimes decided to keep his eyes closed.   A silent crowd was waiting on the quayside when the ship finally docked. They watched Vimes and his men walk down the gangway. There were one or two coughs, and then someone called out: 'Say it ain't so, Mr Vimes!' At the foot of the gangplank Constable Dorfl saluted stiffly. 'Lord Ruses Ship Cot In This Morning, Sir,' the golem said. 'Anyone seen Vetinari?' 'No, sir.' 'Afraid to show his face!' someone shouted. 'Lord Rust Said You Were To Do Your Duty, Damn You,' said Dorfl. Golems had a certain literalness of speech. He handed Vimes a sheet of paper. Vimes grabbed it and read the first few lines. 'What's this? "Emergency Council?" And this?... Treason? Against Vetinari? I'm not carrying this out!' 'Can I see, sir?' said Carrot. It was Angua who noticed the wave, while the others were staring at the warrant. Even in human form a werewolf's ears are pretty sensitive. She wandered back to the quayside and looked downriver. A wall of white water a few feet high was running up the Ankh. As it passed, boats were lifted and rocked. It sloshed by her, sucking at the quay and making Jenkins's boat dance for a moment. There was a crash of crockery somewhere aboard. Then it was gone, a line of surf heading towards the next bridge. For a moment the air smelled not of the Ankh's eau de latrine but of sea winds and salt. Jenkins appeared out of his cabin and looked over the side. 'What was that? The tide changing?' Angua called up. 'We came up on the tide,' said Jenkins. 'Beats me. One of those phenomena, I expect.' Angua went back to the group. Vimes was already red in the face. 'It has been signed by quite a lot of the major guilds, sir,' Carrot was saying. 'In fact they're all here except the Beggars and the Seamstresses.' 'Really? Well, piss on 'em! Who are they to give me an order like that?' 'Angua saw the look of pain cross Carrot's face. 'Uh... someone has to give us orders, sir. In a general sort of way. We aren't supposed to make up our own. That's sort of... the point.' 'Yes... but... not like...' 'And I suppose they represent the will of the people–' 'That bunch? Don't give me that rubbish! We'd have been slaughtered if we'd fought! And then we'd be in just the same position as we–' 'This does look legal, sir.' 'It's... ridiculous!' 'It's not as if we are accusing him, sir. We just have to make sure he turns up at the Rats Chamber. Look, sir, you've had a very trying time–' 'But... arrest Vetinari? I can't–' Vimes stopped, because his ears had caught up. And because that was the point, wasn't it? If you could arrest anyone, then that's what you had to do. You couldn't turn round and say 'but not him'. Ahmed would snigger. Old Stoneface would turn in all five of his graves. 'I can, can't I?' he said, sadly. 'Oh, all right. Put out a description, Dorfl.' 'That Will Not Be Necessary, Sir.' The crowds moved aside as Lord Vetinari walked along the quay, with Nobby and Colon behind him. At least, if it wasn't Sergeant Colon it was a very strangely deformed camel. 'I think I caught quite a lot of that, commander,' said Lord Vetinari. 'Please do your duty.' 'All you've got to do is to go to the palace, sir. Let's–' 'You're not going to handcuff me?' Vimes's mouth dropped open. 'Why should I do that?' 'Treason is very nearly the ultimate crime, Sir Samuel. I think I should demand handcuffs.' 'All right, if you insist.' Vimes nodded at Dorfl. 'Cuff him, then.' 'You haven't any shackles, by any chance?' said Lord Vetinari, as Dorfl produced a pair of handcuffs. 'We may as well do this thing properly–' 'No. We don't have any shackles.' 'I was only trying to help, Sir Samuel. Shall we be going?' The crowd weren't jeering. That was almost frightening. They were just waiting, like an audience watching to see how the trick was going to be done. They parted again as the Patrician headed towards the centre of the city. He stopped and turned. 'What was the other thing... oh yes, I don't have to be dragged on a hurdle, do I?' 'Only if you're actually executed, my lord,' said Carrot, cheerfully. 'Traditionally, traitors are dragged to their place of execution on a hurdle. And then you're hung, drawn and quartered.' Carrot looked embarrassed. 'I know about the hanging and quartering but I'm not sure how you're drawn, sir.' 'Are you any good with a pencil, captain?' said Lord Vetinari innocently. 'No, he's not!' said Vimes. 'Do you actually have a hurdle?' 'No!' snapped Vimes. 'Oh? Well, I believe there's a sports equipment shop in Sheer Street. just in case, Sir Samuel.'   A figure walked across the trampled sand near Gebra, and paused when a voice very near ground level said, hopefully, 'Bingeley–bingeley beep?' The Dis–organizer felt itself being picked up. WHAT KIND OF A THING ARE YOU? 'I am the Dis–organizer Mk II, with many handy hard–touse features, Insert Name Here!' SUCH AS? Even the Dis–organizer's tiny mind felt slightly uneasy. The voice it was speaking to didn't sound right. 'I know what time it is everywhere,' it ventured. SO DO I. 'Er... I can maintain an up–to–the–minute contacts directory...' The Dis–organizer felt movements that suggested the new owner had mounted a horse. REALLY? I HAVE A GREAT MANY CONTACTS. 'There you are, then,' said the demon, trying to hold on to its rapidly draining enthusiasm. 'So I make a note of them, and when you want to contact them again–' THAT IS GENERALLY NOT NECESSARY. MOSTLY, THEY STAY CONTACTED. 'Well... do you have many appointments?' There were hoofbeats, and then no sound but rushing wind. MORE THAN YOU COULD POSSIBLY IMAGINE. NO... I THINK, PERHAPS, YOUR TALENTS COULD BE BETTER EMPLOYED ELSEWHERE... There was more rushing wind, and then a splash.   The Rats Chamber was crowded. Guild leaders were entitled to be there, but there were plenty of other people who considered they had a right to be in at the death too. There were even some of the senior wizards. Everyone wanted to be able to say to their grandchildren 'I was there'.[17] 'I feel certain I ought to be wearing more chains,' said Vetinari, as they paused in the doorway and looked at the assembled crowd. 'Are you taking this seriously, sir?' said Vimes. 'Incredibly seriously, commander, I assure you. But if by some chance I survive, I authorize you to buy some shackles. We must learn to do this sort of thing properly.' 'I shall keep them handy, I assure you.' 'Good.' The Patrician nodded at Lord Rust, who was flanked by Mr Boggis and Lord Downey. 'Good morning,' he said. 'Can we make this quick? It's going to be a busy day.' 'It pleases you to continue to make Ankh–Morpork a laughing stock,' Rust began. His glance flicked to Vimes for a moment, and wrote him out of the universe. 'This is not a formal trial, Lord Vetinari. It is an arraignment so that the charges may be known. Mr Slant tells me that it will be many weeks before a full trial can be mounted.' 'Expensive weeks no doubt. Shall we get on with it?' said Vetinari. 'Mr Slant will read the charges,' said Rust. 'But in a nutshell, as you are well aware, Havelock, you are charged with treason. You surrendered most ignobly–' '–but I did not–' '–and quite illegally waived all rights to our sovereignty of the country known as Leshp–' '–but there is no such place.' Lord Rust paused. 'Are you quite sane, sir?' 'The surrender terms were to be ratified on the island of Leshp, Lord Rust. There is no such place.' 'We passed it on the way here, man!' 'Has anyone looked recently?' Angua tapped Vimes on the shoulder. 'A strange wave came up the river just after we arrived, sir–' There was some urgent conversation among the wizards, and Archchancellor Ridcully stood up. 'There seems to be a bit of a problem, your lordships. The Dean says it really isn't there.' 'It's an island. Are you suggesting someone's stolen it? Are you sure you know where it is, man?' 'We do know where it is, and it isn't there. There's just a lot of seaweed and wreckage,' said the Dean coldly. He stood up, holding a small crystal ball in his hands. 'We've been watching it most evenings. For the fights, you know. Of course, the picture is pretty bad at this distance––' Rust stared at him. But the Dean was too large to be written out of the scene. 'But an entire island can't just vanish,' said Rust. 'In theory they can't just appear either, my lord, but this one did.' 'Perhaps it's sunk again,' said Carrot. Now Rust glared at Vetinari. 'Did you know about this?' he demanded. 'How could I know something like that?' Vimes watched the faces around the room. 'You do know something about this!' said Rust. He glanced towards Mr Slant, who was leafing hurriedly through a large volume. 'All I know, my lord, is that Prince Cadram has, at a politically dangerous time for him, given up a huge military advantage in exchange for an island which seems to have sunk under the sea,' said Lord Vetinari. 'The Klatchians are a proud people. I wonder what they will think?' And Vimes thought about General Ashal, standing beside Prince Cadram's throne. Klatchians like successful leaders, he thought. I wonder what happens to the unsuccessful ones? I mean, look at what when we think– Someone nudged him. ' 's us, sir,' said Nobby. 'They said they didn't have any hurdles but they do a ping–pong table for ten dollars. There's a small trampoline we could drag him on but sarge thinks that'd be a bit ridiculous.' Vimes walked out of the room, dragging Nobby with him, and pushed the little man against the wall. 'Where did you get to with Vetinari, corporal? And remember I know when you tell me lies. Your lips move. 'We... we... we... just went on a little voyage, sir. He said I wasn't to say we went under the island, sir!' 'So you – Under Leshp?' 'Nossir! We didn't go down there! Stinking hole it was, too. Stunk of rotten eggs, the whole bloody cave, and as big as the city, believe me!' 'I bet you're glad you didn't go, then.' Nobby looked relieved. 'That's right, sir.' Vimes sniffed. 'Are you using some kind of aft–' – he corrected himself –'some kind of insteadofshave, Nobby?' 'No, sir?' 'Something smells of fermented flowers.' 'Oh, it's just a souvenir I picked up in foreign parts, sir. It kind of lingers, if you know what I mean.' Vimes shrugged and went back into the Rats Chamber. '–and I resent most strongly the suggestion that I would have negotiated with His Highness in the knowledge that... ah, Sir Samuel. The keys to the handcuffs, please.' 'You knew! You knew all the time!' Rust shouted. 'Is Lord Vetinari charged with anything?' said Vimes. Mr Slant was scrabbling through another volume. He looked quite flustered, for a zombie. His greygreen shade was distinctly greener. 'Not as such...' he muttered. 'But he will be!' said Lord Rust. 'Well, when you find out what it is you be sure and let me know, and I'll go and arrest him for it,' said Vimes, unlocking the handcuffs. He was aware of cheering outside. Nothing stayed secret very long in Ankh-Morpork. The damn island wasn't there any more. And, somehow, it had all worked out. He met Vetinari's eyes. 'Piece of luck for you,– eh?' he said. 'Oh, there's always a chicken, Sir Samuel. If you look hard enough.'   The day turned out to be nearly as trying as war. At least one carpet made the flight from Klatch, and there was a constant stream of messages between the palace and the embassy. A crowd still hung around outside the palace. Things were happening, and even if they did not know what they were they weren't going to miss them. If any history was going to occur, they wanted to watch it. Vimes went home. To his amazement, the door was answered by Willikins. He had his sleeves rolled up and was wearing a long green apron. 'You? How the hell did you get back so quickly?' said Vimes. 'Sorry. I didn't mean to be impolite–' 'I inveigled myself on to Lord Rust's ship in the general confusion, sir. I did not wish to let things go to rack and ruin here. The silverware is frankly disgusting, I am afraid. The gardener does not have the least idea how to do it. Allow me to apologize in advance for the shocking condition of the cutlery, sir.' 'A few days ago you were biting people's noses off!' 'Ah, you must not believe Private Bourke, sir,' said the butler, as Vimes stepped in. 'It was only one nose.' 'And now you've hurried back to polish the silver?' 'It does not do to let standards slip, sir.' He stopped. ‘Sir?' 'Yes?' 'Did we win?' Vimes looked into the round pink face. 'Er... we didn't lose, Willikins,' he said. 'We couldn't let a foreign despot raise a hand to Ankh-Morpork, could we, sir?' said the butler. There was a slight tremble in his voice. 'I suppose not...' 'So it was right, what we did.' 'I suppose so...' 'The gardener was saying that Lord Vetinari put one over on the Klatchians, sir...' 'I don't see why not. He's done it with everyone else.' 'That would be very satisfactory, sir. Lady Sybil is in the Slightly Pink Drawing Room, sir.' She was knitting inexpertly when Vimes came in, but rose and gave him a kiss. 'I heard the news,' she said. 'Well done.' She looked him up and down. As far as she could see, he was all there. 'I'm not sure that we won...' 'Getting you back alive counts as a win, Sam. Although of course I wouldn't say that in front of Lady Selachii.' Sybil waved the knitting at him. 'She's organized a committee to knit socks for our brave lads at the front, but it turns out you're back. And I haven't even worked out how to turn a heel yet. She's probably going to be annoyed.' 'Er.. . how long do you think my legs are?' 'Um...' She looked at the knitting. 'Do you need a scarf?' He kissed her again. 'I'm going to have a bath and then something to eat,' he said. The water was only lukewarm. Vimes had some hazy idea that Sybil thought that really hot baths might be letting the side down while there was a war on. He was lying with his nose just above the surface when he heard, with the addition of that special gloinggloing sound that comes from listening with your ears underwater, some distant talking. Then the door opened. 'Fred's here. Vetinari wants you,' said Sybil. 'Already? But we haven't even started dinner.' 'I'm coming with you, Sam. He can't keep on calling you out at all hours, you know.' Sam Vimes tried to look as serious as any man can when he's holding a loofah. 'Sybil, Im the Commander of the Watch and he's the ruler of the city. It's not like going to complain to the teacher because I'm not doing well in geography...' 'I said I'm coming with you, Sam.'   The Boat slipped down its rails and into the water. A stream of bubbles came up. Leonard sighed. He had very carefully refrained from putting the cork in. The current n–tight roll it anywhere. He hoped it'd roll to the deepest pit of the ocean, or even right over the Rim. He walked unnoticed through the crowds until he came to the palace. He let himself into the secret corridor and avoided the various traps without thinking, since he himself had designed them. He reached the door to his airy room and unlocked it. When he was inside he locked it again, and pushed the key back under the door. And then he sighed. So that was the world, was it? Clearly a mad place, with madmen in it. Well, from now on he'd be careful. It was clear that some men would try to turn anything into a weapon. He made himself a cup of tea, a process slightly delayed while he designed a better sort of spoon and a small device to improve the circulation of the boiling water. Then he sat back in his special chair and pulled a lever. Counterweights dropped. Somewhere, water sloshed from one tank to another. Bits of the chair creaked and slid into a comfortable position. Leonard stared bleakly out of the skylight. A few seabirds turned lazily in the blue square, circling, hardly moving their wings... After a while, his tea growing cold, Leonard began to draw.   'Lady Sybil? This is an unexpected surprise,' said Lord Vetinari. 'Good evening, Sir Samuel, and may I say what a nice scarf you're wearing. And Captain Carrot. Please sit down. We have a lot of business to finish.' They sat. 'Firstly,' said Lord Vetinari, 'I have just drafted a proclamation for the town criers. The news is good.' 'The war is officially over, is it?' said Carrot. 'The war, captain, never happened. It was a... misunderstanding.' 'Never happened?' said Vimes. 'People got killed!' 'Quite so,' said Lord Vetinari. 'And this suggests, does it not, that we should try to understand one another as much as possible?' 'What about the Prince?' 'Oh, I am sure we can do business with him, Vimes.' 'I don't think so!' 'Prince Khufurah? I thought you rather liked the man.' 'What? What happened to the other one?' 'He appears to have gone on a long visit to the country,' said the Patrician. 'At some speed.' 'You mean the kind of visit where you don't even stop to pack?' 'That kind of visit, yes. He seems to have upset people.' 'Do we know which country?' said Vimes. 'Klatchistan, I believe – I'm sorry, did I say something funny?' 'Oh, no. No. Just a thought crossed my mind, that's all.' Vetinari leaned back. 'And so once again peace spreads her tranquil blanket.' 'I shouldn't think the Klatchians are very happy, though.' 'It is in the nature of people to turn on their leaders when they fail to be lucky,' Vetinari added, his expression not changing. 'Oh, there will no doubt be problems. We will just have to... discuss them. Prince Khufurah is an amiable man. Very much like most of his ancestors. A flask of wine, a loaf of bread and thou, or at least a selection of thous, and he'd not be too interested in politics.' 'They're as clever as us,' said Vimes. 'We just have to stay ahead of them, then,' said Vetinari. 'A brain race, sort of,' said Vimes. 'Better than an arms race. Cheaper, too,' said the Patrician. He flicked through the papers in front of him. 'Now then, what was – oh, yes. The matter of traffic?' 'Traffic?' Vimes's brain tried to do a u–turn. 'Yes. Our ancient streets are becoming very congested these days. I hear there is a carter in Kings' Way who settled down and raised a family while in the queue. And the responsibility for keeping the streets clear is, in fact, one of the most ancient ones incumbent on the Watch.' 'Maybe, sir, but these days–' 'So you will set up a department, Vimes, to regulate matters. To deal with things. Stolen carts and so on. And keeping the major crossroads clear. And perhaps to fine carters who park for too long and impede the flow. And so on. Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobbs would, I think, be eminently fitted for this work which, I suspect, should easily be self–financing. What is your opinion?' A chance to be 'self–financing' and not get shot at, thought Vimes. They'll think they've died and gone to heaven. 'Is this some sort of a reward for them, sir?' 'Let us say, Vimes, that where one finds one has a square peg, one should look for a square hole.' 'I suppose that's all right, sir. Of course, that means I'll have to promote someone–' 'I am sure I can leave the details to you. A small bonus for each of them would not be out of order. Ten dollars, say. Oh, there is one other thing, Vimes. And I am particularly glad that Lady Sybil is here to hear this. I am persuaded to change the title of your office.' 'Yes?' ' "Commander" is rather a mouthful. So I have been reminded that a word that originally meant commander was "Dux".' 'Dux Vimes?' said Vimes. He heard Sybil gasp. He was aware of a waiting hush around him, such as may be found between the fighting of a fuse and the bang. He rolled the word over and over in his mind. 'Duke?' he said. 'Oh, no– Sybil, could you wait outside?' 'Why, Sam?' 'I need to discuss this very personally with his lord ship.' 'Have a row. you mean?' 'A discussion.' Lady Sybil sighed. 'Oh, very well. It's up to you, Sam. You know that.' 'There are... associated matters,' said Lord Vetinari, when the door closed behind her. 'No!' 'Perhaps you should hear them.' 'No! You've done this to me before! We've got the Watch set up, we've almost got the numbers, the widows and orphans fund is so big the men are queueing up for the dangerous beats, and the dartboard we've got is nearly new! You can't bribe me into accepting this time! There is nothing we want!' 'Stoneface Vimes was a much–maligned man, I've always thought,' said Vetinari. 'I'm not accepting– What?' Vimes skidded in mid–anger. 'I've always thought that, too,' said Carrot loyally. Vetinari stood up and went to stand by the window, looking down at Broad Way with his hands behind his back. 'The thought occurs that this might be time for... reconsideration of certain ancient assumptions,' said Vetinari. The meaning enveloped Vimes like a chilly mist. 'You're offering to change history?' he said. 'Is that it? Rewrite the–' 'Oh, my dear Vimes, history changes all the time. It is constantly being re–examined and re–evaluated, otherwise how would we be able to keep historians occupied? We can't possibly allow people with their sort of minds to walk around with time on their hands. The Chairman of the Guild of Historians is in full agreement with me, I know, that the pivotal role of your ancestor in the city's history is ripe for fresh... analysis.' 'Discussed it with him, have you?' said Vimes. 'Not yet.' Vimes opened and shut his mouth a few times. The Patrician went back to his desk and picked up a sheet of paper. 'And, of course, other details would have to be taken care of...' he said. 'Such as?' Vimes croaked. 'The Vimes coat of arms would be resurrected, of course. It would have to be. I know Lady Sybil was extremely upset when she found you weren't entitled to one. And a coronet, I believe, with knobs on–' 'You can take that coronet with the knobs on and–' '–which I hope you will wear on formal occasions, such as, for example, the unveiling of the statue which has for so long disgraced the city by its absence.' For once, Vimes managed to get ahead of the conversation. 'Old Stoneface again?' he said. 'That part of it, is it? A statue to old Stoneface?' 'Well done,' said Lord Vetinari. 'Not of you, obviously. Putting up a statue to someone who tried to stop a war is not very, um, statuesque. Of course, if you had butchered five hundred of your own men out of arrogant carelessness, we'd be melting the bronze already. No. I was thinking of the first Vimes who tried to make a future and merely made history. I thought perhaps somewhere in Peach Pie Street–' They watched one another like cats, like poker players. 'Top of Broad Way,' Vimes said hoarsely. 'Right in front of the palace.' The Patrician glanced out of the window. 'Agreed. I shall enjoy looking at it.' 'And right up close to the wall. Out of the wind.' 'Certainly.' Vimes looked nonplussed for a moment. 'We lost people––' 'Seventeen, caught in skirmishes of one sort or another,' said Lord Vetinari. 'I want–' 'Financial arrangements will be made for widows and dependants.' Vimes gave up. 'Well done, sir!' said Carrot. The new duke rubbed his chin. 'But that means I'll have to be married to a duchess,' he said. 'That's a big fat word, duchess. And Sybil's never been very interested in that sort of thing.' 'I bow to your knowledge of the female psyche,' said Vetinari. 'I saw her face just now. No doubt when she next takes tea with her friends, who I believe include the Duchess of Quirm and Lady Selachii, she will be entirely unmoved and not faintly smug in any way.' Vimes hesitated. Sybil was an amazingly levelheaded woman, of course, and this sort of thing... She'd left it entirely up to him, hadn't she?... This sort of thing wouldn't... Well, of course she wouldn't, she... Of course she would, wouldn't she? She wouldn't swank, she'd just be very comfortable knowing that they knew that she knew that they knew... 'All right,' he said, 'but, look I thought only a king could make someone a duke. It's not like all these knights and barons, that's just, well, political, but something like a duke needs a–' He looked at Vetinari. And then at Carrot. Vetinari had said that he'd been reminded... 'I'm sure, if ever there is a king in Ankh–Morpork again, he will choose to ratify my decision,' said Vetinari smoothly. 'And if there never is a king, well, I see no practical problems.' 'I'm bought and sold, aren't I?' said Vimes, shaking his head. 'Bought and sold.' 'Not at all,' said Vetinari. 'Yes, I am. We all are. Even Rust. And all those poor buggers who went off to get slaughtered. We're not part of the big picture, right? We're just bought and sold.' Vetinari was suddenly in front of Vimes, his chair hitting the floor behind his desk. 'Really? Men marched away, Vimes. And men marched back. How glorious the battles would have been that they never had to fight!' He hesitated, and then shrugged. 'And you say bought and sold? All right. But not, I think, needlessly spent.' The Patrician flashed one of those sharp, fleeting little smiles to say that something that wasn't very funny had nevertheless amused him. 'Veni, vici... Vetinari.'   Seaweed floated away on aimless currents. Apart from the driftwood, there was nothing to show that Leshp had ever been. Seabirds wheeled. But their cries were more or less drowned out by the argument going on just above sea level. 'It is entirely our wood, you nodding acquaintance of a dog!' 'Oh? Really? On your side of the island, is it? I don't think so!' 'It floated up!' 'How do you know we didn't have some driftwood on our side of the island? Anyway, we've still got a barrel of fresh water, camel breath!' 'All right! We'll share! You can have half the raft!' 'Aha! Aha! Want to negotiate, eh, now we've got you over a barrel?' 'Can we just say yes, Dad? I'm fed up with treading water!' 'And you'll have to do your share of the paddling.' 'Of course.' The birds glided and turned, white scribbles against the dear blue sky. 'To Ankh–Morpork!' 'To Klatch!' Down below, as the sunken mountain of Leshp settled further onto the sea bed, the Curious Squid jetted back along its curious streets. They had no idea why, at enormous intervals, their city disappeared up into the sky, but it never went away for very long. It was just one of those things. Things happened, or sometimes they didn't The Curious Squid just assumed that it all worked out, sooner or later. A shark swam by. If anyone had risked placing an car to its side, they would have heard: 'Bingeleybingeley beep! Three pee em... Eat, Hunger, Swim. Things To Do Today: Swim, Hunger, Eat. Three oh five pee em: Feeding Frenzy...' It wasn't the most interesting of schedules, but it was very easy to organize.   Unusually, Sergeant Colon had put himself on the patrol roster. It was good to get out in the cool air. And also, for some reason, the news had got around that the Watch were somehow bound up with what seemed, in some indefinable way, to have been a victory, which meant that a Watch uniform was probably good for the odd free pint at the back door of the occasional pub. He patrolled with Corporal Nobbs. They walked with the confident tread of men who had been places and seen things. With a true copper's instinct, the tread took them past Mundane Meals. Mr Goriff was cleaning the windows. He stopped when he saw them and darted inside. 'Call that gratitude?' sniffed Colon. The man reappeared carrying two large packages. 'My wife made this specially for you,' he said. He added, 'She said she knew you'd be along.' Colon pulled aside the waxed paper. 'My word,' he said. 'Special Ankh–Morpork curry,' said Mr Goriff. 'Containing yellow curry powder, big lumps of swede, green peas and soggy sultanas the–'   '–size of eggs!' said Nobby. 'Thank you very much,' said Colon. 'How's your lad, then, Mr Goriff?' 'He says you have set him an example and now he will be a watchman when he grows up.' 'Ah, right,' said Colon happily. 'That'll please Mr Vimes. You just tell him–' 'In Al–Khali,' said Goriff. 'He is staying with my brother.' 'Oh. Well... fair enough, then. Er... thanks for the curry, anyway.' 'What sort of example do you think he meant?' said Nobby, as they strolled away. 'The good sort, obviously,' said Colon, through a mouthful of mildly spiced swede. 'Yeah, right.' Chewing slowly and walking even slower, they headed towards the docks. 'I was gonna write Bana a letter,' said Nobby, after a while. 'Yeah, but... she thought you was a woman, Nobby.' 'Right. So she saw, like, my inner self, shorn of...' Nobby's lips moved as he concentrated, 'shorn of surface thingy. That's what Angua said. Anyway, then I thought, well, her boyfriend'll be coming back, so I thought I'd be noble about it and give her up.' ' 'cos he might be a big stroppy bloke, too,' said Sergeant Colon. 'I never thought about that, sarge.' They paced for a while. 'It's a far, far better thing I do now than I have ever done before,' said Nobby. 'Right,' said Sergeant Colon. They walked on in silence for a while and he added: 'O'course, that's not difficult.' 'I still got the hanky she gave me, look.' 'Very nice, Nobby.' 'That's genuine Klatchian silk, that is.' 'Yeah, it looks very nice.' 'I'm never going to wash it, sarge,' 'You soppy old thing, Nobby,' said Fred Colon. He watched Corporal Nobbs blow his nose. 'So... you're going to stop using it, are you?' he said, doubtfully. 'It still bends, sarge. See?' Nobby demonstrated. 'Yeah, right. Silly of me to ask, really.' Overhead, the weathervanes started to creak round. 'Made me a lot more understanding about women, that experience,' said Nobby. Colon, a much–married man, said nothing. 'I met Verity Pushpram this afternoon,' Nobby went on, 'and I said how about coming out with me tonight and I don't mind about the squint at all and I've got this expensive exotic perfume which'll totally disguise your smell, and she said bugger off and threw an eel at me.' 'Not good, then,' said Colon. 'Oh, yeah, sarge, 'cos she used to just cuss when she saw me. And I've still got the eel, and there's a good feed off it, so I look upon it as a very positive step.' 'Could be. Could be. just so long as you give someone that scent soon, eh? Only even the people across the street are starting to complain.' Their feet, moving like bees towards a flower, had found their way to the waterfront. They looked up at the KIatchian's Head, on its spike. 'It's only wooden,' said Colon. Nobby said nothing. 'And it's, like, part of our traditional heritage an' that,' Colon went on, but hesitantly, as if he didn't believe his own voice. Nobby blew his nose again, an exercise which, with all its little arpeggios and flourishes, went on for some time. The sergeant gave in. Some things didn't seem quite the same any more, he had to admit. 'I've never really liked the place. Let's go to the Bunch of Grapes then, all right?' Nobby nodded. 'Anyway, the beer here is frankly piss,' said Colon.   Lady Sybil held her handkerchief in front of her husband. 'Spit!' she commanded. Then she carefully cleaned a smut off his cheek. 'There. Now you look very–' '–ducal,' said Vimes gloomily. 'I thought I'd done this once already...' 'They never actually had the Convivium. after all that fuss,' said Lady Sybil, picking some microscopic lint off his doublet. 'It's got to be held.' 'You'd think if I'm a duke I wouldn't have to wear all this damn silly outfit, wouldn't you?' 'Well, I did point out that you could wear the official ducal regalia, dear.' 'Yes, I've seen it. White silk stockings are not me.' 'Well, you've got the calves for them–' 'I think I'll stick with the commander's costume,' said Vimes quickly. Archchancellor Ridcully hurried up. 'Ah, we're ready for you now, Lord Vi–' 'Call me Sir Samuel,' said Vimes. 'I can just about live with that.' 'Well, we've found the Bursar in one of the attics, so I think we can make a start. If you'd take your place...' Vimes walked to the head of the procession, feeling every gaze on him, hearing the whispers. Maybe you could get chucked out of the peerage? He'd have to look that up. Although, considering what lords had got up to in the past, it would have to be for something really, really awful. Still, the drawings of the statue looked good. And he'd seen what was going to go in the history books. Making history, it turned out, was quite easy. It was what got written down. It was as simple as that. 'Jolly good,' Ridcully bellowed, above the buzz. Now, if we all step smartly and follow Lor– Com– Sir Samuel we ought to be back here for lunch no later than half past one. Is the choir ready? No–one is treading on anyone else's robes? Then orf we go!' Vimes set out at the mandatory slow walking pace. He heard the procession start up behind him. There were no doubt problems, as there always are on civic occasions which have to involve the old and deaf and the young and stupid. Several people were probably already walking in the wrong direction. As he stepped out into Sator Square there were the jeers and various flatulent noises and murmurs of 'Oozee then, oozee finkee izz?' that are the traditional crowd responses on these occasions. But there were one or two cheers, too. He tried to look straight ahead. Silk stockings. With garters. Well, they were out. There were a lot of things he'd do for Sybil, but if garters figured anywhere in the relationship they weren't going to be on him. And everyone said he had to wear a purple robe fined with vermine. They could forget that, too. He'd spent a desperate hour in the library, and all that stuff about the gold knobs and silk stockings was so much marsh gas. Tradition? He'd show them tradition. What the original dukes wore, as far as he could see, was good sensible chain mall with blood on it, preferably other people's–– There was a scream from the crowd. His head jerked round and he saw a stout woman sitting on the ground, waving her arms. ' 'e stole my bag! And 'e never showed me 'is Thieves' Guild badge!' The procession shunted to a halt as Vimes stared at the figure legging it across Sator Square. 'You stop right there, Sidney Pickens!' he yelled, and leapt forward. And, of course, very few people do know how Tradition is supposed to go. There's a, certain mysterious ridiculousness about it by its very nature – once there was a reason why you had to carry a posy of primroses on Soul Cake Tuesday, but now you did it because... that's what was Done. Besides, the intelligence of that creature known as a crowd is the square root of the number of people in it. Vimes was running, so the University choir hurried after him. And the people behind the choir saw the gap opening up and responded to the urge to fill it. And then everyone was just running, because everyone else was running. There were occasional whimpers from those whose heart, lungs or legs weren't up to this kind of thing, and a bellow from the Archchancellor who had tried to stand firm in the face of the frantic stampede and was now having his head repeatedly trodden into the cobbles. And apprentice thief Sidney Pickens ran because he'd taken one look over his shoulder and seen the whole of Ankh-Morpork society bearing down on him, and that sort of thing has a terrible effect on a growing lad. And Sam Vimes ran. He tore off his cloak and whirled away his plumed hat, and he ran and ran. There would be trouble later on. People would ask questions. But that was later on – for now, gloriously uncomplicated and wonderfully clean, and hopefully with never an end, under a clear sky, in a world untarnished... there was only the chase.     THE END   [1] The palms are held at right angles to one another and flapped together rather than clapped, while the flapper stares intently at the audience as if to say 'We're going to have some applause here or else the whole school is in detention.'   [2] Women always do this.   [3] The possibility that they were not guilty of anything was one that he didn't even think worthy of consideration.   [4] A term invented by the wizard Denephew Boot*, who had found that by a system of rewards and punishments he could train a dog, at the ringing of a bell, to immediately eat a strawberry meringue. *His parents, who were uncomplicated country people, had wanted a girl. They were expecting to call her Denise.   [5] Plain clothes was the problem. Both the men had been used to uniforms all their lives. Sergeant Colon's only suit had been bought by a man two stone lighter and ten years younger, so the buttons creaked under tension, and Nobby's idea of plain clothes was the ribbon–and-bell-bedecked costume he wore as a leading member of the Ankh–Morpork Folk Dance and Song Society. Small children had followed them in the street to see where the show was going to be.   [6] Constable Visit–The–Ungodly–With–Explanatory–Pamphlets was a good copper, Vimes always said, and that was his highest term of praise. He was an Omnian with his countrymen's almost pathological interest in evangelical religion and spent all his wages on pamphlets; he even had his own printing press. The results were handed out to anyone interested and everyone who wasn't interested as well. Even Detritus couldn't clear a crowd faster than Visit, Vimes said. And on his days off he could be seen tramping the streets with his colleague, Smite–TheUnbeliever–With–Cunning–Arguments. So far they hadn't made a single convert. Vimes thought that Visit was probably a really nice man underneath it all, but somehow he could never face the task of finding out.   [7] And would not, therefore, be officially burgled. AnkhMorpork had a very direct approach to the idea of insurance. When the middle–man was cut out, that wasn't a figure of speech. [8] It is a long–cherished tradition among a certain type of military thinker that huge casualties are the main thing. If they are on the other side then this is a valuable bonus.   [9] One of the universal rules of happiness is: always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual.   [10] Thinking up good names was, oddly enough, one area where Leonard Quirm's genius tended to give up.   [11] Except in the particular case of Sidney Lopsides, who was paid two dollars a day from City funds to wear a sack over his head. It wasn't that he was spectacularly deformed, as such, it was merely that anyone who saw him spent the rest of the day with an unnerving feeling that they were upside down. [12] Sidney Lopsides again. [13] Jugglers will tell you that juggling with items that are identical is always easier than a mixture of all shapes and sizes. This is even the case with chainsaws, although of course when the juggler misses the first chainsaw it is only the start of his problems. Some more will be along very shortly. [14] Corporal Nobbs's appearance could best be summarized this way. One of the minor laws of the narrative universe is that any homely featured man who has, for some reason, to disguise himself as a woman will apparently become attractive to some otherwise perfectly sane men with, as the ardent scrolls say, hilarious results. In this case the laws were fighting against the fact of Corporal Nobby Nobbs, and gave up.   [15] And Mr Harris of the Blue Cat Club. His admission caused a lot of argument in the Guild, who knew competition when they saw it, but Mrs Palm overruled opposition on the basis, she said, that unnatural acts were only natural.   [16] Usually because they suspect the joke's on them.   [17] Although of course wizards aren't allowed to, because they're not supposed to have grandchildren.   Unknown v1.0. 15/11/2000 Scanned and spellchecked with Word2000 by 4i Publications. 
Feet of Clay - Terry Pratchett	----	DiscWorld 19 - Feet of Clay   Terry Pratchett: Feet of Clay v1.0 (22-dec-00) Scanning, layout and quick proof by 4i Publications. It was a warm spring night when a fist knocked at the door so hard that the hinges bent. A man opened it and peered out into the street. There was mist coming off the river and it was a cloudy night. He might as well have tried to see through white velvet. But he thought afterwards that there had been shapes out there, just beyond the light spilling out into the road. A lot of shapes, watching him carefully. He thought maybe there'd been very faint points of light . . . There was no mistaking the shape right in front of him, though. It was big and dark red and looked like a child's clay model of a man. Its eyes were two embers. 'Well? What do you want at this time of night?' The golem handed him a slate, on which was written: WE HEAR YOU WANT A GOLEM. Of course, golems couldn't speak, could they? 'Hah. Want, yes. Afford, no. I've been asking around but it's wicked the prices you're going for these days . . .' The golem rubbed the words off the slate and wrote: TO YOU, ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS. 'You're for sale?' NO. The golem lurched aside. Another one stepped into the light. It was also a golem, the man could see that. But it wasn't like the usual lumpen clay things that you occasionally saw. This one gleamed like a newly polished statue, perfect down to the detailing of the clothes. It reminded him of one of the old pictures of the city's kings, all haughty stance and imperious haircut. In fact, it even had a small coronet moulded on to its head. 'A hundred dollars?' the man said suspiciously. 'What's wrong with it? Who's selling it?' NOTHING IS WRONG. PERFECT IN ALL DETAIL. NINETY DOLLARS. 'Sounds like someone wants to get rid of it in a hurry . . .' GOLEM MUST WORK. GOLEM MUST HAVE A MASTER. 'Yeah, right, but you hear stories . . . Going mad and making too many things, and that.' NOT MAD. EIGHTY DOLLARS. 'It looks . . . new,' said the man, tapping the gleaming chest. 'But no one's making golems any more, that's what's keeping the price up beyond the purse of the small business—' He stopped. 'Is someone making them again?' EIGHTY DOLLARS. ‘I heard the priests banned making 'em years ago. A man could get in a lot of trouble.' SEVENTY DOLLARS. 'Who's doing it?' SIXTY DOLLARS. 'Is he selling them to Albertson? Or Spadger and Williams? It's hard enough competing as it is, and they've got the money to invest in new plant—' FIFTY DOLLARS. The man walked around the golem. 'A man can't sit by and watch his company collapse under him because of unfair price cutting, I mean to say . . .' FORTY DOLLARS. 'Religion is all very well, but what do prophets know about profits, eh? Hmm . . .' He looked up at the shapeless golem in the shadows. 'Was that "thirty dollars" I just saw you write?' YES. 'I've always liked dealing wholesale. Wait one moment.' He went back inside and returned with a handful of coins. 'Will you be selling any to them other bastards?' NO. 'Good. Tell your boss it's a pleasure to do business with him. Get along inside, Sunny Jim.' The white golem walked into the factory. The man, glancing from side to side, trotted in after it and shut the door. Deeper shadows moved in the dark. There was a faint hissing. Then, rocking slightly, the big heavy shapes moved away. Shortly afterwards, and around the corner, a beggar holding out a hopeful hand for alms was amazed to find himself suddenly richer by a whole thirty dollars.[1]     The Discworld turned against the glittering backdrop of space, spinning very gently on the backs of the four giant elephants that perched on the shell of Great A'Tuin the star turtle. Continents drifted slowly past, topped by weather systems that themselves turned gently against the flow, like waltzers spinning counter to the whirl of the dance. A billion tons of geography rolled slowly through the sky. People look down on stuff like geography and meteorology, and not only because they're standing on one and being soaked by the other. They don't look quite like real science,[2] But geography is only physics slowed down and with a few trees stuck on it, and meteorology is full of excitingly fashionable chaos and complexity. And summer isn't a time. It's a place as well. Summer is a moving creature and likes to go south for the winter. Even on the Discworld, with its tiny orbiting sun tilting over the turning world, the seasons moved. In Ankh-Morpork, greatest of its cities, spring was nudged aside by summer, and summer was prodded in the back by autumn. Geographically speaking, there was not a lot of difference within the city itself, although in late spring the scum on the river was often a nice emerald green. The mist of spring became the fog of autumn, which mixed with fumes and smoke from the magical quarter and the workshops of the alchemists until it seemed to have a thick, choking life of its own. And time moved on.     Autumn fog pressed itself against the midnight window-panes. Blood ran in a trickle across the pages of a rare volume of religious essays, which had been torn in half. There had been no need for that, thought Father Tubelcek. A further thought suggested that there had been no need to hit him either. But Father Tubelcek had never been very concerned about that sort of thing. People healed, books didn't. He reached out shakily and tried to gather up the pages, but slumped back again. The room was spinning. The door swung open. Heavy footsteps creaked across the floor - one footstep at least, and one dragging noise. Step. Drag. Step. Drag. Father Tubelcek tried to focus.' You?' he croaked. Nod. 'Pick ... up the ... books.' The old priest watched as the books were retrieved and piled carefully with fingers not well suited to the task. The newcomer took a quill pen from the debris, carefully wrote something on a scrap of paper, then rolled it up and placed it delicately between Father Tubelcek's lips. The dying priest tried to smile. 'We don't work like that,' he mumbled, the little cylinder wobbling like a last cigarette. 'We . . . make . . . our . . . own . . . w . . .' The kneeling figure watched him for a while and then, taking great care, leaned forward slowly and closed his eyes.     Commander Sir Samuel Vimes, Ankh-Morpork City Guard, frowned at himself in the mirror and began to shave. The razor was a sword of freedom. Shaving was an act of rebellion. These days, someone ran his bath (every day! -you wouldn't think the human skin could stand it). And someone laid out his clothes (such clothes!). And someone cooked his meals (what meals! — he was putting on weight, he knew). And someone even polislied his boots (and such boots! - no cardboard-soled wrecks but big, well-fitting boots of genuine shiny leather). There was someone to do nearly everything for him, but there were some things a man ought to do for himself, and one of them was shaving. He knew that Lady Sybil mildly disapproved. Her father had never shaved himself in his life. He had a man for it. Vimes had protested that he'd spent too many years trudging the night-time streets to be happy about anyone else wielding a blade anywhere near his neck, but the real reason, the unspoken reason, was that he hated the very idea of the world being divided into the shaved and the shavers. Or those who wore the shiny boots and those who cleaned the mud off them. Every time he saw Willikins the butler fold his, Vimes's, clothes, he suppressed a terrible urge to kick the butler's shiny backside as an affront to the dignity of man. The razor moved calmly over the stubble of the night. Yesterday there had been some official dinner. He couldn't recall now what it had been for. He seemed to spend his whole life at the things. Arch, giggling women and braying young men who'd been at the back of the line when the chins were handed out. And, as usual, he'd come back through the fog-bound city in a filthy temper with himself. He'd noticed a light under the kitchen door and heard conversation and laughter, and had gone in. Willikins was there, with the old man who stoked the boiler, and the head gardener, and the boy who cleaned the spoons and lit the fires. They were playing cards. There were bottles of beer on the table. He'd pulled up a chair, and cracked a few jokes and asked to be dealt in. They'd been . . . welcoming. In a way. But as the game progressed Vimes had been aware of the universe crystallizing around him. It was like becoming a cogwheel in a glass clock. There was no laughter. They'd called him 'sir' and kept clearing their throats. Everything was very . . . careful. Finally he'd mumbled an excuse and stumbled out. Halfway along the passage he'd thought he'd heard a comment followed by ... well, maybe it was only a chuckle. But it might have been a snigger. The razor carefully circumnavigated the nose. Hah. A couple of years ago a man like Willikins would have allowed him into the kitchen only on sufferance. And would have made him take his boots off. So that's your life now, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes. A jumped-up copper to the nobs and a nob to the rest, eh? He frowned at the reflection in the mirror. He'd started out in the gutter, true enough. And now he was on three meat meals a day, good boots, a warm bed at night and, come to that, a wife too. Good old Sybil- although she did tend to talk about curtains these days, but Sergeant Colon had said this happened to wives and was a biological thing and perfectly normal. He'd actually been rather attached to his old cheap boots. He could read the street in them, the soles were so thin. It'd got so that he could tell where he was on a pitch-dark night just by the feel of the cobbles. Ah, well . . . There was something mildly strange about Sam Vimes's shaving mirror. It was slightly convex, so that it reflected more of the room than a flat mirror would do, and it gave a very good view of the outbuildings and gardens beyond the window. Hmm. Going thin on top. Definitely a receding scalp there. Less hair to comb but, on the other hand, more face to wash . . . There was a flicker in the glass. He moved sideways and ducked. The mirror smashed. There was the sound of feet somewhere beyond the broken window, and then a crash and a scream. Vimes straightened up. He fished the largest piece of mirror out of the shaving bowl and propped it up on the black crossbow bolt that had buried itself in the wall. He finished shaving. Then he rang the bell for the butler. Willikins materialized. 'Sir?' Vimes rinsed the razor. 'Get the boy to nip along to the glazier, will you?' The butler's eyes flickered to the window and then to the shattered mirror. 'Yes, sir. And the bill to go to the Assassins' Guild again, sir?' 'With my compliments. And while he's out he's to call in at that shop in Five And Seven Yard and get me another shaving mirror. The dwarf there knows the kind I like.' 'Yes, sir. And I shall fetch a dustpan and brush directly, sir. Shall I inform her ladyship of this eventuality, sir?' 'No. She always says it's my fault for encouraging them.' 'Very good, sir,' said Willikins. He dematerialized. Sam Vimes dried himself off and went downstairs to the morning-room, where he opened the cabinet and took out the new crossbow Sybil had given to him as a wedding present. Sam Vimes was used to the old guard crossbows, which had a nasty habit of firing backwards in a tight corner, but this was a Burleigh and Stronginthearm made-to-measure job with the oiled walnut stock. There was none finer, it was said. Then he selected a thin cigar and strolled out into the garden. There was a commotion coming from the dragon house. Vimes entered, and shut the door behind him. He rested the crossbow against the door. The yammering and squeaking increased. Little gouts of flame puffed above the thick walls of the hatching pens. Vimes leaned over the nearest one. He picked up a newly hatched dragonette and tickled it under the chin. As it flamed excitedly he lit his cigar and savoured the smoke. He blew a smoke ring at the figure hanging from the ceiling. 'Good morning,' he said. The figure twisted frantically. By an amazing feat of muscle control it had managed to catch a foot around a beam as it fell, but it couldn't quite pull itself up. Dropping was not to be thought of. A dozen baby dragons were underneath it, jumping up and down excitedly and flaming. 'Er . . . good morning,' said the hanging figure. Turned out nice again,' said Vimes, picking up a bucket of coal. 'Although the fog will be back later, I expect.' He took a small nugget and tossed it to the dragons. They squabbled for it. Vimes gripped another lump. The young dragon that had caught the coal already had a distinctly longer and hotter flame. 'I suppose,' said the young man, 'that I could not prevail upon you to let me down?' Another dragon caught some coal and belched a fireball. The young man swung desperately to avoid it. 'Guess,' said Vimes. 'I suspect, on reflection, that it was foolish of me to choose the roof,' said the assassin. 'Probably,' said Vimes. He'd spent several hours a few weeks ago sawing through joists and carefully balancing the roof tiles. 'I should have dropped off the wall and used the shrubbery.' 'Possibly,' said Vimes. He'd set a bear-trap in the shrubbery. He took some more coal. 'I suppose you wouldn't tell me who hired you?' Tm afraid not, sir. You know the rules.' Vimes nodded gravely. 'We had Lady Selachii's son up before the Patrician last week,' said Vimes. 'Now, there's a lad who needs to learn that "no" doesn't mean "yes> please".' 'Could be, sir.' 'And then there was that business with Lord Rust's boy. You can't shoot servants for putting your shoes the wrong way round, you know. It's too messy. He'll have to learn right from left like the rest of us. And right from wrong, too.' 'I hear what you say, sir.' 'We seem to have reached an impasse,' said Vimes. 'It seems so, sir.' Vimes aimed a lump at a small bronze and green dragon, which caught it expertly. The heat was getting intense. 'What I don't understand,' he said, 'is why you fellows mainly try it here or at the office. I mean, I walk around a lot, don't I? You could shoot me down in the street, couldn't you?' 'What? Like some common murderer, sir?' Vimes nodded. It was black and twisted, but the Assassins' Guild had honour of a sort. 'How much was I worth?' 'Twenty thousand, sir.' 'It should be higher,' said Vimes. 'I agree.' If the assassin got back to the guild it would be, Vimes thought. Assassins valued their own lives quite highly. 'Let me see now,' said Vimes, examining the end of his cigar. 'Guild takes fifty per cent. That leaves ten thousand dollars.' The assassin seemed to consider this, and then reached up to his belt and tossed a bag rather clumsily towards Vimes, who caught it. Vimes picked up his crossbow. 'It seems to me,' he said, 'that if a man were to be let go he might well make it to the door with no more than superficial burns. If he were fast. How fast are you?' There was no answer. 'Of course, he'd have to be desperate,' said Vimes, wedging the crossbow on the feed table and taking a piece of cord out of his pocket. He lashed the cord to a nail and fastened the other end to the crossbow's string. Then, standing carefully to one side, he eased the trigger. The string moved very slightly. The assassin, watching him upside down, seemed to have stopped breathing. Vimes puffed at his cigar until the end was an inferno. Then he took it out of his mouth and leaned it against the restraining cord so that it would have just a fraction of an inch to burn before the string began to smoulder. 'I’ll leave the door unlocked,' he said. 'I've never been an unreasonable man. I shall watch your career with interest.' He tossed the rest of the coals to the dragons, and stepped outside. It looked like being another eventful day in Ankh-Morpork, and it had only just begun. As Vimes reached the house he heard a whoosh, a click, and the sound of someone running very fast towards the ornamental lake. He smiled. Willikins was waiting with his coat. 'Remember you have an appointment with his lordship at eleven, Sir Samuel.' 'Yes, yes,' said Vimes. 'And you are to go and see the Heralds at ten. Her ladyship was very explicit, sir. Her exact words were, "Tell him he's not to try to wriggle out of it again," sir.' 'Oh, very well.' 'And her ladyship said please to try not to upset anyone.' 'Tell her I'll try.' 'And your sedan chair is outside, sir.' Vimes sighed. 'Thank you. There's a man in the ornamental lake. Fish him out and give him a cup of tea, will you? Promising lad, I thought.' 'Certainly, sir.' The chair. Oh, yes, the chair. It had been a wedding present from the Patrician. Lord Vetinari knew that Vimes loved walking the streets of the city, and so it was very typical of the man that he presented him with something that did not allow him to do so. It was waiting outside. The two bearers straightened up expectantly. Sir Samuel Vimes, Commander of the City Watch, rebelled again. Perhaps he did have to use the damn thing, but . . . He looked at the front man and motioned with a thumb to the chair's door.'Get in,' he commanded. 'But sir—' 'It's a nice morning,' said Vimes, taking off his coat again. 'I’ll drive myself.'     'Dearest Mumm & Dad   Captain Carrot of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch was on his day off. He had a routine. First he had breakfast in some handy cafe. Then he wrote his letter home. Letters home always gave him some trouble. Letters from his parents were always interesting, being full of mining statistics and exciting news about new shafts and promising seams. All he had to write about were murders and such things as that. He chewed the end of his pencil for a moment.   Well, it has been an intresting week again [he wrote]. I am running around like a flye with a blue bottom and No Mistake! We are opening another Watch House at Chittling Street which is handy for the Shades, so now we have no Less than 4 including Dolly Sisters and Long Wall, and I am the only Captain so I am around at all hours. Persnally I sometimes mifs the cameraderry of the old days when it was just me and Nobby and Sergeant Colon but this is the Century of the Fruitbat. Sergeant Colon is going to retire at the end of the month, he says Mrs Colon wants him to buy a farm, he says he is looking forward to the peace of the country and being Close to Nature, I'm sure you would wish him well. My friend Nobby is still Nobby only more than he was.   Carrot absent-mindedly took a half-eaten mutton chop from his breakfast plate and held it out below the table. There was an unk.   Anyway, back to the jobb, also I am sure I have told you about the Cable Street Particulars, although they are still based in Pseudopolis Yard, people do not like it when Watchmen do not wear uniforms but Commander Vimes says criminals dont wear uniforms either so be d*mned to the lot of them.   Carrot paused. It said a lot about Captain Carrot that, even after almost two years in Ankh-Morpork, he was still uneasy about 'd*mned'.   Commander Vimes says you have to have secret policemen because there are secret crimes . . .   Carrot paused again. He loved his uniform. He didn't have any other clothes. The idea of Watchmen in disguise was . . . well, it was unthinkable. It was like those pirates who sailed under false colours. It was like spies. However, he went on dutifully:   . . . and Commander Vimes knows what he is talking about I am sure. He says it's not like old fashioned police work which was catching the poor devils too stupid to run away!! Anyhow it all means a lot more work and new faces in the Watch.   While he waited for a new sentence to form, Carrot took a sausage from his plate and lowered it. There was another unk. The waiter bustled up. 'Another helping, Mr Carrot? On the house.' Every restaurant and eatery in Ankh-Morpork offered free food to Carrot, in the certain and happy knowledge that he would always insist on paying. 'No, indeed, that was very good. Here we are . . . twenty pence and keep the change,' said Carrot. 'How's your young lady? Haven't seen her today.' 'Angua? Oh, she's . . . around and about, you know. I shall definitely tell her you asked after her, though.' The dwarf nodded happily, and bustled off. Carrot wrote another few dutiful lines and then said, very softly, 'Is that horse and cart still outside Ironcrust's bakery?' There was a whine from under the table. 'Really? That's odd. All the deliveries were over hours ago and the flour and grit doesn't usually arrive until the afternoon. Driver still sitting there?' Something barked, quietly. 'And that looks quite a good horse for a delivery cart. And, you know, normally you'd expect the driver to put a nosebag on. And it's the last Thursday in the month. Which is payday at Ironcrust's.' Carrot laid down his pencil and waved a hand politely to catch the waiter's eye. 'Cup of acorn coffee, Mr Gimlet? To take away?'     In the Dwarf Bread Museum, in Whirligig Alley, Mr Hopkinson the curator was somewhat excited. Apart from other considerations, he'd just been murdered. But at the moment he was choosing to consider this as an annoying background detail. He'd been beaten to death with a loaf of bread. This is unlikely even in the worst of human bakeries, but dwarf bread has amazing properties as a weapon of offence. Dwarfs regard baking as part of the art of warfare. When they make rock cakes, no simile is intended. 'Look at this dent here,' said Hopkinson. 'It's quite ruined the crust!' AND YOUR SKULL TOO, said Death. 'Oh, yes,' said Hopkinson, in the voice of one who regards skulls as ten a penny but is well aware of the rarity value of a good bread exhibit. 'But what was wrong with a simple cosh? Or even a hammer? I could have provided one if asked.' Death, who was by nature an obsessive personality himself, realized that he was in the presence of a master. The late Mr Hopkinson had a squeaky voice and wore his spectacles on a length of black tape - his ghost now wore their spiritual counterpart - and these were always the signs of a mind that polished the undersides of furniture and stored paperclips by size. 'It really is too bad,' said Mr Hopkinson. 'And ungrateful, too, after the help I gave them with the oven. I really feel I shall have to complain.' MR HOPKINSON, ARE YOU FULLY AWARE THAT YOU ARE DEAD? 'Dead?' trilled the curator. 'Oh, no. I can't possibly be dead. Not at the moment. It's simply not convenient. I haven't even catalogued the combat muffins.' NEVERTHELESS. 'No, no. I'm sorry, but it just won't do. You will have to wait. I really cannot be bothered with that sort of nonsense.' Death was nonplussed. Most people were, after the initial confusion, somewhat relieved when they died. A subconscious weight had been removed. The other cosmic shoe had dropped. The worst had happened and they could, metaphorically, get on with their lives. Few people treated it as a simple annoyance that might go away if you complained enough. Mr Hopkinson's hand went through a tabletop. 'Oh.' YOU SEE? 'This is most uncalled-for. Couldn't you have arranged a less awkward time?' ONLY BY CONSULTATION WITH YOUR MURDERER. 'It all seems very badly organized. I wish to make a complaint. I pay my taxes, after all.' I AM DEATH, NOT TAXES. I TURN UP ONLY ONCE. The shade of Mr Hopkinson began to fade. 'It's simply that I've always tried to plan ahead in a sensible way . . .' I FIND THE BEST APPROACH IS TO TAKE LIFE AS IT COMES. 'That seems very irresponsible . . .' IT'S ALWAYS WORKED FOR ME.     The sedan chair came to a halt outside Pseudopolis Yard. Vimes left the runners to park it and strode in, putting his coat back on. There had been a time, and it seemed like only yesterday, when the Watch House had been almost empty. There'd be old Sergeant Colon dozing in his chair, and Corporal Nobbs's washing drying in front of the stove. And then suddenly it had all changed . . . Sergeant Colon was waiting for him with a clipboard. 'Got the reports from the other Watch Houses, sir,' he said, trotting along beside Vimes. 'Anything special?' 'Bin a bit of an odd murder, sir. Down in one of them old houses on Misbegot Bridge. Some old priest. Dunno much about it. The patrol just said it ought to be looked at.' 'Who found him?' 'Constable Visit sir.' 'Oh, gods.' 'Yessir.' ‘I’ll try to get along there this morning. Anything else?' 'Corporal Nobbs is sick, sir,' 'Oh, I know that.' 'I mean off sick, sir.' 'Not his granny's funeral this time?' 'Nossir.' 'How many's he had this year, by the way?' 'Seven, sir.' 'Very odd family, the Nobbses.' 'Yessir.' 'Fred, you don't have to keep calling me "sir".' 'Got comp'ny, sir,' said the sergeant, glancing meaningfully towards a bench in the main office. 'Come for that alchemy job.' A dwarf smiled nervously at Vimes. 'All right,' said Vimes. ‘I’ll see him in my office.' He reached into his coat and took out the assassin's money pouch. 'Put it in the Widows and Orphans Fund, will you, Fred?' 'Right. Oh, well done, sir. Any more windfalls like this and we'll soon be able to afford some more widows.' Sergeant Colon went back to his desk, surreptitiously opened his drawer and pulled out the book he was reading. It was called Animal Husbandry. He'd been a bit worried about the title - you heard stories about strange folk in the country — but it turned out to be nothing more than a book about how cattle and pigs and sheep should breed. Now he was wondering where to get a book that taught them how to read. Upstairs, Vimes pushed open his office door carefully. The Assassins' Guild played to rules. You could say that about the bastards. It was terribly bad form to kill a bystander. Apart from anything else, you wouldn't get paid. So traps in his office were out of the question, because too many people were in and out of it every day. Even so, it paid to be careful. Vimes was good at making the kind of rich enemies who could afford to employ assassins. The assassins had to be lucky only once, but Vimes had to be lucky all the time. He slipped into the room and glanced out of the window. He liked to work with it open, even in cold weather. He liked to hear the sounds of the city. But anyone trying to climb up or down to it would run into everything in the way of loose tiles, shifting handholds and treacherous drainpipes that Vimes's ingenuity could contrive. And Vimes had installed spiked railings down below. They were nice and ornamental but they were, above all, spiky. So far, Vimes was winning. There was a tentative knock at the door. It had issued from the knuckles of the dwarf applicant. Vimes ushered him into the office, shut the door, and sat down at his desk. 'So,' he said. 'You're an alchemist. Acid stains on your hands and no eyebrows.' 'That's right, sir.' 'Not usual to find a dwarf in that line of work. You people always seem to toil in your uncle's foundry or something.' You people, the dwarf noted. 'Can't get the hang of metal,' he said. 'A dwarf who can't get the hang of metal? That must be unique.' 'Pretty rare, sir. But I was quite good at alchemy.' 'Guild member?' 'Not any more, sir.' 'Oh? How did you leave the guild?' 'Through the roof, sir. But I'm pretty certain I know what I did wrong.' Vimes leaned back. The alchemists are always blowing things up. I never heard of them getting sacked for it.' 'That's because no one's ever blown up the Guild Council, sir.' 'What, all of it?' 'Most of it, sir. All the easily detachable bits, at least.' Vimes found he was automatically opening the bottom drawer of his desk. He pushed it shut again and, instead, shuffled the papers in front of him. 'What's your name, lad?' The dwarf swallowed. This was clearly the bit he'd been dreading. 'Littlebottom, sir.' Vimes didn't even look up. 'Ah, yes. It says here. That means you're from the Uberwald mountain area, yes?' 'Why . . . yes, sir,' said Littlebottom, mildly surprised. Humans generally couldn't distinguish between dwarf clans. 'Our Constable Angua comes from there,' said Vimes. 'Now . . . it says here your first name is. . . can't read Fred's handwriting . . . er . . .' There was nothing for it. 'Cheery, sir,' said Cheery Littlebottom. 'Cheery, eh? Good to see the old naming traditions kept up. Cheery Littlebottom. Fine.' Littlebottom watched carefully. Not the faintest glimmer of amusement had crossed Vimes's face. 'Yes, sir. Cheery Littlebottom,' he said. And there still wasn't as much as an extra wrinkle there. 'My father was Jolly. Jolly Littlebottom,' he added, as one might prod at a bad tooth to see when the pain will come. 'Really?' 'And . . . his father was Beaky Littlebottom.' Not a trace, not a smidgeon of a grin twitched anywhere. Vimes merely pushed the paper aside. 'Well, we work for a living here, Littlebottom.' 'Yes, sir.' 'We don't blow things up, Littlebottom.' 'No, sir. I don't blow everything up, sir, Somejust melts.' Vimes drummed his fingers on the desk. 'Know anything about dead bodies?' 'They were only mildly concussed, sir.' Vimes sighed. 'Listen. I know about how to be a copper. Itxs mainly walking and talking. But there's lots of things I don't know. You find the scene of a crime and there's some grey powder on the floor. What is it? I don't know. But you fellows know how to mix things up in bowls and can find out. And maybe the dead person doesn't seem to have a mark on them. Were they poisoned? It seems we need someone who knows what colour a liver is supposed to be. I want someone who can look at the ashtray and tell me what kind of cigars I smoke.' 'Pantweed's Slim Panatellas,' said Littlebottom automatically. 'Good gods!' 'You've left the packet on the table, sir.' Vimes looked down. 'All right,' he said. 'So sometimes it's an easy answer. But sometimes it isn't. Sometimes we don't even know if it was the right question.' He stood up. 'I can't say I like dwarfs much, Littlebottom. But I don't like trolls or humans either, so I suppose that's okay. Well, you're the only applicant. Thirty dollars a month, five dollars living-out allowance, I expect you to work to the job not the clock, there's some mythical creature called "overtime", only no one's even seen its footprints, if troll officers call you a gritsucker they're out, and if you call them rocks you're out, we're just one big family and, when you've been to a few domestic disputes, Littlebottom, I can assure you that you'll see the resemblance, we work as a team and we're pretty much making it up as we go along, and half the time we're not even certain what the law is, so it can get interesting, technically you'll rank as a corporal, only don't go giving orders to real policemen, you're on a month's trial, we'll give you some training just as soon as there's time, now, find an iconograph and meet me on Misbegot Bridge in. . . damn. . . better make it an hour. I've got to see about this blasted coat of arms. Still, dead bodies seldom get deader. Sergeant Detritus!' There was a series of creaks as something heavy moved along the corridor outside and a troll opened the door. 'Yessir?' 'This is Corporal Littlebottom. Corporal Cheery Littlebottom, whose father was Jolly Littlebottom. Give him his badge, swear him in, show him where everything is. Very good, Corporal?' 'I shall try to be a credit to the uniform, sir,' said Littlebottom. 'Good,' said Vimes briskly. He looked at Detritus. 'Incidentally, Sergeant, I've got a report here that a troll in uniform nailed one of Chrysoprase's henchmen to a wall by his ears last night. Know anything about that?' The troll wrinkled its enormous forehead. 'Does it say anything 'bout him selling bags of Slab to troll kids?' 'No. It says he was going to read spiritual literature to his dear old mother,' said Vimes. 'Did Hardcore say he saw dis troll's badge?' 'No, but he says the troll threatened to ram it where the sun doesn't shine,' said Vimes. Detritus nodded gravely. 'Dat's a long way to go just to ruin a good badge,' he said. 'By the way,' said Vimes, 'that was a lucky guess of yours, guessing that it was Hardcore.' 'It come to me in a flash, sir,' said Detritus. 'I fort: what bastard who sells Slab to kids deserves bein' nailed up by his ears, sir, and . . . bingo. Dis idea just formed in my head.' 'That's what I thought.' Cheery Littlebottom looked from one impassive face to the other. The Watchmen's eyes never left each other's face, but the words seemed to come from a little distance, as though both of them were reading an invisible script. Then Detritus shook his head slowly. 'Musta been a impostor, sir. 'S easy to get helmets like ours. None of my trolls'd do anything like dat. Dat would be police brutality, sir.' 'Glad to hear it. Just for the look of the thing, though, I want you to check the trolls' lockers. The Silicon Anti-Defamation League are on to this one.' 'Yes, sir. An' if I find out it was one of my trolls I will be down on dat troll like a ton of rectang'lar buildin' things, sir.' 'Fine. Well, off you go, Littlebottom. Detritus will look after you.' Littlebottom hesitated. This was uncanny. The man hadn't mentioned axes, or gold. He hadn't even said anything like 'You can make it big in the Watch'. Littlebottom felt really unbalanced. 'Er . . . I did tell you my name, didn't I, sir?' 'Yes. Got it down here,' said Vimes. 'Cheery Littlebottom. Yes?' 'Er . . . yes. That's right. Well, thank you, sir.' Vimes listened to them go down the passage. Then he carefully shut the door and put his coat over his head so that no one would hear him laughing. 'Cheery Littlebottom!'     Cheery ran after the troll called Detritus. The Watch House was beginning to fill up. And it was clear that the Watch dealt with all sorts of things, and that many of them involved shouting. Two uniformed trolls were standing in front of Sergeant Colon's high desk, with a slightly smaller troll between them. This troll was wearing a downcast expression. It was also wearing a tutu and had a small pair of gauze wings glued to its back. '—happen to know that trolls don't have any tradition of a Tooth Fairy,' Colon was saying. 'Especially not one called' - he looked down -'Clinkerbell. So how about it we just call it breaking and entering without a Thieves' Guild licence?' 'Is racial prejudice, not letting trolls have a Tooth Fairy,' Clinker bell muttered. One of the troll guards upended a sack on the desk. Various items of silverware cascaded over the paperwork. 'And this is what you found under their pillows, was it?' said Colon. 'Bless dere little hearts,' said Clinkerbell. At the next desk a tired dwarf was arguing with a vampire. 'Look,' he said, 'it's not murder. You're dead already, right?' 'He stuck them right in me!' 'Well, I've been down to interview the manager and he said it was an accident. He said he's got nothing against vampires at all. He says he was merely carrying three boxes of HB Eraser Tips and tripped over the edge of your cloak.' 'I don't see why I can't work where I like!' 'Yes, but... in a pencil factory?' Detritus looked down at Littlebottom and grinned. 'Welcome to life in der big city, Little-bottom,' he said. 'Dat's an int'restin' name.' 'Is it?' 'Most dwarfs have names like Rockheaver or Stronginthearm.' 'Do they?' Detritus was not one for the fine detail of relationships, but the edge in Littlebottom's voice got through to him. "S a good name, though,' he said. 'What's Slab?' said Cheery. 'It are chloric ammonium an' radium mixed up. It give your head a tingle but melts troll brains. Big problem in der mountains and some buggers are makin' it here in der city and we tryin' to find how it get up dere, Mr Vimes is lettin' me run a' - Detritus concentrated - 'pub-lie a-ware-ness campaign tellin' people what happens to buggers who sells it to kids . . ,' He waved a hand at a large and rather crudely done poster on the wall. It said:   Slab: Jus' say 'Aarrghaarrghpleeassennono-noUGH'.   He pushed open a door. 'Dis is der ole privy wot we don't use no more, you can use it for mixin' up stuff, it the only place we got now, you have to clean it up first 'cos it smells like a toilet in here.' He opened another door. 'And this der locker room,' he said. 'You got your own peg and dat, and dere's dese panels for getting changed behind 'cos we knows you dwarfs is modest. It a good life if you don't weaken. Mr Vimes is okay but he a bit weird about some stuff, he keepin' on sayin' stufFlike dis city is a meltin' pot an' all der scum floats to der top, and stuff like dat. I'll give you your helmet an' badge in a minute but first' — he opened a rather larger locker on the other side of the room, which had 'DTRiTUS' painted on it - 'I got to go and hide dis hammer.'     Two figures hurried out of Ironcrust's Dwarf Bakery (T'Bread Wi' T'Edge'), threw themselves on to the cart and shouted at the driver to leave urgently. He turned a pale face towards them and pointed to the road ahead. There was a wolf there. Not a usual kind of wolf. It had a blond coat, which around its ears was almost long enough to be a mane. And wolves did not normally sit calmly on their haunches in the middle of a street. This one was growling. A long, low growl. It was the audible equivalent of a shortening fuse. The horse was transfixed, too frightened to stay where it was but far too terrified to move. One of the men carefully reached for a crossbow. The growl rose slightly. He even more carefully took his hand away. The growl subsided again. 'What is it?' 'It's a wolf!' 'In a city? What does it find to eat?' 'Oh, why did you have to ask that?' 'Good morning, gentlemen!' said Carrot, as he stopped leaning against the wall. 'Looks like the fog's rising again. Thieves' Guild licences, please?' They turned. Carrot gave them a happy smile and nodded encouragingly. One of the men patted his coat in a theatrical display of absentmindedness. 'Ah. Well. Er. Left the house in a bit of a hurry this morning, must've forgotten—' 'Section Two, Rule One of the Thieves' Guild Charter says that members must carry their cards on all professional occasions,' said Carrot. 'He's not even drawn his sword!' hissed the most stupid of the three-strong gang. 'He doesn't need to, he's got a loaded wolf.'     Someone was writing in the gloom, the scritching of their pen the only sound. Until a door creaked open. The writer turned as quick as a bird. 'You? I told you never to come back here!' 'I know, I know, but it's that damn thing! The production line stopped and it got out and it's killed that priest!' 'Did anyone see it?' 'In the fog we had last night? I shouldn't think so. But—' 'Then it is not, ah-ha, a matter of significance.' 'No? They're not supposed to kill people. Well . . . that is,' the speaker conceded, 'not by smashing them on the head, anyway.' 'They will if so instructed.' 'I never told it to! Anyway, what if it turns on me?' 'On its master? It can't disobey the words in its head, man.' The visitor sat down, shaking his head. 'Yeah, but which words? I don't know, I don't know, this is getting too much, that damn thing around all the time—' 'Making you a fat profit—' 'All right, all right, but this other stuff, the poison, I never—' 'Shut up! I'll see you again tonight. You can tell the others that I certainly do have a candidate. And if you dare come here again . . .'     The Ankh-Morpork Royal College of Heralds turned out to be a green gate in a wall in Mollymog Street. Vimes tugged on the bell-pull. Something clanged on the other side of the wall and immediately the place erupted in a cacophony of hoots, growls, whistles and trumpetings. A voice shouted, 'Down, boy! Couchant! I said couchant! No! Not rampant! And thee shall have a sugar lump like a good boy. William! Stop that at once! Put him down! Mildred, let go of Graham!' The animal noises subsided a bit and footsteps approached. A wicket gate in the main door opened a fraction. Vimes saw an inch-wide segment of a very short man. 'Yes? Are you the meat man?' 'Commander Vimes,' said Vimes. 'I have an appointment.' The animal noises started up again. 'Eh?' 'Commander Vimes!' Vimes shouted. 'Oh. I suppose thee'd better come in.' The door swung open. Vimes stepped through. Silence fell. Several dozen pairs of eyes regarded Vimes with acute suspicion. Some of the eyes were small and red. Several were big and poked just above the surface of the scummy pond that occupied a lot of space in the yard. Some were on perches. The yard was fullof animals, but even they were crowded out by the smell of a yard full of animals. And most of them were clearly very old, which didn't do anything for the smell. A toothless lion yawned at Vimes. A lion running, or at least lounging around loose was amazing in itself, but not so amazing as the fact that it was being used as a cushion by an elderly gryphon, which was asleep with all four claws in the air. There were hedgehogs, and a greying leopard, and moulting pelicans. Green water surged in the pond and a couple of hippos surfaced and yawned. Nothing was in a cage, and nothing was trying to eat anything else. 'Ah, it takes people like that, first time,' said the old man. He had a wooden leg. 'We're quite a happy little family.' Vimes turned and found himself looking at a small owl. 'My gods,' he said. 'That's a morpork, isn't it?' The old man's face broke into a happy smile. 'Ah, I can see thee knows thy heraldry,' he cackled. 'Daphne's ancestors came all the way from some islands on the other side of the Hub, so they did.' Vimes took out his City Watch badge and stared at the coat of arms embossed thereon. The old man looked over his shoulder. 'That's not her, o'course,' he said, indicating the owl perched on the Ankh. 'That was her great-grandma, Olive. A morpork on an ankh, see? That is a pune or play on words. Laugh? I nearly started. That's about as funny as you gets round here. We could do with a mate for her, tell you the truth. And a female hippo. I mean, his lordship says we've got two hippos, which is right enough, I'm just saying it's not natural for Roderick and Keith, I ain't passing judgement, it's just not right, that's all I'm saying. What was thy name again?' 'Vimes. Sir Samuel Vimes. My wife made the appointment.' The old man cackled again. 'Ah, 'tis usually so.' Moving quite fast despite his wooden leg, the old man led the way through the steaming mounds of multi-species dung to the building on the other side of the yard. 'I expect this is good for the garden, anyway,' said Vimes, trying to make conversation. 'I tried it on my rhubarb,' said the old man, pushing open the door. 'But it grew to twenty feet tall, sir, and then spontaneously caught fire. Mind where the wyvern's been, sir, he's been ill - oh, what a shame. Never mind, it'll scrape off beautiful when it dries. In thee goes, sir.' The hall inside was as quiet and dark as the yard had been full of light and noise. There was the dry, tombstone smell of old books and church towers. Above him, when his eyes got used to the darkness, Vimes could make out hanging flags and banners. There were a few windows, but cobwebs and dead flies meant that the light they allowed in was merely grey. The old man had shut the door and left him alone. Vimes watched through the window as he limped back to continue what he had been doing before Vimes's appearance. What he had been doing was setting up a living coat of arms. There was a large shield. Cabbages, actual cabbages, had been nailed to it. The old man said something that Vimes couldn't hear. The little owl fluttered from its perch and landed on a large ankh that had been glued to the top of the shield. The two hippos flopped out of their pool and took up station on either side. The old man unfolded an easel in front of the scene, placed a canvas on it, picked up a palette and brush, and shouted, 'Hup-la!' The hippos reared, rather arthritically. The owl spread its wings. 'Good gods,' murmured Vimes. 'I always thought they just made it up!' 'Made it up, sir? Made it up?' said a voice behind him. 'We'd soon be in trouble if we made things up, oh dear me, yes.' Vimes turned. Another little old man had appeared behind him, blinking happily through thick glasses. He had several scrolls under one arm. 'I'm sorry I couldn't meet you at the gate but we're very busy at the moment,' he said, holding out his spare hand. 'Croissant Rouge Pursuivant.' 'Er . . . you're a small red breakfast roll?' said Vimes, nonplussed. 'No, no. No. It means Red Crescent. It's my title, you see. Very ancient title. I'm a Herald. You'd be Sir Samuel Vimes, yes?' 'Yes/ Red Crescent consulted a scroll. 'Good. Good. How do you feel about weasels?' he said. 'Weasels?' 'We have got some weasels, you see. I know they're not strictly a heraldic animal, but we seem to have some on the strength and frankly I think I'm going to have to let them go unless we can persuade someone to adopt them, and that'd upset Pardessus Chatain Pursuivant. He always locks himself in his shed when he's upset . . .' 'Pardessus . . . you mean the old man out there?' said Vimes.'I mean. . .why's he. . . I thought you ... I mean, a coat of arms is just a design. You don't have to paint it from life!' Red Crescent looked shocked. 'Well, I suppose if you want to make a complete mockery of the whole thing, yes, you could just make it up. You could do that,' he said. 'Anyway . . . not weasels, then?' 'Personally I'd just as soon not bother,' said Vimes. 'And certainly not with a weasel. My wife said that dragons would—' 'Happily, the occasion will not arise,' said a voice in the shadows. It wasn't the right sort of voice to hear in any kind of light. It was dust-dry. It sounded as if it came from a mouth that had never known the pleasures of spittle. It sounded dead. It was.     The bakery thieves considered their options. 'I've got my hand on my crossbow,' said the most enterprising of the three. The most realistic said, 'Have you? Well, I've got my heart in my mouth.' 'Ooo,' said the third. ‘I’ve got a weak heart, me . . .' 'Yeah, but what I mean is ... he's not even wearing a sword. If I take the wolf, the two of you should be able to deal with him with no trouble, right?' The one clear thinker looked at Captain Carrot. His armour shone. So did the muscles on his bare arms. Even his knees gleamed. 'It seems to me that we have a bit of an impasse, or stand-off,' said Captain Carrot. 'How about if we throw down the money?' said the clear thinker. 'That would certainly help matters,' 'And you'd let us go?' 'No. But it would definitely count in your favour and I would certainly speak up on your behalf.' The bold one with the crossbow licked his lips and glanced from Carrot to the wolf. 'If you set it on us, I warn you, someone's going to get killed!' he warned. 'Yes, it could happen,' said Carrot, sadly. 'I'd prefer to avoid that, if at all possible.' He raised his hands. There was something flat and round and about six inches across in each one. 'This,' he said, 'is dwarf bread. Some of Mr Ironcrust's best. It's not classic battle bread, of course, but it's probably good enough for slicing . . .' Carrot's arm blurred. There was a brief flurry of sawdust, and the flat loaf spun to a stop half-way through the thick timbers of the cart and about half an inch away from the man with the weak heart and, as it turned out, a fragile bladder, too. The man with the crossbow tore his attention away from the bread only when he felt a slight, damp pressure on his wrist. There was no way that an animal could have moved that fast, but there it was, and the wolfs expression contrived to indicate very calmly that if the animal so desired the pressure could be increased more or less indefinitely. 'Call it off!' he said, flinging the bow away with his free hand. Tell it to let go!' 'Oh, I never tell her anything,' said Carrot. 'She makes up her own mind.' There was a clatter of iron-shod boots and half a dozen axe-bearing dwarfs raced out of the bakery gates, kicking up sparks as they skidded to a halt beside Carrot. 'Get them!' shouted Mr Ironcrust. Carrot dropped a hand on top of the dwarfs helmet and turned him around. 'It's me, Mr Ironcrust,' he said. 'I believe these are the men?' 'Right you are, Captain Carrot!' said the dwarf baker. 'C'mon, lads! Let's hang 'em up by the bura'zak-ka![3]' 'Ooo,' murmured the weak of heart, damply. 'Now, now, Mr Ironcrust,' said Carrot patiently. 'We don't practise that punishment in Ankh-Morpork.<![if !supportFootnotes]>[4]' 'They bashed Bjorn Tightbritches senseless! And they kicked Olaf Stronginthearm in the bad'dhakz!<![if !supportFootnotes]>[5] We'll cut their—' 'Mr Ironcrust!' The dwarf baker hesitated and then, to the amazement and relief of the thieves, took a step backwards. 'Yeah ... all right, Captain Carrot. If you say so.' 'I have business elsewhere, but I would be grateful if you would take them and turn them over to the Thieves' Guild,' said Carrot. The quick thinker went pale. 'Oh, no! They get really intense about unlicensed thieving! Anything but the Thieves'Guild!' Carrot turned. The light caught his face in a certain way. 'Anything?' he said. The unlicensed thieves looked at one another, and then all spoke at once. 'The Thieves' Guild. Fine. No problem.' 'We like the Thieves' Guild.' 'Can't wait. Thieves' Guild, here I come.' 'Fine body of men.' 'Firm but fair.' 'Good,' said Carrot. Then everyone's happy. Oh, yes.' He dug into his money pouch. 'Here's five pence for the loaf, Mr Ironcrust. I've handled the other one, but you should be able to sand it off with no trouble.' The dwarf blinked at the coins. ' You want to pay me for saving my money?' he said. 'As a tax payer you are entitled to the protection of the Watch,' said Carrot. There was a delicate pause. Mr Ironcrust stared at his feet. One or two of the other dwarfs started to snigger. ‘I’ll tell you what,' said Carrot, in a kindly voice, ‘I’ll come round when I get a moment and help you fill in the forms, how about that?' A thief broke the embarrassed silence. 'Er. . . could your. . . little dog... let go of my arm, please?' The wolf released its grip, jumped down and padded over to Carrot, who raised his hand to his helmet respectfully. 'Good day to you all,' he said, and strode away. Thieves and victims watched him go. 'Is he real? said the quick thinker. There was a growl from the baker, then 'You bastards!' he shouted. 'You bastardsl' 'Wha . . . what? You've got the money back, haven't you?' Two of his employees had to hold Mr Ironcrust back. 'Three years!' he said. 'Three years and no one bothered! Three bloody years and not so much as a knock at the door! And he'll ask me! Oh, yes! He'll be nice about it! He'll probably even go and get the extra forms so I won't be put to the trouble! Why couldn't you buggers have just run away?'     Vimes peered around the shadowy, musty room. The voice might as well have come from a tomb. A panicky look crossed the face of the little Herald. 'Perhaps Sir Samuel would be kind enough to step this way?' said the voice. It was chilly, clipping every syllable with precision. It was the kind of voice that didn't blink. 'That is, in fact, er ... Dragon/ said Red Crescent. Vimes reached for his sword. 'Dragon King of Arms,' said the man. 'King of Arms?' said Vimes. 'Merely a title,' said the voice. 'Pray enter.' For some reason the words re-spelled themselves in Vimes's hindbrain as 'prey, enter'. 'King of Arms,' said the voice of Dragon, as Vimes passed into the shadows of the inner sanctum. 'You will not need your sword, Commander. I have been Dragon King of Arms for more than five hundred years but I do not breathe fire, I assure you. Ah-ha. Ah-ha.' 'Ah-ha,' said Vimes. He couldn't see the figure clearly. The light came from a few high and grubby windows, and several dozen candles that burned with black-edged flames. There was a suggestion of hunched shoulders in the shape before him. 'Pray be seated,' said Dragon King of Arms. 'And I would be most indebted if you would look to your left and raise your chin.' 'And expose my neck, you mean?' said Vimes. 'Ah-ha. Ah-ha.' The figure picked up a candelabrum and moved closer. A hand so skinny as to be skeletal gripped Vimes's chin and moved it gently this way and that. 'Ah, yes. You have the Vimes profile, certainly. But not the Vimes ears. Of course, your maternal grandmother was a Clamp. Ah-ha . . .' The Vimes hand gripped the Vimes sword again. There was only one type of person that had that much strength in a body so apparently frail. 'I thought so! You are a vampire!' he said. 'You're a bloody vampire.' 'Ah-ha.' It might have been a laugh. It might have been a cough. 'Yes. Vampire, indeed. Yes, I've heard about your views on vampires. "Not really alive but not dead enough," I believe you have said. I think that is rather clever. Ah-ha. Vampire, yes. Bloody, no. Black puddings, yes. The acme of the butcher's art, yes. And if all else fails there are plenty of kosher butchers down in Long Hogmeat. Ah-ha, yes. We all live in the best way we can. Ah-ha. Virgins are safe from me. Ah-ha. For several hundred years, more's the pity. Ah-ha.' The shape, and the pool of candlelight, moved away. 'I'm afraid your time has been needlessly wasted, Commander Vimes.' Vimes's eyes were growing accustomed to the flickering light. The room was full of books, in piles. None of them were on shelves. Each one sprouted bookmarks like squashed fingers. 'I don't understand,' he said. Either Dragon King of Arms had very hunched shoulders or there were wings under his shapeless robe. Some of them could fly like a bat, Vimes recalled. He wondered how old this one was. They could 'live' almost forever . . . 'I believe you're here because it is considered, ah-ha, appropriate that you have a coat of arms. I am afraid that this is not possible. Ah-ha. A Vimes coat of arms has existed, but it cannot be resurrected. It would be against the rules.' 'What rules?' There was a thump as a book was taken down and opened. 'I'm sure you know your ancestry, Commander. Your father was Thomas Vimes, his father was Gwilliam Vimes—' 'It's Old Stoneface, isn't it,' said Vimes flatly. 'It's something to do with Old Stoneface.' 'Indeed. Ah-ha. Suffer-Not-Injustice Vimes. Your ancestor. Old Stoneface, indeed, as he was called. Commander of the City Watch in 1688. And a regicide. He murdered the last king of Ankh-Morpork, as every schoolboy knows.' 'Executed!' The shoulders shrugged. 'Nevertheless, the family crest was, as we say in heraldry, Excretus Est Ex Altitudine, That is to say, Depositatum De Latrina. Destroyed. Banned. Made incapable of resurrection. Lands confiscated, house pulled down, page torn out of history. Ah-ha. You know, Commander, it is interesting that so many of, ah-ha, "Old Stoneface's" descendants' - the inverted commas dropped neatly around the nickname like an old lady carefully picking up something nasty in a pair of tongs - 'have been officers of the Watch. I believe, Commander, that you too have acquired the nickname. Ah-ha. Ah-ha. I have wondered whether there is some inherited urge to expunge the infamy. Ah-ha.' Vimes gritted his teeth. 'Are you telling me I can't have a coat of arms?' This is so. Ah-ha.' 'Because my ancestor killed a—' He paused. 'No, it wasn't even execution,' he said. 'You execute a human being. You slaughter an animal.' 'He was the king,' said Dragon mildly. 'Oh, yes. And it turned out that down in the dungeons he had machines for—' 'Commander,' said the vampire, holding up his hands, 'I feel you do not understand me. Whatever else he was, he was the king. You see, a crown is not like a Watchman's helmet, ah-ha. Even when you take it off, it's still on the head.' 'Stoneface took it off all right!' 'But the king did not even get a trial.' 'No willing judge could be found,' said Vimes. 'Except you . . . that is, your ancestor . . .' 'Well? Someone had to do it. Some monsters should not walk under the living sky.' Dragon found the page he had been looking for and turned the book around. This was his escutcheon,' he said. Vimes looked down at the familiar sign of the morpork owl perched on an ankh. It was atop a shield divided into four quarters, with a symbol in each quarter. 'What's this crown with a dagger through it?' 'Oh, a traditional symbol, ah-ha. Indicates his role as defender of the crown.' 'Really? And the bunch of rods with an axe in it?' He pointed. 'A fasces. Symbolizes that he is . . . was an officer of the law. And the axe was an interesting harbinger of things to come, yes? But axes, I'm afraid, solve nothing.' Vimes stared at the third quarter. It contained a painting of what seemed to be a marble bust. 'Symbolizing his nickname, "Old Stoneface",' said Dragon helpfully. 'He asked that some reference be made. Sometimes heraldry is nothing more than the art of punning.' 'And this last one? A bunch of grapes? Bit of a boozer, was he?' said Vimes sourly. 'No. Ah-ha. Word play. Vimes = Vines.' 'Ah. The art of bad punning,' said Vimes. 'I bet that had you people rolling on the floor.' Dragon shut the book and sighed. There is seldom a reward for those who do what must be done. Alas, such is precedent, and I am powerless.' The old voice brightened up. 'But, still ... I was extremely pleased, Commander, to hear of your marriage to Lady Sybil. An excellent lineage. One of the most noble families in the city, ah-ha. The Ramkins, the Selachiis, the Venturis, the Nobbses, of course . . .' That's it, is it?' said Vimes. 'I just go now?' 'I seldom get visitors,' said Dragon. 'Generally people are seen by the Heralds, but I thought you should get a proper explanation. Ah-ha. We're so busy now. Once we dealt with real heraldry. But this, they tell me, is the Century of the Fruitbat. Now it seems that, as soon as a man opens his second meat-pie shop, he feels impelled to consider himself a gentleman.' He waved a thin white hand at three coats of arms pinned in a row on a board. 'The butcher, the baker and the candlestick-maker,' he sneered, but genteelly. 'Well, the candlemaker, in point of fact. Nothing will do but that we burrow through the records and prove them acceptably armigerous . . .' Vimes glanced at the three shields. 'Haven't I seen that one before?' he said. 'Ah. Mr Arthur Carry the candlemaker,' said Dragon. 'Suddenly business is booming and he feels he must be a gentleman. A shield bisected by a bend sinister d'une meche en metal gris - that is to say, a steel grey shield indicating his personal determination and zeal (how zealous, ah-ha, these businessmen are!) bisected by a wick. Upper half, a chandelle in a fenetre avec rideaux houlant (a candle lighting a window with a warm glow, ah-ha), lower half two chandeliers illumine (indicating the wretched man sells candles to rich and poor alike). Fortunately his father was a harbourmaster, which fact allowed us to stretch ourselves a little with a crest of a lampe au poisson (fish-shaped lamp), indicating both this and his son's current profession. The motto I left in the common modern tongue and is "Art Brought Forth the Candle". I'm sorry, ah-ha, it was naughty but I couldn't resist it.' 'My sides ache,' said Vimes. Something kicked his brain, trying to get attention. ' This one is for Mr Gerhardt Sock, president of the Butchers' Guild,' said Dragon. 'His wife's told him a coat of arms is the thing to have, and who are we to argue with the daughter of a tripe merchant, so we've made him a shield of red, for blood, and blue and white stripes, for a butcher's apron, bisected by a string of sausages, centralis a cleaver held in a gloved hand, a boxing glove, which is, ah-ha, the best we could do for "sock". Motto is Futurus Meus est in Visceris, which translates as "My Future is in (the) Entrails", both relating to his profession and, ah-ha, alluding to the old practice of telling—' '—the future from entrails,' said Vimes. 'A-mazing.' Whatever was trying to get into his attention was really jumping up and down now. 'While this one, ah-ha, is for Rudolph Potts of the Bakers' Guild,' said Dragon, pointing to the third shield with a twig-thin finger. 'Can you read it, Commander?' Vimes gave it a gloomy stare. 'Well, it's divided into three, and there's a rose, a flame and a pot,' he said. 'Er... bakers use fire and the pot's for water, I suppose . . .' 'And a pun on the name,' said Dragon. 'But, unless he's called Rosie, I . . .' Then Vimes blinked. 'A rose is a flower. Oh, good grief. Flower, flour. Flour, fire and water? The pot looks like a guzunder to me, though. A chamber pot?' 'The old word for baker waspistor,' said Dragon. 'Why, Commander, we shall make a Herald of you yet! And the motto?' 'Quod Subigo Farinam,' said Vimes, and wrinkled his forehead. ' "Because" . . . "farinaceous" means to do with corn, or flour, doesn't it? ... oh, no ... "Because I Knead the Dough"?' Dragon clapped his hands. 'Well done, sir!' 'This place must simply rock on those long winter evenings,' said Vimes. 'And that's heraldry, is it? Crossword clues and plays on words?' 'Of course there is a great deal more,' said the Dragon. 'These are simple. We more or less have to make them up. Whereas the escutcheon of an old family, such as the Nobbses . . .' 'Nobbs!' said Vimes, as the penny dropped. That's it! You said "Nobbs"! Before - when you were talking about old families!' 'Ah-ha. What? Oh, indeed. Yes. Oh, yes. A fine old family. Although now, sadly, in decay.' 'You don't mean Nobbs as in ... Corporal Nobbs?' said Vimes, horror edging his words. A book thumped open. In the orange light Vimes had a vague upside-down glimpse of shields, and a rambling, unpruned family tree. 'My word. Would that be a C. W. St J. Nobbs?' 'Er... yes. Yes!' 'Son of Sconner Nobbs and a lady referred to here as Maisie of Elm Street?' 'Probably.' 'Grandson of Slope Nobbs?' 'That sounds about right.' 'Who was the illegitimate son of Edward St John de Nobbes, Earl of Ankh, and a, ah-ha, a parlourmaid of unknown lineage?' 'Good gods!' 'The earl died without issue, except that which, ah-ha, resulted in Slope. We had not been able to trace the scion - hitherto, at any rate.' 'Good gods!' 'You know the gentleman?' Vimes regarded with amazement a serious and positive sentence about Corporal Nobbs that included the word 'gentleman'. 'Er ... yes,' he said. 'Is he a man of property?' 'Only other people's.' 'Well, ah-ha, do tell him. There is no land or money now, of course, but the title is still extant.' 'Sorry ... let me make sure I understand this. Corporal Nobbs... my Corporal Nobbs... is the Earl of Ankh?' 'He would have to satisfy us as to proof of his lineage but, yes, it would appear so.' Vimes stared into the gloom. Thus far in his life, Corporal Nobbs would have been unlikely to satisfy the examiners as to his species. 'Good gods!' Vimes said yet again. 'And I suppose he gets a coat of arms?' 'A particularly fine one.' 'Oh.' Vimes hadn't even wanted a coat of arms. An hour ago he'd have cheerfully avoided this appointment as he had done so many times before. But . . . 'Nobby?' he said 'Good gods!' 'Well, well! This has been a very happy meeting,' said Dragon. 'I do so like to keep the records up to date. Ah-ha. Incidentally, how is young Captain Carrot getting along? I'm told his young lady is a werewolf. Ah-ha.' 'Really,' said Vimes. 'Ah-ha.' In the dark, Dragon made a movement that might have been a conspiratorial tap on the side of the nose. 'We know these things!' 'Captain Carrot is doing well,' said Vimes, as icily as he could manage. 'Captain Carrot always does well.' He slammed the door when he went out. The candle flames wavered.     Constable Angua walked out of an alleyway, doing up her belt. 'That went very well, I thought,' said Carrot, 'and will go some way to earning us the respect of the community.' 'Pff! That man's sleeve! I doubt if he even knows the meaning of the word "laundry",' said Angua, wiping her mouth. Automatically, they fell into step - the energy-saving policeman's walk, where the pendulum weight of the leg is used to propel the walker along with the minimum of effort. Walking was important, Vimes had always said, and because Vimes had said it Carrot believed it. Walking and talking. Walk far enough and talk to enough people and sooner or later you had an answer. The respect of the community, thought Angua. That was a Carrot phrase. Well, in fact it was a Vimes phrase, although Sir Samuel usually spat after he said it. But Carrot believed it. It was Carrot who'd suggested to the Patrician that hardened criminals should be given the chance to 'serve the community' by redecorating the homes of the elderly, lending a new terror to old age and, given Ankh-Morpork's crime rate, leading to at least one old lady having her front room wallpapered so many times in six months that now she could only get into it sideways.[6] 'I've found something very interesting that you will be very interested to see,' said Carrot, after a while. 'That's interesting,' said Angua. 'But I'm not going to tell you what it is because I want it to be a surprise,' said Carrot. 'Oh. Good.' Angua walked in thought for a while and then said: 'I wonder if it will be as surprising as the collection of rock samples you showed me last week?' 'That was good, wasn't it?' said Carrot enthusiastically. 'I've been along that street dozens of times and never suspected there was a mineral museum there! All those silicates!' 'Amazing! You'd imagine people would be flocking to it, wouldn't you?' 'Yes, I can't think why they don't!' Angua reminded herself that Carrot appeared to have in his soul not even a trace element of irony. She told herself that it wasn't his fault he'd been brought up by dwarfs in some mine, and really did think that bits of rock were interesting. The week before they'd visited an iron foundry. That had been interesting, too. And yet. . . and yet. . . you couldn't help liking Carrot. Even people he was arresting liked Carrot. Even old ladies living in a permanent smell of fresh paint liked Carrot. She liked Carrot. A lot. Which was going to make leaving him all the harder. She was a werewolf. That's all there was to it. You either spent your time trying to make sure people didn't find out or you let them find out and spent your time watching them keep their distance and whisper behind your back, although of course you'd have to turn round to watch that. Carrot didn't mind. But he minded that other people minded. He minded that even quite friendly colleagues tended to carry a bit of silver somewhere on their person. She could see it upsetting him. She could see the tensions building up, and he didn't know how to deal with them. It was just as her father had said. Get involved with humans other than at mealtimes and you might as well jump down a silver mine. 'Apparently there's going to be a huge firework display after the celebrations next year,' said Carrot. 'I like fireworks.' 'It beats me why Ankh-Morpork wants to celebrate the fact it had a civil war three hundred years ago/ said Angua, coming back to the here-and-now. 'Why not? We won,' said Carrot. 'Yes, but you lost, too.' 'Always look on the positive side, that's what I say. Ah, here we are.' Angua looked up at the sign. She'd learned to read dwarf runes now. ' "Dwarf Bread Museum",' she said. 'Gosh. I can't wait.' Carrot nodded happily and pushed open the door. There was a smell of ancient crusts. 'Coo-ee, Mr Hopkinson?' he called. There was no reply. 'He does go out sometimes,' he said. 'Probably when the excitement gets too much for him,' said Angua. 'Hopkinson? That's not a dwarf name, is it?' 'Oh, he's a human,' said Carrot, stepping inside. 'But an amazing authority. Bread's his life. He wrote the definitive work on offensive baking. Well ... since he's not here I'll just take two tickets and leave tuppence on the desk.' It didn't look as though Mr Hopkinson got many visitors. There was dust on the floor, and dust on die display cases, and a lot of dust on the exhibits. Most of them were the classic cowpat-like shape, an echo of their taste, but there were also buns, close-combat crumpets, deadly throwing toast and a huge dusty array of other shapes devised by a race that went in for food-fighting in a big and above all terminal way. 'What are we looking for?' Angua said. She sniffed. There was a nastily familiar tang in the air. 'It's . . . are you ready for this? . . . it's . . . the Battle Bread of B'hrian Bloodaxe!' said Carrot, rummaging in a desk by the entrance. 'A loaf of bread? You brought me here to see a loaf of bread?' She sniffed again. Yes. Blood. Fresh blood. 'That's right,' said Carrot. 'It's only going to be here a couple of weeks on loan. It's the actual bread he personally wielded at the Battle of Koom Valley, killing fifty-seven trolls although' - and here Carrot's tone changed down from enthusiasm to civic respectability - 'that was a long time ago and we shouldn't let ancient history blind us to the realities of a multi-ethnic society in the Century of theFruitbat.' There was a creak of a door. Then: 'This battle bread,' said Angua, indistinctly. 'Black, isn't it? Quite a lot bigger than normal bread?' 'Yes, that's right,' said Carrot. 'And Mr Hopkinson ... A short man? Little white pointy beard?' That's him.' 'And his head all smashed in?' 'What?' 'I think you'd better come and look,' said Angua, backing away.     Dragon King of Arms sat alone among his candles. So that was Commander Sir Samuel Vimes, he mused. Stupid man. Clearly can't see beyond the chip on his shoulder. And people like that rise to high office these days. Still, such people have their uses, which presumably is why Vetinari has elevated him. Stupid men are often capable of things the clever would not dare to contemplate . . . He sighed, and pulled another tome towards him. It was not much bigger than many others which lined his study, a fact which might have surprised anyone who knew its contents. He was rather proud of it. It was quite an unusual piece of work, but he had been surprised- or would have been surprised, had Dragon been really surprised at anything at all for the last hundred years or so - at how easy some of it had been. He didn't even need to read it now. He knew it by heart. The family trees were properly planted, the words were down there on the page, and all he had to do was sing along. The first page was headed: 'The Descent of King Carrot I, by the Grace of the Gods King of Ankh-Morpork'. A long and complex family tree occupied the next dozen pages until it reached: Married . . . The words there were merely pencilled in. 'Delphine Angua von Uberwald,' read the Dragon aloud. 'Father - and, ah-ha, sire - Baron Guye von Uberwald, also known as Silvertail; mother, Mme Serafine Soxe-Bloonberg, also known as Yellowfang, of Genua . . .' It had been quite an achievement, that part. He had expected his agents to have had some difficulty with the more lupine areas of Angua's ancestry, but it turned out that mountain wolves took quite a lot of interest in that sort of thing as well. Angua's ancestors had definitely been among the leaders of the pack. Dragon King of Arms grinned. As far as he was concerned, species was a secondary consideration. What really mattered in an individual was a good pedigree. Ah, well. That was the future as it might have been. He pushed the book aside. One of the advantages of a life much longer than average was that you saw how fragile the future was. Men said things like 'peace in our time' or 'an empire that will last a thousand years', and less than half a lifetime later no one even remembered who they were, let alone what they had said or where the mob had buried their ashes. What changed history were smaller things. Often a few strokes of the pen would do the trick. He pulled another tome towards him. The frontispiece bore the words: 'The Descent of King . . .' Now, what would the man call himself? That at least was not calculable. Oh, well . . . Dragon picked up his pencil and wrote: 'Nobbs'. He smiled in the candlelit room. People kept on talking about the true king of Ankh-Morpork, but history taught a cruel lesson. It said - often in words of blood - that the true king was the one who got crowned.     Books filled this room, too. That was the first impression - one of dank, oppressive bookishness. The late Father Tubelcek was sprawled across a drift of fallen books. He was certainly dead. No one could have bled that much and still been alive. Or survived for long with a head like a deflated football. Someone must have hit him with a lump hammer. 'This old lady came running out screaming,' said Constable Visit, saluting. 'So I went in and it was just like this, sir.' 'Just like this, Constable Visit?' 'Yes, sir. And the name's Visit-The-Infidel-With-Explanatory-Pamphlets, sir.' 'Who was the old lady?' 'She says she's Mrs Kanacki, sir. She says she always brings him his meals. She says she does for him.' 'Does for him?' 'You know, sir. Cleaning and sweeping.' There was, indeed, a tray on the floor, along with a broken bowl and some spilled porridge. The lady who did for the old man had been shocked to find that someone else had done for him first. 'Did she touch him?' he said. 'She says not, sir.' Which meant the old priest had somehow achieved the neatest death Vimes had ever seen. His hands were crossed on his chest. His eyes had been closed. And something had been put in his mouth. It looked like a rolled-up piece of paper. It gave the corpse a disconcertingly jaunty look, as though he'd decided to have a last cigarette after dying. Vimes gingerly picked out the little scroll and unrolled it. It was covered with meticulously written but unfamiliar symbols. What made them particularly noteworthy was the fact that their author had apparently made use of the only liquid lying around in huge quantities. 'Yuk,' said Vimes. 'Written in blood. Does this mean anything to anyone?' 'Yes, sir!' Vimes rolled his eyes. 'Yes, Constable Visit?' 'Visit-The-Infidel-With-Explanatory-Pamphlets, sir,' said Constable Visit, looking hurt. ''The-Infidel-With-Explanatory-Pamphlets[7]" I was just about to say it, Constable,' said Vimes. 'Well?' 'It's an ancient Klatchian script,' said Constable Visit. 'One of the desert tribes called the Cenotines, sir. They had a sophisticated but fundamentally flawed . . .' 'Yes, yes, yes,' said Vimes, who could recognize the verbal foot getting ready to stick itself in the aural door. 'But do you know what it means?' 'I could find out, sir.' 'Good.' 'Incidentally, were you able by any chance to find time to have a look at those leaflets I gave you the other day, sir?' 'Been very busy!' said Vimes automatically. 'Not to worry, sir,' said Visit, and smiled the wan smile of those doing good against great odds. 'When you've got a moment will be fine.' The old books that had been knocked from the shelves had spilled their pages everywhere. There were splashes of blood on many of them. 'Some of these look religious,' Vimes said. 'You might find something.' He turned. 'Detritus, have a look round, will you?' Detritus paused in the act of laboriously drawing a chalk outline around the body. 'Yessir. What for, sir?' 'Anything you find.' 'Right, sir.' With a grunt, Vimes hunkered down and prodded at a grey smear on the floor. 'Dirt,' he said. 'You get dat on floors, sir,' said Detritus, helpfully. 'Except this is off-white. We're on black loam,' said Vimes. 'Ah,' said Sergeant Detritus. 'A Clue.' 'Could be just dirt, of course.' There was something else. Someone had made an attempt to tidy up the books. They'd stacked several dozen of them in one neat towering pile, one book wide, largest books on the bottom, all the edges squared up with geometrical precision. 'Now that I don't understand,' said Vimes. 'There's a fight. The old man is viciously attacked. Then someone- maybe it was him, dying, maybe it was the murderer - writes something down using the poor man's own blood. And rolls it up neatly and pops it into his mouth like a sweetie. Then he does die and someone shuts his eyes and makes him tidy and piles these books up neatly and . . . does what? Walks out into the seething hurly-burly that is Ankh-Morpork?' Sergeant Detritus's honest brow furrowed with the effort of thought. 'Could be a ... could be dere's a footprint outside der window,' he said. 'Dat's always a Clue wort' lookin' for.' Vimes sighed. Detritus, despite a room-temperature IQ, made a good copper and a damn good sergeant. He had that special type of stupidity that was hard to fool. But the only thing more difficult than getting him to grasp an idea was getting him to let go of it.<![if !supportFootnotes]>[8] 'Detritus,' he said, as kindly as possible. 'There's a thirty-foot drop into the river outside the window. There won't be—' He paused. This was the river Ankh, after all. 'Any footprints'd be bound to have oozed back by now,' he corrected himself. 'Almost certainly.' He looked outside, though, just in case. The river gurgled and sucked below him. There were no footprints, even on its famously crusted surface. But there was another smear of dirt on the window-sill. Vimes scratched some up, and sniffed at it. 'Looks like some more white clay,' he said. He couldn't think of any white clay around the city. Once you got outside the walls it was thick black loam all the way to the Ramtops. A man walking across it would be two inches taller by the time he got to the other side of a field. 'White clay,' he said. 'Where the hell is white-clay country round here?' 'It a mystery,' said Detritus. Vimes grinned mirthlessly. It was a mystery. And he didn't like mysteries. Mysteries had a way of getting bigger if you didn't solve them quickly. Mysteries pupped. Mere murders happened all the time. And usually even Detritus could solve them. When a distraught woman was standing over a fallen husband holding a right-angled poker and crying 'He never should've said that about our Neville!' there was only a limited amount you could do to spin out the case beyond the next coffee break. And when various men or parts thereof were hanging from or nailed to various fixtures in the Mended Drum on a Saturday night, and the other clientele were all looking innocent, you didn't need even a Detritic intelligence to work out what had been happening. He looked down at the late Father Tubelcek. It was amazing he'd bled so much, with his pipe-cleaner arms and toast-rack chest. He certainly wouldn't have been able to put up much of a fight. Vimes leaned down and gently raised one of the corpse's eyelids. A milky blue eye with a black centre looked back at him from wherever the old priest was now. A religious old man who lived in a couple of little poky rooms and obviously didn't go out much, from the smell. What kind of threat could he . . . ? Constable Visit poked his head around the door. 'There's a dwarf down here with no eyebrows and a frizzled beard says you told him to come, sir,' he said. 'And some citizens say Father Tubelcek is their priest and they want to bury him decently.' 'Ah, that'll be Littlebottom. Send him up,' said Vimes, straightening. Tell the others they'll have to wait.' Littlebottom climbed the stairs, took in the scene, and managed to reach the window in time to be sick. 'Better now?' said Vimes eventually, 'Er . . . yes. I hope so.' ‘I’ll leave you to it, then.' 'Er. . . what exactly did you want me to do?' said Littlebottom, but Vimes was already half-way down the stairs.     Angua growled. It was the signal to Carrot that he could open his eyes again. Women, as Colon had remarked to Carrot once when he thought the lad needed advice, could be funny about little things. Maybe they didn't like to be seen without their make-up on, or insisted on buying smaller suitcases than men even though they always took more clothes. In Angua's case she didn't like to be seen en route from human to werewolf shape, or vice versa. It was just something she had a thing about, she said. Carrot could see her in either shape but not in the various ones she occupied on the way through, in case he never wanted to see her again. Through werewolf eyes the world was different. For one thing, it was in black-and-white. At least, that small part of it which as a human she'd thought of as 'vision' was monochrome - but who cared that vision had to take a back seat when smell drove instead, laughing and sticking its arm out of the window and making rude gestures at all the other senses? Afterwards, she always remembered the odours as colours and sounds. Blood was rich brown and deep bass, stale bread was a surprisingly tinkly bright blue, and every human being was a four-dimensional kaleidoscopic symphony. For nasal vision meant seeing through time as well as space: a man could stand still for a minute and, an hour later, there he'd still be, to the nose, his odours barely faded. She prowled the aisles of the Dwarf Bread Museum, muzzle to the ground. Then she went out into the alley for a while and tried there too. After five minutes she padded back to Carrot and gave him the signal again. When he re-opened his eyes she was pulling her shirt on over her head. That was one thing where humans had the edge. You couldn't beat a pair of hands. 'I thought you'd be down the street and following someone,' he said. 'Follow who?' said Angua. 'Pardon?' 'I can smell him, and you, and the bread, and that's it.' 'Nothing else?' 'Dirt. Dust. The usual stuff. Oh, there are some old traces, days old. I know you were in here last week, for example. There are lots of smells. Grease, meat, pine resin for some reason, old food . . . but I'll swear no living thing's been in here in the last day or so but him and us.' 'But you told me everyone leaves a trail.' 'They do.' Carrot looked down at the late curator. However you phrased it, however broadly you applied your definitions, he definitely couldn't have committed suicide. Not with a loaf of bread. 'Vampires?' said Carrot. 'They can fly . . .' Angua sighed. 'Carrot, I could tell if a vampire had been in here in the last month.' 'There's almost half a dollar in pennies in the drawer,' said Carrot. 'Anyway, a thief would be here for the Battle Bread, wouldn't they? It is a very valuable cultural artefact.' 'Has the poor man got any relatives?' said Angua. 'He's got an elderly sister, I believe. I come in once a month just to have a chat. He lets me handle the exhibits, you know.' 'That must be fun,' said Angua, before she could stop herself. 'It's very . . . satisfying, yes,' said Carrot solemnly. 'It reminds me of home.' Angua sighed and stepped into the room behind the little museum. It was like the back rooms of museums everywhere, full of junk and things there is no room for on the shelves and also items of doubtful provenance, such as coins dated '52 BC'. There were some benches with shards of dwarf bread on them, a tidy tool rack with various sizes of kneading hammer, and papers all over the place. Against one wall, and occupying a large part of the room, was an oven. 'He researches old recipes,' said Carrot, who seemed to feel he had to promote the old man's expertise even in death. Angua opened the oven door. Warmth spilled out into the room. 'Hell of a bake oven,' she said. 'What're these things?' 'Ah ... I see he's been making drop scones,' said Carrot. 'Quite deadly at short range.' She shut the door. 'Let's get back to the Yard and they can send someone out to—' Angua stopped. These were always the dangerous moments, just after a shape-change this close to full moon. It wasn't so bad when she was a wolf. She was still as intelligent, or at least she felt as intelligent, although life was a lot simpler and so she was probably just extremely intelligent for a wolf. It was when she became a human again that things were difficult. For a few minutes, until the morphic field fully reasserted itself, all her senses were still keen; smells were still incredibly strong, and her ears could hear sounds way outside the stunted human range. And she could think more about the things she experienced. A wolf could sniff a lamp-post and know that old Bonzo had been past yesterday, and was feeling a bit under the weather, and was still being fed tripe by his owner, but a human mind could actually think about the whys and wherefores. 'There is something else,' she said, and breathed in gently. 'Faint. Not a living thing. But. . . can't you smell it? Something like dirt, but not quite. It's kind of... yellow-orange . . .' 'Um . . .' said Carrot, tactfully. 'Some of us don't have your nose.' 'I've smelled it before, somewhere in this town. Can't remember where . . . It's strong. Stronger than the other smells. It's a muddy smell.' 'Hah, well, on these streets . . .' 'No, it's not . . . exactly mud. Sharper. More treble.' 'You know, sometimes I envy you. It must be nice to be a wolf. Just for a while.' 'It has its drawbacks.' Like fleas, she thought, as they locked up the museum. And the food. And the constant nagging feeling that you should be wearing three bras at once. She kept telling herself she had it under control and she did, in a way. She prowled the city on moonlit nights and, okay, there was the occasional chicken, but she always remembered where she'd been and went round next day to shove some money under the door. It was hard to be a vegetarian who had to pick bits of meat out of her teeth in the morning. She was definitely on top of it, though. Definitely, she reassured herself. It was Angua's mind that prowled the night, not a werewolf mind. She was almost entirely sure of that. A werewolf wouldn't stop at chickens, not by a long way. She shuddered. Who was she kidding? It was easy to be a vegetarian by day. It was preventing yourself from becoming a humanitarian at night that took the real effort.     The first clocks were striking eleven as Vimes's sedan chair wobbled to a halt outside the Patrician's palace. Commander Vimes's legs were beginning to give out, but he ran up five flights of stairs as fast as possible and collapsed on a chair in the waiting salon. Minutes went past. You didn't knock on the Patrician's door. He summoned you in the certain knowledge that you would be there. Vimes sat back, enjoying a moment's peace. Something inside his coat went: 'Bing bing bingley bing!' He sighed, pulled out a leather-bound package about the size of a small book, and opened it. A friendly yet slightly worried face peered up at him from its cage. 'Yes?' said Vimes. '11 am. Appointment with the Patrician.' 'Yes? Well? It's five past now.' 'Er. So you've had it, have you?' said the imp. 'No.' 'Shall I go on remembering it or what?' 'No. Anyway, you didn't remind me about the College of Arms at ten.' The imp looked panic-stricken. That's Tuesday, isn't it? Could've sworn it was Tuesday.' 'It was an hour ago.' 'Oh.' The imp was downcast. 'Er. All right. Sorry. Um. Hey, I could tell you what time it is in Klatch, if you like. Or Genua. Or Hunghung. Any of those places. You name it.' 'I don't need to know the time in Klatch.' 'You might,' said the imp desperately. Think how people will be impressed if, during a dull moment of the conversation, you could say "Incidentally, in Klatch it's an hour ago". Or Bes Pelargic. Or Ephebe. Ask me. Go on. I don't mind. Any of those places.' Vimes sighed inwardly. He had a notebook. He took notes in it. It was always useful. And then Sybil, gods bless her, had brought him this fifteen-function imp which did so many other things, although as far as he could see at least ten of its functions consisted of apologizing for its inefficiency in the other five. 'You could take a memo,' Vimes said. 'Wow! Really? Gosh! Okay. Right. No problem.' Vimes cleared his throat. 'See Corporal Nobbs re time-keeping; also re Earldom.' 'Er . . . sorry, is this the memo?' 'Yes.' 'Sorry, you should have said "memo" first. I'm pretty certain it's in the manual.' 'All right, it was a memo.' 'Sorry, you have to say it again.' 'Memo: See Corporal Nobbs re time-keeping; also re Earldom.' 'Got it,' said the imp. 'Would you like to be reminded of this at any particular time?' The time here?' said Vimes, nastily. 'Or the time in, say, Klatch?' 'As a matter of fact, I can tell you what time it—' 'I think I'll write it in my notebook, if you don't mind,' said Vimes. 'Oh, well, if you prefer, I can recognize handwriting,' said the imp proudly. ‘I’m quite advanced.' Vimes pulled out his notebook and held it up. 'Like this?' he said. The imp squinted for a moment. 'Yep,' it said. That's handwriting, sure enough. Curly bits, spiky bits, all joined together. Yep. Handwriting. I'd recognize it anywhere.' 'Aren't you supposed to tell me what it says?' The imp looked wary. 'Says?' it said. 'It's supposed to make noises?' Vimes put the battered book away and shut the lid of the organizer. Then he sat back and carried on waiting. Someone very clever - certainly someone much cleverer than whoever had trained that imp - must have made the clock for the Patrician's waiting room. It went tick-tock like any other clock. But somehow, and against all usual horological practice, the tick and the tock were irregular. Tick tock tick . . . and then the merest fraction of a second longer before. . . tock tick tock. . . and then a tick a fraction of a second earlier than the mind's ear was now prepared for. The effect was enough, after ten minutes, to reduce the thinking processes of even the best-prepared to a sort of porridge. The Patrician must have paid the clockmaker quite highly. The clock said quarter past eleven. Vimes walked over to the door and, despite precedent, knocked gently. There was no sound from within, no murmur of distant voices. He tried the handle. The door was unlocked. Lord Vetinari had always said that punctuality was the politeness of princes. , Vimes went in.     Cheery dutifully scraped up the crumbly white dirt and then examined the corpse of the late Father Tubelcek. Anatomy was an important study at the Alchemists' Guild, owing to the ancient theory that the human body represented a microcosm of the universe, although when you saw one opened up it was hard to imagine which part of the universe was small and purple and went blomp-blomp when you prodded it. But in any case you tended to pick up practical anatomy as you went along, and sometimes scraped it off the walls as well. When new students tried an experiment that was particularly successful in terms of explosive force, the result was often a cross between a major laboratory refit and a game of Hunt-the-other-Kidney. The man had been killed by being repeatedly hit around the head. That was about all you could say. Some kind of very heavy blunt instrument.[9] What else did Vimes expect Cheery to do? He looked carefully at the rest of the body. There were no other obvious signs of violence, although . . . there were a few specks of blood on the man's fingers. But, then, there was blood everywhere. A couple of fingernails were torn. Tubelcek had put up a fight, or at least had tried to shield himself with his hands. Cheery looked more closely at the fingers. There was something piled under the nails. It had a waxy sheen, like thick grease. He couldn't imagine why it should be there, but maybe his job was to find out. He conscientiously took an envelope out of his pocket and scraped the stuff into it, sealed it up and numbered it. Then he took his iconograph out of its box and prepared to take a picture of the corpse. As he did so, something caught his eye. Father Tubelcek lay there, one eye still open as Vimes had left it, winking at eternity. Cheery looked closer. He'd thought he'd imagined it. But . . . Even now he wasn't sure. The mind could play tricks. He opened the little door of the iconograph and spoke to the imp inside. 'Can you paint a picture of his eye, Sydney?' he said. The imp squinted out through the lens. 'Just the eye?' it squeaked. 'Yes. As big as you can.' 'You're sick, mister.' 'And shut up,' said Cheery. He propped the box on the table and sat back. From inside the box there came the swish-swish of brush strokes. At last there was the sound of a handle being turned, and a slightly damp picture rustled out of a slot. Cheery peered at it. Then he knocked on the box. The hatch opened. 'Yes?' 'Bigger. So big it fills the whole paper. In fact' -Cheery squinted at the picture in his hands - 'just paint the pupil. The bit in the middle.' 'So it fills the whole paper? You're weird.' Cheery propped the box nearer. There was a clicking of gears as the imp wound the lenses out, and then a few more seconds of busy brush work. Another damp picture unwound. It showed a big black disc. Well. . . mainly black. Cheery looked closer. There was a hint, just a hint . . . He rapped on the box again. 'Yes, Mr Dwarf Weird Person?' said the imp. 'The bit in the middle. Big as you can, thank you.' The lenses wound out yet further. Cheery waited anxiously. In the next room, he could hear Detritus patiently moving around. The paper wound out for the third time, and the hatch opened. 'That's it,' said the imp. 'I've run out of black.' And the paper was black . . . except for the tiny little area that wasn't. The door to the stairs burst open and Constable Visit came in, borne along by the pressure of a small crowd. Cheery guiltily thrust the paper into his pocket. 'This is intolerable!' said a small man with a long black beard. 'We demand you let us in! Who're you, young man?' 'I'm Ch - I'm Corporal Littlebottom,' said Cheery. 'Look, I've got a badge . . .' 'Well, Corporal,' said the man, 'I am Wengel Raddley and I am a man of some standing in this community and I demand that you let us have poor Father Tubelcek this minute!' 'We're, er, we're trying to find out who killed him,' Cheery began. There was a movement behind Cheery, and the faces in front of him suddenly looked very worried indeed. He turned to see Detritus in the doorway to the next room. 'Everyt'ing okay?' said the troll. The changed fortunes of the Watch had allowed Detritus to have a proper breastplate rather than a piece of elephant battle armour. As was normal practice for the uniform of a sergeant, the armourer had attempted to do a stylized representation of muscles on it. As far as Detritus was concerned, he hadn't been able to get them all in. 'Is dere any trouble?' he said. The crowd backed away. 'None at all, officer,' said Mr Raddley. 'You, er, just loomed suddenly, that's all . . .' 'Dis is correct,' said Detritus. 'I am a loomer. It often happen suddenly. So dere's no trouble, den?' 'No trouble whatsoever, officer.' 'Amazing t'ing, trouble,' rumbled Detritus thoughtfully. 'Always I go lookin' for trouble, an' when I find it people said it ain't dere.' Mr Raddley drew himself up. 'But we want to take Father Tubelcek away to bury him,' he said. Detritus turned to Cheery Littlebottom. 'You done everyt'ing you need?' 'I suppose so . . .' 'He dead?' 'Oh, yes.' 'He gonna get any better?' 'Better than dead? I doubt it.' 'Okay, den you people can take him away.' The two Watchmen stood aside as the body was carried down the stairs. 'Why you takin' pictures of the dead man?' said Detritus. 'Well, er, it might be helpful to see how he was lying.' Detritus nodded sagely. 'Ah, he was lyin', was he? An' him a holy man, too.' Littlebottom pulled out the picture and looked at it again. It was almost black. But . . . A constable arrived at the bottom of the stairs. 'Is there someone up there called' - there was a muffled snigger — 'Cheery Littlebottom?' 'Yes,' said Littlebottom gloomily. 'Well, Commander Vimes says you've to come to the Patrician's palace right now, all right?' 'Dat's Corporal Littlebottom you're talkin' to,' said Detritus. 'It's all right,' said Littlebottom. 'Nothing could make it any worse.'     Rumour is information distilled so finely that it can filter through anything. It does not need doors and windows - sometimes it doesn't even need people. It can exist free and wild, running from ear to ear without ever touching lips. It had escaped already. From the high window of the Patrician's bedroom, Sam Vimes could see people drifting towards the palace. There wasn't a mob - there wasn't even what you might call a crowd- but the Brownian motion of the streets was bouncing more and more people in his direction. He relaxed slightly when he saw one or two guards come through the gates. On the bed, Lord Vetinari opened his eyes. 'Ah . . . Commander Vimes,' he murmured. 'What's been happening, sir?' said Vimes. 'I appear to be lying down, Vimes.' 'You were in your office, sir. Unconscious.' 'Dear me. I must have been . . . overdoing it. Well, thank you. If you would be kind enough to . . . help me up . . .' Lord Vetinari tried to pull himself upright, swayed, and fell back again. His face was pale. Sweat beaded his forehead. There was a knock at the door. Vimes opened it a fraction. 'It's me, sir. Fred Colon. I got a message. What's up?' 'Ah, Fred. Who've you got down there so far?' 'There's me and Constable Flint and Constable Slapper, sir.' 'Right. Someone's to go up to my place and get Willikins to bring me my street uniform. And my sword and crossbow. And an overnight bag. And some cigars. And tell Lady Sybil. . . tell Lady Sybil . . . well, they'lljust have to tell Lady Sybil I've got to deal with things down here, that's all.' 'What's happening, sir? Someone downstairs said Lord Vetinari's dead!' 'Dead?' murmured the Patrician from his bed. 'Nonsense!' He jerked himself upright, swung his legs off the bed, and folded up. It was a slow, terrible collapse. Lord Vetinari was a tall man, so there was a long way to fall. And he did it by folding up a joint at a time. His ankles gave way and he fell on his knees. His knees hit the ground with a bang and he bent at the waist. Finally his forehead bounced on the carpet. 'Oh,'he said. 'His lordship's just a bit . . .' Vimes began-then he grabbed Colon and dragged him out of the room. 'I reckon he's been poisoned, Fred, and that's the truth of it.' Colon looked horrified. 'Ye gods! Do you want me to get a doctor?' 'Are you mad? We want him to live!' Vimes bit his lip. He'd said the words that were on his mind, and now, without a doubt, the faint smoke of rumour would drift out across the city. 'But someone ought to look at him . . .' he said aloud. 'Damn right!' said Colon. 'You want I should get a wizard?' 'How do we know it wasn't one of them?' 'Ye gods!' Vimes tried to think. All the doctors in the city were employed by the guilds, and all the guilds hated Vetinari, so ... 'When you've got enough people to spare a runner, send him up to the stables on Kings Down to fetch Doughnut Jimmy,' he said. Colon looked even more stricken. 'Doughnut? He doesn't know anything about doctoring! He dopes racehorses!' 'Just get him, Fred.' 'What if he won't come?' 'Then say that Commander Vimes knows why Laughing Boy didn't win the Quirm 100 Dollars last week, and say that I know Chrysoprase the troll lost ten thousand on that race.' Colon was impressed. 'You've got a nasty twist of mind there, sir.' 'There's going to be a lot of people turning up pretty soon. I want a couple of Watchmen outside this room - trolls or dwarfs for preference - and no one is to come in without my permission, right?' Colon's face contorted as various emotions fought for space. Finally he managed to say, 'But . . . poisoned? He's got food-tasters and everything!' 'Then maybe it was one of them, Fred.' 'My gods, sir! You don't trust anyone, do you?' 'No, Fred. Incidentally, was it you? Just kidding,' Vimes added quickly as Colon's face threatened to burst into tears. 'Off you go. We don't have much time.' Vimes shut the door and leaned on it. Then he turned the key in the lock and moved a chair under the handle. Finally he hauled the Patrician off the floor and rolled him on to the bed. There was a grunt from the man, and his eyelids flickered. Poison, thought Vimes. That's the worst of all. It doesn't make a noise, the poisoner can be miles away, you can't see it, often you can't really smell it or taste it, it could be anywhere - and there it is, doing its work . . . The Patrician opened his eyes. 'I would like a glass of water,' he said. There was a jug and a glass by the bed. Vimes picked up the jug, and hesitated. ‘I’ll send someone to get some,' he said. Lord Vetinari blinked, very slowly. 'Ah, Sir Samuel,' he said, 'but whom can you trust?'     There was a crowd in the big audience chamber when Vimes finally went downstairs. They were milling about, worried and unsure, and, like important men everywhere, when they were worried and unsure they got angry. The first to bustle up to Vimes was Mr Boggis of the Guild of Thieves. 'What's going on, Vimes?' he demanded. He met Vimes's stare. 'Sir Samuel, I mean,' he said, losing a certain amount of bustle. 'I believe Lord Vetinari has been poisoned,' said Vimes. The background muttering stopped. Boggis realized that, since he had been the one to ask the question, he was now the man on the spot. 'Er . . . fatally?' he said. In the silence, a pin would have clanged. 'Not yet,' said Vimes. Around the hall there was a turning of heads. The focus of the universal attention was Dr Downey, head of the Guild of Assassins. Downey nodded. 'I'm not aware of any arrangement with regard to Lord Vetinari,' he said. 'Besides, as I am sure is common knowledge, we have set the price for the Patrician at one million dollars.' 'And who has that sort of money, indeed?' said Vimes. 'Well . . . you for one, Sir Samuel,' said Downey. There was some nervous laughter. 'We wish to see Lord Vetinari, in any case,' said Boggis. 'No.' 'No? And why not, pray?' 'Doctor's orders.' 'Really? Which doctor?' Behind Vimes, Sergeant Colon shut his eyes. 'Dr James Folsom,' said Vimes. It took a few seconds before someone worked this out. 'What? You can't mean . . . Doughnut Jimmy? He's a horse doctor!' 'So I understand,' said Vimes. 'But why?' 'Because many of his patients survive,' said Vimes. He raised his hands as the protests grew. 'And now, gentlemen, I must leave you. Somewhere there's a poisoner. I'd like to find him before he becomes a murderer.' He went back up the stairs, trying to ignore the shouts behind him. 'You sure about old Doughnut, sir?' said Colon, catching him up. 'Well, do you trust him?' said Vimes. 'Doughnut? Of course not!' 'Right. He's untrustworthy, and so we don't trust him. So that's all right. But I've seen him revive a horse when everyone else said it was fit only for the knackers. Horse doctors have to get results, Fred.' And that was true enough. When a human doctor, after much bleeding and cupping, finds that a patient has died out of sheer desperation, he can always say, 'Dear me, will of the gods, that will be thirty dollars please,' and walk away a free man. This is because human beings are not, technically, worth anything. A good racehorse, on the other hand, may be worth twenty thousand dollars. A doctor who lets one hurry off too soon to that great big paddock in the sky may well expect to hear, out of some dark alley, a voice saying something on the lines of 'Mr Chrysoprase is very upset', and find the brief remainder of his life full of incident. 'No one seems to know where Captain Carrot and Angua are,' said Colon. 'It's their day off. And Nobby's nowhere to be found.' 'Well, that's something to be thankful for . . .' 'Bingeley bingeley bong beep,' said a voice from Vimes's pocket. He lifted out the little organizer and raised the flap. 'Yes?' 'Er ... twelve noon,' said the imp. 'Lunch with Lady Sybil.' It stared at their faces. 'Er ... that's all right, isn't it?' it said.     Cheery Littlebottom wiped his brow. 'Commander Vimes is right. It could be arsenic,' he said. 'It looks like arsenic poisoning to me. Look at his colour.' 'Nasty stuff,' said Doughnut Jimmy. 'Has he been eating his bedding?' 'All the sheets seem to be here, so I suppose the answer is no.' 'How's he pissing?' 'Er. The usual way, I assume.' Doughnut sucked at his teeth. He had amazing teeth. It was the second thing everyone noticed about him. They were the colour of the inside of an unwashed teapot. 'Walk him round a bit on the loose rein,' he said. The Patrician opened his eyes. 'You are a doctor, aren't you?' he said. Doughnut Jimmy gave him an uncertain look. He was not used to patients who could talk. 'Well, yeah ... I have a lot of patients,' he said. 'Indeed? I have very little,' said the Patrician. He tried to lift himself off the bed, and slumped back. ‘I’ll mix up a draught,' said Doughnut Jimmy, backing away. 'You're to hold his nose and pour it down his throat twice a day, right? And no oats.' He hurried out, leaving Cheery alone with the Patrician. Corporal Littlebottom looked around the room. Vimes hadn't given him much instruction. He'd said: 'I'm sure it won't be the food-tasters. For all they know they might be asked to eat the whole plateful. Still, we'll get Detritus to talk to them. You find out the how, right? And then leave the who to me.' If you didn't eat or drink a poison, what else was left? Probably you could put it on a pad and make someone breathe it, or dribble some in their ear while they slept. Or they could touch it. Maybe a small dart... Or an insect bite . . . The Patrician stirred, and looked at Cheery through watery red eyes. 'Tell me, young man, are you a policeman?' 'Er ... just started, sir.' 'You appear to be of the dwarf persuasion.' Cheery didn't bother to answer. There was no use denying it. Somehow, people could tell if you were a dwarf just by looking at you. 'Arsenic is a very popular poison,' said the Patrician. 'Hundreds of uses around the home. Crushed diamonds used to be in vogue for hundreds of years, despite the fact they never worked. Giant spiders, too, for some reason. Mercury is for those with patience, aquafortis for those without. Cantharides has its followers. Much can be done with the secretions of various animals. The bodily fluids of the caterpillar of the Quantum Weather Butterfly will render a man quite, quite helpless. But we return to arsenic like an old, old friend.' There was a drowsiness in the Patrician's voice. 'Is that not so, young Vetinari? Yes indeed, sir. Correct. But where then shall we put it, seeing that all will look for it? In the last place they will look, sir. Wrong. Foolish. We put it where no one will looked// The voice faded to a murmur. The bed linen, Cheery thought. Even clothes. Into the skin, slowly . . . Cheery hammered on the door. A guard opened k. 'Get another bed.' 'What?' 'Another bed. From anywhere. And fresh bed linen.' He looked down. There wasn't much of a carpet on the floor. Even so, in a bedroom, where people might walk with bare feet . . . 'And take away this rug and bring another one.' What else? Detritus came in, nodded at Cheery, and looked carefully around the room. Finally he picked up a battered chair. 'Dis'll have to do,' he said. 'If he want, I can break der back off fit.' 'What?' said Cheery. 'Ole Doughnut said for to get a stool sample,' said Detritus, going out again. Cheery opened his mouth to stop the troll, and then shrugged. Anyway, the less furniture in here the better . . . And that seemed about it, short of stripping the wallpaper off the wall.     Sam Vimes stared out of the window. Vetinari hadn't bothered much in the way of bodyguards. He had used –that is, he still did use– food-tasters, but that was common enough. Mind you, Vetinari had added his own special twist. The tasters were well paid and treated, and they were all sons of the chief cook. But his main protection was that he was just that bit more useful alive than dead, from everyone's point of view. The big powerful guilds didn't like him, but they liked him in power a lot more than they liked the idea of someone from a rival guild in the Oblong Office. Besides, Lord Vetinari represented stability. It was a cold and clinical kind of stability, but part of his genius was the discovery that stability was what people wanted more than anything else. He'd said to Vimes once, in this very room, standing at this very window: They think they want good government and justice for all, Vimes, yet what is it they really crave, deep in their hearts? Only that things go on as normal and tomorrow is pretty much like today.' Now, Vimes turned around. 'What's my next move, Fred?' 'Dunno, sir.' Vimes sat down in the Patrician's chair. 'Can you remember the last Patrician?' 'Old Lord Snapcase? And the one before him, Lord Winder. Oh, yeah. Nasty pieces of work, they were. At least this one didn't giggle or wear a dress.' The past tense, thought Vimes. It creeps in already. Not long past, but already very tense. 'It's gone very quiet downstairs, Fred,' he said. 'Plotting don't make a lot of noise, sir, generally.' 'Vetinari's not dead, Fred.' 'Yessir. But he's not exactly in charge, is he?' Vimes shrugged. 'No one's in charge, I suppose.' 'Could be, sir. There again, you never know your luck.' Colon was standing stiffly to attention, with his eyes firmly fixed on the middle distance and his voice pitched carefully to avoid any hint of emotion in the words. Vimes recognized the stance. He used it himself, when he had to. 'What do you mean, Fred?' he said. 'Not a thing, sir. Figure of speech, sir.' Vimes sat back. This morning, he thought, I knew what the day held. I was going to see about that damn coat of arms. Then there was my usual meeting with Vetinari. I was going to read some reports after lunch, maybe go and see how they're getting on with the new Watch House in Chittling Street, and have an early night. Now Fred's suggesting . . . what? 'Listen, Fred, if there is to be a new ruler, it won't be me.' 'Who'll it be, sir?' Colon's voice still held that slow, deliberate tone. 'How should I know? It could be . . .' The gap opened ahead of him and he could feel his thoughts being sucked into it. 'You're talking about Captain Carrot, aren't you, Fred?' 'Could be, sir. I mean none of the guilds'd let some other guild bloke be ruler now, and everyone likes Captain Carrot, and, well . . . rumour's got about that he's the hair to the throne, sir.' 'There's no proof of that, Sergeant.' 'Not for me to say, sir. Dunno about that. Dunno what is proof,' said Colon, with just a hint of defiance. 'But he's got that sword of his, and the birthmark shaped like a crown, and . . . well, everyone knows he's king. It's his krisma.' Charisma, thought Vimes. Oh, yes. Carrot has charisma. He makes something happen in people's heads. He can talk a charging leopard into giving up and handing over its teeth and doing good work in the community, and that would really upset the old ladies. Vimes distrusted charisma. 'No more kings, Fred.' 'Right you are, sir. By the way, Nobby's turned up.' 'The day gets worse and worse, Fred.' 'You said you'd talk to him about all these funerals, sir . . .' 'The job goes on, I suppose. All right, go and tell him to come up here." Vimes was left to himself. No more kings. Vimes had difficulty in articulating why this should be so, why the concept revolted in his very bones. After all, a good many of the patricians had been as bad as any king. But they were . . . sort of... bad on equal terms. What set Vimes's teeth on edge was the idea that kings were a different kind of human being. A higher lifeform. Somehow magical. But, huh, there was some magic, at that. Ankh-Morpork still seemed to be littered with Royal this and Royal that, little old men who got paid a few pence a week to do a few meaningless chores, like the Master of the King's Keys or the Keeper of the Crown Jewels, even though there were no keys and certainly no jewels. Royalty was like dandelions. No matter how many heads you chopped off, the roots were still there underground, waiting to spring up again. It seemed to be a chronic disease. It was as if even the most intelligent person had this little blank spot in their heads where someone had written: 'Kings. What a good idea.' Whoever had created humanity had left in a major design flaw. It was its tendency to bend at the knees. There was a knock at the door. It should not be possible for a knock to sound surreptitious, yet this knock achieved it. It had harmonics. They told the hindbrain: the person knocking will, if no one eventually answers, open the door anyway and sidle in, whereupon he will certainly nick any smokes that are lying around, read any correspondence that catches his eye, open a few drawers, take a nip out of such bottles of alcohol as are discovered, but stop short of major crime because he is not criminal in the sense of making a moral decision but in the sense that a weasel is evil - it is built into his very shape. It was a knock with a lot to say for itself. 'Come in, Nobby,' said Vimes, wearily. Corporal Nobbs sidled in. It was another special trait of his that he could sidle forwards as well as sideways. He saluted awkwardly. There was something absolutely changeless about Corporal Nobbs, Vimes told himself. Even Fred Colon had adapted to the changing nature of the City Watch, but nothing altered Corporal Nobbs in any way. It wouldn't matter what you did to him, there was always something fundamentally Nobby about Corporal Nobbs. 'Nobby . . .' 'Yessir?' 'Er . . . take a seat, Nobby.' Corporal Nobbs looked suspicious. This was not how a dressing-down was supposed to begin. 'Er, Fred said you wanted to see me, Mr Vimes, on account of timekeeping . . .' 'Did I? Did I? Oh, yes. Nobby, how many grandmothers' funerals have you really been to?' 'Er . . . three . . .' said Nobby, uncomfortably. Three?' 'It turned out Nanny Nobbs weren't quite dead the first time.' 'So why have you taken all this time off?' 'Don't like to say, sir . . .' 'Why not?' 'You're gonna go spare, sir.' 'Spare?' 'You know, sir ... throw a wobbler.' 'I might, Nobby.' Vimes sighed. 'But it'll be nothing to what'll get heaved if you don't tell me . . .' 'Thing is, it's the tricentre - tricera - this three-hundred-year celebration thing next year, Mr Vimes . . .' 'Yes?' Nobby licked his lips. 'I dint like to ask for time offspecial. Fred said you were a bit sensitive about it all. But . . . you know I'm in the Peeled Nuts, sir. . .' Vimes nodded. 'Those clowns who dress up and pretend to fight old battles with blunt swords,' he said. 'The Ankh-Morpork Historical Re-creation Society, sir,' said Nobby, a shade reproachfully. 'That's what I said.' 'Well . . . we're going to recreate the Battle of Ankh-Morpork for the celebrations, see. That means extra practice.' 'It all begins to make sense,' said Vimes, nodding wearily. 'You've been marching up and down with your tin pike, eh? In my time?' 'Er ... not exactly, Mr Vimes . , . er . . . I've been riding up and down on my white horse, to tell the truth 'Oh? Playing at being a general, eh?' 'Er ... a bit more'n a general, sir . . .' 'Goon.' Nobby's adam's apple bobbed nervously. 'Er . . . I'm going to be King Lorenzo, sir. Er ... you know . . . the last king, the one your . . . er . . .' The air froze. 'You ... are going to be . . .' Vimes began, unpeeling each word like a sullen grape of wrath. 'I said you'd go spare,' said Nobby. 'Fred Colon said you'd go spare, too.' 'Why are you—?' 'We drew lots, sir.' 'And you lost?' Nobby squirmed. Er ... not exactly lost, sir. Not precisely lost. More sort of won, sir. Everyone wanted to play him. I mean, you get a horse and a good costume and everything, sir. And he was a king, when all's said and done, sir.' 'The man was a vicious monster!' 'Well, it was all a long time ago, sir,' said Nobby anxiously. Vimes calmed down a little. 'And who drew the straw to play Stoneface Vimes?' 'Er. . .er. . .' 'Nobby!' Nobby hung his head. 'No one, sir. No one wanted to play him, sir.' The little corporal swallowed, and then plunged onwards with the air of a man determined to get it all over with. 'So we're making a man out of straw, sir, so he'll burn nicely when we throw him on the bonfire in the evening. There's going to be fireworks, sir,' he added, with dreadful certainty. Vimes's face shut down. Nobby preferred it when people shouted. He had been shouted at for most of his life. He could handle shouting. 'No one wanted to be Stoneface Vimes,' Vimes said coldly. 'On account of him being on the losing side, sir.' 'Losing? Vimes's Ironheads won. He ruled the city for six months.' Nobby squirmed again. 'Yeah, but . . . everyone in the Society says he didn't ought to of, sir. They said it was just a fluke, sir. After all, he was outnumbered ten to one, and he had warts, sir. And he was a bit of a bastard, sir, when all's said and done. He did chop off a king's head, sir. You got to be a bit of a nasty type to do that, sir. Saving your presence, Mr Vimes.' Vimes shook his head. What did it matter, anyway? (But it did matter, somewhere.) It had all been a long time ago. It didn't matter what a bunch of deranged romantics thought. Facts were facts. 'All right, I understand,' he said. 'It's almost funny, really. Because there's something else I've got to tell you, Nobby.' 'Yessir?' said Nobby, looking relieved. 'Do you remember your father?' Nobby looked about to panic again. 'What kind of question is that to suddenly ask anybody, sir?' 'Purely a social enquiry.' 'Old Sconner, sir? Not much, sir. Never used to see him much except when the milit'ry police used to come for to drag him outa the attic.' 'Do you know much about your, er, antecedents?' 'That is a lie, sir. I haven't got no antecedents, sir, no matter what you might have been tole.' 'Oh. Good. Er ... you don't actually know what "antecedents" means, do you, Nobby?' Nobby shifted uneasily. He didn't like being questioned by policemen, especially since he was one. 'Not in so many words, sir.' 'You never got told anything about your forebears?' Another worried expression crossed Nobby's face, so Vimes quickly added: 'Your ancestors?' 'Only old Sconner, sir. Sir ... if all this is working up to asking about them sacks of vegetables which went missing from the shop in Treacle Mine Road, I was not anywhere near the—' Vimes waved a hand vaguely. 'He didn't . . . leave you anything? Or anything?' 'Coupla scars, sir. And this trick elbow of mine. It aches sometimes, when the weather changes. I always remembers ole Sconner when the wind blows from the Hub.' 'Ah, right—' 'And this, o' course . . .' Nobby fished around behind his rusting breastplate. And that was a marvel, too. Even Sergeant Colon's armour could shine, if not actually gleam. But any metal anywhere near Nobby's skin corroded very quickly. The corporal pulled out a leather thong that hung around his neck. There was a gold ring on it. Despite the fact that gold cannot corrode, it had nevertheless developed a patina. 'He left it to me when he was on his deathbed,' said Nobby. 'Well, when I say "left it" 'Did he say anything?' 'Well, yeah, he did say "Give it back, you little bugger!", sir. See, 'e 'ad it on a string round his neck, sir, just like me. But it's not like a proper ring, sir. I'd have flogged it but it's all I got to remember him by. Except when the wind blows from the Hub.' Vimes took the ring and rubbed it with a finger. It was a seal ring, with a coat of arms on it. Age and wear and the immediate presence of the body of Corporal Nobbs had made it quite unreadable. 'You are armigerous, Nobby.' Nobby nodded. 'But I got a special shampoo for it, sir.' Vimes sighed. He was an honest man. He'd always felt that was one of the bigger defects in his personality. 'When you've got a moment, nip along to the College of Heralds in Mollymog Street, will you? Take this ring with you and say I sent you.' 'Er . . .' 'It's all right. Nobby,' said Vimes. 'You won't get into trouble. Not as such.' 'If you say so, sir.' 'And you don't have to bother with the "sir", Nobby.' 'Yessir.' When Nobby had gone Vimes reached behind the desk and picked up a faded copy of Twurp's Peerage or, as he personally thought of it, the guide to the criminal classes. You wouldn't find slum dwellers in these pages, but you would find their landlords. And, while it was regarded as pretty good evidence of criminality to be living in a slum, for some reason owning a whole street of them merely got you invited to the very best social occasions. These days they seemed to be bringing out a new edition every week. Dragon had been right about one thing, at least. Everyone in Ankh-Morpork seemed to be hankering after more arms than they were born with. He looked up de Nobbes. There even was a damn coat of arms. One supporter of the shield was a hippo, presumably one of the royal hippos of Ankh-Morpork and therefore the ancestor of Roderick and Keith. The other was a bull of some sort, with a very Nobby-like expression; it was holding a golden ankh which, this being the de Nobbes coat of arms, it had probably stolen from somewhere. The shield was red and green; there was a white chevron with five apples on it. Quite what they had to do with warfare was unclear. Perhaps they were some kind of jolly visual pune or play on words that had had them slapping their thighs down at the Royal College of Arms, although probably if Dragon slapped his thigh too hard his leg would fall off. It was easy enough to imagine an ennobled Nobbs. Because where Nobby went wrong was in thinking small. He sidled into places and pinched things that weren't worth much. If only he'd sidled into continents and stolen entire cities, slaughtering many of the inhabitants in the process, he'd have been a pillar of the community. There was nothing in the book under 'Vimes'. Suffer-Not-Injustice Vimes wasn't a pillar of the community. He killed a king with his own hands. It needed doing, but the community, whatever that was, didn't always like the people who did what needed to be done or said what had to be said. He put some other people to death as well, that was true, but the city had been lousy, there'd been a lot of stupid wars, we were practically part of the Klatchian empire. Sometimes you needed a bastard. History had wanted surgery. Sometimes Dr Chopper is the only surgeon to hand. There's something final about an axe. But kill one wretched king and everyone calls you a regicide. It wasn't as if it was a habit or anything . . . Vimes had found old Stoneface's journal in the Unseen University library. The man had been hard, no doubt about that. But they were hard times. He'd written: 'In the Fyres of Struggle let us bake New Men, who Will Notte heed the old Lies.' But the old lies had won in the end. He said to people: you're free. And they said hooray, and then he showed them what freedom costs and they called him a tyrant and, as soon as he'd been betrayed, they milled around a bit like barn-bred chickens who've seen the big world outside for the first time, and then they went back into the warm and shut the door— 'Bing bong bingely beep.' Vimes sighed and pulled out his organizer. 'Yes?' 'Memo: Appointment with bootmaker, 2pm,' said the imp. 'It's not two o'clock yet and that was Tuesday in any case,' said Vimes. 'So I'll cross it off the list of Things To Do, then?' Vimes put the disorganized organizer back in his pocket and went and looked out of the window again. Who had a motive for poisoning Lord Vetinari? No, that wasn't the way to crack it. Probably, if you went to some outlying area of the city and confined your investigations to little old ladies who didn't get out much, what with all the wallpaper over the door and everything, you might be able to find someone without a motive. But the man stayed alive by always arranging matters so that a future without him represented a riskier business than a future with him still upright. The only people, therefore, who'd risk killing him were madmen - and the gods knew Ankh-Morpork had enough of them — or someone who was absolutely confident that if the city collapsed he'd be standing on top of the pile. If Fred were right - and the sergeant was generally a good indicator of how the man in the street thought because he was the man in the street - then that person was Captain Carrot. But Carrot was one of the few people in the city who seemed to like Vetinari. Of course, there was one other person who stood to gain. Damn, thought Vimes. It's me, isn't it . . . There was another knock at the door. He didn't recognize this one. He opened the door cautiously. 'It's me, sir. Littlebottom.' 'Come in, then.' It was nice to know there was at least one person in the world with more problems than him. 'How is his lordship?' 'Stable,' said Littlebottom. 'Dead is stable,' said Vimes. 'I mean he's alive, sir, and sitting up reading. Mr Doughnut made up some sticky stuff that tasted of seaweed, sir, and I mixed up some Gloobool's Salts. Sir, you know the old man in the house on the bridge?' 'What old . . . oh. Yes.' It seemed a long time ago. 'What about him?' 'Well. . . you asked me to look around and ... I took some pictures. This is one, sir.' He handed Vimes a rectangle that was nearly all black. 'Odd. Where'd you get it?' 'Er . . . have you ever heard the story about dead men's eyes, sir?' 'Assume I haven't had a literary education, Littlebottom.' 'Well. . . they say . . .' 'Who say?' 'They, sir. You know, they.' 'The same people who're the "everyone" in "everyone knows"? The people who live in "the community"?' 'Yes, sir. I suppose so, sir.' Vimes waved a hand. 'Oh, them. Well, go on.' 'They say that the last thing a dying man sees stays imprinted in his eyes, sir.' 'Oh, that. That's just an old story.' 'Yes. Amazing, really. I mean, if it weren't true, you'd have thought it wouldn't have survived, wouldn't you? I thought I saw this little red spark, so I got the imp to paint a really big picture before it faded completely. And, right in the centre . . .' 'Couldn't the imp have made it up?' said Vimes, staring at the picture again. 'They haven't got the imagination to lie, sir. What they see is what you get.' 'Glowing eyes.' 'Two red dots,' said Littlebottom, conscientiously, 'which might indeed be a pair of glowing eyes, sir.' 'Good point, Littlebottom.' Vimes rubbed his chin. 'Blast! I just hope it's not a god of some sort. That's all I need at a time like this. Can you make copies so I can send them to all the Watch Houses?' 'Yes, sir. The imp's got a good memory.' 'Hop to it, then.' But before Littlebottom could go the door opened again. Vimes looked up. Carrot and Angua were there. 'Carrot? I thought you were on your day off?' 'We found a murder, sir! At the Dwarf Bread Museum. But when we got back to the Watch House they told us Lord Vetinari's dead!' Did they? thought Vimes. That's rumour for you. If we could modulate it with the truth, how useful it could be . . . 'He's breathing well for a corpse,' he said. 'I think he'll be okay. Someone got past his guard, that's all. I've got a doctor to see him. Don't worry.' Someone got past his guard, he thought. Yes. And I'm his guard. 'I hope the man's a leader in the field, that's all I can say,' said Carrot severely. 'He's even better than that - he's the doctor to the leaders of the field,' said Vimes. I'm his guard and I didn't see it coming. 'It'd be terrible for the city if anything happened to him!' said Carrot. Vimes saw nothing but innocent concern behind Carrot's forthright stare. 'It would, wouldn't it?' he said. 'Anyway, it's under control. You said there's been another murder?' 'At the Dwarf Bread Museum. Someone killed Mr Hopkinson with his own bread!' 'Made him eat it?' 'Hit him with it, sir,' said Carrot reproachfully. 'Battle Bread, sir.' 'Is he the old man with the white beard?' 'Yes, sir. You remember, I introduced you to him when I took you to see the Boomerang Biscuit exhibition.' Angua thought she saw a faint wince of recollection speed guiltily across Vimes's face. 'Who's going around killing old men?' he said to the world at large. 'Don't know, sir. Constable Angua went plain clothes' — Carrot waggled his eyebrows conspiratorially - 'and couldn't find a sniff of anyone. And nothing was taken. This is what it was done with.' The Battle Bread was much larger than an ordinary loaf. Vimes turned it over gingerly. 'Dwarfs throw it like a discus, right?' 'Yes, sir. At the Seven Mountains games last year Snori Shieldbiter took the tops off a line of six hard-boiled eggs at fifty yards, sir. And that was with just a standard hunting loaf. But this is, well, it's a cultural artefact. We haven't got the baking technology for bread like this any more. It's unique.' 'Valuable?' 'Very, sir.' 'Worth stealing?' 'You'd never be able to get rid of it! Every honest dwarf would recognize it!' 'Hmm. Did you hear about that priest being murdered on Misbegot Bridge?' Carrot looked shocked. 'Not old Father Tubelcek? Really?' Vimes stopped himself from asking: 'You know him, then?' Because Carrot knew everyone. If Carrot were to be dropped into some dense tropical jungle it'd be 'Hello, Mr Runs Swiftly Through The Trees! Good morning, Mr Talks To The Forest, what a splendid blowpipe! And what a novel place for a feather!' 'Did he have more than one enemy?' said Vimes. 'Sorry, sir? Why more than one?' 'I should say the fact that he had one is obvious, wouldn't you?' 'He is ... he was a nice old chap,' said Carrot. 'Hardly stirred out. Spends . . . spent all his time with his books. Very religious. I mean, all kinds of religion. Studied them. Bit odd, but no harm in him. Why should anyone want to kill him? Or Mr Hopkinson? A pair of harmless old men?' Vimes handed him the Battle Bread. 'We shall find out. Constable Angua, I want you to have a look at this one. Take . . . yes, take Corporal Littlebottom,' he said. 'He's been doing some work on it. Angua's from Uberwald too, Littlebottom. Maybe you've got friends in common, that sort of thing.' Carrot nodded cheerfully. Angua's expression went wooden. 'Ah, h'druk g'har dWatch, Sh'rt'azs!' said Carrot. 'H'h Angua tConstable . . . Angua g'har, b'hk bargr'a Sh'rt'azs Kad'k . . . '[10] Angua appeared to concentrate. 'Grr'dukk d'buz-h'drak . . .' she managed. Carrot laughed. 'You just said "small delightful mining tool of a feminine nature"!' Cheery stared at Angua, who returned the stare blankly while mumbling, 'Well, dwarfish is difficult if you haven't eaten gravel all your life . . .' Cheery was still staring. 'Er ... thank you,' he managed. 'Er ... I'd better go and tidy up.' 'What about Lord Vetinari?' said Carrot. 'I'm putting my best man on that,' said Vimes. 'Trustworthy, reliable, knows the ins and outs of this place like the back of his hand. I'm handling it, in other words.' Carrot's hopeful expression faded to hurt puzzlement. 'Don't you want me to?' he said. 'I could—' 'No. Indulge an old man. I want you to go back to the Watch House and take care of things.' 'What things?' 'Everything! Rise to the occasion. Move paper around. There's that new shift rota to draw up. Shout at people! Read reports!' Carrot saluted. 'Yes, Commander Vimes.' 'Good. Off you go, then.' And if anything happens to Vetinari, Vimes added to himself as the dejected Carrot went out, no one will be able to say you were anywhere near him.     The little grille in the gate of the Royal College of Arms snapped open, to the distant accompaniment of brayings and grunts. 'Yes?' said a voice, 'what dost thee want?' 'I'm Corporal Nobbs,' said Nobby. An eye applied itself to the grille. It took in the full, dreadful extent of the godly handiwork that was Corporal Nobbs. 'Are you the baboon? We've had one on order for . . .' 'No. I've come about some coat with arms,' said Nobby. 'You?' said the voice. The owner of the voice made it very clear that he was aware there were degrees of nobility from something above kingship stretching all the way down to commoner, and that as far as Corporal Nobbs was concerned an entirely new category - commonest, perhaps - would have to be coined. 'I've been told,' said Nobby, miserably. 'It's about this ring I got.' 'Go round the back door,' said the voice.     Cheery was tidying away the makeshift equipment he'd set up in the privy when a sound made him look around. Angua was leaning against the doorway. 'What do you want?' he demanded. 'Nothing. I just thought I'd say: don't worry, I won't tell anyone if you don't want me to.' 'I don't know what you're talking about!' 'I think you're lying.' Cheery dropped a test tube, and sagged on to a seat. 'How could you tell?' he said. 'Even other dwarfs can't tell! I've been so careful!' 'Shall we just say ... I have special talents?' said Angua. Cheery started to clean a beaker distractedly. 'I don't know why you're so upset,' said Angua. 'I thought dwarfs hardly recognized the difference between male and female, anyway. Half the dwarfs we bring in here on a No. 23 are female, I know that, and they're the ones that are hardest to subdue . . .' 'What's a No. 23?' . ' "Running Screaming at People While Drunk and Trying to Cut Their Knees off',' said Angua. 'It's easier to give them numbers than write it down every time. Look, there's plenty of women in this town that'd love to do things the dwarf way. I mean, what're the choices they've got? Barmaid, seamstress or someone's wife. While you can do anything the men do . . .' 'Provided we do only what the men do,' said Cheery. Angua paused. 'Oh,' she said. 'I see. Hah. Yes. I know that tune.' 'I can't hold an axe!' said Cheery. ‘I’m scared of fights! I think songs about gold are stupid! I hate beer! I can't even drink dwarfishly! When I try to quaff I drown the dwarf behind me!' 'I can see that could be tricky,' said Angua. 'I saw a girl walk down the street here and some men whistled after her! And you can wear dressesl With colours!' 'Oh, dear.' Angua tried not to smile. 'How long have lady dwarfs felt like this? I thought they were happy with the way things are . . .' 'Oh, it's easy to be happy when you don't know any different,' said Cheery bitterly. 'Chainmail trousers are fine if you've never heard of lingerry!' 'Li— oh, yes,' said Angua. 'Lingerie. Yes.' She tried to feel sympathetic and found that she was, really, but she did have to stop herself from saying that at least you don't have to find styles that can easily be undone by paws. 'I thought I could come here and get a different kind of job,' Cheery moaned. 'I'm good at needlework and I went to see the Guild of Seamstresses and—' She stopped, and blushed behind her beard. 'Yes,' said Angua. 'Lots of people make that mistake.' She stood up straight and brushed herself off. 'You've impressed Commander Vimes, anyway. I think you'll like it here. Everyone's got troubles in the Watch. Normal people don't become policemen. You'll get on fine.' 'Commander Vimes is a bit . . .' Cheery began. 'He's okay when he's in a good mood. He needs to drink but he doesn't dare to these days. You know: one drink is too many, two is not enough . . . And that makes him edgy. When he's in a bad mood he'll tread on your toes and then shout at you for not standing up straight.' * You're normal,' said Cheery, shyly. 'I like you.' Angua patted her on the head. 'You say that now,* she said, 'but when you've been around here for a while you'll find out that sometimes I can be a bitch . . . What's that?' 'What?' 'That. . . painting. With the eyes . . -.' 'Or two points of red light,' said Cheery. 'Oh, yeah?' 'It's the last thing Father Tubelcek saw, I think,' said the dwarf. Angua stared at the black rectangle. She sniffed. 'There it is again!' / Cheery took a step backwards. 'What? What?' 'Where's that smell coming from?' Angua demanded. 'Not me!' said Cheery hurriedly. Angua grabbed a small dish from the bench and sniffed at it. This is it! I smelled this at the museum! What is it?' 'It's just clay. It was on the floor in the room where the old priest was killed,' said Cheery. 'Probably it came off someone's boot.' Angua crumbled some of it between her fingers. 'I think it's just potters' clay,' said Cheery. We used to use it at the guild. For making pots,' she added, just in case Angua hadn't grasped things. 'You know? Crucibles and things. This looks like someone tried baking it but didn't get the heat right. See how it crumbles?' 'Pottery,' said Angua. 'I know a potter . , .' She glanced down at the dwarfs iconograph again. Please, no, she thought. Not one of them?     The front gate of the College of Arms - both front gates - were swung open. The two Heralds bobbed excitedly around Corporal Nobbs as he tottered out. 'Has your lordship got everything he requires?' 'Nfff,' said Nobby. 'If we can be of any help whatsoever—' 'Nnnf.' 'Any help at all—?' 'Nnnf.' 'Sorry about your boots, m'lord, but the wyvern's been ill. It'll brush off no trouble when it dries.' Nobby tottered off along the lane. 'He even walks nobly, wouldn't you say?' 'More . . . nobbly than nobly, I think.' 'It's disgusting that he's a mere corporal, a man of his breeding.'     Igneous the troll backed away until he was up against his potter's wheel. 'I never done it,' he said. 'Done what?' said Angua. Igneous hesitated. Igneous was huge and . . . well, rocky. He moved around the streets of Ankh-Morpork like a small iceberg and, like an iceberg, there was more to him than immediately met the eye. He was known as a supplier of things. More or less any kind of things. And he was also a wall, which was the same as a fence only a lot harder and tougher to beat. Igneous never asked unnecessary questions, because he couldn't think of any. 'Muffin,* he said, finally. Igneous had always found the general denial was more reliable than the specific refutation. 'Glad to hear it,' said Angua. 'Now. . . where do you get your clay from?' Igneous's face crinkled as he tried to work out where this line of questioning could possibly go. 'I got re-seats,' he said. 'Every bit prop'ly paid for.' Angua nodded. It was probably true. Igneous, despite giving the appearance of not being able to count beyond ten without ripping off someone else's arm, and having an intimate involvement in the city's complex hierarchy of crime, was known to pay his bills. If you were going to be successful in the criminal world, you needed a reputation for honesty. 'Have you seen any like this before?' she said, holding out the sample. 'It day,' said Igneous, relaxing a little. 'I see clay all der time. It don't have no serial number. Clay's clay. Got lumps of it out der back. You make bricks an pots and stuff outa it. Dere's loads of potters in dis town and we all got der stuff. Why you wanna know about clay?' 'Can't you tell where it came from?' Igneous took the tiny piece, sniffed it, and rolled it between his fingers. 'Dis is crank,' he said, looking a lot happier now that the conversation was veering away from more personal concerns. 'Dat's like . . . crappy clay, jus' good enough for dem lady potters wi' dangly earrings wot make coffee mugs wot you can't lift wid both hands.' He rolled it again. 'Also, it got a lotta grog in it. Dat's bitsa old pots, all smashed up real small. Makes it stronger. Any potter got loadsa stuff like dis.' He rubbed it again. 'Dis has been sorta heated up but it ain't prop'ly baked.' 'But you can't say where it came from?' 'Outa der ground is der best I can do, lady,' said Igneous. He relaxed a little now it appeared that enquiries were not to do with such matters as a recent batch of hollow statues and subjects of a similar nature. As sometimes happened in these circumstances, he tried to be helpful. 'Come an' have a look at dis.' He loped away. The Watchmen followed him through the warehouse, observed by a couple of dozen cautious trolls. No one liked to see policemen up close, especially if the reason you were working at Igneous's place was that it was nice and quiet and you wanted somewhere to lie low for a few weeks. Besides, while it was true that a lot of people came to Ankh-Morpork because it was a city of opportunity, sometimes it was the opportunity not to be hung, skewered or dismantled for whatever crimes you'd left behind in the mountains. 'Just don't look,' said Angua. 'Why?' said Cheery. 'Because there's just us and there's at least two dozen of them,' said Angua. 'And all our clothes were made for people with full sets of arms and legs.' Igneous went through a doorway and out into the yard behind the factory. Pots were stacked high on pallets. Bricks were curing in long rows. And under a crude roof were several large mounds of clay. 'Dere,' said Igneous generously. 'Clay.' 'Is there a special name for it when it's piled up like that?' said Cheery timorously. She prodded the stuff. 'Yeah,' said Igneous. 'Dat's technic'ly wot we calls a heap.' Angua shook her head sadly. So much for Clues. Clay was clay. She'd hoped there were all different sorts, and it turned out to be as common as dirt. And then Igneous Helped the Police with Their Enquiries. 'D'you mind if youse goes out the back way?' he mumbled. 'Youse makes the help nervous an' I get pots I can't sell.' He indicated a pair of wide doors in the rear wall, big enough for a cart to get through. Then he fumbled in his apron and produced a large keyring. The padlock on the gate was big and shiny and new. 'You are afraid of theft?' said Angua. 'Now, lady, dat's unfair,' said Igneous. 'Someone broke der ole lock when dey pinched some stuff tree, four munfs ago.' 'Disgusting, isn't it?' said Angua. 'Makes you wonder why you pay your taxes, I expect.' In some ways Igneous was a lot brighter than, say, Mr Ironcrust. He ignored the remark. 'It was just stuff,' he said, ushering them towards the open gate as speedily as he dared. 'Was it clay they stole?' said Cheery. 'It don't cost much but it's the principle of the t'ing,' he said. 'It beat me why dey bothered. It come to somet'ng when half a ton of clay can jus' walk out the door.' Angua looked at the lock again. 'Yes, indeed,' she said distantly. The gate rattled shut behind them. They were outside, in an alley. 'Fancy anyone stealing a load of clay,' said Cheery. 'Did he tell the Watch?' 'I shouldn't think so,' said Angua. 'Wasps don't complain too loudly when they're stung. Anyway, Detritus thinks Igneous is mixed up with smuggling Slab to the mountains, and so he's itching for an excuse to have a poke around in there . . . Look, this is still technically my day off.' She stepped back and peered up at the high spiked wall around the yard. 'Could you bake clay in a baker's oven?' she said. 'Oh, no.' 'Doesn't get hot enough?' 'No, it's the wrong shape. Some of your pots'd be baked hard while others'd still be green. Why do you ask?' Why did I ask? Angua thought. Oh, what the hell . . . 'Fancy a drink?' 'Not ale,' said Cheery quickly. 'And nowhere where you have to sing while you drink. Or slap your knees.' Angua nodded understandingly. 'Somewhere, in fact, without dwarfs?' 'Er ... yes 'Where we're going,' said Angua, 'that won't be a problem.'     The fog was rising fast. All morning it had hung around in alleys and cellars. Now it was moving back in for the night. It came out of the ground and up from the river and down from the sky, a clinging yellowish stinging blanket, the river Ankh in droplet form. It found its way through cracks and, against all common sense, managed to survive in lighted rooms, filling the air with an eye-watering haze and making the candles crackle. Outdoors, every figure loomed, every shape was a menace . . . In a drab alley off a drab street Angua stopped, squared her shoulders, and pushed open a door. The atmosphere in the long, low, dark room altered as she stepped inside. A moment of time rang like a glass bowl, and then there was a sense of relaxation. People turned back in their seats. Well, they were seated. It was quite likely they were people. Cheery moved closer to Angua. 'What's this place called?' she whispered. 'It hasn't really got a name,' said Angua, 'but sometimes we call it Biers.' 'It didn't look like an inn outside. How did you find it?' 'You don't. You . . . gravitate to it.' Cheery looked around nervously. She wasn't sure where they were, apart from somewhere in the cattle-market district, somewhere up a maze of alleys. Angua walked to the bar. A deeper shadow appeared out of the gloom. 'Hello, Angua,' it said, in a deep, rolling voice. 'Fruit juice, is it?' 'Yes. Chilled.' 'And what about the dwarf?' 'She'll have him raw,' said a voice somewhere in the gloom. There was a ripple of laughter in the dark. Some of it sounded altogether too strange to Cheery. She couldn't imagine it issuing from normal lips. ‘I’ll have a fruit juice, too,' she quavered. Angua glanced at the dwarf. She felt oddly grateful that the remark from the darkness seemed to have gone entirely over the small bullet head. She unhooked her badge and with care and deliberation laid it down on the counter. It went perlink. Then Angua leaned forward and showed the iconograph to the barman. If it was a man. Cheery wasn't sure yet. A sign over the bar said 'Don't you ever change'. 'You know everything that's going on, Igor,' Angua said. Two old men got killed yesterday. And a load of clay got stolen from Igneous the troll recently. Did you ever hear about that?' 'What's that to you?' 'Killing old men is against the law,' said Angua. 'Of course, a lot of things are against the law, so we're very busy in the Watch. We like to be busy about important things. Otherwise we have to be busy about unimportant things. Are you hearing me?' The shadow considered this. 'Go and take a seat,' it said. 'I'll bring your drinks.' Angua led the way to a table in an alcove. The clientele lost interest in them. A buzz of conversation resumed. 'What is this place?' Cheery whispered. 'It's ... a place where people can be themselves,' said Angua slowly. 'People who . . . have to be a little careful at other times. You know?' 'No.' Angua sighed. 'Vampires, zombies, bogeymen, ghouls, oh my. The und—' She corrected herself. 'The differently alive,' she said. 'People who have to spend most of their time being very careful, not frightening people, fitting in. That's how it works here. Fit in, get a job, don't worry people, and you probably won't find a crowd outside with pitchforks and flaming torches. But sometimes it's good to go where everybody knows your shape.' Now that Cheery's eyes had grown accustomed to the low light she could make out the variety of shapes on the benches. Some of them were a lot bigger than human. Some had pointy ears and long muzzles. 'Who's that girl?' she said. 'She looks . . . normal.' 'That's Violet. She's a tooth fairy. And next to her is Schleppel the bogeyman.' In the far corner something sat huddled in a huge overcoat under a high, broad-brimmed pointed hat. 'And him?' 'That's old Man Trouble,' said Angua. 'If you know what's good for you, you don't mind him.' 'Er . . . any werewolves here?' 'One or two,' said Angua. 'I hate werewolves.' 'Oh?' The oddest customer was sitting by herself, at a small round table. She appeared to be a very old lady, in a shawl and a straw hat with flowers in it. She was staring in front of her with an expression of good-natured aimlessness, and in context looked more frightening than any of the shadowy figures. 'What is she?' Cheery hissed. 'Her? Oh, that's Mrs Gammage.' 'And what does she do?' 'Do? Well, she comes in here most days for a drink and some company. Sometimes we ... they have a singsong. Old songs, that she remembers. She's practically blind. If you mean, is she an undead ... no, she isn't. Not a vampire, a werewolf, a zombie or a bogeyman. Just an old lady.' A huge shambling hairy thing paused at Mrs Gammage's table and put a glass in front of her. 'Port and lemon. There you goes, Mrs Gammage,' it rumbled. 'Cheers, Charlie!' the old lady cackled. 'How's the plumbing business?' 'Doing fine, love,' said the bogeyman, and vanished into the gloom. ' That was a plumber? said Cheery. 'Of course not. I don't know who Charlie was. He probably died years ago. But she thinks the bogeyman is him, and who's going to tell her different?' 'You mean she doesn't know this place is—' 'Look, she's been coming here ever since the old days when it was the Crown and Axe,' said Angua. 'No one wants to spoil things. Everyone likes Mrs Gammage. They . . . watch out for her. Help her out in little ways.' 'How?' 'Well, I heard that last month someone broke into her hovel and stole some of her stuff. . .' ' That doesn't sound helpful.' '. . . and it was all returned next day and a couple of thieves were found in the Shades with not a drop of blood left in their bodies.' Angua smiled, and her voice took on a mocking edge. 'You know, you get told a lot of bad things about the undead, but you never hear about the marvellous work they do in the community.' Igor the barman appeared. He looked more or less human, apart from the hair on the back of his hands and the single unbifurcated eyebrow across his forehead. He tossed a couple of mats on the table and put their drinks down. 'You're probably wishing this was a dwarf bar,' said Angua. She lifted her beermat carefully and glanced at the underside. Cheery looked around again. By now, if it had been a dwarf bar, the floor would be sticky with beer, the air would be full of flying quaff, and people would be singing. They'd probably be singing the latest dwarf tune, Gold, Gold, Gold, or one of the old favourites, like Gold, Gold, Gold, or the all-time biggie, Gold, Gold, Gold. In a few minutes, the first axe would have been thrown. 'No,' she said, 'it could never be that bad.' 'Drink up,' said Angua. 'We've got to go and see . . . something.' A large hairy hand grabbed Angua's wrist. She looked up into a terrifying face, all eyes and mouth and hair. 'Hello, Shlitzen,' she said calmly. 'Hah, I'm hearing where there's a baron who's really unhappy about you,' said Shlitzen, alcohol crystallizing on his breath. 'That's my business, Shlitzen,' said Angua. 'Why don't you just go back behind your door like the good bogeyman that you are?' 'Hah, he's sayin' where you're disgracin' the Old Country—' 'Let go, please,' said Angua. Her skin was white where Shlitzen was gripping her. Cheery looked from the wrist to the bogeyman's shoulder. Rangy though the creature was, muscles were strung along the arm like beads on a wire. 'Hah, you wearin' a badge,' it sneered. 'What's a good we—?' Angua moved so fast she was a blur. Her free hand pulled something from her belt and nipped it up and on to Shlitzen's head. He stopped, and stood swaying back and forth gently, making faint moaning sounds. On his head, flopping down around his ears like the knotted hanky of a style-impaired seaside sunbather, was a small square of heavy material. Angua pushed back her chair and grabbed the beermat. The shadowy figures around the walls were muttering. 'Let's get out of here,' she said. 'Igor, give us half a minute and then you can take the blanket off him. Come on.' They hurried out. The fog had already turned the sun into a mere suggestion, but it was vivid daylight compared to the gloom in Biers. 'What happened to him?' said Cheery, running to keep up with Angua's stride. 'Existential uncertainty,' Angua said. 'He doesn't know whether he exists or not. It's cruel, I know, but it's the only thing we've found that works against bogeymen. Blue fluffy blanket, for preference. ' She noted Cheery's blank expression. 'Look, bogeymen go away if you put your head under the blankets. Everyone knows that, don't they? So if you put their head under a blanket . . .' 'Oh, I see. Ooo, that's nasty.' 'He'll feel all right in ten minutes.' Angua skimmed the beermat across the alley. 'What was he saying about a baron?' 'I wasn't really listening,' said Angua carefully. Cheery shivered in the fog, but not just from the cold. 'He sounded like he came from Uberwald, like us. There was a baron who lived near us and he hated people to leave.' 'Yes 'The whole family were werewolves. One of them ate my second cousin.' Angua's memory spun in a hurry. Old meals came back to haunt her from the time before she'd said, no, this is not the way to live. A dwarf, a dwarf. . . No, she was pretty sure she'd never . . . The family had always made fun of her eating habits . . . 'That's why I can't stand them,' said Cheery. 'Oh, people say they can be tamed but I say, once a wolf, always a wolf. You can't trust them. They're basically evil, aren't they? They could go back to the wild at any moment, I say.' 'Yes. You may be right.' 'And the worst thing is, most of the time they walk around looking just like real people.' Angua blinked, glad of the twin disguises of the fog and Cheery's unquestioning confidence. 'Come on. We're nearly there.' 'Where?' 'We're going to see someone who's either our murderer or who knows who the murderer is.' Cheery stopped. 'But you've got only a sword and I haven't even got that!' 'Don't worry, we won't need weapons.' 'Oh, good.' 'They wouldn't be any use.' 'Oh.'     Vimes opened his door to see what all the shouting was about down in the office. The corporal manning - or in this case dwarfing - the desk was having trouble. 'Again? How many times have you been killed this week?' 'I was minding my own business!' said the unseen complainer. 'Stacking garlic? You're a vampire, aren't you? I mean, let's see what jobs you have been doing . . . Post sharpener for a fencing firm, sunglasses tester for Argus opticians ... Is it me, or is there some underlying trend here?' 'Excuse me, Commander Vimes?' Vimes looked round into a smiling face that sought only to do good in the world, even if the world had other things it wanted done. 'Ah . . . Constable Visit, yes,' he said hurriedly. 'At the moment I'm afraid I'm rather busy, and I'm not even sure that I have got an immortal soul, haha, and perhaps you could call again when ..." 'It's about those words you asked me to check,' said Visit reproachfully. 'What words?' 'The ones Father Tubelcek wrote in his own blood? You said to try and find out what they meant?' 'Oh. Yes. Come on into my office.' Vimes relaxed. This wasn't going to be another one of those painful conversations about the state of his soul and the necessity of giving it a wash and brush-up before eternal damnation set in. This was going to be about something important. 'It's ancient Cenotine, sir. It's out of one of their holy books, although of course when I say "holy" it is a fact that they were basically misguided in a . . .' 'Yes, yes, I'm sure,' said Vimes, sitting down. 'Does it by any chance say "Mr X did it, aargh, aargh, aargh"?' 'No, sir. That phrase does not appear anywhere in any known holy book, sir. * 'Ah,'said Vimes. 'Besides, I looked at other documents in the room and the paper does not appear to be in the deceased's handwriting, sir.' Vimes brightened up. 'Ah-ha! Someone else's? Does it say something like "Take that, you bastard, we've been waiting ages to get you for what you did all those years ago"?' 'No, sir. That phrase also does not appear in any holy book anywhere,' said Constable Visit, and hesitated. 'Except in the Apocrypha to The Vengeful Testament of Offter,' he added conscientiously. ' These words are from the Cenotine Book of Truth,' he sniffed, 'as they called it. It's what their false god . . .' 'Could I just perhaps have the words and leave out the comparative religion?' said Vimes. 'Very well, sir.' Visit looked hurt, but unfolded a piece of paper and sniffed disparagingly. These are some of the rules that their god allegedly gave to the first people after he'd baked them out of clay, sir. Rules like "Thou shall labour fruitfully all the days of your life", sir, and "Thou shalt not kill", and "Thou shalt be humble". That sort of thing.' 'Is that all?' said Vimes. 'Yes, sir,' said Visit. 'They're just religious quotations?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Any idea why it was in his mouth? Poor devil looked like he was having a last cigarette.' 'No, sir.' 'I could understand if it was one of the "smite your enemies" ones,' said Vimes. 'But that's just saying "get on with your work and don't make trouble".' 'Ceno was a rather liberal god, sir. Not big on commandments.' 'Sounds almost decent, as gods go.' Visit looked disapproving. The Cenotines died through five hundred years of waging some of the bloodiest wars on the continent, sir.' 'Spare the thunderbolts and spoil the congregation, eh?' said Vimes. 'Pardon, sir?' 'Oh, nothing. Well thank you, Constable. I'll, er, see that Captain Carrot is informed and, thank you once again, don't let me keep you from—' Vimes's desperately accelerating voice was too late to prevent Visit pulling a roll of paper out of his breastplate. ‘I’ve brought you the latest Unadorned Facts magazine, sir, and also this month's Battle Call, which contains many articles that I'm sure will be of interest to you, including Pastor Nasal Pedlers' exhortation to the congregation to rise up and speak to people sincerely through their letterboxes, sir.' 'Er, thank you.' 'I can't help noticing that the pamphlets and magazines I gave you last week are still on your desk where I left them, sir.' 'Oh, yes, well, sorry, you know how it is, the amount of work these days, makes it so hard to find the time to—' 'It's never too soon to contemplate eternal damnation, sir.' 'I think about it all the time, Constable. Thank you.' Unfair, thought Vimes, when Visit had gone. A note is left at the scene of a crime in my town and does it have the decency to be a death-threat? No. The last dying scrawl of a man determined to name his murderer? No. It's a bit of religious doggerel. What's the good of Clues that are more mysterious than the mystery? He scribbled a note on Visit's translation and chucked it into his In Tray.     Too late, Angua remembered why she avoided the slaughterhouse district at this time of the month. She could change at will at any time. That's what people forgot about werewolves. But they remembered the important thing. Full moonlight was the irresistible trigger: the lunar rays reached down into the centre of her morphic memory and flipped all the switches, whether she wanted them switched or not. Full moon was only a couple of days away. And the delicious smell of the penned animals and the blood from the slaughterhouses was chiming against her strict vegetarianism. The clash was bringing on her PLT. She glared at the shadowy building in front of her. 'I think we'll go round the back,' she said. 'And you can knock.' 'Me? They won't take any notice of me!' said Cheery. 'You show them your badge and tell them you're the Watch.' They'll ignore me! They'll laugh at me!' 'You're going to have to do it sooner or later. Go on.' The door was opened by a stout man in a bloody apron. He was shocked to have his belt grabbed by one dwarf hand, while another dwarf hand was thrust in front of his face, holding a badge, and a dwarf voice in the region of his navel said, 'We're the Watch, right? Oh, yes! And if you don't let us in we'll have your guts for starters!' 'Good try,' murmured Angua. She lifted Cheery out of the way and smiled brightly at the butcher. 'Mr Sock? We'd like to speak to an employee of yours. Mr Dorfl.' The man hadn't quite got over Cheery, but he managed to rally. 'Mr Dorfl? What's he done now?' 'We'd just like to talk to him. May we come in?' Mr Sock looked at Cheery, who was trembling with nerves and excitement. 'I have a choice?' he said. 'Let's say - you have a kind of choice,' said Angua. She tried to close her nostrils against the beguiling miasma of blood. There was even a sausage factory on the premises. It used all the bits of animals no one would ever otherwise eat, or even recognize. The odours of the abattoir turned her human stomach but, deep inside, part of her sat up and drooled and begged at the mingling smells of pork and beef and lamb and mutton and . . . 'Rat?' she said, sniffing. 'I didn't know you supplied the dwarf market, Mr Sock.' Mr Sock was suddenly a man who wished to be seen to be cooperative. 'Dorfl! Come here right now!' There was the sound of footsteps and a figure emerged from behind a rack of beef carcases. Some people had a thing about the undead. Angua knew Commander Vimes was uneasy in their presence, although he was getting better these days. People always needed someone to feel superior to. The living hated the undead, and the undead loathed – she felt her fists clench – the unalive. The golem called Dorfl lurched a little because one leg was slightly shorter than the other. It didn't wear any clothes because there was nothing whatsoever to conceal, and so she could see the mottling on it where fresh clay had been added over the years. There was so much patching that she wondered how old it could be. Originally, some attempt had been made to depict human musculature, but the repairs had nearly obscured these. The thing looked like the kind of pots Igneous despised, the ones made by people who thought that because it was hand-made it was supposed to look as if it was hand-made, and that thumbprints baked in the clay were a sign of integrity. That was it. The thing looked hand-made. Of course, over the years it had mostly made itself, one repair at a time. Its triangular eyes glowed faintly. There were no pupils, just the dark red glow of a banked fire. It was holding a long, heavy cleaver. Cheery's stare gravitated to this and remained fixed on it in terrified fascination. The other hand grasped a piece of string, on the end of which was a large, hairy and very smelly goat. 'What are you doing, Dorfl?' The golem nodded towards the goat. 'Feeding the yudasgoat?' Dorfl nodded again. 'Have you got something to do, Mr Sock?' said Angua. 'No, I've 'You have got something to do, Mr Sock,' said Angua emphatically. 'Ah. Er? Yes. Er? Yes. Okay. I'll just go and see to the offal boilers . . .' As the butcher walked away he stopped to wave a finger under the place where Dorfl's nose would be if the golem had had a nose. Tf you've been causing trouble . . .' he began. 'I expect those boilers could really do with attention,' said Angua sharply. He hurried off. There was silence in the yard, although the sounds of the city drifted in over the walls. From the other side of the slaughterhouse there was the occasional bleat of a worried sheep. Dorfl stood stock-still, holding his cleaver and looking down at the ground. 'Is it a troll made to look like a human?' whispered Cheery. 'Look at those eyesl' 'It's not a troll,' said Angua. 'It's a golem. A man of clay. It's a machine.' 'It looks like a human!' 'That's because it's a machine made for looking like a human.' She walked around behind the thing. 'I'm going to read your chem, Dorfl,' she said. The golem let go of the goat and raised the cleaver and brought it down sharply on to a chopping block beside Cheery, making the dwarf leap sideways. Then it pulled around a slate that was slung over its shoulder on a piece of string, unhooked the pencil, and wrote: YES. When Angua put her hand up, Cheery realized that there was a thin line across the golem's forehead. To her horror, the entire top of the head flipped up. Angua, quite unperturbed, reached inside. Her hand came out holding a yellowing scroll. The golem froze. The eyes faded. Angua unrolled the paper. 'Some kind of holy writing,' she said. 'It always is. Some old dead religion.' 'You've killed it?' 'No. You can't take away what isn't there.' She put the scroll back and closed the head with a click. The golem came alive again, the glow returning to its eyes. Cheery had been holding her breath. It came out in a rush. 'What did you do?' she managed. 'Tell her, Dorfl,' said Angua. The golem's thick fingers were a blur as the pencil scratched across the slate. I AM A GOLEM. I WAS MADEW OF CLAY. MY LIFE IS IN THE WORDS. BY MEANS OF WORDS OF PURPOSE IN MY HEAD I ACQUIRE LIFE. MY LIFE IS TO WORK. I OBEY ALL COMMANDS. I TAKE NO REST. 'What words of purpose?' RELEVANT TEXTS THAT ME THE FOCUS OF BELIEF. GOLEM MUST WORK. GOLEM MUST HAVE A MASTER. The goat lay down beside the golem and started to chew cud. 'There have been two murders, ' said Angua. 'I'm pretty certain a golem did one and probably both. Can you tell us anything, Dorfl?' 'Sorry, look,' said Cheery. 'Are you telling me this . . . thing is powered by words? I mean ... is it telling me it's powered by words?' 'Why not? Words do have power. Everyone knows that,' said Angua. There are more golems around than you might think. They're out of fashion now, but they last. They can work underwater, or in total darkness, or knee-deep in poison. For years. They don't need rest or feeding. They...' 'But that's slavery!' said Cheery. 'Of course it isn't. You might as well enslave a doorknob. Have you got anything to tell me, Dorfl?' Cheery kept looking at the cleaver in the block. Words like length and heavy and sharp were filling her head more snugly than any words could have filled the clay skull of the golem. Dorfl said nothing. 'How long have you been working here, Dorfl?' NOW THREE HUNDRED DAYS ALREADY. 'And you have time off?' TO MAKE A HOLLOW LAUGHING. WHAT WOULD I DO WITH TIME OFF? 'I mean, you're not always in the slaughterhouse?' SOMETIMES I MAKE DELIVERIES. 'And meet other golems? Now listen, Dorfl, I know you things keep in touch somehow. And, if a golem is killing real people, I wouldn't give a busted teacup for your chances. Folk will be along here straight away with flaming torches. And sledgehammers. You get my drift?' The golem shrugged. THEY CANNOT TAKE AWAY DOES NOT EXIST, it wrote. Angua threw up her hands. ‘I’m trying to be civilized,' she said. 'I could confiscate you right now. The charge would be Being Obstructive When It's Been a Long Day and I've Had Enough. Do you know Father Tubelcek?' THE OLD PRIEST WHO LIVES ON THE BRIDGE. 'How come you know him?' I MADE DELIVERIES THERE. 'He's been murdered. Where were you when he was killed?' IN THE SLAUGTERHOUSE. 'How do you know?' Dorfl hesitated a moment. Then the next words were written very slowly, as if they had come from a long way away after a great deal of thought. BECAUSE IT IS SOMETHING THAT MUST HAVE HAPPENED NOT LONG AGO, BECAUSE YOU ARE EXCITED.FOR THE LAST THEREE DAYS I HAVE BEEN WORKING HERE. 'All the time?' YES. 'Twenty-four hours a day?' YES. MEN AND TROLLS HERE ON EVERY SHIFT, THEY WILL TELL YOU. DURING THE DAY I MUST SLAUGHTER, DRESS, QUARTER, JOINT AND BONE, AND AT NIGHT WITHOUT REST I MUST MAKE SAUSAGES AND BOIL UP THE LIVERS, HEARTS, TRIPES, KIDNEYS AND CAITTERLINGS. That's awful,' said Cheery. The pencil blurred briefly. CLOSE. Dorfl turned his head slowly to look at Angua and wrote: DO YOU NEED ME FURTHER? 'If we do, we know where to find you.' I AM SORRY ABOUT THE OLD MAN. 'Good. Come on, Cheery.' They felt the golem's eyes on them as they left the yard. 'It was lying,' said Cheery. 'Why do you say that?' 'It looked as if it was lying.' 'You're probably right,' said Angua. 'But you can see the size of the place. I bet we wouldn't be able to prove it'd stepped out for half an hour. I think I'll suggest that we put it under what Commander Vimes calls special surveillance.' 'What, like . . . plain clothes?' 'Something like that,' said Angua carefully. 'Funny to see a pet goat in a slaughterhouse, I thought,' said Cheery, as they walked on through the fog. 'What? Oh, you mean the yudasgoat,' said Angua. 'Most slaughterhouses have one. It's not a pet. I suppose you could call it an employee.' 'Employee? What kind of job could it possibly do?' 'Hah. Walk into the slaughterhouse every day. That's its job. Look, you've got a pen full of frightened animals, right? And they're milling around and leaderless . . . and there's this ramp into this building, looks very scary . . . and, hey, there's this goat, it's not scared, and so the flock follows it and' - Angua made a throat-slitting noise - 'only the goat walks out.' 'That's horrible!' 'I suppose it makes sense from the goat's point of view. At least it does walk out,' said Angua. 'How did you know about this?' 'Oh, you pick up all sorts of odds and ends of stuff in the Watch.' 'I've got a lot to learn, I can see,' said Cheery. 'I never thought you had to carry bits of blanket, for a start!' 'It's special equipment if you're dealing with the undead.' 'Well, I knew about garlic and vampires. Anything holy works on vampires. What else works on werewolves?' 'Sorry?' said Angua, who was still thinking about the golem. 'I've got a silver mail vest which I promised my family I'd wear, but is anything else good for werewolves?' 'A gin and tonic's always welcome,' said Angua distantly. 'Angua?' 'Hmm? Yes? What?' 'Someone told me there was a werewolf in the Watchl I can't believe that!' Angua stopped and stared down at her. 'I mean, sooner or later the wolf comes through,' said Cheery. 'I'm surprised Commander Vimes allows it.' 'There is a werewolf in the Watch, yes,' said Angua. 'I knew there was something odd about Constable Visit.' Angua's jaw dropped. 'He always looks hungry,' said Cheery. 'And he's got that odd smile all the time. I know a werewolf when I see one.' 'He does look a bit hungry, that's true,' said Angua. She couldn't think of anything else to say. 'Well, I'm going to be keeping my distance!' 'Fine,' said Angua. 'Angua . . .' 'Yes?' 'Why do you wear your badge on a collar round your neck?' 'What? Oh. Well... so it's always handy. You know. In any circumstances.' 'Do I need to do that?' 'I shouldn't think so.'     Mr Sock jumped. 'Dorfl, you damn stupid lump! Never sneak up behind a man on the bacon slicer! I've told you that before! Try to make some noise when you move, damn you!' The golem held up its slate, which said: TONIGHT I CANNOT WORK. 'What's this? The bacon slicer never asks for time off!' IT IS A HOLY DAY. Sock looked at the red eyes. Old Fishbine had said something about this, hadn't he, when he'd sold Dorfl? Something like: 'Sometimes it'll go off for a few hours because it's a holy day. It's the words in its head. If it doesn't go and trot off to its temple or whatever it is, the words'll stop working, don't ask me why. There's no point in stopping it.' Five hundred and thirty dollars the thing had cost. He'd thought it was a bargain - and it was a bargain, no doubt about that. The damned thing only ever stopped working when it had run out of things to do. Sometimes not even then, according to the stories. You heard about golems flooding out houses because no one told them to stop carrying water from the well, or washing the dishes until the plates were thin as paper. Stupid things. But useful if you kept your eye on them. And yet... and yet... he could see why no one seemed to keep them for long. It was the way the damned two-handed engine just stood there, taking it all in and putting it ... where? And never complained. Or spoke at all. A man could get worried about a bargain like that, and feel mightily relieved when he was writing out a receipt for the new owner. 'Seems to me there's been a lot of holy days lately,' Sock said. SOME TIMES ARE MORE HOLY THAN OTHERS. But they couldn't skive off, could they? Work was what a golem did. 'I don't know how we're going to manage . . .' Sock began. IT IS A HOLY DAY. 'Oh, all right. You can have time off tomorrow.' TONIGHT. HOLY DAY STARTS AT SUNSET. 'Be back quickly, then,' said Sock, weakly. 'Or I'll— You be back quickly, d'you hear?' That was another thing. You couldn't threaten the creatures. You certainly couldn't withhold their pay, because they didn't get any. You couldn't frighten them. Fishbine had said that a weaver over Nap Hill way had ordered his golem to smash itself to bits with a hammer - and it had. YES. I HEAR.     In a way, it didn't matter who they were. In fact, their anonymity was part of the whole business. They thought themselves part of the march of history, the tide of progress and the wave of the future. They were men who felt that The Time Had Come. Regimes can survive barbarian hordes, crazed terrorists and hooded secret societies, but they're in real trouble when prosperous and anonymous men sit around a big table and think thoughts like that. One said, 'At least it's clean this way. No blood.' 'And it would be for the good of the city, of course.' They nodded gravely. No one needed to say that what was good for them was good for Ankh-Morpork. 'And he won't die?' 'Apparently he can be kept merely ... unwell. The dosage can be varied, I'm told.' 'Good. I'd rather have him unwell than dead. I wouldn't trust Vetinari to stay in a grave.' 'I've heard that he once said he'd prefer to be cremated, as a matter of fact.' 'Then I just hope they scatter the ashes really widely, that's all.' 'What about the Watch?' 'What about it?' 'Ah.'     Lord Vetinari opened his eyes. Against all rationality, his hair ached. He concentrated, and a blur by the bed focused into the shape of Samuel Vimes. 'Ah, Vimes,' he said weakly. 'How are you feeling, sir?' 'Truly dreadful. Who was that little man with the incredibly bandy legs?' 'That was Doughnut Jimmy, sir. He used to be a jockey on a very fat horse.' 'A racehorse?' 'Apparently, sir ' 'A fat racehorse? Surely that could never win a race?' 'I don't believe it ever did, sir. But Jimmy made a lot of money by not winning races.' 'Ah. He gave me milk and some sort of sticky potion.' Vetinari concentrated. 'I was heartily sick.' 'So I understand, sir.' 'Funny phrase, that. Heartily sick. I wonder why it's a cliche? Sounds . . . jolly. Rather cheerful, really.' 'Yes, sir.' 'Feel like I've got a bad dose of 'flu, Vimes. Head not working properly.' 'Really, sir?' The Patrician thought for a while. There was obviously something else on his mind. 'Why did he still smell of horses, Vimes?' he said at last. 'He's a horse doctor, sir. A damn good one. I heard last month he treated Dire Fortune and it didn't fall over until the last furlong.' 'Doesn't sound helpful, Vimes.' 'Oh, I don't know, sir. The horse had dropped dead coming up to the starting line.' 'Ah. I see. Well, well, well. What a nasty suspicious mind you have, Vimes.' 'Thank you, sir.' The Patrician raised himself on his elbows. 'Should toenails throb, Vimes?' 'Couldn't say, sir.' *Now, I think I should like to read for a while. Life goes on, eh?' Vimes went to the window. There was a nightmarish figure crouched on the edge of the balcony outside, staring into the thickening fog. 'Everything all right, Constable Downspout?' 'Eff, fir,' said the apparition. ‘I’ll shut the window now. The fog is coming in.' 'Fight oo are, fir.' Vimes closed the window, trapping a few tendrils which gradually faded away. 'What was that?' said Lord Vetinari. 'Constable Downspout's a gargoyle, sir. He's no good on parade and bloody useless on the street, but when it conies to staying in one place, sir, you can't beat him. He's world champion at not moving. If you want the winner of the 100 Metres Standing Still, that's him. He spent three days on a roof in the rain when we caught the Park Lane Knobbler. Nothing'll get past him. And there's Corporal Gimletsson patrolling the corridor and Constable Glodsnephew on the floor below and Constables Flint and Moraine in the rooms on either side of you, and Sergeant Detritus will be around constantly so that if anyone nods off he'll kick arse, sir, and you'll know when he does that 'cos the poor bugger'll come right through the wall.' 'Well done, Vimes. Am I right in thinking that all my guards are non-human? They all seem to be dwarfs and trolls.' 'Safest way, sir.' 'You've thought of everything, Vimes.' 'Hope so, sir.' 'Thank you, Vimes.' Vetinari sat up and took a mass of papers off the bedside table. 'And now, don't let me detain you.' Vimes's mouth dropped open. Vetinari looked up. 'Was there anything else, Commander?' 'Well ... I suppose not, sir. I suppose I'd just better run along, eh?' 'If you wouldn't mind. And I'm sure a lot of paperwork has accumulated in my office, so if you'd send someone to fetch it, I would be obliged.' Vimes shut the door behind him, a little harder than necessary. Gods, it made him livid, the way Vetinari turned him on and off like a switch - and had as much natural gratitude as an alligator. The Patrician relied on Vimes doing his job, knew he'd do his job, and that was the extent of his thought on the matter. Well, one day, Vimes would . . . would . . . . . . would bloody well do his job, of course, because he didn't know how to do anything else. But realizing that made it all the worse. Outside the palace the fog was thick and yellow. Vimes nodded to the guards on the door, and looked out at the clinging, swirling clouds. It was almost a straight line to the Watch House in Pseudopolis Yard. And the fog had brought early night to the city. Not many people were on the streets; they stayed indoors, barring the windows against the damp shreds that seemed to leak in everywhere. Yes . . . empty streets, a chilly night, dampness in the air ... Only one thing was needed to make it perfect. He sent the sedan men on home and walked back to one of the guards. 'You're Constable Lucker, aren't you?' 'Yessir, Sir Samuel.' 'What size boots do you take?' Lucker looked panicky.'What, sir?' 'It's a simple question, man!' 'Seven and a halfs, sir.' 'From old Plugger in New Cobblers? The cheap ones?' 'Yessir!' 'Can't have a man guarding the palace in cardboard boots!' said Vimes, with mock cheerfulness. 'Off with them, Constable. You can have mine. They've still got wyvern - well, whatever it is wyverns do - on them, but they'll fit you. Don't stand there with your mouth open. Give me your boots, man. You can keep mine.' Vimes added: 'I've got lots.' The constable watched in frightened astonishment as Vimes pulled on the cheap pair and stood upright, stamping a few times with his eyes shut. 'Ah,' he said. 'I'm in front of the palace, right?' 'Er ... yes, sir. You've just come out of it, sir. It's this big building here.' 'Ah,' said Vimes brightly, 'but I'd know I was here, even if I hadn't!' 'Er . . .' 'It's the flagstones,' said Vimes. 'They're an unusual size and slightly dished in the middle. Hadn't you noticed? Your feet, lad! That's what you'll have to learn to think with!' The bemused constable watched him disappear into the fog, stamping happily.     Corporal the Right Honourable the Earl of Ankh Nobby Nobbs pushed open the Watch-House door and staggered inside. Sergeant Colon looked up from the desk, and gasped. 'You okay, Nobby?' he said, hurrying around to support the swaying figure. 'It's terrible, Fred. Terrible!' 'Here, take a seat. You're all pale.' 'I've been elevated, Fred!' moaned Nobby. 'Nasty! Did you see who did it?' Nobby wordlessly handed him the scroll Dragon King of Arms had pressed into his hand, and flopped back. He took a tiny length of home-made cigarette from behind his ear and lit it with a shaking hand. 'I dunno, I'm sure,' he said. 'You do your best, you keep your head down, you don't make any trouble, and then something like this happens to you.' Colon read the scroll slowly, his lips moving when he came to difficult words like 'and' and 'the'. 'Nobby, you've read this? It says you're a lord!' 'The old man said they'd have to do a lot of checking up but he thought it was pretty clear what with the ring and all. Fred, what am I gonna do?' 'Sit back and eat off ermine plates, I should think!' That's just it, Fred. There's no money. No big house. No land. Not a brass farthing!' 'What, nothing?' 'Not a dried pea, Fred.' 'I thought all the upper crust had pots of money.' 'Well, I'm the crust on its uppers, Fred. I don't know anything about lording! I don't want to have to wear posh clothes and go to hunt balls and all that stuff.' Sergeant Colon sat down beside him. 'You never suspected you'd got any posh connections?' 'Well . . . my cousin Vincent once got done for indecently assaulting the Duchess of Quirm's housemaid . . .' 'Chambermaid or scullery maid?' 'Scullery maid, I think.' 'Probably doesn't count, then. Does anyone else know about this?' 'Well, she did, and she went and told . . . ' 'I mean about your lordshipping. ' 'Only Mr Vimes.' 'Well, there you are,' said Sergeant Colon, handing him back the scroll. 'You don't have to tell anyone. Then you don't have to go around wearing golden trousers, and you needn't hunt balls unless you've lost 'em. You just sit there, and I'll fetch you a cup of tea, how about that? We'll see it through, don't you worry. ' 'You're a toff, Fred.' 'That makes two of us, m'lord!' Colon waggled his eyebrows. 'Get it? Get it?' 'Don't, Fred,' said Nobby wearily. The Watch-House door opened. Fog poured in like smoke. In the midst of it were two red eyes. The parting shreds revealed the massive figure of a golem. 'Umpk,' said Sergeant Colon. The golem held up its slate: I HAVE COME TO YOU. 'Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've, er, yeah, I can see that,' said Colon. Dorfl turned the slate around. The other side read: I GIVE MYSELF UP FOR MURDER. IT WAS I WHO KILLED THE OLD PRIEST. THE CASE IS SOLVED. Colon, once his lips had stopped moving, scurried behind the suddenly very flimsy defences of his desk and scrabbled through the papers there. 'You keep it covered, Nobby,' he said, 'Make sure it don't run off.' 'Why's it going to run off?' said Nobby. Sergeant Colon found a relatively clean piece of paper. 'Well, well, well, I, well, I guess I'd better . . . What's your name?' The golem wrote: DORFL.     By the time he was on the Brass Bridge (medium-sized cobbles of the rounded sort they called 'cat heads', quite a few missing) Vimes was already beginning to wonder if he'd done the right thing. Autumn fogs were always thick, but he'd never known it this bad. The pall muffled the sounds of the city and turned the brightest lights into dim glows, even though in theory the sun hadn't set yet. He walked along by the parapet. A squat, glistening shape loomed in the fog. It was one of the wooden hippos, some distant ancestor of Roderick or Keith. There were four on either side, all looking out towards the sea. Vimes had walked past them thousands of times. They were old friends. He'd often stood in the lee of one on chilly nights, when he was looking for somewhere out of trouble. That's what it used to be like, wasn't it? It hardly seemed that long ago. Just a handful of them in the Watch, staying out of trouble. And then Carrot had arrived, and suddenly the narrow circuit of their lives had opened up, and there were nearly thirty men (oh, including trolls and dwarfs and miscellaneous) in the Watch now, and they didn't skulk around keeping out of trouble, they went looking for trouble, and they found it everywhere they looked. Funny, that. As Vetinari had pointed out in that way of his, the more policemen you had, the more crimes seemed to be committed. But the Watch was back and out there on the streets, and if they weren't actually as good as Detritus at kicking arse they were definitely prodding buttock. He lit a match on a hippo's toenail and cupped his hand around it to shield his cigar from the damp. These murders, now. No one would care if the Watch didn't care. Two old men, murdered on the same day. Nothing stolen . . . He corrected himself: nothing apparently stolen. Of course, the thing about things that were stolen was that the bloody things weren't there. They almost certainly hadn't been fooling around with other people's wives. They probably couldn't remember what fooling around was. One spent his time among old religious books; the other, for gods' sakes, was an authority on the aggressive uses of baking. People would probably say they had lived blameless lives. But Vimes was a policeman. No one lived a completely blameless life. It might be just possible, by lying very still in a cellar somewhere, to get through a day without committing a crime. But only just. And, even then, you were probably guilty of loitering. Anyway, Angua seemed to have taken this case personally. She always had a soft spot for the underdog. So did Vimes. You had to. Not because they were pure or noble, because they weren't. You had to be on the side of underdogs because they weren't overdogs. Everyone in this city looked after themselves. That's what the guilds were for. People banded together against other people. The guild looked after you from the cradle to the grave or, in the case of the Assassins, to other people's graves. They even maintained the law, or at least they had done, after a fashion. Thieving without a licence was punishable by death for the first offence.[11] The Thieves' Guild saw to that. The arrangement sounded unreal, but it worked. It worked like a machine. That was fine except for the occasional people who got crushed in the wheels. The damp cobbles felt reassuringly real under his soles. Gods, he'd missed this. He'd patrolled alone in the old days. When there was just him, and the stones glistened around 3am, it all seemed to make sense somehow— He stopped. Around him, the world became a crystal of horror, the special horror that has nothing to do with fangs or ichor or ghosts but has everything to do with the familiar becoming unfamiliar. Something fundamental was wrong. It took a few dreadful seconds for his mind to supply the details of what his subconscious had noticed. There had been five statues along the parapet on this side. But there should have been four. He turned very slowly and walked back to the last one. It was a hippo, all right. So was the next one. There was graffiti on it. Nothing supernatural had 'Zaz Ys A Wonker' scrawled on it. It seemed to him that it didn't take quite so long to get to the next one, and when he looked at it ... Two red points of light flared in the fog above him. Something big and dark leapt down, knocked him to the ground and disappeared into the gloom. Vimes struggled to his feet, shook his head and set off after it. No thought was involved. It is the ancient instinct of terriers and policemen to chase anything that runs away. As he ran he felt automatically for his bell, which would summon other Watchmen, but the Commander of the Watch didn't carry a bell. Commanders of the Watch were on their own.     In Vimes's squalid office Captain Carrot stared at a piece of paper:   Repairs to Guttering, Watch House, Pseudopolis Yard. New downpipe, 35° Micklewhite bend, four right-angled trusses, labour and making good. $16.35p.   There were more like them, including Constable Downspout's pigeon bill. He knew Sergeant Colon objected to the idea of a policeman being paid in pigeons, but Constable Downspout was a gargoyle and gargoyles had no concept of money. But they knew a pigeon when they ate it. Still, things were improving. When Carrot had arrived the entire Watch's petty cash had been kept on a shelf in a tin marked 'Stronginthearm's Armour Polish for Gleaming Cohorts' and, if money was needed for anything, all you had had to do was go and find Nobby and force him to give it back. Then there was the letter from a resident in Park Lane, one of the most select addresses in the city:   Commander Vimes, The Night Watch patrol in this street appears to be made up entirely of dwarfs. I have nothing against dwarfs amongst their own kind, at least they are not trolls, but one hears stories and I have daughters in the house. I demand that this situation is remedied instantly otherwise I shall have no option but to take up the matter with Lord Vetinari, who is a personal friend. I am, sir, your obt. servant, Joshua H. Catterail   This was police work, was it? He wondered if Mr Vimes were trying to tell him something. There were other letters. The Community Co-ordinator of Equal Heights for Dwarfs was demanding that dwarfs in the Watch be allowed to carry an axe rather than the traditional sword, and should be sent to investigate only those crimes committed by tall people. The Thieves' Guild was complaining that Commander Vimes had said publicly that most thefts were committed by thieves. You'd need the wisdom of King Isiahdanu to tackle them, and these were only today's letters. He picked up the next one and read: 'Translation of text found in Fr. Tubelcek's mouth. Why? SV.' Carrot dutifully read the translation. 'In his mouth? Someone tried to put words in his mouth?' said Carrot, to the silent room. He shivered, but not because of the cold that came from fear. Vimes's office was always cold. Vimes was an outdoors person. Fog was dancing in the open window, little fingers of it drifting in the light. The next paper down the heap was a copy of Cheery's iconograph. Carrot stared at the two blurred red eyes. 'Captain Carrot?' He half-turned his head, but kept looking at the picture. 'Yes, Fred?' 'We've got the murderer! We've got 'im!' 'Is he a golem?' 'How did you know that?'   The tincture of night began to suffuse the soup of the afternoon. Lord Vetinari considered the sentence, and found it good. He liked 'tincture' particularly. Tincture. Tincture. It was a distinguished word, and pleasantly countered by the flatness of 'soup'. The soup of the afternoon. Yes. In which may well be found the croutons of teatime. He was aware that he was a little light-headed. He'd never have thought a sentence like that in a normal frame of mind. In the fog outside the window, just visible by the candlelight, he saw the crouching shape of Constable Downspout. A gargoyle, eh? He'd wondered why the Watch was indented for five pigeons a week on its wages bill. A gargoyle in the Watch, whose job it was to watch. That would be Captain Carrot's idea. Lord Vetinari got up carefully from the bed and closed the shutters. He walked slowly to his writing table, pulled his journal out of its drawer, then tugged out a wad of manuscript and unstoppered the ink bottle. Now then, where had he got to? Chapter Eight, he read unsteadily, The Rites of Man. Ah, yes . . . 'Concerning Truth,' he wrote, 'that which May be Spoken as Events Dictate, but should be Heard on Every Ocasfion . . .' He wondered how he could work 'soup of the afternoon' into the treatise, or at least 'tincture of night'. The pen scratched across the paper. Unheeded on the floor lay the tray that had contained a bowl of nourishing gruel, concerning which he had resolved to have strong words with the cook when he felt better. It had been tasted by three tasters, including Sergeant Detritus, who was unlikely to be poisoned by anything that worked on humans or even by most things that worked on trolls . . . but probably by most things that worked on trolls. The door was locked. Occasionally he could hear the reassuring creak of Detritus on his rounds. Outside the window, the fog condensed on Constable Downspout. Vetinari dipped the pen in the ink and started a new page. Every so often he consulted the leather-bound journal, licking his fingers delicately to turn the thin pages. Tendrils of fog slipped in around the shutters and brushed against the wall until they were frightened away by the candlelight.     Vimes pounded through the fog after the fleeing figure. It wasn't quite so fast as him, despite the twinges in his legs and one or two warning stabs from his left knee, but whenever he came close to it some muffled pedestrian got in the way, or a cart pulled out of a cross-street.[12] His soles told him that they'd gone right down Broad Way and had turned left into Nonesuch Street (small square paving stones). The fog was even thicker here, trapped between the trees of the park. But Vimes was triumphant. You've missed your turning if you're heading for the Shades, my lad! There's only the Ankh Bridge now and there'll be a guard on that— His feet told him something else. They said: 'Wet leaves, that's Nonesuch Street in the autumn. Small square paving stones with occasional treacherous drifts of wet leaves.' They said it too late. Vimes landed on his chin in the gutter, staggered upright, fell over again as the rest of the universe spun past, got up, tottered a few steps in the wrong direction, fell over again and decided to accept the majority vote for a while.     Dorfl was standing quietly in the station office, heavy arms folded across its chest. In front of the golem was the crossbow belonging to Sergeant Detritus, which had been converted from an ancient siege weapon. It fired a six-foot long iron arrow. Nobby sat behind it, his finger on the trigger. Tut it away, Nobby! You can't fire that in here!' said Carrot. 'You know we never find where the arrows stop!' 'We wrestled a confession out of it,' said Sergeant Colon, hopping up and down. 'It kept on admitting it but we got it to confess in the end! And we've got these other crimes we'd like taken into consideration. ' Dorfl held up its slate. I AM GUILTY. Something fell out of its hand. It was short, and white. A piece of matchstick, by the look of it. Carrot picked it up and stared at it. Then he looked at the list Colon had drawn up. It was quite long, and consisted of every unsolved crime in the city for the past couple of months. 'It's confessed to all these?' 'Not yet,' said Nobby. 'We haven't read 'em all out yet,' said Colon. Dorfl wrote: I DID EVERYTHING. 'Hey!' said Colon. 'Mr Vimes is going to be really pleased with us!' Carrot walked up to the golem. There was a faint orange glow in its eyes. 'Did you kill Father Tubelcek?' he said. YES. 'See?' said Sergeant Colon. 'You can't argue with that.' 'Why did you do it?' said Carrot. No reply. 'And Mr Hopkinson at the Bread Museum?' YES. 'You beat him to death with an iron bar?' said Carrot. YES. 'Hang on,' said Colon, 'I thought you said he was . . . ?' 'Leave it, Fred,' said Carrot.' Why did you kill the old man, Dorfl?' No reply. 'Does there have to be a reason? You can't trust golems, my dad always used to say/ said Colon. 'Turn on you soon as look at you, he said.' 'Have they ever killed anyone?' said Carrot. 'Not for want of thinking about it,' said Colon darkly. 'My dad said he had to work with one once and it used to look at him all the time. He'd turn around and there it would be ... looking at him.' Dorfl sat staring straight in front. 'Shine a candle in its eyes!' said Nobby, Carrot pulled a chair across the floor and straddled it, facing Dorfl. He absent-mindedly twirled the broken match between his fingers. 'I know you didn't kill Mr Hopkinson and I don't think you killed Father Tubelcek,' he said. 'I think he was dying when you found him. I think you tried to save him, Dorfl. In fact, I'm pretty sure I can prove it if I can see your chem—' The light from the golem's flaring eyes filled the room. He stepped forward, fists upraised. Nobby fired the crossbow. Dorfl snatched the long bolt out of the air. There was the sound of screaming metal and the bolt became a thin bar of red-hot iron with a bulge piled up around the golem's grip. But Carrot was behind the golem, flipping open its head. As the golem turned, raising the iron bar like a club, the fire died in its eyes. 'Got it,' said Carrot, holding up a yellowed scroll.     At the end of Nonesuch Street was a gibbet, where wrongdoers - or, at least, people found guilty of wrongdoing - had been hung to twist gently in the wind as examples of just retribution and, as the elements took their toll, basic anatomy as well. Once, parties of children were brought there by their parents to learn by dreadful example of the snares and perils that await the criminal, the outlaw and those who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and they would see the terrible wreckage creaking on its chain and listen to the stern imprecations and then usually (this being Ankh-Morpork) would say 'Wow! Brilliant!' and use the corpse as a swing. These days the city had more private and efficient ways of dealing with those it found surplus to requirements, but for the sake of tradition the gibbet's incumbent was a quite realistic wooden body. The occasional stupid raven would have a peck at the eyeballs even now, and end up with a much shorter beak. Vimes tottered up to it, fighting for breath. The quarry could have gone anywhere by now. Such daylight as had been filtering through the fog had given up. Vimes stood beside the gibbet, which creaked. It had been built to creak. What's the good of a public display of retribution, it had been argued, if it didn't creak ominously? In richer times an elderly man had been employed to operate the creak by means of a length of string, but now there was a clockwork mechanism that needed to be wound up only once a month. Condensation dripped off the artificial corpse. 'Blow this for a lark,' muttered Vimes, and tried to head back the way he came. After ten seconds of blundering, he tripped over something. It was a wooden corpse, hurled into the gutter. When he got back to the gibbet, the empty chain was swinging gently, jingling in the fog.     Sergeant Colon tapped the golem's chest. It went donk. 'Like a flowerpot,' said Nobby. 'How can they move around when they're like a pot, eh? They ought to keep cracking all the time.' 'They're daft, too,' said Colon. 'I heard there was one over in Quirm who was made to dig a trench and they forgot about it and they only remembered it when there was all this water 'cos it had dug all the way to the river . . .' Carrot unrolled the chem on the table, and laid beside it the paper that had been put in Father Tubelcek's mouth. 'It's dead, is it?' said Sergeant Colon. 'It's harmless,' said Carrot, looking from one piece of paper to the other. 'Right. I've got a sledgehammer round the back somewhere, I'll just . . .' 'No,' said Carrot. 'You saw the way it was acting!' 'I don't think it could actually have hit me. I think it just wanted to scare us.' 'It worked!' 'Look at these, Fred.' Sergeant Colon glanced at the desk. 'Foreign writing,' he said, in a voice which suggested that it was nothing like as good as decent home writing, and probably smelled of garlic. 'Anything strike you about them?' 'Well . . . they looks the same,' Sergeant Colon conceded, 'This yellowing one is DorfFs chem. The other one is from Father Tubelcek,' said Carrot. 'Letter for letter the same.' 'Why's that?' 'I think Dorfl wrote these words and put them in old Tubelcek's mouth after the poor man died,' said Carrot slowly, still looking from one piece of paper to the other. 'Urgh, yuk,' said Nobby. 'That's mucky, that is . . .' 'No, you don't understand,' said Carrot. 'I mean he wrote them because they were the only ones he knew that worked . . .' 'Worked how?' 'Well. . . you know the kiss of life?' said Carrot. 'I mean first aid? I know you know, Nobby. You came with me when they had that course at the YMPA.' 'I only went 'cos you said you got a free cup of tea and a biscuit,' said Nobby sulkily. 'Anyway, the dummy ran away when it was my turn.' 'It's the same with life-saving, too,' said Carrot. 'We want people to breathe, so we try to make sure they've got some air in them . . .' They all turned to look at the golem. 'But golems don't breathe,' said Colon. 'No, a golem knows only one thing that keeps you alive,' said Carrot. 'It's the words in your head.' They all turned back to look at the words. They all turned to look at the statue that was Dorfl. 'It's gone all cold in here,' Nobby quavered. 'I def nitly felt a aura flick'rin' in the air just then! It was like someone . . .' 'What's going on?' said Vimes, shaking the damp off his cloak. '. . . openin' the door,' said Nobby.     It was ten minutes later. Sergeant Colon and Nobby had gone off-duty, to everyone's relief. Colon in particular had great difficulty with the idea that you went on investigating after someone had confessed. It outraged his training and experience. You got a confession and there it ended. You didn't go around disbelieving people. You disbelieved people only when they said they were innocent. Only guilty people were trustworthy. Anything else struck at the whole basis of policing. 'White clay,' said Carrot. 'It was white clay we found. And practically unbaked. Dorfl's made of dark terracotta, and rock-hard.' The last thing the old priest saw was a golem,' said Vimes. 'Dorfl, I'm sure,' said Carrot. 'But that's not the same as saying Dorfl was the murderer. I think he turned up as the man was dying, that's all.' 'Oh? Why?' 'I'm. . . not sure yet. But I've seen Dorfl around. He's always seemed a very gentle person.' 'It works in a slaughterhouse!' 'Maybe that's not a bad place for a gentle person to work, sir,' said Carrot. 'Anyway, I've checked up all the records I can find and I don't think a golem has ever attacked anyone. Or committed any kind of crime.' 'Oh, come on,' said Vimes. 'Everyone knows . . .' He stopped as his cynical ears heard his incredulous voice. 'What, never? 'Oh, people are always saying that they know someone who had a friend whose grandfather heard of one killing someone, and that's about as real as it gets, sir. Golems aren't allowed to hurt people. It's in their words.' They give me the willies, I know that,' said Vimes. They give everyone the willies, sir.' 'You hear lots of stories about them doing stupid things like making a thousand teapots or digging a hole five miles deep,' said Vimes. 'Yes, but that's not exactly criminal activity, is it, sir? That's just ordinary rebellion.' 'What do you mean, "rebellion"?' 'Dumbly obeying orders, sir. You know . . . someone shouts at it "Go and make teapots", so it does. Can't be blamed for obeying orders, sir. No one told them how many. No one wants them to think, so they get their own back by not thinking.' They rebel by working"?' 'It's just a thought, sir. It'd make more sense to a golem, I expect.' Automatically, they turned again to look at the silent shape of the golem. 'Can it hear us?' said Vimes. 'I don't think so, sir.' This business with the words . . . ?' 'Er ... I think they think a dead human is just someone who's lost his chem. I don't think they understand how we work, sir.' Them and me both, Captain.' Vimes stared at the hollow eyes. The top of Dorfl's head was still open so that light shone down through the sockets. Vimes had seen many horrible things on the street, but the silent golem was somehow worse. You could too easily imagine the eyes flaring and the thing standing up and striding forward, fists flailing like sledgehammers. It was more than just his imagination. It seemed to be built into the things. A potentiality, biding its time. That's why we all hate 'em, he thought. Those expressionless eyes watch us, those bigfaces turn to follow us, and doesn't it just look as if they're making notes and taking names? If you heard that one had bashed in someone's head over in Quirm or somewhere, wouldn't you just love to believe it? A voice inside, a voice which generally came to him only in the quiet hours of the night or, in the old days, half-way down a whisky bottle, added: Given how we use them, maybe we're scared because we know we deserve it . . . No... there's nothing behind those eyes. There's just clay and magic words. Vimes shrugged. 'I chased a golem earlier,' he said. 'It was standing on the Brass Bridge. Damn thing. Look, we've got a confession and the eyeball evidence. If you can't come up with anything better than a ... a feeling, then we'll have to—' To what, sir?' said Carrot. There isn't anything more we could do to him. He's dead now.' 'Inanimate, you mean.' 'Yes, sir. If you want to put it that way.' 'If Dorfl didn't kill the old men, who did?' 'Don't know, sir. But I think Dorfl does. Maybe he was following the murderer.' 'Could it have been ordered to protect someone?' 'Maybe, sir. Or he decided to.' 'You'll be telling me it's got emotions next. Where's Angua gone?' 'She thought she'd check a few things, sir,' said Carrot. 'I was . . . puzzled about this, sir. It was in his hand. 'He held the object up. 'A piece of matchstick?' 'Golems don't smoke and they don't use fire, sir. It's just. . . odd that he should have the thing, sir.' 'Oh,' said Vimes, sarcastically. 'A Clue.'     Dorfl's trail was the word on the street. The mixed smells of the slaughterhouse filled Angua's nostrils. The journey zigzagged, but with a certain directional tendency. It was as if the golem had laid a ruler across the town and taken every road and alley that went in the right direction. She came to a short blind alley. There were some warehouse gates at the end. She sniffed. There were plenty of other smells, too. Dough. Paint, Grease. Pine resin. Sharp, loud, fresh scents. She sniffed again. Cloth? Wool? There was a confusion of footprints in the dirt. Large footprints. The small part of Angua that always walked on two legs saw that the footprints coming out were on top of the footprints going in. She snuffled around. Up to twelve creatures, each with their own very distinctive smell - the smell of merchandise rather than living creatures - had all very recently gone down the stairwell. And all twelve had come back up. She went down the steps and was met by an impenetrable barrier. A door. Paws were no good at doorknobs. She peered over the top of the steps. There was no one around. Only the fog hung between the buildings. She concentrated and changed, leaned against the wall for a moment until the world stopped spinning, and tried the door. There was a large cellar beyond. Even with a werewolf s eyesight there wasn't much to see. She had to stay human. She thought better when she was human. Unfortunately, here and now, as a human, the thought occupying her mind in no small measure was that she was naked. Anyone finding a naked woman in their cellar would be bound to ask questions. They might not even bother with questions, even ones like 'Please?' Angua could certainly deal with that situation, but she preferred not to have to. It was so difficult explaining away the shape of the wounds. No time to waste, then. The walls were covered in writing. Big letters, small letters, but all in that neat script which the golems used. There were phrases in chalk and paint and charcoal, and in some cases simply cut into the stone itself. They reached from floor to ceiling, criss-crossing one another over and over again so often that it was almost impossible to make out what any of them were meant to say. Here and there a word or two stood out in the jumble of letters: ...SHALT NOT...WHAT HE DOES IS NOT...RAGE AT THE CREATOR ...WOE UNTO THE MASTERLESS...WORDS IN THE...CLAY OF OUR...LET MY...BRING US TO FRE... The dust in the middle of the floor was scuffed, as if a number of people had been milling around. She crouched down and rubbed the dirt, occasionally sniffing her finger. Smells. They were industrial smells. She hardly needed special senses to detect them. A golem didn't smell of anything except clay and whatever it was it was working with at the time . . . And . . . something rolled under her fingers. It was a length of wood, only a couple of inches long. A matchstick, without a head. A few minutes' investigation found another ten, lying here and there as if they'd been idly dropped. There was also half a stick, tossed away some distance from the others. Her night vision was fading. But sense of smell lasted much longer. Smells were strong on the sticks - the same cocktail of odours that had trailed into this damp room. But the slaughterhouse smell she'd come to associate with Dorfl was on only the broken piece. She sat back on her haunches and looked at the little heap of wood. Twelve people (twelve people in messy jobs) had come here. They hadn't stayed long. They'd had a ... a discussion: the writing on the wall. They'd done something involving eleven matches (just the wooden part - they hadn't been dipped to get the head. Maybe the pine-smelling golem worked in a match factory?) plus one broken match. Then they'd all left and gone their separate ways. Dorfl's way had taken him straight to the main Watch House to give himself up. Why? She sniffed at the piece of broken match again. There was no doubt about that cocktail of blood and meat smells. Dorfl had given himself up for murder . . . She stared at the writing on the wall, and shivered.     'Cheers, Fred,' said Nobby, raising his pint. 'We can put the money back in the Tea Club tomorrow. No one'll miss it,' said Sergeant Colon. 'Anyway, this comes under the heading of an emergency.' Corporal Nobbs looked despondently into his glass. People often did this in the Mended Drum, when the immediate thirst had been slaked and for the first time they could take a good look at what they were drinking. 'What am I going to do?' he moaned. 'If you're a nob you got to wear coronets and long robes and that. Got to cost a mint, that kind of stuff. And there's stuffyou've got to do.' He took another long swig. ' 'S called knobless obleeje.' 'Nobblyesse obligay,' corrected Colon. 'Yeah. Means you got to keep your end up in society. Giving money to charities. Being kind to the poor. Passing your ole clothes to your gardener when there's still some good wear left in 'em. I know about that. My uncle was butler to ole Lady Selachii.' 'Ain't got a gardener,' said Nobby gloomily. 'Ain't got a garden. Ain't got 'ny ole clothes except what I'm wearin'.' He took another swig. 'She gave her ole clothes to the gardener, did she?' Colon nodded. 'Yeah. We were always a bit puzzled about that gardener.' He caught the barman's eye. 'Two more pints of Winkles, Ron.' He glanced at Nobby. His old friend looked more dejected than he'd ever seen him. They'd have to see this thing through together. 'Better make that two for Nobby, too,' he added. 'Cheers, Fred.' Sergeant Colon's eyebrows raised as one pint was emptied almost in one go. Nobby put the mug down a little unsteadily. 'Wouldn't be so bad if there was a pot of cash,' Nobby said, picking up the other mug. 'I thought you couldn't be a nob without bein' a rich bugger. I thought they gave you a big wad with one hand and banged the crown on your head with the other. Don't make sense, bein' nobby and poor. S'worst of both wurble.' He drained the mug and banged it down. 'Common 'n' rich, yeah, that I could hurble.' The barman leaned over to Sergeant Colon. 'What's up with the corporal? He's a half-pint man. That's eight pints he's had.' Fred Colon leaned closer and spoke out of the corner of his mouth. 'Keep it to yourself, Ron, but it's because he's a peer.' 'Is that a fact? I'll go and put down some fresh sawdust.'     In the Watch House, Sam Vimes prodded the matches. He didn't ask Angua if she were sure. Angua could smell if it was Wednesday. 'So who were the others?' he said. 'Other golems?' 'It's hard to tell from the tracks,' said Angua, 'But I think so. I'd have followed them, but I thought I ought to come right back here.' 'What makes you think they were golems?' 'The footprints. And golems have no smell,' she said. 'They pick up the smells associated with whatever they're doing. That's all they smell of. . .' She thought of the wall of words. 'And they had a long debate,' she said. 'A golem argument. In writing. It got pretty heated, I think.' She thought about the wall again. 'Some of them got quite emphatic,' she added, remembering the size of some of the lettering. 'If they were human, they'd have been shouting . . .' Vimes stared gloomily at the matches laid out before him. Eleven bits of wood, and a twelfth broken in two. You didn't need to be any kind of genius to see what had been going on. 'They drew lots,' he said. 'And Dorfl lost.' He sighed. 'This is getting worse,' he said. 'Does anyone know how many golems there are in the city?' 'No,' said Carrot. 'Hard to find out. No one's made any for centuries, but they don't wear out.' 'No one makes them?' 'It's banned, sir. The priests are pretty hot on that, sir. They say it's making life, and that's something only gods are supposed to do. But they put up with the ones that are still around because, well, they're so useful. Some are walled up or in treadmills or at the bottom of shafts. Doing messy tasks, you know, in places where it's dangerous to go. They do all the really mucky jobs. I suppose there could be hundreds . . .' 'Hundreds?' said Vimes. 'And now they meet secretly and make plots? Good grief! Right. We ought to destroy the lot of them.' 'Why?' 'You like the idea of them having secrets? I mean, good grief, trolls and dwarfs, fine, even the undead are alive in a way, even if it is a bloody awful way' -Vimes caught Angua's eye and went on — 'for the most part. But these things? They'rejust things that do work. It's like having a bunch of shovels meeting for a chat!' 'Er . . . there was something else, sir,' said Angua slowly. 'In the cellar?' 'Yes. Er ... but it's hard to explain. It was a ... feeling.' Vimes shrugged non-committally. He'd learned not to scoff at Angua's feelings. She always knew where Carrot was, for one thing. If she were in the Watch House you could tell if he were coming up the street by the way she turned to look at the door. 'Yes?' 'Like . . . deep grief, sir. Terrible, terrible sadness. Er.' Vimes nodded, and pinched the bridge of his nose. It seemed to have been a long day and it was far from over yet. He really, really needed a drink. The world was distorted enough as it was. When you saw it through the bottom of a glass, it all came back into focus. 'Have you had anything to eat today, sir?' said Angua. 'I had a bit of breakfast,' muttered Vimes. 'You know that word Sergeant Colon uses?' 'What? "Manky"?' 'That's how you look. If you're staying here at least let's have some coffee and send out for figgins.' Vimes hesitated at that. He'd always imagined that manky was how your mouth felt after three days on a regurgitated diet. It was horrible to think that you could look like that. Angua reached for the old coffee tin that represented the Watch's tea kitty. It was surprisingly easy to lift. 'Hey? There should be at least twenty-five dollars in here,' she said. 'Nobby collected it only yesterday . . .' She turned the tin upside-down. A very small dog-end dropped out. 'Not even an IOU?' said Carrot despondently. 'An IOU? This is Nobby we're talking about.' 'Oh. Of course.'     It had gone very quiet in the Mended Drum. Happy Hour had been passed with no more than a minor fight. Now everyone was watching Unhappy Hour. There was a forest of mugs in front of Nobby. 'I mean, I mean, what's it worth whenallsaidan-done?' he said. 'You could flog it,' said Ron. 'Good point,' said Sergeant Colon. 'There's plenty o' rich folks who'd give a sack of cash for a title. I mean folks that's already got the big house and that. They'd give anything to be as nobby as you, Nobby.' The ninth pint stopped half-way to Nobby's lips. 'Could be worth thousands of dollars,' said Ron encouragingly. 'At the very least,' said Colon. They'd fight over it.' 'You play your cards right and you could retire on something like that,' said Ron. The mug remained stationary. Various expressions fought their way around the lumps and excrescences of Nobby's face, suggesting the terrible battle within, 'Oh, they would, would they?' he said at last. Sergeant Colon tilted unsteadily away. There was an edge in Nobby's voice he hadn't heard before. Then you could be rich and common just like you said,' said Ron, who did not have quite the same eye for mental weather changes. 'Posh folks'd be falling over themselves for it.' 'Sell m' birthright for a spot of massage, is that it?' said Nobby. 'It's "a pot of message",' said Sergeant Colon. 'It's "a mess of pottage",' said a bystander, anxious not to break the flow. 'Hah! Well, I'll tell you,' said Nobby, swaying, 'there's some things that can't be sole. Hah! Hah! Who streak my prurse streals trasph, right?' 'Yeah, it's the trashiest looking purse I ever saw,' said a voice. '—what is a mess of pottage, anyway?' "Cos . . . what good'd a lot of moneneney do me, hey?' The clientele looked puzzled. This seemed to be a question on the lines of 'Alcohol, is it nice?', or 'Hard work, do you want to do it?'. '—what's messy about it, then?' 'We - ell,' said a brave soul, uncertainly, 'you could use it to buy a big house, lots of grub and. . . drink and . . . women and that.' That's wha' it takes to make a man happppeyey, is it?' said Nobby, glassy-eyed. His fellow-drinkers just stared. This was a metaphysical maze, 'Well, I'll tell you," said Nobby, the swaying now so regular that he looked like an inverted pendulum, 'all that stuffs nothing, nothing. I tell you, compared to pride inna man's linneneage . . . cage.' 'Linneneageeage?' said Sergeant Colon. 'Ancescestors and that,' said Nobby. "T means I've got ancescestors and that, which's more'n you lot've got!' Sergeant Colon choked on his pint. 'Everyone's got ancestors,' said the barman calmly. 'Otherwise they wouldn't be here.' Nobby gave him a glassy stare and tried unsuccessfully to focus. 'Right!' he said, eventually. 'Right! Only . . . only I've got more of 'em, d'y'see? The blood of bloody kings is in these veins, am I right?' Temporarily,' said a voice. There was laughter, but it had an anticipatory ring to it that Colon had learned to respect and fear. It reminded him of two things: (1) he had got only six weeks to retirement, and (2) it had been quite a long time since he'd been to the lavatory. Nobby delved into his pocket and pulled out a battered scroll. 'Y'see this?' he said, unrolling it with difficulty on the bar. 'Y'see it? I've got a right to arm bears, me. See here? It says "Earl", right? That's me. You could, you could, you could have my head up over the door.' 'Could be,' said the barman, eyeing the crowd. 'I mean, y'could change t'name o' this place, call it the Earl of Ankh, and I'd come in and drink here reg'lar, whaddya say?' said Nobby. 'News gets around an earl drinks here, business will go right up. And I wouldn't'n't'n't chargeyouapenny, how-aboutit? People'd say, dat's a high-class pub, is that, Lord de Nobbes drinks there, that's a place with a bit of tone.' Someone grabbed Nobby by the throat. Colon didn't recognize the grabber. He was just one of the scarred, ill shaven regulars whose function it was, around about this time of an evening, to start opening bottles with his teeth or, if the evening was going really well, with somebody else's teeth. 'So we ain't good enough for you, is that what you're saying?' the man demanded. Nobby waved his scroll. His mouth opened to frame words like - Sergeant Colon just knew -'Unhand me, you low-born oaf.' With tremendous presence of mind and absence of any kind of common sense, Sergeant Colon said: 'His lordship wants everyone to have a drink with him!'     Compared to the Mended Drum, the Bucket in Gleam Street was an oasis of frigid calm. The Watch had adopted it as their own, as a silent temple to the art of getting drunk. It wasn't that it sold particularly good beer, because it didn't. But it did serve it quickly, and quietly, and gave credit. It was one place where Watchmen didn't have to see things or be disturbed. No one could sink alcohol in silence like a Watchman who'd just come off duty after eight hours on the street. It was as much protection as his helmet and breastplate. The world didn't hurt so much. And Mr Cheese the owner was a good listener. He listened to things like 'Make that a double' and 'Keep them coming'. He also said the right things, like 'Credit? Certainly, officer'. Watchmen paid their tab or got a lecture from Captain Carrot. Vimes sat gloomily behind a glass of lemonade. He wanted one drink, and understood precisely why he wasn't going to have one. One drink ended up arriving in a dozen glasses. But knowing this didn't make it any better. Most of the day shift were in here now, plus one or two men who were on their day off. Scummy as the place was, he liked it here. With the buzz of other people around him, he didn't seem to get in the way of his own thoughts. One reason that Mr Cheese had allowed his pub to become practically the city's fifth Watch House was the protection this offered. Watchmen were quiet drinkers, on the whole. They just went from vertical to horizontal with the minimum amount of fuss, without starting any major fights, and without damaging the fixtures overmuch. And no one ever tried to rob him. Watchmen got really intense about having their drinking disturbed. And he was therefore surprised when the door was flung open and three men rushed in, flourishing crossbows. 'Don't nobody move! Anyone moves and they're dead!' The robbers stopped at the bar. To their own surprise their arrival didn't seem to have caused much of a stir. 'Oh, for heaven's sake, will someone shut that door?' growled Vimes. A Watchman near the door did so. 'And bolt it,' Vimes added. The three thieves looked around. As their eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, they received a general impression of armourality, with strong overtones of helmetness. But none of it was moving. It was all watching them. 'You boys new in town?' said Mr Cheese, buffing a glass. The boldest of the three waved his bow under the barman's nose. 'All the money right now!' he screamed. 'Otherwise,' he said, to the room in general, 'you've got a dead barman.' 'Plenty of other bars in town, boyo,' said a voice. Mr Cheese didn't look up from the glass he was polishing. 'I know that was you, Constable Thighbiter,' he said calmly. There's two dollars and thirty pence on your slate, thank you very much.' The thieves drew closer together. Bars shouldn't act like this. And they fancied they could hear the faint sliding noises of assorted weapons being drawn from various sheaths. 'Haven't I seen you before?' said Carrot. 'Oh gods, it's him,' moaned one of the men. The bread-thrower!' 'I thought Mr Ironcrust was taking you to the Thieves' Guild,' Carrot went on. There was a bit of an argument about taxes . . .' 'Don't tell him!' Carrot tapped his head. The tax forms!' he said. 'I expect Mr Ironcrust is worried I've forgotten about them!' The thieves were now so close together they looked like a fat six-armed man with a very large bill for hats. 'Er ... Watchmen aren't allowed to kill people, right?' said one of them. 'Not while we're on duty,' said Vimes. The boldest of the three moved suddenly, grabbed Angua and pulled her upright. 'We walk out of here unharmed or the girl gets it, all right?' he snarled. Someone sniggered. 'I hope you're not going to kill anyone,' said Carrot. That's up to us!' 'Sorry, was I talking to you?' said Carrot. 'Don't worry, I'll be fine,' said Angua. She looked around to make sure Cheery wasn't there, and then sighed. 'Come on, gentlemen, let's get it over with.' 'Don't play with your food!' said a voice from the crowd. There were one or two giggles until Carrot turned in his seat, whereupon everyone was suddenly intensely interested in their drinks. 'It's okay,' said Angua quietly. Aware that something was out of kilter, but not quite sure what it was, the thieves edged back to the door. No one moved as they unbolted it and, still holding Angua, stepped out into the fog, shutting the door behind them. 'Hadn't we better help?' said a constable who was new to the Watch. They don't deserve help,' said Vimes. There was a clank of armour and then a long, deep growl, right outside in the street. And a scream. Ancl then another scream. And a third scream, modulated with 'NONONOnonononononoNO! . . . aarghaargh aargh!' Something heavy hit the door. Vimes turned back to Carrot. 'You and Constable Angua,' he said. 'You ... er ... get along all right?' 'Fine, sir/ said Carrot. 'Some people might think that, er, there might be, er, problems . . .' There was a thud, and then a faint bubbling noise. 'We work around them, sir,' said Carrot, raising his voice slightly. 'I heard that her father's not very happy about her working here . . .' They don't have much law up in Uberwald, sir. They think it's for weak societies. The baron's not a very civic-minded man.' 'He's pretty bloodthirsty, from what I've heard.' 'She wants to stay in the Watch, sir. She likes meeting people.' From outside came another gurgle. Fingernails scrabbled at a windowpane. Then their owner disappeared abruptly from view. 'Well, it's not for me to judge,' said Vimes. 'No, sir.' After a few moments of silence the door opened, slowly. Angua walked in, adjusting her clothes, and sat down. All the Watchmen in the room suddenly took a second course of advanced beer-study. 'Er ..." Carrot began. 'Flesh wounds,' said Angua. 'But one of them did shoot one of the others in the leg by accident.' ‘I think you'd better put it in your report as "self-inflicted wounds while resisting arrest",' said Vimes. 'Yes, sir,' said Angua. 'Not all of them,' said Carrot. 'They tried to rob our bar and take a wer—Angua hostage,' said Vimes. 'Oh, I see what you mean, sir,' said Carrot. 'Self-inflicted. Yes. Of course.'     It had gone quiet in the Mended Drum. This was because it is usually very hard to be both loud and unconscious. Sergeant Colon was impressed at his own cleverness. Throwing a punch could stop a fight, of course, but in this case it had a quarter of rum, gin and sixteen chopped lemons floating in it. Some people were still upright, however. They were the serious drinkers, who drank as if there was no tomorrow and rather hoped this would be the case. Fred Colon had reached the convivial drunk stage. He turned to the man beside him. ' 'S good here, isn't it,' he managed. 'What'm I gonna tell me wife, that's what I want to know . . .' moaned the man. 'Dunno. Say you've bin bin bin working late,' said Colon. 'An' suck a peppermint before you goes home, that usually works—' 'Working late? Hah! I've bin given the sack! Me! A craftsman! Fifteen years at Spadger and Williams, right, and then they go bust 'cos of Carry undercutting 'em and I get a job at Carry's and, bang, I'm out of a job there, too! "Surplus to requirements"! Bloody golems! Forcing real people out of a job! What they wanna work for? They got no mouth to feed, hah. But the damn thing goes at it so fast you can't see its bloody arms movin'!' 'Shame.' 'Smash 'em up, that's what I say. I mean, we had a golem at S an' W's but ole Zhlob just used to plod along, y'know, not buzz away like a blue-arsed fly. You wanna watch it, mate, they'll have yourjob next.' 'Stoneface wouldn't stand fr it,' said Colon, undulating gently. 'Any chance of a job with you lot, then?' 'Dunno,' said Colon. The man seemed to have become two men. 'What's it you do?' Tm a Wick-Dipper and End-Teaser, mate,' they said. 'I can see that's a useful trade.' 'Here you go, Fred,' said the barman, tapping him on the shoulder and putting a piece of paper in front of him. Colon watched with interest as figures danced back and forth. He tried to focus on the one at the bottom, but it was too big to take in. 'What's this, then? 'His imperial lordship's bar bill,' said the barman. 'Don't be daft, no one can drink that much . . . 'm not payin'!' 'I'm including breakages, mind you.' 'Yeah? Like what?' The barman pulled a heavy hickory stick from its hiding place under the bar. 'Arms? Legs? Suit yourself,' he said. 'Oh, come on, Ron, you've known me for years!' 'Yes, Fred, you've always been a good customer, so what I'll do is, I'll let you shut your eyes first.' 'But that's all the money I've got!' The barman grinned. 'Lucky one for you, eh?'     Cheery Littlebottom leaned against the corridor wall outside her privy and wheezed. It was something alchemists learned to do early in their career. As her tutors had said, there were two signs of a good alchemist: the Athletic and the Intellectual. A good alchemist of the first sort was someone who could leap over the bench and be on the far side of a safely thick wall in three seconds, and a good alchemist of the second sort was someone who knew exactly when to do this. The equipment didn't help. She scrounged what she could from the guild, but a real alchemical laboratory should be full of the kind of glassware that looked as if it were produced during the Guild of Glassblowers All-Comers Hiccuping Contest. A proper alchemist did not have to run tests using as her beaker a mug with a picture of a teddy-bear on it, which Corporal Nobbs was probably going to be very upset about when he found it missing. When she judged that the fumes had cleared she ventured back into her tiny room. That was another thing. Her books on alchemy were marvellous objects, every page a work of the engraver's art, but they nowhere contained instructions like 'Be sure to open a window'. They did have instructions like 'Adde Aqua Quirmis to the Zinc untile Rising Gas Yse Vigorously Evolved', but never added 'Don't Doe Thys Atte Home' or even 'And Say Fare-thee-Welle to Thy Eyebrows'. Anyway . . . The glassware remained innocent of the brown-black sheen that, according to The Compound of Alchemic, would indicate arsenic in the sample. She'd tried every type of food and drink she could find in the palace pantries, and pressed into service every bottle and jar she could discover in the Watch House. She tried one more time with what said on the packet it was Sample #2. Looked like a smear of cheese. Cheese? The various fumes thronging around her head were making her slow. She must have taken some cheese samples. She was pretty sure Sample #17 had been some Lancre Blue Vein, which had reacted vigorously with the acid, blown a small hole in the ceiling and covered half the work-bench with a dark green substance that was setting like tar. She tested this one anyway. A few minutes later she was scrabbling furiously through her notebook. The first sample she'd taken from the pantry (one portion of duck pate) was down here as Sample #3. What about #1 and #2? No, #1 had been the white clay from Misbegot Bridge, so what had been #2? She found it. But that couldn't be right! She looked up at the glass tube. Metallic arsenic grinned back at her. She'd retained a bit of the sample. She could test again, but . . . perhaps it would be better to tell someone . . . She hurried along to the main office, where a troll was on duty. 'Where's Commander Vimes?' The troll grinned. 'In der Gleam . . . Little-bottom. ' 'Thank you.' The troll turned back to address a worried-looking monk in a brown cassock. 'And?' he said. 'Best if he tells it himself,' said the monk. 'I only work on the next bench.' He put a small jar of dust on the desk. It had a bow tie around it. 'I want to complain most emphatically,' said the dust, in a shrill little voice. 'I was working there only five minutes and then splash. It's going to take days to get back into shape!' 'Working where?' said the troll. 'Nonesuch Ecclesiastical Supplies,' said the worried monk, helpfully. 'Holy water section,' said the vampire.     'You've found arsenic?' said Vimes. 'Yes, sir. Lots. The sample's full of it. But ..." 'Well?' Cheery looked at her feet. 'I tried my process again with a test sample, sir, and I'm sure I'm doing it right . . .' 'Good. What was it in?' 'That's just it, sir. It wasn't in anything from the palace. Because I'd got a bit confused and tested the stuffl found under Father Tubelcek's fingernails, sir.' 'What? There was grease under his nails, sir, and I thought maybe it could've come from whoever attacked him. Off an apron or something . . . I've still got some left if you want a second opinion, sir. I wouldn't blame you.' 'Why would the old man be handling poison?' said Carrot. 'I thought he might have scratched the murderer,' said Cheery. 'You know ... put up a fight . . .' 'With the Arsenic Monster?' said Angua. 'Oh, gods,' said Vimes. 'What time is it?' 'Bingely bingely beep bong!' 'Oh, damn 'It's nine of the clock,' said the organizer, poking its head out of Vimes's pocket. ' "I was unhappy because I had no shoes until I met a man with no feet." ' The Watchmen exchanged glances. 'What?' said Vimes, very carefully. 'People like it if I occasionally come up with a little aphorism or inspiring Thought For The Day,' said the imp. 'So how did you meet this man with no feet?' said Vimes. 'I didn't actually meet him,' said the imp. 'It was a general metaphorical statement.' 'Well, that's it, then,' said Vimes. 'If you'd met him you could have asked him if he had any boots he didn't have any use for.' There was a squeak as he pushed the imp back into its box. 'There's more, sir,' said Cheery. 'Go on,' said Vimes wearily. 'And I had a careful look at the clay we found at the murder scene,' said Cheery. 'Igneous said it had a lot of grog in it - old powdered pottery. Well... I chipped a bit off Dorfl to compare and I can't be sure but I got the iconograph demon to paint really small details and ... I think there's some clay just like his in there. He's got a lot of iron oxide in his clay.' Vimes sighed. All around them people were drinking alcohol. One drink would make it all so clear. 'Any of you know what any of this means?' he said. Carrot and Angua shook their heads. 'Is it supposed to make sense if we know how all the pieces fit together?' Vimes demanded, raising his voice. 'Like pieces of a jigsaw, sir?' Cheery ventured. 'Yes!' said Vimes, so loudly that the room went quiet. 'Now all we need is the corner bit with the piece of sky and the leaves and it'll all be one big picture?' 'It's been a long day for all of us, sir,' said Carrot. Vimes sagged. 'Okay,' he said. Tomorrow... I want you, Carrot, to check on the golems in the city. If they're up to something I want to know what it is. And you, Littlebottom . . . you look everywhere in the old man's house for more arsenic. I wish I could believe that you'll find any.'     Angua had volunteered to walk Littlebottom back to her lodgings. The dwarf was surprised that the men let her do this. After all, it'd mean that Angua would then have to walk on home by herself. 'Aren't you afraid?' Cheery said as they ambled through the damp clouds of fog. 'Nope.' 'But I imagine muggers and cut-throats would be out in a fog like this. And you said you lived in the Shades.' 'Oh, yes. But I haven't been bothered lately.' 'Ah, perhaps they're frightened of the uniform?' 'Possibly,' said Angua. 'Probably they've learned respect.' 'You may be right.' 'Er ... excuse me ... but are you and Captain Carrot . . . ?' Angua waited politely. '. . . Er . . .' 'Oh, yes,' said Angua, taking pity. 'We're er. But I stay at Mrs Cake's boarding house because you need your own space in a city like this.' And an understanding landlady sympathetic to those with special needs, she added to herself. Like doorhandles that a paw could operate, and a window left open on moonlit nights. 'You've got to have somewhere where you can be yourself. Anyway, the Watch House smells of socks.' 'I'm staying with my Uncle Armstrangler,' said Cheery. 'It's not very nice there. People talk about mining most of the time.' 'Don't you?' 'There's not a lot you can say about mining. "I mine in my mine and what's mine is mine," ' said Cheery in a singsong voice. 'And then they go on about gold which, frankly, is a lot duller than people think.' 'I thought dwarfs loved gold,' said Angua. They just say that to get it into bed.' 'Are you sure you're a dwarf? Sorry. That was a joke.' 'There must be more interesting things. Hair. Clothes. People.' 'Good grief. You mean girl talk? 'I don't know, I've never talked girl talk before,' said Cheery. 'Dwarfs just talk.' 'It's like that in the Watch, too,' said Angua. 'You can be any sex you like provided you act male. There's no men and women in the Watch, just a bunch of lads. You'll soon learn the language. Basically it's how much beer you supped last night, how strong the curry was you had afterwards, and where you were sick. Just think egotesticle. You'll soon get the hang of it. And you'll have to be prepared for sexually explicit jokes in the Watch House.' Cheery blushed. 'Mind you, that seems to have ended now,' said Angua. 'Why? Did you complain?' 'No, after I joined in it all seemed to stop/ said Angua, 'And, you know, they didn't laugh? Not even when I did the hand gestures too? I thought that was unfair. Mind you, some of them were quite small gestures.' 'There's no help for it, I'll have to move out,' sighed Cheery. 'I feel all... wrong.' Angua looked down at the little figure trudging along beside her. She recognized the symptoms. Everyone needed their own space, just like Angua did, and sometimes that space was inside their heads. And she liked Cheery, oddly enough. Possibly it was because of her earnestness. Or the fact that she was the only person apart from Carrot who didn't look slightly frightened when they talked to her. And that was because she didn't know. Angua wanted to preserve that ignorance as a small precious thing, but she could tell when someone needed a little change in their lives. 'We're going quite close to Elm Street,' she said, carefully. 'Just, er, drop in for a while. I've got some stuff you could borrow . . .' I won't be needing it, she told herself. When I go, I won't be able to carry much.     Constable Downspout watched the fog. Watching was, after staying in one place, the thing he did best. But he was also good at keeping quite still. Not making any noise whatsoever was another of his best features. When it came to doing absolutely nothing at all he was among the finest. But it was keeping completely motionless in one place that was his forte. If there were a roll-call for the world's champion non-movers, he wouldn't even turn up. Now, chin on his hands, he watched the fog. The clouds had settled somewhat so that up here, six storeys above the streets, it was possible to believe you were on a beach at the edge of a cold, moonlit sea. The occasional tall tower or steeple rose out of the clouds, but all sounds were muffled and pulled in on themselves. Midnight came and went. Constable Downspout watched, and thought about pigeons. Constable Downspout had very few desires in life, and almost all of them involved pigeons.     A group of figures lurched, staggered or in one case rolled through the fog like the Four Horsemen of a small Apocalypse. One had a duck on his head, and because he was almost entirely sane except for this one strange particular he was known as the Duck Man. One coughed and expectorated repeatedly, and hence was called Coffin Henry. One, a legless man on a small wheeled trolley, was for no apparent reason called Arnold Sideways. And the fourth, for some very good reasons indeed, was Foul Ole Ron. Ron had a small greyish-brown, torn-eared terrier on the end of a string, although in truth it would be hard for an observer to know exactly who was leading whom and who, when push came to shove, would be the one to fold at the knees if the other one shouted 'Sit!' Because, although trained canines as aids for those bereft of sight, and even of hearing, have frequently been used throughout the universe, Foul Ole Ron was the first person ever to own a Thinking-Brain Dog. The beggars, led by the dog, were heading for the dark arch of Misbegot Bridge, which they called Home. At least, one of them called it 'Home'; the others respectively called it 'Haaawrk haaawrk HRRaawrk ptui!', 'Heheheh! Whoops!' and 'Buggrit, millennium hand and shrimp!' As they stumbled along the riverside they passed a can from hand to hand, drinking appreciatively and occasionally belching. The dog stopped. The beggars shunted to a halt behind it. A figure came towards them along the riverside. 'Ye gods!' 'Ptui!' 'Whoops!' 'Buggrit?' The beggars flung themselves against the wall as the pale figure lurched past. It was clutching at its head as if trying to lift itself off the ground by its ears, and then occasionally banging its head against nearby buildings. While they watched, it pulled a metal mooring post out of the cobbles and started to hit itself over the head. Eventually the cast iron shattered. The figure dropped the stub, flung back its head, opened a mouth from which red light spilled, and roared like a bull in distress. Then it staggered on into the darkness. 'There's that golem again,' said the Duck Man. 'The white one.' 'Heheh, I gets heads like that myself, some mornings,' said Arnold Sideways. 'I knows about golems,' said Coffin Henry, spitting expertly and hitting a beetle climbing the wall twenty feet away. 'They ain't s'posed to have a voice.' 'Buggrit/ said Foul Ole Ron. 'Dang the twigger f r'a bang at the fusel, and shrimp, 'cos the worm's on the other boot! See if he don't.' 'He meant it's the same one we saw the other day,' said the dog. 'After that ole priest got topped.' 'Do you think we should tell someone?' said the Duck Man. The dog shook its head. 'Nah,' it said. 'We got a cushy number down here, no sense in spoiling it.' The five of them staggered on into the damp shadows. 'I hate bloody golems, takin' our jobs . . .' 'We ain't got jobs.' 'See what I mean?' 'What's for supper?' 'Mud and ole boots. HRRaawrk ptui!' 'Millennium hand and shrimp, I sez.' '’m glad I've got a voice. I can speak up for meself.' 'It's time you fed your duck.' 'What duck?'     The fog glowed and sizzled around Five and Seven Yard. Flames roared up and all but set the thick clouds alight. Spitting liquid iron cooled in its moulds. Hammers rang out around the workshops. The ironmasters didn't work by the clock, but by the more demanding physics of molten metal. Even though it was nearly midnight, Stronginthearm's Iron Founders, Beaters and General Forging was still bustling. There were many Stronginthearms in Ankh-Morpork. It was a very common dwarf name. That had been a major consideration for Thomas Smith when he'd adopted it by official deed poll. The scowling dwarf holding a hammer which adorned his sign was a mere figment of the signpainter's imagination. People thought 'dwarfmade' was better, and Thomas Smith had decided not to argue. The Committee for Equal Heights had objected but things had mired somewhat because, firstly, most of the actual Committee was human, since dwarfs were generally too busy to worry about that sort of thing,[13] and in any case their position hinged on pointing out that Mr Stronginthearm né Smith was too tall, which was clearly a sizeist discrimination and technically illegal under the Committee's own rules. In the meantime Thomas had let his beard grow, wore an iron helmet if he thought anyone official was around, and put up his prices by twenty pence on the dollar. The drop hammers thumped, all in a row, powered by the big ox treadmill. There were swords to beat out and panels to be shaped. Sparks erupted. Stronginthearm took off his helmet (the Committee had been around again) ancl wiped the inside. 'Dibbuk? Where the hell are you?' A sensation of filled space made him turn. The foundry's golem was standing a few inches behind him, the forge light glowing on his dark red clay. 'I told you not to do that, didn't I?' Stronginthearm shouted above the din. The golem held up its slate. YES. 'You've gone and done all your holy day stuff? You were away too long!' SORROW. 'Well, now you're back with us, go and take over on Number Three hammer and send Mr Vincent up to my office, right?' YES. Stronginthearm climbed the stairs to his office. He turned at the top to look back across the red-lit foundry floor. He saw Dibbuk walk over to the hammer and hold up a slate for the foreman. He saw Vincent the foreman walk away. He saw Dibbuk take the sword-blank that was being shaped and hold it in place for a few blows, then hurl it aside. Stronginthearm hurried back down the steps. When he was half-way down Dibbuk had laid his head on the anvil. When Stronginthearm reached the bottom the hammer struck for the first time. When he was half-way across the ash-crusted floor, other workers scurrying after him, the hammer struck for the second time. As he reached Dibbuk the hammer struck for the third time. The glow faded in the golem's eyes. A crack appeared across the impassive face. The hammer went back up for the fourth time— 'Duck!' screamed Stronginthearm— —and then there was nothing but pottery. When the thunder had died away, the foundry master got to his feet and brushed himself off. Dust and wreckage were strewn across the floor. The hammer had jumped its bearings and was lying by the anvil in a heap of golem shards. Stronginthearm gingerly picked up a piece of a foot, tossed it aside, and then reached down again and pulled a slate out of the wreckage. He read:   THE OLD MEN HELPED US! THOU SHALT NOT KILL! CLAY OF MY CLAY! SHAME. SORROW.   His foreman looked over Stronginthearm's shoulder. 'What did it go and do that for?' 'How should I know?' snapped Stronginthearm. 'I mean, it brought the tea round this afternoon as normal as anything. Then it went off for a coupla hours, and now this . . .' Stronginthearm shrugged. A golem was a golem and that was all there was to it, but the recollection of that bland face positioning itself under the giant hammer had shaken him. 'I heard the other day the sawmill in Dimwell Street wouldn't mind selling the one it's got,' said the foreman. 'It sawed up a mahogany trunk into matchsticks, or something. You want I should go and have a word?' Stronginthearm looked at the slate again. Dibbuk had never been very wordy. He'd carry red-hot iron, hammer sword-blanks with his fists, clean out clinkers from a smelter still too hot for a man to touch . . . and never say a word. Of course, he couldn't say any words, but Dibbuk had always given the impression that there were none he'd particularly wanted to say in any case. He just worked. These were the most words he'd ever written at any one time. They spoke to Stronginthearm of black distress, and a mind that would have been screaming if it could only have uttered a sound. Which was daft! The things couldn't commit suicide. 'Boss?' said the foreman. 'I said, you want me to get another one?' Stronginthearm skimmed the slate away and, with a feeling of relief, watched it shatter against the wall. 'No,' he said. 'Just clear this thing up. And get the bloody hammer fixed.'     Sergeant Colon, after some considerable effort, managed to get his head higher than the gutter. 'You - you all right, Corporal Lord de Nobbes?' he mumbled. 'Dunno, Fred. Whose face is this?' '’S mine, Nobby.' Thank gods for that, I thought it was me . . .' Colon fell back. 'We're lyin' in the gutter, Nobby,' he moaned. 'Ooo.' 'We're all lyin' in the gutter, Fred. But some of us're lookin' at the stars 'Well, I'm lookin' at your face, Nobby. Stars'd be a lot better, believe you me. C'mon . . .' With several false starts they both managed to get upright, mainly by pulling themselves up one another. 'Where're're're we, Nobby?' '’m sure we left the Drum,. . . 've I got a sheet over m'head?' 'It's the fog, Nobby.' 'What about these legs down here?' 'I reckon them's your legs, Nobby. I've got mine.' 'Right. Right. Ooo ... I reckon I drunk a lot, Sarge.' 'Drunk as a lord, eh?' Nobby reached gingerly up to his helmet. Someone had put a paper coronet around it. His questing hand found a dog-end behind his ear. It was that unpleasant hour of the drinking day when, after a few hours' quality gutter-time, you're beginning to feel the retribution of sobriety while still being drunk enough to make it worse. 'How'd we get here, Sarge?' Colon started to scratch his head and stopped because of the noise. 'I reckon . . .' he said, winnowing the frazzled shreds of his short-term memory, 'I... reckon. . . seems to me there was something about stormin' the palace and demandin' your birthright. . .' Nobby choked and spat out the cigarette. 'We didn't do that, did we?' 'You was shouting we ought to do it . . .' 'Oh, gods . . .' moaned Nobby. 'But I reckon you threw up around that time.' 'That's a relief, anyway.' 'Well... it was all over Grabber Hoskins. But he tripped over someone before he could get us.' Colon suddenly patted his pockets. 'And I've still got the tea money,' he said. Another cloud of memory scudded across the sunshine of oblivion. 'Well. . . three pennies of it. . .' The urgency of this got through to Nobby. Thruppence?' 'Yeah, well . . . after you started orderin' all them expensive drinks for the whole bar . . . well, you din't have no money and it was either me payin' for them or . . .' Colon moved his finger across his throat and went: 'Kssssh!' 'You tellin' me we paid for Happy Hour in the Drum?' 'Not so much Happy Hour,' said Colon miserably. 'More sort of Ecstatic One-Hundred-and-Fifty Minutes. I didn't even know you could buy gin in pints.' Nobby tried to focus on the fog. 'No one can drink gin by the pint, Sarge.' 'That's what I kept sayin', and would you listen?' Nobby sniffed. 'We're close to the river,' he said. 'Let's try to get . . .’ Something roared, very close by. It was long and low, like a foghorn in serious distress. It was the sound you might hear from a cattleyard on a nervous night, and it went on and on, and then stopped so abruptly it caught the silence unawares. '. . . far away from that as we can,' said Nobby. The sound had done the work of an ice-cold shower and about two pints of black coffee. Colon spun around. He desperately needed something that would do the work of a laundry. 'Where did it come from?' he said. 'It was . . . over there, wasn't it?' 'I thought it was that way!' In the fog, all directions were the same. 'I think . . .' said Colon, slowly, 'that we ort to go and make a report about this as soon as possible.' 'Right,' said Nobby. 'Which way?' 'Let's just run, eh?'     Constable Downspout's huge pointy ears quivered as the noise boomed over the city. He turned his head carefully, triangulating for height, direction and distance. And then he remembered it.     The cry was heard in the Watch House, but muffled by the fog. It entered the open head of the golem Dorfl and bounced around inside, echoing down, down among the small cracks in the clay until, at the very edge of perception, little grains danced together. The sightless sockets stared at the wall. No one heard the cry that came back from the dead skull, because there was no mouth to utter it and not even a mind to guide it, but it screamed out into the night: CLAY OF MY CLAY, THOU SHALT NOT KILL! THOU SHALT NOT DIE!     Samuel Vimes dreamed about Clues. He had a jaundiced view of Clues. He instinctively distrusted them. They got in the way. And he distrusted the kind of person who'd take one look at another man and say in a lordly voice to his companion, 'Ah, my dear sir, I can tell you nothing except that he is a left-handed stonemason who has spent some years in the merchant navy and has recently fallen on hard times,' and then unroll a lot of supercilious commentary about calluses and stance and the state of a man's boots, when exactly the same comments could apply to a man who was wearing his old clothes because he'd been doing a spot of home bricklaying for a new barbecue pit, and had been tattooed once when he was drunk and seventeen[14] and in fact got seasick on a wet pavement. What arrogance! What an insult to the rich and chaotic variety of the human experience! It was the same with more static evidence. The footprints in the flowerbed were probably in the real world left by the window-cleaner. The scream in the night was quite likely a man getting out of bed and stepping sharply on an upturned hairbrush. The real world was far too real to leave neat little hints. It was full of too many things. It wasn't by eliminating the impossible that you got at the truth, however improbable; it was by the much harder process of eliminating the possibilities. You worked away, patiently asking questions and looking hard at things. You walked and talked, and in your heart you just hoped like hell that some bugger's nerve'd crack and he'd give himself up. The events of the day clanged together in Vimes's head. Golems tramped like sad shadows. Father Tubelcek waved at him and then his head exploded, showering Vimes in words. Mr Hopkinson lay dead in his own oven, a slice of dwarf bread in his mouth. And the golems marched on, silently. There was Dorfl, dragging its foot, its head open for the words to fly in and out of, like a swarm of bees. And in the middle of it all Arsenic danced, a spiky little green man, crackling and gibbering. At one point he thought one of the golems screamed. After that, the dream faded, a bit at a time. Golems. Oven. Words. Priest. Dorfl. Golems marching, the thudding of their feet making the whole dream pulsate ... Vimes opened his eyes. Beside him, Lady Sybil said.'Wsfgl,' and turned over. Someone was hammering at the front door. Still muzzy, head swimming, Vimes pulled himself up on his elbows and said, to the night-time world in general, 'What sort of a time do you call this?' 'Bingeley bingeley beep!' said a cheerful voice from the direction of Vimes's dressing-table. 'Oh, please 'Twenty-nine minutes and thirty-one seconds past five ay-emm. A Penny Saved is a Penny Earned. Would you like me to present your schedule for today? While I am doing this, why not take some time to fill out your registration card?' 'What? What? What're you talking about?' The knocking continued. Vimes fell out of bed and groped in the dark for the matches. He finally got a candle alight and half-ran, half-staggered down the long.stairs and into the hall. The knocker turned out to be Constable Visit. 'It's Lord Vetinari, sir! It's worse this time!' 'Has anyone sent for Doughnut Jimmy?' 'Yessir!' At this time of day the fog was fighting a rearguard action against the dawn, and made the whole world look as though it were inside a ping-pong ball. 'I poked my head in as soon as I came on shift and he was out like a light, sir!' 'How did you know he wasn't asleep?' 'On the floor, sir, with all his clothes on?' A couple of Watchmen had put the Patrician on his bed by the time Vimes arrived, slightly out of breath and with his knees aching. Gods, he thought as he struggled up the stairs, it's not like the old truncheon-and-bell days. You wouldn't think twice about running half-way across the city, coppers and criminals locked in hot pursuit. With a mixture of pride and shame he added: And none of the buggers ever caught me, either. The Patrician was still breathing, but his face was waxy and he looked as though death might be an improvement. Vimes's gaze roamed the room. There was a familiar haze in the air. 'Who opened the window?' he demanded. 'I did, sir,' said Visit. 'Just before I went to get you. He looked as though he needed some fresh air 'It'd be fresher if you left the window shut,' said Vimes. 'Okay, I want everyone, I mean everyone, who was in this place overnight rounded up and down in the hall in two minutes. And someone fetch Corporal Littlebottom. And tell Captain Carrot.' I'm worried and confused, he thought. So the first rule in the book is to spread it around. He prowled about the room. It didn't take much intelligence to see that Vetinari had got up and moved over to his writing-desk, where by the look of it he had worked for some time. The candle had burned right down. An inkwell had been overturned, presumably when he'd slipped off the chair. Vimes dipped a finger in the ink and sniffed it. Then he reached for the quill pen beside it, hesitated, took out his dagger, and lifted the long feather gingerly. There seemed to be no cunning little barbs on it, but he put it carefully on one side for Littlebottom to examine later. He glanced down at the paper Vetinari had been working on. To his surprise it wasn't writing at all, but a careful drawing. It showed a striding figure, except that the figure was not one person at all but made up of thousands of smaller figures. The effect was like one of the wicker men built by some of the more outlandish tribes near the Hub, when they annually celebrated the great cycle of Nature and their reverence for life by piling as much of it as possible in a great heap and setting fire to it. The composite man was wearing a crown. Vimes pushed the sheet of paper aside and returned his attention to the desk. He brushed the surface carefully for any suspicious splinters. He crouched down and examined the underside. The light was growing outside. Vimes went into both the rooms alongside and made sure their drapes were open, then went back into Vetinari's room, closed the curtains and the doors, and sidled along the walls looking for any tell-tale speck of light that might indicate a small hole. Where could you stop? Splinters in the floor? Blowpipes through the keyhole? He opened the curtains again. Vetinari had been on the mend yesterday. And now he looked worse. Someone had got to him in the night. How? Slow poison was the devil of a thing. You had to find a way of giving it to the victim every day. No, you didn't . . . What was elegant was finding a way of getting him to administer it to himself every day. Vimes rummaged through the paperwork. Vetinari had obviously felt well enough to get up and walk over here, but here was where he had collapsed. You couldn't poison a splinter or a nail because he wouldn't keep on nicking himself. . . There was a book half-buried in the papers, but it had a lot of bookmarks in it, mostly torn bits of old letters. What did he do every day? Vimes opened the book. Every page was covered with handwritten symbols. You have to get a poison like arsenic into the body. It isn't enough to touch it. Or is it? Is there a kind of arsenic you can pick up through the skin? No one was getting in. Vimes was almost certain of that. The food and drink were probably all right, but he'd get Detritus to go and have another one of his little talks with the cooks in any case. Something he breathed? How could you keep that up day after day without arousing suspicion somewhere? Anyway, you'd have to get your poison into the room. Something already in the room? Cheery had a different carpet put down and replaced the bed, What else could you do? Strip the paint from the ceiling? What had Vetinari told Cheery about poisoning? ' You put it where no one will look at all . . .' Vimes realized he was still staring at the book. There wasn't anything there that he could recognize. It must be a code of some sort. Knowing Vetinari, it wouldn't be crackable by anyone in a normal frame of mind. Could you poison a book? But ... so what? There were other books. You'd have to know he'd look at this one, continuously. And even then you'd have to get the poison into him. A man might prick his finger once and after that he'd take care. It sometimes worried Vimes, the way he suspected everything. If you started wondering whether a man could be poisoned by words, you might as well accuse the wallpaper of driving him mad. Mind you, that horrible green colour would drive anyone insane . . . 'Bingely beepy bleep!' 'Oh, no . . .' 'This is your six ay-emm wake-up call! Good morning!! Here are your appointments for today, Insert Name Here!! Ten ay-emm . . .' 'Shut up! Listen, whatever's in my diary for today is definitely not—' Vimes stopped. He lowered the box. He went back to the desk. If you assumed one page per day . . . Lord Vetinari had a very good memory. But everyone wrote things down, didn't they? You couldn't remember every little thing. Wednesday: 3pm, reign of terror; 3.15pm, clean out scorpion pit ... He held the organizer up to his lips. Take a memo,' he said. 'Hooray! Go right ahead. Don't forget to say "memo" first!!' 'Speak to ... blast . . . Memo: What about Vetinari's journal?' 'Is that it?' 'Yes.' Someone knocked politely at the door. Vimes opened it carefully. 'Oh, it's you, Littlebottom.' Vimes blinked. Something wasn't right about the dwarf. ‘I’ll mix up some of Mr Doughnut's jollop right away, sir.' The dwarf looked past Vimes to the bed. 'Ooo ... he doesn't look good, does he ... ?' 'Get someone to move him into a different bedroom,' said Vimes. 'Get the servants to prepare a new room, right?' 'Yes, sir.' 'And, after they've done it, pick a different room at random and move him into it. And change everything, understand? Every stick of furniture, every vase, every rug—' 'Er... yes, sir.' Vimes hesitated. Now he could put his finger on what had been bothering him for the last twenty seconds. 'Littlebottom 'Sir?' 'You ... er ... you ... on your ears?' 'Earrings, sir,' said Cheery nervously. 'Constable Angua gave them to me.' 'Really? Er ... right ... I didn't think dwarfs wore jewellery, that's all.' 'We're known for rings, sir.' 'Yes, of course.' Rings, yes. No one quite like a dwarf for forging a magical ring. But. . . magical earrings? Oh, well. There were some waters too deep to wade.     Sergeant Detritus's approach to these matters was almost instinctively correct. He had the palace staff lined up in front of him and was shouting at them at the top of his voice. Look at old Detritus, Vimes thought as he went down the stairs. Just your basic thick troll a few years ago, now a valuable member of the Watch provided you get him to repeat his orders back to you to make sure he understands you. His armour gleams even brighter than Carrot's because he doesn't get bored with polishing. And he's mastered policing as it is practised by the majority of forces in the universe, which is, basically, screaming angrily at people until they give in. The only reason that he's not a one-troll reign of terror is the ease with which his thought processes can be derailed by anyone who tries something fiendishly cunning, like an outright denial. 'I know you all done it!' he was shouting. 'If the person wot done it does not own up der whole staff, an' I means this, der whole staff will be locked up in der Tanty also we throws der key away!' He pointed a finger at a stout scullerymaid. 'It was you wot done it, own up!' 'No.' Detritus paused. Then: 'Where was you last night? Own up!' 'In bed, of course!' 'Aha, dat a likely story, own up, dat where you always is at night?' 'Of course.' 'Aha, own up, you got witnesses?' 'Sauce!' 'Ah, so you got no witnesses, you done it then, own up!' 'No!' 'Oh . . .' 'All right, all right. Thank you, Sergeant. That will be all for now,' said Vimes, patting him on the shoulder. 'Are all the staff here?' He glared at the line-up: 'Well? Are you all here?' There was a certain amount of reluctant shuffling among the ranks, and then someone cautiously put up a hand. 'Mildred Easy hasn't been seen since yesterday,' said its owner. 'She's the upstairs maid. A boy come with a message. She had to go off to see her family.' Vimes felt the faintest of prickles on the back of his neck. 'Anyone know why?' he said. 'Dunno, sir. She left all her stuff.' 'All right. Sergeant, before you go off shift, get someone to find her. Then go and get some sleep. The rest of you, go and get on with whatever it is you do. Ah ... Mr Drumknott?' The Patrician's personal clerk, who'd been watching Detritus's technique with a horrified expression, looked up at him. 'Yes, Commander?' 'What's this book? Is it his lordship's diary?' Drumknott took the book. 'It looks like it, certainly.' 'Have you been able to crack the code?' 'I didn't know it was in code, Commander.' 'What? You've never looked at it?' 'Why should I, sir? It's not mine.' 'You do know his last secretary tried to kill him?' 'Yes, sir. I ought to say, sir, that I have already been exhaustively interrogated by your men.' Drumknott opened the book and raised his eyebrows. 'What did they say?' said Vimes. Drumknott looked up thoughtfully. 'Let me see, now . . . "It was you wot done it, own up, everybody seen you, we got lots of people say you done it, you done it all right didn't you, own up." That was, I think, the general approach. And then, I said it wasn't me and that seemed to puzzle the officer concerned.' Drumknott delicately licked his finger and turned a page. Vimes stared at him.     The sound of saws was brisk on the morning air. Captain Carrot knocked against the timber-yard door, which was eventually opened. 'Good morning, sir!' he said. 'I understand you have a golem here?' 'Had,' said the timber merchant. 'Oh dear, another one,' said Angua. That made four so far. The one in the foundry had knelt under a hammer, the one in the stonemason's yard was now ten clay toes sticking out from under a two-ton block of limestone, one working in the docks had last been seen in the river, striding towards the sea, and now this one . . . 'It was weird,' said the merchant, thumping the golem's chest. 'Sidney said it went on sawing all the way up to the moment it sawed its head right off. I've got a load of ash planking got to go out this afternoon. Who's going to saw it up, may I ask?' Angua picked up the golem's head. Insofar as it had any expression at all, it was one of intense concentration, "ere,' said the merchant, 'Alf told me he heard in the Drum last night that golems have been murderin' people . . .' 'Enquiries are continuing,' said Carrot. 'Now then, Mr ... it's Preble Skink, isn't it? Your brother runs the lamp-oil shop in Cable Street? And your daughter is a maid at the university?' The man looked astonished. But Carrot knew everyone. 'Yeah . . .' 'Did your golem leave the yard yesterday evening?' 'Well, yeah, early on ... Something about a holy day.' He looked nervously from one to the other. 'You got to let them go, otherwise the words in their heads—' 'And then it came back and worked all night?' 'Yeah. What else would it do? And then Alf came in on early turn and he said it came up outa the saw pit, stood there for a moment, and then . . .' 'Was it sawing pine logs yesterday?' said Angua. That's right. Where'm I going to get another golem at short notice, may I ask?' 'What's this?' said Angua. She picked up a wood-framed square from a heap of sawdust. This was its slate, was it?' She handed it to Carrot. ' "Thou Shall Not Kill," ' Carrot read slowly. ' "Clay of My Clay. Ashamed." Do you have any idea why it'd write that?' 'Search me,' said Skink. They're always doing dumb things.' He brightened up a bit. 'Hey, perhaps it went potty? Get it? Clay ... pot ... potty?' 'Extremely funny,' said Carrot gravely. 'I will take this as evidence. Good morning. 'Why did you ask about pine logs?' he said to Angua as they stepped outside. 'I smelled the same pine resin in the cellar.' 'Pine resin's just pine resin, isn't it?' 'No. Not to me. That golem was in there.' They all were,' sighed Carrot. 'And now they're committing suicide.' 'You can't take life you haven't got,' said Angua. 'What shall we call it, then? "Destruction of property"?' said Carrot. 'Anyway, we can't ask them now . . .'He tapped the slate. 'They've given us the answers,' he said. 'Perhaps we can find out what the questions should have been.'     'What do you mean, "nothing"?' said Vimes. 'It's got to be the book! He licks his fingers to turn a page, and every day he gets a little dose of arsenic! Fiendishly clever!' 'Sorry, sir,' said Cheery, backing away. 'I can't find a trace. I've used all the tests I know.' 'You're sure?' 'I could send it up to the Unseen University. They've built a new morphic resonator in the High Energy Magic Building. Magic would easily—' 'Don't do that,' said Vimes. 'We'll keep the wizards out of this. Damn! For half an hour there I really thought I'd got it . . He sat down at his desk. Something new was odd about the dwarf, but again he couldn't quite work out what it was. 'We're missing something here, Littlebottom,' he said. 'Yes, sir.' 'Let's look at the facts. If you want to poison someone slowly you've either got to give them small doses all the time - or, at least, every day. We've covered everything the Patrician does. It can't be the air in the room. You and I have been in there every day. It's not the food, we're pretty sure of that. Is something stinging him? Can you poison a wasp? What we need—' '’scuse me, sir.' Vimes turned. 'Detritus? I thought you were off-duty?' 'I got dem to give me der address of dat maid called Easy like you said,' said Detritus, stoically. 'I went up dere and dere was people all lookin' in.' 'What d'you mean?' 'Neighbours and dat. Cryin' women all round der door. An' I remember what you said about dat dipplo word—' 'Diplomacy,' said Vimes. 'Yeah. Not shoutin' at people an' dat. I fought, dis look a delicate situation. Also, dey was throwin' stuff at me. So I came back here. I writ down der address. An' now I'm goin' home.' He saluted, rocked slightly from the force of the blow to the side of his head, and departed. 'Thanks, Detritus,' said Vimes. He looked at the paper written in the troll's big round hand. 'ist Floor Back, 27 Cockbill Street,' he said. 'Good grief!' 'You know it, sir?' 'Should do. I was born in that street,' said Vimes. 'It's down below the Shades. Easy . . . Easy . . . Yes , . . Now I remember. There was a Mrs Easy down the road. Skinny woman. Did a lot of sewing. Big family. Well, we were all big families, it was the only way to keep warm . . .' He frowned at the paper. It wasn't as if it were any particular lead. Maidservants were always going off to see their mothers, every time there was the least little family upset. What was it his granny had used to say? 'Yer son's yer son till he takes a wife, but yer daughter's yer daughter all yer life.' Sending a Watchman around would almost certainly be a waste of everyone's time . . . 'Well, well . . . Cockbill Street,' he said. He stared at the paper again. You might as well rename the place Memory Lane. No, you couldn't waste Watch resources on a wild-goose chase like that. But he might look in. On his way past. Some time today. 'Er ... Littlebottom?' 'Sir?' 'On your . . . your lips. Red. Er. On your lips 'Lipstick, sir.' 'Oh ... er. Lipstick? Fine. Lipstick.' 'Constable Angua gave it to me, sir.' "That was kind of her,' said Vimes. 'I expect.'     It was called the Rats Chamber. In theory this was because of the decoration; some former resident of the palace had thought that a fresco of dancing rats would be a real decorative coup. There was a pattern of rats woven in the carpet. On the ceiling rats danced in a circle, their tails intertwining at the centre. After half an hour in that room, most people wanted a wash. Soon, then, there would be a big rush on the hot water. The room was filling up fast. By common consent the chair was taken and amply filled by Mrs Rosemary Palm, head of the Guild of Seamstresses[15], as one of the most senior guild leaders. 'Quiet, please! Gentlemen!' The noise level subsided a little. 'Dr Downey?' she said. The head of the Assassins' Guild nodded. 'My friends, I think we are all aware of the situation—' he began. 'Yeah, so's your accountant!' said a voice in the crowd. There was a ripple of nervous laughter but it didn't last long, because you don't laugh too loud at someone who knows exactly how much you're worth dead. Dr Downey smiled. 'I can assure you once again, gentlemen - and ladies - that I am aware of no engagement regarding Lord Vetinari. In any case, I cannot imagine that an Assassin would use poison in this case. His lordship spent some time at the Assassins' school. He knows the uses of caution. No doubt he will recover.' 'And if he doesn't?' said Mrs Palm. 'No one lives forever,' said Dr Downey, in the calm voice of a man who personally knew this to be true. Then, no doubt, we'll get a new ruler.' The room went very silent. The word 'Who?' hovered silently above every head. 'Thing is ... the thing is . . .' said Gerhardt Sock, head of the Butchers' Guild, 'it's been . . . you've got to admit it... it's been . . . well, think about some of the others ..." The words 'Lord Snapcase, now ... at least this one isn't actually insane' flickered in the group consciousness. 'I have to admit,' said Mrs Palm, 'that under Vetinari it has certainly been safer to walk the streets—' 'You should know, madam,' said Mr Sock. Mrs Palm gave him an icy look. There were a few sniggers. 'I meant that a modest payment to the Thieves' Guild is all that is required for perfect safety,' she finished. 'And, indeed, a man may visit a house of ill—' 'Negotiable hospitality,' said Mrs Palm quickly. 'Indeed, and be quite confident of not waking up stripped stark naked and beaten black and blue,' said Sock. 'Unless his tastes run that way,' said Mrs Palm. 'We aim to give satisfaction. Very accurately, if required.' 'Life has certainly been more reliable under Vetinari,' said Mr Potts of the Bakers' Guild. 'He does have all street-theatre players and mime artists thrown into the scorpion pit,' said Mr Boggis of the Thieves' Guild. 'True. But let's not forget that he has his bad points too. The man is capricious.' 'You think so? Compared to the ones we had before he's as reliable as a rock.' 'Snapcase was reliable,' said Mr Sock gloomily. 'Remember when he made his horse a city councillor?' 'You've got to admit it wasn't a bad councillor. Compared to some of the others.' 'As I recall, the others at that time were a vase of flowers, a heap of sand and three people who had been beheaded.' 'Remember all those fights? All the little gangs of thieves fighting all the time? It got so that there was hardly any energy left to actually steal things,' said Mr Boggis. 'Things are indeed more . . . reliable now.' Silence descended again. That was it, wasn't it? Things were reliable now. Whatever else you said about old Vetinari, he made sure today was always followed by tomorrow. If you were murdered in your bed, at least it would be by arrangement. 'Things were more exciting under Lord Snapcase,' someone ventured. 'Yes, right up until the point when your head fell off.' 'The trouble is,' said Mr Boggis, 'that the job makes people mad. You take some chap who's no worse than any of us and after a few months he's talking to moss and having people flayed alive.' 'Vetinari isn't mad.' 'Depends how you look at it. No one can be as sane as he is without being mad.' 'I am only a weak woman,' said Mrs Palm, to the personal disbelief of several present, 'but it does seem to me that there's an opportunity here. Either there's a long struggle to sort out a successor, or we sort it out now. Yes?' The guild leaders tried to look at one another while simultaneously avoiding everyone else's glances. Who'd be Patrician now? Once there'd have been a huge multi-sided power struggle, but now . . . You got the power, but you got the problems, too. Things had changed. These days, you had to negotiate and juggle with all the conflicting interests. No one sane had tried to kill Vetinari for years, because the world with him in it was just preferable to one without him. Besides . . . Vetinari had tamed Ankh-Morpork. He'd tamed it like a dog. He'd taken a minor scavenger among scavengers and lengthened its teeth and strengthened its jaws and built up its muscles and studded its collar and fed it lean steak and then he'd aimed it at the throat of the world. He'd taken all the gangs and squabbling groups and made them see that a small slice of the cake on a regular basis was better by far than a bigger slice with a dagger in it. He'd made them see that it was better to take a small slice but enlarge the cake. Ankh-Morpork, alone of all the cities of the plains, had opened its gates, to dwarfs and trolls (alloys are stronger, Vetinari had said). It had worked. They made things. Often they made trouble, but mostly they made wealth. As a result, although Ankh-Morpork still had many enemies, those enemies had to finance their armies with borrowed money. Most of it was borrowed from Ankh-Morpork, at punitive interest. There hadn't been any really big wars for years. Ankh-Morpork had made them unprofitable. Thousands of years ago the old empire had enforced the Pax Morporkia, which had said to the world: 'Do not fight, or we will kill you.' The Pax had arisen again, but this time it said: 'If you fight, we'll call in your mortgages. And incidentally, that's my pike you're pointing at me. I paid for that shield you're holding. And take my helmet off when you speak to me, you horrible little debtor.' And now the whole machine, which whirred away so quietly that people had forgotten it was a machine at all and thought that it was just the way the world worked, had given a lurch. The guild leaders examined their thoughts and decided that what they did not want was power. What they wanted was that tomorrow should be pretty much like today. 'There's the dwarfs,' said Mr Boggis. 'Even if one of us - not that I'm saying it would be one of us, of course - even if someone took over, what about the dwarfs? We get someone like Snapcase again, there's going to be chopped kneecaps in the streets.' 'You're not suggesting we have some sort of. . . vote, are you? Some kind of popularity contest?' 'Oh, no. It's just . . . it's just ... all more complicated now. And power goes to people's heads.' 'And then other people's heads fall off.' 'I wish you wouldn't keep on saying that, whoever you are,' said Mrs Palm. 'Anyone would think you'd had your head cut off.' 'Uh—' 'Oh, it's you, Mr Slant. I do apologize.' 'Speaking as the President of the Guild of Lawyers,' said Mr Slant, the most respected zombie in Ankh-Morpork, 'I must recommend stability in this matter. I wonder if I may offer some advice?' 'How much will it cost us?' said Mr Sock. 'Stability,' said Mr Slant, 'equals monarchy.' 'Oh, now, don't tell us—' 'Look at Klatch,' said Mr Slant doggedly. 'Generations of Seriphs. Result: political stability. Take Pseudopolis. Or Sto Lat. Or even the Agatean Empire—' 'Come on,' said Dr Downey. 'Everyone knows that kings—' 'Oh, monarchs come and go, they depose one another, and so on and so forth,' said Mr Slant. 'But the institution goes on. Besides, I think you'll find that it is possible to work out ... an accommodation.' He realized that he had the floor. His fingers absent-mindedly touched the seam where his head had been sewn back on. All those years ago Mr Slant had refused to die until he had been paid for the disbursements in the matter of conducting his own defence. 'How do you mean?' said Mr Potts. 'I accept that the question of resurrecting the Ankh-Morpork succession has been raised several times recently,' said Mr Slant. 'Yes. By madmen,' said Mr Boggis. It's part of the symptoms. Put underpants on head, talk to trees, drool, decide that Ankh-Morpork needs a king...' 'Exactly. Supposing sane men were to give it consideration?' 'Go on,' said Dr Downey. 'There have been precedents,' said Mr Slant. 'Monarchies who have found themselves bereft of a convenient monarch have . . . obtained one. Some suitably born member of some other royal line. After all, what is required is someone who, uh, knows the ropes, as I believe the saying goes.' 'Sorry? Are you saying we send out for a king?' said Mr Boggis. 'We put up some kind of advertisement? "Throne vacant, applicant must supply own crown"?' 'In fact,' said Mr Slant, ignoring this, 'I recall that, during the first Empire, Genua wrote to Ankh-Morpork and asked to be sent one of our generals to be their king, their own royal lines having died out through interbreeding so intensively that the last king kept trying to breed with himself. The history books say that we sent our loyal General Tacticus, whose first act after obtaining the crown was to declare a war on Ankh-Morpork. Kings are ... interchangeable.' 'You mentioned something about reaching an accommodation,' said Mr Boggis. 'You mean, we tell a king what to doT 'I like the sound of that,' said Mrs Palm. 'I like the echoes,' said Dr Downey. 'Not tell,' said Mr Slant. 'We . . . agree. Obviously, as king, he would concentrate on those things traditionally associated with kingship—' 'Waving,' said Mr Sock. 'Being gracious,' said Mrs Palm. 'Welcoming ambassadors from foreign countries,' said Mr Potts. 'Shaking hands.' 'Cutting off heads—' 'No! No. No, that will not be part of his duties. Minor affairs of state will be carried out—' 'By his advisors?' said Dr Downey. He leaned back. 'I'm sure I can see where this is going, Mr Slant,' he said. 'But kings, once acquired, are so damn hard to get rid of. Acceptably.' There have been precedents for that, too,' said Mr Slant. The Assassin's eyes narrowed. Tm intrigued, Mr Slant, that as soon as the Lord Vetinari appears to be seriously ill, you pop up with suggestions like this. It sounds like ... a remarkable coincidence.' There is no mystery, I assure you. Destiny works its course. Surely many of you have heard the rumours - that there is, in this city, someone with a bloodline traceable all the way back to the last royal family? Someone working in this very city in a comparatively humble position? A lowly Watchman, in fact?' There were some nods, but not very definite ones. They were to nods what a grunt is to 'yes'. The guilds all picked up information. No one wanted to reveal how much, or how little, they personally knew, just in case they knew too little or, even worse, turned out to know too much. However, Doc Pseudopolis of the Guild of Gamblers put on a careful poker face and said, 'Yes, but the tricentennial is coming up. And in a few years it'll be the Century of the Rat. There's something about centuries that gives people a kind of fever.' 'Nevertheless, the person exists,' said Mr Slant. The evidence stares one in the face if one looks in the right places.' 'Very well,' said Mr Boggis. Tell us the name of this captain.' He often lost large sums at poker. 'Captain?' said Mr Slant. 'I'm sorry to say his natural talents have thus far not commended him to that extent. He is a corporal. Corporal C. W. St J. Nobbs.' There was silence. And then there was a strange putt-putting sound, like water negotiating its way through a partially blocked pipe. Queen Molly of the Beggars' Guild had so far been silent apart from occasional damp sucking noises as she tried to dislodge a particle of her lunch from the things which, because they were still in her mouth and apparently attached, were technically her teeth. Now she was laughing. The hairs wobbled on every wart. 'Nobby Nobbs?' she said. 'You're talking about Nobby Nobbs? 'He is the last known descendant of the Earl of Ankh, who could trace his descent all the way to a distant cousin to the last king/ said Mr Slant. 'It's the talk of the city.' 'A picture forms in my mind,' said Dr Downey. 'Small monkeylike chap, always smoking very short cigarettes. Spotty. He squeezes them in public.' 'That's Nobby!' Queen Molly chuckled. 'Face like a blind carpenter's thumb!' 'Him? But the man's a tit!' 'And dim as a penny candle,' said Mr Boggis. 'I don't see—' Suddenly he stopped, and then contracted the contemplative silence that was gradually affecting everyone else around the table. 'Don't see why we shouldn't . . . give this . . . due consideration,' he said, after a while. The assembled leaders looked at the table. Then they looked at the ceiling. Then they studiously avoided one another's gaze. 'Blood will out,' said Mr Carry. 'When I've watched him go down the street I've always thought: "There's a man who walks in greatness," ' said Mrs Palm. 'He squeezes them in a very regal way, mind you. Very graciously.' The silence rolled over the assembly again. But it was busy, in the same way that the silence of an anthill is busy. 'I must remind you, ladies and gentlemen, that poor Lord Vetinari is still alive,' said Mrs Palm. 'Indeed, indeed,' said Mr Slant. 'And long may he remain so. I've merely set out for you one option against that day, may it be a long time coming, when we should consider a ... successor.' 'In any case,' said Dr Downey, 'there is no doubt that Vetinari has been over-doing it. If he survives -which is greatly to be hoped, of course - I feel we should require him to step down for the sake of his health. Well done thou good and faithful servant, and so on. Buy him a nice house in the country somewhere. Give him a pension. Make sure there's a seat for him at official dinners. Obviously, if he can be so easily poisoned now he should welcome the release from the chains of office 'What about the wizards?' said Mr Boggis. 'They've never got involved in civic concerns,' said Dr Downey. 'Give 'em four meat meals a day and tip your hat to them and they're happy. They know nothing about politics.' The silence that followed was broken by the voice of Queen Molly of the Beggars. 'What about Vimes?' Dr Downey shrugged. 'He is a servant of the city.' 'That's what I mean.' 'Surely we represent the city?' 'Hah! He won't see it that way. And you know what Vimes thinks about kings. It was a Vimes who chopped the head off the last one. There's a bloodline that thinks a swing of an axe can solve anything.' 'Now, Molly, you know Vimes'd probably take an axe to Vetinari if he thought he could get away with it. No love lost there, I fancy.' 'He won't like it. That's all I tell you. Vetinari keeps Vimes wound up. No knowing what happens if he unwinds all at once—' 'He's a public servant!' snapped Dr Downey. Queen Molly made a face, which was not difficult in one so naturally well endowed, and sat back. 'So this is the new way of things, is it?' she muttered. 'Lot of ordinary men sit around a table and talk and suddenly the world's a different place? The sheep turn round and charge the shepherd?' 'There's a soiree at Lady Selachii's house this evening,' said Dr Downey, ignoring her. 'I believe Nobbs is being invited. Perhaps we can . . . meet him.'     Vimes told himself he was really going to inspect the progress on the new Watch House in Chittling Street. Cockbill Street was just round the corner. And then he'd call in, informally. No sense in sparing a man when they were pushed anyway, what with these murders and Vetinari and Detritus's anti-Slab crusade. He turned the corner, and stopped. Nothing much had changed. That was the shocking thing. After . . . oh, too many years . . . things had no right not to have changed. But washing lines still criss-crossed the street between the grey, ancient buildings. Antique paint still peeled in the way cheap paint peeled when it had been painted on wood too old and rotten to take paint. Cockbill Street people were usually too penniless to afford decent paint, but always far too proud to use whitewash. And the place was slightly smaller than he remembered. That was all. When had he last come down here? He couldn't remember. It was beyond the Shades, and up until quite recently the Watch had tended to leave that area to its own unspeakable devices. Unlike the Shades, though, Cockbill Street was clean, with the haunting, empty cleanliness you get when people can't afford to waste dirt. For Cockbill Street was where people lived who were worse than poor, because they didn't know how poor they were. If you asked them they would probably say something like 'mustn't grumble' or 'there's far worse off than us' or 'we've always kept uz heads above water and we don't owe nobody nowt'. He could hear his granny speaking. 'No one's too poor to buy soap.' Of course, many people were. But in Cockbill Street they bought soap just the same. The table might not have any food on it but, by gods, it was well scrubbed. That was Cockbill Street, where what you mainly ate was your pride. What a mess the world was in, Vimes reflected. Constable Visit had told him the meek would inherit it, and what had the poor devils done to deserve that"? Cockbill Street people would stand aside to let the meek through. For what kept them in Cockbill Street, mentally and physically, was their vague comprehension that there were rules. And they went through life filled with a quiet, distracted dread that they weren't quite obeying them. People said that there was one law for the rich and one law for the poor, but it wasn't true. There was no law for those who made the law, and no law for the incorrigibly lawless. All the laws and rules were for those people stupid enough to think like Cockbill Street people. It was oddly quiet. Normally there'd be swarms of kids, and carts heading down towards the docks, but today the place had a shut-in look. In the middle of the road was a chalked hopscotch path. Vimes felt his knees go weak. It was still here! When had he last seen it? Thirty-five years ago? Forty? So it must have been drawn and redrawn thousands of times. He'd been pretty good at it. Of course, they'd played it by Ankh-Morpork rules. Instead of kicking a stone they'd kicked William Scuggins. It had been just one of the many inventive games they'd played which had involved kicking, chasing or jumping on William Scuggins until he threw one of his famous wobblers and started frothing and violently attacking himself. Vimes had been able to drop William in the square of his choice nine times out often. The tenth time, William bit his leg. In those days, tormenting William and finding enough to eat had made for a simple, straightforward life. There weren't so many questions you didn't know the answers to, except maybe how to stop your leg festering. Sir Samuel looked around, saw the silent street, and flicked a stone out of the gutter with his foot. Then he booted it surreptitiously along the squares, adjusted his cloak, and hopped and jumped his way up, turned, hopped— What was it you shouted as you hopped? 'Salt, mustard, vinegar, pepper?'? No? Or was it the one that went 'William Scuggins is a bastard'? Now he'd wonder about that all day. A door opened across the street. Vimes froze, one leg in mid-air, as two black-clothed figures came out slowly and awkwardly. This was because they were carrying a coffin. The natural solemnity of the occasion was diminished by their having to squeeze around it and out into the street, pulling the casket after them and allowing two other pairs of bearers to edge their way into the daylight. Vimes remembered himself in time to lower his other foot, and then remembered even more of himself and snatched his helmet off in respect. Another coffin emerged. It was a lot smaller. It needed only two people to carry it and that was really one too many. As mourners trooped out behind them, Vimes fumbled in a pocket for the scrap of paper Detritus had given him. The scene was, in its way, funny, like the bit in a circus where the coach stops and a dozen clowns get out of it. Apartment houses round here made up for their limited number of rooms by having a large number of people occupy them. He found the paper and unfolded it. First Floor Back, 27 Cockbill Street. And this was it. He'd arrived in time for a funeral. Two funerals.     'Looks like it's a really bad day to be a golem,' said Angua. There was a pottery hand lying in the gutter. 'That's the third one we've seen smashed in the street.' There was a crash up ahead, and a dwarf came through a window more or less horizontally. His iron helmet struck sparks as he hit the street, but the dwarf was soon up again and plunging back through the adjacent doorway. He emerged via the window a moment later but was fielded by Carrot, who set him on his feet. 'Hello, Mr Oresmiter! Are you keeping well? And what is happening here?' 'It's that devil Gimlet, Captain Carrot! You should be arresting him!' 'Why, what's he done?' 'He's been poisoning people, that's what!' Carrot glanced at Angua, then back at Oresmiter. 'Poison?' he said. That's a very serious allegation.' 'You're telling me! I was up all night with Mrs Oresmiter! I didn't think much about it until I came in here this morning and there were other people complaining—' He tried to struggle out of Carrot's grip. 'You know what?' he said. 'You know what? We looked in his cold room and you know what? You know what? You know what he's been selling as meat?' 'Tell me,' said Carrot. 'Pork and beef!' 'Oh, dear.' 'And lamb!' 'Teh, tch.' 'Hardly any rat at all!' Carrot shook his head at the duplicity of traders. 'And Snori Glodssonsunclesson said he had Rat Surprise last night and he'll swear there were chicken bones in it!' Carrot let go of the dwarf. 'You stay here,' he said to Angua and, head bowed, stepped inside Gimlet's Hole Food Delicatessen. An axe spun towards him. He caught it almost absent-mindedly and tossed it casually aside. 'Ow!' There was a melee of dwarfs around the counter. The row had already gone well past the stage when it had anything much to do with the subject in hand and, these being dwarfs, now included matters of vital importance such as whose grandfather had stolen whose grandfather's mining claim three hundred years ago and whose axe was at whose throat right now. But there was something about Carrot's presence. The fighting gradually stopped. The fighters tried to look as if they'd just happened to be standing there. There was a sudden and general 'Axe? What axe? Oh, this axe? I was just showing it to my friend Bjorn here, good old Bjorn' feel to the atmosphere. 'All right,' said Carrot. 'What's all this about poison? Mr Gimlet first.' 'It's a diabolical lie!' shouted Gimlet, from somewhere under the heap. 'I run a wholesome restaurant! My tables are so clean you could eat your dinner off them!' Carrot raised his hands to stop the outburst this caused. 'Someone said something about rats,' he said. 'I told them, I use only the very best rats!' shouted Gimlet. 'Good plump rats from the best locations! None of your latrine rubbish! And they're hard to come by, let me tell you!' 'And when you can't get them, Mr Gimlet?' said Carrot. Gimlet paused. Carrot was hard to lie to. 'All right,' he mumbled. 'Maybe when there's not enough I might sort of plump out the stock with some chicken, maybe just a bit of beef—' 'Hah! A bit?' More voices were raised. 'That's right, you should see his cold room, Mr Carrot!' 'Yeah, he uses steak and cuts little legs in it and covers it with rat sauce!' 'I don't know, you try to do your best at very reasonable prices and this is the thanks you get?' said Gimlet hotly. 'It's hard enough to make ends meet as it is!' 'You don't even make 'em of the right meat!' Carrot sighed. There were no public health laws in Ankh-Morpork. It would be like installing smoke detectors in Hell. 'All right,' he said. 'But you can't get poisoned by steak. No, honestly. No. No, shut up, all of you. No, I don't care what your mothers told you. Now, I want to know about this poisoning, Gimlet.' Gimlet struggled to his feet. 'We did Rat Surprise last night for the Sons of Bloodaxe annual dinner,' he said. There was a general groan. 'And it was rat.' He raised his voice against the complaining. 'You can't use anything else - listen - you've got to have the noses poking through the pastry, all right? Some of the best rat we've had in for a long time, let me tell you!' 'And you were all ill afterwards?' said Carrot, taking out his notebook. 'Sweating all night!' 'Couldn't see straight!' 'I reckon I know every knothole on the back of the privy door!' ‘I’ll write that down as a "definitely",' said Carrot. 'Was there anything else on the dinner menu?' 'Vole-au-vents and Cream of Rat,' said Gimlet. 'All hygienically prepared.' 'How do you mean, "hygienically prepared"?' said Carrot. 'The chef is under strict orders to wash his hands afterwards.' The assembled dwarfs nodded. This was certainly pretty hygienic. You didn't want people going around with ratty hands. 'Anyway, you've all been eating here for years,' said Gimlet, sensing this slight veer in his direction. This is the first time there's been any trouble, isn't it? My rats are famous!' 'Your chicken's going to be pretty famous, too,' said Carrot. There was laughter this time. Even Gimlet joined in. 'All right, I'm sorry about the chicken. But it was that or very poor rats, and you know I only buy from Wee Mad Arthur. He's trustworthy, whatever else you may say about him. You just can't get better rats. Everyone knows that.' That'll be Wee Mad Arthur in Gleam Street?' said Carrot. 'Yes. Not a mark on 'em, most of the time.' 'Have you got any left?' 'One or two.' Gimlet's expression changed. 'Here, you don't think he poisoned them, do you? I never did trust that little bugger!' 'Enquiries are continuing,' said Carrot. He tucked his notebook away. 'I'd like some rats, please. Those rats. To go.' He glanced at the menu, patted his pocket and looked questioningly out through the door at Angua. 'You don't have to buy them,' she said wearily. "They're evidence.' 'We can't defraud an innocent tradesman who may be the victim of circumstances,' said Carrot. 'You want ketchup?' said Gimlet. 'Only they're extra with ketchup.'     The funeral carriage went slowly through the streets. It looked quite expensive, but that was Cockbill Street for you. People put money by. Vimes remembered that. You always put money by, in Cockbill Street. You saved up for a rainy day even if it was pouring already. And you'd die of shame if people thought you could afford only a cheap funeral. Half a dozen black-clad mourners came along behind, together with perhaps a score of people who had tried at least to look respectable. Vimes followed the procession at a distance all the way to the cemetery behind the Temple of Small Gods, where he lurked awkwardly among the gravestones and sombre graveyard trees while the priest mumbled on. The gods had made the people of Cockbill Street poor, honest and provident, Vimes reflected. They might as well have hung signs saying 'Kick me' on their backs and had done with it. Yet Cockbill Street people tended towards religion, at least of the less demonstrative kind. They always put a little life by for a rainy eternity. Eventually the crowd around the graves broke up and drifted away with the aimless look of people whose immediate future contains ham rolls. Vimes spotted a tearful young woman in the main group and advanced carefully. 'Er. . . are you Mildred Easy?' he said. She nodded. 'Who are you?' She took in the cut of his coat and added, 'sir?' Was that old Mrs Easy who used to do dressmaking?' said Vimes, taking her gently aside. That's right 'And the . . . smaller coffin?' ‘That was our William–‘ The girl looked as if she were about to cry again. 'Can we have a talk?' said Vimes. There are some things I hope you can tell me.' He hated the way his mind worked. A proper human being would have shown respect and quietly walked away. But, as he'd stood among the chilly stones, a horrible apprehension had stolen over him that almost all the answers were in place now, if only he could work out the questions. She looked around at the other mourners. They had reached the gate and were staring back curiously at the two of them. 'Er ... I know this isn't the right time,' said Vimes. 'But, when the kids play hopscotch in the street, what's the rhyme they sing? "Salt, mustard, vinegar, pepper?", isn't it?' She stared at his worried grin. That's a skipping rhyme,' she said coldly. 'When they play hopscotch they sing "Billy Skunkins is a brass stud". Who are you?' 'I'm Commander Vimes of the Watch,' said Vimes. So ... Willy Scuggins would live on in the street, in disguise and in a fashion . . . And old Stoneface was just some guy on a bonfire . . . Then her tears came. 'It's all right, it's all right,' said Vimes, as soothingly as he could. 'I was brought up in Cockbill Street, that's why I ... I mean I'm . . . I'm not here on ... I'm not out to ... look, I know you took food home from the palace. That's all right by me. I'm not here to ... oh, damn, would you like my handkerchief? I think your one's full.' 'Everyone does it!' 'Yes, I know.' 'Anyway, cook never says nothing ..." She began to sob again. 'Yes, yes.' 'Everyone takes a few things,' said Mildred Easy. 'It's not like stealing.' It is, thought Vimes treacherously. But I don't give a damn. And now . . . he'd got a grip on the long copper rod and was climbing into a high place while the thunder muttered around him. The, er, the last food you sto— were given,' he said. 'What was it?' 'Just some blancmange and some, you know, that sort of jam made out of meat. . .' 'Pate?' 'Yes. I thought it would be a little treat..." Vimes nodded. Rich, mushy food. The sort you'd give to a baby who was peaky and to a granny who hadn't got any teeth. Well, he was on the roof now, the clouds were black and threatening, and he might as well wave the lightning conductor. Time to ask . . . The wrong question, as it proved. Tell me,' he said, 'what did Mrs Easy die of?'     'Let me put it like this,' said Cheery. 'If these rats had been poisoned with lead instead of arsenic, you'd have been able to sharpen their noses and use them as a pencil.' She lowered the beaker. 'Are you sure?' said Carrot. 'Yes.' 'Wee Mad Arthur wouldn't poison rats, would he? Especially not rats that were going to be eaten.' 'I've heard he doesn't like dwarfs much,' said Angua. 'Yes, but business is business. No one who does a lot of business with dwarfs likes them much, and he must supply every dwarf cafe and delicatessen in the city.' 'Maybe they ate arsenic before he caught them?' said Angua.'People use it as a rat poison, after all . . .' 'Yes,' said Carrot, in a very deliberate way. 'They do.' 'You're not suggesting that Vetinari tucks into a nice rat every day?' said Angua. 'I've heard he uses rats as spies, so I don't think he uses them as elevenses,' said Carrot. 'But it'd be nice to know where Wee Mad Arthur gets his from, don't you think?' 'Commander Vimes said he was looking after the Vetinari case,' said Angua. 'But we're just finding out why Gimlet's rats are full of arsenic/ said Carrot, innocently. 'Anyway, I was going to ask Sergeant Colon to look into it.' 'But . . . Wee Mad Arthur?' said Angua. 'He's mad.' 'Fred can take Nobby with him. I'll go and tell him. Um. Cheery?' 'Yes, Captain?' 'You've been, er, you've been trying to hide your face from me ... oh. Did someone hit you?' 'No, sir!' 'Only your eyes look a bit bruised and your lips-' 'I'm fine, sir!' said Cheery desperately. 'Oh, well, if you say so. I'll... er, I'll. . . look for Sergeant Colon, then ..." He backed out, embarrassed. That left the two of them. All girls together, thought Angua. One normal girl between the two of us, at any rate. 'I don't think the mascara works,' Angua said. 'The lipstick's fine but the mascara... I don't think so.' 'I think I need practice.' 'You sure you want to keep the beard?' 'You don't mean . . . shave? Cheery backed away. 'All right, all right. What about the iron helmet?' 'It belonged to my grandmother! It's dwarfish!' 'Fine. Fine. Okay. You've made a good start, anyway.' 'Er ... what do you think of ... this?' said Cheery, handing her a bit of paper. Angua read it. It was a list of names, although most of them were crossed out:   Cheery Littlebottom Cherry Sherry Sherri Lucinda Littlebottom Sharry Sharri Cheri   'Er ... what do you think?' said Cheery nervously. ' "Lucinda"?' said Angua, raising her eyebrows. 'I've always liked the sound of the name.' ' "Cheri" is nice,' said Angua. 'And it is rather like the one you've got already. The way people spell in this town, no one will actually notice unless you point it out to them.' Cheery's shoulders sagged with released tension. When you've made up your mind to shout out who you are to the world, it's a relief to know that you can do it in a whisper. ' Cheri' , thought Angua. Now, what does that name conjure up? Does the mental picture include iron boots, iron helmet, a small worried face and a long beard? Well, it does now. Somewhere underneath Ankh-Morpork a rat went about its business, ambling unconcernedly through the ruins of a damp cellar. It turned a corner towards the grain store it knew was up ahead, and almost walked into another rat. This one was standing on its hind-legs, though, and wearing a tiny black robe and carrying a scythe. Such of its snout that could be seen was bone-white. SQUEAK? it said. Then the vision faded and revealed a slightly smaller figure. There was nothing in the least rat-like about it, apart from its size. It was human, or at least humanoid. It was dressed in ratskin trousers but was bare above the waist, apart from two bandoliers that criss-crossed its chest. And it was smoking a tiny cigar. It raised a very small crossbow and fired. The soul of the rat - for anything so similar in so many ways to human beings certainly has a soul -watched gloomily as the figure took its recent habitation by the tail and towed it away. Then it looked up at the Death of Rats. 'Squeak?' it said. The Grim Squeaker nodded. SQUEAK. A minute later Wee Mad Arthur emerged into the daylight, dragging the rat behind him. There were fifty-seven neatly lined up along the wall, but despite his name Wee Mad Arthur made a point of not killing the young and the pregnant females. It's always a good idea to make sure you've got a job tomorrow. His sign was still tacked up over the hole. Wee Mad Arthur, as the only insect and vermin exterminator able to meet the enemy on its own terms, found that it paid to advertise.   <divstyle='border:solidwindowtext.5pt;padding:1.0pt4.0pt1.0pt4.0pt'>'WEE MAD' ARTHUR For those little things that get you down Rats *FREE* Mise: 1p per ten tails Moles: 1/2p each Warsps: 50p per nest. Hornets 20p extra Cockroaches and similar by aranjement. Small Fees - BIG JOBS </div>   Arthur took out the world's smallest notebook and a piece of pencil lead. See here, now . . . fifty-eight skins at two a penny, City bounty for the tails at a penny per ten, and the carcases to Gimlet at tuppence per three, the hard-driving dwarf bastard that he was . . . There was a moment's shadow, and then someone stamped on him. 'Right,' said the owner of the boot. 'Still catching rats without a Guild card, are you? Easiest ten dollars we ever earned, Sid. Let's go and—' The man was lifted several inches off the ground, whirled around, and hurled against the wall. His companion stared as a streak of dust raced across his boot, but reacted too late. 'He's gone up me trouser! He's gone up me –arrgh!' There was a crack. 'Me knee! Me knee! He's broken me knee!' The man who had been flung aside tried to get up, but something scurried across his chest and landed astride his nose. 'Hey, pal?' said Wee Mad Arthur. 'Can yer mother sew, pal? Yeah? Then get her to stitch this one!' He grabbed an eyelid in each hand and thrust his head forward with pin-point precision. There was another crack as the skulls met. The man with the broken knee tried to drag himself away but Wee Mad Arthur leapt from his stunned comrade and proceeded to kick him. The kicks of a man not much more than six inches high should not hurt, but Wee Mad Arthur seemed to have a lot more mass than his size would allow. Being nutted by Arthur was like being hit by a steel ball from a slingshot. A kick seemed to have all the power of one from a large man, but very painfully concentrated into a smaller area. 'Yez can tell them buggers at the Rat-Catchers' Guild that I works for whoze I want and charges what I like,' he said, between kicks. 'And them shites can stop tryin' to persecute the small businessman . . .' The other guild enforcer made it to the end of the alley. Arthur gave Sid a final kick and left him in the gutter. Wee Mad Arthur walked back to his task, shaking his head. He worked for nothing and sold his rats for half the official rate, a heinous crime. Yet Wee Mad Arthur was growing rich because the guild hadn't got its joint heads around the idea of fiscal relativity. Arthur charged a lot more for his services. A lot more, that is, from the specialized and above all low point of view of Wee Mad Arthur. What Ankh-Morpork had yet to understand was that the smaller you are the more your money is worth. A dollar for a human bought a loaf of bread that was eaten in a few bites. The same dollar for Wee Mad Arthur bought the same-sized loaf, but it was food for a week and could then be further hollowed out and used as a bedroom. The size-differential problem was also responsible for his frequent drunkenness. Few publicans were prepared to sell beer by the thimbleful or had gnome-sized mugs. Wee Mad Arthur had to go drinking in a swimming costume. But he liked his work. No one could clear out rats like Wee Mad Arthur. Old and cunning rats that knew all about traps, deadfalls and poison were helpless in the face of his attack, which was where, in fact, he often attacked. The last thing they felt was a hand gripping each of their ears, and the last thing they saw was his forehead, approaching at speed. Muttering under his breath, Wee Mad Arthur got back to his calculations. But not for long. He spun around, forehead cocked. 'It's only us, Wee Mad Arthur,' said Sergeant Colon, stepping back hurriedly. 'That's Mr Wee Mad Arthur to youse, copper,' said Wee Mad Arthur, but he relaxed a little. 'We're Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobbs,' said Colon. 'Yeah, you remember us, don't you?' said Nobby, in a wheedling voice. 'We was the ones who helped you when you was fighting them three dwarfs last week.' 'Yez pulled me off 'f them, if that's what you mean,' said Wee Mad Arthur. 'Just when I'd got 'em all down.' 'We want to talk to you about some rats,' said Colon. 'Can't take on any more customers,' said Wee Mad Arthur firmly. 'Some rats you sold to Gimlet's Hole Food Delicatessen a few days ago.' 'What's that to yez?' 'He reckons they was poisoned,' said Nobby, who had taken the precaution of moving behind Colon. 'I never uses poison!' Colon realized he was backing away from a man six inches high. 'Yeah, well... see ... fing is ... you being in fights and that. . . you don't get on with dwarfs . . . some people might say . . . fing is ... it could look like you might have a grudge.' He took another step back and almost tripped over Nobby. 'Grudge? Why should I have a grudge, pal? It ain't me that gets the kicking!' said Wee Mad Arthur, advancing. 'Good point. Good point,' said Colon. 'Only it'd help, right, if you could tell us ... where you got those rats from . . .' 'Like the Patrician's palace, maybe,' said Nobby. 'The palace? No one catches rats at the palace. That's not allowed. No, I remember those rats. They wuz good fat ones, I wanted a penny each, but he held out for four for threepence, th' ole skinflint that he is.' 'Where did you get them, then?' Wee Mad Arthur shrugged. 'Down the cattle market. I do the cattle market Tuesdays. Couldn't tell yez where they came from. Them tunnels guz everywhere, see?' 'Could they've eaten poison before you caught them?' said Colon. Wee Mad Arthur bristled. 'No one puts down poison round there. I won't have it, see? I got all the contracts along the Shambles, and I won't deal with any gobshite who uses poison. I doesn't charge for extermination, see? Guild hates that. But I chooses me customers.' Wee Mad Arthur grinned wickedly. 'I only guz where's there's the finest eating for the rats and I clean up flogging 'em to the lawn ornaments. I find anyone using poison on my patch, they can pay guild rates for guild work, hah, and see how they like it.' 'I can see you're going to be a big man in industrial catering,' said Colon. Wee Mad Arthur put his head on one side. 'D'youse know what happened to the last man that made a crack like that?' he said. 'Er . . . no . . . ?' said Colon. 'Neither does anyone else,' said Wee Mad Arthur, "cos he was never found. Have yez finished? Only I got a wasps' nest to clean out before I go home.' 'So you were catching them under the Shambles?' Colon persisted. 'All the way along. 'S a good beat. There's tanners, tallow men, butchers, sausage-makers . . . That's good grazing, if you're a rat.' 'Yeah, right,' said Colon. 'Fair enough. Well, I reckon we've taken up enough of your time—' 'How d'you catch wasps?' said Nobby, intrigued. 'Smoke 'em out?' '’Tis unsporting not to hit them on the wing,' said Wee Mad Arthur. 'But if it's a busy day I make up squibs out of that No. i black powder the alchemists sell.' He indicated the laden bandoliers over his shoulders. 'You blow them up?' said Nobby. That don't sound too sporting.' 'Yeah? Just ever tried settin' and lightin' half a dozen fuses and then fightin' your way back out of the entrance before the first one goes off?'     'It's a wild-goose chase, Sarge,' said Nobby, as they strolled away. 'Some rats et some poison somewhere and he got them. What're we supposed to do about it? Poisonin' rats ain't illegal.' Colon scratched his chin. 'I think we could be in a bit of trouble, Nobby,' he said. 'I mean, everyone's been bustling around detectoring and we could end up looking a right couple of noddies. I mean, do you want to go back to the Yard and say we talked to Wee Mad Arthur and he said it wasn't him, end of story? We're humans, right? Well, I am and I know you probably are - and we're definitely bringing up the rear around here. I'm telling you, this ain't my Watch any more, Nobby. Trolls, dwarfs, gargoyles . . . I've nothing against them, you know me, but I'm looking forward to my little farm with chickens round the door. And I wouldn't mind goin' out with something to be proud of.' 'Well, what do you want us to do? Knock on every door round the cattle market and ask 'em if they've got any arsenic in the place?' 'Yep,' said Colon. 'Walk and talk. That's what Vimes always says.' 'There's hundreds of 'em! Anyway, they'd say no.' 'Right, but we got to arsk. T'aint like it used to be, Nobby. This is modern policing. Detectoring. These days, we got to get results. I mean, the Watch is getting bigger. I don't mind ole Detritus bein' a sergeant, he's not bad when you get to know him, but one of these days it could be a dwarf giving out orders, Nobby. It's all right for me 'cos I'll be out on my farm—' 'Nailin' chickens round the door,' said Nobby. '—but you've got your future to think about. An', the way things are going, maybe the Watch'll be looking for another captain. It'd be a right bugger if he turned out to have a name like Stronginthearm, eh, or Shale. So you'd better look smart.' 'You never wanted to be a captain, Fred?' 'Me? A hofficer? I have my pride, Nobby. I've nothing against hofficering for them as is called to it, but it's not for the likes of me. My place is with the common man.' 'I wish mine was,' said Nobby gloomily. 'Look what was in my pigeonhole this morning.' He handed the sergeant a square of card, with gold edging. ' "Lady Selachii will be At Home this pm from five onwards, and requests the pleasure of the company of Lord de Nobbes," ' he read. 'Oh.' ‘I’ve heard about these rich ole women,' said Nobby, dejectedly. 'I reckon she wants me to be a giggle-low, is that right?' 'Nah, nah,' said the sergeant, looking at passion's most unlikely plaything. 'I know this stufffrom my uncle. "At Home" is like a bit of a drinks do. It's where all you nobs hob-nob, Nobby. You just drink and scoff and talk about literachoor and the arts.' 'I haven't got any posh clothes,' said Nobby. 'Ah, that's where you score, Nobby,' said Colon. 'Uniforms is okay. Adds a bit of tone, in fact. Especially if you look dashing,' he said, ignoring the evidence that Nobby was, in fact, merely runny. 'Is that a fact?' said Nobby, brightening up a bit. 'I've got a lot more of 'em invites, too,' he said. 'Posh cards what look like they've been nibbled along the edges with gold teeth. Dinners, balls, all kinds of stuff.' Colon looked down at his friend. A strange and yet persuasive thought crept into his mind. 'We-ell,' he said, 'it's the end of the social Season, see? Time's running out.' 'What for?' 'We-ell. . . could be all them posh women want to marry you off to their daughters who're in Season . . .' 'What?' 'Nothing beats an earl except a duke, and we haven't got one of them. And we ain't got a king, neither. The Earl of Ankh would be what they calls a social catch.' Yes, it was easier if he said it to himself like that. If you substituted 'Nobby Nobbs' for 'Earl of Ankh' it didn't work. But it did work when youjust said 'Earl of Ankh'. There'd be many women who'd be happy to be the mother-in-law of the Earl of Ankh even if it meant having Nobby Nobbs into the bargain. Well, a few, anyway. Nobby's eyes gleamed. 'Never thought of that,' he said. 'And some of these girls have a bit of cash, too?' 'More'nyou, Nobby.' 'And of course I owes it to my posterity to see that the line of Nobbses doesn't die out,' Nobby added, thoughtfully. Colon beamed at him with the rather worried expression of a mad doctor who has bolted on the head, applied the crackling lightning to the electrodes, and is now watching his creation lurch down to the village. 'Cor,' said Nobby, his eyes now unfocusing slightly. 'Right, but before that,' said Colon, ‘I’ll do all the places along the Shambles and you do Chittling Street and then we can push off back to the Yard, job done and dusted. Okay?'     'Afternoon, Commander Vimes,' said Carrot, shutting the door behind him. 'Captain Carrot reporting.' Vimes was slumped in his chair, staring at the window. The fog was creeping up again. Already the Opera House opposite was a little hazy. 'We, er, had a look at as many golems as we could, sir,' said Carrot, trying diplomatically to see if there was a bottle anywhere on the desk. There's hardly any, sir. We found eleven had smashed themselves up or sawn their heads off and by lunchtime people were smashing 'em or taking out their words themselves, sir. It's not nice, sir. There's bits of pottery all over the city. It's as if people were . . . just waiting for the opportunity. It's odd, sir. All they do is work and keep themselves to themselves and don't offer any harm to anyone. And some of the ones that smashed themselves left . . . well, notes, sir. Sort of saying they were sorry and ashamed, sir. They kept on going on about their clay . . .' Vimes did not respond. Carrot leaned sideways and down, in case there was a bottle on the floor. 'And Gimlet's Hole Food Delicatessen has been selling poisoned rat. Arsenic, sir. I've asked Sergeant Colon and Nobby to follow that one. It might just be some kind of mix-up, but you never know.' Vimes turned. Carrot could hear his breathing. Short, sharp bursts, like a man trying to keep himself under control. 'What have we missed, Captain?' he said, in a faraway voice. 'Sir?' 'In his lordship's bedroom. There's the bed. The desk. Things on the desk. The table by the bed. The chair. The rug. Everything. We replaced everything. He eats food. We've checked the food, yes?' The whole larder, sir.' Ts that a fact? We might be wrong there. I don't understand how, but we might be wrong. There's some evidence lying in the cemetery that suggests we are.' Vimes was nearly growling. 'What else is there? Littlebottom says there's no marks on him. What else is there? Let's find out the how and with any luck that'll give us the who.' 'He breathes the air more than anyone else, si—' 'But we moved him into another bedroom! Even if someone was, I don't know, pumping poison in . . . they couldn't change rooms with us all watching. It's got to be the food!' 'I've watched them taste it, sir.' Then it's something we're not seeing, damn it! People are dead, Captain! Mrs Easy's deadl' 'Who, sir?' 'You've never heard of her?' 'Can't say that I have, sir. What did she use to do?' 'Do? Nothing, I suppose. She just brought up nine kids in a couple of rooms you couldn't stretch out in and she sewed shirts for tuppence an hour, every hour the bloody gods sent, and all she did was work and keep herself to herself and she is dead, Captain. And so's her grandson. Aged fourteen months. Because her granddaughter took them some grub from the palace! A bit of a treat for them! And d'you know what? Mildred thought I was going to arrest her for theft! At the damn funeral, for gods' sake!' Vimes's fists opened and closed, his knuckles showing white. 'It's murder now. Not assassination, not politics, it's murder. Because we're not asking the right damn questions!'     The door opened. 'Oh, good afternoon, squire,' said Sergeant Colon brightly, touching his helmet. 'Sorry to bother you. I expect it's your busy time, but I've got to ask, just to eliminate you from our enquiries, so to speak. Do you use any arsenic around the place?' 'Er . . . don't leave the officer standing there, Fanley,' said a nervous voice, and the workman stepped aside. 'Good afternoon, officer. How may we help you?' 'Checking up on arsenic, sir. Seems some's been getting where it shouldn't.' 'Er . . . good heavens. Really. I'm sure we don't use any, but do come inside while I check with the foremen. I'm certain there's a pot of tea hot, too.' Colon looked behind him. The mist was rising. The sky was going grey. 'Wouldn't say no, sir!' he said. The door closed behind him. A moment later, there was the faint scrape of the bolts.     'Right,' said Vimes. 'Let's start again.' He picked up an imaginary ladle. 'I'm the cook. I've made this nourishing gruel that tastes like dog's water. I'm filling up three bowls. Everyone's watching me. All the bowls have been well washed, right? Okay. The tasters take two, one to taste, and these days the other's for Littlebottom to check, and then a servant - that's you, Carrot - takes the third one and . . .' 'Puts it in the dumbwaiter, sir. There's one up to every room.' 'I thought they carried them up?' 'Six floors? It'd get stone-cold, sir.' 'All right . . . hold on. We've gone too far. You've got the bowl. D'you put it on a tray?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Put it on a tray, then.' Carrot obediently put the invisible bowl on an invisible tray. 'Anything else?' said Vimes. 'Piece of bread, sir. And we check the loaf.' 'Soup spoon?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Well, don't just stand there. Put them on . . .' Carrot detached one hand from the invisible tray to take an invisible piece of bread and an intangible spoon. 'Anything else?' said Vimes. 'Salt and pepper?' 'I think I remember salt and pepper pots, sir.' 'On they go, then.' Vimes stared hawk-like at the space between Carrot's hands. 'No,' he said. 'We wouldn't have missed that, would we? I mean . . . we wouldn't, would we?' He reached out and picked up an invisible tube. 'Tell me we checked the salt,' he said. 'That's the pepper, sir,' said Carrot helpfully. 'Salt! Mustard! Vinegar! Pepper!' said Vimes. 'We didn't check all the food and then let his lordship tip poison on to suit his taste, did we? Arsenic's a metal. Can't you get ... metal salts? Tell me we asked ourselves that. We aren't that stupid, are we?' ‘I’ll check directly,' said Carrot. He looked around desperately. ‘I’ll just put the tray down—' 'Not yet,' said Vimes. ‘I’ve been here before. We don't rush off shouting "Give me a towel!" just because we've had one idea. Let's keep looking, shall we? The spoon. What's it made of?' 'Good point. I'll check the cutlery, sir.' 'Now we're cooking with charcoal! What's he been drinking?' 'Boiled water, sir. We've tested the water. And I checked the glasses.' 'Good. So... we've got the tray and you put the tray in the dumbwaiter and then what?' 'The men in the kitchen haul on the ropes and it goes up to the sixth floor.' 'No stops?' Carrot looked blank. 'It goes up six floors,' said Vimes. 'It's just a shaft with a big box in it that can be pulled up and down, isn't it? I'll bet there's a door into it on every floor.' 'Some of the floors are hardly used these days, sir—' 'Even better for our poisoner, hmm? He just stands there, bold as you like, and waits for the tray to come by, right? We don't know that the meal which arrives is the one that left, do we?' 'Brilliant, sir!' 'It happens at night, I'll swear,' said Vimes. 'He's chipper in the evenings and out like a light next morning. What time is his supper sent up?' 'While he's poorly, around six o'clock, sir,' said Carrot. 'It's got dark by then. Then he gets on with his writing.' 'Right. We've got a lot to do. Come on.'     The Patrician was sitting up in bed reading when Vimes entered. 'Ah, Vimes,' he said. 'Your supper will be up shortly, my lord,' said Vimes. 'And can I once again say that our job would be a lot easier if you let us move you out of the palace?' 'I'm sure it would be,' said Lord Vetinari. There was a rattle from the dumbwaiter. Vimes walked across and opened the doors. There was a dwarf in the box. He had a knife between his teeth and an axe in each hand, and was glowering with ferocious concentration. 'Good heavens,' said Vetinari weakly. 'I hope at least they've included some mustard.' 'Any problems, Constable?' said Vimes. 'Nofe, fir,' said the dwarf, unfolding himself and removing the knife. 'Very dull all the way up, sir. There was other doors and they all looked pretty unused, but I nailed 'em up anyway like Captain Carrot said, sir.' 'Well done. Down you go.' Vimes shut the doors. There was more rattling as the dwarf began his descent. 'Every detail covered, eh, Vimes?' 'I hope so, sir.' The box came back up again, with a tray in it. Vimes took it out. 'What's this?' 'A Klatchian Hots without anchovies,' said Vimes, lifting the cover. 'We got it from Ron's Pizza Hovel round the corner. The way I see it, no one can poison all the food in the city. And the cutlery's from my place.' 'You have the mind of a true policeman, Vimes.' 'Thank you, sir.' 'Really? Was it a compliment?' The Patrician prodded at the plate with the air of an explorer in a strange country. 'Has someone already eaten this, Vimes?' 'No, sir. That's just how they chop up the food.' 'Oh, I see. I thought perhaps the food-tasters were getting over-enthusiastic,' said the Patrician. 'My word. What a treat I have to look forward to.' 'I can see you're feeling better, sir,' said Vimes stiffly. 'Thank you, Vimes.' When Vimes had gone Lord Vetinari ate the pizza, or at least those parts of it he thought he could recognize. Then he put the tray aside and blew out the candle by his bed. He sat in the dark for a while, then felt under his pillow until his finger located a small sharp knife and a box of matches. Thank goodness for Vimes. There was something endearing about his desperate, burning and above all misplaced competence. If the poor man took any longer he'd have to start giving him hints.     In the main office Carrot sat alone, watching Dorfl. The golem stood where it had been left. Someone had hung a dishcloth on one arm. The top of its head was still open. Carrot spent a while with his chin on one hand, just staring. Then he opened a desk drawer and took out Dorfl's chem. He examined it. He got up. He walked over to the golem. He placed the words in the head. An orange glow rose in Dorfl's eyes. What was baked pottery took on that faintest of auras that marked the change between the living and the dead. Carrot found the golem's slate and pencil and pushed them into Dorfl's hand, then stood back. The burning gaze followed him as he removed his sword belt, undid his breastplate, took off his jerkin and pulled his woollen vest over his head. The glow was reflected from his muscles. They glistened in the candlelight. 'No weapons,' said Carrot. 'No armour. You see? Now listen to me . . Dorfl lurched forward and swung a fist. Carrot did not move. The fist stopped a hair's-breadth from Carrot's unblinking eyes. 'I didn't think you could,' he said, as the golem swung again and the fist jerked to a stop a fraction of an inch from Carrot's stomach. 'But sooner or later you'll have to talk to me. Write, anyway. ' Dorfl paused. Then it picked up the slate pencil. TAKE MY WORDS! 'Tell me about the golem who killed people. ' The pencil did not move. 'The others have killed themselves,' said Carrot. I KNOW. 'How do you know?' The golem watched him. Then it wrote: CLAY OF MY CLAY. 'You feel what other golems feel?' said Carrot. Dorfl nodded. 'And people are killing golems,' said Carrot. 'I don't know if I can stop that. But I can try. I think I know what's happening, Dorfl. Some of it. I think I know who you were following. Clay of your clay. Shaming you all. Something went wrong. You tried to put it right. I think . . . you all had such hopes. But the words in your head'll defeat you every time . . . ' The golem stayed motionless. 'You sold him, didn't you, ' said Carrot quietly. 'Why?' The words were scribbled quickly. GOLEM MUST HAVE A MASTER. 'Why? Because the words say so?' GOLEM MUST HAVE A MASTER. Carrot sighed. Men had to breathe, fish had to swim, golems had to have a master. 'I don't know if I can sort this out, but no one else is going to try, believe me,' he said. Dorfl did not move. Carrot went back to where he had been standing. 'I'm wondering if the old priest and Mr Hopkinson did something ... or helped to do something,' he said, watching the golem's face. ‘I’m wondering if . . . afterwards . . . something turned against them, found the world a bit too much . . .' Dorfl remained impassive. Carrot nodded. 'Anyway, you're free to go. What happens now is up to you. I'll help you if I can. If a golem is a thing then it can't commit murder, and I'll still try to find out why all this is happening. If a golem can commit murder, then you are people, and what is being done to you is terrible and must be stopped. Either way, you win, Dorfl.' He turned his back and fiddled with some papers on his desk. 'The big trouble,' he added, 'is that everyone wants someone else to read their minds for them and then make the world work properly. Even golems, perhaps.' He turned back to face the golem. 'I know you've all got a secret. But, the way things are going, there won't be any of you left to keep it.' He looked hopefully at Dorfl. NO. CLAY OF MY CLAY. I WILL NOT BETRAY. Carrot sighed. 'Well, I won't force you.' He grinned. 'Although, you know, I could. I could write a few extra words on your chem. Tell you to be talkative.' The fires rose in Dorfl’s eyes. 'But I won't. Because that would be inhumane. You haven't murdered anyone. I can't deprive you of your freedom because you haven't got any. Go on. You can go. It's not as if I don't know where you live.' TO WORK IS TO LIVE. 'What is it golems want, Dorfl? I've seen you golems walking around the streets and working all the time, but what is it you actually hope to achieve?' The slate pencil scribbled. RESPITE. Then Dorfl turned around and walked out of the building, 'D*mn!' said Carrot, a difficult linguistic feat. He drummed his fingers on the desk, then got up abruptly, put his clothing back on and stalked down the corridor to find Angua. She was leaning against the wall in Corporal Littlebottom's office, talking to the dwarf. 'I've sent Dorfl home,' said Carrot. 'Has he got one?' said Angua. 'Well, back to the slaughterhouse, anyway. But it's probably not a good time for a golem to be out alone so I'm just going to stroll along after him and keep . . . Are you all right, Corporal Little-bottom?' 'Yes, sir,' said Cheri. 'You're wearing a. ..a. ..a...' Carrot's mind rebelled at the thought of what the dwarf was wearing and settled for: 'A kilt?' 'Yes, sir. A skirt, sir. A leather one, sir.' Carrot tried to find a suitable response and had to resort to:'Oh.' ‘I’ll come with you,' said Angua. 'Cheri can keep an eye on the desk.' 'A ... kilt,' said Carrot. 'Oh. Well, er ... just keep an eye on things. We won't be long. And . . . er ... just keep behind the desk, all right?' 'Come on,' said Angua. When they were out in the fog Carrot said, 'Do you think there's something a bit ... odd about Littlebottom?' 'Seems like a perfectly ordinary female to me,' said Angua. 'Female? He told you he was female?' 'She,' Angua corrected. This is Ankh-Morpork, you know. We've got extra pronouns here.' She could smell his bewilderment. Of course, everyone knew that, somewhere down under all those layers of leather and chain mail, dwarfs came in enough different types to ensure the future production of more dwarfs, but it was not a subject that dwarfs discussed other than at those essential points in a courtship when embarrassment might otherwise arise. 'Well, I would have thought she'd have the decency to keep it to herself,' Carrot said finally. 'I mean, I've nothing against females. I'm pretty certain my stepmother is one. But I don't think it's very clever, you know, to go around drawing attention to the fact.' 'Carrot, I think you've got something wrong with your head,' said Angua. 'What?' 'I think you may have got it stuck up your bum. I mean, good grief. A bit of make-up and a dress and you're acting as though she'd become Miss Va Va Voom and started dancing on tables down at the Skunk Club!' There were a few seconds of shocked silence while they both considered the image of a dwarfish strip-tease dancer. Both minds rebelled. 'Anyway,' said Angua, 'if people can't be themselves in Ankh-Morpork, where can they?' 'There'll be trouble when the other dwarfs notice,' said Carrot. 'I could almost see his knees. Her knees.' 'Everyone's got knees.' 'Perhaps, but it's asking for trouble to flaunt them. I mean, I'm used to knees. I can look at knees and think, "Oh, yes, knees, they're just hinges in your legs", but some of the lads—' Angua sniffed. 'He turned left here. Some of the lads what"?' 'Well ... I don't know how they'll react, that's all. You shouldn't have encouraged her. I mean, of course there's female dwarfs but ... I mean, they have the decency not to show it.' He heard Angua gasp. Her voice sounded rather far away when she said, 'Carrot, you know I've always respected your attitude to the citizens of Ankh-Morpork.' 'Yes?' 'I’ve been impressed by the way you really seem to be blind to things like shape and colour.' 'Yes?' 'And you always seem to care for people.' 'Yes?' 'And you know that I feel considerable affection for you.' 'Yes?' 'It's just that, sometimes 'Yes?' 'I really, really, really wonder why.'     Carriages were thickly parked outside Lady Selachii's mansion when Corporal Nobbs strolled up the drive. He knocked on the door. A footman opened it. 'Servants' entrance,' said the footman, and made to shut the door again. But Nobby's outstretched foot had been ready for this. 'Read these,' he said, thrusting two bits of paper at him. The first one read:   I, after hearing evidence from a number of experts, including Mrs Slipdry the midwife, certify that the balance of probability is that the bearer of this document, C. W. St John Nobbs, is a human being. Signed, Lord Vetinari.   The other was the letter from Dragon King of Arms. The footman's eyes widened. 'Oh, I am terribly sorry, your lordship,' he said. He stared again at Corporal Nobbs. Nobby was clean-shaven - at least, the last time he'd shaved he'd been cleanshaven - but his face had so many minor topological features it looked like a very bad example of slash-and-burn agriculture. 'Oh, dear,' added the footman. He pulled himself together. 'The other visitors normally just have cards.' Nobby produced a battered deck. 'I'm probably busy hobnobbing right now,' he said. 'But I'm game for a few rounds of Cripple Mr Onion afterwards, if you like.' The footman looked him up and down. He didn't get out much. He'd heard rumours - who hadn't? -that working in the Watch was the rightful king of Ankh-Morpork. He'd have to admit that, if you wanted to hide a secret heir to the throne, you couldn't possibly hide him more carefully than under the face of C. W. St J. Nobbs. On the other hand . . . the footman was something of an historian, and knew that in its long history even the throne itself had been occupied by creatures who had been hunchbacked, one-eyed, knuckle-dragging and as ugly as sin. On that basis Nobby was as royal as they came. If, technically, he wasn't hunchbacked, this was only because he was hunched front and sides, too. There might be a time, the footman thought, when it paid to hitch your wagon to a star, even if said star was a red dwarf. 'You've never been to one of these affairs before, m'lord?' he said. 'First time,' said Nobby. Tm sure your lordship's blood will rise to the occasion,' said the footman weakly.     I'll have to go, Angua thought as they hurried through the fog. I can't go on living from month to month. It's not that he's not likeable. You couldn't wish to meet a more caring man. That's just it. He cares for everyone. He cares about everything. He cares indiscriminately. He knows everything about everyone because everyone interests himf and the caring is all general and never personal. He doesn't think personal is the same as important. If only he had some decent human quality, like selfishness. I'm sure he doesn't think about it that way, but you can tell the werewolf thing is upsetting him underneath. He cares about the things people say behind my back, and he doesn't know how to deal with them. What was it those dwarfs said the other day? One said something like, 'She feels the need/ and the other one said, 'Yeah, the need to feed.' I saw his expression. I can handle that sort of thing . . . well, most of the time . . . but he can't. If only he'd thump someone. It wouldn't do any good but at least he'd feel better. It's going to get worse. At best I'm going to get caught in someone's chicken-house, and then the midden is really going to hit the windmill. Or I'll get caught in someone's room . . . She tried to shut out the thought but it didn't work. You could only control the werewolf, you couldn't tame it. It's the city. Too many people, too many smells . . . Maybe it would work if we were just alone somewhere, but if I said, 'It's me or the city,' he wouldn't even see there was a choice. Sooner or later, I've got to go home. It's the best thing for him.     Vimes walked back through the damp night. He knew he was too angry to think properly. He'd got nowhere, and he'd travelled a long way to get there. He'd got a cartload of facts and he'd done all the right logical things, and to someone, somewhere, he must look like a fool. He probably looked like a fool to Carrot already. He'd kept coming up with bright ideas - proper policeman's ideas - and each one had turned out to be a joke. He'd bullied and shouted and done all the proper things, and none of it had worked. They hadn't found a thing. They'd merely increased their amount of ignorance. The ghost of old Mrs Easy rose up in his inner vision. He couldn't remember much about her. He'd been just another snotty kid in a crowd of snotty kids, and she'd been just another worried face somewhere on top of a pinny. One of Cockbill Street's people. She'd taken in needlework to make ends meet and kept up appearances and, like everyone else in the street, had crept through life never asking for anything and getting even less. What else could he have done? They'd practically scraped the damn wallpaper off the wal— He stopped. There was the same wallpaper in both rooms. In every room on that floor. That horrible green wallpaper. But... no, that couldn't be it. Vetinari had slept in that room for years, if he slept at all. You can't sneak in and redecorate without someone noticing. In front of him, the fog rolled aside. He caught a glimpse of a candlelit room in a nearby building before the cloud flowed back. The fog. Yes. Dampness. Creeping in, brushing against the wallpaper. The old, dusty, musty wallpaper . . . Would Cheery have tested the wallpaper? After all, in a way you didn't actually see it. It wasn't in the room because it was defining what the room was. Could you actually be poisoned by the walls'? He hardly dared think the thought. If he let his mind settle on the suspicion it'd twist and fly away, like all the others. But . . . this was it, said his secret soul. All the messing around with suspects and Clues . . . that was just something to keep the body amused while the back of the brain toiled away. Every real copper knew you didn't go around looking for Clues so that you could find out Who Done It. No, you started out with a pretty good idea of Who Done It. That way, you knew what Clues to look for. He wasn't going to have another day of bafflement interspersed with desperately bright ideas, was he? It was bad enough looking at Corporal Littlebottom's expression, which seemed to be getting a little more colourful every time he saw it. He'd said, 'Ah, arsenic's a metal, right, so maybe the cutlery has been made of it?' He wouldn't forget the look on the dwarfs face as Cheery tried to explain that, yes, it might be possible to do that, provided you were sure that no one would notice the way it dissolved in the soup almost instantly. This time he was going to think first.     'The Earl of Ankh, Corporal the Rt. Hon. Lord C. W. StJ. Nobbs!' The buzz of conversation stopped. Heads turned. Somewhere in the crowd someone started to laugh and was hurriedly shushed into silence by their neighbours. Lady Selachii came forward. She was a tall, angular woman, with the sharp features and aquiline nose that were the hallmarks of the family. The impression was that an axe was being thrown at you. Then she curtsied. There were gasps of surprise around her, but she glared at the assembled guests and there was a smattering of bows and curtsies. Somewhere at the back of the room someone started to say, 'But the man's an absolute oik—' and was cut off. 'Has someone dropped something?' said Nobby nervously. ‘I’ll help you look, if you like.' The footman appeared at his elbow, bearing a tray. 'A drink, m'lord?' he said. 'Yeah, okay, a pint of Winkles,' said Nobby. Jaws fell. But Lady Selachii's rose to the occasion. 'Winkles?' she said. 'A type of beer, your ladyship,' said the footman. Her ladyship hesitated only a moment. 'I believe the butler drinks beer,' she said. 'See to it, man. And I'll have a pint of Winkles, too. What a novel idea.' This caused a certain effect among those guests who knew on which side of the biscuit their pate was spread. 'Indeed! Capital suggestion! A pint of Winkles here, too!' 'Hawhaw! Gweat! Winkles for me!' 'Winkles all round!' 'But the man's an absolute ti—' 'Shut up!'     Vimes crossed the Brass Bridge with care, counting the hippos. There was a ninth shape, but it was leaning against the parapet and muttering to itself in a familiar and, to Vimes at least, an unmenacing way. Faint air movements wafted towards him a smell that out-smelled even the river. It proclaimed that ahead of Vimes was a ding-a-ling so big he'd been upgraded to a clang-a-lang. '. . . Buggrit buggrit I told 'em, stand it up and pull the end orf! Millennium hand and shrimp! I told 'em, sez I, and would they poke . . .' 'Evening, Ron,' said Vimes, without even bothering to look at the figure. Foul Ole Ron fell into step behind him. 'Buggrit they done me out of it so they did . . .' 'Yes, Ron,' said Vimes. '. . . And shrimp . . . buggrit, say I, bread it on the butter side . . . Queen Molly says to watch your back, mister.' 'What was that?' '. . . Sowter fry it!' said Foul Ole Ron innocently. Trouser the lot of'em, they did me out of it, them and their big weasel!' The beggar lurched around and, filthy coat dragging its hems along the ground, limped away into the fog. His little dog trotted along in front of him.     There was pandemonium in the servants' hall. 'Winkles' Old Peculiar?' said the butler. 'Another one hundred and four pints!' said the footman. The butler shrugged. 'Harry, Sid, Rob and Jeffrey . . . two trays apiece and double down to the King's Head again right now! What else is he doing?' 'Well, they're supposed to be having a poetry reading but he's telling 'em jokes . . .' 'Anecdotes?' 'Not exactly.'     It was amazing how it could drizzle and fog at the same time. Wind was blowing both through the open window, and Vimes was forced to shut it. He lit the candles by his desk and opened his notebook. Probably he should use the demonic organizer, but he liked to see things written down fair and square. He could think better when he wrote things down. He wrote 'Arsenic', and drew a big circle round it. Around the circle he wrote: 'Fr. Tubelcek's fingernails' and 'Rats and 'Vetinari' and 'Mrs Easy'. Lower down the page he wrote: 'Golems', and drew a second circle. Around that one he wrote: 'Fr. Tubelcek?' and 'Mr Hopkinson?'. After some thought he wrote down: 'Stolen clay' and 'Grog'. And then: 'Why would a golem admit to something it didn't do?' He stared at the candlelight for a while and then wrote: 'Rats eat stuff.' More time passed. 'What has the priest got that anyone wants?' From downstairs came the sound of armour as a patrol came in. A corporal shouted. 'Words,' wrote Vimes. 'What had Mr Hopkinson got? Dwarf bread? —»• Not stolen. What else had he got?' Vimes looked at this, too, and then he wrote 'Bakery', stared at the word for a while, and rubbed it out and replaced it with 'Oven?'. He drew a ring around 'Oven?' and a ring around 'Stolen clay', and linked the two. There'd been arsenic under the old priest's fingernails. Perhaps he'd put down rat poison? There were plenty of uses for arsenic. It wasn't as if you couldn't buy it by the pound from any alchemist. He wrote down 'Arsenic Monster' and looked at it. You found dirt under fingernails. If people had put up a fight you might find blood or skin. You didn't find grease and arsenic. He looked at the page again and, after still more thought, wrote: 'Golems aren't alive. But they think they are alive. What do things that are alive do? —» Ans: Breathe, eat, crap.' He paused, staring out at the fog, and then wrote very carefully: 'And make more things.' Something tingled at the back of his neck. He circled the late Hopkinson's name and drew a line down the page to another circle, in which he wrote: 'He'd got a big oven.' Hmm. Cheery had said you couldn't bake clay properly in a bread oven. But maybe you could bake it improperly. He looked up at the candlelight again. They couldn't do that, could they? Oh, gods . . . No, surely not ... But, after all, all you needed was clay. And a holy man who knew how to write the words. And someone to actually sculpt the figure, Vimes supposed, but golems had had hundreds and hundreds of years to learn to be good with their hands . . . Those great big hands. The ones that looked so very fist-like. And then the first thing they'd want to do would be to destroy the evidence, wouldn't they? They probably didn't think of it as killing, but more like a sort of switching-off. . . He drew another rather misshapen circle on his notes. Grog. Old baked clay, ground up small. They'd added some of their own clay. Dorfl had a new foot, didn't he - it? It hadn't made it quite right. They'd put part of their own selves into a new golem. That all sounded - well, Nobby would call it mucky. Vimes didn't know what to call it. It sounded like some sort of secret-society thing. 'Clay of my clay.' My own flesh and blood . . . Damn hulking things. Aping their betters! Vimes yawned. Sleep. He'd be better for some sleep. Or something. He stared at the page. Automatically his hand trailed down to the bottom drawer of his desk, as it always did when he was worried and trying to think. It wasn't as though there was ever a bottle there these days - but old habits died ha ... There was a soft glassy ching and a faint, seductive slosh. Vimes's hand came up with a fat bottle. The label said: Bearhugger's Distilleries: The MacAbre, Finest Malt. The liquid inside almost crawled up the sides of the glass in anticipation. He stared at it. He'd reached down into the drawer for the whisky bottle and there it was. But it shouldn't have been. He knew Carrot and Fred Colon kept an eye on him, but he'd never bought a bottle since he'd got married, because he'd promised Sybil, hadn't he . . . ? But this wasn't any old rotgut. This was The MacAbre . . . He'd tried it once. He couldn't quite remember why now, since in those days the only spirits he generally drank had the subtlety of a mallet to the inner ear. He must have found the money somehow. Just a sniff of it had been like Hogswatchnight. Just a sniff. . .     'And she said, "That's funny - it didn't do that last night"!' said Corporal Nobbs. He beamed at the company. There was silence. Then someone in the crowd started to laugh, one of those little uncertain laughs a man laughs who is unsure that he's not going to be silenced by those around him. Another man laughed. Two more picked it up. Then laughter exploded in the group as a whole. Nobby basked. 'Then there's the one about the Klatchian who walked into a pub with a tiny piano—' he began. 'I think,' said Lady Selachii firmly, 'that the buffet is ready.' 'Got any pig knuckles?' said Nobby cheerfully. 'Goes down a treat with Winkles, a plate of pig knuckles.' 'I don't normally eat extremities,' said Lady Selachii. 'A pig-knuckle sandwich . . . Never tried a pig knuckle? You just can't beat it,' said Nobby. 'It is ... perhaps. . . not the most delicate food?' said Lady Selachii. 'Oh, you can cut the crusts off,' said Nobby. 'Even the toenails. If you're feeling posh.'     Sergeant Colon opened his eyes, and groaned. His head ached. They'd hit him with something. It might have been a wall. They'd tied him up, too. He was trussed hand and foot. He appeared to be lying in darkness on a wooden floor. There was a greasy smell in the air, which seemed familiar yet annoyingly unrecognizable. As his eyes grew accustomed to the dark he could make out very faint lines of light, such as might surround a door. He could also hear voices. He tried to get up to his knees, and groaned as more pain crackled in his head. When people tied you up it was bad news. Of course, it was much better news than when they killed you, but it could mean they were just putting you on one side for killing later. This never used to happen, he told himself. In the old days, if you caught someone thieving, you practically held the door open for him to escape. That way, you got home in one piece. By using the angle between a wall and a heavy crate he managed to get upright. This was not much of an improvement on his former position, but after the thunder in his head had died away he hopped awkwardly towards the door. There were still voices on the other side of it. Someone apart from Sergeant Colon was in trouble. '—down! You got me here for this'? There's a werewolf in the Watch! Ah-ha. Not one of your freaks. She's a proper bimorphic! If you tossed a coin, she could smell what side it came down!' 'How about if we kill him and drag his body away?' 'You think she couldn't smell the difference between a corpse and a living body?' Sergeant Colon moaned softly. 'Er, how about we could march him out in the fog-?' 'And they can smell fear, idiot. Ah-ha. Why couldn't you have let him look around? What could he have seen? I know that copper. A fat old coward with all the brains of, ah-ha, a pig. He stinks of fear all the time.' Sergeant Colon hoped he wasn't about to stink of anything else. 'Send Meshugah after him, ah-ha.' 'Are you sure? It's getting odd. It wanders off and screams in the night, and they're not supposed to do that. And it's cracking up. Trust dumb golems not to do something prop—' 'Everyone knows you can't trust golems. Ah-ha. See to it!' ‘I heard that Vimes is—' 'I've seen to Vimes!' Colon eased himself away from the door as quietly as possible. He hadn't the faintest idea what this thing called Meshugah the golems had made was, except that it sounded like a fine idea to be wherever it wasn't. Now, if he were a resourceful type, like Sam Vimes or Captain Carrot, he'd . . . find a nail or something to snap these ropes, wouldn't he? They were really tight, and cut into his wrists because the cord was so thin, little more than string wound and knotted many times. If he could find something to rub it on ... But, unfortunately, and against all common sense, sometimes people inconsiderately throw their bound enemies into rooms entirely bereft of nails, handy bits of sharp stone, sharp-edged shards of glass or even, in extreme cases, enough pieces of old junk and tools to make a fully functional armoured car. He managed to get on to his knees again and shuffled across the planks. Even a splinter would do. A lump of metal. A wide-open doorway marked FREEDOM. He'd settle for anything. What he got was a tiny circle of light on the floor. A knothole in the wood had long ago fallen out, and light - dim orange light — was shining through. Colon got down and applied his eye to the hole. Unfortunately this also brought his nose into a similar proximity. The stench was appalling. There was a suggestion of wateriness, or at least of liquidity. He must be over one of the numerous streams that flowed through the city, although they had of course been built over centuries before and were now used - if their existence was even remembered - for those purposes to which humanity had always put clean fresh water; i.e., making it as turbid and undrinkable as possible. And this one was flowing under the cattle markets. The smell of ammonia bored into Colon's sinuses like a drill. And yet there was light down there. He held his breath and took another look. A couple of feet below him was a very small raft. Haifa dozen rats were laid neatly on it, and a minute scrap of candle was burning. A tiny rowing boat entered his vision. A rat was in the bottom of it and, sitting amidships and rowing, was— 'Wee Mad Arthur?' The gnome looked up. 'Who's that there, then?' 'It's me, your good old mate Fred Colon! Can you give me a hand?' 'Wha're yez doing up there?' Tm all tied up and they're going to kill me! Why does it smell so bad?' "S the old Cockbill stream. All the cattle pens drain into it.' Wee Mad Arthur grinned. 'Yez can feel it doing yer tubes a power of good, eh? Just call me King of the Golden River, eh?' 'They're going to kill me, Arthur! Don't piss about!' 'Aha, good one!' Desperate cells flared in Colon's mind. ‘I’ve been on the trail of those blokes who're poisoning your rats,' he said. The Rat-catchers' Guild!' snarled Arthur, almost dropping an oar. 'I knew it was them, right? This is where I got them rats! There's more of 'em down here, dead as doornails!' 'Right! And I've got to give the names to Commander Vimes! In person! With all my arms and legs on! He's very particular about that sort of thing!' 'Did yez know yez on a trapdoor?' said Arthur. 'Wait right there.' Arthur rowed out of sight. Colon rolled over. After a while there was a scratching noise in the walls and then someone kicked him in the ear. 'Ow!' 'Would there be any money in this?' said Wee Mad Arthur, holding up his stub of candle. It was a small one, such as might be put on a child's birthday cake. 'What about your public duty?' 'Aye, so there's no money in this?' 'Lots! I promise! Now untie me!' 'This is string they've used,' said Arthur, somewhere around Colon's hands. 'Not proper rope at all.' Colon felt his hands free, although there was still pressure around his wrists. 'Where's the trapdoor?' he said. 'Yer on it. Handy for dumping stuff. Dunt look as if it been used for years, from underneath. Hey, I been rinding dead rats everywhere down there now! Fat as yer head and twice as dead! I thought the ones I caught for Gimlet were a wee bit sluggish!' There was a twang and Colon's legs were free. He sat up cautiously and tried to massage some life back into them. 'Is there any other way out?' he said. 'Plenty for me, none for a silly bigger like yez,' said Wee Mad Arthur. 'Yer'll have to swim for it.' 'You want me to drop into thatT 'Don't yez worry, yez can't drown in it.' 'You sure?' 'Yeah. But yez may suffocate. Yer know that creek they talk about? The one yez can be up without no paddle?' 'That's not this one, is it?' said Colon. 'It's coz of the cattle pens,' said Wee Mad Arthur. 'Cattle penned up is always a bit nervous.' 'I know how they feel.' There was a creak outside the door. Colon managed to get to his feet. The door opened. A figure filled the doorway. It was in silhouette because of the light behind it, but Colon looked up into two triangular glowing eyes. Colon's body, which in many respects was considerably more intelligent than the mind it had to carry around, took over. It made use of the adrenalin-fed start the brain had given it and leapt several feet in the air, pointing its toes as it came down so that the iron tips of Colon's boots hit the trapdoor together. The filth of years and the rust of iron gave way. Colon went through. Fortunately his body had the foresight to hold its own nose as he hit the much-maligned stream, which went: Gloop. Many people, when they're precipitated into water, struggle to breathe. Sergeant Colon struggled not to. The alternative was too horrible to think about. He rose again, buoyed up in part by various gases released from the ooze. A few feet away, the candle on Wee Mad Arthur's rocking raft started to burn with a blue flame. Someone landed on his helmet and kicked it like a man spurs on a horse. 'Right turnl Forward!' Half-walking, half-swimming, Colon struggled down the fetid drain. Terror lent him strength. It would demand repayment with interest later but, for now, he left a wake. Which took several seconds to close up after him. He didn't stop until a sudden lack of pressure overhead told him that he was in the open air. He grabbed in the darkness, found the greasy pilings of a jetty, and clung to them, wheezing. 'What was that thing?' said Wee Mad Arthur. 'Golem,' Colon panted. He managed to get a hand on to the planks of the jetty, tried to pull himself up, and sagged back into the water. 'Hey, did I just hear something?' said Wee Mad Arthur. Sergeant Colon rose like an undersea-launched missile and landed on the jetty, where he folded up. 'Nah, just a bird or something,' said Wee Mad Arthur. 'What do your friends call you, Wee Mad Arthur?' muttered Colon. 'Dunno. Ain't got none.' 'Gosh, that's surprising.'     Lord de Nobbes had a lot of friends now. 'Up the hatch! Here's looking at your bottom!' he said. There were shrieks of laughter. Nobby grinned happily in the middle of the crowd. He couldn't remember when he had enjoyed himself so much with all his clothes on. In the far corner of Lady Selachii's drawing-room a door closed discreetly and, in the comfortable smoking-room beyond, anonymous people sat down in leather armchairs and looked at one another expectantly. Finally one said, 'It's astonishing. Frankly astonishing. The man has actually got charisn'tma.' 'Your meaning?' 'I mean he's so dreadful he fascinates people. Like those stories he was telling . . . Did you notice how people kept encouraging him because they couldn't actually believe anyone would tell jokes like that in mixed company?' 'Actually, I rather liked the one about the very small man playing the piano—' 'And his table manners! Did you notice them?' 'No.' 'Ex-actly!' 'And the smell, don't forget the smell.' 'Not so much bad as ... odd.' 'Actually, I found that after a few minutes the nose shuts down and then it's—' 'My point is that, in some strange way, he attracts people.' 'Like a public hanging.' There was a period of reflective silence. 'Good humoured little tit, though, in his way.' 'Not too bright, though.' 'Give him his pint of beer and a plate of whatever those things with toenails were and he seems as happy as a pig in muck.' 'I think that's somewhat insulting.' Tm sorry.' 'I've known some splendid pigs.' 'Indeed.' 'But I can certainly see him drinking his beer and eating feet while he signs the royal proclamations.' 'Yes, indeed. Er. Do you think he can read?' 'Does it matter?' There was some more silence, filled with the busy racing of minds. Then someone said, 'Another thing . . . we won't have to worry about establishing a royal succession that might be inconvenient.' 'Why do you think that?' 'Can you see any princess marrying him?' 'We-ell . . . they have been known to kiss frogs . . .' 'Frogs, I grant you.' '. . . And, of course, power and royalty are powerful aphrodisiacs . . .' 'How powerful, would you say?' More silence. Then: 'Probably not that powerful.' 'He should do nicely.' 'Splendid.' 'Dragon did well. I suppose the little tit isn't really an earl, by any chance?' 'Don't be silly.'     Cheri Littlebottom sat awkwardly on the high stool behind the desk. All she had to do, she'd been told, was check the patrols off and on-duty when the shift changed. A few of the men gave her an odd look but they said nothing, and she was beginning to relax when the four dwarfs on the King's Way beat came in. They stared at her. And her ears. Their eyes travelled downwards. There was no such concept as a modesty panel in Ankh-Morpork. All that was usually visible under the desk was the bottom half of Sergeant Colon. Of the large number of good reasons for shielding the bottom half of Sergeant Colon from view, its potential for engendering lust was not among the top ten. 'That's . . .female clothes, isn't it?' said one of the dwarfs. Cheri swallowed. Why now? She'd sort of assumed Angua would be around. People always calmed down when she smiled at them, it was really amazing. 'Well?' she quavered. 'So what? I can if I want to.' 'And ... on your ear . , .' 'Well?' 'That's . . . my mother never even . . . urgh . . . that's disgusting! In public, too! What happens if kids come in?' 'I can see your ankles!' said another dwarf. 'I'm going to speak to Captain Carrot about this!' said the third. 'I never thought I'd live to see the day!' Two of the dwarfs stormed off towards the locker-room. Another one hurried after them, but hesitated as he drew level with the desk. He gave Cheri a frantic look. 'Er ... er ... nice ankles, though,' he said, and then ran. The fourth dwarf waited until the others had gone and then sidled up. Cheri was shaking with nervousness. 'Don't you say a thing about my legs!' she said, waving a finger. 'Er . . .' The dwarf looked around hurriedly, and leaned forward. 'Er ... is that. . . lipstick?' 'Yes! What about it?' 'Er . . .' The dwarf leaned forward even more, looked around again, this time conspiratorially, and lowered her voice. 'Er ... could I try it?'     Angua and Carrot walked silently through the fog, except for Angua's occasional crisp and brief directions. Then she stopped. Up until then Dorfl's scent, or at least the fresh scent of old meat and cow dung, had headed quite directly back to the slaughterhouse district. 'It's gone up this alley,' she said. 'That's nearly doubling back. And ... it was moving faster . . . and . . . there's a lot of humans and . . . sausages'?' Carrot started to run. A lot of people and the smell of sausages meant a performance of the street theatre that was life in Ankh-Morpork. There was a crowd further up the alley. It had obviously been there for some time, because at the rear was a familiar figure with a tray, craning to see over the tops of the heads. 'What's going on, Mr Dibbler?' said Carrot. 'Oh, hello, cap'n. They've got a golem.' 'Who have?' 'Oh, some blokes. They've just fetched the hammers.' There was a press of bodies in front of Carrot. He put both hands together and rammed them between a couple of people, and then moved them apart. Grunting and struggling, the crowd opened up like a watercourse in front of the better class of prophet. Dorfl was standing at bay at the end of the alley. Three men with hammers were approaching the golem cautiously, in the way of mobs, each unwilling to strike the first blow in case the second blow came right back at him. The golem was crouching back, shielding itself with its slate on which was written: I AM WORTH 530 DOLLARS. 'Money?' said one of the men. That's all you things think about!' The slate shattered under a blow. Then he tried to raise his hammer again. When it didn't budge he very nearly somersaulted backwards. 'Money is all you can think about when all you have is a price,' said Carrot calmly, twisting the hammer out of his grip. 'What do you think you're doing, my friend?' 'You can't stop us!' mumbled the man. 'Everyone knows they're not alive!' 'But I can arrest you for wilful damage to property,' said Carrot. 'One of these killed that old priest!' 'Sorry?' said Carrot. 'If it's just a thing, how can it commit murder? A sword is a thing' - he drew his own sword; it made an almost silken sound- 'and of course you couldn't possibly blame a sword if someone thrust it at you, sir.' The man went cross-eyed as he tried to focus on the sword. And, again, Angua felt that touch of bewilderment. Carrot wasn't threatening the man. He wasn't threatening the man. He was merely using the sword to demonstrate a ... well, a point. And that was all. He'd be quite amazed to hear that not everyone would think of it like that. Part of her said: Someone has to be very complex indeed to be as simple as Carrot. The man swallowed. 'Good point,' he said. 'Yeah, but . . . you can't trust 'em,' said one of the other hammer-bearers. They sneak around and they never say anything. What are they up to, eh?' He gave Dorfl a kick. The golem rocked slightly. 'Well, now,' said Carrot. 'That is what I am finding out. In the meantime, I must ask you to go about your business . . .' The third demolition man had only recently arrived in the city and had gone along with the idea because there are some people who do. He raised his hammer defiantly and opened his mouth to say, 'Oh, yeah?' but stopped, becausejust by his ear he heard a growl. It was quite low and soft, but it had a complex little waveform which went straight down into a little knobbly bit in his spinal column where it pressed an ancient button marked Primal Terror. He turned. An attractive watchwoman behind him gave him a friendly smile. That was to say, her mouth turned up at the corners and all her teeth were visible. He dropped the hammer on his foot. 'Well done,' said Carrot. ‘I’ve always said you can do more with a kind word and a smile.' The crowd looked at him with the kind of expression people always wore when they looked at Carrot. It was the face-cracking realization that he really did believe what he was saying. The sheer enormity tended to leave people breathless. They backed away and scurried out of the alley. Carrot turned back to the golem, which had dropped to its knees and was trying to piece its slate together. 'Come on, Mr Dorfl,' he said. 'We'll walk with you the rest of the way.'     'Are you mad?' said Sock, trying to shut the door. 'You think I want that back?' 'He's your property,' said Carrot. 'People were trying to smash him.' 'You should've let them,' said the butcher. 'Haven't you heard the stories? I'm not having one of those under my roof!' He tried to slam the door again, but Carrot's foot was in it. 'Then I'm afraid you're committing an offence,' said Carrot. To wit, littering.' 'Oh, be serious!' 'I always am,' said Carrot. 'He always is,' said Angua. Sock waved his hands frantically. 'It can just go away. Shoo! I don't want a killer working in my slaughterhouse! You have it, if you're so keen!' Carrot grabbed the door and forced it wide open. Sock took a step backwards. 'Are you trying to bribe an officer of the law, Mr Sock?' 'Are you insane?' 'I am always sane,' said Carrot. 'He always is,' sighed Angua. 'Watchmen are not allowed to accept gifts,' said Carrot. He looked around at Dorfl, who was standing forlornly in the street. 'But I will buy him from you. For a fair price.' Sock looked from Carrot to the golem and then back again. 'Buy? For money?' 'Yes.' The butcher shrugged. When people were offering you money it was no time to debate their sanity. 'Well, that's different,' he conceded. 'It was worth $530 when I bought it, but of course it's got additional skills now—' Angua growled. It had been a trying evening and the smell of fresh meat was making her senses twang. 'You were prepared to give it away a moment ago!' 'Well, give, yes, but business is busi—' ‘I’ll pay you a dollar,' said Carrot. 'A dollar? That's daylight robb—' Angua's hand shot out and grabbed his neck. She could feel the veins, smell his blood and fear . . . She tried to think of cabbages. 'It's night-time,' she growled. Like the man in the alley, Sock listened to the call of the wild. 'A dollar,' he croaked. 'Right. A fair price. One dollar.' Carrot produced one. And waved his notebook. 'A receipt is very important,' he said. 'A proper legal transfer of ownership.' 'Right. Right. Right. Happy to oblige.' Sock glanced desperately at Angua. Somehow, her smile didn't look right. He scribbled a few hasty lines. Carrot looked over his shoulder.   I Gerhardt Sock give the barer full and totarl ownership of the golem Dorfl in xchange for One Dolar and anythinge it doz now is his responisbility and nuthing to doe with me. Singed, Gerhardt Sock.   'Interesting wording, but it does look legal, doesn't it?' said Carrot, taking the paper. Thank you very much, Mr Sock. A nappy solution all round, I feel.' 'Is that it? Can I go now?' 'Certainly, and—' The door slammed shut. 'Oh, well done,' said Angua. 'So now you own a golem. You do know that anything it does is your responsibility?' 'If that's the truth, why are people smashing them? 'What are you going to use it/or?' Carrot looked thoughtfully at Dorfl, who was staring at the ground. 'Dorfl?' The golem looked up. 'Here's your receipt. You don't have to have a master.' The golem took the little scrap of paper between two thick fingers. That means you belong to you,' said Carrot encouragingly. 'You own yourself.' Dorfl shrugged. 'What did you expect?' said Angua. 'Did you think it was going to wave a flag?' 'I don't think he understands,' said Carrot. 'It's quite hard to get some ideas into people's heads . . .'He stopped abruptly. Carrot took the paper out of Dorfl's unresisting fingers. 'I suppose it might work,' he said. 'It seems a bit-invasive. But what they understand, after all, is the words . . .' He reached up, opened Dorfl's lid, and dropped the paper inside. The golem blinked. That is to say, its eyes went dark and then brightened again. It raised one hand very slowly and patted the top of its head. Then it held up the other hand and turned it this way and that, as if it had never seen a hand before. It looked down at its feet and around at the fog-shrouded buildings. It looked at Carrot. It looked up at the clouds above the street. It looked at Carrot again. Then, very slowly, without bending in any way, it fell backwards and hit the cobbles with a thud. The light faded in its eyes. There,' said Angua. 'Now it's broken. Can we go?' There's still a bit of a glow,' said Carrot. 'It must have all been too much for him. We can't leave him here. Maybe if I took the receipt out . . .' He knelt down by the golem and reached for the trapdoor on its head. Dorfl's hand moved so quickly it didn't even appear to move. It was just there, gripping Carrot's wrist. 'Ah,' said Carrot, gently pulling his arm back. 'He's obviously . . . feeling better.' 'Thsssss,' said Dorfl. The voice of the golem shivered in the fog. Golems had a mouth. They were part of the design. But this one was open, revealing a thin line of red light. 'Oh, ye gods,' said Angua, backing away. They can't speak!' 'Thssss!' It was less a syllable than the sound of escaping steam. ‘I’ll find your bit of slate—' Carrot began, looking around hurriedly. 'Thssss!' Dorfl clambered to its feet, gently pushed him out of the way and strode off. 'Are you happy now?' said Angua. ‘I’m not following the wretched thing! Maybe it's going to throw itself in the river!' Carrot ran a few steps after the figure, and then stopped and came back. 'Why do you hate them so much?' he said. 'You wouldn't understand. I really think you wouldn't understand,' said Angua. 'It's an ... undead thing. They . . . sort of throw in your face the fact you're not human.' 'But you are human!' 'Three weeks out of four. Can't you understand that, when you have to be careful all the time, it's dreadful to see things like that being accepted? They're not even alive. But they can walk around and they never get people passing remarks about silver or garlic ... up until now, anyway. They're just machines for doing work!' That's how they're treated, certainly,' said Carrot. 'You're being reasonable again!' snapped Angua. 'You're deliberately seeing everyone's point of view! Can't you try to be unfair even once?'     Nobby had been left alone for a moment while the party buzzed around him, so he'd elbowed some waiters away from the buffet and was currently scraping out a bowl with his knife. 'Ah, Lord de Nobbes,' said a voice behind him. He turned. 'Wotcha,' he said, licking the knife and wiping it on the tablecloth. 'Are you busy, my lord?' 'Just making meself this meat-paste sandwich,' said Nobby. That's pate de foie gras, my lord.' "S that what it's called? It doesn't have the kick of Clammer's Beefymite Spread, I know that. Want a quail's egg? They're a bit small.' 'No, thank you—' There's loads of them,' said Nobby generously. They're free. You don't have to pay.' 'Even so—' 'I can get six in my mouth at once. Watch—' 'Amazing, my lord. I was wondering, however, whether you would care to join a few of us in the smoking-room?' 'Fghmf? Mfgmf fgmf mgghjf?' 'Indeed.' A friendly arm was put around Nobby's shoulders and he was adroitly piloted away from the buffet, but not before he had grabbed a plate of chicken legs. 'So many people want to talk to you . . .' 'Mgffmph?'     Sergeant Colon tried to clean himself up, but trying to clean yourself up with water from the Ankh was a difficult manoeuvre. The best you could hope for was an all-over grey. Fred Colon hadn't reached Vimes's level of sophisticated despair. Vimes took the view that life was so full of things happening erratically in all directions that the chances of any of them making some kind of relevant sense were remote in the extreme. Colon, being by nature more optimistic and by intellect a good deal slower, was still at the Clues are Important stage. Why had he been tied up with string? There were still loops of it around his arms and legs. 'You sure you don't know where I was?' he said. 'Yez walked into the place,' said Wee Mad Arthur, trotting along beside him. 'How come yez don't know?' "Cos it was dark and foggy and I wasn't paying attention, that's why. I was just going through the motions.' 'Aha, good one!' 'Don't mess about. Where was I?' 'Don't ask me,' said Wee Mad Arthur. 'I just hunts under the whole cattle-market area. I don't bother about what's up top. Like I said, them runs go everywhere.' 'Anyone along there make string?' 'It's all animal stuff, I tell yez. Sausages and soap and stuff like that. Is this the bit where yez gives me the money?' Colon patted his pockets. They squelched. 'You'll have to come to the Watch House, Wee Mad Arthur.' 'I got a business to run here!' 'I'm swearin' you in as a Special Watchman for the night,' said Colon. 'What's the pay?' 'Dollar a night.' Wee Mad Arthur's tiny eyes gleamed. They gleamed red. 'Ye gods, you look awful,' said Colon. 'What're you looking at my ear for?' Wee Mad Arthur said nothing. Colon turned. A golem was standing behind him. It was taller than any he'd seen before, and much better proportioned - a human statue rather than the gross shape of the usual golems, and handsome, too, in the cold way of a statue. And its eyes shone like red searchlights. It raised a fist above its head and opened its mouth. More red light streamed out. It screamed like a bull. Wee Mad Arthur kicked Colon on the ankle. 'Are we running or what?' he said. Colon backed away, still staring at the thing. 'It's. . . it's all right, they can't move fast . . .'he muttered. And then his sensible body gave up on his stupid brain and fired up his legs, spinning him around and shoving him in the opposite direction. He risked looking over his shoulder. The golem was running after him in long, easy strides. Wee Mad Arthur caught him up. Colon was used to proceeding gently. He wasn't built for high speeds, and said so. 'And you certainly can't run faster than that thing!' he wheezed. 'Just so long as I can run faster'n yez,' said Wee Mad Arthur. This way!' There was a flight of old wooden stairs against the side of a warehouse. The gnome went up them like the rats he hunted. Colon, panting like a steam engine, followed him. He stopped half-way up and looked around. The golem had reached the bottom step. It tested it carefully. The wood creaked and the whole stairway, grey with age, trembled. 'It won't take the weight!' said Wee Mad Arthur. 'The bugger's gonna smash it up! Yeah!' The golem took another step. The wood groaned. Colon got a grip on himself and hurried on up the stairs. Behind him, the golem seemed to have satisfied itself that the wood could indeed take its weight, and started to leap from step to step. The rails shook under Colon's hands and the whole structure swayed. 'Come on, will yez?' said Wee Mad Arthur, who had already reached the top. 'It's gaining on yez!' The golem lunged. The stairs gave way. Colon flung out his hands and grabbed the edge of the roof. Then his body thudded into the side of the building. There was the distant sound of woodwork hitting cobbles. 'Come on then,' said Wee Mad Arthur. 'Pull yourself up, yer silly bugger!' 'Can't,' said Colon. 'Why not?' 'It's holding on to my foot . . .'     'A cigar, your lordship?' 'Brandy, my lord?' Lord de Nobbes sat back in the comfort of his chair. His feet only just reached the ground. Brandy and cigars, eh? This was the life all right. He took a deep puff at the cigar. 'We were just talking, my lord, about the future governance of the city now that poor Lord Vetinari's health is so bad . . .' Nobby nodded. This was the kind of thing you talked about when you were a nob. This was what he'd been born for. The brandy was giving him a pleasant warm feeling. 'It would obviously upset the current equilibrium if we looked for a new Patrician at this point,' said another armchair. 'What is your view, Lord de Nobbes?' 'Oh, yeah. Right. The guilds'd fight like cats in a sack,' said Nobby. 'Everyone knows that.' 'A masterly summary, if I may say so.' There was a general murmur of agreement from the other chairs. Nobby grinned. Oh, yes. This was the bee's pyjamas and no mistake. Hobnobbing with his fellow nobs, talking big talk about important matters instead of having to think up reasons why the tea-money tin was empty . . . oh, yes. A chair said, 'Besides, are any of the guild leaders up to the task? Oh, they can organize a bunch of tradesmen, but ruling an entire city ... I think not. Gentlemen, perhaps it is time for a new direction. Perhaps it is time for blood to reveal itself.' Odd way of putting it, Nobby thought, but clearly this was how you were supposed to speak. 'At a time like this,' said a chair, 'the city will surely look at those representatives of its most venerable families. It would be in all our interests if such a one would take up the burden.' 'He'd need his head examined, if you want my opinion,' said Nobby. He took another swig of the brandy and waved the cigar expansively. 'Still, not to worry,' he said. 'Everyone knows we've got a king hanging around. No problem there. Send for Captain Carrot, that's my advice.'     Another evening folded over the city in layers of fog. When Carrot arrived back at the Watch House Corporal Littlebottom made a face at him and indicated, with a flicker of her eyes, the three people sitting grimly on the bench against one wall. They want to see an officer!' she hissed. 'But S'arnt Colon isn't back and I knocked on Mr Vimes's door and I don't think he's in.' Carrot composed his features into a welcoming smile. 'Mrs Palm," he said. 'And Mr Boggis . . . and Dr Downey. I am so sorry. We're rather stretched at present, what with the poisoning and this business with the golems—' The head of the Assassins' Guild smiled, but only with his mouth. 'It's about the poisoning we wish to speak,' he said. 'Is there somewhere a little less public?' 'Well, there's the canteen,' said Carrot. 'It'll be empty at this time of night. If you'd just step this way . . .' 'You do well for yourselves here, I must say,' said Mrs Palm. 'A canteen—' She stopped as she stepped through the door. 'People eat in here?' she said. 'Well, grumble about the coffee, mostly,' said Carrot. 'And write their reports. Commander Vimes is keen on reports.' 'Captain Carrot,' said Dr Downey, firmly, 'we have to talk to you on a grave matter concerning— What have I sat in?' Carrot brushed a chair hurriedly. 'Sorry, sir, we don't seem to have much time to clean up—' 'Leave it for now, leave it for now.' The head of the Assassins' Guild leaned forward with his hands pressed together. 'Captain Carrot, we are here to discuss this terrible matter of the poisoning of Lord Vetinari.' 'You really ought to talk to Commander Vimes—' 'I believe that on a number of occasions Commander Vimes has made derogatory comments to you about Lord Vetinari,' said Dr Downey. 'You mean like "He ought to be hung except they can't find a twisty enough rope"?' said Carrot. 'Oh, yes. But everyone does that.' 'Do you?' 'Well, no,' Carrot admitted. 'And I believe he personally took over the investigation of the poisoning?' 'Well, yes. But—' 'Didn't you think that was odd?' 'No, sir. Not when I thought about it. I think he's got a sort of soft spot for the Patrician, in his way. He once said that if anyone was going to kill Vetinari he'd like it to be him.' 'Indeed?' 'But he was smiling when he said it. Sort of smiling, anyway.' 'He, er, visits his lordship most days, I believe?' 'Yes, sir.' 'And I understand that his efforts to discover the poisoner have not reached any conclusions?' 'Not as such, sir,' said Carrot. 'We've found a lot of ways he's not being poisoned.' Downey nodded at the others. 'We would like to inspect the Commander's office,' he said. 'I don't know if that's—' Carrot began. 'Please think very carefully,' said Dr Downey. 'We three represent most of the guilds of this city. We feel we have a good reason for inspecting the Commander's office. You will of course accompany us to see that we do nothing illegal.' Carrot looked awkward. 'I suppose ... if I'm with you . . .' he said. 'That's right,' said Downey. 'That makes it official.' Carrot led the way. 'I don't even know if he's back,' he said, opening the door. 'As I said, we've been . . . oh.' Downey peered around him and at the figure slumped over the desk. 'It would appear that Sir Samuel is in,' he said. 'But quite out of it.' 'I can smell the drink from here,' said Mrs Palm. 'It's terrible what drink will do to a man.' 'A whole bottle of Bearhugger's finest,' said Mr Boggis. 'All right for some, eh?' 'But he hasn't touched a drop all year!' said Carrot, giving the recumbent Vimes a shake. 'He goes to meetings about it and everything!' 'Now let us see . . .' said Downey. He pulled open one of the desk drawers. 'Captain Carrot?' he said. 'Can you witness that there appears to be a bag of greyish powder in here? I will now—' Vimes's hand shot out and slammed the drawer on the man's fingers. His elbow rammed back into the assassin's stomach and, as Downey's chin jerked down, Vimes's forearm swung upwards and caught him full on the nose. Then Vimes opened his eyes. 'Wassat? Wassat?' he said, raising his head. 'Dr Downey? Mr Boggis? Carrot? Hmm?' 'Hwat? Hwat?' screamed Downey. 'You hnsfruck me!' 'Oh, I'm so sorry,' said Vimes, concern radiating from every feature as he pushed the chair back into Downey's groin and stood up. ‘I’m afraid I must have dropped off and, of course, when I woke up and found someone stealing from . . .' 'You're raving drunk, man!' said Mr Boggis. Vimes's features froze. 'Indeed? Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,' he snarled, prodding the man in the chest. 'A peck of bloody pickled peppers Peter Piper damn well picked. Do you want me to continue?' he said, poking the man until his back was against the wall. 'It doesn't get much better!' 'Hwhat about thif packet?' shouted Downey, clutching his streaming nose with one hand and waving at the desk with the other. Vimes still wore a wild-eyed mirthless grin. 'Ah, well, yes,' he said. 'You've got me there. A highly dangerous substance.' 'Ah, you admit it!' 'Yes, indeed. I suppose I have no alternative but to dispose of the evidence . . .' Vimes grabbed the packet, ripped it open and tipped most of the powder into his mouth. 'Mmm mmm,' he said, powder spraying everywhere as he masticated. 'Feel that tingle on the tongue!' 'But that's arsenic,' said Boggis. 'Good gods, is it?' said Vimes, swallowing. 'Amazing! I've got this dwarf downstairs, you know, clever little bugger, spends all his time with pipes and chemicals and things to find out what is arsenic and what isn't, and all the time here's you able to spot it just by looking! I've got to hand it to you!' He dropped the torn packet into Boggis's hand, but the thief jerked back and the packet tumbled to the floor, spraying its contents. 'Excuse me,' said Carrot. He knelt down and peered at the powder. It is traditionally the belief of policemen that they can tell what a substance is by sniffing it and then gingerly tasting it, but this practice had ceased in the Watch ever since Constable Flint had dipped his finger into a blackmarket consignment of ammonium chloride cut with radium, said 'Yes, this is definitely slab wurble wurble sclup", and had to spend three days tied to his bed until the spiders went away. Nevertheless, Carrot said, 'I'm sure this isn't poisonous,’ licked his finger and tried a bit. 'It's sugar,' he said. Downey, his composure severely compromised, waved a finger at Vimes. 'You admitted it was dangerous!' he screamed. 'Right! Take too much of it and see what it does to your teeth!' bellowed Vimes. 'What did you think it was?' 'We had information . . .' Boggis began. 'Oh, you had information, did you?' said Vimes. 'You hear that, Captain? They had information. So that's all right!' 'We acted in good faith,' said Boggis. 'Let me see,' said Vimes. 'Your information was something on the lines of: Vimes is dead drunk in the Watch House and he's got a bag of arsenic in his desk? And I'll just bet you wanted to act in good faith, eh?' Mrs Palm cleared her throat. 'This has gone far enough. You are correct, Sir Samuel,' she said. 'We were all sent a note.' She handed a slip of paper to Vimes. It had been written in capitals. 'And I can see we have been misinformed,' she added, glaring at Boggis and Downey. 'Do allow me to apologize. Come, gentlemen.' She swept out of the door. Boggis followed her quickly. Downey dabbed at his nose. 'What's the guild price on your head, Sir Samuel?' he said. 'Twenty thousand dollars.' 'Really? I think we shall definitely have to upgrade you.' 'Delighted. I shall have to buy a new beartrap.' 'I’ll, er, show you out,' said Carrot. When he hurried back he found Vimes leaning out of the window and feeling the wall below it. 'Not a brick dislodged,' Vimes muttered. 'Not a tile loose . . . and the front office has been manned all day. Odd, that.' He shrugged and walked back to his desk, where he picked up the note. 'And I shouldn't think we'll be able to find any Clues on this,' he said. 'There's too many greasy fingermarks all over it.' He put down the paper and glared at Carrot. 'When we find the man responsible,' he said, 'somewhere at the top of the charge sheet is going to be Forcing Commander Vimes to Tip a Whole Bottle of Single Malt on to the Carpet. That's a hanging offence.' He shuddered. There were some things a man should not have to do. 'It's disgusting!' said Carrot. 'Fancy them even thinking that you'd poison the Patrician!' 'I'm offended that they think I'd be daft enough to keep the poison in my desk drawer,' said Vimes, lighting a cigar. 'Right,' said Carrot. 'Did they think you were some kind of fool who'd keep evidence like that where anyone could find it?' 'Exactly,' said Vimes, leaning back. 'That's why I've got it in my pocket.' He put his feet on the desk and blew out a cloud of smoke. He'd have to get rid of the carpet. He wasn't going to spend the rest of his life working in a room haunted by the smell of departed spirits. Carrot's mouth was still open. 'Oh, good grief,' said Vimes. 'Look, it's quite simple, man. I was expected to go "At last, alcohol!", and chugalug the lot without thinking. Then some respectable pillars of the community' - he removed the cigar from his mouth and spat -'were going to find me, in your presence, too -which was a nice touch - with the evidence of my crime neatly hidden but not so well hidden that they couldn't find it.' He shook his head sadly. 'The trouble is, you know, that once the taste's got you it never lets go.' 'But you've been very good, sir,' said Carrot. 'I've not seen you touch a drop for—' 'Oh, that,' said Vimes. 'I was talking about policing, not alcohol. There's lots of people will help you with the alcohol business, but there's no one out there arranging little meetings where you can stand up and say, "My name is Sam and I'm a really suspicious bastard." ' He pulled a paper bag out of his pocket. 'We'll get Littlebottom to have a look at this,' he said. 'I damn sure wasn't going to try tasting it. So I nipped down to the canteen and filled a bag with sugar out of the bowl. It was but the work of a moment to fish Nobby's butts out of it, I might add.' He opened the door, poked his head out into the corridor and yelled, 'Littlebottom!' To Carrot he added, 'You know, I feel quite perked up. The old brain has begun to work at last. You know the golem that did the killing?' 'Yes, sir?' 'Ah, but do you know what was special about it?' 'Can't think, sir,' said Carrot, 'except that it was a new one. The golems made it themselves, I think. But of course they needed a priest for the words and they had to borrow Mr Hopkinson's oven. I expect the old men thought it would be interesting. They were historians, after all.' It was Vimes's turn to stand there with his mouth open. Finally he got control of himself. 'Yes, yes, of course,' he said, his voice barely shaking. 'Yes, I mean, that's obvious. Plain as the nose on your face. But... er, have you worked out what else is special about k?' he added, trying to keep any trace of hope out of his voice. 'You mean the fact it's gone mad, sir?' 'Well, I didn't think it was winner of the Ankh-Morpork Mr Sanity Award!' said Vimes. 'I mean they drove it mad, sir. The other golems. They didn't mean to, but it was built-in, sir. They wanted it to do so many things. It was like their. . . child, I think. All their hopes and dreams. Arid when they found out it'd been killing people . . . well, that's terrible to a golem. They mustn't kill, and it was their own day doing it—' 'It's not a great idea for people, either.' 'But they'd put all their future in it—' 'You wanted me, Commander?' said Cheery. 'Oh, yes. Is this arsenic?' said Vimes, handing her the packet. Cheery sniffed at it. 'It could be arsenous acid, sir. I'll have to test it, of course.' 'I thought acids sloshed about in jars,' said Vimes. 'Er ... what's that on your hands?' 'Nail varnish, sir.' 'Nail varnish?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Er . . . fine, fine. Funny, I thought it would be green.' 'Wouldn't look good on the fingers, sir.' 'I meant the arsenic, Littlebottom.' 'Oh, you can get all sorts of colours of arsenic, sir. The sulphides - that's the ores, sir - can be red or brown or yellow or grey, sir. And then you cook them up with nitre and you get arsenous acid, sir. And a load of nasty smoke, really bad.' 'Dangerous stuff,' said Vimes. 'Not good at all, sir. But useful, sir,' said Cheery. 'Tanners, dyers, painters . . . It's not just poisoners that've got a use for arsenic.' 'I'm surprised people aren't dropping dead of it all the time,' said Vimes. 'Oh, most of them use golems, sir—' The words stayed in the air even after Cheery stopped speaking. Vimes caught Carrot's eye and started to whistle hoarsely under his breath. This is it, he thought. This is where we've filled ourselves up with so many questions that they're starting to overflow and become answers. He felt more alive than he had for days. The recent excitement still tingled in his veins, kicking his brain into life. It was the sparkle you got with exhaustion, he knew. You were so bone-weary that a shot of adrenalin hit you like a falling troll. They must have it all now. All the bits. The edges, the corners, the whole picture. All there, just waiting to be pieced together . . . 'These golems,' said Carrot. 'They'd be covered in arsenic, would they?' 'Could be, sir. I saw one at the Alchemists' Guild building in Quirm and, hah, it'd even got arsenic plated on its hands, sir, on account of stirring crucibles with its fingers . . .' 'They don't feel heat/ said Vimes. 'Or pain,' said Carrot. 'That's right,' said Cheery. She looked uncertainly from one to the other. 'You can't poison them,' said Vimes. 'And they'll obey orders,' said Carrot. 'Without speaking.' 'Golems do all the really mucky jobs,' said Vimes. 'You could have mentioned this before, Cheery,' said Carrot. 'Well, you know, sir ... Golems are just there, sir. No one notices golems.' 'Grease under his fingernails,' said Vimes, to the room in general. 'The old man scratched at his murderer. Grease under his fingernails. With arsenic in it.' He looked down at the notebook, still on his desk. It's there, he thought. Something we haven't seen. But we've looked everywhere. So we've seen the answer and haven't seen that it is the answer. And if we don't see it now, at this moment, we'll never see it at all . . . 'No offence, sir, but that's probably not a help,' said Cheery's voice somewhere in the distance. 'So many of the trades that use arsenic involve some kind of grease.' Something we don't see, thought Vimes. Something invisible. No, it wouldn't have to be invisible. Something we don't see because it's always there. Something that strikes in the night . . . And there it was. He blinked. The glittering stars of exhaustion were causing his mind to think oddly. Well, thinking rationally hadn't worked. 'No one move,' he said. He held up a hand for silence. There it is,' he said softly. There. On my desk. You see it?' 'What, sir?' said Carrot. 'You mean you haven't worked it out?' said Vimes. 'What, sir?' 'The thing that's poisoning his lordship. There it is ... on the desk. See?' 'Your notebook?' 'No!' 'He drinks Bearhugger's whisky?' said Cheery. 'I doubt it,' said Vimes. 'The blotter?' said Carrot. 'Poisoned pens? A packet of Pantweeds?' 'Where're they?' said Vimes, patting his pockets. 'Just sticking out from under the letters in the In Tray, sir,' said Carrot. He added reproachfully, 'You know, sir, the ones you don't answer.' Vimes picked up the packet and extracted another cigar. Thanks,' he said. 'Hah! I didn't ask Mildred Easy what else she took! But of course they're a servant's little bonus, too! And old Mrs Easy was a seamstress, a proper seamstress! And this is autumn! Killed by the nights drawing in! See?' Carrot crouched down and looked at the surface of the desk. 'Can't see it myself, sir,' he said. 'Of course you can't,' said Vimes. 'Because there's nothing to see. You can't see it. That's how you can tell it's there. If it wasn't there you'd soon see it!' He gave a huge manic grin. 'Only you wouldn't! See?' 'You all right, sir?' said Carrot. 'I know you've been overdoing it a bit these last few days—' 'I've been underdoing it!' said Vimes. 'I've been running around looking for damn Clues instead of just thinking for five minutes! What is it I'm always telling you?' 'Er ... er ... Never trust anybody, sir?' 'No, not that.' 'Er ... er ... Everyone's guilty of something, sir?' 'Not that, either.' 'Er ... er ... Just because someone's a member of an ethnic minority doesn't mean they're not a nasty small-minded little jerk, sir?' 'N— When did I say that?' 'Last week, sir. After we'd had that visit from the Campaign for Equal Heights, sir.' Well, not that. I mean . . . I'm pretty sure I'm always saying something else that's very relevant here. Something pithy about police work.' 'Can't remember anything right now, sir.' 'Well, I'll damn well make up something and start saying it a lot from now on.' 'Jolly good, sir.' Carrot beamed. 'It's good to see you're your old self again, sir. Looking forward to kicking ar—to prodding buttock, sir. Er . . . What have we found, sir?' 'You'll see! We're going to the palace. Fetch Angua. We might need her. And bring the search warrant.' 'You mean the sledgehammer, sir?' 'Yes. And Sergeant Colon, too.' 'He hasn't signed in again yet, sir,' said Cheery. 'He should have gone off-duty an hour ago.' 'Probably hanging around somewhere, staying out of trouble,' said Vimes.     Wee Mad Arthur peered over the edge of the wall. Somewhere below Colon, two red eyes stared up at him. 'Heavy, is it?' "S!' 'Kick it with your other foot!' There was a sucking sound. Colon winced. Then there was a plop, a moment of silence, and a loud crash of pottery down in the street. 'The boot it was holding came off,' moaned Colon. 'How did that happen?' 'It got. . . lubricated . . .' Wee Mad Arthur tugged at a finger. 'Up yez come, then.' 'Can't.' 'Why not? It ain't holding on to yez no more.' 'Arms tired. Another ten seconds and I'm gonna be a chalk outline . . .' 'Nah, no one's got that much chalk.' Wee Mad Arthur knelt down so that his head was level with Colon's eyes. 'If you gonna die, d'yez mind signing a chitty to say yez promised me a dollar?' Down below, there was a chink of pottery shards. 'What was that?' said Colon. 'I thought the damn thing smashed up ..." Wee Mad Arthur looked down. 'D'yez believe in that reincarnation stuff, Mr Colon?' he said. 'You wouldn't get me touching that foreign muck,' said Colon. 'Well, it's putting itself together. Like one of them jiggling saw puzzles.' 'Well done, Wee Mad Arthur,' said Colon. 'But I know you're just saying that so's I'll make the effort to haul meself up, right? Statues don't go putting themselves back together when they're smashed up.' 'Please yezself. It's done nearly a whole leg already.' Colon managed to peer down through the small and smelly space between the wall and his armpit. All he could see were shreds of fog and a faint glow. 'You sure?' he said. 'Yez run around rat holes, yez learns to see good in the dark,' said Wee Mad Arthur. 'Otherwise yez dead.' Something hissed, somewhere below Colon's feet. With his one booted foot and his toes he scrabbled at the brickwork. 'It's having a wee bit o' trouble,' said Wee Mad Arthur conversationally. 'Looks like it's put its knees on wrong way round.'     Dorfl sat hunched in the abandoned cellar where the golems had met. Occasionally the golem raised its head and hissed. Red light spilled from its eyes. If something had streamed back down through the glow, soared through the eye-sockets into the red sky beyond, there would be ... Dorfl huddled under the glow of the universe. Its murmur was a long way off, muted, nothing to do with Dorfl. The Words stood around the horizon, reaching all the way to the sky. And a voice said quietly, 'You own yourself.' Dorfl saw the scene again arid again, saw the concerned face, hand reaching up, filling its vision, felt the sudden icy knowledge . . . '. . . Own yourself...’ It echoed off the Words, and then rebounded, and then rolled back and forth, increasing in volume until the little world between the Words was gripped in the sound. Golem Must Have a Master. The letters towered against the world, but the echoes poured around them, blasting like a sandstorm. Cracks started and then ran, zigzagging across the stone, and then— The Words exploded. Great slabs of them, mountain-sized, crashed in showers of red sand. The universe poured in. Dorfl felt the universe pick it up and bowl it over and then lift it off its feet and up ... . . . and now the golem was among the universe. It could feel it all around, the purr of it, the busyness, the spinning complexity of it, the roar . . . There were no Words between you and It. You belonged to It, It belonged to you. You couldn't turn your back on It because there It was, in front of you. Dorfl was responsible for every tick and swerve of It. You couldn't say, 'I had orders.' You couldn't say, 'It's not fair.' No one was listening. There were no Words. You owned yourself. Dorfl orbited a pair of glowing suns and hurtled off again. Not Thou Shalt Not. Say I Will Not. Dorfl tumbled through the red sky, then saw a dark hole ahead. The golem felt it dragging at him, and streamed down through the glow and the hole grew larger and sped across the edges of Dorfl's vision . . . The golem opened his eyes. NO MASTER! Dorfl unfolded in one movement and stood upright. He reached out one arm and extended a finger. The golem pushed the finger easily into the wall where the argument had taken place, and then dragged it carefully through the splintering brickwork. It took him a couple of minutes but it was something Dorfl felt needed to be said. Dorfl completed the last letter and poked a row of three dots after it. Then the golem walked away, leaving behind: NO MASTER...     A blue overcast from the cigars hid the ceiling of the smoking-room. 'Ah, yes. Captain Carrot,' said a chair. 'Yes . . . indeed . . . but... is he the right man?' "S got a birthmark shaped like a crown. I seen it,' said Nobby helpfully. 'But his background . . .' 'He was raised by dwarfs,' said Nobby. He waved his brandy glass at a waiter. 'Same again, mister.' 'I shouldn't think dwarfs could raise anyone very high,' said another chair. There was a hint of laughter. 'Rumours and folklore,' someone murmured. 'This is a large and busy and above all complex city. I'm afraid that having a sword and a birthmark are not much in the way of qualifications. We would need a king from a lineage that is used to command.' 'Like yours, my lord.' There was a sucking, draining noise as Nobby attacked the fresh glass of brandy. 'Oh, I'm used to command, all right,' he said, lowering the glass. 'People are always orderin' me around.' 'We would need a king who had the support of the great families and major guilds of the city.' 'People like Carrot,' said Nobby. 'Oh, the people 'Anyway, whoever got the job'd have his work cut out,' said Nobby. 'Ole Vetinari's always pushin' paper. What kinda fun is that? 'S no life, sittin' up all hours, worryin', never a moment to yerself.' He held out the empty glass. 'Same again, my old mate. Fill it right up this time, eh? No sense in havin' a great big glass and only sloshin'a bit in the bottom, is there?' 'Many people prefer to savour the bouquet,' said a quietly horrified chair. They enjoy sniffing it.' Nobby looked at his glass with the red-veined eyes of one who'd heard rumours about what the upper crust got up to. 'Nah,' he said. ‘I’ll go on stickin' it in my mouth, if it's all the same to you.' 'If we may get to the point,' said another chair, 'a king would not have to spend every moment running the city. He would of course have people to do that. Advisors. Counsellors. People of experience.' 'So what'd he have to do?' said Nobby. 'He'd have to reign,' said a chair. 'Wave.' 'Preside at banquets.' 'Sign things.' 'Guzzle good brandy disgustingly.' 'Reign.' 'Sounds like a good job to me,' said Nobby. 'All right for some, eh?' 'Of course, a king would have to be someone who could recognize a hint if it was dropped on his head from a great height/ said a speaker sharply, but the other chairs shushed him into silence. Nobby managed to find his mouth after several goes and took another long pull at his cigar. 'Seems to me,' he said, 'seems to me, what you want to do is find some nob with time on his hands and say, "Yo, it's your lucky day. Let's see you wave that hand."' 'Ah! That's a good idea! Does any name cross your mind, my lord? Have a drop more brandy.' 'Why, thanks, you're a toff. O' course, so 'm I, eh? That's right, flunkey, all the way to the top. No, can't think of anyone that fits the bill.' 'In fact, my lord, we were indeed thinking of offering the crown to you—' Nobby's eyes bulged. And then his cheek bulged. It is not a good idea to spray finest brandy across the room, especially when your lighted cigar is in the way. The flame hit the far wall, where it left a perfect chrysanthemum of scorched woodwork, while in accordance with a fundamental rule of physics Nobby's chair screamed back on its castors and thudded into the door. 'King?' Nobby coughed, and then they had to slap him on the back until he got his breath again. 'King?' he wheezed. 'And have Mr Vimes cut me head off?' 'All the brandy you can drink, my lord,' said a wheedling voice. "S no good if you ain't got a throat for it to go down!' 'What're you talking about?' 'Mr Vimes?d go spare! He'd go spared 'Good heavens, man—' 'My lord,' someone corrected. 'My lord, I mean - when you're king you can tell that wretched Sir Samuel what to do. You'll be, as you would call it, "the boss". You could—' 'Tell ole Stoneface what to do?' said Nobby. That's right!' Td be a king and tell ole Stoneface what to do?' said Nobby. 'Yes!' Nobby stared into the smoky gloom. 'He'd go spared 'Listen, you silly little man—' 'My lord—' 'You silly little lord, you'd be able to have him executed if you wished!' 'I couldn't do that!' 'Why not?' 'He'd go spare!' 'The man calls himself an officer of the law, and whose law does he listen to, eh? Where does his law come from?' 'I don't know!' groaned Nobby. 'He says it comes up through his boots!' He looked around. The shadows in the smoke seemed to be closing in. 'I can't be king! Ole Vimes'd go spare!' 'Will you stop saying that!' Nobby pulled at his collar. "S a bit hot and smoky in here,' he mumbled. 'Which way's the window?' 'Over there—' The chair rocked. Nobby hit the glass helmet-first, landed on top of a waiting carriage, bounced off and ran into the night, trying to escape destiny in general and axes in particular.     Cheri Littlebottom strode into the palace kitchens and fired her crossbow into the ceiling. 'Don't nobody move!' she yelled. The Patrician's domestic staff looked up from their dinner. 'When you say don't nobody move,' said Drum-knott carefully, fastidiously taking a piece of plaster off his plate, 'do you in fact mean—' 'All right, Corporal, I'll take over now,' said Vimes, patting Cheri on the shoulder. 'Is Mildred Easy here?' All heads turned. Mildred's spoon dropped into her soup. 'It's all right,' said Vimes. 'I just need to ask you a few more questions—' 'I'm . . . s-s-sorry, sir—' 'You haven't done anything wrong,' said Vimes, walking around the table. 'But you didn't just take food home for your family, did you?' 'S-sir?' 'What else did you take?' Mildred looked at the suddenly blank expressions on the faces of the other servants. 'There was the old sheets but Mrs Dipplock did s-say I could have—' 'No, not that,' said Vimes. Mildred licked her dry lips. 'Er, there was . . . there was some boot polish . . .' 'Look,' said Vimes, as kindly as possible, 'everyone takes small things from the place where they work. Small stuff that no one notices. No one thinks of it as stealing. It's like . . . it's like rights. Odds and ends. Ends, Miss Easy? I'm thinking about the word "ends".' 'Er . . . you mean . . . the candle ends, sir?' Vimes took a deep breath. It was such a relief to be right, even though you knew you'd only got there by trying every possible way to be wrong. 'Ah,' he said. 'B-but that's not stealing, sir. I've never stolen nothing, s-sir!' 'But you take home the candle stubs? Still half an hour of light in 'em, I expect, if you burn them in a saucer?' said Vimes gently. 'But that's not stealing, sir! That's perks, sir.' Sam Vimes smacked his forehead. 'Perks! Of course! That was the word I was looking for. Perks! Everyone's got to have perks, aren't I right? Well, that's fine, then,' he said. 'I expect you get the ones from the bedrooms, yes?' Even through her nervousness, Mildred Easy was able to grin the grin of someone with an Entitlement that lesser beings hadn't got. 'Yessir. I'm allowed, sir. They're much better than the ole coarse ones we use in the main halls, sir.' 'And you put in fresh candles when necessary, do you?' 'Yessir.' Probably slightly more often than necessary, Vimes thought. No point in letting them burn down too much . . . 'Perhaps you can show me where they're kept, miss?' The maid looked along the table to the housekeeper, who glanced at Commander Vimes and then nodded. She was bright enough to know when something that sounded like a question really wasn't one. 'We keep them in the candle pantry next door, sir,' said Mildred. 'Lead the way, please.' It wasn't a big room, but its shelves were stacked floor-to-ceiling with candles. There were the yard-high ones used in the public halls and the small everyday ones used everywhere else, sorted according to quality. 'These are what we uses in his lordship's rooms, sir.' She handed him twelve inches of white candle. 'Oh, yes . . . very good quality. Number Fives. Nice white tallow,' said Vimes, tossing it up and down. 'We burn these at home. The stuff we use at the Yard is damn near pork dripping. We get ours from Carry's in the Shambles now. Very reasonable prices. We used to deal with Spadger and Williams but Mr Carry's really cornered the market these days, hasn't he?' 'Yessir. And he delivers 'em special, sir.' 'And you put these candles in his lordship's room every day?' 'Yessir.' 'Anywhere else?' 'Oh, no, sir. His lordship's particular about that! We just use Number Threes.' 'And you take your, er, perks home?' 'Yessir. Gran said they gave a lovely light, sir . . .' 'I expect she sat up with your little brother, did she? Because I expect he got took sick first, so she sat up with him all night long, night after night and, hah, if I know old Mrs Easy, she did her sewing . . .' 'Yessir.' There was a pause. 'Use my handkerchief,' said Vimes, after a while. 'Am I going to lose my position, sir?' 'No. That's definite. No one involved deserves to lose their jobs,' said Vimes. He looked at the candle. 'Except possibly me,' he added. He stopped at the doorway, and turned. 'And if you ever want candle-ends, we've always got lots at the Watch House. Nobby'll have to start buying cooking fat like everyone else.'     'What's it doing now?' said Sergeant Colon. Wee Mad Arthur peered over the edge of the roof again. 'It's havin' problems with its elbows,' he said conversationally. 'It keeps lookin' at one of'em and tryin' it all ways up and it's not workin'.' 'I had that trouble when I put up them kitchen units for Mrs Colon,' said the sergeant. 'The instructions on how to open the box were inside the box—' 'Oh-oh, it's worked it out,' said the rat-catcher. 'Looks like it had it mixed up with its knees after all.' Colon heard a clank below him; 'And now it's gone round the corner' — there was a crash of splintering wood - 'and now it's got into the building. I expect it'll come up the stairs, but it looks like yer'll be okay.' 'Why?' "Cos all you gotta do is let go of the roof, see?' ‘I’ll drop to my death!' 'Right! Nice clean way to go. None of that "arms-and-legs-bein'-ripped-off' stuff first.' 'I wanted to buy a farm!' moaned Colon. 'Could be,' said Arthur. He looked over the roof again. 'Or,' he said, as if this were hardly a better option, 'yez could try to grab the drainpipe.' Colon looked sideways. There was a pipe a few feet away. If he swung his body and really made an effort, he might just miss it by inches and plunge to his death. 'Does it look safe?' he said. 'Compared with what, mister?' Colon tried to swing his legs like a pendulum. Every muscle in his arm screamed at him. He knew he was overweight. He'd always meant to take exercise one day. He just hadn't been aware that it was going to be today. 'I reckon I can hear it walking up the stairs,' said Wee Mad Arthur. Colon tried to swing faster. 'What're you going to do?' he said. 'Oh, don't yez worry about me,' said Wee Mad Arthur. ‘I’ll be fine. I'll jump.' 'Jump?' 'Sure. I'll be safe 'cos of being normal-sized, see.' 'You think you're normal-sized?' Wee Mad Arthur looked at Colon's hands. 'Are these yer fingers right here by my boots?' he said. 'Right, right, you're normal-sized. 'S not your fault you've moved into a city full of giants,' said Colon. 'Right. The smaller yez are the lighter yez fall. Well known fact. A spider'll not even notice a drop like this, a mouse'd walk away, a horse'd break every bone in its body and a helephant would spla—' 'Oh, gods,' muttered Colon. He could feel the drainpipe with his boot now. But getting a grip would mean there would have to be one long, bottomless moment when he was not exactly holding on to the roof and not exactly holding on to the drainpipe and in very serious peril of holding on to the ground. There was another crash from somewhere on the roof. 'Right,' said Wee Mad Arthur. 'See you at the bottom.' 'Oh, gods.' The gnome stepped off the roof. 'All okay so far,' he shouted, as he went past Colon. 'Oh, gods.' Sergeant Colon looked up into two red glows. 'Doing fine up to now,' said a dopplering voice from below. 'Oh, gods . . .’ Colon heaved his legs around, stood on fresh air for a moment, grabbed the top of the pipe, ducked his head as a pottery fist swung at him, heard the nasty little noise as the pipe's rusty bolts said goodbye to the wall and, still clinging to a tilting length of cast-iron pipe as if it were going to help, disappeared backwards into the fog.     Mr Sock looked up at the sound of the door opening, and then cowered back against the sausage machine. ' You!' he whispered. 'Here, you can't come back! I sold you!' Dorfl regarded him steadily for a few seconds, and then walked past him and took the largest cleaver from the blood-stained rack on the wall. Sock began to shake. 'I-I-I was always g-g-good to you,' he said. 'A-a-always let you h-have your h-holy d-d-days off—' Dorfl stared at him again. It's only red light, Sock gibbered to himself. . . But it seemed more focused. He felt it entering his head through his own eyes and examining his soul. The golem pushed him aside and stepped out of the slaughterhouse and towards the cattle pens. Sock unfroze. They never fought back, did they? They couldn't. It was how the damn things were made. He stared around at the other workers, humans and trolls alike. 'Don't just stand there! Get it!' One or two hesitated. It was a big cleaver in the golem's hand. And when Dorfl stopped to look around at them there was something different about the golem's stance, too. It didn't look like something that wouldn't fight back. But Sock didn't employ people for the muscles in their heads. Besides, no one had really liked a golem around the place. A troll aimed a pole-axe at him. Dorfl caught it one-handed without turning his head and snapped the hickory handle with his fingers. A man with a hammer had it plucked from his hand and thrown so hard at the wall that it left a hole. After that they followed at a cautious distance. Dorfl took no further notice of them. The steam over the cattle pens mingled with the fog. Hundreds of dark eyes watched Dorfl curiously as he walked between the fences. They were always quiet when the golem was around. He stopped by one of the largest pens. There were voices from behind. 'Don't tell me it's going to slaughter the lot of 'em! We'll never get that lot jointed this shift!' 'I heard where there was one at a carpenter's that went odd and made five thousand tables in one night. Lost count or something.' 'It's just staring at them . . .' 'I mean, five thousand tables? One of them had twenty-seven legs. It got stuck on legs . . .' Dorfl brought the cleaver down hard and sliced the lock off the gate. The cattle watched the golem, with that guarded expression which cattle have that means they're waiting for the next thought to turn up. He walked on to the sheep pens and opened them, too. The pigs were next, and then the poultry. 'All of them?' said Mr Sock. The golem walked calmly back down the line of pens, ignoring the watchers, and re-entered the slaughterhouse. He came out very shortly afterwards leading the ancient and hairy billygoat on a piece of string. He went past the waiting animals until he reached the wide gates that led on to the main road, which he opened. Then he let the goat loose. The animal sniffed the air and rolled its slotted eyes. Then, apparently deciding that the distant odour of the cabbage fields beyond the city wall was much preferable to the smells immediately around it, it trotted away up the road. The animals followed it in a rush, but with hardly any other noise than the rustle of movement and the sounds of their hooves. They streamed around the stationary figure of Dorfl, who stood and watched them go. A chicken, bewildered by the stampede, landed on the golem's head and started to cluck. Anger finally overcame Sock's terror. 'What the hell are you doing?' he shouted, trying to field a few stray sheep as they bolted out of the pens. 'That's money walking out of the gate, you—' Dorfl's hand was suddenly around his throat. The golem picked him up and held the struggling man at arm's-length, turning his head this way and that as if considering his next course of action. Finally he tossed away the cleaver, reached up under the chicken that had taken up residence, and produced a small brown egg. With apparent ceremony the golem smashed it carefully on Sock's scalp and dropped him. The golem's former co-workers jumped back out of the way as Dorfl walked back through the slaughterhouse. There was a tally board by the entrance. Dorfl looked at it for a while, then picked up the chalk and wrote: NO MASTER... The chalk crumbled in his fingers. Dorfl walked out into the fog. Cheri looked up from her workbench.     'The wick's full of arsenous acid,' she said. 'Well done, sir! This candle even weighs slightly more than other candles!' 'What an evil way to kill anyone,' said Angua. 'Certainly very clever,' said Vimes. 'Vetinari sits up half the night writing, and in the morning the candle's burned down. Poisoned by the light. The light's something you don't see. Who looks at the light? Not some plodding old copper.' 'Oh, you're not that old, sir,' said Carrot, cheerfully. 'What about plodding?' 'Or that plodding, either,' Carrot added quickly. 'I've always pointed out to people that you walk in a very purposeful and meaningful manner.' Vimes gave him a sharp look and saw nothing more than a keen and innocently helpful expression. 'We don't look at the light because the light is what we look with,' said Vimes. 'Okay. And now I think we should go and have a look at the candle factory, shouldn't we? You come, Littlebottom, and bring your . . . have you got taller, Little-bottom?' 'High-heeled boots, sir,' said Cheri. 'I thought dwarfs always wore iron boots . . .' 'Yes, sir. But I've got high heels on mine, sir. I welded them on.' 'Oh. Fine. Right.' Vimes pulled himself together. 'Well, if you can still totter, bring your alchemy stuff with you. Detritus should've come off-duty from the palace. When it comes to locked doors you can't beat Detritus. He's a walking crowbar. We'll pick him up on the way.' He loaded his crossbow and lit a match. 'Right,' he said. 'We've done it the modern way, now let's try policing like grandfather used to do it. It's time to—' 'Prod buttock, sir?' said Carrot, hurriedly. 'Close,' said Vimes, taking a deep drag and blowing out a smoke ring, 'but no cigar.'     Sergeant Colon's view of the world was certainly changing. Just when something was about to fix itself firmly in his mind as the worst moment of his entire life, it was hurriedly replaced by something even nastier. Firstly, the drainpipe he was riding hit the wall of the building opposite. In a well-organized world he might have landed on a fire escape, but fire escapes were unknown in Ankh-Morpork and the flames generally had to leave via the roof. With the pipe thus leaning against the wall, he found himself sliding down the diagonal. Even this might have been a happy outcome were it not for the fact that Colon was a heavy man and, as his weight slid nearer to the middle of the unsupported pipe, the pipe sagged, and cast iron has only a very limited amount of sag before it snaps, which it novv did. Colon dropped, and landed on something soft -at least, softer than the street - and the something went 'mur-r-r-r-r-m!'. He bounced off it and landed on something lower and softer which went 'baaaaarp!', and rolled from this on to something even lower and apparently made of feathers, which went insane. And pecked him. The street was full of animals, milling around uncertainly. When animals are in a state of uncertainty they get nervous, and the street was already, as it were, paved with anxiety. The only benefit to Sergeant Colon was that this made it slightly softer than would otherwise have been the case. Hooves trod on his hands. Very large dribbly noses sneezed at him. Sergeant Colon had not hitherto had a great deal of experience of animals, except in portion sizes. When he'd been little he'd had a pink stuffed pig called Mr Dreadful, and he'd got up to Chapter Six in Animal Husbandry. It had woodcuts in it. There was no mention of hot smelly breath and great clomping feet like soup plates on a stick. Cows, in Sergeant Colon's book, should go 'moo'. Every child knew that. They shouldn't go 'mur-r-r-r-r-m!' like some kind of undersea monster and spray you with spit. He tried to get up, skidded on some cow's moment of crisis, and sat down on a sheep. It went 'blaaaart!' What kind of noise was that for a sheep to make? He got up again and tried to make his way to the kerb. 'Shoo! Get out of the damn way, you sheep! Gam!' A goose hissed at him and stuck out altogether too much neck. Colon backed off, and stopped when something nudged him in the back. It was a pig. It was no Mr Dreadful. This wasn't the little piggy that went to market, or the little piggy that stayed at home. It would be quite hard to imagine what kind of foot would have a piggy like this, but it would probably be the kind that also had hair and scales and toenails like cashew nuts. This piggy was the size of a pony. This piggy had tusks. And it wasn't pink. It was a blue-black colour and covered with sharp hair but it did have - let's be fair, thought Colon - little red piggy eyes. This little piggy looked like the little piggy that killed the boarhounds, disembowelled the horse and ate the huntsman. Colon turned around, and came face-to-face with a bull like a beef cube on legs. It turned its huge head from side to side so that each rolling eye could get a sight of the sergeant, but it was clear that neither of them liked him very much. It lowered its head. There wasn't room for it to charge, but it could certainly push. As the animals crowded around him, Colon took the only way of escape possible.     There were men slumped all over the alley. 'Hello, hello, hello, what's all this, then?' said Carrot. A man who was holding his arm and groaning looked up at him. 'We were viciously attacked!' 'We don't have time for this,' said Vimes. 'We may have,' said Angua. She tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to the wall opposite, on which was written in a familiar script: NO MASTER... Carrot hunched down and spoke to the casualty. 'You were attacked by a golem, were you?' he said. 'Right! Vicious bugger! Just walked out of the fog and went for us, you know what they're like!' Carrot gave the man a cheerful smile. Then his gaze travelled along the man's body to the big hammer lying in the gutter, and moved from that to the other tools strewn around the scene of the fight. Several had their handles broken. There was a long crowbar, bent nearly into a circle. 'It's lucky you were all so well armed, ' he said. 'It turned on us, ' said the man. He tried to snap his fingers. 'Just like that - aargh!' 'You seem to have hurt your fingers . . .' 'You're right!' 'It's just that I don't understand how it could have turned on you and just walked out of the fog,' said Carrot. 'Everyone knows they're not allowed to fight back!' ' "Fight back",' Carrot repeated. 'It's not right, them walking around the streets like that,' the man muttered, looking away. There was the sound of running feet behind them and a couple of men in blood-stained aprons caught up with them. 'It went that way!' one yelled. 'You'll be able to catch up with it if you hurry!' 'Come on, don't hang around! What do we pay our taxes for?' said the other. 'It went all round the cattle yards and let everything out. Everything*. You can't move on Pigsty Hill!' 'A golem let all the cattle out?' said Vimes. 'What for?' 'How should I know? It took the yudasgoat out of Sock's slaughterhouse so half the damn things are following it around! And then it went and put old Fosdyke in his sausage machine—' 'What?' 'Oh, it didn't turn the handle. It just shoved a handful of parsley in his mouth, dropped an onion down his trousers, covered him in oatmeal and dropped him in the hopper!' Angua's shoulders started to shake. Even Vimes grinned. 'And then it went into the poultry merchant's, grabbed Mr Terwillie, and' - the man stopped, aware there was a lady present, even if she was making snorting noises while trying not to laugh, and continued in a mumble - 'made use of some sage and onion. If you know what I mean . . .' 'You mean he—?' Vimes began. 'Yes!' His companion nodded. 'Poor old Terwillie won't be able to look sage and onion in the face again, I reckon.' 'By the sound of it, that's the last thing he'll do,' said Vimes. Angua had to turn her back. Tell him about what happened in your pork butcher's,' said the man's companion. 'I don't think you'll need to/ said Vimes. ‘I’m seeing a pattern here.' 'Right! And poor young Sid's only an apprentice and didn't deserve what it done to him!' 'Oh, dear,' said Carrot. 'Er. . .I think I've got an ointment that might be—' 'Will it help with the apple?' the man demanded. 'It shoved an apple in his mouth?' 'Wrong!' Vimes winced. 'Ouch . . .' 'What's going to be done, eh?' said the butcher, his face a few inches from Vimes's. 'Well, if you can get a grip on the stem—' 'I'm serious! What are you going to do? I'm a taxpayer and I know my rights!' He prodded Vimes in the breastplate. Vimes's expression went wooden. He looked down at the finger, and then back up at the man's large red nose. 'In that case,' said Vimes, 'I suggest you take another apple and—' 'Er, excuse me,' said Carrot loudly, 'You're Mr Maxilotte, aren't you? Got a shop in the Shambles?' 'Yes, that's right. What of it?' 'It's just that I don't recall seeing your name on the register of taxpayers, which is very odd because you said you were a taxpayer, but of course you wouldn't lie about a thing like that and anyway when you paid your taxes they would have given you a receipt because that's the law and I'm sure you'd be able to find it if you looked—' The butcher lowered his finger. 'Er, yes . . .' 'I could come and help you if you'd like,' said Carrot. The butcher gave Vimes a despairing look. 'He really does read that stuff,' said Vimes. 'For pleasure. Carrot, why don't you scarp—? My gods, what the hell is that? There was a bellow further up the street. Something big and muddy was approaching at a sort of menacing amble. In the gloom it looked vaguely like a very fat centaur, half-man, half. . . in fact it was, he realized as it bounced nearer, half-Colon, half-bull. Sergeant Colon had lost his helmet and had a certain look about him that suggested he had been close to the soil. As the massive bull cantered past, the sergeant rolled his eyes wildly and said, 'I daren't get off! I daren't get off!' 'How did you get on?' shouted Vimes. 'It wasn't easy, sir! I just grabbed the 'orns, sir, next minute I was on its back!' 'Well, hang on!' 'Yes, sir! Hanging on sir!'     Rogers the bulls were angry and bewildered, which counts as the basic state of mind for full-grown bulls.[16] But they had a particular reason. Beef cattle have a religion. They are deeply spiritual animals. They believe that good and obedient cattle go to a better place when they die, through a magic door. They don't know what happens next, but they've heard that it involves really good eating and, for some reason, horseradish. Rogers had been quite looking forward to it. They were getting a bit creaky these days, and cows seemed to run faster than they had done when they were lads. They could just taste that heavenly horseradish . . . And instead they'd been herded into a crowded pen for a day and then the gate had been opened and there'd been animals everywhere and this did not look like the Promised Lard. And someone was on their back. They'd tried to buck him off a few times. In Rogers' heyday the impudent man would by now be a few stringy red stains on the ground, but finally the arthritic bulls had given up until such time as they could find a handy tree on which to scrape him off. They just wished the wretched man would stop yelling.     Vimes took a few steps after the bull, and then turned. 'Carrot? Angua? You two get down to Carry's tallow works. Just keep an eye on it until we get there, understand? Spy out the place but don't go in, understand? Right? Do not in any circumstances move in. Do I make myself clear? Just remain in the area. Right?' 'Yes, sir,' said Carrot. 'Detritus, let's get Fred off that thing.' The crowds were melting away ahead of the bull. A ton of pedigree bull does not experience traffic congestion, at least not for any length of time. 'Can't you jump off, Fred?' Vimes yelled, as he ran along behind. 'I do not wish to give that a try, sir!' 'Well, can you steer it?' 'How, sir?' 'Take the bull by the horns, man!' Colon tentatively reached out and took a horn in each hand. Rogers the bulls turned their head and nearly pulled him off. 'He's a bit stronger than me, sir! Quite a lot stronger actually, sir!' 'I could shoot it through der head wid my bow, Mr Vimes,' said Detritus, flourishing his converted siege weapon. 'This is a crowded street, Sergeant. It might hit an innocent person, even in Ankh-Morpork.' 'Sorry, sir.' Detritus brightened. 'But if it did we could always say they'd bin guilty of somethin', sir?' 'No, that . . . What's that chicken doing?' A small black bantam cock raced up the street, ran between the bull's legs and skidded to a halt just in front of Rogers. A smaller figure jumped off its back, leapt up, caught hold of the ring through the bull's nose, swung up further until it was in the mass of curls on the bull's forehead, and then took firm hold of a lock of hair in each tiny hand. 'It looks like Wee Mad Arthur der ger-nome, sir,' said Detritus. 'He . . . tryin' to nut der bull . . .' There was a noise like a slow woodpecker working on a particularly difficult tree, and it punctuated a litany of complaints from somewhere between the animal's eyes. 'Take that, yer big lump that yez are . . .' The bulls stopped. They tried to turn their head so that one or other of the Rogerses could see what the hell it was that was hammering at their foreheads, and might as well have tried looking down their own ears. They staggered backwards. 'Fred,' Vimes whispered. 'You slip off its back while it's busy.' With a panicky look, Sergeant Colon swung a leg over the bull's huge back and slid down to the ground. Vimes grabbed him and hustled him into a doorway. Then he hustled him out again. A doorway was far too confined a space in which to be anywhere near Fred Colon. 'Why are you all covered in crap, Fred?' 'Well, sir, you know that creek that you're up without a paddle? It started there and it's got worse, sir. 'Good grief. Worse than that?' 'Permission to go and have a bath, sir?' 'No, but you could stand back a few more feet. What happened to your helmet?' 'Last time I saw it, it was on a sheep, sir. Sir, I was tied up and shoved in a cellar and heroically broke free, sir! And I was chased by one of them golems, sir!' 'Where was this?' Colon had hoped he wouldn't be asked that. 'It was a place in the Shambles,' he said. 'It was foggy, so I—' Vimes grabbed Colon's wrists. 'What's this?' They tied me up with string, sir! But at great pers'nal risk of life and limb I—' This doesn't look like string to me,' said Vimes. 'No, sir?' 'No, this looks like . . . candlewick.' Colon looked blank. That a Clue, sir?' he said, hopefully. There was a splatting noise as Vimes slapped him on the back. 'Well done, Fred,' he said, wiping his hand on his trousers. 'It's certainly a corroboration.' That's what I thought!' said Colon quickly. This is a corrobolaration and I've got to get it to Commander Vimes as soon as possible regardless of—' 'Why's that gnome nutting that bull, Fred?' That's Wee Mad Arthur, sir. We owe him a dollar. He was ... of some help, sir.' Rogers the bulls were on their knees, dazed and bewildered. It wasn't that Wee Mad Arthur was capable of delivering a killing blow, but he just didn't stop. After a while the noise and the thumping got on people's nerves. 'Should we help him?' said Vimes. 'Looks like he's doing all right by himself, sir,' said Colon. Wee Mad Arthur looked up and grinned. 'One dollar, right?' he shouted. 'No welching or I'll come after yez! One of these buggers trod on me grandpa once!' 'Was he hurt?' 'He got one of his horns twisted right orf!' Vimes took Sergeant Colon firmly by the arm. 'Come on, Fred, it's all hitting the street now!' 'Right, sir! And most of it's splashing!' 'I say! You there! You're a watchman, aren't you? Come over here!' Vimes turned. A man had pushed his way through the crowds. On the whole, Colon reflected, it was just possible that the worst moment of his life hadn't happened yet. Vimes tended to react in a ballistic way to words like 'I say! You there!' when uttered in a certain kind of neighing voice. The speaker had an aristocratic look about him, and the angry air of a man not accustomed to the rigours of life who has just found one happening to him. Vimes saluted smartly. 'Yessir! I'm a watchman, sir!' 'Well, just you come along with me and arrest this thing. It's disturbing the workers.' 'What thing, sir?' 'A golem, man! Walked into the factory as bold as you like and started painting on the damn walls!' 'What factory, sir?' 'You come with me, my man. I happen to be a very good friend of your commander and I can't say I like your attitude.' 'Sorry about that, sir,' said Vimes, with a cheerfulness that Sergeant Colon had come to dread. There was a nondescript factory on the other side of the street. The man strode in. 'Er ... he said "golem", sir,' murmured Colon. Vimes had known Fred Colon a long time. 'Yes, Fred, so it's vitally important for you to stay on guard out here,' he said. The relief rose off Colon like steam. 'That's right, sir!' he said. The factory was full of sewing-machines. People were sitting meekly in front of them. It was the sort of thing the guilds hated, but since the Guild of Seamstresses didn't take all that much interest in sewing there was no one to object. Endless belts led up from each machine to pulleys on a long spindle near the roof, which in turn were driven by ... Vimes's eyes followed it down the length of the workshop ... a treadmill, now stationary and somewhat broken. A couple of golems were standing forlornly alongside it, looking lost. There was a hole in the wall quite close to it and, above it, someone had written in red paint: WORKERS! NO MASTERS BUT YOURSELVES! Vimes grinned. 'It smashed its way in, broke the treadmill, pulled my golems out, painted that stupid message on the wall and stamped out again!' said the man behind him. 'Hmm, yes, I see. A lot of people use oxen in their treadmills,' said Vimes mildly. 'What's that got to do with it? Anyway, cattle can't keep going twenty-four hours a day.' Vimes's gaze worked its way along the rows of workers. Their faces had that worried, Cockbill Street look that you got when you were cursed with pride as well as poverty. 'No, indeed,' he said. 'Most of the clothing workshops are up at Nap Hill, but the wages are cheaper down here, aren't they?' 'People are jolly glad to get the work!' 'Yes,' said Vimes, looking at the faces again. 'Glad.' At the far end of the factory, he noted, the golems were trying to rebuild their treadmill. 'Now you listen to me, what I want you to do is—' the factory-owner began. Vimes's hand gripped his collar and dragged him forward until his face was a few inches from Vimes's own. 'No, you listen to me,' hissed Vimes. 'I mix with crooks and thieves and thugs all day and that doesn't worry me at all but after two minutes with you I need a bath. And if I find that damn golem I'll shake its damn hand, you hear me?' To the surprise of that part of Vimes that wasn't raging, the man found enough courage to say 'How dare you! You're supposed to be the law!' Vimes's furious finger almost went up the man's nose. 'Where shall I start?' he yelled. He glared at the two golems. 'And why are you clowns repairing the treadmill?' he shouted. 'Good grief, haven't got the sense you were bor— Haven't you got any sense?' He stormed out of the building. Sergeant Colon stopped trying to scrape himself clean and ran to catch up with him. 'I heard some people say they saw a golem come out of the other door, sir,' he said. 'It was a red one. You know, red clay. But the one that was after me was white, sir. Are you angry, Sam?' 'Who's that man who owns that place?' 'That's Mr Catterail, sir. You know, he's always writing you letters about there being too many what he calls "lesser races" in the Watch. You know . . . trolls and dwarfs . . .' The sergeant had to trot to keep up with him. 'Get some zombies,' said Vimes. 'You've always been dead against zombies, excuse my pune,' said Sergeant Colon. 'Any want to join, are there?' 'Oh, yessir. Couple of good lads, sir, and but for the grey skin hangin' off 'em you'd swear they hadn't been buried five minutes.' 'Swear them in tomorrow.' 'Right, sir. Good idea. And of course it's a great saving not having to include them in the pension plan.' They can patrol up on Kings Down. After all, they're only human.' 'Right, sir.' When Sam is in these moods, Colon thought, you agree with everything. 'You're really getting the hang of this affirmative action stuff, eh sir?' 'Right now I'd swear in a gorgon!' 'There's always Mr Bleakley, sir, he's getting fed up with working in the kosher butcher's and—' 'But no vampires. Never any vampires. Now let's get a move on, Fred.'     Nobby Nobbs ought to have known. That's what he told himself as he scuttled through the streets. All that stuff about kings and stuff- they'd wanted him to ... It was a terrible thought . . . Volunteer. Nobby had spent a lifetime in one uniform or another. And one of the most basic lessons he'd learned was that men with red faces and plummy voices never ever gave cushy numbers to the likes of Nobby. They'd ask for volunteers to do something 'big and clean' and you'd end up scrubbing some damn great drawbridge; they'd say, 'Anyone here like good food?' and you'd be peeling potatoes for a week. You never ever volunteered. Not even if a sergeant stood there and said, 'We need someone to drink alcohol, bottles of, and make love, passionate, to women, for the use of.' There was always a snag. If a choir of angels asked for volunteers for Paradise to step forward, Nobby knew enough to take one smart pace to the rear. When the call came for Corporal Nobbs, it would not find him wanting. It would not find him at all. Nobby avoided a herd of pigs in the middle of the street. Even Mr Vimes never expected him to volunteer. He respected Nobby's pride. Nobby's head ached. It must've been the quail's eggs, he was sure. They couldn't be healthy birds to lay titchy eggs like that. He sidled past a cow that had got its head stuck in someone's window. Nobby as king? Oh, yes. No one ever gave a Nobbs anything except maybe a skin disease or sixty lashes. It was a dog-eat-Nobbs world, right enough. If there were to be a world competition for losers, a Nobbs would come firs— last. He stopped running and went to earth in a doorway. In its welcome shadows he extracted a very short cigarette end from behind his ear and lit it. Now that he felt safe enough to think about more than flight he wondered about all the animals that seemed to be on the streets. Unlike the family tree that had borne Fred Colon as its fruit, the creeping vine of the Nobbses had flourished only within city walls. Nobby was vaguely aware of animals as being food in a primary stage and left it at that. But he was pretty sure they weren't supposed to be wandering around untidily like this. Gangs of men were trying to round them up. Since they were tired and working at cross-purposes, and the animals were hungry and bewildered, all that was happening was that the streets were getting a lot muddier. Nobby became aware that he was not alone in the doorway. He looked down. Also lurking in the shadows was a goat. It was unkempt and smelly, but it turned its head and gave Nobby the most knowing look he'd ever seen on the face of an animal. Unexpectedly, and most uncharacteristically, Nobby was struck by a surge of fellow-rfeeling. He pinched out the end of his cigarette and passed it down to the goat, which ate it. 'You and me both,' said Nobby.     Miscellaneous livestock scattered madly as Carrot, Angua and Cheri made their way down the Shambles. They especially tried to keep away from Angua. It seemed to Cheri that an invisible barrier was advancing in front of them. Some animals tried to climb walls or scattered madly into side alleys. 'Why are they so scared?' said Cheri. 'Can't imagine,' said Angua. A few maddened sheep ran away from them as they walked around the candle-factory. Light from its high windows indicated that candlemaking continued all night. They make nearly half a million candles every twenty-four hours,' said Carrot. 'I heard they've got very advanced machinery. It sounds very interesting. I'd love to see it.' At the rear of the premises light blazed out into the fog. Crates of candles were being manhandled on to a succession of carts. 'Looks normal enough,' said Carrot, as they eased themselves into a conveniently shadowy doorway. 'Busy, though.' 'I don't see what good this is going to do,' said Angua. 'As soon as they see us they can destroy any evidence. And, even if we find arsenic, so what? There's no crime in owning arsenic, is there?' 'Er ... is there a crime in owning that? whispered Cheri. A golem was walking slowly up the alley. It was quite unlike any other golem they had seen. The others were ancient and had repaired themselves so many times they were as shapeless as a gingerbread man, but this one looked like a human, or at least like humans wished they could look. It resembled a statue made of white clay. Around its head, part of the very design, was a crown. 'I was right,' murmured Carrot. 'They did make themselves a golem. The poor devils. They thought a king would make them free.' 'Look at its legs,' said Angua. As the golem walked, lines of red light appeared and disappeared all over its legs, and across its body and arms. 'It's cracking,' she said. 'I knew you couldn't bake pottery in an old bread oven!' said Cheri. 'It's not the right shapel' The golem pushed open a door and disappeared into the factory. 'Let's go,' said Carrot. 'Commander Vimes told us to wait for him,' said Angua. 'Yes, but we don't know what might be going on in there,' said Carrot. 'Besides, he likes us to use our initiative. We can't just hang around now.' He darted across the alley and opened the door. There were crates piled inside, with a narrow passageway between them. From all around them, but slightly muffled by the crates, came the clicking and rattling of the factory. The air smelled of hot wax. Cheri was aware of a whispered conversation going on several feet above her little round helmet. ‘I wish Mr Vimes hadn't wanted us to bring her. Supposing something happens to her?' 'What are you talking about?' 'Well . . . you know . . . she's a girl.' 'So what? There's at least three female dwarfs in the Watch already and you don't worry about them.' 'Oh, come on ... name one.' 'Lars Skulldrinker,for a start.' 'No! Really?' 'Are you calling this nose a liar?' 'But he broke up a fight in the Miner's Arms single-handedly last week!' ' Well? Why do you assume females are weaker? You wouldn't worry about me taking on a vicious bar crowd by myself.' 'I'd give aid where necessary.' ' To me or to them?' 'That's unfair!' 'Is it?' 'I wouldn't help them unless you got really rough.' 'Ah, so? And they say chivalry is dead . . .' 'Anyway, Cheri is . . .a bit different. I'm sure he. . . she's good at alchemy, but we'd better watch her back in a fight. Hold on...’ They'd stepped out into the factory. Candles whirled overhead - hundreds of them, thousands of them - dangling by their wicks from an endless belt of complex wooden links that switch-backed its way up and down the long hall. 'I heard about this,' said Carrot. 'It's called a producing line. It's a way of making thousands of things that are all the same. But look at the speed! I'm amazed the treadmill can—' Angua pointed. There was a treadmill creaking around beside her, but there was nothing inside it. 'Something's got to be powering all this,' said Angua. Carrot pointed. Further up the hall the switchbacks of the line converged in a complicated knot. There was a figure somewhere in the middle, arms moving in a blur. Just beside Carrot the line ended at a big wooden hopper. Candles cascaded into it. No one had been emptying it, and they were tumbling over the pile and rolling on to the floor. 'Cheri,' said Carrot. 'Do you know how to use any kind of weapon?' 'Er . . . no, Captain Carrot.' 'Right. You just wait in the alley, then. I don't want any harm coming to you.' She scuttled off, looking relieved. Angua sniffed the air. 'There's been a vampire here,' she said. 'I think we'd—' Carrot began. 'I knew you'd find out! I wish I'd never bought the damned thing! I've got a bow! I warn you, I've got a crossbow!' They turned. 'Ah, Mr Carry,' said Carrot cheerfully. He produced his badge. 'Captain Carrot, Ankh-Morpork City Watch—' 'I know who you are! I know who you are! And what you are, too! I knew you'd come! I've got a bow and I'm not afraid to use it!' The crossbow's point moved uncertainly, proving him a liar. 'Really?' said Angua. 'What we are?' 'I didn't even want to get involved!' said Carry. 'It killed those old men, didn't it?' 'Yes,' said Carrot. 'Why? I didn't tell it to!' 'Because they helped make it, I think,' said Carrot. 'It knew who to blame.' The golems sold it to me!' said Carry. 'I thought it'd help build up the business but the damned thing won't stop—' He glanced up at the line of candles whirring overhead, but jerked his head back before Angua could move. 'Works hard, does it?' 'Hah!' But Carry didn't look like a man enjoying a joke. He looked like a man in private torment. 'I've laid off everyone except the girls in the packing department, and they're on three shifts and overtime! I've got four men out looking for tallow, two negotiating for wicks and three trying to buy more storage space!' 'Then get it to stop making candles,' said Carrot. 'It goes off into the streets when we run out of tallow! You want it walking around looking for something to do? Hey, you two stay together!' Carry added urgently, waving the crossbow, 'Look, all you have to do is change the words in its head,' said Carrot. 'It won't let me! Don't you think I've tried?' 'It can't not let you,' said Carrot. 'Golems have to let—' 'I said it won't let me!' 'What about the poisoned candles?' said Carrot. 'That wasn't my idea!' 'Whose idea was it?' Carry's crossbow swung back and forth. He licked his lips. 'This has all gone far too far,' he said. 'I'm getting out.' 'Whose idea, Mr Carry?' 'I'm not going to end up in some alley somewhere with as much blood as a banana!' 'Now then, we wouldn't do anything like that,' said Carrot. Mr Carry was exporting terror. Angua could smell it streaming off him. He might pull the trigger out of sheer panic. There was another smell, too. 'Who's the vampire?' she said. For a moment she thought the man would fire the crossbow. 'I never said anything about him!' 'You've got garlic in your pocket,' said Angua. 'And the place reeks of vampire.' 'He said we could get the golem to do anything,' Carry mumbled. 'Like making poisoned candles?' said Carrot. 'Yes, but he said it'd just keep Vetinari out of the way,' said Carry. He seemed to be getting a tenuous grip on himself. 'And he's not dead, 'cos I'd have heard,' he said. 'I shouldn't think making him ill is a crime, so you can't—' 'The candles killed two other people,' said Carrot. Carry started to panic again. 'Who?' 'An old lady and a baby in Cockbill Street.' 'Were they important?' said Carry. Carrot nodded to himself. 'I was almost feeling sorry for you,' he said. 'Right up to that point. You're a lucky man, Mr Carry.' 'You think so?' 'Oh, yes. We got to you before Commander Vimes did. Now, just put down the crossbow and we can talk about—' There was a noise. Or, rather, the sudden cessation of a noise that had been so pervasive that it had no longer been consciously heard. The clacking line had stopped. There was a chorus of little waxy thuds as the hanging candles swung and hit one another, and then silence unrolled. The last candle dropped off the line, tumbled down the heap in the hopper, and bounced on the floor. And in the silence, the sound of footsteps. Carry started to back away. 'Too late!' he moaned. Both Carrot and Angua saw his finger move. Angua pushed Carrot out of the way as the claw released the string, but he had anticipated this and his hand was already flinging itself up and across. She heard the sickening, tearing noise as his palm whirled in front of her face, and his grunt as the force of the bolt spun him round. He landed heavily on the floor, clutching his left hand. The crossbow bolt was sticking out of the palm. Angua crouched down. 'It doesn't look barbed, let me pull—' Carrot grabbed her wrist. 'The point's silver! Don't touch it!' They both looked up as a shadow crossed the light. The king golem looked down at her. She felt her teeth and fingernails begin to lengthen. Then she saw the small round face of Cheri peering nervously around a pile of crates. Angua fought down her werewolf instincts, screamed 'Stay right there!' at the dwarf and at every swelling hair follicle, and hesitated between pursuing the fleeing Carry and dragging Carrot to safety. She told her body again that a wolf-shape was not an option. There were too many strange smells, too many fires . . . The golem glistened with tallow and wax. She backed away. Behind the golem she saw Cheri look down at the groaning Carrot and then up at a fire-axe hooked on the wall. The dwarf took it down and weighed it vaguely in her hands. 'Don't try—' Angua began. 'T'dr'duzkb'hazgt't!' 'Oh, no!' moaned Carrot. 'Not that one!' Cheri came up behind the golem at a run and hacked at its waist. The axe rebounded but she pirouetted with it and caught the statue on the thigh, chipping off a piece of clay. Angua hesitated. Cheri's axe was making blurred orbits around the golem while its wielder yelled more terrible battle cries. Angua couldn't make out any words but many dwarf cries didn't bother with words. They went straight for emotions in sonic form. Chips of pottery ricocheted off the crates as each blow landed. 'What did she yell?' Angua said, as she pulled Carrot out of the way. 'It's the most menacing dwarf battle cry there is! Once it's been shouted someone has to be killed!' 'What's it mean?' 'Today Is A Good Day For Someone Else To Die!' The golem watched the dwarf incuriously, like an elephant watching an attack by a rogue chicken. Then it picked the axe out of the air, Cheri trailing behind it like a comet, and hurled it aside. Angua hauled Carrot to his feet. Blood dripped from his hand. She tried to shut her nostrils. Full moon tomorrow. No more choices. 'Maybe we can reason with it—' Carrot started. 'Attention! This is the real world calling!' shouted Angua. Carrot drew his sword. 'I am arresting you—' he began. The golem's arm whirred across. The sword buried itself to the hilt in a crate of candles. 'Got any more clever ideas?' said Angua, as they backed away. 'Or can we go now?' 'No. We've got to stop it somewhere.' Their heels met a wall of crates. 'I think we've found the place,' said Angua as the golem raised its fists again. 'You duck right, I'll duck left. Maybe—' A blow rocked the big double doors in the far wall. The king golem's head turned. The doors shook again, and burst inwards. For a moment Dorfl was framed in the doorway. Then the red golem lowered his head, spread his arms, and charged. It wasn't a very fast run but it did have a terrible momentum, like the slow slide of a glacier. The floorboards shook and drummed under him. The golems collided with a clang in the middle of the floor. Jagged lines of fire spread across the king's body as cracks opened, but it roared and caught up Dorfl around the middle and tossed him against the wall. 'Come on,' said Angua. 'Now can we find Cheri and get out of here?' 'We ought to help him,' said Carrot, as the golems smashed into each other again. 'How? If it. . . if he can't stop it, what makes you think we can? Come on!' Carrot shook her off. Dorfl picked itself up from among the bricks and charged again. The golems met, scrabbling at one another for purchase. They stood locked for a moment, creaking, and then Dorfl's hand came up holding something. Dorfl pushed himself back and smashed the other golem over the head with its own leg. As it spun Dorfl's other hand lashed out, but was grabbed. The king swivelled with a strange grace, bore Dorfl to the floor, rolled and kicked out. Dorfl rolled too. He flung out his arms to stop himself, and looked back >to see both his feet pinwheeling into the wall. The king picked up its own leg, balanced for a moment, and joined itself together. Then its red gaze swept the factory and flared when it caught sight of Carrot, 'There must be a back way out of here,' muttered Angua. 'Carry got out!' The king started to run after them, but hit an immediate problem. It had put its leg on back to front. It began to limp in a circle but, somehow, the circle got nearer to them. 'We can't just leave Dorfl lying there/ said Carrot. He pulled a long metal rod out of a stirring tank and eased himself back down to the grease-crusted floor. The king rocked towards him. Carrot hopped backwards, steadied himself on a rail, and swung. The golem lifted its hand, caught the rod out of the air and tossed it aside. It raised both fists and tried to step forward. It couldn't move. It looked down. 'Thsss,' said what remained of Dorfl, gripping its ankle. The king bent, swung one hand with the palm edgewise, and calmly sheared the top off Dorfl's head. It removed the chem and crumpled it up. The glow died in Dorfl's eyes. Angua cannoned into Carrot so hard he almost fell over. She wrapped both arms around him and pulled him after her. 'It just killed Dorfl, just like that!' said Carrot. 'It's a shame, yes,' said Angua. 'Or it would be if Dorfl had been alive. Carrot, they're like . . . machinery. Look, we can make it to the door—' Carrot shook himself free. 'It's murder,' he said. 'We're Watchmen. We can't just. . . watch! It killed him!' 'It's an it and so's he—' 'Commander Vimes said someone has to speak for the people with no voices!' He really believes it, Angua thought. Vimes puts words in his head. 'Keep it occupied!' he shouted, and darted away. 'How? Organize a sing-song?' 'I've got a plan.' 'Oh, good!’     Vimes looked up at the entrance of the candle-factory. He could dimly see two cressets burning on either side of a shield. 'Look at that, will you?' he said. 'Paint not dry and he flaunts the thing for all the world to see!' 'What's dat, sir?' said Detritus. 'His damn coat of arms!' Detritus looked up. 'Why's it got a lighted fish on it?' he said. 'In heraldry that's a poisson,' said Vimes bitterly. 'And it's supposed to be a lamp.' 'A lamp made out of a poisson,' said Detritus. 'Well, dere'safmg.' 'At least it's got the motto in proper language,' said Sergeant Colon. 'Instead of all the old- fashioned stuff no one understands. "Art Brought Forth the Candle." That, Sergeant Detritus, is a pune, or play on words. 'Cos his name is Arthur, see.' Vimes stood between the two sergeants and felt a hole open up in his head. 'Damn!* he said. 'Damn, damn, damn! He showed it to me! "Dumb plodder Vimes! He won't notice!" Oh, yes! And he was right!' "S not that good,' said Colon. 'I mean, you've got to know that Mr Carry's first name is Arthur—' 'Shut up, Fred!' snapped Vimes. 'Shutting up right now, sir.' 'The arrogance of the . . . Who's that?' A figure darted out of the building, glanced around hurriedly, and scurried along the street. 'That's Carry!' said Vimes. He didn't even shout 'After him!' but went from a standing start to a full run. The fleeing figure dodged between the occasional straying sheep or pig and didn't have a bad turn of speed, but Vimes was powered by sheer anger and was only yards away when Carry ducked into an alleyway. Vimes skidded to a halt and grabbed at the wall. He'd seen the shape of a crossbow and one of the things you learned in the Watch - that is, one of the things which hopefully you'd have a chance to learn — was that it was a very stupid thing indeed to follow someone with a crossbow into a dark alley where you'd be outlined against any light there was. 'I know it's you, Carry,' he shouted. ‘I’ve got a crossbow!' 'You can only fire it once!' 'I want to turn King's Evidence!' 'Guess again!' Carry lowered his voice. 'They just said I could get the damn golem to do it. I didn't think anyone was going to get hurt.' 'Right, right,' said Vimes. 'You made poisoned candles because they gave a better light, I expect.' 'You know what I mean! They told me it would all be all right and—' 'Which they would "they" be?' 'They said no one would ever find out!' 'Really?' 'Look, look, they said they could . . .' The voice paused, and took on that wheedling tone the blunt-witted use when they're trying to sound sharp. 'If I tell you everything, you'll let me go, right?' The two sergeants had caught up. Vimes pulled Detritus towards him, although in fact he ended up pulling himself towards Detritus. 'Go round the corner and see he doesn't come out of the alley the other way,' he whispered. The troll nodded. 'What's it you want to tell me, Mr Carry?' said Vimes to the darkness in the alley. 'Have we got a bargain?' 'What?' 'A bargain.' 'No, we damn well haven't got a bargain, Mr Carry! I'm not a tradesman! But I'll tell you something, Mr Carry. They betrayed you!' There was silence from the darkness, and then a sound like a sigh. Behind Vimes, Sergeant Colon stamped his feet on the cobbles to keep warm. 'You can't stay in there all night, Mr Carry,' said Vimes. There was another sound, a leathery sound. Vimes glanced up into the coils of fog. 'Something's not right,' he said. 'Come on!' He ran into the alley. Sergeant Colon followed, on the basis that it was fine to run into an alley containing an armed man provided you were behind someone else. A shape loomed at them. 'Detritus?' 'Yes, sir!' 'Where did he go? There are no doors in the alley!' Then his eyes grew more accustomed to the gloom. He saw a huddled outline at the foot of a wall, and his foot nudged a crossbow. 'Mr Carry?' He knelt down and lit a match. 'Oh, nasty,' said Sergeant Colon. 'Something's broken his neck . . .' 'Dead, is he?' said Detritus. 'You want I should draw a chalk outline round him?' 'I don't think we need bother, Sergeant.' 'It no bother, I've got der chalk right here.' Vimes looked up. Fog filled the alley, but there were no ladders, no handy low roofs. 'Let's get out of here,' he said.     Angua faced the king. She resisted a terrible urge to Change. Even a werewolf s jaws probably wouldn't have any effect on the thing. It didn't have a jugular. She daren't look away. The king moved uncertainly, with little jerks and twitches that in a human would suggest madness. Its arms moved fast but erratically, as if signals that were being sent were not arriving properly. And Dorfl's attack had left it damaged. Every time it moved, red light shone from dozens of new cracks. 'You're cracking up!' she shouted. 'The oven wasn't right for pottery!' The king lunged at her. She dodged and heard its hand slice through a rack of candles. 'You're cranky! You're baked like a loaf! You're half-baked? She drew her sword. She didn't usually have much use for it. She found a smile would invariably do the trick, A hand sliced the top off the blade. She stared at the sheared metal in horror and then somersaulted back as another blow hummed past her face. Her foot rolled on a candle and she fell heavily, but with enough presence of mind to roll before a foot stamped down. 'Where've you gone?' she yelled. 'Can you get it to move a little closer to the doors, please?' said a voice from the darkness on high. Carrot crawled out along the rickety structure that supported the production line. 'Carrot!' 'Almost there...' The king grabbed at her leg. She lashed out with her foot and caught it on the knee. To her amazement she made it crack. But the fire below was still there. The pieces of pottery seemed to float on it. No matter what anyone did the golem could keep going, even if it were just a cloud of dust held together. 'Ah. Right,' said Carrot, and dropped off the gantry. He landed on the king's back, flung one arm around its neck, and began to pound on its head with the hilt of his sword. It staggered and tried to reach up to pull him off. 'Got to get the words out!' Carrot shouted, as the arms flailed at him. 'It's the only . . . way!' The king staggered forward and hit a stack of boxes, which burst and rained candles over the floor. Carrot grabbed its ears and tried to twist. Angua heard him saying: 'You . . . have . . . the right... to ... a lawyer . . .' 'Carrot! Don't bother with its damn rights!' 'You . . . have . . . the right to—' 'Just give it the last ones!' There was a commotion in the gaping doorway and Vimes ran in, sword drawn. 'Oh, gods . . . Sergeant Detritus!' Detritus appeared behind him. 'Sah!' 'Crossbow bolt through the head, if you please!' Tf you say so, sir . . .' 'Its head, Sergeant! Mine is fine! Carrot, get down off the thing!' 'Can't get its head off, sir!' 'We'll try six feet of cold steel in the ear just as soon as you let the damn thing go!' Carrot steadied himself on the king's shoulders, tried to judge his moment as the thing staggered around, and leapt. He landed awkwardly on a sliding heap of candles. His leg buckled under him and he tumbled over until he was stopped by the inert shell that had been Dorfl. 'Hey, look dis way, mister,' said Detritus. The king turned. Vimes didn't catch everything that happened next, because it all happened so quickly. He was merely aware of the rush of air and thegloink of the rebounding bolt mingling with the wooden juddering noise as it buried itself in the doorframe behind him. And the golem was crouching down by Carrot, who was trying to squirm out of the way. It raised a fist, and brought it down . . . Vimes didn't even see Dorfl's arm move but there it was there, suddenly gripping the king's wrist. Tiny stars of light went nova in Dorfl's eyes. 'Tssssss!' As the king jerked back in surprise, Dorfl held on and levered himself up on what remained of his legs. As he came up so did his fist. Time slowed. Nothing moved in the whole universe but Dorfl's fist. It swung like a planet, without any apparent speed but with a drifting unstoppability. And then the king's expression changed. Just before the fist landed, it smiled. The golem's head exploded, Vimes recalled it in slow motion, one long second of floating pottery. And words. Scraps of paper flew out, dozens, scores of them, tumbling gently to the floor. Slowly, peacefully, the king hit the floor. The red light died, the cracks opened, and then there were just. . . pieces. Dorfl collapsed on top of them. Angua and Vimes reached Carrot together. 'He came alive!' said Carrot, struggling up. That thing was going to kill me and Dorfl came alive! But that thing had smashed the words out of his head! A golem has to have the words!' 'They gave their own golem too many, I can see that,' said Vimes. He picked up some of the coils of paper. ...CREATE PEACE AND JUSTICE FOR ALL... ...RULE USE WISELY... ...TEACH US FREEDOM... ...LEAD US TO... Poor devil, he thought. 'Let's get you home. That hand needs treating—' said Angua. 'Listen, will you?' said Carrot. 'He's alive!' Vimes knelt down by Dorfl. The broken clay skull looked as empty as yesterday's breakfast egg. But there was still a pinpoint of light in each eye socket. 'Usssss,' hissed Dorfl, so faintly that Vimes wasn't sure he'd heard it. A finger scratched on the floor. 'Is it trying to write something?' said Angua. Vimes pulled out his notebook, eased it under Dorfl's hand, and gently pushed a pencil into the golem's fingers. They watched the hand as it wrote - a little jerkily but still with the mechanical precision of a golem - eight words. Then it stopped. The pencil rolled away. The lights in Dorfl's eyes dwindled and went out, 'Good grief,' breathed Angua. 'They don't need words in their heads . . .' 'We can rebuild him,' said Carrot hoarsely. 'We have the pottery.' Vimes stared at the words, and then at what remained of Dorfl. 'Mr Vimes?' said Carrot. 'Do it,' said Vimes. Carrot blinked. 'Right now,' Vimes said. He looked back at the scrawl in his book. W<span lang=EN-US style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:11.5pt'>O</span>R</span><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:11.5pt'>D</span>S I</span><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt'>N</span> THE H</span><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:11.5pt'>E</span>A</span><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:11.5pt'>R</span>T CA</span><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt'>N</span>N</span><span lang=EN-US style='font-size: 14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:11.5pt'>O</span>T BE T</span><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:11.5pt'>A</span><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:11.5pt'>K</span><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:11.5pt'>E</span>N.</span> 'And when you rebuild him,' he said, 'when you rebuild him. . . give him a voice. Understand? And get someone to look at your hand.' 'A voice, sir?' 'Do it!' 'Yes, sir.' 'Right.' Vimes pulled himself together. 'Constable Angua and I will have a look around here. Off you go.' He watched Carrot and the troll carry the remains out. 'Okay,' he said. 'We're looking for arsenic. Maybe there'll be some workshop somewhere. I shouldn't think they'd want to mix the poisoned candles up with the others. Cheery'll know what— Where is Corporal Littlebottom?' 'Er ... I don't think I can hold on much longer . . .' They looked up. Cheri was hanging on the line of candles. 'How did you get up there?' said Vimes. 'I sort of found myself going past, sir.' 'Can't you just let go? You're not that high— Oh . . .' A big trough of molten tallow was a few feet under her. Occasionally the surface wentgloop. 'Er . . . how hot would that be?' Vimes hissed to Angua. 'Ever bitten hot jam?' she said. Vimes raised his voice. 'Can't you swing yourself along, Corporal?' 'All the wood's greasy, sir!' 'Corporal Littlebottom, I order you not to fall off!' 'Very good, sir!' Vimes pulled off his jacket. 'Hang on to this. I'll see if I can climb up . . .'he muttered. 'It won't work!' said Angua. The thing's shaky enough as it is!' 'I can feel my hands slipping, sir.' 'Good grief, why didn't you call out earlier?' 'Everyone seemed to be busy, sir.' 'Turn around, sir,' said Angua, undoing the buckles of her breastplate. 'Right now, please! And shut your eyes!' 'Why, what . . . ?' 'Rrright nowwww, sirrrrr!' 'Oh. . .yes. . .' Vimes heard Angua back away from the candle machine, her footsteps punctuated by the clang of falling armour. Then she started running and the footsteps changed while she was running and then . . . He opened his eyes. The wolf sailed upwards in slow motion, caught the dwarfs shoulder in its jaws as Cheri's grip gave way, and then arced its body so that wolf and dwarf hit the floor on the far side of the vat. Angua rolled, whimpering. Cheri scrambled to her feet. 'It's a werewolf!' Angua rolled back and forth, pawing at her mouth. 'What's happened to it?' said Cheri, her panic receding a little. 'It looks . . . hurt. Where's Angua? Oh. . .' Vimes glanced at the dwarfs torn leather shirt. 'You wear chain mail under your clothes?' he said. 'Oh . . . it's my silver vest . . . but she knew about it. I told her . . .' Vimes grabbed Angua's collar. She moved to bite him, and then caught his eye and turned her head away. 'She only bit the silver,' said Cheri, distractedly. Angua pulled herself on to her feet, glared at them, and slunk off behind some crates. They heard her whimpering which, by degrees, became a voice. 'Blasted blasted dwarfs and their blasted vests . . .' 'You all right, Constable?' said Vimes. 'Damn silver underwear . . . Can you throw me my clothes, please?' Vimes bundled up Angua's uniform and, eyes closed for decency's sake, handed it around the crates. 'No one told me she was a were—' Cheri moaned. 'Look at it like this, Corporal,' said Vimes, as patiently as he could. 'If she hadn't been a werewolf you would by now be the world's largest novelty candle, all right?' Angua walked from behind the crates, rubbing her mouth. The skin around it looked too pink . . . 'It burned you?' said Cheri. 'It'll heal,' said Angua. 'You never said you were a werewolf!' 'How would you've liked me to have put it?' 'Right,' said Vimes, 'if that's all sorted out, ladies, I want this place searched. Understand?' 'I've got some ointment,' said Cheri meekly. 'Thank you.' They found a bag in a cellar. There were several boxes of candles. And a lot of dead rats.     Igneous the troll opened the door of his pottery a fraction. He'd intended the fraction to be no more than about one-sixteenth, but someone immediately pushed hard and turned it into rather more than one and three-quarters. 'Here, what's dis?' he said, as Detritus and Carrot came in with the shell of Dorfl between them. 'You can't jus' break in here—' 'We ain't just breakin' in,' said Detritus. 'Dis is an outrage,' said Igneous. 'You got no right comin' in here. You got no reason—' Detritus let go of the golem and spun around. His hand shot out and caught Igneous around the throat. 'You see dose statchoos of Monolith over dere? You see dem?' he growled, twisting the other troll's head to face a row of troll religious statues on the other side of the warehouse. 'You want I should smash one open, see what dey're fill wit', maybe find a reason?' Igneous's slitted eyes darted this way and that. He might have been hard of thinking, but he could feel a killing mood when it was in the air. 'No call for dat, I always help der Watch,' he muttered. 'What dis all about?' Carrot laid out the golem on a table. 'Start, then,' he said. 'Rebuild him. Use as much of the old clay as you can, understand?' 'How can it work when its lights're out?' said Detritus, still puzzled by this mission of mercy. 'He said the clay remembers!' The sergeant shrugged. 'And give him a tongue,' said Carrot. Igneous looked shocked. 'I won't do dat,' he said. 'Everybody know it blasphemy if golems speak.' 'Oh, yeah?' said Detritus. He strode across the warehouse to the group of statues and glared at them. Then he said, 'Whoops, here's me accident'ly trippin' up, ooo, dis is me grabbin' a statchoo for support, oh, der arm have come right off, where can I put my face . . . and what is dis white powder what I sees here with my eyes accident'ly spillin' on der floor?' He licked a finger and gingerly tasted the stuff. 'Slab,' he growled, walking back to the trembling Igneous. 'You tellin' me about blasphemy, you sedimentr'y coprolith? You doin' what Captain Carrot say right now or you goin' out of here in a sack!' 'Dis is police brutality . . .' Igneous muttered. 'No, dis is just police shoutin'!' yelled Detritus. 'You want to try for brutality it okay wit' me!' Igneous tried to appeal to Carrot. 'It not right, he got a badge, he puttin' me in fear, he can't do dis,' he said. Carrot nodded. There was a glint in his eye that Igneous should have noticed. 'That's correct,' he said. 'Sergeant Detritus?' 'Sir?' 'It's been a long day for all of us. You can go off duty.' 'Yessir!' said Detritus, with considerable enthusiasm. He removed his badge and laid it down carefully. Then he started to struggle out of his armour. 'Look at it like this,' said Carrot. 'It's not that we're making life, we're simply giving life a place to live.' Igneous finally gave up. 'Okay, okay,' he muttered. 'I doin' it. I doin' it.' He looked at the various lumps and shards that were all that remained of Dorfl, and rubbed the lichen on his chin. 'You got most of the bits,' he said, professionalism edging resentment aside for a moment. 'I could glue him together wit' kiln cement. Dat'd do the trick if we bakes him overnight. Lessee... I reckon I got some over dere . . .' Detritus blinked at his finger, which was still white with the dust, and sidled over to Carrot. 'Did I just lick dis?' he said. 'Er, yes,' said Carrot. 'T'ank goodness for dat,' said Detritus, blinking furiously, "d hate to believe dis room was really full of giant hairy spide . . . weeble weeble sclup ..." He hit the floor, but happily. 'Even if I do it you can't make it come alive again,' muttered Igneous, returning to his bench. 'You won't find a priest who's goin' to write der words for in der head, not again.' 'He'll make up his own words,' said Carrot. 'And who's going to watch the oven?' said Igneous. 'It's gonna take 'til breakfast at least . . / 'I wasn't planning on doing anything for the rest of tonight,' said Carrot, taking off his helmet.     Vimes awoke around four o'clock. He'd gone to sleep at his desk. He hadn't meant to, but his body had just shut down. It wasn't the first time he'd opened bleary eyes there. But at least he wasn't lying in anything sticky. He focused on the report he'd half-written. His notebook was beside it, page after page of laborious scrawl to remind him that he was trying to understand a complex world by means of his simple mind. He yawned, and looked out at the shank of the night. He didn't have any evidence. No real evidence at all. He'd had an interview with an almost incoherent Corporal Nobbs, who hadn't really seen anything. He had nothing that wouldn't burn away like the fog in the morning. All he'd got were a few suspicions and a lot of coincidences, leaning against one another like a house of cards with no card on the bottom. He peered at his notebook. Someone seemed to have been working hard. Oh, yes. It had been him. The events of last night jangled in his head. Why'd he written all this stuff about a coat of arms? Oh, yes . . . Yes! Ten minutes later he was pushing open the door of the pottery. Warmth spilled out into the clammy air. He found Carrot and Detritus asleep on the floor on either side of the kiln. Damn. He needed someone he could trust, but he hadn't the heart to wake them. He'd pushed everyone very hard the last few days ... Something tapped on the door of the kiln. Then the handle started to turn by itself. The door opened as far as it could go and something half-slid and half-fell on to the floor. Vimes still wasn't properly awake. Exhaustion and the importunate ghosts of adrenalin sizzled around the edges of his consciousness, but he saw the burning man unfold himself and stand upright. His red-hot body gave little pings as it began to cool. Where it stood, the floor charred and smoked. The golem raised his head and looked around. 'You!' said Vimes, pointing an unsteady finger. 'Come with me!' 'Yes,'said Dorfl.     Dragon King of Arms stepped into his library. The dirt of the small high windows and the remnants of the fog made sure there was never more than greyness here, but a hundred candles yielded their soft light. He sat down at his desk, pulled a volume towards him, and began to write. After a while he stopped and stared ahead of him. There was no sound but the occasional spluttering of a candle. 'Ah-ha. I can smell you, Commander Vimes,' he said. 'Did the Heralds let you in?' 'I found my own way, thank you,' said Vimes, stepping out of the shadows. The vampire sniffed again. 'You came alone?' 'Who should I have brought with me?' 'And to what do I owe the pleasure, Sir Samuel?' 'The pleasure is all mine. I'm going to arrest you,' said Vimes. 'Oh, dear. Ah-ha. For what, may I ask?' 'Can I invite you to notice the arrow in this crossbow?' said Vimes. 'No metal on the point, you'll see. It's wood all the way.' 'How very considerate. Ah-ha.' Dragon King of Arms twinkled at him. 'You still haven't told me what I'm accused of, however.' 'To start with, complicity in the murders of Mrs Flora Easy and the child William Easy.' 'I am afraid those names mean nothing to me.' Vimes's finger twitched on the bow's trigger. 'No,' he said, breathing deeply. They probably don't. We are making other enquiries and there may be a number of additional matters. The fact that you were poisoning the Patrician I consider a mitigating circumstance.' 'You really intend to prefer charges?' Tdprefer violence,' said Vimes loudly. 'Charges is what I'm going to have to settle for.' The vampire leaned back. 'I hear you've been working very hard, Commander,' he said. 'So I will not—' 'We've got the testimony of Mr Carry,' lied Vimes. 'The late Mr Carry.' Dragon's expression changed by not one tiny tremor of muscle. 'I really do not know, ah-ha, what you are talking about, Sir Samuel.' 'Only someone who could fly could have got into my office.' Tm afraid you've lost me, sir.' 'Mr Carry was killed tonight,' Vimes went on. 'By someone who could get out of an alley guarded at both ends. And I know a vampire was in his factory.' Tm still gamely trying to understand you, Commander,' said Dragon King of Arms. 'I know nothing about the death of Mr Carry and in any case there are a great many vampires in the city. I'm afraid your . . . aversion is well known.' 'I don't like to see people treated like cattle,' said Vimes. He stared briefly at the volumes piled in the room. 'And of course that's what you've always done, isn't it? These are the stock books of Ankh-Morpork.' The crossbow swung back towards the vampire, who hadn't moved. 'Power over little people. That's what vampires want. The blood is just a way of keeping score. I wonder how much influence you've had over the years?' 'A little. You are correct there, at least.' ' "A person of breeding",' said Vimes. 'Good grief. Well, I think people wanted Vetinari out of the way. But not dead, yet. Too many things'd happen too fast if he were dead. Is Nobby really an earl?' 'The evidence suggests so.' 'But it's your evidence, right? You see, I don't think he's got noble blood in him. Nobby's as common as muck. It's one of his better points. I don't set any score by the ring. The amount of stuff his family's nicked, you could probably prove he's the Duke of Pseudopolis, the Seriph of Klatch and the Dowager Duchess of Quirm. He pinched my cigar case last year and I'm damn certain he's not me. No, I don't think Nobby is a nob. But I think he was convenient.' It seemed to Vimes that Dragon was getting bigger, but perhaps it was only a trick of the candlelight. The light flickered as the candles hissed and popped. 'You made good use of me, eh?' Vimes carried on. Td been ducking out of appointments with you for weeks. I expect you were getting quite impatient. You were so surprised when I told you about Nobby, eh? Otherwise you'd've had to send for him or something, very suspicious. But Commander Vimes discovered him. That looks good. Practically makes it official. 'And then I started thinking: who wants a king? Well, nearly everyone. It's built in. Kings make it better. Funny thing, isn't it? Even those people who owe everything to him don't like Vetinari. Ten years ago most of the guild leaders were just a bunch of thugs and now . . . well, they're still a bunch of thugs, to tell the truth, but Vetinari's given 'em the time and energy to decide they never needed him. 'And then young Carrot turns up with charisma writ all over him, and he's got a sword and a birthmark and everyone gets a funny feeling and dozens of buggers start going through the records and say, "Hey, looks like the king's come back." And then they watch him for a while and say, "Shit, he really is decent and honest and fair and just, just like in all the stories. Whoops! If this lad gets on the throne we could be in serious trouble! He might turn out to be one of them inconvenient kings from long ago who wanders around talking to the common people—" ' 'You are in favour of the common people?' said Dragon mildly. The common people?' said Vimes. 'They're nothing special. They're no different from the rich and powerful except they've got no money or power. But the law should be there to balance things up a bit. So I suppose I've got to be on their side.' 'A man married to the richest woman in the city?' Vimes shrugged. The watchman's helmet isn't like a crown. Even when you take it off you're still wearing it.' That's an interesting statement of position, Sir Samuel, and I would be the first to admire the way you've come to terms with your family history, but—' 'Don't move!' Vimes shifted his grip on the crossbow. 'Anyway . . . Carrot wouldn't do, but the news was getting around, and someone said, "Right, let's have a king we can control. All the rumours say the king is a humble watchman so let's find one." And they had a look and found that when it comes to humble you can't beat Nobby Nobbs. But ... I think people weren't too sure. Killing Vetinari wasn't an option. As I said, too many things would happen too fast. But to just gently remove him, so that he's there and not there at the same time, while everyone tried out the idea . . . that was a good wheeze. That's when someone got Mr Carry to make poisoned candles. He'd got a golem. Golems can't talk. No one would know. But it turned out to be a bit. . . erratic.' 'You seem to wish to involve me,' said Dragon King of Arms. 'I know nothing about this man other than that he's a customer—' Vimes strode across the room and pulled a piece of parchment from a board. 'You did him a coat of arms!' he shouted. 'You even showed me when I was here! "The butcher, the baker and the candlestick-maker!" Remember?' There was no sound now from the hunched figure. 'When I first met you the other day,' said Vimes, 'you made a point of showing me Arthur Carry's coat of arms. I thought it was a bit fishy at the time, but all that business with Nobby put it out of my mind. But I do remember it reminded me of the one for the Assassins' Guild.' Vimes flourished the parchment. 'I looked and looked at it last night, and then I wound my sense of humour down ten notches and let it go out of focus and looked at the crest, the fish-shaped lamp. Lampe au poisson, it's called. A sort of bilingual play on words, perhaps? "A lamp of poison?" You've got to have a mind like old Detritus to spot that one. And Fred Colon wondered why you'd left the motto in modern Ankhian instead of putting it into the old language, and that made me wonder so I sat up with the dictionary and worked it out and, you know, it would have read "Ars Enixa Est Candelam". Ars Enixa. That must have really cheered you up. You'd said who did it and how it was done and gave it to the poor bugger to be proud of. It didn't matter that no one else would spot it. It made you feel good. Because we ordinary mortals just aren't as clever as you, are we?' He shook his head. 'Good grief, a coat of arms. Was that the bribe? Was that all it took?' Dragon slumped in his chair. 'And then I wondered what was in it for you,' continued Vimes. 'Oh, there's a lot of people involved, I expect, for the same old reasons. But you? Now, my wife breeds dragons. Out of interest, really. Is that what you do? A little hobby to allow the centuries to fly by? Or does blue blood taste sweeter? Y'know, I hope it was some reason like that. Some decent mad selfish one.' 'Possibly - if someone were so inclined, and I certainly' make no such admission, ah-ha — they might simply be thinking of improving the race,' said the shape in the shadows. 'Breeding for receding chins or bunny teeth, that sort of thing?' said Vimes. 'Yes, I can see where it'd be more straightforward if you had the whole king business. All those courtly balls. All those little arrangements which see to it that the right kind of gel meets only the right kind of boy. You've had hundreds of years, right? And everyone consults you. You know where all the family trees are planted. But it's all got a bit messy under Vetinari, hasn't it? All the wrong people are getting to the top. I know how Sybil curses when people leave the pen gates open: it really messes up her breeding programme.' 'You are wrong about Captain Carrot, ah-ha. The city knows how to work around . . . difficult kings. But would it want a future king who might really be called Rex?' Vimes looked blank. There was a sigh from the shadows. 'I am, ah-ha, referring to his apparently stable relationship with the werewolf.' Vimes stared. Understanding eventually dawned. 'You think they'd have puppies?' 'The genetics of werewolves are not straightforward, ah-ha, but the chance of such an outcome would be considered unacceptable. If someone were thinking on those lines.' 'By gods, and that's if?' The shadows were changing. Dragon was still slumped in his chair, but his outline seemed to be blurring. 'Whatever the, ah-ha, motives, Mr Vimes, there is no evidence other than supposition and coincidence and your will to believe that links me with any attempt on Vetinari's, ah-ha, life . . .' The old vampire's head was sunk even further in his chest. The shadows of his shoulders seemed to be getting longer. 'It was sick, involving the golems,' said Vimes, watching the shadows. 'They could feel what their "king" was doing. Perhaps it wasn't very sane even to begin with, but it was all they had. Clay of their clay. The poor devils didn't have anything except their clay, and you bastards took away even that—' Dragon leapt suddenly, bat-wings unfolding. Vimes's wooden bolt clattered somewhere near the ceiling as he was borne down. 'You really thought you could arrest me with a piece of wood?' said Dragon, his hand around Vimes's neck. 'No,' Vimes croaked. 'I was more. . . poetic. . . than that. All I had ... to do ... was keep you talking. Feeling . . . weak, are you? The biter bit . . . you might say . . . ?' He grinned. The vampire looked puzzled, and then turned his head and stared at the candles. 'You . . . put something in the candles? Really?' 'We . . . knew garlic . . . would smell but . . . our alchemist reckoned that. . . if you get. . . holy water. . . soak the wicks . . . water evaporates . . . just leaves holiness.' The pressure was released. Dragon King of Arms sat back on his haunches. His face had changed, shaping itself forward, giving him an expression like a fox. Then he shook his head. 'No,' he said, and this time it was his turn to grin. 'No, that's just words. That wouldn't work . . .' 'Bet. . . your. . . unlife?' rasped Vimes, rubbing his neck. 'A better way . . . than old Carry went, eh?' 'Trying to trick me into an admission, Mr Vimes?' 'Oh, I had that,' said Vimes. 'When you looked straight at the candles.' 'Really? Ah-ha. But who else saw me?' said Dragon. From the shadows there was a rumble like a distant thunderstorm. 'I Did,' said Dorfl. The vampire looked from the golem to Vimes. 'You gave one of them a voice?' he said. 'Yes,' said Dorfl. He reached down and picked up the vampire in one hand. 'I Could Kill You,' he said. 'This Is An Option Available To Me As A Free-Thinking Individual But I Will Not Do So Because I Own Myself And I Have Made A Moral Choice.' 'Oh, gods,' murmured Vimes under his breath. 'That's blasphemy,' said the vampire. He gasped as Vimes shot him a glance like sunlight. 'That's what people say when the voiceless speak. Take him away, Dorfl. Put him in the palace dungeons.' 'I Could Take No Notice of That Command But Am Choosing To Do So Out of Earned Respect And Social Responsibility—' 'Yes, yes, fine,' said Vimes quickly. Dragon clawed at the golem. He might as well have kicked at a mountain. 'Undead or Alive, You Are Coming With Me,' said Dorfl. 'Is there no end to your crimes? You've made this thing a policeman? said the vampire, struggling as Dorfl dragged him away. 'No, but it's an intriguing suggestion, don't you think?' said Vimes. He was left alone in the thick velvety gloom of the Royal College. And Vetinari will let him go, he reflected. Because this is politics. Because he's part of the way the city works. Besides, there's the matter of evidence. I've got enough to prove it to myself, but . . . But I'll know, he told himself. Oh, he'll be watched, and maybe one day when Vetinari is ready a really good assassin will be sent with a wooden dagger soaked in garlic, and it'll all be done in the dark. That's how politics works in this city. It's a game of chess. Who cares if a few pawns die? I'll know. And I'll be the only one who knows, deep down. His hands automatically patted his pockets for a cigar. It was hard enough to kill a vampire. You could stake them down and turn them into dust and ten years later someone spills a drop of blood in the wrong place and guess who's back"? They returned more times than raw broccoli. These were dangerous thoughts, he knew. They were the kind that crept up on a watchman when the chase was over and it was just you and him, facing one another in that breathless little pinch between the crime and the punishment. And maybe a watchman had seen civilization with the skin ripped off one time too many and stopped acting like a watchman and started acting like a normal human being and realized that the click of the crossbow or the sweep of the sword would make all the world so clean. And you couldn't think like that, even about vampires. Even though they'd take the lives of other people because little lives don't matter and what the hell can we take away from them"? And you couldn't think like that because they gave you a sword and a badge and that turned you into something else and that had to mean there were some thoughts you couldn't think. Only crimes could take place in darkness. Punishment had to be done in the light. That was thejob of a good watchman, Carrot always said. To light a candle in the dark. He found a cigar. Now his hands did the automatic search for matches. The volumes were piled up against the walls. The candlelight picked up gold lettering and the dull gleam of leather. There they were, the lineages, the books of heraldic minutiae, the Who's Whom of the centuries, the stock books of the city. People stood on them to look down. No matches . . . Quietly, in the dusty silence of the College, Vimes picked up a candelabrum and lit his cigar. He took a few deep luxuriant puffs, and looked thoughtfully at the books. In his hand, the candles spluttered and flickered.     The clock ticked its arrhythmic tock. It finally stuttered its way to one o'clock, and Vimes got up and went into the Oblong Office. 'Ah, Vimes,' said Lord Vetinari, looking up. 'Yes, sir.' Vimes had managed a few hours' sleep and had even attempted to shave. The Patrician shuffled some papers on his desk. 'It seems to have been a very busy night last night. . .' 'Yes, sir.' Vimes stood to attention. All uniformed men knew in their very soul how to act in circumstances like this. You stared straight ahead, for one thing. 'It appears that I have Dragon King of Arms in the cells,' said the Patrician. 'Yes, sir.' 'I've read your report. Somewhat tenuous evidence, I feel.' 'Sir?' 'One of your witnesses isn't even alive, Vimes.' 'No, sir. Neither is the suspect, sir. Technically.' 'He is, however, an important civic figure. An authority.' 'Yes, sir.' Lord Vetinari shuffled some of the papers on his desk. One of them was covered in sooty fingermarks. 'It also appears I have to commend you, Commander.' 'Sir?' The Heralds at the Royal College of Arms, or at least at what remains of the Royal College of Arms, have sent me a note saying how bravely you worked last night.' 'Sir?' 'Letting all those heraldic animals out of the pens and raising the alarm and so on. A tower of strength, they've called you. I gather most of the creatures are lodging with you at the present time?' 'Yes, sir. Couldn't stand by and let them suffer, sir. We'd got some empty pens, sir, and Keith and Roderick are doing well in the lake. They've taken a liking to Sybil, sir.' Lord Vetinari coughed. Then he stared up at the ceiling for a while. 'So you, er, assisted in the fire.' 'Yes, sir. Civic duty, sir.' 'The fire was caused by a candlestick falling over, I understand, possibly after your fight with Dragon King of Arms.' 'So I believe, sir.' 'And so, it seems, do the Heralds.' 'Anyone told Dragon King of Arms?' said Vimes innocently. 'Yes.' 'Took it well, did he?' 'He screamed a lot, Vimes. In a heart-rending fashion, I am told. And I gather he uttered a number of threats against you, for some reason.' 'I shall try to fit him into my busy schedule, sir.' 'Bingely bongely beep!!' said a small bright voice. Vimes slapped a hand against his pocket. Lord Vetinari fell silent for a moment. His fingers drummed softly on his desk. 'Many fine old manuscripts in that place, I believe. Without price, I'm told.' 'Yes, sir. Certainly worthless, sir.' 'Is it possible you misunderstood what I just said, Commander?' 'Could be, sir.' "The provenances of many splendid old families went up in smoke, Commander. Of course, the Heralds will do what they can, and the families themselves keep records but frankly, I understand, it's all going to be patchwork and guesswork. Extremely embarrassing. Are you smiling, Commander?' 'It was probably a trick of the light, sir.' 'Commander, I always used to consider that you had a definite anti-authoritarian streak in you.' 'Sir?' 'It seems that you have managed to retain this even though you are authority.' 'Sir?' 'That's practically Zen.' 'Sir?' 'It seems I've only got to be unwell for a few days and you manage to upset everyone of any importance in this city.' 'Sir.' 'Was that a "yes, sir" or a "no, sir", Sir Samuel?' 'It was just a "sir", sir.' Lord Vetinari glanced at a piece of paper. 'Did you really punch the president of the Assassins' Guild?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Why?' 'Didn't have a dagger, sir.' Vetinari turned away abruptly. 'The Council of Churches, Temples, Sacred Groves and Big Ominous Rocks is demanding . . . well, a number of things, several of them involving wild horses. Initially, however, they want me to sack you.' 'Yes, sir?' 'In all I've had seventeen demands for your badge. Some want parts of your body attached. Why did you have to upset everybody?' 'I suppose it's a knack, sir.' 'But what could you hope to achieve?' 'Well, sir, since you ask, we found out who murdered Father Tubelcek and Mr Hopkinson and who was poisoning you, sir.' Vimes paused. 'Two out of three's not bad, sir.' Vetinari riffled through the papers again. 'Workshop owners, assassins, priests, butchers . . . you seem to have infuriated most of the leading figures in the city.' He sighed. 'Really, it seems I have no choice. As of this week, I'm giving you a pay rise.' Vimes blinked. 'Sir?' 'Nothing unseemly. Ten dollars a month. And I expect they need a new dart-board in the Watch House? They usually do, I recall.' 'It's Detritus,' said Vimes, his mind unable to think of anything other than an honest reply. 'He tends to split them.' 'Ah, yes. And talking of splits, Vimes, I wonder if your forensic genius could help me with a little conundrum we found this morning.' The Patrician stood up and headed for the stairs. 'Yes, sir? What is it?' said Vimes, following him down. 'It's in the Rats Chamber, Vimes.' 'Really, sir?' Vetinari pushed open the double doors. ' Voila,' he said. 'That's some kind of musical instrument, isn't it, sir?' 'No, Commander, the word means "What is that in the table?",' said the Patrician sharply. Vimes looked into the room. There was no one there. The long mahogany table was bare. Except for the axe. It had embedded itself in the wood very deeply, almost splitting the table along its entire length. Someone had walked up to the table and brought an axe down right in the centre as hard as they could and then left it there, its handle pointing towards the ceiling. 'That's an axe,' said Vimes. 'Astonishing,' said Lord Vetinari. 'And you've barely had time to study it. Why is it there?' 'I really couldn't say, sir.' 'According to the servants, Sir Samuel, you came into the palace at six o'clock this morning . . .' 'Oh, yes, sir. To check that the bastard was safely in a cell, sir. And to see that everything was all right, of course.' 'You didn't come into this room?' Vimes kept his gaze fixed somewhere on the horizon. 'Why should I have done that, sir?' The Patrician tapped the axe handle. It vibrated with a faint thumping noise. 'I believe some of the City Council met in here this morning. Or came in here, at least. I'm told they hurried out very quickly. Looking rather disturbed, I'm told.' 'Maybe it was one of them that did it, sir.' 'That is, of course, a possibility,' said Lord Vetinari. 'I suppose you won't be able to find one of your famous Clues on the thing?' 'Shouldn't think so, sir. Not with all these fingerprints on it.' ‘It would be a terrible thing, would it not, if people thought they could take the law into their own hands . . .' 'Oh, no fear of that, sir. I'm holding on tightly to it.' Lord Vetinari plunked the axe again. 'Tell me, Sir Samuel, do you know the phrase "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"?' It was an expression Carrot had occasionally used, but Vimes was not in the mood to admit anything. 'Can't say that I do, sir,' he said. 'Something about trifle, is it?' 'It means "Who guards the guards themselves?", Sir Samuel.' 'Ah.' 'Well?' 'Sir?' 'Who watches the Watch? I wonder?' 'Oh, that's easy, sir. We watch one another.' 'Really? An intriguing point . . .' Lord Vetinari walked out of the room and back into the main hall, with Vimes trailing behind. 'However,' he said, 'in order to keep the peace, the golem will have to be destroyed.' 'No, sir.' 'Allow me to repeat my instruction.' 'No, sir.' 'I'm sure I just gave you an order, Commander. I distinctly felt my lips move.' 'No, sir. He's alive, sir.' 'He's just made of clay, Vimes.' 'Aren't we all, sir? According to them pamphlets Constable Visit keeps handing out. Anyway, he thinks he's alive, and that's good enough for me.' The Patrician waved a hand towards the stairs and his office full of paper. 'Nevertheless, Commander, I've had no less than nine missives from leading religious figures declaring that he is an abomination.' 'Yes, sir. I've given that viewpoint a lot of thought, sir, and reached the following conclusion: arseholes to the lot of 'em, sir.' The Patrician's hand covered his mouth for a moment. 'Sir Samuel, you are a harsh negotiator. Surely you can give and take?' 'Couldn't say, sir.' Vimes walked to the main doors and pushed them open. 'Fog's lifted, sir,' he said. There's a bit of cloud but you can see all the way across the Brass Bridge—' 'What will you use the golem for?' 'Not use, sir. Employ. I thought he might be useful for to keep the peace, sir.' 'A watchman?' 'Yes, sir,' said Vimes. 'Haven't you heard, sir? Golems do all the mucky jobs.' Vetinari watched him go, and sighed. 'He does so like a dramatic exit,' he said. 'Yes, my lord,' said Drumknott, who had appeared noiselessly at his shoulder. 'Ah, Drumknott.' The Patrician took a length of candle out of his pocket and handed it to his secretary. 'Dispose of this somewhere safely, will you?' 'Yes, my lord?' 'It's the candle from the other night.' 'It's not burned down, my lord? But I saw the candle end in the holder . . .' 'Oh, of course I cut off enough to make a stub and let the wick burn for a moment. I couldn't let our gallant policeman know I'd worked it out for myself, could I? Not when he was making such an effort and having so much fun being . . . well, being Vimes. I'm not completely heartless, you know.' 'But, my lord, you could have sorted it out diplomatically! Instead he went around upsetting things and making a lot of people very angry and afraid—' 'Yes. Dear me. Tsk, tsk.' 'Ah,' said Drumknott. 'Quite so,' said the Patrician. 'Do you wish me to have the table in the Rats Chamber repaired?' 'No, Drumknott, leave the axe where it is. It will make a good . . . conversation piece, I think.' 'May I make an observation, my lord?' 'Of course you may,' said Vetinari, watching Vimes walk through the palace gates. 'The thought occurs, sir, that if Commander Vimes did not exist you would have had to invent him.' 'You know, Drumknott, I rather think I did.'     'Atheism Is Also A Religious Position,' Dorfl rumbled. 'No it's not!' said Constable Visit. 'Atheism is a denial of a god.' 'Therefore It Is A Religious Position,' said Dorfl. 'Indeed, A True Atheist Thinks Of The Gods Constantly, Albeit In Terms of Denial. Therefore, Atheism Is A Form Of Belief. If The Atheist Truly Did Not Believe, He Or She Would Not Bother To Deny.' 'Did you read those pamphlets I gave you?' said Visit suspiciously. 'Yes. Many Of Them Did Not Make Sense. But I Should Like To Read Some More.' 'Really?' said Visit. His eyes gleamed. 'You really want more pamphlets?' 'Yes. There Is Much In Them That I Would Like To Discuss. If You Know Some Priests, I Would Enjoy Disputation.' 'All right, all right,' said Sergeant Colon. 'So are you going to take the sodding oath or not, Dorfl?' Dorfl held up a hand the size of a shovel. 'I, Dorfl, Pending The Discovery Of A Deity Whose Existence Withstands Rational Debate, Swear By The Temporary Precepts of A Self-Derived Moral System—' 'You really want more pamphlets?' said Constable Visit. Sergeant Colon rolled his eyes. 'Yes,' said Dorfl. 'Oh, my god!' said Constable Visit, and burst into tears. 'No one's ever asked for more pamphlets before!' Colon turned when he realized Vimes was watching. 'It's no good, sir,' he said. 'I've been trying to swear him in for half an hour, sir, and we keep ending up arguing about oaths and things.' 'You willing to be a Watchman, Dorfl?' said Vimes. 'Yes.' 'Right. That's as good as a swear to me. Give him his badge, Fred. And this is for you, Dorfl. It's a chit to say you're officially alive, just in case you run into any trouble. You know . . . with people.' Thank You,' said Dorfl solemnly. 'If Ever I Feel I Am Not Alive, I Will Take This Out And Read It.' 'What are your duties?' said Vimes. 'To Serve The Public Trust, Protect The Innocent, And Seriously Prod Buttock, Sir,' said Dorfl. 'He learns fast, doesn't he?' said Colon. 'I didn't even tell him the last one.' 'People won't like it,' said Nobby. "S not going to be popular, a golem as a watchman.' 'What Better Work For One Who Loves Freedom Than The Job of Watchman. Law Is The Servant of Freedom. Freedom Without Limits Is Just A Word,' said Dorfl ponderously. 'Y'know,' said Colon, 'if it doesn't work out, you could always get ajob making fortune cookies.' 'Funny thing, that,' said Nobby. 'You never get bad fortunes in cookies, ever noticed that? They never say stuff like: "Oh dear, things're going to be really bad." I mean, they're never misfortune cookies.' Vimes lit a cigar and shook the match to put it out. 'That, Corporal, is because of one of the fundamental driving forces of the universe.' 'What? Like, people who read fortune cookies are the lucky ones?' said Nobby. 'No. Because people who sell fortune cookies want to go on selling them. Come on, Constable Dorfl. We're going for a walk.' 'There's a lot of paperwork, sir,' said Sergeant Colon. 'Tell Captain Carrot I said he should look at it,' said Vimes, from the doorway. 'He hasn't been in yet, sir.' 'It'll keep.' 'Right, sir.' Colon went and sat behind his desk. It was a good place to be, he'd decided. There was absolutely no chance of finding any Nature there. He'd had a rare conversation with Mrs Colon this morning and made it clear that he was no longer interested in getting close to the soil because he'd been as close to the soil as it was possible to get and the soil, it turned out, was just dirt. A good thick layer of cobblestones was, he decided, about as close as he wanted to get to Nature. Also, Nature tended to be squishy. 'I've got to go on duty,' said Nobby. 'Captain Carrot wants me to do crime prevention in Peach Pie Street.' 'How d'you do that, then?' said Colon. 'Keep away, he said.' "Ere, Nobby, woss this about you not being a lord after all?' said Colon cautiously. 'I think I got the sack,' said Nobby. 'Bit of a relief, really. That nobby grub isn't much, and the drink is frankly piss.' 'Lucky escape for you, then,' said Colon. 'I mean, you won't have to go giving your clothes away to gardeners and so on.' 'Yeah. Wish I'd never told them about the damn ring, really.' 'Would've saved you a lot of trouble, certainly,' said Colon. Nobby spat on his badge and buffed it industriously with his sleeve. 'S a good job I never told them about the tiara, the coronet and the three gold lockets, he said to himself.     'Where Are We Going?' said Dorfl, as Vimes strolled across the Brass Bridge. 'I thought I might break you in gently with some guard duty at the palace,' said Vimes. 'Ah. This Is Where My New Friend Constable Visit Is Also On Guard,' said Dorfl. 'Splendid!' 'I Wish To Ask You A Question,' said the golem. 'Yes?' 'I Smashed The Treadmill But The Golems Repaired It. Why? And I Let The Animals Go But They Just Milled Around Stupidly. Some of Them Even Went Back To The Slaughter Pens. Why?' 'Welcome to the world, Constable Dorfl.' 'Is It Frightening To Be Free?' 'You said it.' 'You Say To People "Throw Off Your Chains" And They Make New Chains For Themselves?' 'Seems to be a major human activity, yes.' Dorfl rumbled as he thought about this. 'Yes,' he said eventually. 'I Can See Why. Freedom Is Like Having The Top Of Your Head Opened Up.' 'I'll have to take your word for that, Constable.' 'And You Will Pay Me Twice As Much As Other Watchmen/ said Dorfl. 'Will I?' 'Yes. I Do Not Sleep. I Can Work Constantly. I Am A Bargain. I Do Not Need Days Off To Bury My Granny.' How soon they learn, thought Vimes. He said: 'But you have holy days off, don't you?' 'Either All Days Are Holy Or None Are. I Have Not Decided Yet.' 'Er . . . what do you need money for, Dorfl?' 'I Shall Save Up And Purchase The Golem Klutz Who Labours In The Pickle Factory, And Give Him To Himself; Then Together We Will Earn And Save For The Golem Bobkes Of The Coal Merchant; The Three Of Us Will Labour And Buy The Golem Shmata Who Toils At The Seven-Dollar Tailor's In Peach Pie Street; Then The Four of Us Will—' 'Some people might decide to free their comrades by force and bloody revolution,' said Vimes. 'Not that I'm suggesting that in any way, of course.' 'No. That Would Be Theft. We Are Bought And Sold, So We Will Buy Ourselves Free. By Our Labour. No One Else To Do It For Us. We Will Do It By Ourselves.' Vimes smiled to himself. Probably no other species in the world would demand a receipt with their freedom. Some things you just couldn't change. 'Ah,' he said. 'It seems some people want to talk to us . . .' A crowd was approaching over the bridge, in a mass of grey, black and saffron robes. It was made up of priests. They looked angry. As they pushed and shoved their way through the other citizens, several haloes became interlocked. At their head was Hughnon Ridcully, Chief Priest of Blind lo and the closest thing Ankh-Morpork had to a spokesman on religious issues. He spotted Vimes and hurried towards him, admonitory finger upraised. 'Now, see here, Vimes . . .' he began, and stopped. He glared at Dorfl. 'Is this if?' he said. 'If you mean the golem, this is /ii'm,' said Vimes. 'Constable Dorfl, your reverence.' Dorfl touched his helmet respectfully. 'How May We Be Of Service?' he said. 'You've done it this time, Vimes!' said Ridcully, ignoring him. 'You've gone altogether too far by . half. You made this thing speak and it isn't even alive!' ' 'We want it smashed!' 'Blasphemy!' 'People won't stand for it!' Ridcully looked around at the other priests. 'I'm talking,' he said. He turned back to Vimes. 'This comes under the heading of gross profanity and the worship of idols—' 'I don't worship him. I'm just employing him,' said Vimes, beginning to enjoy himself. 'And he's far from idle.' He took a deep breath. 'And if it's gross profanity you're looking for—' 'Excuse Me,' said Dorfl. 'We're not listening to you! You're not even really alive!' said a priest. Dorfl nodded. 'This Is Fundamentally True,' he said. 'See? He admits it!' 'I Suggest You Take Me And Smash Me And Grind The Bits Into Fragments And Pound The Fragments Into Powder And Mill Them Again To The Finest Dust There Can Be, And I Believe You Will Not Find A Single Atom of Life—' 'True! Let's do it!' 'However, In Order To Test This Fully, One Of You Must Volunteer To Undergo The Same Process.' There was silence. 'That's not fair,' said a priest, after a while. 'All anyone has to do is bake up your dust again and you'll be alive . . .' There was more silence. Ridcully said, 'Is it only me, or are we on tricky theological ground here?' There was more silence. Another priest said, 'Is it true you've said you'll believe in any god whose existence can be proved by logical debate?' 'Yes.' Vimes had a feeling about the immediate future and took a few steps away from Dorfl. 'But the gods plainly do exist,' said a priest. 'It Is Not Evident.' A bolt of lightning lanced through the clouds and hit Dorfl's helmet. There was a sheet of flame and then a trickling noise. Dorfl's molten armour formed puddles around his white-hot feet. 'I Don't Call That Much Of An Argument,' said Dorfl calmly, from somewhere in the clouds of smoke. 'It's tended to carry the audience,' said Vimes. 'Up until now.' The Chief Priest of Blind lo turned to the other priests. 'All right, you fellows, there's no need for any of that—' 'But Offler is a vengeful god,' said a priest at the back of the crowd. 'Trigger-happy is what he is,' said Ridcully. Another lightning bolt zigzagged down but bent at right-angles a few feet above the Chief Priest's hat and earthed itself on a wooden hippo, which split. The Chief Priest smiled smugly and turned back to Dorfl, who was making little clinking noises as he cooled. 'What you're saying is, you'll accept the existence of any god only if it can be proved by discussion?' 'Yes,'said Dorfl. Ridcully rubbed his hands together. 'Not a problem, me old china,' he said. 'Firstly, let us take the—' 'Excuse Me,' said Dorfl. He bent down and picked up his badge. The lightning had given it an interesting melted shape. 'What are you doing?' said Ridcully. 'Somewhere, A Crime Is Happening,' said Dorfl. 'But When I Am Off Duty I Will Gladly Dispute With The Priest of The Most Worthy God.' He turned and strode on across the bridge. Vimes nodded hurriedly at the shocked priests and ran after him. We took him and baked him in the fire and he's turned out to be free, he thought. No words in the head except the ones he's chosen to put there himself. And he's not just an atheist, he's a ceramic atheist. Fireproof! It looked like being a good day. Behind them, on the bridge, a fight was breaking out.     Angua was packing. Or, rather, she was failing to pack. The bundle couldn't be too heavy to carry by mouth. But a little money (she wouldn't have to buy much food) and a change of clothes (for those occasions when she might have to wear clothes) didn't have to take up much room. 'The boots are a problem,' she said aloud. 'Maybe if you knot the laces together you could carry them round your neck?' said Cheri, who was sitting on the narrow bed. 'Good idea. Do you want these dresses? I've never got round to wearing them. I expect you could cut them down.' Cheri took them in both arms. 'This one's silkV 'There's probably enough material for you to make two for one.' 'D'you mind if I share them out? Only some of the lads - the ladies at the Watch House' - Cheri savoured the word 'ladies' - 'are beginning to get a bit thoughtful 'Going to melt down their helmets, are they?' said Angua. 'Oh, no. But perhaps they could be made into a more attractive design. Er . . .' 'Yes?' 'Urn . . .' Cheri shifted uneasily. 'You've never actually eaten anyone, have you? You know . . . crunching bones and so on?' 'No.' 'I mean, I only heard my second cousin was eaten by werewolves. He was called Sfen.' 'Can't say I recall the name,' said Angua. Cheri tried to grin. That's all right, then,' she said. 'So you won't need that silver spoon in your pocket,' said Angua. Cheri's mouth dropped open, and then the words tumbled over themselves. 'Er ... I don't know how it got there it must have dropped in when I was washing up oh I didn't mean—' 'It doesn't worry me, honestly. I'm used to it.' 'But I didn't think you'd—' 'Look, don't get the wrong idea. It's not a case of not wanting to,' said Angua. 'It's a case of wanting to and not doing it.' 'You don't really have to go, do you?' 'Oh, I don't know if I can take the Watch seriously and . . . and sometimes I think Carrot's working up to ask me ... and, well, it'd never work out. It's the way he just assumes everything, you know? So best to go now,' Angua lied. 'Won't Carrot try to stop you?' 'Yes, but there's nothing he can say.' 'He'll be upset.' 'Yes,' said Angua briskly, throwing another dress on the bed. 'And then he'll get over it.' 'Hrolf Thighbiter's asked me out,' said Cheri shyly, looking at the floor. 'And I'm almost certain he's male!' 'Glad to hear it.' Cheri stood up. ‘I’ll walk with you as far as the Watch House. I've got to go on duty.' They were half-way along Elm Street before they saw Carrot, head and shoulders above the crowd. ‘Looks like he was coming to see you,' said Cheri. 'Er, shall I go away?' Too late...' 'Ah, good morning, Corporal Miss Little-bottom!' said Carrot cheerfully. 'Hello, Angua. I was just coming to see you but I had to write my letter home first, of course.' He took off his helmet, and smoothed back his hair. 'Er . . .' he began. 'I know what you're going to ask,' said Angua. 'You do?' 'I know you've been thinking about it. You knew I was wondering about going.' 'It was obvious, was it?' 'And the answer's no. I wish it could be yes.' Carrot looked astonished. 'It never occurred to me that you'd say no,' he said. 'I mean, why should you?' 'Good grief, you amaze me,' she said. 'You really do.' 'I thought it'd be something you'd want to do,' said Carrot. He sighed. 'Oh, well ... it doesn't matter, really.' Angua felt that a leg had been kicked away. 'It doesn't matter? she said. 'I mean, yes, it'd have been nice, but I won't lose any sleep over it.' 'You won't?' 'Well, no. Obviously not. You've got other things you want to do. That's fine. I just thought you might enjoy it. I'll do it by myself.' 'What? How can ... ?' Angua stopped. 'What are you talking about, Carrot?' ‘The Dwarf Bread Museum. I promised Mr Hopkinson's sister that I'd tidy it up. You know, get it sorted out. She's not very well off and I thought it could raise some money. Just between you and me, there's several exhibits in there that could be better-presented, but I'm afraid Mr Hopkinson was rather set in his ways. I'm sure there's a lot of dwarfs in the city that'd flock there if they knew about it, and of course there's a lot of youngsters that ought to learn more about their proud heritage. A good dusting and a lick of paint would make all the difference, I'm sure, especially on the older loaves. I don't mind giving up a few days off. I just thought it might cheer you up, but I appreciate that bread isn't everyone's cup of tea.' Angua stared at him. It was the stare that Carrot so often attracted. It roamed every feature of his face, looking for the tiniest clue that he was making some kind of joke. Some long, deep joke at the expense of everyone else. Every sinew in her body knew that he must be, but there was not a clue, not a twitch to prove it. 'Yes,' she said weakly, still searching his face, 'I expect it could be a little goldmine.' 'Museums have got to be a whole lot more interesting these days. And, you know, there's a whole guerrilla crumpet assortment he hasn't even catalogued,' said Carrot. 'And some early examples of defensive bagels.' 'Gosh,' said Angua. 'Hey, why don't we paint a big sign saying something like "The Dwarf Bread Experience"?' 'That probably wouldn't work for dwarfs,' said Carrot, oblivious to sarcasm. 'A dwarf bread experience tends to be short. But I can see it's certainly caught your imagination!' I'll have to go, Angua thought as they strolled on down the street. Sooner or later he'll see that it can't really work out. Werewolves and humans . . . we've both got too much to lose. Sooner or later I'll have to leave him. But, for one day at a time, let it be tomorrow. 'Want the dresses back?' said Cheri, behind her. 'Maybe one or two,' said Angua.     THE END </div><divstyle='mso-element:endnote-list'><![if!supportEndnotes]>   <![endif]><divstyle='mso-element:endnote'id=edn1> [1] He subsequently got dead-drunk and was shanghaied aboard a merchantman bound for strange and foreign parts, where he met lots of young ladies who didn't wear many clothes. He eventually died from stepping on a tiger. A good deed goes around the world. </div><divstyle='mso-element:endnote'id=edn2> [2] That is to say, the sort you can use to give something three extra legs and then blow it up. </div><divstyle='mso-element:endnote'id=edn3> [3] Town hall. </div><divstyle='mso-element:endnote'id=edn4> [4] Because Ankh-Morpork doesn't have a town hall. </div><divstyle='mso-element:endnote'id=edn5> [5] Yeast bowl. </div><divstyle='mso-element:endnote'id=edn6> [6] Commander Vimes, on the other hand, was all for giving criminals a short, sharp shock. It really depended on how tightly they could be tied to the lightning rod. </div><divstyle='mso-element:endnote'id=edn7> [7] Constable Visit was an Omnian, whose country's traditional approach to evangelism was to put unbelievers to torture and the sword. Things had become a lot more civilized these days but Omnians still had a strenuous and indefatigable approach to spreading the Word, and had merely changed the nature of the weapons. Constable Visit spent his days off in company with his co-religionist Smite-The-Unbeliever-With-Cunning-Arguments, ringing doorbells and causing people to hide behind the furniture everywhere in the city. </div><divstyle='mso-element:endnote'id=edn8> [8] Detritus was particularly good when it came to asking questions. He had three basic ones. They were the direct ('Did you do it?'), the persistent ('Are you sure it wasn't you what done it?') and the subtle ('It was you what done it, wasn't it?'). Although they were not the most cunning questions ever devised, Detritus's talent was to go on patiently asking them for hours on end, until he got the right answer, which was generally something like: 'Yes! Yes! I did it! I did it! Now please tell me what it was I did!' </div><divstyle='mso-element:endnote'id=edn9> [9] It is a pervasive and beguiling myth that the people who design instruments of death end up being killed by them. There is almost no foundation in fact. Colonel Shrapnel wasn't blown up, M. Guillotin died with his head on, Colonel Catling wasn't shot. If it hadn't been for the murder of cosh and blackjack maker Sir William Blunt-Instrument in an alleyway, the rumour would never have got started. </div><divstyle='mso-element:endnote'id=edn10> [10] 'Welcome, Corporal Smallbottom! This is Constable Angua . . . Angua, show Smallbottom how well you're learning dwarfish . . .' </div><divstyle='mso-element:endnote'id=edn11> [11] The Ankh-Morpork view of crime and punishment was that the penalty for the first offence should prevent the possibility of a second offence. </div><divstyle='mso-element:endnote'id=edn12>[12] This always happens in any police chase anywhere, A heavily laden lorry will always pull out of a side alley in front of the pursuit. If vehicles aren't involved, then it'll be a man with a rack of garments. Or two men with a large sheet of glass. There's probably some kind of secret society behind all this. </div><divstyle='mso-element:endnote'id=edn13> [13] And for the most part were unconcerned about matters of height. There's a dwarfish saying: 'All trees are felled at ground-level' - although this is said to be an excessively bowdlerized translation for a saw which more literally means, 'When his hands are higher than your head, his groin is level with your teeth.' </div><divstyle='mso-element:endnote'id=edn14> [14] These terms are often synonymous. </div><divstyle='mso-element:endnote'id=edn15> [15] As they were euphemistically named. People said, 'They call themselves seamstresses - hem, hem!' </div><divstyle='mso-element:endnote'id=edn16> [16] Because of the huge obtrusive mass of his forehead, Rogers the bulls' view of the universe was from two eyes each with their own non-overlapping hemispherical view of the world. Since there were two separate visions, Rogers had reasoned, that meant there must be two bulls (bulls not having been bred for much deductive reasoning). Most bulls believe this, which is why they always keep turning their head this way and that when they look at you. They do this because both of them want to see. </div></div> AboutthisTitle About this Title This eBook was created using ReaderWorks® Publisher 2.0, produced by OverDrive, Inc. For more information about ReaderWorks, please visit us on the Web at www.overdrive.com/readerworks 
Hogfather - Terry Pratchett	----	Hogfather v1.0 18/11/2000 scanned and spellcheked with Word2000 by 4i Publications   Everything starts somewhere, although many physicists disagree. But people have always been dimly aware of the problem with the start of things. They wonder aloud how the snowplough driver gets to work, or how the makers of dictionaries look up the spelling of the words. Yet there is the constant desire to find some point in the twisting, knotting, ravelling nets of space-time on which a metaphorical finger can be put to indicate that here, here, is the point where it all began... Something began when the Guild of Assassins enrolled Mister Teatime, who saw things differently from other people, and one of the ways that he saw things differently from other people was in seeing other people as things (later, Lord Downey of the Guild said, 'We took pity on him because he'd lost both parents at an early age. I think that, on reflection, we should have wondered a bit more about that.') But it was much earlier even than that when most people forgot that the very oldest stories are, sooner or later, about blood. Later on they took the blood out to make the stories more acceptable to children, or at least to the people who had to read them to children rather than the children themselves (who, on the whole, are quite keen on blood provided it's being shed by the deserving[1]), and then wondered where the stories went. And earlier still when something in the darkness of the deepest caves and gloomiest forests thought: what are they, these creatures? I will observe them. And much, much earlier than that, when the Discworld was formed, drifting onwards through space atop four elephants on the shell of the giant turtle, Great A'Tuin. Possibly, as it moves, it gets tangled like a blind man in a cobwebbed house in those highly specialized little spacetime strands that try to breed in every history they encounter, stretching them and breaking them and tugging them into new shapes. Or possibly not, of course. The philosopher Didactylos has summed up an alternative hypothesis as 'Things just happen. What the hell.' The senior wizards of Unseen University stood and looked at the door. There was no doubt that whoever had shut it wanted it to stay shut. Dozens of nails secured it to the door frame. Planks had been nailed right across. And finally it had, up until this morning, been hidden by a bookcase that had been put in front of it. 'And there's the sign, Ridcully,' said the Dean. 'You have read it, I assume. You know? The sign which says "Do not, under any circumstances, open this door"?' 'Of course I've read it,' said Ridcully. 'Why d'yer think I want it opened?' 'Er ... why?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'To see why they wanted it shut, of course.`[2] He gestured to Modo, the University's gardener and oddjob dwarf, who was standing by with a crowbar. 'Go to it, lad.' The gardener saluted. 'Right you are, sir.' Against a background of splintering timber, Ridcully went on: 'It says on the plans that this was a bathroom. There's nothing frightening about a bathroom, for gods' sake. I want a bathroom. I'm fed up with sluicing down with you fellows. It's unhygienic. You can catch stuff. My father told me that. Where you get lots of people bathing together, the Verruca Gnome is running around with his little sack.' 'Is that like the Tooth Fairy?' said the Dean sarcastically. 'I'm in charge here and I want a bathroom of my own,' said Ridcully firmly. 'And that's all there is to it, all right? I want a bathroom in time for Hogswatchnight, understand?' And that's a problem with beginnings, of course. Sometimes, when you're dealing with occult realms that have quite a different attitude to time, you get the effect a little way before the cause. From somewhere on the edge of hearing came a glingleglingleglingle noise, like little silver bells. At about the same time as the Archchancellor was laying down the law, Susan Sto-Helit was sitting up in bed, reading by candlelight. Frost patterns curled across the windows. She enjoyed these early evenings. Once she had put the children to bed she was more or less left to herself. Mrs Gaiter was pathetically scared of giving her any instructions even though she paid Susan's wages. Not that the wages were important, of course. What was important was that she was being her Own Person and holding down a Real job. And being a governess was a real job. The only tricky bit had been the embarrassment when her employer found out that she was a duchess, because in Mrs Gaiter's book, which was a rather short book with big handwriting, the upper crust wasn't supposed to work. It was supposed to loaf around. It was all Susan could do to stop her curtseying when they met. A flicker made her turn her head. The candle flame was streaming out horizontally, as though in a howling wind. She looked up. The curtains billowed away from the window, which- -flung itself open with a clatter. But there was no wind. At least, no wind in this world. Images formed in her mind. A red ball ... The sharp smell of snow... And then they were gone, and instead there were... 'Teeth?' said Susan, aloud. 'Teeth, again?' She blinked. When she opened her eyes the window was, as she knew it would be, firmly shut. The curtain hung demurely. The candle flame was innocently upright. Oh, no, not again. Not after all this time. Everything had been going so well 'Thusan?' She looked around. Her door had been pushed open and a small figure stood there, barefoot in a nightdress. She sighed. 'Yes, Twyla?' 'I'm afwaid of the monster in the cellar, Thusan. It's going to eat me up.' Susan shut her book firmly and raised a warning finger. 'What have I told you about trying to sound ingratiatingly cute, Twyla?' she said. The little girl said, 'You said I mustn't. You said that exaggerated lisping is a hanging offence and I only do it to get attention.' 'Good. Do you know what monster it is this time?' 'It's the big hairy one wif-' Susan raised the finger. 'Uh?' she warned. ‘-with eight arms,' Twyla corrected herself. 'What, again? Oh, all right.' She got out of bed and put on her dressing gown, trying to stay quite calm while the child watched her. So they were coming back. Oh, not the monster in the cellar. That was all in a day's work. But it looked as if she was going to start remembering the future again. She shook her head. However far you ran away, you always caught yourself up. But monsters were easy, at least. She'd learned how to deal with monsters. She picked up the poker from the nursery fender and went down the back stairs, with Twyla following her. The Gaiters were having a dinner party. Muffled voices came from the direction of the dining room. Then, as she crept past, a door opened and yellow light spilled out and a voice said, 'Ye gawds, there's a gel in a nightshirt out here with a poker!' She saw figures silhouetted in the light and made out the worried face of Mrs Gaiter. 'Susan? Er ... what are you doing?' Susan looked at the poker and then back at the woman. 'Twyla said she's afraid of a monster in the cellar, Mrs Gaiter.' 'And yer going to attack it with a poker, eh?' said one of the guests. There was a strong atmosphere of brandy and cigars. 'Yes,' said Susan simply. 'Susan's our governess,' said Mrs Gaiter. 'Er ... I told you about her.' There was a change in the expression on the faces peering out from the dining room. It became a sort of amused respect. 'She beats up monsters with a poker?' said someone. 'Actually, that's a very clever idea,' said someone else. 'Little gel gets it into her head there's a monster in the cellar, you go in with the poker and make a few bashing noises while the child listens, and then everything's all right. Good thinkin', that girl. Ver' sensible. Ver' modem.' 'Is that what you're doing Susan?' said Mrs Gaiter anxiously. 'Yes, Mrs Gaiter,' said Susan obediently. 'This I've got to watch, by Io! It's not every day you see monsters beaten up by a gel,' said the man behind her. There was a swish of silk and a cloud of cigar smoke as the diners poured out into the hall. Susan sighed again and went down the cellar stairs, while Twyla sat demurely at the top, hugging her knees. A door opened and shut. There was a short period of silence and then a terrifying scream. One woman fainted and a man dropped his cigar. 'You don't have to worry, everything will be all right,' said Twyla calmly. 'She always wins. Everything will be all right.' There were thuds and clangs, and then a whirring noise, and finally a sort of bubbling. Susan pushed open the door. The poker was bent at right angles. There was nervous applause. 'Ver' well done,' said a guest. 'Ver' persykological. Clever idea, that, bendin' the poker. And I expect you're not afraid any more, eh, little girl?' 'No,' said Twyla 'Ver' persykological.' 'Susan says don't get afraid, get angry,' said Twyla. 'Er, thank you, Susan,' said Mrs Gaiter, now a trembling bouquet of nerves. 'And, er, now, Sir Geoffrey, if you'd all like to come back into the parlour - I mean, the drawing room-' The party went back up the hall. The last thing Susan heard before the door shut was 'Dashed convincin', the way she bent the poker like that-' She waited. 'Have they all gone, Twyla?' 'Yes, Susan.' 'Good.' Susan went back into the cellar and emerged towing something large and hairy with eight legs. She managed to haul it up the steps and down the other passage to the back yard, where she kicked it out. It would evaporate before dawn. 'That's what we do to monsters,' she said. Twyla watched carefully. 'And now it's bed for you, my girl,' said Susan, picking her up. 'C'n I have the poker in my room for the night?' 'All right.' 'It only kills monsters, doesn't it...?' the child said sleepily, as Susan carried her upstairs. 'That's right,' Susan said. 'All kinds.' She put the girl to bed next to her brother and leaned the poker against the toy cupboard. The poker was made of some cheap metal with a brass knob on the end. She would, Susan reflected, give quite a lot to be able to use it on the children's previous governess. 'G'night.' 'Goodnight.' She went back to her own small bedroom and got back into bed, watching the curtains suspiciously. It would be nice to think she'd imagined it. It would also be stupid to think that, too. But she'd been nearly normal for two years now, making her own way in the real world, never remembering the future at all... Perhaps she had just dreamed things (but even dreams could be real...). She tried to ignore the long thread of wax that suggested the candle had, just for a few seconds, streamed in the wind. As Susan sought sleep, Lord Downey sat in his study catching up on the paperwork. Lord Downey was an assassin. Or, rather, an Assassin. The capital letter was important. It separated those curs who went around murdering people for money from the gentlemen who were occasionally consulted by other gentlemen who wished to have removed, for a consideration, any inconvenient razorblades from the candyfloss of life. The members of the Guild of Assassins considered themselves cultured men who enjoyed good music and food and literature. And they knew the value of human life. To a penny, in many cases. Lord Downey's study was oak-panelled and well carpeted. The furniture was very old and quite worn, but the wear was the wear that comes only when very good furniture is carefully used over several centuries. It was matured furniture. A log fire burned in the grate. In front of it a couple of dogs were sleeping in the tangled way of large hairy dogs everywhere. Apart from the occasional doggy snore or the crackle of a shifting log, there were no other sounds but the scratching of Lord Downey's pen and the ticking of the longcase clock by the door ... small, private noises which only served to define the silence. At least, this was the case until someone cleared their throat. The sound suggested very clearly that the purpose of the exercise was not to erase the presence of a troublesome bit of biscuit, but merely to indicate in the politest possible way the presence of the throat. Downey stopped writing but did not raise his head. Then, after what appeared to be some consideration, he said in a businesslike voice, 'The doors are locked. The windows are barred. The dogs do not appear to have woken up. The squeaky floorboards haven't. Other little arrangements which I will not specify seem to have been bypassed. That severely limits the possibilities. I really doubt that you are a ghost and gods generally do not announce themselves so politely. You could, of course, be Death, but I don't believe he bothers with such niceties and, besides, I am feeling quite well. Hmm!’ Something hovered in the air in front of his desk. 'My teeth are in fine condition so you are unlikely to be the Tooth Fairy. I've always found that a stiff brandy before bedtime quite does away with the need for the Sandman. And, since I can carry a tune quite well, I suspect I'm not likely to attract the attention of Old Man Trouble. Hmm.' The figure drifted a little nearer. 'I suppose a gnome could get through a mousehole, but I have traps down,' Downey went on. 'Bogeymen can walk through walls but would be very loath to reveal themselves. Really, you have me at a loss. Hmm?' And then he looked up. A grey robe hung in the air. It appeared to be occupied, in that it had a shape, although the occupant was not visible. The prickly feeling crept over Downey that the occupant wasn't invisible, merely not, in any physical sense, there at all. 'Good evening,' he said. The robe said, Good evening, Lord Downey. His brain registered the words. His ears swore they hadn't heard them. But you did not become head of the Assassins' Guild by taking fright easily. Besides, the thing wasn't frightening. It was, thought Downey, astonishingly dull. If monotonous drabness could take on a shape, this would be the shape it would choose. 'You appear to be a spectre,' he said. Our nature is not a matter for discussion, arrived in his head. We offer you a commission. 'You wish someone inhumed?' said Downey. Brought to an end. Downey considered this. It was not as unusual as it appeared. There were precedents. Anyone could buy the services of the Guild. Several zombies had, in the past, employed the Guild to settle scores with their murderers. In fact the Guild, he liked to think practised the ultimate democracy. You didn't need intelligence, social position, beauty or charm to hire it. You just needed money which, unlike the other stuff, was available to everyone. Except for the poor, of course, but there was no helping some people. 'Brought to an end...' That was an odd way of putting it. 'We can-' he began. The payment will reflect the difficulty of the task. 'Our scale of fees-' The payment will be three million dollars. Downey sat back. That was four times higher than any fee yet earned by any member of the Guild, and that had been a special family rate, including overnight guests. 'No questions asked, I assume?' he said, buying time. No questions answered. 'But does the suggested fee represent the difficulty involved? The client is heavily guarded?' Not guarded at all. But almost certainly impossible to delete with conventional weapons. Downey nodded. This was not necessarily a big problem, he said to himself. The Guild had amassed quite a few unconventional weapons over the years. Delete? An unusual way of putting it ... 'We like to know for whom we are working, he said. We are sure you do. 'I mean that we need to know your name. Or names. In strict client confidentiality, of course. We have to write something down in our files.' You may think of us as ... the Auditors. 'Really? What is it you audit?' Everything. 'I think we need to know something about you.' We are the people with three million dollars. Downey took the point, although he didn't like it. Three million dollars could buy a lot of no questions. 'Really?' he said. 'In the circumstances, since you are a new client, I think we would like payment in advance.' As you wish. The gold is now in your vaults. 'You mean that it will shortly be in our vaults,' said Downey. No. It has always been in your vaults. We know this because we have just put it there. Downey watched the empty hood for a moment, and then without shifting his gaze he reached out and picked up the speaking tube. 'Mr Winvoe?' he said, after whistling into it. 'Ah. Good. Tell me, how much do we have in our vaults at the moment? Oh, approximately. To the nearest million, say.' He held the tube away from his ear for a moment, and then spoke into it again. 'Well, be a good chap and check anyway, will you?' He hung up the tube and placed his hands flat on the desk in front of him. 'Can I offer you a drink while we wait?' he said. Yes. We believe so. Downey stood up with some relief and walked over to his large drinks cabinet. His hand hovered over the Guild's ardent and valuable tantalus, with its labelled decanters of Mur, Nig, Trop and Yksihw.[3] 'And what would you like to drink?' he said, wondering where the Auditor kept its mouth. His hand hovered for just a moment over the smallest decanter, marked Nosiop. We do not drink. 'But you did just say I could offer you a drink ... ' Indeed. We judge you fully capable of performing that action. 'Ah.'Downey's hand hesitated over the whisky decanter, and then he thought better of it. At that point, the speaking tube whistled. 'Yes, Mr Winvoe? Really? Indeed? I myself have frequently found loose change under sofa cushions, it's amazing how it mou ... No, no, I wasn't being ... Yes, I did have some reason to ... No, no blame attaches to you in any ... No, I could hardly see how it ... Yes, go and have a rest, what a good idea. Thank you.' He hung up the tube again. The cowl hadn't moved. 'We will need to know where, when and, of course, who,' he said, after a moment. The cowl nodded. The location is not on any map. We would like the task to be completed within the week. This is essential. As for the who... A drawing appeared on Downey's desk and in his head arrived the words: Let us call him the Fat Man. 'Is this a joke?' said Downey. We do not joke. No, you don't, do you, Downey thought. He drummed his fingers. 'There are many who would say this... person does not exist,' he said. He must exist. How else could you so readily recognize his picture? And many are in correspondence with him. 'Well, yes, of course, in a sense he exists… In a sense everything exists. It is cessation of existence that concerns us here. 'Finding him would be a little difficult.' You will find persons on any street who can tell you his approximate address. 'Yes, of course,' said Downey, wondering why anyone would call them 'persons'. It was an odd usage. 'But, as you say, I doubt that they could give a map reference. And even then, how could the . . . the Fat Man be inhumed? A glass of poisoned sherry, perhaps?' The cowl had no face to crack a smile. You misunderstand the nature of employment, it said in Downey's head. He bridled at this. Assassins were never employed. They were engaged or retained or commissioned, but never employed. Only servants were employed. 'What is it that I misunderstand, exactly?' he said. We pay. You find the ways and means. The cowl began to fade. 'How can I contact you?' said Downey. We will contact you. We know where you are. We know where everyone is. The figure vanished. At the same moment the door was flung open to reveal the distraught figure of Mr Winvoe, the Guild Treasurer. 'Excuse me, my lord, but I really had to come up!' He flung some discs on the desk. 'Look at them!' Downey carefully picked up a golden circle. It looked like a small coin, but - 'No denomination!' said Winvoe. 'No heads, no tails, no milling! It's just a blank disc! They're all just blank discs!' Downey opened his mouth to say, 'Valueless?' He realized that he was half hoping that this was the case. If they, whoever they were, had paid in worthless metal then there wasn't even the glimmering of a contract. But he could see this wasn't the case. Assassins learned to recognize money early in their careers. 'Blank discs,' he said, 'of pure gold.' Winvoe nodded mutely. 'That,' said Downey, 'will do nicely.' 'It must be magical!' said Winvoe. 'And we never accept magical money!' Downey bounced the coin on the desk a couple of times. It made a satisfyingly rich thunking noise. It wasn't magical. Magical money would look real, because its whole purpose was to deceive. But this didn't need to ape something as human and adulterated as mere currency. This is gold, it told his fingers. Take it or leave it. Downey sat and thought, while Winvoe stood and worried. 'We'll take it,' he said. 'But-' 'Thank you, Mr Winvoe. That is my decision,' said Downey. He stared into space for a while, and then smiled. 'Is Mister Teatime still in the building?' Winvoe stood back. 'I thought the council had agreed to dismiss him,' he said stiffly. 'After that business with---' 'Mister Teatime does not see the world in quite the same way as other people,' said Downey, picking up the picture from his desk and looking at it thoughtfully. 'Well, indeed, I think that is certainly true.' 'Please send him up.' The Guild attracted all sorts of people, Downey reflected. He found himself wondering how it had come to attract Winvoe, for one thing. It was hard to imagine him stabbing anyone in the heart in case he got blood on the victim's wallet. Whereas Mister Teatime... The problem was that the Guild took young boys and gave them a splendid education and incidentally taught them how to kill, cleanly and dispassionately, for money and for the good of society, or at least that part of society that had money, and what other kind of society was there? But very occasionally you found you'd got someone like Mister Teatime, to whom the money was merely a distraction. Mister Teatime had a truly brilliant mind, but it was brilliant like a fractured mirror, all marvellous facets and rainbows but, ultimately, also something that was broken. Mister Teatime enjoyed himself too much. And other people, also. Downey had privately decided that some time soon Mister Teatime was going to meet with an accident. Like many people with no actual morals, Lord Downey did have standards, and Teatime repelled him. Assassination was a careful game, usually played against people who knew the rules themselves or at least could afford the services of those who did. There was considerable satisfaction in a clean kill. What there wasn't supposed to be was pleasure in a messy one. That sort of thing led to talk. On the other hand, Teatime's corkscrew of a mind was exactly the tool to deal with something like this. And if he didn't ... well, that was hardly Downey's fault, was it? He turned his attention to the paperwork for a while. It was amazing how the stuff mounted up. But you had to deal with it. It wasn't as though they were murderers, after all... There was a knock at the door. He pushed the paperwork aside and sat back. 'Come in, Mister Teatime,' he said. It never hurt to put the other fellow slightly in awe of you. In fact the door was opened by one of the Guild's servants, carefully balancing a tea tray. 'Ah, Carter,' said Lord Downey, recovering magnificently. 'Just put it on the table over there, will you?' 'Yes, sir,' said Carter. He turned and nodded. 'Sorry, sir, I will go and fetch another cup directly, sir.' 'What?' 'For your visitor, sir.' 'What visitor? Oh, when Mister Teati-' He stopped. He turned. There was a young man sitting on the hearthrug, playing with the dogs. 'Mister Teatime!' 'It's pronounced Teh-ah-tim-eh, sir,' said Teatime, with just a hint of reproach. 'Everyone gets it wrong, sir.' 'How did you do that?' 'Pretty well, sir. I got mildly scorched on the last few feet, of course.' There were some lumps of soot on the hearthrug. Downey realized he'd heard them fall, but that hadn't been particularly extraordinary. No one could get down the chimney. There was a heavy grid firmly in place near the top of the flue. 'But there's a blocked-in fireplace behind the old library,' said Teatime, apparently reading his thoughts. 'The flues connect, under the bars. It was really a stroll, sir.' 'Really . . .' 'Oh, yes, sir.' Downey nodded. The tendency of old buildings to be honeycombed with sealed chimney flues was a fact you learned early in your career. And then, he told himself, you forgot. It always paid to put the other fellow in awe of you, too. He had forgotten they taught that, too. 'The dogs seem to like you,' he said. 'I get on well with animals, sir.' Teatime's face was young and open and friendly. Or, at least, it smiled all the time. But the effect was spoiled for most people by the fact that it had only one eye. Some unexplained accident had taken the other one, and the missing orb had been replaced by a ball of glass. The result was disconcerting. But what bothered Lord Downey far more was the man's other eye, the one that might loosely be called normal. He'd never seen such a small and sharp pupil. Teatime looked at the world through a pinhole. He found he'd retreated behind his desk again. There was that about Teatime. You always felt happier if you had something between you and him. 'You like animals, do you?' he said. 'I have a report here that says you nailed Sir George's dog to the ceiling.' 'Couldn't have it barking while I was working, sir.' 'Some people would have drugged it.' 'Oh.' Teatime looked despondent for a moment, but then he brightened. 'But I definitely fulfilled the contract, sir. There can be no doubt about that, sir. I checked Sir George's breathing with a mirror as instructed. It's in my report.' 'Yes, indeed.' Apparently the man's head had been several feet from his body at that point. It was a terrible thought that Teatime might see nothing incongruous about this. 'And ... the servants...?' he said. 'Couldn't have them bursting in, sir.' Downey nodded, half hypnotized by the glassy stare and the pinhole eyeball. No, you couldn't have them bursting in. And an Assassin might well face serious professional opposition, possibly even by people trained by the same teachers. But an old man and a maidservant who'd merely had the misfortune to be in the house at the time... There was no actual rule, Downey had to admit. It was just that, over the years, the Guild had developed a certain ethos and members tended to be very neat about their work, even shutting doors behind them and generally tidying up as they went. Hurting the harmless was worse than a transgression against the moral fabric of society, it was a breach of good manners. It was worse even than that. It was bad taste. But there was no actual rule... 'That was all right, wasn't it, sir?' said Teatime, with apparent anxiety. 'It, uh ... lacked elegance,' said Downey. 'Ah. Thank you, sir. I am always happy to be corrected. I shall remember that next time.' Downey took a deep breath. 'It's about that I wish to talk,' he said. He held up the picture of ... what had the thing called him? ... the Fat Man? 'As a matter of interest,' he said, 'how would you go about inhuming this ... gentleman?' Anyone else, he was sure, would have burst out laughing. They would have said things like 'Is this a joke, sir?' Teatime merely leaned forward, with a curious intent expression. 'Difficult, sir.' 'Certainly,' Downey agreed. 'I would need some time to prepare a plan, sir,' Teatime went on. 'Of course, and-' There was a knock at the door and Carter came in with another cup and saucer. He nodded respectfully to Lord Downey and crept out again. 'Right, sir,' said Teatime. 'I'm sorry?' said Downey, momentarily distracted. 'I have now thought of a plan, sir,' said Teatime, patiently. 'You have?' 'Yes, sir.' 'As quickly as that?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Ye gods!' 'Well, sir, you know we are encouraged to consider hypothetical problems. 'Oh, yes. A very valuable exercise----’ Downey stopped, and then looked shocked. 'You mean you have actually devoted time to considering how to inhume the Hogfather?' he said weakly. 'You've actually sat down and thought out how to do it? You've actually devoted your spare time to the problem?' 'Oh, yes, sir. And the Soul Cake Duck. And the Sandman. And Death.' Downey blinked again. 'You've actually sat down and considered how to-’ 'Yes, sir. I've amassed quite an interesting file. In my own time, of course.' 'I want to be quite certain about this, Mister Teatime. You ... have ... applied ... yourself to a study of ways of killing Death?' 'Only as a hobby, sir.' 'Well, yes, hobbies, yes, I mean, I used to collect butterflies myself,' said Downey, recalling those first moments of awakening pleasure at the use of poison and the pin, 'but-' . 'Actually, sir, the basic methodology is exactly the same as it would be for a human. Opportunity, geography, technique . . . You just have to work with the known facts about the individual concerned. Of course, with this one such a lot is known.' 'And You've worked it all out, have you?' said Downey, almost fascinated. 'Oh, a long time ago, sir.' 'When, may I ask?' 'I think it was when I was lying in bed one Hogswatchnight, sir.' My gods, thought Downey, and to think that I just used to listen for sleigh bells. 'My word,' he said aloud. 'I may have to check some details, sir. I'd appreciate access to some of the books in the Dark Library. But, yes, I think I can see the basic shape.' 'And yet ... this person ... some people might say that he is technically immortal.' Everyone has their weak point, sir.' Even Death?' 'Oh, yes. Absolutely. Very much so.' 'Really?' Downey drummed his fingers on the desk again. The boy couldn't possibly have a real plan, he told himself. He certainly had a skewed mind - skewed? It was a positive helix - but the Fat Man wasn't just another target in some mansion somewhere. It was reasonable to assume that people had tried to trap him before. He felt happy about this. Teatime would fail, and possibly even fail fatally if his plan was stupid enough. And maybe the Guild would lose the gold, but maybe not. 'Very well,' he said. 'I don't need to know what your plan is.' 'That's just as well, sir.' 'What do you mean?' 'Because I don't propose to tell you, sir. You'd be obliged to disapprove of it.' 'I am amazed that you are so confident that it can work, Teatime.' 'I just think logically about the problem, sir,' said the boy. He sounded reproachful. 'Logically?' said Downey. 'I suppose I just see things differently from other people,' said Teatime. It was a quiet day for Susan, although on the way to the park Gawain trod on a crack in the pavement. On purpose. One of the many terrors conjured up by the previous governess's happy way with children had been the bears that waited around in the street to eat you if you stood on the cracks. Susan had taken to carrying the poker under her respectable coat. One wallop generally did the trick. They were amazed that anyone else saw them. 'Gawain?' she said, eyeing a nervous bear who had suddenly spotted her and was now trying to edge away nonchalantly. 'Yes?' 'You meant to tread on that crack so that I'd have to thump some poor creature whose only fault is wanting to tear you limb from limb.' 'I was just skipping-' 'Quite. Real children don't go hoppity-skip unless they are on drugs.' He grinned at her. 'If I catch you being twee again I will knot your arms behind your head,' said Susan levelly. He nodded, and went to push Twyla off the swings. Susan relaxed, satisfied. It was her personal discovery. Ridiculous threats didn't worry them at all, but they were obeyed. Especially the ones in graphic detail. The previous governess had used various monsters and bogeymen as a form of discipline. There was always something waiting to eat or carry off bad boys and girls for crimes like stuttering or defiantly and aggravatingly persisting in writing with their left hand. There was always a Scissor Man waiting for a little girl who sucked her thumb, always a bogeyman in the cellar. Of such bricks is the innocence of childhood constructed. Susan's attempts at getting them to disbelieve in the things only caused the problems to get worse. Twyla had started to wet the bed. This may have been a crude form of defence against the terrible clawed creature that she was certain lived under it. Susan had found out about this one the first night, when the child had woken up crying because of a bogeyman in the closet. She'd sighed and gone to have a look. She'd been so angry that she'd pulled it out, hit it over the head with the nursery poker, dislocated its shoulder as a means of emphasis and kicked it out of the back door. The children refused to disbelieve in the monsters because, frankly, they knew damn well the things were there. But she'd found that they could, very firmly, also believe in the poker. Now she sat down on a bench and read a book. She made a point of taking the children, every day, somewhere where they could meet others of the same age. If they got the hang of the playground, she thought, adult life would hold no fears. Besides, it was nice to hear the voices of little children at play, provided you took care to be far enough away not to hear what they were actually saying. There were lessons later on. These were going a lot better now she'd got rid of the reading books about bouncy balls and dogs called Spot. She'd got Gawain on to the military campaigns of General Tacticus, which were suitably bloodthirsty but, more importantly, considered too difficult for a child. As a result his vocabulary was doubling every week and he could already use words like 'disembowelled' in everyday conversation. After all, what was the point of teaching children to be children? They were naturally good at it. And she was, to her mild horror, naturally good with them. She wondered suspiciously if this was a family trait. And if, to judge by the way her hair so readily knotted itself into a prim bun, she was destined for jobs like this for the rest of her life. It was her parents' fault. They hadn't meant it to turn out like this. At least, she hoped charitably that they hadn't. They'd wanted to protect her, to keep her away from the worlds outside this one, from what people thought of as the occult, from ... well, from her grandfather, to put it bluntly. This had, she felt, left her a little twisted up. Of course, to be fair, that was a parent's job. The world was so full of sharp bends that if they didn't put a few twists in you, you wouldn't stand a chance of fitting in. And they'd been conscientious and kind and given her a good home and even an education. It had been a good education, too. But it had only been later on that she'd realized that it had been an education in, well, education. It meant that if ever anyone needed to calculate the volume of a cone, then they could confidently call on Susan Sto-Helit. Anyone at a loss to recall the campaigns of General Tacticus or the square root of 27.4 would not find her wanting. If you needed someone who could talk about household items and things to buy in the shops in five languages, then Susan was at the head of the queue. Education had been easy. Learning things had been harder. Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on. She'd become a governess. It was one of the few jobs a known lady could do. And she'd taken to it well. She'd sworn that if she did indeed ever find herself dancing on rooftops with chimney sweeps she'd beat herself to death with her own umbrella. After tea she read them a story. They liked her stories. The one in the book was pretty awful, but the Susan version was well received. She translated as she read. '... and then Jack chopped down the beanstalk, adding murder and ecological vandalism to the theft, enticement and trespass charges already mentioned, but he got away with it and lived happily ever after without so much as a guilty twinge about what he had done. Which proves that you can be excused just about anything if you're a hero, because no one asks inconvenient questions. And now,' she closed the book with a snap, 'it's time for bed.' The previous governess had taught them a prayer which included the hope that some god or other would take their soul if they died while they were asleep and, if Susan was any judge, had the underlying message that this would be a good thing. one day, Susan averred, she'd hunt that woman down. 'Susan,' said Twyla, from somewhere under the blankets. 'Yes?' 'You know last week we wrote letters to the Hogfather?' 'Yes?' 'Only ... in the park Rachel says he doesn't exist and it's your father really. And everyone else said she was right.' There was a rustle from the other bed. Twyla's brother had turned over and was listening surreptitiously. Oh dear, thought Susan. She had hoped she could avoid this. It was going to be like that business with the Soul Cake Duck all over again. 'Does it matter if you get the presents anyway?' she said, making a direct appeal to greed. ' ' es.' Oh dear, oh dear. Susan sat down on the bed, wondering how the hell to get through this. She patted the one visible hand. 'Look at it this way, then,' she said, and took a deep mental breath. 'Wherever people are obtuse and absurd ... and wherever they have, by even the most generous standards, the attention span of a small chicken in a hurricane and the investigative ability of a one-legged cockroach ... and wherever people are inanely credulous, Pathetically attached to the certainties of the nursery and, in general, have as much grasp of the realities of the physical universe as an oyster has of mountaineering ... yes, Twyla: there is a Hogfather.' There was silence from under the bedclothes, but she sensed that the tone of voice had worked. The words had meant nothing. That, as her grandfather might have said, was humanity all over. 'G' night.' 'Good night,' said Susan. It wasn't even a bar. It was just a room where people drank while they waited for other people with whom they had business. The business usually involved the transfer of ownership of something from one person to another, but then, what business doesn't? Five businessmen sat round a table, lit by a candle stuck in a saucer. There was an open bottle between them. They were taking some care to keep it away from the candle flame. ' ' s gone six,' said one, a huge man with dreadlocks and a beard you could keep goats in. 'The clocks struck ages ago. He ain't coming. Let's go. 'Sit down, will you? Assassins are always late. 'cos of style, right?' 'This one's mental.' 'Eccentric.' 'What's the difference?' 'A bag of cash.' The three that hadn't spoken yet looked at one another. 'What's this? You never said he was an Assassin,' said Chickenwire. 'He never said the guy was an Assassin, did he, Banjo?' There was a sound like distant thunder. It was Banjo Lilywhite clearing his throat. 'Dat's right,' said a voice from the upper slopes. 'Youse never said.' The others waited until the rumble died away. Even Banjo's voice hulked. 'He's' - the first speaker waved his hands vaguely, trying to get across the point that someone was a hamper of food, several folding chairs, a tablecloth, an assortment of cooking gear and an entire colony of ants short of a picnic -'mental. And he's got a funny eye.' 'It's just glass, all right?' said the one known as Catseye, signalling a waiter for four beers and a glass of milk. 'And he's paying ten thousand dollars each. I don't care what kind of eye he's got.' 'I heard it was made of the same stuff they make them fortune-telling crystals out of. You can't tell me that's right. And he looks at you with it,' said the first speaker. He was known as Peachy, although no one had ever found out why[4]. Catseye sighed. Certainly there was something odd about Mister Teatime, there was no doubt about that. But there was something weird about all Assassins. And the man paid well. Lots of Assassins used informers and locksmiths. It was against the rules, technically, but standards were going down everywhere, weren't they? Usually they paid you late and sparsely, as if they were doing the favour. But Teatime was OK. True, after a few minutes talking to him your eyes began to water and you felt you needed to scrub your skin even on the inside, but no one was perfect, were they? Peachy leaned forward. 'You know what?' he said. 'I reckon he could be here already. In disguise! Laughing at us! Well, if he's in here laughing at us-' He cracked his knuckles. Medium Dave Lilywhite, the last of the five, looked around. There were indeed a number of solitary figures in the low, dark room. Most of them wore cloaks with big hoods. They sat alone, in corners, hidden by the hoods. None of them looked very friendly. 'Don't be daft, Peachy,' Catseye murmured. 'That's the sort of thing they do,' Peachy insisted. 'They're masters of disguise!' 'With that eye of his?' 'That guy sitting by the fire has got an eye patch,' said Medium Dave. Medium Dave didn't speak much. He watched a lot. The others turned to stare. 'He'll wait till we're off our guard then go ahahaha,' said Peachy. 'They can't kill you unless it's for money,' said Catseye. But now there was a soupcon of doubt in his voice. They kept their eyes on the hooded man. He kept his eye on them. If asked to describe what they did for a living, the five men around the table would have said something like 'This and that' or 'The best I can', although in Banjo's case he'd have probably said 'Dur?' They were, by the standards of an uncaring society, criminals, although they wouldn't have thought of themselves as such and couldn't even spell words like 'nefarious'. What they generally did was move things around. Sometimes the things were on the wrong side of a steel door, say, or in the wrong house. Sometimes the things were in fact people who were far too unimportant to trouble the Assassins' Guild with, but who were nevertheless inconveniently positioned where they were and could much better be located on, for example, a sea bed somewhere[5]. None of the five belonged to any formal guild and they generally found their clients among those people who, for their own dark reasons, didn't want to put the guilds to any trouble, sometimes because they were guild members themselves. They had plenty of work. There was always something that needed transferring from A to B or, of course, to the bottom of the C. 'Any minute now,' said Peachy, as the waiter brought their beers. Banjo cleared his throat. This was a sign that another thought had arrived. 'What I don' unnerstan,' he said, 'is…’ 'Yes?' said his brother.[6] 'What I don' unnerstan is, how longaz diz place had waiters?' 'Good evening,' said Teatime, putting down the tray. They stared at him in silence. He gave them a friendly smile. Peachy's huge hand slapped the table. 'You crept up on us, you little- he began. Men in their line of business develop a certain prescience. Medium Dave and Catseye, who were sitting on either side of Peachy, leaned away nonchalantly. 'Hi!' said Teatime. There was a blur, and a knife shuddered in the table between Peachy's thumb and index finger. He looked down at it in horror. 'My name's Teatime,' said Teatime.'Which one are you?' 'I'm ... Peachy,' said Peachy, still staring at the vibrating knife. 'That's an interesting name,' said Teatime. 'Why are you called Peachy, Peachy?' Medium Dave coughed. Peachy looked up into Teatime's face. The glass eye was a mere ball of faintly glowing grey. The other eye was a little dot in a sea of white. Peachy's only contact with intelligence had been to beat it up and rob it whenever possible, but a sudden sense of selfpreservation glued him to his chair. ' cos I don't shave,' he said. 'Peachy don't like blades, mister,' said Catseye. 'And do you have a lot of friends, Peachy?' said Teatime. 'Got a few, yeah.’ With a sudden whirl of movement that made the men start, Teatime spun away, grabbed a chair, swung it up to the table and sat down on it. Three of them had already got their hands on their swords. 'I don't have many,' he said, apologetically. 'Don't seem to have the knack. On the other hand ... I don't seem to have any enemies at all. Not one. Isn't that nice?' Teatime had been thinking, in the cracking, buzzing firework display that was his head. What he had been thinking about was immortality. He might have been quite, quite insane, but he was no fool. There were, in the Assassins' Guild, a number of paintings and busts of famous members who had, in the past, put ... no, of course, that wasn't right. There were paintings and busts of the famous clients of members, with a noticeably modest brass plaque screwed somewhere nearby, bearing some unassuming little comment like 'Departed this vale of tears on Grune 3, Year of the Sideways Leech, with the assistance of the Hon. K. W. Dobson (Viper House)'. Many fine old educational establishments had dignified memorials in some hall listing the Old Boys who had laid down their lives for monarch and country. The Guild's was very similar, except for the question of whose life had been laid. Every Guild member wanted to be up there somewhere. Because getting up there represented immortality. And the bigger your client, the more incredibly discreet and restrained would be the little brass plaque, so that everyone couldn't help but notice your name. In fact, if you were very, very renowned, they wouldn't even have to write down your name at all... The men around the table watched him. It was always hard to know what Banjo was thinking, or even if he was thinking at all, but the other four were thinking along the lines of: bumptious little tit, like all Assassins. Thinks he knows it all. I could take him down one-handed, no trouble. But ... you hear stories. Those eyes give me the creeps... 'So what's the job?' said Chickenwire. 'We don't do jobs,' said Teatime. 'We perform services. And the service will earn each of you ten thousand dollars.' 'That's a lot more'n Thieves' Guild rate,' said Medium Dave. 'I've never liked the Thieves' Guild,' said Teatime, without turning his head. 'Why not?' 'They ask too many questions.' 'We don't ask questions,' said Chickenwire quickly. 'We shall suit one another perfectly,' said Teatime. 'Do have another drink while we wait for the other members of our little troupe.' Chickenwire saw Medium Dave's lips start to frame the opening letters 'Who-’ These letters he deemed inauspicious at this time. He kicked Medium Dave's leg under the table. The door opened slightly. A figure came in, but only just. It inserted itself in the gap and sidled along the wall in a manner calculated not to attract attention. Calculated, that is, by someone not good at this sort of calculation. It looked at them over its turned-up collar. 'That's a wizard,' said Peachy. The figure hurried over and dragged up a chair. 'No I'm not!' it hissed. 'I'm incognito!' 'Right, Mr Gnito,' said Medium Dave. 'You're just someone in a pointy hat. This is my brother Banjo, that's Peachy, this is Chick---’ The wizard looked desperately at Teatime. 'I didn't want to come!' 'Mr Sideney here is indeed a wizard,' said Teatime. 'A student, anyway. But down on his luck at the moment, hence his willingness to join us on this venture.' 'Exactly how far down on his luck?' said Medium Dave. The wizard tried not to meet anyone's gaze. 'I made a misjudgement to do with a wager,' he said. 'Lost a bet, you mean?' said Chickenwire. 'I paid up on time,' said Sideney. 'Yes, but Chrysoprase the troll has this odd little thing about money that turns into lead the next day,' said Teatime cheerfully. 'So our friend needs to earn a little cash in a hurry and in a climate where arms and legs stay on.' 'No one said anything about there being magic in all this,' said Peachy. 'Our destination is ... probably you should think of it as something like a wizard's tower, gentlemen,' said Teatime. 'It isn't an actual wizard's tower, is it?' said Medium Dave. 'They got a very odd sense of humour when it comes to booby traps.' 'No.' 'Guards?' 'I believe so. According to legend. But nothing very much.' Medium Dave narrowed his eyes. 'There's valuable stuff in this ... tower?' 'Oh, yes.' 'Why ain't there many guards, then?' 'The ... person who owns the property probably does not realize the value of what ... of what they have.' 'Locks?' said Medium Dave. 'On our way we shall be picking up a locksmith.' 'Who?' 'Mr Brown.' They nodded. Everyone - at least, everyone in 'the business', and everyone in 'the business' knew what 'the business' was, and if you didn't know what 'the business' was you weren't a businessman - knew Mr Brown. His presence anywhere around a job gave it a certain kind of respectability. He was a neat, elderly man who'd invented most of the tools in his big leather bag. No matter what cunning you'd used to get into a place, or overcome a small army, or find the secret treasure room, sooner or later you sent for Mr Brown, who'd turn up with his leather bag and his little springy things and his little bottles of strange alchemy and his neat little boots. And he'd do nothing for ten minutes but look at the lock, and then he'd select a piece of bent metal from a ring of several hundred almost identical pieces, and under an hour later he'd be walkingaway with a neat ten per cent of the takings. Of course, you didn't have to use Mr Brown's services. You could always opt to spend the rest of your life looking at a locked door. 'All right. Where is this place?' said Peachy. Teatime turned and smiled at him. 'If I'm paying you, why isn't it me who's asking the questions?' Peachy didn't even try to outstare the glass eye a second time. 'Just want to be prepared, that's all,' he mumbled. 'Good reconnaissance is the essence of a successful operation,' said Teatime. He turned and looked up at the bulk that was Banjo and added, 'What is this?' 'This is Banjo,' said Medium Dave, rolling himself a cigarette. 'Does it do tricks?' Time stood still for a moment. The other men looked at Medium Dave. He was known to Ankh-Morpork's professional underclass as a thoughtful, patient man, and considered something of an intellectual because some of his tattoos were spelled right. He was reliable in a tight spot and, above all, he was honest, because good criminals have to be honest. If he had a fault, it was a tendency to deal out terminal and definitive retribution to anyone who said anything about his brother. If he had a virtue, it was a tendency to pick his time. Medium Dave's fingers tucked the tobacco into the paper and raised it to his lips. 'No,' he said. Chickenwire tried to defrost the conversation. 'He's not what you'd call bright, but he's always useful. He can lift two men in each hand. By their necks.' 'Yur,' said Banjo. 'He looks like a volcano,' said Teatime. 'Really?' said Medium Dave Lilywhite. Chickenwire reached out hastily and pushed him back down in his seat. Teatime turned and smiled at him. 'I do so hope we're going to be friends, Mr Medium Dave,' he said. 'It really hurts to think I might not be among friends.' He gave him another bright smile. Then he turned back to the rest of the table. 'Are we resolved, gentlemen?' They nodded. There was some reluctance, given the consensus view that Teatime belonged in a room with soft walls, but ten thousand dollars was ten thousand dollars. possibly even more. 'Good,' said Teatime. He looked Banjo up and down. 'Then I suppose we might as well make a start.' And he hit Banjo very hard in the mouth. Death in person did not turn up upon the cessation of every life. It was not necessary. Governments govern, but prime ministers and presidents do not personally turn up in people's homes to tell them how to run their lives, because of the mortal danger this would present. There are laws instead. But from time to time Death checked up to see that things were functioning properly or, to put it another and more accurate way, properly ceasing to function in the less significant areas of his jurisdiction. And now he walked through dark seas. Silt rose in clouds around his feet as he strode along the trench bottom. His robes floated out around him. There was silence, pressure and utter, utter darkness. But there was life down here, even this far below the waves. There were giant squid, and lobsters with teeth on their eyelids. There were spidery things with their stomachs on their feet, and fish that made their own light. It was a quiet, black nightmare world, but life lives everywhere that life can. Where life can't, this takes a little longer. Death's destination was a slight rise in the trench floor. Already the water around him was getting warmer and more populated, by creatures that looked as though they had been put together from the bits left over from everything else. Unseen but felt, a vast column of scalding hot water was welling up from a fissure. Somewhere below were rocks heated to near incandescence by the Disc's magical field. Spires of minerals had been deposited around this vent. And, in this tiny oasis, a type of life had grown up. It did not need air or light. It did not even need food in the way that most other species would understand the term. It just grew at the edge of the streaming column of water, looking like a cross between a worm and a flower. Death kneeled down and peered at it, because it was so small. But for some reason, in this world without eyes or light, it was also a brilliant red. The profligacy of life in these matters never ceased to amaze him. He reached inside his robe and pulled out a small roll of black material, like a jeweller's toolkit. With great care he took from one of its pouches a scythe about an inch long, and held it expectantly between thumb and forefinger. Somewhere overhead a shard of rock was dislodged by a stray current and tumbled down, raising little puffs of silt as it bounced off the tubes. It landed just beside the living flower and then rolled, wrenching it from the rock. Death flicked the tiny scythe just as the bloom faded ... The omnipotent eyesight of various supernatural entities is often remarked upon. It is said they can see the fall of every sparrow. And this may be true. But there is only one who is always there when it hits the ground. The soul of the tube worm was very small and uncomplicated. It wasn't bothered about sin. it had never coveted its neighbour's polyps. It had never gambled or drunk strong liquor. It had never bothered itself with questions like 'Why am I here?' because it had no concept at all of 'here' or, for that matter, of 'I'. Nevertheless, something was cut free under the surgical edge of the scythe and vanished in the roiling waters. Death carefully put the instrument away and stood up. All was well, things were functioning satisfactorily, and -but they weren't. In the same way that the best of engineers can hear the tiny change that signals a bearing going bad long before the finest of instruments would detect anything wrong, Death picked up a discord in the symphony of the world. It was one wrong note among billions but all the more noticeable for that, like a tiny pebble in a very large shoe. He waved a finger in the waters. For a moment a blue, door-shaped outline appeared He ste pped through it and was gone. The tube creatures didn't notice him go. They hadn't noticed him arrive. They never ever noticed anything. A cart trundled through the freezing foggy streets, the driver hunched in his seat. He seemed to be all big thick brown overcoat. A figure darted out of the swirls and was suddenly on the box next to him 'Hi!' it said. 'My name's Teatime. What's yours?' ''ere, you get down, I ain't allowed to give li-' The driver stopped. It was amazing how Teatime had been able to thrust a knife through four layers of thick clothing and stop it just at the point where it pricked the flesh. 'Sorry?' said Teatime, smiling brightly. 'Er - there ain't nothing valuable, y'know, nothing valuable, only a few bags of-’ 'Oh, dear,' said Teatime, his face a sudden acre of concern. 'Well, we'll just have to see, won't we ... What is your name, sir?' 'Ernie. Er. Ernie,' said Ernie. 'Yes. Ernie. Er... ' Teatime turned his head slightly. 'Come along, gentlemen. This is my friend Ernie. He's going to be our driver for tonight.' Ernie saw half a dozen figures emerge from the fog and climb into the cart behind him. He didn't turn to look at them. By the pricking of his kidneys he knew this would not be an exemplary career move. But it seemed that one of the figures, a huge shambling mound of a creature, was carrying a long bundle over its shoulder. The bundle moved and made muffled noises. 'Do stop shaking, Ernie. We just need a lift said Teatime, as the cart rumbled over the cobbles. 'Where to, mister?' 'Oh, we don't mind. But first, I'd like you to stop in Sator Square, near the second fountain.' The knife was withdrawn. Ernie stopped trying to breathe through his ears. 'Er . . .' 'What is it? You do seem tense, Ernie. I always find a neck massage helps.' 'I ain't rightly allowed to carry passengers, see Charlie'll give me a right telling-off . . .' 'Oh, don't you worry about that,' said Tea time, slapping him on the back. 'We're all friends here!' 'What're we bringing the girl for?' said a voice behind them. ''s not right, hittin' girls,' said a deep voice. 'Our mam said no hittin' girls. Only bad boys do that, our mam said! 'You be quiet, Banjo.' 'Our mam said-' 'Shssh! Emie here doesn't want to listen to our troubles,' said Teatime, not taking his gaze off the driver. 'Me? Deaf as a post, me,' burbled Ernie, who in some ways was a very quick learner. 'Can't hardly see more'n a few feet, neither. Cot no recollection for them faces that I do see, come to that. Bad memory? Hah! Talk about bad memory. Cor, sometimes I can be like as it were on the cart, talking to people, hah, just like I'm talking gone, hah, remember anything about them or how many they were or what they were carrying or anything about any to you now, and then when they're try as I might, do you think I car girl or anything?' By this time his voice was a highpitched wheeze. 'Hah! Sometimes I forget me own name!' 'It's Ernie, isn't it?' said Teatime, giving him a happy smile. 'Ah, and here we are. Oh dear. There seems to be some excitement.' There was the sound of fighting somewhere ahead, and then a couple of masked trolls ran past with three Watchmen after them. They all ignored the cart. 'I heard the De Bris gang were going to have a go at Packley's strongroom tonight,' said a voice behind Ernie. ' Looks like Mr Brown won't be joining us, then,' said another voice. There was a snigger. 'Oh, I don't know about that, Mr Lilywhite, I don't know about that at all,' said a third voice, and this one was from the direction of the fountain. 'Could you take my bag while I climb up, please? Do be careful, it's a little heavy.' It was a neat little voice. The owner of a voice like that kept his money in a shovel purse and always counted his change carefully. Ernie thought all this, and then tried very hard to forget that he had. 'On you go, Ernie,' said Teatime. 'Round behind the University, I think.' As the cart rolled on, the neat little voice said, 'You grab all the money and then you get out very smartly. Am I right?' There was a murmur of agreement. 'Learned that on my mother's knee, yeah.' 'You learned a lot of stuff across your ma's knee, Mr Lilywhite.' 'Don't you say nuffin' about our mam!' The voice was like an earthquake. 'This is Mr Brown, Banjo. You smarten up.' 'He dint ort to tork about our mam!' 'All right! All right! Hello, Banjo ... I think I may have a sweet somewhere ... Yes, there you' are. Yes, your ma knew the way all right. You go in quietly, you take your time, you get what you came for and you leave smartly and in good order. You don't hang around at the scene to count it out and tell one another what brave lads you are, am I right?' 'You seem to have done all right, Mr Brown.' The cart rattled towards the other side of the square. 'Just a little for expenses, Mr Catseye. A little Hogswatch present, you might say. Never take the lot and run. Take a little and walk. Dress neat. That's my motto. Dress neat and walk away slowly. Never run. Never run. The Watch'Il always chase a running man. They're like terriers for giving chase. No, you walk out slow, you walk round the corner, you wait till there's a lot of excitement, then you turn around and walk back. They can't cope with that, see. Half the time they'll stand aside to let you walk past. "Good evening, officers," you say, and then you go home for your tea.' 'Wheee! Gets you out of trouble, I can see that. If you've got the nerve.' 'Oh, no, Mr Peachy. Doesn't get you out of. Keeps You out of.' It was like a very good schoolroom, Ernie thought (and immediately tried to forget). Or a back-street gym when a champion prizefighter had just strolled in. 'What's up with your mouth, Banjo?' 'He lost a tooth, Mr Brown,' said another voice, and sniggered. 'Lost a toot, Mr Brown,' said the thunder that was Banjo. 'Keep your eyes on the road, Ernie,' said Teatime beside him. 'We don't want an accident, do we. . .' The road here was deserted, despite the bustle of the city behind them and the bulk of the University nearby. There were a few streets, but the buildings were abandoned. And something was happening to the sound. The rest of AnkhMorpork seemed very far away, the sounds arriving as if through quite a thick wall. They were entering that scorned little corner of AnkhMorpork that had long been the site of the University's rubbish pits and was now known as the Unreal Estate. 'Bloody wizards,' muttered Ernie, automatically. 'I beg your pardon?' said Teatime. 'My great-grandpa said we used t'own prop'ty round here. Low levels of magic, my arse! Hah, it's all right for them wizards, they got all kindsa spells to protect 'em. Bit of magic here, bit of magic there... Stands to reason it's got to go somewhere, right?' 'There used to be warning signs up,' said the neat voice from behind. 'Yeah, well, warning signs in Ankh-Morpork might as well have "Good firewood" written on them,' said someone else. 'I mean, stands to reason, they chuck out an old spell for exploding this, and another one for twiddlin' that, and another one for making carrots grow, they finish up interfering with one another, who knows what they'll end up doing?' said Ernie. 'Great-grandpa said sometimes they'd wake up in the morning and the cellar'd be higher than the attic. And that weren't the worst,' he added darkly. 'Yeah, I heard where it got so bad you could walk down the street and meet yourself coming the other way,' someone supplied. 'It got so's you didn't know it was bum or breakfast time, I heard.' 'The dog used to bring home all kinds of stuff,' said Ernie. 'Great-grandpa said half the time they used to dive behind the sofa if it came in with anything in its mouth. Corroded fire spells startin' to fizz, broken wands with green smoke coming out of 'em and I don't know what else ... and if you saw the cat playing with anything, it was best not to try to find out what it was, I can tell you.' He twitched the reins, his current predicament almost forgotten in the tide of hereditary resentment. 'I mean, they say all the old spell books and stuff was buried deep and they recycle the used spells now, but that don't seem much comfort when your potatoes started walkin' about,' he grumbled. 'My great-grandpa went to see the head wizard about it, and he said' - he put on a strangled nasal voice which was his idea of how you talked when you'd got an education - ' " Oh, there might be some temp'ry inconvenience now, my good man, but just you come back in fifty thousand years." Bloody wizards.' The horse turned a corner. This was a dead-end street. Half-collapsed houses, windows smashed, doors stolen, leaned against one another on either side. 'I heard they said they were going to clean up this place,' said someone. 'Oh, yeah,' said Ernie, and spat. When it hit the ground it ran away. 'And you know what? You get loonies coming in all the time now, poking around, pulling things about--’ 'Just at the wall up ahead,' said Teatime conversationally. 'I think you generally go through just where there's a pile of rubble by the old dead tree, although you wouldn't see it unless you looked closely. But I've never seen how you do it ... ' '' ere, I can't take you lot through,' said Ernie. 'Lifts is one thing, but not taking people through- ' Teatime sighed. 'And we were getting on so well. Listen, Ernie ... Ern ... you will take us through or, and I say this with very considerable regret, I will have to kill you. You seem a nice man. Conscientious. A very serious overcoat and sensible boots.' 'But if'n I take you through-' 'What's the worst that can happen?' said Teatime. 'You'll lose your job. Whereas if you don't, you'll die. So if you look at it like that, we're actually doing you a favour. Oh, do say yes.' 'Er . . .' Ernie's brain felt twisted up. The lad was definitely what Ernie thought of as a toff, and he seemed nice and friendly, but it didn't all add up. The tone and the content didn't match. 'Besides,' said Teatime, 'if you've been coerced, it's not your fault, is it? No one can blame you. No one could blame anyone who'd been coerced at knife point.' 'Oh, well, I s'pose, if we're talking coerced…' Ernie muttered. Going along with things seemed to be the only way. The horse stopped and stood waiting with the patient look of an animal that probably knows the route better than the driver. Ernie fumbled in his overcoat pocket and took out a small tin, rather like a snuff box. He opened it. There was glowing dust inside. 'What do you do with that?' said Teatime, all interest. 'Oh, you just takes a pinch and throws it in the air and it goes twing and it opens the soft place,' said Ernie. 'SO ... you don't need any special training or anything?' 'Er... you just chucks it at the wall there and it goes twing,' said Ernie. 'Really? May I try?' Teatime took the tin from his unresisting hand and threw a pinch of dust into the air in front of the horse. It hovered for a moment and then produced a narrow, glittering arch in the air. It sparkled and went… ... twing. 'Aw,' said a voice behind them. 'Innat nice, eh, our Davey?' 'Yeah.' 'All pretty sparkles...’ 'And then you just drive forward?' said Teatime. 'That's right,' said Ernie. 'Quick, mind. It only stays open for a little while.' Teatime pocketed the little tin. 'Thank you very much, Ernie. Very much indeed.' His other hand lashed out. There was a glint of metal. The carter blinked, and then fell sideways off his seat. There was silence from behind, tinted with horror and possibly just a little terrible admiration. 'Wasn't he dull?' said Teatime, picking up the reins. Snow began to fall. It fell on the recumbent shape of Ernie, and it also fell through several hooded grey robes that hung in the air. There appeared to be nothing inside them. You could believe they were there merely to make a certain point in space. Well, said one, we are frankly impressed. Indeed, said another. We would never have thought of doing it this way. He is certainly a resourceful human, said a third. The beauty of it all, said the first - or it may have been the second, because, absolutely nothing distinguished the robes - is that there is so much else we will control. Quite, said another. It is really amazing how they think. A sort of ... illogical logic. Children, said another. Who would have thought it? But today the children, tomorrow the world. Give me a child until he is seven and he's mine for life, said another. There was a dreadful pause. The consensus beings that called themselves the Auditors did not believe in anything, except possibly immortality. And the way to be immortal, they knew, was to avoid living. Most of all they did not believe in personality. To be a personality was to be a creature with a beginning and an end. And since they reasoned that in an infinite universe any life was by comparison unimaginably short, they died instantly. There was a flaw in their logic, of course, but by the time they found this out it was always too late. In the meantime, they scrupulously avoided any comment, action or experience that set them apart ... You said 'me', said one. Ah. Yes. But, you see, we were quoting, said the other one hurriedly. Some religious person said that. About educating children. And so would logically say 'me'. But I wouldn't use that term of myself, of - damn! The robe vanished in a little puff of smoke. Let that be a lesson to us, said one of the survivors, as another and totally indistinguishable robe popped into existence where the stricken colleague had been. Yes, said the newcomer. Well, it certainly appears- It stopped. A dark shape was approaching through the snow. It's him, it said. They faded hurriedly - not simply vanishing, but spreading out and thinning until they were just lost in the background. The dark figure stopped by the dead carter and reached down. COULD I GIVE YOU A HAND? Ernie looked up gratefully. 'Cor, yeah,' he said. He got to his feet, swaying a little. 'Here, your fingers're cold, mister!' SORRY. 'What'd he go and do that for? I did what he said. He could've killed me.' Ernie felt inside his overcoat and pulled out a small and, at this point, strangely transparent silver flask. 'I always keep a nip on me these cold nights,' he said. 'Keeps me spirits up.' YES INDEED. Death looked around briefly and sniffed the air. 'How'm I going to explain all this, then, eh?' said Ernie, taking a pull. SORRY? THAT WAS VERY RUDE OF ME. I WASN'T PAYING ATTENTION. 'I said what'm I going to tell people? Letting some blokes ride off with my cart neat as you like ... That's gonna be the sack for sure, I'm gonna be in big trouble . . .' All. WELL. THERE AT LEAST I HAVE SOME GOOD NEWS, ERNEST. AND, THEN AGAIN, I HAVE SOME BAD NEWS. Ernie listened. Once or twice he looked at the corpse at his feet. He looked smaller from the outside. He was bright enough not to argue. Some things are fairly obvious when it's a seven-foot skeleton with a scythe telling you them. 'So I'm dead, then,' he concluded. CORRECT. 'Er ... The priest said that ... you know. after you're dead . . . it's like going through a door and on one side of it there's ... He. . . well, a terrible place ... ?' Death looked at his worried, fading face. THROUGH A DOOR... 'That's what he said . . I EXPECT IT DEPENDS ON THE DIRECTION YOU'RE WALKING IN. When the street was empty again, except for the fleshy abode of the late Ernie, the grey shapes came back into focus. Honestly, he gets worse and worse, said one. He was looking for us, said another. Did you notice? He suspects something. He gets so ... concerned about things. Yes ... but the beauty of this plan, said a third, is that he can't interfere. He can go everywhere, said one. No, said another. Not quite everywhere. And, with ineffable smugness, they faded into the foreground. It started to snow quite heavily. It was the night before Hogswatch. All through the house... ...one creature stirred. It was a mouse. And someone, in the face of all appropriateness, had baited a trap. Although, because it was the festive season, they'd used a piece of pork crackling. The smell of it had been driving the mouse mad all day but now, with no one about, it was prepared to risk it. The mouse didn't know it was a trap. Mice aren't good at passing on information. Young mice aren't taken up to famous trap sites and told, 'This is where your Uncle Arthur passed away.' All it knew was that, what the hey, here was something to eat. On a wooden board with some wire round it. A brief scurry later and its jaw had closed on the rind. Or, rather, passed through it. The mouse looked around at what was now lying under the big spring, and thought, 'Oops . . .' Then its gaze went up to the black-clad figure that had faded into view by the wainscoting. 'Squeak?' it asked. SQUEAK, said the Death of Rats. And that was it, more or less. Afterwards, the Death of Rats looked around with interest. In the nature of things his very important job tended to take him to brickyards and dark cellars and the inside of cats and all the little dank holes where rats and mice finally found out if there was a Promised Cheese. This place was different. It was brightly decorated, for one thing. Ivy and mistletoe hung in bunches from the bookshelves. Brightly coloured streamers festooned the walls, a feature seldom found in most holes or even quite civilized cats. The Death of Rats took a leap onto a chair and from there on to the table and in fact right into a glass of amber liquid, which tipped over and broke. A puddle spread around four turnips and began to soak into a note which had been written rather awkwardly on pink writing paper. It read:   Dere Hogfather,        For Hogswatch I would like a drum an a dolly an a teddybear an a Gharstley Omnian Inquisision Torchure Chamber with Wind-up Rack and Nearly Real Blud You Can Use Again, you can get it From the toyshoppe in Short Strete, it is $5.99p. I have been good an here is a glars of Sherre an a Pork pie for you and turnips for Gouger an Rooter an Snot Snouter. I hop the Chimney is big enough but my friend Willaim Says you are your father really. Yrs. Virginia Prood   The Death of Rats nibbled a bit of the pork pie because when you are the personification of the death of small rodents you have to behave in certain ways. He also piddled on one of the turnips for the same reason, although only metaphorically, because when you are a small skeleton in a black robe there are also some things you technically cannot do. Then he leapt down from the table and left sherryflavoured footprints all the way to the tree that stood in a pot in the corner. It was really only a bare branch of oak, but so much shiny holly and mistletoe had been wired onto it that it gleamed in the fight of the candles. There was tinsel on it, and glittering ornaments, and small bags of chocolate money. The Death of Rats peered at his hugely distorted reflection in a glass ball, and then looked up at the mantelpiece. He reached it in one jump, and ambled curiously through the cards that had been ranged along it. His grey whiskers twitched at messages like 'Wifhin  you Joye and all Goode Cheer at Hogswatchtime & All Through The Yeare'. A couple of them had pictures of a big jolly fat man carrying a sack. In one of them he was riding in a sledge drawn by four enormous pigs. The Death of Rats sniffed at a couple of long stockings that had been hung from the mantelpiece, over the fireplace in which a fire had died down to a few sullen ashes. He was aware of a subtle tension in the air, a feeling that here was a scene that was also a stage, a round hole, as it were, waiting for a round peg There was a scraping noise. A few lumps of soot thumped into the ashes. The Grim Squeaker nodded to himself. The scraping became louder, and was followed by a moment of silence and then a clang as something landed in the ashes and knocked over a set of ornamental fire irons. The rat watched carefully as a red-robed figure pulled itself upright and staggered across the hearthrug, rubbing its shin where it had been caught by the toasting fork. It reached the table and read the note. The Death of Rats thought he heard a groan. The turnips were pocketed and so, to the Death of Rats' annoyance, was the pork pie. He was pretty sure it was meant to be eaten here, not taken away. The figure scanned the dripping note for a moment, and then turned around and approached the mantelpiece. The Death of Rats pulled back slightly behind 'Seafon's Greetings!' A red-gloved hand took down a stocking. There was some creaking and rustling and it was replaced, looking a lot fatter - the larger box sticking out of the top had, just visible, the words 'Victim Figures Not Included. 3-10 yrs'. The Death of Rats couldn't see much of the donor of this munificence. The big red hood hid all the face, apart from a long white beard. Finally, when the figure finished, it stood back and pulled a list out of its pocket. It held it up to the hood and appeared to be consulting it. It waved its other hand vaguely at the fireplace, the sooty footprints, the empty sherry glass and the stocking. Then it bent forward, as if reading some tiny print. AH, YES, it said. ER... HO. HO. HO. With that, it ducked down and entered the chimney. There was some scrabbling before its boots gained a purchase, and then it was gone. The Death of Rats realized he'd begun to knaw his little scythe's handle in sheer shock. SQUEAK? He landed in the ashes and swarmed up the sooty cave of the chimney. He emerged so fast that he shot out with his legs still scrabbling and landed in the snow on the roof. There was a sledge hovering in the air by the gutter. The red-hooded figure had just climbed in and appeared to be talking to someone invisible behind a pile of sacks. HERE'S ANOTHER PORK PIE. 'Any mustard?' said the sacks. 'They're a treat with mustard.' IT DOES NOT APPEAR SO. 'Oh, well. Pass it over anyway.' IT LOOKS VERY BAD. 'Nah, 's just where something's nibbled it---' I MEAN THE SITUATION. MOST OF THE LETTERS ... THEY DON'T REALLY BELIEVE. THEY PRETEND TO BELIEVE, JUST IN CASE[7]. I FEAR IT MAY BE TOO LATE. IT HAS SPREAD SO FAST AND BACK IN TIME, TOO. 'Never say die, master. That's our motto, eh?' said the sacks, apparently with their mouth full. I CAN'T SAY IT'S EVER REALLY BEEN MINE. 'I meant we're not going to be intimidated by the certain prospect of complete and utter failure, master.' AREN'T WE? OH, GOOD. WELL, I SUPPOSE WE'D BETTER BE GOING. The figure picked up the reins. UP, GOUGER! UP, ROOTER! UP, TUSKER! UP, SNOUTER! GIDDYUP! The four large boars harnessed to the sledge did not move. WHY DOESN'T THAT WORK? said the figure in a puzzled, heavy voice. 'Beats me, master,' said the sacks. IT WORKS ON HORSES. 'You could try "Pig-hooey! "' PIG-HOOEY. They waited. NO ... DOESN'T SEEM TO REACH THEM. There was some whispering. REALLY? YOU THINK THAT WOULD WORK? 'It'd bloody well work on me if I was a pig, master.' VERY WELL, THEN. The figure gathered up the reins again. APPLE! SAUCE! The pigs' legs blurred. Silver light flicked across them, and exploded outwards. They dwindled to a dot, and vanished. SQUEAK? The Death of Rats skipped across the snow, slid down a drainpipe and landed on the roof of a shed. There was a raven perched there. It was staring disconsolately at something. SQUEAK! 'Look at that, willya?' said the raven rhetorically. It waved a claw at a bird table in the garden below. 'They hangs up half a bloody coconut, a lump of bacon rind, a handful of peanuts in a bit of wire and they think they're the gods' gift to the nat'ral world. Huh. Do I see eyeballs? Do I see entrails? I think not. Most intelligent bird in the temperate latitudes an' I gets the cold shoulder just because I can't hang upside down and go twit, twit. Look at robins, now. Stroppy little evil buggers, fight like demons, but all they got to do is go bob-bob-bobbing along and they can't move for breadcrumbs. Whereas me myself can recite poems and repeat many hum'rous phrases--' SQUEAK! 'Yes? What?' The Death of Rats pointed at the roof and then the sky and jumped up and down excitedly. The raven swivelled one eye upwards. 'Oh, yes. Him,' he said. 'Turns up at this time of year. Tends to be associated distantly with robins, which-' SQUEAK! SQUEE IK IR IK! The Death of Rats pantomimed a figure landing in a grate and walking around a room. SQUEAK EEK IK IK, SQUEAK 'HEEK HEEK HEEK'! IK IK SQUEAK! 'Been overdoing the Hogswatch cheer, have you? Been rustling around in the brandy butter?' SQUEAK? The raven's eyes revolved. 'Look, Death's Death. It's a full-time job right? it's not as though you can run, like, a window cleaning round on the side or nip round after work cutting people's lawns.' SQUEAK! 'Oh, please yourself.' The raven crouched a little to allow the tiny figure to hop on to its back, and then lumbered into the air. 'Of course, they can go mental, your occult types,' it said, as it swooped over the moonlit garden. 'Look at Old Man Trouble, for one-' SQUEAK. 'Oh, I'm not suggestin---' Susan didn't like Biers but she went there anyway, when the pressure of being normal got too much. Biers, despite the smell and the drink and the company, had one important virtue. In Biers no one took any notice. Of anything. Hogswatch was traditionally supposed to be a time for families but the people who drank in Biers probably didn't have families; some of them looked as though they might have had litters, or clutches. Some of them looked as though they'd probably eaten their relatives, or at least someone's relatives. Biers was where the undead drank. And when Igor the barman was asked for a Bloody Mary, he didn't mix a metaphor. The regular customers didn't ask questions, and not only because some of them found anything above a growl hard to articulate. None of them was in the answers business. Everyone in Biers drank alone. even when they were in groups. Or packs. Despite the decorations put up inexpertly by Igor the barman to show willing,[8] Biers was not a family place. Family was a subject Susan liked to avoid. Currently she was being aided in this by a gin and tonic. In Biers, unless you weren't choosy, it paid to order a drink that was transparent because Igor also had undirected ideas about what you could stick on the end of a cocktail stick. If you saw something spherical and green, you just had to hope that it was an olive. She felt hot breath on her ear. A bogeyman had sat down on the stool beside her. 'Woss a normo doin' in a place like this, then?' it rumbled, causing a cloud of vaporized alcohol and halitosis to engulf her. 'Hah, you fink it's cool comin' down here an' swannin' around in a black dress wid all the lost boys, eh? Dabblin' in a bit of designer darkness, eh?' Susan moved her stool away a little. The bogeyman grinned. 'Want a bogeyman under yer bed, eh?' 'Now then, Shlimazel,' said Igor, without looking up from polishing a glass. 'Well, woss she down here for, eh?' said the bogeyman. A huge hairy hand grabbed Susan's arm. 'O' course, maybe what she wants is-' 'I ain't telling you again, Shlimazel,' said Igor. He saw the girl turn to face Shlimazel. Igor wasn't in a position to see her face fully, but the bogeyman was. He shot back so quickly that he fell off his stool. And when the girl spoke, what she said was only partly words but also a statement, written in stone, of how the future was going to be. ' GO AWAY AND STOP BOTHERING ME.' She turned back and gave Igor a polite and slightly apologetic smile. The bogeyman struggled frantically out of the wreckage of his stool and loped towards the door. Susan felt the drinkers turn back to their private preoccupations. It was amazing what you could get away with in Biers. Igor put down the glass and looked up at the window. For a drinking den that relied on darkness it had rather a large one but, of course, some customers did arrive by air. Something was tapping on it now. Igor lurched over and opened it. Susan looked up. 'Oh, no . . . ' The Death of Rats leapt down onto the counter, with the raven fluttering after it. SQUEAK SQUEAK EEK! EEK! SQUEAK IK IK 'HEEK HEEK HEEK'! SQ 'Go away,' said Susan coldly. 'I'm not interested. You're just a figment of my imagination.' The raven perched on a bowl behind the bar and said, 'Ah, great.' SQUEAK! 'What're these?' said the raven, flicking something off the end of its beak. 'Onions? Pfah!' 'Go on, go away, the pair of you,' said Susan. 'The rat says your granddad's gone mad,' said the raven. 'Says he's pretending to be the Hogfather.' 'Listen, I just don't- What?' 'Red cloak, long beard-’ HEEK! HEEK! HEEK! -going "Ho, ho, ho", driving around in the big sledge drawn by the four piggies, the whole thing . . .' 'Pigs? What happened to Binky?' 'Search me. O' course, it can happen, as I was telling the rat only just now-' Susan put her hands over her ears, more for desperate theatrical effect than for the muffling they gave. 'I don't want to know! I don't have a grandfather!' She had to hold on to that. The Death of Rats squeaked at length. 'The rat says you must remember, he's tall, not what you'd call fleshy, he carries a scythe-' 'Go away! And take the ... the rat with you!' She waved her hand wildly and, to her horror and shame, knocked the little hooded skeleton over an ashtray. EEK?       The raven took the rat's cowl in its beak and tried to drag him away, but a tiny skeletal fist shook its scythe. EEK IK EEK SQUEAK! 'He says, you don't mess with the rat,' said the raven. In a flurry of wings they were gone. Igor dosed the window. He didn't pass any comment. 'They weren't real,' said Susan, hurriedly. 'Well, that is ... the raven's probably real, but he hangs around with the rat--’ 'Which isn't real,' said Igor. 'That's right!' said Susan, gratefully. 'You probably didn't see a thing.' 'That's right,' said Igor. 'Not a thing.' 'Now ... how much do I owe you?' said Susan. Igor counted on his fingers. 'That'll be a dollar for the drinks,' he said, 'and fivepence because the raven that wasn't here messed in the pickles.' It was the night before Hogswatch. In the Archchancellor's new bathroom Modo wiped his hands on a piece of rag and looked proudly at his handiwork. Shining porcelain gleamed back at him. Copper and brass shone in the lamplight. He was a little worried that he hadn't been able to test everything, but Mr Ridcully had said, 'I'll test it when I use it,' and Modo never argued with the Gentlemen, as he thought of them. He knew that they all knew a lot more than he knew, and was quite happy knowing this. He didn't meddle with the fabric of time and space, and they kept out of his greenhouses. The way he saw it, it was a partnership. He'd been particularly careful to scrub the floors. Mr Ridcully had been very specific about that. 'Verruca Gnome,' he said to himself, giving tap a last polish. 'What an imagination the Gentlemen do have.’ Far off, unheard by anyone, was a faint little noise, like the ringing of tiny silver bells. Glingleglingleglingle... And someone landed abruptly in a snowdrift and said, 'Bugger!', which is a terrible thing to say as your first word ever. Overhead, heedless of the new and somewhat angry life that was even now dusting itself off, the sledge soared onwards through time and space. I'M FINDING THE BEARD A BIT OF A TRIAL, said Death. 'Why've you got to have the beard?' said the voice from among the sacks. 'I thought you said people see what they expect to see.' CHILDREN DON'T. TOO OFTEN THEY SEE WHAT'S THERE. 'Well, at least it's keeping you in the right frame of mind, master. In character, sort of thing.' BUT GOING DOWN THE CHIMNEY? WHERE'S THE SENSE IN THAT? I CAN JUST WALK THROUGH THE WALLS. 'Walking through the walls is not right, neither,' said the voice from the sacks. IT WORKS FOR ME. 'It's got to be chimneys. Same as the beard, really.' A head thrust itself out from the pile. It appeared to belong to the oldest, most unpleasant pixie in the universe. The fact that it was underneath a jolly little green hat with a bell on it did not do anything to improve matters. It waved a crabbed hand containing a thick wad of letters, many of them on pastel-coloured paper, often with bunnies and teddy bears on them, and written mostly in crayon. 'You reckon these little buggers'd be writing to someone who walked through walls?' it said. 'And the "Ho, ho, ho" could use some more work, if you don't mind my saying so.' HO. HO. HO. 'No, no, no!' said Albert. 'You got to put a bit of life in it, sir, no offence intended. It's got to be a big fat laugh. You got to ... you got to sound like you're pissing brandy and crapping plum pudding, sir, excuse my Klatchian.' REALLY? HOW DO YOU KNOW ALL THIS? 'I was young once, sir. Hung up my stocking like a good boy every year. For to get it filled with toys, just like you're doing. Mind you, in those days basically it was sausages and black puddings if you were lucky. But you always got a pink sugar piglet in the toe. It wasn't a good Hogswatch unless you'd eaten so much you were sick as a pig, master.' Death looked at the sacks. It was a strange but demonstrable fact that the sacks of toys carried by the Hogfather, no matter what they really contained, always appeared to have sticking out of the top a teddy bear, a toy soldier in the kind of colourful uniform that would stand out in a disco, a drum and a red-and-white candy cane. The actual contents always turned out to be something a bit garish and costing $5.99. Death had investigated one or two. There had been a Real Agatean Ninja, for example, with Fearsome Death Grip, and a Captain Carrot One-Man Night Watch with a complete wardrobe of toy weapons, each of which cost as much as the original wooden doll in the first place. Mind you, the stuff for the girls was just as depressing. It seemed to be nearly all horses. Most of them were grinning. Horses, Death felt, shouldn't grin- Any horse that was grinning was planning something. He sighed again. Then there was this business of deciding who'd been naughty or nice. He'd never had to think about that sort of thing before. Naughty or nice, it was ultimately all the same. Still, it had to be done right. Otherwise it wouldn't work. The pigs pulled up alongside another chimney. 'Here we are, here we are,' said Albert. 'James Riddle, aged eight.' HAH, YES. HE ACTUALLY SAYS IN HIS LETTER, 'I BET YOU DON'T EXIST 'COS EVERYONE KNOWS ITS YORE PARENTS.' OH YES, said Death, with what almost sounded like sarcasm, I'M SURE HIS PARENTS ARE JUST IMPATIENT TO BANG THEIR ELBOWS IN TWELVE FEET OF NARROW UNSWEPT CHIMNEY, I DON'T THINK. I SHALL TREAD EXTRA SOOT INTO HIS CARPET. 'Right, sir. Good thinking. Speaking of which - down you go, sir.' HOW ABOUT IF I DON'T GIVE HIM ANYTHING AS A PUNISHMENT FOR NOT BELIEVING? 'Yeah, but what's that going to prove?' Death sighed. I SUPPOSE YOU'RE RIGHT. 'Did you check the list?' YES. TWICE. ARE YOU SURE THAT'S ENOUGH? 'Definitely.' COULDN'T REALLY MAKE HEAD OR TAIL OF IT, TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH. HOW CAN I TELL IF HE'S BEEN NAUGHTY OR NICE, FOR EXAMPLE? 'Oh, well ... I don't know ... Has he hung his clothes up, that sort of thing. ' AND IF HE HAS BEEN GOOD I MAY GIVE HIM THIS KLATCHIAN WAR CHARIOT WITH REAL SPINNING SWORD BLADES? 'That's right.' AND IF HE'S BEEN BAD? Albert scratched his head. 'When I was a lad, you got a bag of bones. 's'mazing how kids got better behaved towards the end of the year.' OH DEAR. AND NOW? Albert held a package up to his ear and rustled it. 'Sounds like socks.' SOCKS. 'Could be a woolly vest.' SERVE HIM RIGHT, IF I MAY VENTURE TO EXPRESS AN OPINION... Albert: looked across the snowy rooftops and sighed. This wasn't right. He was helping because, well, Death was his master and that's all there was to it, and if the master had a heart it would be in the right place. But... 'Are you sure we ought to be doing this, master?' Death stopped, halfway out of the chimney. CAN YOU THINK OF A BETTER ALTERNATIVE, ALBERT? And that was it. Albert couldn't. Someone had to do it. There were bears on the street again. Susan ignored them and didn't even make a point of not treading on the cracks. They just stood around, looking a bit puzzled and slightly transparent, visible only to children and Susan. News like Susan gets around. The bears had heard about the poker. Nuts and berries, their expressions seemed to say. That's what we're here for. Big sharp teeth? What big shar--- Oh, these big sharp teeth? They're just for, er, cracking nuts. And some of these berries can be really vicious. The city's clocks were striking six when she got back to the house. She was allowed her own key. It wasn't as if she was a servant, exactly. You couldn't be a duchess and a servant. But it was all right to be a governess. It was understood that it wasn't exactly what you were, it was merely a way of passing the time until you did what every girl, or gel, was supposed to do in life, i.e., marry some man. It was understood that you were playing. The parents were in awe of her. She was the daughter of a duke whereas Mr Gaiter was a man to be reckoned with in the wholesale boots and shoes business. Mrs Gaiter was bucking for a transfer into the Upper Classes, which she currently hoped to achieve by reading books on etiquette. She treated Susan with the kind of worried deference she thought was due to anyone who'd known the difference between a serviette and a napkin from birth. Susan had never before come across the idea that you could rise in Society by, as it were, gaining marks, especially since such noblemen as she'd met in her father's house had used neither serviette nor napkin but a state of mind, which was 'Drop it on the floor, the dogs'll eat it.' When Mrs Gaiter had tremulously asked her how one addressed the second cousin of a queen, Susan had replied without thinking, 'We called him Jamie, usually,' and Mrs Gaiter had had to go and have a headache in her room. Mr Gaiter just nodded when he met her in a passage and never said very much to her. He was pretty sure he knew where he stood in boots and shoes and that was that. Gawain and Twyla, who'd been named by people who apparently loved them, had been put to bed by the time Susan got in, at their own insistence. It's a widely held belief at a certain age that going to bed early makes tomorrow come faster. She went to tidy up the schoolroom and get things ready for the morning, and began to pick up the things the children had left lying around. Then something tapped at a window pane. She peered out at the darkness, and then opened the window. A drift of snow fell down outside. In the summer the window opened into the branches of a cherry tree. In the winter dark, they were little grey fines where the snow had settled on them. 'Who's that?' said Susan. Something hopped through the frozen branches. 'Tweet tweet tweet, would you believe?' said the raven. 'Not you again?' 'You wanted maybe some dear little robin? Listen, your grand-' 'Go away! ' Susan slammed the window and pulled the curtains across. She put her back to them, to make sure, and tried to concentrate on the room. It helped to think about ... normal things. There was the Hogswatch tree, a rather smaller version of the grand one in the hall. She'd helped the children to make paper decorations for it. Yes. Think about that. There were the paperchains. There were the bits of holly, thrown out from the main rooms for not having enough berries on them, and now given fake modelling clay berries and stuck in anyhow on shelves and behind pictures. There were two stockings hanging from the mantelpiece of the small schoolroom grate. There were Twyla's paintings, all blobby blue skies and violently green grass and red houses with four square windows. There were ... Normal things ... She straightened up and stared at them, her fingernails beating a thoughtful tattoo on a wooden pencil case. The door was pushed open. It revealed the tousled shape of Twyla, hanging onto the doorknob with one hand. 'Susan, there's a monster under my bed again . . .' The click of Susan's fingernails stopped. '. . . I can hear it moving about . . .' Susan sighed and turned towards the child. 'All right, Twyla. I'll be along directly.' The girl nodded and went back to her room, leaping into bed from a distance as a precaution against claws. There was a metallic tzing as Susan withdrew the poker from the little brass stand it shared with the tongs and the coal shovel. She sighed. Normality was what you made it. She went into the children's bedroom and leaned over as if to tuck Twyla up. Then her hand darted down and under the bed. She grabbed a handful of hair. She pulled. The bogeyman came out like a cork but before it could get its balance it found itself spreadeagled against the wall with one arm behind its back. But it did manage to turn its head, to see Susan's face glaring at it from a few inches away. Gawain bounced up and down on his bed. 'Do the Voice on it! Do the Voice on it!' he shouted. 'Don't do the Voice, don't do the Voice!' pleaded the bogeyman urgently. 'Hit it on the head with the poker!' 'Not the poker! Not the poker!' 'It's you, isn't it,' said Susan. 'From this afternoon . . .' 'Aren't you going to poke it with the poker?' said Gawain. 'Not the poker!' whined the bogeyman. 'New in town?' whispered Susan. 'Yes!' The bogeyman's forehead wrinkled with puzzlement. 'Here, how come you can see me?' 'Then this is a friendly warning, understand? Because it's Hogswatch.' The bogeyman tried to move. 'You call this friendly?' 'Ah, you want to try for unfriendly?' said Susan, adjusting her grip. 'No, no, no, I like friendly!' 'This house is out of bounds, right?' 'You a witch or something?' moaned the bogeyman. ' I'm just ... something. Now ... you won't be around here again, will you? Otherwise it'll be the blanket next time.' 'No!' 'I mean it. We'll put your head under the blanket.' 'No!' 'It's got fluffy bunnies on it. ' 'No!' 'Off you go, then.' The bogeyman half fell, half ran towards the door. i's not right,' it mumbled. 'You're not s'posed to see us if you ain't dead or magic. 's not fair. . .' 'Try number nineteen,' said Susan, relenting a little. 'The governess there doesn't believe in bogeymen.' 'Right?' said the monster hopefully. 'She believes in algebra, though.' 'Ah. Nice.' The bogeyman grinned hugely. It was amazing the sort of mischief that could becaused in a house where no one in authority thought you existed. 'I'll be off, then,' it said. 'Er. Happy Hogswatch.' 'Possibly,' said Susan, as it slunk away. 'That wasn't as much fun as the one last month,' said Gawain, getting between the sheets again. 'You know, when you kicked him in the trousers-' 'Just you two get to sleep now,' said Susan. 'Verity said the sooner we got to sleep the sooner the Hogfather would come,' said Twyla conversationally. 'Yes,' said Susan. 'Unfortunately, that might be the case.' The remark passed right over their heads. She wasn't sure why it had gone through hers, but she knew enough to trust her senses. She hated that kind of sense. It ruined your life. But it was the sense she had been born with. The children were tucked in, and she closed the door quietly and went back to the schoolroom. Something had changed. She glared at the stockings, but they were unfulfilled. A paperchain rustled. She stared at the tree. Tinsel had been twined around it, badly pasted-together decorations had been hung on it. And on top was the fairy made of She crossed her arms, looked up at the ceiling, and sighed theatrically. 'It's you, isn't it?' she said. SQUEAK? 'Yes, it is. You're sticking out your arms like a scarecrow and you've stuck a little star on your scythe, haven't you...?' The Death of Rats hung his head guiltily. SQUEAK. 'You're not fooling anyone.' SQUEAK. 'Get down from there this minute!' SQUEAK. 'And what did you do with the fairy?' 'It's shoved under a cushion on the chair,' said a voice from the shelves on the other side of the room. There was a clicking noise and the raven's voice added, 'These damn eyeballs are hard, aren't they?' Susan raced across the room and snatched the bowl away so fast that the raven somersaulted and landed on its back. 'They're walnuts!' she shouted, as they bounced around her. 'Not eyeballs! This is a schoolroom! And the difference between a school and a-a-a raven delicatessen is that they hardly ever have eyeballs lying around in bowls in case a raven drops in for a quick snack! Understand? No eyeballs! The world is full of small round things that aren't eyeballs! OK?' The raven's own eyes revolved. ' ' n' I suppose a bit of warm liver's out of the question---’ 'Shut up! I want both of you out of here right now! I don't know how you got in here-’ 'There's a law against coming down the chimney on Hogswatchnight?' '-but I don't want you back in my life, understand?' 'The rat said you ought to be warned even if you were crazy,' said the raven sulkily. 'I didn't want to come, there's a donkey dropped dead just outside the city gates, I'll be lucky now if I get a hoof---’ 'Warned?' said Susan. There it was again. The change in the weather of the mind, a sensation of tangible time ... The Death of Rats nodded. There was a scrabbling sound far overhead. A few flakes of soot dropped down the chimney. SQUEAK, said the rat, but very quietly. Susan was aware of a new sensation, as a fish might be aware of a new tide, a spring of fresh water flowing into the sea. Time was pouring into the world. She glanced up at the clock. It was just on half past six. The raven scratched its beak. 'The rat says ... The rat says: you'd better watch out . . .' There were others at work on this shining Hogswatch Eve. The Sandman was out and about, dragging his sack from bed to bed. Jack Frost wandered from window pane to window pane, making icy patterns. And one tiny hunched shape slid and slithered along the gutter, squelching its feet in slush and swearing under its breath. It wore a stained black suit and, on its head, the type of hat known in various parts of the multiverse as 'bowler', 'derby' or 'the one that makes you look a bit of a tit'. The hat had been pressed down very firmly and, since the creature had long pointy ears, these had been forced out sideways and gave it the look of a small malignant wing-nut. The thing was a gnome by shape but a fairy by profession. Fairies aren't necessarily little twinkly creatures. It's purely a job description, and the commonest ones aren't even visible.[9] A fairy is simply any creature currently employed under supernatural laws to take things away or, as in the case of the small creature presently climbing up the inside of a drainpipe and swearing, to bring things. Oh, yes. He does. Someone has to do it, and he looks the right gnome for the job. Oh, yes. Sideney was worried. He didn't like violence, and there had been a lot of it in the last few days, if days passed in this place. The men ... well, they only seemed to find life interesting when they were doing something sharp to someone else and, while they didn't bother him much in the same way that lions don't trouble themselves with ants, they certainly worried him. But not as much as Teatime did. Even the brute called Chickenwire treated Teatime with caution, if not respect, and the monster called Banjo just followed him around like a puppy. The enormous man was watching him now. He reminded Sideney too much of Ronnie Jenks, the bully who'd made his life miserable at Cammer Wimblestone's dame school. Ronnie hadn't been a pupil. He was the old woman's grandson or nephew or something, which gave him a licence to hang around the place and beat up any kid smaller or weaker or brighter than he was, which more or less meant he had the whole world to choose from. In those circumstances, it was particularly unfair that he always chose Sideney. Sideney hadn't hated Ronnie. He'd been too frightened. He'd wanted to be his friend. Oh, so much. Because that way, just possibly, he wouldn't have his head trodden on such a lot and would actually get to eat his lunch instead of having it thrown in the privy. And it had been a good day when it had been his lunch. And then, despite all Ronnie's best efforts, Sideney had grown up and gone to university. Occasionally his mother told him how Ronnie was getting on (she assumed, in the way of mothers, that because they had been small boys at school together they had been friends). Apparently he ran a fruit stall and was married to a girl called Angie.[10] This was not enough punishment, Sideney considered. Banjo even breathed like Ronnie, who had to concentrate on such an intellectual exercise and always had one blocked nostril. And his mouth open all the time. He looked as though he was living on invisible plankton. He tried to keep his mind on what he was doing and ignore the laboured gurgling behind him. A change in its tone made him look up. 'Fascinating,' said Teatime. 'You make it look so easy.' Sideney sat back, nervously. 'Urn ... it should be fine now, sir,' he said. 'It just got a bit scuffed when we were piling up the He couldn't bring himself to say it, he even had to avert his eyes from the heap, it was the sound they'd made. '. . . the things,' he finished. 'We don't need to repeat the spell?' said Teatime. 'Oh, it'll keep going for ever,' said Sideney. 'The simple ones do. It's just a state change, powered by the ... the ... it just keeps going He swallowed. 'So,' he said, 'I was thinking ... since you don't actually need me, sir, perhaps . . .' 'Mr Brown seems to be having some trouble with the locks on the top floor,' said Teatime. 'That door we couldn't open, remember? I'm sure you'll want to help.' Sideney's face fell. 'Urn, I'm not a locksmith. ' 'They appear to be magical.' Sideney opened his mouth to say, 'But I'm very bad at magical locks,' and then thought much better of it. He had already fathomed that if Teatime wanted you to do something, and you weren't very good at it, then your best plan, in fact quite possibly your only plan, was to learn to be good at it very quickly. Sideney was not a fool. He'd seen the way the others reacted around Teatime, and they were men who did things he'd only dreamed of.[11] At which point he was relieved to see Medium Dave walk down the stairs, and it said a lot for the effect of Teatime's stare that anyone could be relieved to have it punctuated by someone like Medium Dave. 'We've found another guard, sir. Up on the sixth floor. He's been hiding.' Teatime stood up. 'Oh dear,' he said. 'Not trying to be heroic, was he?' 'He's just scared. Shall we let him go?' 'Let him go?' said Teatime. 'Far too messy. I'll go up there. Come along, Mr Wizard.' Sideney followed him reluctantly up the stairs. The tower - if that's what it was, he thought; he was used to the odd architecture at Unseen University and this made UU look normal was a hollow tube. No fewer than four spiral staircases climbed the inside, criss-crossing on landings and occasionally passing through one another in defiance of generally accepted physics. But that was practically normal for an alumnus of Unseen University, although technically Sideney had not alumed. What threw the eye was the absence of shadows. You didn't notice shadows, how they delineated things, how they gave texture to the world, until they weren't there. The white marble, if that's what it was seemed to glow from the inside. Even when the impossible sun shone through a window it barely caused faint grey smudges where honest shadows should be. The tower seemed to avoid darkness. That was even more frightening than the times when, after a complicated landing, you found yourself walking up by stepping down the underside of a stair and the distant floor now hung overhead like a ceiling. He'd noticed that even the other men shut their eyes when that happened. Teatime, though, took those stairs three at a time, laughing like a kid with a new toy. They reached an upper landing and followed a corridor. The others were gathered by a closed door. 'He's barricaded himself in,' said Chickenwire. Teatime tapped on it. 'You in there,' he said. 'Come on out. You have my word you won't be harmed.' 'No!' Teatime stood back. 'Banjo, knock it down,' he said. Banjo lumbered forward. The door withstood a couple of massive kicks and then burst open. The guard was cowering behind an overturned cabinet. He cringed back as Teatime stepped over it. 'What're you doing here?' he shouted. 'Who are you?' 'Ah, I'm glad you asked. I'm your worst nightmare!' said Teatime cheerfully. The man shuddered. 'You mean ... the one with the giant cabbage and the sort of whirring knife thing?' 'Sorry?' Teatime looked momentarily nonplussed. 'Then you're the one about where I'm falling, only instead of ground underneath it's all-' 'No, in fact I'm---' The guard sagged. 'Awww, not the one where there's all this kind of, you know, mud and then everything goes blue---’ 'No, I'm---' 'Oh, shit, then you're the one where there's this door only there's no floor beyond it and then there's these claws-' 'No,' said Teatime. 'Not that one.' He withdrew a dagger from his sleeve. 'I'm the one where this man comes out of nowhere and kills you stone dead.' The guard grinned with relief. 'Oh, that one,' he said. 'But that one's not very-' He crumpled around Teatime's suddenly outthrust fist. And then, just like the others had done, he faded. 'Rather a charitable act there, I feel,' Teatime said as the man vanished. 'But it is nearly Hogswatch, after all.' Death, pillow slipping gently under his red robe, stood in the middle of the nursery carpet . . . It was an old one. Things ended up in the nursery when they had seen a complete tour of duty in the rest of the house. Long ago, someone had made it by carefully knotting long bits of brightly coloured rag into a sacking base, giving it the look of a deflated Rastafarian hedgehog. Things lived among the rags. There were old rusks, bits of toy, buckets of dust. It had seen life. It may even have evolved some. Now the occasional lump of grubby melting snow dropped onto it. Susan was crimson with anger. 'I mean, why?' she demanded, walking around the figure. 'This is Hogswatch! It's supposed to be jolly, with mistletoe and holly, and - and other things ending in olly! It's a time when people want to feel good about things and eat until they explode! It's a time when they want to see all their relatives-' She stopped that sentence. 'I mean it's a time when humans are really human,' she said. 'And they don't want a ... a skeleton at the feast! Especially one, I might add, who's wearing a false beard and has got a damn cushion shoved up his robe! I mean, why?' Death looked nervous. ALBERT SAID IT WOULD HELP ME GET INTO THE SPIRIT OF THE THING. ER AGAIN There was a small squelchy noise. Susan spun around, grateful right now for any distraction. 'Don't think I can't hear you! They're grapes, understand? And the other things are satsumas! Get out of the fruit bowl!' 'Can't blame a bird for trying,' said the raven sulkily, from the table. 'And you, you leave those nuts alone! They're for tomorrow!' SKQUEAF, said the Death of Rats, swallowing hurriedly. Susan turned back to Death. The Hogfather's artificial stomach was now at groin level. 'This is a nice house,' she said. 'And this is a . IT'S GOOD TO SEE YOU good job. And it's real, with normal people. And I was looking forward to a real life, where normal things happen! And suddenly the old circus comes to town. Look at yourselves. Three Stooges, No Waiting! Well, I don't know what's going on, but you can all leave again, right? This is my life. It doesn't belong to any of you. It's not going to-' There was a muffled curse, a rush of soot, and a skinny old man landed in the grate. 'Bum!' he said. 'Good grief! ' raged Susan. 'And here is Pixie Albert! Well, well, well! Come along in, do! If the real Hogfather doesn't come soon there's not going to be room.' HE WON'T BE JOINING US, said Death. The pillow slid softly on to the rug. 'Oh, and why not? Both of the children did letters to him,' said Susan. 'There's rules, you know.' YES. THERE ARE RULES. AND THEY'RE ON THE LIST. I CHECKED IT. Albert pulled the pointy hat off his head and spat out some soot. 'Right. He did. Twice,' he said. 'Anything to drink around here?' 'So what have you turned up for?' Susan demanded. 'And if it's for business reasons, I will add, then that outfit is in extremely poor taste--' THE HOGFATHER IS ... UNAVAILABLE. 'Unavailable? At Hogswatch?' YES. 'Why?' HE IS . . . LET ME SEE . . . THERE ISN'T AN ENTIRELY APPROPRIATE HUMAN WORD, SO ... LET'S SETTLE FOR ... DEAD. YES. HE IS DEAD. Susan had never hung up a stocking. She'd never looked for eggs laid by the Soul Cake Duck. She'd never put a tooth under her pillow in the serious expectation that a dentally inclined fairy would turn up. It wasn't that her parents didn't believe in such things. They didn't need to believe in them. They knew they existed. They just wished they didn't. Oh, there had been presents, at the right time, with a careful label saying who they were from. And a superb egg on Soul Cake Morning, filled with sweets. Juvenile teeth earned no less than a dollar each from her father, without argument.[12] But it was all straightforward. She knew now that they'd been trying to protect her. She hadn't known then that her father had been Death's apprentice for a while, and that her mother was Death's adopted daughter. She'd had very dim recollections of being taken a few times to see someone who'd been quite, well, jolly, in a strange, thin way. And the visits had suddenly stopped. And she'd met him later and, yes, he had his good side, and for a while she'd wondered why her parents had been so unfeeling and She knew now why they'd tried to keep her away. There was far more to genetics than little squirmy spirals. She could walk through walls when she really had to. She could use a tone of voice that was more like actions than words, that somehow reached inside people and operated all the right switches. And her hair ... That had only happened recently, though. It used to be unmanageable, but at around the age of seventeen she had found it more or less managed itself. That had lost her several young men. Someone's hair rearranging itself into a new style, the tresses curling around themselves like a nest of kittens, could definitely put the crimp on any relationship. She'd been making good progress, though. She could go for days now without feeling anything other than entirely human. But it was always the case, wasn't it? You could go out into the world, succeed on your own terms, and sooner or later some embarrassing old relative was bound to turn up. Grunting and swearing, the gnome clambered out of another drainpipe, jammed its hat firmly on its head, threw its sack onto a snowdrift and jumped down after it. ' 's a good one,' he said. 'Ha, take 'im weeks to get rid of that one!' He took a crumpled piece of paper out of a pocket and examined it closely. Then he looked at an elderly figure working away quietly at the next house. It was standing by a window, drawing with great concentration on the glass. The gnome wandered up, interested, and watched critically. 'Why just fern patterns?' he said, after a while. 'Pretty, yeah, but you wouldn't catch me puttin' a penny in your hat for fern patterns.' The figure turned, brush in hand. 'I happen to like fern patterns,' said jack Frost coldly. 'It's just that people expect, you know, sad big-eyed kids, kittens lookin' out of boots, little doggies, that sort of thing.' 'I do ferns.' 'Or big pots of sunflowers, happy seaside scenes... ' 'And ferns.' 'I mean, s'posing some big high priest wanted you to paint the temple ceiling with gods 'n' angels and suchlike, what'd you do then?' 'He could have as many gods and angels as he liked, provided they-' '-looked like ferns?' 'I resent the implication that I am solely fernfixated,' said Jack Frost. 'I can also do a very nice paisley pattern.' 'What's that look like, then?' 'Well . . . it does, admittedly, have a certain ferny quality to the uninitiated eye.' Frost leaned forward. 'Who're you?' The gnome took a step backwards. 'You're not a tooth fairy, are you? I see more and more of them about these days. Nice girls.' 'Nah. Nah. Not teeth,' said the gnome, clutching his sack. 'What, then?' The gnome told him. 'Really?' said Jack Frost. 'I thought they just turned up.' 'Well, come to that, I thought frost on the windows just happened all by itself,' said the gnome. "ere, you don't half look spiky. I bet You go through a lot of bedsheets.' 'I don't sleep,' said Frost icily, turning away. 'And now, if you'll excuse me, I have a large number of windows to do. Ferns aren't easy. You need a steady hand.' 'What do you mean dead?' Susan demanded. 'How can the Hogfather be dead? He's ... isn't he what you are? An-' ANTHROPOMORPHIC PERSONIFICATION. YES. HE HAS BECOME SO. THE SPIRIT OF HOGSWATCH. 'But ... how? How can anyone kill the Hogfather? Poisoned sherry? Spikes in the chimney?' THERE ARE ... MORE SUBTLE WAYS. 'Coff. Coff. Coff. Oh dear, this soot,' said Albert loudly. 'Chokes me up something cruel.' 'And you've taken over?' said Susan, ignoring him. 'That's sick!' Death contrived to look hurt. 'I'll just go and have a look somewhere,' said Albert, brushing past her and opening the door. She pushed it shut quickly. 'And what are you doing here, Albert?' she said, clutching at the straw. 'I thought you'd die if you ever came back to the world!' AH, BUT WE ARE NOT IN THE WORLD, said Death. WE ARE IN THE SPECIAL CONGRUENT REALITY CREATED FOR THE HOGFATHER. NORMAL RULES HAVE TO BE SUSPENDED. HOW ELSE COULD ANYONE GET AROUND THE ENTIRE WORLD IN ONE NIGHT? ' 's right,' said Albert, leering. 'One of the Hogfather's Little Helpers, me. Official. Cot the pointy green hat and everything.' He spotted the glass of sherry and couple of turnips that the children had left on the table, and bore down on them. Susan looked shocked. A couple of days earlier she'd taken the children to the Hogfather's Grotto in one of the big shops in The Maul. Of course, it wasn't the real one, but it had turned out to be a fairly good actor in a red suit. There had been people dressed up as pixies, and a picket outside the shop by the Campaign for Equal Heights.[13] None of the pixies had looked anything like Albert. If they had, people would have only gone into the grotto armed. 'Been good, 'ave yer?' said Albert, and spat into the fireplace. Susan stared at him. Death leaned down. She stared up into the blue glow of his eyes. YOU ARE KEEPING WELL? he said. 'Yes.' SELF-RELIANT? MAKING YOUR OWN WAY IN THE WORLD? 'Yes!' GOOD. WELL, COME, ALBERT. WE WILL LOAD THE STOCKINGS AND GET ON WITH THINGS. A couple of letters appeared in Death's hand. SOMEONE CHRISTENED THE CHILD TWYLA? 'I m afraid so, but why-' AND THE OTHER ONE GAWAIN? 'Yes. But look, how-' WHY GAWAIN? 'I . . . suppose it's a good strong name for a fighter . . .' A SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY, I SUSPECT. I SEE THE GIRL WRITES IN GREEN CRAYON ON PINK PAPER WITH A MOUSE IN THE CORNER. THE MOUSE IS WEARING A DRESS. 'I ought to point out that she decided to do that so the Hogfather would think she was sweet,' said Susan. 'Including the deliberate bad spelling. But look, why are you-' SHE SAYS SHE IS FIVE YEARS OLD. 'In years, yes. In cynicism, she's about thirtyfive. Why are you doing the-' BUT SHE BELIEVES IN THE HOGFATHER? 'She'd believe in anything if there was a dolly in it for her. But you're not going to leave without telling me---' Death hung the stockings back on the mantelpiece. NOW WE MUST BE GOING. HAPPY HOGSWATCH. ER ... OH, YES: HO. HO. HO. 'Nice sherry,' said Albert, wiping his mouth. Rage overtook Susan's curiosity. It had to travel quite fast. 'You've actually been drinking the actual drinks little children leave out for the actual Hogfather?' she said. 'Yeah, why not? He ain't drinking 'em. Not where he's gone.' 'And how many have you had, may I ask?' 'Dunno, ain't counted,' said Albert happily. ONE MILLION, EIGHT HUNDRED THOUSAND, SEVEN HUNDRED AND SIX, said Death. AND SIXTY EIGHT THOUSAND, THREE HUNDRED AND NINETEEN PORK PIES. AND ONE TURNIP. 'It looked pork-pie shaped,' said Albert. 'Everything does, after a while.' 'Then why haven't you exploded?' 'Dunno. Always had a good digestion.' TO THE HOGFATHER, ALL PORK PIES ARE AS ONE PORK PIE. EXCEPT THE ONE LIKE A TURNIP. COME, ALBERT. WE HAVE TRESPASSED ON SUSAN'S TIME. 'Why are you doing this?' Susan screamed. I AM SORRY. I CANNOT TELL YOU. FORGET YOU SAW ME. IT'S NOT YOUR BUSINESS. 'Not my business? How can-' AND NOW ... WE MUST BE GOING... 'Nighty-night,' said Albert. The clock struck, twice, for the half-hour. It was still half past six. And they were gone. The sledge hurtled across the sky. 'She'll try to find out what this is all about, you know,' said Albert. OH DEAR. 'Especially after you told her not to.' YOU THINK SO? 'Yeah,' said Albert. DEAR ME. I STILL HAVE A LOT TO LEARN ABOUT HUMANS, DON'T I? 'Oh ... I dunno... ' said Albert. OBVIOUSLY IT WOULD BE QUITE WRONG TO INVOLVE A HUMAN IN ALL THIS. THAT IS WHY, YOU WILL RECALL, I CLEARLY FORBADE HER TO TAKE AN INTEREST. 'Yeah ... you did. . BESIDES, IT'S AGAINST THE RULES. 'You said them little grey buggers had already broken the rules.' YES, BUT I CAN'T JUST WAVE A MAGIC WAND AND MAKE IT ALL BETTER. THERE MUST BE PROCEDURES. Death stared ahead for a moment and then shrugged. AND WE HAVE SO MUCH TO DO. WE HAVE PROMISES TO KEEP. 'Well, the night is young,' said Albert, sitting back in the sacks. THE NIGHT IS OLD. THE NIGHT IS ALWAYS OLD. The pigs galloped on. Then, 'No, it ain't.' I'M SORRY? 'The night isn't any older than the day, master. It stands to reason. There must have been a day before anyone knew what the night was.' YES, BUT IT'S MORE DRAMATIC. 'Oh. Right, then.' Susan stood by the fireplace. It wasn't as though she disliked Death. Death considered as an individual rather than life's final curtain was someone she couldn't help liking, in a strange kind of way. Even so ... The idea of the Grim Reaper filling the Hogswatch stockings of the world didn't fit well in her head, no matter which way she twisted it. It was like trying to imagine Old Man Trouble as the Tooth Fairy. Oh, yes. Old Man Trouble ... now there was a nasty one for you... But honestly, what kind of sick person went round creeping into little children's bedrooms all night? Well, the Hogfather, of course, but... There was a little tinkling sound from somewhere near the base of the Hogswatch tree. The raven backed away from the shards of one of the glittering balls. 'Sorry,' it mumbled. 'Bit of a species reaction there. You know . . . round, glittering sometimes you just gotta peck-' 'That chocolate money belongs to the children!' SQUEAK? said the Death of Rats, backing away from the shiny coins. 'Why's he doing this?' SQUEAK. 'You don't know either?' SQUEAK. 'Is there some kind of trouble? Did he do something to the real Hogfather?' SQUEAK. 'Why won't he tell me?' SQUEAK. 'Thank you. You've been very helpful.' Something ripped, behind her. She turned and saw the raven carefully removing a strip of red wrapping paper from a package. 'Stop that this minute!' It looked up guiltily. 'It's only a little bit,' it said. 'No one's going to miss it.' 'What do you want it for, anyway?' 'We're attracted to bright colours, right? Automatic reaction.' 'That's jackdaws!' 'Damn. Is it?' The Death of Rats nodded. SQUEAK. 'Oh, so suddenly you're Mr Ornithologist, are you?' snapped the raven. Susan sat down and held out her hand. The Death of Rats leapt onto it. She could feel its claws, like tiny pins. It was just like those scenes where the sweet and pretty heroine sings a little duet with Mr Bluebird. Similar, anyway. In general outline, at least. But with more of a PG rating. 'Has he gone funny in the head?' SQUEAK. The rat shrugged. 'But it could happen, couldn't it? He's very old, and I suppose he sees a lot of terrible things.' SQUEAK. 'All the trouble in the world,' the raven translated. 'I understood,' said Susan. That was a talent, too. She didn't understand what the rat said. She just understood what it meant. 'There's something wrong and he won't tell me?' said Susan. That made her even more angry. 'But Albert is in on it too,' she added. She thought: thousands, millions of years in the same job. Not a nice one. It isn't always cheerful old men passing away at a great age. Sooner or later, it was bound to get anyone down. Someone had to do something. It was like that time when Twyla's grandmother had started telling everyone that she was the Empress of Krull and had stopped wearing clothes. And Susan was bright enough to know that the phrase 'Someone ought to do something' was not, by itself, a helpful one. People who used it never added the rider 'and that someone is me'. But someone ought to do something, and right now the whole pool of someones consisted of her, and no one else. Twyla's grandmother had ended up in a nursing home overlooking the sea at Quirm. That sort of option probably didn't apply here. Besides, he'd be unpopular with the other residents. She concentrated. This was the simplest talent of them all. She was amazed that other people couldn't do it. She shut her eyes, placed her hands palm down in front of her at shoulder height, spread her fingers and lowered her hands. When they were halfway down she heard the clock stop ticking. The last tick was longdrawn-out, like a death rattle. Time stopped. But duration continued. She'd always wondered, when she was small, why visits to her grandfather could go on for days and yet, when they got back, the calendar was still plodding along as if they'd never been away. Now she knew the why, although probably no human being would ever really understand the how. Sometimes, somewhere, somehow, the numbers on the clock did not count. Between every rational moment were a billion irrational ones. Somewhere behind the hours there was a place where the Hogfather rode, the tooth fairies climbed their ladders, jack Frost drew his pictures, the Soul Cake Duck laid her chocolate eggs. In the endless spaces between the clumsy seconds Death moved like a witch dancing through raindrops, never getting wet. Humans could liv- No, humans couldn't live here, no, because even when you diluted a glass of wine with a bathful of water you might have more liquid but you still have the same amount of wine. A rubber band was still the same rubber band no matter how far it was stretched. Humans could exist here, though. It was never too cold, although the air did prickle like winter air on a sunny day. But out of human habit Susan got her cloak out of the closet. SQUEAK. 'Haven't you got some mice and rats to see to, then?' 'Nah, 's pretty quiet just before Hogswatch,' said the raven, who was trying to fold the red paper between his claws. 'You get a lot of gerbils and hamsters and that in a few days, mind. When the kids forget to feed them or try to find out what makes them go.' Of course, she'd be leaving the children. But it wasn't as if anything could happen to them. There wasn't any time for it to happen to them in. She hurried down the stairs and let herself out of the front door. Snow hung in the air. It was not a poetic description. It hovered like the stars. When flakes touched Susan they melted with little electric flashes. There was a lot of traffic in the street, but it was fossilized in Time. She walked carefully between it until she reached the entrance to the park. The snow had done what even wizards and the Watch couldn't do, which was clean up AnkhMorpork. It hadn't had time to get dirty. In the morning it'd probably look as though the city had been covered in coffee meringue, but for now it mounded the bushes and trees in pure white. There was no noise. The curtains of snow shut out the city lights. A few yards into the park and she might as well be in the country. She stuck her fingers into her mouth and whistled. Yknow, that could've been done with a bit more ceremony,' said the raven, who'd perched on a snowencrusted twig. 'Shut up.' ' 's good, though. Better than most women could do.' 'Shut up.' They waited. 'Why have you stolen that piece of red paper from a little girl's present?' said Susan. 'I've got plans,' said the raven darkly. They waited again. She wondered what would happen if it didn't work. She wondered if the rat would snigger. It had the most annoying snigger in the world. Then there were hoofbeats and the floating snow burst open and the horse was there. Binky trotted round in a circle, and then stood and steamed. He wasn't saddled. Death's horse didn't let you fall. If I get on, Susan thought, it'll all start again. I'll be out of the light and into the world beyond this one. I'll fall off the tightrope. But a voice inside her said, You want to, though . don't you . . . ? Ten seconds later, there was only the snow. The raven turned to the Death of Rats. 'Any idea where I can get some string?' SQUEAK. She was watched. One said, Who is she? One said, Do we remember that Death adopted a daughter? The young woman is her daughter. One said, She is human? One said, Mostly. One said, Can she be killed? One said, Oh, yes. One said, Well, that's all right, then. One said, Er ... we don't think we're going to get into trouble over this, do we? All this is not exactly ... authorized. We don't want questions asked. One said, We have a duty to rid the universe of sloppy thinking. One said, Everyone will be grateful when they find out. Binky touched down lightly on Death's lawn. Susan didn't bother with the front door but went round the back, which was never locked. There had been changes. One significant change, at least. There was a cat-flap in the door. She stared at it. After a second or two a ginger cat came through the flap, gave her an I'm-not-hungryand-you're-notinteresting look, and padded off into the gardens. Susan pushed open the door into the kitchen. Cats of every size and colour covered every surface. Hundreds of eyes swivelled to watch her. It was Mrs Gammage all over again, she thought. The old woman was a regular in Biers for the company and was quite gaga, and one of the symptoms of those going completely yoyo was that they broke out in chronic cats. Usually cats who'd mastered every detail of feline existence except the whereabouts of the dirt box. Several of them had their noses in a bowl of cream. Susan had never been able to see the attraction in cats. They were owned by the kind of people who liked puddings. There were actual people in the world whose idea of heaven would be a chocolate cat. 'Push off, the lot of you,' she said. 'I've never known him have pets.' The cats gave her a look to indicate that they were intending to go somewhere else in any case and strolled off, licking their chops. The bowl slowly filled up again. They were obviously living cats. Only life had colour here. Everything else was created by Death. Colour, along with plumbing and music, were arts that escaped the grasp of his genius. She left them in the kitchen and wandered along to the study. There were changes here, too. By the look of it, he'd been trying to learn to play the violin again. He'd never been able to understand why he couldn't play music. The desk was a mess. Books lay open, piled on one another. They were the ones Susan had never learned to read. Some of the characters hovered above the pages or moved in complicated little patterns as they read you while you read them. Intricate devices had been scattered across the top. They looked vaguely navigational, but on what oceans and under which stars? Several pages of parchment had been filled up with Death's own handwriting. It was immediately recognizable. No one else Susan had ever met had handwriting with serifs. It looked as though he'd been trying to work something out. NOT KLATCH. NOT HOWOWONDALAND. NOT THE EMPIRE. LET US SAY 20 MILLION CHILDREN AT 2LB OF TOYS PER CHILD. EQUALS 17,857 TONS. 1,785 TONS PER HOUR. MEMO: DON'T FORGET THE SOOTY FOOTPRINTS. MORE PRACTICE ON THE HO HO HO. CUSHION. She put the paper back carefully. Sooner or later it'd get to you. Death was fascinated by humans, and study was never a one-way thing. A man might spend his life peering at the private life of elementary particles and then find he either knew who he was or where he was, but not both. Death had picked up ... humanity. Not the real thing, but something that might pass for it until you examined it closely. The house even imitated human houses. Death had created a bedroom for himself, despite the fact that he never slept. If he really picked things up from humans, had he tried insanity? It was very popular, after all. Perhaps, after all these millennia, he wanted to be nice. She let herself into the Room of Lifetimers. She'd liked the sound of it, when she was a little girl. But now the hiss of sand from millions of hourglasses, and the little pings and pops as full ones vanished and new empty ones appeared, was not so enjoyable. Now she knew what was going on. Of course, everyone died sooner or later. It just wasn't right to be listening to it happening. She was about to leave when she noticed the open door in a place where she had never seen a door before. It was disguised. A whole section of shelving, complete with its whispering glasses, had swung out. Susan pushed it back and forth with a finger. When it was shut, you'd have to look hard to see the crack. There was a much smaller room on the other side. It was merely the size of, say, a cathedral. And it was lined floor to ceiling with more hourglasses that Susan could just see dimly in the light from the big room. She stepped inside and snapped her fingers. 'Light,' she commanded. A couple of candles sprang into life. The hourglasses were ... wrong. The ones in the main room, however metaphorical they might be, were solid-looking things of wood and brass and glass. But these looked as though they were made of highlights and shadows with no real substance at all. She peered at a large one. The name in it was: OFFLER. 'The crocodile god?' she thought. Well, gods had a life, presumably. But they never actually died, as far as she knew. They just dwindled away to a voice on the wind and a footnote in some textbook on religion. There were other gods lined up. She recognized a few of them. But there were smaller lifetimers on the shelf. When she saw the labels she nearly burst out laughing. 'The Tooth Fairy? The Sandman? John Barleycorn? The Soul Cake Duck? The God of what?' She stepped back, and something crunched under her feet. There were shards of glass on the floor. She reached down and picked up the biggest. Only a few letters remained of the name etched into the glass HOGFA... 'Oh, no ... it's true. Granddad, what have you done?' When she left, the candles winked out. Darkness sprang back. And in the darkness, among, the spilled sand, a faint sizzle and a tiny spark of light… Mustrum Ridcully adjusted the towel around his waist. 'How're we doing, Mr Modo?' The University gardener saluted. 'The tanks are full, Mr Archchancellor sir!' he said brightly. 'And I've been stoking the hotwater boilers an day!' The other senior wizards clustered in the doorway. 'Really, Mustrum, I really think this is most unwise,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'It was surely sealed up for a purpose.' 'Remember what it said on the door,' said the Dean. 'Oh, they just wrote that on it to keep people out,' said Ridcully, opening a fresh bar of soap. 'Wen, yes,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'That's right. That's what people do.' 'It's a bathroom,' said Ridcully. 'You are all acting as if it's some kind of a torture chamber.' 'A bathroom,' said the Dean, 'designed by Bloody Stupid Johnson. Archchancellor Weatherwax only used it once and then had it sealed up! Mustrum, I beg you to reconsider! It's a Johnson!' There was something of a pause, because even Ridcully had to adjust his mind around this. The late (or at least severely delayed) Bergholt Stuttley Johnson was generally recognized as the worst inventor in the world, yet in a very specialized sense. Merely bad inventors made things that failed to operate. He wasn't among these small fry. Any fool could make something that did absolutely nothing when you pressed the button. He scorned such fumble-fingered amateurs. Everything he built worked. It just didn't do what it said on the box. If you wanted a small ground-to-air missile, you asked Johnson to design an ornamental fountain. It amounted to pretty much the same thing. But this never discouraged him, or the morbid curiosity of his clients. Music, landscape gardening, architecture - there was no start to his talents. Nevertheless, it was a little bit surprising to find that Bloody Stupid had turned to bathroom design. But, as Ridcully said, it was known that he had designed and built several large musical organs and, when you got right down to it, it was all just plumbing, wasn't it? The other wizards, who'd been there longer than the Archchancellor, took the view that if Bloody Stupid Johnson had built a fully functional bathroom he'd actually meant it to be something else. 'Y'know, I've always felt that Mr Johnson was a much maligned man,' said Ridcully, eventually. 'Well, yes, of course he was,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, clearly exasperated. 'That's like saying that jam attracts wasps, you see.' 'Not everything he made worked badly,' said Ridcully stoutly, flourishing his scrubbing brush. 'Look at that thing they use down in the kitchens for peelin' the potatoes, for example.' 'Ah, you mean the thing with the brass plate on it saying "Improved Manicure Device", Archchancellor?' 'Listen, it's just water,' snapped Ridcully. 'Even Johnson couldn't do much harm with water. Modo, open the sluices!' The rest of the wizards backed away as the gardener turned a couple of ornate brass wheels. 'I'm fed up with groping around for the soap like you fellows!' shouted the Archchancellor, as water gushed through hidden channels. 'Hygiene. That's the ticket!' 'Don't say we didn't warn you,' said the Dean, shutting the door. 'Er, I still haven't worked out where all the pipes lead, sir,' Modo ventured. 'We'll find out, never you fear,' said Ridcully happily. He removed his hat and put on a shower cap of his own design. In deference to his profession, it was pointy. He picked up a yellow rubber duck. 'Man the pumps, Mr Modo. Or dwarf them, of course, in your case.' 'Yes, Archchancellor.' Modo hauled on a lever. The pipes started a hammering noise and steam leaked out of a few joints. Ridcully took a last look around the bathroom. It was a hidden treasure, no doubt about it. Say what you like, old Johnson must sometimes have got it right, even if it was only by accident. The entire room, including the floor and ceiling, had been tiled in white, blue and green. In the centre, under its crown of pipes, was Johnson's Patent 'Typhoon' Superior Indoor Ablutorium with Automatic Soap Dish, a sanitary poem in mahogany, rosewood and copper. He'd got Modo to polish every pipe and brass tap until they gleamed. It had taken ages. Ridcully shut the frosted door behind him. The inventor of the ablutionary marvel had decided to make a mere shower a fully controllable experience, and one wall of the large cubicle held a marvellous panel covered with brass taps cast in the shape of mermaids and shells and, for some reason, pomegranates. There were separate feeds for salt water, hard water and soft water and huge wheels for accurate control of temperature. Ridcully inspected them with care. Then he stood back, looked around at the tiles and sang, 'Mi, mi, mi!' His voice reverberated back at him. 'A perfect echo!' said Ridcully, one of nature's bathroom baritones. He picked up a speaking tube that had been installed to allow the bather to communicate with the engineer. 'All cisterns go, Mr Modo!' 'Aye, aye, sir!' Ridcully opened the tap marked 'Spray' and leapt aside, because part of him was still well aware that Johnson's inventiveness didn't just push the edge of the envelope but often went across the room and out through the wall of the sorting office. A gentle shower of warm water, almost a caressing mist, enveloped him. 'My word!' he exclaimed, and tried another tap. 'Shower' turned out to be a little more invigorating. 'Torrent' made him gasp for breath and 'Deluge' sent him groping to the panel because the top of his head felt that it was being removed. 'Wave' sloshed a wall of warm salt water from one side of the cubicle to the other before it disappeared into the grating that was set into the middle of the floor. 'Are you all right, sir?' Modo called out. 'Marvellous! And there's a dozen knobs I haven't tried yet!' Modo nodded, and tapped a valve. Ridcully's voice, raised in what he considered to be song, boomed out through the thick clouds of steam. 'Oh, IIIIIII knew a ... er ... an agricultural worker of some description, possibly a thatcher, And I knew him well, and he - he was a farmer, now I come to think of it - and he had a daughter and her name I can't recall at the moment, And ... Where was P Ah yes. Chorus: Something something, a humorously shaped vegetable, a turnip, I believe, something something and the sweet nightingaleeeeaarggooooooh-ARGHH oh oh oh-' The song shut off suddenly. All Modo could hear was a ferocious gushing noise. 'Archchancellor?' After a moment a voice answered from near the ceiling. It sounded somewhat high and hesitant. 'Er . . . I wonder if you would be so very good as to shut the water off from out there, my dear chap? Er ... quite gently, if you wouldn't mind. . .' Modo carefully spun a wheel. The gushing sound gradually subsided. 'Ah. Well done,' said the voice, but now from somewhere nearer floor level. 'Well. Jolly good job. I think we can definitely call it a success. Yes, indeed. Er. I wonder if you could help me walk for a moment. I inexplicably feel a little unsteady on my feet . . . ' Modo pushed open the door and helped Ridcully out and onto a bench. He looked rather pale. 'Yes, indeed,' said the Archchancellor, his eyes a little glazed. 'Astoundingly successful. Er. Just a minor point, Modo-' 'Yes, sir?' 'There's a tap in there we perhaps should leave alone for now,' said Ridcully. 'I'd esteem it a service if you could go and make a little sign to hang on it.' 'Yes, sir?' 'Saying "Do not touch at all", or something like that.' 'Right, sir.' 'Hang it on the one marked "Old Faithful".' 'Yes, sir.' 'No need to mention it to the other fellows.' 'Yes. sir.' 'Ye gods, I've never felt so clean.' From a vantage point among some ornamental tilework near the ceiling a small gnome in a bowler hat watched Ridcully carefully. When Modo had gone the Archchancellor slowly began to dry himself on a big fluffy towel. As he got his composure back, so another song wormed its way under his breath. 'On the second day of Hogswatch I ... sent my true love back A nasty little letter, hah, yes indeed, and a partridge in a pear tree---' The gnome slid down onto the tiles and crept up behind the briskly shaking shape. Ridcully, after a few more trial runs, settled on a song which evolves somewhere on every planet where there are winters. It's often dragooned into the service of some local religion and a few words are changed, but it's really about things that have to do with gods only in the same way that roots have to do with leaves. '-the rising of the sun, and the running of the deer---' Ridcully spun. A corner of wet towel caught the gnome on the ear and flicked it onto its back. 'I saw you creeping up!' roared the Archchancellor. 'What's the game, then? Small-time thief, are you?' The gnome slid backwards on the soapy surface. ' ' ere, what's your game, mister, you ain't supposed to be able to see me!' 'I'm a wizard! We can see things that are really there, you know,' said Ridcully. 'And in the case of the Bursar, things that aren't there, too. What's in this bag?' 'You don't wanna open the bag, mister! You really don't wanna open the bag!' 'Why? What have you got in it?' The gnome sagged. 'It ain't what's in it, mister. It's what'll come out. I has to let 'em out one at a time, no knowin' what'd happen if they all gets out at once!' Ridcully looked interested, and started to undo the string. 'You'll really wish you hadn't, mister!' the gnome pleaded. 'Will I? What're you doing here, young man?' The gnome gave up. 'Well ... you know the Tooth Fairy?' 'Yes. Of course,' said Ridcully. 'Well ... I ain't her. But ... it's sort of like the same business . . .' 'What? You take things away?'        'Er     not take away, as such. More sort of ... bring ... 'Ah ... like new teeth?' 'Er ... like new verrucas,' said the gnome. Death threw the sack into the back of the sledge and climbed in after it. 'You're doing well, master,' said Albert. THIS CUSHION IS STILL UNCOMFORTABLE, said Death, hitching his belt. I AM NOT USED TO A BIG FAT STOMACH. 'Just a stomach's the best I could do, master. You're starting off with a handicap, sort of thing.' Albert unscrewed the top off a bottle of cold tea. All the sherry had made him thirsty. 'Doing well, master,' he repeated, taking a pull. 'All the soot in the fireplace, the footprints, them swigged sherries, the sleigh tracks all over the roofs ... it's got to work.' YOU THINK SO? 'Sure.' AND I MADE SURE SOME OF THEM SAW ME. I KNOW IF THEY ARE PEEPING, Death added proudly. 'Well done, sir.' YES. 'Though here's a tip, though. Just "Ho. Ho. Ho,- will do. Don't say, "Cower, brief mortals" unless you want them to grow up to be moneylenders or some such.' HO. HO. HO. 'Yes, you're really getting the hang of it.' Albert looked down hurriedly at his notebook so that Death wouldn't see his face. 'Now, I got to tell you, master, what'll really do some good is a public appearance. Really.' OH. I DON'T NORMALLY DO THEM. 'The Hogfather's more've a public figure, master. And one good public appearance'll do more good than any amount of letting kids see you by accident. Good for the old belief muscles.' REALLY? HO. HO. HO. 'Right, right, that's really good, master. Where was I ... yes ... the shops'll be open late. Lots of kiddies get taken to see the Hogfather, you see. Not the real one, of course. just some ole geezer with a pillow up his jumper, saving yer presence, master.' NOT REAL? HO. HO. HO. 'Oh, no. And you don't need-' THE CHILDREN KNOW THIS? HO. HO. HO. Albert scratched his nose. 'S'pose so, master.' THIS SHOULD NOT BE. NO WONDER THERE HAS BEEN . . . THIS DIFFICULTY. BELIEF WAS COMPROMISED? HO. HO. HO. 'Could be, master. Er, the "ho, ho-"' WHERE DOES THIS TRAVESTY TAKE PLACE? HO. HO. HO. Albert gave up. 'Well, Crumley's in The Maul, for one. Very popular, the Hogfather Grotto. They always have a good Hogfather, apparently.' LET'S GET THERE AND SLEIGH THEM. HO. HO. HO. 'Right you are, master.' THAT WAS A PUNE OR PLAY ON WORDS, ALBERT. I DON'T KNOW IF YOU NOTICED. 'I'm laughing like hell deep down, sir.' HO. HO. HO. Archchancellor Ridcully grinned. He often grinned. He was one of those men who grinned even when they were annoyed, but right now he grinned because he was proud. A little sore still, perhaps, but still proud. 'Amazing bathroom, ain't it?' he said. 'They had it walled up, you know. Damn silly thing to do. I mean, perhaps there were a few teething troubles,' he shifted gingerly, 'but that's only to be expected. It's got everything, d'you see? Foot baths in the shape of clam shells, look. A whole wardrobe for dressing gowns. And that tub over there's got a big blower thingy so's you get bubbly water without even havin' to eat starchy food. And this thingy here with the mermaids holdin' it up's a special pot for your toenail clippings. It's got everything, this place.' 'A special pot for nail clippings?' said the Verruca Gnome. 'Oh, can't be too careful,' said Ridcully, lifting the lid of an ornate jar marked BATH SALTS and pulling out a bottle of wine. 'Get hold of something like someone's nail clipping and you've got ' em under your control. That's real old magic. Dawn of time stuff.' He held the wine bottle up to the light. 'Should be cooled nicely by now,' he said, extracting the cork. 'Verrucas, eh?' 'Wish I knew why,' said the gnome. 'You mean you don't know?' 'Nope. Suddenly I wake up and I'm the Verruca Gnome.' 'Puzzling, that,' said Ridcully. 'My dad used to say the Verruca Gnome turned up if you walked around in bare feet but I never knew you existed. I thought he just made it up. I mean, tooth fairies, yes, and them little buggers that live in flowers, used to collect 'em myself as a lad, but can't recall anything about verrucas.' He drank thoughtfully. 'Cot a distant cousin called Verruca, as a matter of fact. It's quite a nice sound, when you come to think of it.' He looked at the gnome over the top of his glass. You didn't become Archchancellor without a feeling for subtle wrongness in a situation. Well, that wasn't quite true. It was more accurate to say that you didn't remain Archchancellor for very long. 'Good job, is it?' he said thoughtfully. 'Dandruff'd be better,' said the gnome. 'At least I'd be out in the fresh air.' 'I think we'd better check up on this,' said Ridcully. 'Of course, it might be nothing.' 'Oh, thank you,' said the Verruca Gnome, gloomily. It was a magnificent Grotto this year, Vernon Crumley told himself. The staff had worked really hard. The Hogfather's sleigh was a work of art in itself, and the pigs looked really real and a wonderful shade of pink. The Grotto took up nearly all of the first floor. One of the pixies had been Disciplined for smoking behind the Magic Tinkling Waterfall and the clockwork Dolls of All Nations showing how We Could All Get Along were a bit jerky and giving trouble but all in all, he told himself, it was a display to Delight the Hearts of Kiddies everywhere. The kiddies were queueing up with their parents and watching the display owlishly. And the money was coming in. Oh, how the money was coming in. So that the staff would not be Tempted, Mr Crumley had set up an arrangement of overhead wires across the ceilings of the store. In the middle of each floor was a cashier in a little cage. Staff took money from customers, put it in a little clockwork cable car, sent it whizzing overhead to the cashier, who'd make change and start it rattling back again. Thus there was no possibility of Temptation, and the little trolleys were shooting back and forth like fireworks. Mr Crumley loved Hogswatch. It was for. the Kiddies, after all. He tucked his fingers in the pockets of his waistcoat and beamed. 'Everything going well, Miss Harding?' 'Yes, Mr Crumley,' said the cashier, meekly. 'Jolly good.' He looked at the pile of coins. A bright little zig-zag crackled off them and earthed itself on the metal grille. Mr Crumley blinked. In front of him sparks flashed off the steel rims of Miss Harding's spectacles. The Grotto display changed. For just a fraction of a second Mr Crumley had the sensation of speed, as though what appeared had screeched to a halt. Which was ridiculous. The four pink papier-mache pigs exploded. A cardboard snout bounced off Mr Crumley's head. There, sweating and grunting in the place where the little piggies had been, were . . . well, he assumed they were pigs, because hippopotamuses didn't have pointy ears and rings through their noses. But the creatures were huge and grey and bristly and a cloud of acrid mist hung over each one. And they didn't look sweet. There was nothing charming about them. One turned to look at him with small, red eyes, and didn't go 'oink', which was the sound that Mr Crumley, born and raised in the city, had always associated with pigs. It went 'Ghnaaarrrwnnkh?' The sleigh had changed, too. He'd been very pleased with that sleigh. It had delicate silver curly bits on it. He'd personally supervised the gluing on of every twinkling star. But the splendour of it was lying in glittering shards around a sledge that looked as though it had been built of crudely sawn tree trunks laid on two massive wooden runners. It looked ancient and there were faces carved on the wood, nasty crude grinning faces that looked quite out of place. Parents were yelling and trying to pull their children away, but they weren't having much luck. The children were gravitating towards it like flies to jam. Mr Crumley ran towards the terrible thing, waving his hands. 'Stop that! Stop that!' he screamed. 'You'll frighten the Kiddies!' He heard a small boy behind him say, 'They 've got tusks! Cool!' His sister said, 'Hey, look, that one's doing a wee!' A tremendous cloud of yellow steam arose. 'Look, it's going all the way to the stairs! All those who can't swim hold onto the banisters!' 'They eat you if you're bad, you know,' said a small girl with obvious approval. 'All up. Even the bones. They crunch them.' Another, older, child opined: 'Don't be childish. They're not real. They've just got a wizard in to do the magic. Or it's all done by clockwork. Everyone knows they're not really r---' One of the boars turned to look at him. The boy moved behind his mother. Mr Crumley, tears of anger streaming clown his face, fought through the milling crowd until he reached the Hogfather's Grotto. He grabbed a frightened pixie. 'It's the Campaign for Equal Heights that've done this, isn't it!' he shouted. 'They're out to ruin me! And they're ruining it for all the Kiddies! Look at the lovely dolls!' The pixie hesitated. Children were clustering around the pigs, despite the continued efforts of their mothers. The small girl was giving one of them an orange. But the animated display of Dolls of All Nations was definitely in trouble. The musical box underneath was still playing 'Wouldn't It Be Nice If Everyone Was Nice' but the rods that animated the figures had got twisted out of shape, so that the Klatchian boy was rhythmically hitting the Omnian girl over the head with his ceremonial spear, while the girl in Agatean national costume was kicking a small Llamedosian druid repeatedly in the ear. A chorus of small children was cheering them on indiscriminately. 'There's, er, there's more trouble in the Grotto, Mr Crum' the pixie began. A red and white figure pushed its way through the crush and rammed a false beard into Mr Crumley's hands. 'That's it,' said the old man in the Hogfather costume. 'I don't mind the smell of oranges and the damp trousers but I ain't putting up with this.' He stamped off through the queue. Mr Crumley heard him add, 'And he's not even doin' it right!' Mr Crumley forced his way onward. Someone was sitting in the big chair. There was a child on his knee. The figure was ... strange. It was definitely in something like a Hogfather costume but Mr Crumley's eye kept slipping, it wouldn't focus, it skittered away and tried to put the figure on the very edge of vision. It was like trying to look at your own ear. 'What's going on here? What's going on here?' Crumley demanded. A hand took his shoulder firmly. He turned round and looked into the face of a Grotto Pixie. At least, it was wearing the costume of a Grotto Pixie, although somewhat askew, as if it had been put on in a hurry. 'Who are you?' The pixie took the soggy cigarette end out of its mouth and leered at him. 'Call me Uncle Heavy,' he said. 'You're not a pixie!' 'Nah, I'm a fairy cobbler, mister.' Behind Crumley, a voice said: AND WHAT DO YOU WANT FOR HOGSWATCH, SMALL HUMAN? Mr Crumley turned in horror. In front of - well, he had to think of it as the usurping Hogfather - was a small child of indeterminate sex who seemed to be mostly woollen bobble hat. Mr Crumley knew how it was supposed to go. It was supposed to go like this: the child was always struck dumb and the attendant mother would lean forward and catch the Hogfather's eye and say very pointedly, in that voice adults use when they're conspiring against children: 'You want a Baby Tinkler Doll, don't you, Doreen? And the Just Like Mummy Cookery Set you've got in the window. And the Cut-Out Kitchen Range Book. And what do you say?' And the stunned child would murmur "nk you' and get given a balloon or an orange. This time, though, it didn't work like that. Mother got as far as 'You want a---’ WHY ARE YOUR HANDS ON BITS OF STRING, CHILD? The child looked down the length of its arms to the dangling mittens affixed to its sleeves. It held them up for inspection. 'Clubs,' it said. I SEE. VERY PRACTICAL. 'Are you weal?' said the bobble hat. WHAT DO YOU THINK? The bobble hat sniggered. 'I saw your piggie do a wee!' it said, and implicit in the tone was the suggestion that this was unlikely to be dethroned as the most enthralling thing the bobble hat had ever seen. OH. ER ... GOOD. 'It had a gwate big-' WHAT DO YOU WANT FOR HOGSWATCH? said the Hogfather hurriedly. Mother took her economic cue again, and said briskly: 'She wants a-' The Hogfather snapped his fingers impatiently. The mother's mouth slammed shut. The child seemed to sense that here was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and spoke quickly. 'I wanta narmy. Anna big castle wif pointy bits,' said the child. 'Anna swored.' WHAT DO YOU SAY? prompted the Hogfather. 'A big swored?' said the child, after a pause for deep cogitation. THAT'S RIGHT. Uncle Heavy nudged the Hogfather. 'They're supposed to thank you,' he said. ARE YOU SURE? PEOPLE DON'T, NORMALLY. 'I meant they thank the Hogfather,' Albert hissed. 'Which is you, right?' YES, OF COURSE. AHEM. YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO SAY THANK YOU.  ' 'nk you.' AND BE GOOD. THIS IS PART OF THE ARRANGEMENT. ' 'es.' THEN WE HAVE A CONTRACT. The Hogfather reached into his sack and produced -a very large model castle with, as correctly interpreted, pointy blue cone roofs on turrets suitable for princesses to be locked in -a box of several hundred assorted knights and warriors -and a sword. It was four feet long and glinted along the blade. The mother took a deep breath. 'You can't give her that!' she screamed. 'It's not safe!' IT'S A SWORD, said the Hogfather. THEY'RE NOT MEANT TO BE SAFE. 'She's a child!' shouted Crumley. IT'S EDUCATIONAL. 'What if she cuts herself?' THAT WILL BE AN IMPORTANT LESSON. Uncle Heavy whispered urgently. REALLY? OH, WELL. IT'S NOT FOR ME TO ARGUE, I SUPPOSE. The blade went wooden. 'And she doesn't want all that other stuff!' said Doreen's mother, in the face of previous testimony. 'She's a girl! Anyway, I can't afford big posh stuff like that!' I THOUGHT I GAVE IT AWAY, said the Hogfather, sounding bewildered. 'You do?' said the mother. 'You do?' said Crumley, who'd been listening in horror. 'You don't! That's our Merchandise! You can't give it away! Hogswatch isn't about giving it all away! I mean ... yes, of course, of course things are given away,' he corrected himself, aware that people were watching, 'but first they have to be bought, d'you see, I mean ... haha.' He laughed nervously, increasingly aware of the strangeness around him and the rangy look of Uncle Heavy. 'It's not as though the toys are made by little elves at the Hub, ahaha . - .' 'Damn right,' said Uncle Heavy sagely. 'You'd have to be a maniac even to think of giving an elf a chisel, less'n you want their initials carved on your forehead.' 'You mean this is all free?' said Doreen's mother sharply, not to be budged from what she saw as the central point. Mr Crumley looked helplessly at the toys. They certainly didn't look like any of his stock. Then he tried to look hard at the new Hogfather. Every cell in his brain was telling him that here was a fat jolly man in a red and white suit. Well ... nearly every cell. A few of the sparkier ones were saying that his eyes were reporting something else, but they couldn't agree on what. A couple had shut down completely. The words escaped through his teeth. 'It ... seems to be,' he said. Although it was Hogswatch the University buildings were bustling. Wizards didn't go to bed early in any case,[14] and of course there was the Hogswatchnight Feast to look forward to at midnight. It would give some idea of the scale of the Hogswatchnight Feast that a light snack at UU consisted of a mere three or four courses, not counting the cheese and nuts. Some of the wizards had been practising for weeks. The Dean in particular could now lift a twenty-pound turkey on one fork. Having to wait until midnight merely put a healthy edge on appetites already professionally honed. There was a general air of pleasant expectancy about the place, a general sizzling of salivary glands, a general careful assembling of the pills and powders against the time, many hours ahead, when eighteen courses would gang up somewhere below the ribcage and mount a counterattack. Ridcully stepped out into the snow and turned up his collar. The lights were all on in the High Energy Magic Building. 'I don't know, I don't know,' he muttered. 'Hogswatchnight and they're still working. It's just not natural. When I was a student I'd have been sick twice by now-' In fact Ponder Stibbons and his group of research students had made a concession to Hogswatchnight. They'd draped holly over Hex and put a paper hat on the big glass dome containing the main ant heap. Every time he came in here, it seemed to Ridcully, something -more had been done to the ... engine, or thinking machine, or whatever it was. Sometimes stuff turned up overnight. Occasionally, according to Stibbons, Hex hims--- itself would draw plans for extra bits that he - it needed. It all gave Ridcully the willies, and an additional willy was engendered right now when he saw the Bursar sitting in front of the thing. For a moment, he forgot all about verrucas. 'What're you doing here, old chap?' he said. 'You should be inside, jumping up and down to make more room for tonight.' 'Hooray for the pink, grey and green,' said the Bursar. 'Er ... we thought Hex might be of . . .  you know . . . help, sir,' said Ponder Stibbons, who liked to think of himself as the University's token sane person. 'With the Bursar's problem. We thought it might be a nice Hogswatch present for him.' 'Ye gods, Bursar's got no problems,' said Ridcully, and patted the aimlessly smiling man on the head while mouthing the words 'mad as a spoon'. 'Mind just wanders a bit, that's all. I said MIND WANDERS A BIT, eh? Only to be expected, spends far too much time addin' up numbers. Doesn't get out in the fresh air. I said, YOU DON'T GET OUT IN THE FRESH AIR, OLD CHAP!' 'We thought, er, he might like someone to talk to,' said Ponder. 'What? What? But I talk to him all the time! I'm always trying to take him out of himself,' said Ridcully. 'It's important to stop him mopin' around the place.' 'Er ... yes ... certainly,' said Ponder diplomatically. He recalled the Bursar as a man whose idea of an exciting time had once been a soft-boiled egg. 'So ... er ... well, let's give it another try, shall we? Are you ready, Mr Dinwiddie?' 'Yes, thank you, a green one with cinnamon if it’s not too much trouble.' 'Can't see how he can talk to a machine,' said Ridcully, in a sullen voice. 'The thing's got no damn ears.' 'Ah, well, in fact we made it one ear,' said Ponder. 'Er. . .' He pointed to a large drum in a maze of tubes. 'Isn't that old Windle Poons' ear trumpet sticking out of the end?' said Ridcully suspiciously. 'Yes, Archchancellor.' Ponder cleared his throat. 'Sound, you see, comes in waves-' He stopped. Wizardly premonitions rose in his mind. He just knew Ridcully was going to assume he was talking about the sea. There was going to be one of those huge bottomless misunderstandings that always occurred whenever anyone tried to explain anything to the Archchancellor. Words like 'surf, and probably 'ice cream' and 'sand' were just ... 'It's all done by magic, Archchancellor,' he said, giving up. 'Ah. Right,' said Ridcully. He sounded a little disappointed. 'None of that complicated business with springs and cogwheels and tubes and stuff, then.' 'That's right, sir,' said Ponder. 'Just magic. Sufficiently advanced magic.' 'Fair enough. What's it do?' 'Hex can hear what you say.' 'Interesting. Saves all that punching holes in bits of cards and hitting keys you lads are forever doing, then-' 'Watch this, sir,' said Ponder. 'All right, Adrian, initialize the GBU 'How do you do that, then?' said Ridcully, behind him. 'It ... it means pull the great big lever,' Ponder said, reluctantly. 'Ah. Takes less time to say.' Ponder sighed. 'Yes, that's right, Archchancellor.' He nodded to one of the students, who pulled a large red lever marked 'Do Not Pull'. Gears spun, somewhere inside Hex. Little trap-doors opened in the ant farms and millions of ants began to scurry along the networks of glass tubing. Ponder tapped at the huge wooden keyboard. 'Beats me how you fellows remember how to do all this stuff,' said Ridcully, still watching him with what Ponder considered to be amused interest. 'Oh, it's largely intuitive, Archchancellor,' said Ponder. 'Obviously you have to spend a lot of time learning it first, though. Now, then, Bursar,' he added. 'If you'd just like to say something. . .' 'He says, SAY SOMETHING, BURSAAAR!' yelled Ridcully helpfully, into the Bursar's ear. 'Corkscrew? It's a tickler, that's what Nanny says,' said the Bursar. Things started to spin inside Hex. At the back of the room a huge converted waterwheel covered with sheep skulls began to turn, ponderously. And the quill pen in its network of springs and guiding arms started to write: +++ Why Do You Think You Are A Tickler? +++ For a moment the Bursar hesitated. Then he said, 'I've got a spoon of my own, you know.' +++ Tell Me About Your Spoon +++ 'Er ... it's a little spoon. . .' +++ Does Your Spoon Worry You? +++ The Bursar frowned. Then he seemed to rally. 'Whoops, here comes Mr Jelly,' he said, but he didn't sound as though his heart was in it. +++ How Long Have You Been Mr Jelly? +++ The Bursar glared.'Are you makingfun of me?' he said. 'Amazin'!' said Ridcully. 'It's got him stumped! 's better than dried frog pills! How did you work it out?' 'Er said Ponder. 'It sort of just happened 'Amazin',' said Ridcully. He knocked the ashes out of his pipe on Hex's 'Anthill Inside' sticker, causing Ponder to wince. 'This thing's a kind of big artificial brain, then?' 'You could think of it like that,' said Ponder, carefully. 'Of course, Hex doesn't actually think. Not as such. It just appears to be thinking.' 'Ah. Like the Dean,' said Ridcully. 'Any chance of fitting a brain like this into the Dean's head?' 'It does weigh ten tons, Archchancellor.' 'Ah. Really? Oh. Quite a large crowbar would be in order, then.' He paused, and then reached into his pocket. 'I knew I'd come here for something,' he added. 'This here chappie is the Verruca Gnome-' 'Hello,' said the Verruca Gnome shyly. -who seems to have popped into existence to be with us here tonight. And, you know, I thought: this is a bit odd. Of course, there's always something a bit unreal about Hogswatchnight,' said Ridcully. 'Last night of the year and so on. The Hogfather whizzin' around and so forth. Time of the darkest shadows and so on. All the old year's occult rubbish pilin' up. Anythin' could happen. I just thought you fellows might check up on this. Probably nothing to worry about.' 'A Verruca Gnome?' said Ponder. The gnome clutched his sack protectively. 'Makes about as much sense as a lot of things, I suppose,' said Ridcully. 'After all, there's a Tooth Fairy, ain' there? You might as well wonder why we have a God of Wine and not a God of Hangovers---' He stopped. 'Anyone else hear that noise just then?' he said. 'Sorry, Archchancellor?' 'Sort of glingleglingleglingle? Like little tinkly bells?' 'Didn't hear anything like that, sir.' 'Oh.' Ridcully shrugged. 'Anyway ... what was I saying ... yes ... no one's ever heard of a Verruca Gnome until tonight.' 'That's right,' said the gnome. 'Even I've never heard of me until tonight, and I'm me.' 'We'll see what we can find out, Archchancellor,' said Ponder diplomatically. 'Good man.' Ridcully put the gnome back in his pocket and looked up at Hex. 'Amazin',' he said again. 'He just looks as though he's thinking, right?' 'Er ... yes.' 'But he's not actually thinking?' 'Er ... no.' 'So ... he just gives the impression of thinking but really it's just a show?' 'Er ... yes.' 'Just like everyone else, then, really,' said Ridcully. something,' he added. 'This here chappie is the Verruca Gnome-' 'Hello,' said the Verruca Gnome shyly. ' -who seems to have popped into existence to be with us here tonight. And, you know, I thought: this is a bit odd. Of course, there's always something a bit unreal about Hogswatchnight,' said Ridcully. 'Last night of the year and so on. The Hogfather whizzin' around and so forth. Time of the darkest shadows and so on. All the old year's occult rubbish pilin' up. Anythin' could happen. I just thought you fellows might check up on this. Probably nothing to worry about.' 'A Verruca Gnome?' said Ponder. The gnome clutched his sack protectively. 'Makes about as much sense as a lot of things, I suppose,' said Ridcully. 'After all, there's a Tooth Fairy, ain' there? You might as well wonder why we have a God of Wine and not a God of Hangovers---' He stopped. 'Anyone else hear that noise just then?' he said. 'Sorry, Archchancellor?' 'Sort of glingleglingleglingle? Like little tinkly bells?' 'Didn't hear anything like that, sir.' 'Oh.' Ridcully shrugged. 'Anyway ... what was I saying ... yes ... no one's ever heard of a Verruca Gnome until tonight.' 'That's right,' said the gnome. 'Even I've never heard of me until tonight, and I'm me.' 'We'll see what we can find out, Archchancellor,' said Ponder diplomatically. 'Good man.' Ridcully put the gnome back in his pocket and looked up at Hex. 'Amazin',' he said again. 'He just looks as though he's thinking, right?' 'Er ... yes.' 'But he's not actually thinking?' 'Er ... no.' 'So ... he just gives the impression of thinking but really it's just a show?' 'Er ... yes.' 'Just like everyone else, then, really,' said Ridcully. The boy gave the Hogfather an appraising stare as he sat down on the official knee. 'Let's be absolutely clear. I know you're just someone dressed up,' he said. 'The Hogfather is a biological and temporal impossibility. I hope we understand one another.' AH. SO I DON'T EXIST? 'Correct. This is just a bit of seasonal frippery and, I may say, rampantly commercial. My mother's already bought my presents. I instructed her as to the right ones, of course. She often gets things wrong.' The Hogfather glanced briefly at the smiling, worried image of maternal ineffectiveness hovering nearby. HOW OLD ARE YOU, BOY? The child rolled his eyes. 'You're not supposed to say that,' he said. 'I have done this before, you know. You have to start by asking me my name.' AARON FIDGET, 'THE PINES', EDGEWAY ROAD, ANKHMORPORK. 'I expect someone told you,' said Aaron. 'I expect these people dressed up as pixies get the information from the mothers.' AND YOU ARE EIGHT, GOING ON ... OH, ABOUT FORTY-FIVE, said the Hogfather. 'There's forms to fill in when they pay, expect,' said Aaron. AND YOU WANT WALNUT'S INOFFENSIVE REPTILES OF THE STO PLAINS, A DISPLAY CABINET, A COLLECTOR'S ALBUM, A KILLING JAR AND A LIZARD PRESS. WHAT IS A LIZARD PRESS? 'You can't glue them in when they're still fat, or didn't you know that? I expect she told you about them when I was momentarily distracted by the display of pencils. Look, shall we end this charade? just give me my orange and we'll say no more about it.' I CAN GIVE FAR MORE THAN ORANGES. 'Yes, yes, I saw all that. Probably done in collusion with accomplices to attract gullible customers. Oh dear, you've even got a false beard. By the way, old chap, did you know that your pig----' YES. 'All done by mirrors and string and pipes, I expect. It all looked very artificial to me.' The Hogfather snapped his fingers. 'That's probably a signal, I expect,' said the boy, getting down. 'Thank you very much.' HAPPY HOGSWATCH, said the Hogfather as the boy walked away. Uncle Heavy patted him on the shoulder. 'Well done, master,' he said. 'Very patient. I'd have given him a clonk athwart the earhole, myself.' OH, I'M SURE HE'LL SEE THE ERROR OF HIS WAYS. The red hood turned so that only Albert could see into its depths. RIGHT AROUND THE TIME HE OPENS THOSE BOXES HIS MOTHER WAS CARRYING ... HO. HO. HO. 'Don't tie it so tight! Don't tie it so tight!' SQUEAK. There was a bickering behind Susan as she sought along the shelves in the canyons of Death's huge library, which was so big that clouds would form in it if they dared. 'Right, right,' said the voice she was trying to ignore. 'That's about right. I've got to be able to move my wings, right?' SQUEAK. 'Ah,' said Susan, under her breath. 'The Hogfather. . .' He had several shelves, not just one book. The first volume seemed to be written on a roll of animal skin. The Hogfather was old. `OK, OK. How does it look?' SQUEAK. 'Miss?' said the raven, seeking a second opinion. Susan looked up. The raven bounced past, its breast bright red. 'Twit, twit,' it said. 'Bobbly bobbly bob. Hop hop hopping along . . .' 'You're fooling no one but yourself,' said Susan. 'I can see the string.' She unrolled the scroll. 'Maybe I should sit on a snowy log,' mumbled the raven behind her. 'Thats probably the trick, right enough.' 'I can't read this!' said Susan. 'The letters are all ... odd. . .' 'Ethereal runes,' said the raven. 'The Hogfather ain't human, after all.' Susan ran her hands over the thin leather. The ... shapes flowed around her fingers. She couldn't read them but she could feel them. There was the sharp smell of snow, so vivid that her breath condensed in the air. There were sounds, hooves, the snap of branches in a freezing forest A bright shining ball . . . Susan jerked awake and thrust the scroll aside. She unrolled the next one, which looked as though it was made of strips of bark. Characters hovered over the surface. Whatever they were, they had never been designed to be read by the eye; you could believe they were a Braille for the touching mind. Images ribboned across her senses - wet fur, sweat, pine, soot, iced air, the tang of damp ash, pig ... manure, her governess mind hastily corrected. There was blood ... and the taste of . . ..beans? It was all images without words. Almost ... animal. 'But none of this is right! Everyone knows he's a jolly old fat man who hands out presents to kids!' she said aloud. 'Is. Is. Not was. You know how it is,' said the raven. 'Do I?' 'It's like, you know, industrial re-training,' said the bird. 'Even gods have to move with the times, am I right? He was probably quite different thousands of years ago. Stands to reason. No one wore stockings, for one thing.' He. scratched at his beak. 'Yersss,' he continued expansively, 'he was probably just your basic winter demi-urge. You know ... blood on the snow, making the sun come up. Starts off with animal sacrifice, y'know, hunt some big hairy animal to death, that kind of stuff. You know there's some people up on the Ramtops who kill a wren at Hogswatch and walk around from house to house singing about it? With a whack-fol-oh-diddle-dildo. Very folkloric, very myffic.' 'A wren? Why?' 'I dunno. Maybe someone said, hey, how'd you like to hunt this evil bastard of an eagle with his big sharp beak and great ripping talons, sort of thing, or how about instead you hunt this wren, which is basically about the size of a pea and goes "twit"? Go on, you choose. Anyway, then later on it sinks to the level of religion and then they start this business where some poor bugger finds a special bean in his tucker, oho, everyone says, you're king, mate, and he thinks "This is a bit of all right" only they don't say it wouldn't be a good idea to start any long books, 'cos next thing he's legging it over the snow with a dozen other buggers chasing him with holy sickles so's the earth'll come to life again and all this snow'll go away. Very, you know ... ethnic. Then some bright spark thought, hey, looks like that damn sun comes up anyway, so how come we're giving those druids all this free grub? Next thing you know, there's a job vacancy. That's the thing about gods. They'll always find a way to, you know ... hang on.' 'The damn sun comes up anyway,' Susan repeated. 'How do you know that?' 'Oh, observation. It happens every morning. I seen it.' 'I meant all that stuff about holy sickles and things.' The raven contrived to look smug. 'Very occult bird, your basic raven,' he said. 'Blind Io the Thunder God used to have these myffic ravens that flew everywhere and told him everything that was going on.' 'Used to?' 'WeeeW ... you know how he's not got eyes in his face, just these, like, you know, free-floating eyeballs that go and zoom around . . .' The raven coughed in species embarrassment. 'Bit of an accident waiting to happen, really.' 'Do you ever think of anything except eyeballs?' 'Well ... there's entrails.' SQUEAK. 'He's right, though,' said Susan. 'Gods don't die. Never completely die . . .' There's always somewhere, she told herself. Inside some stone, perhaps, or the words of a song, or riding the mind of some animal, or maybe in a whisper on the wind. They never entirely go, they hang on to the world by the tip of a fingernail, always fighting to find a way back. Once a god, always a god. Dead, perhaps, but only like the world in winter 'All right,' she said. 'Let's see what happened to him . . .' She reached out for the last book and tried to open it at random ... The feeling lashed at her out of the book, like a whip ... ... hooves, fear, blood, snow, cold, night . . . She dropped the scroll. It slammed shut. SQUEAK? 'I'm. . . all right.' She looked down at the book and knew that she'd been given a friendly warning, such as a pet animal might give when it was crazed with pain but just still tame enough not to claw and bite the hand that fed it - this time. Wherever the Hogfather was - dead, alive, somewhere - he wanted to be left alone ... She eyed the Death of Rats. His little eye sockets flared blue in a disconcertingly familiar way. SQUEAK. EEK? 'The rat says, if he wanted to find out about the Hogfather, he'd go to the Castle of 'Oh, that's just a nursery tale,' said Susan. 'That's where the letters are supposed to go that are posted up the chimney. That's just an old story.' She turned. The rat and the raven were staring at her. And she realized that she'd been too normal. SQUEAK? 'The rat says, "What d'you mean, just?"' said the raven. Chickenwire sidled towards Medium Dave in the garden. If you could call it a garden. It was the land round the ... house. If you could call it a house. No one said much about it, but every so often you just had to get out. It didn't feel right, inside. He shivered. 'Where's himself?' he said. 'Oh, up at the top,' said Medium Dave. 'Still trying to open that room.' 'The one with all the locks?' 'Yeah.' Medium Dave was rolling a cigarette. Inside the house ... or tower, or both, or whatever ... you couldn't smoke, not properly. When you smoked inside it tasted horrible and you felt sick. 'What for? We done what we came to do, didn't we? Stood there like a bunch of kids and watched that wet wizard do all his chanting it was all I could do to keep a straight face. What's he after now?' 'He just said if it was locked that bad he wanted to see inside.' 'I thought we were supposed to do what we came for and go!' 'Yeah? You tell him. Want a roll-up?' Chickenwire took the bag of tobacco and relaxed. 'I've seen some bad places in my time, but this takes the serious biscuit.' 'Yeah.' 'It's the cute that wears you down. And there's got to be something else to eat than apples.' 'Yeah.' 'And that damn sky. That damn sky is really getting on my nerves.' 'Yeah.' They kept their eyes averted from that damn sky. For some reason, it made you feel that it was about to fall on you. And it was worse if you let your eyes stray to the gap where a gap shouldn't be. The effect was like getting toothache in your eyeballs. In the distance Banjo was swinging on a swing. Odd, that, Dave thought. Banjo seemed perfectly happy here. 'He found a tree that grows lollipops yesterday,' he said moodily. 'Well, I say yesterday, but how can you tell? And he follows the man around like a dog. No one ever laid a punch on Banjo since our mam died. He's just like a little boy, you know. Inside. Always has been. Looks to me for everything. Used to be, if I told him "punch someone", he'd do it.' 'And they stayed punched.' 'Yeah. Now he follows him around everywhere. It makes me sick.' 'What are you doing here, then?' 'Ten thousand dollars. And he says there's more, you know. More than we can imagine.' He was always Teatime. 'He ain't just after money.' -7 'Yeah, well, I didn't sign up for world domination,' said Medium Dave. 'That sort of thing gets you into trouble.' 'I remember your mam saying that sort of thing,' said Chickenwire. Medium Dave rolled his eyes. Everyone remembered Ma Lilywhite. 'Very straight lady, was your ma. Tough but fair.' 'Yeah ... tough.' 'I recall that time she strangled Glossy Ron with his own leg,' Chickenwire went on. 'She had a wicked right arm on her, your mam.' 'Yeah. Wicked.' 'She wouldn't have stood for someone like Teatime.' 'Yeah,' said Medium Dave. 'That was a lovely funeral you boys gave her. Most of the Shades turned up. Very respectful. All them flowers. An' everyone looking so . . .' Chickenwire floundered'... happy. In a sad way, o' course.' 'Yeah.' 'Have you got any idea how to get back home?' Medium Dave shook his head. 'Me neither. Find the place again, I suppose.' Chickenwire shivered. 'I mean, what he did to that carter ... I mean, well, I wouldn't even act like that to me own dad---' 'Yeah.' 'Ordinary mental, yes, I can deal with that. But he can be talking quite normal, and then-' 'Yeah.' 'Maybe the both of us could creep up on him and----' 'Yeah, yeah. And how long'll we live? In seconds! 'We could get lucky --- ' Chickenwire began. 'Yeah? You've seen him. This isn't one of those blokes who threatens you. This is one of those blokes who'd kill you soon as look at you. Easier, too. We got to hang on, right? It's like that saying about riding a tiger.' 'What saying about riding a tiger?' said Chickenwire suspiciously. 'Well . . .' Medium Dave hesitated. 'You ... well, you get branches slapping you in the face, fleas, that sort of thing. So you got to hang on. Think of the money. There's bags of it in there. You saw it.' 'I keep thinking of. that glass eye watching me. I keep thinking it can see right in my head.' 'Don't worry, he doesn't suspect you of anything., 'How d'you know?' 'You're still alive, yeah?' In the Grotto of the Hogfather, a round-eyed child. HAPPY HOGSWATCH. HO. HO. HO. AND YOUR NAME IS ... EUPHRASIA COAT, CORRECT? 'Go on, dear, answer the nice man.' ‘ ‘s.’ AND YOU ARE SIX YEARS OLD. 'Go on, dear. They're all the same at this age, aren't they . . .’ ‘ ‘s.’ AND YOU WANT A PONY ' 's.' A small hand pulled the Hogfather's hood down to mouth level. Heavy Uncle Albert heard a ferocious whispering. Then the Hogfather leaned back. YES, I KNOW. WHAT A NAUGHTY PIG IT WAS, INDEED. His shape flickered for a moment, and then a hand went into the sack. HERE IS A BRIDLE FOR YOUR PONY, AND A SADDLE, AND A RATHER STRANGE HARD HAT AND A PAIR OF THOSE TROUSERS THAT MAKE YOU LOOK AS THOUGH YOU HAVE A LARGE RABBIT IN EACH POCKET. 'But we can't have a pony, can we, Euffie, because we live on the third floor . . OH, YES. IT'S IN THE KITCHEN. 'I'm sure you're making a little joke, Hogfather,' said Mother, sharply. HO. HO. YES. WHAT A JOLLY FAT MAN I AM. IN THE KITCHEN? WHAT A JOKE. DOLLIES AND SO ON WILL BE DELIVERED LATER AS PER YOUR LETTER. 'What do you say, Euffie?' ‘ ' nk you.' ' 'ere, you didn't really put a pony in their kitchen, did you?' said Heavy Uncle Albert as the line moved on. DON'T BE FOOLISH, ALBERT. I SAID THAT TO BE JOLLY. 'Oh, right. Hah, for a minute--' IT'S IN THE BEDROOM. 'Ah . . MORE HYGIENIC. 'Well, it'll make sure of one thing,' said Albert. 'Third floor? They're going to believe all right.' YES. YOU KNOW, I THINK I'M GETTING THE HANG OF THIS. HO. HO. HO. At the Hub of the Discworld, the snow burned blue and green. The Aurora Corealis hung in the sky, curtains of pale cold fire that circled the central mountains and cast their spectral light over the ice. They billowed, swirled and then trailed a ragged arm on the end of which was a tiny dot that became, when the eye of imagination drew nearer, Binky. He trotted to a halt and stood on the air. Susan looked down. And then found what she was looking for. At the end of a valley of snow-mounded trees something gleamed brightly, reflecting the sky. The Castle of Bones. Her parents had sat her down one day when she was about six or seven and explained how such things as the Hogfather did not really exist, how they were pleasant little stories that it was fun to know, how they were not real. And she had believed it. All the fairies and bogeymen, all those stories from the blood and bone of humanity, were not really real. They'd lied. A seven-foot skeleton had turned out to be her grandfather. Not a flesh and blood grandfather, obviously. But a grandfather, you could say, in the bone. Binky touched down and trotted over the snow. Was the Hogfather a god? Why not? thought Susan. There were sacrifices, after all. All that sherry and pork pie. And he made commandments and rewarded the good and he knew what you were doing. If you believed, nice things happened to you. Sometimes you found him 'm a grotto, and sometimes he was up there in the sky ... The Castle of Bones loomed over her now. It certainly deserved the capital letters, up this close. She'd seen a picture of it in one of the children's books. Despite its name, the woodcut artist had endeavoured to make it look ... sort of jolly. It wasn't jolly. The pillars at the entrance were hundreds of feet high. Each of the steps leading up was taller than a man. They were the greygreen of old ice. Ice. Not bone. There were faintly familiar shapes to the pillars, possibly a suggestion of femur or skull, but it was made of ice. Binky was not challenged by the high stairs. It wasn't that he flew. It was simply that he walked on a ground level of his own devising. Snow had blown over the ice. Susan looked down at the drifts. Death left no tracks, but there were the faint outlines of booted footprints. She'd be prepared to bet they belonged to Albert. And ... yes, half obscured by the snow ... it looked as though a sledge had stood here. Animals had milled around. But the snow was covering everything. She dismounted. This was certainly the place described, but it still wasn't right. It was supposed to be a blaze of light and abuzz with activity, but it looked like a giant mausoleum. A little way beyond the pillars was a very large slab of ice, cracked into pieces. Far above, stars were visible through the hole it had left in the roof. Even as she stared up, a few small lumps of ice thumped into a snowdrift. The raven popped into existence and fluttered wearily on to a stump of ice beside her. 'This place is a morgue,' said Susan. ' 's got to be mine, if I do ... any more flyin' tonight,' panted the raven, as the Death of Rats got off its back'I never signed up for all this long-distance, faster'n time stuff. I should be back in a forest somewhere, making excitingly decorated constructions to attract females.' 'That's bower birds,' said Susan. 'Ravens don't do that.' 'Oh, so it's type-casting now, is it?' said the raven. 'I'm missing meals here, you do know that?' It swivelled its independently sprung eyes. 'So where's all the lights?' it said. 'Where's all the noise? Where's all the jolly little buggers in pointy hats and red and green suits, hitting wooden toys unconvincingly yet rhythmically with hammers?' 'This is more like the temple of some old thunder god,' said Susan. SQUEAK. 'No' I read the map right. Anyway, Albert's been here too. There's fag ash all over the place.' The rat jumped down and walked around for a moment, bony snout near the ground. After a few moments of snuffling it gave a squeak and hurried off into the gloom. Susan followed. As her eyes grew more accustomed to the faint blue-green light she made out something rising out of the floor. It was a pyramid of steps, with a big chair on top. Behind her, a pillar groaned and twisted slightly. SQUEAK. 'That rat says this place reminds him of some old mine,' said the raven. 'You know, after it's been deserted and no one's been paying attention to the roof supports and so on? We see a lot of them.' At least these steps were human sized, Susan thought, ignoring the chatter. Snow had come in through another gap in the roof. Albert's footprints had stamped around quite a lot here. 'Maybe the old Hogfather crashed his sleigh,' the raven suggested. SQUEAK? 'Well, it could've happened. Pigs are not notably aerodynamic, are they? And with all this snow, you know, poor visibility, big cloud ahead turns out too late to be a mountain, there's buggers in saffron robes looking down at you, poor devil tries to remember whether you're supposed to shove someone's head between your legs, then WHAM, and it's all over bar some lucky mountaineers making an awful lot of sausages and finding the flight recorder.' SQUEAK! 'Yes, but he's an old man. Probably shouldn't be in the sky at his time of life.' Susan pulled at something half buried in the snow. It was a red-and-white-striped candy cane. She kicked the snow aside elsewhere and found a wooden toy soldier in the kind of uniform that would only be inconspicuous if you wore it in a nightclub for chameleons on hard drugs. Some further probing found a broken trumpet. There was some more groaning in the darkness. The raven cleared its throat. 'What the rat meant about this place being like a mine,' he said, 'was that abandoned mines tend to creak and groan in the same way, see? No one looking after the pit props. Things fall in. Next thing you know you're a squiggle in the sandstone. We shouldn't hang around is what I'm saying.' Susan walked further in, lost in thought. This was all wrong. The place looked as though - it had been deserted for years, which couldn't be true. The column nearest her creaked and twisted slightly. A fine haze of ice crystals dropped from the roof. Of course, this wasn't exactly a normal place. You couldn't build an ice palace this big. It was a bit like Death's house. If he abandoned it for too long all those things that had been suspended, like time and physics, would roll over it. It would be like a dam bursting. She turned to leave and heard the groan again. It wasn't dissimilar to the tortured sounds being made by the ice, except that ice, afterwards, didn't moan. 'Oh, me . . .' There was a figure lying in a snowdrift. She'd almost missed it because it was wearing a long white robe. It was spreadeagled, as though it had planned to make snow angels and had then decided against it. And it wore a little crown, apparently of vine leaves. And it kept groaning. She looked up. The roof was open here, too. But no one could have fallen that far and survived. No one human, anyway. He looked human and, in theory, quite young. But it was only in theory because, even by the second-hand light of the glowing snow, his face looked like someone had been sick with it. 'Are you all right?' she ventured. The recumbent figure opened its eyes and stared straight up. 'I wish I was dead . . .' it moaned. A piece of ice the size of a house fell down in the far depths of the building and exploded in a shower of sharp little shards. 'You may have come to the right place,' said Susan. She grabbed the boy under his arms and hauled him out of the snow. 'I think leaving would be a very good idea around now, don't you? This place is going to fall apart.' 'Oh, me . . .' She managed to get one of his arms around her neck. 'Can you walk?' 'Oh, me ...’ 'It might help if you stopped saying that and tried walking.' 'I'm sorry, but I seem to have too many legs. Ow.' Susan did her best to prop him up as, swaying and slipping, they made their way back to the exit. 'My head,' said the boy. 'My head. My head. My head. Feels awful. My head. Feels like someone's hitting it. My head. With a hammer.' Someone was. There was a small green and purple imp sitting amid the damp curls and holding a very large mallet. It gave Susan a friendly nod and brought the hammer down again. 'Oh, me . . .’ 'That wasn't necessary!' said Susan. 'You telling me my job?' said the imp. 'I suppose you could do it better, could you?' 'I wouldn't do it at all!' 'Well, someone's got to do it,' said the imp. 'He's part. Of the. Arrangement,' said the boy. 'Yeah, see?' said the imp. 'Can you hold the hammer while I go and coat his tongue with yellow gunk?' 'Get down right now!' Susan made a grab for the creature. It leapt away, still clutching the hammer, and grabbed a pillar. 'I'm part of the arrangement, I am!' it yelled. The boy clutched his head. 'I feel awful,' he said. 'Have you got any ice?' Whereupon, because there are conventions stronger than mere physics, the building fell in. The collapse of the Castle of Bones was stately and impressive and seemed to go on for a long time. Pillars fell in, the slabs of the roof slid down, the ice crackled and splintered. The air above the tumbling wreckage filled with a haze of snow and ice crystals. Susan watched from the trees. The boy, who she'd leaned against a handy trunk, opened his eyes. 'That was amazing,' he managed. 'Why, you mean the way it's all turning bark into snow?' 'The way you just picked me up and ran. 'Oh, that.' The grinding of the ice continued. The fallen pillars didn't stop moving when they collapsed, but went on tearing themselves apart. When the fog of ice settled there was nothing but drifted snow. 'As though it was never there,' said Susan, aloud. She turned to the groaning figure. 'All right, what were you doing there?' 'I don't know. I just opened my. Eyes and there I was.' 'Who are you?' 'I ... think my name is Bilious. I'm the ... I'm the oh God of Hangovers.' 'There's a God of Hangovers?' 'An oh god,' he corrected. 'When people witness me, you see, they clutch their head and say, "Oh God . . ." How many of you are standing here?' 'What? There's just me!' 'Ah. Fine. Fine.' 'I've never heard of a God of Hangovers . . .' 'You've heard of Bibulous, the God of Wine? 'Oh. yes.' 'Big fat man, wears vine leaves round his head, always pictured with a glass in his hand ... Ow. Well, you know why he's so cheerful? Him and his big face? It's because he knows he's going to feel good in the morning! It's because it's me that---' '-gets the hangovers?' said Susan. 'I don't even drink! Ow! But who is it who ends up head down in the privy every morning? Arrgh.' He stopped and clutched at his head. 'Should your skull feel like it's lined with dog hair?' 'I don't think so.' 'Ah.' Bilious swayed. 'You know when people say ''I had fifteen lagers last night and when I woke up my head was clear as a bell''?' 'Oh, yes.' 'Bastards! That's because I was the one who woke up groaning in a pile of recycled chill Just once, I mean just once, I'd like to open my eyes in the morning without my head sticking to something.' He paused. 'Are there any giraffes in this wood?' 'Up here? I shouldn't think so.' He looked nervously past Susan's head. 'Not even indigo-coloured ones which are sort of stretched and keep flashing on and off?' 'Very unlikely.' 'Thank goodness for that.' He swayed back and forth. 'Excuse me, I think Im about to throw up my breakfast.' 'It's the middle of the evening!' 'Is it? In that case, I think I'm about to throw up my dinner.' He folded up gently in the snow behind the tree. 'He's a long streak of widdle, isn't he?' said a voice from a branch. It was the raven. 'Got a neck with a knee in it.' The oh god reappeared after a noisy interlude. 'I know I must eat,' he mumbled. 'It's just that the only time I remember seeing my food it's always going the other way . . .' 'What were you doing in there?' said Susan. `Ouch! Search me,' said the oh god. 'It's only a mercy I wasn't holding a traffic sign and wearing a-----' he winced and paused '---having some kind of women's underwear about my person.' He sighed. 'Someone somewhere has a lot of fun,' he said wistfully. 'I wish it was me.' 'Get a drink inside you, that's my advice,' said the raven. 'Have a hair of the dog that bit someone else.' 'But why there?' Susan insisted. The oh god stopped h-ling to glare at the raven. 'I don't know, where was there exactly?' Susan looked back at where the castle had been. It was entirely gone. 'There was a very important building there a moment ago,' she said. The oh god nodded carefully. 'I often see things that weren't there a moment ago,' he said. 'And they often aren't there a moment later. Which is a blessing in most cases, let me tell you. So I don't usually take a lot of notice.' He folded up and landed in the snow again. There's just snow now, Susan thought. Nothing but snow and the wind. There's not even a ruin. The certainty stole over her again that the Hogfather's castle wasn't simply not there any more. No ... it had never been there. There was no ruin, no trace. It had been an odd enough place. It was where the Hogfather lived, according to the legends. Which was odd, when you thought about it. It didn't look like the kind of place a cheery old toymaker would live in. The wind soughed in the trees behind them. Snow slid off branches. Somewhere in the dark there was a flurry of hooves. A spidery little figure leapt off a snowdrift and landed on the oh gods head. It turned a beady eye up towards Susan. 'All right by you, is it?' said the imp, producing its huge hammer. 'Some of us have a job to do, you know, even if we are of a metaphorical, nay, folkloric persuasion.' 'Oh, go away.' 'If you think I'm bad, wait until you see the little pink elephants,' said the imp. 'I don't believe you.' 'They come out of his ears and fly around his head making tweeting noises.' 'Ah,' said the raven, sagely. 'That sounds more like robins. I wouldn't put anything past them.' The oh god grunted. Susan suddenly felt that she didn't want to leave him. He was human. Well, human shaped. Well, at least he had two arms and legs. He'd freeze to death here. Of course, gods, or even oh gods, probably couldn't, but humans didn't think like that. You couldn't just leave someone. She prided herself on this bit of normal thinking. Besides, he might have some answers, if she could make him stay awake enough to understand the questions. From the edge of the frozen forest.. animal eyes watched them go. Mr Crumley sat on the damp stairs and sobbed. He couldn't get any nearer to the toy department. Every time he tried he got lifted off his feet by the mob and dumped at the edge of the crowd by the current of people. Someone said, 'Top of the evenin', squire,' and he looked up blearily at the small yet irregularly formed figure that had addressed him thusly. 'Are you one of the pixies?' he said, after mentally exhausting all the other possibilities. 'No, sir. I am not in fact a pixie, sir, I am in fact Corporal Nobbs of the Watch. And this is Constable Visit, sir.' The creature looked at a piece of paper in its paw. 'You Mr Crummy?' 'Crumley!' 'Yeah, right. You sent a runner to the Watch House and we have hereby responded with commendable speed, sir,' said Corporal Nobbs. 'Despite it being Hogswatchnight and there being a lot of strange things happening and most importantly it being the occasion of our Hogswatchly piss-up, sir. But this is all right because Washpot, that's Constable Visit here, he doesn't drink, sir, it being against his religion, and although I do drink, sir, I volunteered to come because it is my civic duty, sir.' Nobby tore off a salute, or what he liked to believe was a salute. He did not add, 'And turning out for a rich bugger such as your good self is bound to put the officer concerned in the way of a seasonal bottle or two or some other tangible evidence of gratitude,' because his entire stance said it for him Even Nobby's ears could look suggestive. Unfortunately, Mr Crumley wasn't in the right receptive frame of mind. He stood up and waved a shaking finger towards the top of the stairs. 'I want you to go up there,' he said, 'and arrest him!' 'Arrest who, sir?' said Corporal Nobbs. 'The Hogfather!' 'What for, sir?' 'Because he's sitting up there as bold as brass in his Grotto, giving away presents!' Corporal Nobbs thought about this. 'You haven't been having a festive drink, have you, sir?' he said hopefully. 'I do not drink!' 'Very wise, sir,' said Constable Visit. 'Alcohol is the tarnish of the soul. Ossory, Book Two, Verse Twentyfour.' 'Not quite up to speed here, sir,' said Corporal Nobbs, looking perplexed. 'I thought the Hogfather is s'posed to give away stuff, isn't he?' This time Mr Crumley had to stop and think. Up until now he hadn't quite sorted things out in his head, other than recognizing their essential wrongness. 'This one is an Impostor!' he declared. 'Yes, that's right! He smashed his way into here!' 'Y'know, I always thought that,' said Nobby. 'I thought, every year, the Hogfather spends a fortnight sitting in a wooden grotto in a shop in Ankh-Morpork? At his busy time, too? Hah! Not likely! Probably just some old man in a beard, I thought.' 'I meant ... he's not the Hogfather we usually have,' said Crumley, struggling for firmer ground. 'He just barged in here" 'Oh, a different impostor? Not the real impostor at all?' 'Well ... yes ... no. . .' 'And started giving stuff away?' said Corporal Nobbs. 'That's what I said! That's got to be a Crime, hasn't it?' Corporal Nobbs rubbed his nose. 'Well, nearly,' he conceded, not wishing to totally relinquish the chance of any festive remuneration. Realization dawned. 'He's giving away your stuff, sir?' 'No! No, he brought it in with him!' 'Ah? Giving away your stuff, now, if he was doing that, yes, I could see the problem. That's a sure sign of crime, stuff going missing. Stuff turning up, weerlll, that's a tricky one. Unless it's stuff like arms and legs, o' course. We'd be on safer ground if he was nicking stuff, sir, to tell you the truth.' 'This is a shop,' said Mr Crumley, finally getting to the root of the problem. 'We do not give Merchandise away. How can we expect people to buy things if some Person is giving them away? Now please go and get him out of here.' 'Arrest the Hogfather, style of thing?' 'Yes!' 'On Hogswatchnight?' 'Yes!' 'In your shop?' 'Yes!' 'In front of all those kiddies?' 'Y--' Mr Crumley hesitated. To his horror, he realized that Corporal Nobbs, against all expectation, had a point. 'You think that will look bad?' he said. 'Hard to see how it could look good, sir.' 'Could you not do it surreptitiously?' he said. 'Ah, well, surreptition, yes, we could give that a try,' said Corporal Nobbs. The sentence hung in the air with its hand out. 'You won't find me ungrateful,' said Mr Crumley, at last. 'Just you leave it to us,' said Corporal Nobbs, magnanimous in victory. 'You just nip down to your office and treat yourself to a nice cup of tea and we'll sort this out in no time. You'll be ever so grateful.' Crumley gave him a look of a man in the grip of serious doubt, but staggered away nonetheless. Corporal Nobbs rubbed his hands together. 'You don't have Hogswatch back where you come from do you, Washpot?' he said, as they climbed the stairs to the first floor. 'Look at this carpet, you'd think a pig'd pissed on it . . .' 'We call it the Fast of St Ossory,' said Visit, who was from Omnia. 'But it is not an occasion for superstition and crass commercialism. We simply get together in family groups for a prayer meeting and a fast.' 'What, turkey and chicken and that?' 'A fast, Corporal Nobbs. We don't eat anything.' 'Oh, right. Well, each to his own, I s'pose. And at least you don't have to get up early in the morning and find that the nothing you've got is too big to fit in the oven. No presents neither?' They stood aside hurriedly as two children scuttled down the stairs carrying a large toy boat between them. 'It is sometimes appropriate to exchange new religious pamphlets, and of course there are usually copies of the Book of Ossory for the children,' said Constable Visit. 'Sometimes with illustrations,' he added, in the guarded way of a man hinting at licentious pleasures. A small girl went past carrying a teddy bear larger than herself. It was pink. 'They always gives me bath salts,' complained Nobby. 'And bath soap and bubble bath and herbal bath lumps and tons of bath stuff and I can't think why, 'cos it's not as if I hardly ever has a bath. You'd think they'd take the hint, wouldn't you?' 'Abominable, I call it,' said Constable Visit. The first floor was a mob. 'Huh, look at them. Mr Hogfather never brought me anything when I was a kid,' said Corporal Nobbs, eyeing the children gloomily. 'I used to hang up my stocking every Hogswatch, regular. All that ever happened was my dad was sick in it once.' He removed his helmet. Nobby was not by any measure a hero, but there was the sudden gleam in his eye of someone who'd seen altogether too many empty stockings plus one rather full and dripping one. A scab had been knocked off some wound in the corrugated little organ of his soul. 'I'm going in,' he said. In between the University's Great Hall and its main door is a rather smaller circular hall or vestibule known as Archchancellor Bowell's Remembrance, although no one now knows why, or why an extant bequest pays. for one small currant bun and one copper penny to be placed on a high stone shelf on one wall every second Wednesday.[15] Ridcully stood in the middle of the floor, looking upwards. 'Ten me, Senior Wrangler, we never invited any women to the Hogswatchnight Feast, did we?' 'Of course not, Archchancellor,' said the Senior Wrangler. He looked up in the dust-covered rafters, wondering what had caught Ridcully's eye. 'Good heavens, no. They'd spoil everything. I've always said so.' 'And all the maids have got the evening off until midnight?' 'A very generous custom, I've always said,' said the Senior Wrangler, feeling his neck crick. 'So why, every year, do we hang a damn great bunch of mistletoe up there?' The Senior Wrangler turned in a circle, still staring upwards. 'Welt er ... it's ... well, it's ... it's symbolic, Archchancellor.' 'Ah?' The Senior Wrangler felt that something more was expected. He groped around in the dusty attics of his education. 'Of ... the leaves, d'y'see ... they're symbolic of ... of green, d'y'see whereas the berries, in fact, yes, the berries symbolize . . . symbolize white. Yes. White and green. Very ... symbolic.' He waited. He was not, unfortunately, disappointed. 'What of?' The Senior Wrangler coughed. 'I'm not sure there has to be an of,' he said. 'Ah? So,' said the Archchancellor, thoughtfully, 'it could be said that. the white and green symbolize a small parasitic plant?' 'Yes, indeed,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'So mistletoe, in fact, symbolizes mistletoe?' 'Exactly, Archchancellor,' said the Senior Wrangler, who was now just hanging on. 'Funny thing, that,' said Ridcully, in the same thoughtful tone of voice. 'That statement is either so deep it would take a lifetime to fully comprehend every particle of its meaning, or it is a load of absolute tosh. Which is it, I wonder?' 'It could be both,' said the Senior Wrangler desperately. 'And that comment,' said Ridcully, 'is either very perceptive, or very trite.' 'It might be bo--' 'Don't push it, Senior Wrangler.' There was a hammering on the outer door. 'Ah, that'll be the wassailers,' said the Senior Wrangler, happy for the distraction. 'They call on us first every year. I personally have always liked "The Lily-white Boys", you know.' The Archchancellor glanced up at the mistletoe, gave the beaming man a sharp look, and opened the little hatch in the door. 'Well, now, wassailing you fellows-' he began. 'Oh. Well, I must say you might've picked a better time . . .' A hooded figure stepped through the wood of the door, carrying a limp bundle over its shoulder. The Senior Wrangler stepped backwards quickly. 'Oh ... no, not tonight . . .’ And then he noticed that what he had taken for a robe had lace around the bottom, and the hood, while quite definitely a hood, was nevertheless rather more stylish than the one he had first mistaken it for. 'Putting down or taking away?' said Ridcully. Susan pushed back her hood. 'I need your help, Mr Ridcully,' she said. 'You're . . . aren't you Death's granddaughter?' said Ridcully. 'Didn't I meet you a few---' 'Yes,' sighed Susan. 'And ... are you helping out?' said Ridcully. His waggling eyebrows indicated the slumbering figure over her shoulder. 'I need you to wake him up,' said Susan. 'Some sort of miracle, you mean?' said the Senior Wrangler, who was a little behind. 'He's not dead,' said Susan. 'He's just resting.' 'That's what they all say,' the Senior Wrangler quavered. Ridcully, who was somewhat more practical, lifted the oh god's head. There was a groan. 'Looks a bit under the weather,' he said. 'He's the God of Hangovers,' said Susan. 'The Oh God of Hangovers.' 'Really?' said Ridcully. 'Never had one of those myself. Funny thing, I can drink all night and feel as fresh as a daisy in the morning.' The oh god's eyes opened. Then he soared towards Ridcully and started beating him on the chest with both fists. 'You utter, utter bastard! I hate you hate you hate you hate you-' His eyes shut, and he slid down to the floor. 'What was all that about?' said Ridcully. 'I think it was some kind of nervous reaction,' said Susan diplomatically. 'Something nasty's happening tonight. I'm hoping he can tell me what it is. But he's got to be able to think straight first.' 'And you brought him here?' said Ridcully. HO. HO. HO. YES INDEED, HELLO, SMALL CHILD CALLED VERRUCA LUMPY, WHAT A LOVELY NAME, AGED SEVEN, I BELIEVE? GOOD. YES, I KNOW IT DID. ALL OVER THE NICE CLEAN FLOOR, YES. THEY DO, YOU KNOW. THAT's ONE OF THE THINGS ABOUT REAL PIGS. HERE WE ARE, DON'T MENTION IT. HAPPY HOGSWATCH AND BE GOOD. I WILL KNOW IF YOU'RE GOOD OR BAD, YOU KNOW. HO. HO. HO. 'Well, you brought some magic into that little life,' said Albert, as the next child was hurried away. IT'S THE EXPRESSION ON THEIR LITTLE FACES I LIKE, said the Hogfather. 'You mean sort of fear and awe and not knowing whether to laugh or cry or wet their pants?' YES. NOW THAT IS WHAT I CALL BELIEF. The oh god was carried into the Great Hall and laid out on a bench. The senior wizards gathered round, ready to help those less fortunate than themselves remain that way. 'I know what's good for a hangover,' said the Dean, who was feeling in a party mood. They looked at him expectantly. 'Drinking heavily the previous night!' he said. He beamed at them. 'That was a good word joke,' he said, to break the silence. The silence came back. 'Most amusing,' said Ridcully. He turned back and stared thoughtfully at the oh god. 'Raw eggs are said to be good----' he glared at the Dean '-I mean bad for a hangover,' he said. 'And fresh orange juice.' - 'Klatchian coffee,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, firmly. 'But this fellow hasn't just got his hangover, he's got everyone's hangover,' said Ridcully. 'I've tried it,' mumbled the oh god. 'It just makes me feel suicidal and sick.' 'A mixture of mustard and horseradish?' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'In cream, for preference. With anchovies.' 'Yoghurt' said the Bursar. Ridcully looked at him, surprised. 'That sounded almost relevant,' he said. 'Well done. I should leave it at that if I were you, Bursar. Hmm. Of course, my uncle always used to swear at Wow-Wow Sauce,' he added. 'You mean swear by, surely?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'Possibly both,' said Ridcully. 'I know he once drank a whole bottle of it as a hangover cure and it certainly seemed to cure him. He looked very peaceful when they came to lay him out.' 'Willow bark' said the Bursar. 'That's a good idea,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'It's an analgesic.' 'Really? Well, possibly, though it's probably better to give it to him by mouth,' said Ridcully. 'I say, are you feeling yourself, Bursar? You seem somewhat coherent.' The oh god opened his crusted eyes. 'Will all that stuff help?' he mumbled. 'It'll probably kill you,' said Susan. 'Oh. Good.' 'We could add Englebert's Enhancer,' said the Dean. 'Remember when Modo put some on his peas? We could only manage one each!' 'Can't you do something more, well, magical?' said Susan. 'Magic the alcohol out of him or something?' 'Yes, but it's not alcohol by this time, is it?' said Ridcully. 'It'll have turned into a lot of nasty little poisons all dancin' round on his liver.' 'Spold's Unstirring Divisor would do it,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'Very simply, too. You'd end up with a large beaker full of all the nastiness. Not difficult at all, if you don't mind the side effects.' 'Tell me about the side effects,' said Susan, who had met wizards before. 'The main one is that the rest of him would end up in a somewhat larger beaker,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'Alive?' The Lecturer in Recent Runes screwed up his face and waggled his hands. 'Broadly, yes,' he said. 'Living tissue, certainly. And definitely sober.' 'I think we had in mind something that would leave him the same shape and still breathing,' said Susan. 'Well, you might've said . . .' Then the Dean repeated the mantra that has had such a marked effect on the progress of knowledge throughout the ages. 'Why don't we just mix up absolutely everything and see what happens?' he said. And Ridcully responded with the traditional response. 'It's got to be worth a try,' he said. The big glass beaker for the cure had been placed on a pedestal in the middle of the floor. The wizards liked to make a ceremony of everything in any case, but felt instinctively that if they were going, to cure the biggest hangover in the world it needed to be done with style. Susan and Bilious watched as the ingredients were added. Round about halfway the mixture, which was an orange-brown colour, went gloop. 'Not a lot of improvement, I feel,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. Englebert's Enhancer was the penultimate ingredient. The Dean dropped in a greenish ball of light that sank under the surface. The only apparent effect was that it caused purple bubbles to creep over the sides of the beaker and drip onto the floor. 'That's it?' said the oh god. 'I think the yoghurt probably wasn't a good idea,' said the Dean. 'I'm not drinking that,' said Bilious firmly, and then clutched at his head. 'But gods are practically unkillable, aren't they?' said the Dean. 'Oh, good,' muttered Bilious. 'Why not stick my legs in a meat grinder, then?' 'Well, if you think it might help---' 'I anticipated a certain amount of resistance from the patient,' said the Archchancellor. He removed his hat and fished out a small crystal ball from a pocket in the lining. 'Let's see what the God of Wine is up to at the moment, shall we? Shouldn't be too difficult to locate a funloving god like him on an evening like this . . .' He blew on the glass and polished it. Then he brightened up. 'Why, here he is, the little rascal! On Dunmanifestin, I do believe. Yes ... yes ... reclining on his couch, surrounded by naked maenads.' 'What? Maniacs?' said the Dean. 'He means ... excitable young women,' said Susan. And it seemed to her that there was a general ripple of movement among the wizards, a sort of nonchalant drawing towards the glittering ball. 'Can't quite see what he's doing said Ridcully. 'Let me see if I can make it out,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies hopefully. Ridcully half turned to keep the ball out of his reach. 'Ah., yes,' he said. 'It looks like he's drinking . . . yes, could very wen be lager and blackcurrant, if I'm any judge . . .' 'Oh, me . . .' moaned the oh god. 'These young women, now--' the Lecturer in Recent Runes began. 'I can see there's some bottles on the table,' Ridcully continued. 'That one, hmm, yes, could be scumble which, as you know, is made from apple.-, 'Mainly apples,' the Dean volunteered. 'Now, about these poor mad girls-' The oh god slumped to his knees. '. . . and there's ... that drink, you know, there's a worm in the bottle . . .' 'Oh, me . . .' '. . . and ... there's an empty glass, a big one, can't quite see what it contained, but there's a paper umbrella in it. And some cherries on a stick. Oh, and an amusing little monkey.' ‘ooohhh . . .' ‘…of course, there's a lot of other bottles too,' said Ridcully, cheerfully. 'Different coloured drinks, mainly. The sort made from melons and coconuts and chocolate and suchlike, don'tcherknow. Funny thing is, all the glasses on the table are pint mugs . . .' Bilious fell forward. 'All right,' he murmured. 'I'll drink the wretched stuff.' 'It's not quite ready yet,' said Ridcully. 'Ah, thank you, Modo.' Modo tiptoed in, pushing a trolley. There was a large metal bowl on it, in which a small bottle stood in the middle of a heap of crushed ice. 'Only just made this for Hogswatch dinner,' said Ridcully. 'Hasn't had much time to mature yet.' He put down the crystal and fished a pair of heavy gloves out of his hat. The wizards spread like an opening flower. One moment they were gathered around Ridcully, the next they were standing close to various items of heavy furniture. Susan felt she was present at a ceremony and hadn't been told the rules. 'What's that?' she said, as Ridcully carefully lifted up the bottle. 'Wow-Wow Sauce,' said Ridcully. 'Finest condiment known to man. A happy accompaniment to meat, fish, fowl, eggs and many types of vegetable dishes. It's not safe to drink it when sweat's still condensing on the bottle, though.' He peered at the bottle, and then rubbed at it, causing a glassy, squeaky noise. 'On the other hand,' he said brightly, 'if it's a kill-or-cure remedy then we are, given that the patient is practically immortal, probably on to a winner.' He placed. a thumb over the cork and shook the bottle vigorously. There was a crash as the Chair of Indefinite Studies and the Senior Wrangler tried to get under the same table. 'And these fellows seem to have taken against it for some reason,' he said, approaching the beaker. 'I prefer a sauce that doesn't mean you mustn't make any jolting movements for half an hour after using it,' muttered the Dean. 'And that can't be used for breaking up small rocks,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Or getting rid of tree roots,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'And which isn't actually outlawed in three cities,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. Ridcully cautiously uncorked the bottle. There was a brief hiss of indrawn air. He allowed a few drops to splash into the beaker. Nothing happened. A more generous helping was allowed to fall. The mixture remained irredeemably inert. Ridcully sniffed suspiciously at the bottle. 'I wonder if I added enough grated wahooni?' he said, and then upturned the sauce and let most of it slide into the mixture. It merely went gloop. The wizards began to stand up and brush themselves off, giving one another the rather embarrassed grins of people who know that they've just been part of a synchronized makinga-fool-of-yourself team. 'I know we've had that asafoetida rather a long time,' said Ridcully. He turned the bottle round, peering at it sadly. Finally he tipped it up for the last time and thumped it hard on the base. A trickle of sauce arrived on the lip of the bottle and glistened there for a moment. Then it began to form a bead. As if drawn by invisible strings, the heads of the wizards turned to look at it. Wizards wouldn't be wizards if they couldn't see a little way into the future. As the bead swelled and started to go pearshaped they turned and, with a surprising turn .of speed for men so wealthy in years and waistline, began to dive for the floor. The drop fen. It went gloop. And that was all. Ridcully, who'd been standing like a statue, sagged in relief. 'I don't know,' he said, turning away, 'I wish you fellows would show some backbone--' The fireball lifted him off his feet. Then it rose to the ceiling where it spread out widely and vanished with a pop, leaving a perfect chrysanthemum of scorched plaster. Pure white light filled the room. And there was a sound. TINKLE. TINKLE FIZZ. The wizards risked looking around. The beaker gleamed. It was filled with a liquid glow, which bubbled gently and sent out sparkles like a spinning diamond. 'My word . . .' breathed the Lecturer in Recent Runes. Ridcully picked himself up off the floor. Wizards tended to roll well, or in any case are well. padded enough to bounce. Slowly, the flickering. brilliance casting their long shadows on the walls, the wizards gravitated towards the beaker. 'Well, what is it?' said the Dean. 'I remember my father tellin' me some very valuable advice about drinks,' said Ridcully. 'He said, "Son, never drink any drink with a paper umbrella in it, never drink any drink with a humorous name, and never drink any drink that changes colour when the last ingredient goes in. And never, ever, do this---" ' He dipped his finger into the beaker. It came out with one glistening drop on the end. 'Careful, Archchancellor,' warned the Dean. 'What you have there might represent pure sobriety.' Ridcully paused with the finger halfway to his lips. 'Good point,' he said. 'I don't want to start being sober at my time of life.' He looked around. 'How do we usually test stuff?' 'Generally we ask for student volunteers,' said the Dean. 'What happens if we don't get any?' 'We give it to them anyway.' 'Isn't that a bit unethical?' 'Not if we don't tell them, Archchancellor.' 'Ah, good point.' 'I'll try it,' the oh god mumbled. 'Something these clo- gentlemen have cooked up?' said Susan. 'It might kill you!' 'You've never had a hangover, I expect,' said the oh god. `Otherwise you wouldn't talk such rot.' He staggered up to the beaker, managed to grip it on the second go, and drank the lot. 'There'll be fireworks now,' said the raven, from Susan's shoulder. 'Flames coming out of the mouth, screams, clutching at the throat, lying down under the cold tap, that sort of thing-' Death found, to his amazement, that dealing with the queue was very enjoyable. Hardly anyone had ever been pleased to see him before. NEXT! AND WHAT'S YOUR NAME, LITTLE ... He hesitated, but rallied, and continued ... PERSON? 'Nobby Nobbs, Hogfather,' said Nobby. Was it him, or was this knee he was sitting on a lot bonier than it should be? His buttocks argued with his brain, and were sat on. AND HAVE YOU BEEN A GOOD BO ... A GOOD DWA ... A GOOD GNO ... A GOOD INDIVIDUAL? And suddenly Nobby found he had no control at all of his tongue. Of its own accord, gripped by a terrible compulsion, it said: ' 's.' He struggled for -self-possession as the great voice went on: SO I EXPECT YOU'LL WANT A PRESENT FOR A GOOD MON ... A GOOD HUM ... A GOOD MALE? Aha, got you bang to rights, you'll be coming along with me, my old chummy, I bet you don't remember the cellar at the back of the shoelace maker's in Old Cobblers, eh, all those Hogswatch mornings with a little hole in my world, eh? The words rose in Nobby's throat but were overridden by something ardent before they reached his voice box, and to his amazement were translated into: ' 's.' SOMETHING NICE? ' 's.' There was hardly anything left of Nobby's conscious will now. The world consisted of nothing but his naked soul and the Hogfather, who filled the universe. AND YOU WILL OF COURSE BE GOOD FOR ANOTHER YEAR? The tiny remnant of basic Nobbyness wanted to say, 'Er, how exactly do you define "good", mister? Like, suppose there was just some stuff that no one'd miss, say? Or, f 'r instance, say a friend of mine was on patrol, sort of thing, and found a shopkeeper had left his door unlocked at night. I mean, anyone could walk in, right, but suppose this friend took one or two things, sort of like, you know, a gratuity, and then called the shopkeeper out and got him to lock up, that counts as "good", does it?' Good and bad were, to Nobby's way of thinking, entirely relative terms. Most of his relatives, for example, were criminals. But, again, this invitation to philosophical debate was ambushed somewhere in his head by sheer dread of the big beard in the sky. ' 's,' he squeaked. NOW, I WONDER WHAT YOU WOULD LIKE? Nobby gave up, and sat mute. Whatever was going to happen next was going to happen, and there was not a thing he could do about it . . . Right now, the light at the end of his mental tunnel showed only more tunnel. AH, YES ... The Hogfather reached into his sack and pulled out an awkwardly shaped present wrapped in festive Hogswatch paper which, owing to some slight confusion on the current Hogfather's part, had merry ravens on it. Corporal Nobbs took it in nervous hands. WHAT DO YOU SAY? ' nk you.' OFF YOU GO. Corporal Nobbs slid down gratefully and barged his way through the crowds, stopping only when he was fielded by Constable Visit. 'What happened? What happened? I couldn't see!' 'I dunno,' mumbled Nobby. 'He gave me this.' 'What is it.' 'I dunno . . He clawed at the raven-bedecked paper. 'This is disgusting, this whole business,' said Constable Visit. 'It's the worship of idols--' 'It's a genuine Burleigh and Stronginthearm doubleaction triple-cantilever crossbow with a polished walnut stock and engraved silver facings!' '--a crass commercialization of a date which is purely of astronomical significance,' said Visit, who seldom paid attention when he was in mid-denounce. 'If it is to be celebrated at all, then--' 'I saw this in Bows and Ammo! It got Editor's Choice in the 'What to Buy When Rich Uncle Sidney Dies" category! They had to break both the reviewer's arms to get him to let go of it!' '---ought to be commemorated in a small service of---' 'It must cost more'n a year's salary! They only make 'em to order! You have to wait ages!' '-religious significance.' It dawned on Constable Visit that something behind him was amiss. 'Aren't we going to arrest this impostor, corporal?' he said. Corporal Nobbs looked blearily at him through the mists of possessive pride. 'You're foreign, Washpot,' he said. 'I can't expect you to know the real meaning of Hogswatch.' The oh god blinked. 'Ah,' he said. 'That's better. Oh, yes. That's a lot better. Thank you.' The wizards, who shared the raven's belief in the essential narrative conventions of life, watched him cautiously. 'Any minute now,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes confidently, 'it'll probably start with some kind of amusing yell---' 'You know,' said the oh god, 'I think I could just possibly eat a soft-boiled egg.' '---or maybe the cars spinning round---' 'And perhaps drink a glass of milk' said the oh god. Ridcully looked nonplussed. 'You really feel better?' he said. 'Oh, yes,' said the oh god. 'I really think I could risk a smile without the top of my head falling off.' 'No, no, no,' said the Dean. 'This can't be right. Everyone knows that a good hangover cure has got to involve a lot of humorous shouting, ekcetra.' 'I could possibly tell you a joke,' said the oh god carefully. 'You don't have this pressing urge to run outside and stick your head in a water butt?' said Ridcully. 'Er . . . not really,' said the oh god. 'But I'd like some toast, if that helps.' The Dean took off his hat and pulled a thaumameter out of the point. 'Something happened,' he said. 'There was a massive thaumic surge.' 'Didn't it even taste a bit ... well, spicy?' said Ridcully. 'It didn't taste of anything, really,' said the oh god. 'Oh, look, it's obvious,' said Susan. 'When the God of Wine drinks, Bilious here gets the aftereffects, so when the God of Hangovers drinks a hangover cure then the effects must jump back across the same link.' 'That could be right,' said the Dean. 'He is, after all, basically a conduit.' 'I've always thought of myself as more of a tube,' said the oh god. 'No, no, she's right,' said Ridcully. 'When he drinks, this lad here gets the nasty result. So, logically, when our friend here takes a hangover cure the side effects should head back the same way--' 'Someone mentioned a crystal ball just now,' said the oh god in a voice suddenly clanging with vengeance. 'I want to see this--' It was a big drink. A very big and a very long drink. It was one of those special cocktails where each very sticky, very strong ingredient is poured in very slowly, so that they layer on top of one another. Drinks like this tend to get called Traffic Lights or Rainbow's Revenge or, in places where truth is more highly valued, Hello and Goodbye, Mr Brain Cell. In addition, this drink had some lettuce floating in it. And a slice of lemon and a piece of pineapple hooked coquettishly on the side of the glass, which had sugar frosted round the rim. There were two paper umbrellas, one pink and one blue, and they each had a cherry on the end. And someone had taken the trouble to freeze ice cubes in the shape of little elephants. After that, there's no hope. You might as well be drinking in a place called the Cococobana. The God of Wine picked it up lovingly. It was his kind of drink. There was a rumba going on in the background. There were also a couple of young ladies snuggling up to him. It was going to be a good night. It was always a good night. 'Happy Hogswatch, everyone!' he said, and raised the glass. And then: 'Can anyone hear something?' Someone blew a paper squeaker at him. 'No, seriously ... like a sort of descending note Since no one paid this any attention he shrugged, and nudged one of his fellow drinkers. 'How about we have a couple more and go to this club I know?' he said. And then The wizards leaned back, and one or two of them grimaced. Only the oh god stayed glued to the glass, face contorted in a vicious smile. 'We have eructation!' he shouted, and punched the air. 'Yes! Yes! Yes! The worm is on the other boot now, eh? Hah! How do you like them apples, huh?' 'Well, mainly apples--' said the Dean. 'Looked like a lot of other things to me,' said Ridcully. 'It seems we have reversed the cause-effect flow . . .' 'Will it be permanent?' said the oh god hopefully. 'I shouldn't think so. After all, you are the God of Hangovers. It'll probably just reverse itself again when the potion wears off.' 'Then I may not have much time. Bring me ... let's see ... twenty pints of lager, some pepper vodka and a bottle of coffee liqueur! With an umbrella in it! Let's see how he enjoys that, Mr You've Cot Room For Another One In There!' Susan grabbed his hand and pulled him over to a bench. 'I didn't have you sobered up just so you could go on a binge!' she said. He blinked at her. 'You didn't?' 'I want you to help me!' 'Help you what?' 'You said you'd never been human before, didn't you?' 'Er . . .' The oh god looked down at himself. 'That's right,' he said. 'Never.' 'You've never incarnated?' said Ridcully. 'Surely that's a rather personal question, isn't it?' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'That's ... right,' said the oh god. 'Odd, that. I remember always having headaches ... but never having a head. That can't be right, can it?' 'You existed in potentia?' said Ridcully. 'Did P' 'Did he?' said Susan. Ridcully paused. 'Oh dear,' he said. 'I think I did it, didn't I? I said something to young Stibbons about drinking and hangovers, didn't I ... ?' 'And you created him just like that?' said the Dean. 'I find that very hard to believe, Mustrum. Hah! Out of thin air? I suppose we can all do that, can we? Anyone care to think up some new pixie?' 'Like the Hair Loss Fairy?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. The other wizards laughed. 'I am not losing my hair!' snapped the Dean. 'It is just very finely spaced.' 'Half on your head and half on your hairbrush,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'No sense in bein' bashful about goin' bald,' said Ridcully evenly. 'Anyway, you know what they say about bald men, Dean.' 'Yes, they say, "Look at him, he's got no hair,"' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. The Dean had been annoying him lately. 'For the last time,' shouted the Dean, 'I am not--' He stopped. There was a glingleglingleglingle noise. 'I wish I knew where that was coming from,' said Ridcully. 'Er . . .' the Dean began. 'Is there ... something on my head?' The other wizards stared. Something was moving under his hat. Very carefully, he reached up and removed it. The very small gnome sitting on his head had a chimp of the Dean's hair in each hand. It blinked guiltily in the light. 'Is there a problem?' it said. 'Get it off me!' the Dean yelled. The wizards hesitated. They were all vaguely aware of the theory that very small creatures could pass on diseases, and while the gnome was larger than such creatures were generally thought to be, no one wanted to catch Expanding Scalp Sickness. Susan grabbed it. 'Are you the Hair Loss Fairy?' she said. `Apparently,' said the gnome, wriggling in her grip. The Dean ran his hands desperately through his hair. 'What have you been doing with my hair?' he demanded. 'Welt some of it I think I have to put on hairbrushes,' said the gnome, 'but sometimes I think I weave it into little mats to block up the bath with.' 'What do you mean, you think?' said Ridcully. 'Just a minute,' said Susan. She turned to the oh god. 'Where exactly were you before I found you in the snow?' 'Er . . . sort of ... everywhere, I think,' said the oh god. 'Anywhere where drink had been consumed in beastly quantities some time previously, you could say.' 'Ah-ha,' said Ridcully. 'You were an immanent vital force, yes?' 'I suppose I could have been,' the oh god conceded. 'And when we joked about the Hair Loss Fairy it suddenly focused on the Dean's head,' said Ridcully, 'where its operations have been noticeable to all of us in recent months although of course we have been far too polite to pass comment on the subject.' 'You're calling things into being,' said Susan. 'Things like the Give the Dean a Huge Bag of Money Goblin?' said the Dean, who could think very quickly at times. He looked around hopefully. 'Anyone hear any fairy tinkling?' 'Do you often get given huge bags of money, sir?' said Susan. 'Not on what you'd call a daily basis, no,' said the Dean. 'But if---' 'Then there probably isn't any occult room for a Huge Bags of Money Goblin,' said Susan. 'I personally have always wondered what happens to my socks,' said the Bursar cheerfully. 'You know how there's always one missing? When I was a lad I always thought that something was taking them . . .' The wizards gave this some thought. Then they all heard it - the little crinkly tinkling noise of magic taking place. The Archchancellor pointed dramatically skywards. 'To the laundry!' he said. 'It's downstairs, Ridcully,' said the Dean. 'Down to the laundry!' 'And you know Mrs Whitlow doesn't like us going in there,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'And who is Archchancellor of this University, may I ask?' said Ridcully. 'Is it Mrs Whitlow? I don't think so! Is it me? Why, how amazing, I do believe it is!' 'Yes, but you know what she can be like,' said the Chair. 'Er, yes, that's true--' Ridcully began. 'I believe she's gone to her sister's for the holiday,' said the Bursar. 'We certainly don't have to take orders from any kind of housekeeper!' said the Archchancellor. 'To the laundry!' The wizards surged out excitedly, leaving Susan, the oh god, the Verruca Gnome and the Hair Loss Fairy. 'Tell me again who those people were,' said the oh god. 'Some of the cleverest men in the world,' said Susan. 'And I'm sober, am W 'Clever isn't the same as sensible,' said Susan, 'and they do say that if you wish to walk the path to wisdom then for your first step you must become as a small child.' 'Do you think they've heard about the second step?' Susan sighed. 'Probably not, but sometimes they fall over it while they're running around shouting.' 'Ah.' The oh god looked around. 'Do you think they have any soft drinks here?' he said. The path to wisdom does, in fact, begin with a single step. Where people go wrong is in ignoring all the thousands of other steps that come after it. They make the single step of deciding to become one with the universe, and for some reason forget to take the logical next step of living for seventy years on a mountain and a daily bowl of rice and yak-butter tea that would give it any kind of meaning. While evidence says that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, they're probably all on first steps. The Dean was always at his best at times like this. He led the way between the huge, ardent copper vats, prodding with his staff into dark corners and going 'Hut! Hut!' under his breath. 'Why would it turn up here?' whispered the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'Point of reality instability,' said Ridcully, standing on tiptoe to look into a bleaching cauldron. 'Every damn thing turns up here. You should know that by now.' 'But why now?' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'No talking!' hissed the Dean, and leapt out into the next alleyway, staff held protectively in front of him. 'Hall!' he screamed, and then looked disappointed ' Er, how big would this sock-stealing thing be?' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Don't know,' said Ridcully. He peered behind a stack of washboards. 'Come to think of it, I must've lost a ton of socks over the years.' 'Me too,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'So ... should we be looking in small places or very large places?' the Senior Wrangler went on, in the voice of one whose train of thought has just entered a long dark tunnel. 'Good point,' said Ridcully. 'Dean, why do you keep referring to sheds all the time?' 'It's "hut", Mustrum,' said the Dean. 'It means . it means. . .' 'Small wooden building?' Ridcully suggested. 'Welt sometimes, agreed, but other times . . . well, you just have to say "hut".' 'This sock creature ... does it just steal them, or does it eat them?' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Valuable contribution' that man,' said Ridcully, giving tip on the Dean. 'Right, pass the word along: no one is to look like a sock, understand?' 'How can you---' the Dean began, and stopped. They all heard it. ... grnf, grnf, grnf ... It was a busy sound, the sound of something with a serious appetite to satisfy. 'The Eater of Socks,' moaned the Senior Wrangler, with his eyes shut. 'How many tentacles would you expect it to have?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'I mean, roughly speaking?' 'It's a very large sort of noise, isn't it?' said the Bursar. 'To the nearest dozen, say,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, edging backwards. ... grnf, grnf, grnf ... 'It'd probably tear our socks off as soon as look at us . . .' wailed the Senior Wrangler. 'Ah. So at least five or six tentacles, then, would you say?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'Seems to me it's coming from one of the washing engines,' said the Dean. The engines were each two storeys high, and usually only used when the University's population soared during term time. A huge treadmill connected to a couple of big bleached wooden paddles in each vat, which were heated via the fireboxes underneath. In full production the washing engines needed at least half a dozen people to manhandle the loads, maintain the fires and oil the scrubbing arms. Ridcully had seen them at work once, when it had looked like a picture of a very dean and hygienic Hell, the kind of place soap might go to when it died. The Dean stopped by the door to the boiler area. 'Something's in here,' he whispered. 'Listen!' . . grnf. . . It's stopped! It knows we're here!' he hissed. "All right? Ready? Hut!' 'No!' squeaked the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'I'll open the door and you be ready to stop it! One ... two ... three! Oh . . .' The sleigh soared into the snowy sky. ON THE WHOLE, I THINK THAT WENT VERY WELL, DON'T YOU? 'Yes, master,' said Albert. I WAS RATHER PUZZLED BY THE LITTLE BOY IN THE CHAIN MAIL, THOUGH. 'I think that was a Watchman, master.' REALLY? WELL, HE WENT AWAY HAPPY, AND THAT's THE MAIN THING. 'Is it, master?' There was worry in Albert's voice. Death's osmotic nature tended to pick up new ideas altogether too quickly. Of course, Albert understood why they had to do all this, but the master ... well, sometimes the master lacked the necessary mental equipment to work out what should be true and what shouldn't ... AND I THINK I'VE GOT THE LAUGH WORKING REALLY WELL NOW. HO. HO. HO. 'Yeah, sir, very jolly,' said Albert. He looked down at the list. 'Still, work goes on, eh? The next one's pretty dose, master, so I should keep them down low if I was you.' JOLLY GOOD. HO. HO. HO. 'Sarah the little match girl, doorway of Thimble's Pipe and Tobacco Shop, Money Trap Lane, it says here.' AND WHAT DOES SHE WANT FOR HOGSWATCH? HO. HO. HO. 'Dunno. Never sent a letter. By the way, just a tip, you don't have to say "Ho, ho, ho, " all the time, master. Let's see ... It says here...' Albert's lips moved as he read. I EXPECT A DOLL IS ALWAYS ACCEPTABLE. OR A SOFT TOY OF SOME DESCRIPTION. THE SACK SEEMS TO KNOW. WHAT'VE WE GOT FOR HER, ALBERT? HO. HO. HO. Something small was dropped into his hand. 'This,' said Albert. OH. There was a moment of horrible silence as they both stared at the lifetimer. 'You're for life, not just for Hogswatch,' prompted Albert. 'Life goes on, master. In a manner of speaking.' BUT THIS IS HOGSWATCHNIGHT. 'Very traditional time for this sort of thing, I understand,' said Albert. I THOUGHT IT WAS THE SEASON TO BE JOLLY, said Death. 'Ah, well, yes, you see, one of the things that makes folks even more jolly is knowing there're people who ain't,' said Albert, in a matter-of-fact voice. 'That's how it goes, master. Master?' No. Death stood Up. THIS IS HOW IT SHOULDN'T GO. The University's Great Hall had been set for the Hogswatchnight Feast. The tables were already groaning under the weight of the cutlery, and it would be hours before any real food was put on them. It was hard to see where there would be space for any among the drifts of ornamental fruit bowls and forests of wine glasses. The oh god picked up a menu and turned to the fourth page. 'Course four: molluscs and crustaceans. A medley of lobster, crab, king crab, prawn, shrimp, oyster, clam, giant mussel, green-lipped mussel, thin-lipped mussel and Fighting Tiger Limpet. With a herb and butter dipping sauce. Wine: "Three Wizards" Chardonnay, Year of the Talking Frog. Beer: Winkles' Old Peculiar.' He put it down. 'That's one course?' he said. 'They're big men in the food department,' said Susan. He turned the menu over. On the cover was the University's coat of arms and, over it, three large letters in ardent script: h b p 'Is this some sort of magic word?' 'No.' Susan sighed. 'They put it on all their menus. You might call it the unofficial motto of the University.' 'What's it mean?' 'Eta Beta Pi.' Bilious gave her an expectant look. 'Yes . . .?' 'Er ... like, Eat a Better Pie?' said Susan. 'That's what you just said, yes,' said the oh god. 'Urn. No. You see, the letters are Ephebian characters which just sound a bit like "eat a better Pie 'Ah.' Bilious nodded wisely. 'I can see that might cause confusion.' Susan felt a bit helpless in the face of the look of helpful puzzlement. 'No,' she said, 'in fact they are supposed to cause a little bit of confusion, and then you laugh. It's called a pune or play on words. Eta Beta Pi.' She eyed him carefully. 'You laugh,' she said. 'With your mouth. Only, in fact, you don't laugh, because you're not supposed to laugh at things like this.' 'Perhaps I could find that glass of milk,' said the oh god helplessly, peering at the huge array of jugs and bottles. He'd clearly given up on sense of humour. 'I gather the Archchancellor won't have milk in the University,' said Susan. 'He says he knows where it comes from and it's unhygienic. And that's a man who eats three eggs for breakfast every day, mark you. How do you know about milk, by the way?' 'I've got ... memories,' said the oh god. 'Not exactly of anything, er, specific. just, you know, memories. Like, I know trees usually grow greenend up ... that sort of thing. I suppose gods just know things.' 'Any special god-like powers?' 'I might be able to turn water into an enervescent drink.' He pinched the bridge of his nose. 'Is that any help? And it's just possible I can give people a blinding headache.' 'I need to find out why my grandfather is ... acting strange.' 'Can't you ask him?' 'He won't tell me!' 'Does he throw up a lot?' 'I shouldn't think so. He doesn't often eat. The occasional curry, once or twice a month.' 'He must be pretty thin.' 'You've no idea.' 'Well, then ... Does he often stare at himself in the mirror and say "Arrgh"? Or stick out his tongue and wonder why it's gone yellow? You see, it's possible I might have some measure of influence over people who are hung over. If he's been drinking a lot, I might be able to find him.' 'I can't see him doing any of those things. I think I'd better tell you ... My grandfather is Death.' 'Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.' 'I said Death.' 'Sorry?' 'Death. You know ... Death?' 'You mean the robes, the---' '-scythe, white horse, bones . . .. yes. Death.' 'I just want to make sure I've got this dear,' said the oh god in a reasonable tone of voice. 'You think your grandfather is Death and you think he's acting strange?' The Eater of Socks looked up at the wizards, cautiously. Then its jaws started to work again. ... grnf, grnf ... 'Here, thats one of mine!' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, making a grab. The Eater of Socks backed away hurriedly. It looked like a very small elephant with a very wide, flared trunk, up which one of the Chair's socks was disappearing. 'Funny lookin' little thing, ain't it?' said Ridcully, leaning his staff against the wall. 'Let go, you wretched creature!' said the Chair, making a grab for the sock. 'Shoo!' The sock eater tried to get away while remaining where it was. This should be impossible, but it is in fact a move attempted by many small animals when they are caught eating something forbidden. The legs scrabble hurriedly but the neck and feverishly working jaws merely stretch and pivot around the food. Finally the last of the sock disappeared up the snout with a faint sucking noise and the creature lumbered off behind one of the boilers. After a while it poked one suspicious eye around the corner to watch them. 'They're expensive, you know, with the flaxreinforced heel,' muttered the Chair of Indefinite Studies. Ridcully pulled open a drawer in his hat and extracted his pipe and a pouch of herbal tobacco. He struck a match on the side of the washing engine. This was turning out to be a far more interesting evening than he had anticipated. 'We've got to get this sorted out,' he said, as the first few puffs filled the washing hall with the scent of autumn bonfires. 'Can't have creatures just popping into existence because someone's thought about them. It's unhygienic.' The sleigh slewed around at the end of Money Trap Lane. COME ON, ALBERT. 'You know you're not supposed to do this sort of thing, master. You know what happened last time.' THE HOGFATHER CAN DO IT, THOUGH. 'But ... little match girls dying in the snow is part of what the Hogswatch spirit is all about, master,' said Albert desperately. 'I mean, people hear about it and say, "We may be poorer than a disabled banana and only have mud and old boots to eat, but at least we're better off than the poor little match girl," master. It makes them feel happy and grateful for what they've got, see.' I KNOW WHAT THE SPIRIT OF HOGSWATCH IS, ALBERT. 'Sorry, master. But, look, it's all right, anyway, because she wakes up and it's all bright and shining and tinkling music and there's angels, master.' Death stopped. AH. THEY TURN UP AT THE LAST MINUTE WITH WARM CLOTHES AND A HOT DRINK? Oh dear, thought Albert. The master's really in one of his funny moods now. 'Er. No. Not exactly at the last minute, master. Not as such.' WELL? 'More sort of just after the last minute.' Albert coughed nervously. YOU MEAN AFTER SHE'S--- 'Yes. That's how the story goes, master, 's not my fault.' WHY NOT TURN UP BEFORE? AN ANGEL HAS QUITE A LARGE CARRYING CAPACITY. 'Couldn't say, master. I suppose people think it's more ... satisfying the other way . . .' Albert hesitated, and then frowned. 'You know, now that I come to tell someone . . Death looked down at the shape under the falling snow. Then he set the lifetimer on the air and touched it with a finger. A spark flashed across. 'You ain't really allowed to do that,' said Albert, feeling wretched. THE HOGFATHER CAN. THE HOGFATHER GIVES PRESENTS. THERE'S NO BETTER PRESENT THAN A FUTURE. 'Yeah, but---' ALBERT. 'All right, master.' Death scooped up the girl and strode to the end of the alley. The snowflakes fen like angel's feathers. Death stepped out into the street and accosted two figures who were tramping through the drifts. TAKE HER SOMEWHERE WARM AND GIVE HER A GOOD DINNER, he commanded, pushing the bundle into the arms of one of them. AND I MAY WELL BE CHECKING UP LATER. Then he turned and disappeared into the swirling snow. Constable Visit looked down at the little girl in his arms, and then at Corporal Nobbs. 'What's all this about, corporal?' Nobby pulled aside the blanket. 'Search me,' he said. 'Looks like we've been chosen to do a bit of charity.' 'I don't call it very charitable, just dumping someone on people like this.' 'Come on, there'll still be some grub left in the Watchhouse,' said Nobby. He'd got a very deep and certain feeling that this was expected of him. He remembered a big man in a grotto, although he couldn't quite remember the face. And he couldn't quite remember the face of the person who had handed over the girl, so that meant it must be the same one. Shortly afterwards there was some tinkling music and a very bright light and two rather affronted angels appeared at the other end of the alley, but Albert threw snowballs at them until they went away. Hex worried Ponder Stibbons. He didn't know how it worked, but everyone else assumed that he did. Oh, he had a good idea about some parts, and he was pretty certain that Hex thought about things by turning them all into numbers and crunching them (a clothes wringer from the laundry, or CWL, had been plumbed in for this very purpose), but why did it need a lot of small religious pictures? And there was the mouse. It didn't seem to do much, but whenever they forgot to give it its cheese Hex stopped working. There were all those ram skulls. The ants wandered over to them occasionally but they didn't seem to do anything. What Ponder was worried about was the fear that he was simply engaged in a cargo cult. He'd read about them. Ignorant[16] and credulous[17] people, whose island might once have been visited by some itinerant merchant vessel that traded pearls and coconuts for such fruits of civilization as glass beads, mirrors, axes and sexual diseases, would later make big model ships out of bamboo in the hope of once again attracting this magical cargo. Of course, they were far too ignorant and credulous to know that just because you built the shape you didn't get the substance ... He'd built the shape of Hex and, it occurred to him, he'd built it in a magical university where the border between the real and 'not real' was stretched so thin you could almost see through it. He got the horrible suspicion that, somehow, they were merely making solid a sketch that was hidden somewhere in the air. Hex knew what it ought to be. All that business about the electricity, for example. Hex had raised the subject one night, not long after it'd asked for the mouse. Ponder prided himself that he knew pretty much all there was to know about electricity. But they'd tried rubbing balloons and glass rods until they'd been able to stick Adrian onto the ceiling, and it hadn't had any effect on Hex. Then they'd tried tying a lot of. cats to a wheel which, when revolved against some beads of amber, caused any amount of electricity all over the place. The wretched stuff hung around for days, but there didn't seem any way of ladling it into Hex and anyway no one could stand the noise. So far the Archchancellor had vetoed the lightning rod idea. All this depressed Ponder. He was certain that the world ought to work in a more efficient way. And now even the things that he thought were going right were going wrong. - He stared glumly at Hex's quill pen in its tangle of springs and wire. The door was thrown open. Only one person could make a door bang on its hinges like that. Ponder didn't even turn round. 'Hello again, Archchancellor.' 'That thinking engine of yours working?' said Ridcully. 'Only there's an interesting little---' 'It's not working,' said Ponder. 'It ain't. What's this, a half-holiday for Hogswatch?' 'Look' said Ponder. Hex wrote: +++ Whoops! Here Comes The Cheese! +++MELON MELON MELON +++ Error At Address: 14, Treacle Mine Road, AnkhMorpork+++ !!!!! +++Oneoneoneoneoneone +++ Redo From Start +++ 'What's going on?' said Ridcully, as the others pushed in behind them. 'I know it -sounds stupid, Archchancellor, but we think it might have caught something off the Bursar.' 'Daftness, you mean?' 'That's ridiculous, boy!' said the Dean. 'Idiocy is not a communicable disease.' Ridcully puffed his pipe. 'I used to think that, too,' he said. 'Now Im not so sure. Anyway, you can catch wisdom, can't you?' 'No, you can't,' snapped the Dean. 'It's not like 'flu, Ridcully. Wisdom is ... well, instilled.' 'We bring students here and hope they catch wisdom off us, don't we?' said Ridcully. 'Well, metaphorically,' said the Dean. 'And if you hang around with a bunch of idiots you're bound to become pretty daft yourself,' Ridcully went on. 'I suppose in a manner of speaking . . 'And you've only got to talk to the poor old Bursar for five minutes and you think you're going a bit potty yourself, am I right?' The wizards nodded glumly. The Bursar's company, although quite harmless, had a habit of making one's brain squeak. 'So Hex here has caught daftness off the Bursar,' said Ridcully. 'Simple. Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.' He banged his pipe on the side of Hex's listening tube and shouted: 'FEELING ALL RIGHT, OLD CHAP?' Hex wrote: +++ Hi Mum Is Testing +++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out Of Cheese Error +++ !!!!! +++ Mr Jelly! Mr Jelly! +++ 'Hex seems perfectly able to work out anything purely to do with numbers but when it tries anything else it does this,' said Ponder. 'See? Bursar Disease,' said Ridcully. 'The bee's knees when it comes to adding up, the pig's ear at everything else. Try giving him dried frog pills?' 'Sorry, sir, but that is a very uninformed suggestion,' said Ponder. 'You can't give medicine to machines.' 'Don't see why not,' said Ridcully. He banged on the tube again and bellowed, 'SOON HAVE YOU BACK ON YOUR ... your ... yes, indeed, old chap! Where's that board with all the letter and number buttons, Mr Stibbons? Ah, good.' He sat down and typed, with one finger, as slowly as a company chairman: D-R-Y-D-F-R-O-R-G-½-P-I-L-L-S Hex's pipes jangled. 'That can't possibly work sir,' said Ponder. 'It ought to,' said Ridcully. 'If he can get the idea of being ill, he can get the idea of being cured.' He typed: L-O-T-S-O-F-D-R-Y-D-F-R-O-R-C-P-  ¼-L-L-S 'Seems to me' ' he said, `that this thing believes what it's told, right?' 'Well, it's true that Hex has, if you want to put it that way, no idea of an untruth.' `Right. Well, I've just told the thing it's had a lot of dried frog pills. It's not going to call me a liar, is it?' There was some clickings and whirrings within the structure of Hex. Then it wrote: +++ Good Evening, Archchancellor. I Am Fully Recovered And Enthusiastic About My Tasks +++ 'Not mad, then?' +++ I Assure You I Am As Sane As The Next Man +++ 'Bursar, just move away from the machine, will you?' said Ridcully. 'Oh well, I expect it's the best we're going to get. Right, let's get all this sorted out. We want to find out what's going on.' 'Anywhere specific or just everywhere?' said Ponder, a shade sarcastically. There was a scratching noise from Hex's pen. Ridcully glanced down at the paper. 'Says here "Implied Creation Of Anthropomorphic Personification",' he said. 'What's that mean?' 'Er ... I think Hex has tried to work out the answer,' said Ponder. 'Has it, bigods? I hadn't even worked out what the question was yet . . .' 'It heard you talking, sir.' Ridcully raised his eyebrows. Then he leaned down towards the speaking tube. 'CAN YOU HEAR ME IN THERE?' The pen scratched. +++ Yes +++ 'LOOKIN' AFTER YOU ALL RIGHT, ARE THEY?' 'You don't have to shout, Archchancellor,' said Ponder. 'What's this Implied Creation, then?' said Ridcully. 'Er, I think I've heard of it, Archchancellor,' said Ponder. 'It means the existence of some things automatically brings into existence other things. If some things exist, certain other things have to exist as well.' 'Like... crime and punishment, say?' said Ridcully. 'Drinking and hangovers ... of course. . 'Something like that, sir, yes.' 'So ... if there's a Tooth Fairy there has to be a Verruca Gnome?' Ridcully stroked his beard. 'Makes a sort of sense, I suppose. But why not a Wisdom Tooth Goblin? You know, bringing them extra ones? Some little devil with a bag of big teeth?' There was silence. But in the depths of the silence there was a little tingly fairy bell sound. 'Er ... do you think I might have---' Ridcully began. 'Sounds logical to me,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'I remember the agony I had when my wisdom teeth came through.' 'Last week?' said the Dean, and smirked. 'Ah,' said Ridcully. He didn't look embarrassed because people like Ridcully are never, ever embarrassed about anything, although often people are embarrassed on their behalf. He bent down to the ear Hex again. 'YOU STILL IN THERE?' Ponder Stibbons rolled his eyes. 'MIND TELLING US WHAT THE REALITY IS LW ROUND HERE?' The pen wrote: +++ On A Scale Of One To Ten Query +++ FINE,' Ridcully shouted. ++ Divide By Cucumber Error. Please Reinstall Universe And Reboot +++ 'Interestin',' said Ridcully. 'Anyone know what that means?' 'Damn,' said Ponder. 'It's crashed again.' Ridcully looked mystified. 'Has it? I never even saw it take off.' 'I mean its ... its sort of gone a little bit mad,' said Ponder. 'Ah,' said Ridcully. 'Well, we're experts at that around here.' He thumped on the drum again. 'WANT SOME MORE DRIED FROG PILLS, OLD CHAP?' he shouted. 'Er, I should let us sort it out, Archchancellor,' said Ponder, trying to steer him away. 'What does "divide by cucumber" mean?' said Ridcully. 'Oh, Hex just says that if it comes up with an answer that it knows can't possibly be real,' said Ponder. 'And this "rebooting" business? Give it a good kicking, do you?' 'Oh, no, of course, we ... that is ... well, yes, in fact,' said Ponder. 'Adrian goes round the back and ... er ... prods it with his foot. But in a technical way,' he added. 'Ah. I think I'm getting the hang of this thinkin' engine business,' said Ridcully cheerfully. 'So it reckons the universe needs a kicking, does it?' Hex's pen was scratching across the paper. Ponder glanced at the figures. 'It must do. These figures can't be right!' Ridcully grinned again. 'You mean either the whole world has gone wrong or your machine is wrong?' 'Yes!' 'Then I'd imagine the answer's pretty easy, wouldn't you?' said Ridcully. 'Yes. It certainly is. Hex gets thoroughly tested every day,' said Ponder Stibbons. 'Good point, that man,' said Ridcully. He banged on Hex's listening tube once more. 'YOU DOWN THERE---' 'You really don't need to shout, Archchancellor,' said Ponder. -what's this Anthropomorphic Personification, then?' +++ Humans Have Always Ascribed Random, Seasonal, Natural Or Inexplicable Actions To HumanShaped Entities. Such Examples Are jack Frost, The Hogfather, The Tooth Fairy And Death +++ 'Oh, them. Yes, but they exist,' said Ridcully. 'Met a couple of 'em myself.' +++ Humans Are Not Always Wrong +++ 'All right, but I'm damn sure there's never been an Eater of Socks or God of Hangovers.' +++ But There Is No Reason Why There Should Not Be +++ 'The thing's right, you know,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'A little man who carries verrucas around is no more ridiculous than someone who takes away children's teeth for money, when you come to think about it.' 'Yes, but what about the Eater of Socks?' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'Bursar just said he always thought something was eating his socks and, bingo, there it was.' 'But we all believed him, didn't we? I know I did. Seems like the best possible explanation for all the socks I've lost over the years. I mean, if they'd just fallen down the back of the drawer or something there'd be a mountain of the things by now.' 'I know what you mean,' said Ponder. 'It's like pencils. I must have bought hundreds of pencils over the years, but how many have I ever actually worn down to the stub? Even I've caught myself thinking that something's creeping up and eating them---' There was a faint glingleglingle noise. He froze. 'What was that?' he said. 'Should I look round? Will I see something horrible?' 'Looks like a very puzzled bird,' said Ridcully. 'With a very odd-shaped beak,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'I wish I knew who's making that bloody tinkling noise,' said the Archchancellor. The oh god listened attentively. Susan was amazed. He didn't seem to disbelieve anything. She'd never been able to talk like this before, and said so. 'I think that's because I haven't got any preconceived ideas,' said the oh god. 'It comes of not having been conceived, probably.' 'Well, that's how it is, anyway,' said Susan. 'Obviously I haven't inherited . . . physical characteristics. I suppose I just look at the world in a certain way.' 'What way?' 'It ... doesn't always present barriers. Like this, for example.' She dosed her eyes. She felt better if she didn't see what she was doing. Part of her would keep on insisting it was impossible. All she felt was a faintly cold, prickling sensation. 'What did I just do?' she said, her eyes still shut. 'Er . . . you waved your hand through the table,' said the oh god. 'You see?' 'Um ... I assume that most humans can't do that?' 'No!" 'You don't have to shout. I'm not very experienced about humans, am l? Apart from around the point the sun shines through the gap in the curtains. And then they're mainly wishing that the ground would open up and swallow them. I mean the humans, not the curtains.' Susan leaned back in her chair - and knew that a tiny part of her brain was saying, yes, there is a chair here, it's a real thing, you can sit on it. 'There's other things,' she said. 'I can remember things. Things that haven't happened yet.' 'Isn't that useful?' 'No! Because I never know what they - look, it's like looking at the future through a keyhole. You see bits of things but you never really know what they mean until you arrive where they are and see where the bit fits in.' 'That could be a problem,' said the oh god politely. 'Believe me. Its the waiting that's the worst part. You keep watching out for one of the bits to go past. I mean I don't usually remember anything useful about the future, just twisted little dues that don't make sense until it's too late. Are you sure you don't know why you turned up at the Hogfather's castle?' 'No. I just remember being a ... well, can you understand what I mean by a disembodied mind?' 'Oh, yes.' .'Good. Now can you understand what I mean by a disembodied headache? And then, next moment, I was lying on a back I didn't used to have in a lot of cold white stuff I'd never seen before. But I suppose if you're going to pop into existence, you've got to do it somewhere.' 'Somewhere where someone else, who should have existed, didn't,' said Susan, half to herself. 'Pardon?' 'The Hogfather wasn't there.' said Susan. 'He shouldn't have been there anyway, not tonight, but this time he wasn't there not because he was somewhere else but because he wasn't anywhere any more. Even his castle was vanishing.' 'I expect I shall get the hang of this incarnation business as I go along,' said the oh god. 'Most people---' Susan began. A shudder ran through her body. 'Oh, no. What's he doing? WHAT'S HE DOING?' A JOB WELL DONE, I FANCY. The sleigh thundered across the night. Frozen fields passed underneath. 'Hmph,' said Albert. He sniffed. WHAT DO YOU CALL THAT WARM FEELING YOU GET INSIDE; 'Heartburn!' Albert snapped. DO I DETECT A NOTE OF UNSEASONAL GRUMPINESS? said Death. NO SUGAR PIGGYWIGGY FOR YOU, ALBERT. 'I don't want any present, master.' Albert sighed. 'Except maybe to wake up and find it's all back to normal. Look, you know it always goes, wrong when you start changing things. . .' BUT THE HOGFATHER CAN CHANGE THINGS. LITTLE MIRACLES ALL OVER THE PLACE, WITH MANY A MERRY HO, HO, HO. TEACHING PEOPLE THE REAL MEANING OF HOGSWATCH, ALBERT. 'What, you mean that the pigs and cattle have all been slaughtered and with any luck everyone's got enough food for the winter?' WELL, WHEN I SAY THE REAL MEANING 'Some wretched devil's had his head chopped off in a wood somewhere 'cos he found a bean in his dinner and now the summer's going to come back?' NOT EXACTLY THAT, BUT- 'Oh, you mean that they've chased down some poor beast and shot arrows up into their apple trees and now the shadows are going to go away?' THAT IS DEFINITELY A MEANING, BUT I 'Ah, then you're talking about the one where they light a bloody big bonfire to give the sun a hint and tell it to stop lurking under the horizon and do a proper day's work?' Death paused, while the hogs hurtled over a range of hills. YOU'RE NOT HELPING, ALBERT. 'Well, they're all the real meanings that I know.' I THINK YOU COULD WORK WITH ME ON THIS. 'It's all about the sun, master. White snow and red blood and the sun. Always has been.' VERY WELL, THEN. THE HOGFATHER CAN TEACH PEOPLE THE UNREAL MEANING OF HOGSWATCH. Albert spat over the side of the sleigh. 'Hah! "Wouldn't It Be Nice If Everyone Was Nice", eh? THERE ARE WORSE BATTLE CRIES. 'Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear . . EXCUSE ME ... Death reached into his robe and pulled out an hourglass. TURN THE SLEIGH AROUND, ALBERT. DUTY CALLS. 'Which one?' A MORE POSITIVE ATTITUDE WOULD ASSIST AT THIS POINT, THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH. 'Fascinatin'. Anyone got another pencil?' said Ridcully. 'It's had four already,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'Right down to the stub, Archchancellor. And you know we buy our own these days.' It was a sore point. Like most people with no grasp whatsoever of real economics, Mustrum Ridcully equated 'proper financial control' with the counting of paperclips. Even senior wizards had to produce a pencil stub to him before they were allowed a new one out of the locked cupboard below his desk. Since of course hardly anyone retained a half-used pencil, the wizards had been reduced to sneaking out and buying new ones with their own money. The reason for the dearth of short pencils was perched in front of them, whirring away as it chewed an HB down to the eraser on the end, which it spat at the Bursar. Ponder Stibbons had been making notes. 'I think it works like this,' he said. 'What we're getting is the personification of forces, just like Hex said. But it only works if the thing is ... well, logical.' He swallowed. Ponder was a great believer in logic, in the face of all the local evidence, and he hated having to use the word in this way. 'I don't mean it's logical that there's a creature that eats socks, but it ... a ... it makes a sort of sense . . . I mean it's a working hypothesis.' 'Bit like the Hogfather,' said Ridcully. 'When you're a kiddie, he's as good an explanation as any, right?' 'What's not logical about there being a goblin that brings me huge bags of money?' said the Dean sulkily. Ridcully fed the Stealer of Pencils another pencil. 'Welt sir ... firstly, you've never mysteriously received huge bags of money and needed to find a hypothesis to explain them, and secondly, no one else would think it at all likely.' 'Huh!' 'Why's it happening now?' said Ridcully. 'Look its hopped onto my finger! Anyone got another pencil?' 'Well, these ... forces have always been here,' said Ponder. 'I mean, socks and pencils have always inexplicably gone missing, haven't they? But why they're suddenly getting personified like this ... I'm afraid I don't know.' 'Well, we'd better find out, hadn't we?' said Ridcully. 'Can't have this sort of thing going on. Daft anti-gods and miscellaneous whatnots being created just because people've thought about 'em? We could have anything turn up, anyway. Supposing some idiot says there must be a god of indigestion, eh?' Glingleglingleglingle. 'Er . . . I think someone just did, sir,' said Ponder. 'What's the matter? What's the matter?' said the oh god. He took Susan by the shoulders. They felt bony under his hands. 'DAMN,' said Susan. She pushed him away and steadied herself on the table, taking care that he didn't see her face. Finally, with a measure of the self-control she'd taught herself over the last few years, she managed to get her own voice back. 'He's slipping out of character,' she muttered, to the hall in general. 'I can feel him doing it. And that drags me in. What's he doing it all for?' 'Search me,' said the oh god, who'd backed away hurriedly. 'Er ... just then ... before you turned your face away ... it looked as though you were wearing very dark eye shadow ... only you weren't . . .' 'Look, it's very simple,' said Susan, spinning round. She could feel her hair restyling itself, which it always did when it was anxious. 'You know how stuff runs in families? Blue eyes, buck teeth, that sort of thing? Well, Death runs in my family.' 'Er ... in everybody's family, doesn't it?' said the oh god. 'Just shut up, please, don't gabble,' said Susan. ,I didn't mean death, I meant Death with a capital D. I remember things that haven't happened yet and I Can TALK THAT TALK and stalk that stalk and ... if he gets sidetracked, then I'll have to do it. And he does get sidetracked. I don't know what's really happened to the real Hogfather or why Grandfather's doing his job, but I know a bit about how he thinks and he's got no ... no mental shields like we have. He doesn't know how to forget things or ignore things. He takes everything literally and logically and doesn't understand why that doesn't always work----' She saw his bemused expression. 'Look ... how would you make sure everyone in the world was well fed?' she demanded. 'Me? Oh, well, I...' The oh god spluttered for a moment. 'I suppose you'd have to think about the prevalent political systems, and the proper division and cultivation of arable land, and---' 'Yes, yes. But he'd just give everyone a good meat' said Susan. 'Oh, I see. Very impractical. Hah, it's as silly as saying you could clothe the naked by, well, giving them some clothes.' 'Yes! I mean, no. Of course not! I mean, obviously you'd give- oh, you know what I mean!' 'Yes, I suppose so.' 'But he wouldn't.' There was a crash beside them. A burning wheel always rolls out of flaming wreckage. Two men carrying a large sheet of glass always cross the road in front of any comedy actor involved in a crazy car chase. Some narrative conventions are so strong that equivalents happen even on planets where the rocks boil at noon. And when a fully laden table collapses, one miraculously unbroken plate always rolls across the floor and spins to a halt. Susan and the oh god watched it, and then turned their attention to the huge figure now lying in what remained of an enormous centrepiece made of fruit. 'He just ... came right out of the air,' whispered the oh god. 'Really? Don't just stand there. Give me a hand to help him up, will you?' said Susan, pulling at a large melon. 'Er, that's a bunch of grapes behind his ear---' 'Well?' 'I don't like even to think about grapes---' 'Oh, come on.' Together they managed to get the newcomer on to his feet. 'Toga, sandals ... he looks a bit like you,' said Susan, as the fruit victim swayed heavily. 'Was I that green colour?' 'Close.' 'Is ... is there a privy nearby?' mumbled their burden, through clammy lips. 'I believe it's through that arch over there,' said Susan. 'I've heard it's not very pleasant, though.' 'That's not a rumour, that's a forecast,' said the fat figure, and lurched off. 'And then can I please have a glass of water and one charcoal biscuit. . .' They watched him go. 'Friend of yours?' said Susan. 'God of Indigestion, I think. Look ... I ... er ... I think I do remember something,' said the oh god- 'Just before I, um, incarnated. But it sounds stupid. . 'Well?' 'Teeth,' said the oh god. Susan hesitated. 'You don't mean something attacking you, do you?' she said flatly. 'No. Just ... a sensation of toothiness. Probably doesn't mean much. As God of Hangovers I see a lot worse, I can tell you.' `Just teeth. Lots of teeth. But not horrible teeth. just lots and lots of little teeth. Almost ... sad?' 'Yes! How did you know?' 'Oh, I ... maybe I remember you telling me before you told me. I don't know. How about a big shiny red globe?' The oh god looked thoughtful for a moment and then said, 'No, can't help you there, I'm afraid. It's just teeth. Rows and rows of teeth.' 'I don't remember rows,' said Susan. 'I just felt ... teeth were important.' 'Nah, it's amazing what you can do with a beak,' said the raven, who'd been investigating the laden table and had succeeded in levering a lid off a jar. 'What have you got there?' said Susan wearily. 'Eyeballs,' said the raven. 'Hah, wizards know how to live all right," eh? They don't want for nothing around here, I can tell you.' 'They're olives,' said Susan. 'Tough luck,' said the raven. 'They're mine now.' 'They're a kind of fruit! Or a vegetable or something!' 'You sure?' The raven swivelled one doubtful eye on the jar and the other on her. 'Yes!' The eyes swivelled again. 'So you're an eyeball expert all of a sudden?' 'Look they're green, you stupid bird!' 'They could be very old eyeballs,' said the raven defiantly. 'Sometimes they go like that---' SQUEAK, said the Death of Rats, who was halfway through a cheese. ',And not so much of the stupid,' said the raven. 'Corvids are exceptionally bright with reasoning and, in the case of some forest species, tool-using abilities!' 'Oh, so you are an expert on ravens, are you?' said Susan. 'Madam, I happen to be a---' SQUEAK, said the Death of Rats again. They both turned. It was pointing at its grey teeth. 'The Tooth Fairy?' said Susan. 'What about her?' SQUEAK. `Rows of teeth,' said the oh god again. 'Like . . . rows, you know? What's the Tooth Fairy?' 'Oh, you see her around a lot these days,' said Susan. 'Or them, rather. Its a sort of franchise operation. You get the ladder, the moneybelt and the pliers and you're set up.' 'Pliers?' 'If she can't make change she has to take an extra tooth on account. But, look, the tooth fairies are harmless enough. I've met one or two of them. They're just working girls. They don't menace anyone.' SQUEAK. 'I just hope Grandfather doesn't take it into his head to do their job as well. Good grief, the thought of it---' 'They collect teeth?' 'Yes. Obviously.' 'Why?' 'Why? It's their job.' 'I meant why, where do they take the teeth after they collect them?' 'I don't know! They just ... well, they just take the teeth and leave the money,' said Susan. 'What sort of question is that - 'Where do they take the teeth?'?' 'I just wondered, that's all. Probably all humans know, I'm probably very silly for asking, it's probably a wellknown fact.' Susan looked thoughtfully at the Death of Rats. 'Actually ... where do they take the teeth?' SQUEAK? 'He says search him,' said the raven. 'Maybe they sell 'em?' It pecked at another jar. 'How about these, these look nice and wrinkl---' 'Pickled walnuts,' said Susan absently. 'What do they do with the teeth? What use is there for a lot of teeth? But ... what harm can a tooth fairy do?' 'Have we got time to find one and ask her?' said the oh god. 'Time isn't the problem,' said Susan. There are those who believe knowledge is something that is acquired - a precious ore hacked, as it were, from the grey strata of ignorance. There are those who believe that knowledge can only be recalled, that there was some Golden Age in the distant past when everything was known and the stones fitted together so you could hardly put a knife between them, you know, and it's obvious they had flying machines, right, because of the way the earthworks can only be seen from above, yeah? and there's this museum I read about where they found a pocket calculator under the altar of this ancient temple, you know what I'm saying? but the government hushed it up ... [18] Mustrum Ridcully believed that knowledge could be acquired by shouting at people, and was endeavouring to do so. The wizards were sitting around the Uncommon Room table, which was piled high with books. 'It is Hogswatch, Archchancellor,' said the Dean reproachfully, thumbing through an ancient volume. 'Not until midnight,' said Ridcully. 'Sortin' this out will give you fellows an appetite for your dinner.' 'I think I might have something, Archchancellor,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'This is Woddeley's Basic Gods. There's some stuff here about lares and penates that seems to it the bill.' 'Lares and penates? What were they when they were at home?' said Ridcully. 'Hahaha,' said the Chair. 'What?' said Ridcully. 'I thought you were making a rather good joke, Archchancellor,' said the Chair. 'Was I? I didn't mean to,' said Ridcully. 'Nothing new there,' said the Dean, under his breath. 'What was that, Dean?' 'Nothing, Archchancellor.' 'I thought you made the reference "at home" because they are, in fact, household gods. Or were, rather. They seemed to have faded away long ago. They were ... little spirits of the house, like, for example---' Three of the other wizards, thinking quite fast for wizards, clapped their hands over his mouth. 'Careful!' said Ridcully. 'Careless talk creates lives! That's why we've got a big fat God of Indigestion being ill in the privy. By the way,. where's the Bursar?' 'He was in the privy, Archchancellor,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'What, when the-?' 'Yes, Archchancellor.' 'Oh, well, Im sure he'll be all right,' said Ridcully, in the matter-of-fact voice of someone contemplating something nasty that was happening to someone else out of earshot. 'But we don't want any more of these ... what're they, Chair?' 'Lares and penates, Archchancellor, but I wasn't suggesting---' 'Seems dear to me. Something's gone wrong and these little devils are coming back. All we have to do is find out what's gone wrong and put it right.' 'Oh, well, I'm glad that's all sorted out,' said the Dean. 'Household gods,' said Ridcully. 'That's what they are, Chair?' He opened the drawer in his hat and took out his pipe. 'Yes, Archchancellor. It says here they used to be the ... local spirits, I suppose. They saw to it that the bread rose and the butter churned properly.' 'Did they eat pencils? What was their attitude in the socks department?' 'This was back in the time of the First Empire,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'Sandals and togas and so on.' 'Ah. Not noticeably socked?' 'Not excessively so, no. And it was nine hundred years before Osric Pencillium first discovered, in the graphiterich sands of the remote island of Sumtri, the small bush which, by dint of careful cultivation, he induced to produce the long-' 'Yes, we can all see you've got the encyclopaedia open under the table, Chair,' said Ridcully. 'But I daresay things have changed a bit. Moved with the times. Bound to have been a few developments. Once they looked after the bread rising, now we have things that eat pencils and socks and see to it that you can never find a dean towel when you want one-' There was a distant tinkling. He stopped. 'I just said that, didn't P' he said. The wizards nodded glumly. 'And this is the first time anyone's mentioned it?' The wizards nodded again. 'Well, dammit, it's amazing, you can never find a dean towel when---' There was a rising wheeee noise. A towel went by at shoulder height. There was a suggestion of many small wings. 'That was mine,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes reproachfully. The towel disappeared in the direction of the Great Hall. 'Towel Wasps,' said the Dean. 'Well done, Archchancellor.' 'Well, I mean, dammit, it's human nature, isn't it?' said Ridcully hotly. 'Things go wrong, things get lost, it's natural to invent little creatures that - All right, all right, I'll be careful. I'm just saying man is naturally a mythopoeic creature.' 'What's that mean?' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Means we make things up as we go along,' said the Dean, not looking up. 'Um ... excuse me, gentlemen,' said Ponder Stibbons, who had been scribbling thoughtfully at the end of the table. 'Are we suggesting that things are coming back? Do we think that's a viable hypothesis?' The wizards looked at one another around the table. 'Definitely viable.' `Viable, right enough.' - 'Yes, that's the stuff to give the troops.' 'What is? Whats the stuff to give the troops?' 'Well ... tinned rations? Decent weapons, good boots ... that sort of thing.' 'What's that got to do with anything?' 'Don't ask me. He was the one who started talking about giving stuff to the troops.' 'Will you lot shut up? No one's giving anything to the troops!' 'Oh, shouldn't they have something? It's Hogswatch, after all.' 'Look it was just a figure of speech, all right? I just meant I was. fully in agreement. It's just colourful language. Good grief, you surely can't think I'm actually suggesting giving stuff to the troops, at Hogswatch or any other time!' 'You weren't?' 'No!" 'That's a bit mean, isn't it?' Ponder just let it happen. It's because their minds are so often involved with deep and problematic matters, he told himself, that their mouths are allowed to wander around making a nuisance of themselves. 'I don't hold with using that thinking machine,' said the Dean. 'I've said this before. It's meddling with the Cult. The occult has always been good enough for me, thank you very much.' 'On the other hand it's the only person round here who can think straight and it does what it's told,' said Ridcully. The sleigh roared through the snow, leaving rolling trails in the sky. 'Oh, what fun,' muttered Albert, hanging on tightly. The runners hit a roof near the University and the pigs trotted to a halt. Death looked at the hourglass again. ODD, he said. 'It's a scythe job, then?' said Albert. 'You won't be wanting the false beard and the jolly laugh?' He looked around, and puzzlement replaced sarcasm. 'Hey ... how could anyone be dead up here? Someone was. A corpse lay in the snow. It was dear that the man had only just died. Albert squinted up at the sky. 'There's nowhere to fall from and there's no footprints in the snow,' he said, as Death swung his scythe. 'So where did he come from? Looks like someone's personal guard. Been stabbed to death. Nasty knife wound there, see?' 'It's not good,' agreed the spirit of the man, looking down at himself. Then he stared from himself to Albert to Death and his phantom expression went from shock to concern. 'They got the teeth! All of them! They just walked in ... and ... they ... no, wait. . He faded and was gone. 'Well, what was that all about?' said Albert. I HAVE MY SUSPICIONS. 'See that badge on his shirt? Looks like a drawing of a tooth.' YES. IT DOES. 'Where's that come from?' A PLACE I CANNOT GO. Albert looked down at the mysterious corpse and then back up at Deaths impassive skull. 'I keep thinking it was a funny thing, us bumping into your grand-daughter like that,' he said. YES. Albert put his head on one side. 'Given the large number of chimneys and kids in the world, ekcetra.' INDEED… 'Amazing coincidence, really.' IT JUST GOES TO SHOW. 'Hard to believe, you might say.' LIFE CERTAINLY SPRINGS A FEW SURPRISES. 'Not just life, I reckon,' said Albert. 'And she got real worked up, didn't she? Flew right off the ole handle. Wouldn't be surprised if she started asking questions.' THAT'S PEOPLE FOR YOU. 'But Rat is hanging around, ain't he? He'll probably keep an eye socket on her. Guide her path, prob'ly.' HE IS A LITTLE SCAMP, ISN'T HE? Albert knew he couldn't win. Death had the ultimate poker face. I'M SURE SHE'LL ACT SENSIBLY. 'Oh, yeah,' said Albert, as they walked back to the sleigh. 'It runs in the family, acting sensibly.' Like many barmen, Igor kept a club under the bar to deal with those little upsets that occurred around closing time, although in fact Biers never closed and no one could ever remember not seeing Igor behind the bar. Nevertheless, things sometimes got out of hand. Or paw. Or talon. Igor's weapon of choice was a little different. It was tipped with silver (for werewolves), hung with garlic (for vampires) and wrapped around with a strip of blanket (for bogeymen). For everyone else the fact that it was two feet of solid bog-oak usually sufficed. He'd been watching the window. The frost was creeping across it. For some reason the creeping fingers were forming into a pattern of three little dogs looking out of a boot. Then someone had tapped him on the shoulder. He spun around, club already in his hand, and relaxed. 'Oh ... it's you, miss. I didn't hear the door.' There hadn't been the door. Susan was in a hurry. 'Have you seen Violet lately, Igor?' 'The tooth girl?' Igor's one eyebrow writhed in concentration. 'Nah, haven't seen her for a week or two.` The eyebrow furrowed into a V of annoyance as he spotted the raven, which tried to shuffle behind a halfempty display card of beer nuts. 'You can get that out of here, miss,' he said. 'You know the rule 'bout pets and familiars. If it can't turn back into human on demand, it's out.' 'Yeah, well, some of us have more brain cells than fingers,' muttered a voice from behind the beer nuts. 'Where does she live?' 'Now, miss, you know I never answers questions like that--' ‘WHERE DOES SHE LIVE, IGOR?' 'Shamlegger Street, next to the picture framers,' said Igor automatically. The eyebrow knotted in anger as he realized what he'd said. 'Now, miss, you know the rules! I don't get bitten, I don't get me froat torn out and no one hides behind me door! And you don't try your granddad's voice on me! I could ban you for messin' me about like that!' 'Sorry, it's important,' said Susan. Out of the corner of her eye she could see that the raven had crept on to the shelves and was pecking the top off a jar. 'Yeah, well, suppose one of the vampires decides it's important he's missed his tea?' grumbled Igor, putting the club away. There was a plink from the direction of thee pickled egg jar. Susan tried hard not to look. ' Can we go?' said the oh god. 'All this alcohol makes me nervous.' Susan nodded and hurried out. Igor grunted. Then he went back to watching the frost, because Igor never demanded much out of life. After a while he heard a muffled voice say: 'I 'ot 'un! I 'ot 'un!' It was indistinct because the raven had speared a pickled egg with its beak. Igor sighed, and picked up his club. And it would have gone very hard for the raven if the Death of Rats hadn't chosen that moment to bite Igor on the ear. DOWN THERE, said Death. The reins were hauled so sharply so quickly that the hogs ended up facing the other way. Albert fought his way out of a drift of teddy bears, where he'd been dozing. 'What's up? What's up? Did we hit something?' he said.  Death pointed downwards. An endless white snowfield lay below, only the occasional glow of a window candle or a half-covered hut indicating the presence on this world of brief mortality. Albert squinted, and then saw what Death had spotted. ' 's some old bugger trudging through the snow,' he said. 'Been gathering wood, by the look of it. A bad night to be out,' he said. 'And I'm out in it too, come to that. Look, master, I'm sure you've done enough now to make sure----' SOMETHING'S HAPPENING DOWN THERE. HO. HO. HO. 'Look, he's all right,' said Albert, hanging on as the sleigh tumbled downwards. There was a brief wedge of light below as the wood-gatherer opened the door of a snow-drifted hovel. 'See, over there, there's a couple of blokes catching him up, look they're weighed down with parcels and stuff, see? He's going to have a decent Hogswatch after all, no problem there. Now can we go-' Death's glowing eye sockets took in the scene in minute detail. IT'S WRONG. 'Oh, no ... here we go again.' The oh god hesitated. 'What do you mean, you can't walk through the door?' said Susan. 'You walked through the door in the bar.' 'That was different. I have certain god-like powers in the presence of alcohol. Anyway, we've knocked and she hasn't answered and whatever happened to Mr Manners?' Susan shrugged, and walked through the cheap woodwork. She knew she probably shouldn't. Every time she did something like this she used up a certain amount of, well, normal. And sooner or later she'd forget what doorknobs were for, just like Grandfather. Come to think of it, he'd never found out what doorknobs were for. She opened the door from the inside. The oh god stepped in and looked around. This did not take long. It was not a large room. It had been subdivided from a room that itself hadn't been all that big to start with. 'This is where the Tooth fairy lives?' Bilious said. 'It's a bit ... poky, isn't it? Stuff all over the floor ... What're these things hanging from this line?' 'They're . . . women's clothes,' said Susan, rummaging through the paperwork on a small rickety table. 'They're not very big,' said the oh god. 'And a bit thin . . .' 'Tell me,' said Susan, without looking up. 'These memories you arrived here with ... They weren't very complicated, were they ... ? Ah...' He looked over her shoulder as she opened a small red notebook. 'I've only talked to Violet a few times,' she said. 'I think she delivers the teeth somewhere and gets a percentage of the money. It's not a highly paid line of work. You know, they say you can Earn $$$ in Your Spare Time but she says really she could earn more money waiting on tables - All, this looks right 'What's that?' 'She said she gets given the names every week.' 'What, of the children where going to lose teeth?' 'Yes. Names and addresses,' said Susan, flicking through the pages. 'That doesn't sound very likely.' `Pardon me, but are you the God of Hangovers? Oh, look here's Twyla's tooth last month.' She smiled at the neat grey writing. 'She practically hammered it out because she needed the half-dollar.' 'Do you like children?' said the oh god. She gave him a look. 'Not raw,' she said. `Other people's are OK. Hold on . . .' She flicked some pages back and forth. 'There's just blank days,' she said. 'Look, the last few days, all unticked. No names. But if you go back a week or two, look they're all properly marked off and the money added up at the bottom of the page, see? And ... this can't be right, can it?' There were only five names entered on the first unticked night, for the previous week. Most children instinctively knew when to push their luck and only the greedy or dentally improvident called out the Tooth Fairy around Hogswatch. 'Read the names,' said Susan. ‘William Wittles, a.k.a. Willy (home), Tosser (school),  2nd flr bck bdrm, 68 Kicklebury Street; Sophie Langtree, a.k.a. Daddy's Princess, attic bdrm, 5 The Hippo; The Hon. Jeffrey Bibbleton, a.k.a. Trouble in Trousers (home), Foureyes (school), 1st fir bck, Scrote Manor, Park Lane-' He stopped. 'I say, this is a bit intrusive, isn't it?' ' It's a whole new world,' said Susan. 'You haven't got there yet. Keep going.' 'Nuhakme Icta, a.k.a. Little Jewel, basement, The Laughing Falafel, Klatchistan Take-Away and All Nite Grocery, cnr. Soake and Dimwell; Reginald Lilywhite, a.k.a. Banjo, The Park Lane Bully, Have You Seen This Man? , The Goose Gate Grabber, The Nap Hill Lurker, Rm 17, YMPA. 'YMPA?' 'It's what we generally call the Young-Men's-ReformedCultists-of-the-Ichor-God-Bel-ShamharothAssociation,' said Susan. 'Does that sound to you like someone who'd expect a visit from a tooth fairy?' 4 No.' 'Me neither. He sounds like someone who'd expect a visit from the Watch.' Susan looked around. It really was a crummy room, the sort rented by someone who probably took it never intending to stay Iong, the sort where walking across the floor in the middle of the night would be accompanied by the crack of cockroaches in a death flamenco. It was amazing how many people spent their whole fives in places where they never intended to stay. Cheap, narrow bed, crumbling plaster, tiny window  She opened the window and fished around below the ledge, and felt satisfied when her questing fingers dosed on a piece of string which was attached to an oilcloth bag. She hauled it in. 'What's that?' said the oh god, as she opened it on the table. 'Oh, you see them a lot,' said Susan, taking out some packages wrapped in second-hand waxed paper. 'You live alone, mice and roaches eat everything, there's nowhere to store food - but outside the window it's cold and safe. More or less safe. It's an old trick. Now ... look at this. Leathery bacon, a green loaf and a bit of cheese you could shave. She hasn't been back home for some time, believe me.' 'Oh dear. What now?' 'Where would she take the teeth?' said Susan, to the world in general but mainly to herself. 'What the hell does the Tooth Fairy do with---' There was a knock at the door. Susan opened it. Outside was a small bald man in a long brown coat. He was holding a clipboard and blinked nervously at the sight of her. 'Er. . .' he began. 'Can I help you?' said Susan. 'Er, I saw the light, see. I thought Violet was in,' said the little man. He twiddled the pencil that was attached to his clipboard by a piece of string. 'Only she's a bit behind with the teeth and there's a bit of money owing and Ernie's cart ain't come back and it's got to go in my report and I come round in case ... in case she was W or something, it not being nice being alone and ill at Hogswatch-' 'She's not here,' said Susan. The man gave her a worried look and shook his head sadly. 'There's nearly thirteen dollars in pillow money, see. I'll have to report it.' 'Who to?' 'It has to go higher up, see. I just hope it's not going to be like that business in Quirm where the girl started robbing houses. We never heard the end of that one-' 'Report to who?' 'And there's the ladder and the pliers,' the man went on, in a litany against a world that had no understanding of what it meant to have to fill in an AF17 report in triplicate. 'How can I keep track of stocktaking if people go around taking stock?' He shook his head. 'I dunno, they get the job, they think it's all nice sunny nights, they get a bit of sharp weather and suddenly it's goodbye Charlie I'm off to be a waitress in the warm. And then there's Emie. I know him. It's a nip to keep out the cold, and then another one to keep it company, and then a third in case the other two get lost ... It's all going to have to go down in my report, you know, and who's going to get the blame? M tell you---' 'It's going to be you, isn't it?' said Susan. She was almost hypnotized. The man even had a fringe of worried hair and a small, worried moustache. And the voice suggested exactly that here was a man who, at the end of the world, would worry that it would be blamed on him. 'That's right,' he said, but in a slightly grudging voice. He was not about to allow a bit of understanding to lighten his day. 'And the girls all go on about the job but I tell them they've got it easy, it's just basic'ly ladder work, they don't have to spend their evenings knee-deep in paper and making shortfalls good out of their own money, I might add---' 'You employ the tooth fairies?' said Susan quickly. The oh god was still vertical but his eyes had glazed over. The little man preened slightly. 'Sort of,' he said. 'Basic'Iy I run Bulk Collection and Despatch---' 'Where to?' He stared at her. Sharp, direct questions weren't his forte. 'I just sees to it they gets on the cart,' he mumbled. 'When they're on the cart and Ernie's signed the CV19 for 'em, that's it done and finished, only like I said he ain't turned up this week and-' 'A whole cart for a handful of teeth?' 'Well, there's the food for the guards, and - 'ere, who are you, anyway? What're you doing here?' Susan straightened up. 'I don't have to put up with this,' she said sweetly, to no one in particular. She leaned forward again. WHAT CART ARE WE TALKING ABOUT HERE, CHARLIE?' The oh god jolted away. The man m the brown coat shot backwards and splayed against the corridor wall as Susan advanced. 'Comes Tuesdays,' he panted. "ere, what---' ' AND WHERE DOES IT GO?' 'Dunno! Like I said, when he's--' 'Signed the GV19 for them it's you done and finished,' said Susan, in her normal voice. 'Yes. You said. What's Violet's full name? She never mentioned it.' The man hesitated. ' I SAID-' 'Violet Bottler!' 'Thank you.' 'An' Emie's gorn too,' said Charlie, continuing more or less on auto-pilot. 'I call that suspicious. I mean, he's got a wife and everything. Won't be the first man to get his head turned by thirteen dollars and a pretty ankle and, o' course, no one thinks about muggins who has to carry the can, I mean, supposing we was all to get it in our heads to run off with young wimmin?' He gave Susan the stem look of one who, if it was not for the fact that the world needed him, would even now be tiring of painting naked young ladies on some tropical island somewhere. ' What happens to the teeth?' said Susan. He blinked at her. A bully, thought Susan. A very small, weak, very dull bully, who doesn't manage any real bullying because there's hardly anyone smaller and weaker than him, so he just makes everyone's lives just that little bit more difficult ... 'What sort of question is that?' he managed, in the face of her stare. 'You never wondered?' said Susan, and added to herself, I didn't. Did anyone? 'Well, 's not my job, I just-' 'Oh, yes. You said,' said Susan. 'Thank you. You've been very helpful. Thank you very much.' The man stared at her, and then turned and ran down the stairs. 'Drat,' said Susan. 'That's a very unusual swearword,' said the oh god nervously. 'It's so easy,' said Susan. 'If I want to, I can find anybody. It's a family trait.' 'Oh. Good.' 'No. Have you any idea how hard it is to be normal? The things you have to remember? How to go to sleep? How to forget things? What doorknobs are for?' Why ask him, she thought, as she looked at his shocked face. All that's normal for him is remembering to throw up what someone else drank. 'Oh, come on,' she said, and hurried towards the stairs. It was so easy to slip into immortality, to ride the horse, to know everything. And every time you did, it brought closer the day when you could never get off and never forget. Death was hereditary. You got it from your ancestors. 'Where are we going now?' said the oh god. 'Down to the YMPA,' said Susan. The old man in the hovel looked uncertainly at the feast spread in front of him. He sat on his stool as curled up on himself as a spider in a flame. 'I'd got a bit of a mess of beans cooking,' he mumbled, looking at his visitors through filmy eyes. 'Good heavens, you can't eat beans at Hogswatch,', said the king, smiling hugely. 'That's terribly unlucky, eating beans at Hogswatch. My word, yes!' 'Di'nt know that,' the old man said, looking down desperately at his lap. 'We've brought you this magnificent spread. Don't you think so?' 'I bet you're incredibly grateful for it, too,' said the page, sharply. 'Yes, well, o' course, it's very kind of you gennelmen,' said the old man, in a voice the size of a mouse. He blinked, uncertain of what to do next. 'The turkey's hardly been touched, still plenty of meat on it,' said the king. 'And do have some of this cracking good widgeon stuffed with swan's liver.’ '-only I'm partial to a bowl of beans and I've never been beholden to no one nor nobody,' the old man said, still staring at his lap. 'Good heavens, man, you don't need to worry about that,' said the king heartily. 'It's Hogswatch! I was only just now looking out of the window and I saw you plodding through the snow and I said to young Jermain here, I said, `Who's that chappie?" and he said, "Oh, he's some peasant fellow who lives up by the forest," and I said, "Well, I couldn't eat another thing and it's Hogswatch, after all," and so we just bundled everything up and here we are!' 'And I expect you're pathetically thankful,' said the page. 'I expect we've brought a ray of light into your dark tunnel of a life, hmm?' '---yes, well, o' course, only I'd been savin' 'em for weeks, see, and there's some bakin' potatoes under the fire, I found 'em in the cellar 'n' the mice'd hardly touched 'em.' The old man never raised his eyes from knee level. 'W our dad brought me up never to ask for--' 'Listen,' said the king, raising his voice a little, 'I've walked miles tonight and I bet you've never seen food like this in your whole life, eh?' Tears of humiliated embarrassment were rolling down the old man's face. '-well, I'm sure it's very kind of you fine gennelmen but I ain't sure I knows how to eat swans and suchlike, but if you want a bit o' my beans you've only got to say--' 'Let me make myself absolutely clear,' said the king sharply. 'This is some genuine Hogswatch charity, d'you understand? And we're going to sit here and watch the smile on your grubby but honest face, is that understood?' 'And what do you say to the good king?' the page prompted. The peasant hung his head. ' 'nk you.' 'Right,' said the king, sitting back. 'Now, pick up your fork---' The door burst open. An indistinct figure strode into the room, snow swirling around it in a cloud. WHAT'S GOING ON HERE? The page started to stand up, drawing his sword. He never worked out how the other figure could have got behind him, but there it was, pressing him gently down again. 'Hello, son, my name is Albert,' said a voice by his ear. 'Why don't you put that sword back very slowly? People might get hurt.' A finger prodded the king, who had been too shocked to move. WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING, SIRE? The king tried to focus on the figure. There was an impression of red and white, but black, too. To Albert's secret amazement, the man managed to get to his feet and draw himself up as regally as he could. 'What is going on here, whoever you are, is some fine old Hogswatch charity! And who---' NO, IT'S NOT. 'What? How dare you-' WERE YOU HERE LAST MONTH? WILL YOU BE HERE NEXT WEEK? NO. BUT TONIGHT YOU WANTED TO FEEL ALL WARM INSIDE. TONIGHT YOU WILL WANT THEM TO SAY: WHAT A GOOD KING HE IS. 'Oh, no, he's going too far again-' muttered Albert under his breath. He pushed the page down again. "No, you stay still, sonny. Else you'll just be a paragraph.' 'Whatever it is, it's more than he's got!' snapped the king. 'And all we've had from him is ingratitude---' YES, THAT DOES SPOIL IT, DOESN'T IT? Death leaned forward. GO AWAY. To the kings's own surprise his body took over and marched him out of the door. Albert patted the page on the shoulder. 'And you can run along too,' he said. '-I didn't mean to go upsetting anyone, its just that I never asked no one for nothing---' mumbled the old man, in a small humble world of his own, his hands tangling themselves together out of nervousness. 'Best if you leave this one to me, master, if you don't mind,' said Albert. 'I'll be back in just a tick.' Loose ends, he thought, that's my job. Tying up loose ends. The master never thinks things through. He caught up with the king outside. 'Ah, there you are, your sire,' he said. 'Just before you go, won't keep you a minute, just a minor point---' Albert leaned dose to the stunned monarch. 'If anyone was thinking about making a mistake, you know, like maybe sending the guards down here tomorrow, tipping the old man out of his hovel, chuckin' him in prison, anything like that ... werrlll ... that's the kind of mistake he ought to treasure on account of it being the last mistake he'll ever make. A word to the wise men, right?' He tapped the side of his nose conspiratorially. 'Happy Hogswatch.' Then he hurried back into the hovel. The feast had vanished. The old man was looking blearily at the bare table. HALF-EATEN LEAVINGS, said Death. WE COULD CERTAINLY DO BETTER THAN THIS. He reached into the sack. Albert grabbed his arm before he could withdraw his hand. 'Mind taking a bit of advice, master? I was brung up in a place like this.' DOES IT BRING TEARS TO YOUR EYES? 'A box of matches to me hand, more like. Listen The old man was only dimly aware of some whispering. He sat hunched up, staring at nothing. WELL, IF YOU ARE SURE ... 'Been there, done that, chewed the bones,' said Albert. 'Charity ain't giving people what you wants to give, it's giving people what they need to get.' VERY WELL. Death reached into the sack again. HAPPY HOGSWATCH. HO. HO. HO. There was a string of sausages. There was a side of bacon. And a small tub of salt pork. And a mass of chitterlings wrapped up in greased paper. There was a black pudding. There were several other tubs of disgusting yet savoury porkadjacent items highly prized in any pig-based economy. And, laid on the table with a soft thump, there was 'A pig's head,' breathed the old man. 'A whole one! Ain't had brawn in years! And a basin of pig knuckles! And a bowl of pork dripping!' HO. HO. HO. 'Amazing,' said Albert. 'How did you get the head's expression to look like the king?' I THINK THAT's ACCIDENTAL. Albert patted the old man on the back. 'Have yourself a ball,' he said. 'In fact, have two. Now I think we ought to be going, master.' They left the old man staring at the laden board. WASN'T THAT NICE? said Death, as the hogs accelerated. 'Oh, yes,' said Albert, shaking his head. 'Poor old devil. Beans at Hogswatch? Unlucky, that. Not a night for a man to find a bean in his bowl.' I FEEL I WAS CUT OUT FOR THIS SORT OF THING, YOU KNOW. 'Really, master?' IT'S NICE TO DO A JOB WHERE PEOPLE LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU. 'Ah,' said Albert glumly. THEY DON'T NORMALLY LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING ME. 'Yes, I expect so.' EXCEPT IN SPECIAL AND RATHER UNFORTUNATE CIRCUMSTANCES. 'Right, right.' AND THEY SELDOM LEAVE A GLASS OF SHERRY OUT. 'I expect they don't, no.' I COULD GET INTO THE HABIT OF DOING THIS, IN FACT. 'But you won't need to, will you, master?' said Albert hurriedly, with the horrible prospect of being a permanent Pixie Albert looming in his mind again. 'Because we'll get the Hogfather back.. right? That's what you said we were going to do, right? And young Susan's probably bustling around ... YES. OF COURSE. 'Not that you asked her to, of course.' Albert's jittery ears didn't detect any enthusiasm. Oh dear, he thought. I HAVE ALWAYS CHOSEN THE PATH OF DUTY. 'Right, master.' The sleigh sped on. I AM THOROUGHLY IN CONTROL AND FIRM OF PURPOSE. 'No problem there, then, master.' said Albert. NO NEED TO WORRY AT ALL. 'Pleased to hear it, master.' IF I HAD A FIRST NAME, 'DUTY' WOULD BE MY MIDDLE NAME. 'Good.' NEVERTHELESS ... Albert strained his ears and thought he heard, just on the edge of hearing, a voice whisper sadly. HO. HO. HO. There was a party going on. It seemed to occupy the entire building. 'Certainly very energetic young men,' said the oh god carefully, stepping over a wet towel. 'Are women allowed in here?' 'No,' said Susan. She stepped through a wall into the superintendent's office. A group of young men went past, manhandling a barrel of beer. 'You'll feel bad about it in the morning,' said Bilious. 'Strong drink is a mocker, you know.' They set it up on a table and knocked out the bung. 'Someone's going to have to be sick after all that,' he said, raising his voice above the hubbub. 'I hope you realize that. You think it's clever, do you, reducing yourself to the level of the beasts of the field ... er ... or the level they'd sink to if they drank, I mean.' They moved away, leaving one mug of beer by the barrel. The oh god glanced at it, and picked it up and sniffed at it. 'Ugh.' Susan stepped out of the wall. 'He hasn't been back for- What're you doing?' 'I thought Id see what beer tastes like,' said the oh god guiltily. 'You don't know what beer tastes like?' 'Not on the way down, no. It's ... quite different by the time it gets to me,' he said sourly. He took another sip, and then a longer one. 'I can't see what all the fuss is about,' he added. He tipped up the empty pot. 'I suppose it comes out of this tap here,' he said. 'You know, for once in my existence I'd like to get drunk.' 'Aren't you always?' said Susan, who wasn't really paying attention. 'No. I've always been drunk. I'm sure I explained.' 'He's been gone a couple of days,' said Susan. 'That's odd. And he didn't say where he was going. The last night he was here was the night he was on Violet's list. But he paid for his room for the week, and I've got the number.' 'And the key?' said the oh god. 'What a strange idea.' Mr Lilywhite's room was small. That wasn't surprising. What was surprising was how neat it was, how carefully the little bed had been made, how well the floor had been swept. It was hard to imagine anyone living in it, but there were a few signs. On the simple table by the bed was a small, rather crude portrait of a bulldog in a wig, although on closer inspection it might have been a woman. This tentative hypothesis was borne out by the inscription 'To a Good Boy, from his Mother' on the back. A book lay next to it. Susan wondered what kind of reading someone with Mr Banjo's background would buy. It turned out to be a book of six pages, one of those that were supposed to enthral children with the magic of the printed word by pointing out that they could See Spot Run. There were no more than ten words on each page and yet, carefully placed between pages four and five, was a bookmark. She turned back to the cover. The book was called Happy Tales. There was a blue sky and trees and a couple of impossibly pink children playing with a jollylooking dog. It looked as though it had been read frequently, if slowly. And that was it. A dead end. No. Perhaps not ... On the floor by the bed, as if it had been accidentally dropped, was a small, silvery halfdollar piece. Susan picked it up and tossed it idly. She looked the oh god up and down. He was swilling a mouthful of beer from cheek to cheek and looking thoughtfully at the ceiling. She wondered about his likelihood of survival incarnate in Ankh-Morpork at Hogswatch, especially if the cure wore off. After all, the only purpose of his existence was to have a headache and throw up. There were not a great many postgraduate jobs for which these were the main qualifications. 'Tell me,' she said. 'Have you ever ridden a horse?' 'I don't know. What's a horse?' In the depths of the library of Death, a squeaking noise. It was not loud, but it appeared louder than mere decibels would suggest in the furtive, scribbling hush of the books. Everyone, it is said, has a book inside them. In this library, everyone was inside a book. The squeaking got louder. It had a rhythmical, circular quality. Book on book, shelf on shelf ... and in every one, at the page of the ever-moving now, a scribble of handwriting following the narrative of every life ... The squeaking came round the corner. It was issuing from what looked like a very rickety edifice, several storeys high. It looked rather like a siege tower, open at the sides. At the base, between the wheels, was a pair of geared treadles which moved the whole thing. Susan dung to the railing of the topmost platform. 'Can't you hurry up?' she said. 'We're only at the Bi's at the moment.' 'I've been pedalling for ages!' panted the oh god. 'Well, "A" is a very popular letter.' Susan stared up at the shelves. A was for Anon, among other things. All those people who, for one reason or another, never officially got a name. They tended to be short books. 'M ... Bo ... Bod ... Bog ... turn left . . The library tower squeaked ponderously around the next corner. 'Ah, Bo ... blast, the Bots are at least twenty shelves up.' 'Oh, how nice,' said the oh god grimly. He heaved on the lever that moved the drive chain from one sprocket to another, and started to pedal again. Very ponderously, the creaking tower began to telescope upwards. 'Right, we're there,' Susan shouted down, after a few minutes of slow rise. 'Here's ... let's see ... Aabana Bottler. . .'  'I expect Violet will be a lot further,' said the oh god, trying out irony. 'Onwards!' Swaying a little, the tower headed down the Bs until. 'Stop!’ It rocked as the oh god kicked the brake block against a wheel. 'I think this is her,' said a voice from above. 'OK, you can lower away.' A big wheel with ponderous lead weights on it spun slowly as the tower concertina'd back, creaking and grinding. Susan climbed down the last few feet. 'Everyone's in here?' said the oh god, as she thumbed through the pages. 'Yes.' 'Even gods?' 'Anything that's alive and self-aware,' said Susan, not looking up. 'This is ... odd. It looks as though she's in some sort of ... prison. Who'd want to lock up a tooth fairy?' 'Someone with very sensitive teeth?' Susan flicked back a few pages. 'It's all ... hoods over her head and people carrying her and so on. But . . .' she turned a page '. . . it says the last job she did was on Banjo and ... yes, she got the tooth ... and then she felt as though someone was behind her and ... there's a ride on a cart ... and the hood's come off ... and there's a causeway ... and. . .' 'All that's in a book?' 'The autobiography. Everyone has one. It writes down your life as you go along.' 'I've got one?' 'I expect so.' 'Oh, dear. "Got up, was sick, wanted to die." Not a gripping read, really.' Susan turned the page. 'A tower,' she said. 'She's in a tower. From what she saw, it was tall and white inside ... but not outside? It didn't look real. There were apple trees around it, but the trees, the trees didn't look right. And a river, but that wasn't right either. There were goldfish in it ... but they were on top of the water.' 'Ah. Pollution,' said the oh god. 'I don't think so. It says here she saw them swimming! 'Swimming on top of the water?' 'That's how she thinks she saw it.' 'Really? You don't think she'd been eating any of that mouldy cheese, do you?' 'And there was blue sky but ... she must have got this wrong ... it says here there was only blue sky above . . .' 'Yep. Best place for the sky,' said the oh god. 'Sky underneath you, that probably means trouble.' Susan flicked a page back and forth. 'She means ... sky overhead but not around the edges, I think No sky on the horizon.' 'Excuse me,' said the oh god. 'I'm not long in this world, I appreciate that, but I think you have, to have sky on the horizon. That's how you can tell it's the horizon.' A sense of familiarity was creeping up on Susan, but surreptitiously, dodging behind things whenever she tried to concentrate on it. 'I've seen this place,' she said, tapping the page. 'If only she'd looked harder at the trees ... She says they've got brown trunks and green leaves and it says here she thought they were odd. And ... She concentrated on the next paragraph. 'Flowers. Growing in the grass. With big round petals.' She stared unseeing at the oh god again. 'This isn't a proper landscape,' she said. 'It doesn't sound too unreal to me,' said the oh god. 'Sky. Trees. Flowers. Dead fish.' 'Brown tree trunks? Really they're mostly a sort of greyish mossy colour. You only ever see brown tree trunks in one place,' said Susan. 'And it's the same place where the sky is only ever overhead. The blue never comes down to the ground.' She looked up. At the far end of the corridor was one of the very tall, very thin windows. It looked out on to the black gardens. Black bushes, black grass, black trees. Skeletal fish cruising 'm the black waters of a pool, under black water lilies. There was colour, in a sense, but it was the kind of colour you'd get if you could shine a beam of black through a prism. There were hints of tints, here and there a black you might persuade yourself was a very deep purple or a midnight blue. But it was basically black, under a black sky, because this was the world belonging to Death and that was all there was to it. The shape of Death was the shape people had created for him, over the centuries. Why bony? Because bones were associated with death. He'd got a scythe because agricultural people could spot a decent metaphor. And he lived in a sombre land because the human imagination would be rather stretched to let him live somewhere nice with flowers. People like Death lived in the human imagination, and got their shape there, too. He wasn't the only one ... ... but he didn't like the script, did he? He'd started to take an interest in people. Was that a thought, or just a memory of something that hadn't happened yet? The oh god followed her gaze. 'Can we go after her?' said the oh god. 'I say we, I think I've just got drafted in because I was in the wrong place.' 'She's alive. That means she is mortal,' said Susan. 'That means I can find her, too.' She turned and started to walk out of the library. 'If she says the sky is just blue overhead, what's between it and the horizon?' said the oh god, running to keep up. 'You don't have to come,' said Susan. 'It's not your problem.' 'Yes, but given that my problem is that my whole purpose in life is to feel rotten, anything's an improvement.' 'It could be dangerous. I don't think she's there of her own free will. Would you be any good in a fight?' 'Yes. I could be sick on people.' It was a shack, somewhere out on the outskirts of the Plains town of Scrote. Scrote had a lot of outskirts, spread so widely - a busted cart here, a dead dog there that often people went through it without even knowing it was there, and really it only appeared on the maps because cartographers get embarrassed about big empty spaces. Hogswatch came after the excitement of the cabbage harvest when it was pretty quiet in Scrote and there was nothing much to look forward to until the fun of the sprout festival. This shack had an iron stove, with a pipe that went up through the thick cabbage-leaf thatch. Voices echoed faintly within the pipe. THIS IS REALLY, REALLY STUPID. 'I think the tradition got started when everyone had them big chimneys, master.' This voice sounded as though it was coming from someone standing on the roof and shouting down the pipe. INDEED? IT'S ONLY A MERCY IT'S UNLIT. There was some muffled scratching and banging, and then a thump from within the pot belly of the stove. DAMN. 'What's up, master?' THE DOOR HAS NO HANDLE ON THE INSIDE. I CALL THAT INCONSIDERATE. There were some more bumps, and then a scrape as the stove lid was lifted up and pushed sideways. An arm came out and felt around the front of the stove until it found the handle. It played with it for a while, but it was obvious that the hand did not belong to a person used to opening things. In short, Death came out of the stove. Exactly how would be difficult to describe without folding the page. Time and space were, from Death's point of view, merely things that he'd heard described. When it came to Death, they ticked the box marked Not Applicable. It might help to think of the universe as a rubber sheet, or perhaps not. 'Let us in, master,' a pitiful voice echoed down from the roof. 'It's brass monkeys out here.' Death went over to the door. Snow was blowing underneath it. He peered nervously at the woodwork. There was a thump outside and Albert's voice sounded a lot closer. 'What's up, master?' Death stuck his head through the wood of the door. THERE'S THESE METAL THINGS 'Bolts, master. You slide them,' said Albert, sticking his hands under his armpits to keep them warm. AH. Death's head disappeared. Albert stamped his feet and watched his breath cloud in the air while he listened to the pathetic scrabbling on the other side of the door. Death's head appeared again. ER ... 'It's the latch, master,' said Albert wearily. RIGHT. RIGHT. 'You put your thumb on it and push it down.' RIGHT. The head disappeared. Albert jumped up and down a bit, and waited. The head appeared. ER ... I WAS WITH YOU UP TO THE THUMB... Albert sighed. 'And then you press down and pull, master.' AH. RIGHT. GOT YOU. The head disappeared. Oh dear, thought Albert. He just can't get the hang of them, can he ... ? The door jerked open. Death stood behind it, beaming proudly, as Albert staggered in, snow blowing in with him. 'Blimey, it's getting really parky,' said Albert. 'Any sherry?' he added hopefully. IT APPEARS NOT. Death looked at the sock hooked on to the side of the stove. It had a hole in it. A letter, in erratic handwriting, was attached to it. Death picked it up. THE BOY WANTS A PAIR OF TROUSERS THAT HE DOESN'T HAVE TO SHARE, A HUGE MEAT PIE, A SUGAR MOUSE, 'A LOT OF TOYS' AND A PUPPY CALLED SCRUFF. 'Ah, sweet,' said Albert. 'I shall wipe away a tear, 'cos what he's gettin', see, is this little wooden toy and an apple.' He held them out. BUT THE LETTER CLEARLY 'Yes, well, it's socio-economic factors again, right?' said Albert 'The world'd be in a right mess if everyone got what they asked for, eh?' I GAVE THEM WHAT THEY WANTED IN THE STORE . . . 'Yeah, and that's gonna cause a lot of trouble, master. All them "toy pigs that really work". I didn't say nothing 'cos it was getting the job done but you can't go on like that. What good's a god who gives you everything you want?' YOU HAVE ME THERE. ‘It’s the hope that's important. Big part of belief, hope. Give people jam today and they'll just sit and eat it. jam tomorrow, now - that'll keep them going for ever.' AND YOU MEAN THAT BECAUSE OF THIS THE POOR GET POOR THINGS AND THE RICH GET RICH THINGS? ' 's right,' said Albert. 'That's the meaning of Hogswatch.' Death nearly wailed. BUT I'M THE HOGFATHER! He looked embarrassed. AT THE MOMENT, I MEAN. 'Makes no difference,' said Albert, shrugging. 'I remember when I was a nipper, one Hogswatch I had my heart set on this huge model horse they had in the shop . . .' His face creased for a moment in a grim smile of recollection. 'I remember I spent hours one day, cold as charity the weather was, I spent hours with my nose pressed up against the window . . . until they heard me callin', and unfroze me. I saw them take it out of the window, someone was in there buying it, and, y'know, just for a second I thought it really was going to be for me ... Oh. I dreamed of that toy horse. It were red and white with a real saddle and everything. And rockers. I'd've killed for that horse.' He shrugged again. 'Not a chance, of course, 'cos we didn't have a pot to piss in and we even `ad to spit on the bread to make it soft enough to eat---' PLEASE ENLIGHTEN ME. WHAT IS SO IMPORTANT ABOUT HAVING A POT TO PISS IN? 'It's ... it's more like a figure of speech, master. It means you're as poor as a church mouse.' ARE THEY POOR? 'Well ... yeah.' BUT SURELY NOT MORE POOR THAN ANY OTHER MOUSE? AND, AFTER ALL, THERE TEND TO BE LOTS OF CANDLES AND THINGS THEY COULD EAT. 'Figure of speech again, master. It doesn't have to make sense.' OH. I SEE. DO CARRY ON. 'O' course, I still hung up my stocking on Hogswatch Eve, and in the morning, you know, you know what? Our dad had put in this little horse he'd carved his very own self . . .' AH, said Death. AND THAT WAS WORTH MORE THAN ALL THE EXPENSIVE TOY HORSES IN THE WORLD,EH? Albert gave him a beady look. 'No!' he said. 'It weren't. All I could think of was it wasnt the big horse in the window.' Death looked shocked. BUT HOW MUCH BETTER TO HAVE A TOY CARVED WITH--- 'No. Only grown-ups think like that,' said Albert. 'You're a selfish little bugger when you're seven. Anyway, Dad got ratted after lunch and trod on it.' LUNCH? 'All right, mebbe we had a bit of pork chipping tor the bread . . .' EVEN SO, THE SPIRIT OF HOGSWATCH--- Albert sighed. 'If you like, master. If you like.' Death looked perturbed. BUT SUPPOSING THE HOGFATHER HAD BROUGHT YOU THE WONDERFUL HORSE--- 'Oh, Dad would've flogged it for a couple of bottles,' said Albert. BUT WE HAVE BEEN INTO HOUSES WHERE THE CHILDREN HAD MANY TOYS AND BROUGHT THEM EVEN MORE TOYS, AND IN HOUSES LIKE THIS THE CHILDREN GET PRACTICALLY NOTHING. 'Huh, we'd have given anything to get practically nothing when I were a lad,' said Albert. BE HAPPY WITH WHAT YOU'VE GOT, IS THAT THE IDEA? 'That's about the size of it, master. A good god line, that. Don't give 'em too much and tell 'em to be happy with it. jam tomorrow, see.' THIS IS WRONG. Death hesitated. I MEAN ... IT'S RIGHT to BE HAPPY WITH WHAT YOU'VE GOT. BUT YOU'VE GOT TO HAVE SOMETHING TO BE HAPPY ABOUT HAVING. THERE'S NO POINT IN BEING HAPPY ABOUT HAVING NOTHING. Albert felt a bit out of his depth in this new tide of social philosophy. 'Dunno,' he said. 'I suppose people'd say they've got the moon and the stars and suchlike.' I'M SURE THEY WOULDN'T BE ABLE TO PRODUCE THE PAPERWORK. 'All I know is, if Dad'd caught us with a big bag of pricey toys wed just have got a ding round the earhole for nicking 'em.' IT IS ... UNFAIR. 'That's life, master.' BUT I'M NOT. 'I meant this is how it's supposed to go, master,' said Albert. NO. YOU MEAN THIS IS HOW IT GOES. Albert leaned against the stove and rolled himself one of his horrible thin cigarettes. It was best to let the master work his own way through these things. He got over them eventually. It was like that business with the violin. For three days there was nothing but twangs and broken strings, and then he'd never touched the thing again. That was the trouble, really. Everything the master did was a bit like that. When things got into his head you just had to wait until they leaked out again. He'd thought that Hogswatch was all ... plum pudding and brandy and ho ho ho and he didn't have the kind of mind that could ignore all the other stuff. And so it hurt him. IT IS HOGSWATCH, said Death, AND PEOPLE DIE ON THE STREETS. PEOPLE FEAST BEHIND LIGHTED WINDOWS AND OTHER PEOPLE HAVE NO HOMES. IS THIS FAIR? 'Well, of course, that's the big issue---' Albert began. THE PEASANT HAD A HANDFUL OF BEANS AND THE KING HAD SO MUCH HE WOULD NOT EVEN NOTICE THAT WHICH HE GAVE AWAY. IS THIS FAIR? 'Yeah, but if you gave it all to the peasant then in a year or two he'd be just as snooty as the king---' began Albert, jaundiced observer of human nature. NAUGHTY AND NICE? said Death. BUT IT'S EASY TO BE NICE IF YOU'RE RICH. IS THIS FAIR? Albert wanted to argue. He wanted to say, Really? In that case, how come so many of the rich buggers is bastards? And being poor don't mean being naughty, neither. We was poor when I were a kid, but we was honest. Well, more stupid than honest, to tell the truth. But basically honest. He didn't argue, though. The master wasn't in any mood for it. He always did what needed to be done. 'You did say we just had to do this so's people'd believe-' he began, and then stopped and started again. 'When it comes to fair, master, you yourself-' I AM EVEN-HANDED TO RICH AND POOR ALIKE, snapped Death. BUT THIS SHOULD NOT BE A SAD TIME. THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE THE SEASON TO BE JOLLY. He wrapped his red robe around him. AND OTHER THINGS ENDING IN OLLY, he added. 'There's no blade,' said the oh god. 'It's Just a sword hilt.' Susan stepped out of the light and her wrist moved. A sparkling blue line flashed in the air, for a moment outlining an edge too thin to be seen. The oh god backed away. 'What's that?' 'Oh, it cuts tiny bits of the air in half. It can cut the soul away from the body, so stand back, please.' 'Oh, I will, I will.' Susan fished the black scabbard out of the umbrella stand. Umbrella stand! It never rained here, but Death had an umbrella stand. Practically no one else Susan knew had an umbrella stand. In any list of useful furniture, the one found at the bottom would be the umbrella stand. Death lived in a black world, where nothing was alive and everything was dark and his great library only had dust and cobwebs because he'd created them for effect and there was never any sun in the sky and the air never moved and he had an umbrella stand. And a pair of silverbacked hairbrushes by his bed. He wanted to be something more than just a bony apparition. He tried to create these flashes of personality but somehow they betrayed themselves, they tried too hard, like an adolescent boy going out wearing an aftershave called 'Rampant'. Grandfather always got things wrong. He saw life from outside and never quite understood. 'That looks dangerous,' said the oh god. Susan sheathed the sword. 'I hope so,' she said. 'Er ... where are we going? Exactly?' 'Somewhere under an overhead sky,' said Susan. 'And ... I've seen it before. Recently. I know the place.' They walked out to the stable yard. Binky was waiting. 'I said you don't have to come,' said Susan, grasping the saddle. 'I mean, you're a ... an innocent bystander.' 'But I'm a god of hangovers who's been cured of hangovers,' said the oh god. 'I haven't really got any function at all.' He looked so forlorn when he said this that she relented. 'All right. Come on, then.' She pulled him up behind her. 'Just hang on,' she said. And then she said, `Hang on somewhere differently, I mean.' 'I'm sorry, was that a problem?' said the oh god, shifting his grip. 'It might take too long to explain and you probably don't know all the words. Around the waist, please.' Susan took out Violet's hourglass and held it up. There was a lot of sand left to run, but she couldn't be certain that was a good sign. All she could be certain of was that the horse of Death could go anywhere. The sound of Hex's quill as it scrabbled across the paper was like a frantic spider trapped in a matchbox. Despite his dislike of what was going on, there was a part of Ponder Stibbons that was very, very impressed. In the past, when Hex had been recalcitrant about its calculations, when it had got into a mechanical sulk and had started writing things like'+++ Out of Cheese Error +++'and'+++ Redo From Start +++' Ponder had tried to sort things out calmly and logically. It had never, ever occurred to him to contemplate hitting Hex with a mallet. But this was, in fact, what Ridcully was threatening to do. What was impressive, and also more than a little worrying, was that Hex seemed to understand the concept. 'Right,' said Ridcully, putting the mallet aside. 'Let's have no more of this "Insufficient dates" business, shallwe? There's boxes of the damn things back in the Great Hall. You can have the lot as far as Im concerned---' 'It's data, not dates,' said Ponder helpfully. 'What? You mean like ... more than dates? Extra sticky?' 'No, no, data is Hex's word for ... well, facts,' said Ponder. 'Ridiculous way to behave,' said Ridcully brusquely. 'If he's stumped for an answer, why can't he write "You've got me there" or "Damned if I know," or "That's a bit of a puzzler and no mistake"? All this "Insufficient data" business is just pure contrariness, to my mind. It's just swank-' He turned back to Hex. 'Right, you. Hazard a guess.' The quill started to write '+++ Insuff ' and then stopped. After quivering for a moment it went down a line and started again. +++ This Is Just Calculating Aloud, You Understand +++ 'Fair enough,' said Ridcully. .+++ The Amount Of Belief In The World Must Be Subject To An Upper Limit +++ 'What an odd question,' said the Dean. 'Sounds sensible,' said Ridcully. 'I suppose people just ... believe in stuff. Obviously there's a limit to what you can believe in. I've always said so. So what?' .+++ Creatures Have Appeared That Were Once Believed In +++ 'Yes. Yes, you could put it like that.' +++ They Disappeared Because They Were Not Believed In +++ 'Seems reasonable,' said Ridcully. +++ People Were Believing In Something Else Query? +++ Ridcully looked at the other wizards. They shrugged. 'Could be,' he said guardedly. 'People can only believe in so many things.' ... It Follows That If A Major Focus Of Belief Is Removed, There Will Be Spare Belief ... Ridcully stared at the words. 'You mean ... sloshing around?' The big wheel with the ram skulls on it began to turn ponderously. The scurrying ants in the .glass tubes took on a new urgency. 'What's happening?' said Ridcully, in a loud whisper. 'I think Hex is looking up the word "sloshing",' said Ponder. 'It may be in long-term storage.' A large hourglass came down on the spring. 'What's that for?' said Ridcully. 'Er ... it shows Hex is working things out.' 'Oh. And that buzzing noise? Seems to be coming from the other side of the wall.' Ponder coughed. 'That is the long-term storage, Archchancellor.' 'And how does that work?' 'Er ... well, if you think of memory as a series of little shelves or, or, or holes, Archchancellor, in which you can put things, well, we found a way of making a sort of memory which, er, interfaces neatly with the ants, in fact, but more importantly can expand its size depending on how much we give it to remember and, er, is possibly a bit slow but----' 'It's a very loud buzzing,' said the Dean. 'Is it going wrong. 'No, that shows it's working,' said Ponder. 'It's, er, beehives.' He coughed. 'Different types of pollen, different thicknesses of honey, placement of the eggs ... It's actually amazing how much information you can store on one honeycomb.' He looked at their faces. 'And it's very secure because anyone trying to tamper with it will get stung to death and Adrian believes that when we shut it down in the summer holidays we should get a nice lot of honey, too.' He coughed again. 'For our ... sand ... wiches,' he said. He felt himself getting smaller and hotter under their gazes. Hex came to his rescue. The hourglass bounced away and the quill pen was jerked in and out of its inkwell. +++ Yes. Sloshing Around. Accreting +++ 'That means forming around new centres, Archchancellor,' said Ponder helpfully. 'I know that,' said Ridcully. 'Blast. Remember when we had all that life force all over the place? A man couldn't call his trousers his own! So ... there's spare belief sloshing around, thank you, and these little devils are taking advantage of it? 'Coming back? Household gods?' +++ This Is Possible +++ 'All right, then, so what are people not believing in all of a sudden?' +++ Out Of Cheese Error +++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Redo From Start +++ 'Thank you. A simple "I don't know" would have been sufficient,' said Ridcully, sitting back. 'One of the major gods?' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'Hah, we'd soon know about it if one of those vanished.' 'It's Hogswatch,' said the Dean. 'I suppose the Hogfather is around, is he?' 'You believe in him?' said Ridcully. 'Well, he's for kids, isn't he?' said the Dean. 'But I'm sure they all believe in him. I certainly did. It wouldn't be Hogswatch when I was a kid without a pillowcase hanging by the fire--.-' 'A pillowcase?' said the Senior Wrangler, sharply. 'Well, you can't get much in a stocking,' said the Dean. 'Yes, but a whole pillowcase?' the Senior Wrangler insisted. 'Yes. What of it?' 'Is it just me, or is that a rather greedy and selfish way to behave? In my family we just hung up very small socks,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'A sugar pig, a toy soldier, a couple of oranges and that was it. Hah, turns out people with whole pillowcases were cornering the market, eh?' 'Shut up and stop squabbling, both of you,' said Ridcully. 'There must be a simple way to check up. How can you tell if the Hogfather exists?' 'Someone's drunk the sherry, there's sooty footprints on the carpet, sleigh tracks on the roof and your pillowcase is full of presents,' said the Dean. 'Hah, pillowcase,' said the Senior Wrangler darkly. 'Hah. I expect your family were the stuck-up sort that didn't even open their presents until after Hogswatch dinner, eh? One of them with a big snooty Hogswatch tree in the hall?' 'What if---' Ridcully began, but he was too late. 'Well?' said the Dean. 'Of course we waited until after lunch---' 'You know, it really used to wind me right up, people with big snooty Hogswatch trees. And I just bet you had one of those swanky fancy nutcrackers like a big thumbscrew,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Some people had to make do with the coal hammer out of the outhouse, of course. And had dinner in the middle of the day instead of lah-di-dah posh dinner in the evening.' 'I can't help it if my family had money,' said the Dean, and that might have defused things a bit had he not added, 'and standards.' 'And big pillowcases!' shouted the Senior Wrangler, bouncing up and down in rage. 'And I bet you bought your holly, eh?' The Dean raised his eyebrows. 'Of course! We didn't go creeping around the country pinching it out of other people's hedges, like some people did,' he snapped. 'That's traditional! That's part of the fun!' 'Celebrating Hogswatch with stolen greenery?' Ridcully put his hand over his eyes. The word for this, he had heard, was 'cabin fever'. When people had been cooped up for too long in the dark days of the winter, they always tended to get on one another's nerves, although there was probably a school of thought that would hold that spending your time in a university with more than five thousand known rooms, a huge library, the best kitchens in the city, its own brewery, dairy, extensive wine cellar, laundry, barber shop, cloisters and skittle alley was testing the definition of 'cooped up' a little. Mind you, wizards could get on one another's nerves in opposite corners of a very large field. 'Just shut up, will you?' he said. 'It's Hogswatch! That's not the time for silly arguments, all right?' 'Oh, yes it is,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies glumly. 'It's exactly the time for silly arguments. In our family we were lucky to get through dinner without a reprise of What A Shame Henry Didn't Go Into Business With Our Ron. Or Why Hasn't Anyone Taught Those Kids To Use A Knife? That was another favourite.' 'And the sulks,' said Ponder Stibbons. 'Oh, the sulks,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'Not a proper Hogswatch without everyone sitting staring at different walls.' 'The games were worse,' said Ponder. 'Worse than the kids hitting one another with their toys, do you think? Not a proper Hogswatch afternoon without wheels and bits of broken dolly everywhere and everyone whining. Assault and battery included.' 'We had a game called Hunt the Slipper,' said Ponder. 'Someone hid a slipper. And then we had to find it. And then we had a row.' 'It's not really bad,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'I mean, not proper Hogswatch bad, unless everyone's wearing a paper hat. There's always that bit, isn't there, when someone's horrible great-aunt puts on a paper hat and smirks at everyone because she's being so bohemian.' 'I'd forgotten about the paper hats,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'Oh, dear.' 'And then later on someone'll suggest a board game,' said Ponder. 'That's right. Where no one exactly remembers all the rules.' 'Which doesn't stop someone suggesting that you play for pennies.' 'And five minutes later there's two people not speaking to one another for the rest of their lives because of tuppence.' 'And some horrible little kid--' 'I know, I know! Some little kid who's been allowed to stay up wins everyone's money by being a nasty little cut-throat swot!' 'Right!' 'Er . . .' said Ponder, who rather suspected that he had been that child. 'And don't forget the presents,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, as if reading off some internal list of gloom. 'How ... how full of potential they seem in all that paper, how pregnant with possibilities ... and then you open them and basically the wrapping paper was more interesting and you have to say "How thoughtful, that will come in handy!' It's not better to give than to receive, in my opinion, it's just less embarrassing.' 'I've worked out,' said the Senior Wrangler, 'that over the years I have been a net exporter of Hogswatch presents--' 'Oh, everyone is,' said the Chair. 'You spend a fortune on other people and what you get when all the paper is cleared away is one slipper that's the wrong colour and a book about earwax.' Ridcully sat in horrified amazement. He'd always enjoyed Hogswatch, every bit of it. He'd enjoyed seeing ardent relatives, he'd enjoyed the food, he'd been good at games like Chase My Neighbour Up The Passage and Hooray Jolly Tinker. He was always the first to don a paper hat. He felt that paper hats lent a special festive air to the occasion. And he always very carefully read the messages on Hogswatch cards and found time for a few kind thoughts about the sender. Listening to his wizards was like watching someone kick apart a doll's house. 'At least the Hogswatch cracker mottoes are fun...?' he ventured. They all turned to look at him, and then turned away again. 'If you have the sense of humour of a wire coathanger,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Oh dear,' said Ridcully. 'Then perhaps there isn't a Hogfather if all you chaps are sitting around with long faces. He's not the sort to let people go around being miserable!' 'Ridcully, he's just some old winter god,' said the Senior Wrangler wearily. 'He's not the Cheerful Fairy or anything.' The Lecturer in Recent Runes raised his chin from his hands. 'What Cheerful Fairy?' 'Oh, its just something my granny used to go on about if it was a wet afternoon and we were getting on her nerves,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'She'd say "I'll call the Cheerful Fairy if you're. . ." ' He stopped, looking guilty. The Archchancellor held a hand to his ear in a theatrical gesture denoting 'Hush. What was that I heard?' 'Someone tinkled,' he said. 'Thank you, Senior Wrangler.' 'Oh no,' the Senior Wrangler moaned. 'No, no, no!' They listened for a moment. 'We might have got away with it,' said Ponder. 'I didn't hear anything - . .' 'Yes, but you can just imagine her, can't you?' said the Dean. 'The moment you said it, I had this picture in my mind. She's going to have a whole bag of word games, for one thing. Or she'll suggest we go outdoors for our health.' The wizards shuddered. They weren't against the outdoors, it was simply their place in it they objected to. 'Cheerfulness has always got me down,' said the Dean. 'Welt if some wretched little ball of cheerfulness turns up I shan't have it for one,' said the Senior Wrangler, folding his arms. 'I've put up with monsters and trolls and big green things with teeth, so I'm not sitting still for any kind of--' 'Hello!! Hello !!' The voice was the kind of voice that reads suitable stories to children. Every vowel was beautifully rounded. And they could hear the extra exclamation marks, born of a sort of desperate despairing jollity, slot into place. They turned. The Cheerful Fairy was quite short and plump in a tweed skirt and shoes so sensible they could do their own tax returns, and was pretty much like the first teacher you get at school, the one who has special training in dealing with nervous incontinence and little boys whose contribution to the wonderful world of sharing consists largely of hitting a small girl repeatedly over the head with a wooden horse. In fact, this picture was helped by the whistle on a string around her neck and a general impression that at any moment she would clap her hands. The tiny gauzy wings just visible on her back were probably just for show, but the wizards kept on staring at her shoulder. 'Hello--' she said again, but a lot more uncertainly. She gave them a suspicious look. 'You're rather big boys,' she said, as if they'd become so in order to spite her. She blinked. 'It's my job to chase those blues away,' she added, apparently following a memorized script. Then she seemed to rally a bit and went on. 'So chins up, everyone, and lets see a lot of bright shining faces!!' Her gaze met that of the Senior Wrangler, who had probably never had a bright shining face in his entire life. He specialized in dull, sullen ones. The one he was wearing now would have won prizes. 'Excuse me, madam,' said Ridcully. 'But is that a chicken on your shoulder?' 'It's, er, its, er, it's the Blue Bird of Happiness,' said the Cheerful Fairy. Her voice now had the slightly shaking tone of someone who doesn't quite believe what she has just said but is going to go on saying it anyway, just in case saying it will eventually make it true. 'I beg your pardon, but it is a chicken. A live chicken,' said Ridcully. 'It just went cluck.' 'It is blue,' she said hopelessly. 'Well, that at least is true,' Ridcully conceded, as kindly as he could manage. 'Left to myself, I expect I'd have imagined a slightly more streamlined Blue Bird of Happiness, but I can't actually fault you there.' The Cheerful Fairy coughed nervously and fiddled with the buttons on her sensible woolly jumper. 'How about a nice game to get us all in the mood?' she said. 'A guessing game, perhaps? Or a painting competition? There may be a small prize for the winner.' 'Madam, we're wizards,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'We don't do cheerful.' 'Charades?' said the Cheerful Fairy. 'Or perhaps you've been playing them already? How about a sing-song? Who knows "Row Row Row Your Boat"?' Her bright little smile hit the group scowl of the assembled wizards. 'We don't want to be Mr Grumpy, do we?' she added hopefully. 'Yes,' said the Senior Wrangler. The Cheerful Fairy sagged, and then patted frantically at her shapeless sleeves until she tugged out a balled-up handkerchief. She dabbed at her eyes. 'It's all going wrong again, isn't it?' she said, her chin trembling. 'No one ever wants to be cheerful these days, and I really do try. I've made a Joke Book and I've got three boxes of clothes for charades and ... and ... and whenever I try to cheer people up they all look embarrassed ... and really I do make an effort . . She blew her nose loudly. Even the Senior Wrangler had the grace to look embarrassed. 'Er . . .' he began. 'Would it hurt anyone just occasionally to try to be a little bit cheerful?' said the Cheerful Fairy. 'Er ... in what way?' said the Senior Wrangler, feeling wretched. 'Well, there's so many nice things to be cheerful about,' said the Cheerful Fairy, blowing her nose again. 'Er ... raindrops and sunsets and that sort of thing?' said the Senior Wrangler, managing some sarcasm, but they could tell his heart wasn't in it. 'Er, would you like to borrow my handkerchief? It's nearly fresh.' 'Why don't you get the lady a nice sherry?' said Ridcully. 'And some corn for her chicken . . .' 'Oh, I never drink alcohol,' said the Cheerful Fairy, horrified. 'Really?' said Ridcully. 'We find it's something to be cheerful about. Mr Stibbons ... would you be so kind as to step over here for a moment?' He beckoned him up close. 'There's got to be a lot of belief sloshing around to let her be created,' he said. 'She's a good fourteen stone, if I'm any judge. If we wanted to contact the Hogfather, how would we go about it? Letter up chimney?' 'Yes, but not tonight, sir,' said Ponder. 'He'll be out delivering.' 'No telling where he'll be, then,' said Ridcully. 'Blast.' 'Of course, he might not have come here yet,' said Ponder. 'Why should he come here?' said Ridcully. The Librarian pulled the blankets over himself and curled up. As an orang-utan he hankered for the warmth of the rainforest. The problem was that he'd never even seen a rainforest, having been turned into an orang-utan when he was already a fully grown human. Something in his bones knew about it, though, and didn't like the cold of winter at all. But he was also a librarian in those same bones and he flatly refused to allow fires to be lit in the library. As a result, pillows and blankets went missing everywhere else in the University and ended up in a sort of cocoon in the reference section, in which the ape lurked during the worst of the winter. He turned over and wrapped himself in the Bursar's curtains. There was a creaking outside his nest, and some whispering. 'No, don't fight the lamp.' 'I wondered why I hadn't seen him all evening.' 'Oh, he goes to bed early on Hogswatch Eve, sir. Here we are . . .' There was some rustling. 'We're in luck. It hasn't been filled,' said Ponder. 'Looks like he's used one of the Bursar's.' 'He puts it up every year?' 'Apparently.' 'But it's not as though he's a child. A certain child-like simplicity, perhaps.' 'It might be different for orang-utans, Archchancellor.' 'Do they do it in the jungle, d'you think?' 'I don't imagine so, sir. No chimneys, for one thing.' 'And quite short legs, of course. Extremely underfunded in the sock area, orang-utans. They'd be quids in if they could hang up gloves, of course. Hogfather'd be on double shifts if they could hang up their gloves. On account of the length of their arms.' 'Very good, Archchancellor.' 'I say, what's this on the... my word, a glass of sherry. Well, waste not, want not.' There was a damp glugging noise in the darkness. 'I think that was supposed to be for the Hogfather, sir.' 'And the banana?' 'I imagine that's been left out for the pigs, sir.' 'Pigs?' 'Oh, you know, sir. Tusker and Snouter and Gouger and Rooter. I mean,' Ponder stopped, conscious that a grown man shouldn't be able to remember this sort of thing, 'that's what children believe.' 'Bananas for pigs? That's not traditional, is it? I'd have thought acorns, perhaps. Or apples or swedes.' 'Yes, sir, but the Librarian likes bananas, sir.' 'Very nourishin' fruit, Mr Stibbons.' 'Yes, sir. Although, funnily enough it's not actually a fruit, sir.' 'Really?' 'Yes, sir. Botanically, it's a type of fish, sir. According to my theory it's cladistically associated with the Krullian pipefish, sir, which of course is also yellow and goes around in bunches or shoals.' 'And lives in trees?' 'Well, not usually, sir. The banana is obviously exploiting a new niche.' 'Good heavens, really? It's a funny thing, but I've never much liked bananas and I've always been a bit suspicious of fish, too. That'd explain it.' 'Yes, sir.' 'Do they attack swimmers?' 'Not that I've heard, sir. Of course, they may be clever enough to only attack swimmers who're far from land.' 'What, you mean sort of... high up? In the trees, as it were?' 'Possibly, sir.' 'Cunning, eh?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Well, we might as well make ourselves comfortable, Mr Stibbons.' 'Yes, sir.' A match flared in the darkness as Ridcully lit his pipe. The Ankh-Morpork wassailers had practised for weeks. The custom was referred to by Anaglypta Huggs, organizer of the best and most select group of the city's singers, as an occasion for fellowship and good cheer. One should always be wary of people who talk unashamedly of 'fellowship and good cheer' as if it were something that can be applied to life like a poultice. Turn your back for a moment and they may well organize a Maypole dance and, frankly, there's no option then but to try and make it to the treeline. The singers were halfway down Park Lane now, and halfway through 'The Red Rosy Hen' in marvellous harmony.[19] Their collecting tins were already full of donations for the poor of the city, or at least those sections of the poor who in Mrs Huggs' opinion were suitably picturesque and not too smelly and could be relied upon to say thank you. People had come to their doors to listen. Orange light spilled on to the snow. Candle lanterns glowed among the tumbling flakes. If you could have taken the lid off the scene, there would have been chocolates inside. Or at least an interesting biscuit assortment. Mrs Huggs had heard that wassailing was an ardent ritual, and you didn't need anyone to tell you what that meant, but she felt she'd carefully removed all those elements that would affront the refined ear. And it was only gradually that the singers became aware of the discord. Around the corner, slipping and sliding on the ice, came another band of singers. Some people march to a different drummer. The drummer in question here must have been trained elsewhere, possibly by a different species on another planet. In front of the group was a legless man on a small wheeled trolley, who was singing at the top of his voice and banging two saucepans together. His name was Arnold Sideways. Pushing him along was Coffin Henry, whose croaking progress through an entirely different song was punctuated by bouts of off-the-beat coughing. He was accompanied by a perfectly ordinary-looking man in torn, dirty and yet expensive clothing, whose pleasant tenor voice was drowned out by the quacking of a duck on his head. He answered to the name of Duck Man, although he never seemed to understand why, or why he was always surrounded by people who seemed to see ducks where no ducks could be. And finally, being towed along by a small grey dog on a string, was Foul Ole Ron, generally regarded in AnkhMorpork as the deranged beggars' deranged beggar. He was probably incapable of singing, but at least he was attempting to swear in time to the beat, or beats. The wassailers stopped and watched them in horror. Neither party noticed, as the beggars oozed and ambled up the street, that little smears of black and grey were spiralling out of drains and squeezing out from under tiles and buzzing off into the night. People have always had the urge to sing and clang things at the dark stub of the year, when all sorts of psychic nastiness has taken advantage of the long grey days and the deep shadows to lurk and breed. Lately people had taken to singing harmoniously, which rather lost the effect. Those who really understood just clanged something and shouted. The beggars were not in fact this well versed in folkloric practice. They were just making a din in the wellfounded hope that people would give them money to stop. It was just possible to make out a consensus song in there somewhere. 'Hogswatch is coming, The pig is getting fat, Please put a dollar in the old man's hat If you ain't got a dollar a penny will do-' 'And if you ain't got a penny,' Foul Ole Ron yodelled, solo, 'then - fghfgh yffg mftnfmf...' The Duck Man had, with great presence of mind, damped a hand over Ron's mouth. 'So sorry about this,' he said, 'but this time I'd like people not to slam their doors on us. And it doesn't scan, anyway.' The nearby doors slammed regardless. The other wassailers fled hastily to a more salubrious location. Goodwill to all men was a phrase coined by someone who hadn't met Foul Ole Ron. The beggars stopped singing, except for Arnold Sideways, who tended to live in his own small world. ' -nobody knows how good we can live, on boots three times a day...' Then the change in the air penetrated even his consciousness. Snow thumped off the trees as a contrary wind brushed them. There was a whirl of flakes and it was just possible, since the beggars did not always have their mental compasses pointing due Real, that they heard a brief snatch of conversation. 'It just ain't that simple, master, that's all I'm saying-' IT IS BETTER TO GIVE THAN TO RECEIVE, ALBERT. 'No, master, it's just a lot more expensive. You can't just go around-' Things rained down on the snow. The beggars looked at them. Arnold Sideways carefully picked up a sugar pig and bit its nose off. Foul Ole Ron peered suspiciously into a cracker that had bounced off his hat, and then shook it against his ear. The Duck Man opened a bag of sweets. 'Ah, humbugs?' he said. Coffin Henry unlooped a string of sausages from around his neck. 'Buggrit?' said Foul Ole Ron. 'It's a cracker,' said the dog, scratching its ear. 'You pull it.' Ron waved the cracker aimlessly by one end. 'Oh, give it here,' said the dog, and gripped the other end in its teeth. 'My word,' said the Duck Man, fishing in a snowdrift. 'Here's a whole roast pig! And a big dish of roast potatoes, miraculously uncracked! And... look... isn't this caviar in the jar? Asparagus! Potted shrimp! My goodness! What were we going to have for Hogswatch dinner, Arnold?' 'Old boots,' said Arnold. He opened a fallen box of cigars and licked them. 'Just old boots?' 'Oh, no. Stuffed with mud, and with roast mud. 's good mud, too. I bin saving it up.' 'Now we can have a merry feast of goose!' 'All right. Can we stuff it with old boots?' There was a pop from the direction of the cracker. They heard Foul Ole Ron's thinkingbrain dog growl. 'No, no, no, you put the hat on your head and you read the hum'rous mottar.' 'Millennium hand and shrimp?' said Ron, passing the scrap of paper to the Duck Man. The Duck Man was regarded as the intellectual of the group. He peered at the motto. 'Ah, yes, let's see now... It says "'Help Help Help Ive Fallen in the Crakker Machine I Cant Keep Runin on this Roller Please Get me Ou-".' He turned the paper over a few times. 'That appears to be it, except for the stains.' 'Always the same ole mottars,' said the dog. 'Someone slap Ron on the back, will you? If he laughs any more he'll - oh, he has. Oh well, nothing new about that.' The beggars spent a few more minutes picking up hams, jars and bottles that had settled on the snow. They packed them around Arnold on his trolley and set off down the street. 'How come we got all this?' ' 's Hogswatch, right?' 'Yeah, but who hung up their stocking?' 'I don't think we've got any, have we?' 'I hung up an old boot.' 'Does that count?' 'Dunno. Ron ate it.' I'm waiting for the Hogfather, thought Ponder Stibbons. I'm in the dark waiting for the Hogfather. Me. A believer in Natural Philosophy. I can find the square root of 27.4 in my head.[20] I shouldn't be doing this. It's not as if I've hung a stocking up. There'd be some point if... He sat rigid for a moment, and then pulled off his pointy sandal and rolled down a sock. It helped if you thought of it as the scientific testing of an interesting hypothesis. From out of the darkness Ridcully said, 'How long, do you think?' 'It's generally believed that all deliveries are completed well before midnight,' said Ponder, and tugged hard. 'Are you all right, Mr Stibbons?' 'Fine. sir. Fine. Er... do you happen to have a drawing pin about you? Or a small nail, perhaps?' 'I don't believe so.' 'Oh, it's all right. I've found a penknife.' After a while Ridcully heard a faint scratching noise in the dark. 'How do you spell "electricity", sir?' Ridcully thought for a while. 'You know, I don't think I ever do.' There was silence again, and then a clang. The Librarian grunted in his sleep. 'What are you doing?' 'I just knocked over the coal shovel.' 'Why are you feeling around on the mantelpiece?' 'Oh, just... you know, just... just looking. A little... experiment. After all, you never know.' 'You never know what?' 'Just... never know, you know.' 'Sometimes you know,' said Ridcully. 'I think I know quite a lot that I didn't used to know. It's amazing what you do end up knowing, I sometimes think. I often wonder what new stuff I'll know.' 'Well, you never know.' 'That's a fact.' High over the city Albert turned to Death, who seemed to be trying to avoid his gaze. 'You didn't get that stuff out of the sack! Not cigars and peaches in brandy and grub with fancy foreign names!' YES, IT CAME OUT OF THE SACK. Albert gave him a suspicious look. 'But you put it in the sack in the first place, didn't you?' NO. 'You did, didn't you?' Albert stated. NO. 'You put all those things in the sack.' NO. 'You got them from somewhere and put them in the sack.' NO. 'You did put them in the sack, didn't you?' NO. 'You put them in the sack.' YES. 'I knew you put them in the sack. Where did you get them?' THEY WERE JUST LYING AROUND. 'Whole roast pig does not, in my experience, just lie around.' NO ONE SEEMED TO BE USING THEM, ALBERT. 'Couple of chimneys ago we were over that big posh restaurant...' REALLY? I DON'T REMEMBER. 'And it seemed to me you were down there a bit longer than usual, if you don't mind me saying so.' REALLY. 'How exactly were they just inverted comma lying around inverted comma?' JUST... LYING AROUND. YOU KNOW. RECUMBENT. 'In a kitchen?' THERE WAS A CERTAIN CULINARINESS ABOUT THE PLACE, I RECALL. Albert pointed a trembling finger. 'You nicked someone's Hogswatch dinner, master!' IT'S GOING TO BE EATEN, said Death defensively. ANYWAY, YOU THOUGHT IT WAS A GOOD IDEA WHEN I SHOWED THAT KING THE DOOR. 'Yeah, well, that was a bit different,' said Albert, lowering his voice. 'But, I mean, the Hogfather doesn't drop down the chimney and pinch people's grub!' THE BEGGARS WILL ENJOY IT, ALBERT. 'Well, yes, but-' IT WASN'T STEALING. IT WAS JUST... REDISTRIBUTION. IT WILL BE A GOOD DEED IN A NAUGHTY WORLD. 'No, it won't!' THEN IT WILL BE A NAUGHTY DEED IN A NAUGHTY WORLD AND WILL PASS COMPLETELY UNNOTICED. 'Yeah, but you might at least have thought about the people whose grub you pinched.' THEY HAVE BEEN PROVIDED FOR, OF COURSE. I AM NOT COMPLETELY HEARTLESS. IN A METAPHORICAL SENSE. AND NOW - ONWARDS AND UPWARDS. 'We're heading down, master.' ONWARDS AND DOWNWARDS, THEN. There were... swirls. Binky galloped easily through them, except that he did not seem to move. He might have been hanging in the air. 'Oh, me,' said the oh god weakly. 'What?' said Susan. 'Try shutting your eyes--' Susan shut her eyes. Then she reached up to touch her face. 'I'm still seeing. . 'I thought it was just me. It's usually just me.' The swirls vanished. There was greenery below. And that was odd. It was greenery. Susan had flown a few times over countryside, even swamps and jungles, and there had never been a green as green as this. If green could be a primary colour, this was it. And that wiggly thing 'That's not a river!' she said. 'Isn't it?' 'It's blue!' The oh god risked a look down. 'Water's blue,' he said. 'Of course it's not!' 'Grass is green, water's blue... I can remember that. It's some of the stuff I just know.' 'Well, in a way...' Susan hesitated. Everyone knew grass was green and water was blue. Quite often it wasn't true, but everyone knew it in the same way they knew the sky was blue, too. She made the mistake of looking up as she thought that. There was the sky. It was, indeed, blue. And down there was the land. It was green. And in between was nothing. Not white space. Not black night. Just... nothing, all round the edges of the world. Where the brain said there should be, well, sky and land, meeting neatly at the horizon, there was simply a void that sucked at the eyeball like a loose tooth. And there was the sun. It was under the sky, floating above the land. And it was yellow. Buttercup yellow. Binky landed on the grass beside the river. Or at least on the green. It felt more like sponge, or moss. He nuzzled it. Susan slid off, trying to keep her gaze low. That meant she was looking at the vivid blue of the water. There were orange fish in it. They didn't look quite right, as if they'd been created by someone who really did think a fish was two curved lines and a dot and a triangular tail. They reminded her of the skeletal fish in Death's quiet pool. Fish that were... appropriate to their surroundings. And she could see them, even though the water was just a block of colour which part of her insisted ought to be opaque... She knelt down and dipped her hand in. It felt like water, but what poured through her fingers was liquid blue. And now she knew where she was. The last piece clicked into place and the knowledge bloomed inside her. She knew if she saw a house just how its windows would be placed, and just how the smoke would come out of the chimney. There would almost certainly be apples on the trees. And they would be red, because everyone knew that apples were red. And the sun was yellow. And the sky was blue. And the grass was green. But there was another world, called the real world by the people who believed in it, where the sky could be anything from off-white to sunset red to thunderstorm yellow. And the trees would be anything from bare branches, mere scribbles against the sky, to red flames before the frost. And the sun was white or yellow or orange. And water was brown and grey and green... The colours here were springtime colours, and not the springtime of the world. They were the colours of the springtime of the eye. 'This is a child's painting,' she said. The oh god slumped onto the green. 'Every time I look at the gap my eyes water,' he mumbled. 'I feel awful.' 'I said this is a child's painting,' said Susan. 'Oh, me... I think the wizards' potion is wearing off...' 'I've seen dozens of pictures of it,' said Susan, ignoring him. 'You put the sky overhead because the sky's above you and when you are a couple of feet high there's not a lot of sideways to the sky in any case. And everyone tells you grass is green and water is blue. This is the landscape you paint. Twyla paints like that. I painted like that. Grandfather saved some of-' She stopped. 'All children do it, anyway,' she muttered. 'Come on, let's find the house.' 'What house?' the oh god moaned. 'And can you speak quieter, please?' 'There'll be a house,' said Susan, standing up. 'There's always a house. With four windows. And the smoke coming out of the chimney all curly like a spring. Look, this is a place like gr--- Death's country. It's not really geography.' The oh god walked over to the nearest tree and banged his head on it as if he hoped it was going to hurt. 'Feels like geo'fy,' he muttered. 'But have you ever seen a tree like that? A big green blob on a brown stick? It looks like a lollipop!' said Susan, pulling him along. 'Dunno. Firs' time I ever saw a tree. Arrgh. Somethin' dropped on m'head.' He blinked owlishly at the ground. ' 's red.' 'It's an apple,' she said. She sighed. 'Everyone knows apples are red.' There were no bushes. But there were flowers, each with a couple of green leaves. They grew individually, dotted around the rolling green. And then they were out of the trees and there, by a bend in the river, was the house. It didn't look very big. There were four windows and a door. Corkscrew smoke curled out of the chimney. 'You know, it's a funny thing,' said Susan, staring at it. 'Twyla draws houses like that. And she practically lives in a mansion. I drew houses like that. And I was born in a palace. Why?' 'P'raps it's all this house,' muttered the oh. god miserably. 'What? You really think so? Kids' paintings are all of this place? It's in our heads?' 'Don't ask me, I was just making conversation,' said the oh god. Susan hesitated. The words What Now? loomed. Should she just go and knock? And she realized that was normal thinking... In the glittering, clattering, chattering atmosphere a head waiter was having a difficult time. There were a lot of people in, and the staff should have been fully stretched, putting bicarbonate of soda in the white wine to make very expensive bubbles and cutting the vegetables very small to make them cost more. Instead they were standing in a dejected group in the kitchen. 'Where did it all go?' screamed the manager. 'Someone's been through the cellar, too!' 'William said he felt a cold wind,' said the waiter. He'd been backed up against a hot plate, and now knew why it was called a hot plate in a way he hadn't fully comprehended before. 'I'll give him a cold wind! Haven't we got anything?' 'There's odds and ends. . 'You don't mean odds and ends, you mean des curieux et des bouts,' corrected the manager. 'Yeah, right, yeah. And, er, and, er . . 'There's nothing else?' 'Er... old boots. Muddy old boots.' 'Old-?' 'Boots. Lots of 'em,' said the waiter. He felt he was beginning to singe. 'How come we've got... vintage footwear?' 'Dunno. They just turned up, sir. The oven, s full of old boots. So's the pantry.' 'There's a hundred people booked in! All the shops'll be shut! Where's Chef?' 'William's trying to get him to come out of the privy, sir. He's locked himself in and is having one of his Moments.' 'Something's cooking. What's that I can smell?' 'Me, sir.' 'Old boots muttered the manager. 'Old boots... old boots... Leather, are they? Not clogs or rubber or anything?' 'Looks like... just boots. And lots of mud, sir.' The manager took off his jacket. 'All right. Cot any cream, have we? Onions? Garlic? Butter? Some old beef bones? A bit of pastry?' 'Er, yes...' The manager rubbed his hands together. 'Right,' he said, taking an apron off a hook. 'You there, get some water boiling! Lots of water! And find a really large hammer! And you, chop some onions! The rest of you, start sorting out the boots. I want the tongues out and the soles off. We'll do them... let's see... Mousse de la Boue dans une Panier de la Pate de Chaussures...' 'Where're we going to get that from, sir?' 'Mud mousse in a basket of shoe pastry. Get the idea? It's not our fault if even Quirmians don't understand restaurant Quirmian. It's not like lying, after all.' 'Well, it's a bit like-' the waiter began. He'd been cursed with honesty at an early stage. 'Then there's Brodequin rôti Façon Ombres . . The manager sighed at the head waiter's panicky expression. 'Soldier's boot done in the Shades fashion,' he translated. 'Er... Shades fashion?' 'In mud. But if we cook the tongues separately we can put on Languette braisée, too.' 'There's some ladies' shoes, sir,' said an underchef. 'Right. Add to the menu... Let's see now... Sole d'une Bonne Femme... and... yes... Servis dans un Coulis de Terre en I'Eau. That's mud, to you.' 'What about the laces, sir?' said another underchef. 'Good thinking. Dig out that recipe for Spaghetti Carbonara.' 'Sir?' said the head waiter. 'I started off as a chef,' said the manager, picking up a knife. 'How do you think I was able to afford this place? I know how it's done. Get the look and the sauce right and you're threequarters there.' 'But it's all going to be old boots!' said the waiter. 'Prime aged beef,' the manager corrected him. 'It'll tenderize in no time.' 'Anyway... anyway... we haven't got any soup 'Mud. And a lot of onions.' 'There's the puddings---' 'Mud. Let's see if we can get it to caramelize, you never know.' 'I can't even find the coffee... Still, they probably won't last till the coffee...' 'Mud. Cafe de Terre,’ said the manager firmly. 'Genuine ground coffee.' 'Oh, they'll spot that, sir!' 'They haven't up till now,' said the manager darkly. 'We'll never get away with it, sir. Never.' In the country of the sky on top, Medium Dave Lilywhite hauled another bag of money down the stairs. 'There must be thousands here,' said Chickenwire. 'Hundreds of thousands,' said Medium Dave. 'And what's all this stuff?' said Catseye, opening a box. ' 's just paper.' He tossed it aside. Medium Dave sighed. He was all for class solidarity, but sometimes Catseye got on his nerves. 'They're title deeds,' he said. 'And they're better than money.' Taper's better'n money?' said Catseye. 'Hah, if you can burn it you can't spend it, that's what I say.' 'Hang on,' said Chickenwire. 'I know about them. The Tooth Fairy owns property?' 'Cot to raise money somehow,' said Medium Dave. 'All those half-dollars under the pillow.' 'If we steal them, do they become ours?' 'Is that a trick question?' said Catseye, smirking. 'Yeah, but... ten thousand each doesn't sound such a lot, when you see all this.' 'He won't miss a-- 'Gentlemen...' They turned. Teatime was in the doorway. 'We were just... we were just piling up the stuff,' said Chickenwire. 'Yes. I know. I told you to.' 'Right. That's right. You did,' said Chickenwire gratefully. 'And there's such a lot,' said Teatime. He gave them a smile. Catseye coughed. ' 's got to be thousands,' said Medium Dave. 'And what about all these deeds and so on? Look, this one's for that pipe shop in Honey Trap Lane! In Ankh-Morpork! I buy my tobacco there! Old Thimble is always moaning about the rent, too!' 'Ah. So you opened the strongboxes,' said Teatime pleasantly. 'Well... yes...' 'Fine. Fine,' said Teatime. 'I didn't ask you to, but... fine, fine. And how did you think the Tooth Fairy made her money? Little gnomes in some mine somewhere? Fairy gold? But that turns to trash in the morning!' He laughed. Chickenwire laughed. Even Medium Dave laughed. And then Teatime was on him, pushing him irresistibly backwards until he hit the wall. There was a blur and he tried to blink and his left eyelid was suddenly a rose of pain. Teatime's good eye was close to him, if you could call it good. The pupil was a dot. Medium Dave could just make out his hand, right by Medium Dave's face. It was holding a knife. The point of the blade could only be the merest fraction of an inch from Medium Dave's right eye. 'I know people say I'd kill them as soon as look at them,' whispered Teatime. 'And in fact I'd much rather kill you than look at you, Mr Lilywhite. You stand in a castle of gold and plot to steal pennies. Oh, dear. What am I to do with you?' He relaxed a little, but his hand still held the knife to Medium Dave's unblinking eye. 'You're thinking that Banjo is going to help you,' he said. 'That's how it's always been, isn't it? But Banjo likes me. He really does. Banjo is my friend.' Medium Dave managed to focus beyond Teatime's ear. His brother was just standing there, with the blank face he had while he waited for another order or a new thought to turn up. 'If I thought you were feeling bad thoughts about me I would be so downcast,' said Teatime. 'I do not have many friends left, Mr Medium Dave.' He stood back and smiled happily. 'All friends now?' he said, as Medium Dave slumped down. 'Help him, Banjo.' On cue, Banjo lumbered forward. 'Banjo has the heart of a little child,' said Teatime, the knife disappearing somewhere about his clothing. 'I believe I have, too.' The others were frozen in place. They hadn't moved since the attack. Medium Dave was a heavy-set man and Teatime was a matchstick model, but he'd lifted Medium Dave off his feet like a feather. 'As far as the money goes, in fact, I really have no use for it,' said Teatime, sitting down on a sack of silver. 'It is small change. You may share it out amongst yourselves, and no doubt you'll squabble and doublecross one another more tiresomely. Oh, dear. It is so awful when friends fall out.' He kicked the sack. It split. Silver and copper fell in an expensive trickle. 'And you'll swagger and spend it on drink and women,' he said, as they watched the coins roll into every corner of the room. 'The thought of investment will never cross your scarred little minds---' There was a rumble from Banjo. Even Teatime waited patiently until the huge man had assembled a sentence. The result was: 'I gotta piggy bank.' 'And what would you do with a million dollars, Banjo?' said Teatime. Another rumble. Banjo's face twisted up. 'Buy... a... bigger piggy bank?' 'Well done.' The Assassin stood up. 'Let's go and see how our wizard is getting on, shall we?' He walked out of the room without looking back. After a moment Banjo followed. The others tried not to look at one another's faces. Then Chickenwire said, 'Was he saying we could take the money and go?' 'Don't be bloody stupid, we wouldn't get ten yards,' said Medium Dave, still clutching his face. 'Ugh, this hurts. I think he cut the eyelid... he cut the damn eyelid...' 'Then let's just leave the stuff and go! I never joined up to ride on tigers!' 'And what'll you do when he comes after you?' 'Why'd he bother with the likes of us?' 'He's got time for his friends,' said Medium Dave bitterly. 'For gods' sakes, someone get me a clean rag or something... 'OK, but... but he can't look everywhere.' Medium Dave shook his head. He'd been through AnkhMorpork's very own university of the streets and had graduated with his life and an intelligence made all the keener by constant friction. You only had to look into Teatime's mismatched eyes to know one thing, which was this: that if Teatime wanted to find you he would not look everywhere. He'd look in only one place, which would be the place where you were hiding. 'How come your brother likes him so much?' Medium Dave grimaced. Banjo had always done what he was told, simply because Medium Dave had told him. Up to now, anyway. It must have been that punch in the bar. Medium Dave didn't like to think about it. He'd always promised their mother that he'd look after Banjo,[21] and Banjo had gone back like a falling tree. And when Medium Dave had risen from his seat to punch Teatime's unbalanced lights out he'd suddenly found the Assassin already behind him, holding a knife. In front of everyone. It was humiliating, that's what it was And then Banjo had sat up, looking puzzled, and spat out a tooth 'If it wasn't for Banjo going around with him all the time we could gang up on him,' said Catseye. Medium Dave looked up, one hand clamping a handkerchief to his eye. 'Gang up on him?' he said. 'Yeah, it's all your fault,' Chickenwire went on. 'Oh, yeah? So it wasn't you who said, wow, ten thousand dollars, count me in?' Chickenwire backed away. 'I didn't know there was going to be all this creepy stuff! I want to go home!' Medium Dave hesitated, despite his pain and rage. This wasn't normal talk for Chickenwire, for all that he whined and grumbled. This was a strange place, no lie about that, and all that business with the teeth had been very... odd, but he'd been out with Chickenwire when jobs had gone wrong and both the Watch and the Thieves' Guild had been after them and he'd been as cool as anyone. And if the Guild had been the ones to catch them they'd have nailed their ears to their ankles and thrown them in the river. In Medium Dave's book, which was a simple book and largely written in mental crayon, things didn't get creepier than that. 'What's up with you?' he said. 'All of you you're acting like little kids!' 'Would he deliver to apes earlier than humans?' 'Interesting point, sir. Possibly you're referring to my theory that humans may have in fact descended from apes, of course,' said Ponder. 'A bold hypothesis which ought to sweep away the ignorance of centuries if the grants committee could just see their way clear to letting me hire a boat and sail around to the islands of --- ' 'I just thought he might deliver alphabetically,' said Ridcully. There was a patter of soot in the cold fireplace. 'That's presumably him now, do you think?' Ridcully went on. 'Oh, well, I thought we should check---' Something landed in the ashes. The two wizards stood quietly in the darkness while the figure picked itself up. There was a rustle of paper. LET ME SEE NOW There was a click as Ridcully's pipe fell out of his mouth. 'Who the hell are you?' he said. 'Mr Stibbons, light a candle!' Death backed away. I'M THE HOGFATHER, OF COURSE. ER. HO. HO. HO. WHO WOULD YOU EXPECT TO COME DOWN A CHIMNEY ON A NIGHT LIKE THIS, MAY I ASK? 'No, you're not!' I AM. LOOK, I'VE GOT THE BEARD AND THE PILLOW AND EVERYTHING! 'You look extremely thin in the face!' I'M... I... I'M NOT WELL. IT'S ALL... YES, IT'S ALL THIS SHERRY. AND RUSHING AROUND. I AM A BIT ILL. 'Terminally, I should say.' Ridcully grabbed the beard. There was a twang as the string gave way. 'It's a false beard!' NO IT'S NOT, said Death desperately. 'Here's the hooks for the ears, which must have given you a bit of trouble, I must say!' Ridcully flourished the incriminating evidence. 'What were you doing coming down the chimney?' he continued. 'Not in marvellous taste, I think.' Death waved a small grubby scrap of paper defensively. OFFICIAL LETTER TO THE HOGFATHER. SAYS HERE... he began, and then looked at the paper again. WELL, QUITE A LOT, IN FACT. IT'S A LONG LIST. LIBRARY STAMPS, REFERENCE BOOKS, PENCILS, BANANAS... 'The Librarian asked the Hogfather for those things?' said Ridcully. 'Why?' I DON'T KNOW, said Death. This was a diplomatic answer. He kept his finger over a reference to the Archchancellor. The orang-utan for 'duck's bottom' was quite an interesting squiggle. 'I've got plenty in my desk drawer,' mused Ridcully. 'I'm quite happy to give them out to any chap provided he can prove he's used up the old one.' THEY MUST SHOW YOU AN ABSENCE OF PENCIL? 'Of course. If he needed essential materials he need only have come to me. No man can tell you I'm an unreasonable chap.' Death checked the list carefully. THAT IS PRECISELY CORRECT, he confirmed, with anthropological exactitude. 'Except for the bananas, of course. I wouldn't keep fish in my desk.' Death looked down at the list and then back up at Ridcully. GOOD? he said, in the hope that this was the right response. Wizards know when they are going to die.[22] Ridcully had no such premonitions, and to Ponder's horror prodded Death in the cushion. 'Why you?' he said. 'What's happened to the other fellow?' I SUPPOSE I MUST TELL YOU. In the house of Death, a whisper of shifting sand and the faintest chink of moving glass, somewhere in the darkness of the floor... And, in the dry shadows, the sharp smell of snow and a thud of hooves. Sideney almost swallowed his tongue when Teatime appeared beside him. 'Are we making progress?' 'Gnk-' 'I'm sorry?' said Teatime. Sideney recovered himself. 'Er... some,' he said. 'We think we've worked out... er... one lock.' Light gleamed off Teatime's eye. 'I believe there are seven of them?' said the Assassin. 'Yes, but... they're half magic and half real and half not there... I mean... there's parts of them that don't exist all the time-' Mr Brown, who had been working at one of the locks, laid down his pick. ' 't's no good, mister,' he said. 'Can't even get a purchase with a crowbar. Maybe if I went back to the city and got a couple of dragons we could do something. You can melt through steel with them if you twist their necks right and feed 'em carbon.' 'I was told you were the best locksmith in the city,' said Teatime. Behind him, Banjo shifted position. Mr Brown looked annoyed... 'Well, yes,' he said. 'But locks don't generally alter 'emselves while you're working on 'em, that's what I'm saying.' 'And I thought you could open any lock anyone ever made,' said Teatime. 'Made by humans,' said Mr Brown sharply. 'And most dwarfs. I dunno what made these. You never said anything about magic.' 'That's a shame,' said Teatime. 'Then really I have no more need of your services. You may as well go back home.' 'I won't be sorry.' Mr Brown started putting things back into his tool bag. 'What about my money?' 'Do I owe you any?' 'I came along with you. I don't see it's my fault that this is all magic business. I should get something.' 'Ah, yes, I see your point,' said Teatime. 'Of course, you should get what you deserve. Banjo?' Banjo lumbered forward, and then stopped. Mr Brown's hand had come out of the bag holding a crowbar. 'You must think I was born yesterday, you slimy little bugger,' he said. 'I know your type. You think it's all some kind of game. You make little jokes to yourself and you think no one else notices and you think you're so smart. Well, Mr Teacup, I'm leaving, right? Right now. With what's coming to me. And you ain't stopping me. And Banjo certainly ain't. I knew old Ma Lilywhite back in the good old days. You think you're nasty? You think you're mean? Ma Lilywhite'd tear your ears off and spit 'em in your eye, you cocky little devil. And I worked with her, so you don't scare me and nor does little Banjo, poor sod that he is.' Mr Brown glared at each of them in turn, flourishing the crowbar. Sideney cowered in front of the doors. He saw Teatime nod gracefully, as if the man had made a small speech of thanks. 'I appreciate your point of view,' said Teatime. 'And, I have to repeat, it's Teh-ah-tim-eh. Now, please, Banjo.' Banjo loomed over Mr Brown, reached down and lifted him up by the crowbar so sharply that his feet came out of his boots. 'Here, you know me, Banjo!' the locksmith croaked, struggling in mid-air. 'I remembers you when you was little, I used to sit you on my knees, I often used to work for your ma-' 'D'you like apples?' Banjo rumbled. Brown struggled. 'You got to say yes,' Banjo said. 'Yes!' 'D'You like pears? You got to say yes.' 'All right, yes!' 'D'you like falling down the stairs?' Medium Dave held up his hands for quiet. He glared at the gang. 'This place is getting to you, right? But we've all been in bad places before, right?' 'Not this bad,' said Chickenwire. 'I've never been anywhere where it hurts to look at the sky. It give me the creeps.' 'Chick's a little baby, nyer nyer nyer,' sang Careers. They looked at him. He coughed nervously. 'Sorry... don't know why I said that. . 'If we stick together we'll be fine-' 'Teeny meeny minty me...' mumbled Catseye. 'What? What are you talking about?' 'Sorry... it just sort of slipped out...' 'What I'm trying to say,' said Medium Dave, 'is that if--' 'Peachy keeps making faces at me!' 'I didn't!' 'Liar, liar, pants on fire!' Two things happened at this point. Medium Dave lost his temper, and Peachy screamed. A small wisp of smoke was rising from his trousers. He hopped around, beating desperately at himself. 'Who did that? Who did that?' demanded Medium Dave. 'I didn't see anyone,' said Chickenwire. 'I mean, no one was near him. Catseye said "pants on fire" and next minute-' 'Now he's sucking his thumb!' Catseye jeered. Nyer nyer nyer! Crying for Mummy! You know what happens to kids who suck their thumbs, there's this big monster with scissors all---' 'Will you stop talking like that!' shouted Medium Dave. 'Blimey, it is like dealing with a bunch of-' Someone screamed, high above. It went on for a while and seemed to be getting nearer, but then it stopped and was replaced by a rush of thumping and an occasional sound like a coconut being bounced on a stone floor. Medium Dave got to the door just in time to see the body of Mr Brown the locksmith tumble past, moving quite fast and not at all neatly. A moment later his bag somersaulted around the curve of the stairs. It split as it bounced and there was a jangle as tools and lockpicks bounced out and followed their late owner. He'd been moving quite fast. He'd probably roll all the way to the bottom. Medium Dave looked up. Two turns above him, on the opposite side of the huge shaft, Banjo was watching him. Banjo didn't know right from wrong. He'd always left that sort of thing to his brother. 'Er... poor guy must've slipped,' Medium Dave mumbled. 'Oh, yeah... slipped,' said Peachy. He looked up, too. It was funny. He hadn't noticed them before. The white tower had seemed to glow from within. But now there were shadows, moving across the stone. In the stone. 'What was that?' he said. 'That sound... 'What sound?' 'It sounded... like knives scraping,' said Peachy. 'Really close.' 'There's only us here!' said Medium Dave. 'What're you afraid of? Attack by daisies? Come on... let's go and help him...' She couldn't walk through the door. It simply resisted any such effort. She ended up merely bruised. So Susan turned the doorknob instead. She heard the oh god gasp. But she was used to the idea of buildings that were bigger on the inside. Her grandfather had never been able to get a handle on dimensions. The second thing the eye was drawn to were the staircases. They started opposite one another in what was now a big round tower, its ceiling lost in the haze. The spirals circled into infinity. Susan's eyes went back to the first thing. It was a large conical heap in the middle of the floor. It was white. It glistened in the cool light that shone down from the mists. 'It's teeth,' she said. 'I think I'm going to throw up,' said the oh god miserably. 'There's nothing that scary about teeth,' said Susan. She didn't mean it. The heap was very horrible indeed. 'Did I say I was scared? I'm just hung over again... Oh, me...' Susan advanced on the heap, moving warily. They were small teeth. Children's teeth. Whoever had piled them up hadn't been very careful about it, either. A few had been scattered across the floor. She knew because she trod on one, and the slippery little crunching sound made her desperate not to tread on any more. Whoever had piled them up had presumably been the one who'd drawn the chalk marks around the obscene heap. 'There're so many,' whispered Bilious. 'At least twenty million, given the size of the average milk tooth,' said Susan. She was shocked to find that it came almost automatically. 'How can you possibly know that?' 'Volume of a cone,' said Susan. 'Pi times the square of the radius times the height divided by three. I bet Miss Butts never thought it'd come in handy in a place like this.' 'That's amazing. You did it in your head?' 'This isn't right,' said Susan quietly. 'I don't think this is what the Tooth Fairy is all about. All that effort to get the teeth, and then just to dump them like this? No. Anyway, there's a cigarette end on the floor. I don't see the Tooth Fairy as someone who rolls her own.' She stared down at the chalk marks. Voices high above her made her look up. She thought she saw a head look over the stair rail, and then draw back again. She didn't see much of the face, but what she saw didn't look fairylike. She glanced back at the circle of chalk around the teeth. Someone had wanted all the teeth in one place and had drawn a circle to show people where they had to go. There were a few symbols scrawled around the circle. She had a good memory for small details. It was another family trait. And a small detail stirred in her memory like a sleepy bee. 'Oh, no,' she breathed. 'Surely no one would try to-' Someone shouted, someone up in the whiteness. A body rolled down the stairs nearest her. It had been a skinny, middle-aged man. Technically it still was, but the long spiral staircase had not been kind. It tumbled across the white marble and slid to a boneless halt. Then, as she hurried towards the body, it faded away, leaving nothing behind but a smear of blood. A jingle noise made her look back up the stairs. Spinning over and over, making salmon leaps in the air, a crowbar bounded over the last dozen steps and landed point first on a flagstone, staying upright and vibrating. Chickenwire reached the top of the stairs, panting. 'There's people down there, Mister Teatime!' he wheezed. 'Dave and the others've gone down to catch them, Mister Teatime!' 'Teh-ah-tim-eh,' said Teatime, without taking his eyes off the wizard. 'That's right, sir!' 'Well?' said Teatime. 'Just... do away with them.' 'Er... one of them's a girl, sir.' Teatime still didn't look round. He waved a hand vaguely. 'Then do away with them politely.' 'Yes, Mister... yes, right...' Chickenwire coughed. 'Don't you want to find out why they're here, sir?' 'Good heavens, no. Why should I want to do that? Now go away.' Chickenwire stood there for a moment, and then hurried off. As he scurried down the stairs he thought he heard a creak, as of an ancient wooden door. He went pale. It was just a door, said the sensible bit in front of his brain. There were hundreds of them in this place, although, come to think of it, none of them had creaked. The other bit, the bit that hung around in dark places nearly at the top of his spinal column, said: But it's not one of them, and you know it, because you know which door it really is... He hadn't heard that creak for thirty years. He gave a little yelp and started to take the stairs four at a time. In the hollows and corners, the shadows grew darker. Susan ran up a flight of stairs, dragging the oh god behind her. 'Do you know what they've been doing?' she said. 'You know why they've got all those teeth in a circle? The power... oh my...' 'I'm not going to,' said the head waiter, firmly. 'Look, I'll buy you a better pair after Hogswatch-' 'There's two more Shoe Pastry, one for Purée de la Terre and three more Tourte à la Boue,' said a waiter, hurrying in. 'Mud pies!' moaned the waiter. 'I can't believe we're selling mud pies. And now you want my boots!' 'With cream and sugar, mind you. A real taste of AnkhMorpork. And we can get at least four helpings off those boots. Fair's fair. We're all in our socks--' 'Table seven says the steaks were lovely but a bit tough,' said a waiter, rushing past. 'Right. Use a larger hammer next time and boil them for longer.' The manager turned back to the suffering head waiter. 'Look, Bill,' he said, taking him by the shoulder. 'This isn't food. No one expects it to be food. If people wanted food they'd stay at home, isn't that so? They come here for ambience. For the experience. This isn't cookery, Bill. This is cuisine. See? And they're coming back for more.' 'Yeah, but old boots . . . ' 'Dwarfs eats rats,' said the manager. 'And trolls eat rocks. There's folks in Howondaland that eat insects and folks on the Counterweight Continent eat soup made out of bird spit. At least the boots have been on a cow.' 'And mud?' said the head waiter, gloomily. 'Isn't there an old proverb that says a man must eat a bushel of dirt before he dies?' 'Yes, but not all at once.' 'Bill?' said the manager, kindly, picking up a spatula. 'Yes, boss?' 'Get those damn boots off right now, will you?' When Chickenwire reached the bottom of the tower he was trembling, and not just from the effort. He headed straight for the door until Medium Dave grabbed him. 'Let me out! It's after me!' 'Look at his face,' said Catseye. 'Looks like he's seen a ghost!' 'Yeah, well, it ain't a ghost,' muttered Chickenwire. 'It's worse'n a ghost-' Medium Dave slapped him across the face. 'Pull yourself together! Look around! Nothing's chasing you! Anyway, it's not as though we couldn't put up a fight, right?' Terror had had time to drain away a little. Chickenwire looked back up the stairs. There was nothing there. 'Good,' said Medium Dave, watching his face. 'Now... What happened?' Chickenwire looked at his feet. 'I thought it was the wardrobe,' he muttered. 'Go on, laugh...' They didn't laugh. 'What wardrobe?' said Catseye. 'Oh, when I was a kid...' Chickenwire waved his arms vaguely. 'We had this big ole wardrobe, if you must know. Oak. It had this... this... on the door there was this... sort of... face.' He looked at their faces, which were equally wooden. 'I mean, not an actual face, there was... all this... decoration round the keyhole, sort of flowers and leaves and stuff, but if you looked at it in the... right way... it was a face and they put it in my room 'cos it was so big and in the night... in the night... in the night-' They were grown men or at least had lived for several decades, which in some societies is considered the same thing. But you had to stare at a man so creased up with dread. 'Yes?' said Catseye hoarsely.  '...it whispered things,' said Chickenwire, in a quiet little voice, like a vole in a dungeon. They looked at one another. 'What things?' said Medium Dave. 'I don't know! I always had my head under the pillow! Anyway, it's just something from when I was a kid, all right? Our dad got rid of it in the finish. Burned it. And I watched.' They mentally shook themselves, as people do when their minds emerge back into the light. 'It's like me and the dark,' said Catseye. 'Oh, don't you start,' said Medium Dave. 'Anyway, you ain't afraid of the dark. You're famed for it. I been working with you in all kinds of cellars and stuff. I mean, that's how you got your name. Catseye. Sees like a cat.' 'Yeah, well... you try an' make up for it, don't you?' said Catseye. "Cos when you're grown you know it's just shadows and stuff. Besides, it ain't like the dark we used to have in the cellar.' 'Oh, they had a special kind of a dark when you was a lad, did they?' said Medium Dave. 'Not like the kind of dark you get these days, eh?' Sarcasm didn't work. 'No,' said Catseye, simply. 'It wasn't. In our cellar, it wasn't.' 'Our mam used to wallop us if we went down to the cellar,' said Medium Dave. 'She had her still down there.' 'Yeah?' said Catseye, from somewhere far off. 'Well, our dad used to wallop us if we tried to get out. Now shut up talking about it.' They reached the bottom of the stairs. There was an absence of anybody. And any body. 'He couldn't have survived that, could he?' said Medium Dave. 'I saw him as he went past,' said Catseye. 'Necks aren't supposed to bend that way-' He squinted upwards. 'Who's that moving up there?' 'How are their necks moving?' quavered Chickenwire. 'Split up!' said Medium Dave. 'And this time all take a stairway. Then they can't come back down!' 'Who're they? Why're they here?' 'Why're we here?' said Peachy. He started, and looked behind him. 'Taking our money? After us putting up with him?' 'Yeah...' said Peachy distantly, trailing after the others. 'Er... did you hear that noise just then?' 'What noise?' 'A sort of clipping, snipping... ?' 'No.' 'No.' 'No. You must have imagined it.' Peachy nodded miserably. As he walked up the stairs, little shadows raced through the stone and followed his feet. Susan darted off the stairs and dragged the oh god along a corridor lined with white doors. 'I think they saw us,' she said. 'And if they're tooth fairies there's been a really stupid equal opportunities policy...' She pushed open a door. There were no windows to the room, but it was lit perfectly well by the walls themselves. Down the middle of the room was something like a display case, its lid gaping open. Bits of card littered the floor. She reached down and picked one up and read: 'Thomas Ague, aged 4 and nearly three quarters, 9 Castle View, Sto Lat'. The writing was in a meticulous rounded script. She crossed the passage to another room, where there was the same scene of devastation. 'So now we know where the teeth were,' she said. 'They must've taken them out of everywhere and carried them downstairs.' 'What for?' She sighed. 'It's such old magic it isn't even magic any more,' she said. 'If you've got a piece of someone's hair, or a nail clipping, or a tooth you can control them.' The oh god tried to focus. 'That heap's controlling millions of children?' 'Yes. Adults too, by now.' 'And you... you could make them think things and do things?' She nodded. 'Yes.' 'You could get them to open Dad's wallet and post the contents to some address?' 'Well, I hadn't thought of that, but yes, I suppose you could...' 'Or go downstairs and smash all the bottles in the drinks cabinet and promise never to take a drink when they grow up?' said the oh god hopefully. 'What are you talking about?' 'It's all right for you. You don't wake up every morning and see your whole life flush before your eyes. Medium Dave and Catseye ran down the passage and stopped where it forked. 'You go that way, I'll-' 'Why don't we stick together?' said Catseye. 'What's got into everyone? I saw you bite the throats out of a coupla guard dogs when we did that job in Quirm! Want me to hold your hand? You check the doors down there, I'll check them along here.' He walked off. Catseye peered down the other passage. There weren't many doors down there. It wasn't very long. And, as Teatime had said, there was nothing dangerous here that they hadn't brought with them. He heard voices coming from a doorway and sagged with relief. He could deal with humans. As he approached, a sound made him look round. Shadows were racing down the passage behind him. They cascaded down the walls and flowed over the ceiling. Where shadows met they became darker. And darker. And rose. And leapt. 'What was that?' said Susan. 'Sounded like the start of a scream,' said Bilious. Susan threw open the door. There was no one outside. There was movement, though. She saw a patch of darkness in the corner of a wall shrink and fade, and another shadow slid around the bend of the corridor. And there was a pair of boots in the centre of the corridor. She hadn't remembered any boots there before. She sniffed. The air tasted of rats, and damp, and mould. 'Let's get out of here,' she said. 'How're we going to find this Violet in all these rooms?' 'I don't know. I should be able to... sense her, but I can't.' Susan peered around the end of the corridor. She could hear men shouting, some way off. They slipped out on to the stairs again and managed another flight. There were more rooms here, and in each one a cabinet that had been broken open. Shadows moved in the corners. The effect was as though some invisible light source was gently shifting. 'This reminds me a lot of your... um... of your grandfather's place,' said the oh god. 'I know,' said Susan. 'There aren't any rules except the ones he makes up as he goes along. I can't see him being very happy if someone got in and started pulling the library apart-' She stopped. When she spoke again her voice had a different tone. 'This is a children's place,' she said. 'The rules are what children believe.' 'Well, that's a relief.' 'You think so? Things aren't going to be right. In the Soul Cake Duck's country ducks can lay chocolate eggs, in the same way that Death's country is black and sombre because that's what people believe. He's very conventional about that sort of thing. Skull and bone decorations all over the place. And this place--' 'Pretty flowers and an odd sky.' 'I think it's going to be a lot worse than that. And very odd, too.' 'More odd than it is now?' 'I don't think it's possible to die here.' 'That man who fell down the stairs looked pretty dead to me.' 'Oh, you die. But not here. You... let's see... yes... you go somewhere else. Away. You're just not seen any more. That's about all you understand when you're three. Grandfather said it wasn't like that fifty years ago. He said you often couldn't see the bed for everyone having a good cry. Now they just tell the child that Grandma's gone. For three weeks Twyla thought her uncle'd been buried in the sad patch behind the garden shed along with Buster and Meepo and all three Bulgies.' 'Three Bulgies?' 'Gerbils. They tend to die a lot,' said Susan. 'The trick is to replace them when she's not looking. You really don't know anything, do you?' 'Er... hello?' The voice came from the corridor. They worked their way round to the next room. There, sitting on the floor and tied to the leg of a white display case, was Violet. She looked up in apprehension, and then in bewilderment, and finally in growing recognition. 'Aren't you-?' 'Yes, yes, we see each other sometimes in Biers, and when you came for Twyla's last tooth you were so shocked that I could see you I had to give you a drink to get your nerves back,' said Susan, fumbling with the ropes. 'I don't think we've got a lot of time.' 'And who's he?' The oh god tried to push his lank hair into place. 'Oh, he's just a god,' said Susan. 'His name's Bilious.' 'Do you drink at all?' said the oh god. 'What sort of quest-' 'He needs to know before he decides whether he hates you or not,' said Susan. 'It's a god thing.' 'No, I don't,' said Violet. 'What an idea. I've got the blue ribbon!' The oh god raised his eyebrows at Susan. 'That means she's a member of Offler's League of Temperance,' said Susan. 'They sign a pledge not to touch alcohol. I can't think why. Of course, Offler's a crocodile. They don't go in bars much. They're into water.' 'Not touch alcohol at all?' said the oh god. 'Never!' said Violet. 'My dad's very strict about that sort of thing!' After a moment Susan felt forced to wave a hand across their locked gaze. 'Can we get on?' she said. 'Good. Who brought you here, Violet?' 'I don't know! I was doing the collection as usual, and then I thought I heard someone following me, and then it all went dark, and when I came to we were... Have you seen what it's like outside?' 'Yes.' 'Well, we were there. The big one was carrying me. The one they call Banjo. He's not bad, just a bit... odd. Sort of... slow. He just watches me. The others are thugs. Watch out for the one with the glass eye. They're all afraid of him. Except Banjo.' 'Class eye?' 'He's dressed like an Assassin. He's called Teatime. I think they're trying to steal something... They spent ages carting the teeth out. Little teeth everywhere... It was horrible! Thank you,' she added to the oh god, who had helped her on to her feet. 'They've piled them up in a magic circle downstairs,' said Susan. Violet's eyes and mouth formed three Os. It was like looking at a pink bowling ball. 'What for?' 'I think they're using them to control the children. By magic.' Violet's mouth opened wider. 'That's horrid.' Horrible, thought Susan. The word is 'horrible'. 'Horrid' is a childish word selected to impress nearby males with one's fragility, if I'm any judge. She knew it was unkind and counterproductive of her to think like that. She also knew it was probably an accurate observation, which only made it worse. 'Yes,' she said. 'There was a wizard! He's got a pointy hat!' 'I think we should get her out of here,' said the oh god, in a tone of voice that Susan considered was altogether too dramatic. 'Good idea,' she conceded. 'Let's go.' Catseye's boots had snapped their laces. It was as if he'd been pulled upwards so fast they simply couldn't keep up. That worried Medium Dave. So did the smell. There was no smell at all in the rest of the tower, but just here there was a lingering odour of mushrooms. His forehead wrinkled. Medium Dave was a thief and a murderer and therefore had a highly developed moral sense. He preferred not to steal from poor people, and not only because they never had anything worth stealing. If it was necessary to hurt anyone, he tried to leave wounds that would heal. And when in the course of his activities he had to kill people then he made some effort to see that they did not suffer much or at least made as few noises as possible. This whole business was getting on his nerves. Usually, he didn't even notice that he had any. There was a wrongness to everything that grated on his bones. And a pair of boots was all that remained of old Catseye. He drew his sword. Above him, the creeping shadows moved and flowed away. Susan edged up to the entrance to the stairways and peered around into the point of a crossbow. 'Now, all of you step out where I can see you.' said Peachy conversationally. 'And don't touch that sword, lady. You'll probably hurt yourself.' Susan tried to make herself unseen, and failed. Usually it was so easy to do that that it happened automatically, usually with embarrassing results. She could be idly reading a book while people searched the room for her. But here, despite every effort, she seemed to remain obstinately visible. 'You don't own this place,' she said, stepping back. 'No, but you see this crossbow? I own this crossbow. So you just walk ahead of me, right, and we'll all go and see Mister Teatime.' 'Excuse me, I just want to check something,' said Bilious. To Susan's amazement he leaned over and touched the point of the arrow. ',Here! What did you do that for?' said Peachy, stepping back. 'I felt it, but of course a certain amount of pain sensation would be part of normal sensory response,' said the oh god. 'I warn you, there's a very good chance that I might be immortal.' 'Yes, but we probably aren't,' said Susan. 'Immortal, eh?' said Peachy. 'So if I was to shoot you inna head, you wouldn't die?' 'I suppose when you put it like that... I do know I feel pain...' 'Right. You just keep moving, then.' 'When something happens,' said Susan, out of the corner of her mouth, 'you two try to get downstairs and out, all right? If the worst comes to the worst, the horse will. take you out of here.' 'If something happens,' whispered the oh god. 'When,' said Susan. Behind them, Peachy looked around. He knew he'd feel a lot better when any of the others turned up. It was almost a relief to have prisoners. Out of the corner of her eye Susan saw something move on the stairs on the opposite side of the shaft. For a moment she thought she saw several flashes like metal blades catching the light. She heard a gasp behind her. The man with the crossbow was standing very still and staring at the opposite stairs. 'Oh, noooo,' he said, under his breath. 'What is it?' said Susan. He stared at her. 'You can see it too?' 'The thing like a lot of blades clicking together?' said Susan. 'Oh, nooo...' 'It was only there for a moment,' said Susan. 'It's gone now,' she said. 'Somewhere else,' she added. 'It's the Scissor Man . . 'Who's he?' said the oh god. 'No one!' snapped Peachy, trying to pull himself together. 'There's no such thing as the Scissor Man, all right?' 'Ah... yes. When you were little, did you suck your thumb?' said Susan. 'Because the only Scissor Man I know is the one people used to frighten children with. They said he'd turn up and---' 'Shutupshutupshutup!' said Peachy, prodding her with the crossbow. 'Kids believe all kinds of crap! But I'm grown up now, right, and I can open beer bottles with other people's teeth an- oh, gods...' Susan heard the snip, snip. It sounded very close now. Peachy had his eyes shut. 'Is there anything behind me?' he quavered. Susan pushed the others aside and waved frantically towards the bottom of the stairs. 'No,' she said, as they hurried away. 'Is there anything standing on the stairs at all?' 'No.' 'Right! If you see that one-eyed bastard you tell him he can keep the money!' He turned and ran. When Susan turned to go up the stairs the Scissor Man was there. It wasn't man-shaped. It was something like an ostrich, and something like a lizard on its hind legs, but almost entirely like something made out of blades. Every time it moved a thousand blades went snip, snip. Its long silver neck curved and a head made of shears stared down at her. 'You're not looking for me,' she said. 'You're not my nightmare.' The blades tilted this way and that. The Scissor Man was trying to think. 'I remember you came for Twyla,' said Susan, stepping forward. 'That damn governess had told her what happens to little girls who suck their thumbs, remember? Remember the poker? I bet you needed a hell of a lot of sharpening afterwards...' The creature lowered its head, stepped carefully around her in as polite a way as it could manage, and clanked on down the stairs after Peachy. Susan ran on towards the top of the tower. Sideney put a green filter over his lantern and pressed down with a small silver rod that had an emerald set on its tip. A piece of the lock moved. There was a whirring from inside the door and something went click. He sagged with relief. It is said that the prospect of hanging concentrates the mind wonderfully, but it was Valium compared to being watched by Mister Teatime. 'I, er, think that's the third lock,' he said. 'Green light is what opens it. I remember the fabulous lock of the Hall of Murgle, which could only be opened by the Hubward wind, although that was---' 'I commend your expertise,' said Teatime. 'And the other four?' Sideney looked up nervously at the silent bulk of Banjo, and licked his lips. 'Well, of course, if I'm right, and the locks depend on certain conditions, well, we could be here for years...' he ventured. 'Supposing they can only be opened by, say, a small blond child holding a mouse? On a Tuesday? In the rain?' 'You can find out what the nature of the spell is?' said Teatime. 'Yes, yes, of course, yes.' Sideney waved his hands urgently. 'That's how I worked out this one. Reverse thaumaturgy, yes, certainly. Er. In time.' 'We have lots of time,' said Teatime. 'Perhaps a little more time than that,' Sideney quavered. 'The processes are very, very, very... difficult.' 'Oh, dear. If it's too much for you, you've only got to say,' said Teatime. 'No!' Sideney yipped, and then managed to get some self-control. 'No. No. No, I can... I'm sure I shall work them out soon-' 'Jolly good,' said Teatime. The student wizard looked down. A wisp of vapour oozed from the crack between the doors. 'Do you know what's in here, Mister Teatime?' 'No.' 'Ah. Right.' Sideney stared mournfully at the fourth lock. It was amazing how much you remembered when someone like Teatime was around. He gave him a nervous look. 'There's not going to be any more violent deaths, are there?' he said. 'I just can't stand the sight of violent deaths!' Teatime put a comforting arm around his shoulders. 'Don't worry,' he said. 'I'm on your side. A violent death is the last thing that'll happen to you.' 'Mister Teatime?' He turned. Medium Dave stepped onto the landing. 'Someone else is in the tower,' he said. 'They've got Catseye. I don't know how. I've got Peachy watching the stairs and I ain't sure where Chickenwire is.' Teatime looked back to Sideney, who started prodding at the fourth lock again in a feverish attempt not to die. 'Why are you telling me? I thought I was paying you big strong men a lot of money to deal with this sort of thing.' Medium Dave's lips framed some words, but when he spoke he said, 'AH right, but what are we up against here? Eh? Old Man Trouble or the bogeyman or what?' Teatime sighed. 'Some of the Tooth Fairy's employees, I assume,' he said. 'Not if they're like the ones that were here,' said Medium Dave. 'They were just civilians. It looks like the ground opened and swallowed Catseye up.' He thought about this. 'I mean the ceiling,' he corrected himself. A horrible image had just passed across his under-used imagination. Teatime walked across to the stairwell and looked down. Far below, the pile of teeth looked like a white circle. 'And the girl's gone,' said Medium Dave. 'Really? I thought I said she should be killed.' Medium Dave hesitated. The boys had been brought up by Ma Lilywhite to be respectful to women as delicate and fragile creatures, and were soundly thrashed if disrespectful tendencies were perceived by Ma's incredibly sensitive radar. And it was truly incredibly sensitive. Ma could hear what you were doing three rooms away, a terrible thing for a growing lad. That sort of thing leaves a mark. Ma Lilywhite certainly could. As for the others, they had no objections in practice to the disposal of anyone who got between them and large sums of money, but there was a general unspoken resentment at being told by Teatime to kill someone just because he had no further use for them. It wasn't that it was unprofessional. Only Assassins thought like that. It was just that there were things you did do, and things you didn't do. And this was one of the things you didn't do. 'We thought... well, you never know...' 'She wasn't necessary,' said Teatime. 'Few people are.' Sideney thumbed hurriedly through his notebooks. 'Anyway, the place is a maze-' Medium Dave said. 'Sadly, this is so,' said Teatime. 'But I am sure they will be able to find us. It's probably too much to hope that they intend something heroic.' Violet and the oh god hurried down the stairs. 'Do you know how to get back?' said Violet. 'Don't you?' 'I think there's a... a kind of soft place. If you walk at it knowing it's there you go through.' 'You know where it is?' 'No! I've never been here before! They had a bag on my head when we came! All I ever did was take the teeth from under the pillows!' Violet started to sob. 'You just get this list and about five minutes' training and they even dock you ten pence a week for the ladder and I know I made that mistake with little William Rubin but they should of said, you're supposed to take any teeth you---' 'Er... mistake?' said Bilious, trying to get her to hurry. 'Just because he slept with his head under the pillow but they give you the pliers anyway and no one told me that you shouldn't-' She certainly did have a pleasant voice, Bilious told himself. It was just that in a funny way it grated, too. It was like listening to a talking flute. 'I think we'd just better get outside,' he said. 'In case they hear us,' he hinted. 'What sort of godding do you do?' said Violet. 'Er... oh, I... this and that... I... er...' Bilious tried to think through the pounding headache. And then he had one of those ideas, the kind that only sound good after a lot of alcohol. Someone else may have drunk the drinks, but he managed to snag the idea. 'I'm actually self-employed,' he said, as brightly as he could manage. 'How can you be a self-employed god?' 'Ah, well, you see, if any other god wants, perhaps, you know, a holiday or something, I cover for them. Yes. That's what I do.' Unwisely, in the circumstances, he let his inventiveness impress him. 'Oh, yes. I'm very busy. Rushed off my feet. They're always employing me. You've no idea. They don't think twice about pushing off for a month as a big white bull or a swan or something and it's always, "Oh, Bilious, old chap, just take care of things while I'm away, will you? Answer the prayers and so on." I hardly get a minute to myself but of course you can't turn down work these days.' Violet was round-eyed with fascination. 'And are you covering for anyone right now?' she asked. 'Um, yes... the God of Hangovers, actually... 'A God of Hangovers? How awful!' Bilious looked down at his stained and wretched toga. 'I suppose it is...' he mumbled. 'You're not very good at it.' 'You don't have to tell me.' 'You're more cut out to be one of the important gods,' said Violet, admiringly. 'I can just see you as lo or Fate or one of those.' Bilious stared at her with his mouth open. 'I could tell at once you weren't right,' she went on. 'Not for some horrible little god. You could even be Offier with calves like yours.' 'Could I? I mean... oh, yes. Sometimes. Of course, I have to wear fangs-' And then someone was holding a sword to his throat. 'What's this?' said Chickenwire. 'Lover's Lane?' 'You leave him alone, you!' shouted Violet. 'He's a god! You'll be really sorry!' Bilious swallowed, but very gently. It was a sharp sword. 'A god, eh?' said Chickenwire. 'What of?' Bilious tried to swallow again. 'Oh, bit o' this, bit o' that,' he mumbled. 'Cor,' said Chickenwire. 'Well, I'm impressed. I can see I'm going to have to be dead careful here, eh? Don't want you smiting me with thunderbolts, do I? Puts a crimp in the day, that sort of thing------' Bilious didn't dare move his head. But out of the corner of his eye he was sure he could see shadows moving very fast across the walls. 'Dear me, out of thunderbolts, are we?' Chickenwire sneered. 'Well, y'know, I've never---' There was a creak. Chickenwire's face was a few inches from Bilious. The oh god saw his expression change. The man's eyes rolled. His lips said nur...' Bilious risked stepping back. Chickenwire's sword didn't move. He stood there, trembling slightly, like a man who wants to turn round to see what's behind him but doesn't dare to in case he does. As far as Bilious was concerned, it had just been a creak. He looked up at the thing on the landing above. 'Who put that there?' said Violet. It was just a wardrobe. Dark oak, a bit of fancy woodwork glued on in an effort to disguise the undisguisable fact that it was just an upright box. It was a wardrobe. 'You didn't, you know, try to cast a thunderbolt and go on a few letters too many?' she went on. 'Huh?' said Bilious, looking from the stricken man to the wardrobe. It was so ordinary it was . odd. 'I mean, thunderbolts begin with T and wardrobes...' Violet's lips moved silently. Part of Bilious thought: I'm attracted to a girl who actually has to shut down all other brain functions in order to think about the order of the letters of the alphabet. On the other hand, she's attracted to someone who's wearing a toga that looks as though a family of weasels have had a party in it, so maybe I'll stop this thought right here. But the major part of his brain thought: why's this man making little bubbling noises? It's just a wardrobe, for my sake! 'No, no,' mumbled Chickenwire. 'I don't wanna!' The sword clanged on the floor. He took a step backwards up the stairs, but very slowly, as if he was doing it despite every effort his muscles could muster. 'Don't want to what?' said Violet. Chickenwire spun round. Bilious had never seen that happen before. People turned round quickly, yes, but Chickenwire just revolved as if some giant hand had been placed on his head and twisted a hundred and eighty degrees. 'No. No. No,' Chickenwire whined. 'No.' He tottered up the steps. 'You got to help me,' he whispered. 'What's the matter?' said Bilious. 'It's just a wardrobe, isn't it? It's for putting all your old clothes in so that there's no room for your new clothes.' The doors of the wardrobe swung open. Chickenwire managed to thrust out his arms and grab the sides and, for a moment, he stood quite still. Then he was pulled into the wardrobe in one sudden movement and the doors slammed shut. The little brass key turned in the lock with a click. 'We ought to get him out,' said the oh god, running up the steps. 'Why?' Violet demanded. 'They are not very nice people! I know that one. When he brought me food he made... suggestive comments.' 'Yes, but...' Bilious hadn't ever seen a face like that, outside of a mirror. Chickenwire had looked very, very sick. He turned the key and opened the doors. 'Oh dear...' 'I don't want to see! I don't want to see!' said Violet, looking over his shoulder. Bilious reached down and picked up a pair of boots that stood neatly in the middle of the wardrobe's floor. Then he put them back carefully and walked around the wardrobe. It was plywood. The words 'Dratley and Sons, Phedre Road, Ankh-Morpork' were stamped in one corner in faded ink. 'Is it magic?' said Violet nervously. 'I don't know if something magic has the maker's name on it,' said Bilious. 'There are magic wardrobes,' said Violet nervously. 'If you go into them, you come out in a magic land.' Bilious looked at the boots again. 'Um... yes,' he said. I THINK I MUST TELL YOU SOMETHING, said Death. 'Yes, I think you should,' said Ridcully. 'I've got little devils running round the place eating socks and pencils, earlier tonight we sobered up someone who thinks he's a God of Hangovers and half my wizards are trying to cheer up the Cheerful Fairy. We thought something must've happened to the Hogfather. We were right, right?' 'Hex was right, Archchancellor,' Ponder corrected him. HEX? WHAT IS HEX? 'Er... Hex thinks - that is, calculates - that there's been a big change in the nature of belief today,' said Ponder. He felt, he did not know why, that Death was probably not in favour of unliving things that thought. MR HEX WAS REMARKABLY ASTUTE. THE HOGFATHER HAS BEEN... Death paused. THERE IS NO SENSIBLE HUMAN WORD. DEAD, IN A WAY, BUT NOT EXACTLY... A GOD CANNOT BE KILLED. NEVER COMPLETELY KILLED. HE HAS BEEN, SHALL WE SAY, SEVERELY REDUCED. 'Ye gods!' said Ridcully. 'Who'd want to kill off the old boy?' HE HAS ENEMIES. 'What did he do? Miss a chimney?' EVERY LIVING THING HAS ENEMIES. 'What, everything?' YES. EVERYTHING. POWERFUL ENEMIES. BUT THEY HAVE CONE TOO FAR THIS TIME. NOW THEY ARE USING PEOPLE. 'Who are?' THOSE WHO THINK THE UNIVERSE SHOULD BE A LOT OF ROCKS MOVING IN CURVES. HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF THE AUDITORS? 'I suppose the Bursar may have done-' NOT AUDITORS OF MONEY. AUDITORS OF REALITY. THEY THINK OF LIFE AS A STAIN ON THE UNIVERSE. A PESTILENCE. MESSY. GETTING IN THE WAY. 'In the way of what?' THE EFFICIENT RUNNING OF THE UNIVERSE. 'I thought it was run for us... Well, for the Professor of Applied Anthropics, actually, but we're allowed to tag along,' said Ridcully. He scratched his chin. 'And I could certainly run a marvellous university here if only we didn't have to have these damn students underfoot all the time.' QUITE SO. 'They want to get rid of us?' THEY WANT YOU TO BE... LESS... DAMN, I'VE FORGOTTEN THE WORD. UNTRUTHFUL? THE HOGFATHER IS A SYMBOL OF THIS... Death snapped his fingers, causing echoes to bounce off the walls, and added, WISTFUL LYING? 'Untruthful?' said Ridcully. 'Me? I'm as honest as the day is long! Yes, what is it this time?' Ponder had tugged at his robe and now he whispered something in his ear. Ridcully cleared his throat. 'I am reminded that this is in fact the shortest day of the year,' he said. 'However, this does not undermine the point that I just made, although I thank my colleague for his invaluable support and constant readiness to correct minor if not downright trivial errors. I am a remarkably truthful man, sir. Things said at University council meetings don't count.' I MEAN HUMANITY IN GENERAL. ER... THE ACT OF TELLING THE UNIVERSE IT IS OTHER THAN IT is? 'You've got me there,' said Ridcully. 'Anyway, why're you doing the job?' SOMEONE MUST. IT IS VITALLY IMPORTANT. THEY MUST BE SEEN, AND BELIEVED. BEFORE DAWN, THERE MUST BE ENOUGH BELIEF IN THE HOGFATHER. 'Why?' said Ridcully. SO THAT THE SUN WILL COME UP. The two wizards gawped at him. I SELDOM JOKE, said Death. At which point there was a scream of horror. 'That sounded like the Bursar,' said Ridcully. 'And he's been doing so well up to now.' The reason for the Bursar's scream lay on the floor of his bedroom. It was a man. He was dead. No one alive had that kind of expression. Some of the other wizards had got there first. Ridcully pushed his way through the crowd. 'Ye gods,' he said. 'What a face! He looks as though he died of fright! What happened?' 'Well,' said the Dean, 'as far as I can tell, the Bursar opened his wardrobe and found the man inside.' 'Really? I wouldn't have said the poor old Bursar was all that frightening.' 'No, Archchancellor. The corpse fell out on him.' The Bursar was standing in the corner, wearing his old familiar expression of good-humoured concussion. 'You all right, old fellow?' said Ridcully. 'What's eleven per cent of 1,276?' 'One hundred and forty point three six,' said the Bursar promptly. 'Ah, right as rain,' said Ridcully cheerfully. 'I don't see why,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'Just because he can do things with numbers doesn't mean everything else is fine.' 'Doesn't need to be,' said Ridcully. 'Numbers is what he has to do. The poor chap might be slightly yoyo, but I've been reading about it. He's one of these idiot servants.' 'Savants,' said the Dean patiently. 'The word is savants, Ridcully.' 'Whatever. Those chaps who can tell you what day of the week the first of Grune was a hundred years ago-' '-Tuesday-' said the Bursar. '-but can't tie their bootlaces,' said Ridcully. 'What was a corpse doing in his wardrobe? And no one is to say "Not a lot," or anythin' tasteless like that. Haven't had a corpse in a wardrobe since that business with Archchancellor Buckleby.' 'We all warned Buckleby that the lock was too stiff,' said the Dean. 'Just out of interest, why was the Bursar fiddling with his wardrobe at this time of night?' said Ridcully. The wizards looked sheepish. 'We were... playing Sardines, Archchancellor,' said the Dean. 'What's that?' 'It's like Hide and Seek, but when you find someone you have to squeeze in with them,' said the Dean. 'I just want to be clear about this,' said Ridcully. 'My senior wizards have spent the evening playing Hide and Seek?' 'Oh, not the whole evening,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'We played Grandmother's Footsteps and I Spy for quite a while until the Senior Wrangler made a scene just because we wouldn't let him spell chandelier with an S.' 'Party games? You fellows?' The Dean sidled closer. 'It's Miss Smith,' he mumbled. 'When we don't join in she bursts into tears.' 'Who's Miss Smith?' 'The Cheerful Fairy,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes glumly. 'If you don't say yes to everything her lip wobbles like a plate of jelly. It's unbearable.' 'We just joined in to stop her weeping,' said the Dean. 'It's amazing how one woman can be so soggy.' 'If we're not cheerful she bursts into tears,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'The Senior Wrangler's doing some juggling for her at the moment.' 'But he can't juggle!' 'I think that's cheering her up a bit.' 'What you're tellin' me, then, is that my wizards are prancing around playin' children's games just to cheer up some dejected fairy?' 'Er... yes.' 'I thought you had to clap your hands and say you believed in 'em,' said Ridcully. 'Correct me if I'm wrong.' 'That's just for the little shiny ones,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'Not for the ones in saggy cardigans with half a dozen hankies stuffed up their sleeves.' Ridcully looked at the corpse again. 'Anyone know who he is? Looks a bit of a ruffian to me. And where's his boots, may I ask?' The Dean took a small glass cube from his pocket and ran it over the corpse. 'Quite a large thaumic reading, gentlemen,' he said. 'I think he got here by magic.' He rummaged in the man's pockets and pulled out a handful of small white things. 'Ugh,' he said. 'Teeth?' said Ridcully. 'Who goes around with a pocket full of teeth?' 'A very bad fighter?' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'I'll go and get Modo to take the poor fellow away, shall W 'If we can get a reading off the thaumameter, perhaps Hex-' Ridcully began. 'Now, Ridcully,' said the Dean, 'I really think there must be some problems that can be resolved without having to deal with that damn thinking mill.' Death looked up at Hex. A MACHINE FOR THINKING? 'Er... yes, sir,' said Ponder Stibbons. 'You see, when you said... well, you see, Hex believes everything... but, look, the sun really will come up, won't it? That's its job.' LEAVE US. Ponder backed away, and then scurried out of the room. The ants flowed along their tubes. Cogwheels spun. The big wheel with the sheep skulls on it creaked around slowly. A mouse squeaked, somewhere in the works. WELL? said Death. After a while, the pen began to write. +++ Big Red Lever Time +++ Query +++ NO. THEY SAY YOU ARE A THINKER. EXTEND LOGICALLY THE RESULT OF THE HUMAN RACE CEASING TO BELIEVE IN THE HOGFATHER. WILL THE SUN COME UP? ANSWER. It took several minutes. The wheels spun. The ants ran. The mouse squeaked. An eggtimer came down on a spring. It bounced aimlessly for a while, and then jerked back up again. Hex wrote: +++ The Sun Will Not Come Up +++ CORRECT. HOW MAY THIS BE PREVENTED? ANSWER. +++ Regular and Consistent Belief +++ GOOD. I HAVE A TASK FOR YOU, THINKING ENGINE. +++ Yes. I Am Preparing An Area Of WriteOnly Memory +++ WHAT IS THAT? +++ You Would Say: To Know In Your Bones +++ GOOD. HERE IS YOUR INSTRUCTION. BELIEVE IN THE HOGFATHER. +++ Yes +++ DO YOU BELIEVE? ANSWER. +++ Yes +++ DO... YOU... BELIEVE? ANSWER. +++ YES +++ There was a change in the ill-assembled heap of pipes and tubes that was Hex. The big wheel creaked into a new position. From the other side of the wall came the hum of busy bees. GOOD. Death turned to leave the room, but stopped when Hex began to write furiously. He went back and looked at the emerging paper. +++ Dear Hogfather, For Hogswatch I Want OH, NO. YOU CAN'T WRITE LETT--- Death paused, and then said, YOU CAN, CAN'T YOU. +++ Yes. I Am Entitled +++ Death waited until the pen had stopped, and picked up the paper. BUT YOU ARE A MACHINE. THINGS HAVE NO DESIRES. A DOORKNOB WANTS NOTHING, EVEN THOUGH IT IS A COMPLEX MACHINE. +++ All Things Strive +++ YOU HAVE A POINT, said Death. He thought of tiny red petals in the black depths, and read to the end of the list. I DON'T KNOW WHAT MOST OF THESE THINGS ARE. I DON'T THINK THE SACK WILL, EITHER. +++ I Regret This +++ BUT WE WILL DO THE BEST WE CAN, said Death. FRANKLY, I SHALL BE CLAD WHEN TONIGHT'S OVER. IT'S MUCH HARDER TO GIVE THAN TO RECEIVE. He rummaged in his sack. LET ME SEE... HOW OLD ARE YOU? Susan crept up the stairs, one hand on the hilt of the sword. Ponder Stibbons had been worried to find himself, as a wizard, awaiting the arrival of the Hogfather. It's amazing how people define roles for themselves and put handcuffs on their experience and are constantly surprised by the things a roulette universe spins at them. Here am I, they say, a mere wholesale fishmonger, at the controls of a giant airliner because as it turns out all the crew had the Coronation Chicken. Who'd have thought it? Here am I, a housewife who merely went out this morning to bank the proceeds of the Playgroup Association's Car Boot Sale, on the run with one million in stolen cash and a rather handsome man from the Battery Chickens' Liberation Organization. Amazing! Here am I, a perfectly ordinary hockey player, suddenly realizing I'm the Son of God with five hundred devoted followers in a nice little commune in Empowerment, Southern California. Who'd have thought it? Here am I, thought Susan, a very practically minded governess who can add up faster upside down than most people can the right way up, climbing up a toothshaped tower belonging to the Tooth Fairy and armed with a sword belonging to Death... Again! I wish one month, just one damn month, could go by without something like this happening to me. She could hear voices above her. Someone said something about a lock. She peered over the edge of the stairwell. It looked as though people had been camping out up here. There were boxes and sleeping rolls strewn around. A couple of men were sitting on boxes watching a third man who was working on a door in one curved wall. One of the men was the biggest Susan had ever seen, one of those huge fat men who contrive to indicate that a lot of the fat under their shapeless clothes is muscle. The other 'Hello,' said a cheerful voice by her ear. 'What's your name?' She made herself turn her head slowly. First she saw the grey, glinting eye. Then the yellowwhite one with the tiny dot of a pupil came into view. Around them was a friendly pink and white face topped by curly hair. It was actually quite pretty, in a boyish sort of way, except that those mismatched eyes staring out of it suggested that it had been stolen from someone else. She started to move her hand but the boy was there first, dragging the sword scabbard out of her belt. 'Ah, ah!' he chided, turning and fending her off as she tried to grab it. 'Wen, well, well. My word. White bone handle, rather tasteless skull and bone decoration... Death himself's second favourite weapon, am I right? Oh, my! This must be Hogswatch! And this must mean that you are Susan Sto-Helit. Nobility. I'd bow,' he added, dancing back, 'but I'm afraid you'd do something dreadful-----' There was a click, and a little gasp of excitement from the wizard working on the door. 'Yes! Yes! Left-handed using a wooden pick! That's simple!' He saw that even Susan was looking at him, and coughed nervously. 'Er, I've got the fifth lock open, Mister Teatime! Not a problem! They're just based on Woddeley's Occult Sequence! Any fool could do it if they knew that!' 'I know it,' said Teatime, without taking his eyes off Susan. 'Ah... ' It was not technically audible, but nevertheless Susan could almost hear the wizard's mind back-pedalling. Up ahead was the conclusion that Teatime had no time for people he didn't need. '... with... inter... est... ing subtleties,' he said slowly. 'Yes. Very tricky. I'll, er, just have a look at number six...' 'How do you know who I am?' said Susan. 'Oh, easy,' said Teatime. 'Twurp's Peerage. Family motto Non temetis messor. We have to read it, you know, in class. Hah, old Mericet calls it the Guide to the Turf. No one laughs except him, of course. Oh yes, I know about you. Quite a lot. Your father was well known. Went a long way very fast. As for your grandfather... honestly, that motto. Is that good taste? Of course, you don't need to fear him, do you? Or do you?' Susan tried to fade. It didn't work. She could feel herself staying embarrassingly solid. 'I don't know what you're talking about,' she said. 'Who are you, anyway?' 'I beg your pardon. My name is Teatime, Jonathan Teatime. At your service.' Susan lined up the syllables in her head. 'You mean... like around four o'clock in the afternoon?' she said. 'No. I did say Teh-ah-tim-eh,' said Teatime. 'I spoke very clearly. Please don't try to break my concentration by annoying me. I only get annoyed at important things. How are you getting on, Mr Sideney? If it's just according to Woddeley's sequence, number six should be copper and blue-green light. Unless, of course, there are any subtleties...' 'Er, doing it right now, Mister Teatime-' 'Do you think your grandfather will try to rescue you? Do you think he will? But now I have his sword, you see. I wonder--' There was another click. 'Sixth lock, Mister Teatime!' 'Really.' 'Er... don't you want me to start on the seventh?' 'Oh, well, if you like. Pure white light will be the key,' said Teatime, still not looking away from Susan. 'But it may not be all important now. Thank you, anyway. You've been most helpful.' 'Er-.--' 'Yes, you may go.' Susan noticed that Sideney didn't even bother to pick up his books and tools, but hurried down the stairs as if he expected to be called back and was trying to run faster than the sound. 'Is that all you're here for?' she said. 'A robbery?' He was dressed like an Assassin, after all, and there was always one way to annoy an Assassin. 'Like a thief?' Teatime danced excitedly. 'A thief? Me? I'm not a thief, madam. But if I were, I would be the kind that steals fire from the gods.' 'We've already got fire.' 'There must be an upgrade by now. No, these gentlemen are thieves. Common robbers. Decent types, although you wouldn't necessarily want to watch them eat, for example. That's Medium Dave and exhibit B is Banjo. He can talk.' Medium Dave nodded at Susan. She saw the look in his eyes. Maybe there was something she could use... She'd need something. Even her hair was a mess. She couldn't step behind time, she couldn't fade into the background, and now even her hair had let her down. She was normal. Here, she was what she'd always wanted to be. Bloody, bloody damn. Sideney prayed as he ran down the stairs. He didn't believe in any gods, since most wizards seldom like to encourage them, but he prayed anyway the fervent prayers of an atheist who hopes to be wrong. But no one called him back. And no one ran after him. So, being of a serious turn of mind under his normal state of sub-critical fear, he slowed down in case he lost his footing. It was then that he noticed that the steps underfoot weren't the smooth whiteness they had been everywhere else but were very large, pitted flagstones. And the light had changed, and then they weren't stairs any more and he staggered as he encountered flat ground where steps should have been. His outstretched hand brushed against a crumbling brick. And the ghosts of the past poured in, and he knew where he was. He was in the yard of Gammer Wimblestone's dame school. His mother wanted him to learn his letters and be a wizard, but she also thought that long curls on a five-year-old boy looked very smart. This was the hunting ground of Ronnie Jenks. Adult memory and understanding said that Ronnie was just an unintelligent bullet-headed seven-year-old bully with muscles where his brain should have been. The eye of childhood, rather more accurately, dreaded him as a force like a personalized earthquake with one nostril bunged up with bogies, both knees scabbed, both fists balled and all five brain cells concentrated in a kind of cerebral grunt. Oh, gods. There was the tree Ronnie used to hide behind. It looked as big and menacing as he remembered it. But... if somehow he'd ended up back there, gods knew how, well, he might be a bit on the skinny side but he was a damn sight bigger than Ronnie Jenks now. Gods, yes, he'd kick those evil little trousers all the-- And then, as a shadow blotted out the sun, he realized he was wearing curls. Teatime looked thoughtfully at the door. 'I suppose I should open it,' he said, 'after coming all this way...' 'You're controlling children by their teeth,' said Susan. 'It does sound odd, doesn't it, when you put it like that,' said Teatime. 'But that's sympathetic magic for you. Is your grandfather going to try to rescue you, do you think? But no... I don't think he can. Not here, I think. I don't think that he can come here. So he sent you, did he?' 'Certainly not! He-' Susan stopped. Oh, he had, she told herself, feeling even more of a fool. He certainly had. He was learning about humans, all right. For a walking skeleton, he could be quite clever... But... how clever was Teatime? Just a bit too excited at his cleverness to realize that if DeathShe tried to stamp on the thought, just in case Teatime could read it in her eyes. 'I don't think he'll try,' she said. 'He's not as clever as you, Mister Teatime.' 'Teh-ah-tim-eh,' said Teatime, automatically. 'That's a shame.' 'Do you think You're going to get away with this?' 'Oh, dear. Do people really say that?' And suddenly Teatime was much closer. 'I've got away with it. No more Hogfather. And that's only the start. We'll keep the teeth coming in, of course. The possibilities---' There was a rumble like an avalanche, a long way off. The dormant Banjo had awakened, causing tremors on his lower slopes. His enormous hands, which had been resting on his knees, started to bunch. 'What's dis?' he said. Teatime stopped and, for a moment, looked puzzled. 'What's this what?' 'You said no more Hogfather,' said Banjo. He stood up, like a mountain range rising gently in the squeeze between colliding continents. His hands still stayed in the vicinity of his knees. Teatime stared at him and then glanced at Medium Dave. 'He does know what we've been doing, does he?' he said. 'You did tell him?' Medium Dave shrugged. 'Dere's got to be a Hogfather,' said Banjo. 'Dere's always a Hogfather.' Susan looked down. Grey blotches were speeding across the white marble. She was standing in a pool of grey. So was Banjo. And around Teatime the dots bounced and recoiled like wasps around a pot of jam. Looking for something, she thought. 'You don't believe in the Hogfather, do you?' said Teatime. 'A big boy like you?' 'Yeah,' said Banjo. 'So what's dis "no more Hogfather"?' Teatime pointed at Susan. 'She did it,' he said. 'She killed him.' The sheer playground effrontery of it shocked Susan. 'No I didn't,' she said. 'He---' 'Did!' 'Didn't!' 'Did!' Banjo's big bald head turned towards her. 'What's dis about the Hogfather?' he said. 'I don't think he's dead,' said Susan. 'But Teatime has made him very ill---' 'Who cares?' said Teatime, dancing away. 'When this is over, Banjo, you'll have as many presents as you want. Trust me!' 'Dere's got to be a Hogfather,' Banjo rumbled. 'Else dere's no Hogswatch.' 'It's just another solar festival,' said Teatime. 'It-' Medium Dave stood up. He had his hand on his sword. 'We're going, Teatime,' he said. 'Me and Banjo are going. I don't like any of this. I don't mind robbing, I don't mind thieving, but this isn't honest. Banjo? You come with me right now!' 'What's dis about no more Hogfather?' said Banjo. Teatime pointed to Susan. 'You grab her, Banjo. It's all her fault!' Banjo lumbered a few steps in Susan's direction, and then stopped. 'Our mam said no hittin' girls,' he rumbled. 'No pullin' m hair...' Teatime rolled his one good eye. Around his feet the greyness seemed to be boiling in the stone, following his feet as they moved. And it was around Banjo, too. Searching, Susan thought. It's looking for a way in. 'I think I know you, Teatime,' she said, as sweetly as she could for Banjo's sake. 'You're the mad kid they're all scared of, right?' 'Banjo?' snapped Teatime. 'I said grab her-' 'Our mam said----' 'The giggling excitable one even the bullies never touched because if they did he went insane and kicked and bit,' said Susan. 'The kid who didn't know the difference between chucking a stone at a cat and setting it on fire.' To her delight he glared at her. 'Shut up,' he said. 'I bet no one wanted to play with you,' said Susan. 'Not the kid with no friends. Kids know about a mind like yours even if they don't know the right words for it-' 'I said shut up! Get her, Banjo!' That was it. She could hear it in Teatime's voice. There was a touch of vibrato that hadn't been there before. 'The kind of little boy,' she said, watching his face, 'who looks up dolls' dresses...' 'I didn't!' Banjo looked worried. 'Our mam said-' 'Oh, to blazes with your mam!' snapped Teatime. There was a whisper of steel as Medium Dave drew his sword. 'What'd you say about our mam?' he whispered. Now he's having to concentrate on three people, Susan thought. 'I bet no one ever played with you,' she said. 'I bet there were things people had to hush up, eh?' 'Banjo! You do what I tell you!' Teatime screamed. The monstrous man was beside her now. She could see his face twisted in an agony of indecision. His enormous fists clenched and undenched and his lips moved as some kind of horrible debate raged in his head. 'Our... our mam... our mam said . . The grey marks flowed across the floor and formed a pool of shadow which grew darker and higher with astonishing speed. It towered over the three men, and grew a shape. 'Have you been a bad boy, you little perisher?' The huge woman towered over all three men. In one meaty hand it was holding a bundle of birch twigs as thick as a man's arm. The thing growled. Medium Dave looked up into the enormous face of Ma Lilywhite. Every pore was a pothole. Every brown tooth was a tombstone. 'You been letting him get into trouble, our Davey? You have, ain't you?' He backed away. 'No, Mum... no, Mum. . 'You need a good hiding, Banjo? You been playing with girls again?' Banjo sagged on to his knees, tears of misery rolling down his face. 'Sorry Mum sorry sorry Mum noooohhh Mum sorry Mum sorry sorry---' Then the figure turned to Medium Dave again. The sword dropped out of his hand. His face seemed to melt. Medium Dave started to cry. 'No Mum no Mum no Mum nooooh Mum----' He gave a gurgle and collapsed, clutching his chest. And vanished. Teatime started to laugh. Susan tapped him on the shoulder and ' as he looked round, hit him as hard as she could across the face. That was the plan, at least. His hand moved faster and caught her wrist. It was like striking an iron bar. 'Oh, no,' he said. 'I don't think so.' Out of the corner of her eye Susan saw Banjo crawling across the floor to where his brother had been. Ma Lilywhite had vanished. 'This place gets into your head, doesn't it?' Teatime said. 'It pokes around to find out how to deal with you. Well, I'm in touch with my inner child.' He reached out with his other hand and grabbed her hair, pulling her head down. Susan screamed. 'And it's much more fun,' he whispered. Susan felt his grip lessen. There was a wet thump like a piece of steak hitting a slab and Teatime went past her, on his back. 'No pullin' girls' hair,' rumbled Banjo. 'That's bad.' Teatime bounced, up like an acrobat and steadied himself on the railing of the stairwell. Then he drew the sword. The blade was invisible in the bright light of the tower. 'It's true what the stories say, then,' he said. 'So thin you can't see it. I'm going to have such fun with it.' He waved it at them. 'So light.' 'You wouldn't dare use it. My grandfather will come after you,' said Susan, walking towards him. She saw one eye twitch. 'He comes after everyone. But I'll be ready for him,' said Teatime. 'He's very single-minded,' said Susan, closer now. 'Ah, a man after my own heart.' 'Could be, Mister Teatime.' He brought the sword around. She didn't even have time to duck. And she didn't even try to when he swung the sword back again. 'It doesn't work here,' she said, as he stared at it in astonishment. 'The blade doesn't exist here. There's no Death here!' She slapped him across the face. 'Hi!' she said brightly. 'I'm the inner babysitter!' She didn't punch. She just thrust out an arm, palm first, catching him under the chin and lifting him backwards over the rail. He somersaulted. She never knew how. He somehow managed to gain purchase on clear air. His free arm grabbed at hers, her feet came off the ground, and she was over the rail. She caught it with her other hand - although later she wondered if the rail hadn't managed to catch her instead. Teatime swung from her arm, staring upwards with a thoughtful expression. She saw him grip the sword hilt in his teeth and reach down to his belt The question 'Is this person mad enough to try to kill someone holding him?' was asked and answered very, very fast... She kicked down and hit him on the ear. The cloth of her sleeve began to tear. Teatime tried to get another grip. She kicked again and the dress ripped. For an instant he held on to nothing and then, still wearing the expression of someone trying to solve a complex problem, he fell away, spinning, getting smaller... He hit the pile of teeth, sending them splashing across the marble. He jerked for a moment... And vanished. A hand like a bunch of bananas pulled Susan back over the rail. 'You can get into trouble, hittin' girls,' said Banjo. 'No playin' with girls.' There was a click behind them. The doors had swung open. Cold white mist rolled out across the floor. 'Our mam---' said Banjo, trying to work things out. 'Our mam was here-' 'Yes,' said Susan. 'But it weren't our mam, 'cos they buried our mam---' 'Yes.' 'We watched 'em fill in the grave and everything.' 'Yes,' said Susan, and added to herself, I bet you did. 'And where's our Davey gone?' 'Er... somewhere else, Banjo.' 'Somewhere nice?' said the huge man hesitantly. Susan grasped with relief the opportunity to tell the truth, or at least not definitely lie. 'It could be,' she said. 'Better'n here?' 'You never know. Some people would say the odds are in favour.' Banjo turned his pink piggy eyes on her. For a moment a thirty-five-year-old man looked out through the pink clouds of a five-year-old face. 'That's good,' he said. 'He'll be able to see our mam again.' This much conversation seemed to exhaust him. He sagged. 'I wanna go home,' he said. She stared at his big, stained face, shrugged hopelessly, pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket and held it up to his mouth. 'Spit,' she commanded. He obeyed. She dabbed the handkerchief over the worst parts and then tucked it into his hand. 'Have a good blow,' she suggested, and then carefully leaned out of range until the echoes of the blast had died away. 'You can keep the hanky. Please,' she added, meaning it wholeheartedly. 'Now tuck your shirt in.' 'Yes, miss.' 'Now, go downstairs and sweep all the teeth out of the circle. Can you do that?' Banjo nodded. 'What can you do?' Susan prompted. Banjo concentrated. 'Sweep all the teeth out of the circle, miss.' 'Good. Off you go.' Susan watched him plod off, and then looked at the white doorway. She was sure the wizard had only got as far as the sixth lock. The room beyond the door was entirely white, and the mist that swirled at knee level deadened even the sound of her footsteps. All there was was a bed. It was a large fourposter, old and dusty. She thought it was unoccupied and then she saw the figure, lying among the mounds of pillows. It looked very much like a frail old lady in a mob cap. The old woman turned her head and smiled at Susan. 'Hello, my dear.' Susan couldn't remember a grandmother. Her father's mother had died when she was young and the other side of the family... well, she'd never had a grandmother. But this was the sort she'd have wanted. The kind, the nasty realistic side of her mind said, that hardly ever existed. Susan thought she heard a child laugh. And another one. Somewhere almost out of hearing, children were at play. It was always a pleasant, lulling sound. Always provided, of course, you couldn't hear the actual words. 'No,' said Susan. 'Sorry, dear?' said the old lady. 'You're not the Tooth Fairy.' Oh, no... there was even a damn patchwork quilt... 'Oh, I am, dear.' 'Oh, Grandma, what big teeth you have... Good grief, you've even got a shawl, oh dear.' 'I don't understand, lovey---' 'You forgot the rocking chair,' said Susan. 'I always thought there'd be a rocking chair...' There was a pop behind her, and then a dying creakcreak. She didn't even turn round. 'If you've included a kitten playing with a ball of wool it'll go very hard with you,' she said sternly, and picked up the candlestick by the bed. It seemed heavy enough. 'I don't think you're real,' she said levelly. 'There's not a little old woman in a shawl running this place. You're out of my head. That's how you defend yourself... You poke around in people's heads and find the things that work-' She swung the candlestick. It passed through the figure in the bed. 'See?' she said. 'You're not even real.' 'Oh, I am real, dear,' said the old woman, as her outline changed. 'The candlestick wasn't.' Susan looked down at the new shape. 'Nope,' she said. 'It's horrible, but it doesn't frighten me. No, nor does that.' It changed again, and again. 'No, nor does my father. Good grief, you're scraping the bottom of the barrel, aren't you? I like spiders. Snakes don't worry me. Dogs? No. Rats are fine, I like rats. Sorry, is anyone frightened of that?' She grabbed at the thing and this time the shape stayed. It looked like a small, wizened monkey, but with big deep eyes under a brow overhanging like a balcony. Its hair was grey and lank. It struggled weakly in her grasp, and wheezed. 'I don't frighten easily,' said Susan, 'but you'd be amazed at how angry I can become.' The creature hung limp. 'I... I...' it muttered. She let it down again. 'You're a bogeyman, aren't you?' she said. It collapsed in a heap when she took her hand away. '... Not a... The...' it said. 'What do you mean, the?' said Susan. 'The bogeyman,' said the bogeyman. And she saw how rangy it was, how white and grey streaked its hair, how the skin was stretched over the bones... 'The first bogeyman?' 'I... there were... I do remember when the land was different. Ice. Many times of... ice. And the... what do you call them?' The creature wheezed. '... The lands, the big lands... all different...' Susan sat down on the bed. 'You mean continents?' '... all different.' The black sunken eyes glinted at her and suddenly the thing reared up, bony arms waving. 'I was the dark in the cave! I was the shadow in the trees! You've heard about... the primal scream? That was... at me! I was...' It folded up and started coughing. 'And then... that thing, you know, that thing... all light and bright... lightning you could carry, hot, little sunshine, and then there was no more dark, just shadows, and then you made axes, axes in the forest, and then... and then...' Susan sat down on the bed. 'There's still plenty of bogeymen,' she said. 'Hiding under beds! Lurking in cupboards! But,' it fought for breath, 'if you had seen me... in the old days... when they came down into the deep caves to draw their hunting pictures... I could roar in their heads... so that their stomachs dropped out of their bottoms...' 'All the old skills are dying out,' said Susan gravely. '... Oh, others came later... They never knew that first fine terror. All they knew,' even whispering, the bogeyman managed to get a sneer in its voice, 'was dark corners. I had been the dark! I was the... first! And now I was no better than them... frightening maids, curdling cream... hiding in shadows at the stub of the year... and then one night, I thought... why?' Susan nodded. Bogeymen weren't bright. The moment of existential uncertainty probably took a lot longer in heads where the brain cells bounced so very slowly from one side of the skull to the other. But--- . . Granddad had thought like that. You hung around with humans long enough and you stopped being what they imagined you to be and wanted to become something of your own. Umbrellas and silver hairbrushes... 'You thought: what was the point of it all?' she said. '... frightening children... lurking... and then I started to watch them. Didn't really used to be children back in the ice times... just big humans, little humans, not children... and... and there was a different world in their heads... In their heads, that's where the old days were now. The old days. When it was all young., 'You came out from under the bed...' 'I watched over them... kept 'em safe... Susan tried not to shudder. 'And the teeth?' 'I... oh, you can't leave teeth around, anyone might get them, do terrible things. I liked them, I didn't want anyone to hurt them... ' it bubbled. 'I never wanted to hurt them, I just used to watch, I kept the teeth all safe... and, and, and sometimes I just sit here listening to them . . . ' It mumbled on. Susan listened in embarrassed amazement, not knowing whether to take pity on the thing or, and this was a developing option, to tread on it. '... and the teeth... they remember . . It started to shake. 'The money?' Susan prompted. 'I don't see many rich bogeymen around.' ' - . . money everywhere... buried in holes... old treasure... back of sofas... it adds up... investments... money for the tooth, very important, part of the magic, makes it safe, makes it proper, otherwise it's thieving... and I labelled 'em all, and kept 'em safe, and... and then I was old, but I found people...' The Tooth Fairy sniggered, and for a moment Susan felt sorry for the men in the ancient caves. 'They don't ask questions, do they?' it bubbled. '... You give 'em money and they all do their jobs and they don't ask questions...' 'It's more than their job's worth,' said Susan. I... and then they came... stealing...' Susan gave in. Old gods do new jobs. 'You look terrible.' ... thank you very much . . 'I mean ill.' '…very old... all those men, too much effort The bogeyman groaned. '... you... don't die here,' it panted. 'Just get old, listening to the laughter...' Susan nodded. It was in the air. She couldn't hear words, just a distant chatter, as if it was at the other end of a long corridor. '... and this place... it grew up round me...' 'The trees,' said Susan. 'And the sky. Out of their heads...' '... dying... the little children... you've got to... I' The figure faded. Susan sat for a while, listening to the distant chatter. Worlds of belief, she thought. Just like oysters. A little piece of shit gets in and then a pearl grows up around it. She got up and went downstairs. Banjo had found a broom and mop somewhere. The circle was empty and, with surprising initiative, the man was carefully washing the chalk away. 'Banjo?' 'Yes, miss.' 'You like it here?' 'There's trees, miss.' That probably counts as a 'yes', Susan decided. 'The sky doesn't worry you?' He looked at her in puzzlement. 'No, miss?' 'Can you count, Banjo?' He looked smug. 'Yes, miss. On m'fingers, miss.' 'So you can count up to... ?' Susan prompted. 'Thirteen, miss,' said Banjo proudly. She looked at his big hands. 'Good grief.' Well, she thought, and why not? He's big and trustworthy and what other kind of life has he got? 'I think it would be a good idea if you did the Tooth Fairy's job, Banjo.' 'Will that be all right, miss? Won't the Tooth Fairy mind?' 'You... do it until she comes back.' 'All right, miss.' 'I'll... er... get people to keep an eye on you, until you get settled in. I think food comes in on the cart. You're not to let people cheat you.' She looked at his hands and then up and up the lower slopes until she saw the peak of Mount Banjo, and added, 'Not that I think they'll try, mind you.' 'Yes, miss. I will keep things tidy, miss. Er. The big pink face looked at her. 'Yes, Banjo?' 'Can I have a puppy, miss? I had a kitten once, miss, but our mam drownded it 'cos it was dirty.' Susan's memory threw up a name. 'A puppy called Spot?' 'Yes, miss. Spot, miss.' 'I think it'll turn up quite soon, Banjo.' He seemed to take this entirely on trust. 'Thank you, miss.' 'And now I've got to go.' 'Right, miss.' She looked back up the tower. Death's land might be dark, but when you were there you never thought anything bad was going to happen to you. You were beyond the places where it could. But here-- When you were grown up you only feared, well, logical things. Poverty. Illness. Being found out. At least you weren't mad with terror because of something under the stairs. The world wasn't full of arbitrary light and shade. The wonderful world of childhood? Well, it wasn't a cut-down version of the adult one, that was certain. It was more like the adult one written in big heavy letters. Everything was... more. More everything. She left Banjo to his sweeping and stepped out into the perpetually sunlit world. Bilious and Violet hurried towards her. Bilious was waving a branch like a club. 'You don't need that,' said Susan. She wanted some sleep. 'We talked about it and we thought we ought to come back and help,' said Bilious. 'Ah. Democratic courage,' said Susan. 'Well, they're all gone. To wherever they go.' Bilious lowered the branch thankfully. 'It wasn't that-' he began. 'Look, you two can make yourselves useful,' said Susan. 'There's a mess in there. Go and help Banjo.' 'Banjo?' 'He's... more or less running the place now.' Violet laughed. 'But he's-' 'He's in charge,' said Susan wearily. 'All right,' said Bilious. 'Anyway, I'm sure we can tell him what to do-' 'No! Too many people have told him what to do. He knows what to do. Just help him get started, all right? But...' If the Hogfather comes back now, you'll vanish, won't you? She didn't know how to phrase the question. 'I'm, er, giving up my old job,' said Bilious. 'Er... I'm going to go on working as a holiday relief for the other gods.' He gave her a pleading look. 'Really?' Susan looked at Violet. Oh, well, maybe if she believes in him, at least... It might work. You never know. 'Good,' she said. 'Have fun. Now I'm going home. This is a hell of a way to spend Hogswatch.' She found Binky waiting by the stream. The Auditors fluttered anxiously. And, as always happens in their species when something goes radically wrong and needs fixing instantly, they settled down to try to work out who to blame. One said, It was... And then it stopped. The Auditors lived by consensus, which made picking scapegoats a little problematical. It brightened up. After all, if everyone was to blame, then it was no one's actual fault. That's what collective responsibility meant, after all. It was more like bad luck, or something. Another said, Unfortunately, people might get the wrong idea. We may be asked questions. One said, What about Death? He interfered, after all. One said, Er... not exactly. One said, Oh, come on. He got the girl involved. One said, Er... no. She got herself involved. One said, Yes, but he told her... One said, No. He didn't. In fact he specifically did not tell-- It paused, and then said, Damn! One said, On the other hand... The robes turned towards it. Yes? One said, There's no actual evidence. Nothing written down. Some humans got excited and decided to attack the Tooth Fairy's country. This is unfortunate, but nothing to do with us. We are shocked, of course. One said, There's still the Hogfather. Things are going to be noticed. Questions may be asked. They hovered for a while, unspeaking. Eventually one said, We may have to take... It paused, loath even to think the word, but managed to continue... a risk. Bed, thought Susan, as the mists rolled past her. And in the morning, decent human things like coffee and porridge. And bed. Real things- Binky stopped. She stared at his ears for a moment, and then urged him forward. He whinnied, and didn't budge. A skeletal hand had grabbed his bridle. Death materialized. IT IS NOT OVER. MORE MUST BE DONE. THEY TORMENT HIM STILL. Susan sagged. 'What is? Who are?' MOVE FORWARD. I WILL STEER. Death climbed into the saddle and reached around her for the reins. 'Look, I went-' Susan began. YES. I KNOW. THE CONTROL OF BELIEF, said Death, as the horse moved forward again. ONLY A VERY SIMPLE MIND COULD THINK OF THAT. MAGIC SO OLD IT'S HARDLY MAGIC. WHAT A SIMPLE WAY TO MAKE MILLIONS OF CHILDREN CEASE TO BELIEVE IN THE HOGFATHER. 'And what were you doing?' Susan demanded. I TOO HAVE DONE WHAT I SET OUT TO DO. I HAVE KEPT A SPACE. A MILLION CARPETS WITH SOOTY BOOTMARKS, MILLIONS OF FILLED STOCKINGS, ALL THOSE ROOFS WITH RUNNER MARKS ON THEM... DISBELIEF WILL FIND IT HARD GOING IN THE FACE OF THAT. ALBERT SAYS HE NEVER WANTS TO DRINK ANOTHER SHERRY FOR DAYS. THE HOGFATHER WILL HAVE SOMETHING TO COME BACK TO, AT LEAST. 'What have I got to do now?' YOU MUST BRING THE HOGFATHER BACK. 'Oh, must I? For peace and goodwill and the tinkling of fairy bells? Who cares. He's just some fat old clown who makes people feel smug at Hogswatch! I've been through all this for some old man who prowls around kids' bedrooms?' NO. SO THAT THE SUN WILL RISE. 'What has astronomy got to do with the Hogfather?' OLD GODS DO NEW JOBS. The Senior Wrangler wasn't attending the Feast. He got one of the maids to bring a tray up to his rooms, where he was Entertaining and doing all those things a man does when he finds himself unexpectedly tête-à-tête with the opposite sex, like trying to shine his boots on his trousers and clean his fingernails with his other fingernails. 'A little more wine, Gwendoline? It's hardly alcoholic,' he said, leaning over her. 'I don't mind if I do, Mr Wrangler.' 'Oh, call me Horace, please. And perhaps a little something for your chic-ken?' 'I'm afraid she seems to have wandered off somewhere,' said the Cheerful Fairy. 'I'm afraid I'm, I'm I'm rather dull company...' She blew her nose noisily. 'Oh, I certainly wouldn't say that,' said the Senior Wrangler. He wished he'd had time to tidy up his rooms a bit, or at least get some of the more embarrassing bits of laundry off the stuffed rhinoceros. 'Everyone's been so kind,' said the Cheerful Fairy, dabbing at her streaming eyes. 'Who was the skinny one that kept making the funny faces for me?' 'That was the Bursar. Why don't you-' 'He seemed very cheerful, anyway.' 'It's the dried frog pills, he eats them by the handful,' said the Senior Wrangler dismissively. 'I say, why don't--' 'Oh dear. I hope they're not addictive.' 'I'm sure he wouldn't keep on eating them if they were addictive,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Now, why don't you have another glass of wine, and then... and then...' a happy thought struck him '... and then... and then perhaps I could show you Archchancellor Bowell's Remembrance? It's got a-a-a-a very interesting ceiling. My word, yes.' 'That would be very nice,' said the Cheerful Fairy. 'Would it cheer me up, do you think?' 'Oh, it would, it would,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Definitely! Good! So I'll, er, I'll just go and... just go and... I'll... ' He pointed vaguely in the direction of his dressing room, while hopping from one foot to the other. 'I'll just go and, er... go... just...' He fled into the dressing room and slammed the door behind him. His wild eyes scanned the shelves and hangers. 'Clean robe,' he mumbled. 'Comb face, wash socks, fresh hair, where's that Insteadofshave lotion---' From the other side of the door came the adorable sound of the Cheerful Fairy blowing her nose. From this side came the sound of the Senior Wrangler's muffled scream as, made careless by haste and a very poor sense of smell, he mistakenly splashed his face with the turpentine he used for treating his feet. Somewhere overhead a very small plump child with a bow and arrow and ridiculously unaerodynamic wings buzzed ineffectually against a shut window on which the frost was tracing the outline of a rather handsome Auriental lady. The other window already had an icy picture of a vase of sunflowers. In the Great Hall one of the tables had already collapsed. It was one of the customs of the Feast that although there were many courses each wizard went at his own speed, a tradition instituted to prevent the slow ones holding everyone else up. And they could also have seconds if they wished, so that if a wizard was particularly attracted to soup he could go round and round for an hour before starting on the preliminary stages of the fish courses. 'How're you feeling now, old chap?' said the Dean, who was sitting next to the Bursar. 'Back on the dried frog pills?' 'I, er, I, er, no, Im not too bad,' said the Bursar. 'It was, of course, rather a, rather a shock when-' 'That's a shame, because here's your Hogswatch present,' said the Dean, passing over a small box. It rattled. 'You can open it now if you like.' 'Oh, well, how nice---' 'It's from me,' said the Dean. 'What a lovely--' 'I bought it with my own money, you know,' said the Dean, waving a turkey leg airily. 'The wrapping paper is a very nice---' 'More than a dollar, I might add.' 'My goodness-' The Bursar pulled off the last of the wrapping paper. 'It's a box for keeping dried frog pills in. See? It's got "Dried Frog Pills" on it, see?' The Bursar shook it. 'Oh, how nice,' he said weakly. 'It's got some pills in it already. How thoughtful. They will come in handy.' 'Yes,' said the Dean. 'I took them off your dressing table. After all, I was down a dollar as it was.' The Bursar nodded gratefully and put the little box neatly beside his plate. They'd actually allowed him knives this evening. They'd actually allowed him to eat other things than those things that could only be scraped up with a wooden spoon. He eyed the nearest roast pig with nervous anticipation, and tucked his napkin firmly under his chin. 'Er, excuse me, Mr Stibbons,' he quavered. 'Would you be so good as to pass me the apple sauce tankard-' There was a sound like coarse fabric ripping, somewhere in the air in front of the Bursar, and a crash as something landed on top of the roast pig. Roast potatoes and gravy filled the air. The apple that had been in the pig's mouth was violently expelled and hit the Bursar on the forehead. He blinked, looked down, and found he was about to plunge his fork into a human head. 'Ahaha,' he murmured, as his eyes started to glaze. The wizards heaved aside the overturned dishes and smashed crockery. 'He just fell out of the air!' 'Is he an Assassin? Not one of their student pranks, is it?' 'Why's he holding a sword without a sharp bit?' 'Is he dead?' 'I think so!' 'I didn't even have any of that salmon mousse! Will you look at it? His foot's in it! It's all over the place! Do you want yours?' Ponder Stibbons fought his way through the throng. He knew his more senior fellows when they were feeling helpful. They were like a glass of water to a drowning man. 'Give him air!' he protested. 'How do we know if he needs any?' said the Dean. Ponder put his ear to the fallen youth's chest. 'He's not breathing!' 'Breathing spell, breathing spell,' muttered the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'Er... SpoIt's Forthright Respirator, perhaps? I think I've got it written down somewhere-' Ridcully reached through the wizards and pulled out the black-clad man by a leg. He held him upside down in his big hand and thumped him heavily on the back. He met their astonished gaze. 'Used to do this on the farm,' he said. 'Works a treat on baby goats.' 'Oh, now, really,' said the Dean, 'I don't-' The corpse made a noise somewhere between a choke and a cough. 'Make some space, you fellows!' the Archchancellor bellowed, clearing an area of table with one sweep of his spare arm. 'Hey, I hadn't had any of that Prawn Escoffe!' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'I didn't even know we had any,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'Someone, and I name no names, Dean, shoved it behind the soft-shelled crabs so they could keep it for themselves. I call that cheap.' Teatime opened his eyes. It said a lot for his constitution that it survived a very close-up view of Ridcully's nose, which filled the immediate universe like a big pink planet. 'Excuse me, excuse me,' said Ponder, leaning over with his notebook open, 'but this is vitally important for the advancement of natural philosophy. Did you see any bright lights? Was there a shining tunnel? Did any deceased relatives attempt to speak to you? What word most describes the-' Ridcully pulled him away. 'What's all this, Mr Stibbons?' 'I really should talk to him, sir. He's had a near-death experience!' 'We all have. It's called "living",' said the Archchancellor shortly. 'Pour the poor lad a glass of spirits and put that damn pencil away. 'Uh... This must be Unseen University?' said Teatime. 'And you are all wizards?' 'Now, just you lie still,' said Ridcully. But Teatime had already risen on his elbows. 'There was a sword,' he muttered. 'Oh, it's fallen on the floor,' said the Dean, reaching down. 'But it looks as though it's- Did I do that?' The wizards looked at the large curved slice of table falling away. Something had cut through everything wood, cloth, plates, cutlery, food. The Dean swore that a candle flame that had been in the path of the unseen blade was only half a flame for a moment, until the wick realized that this was no way to behave. The Dean raised his hand. The other wizards scattered. 'Looks like a thin blue line in the air,' he said, wonderingly. 'Excuse me, sir,' said Teatime, taking it from him. 'I really must be off.' He ran from the hall. 'He won't get far,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'The main doors are locked in accordance with Archchancellor Spode's Rules.' 'Won't get far while holding a sword that appears to be able to cut through anything,' said Ridcully, to the sound of falling wood. 'I wonder what all that was about?' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, and then turned his attention to the remains of the Feast. 'Anyway, at least this joint's been nicely carved 'Bu-bu-bu---' They all turned. The Bursar was holding his hand in front of him. The cut surface of a fork gleamed at the wizards. 'Nice to know his new present will come in handy,' said the Dean. 'It's the thought that counts.' Under the table the Blue Hen of Happiness relieved itself on the Bursar's foot. THERE ARE... ENEMIES, said Death, as Binky galloped through icy mountains. 'They're all dead-' OTHER ENEMIES. YOU MAY AS WELL KNOW THIS. DOWN IN THE DEEPEST KINGDOMS OF THE SEA, WHERE THERE IS NO LIGHT, THERE LIVES A TYPE OF CREATURE WITH NO BRAIN AND NO EYES AND NO MOUTH. IT DOES NOTHING BUT LIVE AND PUT FORTH PETALS OF PERFECT CRIMSON WHERE NONE ARE THERE TO SEE. IT IS NOTHING EXCEPT A TINY YES IN THE NIGHT. AND YET... AND YET... IT HAS ENEMIES THAT BEAR ON IT A VICIOUS, UNBENDING MALICE, WHO WISH NOT ONLY FOR ITS TINY LIFE TO BE OVER BUT ALSO THAT IT HAD NEVER EXISTED. ARE YOU WITH ME SO FAR? 'Well, yes, but-' GOOD. NOW, IMAGINE WHAT THEY THINK OF HUMANITY. Susan was shocked. She had never heard her grandfather speak in anything other than calm tones. Now there was a cutting edge in his words. 'What are they?' she said. WE MUST HURRY. THERE IS NOT MUCH TIME. 'I thought you always had time. I mean... whatever it is you want to stop, you can go back in time and-' AND MEDDLE? 'You've done it before . . THIS TIME IT IS OTHERS WHO ARE DOING IT. AND THEY HAVE NO RIGHT. 'What others?' THEY HAVE NO NAME. CALL THEM THE AUDITORS. THEY RUN THE UNIVERSE. THEY SEE TO IT THAT GRAVITY WORKS AND THE ATOMS SPIN, OR WHATEVER IT IS ATOMS DO. AND THEY HATE LIFE. 'Why?' IT IS... IRREGULAR. IT WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN. THEY LIKE STONES, MOVING IN CURVES. AND THEY HATE HUMANS MOST OF ALL. Death sighed. IN MANY WAYS, THEY LACK A SENSE OF HUMOUR. 'Why the Hog-' IT IS THE THINGS YOU BELIEVE WHICH MAKE YOU HUMAN. GOOD THINGS AND BAD THINGS, IT'S ALL THE SAME. The mists parted. Sharp peaks were around them, lit by the glow off the snow. 'These look like the mountains where the Castle of Bones was,' she said. THEY ARE, said Death. IN A SENSE. HE HAS GONE BACK TO A PLACE HE KNOWS. AN EARLY PLACE... Binky cantered low over the snow. 'And what are we looking for?' said Susan. YOU WILL KNOW WHEN YOU SEE IT. 'Snow? Trees? I mean, could I have a clue? What are we here for?' I TOLD YOU. TO ENSURE THAT THE SUN COMES UP. 'Of course the sun will come up!' NO. 'There's no magic that'll stop the sun coming up!' I WISH I WAS AS CLEVER AS YOU. Susan stared down out of sheer annoyance, and saw something below. Small dark shapes moved across the whiteness, running as if they were in pursuit of something. 'There's... some sort of chase...' she conceded. 'I can see some sort of animals but I can't see what they're after-' Then she saw movement in the snow, a blurred, dark shape dodging and skidding and never clear. Binky dropped until his hooves grazed the tops of the pine trees, which bent in his wake. A rumble followed him across the forest, dragging broken branches and a smoke of snow behind it. Now they were lower she could see the hunters clearly. They were large dogs. Their quarry was indistinct, dodging among snowdrifts, keeping to the cover of snow-laden bushes A drift exploded. Something big and long and blue-black rose through the flying snow like a sounding whale. 'It's a pig!' A BOAR. THEY DRIVE IT TOWARDS THE CLIFF. THEY'RE DESPERATE NOW. She could hear the panting of the creature. The dogs made no sound at all. Blood streamed onto the snow from the wounds they had already managed to inflict. 'This... boar,' said Susan. It's . . YES. 'They want to kill the Hogf---' NOT KILL. HE KNOWS HOW TO DIE. OH, YES... IN THIS SHAPE, HE KNOWS HOW TO DIE. HE'S HAD A LOT OF EXPERIENCE. NO, THEY WANT TO TAKE AWAY HIS REAL LIFE, TAKE AWAY HIS SOUL, TAKE AWAY EVERYTHING. THEY MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO BRING HIM DOWN. 'Well, stop them!' YOU MUST. THIS IS A HUMAN THING. The dogs moved oddly. They weren't running but flowing, crossing the snow faster than the mere movement of their legs would suggest. 'They don't look like real dogs . . NO. 'What can I do?' Death nodded his head towards the boar. Binky was keeping level with it now, barely a few feet away. Realization dawned. 'I can't ride that!' said Susan. WHY NOT? YOU HAVE HAD AN EDUCATION. 'Enough to know that pigs don't let people ride them!' MERE ACCUMULATION OF OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE IS NOT PROOF. Susan glanced ahead. The snowfield had a cut-off look. YOU MUST, said her grandfather's voice in her head. WHEN HE REACHES THE EDGE THERE HE WILL STAND AT BAY. HE MUST NOT. UNDERSTAND? THESE ARE NOT REAL DOGS. IF THEY CATCH HIM HE WON'T JUST DIE, HE WILL... NEVER BE... Susan leapt. For a moment she floated through the air, dress streaming behind her, arms outstretched... Landing on the animal's back was like hitting a very, very firm chair. It stumbled for a moment and then righted itself. Susan's arms clung to its neck and her face was buried in its sharp bristles. She could feel the heat under her. It was like riding a furnace. And it stank of sweat, and blood, and pig. A lot of pig. There was a lack of landscape in front of her. The boar ploughed into the snow on the edge of the drop, almost flinging her off, and turned to face the hounds. There were a lot of them. Susan was familiar with dogs. They'd had them at home like other houses had rugs. And these weren't that big floppy sort. She rammed her heels in and grabbed a pig's ear in each hand. It was like holding a pair of hairy shovels. 'Turn left!' she screamed, and hauled. She put everything into the command. It promised tears before bedtime if disobeyed. To her amazement the boar grunted, pranced on the lip of the precipice and scrambled away, the hounds floundering as they turned to follow. This was a plateau. From here it seemed to be all edge, with no way down except the very simple and terminal one. The dogs were flying at the boar's heels again. Susan looked around in the grey, Sightless air. There had to be somewhere, some way... There was. It was a shoulder of rock, a giant knife-edge connecting this plain to the hills beyond. It was sharp and narrow, a thin line of snow with chilly depths on either side. It was better than nothing. It was nothing with snow on it. The boar reached the edge and hesitated. Susan put her head down and dug her heels in again. Snout down, legs moving like pistons, the beast plunged out onto the ridge. Snow sprayed up as its trotters sought for purchase. It made up for lack of grace by sheer manic effort, legs moving like a tap dancer climbing a moving staircase that was heading down. 'That's right, that's right, that's-' A trotter slipped. For a moment the boar seemed to stand on two, the others scrabbling at icy rock. Susan flung herself the other way, clinging to the neck, and felt the dragging abyss under her feet. There was nothing there. She told herself, He'll catch me if I fall he'll catch me if I fall, he'll catch me if I fall... Powdered ice made her eyes sting. A flailing trotter almost slammed against her head. An older voice said, No, he won't. If I fall now I don't deserve to be caught. The creature's eye was inches away. And then she knew... ... Out of the depths of eyes of all but the most unusual of animals comes an echo. Out of the dark eye in front of her, someone looked back... A foot caught the rock and she concentrated her whole being on it, kicking herself upward in one last effort. Pig and woman rocked for a moment and then a trotter caught a footing and the boar plunged forward along the ridge. Susan risked a look behind. The dogs still moved oddly. There was a slight jerkiness about their movements, as if they flowed from position to position rather than moved by ordinary muscles. Not dogs, she thought. Dog shapes. There was another shock underfoot. Snow flew up. The world tilted. She felt the shape of the boar change when its muscles bunched and sent it soaring as a slab of ice and rock came away and began the long slide into darkness. Susan was thrown off when the creature landed, and tumbled into deep snow. She flailed around madly, expecting at any minute to begin sliding. Instead her hand found a snow-encrusted branch. A few feet away the boar lay on its side, steaming and panting. She pulled herself upright. The spur here had widened out into a hill, with a few frosted trees on it. The dogs had reached the gap and were milling round, struggling to prevent themselves slipping. They could easily clear the distance, she could see. Even the boar had managed it with her on its back. She put both hands around the branch and heaved; it came away with a crack, like a broken icicle, and she waved it like a club. 'Come on,' she said. 'Jump! Just you try it! Come on!' One did. The branch caught it as it landed, and then Susan spun and brought the branch around on the upswing, lifted the dazed animal off its feet and out over the edge. For a moment the shape wavered and then, howling, it dropped out of sight. She danced a few steps of rage and triumph. 'Yes! Yes! Who wants some? Anyone else?' The other dogs looked her in the eye, decided that no one did, and that there wasn't. Finally, after one or two nervous attempts, they managed to turn, still sliding, and tried to make it back to the plateau. A figure barred their way. It hadn't been there a moment ago but it looked permanent now. It seemed to have been made of snow, three balls of snow piled on one another. It had black dots for eyes. A semi-circle of more dots formed the semblance of a mouth. There was a carrot for the nose. And, for the arms, two twigs. At this distance, anyway. One of them was holding a curved stick. A raven wearing a damp piece of red paper landed on one arm. 'Bob bob bob?' it suggested. 'Merry Solstice? Tweetie tweet? What are you waiting for? Hogswatch?' The dogs backed away. The snow broke off the snowman in chunks, revealing a gaunt figure in a flapping black robe. Death spat out the carrot. HO. HO. HO. The grey bodies smeared and rippled as the hounds sought desperately to change their shape. YOU COULDN'T RESIST IT? IN THE END? A MISTAKE, I FANCY. He touched the scythe. There was a click as the blade flashed into life. IT GETS UNDER YOUR SKIN, LIFE, said Death, stepping forward. SPEAKING METAPHORICALLY, OF COURSE. IT'S A HABIT THAT'S HARD TO GIVE UP. ONE PUFF OF BREATH IS NEVER ENOUGH. YOU'LL FIND YOU WANT TO TAKE ANOTHER. A dog started to slip on the snow and scrabbled desperately to save itself from the long, cold drop. AND, YOU SEE, THE MORE YOU STRUGGLE FOR EVERY MOMENT, THE MORE ALIVE YOU STAY... WHICH IS WHERE I COME IN, AS A MATTER OF FACT. The leading dog managed, for a moment, to become a grey led figure before being dragged back into shape. FEAR, TOO, IS AN ANCHOR, said Death. ALL THOSE SENSES, WIDE OPEN TO EVERY FRAGMENT OF THE WORLD. THAT BEATING HEART. THAT RUSH OF BLOOD. CAN YOU NOT FEEL IT, DRAGGING YOU BACK? Once again the Auditor managed to retain a shape for a few seconds, and managed to say: you cannot do this, there are rules! YES. THERE ARE RULES. BUT YOU BROKE THEM. HOW DARE YOU? HOW DARE YOU? The scythe blade was a thin blue outline in the grey light. Death raised a thin finger to where his lips might have been, and suddenly looked thoughtful. AND NOW THERE REMAINS ONLY ONE FINAL QUESTION, he said. He raised his hands, and seemed to grow. Light flared in his eye sockets. When he spoke next, avalanches fell in the mountains. HAVE YOU BEEN NAUGHTY... OR NICE? HO. HO. HO. Susan heard the wails die away. The boar lay in white snow that was now red with blood. She knelt down and tried to lift its head. It was dead. One eye stared at nothing. The tongue lolled. Sobs welled up inside her. The tiny part of Susan that watched, the inner baby-sitter, said it was just exhaustion and excitement and the backwash of adrenalin. She couldn't be crying over a dead pig. The rest of her drummed on its flank with both fists. 'No, you can't! We saved you! Dying isn't how it's supposed to go!' A breeze blew up. Something stirred in the landscape, something under the snow. The branches on the ancient trees shook gently, dislodging little needles of ice. The sun rose. The light streamed over Susan like a silent gale. It was dazzling. She crouched back, raising her forearm to cover her eyes. The great red ball turned frost to fire along the winter branches. Cold light slammed into the mountain peaks, making every one a blinding, silent volcano. It rolled onward, gushing into the valleys and thundering up the slopes, unstoppable... There was a groan. A man lay in the snow where the boar had been. He was naked except for an animal skin loincloth. His hair was long and had been woven into a thick plait down his back, so matted with blood and grease that it looked like felt. And he was bleeding everywhere the hounds had caught him. Susan watched for a moment, and then, thinking with something other than her head, methodically tore some strips from her petticoat to bandage the more unpleasant wounds. Capability, said the small part of her mind. A rational head in emergencies. Rational something, anyway. It's probably some kind of character flaw. The man was tattooed. Blue whorls and spirals haunted his skin, under the blood. He opened his eyes and stared at the sky. 'Can you get up?' His gaze flicked to her. He tried moving and then fell back. Eventually she managed to pull the man up into a sitting position. He swayed as she put one of his arms across her shoulders and then heaved him to his feet. She did her best to ignore the sting, which had an almost physical force. Downhill seemed the best option. Even if his brain wasn't working yet, his feet seemed to get the idea. They lurched down through the freezing woods, the snow glowing orange in the risen sun. Cold blue gloom lurked in hollows like little cups of winter. Beside her, the tattooed man made a gurgling sound. He slipped out of her grasp and landed on his knees in the snow, clutching at his throat and choking. His breath sounded like a saw. 'What now? What's the matter? What's the matter?' He rolled his eyes at her and pawed at his throat again. 'Something stuck?' She slapped him as hard as she could on the back, but now he was on his hands and knees, fighting for breath. She put her hands under his shoulders and pulled him upright, and put her arms around his waist. Oh, gods, how was it supposed to go, she'd gone to classes about it, now, didn't you have to bunch up one fist and then put the other hand around it and then pull up and in like this-- The man coughed and something bounced off a tree and landed in the snow. She knelt down to have a look. It was a small black bean. A bird trilled, high on a branch. She looked up. A wren bobbed at her and fluttered to another twig. When she looked back, the man was different. He had clothes now, heavy furs, with a fur hood and fur boots. He was supporting himself on a stone-tipped spear, and looked a lot stronger. Something hurried through the wood, barely visible except by its shadow. For a moment she glimpsed a white hare before it sprang away on a new path. She looked back. Now the furs had gone and the man looked older, although he had the same eyes. He was wearing thick white robes, and looked very much like a priest. When a bird called again she didn't look away. And she realized that she'd been mistaken in thinking that the man changed like the turning of pages. All the images were there at once, and many others too. What you saw depended on how you looked. Yes. It's a good job I'm cool and totally used to this sort of thing, she thought. Otherwise I'd be rather worried... Now they were at the edge of the forest. A little way off, four huge boars stood and steamed, in front of a sledge that looked as if it had been put together out of crudely trimmed trees. There were faces in the blackened wood, possibly carved by stone, possibly carved by rain and wind. The Hogfather climbed aboard and sat down. He'd put on weight in the last few yards and now it was almost impossible to see anything other than the huge, redrobed man, ice crystals settling here and there on the cloth. Only in the occasional sparkle of frost was there a hint of hair or tusk. He shifted on the seat and then reached down to extricate a false beard, which he held up questioningly. SORRY, said a voice behind Susan. THAT WAS MINE. The Hogfather nodded at Death, as one craftsman to another, and then at Susan. She wasn't sure if she was being thanked - it was more a gesture of recognition, of acknowledgement that something that needed doing had indeed been done. But it wasn't thanks. Then he shook the reins and clicked his teeth and the sledge slid away. They watched it go. 'I remember hearing,' said Susan distantly, 'that the idea of the Hogfather wearing a red and white outfit was invented quite recently.' NO. IT WAS REMEMBERED. Now the Hogfather was a red dot on the other side of the valley. 'Well, that about wraps it up for this dress,' said Susan. 'I'd just like to ask, just out of academic interest... you were sure I was going to survive, were you?' I WAS QUITE CONFIDENT. 'Oh, good.' I WILL GIVE YOU A LIFT BACK, said Death, after a while. 'Thank you. Now... tell me . . WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF YOU HADN'T SAVED HIM? 'Yes! The sun would have risen just the same, yes?' NO. 'Oh, come on. You can't expect me to believe that. It's an astronomical fact.' THE SUN WOULD NOT HAVE RISEN. She turned on him. 'It's been a long night, Grandfather! I'm tired and I need a bath! I don't need silliness!' THE SUN WOULD NOT HAVE RISEN. 'Really? Then what would have happened, pray?' A MERE BALL OF FLAMING GAS WOULD HAVE ILLUMINATED THE WORLD. They walked in silence for a moment. 'Ah,' said Susan dully. 'Trickery with words. I would have thought you'd have been more literal-minded than that.' I AM NOTHING IF NOT LITERAL-MINDED. TRICKERY WITH WORDS IS WHERE HUMANS LIVE. 'All right,' said Susan. 'I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable.' REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE. 'Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little-' YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES. 'So we can believe the big ones?' YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING. 'They're not the same at all!' YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET-- Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME... SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED. 'Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point---' MY POINT EXACTLY. She tried to assemble her thoughts. THERE IS A PLACE WHERE TWO GALAXIES HAVE BEEN COLLIDING FOR A MILLION YEARS, said Death, apropos of nothing. DON'T TRY TO TELL ME THAT'S RIGHT. 'Yes, but people don't think about that,' said Susan. Somewhere there was a bed... CORRECT. STARS EXPLODE, WORLDS COLLIDE, THERE's HARDLY ANYWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE WHERE HUMANS CAN LIVE WITHOUT BEING FROZEN OR FRIED, AND YET YOU BELIEVE THAT A... A BED IS A NORMAL THING. IT IS THE MOST AMAZING TALENT. 'Talent?' OH, YES. A VERY SPECIAL KIND OF STUPIDITY. YOU THINK THE WHOLE UNIVERSE IS INSIDE YOUR HEADS. 'You make us sound mad,' said Susan. A nice warm bed... NO. YOU NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME? said Death, helping her up on to Binky. 'These mountains,' said Susan, as the horse rose. 'Are they real mountains, or some sort of shadows?' YES. Susan knew that was all she was going to get. 'Er... I lost the sword. It's somewhere in the Tooth Fairy's country.' Death shrugged. I CAN MAKE ANOTHER. 'Can you?' OH, YES. IT WILL GIVE ME SOMETHING TO DO. DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT. The Senior Wrangler hummed cheerfully to himself as he ran a comb through his beard for the second time and liberally sprinkled it with what would turn out to be a preparation of weasel extract for demon removal rather than, as he had assumed, a pleasant masculine Scent.[23] Then he stepped out into his study. 'Sorry for the delay, but-' he began. There was no one there. Only, very far off, the sound of someone blowing their nose mingling with the glingleglingleglingle of fading magic. The fight was already gilding the top of the Tower of Art when Binky trotted to a standstill on the air beside the nursery balcony. Susan climbed down onto the fresh snow and stood uncertainly for a moment. When someone has gone out of their way to drop you home it's only courteous to ask them in. On the other hand... WOULD YOU LIKE TO VISIT FOR HOGSWATCH DINNER? said Death. He sounded hopeful. ALBERT IS FRYING A PUDDING. 'Frying a pudding?' ALBERT UNDERSTANDS FRYING. AND I BELIEVE HE'S MAKING JAM. HE CERTAINLY KEPT TALKING ABOUT Fr. 'I... er... they're really expecting me here,' said Susan. 'The Gaiters do a lot of entertaining. His business friends. Probably the whole day will be... I'll more or less have to look after the children...' SOMEONE SHOULD. 'Er... would you like a drink before you go?' said Susan, giving in. A CUP OF COCOA WOULD BE APPROPRIATE IN THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 'Right. There's biscuits in the tin on the mantelpiece.' Susan headed with relief into the tiny kitchen. Death sat down in the creaking wicker chair, buried his feet in the rug and looked around with interest. He heard the clatter of cups, and then a sound like indrawn breath, and then silence. Death helped himself to a biscuit from the tin. There were two full stockings hanging from the mantelpiece. He prodded them with professional satisfaction, and then sat down again and observed the nursery wallpaper. It seemed to be pictures of rabbits in waistcoats, among other fauna. He was not surprised. Death occasionally turned up in person even for rabbits, simply to see that the whole process was working properly. He'd never seen one wearing a waistcoat. He wouldn't have expected waistcoats. At least, ould he wouldn't have expected waistcoats if he hadn't had some experience of the way humans portrayed the universe. As it was, it was only a blessing they hadn't been given gold watches and top hats as well. Humans liked dancing pigs, too. And lambs in hats. As far as Death was aware, the sole reason for any human association with pigs and lambs was as a prelude to chops and sausages. Quite why they should dress up for children's wallpaper as well was a mystery. Hello, little folk, this is what you're going to eat... He felt that if only he could find the key to it, he'd know a lot more about human beings. His gaze travelled to the door. Susan's governess coat and hat were hanging on it. The coat was grey, and so was the hat. Grey and round and dull. Death didn't know many things about the human psyche, but he did know protective coloration when he saw it. Dullness. Only humans could have invented it. What imaginations they had. The door opened. To his horror, Death saw a small child of unidentifiable sex come out of the bedroom, amble sleepily across the floor and unhook the stockings from the mantelpiece. It was halfway back before it noticed him and then it simply stopped and regarded him thoughtfully. He knew that young children could see him because they hadn't yet developed that convenient and selective blindness that comes with the intimation of personal mortality. He felt a little embarrassed. 'Susan's gotta poker, you know,' it said, as if anxious to be helpful. WELL, WELL. INDEED. MY GOODNESS ME. 'I fort - thought all of you knew that now. Larst - last week she picked a bogey up by its nose.' Death tried to imagine this. He felt sure he'd heard the sentence wrong but it didn't sound a whole lot better however he rearranged the words. 'I'll give Gawain his stocking and then I'll come an' watch,' said the child. It padded out. ER... SUSAN? Death said, calling in reinforcements. Susan backed out of the kitchen, a black kettle in her hand. There was a figure behind her. In the half-light the sword gleamed blue along its blade. Its glitter reflected off one glass eye. 'Well, well,' said Teatime, quietly, glancing at Death. 'Now this is unexpected. A family affair?' The sword hummed back and forth. 'I wonder,' said Teatime, 'is it possible to kill Death? This must be a very special sword and it certainly works here...' He raised a hand to his mouth for a moment and gave a little chuckle. 'And of course it might well not be regarded as murder. Possibly it is a civic act. It would be, as they say, The Big One. Stand up, sir. You may have some personal knowledge about your vulnerability but I'm pretty certain that Susan here would quite definitely die, so I'd rather you didn't try any last-minute stuff.' I AM LAST-MINUTE STUFF, said Death, standing up. Teatime circled around carefully, the sword's tip making little curves in the air. From the next room came the sound of someone trying to blow a whistle quietly. Susan glanced at her grandfather. 'I don't remember them asking for anything that made a noise,' she said. OH, THERE HAS TO BE SOMETHING IN THE STOCKING THAT MAKES A NOISE, said Death. OTHERWISE WHAT is 4.30 A.M. FOR? 'There are children?' said Teatime. 'Oh yes, of course. Call them.' 'Certainly not!' 'It will be instructive,' said Teatime. 'Educational. And when your adversary is Death, you cannot help but be the good guy.' He pointed the sword at Susan. 'I said call them.' Susan glanced hopefully at her grandfather. He nodded. For a moment she thought she saw the glow in one eye socket flicker off and on, Death's equivalent of a wink. He's got a plan. He can stop time. He can do anything. He's got a plan. 'Gawain? Twyla?' The muffled noises stopped in the next room. There was a padding of feet and two solemn faces appeared round the door. 'Ah, come in, come in, curly-haired tots,' said Teatime genially. Gawain gave him a steely stare. His next mistake, thought Susan. If he'd called them little bastards he'd have them bang on his side. But they know when you're sending them up. 'I've caught this bogeyman,' said Teatime. 'What shall we do with him, eh?' The two faces turned to Death. Twyla put her thumb in her mouth. 'It's only a skeleton,' said Gawain critically. Susan opened her mouth, and the sword swung towards her. She shut it again. 'Yes, a nasty, creepy, horrible skeleton,' said Teatime. 'Scary, eh?' There was a very faint 'pop' as Twyla took her thumb out of her mouth. 'He's eating a bittit,' she said. 'Biscuit,' Susan corrected automatically. She started to swing the kettle in an absent-minded way. 'A creepy bony man in a black robe!' said Teatime, aware that things weren't going in quite the right direction. He spun round to face Susan. 'You're fidgeting with that kettle,' he said. 'So I expect you're thinking of doing something creative. Put it down, please. Slowly.' Susan knelt down gently and put the kettle on the hearth. 'Huh, that's not very creepy, it's just bones,' said Gawain dismissively. 'And anyway Willie the groom down at the stables has promised me a real horse skull. And anyway I'm going to make a hat out of it like General Tacticus had when he wanted to frighten people. And anyway it's just standing there. It's not even making woo-woo noises. And anyway you're creepy. Your eye's weird.' 'Really? Then let's see how creepy I can be,' said Teatime. Blue fire crackled along the sword as he raised it. Susan closed her hand over the poker. Teatime saw her start to turn. He stepped behind Death, sword raised... Susan threw the poker overarm. It made a ripping noise as it shot through the air, and trailed sparks. It hit Death's robe and vanished. He blinked. Teatime smiled at Susan. He turned and peered dreamily at the sword in his hand. It fell out of his fingers. Death turned and caught it by the handle as it tumbled, and turned its fall into an upward curve. Teatime looked down at the poker in his chest as he folded up. 'Oh, no,' he said. 'It couldn't have gone through you. There are so many ribs and things!' There was another 'pop' as Twyla extracted her thumb and said, 'It only kills monsters.' 'Stop time now,' commanded Susan. Death snapped his fingers. The room took on the greyish purple of stationary time. The clock paused its ticking. 'You winked at me! I thought you had a plan!' INDEED. OH, YES. I PLANNED TO SEE WHAT YOU WOULD DO. 'Just that?' YOU ARE VERY RESOURCEFUL. AND OF COURSE YOU HAVE HAD AN EDUCATION. 'What?' I DID ADD THE SPARKLY STARS AND THE NOISE, THOUGH. I THOUGHT THEY WOULD BE APPROPRIATE. 'And if I hadn't done anything?' I DARESAY I WOULD HAVE THOUGHT OF SOMETHING. AT THE LAST MINUTE. 'That was the last minute!' THERE IS ALWAYS TIME FOR ANOTHER LAST MINUTE. 'The children had to watch that!' EDUCATIONAL. THE WORLD WILL TEACH THEM ABOUT MONSTERS SOON ENOUGH. LET THEM REMEMBER THERE's ALWAYS THE POKER. 'But they saw he's human--' I THINK THEY HAD A VERY GOOD IDEA OF WHAT HE WAS. Death prodded the fallen Teatime with his foot. STOP PLAYING DEAD, MISTER TEH-AH-TIM-EH. The ghost of the Assassin sprang up like a jack-in-thebox, all slightly crazed smiles. 'You got it right!' OF COURSE. Teatime began to fade. I'LL TAKE THE BODY, said Death. THAT WILL PREVENT INCONVENIENT QUESTIONS. 'What did he do it all for?' said Susan. 'I mean, why? Money? Power?' SOME PEOPLE WILL DO ANYTHING FOR THE SHEER FASCINATION OF DOING IT, said Death. OR FOR FAME. OR BECAUSE THEY SHOULDN'T. Death picked up the corpse and slung it over his shoulder. There was a sound of something bouncing on the hearth. He turned, and hesitated. ER... YOU DID KNOW THE POKER WOULD GO THROUGH ME? Susan realized she was shaking. 'Of course. In this room it's pretty powerful.' YOU WERE NEVER IN ANY DOUBT? Susan hesitated, and then smiled. 'I was quite confident,' she said. All. Her grandfather stared at her for a moment and she thought she detected just the tiniest flicker of uncertainty. OF COURSE. OF COURSE. TELL ME, ARE YOU LIKELY TO TAKE UP TEACHING ON A LARGER SCALE? 'I hadn't planned to.' Death turned towards the balcony, and then seemed to remember something else. He fumbled inside his robe. I HAVE MADE THIS FOR YOU. She reached out and took a square of damp cardboard. Water dripped off the bottom. Somewhere in the middle, a few brown feathers seemed to have been glued on. 'Thank you. Er... what is it?' ALBERT SAID THERE OUGHT TO BE SNOW ON IT, BUT IT APPEARS TO HAVE MELTED, said Death. IT IS, OF COURSE, A HOGSWATCH CARD. 'Oh...' THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN A ROBIN ON IT AS WELL, BUT I HAD CONSIDERABLE DIFFICULTY IN GETTING IT TO STAY ON. 'Ah... IT WAS NOT AT ALL CO-OPERATIVE. 'Really... ?' IT DID NOT SEEM TO GET INTO THE HOGSWATCH SPIRIT AT ALL. 'Oh. Er. Good. Granddad?' YES? 'Why? I mean, why did you do all this?' He stood quite still for a moment, as if he was trying out sentences in his mind. I THINK IT'S SOMETHING TO DO WITH HARVESTS, he said at last. YES. THAT'S RIGHT. AND BECAUSE HUMANS ARE SO INTERESTING THAT THEY HAVE EVEN INVENTED DULLNESS. QUITE ASTONISHING. 'Oh.' WELL THEN... HAPPY HOGSWATCH. 'Yes. Happy Hogswatch.' Death paused again, at the window. AND GOOD NIGHT, CHILDREN... EVERYWHERE. The raven fluttered down onto a log covered in snow. Its prosthetic red breast had been torn and fluttered uselessly behind it. 'Not so much as a lift home,' it muttered. 'Look at this, willya? Snow and frozen wastes, everywhere. I couldn't fly another damn inch. I could starve to death here, you know? Hah! People're going on about recycling the whole time, but you just try a bit of practical ecology and they just... don't... want... to... know. Hah! I bet a robin'd have a lift home. Oh yes.' SQUEAK, said the Death of Rats sympathetically, and sniffed. The raven watched the small hooded figure scrabble at the snow. 'So I'll just freeze to death here, shall l?' it said gloomily. 'A pathetic bundle of feathers with my little feet curled up with the cold. It's not even as if I'm gonna make anyone a good meal, and let me tell you it's a disgrace to die thin in my spec-' It became aware that under the snow was a rather grubbier whiteness. Further scraping by the rat exposed something that could very possibly have been an ear. The raven stared. 'It's a sheep!' it said. The Death of Rats nodded. 'A whole sheep!'[24] SQUEAK. 'Oh, wow!' said the raven, hopping forward with its eyes spinning. 'Hey, it's barely cool!' The Death of Rats patted it happily on a wing. SQUEAK-EEK. EEK-SQUEAK... 'Why, thanks. And the same to you... ' Far, far away and a long, long time ago, a shop door opened. The little toymaker bustled in from the workshop in the rear, and then stopped, with amazing foresight, dead. YOU HAVE A BIG WOODEN ROCKING HORSE IN THE WINDOW, said the new customer. 'Ah, yes, yes, yes.' The shopkeeper fiddled nervously with his square-rimmed spectacles. He hadn't heard the bell, and this was worrying him. 'But I'm afraid that's just for show, that is a special order for Lord-' NO. I WILL BUY IT. 'No, because, you see---' THERE ARE OTHER TOYS? 'Yes, indeed, but-' THEN I WILL TAKE THE HORSE. HOW MUCH WOULD THIS LORDSHIP HAVE PAID YOU? 'Er, we'd agreed twelve dollars but--' I WILL GIVE YOU FIFTY, said the customer. The little shopkeeper stopped in midremonstrate and started up in mid-greed. There were other toys, he told himself quickly. And this customer, he thought with considerable prescience, looked like someone who did not take no for an answer and seldom even bothered to ask the question. Lord Selachii would be angry, but Lord Selachii wasn't here. The stranger, on the other hand, was here. Incredibly here. 'Er... well, in the circumstances... er... shall I wrap it up for you?' NO. I WILL TAKE IT AS IT IS. THANK YOU. I WILL LEAVE VIA THE BACK WAY, IF IT'S ALL THE SAME TO YOU. 'Er... how did you get in?' said the shopkeeper, pulling the horse out of the window. THROUGH THE WALL. SO MUCH MORE CONVENIENT THAN CHIMNEYS, DON'T YOU THINK? The apparition dropped a small clinking bag on the counter and lifted the horse easily. The shopkeeper wasn't in a position to hold on to anything. Even yesterday's dinner was threatening to leave him. The figure looked at the other shelves. YOU MAKE GOOD TOYS. 'Er... thank you.' INCIDENTALLY, said the customer, as he left, THERE IS A SMALL BOY OUT THERE WITH HIS NOSE FROZEN TO THE WINDOW. SOME WARM WATER SHOULD DO THE TRICK. Death walked out to where Binky was waiting in the snow and tied the toy horse behind the saddle. ALBERT WILL BE VERY PLEASED. I CAN'T WAIT TO SEE HIS FACE. HO. HO. HO. As the light of Hogswatch slid down the towers of Unseen University, the Librarian slipped into the Great Hall with some sheet music clenched firmly in his feet. As the light of Hogswatch lit the towers of Unseen University, the Archchancellor sat down with a sigh in his study and pulled off his boots. It had been a damn long night, no doubt about it. Lots of strange things. First time he'd ever seen the Senior Wrangler burst into tears, for one thing. Ridcully glanced at the door to the new bathroom. Well, he'd sorted out the teething troubles, and a nice warm shower would be very refreshing. And then he could go along to the organ recital all nice and clean. He removed his hat, and someone fell out of it with a tinkling sound. A small gnome rolled across the floor. 'Oh, another one. I thought we'd got rid of you fellows,' said Ridcully. 'And what are you?' The gnome looked at him nervously. 'Er... you know whenever there was another magical appearance you heard the sound of, er, bells?' it said. Its expression suggested it was owning up to something it just knew was going to get it a smack. .'Yes?' The gnome held up some rather small handbells and waved them nervously. They went glingleglingleglingle, in a very sad way. 'Good, eh? That was me. Im the Glingleglingleglingle Fairy.' `Get out.' 'I also do sparkly fairy dust effects that go twing too, if you like... `Go away!' 'How about "The Bells of St Ungulant's"?' said the gnome desperately. 'Very seasonal. Very nice. Why not join in? It goes: ''The bells [clong] of St [clang]... " ' Ridcully scored a direct hit with the rubber duck, and the gnome escaped through the bath overflow. Cursing and spontaneous handbell ringing echoed away down the pipes. In perfect peace at last, the Archchancellor pulled off his robe. The organ's storage tanks were wheezing at the rivets by the time the Librarian had finished pumping. Satisfied, he knuckled his way up to the seat and paused to survey, with great satisfaction, the keyboards in front of him. Bloody Stupid Johnson's approach to music was similar to his approach in every field that was caressed by his genius in the same way that a potato field is touched by a late frost. Make it loud, he said. Make it wide. Make it allembracing. And thus the Great Organ of Unseen University was the only one in the world where you could play an entire symphony scored for thunderstorm and squashed toad noises. Warm water cascaded off Mustrum Ridcully's pointy bathing cap. Mr Johnson had, surely not on purpose, designed a perfect bathroom - at least, perfect for singing in. Echoes and resonating pipeways smoothed out all those little imperfections and gave even the weediest singer a rolling, dark brown voice. And so Ridcully sang. ' -as I walked out one dadadadada for to something or other and to take the dadada, I did espy a fair pretty may-ay-den I think it was, and I---' The organ pipes hummed with pent-up energy. The Librarian cracked his knuckles. This took some time. Then he pulled the pressure release valve. The hum became an urgent thrumming. Very carefully, he let in the clutch. Ridcully stopped singing as the tones of the organ came through the wall. Bathtime music, eh? he thought. Just the job. It was a shame it was muffled by all the bathroom fixtures, though. It was at this point he espied a small lever marked `Musical pipes. Ridcully, never being a man to wonder what any kind of switch did when it was so much easier and quicker to find out by pulling it, did so. But instead of the music he was expecting he was rewarded simply with several large panels sliding silently aside, revealing row upon row of brass nozzles. The Librarian was lost now, dreaming on the wings of music. His hands and feet danced over the keyboards, picking their way towards the crescendo which ended the first movement of Bubble's Catastrophe Suite. One foot kicked the 'Afterburner' lever and the other spun the valve of the nitrous oxide cylinder. Ridcully tapped the nozzles. Nothing happened. He looked at the controls again, and realized that he'd never pulled the little brass lever marked 'Organ Interlock`. He did so. This did not cause a torrent of pleasant bathtime accompaniment, however. There was merely a thud and a distant gurgling which grew in volume. He gave up, and went back to soaping his chest. '----running of the deer, the playing of... huh? What--' Later that day he had the bathroom nailed up again and a notice placed on the door, on which was written: 'Not to be used in any circumstances. This is IMPORTANT.' However, when Modo nailed the door up he didn't hammer the nails in all the way but left just a bit sticking up so that his pliers would grip later on, when he was told to remove them. He never presumed and he never complained, he just had a good working knowledge of the wizardly mind. They never did find the soap. Ponder and his fellow students watched Hex carefully. 'It can't just, you know, stop,' said Adrian 'Mad Drongo' Tumipseed. 'The ants are just standing still,' said Ponder. He sighed. 'All right, put the wretched thing back.' Adrian carefully replaced the small fluffy teddy bear above Hex's keyboard. Things immediately began to whirr. The ants started to trot again. The mouse squeaked. They'd tried this three times. Ponder looked again at the single sentence Hex had written. +++ Mine! Waaaah +++ 'I don't actually think,' he said, gloomily, 'that I want to tell the Archchancellor that this machine stops working if we take its fluffy teddy bear away. I just don't think I want to live in that kind of world.' 'Er,' said Mad Drongo, 'you could always, you know, sort of say it needs to work with the FTB enabled... 'You think that's better?' said Ponder, reluctantly. It wasn't as if it was even a very realistic interpretation of a bear. 'You mean, better than "fluffy teddy bear"?' Ponder nodded. 'It's better,' he said. Of all the presents he got from the Hogfather, Gawain told Susan, the best of all was the marble. And she'd said, what marble? And he'd said, the glass marble I found in the fireplace. It wins all the games. It seems to move in a different way. The beggars walked their erratic and occasionally backward walk along the city streets, while fresh morning snow began to fall. Occasionally one of them belched happily. They all wore paper hats, except for Foul Ole Ron, who'd eaten his. A tin can was passed from hand to hand. It contained a mixture of fine wines and spirits and something in a can that Arnold Sideways ha stolen from behind a paint factory in Phedre Road. 'The goose was good,' said the Duck Man, picking his teeth. 'I'm surprised you et it, what with that duck on your head,' said Coffin Henry, picking his nose. 'What duck?' said the Duck Man. 'What were that greasy stuff?' said Arnold Sideways. 'That, my dear fellow, was pâté de foie gras. All the way from Genua, I'll wager. And very good, too.' 'Dun' arf make you fart, don't it?' 'Ah, the world of haute cuisine,' said the Duck Man happily. They reached, by fits and starts, the back door of their favourite restaurant. The Duck Man looked at it dreamily, eyes filmy with recollection. 'I used to dine here almost every night,' he said. 'Why'd you stop?' said Coffin Henry. 'I... I don't really know,' said the Duck Man. 'It's... rather a blur, I'm afraid. Back in the days when I... think I was someone else. But still,' he said, patting Arnold's head, 'as they say, "Better a meal of old boots where friendship is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith." Forward, please, Ron.' They positioned Foul Ole Ron in front of the back door and then knocked on it. When a waiter opened it Foul Ole Ron grinned at him, exposing what remained of his teeth and his famous halitosis, which was still all there. 'Millennium hand and shrimp!' he said, touching his forelock. ' "Compliments of the season",' the Duck Man translated. The man went to shut the door but Arnold Sideways was ready for him and had wedged his boot in the crack.[25] 'We thought you might like us to come round at lunchtime and sing a merry Hogswatch glee for your customers,' said the Duck Man. Beside him, Coffin Henry began one of his volcanic bouts of coughing, which even sounded green. ' No charge, of course.' 'It being Hogswatch,' said Arnold. The beggars, despite being too disreputable even to belong to the Beggars' Guild, lived quite well by their own low standards. This was generally by careful application of the Certainty Principle. People would give them all sorts of things if they were certain to go away. A few minutes later they wandered off again, pushing a happy Arnold who was surrounded by hastily wrapped packages. 'People can be so kind,' said the Duck Man. 'Millennium hand and shrimp.' Arnold started to investigate the charitable donations as they manoeuvred his trolley through the slush and drifts. 'Tastes... sort of familiar,' he said. 'Familiar like what?' 'Like mud and old boots.' 'Cam! That's posh grub, that is.' 'Yeah, yeah... ' Arnold chewed for a while. 'You don't think we've become posh all of a sudden?' 'Dunno. You posh, Ron?' 'Buggrit.' 'Yep. Sounds posh to me.' The snow began to settle gently on the River Ankh. 'Still... Happy New Year, Arnold.' 'Happy New Year, Duck Man. And your duck.' 'What duck?' 'Happy New Year, Henry.' 'Happy New Year, Ron.' 'Buggrem!' 'And god bless us, every one,' said Arnold Sideways. The curtain of snow hid them from view. 'Which god?' 'Dunno. What've you got?' 'Duck Man?' 'Yes, Henry?' 'You know that stalled ox you mentioned?' 'Yes, Henry?' 'How come it'd stalled? Run out of grass, or something?' 'Ah... it was more a figure of speech, Henry.' 'Not an ox?'  'Not exactly. What I meant was-' And then there was only the snow. After a while, it began to melt in the sun. THE END [1] That is to say, those who deserve to shed blood. Or possibly not. You never quite know with some kids. [2] This exchange contains almost all you need to know about human civilization. At least, those bits of it that are now under the sea, fenced off or still smoking.   [3] It's a sad and terrible thing that high-born folk really have thought that the servants would be totally fooled if spirits were put into decanters that were cunningly labelled backwards. And also throughout history the more politically conscious butler has taken it on trust, and with rather more justification, that his employers will not notice if the whisky is topped up with eniru. [4] Peachy was not someone you generally asked questions of, except the sort that go like: If-if-if-if I give you all my money could you possibly not break the other leg, thank you so much?' [5] Chickenwire had got his name from his own individual contribution to the science of this very specialized 'concrete overshoe' form of waste disposal. An unfortunate drawback of the process was the tendency for bits of the client to eventually detach and float to the surface, causing much comment in the general population. Enough chickenwire, he'd pointed out, would solve that, while also allowing the ingress of crabs and fish going about their vital recycling activities. [6] Ankh-Morpork's underworld, which was so big that the overworld floated around on top of it like a very small hen trying to mother a nest of ostrich chicks, already had Big Dave, Fat Dave, Mad Dave, Wee Davey, and Lanky Dai. Everyone had to find their niche. [7] This is very similar to the suggestion put forward by the Quirmian philosopher Ventre, who said, 'Possibly the gods exist, and possibly they do not. So why not believe in them in any case? If it's all true you'll go to a lovely place when you die, and if it isn't then you've lost nothing, right?' When he died he woke up in a circle of gods holding nasty-looking sticks and one of them said, 'We're going to show you what we think of Mr Clever Dick in these parts . . .' [8] He'd done his best. But black and purple and vomit yellow weren't a good colour combination for paperchains, and no Hogswatch fairy doll should be nailed up by its head [9] Such as the Electric Drill Chuck Key Fairy. [10] Who was (according to Sideney's mother) a bit of a catch since her father owned a half-share in an eel pie shop in Gleam Street, you must know her, got all her own teeth and a wooden leg you'd hardlynotice, got a sister called Continence, lovely girl, why didn't she invite her along for tea next time he was over, not that she hardly saw her son the big wizard at all these days, but you never knew and if the magic thing didn't work out then a quarter-share in a thriving eel pie business was not to be sneezed at ... [11] Not, that is, things that he wanted to do, or wanted done to him. Just things that he dreamed of, in the armpit of a bad night. [12] In fact, when she was eight she'd found a collection of animal skulls in an attic, relict of some former duke of an enquiring turn of mind. Her father had been a bit preoccupied with affairs of state and she'd made twenty-seven dollars before being found out. The hippopotamus molar had, with hindsight, been a mistake. Skulls never frightened her, even then. [13] The CEH was always ready to fight for the rights of the differently tall, and was not put off by the fact that most pixies and gnomes weren't the least interested in dressing up in little pointy hats with bells on when there were other far more interesting things to do. All that tinkly-wee stuff was for the old folks back home in the forest - when a tiny man hit Ankh-Morpork he preferred to get drunk, kick some serious ankle, and search for tiny women. In fact the CEH now had to spend so much time explaining to people that they hadn't got enough rights that they barely had any time left to fight for them. [14] Often they lived to a timescale to suit themselves. Many of the senior ones, of course, lived entirely in the past, but several were like the Professor of Anthropics, who had invented an entire temporal system based on the belief that all the other ones were a mere illusion. Many people are aware of the Weak and Strong Anthropic Principles. The Weak One says, basically, that it was jolly amazing of the universe to be constructed in such a way that humans could evolve to a point where they make a living in, for example, universities, while the Strong One says that, on the contrary, the whole point of the universe was that humans should not only work in universities but also write for huge sums books with words like 'Cosmic' and 'Chaos' in the titles. *) The UU Professor of Anthropics had developed the Special and Inevitable Anthropic Principle, which was that the entire reason for the existence of the universe was the eventual evolution of the UU Professor of Anthropics. But this was only a formal statement of the theory which absolutely everyone, with only some minor details of a 'Fill in name here' nature, secretly believes to be true. *)And they are correct. The universe dearly operates for the benefit of humanity. This can be readily seen from the convenient way the sun comes up in the morning, when people are ready to start the day.   [15] The ceremony still carries on, of course. If you left off traditions because you didn't know why they started you'd be no better than a foreigner. [16] Ignorant: a state of not knowing what a pronoun is, or how to find the square root of 27.4, and merely knowing childish and useless things like which of the seventy almost identicallooking species of the purple sea snake are the deadly ones, how to treat the poisonous pith of the Sagosago tree to make a nourishing gruel, how to foretell the weather by the movements of the tree-climbing Burglar Crab, how to navigate across a thousand miles of featureless ocean by means of a piece of string and a small clay model of your grandfather, how to get essential vitamins from the liver of the ferocious Ice Bear, and other such trivial matters. It's a strange thing that when everyone becomes educated, everyone knows about the pronoun but no one knows about the Sago-sago. [17] Credulous: having views about the world, the universe and humanity's place in it that are shared only by very unsophisticated people and the most intelligent and advanced mathematicians and physicists. [18] It's amazing how good governments are, given their track record in almost every other field, at hushing up things like alien encounters. One reason may be that the aliens themselves are too embarrassed to talk about it. It's not known why most of the space-going races of the universe want to undertake rummaging in Earthling underwear as a prelude to formal contact. But representatives of several hundred races have taken to hanging out, unsuspected by one another, in rural corners of the planet and, as a result of this, keep on abducting other would-be abductees. Some have been in fad abducted while waiting to carry out an abduction on a couple of other aliens trying to abduct the aliens who were, as a result of misunderstood instructions, trying to form cattle into circles and mutilate crops. The planet Earth is now banned to an alien races until they can compare notes and find out how many, if any, real humans they have actually got. It is gloomily suspected that there is only one who is big, hairy and has very large feet. The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head. [19] The red rosy hen greets the dawn of the day'. In fact the hen is not the bird traditionally associated with heralding a new sunrise, but Mrs Huggs, while collecting many old folk songs for posterity, has taken care to rewrite them where necessary to avoid, as she put it, 'offending those of a refined disposition with unwarranted coarseness'. Much to her surprise, people often couldn't spot the unwarranted coarseness until it had been pointed out to them. Sometimes a chicken is nothing but a bird. [20] He'd have to admit that the answer would be 'five and a bit', but at least he could come up with it. [21] It had been Ma Lilywhite's dying wish, although she hadn't known it at the time. Her last words to her son were 'You try and get to the horses, I'll try to hold 'em off on the stairs, and if anything happens to me, take care of the dummy!' [22] They generally know in time to have their best robe cleaned, do some serious damage to the wine cellar and have a really good last meal. It's a nicer version of Death Row, with the bonus of no lawyers. [23] It was, in fact, a pleasant masculine scent. But only to female weasels. [24] Which had died in its sleep. Of natural causes. At a great age. After a long and happy life, insofar as a sheep can be happy. And would probably be quite pleased to know that it could help somebody as it passed away... [25] Arnold had no legs but, since there were many occasions when a boot was handy on the streets, Coffin Henry had affixed one to the end of a pole for him. He was deadly with it, and any muggers hardpressed enough to try to rob the beggars often found themselves kicked on the top of the head by a man three feet high. Unknown v1.0 18/11/2000 scanned and spellcheked with Word2000 by 4i Publications 
d! - Terry Pratchett	----	Thud! TERRY PRATCHETT THUD! The first thing Tak did, he wrote himself. The second thing Tak did, he wrote the Laws. The third thing Tak did, he wrote the World. The fourth thing Tak did, he wrote a cave. The fifth thing Tak did, he wrote a geode, an egg of stone. And in the twilight of the mouth of the cave, the geode hatched and the Brothers were born. The first Brother walked towards the light, and stood under the open sky. Thus he became too tall. He was the first Man. He found no Laws, and he was enlightened. The second Brother walked towards the darkness, and stood under a roof of stone. Thus he achieved the correct height. He was the first Dwarf. He found the Laws Tak had written, and he was endarkened. But some of the living spirit of Tak was trapped in the broken stone egg, and it became the first troll, wandering the world unbidden and unwanted, without soul or purpose, learning or understanding. Fearful of light and darkness it shambles for ever in twilight, knowing nothing, learning nothing, creating nothing, being nothing ... -From 'Gd Tak `Gar' (The Things Tak Wrote) trans. Prof. W. W. W Wildblood, Unseen University Press, AM$8. In the original, the last paragraph of the quoted text appears to have been added by a much later hand. Him who mountain crush him no Him who sun him stop him no Him who hammer him break him no Him who fire him fear him no Him who raise him head above him heart Him diamond - Translation of Troll pictograms found carved on a basalt slab in the deepest level of the Ankh-Morpork treacle mines, in pig-treacle measures estimated at 500,000 years old. Thud... That was the sound the heavy club made as it connected with the head. The body jerked, and slumped back. And it was done, unheard, unseen: the perfect end, a perfect solution, a perfect story. But, as the dwarfs say, where there is trouble you will always find a troll. The troll saw. It started out as a perfect day. It would soon enough be an imperfect one, he knew, but just for these few minutes it was possible to pretend that it wouldn't. Sam Vimes shaved himself. It was his daily act of defiance, a confirmation that he was ... well, plain Sam Vimes. Admittedly he shaved himself in a mansion, and while he did so his butler read out bits from the Times, but they were just ... circumstances. It was still Sam Vimes looking back at him from the mirror. The day he saw the Duke of Ankh in there would be a bad day. `Duke' was just a job description, that's all. `Most of the news is about the current ... dwarfish situation, sir,' said Willikins as Vimes negotiated the tricky area under the nose. He still used his grandad's cut-throat razor. It was another anchor to reality. Besides, the steel was a lot better than the steel you got today. Sybil, who had a strange enthusiasm for modern gadgetry, kept on suggesting he get one of those new shavers, with a little magic imp inside that had its own scissors and did all the cutting very quickly, but Vimes had held out. If anyone was going to be using a blade near his face, it was going to be him. 'Koom Valley, Koom Valley,' he muttered to his reflection. Ànything new?' `Not as such, sir,' said Willikins, turning back to the front page. `There is a report of that speech by Grag Hamcrusher. There was a disturbance afterwards, it says. Several dwarfs and trolls were wounded. Community leaders have appealed for calm.' Vimes shook some lather off the blade. `Hah! I bet they have. Tell me, Willikins, did you fight much when you were a kid? Were you in a gang or anything?' Ì was privileged to belong to the Shamlegger Street Rude Boys, sir,' said the butler. `Really?' said Vimes, genuinely impressed. `They were pretty tough nuts, as I recall.' `Thank you, sir,' said Willikins smoothly. Ì pride myself I used to give somewhat more than I got if we needed to discuss the vexed area of turf issues with the young men from Rope Street. Stevedore's hooks were their weapon of choice, as I recall.' Ànd yours ... ?'said Vimes, agog. À cap-brim sewn with sharpened pennies, sir. An ever-present help in times of trouble.' 'Ye gods, man! You could put someone's eye out with something like that.' `With care, sir, yes,' said Willikins, meticulously folding a towel. And here you stand now, in your pinstripe trousers and butlering coat, shiny as schmaltz and fat as butter, Vimes thought, while he tidied up under the ears. And I'm a Duke. How the world turns. Ànd have you ever heard someone say "Let's have a disturbance"?' he said. `Never, sir,' said Willikins, picking up the paper again. `Me neither. It only happens in newspapers: Vimes glanced at the bandage on his arm. It had been quite disturbing, even so. `Did it mention I took personal charge?' he said. `No, sir. But it does say here that rival factions in the street outside were kept apart by the valiant efforts of the Watch, sir.' `They actually used the word "valiant"?' said Vimes. Ìndeed they did, sir.' `Well, good,' Vimes conceded grumpily. `Do they record that two officers had to be taken to the Free Hospital, one of them quite badly hurt?' Ùnaccountably not, sir,' said the butler. `Huh. Typical. Oh, well ... carry on.' Willikins coughed a butlery cough. `You might wish to lower the razor for the next one, sir. I got into trouble with her ladyship about last week's little nick.' Vimes watched his image sigh, and lowered the razor. Àll right, Willikins. Tell me the worst.' Behind him, the paper was professionally rustled. `The headline on page three is: "Vampire Officer For The Watch?", said the butler, and took a careful step backwards. `Damn! Who told them?' Ì really couldn't say, sir. It says you are not in favour of vampires in the Watch but will be interviewing a recruit today. It says there is a lively controversy over the issue.' `Turn to page eight, will you?' said Vimes. Behind him, the paper rustled again. `Well?' he said. `That's where they usually put their silly political cartoon, isn't it?' `You did put the razor down, did you, sir?' said Willikins. `Yes!' `Perhaps it would also be just as well if you stepped away from the washbasin, too, sir.' `There's one of me, isn't there ..: said Vimes grimly. Ìndeed there is, sir. It portrays a small nervous vampire and, if I may say so, a rather larger-than-life drawing of yourself leaning over your desk, holding a wooden stake in your right hand. The caption is: "Any good on a stake-out, eh?" sir, this being a humorous wordplay referring, on the one hand, to the standard police procedure-' `Yes, I think I can just about spot it,' said Vimes wearily. Àny chance you could nip down and buy the original before Sybil does? Every time they run a cartoon of me she gets hold of it and hangs it up in the library!' `Mr, er, Fizz does capture a very good likeness, sir,' the butler conceded. Ànd I regret to say that her ladyship has already instructed me to go down to the Times office on her behalf.' Vimes groaned. `Moreover, sir, Willikins went on, `her ladyship desired me to remind you that she and Young Sam will meet you at the studio of Sir Joshua at eleven sharp, sir. The painting is at an important stage, I gather.' `But I-' `She was very specific, sir. She said if a commander of police cannot take time off, who can?' On this day in 1802, the painter Methodia Rascal woke up in the night because the sounds of war fare were coming from a drawer in his bedside table. Again. One little light illuminated the cellar, which is to say that it lent different textures to the darkness and divided shadow from darker shadow. The figures barely showed up at all. It was quite impossible, with normal eyes, to tell who was talking. `This is not to be talked about, do you understand?' `Not talked about? He's dead!' `This is dwarf business! It's not to come to the ears of the City Watch! They have no place here! Do any of us want them down here?' `They do have dwarf officers-' `Hah. D'rkza. Too much time in the sun. They're just short humans now. Do they think dwarf? And Vimes will dig and dig and wave the silly rags and tatters they call laws. Why should we allow such a violation? Besides, this is hardly a mystery. Only a troll could have done it, agreed? I said: Are we agreed?' `That is what happened,' said a figure. The voice was thin and old and, in truth, uncertain. Ìndeed, it was a troll,' said another voice, almost the twin of that one, but with a little more assurance. The subsequent pause was underlined by the ever-present sound of the pumps. Ìt could only have been a troll,' said the first voice. Ànd is it not said that behind every crime you will find the troll?' There was a small crowd outside the Watch House in Pseudopolis Yard when Commander Sam Vimes arrived at work. It had been a fine sunny morning up until then. Now it was still sunny, but nothing like as fine. The crowd had placards. `Bloodsuckers out!!, Vimes read, and `No Fangs!' Faces turned towards him with a sullen, half-frightened defiance. He uttered a bad word under his breath, but only just. Otto Chriek, the Times iconographer, was standing near by, holding a sunshade and looking dejected. He caught Vimes's eye and trudged over. `What's in this for you, Otto?' said Vimes. `Come to get a picture of a jolly good riot, have you?' Ìt's news, commander,' said Otto, looking down at his very shiny shoes. `Who tipped you off?' Ì just do zer pictures, commander,' said Otto, looking up with a hurt expression. 'Anyvay, I couldn't tell you even if I knew, because of zer Freedom of zer Press.' `Freedom to pour oil on a flame, d'you mean?' Vimes demanded. `That's freedom for you,' said Otto. `No vun said it vas nice.' `But ... well, you're a vampire, too!' said Vimes, waving a hand towards the protesters. `Do you like what's been stirred up?' Ìt's still news, commander,' said Otto meekly. Vimes glared at the crowd again. It was mostly human. There was one troll, although admittedly the troll had probably joined in on general principles, simply because something was happening. A vampire would need a masonry drill and a lot of patience before it could put a troll to any trouble. Still, there was one good thing, if you could call it that: this little sideshow took people's minds off Koom Valley. Ìt's strange that they don't seem to mind you, Otto,' he said, calming down a little. `yell, I'm not official,' said Otto. Ì do not haf zer sword and zer badge. I do not threaten. I am just a vorking stiff. And I make zem laff.' Vimes stared at the man. He'd never thought about that before. But yes ... Little fussy Otto, in his red-lined black opera cloak with pockets for all his gear, his shiny black shoes, his carefully cut widow's peak and, not least, his ridiculous accent that grew thicker or thinner depending on who he was talking to, did not look like a threat. He looked funny, a joke, a music-hall vampire. It had never previously occurred to Vimes that, just possibly, the joke was on other people. Make them laugh, and they're not afraid. He nodded to Otto and went inside, where Sergeant Cheery Littlebottom was standing - on a box - at the too high duty officer's desk, her chevrons all shiny and new on her sleeve. Vimes made a mental note to do something about the box. Some of the dwarf officers were getting sensitive about having to use it. Ì think we could do with a couple of lads standing outside, Cheery,' he said. `Nothing provocative, just a little reminder to people that we keep the peace.' Ì don't think we'll need that, Mister Vimes,' said the dwarf. Ì'm not interested in seeing a picture in the Times showing the Watch's first vampire recruit being mobbed by protesters, corpsergeant,' said Vimes severely. Ì thought you wouldn't be, sir,' said Cheery. `So I asked Sergeant Angua to fetch her. They came in the back way half an hour ago. She's showing her the building. I think they're down in the locker room.' `You asked Angua to do it?' said Vimes, his heart sinking. 'Yessir?' said Cheery, suddenly looking worried. Èr ... is there a problem?' Vimes stared at her. She's a good orderly officer, he thought. I wish I had two more like her. And she deserved the promotion, heavens know, but, he reminded himself, she's from Uberwald, isn't she? She should have remembered about the ... thing between them and werewolves. Maybe it's my fault. I tell 'em that all coppers are just coppers. `What? Oh, no,' he said. `Probably not.' A vampire and a werewolf in one room, he thought, as he headed on up the stairs to his office. Well, they'll just have to deal with it. And that'll be only the first of our problems. Ànd I took Mr Pessimal up to the interview room,' Cheery called after him. Vimes stopped mid-stair. 'Pessimal?' he said. `The government inspector, sir?' said Cheery. `The one you told me about?' Oh yes, thought Vimes. The second of our problems. It was politics. Vimes could never get a handle on politics, which was full of traps for honest men. This one had been sprung last week, in Lord Vetinari's office, at the normal daily meeting ... Àh, Vimes,' said his lordship as Vimes entered. `So kind of you to come. Isn't it a beautiful day?' Up until now, Vimes thought, when he spotted the two other people in the room. `You wanted me, sir?' he said, turning to Vetinari again. `There's a Silicon Anti-Defamation League march in Water Street and I've got traffic backed up all the way to Least Gate-' Ì'm sure it can wait, commander. 'Yes, sir. That's the trouble, sir. That's what it's doing.' Vetinari waved a languid hand. `But full carts congesting the street, Vimes, is a sign of progress,' he declared. Ònly in the figurative sense, sir,' said Vimes. `Well, at any rate I'm sure your men can deal with it,' said Vetinari, nodding to an empty chair. `You have so many of them now. Such an expense. Do sit down, commander. Do you know Mr John Smith?' The other man at the table took the pipe out of his mouth and gave Vimes a smile of manic friendliness. Ì don't believe wwwe have had the pleasure,' he said, extending a hand. It should not be possible to roll your double-yous, but John Smith managed it. Shake hands with a vampire? Not bloody likely, Vimes thought, not even one wearing a badly handknitted pullover. He saluted instead. `Pleased to meet you, sir,' he said crisply, standing to attention. It really was an awful garment, that pullover. It had a queasy zigzag pattern, in many strange, unhappy colours. It looked like something knitted as a present by a colour-blind aunt, the sort of thing you wouldn't dare throw away in case the rubbish collectors laughed at you and kicked your bins over. `Vimes, Mr Smith is-' Vetinari began. `President of the Ankh-Morpork Mission of the Uberwald League of Temperance,' said Vimes. Ànd I believe the lady next to him to be Mrs Doreen Winkings, treasurer of same. This is about having a vampire in the Watch, isn't it, sir? Again: `Yes, Vimes, it is,' said Vetinari. Ànd, yes, it is again. Shall we all be seated? Vimes?' There was no escape, Vimes knew, as he sagged resentfully into a chair. And this time he was going to lose. Vetinari had cornered him. Vimes knew all the arguments for having different species in the Watch. They were good arguments. Some of the arguments against them were bad arguments. There were trolls in the Watch, plenty of dwarfs, one werewolf, three golems, an Igor and, not least, Corporal Nobbs, [1] so why not a vampire? And the League of Temperance was a fact. Vampires wearing the League's Black Ribbon ('Not one Drop!') were a fact, too. Admittedly, vampires who had sworn off blood could be a bit weird, but they were intelligent and clever and as such a potential asset to society. And the Watch was the most visible arm of government in the city. Why not set an example? Because, said Vimes's battered but still functional soul, you hate bloody vampires. No messing about, no dissembling, no weasel words about `the public won't stand for it' or ìt's not the right time. You hate bloody vampires and it's your bloody Watch. The other three were staring at him. `Mr Vimes,' said Mrs Winkings, `ve cannot help but notice that you still haf not employed any of our members in the Vatch . . Say `Watch, why don't you? Vimes thought. I know you can. Let the twenty-third letter of the alphabet enter your life. Ask Mr Smith for some, he's got more than enough. Anyway, I have a new argument. It's copper bottomed. `Mrs Winkings,' he said aloud, `no vampire has applied to join the Watch. They're just not mentally suited to a copper's way of life. And it's Commander Vimes, thank you.' Mrs Winkings's little eyes gleamed with righteous malice. Òh, are you sayink vampires are ... stupid?' she said. `No, Mrs Winkings, I'm saying that they're intelligent. And there's your problem, right there. Why would a clever person want [1] This was a bit of a slur on Nobby, Vimes had to admit. Nobby was human, just like many other officers. It was just that he was the only one who had to carry a certificate to prove it. to risk getting their nadg- their head kicked in on a daily basis for thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances? Vampires have got class, an education, a von in front of their name. There's a hundred better things for them to be doing than walking the streets as a cop. What do you want me to do, force them to join the force?' 'Wwwouldn't they be offered officer rank?' said John Smith. There was sweat on his face and his permanent smile was manic. Rumour had it he was finding the Pledge very hard going. `No. Everyone starts on the street,' said Vimes. That wasn't entirely true, but the question had offended him. Ànd on the Night Watch, too. Good training. The best there is. A week of rainy nights with the mists coming up and the water trickling down your neck and odd noises in the shadows ... well, that's when we find out if we've got a real copper-' He knew it as soon as he said it. He'd walked right into it. They must have found a candidate! `Veil, zat is good news!' said Mrs Winkings, leaning back. Vimes wanted to shake her and shout: You're not a vampire, Doreen! You're married to one, yes, but he didn't become one until a time when it is beyond human imagining that he could possibly have wanted to bite you! All the real Black Ribboners try to act normal and unobtrusive! No flowing cloaks, no sucking and definitely no ripping the underwired nightdresses off young ladies! Everyone knows John Not-A-Vampire-At-All Smith used to be Count Vargo St Gruet von Vilinus! But now he smokes a pipe and wears those horrible sweaters and he collects bananas and makes models of human organs out of matchsticks because he thinks hobbies make you more human! But you, Doreen? You were born in Cockbill Street! Your mum was a washerwoman! No one would ever rip your nightdress off, not without a crane! But you're so .. . into this, right? It's a damn hobby. You try to look more like vampires than vampires do! Incidentally, those fake pointy teeth rattle when you talk! Vimes?, 'Hmm?' Vimes was aware that people had been speaking. `Mr Smith has some good news,' said Vetinari. Ìndeed yes,' said John Smith, beaming manically `Wwwe have a recruit for you, commander. A vampire wwho wwants to be in the Wwwatch!' Ànt, of course, zer night vill not prezsent a problem,' said Doreen triumphantly. 'Ve are zer night!' Àre you trying to tell me that I must-' Vimes began. Vetinari cut in quickly. Òh, no, commander. We all fully respect your autonomy as head of the Watch. Clearly, you must hire whomsoever you think fit. All I ask is that the candidate is interviewed, in a spirit of fairness. Yeah, right, thought Vimes. And politics with Uberwald will become just that bit easier, won't it, if you can say you even have a Black Ribboner in the Watch. And if I turn this man down, I'll have to explain why. And Ì just don't like vampires, okay?' probably won't do. Òf course,' he said. `Send him along.' `He is in fact she,' said Lord Vetinari. He glanced down at his paperwork. 'Salacia Deloresista Amanita Trigestatra Zeldana Malifee..: He paused, turned over several pages, and said, Ì think we can skip some of these, but they end "von Humpeding". She is fifty-one, but' he added quickly, before Vimes could seize on this revelation, `that is no age at all for a vampire. Oh, and she'd prefer to be known simply as Sally.' The locker room wasn't big enough. Nothing like big enough. Sergeant Angua tried not to inhale. A large hall, that was fine. The open air, even better. What she needed was room to breathe. More specifically, she needed room not to breathe vampire. Damn Cheery! But she couldn't have refused, that would have looked bad. All she could do was grin and bear it and fight down a pressing desire to rip out the girl's throat with her teeth. She must know she's doing it, she thought. They must know that they exude this air of effortless ease, confident in any company, at home everywhere, making everyone else feel second class and awkward. Oh, my. Call me Sally, indeed! `Sorry about this, she said aloud, trying to force the hairs on the back of her neck not to rise. Ìt's a bit close in here.' She coughed. Ànyway, this is it. Don't worry, it always smells like this in here. And don't bother to lock your locker, all the keys are the same and anyway most of the doors spring open if you hit the frame in the right way. Don't keep valuables in it, this place is too full of coppers. And don't get too upset when someone puts holy water or a wooden stake in there.' Ìs that likely to happen?' said Sally. `Not likely' said Angua. `Certain. F'r instance, I used to find dog collars and bone-shaped biscuits in mine.' `Didn't you complain?' `What? No! You don't complain!' snapped Angua, wishing she could stop inhaling right now. Already she was sure her hair was a mess. `But I thought the Watch was-' `Look, it's nothing to do with what you ... what we are, okay?' said Angua. Ìf you were a dwarf it'd be a pair of platform soles or a stepladder or something, although that doesn't happen so much these days. Mostly they try it on everyone. It's a copper thing. And then they'll watch what you do, you see? No one cares if you're a troll or a gnome or a zombie or a vampire,' much, she added to herself, `but don't let them believe you're a whiner or a snitch. And actually the biscuits were pretty good, to tell you the truth- Ah, have you met Igor yet?' `Many times,' said Sally. Angua forced a smile. In Uberwald, you met Igors all the time. Especially if you were a vampire. `The one here, though?' she said. Ì don't think so.' Ah. Good. Angua normally avoided Igor's laboratory, because the smells that emanated therefrom were either painfully chemical or horribly, suggestively organic, but now she'd snuff them up with relief. She headed for the door with slightly more speed than politeness required, and knocked. It creaked open. Any door opened by an Igor would creak. It was a knack. `Hi, Igor,' said Sally cheerfully. `Gimme six!' Angua left them chatting. Igors were naturally servile, vampires were naturally not. It was an ideal match. At least she could go and get some air now. The door opened. `Mr Pessimal, sir,' said Cheery, ushering a man not much taller than she was into Vimes's office. Ànd here's the office copy of the Times. . Mr Pessimal was neat. In fact, he went beyond neat. He was a folding kind of person. His suit was cheap but very clean, his little boots sparkled. His hair gleamed, too, even more than the boots. It had a centre parting and had been plastered down so severely that it looked as though it had been painted on his head. All the city's departments got inspected from time to time, Vetinari had said. There was no reason why the Watch should be passed over, was there? It was, after all, a major drain on the city coffers. Vimes had pointed out that a drain was where things went to waste. Nevertheless, Vetinari had said. Just nevertheless. You couldn't argue with `nevertheless. And the outcome was Mr Pessimal, walking towards Vimes. He twinkled as he walked. Vimes couldn't think of another way to describe it. Every move was ... well, neat. Shovel purse and spectacles on a ribbon, I'll bet, he thought. Mr Pessimal folded himself on to the chair in front of Vimes's desk and opened the clasps of his briefcase with two little snaps of doom. With some ceremony he donned a pair of spectacles. They were on a black ribbon. `My letter of accreditation from Lord Vetinari, your grace,' he said, handing over a sheet of paper. `Thank you, Mr ... A. E. Pessimal,' said Vimes, glancing at it and putting it on one side. Ànd how can we help you? It's Commander Vimes when I'm at work, by the way.' Ì will need an office, your grace. And an oversight of all your paperwork. As you know, I am tasked to give his lordship a complete overview and cost/benefit analysis of the Watch, with any suggestions for improvement in every aspect of its activities. Your co-operation is appreciated but not essential.' `Suggestions for improvement, eh?' said Vimes cheerfully, while behind A. E. Pessimal's chair Sergeant Littlebottom shut her eyes in dread. `Jolly good. I've always been known for my co-operative attitude. I did mention about the Duke thing, did I?' `Yes, your grace,' said A. E. Pessimal primly. `Nevertheless, you are the Duke of Ankh and it would be inappropriate to address you in any other way. I would feel disrespectful.' Ì see. And how should I address you, Mr Pessimal?' said Vimes. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a floorboard on the other side of the room lift almost imperceptibly. À. E. Pessimal will be quite acceptable, your grace,' said the inspector. `The A standing for - ?'Vimes said, taking his eyes off the board for a moment. `Just A, your grace,' said A. E. Pessimal patiently. À. E. Pessimal.' `You mean you weren't named, you were initialled?' `Just so, your grace,' said the little man. `What do your friends call you?' A. E. Pessimal looked as though there was one major assumption in that sentence that he did not understand, so Vimes took a small amount of pity on him. `Well, Sergeant Littlebottom here will look after you,' he said with fake joviality. `Find Mr A. E. Pessimal an office somewhere, sergeant, and let him see any paperwork he requires: As much as possible, Vimes thought. Bury him in the stuff, if it keeps him away from me. `Thank you, your grace,' said A. E. Pessimal. Ì shall need to interview some officers, too.' `Why?' said Vimes. `To ensure that my report is comprehensive, your grace,' said Mr A. E. Pessimal calmly. Ì can tell you anything you need to know,' said Vimes. `Yes, your grace, but that is not how an inquiry works. I must act completely independently. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? your grace.' Ì know that one,' said Vimes. `Who watches the watchmen? Me, Mr Pessimal.' 'Ah, but who watches you, your grace?' said the inspector, with a brief smile. Ì do that, too. All the time,' said Vimes. `Believe me.' `Quite so, your grace. Nevertheless, I must represent the public interest here. I shall try not to be obtrusive.' `Very good of you, Mr Pessimal,' said Vimes, giving up. He hadn't realized he'd been upsetting Vetinari so much lately. This felt like one of his games. Àll right. Enjoy your hopefully brief stay with us. Do excuse me, this is a busy morning, what with the damn Koom Valley thing and everything. Come in, Fred!' That was a trick he'd learned from Vetinari. It was hard for a visitor to hang on when their replacement was in the room. Besides, Fred sweated a lot in this hot weather; he was a champion sweater. And in all these years he'd never worked out that when you stood outside the office door, the long floorboard seesawed slightly on the joist and rose just where Vimes could notice it. The piece of floorboard settled again, and the door opened. `Don't know how you do it, Mister Vimes!' said Sergeant Colon cheerfully. Ì was just about to knock!' After you'd had a decent earful, thought Vimes. He was pleased to see A. E. Pessimal's nose wrinkle, though. `What's up, Fred?' he said. Òh, don't worry, Mr Pessimal was just leaving. Carry on, Sergeant Littlebottom. Good morning, Mr Pessimal.' Fred Colon removed his helmet as soon as the inspector had been ushered away by Cheery, and wiped his forehead. Ìt's heating up out there again,' he said. `We're in for thunderstorms, I reckon.' `Yes, Fred. And you wanted what, exactly?' said Vimes, contriving to indicate that while Fred was always welcome, just now was not the best of times. 'Er ... something big's going down on the street, sir,' said Fred earnestly, in the manner of one who had memorized the phrase. Vimes sighed. `Fred, do you mean something's happening?' `Yes, sir. It's the dwarfs, sir. I mean the lads here. It's got worse. They keep going into huddles. Everywhere you look, sir, there's huddlin' goin' on. Only they stops as soon as anyone else comes close. Even the sergeants. They stops and gives you a look, sir. And that's makin' the trolls edgy, as you might expect. `We're not going to have Koom Valley replayed in this nick, Fred,' said Vimes. Ì know the city's full of it right now, what with the anniversary coming up, but I'll drop like a ton of rectangular building things on any copper who tries a bit of historical re-creation in the locker room. He'll be out on his arse before he knows it. Make sure everyone understands that.' 'Yessir. But I ain't talking about all that stuff, sir. We all know about that,' said Fred Colon. `This is something different, fresh today. It feels bad, sir, makes my neck tingle. The dwarfs know something. Something they ain't sayin'.' Vimes hesitated. Fred Colon was not the greatest gift to policing. He was slow, stolid and not very imaginative. But he'd plodded his way around the streets for so long that he'd left a groove and somewhere inside that stupid fat head was something very smart, which sniffed the wind and heard the buzz and read the writing on the wall, admittedly doing the last bit with its lips moving. `Probably it's just that damn Hamcrusher who has got them stirred up again, Fred,' he said. Ì hear them mentioning his name in their lingo, yes, sir, but there's more to it, I'll swear. I mean, they looked really uneasy, sir. It's something important, sir, I can feel it in my water.' Vimes considered the admissibility of Fred Colon's water as Exhibit A. It wasn't something you'd want to wave around in a court of law, but the gut feeling of an ancient street monster like Fred counted for a lot, one copper to another. He said, `Where's Carrot? 'Off, Sir. He pulled the swing shift and the morning shift down at Treacle Mine Road. Everyone's doin' double shifts, sir,' Fred Colon added reproachfully. `Sorry, Fred, you know how it is. Look, I'll get him on it when he comes in. He's a dwarf, he'll hear the buzz.' Ì think he might be just a wee bit too tall to hear this buzz, sir,' said Colon, in an odd voice. Vimes put his head on one side. `What makes you say that, Fred?' Fred Colon shook his head. `Just a feeling, sir,' he said. He added, in a voice tinged with reminiscence and despair: Ìt was better when there was just you and me and Nobby and the lad Carrot, eh? We all knew who was who in the old days. We knew what one another was thinking . . `Yes, we were thinking "I wish the odds were on our side, just for once", Fred,' said Vimes. `Look, I know this is getting us all down, right? But I need you senior officers to tough it out, okay? How do you like your new office?' Colon brightened up. `Very nice, sir. Shame about the door, o course. Finding a niche for Fred Colon had been a problem. To look at him, you'd see a man who might well, if he fell over a cliff, have to stop and ask directions on the way down. You had to know Fred Colon. The newer coppers didn't. They just saw a cowardly, stupid fat man, which, to tell the truth, was pretty much what was there. But it wasn't all that was there. Fred had looked retirement in the face, and didn't want any. Vimes had got around the problem by giving him the post of Custody Officer, to the amusement of all, [1] and an office in the Watch Training School across the alley, which was much better known as, and probably would for ever be known as, the old lemonade factory. Vimes had thrown in the job of Watch Liaison Officer, because it sounded good and no one knew what it meant. He'd also given him Corporal Nobbs, who was another awkward dinosaur in today's Watch. It was working, too. Nobby and Colon had a street-level knowledge of the city that rivalled Vimes's own. They ambled about, [1] As in Òl' Fred thought he said custard officer and volunteered!' Since this is an example of office humour, it doesn't actually have to be funny. apparently aimless and completely unthreatening, and they watched and they listened to the urban equivalent of the jungle drums. And sometimes the drums came to them. Once, Fred's sweaty little office had been the place where bare-armed ladies had mixed up great batches of Sarsaparilla and Raspberry Lava and Ginger Pop. Now the kettle was always on and it was open house for all his old mates, ex-watchmen and old cons - sometimes the same individual - and Vimes happily signed the bill for the doughnuts consumed when they dropped by to get out from under their wives' feet. It was worth it. Old coppers kept their eyes open, and gossiped like washerwomen. In theory, the only problem in Fred's life now was his door. `The Historians' Guild say we've got to preserve as much of the old fabric as possible, Fred,' said Vimes. Ì know that, sir, but ... well, "The Twaddle Room" sir? I mean, really!' `Nice brass plate, though, Fred,' said Vimes. Ìt's what they called the basic soft-drink syrup, I'm told. Important historical fact. You could stick a piece of paper over the top of it.' `We do that, sir, but the lads pull it off and snigger.' Vimes sighed. `Sort it out, Fred. If an old sergeant can't sort out that kind of thing, the world has become a very strange place. Is that all?' `Well, yes, sir, really. But-' 'C'mon, Fred. It's going to be a busy day.' `Have you heard of Mr Shine, sir?' `Do you clean stubborn surfaces with it?' said Vimes. 'Er ... what, sir?' said Fred. No one did perplexed better than Fred Colon. Vimes felt ashamed of himself. `Sorry, Fred. No, I haven't heard of Mr Shine. Why?' Òh ... nothing, really. "Mr Shine, him Diamond!" Seen it on walls a few times lately. Troll graffiti; you know, carved in deep. Seems to be causing a buzz among the trolls. Important, maybe?' Vimes nodded. You ignored the writing on the walls at your peril. Sometimes it was the city's way of telling you, if not what was on its bubbling mind, then at least what was in its creaking heart. `Well, keep listening, Fred. I'm relying on you not to let a buzz become a sting,' said Vimes, with extra cheerfulness to keep the man's spirits up. Ànd now I've got to see our vampire.) 'Best of luck, Sam. I think it's going to be a long day.' Sam, thought Vimes, as the old sergeant went out. Gods know he's earned it, but he only calls me Sam when he's really worried. Well, we all are. We're waiting for the first shoe to drop. Vimes unfolded the copy of the Times that Cheery had left on his desk. He always read it at work, to catch up on the news that Willikins had thought it unsafe for him to hear whilst shaving. Koom Valley, Koom Valley. Vimes shook out the paper and saw Koom Valley everywhere. Bloody, bloody Koom Valley. Gods damn the wretched place, although obviously they had already done so - damned it and then forsaken it. Up close it was just another rocky wasteland in the mountains. In theory it was a long way away, but lately it seemed to be getting a lot closer. Koom Valley wasn't really a place now, not any more. It was a state of mind. If you wanted the bare facts, it was where the dwarfs had ambushed the trolls and/or the trolls had ambushed the dwarfs, one ill-famed day under unkind stars. Oh, they'd fought one another since Creation, as far as Vimes understood it, but at the Battle of Koom Valley that mutual hatred became, as it were, Official, and as such had developed a kind of mobile geography. Where any dwarf fought any troll, there was Koom Valley. Even if it was a punch-up in a pub, it was Koom Valley. It was part of the mythology of both races, a rallying cry, the ancestral reason why you couldn't trust those short, bearded/big, rocky bastards. There had been plenty of such Koom Valleys since that first one. The war between the dwarfs and the trolls was a battle of natural forces, like the war between the wind and the waves. It had a momentum of its own. Saturday was Koom Valley Day and Ankh-Morpork was full of trolls and dwarfs, and you know what? The further trolls and dwarfs got from the mountains, the more that bloody, bloody Koom Valley mattered. The parades were okay; the Watch had got good at keeping them apart, and anyway they were in the morning when everyone was still mostly sober. But when the dwarf bars and the troll bars emptied out in the evening, hell went for a stroll with its sleeves rolled up. In the bad old days the Watch would find business elsewhere, and turned up only when stewed tempers had run their course. Then they'd bring out the hurry-up wagon and arrest every troll and dwarf too drunk, dazed or dead to move. It was simple. That was then. Now, there were too many dwarfs and trolls - no, mental correction, the city had been enriched by vibrant, growing communities of dwarfs and trolls - and there was more ... yes, call it venom in the air. Too much ancient politics, too many chips handed down from shoulder to shoulder. Too much boozing, too. And then, just when you thought it was as bad as it could be, up popped Grag Hamcrusher and his chums. Deep-downers, they were called, dwarfs as fundamental as the bedrock. They'd turned up a month ago, occupied some old house in Treacle Street and had hired a bunch of local lads to open up the basements. They were grags'. Vimes knew just enough dwarfish to know that grag meant renowned master of dwarfish lore. Hamcrusher, however, had mastered it in his own special way. He preached the superiority of dwarf over troll, and that the duty of every dwarf was to follow in the footsteps of their forefathers and remove trollkind from the face of the world. It was written in some holy book, apparently, so that made it okay, and probably compulsory. Young dwarfs listened to him, because he talked about history and destiny and all the other words that always got trotted out to put a gloss on slaughter. It was heady stuff, except that brains weren't involved. Malign idiots like him were the reason you saw dwarfs walking around now not just with the `cultural' battle-axe but heavy mail, chains, morningstars, broadswords ... all the dumb, in-your-face swaggering that was known as `clang. Trolls listened too. You saw more lichen, more clan graffiti, more body-carving and much, much bigger clubs being dragged around. It hadn't always been like this. Things had loosened up a lot in the last ten years or so. Dwarfs and trolls as races would never be chums, but the city stirred them together and it had seemed to Vimes that they had managed to get along with no more than surface abrasions. Now the melting pot was full of lumps again. Gods damn Hamcrusher. Vimes itched to arrest him. Technically, he was doing nothing wrong, but that was no barrier to a copper who knew his business. He could certainly get him under Behaviour Likely To Cause A Breach Of The Peace. Vetinari had been against it, though. He'd said it'd only inflame the situation, but how much worse could it get? Vimes closed his eyes and recalled that little figure, dressed in heavy black leather robes and hooded so that he would not commit the crime of seeing daylight. A little figure, but with big words. He remembered: `Beware of the troll. Trust him not. Turn him from your door. He is nothing, a mere accident of forces, unwritten, unclean, the mineral world's pale, jealous echo of living, thinking creatures. In his head, a rock; in his heart, a stone. He does not build, he does not delve, he neither plants nor harvests. His nascency was a deed of theft and everywhere he drags his club he steals. When not thieving, he plans theft. The only purpose in his miserable life is its ending, relieving from the wretched rock his all-too-heavy burden of thought. I say this in sadness. To kill the troll is no murder. At its very worst, it is an act of charity.' It was round about that time that the mob had broken into the hall. That was how much worse it could be. Vimes blinked at the newspaper again, this time seeking anything that dared suggest that people in Ankh-Morpork still lived in the real world 'Oh, damn!' He got up and hurried down the stairs, where Cheery practically cowered at his thundering approach. `Did we know about this?' he demanded, thumping the paper down on the Occurrences Ledger. `Know about what, sir?' said Cheery. Vimes prodded a short illustrated article on page four, his finger stabbing at the page. `See that?' he growled. `That pea-brained idiot at the Post Office has only gone and issued a Koom Valley stamp!' The dwarf looked nervously at the article. Èr ... two stamps, sir,' she said. Vimes looked closer. He hadn't taken in much of the detail before the red mist descended. Oh yes, two stamps. They were very nearly identical. They both showed Koom Valley, a rocky area ringed by mountains. They both showed the battle. But in one, little figures of trolls were pursuing dwarfs from right to left, and, in the other, dwarfs were chasing trolls from left to right. Koom Valley, where the trolls ambushed the dwarfs and the dwarfs ambushed the trolls. Vimes groaned. Pick your own stupid history, a snip at ten pence, highly collectable. `The Koom Valley Memorial Issue,' he read. `But we don't want them to remember it! We want them to forget it!' Ìt's only stamps, sir,' said Cheery. Ì mean, there's no law against stamps. ..' `There ought to be one against being a bloody fool!' Ìf there was, sir, we'd be on overtime every day!' said Cheery, grinning. Vimes relaxed a little. `Yep, and no one could build cells fast enough. Remember the cabbage-scented stamp last month? "Send your expatriate sons and daughters the familiar odour of home"? They actually caught fire if you put too many of them together!' Ì still can't get the smell off my clothes, sir.' `There are people living a hundred miles away who can't, I reckon. What did we do with the bloody things in the end?' Ì put them in No. 4 evidence locker and left the key in the lock,' said Cheery. `But Nobby Nobbs always steals anything that-' Vimes began. `That's right, sir!' said Cheery happily. Ì haven't seen them for weeks.' There was a crash from the direction of the canteen, followed by shouting. Something in Vimes, perhaps the very part of him that had been waiting for the first shoe, propelled him across the office, down the passage and to the canteen's doorway at a speed that left dust spiralling on the floor. What met his eyes was a tableau in various shades of guilt. One of the trestle tables had been knocked over. Food and cheap tinware was strewn across the floor. On one side of the mess was troll Constable Mica, currently being held between troll Constables Bluejohn and Schist; on the other was dwarf Constable Brakenshield, currently being lifted off the ground by probably human Corporal Nobbs and definitely human Constable Haddock. There were watchmen at the other tables too, all caught in the act of rising. And, in the silence, audible only to the fine-tuned ears of a man searching for it, was the sound of hands pausing an inch away from the weapon of choice, and very slowly being lowered. Àll right,' said Vimes, in the ringing vacuum. `Who's going to be the first to tell me a huge whopper? Corporal Nobbs?' `Well, Mister Vimes,' said Nobby Nobbs, lowering the mute Brakenshield to the floor,'. .. er ... Brakenshield here ... picked up Mica's ... yes, picked up Mica's mug by mistake, as it were ... and ... we all spotted that and jumped up, yes. .: Nobby speeded up, the really steep fibs now successfully negotiated,'. .. and that's how the table got knocked over ... 'cos,' and here Nobby's face assumed an expression of virtuous imbecility that was really quite frightening to see, `he'd have really hurt himself if he'd taken a swig of troll coffee, sir.' Inside, Vimes sighed. As stupid lame excuses went, it wasn't actually a bad one. For one thing it had the virtue of being completely unbelievable. No dwarf would come close to picking up a mug of troll espresso, which was a molten chemical stew with rust sprinkled on the top. Everyone knew this, just as everyone knew that Vimes could see that Brakenshield was holding an axe over his head and Constable Bluejohn was still frozen in the act of wrenching a club off Mica. And everyone knew, too, that Vimes was in the mood to sack the first bloody idiot to make a wrong move and, probably, anyone standing near him. `That's what it was, was it?' said Vimes. `So it wasn't, as it might be, someone making a nasty remark about a fellow officer and others of his race, perhaps? Some little bit of stupidity to add to the mess of it that's floating around the streets right now?' Òh, nothing like that, sir,' said Nobby. `Just one of them ... things. `Nearly a nasty accident, was it?' said Vimes. `Yessir!' `Well, we don't want any nasty accidents, do we, Nobby ... 'No sir!' `None of us want nasty accidents, I expect,' said Vimes, looking around the room. Some of the constables, he was grimly glad to see, were sweating with the effort of not moving. Ànd it's so easy to have em, when your mind isn't firmly on the job. Understood?' There was a general muttering. Ì can't hear you!' This time there were audible riffs on the theme of `Yessir!' `Right,' snapped Vimes. `Now get out there and keep the peace, because as sure as hell you won't do it in here!' He directed a special glare at Constables Brakenshield and Mica, and strode back to the main office, where he almost bumped into Sergeant Angua. `Sorry, sir, I was just fetching-' she began. Ì sorted it out, don't worry,' said Vimes. `But it was that close.' `Some of the dwarfs are really on edge, sir. I can smell it,' said Angua. `You and Fred Colon,' said Vimes. Ì don't think it's just the Hamcrusher thing, sir. It's something ... dwarfish.' `Well, I can't beat it out of them. And just when the day couldn't get any worse, I've got to interview a damned vampire.' Too late Vimes saw the urgent look in Angua's eyes. Àh ... I think that would be me,' said a small voice behind him. Fred Colon and Nobby Nobbs, having been rousted from their lengthy coffee break, proceeded gently up Broadway, giving the of uniform an airing. What with one thing and another, it was probably a good idea not to be back at the Yard for a while. They walked like men who had all day. They did have all day. They had chosen this particular street because it was busy and wide and you didn't get too many trolls and dwarfs in this part of town. The reasoning was faultless: in lots of areas, right now, dwarfs or trolls were wandering around in groups or, alternatively, staying still in groups in case any of those wandering bastards tried any trouble in this neighbourhood. There had been little flare-ups for weeks. In these areas, Nobby and Fred considered, there wasn't much peace, so it was a waste of effort to keep what little was left of it, right? You wouldn't try keeping sheep in places where all the sheep got eaten by wolves, right? It stood to reason. It would look silly. Whereas in big streets like Broadway there was lots of peace which, obviously, needed keeping. Common sense told them this was true. It was as plain as the nose on your face, and especially the one on Nobby's face. `Bad business,' said Colon, as they strolled. Ì've never seen the dwarfs like this.' Ìt always gets tricky, sarge, just before Koom Valley Day,' Nobby observed. `Yeah, but Hamcrusher's really got them on the boil and no mistake.' Colon removed his helmet and wiped his brow. Ì told Sam about my water and he was impressed.' `Well, he would be,' Nobby agreed. Ìt would impress anyone.' Colon tapped his nose. `There's a storm coming, Nobby.' `Not a cloud in the sky, sarge,' Nobby observed. `Figure of speech, Nobby, figure of speech.' Colon sighed, and glanced sideways at his friend. When he continued, it was in the hesitant tones of a man with something on his mind. Às a matter of fact, Nobby, there was another matter about which, per say, I wanted to speak to you about, man to- ' there was only the tiniest hesitation, `-man: `Yes, sarge?' `Now you know, Nobby, that I've always taken a pers'nal interest in your moral well-being, what with you havin' no dad to put your feet on the proper path. .:Colon managed. `That's right, sarge. I would have strayed no end if you hadn't,' said Nobby virtuously. `Well, you know you was telling me about that girl you're goin' out with, what was her name, now...' 'Tawneee, sarge?' `That's the ... bunny. The one you said worked in a club, right?' `That's right. Is there a problem, sarge?' said Nobby anxiously. `Not as such. But when you was on your day off last week me an' Constable Jolson got called into the Pink PussyCat Club, Nobby. You know? There's pole-dancing and table-dancing and stuff of that nature? And you know of Mrs Spudding what lives in New Cobblers?' Òl' Mrs Spudding with the wooden teeth, sarge?' `The very same, Nobby,' said Colon magisterially. `She does the cleaning in there. And it appears that when she come in at eight o'clock in the morning ae-em, with no one else about, Nobby, well, I hardly like to say this, but it appears she took it into her head to have a twirl on the pole.' They shared a moment of silence as Nobby ran this image in the cinema of his imagination and hastily consigned much of it to the cutting-room floor. `But she must be seventy-five, sarge!' he said, staring at nothing in fascinated horror. À girl can dream, Nobby, a girl can dream. O'course, she forgot she wasn't as limber as she used to be, plus she got her foot caught in her long drawers and panicked when her dress fell over her head. She was in a bad way when the manager came in, having been upside down for three hours with her false teeth fallen out on the floor. Wouldn't let go of the pole, too. Not a pretty sight - I trust I do not have to draw you a picture. Come the finish, Precious Jolson had to rip the pole out top and bottom and we slid her off. That girl's got the muscles of a troll, Nobby, I'll swear it. And then, Nobby, when we was bringing her round behind the scenes this young lady wearing two sequins and a bootlace comes up and says she's a friend of yours! I did not know where to put my face!' `You're not supposed to put it anywhere, sarge. They throw you out for that sort of thing,' said Nobby. `You never told me she was a pole-dancer, Nobby!' Fred wailed. `Don't say it like that, sarge: Nobby sounded a little hurt. `This is modern times. And she's got class, Tawneee has. She even brings her own pole. No hanky-panky.' `But, I mean ... showin' her body off in lewd ways, Nobby! Dancing around without her vest and practic'ly no drawers on. Is that any way to behave?' Nobby considered this deep metaphysical question from various angles. Èr ... yes?' he ventured. Ànyway, I thought you were still walking out with Verity Pushpram? That's a handy little seafood stall she runs,' Colon said, sounding as though he was pleading a case. Òh, Hammerhead's a nice girl if you catch her on a good day, sarge,' Nobby conceded. `You mean those days when she doesn't tell you to bugger off and chase you down the street throwing crabs at you?' Èxactly those days, sarge. But good or bad, you can never get rid of the smell of fish. And her eyes are too far apart. I mean, it's hard to have a relationship with a girl who can't see you if you stand right in front of her.' Ì shouldn't think Tawneee can see you if you're up close, either!' Colon burst out. `She's nearly six feet tall and she's got a bosom like ... well, she's a big girl, Nobby.' Fred Colon was at a loss. Nobby Nobbs and a dancer with big hair, a big smile and ... general bigitigy? Look upon this picture, and on this! It did your head in, it really did. He struggled on. `She told me, Nobby, that she's been Miss May on the centrefold of Girls, Giggles and Garters! Well, I mean. .. !' `What do you mean, sarge? Anyway, she wasn't just Miss May, she was the first week in June as well,' Nobby pointed out. Ìt was the only way they had room.' Èrr, well, I ask you,' Fred floundered, ìs a girl who displays her body for money the right kind of wife for a copper? Ask yourself that!' For the second time in five minutes, what passed for Nobby's face wrinkled up in deep thought. Ìs this a trick question, sarge?' he said, at last. ''Cos I know for a fact that Haddock has got that picture pinned up in his locker and every time he opens it he goes "Phwoar, will you look at th-" ' `How did you meet her, anyway?' said Colon quickly. `What? Oh, our eyes met when I shoved an IOU in her garter, sarge,' said Nobby happily. Ànd ... she hadn't just been hit on the head, or something?' Ì don't think so, sarge: `She's not ... ill, is she?' said Fred Colon, exploring every likelihood. `No, sarge!' Àre you sure?' `She says perhaps we're two halves of the same soul, sarge,' said Nobby dreamily. Colon stopped with one foot raised above the pavement. He stared at nothing, his lips moving. `Sarge?' said Nobby, puzzled by this. `Yeah ... yeah,' said Colon, more or less to himself. `Yeah. I can see that. Not the same stuff in each half, obviously. Sort of ... sieved. . The foot landed. Ì say!' It was more of a bleat than a cry, and it came from the door of the Royal Art Museum. A tall, thin figure was beckoning to the watchmen, who strolled over. `Yessir?' said Colon, touching his helmet. `We've had a burglareah, officer!' `Burglar rear?' said Nobby. Òh dear, sir,' said Colon, putting a warning hand on the corporal's shoulders. Ànything taken?' `Years. I rather think that's hwhy it was a burglareah, you see?' said the man. He had the attitude of a preoccupied chicken, but Fred Colon was impressed. You could barely understand the man, he was that posh. It was not so much speech as modulated yawning. Ì'm Sir Reynold Stitched, curator of Fine Art, and I was hwalking through the Long Gallereah and ... oh, dear, they took the Rascal!' The man looked at two blank faces. 'Methodia Rascal?' he tried. `The Battle of Koom Valley? It is a priceless work of art!' Colon hitched up his stomach. Àh,' he said, `that's serious. We'd better take a look at it. Er ... I mean, the locale where it was situated in. `Years, years, of course,' said Sir Reynold. `Do come this hway. I am given to understand that the modern hWatch can learn a lot just by looking at the place where a thing was, is that not so?' `Like, that it's gone?' said Nobby. Òh, years. We're good at that.' Èr ... quite so,' said Sir Reynold. `Do come this way.' The watchmen followed. They had been inside the museum before, of course. Most citizens had, on days when no better entertainment presented itself. Under the governance of Lord Vetinari it had hosted fewer modern exhibitions, since his lordship held Views, but a gentle stroll amongst the ancient tapestries and rather brown and dusty paintings was a pleasant way of spending an afternoon. Plus, it was always nice to look at the pictures of big pink women with no clothes on. Nobby was having a problem. `Here, sarge, what's he going on about?' he whispered. Ìt sounds like he's yawning all the time. What's a galler rear?' À gallery, Nobby. That's very high-class talkin', that is.' Ì can hardly understand him!' `Shows it's high class, Nobby. It wouldn't be much good if people like you could understand, right?' `Good point, sarge,' Nobby conceded. Ì hadn't thought of that.' `You found it missing this morning, sir?' said Colon, as they trailed after the curator into a gallery still littered with ladders and dust sheets. `Years indeed! 'So it was stolen last night, then?' Sir Reynold hesitated. Èr ... not necessarileah, I'm afraid. We have been refurbishing the Long Gallereah. The picture was too big to move, of course, so hwe've had it covered in heavy dust sheets for the past month. But when we took them down this morning, there hwas only the frame! Observe!' The Rascal occupied - or rather, had occupied - a frame some ten feet high and fifty feet long which, as such, was pretty close to being a work of art in its own right. It was still there, framing nothing but uneven, dusty plaster. Ì suppose some rich private collector has it now,' Sir Reynold moaned. `But how could he keep it a secret? The canvas is one of the most recognizable paintings in the world! Every civilized person would spot it in an instant!' `What did it look like?' said Fred Colon. Sir Reynold performed that downshift of assumptions that was the normal response to any conversation with Ankh-Morpork's Finest. Ì can probableah find you a copy,' he said weakly. `But the original is fifty feet long! Have you never seen it? 'Well, I remember being brought to see it when I was a kiddie, but it's a bit long, really. You can't really see it, anyway. I mean, by the time you get to the other end you've forgotten what was happening back up the line, as it were.' Àlas, that is regrettableah true, sergeant,' said Sir Reynold. Ànd hwhat is so vexing is that the hwhole point of this refurbishment hwas to build a special circular room to hold the Rascal. His ideah, you know, hwas that the viewer should be hwholly encircled by the mural and feel right in the thick of the action, as it hwere. You hwould be there in Koom Valleah! He called it panoscopic art. Say hwhat you like about the current interest, but the extra visitors hwould have made it possible to display the picture as hwe believe he intended it to be displayed. And now this!' Ìf you were going to move it, why didn't you just take it down and put it away nice and safe, sir?' `You mean roll it up?' said Sir Reynold, horrified. `That could cause such a lot of damage. Oh, the horror! No, hwe had a very careful exercise planned for next hweek, to be done with the utmost diligence: He shuddered. `hWhen I think of someone just hacking it out of the frame I feel quite faint-' `Hey, this must be a clue, sarge!' said Nobby, who had returned to his default activity of mooching about and poking at things to see if they were valuable. `Look, someone dumped a load of stinking ol rubbish here!' He'd wandered across to a plinth which did, indeed, appear to be piled high with rags. `Don't touch that, please!' said Sir Reynold, rushing over. `That's Don't Talk to Me About Mondays! It's Daniellarina Pouter's most controversial hwork! You didn't move anything, did you?' he added nervously. Ìt's literalleah priceless and she's got a sharp tongue on her!' Ìt's only a lot of old rubbish,' Nobby protested, backing away. Àrt is greater than the sum of its mere mechanical components, corporal,' said the curator. `Surely you hwould not say that Caravati's Three Large Pink hWomen and One Piece of Gauze is just, ahem, "a lot of old pigment"? 'What about this one, then?' said Nobby, pointing to the adjacent plinth. Ìt's just a big stake with a nail in it! Is this art, too?' `Freedom? If it hwas ever on the market, it hwould probableah fetch thirty thousand dollars,' said Sir Reynold. `For a bit of wood with a nail in it?' said Fred Colon. `Who did it?' Àfter he viewed Don't Talk to Me About Mondays! Lord Vetinari graciousleah had Ms Pouter nailed to the stake by her ear,' said Sir Reynold. `However, she did manage to pull free during the afternoon.' Ì bet she was mad!' said Nobby. `Not after she hwon several awards for it. I believe she's planning to nail herself to several other things. It could be a very exciting exhibition.' `Tell you what, then, sir,' said Nobby helpfully. `Why don't you leave the ol big frame where it is and give it a new name, like Art Theft? 'No,' said Sir Reynold coldly. `That would be foolish.' Shaking his head at the way of the world, Fred Colon walked right up to the wall so cruelly, or cruelleah, denuded of its covering. The painting had been crudely cut from its frame. Sergeant Colon was not a high-speed thinker, but that point struck him as odd. If you've got a month to pinch a painting, why botch the job? Fred had a copper's view of humanity that differed in some respects from that of the curator. Never say that people wouldn't do something, no matter how strange it was. Probably there were some mad rich people out there who would buy the painting, even if it meant only ever viewing it in the privacy of their own mansion. People could be like that. In fact, knowing that this was their big secret probably gave them a lovely tight little shiver inside. But the thieves had slashed the painting out as if they didn't care about making a sale. There were several ragged inches all along the- Just a moment ... Fred stood back. A Clue. There it was, right there. He got a lovely tight little shiver inside. `This painting,' he declared, `this painting ... this painting which isn't here, I mean, obviously, was stolen by a ... troll.' `My goodness, how can you tell?' said Sir Reynold. Ì'm very glad you asked me that question, sir,' said Fred Colon, who was. Ì have detected, you see, that the top of the circular muriel was cut really close to the frame.' He pointed. `Now, your troll would easily be able to reach up with his knife, right, and cut along the edge of the frame at the top and down a bit on each side, see? But your average troll don't bend that well, so when it came to cutting along the bottom, right, he made a bit of a mess of the job and left it all jagged. Plus, only a troll could carry it away. A stair carpet's bad enough, and a rolled-up muriel would be a lot heavier than that!' He beamed. `Well done, sergeant!' said the curator. `Good thinking, Fred,' said Nobby. `Thank you, corporal,' said Fred Colon generously. Òr it could have been a couple of dwarfs with a stepladder,' Nobby went on cheerfully. `The decorators have left a few behind. They're all over the place.' Fred Colon sighed. `Y'see, Nobby' he said, ìt's comments like that, made in front of a member of the public, that are the reason why I'm a sergeant and you ain't. If it was dwarfs, it would be neat all round, obviously. Is this place locked up at night, Mr Sir Reynold?' Òf course! Not just locked, but barred! Old John is meticulous about it. And he lives in the attics, so he can make this place like a fortress.' `This'd be the caretaker?' said Fred. `We'll need to talk to him.' `Certainly you may,' said Sir Reynold nervously. `Now, I think hwe may have some details about the painting in our storeroom. I'll, er, just go and, er, find them . . He hurried off towards a small doorway. Ì wonder how they got it out?' said Nobby, when they were alone. `Who says they did?' said Fred Colon. `Big place like this, full of attics and cellars and odd corners, well, why not stash it away and wait a while? You get in as a customer one day, see, hide under a sheet, take out the muriel in the night, hide it somewhere, then go out with the customers next day. Simple, eh?' He beamed at Nobby. `You've got to outsmart the criminal mind, see?' Òr they could've just smashed down a door and pushed off with the muriel in the middle of the night,' said Nobby. `Why mess about with a cunning plan when a simple one will do?' Fred sighed. Ì can see this is going to be a complicated case, Nobby.' `You should ask Vimesy if we can have it, then,' said Nobby. Ì mean, we already know the facts, right?' Hovering in the air, unsaid, was: Where would you like to be in the next few days? Out there where the axes and clubs are likely to be flying, or in here searching all the attics and cellars very, very carefully? Think about it. And it wouldn't be cowardice, right? 'cos a famous muriel like this is bound to be part of our national heritage, right? Even if it is just a painting of a load of dwarfs and trolls having a scrap. Ì think I will do a proper report and suggest to Mister Vimes that maybe we should handle this one,' said Fred Colon slowly. Ìt needs the attention of mature officers. D'you know much about art, Nobby?' Ìf necessary, sarge.' Òh, come on, Nobby!' `What? Tawneee says what she does is Art, sarge. And she wears more clothes than a lot of the women on the walls around here, so why be sniffy about it?' `Yeah, but. ..' Fred Colon hesitated here. He knew in his heart that spinning upside down around a pole wearing a costume you could floss with definitely was not Art, and being painted lying on a bed wearing nothing but a smile and a small bunch of grapes was good solid Art, but putting your finger on why this was the case was a bit tricky. `No urns,' he said at last. `What urns?' said Nobby. `Nude women are only Art if there's an urn in it,' said Fred Colon. This sounded a bit weak even to him, so he added, òr a plinth. Both is best, o'course. It's a secret sign, see, that they put in to say that it's Art and okay to look at.' `What about a potted plant?' `That's okay if it's in an urn. `What about if it's not got an urn or a plinth or a potted plant?' said Nobby. `Have you one in mind, Nobby?' said Colon suspiciously. `Yes, The Goddess Anoia [1] Arising from the Cutlery,' said Nobby. `They've got it here. It was painted by a bloke with three i's in his name, which sounds pretty artistic to me.' `The number of i's is important, Nobby,' said Sergeant Colon gravely, `but in these situations you have to ask yourself: where's the cherub? If there's a little fat pink kid holding a mirror or a fan or similar, then it's still okay. Even if he's grinning. Obviously you can't get urns everywhere.' Àll right, but supposing-' Nobby began. The distant door opened, and Sir Reynold came hurrying across the marble floor with a book under his arm. Àh, I'm afraid there is no copy of the painting; he said. `Clearly, a copy that did it justice hwould be quite hard to make. But, er, this rather sensationalist treatise has many detailed sketches, at least. These days every visitor seems to have a copy, of course. Did you know that more than two thousand, four hundred and ninety individual dwarfs and trolls can be identified by armour or body markings in the original picture? It drove Rascal quite mad, poor fellow. It took him sixteen years to complete!' `That's nothing,' said Nobby cheerfully. `Fred here hasn't finished painting his kitchen yet, and he started twenty years ago!' `Thank you for that, Nobby,' said Colon, coldly. He took the book from the curator. The title was The Koom Valley Codex. `Mad how?' he said. [1] Anoia is the Ankh-Morpork Goddess of Things That Get Stuck in Drawers. `Well, he neglected his other work, you see. He was constantly moving his lodgings because he couldn't pay the rent and he had to drag that huge canvas with him. Imagine! He had to beg for paints in the street, which took up a lot of his time, since not many people have a tube of Burnt Umber on them. He said it talked to him, too. You'll find it all in there. Rather dramatized, I fear.' `The painting talked to him?' Sir Reynold made a face. `We believe that's what he meant. We don't really know. He did not have any friends. He was convinced that if he went to sleep at night he would turn into a chicken. He'd leave little notes for himself saying, "You are not a chicken", although sometimes he thought he was lying. The general belief is that he concentrated so much on the painting that it gave him some kind of brain fever. Towards the end he hwas sure he hwas losing his mind. He said he could hearh the battle.' `How do you know that, sir?' said Fred Colon. `You said he didn't have any friends.' Àh, the incisive intellect of the policeman!' said Sir Reynold, smiling. `He left notes to himself, sergeant. All the time. Hwhen his last landlady entered his room, she found many hundreds of them, stuffed in old chicken-feed sacks. Fortunately, she couldn't read, and since she'd fixed in her mind the ideah that the lodger was some sort of genius and therefore might have something she could sell, she called in a neighbour, a Miss Adelina Happily, hwho painted watercolours, and Miss Happily called in a friend hwho framed pictures, who hurriedly summoned Ephraim Dowster, the noted landscape artist. Scholars have puzzled over the notes ever since, seeking some insight into the poor man's tortured mind. They are not in order, you see. Some are very ... odd.' Òdder than "You are not a chicken"?' said Fred. `Yes,' said Sir Reynold. Òh, there is stuff about voices, omens, ghosts ... He also hwrote his journal on random pieces of paper, you know, and never gave any indication as to the date or hwhere he hwas staying, in case the chicken found him. And he used very guarded language, because he didn't hwant the chicken to find out.' `Sorry, I thought you said he thought he was the chick-' Colon began. 'hWho can fathom the thought processes of the sadleah disturbed, sergeant?' said Sir Reynold wearily. 'Er ... and does the painting talk?' said Nobby Nobbs. `Stranger things have happened, right?' Àhah, no,' said Sir Reynold. Àt least, not in my time. Ever since that book was reprinted there's been a guard in here during visiting hours and he says it has never uttered a word. Certainly it has always fascinated people and there have always been stories about hidden treasure there. That is hwhy the book has been republished. People love a mystereah, don't they?' `Not us,' said Fred Colon. Ì don't even know what a mister rear is,' said Nobby, leafing through the Codex. `Here, I heard about this book. My friend Dave who runs the stamp shop says there's this story about a dwarf, right, who turned up in this town near Koom Valley, more'n two weeks after the battle, an' he was all injured 'cos he'd been ambushed by trolls, an' starvin, right, an' no one knew much dwarfish but it was like he wanted them to follow him and he kept sayin' this word over and over again which turned out, right, to be dwarfish for "treasure"; right, only when they followed him back to the valley, right, he died on the way an' they never found nothin, an' then this artist bloke found some ... thing in Koom Valley and hid the place where he'd found it in this painting, but it drove him bananas. Like it was haunted, Dave said. He said the government hushed it up., 'Yeah, but your mate Dave says the government always hushes things up, Nobby,' said Fred. `Well, they do.' Èxcept he always gets to hear about 'em, and he never gets hushed up,' said Fred. Ì know you like to point the finger of scoff, sarge, but there's a lot goes on that we don't know about.' `Like what, exactly?' Colon retorted. `Name me one thing that's going on that you don't know about. There - you can't, can you?' Sir Reynold cleared his throat. `That is certainly one of the theoreahs,' he said, speaking carefully as people tended to after hearing the Colon-Nobbs Brains Trust crossing purposes. `Regrettably, Methodia Rascal's notes support just about any theoreah one may prefer. The current populariteah of the painting is, I suspect, because the book does indeed revisit the old story that there's some huge secret hidden in the painting.' Òh?' said Fred Colon, perking up. `What kind of secret? 'I have no idea. The landscape hwas painted in great detail. A pointer to a secret cave, perhaps? Something about the positioning of some of the combatants? There are all kinds of theoreahs. Rather strange people come along with tape measures and rather hworryingly intent expressions, but I don't think they ever find anything.' `Perhaps one of them pinched it?' Nobby suggested. Ì doubt it. They tend to be rather furtive individuals who bring sandwiches and a flask and stay here all day. The sort of people who love anagrams and secret signs and have little theoreahs and pimples. Probably quite harmless except to one another. Besides, hwhy steal it? We like people to take an interest in it. I don't think that kind of person would want to take it home, because it would be too large to fit under the bed. Did you know that Rascal wrote that sometimes in the night he heard screams? The noise of battle, one is forced to assume. So sad: `Not something you'd want over the fireplace, then,' said Fred Colon. `Precisely, sergeant. Even if it hwere possible to have a fireplace fifty feet long.' `Thank you, sir. One other thing, though. How many doors are there into this place?' `Three,' said Sir Reynold promptly. `But two are always locked.' `But if the troll-' `-or the dwarfs,' said Nobby. Òr, as my junior colleague points out, the dwarfs tried to get it out-' `Gargoyles,' said Sir Reynold proudly. `Two hwatch the main door constantleah from the building opposite, and there's one each on the other doors. And there are staff on during the day, of course.' `This may sound a silly question, sir, but have you looked everywhere?' Ì've had the staff searching all morning, sergeant. It would be a very big and very heavy roll. This place is full of odd corners, but it would be very obvious. Colon saluted. `Thank you, sir. We'll just have a look around, if you don't mind: `Yes - for urns,' said Nobby Nobbs. Vimes eased himself into his chair and looked at the damned vampire. She could have passed for sixteen; it was certainly hard to believe that she was not a lot younger than Vimes. She had short hair, which Vimes had never seen on a vampire before, and looked, if not like a boy, then like a girl who wouldn't mind passing for one. `Sorry about the ... remark down there,' he said. Ìt's not been a good week and it's getting worse by the hour.' `You don't have to be frightened,' said Sally. Ìf it's any help, I don't like this any more than you do.' Ì am not frightened,' said Vimes sharply. `Sorry, Mister Vimes. You smell frightened. Not badly,' Sally added. `But just a bit. And your heart is beating faster. I am sorry if I have offended. I was just trying to put you at your ease.' Vimes leaned back. `Don't try to put me at my ease, Miss von Humpeding,' he said. Ìt makes me nervous when people do that. It's not as though I have any ease to be put at. And do not comment on my smell either, thank you. Oh, and it's Commander Vimes or sir, understand? Not Mister Vimes.' Ànd I would prefer to be called Sally' said the vampire. They looked at each other, both aware that this was not going well, both uncertain that they could make it go any better. `So ... Sally ... you want to be a copper?' said Vimes. À policeman? Yes.' Àny history of policing in your family?' said Vimes. It was a standard opening question. It always helped if they'd inherited some idea about coppering. `No, just the throat-biting,' said Sally. There was another pause. Vimes sighed. `Look, I just want to know one thing,' he said. `Did John Not-A-Vampire-At-All Smith and Doreen Winkings put you up to this?' `No!' said Sally. Ì approached them. And if it's any help to you, I didn't think there'd be all this fuss, either.' Vimes looked surprised. `But you applied to join,' he said. `Yes, but I don't see why there has to be all this ... interest!' `Don't blame me. That was your League of Temperance.' `Really? Your Lord Vetinari was quoted in the newspaper,' said Sally. Àll that stuff about the lack of species discrimination being in the finest traditions of the Watch.' 'Hah!' said Vimes. `Well, it's true that a copper's a copper as far as I'm concerned, but the fine traditions of the Watch, Miss von Humpeding, largely consist of finding somewhere out of the rain, mumping for free beer round the backs of pubs, and always keeping two notebooks!' `You don't want me, then?' said Sally. Ì thought you needed all the recruits you could get. Look, I'm probably stronger than anyone on your payroll who isn't a troll, I'm quite clever, I don't mind hard work and I've got excellent night vision. I can be useful. I want to be useful: `Can you turn into a bat?' She looked shocked. `What? What kind of question is that to ask me?' `Probably amongst the less tricky ones,' said Vimes. `Besides, it might be useful. Can you?' `No. Òh, well, never mind-' Ì can turn into a lot of bats,' said Sally. Òne bat is hard to do because you have to deal with changes in body mass, and you can't do that if you've been Reformed for a while. Anyway, it gives me a headache.' `What was your last job?' `Didn't have one. I was a musician.' Vimes brightened up. `Really? Some of the lads have been talking about setting up a Watch band.' `Could they use a cello?' `Probably not.' Vimes drummed his fingers on the desk. Well, she hadn't gone for his throat yet, had she? That was the problem, of course. Vampires were fine right up until the point where, suddenly, they weren't. But, in truth, right now, he had to admit it: he needed anyone who could stand upright and finish a sentence. This damn business was taking its toll. He needed men out there all the time, just to keep the lid on things. Oh, right now it was just scuffles and stone-throwing and breaking windows and running away, but all that stuff added up, like snowflakes on an avalanche slope. People needed to see coppers at a time like this. They gave the illusion that the whole world hadn't gone insane. And the Temperance League were pretty good and very supportive of their members. It was in the interests of them all that no one found themselves standing in a strange bedroom with an embarrassingly full feeling. They'd be watching her ... `We've got no room for passengers in the Watch,' he said. `We're too pressed right now to give you any more than what is laughingly known as on-the-job training, but you'll be on the streets from day one ... Er, how are you with the daylight thing?' Ì'm fine with long sleeves and a wide brim. I carry the kit, anyway. Vimes nodded. A small dustpan and brush, a phial of animal blood and a card saying: Help, I have crumbled and I can't get up. Please sweep me into a heap and crush vial. I am a Black Ribboner and will not harm you. Thanking you in advance. His fingers rattled on the desktop again. She returned his stare. Àll right, you're in,' Vimes said at last. Òn probation, to start with. Everyone starts that way. Sort out the paperwork with Sergeant Littlebottom downstairs, report to Sergeant Detritus for your gear and orientation lecture and try not to laugh. And now you've got what you want, and we're not being official ... tell me why.' `Pardon?' said Sally. À vampire wanting to be a copper?' said Vimes, leaning back in his chair. Ì can't quite make that fit, "Sally".' Ì thought it would be an interesting job in the fresh air which would offer opportunities to help people, Commander Vimes.' `Hmm,' said Vimes. Ìf you can say that without smiling you might make a copper after all. Welcome to the job, lance-constable. I hope you have-' The door slammed. Captain Carrot took two steps into the room, saw Sally and hesitated. 'Lance- Constable von Humpeding has just joined us, captain,' said Vimes. Èr ... fine ... hello, miss,' said Carrot quickly, and turned to Vimes. `Sir, someone's killed Hamcrusher!' Ankh-Morpork's Finest strolled back down towards the Yard. `What I'd do, said Nobby, ìs cut the painting up into little bits, like, oh, a few inches across?' `That's diamonds, Nobby. It's how you get rid of stolen diamonds.' Àll right, then, how about this one? You cut the muriel up into bits the size of ordinary paintings, okay? Then you paint a painting on the other side of each one, an' put 'em in frames, an' leave 'em around the place. No one will notice extra paintings, right? An' then you can go an' pinch 'em when the fuss has died down.' Ànd how do you get them out, Nobby?' `Well, first you get some glue, and a really long stick, and-' Fred Colon shook his head. `Can't see it happening, Nobby.' Àll right, then, you get some paint that's the same colour as the walls, and you glue the painting to the wall somewhere it'll fit, and you paint over it with your wall paint so it looks just like wall.' `Got a convenient bit of wall in mind, then?' `How about inside the frame that's there already, sarge?' `Bloody hell, Nobby, that's clever,' said Fred, stopping dead. `Thank you, sarge. That means a lot, coming from you.' `But you've still got to get it out, Nobby.' `Remember all those dust sheets, sarge? I bet in a few weeks' time a couple of blokes in overalls will be able to walk out of the place with a big white roll under their arms and no one'd think twice about it, 'cos they'd, like, be thinkin' the muriel had been pinched weeks before.' There were a few moments of silence before Sergeant Colon said, in a hushed voice: `That's a very dangerous mind you got there, Nobby. Very dangerous indeed. How'd you get the new paint off, though?' Òh, that's easy,' said Nobby. Ànd I know where to get some painters' aprons, too. `Nobby!' said Fred, shocked. Àll right, sarge. You can't blame a man for dreaming, though.' `This could be a feather in our caps, Nobby. And we could do with one now.' `Your water playing up again, sarge?' `You may laugh, Nobby, but you've only got to look around,' said Fred gloomily. Ìt's just gang fights now, but it's going to get worse, you mark my words. All this scrapping over something that happened thousands of years ago! I don't know why they don't go back to where they came from if they want to do that!' `Most of 'em come from here now,' said Nobby. Fred grunted his disdain for a mere fact of geography. `War, Nobby. Huh! What is it good for?' he said. 'Dunno, sarge. Freeing slaves, maybe?' 'Absol- Well, okay.' `Defending yourself from a totalitarian aggressor?' Àll right, I'll grant you that, but-' `Saving civilization against a horde of-' Ìt doesn't do any good in the long run is what I'm saying, Nobby, if you'd listen for five seconds together,' said Fred Colon sharply. `Yeah, but in the long run what does, sarge?' `Say that again paying attention to every word, will you?' said Vimes. `He's dead, sir. Hamcrusher is dead. The dwarfs are sure of it., Vimes stared at his captain. Then he glanced at Sally and said, Ì gave you an order, Lance-Constable Humpeding. Go and get joined up!' When the girl had hurried out, he said, Ì hope you're sure about it as well, captain . . Ìt's spreading through the dwarfs like, like-' Carrot began. Àlcohol?' Vimes suggested. `Very fast, anyway,' Carrot conceded. `Last night, they say. A troll got into his place in Treacle Street and beat him to death. I heard some of the lads talking about it.' `Carrot, wouldn't we know if something like that had happened?' said Vimes, but in the theatre of his mind Angua and Fred Colon uttered their cassandraic warnings again. The dwarfs knew something. The dwarfs were worried. `Don't we, sir?' said Carrot. Ì mean, I've just told you.' Ì mean, why aren't his people shouting it in the streets? Political assassination and all that sort of thing? Shouldn't they be screaming bloody murder? Who told you this?' `Constable Ironbender and Corporal Ringfounder, sir. They're steady lads. Ringfounder's up for sergeant soon. Er ... there was something else, sir. I did ask them why we hadn't heard officially, and Ironbender said ... you won't like this, sir ... he said the Watch wasn't to be told.' Carrot watched Vimes carefully. It was hard to see the change of expression on the commander's face, but certain small muscles set firmly. Òn whose orders?' said Vimes. `Someone called Ardent, apparently. He's Hamcrusher's ... interpreter, I suppose you could say. He says it's dwarf business. `But this is Ankh-Morpork, captain. And murder is Murder.' `Yes, sir.' Ànd we are the City Watch,' Vimes went on. Ìt says so on the door.' Àctually it mostly says "Copers are Barstuds" on the door at the moment, but I've got someone scrubbing it off,' said Carrot. Ànd 'That means if anyone gets murdered, we're responsible,' said Vimes. Ì know what you mean, sir,' said Carrot carefully. `Does Vetinari know?' Ì can't imagine that he doesn't.' `Me neither.' Vimes thought for a moment. `What about the Times? There's plenty of dwarfs working there. Ì'd be surprised if they passed it on to humans, sir. I only got to hear about it because I'm a dwarf and Ringfounder really wants to make sergeant and frankly I overheard them, but I doubt if the printing dwarfs would mention it to the editor.' Àre you telling me, captain, that dwarfs in the Watch would keep a murder secret?' Carrot looked shocked. Òh no, sir!' `Good! 'They'd just keep it secret from humans. Sorry, sir. The important thing is not to shout at this point, Vimes told himself. Do not ... what do they call it ... go spare? Treat this as a learning exercise. Find out why the world is not as you thought it was. Assemble the facts, digest the information, consider the implications. Then go spare. But with precision. `Dwarfs have always been law-abiding citizens, captain,' he said. `They even pay their taxes. Suddenly they think it's okay not to report a possible murder?' Carrot could see the steely glint in Vimes's eyes. `Well, the fact is-'he began. `Yes?' `You see, Hamcrusher is a deep-down dwarf, sir. I mean really deep down. Hates coming to the surface. They say he lives at subsub-basement level. ..' Ì know all that. So?' `So how far down does our jurisdiction go, sir?' said Carrot. `What? As far down as we like!' Èr, does it say that anywhere, sir? Most of the dwarfs here are from Copperhead and Llamedos and Uberwald,' said Carrot. `Those places have surface laws and underground laws. I know it's not the same here but ... well, it's how they see the world. And of course Hamcrusher's dwarfs are all deepdowners, and you know how ordinary dwarfs think about them.' They come bloody close to worshipping them, Vimes thought, pinching the bridge of his nose and shutting his eyes. It just gets worse and worse. Àll right,' he said. `But this is Ankh-Morpork and we have our own laws. There can be no harm in us just checking up on the health of brother Hamcrusher, can there? We can knock on the door, can't we? Say we've got good reason to ask? I know it's only a rumour, but if enough people believe a rumour like that we will not be able to keep a lid on it.' `Good idea, sir.' `Go and tell Angua I want her along. And ... oh, Haddock. And Ringfounder, maybe. You come too, of course.' Èr, not a good idea, sir. I happen to know most deep-downers are nervous about me. They believe I'm too human to be a dwarf.' `Really?' Six feet three inches in his stockinged feet, thought Vimes. Adopted and raised by dwarfs in a little dwarf mine in the mountains. His dwarfish name is Kzad-bhat, which means Head Banger. He coughed. `Why on earth should they think that, I wonder?' he said. Àll right, I know I'm ... technically human, sir, but size has traditionally never been a dwarfish definition of a dwarf. Hamcrusher's group aren't happy about me, though.' `Sorry to hear it. I'll take Cheery, then.' Àre you mad, sir? You know what they think about female dwarfs who actually admit it!' Àll right, then, I'll take Sergeant Detritus. They'll believe in him all right, won't they?' `Could be said to be a bit provocative, sir-' Carrot began doubtfully. `Detritus is an Ankh-Morpork copper, captain, just like you and me,' said Vimes. Ì suppose I'm acceptable, am I? 'Yes, sir, of course. I think you worry them, though.' Ì do? Oh: Vimes hesitated. `Well, that's good. And Detritus is an officer of the law. We've still got some law here. And as far as I'm concerned, it goes deep. All the way down.' Bloody stupid thing to say, Vimes thought five minutes later as he walked through the streets at the head of the little squad. He cursed himself for saying it. Coppers stayed alive by trickery. That's how it worked. You had your Watch Houses with the big blue lights outside, and you made certain there were always burly watchmen visible in the big public places, and you swanked around like you owned the place. But you didn't own it. It was all smoke and mirrors. You magicked a little policeman into everyone's head. You relied on people giving in, knowing the rules. But in truth a hundred well-armed people could wipe out the Watch, if they knew what they were doing. Once some madman finds out that a copper taken unawares dies just like anyone else, the spell is broken. Hamcrusher's dwarfs don't believe in the City Watch? That could turn out to be a problem. Maybe bringing a troll along was provocative, but Detritus was a citizen, gods damn it, just like everyone else. If you- 'Duddle-dum-duddle-dum-duddle-dum!' Ah, yes. No matter how bad things were, there was always room for them to get just that little bit worse ... He pulled the smart brown box out of his pocket and flipped it open. The pointy-eared face of a small green imp stared up at him with that wistful, hopeless smile which, in its various incarnations, he'd come to know and dread. `Good Morning, Insert Name Here! I am the Dis-Organizer Mark Five, "The Gooseberry"TM. How may I-' it began, speaking fast in order to get as much said as possible before the inevitable interruption. Ì swear I switched you off,' said Vimes. `You threatened me with a hammer,' said the imp accusingly, and rattled the tiny bars. `He threatens state-of-the-Craft technomancy with a hammer, everybody!' it shouted. `He doesn't even fill in the registration card! That's why I have to call him Insert Nam-' Ì thought you'd got rid of that thing, sir,' said Angua as Vimes snapped the lid shut. Ì thought it had had an ... accident.' 'Hah!' said a muffled voice from the box. 'Sybil always gets me a new one,' said Vimes, making a face. À better one. But I know this one was turned off.' The box's lid thrust upwards. Ì wake up for alarms!' the imp shrieked. `Ten colon Forty-Five Sit for Damn Portrait!' Vimes groaned. The portrait with Sir Joshua. He'd get into trouble for this. He'd already missed two sittings. But this dwarf thing was ... important. Ì won't be able to make it,' he mumbled. `Then would you like to engage the handy-to-use Bluenose tm Integrated Messenger Service?' `What does that do?' said Vimes with deep suspicion. The succession of Dis-Organizers he had owned had proved quite successful at very nearly sorting out all the problems that stemmed from owning them in the first place. Èr, basically, it means me running with a message to the nearest clacks tower really fast,' said the imp hopefully. Ànd do you come back?' said Vimes, hope also rising. Àbsolutely!' `Thank you, no,' said Vimes. `How about a game of Splong!TM, specially devised for the Mark Five?' pleaded the imp. Ì have the bats right here. No? Perhaps you would prefer the ever-popular Guess My Weight in Pigs? Or I could whistle one of your favourite tunes? My iHUM tm function enables me to remember up to one thousand five hundred of your all-time-' `You could try learning to use it, sir,' said Angua, as Vimes once again shut the lid on the protesting voice. `Did use one,' said Vimes. 'Yup. As a doorstop,' rumbled Detritus, behind him. Ì'm just not at home with technomancy, all right?' said Vimes. Ènd of discussion. Haddock, nip along to Moon Pond Lane, will you? Present my apologies to Lady Sybil, who will be at Sir Joshua's studio there. Tell her I'm very sorry, but this has come up and it needs careful handling.' Well, it does, he thought, as they headed onward. It probably needs more careful handling than I'm going to give it. Well, to hell with that. It comes to something if you have to tread carefully even to find out if there's been a murder. Treacle Street was just the kind of area the dwarfs colonized - on the edge of the less pleasant parts of town, but not all the way there. You tended to notice the dwarf outposts: a patchwork of windows testified to a two-storey house having been turned into a threestorey house while remaining exactly the same height; an excess of small ponies pulling small carts; and, of course, all the really short people wearing beards and helmets was a definite clue. Dwarfs dug down, too. It was a dwarf thing. Up here, far from the river, they could probably get to sub-basement level without being up to their necks in water. There were a lot of them out and about this morning. They weren't particularly angry, insofar as Vimes could tell when the available area of expression between eyebrows and moustache was a few square inches, but it wasn't usual to see dwarfs just standing around. They tended to be somewhere working hard, usually for one another. No, they weren't angry, but they were worried. You didn't need to see faces to sense that. Dwarfs as a whole weren't happy about newspapers, regarding such news as a lover of fine grapes would regard raisins. They got their news from other dwarfs, to ensure that it was new and fresh and full of personality, and no doubt it grew all kinds of extras in the telling. This crowd was waiting uncertainly for news that it was going to become a riot. For now, the crowd parted to let them through. The presence of Detritus caused a wake of muttering, which the troll cleverly decided not to hear. `Feel that?' said Angua, as they walked up the street. `Through your feet?' Ì don't have your senses, sergeant,' said Vimes. Ìt's a constant thud, thud, underground,' said Angua. Ì can feel the street shaking. I think it's a pump.' `Pumping out more cellars, maybe?' said Vimes. Sounds like a big undertaking. How far down could they go? he wondered. AnkhMorpork is mostly built on Ankh-Morpork, after all. There's been a city here since for ever. It wasn't just a random crowd, when you looked closely. It was also a queue, along one side of the street, moving very slowly towards a side door. They were waiting to see the grags. Please come and say the death words over my father ... Please advise me on the sale of my shop ... Please guide me in my business ... I am a long way from the bones of my grandfathers, please help me stay a dwarf... This was not the time to be d'rkza. Strictly speaking, most Ankh-Morpork dwarfs were d'rkza; it meant something likènot really a dwarf' They didn't live deep underground and come out only at night, they didn't mine metal, they let their daughters show at least a few indications of femininity, they tended to be a little slipshod when it came to some of the ceremonies. But the whiff of Koom Valley was in the air and this was no time to be mostly a dwarf. So you paid attention to the grags. They kept you on the straight seam. And, until now, that had been fine by Vimes. Up until now, though, the grags in the city had stopped short of advocating murder. He liked dwarfs. They made reliable officers, and tended to be naturally law-abiding, at least in the absence of alcohol. But they were all watching him. He could feel the pressure of their gaze. Standing around watching people was, of course, Ankh-Morpork's leading industry. The place was a net exporter of penetrating stares. But these were the wrong kind. The street felt not exactly hostile, but alien. And yet it was an Ankh-Morpork street. How could he be a stranger here? Maybe I shouldn't have brought a troll, he thought. But where does that lead? Pick your own copper from a chart? Two dwarfs were on guard outside Hamcrusher's house. They were more heavily armed than the average dwarf, insofar as that was possible, but it was probably the black leather sashes they wore that were doing the trick of keeping the mood subdued. These declared to those who recognized them that they were working for deep-down dwarfs and, as such, partook a little of the magic, mana, awe or fear that they engendered in the average, backsliding dwarf. They started to give Vimes the look of all guards everywhere, which in summary is this: the default position is that you're dead; only my patience stands in the way. But Vimes was ready for it. Any five hells you cared to name knew that he'd used it himself often enough. He countered with the aloof expression of someone who didn't notice guards. `Commander Vimes, City Watch,' he said, holding up his badge. Ì need to see Grag Hamcrusher immediately.' `He's not seeing anyone,' said one of the guards. Òh. So he is dead, then?' said Vimes. He felt the answer. He didn't even have to see Angua's little nod. The dwarfs had been dreading the question, and were sweating. To their shock and horror, and also somewhat to his own surprise, he sat down on the steps between them and pulled a packet of cheap cigars out of his pocket. Ì won't offer one to you lads because I know that you aren't allowed to smoke on duty' he said convivially. Ì don't allow my boys to do it. The only reason I can get away with it is that there's no one to tell me off, haha.' He blew a stream of blue smoke. `Now, I am, as you know, head of the City Watch. Yes?' The two dwarfs, staring straight ahead, both nodded imperceptibly. `Good,' said Vimes. Ànd that means you, that's both of you, are impeding me in the execution of my duty. That gives me, oooh, a whole range of options. The one I'm thinking of right now is summoning Constable Dorfl. He's a golem. Nothing impedes him in the execution of his duty, believe me. You'll be picking bits of that door off the floor for weeks. And I wouldn't stand in his way, if I was you. Oh, and it'd be lawful, which means that if anyone puts up a fight it gets really interesting. Look, I'm only telling you this because I've done my share of guarding over the years, and there are times when looking tough works and there are times - and this, I suggest, is one of them - when going and asking the people inside what you should do next is a very good career move.' `Can't leave our post,' said a dwarf. `Don't worry about that,' said Vimes, standing. Ì'll stand guard for you.' `You can't do that!' Vimes bent down to the dwarf's ear. Ì am Commander of the Watch,' he hissed, no longer Mr Friendly. He pointed at the cobblestones. `This is my street. I can stand where I like. You are standing on my street. It's the public highway. That means that there are about a dozen things I could arrest you for, right now. That would cause trouble, right enough, but you would be bang in the middle of it. My advice to you, one guard to another, is to hop off smartly and speak to someone highe-further up the ladder, okay?' He saw worried eyes peering out from between the rampant eyebrows and the luxuriant moustache and spotted the tiny little tells he'd come to recognize, and added: Òff you go, ma'am.' The dwarf hammered on the door. The hatch slid back. Whispering transpired. The door opened. The dwarf hurried in. The door closed. Vimes turned, took up station beside it, and stood to attention slightly more theatrically than necessary. There were one or two outbreaks of laughter. Dwarfs they might be, but in Ankh-Morpork people always wanted to see what would happen next. The remaining guard hissed, `We're not allowed to smoke on duty!' 'Oops, sorry,' said Vimes, and removed the cigar, tucking it behind his ear for later. This got a few more chuckles. Let 'em laugh, said Vimes to himself. At least they're not throwing things. The sun shone down. The crowd stood still. Sergeant Angua stared at the sky, her face carefully blank. Detritus had settled into the absolute, rock-like stillness of a troll with nothing to do right now. Only Ringfounder looked uneasy. This probably was not a good time and place to be a dwarf with a badge, Vimes thought. But why? All we've been doing in the last couple of weeks is trying to stop two bunches of idiots from killing one another. And now this. This morning was going to cost him an earful, he thought, although in fact Sybil never shouted when she told him off. She just spoke sadly, which was a lot worse. The bloody family portrait, that was the trouble. It seemed to involve an awful lot of sittings, but it was a tradition of Sybil's family and that was that. It was more or less the same portrait, every generation: the happy family group, against a panorama of their rolling acres. Vimes had no rolling acres, only aching feet, but as the inheritor of the Ramkin wealth he was, he'd learned, also the owner of Crundells, a huge stately home out in the country. He hadn't even seen it yet. Vimes didn't mind the countryside if it stayed put and didn't attack, but he liked pavement under his feet and didn't much care for being pictured as some kind of squire. So far his excuses for avoiding the interminable sittings had been reasonable, but it was a close-run thing ... More time passed. Some of the dwarfs in the crowd wandered off. Vimes didn't move, not even when he heard the hatch in the door open for a moment and then slide back. They were trying to wait him out. 'Tcha-tcha-rumptiddle-tiddle-tiddle-tiddle-tchum-chum!' Without looking down, maintaining the stolid thousand-mile stare of a guard, Vimes pulled the Dis-Organizer out of his pocket and raised it to his lips. Ì know you were turned off,' he grunted. 'Pop-Up For Alarms, remember?' said the imp. `How do I stop you doing that?' `The correct form of words is in the manual, Insert Name Here,' said the imp primly. `Where is the manual?' `You threw it away,' said the imp, full of reproach. `You always do. That's why you never use the right commands, and that is why I did not "go away and stick my head up a duck's bottom" yesterday. You have an appointment to see Lord Vetinari in half an hour.' Ì will be busy' muttered Vimes. `Would you like me to remind you again in ten minutes?' `Tell me, what part of "Stick your head up a duck's bottom" didn't you understand?' Vimes replied, and plunged the thing back into his pocket. So, it had been half an hour. Half an hour was enough. This was going to be drastic, but he'd seen the looks the dwarfs were giving Detritus. Rumour was an evil poison. As he stepped forward, ready to go and summon Dorfl and all the problems that invading this place would entail, the door opened behind him. `Commander Vimes? You may come in.' There was a dwarf in the doorway. Vimes could just make out his shape in the gloom. And for the first time he noticed the symbol chalked on the wall over the door: a circle, with a horizontal line through it. `Sergeant Angua will accompany me,' he said. The sign struck Vimes as vaguely unsettling; it seemed to be a stamp of ownership that was rather more emphatic than, for example, a little plaque saying `Mon Repos'. `The troll will stay outside,' said the figure flatly. `Sergeant Detritus will stand guard, along with Corporal Ringfounder,' said Vimes. This restatement of fact seemed to pass muster, suggesting that the dwarf probably knew a lot about iron but nothing about irony. The door opened further, and Vimes stepped inside. The hall was bare, except for a few stacked boxes, and the air smelled of-What? Stale food. Old empty houses. Sealed-up rooms. Attics. The whole house is an attic, Vimes thought. The thud, thud from below was really noticeable here. It was like a heartbeat. `This way, if you please,' said the dwarf, and ushered Vimes and Angua into a side room. Again, the only furnishings were more wooden boxes and, here and there, some well-worn shovels. `We do not often entertain. Please be patient,' said the dwarf, and backed out. The key clicked in the lock. Vimes sat down on a box. `Polite,' said Angua. Vimes put one hand to his ear and jerked a thumb towards the damp, stained plaster. She nodded, but mouthed the word `corpse' and pointed downwards. `Sure?' said Vimes. Angua tapped her nose. You couldn't argue with a werewolf's nose. Vimes leaned back against a bigger box. It was comfort itself to a man who'd learned to sleep leaning against any available wall. The plaster on the opposite wall was crumbling, green with damp and hung with dusty old spider webs. Someone, though, had scratched a symbol in it so deeply that bits of the plaster had fallen out. It was another circle, this time with two diagonal lines slashed through it. Some passion there; not what you'd expect around dwarfs. `You are taking this very well, sir,' said Angua. `You must know this is deliberate discourtesy.' `Being rude isn't against the law, sergeant.' Vimes pulled his helmet over his eyes and settled down. The little devils! Play silly buggers with me, will they? Try to wind me up, will they? Don't tell the Watch, eh? There are no no-go areas in this city. I'll see to it they find that out. Oh yes. There were more and more of the deep-downers in the city these days, although you very seldom saw them outside the dwarf areas. Even there, you didn't actually see any of them as such, you just saw their dusty black sedan chairs being muscled through the crowds by four other dwarfs. There were no windows; there was nothing outside that a deep-downer could possibly want to see. The city dwarfs regarded them with awe, respect and, it had to be said, a certain amount of embarrassment, like some honoured but slightly loopy relative. Because somewhere in the head of every city dwarf there was a little voice that said: you should live in a mine, you should be in the mountains, you shouldn't walk under open skies, you should be a real dwarf. In other words, you shouldn't really be working in your uncle's pigment and dye factory in Dolly Sisters. However, since you are, you could at least try to think like a proper dwarf. And part of that meant being guided by the deepdowners, the dwarfs' dwarfs, who live in caves miles below the surface and never see the sun. Somewhere down there in the dark was true dwarfishness. They had the knowing of it, and they could guide you ... Vimes had no problem with that at all. It made as much sense as what most humans believed, and most dwarfs were model citizens, even at two-thirds scale. But deciding that murder could be kept in the family? thought Vimes. Not on my Watch! After ten minutes the door was unlocked and another dwarf stepped inside. He was dressed as what Vimes thought of as `standard city dwarf', which meant basic helmet, leather, chain mail and battle-axe/mining pick, but hold the spiky club. He also had a black sash. He looked flustered. `Commander Vimes! What can I say? I do apologize for the way you have been treated!' I bet you do. Aloud, Vimes said, Ànd who are you?' Àpologies again! I am Helmclever, and I am the ... the nearest word is, perhaps, "daylight face"? I do those things that have to be done above ground. Do come into my office, please!' He trotted off, leaving them to follow him. The office was downstairs, in the stone-walled basement. It looked quite cosy. Crates and sacks were piled up against one wall. There wasn't much food in deep caves, after all; the simple life for dwarfs down below happened because of quite complex lives for a lot of dwarfs above. Helmclever looked like little more than a servant, making sure that his masters were fed, although he probably thought the job was rather grander than that. A curtain in the corner probably concealed a bed; dwarfs did not go in for dainty living. A desk was covered in paperwork. Beside it, on a small table, was an octagonal board covered in little playing pieces. Vimes sighed. He hated games. They made the world look too simple. Òh, do you play at all, commander?' said Helmclever, with the hungry look of a true enthusiast. Vimes knew the type, too. Show polite interest, and you'd be there all night. `Lord Vetinari does. It's never interested me,' said Vimes.[1] [1] Vimes had never got on with any game much more complex than darts. Chess in particular had always annoyed him. It was the dumb way the pawns went off and slaughtered their fellow pawns while the kings lounged about doing nothing that always got to him; if only the pawns united, maybe talked the rooks round, the whole board could've been a republic in a dozen moves. 'Helmclever's not a common dwarf name. You're not related to the Helmclevers in Tallow Lane, are you?' He'd meant it as no more than a bit of non-controversial icebreaking, but he might as well have cursed. Helmclever looked down and mumbled: Èr, yes ... but to a ... grag, even a novice, all of dwarfdom is his ... family. It would not be ... really not be. . He faltered into silence and then some other part of his brain took over. He looked up brightly. `Some coffee, perhaps? I shall fetch some. Vimes opened his mouth to say no, but didn't. Dwarfs made good coffee, and there was a smell of it wafting from the next room. Besides, the nervousness radiating off Helmclever suggested he'd been drinking a lot of it today. No harm in encouraging him to have more. It was something he told his officers: people got worried around coppers, if the officer knew his stuff, and jittery people gave too much away. While the dwarf was gone he took in more of the room, and his eye spotted the words The Koom Valley Codex on the spine of a book, half concealed in the paperwork. That bloody valley again, with added weirdness this time. Actually, Sybil had bought a copy, along with most of the reading population of the city, and had dragged him along to look at that poor man's wretched picture in the Royal Art Museum. A painting with secrets? Oh yes? And how come some mad young human artist a hundred years ago knew the secret of a battle fought thousands of years before? Sybil said that the book claimed he'd found something on the battlefield but it was haunted and voices drove him to believe he was a chicken. Or something. When the mugs were brought in, with just a little spilled on Helmclever's desk because his hand was shaking, Vimes said: Ì must see Grag Hamcrusher, sir.' Ì'm sorry, that is not possible.' The answer came out flat and level, as if the dwarf had been practising. But there was a flicker in his eyes, and Vimes glanced up at a very large grille in the wall. At this point, Angua gave a little cough. Okay, thought Vimes, someone's listening. `Mr Helm ... clever,' he said, Ì have reason to suppose that a serious crime has been committed on Ankh-Morpork soil. He added: `That is to say, under it. But Ankh-Morpork's, anyway.' Once again, Helmclever's strange calm gave him away. There was a hunted look in his eyes. Ì am sorry to hear it. How may I assist you to solve it?' Oh well, thought Vimes, I did say I don't play games. `By showing me the dead body you have downstairs,' he said. He was obscenely pleased at the way Helmclever deflated. Time to press home ... He took out his badge. `My authority, Mr Helmclever. I will search this place. I would prefer to do so with your permission.' The dwarf was trembling, with fear or anxiety or, probably, both. `You will invade our premises? You cannot! Dwarf law-' `This is Ankh-Morpork,' said Vimes. Àll the way to the top, all the way to the bottom. Invasion is not the issue. Are you really telling me I cannot search a basement? Now take me to Grag Hamcrusher or whoever is in charge! Now!' 'I - I refuse your request!' Ìt wasn't a request!' And now we reach our own little Koom Valley, Vimes thought, as he stared into Helmclever's eyes. No backing down. We both think we're right. But he's wrong! A movement made him glance down. Helmclever's trembling finger had teased out the spilled coffee into a circle. As Vimes stared, the dwarf's fingers drew two lines across the circle. He looked back up into eyes bulging with anger, fear ... and just a hint of something else ... Àh. Commander Vimes, is it?' said a figure in the doorway. It might have been Lord Vetinari speaking. It was that same level tone, indicating that he had noticed you and you were, in some small way, a necessary chore. But it was coming from another dwarf, presumably, although he wore a rigid, pointed black hood which brought him up to the height of the average human. Elsewhere he was completely shrouded, and that was the wellchosen word, in overlapping black leather scales, with just a narrow slit for the eyes. Were it not for the quiet authority of the voice, the figure in front of Vimes could be mistaken for a very sombre Hogswatch decoration. Ànd you are - ? said Vimes. `My name is Ardent, commander. Helmclever, go about your chores!' As thèdaylight face' scuttled off at speed, Vimes turned in his seat and allowed his hand to brush across the sticky symbol, wiping it out. Ànd do you want to be helpful too?' he said. Ìf I can be,' said the dwarf. `Please follow me. It would be preferable if the sergeant did not accompany you.' (Why? ? `The obvious reason,' said Ardent. `She is openly female.' `What? So? Sergeant Angua is very definitely not a dwarf,' said Vimes. `You can't expect everyone to conform to your rules!' `Why not?' said the dwarf. `You do. But could we just, together, for a moment, proceed to my office and discuss matters?' Ì'll be fine, sir,' said Angua. Ìt's probably the best way.' Vimes tried to relax. He knew he was letting himself get steamed up. Those silent watchers in the street had got through to him, and the look he'd got from Helmclever needed some thinking about. But 'No, he said. `You will not make that small concession?' said Ardent. Ì am already making several big ones, believe me,' said Vimes. The hidden eyes under the pointy cowl stared at him for a few seconds. `Very well,' said Ardent. `Please follow me. The dwarf turned and opened a door behind him, stepping into a small square room. He beckoned them to follow and, when they were inside, pulled a lever. The room shook gently, and the walls began to rise. `This is-'Ardent began. `-an elevator,' said Vimes. `Yes, I know. I saw them when I met the Low King in Uberwald.' The dropping of the name did not work. `The Low King is not ... respected here,' said Ardent. Ì thought he was the ruler of all dwarfs?' said Vimes. À common misconception. Ah, we have arrived.' The elevator stopped with barely a jerk. Vimes stared. Ankh-Morpork was built on Ankh-Morpork. Everyone knew that. They had been building with stone here ten thousand years ago. As the annual flooding of the Ankh brought more silt, so the city had risen on its walls until attics had become cellars. Even at basement level today, it was always said, a man with a pickaxe and a good sense of direction could cross the city by knocking his way through underground walls, provided he could also breathe mud. What had this place been? A palace? The temple of a god who'd subsequently slipped everyone's memory? It was a big space, dark as soot, but there was a glow that managed to show up beautiful vaulting in the roof above. A strange glow. `Vurms,' said Ardent. `From the deep caves in the mountains around Llamedos. We brought them with us and they breed very fast here. They find your silt quite nourishing. I'm sure they shine more, too.' The glow moved. It did not illuminate much, but it showed up the shape of things, and it was heading towards the elevator, flowing over the wonderful ceiling. `They head for heat and movement, even now,' said the hooded dwarf. Èr ... why?' Ardent gave a little laugh. Ìn case you die, commander. They think you are some rat or small deer that has tumbled into their cave. Nourishment is rare in the Deeps. Every breath you exhale is food. And when eventually you expire, they will ... descend. They are very patient. They will leave nothing but bones.' Ì was not intending to expire here,' said Vimes. Òf course not. Follow me please,' said Ardent, leading them past a big round door. There were more on the other side of the room, and several gaping tunnel mouths. `How far down are we? 'Not far. About forty feet. We are good at digging.' Ìn this city?' said Vimes. `Why aren't we trying to breathe under water? And calling it water is giving it the best of it.' `We are very good at keeping water out, too. Alas, it appears we are less good at keeping out Samuel Vimes: The dwarf stepped into a smaller room, its ceiling thick with brilliant vurms, and motioned to a couple of dwarf-sized chairs. `Do sit down. Can I offer you refreshment?' `No, thank you,' said Vimes. He sat down gingerly on a chair that brought his knees up almost to his chin. Ardent sat down behind a small desk made of stone slabs and, to Vimes's amazement, took off his headgear. He looked quite young, with a beard that was actually trimmed. `How far do all these tunnels run?' Vimes said. Ì don't propose to tell you,' said Ardent levelly. `So you're undermining my city?' Òh, commander! You've been to the caves in Uberwald. You've seen how dwarfs can build. We are craftsmen. Do not think that your house is about to collapse.' `But you're not just building basements! You're mining!' said Vimes. Ìn a sense. We would say we are mining for holes. Space, commander, that is what we are digging for. Yes, we are mining for holes. Although our bores have found deep treacle, you will be interested to hear-' `You can't do this!' `Can we not? But we are doing it, nevertheless,' said Ardent calmly. `You are burrowing under other people's property?' `Rabbits burrow, commander. We dig. And, yes, we are. How far down does ownership go, after all? And how far up?' Vimes looked at the dwarf. Calm down, he thought. You can't deal with this. This is too big. It's something for Vetinari to decide. Stick to what you know. Stick to what you can deal with. Ì'm investigating reports of a death,' he said. `Yes. Grag Hamcrusher. A terrible misfortune,' said Ardent with a calmness that was enraging. Ì've heard it was a vicious murder. `That would be a fair description: `You admit it?' said Vimes. Ì'll choose to assume that you mean by that: "Do I admit there has been a murder?" commander. Yes. There has. And we are dealing with it.' `How?' `We are discussing the appointment of a zadkrdga,' said Ardent, folding his hands. `That is "one who smelts" One who finds the pure ore of truth in the dross of confusion.' `Discussing? Have you sealed off the scene of the crime yet?' `The smelter may order that, commander, but we already know that the crime was committed by a troll.' Ardent's face now bore an expression of amused contempt that Vimes longed to remove. `How do you know this? Was it witnessed?' `Not as such. But a troll's club was found beside the body,' said the dwarf. Ànd that's all you have to go on?' Vimes stood up. Ì've had enough of this. Sergeant Angua!' `Sir?' said Angua, beside him. `Let's go. We're going to find the murder scene while there's still any clues left to find!' `You have no business in the lower areas!' snapped Ardent, standing up. `How are you going to stop me?' `How are you going to get past locked doors?' `How are you going to find out who murdered Hamcrusher?' I told you, a troll club was found!' Ànd that's it? "We found a club so a troll did it?" Is anyone going to believe that? You're prepared to start a war in my city with a piece of flim-flam like that? Because, believe me, that's what's going to happen when this gets out. Try it and I'll arrest you!' Ànd start a war in your city?' said Ardent. Dwarf and man glared at one another, while they got their breath. On the ceiling above them, vurms congregated, feasting on spittle and rage. `Why would anyone but a troll strike down the grag?' said Ardent. `Good! You're asking questions!' Vimes leaned across the desk. Ìf you really want answers, unlock those doors!' `No! You cannot go down there, Blackboard Monitor Vimes!' The dwarf could not have put more venom in the words `child murderer Vimes stared. Blackboard monitor. Well, he had been, in that little street school more than forty-five years ago. Mum had insisted. Gods knew where she'd sprung the penny a day it cost, although most of the time Dame Slightly had been happy to accept payment in old clothes and firewood or, preferably, gin. Numbers, letters, weights, measures; it was not what you'd call a rich curriculum. Vimes had attended for nine months or so, until the streets demanded he learn much harder and sharper lessons. But, for a while, he'd been trusted to hand out the slates and clean the blackboard. Oh, the heady, strutting power of it, when you're six years old! `Do you deny it?' said Ardent. `You destroy written words? You admitted as much to the Low King in Uberwald.' Ìt was a joke!' said Vimes. Òh? Then you do deny it?' `What? No! He was impressed by my titles and I just threw that one in for. .. fun.' `Then you deny the crime?' Ardent persisted. `Crime? I cleaned the blackboard so that new things could be written on it! How is that a crime?' `You did not care where those words went?' said Ardent. `Care? They were just chalk dust!' Ardent sighed and rubbed his eyes. `Busy night?' said Vimes. `Commander, I understand that you were young and may not have realized what you were doing, but you must understand that to us you appear to be proud of being complicit in the most heinous of crimes: the destruction of words.' `Sorry? Rubbing out "A is for Apple" is a capital crime?' Òne that would be unthinkable for a true dwarf,' said Ardent. `Really? But I have the trust of the Low King himself,' said Vimes. `So I understand. There are six venerable grags below us, commander, and in their eyes the Low King and his kind have strayed from the true seam. He is,' Ardent rattled off a sentence in staccato dwarfish too fast for Vimes to catch it, and then translated, `wishy-washy. Dangerously liberal. Shallow. He has seen the light.' Ardent was watching him carefully. Think hard. From what Vimes could remember, the Low King and his circle had been pretty crusty types. These people think they're soppy liberals. 'Wishy-washy?' he said. Ìndeed. I invite you, therefore, to derive from that statement something of the nature of those I serve below.' Ah, thought Vimes. There's something there. Just a hint. Friend Ardent is a thinker. `When you say "he has seen the light" you sound as if you mean corrupted,' he said. `Something like that, yes. Different worlds, commander. Down here, it would be unwise to trust your metaphors. To see the light is to be blinded. Do you not know that in darkness the eyes open wider?' `Take me to see these people down below,' said Vimes. `They will not listen to you. They will not even look at you. They have nothing to do with the World Above. They believe it is a kind of bad dream. I have not dared tell them about your "newspapers" printed every day and discarded like rubbish. The shock would kill them.' But dwarfs invented the printing engine, Vimes thought. Obviously they were the wrong kind of dwarf. I've seen Cheery throw stuff in the wastepaper bin, too. It seems like nearly all dwarfs are the wrong sort, eh? `What exactly is your job, Mr Ardent?' said Vimes. Ì am their chief liaison with the World Above. The steward, you could say.' Ì thought that was Helmclever's job?' `Helmclever? He orders the groceries, relays my orders, pays the miners and so on. The chores, in fact,' said Ardent disdainfully. `He is a novice and his job is to do what I tell him. It is I who speak for the grags.' `You talk to bad dreams on their behalf? 'You could put it that way, I suppose. They would not let a proud word-killer become a smelter. The idea would be abominable.' They glared at one another. Once again, we end up in Koom Valley, Vimes told himself. `They won't-' `Permission to make a suggestion?' said Angua quietly. Two heads turned. Two mouths said: `Well?' `The ... smelter. The seeker of the truth. Must they be a dwarf?' Òf course!' said Ardent. `Then what about Captain Carrot? He's a dwarf.' `We know of him. He is an ... anomaly,' said Ardent. `His claim to dwarfishness is debatable.' `But most dwarfs in the city accept that he's a dwarf,' said Angua. Ànd he's a copper, too.' Ardent flopped back into his seat. `To your dwarfs here, yes, he is a dwarf. He would be unacceptable to the grags.' `There's no dwarf law that says a dwarf can't be more than six feet tall, sir.' `The grags are the law, woman,' Ardent snapped. `They interpret laws that go back for tens of thousands of years.' `Well, ours don't,' said Vimes. `But murder is murder anywhere. The news has got out. You've already got the dwarfs and the trolls simmering nicely, and this will bring it all right to the boil. Do you want a war?' `With the trolls? That is-' `No, with the city. A place inside the walls where the law doesn't run? His lordship won't accept that one.' `You would not dare!' `Look into my eyes,' said Vimes. `There are far more dwarfs than there are watchmen,' said Ardent, but the amused expression had fled. `So what you are telling me is that law is just a matter of numbers?' said Vimes. Ì thought you dwarfs practically worshipped the idea of law. Is numbers all it is? I'll swear in more men, then. Trolls, too. They're citizens, just like me. Are you sure every dwarf is on your side? I'll raise the regiments. I'll have to. I know how things run in Llamedos and Uberwald, but they don't run like that here. One law, Mr Ardent. That's what we've got. If I let people slam their front door on it, I might as well shut down the Watch.' Vimes walked to the doorway. `That's my offer. Now I'm going back to the Yard-' `Wait!' Ardent sat staring at the desktop, drumming his fingers on it. Ì do not have ... seniority here,' he said. `Let me talk to your grags. I promise to rub out no words.' `No. They will not talk to you. They do not talk to humans. They are waiting below. They had word of your arrival. They are frightened. They do not trust humans.' Why? `Because you are not dwarfs,' said Ardent. `Because you are ... a sort of dream.' Vimes put his hands on the dwarf's shoulders. `Then let's go downstairs, where you can talk to them about nightmares,' he said, and you can point out which one is me.' There was a long silence until Ardent said, `Very well. This is under protest, you understand.' Ì'll be happy to make a note of that,' said Vimes. `Thank you for your co-operative attitude.' Ardent stood up and produced a ring of complex keys from his robes. Vimes tried to keep track of the journey, but it was hard. There were twists and turns, in dim tunnels that all seemed alike. There was not a trace of water anywhere. How far did the tunnels go? How far down? How far out? Dwarfs mined through granite. They could probably stroll through river mud. In fact in most places the dwarfs hadn't so much mined as cleaned house, taking away the silt, tunnelling from one ancient, dripping room to another. And, somehow, the water went away. There were things glittering, possibly magical, half seen in dark archways as they passed. And odd chanting. He knew dwarfish, in àThe axe of my aunt is in your head' kind of way, and it didn't sound like that at all. It sounded like short words rattled out at very high speed. And with every turn he felt the anger coming back. They were being led in circles, were they? For no other reason than pique. Ardent forged ahead, leaving Vimes to blunder along behind and occasionally bump his head. His temper was bubbling. This was nothing more than a bloody runaround! The dwarfs didn't care about the law, about him, about the world up above. They undermine our city and they don't obey our laws! There's been a damn murder. He admits it! Why am I putting up with this ... this stupid play-acting! He was passing yet another tunnel mouth, but this one had a piece of board nailed across it. He pulled out his sword, yelled, Ì wonder what's down here?', smashed the board and set off down the tunnel, with Angua following. Ìs this wise, sir?' she whispered, as they plunged along. `No. But I'm up to here with Mr Ardent,' Vimes growled. Ì tell you, another twisty tunnel and I'll be back here with the heavy mob, politics or not.' `Calm down, sir!' `Well, everything he says and does is an insult! It makes my blood boil!' said Vimes, striding onwards and ignoring the shouts of Ardent behind him. `There's a door ahead, sir!' Àll right, I'm not blind! Just half blind!' Vimes snapped. He reached out. The big round door had a wheel in its centre, and dwarf runes chalked all over it. `Can you read them, sergeant?' 'Er. .. "Mortal Danger! Flooding! No Entry!"' said Angua. `More or less, sir. They're pressure doors. I've seen these used before in other mines. `Chained shut, too,' said Vimes, reaching out. `Looks like solid iron- Ow!' `Sir?' `Gashed my hand on a nail!' Vimes rammed his hand into a pocket, where without fail Sybil saw to it that a clean handkerchief was lodged on a daily basis. À nail in an iron door, sir?' said Angua, looking closely. À rivet, then. Can't see a thing in this gloom. Why they-' `You must follow me. This is a mine! There are dangers!' said Ardent, catching up with them. `You still get flooding?' said Vimes. Ìt is to be expected! We know how to cope! Now, stay close to me!' Ì'd be more inclined to do that, sir, if I thought we were taking a direct route!' said Vimes. Òtherwise I might look for short cuts!' `We are nearly there, commander,' said Ardent, walking away. `Nearly there!' Aimless and hopeless, the troll wandered ... His name was Brick, although currently he couldn't remember this. His head ached. It really ached. It was der Scrape that did it. What did dey always say? When you sinkin' to where you was cookin' up Scrape you was so low even der cockroaches had to bend down to spitting on you? Last night ... what had happenin'? What bits did he see, what bits did he do, what bits in der thumpin', scaldin' cauldron of his brain were real? The bit with der giant woolly elephants, dey prob'ly weren't real. He was pretty sure there weren't any giant woolly elephants in dis city, 'cos if dere were, he would've seen 'em before, and dere'd be big steamin' turds in der streets an' similar, you wouldn't miss 'em ... He was called Brick because he had been born in the city, and trolls, being made of metamorphorical rock, often take on the nature of the local rocks. His hide was a dirty orange, with a network of horizontal and vertical lines; if Brick stood up close to a wall, he was quite hard to see. But most people didn't see Brick anyway. He was the kind of person whose mere existence is an insult to all decent folk, in their opinion. Dat mine wi' dem dwarfs, was dat real? You go an' find a place to lie down and watch der pretty pitchurs, suddenly you're in dis dwarf hole? That couldn'a bin real! Only ... word on der street was dat some troll had got into a dwarf hole, yeah, and everyone was lookin' for dat troll an' not to shake him by der han' ... Der word said der Breccia wanted to find out real hard, and by der sound of it dey were not happy. Not happy that some dwarf who'd been puttin' der bad word on the clans was offed by a troll? Were dey mad? Actually, it didn't matter if dey was mad or not, 'cos they had ways of asking questions dat didn't heal for months, so he better keepin' out dere way. On der other hand ... a dwarf wouldn't know one troll from another, right? And no one else had seen him. So act normal, right? He'd be fine. He'd be fine. Anyway, it couldn'a bin him ... It occurred to Brick - yeah, dat's my name, knew it all der time - that he still had a bit of the white powder at the bottom of the bag. All he needed to do now was find a startled pigeon and some alcohol, any alcohol at all, and he'd be fine. Yeah. Fine. Nothin' to worry about at all ... Yeah. When Vimes stepped out into the brilliant daylight the first thing he did was draw a deep breath. The second thing he did was draw his sword, wincing as his sore hand protested. Fresh air, that was the stuff. He'd felt quite dizzy underground, and the tiny cut on his hand itched like mad. He'd better get Igor to take a look at it. You could probably catch anything in the muck down there. Ah, that was better. He could feel himself cooling down. The air down there had made him feel really strange. The crowd was a lot more like a mob now, but he saw at the second glance that it was what he thought of as a plum cake mob. It doesn't take many people to turn a worried, anxious crowd into a mob. A shout here, a shove there, something thrown here ... and with care every hesitant, nervous individual is being drawn into a majority that does not in fact exist. Detritus was still standing like a statue, apparently oblivious of the growing din. But Ringfounder ... damn. He was arguing hotly with people at the front of the crowd. You never argued! You never got drawn in! `Corporal Ringfounder!' he bellowed. `To me!' The dwarf turned as a half-brick sailed over the heads of the mob and clanged off his helmet. He went over like a tree. Detritus moved so fast that he was halfway through the crowd before the dwarf hit the cobbles. His arm dipped into the press of bodies and hauled up a struggling figure. He spun round, thudded back through the gap that hadn't had time to close yet, and was beside Vimes before Ringfounder's helmet had stopped rolling. `Well done, sergeant,' said Vimes out of the corner of his mouth. `Did you have a plan for the next bit?' Ì'm more der tactical kind, sir,' said Detritus. Oh, well. At times like this you didn't argue, and you didn't step back. Vimes pulled out his badge and held it up. `This dwarf is under arrest for assaulting a Watch officer!' he shouted. `Let us through, in the name of the law!' And to his amazement, the crowd went quiet, like a lot of children when they sense that this time teacher is really, really angry. Perhaps it was the words on the badge, he thought. You couldn't rub them out. In the silence, another half-brick dropped out of the free hand of the dwarf in Detritus's very solid custody. Years later, Vimes would shut his eyes and still be able to recall the crunch it made when it hit the ground. Angua stood up, with the unconscious Ringfounder in her arms. `He's concussed,' she said. Ànd I suggest, sir, that you turn round, just for a moment?' Vimes risked a glance. Ardent - or, at least, a leather-shrouded dwarf that could have been him - was standing in the shadows of the doorway. He had the attention of the crowd. `We're being allowed to go?' he said to Angua, nodding to the figure. Ì think the going is the thing, sir, don't you?' `You've got that right, sergeant. Detritus, keep a grip on that little bugger. Back to the nick, all of us.' The crowd parted to let them through, with barely a murmur. The silence followed them all the way back to the Watch House ... ... where Otto Chriek of the Times was waiting in the street, iconograph at the ready. Òh no you don't, Otto,' said Vimes, as his squad approached. Ì'm standing on the public highway, Mister Vimes,' said Otto meekly. `Smile, please. . And took a picture of a troll officer holding a dwarf up in the air. Oh well, said Vimes to himself, that's Page One sorted out. And probably the bloody cartoon, too. One dwarf in the cells, one in the tender loving care of Igor, Vimes thought as he trudged up the stairs to his office. And it's only going to get worse. Those dwarfs were obeying Ardent, weren't they? What would they have done if the dwarf had shaken his head? He landed in his chair so hard that it rolled back a foot. He'd met deep-down dwarfs before. They'd been weird, but he'd been able to deal with them. The Low King was a deep-downer, and Vimes had got on with him well enough, once you accepted that the fairytale dwarf in the Hogfather beard was an astute politician. He was a dwarf with vision. He dealt with the world. Ha, `he'd seen the light. But those in the new mine ... He hadn't seen them, even though they were sitting in a room made brilliant with the light of hundreds of candles. That seemed odd, since the grags themselves were completely shrouded in their pointy black leather. But maybe it was some mystic ceremony, and who'd look for sense there? Maybe you got a more holy dark in the midst of light? The brighter the light the blacker the shadow? Ardent had spoken in a language that sounded like dwarfish, and out of the dark hoods had come answers and questions, all barked out in the same harsh brief syllables. At one point Vimes was asked to repeat the meat of his statement made up above, which had seemed too far away now. He'd done so, and there'd been a long drawn out discussion in what he'd come to think of as Deep Dwarf. And all the time he felt that eyes he could not see were watching him very hard indeed. It didn't help that his head had been aching like mad and there were shooting pains going up and down his arm. And that was it. Had they understood him? He didn't know. Ardent had said that they agreed with considerable reluctance. Had they? He hadn't a clue, not a clue, to what had really been said. Would Carrot be given access to a crime scene that had not been interfered with in any way? Vimes grunted. Huh. What do you think, boys and girls? He pinched his nose, and then stared at his right hand. Igor had gone on at length about `tiny invithible biting creatureth' and used some vicious ointment that probably killed anything of any size or visibility. It had stung like seven hells for five minutes, but then had gone and seemed to have taken the pain with it. Anyway, what mattered was that the Watch was officially on this case. His eye was caught by the top sheet of paperwork in his in-tray [1] He groaned as he picked it up. To: His Grace Sir Samuel Vimes, Commander of the Watch From: Mr A E Pessimal, Inspector of the Watch Your Grace, I hope you will not mind giving me as soon as possible the answers to the following questions: 1 What is Corporal `Nobby' Nobbs for? why do you employ a known petty thief.' 2 I timed two officers in Broadway- earlier, and in the space of one hour they made no arrests. Why was this an economic use of their time 3 The level of violence used by troll officers against troll prisoners appears excessive. Could you please comment upon this? [1] Vimes maintained three trays: In, Out and Shake It All About; the last one was where he put everything he was too busy, angry, tired or bewildered to do anything about. ... and so on. Vimes read on with his mouth open. All right, the man wasn't a copper - definitely not - but surely he had a fully functional brain. Oh, good grief, he'd even spotted the monthly discrepancy in the petty cash box! Would A. E. Pessimal understand if Vimes explained that Nobby's services over the years more than made up for the casual petty theft, which you accepted as a kind of mild nuisance? Would that be an economic use of my time? I think not. As he put the paper back in the tray he spotted a sheet underneath, in Cheery's handwriting. He picked it up and read it. Two dwarfs and one troll had handed in their badges that morning, citing `family reasons'. Damn. That was seven officers lost this week. Bloody Koom Valley, it got everywhere. Oh, it couldn't be fun, heavens knew, being a troll holding the line against a bunch of your fellow trolls and defending a dwarf like the late Hamcrusher. It probably wasn't any funnier being a dwarf hearing that some troll street gang beat up your brother because of what that idiot had said. Some people would be asking: whose side are you on? If you're not for us, you're against us. Huh. If you're not an apple, you're a banana... Carrot came in quietly and placed a plate on the desk. Àngua told me all about it,' he said. `Well done, sir.' `What do you mean, well done?' said Vimes, looking at his healthy sandwich lunch. Ì nearly started a war!' Àh, but they didn't know you were bluffing.' Ì probably wasn't: Vimes carefully lifted the top of the bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich and smiled inwardly. Good old Cheery. She knew what a Vimes BIT was all about. It was about having to lift up quite a lot of crispy bacon before you found the miserable skulking vegetables. You might never notice them at all. Ì want you to take Angua down there with you again,' he said. Ànd ... yes, Lance-Constable Humpeding. Our little Sally. Just the job for a vampire who fortuitously has arrived in the nick of time, eh? Let's see how good she is.' `Just those two, sir?' Èr, yes. They both have very good night vision, yes?' Vimes looked down at his sandwich and mumbled, `We can't take any artificial light down there.' À murder investigation in the dark, sir?' Ì had no choice!' said Vimes hotly. Ì know a sticking point when I see one, captain. No artificial light. Well, if they want to play silly buggers, I'm their boy. You know about mines, and both the ladies have got night vision built in. Well, the vampire has, and Angua can practically see with her nose. So that's it. Do the best you can. The place is full of those damn glow beetles. They should help.' `They've got vurms?' said Carrot. Òh. Well, I know some tricks there, sir. 'Good. They say a big troll did it and ran away. Make of that what you will., `There might be some protests about Sally, sir,' said Carrot. `Why? Will they spot she's a vampire?' `No, Sir, I don't think they-' `Then don't tell 'em,' said Vimes. `You're the ... smelter, it's up to you what, er, tools you use. Seen this?' He waved the report about the three officers he was trying not to think of as deserters. `Yes, Sir. I was meaning to talk to you about that. It might help if we changed the patrols a bit,' said Carrot. `How do you mean?, 'Er, it would be quite easy to arrange the patrol schedules so that trolls and dwarfs don't have to go on the beat together, sir. Um ... some of the lads say they'd be a bit happier if we could. . Carrot let the sentence die away in the stony glare. `We've never paid any attention to an officer's species when we do the roster, captain,' said Vimes coldly. Èxcept for the gnomes, of course. `There's your precedent, then-' Carrot began. `Don't be daft. A typical gnome room is about twice the size of a shoebox, captain! Look, you can see this idea is nuts. Dangerous nuts, too. We'd have to patrol troll with troll, dwarf with dwarf and human with human-' `Not necessarily, sir. Humans could patrol with either of the others.' Vimes rocked his chair forward. `No, they couldn't! This is not about common sense, this is about fear! If a troll sees a dwarf and a human patrolling together, he'll think: "There's the enemy, two against one." Can't you see where this is going? When a copper's in a tight corner and blows his whistle for back-up, I don't want him demanding that when it arrives it's the right damn shape!' He calmed down a little, opened his notebook, and tossed it on to the desk. Ànd talking of shapes, do you know what this means? I spotted it in the mine, and a dwarf called Helmclever scrawled it in some spilt coffee, and you know what? I think he was only half aware that he'd done it.' Carrot picked up the notebook and regarded the sketch solemnly for a moment. `Mine sign, sir,' he said. Ìt means "the Following Dark".' Ànd what does that mean?' Èr, that things are pretty bad down there, sir,' said Carrot earnestly. Òh dear.' He put the notebook down slowly, as if half afraid that it might explode. `Well, there has been a murder, captain,' Vimes pointed out. `Yes, Sir. But this might mean something worse, sir. Mine-sign is a very strange phenomenon.' `There was a sign like it over the door, only there was just one line and it was horizontal,' Vimes added. Òh, that'd be the Long Dark rune, sir,' said Carrot dismissively. Ìt's just the symbol for a mine. Nothing to worry about.' `But this other one is? Is it anything to do with grags sitting in a room surrounded by lighted candles?' It was always nice to surprise Carrot, and this time he looked amazed. `How did you work that out, sir?' Ìt's only words, captain,' said Vimes, waving a hand. "'The Following Dark" doesn't sound good. Time to stay brightly lit, maybe? When I met them they were surrounded by candles. I thought maybe it was some kind of ceremony.' `Could be,' Carrot agreed, carefully. `Thank you for this, sir. I'll go prepared.' As Carrot reached the door, Vimes added, Òne thing, captain?' `Yes, sir?' Vimes didn't look up from the sandwich, out of which he was daintily separating the fragments of L and the T from the crispy B. `Just remember you're a copper, will you?' he said. Sally knew something was up as soon as she got back into the locker room, in her shiny new breastplate and soup-bowl helmet. Coppers of various species were standing around trying to look nonchalant. Coppers are never any good at this. They watched as she approached her locker. She opened the door, therefore, with due care. The shelf was full of garlic. Ah. It starts, and so soon, too. Just as well she'd been prepared ... Here and there, behind her, she heard the faint coughs and throat-clearings of people trying not to laugh. And there was smirking going on; a smirk makes a subtle noise if you're listening for it. She reached into the locker with both hands and pulled out two big fat bulbs. All eyes were on her, all coppers were motionless as she walked slowly around the room. The reek of garlic was strong on one young constable, whose big grin was suddenly caked with nervousness at the corners. He had the look about him of the kind of fool who'd do anything for a giggle. Èxcuse me, constable, but what is your name?' she said meekly. Èr ... Fittly miss. ..' Àre these from you?' Sally demanded. She let her canines extend just enough to notice. `... er, only a joke, miss. . `Nothing funny about it,' said Sally sweetly. Ì like garlic. I love garlic. Don't you?' Èr, yeah,' said the unhappy Fittly. `Good,' said Sally. With a speed that made him flinch, she rammed a bulb into her mouth and bit down heavily. The crunching was the only sound in the locker room. And then, she swallowed. Òh dear, where are my manners, constable?' she said, holding out the other bulb. `This one's yours . . Laughter broke out around the room. Coppers are like any other mob. The table's been turned, and this way round it's funnier. It's a bit of a laugh, a bit of fun. No harm done, eh? `Come on, Fittly' said someone. Ìt's only fair. She ate hers!' And someone else, as someone always does, began to clap and urge Èat! Eat!' Others took it up, encouraged by the fact that Fittly had gone bright red. Èat! Eat! Eat! Eat! Eat! Eat! Eat! Eat! Eat!Eat!Eat!' A man without an option, Fittly grabbed the bulb, forced it into his mouth and bit it hard, to the accompaniment of cheers. A moment later, Sally saw his eyes widen. 'Lance-Constable Humpeding?' She turned. A young man of godlike proportions [1] was standing [1] The better class of gods, anyway. Not the ones with the tentacles, obviously. in the doorway. Unlike the armour of the other officers, his breastplate shone and the chain mail was quite devoid of rust. Èverything all right?' The officer glanced at Fittly, who'd dropped to his knees and was coughing garlic across the room, but somehow quite failed to see him. Èr, fine, sir,' said Sally, puzzled, as Fittly began to throw up. `We've met already. Everyone calls me Captain Carrot. Come with me, please.' Out in the main office Carrot stopped and turned. Àll right, lance-constable ... you had a bulb already prepared, right? Don't look like that, there's a vegetable barrow out in the square today. It's not hard to work out.' Èr, Sergeant Angua did warn me. . `So?' `So I carved a garlic out of a radish, sir.' Ànd the one you gave Fittly?' Òh, that was a carved radish, too. I try not to touch garlic, sir,' said Sally. Oh gods, this one really was attractive ... `Really? Just a radish? He seemed to take it badly,' said Carrot. Ì put a few fresh chilli seeds in it,' Sally added. Àbout thirty, I think.' Òh? Why did you do that?' Òh, you know, sir,' said Sally, radiating innocence. À bit of a laugh, a bit of fun. No harm done, eh?' The captain appeared to consider this. `We'll leave it at that, then,' he said. `Now, lance-corporal, have you ever seen a dead body?' Sally waited to see if he was serious. Apparently, he was. `Strictly speaking, no, sir,' she said. Vimes fretted through the afternoon. There was, of course, the paperwork. There was always the paperwork. The trays were only the start. Heaps of it were ranged accusingly along one wall, and gently merging.[1] He knew that he had to do it. Warrants, dockets, Watch Orders, signatures - that was what made the Watch a police force rather than just a bunch of rather rough fellows with inquisitive habits. Paperwork: you had to have lots of it, and it had to be signed by him. He signed the arrests book, the occurrences book, even the lost property book. Lost property book! They'd never had one of those in the old days. If someone turned up complaining that they'd lost some small item, you just held Nobby Nobbs upside down and sorted through what dropped out. But he didn't know two thirds of the coppers he employed now - not know, in the sense of knowing when they'd stand and when they'd run, knowing the little giveaways that'd tell him when they were lying or scared witless. It wasn't really his Watch any more. It was the city's Watch. He just ran it. He went through the Station Sergeant's reports, the Watch Officers' reports, the Sick reports, the Disciplinary reports, the Petty Cash reports 'Duddle-dum-duddle-dum-duddle-' Vimes slammed the Gooseberry down on the desk and picked up the small loaf of dwarf bread that for the last few years he'd used as a paperweight. `Switch off or die,' he growled. `Now, I can see you're slightly upset,' said the imp, looking up at the looming loaf, `but could I ask you to look at things from my point of view? This is my job. This is what I am. I am, therefore I think. And I think we could get along famously if you would only read the manu- Please, no! I really could help you!' [1] Vimes had got around to a Clean Desk policy. It was a Clean Floor strategy that eluded him at the moment. Vimes hesitated in mid thump, and then carefully put down the loaf. `How?' he said. `You've been adding up the numbers wrong,' said the imp. `You don't always carry the tens.' Ànd how would you know that?' Vimes demanded. `You mutter to yourself,' said the imp. `You eavesdrop on me?' Ìt's my job! I can't switch my ears off! I have to listen! That's how I know about the appointments!' Vimes picked up the Petty Cash report and glanced at the messy columns of figures. He prided himself on what he had, since infancy, called `sums: Yes, he knew he plodded a bit, but he got there in the end. `You think you could do better?' he said. `Let me out and give me a pencil!' said the imp. Vimes shrugged. It had been a strange day, after all. He opened the little cage door. The imp was a very pale green and translucent, a creature made out of little more than coloured air, but it was able to grip the tiny pencil stub. It ran up and down the column of figures in the petty cash book and, Vimes was pleased to hear, it muttered to itself. Ìt's out by three dollars and five pence,' it reported after a few seconds. `That's fine, then,' said Vimes. `But the money is not accounted for!' Òh yes it is,' said Vimes. Ìt was stolen by Nobby Nobbs. It always is. He never steals more than four dollars fifty.' `Would you like me to make an appointment for a disciplinary interview?' said the imp, hopefully. Òf course not. I'm signing it off now. Er, thank you. Can you add up the other dockets?' The imp beamed. Àbsolutely!' Vimes left it scribbling happily and walked over to the window. They don't acknowledge our law and they undermine our city. That's not just a bunch of deep-downers here to keep their fellow dwarfs on the straight and narrow. How far do those tunnels go? Dwarfs dig like crazy. But why here? What are they looking for? As sure as any hell you choose, there's no treasure trove under this city, no sleeping dragon, no secret kingdom. There's just water and mud and darkness. How far do they go? How much- Hold on, we know this, we know this, don't we? We know about numbers and figures in today's Watch... Ìmp?' he said, turning round. `Yes, Insert Name Here?' `You see that big pile of paper in the corner?' said Vimes, pointing. `Somewhere in there are the gate guard reports for the past six months. Can you compare them with last week's? Can you compare the number of dunny wagons leaving the city?' 'Dunny Wagon Not Found in Root Dictionary. Searching Slang Dictionary ... mip ... mip ... mip ... Dunny Wagon, n.: cart for carrying night soil (see also Honey Wagon, Treacle Wagon, Midnight Special, Gong Wagon and variants,' said the imp. `That's right,' said Vimes, who hadn't heard the Midnight Special one before. `Can you?' Òoh, yes!' said the imp. `Thank you for using the Dis-Organizer Mark Five "Gooseberry" the most advanced-' `Yeah, don't mention it. Just look at the ones for the Hubwards Gate. That's closest to Treacle Street.' `Then I suggest you stand back, Insert Name Here,' said the imp. `Why?' The imp leapt into the pile. There were some rustling noises, a couple of mice scampered out - and the pile exploded. Vimes backed away hurriedly as papers fountained into the air, borne aloft on a very pale green cloud. Vimes had instigated record-keeping at the gates not because he had a huge interest in the results, but because it kept the lads on their toes. It wasn't as if it was security duty. Ankh-Morpork was so wide open it was gaping. But the cart census was handy. It stopped watchmen falling asleep at their posts, and it gave them an excuse to be nosy. You had to move soil. That was it. This was a city. If you were a long way from the river, the only way to do that was on a cart. Blast it, he thought, I should have asked the thing to see if there's been any increase in stone and timber loads, too. Once you've dug a hole in mud, you've got to keep it open The circling, swooping papers snapped back into piles. The green haze shrank with a faint zzzzp noise, and there was the little imp, ready to explode with pride. Àn extra one point one dunny carts a night over six months ago!' it announced. `Thank you, Insert Name Here! Cogito ergo sum, Insert Name Here. I exist, therefore I do sums!' `Right, yes, thank you,' said Vimes. Hmm. A bit more than one cart a night? They held a couple of tons, maximum. You couldn't make much of that. Maybe people living near that gate had been really ill lately. But ... what would he do, in the dwarfs' position? He damn well wouldn't send stuff out of the nearest gate, that's what. Ye gods, if they were tunnelling in enough places, they could dump it anywhere. Ìmp, could you ... Vimes paused. `Look, don't you have some kind of a name?' `Name, Insert Name Here?' said the imp, looking puzzled. Òh, no. I am created by the dozen, Insert Name Here. A name would be a bit stupid, really.' Ì'll call you Gooseberry, then. So, Gooseberry, can you give me the same figures for every city gate? And also the numbers of timber and stone carts?' Ìt will take some time, Insert Name Here, but yes! I should love to!' Ànd while you're about it, see if there were any reports of subsidence. Walls falling down, houses cracking, that sort of thing?' `Certainly, Insert Name Here. You can rely on me, Insert Name Here!' `Snap to it, then!' `Yes, Insert Name Here! Thank you, Insert Name Here. I think much better outside the box, Insert Name Here!' zzzzp. Paper started to fly. Well, who'd have thought it? Vimes wondered. Maybe the damned thing could be useful after all. The speaking tube whistled. He unhooked it and said, `Vimes: Ì've got the evening edition of the Times, sir,' said the distant voice of Sergeant Littlebottom. She sounded worried. `Fine. Send it up.' Ànd there's a couple of people here who want to see you, sir.' Now there was a guarded tone to her voice. Ànd they can hear you?' said Vimes. `That's right, sir. Trolls. They insist on seeing you personally. They say they have a message for you.' `Do they look like trouble?' Èvery inch, sir.' Ì'm coming down.' Vimes hung up the tube. Trolls with a message. It was unlikely to be an invitation to a literary lunch. Èr ... Gooseberry?' he said. Once again the faint green blur coalesced into the beaming imp. `Found the figures, Insert Name Here. Just working on them!' it said, and saluted. `Good, but get back in the box, will you? We're going out.' `Certainly, Insert Name Here! Thank you for choosing the-' Vimes pushed the box into his pocket and went downstairs. The main office included not only the duty officer's desk but also half a dozen smaller ones, where watchmen sat when they had to do the really tricky parts of police work, like punctuating a sentence correctly. A lot of rooms and corridors opened on to it. A useful result of all this was that any action there attracted a lot of attention very quickly. If the two trolls very conspicuously in the middle of the room had intended trouble, they'd picked a bad time. It was between shifts. Currently, they were trying without success to swagger whilst standing still, watched with deep suspicion by seven or eight officers of various shapes. They'd brought it on themselves. They were baaad trolls. At least, they'd like everyone to think so. But they'd got it wrong. Vimes had seen bad trolls, and these didn't come close. They'd tried. Oh, they'd tried. Lichen covered their heads and shoulders. Clan graffiti adorned their bodies; one of them had even had his arm carved, which must have hurt, for that stone cool troll look. Since wearing the traditional belt of human or dwarf skulls would have resulted in the wearer's heels leaving a groove all the way to the nearest nick, and monkey skulls left the wearer liable to ambush by dwarfs with no grounding in forensic anthropology, these trolls- Vimes grinned. These boys had done the best they could with, oh dear, sheep and goat skulls. Well done, boys, that's really scary. It was depressing. The old-time bad trolls didn't bother with all that stuff. They just beat you over the head with your own arm until you got the message. `Well, gentlemen?' he said. Ì'm Vimes.' The trolls exchanged glances through the mats of lichen, and one of them lost. 'Midder Chrysoprase he wanna see you,' he said sulkily. Ìs that so?' said Vimes. `He wanna see you now,' said the troll. `Well, he knows where I live,' said Vimes. `Yeah. He does.' Three words, smacking into the silence like lead. It was the way the troll said them. A suicidal kind of way. The silence was broken by the steely sound of bolts being shot home, followed by a click. The trolls turned. Sergeant Detritus was taking the key out of the lock of the Watch House's big, thick double doors. Then he turned round and his heavy hands landed on the trolls' shoulders. He sighed. `Boys,' he said, ìf dere was a PhD in bein' fick, youse wouldn't be able to find a pencil.' The troll who'd uttered the not-very-veiled threat then made another mistake. It must have been terror that moved his arms, or dumb machismo. Surely no one with a functioning brain cell would have selected that moment to move their arms into what, for trolls, was the attack position. Detritus's fist moved in a blur, and the crack as it connected with the troll's skull made the furniture rattle. Vimes opened his mouth ... and shut it again. Trollish was a very physical language. And you had to respect cultural traditions, didn't you? It wasn't only dwarfs who were allowed to have them, was it? Besides, you couldn't crack a troll's skull even with a hammer and chisel. And he threatened your family, his hind brain added. He had it coming There was a twinge of pain from the wound on his hand, echoed by the stab of a headache. Oh hells. And Igor said the stuff would work! The stricken troll rocked for a second or two, and then went over forwards in one rigid movement. Detritus walked across to Vimes, kicking the recumbent figure en passant. `Sorry about dat, sir,' he said, and his hand clanged on his helmet as he saluted. `Dey got no manners.' Àll right, that's enough; said Vimes, and addressed the remaining, suddenly-very-alone messenger. `Why does Chrysoprase want to see me?' `He wouldn't tell der Brothers Fick that, would he. ..' said Detritus, grinning horribly. There was no swagger left now. Àll I know is, it's about der killin' o' the horug' mumbled the messenger, taking refuge in surliness. At the sound of the word the eyes of every watching dwarf narrowed further. It was a very bad word. Òh boy, oh boy, oh. .: Detritus hesitated. `-boy,' said Vimes out of the corner of his mouth. `-boy!' said Detritus triumphantly. `You are makin' friends like nobody's business today!' `Where's the meeting?' said Vimes. `Der Pork Futures Warehouse,' said the troll. `You is to come alone. .: he paused, awareness of his position dawning on him, and added, ìf you don't mind. `Go and tell your boss I might choose to wander that way, will you?' said Vimes. `Now get out of here. Let him out, sergeant: Àn' take your rubbish home wid you!' Detritus roared. He slammed the doors behind the troll, bent under the weight of his fallen comrade. Òkay,' said Vimes, as tensions relaxed. `You heard the troll. A good citizen wants to help the Watch. I'll go and see what he's got to-' His eye caught the front page of the Times, spread out on the desk. Oh, hell, he thought wearily. There we are, at a time like this, with a troll officer holding a dwarf with his feet off the ground. Ìt's a good picture of Detritus, sir,' said Sergeant Littlebottom nervously. "'The Long Arm of The Law",' Vimes read aloud. Ìs that supposed to be funny?' `Probably it is to people who write headlines,' said Cheery. `Hamcrusher Murdered; Vimes read. `Watch Investigating'. `Where do they get this?' he said aloud. `Who tells them? Pretty soon I'll have to read the Times to find out what I'm doing today!' He flung the paper back on the desk. Ànything important I need to know about right now?' `Sergeant Colon says there's been a robbery at the Royal-' Cheery began, but Vimes waved that away. `More important than robberies, I mean,' he said. Èr, another two officers have quit since I sent you that note, sir,' said Cheery. `Corporal Ringfounder and Constable Schist at Chittling Street. Both say it's for, er, personal reasons, sir.' `Schist was a good officer,' Detritus rumbled, shaking his head. `Sounds like he decided to be a good troll instead,' said Vimes. He was aware of a stirring behind him. He still had an audience. Oh well, time for the speech. Ì know it's hard for dwarf and troll officers right now,' he said to the room at large. Ì know that giving one of your own kind a tap with your truncheon because he's trying to kick you in the fork might feel like you're siding with the enemy. It's no fun for humans, either, but it's worse for you. The badge seems a bit heavy now, right? You see your people looking at you and wondering whose side you're on, yes? Well, you're on the side of the people, which is where the law ought to be. All the people, I mean, who're out there beyond the mob, who're fearful and puzzled and scared to go out at night. Now, funnily enough, the idiots who're out there right in front of you getting their self-defence in first are also the people, but since they don't seem to remember that, well, you're doing them a favour by cooling them off a bit. Hold on to that, and hold together. You think that you should stay at home to make sure your of mum is okay? What good would you be against a mob? Together, we can stop things going that far. This'll go its course. I know we're all being run ragged, but right now I need everyone I can get, and in return there will be jam tomorrow and free beer too. Maybe I'll even be a little blind when I'm signing the overtime dockets, who knows. Got it? But I want you all, whatever, whoever you are, to know this: I've got no patience with idiots who'll drag a grudge across five hundred miles and a thousand years. This is AnkhMorpork. It's not Koom Valley. You know it's going to be a bad night tonight. Well, I'll be on duty. If you are too, then I'll want to know that I can depend on you to watch my back as I'll watch yours. If I can't depend on you, I don't want to see you near me. Any questions?' There was an embarrassed silence, as there always is on such occasions. Then a hand went up. It belonged to a dwarf. Ìs it true a troll killed the grag?' he asked. There was a murmuring from the watchmen, and he went on, a little less timorously, `Well, he did ask.' `Captain Carrot is investigating,' said Vimes. Àt the moment we are still in the dark. But if indeed there has been a murder, then I will see that the murderer is brought to justice, no matter what size they are, what shape they are, who they are or where they may be. You have my guarantee on that. My personal guarantee. Is that acceptable?' The general change in the atmosphere indicated that it was so. `Good,' he said. `Now go out there and be coppers. Go on!' The room emptied of all except those still labouring over the knotty problem of where they should put the comma. Èr, permission t'speak freely, sir?' said Detritus, knuckling closer. Vimes stared at him. When I first met you, you were chained to a wall like a watchdog and didn't speak much beyond a grunt, he thought. Truly, the leopard can change his shorts. `Yes, of course,' he said. `You ain't serious, are you? You're not going runnin' after a coprolite like Chrysoprase, sir?' `What's the worst he can do to me?' `Rip off your head, grind you to mince and make soup from your bones, sir,' said Detritus promptly. Àn' if you was a troll, he'd have all your teeth knocked out an' make cufflinks out of 'em.' `Why'd he choose to do that now? Do you think he's looking for a war with us? That's not his way. He's hardly going to kill me by appointment, is he? He wants to talk to me. It's got to be to do with the case. He might know something. I don't dare not go. But I want you along. Scrounge up a squad, will you?' A squad would be sensible, he admitted to himself. The streets were just too ... nervous at the moment. He compromised with Detritus and a scratch band of whoever was doing nothing at the moment. That was one thing you could say about the Watch, it was representative. If you based your politics on what other people looked like, then you couldn't claim the Watch was on the side of any shape. That was worth hanging on to. It seemed quieter outside, not so many people on the streets as usual. That wasn't a good sign. Ankh-Morpork could feel trouble ahead like spiders could feel tomorrow's rain. What was this? The creature swam through a mind. It had seen thousands of minds since the universe began, but there was something strange about this one. It looked like a city. Ghostly, wavering buildings appeared through a drizzle of midnight rain. Of course, no two minds were alike ... The creature was old, although it would be more accurate to say that it had existed for a long time. When, at the start of all things, the primordial clouds of mind had collapsed into gods and demons and souls of all levels, it had been among those who had never drifted close to a major accretion. So it had entered the universe aimlessly, without task or affiliation, a scrap of being blowing free, fitting in wherever it could, a sort of complicated thought looking for the right kind of mind. Currently -that is to say, for the past ten thousand years or so -it had found work as a superstition. And now it was in this strange, dark city. There was movement around it. The place was alive. And it rained. For a moment, just then, it had sensed an open door, a spasm of rage it could use. But just as it leapt to take advantage, something invisible and strong had grabbed it and flung it away. Strange. With a flick of its tail, it disappeared into an alley. The Pork Futures Warehouse was ... one of those things, the sort that you get in a city that has lived with magic for too long. The occult reasoning, if such it could be called, was this: pork was an important commodity in the city. Future pork, possibly even pork as yet unborn, was routinely traded by the merchants. Therefore, it had to exist somewhere. And the Pork Futures Warehouse came into existence, icy cold within as the pork drifted backwards in time. It was a popular place for cold storage - and for trolls who wanted to think quickly. Even here, away from the more troubled areas, the people on the streets were ... watchful. And now they watched Vimes and his motley squad pull up outside one of the warehouse doors. Ì reckon at least one of us should go in wid you,' Detritus rumbled, as protective as a mother hen. `Chrysoprase won't be alone, you can bet on dat: He unslung the Piecemaker, the crossbow he had personally built from a converted siege weapon, the multiple bolts of which tended to shatter in the air from the sheer stresses of acceleration. They could remove a door not simply from its frame but also from the world of objects bigger than a matchstick. Its incredible inaccuracy was part of the Piecemaker's charm. The rest of the squad very quickly got behind him. Ònly you, then, sergeant,' said Vimes. `The rest of you, come in only if you hear screaming. Me screaming, that is: He hesitated, and then pulled out the Gooseberry, which was still humming to itself. Ànd no interruptions, understand?' `Yes, Insert Name Here! Hmm hum hmm. . Vimes pulled open the door. Dead, freezing air poured out around him. Thick frost crackled under his feet. Instantly, his breath twinkled in clouds. He hated the Pork Futures Warehouse. The semi-transparent slabs of yet-to-be-meat hanging in the air, accumulating reality every day, made him shiver for reasons that had nothing to do with temperature. Sam Vimes considered crispy bacon to be a food group in its own right, and the sight of it travelling backwards in time turned his stomach the wrong way. He took a few steps inside and looked around in the dank, chilly greyness. `Commander Vimes,' he announced, feeling a bit of a fool. Here, away from the doors, freezing mist lay knee-high on the floor. Two trolls waded through it towards him. More lichen, he saw. More clan graffiti. More sheep skulls. `Leave weapons here,' one rumbled. 'Baaa!' said Vimes, striding between them. There was a click behind him, and the faint song of steel wires under tension yet yearning to be free. Detritus had shouldered his bow. `You can try takin' dis one off'f me if you like,' he volunteered. Vimes saw, further into the mist, a group of trolls. One or two of them looked like hired grunt. The others, though ... He sighed. All Detritus needed to do was fire that thing in this direction and quite a lot of the organized crime in the city would suddenly be very disorganized, as would be Vimes if he didn't hit the floor in time. But he couldn't allow that. There were rules here that went deeper than the law. Besides, a forty-foot hole in the warehouse wall would take some explaining. Chrysoprase was sitting on a frost-crusted crate. You could always tell him in a crowd. He wore suits, when few trolls aspired to more than the odd scrap of leather. He even wore a tie, with a diamond pin. And today he had a fur coat round his shoulders. That had to be for show. Trolls liked low temperatures. They could think faster when their brains were cool. That's why the meeting had been called here. Right, Vimes thought, trying to stop his teeth from chattering, when it's my turn it's going to be in a sauna. `Mister Vimes! Good o' you to be comin',' said Chrysoprase jovially. 'Dese gentlemen are all high-toned businessmen of my acquaintance. I 'spect you can put names to faces.' `Yeah, the Breccia,' said Vimes. `Now den, Mister Vimes, you know dat don't exist,' said Chrysoprase innocently. `We just band together to further troll interests in der city via many charitable concerns. You could say we are community leaders. Dere's no call for name callin'.' Community leaders, Vimes thought. There'd been a lot of talk about community leaders lately, as in `community leaders appealed for calm, a phrase the Times used so often that the printers probably left it set in type. Vimes wondered who they were, and how they were appointed and, sometimes, if àppealing for calm' meant winking and saying `Do not use those shiny new battle-axes in that cupboard over there ... No, not that one, the other one.' Hamcrusher had been a community leader. `You said you wanted to talk to me alone,' he said, nodding towards the shadowy figures. Some of them were hiding their faces. `Dat is so. Oh, dese gennlemen behind me? Dey will be leavin' us now,, said Chrysoprase, waving a hand at them. `Dey're just here so's you understand dat one troll, dat is yours truly, is speakin' for der many. An, at the same time, your good sergeant dere, my of frien' Detritus, is goin' outside for a smoke, would dat be der case? Dis conversation is between you an' me or it don't happen.' Vimes turned and nodded to Detritus. Reluctantly, with a scowl at Chrysoprase, the sergeant withdrew. So did the trolls. Boots crunched over the frost, and then doors slammed shut. Vimes and Chrysoprase looked at one another in literally frozen silence. Ì can hear your teeth chatterin',' said Chrysoprase. `Dis place jus' right for troll, but for you it freezes der brass monkey, right? Dat's why I bringed dis fur coat: He shrugged it off and held it out. `Dere jus' you and me here, okay?' Pride was one thing; not being able to feel your fingers was another. Vimes wrapped himself in the fine, warm fur. `Good. Can't talk to a man whose ear are froze, eh?' said Chrysoprase, pulling out a big cigar case. `Firstly, I am hearin' where one of my boys was disrespectful to you. I am hearin' how him suggestin' I am der kind of troll dat would get pers'nal, dat would raise a hand to your lovely lady an' your liddle boy who is growin' up so fine. Sometimes I am despairin' o' young trolls today. Dey show no respect Dey have no style. Dey lack finesse. If you are wanting a new rockery in your garden, just say der word.' `What? Just make sure I never clap eyes on him again,' said Vimes shortly. `Dat will not be a problem,' said the troll. He indicated a small box, about a foot square, beside the crate. It was far too small to contain a whole troll. Vimes tried to ignore it, but found this hard. `Was that all you wanted to see me for?' he said, trying to stop his imagination playing its home-made horrors across his inner eyeballs. `Smokin, Mister Vimes?' Chrysoprase said, flipping open the case. `Der ones on der left is okay for humans. Finest kind.' Ì've got my own,' said Vimes, pulling out a battered packet. `What is this about? I'm a busy man.' Chrysoprase lit a silvery troll cigar and took a long pull. There was a smell like burning tin. `Yeah, busy because dat of dwarf dies,' he said, not looking at Vimes. `Well?' Ìt was no troll done it,' said Chrysoprase. `How do you know?' Now the troll looked directly at Vimes. Ìf it was, I would have foun' out by now. I bin askin' questions: `So are we.' Ì bin askin' questions more louder,' said the troll. Ì get lotsa answers. Sometimes I am gettin' answers to questions I ain't even asked yet.' I bet you are, Vimes thought. I have to obey rules. `Why should you care who kills a dwarf?' he said. `Mister Vimes! I am a honest citizen! It my public duty to care!' Chrysoprase watched Vimes's face to see how this was playing, and grinned. Àll this stoopid Koom Valley t'ing is bad for business. People are gettin' edgy, pokin' around, askin' questions. I am sittin' dere gettin' nervous. An' den I hear my of friend Mister Vimes is on der case and I am thinkin, that Mister Vimes, he may be very insensitive to the nu-unces of troll culture some times, but der man is straight as a arrow and dere are on him no flies. He will see where dis so-called troll left his club behind an' he is laughin' his head off, it is so see-through like glass! Some dwarf did it an' want to make der trolls look bad, Kew Eee Dee.' He sat back. `What club?' said Vimes quietly. `What's dat?' Ì haven't mentioned a club. There was nothing in the paper about a troll club.' `Dear Mister Vimes, dat's what der lawn ornaments is sayin',' said Chrysoprase. Ànd dwarfs talk to you, do they?' said Vimes. The troll looked thoughtfully at the roof, and blew out more smoke. Èventually,' he said. `But dat's jus' detail. Jus' between you an' me, here an' now. We unnerstan' dese t'ings. It is clear as anyt'ing dat der crazy dwarfs had a fight, or der of dwarf died o' bein' alive too long, or-' `-or you asked him a few questions?' `No callin' for dat, Mister Vimes. Dat club is nothin' but a red dried swimmin' t'ing. Der dwarfs put it dere. Òr a troll did the murder, dropped his club and ran,' said Vimes. Òr he was clever, and thought: no one would believe a troll would be so stupid as to leave his club so if I do leave it, the dwarfs will get the blame.' `Hey, good job it so cold in here or I wouldn't be followin' you!' laughed Chrysoprase. `But den I ask, a troll gets into a nest o' dem lousy deepdowners and lays out jus' one? No way, Jose, eh? He'd whack as many of 'em as he could, thud, thud!' He looked at Vimes's puzzlement and sighed. `See, any troll gettin' in dere, he'd be a mad troll to start with. You know how der kids are all wound up? People bin feeding dem that honour an' glory an' destiny stuff, that coprolite rots your brain faster'n Slab, faster even than Slide. From what I am hearin, the dwarf got knocked off for-rensic, all slick an' quiet. We don't do dat, Mister Vimes. You played der game, you know it. Get a troll in der middle o' a load of dwarfs, he is like a fox in der.. . dem fings wi' wings, layin' dem egg fings . . `Fox in a henhouse?' `Dat's der- You know, fur, big ears-' `Bunny?' `Right! Bash one dwarf an' sneak out? No troll'd stop at one, Mister Vimes. It's like you people an' peanuts. Der game got dat right.' `What's this game?' `You never played Thud?' Chrysoprase looked surprised. Òh, that. I don't play games,' said Vimes. Ànd on the subject of Slab, you do run the biggest pipeline. Just between you and me, here and now.' 'Nah, I'm out o' dat whole t'ing,' said Chrysoprase, waving his cigar dismissively. `You could say I am seein' der error o' my ways. From now on it's clean livin' straight down der middle. Property an' financial services, dat is der way forward.' `Glad to hear it.' `Besides, der kids are movin' in,' Chrysoprase went on. 'Sediment'ry trash. And dey cuts Slab wi' bad sulphides an' cooks it up wi' ferric chloride an' crap like dat. You thought Slab was bad? You wait till you see Slide. Slab makes a troll go an' sit down to watch all der pretty colours, be no trouble to no one, nice and quiet. But Slide make him feel like him der biggest, strongest troll in der worl', don't need sleep, don't need food. After a few weeks, don't need life. Dat ain't for me.' `Yes, why kill your customers?' said Vimes. `Low blow, Mister Vimes, low blow. Nah, der new kids, half der time dey on Slide theyselves. Too much fightin', too much of no respec'.' He narrowed his eyes and leaned forward. Ì know names an' places: Ìt's your duty as a good citizen to tell me, then,' said Vimes. Ye gods, what does he think I am? But I want those names. Slide sounds nasty. Right now we need battle-crazy trolls like we need a hole in the head, which we'll probably end up getting. `Can't tell you. Dat der problem,' said Chrysoprase. `This ain't der time. You know what's happenin' out dere. If der stupid dwarfs want to fight we'll need every troll. Dat's what I sayin'. I tellin' my people, give Vimes a chance. Be good citizens, not rockin' around der boat. People still listenin' to me an' my ... associates. But not for much longer. I hope you on der case, Mister Vimes?' `Captain Carrot is investigating right now,' said Vimes. Chrysoprase's eyes narrowed again. `Carrot Ironfoundersson?' he said. `Der big dwarf? He a lovely boy, bright as a button, but to trolls dat won't look so good, I tell you flat.' Ìt doesn't look that good to dwarfs, if it comes to that,' said Vimes. `But it's my Watch. I'll not be told who I put on what case.' `You trust him?' said Chrysoprase. `Yes!' Òkay, he a finker, he shiny. But ... Ironfoundersson? Dwarf name. Dat a problem right dere. But der name Vimes ... Dat name means a lot. Can't be bribed, he once arrested the Patrician, not der sharpest knife in the drawer but honest like anyt'ing and he don't stop diggin'.' Chrysoprase caught Vimes's expression. `Dat's what dey say. I wishin' Vimes was on dis case, 'cos him like me, bareknuckle boy, he get at der truth soon enough. And to him I say: no troll did dat t'ing, not like dat. Forget that he's talking street troll, Vimes told himself. That's just to seem like a good ol troll. This is Chrysoprase. He beat out most of the old-style mobsters, who were pretty sharp players themselves, and he holds off the Thieves' Guild with one hand. And that's without sitting in a pile of snow. You know he's right. But ... not the sharpest knife in the drawer? Thank you so very much! But Captain Carrot was shiny, was he? Vimes's mind always looked for connections, and came up with: `Who is Mr Shine?' Chrysoprase was absolutely still, the only motion the greenish smoke spiralling up from the cigar. Then, when he spoke, his air was uncharacteristically jovial. `Him? Oh, a story for kids. Kinda like a troll legend from der faroff days o' long ahead,' he said. [1] `Like a folk hero?' `Yeah, that kinda t'ing. Kinda silly t'ing people talk about when times is tricky. Just a willie der wisp, not real. Dis is modern times.' [1] Troll lore says that living creatures actually move backwards through time. It's complicated. And that seemed to be that. Vimes stood up. Àll right, I've heard what you say,' he said. Ànd now I've got a Watch to run.' Chrysoprase puffed his cigar and flicked the ash into the frost, where it sizzled. `You goin' back to der Watch House by way o' Turn Again Lane?' he said. `No, that's well out of-' Vimes stopped. There had been a hint of suggestion in the troll's voice. `Give my regard to der of lady at next door to der cake shop,' said the troll. Èr, I will, will I?' said Vimes, nonplussed. `Sergeant!' The door at the far end opened with a bang and Detritus ran in, crossbow at the ready. Vimes, aware that one of the troll's few faults was an inability to understand all the implications of the term `safety catch, fought down a dreadful urge to dive for the ground. `Time's comin' when we all got to know where we standin',' mused Chrysoprase, as if talking to the audience of ghostly pork. Àn' who is standin' next to us.' As Vimes headed for the door the troll added: `Give der coat to your lady, Mister Vimes. Wi' my compliments.' Vimes stopped dead, and looked down at the coat over his shoulders. It was of some silvery fur, beautifully warm, but not as warm as the rage rising within him. He'd nearly walked out wearing it. He'd come that close. He shrugged it off and wrapped it into a ball. Quite probably several dozen small rare squeaky things had died to make this, but he could see to it that their deaths were not, in some small way, in vain. He threw the bundle high in the air, yelled 'Sergeant!', and threw himself on to the floor. There was the instant slap of the bow, a sound as of a swarm of maddened bees, the plinkplinkplink of arrow fragments turning a circle of metal roof into a colander, and the smell of burnt hair. Vimes got to his feet. What was falling around him was a kind of hairy snow. He met Chrysoprase's gaze. `Trying to bribe a Watch officer is a serious offence,' he said. The troll winked. `Honest like anyt'ing, I tell 'em. Nice to have dis little talk, Mister Vimes.' When they were well outside Vimes pulled Detritus into an alley, insofar as it was possible to pull a troll anywhere. Òkay, what do you know about Slide?' he said. The troll's red eyes gleamed. Ì bin hearin' rumours: `Head to Treacle Mine Road and put a heavy squad together. Go to Turn Again Lane, behind the Scours. There's a wedding-cake maker up there, I think. You've got a nose for drugs. Poke it around, sergeant.' `Right!' said Detritus. `You bin told somethin, sir?' `Let's just say I think it's an earnest of good intent, shall we?' `Dat's good, sir,' said the troll. Èrnest who?' Èr, someone we know wants to show us what a good citizen he is. Get to it, okay?' Detritus slung his crossbow over his shoulder for ease of carriage and knuckled off at high speed. Vimes leaned against the wall. This was going to be a long day. And now he - On the wall, just a little above head height, a troll had scored a rough sketch of a cut diamond. You could tell troll graffiti easily - they did it with a fingernail and it was usually an inch deep in the masonry. Next to the diamond was scored: SHINE. Àhem,' said a small voice in his pocket. Vimes sighed and pulled out the Gooseberry while he still stared at the word. `Yes?' `You said you didn't want to be interrupted. .: said the imp defensively. `Well? What have you got to say?' Ìt's eleven minutes to six, Insert Name Here,' said the imp meekly. `Good grief! Why didn't you tell me!' `Because you said you didn't want to be interrupted!' the imp quavered. `Yes, but not ' Vimes stopped. Eleven minutes. He couldn't run it, not at this time of day. `Six o'clock is ... important.' `You didn't tell me that!' said the imp, holding its head in its hands. `You just said no interruptions! I'm really, really sorry-' Shine forgotten, Vimes looked around desperately at the nearby buildings. There wasn't much use for clacks towers down here where the slaughterhouse district met the docks, but he spotted the big semaphore tower atop the dock superintendent's office. `Get up there!' he ordered, opening the box. `Tell them you've come from me and this is priority one, right? They're to tell Pseudopolis Yard where I'm starting from! I'll cross the river on Misbegot Bridge and head along Prouts! The officers at the Yard will know what this is all about! Go!' The imp went from despair to enthusiasm in an instant. It saluted. `Yes indeed, sir. The BluenoseTM Integrated Messenger Service will not let you down, Insert Name Here. I shall interface right away!' It leapt down and became a disappearing blur of green. Vimes ran down to the dockside and began to race upriver, past the ships. The docks were always too crowded and the road was an obstacle course of bales and ropes and piles of crates, with an argument every ten yards. But Vimes was a runner by nature, and knew all the ways to make progress in the city's crowded streets. He dodged and leapt, jinked and weaved and, where necessary, barged. A rope tripped him up; he rolled upright. A stevedore barged into him; Vimes laid him out with an uppercut and speeded up in case the man had chums around. This was important ... A shiny four-horse carriage swung out of Monkey Street, with two footmen clinging to the back of it. Vimes speeded up in a desperate burst, grabbed a handhold, pulled himself up between the astonished footmen, dragged himself across the swaying roof and dropped down on the seat beside the young driver. `City Watch,' he announced, flashing his badge. `Keep going straight ahead!' `But I'm supposed to turn left on to-'the young man began. Ànd give it a touch of the whip, if you please,' said Vimes, ignoring him. `This is important!' Òh, right! Death-defying high-speed chase, is it?' said the coachman, enthusiasm rising. `Right! I'm the boy for that! You've got your man right here, sir. D'you know, I can make this carriage go along for fifty yards on two wheels? Only old Miss Robinson won't let me. Right side or left side, just say the word! Hyah! Hyah!' Look, just-' Vimes began, as the whip cracked overhead. Ò'course, getting the horses to run along on two legs was the trick. Actually, it's more of a hop, you might say,' the coachman went on, turning his hat around for minimum wind resistance. `Here, want to see my wheelie?' `Not especially,' said Vimes, staring ahead. `The hooves don't 'alf raise sparks when I do me wheelie, I can tell you! Hyah!' The scenery was blurring. Ahead was the cut-through leading to Two Pint Dock. It was normally covered by a swing bridge -normally. It was swung now. Vimes could see the masts of a ship being warped out of the dock and into the river. Òh, don't you bother about that, sir,' yelled the coachman beside him. `We'll go along the quay and jump it!' `You can't jump a two-master with a four-horse carriage, man!' Ì bet you can if you aim between the masts, sir! Hyah! Hyah!' Ahead of the coach, men were running for cover. Behind it, the footmen were seeking other employment. Vimes pushed the boy back into his seat, grabbed a handful of reins, put both feet against the brake lever, and hauled. The wheels locked. The horses began to turn. The coach slid, the metal rims of the wheels sending up sparks and the throaty scream of metal. The horses turned some more. The coach began to swing, dragging the horses with it, whirling them out like fairground mounts. Their hooves made trails of fire across the cobblestones. At this point Vimes let go of everything, gripped the underside of the seat with one hand, held on to the rail with the other, shut his eyes and waited for all the noise to die away. Blessedly, it did. Only one little sound remained: a petulant banging on the coach roof caused, probably, by a walking stick. A querulous, elderly female voice could be heard saying: `Johnny? Have you been driving fast again, young man?' À bootlegger's turn!' Johnny breathed, looking at a team of four steaming horses now facing back the way they'd come. Ì am impressed!' He turned to Vimes, who wasn't there. The men moving the ship had dropped their ropes and run at the sight of coach and four spinning down the road towards them. The dock entrance was narrow. A man could easily scramble up a rope on to the deck, run across the ship and let himself down on to the cobbles on the other side. And this a man had just done. Vimes, speeding along, could see that Misbegot Bridge was going to be a struggle. An overloaded hay wagon had wedged itself between the rickety houses that line the bridge, ripped out part of someone's upper storey, and had shed some of its load in the process. There was a fight going on between the carter and the unimpressed owner of the new bungalow. Valuable seconds were spent struggling over and through the hay until he was hurrying through the backed-up traffic to the other end of the bridge. Ahead of him was the wide thoroughfare known as Prouts, full of vehicles and uphill all the way. He wasn't going to make it. It must be gone five to six already. The thought of it, the thought of that little face 'Mister Vimes!' He turned. A mail coach had just pulled out on to the road behind him and was coming up at a trot. Carrot was sitting beside the driver and waving frantically at him. `Get on the step, sir!' he yelled. `You don't have much time!' Vimes started to run once more and, as the coach drew level, jumped on to the door's step and hung on. Ìsn't this the mail coach to Quirm?' he shouted as the driver urged the horses into a canter. `That's right, sir,' said Carrot. Ì explained it was a matter of extreme importance.' Vimes redoubled his grip. The mail coaches had good horses. The wheels, not very far away from him, were already a blur. `How did you get here so quick?' he yelled. `Short cut through the Apothecary Gardens, sir!' `What? That little walk by the river? That's never wide enough for a coach like this!' Ìt was a bit of a squeeze, sir, yes. It got easier when the coach lamps scraped off.' Vimes was now able to take in the state of the coach's side. The paintwork was scored all along it. Àll right,' he shouted, `tell the driver I'll meet the bills, of course! But it'll be wasted, Carrot. Park Lane'll be jam-packed at this time of day!' `Don't worry, sir! I should hang on very tight if I were you, sir!' Vimes heard the whip crack. This was a real mail coach. Mailbags don't care whether they're comfortable. He could feel the acceleration. Park Lane would be coming up very soon. Vimes couldn't see much, because the wind of their flight was making his eyes water, but up ahead was one of the city's most fashionable traffic jams. It was bad enough at any time of day, but early evening was particularly horrible, owing to the Ankh-Morpork belief that right of way was the prerogative of the heaviest vehicle or the gobbiest driver. There were minor collisions all the time, which were inevitably followed by both vehicles blocking the junction whilst the drivers got down to discussing road-safety issues with reference to the first weapon they could get their hands on. And it was into this maelstrom of jostling horses, scurrying pedestrians and cursing drivers that the mail coach was heading, apparently, at a full gallop. He shut his eyes and then, hearing a change in the sound of the wheels, risked opening them again. The coach flew across the junction. Vimes had a momentary glimpse of a huge queue, fuming and shouting behind a couple of immovable troll officers, before they were spinning on down towards Scoone Avenue. `You closed the road? You closed the road!' he yelled, above the wind. Ànd Kings Way, sir. Just in case,' Carrot shouted down. `You closed two major roads? Two whole damn roads? In the rush hour?' `Yes, sir,' said Carrot. Ìt was the only way.' Vimes hung on, speechless. Would he have dared do that? But that was Carrot all over. There was a problem, and now it's gone. Admittedly, the whole city is probably solid with wagons by now, but that's a new problem. He'd be home in time. Would a minute have mattered? No, probably not, although Young Sam appeared to have a very accurate internal clock. Possibly even two minutes would be okay. Three minutes, even. You could go to five, perhaps. But that was just it. If you could go to five minutes then you'd go to ten, then half an hour, a couple of hours ... and not see your son all evening. So that was that. Six o'clock, prompt. Every day. Read to Young Sam. No excuses. He'd promised himself that. No excuses. No excuses at all. Once you had a good excuse, you opened the door to bad excuses. He had nightmares about being too late. He had a lot of nightmares about Young Sam. They involved empty cots, and darkness. It had all been too ... good. In a few short years he, Sam Vimes, had gone up in the world like a balloon. He was a duke, he commanded the Watch, he was powerful, he was married to a woman whose compassion, love and understanding he knew a man such as he did not deserve, and he was as rich as Creosote. Fortune had rained its gravy, and he'd been the man with the big bowl. And it had all happened so fast. And then Young Sam had come along. At first it had been fine. The baby was, well, a baby, all lolling head and burping and unfocused eyes, entirely the preserve of his mother. And then, one evening, his son had turned and looked directly at Vimes, with eyes that for his father outshone the lamps of the world, and fear had poured into Sam Vimes's life in a terrible wave. All this good fortune, all this fierce joy ... it was wrong. Surely the universe could not allow this amount of happiness in one man, not without presenting a bill. Somewhere a big dark wave was cresting, and when it broke over his head it would wash everything away. Some days, he was sure he could hear its distant roar ... Shouting incoherent thanks, he leapt down as the coach slowed, flailed to stay upright, and skidded into his driveway. The front door was already opening when he raced towards it, scattering gravel, and there was Willikins holding up The Book. Vimes grabbed it and pounded up the stairs as, down in the city, the clocks began to mark various approximations to the hour of six o'clock. Sybil had been adamant about not having a nursemaid. Vimes, for once, had been even more adamant that they get one, and a head cavern girl for the pedigree dragon pens outside. A body could only do so much, after all. He'd won. Purity, who seemed a decent type, had just finished settling Young Sam into his cot when Vimes staggered in. She gave him about one third of a curtsy before she caught his pained expression and remembered last week's impromptu lecture on the Rights of Man, and then she hurried out. It was important that no one else was here. This moment in time was just for the Sams. Young Sam pulled himself up against the cot's rails, and said, `Da!' The world went soft. Vimes stroked his son's hair. It was funny, really. He spent the day yelling and shouting and talking and bellowing ... but here, in this quiet time smelling (thanks to Purity) of soap, he never knew what to say. He was tongue-tied in the presence of a fourteen-month-old baby. All the things he thought of saying, likèWho's Daddy's little boy, then?' sounded horribly false, as though he'd got them from a book. There was nothing to say, nor, in this soft pastel room, anything that needed to be said. There was a grunt from under the cot. Dribble the dragon was dozing there. Ancient, fireless, with ragged wings and no teeth, he clambered up the stairs every day and took up station under the cot. No one knew why. He made little whistling noises in his sleep. The happy silence enveloped Vimes, but it couldn't last. There was The Reading Of The Picture Book to be undertaken. That was the meaning of six o'clock. It was the same book, every day. The pages of said book were rounded and soft where Young Sam had chewed them, but to one person in this nursery this was the book of books, the greatest story ever told. Vimes didn't need to read it any more. He knew it by heart. It was called Where's My Cow? The unidentified complainant had lost their cow. That was the story, really. Page one started promisingly: Where's my cow? Is that my cow? It goes, 'Baa!' It is a sheep! That's not my cow! Then the author began to get to grips with their material: Where's my cow? Is that my cow? It goes, `Neigh!' It is a horse! That's not my cow! At this point the author had reached an agony of creation and was writing from the racked depths of their soul. Where's my cow? Is that my cow? It goes, 'Hruuugh!' It is a hippopotamus! That's not my cow! This was a good evening. Young Sam was already grinning widely and crowing along with the plot. Eventually, the cow would be found. It was that much of a pageturner. Of course, some suspense was lent by the fact that all other animals were presented in some way that could have confused a kitten, who perhaps had been raised in a darkened room. The horse was standing in front of a hatstand, as they so often did, and the hippo was eating at a trough against which was an upturned pitchfork. Seen from the wrong direction, the tableau might look for just one second like a cow ... Young Sam loved it, anyway. It must have been the most cuddled book in the world. Nevertheless, it bothered Vimes, even though he'd got really good at the noises and would go up against any man in his rendition of the 'Hruuugh!' But was this a book for a city kid? When would he ever hear these noises? In the city the only sound those animals would make was `sizzle' But the nursery was full of the conspiracy, with baa-lambs and teddy bears and fluffy ducklings everywhere he looked. One evening, after a trying day, he'd tried the Vimes street version: Where's my daddy? Is that my daddy? He goes, 'Bugrit! Millennium hand and shrimp!' He is Foul Ole Ron! That's not my daddy! It had been going really well when Vimes heard a meaningful little cough from the doorway, wherein stood Sybil. Next day, Young Sam, with a child's unerring instinct for this sort of thing, said 'Buglit!' to Purity. And that, although Sybil never raised the subject even when they were alone, was that. From then on Sam stuck rigidly to the authorized version. He recited it tonight, while wind rattled the windows and this little nursery world, with its pink and blue peace, its creatures who were so very soft and woolly and fluffy, seemed to enfold them both. On the nursery clock, a little woolly lamb rocked the seconds away. When he not-quite-awoke, in twilight, with ragged strands of dark sleep filling his mind, Vimes stared in incomprehension at the room. Panic filled him. What was this place? Why were there all these grinning animals? What was lying on his foot? Who was this doing the asking, and why was he wrapped in a blue shawl with ducks on it? Blessed recollection flowed in. Young Sam was fast asleep, with Vimes's helmet clutched like a teddy bear, and Dribble, always on the lookout for somewhere warm to slump, had rested his head on Vimes's boot. Already the leather was covered with goo. Vimes carefully retrieved his helmet, gathered the shawl around him and wandered down into the big front hall. He could see light under the door of the library and so, still slightly muzzy, he pushed his way in. Two watchmen stood up. Sybil turned in her chair by the fire. Vimes felt the ducks slither slowly down his shoulders and end up in a heap on the floor. Ì let you sleep, Sam,' said Lady Sybil. `You didn't get in this morning until after three.' Èveryone's double-shifting, dear,' said Sam, daring Carrot and Sally to even think about telling anyone they'd seen the boss wearing a blue shawl covered in ducks. Ì've got to set a good example.' Ì'm sure you intend to, Sam, but you look like a horrible warning; said Sybil `When did you last eat? 'I had a lettuce, tomato and bacon sandwich, dear,' he said, endeavouring by tone of voice to suggest that the bacon had been a mere condiment rather than a slab barely covered by the bread. Ì expect you jolly well did,' said Sybil, rather more accurately conveying the fact that she didn't believe a word of it. `Captain Carrot has something to tell you. Now, you sit down and I'm going to see what's happened to dinner.' When she bustled out in the direction of the kitchens Vimes turned to the watchmen and debated for a moment whether to give that sheepish little grin and eye-roll that between men means `Women, eh?' and decided not to on the basis that the watchmen consisted of Lance-Constable Humpeding, who'd think he was a fool, and Captain Carrot, who wouldn't know what it meant. He settled instead on `Well?' `We did the best we could, sir,' said Carrot. Ì was right. That mine is a very unhappy place.' `Murder scenes usually are, yes.' Àctually, I don't think we found the murder scene, sir.' `Didn't you see the body?' `Yes, sir. I think. Really, sir, you had to be there-' Ì don't think I can go through with this,' Angua had hissed as she headed along Treacle Street again. `What's wrong?' said Carrot. Angua jerked a thumb over her shoulder. `Her! Vampires and werewolves: not good company!' `But she's a Black Ribboner,' Carrot protested mildly. `She doesn't-' `She doesn't have to do anything! She just is! For one of us, being around a vampire is like the worst bad hair day you can imagine. And believe me, a werewolf knows what a real bad hair day is!' Ìs it the smell?' said Carrot. `Well, that's not good, but it's more than that. They're so ... poised. So perfect. I get near her and I feel ... hairy. I can't help it, it goes back thousands of years! It's the image. Vampires are always so ... cool, so in control, but werewolves are, well, shambling animals. Underdogs.' `But that's not true. A lot of Black Ribboners are totally neurotic, and you're so sleek and-' `Not when I'm around vampires! They trigger off something! Look, stop trying to be logical about it, will you? I hate it when you get logical on me. Why didn't Mister Vimes hold out? All right, all right, I'm on top of it. But it's hard, that's all.' Ì'm sure it's not easy for her, either-' Carrot began. Angua gave him a Look. But that's him, she thought. He really does think like that. It's just that he doesn't know when saying something like that is a really bad idea. Not easy for her? When was it ever easy for me? At least she probably doesn't have to stash changes of clothes around the city! Okay, going cold bat can't be nice, but we get cold bat every month. And when do I ever rip out a throat? I hunt chickens! And I pay for them in advance. Does she suffer from PIT? I don't think so! Oh gods, and it's already well past Waxing Gibbous tonight. I can feel my hair growing! Bloody vampires! They make such a big thing about not being murderous bloodsuckers any more. They get all the sympathy! Even his! All this flashed past in a second. She said, `Let's just get down there and get it done and get out, shall we?' There was still a crowd hanging around near the entrance. Amongst them was Otto Chriek, who gave Carrot a little shrug. There were still guards on duty, too, but it was clear that someone had been talking to them. They nodded to the squad when they arrived. One of them even opened the door, very politely. Carrot beckoned the other watchmen closer. Èverything we say will be overheard, understand?' he said. Èverything. So be careful. And remember - as far as they are concerned, you can't see in the dark.' He led the way inside, to where Helmclever stood, beaming and edgy. `Welcome, Head Banger,' said the dwarf. Èr, if we are using Morporkian, I would prefer Captain Carrot,' said Carrot. Às you wish, smelter,' said the dwarf. `The elevator awaits!' As they descended, Carrot said, `What powers this, please?' À Device,' said Helmclever, pride breaking out over his nervousness. `Really? You have many Devices?' said Carrot. Àn axle and an average bar.' Àn average bar? I've only ever heard of them.' `We are fortunate. I will be happy to show it to you. It is invaluable for food preparation,' Helmclever gabbled. Ànd down below we have a number of cubes, of varying powers. Nothing may be withheld from the smelter. I am ordered to show you everything you wish to see and tell you everything you wish to know.' `Thank you,' said Carrot, as the elevator stopped in blackness speckled with the corpse glow of vurms. `How large are your diggings here?' Ì cannot tell you that, said Helmclever quickly. Ì do not know. Ah, here is Ardent. I will go back up-' `No, Helmclever, remain with us, please,' said a darker shadow in the gloom. `You should see this, too. Good day to you, Captain Carrot, and' - Angua detected an element of distaste - `ladies. Please follow me. I am sorry for the lack of light. Perhaps your eyes will adapt. I will be happy to describe to you any object that you touch. Now I will lead you to the place where the dreadful occurrence ... occurred.' Angua looked around as they were led along the tunnel, noting that Carrot had to walk with his knees slightly bent. Head Banger, eh? Funny, you never mention that to the lads! Every dozen yards or so Ardent stopped in front of a round door, invariably with the vurms clustered around it, and turned a wheel. The doors creaked when they opened, and they opened with a ponderousness that suggested they were heavy. Here and there in the tunnels were ... things, mechanical things, hanging from the wall and clearly there with a purpose. Vurms glowed around them. She hadn't got a clue what the objects were for, but Carrot greeted them with enthusiastic glee, like a schoolboy. `You have air bells and water boots, Mr Ardent! I've only ever heard of them!' `You were raised in the good rock of Copperhead, were you not, captain? Mining in this wet plain is like digging tunnels in the sea.' Ànd the iron doors are quite watertight, are they?' `Yes, indeed. Airtight, too.' `Remarkable! I should like to visit again, when this wretched business is over. A dwarf mine under the city! It's quite hard to believe!' Ì'm sure that could be arranged, captain: And that was Carrot at work. He could sound so innocent, so friendly, so ... stupid, in a puppy-dog kind of way, and then he suddenly became this big block of steel and you walked right into it. By the smell of it, Sally was watching him with interest. Be sensible, Angua told herself. Don't let the vampire get to you. Don't start believing you're stupid and hairy. Think clearly. You do have a brain. Surely people could go mad living in this murk? Angua found it easier to close her eyes. Down here, her nose worked better without distraction. Darkness helped. With her eyes shut, various faint colours danced across her brain. Without the stink of the damned vampire, though, she would have been able to pick up a lot more. The stench poisoned every sensation. Hold on, don't think like that, you're just letting your mind do the thinking for you ... hang on, that's wrong... There was a faint outline in the corner of the next chamber, which was quite large. It looked like ... an outline. A chalk outline. A glowing chalk outline. Ì understand this is the approved method?' said Ardent. `You will be aware of night chalk, captain? It is made of crushed vurm. The glow persists for about a day. On the floor here you will see, or rather, you will feel the club that dealt him his death blow. Just under your hand, captain. There is blood on it. I regret the darkness, but we kept the vurms out. They would have feasted, you understand.' Angua saw Carrot, outlined in his permanent smell of soap, feel his way across the space. His hand touched another metal door. `Where does this go, sir?' he said, tapping it. `To the outer chambers.' `Was it open at the time the troll attacked the grag?' You really assume a troll did it? Angua wondered. Ì believe so,' said Ardent. `Then I would like it open now, please.' Ì cannot agree to that request, captain.' Ì did not intend it to be a request, sir. After it has been opened, I will need to know who was in the mine at the time the troll broke in. I will need to speak to them, and to whoever discovered the body. Hara'g, j'kargra.' For Angua, the smell of Ardent changed. Under all those layers, the dwarf was suddenly uncertain. He'd walked right into it. He hesitated for several seconds before replying. Ì will ... endeavour to meet your reque- your requirements, smelter,' he said. Ì will leave you now. Come, Helmclever.' 'Grz dava'j?' said Carrot. `K'zakra'j? d j h'ragna ra'd'j!' Ardent stepped forward, uncertainty growing, and held out both hands, palms down. For a moment, until his sleeves slipped, Angua saw a faintly glowing symbol on his right wrist. Every deep-downer had a draht as unique evidence of identity, in a world of shrouded figures. She'd heard they were made by tattooing vurm blood under the skin. It sounded painful. Carrot took his hands for a moment, and then let go. `Thank you,' he said, as if the dwarfish interlude had not taken place. The two dwarfs hurried away. In the thick darkness, the watchmen were left alone. `What was all that about?' said Angua. `Just reassuring him,' said Carrot cheerfully. He reached into a pocket. 'Now we've arrived, let's have some light in here, shall we?' Angua smelled his hand move vigorously across the wall once or twice, as if he was painting. There arose an aroma of ... pork pie? `Soon be brighter,' he said. `Captain Carrot, this wasn't where-' Sally began. Àll in good time, lance-constable,' said Carrot firmly. `For now, we just observe.' `But I must tell you-' `Later on, lance-constable,' said Carrot, a little louder. Vurms were flowing around the open door they'd arrived by, and across the stone. `By the way, er, Sally ... will you be all right if we view the body?' That's right, Angua thought, think of her. I've dealt with blood every day. Walk a mile in my nostrils! Òld blood will not be a problem, sir,' said Sally. `There's some in here. But there's-' Ì expect they've set up a morgue,' said Carrot quickly. `The death rites are quite complex.' Morgue? A home away from home for you, my dear! snarled Angua's inner wolf. The vurms were spreading out now, crawling across the wall with a purpose. She crouched down to bring her nose nearer to the floor. I can smell dwarfs, lots of dwarfs, Angua thought. Hard to smell trolls, especially underground. Blood on the club, like a flower. Dwarf smell on the club, but there's dwarf smell everywhere. I can smellHang on, that's familiar ... The floor mostly smelled of slime and loam. Carrot's footprints showed up, and so did hers. There was a lot of dwarf smell, and she could still just make out the smell of their concern. This is where they found the body, then? But this patch of mud here, this was different. It had been trodden into the floor, but it smelled just like the heavy clay from up around Quarry Lane. Who lived in Quarry Lane? Most of the trolls in Ankh-Morpork. A clue. She smiled in the dwindling darkness. And the trouble with clues, as Mister Vimes always said, was that they were so easy to make. You could walk around with a pocket full of the bloody things. The darkness was disappearing because the light was growing. Angua looked up. There was a huge, bright symbol on the wall where Carrot had touched it. He dragged some meat across it, she thought. They've turned up for the feast ... Ardent came back in, with Helmclever trailing after him. He got as far as: `The door here can be opened again but, alas, we-' and stopped. They were happy vurms. By the standards of greeny-white glow, they were brilliant. Behind Carrot there was now a gently glowing circle, with two diagonal lines slashed through it. Both the dwarfs stared at it as if in shock. `Well, let's take a look, shall we?' said Carrot, apparently oblivious of all this. `We, alas, the water ... water ... not entirely watertight ... the other doors ... the troll caused flooding. .:Ardent murmured, not taking his eyes off the glow. `But you say we can go through here, at least?' said Carrot politely, pointing to the sealed door. Èr, yes. Yes. Certainly.' The steward hurried forward and produced a key. The wheel, unlocked, turned easily. Angua was acutely aware of how the muscles on Carrot's bare arms glistened and pumped as he pulled the metal door open. Oh no, not yet, surely! She ought to have at least another day! It was the vampire, that's what it was, standing there looking so innocent. Bits of her body wanted her to become a wolf, right now, to defend herself... There was a pillared room on the other side of the door. It smelled damp and unfinished. There were vurms on the ceiling, but the floor was muddy and squelched underfoot. Angua could make out another dwarf door across the room, and one on either side as well. `We take spoil to a heap on the waste ground outside,' said Ardent. `We, er, believe the troll got in that way. It was an unpardonable oversight.' He still sounded uneasy. Ànd the troll was not seen?' said Carrot, kicking at the mud. `No. These chambers are finished. The diggers are elsewhere, but they came as soon as they could. We believe the grag had come up here for solitude. To die at the random hand of an abomination!' `Lucky for the troll, wasn't it, sir?' said Angua sharply. `He just happened to wander in and stumble across Hamcrusher?' Carrot's boot struck something metallic. He kicked some more mud away. `You've laid rails?' he said. `You must be shifting a lot of spoil, sir., 'Better to push than to carry,' said Ardent. `Now, I have arranged for-' `Hold on, what's this?' said Carrot. He squatted down and pulled at something pale. Ìt's a piece of bone, by the look of it. On a string.' `There are plenty of old bones,' said Ardent. `Now, I-' It came free with a gloop, and grinned at them in the sickly light. Ìt doesn't look very old, sir,' said Carrot. Just one breath was enough for Angua. Ìt's a sheep skull,' she said. Àbout three months dead.' Oh, another clue, she added to herself. Nice and convenient for us to find, too. `Could have been dropped by the troll,' said Carrot. À troll?' said Ardent, backing away. It wasn't the reaction Angua had expected. Ardent had been nervous already, but now, under all those wrappings, he was on the verge of panic. `You did say a troll had attacked the grag, sir?' said Carrot. `But we never- I never saw that before! Why didn't we find it? Did it come back?' Àll the doors are sealed, sir,' said Carrot patiently. Àren't they?' `But have we sealed it in here with us?' It was practically a shriek. `You'd know, sir, wouldn't you?' said Carrot. `Trolls sort of, well, stand out.' Ì must fetch guards!' said Ardent, backing away towards the single open door. Ìt could be anywhere!' `Then you could be heading right towards it, sir,' said Angua. Ardent stopped dead for a moment, and then uttered a little whimper and ran into the dark, Helmclever on his heels. `Well, how do we all think that went?' said Angua, with a horrible smile. Ànd what was that you said to him in dwarfish - "You know I am a dwarf in the brotherhood of all dwarfs"?' 'Erm, "With emphatic certainty you know me. I observe the rites of the dwarf. What/who am I? I am the Brothers united",' said Sally carefully. `Well done, lance-constable!' said Carrot. `That was an excellent translation!' `Yes, did you bite someone clever?' said Angua. Ì am a Black Ribboner, sergeant,' said Sally meekly. Ànd I'm naturally good at languages. While we're alone, captain, can I mention something else?' `Certainly,' said Carrot, trying the wheel on one of the closed doors. Ì think a lot of things are wrong here, sir. There was something very strange about the way Ardent reacted to that skull. Why would he think the troll was still here, after all that time?' À troll getting into a dwarf mine can do a lot of damage before it's stopped,' said Carrot. Àrdent really wasn't expecting that skull, sir,' said Sally, pressing on. Ì heard his heart racing. It terrified him. Er ... something more, sir. There's lots of city dwarfs here. Dozens. I can feel their hearts, too. There are six grags. Their hearts beat very slowly. And there are other dwarfs, too. Strange ones, and only a few of them. Maybe ten.' `That's useful to know, lance-constable, thank you very much.' `Yes, I don't know how we managed before you came,' said Angua. She walked quickly over to the other side of the dank room, so that they wouldn't see her face. She needed fresh air, not the pervasive, clinging, old-root-cellar reek of this place. Her head was full of shouting. The Temperance League? `Not One Drop'? Did anyone believe that for one minute? But everyone wanted to fall for it because vampires could be so charming. Of course they were! It was part of being a vampire! It was the only way to get people to stay the night in the dreadful castle! Everyone knew a leopard couldn't change his shorts! But, no, stick on a stupid black ribbon and learn the words for `Lips that touch Ichor shall never touch Mine' and they fall for it every time. But werewolves? Well, they were just sad monsters, weren't they? Never mind that life was a daily struggle with the inner wolf, never mind that you had to force yourself to walk past every lamp-post, never mind that in every petty argument you had to fight back the urge to settle it all with just one bite. Never mind that, because everyone knew that a creature that was a wolf and a human combined was a kind of dog. They were expected to behave. Part of her was shouting that this wasn't so, that this was just PIT and the known effects of a vampire's presence, but somehow, now, with the smells around her becoming so strong that they were approaching solidity, she did not want to listen. She wanted to smell the world, she was practically climbing into her own nose. After all, that was why she was in the Watch, wasn't it? For her nose? New smell, new smell ... Sharp blue-grey of lichen, the browns and purples of old carrion, undertones of wood and leather ... even as a full wolf she'd never tasted the air so forensically as this. Something else, sharp, chemical ... The air was full of the smell of damp and dwarfs, but these little traces ran through it like a piccolo hornpipe through a requiem and formed one thing ... `Troll,' she croaked. `Troll. Troll with skull belt and head-locks. On Slab, or something like it! Troll!' Angua was almost barking at the far door now. Òpen door! This way!' She barely needed her eyes now, but there on the metal of the door, in charcoal, someone had drawn a circle with two diagonal lines through it. Suddenly Carrot was by her side. At least he had the decency not to say Àre you sure?' but he rattled the big wheel. The door was locked. Ì don't think there's water behind this,' he said. Òh, really?' Angua managed. `You know that was jus'... to keep us out!' Carrot turned and there, running towards them, was a squad of dwarfs. They were heading for the door as though quite oblivious of the presence of the watchmen. `Don't let them go through first!' said Angua through gritted teeth. `Trail is ... faint!' Carrot drew his sword with one hand and held up his badge with the other. `City Watch!' he roared. `Lower your weapons, please! Thank you!' The squad slowed, which meant that, in the nature of these things, those at the back piled into the hesitant ones in front. `This is a crime scene!' Carrot announced. Ì am still the smelter! Mr Ardent, are you there? Do you have guards on the other side of this door?' Ardent pushed through the throng of dwarfs. `No, I believe not,' he said. Ìs the troll still behind it?' Carrot glanced at Sally, who shrugged. Vampires had never developed the ability to listen for troll hearts. There was no point. `Possibly, but I don't think so,' said Carrot. `Please unlock it. We might yet find a trail!' `Captain Carrot, you know that the safety of the mine must always come first!' said Ardent. Òf course you must give chase. But first we will open the door and make certain there is no danger behind it. You must concede us that.' `Let them,' hissed Angua. Ìt'll be a clearer scent. I'll be okay.' Carrot nodded, and whispered back, `Well done!' Under her flesh, she felt her tail want to wag. She wanted to lick his face. It was the dog part of her doing the thinking. You're a good dog. It was important to be a good dog. Carrot pulled her aside as a couple of dwarfs approached the door purposefully. `But it's long gone,' she murmured, as two more dwarfs came up behind the first two. `The scent's twelve hours old, at least-' `What are they doing?' said Carrot, half to himself. The two new dwarfs were covered from head to toe in leather, like Ardent, but wore mail over the top of it; their helmets were quite unadorned, but covered the whole face and head, with only a slit for the eyes. Each dwarf carried a large black pack on his back and held a lance in front of him. Òh no,' said Carrot, `surely not here-' At a word of command, the door was swung open, revealing only darkness beyond. The lances spat flame, long yellow tongues of it, and the black dwarfs walked slowly along behind them. Smoke, heavy and greasy, filled the air. Angua fainted. Darkness. Sam Vimes struggled up the hill, tired to the bone. It was warm, warmer than he'd expected. Sweat stung his eyes. Water splashed under his feet and made his boots slip. And, ahead, up the slope, a child was screaming. He knew he was shouting. He could hear the breath wheezing in his throat, could feel his lips moving, but he couldn't hear the words he was reciting, over and over again. The darkness felt like cold ink. Tendrils of it dragged at his mind and his body, slowing him down, pulling him back ... And now they came at him with flames Vimes blinked, and found himself staring at the fireplace. The flames flicked peacefully. There was the swish of a dress as Sybil came back into the room, sat down and picked up her darning. He watched her, dully. She was darning his socks. They had maids in this place and she darned his socks. It wasn't as if they didn't have so much money that he could have a new pair of socks every day. But she'd picked up the idea that it was a wifely duty, and so she did it. It was comforting, in a strange sort of way. It was only a shame that she wasn't in fact any good at mending holes, so Sam ended up with sock heels that were a huge welt of criss-crossing wool. He wore them anyway, and never mentioned it. À weapon that fires flame,' he said slowly. `Yes, sir,' said Carrot. `Dwarfs have weapons that fire flame.' `The deep-downers use them to explode pockets of mine-gas,' said Carrot. Ì never expected to see them here!' Ìt's a weapon if some bastard points it at me!' said Vimes. `How much gas did they expect to find in Ankh-Morpork?' `Sir? Even the river catches fire in a hot summer! 'Okay, okay. I'll grant you that,' Vimes conceded, unwillingly. `Make sure the word gets out, will you? Anyone seen above ground with one of those things, we'll shoot first and there will be no point in asking questions afterwards. Good grief, that's all we need. Have you got anything more to tell me, captain?' `Well, afterwards we did get to see Hamcrusher's body,' said Carrot. `What can I say? On his wrist was the draht that identifies him, and his skin was pale. There was a terrible wound on the back of the head. They say it's Hamcrusher. I can't prove it. What I can say is that he didn't die where they said he did, or when they said he did.' `Why?' said Vimes. `Blood, sir,' said Sally. `There should have been blood everywhere. I looked at the wound. What that club hit over the head was already a corpse, and he wasn't killed in that tunnel.' Vimes took several slow breaths. There was so much bad stuff here you needed to take it one horror at a time. Ì'm worried, captain,' he said. `Do you know why? It's because I've got a feeling that very soon I'm going to be asked to confirm that there's evidence that a troll did the deed. Which, my friend, will be like announcing the outbreak of war.' `You did ask us to investigate, sir,' said Carrot. `Yes, but I didn't expect you to come back with the wrong result! The whole thing stinks! That clay from Quarry Lane was planted, wasn't it?' Ìt must have been. Trolls don't clean their feet much, but walking mud all the way? Not a chance.' Ànd they don't leave their clubs behind, either,' growled Vimes. `So it's a set-up, right? But it turns out there really was a troll! Was Angua sure?' `Positive, sir,' said Carrot. `We've always trusted her nose before. Sorry, sir, she had to go and get some fresh air. She was straining her senses as it was, and she got a lungful of that smoke.' Ì can imagine,' said Vimes. Hells' bells, he thought. We were right on the point where I could tell Vetinari that it looked like some kind of half-baked inside job faked to look as though a troll did it, and we find out there was a troll. Huh, so much for relying on the evidence. Sally coughed politely. Àrdent was shocked and frightened when the captain found the skull, sir,' she said. Ìt wasn't an act. I'm certain of it. He was near collapse with terror. So was Helmclever, the whole time. `Thank you for that, lance-constable,' said Vimes gravely. Ì suspect I shall feel the same way when I go out there with a megaphone and shout, "Hello, boys, welcome to the replay of Koom Valley! Hey, let's hold it right here in the city!"' Ì don't think you should actually put it like that, sir,' said Carrot. `Well, yes, I'll probably try to be a bit more subtle, since you mention it,' said Vimes. Ànd it'd be at least the sixteenth battle referred to as Koom Valley,' Carrot went on, òr seventeenth if you include the one in Vilinus Pass, which was more of a fracas. Only three of them were in the original Koom Valley, the one immortalized in Rascal's painting. It's said to be quite accurate. Of course, it took him years.' Àn amazing work,' said Sybil, not looking up from her darning. Ìt used to belong to my family before we gave it to the museum, you know.' Ìsn't progress a wonderful thing, captain?' said Vimes, pouring as much sarcasm into his tone as possible, since Carrot was so bad at recognizing it. `When we have our Koom Valley, our friend Otto will be able to take a colour iconograph of it in a fraction of a second. Wonderful. It's been a long time since this city was last burned to the ground.' He ought to be springing into action. Once upon a time, he would have done. But now, perhaps he should take these precious moments to work out what he should do before he sprang. Vimes tried to think. Don't think of it all as one big bucket of snakes. Think of it as one snake at a time. Try to sort it out. Now, what needs to be done first? Everything. All right, try a different approach. `What are these mine signs all about?' he said. `That Helmclever sort of drew one at me. I saw one on the wall, too. And you drew one. "'The Following Dark",' said Carrot. `Yes. It was scrawled all over the place.' `What does it mean?' `Dread, sir,' said Carrot earnestly. À warning of terrible things to come. `Well, if one of those little sods so much as surfaces with one of those flame weapons in his hand that will be true. But you mean they scrawl it on walls?' Carrot nodded. `You have to understand about a dwarf mine, sir. It's a kind of-' -emotional hothouse, was how Vimes understood it, although no dwarf would ever describe it that way. Humans would have gone insane living like that, cramped together, no real privacy, no real silence, seeing the same faces every day for years on end. And since there were a lot of pointy weapons around, it'd only be a matter of time before the ceilings dripped blood. Dwarfs didn't go mad. They stayed thoughtful and sombre and keen on their job. But they scrawled mine-sign. It was like an unofficial ballot, voting by graffiti, showing your views on what was going on. In the confines of a mine any problem was everyone's problem, stress leapt from dwarf to dwarf like lightning. The signs earthed it. They were an outlet, a release, a way of showing what you felt without challenging anyone (because of all the pointy weapons). The Following Dark: We await what follows with dread. Another translation might mean, in effect: Repent, ye sinners! `There are hundreds of runes for darkness,' said Carrot. `Some of them are part of ordinary dwarfish, of course, like the Long Dark. There's plenty like that. But some are ...' `Mystical?' Vimes suggested. Ùnbelievably mystical, sir. There's books and books about them. And the way dwarfs think about books and words and runes ... well, you wouldn't believe it, sir. W- They think the world was written, sir. All words have enormous power. Destroying a book is worse than murder to a deep-downer.' Ì've rather gathered that,' said Blackboard Monitor Vimes. `Some deepdowners believe that the dark signs are real,' Carrot went on. `Well, if you can see the writing on the wall-' Vimes began. `Real like alive, sir,' said Carrot. `Like they exist somewhere down in the dark under the world, and they cause themselves to be written. There's the Waiting Dark ... that's the dark that fills a new hole. The Closing Dark ... I don't know about that one, but there's an Opening Dark, too. The Breathing Dark, that's rare. The Calling Dark, very dangerous. The Speaking Dark, the Catching Dark. The Secret Dark, I've seen that. They're all fine. But the Following Dark is a very bad sign. I used to hear the older dwarfs talking about that. They said it could make lamps go out, and much worse things. When people start drawing that sign, things have got very bad.' `This is all very interesting, but-' Èveryone in the mine is as nervous as heck, sir. Stressed like wires. Angua said she could smell it, but so could I, sir. I grew up in a mine. When something is wrong, everyone catches it. On days like that, sir, my father used to stop all mining operations. You get too many accidents. Frankly, sir, the dwarfs are mad with worry. The Following Dark signs are everywhere. It's probably the miners they've hired since they came here. They feel that something is very wrong, but the only thing they can do about it is sign.' `Well, their top grag has been killed-' Ì can feel the atmosphere in a mine, sir. Any dwarf can. And that one is rancid with fear and dread and horrible confusion. And there's worse things in the Deeps than the Following Dark.' Vimes had a momentary vision of vengeful darkness rising through caves like a tide, faster than a man could run ... ... which was stupid. You couldn't see dark. Hold on, though ... sometimes you could. Back in the old days, when he was on nights all the time, he'd known all the shades of darkness. And sometimes you got darkness so thick that you almost felt you had to push your way through it. Those were nights when horses were skittish and dogs whined and down in the slaughterhouse district the animals broke out of their pens. They were inexplicable, just like those nights that were quite light and silvery even though there was no moon in the sky. He'd learned, then, not to use his little watchman's lantern. Light only ruined your vision, it blinded you. You stared into the dark until it blinked. You stared it down. `Captain, I'm getting a bit lost here,' said Vimes. Ì didn't grow up in a mine. Are these signs drawn because dwarfs think bad things are going to happen and want to ward them off, or think the mine deserves the bad things happening, or because they want the bad things to happen?' `Can be all three at once,' said Carrot, wincing. Ìt can get really intense when a mine goes bad.' Òh, good grief! 'Oh, it can be awful, sir. Believe me. But no one would ever draw the worst of the signs and want it to happen. Just the drawing wouldn't be enough, anyway. You have to want it to happen with your very last breath.' Ànd what one is that? 'Oh, you don't want to know, sir.' `No, I did ask,' said Vimes. `No. You really don't want to know, sir. Really.' Vimes was about to start yelling, but he stopped to think for a moment. Àctually, no, I don't think I do,' he agreed. `This is all about hysteria and mysticism. It's just weird folklore. Dwarfs believe it. I don't. So ... how did you get the vurms to form that sign?' Èasy, sir. You just smear the wall with a piece of meat. That's a feast for vurms. I wanted to shake Ardent up a bit. Make him nervous, like you taught me. I wanted to show him I knew about signs. I am a dwarf, after all.' `Captain, this is probably not the time to break it to you, but-' Òh, I know people laugh, sir. A six-foot dwarf! But being a human just means being born to human parents. That's easy. Being a dwarf doesn't mean being born to dwarfs, though it's a good start. It's about certain things you do. Certain ceremonies. I've done them. So I'm a human and a dwarf. The deepdowners find it a bit hard to deal with that.' Ìt's mystic again, is it?' said Vimes wearily. Òh yes, sir.' Carrot coughed. Vimes recognized that particular cough. It meant that bad news was on the captain's mind and he was wondering how to shape it to fit the available not-goingtotally-spare space in Vimes's head. Òut with it, captain.' Èr, this little chap turned up,' said Carrot, opening his hand. The Gooseberry imp sat up. Ì ran all the way, Insert Name Here,' it said proudly. `We spotted it jogging along the gutter,' said Carrot. Ìt wasn't hard to see, glowing pale green like that.' Vimes pulled the Gooseberry box out of his pocket and put it on the floor. The imp climbed inside. Òoh, that feels so good,' it said. `Don't talk to me about rats and cats!' `They chased you? But you're a magical creature, aren't you?' said Vimes. `They don't know that!' said the imp. `Now, what was it ... Oh, yes. You asked me about the night-soil removal. Over the past three months the extra honey-wagon load has averaged forty tons a night.' `Forty tons? That'd fill a big room! Why didn't we know about it?' `You did, Insert Name Here!' said the imp. `But they were leaving from every gate, you see, and probably no guard ever spotted more than one or two extra carts.' `Yes, but they turned in reports every night! Why didn't we spot it?' There was an awkward pause. The imp coughed. Ùm, no one reads the reports, Insert Name Here. They appear to be what we in the trade call write-only documents.' `Wasn't anyone supposed to be reading them?' Vimes demanded. There was another thundering silence. Ì rather think you were, dear,' said Sybil, paying attention to her darning. `But I'm in charge!' Vimes protested. `Yes, dear. That's the point, really., 'But I can't spend all my time shuffling bits of paper!' `Then get someone else to do it, dear,' said Sybil. `Can I do that?' said Vimes. `Yes, sir,' said Carrot. `You're in charge.' Vimes looked at the imp, which gave him a willing grin. `Can you go through all of my in-tray-' `. floor.. :murmured Sybil. `-and tell me what's important?' `Happy to, Insert Name Here! Only one question, Insert Name Here. What is important?' `Well, the fact that the dunnikin divers are carting a whole lot more muck out of the city is pretty damn important, don't you think?' Ì wouldn't know, Insert Name Here,' said the imp. Ì do not, in fact, think as such. But I surmise that, if I had drawn your attention to such a fact a month ago you would have told me to stick my head up a duck's bottom.' `That's true,' said Vimes, nodding. Ì probably would. Captain Carrot?' `Sir!' said Carrot, sitting up straight. `What's the situation on the street?' `Well, troll gangs have been wandering around the city all day. Dwarfs, too. Now a lot of the dwarfs are hanging around in Sator Square, sir, and a fair number of trolls are congregating in the Plaza of Broken Moons.' `How many are we talking about here?' said Vimes. Àbout a thousand, all told. They've been drinking, of course.' `Just in the mood for a fight, then.' `Yes, sir. Just drunk enough to be stupid but too sober to fall over,' said Carrot. Ìnteresting observation, captain,' said Vimes thoughtfully. `Yes, sir. The word is that they'll start at nine. Arrangements have been made, I gather.' `Then I think before it gets dark there should be a load of coppers in the Cham, right between them, don't you?' said Vimes. `Get the word out to the Watch Houses.' Ì've done that, sir,' said Carrot. Ànd get some barricades sorted out.' Àll arranged, sir.' Ànd call out the Specials?' Ì put the word out an hour ago, sir.' Vimes hesitated. Ì've got to be there, captain.' `We should have enough men, sir,' said Carrot. `But you won't have enough commander,' said Vimes. Ìf Vetinari hauls me over the coals tomorrow because there was a major riot in the city centre, I don't want to tell him I was having a quiet evening at home.' He turned to his wife. `Sorry, Sybil.' Lady Sybil sighed. Ì think I shall have to have a word with Havelock about the hours he makes you keep,' she said. Ìt's not doing you any good, you know.' Ìt's the job, dear. Sorry.' Ìt's just as well I got the cook to make up a flask of soup, then.' `You did?' Òf course. I know you, Sam. And there's some sandwiches in a bag. Captain Carrot, you are to make sure he eats the apple and the banana. Dr Lawn says he must eat at least five pieces of fruit or vegetable every day!' Vimes stared woodenly at Carrot and Sally, trying to project the warning that the first officer to crack a smile or even mention this to anyone, ever, ever, ever, would have a very hard time of it indeed. Ànd, incidentally, tomato ketchup is not a vegetable,' Sybil added. `Not even the dried stuff round the top of the bottle. Well, what are you all waiting around for?' `There is something I didn't want to mention in front of her ladyship,' said Carrot, as they hurried down to the Yard. Èr, Hitherto is dead, sir.' `Who's Hitherto?' 'Lance-Constable Horace Hitherto, sir? Got walloped on the back of the head last night? When we were at that meeting? When there was that, er, "disturbance"? Got sent to the Free Hospital?' Òh, gods. .: said Vimes. Ìt seems like a week ago. He'd only been with us a couple of months!' `They said at the hospital his brain died, sir. I'm sure they did their best.' Did we do ours? Vimes wondered. But it was a bloody melee, and the cobblestone came out of nowhere. Could have hit me, could have hit Carrot. Hit a kid, instead. What'll I tell his parents? Killed while doing his duty? But his duty shouldn't have been to stop one lot of idiot citizens murdering another lot of idiot citizens. It's all got out of hand. There aren't enough of us. And now there's a few less. Ì'll go and see his mum and dad tomor-' he began, and his sluggish memory shifted at last. `Does- Didn't he have a brother in the Watch?' `Yessir,' said Carrot. 'Lance- Constable Hector Hitherto, sir. They joined together. He's down at Chittling Street.' `Then get hold of his sergeant and tell him Hector is not allowed on the street tonight, okay? I want him introduced to the joys of filing. In a cellar, if possible. And wearing a very thick helmet.' Ì understand, sir,' said Carrot. `How's Angua?' Ì think she'll be fine after having a lie-down, sir. The mine really got to her.' Ì'm really, really sorry about that-' Sally began. `Not your fault, lance-constable ... Sally,' said Vimes. Ìt was mine. I know about the vampire and werewolf thing, but I needed you both to be down there. It's just one of those decisions, okay? I suggest you take the evening off. No, that's an order. You've done very well on your first day. Off you go. Get your head down ... or whatever.' They watched her out of sight before continuing down the street. `She is very good, sir,' said Carrot. `She picks things up fast.' `Yes, very fast. I can see she's going to be useful,' said Vimes thoughtfully. `Doesn't that strike you as odd, captain? Up she pops, just when we need her.' `She has been in Ankh-Morpork for a couple of months, though,' said Carrot. Ànd the League vouches for her.' À couple of months is about the same time as Hamcrusher's been here too,' said Vimes. Ànd if you wanted to find things out, we're not a bad outfit to join. We're official prodnoses.' `Sir, you don't think-' Òh, I'm sure she's a Black Ribboner, but I don't think a vampire comes all the way from Uberwald to play the cello. Still, as you say, she does a good job. Vimes stared at nothing for a moment and then said thoughtfully, `Doesn't one of our Specials work for the clacks company?' `That'd be Andy Hancock, sir,' said Carrot. Òh gods. You mean "Two Swords"?' `That's him, sir. Very keen lad.' `Yes, I saw the dockets. Normally a training dummy lasts for months, captain. You're not supposed to chop through three in half an hour!' `He'll be down at the Yard now, sir. Do you want a word with him?' said Carrot. `No. You have a word with him: Vimes lowered his voice. So did Carrot. There was whispering. Then Carrot said, Ìs that strictly legal, sir?' Ì don't see how. Let's find out, shall we? We haven't had this little conversation, captain.' Ùnderstood, sir.' Ye gods, it was so much better when there were just four of us up against that bloody great dragon, Vimes thought as they walked on. Of course, we nearly got burned alive a few times, but at least it wasn't complicated. It was a damn great dragon. You could see it coming. It didn't get political on you. It had started to rain a fine invasive rain by the time they arrived at Pseudopolis Yard. Vimes had, with extreme reluctance, to hand it to Carrot. He certainly could organize. The place was bustling. Wagon-loads of yellow and black barricades were being trundled out of the old lemonade factory. Watchmen were pouring in from every street. Ì really pushed the boat out on this one, sir,' said Carrot. Ì thought it was important. `Well done, captain,' said Vimes, as they stood like islands in the flood. `But I think there is a little matter of forward planning you may have overlooked...' `Really, sir? I think I've covered everything; said Carrot, looking puzzled. Vimes slapped him on the back. `Probably not this one,' he said. And added, but only to himself: because you, captain, are not a bastard. Bewildered and aimless, the troll wanders through the world ... Brick's head really gonged. He really didn't want to be doing dis, but he'd fallen into bad company. He often fell into bad company, he reflected, although sometimes he had to look all day to find it, 'cos Brick was a loser's loser. A troll without a clan or a gang, and who is considered thick even by other trolls, has to take any bad company he can find. In this case he'd met Totally Slag an' Hardcore an' Big Marble, an' it had been easier to fall in wi' dem than decide not to, an' dey'd met up wi' more trolls an' now ... Look at it like dis, he thought as he trudged along, singing gang songs a bit behind the beat because he didn't know the words ... All right, being in der middle of dis mob o' trolls ain't `lyin' low, dat is a fact. But Totally Slag had said the word wuz that the Watch wuz also after the troll who'd been down dat mine, right? An', if you fink about it, the best place to hide a troll, right, is in a big bunch of trolls. 'Cos the Watch'd be pokin' around in der cellars where der real mean trollz hung out, they wouldn't be lookin' here. An' if they did, an' were puttin' the finger on him, then all dese brother trolls would help him out. He wasn't too certain about that last bit, in his heart of hearts. His possibly negative IQ, complete absence of street cred and, above all, his permanent inclination to snort, suck, swallow or bite anything that promised to make his brain sparkle, meant that he had been turned down even by the Tenth Egg Street Can't- fink- of- aname Gang, rumoured to be so dense that one of their members was a lump of concrete on a piece of string. No, it would be hard to imagine any troll caring much what happened to Brick. But right now dey were brothers, and der only game in town. He nudged the skull-necklaced, graffiti-ornamented, lichencovered, huge-club-dragging troll marching stoically alongside him. 'Resplect, bro!' he said, clenching a scabby fist. `Why'nt you go and ghuhgyerself, Brick, you little piece of coprolite ...the troll muttered. `Right off!' said Brick. The main office was packed but Vimes fought his way through by shoving and shouting until he reached the duty desk, which was under siege. Ìt looks worse than it is, sir!' shouted Cheery, over the din. `Detritus and Constable Bluejohn are in the Cham right now, along with all three golem officers! We've started putting the line in place! Both the mobs are too busy getting themselves worked up!' `Good work, sergeant!' Cheery leaned down and lowered her voice. Vimes had to hang on to the tall desk to stop himself being carried away by the throng. `Fred Colon's signing up the Specials in the old lemonade factory, sir. And Mr de Worde of the Times is looking for you.' `Sorry, sergeant, didn't catch that last bit!' said Vimes loudly. `The lemonade factory, right? Okay!' He turned round, and almost tripped over Mr A. E. Pessimal, who was holding a neat clipboard. Àh, your grace, there're just a few small matters I'd like to discuss with you,' said the gleaming little man. Vimes's mouth dropped open. Ànd you think this is a good time, do you?' he managed, as he was jostled by an officer carrying a bundle of swords. `Well, yes, I've turned up a number of little financial and procedural problems,' said A. E. Pessimal calmly, ànd I think it's vitally important that I understand exactly what-' Vimes, grinning horribly, grabbed him by the shoulder. `Yes! Right! Absolutely!' he shouted. `My dear Mr Pessimal, what have I been thinking of? You should understand! Come with me, please!' He half dragged the bewildered man out through the back door, lifted him out of the way of a trundling cart as he negotiated the crowded yard, and hustled him into the old factory yard, where the Specials were being kitted up. Technically, they were the Citizens' Militia but, as Fred Colon had remarked, it was `better to have them in here pissing themselves than outside pissing on you'. The special constables were men - mostly - who could be a copper in times of dire need but were generally disqualified from formal Watch membership by reason of shape, profession, age or, sometimes, brain. A lot of the professionals didn't like them, but Vimes had lately taken the view that when push came to shove it was better to have your fellow citizens shoving alongside you and, that being the case, you might as well teach them how to hold a sword right, lest the arm they clumsily removed was yours. Vimes pulled A. E. Pessimal through the press of bodies until he found Fred Colon, who was handing out one-size- doesn't-fitanybody helmets. `New man for you, Fred,' he said loudly. `Mr A. E. Pessimal, plain A. E. if he ever makes friends. He's the government inspector. Kit him out, full fig, and don't forget the riot shield. A. E. here wants to understand coppering, so he's kindly volunteered to be an actingconstable on the barricades with us.' Over the top of A. E. Pessimal's head he gave Fred a big wink. Òh, er, right,' said Fred, and his face, in the flickering light of the flares, acquired the innocent smile of one about to make someone's life a little pot of bubbling dread. He leaned over the trestle table. `Know how to use a sword, Acting-Constable Pessimal?' he said, and dropped a helmet on the man's head, where it spun. `Well, I didn't exactly-' the inspector began, as a very elderly sword was shoved across the planks, followed by a heavy truncheon. À shield, then? Any good with a shield?' said Fred, pushing a large such item after the sword. Àctually, I didn't mean-'said A. E. Pessimal, trying to hold both the sword and the truncheon and dropping both, and then the sword and the truncheon and the shield and dropping all three. Àny good at running a hundred yards in ten seconds? In this?' Fred went on. A ragged chain mail coat dropped slowly off the table like a parcel of snakes and landed on A. E. Pessimal's bright little shoes. 'Uh, I don't think-' `Standing still and going to the toilet really, really quickly?' said Fred. Òh well, you'll learn soon enough.' Vimes turned the man round, picked up 35lb of rust-eaten chain mail and dropped it into his arms, causing A. E. Pessimal to bend double. Ì'll introduce you to some of the citizens who will be fighting alongside you tonight, shall I?' he said, as the little man hobbled after him. `This is Willikins, my butler. No sharpened pennies in your cap tonight, Willikins?' `No, sir,' said Willikins, staring at the struggling A. E. Pessimal. `Glad to hear it. This is Acting-Constable Pessimal, Willikins.' Vimes winked. `Honoured to meet you, acting-constable, sir,' said Willikins gravely. `Now that sir is with us I am sure the miscreants will just melt away. Has sir by any chance gone sir-on-one with a troll before? No? A little advice, sir. The important thing is to get in front of them and dodge the first blow. They always leave themselves open and sir may then step smartly forward and select sir's target of choice.' Èr, what if ... if I'm not in front of one when it tries to hit me?' A. E. Pessimal said, hypnotized by the description and dropping the sword again. `What if it is in fact behind me?' Àh, well, I am afraid that in that case sir has to go back and start all over again, sir: Ànd, er, how do I do that? 'Being born is traditionally the first step, sir,' said Willikins, shaking his head. Vimes gave him a nod and moved the trembling Pessimal on through the chattering crowd, while the fine rain fell and the mists rose and the torches flickered. `Good evening, sir!' said a cheerful voice and there, yes, was Special Constable Hancock, an amiable bearded man with an amiable smile and more cutlery about his person than was good for Vimes's mental health. That was the trouble with some of the Specials. They really got into it. They bought their own gear and it was always better than Watch issue. Some of them clanged even more than dwarfs, with patent handcuffs and complicated nightsticks and comfy padded helmets and pencils that wrote underwater and, in the case of Special Constable Hancock, two curved Agatean swords strapped across his back. Those who'd dared to venture into the training yard when he was using them said they looked rather impressive. Vimes had heard that an Agatean ninja could give a fly a shave and a haircut in mid-flight, but this didn't make him feel any better. Òh, hello ... Andy,' he said. Ì think-' `Captain Carrot's had a word with me,' said Special Constable Hancock, giving him a huge wink. Ì'll see to it!' Òh, good,' said Vimes, horribly aware that he'd put himself in a tricky position vis a vis suggesting that maybe one sword might be enough. Èr ... You'll be up against the trolls, at least to start with,' he said. `Just remember that there's our people around you, will you? Remember Special Constable Piggle, eh?' `But in fairness it was a clean cut, sir!' said Hancock. Ìgor said he'd never done such an easy re-attachment!' `Nevertheless, it's truncheons only tonight, Andy, unless I give any other order, okay?' Ùnderstood, Commander Vimes. I've just got a new truncheon, as a matter of fact.' Some sixth sense made Vimes say: Òh, really? May I see?' `Right here, sir. Hancock pulled out what looked to Vimes like two truncheons, joined together with a length of chain. `They're Agatean numknuts, sir. No sharp edges at all.' Vimes gave them an experimental swing and hit his own elbow. He handed them back quickly. `Rather you than me, lad. Still, I suppose they'll make a troll stop and think.' Mr Pessimal was staring in horror, not least because wayward wood had just missed him. Òh, this is Mr Pessimal, Andy,' said Vimes. `He's finding out how we do things. Mr Hancock is one of our ... keenest special constables, Mr Pessimal.' `Nice to meet you, Mr Pessimal!' said Hancock. Ìf you need any catalogues, I'm your man!' Vimes moved on quickly, just in case the man drew those swords again, and ran up against a slightly more reassuring figure. Ànd here we have Mr Boggis,' he said. `Good to see you. Mr Boggis is president of the Guild of Thieves, Mr Pessimal.' Mr Boggis saluted proudly. He had accepted a chain mail jacket from Fred, but no power in the world would have parted him from his brown bowler hat. Any power nevertheless inclined to try would in any case have to contend with the narrow-eyed, stony-jawed men on either side of him, who had eschewed any weapons or armour. One of them was cleaning his fingernails with a cut-throat razor. In a strange but very definite way they looked much more dangerous than Special Constable Hancock. Ànd also Vinny "No Ears" Ludd and Harry "Can't Remember His Nickname" Jones, I see,' Vimes went on. `You've brought your bodyguards, Mr Boggis?' 'Vinny and Harry like to get out in the fresh air, Mister Vimes,' said Mr Boggis. Ànd you've got your own bodyguard, then?' He beamed down on A. E. Pessimal and then grinned at Vimes. `You have to watch them little bantam fighters, Mister Vimes, they can have the nose off'f your face quicker'n wink. I can tell a killing cove when I see one, eh? Best of luck to you, Mr Pessimal!' Vimes bustled the astonished man away before Mr Boggis was killed on the spot by the God of Over-Acting, and almost walked into the one Special who could be guaranteed not to talk too much. Ànd here, Mr Pessimal, here we have the University Librarian,' he said. `Good man in a melee, eh?' `But that- that's not a man! That's an orangutan, Pongo pongo, native of BhangBhangduc and nearby islands!' Òok!' said the Librarian, patting A. E. Pessimal on the head and handing him a banana skin. `Well done, A. E.!' said Vimes. `Not many people get that right!' And so Vimes dragged the inspector back through the crowd of damp, armoured men, introducing him right and left. Then he pushed him into a corner and, to faint stunned protestations, dragged the mail shirt over his head. `You stick close behind me, Mr Pessimal,' he said, as the man tried to move. Ìt could get a bit sticky later on. The trolls are up in the plaza and the dwarfs are down in the square, and both of 'em are drinking up enough courage to have a good scrap. That's why we'll be lining up in the Cham, right between 'em, the thin brown streak, haha. The dwarfs favour battle-axes, the trolls go in for clubs. Our weapon of first resort will be our truncheons, and our weapon of last resort is our feet. That is to say, we'll run like hell.' `But, but, you have swords!' A. E. Pessimal managed. `We have swords, acting-constable. Yes, that is a fact, but poking holes in citizens is Watch brutality, and we don't want any of that now, do we? Let's get going; I wouldn't like you to miss anything.' He harried the man again, out into the street and the stream of watchmen heading for the Cham. Apart from them, the street was empty. Ankh-Morpork people had an instinct for staying indoors when there were too many battle-axes and spiky clubs out there. The Cham was simply a very, very wide road, once intended for ceremonial parades, a hangover from the days when the city had much to be ceremonious about. Drizzle filled it now and did not do much more than wet the pavements and reflect the light of the flares along the barricades. Barricades ... well, that's what they were called on the Watch inventory. Ha! Lengths of wood painted in black and yellow stripes and mounted on trestles were not barricades, not to anyone who'd been behind a real one, which was built of rubbish and furniture and barrels and fear and bowel-knotting defiance. No, these simple things were the physical symbol of an idea. It was a line in the sand. It said: thus far, and no further. It said: this is where the law is. Step over this line and you've gone beyond the law. Step over this line, with your massive axes and huge morningstars and heavy, heavy spiky clubs, and we few, we happy few, who stand here with our wooden truncheons, we'll ... we'll ... ... well, you just better not step over the line, okay? The yellow and black edges of the Law had been set about twelve feet apart, giving plenty of room for two lines of watchmen standing back to back, facing outwards. Vimes dragged Mr Pessimal into the centre of the Cham, between the lines, and let him go. Àny questions?' he said, as latecomers jostled past them to take up their positions. The little man stared towards the distant plaza, where the trolls had lit a big fire, and then turned to look the other way, at the square, where the dwarfs had lit several fires. There was the sound of distant singing. Òh, yes, we'll get the singing first. At this point it's all about getting the blood pounding, you see,' Vimes added helpfully. `Songs about heroes, great victories, killing your enemies and drinking out of their warm skulls, that sort of thing.' Ànd then, er, they'll attack us?' said A. E. Pessimal. `Well, not as such,' Vimes conceded. `They'll try to attack the other bunch, and we're in the way.' `They won't go around us, perhaps?' said A. E. Pessimal hopefully. Ì doubt it. They won't be in the mood for narrow alleys. They'll be thinking in straight lines. Charge and yell, they'll say, that's the way.' Àh, there's the university over there!' said A. E. Pessimal, as if noticing the huge bulk of Unseen University for the very first time. `Surely the wizards could-' -magic their weapons out of their hands, possibly leaving them with all their fingers? Magic them into the cells? Turn them all into ferrets? And what then, Mr Pessimal?' Vimes lit a cigar, cupping the match in his hand so that the flame made his face glow briefly. `Shall we follow where magic leads us? Wave a wand, eh, to find out who's guilty, and what of? Magic men good? The innocent would have nothing to fear, d'you think? I wouldn't bet tuppence, Mr Pessimal. Magic's a little bit alive, a little bit tricky. Just when you think you've got it by the throat it bites you in the arse. No magic in my Watch, Mr Pessimal. We use good old-fashioned policing.' `But there are lots of them, commander.' Àbout a thousand altogether, I reckon,' said Vimes placidly. `Plus who knows how many more out there who'll whale in if we let it get out of hand. This is just the hotheads and the gangs right now.' `B-but can't you just, er, leave them to it? 'No, Mr Pessimal, because that'd be what we in the Watch call "complete and utter bloody chaos" and it will not stop, and it will get bigger very quickly. We have to finish it right now, so-' There was a thud from the direction of the plaza. It was loud enough to echo around the buildings. `What was that?' A. E. Pessimal said, looking around hurriedly. Òh, that was to be expected,' said Vimes. Pessimal relaxed very slightly. Ìt was?' `Yes, it's the gahanka, the troll war beat,' said Vimes. `They say that within ten minutes of hearing it, you're dead.' Behind Pessimal, Detritus grinned, the torchlight turning his diamond teeth into rubies. Ìs that true?' Ì shouldn't think so,' said Vimes. Ànd now please excuse me for a while, Acting-Constable Pessimal. I'll leave you in the good hands of Sergeant Detritus while I talk to my men. Stiffen their sinews, that sort of thing.' He moved away quickly. He told himself he shouldn't be doing this to the inspector, who was just a clerk in the wrong place and probably wasn't a bad man. The trouble was, the trolls up in the plaza probably weren't bad trolls, and the dwarfs down in the square probably weren't bad dwarfs, either. People who probably weren't bad could kill you. The troll beat boomed around the city as Vimes reached Fred Colon. Ì see they're giving us the of gahanka then, Mister Vimes,' said the sergeant, with nervous cheerfulness. `Yep. They'll be charging pretty soon, I expect: Vimes screwed up his eyes, trying to see figures around the distant glow. Trolls didn't charge fast, but when they charged it was like a wall getting nearer. Extending a hand and shouting `Halt!' in a firm, authoritative voice probably would not be sufficient. `You thinking about another barricade, Mister Vimes?' said Fred. 'Hmm?' said Vimes, dismissing the mental picture of himself laminated to the street. `Barricades, sir,' Colon prompted. 'More'n thirty years ago?' Vimes gave a curt nod. Oh yes, he remembered the Glorious Revolution. It hadn't really been a revolution and had been glorious only if you thought an early grave was glorious. Men had died there, too, because of other men who, bar one or two, probably weren't bad ... `Yes,' he said. Ànd it seems like only yesterday.' Every day, he thought, it seems like only yesterday. `Remember of Sergeant Keel? He pulled off a few tricks that night!' Sergeant Colon's voice, like A. E. Pessimal's, had a curiously hopeful tone. Vimes nodded. Ì suppose you wouldn't have one or two up your sleeve too, sir?' Fred went on, the hope now naked and unashamed. `You know me, Fred, always willing to learn,' said Vimes vaguely. He strolled on, nodding to watchmen he knew, slapping others on the back, and trying not to get trapped in anyone's gaze. Every face was in some way a reflection of the face of Fred Colon. He could practically see their thoughts, while the thud of five hundred clubs hitting the stone in unison banged on the eardrums like a hammer. You have got it sorted, haven't you, Mister Vimes? We're not really going to be stuck here like the meat in a sandwich, right? It's a trick, yes? It is a trick, isn't it? Sir? I hope it is, Vimes thought. But, one way or another, the Watch has to be here. That's the bloody truth of it. Something had changed in the rhythm of the gahanka. You had to be listening, but some of the clubs were hitting the ground just ahead or just after the beat. Ah. He reached Cheery and Carrot, who were staring at the distant fires of the dwarfs. `We think we might be getting a result, sir,' said Carrot. Ì damn well hope so! What's happening with the dwarfs?' `Not so much singing, sir,' Cheery reported. `Glad to hear it.' `We could handle them, though, couldn't we, sir?' said Carrot. `With the golem officers on our side too? If it came to it?' Of course we couldn't, Vimes's mind supplied, not if they mean it. What we could do is die valiantly. I've seen men die valiantly. There's no future in it. Ì don't want it to come to it, captain-' Vimes stopped. A deeper shadow had moved amongst the shadows. `What's the password?' he said quickly. The shadowy figure, who was cloaked and hooded, hesitated. `Pathword? Ecthcuthe me, I've got it written down thome where-' it began. Òkay, Igor, come on in,' said Carrot. `How did you know it wath me, thur?' said Igor, ducking under the barricade. `Your aftershave' said Vimes, winking at the captain. `How did it go?' Jutht ath you thaid, thur,' said Igor, pushing his hood back. 'Inthidentally, thur, I have thcrubbed the thlab well and my couthin Igor ith thtanding by to lend a hand. In cathe of any little acthidenth, thur. ...' `Thank you for thinking of that, Igor,' said Vimes, as if Igors ever thought of anything else. Ì hope it won't be needed.' He looked up and down the Chain. The rain was falling harder now. Just for once, the copper's friend had turned up when he really needed it. Rain tended to dampen martial enthusiasm. Ànyone seen Nobby?' he said. A voice from the shadows said: `Here, Mister Vimes! Been here five minutes!' `Why didn't you sing out, then?' `Couldn't remember the password, sir! I thought I'd wait till I heard Igor say it!' Òh, come on in. Did it work?' 'Better'n you'd imagine, sir!' said Nobby, rain pouring down his cloak. Vimes stood back. Òkay, lads, then this is it. Carrot and Cheery, you head for the dwarfs, me and Detritus will take the trolls. You know the drill. Lines to advance slowly, and no edged weapons. I repeat, no edged weapons until it's that or die. Let's do this like coppers, okay? On the signal!' He hurried back up the line of barricades as fast as the stir ran along the ranks of the watchmen. Detritus was waiting stoically. He grunted when Vimes arrived. `Clubs have jus' about stopped, sir,' he reported. Ì heard, sergeant.' Vimes took off his oiled leather cloak and hung it on the barricade. He needed his arms free. `By the way, how did it go in Turn Again Lane?' he said, stretch ing and breathing deeply. Òh, wonnerful, sir,' said Detritus happily. `Six alchemists an' fifty pound o' fresh Slide. In an' out, quick an' sweet, all banged up in the Tanty.' `Didn't know what'd hit 'em, eh?' said Vimes. Detritus looked mildly offended at this. Òh no, sir,' he said, Ì made sure they knew I hit 'em.' And then Vimes spotted Mr Pessimal, still where he had left him, his face a pale disc in shadows. Well, enough of that game. Maybe the little tit would have learned something, standing here in the rain, waiting to be caught between a couple of screaming mobs. Maybe he'd had time to wonder what it was like to spend your life going through moments like that. A bit harder than pushing paper, eh? Ìf I was you, I'd just wait here, Mr Pessimal,' he said, as kindly as he could manage. `This might be a bit rough in parts.' `No, commander,' said A. E. Pessimal, looking up. `What?' Ì have been paying attention to what has been said, and intend to face the foe, commander,' said A. E. Pessimal. `Now see here, Mr Pessi- er, see here, A. E.,' said Vimes, putting his hand on the little man's shoulder. He stopped. A. E. Pessimal was trembling so much that his chain mail was faintly jingling. Vimes persevered. `Look, go on home, eh? This isn't where you belong: He patted the shoulder a few times, totally nonplussed. `Commander Vimes!' snapped the inspector. Èr, yes?' A. E. Pessimal turned up to Vimes a face wetter than the drizzle rightly accounted for. Ì am an acting-constable, am I not?' `Well, yes, I know I said that, but I did not expect you to take it seriously. . Ì am a serious man, Commander Vimes. And there is no place I would rather be now than here!' Acting-Constable Pessimal said, his teeth chattering. Ànd no time I'd rather be here than now! Let's do this, shall we?' Vimes looked at Detritus, who shrugged his massive shoulders. Something was happening here, in the mind of a little man whose back he could probably break with one hand. Òh, well, if you say so,' he said hopelessly. `You heard the inspector, Sergeant Detritus. Let's do this, shall we?' The troll nodded and turned to face the distant troll encampment. He cupped his hands and bellowed a string of trollish which bounced off the buildings. `Something we can all understand, perhaps?' said Vimes, as the echoes died away. A. E. Pessimal stepped forward, taking a deep breath. `C'mon if you think you're hard enoughf he screamed wildly. Vimes coughed. `Thank you, Mr Pessimal,' he said weakly. Ì imagine that should do it.' The moon was somewhere beyond the clouds but Angua didn't need to see it. Carrot had once had a special watch made for her birthday. It was a little moon that turned right around, black side and white side, through every twenty-eight days. It must have cost him a lot of money and Angua now wore it on her collar, the one item of clothing that she could wear all month round. She couldn't bring herself to tell him she didn't need it. You knew what was happening. It was hard to know much else right now, because she was thinking with her nose. That was the problem with the wolf times: the nose took charge. Currently, Angua was searching the alleys around Treacle Street, spiralling out from the entrance to the dwarf mine. She prowled onward in a world of colour; smells overlaid on one another, drifting and persisting. The nose is also the only organ that can see backwards in time. She'd already visited the spoil heap on the waste ground. There was the smell of troll there. It had got out that way, but there was no point in following a trail that cold. Hundreds of street trolls wore lichen and skulls these days. But the foul oily stuff, that was a smell that was clinging to her memory. The little devils must have some other ways in, right? And you had to move the air around in a mine, right? So some trace of that oil would find its way out along with the air. It probably wouldn't be strong, but she didn't need it to be. A trace was all she needed. It would be more than enough. As she padded through the alleys, and leapt walls into midnight yards, she kept clenched in her jaws the little leather bag that was a friend to any thinking werewolf, such a creature being defined as one who remembers that your clothes don't magically follow you. The bag held a lightweight silk dress and a large bottle of mouthwash, which Angua considered to be the greatest invention of the last hundred years. She found what she was looking for behind Broadway: it stood out against the familiar organic smells of the city as a tiny black ribbon of stench that left zigzags in the air as breezes and the passage of carts had dragged it this way and that. She began to move with more care. This wasn't an area like Treacle Street; people with money lived here, and they often spent that money on big dogs and `Disproportionate Response' signs in their driveways. As it was, she heard the rattle of chains and the occasional whine as she slunk along. She hated being attacked by large ferocious dogs. It always left a mess and the mouthwash afterwords was never strong enough. The thread of stink was floating through the railings of Empirical Crescent, one of the city's great architectural semi-precious gems. It was always hard to find people prepared to live there, however, despite the generally desirable nature of the area. Tenants seldom stayed for more than a few months before moving hurriedly, sometimes leaving all their possessions behind. [1] She sailed over the railing with silence and ease and landed on all [1] Empirical Crescent was just off Park Lane, in what was generally a high-rent district. The rents would have been higher still were it not for the continued existence of Empirical Crescent itself, which, despite the best efforts of the Ankh-Morpork Historical Preservation Society, had still not been pulled down. This was because it had been built by Bergholt Stuttley Johnson, better known to history as `Bloody Stupid' Johnson, a man who combined in one frail body such enthusiasm, self-delusion and creative lack of talent that he was, in many respects, one of the great heroes of architecture. Only Bloody Stupid Johnson could have invented the 13-inch foot and a triangle with three right angles in it. Only Bloody Stupid Johnson could have twisted common matter through dimensions it was not supposed to enter. And only Bloody Stupid Johnson could have done all this by accident. His highly original multi-dimensional approach to geometry was responsible for Empirical Crescent. On the outside it was a normal terraced crescent of the period, built of honey-coloured stone with the occasional pillar or cherub nailed on. Inside, the front door of No. 1 opened into the back bedroom of No.15, the ground-floor front window of No.3 showed the view appropriate to the second floor of No.9, smoke from the dining-room fireplace of No. 2 came out of the chimney of No.19. fours on what had once been a gravel path. Residents in the crescent seldom did much gardening, since even if you planted bulbs you could never be sure whose garden they'd come up in. Angua followed her nose to a patch of rampant thistles. Some mouldering bricks in a circle marked what must have been an old well. The oily stink was heavy here, but there was a fresher, far more complex smell that raised the hairs on Angua's neck. There was a vampire down there. Someone had pulled away the weeds and debris, including the inevitable rotting mattress and decomposing armchair. [1] Sally? What would she be doing here? Angua pulled a brick out of the rotted edging and let it drop. Instead of a splash, there was a clear wooden thump. Oh well. She went back to human to get down; claws were fine, but some things were better done by monkeys. The sides were of course slimy, but so many bricks had fallen out over the years that the descent turned out to be easier than she'd expected. And it was only about sixty feet deep, built in the days when it was widely believed that any water that supported so many little whiskery swimming things must be healthy. There were fresh planks in the bottom. Someone - and surely it could only have been the dwarfs - had broken into the well down here and laid a couple of planks across it. They had dug this far, and stopped. Why? Because they'd reached the well? There was dirty water, or water-like liquid, just under the planks. The tunnel was a bit wider here, and dwarfs had been here - she sniffed - a few days ago, no more. Yes. Dwarfs had been here, had fished around, and had then all left at once. They hadn't even bothered to tidy up. She could smell it like a picture. [1] It was okay to throw your rubbish into the garden, because it might not be your garden you were throwing it into. She crept forward, the tunnels mapping themselves in her nostrils. They weren't nicely finished like the tunnels Ardent moved in. They were rougher, with lots of zigzags and blind alleys. Rough planks and baulks of timber held back the fetid mud of the plains, which was nevertheless oozing through everywhere. These tunnels weren't built to last; they were there for a quick and definitely dirty job and all they had to do was survive until it was done. So ... the diggers had been looking for something, but weren't sure where it was until they were within, what, about twenty feet of it, when they'd ... smelled it? Detected it? The last stretch to the well was dead straight. By then, they knew where they were going. Angua crept on, almost bending double to clear the low ceiling until she gave up and went back to wolf. The tunnel straightened out again, with the occasional side passage that she ignored, although they smelled long. The vampire odour was still an annoying theme in the nasal symphony, and it came close to drowning the reek of foul water oozing from the walls. Here and there, vurms had colonized the ceiling. So had bats. They stirred. And then there was another scent, as she passed a tunnel opening. It was quite faint, but it was unmistakably the whiff of corruption. A fresh death ... Three fresh deaths. At the end of a short side tunnel were the bodies of two, no, three dwarfs, half buried in mud. They glowed. Vurms had no teeth, Carrot had told her. They waited until the prospective meal became runny of its own accord. And, while they waited for the biggest stroke of luck ever to have come their way, they celebrated. Down here, in a world far away from the streets, the dwarfs would dissolve in light. Angua sniffed. Make that very fresh 'They found something,' said a voice behind her. Ànd then it killed them.' Angua leapt. The leap wasn't intentional. Her hindbrain arranged it all by itself. The front brain, the bit that knew that sergeants should not attempt to disembowel lance-constables without provocation, tried to stop the leap in mid-air, but by then simple ballistics were in charge. All she managed was a mid-air twist, and struck the soft wall with her shoulder. Wings fluttered a little way off, and there was a drawn-out organic sound, a sound that conveyed the idea that a slaughterhouse man was having some difficulty with a tricky bit of gristle. `You know, sergeant,' said the voice of Sally, as if nothing had happened, `you werewolves have it easy. You stay one thing and you don't have any problems with body mass. Do you know how many bats I have to become for my bodyweight? More than a hundred and fifty, that's how many. And there's always one, isn't there, that gets lost or flies the wrong way? You can't think straight unless you get your bats together. And I'm not even going to touch on the subject of reassimilation. It's like the biggest sneeze you can think of. Backwards.' There was no point in modesty, not down here in the dark. Angua forced herself to change back, every brain cell piling in to outvote tooth and claw. Anger helped. `Why the hell are you here?' she said, when she had a mouth that worked. Ì'm off duty,' said Sally, stepping forward. Ì thought I'd see what I could find.' She was totally naked. `You couldn't have been so lucky!' Angua growled. Òh, I don't have your nose, sergeant,' said Sally, with a sweet smile. `But I was using a hundred and fifty-five pretty good flying ones, and they can cover a lot of ground.' Ì thought vampires could rematerialize their clothes,' said Angua accusingly. Òtto Chriek can!' `Females can't. We don't know why. It's probably part of the whole underwired nightdress business. That's where you score again, of course. When you're in one hundred and fifty bat bodies it's quite hard to remember to keep two of them carrying a pair of pants.' Sally looked up at the ceiling and sighed. `Look, I can see where this is going. It's going to be about Captain Carrot, isn't it ...?, 'I saw the way you were smiling at him!' Ì'm sorry! We can be very personable! It's a vampire thing!' `You were so keen to impress him, eh?' Ànd you aren't? He's the kind of man anyone would want to impress!' They watched one another warily. `He is mine, you know,' said Angua, feeling the nascent claws strain under her fingernails. `You're his, you mean!' said Sally. `You know it works like that. You trail after him!' Ì'm sorry! It's a werewolf thing!' Angua yelled. `Hold it!' Sally thrust both hands in front of her in a gesture of peace. `There's something we'd better sort before this goes any further!' `Yeah?' `Yes. We're both wearing nothing, we're standing in what, you may have noticed, is increasingly turning into mud, and we're squaring up to fight. Okay. But there's something missing, yes?' Ànd that is ... ?' À paying audience? We could make a fortune.' Sally winked. Òr we could do the job we came here to do?' Angua forced her body to relax. She should have been saying that. She was the sergeant, wasn't she? Àll right, all right,' she said. `We're both here, okay? Let's leave it at that. Were you saying that these dwarfs were killed by some ... thing from the well?' `Possibly. But if they were, it used an axe,' said Sally. `Take a look. Scrape some of the mud away. It's been oozing over them since I arrived. That's probably why you missed it,' she added generously. Angua hauled one dwarf out of the shining slime. Ì see,' she said, letting the body fall back. `This one hasn't been dead two days. Not much effort made to hide them, I notice.' `Why bother? They've stopped pumping out these tunnels; the props look pretty temporary; the mud's coming back. Besides, who'd be stupid enough to come down here?' A piece of wall slithered down, with a sticky, organic, cow-pat sort of noise. Little plops and trickles filled the tunnel. Ankh-Morpork's underworld was stealthily reclaiming its own. Angua closed her eyes and concentrated. The slime reek, the vampire's smell and the water that was now ankle deep all jostled for attention, but this was competition time. She couldn't let a vampire take the lead. That would be so ... traditional. `There were other dwarfs,' she murmured. `Two - no, three ... er ... four more. I'm getting ... the black oil. Distant blood. Down the tunnel.' She stood up so sharply that she nearly hit her head on the tunnel roof. `C'mon!' Ìt's getting a bit unsafe-' `We could solve this! Come on! You can't be afraid of dying!' Angua plunged away. Ànd you think spending a few thousand years buried in sludge is likely to be fun?' shouted Sally, but she was talking only to dripping mud and fetid air. She hesitated a moment, groaned and followed Angua. Further along the main tunnel, there were more passages branching off. On either side, rivers of mud, like cool lava, were already flowing out of them. Sally splashed past something that looked like a huge copper trumpet, turning gently on the current. The tunnel was better built here than the sections nearer the well. And there at the end of it was a pale light and Angua, crouched by one of the big round dwarf doors. Sally paid her no attention. She barely glanced at the dwarf slumped with his back against the bottom of the door. Instead, she stared at the symbol scrawled large on the metal. It was big and crude and might be a round, staring eye with a tail, and it gleamed with the greeny-white glow of vurms. `He wrote it in his blood,' said Angua, without looking up. `They left him for dead but he was only dying, you see. He managed to make it to here, but the killers had shut the door. He scratched at it - smell here - and he's worn away his fingernails. Then he made that sign in his own warm blood and sat here, holding the wound shut, watching the vurms turn up. I'd say he's been dead for eighteen hours or so. Hmm?' Ì think we should get out of here right now,' said Sally, backing away. `Do you know what that sign means?' Ì know it's mine-sign, that's all. Do you know what it means?' `No, but I know it's one of the really bad ones. It's not good seeing it here. What're you doing with that body?' Sally backed away further. `Trying to find out who he was,' said Angua, searching the dwarf's clothing. Ìt's the sort of thing we do in the Watch. We don't stand around getting worried about drawings on the wall. What's the problem?' `Right now?' said the vampire. `He's ... oozing a bit. . Ìf I can stand it, so can you. You see a lot of blood in this job. Don't attempt to drink it, that's my advice,' said Angua, still rummaging. Àh ... he's got a rune necklace. And' - she pulled a hand out of the dead dwarf's jerkin -'can't make this out very well, but I can smell ink so it may be a letter. Okay. Let's get out of here.' She looked round at Sally. `Did you hear me?' `The sign was written by someone dying,' said Sally, still keeping her distance. `Well?' `Then it's probably a curse.' `So? We didn't kill him,' said Angua, getting to her feet with some difficulty. They looked down at the liquid mud now rising to their knees. `Do you think it cares?' said Sally, matter of factly. `No, but I think there may be another way out in that last turning we passed,' said Angua, looking back along the tunnel. She pointed. Scuttling along with blind determination, a line of vurms marched across the dripping roof almost as fast as the mud flowed down below. They were heading into the side tunnel in a glowing stream. Sally shrugged. Ìt's worth a try, yes?' They left, and the sound of their splashing soon died away. Slowly the mud rose, rustling in the gloom. The trail of vurms gradually disappeared overhead. The vurms that made the sign remained, though, because such a feast as this was worth dying for. Their glow winked out, one insect at a time. The darkness beneath the world caressed the sign, which flamed red and died. Darkness remained. On this day in 1802 the painter Methodia Rascal tried putting the thing under a heap of old sacks, in case it woke up the Chicken, and finished the last troll, using his smallest brush to paint the eyeballs. It was five a.m. Rain rustled out of the sky, not hard, but with a gentle persistence. In Sator Square, and in the Plaza of Broken Moons, it hissed on the white ash of the bonfires, occasionally exposing the orange glow, which would briefly sizzle and spit. A family of gnolls were sniffing around, each one dragging his or her little cart. A few officers were keeping an eye on them. Gnolls weren't choosy about what they collected, provided it didn't actually struggle, and even then there were rumours. But they were tolerated. Nothing cleaned up the place like a gnoll. From here, they looked like little trolls, each with a huge compost heap on its back. That represented everything it owned, and mostly what it owned was rotten. Sam Vimes winced at the pain in his side. Just his luck. Two coppers injured in the entire damn affair, and he had to be one of them? Igor had done his best, but broken ribs were broken ribs and it'd be a week or two before the suspicious green ointment made much difference. Still, he enjoyed a bit of a warm glow about the whole thing. They had used good old-fashioned policing, and since good oldfashioned policemen are invariably outnumbered, he'd employed the good old-fashioned police methods of cunning, deceit and any damn weapon you could lay your hands on. It had hardly been a fight at all. The dwarfs had mostly been sitting and singing gloomy songs because they fell over when they tried to stand up, or had tried to stand up and were now lying down and snoring. The trolls were, on the other hand, mostly upright, but went over when you pushed them. One or two, a little clearer in the head than the others, had put up a ponderous and laughable fight but had fallen to that most old-fashioned of police methods, the well-placed boot. Well, most of them had. Vimes shifted to ease the aching in his side; he should have seen that one coming. But all's well that ends well, eh? No deaths and, just to put a little cherry on the morning cake, he had in his hand an early edition of the Times in which a leading article deplored the gangs stalking the city and wondered if the Watch was ùp to the job' of cleaning up the streets. Well, yes, I think we are, you pompous twerp. Vimes struck a match on a plinth and lit a cigar in recognition of a petty but darkly satisfying triumph. Gods knew they needed one. The Watch had taken a pounding over the whole damn Koom Valley thing, and it was good to hand the lads something to be proud of for a change. All in all, it was definitely a Result He stared at the plinth. He didn't remember what statue had once been there. It celebrated generations of graffiti artists now. A piece of troll graffiti adorned it, obliterating everything done by the artists who used mere paint. He read: MR SHINE HIM DIAMOND Mine sign, city scrawl, he thought. Things go bad, and people are moved to write on the walls ... `Commander!' He turned. Captain Carrot, armour gleaming, was hurrying towards him, his face as usual radiating an expression of 100 per cent pure Keen. Ì thought I told every officer not on prisoner duty to get some sleep, captain,' said Vimes. `Just clearing up a few things, sir,' said Carrot. `Lord Vetinari sent a message down to the Yard. He wants a report. I thought I'd better tell you, sir.' Ì was just thinking, captain,' said Vimes expansively. `Should we put up a little plaque? Something simple? It could say something like "Battle of Koom Valley Not Fought Here, Grune the 5th, Year of the Prawn." Could we get them to do a bloody stamp? What do you think?' Ì think you need to get some sleep yourself, commander,' said Carrot. Ànd technically, it isn't Koom Valley Day until Saturday.' Òf course, monuments to battles that didn't take place might be stretching things a bit, but a stamp-' `Lady Sybil really worries about you, sir.' Carrot broadcast concern. The fizz in Vimes's head subsided. As if awakened by the reference to Sybil, the creditors of his body queued up to wave their overdue IOUs; feet: dead tired and in need of a bath; stomach: gurgling; ribs: on fire; back: aching; brain: drunk on its own poisons. Bath, sleep, eat ... good ideas. But still must do things ... `How's our Mr Pessimal?' he said. 'Igor's fixed him up, sir. He's a bit amazed at all the fuss. Now, I know I can't order you to go and see his lordship-' `No, you can't, because I am a commander, captain,' said Vimes, still fuzzily intoxicated on exhaustion. `-but he can and he has, sir. And your coach will be waiting for you outside the palace when you come out. That's Lady Sybil's orders, sir,' said Carrot, appealing to higher authority. Vimes looked up at the ugly bulk of the palace. Suddenly, clean sheets seemed such a sweet idea. `Can't face him like this,' he murmured. Ì had a word with Secretary Drumknott, sir. Hot water, a razor and a big cup of coffee will be waiting in the palace.' `You thought of everything, Carrot. ..' Ì hope so, sir. Now off you-' `But I thought of something, eh?' said Vimes, swaying cheerfully. `Better dead drunk than just dead, eh?' Ìt was a classic ruse, sir,' said Carrot reassuringly. Òne for the history books. Now, off you go, sir. I'm going to have a look for Angua. She hasn't slept in her bed.' `But at this time of the month-' Ì know, sir. She hasn't slept in her basket, either. In a dank cellar that once was an attic and was now half full of mud, the vurms poured out of a small hole where wooden planks had long since rotted away. A fist punched up. Soggy timber split and crumbled. Angua pulled herself up into this new darkness, then reached down to help Sally, who said, `Well, here's another fine mess. `Let's hope so,' said Angua. Ì think we need to go up at least one more level. There's an archway here. Come on.' There had been too many dead ends, forgotten, stinking rooms and false hopes, and altogether too much slime. After a while the smell had become almost tangible and then it managed to become just another part of the darkness. The women wandered and scrambled from one dripping, fetid room to another, testing the muddy walls for hidden doors, searching for even a pinprick of light in the ceilings hanging with interesting but horrible growths. Now, they heard music. Five minutes' wading and slithering brought them to a blocked-in doorway, but since it had been filled using the more modern AnkhMorpork mortar of sand, horse dung and vegetable peelings, several bricks had already fallen out. Sally removed most of the rest with one punch. `Sorry about that,' she said. Ìt's a vampire thing.' The cellar behind the demolished wall had some barrels in it and looked as if it was regularly used. There was a proper door, too. Dull, repetitive music filtered down between the boards of the ceil ing. There was a trap door in them. Ò-kay,' said Angua. `There's people up there, I can smell them-' Ì can count fifty-seven hearts beating,' said Sally. Angua gave her a Look. `You know, that's one particular talent I'd keep to myself, if I was you,' she said. `Sorry, sergeant.' Ìt's not the sort of thing people want to hear,' Angua went on. Ì mean, I personally am quite capable of cracking a man's skull in my jaws, but I don't go around telling everyone.' Ì shall make a note of it, sergeant,' said Sally, with a meekness that was quite possibly feigned. `Good. Now ... what do we look like? Swamp monsters?' `Yes, sergeant. Your hair looks dreadful. Just like a great lump of green slime.' `Green?' Ì'm afraid so.' Ànd my emergency dress is back down there somewhere,' said Angua. Ìt's past dawn, too. Can you, er, go bats now?' Ìn daylight? One hundred and fifty-five disorientated bits of me? No! But you could get out as a wolf, couldn't you?' Ì'd kind of prefer not to be a slime monster coming through the floor, if it's all the same to you,' said Angua. `Yes, I can see that. It does not pay to advertise.' Sally flicked away a lump of ooze. Ùgh, this stuff is foul.' `So the best we can hope for is that when we make a run for it no one will recognize us,' said Angua, pulling a lump of wobbly green stuff from her hair. Àt least we- Oh, no. ..' `What's wrong?' said Sally. `Nobby Nobbs! He's up there! I can smell him!' She pointed urgently at the boards overhead. `You mean Corporal Nobbs? The little ... man with the spots?' said Sally. `We're not under a Watch House, are we?' said Angua, looking around in panic. Ì don't think so. Someone's dancing, by the sound of it. But look, how can you smell one human in the middle of all ... this?' Ìt never leaves you, believe me.' The smells of old cabbage, acne ointment and non-malignant skin disease became transmuted, in Corporal Nobbs, into a strange odour that lay across the nose like a saw blade on a harp. It wasn't bad as such, but it was like its host: strange, ubiquitous and hellishly difficult to forget. `Well, he's a fellow officer, isn't he? Won't he help us?' said Sally. `We are naked, lance-constable!' Ònly technically. This mud really sticks. Ì mean underneath the mud!' said Angua. `Yes, but if we had clothes on we'd be naked underneath them, too!' Sally pointed out. `This is not the time for logic! This is the time for not seeing Nobby grinning at me!' `But he's seen you when you're wolf-shaped, hasn't he?' said Sally. `So?' snapped Angua. `Well, technically you're naked then, aren't you?' `Never tell him that!' Nobby Nobbs, a shadow in the warm red gloom, nudged Sergeant Colon. `You don't have to keep your eyes shut, sarge,' he said. Ìt's all legit. It's an artistic celebration of the female body, Tawneee says. Anyway, she's got clothes on.' `Two tassels and a folded hanky is not clothes, Nobby,' said Fred, sinking down in his seat. The Pink PussyCat! Now, fair's fair, he'd been in the army and Watch and you couldn't spend all that time in uniform without seeing a thing or two - or three, now he came to recollect - and it was true, as Nobby had pointed out, that the ballerinas down at the opera house didn't leave a lot to the imagination, at least not to Nobby's, but when all was said and done ballet had to be Art even though it was a bit short on plinths and urns, on account of being expensive to look at, and moreover ballerinas didn't whizz around upside down. And the worst of it was, he'd already spotted two people he knew in the audience. Fortunately they hadn't seen him, which was to say that whenever he'd sneaked a glance their way they were looking in completely the opposite direction. `Now this bit is really hard,' whispered Nobby conversationally. Èr ... is it?' Fred Colon closed his eyes again. Òh, yes. It's the Triple Corkscrew-' `Look, don't the management object to you coming in here?' Fred managed, shifting even further down in his seat. Òh, no. They like having a watchman in, 'said Nobby, still watching the stage. `They say it makes people behave. Anyway, I only come in so's I can walk Betty home.' `Betty being - ?' 'Tawneee's actually only her pole name,' Nobby said. `She says no one would be interested in an exotic dancer with a name like Betty. She says it sounds like she'd be better with a bowl of cake mixture.' Colon shut his eyes, trying to banish a mental conjunction of the bronzed lithe figure on stage and a bowl of cake mixture. Ì think I could do with a breath of fresh air,' he groaned. Òh, not yet, sarge. Broccolee's on next. She can touch the back of her head with her foot, you know-' Ì don't believe that!' said Fred Colon. `She can, sarge, I've seen-' Ì don't believe there's a dancer called Broccoli!' `Well, she did use to be called Candi, sarge, but then she heard that broccoli is better for you-' `Corporal Nobbs!' The sound appeared to be coming from under the table. Nobby stared at Fred Colon, and then looked down. `Yes?' he ventured, with caution. `This is Sergeant Angua,' said the floor. Òh?' said Nobby. `What is this place?' the voice continued. `The Pink PussyCat Club, sergeant,' said Nobby obediently. Òh, gods. There was some conversation down below, and then the voice said: Àre there women up there?' `Yes, sergeant. Er, what are you doing down there, sarge?' `Giving you orders, Nobby,' said the voice from below. Àre there women up there?' `Yes, sarge. Lots.' `Good. Please ask one to come down into the beer cellar. We'll need a couple of buckets of warm water and some towels, got that?' Nobby was aware that the musicians had stopped playing and Tawneee had paused in mid drop-and-split. Everyone was listening to the talking floor. `Yes, sergeant,' said Nobby. Ì've got it.' Ànd some clean clothes. And' - there was subterranean whispering -'make that several buckets of water. And a scrubbing brush. And a comb. And another comb. And more towels. Oh, and two pairs of shoes, size six and ... four and a half? Really? Okay. And is Fred Colon with you, or is that a stupid question?' Fred cleared his throat. Ì'm here, sergeant,' he reported. `But I only came along to-' `Good. I want to borrow a set of your stripes. I've got a bad feeling about the next few hours and I don't want anyone to forget I'm a sergeant. Got that, the pair of you?' Ìt's full moon,' Fred whispered to Nobby, as one man to another, and then he said aloud: `Yes, sergeant. This may take a while-' `No! It won't. Because you've got a werewolf and a vampire down here, understand? I'm having a really bad hair day and she's got toothache! We come up in ten minutes looking human or we come up anyway! What?' There was more whispering. `Why a beetroot? Why in gods' names is a girly show likely to contain a beetroot? What? Okay. Will an apple do? Nobby, Lance-Constable Humpeding needs an apple, urgently. Or something else that she can bite. Now, jump to it!' Coffee was only a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to your slightly older self. Vimes drank two cups, and had a wash and at least an attempt at a shave that made him feel quite human if he ignored the sensation that parts of his head were stuffed with warm cotton wool. At last, deciding that he felt as good as it was going to get and could probably handle quite long questions, he was ushered into the Oblong Office of the Patrician of AnkhMorpork. Àh, commander,' said Lord Vetinari, looking up after a considered interval and pushing aside some paperwork. `Thank you for coming. It seems that congratulations are in order. So I am told.' Ànd why's that, sir?' said Vimes, putting on his special blank talking-to-Vetinari face. `Come now, Vimes. Yesterday it looked as if we would be having a species war right in the middle of the city, and suddenly we are not. Those gangs were quite fearsome, I gather.' `Most of 'em were asleep or squabbling amongst themselves by the time we arrived, sir. We just had to tidy them away,' Vimes volunteered. `Yes indeed,' said Vetinari. Ìt was quite astonishing, really. Do sit down, by the way. It really is not necessary for you to stand in front of me like a corporal on a charge.' `Don't know what you mean, sir,' said Vimes, collapsing gratefully into a chair. `You don't? I was referring, Vimes, to the speed with which both parties managed to incapacitate themselves with strong liquor at the same time ... ?' Ì wouldn't know anything about that, sir: That was an automatic reaction; it made life simpler. `No? It appears, Vimes, that whilst steeling themselves for the fracas to come, both the trolls and the dwarfs came into possession of what I assume they thought was beer ... ?' `They had been on the pi- been drinking all day, sir,' Vimes pointed out. Ìndeed, Vimes, and possibly that is why the dwarf contingent were less than cautious in drinking copiously from beer that had been considerably ... fortified? Areas of Sator Square, I gather, still smell faintly of apples, Vimes. One could come to believe, therefore, that what they were drinking was in fact a mixture of strong beer and stumble, which is, as you know, distilled from apples-' 'Uh, mostly apples, sir,' said Vimes helpfully. `Quite. The cocktail is known as Fluff, I believe. As to the trolls, one might speculate that it would be very hard to find anything to make their beer even more dangerous than it palpably is, but I wonder if you have heard, Vimes, that an admixture of various metallic salts produces a drink known as luglarr, or "Big Hammer"? 'Can't say I have, sir: `Vimes, some of the flagstones in the plaza have actually been etched by the stuff!' `Sorry about that, sir: Vetinari drummed his fingers on the table. `What would you do if I asked you an outright question, Vimes?' Ì'd tell you a downright lie, sir: `Then I will not do so,' said Vetinari, smiling faintly. `Thank you, sir. Nor will I' `Where are your prisoners?' `We spread them around the Watch House yards,' said Vimes. Às they wake up we hose 'em clean, take their names, give 'em a receipt for their weapon and a hot drink and push 'em out into the street.' `Their weapons are culturally very important to them, Vimes,' said Vetinari. `Yeah, Sir, I know. I myself have a strong cultural bias against getting my brains bashed in and my knees cut off,' said Vimes, stifling a yawn and wincing as his ribs objected. Ìndeed. Were there any casualties in the battle?' `None that won't heal.' Vimes grimaced. Ì have to report that Mr A. E. Pessimal sustained a broken arm and multiple bruises, though.' Vetinari actually looked taken aback. `The inspector? What was he doing?' Èr, attacking a troll, sir: I'm sorry? Mr A. E. Pessimal attacked a troll?' `Yessir.' À. E. Pessimal?' Vetinari repeated. `That's the man, sir.' À whole troll?' `Yessir. With his teeth, sir: `Mr A. E. Pessimal? You are sure? Small man? Very clean shoes?' `Yessir.' Vetinari grabbed a helpful question from the gathering throng. `Why?' Vimes coughed. `Well, Sir...' The troll mob was a tableau. Trolls stood or sat or lay where they had been when the Big Hammer had struck. There were a few slow imbibers who put up a bit of a fight, and one who had stuck with a bottle of looted sherry put up a spirited last-drop stand until golem Constable Dorfl picked him up bodily and bounced him on his head. Vimes walked through it all, as the squad dragged or rolled slumbering trolls into neat lines to await the wagons. And then The day was not improving for Brick. He'd drunk a beer. Well, maybe more'n one. Where was der harm in dat? And now, there, right in front of him, wearing one o' dem helmets an' everyt'ing, was, yeah, could be a dwarf, insofar as the fizzing, sizzling pathways of his brain were capable of deciding anything at all. What der hell, they decided, it wasn't a troll and dat was what it was all about, right? An' here was his club, right here in his han' Instinct caused Vimes to turn as a troll opened red eyes, blinked and began to swing a club. Too slowly, too slowly in the suddenly frozen time, he tried to dive away, and he felt the club smash into his side and lift him, lift him up and tip him on to the ground. He could hear shouting as the troll lumbered forward, club raised again to make Vimes at one with the bedrock. Brick became aware that he was being attacked. He stopped what he was doing and, with sparks going fwizzle! in his brain, looked down at his right knee. Some little gnome or somethin' was attackin' him wi' a blunt sword and kickin' an' scream in' like a mad fing. He put it down to the drink, like der feelin' that his ears were givin' off flames, an' brushed the fing away with a flip of his hand. Vimes, helpless, saw A. E. Pessimal tumble across the plaza, and watched the troll turn back to the clubbing in hand. But Detritus, arriving behind it now, pulled it round with one shovel-sized hand and here came Detritus's fist, like the wrath of gods. For Brick, everything went dar- `You wish me to believe,' said Lord Vetinari, `that Mr A. E. Pessimal single-handedly attacked a troll?' `Both hands, sir,' said Vimes. Ànd feet, too. And tried to bite it, we think.' Ìsn't that certain death?' said Vetinari. `That didn't seem to worry him, sir.' Vimes had last seen A. E. Pessimal being bandaged by Igor and smiling in a semi-conscious way. Watchmen were dropping in all the time to say things likèHi, Big Man!' and slap him on the back. The world had turned for A. E. Pessimal. `Might I enquire, Vimes, why one of my most conscientious and most decidedly civilian clerks was in a position to do this?' Vimes shifted uncomfortably. `He was inspecting. Learning all about us, sir.' He gave Vetinari the look which said: if you take this any further I will have to lie. Vetinari returned one which said: I know. `You yourself are not too badly injured?' the Patrician said aloud. `Just a few scratches, sir,' said Vimes. Vetinari gave him a look which said: broken ribs, I'm certain of it. Vimes returned one which said: nothing. Vetinari wandered over to the window and stared down at the waking city. He didn't speak for some time, and then let out a sigh. `Such a shame, I think, that so many of them were born here,' he said. Vimes stuck with saying nothing. It generally sufficed. `Perhaps I should have taken action against that wretched dwarf' Vetinari went on. `Yes, sir.' `You think so? A wise ruler thinks twice before directing violence against someone because he does not approve of what they say.' Once again, Vimes did not comment. He himself directed violence daily and with a certain amount of enthusiasm against people because he didn't approve of them saying things likèGive me all your money' or `What are you going to do about it, copper?' But perhaps rulers had to think differently. Instead he said: `Someone else didn't, sir.' `Thank you for that, Vimes,' said the Patrician, turning round sharply. Ànd have you found out who they are yet?' Ìnvestigations are continuing, sir. Last night's affair got in the way. Ìs there any evidence that it was a troll?, 'There is ... puzzling evidence, sir. We are ... assembling a jigsaw, you might say.' Except that we haven't got any of the edges and it'd help if we had the lid of the box, he added to himself. And, because Vetinari's face bore a hungry look, Vimes continued aloud: Ìf you're expecting me to pull a magic rabbit out of my helmet, sir, it'll be a cooked one. The dwarfs are certain it was a troll. There's a thousand years of history telling them. They don't need proof. And the trolls don't think it was a troll but probably wish it was. This isn't about a murder, sir. Something inside 'em's gone click and it's time for all good men - well, you know what I mean - to fight Koom Valley all over again. Something else is going on in that mine, I know it. Something bigger than murder. All those tunnels ... what are they for? All those lies ... I can smell lies, and the place is full of them.' `Much hangs on this, Vimes,' said Vetinari. Ìt's bigger than you know. I have this morning had a clacks from Rhys Rhysson, the Low King. All politicians have their enemies, of course. There are, shall we say, factions who disagree with him, his policy towards us, his conciliatory approaches to the troll clans, his stance on the whole wretched Ha'ak thing ... And now there are stories about a troll killing a grag and, yes, rumours that the Watch has threatened the dwarfs ... Vetinari held up a pale hand as Vimes opened his mouth to protest. `We need to know the truth, Vimes. Commander Sam Vimes's truth. It may count for more than you think. In the Plains, certainly, and much further. People know about you, commander. Descendant of a watchman who believed that if a corrupted court will not behead an evil king, then the watchman should do it himself-' Ìt was only one king,' Vimes protested. `Sam Vimes once arrested me for treason,' said Vetinari calmly. Ànd Sam Vimes once arrested a dragon. Sam Vimes stopped a war between nations by arresting two high commands. He's an arresting fellow, Sam Vimes. Sam Vimes killed a werewolf with his bare hands, and carries law with him like a lamp-' `Where did all that come from?' `Watchmen across half the continent will say that Sam Vimes is as straight as an arrow, can't be corrupted, won't be turned, never took a bribe. Listen to me. If Rhys falls, the next Low King will not be one who is prepared to talk to the trolls. Can I make it simple for you? Those clans whose leaders have been dealing with Rhys will in all likelihood feel they have been made fools of, overthrow said leaders and replace them with trolls too belligerent and stupid to be fools. And there will be a war, Vimes. It'll come here. It won't be a gang crumble such as you thwarted last night. We won't be able to hold fast or stand aloof. Because we have our own fools, Vimes, as I'm sure you know, who'll insist we pick sides. Koom Valley will be everywhere. Find me a murderer, Vimes. Hound them down and bring them into the daylight. Troll or dwarf or human, it doesn't matter. Then at least we shall have the truth, and can make use of it. It is rumour and uncertainty that is our enemy now. The Low King's throne trembles, Vimes, and thus do the foundations of the world.' Vetinari paused, and carefully squared up the paperwork in front of him, as if he now felt he'd gone too far. `However, obviously I do not wish to put you under any kind of pressure,' he finished. In Vimes's confused, lukewarm brain, one word bobbed to the surface. `Crumble?' Lord Vetinari's secretary leaned down and whispered into his master's ear. Àh, I believe I meant "rumble",' said Vetinari brightly. Vimes was still trying to cope with the international news digest. Àll this over one murder?' he said, trying to stifle a yawn. `No, Vimes. You said it yourself: all this over thousands of years of tension and politics and power struggles. In recent years things have gone in certain ways, causing power to shift. There are those who would like it to shift back, even if it returns on a tide of blood. Who cares about one dwarf? But if his death can be turned into a casus belli' - here Lord Vetinari looked at Vimes's sleepy eyes and went on -'that is, a reason for war, then suddenly he is the most important dwarf in the world. When did you last get some proper sleep, Vimes?' Vimes muttered something about `not long ago. `Go and have some more. And then find me the murderer. Quickly. Good day to you.' Not just thrones trembling, Vimes managed to think. Your chair is wobbling a bit, too. Pretty soon some people will be saying: who let all these dwarfs in here? They undermine our city and they don't obey our laws. And the trolls? We used to chain 'em up like guard dogs, and now they're allowed to walk around threatening real people! They'd be gathering now, the plotters, the people who chatted quietly in the corner at parties, the people who know how to fashion opinion into knives. Last night's little affray had been turned into a joke that had probably dismayed the party people, but you couldn't do it twice. Once things began to spread, once a few humans had been killed, you wouldn't need to talk behind closed doors any more. The mob would scream on your behalf. They undermine our city and they don't obey our laws ... He climbed into the coach on legs that were only marginally under his control, muttered an instruction to head for Pseudopolis Yard, and fell asleep. It was still night time in the city of endless rain. It was never not night time. No sun rose here. The creature lay coiled in its alley. Something was seriously wrong. It had expected resistance. There was always resistance, and it always overcame it. But even now, when the invisible bustle of the city had slowed, there was no way in. Time and again it'd be sure that it had found a point of control, some tide of rage it could use, and time and again it'd be slammed back here, into this dark alley where the gutters overflowed. This was not the usual kind of mind. The creature struggled. But no mind had ever beaten it. There was always a way ... Through the ruin of the world the troll staggers ... Brick lurched out of Dolly Sisters Watch House, clutching his head with one hand and, in the other, holding the bag that contained as many of his teeth as Detritus had been able to find. The sergeant had been very decent about dat, Brick thought. Detritus had also explained to him exactly what would have been happening to him had his second blow hit the human, graphically indicating that finding Brick's teeth would have been secondary to finding a head to put them in. He'd gone on to say, though, that there might be a place in the Watch for any troll who could still stand up after a headful of Big Hammer, and maybe Brick might like to conduct his future behaviour with an eye to this. So, Brick thought - insofar as the term could be applied to any brain activity within two days of Big Hammer - the future was looking so bright that he had to walk along with his eyes almost shut, although that was probably the Big Hammer again. But He'd heard the other trolls talking. And the watchmen, too. All dis stuff about a troll killing a dwarf down in dat new mine. Now, Brick was still certain he hadn't killed no dwarf, even after half an ounce of Scrape. He'd gone over and over it in what currently remained of his mind. Trouble was, the Watch had all dese tricks dese days, dey could tell what a guy had for dinner just by looking at his plate. An' he'd lost a skull down there too, he was sure o' dat. Like, dey could jus' sniff it and know it was him! Except it wasn't him, right? 'Cos dey said der troll dropped his club, an' Brick still had his club 'cos he hit dat top watchman wi' it, so maybe that was what dey called an Ally By? Yes? Despite the cerebral gurgling noise of the Big Hammer draining away from his higher brain functions, Brick suspected that it wasn't. An' anyway, if dey lookin' for a troll what done der deed, and dey find out I was dere, lost a skull an' everyt'in' an' I say, okay, I was dere but I never walloped no dwarf, dey'll say, ho yus, pull der other one, it is havin' bells on. Right here, and right now, Brick was feeling a very lonely troll. Dere was nothin' for it. Dere was only one person who could help him wi' dis one. It was too much t'inkin' for one troll. Slinking through alleys, pressed against walls, keeping his head down, avoiding every living creature, Brick sought out Mr Shine. Angua decided to go straight to Pseudopolis Yard, rather than a closer Watch House. That was HQ, after all, and besides, she always kept a spare uniform in her locker. What was annoying was that Sally walked so easily in six-inch heels. That was vampires for you. She had taken hers off and was carrying them; it was that or turn an ankle. The Pink PussyCat Club had a fairly limited choice of footwear. There wasn't much to choose from in the way of clothing either, if by clothing you meant something that actually made an attempt to cover anything. Angua had been rather surprised that the stage wardrobe had included a female Watch outfit, but with skimpy papier-mache armour and a skirt that was much too short to be any protection. Tawneee had explained, rather carefully, that men sometimes liked to see a pretty girl in armour. To Angua, who'd found that men she was apprehending never looked very pleased to see her, this was food for thought. She'd settled for a sequinned gold dress, which just didn't work. Sally had picked something simple and cut to the thigh in a blue which of course had become stunning the moment she'd put it on. She looked fabulous. So when Angua strode ahead of Sally into the main office, slamming the big doors back, and there was a derisive wolf whistle, the unwise watchman found himself being pushed backwards until he was slammed against the wall. He felt two sharp points pressed against his neck as Angua growled, `You want a wolf, do you? Say no, Sergeant Angua.' `No, Sergeant Angua!' `You don't? I was probably mistaken then, was I?' The points pressed a little harder. In the man's mind, steely talons were about to pierce his jugular. `Couldn't say for sure, Sergeant Angua!' `My nerves are a tad stretched right now!' Angua howled. `Hadn't noticed, Sergeant Angua!' `We're all a little bit on edge at the moment, wouldn't you say?' `That's ever so true, Sergeant Angua!' Angua let the man's boots reach the ground. She put two black, shiny and noticeably pointed heels into his unresisting hands. `Could you do me a really big favour, please, and take these back up to the Pink PussyCat Club?' she said sweetly. `They belong to someone called Sherilee, I think. Thank you.' She turned and looked over to the duty desk, where Carrot was watching her with his mouth open. Well aware of the stir she was causing, she walked up to the desk past an audience of shocked faces and threw a muddy necklace down on to the open Incident Book. `Four dwarfs murdered by other dwarfs, down in the Long Dark,' she said. Ì'll bet my nose on it. That belonged to one of them. He'd also got this.' A muddy envelope was dropped by the necklace. Ìt's pretty slimy, but you can read it. Mister Vimes is going to go spare.' She looked up into the blue eyes of Carrot. `Where is he?' `Sleeping on a mattress in his office,' said Carrot, and shrugged. `Lady Sybil knew he wouldn't go home, so she got Willikins to make up a bed down here. Are you two all right?' `Fine, sir,' said Sally. Ì was getting very worried-' Carrot began. `Four dead dwarfs, captain,' said Angua. `City dwarfs. That's what you should be worrying about. Three half buried, this one crawled away.' Carrot picked up the necklace and read the runes. `Lars Legstrong,' he said. Ì think I know the family. Are you sure he was murdered?' `Throat cut. It'd be hard to call it suicide. But he took some time to die. He made it to one of their damn doors which they'd locked shut, and scrawled one of their signs on it in his own blood. Then he sat down and waited to die in the dark. In the damn dark, Carrot! They were working dwarfs! They had shovels and wheelbarrows! They were down there doing a job and when they weren't needed any more they got the chop! Hacked down and left for the mud! He might even still have been alive down there when Mister Vimes and I went in. Behind their bloody thick door, dying by inches. And do you know what this means?' She pulled a folded piece of card out of her bodice and passed it over. À drinks menu?' said Carrot. Òpen it,' snapped Angua. Ì'm sorry it's written in lipstick. It was all we could find.' Carrot flipped it open. Ànother dark symbol?' he said. Ì don't think I know this one.' There were other dwarf watchmen in the office. Carrot held up the symbol. `Does anyone here know what this means?' A few helmeted heads shook, and a few dwarfs backed away but a deep voice from the doorway said: `Yes, Captain Carrot. I suspect I do. Does it look like an eye with a tail?' `Yes ... er ... sir?' said Carrot, staring. A shadow moved. Ìt was drawn in the dark? By a dying dwarf? In his own blood? It is the Summoning Dark, captain, and it will be moving. Good morning to you. I am Mr Shine.' Carrot's jaw dropped as the watchmen turned to look at the newcomer. He loomed in the doorway, almost as broad as he was tall, in a black cloak and hood that hid any possible feature. `The Mr Shine?' he said. `Regrettably so, captain, and can I charge you to see that no one in this room leaves for a few minutes after I do? I like to keep my movements ... private.' Ì didn't think you were real, sir!' `Believe me, young man, I wish it were possible to keep you in that happy state,' said the hooded figure. `However, my hand is forced.' Mr Shine stepped forward, pulling a rangy figure into the room. It was a troll, whose look of sullen defiance did not quite manage to conceal knee-knocking terror. `This is Brick, captain. I deliver him back into the personal custody of your Sergeant Detritus. He has information of use to you. I have heard his story. I believe him. You must move fast. The Summoning Dark may already have found a champion. What else ... oh yes, be sure not to keep that symbol in a dark place. Keep light around it at all times. And now, if you will excuse the theatricals-' The black robe twitched. Hard, white, blinding light filled the room for a second. When it had gone, so had Mr Shine. All that was left was a large, egg-shaped stone on the stained floor. Carrot blinked, and then pulled himself together. Àll right, you heard,' he said to the suddenly animated room at large. `No one is to follow Mr Shine, understood?' `Follow him, captain?' said a dwarf. `We're not mad, you know!' `Dat's right,' said a troll. `Dey say he can reach inside o' you an' stop your heart!' `Mr Shine?' said Angua. Ìs he what they've been writing about on the walls?' Ìt looks like that, said Carrot shortly. Ànd he said we don't have much time. Mr ... Brick, was it?' Whereas Chrysoprase's trolls had contrived to swagger while standing still, Brick just managed to huddle all alone. You usually need two to huddle, but here was a troll trying to hide behind himself. No one could have hidden behind Brick: for a troll he was stick thin to the point of knobbliness. His lichen was cheap and matted, not the real thing at all, probably the stuff they made up out of broccoli stalks in the back alleys of Quarry Lane. His belt of skulls was a disgrace; some of them were clearly the papier-mache kind that could be bought from any joke shop. One had a red nose. He looked around nervously, and there was a thud as his club dropped from his fingers. Ì'm in deep copro, right?' he said. `Certainly we need to talk to you,' said Carrot. `Do you want a lawyer?' `No, I ate already.' `You eat lawyers?' said Carrot. Brick gave him an empty stare until sufficient brain had been mustered. `What d'y'call dem fangs, dey kinda crumble when you eat dem?' he ventured. Carrot looked at Detritus and Angua, to see if there was going to be any help there. `Could be lawyers,' he conceded. `Dey go soggy if you dips 'em in somefing,' said Brick, as if undertaking a forensic examination. `More likely to be biscuits, then?' Carrot suggested. `Could be. Inna packet wi' all paper on. Yeah, biscuits.' `What I meant,' said Carrot, `was: when we talk to you, do you want someone to be on your side?' `Yes, please. Everyone,' said Brick promptly. To be centre of attention in a roomful of watchmen was his worst nightmare. No, hold on, what about dat time when he had dat bad Slab wot had bin cut wi' ammonium nitrate? Whooo! Goodbye lobes! Yep! Den dis was his second worst nightmar- No, come to fink of it, dere was dis time when he had dat stuff wot Hardcore jacked off'f One-Eyed Goddam, whee, yes! Who knows where dat had bin! All dem dancin' teef! So dis was his- Hey, wait, remember dat time you got lunched on Scrape an' your arms flew away? Okay, dat was bad, so maybe dis was his ... Wait, wait, of course, can't be forgetting der day when you got baked on Sliver and blew powdered zinc up your nose an' thought you'd thrown up your feet? -Aargh, here come dat time again when you'd, aargh no, when you'd, aargh Brick had got as far as his nineteenth worst nightmare before Carrot's voice cut through the snakes. `Mr Brick?' Èr ... is dat still me?' said Brick nervously. He could really, really do some Slab right now ... `Generally your advocate is one person,' said Carrot. `We're going to have to ask you some difficult questions. You're allowed to have someone to help you. Perhaps you have a friend we could fetch?' Brick pondered this. The only people he could think of in this context were Totally Slag and Big Marble, although more correctly they fell into the category of `people dat don't fro fings at me much and let me glom a bit o' slab sometimes' Right now, these did not seem ideal qualifications. He pointed to Sergeant Detritus. `Him,' he said. `He helped me find my teef.' Ì'm not sure a serving officer is-' Carrot began. Ì'll volunteer for the role, captain,' said a little voice. Carrot peered over the end of the desk. `Mr Pessimal? I don't think you should be out of bed.' 'Uh ... I am in fact "acting lance-constable" captain,' said A. E. Pessimal, politely yet firmly. He was on crutches. Òh? Er ... right,' said Carrot. `But I still think you shouldn't be out of bed.' `Nevertheless, justice must be served,' said A. E. Pessimal. Brick bent down and peered closely at the inspector. Ìt's dat gnome from last night,' he said. `Don't want him!' `You can't think of anyone?' said Carrot. Brick thought again, and at last brightened up. `Yeah, I can,' he said. Èasy. Someone to help me answer der questions, right?' `That's right.' `Well, easy peas. If you can fetch that dwarf I saw down in dat new dwarf mine, he'd help me: The room went deadly quiet. Ànd why would he do that?' said Carrot carefully. `He could tell you why he was hitting dat other dwarf onna head,' said Brick. Ì mean, I don't know. But I 'spect he won't wanna come on account of me bein' a troll, so I'll stick with the sergeant, if it's all the same to you.' Ì think this is going too far, captain!' said A. E. Pessimal. In the silence that followed this, Carrot's voice sounded very loud. Ì think this, Mr Pessimal, is the point where we wake up Commander Vimes.' There was an old military saying that Fred Colon used to describe total bewilderment and confusion. An individual in that state, according to Fred, `couldn't tell if it was arsehole or breakfast time. This had always puzzled Vimes. He wondered what research had been done. Even now, with his mouth tasting of warmed-over yesterday and everything curiously sharp in his vision, he thought he'd be able to tell the difference. Only one was likely to include a cup of coffee, for a start. He had one now, ergo, it was breakfast time. Actually, it was near lunchtime, but that would have to do. The troll known to everyone else and occasionally to himself as Brick was seated in one of the big troll cells, but in deference to the fact that no one could decide if he was a prisoner or not, the door had been left unlocked. The understanding was that, provided he didn't try to leave, no one would stop him leaving. Brick was engulfing his third bowl of the mineral-rich mud that, to a troll, was nourishing soup. `What is Scrape?' Vimes said, leaning back in the room's one spare chair and staring at Brick as a zoologist might eye a fascinating but highly unpredictable new species. He'd put the stone ball from the mysterious Mr Shine on the table by the bowl, to see if it got any reaction, but the troll paid it no attention. `Scrape? You don't see it much dese days now dat Slab's so damn cheap,' rumbled Detritus, who was watching his new find with a proprietorial air, like a mother hen watching a chick who was about to leave the nest. Ìt what you "scrape up", see? It a few bits o' draingrade Slab boiled up in a tin wi' alcohol and pigeon droppin's. It what der street trolls make when dey is short o' cash an'. .. What is it dey's short of, Brick?' The moving spoon paused. `Dey is short o' self-respect sergeant,' he said, as one might who'd had the lesson shouted into his ear for twenty minutes. `By Io, he got it!' said Detritus, slapping the skinny Brick on the back so hard that the young troll dropped his spoon in the steaming gloop. `But dis lad has promised me all dat is behind him and he is damn straight now, on account o' havin' joined my one-step programme! Ain't dat so, Brick? No more Slab, Scrape, Slice, Slide, Slunkie, Slurp or Sliver for dis boy, right?' `Yes, sergeant,' said Brick obediently. `Sergeant, why do the names of all troll drugs start with ess?' said Vimes. Àh, it make dem easier to remember, sir,' said Detritus, nodding sagely. Àh, of course. I hadn't spotted that said Vimes. `Has Sergeant Detritus explained to you why he calls it a one-step programme, Brick?' Èr . . . 'cos he won't let me put a foot wrong, sir?' said Brick, as if reading it off a card. Àn' Brick here's got something else to say to you, haven't you, Brick?' said the maternal Detritus. `Go on, tell Mister Vimes.' Brick looked down at the table. `Sorry I tried to kill you, Mrs Vimes,' he whispered. `Well, we'll see about that, shall we?' said Vimes, for something better to say. `By the way, I think you meant Mister Vimes, and I prefer it if only people who've fought alongside me call me Mister Vimes.' `Well, technic'ly Brick has fought-' Detritus began, but Vimes put down his coffee mug firmly. His ribs were aching. `No, "in front of" is not the same thing as "alongside"; sergeant,' he said. Ìt really isn't.' `Not really his fault, sir, it was more a case o' mis-takeniden-tity' Detritus protested. `You mean he didn't know who I was?' said Vimes. `That didn't seem to-' `Nosir. He didn't know who he was, sir. He thought he was a bunch o' lights and fireworks. Trust me, sir, I reckon I can make something o' this one. Please? Sir, he was out o' his brain on Big Hammer and still he was walkin' about!' Vimes stared at Detritus for a moment and then looked back at Brick. `Mr Brick, tell me how you got into the mine, will you?' he said. Ì told the other polisman-' Brick began. `Now you tell Mister Vimes!' growled Detritus. `Right now!' It took a little while, with pauses for bits of Brick's mind to shunt into position, but Vimes assembled it like this: The wretched Brick had been cooking up Scrape with some fellow gutter trolls in an old warehouse in the maze of streets behind Park Lane, had blundered down into the cellar looking for a cool place to watch the display, and the floor had given way under him. By the sound of it he'd fallen a long way, but to judge from the troll's natural state he probably floated down like a butterfly. He'd ended up in a tunnel `like a mine, y'know, wi' all wood holdin' the roof up' and had wandered along it in the hope that it would lead back to the surface or something to eat. He didn't start to worry until he came out into a far grander tunnel and the word `dwarfs' finally reached a bit of his brain with nothing to do but listen. A troll in a dwarf mine goes on the rampage. It was one of those givens, like a bull in a china shop. But Brick seemed refreshingly free of hatred towards anyone. Provided the world supplied enough things beginning with `S' to make his head gòbzzz!' - and the city had no shortage of these - he didn't much care about what else it did. Brick, down in the gutter, had dropped below even that horizon. No wonder Chrysoprase's shakedown hadn't corralled him. Brick was something you stepped over. It might even have occurred to Brick, standing there in the dark with the sound of dwarf voices in the distance, to be afraid. And then he'd seen, through a big round doorway, one dwarf hold up another and hit it over the head. It was cave-gloomy, but trolls had good night vision and there were always the vurms. The troll hadn't made out details and was not particularly looking for them. Who cared what dwarfs did to one another? So long as they didn't do it to him, he didn't see a problem. But when the dwarf that had done the bashing started to shout, then there was a problem, large as life. A big metal door right by him had slammed open and hit him in the face. When he peered out from behind it, it was to see several armed dwarfs running past. They weren't interested in what might be behind the door, not yet. They were doing what people do, which is run towards the source of the shouting. Brick, on the other hand, was interested only in getting as far away from the shouting as possible, and right here was an open door. He'd taken it, and run, not stopping until he was out in the fresh night air. There had been no pursuit. Vimes wasn't surprised. You needed a special kind of mind to be a guard. One that was prepared to be in a body that stood and looked at nothing very much for hours on end. Such a mind did not command high wages. Such a mind, too, would not be likely to start a search by looking in the tunnel it had just arrived by. It would not be the sharpest knife in the drawer. And so, aimlessly, without intent, malice or even curiosity, a wandering troll had wandered into a dwarf mine, spotted a murder through a drug-raddled perception, and wandered out again. Who could plan for anything like that? Where was the logic? Where was the sense? Vimes looked at the watery, fried-egg eyes, the emaciated frame, the thin dribble of gods-knew-what from a crusted nostril. Brick wasn't telling lies. Brick had enough trouble dealing with things that weren't made-up. `Tell Mister Vimes about the wukwuk,' Detritus prompted. Òh, yeah,' said Brick. `Dere was dis big wukwuk in der cave.' Ì think I'm missing a vital point here,' said Vimes. À wukwuk is what you make wi' charcoal an' nitre an' Slab,' said the sergeant. Àll rolled up in paper like a cigar, you know? He said it was-' `We call dem wukwuks 'cos dey looks like ... you know, a wukwuk,' said Brick, with an embarrassed grin. `Yes, I'm getting the picture,' said Vimes wearily. Ànd did you try to smoke it? 'Nosir. It was big,' said Brick. Àll rolled up in their cave, jus' by the manky of tunnel I fell into.' Vimes tried to fit this into his thinking, and left it out for now. So ... a dwarf did it? Right. And, at that moment, he believed Brick, although a bucket of frogs would make a better witness. No sense in pushing him further right now, anyway. Òkay,' he said. He reached down and came up with the mysterious stone that had been left on the floor of the office. It was about eight inches across, but curiously light. `Tell me about Mr Shine, Brick. Friend of yours?' `Mr Shine is everywhere!' said Brick fervently. `Him diamond!' `Well, half an hour ago he was in this building,' said Vimes. `Detritus?' `Sir?' said the sergeant, a guilty look spreading across his face. `What do you know about Mr Shine?' said Vimes. Èr ... he a bit like a troll god ..: Detritus muttered. `Don't get many gods in here, as a rule,' said Vimes. `Someone's pinched the Secret of Fire, have you seen my golden apple? It's amazing how often we don't see that sort of thing in the crime book. He's a troll, is he?' 'Kinda like a ... a king,' said Detritus, as if every word was being dragged from him. Ì thought trolls didn't have kings these days,' said Vimes. Ì thought every clan ruled itself.' `Right, right,' said Detritus. `Look, Mister Vimes, he Mr Shine, okay? We don't talk about him much.' The troll's expression was a mixture of misery and defiance. Vimes decided to go for a weaker target. `Where did you find him, Brick? I just want to-' `He came callin' to help you!' snarled Detritus. `What you doin, Mister Vimes? Why you go on askin' questions? Wi' the dwarfs you have pussy feet, must not upset 'em, oh no, but what you do if dey was trolls, eh? Kick down der door, no problem! Mr Shine bring you Brick, give you good advice, an' you talk like he bein' a bad troll! I'm hearin' now where Captain Carrot, he tellin' the dwarfs he the Two Brothers. You fink that make me happy? We know dat lyin' of dwarf lie, yes! We groan at it lyin' yes! You want to see Mr Shine, you show humble, you show respect yes!' This is Koom Valley again, thought Vimes. He'd never seen Detritus this angry, at least at him. The troll was just there, reliable and dependable. At Koom Valley, two tribes had met, and no one blinked. Ì apologize,' he said, blinking. Ì didn't know. No offence was meant.' `Right!' said Detritus, his huge hand thumping on the table. The spoon jumped out of Brick's empty soup bowl. The mysterious rock ball rolled across the table, with an inevitable little trundling noise, and cracked open on the floor. Vimes looked down at two neat halves. Ìt's full of crystals,' he said. Then he looked closer. There was a piece of paper in one glittering hemisphere. He picked it up and read: Pointer & Pickles, Crystals, Minerals & Tumbling Supplies, No. 3 Tenth Egg Street, Ankh-Morpork. Vimes put this down carefully and picked up the two pieces of the stone. He pushed them together, and they fitted with the merest hairline crack. There was no sign that any glue had ever been used. He looked up at Detritus. `Did you know that was going to happen?' he said. `No,' said the troll. `But I fink Mr Shine did.' `He's given me his address, sergeant.' `Yeah. So maybe he want you to visit,' Detritus conceded. `Dat is a honour, all right. You don't find Mr Shine, Mr Shine find you.' `How did he find you, Mr Brick?' said Vimes. Brick gave Detritus a panicky look. The sergeant shrugged. `He pick me up one day. Gimme food,' Brick mumbled. `He show me where to come for more. He tole me t'keep off'f the stuff, too. But...' `Yes ... ?'Vimes prompted. Brick waved a pair of scarred, knobbly arms in a gesture that said, far more coherently than he could, that there was the whole universe on one side and Brick on the other, and what could anyone do against odds like that? And so he'd been handed over to Detritus, Vimes thought. That evened the odds somewhat. He stood up and nodded to Detritus. `Should I take anything, sergeant?' The troll thought about this. `No,' he said, `but maybe dere's some finkin' you could leave behind.' I should be in charge of the mine raid, thought Vimes. We might be starting a war after all, and I'm sure people would like to think that someone high up was there when it happened. So why do I think it's more important that I see the mysterious Mr Shine? Captain Carrot had been busy. The city dwarfs liked him. So he'd done what Vimes could not have done, or at least done well, which was take a muddy dwarf necklace to a dwarf home down in New Cobblers and explain to two dwarf parents how it had been found. Things had happened quite fast after that, and another reason for the speed was that the mine was shut. Guards and workers and dwarfs seeking guidance on the path of dwarfdom had turned up to be met with locked doors. Money was owing, and dwarfs got very definite about things like that. A lot of the huge body of dwarf lore was about contracts. You were supposed to get paid. No more politics, Vimes told himself. Someone killed four of our dwarfs, not some crazy rabble-rouser, and left them down there in the dark. I don't care who they are, they're going to be dragged into the light. It's the law. All the way to the bottom, all the way to the top. But it's going to be done by dwarfs. Dwarfs will go to that well, and dig out that mud again, and bring up the proof. He walked into the main office. Carrot was there, along with half a dozen dwarf officers. They looked grim. Àll set?' said Vimes. `Yes, Sir. We'll meet the others at Empirical Crescent.' `You've got enough diggers?' Àll dwarfs are diggers, sir,' said Carrot solemnly. `There's timber on the way, and winching gear too. Some of the miners joining us helped dig that tunnel, sir. They knew those lads. They're a bit bewildered and angry.' Ì'll bet. They believe us, then, do they?' said Vimes. Èr ... more or less, sir. If the bodies aren't there, though, we're going to be in trouble.' `Very true. Did your lads know what they were digging for?' `No, Sir. They just got orders from the dark dwarfs. And different squads dug in different directions. A long way in different directions. As far as Money Trap Lane and Ettercap Street, they think.' `That's a big slice of the city!' `Yessir. But there was something odd.' `Do go on, captain,' said Vimes. `We're good at odd.' Èvery so often everyone had to stop work and the foreign dwarfs listened at the walls with a big, er, thing, like an ear trumpet. Sally found something like that when she was down there.' `They were listening? In soggy mud? Listening for what? Singing worms?' `The dwarfs don't know, sir. Trapped miners, they thought. I suppose it makes sense. A lot of the digging is through old stonework, so I suppose it's possible that other miners could be trapped somewhere that's got air.' `Not to last for weeks, though, surely? And why dig in different directions?' Ìt's a puzzle, sir, there's no doubt about it. But we'll get to the bottom of it soon enough. Everyone's very keen.' `Good. But play down the Watch side, will you? This is a bunch of concerned citizens trying to find their loved ones after a reported mining disaster, okay? The watchmen are just helping them out.' `You mean "remember I'm a dwarf" sir?' `Thank you for that, Carrot. Yes, exactly,' said Vimes. Ànd now I'm off to see a legend with a name like a can of polish.' As he went out, he noticed the Summoning Dark symbol. The Pink PussyCat Club drinks menu had been put with some care on a shelf by the window, where it got maximum light. It glowed. Maybe this was because Frosted Hot Lips Rose had been designed to be seen across a crowded bar in poor light, but it seemed to float above the oh-so-funny sticky cocktail names like Just Sex, Pussy Galore and No Brainer, making them look faded and unreal. Someone - several ones, by the look of it - had lit candles in front of it, for when night came. It mustn't be kept in the dark, Vimes thought. I wish I wasn't. Pointer & Pickles was dusty. Dust was the keynote of the shop. Vimes must have passed it a thousand times; it was that kind of shop, the kind you walked past. Dust and dead flies filled the little window, which nevertheless offered dim views of large lumps of rock, covered with dust, beyond. The bell over the door gave a dusty jangle as Vimes entered the gloomy interior. The noise died away, and there was a definite feeling that this marked the end of the entertainment for today. Then a distant shuffling was born in the heavy silence. It turned out to belong to a very old woman who appeared, at first sight, to be as dusty as the rocks she, presumably, sold. Vimes had his doubts even about that. Shops like this one often looked upon the selling of merchandise as in some way a betrayal of a sacred trust. As if to underline this, she was carrying a club with a nail in it. When she was close enough for conversation, Vimes said, Ì've come here to-' `Do you believe in the healing power of crystals, young man?' snapped the woman, raising the club threateningly. `What? What healing power?' said Vimes. The old woman gave him a cracked smile, and dropped the club. `Good,' she said. `We like our customers to take their geology seriously. We've got some trollite in this week.' `Good, but in fact I-' Ìt's the only mineral that travels backwards in time, you know.' Ì'm here to see Mr Shine,' Vimes managed. `Mr who?' said the old woman, putting a hand to her ear. `Mr Shine?' said Vimes, confidence already draining out of him. `Never heard of him, dear.' `He, er, gave me this,' said Vimes, showing her the two pieces of stone egg. Àmethyst geode, very nice specimen, I'll give you seven dollars,' said the old woman. Àre you, er, Pickles or Pointer?' said Vimes, as a last resort. Ì'm Miss Pickles, dear. Miss Point-' She stopped. Her expression changed, became slightly younger and considerably more alert. Ànd I'm Miss Pointer, dear,' she said. `Don't worry about Pickles, she just runs the body when I've got other things to do. Are you Commander Vimes?' Vimes stared. Àre you telling me you're two people? With one body?' `Yes, dear. It's supposed to be an illness, but all I can say is we've always got along well. I've never told her about Mr Shine. Can't be too careful. Come this way, do.' She led the way through the dusty crystals and slabs into the back of the shop, where there was a wide corridor lined with shelves. Crystals of all sizes sparkled down at him. Òf course, trolls have always been of interest to geologists, being made of metamorphorical rock,' said Miss Pointer/Pickles conversationally. `You're not a rock hound yourself, commander?' Ì've had the occasional stone thrown at me,' said Vimes. Ì've never bothered to check what kind it was.' `Ha. Such a shame we're on loam here,' said the woman, as the sound of quiet voices drew nearer. She opened a door and stood aside. Ì rent them the room,' she said. `Do go in.' Vimes looked at the top few treads of a flight of stairs, heading down. Oh goody, he thought. We're going underground again. But there was warm light coming up, and the voices were louder. The cellar was large and cool. There were tables everywhere, with a couple of people at each one, bent over a chequered board. A games room? The players were dwarfs, trolls and humans, but what they had in common was concentration. Unconcerned faces glanced towards Vimes, who had paused halfway down the stairs, and then looked back to the game in hand. Vimes continued down to floor level. This had to be important, right? Mr Shine had wanted him to see it. People - men, trolls, dwarfs - playing games. Occasionally a couple of players would look up at one another, share a glance and shake hands. Then one of them would go off to a new table. `What do you notice, Mister Vimes?' said a deep voice behind him. Vimes forced himself to turn slowly. The figure sitting in the shadows beside the stairway was shrouded entirely in black. He looked a good head taller than Vimes. `They're all young?' he ventured, and added: `Mr Shine?' Èxactly! More youngsters tend to come along in the evenings, too. Do take a seat, sir.' `Why have I come to see you, Mr Shine?' said Vimes, sitting down. `Because you want to find out why you have come to see me, 'said the dark figure. `Because you're wandering in the dark. Because Mister Vimes, with his badge and his truncheon, is full of rage. More full than usual. Take care of that rage, Mister Vimes.' Mystic, thought Vimes. Ì like to see who I'm talking to,' he said. `What are you?' `You would not see me if I removed this hood,' said Mr Shine. Às for what I am, I'll ask you this: would it be true to say that Captain Carrot, while very happy to be a Watch officer, is the rightful king of Ankh-Morpork?' Ì have trouble with the term "rightful",' said Vimes. `So I understand. It may well be that this is one reason why he hasn't yet chosen to declare himself,' said Mr Shine. `But no matter. Well, I am the rightful - excuse me - and indisputable king of the trolls.' `Really?' said Vimes. It wasn't much of a reply, but the options at this point were limited. `Yes. And when I say indisputable, I mean what I say, Mister Vimes. Hidden human kings have to resort to magic swords or legendary feats to reclaim their birthright. I do not. I just have to be. You are aware of the concept of metamorphorical rock?' `You mean the way trolls look like certain types of rock?' Ìndeed. Schist, Mica, Shale, and so on. Even Brick, poor young Brick. No one knows why this is, and they have expended thousands of words in saying so. Oh, to hell with it, as you would say. You deserve a glimpse. Protect your eyes. I, Mister Vimes-' A black-robed arm was extended, a black velvet glove removed. Vimes shut his eyes in time, but the inside of the lids blazed red. -am diamond,' said Mr Shine. The glare faded a little. Vimes risked opening his eyes a fraction, and made out a hand, every flexing finger sparkling like a prism. The players glanced up, but they'd seen this before. `Frost forms quite quickly,' said Mr Shine. When Vimes dared to peek, the hand glittered like the heart of winter. `You're hiding out from jewellers?' he managed, taken aback. `Ha! In fact this city is indeed a very good place for people who don't wish to be seen, Mister Vimes. I have friends here. And I have talents. You'd find me quite hard to see if I wished to be unseen. I am also, frankly, intelligent, and intelligent all the time. I don't need the Pork Futures Warehouse. I can regulate the temperature of my brain by reflecting all heat. Diamond trolls are very rare, and when we do appear, kingship is our destiny.' Vimes waited. Mr Shine, who was now pulling his glove back on, appeared to have an agenda. The wisest thing was to let him talk until it all made sense. Ànd do you know what happens when we become king?' said Mr Shine, now safely shrouded once more. `Koom Valley?' Vimes suggested. `Well done. The trolls unite, and we have the same tired old war, followed by centuries of skirmishing. That is the sad, stupid history of the trolls and the dwarfs. And this time, Ankh-Morpork will be caught up in it. You know that the troll and dwarf population here has grown enormously under Vetinari: Àll right, but if you're king, can't you just make peace?' `Just like that? It'll need much more than that.' The hood of the robe shook sadly. `You really know very little about us, Mister Vimes. You see us down on the plains, shambling around talkin' like dis. You don't know about the history chant, or the Long Dance, or stone music. You see the hunched troll, dragging his club. That's what the dwarfs did for us, long ago. They turned us, in your minds, into sad, brainless monsters.' `Don't look at me when you say that,' said Vimes. `Detritus is one of my best officers!' There was silence. Then Mr Shine said, `Shall I tell you what I think the dwarfs were looking for, Mister Vimes? Something of theirs. It is a thing that talks. And they found it and I think what it had to say directly caused five deaths. I believe I know how to find the secret of Koom Valley. In a few weeks, everyone will be able to. But by then, I think, it will be too late. You must solve it too, before the war sweeps up all of us.' `How do you know all this?' said Vimes. `Because I'm magical,' said the voice from the hood. Òh, well, if that's the way you're-' Vimes began. `Patience, commander,' said Mr Shine. Ì just ... simplified. Accept, instead, that I am very ... smart. I have an analytical mind. I've studied the histories and lore of my hereditary enemy. I have friends who are dwarfs. Quite knowledgeable dwarfs. Quite ... powerful dwarfs, who wish for an end to this stupid feud as much as I do. And I have a love of games and puzzles. The Codex was not a terrible challenge.' Ìf it's going to help me find the murderers of those dwarfs in the mine then you should tell me what you know!' `Why trust what I say? I am a troll, I'm partisan, I might wish to direct your thoughts down the wrong path.' `Maybe you have already!' said Vimes hotly. He knew he was making a fool of himself; it only made him angrier. `Good, that's the spirit!' said Mr Shine. `Test all that I've told you! Where would we be if Commander Vimes relied on magic, eh? No, the secret of Koom Valley must be found by observation and questioning and facts, facts, facts. Possibly I'm helping you find them a little quicker than you might otherwise do. You just have to think about what you know, commander. And, in the meantime, shall we play a little game?' Mr Shine picked up a box by his chair and upended it over the table. `This is Thud, Mister Vimes,' he said, as little stone figures bounced over the board. `Dwarfs versus trolls. Eight trolls and thirty-two dwarfs, forever fighting their little battles on a cardboard Koom Valley.' He began to place the pieces, black-gloved hands moving with un-trollish speed. Vimes pushed back his chair. `Nice to meet you, Mr Shine, but all you are giving me is riddles and-' `Sit down, commander.' The quiet voice had a schoolteacher harmonic to it that folded Vimes's legs under him. `Good,' said Mr Shine. Èight trolls, thirty-two dwarfs. Dwarfs always start. A dwarf is small and fast and can run as many squares as possible in any direction. A troll - because we're stupid and drag our clubs, as everyone knows - can move only one square in any direction. There are other types of moving, but what do you see so far?' Vimes tried to concentrate. It was hard. This was a game, it wasn't real. Besides, the answer was so obvious that it couldn't be the right one. Ìt looks like the dwarfs must win every time,' he ventured. Àh, natural suspicion, I like that. In fact, among the best players the bias is slightly in favour of the trolls,' said Mr Shine. `This is largely because a troll can, in the right circumstances, do a lot of damage. How are your ribs, by the way?' Àll the better for you asking,' said Vimes sourly. He'd forgotten them for twenty blessed minutes; now they ached again. `Good. I'm glad Brick has found Detritus. He has a good brain if he can be persuaded to stop frying it every half an hour. Back to our game . . . advantages to either side do not matter, in fact, because a complete game consists of two battles. In one, you must play the dwarfs. In the other, you must play the trolls. As you may expect, dwarfs find it easy to play the dwarf side, which needs a strategy and mode of attack that comes easily to a dwarf. Something similar applies to the trolls. But to win you must play both sides. You must, in fact, be able to think like your ancient enemy. A really skilled player- Well, take a look, commander. Look towards the back of the room where my friend Phyllite is playing against Nils Mousehammer.' Vimes turned. `What am I looking for?' he said. `Whatever you see.' `Well, that troll over there is wearing what looks like a large dwarf helmet. . `Yes, one of the dwarf players made it for him. And he speaks quite passable dwarfish.' `He's drinking out of a horn, like the dwarfs do. ..' `He had to have one made in metal! Troll beer would melt through ordinary horn. Nils there can sing quite a lot of the troll history chant. Look at Gabbro, over there. Good troll boy, but he knows all there is to know about dwarf battle bread. In fact, I believe that's a boomerang croissant on the table next to him. Purely for ceremonial purposes, of course. Commander?' `Hmm?' said Vimes. `What?' A slightly built dwarf at one of the tables was watching him with interest, as though he was some kind of fascinating monster. Mr Shine chuckled. `To study the enemy you have to get under his skin. When you're under his skin you start to see the world through his eyes. Gabbro is so good at playing from the dwarf viewpoint that his troll game is suffering, and he wants to go to Copperhead to learn from some of the dwarf thudmeisters there. I hope he does; they'll teach him how to play like a troll. None of these lads here were out getting fighting drunk last night. And thus we wear down mountains. Water dripping on a stone, dissolving and removing. Changing the shape of the world, one drop at a time. Water dripping on a stone, commander. Water flowing underground, bubbling up in unexpected places.' Ì think you're going to need a bit more of a gush,' said Vimes. Ì don't think a bunch of people playing games is going to break down a mountain any time soon.' Ìt depends on where the drops fall,' said Mr Shine. Ìn time they may wash away a valley, at least. You should ask yourself why you were so keen to get into that mine.' `Because there had been a murder!' Ànd that was the only reason?' said the shrouded Mr Shine. Òf course!' Ànd everyone knows what gossips dwarfs are,' said Mr Shine. `Well, I am sure you will do your best, commander. I hope you find the murderer before the Dark catches up with them.' `Mr Shine, some of my officers have lit candles around that damn symbol! 'Good thinking, I'd say.' `So you really believe that it's some kind of a threat? How come you know so much about dwarf signs, anyway?' Ì have studied them. I accept the fact of their existence. Some of your officers believe. Most dwarfs do, somewhere in their gnarly little souls. I respect that. You can take a dwarf out of the dark, but you can't take the dark out of a dwarf. Those symbols are very old. They have real power. Who knows what old evil exists in the deep darkness under the mountains? There's no darkness like it.' `You can take the mickey out of a copper, too,' said Vimes. Àh, Mister Vimes, you have had a busy day. So much happening, so little time to think. Take time to reflect on all you know, sir. I am a reflecting kind of person.' `Commander Vimes?' The voice came from Miss Pickles/ Pointer, halfway up the stairs. `There is a big troll asking after you. `What a shame,' said Mr Shine. `That will be Sergeant Detritus. Not good news, I suspect. If I had to guess, I'd say that the trolls have sent around the taka-taka. You must go, Mister Vimes. I'll be seeing you again.' Ì don't think I'll see you,' said Vimes. He stood up, and then hesitated. Òne question, right? And no funny answers, if you don't mind,' he said. `Tell me why you helped Brick. Why should you care about a slushed-out gutter troll?' `Why should you care about some dead dwarfs?' said Mr Shine. `Because someone has to!' Èxactly! Goodbye, Mister Vimes.' Vimes hurried up the stairs and followed Miss Pickles/Pointer out into the shop. Detritus was standing among the mineral specimens, looking uncomfortable, like a man in a morgue. `What's happening?' said Vimes. Detritus shifted uneasily. `Sorry, Mister Vimes, but I was the only one dat knew where-' he began. `Yes, okay. Is this about the taka-taka?' `How did you know about that, sir?' Ì don't. What is the taka-taka?' Ìt der famous war club of der trolls,' said Detritus. Vimes, with the image of the peace club of the trolls downstairs still in his mind, couldn't stop himself. `You mean you subscribe and get a different war every month?' he said. But that sort of thing was wasted on Detritus. He treated humour as some human aberration which had to be overcome by talking slowly and patiently. `No, sir. When der taka-taka is sent a-round the clans, it a summon-ing to war,' he said. Òh damn. Koom Valley?' `Yes, sir. An' I'm hearing dat der Low King and der Uberwald dwarfs is already on der way to Koom Valley, too. Der street is full of it.' Èr ... bingle bingle bingle ... ?' said a small and very nervous voice. Vimes pulled out the Gooseberry and stared at it. At a time like this ... `Well?' he said. Ìt's twenty-nine minutes past five, Insert Name Here,' said the imp nervously. `So?' Òn foot, at this time of day, you will need to leave now to be home at six o'clock,' said the imp. `Der Patrician want to see you and dere's clackses arrivin' and everythin',' said Detritus insistently. Vimes continued to stare at the imp, which looked embarrassed. Ì'm going home,' he said, and started walking. Dark clouds were rolling in overhead, heralding another summer storm. 'Dey've foun' der three dwarfs near der well, sir,' said Detritus, lumbering after him. `Looks like it was other dwarfs what killed 'em, sure enough. The ol grags have gone. Captain Carrot's put guards on every exit he can find. ..' But they dig, Vimes thought. Who knows where all the tunnels go? ... and he wants permission to break open der big iron doors in Treacle Street,' Detritus went on. `Dey can get at the last dwarf dat way.' `What are the dwarfs saying about it?' said Vimes, over his shoulder. `The living ones, I mean?' À lot of dem saw der dead dwarfs brought up,' said Detritus. Ì fink most of dem would hand him der crowbar.' Let's hear it for the mob, Vimes thought. Grab it by its sentimental heart. Besides, the storm is beginning. Why worry about an extra raindrop? Òkay,' he said. `Tell him this. I know Otto will be there with his damn picture box, so when that door is wrenched open it's going to be dwarfs doing it, okay? A picture full of dwarfs?' `Right, sir!' `How is young Brick? Will he swear a statement? Does he understand about that?' Ì reckon he could, sir. Ìn front of dwarfs?' `He will if I ask him, sir,' said Detritus. `Dat I can promise.' `Good. And get someone to put out a message on the clacks, to every city watch and village constable between here and the mountains. Tell them to look out for a party of dark dwarfs. They've got what they came for and they're doing a runner, I know it.' `You want they should try to stop 'em?' the sergeant asked. `No! No one should try it! Say they've got weapons that shoot fire! Just let me know where they're headed!' Ì'll tell dem dat, sir.' And I'm going home, Vimes repeated to himself. Everyone wants something from Vimes, even though I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Hell, I'm probably a spoon. Well, I'm going to be Vimes, and Vimes reads Where's My Cow? to Young Sam at six o'clock. With the noises done right. He went home at a brisk walk, using all the little shortcuts, his mind sloshing backwards and forwards like thin soup, his ribs nudging him occasionally to say, yes, they were still there and twingeing. He arrived at the door just as Willikins was opening it. Ì shall tell her ladyship you are back, sir,' he called out, as Vimes hurried up the stairs. `She is mucking out the dragon pens.' Young Sam was standing up in his cot, watching the door. Vimes's day went soft and pink. The chair was littered with the favoured toys of the hour - a rag ball, a little hoop, a woolly snake with one button eye. Vimes pushed them on to the rug, sat down and took off his helmet. Then he took off his damp boots. You didn't need to heat a room after Sam Vimes had taken his boots off. On the wall the nursery clock ticked, and with every tick and tock a little sheep jumped back and forth over a fence. Sam unfolded the rather chewed, rather soggy book. `Where's my cow?' he announced, and Young Sam chuckled. Rain rattled on the window. Where's my cow? Is that my cow? ... Àthing' that talks, he thought, as his mouth and eyes took over the task in hand. I'm going to have to find out about that. Why'd it make dwarfs want to kill one another? It goes, 'Baa!' It is a sheep! ... Why did we go into that mine? Because we heard there'd been a murder, that's why! That's not my cow! ... Everyone knows that dwarfs gossip. It was stupid to tell them to keep it from us! That's the deep-downers for you, they think they just have to say a thing and it's true! Where's my cow? ... water dripping on a stone ... Is that my cow? Where did I see one of those Thud boards recently? It goes, `Neigh!' Oh, yes, Helmclever. He was very worried, wasn't he? It is a horse! He had a board. He said he was a keen player. That's not my cow! That was a dwarf under pressure if ever I saw one; he looked as if he was dying to tell me something ... Where's my cow? That look in his eyes ... Is that my cow? I was so angry. Don't tell the Watch? What did they expect? You'd have thought he would have known ... It goes, 'Hruuugh!' He knew I'd go spare! It is a hippopotamus! He wanted me to be angry! That's not my cow! He damn well wanted me to be angry! Vimes snorted and crowed his way through the rest of the zoo, missing out not one hark or squeak, and tucked up his son with a kiss. There was the sound of tinkling glass from downstairs. Oh, someone's dropped a glass, said his front brain. But his back brain, which had steered him safely through these mean streets for more than fifty years, whispered: like hell they did! Cook had the evening off. Purity would be up in her room. Sybil was out feeding the dragons. That left Willikins. Butlers didn't drop things. From below there was a quiet ugh, and then the thud of something hitting meat. And Vimes's sword was on the hook at the other end of the hall, because Sybil didn't like him wearing it in the house. As quietly as possible he looked around for something, anything, that could be turned into a weapon. Regrettably, they had, when choosing toys for Young Sam, completely neglected the whole area of hard things with sharp edges. Bunnies, chuckies and piggies there were in plenty, but- Ah. Vimes spotted something that would do, and wrenched it free. Moving soundlessly on thick, over-darned socks, he crept down the stairs. The door to the wine cellar was open. Vimes didn't drink these days, but guests did, and Willikins in accordance with some butlerian duty to generations just arrived or as yet unborn cared for it and bought in the occasional promising vintage. Was there the crackle of glass being trodden on? Okay, did the stairs creak? He'd find out. He reached the vaulted cellar and stepped carefully out of the light filtering down from the hall. Now he could smell it ... the faint reek of black oil. The little bastards! And they could see in the dark, too, right? He fumbled in his pocket for his matches, while his heart thudded in his ears. His fingers closed over a match, he took a deep breath One hand grasped his wrist, and as he swung madly at the darkness with the hind leg of a rocking-horse this too was wrested from him. Instinctively, he kicked out, and there was a grunt. His arms were released, and from somewhere near the floor the voice of Willikins, rather strained, said, Èxcuse me, sir, I appear to have walked into your foot.' `Willikins? What the hell's been happening?' `Some dwarfish gentlemen called while you were upstairs, sir,' said the butler, unfolding slowly. `Through the cellar wall, in fact. I regret to say that I found it necessary to deal somewhat strictly with them. I fear one might be dead.' Vimes peered around. `Might be dead? Is he still breathing?' Ì do not know, sir.' Willikins applied a match, with great care, to a stub of candle. Ì heard him gurgling, but he appears to have stopped. I'm sorry to say that they came upon me when I was leaving the ice store and I was forced to defend myself with the first thing that came to hand.' `Which was....?' `The ice knife, sir,' said Willikins levelly. He held up eighteen inches of sharp serrated steel, designed to slice ice into convenient blocks. `The other gentleman I have lodged on a meat hook, sir.' `You didn't ' Vimes began, horrified. Ònly through his clothing, sir. I am sorry to have laid hands on you, but I feared the wretched oil might have been inflammable. I hope I got all of them. I would like to take this opportunity to apologize for the mess-' But Vimes had gone and was already halfway up the cellar steps. In the hall, his heart stopped. A short dark figure was at the top of the stairs and disappearing into the nursery. The broad, stately staircase soared in front of him, a stairway to the top of the sky. He ran up it, hearing himself screaming -'I'll kill you'll killyoukillyoukillyoukillkillkill you'll kill you kill you'llkill you-'The terrible fury choked him, the rage and dreadful fear set his lungs on fire, and still the stairs unrolled. There was no end to them. They climbed for ever, while he was falling backwards, into hell. But hell buoyed him up, gave wings to his rage, lifted him, sent him back ... And then, his breath now nothing more than one long profane scream, he reached the top step The dwarf came out of the nursery doorway, backwards and fast. He hit the banisters and crashed through them on to the floor below. Vimes ran on, sliding on the polished wood, skidding as he swung into the nursery, dreading the sight of -Young Sam, sleeping peacefully. On the wall, the little lamb rocked the night away. Sam Vimes picked up his son, wrapped in his blue blanket, and sagged to his knees. He hadn't drawn breath all the way up the stairs and now his body cashed its cheques, sucking in air and redemption in huge, racking sobs. Tears boiled out of him, shaking him wretchedly ... Through the running, wet blur, he saw something on the floor. There, on the rug, were the rag ball, the hoop and the woolly snake, lying where they'd fallen. The ball had rolled, more or less, into the middle of the hoop. The snake lay half uncoiled, its head lying on the edge of the circle. Together, in this weak nursery light, they looked at first glance like a big eye with a tail. `Sir? Is everything all right?' Vimes looked up and focused on the red face of Willikins. Èr ... yeah ... what? ... yeah ... fine ... thanks,' he managed, summoning his scattered senses. `Fine, Willikins. Thank you.' Òne must've got past me in the dark-' `Huh? Yeah, very remiss of you, then,' said Vimes, getting to his feet but still clutching his son to him. Ì'd just bet most butlers round here would have taken out all three with one swipe of their polishing cloth, right?' Àre you all right, sir? Because-' `But you went to the Shamlegger School of Butlering!' Vimes giggled. His knees were trembling. Part of him knew what this was all about. After the terror came that drunken feeling, when you were still alive and suddenly everything was funny. Ì mean, other butlers just know how to cut people dead with a look, but you, Willikins, you know how to cut them dead with-' `Listen, sir! He's outside, sir!' said Willikins urgently. `So is Lady Sybil!' Vimes's grin froze. `Shall I take the young man, sir?' Willikins said, reaching for him. Vimes backed away. A troll with a crowbar and a tub of grease would not have wrested his son from him. `No! But give me that knife! And go and make sure Purity is all right!' Clutching Young Sam to him, he ran back downstairs, across the hall and out into the garden. It was stupid, stupid, stupid. He told himself that later. But, right now, Sam Vimes was thinking only in primary colours. It had been hard, hard, to go into the nursery in the face of the images that thronged his imagination. He was not going to go through that ever again. And the rage flowed back, easily, under control now. Smooth like a river of fire. He'd find them all, all of them, and they would burn ... The main dragon shed could only be reached now by dodging around three big cast-iron flame-deflector shields, put in place two months ago; dragon breeding was not a hobby for cissies or people who minded having to repaint the whole side of the house occasionally. There were big iron doors at either end; Vimes headed towards one at random, ran into the dragon shed, and bolted the door behind him. It was always warm in there, because the dragons burped all the time; it was that or explode, which occasionally did happen. And there was Sybil in full dragon-keeping gear, walking calmly between the pens with a bucket in each hand, and behind her the doors at the other end were opening, and there was a short dark figure, and there was a rod with a little pilot flame on the end, and 'Look out! Behind you!' Vimes yelled. His wife stared at him, turned round, dropped the buckets and started to shout something. And then the flame blossomed. It hit Sybil in the chest, splashed across the pens, and went out abruptly. The dwarf looked down and began to thump the pipe desperately. The pillar of flame that was Lady Sybil said, in an authoritative voice that brooked no disobeying: `Lie down, Sam. Right now.' And Sybil dropped to the sandy floor as, all down the lines of pens, dragon heads rose on long dragon necks. Their nostrils were flaring. They were breathing in. They'd been challenged. They'd been offended. And they'd just had their supper. `Good boys,' said Sybil, from the floor. Twenty-six streams of answering dragon fire rose to the occasion. Vimes, lying on the floor so that his body shielded Young Sam, felt the hairs crisp on the back of his neck. This wasn't the smoky red of the dwarf fire; this was something only a dragon's stomach could cook up. The flames were practically invisible. At least one of them must have hit the dwarf's weapon, because there was an explosion and something went through the roof. The dragon pens were built like a firework factory: the walls were very thick, and the roof was as thin as possible to provide a faster exit to heaven. When the noise had died to an excited hiccuping, Vimes risked looking up. Sybil was getting to her feet, a little clumsily because of all the special clothing every dragon breeder wore.[1] The iron of the far doors glowed around the black outline of a [1] That is to say, every dragon breeder not currently occupying a small artistic urn. dwarf. A little way in front of them, two iron boots were cooling from white heat in a puddle of molten sand. Metal went plink. Lady Sybil reached up with heavy gloved hands, patted out some patches of burning oil on her leather apron, and lifted off her helmet. It landed on the sand with a thud. Òh, Sam ..: she said softly. Àre you all right? Young Sam is fine. We've got to get out of here!' Òh, Sam. ..' `Sybil, I need you to take him!' Vimes said, speaking slowly and clearly to get through the shock. `There could be others out there!' Lady Sybil's eyes focused. `Give him to me,' she ordered. Ànd you take Raja!' Vimes looked where she was indicating. A young dragon with floppy ears and an expression of mildly concussed good humour blinked at him. He was a Golden Wouter, a breed with a flame so strong that one of them had once been used by thieves to melt their way into a bank vault. Vimes picked him up carefully. `Coal him up,' Sybil commanded. It's in the bloodline, Vimes told himself as he fed anthracite into Raja's eager gullet. Sybil's female forebears had valiantly backed up their husbands as distant embassies were besieged, had given birth on a camel or in the shade of a stricken elephant, had handed around the little gold chocolates while trolls were trying to break into the compound, or had merely stayed at home and nursed such bits of husbands and sons as made it back from endless little wars. The result was a species of woman who, when duty called, turned into solid steel. Vimes flinched as Raja burped. `That was a dwarf, wasn't it?' said Sybil, cradling Young Sam. Òne of those deep-down ones?' `Yes: `Why did it try to kill me?' When people are trying to kill you, it means you're doing something right. It was a rule Sam had lived by. But this ... even a real stone killer like Chrysoprase wouldn't have tried something like this. It was insane. They will burn. They will burn. Ì think they're frightened of what I'm going to find out,' said Vimes. Ì think it's all gone wrong for them, and they want to stop me.' Could they have been that stupid? he wondered. A dead wife? A dead child? Could they think that would mean for one moment that I'd stop? As it is, when I catch up with whoever ordered this, and I will, I hope there's someone there to hold me back. They will burn for what they did. Òh, Sam...' murmured Sybil, the iron mask falling for a moment. Ì'm sorry. I never expected this,' said Vimes. He put the dragon down and held her carefully, almost fearfully. The rage had been so strong; he had felt he might grow spikes, or snap into shards. And the headache was coming back, like a lump of lead nailed just over his eyes. `Whatever happened to all that, you know, hi-ho, hi-ho and being kind to poor lost orphans in the forest, Sam?' Sybil whispered. `Willikins is in the house,' he said. `Purity is as well.' `Let's go and find them, then,' said Sybil. She grinned, a little damply. Ì wish you wouldn't bring your work home with you, Sam.' `This time it followed me, 'said Vimes grimly. `But I intend to tidy it up, believe me.' They shall bur- No! They shall be hunted down to any hole they hide in and brought back to face justice. Unless (oh, please!) they resist arrest ... Purity was standing in the hall, alongside Willikins. She was holding a trophy Klatchian sword, without much conviction. The butler had augmented his weaponry with a couple of meat cleavers, which he hefted with a certain worrying expertise. `My gods, man, you're covered in blood!' Sybil burst out. `Yes, your ladyship,' said Willikins smoothly. `May I say in mitigation that it is not, in fact, mine.' `There was a dwarf in the dragon house,' said Vimes. Àny sign of others?' `No, sir. The ones in the cellar had an apparatus for projecting fire, sir.' `The dwarf we saw had one too,' said Vimes, adding: Ìt didn't do him any good.' Ìndeed, sir? I apprised myself of its use, sir, and tested my understanding by firing it down the tunnel they had arrived by until it ran out of igniferous juice, sir. Just in case there were more. It is for this reason, I suspect, that the shrubbery at Number Five is on fire.' Vimes hadn't met Willikins when they were both young. The Cockbill Street Roaring Lads had a treaty with Shamlegger Street, thus allowing them to ignore that flank while they concentrated on stopping the territorial aggression of the Pigsty Hill Dead Marmoset Gang. He was glad he hadn't fetched up against young Willikins. `They must have come up for air there,' he said. `The Jeffersons are on holiday.' `Well, if they're not ready for that sort of thing, they shouldn't be growing rhododendrons,' said Sybil matter of factly. `What now, Sam?' `We're staying the night at Pseudopolis Yard,' said Vimes. `Don't argue. 'Ramkins have never run away from anything,' Sybil declared. 'Vimeses have run like hell all the time,' said Vimes, too diplomatic to mention the aforesaid ancestors who came home in pieces. `That means you fight where you want to fight. We're all going to go and get the coach, and we're all going down to the Yard. When we're there I'll send people back to pick up our stuff. Just for one night, all right?' `What would you like me to do with the visitors, sir?' said Willikins, with a sidelong glance at Lady Sybil. Òne is indeed dead, I am afraid. If you recall, I must have stabbed him with the ice knife I happened to be holding, having been cutting ice for the kitchen,' he added, poker-faced. `Put him on the roof of the coach,' said Vimes. `The other one also appears to be dead, sir. I'd swear he was fine when I tied him up, sir, because he was cursing me in their lingo.' `You didn't hit him too hard, did-' Vimes began, and gave up on it. If Willikins had wanted someone dead, he wouldn't have taken them prisoner. It must have been a surprise, breaking into a cellar and meeting something like Willikins. Anyway, to hell with them. `Just ... died?' he said. `Yes, sir. Do dwarfs naturally salivate green?' `What?' `There is green around his mouth, sir. Could be a clue, in my opinion. Àll right, put him on the roof of the coach too. Let's go, shall we?' Vimes had to insist that Sybil travel on the inside. Usually she got her own way and he was happy to give it to her, but the unspoken agreement was that when he really insisted, she listened. It's a married couple thing. Vimes rode beside Willikins, and got him to stop halfway down the hill where a man was selling the evening edition of the Times, still damp from the press. The picture on the front page was of a mob of dwarfs. They were pulling open one of the mine's big, round metal doors; it was hanging off its hinges. In the middle of the group, hands gripping the edge of the frame and muscles bulging, was Captain Carrot. Gleaming, with his shirt off. Vimes grunted happily, folded up the paper, and lit a cheroot. The shaking in his legs was barely noticeable now, the fires of that terrible rage banked but still glowing. À free press, Willikins. You just can't beat it,' he said. Ì have often heard you remark as much, sir,' said Willikins. The entity slithered through the rainy streets. Confounded again! It was getting through, it knew it! It was being heard! And yet every time it tried to follow the words, it was thrown back. Bars had blocked its way, doors that had been open locked themselves as it approached. And what was this? Some kind of low-class soldier! By now it would have had berserkers biting their shields in half! That was not the main problem, though. It was being watched. And that had never happened before. There was a crowd of dwarfs milling around outside the Yard. They did not look belligerent - that is to say, any more belligerent than a species the members of which, by custom and practice, wear a big heavy helmet, mail and iron boots and carry an axe all the time will automatically look - but they did seem lost and bewildered and unsure why they were there. Vimes got Willikins to drive in through the coach arch and take the bodies of the attackers down to Igor, who knew about things like people dying with green mouths. Sybil, Purity and Young Sam were hustled away to a clean office. Interesting thing, Vimes thought, as he watched Cheery and a group of dwarf officers fuss over the child: even now - in fact especially now, given the way the tension had made everyone revert to old certainties - he wasn't sure how many female dwarf officers he had. It was a brave female dwarf who advertised the fact, in a society where the wearing of even a decent, floor-length, leatherand-chain-mail dress instead of leggings positioned you, on the moral map, on the far side of Tawneee and her hard-working coworkers at the Pink PussyCat Club. But introduce a gurgling kid into the room and you could spot them instantly, for all their fearsome clang and beards you could lose a rat in. Carrot pushed his way through the crowd and saluted. À lot's been happening, sir!' `My word, has it?' said Vimes, with manic brightness. `Yessir. Everyone was pretty ... angry when we brought the dead dwarfs up from the mine, and what with one thing and another, opening the big door in Treacle Street was pretty popular. All the deep-downers have gone, except one-' `That'd be Helmclever,' said Vimes, heading for his own office. Carrot looked surprised. `That's right, sir. He's in a cell. I'd like you to have a look at him, if you don't mind. He was crying and moaning and trembling in a corner with lit candles all round him.' `More candles? Afraid of the dark?' Vimes suggested. `Could be, sir. Igor says the trouble's in his head.' `Don't let Igor try to give him a new one!' said Vimes quickly. 'I'll go down there as soon as I can.' Ì've tried talking to him but he just looks blank, sir. How did you know he was the one we found?' Ì've got some edges and some bits that are an interesting shape,' said Vimes, sitting down at his desk. When Carrot looked blank, he went on: Òf the jigsaw puzzle, captain. But there are lots of bits of sky. However, I think I might be nearly there, because I think I've been handed a corner. What talks underground?' `Sir?' `You know the dwarfs were listening for something underground? You wondered if someone was trapped, right? But is there ... I don't know ... something dwarf-made that speaks?' Carrot's brow wrinkled. `You're not talking about a cube, are you, sir?' Ì don't know. Am I? You tell me!' `The deep-downers have some in their mine, sir, but I'm sure there's none buried here. They're generally found in hard rocks. Anyway, you wouldn't listen for one. I've never heard of them talking when they're found. Some dwarfs have spent years learning how to use just one of them!' `Good! Now: What Is A Cube?' said Vimes, glancing at his in-tray. Oh, good. There weren't any memos from A. E. Pessimal. Ìt's, um ... it's like a book, sir. Which talks. A bit like your Gooseberry, I suppose. Most of them contain interpretations of dwarf lore by ancient lawmasters. It's very old ... magic, I suppose.' `Suppose?' said Vimes. `Well, technomantic Devices look like things that are built, you know, out of-' `Captain, you've lost me again. What are Devices and why do you pronounce the capital D?' `Cubes are a type of Device, sir. No one knows who made them or for what original purpose. They might be older than the world. They have been found in volcanoes and the deepest rocks. The deep-downers have most of them. They come in all sorts of-, 'Hold on, you mean that when they're dug up there's dwarf voices from millions of years ago? Surely dwarfs haven't been-' `No, sir. Dwarfs put them on later. I'm not too well up on this. I think when they're first found they mostly have natural noises, like moving water or birdsong or rocks moving, that sort of thing. The grags find out how to get rid of those to make room for words, I think. I did hear about one that was the sounds of a forest. Ten years of sounds, in a cube less than two inches across.' Ànd they're valuable, these things?' Ùnbelievably valuable, especially the cubes. Worth mining through a mountain of granite, as we say ... er, that's a dwarf we, not a copper "we", sir. `So digging through a few thousand tons of Ankh-Morpork muck would be worth it, then?' `For a cube? Yes! Is that what all this is about? But how would it get here? The average dwarf might never see one in his whole life. Only grags and great chieftains use them! And why would it be talking? All dwarf ones can only be brought to life by a key word!' `Search me. What do they look like? Apart from being cubical, I assume?' Ì've only ever seen a few, sir. They're, oh, up to six inches on a side, look like old bronze, and they glitter.' `Green and blue?' said Vimes sharply. `Yes, sir! They had a few in the mine in Treacle Street.' Ì think I saw them,' said Vimes. Ànd I think they've got one more. Voices from the past, eh? How come I've never heard of them before?' Carrot hesitated. `You're a very busy man, sir. You can't know everything.' Vimes detected just a soupcon of a smidgen of a reproach there. Àre you saying I'm a man of narrow horizons, captain?' Òh no, sir. You're interested in every aspect of police work and criminology.' Sometimes it was impossible to read Captain Carrot's face. Vimes didn't bother to try. Ì'm missing something,' he said. `But this is about Koom Valley, I know it. Look, what is the secret of Koom Valley?' Ì don't know, sir. I don't think there is one. I suppose the big secret would be which side attacked first. You know, sir, both sides say they were ambushed by the other side.' `Does that sound very interesting to you?' said Vimes. `Would it matter much now?' `Who started it all? I should say so, sir!' said Carrot. `But I thought they'd been scrapping since time began?' `Yes. But Koom Valley was the first official one, sir.' `Who won?' said Vimes. `Sir?' Ìt's not a difficult question, is it? Who won the first battle of Koom Valley?' Ì suppose you could say it was rained off, sir,' said Carrot. `They stopped a grudge match like that because of a bit of rain?' `For a lot of rain, sir. A thunderstorm just sat there in the mountains above it. There were flash floods, full of boulders. The fighters were knocked off their feet and washed away, some were struck by lightning-' Ìt quite ruined the whole day,' said Vimes. Àll right, captain, do we have any idea where the bastards have gone?' `They had an escape tunnel-' Ì bet they did!' -and collapsed it after them. I've got men digging-' `Stand them down. They could be in a safe house, they could have got out in a cart, hell, they could all be wearing helmets and chain mail and passing for city dwarfs. Enough of that. We've been running people ragged. Let them go for now. I think we'll be able to find them again.' `Yes, sir. The grags went so fast, sir, that they left some other Devices. I have secured them for the city. They must have been very frightened. They just took the cubes and ran. Are you all right, sir? You look a bit flustered.' Àctually, captain, I feel inexplicably cheerful. Would you like to hear how my day went?' The showers in the Watch House were the talk of the city. Vimes had paid for them himself, after Vetinari made an acidic comment about the cost. They were a bit primitive and were really no more than watering-can heads connected to a couple of water tanks on the next floor, but after a night in Ankh-Morpork's underworld the thought of being really clean was very attractive. Even so, Angua hesitated. `This is wonderful,' said Sally, turning gently under a spray. `What's wrong?' `Look, I'm dealing with it, all right?' snapped Angua, standing just beyond the shower. Ìt's full moon, okay? The wolf is a bit strong.' Sally stopped scrubbing. Òh, I see,' she said. Ìs it the whole B.A.T.H. thing?' `You just had to say that, didn't you?' said Angua, and forced herself to step on to the tiles. `Well, what do you do normally?' said Sally, handing her the soap. `Cold water, and pretend it's rain. Don't you dare laugh! Change of subject, right now!' Àll right. What did you think of Nobby's girlfriend?' said Sally. `Tawneee? Friendly. Good-looking. . `Try perfect physical beauty? Astonishing proportions? A walking classic?' `Well ... yes. Pretty much,' Angua conceded. Ànd all that is Nobby Nobbs's girlfriend?' `She seems to think so.' `You're not telling me she deserves Nobby?' said Sally. `Look, Verity Pushpram doesn't deserve Nobby, and she's got a weird squint, arms like a stevedore and cooks shellfish for a living,' said Angua. `That's how things are.' Ìs she his old girlfriend?' `He used to say so. As far as I know, the physical side of the relationship consists of her hitting him with a wet fish whenever he goes near her.' Angua squeezed the last of the slime out of her hair. It was tough stuff to lose. As it was, some of it was fighting not to go down the plughole. That was enough. She didn't like to spend too much time in the S.H.O.W.E.R. Another six or so sessions and the smell would have quite gone away. The important thing now was to remember to use a towel and not to shake herself dry. `You think I went down there to impress Captain Carrot, don't you?' said Sally, behind her. Angua stopped, her head wrapped in towelling. Oh well, it was going to happen sooner or later ... `No,' she said. `Your heartbeat says otherwise,' Sally said meekly. `Don't worry. I wouldn't have a chance. His heart beats faster every time he looks at you, and yours skips a beat every time you see him.' Okay, then, this is it, said the wolf who was never far away, this is where we sort it out, claw against fang ... No! Don't listen to the wolf! But it would help, wouldn't it, if this stupid bitch stopped listening to the bat ... `Stay out of people's hearts,' she growled. Ì can't. You can't switch off your nose, can you? Can you?' The moment of the wolf had passed. Angua relaxed a little. His heart beat faster, did it? 'No' 'she said, Ì can't.' `Has he ever seen you without your uniform?' Ye gods, thought Angua, and headed for her clothes. `Well ... of course . . .' she mumbled. Ì meant wearing something else. Like - a dress?' Sally went on. `Come on. Every copper spends some time out of uniform. That's how you know you're off duty.' `But it's pretty much a 24/8 job for us,' said Angua. `There's always-' `You mean it is for him because he likes it that way, and so you go along with it?' said the vampire, and that one got through all Angua's defences. Ìt's my life! Why should I listen to advice from a vampire?' `Because you're a werewolf,' said Sally. Ònly a vampire would dare to give it, right? You don't have to be at his heel all the time.' `Look, I've been through all this, understand? It's a werewolf thing. We are what we are!' Ì'm not. You don't get the black ribbon just for signing the pledge, you know. And it doesn't mean you stop craving blood. You just don't do anything about it. At least you can go out at night and chase chickens.' There was a stony silence. Then Angua said, `You know about the chickens?' `Yes: Ì pay for them, you know.' Ì'm sure you do.' Ànd it's not as though it's every night.' Ì'm sure it isn't. Look, do you know there are people out there who will volunteer to be a vampire's ... dinner companion? Providing it's all done with style? And we are considered weird?' She sniffed. `By the way, what did you wash your hair in?' 'Willard Brothers "Good Girl!" Flea Shampoo,' said Angua. Ìt brings up the gloss,' she added defensively. `Look, I want to get this clear, right? Just because we spent hours wading around under the city, and, okay, maybe saved each other's life once or twice, it does not mean we're friends, okay? We just happened to ... be there at the same time!' `You do need some time off,' said Sally. Ì was going to buy a drink for Tawneee anyway, to say thanks, and Cheery wants to tag along. How about it? We've been stood down for now. Time out for a little fun?' Angua struggled with a seething snake's nest of emotions. Tawneee had been very kind, and far more helpful than you might expect from someone wearing six inches of heel and four square inches of clothing. `Come on, 'said Sally encouragingly. Ì don't know about you, but it's going to take a bit of effort to get the taste of that mud out of my mouth.' Òh, all right! But this doesn't mean we're bonding!' `Fine. Fine.' Ì'm not a bondage kind of person,' added Angua. `Yes, yes,' said Sally. Ì can see that.' Vimes sat and stared at his notebook. He'd got `talking cube' written down and circled. Out of the corner of his ear he could hear the sounds of the City Watch rising from below: the bustle in the yard of the old lemonade factory, where the Specials were assembling again, just in case, the rattle of the hurry-up wagon, the general murmur of voices coming up through the floor ... After some thinking, he wrote òld well' and circled that, too. He'd scrumped plums in the gardens of Empirical Crescent with all the other kids. Half the houses were empty and no one cared much. Yes, there had been a well, but it had long been full up with garbage, even then. Grass was growing on the top. They only found the bricks because they looked for them. So let's say that anything buried right at the bottom, where the dwarfs had headed, had been dumped, oh, more than fifty, sixty years ago ... You seldom saw a dwarf in Ankh-Morpork even forty years ago, and they weren't anything like rich or powerful enough to own a cube. They were hard workers, seeking - just possibly - a better life. So what human would throw away a talking box worth a mountain of gold? He'd have to be bloody mad Vimes sat rigidly staring at the scrawls on the page. In the distance, Detritus was barking a command at someone. He felt like a man crossing a river on stepping stones. He was nearly halfway across, but the next stone was just a bit too far and could only be reached with serious groinal stress. Nevertheless, his foot was waving in the air and it was that or a ducking ... He wrote: `Rascal. Then he circled the word several times, the pencil biting into the cheap paper. Rascal must have been to Koom Valley. Let's say he found a cube there, who knows how. Just lying there? Anyway, he brings it home. He paints his picture and goes mad, but somewhere along the line the cube starts talking to him. Vimes wrotèSPECIAL WORD?' He drew a circle round it so hard that his pencil broke. Maybe he can't find the word for `stop talking'? Anyway, he chucks it down a well ... He tried to writèDid Rascal ever live in Empirical Crescent?; and then gave up and tried to remember it. Anyway ... then he dies and, afterwards, this damn book is written. It doesn't sell many copies, but recently it's republished and ... ah, but now there're lots of dwarfs in the city. Some of them read it and something tells them that the secret is in this cube. They want to find out where it is. How? Damn. Doesn't the book say the secret of Koom Valley is in the painting? Okay. Maybe he ... somehow painted some kind of code into the painting to say where the cube was? But so what? What was so bad to hear that you killed the poor devils who heard it? I think I'm looking at this wrong. It's not my cow. It's a sheep with a pitchfork. Unfortunately, it goes quack. He was getting lost now, going all over the place, but he'd got a toe on the opposite stone and he felt he'd made some progress. But to what, exactly? I mean, what would really happen if there was proof that, say, the dwarfs ambushed the trolls? Nothing that isn't happening already, that's what. You can always find an excuse that your side will accept, and who cares what the enemy thinks? In the real world, it wouldn't make any difference. There was a faint knock at the door, the sort that you use if you secretly hope it won't be answered. Vimes sprang from his chair and pulled the door open. A. E. Pessimal stood there. Àh, A. E.,' said Vimes, going back to his desk and laying down his pencil. `Come on in. What can I do for you? How's the arm?' Èr ... could you spare a moment of your time, your grace?' Your grace, thought Vimes. Well, he hadn't the heart to object this time. He sat down again. A. E. Pessimal was still wearing the chain mail shirt with the Specials badge on it. He didn't look very shiny. Brick's swipe had bowled him across the plaza like a ball. 'Er. ..' A. E. Pessimal began. `You'll have to start as a lance-constable, but a man of your talents ought to make it to sergeant within a year. And you can have your own office,' said Vimes. A. E. Pessimal shut his eyes. `How did you know?' he breathed. `You attacked a boozed-up troll with your teeth,' said Vimes. `There's a man born for the badge, I thought to myself.' And that's what you've always wanted, right? But you were always too small, too weak, too shy to be a watchman. I can buy big and strong anywhere. Right now I need a man who knows how to hold a pencil without breaking it. `You'll be my adjutant,' he went on. `You'll handle all my paperwork. You'll read the reports, you'll try to figure out what's important. And so you can learn what is important, you'll have to do at least two patrols a week.' A tear was running down A. E. Pessimal's cheek. `Thank you, your grace,' he said hoarsely. If A. E. Pessimal had had enough chest to stick out, it would be sticking. Òf course you'll need to finish your report on the Watch first,' Vimes added. `That is a matter between you and his lordship. And now, if you will excuse me, I really must get on. I look forward to seeing you working for me, Lance-Constable Pessimal.' `Thank you, your grace!' Òh, and you won't call me "your grace",' said Vimes. He thought for a moment, and decided that the man had earned this, all in one go, and added: "'Mister Vimes" will do.' And so we make progress, he said to himself, after A. E. Pessimal had floated away. And his lordship won't like it, so as far as I can see there's no downside. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, er, qui custodes custodient? Was that right for `Who watches the watcher that watches the watchmen?'? Probably not. Still ... your move, my lord. He was just puzzling over his notebook again when the door opened without an introductory knock. Sybil entered, with a plate. `You're not eating enough, Sam,' she announced. Ànd the canteen here is a disgrace. It's all grease and stodge!' `That's what the men like, I'm afraid,' said Vimes guiltily. Ì've cleaned out the tea urn, at least,' Sybil went on, with satisfaction. `You cleaned out the tea urn?' said Vimes in a hollow voice. It was like being told that someone had wiped the patina off a fine old work of art. `Yes, it was like tar in there. There really wasn't much proper food in the store, but I managed to make you a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich.' `Thank you, dear.' Vimes cautiously lifted a corner of the bread with his stricken pencil. There seemed to be too much lettuce, which was to say, there was some lettuce. `There's a lot of dwarfs come to see you, Sam,' said Sibyl, as if this was preying on her mind. Vimes stood up so fast that his chair fell over. Ìs Young Sam all right?' he said. `Yes, Sam. They're city dwarfs. You know them all, I think. They say they want to talk to you about-' But Vimes was already clattering down the stairs, drawing his sword as he did so. The dwarfs were clustered nervously by the duty officer's desk. They had that opulence of metalwork, sleekness of beard and thickness of girth that marked them out as dwarfs who were doing very well for themselves, or who had been right up until now. Vimes appeared in front of them like a whirlwind of wrath. You scum, you rat-sucking little worm eaters! You headsdown little scurriers in the dark! What did you bring to my city? What were you thinking? Did you want the deep-downers here? Did you dare deplore what Hamcrusher said, all that bile and ancient lies? Or did you say `Well, I don't agree with him, of course, but he's got a point'? Did you say, Òh he goes too far but it's about time somebody said it'?And now, have you come here to wring your hands and say how dreadful, it was nothing to do with you? Who were the dwarfs in the mobs, then? Aren't you community leaders? Were you leading them? And why are you here now, you ugly snivelling grubbers? Is it possible, is it possible, that now, after that bastard's bodyguards tried to kill my family, you're here to complain? Have I broken some code, trodden on some ancient toe? To hell with it. To hell with you. He could feel the words straining, fighting to get out, and the effort of restraining them filled his stomach with acid and made his temples throb. Just one whine, he thought. Just one pompous moan. Go on. `Well?' he demanded. The dwarfs had perceptibly moved backwards. Vimes wondered if they'd read his thoughts; they'd echoed in his brain loudly enough. A dwarf cleared his throat. `Commander Vimes-'he began. `You're Pors Stronginthearm, aren't you?' Vimes demanded. Òne half of Burleigh & Stronginthearm? You make crossbows.' `Yes, commander, and-' `Remove your weapons! All of them! All of you!' Vimes snapped. The room fell silent. Out of the corner of his eye Vimes saw a couple of dwarf officers, who had at least been pretending to be engaged in paperwork, rising from their seats. He was being dangerously stupid, part of him knew, but right now he wanted to hurt a dwarf and he wasn't allowed to do it with steel. Most of the battle stuff they wore was simply for clang in any case, but a dwarf would sooner drop his drawers than put aside his axe. And these were serious city dwarfs, with seats in the Guilds and everything. Ye gods, he was going too far. He managed to grunt, Àll right, keep your battle-axes. Leave everything else at the desk. You'll get a receipt.' For a moment, quite a long moment, he thought, no, he hoped they would refuse. But one of them, somewhere in the group, said, Ì think we must do this for the commander. These are difficult times. We must learn to fit them.' Vimes went up to his office, hearing the clinks and clangs behind him, and landed so violently in his chair that this time a wheel snapped off. The receipt was a nasty touch. He was quite pleased with it. On his desk, on a little stand that Sybil had made for it, was his official baton of office. It was in fact the same size as the ordinary copper's truncheon, but was turned out of rosewood and silver instead of lignum vitae or oak. It still had plenty of weight, though. Certainly enough to leave the words PROTECTER OF THEE KINGE'S PIECE printed back to front on a dwarf skull. The dwarfs were ushered in, looking slightly less heavy. Just one word, Vimes thought, as the acid swirled. One damn word. Go on. Just a breath wrong. `Very well, what can I do for you?' he said. Ùh, I'm sure you know all of us,' Pors began, trying to smile. `Probably. The dwarf next to you is Grabpot Thundergust, who has just launched the new "Ladies' Secrets" range of perfumes and cosmetics. My wife uses your stuff all the time.' Thundergust, in traditional chain mail, a three-horned helmet and an enormous axe strapped across his back, gave Vimes an embarrassed nod. Vimes's gaze moved on. Ànd you are Setha Ironcrust, proprietor of the chain of bakeries of the same name, and you are surely Gimlet Gimlet, owner of two famous dwarf delicatessens and the newly opened "Yo Rat!" in Attic Bee Street.' Vimes looked round the office, dwarf after dwarf, until he got back to the front row and a dwarf of fairly modest dress by dwarf standards, who had been watching him intently. Vimes had a good memory for faces and had seen this one recently, but couldn't place it. Perhaps it had been behind a well-flung half-brick ... `You, I don't think I know,' he said. Òh, we haven't exactly been introduced, commander,' said the dwarf cheerfully. `But I'm very interested in the theory of games. ... or Mr Shine's Thud Academy? Vimes thought. The dwarf's voice sounded like the one that had, he'd admit it, been of diplomatic help downstairs. He wore a simple plain round helmet, a plain leather shirt with some basic mail on it, and his beard was clipped to something tidier than the general dwarfish `gorse bush' effect. Compared to the other dwarfs, this one looked ... streamlined. Vimes couldn't even see an axe. Ìndeed?' he said. `Well, in fact I don't play 'em, so what's your name?' 'Bashfull Bashfullsson, commander. Grag Bashfullsson.' Quietly, Vimes picked up his truncheon and rolled it in his fingers. `Not underground, then?' he said. `Some of us move on, sir. Some of us think that darkness isn't a depth, it's a state of mind.' `That's nice of you, said Vimes. Oh, friendly and forward-looking are we now? Where were you yesterday? But now I've got all the aces! Those bastards murdered four city dwarfs! They broke into my home, tried to kill my wife! And now they've had it away on their toes! Wherever they've gone they're going dow- coming up! He put the truncheon back on its stand. Às I said, what can I do for you ... gentlemen?' He got the sense that they were all turning, physically or mentally, to Bashfullsson. I see, he thought, it seems that what we have here is a dozen monkeys and one organ grinder, eh? `How can we help you, commander?' said the grag. Vimes stared. You could have stopped them, that's how you could have helped. Don't give me those sombre faces. Maybe you didn't say 'yes' but you sure as hell didn't say `no!' loud enough. I owe you not one damned thing. Don't come to me for your bloody absolution. `Right now? By going out on to the street, walking up to the biggest troll you can see and shaking him warmly by the hand, maybe?' said Vimes. Òr just going out into the street. Quite frankly, I'm busy, gentlemen, and the middle of a horse race is not the time to be mending fences.' `They'll be heading for the mountains,' said Bashfullsson. `They'll steer clear of Uberwald and Lancre. They won't be sure of meeting friends there. That means going into the mountains via Llamedos. Lots of caves there.' Vimes shrugged. `We can see you're annoyed, Mister Vimes,' said Stronginthearm. `But we-' Ì've got two dead assassins in the morgue,' said Vimes. Òne of em died of poison. What do you know about that? And I'm Commander Vimes, thank you.' Ìt's said they take a slow poison before they go on an important mission,' said Bashfullsson. `No turning back, eh?' said Vimes. `Well, that's interesting. But it's the living that concern me right now.' He stood up. Ì have to go and see a dwarf in the cells who does not want to talk to me: Àh, yes. That would be Helmclever,' said Bashfullsson. `He was born here, commander, but went off to study in the mountains more than three months ago, against his parents' wishes. I'm sure he never intended anything like this. He was trying to find himself.' `Well, he can start looking in my cells,' said Vimes crisply. `May I be there when you question him?' said the grag. 'Why?' `Well, for one thing, it may prevent rumours that he was mistreated: Òr start them?' said Vimes. Who watches the watchmen? he asked himself. Me! Bashfullsson gave him a cool look. Ìt could ... calm the situation, sir. 'I don't habitually beat up prisoners, if that's what you're suggesting,' said Vimes. Ànd I am sure you would not wish to do so tonight.' Vimes opened his mouth to shout the grag out of the building, and stopped. Because the cheeky little sod had got it right slap bang on the money. Vimes had been on the edge since leaving the house. He'd felt a tingling across his skin and a tightness in his gut and a sharp, nasty little headache. Someone was going to pay for all this ... this ... this thisness, and it didn't need to be a screwed-up bit-player like Helmclever. And he was not certain, not certain at all, what he'd do if the prisoner gave him any lip or tried to be smart. Beating people up in little rooms ... he knew where that led. And if you did it for a good reason, you'd do it for a bad one. You couldn't say `we're the good guys' and do bad-guy things. Sometimes the watching watchman inside every copper's head could use an extra pair of eyes. Justice has to be seen to be done, so he'd see it done up good and proper. `Gentlemen,' he said, keeping his eye on the grag but talking to the room at large, Ì know all of you, you all know me. You're all respected dwarfs with a stake in this city. I want you to vouch for Mr Bashfullsson, because I've never met him before in my life. Come on, Setha, I've known you for years, what do you say?' `They killed my son,' said Ironcrust. A knife dropped into Vimes's head. It slipped down his windpipe, sliced his heart, cut through his stomach and disappeared. Where the rage had been, there was a chill. Ì'm sorry, commander,' said Bashfullsson quietly. Ìt's true. I don't think Gunder Ironcrust was interested in the politics, you understand. He just took a job at the mine because he wanted to feel like a real dwarf and work with a shovel for a few days.' `They left him to the mud,' said Ironcrust, in a voice that was eerily without emotion. Àny help you need, we will give. Any help. But when you find them, kill them all.' Vimes could think of nothing more to say than Ì will catch them: He didn't say: Kill them? No. Not if they surrender, not if they don't come at me armed. I know where that leads. `Then we will leave and let you get about your business,' said Stronginthearm. `Grag Bashfullsson is known to us, indeed. A little modern, perhaps. A little young. Not the kind of grag we grew up with, but ... yes, we'd vouch for him. Good night, commander.' Vimes stared at his desk as they filed out. When he looked up, the grag was still there, with a patient little smile. `You don't look like a grag. You look like just another dwarf,' said Vimes. `Why haven't I heard of you?' `Because you are a policeman, perhaps?' said Bashfullsson meekly. Òkay, I take the point. But you're not a deep-downer?' Bashfullsson shrugged. Ì can think deep thoughts. I was born here, commander, just like Helmclever. I don't believe I need a mountain over my head in order to be a dwarf.' Vimes nodded. A local lad, not some mountain greybeard. Got a quick brain, too. No wonder the leaders like him. Àll right, Mr Bashfullsson, you can tag along,' he said. `But it's on two conditions, okay? Condition one: you've got five minutes to lay your hands on a Thud set. I think you can do that? 'I think I can, too,' said the dwarf, smiling faintly. Ànd the other condition?' `How long will it take you to teach me to play?' said Vimes. `You? You've never played it at all?' `No. A certain troll showed me the game a little while ago, but I've never played games since I grew up. I used to be good at tiddley-rats [1] when I was a nipper, though: `Well, a few hours should be-' Bashfullsson began. `We don't have time,' said Vimes. `You've got ten minutes: [1] A famous Ankh-Morpork gutter sport, second only to Dead Rat Conkers. Turd Races in the gutter appear to have died out, despite an attempt to take them upmarket with the name Poosticks. The drinking had started in The Bucket, in Gleam Street. This was the coppers' pub. Mr Cheese, the owner, understood about coppers. They liked to drink somewhere where they wouldn't see anything that reminded them they were a copper. Fun was not encouraged. It was Tawneee who suggested that they move to Thank Gods It's Open. Angua wasn't really in the mood, but she hadn't the heart to say no. The plain fact was that while Tawneee had a body that every other woman should hate her for, she compounded the insult by actually being very likeable. This was because she had the selfesteem of a caterpillar and, as you found out in any kind of conversation with her, about the same amount of brain. Perhaps it all balanced out, perhaps some kindly god had said to her: `Sorry, kid, you are going to be thicker than a yard of lard, but the good news is, that's not going to matter.' And she had a stomach made of iron, too. Angua found herself wondering how many hopeful men had died trying to drink her under the table. Alcohol didn't seem to go to her head at all. Maybe it couldn't find it. But she was pleasant, easygoing company, if you avoided allusion, irony, sarcasm, repartee, satire and words longer than `chicken: Angua was tetchy because she was dying for a beer, but the young man behind the bar thought that à pint of Winkles' was the name of a cocktail. Given the drinks on offer, perhaps this was not surprising. `What,' said Angua, reading the menu, ìs a Screaming Orgasm?' Àh,' said Sally. `Looks like we got to you just in time, girl!' `No,' sighed Angua, as the others laughed; that was such a vampire response. Ì mean, what's it made of?' Àlmonte, Wahlulu, Bearhuggers Whiskey Cream and vodka,' said Tawneee, who knew the recipe for every cocktail ever made. Ànd how does it work?' said Cheery, craning to see over the top of the bar. Sally ordered four, and turned back to Tawneee. `So ... you and Nobby Nobbs, eh?' she said. `How about that?' Three sets of ears flared. The other thing you got used to in the presence of Tawneee was silence. Everywhere she went, went quiet. Oh, and the stares. The silent stares. And sometimes, in the shadows, a sigh. There were goddesses who'd kill to look like Tawneee. `He's nice,' said Tawneee. `He makes me laugh and he keeps his hands to himself.' Three faces locked in expressions of concentrated thought. This was Nobby they were talking about. There were so many questions they were not going to ask. `Has he shown you the tricks he can do with his spots?' Angua said. `Yes. I thought I'd widdle myself! He's so funny!' Angua stared into her drink. Cheery coughed. Sally studied the menu. Ànd he's very dependable,' said Tawneee. And, as if dimly aware that this was still not sufficient, she added sadly, Ìf you must know, he's the first boy who's ever asked me out.' Sally and Angua breathed out together. Light dawned. Ah, that was the problem. And this one's a baaaad case. Ì mean, my hair's all over the place, my legs are too long and I know my bosom is far too-' Tawneee went on, but Sally had raised a quieting hand. `First point, Tawneee-' `My real name's Betty,' said Tawneee, blowing a nose so exquisite that the greatest sculptor in the world would have wept to carve it. It went Blort. `First point, then ... Betty' Sally managed, struggling to use the name, ìs that no woman under forty-five-' `Fifty; Angua corrected. `Right, fifty ... no woman under fifty uses the word "bosom" to name anything connected to her. You just don't do it.' Ì didn't know that,' Tawneee sniffed. Ìt's a fact,' said Angua. And, oh dear, how to begin to explain the jerk syndrome? To someone like Tawneee, on whom the name Betty stuck like rocks to a ceiling? This wasn't just a case of the jerk syndrome, this was it, the quintessential, classic, pure platonic example, which should be stuffed and mounted and preserved as a teaching aid for students in the centuries to come. And she was happy with Nobby! `What I've got to tell you now is. ..'she began, and faded in the face of the task, ìs ... Look, shall we have another drink? What's the next cocktail on the menu?' Cheery peered at it. `Pink, Big and Wobbly,' she announced. `Classy! We'll have four!' Fred Colon peered through the bars. He was, on the whole, a pretty good jailer: he always had a pot of tea on the go, he was as a general rule amiably disposed to most people, he was too slow to be easily fooled and he kept the cell keys in a tin box in the bottom drawer of his desk, a long way out of reach of any stick, hand, dog, cunningly thrown belt or trained Klatchian monkey spider. [1] He was a bit worried about this dwarf. You got all sorts in jail, and they often yelled a bit but with this one he didn't know what was worse, the sobbing or the silence. He'd put a candlestick on a [1] Making Fred Colon possibly unique in the annals of jail history. stool by the bars, too, because the dwarf carried on alarmingly if there wasn't enough light. He stirred the tea reflectively and handed a mug to Nobby. `We've got a rum 'un here, I reckon,' he said. À dwarf that's scared of the dark? Not right in the head, then. Wouldn't touch his tea and biscuit. What do you think?' Ì think I'll have his biscuit,' said Nobby, reaching over to the plate. 'Why're you down here, anyway?' said Fred. Ì'm surprised you ain't out there a-ogling of young women.' 'Tawneee's going out boozing with the girls tonight,' said Nobby. Àh, you want to warn her about that sort of thing,' said Fred Colon. `You know what it's like in the centre when the pubs and clubs empty. There's throwin' up and yellin' and unladylike behaviour and takin' their vests off and I don't know what. 'S called . 'he scratched his head'. .. minge drinking.' `She's only gone out with Angua and Sally and Cheery, sarge,' said Nobby, taking another biscuit. 'Oooh, you wanna watch that, Nobby. Women gangin' up on men-' Fred paused. À vampire and a werewolf out on the razzle? Take my tip, lad, stay indoors tonight. And if they start behaving in-' He stopped as the sound of Sam Vimes's voice came down the spiral stone steps, followed closely by its owner. `So I've got to stop them forming a block, right?' Ìf you're playing the troll side, yes,' said a new voice. À tight group of dwarfs is bad news for trolls.' `Trolls shove, dwarfs throw.' `Right: Ànd the central rock, no one can jump that, right?' said Vimes. `Yes.' Ì still think the dwarfs have it all their own way.' `We shall see. The important thing-' Vimes stopped when he saw Nobby and Colon. Òkay, lads, I'll talk to the prisoner now,' he said. `How is he?' Fred indicated the hunched figure on the narrow bunk in the corner cell. `Captain Carrot tried talking to him for nearly half an hour, and you know he's got a way with people,' he said. `Didn't get as much as a sentence out of him. I read him his rights but don't ask me if he understood 'em. He didn't want his tea and biscuit, at any rate. That's Rights 5 and 5b,' he added, looking Bashfullsson up and down. `He gets Right 5c only if we've got Teatime Assortment: `Can he walk?' said Vimes. `He sort of shuffles, sir.' `Fetch him out, then,' said Vimes, and seeing Fred's enquiring look at Bashfullsson he went on: `This gentleman is here to make sure we don't use the rubber truncheon, sergeant: `Didn't know we had one, Mister Vimes,' said Fred. `We haven't,' said Vimes. `No point in hitting 'em with something that bounces, eh?' he added, looking at Bashfullsson, who smiled, once again, his strange little smile. One candle burned on the table. For some reason Fred had seen fit to put another on a stool near the one occupied cell. Ìsn't it a bit dark in here, Fred?' said Vimes, as he pushed aside the debris of mugs and old newspapers that covered most of the table. `Yessir. The dwarfs came and nicked some of our candles to put round their heathe- that nasty sign,' said Fred, with a nervous look at Bashfullsson. `Sorry, sir.' Ì don't know why we can't just burn it,' grumbled Vimes, setting out the Thud board. `That would be dangerous, now that the Summoning Dark is in the world,' said Bashfullsson. `You believe in that stuff?' said Vimes. `Believe? No, said the grag. Ì just know it exists. The troll pieces go all round the central stone, sir,' he added helpfully. Populating the board with its little warriors took some time, but so did the arrival of Helmclever. With Fred Colon steering him carefully by a shoulder he walked like someone in a dream, his eyes turned up so that they mostly showed the whites. His iron boots scraped on the flagstones. Fred pushed him gently into a chair and put the second candle beside him. Like magic, the dwarf's eyes focused on the little stone armies to the exclusion of everything else in the jail. `We're playing a game, Mr Helmclever,' said Vimes quietly. Ànd you can choose your side.' Helmclever reached out with a trembling hand and touched a piece. A troll. A dwarf had chosen to play as the trolls. Vimes gave the hovering Bashfullsson a questioning glance, and got another smile in return. Okay, you got as many of the little sods as possible in a defensive huddle, right? Vimes's hand hesitated, and shifted a dwarf across the board. The click as he placed it was echoed by the one made by the movement of Helmclever's next troll. The dwarf looked sleepy, but his hand had moved with snake speed. `Who killed the four mining dwarfs, Helmclever?' said Vimes softly. `Who killed the boys from the city?' Dull eyes looked at him, and then, meaningfully, at the board. Vimes moved a dwarf at random. `The dark soldiers,' Helmclever whispered, as a little troll clicked smartly into place. `Who ordered it?' Again the look, again a dwarf placed at random followed by a troll that was moved so fast the two pieces seemed to hit the board together. `Grag Hamcrusher ordered it: `Why?' Click/click. `They had heard it speaking.' `What was it that spoke? Was it a cube?' Click/click. `Yes. It was dug up. It said it spoke with the voice of B'hrian Bloodaxe.' Vimes heard a gasp from Bashfullsson, and caught Fred Colon's eye. He jerked his head towards the cell-block door, and mouthed a couple of words. `Wasn't he a famous dwarf king?' said Vimes. Click/click. `Yes. He commanded the dwarfs at Koom Valley,' said Helmclever. Ànd what did this voice say?' said Vimes. Click/click. And a third click from behind Vimes as Fred Colon locked the door and stood in front of it, looking impassive. Ì do not know. Ardent said it was about the battle. He said it was lies.' `Who killed Grag Hamcrusher?' Click/click. Ì do not know. Ardent called me to the meeting and said there was terrible fighting among the grags. Ardent said one of them killed him in the dark, with a mining hammer, but none knew who. They were all struggling together: All dressed alike, Vimes thought. Just shapes, if you can't see their wrists ... `Why did they want to kill him?' Click/click. `They had to stop him destroying the words! He was screaming and hitting the cube with the hammer!' `There are ... sensitive areas on a cube and it is possible that if they are touched in the wrong order all the sound will vanish,' whispered Bashfullsson. Ì should think the hammer would do the trick whatever it hit!' said Vimes, turning his head. `No, commander. Devices are immensely tough. `They must be!' Vimes turned back to Helmclever. Ìt's wrong to destroy lies but it's okay to kill the miners?' he said. Click. He heard the hiss of Bashfullsson's intake of breath. Well, yes, perhaps that could have been better put. There was no answering move. Helmclever hung his head. Ìt was wrong to kill the miners,' he whispered. Ànd why not destroy lies? But it is wrong to think these thoughts, so I ... I said nothing. The old grags were angry and upset and confused, so Ardent took charge. He said one dwarf killing another underground, everyone knew that was no business of humans. He said he could make it all right. He said everyone must listen to him. He told the dark guards to take the body to the new outer chamber. And ... he told me to fetch my club. ..' Vimes glanced at Bashfullsson and mouthed the word `club?' He got an emphatic nod in return. Helmclever sat hunched in silence, and then raised one hand slowly and moved a troll. Click. Click/click. Click/click. Click/click. Vimes tried to spare a few brain cells for the game while his mind raced and laboured to piece together the random information spilling out of Helmclever. So ... it all starts when they come here looking for this magic cube, which can speak ... `Why did they come to the city? How did they know the cube was here?' Click/click. `When I went to begin my training I took a copy of the Codex. Ardent confiscated it, but then they called me to a meeting and said it was very important and they would honour me by letting me go with them to the city. Ardent told me it was a great opportunity. Grag Hamcrusher had a mission, he said.' `They hadn't even known about the painting?' `They lived under a mountain. They believe that humans are not real. But Ardent is smart. He said there were always rumours that something had come out of Koom Valley.' I bet he is smart, Vimes thought. So they come here, do a little light pastoral work and rabble-rousing, and search for the cube in a very dwarfish way. They find it. But the poor bastards who were doing the digging hear what it's got to say. Well, everyone knows dwarfs gossip, so the dark guards make sure these four don't have a chance to. Click/click. Click/click. Then friend Hamcrusher doesn't like what he hears, either. He wants to destroy this thing. In the struggle in the dark one of the other grags does the world a favour and fetches him a crack on the noggin. But, whoops, big mistake, because the mob is going to miss him and his jolly urging to wholesale troll slaughter. You know how dwarfs gossip, and you can't kill 'em all. So while it's still just us together in the dark, we need a plan! Forward, Mr Ardent, who says Ì know! We'll take the corpse out to a tunnel that a troll just might have got into, and bash its head in with a club. 'A troll did it. What right-thinking dwarf could possibly believe anything else? Click/click. `Why the candles?' said Vimes. `The old grags were sitting in brilliant candlelight when I saw them.' Click/click. `The grags ordered it,' Helmclever whispered. `They feared what might come for them in darkness.' Ànd what was it that might come?' Click ... Helmclever's hand stopped in mid-air. For several seconds nothing moved in the little circle of yellow light except the candle flames themselves; in the darkness beyond, the shadows craned to hear. 'I ... cannot say,' whispered the dwarf. Click. Click/click ... click ... click. Vimes glared at the board. Where'd that troll come from? Helmclever had whipped three dwarfs off the board in one go! Àrdent said there's always a troll. A troll got into the mine,' said Helmclever. `The grags said yes, that must have been it.' `But they knew the truth!' Click/click ... click ... click. Three more dwarfs gone, just like that ... `Truth is what a grag says it is, said Helmclever. `The sunlight world is a bad dream anyway. Ardent said no one was to speak about it. He said I was to tell all the guards ... about the troll.' Blame it on a troll, Vimes thought. For a dwarf, that came naturally. A big troll did it and ran away. This isn't just a can of worms, it's a nest of bloody vipers! He stared at the board. Bloody hell. I'm running into a wall here. What am I left with? Brick saw a dwarf hitting another dwarf, but that wasn't the murder - that was Ardent or someone giving Hamcrusher's dead body that distinctive 'bashed-by-a-troll' look. I'm not actually certain that's a major crime. The murder was done in the dark by one of six dwarfs, and the other five might not even know who did it! Okay, maybe I can say they conspired to conceal a crime ... Hold on ... `But it wasn't Ardent who said that the Watch should not be told,' he said. `That was you, wasn't it? Did you want me to be angry, Mr Helmclever?' He moved a dwarf. Click. Helmclever looked down. Since no answer was forthcoming, Vimes captured the wandering troll and placed it beside the board. Ì did not think you would come.' Helmclever's voice was barely audible. `Hamcrusher was ... I think ... I didn't ... Ardent said you wouldn't worry because the grag was such a danger. He said the grag had ordered the miners to be killed, and so now it was ended. But I thought it ... I ... it wasn't right. Things were wrong! I heard you were full of pride. I had to get you ... interested. He ... he. . `You thought I wouldn't be? A troll is accused of murdering a dwarf, at a time like this, and I wouldn't be interested?' said Vimes. Àrdent said that you wouldn't be because no humans were involved. He said you would not care what happens to dwarfs.' `He ought to get out in the fresh air more!' Helmclever's eyes and nose were running now, and dripping on the board. A storm stops the battle, Vimes thought. Then the dwarf lifted his head and wailed: Ìt was the club the troll Mr Shine gave me for winning five games in a row,' he wailed. `He was my friend! He said I was as good as a troll so I should have a club! I told Ardent it was a war trophy! But he took it and bashed that poor dead body!' Water dripping on a stone, Vimes thought. And it depends on where the drops fall, right, Mr Shine? What good has it done this poor devil? He wasn't in the right job to have doubt enter his life! Àll right, Mr Helmclever, thank you for this,' he said, sitting back. `There is just one thing, though. Do you know who sent those dwarfs to my house?' `What dwarfs?' Vimes stared into the weeping, red-rimmed eyes. Their owner was either telling the truth or the stage had missed a major talent. `They came to attack me and my family,' he said. Ì ... did hear Ardent talking to the captain of the guard,' Helmclever murmured. `Something about ... a warning ..., 'A warning? Do you call-' Vimes began, and stopped when he saw Bashfullsson shaking his head. Right. Right. No point in taking it out on this one. He's had all the stuffing knocked out of him in any case. `They are very frightened now,' Helmclever said. `They don't understand the city. They don't understand why trolls are allowed here. They don't understand people who don't ... understand them. They fear you. They fear everything now.' `Where have they gone?' Ì don't know. Ardent said they would have gone now anyway, because they've got the cube and the painting; said Helmclever. `He said the painting will show where there are more lies, and those can be destroyed. But they fear most of all the Summoning Dark, commander. They can feel it coming for them.' Ìt's only a drawing,' said Vimes. Ì don't believe in it.' Ì do,' said Helmclever calmly. Ìt is in this room. How does it come? It comes in darkness and in vengeance and in disguise.' Vimes felt his skin twitch. Nobby looked around the grimy stone walls. Bashfullsson sat bolt upright in his chair. Even Fred Colon shifted uneasily. This is just mystic stuff, Vimes told himself. It's not even human mystic stuff. I don't believe in it. So why does it feel a bit chilly in here? He coughed. `Well, once it knows they've gone I expect it'll head out after them.' Ànd it will come for me,' said Helmclever, in the same calm voice. He folded his hands in front of him. `Why? You didn't kill anybody,' said Vimes. `You don't understand! They ... they ... when they killed the miners one was not all the way dead, and, and, and we could hear him hammering on the door with his fists, and I stood in the tunnel and listened to him die and I wished him dead so that the noise would stop, but, but, but when it did it went on in my head, and I could, I could, I could have turned the wheel but I was afraid of the dark guards who have no souls and because of that the darkness will take mine...' The little voice died away. There was a nervous cough from Nobby. `Well, thank you again, said Vimes. Good grief, they really messed up his head, poor little sod. And I've got nothing, he thought. I might get Ardent on a charge of falsifying evidence. I can't put Brick in the witness box because I'll simply be proving that there was a troll in the mine. All I've got is young Helmclever here, who's clearly unfit to testify. He turned to Bashfullsson and shrugged. Ì think I'd like to keep our friend here tonight, for his own good. I can't imagine there's anywhere else for him to go. The statement he made is of course covered by. . Now his voice trailed off. He turned back in his chair to glare at the sorrowful Helmclever. `What painting?' `The painting of the Battle of Koom Valley by Methodia Rascal,' said the dwarf, not looking up. Ìt's very big. They stole it from the museum. `What?' said Fred Colon, who was making tea in the corner. Ìt was them?' `What? You know about this, Fred?' Vimes demanded. `We - yes, Mister Vimes, we did a report-' `Koom Valley, Koom Valley, Koom Valley!' roared Vimes, slapping his hand down on the table so hard that the candlesticks jumped into the air. À report? What the hell good's a report? Have I got time these days to read reports? Why doesn't someone tell me these thi-' One candle rolled on to the floor and went out. Vimes grabbed for the other as it reached the edge of the table, but it spun away from his fingers and landed wick first on the flagstones. Darkness fell like an axe. Helmclever groaned. It was a heartfelt, soul-creaking groan, like a death rattle from a living mouth. `Nobby!' screamed Vimes. `Light a godsdamn match right now and that's a godsdamn order!' There was a frantic scrabbling in the dark and then a matchhead was a sudden supernova. `Well, bring it here, man!' he shouted to Nobby. `Get those candles lit!' Helmclever was still staring at the table, where the ill-tempered thump had scattered the remains of the game. Vimes glanced down at the game board as the candle flames grew. If you were the kind to see things, you'd say that the trolls and dwarfs had fallen in a rough circle around the central rock, while a few more dwarfs had rolled away in a line. You'd say, in fact, that from above they formed the shape of a round eye. With a tail. Helmclever gave a little sigh and slipped sideways on to the floor. Vimes stood up to help him, and then remembered just in time about politics. He forced himself to back away, hands in the air. `Mr Bashfullsson?' he said. Ì can't touch him. Please?' The grag nodded and knelt down by the dwarf. `No pulse, no heartbeat,' he announced after a few seconds. Ì'm sorry, commander.! 'Then it looks as though I'm now in your hands,' said Vimes. Ìndeed. In the hands of a dwarf,' said the grag, standing up. `Commander Vimes, I will swear that Helmclever was treated with nothing but concern and courtesy whilst I was here. And perhaps with more kindness from you than a dwarf might have a right to expect. His death is not on your hands. The Summoning Dark called him. Dwarfs will understand.' `Well, I don't! Why'd it kill him? What did the poor bugger do?' Ì think it's more true to say that the fear of the Summoning Dark killed him,' said the grag. `He left a miner trapped, heard his cries in the dark and did nothing. To all dwarfs, that is a terrible crime.' Às bad as wiping away a word?' said Vimes sourly. He felt more shaken up than he'd care to admit. `Some would say it is far worse. His own guilt and fear killed Helmclever. It's as if he had his own Summoning Dark in his head,' said Bashfullsson. Ìn a way, perhaps, we all have, commander. Or something similar.' `You know, your religion really messes people up, 'said Vimes. `Not in comparison to what they do to one another,' said Bashfullsson, calmly folding the dead dwarf's hands across his chest. Ànd it is not a religion, commander. Tak wrote the World and the Laws, and then He left us. He does not require that we think of Him, only that we think.' He stood up. Ì shall explain the situation to my fellows, commander. Incidentally, I would ask you to take me with you to Koom Valley.' `Did I say I was going to Koom Valley?' said Vimes. Àll right,' said the grag calmly. `Let's say, then, that should the mood take you to go to Koom Valley, you will take me? I know the place, I know the history, I even know quite a lot about mine sign, especially the Major Darknesses. I may be useful.' `You demand all that just for telling the truth?' said Vimes. Às a matter of fact, no. J'ds hasfak 'ds': I bargain with no axe in my hand. I will tell the truth whatever you decide,' said Bashfullsson. `However, since you are not going to Koom Valley, commander, I will not press you. It was only an idle thought.' Fun. What is it good for? It's not pleasure, joy, delight, enjoyment or glee. It's a hollow, cruel, vicious little bastard, a word for something sought with an hilarious couple of wobbly antennae on your head and the words Ì want It!' on your shirt, and it tends to leave you waking up with your face stuck to the street. Somehow, Angua had acquired a magenta feather boa. It wasn't her. It wasn't anyone. It had just turned up. The sheer fakery of it made her more gloomy. Something was nagging at the back of her mind, and it annoyed her that she didn't know what it was. They had ended up in Biers, as she knew they would. It was the undead bar, although it tolerated anyone who wasn't too normal. It certainly tolerated Tawneee. She just didn't get it, did she? The reason why men never talked to her. The trouble was, thought Angua, that Nobby wasn't actually a bad ... person. As such. As far as she knew, he'd always been faithful to Miss Pushpram, which was to say that when it came to being hit with a fish and then pelted with clams, he never thought of any other girl but her. He actually had quite a romantic soul, but it was encased in what could only be called ... Nobby Nobbs. Sally had accompanied Tawneee to the Ladies, which always came as a shock to people who hadn't seen it before. Now Angua was staring at yet another cocktail menu, painted on a board above the bar, in a very shaky script, by Igor. [1] He'd done his best to flow with the zeitgeist - or would have done if he'd known what the word meant - but had totally failed to grasp the subtleties of the modern cocktail bar, so that the drinks on offer included: HAVIN YOUR TEEF SMASHED IN BY A BIG STINKIN FIST HEAD NAILED TO THE DOOR KICK INNA FORK LIKE BIG LUMP OF STEEL HAMMER FIN YOUR EARS NECK BOLT Actually, the Neck Bolt wasn't too bad, Angua had to admit. ''scuse me,' said Cheery, teetering on a bar stool, `but what was all that about Tawneee? I could see you and Sally nodding to each other!' `That? Oh, it's the jerk syndrome: Angua remembered who she was talking to, and added: Èr ... dwarfs probably don't have that. It means ... sometimes a woman is so beautiful that any man with half a brain isn't going to think of asking her out, okay? Because it's obvious that she's far too grand for the likes of him. Are you with me?' Ì think so.' `Well, that's Tawneee. And, for the purposes of this explanation, Nobby has not got half a brain. He's so used to women saying no [1] Who wasn't an Igor, but was merely called one. It was best not to have fun with him on this subject, and especially not to ask him to sew your head back on. when he asks them out that he's not afraid of being blown out. So he asks her, because he figures, why not? And she, who by now thinks there's something wrong with her, is so grateful she says okay.' `But she likes him.' Ì know. That's where it all gets strange.' Ìt's much simpler for dwarfs,' said Cheery. Ì expect it is.' `But probably not as much fun,' said Cheery, looking crestfallen. Tawneee was returning. Angua ordered three Neck Bolts while Cheery hopefully negotiated for a Screaming Orgasm. [1] And then, with occasional assistance from Sally, Angua explained to Tawneee the facts of ... well ... everything. It took some while. You had to keep changing the shape of sentences to get them to fit into the currently available space in Tawneee's brain. Angua clung to the idea, though, that the girl couldn't be that stupid. She worked in a strip club, didn't she? Ì mean, why do you think men pay to watch you on stage?' she asked. `Because I'm very good,' said Tawneee promptly. `When I was ten I got the dancer of the year award in Miss Deviante's ballet and tap class.' `Tap-dancing?' said Sally, grinning. `Hey, why don't you try that on stage?' Angua closed her mind to the image of Tawneee tap-dancing. The club would probably burn to the ground. Èr, let me try this another way. .:she said. Ànd I'm telling you this as another woma- female. . Tawneee listened intently, and even the way in which she looked puzzled was unfair to the rest of her sex. When Angua had finished she watched the angelic expression hopefully. `So what you're saying, right,' said Tawneee, ìs that walking out [1] Patience is a key virtue amongst dwarfs. with Nobby is like going into a big posh restaurant and only eating the bread roll?' Èxactly!' said Angua. `You've got it!' `But I never really meet men. Granny told me not to act like a floozie.' Ànd you don't think that working at ' Angua began, but Sally cut in. `Sometimes you need to flooze regularly,' she said. `Haven't you ever just gone into a bar and had a drink with a man?' `No.' `Right,' said Sally. She drained her glass. Ì don't like these Neck Bolts. Let's go somewhere else and'- she paused -'open your mind to possibiliteesh.' It was odd, having Sybil in Pseudopolis Yard. It had been one of the Ramkin family houses before she'd given it to the Watch. She'd been a girl there. It had been her home. Some apprehension of this crept into the chipped and stained souls of the watchmen. Men not known for the elegance of their manners found themselves automatically wiping their feet as they came in, and respectfully removing their helmets. They spoke differently too, slowly and hesitantly, anxiously scanning the sentence ahead for expletives to delete. Someone even found a broom and swept up, or at least moved the dirt to a less obvious place. Upstairs, in what had been until then the cash office, Young Sam slept peacefully in a makeshift bed. One day, Vimes hoped, he would be able to tell him that on one special night he'd been guarded by four troll watchmen. They'd been off duty but volunteered to come in for this, and were just itching for some dwarfs to try anything. Sam hoped the boy would be impressed; the most other kids could hope for was angels. Vimes had commandeered the canteen, because it had a big enough table. He'd spread out a map of the city. A lot of the rest of the planking was occupied by pages from The Koom Valley Codex. This wasn't a game, this was a puzzle. A sort of, yes, jigsaw puzzle. And he ought to be able to do it, he reasoned, because he already had nearly all the corners. 'Ettercap Street, Money Trap Lane, Crybaby Alley, Scuttlebutt Court, The Jeebies, Pellicool Steps,' he said. `Tunnels everywhere! They were lucky to find it after only three or four. Mr Rascal must have had lodgings in half the streets in the area. Including Empirical Crescent!' `But hwhy?' said Sir Reynold Stitched. Ì mean, hwhy dig tunnels everyhwhere?' `Tell him, Carrot,' said Vimes, drawing a line across the city. Carrot cleared his throat. `Because they were dwarfs, sir, and deep-downers at that,' he said. Ìt wouldn't occur to them not to dig. And mostly it'd be just a matter of clearing out buried rooms in any case. That's a stroll to a dwarf. And they were laying rails, so they could take the spoil out anywhere they wanted.' `Yes, but sureleah-' Sir Reynold began. `They were listening out for something talking at the bottom of an old well,' said Vimes, still bending over the map. `What chance that'd still be visible? And people can get a bit iffy when a bunch of dwarfs turn up and start digging holes in the garden.' Ìt'd be very slow, sureleah?' `Well, yes, sir. But it would be in the dark, under their control, and secret,' said Carrot. `They could go anywhere they wanted. They could zigzag around if they weren't certain, they could home in with their listening tube, and they'd never have to speak to a human or see daylight. Dark, controllable and secret.' 'Deep-downers in a nutshell,' said Vimes. `This is very exciting!' said Sir Reynold. Ànd they dug into the cellars of my museum?' Òver to you, Fred,' said Vimes, carefully drawing another line across the map. Èr, right,' said Fred Colon. Èr ... Nobby an' me found out where only a couple of hours ago,' he said, thinking it wisest not to add àfter Mister Vimes yelled at us and made us tell him every last detail and then sent us back and told us what to look for'. What he did add was: `They were pretty clever, sir. The mortar even looked dirty. I bet you're saying to yourself ahah, sir?' Ì am?' said Sir Reynold, bewildered. Ì hwould normally say "my goodness".' Ì expect you're saying to yourself, ahah, how were they able to build up the wall again after they'd got the muriel out, sir, and we reckon-' `Well, I imagine one dwarf stayed behind to make good, lay low, as you hwould say, and hwandered out in the morning,' said Sir Reynold. `There were people going in and out all the time. We were looking for a big painting, after all, not a person.' `Yessir. We reckon one dwarf stayed behind to make good, lay low and wandered out in the morning. There were people going in and out all the time. You were looking for a big painting, after all, not a person,' said Fred Colon. He'd been very pleased to come up with that theory, so he was going to say it out loud no matter what. Vimes tapped the map. Ànd here, Sir Reynold, is where a troll called Brick fell through another cellar floor into their tunnel,' he said. `He also told us he saw something in the main mine which sounds very much like the Rascal.' `But, alas, you have not found it, 'said Sir Reynold. Ì'm sorry, sir. It's probably long gone out of the city.' `But hwhy?' said the curator. `They could have studied it in the museum! We're very interactive these days!' Ìnteractive?' said Vimes. `What do you mean?' 'Hwell, people can ... look at the pictures as much as they hwant,' said Sir Reynold. He sounded a little annoyed. People shouldn't ask that kind of question. Ànd the pictures do what, exactly?' Èr ... hang there, commander,' said Sir Reynold. Òf course.' `So what you mean is, people can come and look at the pictures, and the pictures, for their part, are looked at? 'Rather like that, yes,' said the curator. He thought for a moment, aware that this probably wasn't sufficient, and added, `but dynamicaleah. `You mean the people are moved by the pictures, sir?' said Carrot. `Yes!' said Sir Reynold, with huge relief. `Well done! That's just hwhat happens. And we've had the Rascal on public display for years. We even have a stepladder in case people hwant to examine the mountains. Sometimes people come in with a bee in their bonnet that one of the warriors is pointing to some barely visible cave or something. Frankleah, if there was some secret, I hwould have found it by now. There was no point to the theft! 'Unless someone had found the secret and didn't want anyone else to find it,' said Vimes. `That hwould be rather a coincidence, hwouldn't it, commander? It's not as if anything has changed just recently. Mr Rascal didn't turn up and paint another mountain! And, although I hate to say this, just destroying the painting would have been enough.' Vimes walked around the table. All the bits, he thought, I must have all the bits by now. Let's start with this legend of a dwarf turning up, nearly dead, weeks after the battle, babbling about treasure. All right, then it might have been this talking cube thing, Vimes thought. He survived the battle, hid out somewhere, and he's got this thing and it's important. He's got to get it somewhere safe ... No, maybe he's got to get people to listen to it. And of course he doesn't take it with him, 'cos there's still likely to be trolls wandering the area and right now they'll be in a mood to club first and try to think up some questions later. He needs some bodyguards. He gets as far as some humans, but when he's leading them back to the place where it's hidden he finally dies. Forward two thousand years. Would a cube last that long? Hell, they bob up in molten lava! So it's lying there. Methodia Rascal comes along, looking for ... a nice view, or something, and he looks down and there it is? Well, I'll have to accept that he did, because he found it and got it talking, who knows how. But he couldn't stop it. He drops it down the well. The dwarfs find it. They listen to the box, but hate what they hear. They hate it so much that Hamcrusher has four miners killed just because they heard it too. So why the painting? It shows what the box is talking about? Where the box is? If you've got the box in your hand, isn't that it? Anyway, who says it was the voice of Bloodaxe doing the speaking? It could be anybody. Why would you believe what was said? He was aware of Sir Reynold talking to Carrot ... `... said to your Sergeant Colon here, the painting is set several miles from hwhere the actual battle hwas fought. It's in entirely the hwrong part of Koom Valleah! That's just about the one thing both sides are agreed on!' `So why did he set it there?' said Vimes, staring at the table as if hoping to draw a clue from it by willpower alone. `Who knows? It's all Koom Valleah. There's about two hundred and fifty square miles of the place. I imagine he just chose somewhere that looked dramatic.' `Would you chaps like a cup of tea?' said Lady Sybil, from the door. Ì felt a bit at a loose end, so I made a pot. And you should be getting your head down, Sam.' Sam Vimes looked panicky, a figure of authority caught once again in a domestic situation. Òh, Lady Sybil, they took the Rascal!' said Sir Reynold. Ì know it belonged to your family!' `My grandfather said it was just a damn nuisance,' said Sybil. `He used to let me unroll it on the floor of the ballroom. I used to name all the dwarfs. We looked for the secret, because he said there was hidden treasure and the painting showed you where it was. Of course, we never found it, but it kept me quiet on rainy afternoons.' Òh, it wasn't great art,' said Sir Reynold. Ànd the man was quite mad, of course. But somehow it spoke to people: Ì wish it'd say something to me,' said Vimes. `You really don't need to make tea for people, dear. One of the officers-' `Nonsense! We must be hospitable,' said Sybil. Òf course people tried to copy it,' said the curator, accepting a cup. Òh dear, they hwere terrible! A painting fifty feet long and ten feet deep is really quite impossible to copy with any kind of accuraceah-' `Not if you lay it out on the ballroom floor and get a man to make you a pantograph,' said Sybil, pouring tea. `This teapot really is a disgrace, Sam. Worse than the urn. Doesn't anyone ever clean it out?' She looked up at their faces. `Did I say something wrong?' she said. `You made a copy of the Rascal?' said Sir Reynold. Òh, yes. The whole thing, to a scale of one in five,' said Sybil. `When I was fourteen. It was a school project. We were doing dwarf history, you see, and, well, since we owned that painting it was too good to miss. You know what a pantograph is, don't you? It's a very simple way of making larger or smaller copies of a painting, using geometry, some wooden levers and a sharp pencil. Actually I did it as five panels ten feet square, that's full size, to make sure I got all the detail, and then I did the one-fifth scale version to display it as poor Mr Rascal wanted it displayed. I got full marks from Miss Turpitude. She was our maths teacher, you know, she wore her hair in a bun with a pair of compasses and a ruler stuck in it? She used to say that a girl who knew how to use a set square and protractor would go a long way in life.' `What a shame you no longer have it!' said Sir Reynold. `Why should you say that, Sir Reynold?' said Sybil. Ì'm sure I've still got it somewhere. I had it hanging up from the ceiling of my room for some time. Let me think ... Did we take it with us when we moved? I'm sure-' She looked up brightly. Àh, yes. Have you ever been up into the attics here, Sam?' `No!' said Vimes. 'Now's the time, then.' Ì've never been on a Girls' Night Out before,' said Cheery, as they walked, a little uncertainly, through the night-time city. `Was that last bit supposed to happen?' `What bit was that?' said Sally. `The bit where the bar was set on fire.' `Not usually,' said Angua. Ì've never seen men fight over a woman before,' Cheery went on. `Yeah, that was something, wasn't it?' said Sally. They'd dropped Tawneee off at her home. She'd been in quite a thoughtful frame of mind. Ànd all she did was smile at a man,' said Cheery. `Yes,' said Angua. She was trying to concentrate on walking. Ìt'd be a bit of a shame for Nobby if she lets that go to her head, though,' said Cheery. Save me from talkative druks ... drinks ... drunks, Angua thought. She said, `Yes, but what about Miss Pushpram? She's thrown some quite expensive fish at Nobby over the years.' `We've struck a blow for ugly womanhood,' Sally declared loudly. `Shoes, men, coffins ... never accept the first one you see.' Òh, shoes,' said Cheery, Ì can talk about shoes. Has anyone seen the new Yan Rockhammer solid copper slingbacks?' Èr, we don't go to a metalworker for our footwear, dear,' said Sally. Òh ... I think I'm going to be sick...' `Serves you right for drinking ... vine,' said Angua maliciously. Òh, ha ha,' said the vampire from the shadows. Ì'm perfectly fine with sarcastic pause "vine"; thank you! What I shouldn't have drunk was sticky drinks with names made up by people with less sense of humour than, uh, excuse me ... oh, noooo . . Àre you all right?' said Cheery. Ì've just thrown up a small, hilarious, paper umbrella. . Òh dear.' Ànd a sparkler. ..' Ìs that you, Sergeant Angua?' said a voice in the gloom. A lantern was opened, and lit the approaching face of Constable Visit. As he drew near, she could just make out the thick wad of pamphlets under his other arm. `Hello, Washpot,' she said. `What's up?' `... looks like a twist of lemon ..: said a damp voice from the shadows. `Mister Vimes sent me to search the bars of iniquity and low places of sin for you,' said Visit. Ànd the literature?' said Angua. `By the way, the words "nothing personal" could have so easily been added to that last sentence.' `Since I was having to tour the temples of vice, sergeant, I thought I could do Om's holy work at the same time,' said Visit, whose indefatigable evangelical zeal triumphed over all adversity. [1] Sometimes whole bars full of people would lie down on the floor [1] They say there's one in every police station. Constable Visit-the-Ungodly-with-ExplanatoryPamphlets was enough for two. with the lights out when they heard he was coming down the street. There were sounds of retching from the darkness. "'Woe unto those who abuseth the vine",' said Constable Visit. He caught the expression on Angua's face and added: `No offence meant. `We've been through all that,' moaned Sally. `What does he want, Washpot?' said Angua. Ìt's about Koom Valley again. He wants you back at the Yard: `But we were stood down!' Sally complained. `Sorry' said Visit cheerfully, Ì reckon you've been stood up again.' `The story of my life,' said Cheery. Òh, well, I suppose we'd better go,' said Angua, trying to disguise her relief. `When I say "the story of my life"; obviously I don't mean the whole story,' mumbled Cheery, apparently to herself, as she trailed behind them into a world blessedly without fun. The Ramkins never threw anything away. There was something worrying about their attics, and it wasn't just that they had a faint aroma of long-dead pigeon. The Ramkins labelled things. Vimes had been into the big attics in Scoone Avenue to fetch down the rocking-horse and the cot and a whole box of elderly but much-loved soft toys, smelling of mothballs. Nothing that might ever be useful again was thrown away. It was carefully labelled and put in the attic. Brushing aside cobwebs with one hand and holding up a lantern with the other, Sybil led the way past boxes of `men's boots, various; `Risible puppets, string & glove, `Model Theatre and scenery'. Maybe that was the reason for their wealth: they bought things that were built to last, and they seldom, now, had to buy anything at all. Except food, of course, and even then Vimes would not have been surprised to see boxes labelled àpple cores, various, or `leftovers, need eating up'. [1] Àh, here we are; said Sybil, lifting aside a bundle of fencing foils and lacrosse sticks. She pulled a long, thick tube out into the light. Ì didn't colour it in, of course, she said as it was manhandled back to the stairs. `That would have taken for ever.' Getting the heavy bundle down to the canteen took some effort and a certain amount of shoving, but eventually it was lifted on to the table and the crackling scroll removed. While Sir Reynold unrolled the big ten-foot squares and enthused, Vimes pulled out the small-scale copy that Sybil had created. It was just small enough to fit on the table; he weighed down one end with a crusted mug and put a salt cellar on the other. Rascal's notes made sad reading. Difficult reading, too, because a lot of them were half burned, and in any case his handwriting was what might have been achieved by a spider on a trampoline during an earthquake. The man was clearly as mad as a spoon, writing notes that he wanted to keep secret from the chicken; sometimes he'd stop writing in mid-note if he thought the chicken was watching. Apparently he was a very sad sight to see until he picked up a brush, whereupon he would work quite quietly and with a strange glow to his features. And that was his life: one huge oblong of canvas. Methodia Rascal: born, painted famous picture, thought he was a chicken, died. Given that the man couldn't touch bottom with a long stick, how [1] That was a phrase of Sybil's that got to him. She'd announce at lunch: 'We must have the pork tonight, it needs eating up: Vimes never had an actual problem with this, because he'd been raised to eat what was put in front of him, and do it quickly, too, before someone else snatched it away. He was just puzzled at the suggestion that he was there to do the food a favour. could you make sense out of anything he wrote? The only note that seemed concise, if horrible, was the one generally accepted as his last, since it was found under his slumped body. It read: Awk! Awk! It comes! IT COMES! He'd choked with a throat full of feathers. And on the canvas, the last of the paint was still drying. Vimes's eye was caught by the message numbered, arbitrarily, #39:1 thought it was a guiding omen, but it screams in the night.' An omen of what? And what about #143: `The dark, in the dark, like a star in chains'? Vimes had made a note of that one. He'd made a note of many others, too. But the worst thing about them - or the best, if you were keen on mysteries - was that they could mean anything. You could pick your own theory. The man was half starved and in mortal dread of a chicken that lived in his head. You might as well try to make sense of raindrops. Vimes pushed them aside and stared at the careful pencil drawing. Even at this size, it was confusing. Up front, faces were so large that you could see the pores on a dwarf's nose. In the distance, Sybil had meticulously copied figures that were a quarter of an inch high. Axes and clubs were being waved, spears were being pointed, there were charges and countercharges and single combats. Across the whole length of the picture, dwarfs and trolls were locked in ferocious battle, hacking and smashing He thought: who's missing? `Sir Reynold, could you help me?' he said quietly, lest the nascent thought turn tail and run. `Yes, commander?' said the curator, hurrying over. `Doesn't Lady Sybil do the most exquisite-' `She's very good, yes,' said Vimes. `Tell me ... how did Rascal know all this stuff?' `There hwere many dwarf songs about it, and some troll stories. Oh, and some humans hwitnessed it.' `So Rascal could have read about it?' Òh, yes. Apart from the fact that he put it in the wrong part of the valleah, he got it down quite accurately.' Vimes didn't take his gaze off the paper battle. `Does anyone know why he put it in the wrong place, then?' he said. `There are several theoreahs. One is that he hwas deceived by the fact that the dead dwarfs hwere cremated at that end of the valley, but after the storm that is hwhere many of the bodies ended up. There hwas also a great deal of dead hwood for bonfires. But I believe he chose that end because the view is so much better. The mountains are so dramatic.' Vimes sat down, staring at the sketch, willing it to yield its secret. Everyone will know the secret in a few weeks, Mr Shine had said. Why? `Sir Reynold, was anything going to happen to the painting in the next couple of weeks?' he said. Òh, yes, said the curator. `Hwe would have installed it in its new room. Ànything special about that?' Ì did tell your sergeant, commander,' said the curator a little reproachfully. Ìt is circular. Rascal always intended it to be seen in the round, as it were. So that the viewer could be there.' And I'm nearly there, too, Vimes thought. Ì think the cube told the dwarfs something about Koom Valley,' he said, in a faraway voice, because he felt as though he was already in the valley. Ìt told them that the place where it was found was important. Even Rascal thought it was important. They needed a map, and Rascal painted one, even if he didn't know it. Fred?' `Yessir?' `The dwarfs weren't bothered about damaging the bottom of the painting because it doesn't contain anything important. It's just people. People move around.' `But, with respect, commander, so do all those boulders,' said Sir Reynold. `They don't matter. No matter how much the valley has changed, this picture will work,' said Vimes. The glow of understanding lit his brain. `But even the rivers move over the years, and any amount of rocks have rolled down from the mountains,' said Sir Reynold. Ì'm told the area looks nothing like that now.' Èven so,' said Vimes, in the same dreamy voice, `this map will work for thousands of years. It doesn't mark a rock or a hollow or a cave, it just marks a spot. I can pinpoint it. That is, if I had a pin. Ì have one!' said Sir Reynold triumphantly, reaching to his lapel. Ì spotted one in the street yesterday, and of course hwe all know the old saying: "See a pin and pick it up, and all day long-"' `Yes, thank you,' said Vimes, taking it. He walked to the end of the table, picked up one end of the painting, and dragged it back down the length of the table, the heavy paper flapping after him. He pinned the two ends together, held up the circle he had made, and lowered it over his head. `The truth is in the mountains,' he said. `For years you've been looking at a line of mountains. It's really a circle of mountains.' `But I knew that!' said Sir Reynold. Ìn a way, sir, but you probably didn't understand it until now, yes? Rascal was standing somewhere important.' `Well, yes. But it was a cave, commander. He specifically mentions a cave. That's why people have searched along the valleah walls. The painting's set right in the middle, near the river.' `Then there's something we still don't know!' said Vimes, annoyed that a big moment had so quickly become a small one. 'I'll find out what it is when I get there!' There. He'd said it. But he'd known that he was going to go, known for ... how long? It seemed like for ever, but had it seemed like for ever yesterday? This afternoon? He could see the place in his mind's eye. Vimes at Koom Valley! He could practically taste the air! He could hear the roaring of the river, which ran as cold as ice! `Sam-' Sybil began. `No, this has got to be sorted out,' Vimes said quickly. Ì don't care about the stupid secret! Those deep-downers murdered our dwarfs, remember? They think the painting is a map they can use, and that's why they're going there. I've got to go after them.' `Look, Sam, if-' Sybil tried. `We can't afford a war between the trolls and the dwarfs, dear. That business the other night was just a dumb gang fight. A real war in Ankh-Morpork would wreck the place! And somehow it's all tied up with this!' Ì agree! I want to come too!' Sybil screamed. `Besides, I'll be perfectly safe if- What?' Vimes gaped at his wife while his mental gears ripped into reverse. `No, it's too dangerous!' `Sam Vimes, I've dreamed of visiting Koom Valley all my life, so don't dare think for one moment you're gallivanting off to see it and leaving me at home!' Ì don't gallivant! I've never gallivanted. I don't know how to vant! I don't even have a galli! But there's going to be a war there soon!' `Then I shall tell them we're not involved,' said Sybil calmly. `That won't work!' `Then it won't work in Ankh-Morpork either,' said Sybil, with the air of a player cunningly knocking out four dwarfs in one go. `Sam, you know you're going to lose this. There's no point in arguing. Besides, I speak dwarfish. We'll take Young Sam, too.' `No!' `So that's all sorted, then,' said Sybil, apparently struck by sudden deafness. Ìf you want to catch up with the dwarfs, I suggest we leave as soon as possible.' Sir Reynold turned to her with his mouth open. `But, Lady Sybil, armies are already massing there. It's no place for a lady!' Vimes winced. Sybil had made up her mind. This was going to be like watching that dwarf being flamed by dragons all over again. Lady Sybil's bosom, which she was allowed to have, grew as she took a deep breath; it seemed to lift her slightly off the ground. `Sir Reynold,' she said, with a side order of ice, ìn the Year of the Lice my great-grandmother once cooked, personally, a full dinner for eighteen in a military redoubt that was entirely surrounded by bloodthirsty Klatchians, and she felt able to include sorbet and nuts. My grandmother, in the Year of the Quiet Monkey, defended our embassy in Pseudopolis against a mob, with no assistance but that offered by a gardener, a trained parrot and a pan of hot chip fat. My late aunt, when our coach was once held up at bow-point by two desperate highwaymen, gave them such a talking to that they actually ran away crying for their mothers, Sir Reynold, their mothers. We are no strangers to danger, Sir Reynold. May I also remind you that quite probably half the dwarfs who fought at Koom Valley were ladies? No one told them to stay at home!' So that's settled, then, thought Vimes. We- Damn! `Captain,' he said, `send someone to find that dwarf Grag Bashfullsson, will you? Tell him Commander Vimes presents his compliments and will indeed be leaving first thing in the morning.' Èr, right, sir. Will do,' said Carrot. How did he know I'd be going? Vimes wondered. I suppose it was inevitable. But he could have hung us out to dry if he'd said we'd mistreated that dwarf. And he's one of Mr Shine's pupils, I'll bet on it. Good idea to keep an eye on him, perhaps ... When did Lord Vetinari sleep? Presumably the man must get his head down at some point, Vimes reasoned. Everyone slept. Catnaps could get you by for a while, but sooner or later you need a solid eight hours, right? It was almost midnight, and there was Vetinari at his desk, fresh as a daisy and chilly as morning dew. Àre you sure about this, Vimes?' `Carrot can look after things. They've quietened down, anyway. I think most of the serious troublemakers have headed for Koom Valley.' À good reason, one might say, for you not to go. Vimes, I have ... agents for this sort of thing.' `But you wanted me to hunt them down, sir!' Vimes protested. Ìn Koom Valley? At this time? Taking a force there now could have far-reaching consequences, Vimes!' `Good! You told me to drag them into the light! As far as they're concerned, I am far-reaching consequences!' `Well, certainly' said Vetinari, after staring at Vimes for longer than was comfortable. Ànd when you have boldly reached so far, you will need friends. I shall make sure the Low King is at least aware of your presence.' `Don't worry, he'll find out soon enough,' growled Vimes. Òh yes. Ì have no doubt he will. He has his agents in our city, just as I have in his. So I will do him the courtesy of telling him formally what he will in any case know. That is called politics, Vimes. It is a thing we try to do in the government.' `But ... spies? I thought we were chums with the Low King!' Òf course we are,' said Vetinari. Ànd the more we know about each other, the friendlier we shall remain. We'd hardly bother to spy on our enemies. What would be the point? Is Lady Sybil happy to let you go?' `She's coming with me. She insists: Ìs that safe?' Ìs here safe?' said Vimes, shrugging. `We had dwarfs coming up through the damn floor! Don't worry, she and Young Sam will be kept out of harm's way. I'll take Fred and Nobby. And I want to take Angua, Sally, Detritus and Cheery, too. Multi-species, sir. That always helps the politics: Ànd the Summoning Dark? What about that, Vimes? Oh, don't look at me like that. It's common talk among the dwarfs. One of the dying dwarfs put a curse on everyone who was in the mine, I'm told.' Ì wouldn't know about that, sir,' said Vimes, resorting to the wooden expression that so often saw him through. Ìt's mystic. We don't do mystic in the Watch.' Ìt's not a joke, Vimes. It's very old magic, I understand. So old, indeed, that most dwarfs have forgotten that it is magic. And it's powerful. It will be tracking them.' Ì'll just look out for a big floaty eye with a tail, then, shall I?' said Vimes. `That should make it easy.' Vimes, I know you must be aware that the symbol is not the thing itself,' said the Patrician. `Yessir. I know. But magic has no place in coppering. We don't use it to find culprits. We don't use it to get confessions. Because you can't trust the bloody stuff, sir. It's got a mind of its own. If there's a curse chasing these bastards, well, that's its business. But if I reach 'em first, sir, then they'll be my prisoners and it'll have to get past me. `Vimes, Archchancellor Ridcully tells me he believes it may be a quasi-demonic entity that is untold millions of years old!' Ì've said my piece, sir,' said Vimes, staring at a point just above Lord Vetinari's head. Ànd it is my duty to catch up with these people. I believe they may be able to help me with my inquiries.' `But you have no evidence, Vimes. And you are going to need very solid evidence.' `Right. So I want to bring them back here, eyeballs on a string or not. Them and their damn guards. So's I can inquire. Someone will tell me something: Ànd it'll also be to your personal satisfaction?' said Vetinari sharply. Ìs this a trick question, sir?' `Well done, well done,' said Vetinari softly. `Lady Sybil is a remarkable woman, Vimes.' `Yessir. She is.' Vimes left. After a while Vetinari's chief clerk, Drumknott, entered the room on velvet feet and placed a cup of tea in front of Vetinari. `Thank you, Drumknott. You were listening?' `Yes, sir. The commander seemed very forthright.' `They invaded his home, Drumknott.' `Quite, sir.' Vetinari leaned back and stared at the ceiling. `Tell me, Drumknott, are you a betting man?' Ì have been known to have the occasional little "flutter"; sir.' `Given, then, a contest between an invisible and very powerful quasi-demonic thing of pure vengeance on the one hand, and the commander on the other, where would you wager, say... one dollar?' Ì wouldn't, sir. That looks like one that would go to the judges.' `Yes,' said Vetinari, staring thoughtfully at the closed door. `Yes, indeed.' I don't use magic, thought Vimes, walking through the rain towards Unseen University. But, sometimes, I tell lies. He avoided the main entrance and headed as circumspectly as possible for Wizards' Passage, where, halfway down, university access for all was available via several loose bricks. Generations of rascally drunk student wizards had used them to get back in late at night. Later on, they'd become very important and powerful wizards, with full beards and fuller stomachs, but had never lifted a finger to have the wall repaired. It was, after all, Traditional. Nor was it usually patrolled by the Lobsters,[1] who believed in Tradition even more than the wizards. On this occasion, though, one was lurking in the shadows, and jumped when Vimes tapped him on the shoulder. Òh, it's you, Commander Vimes, sir. It's me, sir, Wiggleigh, sir. The Archchancellor is waiting for you in the gardener's hut, sir. Follow me, sir. Mum's the word, eh, sir?' Vimes trailed after Wiggleigh across the dark, squelchy lawns. Oddly, though, he didn't feel so tired now. Days and days of bad sleep and he felt quite fresh, in a fuzzy sort of way. It was the smell of the chase, that's what it was. He'd pay for it later. Wiggleigh, first looking both ways with a conspiratorial air that would have attracted instant attention had anyone been watching, opened the door of the garden shed. There was a large figure waiting inside. `Commander!' it bellowed happily. `What larks, eh? Very cloak and dagger!' Only heavy rain could possibly muffle the voice of Archchancellor Ridcully when he was feeling cheerful. `Could you keep it down a bit, Archchancellor?' said Vimes, shutting the door quickly. `Sorry! I mean, sorry,' said the wizard. `Do take a seat. The [1] The university porters, or bledlows, who doubled, with rather more enthusiasm, as its proctors. They commanded their nickname for being thick-shelled, liable to turn red when hot, and having the smallest brain for their size of any known creature. compost sacks are quite acceptable. Well, er ... how may I help you, Sam?' `Can we agree for now that you can't?' said Vimes. Ìntriguing. Do continue,' said Ridcully, leaning closer. `You know I won't have magic used in the Watch,' Vimes went on. As he sat down in the semi-darkness, a coiled-up hosepipe ambushed him from above, as they do, and he had to wrestle it to the shed floor. Ì do, sir, and I respect you for it, although there are those that think you are a damn silly fool.' 'Well. .: Vimes said, trying to put `damn silly fool' behind them, `the fact is, I must get to Koom Valley very fast. Er ... very fast indeed.' Òne might say- magically fast?' said Ridcully. Às it were,' said Vimes, fidgeting. He really hated having to do this. And what had he sat on? `Mmm,' said Ridcully. `But without, I imagine, any significant hocus-pocus? You appear uncomfortable, sir!' Vimes triumphantly held up a large onion. `Sorry,' he said, tossing it aside. `No, definitely no pocus. Possibly a little hocus. I just need an edge. They've got a day's start on me.' Ì see. You will be travelling alone?' `No, there will have to be eleven of us. Two coaches.' `My word! And disappearing in a puff of smoke to reappear elsewhere is-' Òut of the question. I just need-' Àn edge,' said the wizard. `Yes. Something magical in its cause but not in its effect. Nothing too obvious.' Ànd no chance of anyone being turned into a frog or anything like that,' said Vimes quickly. Òf course,' said Ridcully. He clapped his hands together. `Well, commander, I'm afraid we can't help you. Meddling in things like this is not what wizarding is all about!' He lowered his voice and went on: `We will particularly not be able to help you if you have the coaches, empty, round the back in, oh, call it about an hour?' Òh? Er ... right,' said Vimes, trying to catch up. `You're not going to make them fly or anything, are you?' `We're not going to do anything, commander!' said Ridcully jovially, slapping him on the back. Ì thought that was agreed! And I think also that you should leave now, although, of course, you have in fact not been here. And neither have I. I say, this spying business is pretty clever, eh?' When Vimes had gone, Mustrum Ridcully sat back, lit his pipe and, as an afterthought, used the last of the match to light the candle lantern on the potting table. The gardener could get pretty acerbic if people messed about with his shed, so perhaps he ought to tidy up a bit He stared at the floor, where a tumbled hosepipe and a fallen onion made what looked, at a casual glance, like a large eyeball with a tail. The rain cooled Vimes down. It had cooled down the streets, too. You have to be really keen to riot in the rain. Besides, news of last night had got around. No one was sure, of course, and such were the effects of Fluff and Big Hammer that a large if elementary school of thought had been left uncertain about what had really happened. They'd woken up feeling bad, right? Something must have happened. And tonight the rain was setting in, so maybe it was better to stay in the pub. He walked through the wet, whispering darkness, mind ablaze. How fast could those dwarfs travel? Some of them sounded pretty old. But they'd be tough and old. Even so, the roads in that direction were none too good, and a body could only stand so much shaking. And Sybil was taking Young Sam. That was stupid, except that it ... wasn't stupid, not after dwarfs had broken into your home. Home was where you had to feel safe. If you didn't feel safe, it wasn't home. Against all common sense, he agreed with Sybil. Home was where they were together. She'd already sent off an urgent clacks to some old chum of hers who lived near the valley; she seemed to think it was going to be some kind of family outing. There was a group of dwarfs hanging around on a corner, heavily armed. Maybe the bars were all full, or maybe they needed cooling down too. No law against hanging around, right? Wrong, growled Vimes, as he drew nearer. Come along, boys. Say something wrong. Lay hold of a weapon. Move slightly. Breathe loudly. Give me something that could be stretched to ìn self defence'. It'd be my word against yours, and believe me, lads, I'm unlikely to leave you capable of saying a single damn thing. The dwarfs took one clear look at the approaching vision, haloed in torchlight and mist, and took to their heels. Right! The entity known as the Summoning Dark sped through streets of eternal night, past misty buildings of memory that wavered at its passage. It was getting there, it was getting there. It was having to change the habits of millennia, but it was finding ways in, even if they were no bigger than keyholes. It had never had to work this hard before, never had to move this fast. It was ... exhilarating. But always, when it paused by some grating or unguarded chimney, it heard the pursuit. It was slow, but it never stopped following. Sooner or later, it would catch up. Grag Bashfullsson lodged in a subdivided cellar in Cheap Street. The rent wasn't much, but he had to admit that neither was the accommodation: he could lie on his very narrow bed and touch all four walls or, rather, three walls and a heavy curtain that separated his little space from that of the family of nineteen dwarfs that occupied the rest of the cellar. But meals were included and they respected his privacy. It was something to have a grag as a lodger, even if this one seemed rather young and showed his face. It still impressed the neighbours. On the other side of the curtain children were squabbling, a baby was crying, and there was the smell of rat-and-cabbage casserole. Someone was sharpening an axe. And someone else was snoring. For a dwarf in AnkhMorpork, solitude was something that you had to cultivate on the inside. Books and papers filled the space that wasn't bed. Bashfullsson's desk was a board laid across his knees. He was reading a battered book, its cover cracked and mouldy, and the runes passing under his eye were: Ìt has no strength in this world. To fulfil any purpose, the Dark must find a champion, a living creature it can bend to its will ...' Bashfullsson sighed. He'd read the phrase a dozen times, hoping he could make it mean something other than the obvious. He copied the words into his notebook anyway. Then he put the notebook in his satchel, swung the satchel on to his back, went and paid Toin Footstamper two weeks' rent in advance, and stepped out into the rain. Vimes didn't remember going to sleep. He didn't remember sleeping. He surfaced from darkness when Carrot shook him awake. `The coaches are in the yard, Mister Vimes!' 'Fwisup?' murmured Vimes, blinking in the light. Ì've told people to load them up, sir, but-' `But what?' Vimes sat up. Ì think you'd better come and see, sir: When Vimes stepped out into the damp dawn, two coaches were indeed standing in the yard. Detritus was idly watching the loading, while leaning on the Piecemaker. Carrot hurried over when he saw the commander. Ìt's the wizards, sir,' he said. `They've done something.' The coaches looked normal enough to Vimes, and he said so. Òh, they look fine,' said Carrot. He reached down and put his hand on the door sill, and added: `But they do this.' He lifted the laden coach over his head. `You shouldn't be able to do that,' said Vimes. `That's right, sir,' said Carrot, lowering the coach gently on to the cobbles. Ìt doesn't get any heavier with people inside, either. And if you come over here, sir, they've done something to the horses, too.' Àny idea what they've done, captain?' `None whatsoever, sir. The coaches were just outside the university. Haddock and I drove them down here. Very light, of course. It's the harnesses that are worrying me. See here, sir: Ì see the leather's very thick,' said Vimes. Ànd what're all these copper knobs? Something magical? 'Could be, sir. Something happens at thirteen miles an hour. I don't know what.' Carrot patted the side of the coach, which slid away. `The thing is, sir, I don't know how much of an edge this gives you. `What? Surely a weightless coach would-' Òh, it'll help, sir, especially on the inclines. But horses can only go so fast for so long, sir, and once they've got the coach moving it's a rolling weight and not so much of a problem.' `Thirteen miles an hour,' Vimes mused. `Hmm. That's pretty fast.' `Well, the mail coaches are making nine or ten miles an hour average on many runs now,' said Carrot. `But the roads will be a lot worse when you get near Koom Valley.' `You don't think it'll take wing, do you?' Ì think the wizards would have said so if it was going to do something like that, sir. But it's funny you should mention it, because there's seven broomsticks nailed underneath each coach.' `What? Why don't they just float out of the yard?' `Magic, sir. I think they just compensate for the weight: `Good grief, yes. Why didn't I think of that?' said Vimes sourly. Ànd that's why I don't like magic, captain. 'Cos it's magic. You can't ask questions, it's magic. It doesn't explain anything, it's magic. You don't know where it comes from, it's magic! That's what I don't like about magic, it does everything by magic!' `That's the significant factor, sir, there's no doubt about it,' said Carrot. Ì'll just see to the last of the packing, if you'll excuse me Vimes glared at the coaches. He probably shouldn't have brought in the wizards, but where was the choice? Oh, they could probably have sent Sam Vimes all that way in a puff of smoke and the blink of an eye, but who'd actually arrive there, and who'd come back? How would he know if it was him? He was certain that people were not supposed to disappear like that. Sam Vimes had always been, by nature, a pedestrian. That's why he was going to take Willikins as well, who knew how to drive. He'd also demonstrated to Vimes his ability to throw a common fish knife so hard that it was quite difficult to pull out of the wall. At times like this, Vimes liked to see a skill like that in a butler "Scuse me, sir," said Detritus, behind him. `Could I have a word, pers'nal?' `Yes. Of course,' said Vimes. Ì, er, hope what I said yesterday inna cells wasn't goin' too-' `Can't remember a word of it,' said Vimes. Detritus looked relieved. `Thank you, sir. Er ... I want to take young Brick with us, sir. He's got no kin here, doesn't even know what clan he is. He'll only get messed up again if I take my eye off'f him. An' he's never seen der mountains. Never been outside der city, even!' There was a pleading look in the troll's eyes. Vimes recollected that his marriage to Ruby was happy but childless. `Well, we don't seem to have a weight problem,' he said. Àll right. But you're to keep an eye on him, okay?' The troll beamed. `Yessir! I'll see you don't regret it, sir!' `Breakfast, Sam!' called Sybil, from the doorway. A nasty suspicion gripped Vimes, and he hurried over to the other coach, where Carrot was strapping on the last bag. `Who packed the food? Did Sybil pack the food?' he said. Ì think so, sir.' `Was there ... fruit?' said Vimes, probing the horror. Ì believe so, sir. Quite a lot. And vegetables.' `Some bacon, surely?' Vimes was nearly begging. `Very good for a long journey, bacon. It travels well.' Ì think it's staying at home today,' said Carrot. Ì have to tell you, sir, that Lady Sybil has found out about the bacon sandwich arrangement. She said to tell you the game was up, sir.' Ì am the commander around here, you know,' said Vimes, with as much hauteur as he could muster on an empty stomach. `Yes, sir. But Lady Sybil has a very quiet way of being firm, sir.' `She has, hasn't she?' said Vimes as they strolled towards the building. Ì'm a very lucky man, you know,' he added, just in case Carrot might have got the wrong impression. `Yes, sir. You are indeed.' `Captain!' They turned. Someone was hurrying through the gate. He had two swords strapped to his back. Àh, Special Constable Hancock,' said Carrot, stepping forward. `Do you have something for me?' Èr, yes, captain.' Hancock looked nervously at Vimes. `This is official business, Andy,' said Vimes, reassuringly. `Not much to give you, sir. But I asked around, and a young lady sent at least two self-coded droppers to Bonk in the last week. That means it goes to the main tower and gets handed over to whoever turns up with the right authorization. We don't have to know who they are.' `Well done,' said Carrot. Àny description?' `Young lady with short hair is the best I could get. Signed the message "Aicalas".' Vimes burst out laughing. `Well, that's about it. Thank you, Special Constable Hancock, very much.' `Crime on the clacks is going to be a growing problem,' said Carrot sadly, when they were alone again. `Quite likely, captain,' said Vimes. `But here and now we know that our Sally is not being straight with us.' `We can't be certain it's her, sir,' said Carrot. Òh no?' said Vimes happily. `This quite cheers me up. It's one of the lesser-known failings of the vampire. No one knows why. It goes with having big windows and easily torn curtains. A sort of undeath-wish, you might say. However clever they are, they can't resist thinking that no one will recognize their name if they spell it backwards. Let's go.' Vimes turned back to head into the building, and noticed a small, neat figure standing patiently by the door. It had the look of someone who was quite happy to wait. He sighed. I bargain without an axe in my hand, eh? `Breakfast, Mr Bashfullsson?' he said. `This is all rather fun,' said Sybil an hour later, as the coaches headed out of the city. `Do you remember when we last went on holiday, Sam?' `That wasn't really a holiday, dear,' said Vimes. Above them, Young Sam swung back and forth in a little hammock, cooing. `Well, it was very interesting, all the same,' said Sybil. `Yes, dear. Werewolves tried to eat me.' Vimes sat back. The coach was comfortably upholstered and well sprung. At the moment, while it threaded through the traffic, the magical loss of weight was hardly noticeable. Would it mean anything? How fast could a bunch of old dwarfs travel? If they really had taken a big wagon, the coaches would catch them tomorrow, when the mountains were still a distant prospect. In the meantime, at least he could get some rest. He pulled out a battered volume entitled Walking in the Koom Valley, by Eric Wheelbrace, a man who apparently had walked on just about everything bigger than a sheep track in the Near Ramtops. [1] It had a sketch map, the only actual map of the valley Vimes had seen. Eric wasn't a bad sketch artist. Koom Valley was ... well, Koom Valley was basically a drain, [1] And even then had been belabouring mountain goats on apparently sheer cliff faces and, while pebbles slid and bounced around him, was clearly accusing them of obstructing his Right to Roam. Eric believed very firmly that The Land Belonged To The People, and also that he was more The People than anyone else was. Eric went everywhere with a map, encased in waterproof material, on a string around his neck. Such people are not to be trifled with. that's what it was: nearly thirty miles of soft limestone rock edged by mountains of harder rock, so what you had would have been a canyon if it wasn't so wide. One end was almost on the snowline, the other merged into the plains. It was said that even clouds kept away from the desolation that was Koom Valley. Maybe they did, but that didn't matter. The valley got the water anyway, from meltwater and the hundreds of waterfalls that poured over its walls from the mountains that cupped it. One of those falls, the Tears of the King, was half a mile high. The Koom River didn't just rise in this valley. It leapt and danced in this valley. By the time it was halfway down, it was a crisscrossing of thundering waters, forever merging and parting. They carried and hurled great rocks, and played with whole fallen trees from the dripping forests that colonized the scree built up against the walls. They gurgled into holes and rose again, miles away, as fountains. They had no mappable course - a good storm higher up the mountains could bring house-sized rocks and half a stricken woodland down in the flood, blocking the sinkholes and piling up dams. Some of these could survive for years, becoming little islands in the leaping waters, growing little forests and little meadows and colonies of big birds. Then some key rock would be shifted by a random river, and within an hour it would all be gone. Nothing that couldn't fly lived in the valley, at least for long. The dwarfs had tried to tame it, back before the first battle. It hadn't worked. Hundreds of dwarfs and trolls had been swept up in the famous flood, and many had never been found again. Koom Valley had taken them all into its sinkholes and chambers and caverns, and had kept them. There were places in the valley where a man could drop a coloured cork into a swirling sinkhole and then wait for more than twenty minutes before it bobbed up on a fountain less than a dozen yards away. There was hardly any sound now. Perhaps sound was unable to keep up. `Sir?' said Willikins quietly. `Yes?' said Vimes, his eyes streaming. Ìt took us less than a minute to go that last mile. I timed us between milestones, sir.' `Sixty miles an hour? Don't be daft, man! A coach can't go that fast!' `Just as you say, sir.' A milestone flashed past. Out of the corner of his ear, Willikins heard Vimes counting under his breath until, before very long, another stone fell away behind them. `Wizards, eh?' said Vimes weakly, staring ahead again. Ìndeed, sir,' said Willikins. `May I suggest that once we are through Quirm we head straight across the grass country?' `The roads up there are pretty bad, you know,' said Vimes. `So I believe, sir. However, that will not, in fact, matter,' said the butler, not taking his eyes off the unrolling road ahead. `Why not? If we try to go at speed over those rough-' Ì was referring obliquely, sir, to the fact that we are not precisely touching the ground any more.' Vimes, clinging with care to the rail, looked over the side. The wheels were turning idly. The road, just below them, was a blur. Ahead of them, the spirit of the horse galloped serenely onwards. `There's plenty of coaching inns around Quirm,' he said. `We could, er, stop for lunch?' `Late breakfast, sir! Mail coach ahead, sir! Hold tight!' A tiny square block on the road ahead was getting bigger quite fast. Willikins twitched the reins, Vimes had a momentary vision of rearing horses, and the mail coach was a dwindling dot, soon hidden by the smoke of flaming brassicas. 'Dem milestones is goin' past real fast now,' Detritus observed, in a conversational tone of voice. Behind him, Brick lay flat on the roof of the coach with his eyes tight shut, having never before been in a world where the sky went all the way to the ground; there were brass rails around the top of the coach, and he was leaving fingerprints in them. `Could we try braking?' said Vimes. `Look out! Haycart!' `That only stops the wheels spinning, sir!' yelled Willikins, as the cart went by with a whoom and fell back into the distance. `Try pulling on the reins a little!' Àt this speed, sir?' Vimes slid back the hatch behind him. Sybil had Young Sam on her knee, and was pulling a woolly jumper over his head. Ìs everything all right, dear?' he ventured. She looked up and smiled. `Lovely smooth ride, Sam. Aren't we going rather fast, though?' Èr, could you please sit with your back to the horses?' said Sam. Ànd hold on tight to Young Sam? It might be a bit ... bumpy.' He watched her shift seats. Then he shut the hatch and yelled to Willikins: `Now!' Nothing seemed to happen. In Vimes's mind, the milestones were already going zip ... zip as they flashed past. Then the flying world slowed, while in the fields on either side hundreds of burning cabbages leapt towards the sky, trailing oily smoke. The horse of light and air disappeared and the real horses dropped gently towards the road, going from floating statues to beasts in full gallop without a stumble. He heard a brief scream as the rear coach tore past and swerved into a field full of cauliflowers where, eventually, it squelched to a flatulent halt. And then there was stillness, except for the occasional thud of a falling cabbage. Detritus was comforting Brick, who'd not picked a good day to go cold turkey; it was turning out to be frozen roc. A skylark, safely above cabbage range, sang in the blue sky. Below, except for the whimpering of Brick, all was silent. Absent-mindedly, Vimes pulled a half-cooked leaf off his helmet and flicked it away. `Well, that was fun,' he said, his voice a little distant. He got down carefully and opened the coach door. Èveryone all right in here?' he said. `Yes. Why have we stopped?' said Sybil. `We ran out of ... er, well, we just ran out,' said Vimes. Ì'd better go and check that everyone else is all right. ..' The milestone near by proclaimed that it was but two miles to Quirm. Vimes fished out the Gooseberry as a red-hot cabbage smacked into the road behind him. `Good morning!' he said brightly to the surprised imp. `What is the time, please?' Èr ... nine minutes to eight, Insert Name Here,' said the imp. `So that would mean a speed slightly above one mile a minute,' mused Vimes. `Very good.' Moving like a sleepwalker, he went into the field on the other side of the road and followed the trail of stricken, steaming greens until he reached the other coach. People were climbing out of it. Èveryone okay?' he said. `Breakfast today will be boiled cabbage, baked cabbage, fried cabbage'- he stepped smartly aside as a steaming cauliflower hit the ground and exploded - ànd Cauliflower Surprise. Where's Fred?' `Looking for somewhere to throw up,' said Angua. `Good man. We'll take a minute or two to rest here, I think.' With that, Sam Vimes walked back to the milestone, sat down next to it, put his arms round it, and held on tight until he felt better. You could catch up with the dwarfs long before they're near Koom Valley. Good grief, at the speed we did earlier you'd have to watch out in case you smashed into the back of them! Vimes's thought nagged at him as Willikins drove the coach, at a very sedate speed, out of Quirm and then, on a clear stretch of road, unleashed the hidden horsepower until they were bowling along at forty miles every hour. That seemed quite fast enough. No one was hurt, after all. You could get to Koom Valley by nightfall! Yes, but that was not the plan. Okay, he thought, but what is the plan, exactly? Well, it helped that Sybil knew more or less everybody, or at least everybody who was female, of a certain age, and who had been to the Quirm College for Young Ladies at the same time as Sybil. There appeared to be hundreds of them. They all seemed to have names like Bunny or Bubbles, they kept in touch meticulously, they'd all married influential or powerful men, they all hugged one another when they met and went on about the good old days in Form 3b or whatever, and if they acted together, they could probably run the world or, it occurred to Vimes, might already be doing so. They were Ladies Who Organize. Vimes did his best, but he could never keep track of them. A web of correspondence held them all together, and he marvelled at Sybil's ability to be concerned over the problems of a child - which she'd never met - of a woman she hadn't seen for twenty-five years. It was a female thing. So they would be staying in the town near the foot of the valley with a lady currently known to him only as Bunty, whose husband was the local magistrate. According to Sybil, he had his own police force. Vimes translated this, in the privacy of his head, as `he's got his own gang of thuggish, toothless, evil-smelling thief-takers, since that was what you generally got in these little towns. Still, they might be useful. Beyond that ... there was no plan. He intended to find the dwarfs and capture and drag as many as possible back to AnkhMorpork. But that was an intention, not a plan. It was a firm intention, though. Five people had been murdered. You couldn't just turn your back on that. He'd drag 'em back and lock them up and throw everything at 'em and see what stuck. He doubted if they had many friends now. Of course, it'd get political, it always did, but at least people would know that he'd done all he could, and it was the best he could do. And with any luck it would stop anyone else getting funny ideas. And then there was the damn Secret, but it occurred to him that if he did find it, and it simply was proof that the dwarfs ambushed the trolls or the trolls ambushed the dwarfs or they both ambushed each other at the same time, well, he might as well drop it down a hole. It really wouldn't change anything. And it was unlikely to be a pot of gold; people didn't take a lot of money on to battlefields, because there wasn't very much to spend it on. Anyway, it had been a good start. They'd clawed back some time, hadn't they? They could keep up a cracking pace and change horses at every staging inn, couldn't they? Why was he trying to persuade himself? It made sense to slow down. It was dangerous to go fast. Ìf we keep up this pace we might get there the day after tomorrow, right?' he said to Willikins, as they rattled on between stands of young maize. Ìf you say so, sir,' said Willikins. Vimes noted the hint of diplomacy. `You don't think so?' he said. `Come on, you can speak your mind!' `Well, sir, those dwarfs want to get there fast, d'you think?' said Willikins. Ì expect so. I don't think they want to hang around. So?' `So I'm just puzzled that you think they'll be using the road, sir. They could use broomsticks, couldn't they?' Ì suppose so,' Vimes conceded. `But the Archchancellor would have told me if they'd done that, surely.' `Begging your pardon, sir, but what business would it be of his? They wouldn't have to bother the gentlemen at the university. Everyone knows the best broomsticks are made by the dwarfs, up at Copperhead.' The coach rolled on. After a while Vimes observed, in the voice of one who has been thinking deeply, `They'd have to travel at night, though. They'd be spotted otherwise.' `Very true, sir,' said Willikins, staring ahead. There was more thoughtful silence. `Do you think this thing could jump fences?' said Vimes. Ì'm game to give it a try, sir,' said Willikins. Ì think the wizards put some thought into all this.' Ànd how fast do you think it could go, for the sake of argument?' said Vimes. 'Dunno, sir. But I've got a feeling it might be pretty fast. A hundred miles in an hour, maybe?' `You really think so? That means we could be halfway there in a couple of hours!' `Well, you did say you wanted to get there fast, sir,' said Willikins. This time the silence went on longer before Vimes said, Àll right, stop somewhere. I want to make sure that everyone knows what we're going to do.' `Happy to do that, sir,' said Willikins. Ìt'll give me a chance to tie my hat on.' What Vimes remembered most of all about that journey - and there was so much of it he wanted to forget - was the silence. And the softness. Oh, he could feel the wind in his face, but it was only a breeze, even when the ground was a flat green blur. The air was shaping itself around them. When Vimes experimentally held up a piece of paper a foot above his head, it blew away in an instant. The corn exploded, too. As the coach approached, the green shoots grew out of the ground as if dragged and then burst like fireworks. The corn belt was giving way to cattle country when Willikins said: `You know, sir, this thing steers itself. Watch.' He lowered the reins as a patch of woodland approached. The scream had hardly formed in Vimes's throat before the coach curved around the woodland and then swung delicately back on to its original course. `Don't do that again, please!' said Vimes. Àll right, sir, but it's steering itself. I don't think I could make it run into anything.' `Don't try!' Vimes said quickly. Ànd I swear I saw a cow explode back there! Keep us away from towns and people, will you?' Behind the coach, turnips and rocks leapt into the air and bounced away in the opposite direction. Vimes hoped they wouldn't get into trouble about that. [1] The other thing he noticed was that the landscape ahead was strangely bluish, while behind them it had a relatively red tint. He didn't like to point this out, though, in case it sounded strange. They had to stop twice to get directions, and were twenty miles from Koom Valley at half past five. There was a coaching inn. They sat out in its yard. No one spoke much. Apart from the speedhungry Willikins, the only people not shaken by the journey were Sybil and Young Sam, who seemed quite happy, and Detritus, who had watched the world skim past with every sign of enjoyment. Brick was still face-down on the coach roof, holding tight. `Ten hours,' said Fred Colon. Ànd that included lunch and stoppin' to be sick. I can't believe it ...' [1] But as it happened, it was all blamed on people from another world, so that was all right. Ì don't think people are s'posed to go this fast,' Nobby moaned. Ì fink my brain's still back home.' `Well, if we're going to have to wait for it to catch up, Nobby, I'll buy a house here, shall I?' said Fred. Nerves were frayed, brains were jogging behind ... This is why I don't like magic, thought Vimes. But we're here, and it's amazing how the inn's beer has helped recovery. `We might even be able to have a quick look at Koom Valley before it gets dark,' he ventured, to general groaning. `No, Sam! Everyone needs a meal and a rest!' said Sybil. `Let's go into town like proper people, nice and slowly, and everyone will be fresh for tomorrow.' `Lady Sybil is right, commander,' said Bashfullsson. Ì wouldn't advise going up to the valley at night, even at this time of the year. It's so easy to get lost.' Ìn a valley?' said Vimes. Òh yes, sir,' Cheery chimed in. `You'll see why, sir. And mostly, if you get lost, you die.' On the sedate journey into town, and because it was six o'clock, Vimes read Where's My Cow? to Young Sam. In fact, it became a communal effort. Cheery obliged by handling the chicken noises, an area in which Vimes felt he was somewhat lacking, and Detritus delivered a Hruuugh! that rattled the windows. Grag Bashfullsson, against all expectation, managed a very passable pig. To Young Sam, watching with eyes like saucers, it was indeed the Show Of The Year. Bunty was surprised to see them so soon, but Ladies Who Organize are seldom thrown by guests arriving unexpectedly early. It turned out Bunty was Berenice Waynesbury, nee Mousefather, which must have come as a relief, with a daughter who was married and lived just outside Quirm and a son who'd had to go to Fourecks in a hurry over a complete misunderstanding but was now into sheep in a big way and she hoped Sybil and of course His Grace would be able to stay until Saturday because she'd invited simply everybody and wasn't Young Sam simply adorable ... and so on, right up tò-and we've cleaned out one of the stables for your trolls,' said with a happy smile. Before Sybil or Vimes could say a word, Detritus had removed his helmet and bowed. 'T'ank you very much, missus,' he said gravely. `You know, sometimes people forget to clean dem out first. It's dem little touches dat mean a lot.' `Why, thank you,' said Bunty. `How charming. I've, er, never seen a troll wearing clothing before . . Ì can take dem off if you like,' said Detritus. At which point Sybil took Bunty gently by the arm and said, `Let me introduce you to everybody else . . Mr Waynesbury the magistrate wasn't the venal pocket-liner Vimes had expected. He was thin, tall, and didn't say a great deal, and spent his time at home in a study filled with law books, pipes and fishing tackle; he dispensed justice in the mornings, fished during the afternoon, and charitably forgave Vimes for his total uninterest in dry flies. The local town of Ham-on-Koom made a good living off the river. When the Koom hit the plains it widened and slowed and was more full of fish than a tin of sardines. Marshes spread out on either side, too, with deep and hidden lakes that were the home and feeding ground of innumerable birds. Oh ... and there were the skulls, too. Ì am the coroner as well,' Mr Waynesbury told Vimes, as he unlocked a cupboard in his desk. `We get a few bones washed down here every spring. Mostly tourists, of course. They really will not take advice, alas. But sometimes we get things that are of more ... historical interest.' He put a dwarf skull on the leather desktop. Àbout a hundred years old,' he said. `From the last big battle, a hundred years ago. We get the occasional piece of armour, too. We put it all in the charnel house and from time to time the dwarfs or the trolls come with a cart to sort through it and carry it away. They take it very seriously.' Àny treasure?' said Vimes. 'Hah. Not that I get told about. But I'd hear about it if there was anything big.' The magistrate sighed. Èvery year people come to search for it. Sometimes they are lucky.' `They find gold?' `No, but they get back alive. The others? They wash up out of the caves, in the fullness of time.' He selected a pipe from a rack on his desk and began to fill it. Ì'm amazed that anyone feels it necessary to take weapons up the valley. It'll kill you on a whim. Will you take one of my lads, commander?' Ì have my own guide,' said Vimes, and then added: `But thank you.' Mr Waynesbury puffed his pipe. Às you wish, of course,' he said. Ì shall watch the river, in any case.' Angua and Sally had been put in the same bedroom. Angua tried to feel good about that. The woman wasn't to know. Anyway, it was nice to get between clean sheets, even if the room had a slightly musty smell. More must, less vampire, she thought; look on the bright side. In the darkness, she opened one eye. Someone had moved silently across the room. They'd made no noise but, nevertheless, their passage had stirred the air and changed the texture of the subtle night sounds. They were at the window now. It was bolted shut, and a faint noise was probably the bolt being slipped back. It was easy to tell when the window itself was opened: new scents flooded in. There was a creak that possibly only a werewolf would have heard, followed by a sudden rustling of many leathery wings. Little leathery wings. Angua shut her eye again. The little minx! Maybe she just didn't care any more? No point in trying to follow her, though. She debated the wisdom of shutting the window and bolting the door, just to see what excuses she came up with, but dismissed the idea. No good telling Mister Vimes yet, either. What could she prove? It'd all be put down to the werewolf/vampire thing ... And now Koom Valley stretched away ahead of Vimes, and he could see why he hadn't made plans. You couldn't make plans for Koom Valley. It'd laugh at them. It would push them away, like it pushed away roads. Òf course, you're seeing it at its best at this time of year,' said Cheery. 'By best you mean - ?' Vimes prompted. `Well, it's not actually trying to murder us, sir. And there're the birds. And when the sun's right, you get some wonderful rainbows.' There were lots of birds. Insects bred like mad in the wide, shallow pools and dams that littered the floor of the valley in late spring. Most of them would be dry by the late summer, but for now Koom Valley was a smorgasbord of things that went `bzz!'. And the birds had come up from the plains to feast on all of it. Vimes wasn't good at birds, but they mostly looked like swallows, millions of them. There were nests on the nearest cliff, a good half-mile away, and Vimes could hear the chattering from here. And where trees and rocks had piled up in a dam, saplings and green plants had sprouted. Below the narrow track the party had taken, waters gushed from half a dozen caves and joined together for one wild waterfall into the plain. Ìt's all so ... so alive,' said Angua. Ì thought it would be just barren rock.' 'Dat's what it is like up at der battle place,' said Detritus, spray glistening on his skin. `My dad took me up dere when we were comin' to der city. He showed me dis kind o' rocky place, hit me on der head, and said, "Remember".' `Remember what?' said Sally. `He didn't say. So I just, you know, gen'rally remembered: I didn't expect this, Vimes thought. It's so ... chaotic. Oh, well, let's get clear of the cliff wall, at least. All these bloody great boulders must have got here from somewhere. Ì can smell smoke,' Angua announced after a while, as they made their way unsteadily across the debris-strewn track. `Camp fires from up the valley,' said Cheery. Èarly arrivals, I expect.' `You mean people queue up for a place in the battle?' said Vimes. `Watch this boulder, it's slippery.' Òh, yes. The fighting doesn't start until Koom Valley Day. That's tomorrow.' `Damn, I lost track. Will it affect us down here?' Bashfullsson coughed politely. Ì don't think so, commander. This area is too dangerous to fight in.' `Well, yes, I can see it would be terrible if anyone got hurt,' said Vimes, climbing over a long heap of rotting timber. `That would spoil the day for everyone.' Historical Re-creation, he thought glumly, as they picked their way across, under, over or through the boulders and insectbuzzing heaps of splintered timber, with streamlets running everywhere. Only we do it with people dressing up and running around with blunt weapons, and people selling hot dogs, and the girls all miserable because they can only dress up as wenches, wenching being the only job available to women in the olden days. But the dwarfs and the trolls ... they fight it again for real. Like, perhaps, if they fight it enough times they'll get it right? Now there was a hole in the track in front of him, half blocked with the winter's debris, but still managing to swallow a whole streamlet. It poured, foaming, into the depths. There was a booming noise, far below. When he knelt down and touched the water, it was so cold it stung. `Yes, watch out for sinkholes, commander,' said Bashfullsson. `This is limestone. Water wears it away quite quickly. We'll probably see some much bigger ones. Often they're hidden by rotting debris. Watch where you tread.' `Don't they get blocked up?' Òh, yes, sir. You've seen the size of the rocks that roll down here.' Ìt must be like a giant game of billiards!' `Something like that, I expect,' said Bashfullsson carefully. After ten minutes, Vimes sat down on a log, pulled off his helmet, took out a big red handkerchief and wiped his forehead. Ìt's getting hotter,' he said. Ànd everywhere in this bloody place looks the same- Ow!' He slapped at his wrist. `The midges can be a bit extreme, sir,' Cheery volunteered. Ìt's said that when they bite extra hard, there's a storm coming. They both looked up at the mountains. There was a yellow haze at the far end of the valley, and clouds between the peaks. Òh, good,' said Vimes. `Because it feels like that bite went to the bone.' Ì wouldn't worry too much, commander,' said Cheery. `The big Koom Valley storm was a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.' Ìt certainly is a lifetime if you were caught in it,' said Vimes. `This damn place is getting to me, I don't mind admitting it.' By now the rest of the squad had caught up. Sally and Detritus were visibly suffering from the heat. The vampire sat down in the shade of a big rock without saying anything. Brick lay down by the icy stream and stuck his head in it. Ì'm afraid I'm not much help here, sir,' said Angua. Ì can smell dwarf, but that's about it. There's just too much damn water everywhere!' `Maybe we won't need your nose,' said Vimes. He unslung the tube that contained Sybil's sketch, unrolled the drawing and pinned the ends together. `Give me a hand with this, will you, Cheery?' he said. Èveryone else, get some rest. And don't laugh.' He lowered the circlet of mountains over his head. There was a cough from Angua, which he pretended to ignore. Òkay,' said Vimes, turning the stiff paper to get the mountains lined up just above their pencilled outlines. `That's Copperhead over there and Cori Celesti over there ... and they line up pretty well against the drawing. We're practically on top of it already!' `Not really, commander,' said Bashfullsson, behind him. `They're both almost four hundred miles away. They'd look pretty much the same from anywhere in this part of the valley. You need to look at the nearer peaks.' Vimes turned. Òkay. What's that one that looks really sheer on the left-hand side?' `That is The King, sir,' said Cheery. `He's about ten miles away.' `Really? He looks closer. . Vimes found the mountain on the drawing. Ànd that small one over there?' he said. `The one with two peaks?' Ì don't know the name, sir, but I can see the one you mean.' `They're too small and too close together. .: Vimes muttered. `Then walk towards them, sir. Mind where you're putting your feet. Only tread on bare rock. Keep off any pile of debris. The grag is right. It could be over an old sinkhole and you might drop right through.' Ò-kay. About halfway between them is that funny-shaped little outcrop. I'll head directly for it. You watch where I'm putting my feet too, will you?' Trying to keep the paper level, stumbling on rocks and splashing through icy rivulets, Vimes walked the lonesome valley.. . `Damn and blast!' `Sir?' Vimes peered over the top of his ring of paper. Ì've lost The King. That damn great ridge of boulders is in the way. Hold on ... I can see that mountain with the chunk taken out of it. . It looked so simple. It would have been simple if Koom Valley had been flat and not littered with rubbish like the ten-pin bowling alley of the gods. In some places they had to backtrack because a rampart of tangled, stinking, gnat-infested timber blocked the way. Or the barrier was a wall of rocks the length of a street. Or a wide, mist-filled, thundering cauldron of white water that elsewhere would have a name like The Devil's Cauldron but here was nameless because this was Koom Valley and for Koom Valley there just weren't enough devils and they didn't have enough cauldrons. And the flies stung and the sun shone and the rotting wood and damp air and lack of wind created a sticky, swamp-like miasma that seemed to weaken the muscles. No wonder they fought at the other end of the valley, Vimes thought. There was air and wind up there. At least you'd be comfortable. Sometimes they'd come out into a clear stretch that looked like the scene that Methodia Rascal had painted, but the nearby mountains didn't quite match up, and it was off again into the maze. You had to detour, and then detour around the detour. At last Vimes sat down on a bleached, crumbling log and put the paper aside. `We must've missed it,' he said, panting. Òr Rascal didn't get the mountains quite right. Or maybe even a slice of mountain fell off in the last hundred years. It could have happened. We could be twenty feet away from whatever it is we're looking for and still miss it.' He slapped a gnat off his wrist. `Cheer up, sir, I think we're fairly close,' said Cheery. `Why? What makes you think that?' said Vimes, wiping his brow. `Because I think you may be sitting on the painting, sir. It's very dirty, but that looks like rolled-up canvas to me.' Vimes stood up quickly and inspected the log. One corner of what he'd taken to be yellow-grey bark peeled back to reveal paint on the other side. Ànd those timbers over there-' Cheery began, but stopped because Vimes had raised a finger to his lips. There were indeed some long thin pine saplings lying near by, stripped of all branches. They would have gone unnoticed if it weren't for the presence of the rolled-up painting. They did just what we did, Vimes thought. It was probably easier, if they had enough dwarfs to hold up the painting; the mountains would be properly coloured, not just pencil lines, and it would be more accurate on the bigger canvas. They could take their time, too. They thought they were well ahead of me. All they were worried about was some bloody mystic symbol. He drew his sword and beckoned Cheery to follow him. There's not just dark dwarfs here, then, he thought, creeping around the nearby rocks. They wouldn't have stood out here in daylight. So let's see how many stayed on guard ... None, as it turned out. It was something of an anticlimax. Beyond the rocks was the spot that X would have marked, if there had been an X. They must have been really confident, Vimes realized. By the look of it, they'd moved tons of rock and stricken timber, and there were the crowbars to prove it. Right now would be a really good time for Angua and the others to catch us up, he decided. In front of them was a hole about six feet wide. A steel bar had been laid across it, bedded into two freshly chiselled grooves, and from the bar a stout rope disappeared into the depths. From far below came the thunder of dark waters. `Mr Rascal must've been a brave man to stand here,' said Vimes. Ì expect it was a plugged hole a hundred years ago,' said Cheery. Ì'll tell you what,' said Vimes, kicking a pebble into the dark. `Pretend I'm a city man who doesn't know a bloody thing about caves, why don't you?' Ìt's what you get when a hole gets blocked, sir,' said Cheery patiently. 'Mr Rascal probably just had to climb down on to a plug of debris.' This is the place. So ... this is where he found the talking cube, Vimes thought. Ignoring Cheery's protests, because he was the commander around here, he swung down on to the rope and lowered himself a few feet. There, tucked under the lip of the hole, a stubby piece of iron was rusted into the rock. A few links of equally rusted chain hung from it. It sang in its chains ... `There was a note about the thing being in chains,' he said. `Well, there's some chain here, and what could be the stub of a knife!' `Dwarf steel, sir!' said Cheery reproachfully. Ìt does last.' Ìt could last all that time?' Òh yes. I expect the sink became a fountain for a while after Rascal's day, and forced the blockage out. That sort of thing happens all the time in Koom Va- Er, what are you doing, sir?' Vimes was staring down into the darkness. Below, unseen, dark waters churned. So ... the messenger climbed up this hole, he thought. Where to hide the cube safely? There could be trolls up above? But a fighting dwarf would have a dagger, certainly, and they love chains. Yes ... here would be a good place. And he'd be back soon, anyway ... Òld men climbed down this?' he said, staring down the rope into the dark. Òld dwarfs, sir. Yes. We're strong for our size. You're not going down, are you, sir?' There's a side tunnel down there ... `There must be a side tunnel down there,' said Vimes. Thunder rumbled, far up in the mountains. `But the others will be here soon, sir! Aren't you rushing things?' Don't wait for them. `No. Tell them to follow me. Look, we've lost time. I can't hang around all day.' Cheery hesitated and then pulled something out of a pouch on her belt. `Then at least take these, sir,' she said. He grabbed the little package as it fell. It was surprisingly heavy. `Waxed matches, sir, they don't get wet. And the wrapping will burn like a torch for at least four minutes. There's a small loaf of dwarf bread, too.' `Well ... thank you,' said Vimes, to the worried round shadow against the yellow sky. `Look, I'll see if there's any light down there, and if there isn't, I'll come straight back. I'm not that daft.' He let himself slide down the rope. There was a knot every couple of feet. The air was winter cold after the heat of the valley. Fine spray came up from below. There was a tunnel, well above the cauldron. He could make himself believe there was light in the distance, too. Well, he wasn't stupid. He needed to Letgo... His hands loosened their grip. He didn't even have time to swear before the water closed over him. Vimes opened his eyes. After a while, moving his arm slowly because of the pain, he found his face and checked that his eyelids were, indeed, open. Which bits of his body weren't aching? He checked. No, there seemed to be none. His ribs were carrying the melody of pain, but knees, elbows and head were all adding trills and arpeggios. Every time he shifted to ease the agony, it moved somewhere else. His head ached as if someone was hammering on his eyeballs. He groaned, and coughed up water. Gritty sand was under him. He could hear the rush of water somewhere near by, but the sand under him was merely damp. And that didn't seem right. He risked turning over, a process that extracted a considerable amount of groan. He could remember the icy water. There had been no question of swimming. All he'd been able to do was roll himself into a ball as the water threw and scraped and banged him through the bagatelle board of Koom Valley. He'd gone over an underground waterfall once, he was sure, and had managed to suck a breath before being whisked onward. And then there was depth, and pressure, and his life started to unroll before his eyes, and his last thought had been please, please, can we skip the bit with Mavis Trouncer ... And now he was here on an invisible beach, totally out of the water? But this place surely didn't have tides! So someone was somewhere in the blackness, watching him. That was it. They'd pulled him out and now they were watching him ... He opened his eyes again. Some of the pain had gone, leaving stiffness as payment. He had a feeling that time had passed. The darkness pressed in on all sides, thick as velvet. He rolled back with more groans, and this time managed to push himself on to his hands and knees. `Who's there?' he mumbled, and, very carefully, got to his feet. Being upright seemed to shake his brain into gear again. Ànyone there?' The darkness swallowed the sound. Anyway, what would he have done if something had said, `Yes!'? He drew his sword and held it out in front of him as he shuffled forward. After a dozen steps it clinked against rock. `Matches,' he mumbled. `Got matches!' He found the wax bundle and, working his clammy fingers slowly, drew out one match. Scraping the wax off the head with his thumb, he struck it against the stone. The glare hurt his eyes. Look, quick! Flowing water, smooth sand, hand- and footprints coming out of the water, one set only? Yes. Walls looked dry, small cave, darkness over there, way out ... Vimes limped towards the oval entrance as quickly as he could while the match spat and fizzed in his hand. There was a bigger cave here, so big that the blackness in it seemed to suck all the light from the match, which scorched his fingers and died. The heavy darkness closed in again, like curtains, and now he knew what the dwarfs meant. This wasn't the darkness of a hood, or a cellar, or even of their shallow little mine. He was a long way below the ground here, and the weight of all that darkness bore down on him. Now and again a drop of water went plink into some unseen pool. Vimes staggered onwards. He knew he was bleeding. He didn't know why he was walking, but he did know that he had to. Maybe he'd find daylight. Maybe he'd find a log that had been washed in here, and float his way out. He wasn't going to die, not down here in the dark, a long way from home. A lot of water was dripping in this cavern. A lot of it was going down his neck right now, but there were plinks on every side. Hah, water trickling down your neck and odd noises in the shadows ... well, that's when we find out if we've got a real copper, right? But there were no shadows here. It wasn't light enough. Perhaps that poor sod of a dwarf had wandered through here. But he had found a way out. Maybe he knew the way, maybe he had a rope, maybe he was young and limber ... and so he'd got out, dying on his feet, and tucked the treasure out of the way, and then went down the valley, walking through his grave. That's how it could take people. He remembered Mrs Oldsburton, who went mad after her baby died, cleaning everything in the house, every cup, wall, ceiling and spoon, not seeing anybody or hearing anything, just working all day and all night. Something in the head went click and you found something to do, anything, to stop yourself thinking. Best to stop thinking that the way out the dwarf had found had been the one Vimes had dropped in by, and he had no idea where that was now. Maybe he could simply jump back in the water, knowing what he was doing this time, and maybe he'd make it all the way down to the river before the turbulent currents battered him to death. Maybe he Why the hell had he let go of that rope? It had been like that little voice that whispers `Jump' when you're on a cliff edge, or `Touch the fire'. You didn't listen, of course. At least most people didn't, most of the time. Well, a voice had said `Let go, and he had ... He shuffled on, aching and bleeding, while the dark curled its tail around him. `He'll be back soon, you know,' said Sybil. Èven if it's at the very last minute.' Out in the hall, a big grandfather clock had just stopped chiming half past five. Ì'm sure he will,' said Bunty. They were bathing Young Sam. `He's never late,' Sybil went on. `He says if you're late for a good reason you'll be late for a bad one. And it's only half past five, anyway.! 'Plenty of time,' Bunty agreed. `Fred and Nobby did take the horses up to the valley, didn't they?' said Sybil. `Yes, Sybil. You watched them go,' said Bunty. She looked over Sybil's head to the gaunt figure of her husband, who was standing in the hall doorway. He shrugged hopelessly. Ònly the other day he was running up the stairs as the clocks were striking six,' said Sybil, calmly soaping Young Sam with a sponge shaped like a teddy bear. `The very last second. You wait and see.' He wanted to sleep. He'd never felt this tired before. Vimes slumped to his knees, and then fell sideways on to the sand. When he forced open his eyes he saw pale stars above him, and had once again the sensation that there was someone else present. He turned his head, wincing at the stab of pain, and saw a small but brightly lit folding chair on the sand. A robed figure was reclining in it, reading a book. A scythe was stuck in the sand beside it. A white skeletal hand turned a page. `You'll be Death, then?' said Vimes, after a while. AH, MISTER VIMES, ASTUTE AS EVER. GOT IT IN ONE, said Death, shutting the book on his finger to keep the place. Ì've seen you before.' I HAVE WALKED WITH YOU MANY TIMES, MISTER VIMES. Ànd this is it, is it?' HAS IT NEVER STRUCK YOU THAT THE CONCEPT OF A WRITTEN NARRATIVE IS SOMEWHAT STRANGE? said Death. Vimes could tell when people were trying to avoid something they really didn't want to say, and it was happening here. Ìs it?' he insisted. Ìs this it? This time I die?' COULD BE. `Could be? What sort of answer is that?' said Vimes. A VERY ACCURATE ONE. YOU SEE, YOU ARE HAVING A NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE, WHICH INESCAPABLY MEANS THAT I MUST UNDERGO A NEAR VIMES EXPERIENCE. DON'T MIND ME. CARRY ON WITH WHATEVER YOU WERE DOING. I HAVE A BOOK. Vimes rolled over on to his stomach, gritted his teeth and pushed himself on to his hands and knees again. He managed a few yards before slumping back down. He heard the sound of a chair being moved. `Shouldn't you be somewhere else?' he said. I AM, said Death, sitting down again. `But you're here!' As WELL. Death turned a page and, for a person without breath, managed a pretty good sigh. IT APPEARS THAT THE BUTLER DID IT. `Did what?' IT IS A MADE-UP STORY. VERY STRANGE. ALL ONE NEEDS DO IS TURN TO THE LAST PAGE AND THE ANSWER IS THERE. WHAT, THEREFORE, IS THE POINT OF DELIBERATEDLY NOT KNOWING? It sounded like gibberish to Vimes, so he ignored it. Some of the aches had gone, although his head still hammered. There was an empty feeling, everywhere. He just wanted to sleep. Ìs that clock right?' Ì'm afraid it is, Sybil.' Ì'll just go outside and wait for him, then. I'll have the book ready,' said Lady Sybil. `He won't let anything stop him, you know.' Ì'm sure he won't,' said Bunty. Àlthough things can be very treacherous in the lower valley at this time of-' her husband began, and was fried into silence by his wife's stare. It was six minutes to six. 'Ob oggle oog soggle!' It was a very little, watery sound, and came from somewhere in Vimes's trousers. After a few moments, enough time to recollect that he had both hands and trousers, he reached down and with a strug gle freed the Gooseberry from his pocket. The case was battered and the imp, when Vimes had got the flap open, was quite pale. 'Ob ogle soggle!' Vimes stared at it. It was a talking box. It meant something. 'Woggle soggle lob!' Slowly, Vimes tipped the box up. Water poured out of it. `You weren't listening! I was shouting and you weren't listening!' the imp whined. Ìt's five minutes to six! Read to Young Sam!' Vimes dropped the protesting box on his chest and stared up at the pale stars. `Mus' read to Young Sam,' he murmured, and shut his eyes. They snapped open again. `Got t' read to Young Sam!' The stars were moving. It wasn't the sky! How could it be the sky? This was a bloody cave, wasn't it? He rolled over and got to his feet in one movement. There were more stars now, drifting along the walls. The vurms were moving with a purpose. Overhead they had become a glowing river. Although they were flickering a little, the lights were also coming back on in Vimes's head. He peered into what was now no longer blackness but merely gloom, and gloom was like daylight after the darkness that had gone before. `Got to read to Young Sam. .: he whispered, to a cavern of giant stalactites and stalagmites, all gleaming with water, `... to read to Young Sam...' Stumbling and sliding through shallow pools, running across the occasional patch of white sand, Vimes followed the lights. Sybil tried not to look at the worried faces of her host and hostess as she crossed their hall. The minute hand on the grandfather clock was nearly on the 12, and trembling. She threw open the front door. There was no Sam there, and no one galloping down the road. The clock struck the hour. She heard someone step quietly beside her. `Would you like me to read to the young man, madam?' said Willikins. `Perhaps a man's voice would-' `No, I'll go up,' said Sybil quietly. `You wait here for my husband. He won't be long.' `Yes, madam.' `He'll probably be quite rushed.' Ì shall usher him up without delay, madam.' `He will be here, you know!' `Yes, madam.' `He will walk through walls!' Sybil climbed the stairs as the chimes ended. The clock was a wrong clock. Of course it was! Young Sam had been installed in the old nursery of the house, a rather sombre place full of greys and browns. There was a truly frightening rocking-horse, all teeth and mad glass eyes. The boy was standing up in his cot. He was smiling, but it faded into puzzlement as Sybil pulled up a chair and sat down next to him. `Daddy has asked Mummy to read to you tonight, Sam,' she announced brightly. `Won't that be fun!' Her heart did not sink. It could not. It was already as low as any heart could go. But it curled up and whimpered as she watched the little boy stare at her, at the door, at her again, and then throw back his head and scream. Vimes, half limping and half running, tripped and fell into a shallow pool. He found he'd stumbled over a dwarf. A dead one. Very dead. So dead, in fact, that the dripping water had built a small stalagmite on him, and with a film of milky stone had cemented him to the rock against which he sat. `Got to read to Young Sam,' Vimes told the shadowy helmet earnestly. A little way away, on the sand, was a dwarf's battle-axe. What was going on in Vimes's mind was not exactly coherent thought, but he could hear faint noises up ahead and an instinct as old as thought decided there was no such thing as too much cutting power. He picked it up. It was covered with no more than a thin coat of rust. There were other humps and mounds on the cavern floor which, now that he came to look at them, might all be-No time! Read book! At the end of the cavern the ground sloped up, and had been made treacherous by the dripping water. It fought back, but the axe helped. One problem at a time. Climb hill! Read book! And then the screaming started. His son, screaming. It filled his mind. They will burn ... A staircase floated in his vision, reaching endlessly upwards into darkness. The screaming came from up there. Feet slithered. The axe bit into the milky stone. Weeping and cursing, sliding at every step, Vimes struggled to the top of the slope. A new, huge cave spread out below. It was busy with dwarfs. It looked like a mine. There were four of them only a few feet away from Vimes, whose vision was full of rocking lambs. They stared at this sudden, bloody, swaying apparition, which was dreamily waving a sword in one hand and an axe in the other. They had axes, too. But the thing glared at them and asked: `Where's ... my ... cow?' They backed away. Ìs that my cow?' the creature demanded, stepping forward unsteadily. It shook its head sadly. Ìt goes, "Baaaa!ìt wept. Ìt is ... a sheep... Then it fell to its knees, clenched its teeth and turned its face upwards, like a man tortured beyond his wits, and beseeching the gods of fortune and the tempest, screamed: `That! Is!! Not!!! My!!!! Cow!!!!!' The cry echoed around the cavern and broke through mere rock, so great was the force behind it, melted mere mountains, screamed across the miles ... And in the sombre nursery Young Sam stopped crying and looked around, suddenly happy but puzzled, and said, to his despairing mother's surprise, 'Co!' The dwarfs backed away down the slope. Overhead, the vurms were still pouring in, outlining the invader against their greenwhite glow. `Where's my cow? Is that my cow?' it demanded, following them. In every part of the cavern dwarfs had stopped work. There was hesitancy in the air. This was only one man, after all, and the thought in many minds was: what is someone else going to do about this? It had not yet progressed to: what am Igoing to do about this? Besides, where was the cow? There were cows down here? Ìt goes, "Neigh!" It is a horse! That's not my cow!' Dwarfs looked at one another. Where was the horse, then? Did you hear a horse? Who else is down here? The four guards had retreated to the cavern for advice and reorientation. There were a number of deep-downers there, clustered in frantic conversation and watching the approaching man. In Vimes's strobing vision there were fluffy bunnies, too, and quacky ducks... He had dropped to his knees again, and was staring at the ground, and crying. Half a dozen shrouded dark guards stepped out from the group. One of them carried, ahead of him, a flame weapon, and advanced on the figure cautiously. The flame of its little pilot light was the brightest thing in the cave. The figure looked up, the light reflected red in its eyes, and growled: Ìs that my cow?' Then it threw the axe overarm, full at the guard. It struck the flame weapon, which exploded. Ìt goes, "Hruuugh!"' 'Hg!!' said Young Sam, as his mother hugged him and stared blankly at the wall. Burning oil fountained across the dark. Some of it splashed on Vimes's arm. He slapped at it. There was pain, intense pain, but he knew this only in the same way that he knew the moon existed. It was there, but it was a long way off and didn't affect him very much. `That's not my cow!' he said, standing up. He strode on now, over the burning oil, through red-edged smoke, past the dwarfs rolling desperately on the ground to put out the flames. He seemed to be looking for something. Two more guards ran at him. Without appearing to notice them, Vimes crouched and whirled the sword around in a circle. A little lamb rocked in front of his eyes. A dwarf with greater presence of mind than the others had found a crossbow and was taking aim when he had to stop to brush away the bats streaming past him. He raised the bow again, looked round at a noise like two slabs of meat being slapped together, and was picked up and thrown across the cave by a naked woman. An astonished miner swung his axe at the smiling girl, who vanished in a cloud of bats. There was a lot of yelling going on. Vimes paid it no attention. Dwarfs were running through the smoke. He merely slapped them aside. He had found what he was seeking. Ìs that my cow? It goes, "Mooooo!"' Picking up another fallen axe, Vimes started to run. `Yes! That's my cow!' The grags were behind a ring of guards, in a frantic huddle, but Vimes's eyes were on fire and there were flames streaming from his helmet. A dwarf holding a flame-thrower threw it down and fled. `Hooray, hooray, it's a wonderful day, for I have found my cow!' ... and perhaps that, it was said later, was what did it. Against the berserker, there is no defence. They had sworn to fight to the death, but not to this death. The slowest four guards went down to the axe and the sword, the others scattered and ran. And now Vimes paused in front of the cowering old dwarfs, raising the weapons over his head And halted, rocking like a statue Night, for ever. But within it, a city, shadowy and only real in certain ways. The entity cowered in its alley, where the mist was rising. This could not have happened! Yet it had. The streets had filled with ... things. Animals! Birds! Changing shape! Screaming and yelling! And above it all, higher than the rooftops, a lamb rocking back and forth in great slow motions, thundering over the cobbles ... And then bars had come down, slamming down, and the entity had been thrown back. But it had been so close! It had saved the creature, it was getting through, it was beginning to have control ... and now this ... In the darkness, above the rustle of the never-ending rain, it heard the sound of boots approaching. A shape appeared in the mist. It drew nearer. Water cascaded off a metal helmet and an oiled leather cloak as the figure stopped and, entirely unconcerned, cupped its hand in front of its face and lit a cigar. Then the match was dropped on the cobbles, where it hissed out, and the figure said: `What are you?' The entity stirred, like an old fish in a deep pool. It was too tired to flee. Ì am the Summoning Dark.' It was not in fact a sound, but if it had been, it would have been a hiss. `Who are you?' Ì am the Watchman.' `They would have killed his family!' The darkness lunged, and met resistance. `Think of the deaths they have caused! Who are you to stop me?' `He created me. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who watches the watchmen? Me. I watch him. Always. You will not force him to murder for you.' `What kind of human creates his own policeman?' Òne who fears the dark.' And so he should,' said the entity, with satisfaction. Ìndeed. But I think you misunderstand. I am not here to keep darkness out. I'm here to keep it in.' There was a clink of metal as the shadowy watchman lifted a dark lantern and opened its little door. Orange light cut through the blackness. `Call me ... the Guarding Dark. Imagine how strong I must be.' The Summoning Dark backed desperately into the alley, but the light followed it, burning it. And now,' said the Watchman, 'get out of town.' -and went down as a werewolf landed on his back. Angua drooled. The hair along her spine stood out like a saw blade. Her lips curled back like a wave. Her growl was from the back of a haunted cave. All together these told the brain of anything monkey-shaped that movement meant death. And that stillness, while it also meant death, didn't mean immediate, this-actualsecond death, and was there for the smart monkey option. Vimes didn't move. The growl knotted his muscles. Terror was in control. I salute you, said a thought that was not his, and he felt the sudden absence of something whose presence he had not noticed. In the blackness behind his eyes, some dark fin swished, and disappeared. He heard a whimper, and the weight on him disappeared. He rolled over and saw, fading in the middle of the air, a crude drawing of an eye with a tail. It dwindled into nothing, and the all-enveloping darkness slowly gave way to flames and the light of the vurms. Blood had been spilled; they were pouring down the walls. He felt ... A certain amount of time passed. Vimes jerked awake. Ì read it for him!' he said, mostly to reassure himself. `You did, sir,' said the voice of Angua, behind him. `Very clearly, too. We were more than two hundred yards away. Well done, sir. We thought you ought to have a rest.' `What have I done well?' said Vimes, trying to sit up. The movement filled his world with pain, but he managed a brief glimpse before slumping back. There was a lot of smoke in the cave, but there were actual torches flickering, here and there. And a great many dwarfs some distance away, some sitting down, some standing around in groups. `Why are there so many dwarfs here, sergeant?' he asked, looking up at the cavern roof. `That is, why are there so many dwarfs here that aren't actually trying to kill us?' `They're from the Low King, sir. We're their prisoners ... sort of ... er ... but not exactly. . Òf Rhys? Bugger that!' said Vimes, trying to get to his feet again. Ì saved his bloody life once!' He managed to get upright, but then the world pivoted around him and he would have fallen if Angua hadn't caught him and lowered him on to a rock. Well, at least he was sitting up now ... `Not exactly prisoners,' Angua said. `We can't go anywhere. But since we wouldn't know where to go even if we could go somewhere, it's all a bit superfluous. Sorry I'm only in a shift, sir, you know how it is. The dwarfs have promised to fetch my gear. Er ... it's all gone political, sir. The dwarf in command is a decent sort but he's way out of his depth, so he's sticking with what he knows, sir. And, er, he doesn't know a lot. Do you remember anything about what happened? You've been out for a good twenty minutes.' `Yes. There were ... woolly lambs. .. Vimes's voice trailed into silence for a while. Somehow, what he'd just said took the ring of veracity and dropped it in a deep, deep hole. `There weren't woolly lambs, right?' Ì didn't see any,' said Angua carefully. Ì did see a striding, screaming, vengeful maniac, sir. But in a good way,' she added. The internal Vimes looked at memories he didn't remember from the first time around. 'I-'he began. Èverything's ... sort of fine, sir,' said Angua quickly. `But come and see this. Bashfullsson said you ought to see everything.! 'Bashfullsson ... he's the know-it-all dwarf, right?' he said. 'Ah, it's all coming back, sir,' said Angua. `Good. He was a bit worried about that.' Vimes was steadier on his feet now, but his right arm hurt like hell and all the other pains that the day had accumulated were coming back and waving. Angua carefully led him through puddles and across rocks as slippery as wet marble until they reached a stalagmite. It was about eight feet high. It was a troll. It wasn't a rock shaped like a troll, it was a troll. They only got stonier when they died, Vimes knew, but the lines of this one had been softened by the milky rock dripped on its head. `But now look at this, sir,' said Angua, leading him on. `They were destroying them. . There was another stalagmite, lying on its side in a pool. It had been smashed off at the base. And it was ... a dwarf. Dwarfs crumble after death just like humans, but all the armour, mail, chains and heavy leather mean there's no great change to the eye of the casual observer. The flowing rock had covered it all in a glistening shroud. Vimes straightened up and looked across the cavern. Shapes loomed in the gloom, all the way to the near wall where the drip of ages had formed a perfect ivory waterfall, frozen in time. `There are more?' Àbout twenty, sir. Half of them had been smashed before you ... arrived. Look at this one over here, sir. You can just make them out. They're sitting back to back, sir.' Vimes stared at the figures under the glaze, and shook his head. A dwarf and a troll, together, cemented in rock. Ìs there anything to eat?' he said. It wasn't the most awe-inspired thing to say, but it came from the stomach, with feeling. Òur rations got lost in the excitement, sir. But the dwarfs will share theirs. They aren't unfriendly, sir. Just cautious.' `Share? They have dwarf bread?' Ì'm afraid so, sir.' Ì thought it was illegal to give that to prisoners. I think I'll wait, thanks. And now, sergeant, you can tell me about the excitement.' It hadn't exactly been an ambush; the dwarfs just caught up with them. Their captain had been given rather wide orders to follow Vimes and his party, and there had been a certain chilliness when he found that the party included two trolls. This was still Koom Valley, after all. Vimes felt a pang of sympathy for him; he'd had a simple job to do, and suddenly it was full of politics. Been there, done that, bought the singlet. Forward Grag Bashfullsson, who had a way with words. Since they were all going the same way ... And it had been a long way. The fleeing dwarfs had brought down the ceiling not far from the entrance tunnel, and a journey that had taken Vimes a few minutes had taken the pursuers the best part of a day, even with Sally scouting ahead. Angua spoke of caves even bigger than this, of vast waterfalls in the dark. Vimes said, yes, he knew. Then the words of Where's My Cow? had boomed under Koom Valley, shaking the rock of ages and making the stalactites hum in sympathy, and the rest had been a matter of running ... Ì can remember reading to Young Sam,' said Vimes slowly. `But there were these ... strange pictures in my head.' He stopped. All that anger, all that red-hot rage, had flowed out of him in a torrent, without thought. Ì killed those damn soldiers. . `Most of them, sir,' said Angua cheerfully. Ànd there's a couple of miners who got in the way who'll be aching for months.' It was all coming back to Vimes now. He wished it wasn't. There was always a part of the human brain that objected to fighting dwarfs. They were child-sized. Oh, they were also at least as strong as a human, and more resilient, and would take any advantage in a fight, and if you were lucky you learned to overcome that prejudice before you were hacked off at the knees, but it was always there ... Ì remember those old dwarfs,' he said. `They were cowering like little maggots. I wanted to smash them. . `You resisted for almost four seconds, sir, and then I brought you down,' said Angua. Ànd that was a good thing, was it?' said Vimes. Òh, yes. It's why you're still here, commander,' said Bashfullsson, appearing from behind a stalagmite. Ì'm glad to see you up and about again. This is an historic day! And you still have a soul, it appears! Isn't that nice?' `Now you listen to me-' Vimes began. `No, you listen to me, commander. Yes, I knew you'd come to Koom Valley, because the Summoning Dark would come here. It needed you to bring it. No, listen to me, because we don't have much time. The Summoning Dark symbol commands an entity as old as the universe. But it has no real body and very little physical strength; it can cover a million dimensions in the blink of an eye but could barely make it across a room. It works through living creatures, especially ones it finds ... amenable. It found you, commander, a cauldron of anger, and in small subtle ways it saw that you got it to this place.' Ì believe him, sir,' said Angua quickly. Ìt was the one called up as a curse by one of the miners. Remember? The one who drew the sign in his own blood? On a locked door? And you-' `There was a door that stung when I touched it, I remember...' said Vimes. Àre you telling me that behind that door he- Oh, no . . `He was already dead by then, sir, I'm positive about that,' said Angua quickly. `We couldn't have saved him.' 'Helmclever said-' Vimes began, and Bashfullsson must have seen the panic rising in his eyes, because he grabbed both Vimes's hands and spoke fast and urgently: `No! You didn't kill him! You didn't even touch him! You were afraid that if you did I'd say you'd used force, remember?' `He dropped dead! How much force is that?' Vimes shouted. His voice echoed, and heads turned all across the cavern. `There was the symbol, wasn't there?' Ìt's true that the ... creature tends to leave a, a signature on events, but you would have had to touch him! You did not! You did not raise a hand! I think you would have resisted even then! Resisted and won! Do you hear me? Calm down. Calm down. He died of fear and guilt. You must realize that.' `What reason did he have to feel guilty?' Èvery reason, for a dwarf. That mine bore down so heavily on him.' The grag turned to Angua. `Sergeant, could you get the commander some water? It's as pure in these pools as anywhere in the world. Well, it is if you pick one without a body floating in it.' 'Y'know, you could have avoided that last sentence,' said Vimes. He sat down on a rock. He could feel himself shaking. Ànd then I got the damn thing here?' he managed. `Yes, commander. And it got you here too, I suspect. Cheery says she saw you drop into churning water half a mile from where we are now. Even a champion swimmer wouldn't have survived that.' Ì woke up on a beach-' Ìt got you there. It swam your body for you.' `But I was all knocked about!' Òh, it wasn't your friend, commander. It needed to get you here in one piece. It didn't have to be a good-looking piece. And then ... you disappointed it, commander. You disappointed it. Or, perhaps, impressed it. It's hard to tell. You wouldn't strike the helpless, you see. You resisted. I had the sergeant here bring you down because I was frightened that the struggle inside would rip your tendons from your bones.' `They were just frightened old men. . Ànd so it appears to have let you go,' said the dwarf. Ì wonder why? Historically, anyone subject to the Summoning Dark dies insane.' Vimes reached up and took a mug of water from Angua. It was teeth-achingly cold and the best drink he'd ever tasted. And his mind worked fast, flying in emergency supplies of common sense, as human minds do, to construct a huge anchor in sanity and prove that what had happened hadn't really happened and, if it had happened, hadn't happened much. It was all mystic, that's what it was. Oh, it might all be true, but how could you ever tell? You had to stick to the things you can see. And you had to keep reminding yourself of that, too. Yeah, that was it. What had really happened, eh? A few signs? Well, anything can look like you want it to if you're wound up enough, yes? A sheep can look like a cow, right? Ha! As for the rest, well, Bashfullsson seemed a decent lad, but you didn't have to buy into his world view. Same with Mr Shine. That sort of thing could spook you. He'd been wound up about Young Sam, and when he'd seen those devil guards of course he'd gone for them. He hadn't been getting much sleep lately. It seemed like every hour brought some new problem. The mind played funny tricks. Surviving the underground river? Easy. He must have kept himself afloat. There were a lot of things the body would rather do than die. There. .. some logical thought, and the mystic becomes ... well, straightforward. You can stop feeling like some puppet and become a man with a purpose once again. He put down the empty mug and stood up - purposefully. Ì'm going to see how my men are,' he announced. Ì'll come with you,' said Bashfullsson quickly. Ì think I need no assistance,' lied Vimes, as coolly as he could. Ì'm sure you do not,' said the dwarf. `But Captain Gud is a little nervous.' `He'll be a lot nervous if I don't like what I see,' said Vimes. `Yes. That's why I'm coming with you,' said Bashfullsson. Vimes set off across the cavern a little faster than he felt was comfortable. The grag kept up by skipping at every other step. `Don't think you know me, Mr Bashfullsson,' Vimes growled. `Don't think I took pity on those bastards. Don't think I was merciful. You just don't kill the helpless. You just don't.' `The dark guards seemed to have no trouble with the prospect,' said Bashfullsson. Èxactly!' said Vimes. `By the way, Mr Bashfullsson, what kind of dwarf doesn't carry an axe?' `Well, as a grag, my first resort, of course, is to my voice,' said the grag. `The axe is nothing without the hand, and the hand is nothing without the mind. I've trained myself to think about axes.' `Sounds mystical to me,' said Vimes. Ì suppose it would,' said Bashfullsson. Àh, here we are.' Here was the area that the newly arrived dwarfs had occupied. Very military, Vimes thought. A defensive square. You're not sure who your enemies are. And neither am I. The nearest dwarf regarded him with that slightly defiant, slightly uneasy look he'd come to recognize. Captain Gud straightened up. Vimes looked over the dwarf's shoulder, which was not hard to do. There were Nobby and Fred Colon, and both of the trolls, and even Cheery, all sitting in a huddle. Àre my men under arrest, captain?' he said. `My orders are to detain everyone found here,' said the captain. Vimes admired the flatness of the response. It meant: I am not interested in a dialogue at this time. `What is your authority here, captain?' he said. `My authority comes threefold: the Low King, mining law and sixty armed dwarfs,' said Gud. Bugger, thought Vimes. I forgot about mining law. This is a problem. I think I need to delegate. A good commander learns to delegate. Therefore I will delegate this problem to Captain Gud. `That was a good answer, captain,' he said, ànd I respect it.' In one movement he pushed past and headed for the watchmen. He stopped dead when he heard the sound of drawn metal behind him, raised his hands, and said, `Grag Bashfullsson, will you explain matters to the captain? I have stepped into his custody, not out of it. And this is not the time or place for rash action.' He walked on without waiting for a reply. Admittedly, banking on the fact that someone would get into trouble if they killed you would probably come under the heading of rash action, but he'd just have to live with that. Or, of course, not. He hunkered down by Nobby and Colon. `Sorry about this, Mister Vimes,' said Fred. `We were waiting on the path with some horses and they just turned up. We showed 'em our badges but they just did not want to know.' Ùnderstood. And you, Cheery?' Ì thought it'd be best to stay together, sir,' said Cheery earnestly. `Right. And you, Detr-' Vimes looked down, and felt the bile rise. Brick and Detritus both had chains on their legs. `You let them shackle you?' he said. `Well, it seemed to be gettin' all poll-itical, Mister Vimes,' said Detritus. `But say der word and me an' Brick can have 'em off, no trouble. Dey're only field chains. My granny could've bust out of 'em.' Vimes felt the anger rising, but put a lid on it. Right now, Detritus was being rather more sensible than his boss. `Don't do that, not until I say so, he said. `Where are the grags?' `They're guarding them in another cave, sir,' said Cheery. Ànd the miners. Sir, they said the Low King is on his way!' `Good job it's a big cave, otherwise it'd be getting crowded,' said Vimes. He walked back to the captain and bent down. `You chained up my sergeant?' he said. `He's a troll. This is Koom Valley,' said the captain flatly. Èxcept even I could bust out of chains that thin,' said Vimes. He glanced up. Sally and Angua had regained their amour propre in their proper armour, and were watching Vimes carefully. `Those two officers are a vampire and a werewolf,' he said, still in the same level voice. Ì know you know this, and you very wisely didn't try to lay a finger on them. And Bashfullsson's a grag. But you put my sergeant in weak chains that he could snap with a finger so's you could kill him and say he was trying to escape. Don't even think about denying it. I know a dirty trick when I see one. Shall I tell you what I'm going to do? I'm going to give you a chance to show brotherly love and let the trolls out, right now. And the others. Otherwise, unless you kill me, I'll poison your future career to the very best of my ability. And don't you dare kill me.' The captain eyeballed him, but it was a game Vimes had mastered a long time ago. Then the dwarf's gaze fell on Vimes's arm and he gave a groan and took a step back, raising his hand protectively. `Yes! I'll do it! Yes!' `See you do,' said Vimes, taken aback. Then he too looked down at the inside of his wrist. `What the hell is this?' he said, turning to Bashfullsson. Àh, it left its mark on you, commander,' said the grag cheerfully. Àn exit wound, perhaps?' On the soft underskin of Vimes's wrist, the sign of the Summoning Dark blazed as a livid scar. Vimes turned his arm this way and that. Ìt was real?' he said. `Yes. But it has gone, I'm sure. There's a difference in you.' Vimes rubbed the symbol. It didn't hurt; it was simply raised, reddened skin. Ìt's not going to come back, is it?' he said. Ì doubt it'll risk it, sir!' said Angua. Vimes had opened his mouth to ask her what she meant by that piece of sarcasm when yet more dwarfs trotted into the cavern. These were the tallest and broadest he'd seen. Unlike most dwarfs they wore simple mail shirts and carried one axe: one good, large and beautifully balanced axe. Other dwarfs bristled with up to a dozen weapons. These dwarfs bristled with one each, and they separated and spread out into the cavern with a purpose, covering lines of sight, guarding shadows and, in the case of four of them, taking up station behind Detritus and Brick. When they finally clattered to a halt another group stepped out of the tunnel. Vimes recognized Rhys, Low King of the Dwarfs. He stopped, looked around, glanced briefly at Vimes, and summoned the captain to him. `We have everything?' `Sire?' said Gud nervously. `You know what I mean, captain!' `Yes, but we found nothing on any of them, sire! We searched them, and we've gone over the floor three times!' Èxcuse me?' said Vimes. `Commander Vimes!' said the King, turning and greeting Vimes like a long-lost son. Ìt is good to see you!' `You've lost the bloody cube?' said Vimes. Àfter all this?' `What cube would this be, commander?' said the King. Vimes had to admire his acting ability, at least. `The one you're looking for,' he said. `The one dug up in my city. The one all this fuss is about. They wouldn't throw it away because they're grags, right? You can't destroy words. It's the worst crime there is. So they'd keep it with them.' The Low King looked at Captain Gud, who swallowed. Ìt's not in this cave,' he muttered. `They wouldn't leave it anywhere else,' said Vimes. `Not now! Someone might find it!' The luckless captain turned to his king, seeking help there. `There was panic everywhere when we arrived, sire!' he protested. `People running and screaming, fires everywhere! Complete chaos, sire! All we can be sure of is that no one got out! And we searched them all, sire. We searched them all!' Vimes shut his eyes. Memories were fading fast as common sense walled up all those things that could not have happened, but he recalled the panicking grags, hunched over something. Had there been just a twinkle of blue and green specks? Time for a long shot ... `Corporal Nobbs, come here!' he said. `Let him through, captain. I insist!' Gud didn't protest. His spirit was broken. A reluctant Nobby was produced. `Yes, Mister Vimes?' he said. `Corporal Nobbs, did you obtain that precious thing I asked you to acquire?' said Vimes. Èr, what would that be, sir?' said Nobby. Vimes's heart leapt. Nobby's face was an open book, albeit the kind that got banned in some countries. `Nobby, there are times when I'll put up with you mucking about. This isn't one,' he said. `Did you find the thing I asked you to look for?' Nobby looked into his eyes. Ì ... Oh? Oh. Oh, yes, sir,' he said. Ì ... yes ... we rushed in, you see, you see, you see, and people were running everywhere and there was, like, smoke. .: Nobby's face glazed and his lips moved soundlessly in an agony of creation,'. . . an, an' I was bravely fightin' when what did I see but a sparkly thing rollin' and bein' kicked about, an' I thought, I jus' bet that's the very same sparkly thing Mister Vimes very specific'ly told me to be lookin' out for ... an' here it is, all safe . . He pulled a small, gently glittering cube from his pocket and held it out. Vimes was faster than the King. His hand shot forward, closed over the cube, and was locked in a fist in the skin of a second. `Well done, Corporal Nobbs, for obeying my orders so concisely,' he said, and stifled a grin at Nobby's impeccably dreadful salute. Ì believe that is dwarf property, Commander Vimes,' said the King calmly. Vimes opened his hand, palm up. The cube, only a couple of inches across, gave off little blue and green glints. The metal looked like bronze that had been corroded by time into a beautiful pattern of greens, blues and browns. It was a jewel. He's a king, thought Vimes. A king on a throne as wobbly as a rocking-horse. And he's not nice. It's not a job where the nice last long. He even got a spy into my Watch! I will not put my faith in kings. Right now, who do I trust? Me. One thing I do know is that no damn demon got inside my head, no matter what they say. I wouldn't buy that even if they threw in a lifetime supply of cabbage! No one gets into my head but me! But you play the hand you're dealt ... `Take it,' he said, opening his hand. On his wrist, the Summoning Dark glowed. Ì ask you to give it to me, commander,' said Rhys. `Take it,' Vimes repeated. And he thought: Let's see what you believe, shall we? The King reached out, hesitated, and then slowly withdrew his hand. Òr, perhaps,' he said, as if the thought had just occurred to him, ìt might be best to leave it in your celebrated custody, Commander Vimes.' `Yes. I want to hear what it has to say,' said Vimes, closing his fist again. Ì want to know what was too dangerous to know.' Ìndeed, so do I,' said the king of the dwarfs. `We will take it to a place that can-' `Look around you, sire!' snapped Vimes. `Dwarfs and trolls died here! They weren't fighting, they were standing together! Look around you, the place looks like a godsdamn game board! Was this their testament? Then we listen to it here! In this place! At this time!' Ànd supposing what it has to say is dreadful?' said the King. `Then we listen!' Ì am the King, Vimes! You have no authority here! This is not your city! You stand here defying me with a handful of men and your wife and child not ten miles away-' Rhys stopped, and the echoes bounced back from distant caves, tumbling over themselves and dying into a silence that rang like iron. Out of the corner of his ear Vimes heard Sally say, Òops ...' Bashfullsson hurried forward and whispered something in the King's ear. The dwarf's expression changed as only a politician's face can, into careful amity. I'm not going to do a thing, Vimes told himself. I'm just going to stand here. Ì do look forward to meeting Lady Sibyl again,' said Rhys. Ànd your son, of course ...' `Good. They're staying in a house not ten miles away,' said Vimes. `Sergeant Littlebottom?' `Sir?' said Cheery. `Please take Lance-Constable Humpeding with you and go down to the town, will you? Tell Lady Sybil I'm fine,' Vimes added, not taking his eyes off the King. Òff you go, right now.' As they hurried away the King smiled, and looked around the cavern. He sighed. `Well, I cannot afford a row with Ankh-Morpork, not at the moment. Very well, commander. Do you know how to make it speak?' `No. Don't you?' This is a game, right? Vimes thought. A king wouldn't take this kind of gobbyness from anyone, especially when he outnumbered them ten to one. A row? You'd just have to say we got caught in a storm in Koom Valley, which is such a treacherous place, as everyone agrees. He will be greatly missed and we will certainly hand over his body if it ever turns up ... But you're not going to try that, are you, because you need me. You know something about this cavern, yes? And whatever's going to happen, you want good of not-sharp-but-by-gods-he's-straight Sam Vimes to tell the world ... `No two cubes are alike,' said Rhys. Ìt is usually a word, but it can be a breath, a sound, a temperature, a point in the world, the smell of rain. Anything. I understand that there are many cubes that have never spoken.' `Really?' said Vimes. `But this thing damn well gabbled. And whoever sent it out of the valley wanted it to be heard, so I doubt if it only starts talking when a virgin's tear falls on it on a warm Tuesday in February. And this one started chatting very smartly to a man who didn't know a word of dwarfish, too: `But the speaker would want dwarfs to hear it, surely!' the King protested. Ìt's a two-thousand-year-old legend! Who knows who wanted what?' said Vimes. `What do you want?' This was to Nobby, who had appeared beside him, looking with interest at the cube. `How did tha- he get past my guards?' said the King. `The Nobbs sidle,' said Vimes, and as a couple of embarrassed guards dropped heavy hands on Nobby's frail shoulders he added: `No. Leave him. Come on, Nobby, you say something to make this thing start speaking.' Èr, say something or it'll be the worse for you?' Nobby suggested. `Not a bad try,' Vimes conceded. À hundred years ago, sire, I doubt if anyone in Ankh-Morpork knew many words of dwarf or troll. Perhaps the message was intended for humans? There must have been a settlement down on the plain, with all those birds and fish to eat.' `Perhaps some more human words, then, er, Nobby?' said the King. Òkay. Open, speak, say something, talk, spill the beans, play-' `No, no, Mister Vimes, he's doing it wrong!' Fred Colon shouted. Ìt was in the olden days, right? So it'd be old words, like ... er ... openeth!' Vimes laughed as an idea struck. I wonder, he thought. It could be. This is not really about words, it's about sounds. Noises .. . Bashfullsson was watching the attempt with a puzzled expression. `What is the dwarf word for "open"; Mr Bashfullsson?' said Vimes. Ìn the sense of "open a book"? That would be "dhwe", commander.' 'Hmm. That won't do. How about... "say"?' `Why, that would be "aargk", or, in the peremptive form, "cork!", commander. You know, I don't think-' Èxcuse me!' said Vimes loudly. The babble of voices stopped. Àwk!' he said. The blue and green lights ceased their sparkle and, instead, began to move across the metal to form a pattern of blue and green squares. Ì thought the artist knew no dwarfish,' said the King. `He didn't, but he spoke fluent Chicken,' said Vimes. Ì'll explain later...' `Captain, fetch the grags,' the King snapped. `The prisoners too, even the trolls. All shall hear this!' The cube's surface seemed to be moving over Vimes's skin. Some of the green and blue squares rose slightly proud of the rest of the metal. The box began to speak. There was a crackle that sounded like dwarfish, although Vimes couldn't make out a single word. It was followed by a couple of loud knocking noises. `Second Convocation Hubland Dwarfish,' said Bashfullsson. `That would be right for the time. Whoever is speaking has just said: "Art thys thyng workyng?"' The voice spoke again. As the cracked old syllables unrolled, Bashfullsson went on: `The first thyng Tak did, he wroten hymself; the second thyng Tak did, he wroten the Laws; the thyrd thyng Tak did, he wroten the World; the fourth thyng Tak did, he wroten ay cave; the fyfth thyng Tak did, he wroten a geode, ay egge of stone; and in the gloamyn of the mouth of the cave, the geode hatched and the Brothers were born; the first Brother walked towards the light, and stood under the open sky-' `This is just the story of the Things Tak Wrote,' Cheery whispered to Vimes. Vimes shrugged, and watched as some of the bodyguards hustled the old grags into the circle, Ardent among them. Ìt's not new or anything?' Vimes said, disappointed. Èvery dwarf knows it, sir.' `-He was the first Dwarf,' Bashfullsson translated. `He found the Laws Tak had written, and he was endarkened-' The crackling voice went on and then Bashfullsson, who had his eyes closed in concentration, opened them in shock. `... uh ... Then Tak looked upon the stone and it was trying to come alive, and Tak smiled and wrote: "All things strive",' said the dwarf, raising his voice above the growing commotion around him. Ànd for the service the stone had given he fashioned it into the first Troll, and delighted in the life that came unbidden. These are the things that Tak wrote!' He was shouting now, because of the noise level. Vimes felt like an outsider. It seemed that everyone except him was arguing. Axes were being flourished. Ì WHO SPEAK TO YOU NOW AM B'HRIAN BLOODAXE, BY RIGHT OF THE SCONE THE TRUE KING OF THE DWARFS!' Bashfullsson screamed. The cave went silent, except for the echoing scream returning from distant darkness. `We were washed into the caves by the flood. We sought one another, voices in the dark. We are dying. Our bodies are broken by the terrible water with teeth ... of stone. We are too weak to climb. Water surrounds all. This testament we will entrust to young Stronginthearm, who is still nimble, in the hope that it will reach the daylight. For the story of this day must not be forgotten. This outcome was not meant! We came to sign a treaty! It was the secret, careful work of many years!' The box stopped speaking. But there were faint groans, and the rush of water somewhere. `Sire, I demand that this should not be heard!' shouted Ardent from among the grags. Ìt is nothing but lies upon lies. There is no truth in it! What proof is there that this is the voice of Bloodaxe?' Captain Gud is looking a bit uncertain, Vimes thought. The King's bodyguard? Well, they mostly looked like the stolid kind who stayed loyal and didn't pay much attention to politics. The miners? Angry and confused because the old grags are yelling. This is going to go bad really fast. `City Watch, to me!' he shouted. The background noises from the cube died and another voice started to speak. Detritus looked up quickly. 'Dat's Old Troll!' he said. Bashfullsson hesitated for a moment. `... er ... I am Diamond King of Trolls,' he said, looking desperately at Vimes. Ìndeed we came to make peace. But the mist came down upon us and when it rose some trolls and dwarfs cried Ambush! They fell to fighting and would not hear our commands. So troll fought troll, and dwarf fought dwarf, and fools made fools of all of us as we fought to stop a war, until the disgusted sky washed us away. Ànd yet we say this. Here in this cave at the end of the world peace is made between dwarf and troll and we will march beyond the hand of Death together. For the enemy is not Troll, nor is it Dwarf, but it is the baleful, the malign, the cowardly, the vessels of hatred, those who do a bad thing and call it good. Those we fought today, but the wilful fool is eternal and will say-' `This is just a trick!' Ardent shouted. `-say this is a trick,' Bashfullsson continued, ànd so we implore: come to the caves under this valley, where you will find us sharing the peace that cannot be braken.' The rumbling voice from the box stopped speaking. There was, once again, a rustle of half-heard voices, and then silence. The little squares moved about like a sliding puzzle for a moment, and sound came back. Now what issued from the box was shouts and screams, and the clash of steel ... Vimes was watching the King's face. Some of this you knew, right. Not all of it, but you didn't look surprised that it was Bloodaxe speaking. Rumours? Old stories? Something in the records? You'll never tell me. 'Had'ra,' said Bashfullsson, and the cube fell silent. `That means stop, commander,' the grag added. Ànd so we are under Koom Valley,' sneered Ardent. Ànd what do we find?' `We find you,' said Bashfullsson. `We always find you.' `Dead trolls. Dead dwarfs. And nothing more than a voice,' said Ardent. 'Ankh-Morpork here is here. They are devious. These words could have been spoken yesterday!' The King was watching Ardent and Bashfullsson. So was every other dwarf. You don't have to stand and argue! Vimes wanted to shout. Just chain the bastards up and we can sort it out later! But being a dwarf was all about words and laws ... `These are venerable grags,' said Ardent, indicating the robed figures behind him. `They have studied the Histories! They have studied the Devices! Thousands of years of knowledge stand before you. And you? What do you know?' `You came to destroy the truth,' said Bashfullsson. `You dared not trust it. A voice is just a voice, but these bodies are proof. You came here to destroy them: Ardent snatched the axe from a miner and was flourishing it before any of the bodyguards could react. When realization caught up with them, there was a massed move forward. `No!' said Bashfullsson, holding up his hands. `Sire, please! This is an argument between grags!' `Why do you carry no axe?' Ardent snarled. Ì need no axe to be a dwarf,' said Bashfullsson. `Nor do I need to hate trolls. What kind of creature defines itself by hatred?' `You strike at the very root of us!' said Ardent. Àt the root!' `Then strike back,' said Bashfullsson, holding out his empty hands. Ànd put your sword away, Commander Vimes,' he added, without turning his head. `This is dwarf business. Ardent? I'm still standing. What do you believe in? Ha'ak! Ga strak ja'ada!' Ardent jerked forward, axe raised. Bashfullsson moved quickly, there was the thud of something hitting flesh, and then a tableau as motionless as the brooding figures around the cavern. There was Ardent, axe raised overhead. There was Bashfullsson, down on one knee with his head resting almost companionably against the dwarf's chest and the edge of one hand pressed hard against Ardent's throat. Ardent's mouth opened, but all that came out was a croak and a trickle of blood. He took a few steps back, and fell over backwards. The axe struck the white, wet, stony waterfall, and smashed through the drip of millennia. Time fell in shards around it. Bashfullsson rose, looking shocked and massaging his hand. Ìt is like using an axe,' he said, to no one in particular, `but without the axe...' The uproar began again, but a dwarf, dripping with water, pushed through the mob. `Sire, there's a band of trolls coming up the valley! They asked for you! They say they want to parley!' Rhys stepped over the body of Ardent, looking intently at the hole in the waterfall of stone. Another piece fell down as he touched it. Ìs there something unusual about their leader?' he said in a preoccupied voice, still staring into the new darkness. `Yes, sire! He's all ... sparkly!' Àh. Good,' said the King. `He has his parley. Bring him down here.' `Could that be a troll who knows some very powerful dwarfs?' said Vimes. The Low King met his eyes for a moment. `Yes, I imagine it is,' he said. Then he raised his voice. `Someone fetch me a torch! Commander Vimes, could you just ... look at this, please?' In the depths of the revealed cave, something shone. On this day in 1802, the painter Methodia Rascal dropped the glittering thing in the deepest well he knew. No one would ever hear it down there. The Chicken chased him home. It would be a lot simpler, Vimes thought, if this was a story. A sword is pulled out of a stone or a magic ring is flung into the depths of the sea, and with general rejoicing the world turns. But this was real life. The world didn't turn, it just went into a spin. It was Koom Valley Day and there wasn't a battle going on in Koom Valley. But what was going on here wasn't peace, either. What was going on ... well, what was going on was committees. It was negotiation. Actually, as far as he could tell, it hadn't even got as far as negotiation yet. It hadn't got past talks about meetings about delegations. On the other hand, no one had died, except maybe of boredom. There was a lot of history to be unpicked, and, for those who weren't actually engaged in that delicate activity, there was Koom Valley to tame. Two cultural heroes were down there in the cavern, and all it needed was one good storm and a few misplaced blockages for a white flood laden with grinding boulders to wipe the whole place away. It hadn't happened yet, but sooner or later the dynamic geography would get round to it. Koom Valley couldn't be left to its own devices, not any more. Everywhere you looked there were teams of trolls and dwarfs surveying, diverting, damming and drilling. They'd been engaged in this for two days, but it would take them for ever, because every winter changed the game. Koom Valley was forcing co-operation on them. Dam Koom Valley ... Vimes thought that was a bit too pat, but nature can be like that. Sometimes you got sunsets so pink that they had no style at all. One thing that had happened fast was the tunnel. Dwarfs had cut down quickly through the soft limestone. You could stroll down into the cavern now, although in fact you'd have to queue because of the long line of trolls and dwarfs. Those in the line going down eyed one another with uncertainty at best. Those in the line coming up sometimes looked angry, or were close to tears, or just walked along looking at the ground. Once they got past the exit, they tended to form into quiet groups. Sam, with Young Sam in his arms, didn't have to queue. News had got around. He went straight in, past the trolls and dwarfs who were painstakingly reassembling the broken stalagmites (it was news to Vimes that you could do that, but apparently if you came back in five hundred years they'd be as good as new) and into what had come to be called the Kings' Cave. And there they were. You couldn't argue with it. There was the dwarf king, slumped forward across the board, glazed by the eternal drip, his beard now rock and at one with the stone, but the diamond king had remained upright in death, his skin gone cloudy, and you could still see the game in front of him. It was his move; a healthy little stalactite hung from his outstretched hand. They'd broken off small stalagmites to make the pieces, which time had now glued into immobility. The scratched lines on the stone board were more or less invisible, but Thud players from both races had already pored over it and a sketch of the Dead Kings' Game had by now appeared in the Times. The diamond king was playing the dwarf side. Apparently it could go either way. People were saying that when this was all over they'd seal the cave. Too many people in a living cave killed it in some way, the dwarfs said. And then the kings would be left in the dark to finish their game in, with luck, peace. Water dripping on a stone, changing the shape of the world one drop at a time, washing away a valley ... Yes, well, Vimes had added to himself. But it'd never be that simple. And for every new generation you'd have to open it again, so that people could see that it was true. Today, though, it was open for Sam and Young Sam, who was wearing a fetching woolly hat with a bobble on it. Brick and Sally were on duty, along with a couple of dwarfs and two more trolls, all watching the stream of visitors and one another. Vurms covered the ceiling. The game gleamed. What would Young Sam remember? Probably just the glitter. But it had to be done. The players were genuine, on that at least both sides agreed. The carvings on Diamond were accurate, the armour and jewellery on Bloodaxe were just as history recorded. Even the long loaf of dwarf bread that he carried into battle, and which could shatter a troll skull, was by his side. Dwarf scholars had, with delicacy and care and the blunting of fifteen saw blades, removed a tiny slice of it. Miraculously, it had turned out still to be as inedible now as the day it was baked. A minute was about enough for this historic moment, Vimes decided. Young Sam was at the grabbing age, and he'd never hear the end of it if his son ate an historic monument. `Can I have a word, lance-constable?' he said to Sally, as he turned to go. `The guard changes in a minute.' `Certainly, sir,' said Sally. Vimes strolled off to a corner of the cavern and waited until Nobby and Fred Colon marched in at the head of the relief. `Glad you joined, lance-constable?' he said, as she hurried up. `Very much, sir!' `Good. Shall we go up to the daylight?' She followed him up the slope and into the damp warmth of Koom Valley, where he sat down on a boulder. He looked at her while Young Sam played at his feet. He said: Ìs there anything you'd like to say to me, lance-constable?' `Should there be, sir?' Ì can't prove anything, of course,' said Vimes. `But you are an agent of the Low King, aren't you? You've been spying on me.' He waited while she considered the options. Swallows swooped overhead in squadrons. Ì, er, wouldn't put it quite like that, sir,' she said eventually. Ì was keeping an eye on Hamcrusher and I'd heard about the mining, and then when it all started to heat up-' `-becoming a watchman seemed a good idea, right? Did the League know?' `No! Look, sir, I wasn't spying on you-' `You told him I was headed for Koom Valley. And the night we arrived, you went for a little fly-around. Just stretching your wings?' `Look, this isn't my life!' said Sally. Ì'd joined the new force in Bonk. We're trying to make a difference up there! I did want to come to Ankh-Morpork anyway, because, well, we all want to. To learn, you know? How you manage to do it? Everyone speaks highly of you! And then the Low King summoned me and I thought, where's the harm? Hamcrusher has caused trouble up there, too. Er ... I never actually told you a lie, sir.' `Rhys already knew about the Secret, right?' said Vimes. `No, sir, not as such. But I think he had some reason to suspect there was something down there.' `Then why didn't he just go and look?' `Dwarfs digging around in Koom Valley? The trolls would, er, go spare, sir.' `But not if the dwarfs were merely investigating why a copper from AnkhMorpork was chasing some fleeing criminals into the caves, right? Not if the copper was good ol Sam Vimes, who everyone knows is as straight as an arrow even if he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer. You can't bribe Sam Vimes, but why bother when you can pull the wool over his eyes?' `Look, sir, I know how you must feel, but ... well, there's your little boy there, playing in Koom Valley, with trolls and dwarfs all round, and they're not fighting. Right? I didn't lie, I just ... liaised a little. Wasn't it worth it, sir? Hah, you really worried them when you went to the wizards! Shine hadn't left the city! Rhys had to fly him in by night! All they really did was follow your lead. The only person who fooled you was me, and it turns out I wasn't very good at it. They needed you, sir. Look around and say it wasn't worth it A hundred yards away, a house-sized rock rumbled across the stone, pushed and steered by a dozen trolls, dropped into a sinkhole and blocked it like an egg in a cup. There was a cheer. `Can I mention something else, sir?' said Sally. Ì do know Angua is standing behind me.' Ìt's Sergeant Angua to you,' said Angua, by her ear. `You didn't fool me, either. I told you we didn't like snitches in the Watch. But for what it's worth, sir, she smells like she's telling the truth.' `Do you still have a route to the Low King?' said Vimes. `Yes, and I'm sure he'll-' Sally began quickly. `These are my demands. The grags and what's left of their guards are coming back to Ankh-Morpork with me. That includes Ardent, though I'm told it'll be weeks before he can talk again. They're going before Vetinari. I've got promises to keep, and no one is going to stop me. It'll be tough to make any big charges stick, but I'm bloody well going to try. And since I'll bet my dinner that Vetinari is in on all this, I expect he'll pack 'em off back to Rhys in any case. I imagine he's got a cell that's deep enough for comfort. Understood?' `Yes, sir. And the other demands?' `The same as that one, repeated in a louder voice,' said Vimes. Ùnderstood?' Àbsolutely, sir. Then I'll resign, of course,' said Sally. Vimes's eyes narrowed. `You'll resign when I tell you to, lance-constable! You took the King's Shilling, remember? And made an oath. Go and liaise!' `You're going to keep her?' said Angua, watching the vampire disappear into the distance. `You said yourself she's a good copper. We'll see. Oh, don't make that face, sergeant. It's all the rage in politics these days, spying on your friends. That's what I'm told. Like she said: look around.' `This is a bit unlike you, sir,' said Angua, giving him a look of concern. `Yes, it is, isn't it?' said Vimes. Ì had a nice sleep last night. It's a nice day. No one is actively trying to kill me, which is nice. Thank you, sergeant. Have a nice evening.' Vimes carried Young Sam back in late afternoon light. Just as well the girl had been working for Rhys. Things might have been a bit tricky otherwise. That was the plain fact of it. Keep her on? Maybe. She'd been very useful, even Angua admitted. Besides, he'd been practically forced to take on a spy, in times of more-or-less war! If he played that right, no one would ever again dictate to him who he took on in the Watch. Doreen Winkings could rattle her false canines as much as she liked! Hmm ... was this how Vetinari thought all the time? He heard his name being called. A coach was coming across the rock, and Sybil was waving from the window. That was another step forward; even wagons could get up here now. `You haven't forgotten the dinner tonight, have you?' she said, a hint of suspicion in her voice. `No, dear.' Vimes hadn't, but he'd hoped that it might evaporate if he didn't think about it. It was going to be Official, with both kings and lots of important lesser kings and clan leaders. And the Special Envoy from Ankh-Morpork, unfortunately. That would be Sam Vimes, scrubbed up. At least there weren't going to be tights and plumes. Even Sybil hadn't been that farsighted. Regrettably, though, the town had a decent tailor who had been very keen to use all that gold braid he'd bought by accident a couple of years ago. 'Willikins will have a bath run by the time we get back,' said Sybil, as the coach moved away. `Yes, dear,' said Vimes. `Don't look so glum! You'll be upholding the honour of AnkhMorpork, remember!' `Really, dear? What shall I do with the other hand?' said Vimes, settling back into the seat. Òh, Sam! Tonight you'll walk with kings!' I'd sooner be walking all by myself along Treacle Mine Road at three in the morning, Vimes thought. In the rain, with the gutters gushing. But it was a wife thing. She took such a ... a pride in him. He could never work out why. He looked down at his arm. He'd sorted that out, at least. Exit wound indeed! It was just the way the burning oil had splashed on his skin. It might look a bit like that damn symbol, enough to put the wind up the dwarfs, but no floaty eyeball was going to get past him. Common sense and facts, that's what worked! After a while it dawned on him that they weren't going into the town. They'd gone down almost as far as the lakes, but now they were heading back up on the cliff path. He could see the valley below them, opening out. The kings were working their subjects hard, on the basis that tired warriors are less keen to fight. Teams swarmed over the rock like ants. Maybe there was a plan. There probably was. But the mountains would sneer at it every winter. You'd have to have squads here all the time, you'd need to scout the mountainsides to find and smash the big boulders before they caused trouble. Remember Koom Valley! Because, if you don't, your history is ... history. And maybe, behind the thunder and in the roar of the waters flowing underground, you'll hear the laughter of dead kings. The coach came to a halt. Sybil opened the door. `Get down, Sam Vimes,' she said. `No arguing. It's time for your portrait.' Òut here? But it's-' Vimes began. `Good afternoon, commander,' said Otto Chriek cheerfully, appearing at the doorway. Ì haf set up a bench and zer light is just right for colour!' Vimes had to agree that it was. Thunder light made the mountains gleam like gold. In the middle distance, the Tears of the King fell in a line of glittering silver. Brightly coloured birds skimmed through the air. And all the way up the valley there were rainbows. Koom Valley, on Koom Valley Day. He'd had to be there. Ìf her ladyship vill be seated viz zer little boy on her lap and you, commander, standink with your hand on her shoulder ... ?' He bustled around his big black iconograph. `He's up here taking pictures for the Times,' Sybil whispered. Ànd I thought, well, it's now or never. Portraiture must move on.' `How long is this going to take?' said Vimes. Òh, about a fraction of a second, commander,' said Otto. Vimes brightened up. This was more like it. Of course, it never is. But it was a warm afternoon, and Vimes still felt good. They sat and stared with those fixed grins people wear when they're wondering why a fraction of a second takes half an hour, while Otto tried to get the universe sorted out to his satisfaction. 'Havelock will be wondering how to reward you, you know,' murmured Sybil, as the vampire fussed around. `He can go on wondering,' said Vimes. Ì've everything I want.' He smiled. Click! `Sixty new officers?' said Lord Vetinari. `The price of peace, sir,' said Captain Carrot earnestly. Ì'm sure that Commander Vimes wouldn't settle for anything less. We are really stretched.' `Sixty men - and dwarfs and trolls, obviously - is more than a third of your current complement,' said the Patrician, tapping his walking stick on the cobbles. `Peace comes with a rather large bill, captain.' Ànd a few dividends, sir,' Carrot said. They looked up at the circle-and-bar symbol over the door of the mine, just above the yellow and black rope used by the Watch to warn off intruders. `The mine falls to us by default?' said Vetinari. Àpparently, sir. I believe the term is "eminent domain".' Àh, yes. That means naked theft by the government,' said Vetinari. `But the grags bought the freehold, sir. They're hardly going to contest it now.' `Quite. And the dwarfs really can make watertight tunnels?' Òh, yes. The trick is almost as old as mining. Would you care to step inside? I'm afraid the elevator is not working at the moment, though.' Lord Vetinari inspected the rails and the little carts the dwarfs had used to shift spoil. He felt the dry walls. He went back upstairs and frowned as a one-ton slab of iron came through the wall, whirled past his face, passed through the opposite wall and buried itself in the street outside. Ànd was that supposed to happen?' he said, brushing plaster dust off his robe. An excited voice behind him shouted: `The torque! It's impossible! Amazing!' A figure climbed through the wall, holding something in one hand. He rushed up to Captain Carrot, vibrating with excitement. Ìt spins once every 6.9 seconds but the torque is immense! It broke the clamp! What powers it?' `No one seems to know,' said Carrot. Ìn Uberwald-' Èxcuse me, what is this about?' said Lord Vetinari, holding out a hand imperiously. The man glanced at him and then turned to Carrot. `Who's this?' he said. `Lord Vetinari, ruler of the city, may I present Mr Pony of the Artificers' Guild?' said Carrot quickly. `Please let his lordship see the Axle, Mr Pony.' `Thank you,' said Vetinari. He took the thing, which looked very like two cubes, each about six inches on a side, joined together on one face, like a pair of dice joined at the sixes. In relation to the other, one turned - very, very slowly. Òh,' he said flatly. À mechanism. How nice.' `Nice?' said Pony. `Don't you understand? It won't stop turning.' Carrot and Pony looked expectantly at the Patrician, who said: Ànd that's a good thing, is it?' Carrot coughed. `Yes, sir. One of these drives one of the biggest mines in Uberwald. All the pumps, the fans that move the air, the trucks that haul the ore, the bellows for the forges, the elevators ... everything. Just one of those. It's another type of Device, like the cubes. We don't know how they're made, they're very rare, but the other three I've heard of have not stopped working for hundreds of years. They don't use fuel, they don't need anything. They appear to be millions of years old. No one knows what made them. They just turn.' `How interesting,' said Vetinari. `Hauling trucks? Underground, you say?' Òh, yes,' said Carrot. Èven with miners in.' Ì shall give this some thought,' said Vetinari, avoiding Mr Pony's outstretched hand. Ànd what could we make it do in this city?' He and Carrot turned questioning faces to Mr Pony, who shrugged and said, Èverything?' Plink! went a drop of water on to the head of the very, very late King Bloodaxe. `How long are we going to have to do this, sarge?' said Nobby, as they watched the line of visitors shuffle past the dead kings. `Mister Vimes has sent for another squad from home,' said Fred Colon, shifting from one foot to the other. It seemed quite warm when you first came into the cave, but after a while the clamminess could get a man down. He reflected that Nobby wasn't affected by this, being blessed by Nature with natural clammy. Ìt's starting to give me the creeps, sarge,' said Nobby, indicating the kings. Ìf that hand moves, I'm going to scream.' `Think of it as Being There, Nobby.' Ì've always been somewhere, sarge: `Yeah, but when they comes to write the history books they'll-' Fred Colon paused for thought. He had to admit, they probably wouldn't mention him and Nobby. `Well, your Tawneee will be proud of you, anyway.' Ì think that's not to be, sarge,' said Nobby sadly. `She's a nice girl, but I think I'm goin' to have to let her down lightly.' `Surely not!' "fraid so, sarge. She cooked me dinner the other day. She tried to make Distressed Pudding like my ol mum used to make.' Plink! Fred Colon smiled all the way from his stomach. Àh, yes. No one could distress a pudding like your ol mum, Nobby.' Ìt was awful, Fred,' said Nobby, hanging his head. Às for her Slumpie, well, I do not wish to go there. She is not a girl who knows her way around a stove.' `She's more of a pole person, Nobby, that is true.' Èxactly. An' I thought, ol Hammerhead, well, you might never be sure which way she was lookin; but her buttered clams, well ... He sighed. `There's a thought to keep a man warm on a cold night,' Fred agreed. Àn, y'know, these days, when she hits me with a wet fish, it doesn't sting like it used to,' Nobby went on. Ì think we are reaching an understanding.' Plink! `She can crack a lobster with her fist,' Colon observed. `That's a very portable talent.' `So I was thinking of speaking to Angua,' said Nobby. `She might give me a few hints on how to let Tawneee down gently.' `That's a good idea, Nobby,' said Fred. `No touchin, sir, otherwise I shall have to cut yer fingers orf.' This was said, in a friendly tone of voice, to a dwarf who'd been reaching in awe towards the board. `But we'll still be friends, of course,' said Nobby, as the dwarf backed away. `So long as I can get into the Pink PussyCat Club for free, anyway, I'll always be there if she needs a helmet to cry on., `That's very modern of you, Nobby,' said Fred. He smiled in the gloom. Somehow, the world was back on course. Plink! Wandering through the world, the eternal troll ... Brick headed after Detritus, dragging his club. Well, he wuz goin' up in der worl' an' no mistakin'! Dey said it hurt if you come off of der stuff, but Brick had always hurt, all his life, and right now it wasn't too bad at all. It wuz, like, weird der way he could fink to the end of a sentence now an' still remember der start of it. An' he wuz bein' given food, which he wuz gettin' to like once he stopped frowing it up. Sergeant Detritus, who knew eveythin' had tole him if'n he stayed clean an' smartened up he could rise as high as Lance-Constable one day, makin' heapo money. He wuzn't too sure what had been happnin' to cause all dis. It looked like he wasn't in der city any more, an' dere had been some fightin, and Sergeant Detritus had showed him dese kinda dead people and smacked him aroun' der head an' said `Remember!' an' he wuz doin' his best, but he'd been smacked aroun' der head a hole lot harder many, many times and dat one was nuffin'. But Sergeant Detritus said it wuz all about not hatin' dwarfs no more and dat was okay cuz really Brick never had der energy to waste hatin'. What dey had been doin' down dat hole was makin' der worl' a betterer place, Sergeant Detritus said. And it seemed to Brick, as he smelled the food, dat Sergeant Detritus had got dat one dead right. Trolls and dwarfs had raised a huge roundhouse in Koom Valley, using giant boulders for the walls and half a fallen forest for the roof. A fire thirty yards long crackled inside. Ranged around it on long benches were the kings of more than a hundred dwarf mines, and the leaders of eighty troll clans, with their followers and servants and bodyguards. The noise was intense, the smoke was thick, the heat was a wall. It had been a good day. Progress had been made. The guests were not mixing, that was true, but nor were they trying to kill one another. This was a promising development. The truce was holding. At the high table, King Rhys leaned back in his makeshift throne and said, Òne does not make demands of kings. One makes requests, which are graciously granted. Does he not understand?' Ì don't think he gives a tra'ka, sir, if I may be coarse,' said Grag Bashfullsson, who was standing respectfully beside him. Ànd the senior dwarfs in the city will be right behind him on this. It's not my place, sir, but I advise acquiescence.' Ànd that's all he wants? No gold, no silver, no concessions?' `That's all he wants, sire. But I suspect you will be hearing from Lord Vetinari before long.' Òh, you may be sure of that!' said the King. He sighed. Ìt's a new world, Grag, but some things don't change. Er ... that ... thing has left him, has it? 'I believe so, sire.' `You are not certain?' The grag smiled a faint, inward smile. `Let's just say that his reasonable request is best granted, shall we, sire?' `Your point is taken, Grag. Thank you.' King Rhys turned in his seat, leaned across the two empty places and said to the Diamond King: `Do you think something has happened to them? It's past six o'clock!' Shine smiled, filling the hall with light. Ì suspect they've been delayed by matters of great importance.' `More important than this?' said the dwarf king. ... and, because some things are important, the coach stood outside the magistrate's house, down in the town. The horses stamped impatiently. The coachman waited. Inside, Lady Sybil darned a sock, because some things are important, with a faint smile on her face. And floating out of an open upstairs window was the voice of Sam Vimes: Ìt goes, "Hruuugh!" It is a hippopotamus! That's not my cow!' Nevertheless, it was close enough for now. Document Outline 1 2 3 
Interesting Times - Terry Pratchett	----	Interesting Times There is a curse.   They say: May You Live in Interesting Times This is where the gods play games with the lives of men, on a board which is at one and the same time a simple playing area and the whole world. And Fate always wins. Fate always wins. Most of the gods throw dice but Fate plays chess, and you don't find out until too late that he's been using two queens all along. Fate wins. At least, so it is claimed. Whatever happens, they say afterwards, it must have been Fate.[1] Gods can take any form, but the one aspect of themselves they cannot change is their eyes, which show their nature. The eyes of Fate are hardly eyes at all - just dark holes into an infinity speckled with what may be stars or, there again, may be other things. He blinked them, smiled at his fellow players in the smug way winners do just before they become winners, and said: 'I accuse the High Priest of the Green Robe in the library with the double-handed axe.' And he won. He beamed at them. 'No-one likesh a poor winner,' grumbled Offler the I Crocodile God, through his fangs. 'It seems that I am favouring myself today,' said Fate. 'Anyone fancy something else?' The gods shrugged. 'Mad Kings?' said Fate pleasantly. 'Star-Crossed Lovers?' 'I think we've lost the rules for that one,' said Blind Io, chief of the gods. 'Or Tempest-Wrecked Mariners?' 'You always win,' said Io. 'Floods and Droughts?' said Fate. 'That's an easy one.' A shadow fell across the gaming table. The gods looked up. 'Ah,' said Fate. 'Let a game begin,' said the Lady. There was always an argument about whether the newcomer was a goddess at all. Certainly no-one ever got anywhere by worshipping her, and she tended to turn up only where she was least expected, such as now. And people who trusted in her seldom survived. Any temples built to her would surely be struck by lightning. Better to juggle axes on a tightrope than say her name. Just call her the waitress in the Last Chance saloon. She was generally referred to as the Lady, and her eyes were green; not as the eyes of humans are green, but emerald green from edge to edge. It was said to be her favourite colour. 'Ah,' said Fate again. 'And what game will it be?' She sat down opposite him. The watching gods looked sidelong at one another. This looked interesting. These two were ancient enemies. 'How about. . .' she paused,'. . . Mighty Empires?' 'Oh, I hate that one,' said Offler, breaking the sudden silence. 'Everyone dief at the end.' 'Yes,' said Fate, 'I believe they do.' He nodded at the Lady, and in much the same voice as professional gamblers say 'Aces high?' said, 'The Fall of Great Houses? Destinies of Nations Hanging by a Thread?' 'Certainly,' she said. 'Oh, good.' Fate waved a hand across the board. The Discworld appeared. 'And where shall we play?' he said. 'The Counterweight Continent,' said the Lady. Where five noble families have fought one another Jor centuries.' 'Really? Which families are these?' said Io. He had little involvement with individual humans. He generally looked after thunder and lightning, so from his point of view the only purpose of humanity was to get wet or, in occasional cases, charred. 'The Hongs, the Sungs, the Tangs, the McSweeneys and the Fangs.' 'Them? I didn't know they were noble,' said Io. 'They're all very rich and have had millions of people butchered or tortured to death merely for reasons of expediency and pride,' said the Lady. The watching gods nodded solemnly. That was certainly noble behaviour. That was exactly what they would have done. 'McFweeneyf?' said Offler. 'Very old established family,' said Fate. 'Oh.' 'And they wrestle one another for the Empire,' said Fate. 'Very good. Which will you be?' The Lady looked at the history stretched out in front of them. 'The Hongs are the most powerful. Even as we speak, they have taken yet more cities,' she said. 'I see they are fated to win.' 'So, no doubt, you'll pick a weaker family.' Fate waved his hand again. The playing pieces appeared, and started to move around the board as if they had a life of their own, which was of course the case. 'But,' he said, 'we shall play without dice. I don't trust you with dice. You throw them where I can't see them. We will play with steel, and tactics, and politics, and war.' The Lady nodded. Fate looked across at his opponent. 'And your move?' he said. She smiled. 'I've already made it.' He looked down. 'But I don't see your pieces on the board.' 'They're not on the board yet,' she said. She opened her hand. There was something black and yellow on her palm. She blew on it, and it unfolded its wings. It was a butterfly. Fate always wins . . . At least, when people stick to the rules.   According to the philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle, chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order, because it is better organized.   This is the butterfly of the storms. See the wings, slightly more ragged than those of the common fritillary. In reality, thanks to the fractal nature of the universe, this means that those ragged edges are infinite - in the same way that the edge of any rugged coastline, when measured to the ultimate microscopic level, is infinitely long - or, if not infinite, then at least so close to it that Infinity can be seen on a clear day. And therefore, if their edges are infinitely long, the wings must logically be infinitely big. They may look about the right size for a butterfly's wings, but that's only because human beings have always preferred common sense to logic. The Quantum Weather Butterfly (Papilio tempestae) is an undistinguished yellow colour, although the mandelbrot patterns on the wings are of considerable interest. Its outstanding feature is its ability to create weather. This presumably began as a survival trait, since even an extremely hungry bird would find itself incon-venienced by a nasty localized tornado.[2] From there it possibly became a secondary sexual characteristic, like the plumage of birds or the throat sacs of certain frogs. Look at me, the male says, flapping his wings lazily in the canopy of the rain forest. I may be an undistinguished yellow colour but in a fortnight's tone, a thousand miles away, Freak Gales Cause Road Chaos. This is the butterly of the storms. It flaps its wings . . .   This is the Discworld, which goes through space on the back of a giant turtle. Most worlds do, at some time in their perception. It's a cosmological view the human brain seems preprogrammed to take. On veldt and plain, in cloud jungle and silent red desert, in swamp and reed marsh, in fact in any place where something goes 'plop' off a floating log as you approach, variations on the following take place at a crucial early point in the development of the tribal mythology . . . 'You see dat?' 'What?' 'It just went plop off dat log.' 'Yeah? Well?' 'I reckon . . . I reckon . . . like, I reckon der world is carried on der back of one of dem.' A moment of silence while this astrophysical hypothesis is considered, and then . . . 'The whole world?' 'Of course, when I say one of dem, I mean a big one of dem.' 'It'd have to be, yeah.' 'Like . . . really big.' ' 'S funny, but . . . I see what you mean.' 'Makes sense, right?' 'Makes sense, yeah. Thing is . . .' 'What?' 'I just hope it never goes plop.' But this is the Discworld, which has not only the turtle but also the four giant elephants on which the wide, slowly turning wheel of the world revolves.[3] There is the Circle Sea, approximately halfway between the Hub and the Rim. Around it are those countries which, according to History, constitute the civilized world, i.e., a world that can support histor-ians: Ephebe, Tsort, Omnia, Klatch and the sprawling city state of Ankh-Morpork. This is a story that starts somewhere else, where a man is lying on a raft in a blue lagoon under a sunny sky. His head is resting on his arms. He is happy - in his case, a mental state so rare as to be almost unprecedented. He is whistling an amiable little tune, and dangling his feet in the crystal clear water. They're pink feet with ten toes that look like little piggy-wiggies. From the point of view of a shark, skimming over the reef, they look like lunch, dinner and tea.   It was, as always, a matter of protocol. Of discretion. Of careful etiquette. Of, ultimately, alcohol. Or at least the illusion of alcohol. Lord Vetinari, as supreme ruler of Ankh-Morpork, could in theory summon the Archchancellor of Unseen University to his presence and, indeed, have him executed if he failed to obey. On the other hand Mustrum Ridcully, as head of the college of wizards, had made it clear in polite but firm ways that he could turn him into a small amphibian and, indeed, start jumping around the room on a pogo stick. Alcohol bridged the diplomatic gap nicely. Sometimes Lord Vetinari invited the Archchancellor to the palace for a convivial drink. And of course the Archchancellor went, because it would be bad manners not to. And everyone understood the position, and everyone was on their best behaviour, and thus civil unrest and slime on the carpet were averted. It was a beautiful afternoon. Lord Vetinari was sitting in the palace gardens, watching the butterflies with an expression of mild annoyance. He found something very slightly offensive about the way they just fluttered around enjoying themselves in an unprofitable way. He looked up. 'Ah, Archchancellor,' he said. 'So good to see you. Do sit down. I trust you are well?' 'Yes indeed,' said Mustrum Ridcully. 'And yourself? You are in good health?' 'Never better. The weather, I see, has turned out nice again.' 'I thought yesterday was particularly fine, certainly.' 'Tomorrow, I am told, could well be even better.' 'We could certainly do with a fine spell.' 'Yes, indeed.' 'Yes.' 'Ah . . .' 'Certainly.' They watched the butterflies. A butler brought long, cool drinks. 'What is it they actually do with the flowers?' said Lord Vetinari. 'What?' The Patrician shrugged. 'Never mind. It was not at all important. But - since you are here, Archchancellor, having dropped by on your way to something infinitely more important, I am sure, most kind - I wonder if you could tell me: who is the Great Wizard?' Ridcully considered this. 'The Dean, possibly,' he said. 'He must be all of twenty stone.' 'Somehow I feel that is not perhaps the right answer,' said Lord Vetinari. 'I suspect from context that "great" means superior.' 'Not the Dean, then,' said Ridcully. Lord Vetinari tried to recollect the faculty of Unseen University. The mental picture that emerged was of a small range of foothills in pointy hats. 'The context does not, I feel, suggest the Dean,' he said. 'Er . . . what context would this be?' said Ridcully. The Patrician picked up his walking stick. 'Come this way,' he said. 'I suppose you had better see for yourself. It is very vexing.' Ridcully looked around with interest as he followed Lord Vetinari. He did not often have a chance to see the gardens, which had been written up in the 'How Not To Do It' section of gardening manuals everywhere. They had been laid out, and a truer phrase was never used, by the renowned or at least notorious landscape gardener and all round inventor 'Bloody Stupid' Johnson, whose absent-mindedness and blindness to elementary mathematics made every step a walk with danger. His genius . . . well, as far as Ridcully understood it, his genius was exactly the opposite of whatever kind of genius it was that built earthworks that tapped the secret yet beneficent forces of the leylines. No-one was quite certain what forces Bloody Stupid's designs tapped, but the chiming sundial frequently exploded, the crazy paving had committed suicide and the cast iron garden furniture was known so have melted on three occasions. The Patrician led the way through a gate and into something like a dovecot. A creaking wooden stairway led around the inside. A few of Ankh-Morpork's indestructible feral pigeons muttered and sniggered in the shadows. 'What's this?' said Ridcully, as the stairs groaned under him. The Patrician took a key out of his pocket. 'I have always understood that Mr Johnson originally planned this to be a beehive,' he said. 'However, in the absence of bees ten feet long we have found . . . other uses.' He unlocked a door to a wide, square room with a big unglazed window in each wall. Each rectangle was surrounded by a wooden arrangement to which was affixed a bell on a spring. It was apparent that anything large enough, entering by one of the windows, would cause the bell to ring. In the centre of the room, standing on a table, was the largest bird Ridcully had ever seen. It turned and fixed him with a beady yellow eye. The Patrician reached into a pocket and took out a jar of anchovies. 'This one caught us rather unexpectedly,' he said. 'It must be almost ten years since a message last arrived. We used to keep a few fresh mackerel on ice.' 'Isn't that a Pointless Albatross?' said Ridcully. 'Indeed,' said Lord Vetinari. 'And a highly trained one. It will return this evening. Six thousand miles on one jar of anchovies and a bottle of fish paste my clerk Drumknott found in the kitchens. Amazing.' 'I'm sorry?' said Ridcully. 'Return to where?' Lord Vetinari turned to face him. 'Not, let me make it clear, to the Counterweight Continent,' he said. 'This is not one of those birds the Agatean Empire uses for its message services. It is a well-known fact that we have no contact with that mysterious land. And this bird is not the first to arrive here for many years, and it did not bring a strange and puzzling message. Do I make myself clear?' 'No.' 'Good.' 'This is not an albatross?' The Patrician smiled. 'Ah, I can see you're getting the hang of it.' Mustrum Ridcully, though possessed of a large and efficient brain, was not at home with duplicity. He looked at the long vicious beak. 'Looks like a bloody albatross to me,' he said. 'And you just said it was. I said, isn't that a—' The Patrician waved a hand irritably. 'Leaving aside our ornithological studies,' he said, 'the point is that this bird had, in its message pouch, the following piece of paper—' 'You mean did not have the following piece of paper?' said Ridcully, struggling for a grip. 'Ah, yes. Of course, that is what I mean. And this isn't it. Observe.' He handed a single small sheet to the Arch-chacellor. 'Looks like paintin',' said Ridcully. 'Those are Agatean pictograms,' said the Patrician. 'You mean they're not Agatean pictograms?' 'Yes, yes, certainly,' sighed the Patrician, 'I can see you are well alongside the essential business of diplomacy. Now . . . your views, please.' 'Looks like slosh, slosh, slosh, slosh, Wizzard,' said Ridcully. 'And from that you deduce . . . ?' 'He took Art because he wasn't any good at spelling I mean, who wrote it? Painted it, I mean?' 'I don't know. The Grand Viziers used to send the occasional message, but I gather there has been some turmoil in recent years. It is unsigned, you notice. However, I cannot ignore it.' 'Wizzard, wizzard,' said Ridcully, thoughtfully. 'The pictograms mean "Send Us Instantly The Great",' said Lord Vetinari. '. . . wizzard . . .' said Ridcully to himself, tapping the paper. The Patrician tossed an anchovy to the albatross, which swallowed it greedily. 'The Empire has a million men under arms,' he said. 'Happily, it suits the rulers to pretend that everywhere outside the Empire is a valueless howling waste peopled only by vampires and ghosts. They usually have no interest whatsoever in our affairs. This is fortunate for us, because they are both cunning, rich and powerful. Frankly, I had hoped they had forgotten about us altogether. And now this. I was hoping to be able to dispatch the wretched person and forget about it.' '. . . wizzard,' said Ridcully. 'Perhaps you would like a holiday?' said the Patrician, a hint of hope in his voice. 'Me? No. Can't abide foreign food,' said Ridculy quickly. He repeated, half to himself, 'Wizzard . . .' 'The word seems to fascinate you,' said Lord Vetinari. 'Seen it spelled like that before,' said Ridcully 'Can't remember where.' 'I'm sure you will remember. And will be in position to send the Great Wizard, however he spelled, to the Empire by teatime.' Ridcully's jaw dropped. 'Six thousand miles? By magic? Do you know hov hard that is?' 'I cherish my ignorance on the subject,' said Lord Vetinari. 'Besides,' Ridcully went on, 'they're, well. . . foreign over there. I thought they had enough wizards of their own.' 'I really couldn't say.' 'We don't know why they want this wizard?' 'No. But I'm sure there is someone you could spare. There seems to be such a lot of you down there.' 'I mean, it could be for some terrible foreign purj pose,' said Ridcully. For some reason the face of the Dean waddled across his mind, and he brightened upj 'They might be happy with a great wizard, do you think?' he mused. 'I leave that entirely to you. But by tonight I would like to be able to send back a message saying that the Great Wizzard is duly on his way. And then we can forget about it.' 'Of course, it would be very hard to bring the chap back,' said Ridcully. He thought of the Dean again. 'Practically impossible,' he added, in an inappropriately happy way. 'I expect we'd try for months and months without succeeding. I expect we'd attempt everything with no fuck. Damn it.' 'I can see you are agog to rise to this challenge,' said the Patrician. 'Let me not detain you from rushing back to the University and putting measures in hand.' 'But. . . "wizzard" . . .' Ridcully murmured. 'Rings a faint bell, that. Think I've seen it before, somewhere.'   The shark didn't think much. Sharks don't. Their thought processes can largely be represented by '='. You see it = you eat it. But, as it arrowed through the waters of the lagoon, its tiny brain began to receive little packages of selachian existential dread that could only be called doubts. It knew it was the biggest shark around. All the challengers had fled, or run up against good old '='. Yet its body told it that something was coming up fast behind it. It turned gracefully, and the first thing it saw was hundreds of legs and thousands of toes, a whole pork pie factory of piggy-wiggies.   Many things went on at Unseen University and, regrettably, teaching had to be one of them. The faculty had long ago confronted this fact and had perfected various devices for avoiding it. But this was perfectly all right because, to be fair, so had the students. The system worked quite well and, as happens in such cases, had taken on the status of a tradition, Lectures clearly took place, because they were down there on the timetable in black and white. The fact that no-one attended was an irrelevant detail. It was occasionally maintained that this meant that the lectures did not in fact happen at all, but no-one ever attended them to find out if this was true. Anyway, it was argued (by the Reader in Woolly Thinking[4]) that lectures had taken place in essence, so that was all right, too. And therefore education at the University mostly worked by the age-old method of putting a lot of young people in the vicinity of a lot of books and hoping that something would pass from one to the other, while the actual young people put themselves in the vicinity of inns and taverns for exactly the same reason. It was the middle of the afternoon. The Chair of Indefinite Studies was giving a lecture in room 3B and therefore his presence asleep in front of the fire in the Uncommon Room was a technicality upon which no diplomatic man would comment. Ridcully kicked him on the shins. 'Ow!' 'Sorry to interrupt, Chair,' said Ridcully, in a very perfunctory way. 'God help me, I need the Council of Wizards. Where is everybody?' The Chair of Indefinite Studies rubbed his leg. 'I know the Lecturer in Recent Runes is giving a lecture in 3B,'[5] he said. 'But I don't know where he is. You know, that really hurt—' 'Round everyone up. My study. Ten minutes,' said Ridcully. He was a great believer in this approach. A less direct Archchancellor would have wandered around looking for everyone. His policy was to find one person and make their life difficult until every-thing happened the way he wanted it to.[6]   Nothing in nature had that many feet. True, some things had that many legs - damp, wriggling things that live under rocks - but those weren't legs with feet, they were just legs that ended without ceremony. Something brighter than the shark might have been wary But '=' swung treacherously into play and shot it forward. That was its first mistake. In these circumstances, one mistake = oblivion.   Ridcully was waiting impatiently when, one by one, the senior wizards filed in from serious lecturing in room 3B. Senior wizards needed a lot of lecturing in order to digest their food. 'Everyone here?' he said. 'Right. Sit down. Listen carefully. Now . . . Vetinari hasn't had an albatross. It hasn't come all the way from the Counterweight Continent, and there isn't a strange message that we've got to obey, apparently. Follow me so far?' The senior wizards exchanged glances. 'I think we may be a shade unclear on the detail,' said the Dean. 'I was using diplomatic language.' 'Could you, perhaps, try to be a little more indiscreet?' 'We've got to send a wizard to the Counterweight Continent,' said Ridcully. 'And we've got to do it by teatime. Someone's asked for a Great Wizard and it seems we've got to send one. Only they spell it Wizzard—' 'Oook?' 'Yes, Librarian?' Unseen University's Librarian, who had been doz-ing with his head on the table, was suddenly sitting bolt upright. Then he pushed back his chair and, arms waving wildly for balance, left the room at a bow-legged run. 'Probably remembered an overdue book,' said the Dean. He lowered his voice. 'Am I alone in thinking, by the way, that it doesn't add to the status of this University to have an ape on the faculty?' 'Yes,' said Ridcully flatly. 'You are. We've got the only librarian who can rip off your arm with his leg. People respect that. Only the other day the head of the Thieves' Guild was asking me if we could turn their librarian into an ape and, besides, he's the only one of you buggers who stays awake more'n an hour a day. Anyway—' 'Well, I find it embarrassing,' said the Dean. 'Also, he's not a proper orang-utan. I've been reading a book. It says a dominant male should have huge cheek pads. Has he got huge cheek pads? I don't thrnk so. And—' 'Shut up, Dean,' said Ridcully, 'or I won't let you go to the Counterweight Continent.' 'I don't see what raising a perfectly valid - What?' 'They're asking for the Great Wizzard,' said Ridcully. 'And I immediately thought of you.' As the only man I know who can sit on two chairs at the same time, he added silently. 'The Empire?' squeaked the Dean. 'Me? But they hate foreigners!' 'So do you. You should get on famously.' 'It's six thousand miles!' said the Dean, trying a new tack. 'Everyone knows you can't get that far by magic.' 'Er. As a matter of fact you can, I think,' said a voice from the other end of the table. They all looked at Ponder Stibbons, the youngest and most depressingly keen member of the faculty He was holding a complicated mechanism of sliding wooden bars and peering at the other wizards over the top of it. 'Er. Shouldn't be too much of a problem,' he added. 'People used to think it was, but I'm pretty sure it's all a matter of energy absorption and attention to relative velocities.' The statement was followed with the kind of mystified and suspicious silence that generally succeeded one of his remarks. 'Relative velocities,' said Ridcully. 'Yes, Archchancellor.' Ponder looked down at his prototype slide rule and waited. He knew that Ridcully would feel it necessary to add a comment at this point in order to demonstrate that he'd grasped something. 'My mother could move like lightning when—' 'I mean how fast things are going when compared to other things,' Ponder said quickly, but not quite quickly enough. 'We should be able to work it out quite easily. Er. On Hex.' 'Oh, no,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, pushing his chair back. 'Not that. That's meddling with things you don't understand.' 'Well we are wizards,' said Ridcully. 'We're supposed to meddle with things we don't understand. If we hung around waitin' till we understood things we'd never get anything done.' 'Look, I don't mind summoning some demon and asking it,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'That's normal. But building some mechanical contrivance to do your thinking for you, that's . . . against Nature. Besides,' he added in slightly less foreboding tones, 'last time you did a big problem on it the wretched thing broke and we had ants all over the place.' 'We've sorted that out,' said Ponder. 'We—' 'I must admit there was a ram's skull in the middle of it last time I looked,' said Ridcully. 'We had to add that to do occult transformations,' said Ponder, 'but—' 'And cogwheels and springs,' the Archchancellor went on. 'Well, the ants aren't very good at differential analysis, so—' 'And that strange wobbly thing with the cuckoo?' 'The unreal time clock,' said Ponder. 'Yes, we think that's essential for working out—' 'Anyway, it's all quite immaterial, because I certainly have no intention of going anywhere,' said the Dean. 'Send a student, if you must. We've got a lot spare ones.' 'Good so be would you if, duff plum of helping second A,' said the Bursar. The table fell silent. 'Anyone understand that?' said Ridcully. The Bursar was not technically insane. He had passed through the rapids of insanity some time previously, and was now sculling around in some peaceful pool on the other side. He was often quite coherent, although not by normal human standards. 'Um, he's going through yesterday again,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Backwards, this time.' 'We should send the Bursar,' said the Dean firmly. 'Certainly not! You probably can't get dried frog pills there—' 'Oook!' The Librarian re-entered the study at a bandy-legged run, waving something in the air. It was red, or at least had at some time been red. It might well once have been a pointy hat, but the point had crumpled and most of the brim was burned away. A word had been embroidered on it in sequins. Many had been burned off, but: WIZZARD . . . could just be made out as pale letters on the scorched cloth. 'I knew I'd seen it before,' said Ridcully. 'On a shelf in the Library, right?' 'Oook.' The Archchancellor inspected the remnant. 'Wizzard?' he said. 'What kind of sad, hopeless person needs to write WIZZARD on their hat?'   A few bubbles broke the surface of the sea, causing the raft to rock a little. After a while, a couple of pieces of shark skin floated up. Rincewind sighed and put down his fishing rod. The rest of the shark would be dragged ashore later, he knew it. He couldn't imagine why. It wasn't as if they were good eating. They tasted like old boots soaked in urine. He picked up a makeshift oar and set out for the beach. It wasn't a bad little island. Storms seemed to pass it by. So did ships. But there were coconuts, and breadfruit, and some sort of wild fig. Even his experiments in alcohol had been quite successful, although he hadn't been able to walk properly for two days. The lagoon provided prawns and shrimps and oysters and crabs and lobsters, and in the deep green water out beyond the reef big silver fish fought each other for the privilege of biting a piece of bent wire on the end of a bit of string. After six months on the island, in fact, there was only one thing Rincewind lacked. He'd never really thought about it before. Now he thought about it - or, more correctly, them - all the time. It was odd. He'd hardly ever thought about them in Ankh-Morpork, because they were there if ever he wanted them. Now they weren't, and he craved. His raft bumped the white sand at about the same moment as a large canoe rounded the reef and entered the lagoon.   Ridcully was sitting at his desk now, surrounded by his senior wizards. They were trying to tell him things, despite the known danger of trying to tell Ridcully things, which was that he picked up the facts he liked and let the others take a running jump. 'So,' he said, 'not a kind of cheese.' 'No, Archchancellor,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'Rincewind is a kind of wizard.' 'Was,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'Not a cheese,' said Ridcully, unwilling to let go of a fact. 'No.' 'Sounds a sort of name you'd associate with cheese, I mean, a pound of Mature Rincewind, it rolls off the tongue . . .' 'Godsdammit, Rincewind is not a cheese!' shouted the Dean, his temper briefly cracking. 'Rincewind is not a yoghurt or any kind of sour milk derivative! Rincewind is a bloody nuisance! A complete and utter disgrace to wizardry! A fool! A failure! Anyway, he hasn't been seen here since that . . . unpleasantness with the Sourcerer, years ago.' 'Really?' said Ridcully, with a certain kind of nasty politeness. 'A lot of wizards behaved very badly then, I understand.' 'Yes indeed,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, scowling at the Dean, who bridled. 'I don't know anything about that, Runes. I wasn't Dean at the time.' 'No, but you were very senior.' 'Perhaps, but it just so happens that at the time I was visiting my aunt, for your information.' 'They nearly blew up the whole city!' 'She lives in Quirm.' 'And Quirm was heavily involved, as I recall.' '—near Quirm. Near Quirm. Not all that near, actually. Quite a way along the coast—' 'Hah!' 'Anyway, you seem to be very well informed, eh, Runes?' said the Dean. 'I - What? - I - was studying hard at the time. Hardly knew what was going on—' 'Half the University was blown down!' The Dean remembered himself and added, 'That is, so I heard. Later. After getting back from my aunt's.' 'Yes, but I've got a very thick door—' 'And I happen to know the Senior Wrangler was here, because—' '—with that heavy green baize stuff you can hardly hear any—' 'Nap my for time it's think I.' 'Will you all shut up right now this minute!' Ridcully glared at his faculty with the clear, innocent glare of someone who was blessed at birth with no imagination whatsoever, and who had genuinely been hundreds of miles away during the University's recent embarrassing history. 'Right,' he said, when they had quietened down. 'This Rincewind. Bit of an idiot, yes? You talk, Dean. Everyone else will shut up.' The Dean looked uncertain. 'Well, er . . . I mean, it makes no sense, Archchancellor. He couldn't even do proper magic. What good would he be to anyone? Besides . . . where Rincewind went' - he lowered his voice - 'trouble followed behind.' Ridcully noticed that the wizards drew a little closer together. 'Sounds all right to me,' he said. 'Best place for trouble behind. You certainly don't want it in front.' 'You don't understand, Archchancellor,' said the Dean. 'It followed behind on hundreds of little legs.' The Archchancellor's smile stayed where it was while the rest of his face went solid behind it. 'You been on the Bursar's pills, Dean?' 'I assure you, Mustrum—' 'Then don't talk rubbish.' 'Very well, Archchancellor. But you do realize, don't you, that it might take years to find him?' 'Er,' said Ponder, 'if we can work out his thaumic signature, I think Hex could probably do it in a day. . .' The Dean glared. 'That's not magic!' he snapped. 'That's just . . . engineering!'   Rincewind trudged through the shallows and used a sharp rock to hack the top off a coconut that had been cooling in a convenient shady rock pool. He put it to his lips. A shadow fell across him. It said, 'Er, hello?'   It was possible, if you kept on talking at the Arch-chancellor for long enough, that some facts might squeeze through. 'So what you're tellin' me,' said Ridcully, eventually, 'is that this Rincewind fella has been chased by just about every army in the world, has been bounced around life like a pea on a drum, and probably is the one wizard who knows anything about the Agatean Empire on account of once being friends with,' he glanced at his notes,' "a strange little man in glasses" who came from there and gave him this funny thing with the legs you all keep alluding to. And he can speak the lingo. Am I right so far?' 'Exactly, Archchancellor. Call me an idiot if you like,' said the Dean, 'but why would anyone want him?' Ridcully looked down at his notes again. 'You've decided to go, then?' he said. 'No, of course not—' 'What I don't think you've spotted here, Dean,' he said, breaking into a determinedly cheery grin, 'is what I might call the common denominator. Chap stays alive. Talented. Find him. And bring him here. Wherever he is. Poor chap could be facing something dreadful.'   The coconut stayed where it was, but Rincewind' s eyes swivelled madly from side to side. Three figures stepped into his line of vision. They were obviously female. They were abundantly female. They were not wearing a great deal of clothing and seemed to be altogether too fresh-from-the-haidressers for people who have just been paddling a large war canoe, but this is often the case with beautiful Amazonian warriors. A thin trickle of coconut milk began to dribble off the end of Rincewind's beard. The leading woman brushed aside her long blonde hair and gave him a bright smile. 'I know this sounds a little unlikely,' she said, 'but I and my sisters here represent a hitherto undiscovered tribe whose menfolk were recently destroyed in a deadly but short-lived and highly specific plague. Now we have been searching these islands for a man to enable us to carry on our line.' 'How much do you think he weighs?' Rincewind's eyebrows raised. The woman looked down shyly. 'You may be wondering why we are all blonde and white-skinned when everyone else in the islands around here is dark,' she said. 'It just seems to be one of those genetic things.' 'About 120, 125 pounds. Put another pound or two of junk on the heap. Er. Can you detect . . . you know . . . IT?' 'This is all going to go wrong, Mr Stibbons, I just know it.' 'He's only six hundred miles away and we know where we are, and he's on the right half of the Disc. Anyway, I've worked this out on Hex so nothing can possibly go wrong.' 'Yes, but can anyone see . . . that . . . you know . . . with the . . . feet?' Rincewind's eyebrows waggled. A sort of choking noise came from his throat. 'Can't see . . . it. Will you lot stop huffing on my crystal ball?' 'And, of course, if you were to come with us we could promise you . . . earthly and sensual pleasures such as those of which you may have dreamed . . .' 'All right. On the count of three—' The coconut dropped away. Rincewind swallowed. There was a hungry, dreamy look in his eyes. 'Can I have them mashed?' he said. 'NOW!'   First there was the sensation of pressure. The world opened up in front of Rincewind and sucked him into it. Then it stretched out thin and went twang. Cloud rushed past him, blurred by speed. When he dared open his eyes again it was to see, far ahead of him, a tiny black dot. It got bigger. It resolved itself into a tight cloud of objects. There were a couple of heavy saucepans, a large brass candlestick, a few bricks, a chair and a large brass blancmange mould in the shape of a castle. They hit him one after the other, the blancmange mould making a humorous clang as it bounced off his head, and then whirled away behind him. The next thing ahead of him was an octagon. A chalked one. He hit it.   Ridcully stared down. 'A shade less than 125 pounds, I fancy,' he said. 'All the same . . . well done, gentlemen.' The dishevelled scarecrow in the centre of the circle staggered to its feet and beat out one or two small fires in its clothing. Then it looked around blearily and said, 'Hehehe?' 'He could be a little disorientated,' the Archchancellor went on. 'More than six hundred miles in two seconds, after all. Don't give him a nasty shock.' 'Like sleepwalkers, you mean?' said the Senior Wrangler. 'What do you mean, sleepwalkers?' 'If you wake sleepwalkers, their legs drop off. So my grandmother used to aver.' 'And are we sure it's Rincewind?' said the Dean. 'Of course it's Rincewind,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'We spent hours looking for him.' 'It could be some dangerous occult creature,' said the Dean stubbornly. 'With that hat?' It was a pointy hat. In a way. A kind of cargo-cult pointy hat, made out of split bamboo and coconut leaves, in the hope of attracting passing wizardliness. Picked out on it, in seashells held in place with grass, was the word WIZZARD. Its wearer gazed right through the wizards and, as if driven by some sudden recollection of purpose, lurched abruptly out of the octagon and headed towards the door of the hall. The wizards followed cautiously. 'I'm not sure I believe her. How many times did she see it happen?' 'I don't know. She never said.' 'The Bursar sleepwalks most nights, you know.' 'Does he? Tempting . . .' Rincewind, if that was the creature's name, headed out into Sator Square. It was crowded. The air shimmered over the braziers of chestnut sellers and hot potato merchants and echoed with the traditional street cries of Old Ankh-Morpork.[7] The figure sidled up to a skinny man in a huge overcoat who was frying something over a little oil-heater in a wide tray around his neck. The possibly-Rincewind grabbed the edge of the tray. 'Got . . . any . . . potatoes?' it growled. 'Potatoes? No, squire. Got some sausages inna bun.' The possibly-Rincewind froze. And then it burst into tears. 'Sausage inna buuunnnnnl' it bawled. 'Dear old sausage inna inna inna buuunnn! Gimme saussaaage inna buunnnnn!' It grabbed three off the tray and tried to eat them all at once. 'Good grief!' said Ridcully. The figure half ran, half capered away, fragments of bun and pork-product debris cascading from its unkempt beard. 'I've never seen anyone eat three of Throat Dibbler's sausages inna bun and look so happy,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'I've never seen someone eat three of Throat Dibbler's sausages inna bun and loo|c so upright,' said the Dean. 'I've never seen anyone eat anything of Dibbler's and get away without paying,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. The figure spun happily around the square, tears streaming down its face. The gyrations took it past an alley mouth, whereupon a smaller figure stepped out behind it and with some difficulty hit it on the back of the head. The sausage-eater fell to his knees, saying, to the world in general, 'Ow!' 'Nonononononono!' A rather older man stepped out and removed the cosh from the young man's hesitant hands, while the victim knelt and moaned. 'I think you ought to apologize to the poor gentleman,' said the older man. 'I don't know, what's he going to think? I mean, look at him, he made it so easy for you and what does he get? I mean, what did you think you were doing?' 'Mumblemumble, Mr Boggis,' said the boy, looking at his feet. 'What was that again? Speak up!' 'Overarm Belter, Mr Boggis.' 'That was an Overarm Belter? You call that an Overarm Belter? That was an Overarm Belter, was it? This - excuse me, sir, we'll just have you up on your feet for a moment, sorry about this - this is an Overarm Belter—' 'Ow!' shouted the victim and then, to the surprise of all concerned, he added: 'Hahahaha!' 'What you did was - sorry to impose again, sir, this won't take a minute - what you did was this—' 'Ow! Hahahaha!' 'Now, you lot, you saw that? Come on, gather round . . .' Half a dozen other youths slouched out of the alleyway and formed a ragged audience around Mr Boggis, the luckless student and the victim, who was staggering in a circle and making little 'oomph oomph' sounds but still, for some reason, apparently enjoying himself immensely. 'Now,' said Mr Boggis, with the air of an old skilled craftsman imparting his professional expertise to an ungrateful posterity, 'when inconveniencing a customer from your basic alley entrance, the correct procedure is - Oh, hello, Mr Ridcully, didn't see you there.' The Archchancellor gave him a friendly nod. 'Don't mind us, Mr Boggis. Thieves' Guild training, is it?' Boggis rolled his eyes. 'Dunno what they teaches 'em at school,' he said. 'It's jus' nothing but reading and writing all the time. When I was a lad school was where you learned somethin' useful. Right - you, Wilkins, stop that giggling, you have a go, excuse us just another moment, sir—' 'Ow!' 'Nononononono! My old granny could do better than that! Now look, you steps up trimly, places one hand on his shoulder here, for control . . . go on, you do it . . . and then smartly—' 'Ow!' 'All right, can anyone tell me what he was doing wrong?' The figure crawled away unnoticed, except by the wizards, while Mr Boggis was demonstrating the finer points of head percussion on Wilkins. It staggered to his feet and plunged on along the road, still moving like one hypnotized. 'He's crying,' said the Dean. 'Not surprising,' said the Archchancellor. 'But why's he grinnin' at the same time?' 'Curiouser and curiouser,' said the Senior Wrangler. Bruised and possibly poisoned, the figure headed back for the University, the wizards still trailing behind. 'You must mean "curious and more curious", surely? And even then it doesn't make much sense—' It entered the gates but, this time, hurried jerkily through the main hall and into the Library. The Librarian was waiting, holding - with something of a smirk on his face, and an orang-utan can really smirk - the battered hat. 'Amazin',' said Ridcully. 'It's true! A wizard will always come back for his hat!' The figure grabbed the hat, evicted some spiders, threw away the sad affair made of leaves and put the hat on his head. Rincewind blinked at the puzzled faculty. A light came on behind his eyes for the first time, as if up to now he'd merely been operating by reflex action. 'Er. What have I just eaten?' 'Er. Three of Mr Dibbler's finest sausages,' said Ridcully. 'Well, when I say finest, I mean "most typical", don'tcheknow.' 'I see. And who just hit me?' 'Thieves' Guild apprentices out trainin'.' Rincewind blinked. 'This is Ankh-Morpork, isn't it?' 'Yes.' 'I thought so.' Rincewind blinked, slowly. 'Well,' he said, just as he fell forward, 'I'm back.'   Lord Hong was flying a kite. It was something he did perfectly. Lord Hong did everything perfectly. His water-colours were perfect. His poetry was perfect. When he folded paper, every crease was perfect. Imaginative, original , and definitely perfect. Lord Hong had long ago ceased pursuing perfection because he already had it nailed up in a dungeon somewhere. Lord Hong was twenty-six, and thin, and handsome. He wore very small, very circular steel-rimmed spectacles. When asked to describe him, people often used the word 'smooth' or even 'lacquered'.[8] And he had risen to the leadership of one of the most influential families in the Empire by relentless application, total focusing of his mental powers, and six well-executed deaths. The last one had been that of his father, who'd died happy in the knowledge that his son was maintaining an old family tradition. The senior families venerated their ancestors, and saw no harm in prematurely adding to their number. And now his kite, the black kite with the two big eyes, plunged out of the sky. He'd calculated the angle, needless to say, perfectly. Its string, coated with glue and ground glass, sawed through those of his fellow contestants and sent their kites tumbling. There was genteel applause from the bystanders. People generally found it advisable to applaud Lord Hong. He handed the string to a servant, nodded curtly at the fellow flyers, and strode towards his tent. Once inside, he sat down and looked at his visitor. 'Well?' he said. 'We sent the message,' said the visitor. 'No-one saw us.' 'On the contrary,' said Lord Hong. 'Twenty people saw you. Do you know how hard it is for a guard to look straight ahead and see nothing when people are creeping around making a noise like an army and whispering to one another to be quiet? Frankly, your people do not seem to possess that revolutionary spark. What is the matter with your hand?' 'The albatross bit it.' Lord Hong smiled. It occurred to him that it might have mistaken his visitor for an anchovy, and with some justification. There was the same fishy look about the eyes. 'I don't understand, o lord,' said the visitor, whose name was Two Fire Herb. 'Good.' 'But they believe in the Great Wizzard and you want him to come here?' 'Oh, certainly. I have my . . . people in' - he tried the alien syllables - 'Ankh-More-Pork. The one so foolishly called the Great Wizzard does exist. But, I might tell you, he is renowned for being incompetent, cowardly and spineless. Quite proverbially so. So I think the Red Army should have their leader, don't you? It will . . . raise their morale.' He smiled again. 'This is politics,' he said. 'Ah.' 'Now go.' Lord Hong picked up a book as his visitor left. But it was hardly a real book; pieces of paper had simply been fastened together with string, and the text was handwritten. He'd read it many times before. It still amused him, mainly because the author had managed to be wrong about so many things. Now, every time he finished a page, he ripped it out and, while reading the next page, carefully folded the paper into the shape of a chrysanthemum. 'Great Wizard,' he said, aloud. 'Oh, indeed. Very great.'   Rincewind awoke. There were clean sheets and no-one was saying 'Go through his pockets,' so he chalked that up as a promising beginning. He kept his eyes shut, just in case there was anyone around who, once he was seen to be awake, would make life complicated for him. Elderly male voices were arguing. 'You're all missin' the point. He survives. You keep on tellin' me he's had all these adventures and he's still alive.' 'What do you mean? He's got scars all over him!' 'My point exactly, Dean. Most of 'em on his back, too. He leaves trouble behind. Someone Up There smiles on him.' Rincewind winced. He had always been aware that Someone Up There was doing something on him. He'd never considered it was smiling. 'He's not even a proper wizard! He never got more than two per cent in his exams!' 'I think he's awake,' said someone. Rincewind gave in, and opened his eyes. A variety of bearded, overly pink faces looked down upon him. 'How're you feeling, old chap?' said one, extending a hand. 'Name's Ridcully. Archchancellor. How're you feeling?' 'It's all going to go wrong,' said Rincewind flatly. 'What d'you mean, old fellow?' 'I just know it. It's all going to go wrong. Something dreadful's going to happen. I thought it was too good to last.' 'You see?' said the Dean. 'Hundreds of little legs. I told you. Would you listen?' Rincewind sat up. 'Don't start being nice to me,' he said. 'Don't start offering me grapes. No-one ever wants me for something nice.' A confused memory of his very recent past floated across his mind and he experienced a brief moment of regret that potatoes, while uppermost in his mind at that point, had not been similarly positioned in the mind of the young lady. No-one dressed like that, he was coming to realize, could be thinking of any kind of root vegetable. He sighed. 'All right, what happens now?' 'How do you feel?' Rincewind shook his head. 'It's no good,' he said. 'I hate it when people are nice to me. It means something bad is going to happen. Do you mind shouting?' Ridcully had had enough. 'Get out of that bed you horrible little man and follow me this minute or it will go very hard for you!' 'Ah, that's better. I feel right at home now. Now we're cooking with charcoal,' said Rincewind, glumly. He swung his legs off the bed and stood up carefully. Ridcully stopped halfway to the door, where the other wizards had lined up. 'Runes?' 'Yes, Archchancellor?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, his voice oozing innocence. 'What is that you've got behind your back?' 'Sorry, Archchancellor?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'Looks like some kind of tool,' said Ridcully. 'Oh, this,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, as if he'd only just at that moment noticed the eight-pound lump hammer he'd been holding. 'My word . . . it's a hammer, isn't it? My word. A hammer. I suppose I must just have . . . picked it up somewhere. You know. To keep the place tidy.' 'And I can't help noticing,' said Ridcully, 'that the Dean seems to be tryin' to conceal a battle-axe about his person.' There was a musical twang from the rear of the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'And that sounded like a saw to me,' said Ridcully. 'Is there anyone here not concealin' some kind of implement? Right. Would anyone care to explain what the hell you think you're doin'?' 'Hah, you don't know what it was like,' muttered the Dean, not meeting the Archchancellor's eye. 'A man daren't turn his back for five minutes in those days. You'd hear the patter of those damn feet and—' Ridcully ignored him. He put an arm around Rincewind's bony shoulders and led the way towards the Great Hall. 'Well, now, Rincewind,' he said. 'They tell me you're no good at magic.' 'That's right.' 'Never passed any exams or anything?' 'None, I'm afraid.' 'But everyone calls you Rincewind the wizard.' Rincewind looked at his feet. 'Well, I kind of worked here as sort of deputy Librarian—' '—an ape's number two—' said the Dean. '—and, you know, did odd jobs and things and kind of, you know, helped out—' 'I say, did anyone notice that? An ape's number two? Rather clever, I thought.' 'But you have never, in fact, actually been entitled to call yourself a wizard?' said Ridcully. 'Not technically, I suppose . . .' 'I see. That is a problem.' 'I've got this hat with the word "Wizzard" on it,' said Rincewind hopefully. 'Not a great help, I'm afraid. Hmm. This presents us with a bit of a difficulty, I'm afraid. Let me see . . . How long can you hold your breath?' 'I don't know. A couple of minutes. Is that important?' 'It is in the context of being nailed upside down to one of the supports of the Brass Bridge for two high tides and then being beheaded which, I'm afraid, is the statutory punishment for impersonating a wizard. I looked it up. No-one was more sorry than me, I can tell you. But the Lore is the Lore.' 'Oh, no!' 'Sorry. No alternative. Otherwise we'd be knee-deep in people in pointy hats they'd no right to. It's a terrible shame. Can't do a thing. Wish I could. Hands tied. The statutes say you can only be a wizard by passing through the University in the normal way or by performing some great service of benefit to magic, and I'm afraid that—' 'Couldn't you just send me back to my island? I liked it there. It was dull!' Ridcully shook his head sadly. 'No can do, I'm afraid. The offence has been committed over a period of many years. And since you haven't passed any exams or performed,' Ridcully raised his voice slightly, 'any service of great benefit to magic, I'm afraid I shall have to instruct the bledlows[9] to fetch some rope and—' 'Er. I think I may have saved the world a couple of times,' said Rincewind. 'Does that help?' 'Did anyone from the University see you do it?' 'No, I don't think so.' Ridcully shook his head. 'Probably doesn't count, then. It's a shame, because if you had performed any service of great benefit to magic then I'd be happy to let you keep that hat and, of course, something to wear it on. Rincewind looked crestfallen. Ridcully sighed, and had one last try. 'So,' he said, 'since it seems that you haven't actually passed your exams OR PERFORMED A SERVICE OF GREAT BENEFIT TO MAGIC, then—' 'I suppose . . . I could try to perform some great service?' said Rincewind, with the expression of one who knows that the light at the end of the tunnel is an incoming train. 'Really? Hmm? Well, that's definitely a thought,' said Ridcully. 'What sort of services are they?' 'Oh, typically you'd be expected to, for the sake of example, go on a quest, or find the answer to some very ancient and important question - What the hell is that thing with all the legs?' Rincewind didn't even bother to look round. The expression on Ridcully's face, as it stared over his shoulder, was quite familiar. 'Ah,' he said, 'I think I know that one.'   Magic isn't like maths. Like the Discworld itself, it follows common sense rather than logic. And nor is it like cookery. A cake's a cake. Mix the ingredients up right and cook them at the right temperature and a cake happens. No casserole requires moonbeams. No souffle ever demanded to be mixed by a virgin. Nevertheless, those afflicted with an enquiring turn of mind have often wondered whether there are rules of magic. There are more than five hundred known spells to secure the love of another person, and they range from messing around with fern seed at midnight to doing something rather unpleasant with a rhino horn at an unspecified time, but probably not just after a meal. Was it possible (the enquir ing minds enquired) that an analysis of all these spells might reveal some small powerful common denominator, some meta-spell, some simple little equation which would achieve the required end far more simply, and incidentally come as a great relief to all rhinos? To answer such questions Hex had been built, although Ponder Stibbons was a bit uneasy about the word 'built' in this context. He and a few keen students had put it together, certainly, but . . . well . . . sometimes he thought bits of it, strange though this sounded, just turned up. For example, he was pretty sure no-one had designed the Phase of the Moon Generator, but there it was, clearly a part of the whole thing. They had built the Unreal Time Clock, although no-one seemed to have a very clear idea how it worked. What he suspected they were dealing with was a specialized case of formative causation, always a risk in a place like Unseen University, where reality was stretched so thin and therefore blown by so many strange breezes. If that was so, then they weren't exactly designing something. They were just putting physical clothes on an idea that was already there, a shadow of something that had been waiting to exist. He'd explained at length to the Faculty that Hex didn' think. It was obvious that it couldn't think. Part of it was clockwork. A lot of it was a giant ant farm (the interface, where the ants rode up and down on a little paternoster that turned a significant cogwheel was a little masterpiece, he thought) and the intricately controlled rushing of the ants through their maze of glass tubing was the most important part of the whole thing. But a lot of it had just . . . accumulated, like the aquarium and wind chimes which now seemed to be essential. A mouse had built a nest in the middle of it all and had been allowed to become a fixture, since the thing stopped working when they took it out. Nothing in that assemblage could possibly think, except in fairly limited ways about cheese or sugar, Nevertheless . . . in the middle of the night, when Hex was working hard, and the tubes rustled with the toiling ants, and things suddenly went 'clonk' for no obvious reason, and the aquarium had been lowered on its davits so that the operator would have some-thing to watch during the long hours .. . nevertheless, then a man might begin to speculate about what a brain was and what thought was and whether things that weren't alive could think and whether a brain was just a more complicated version of Hex (or, around 4 a.m., when bits of the clockwork reversed direction suddenly and the mice squeaked, a less complicated version of Hex) and wonder if the whole produced something not apparently inherent in the parts. In short, Ponder was just a little bit worried. He sat down at the keyboard. It was almost as big as the rest of Hex, to allow for the necessary levers and armatures. The various keys allowed little boards with holes in them to drop briefly into slots, forcing the ants into new paths. It took him some time to compose the problem, but at last he braced one foot on the structure and tugged on the Enter lever. The ants scurried on new paths. The clockwork started to move. A small mechanism which Ponder would be prepared to swear had not been there yesterday, but which looked like a device for measuring wind speed, began to spin. After several minutes a number of blocks with occult symbols on them dropped into the output hopper. 'Thank you,' said Ponder, and then felt extremely silly for saying so. There was a tension to the thing, a feeling of nute straining and striving towards some distant and incomprehensible goal. As a wizard, it was something that Ponder had only before encountered in acorns: a tiny soundless voice which said, yes, I am but a small, green, simple object - but I dream about forests. Only the other day Adrian Turnipseed had typed in 'Why?' to see what happened. Some of the students had forecast that Hex would go mad trying to work it out; Ponder had expected Hex to produce the message ?????, which it did with depressing frequency. Instead, after some unusual activity among the ants, it had laboriously produced: 'Because.' With everyone else watching from behind a hastily overturned desk, Turnipseed had volunteered: 'Why anything?' The reply had finally turned up: 'Because Everything. ????? Eternal Domain Error. +++++ Redo From Start +++++.' No-one knew who Redo From Start was, or why he was sending messages. But there were no more funny questions. No-one wanted to risk getting answers. It was shortly afterwards that the thing like a broken umbrella with herrings on it appeared just behind the thing like a beachball that went 'parp' every fourteen minutes. Of course, books of magic developed a certain . . . personality, derived from all that power in their pages. That's why it was unwise to go into the Library without a stick. And now Ponder had helped build an engine for studying magic. Wizards had always known that the act of observation changed the thing that was observed, and sometimes forgot that it also changed the observer too. He was beginning to suspect that Hex was redesigning itself. And he'd just said 'Thank you'. To a thing that looked like it had been made by a glassblower with hiccups. He looked at the spell it had produced, hastily wrote it down and hurried out. Hex clicked to itself in the now empty room. The thing that went 'parp' went parp. The Unreal Time Clock ticked sideways. There was a rattle in the output slot. 'Don't mention it. ++?????++ Out of Cheese Error. Redo From Start.'   It was five minutes later. 'Fascinatin',' said Ridcully. 'Sapient pearwood, eh?' He knelt down in an effort to see underneath. The Luggage backed away. It was used to terror, horror, fear and panic. It had seldom encountered interest before. The Archchancellor stood up and brushed himself off. 'Ah,' he said, as a dwarfish figure approached. 'Here's the gardener with the stepladder. The Dean's in the chandelier, Modo.' 'I'm quite happy up here, I assure you,' said a voice from the ceiling regions. 'Perhaps someone would be kind enough to pass me up my tea?' 'And I was amazed the Senior Wrangler could ever fit in the sideboard,' said Ridcully. 'It's amazin' how a man can fold himself up.' 'I was just - just inspecting the silverware,' said a voice from the depths of a drawer. The Luggage opened its lid. Several wizards jumped back hurriedly. Ridcully examined the shark teeth stuck here and there in the woodwork. 'Kills sharks, you say?' he said. 'Oh, yes,' said Rincewind. 'Sometimes it drags them ashore and jumps up and down on them.' Ridcully was impressed. Sapient pearwood was very rare in the countries between the Ramtops and the Circle Sea. There were probably no living trees left. A few wizards were lucky enough to have inherited staffs made out of it. Economy of emotion was one of Ridcully's strong points. He had been impressed. He had been fascnated. He'd even, when the thing had landed in the middle of the wizards and caused the Dean's remarkable feat of vertical acceleration, been slightly aghast. But he hadn't been frightened, because he didn't have the imagination. 'My goodness,' said a wizard. The Archchancellor looked up. 'Yes, Bursar?' 'It's this book the Dean loaned me, Mustrum. It's about apes.' 'Really.' 'It's most fascinating,' said the Bursar, who was on the median part of his mental cycle and therefore vaguely on the right planet even if insulated from it by five miles of mental cotton wool. 'It's true what he said. It says here that an adult male orang-utan doesn't grow the large flamboyant cheek pads unless he's the dominant male.' 'And that's fascinating, is it?' 'Well, yes, because he hasn't got 'em. I wonder why? He certainly dominates the Library, I should think.' 'Ah, yes,' said the Senior Wrangler, 'but he knows he's a wizard, too. So it's not as though he dominates the whole University.' One by one, as the thought sank in, they grinned at the Archchancellor. 'Don't you look at my cheeks like that!' said Ridcully. 'I don't dominate anybody!' 'I was only—' 'So you can all shut up or there will be big trouble!' 'You should read it,' said the Bursar, still happily living in the valley of the dried frogs. 'It's amazing what you can learn.' 'What? Like . . . how to show your bottom to people?' said the Dean, from on high. 'No, Dean. That's baboons,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'I beg your pardon, I think you'll find it's gibbons,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'No, gibbons are the ones that hoot. It's baboons if you want to see bottoms.' 'Well, he's never shown me one,' said the Archchancellor. 'Hah, well, he wouldn't, would he?' said a voice from the chandelier. 'Not with you being dominant male and everything.' 'Two Chairs, you come down here this minute!' 'I seem to be entangled, Mustrum. A candle is giving me some difficulty.' 'Hah!' Rincewind shook his head and wandered away. There had certainly been some changes around the place since he had been there and, if it came to it, he didn't know how long ago that had been . . . He'd never asked for an exciting life. What he really liked, what he sought on every occasion, was boredom. The trouble was that boredom tended to explode in your face. Just when he thought he'd found it he'd be suddenly involved in what he supposed other people - thoughtless, feckless people - would call an adventure. And he'd be forced to visit many strange lands and meet exotic and colourful people, although not for very long because usually he'd be running. He'd seen the creation of the universe, although not from a good seat, and had visited Hell and the afterlife. He'd been captured, imprisoned, rescued, lost and marooned. Sometimes it had all happened on the same day. Adventure! People talked about the idea as if it was something worthwhile, rather than a mess of bad food, no sleep and strange people inexplicably trying to stick pointed objects in bits of you. The root problem, Rincewind had come to believe, was that he suffered from pre-emptive karma. If it even looked as though something nice was going to happen to him in the near future, something bad would happen right now. And it went on happening to him right through the part where the good stuff should be happening, so that he never actually experienced it. It was as if he always got the indigestion before the meal and felt so dreadful that he never actually managed to eat anything. Somewhere in the world, he reasoned, there was someone who was on the other end of the see-saw, a kind of mirror Rincewind whose life was a succession of wonderful events. He hoped to meet him one day, preferably while holding some sort of weapon. Now people were babbling about sending him to the Counterweight Continent. He'd heard that life was dull there. And Rincewind really craved dullness. He'd really liked that island. He'd enjoyed Coconut Surprise. You cracked it open and, hey, there was coconut inside. That was the kind of surprise he liked. He pushed open a door. The place inside had been his room. It was a mess. There was a large and battered wardrobe, and that was about the end of it as far as proper furniture was concerned unless you wanted to broaden the term to include a wicker chair with no bottom and three legs and a mattress so full of the life that inhabits mattresses that it occasionally moved sluggishly around the floor, bumping into things. The rest of the room was a litter of objects dragged in from the street - old crates, bits of planking, sacks . . . Rincewind felt a lump in his throat. They'd left his room just as it was. He opened the wardrobe and rummaged through the moth-haunted darkness within, until his questing hand located— —an ear— —which was attached to a dwarf. 'Ow!' 'What,' said Rincewind, 'are you doing in my wardrobe?' 'Wardrobe? Er . . . Er . . . Isn't this the Magic Kingdom of Scrumptiousness?' said the dwarf, trying not to look guilty. 'No, and these shoes you're holding aren't the Golde Jewels of the Queen of the Fairies,' said Rincewind, snatching them out of the thief's hands. 'And this isn't the Wand of Invisibility and these aren't Giant Grumblenose's Wonderful Socks but this is my boot—' 'Ow!' 'And stay out!' The dwarf ran for the door and paused, but only briefly, to shout: 'I've got a Thieves' Guild card! And you shouldn't hit dwarfs! That's speciesism!' 'Good,' said Rincewind, retrieving items of clothing. He found another robe and put it on. Here and there moths had worked their lacemaking skills and most of the red colour had faded to shades of orange and brown, but to his relief it was a proper wizard's robe. It's hard to be an impressive magic-user with bare knees. Gentle footsteps pattered to a halt behind him. He turned. 'Open.' The Luggage obediently cracked its lid. In theory it should have been full of shark; in fact it was half full of coconuts. Rincewind turfed them out on to the floor and put the rest of the clothes inside. 'Shut.' The lid slammed. 'Now go down to the kitchen and get some potatoes.' The chest did a complicated, many-legged about-turn and trotted away. Rincewind followed it out and headed towards the Archchancellor's study. Behind him he could hear the wizards still arguing. He'd become familiar with the study through long years at Unseen. Generally he was there to answer quite difficult questions, like 'How can anyone get a negative mark in Basic Firemaking?' He'd spent a lot of time staring at the fixtures while people harangued him. There had been changes here, too. Gone were the alembics and bubbling flagons that were the traditional props of wizardry; Ridcully's study was dominated by a full-size snooker table, on which he'd piled papers until there was no room for any more and no sign of green felt. Ridcully assumed that anything people had time to write down couldn't be important. The stuffed heads of a number of surprised animals stared down at him. From the antlers of one stag hung a pair of corroded boots Ridcuffy had won as a Rowing Brown for the University in his youth.[10] There was a large model of the Discworld on four wooden elephants in a corner of the room. Rincewind was familiar with it. Every student was . . . The Counterweight Continent was a blob. It was a shaped blob; a not very inviting comma shape. Sailors had brought back news of it. They'd said that at one point broke into a pattern of large islands, stretching around the Disc to the even more mysterious island of Bhangbhangduc and the completely mythical continent known only on the charts as 'XXXX'. Not that many sailors went near the Counterweight Continent. The Agatean Empire was known to ignore a very small amount of smuggling; presumably Ankh-Morpork had some things it wanted. But there was nothing official; a boat might come back loaded with silk and rare wood and, these days, a few wild-eyed refugees, or it might come back with its captain riveted upside down to the mast, or it might not come back. Rincewind had been very nearly everywhere, but the Counterweight Continent was an unknown land, or terror incognita. He couldn't imagine why they'd want any kind of wizard. Rincewind sighed. He knew what he should do now. He shouldn't even wait for the return of the Luggage from its argosy to the kitchens, from which the sound of yelling and something being repeatedly hit with a large brass preserving pan suggested it was going about his business. He should just gather up what he could carry and get the hell out of here. He— 'Ah, Rincewind,' said the Archchancellor, who had an amazingly silent walk for such a large man. 'Keen to leave, I see.' 'Yes, indeed,' said Rincewind. 'Oh, yes. Very much so.   The Red Army met in secret session. They opened their meeting by singing revolutionary songs and, since disobedience to authority did not come easily to the Agatean character, these had titles like 'Steady Progress And Limited Disobedience While Retaining Well-Formulated Good Manners'. Then it was time for the news. 'The Great Wizard will come. We sent the message, at great personal risk. 'How will we know when he arrives?' 'If he's the Great Wizard, we'll hear about it. And then—' 'Gently Push Over The Forces of Repression!' they chorused. Two Fire Herb looked at the rest of the cadre. 'Exactly,' he said. 'And then, comrades, we must strike at the very heart of the rottenness. We must storm the Winter Palace!' There was silence from the cadre. Then someone said, 'Excuse me, Two Fire Herb, but it is June.' 'Then we can storm the Summer Palace!'   A similar session, although without singing and with rather older participants, was taking place in Unseen University, although one member of the College Council had refused to come down from the chandelier. This was of some considerable annoyance to the Librarian, who usually occupied it. 'All right, if you don't trust my calculations, then what are the alternatives?' said Ponder Stibbons hotly. 'Boat?' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'They sink,' said Rincewind. 'It'd get you there in no time at all,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'We're wizards, after all. We could give you your own bag of wind.' 'Ah. Forward the Dean,' said Ridcully, pleasantly. 'I heard that,' said a voice from above. 'Overland,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'Up around the Hub? It's ice practically all the way.' 'No,' said Rincewind. 'But you don't sink on ice.' 'No. You tip up and then you sink and then the ice hits you on the head. Also killer whales. And great big seals vif teece ike iff.' 'This is off the wall, I know,' said the Bursar, brightly. 'What is?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'A hook for hanging pictures on.' There was a brief embarrassed silence. 'Good lord, is it that time already?' said the Arch-chancellor, taking out his watch. 'Ah, so it is. The bottle's in your left-hand pocket, old chap. Take three.' 'No, magic is the only way,' said Ponder Stibbons. 'It worked when we brought him here, didn't it?' 'Oh, yes,' said Rincewind. 'Just send me thousands of miles with my pants on fire and you don't even know where I'll land? Oh, yes, that's ideal, that is.' 'Good,' said Ridcully, a man impervious to sarcasm. 'It's a big continent; we can't possibly miss it even with Mr Stibbons' precise calculations.' 'Supposing I end up crushed in the middle of a mountain?' said Rincewind. 'Can't. The rock'll be brought back here when we do the spell,' said Ponder, who hadn't liked the crack about his maths. 'So I'll still be in the middle of a mountain but in a me-shaped hole,' said Rincewind. 'Oh, good. Instant fossil.' 'Don't worry,' said Ridcully. 'It's just a matter of . . . thingummy, you know, all that stuff about three right angles making a triangle . . .' 'Is it possible you're talking about geometry?' said Rincewind, eyeing the door. 'That kind of thing, yes. And you'll have your amazing Luggage item. Why, it'll practically be a holiday. It'll be easy. They probably just want to . . . to . . . ask you something, or something. And I hear you've got a talent for languages, so no problem there.[11] You'll probably be away for a couple of hours at the most. Why do you keep sayin' "hah" under your breath?' 'Was I?' 'And everyone will be so grateful if you come back.' Rincewind looked around - and, in one case, up - at the Council. 'How will I get back?' he said. 'Same way you went. We'll find you and bring you out. With surgical precision.' Rincewind groaned. He knew what surgical precision meant in Ankh-Morpork. It meant 'to within an inch or two, accompanied by a lot of screaming, and then they pour hot tar on you just where your leg was'. But . . . if you put aside for the moment the certainty that something would definitely go horribly wrong, it looked foolproof. The trouble was that wizards were such ingenious fools. 'And then I can have my old job back?' 'Certainly.' 'And officially call myself a wizard?' 'Of course. With any kind of spelling.' 'And never have to go anywhere again as long as I live?' 'Fine. We'll actually ban you leaving the premises, if you like.' 'And a new hat?' 'What?' 'A new hat. This one's practically had it.' 'Two new hats.' 'Sequins?' 'Of course. And those, you know, like glass chandelier things? Lots of those all round the brim. As many as you like. And we'll spell Wizzzard with three Z's. Rincewind sighed. 'Oh, all right. I'll do it.'   Ponder's genius found itself rather cramped when it came to explaining things to people. And this was the case now, as the wizards forgathered to kick some serious magic. 'Yes, but you see, Archchancellor, he's being sent to the opposite side of the Disc, you see—' Ridcully sighed. 'It's spinnin', isn't it,' he said. 'We're all going the same way. It stands to reason. If people're going the other way just because they're on the Counterweight Continent we'd crash into them once a year. I mean twice.' 'Yes, yes, they're spinning the same way, of course, but the direction of motion is entirely opposite. I mean,' said Ponder, lapsing into logic, 'you have to think about vectors, you, you have to ask yourself: what direction would they go in if the Disc wasn't here?' The wizards stared at him. 'Down,' said Ridcully. 'No, no, no, Archchancellor,' said Ponder. 'They wouldn't go down because there'd be nothing to pull them down, they—' 'You don't need anything to pull you down. Down's where you go if there's nothing to keep you up.' 'They'd keep on going in the same direction!' shouted Ponder. 'Right. Round and round,' said Ridcully. He rubbed his hands together. 'You've got to maintain a grip if you want to be a wizard, lad. How're we doing, Runes?' 'I . . . I can make out something,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, squinting into the crystal ball. 'There's a lot of interference . . .' The wizards gathered round. White specks filled the crystal. There were vague shapes just visible in the mush. Some of them could be human. 'Very peaceful place, the Agatean Empire,' said Ridcully. 'Very tranquil. Very cultured. They set great store in politeness.' 'Well, yes,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, 'I heard it was because people who aren't tranquil and quiet get serious bits cut off, don't they? I heard the Empire has a tyrannical and repressive government!' 'What form of government is that?' said Ponder Stibbons. 'A tautology,' said the Dean, from above. 'How serious are these bits?' said Rincewind. They ignored him. 'I heard that gold's very common there,' said the Dean. 'Lying around like dirt, they say. Rincewind could bring back a sackful.' 'I'd rather bring back all my bits,' said Rincewind. After all, he thought, I'm only the one who's going to end up in the middle of it all. So please don't anyone bother to listen to me. 'Can't you stop it blurring like that?' said the Archchancellor. 'I'm sorry, Archchancellor—' 'These bits . . . big bits or small bits?' said Rincewind, unheard. 'Just find us an open space with something about the right size and weight.' 'It's very hard to—' 'Very serious bits? Are we in arms and legs territory here?' 'They say it's very boring there. Their biggest curse is "May you live in interesting times", apparently.' 'There's a thing . . . it's very blurry. Looks like a wheelbarrow or something. Quite small, I think.' '—or toes, ears, that kind of thing?' 'Good, let's get started,' said Ridcully. 'Er, I think it'll help if he's a bit heavier than the thing we move here,' said Ponder. 'He won't arrive at any speed, then. I think—' 'Yes, yes, thank you very much, Mister Stibbons, now get in the circle and let us see that staff crackle, there's a good chap.' 'Fingernails? Hair?' Rincewind tugged at the robe of Ponder Stibbons, who seemed slightly more sensible than the others. 'Er. What's my next move here?' he said. 'Urn. About six thousand miles, I hope,' said Ponder Stibbons. 'But . . . I mean . . . Have you got any advice?' Ponder wondered how to put things. He thought: I've done my best with Hex, but the actual business will be undertaken by a bunch of wizards whose idea of experimental procedure is to throw it and then sit down and argue about where it's going to land. We want to change your position with that of something six thousand miles away which, whatever the Arch-chancellor says, is heading through space in a quite different direction. The key is precision. It's no good using any old travelling spell. It'd come apart halfway, and so would you. I'm pretty sure that we'll get you there in one or, at worst, two pieces. But we've no way of knowing the weight of the thing we change you with. If it's pretty much the same weight as you, then it might just all work out provided you don't mind jogging on the spot when you land. But if it's a lot heavier than you, then my suspicion is that you'll appear over there travelling at the sort of speed normally only experienced by sleep-walkers in clifftop villages in a very terminal way. 'Er,' he said. 'Be afraid. Be very afraid.' 'Oh, that,' said Rincewind. 'No problem there. I'm good at that.' 'We're going to try to put you in the centre of the continent, where Hunghung is believed to be,' said Ponder. 'The capital city?' 'Yes. Er.' Ponder felt guilty. 'Look, whatever happens I'm sure you'll get there alive, which is more than would happen if it'd just been left to them. And I'm pretty sure you'll end up on the right continent.' 'Oh, good.' 'Come along, Mr Stibbons. We're all agog to hear how you wish us to do this,' said Ridcully. 'Ah, er, yes. Right. Now, you, Mr Rincewind, if you will go and stand in the centre of the octagon . . . thank you. Um. You see, gentlemen, what has always been the problem with teleporting over large distances is Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle,[12] since the object teleported, that's from tele, "I see", and porte, "to go", the whole meaning "I see it's gone", er, the object teleported, er, no matter how large, is reduced to a thuamic particle and is therefore the subject of an eventually fatal dichotomy: it can either know what it is or where it is going, but not both. Er, the tension this creates in the morphic field eventually causes it to disintegrate, leaving the subject as a randomly shaped object, er, smeared across up to eleven dimensions. But I'm sure you all know this.' There was a snore from the Chair of Indefinite Studies, who was suddenly giving a lecture in room 3B. Rincewind was grinning. At least, his mouth had gaped open and his teeth were showing. 'Er, excuse me,' he said. 'I don't remember anyone saying anything about being sm—' 'Of course,' said Ponder, 'the subject would not, er, actually experience this—' 'Oh.' '—as far as we know—' 'What?' '—although it is theoretically possible for the psyche to remain present—' 'Eh?' '—briefly witness the explosive discorporation.' 'Hey?' 'Now, we're all familiar with the use of the spell as a fulcrum, er, so that one does not actually move one object but simply exchanges the position of two objects of similar mass. It is my aim tonight, er, to demonstrate that by imparting exactly the right amount of spin and the maximum velocity to the object—' 'Me?' '—from the very first moment, it is virtually cetain—' 'Virtually?' '—to hold together for distances of up to, er, six thousand miles—' 'Up to?' '—give or take ten per cent—' 'Give or take?' 'So if you'd - excuse me, Dean, I'd be obliged if you'd stop dripping wax - if you'd all take up the positions I've marked on the floor . . .' Rincewind looked longingly towards the door. It was no distance at all for the experienced coward. He could just trot out of here and they could . . . they could . . . What could they do? They could just take his hat away and stop him ever coming back to the University. Now he came to think about it, they probably wouldn't be bothered about the nailing bit if he was too much bother to find. And that was the problem. He wouldn't be dead, but then neither would he be a wizard. And, he thought, as the wizards shuffled into position and screwed down the knobs on the end of their staffs, not being able to think of himself as a wizard was being dead. The spell began. Rincewind the shoemaker? Rincewind the beggar? Rincewind the thief? Just about everything apart from Rincewind the corpse demanded training or aptitudes that he didn't have. He was no good at anything else. Wizardry was the only refuge. Well, actually he was no good at wizardry either, but at least he was definitively no good at it. He'd always felt he had a right to exist as a wizard in the same way that you couldn't do proper maths without the number 0, which wasn't a number at all but, if it went away, would leave a lot of larger numbers looking bloody stupid. It was a vaguely noble thought that had kept him warm during those occasional 3 a.m. awakenings when he had evaluated his life and found it weighed a little less than a puff of warm hydrogen. And he probably had saved the world a few times, but it had generally happened accidentally, while he was trying to do something else. So you almost certainly didn't actually get any karmic points for that. It probably only counted if you started out by thinking in a loud way 'By criminy, it's jolly well time to save the world, and no two ways about it!' instead of 'Oh shit, this time I'm really going to die.' The spell continued. It didn't seem to be going very well. 'Come on, you chaps,' said Ridcully. 'Put some backbone into it!' 'Are you sure . . . it's . . . just something small?' said the Dean, who'd broken into a sweat. 'Looks like a . . . wheelbarrow . . .' muttered the Lecturer in Recent Runes. The knob on the end of Ridcully's staff began to smoke. 'Will you look at the magic I'm using!' he said. 'What's goin' on, Mr Stibbons?' 'Er. Of course, size isn't the same as mass . . .' And then, in the same way that it can take considerable effot to push at a sticking door and no effort at all to fall full length into the room beyond, the spell caught. Ponder hoped, afterwards, that what he saw was an optical illusion. Certainly no-one normally was suddenly stretched to about twelve feet tall and then snapped back into shape so fast that their boots ended up under their chin. There was a brief cry of 'Oooooohhhhshhhhhh—' which ended abruptly, and this was probably just as well.   The first thing that struck Rincewind when he appeared on the Counterweight Continent was a cold sensation.' The next things, in order of the direction of travel, were: a surprised man with a sword, another man with a sword, a third man who'd dropped his sword and was trying to run away, two other men who were less alert and didn't even see him, a small tree, about fifty yards of stunted undergrowth, a snowdrift, a bigger snowdrift, a few rocks, and one more and quite final snowdrift.   Ridcully looked at Ponder Stibbons. 'Well, he's gone,' he said. 'But aren't we supposed to get something back?' 'I'm not sure the transit time is instantaneous,' said Ponder. 'You've got to allow for zooming-through-the-occult-dimensions time?' 'Something like that. According to Hex, we might have to wait several—' Something appeared in the octagon with a 'pop', exactly where Rincewind had been, and rolled a few inches. It did, at least, have four small wheels such as might carry a cart. But these weren't workmanlike wheels; these were mere discs such as may be put on something heavy for those rare occasions it needs to be moved. Above the wheels things became rather more interesting. There was a large round cylinder, like a barrel on its side. A considerable amount of effort had been put into its construction; large amounts of brass had gone into making it look like a very large, fat dog with its mouth open. A minor feature was a length of string, which was smoking and hissing because it was on fire. It didn't do anything dangerous. It just sat there, while the smouldering string slowly got shorter. The wizards gathered round. 'Looks pretty heavy,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'A statue of a dog with a big mouth,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. That's rather dull.' 'Bit of a lap-dog, too,' said Ridcully. 'Lot of work gone into it,' said the Dean. 'Can't imagine why anyone'd want to set fire to it.' Ridcully poked his head into the wide tube. 'Some kind of big round ball in here,' he said, his voice echoing a little. 'Someone pass me a staff or something. I'll see if I can wiggle it out.' Ponder was staring at the fizzing string. 'Er,' he said, 'I . . . er . . . think we should all just step away from it, Archchancellor. Er. We should all just step back, yes, step back a little way. Er.' 'Hah, yes, really? So much for research,' said Ridcully. 'You don't mind messing around with cogwheels and ants but when it comes to really trying to find out how things work and—' 'Getting your hands dirty,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'Yes, getting your hands dirty, you come over all shy.' 'It's not that, Archchancellor,' said Ponder. 'But I believe it may be dangerous.' 'I think I'm working it loose,' said Ridcully, poking in the depths of the tube. 'Come on, you fellows, tip the thing up a bit . . .' Ponder took a few more steps back. 'Er, I really don't think—' he began. 'Don't think, eh? Call yourself a wizard and you don't think? Blast! I've got my staff wedged now! That's what comes of listening to you when I should have been paying attention, Mr Stibbons.' Ponder heard a scuffling behind him. The Librarian, with an animal's instinct for danger and a human's instinct for trouble, had upturned a table and was peering over the top of it with a small cauldron on his head, the handle under one of his chins like a strap. 'Archchancellor, I really do think—' 'Oh, you think, do you? Did anyone tell you it's your job to think? Ow! It's got my fingers now, thanks to you!' It needed all Ponder's courage to say, 'I think . . . it might perhaps be some kind of firework, sir.' The wizards turned their attention to the fizzling string. 'What . . . coloured lights, stars, that sort of thing?' said Ridcully. 'Possibly, sir.' 'Must be planning a hell of a display. Apparently they're very keen on firecrackers, over in the Empire.' Ridcully spoke in the tone of voice of a man over whom the thought is slowly stealing that he just might have done something very silly. 'Would you like me to extinguish the string, sir?' said Ponder. 'Yes, dear boy, why not? Good idea. Good thinking, that man.' Ponder stepped forward and pinched the string. 'I do hope we haven't ruined something,' he said.   Rincewind opened his eyes. This was not cool sheets. It was white, and it was cold, but it lacked basic sheetness. It made up for this by having vast amounts of snowosity. And a groove. A long groove. Let's see now . . . He could remember the sensation of movement. And he vaguely remembered something small but incredibly /leauy-looking roaring past in the opposite direction. And then he was here, moving so fast that his feet left this . . . . . . groove. Yes, groove, he thought, in the easy-going way of the mildly concussed. With people lying around it groaning. But they looked like people who, once they'd stopped crawling around groaning, were going to draw the swords they had about their persons and pay detailed attention to serious bits. He stood up, a little shakily. There didn't seem to be anywhere to run to. There was just this wide, snowy waste with a border of mountains. The soldiers were definitely looking a lot more conscious. Rincewind sighed. A few hours ago he'd been sitting on a warm beach with young women about to offer him potatoes,[13] and here he was on a windswept, chilly plain with some large men about to offerr him violence. The soles of his shoes, he noticed, were steaming. And then someone said, 'Hey! Are you . . . you're not, are you . . . are you . . . whatsyername . . . Rincewind, isn't it?' Rincewind turned. There was a very old man behind him. Despite the bitter wind he was wearing nothing except a leather lioncloth and a grubby beard so long that the loincloth wasn't really necessary, at least from the point of view of decency. His legs were blue from the cold and his nose was red from the wind, giving him overall quite a patriotic look if you were from the right country. He had a patch over one eye but rather more notable than that were his teeth. They glittered. 'Don't stand there gawping like a big gawper! Get these damn things off me!' There were heavy shackles around his ankles and wrists; a chain led to a group of more or less similarly clad men who were huddling in a crowd and watching Rincewind in terror. 'Heh! They think you're some kind of demon,' cackled the old man. 'But I knows a wizard when I sees one! That bastard over there's got the keys. Go and give him a good kicking.' Rincewind took a few hesitant steps towards a recumbent guard and snatched at his belt. 'Right,' said the old man, 'now chuck 'em over here. And then get out of the way.' 'Why?' ' 'Cos you don't want to get blood all over you.' 'But you haven't got a weapon and there's one of you and they've got big swords and there's five of them!' 'I know,' said the old man, wrapping the chain around one of his fists in a businesslike manner. 'It's unfair, but I can't wait around all day.' He grinned. Gems glittered in the morning light. Every tooth in the man's head was a diamond. And Rincewind knew of only one man who had the nerve to wear troll teeth. 'Here? Cohen the Barbarian?' 'Ssh! Ingconitar! Now get out of the way, I said.' The teeth flashed at the guards, who were now vertical. 'Come on, boys. There's five of you, after all. An' I'm an old man. Mumble, mumble, oo me leg, ekcetra . . .' To their credit, the guards hesitated. It was probably not, to judge from their faces, because there's something reprehensible about five large, heavily be-weaponed men attacking a frail old man. It might have been because there's something odd about a frail old man who keeps on grinning in the face of obvious oblivion. 'Oh, come on,' said Cohen. The men edged closer, each waiting for one of the others to make the first move. Cohen took a few steps forward, waving his arms wearily. 'Oh, no/ he said. 'It makes me ashamed, honestly it does. This is not how you attack someone, all milling around like a lot of millers; when you attack someone the important thing to remember is the element of . . . surprise—' Ten seconds later he turned to Rincewind. 'All right, Mister Wizard. You can open your eyes now.' One guard was upside down in a tree, one was a pair of feet sticking out of a snowdrift, two were slumped against rocks, and one was . . . generally around the place. Here and there. Certainly hanging out. Cohen sucked his wrist thoughtfully. 'I reckon that last one came within an inch of getting me,' he said. 'I must be getting old.' 'Why are you h—' Rincewind paused. One packet of curiosity overtook the first one. 'How old are you, exactly?' 'Is this still the Century of the Fruitbat?' 'Yes.' 'Oh, I dunno. Ninety? Could be ninety. Maybe ninety-five?' Cohen fished the keys out of the snow and ambled over to the group of men, who were cowering even more. He unlocked the first set of manacles and handed the shocked prisoner the keys. 'Bugger off, the lot of you,' he said, not unkindly. 'And don't get caught again.' He strolled back to Rincewind. 'What brings you into this dump, then?' 'Well—' 'Interestin',' said Cohen, and that was that. 'But can't stay chatting all day, got work to do. You coming, or what?' 'What?' 'Please yourself.' Cohen tied the chain around his waist as a makeshift belt and wedged a couple of swords in it. 'Incidentally,' he said, 'what did you do with the Barking Dog?' 'What dog?' 'I expect it doesn't matter.' Rincewind scuttled after the retreating figure, It wasn't that he felt safe when Cohen the Barbarian was around. No-one was safe when Cohen the Barbarian was around. Something seemed to have gone wrong with the ageing process there. Cohen had always been a barbarian hero because barbaric heroing was all he knew how to do. And while he got old he seemed to get harder, like oak. But he was a known figure, and therefore comforting. He just wasn't in the right place. 'No future in it, back around the Ramtops,' said Cohen, as they trudged through the snow. 'Fences and farms, fences and farms everywhere. You kill a dragon these days, people complain. You know what? You know what happened?' 'No. What happened?' 'Man came up to me, said my teeth were offensive to trolls. What about that, eh?' 'Well, they are made of—' 'I said they never complained to me.' 'Er, did you ever give them a cha—' 'I said, I see a troll up in the mountains with a necklace o' human skulls, I say good luck to him. Silicon Anti-Defamation League, my bottom. It's the same all over. So I thought I'd try my luck the other side of the icecap.' 'Isn't it dangerous, going around the Hub?' said Rincewind. 'Used to be,' said Cohen, grinning horribly. 'Until you left, you mean?' ' 'S right. You still got that box on legs?' 'On and off. It hangs around. You know.' Cohen chuckled. 'I'll get the bloody lid off that thing one day, mark my words. Ah. Horses.' There were five, looking depressed in a small depression. Rincewind looked back at the freed prisoners, who seemed to be milling around aimlessly. 'We're not taking all five horses, are we?' he said. 'Sure. We might need 'em,' 'But . . . one for me, one for you . . . What's the rest for?' 'Lunch, dinner and breakfast?' 'It's a little . . . unfair, isn't it? Those people look a bit bewildered.' Cohen sneered the sneer of a man who has never been truly imprisoned even when he's been locked up. 'I freed 'em,' he said. 'First time they've ever been free. Comes as a bit of a shock, I expect. They're waiting for someone to tell 'em what to do next.' 'Er . . .' 'I could tell 'em to starve to death, if you like.' 'Er . . .' 'Oh, all right. You lot! Formee uppee right now toot sweet chop chop!' The small crowd hurried over to Cohen and stood expectantly behind his horse. 'I tell you, I don't regret it. This is the land of opportunity,' said Cohen, urging the horse into a trot. The embarrassed free men jogged behind. 'Know what? Swords are banned. No-one except the army, the nobles and the Imperial Guard are allowed to own weapons. Couldn't believe it! Gods' own truth, though. Swords are outlawed, so only outlaws have swords. And that,' said Cohen, giving the landscape another glittering grin, 'suits me fine.' 'But. . . you were in chains . . .' Rincewind ventured. 'Glad you reminded me,' said Cohen. 'Yeah. We'll find the rest of the lads, then I'd better try and find who did it and talk to them about that.' The tone of his voice suggested very clearly that all they were likely to say would be, 'Highly enjoyable! Your wife is a big hippo!' 'Lads?' 'No future in one-man barbarianing,' said Cohen. 'Got myself a . . . Well, you'll see.' Rincewind turned to look at the trailing party, and at the snow, and at Cohen. 'Er. Do you know where Hunghung is?' 'Yeah. It's the boss city. We're on our way. Sort of. It's under siege right now.' 'Siege? You mean like . . . lots of armies outside, everyone inside eating rats, that sort of thing?' 'Yeah, but this is the Counterweight Continent, see, so it's a polite siege. Well, I call it a siege . . . The old Emperor's dying, so the big families are all waiting to move in. That's how it goes in these parts. There's five different top nobs and they're all watching one another, and no-one's going to be the first to move. You've got to think sideways to understand anything in this place.' 'Cohen?' 'Yes, lad?' 'What the hell's going on?'   Lord Hong was watching the tea ceremony. It took three hours, but you couldn't hurry a good cuppa. He was also playing chess, against himself. It was the only way he could find an opponent of his calibre but, currently, things were stalemated because both sides were adopting a defensive strategy which was, admittedly, brilliant. Lord Hong sometimes wished he could have an enemy as clever as himself. Or, because Lord Hong was indeed very clever, he sometimes wished for an enemy almost as clever as himself, one perhaps given to flights of strategic genius with nevertheless the occasional fatal flaw. As it was, people were so stupid. They seldom thought more than a dozen moves ahead. Assassination was meat and drink to the Hunghung court; in fact, meat and drink were often the means. It was a game that everyone played. It was just another kind of move. It was not considered good manners to assassinate the Emperor, of course. The correct move was to put the Emperor in a position where you had control. But moves at this level were very dangerous; happy as the warlords were to squabble amongst themselves, they could be relied upon to unite against any who looked in danger of rising above the herd. And Lord Hong had risen like bread, by making everyone else believe that, while they were the obvious candidate for the Emperorship, Lord Hong would be better than any of the alternatives. It amused him to know that they thought he was plotting for the Imperial pearl . . . He glanced up from the board and caught the eye of the young woman who was busy at the tea table. She blushed and looked away. The door slid back. One of his men entered, on his knees. 'Yes?' said Lord Hong. 'Er . . . O lord . . .' Lord Hong sighed. People seldom began like this when the news was good. 'What happened?' he said. 'The one they call the Great Wizard arrived, o lord. Up in the mountains. Riding on a dragon of wind. Or so they say,' the messenger added quickly, aware of Lord Hong's views about superstition. 'Good. But? I assume there is a but.' 'Er . . . one of the Barking Dogs has been lost. The new batch? That you commanded should be tested? We don't quite . . . that is to say . . . we think Captain Three High Trees was ambushed, perhaps . . . our information is somewhat confused . . . the, um, the informant says the Great Wizard magicked it away . . .' The messenger crouched lower. Lord Hong merely sighed again. Magic. It had fallen out of favour in the Empire, except for the most mundane purposes. It was uncultured. It put power in the hands of people who couldn't write a decent poem to save their lives, and sometimes hadn't. He believed in coincidence a lot more than he did in magic. 'This is most vexing,' said Lord Hong. He stood up and took his sword off the rack. It was long and curved and had been made by the finest sword-maker in the Empire, who was Lord Hong. He'd heard it took twenty years to learn the art, so he had stretched himself a little. It had taken him three weeks. People never concentrated, that was their trouble . . . The messenger grovelled. 'The officer concerned has been executed?' he said. The messenger tried to scrabble through the floor and decided to let truth stand in for honesty. 'Yes!' he piped. Lord Hong swung. There was a hiss like the fall of silk, a thump and clatter as of a coconut hitting the ground, and the tinkle of crockery. The messenger opened his eyes. He concentrated on his neck region, fearful that the slightest movement might leave him a good deal shorter. There were dire stories about Lord Hong's swords. 'Oh, do get up,' said Lord Hong. He wiped the blade carefully and replaced the sword. Then he reached across and pulled a small black bottle from the robe of the tea girl. Uncorked, it produced a few drops that hissed when they hit the floor. 'Really,' said Lord Hong. 'I wonder why people bother.' He looked up. 'Lord Tang or Lord McSweeney has probably stolen the Dog to vex me. Did the Wizard escape?' 'So it seems, o lord.' 'Good. See that harm almost comes to him. And send me another tea girl. One with a head.'   There was this to be said about Cohen. If there was no reason for him to kill you, such as you having any large amount of treasure or being between him and somewhere he wanted to get to, then he was good company. Rincewind had met him a few times before, generally while running away from something. Cohen didn't bother overmuch with questions. As far as Cohen was concerned, people appeared, people disappeared. After a five-year gap he'd just say, 'Oh, it's you.' He never added, 'And how are you?' You were alive, you were upright, and beyond that he didn't give a damn. It was a lot warmer beyond the mountains. To Rincewind's relief a spare horse didn't have to be eaten because a leopardly sort of creature dropped off a tree branch and tried to disembowel Cohen. It had a rather strong flavour. Rincewind had eaten horse. Over the years he'd nerved himself to eat anything that couldn't actually wriggle off his fork. But he was feeling shaken enough without eating something you could call Dobbin. 'How did they catch you?' he said, when they were riding again. 'I was busy.' 'Cohen the Barbarian? Too busy to fight?' 'I didn't want to upset the young lady. Couldn't help meself. Went down to a village to pick up some news, one thing led to another, next thing a load of soldiers were all over the place like cheap armour, and I can't fight that well with my arms shackled behind my back. Real nasty bugger in charge, face I won't forget in a hurry. Half a dozen of us were rounded up, made to push the Barking Dog thing all the way out here, then we were chained to that tree and someone lit the bit of string and they all legged it behind a snowdrift. Except you came along and vanished it.' 'I didn't vanish it. Not exactly, anyway.' Cohen leaned across towards Rincewind. 'I reckon I know what it was,' he said, and sat back looking pleased with himself. 'Yes?' 'I reckon it was some kind of firework. They're very big on fireworks here.' 'You mean the sort of things where you light the blue touch paper and stick it up your nose?'[14] 'They use 'em to drive evil spirits away. There's a lot of evil spirits, see. Because of all the slaughtering.' 'Slaughtering?' Rincewind had always understood that the Agatean Empire was a peaceful place. It was civilized. They invented things. In fact, he recalled, he'd been instrumental in introducing a few of their devices to Ankh-Morpork. Simple, innocent things, like clocks worked by demons, and boxes that painted pictures, and extra glass eyes you could wear over the top of your own eyes to help you see better, even if it did mean you made a spectacle of yourself. It was supposed to be dull. 'Oh, yeah. Slaughtering,' said Cohen. 'Like, supposing the population is being a bit behind with its taxes. You pick some city where people are being troublesome and kill everyone and set fire to it and pull down the walls and plough up the ashes. That way you get rid of the trouble and all the other cities are suddenly really well behaved and polite and all your back taxes turn up in a big rush, which is handy for governments, I understand. Then if they ever give trouble you just have to say "Remember Nangnang?" or whatever, and they say "Where's Nangnang?" and you say, "My point exactly." ' 'Good grief! If that sort of thing was tried back home—' 'Ah, but this place has been going a long time. People think that's how a country is supposed to run. They do what they're told. The people here are treated like slaves.' Cohen scowled. 'Now, I've got nothing against slaves, you know, as slaves. Owned a few in my time. Been a slave once or twice. But where there's slaves, what'll you expect to find?' Rincewind thought about this. 'Whips?' he said at last. 'Yeah. Got it in one. Whips. There's something honest about slaves and whips. Well. . . they ain't got whips here. They got something worse than whips.' 'What?' said Rncewind, looking slightly panicky. 'You'll find out.' Rincewind found himself looking around at the half-dozen other prisoners, who had trailed after them and were watching in awe from a distance. He'd given them a bit of leopard, which they'd looked at initially as if it was poison and then eaten as if it was food. 'They're still following us,' he said. 'Yeah, well . . . you did give 'em meat,' cackled Cohen, starting to roll a post-prandial cigarette. 'Shouldn't have done that. Should've let 'em have the whiskers and the claws and you'd've been amazed at what they'd cook up. You know their big dish down on the coast?' 'No.' 'Pig's ear soup. Now, what's that tell you about a place, eh?' Rincewind shrugged. 'Very provident people?' 'Some other bugger pinches the pig.' He turned in the saddle. The group of ex-prisoners shrank back. 'Now, see here,' he said. 'I told you. You're free. Understand?' One of the braver men spoke up. 'Yes, master.' 'I ain't your master. You're free. You can go where-ever you like, excepting if you follow me I'll kill the lot of you. And now - go away!' 'Where, master?' 'Anywhere! Somewhere not here!' The men gave one another some worried looks and then the whole group, as one man, turned and trotted away along the path. 'Probably go straight back to their village,' he said, rolling his eyes. 'Worse than whips, I tell you.' He waved a scrawny hand at the landscape as they rode on. 'Strange bloody country,' he said. 'Did you know there's a wall all round the Empire?' 'That's to keep . . . barbarian invaders . . . out . . .' 'Oh, yes, very defensive,' said Cohen sarcastically. 'Like, oh my goodness, there's a twenty-foot wall, dear me, I suppose we'd just better ride off back over a thousand miles of steppe and not, e.g., take a look at the ladder possibilities inherent in that pine wood over there. Nah. It's to keep the people in. And rules? They've got rules for everything. No-one even goes to the privy without a piece of paper.' 'Well, as a matter of fact I myself—' 'A piece of paper saying they can go, is what I meant. Can't leave your village without a chit. Can't get married without a chit. Can't even have a sh - Ah, we're here.' 'Yes, indeed,' said Rincewind. Cohen glared at him. 'How did you know?' he demanded. Rincewind tried to think. It had been a long day. In fact it had, because of the thaumic equivalent of jetlag, been several hours longer than most other days he'd experienced and had contained two lunchtimes, neither of which had contained anything worth eating. 'Er . . . I thought you were making a general philosophical point,' he hazarded. 'Er. Like, "We'd better make the best of it"?' 'I meant we're here at my hideout,' said Cohen. Rincewind stared around them. There were scrubby bushes, a few rocks, and a sheer cliff face. 'I can't see anything,' he said. 'Yep. That's how you can tell it's mine.'   Art of War was the ultimate basis of diplomacy in the Empire. Clearly war had to exist. It was a cornerstone of the processes of government. It was the way the Empire got its leaders. The competitive examination system was how it got its bureaucrats and public officials, and warfare was for its leaders, perhaps, only a different kind of competitive examination. Admittedly, if you lost you probably weren't allowed to re-sit next year. But there had to be rules. Otherwise it was just a barbaric scuffle. So, hundreds of years ago, the Art of War had been formulated. It was a book of rules. Some were very specific: there was to be no fighting within the Forbidden City, the person of the Emperor was sacrosanct . . . and some were more general guidelines for the good and civilized conduct of warfare. There were the rules of position, of tactics, of the enforcement of discipline, of the correct organization of supply lines. The Art laid down the optimum course to take in every conceivable eventuality. It meant that warfare in the Empire had become far more sensible, and generally consisted of short periods of activity followed by long periods of people trying to find things in the index. No-one remembered the author. Some said it was One Tzu Sung, some claimed it was Three Sun Sung. Possibly it was even some unsung genius who had penned, or rather painted, the very first principle: Know the enemy, and know yourself. Lord Hong felt that he knew himself very well, and seldom had trouble knowing his enemies. And he made a point of keeping his enemies alive and healthy. Take the Lords Sung, Fang, Tang and McSweeney. He cherished them. He cherished their adequacy. They had adequate military brains, which was to say that they had memorized the Five Rules and Nine Principles of the Art of War. They wrote adequate poetry, and were cunning enough to counter such coups as were attempted in their own ranks. They occasionally sent against him assassins who were sufficiently competent to keep Lord Hong interested and observant and entertained. He even admired their adequate treachery. No-one could fail to realize that Lord Hong would be the next Emperor, but when it came to it they would nevertheless contest the throne. At least, officially. In fact, each warlord had privately pledged his personal support to Lord Hong, being adequately bright to know what was likely to happen if he didn't. There would still have to be a battle, of course, for custom's sake. But Lord Hong had a place in his heart for any leader who would sell his own men. Know your enemy. Lord Hong had decided to find a worthwhile one. So Lord Hong had seen to it that he got books and news from Ankh-Morpork. There were ways. He had his spies. At the moment Ankh-Morpork didn't know it was the enemy, and that was the best kind of enemy to have. And he had been amazed, and then intrigued, and finally lost in admiration for what he saw . . . I should have been born there, he thought as he watched the other members of the Serene Council. Oh, for a game of chess with someone like Lord Vetinari. No doubt he would carefully watch the board for three hours before he even made his first move . . . Lord Hong turned to the Serene Council's minutes eunuch. 'Can we get on?' he said. The man licked his brush nervously. 'Nearly finished, o lord,' he said. Lord Hong sighed. Damn calligraphy! There would be changes! A written language of seven thousand letters and it took all day to write a thirteen-syllable poem about a white pony trotting through wild hyacinths. And that was fine and beautiful, he had to concede, and no-one did it better than Lord Hong. But Ankh-Morpork had an alphabet of twenty-six unexpressive, ugly, crude letters, suitable only for peasants and artisans . . . and had produced poems and plays that left white-hot trails across the soul. And you could also use it to write the bloody minutes of a five-minute meeting in less than a day. 'How far have you got?' he said. The eunuch coughed politely. ' "How softly the bloom of the apric—" ' he began. 'Yes, yes, yes,' said Lord Hong. 'Could we on this occasion dispense with the poetic framework, please.' 'Uh. "The minutes of the last meeting were duly signed." ' 'Is that all?' 'Uh . . . you see, I have to finish painting the petals on—' 'I wish this council to be concluded by this evening. Go away.' The eunuch looked anxiously around the table, grabbed his scrolls and brushes and scuttled out. 'Good,' said Lord Hong. He nodded at the other warlords. He saved a special friendly nod for Lord Tang. Lord Hong had prodded the thought with some intrigued interest, but it really did seem that Lord Tang was a man of honour. It was a rather cowed and crabbed honour, but it was definitely in there somewhere, and would have to be dealt with. 'It would be better in any case, my lords, if we spoke in private,' he said. 'On the matter of the rebels. Disturbing intelligence has reached me of their activities.' Lord McSweeney nodded. 'I have seen to it that thirty rebels in Sum Dim have been executed,' he said. 'As an example.' As an example of the mindlessness of Lord McSweeney, thought Lord Hong. To his certain knowledge, and none had better knowledge than he, there had not even been a cadre of the Red Army in Sum Dim. But, almost certainly, there was one now. It was really too easy. The other warlords also made small but proud speeches about their efforts to turn barely noticeable unrest into bloody revolution, although they hadn't managed to see it like that. They were nervous, under the bravado, like sheep-dogs who'd had a glimpse of a world where the sheep did not run. Lord Hong cherished the nervousness. He intended to use it, by and by. He smiled and smiled. Finally he said: 'However, my lords, despite your sterling efforts the situation remains grave. I have infomation that a very senior wizard from Ankh-Morpork has arrived to assist the rebels here in Hunghung, and that there is a plot to overthrow the good organization of the celestial world and assassin-ate the Emperor, may he live for ten thousand years. I must naturally assume that the foreign devils are be-hind this.' 'I know nothing of this!' snapped Lord Tang. 'My dear Lord Tang. I was not suggesting that you should,' said Lord Hong. 'I meant—' Lord Tang began. 'Your devotion to the Emperor is unquestioned,' Lord Hong continued, as smoothly as a knife through warm butter. 'It is true that there is almost certainly someone highly placed assisting these people, but not one shred of evidence points to you,' 'I should hope not!' 'Indeed.' The Lords Fang and McSweeney moved very slightly away from Lord Tang. 'How can we have let this happen?' said Lord Fang. 'Certainly it is true that people, foolish deranged people, have sometimes ventured out beyond the Wall. But to let one come back—' 'I am afraid the Grand Vizier at the time was a man of changeable humours,' said Lord Hong. 'He thought it would be interesting to see what intelligence was brought back.' 'Intelligence?' said Lord Fang. 'This city of Ank . . . More . . . Pork is an abomination! Mere anarchy! There appear to be no nobles of consequence and the society is that of a termite nest! It would be better for us, my lords, if it was wiped from the face of the world!' 'Your incisive comments are duly noted, Lord Fang,' said Lord Hong, while part of him rolled on the floor laughing. 'In any event,' he went on, 'I shall see that extra guards are posted in the Emperor's chambers However all this trouble began, we must see that it ends here.' He watched them watching him. They think I want to rule the Empire, he thought. So they're all - except for Lord Tang, rebel fellow traveller as he will undoubtedly prove to be - working out how this will be to their advantage . . . He dismissed them, and retired to his chambers. It was a fact that the ghosts and devils who lived beyond the Wall had no grasp of culture and certainly no concept of books, and being in possession of such a patently impossible object was punishable by eventual death. And confiscation. Lord Hong had built up quite a library. He had even acquired maps. And more than maps. There was a box he kept locked, in the room with the full-length mirror . . . Not now. Later on . . . Ankh-Morpork! Even the name sounded rich. All he needed was a year. The dreadful scourge of the rebellion would allow him to wield the kind of powers that even the maddest Emperor had not dreamed of. And then it would be unthinkable not to build a vengeful fleet to wreak terror on the foreign devils. Thank you, Lord Fang. Your point is duly noted. As if it mattered who was Emperor! The Empire was possibly a bonus, to be acquired later, perhaps, in passing. Let him just have Ankh-Morpork, with its busy dwarfs and its grasp, above all, of machinery. Look at the Barking Dogs. Half the time they blew up. They were inaccurate. The principle was sound but the execution was terrible, especially when they blew up. It had come as a revelation to Lord Hong when he looked at the problem the Ankh-Morpork way and realized that it might just possibly be better to give the job of Auspicious Dog-maker to some peasant with a fair idea about metal and explosive earths than to some clerk who'd got the highest marks in an examination to find the best poem about iron. In Ankh-Morpork people did things. Let him just walk down Broadway as owner, and eat the pies of the famous Mr Dibbler. Let him play one game of chess against Lord Vetinari. Of course, it would mean leaving the man one arm. He was shaking with excitement. Not later . . . now. His fingers reached for the secret key on its chain around his neck.   It was barely a track. Rabbits would have walked right past it. And you'd have sworn there was a sheer, passless rock wall until you found the gap. Once you did find it, it was hardly worth the bother. It led to a long gully with a few natural caves in it, and a bit of grass, and a spring. And, as it turned out, Cohen's gang. Except that he called it a horde. They were sitting in the sun, complaining about how it wasn't as warm as it used to be. 'I'm back then, lads,' said Cohen. 'Been away, have you?' 'Whut? Whut's he say?' 'He said HE'S BACK.' 'Black what?' Cohen beamed at Rincewind. 'I brought 'em with me,' he said. 'Like I said, no future in going it alone these days.' 'Er,' said Rincewind, after surveying the little scene, 'are any of these men under eighty years old?' 'Stand up, Boy Willie,' said Cohen. A dehydrated man only marginally less wrinkled than the others got to his feet. It was his feet that were particularly noticeable. He wore boots with extremely thick soles. 'So's me feet touch the ground,' he said. 'Don't they . . . er . . . touch the ground in ordinary boots?' 'Nope. Orthopaedic problem, see. Like . . . you know how a lot of people've got one leg shorter than the other? Funny thing, with me it's—' 'Don't tell me,' said Rincewind. 'Sometimes I get these amazing flashes . . . Both legs are shorter than the other, right?' 'Amazing. O' course, I can see you're a wizard,' said Boy Willie. 'You'd know about this sort of thing.' Rincewind gave the next member of the Horde a bright mad smile. It was almost certainly a human being, because wizened little monkeys didn't usually go around in a wheelchair while wearing a helmet with horns on it. It grimaced at Rincewind. 'This is—' 'Whut? Whut?' 'Mad Hamish,' said Cohen. 'Whut? Whozee?' 'I bet that wheelchair terrifies them,' said Rincewind. 'Especially the blades.' 'We had the devil of a job getting it over the wall,' Cohen conceded. 'But you'd be amazed at his turn of speed.' 'Whut?' 'And this is Truckle the Uncivil.' 'Sod off, wizard.' Rincewind beamed at Exhibit B. 'Those walking sticks . . . Fascinating! Very impressive the way you've got LOVE and HATE written on them.' Cohen smiled proprietorially. 'Truckle used to be reckoned one of the biggest badasses in the world,' he said. 'Really? Him?' 'But it's amazing what you can do with a herbal suppository.' 'Up yours, mister,' said Truckle. Rincewind blinked. 'Er. Can I have a word, Cohen?' He drew the ancient barbarian aside. 'I don't want to seem to be making trouble here,' he said, 'but it doesn't strike you, does it, that these men are a bit, well, past their sell-by date? A little, not to put too fine a point on it, old?' 'Whut? Whutzeesayin'?' 'He says IT'S COLD.' 'Whut?' 'What're you saying? There's nearly five hundred years of concentrated barbarian hero experience in 'em,' said Cohen. 'Five hundred years' experience in a fighting unit is good,' said Rincewind. 'It's good. But it should be spread over more than one person. I mean, what are you expecting them to do? Fall over on people?' 'Nothin' wrong with 'em,' said Cohen, indicating a frail man who was staring intently at a large block of teak. 'Look at ole Caleb the Ripper over there. See? Killed more'n four hundred men with his bare hands. Eighty-five now and but for the dust he's marvellous.' 'What the hell is he doing?' 'Ah, see, they're into bare-handed combat here. Very big thing, unarmed combat, on account of most people not being allowed weapons. So Caleb reckons he's on to a good thing. See that big lump of teak? It's amazin'. He just gives this bloodcurdlin' shout and—' 'Cohen, they're all very old men.' 'They're the cream!' Rincewind sighed. 'Cohen, they're the cheese. Why've you brought them all the way here?' 'Gonna help me steal something,' said Cohen. 'What? A jewel or something?' ' 'S something,' said Cohen, sulkily. ' 'S in Hung-hung.' 'Really? My word,' said Rincewind. 'And there's a lot of people in Hunghung, I expect?' 'About half a million,' said Cohen. 'Lots of guards, no doubt?' 'About forty thousand, I heard. About three-quarters of a million if you count all the armies.' 'Right,' said Rincewind. 'So, with these half-dozen old men—' 'The Silver Horde,' said Cohen, with a touch of pride. 'What? Pardon?' 'That's their name. Got to have a name in the horde business. The Silver Horde.' Rincewind turned around. Several of the Horde had fallen asleep. 'The Silver Horde,' he said. 'Right. Matches the colour of their hair. Those that have got hair. So . . . with this . . . Silver Horde you're going to rush the city, kill all the guards and steal all the treasure?' Cohen nodded. 'Yeah . . . something like that. Of course, we won't have to kill all the guards . . .' 'Oh, no?' 'It'd take too long.' 'Yes, and of course you'll want to leave something to do tomorrow.' 'I mean they'll be busy, what with the revolution and everything.' 'A revolution too? My word.' 'They say it's a time of portents,' said Cohen. 'They—' 'I'm surprised they've got time to worry about the state of their camping equipment,' said Rincewind. 'You'd be well advised to stay along o' us,' said Ghenghiz Cohen. 'You'll be safer with us.' 'Oh, I'm not sure about that,' said Rincewind, grinning horribly. 'I'm not sure about that at all.' By myself, he thought, only ordinary horrible things can happen to me. Cohen shrugged, and then stared around the clearing until his gaze lighted on a slight figure who was sitting a little apart from the rest, reading a book. 'Look at him,' he said, benevolently, like a man pointing out a dog doing a good trick. 'Always got his nose in a book.' He raised his voice. 'Teach? Come and show this wizard the way to Hunghung.' He turned back to Rincewind. 'Teach'll tell you anything you want to know, 'cos he knows everything. I'll leave you with him. I've got to go and have a talk with Old Vincent.' He waved a hand dis-missively. 'Not that there's anything wrong with him, at all,' he said defiantly. 'It's just that his memory's bad. We had a bit of trouble on the way over. I keep telling him, it's rape the women and set fire to the houses.' 'Rape?' said Rincewind. 'That's not very—' 'He's eighty-seven,' said Cohen. 'Don't go and spoil an old man's dreams.' Teach turned out to be a tall, stick-like man with an amiably absent-minded expression and a fringe of white hair so that, when viewed from above, he would appear to be a daisy. He certainly did not appear to be a bloodthirsty brigand, even though he was wearing a chain-mail vest slightly too big for him and a huge scabbard strapped across his back, which contained no sword but held a variety of scrolls and brushes. His chain-mail shirt had a breast pocket with three different coloured pens in a leather pocket protector. 'Ronald Saveloy,' he said, shaking Rincewind's hand. 'The gentlemen do rather assume considerable knowledge on my part. Let me see . . . You want to go to Hunghung, yes?' Rincewind had been thinking about this. 'I want to know the way to Hunghung,' he said guardedly. 'Yes. Well. At this time of year I'd head towards the setting sun until I left the mountains and reached the alluvial plain where you'll see evidence of drumlins and some quite fine examples of obviously erratic boulders. It's about ten miles.' Rincewind stared at him. A brigand's directions were usually more on the lines of 'keep straight or past the burning city and turn right when you've passed all the citizens hanging up by their ears'. 'Those drumlins sound dangerous,' he said. 'They're just a type of post-glacial hill,' said Mr Saveloy. 'What about these erratic boulders? They sound like the kind of thing that'd pounce on—' 'Just boulders dropped a long way from home by a glacier,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Nothing to worry about. The landscape is not hostile.' Rincewind didn't believe him. He'd had the ground hit him very hard many times. 'However,' said Mr Saveloy, 'Hunghung is a little dangerous at the moment.' 'No, really?' said Rincewind wearily. 'It's not exactly a siege. Everyone's waiting for the Emperor to die. These are what they call here' - he smiled - 'interesting times.' 'I hate interesting times.' The other Horders had wandered off, fallen asleep again or were complaining to one another about their feet. The voice of Cohen could be heard somewhere in the distance: 'Look, this is a match, and this is—' 'You know, you sound a very educated man for a barbarian,' said Rincewind. 'Oh, dear me, I didn't start out a barbarian. I used to be a school teacher. That's why they call me Teach.' 'What did you teach?' 'Geography. And I was very interested in Auriental[15] studies. But I decided to give it up and make a living by the sword.' 'After being a teacher all your life?' 'It did mean a change of perspective, yes.' 'But. . . well. . . surely . .. the privation, the terrible hazards, the daily risk of death . . .' Mr Saveloy brightened up. 'Oh, you've been a teacher, have you?' Rincewind looked around when someone shouted. He turned, to see two of the Horde arguing nose to nose. Mr Saveloy sighed. 'I'm trying to teach them chess,' he said. 'It's vital to the understanding of the Auriental mind. But I am afraid they have no concept of taking turns at moving, and their idea of an opening gambit is for the King and all the pawns to rush up the board together and set fire to the opposing rooks.' Rincewind leaned closer. 'Look, I mean . . . Ghenghiz Cohen?' he said. 'Has he gone off his head? I mean . . . just killing half a dozen geriatric priests and nicking some paste gems, yes. Attacking forty thousand guards all by himself is certain death!' 'Oh, he won't be by himself,' said Mr Saveloy. Rincewind blinked. There was something about Cohen. People caught optimism off him as though it was the common cold. 'Oh, yes. Of course. Sorry. I'd forgotten that. Seven against forty thousand? I shouldn't think you'll have any problems. I'll just be going. Fairly quickly, I think.' 'We have a plan. It's a sort of—' Mr Saveloy hesitated. His eyes unfocused slightly. 'You know? Thing. Bees do it. Wasps, too. Also some jellyfish, I believe . . . Had the word only a moment ago . . . er. It's going to be the biggest one ever, I think.' Rincewind gave him another blank stare. 'I'm sure I saw a spare horse,' he said. 'Let me give you this,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Then perhaps you'll understand. It's what it's all about, really . . .' He handed Rincewind a small bundle of papers fastened together by a loop of string through one corner. Rincewind, shoving it hastily into his pocket, noticed only the title on the first page. It said: WHAT I DID ON MY HOLIDAYS   The choices seemed very clear to Rincewind. There was the city of Hunghung, under siege, apparently throbbing with revolution and danger, and there was everywhere else. Therefore it was important to know where Hunghung was so that he didn't blunder into it by accident. He paid a lot of attention to Mr Saveloy's instructions, and then rode the other way. He could get a ship somewhere. Of course, the wizards would be surprised to see him back, but he could always say there'd been no-one in. The hills gave way to scrubland which in turn led down to an apparently endless damp plain which contained, in the misty distance, a river so winding that half the time it must have been flowing backwards. The land was a chequerboard of cultivation. Rincewind liked the countryside in theory, providing it wasn't rising up to meet him and was for preference happening on the far side of a city wall, but this was hardly countryside. It was more like one big, hedge-less farm. Occasional huge rocks, looking dangerously erratic, rose out of the fields. Sometimes he'd see people hard at work in the distance. As far as he could tell, their chief activity was moving mud around. Occasionally he'd see a man standing ankle deep in a flooded field holding a water buffalo on the end of a length of string. The buffalo grazed and occasionally moved its bowels. The man held the string. It seemed to be his entire goal and occupation in life. There were a few other people on the road. Usually they were pushing wheelbarrows loaded with water buffalo dung or, possibly, mud. They didn't pay any attention to Rincewind. In fact they made a point of not paying attention; they scurried past staring intently at the scenes of mud dynamics or bovine bowel movement happening in the fields. Rincewind would be the first to admit that he was a slow thinker.[16] But he'd been around long enough to spot the signs. These people weren't paying him any attention because they didn't see people on horseback. They were probably descended from people who learned that if you look too hard at anyone on horseback you receive a sharp stinging sensation such as might be obtained by a stick around the ear. Not looking up at people on horseback had become hereditary. People who stared at people on horseback in what was considered to be a funny way never survived long enough to breed. He decided to try an experiment. The next wheelbarrow that trundled past was carrying not mud but people, about half a dozen of them, on seats either side of the huge central wheel. The method of propulsion was secondarily by a small sail erected to catch the wind but primarily by that pre-eminent source of motive power in a peasant community, someone's great-grandfather, or at least someone who looked like someone's great-grandfather. Cohen had said, 'There's men here who can push a wheelbarrow for thirty miles on a bowl of millet with a bit of scum in it. What does that tell you? It tells me someone's porking all the beef.' Rincewind decided to explore the social dynamics and also try out the language. It had been years since he'd last used it, but he had to admit that Ridcully had been right. He did have a gift for languages Agatean was a language of few basic syllables. It was really all in the tone, inflection and context. Otherwise, the word for military leader was also the word for long-tailed marmot, male sexual organ and ancient chicken coop. 'Hey there, you!' he shouted. 'Er . . . to bend bamboo? An expression of disapproval? Er . . . I mean . . . Stop!' The barrow slewed to a halt. No-one looked at him They looked past him, or around him, or towards his feet. Eventually the wheelbarrow-pusher, in the manner of a man who knows he's in for it no matter what he does, mumbled, 'Your honour commands?' Rincewind felt very sorry, later, for what he said next. He said, 'Just give me all your food and . . . unwilling dogs, will you?' They watched him impassively. 'Damn. I mean . . . arranged beetles? . . . variety of waterfall? . . . Oh, yes . . . money.' There was a general fumbling and shifting among the passengers. Then the wheelbarrow-pusher sidled towards Rincewind, head down, and held up his hat. It contained some rice, some dried fish, a highly dangerous-looking egg. And about a pound of gold, in big round coins. Rincewind stared at the gold. Gold was as common as copper on the Counterweight Continent. That was one of the few things everyone knew about the place. There was no point in Cohen trying any kind of big robbery. There was a limit to what anyone could carry. He might as well rob one peasant village and live like a king for the rest of his life. It wouldn't be as if he'd need that much . . . The 'later' suddenly caught up with him, and he did indeed feel quite ashamed. These people had hardly anything, apart from loads of gold. 'Er. Thanks. Thank you. Yes. Just checking. Yes. You can all have it back now. I'll . . . er . . . keep . . . the elderly grandmother . . . to run sideways . . . oh, damn . . . fish.' Rincewind had always been on the bottom of the social heap. It didn't matter what size heap it was. The top got higher or lower, but the bottom was always in the same place. But at least it was an Ankh-Morpork heap. No-one bowed to anyone in Ankh-Morpork. And anyone who tried what he'd just tried in Ankh-Morpork would, by now, be scrabbling in the gutter for his teeth and whimpering about the pain in his groin and his horse would already have been repainted twice and sold to a man who'd be swearing he'd owned it for years. He felt oddly proud of the fact. Something strange welled up from the sludgy depths of his soul. It was, to his amazement, a generous impulse. He slid off the horse and held out the reins. A horse was useful, but he was used to doing without one. Besides, over a short distance a man could run faster than a horse, and this was a fact very dear to Rince-wind's heart. 'Here,' he said. 'You can have it. For the fish.' The wheelbarrow-pusher screamed, grabbed the handles of his conveyance and hurtled desperately away. Several people were thrown off, took one almost-look at Rincewind, also screamed, and ran after him. Worse than whips, Cohen had said. They've got something here worse than whips. They don't need whips any more. Rincewind hoped he'd never find out what it was, if it had done this to people. He rode on through an endless panorama of fields There weren't even any patches of roadside scrub, or taverns. Away among the fields were shapes that might be small towns or villages, but no apparent paths to them, possibly because paths used up valuable agricultural mud. Finally he sat down on a rock that presumably not even the peasants' most concerted efforts had been able to move, and reached into his pocket for his shameful dried fish lunch. His hand touched the bundle of papers Mr Saveloy had given him. He pulled them out, and got crumbs on them. This is what it's all about, the barbarian teacher had said. He hadn't explained what 'it' was. WHAT I DID ON MY HOLIDAYS, said the title. It was in bad handwriting or, rather, bad painting - the Agateans wrote with paintbrushes, assembling little word pictures out of handy components. One picture wasn't just worth a thousand words, it was a thousand words. Rincewind wasn't much good at reading the language. There were very few Agatean books even in the Unseen University Library. And this one looked as though whoever had written it had been trying to make sense of something unfamiliar. He turned over a couple of pages. It was a story about a Great City, containing magnificent things - 'beer strong like an ox', it said, and 'pies containing many many parts of pig'. Everyone in the city seemed to be wise, kind, strong or all three, especially some character called the Great Wizard who seemed to feature largely in the text. And there were mystifying little comments, as in, 'I saw a man tread upon the toes of a City Guard who said to him "Your wife is a big hippo!" to which the man responded "Place it where the sun does not shed daylight, enormous person", upon which the Guard [this bit was in red ink and the handwriting was shaky, as if the writer was quite excited] did not remove the man's head according to ancient custom.' The statement was followed by a pictogram of a dog passing water, which was for some obscure reason the Agatean equivalent of an exclamation mark. There were five of these. Rincewind flicked through the pages. They were filled with the same dull stuff, sentences stating the blindingly obvious but often followed by several incontinent dogs. Such as: 'The innkeeper said the City had demanded tax but he did not intend to pay, and when I asked if he was not afraid he vouchsafed: "[Complicated pictogram] them all except one and he can [complicated pictogram] himself" [urinating dog, urinating dog]. He went on to say, "The [pictogram indicating Supreme Ruler] is a [another pictogram which, after some thought and holding up the picture at various angles, Rincewind decided meant 'a horse's bottom'] and you can tell him I said so", at which point a Guard in the tavern did not disembowel him [urinating dog, urinating dog] but said, "Tell him from me also" [urinating dog, urinating dog, urinating dog, urinating dog, urinating dog].' What was so odd about that? People talked like that in Ankh-Morpork all the time, or at least expressed those sentiments. Apart from the dog. Mind you, a country that'd wipe out a whole city to teach the other cities a lesson was a mad place. Perhaps this was a book of jokes and he just hadn't seen the point. Perhaps comedians here got big laughs with lines like: 'I say, I say, I say, I met a man on the way to the theatre and he didn't chop my legs off, urinating dog, urinating dog—' He had been aware of the jingle of harness on the road, but hadn't paid it any attention. He hadn't even looked up at the sound of someone approaching. By the time he did think of looking up it was too late, because someone had their boot on his neck. 'Oh, urinating dog,' he said, before passing out.   There was a puff of air and the Luggage appeared, dropping heavily into a snowdrift. There was a meat cleaver sticking into its lid. It remained motionless for some time and then, its legs moving in a complicated little dance, it turned around 360 degrees. The Luggage did not think. It had nothing to think with. Whatever processes went on inside it probably had more to do with the way a tree reacts to sun and rain and sudden storms, but speeded up very fast. After a while it seemed to get its bearings and ambled off across the melting snow. The Luggage did not feel, either. It had nothing to feel with. But it reacted, in the same way that a tree reacts to the changing of the seasons. Its pace quickened. It was close to home.   Rincewind had to concede that the shouting man was right. Not, that is, about Rincewind's father being the diseased liver of a type of mountain panda and his mother being a bucket of turtle slime; Rincewind had no personal experience of either parent but felt that they were probably at least vaguely humanoid, if only briefly. But on the subject of appearing to own a stolen horse he had Rincewind bang to rights and, also, a foot on his neck. A foot on the neck is nine points of the law. He felt hands rummaging in his pockets. Another person - Rincewind was not able to see much beyond a few inches of alluvial soil, but from context it appeared to be an unsympathetic person - joined in the shouting. Rincewind was hauled upright. The guards were pretty much like guards as Rincewind had experienced them everywhere. They had exactly the amount of intellect required to hit people and drag them off to the scorpion pit. They were league champions at shouting at people a few inches from their face. The effect was made surreal by the fact that the guards themselves had no faces, or at least no faces they could call their own. Their ornate, black-enamelled helmets and huge moustachioed visages painted on them, leaving only the owner's mouth uncovered so that he could, for example, call Rincewind's grandfather a box of inferior goldfish droppings. What I Did On My Holidays was waved in front of his face. 'Bag of rotted fish!' 'I don't know what it means,' said Rincewind. 'Someone just gave it to—' 'Feet of extreme rotted milk!' 'Could you perhaps not shout quite so loud? I think my eardrum has just exploded.' The guard subsided, possibly only because he had run out of breath. Rincewind had a moment to look at the scenery. There were two carts on the road. One of them seemed to be a cage on wheels; he made out faces watching him in terror. The other was an ornate palanquin carried by eight peasants; rich curtains covered the sides but he could see where they had been twitched aside so that someone within could look at him. The guards were aware of this. It seemed to make them awkward. 'If I could just expl—' 'Silence, mouth of—' The guard hesitated. 'You've used turtle, goldfish and what you probably meant to be cheese,' said Rincewind. 'Mouth of chicken gizzards!' A long thin hand emerged from the curtains and beckoned, just once. Rincewind was hustled forward. The hand had the longest fingernails he'd ever seen on something that didn't purr. 'Kowtow!' 'Sorry?' said Rincewind. 'Kowtow!' Swords were produced. 'I don't know what you mean!' Rincewind wailed. 'Kowtow, please,' whispered a voice by his ear. It was not a particularly friendly voice but compared to all the other voices it was positively affectionate. It sounded as though it belonged to quite a young man. And it was speaking very good Morporkian. 'How?' 'You don't know that? Kneel down, press your forehead on the ground. That's if you want to be able to wear a hat again.' Rincewind hesitated. He was a free-born Morporkian, and on the list of things a citizen didn't do was bow down to any, not to put too fine a point on it, foreigner. On the other hand, right at the top of the list of things a citizen didn't do was get their head chopped off. 'That's better. That's good. How did you know you ought to tremble?' 'Oh, I thought up that bit myself.' The hand beckoned with a finger. A guard slapped Rincewind in the face with the mud-encrusted What I Did . . . Rincewind clutched it guiltily as the guard scurried towards his master's digit. 'Voice?' said Rincewind. 'Yes?' 'What happens if I claim immunity because I'm a foreigner?' 'There's a special thing they do with a wire-mesh waistcoat and a cheesegrater.' 'Oh.' 'And there are torturers in Hunghung who can keep a man alive for years.' 'I suppose you're not talking about healthy early morning runs and a high-fibre diet?' 'No. So keep quiet and with any luck you'll be sent to be a slave in the palace.' 'Luck is my middle name,' said Rincewind, indistinctly. 'Mind you, my first name is Bad.' 'Remember to gibber and grovel.' 'I'll do my very best.' The white hand emerged bearing a scrap of paper. The guard took it, turned towards Rincewind and cleared his throat. 'Harken to the wisdom and justice of District Commissioner Kee, ball of swamp emanations! Not him, I mean you!' He cleared his throat again and peered closer at the paper in the manner of one who learned to read by saying the name of each letter very carefully to himself. ' "The white pony runs through the . . . the . . ." ' The guard turned and held a whispered conversation with the curtains, and turned back again. ' ". . . chrysanthemum . . . mumum blossoms, The cold wind stirs the Apricot trees. Send him to The palace to slave Until all appendages drop Off." ' Several of the other guards applauded. 'Look up and clap,' said the Voice. 'I'm afraid my appendages will drop off.' 'It's a big cheesegrater.' 'Encore! Wow! Superb! That bit about the chrys-anthemumums? Wonderful!' 'Good. Listen. You're from Bes Pelargic. You've got the right accent, damned if I know why. It's a seaport and people there are a little strange. You were robbed by bandits and escaped on one of their horses. That's why you haven't got your papers. You need pieces of paper for everything here, including being anybody. And pretend you don't know me.' 'I don't know you.' 'Good. Long Live The Changing Things To A More Equitable State While Retaining Due Respect For The Traditions Of Our Forebears And Of Course Not Harming The August Personage Of The Emperor Endeavour!' 'Good. Yes. What?' A guard kicked Rincewind in the region of the kidneys. This suggested, in the universal language of the boot, that he should get up. He managed to get up on one knee, and saw the Luggage. It wasn't his, and there were three of them.   The Luggage trotted to the crest of a low hill and stopped so fast that it left a lot of little grooves in the dirt. In addition to not having any equipment with which to think or feel, the Luggage also had no means of seeing. The manner in which it perceived events was a complete mystery. It perceived the other Luggages. The three of them stood patiently in a line behind the palanquin. They were big. They were black. The Luggage's legs disappeared inside its body. After a while it very cautiously opened its lid, just a fraction.   Of the three things that most people know about the horse, the third is that, over a short distance, it can't run as fast as a man. As Rincewind had learned to his advantage, it has more legs to sort out. There are additonal advantages if a) the people on horseback aren't expecting you to run and b) you happen to be, very conveniently, in an athletic starting position. Rincewind rose like a boomerang curry from a sensitive stomach. There was a lot of shouting but the comforting thing, the important thing, was that it was all behind him. It would soon try to catch him up but that was a problem for the future. He could also consider where he was running to as well, but an experienced coward never bothered with the to when the from held such fascination. A less practised runner would have risked a glance behind, but Rincewind instinctively knew all about wind drag and the tendency of inconvenient rocks to position themselves under the unwary foot. Besides, why look behind? He was already running as fast as he could. Nothing he could see would make him run any faster. There was a large shapeless village ahead, a construction apparently of mud and dung. In the fields in front of it a dozen peasants looked up from their toil at the accelerating wizard. Perhaps it was Rincewind's imagination, but as he passed them he could have sworn that he heard the cry: 'Necessarily Extended Duration To The Red Army! Regrettable Decease Without Undue Suffering To The Forces of Oppression!' Rincewind dived through the huts as the soldiers charged at the peasants. Cohen had been right. There seemed to be a revolution. But the Empire had been in unchanged existence for thousands of years, courtesy and a respect for protocol were part of its very fabric, and by the sound of it the revolutionaries had yet to master the art of impolite slogans. Rincewind preferred running to hiding. Hiding was all very well, but if you were found then you were stuck. But the village was the only cover for miles around, and some of the soldiers had horses. A man might be faster than a horse over a short distance, but over this panorama of flat, open fields a horse had a running man bang to rights. So he ducked into a building at random and pushed aside the first door he came to. It had, pasted on it, the words: Examination. Silence! Forty expectant and slightly worried faces looked up at him from their writing stools. They weren't children, but full-grown adults. There was a lectern at the end of the room and, on it, a pile of papers sealed with string and wax. Rincewind felt the atmosphere was familiar. He'd breathed it before, even if it had been a world away. It was full of those cold sweaty odours created by the sudden realization that it was probably too late to do that revision you'd kept on putting off. Rincewind had faced many horrors in his time, but none held quite the same place in the lexicon of dread as those few seconds after someone said, 'Turn over your papers now.' The candidates were watching him. There was shouting somewhere outside. He hurried up to the lectern, tore at the string and distributed the papers as fast as he could. Then he dived back to the safety of the lectern, removed his hat, and was bent low when the door opened slowly. 'Go away!' he screamed. 'Examination in progress!' The unseen figure behind the door murmured something to someone else. The door was closed again. The candidates were still staring at him. 'Er. Very well. Turn over your papers.' There was a rustle, a few moments of that dreadful silence, and then much activity with brushes. Competitive examinations. Oh, yes. That was another thing people knew about the Empire. They were the only way to get any kind of public post and the security that brought. People had said that this must be a very good system, because it opened up opportunities for people of merit. Rincewind picked up a spare paper and read it. It was headed: Examination for the post of Assistant Night-Soil Operative for the District of W'ung. He read question one. It required candidates to write a sixteen-line poem on evening mist over the reed beds. Question two seemed to be about the use of metaphor in some book Rincewind had never heard of. Then there was a question about music . . . Rincewind turned the paper over a couple of times. There didn't seem to be any mention, anywhere, of words like 'compost' or 'bucket' or 'wheelbarrow'. But presumably all this produced a better class of person than the Ankh-Morpork system, which asked just one question: 'Got your own shovel, have you?' The shouting outside seemed to have died away; Rincewind risked poking his head out of the door. There was a commotion near the road but it no longer seemed Rincewind-orientated. He ran for it. The students got on with their examination. One of the more enterprising, however, rolled up his trouser leg and copied down a poem about mist he'd composed, at great effort, some time previously. After a while you got to know what kind of questions the examiners asked. Rincewind trotted onwards, trying to keep to ditches wherever these weren't knee deep in sucking mud. It wasn't a landscape built for concealment. The Agateans grew crops on any piece of ground the seeds wouldn't roll off. Apart from the occasional rocky outcrop there was a distinct lack of places in which to lurk. No-one paid him much attention once he'd left the village far behind. The occasional water buffalo operative would turn to watch him until he was out of sight, but displayed no special curiosity; it was merely that Rincewind was marginally more interesting than watching a water buffalo defecate. He kept the road just in sight and, by evening, reached a crossroads. There was an inn. Rincewind hadn't eaten since the leopard. The inn meant food, but food meant money. He was hungry, and he had no money. He chided himself for this kind of negative thinking. That was not the right approach. What he should do was go in and order a large, nourishing meal. Then instead of being hungry with no money he'd be well fed with no money, a net gain on his current position. Of course, the world was likely to raise some objections, but in Rincewind's experience there were few problems that couldn't be solved with a scream and a good ten yards' start. And, of course, he would just have had a strengthening meal. Besides, he liked Hunghungese food. A few refugees had opened restaurants in Ankh-Morpork and Rincewind considered himself something of an expert on the dishes.[17] The one huge room was thick with smoke and, insofar as this could be determined through the swirls and coils, quite busy. A couple of old men were sitting in front of a complicated pile of ivory tiles, playing Shibo Yangcong-san. He wasn't sure what they were smoking but, by the looks on their faces, they were happy they'd chosen it. Rincewind made his way to the fireplace, where a skinny man was tending a cauldron. He gave him a cheery smile. 'Good morning! Can I partake of your famous delicacy "Meal A for two People with extra Prawn Cracker"?' 'Never heard of it.' 'Um. Then . . . could I see a painful ear . . . a croak of a frog . . . a menu?' 'What's a menu, friend?' Rincewind nodded. He knew what it meant when a stranger called you 'friend' like that. No-one who called someone else 'friend' was feeling very kindly disposed. 'What is there to eat, I meant.' 'Noodles, boiled cabbage and pork whiskers.' 'Is that all?' 'Pork whiskers don't grow on trees, san.' 'I've been seeing water buffalo all day,' Rincewind said. 'Don't you people ever eat beef?' The ladle splashed into the cauldron. Somewhere behind him a shibo tile dropped on to the floor. The back of Rincewind's head prickled under the stares. 'We don't serve rebels in this place,' said the landlord loudly. Probably too meaty, Rincewind thought. But it seemed to him that the words had been addressed to the world in general rather than to him. 'Glad to hear it,' he said, 'because—' 'Yes indeed,' said the landlord, a little louder. 'No rebels welcome here.' 'That's fine by me, because—' 'If I knew of any rebels I would be certain to alert the authorities,' the landlord bellowed. 'I'm not a rebel, I'm just hungry,' said Rincewind. 'I'd, er, like a bowlful, please.' A bowl was filled. Rainbow patterns shimmered on its oily surface. 'That'll be half a rhinu,' said the landlord. 'You mean you want me to pay before I eat it?' said Rincewind. 'You might not want to afterwards, friend.' A rhinu was more gold than Rincewind had ever owned. He patted his pockets theatrically. 'In fact, it seems that—' he began. There was a small thump beside him. What I Did On My Holidays had fallen on to the floor. 'Yes, thank you, that will do nicely,' said the landlord to the room at large. He pushed the bowl into Rincewind's hand and, in one movement, scooped up the booklet and crammed it back into the wizard's pocket. 'Go and sit down in the corner!' he hissed. 'And you'll be told what to do!' 'But I'm sure I know what to do. Dip spoon in bowl, raise spoon to mouth—' 'Sit down!' Rincewind found the darkest corner and sat down. People were still watching him. To avoid the group gaze he pulled out What I Did and opened it at random, in an effort to find out why it had a magical effect on the landlord. '. . . sold me a bun containing what was called a [complicated pictogram] made entirely of the inside of pigs [urinating dog]' he read. 'And such as these could be bought for small coin at any time, and so replete were the citizens that hardly any bought these [com-plicated pictogram] from the stall of [complicated pictogram, but it seemed to involve a razor]-san.' Sausages filled with pig parts, thought Rincewind. Well, perhaps they might be amazing if, up until then, a bowl of dishwater with something congealing on the top of it had been your idea of a hearty meal. Hah! Mister What-I-Did-On-My-Holidays should try coming to Ankh-Morpork next time, and see how much he liked one of old . . . Dibbler's sausages . . full of genuine . . . pig product . . . The spoon splashed into the bowl. Rincewind turned the pages hurriedly. '. . . peaceful streets, along which I walked, were quite free of crime and brigandage . . .' 'Of course they were, you four-eyed little git!' shouted Rincewind. 'That was because it was all happening to me!' '. . . a city where all men are free . . .' 'Free? Free? Well, yes, free to starve, get robbed by the Thieves' Guild . . . ' said Rincewind to the book. He fumbled through to another page. ' . . . my companion was the Great Wizard [complicated pictogram, but now that Rincewind studied it he realized with a plummeting heart it had a few lines that looked like the Agatean for 'wind'], the most prominent and powerful wizard in the entire country . . .' 'I never said that! I—' Rincewind stopped. Memory treacherously dredged up a few phrases, such as Oh, the Archchancellor listens to everything I say and That place would just fall down without me around. But that was just the sort of thing you said after a few beers, surely no-one would be so gullible as to write . . . A picture focused itself in Rincewind's memory It was of a happy, smiling little man with huge spectacles and a trusting, innocent approach to life which brought terror and destruction everywhere he wandered. Twoflower had been quite unable to believe that the world was a bad place and that was largely because, to him, it wasn't. It saved it all up for Rincewind. Rincewind's life had been quite uneventful before he'd met Twoflower. Since then, as far as he could remember, it had contained events in huge amounts. And the little man had gone back home, hadn't he? To Bes Pelargic - the Empire's only proper seaport. Surely no-one would be so gullible as to write this sort of thing? Surely no-one apart from one person would be so gullible. Rincewind was not politically minded but there were some things he could work out not because they were to do with politics but because they had a lot to do with human nature. Nasty images moved into place like bad scenery. The Empire had a wall around it. If you lived in the Empire then you learned how to make soup out of pig squeals and swallow spit because that's how it was done, and you were bullied by soldiers all the time because that was how the world worked. But if someone wrote a cheerful little book about . . . . . . what I did on my holidays . . . . . . in a place where the world worked quite differently . . . . . . then however fossilized the society there would always be some people who asked themselves danger-ous questions like 'Where's the pork?' Rincewind stared glumly at the wall. Peasants of the Empire, Rebel! You have nothing to lose but your heads and hands and feet and there's this thing they do with a wire waistcoat and a cheesegrater . . . He turned the book over. There was no author's name. There was simply a little message: Increased Luck! Make Copies! Extended Duration And Happiness To The Endeavour! Ankh-Morpork had had the occasional rebellion, too, over the years. But no-one went around organizing things. They just grabbed themselves a weapon and took to the streets. No-one bothered with a formal battlecry, relying instead on the well-tried 'There 'e goes! Get 'im! Got 'im? Now kick 'im inna fork!' The point was . . . whatever caused that sort of thing wasn't usually the reason for it. When Mad Lord Snapcase had been hung up by his figgin[18] it hadn't really been because he'd made poor old Spooner Boggis eat his own nose, it had been because years of inventive nastiness had piled on one another until the grievances reached— There was a terrible scream from the far side of the room. Rincewind was half out of his seat before he noticed the little stage, and the actors. A trio of musicians had squatted down on the floor. The inn's customers turned to watch. It was, in a way, quite enjoyable. Rincewind didn't quite follow the plot, but it went something like: man gets girl, man loses girl to other man, man cuts couple in half, man falls on own sword, all come up front for a bow to what might be the Agatean equivalent of 'Happy Days Are Here Again'. It was a little hard to make out the fine detail because the actors shouted 'Hoorrrrrraa!' a lot and spent much of their time talking to the audience and their masks all looked the same to Rincewind. The musicians were in a world or their own or, by the sound of it, three different worlds. 'Fortune cookie?' 'Huh?' Rincewind re-emerged from the thickets of thespi-anism to see the landlord beside him. A dish of vaguely bivalvular biscuits was thrust under his nose. 'Fortune cookie?' Rincewind reached out. Just as his fingers were about to close on one, the plate was jerked sideways an inch or two, bringing another under his hand. Oh, well. He took it. The thing was - his thoughts resumed, as the play screamed on - at least in Ankh-Morpork you could lay your hands on real weapons. Poor devils. It took more than well-turned slogans and a lot of enthusiasm to run a good rebellion. You needed well-trained fighters and, above all, a good leader. He hoped they found one when he was well away. He unrolled the fortune and read it idly, oblivious to the landlord walking around behind him. Instead of the usual 'You have just enjoyed an inferior meal' it was quite a complicated pictogram. Rincewind's fingers traced the brush strokes. ' "Many . . . many . . . apologies . . ." What kind—' The musician with the cymbals clashed them together sharply. The wooden cosh bounced off Rincewind's head. The old men playing shibo nodded happily to themselves and turned back to their game.   It was a fine morning. The hideout echoed to the sounds of the Silver Horde getting up, groaning, adjusting various home-made surgical supports, com-plaining that they couldn't find their spectacles, and mistakenly gumming one another's dentures. Cohen sat with his feet in a bath of warm water, enjoying the sunshine. 'Teach?' The former geography teacher concentrated on a cap he was making. 'Yes, Ghenghiz?' 'What's Mad Hamish going on about?' 'He says the bread's stale and he can't find his teeth.' 'Tell him if things go right for us he can have a dozen young women just to chew his bread for him,' said Cohen. 'That is not very hygienic, Ghenghiz,' said Mr Saveloy, without bothering to look up. 'Remember, I explained about hygiene.' Cohen didn't bother to answer. He was thinking: six old men. And you can't really count Teach, he's a thinker, not a fighter . . . Self-doubt was not something regularly entertained within the Cohen cranium. When you're trying to carry a struggling temple maiden and a sack of looted temple goods in one hand and fight off half a dozen angry priests with the other there is little time for reflection. Natural selection saw to it that professional heroes who at a crucial moment tended to ask themselves questions like 'What is my purpose in life?' very quickly lacked both. But: six old men . . . and the Empire had almost a million men under arms. When you looked at the odds in the cold light of dawn, or even this rather pleasant warm light of dawn, they made you stop and do the arithmetic of death. If the Plan went wrong . . . Cohen bit his lip thoughtfully. If the Plan went wrong, it'd take weeks to kill all of them. Maybe he should have let old Thog the Butcher come along too, even though he had to stop fighting every ten minutes to go to the lavatory. Oh, well. He was committed now, so he might as well make the best of it. Cohen's father had taken him to a mountain top, when he was no more than a lad, and explained to him the hero's creed and told him that there was no greater joy than to die in battle. Cohen had seen the flaw in this straight away, and a lifetime's experience had reinforced his belief that in fact a greater joy was to kill the other bugger in battle and end up sitting on a heap of gold higher than your horse. It was an observation that had served him well. He stood up and stretched in the sunshine. 'It's a lovely morning, lads,' he said. 'I feel like a million dollars. Don't you?' There was a murmur of reluctant agreement. 'Good,' said Cohen. 'Let's go and get some.'   The Great Wall completely surrounds the Agatean Empire. The word is completely. It is usually about twenty feet high and sheer on its inner side. It is built along beaches and across howling deserts and even on the lip of sheer cliffs where the possibility of attack from outside is remote. On subject islands like Bhangbhangduc and Tingling there are similar walls, all metaphorically the same wall, and tnat seems strange to those of an unthinking military disposition who do not realize what its function really is. It is more than just a wall, it is a marker. On one side is the Empire, which in the Agatean language is a word identical with 'universe'. On the other side is - nothing. After all, the universe is everything there is. Oh, there may appear to be things, like sea, islands, other continents and so on. They may even appear solid, it may be possible to conquer them, walk on them . . . but they are not ultimately real. The Agatean word for foreigner is the same as the word for ghost, and only one brush stroke away from the word for victim. The walls are sheer in order to discourage those boring people who persist in believing that there might be anything interesting on the other side. Amaz-ingly enough there are people who simply won't take the hint, even after thousands of years. The ones near the coast build rafts and head out across lonely seas to lands that are a fable. The ones inland resort to man-carrying kites and chairs propelled by fireworks. Many of them die in the attempt, of course. Most of the others are soon caught, and made to live in interesting times. But some did make it to the great melting pot called Ankh-Morpork. They arrived with no money - sailors charged what the market would bear, which was everything - but they had a mad gleam in their eye and they opened shops and restaurants and worked twenty-four hours a day. People called this the Ankh-Morpork Dream (of making piles of cash in a place where your death was unlikely to be a matter of public policy). And it was dreamed all the stronger by people who didn't sleep.   Rincewind sometimes thought that his life was punctuated by awakenings. They were not always rude ones. Sometimes they were merely impolite. A very few - one or two, perhaps - had been quite nice, especially on the island. The sun had come up in its humdrum fashion, the waves had washed the beach in quite a boring way, and on several occasions he'd managed to erupt from unconsciousness without his habitual small scream. This one wasn't just rude. It was downright insolent. He was being bumped about and someone had tied his hands together. It was dark, a fact occasioned by the sack over his head. Rincewind did some calculation, and reached a conclusion. 'This is the seventeenth worst day of my life so far,' he thought. Being knocked unconscious in pubs was quite commonplace. If it happened in Ankh-Morpork then you'd likely as not wake up lying on the Ankh with all your money gone or, if a ship was due out on a long and unpopular voyage, chained up in some scupper somewhere with no option for the next two years but to plough the ocean wave.[19] But generally the knocker wanted to keep you alive. The Thieves' Guild were punctilious about that. As they said: 'Hit a man too hard and you can only rob him once; hit him just hard enough and you can rob him every week.' If he was in what felt like a cart then someone had some purpose in keeping him alive. He wished he hadn't thought of that. Someone pulled the sack off. A terrifying visage stared down at him. ' "I would like to eat your foot!" ' said Rincewind. 'Don't worry. I am a friend.' The mask was lifted away. There was a young woman behind it - round faced, snub nosed and quite different from any other citizen Rincewind had met hitherto. That was, he realized, because she was looking straight at him. Her clothes, if not her face, had last been seen on the stage. 'Don't cry out,' she said. 'Why? What are you going to do?' 'We would have welcomed you properly but there was no time.' She sat down among the bundles in the back of the swaying cart and regarded him critically. 'Four Big Sandal said you arrived on a dragon and slaughtered a regiment of soldiers,' she said. 'I did?' 'And then you worked magic on a venerable old man and he became a great fighter.' 'He did?' 'And you gave him whole meat, even though Four Big Sandal is only of the pung class.' 'I did?' 'And you have your hat.' 'Yes, yes, got my hat.' 'And yet,' said the girl, 'you don't look like a Great Wizard.' 'Ah. Well, the fact is—' The girl looked as fragile as a flower. But she had just pulled out, from somewhere in the folds of her costume, a small but perfectly serviceable knife. Rincewind had picked up an instinct for this sort or thing. This was probably not the time to deny Great Wizardry. 'The fact is . . .' he repeated, 'that.. . how do I know I can trust you?' The girl looked indignant. 'Do you not have amazing wizardly powers?' 'Oh, yes. Yes! Certainly! But—' 'Say something in wizard language!' 'Er. Stercus, stercus, stercus, moriturus sum,' said Rincewind, his eye on the knife. ' "O excrement, I am about to die?" ' 'It's . . . er . . . a special mantra I say to raise the magical fluxes.' The girl subsided a little. 'But it takes it out of you, wizarding,' said Rincewind. 'Flying on dragons, magically turning old mer into warriors . . . I can only do so much of that sort of thing before it's time for a rest. Right now I'm very weak on account of the tremendous amounts of magic I've just used, you see.' She looked at him with doubt still in her eyes. 'All the peasants believe in the imminent arrival of the Great Wizard,' she said. 'But, in the words of the great philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle, "When many expect a mighty stallion they will find hooves on an ant." ' She gave him another calculating look. 'When you were on the road,' she said, 'you grovelled in front of District Commissioner Kee. You could have blasted him with terrible fire.' Biding my time, spying out the land, not wanting to break my cover,' Rincewind gabbled. 'Er. No good revealing myself straight away, is there?' 'You are maintaining a disguise?' 'Yes.' 'It is a very good one.' 'Thank you, because—' 'Only a great wizard would dare to look like such a pathetic piece of humanity.' 'Thank you. Er . . . how did you know I was on the road?' 'They would have killed you there and then if I had not told you what to do.' 'You were the guard?' 'We had to catch up with you quickly. It was sheer luck you were seen by Four Big Sandal.' 'We?' She ignored the question. 'They are only provincial soldiers. I would not have got away with it in Hung-hung. But I can play many roles.' She put away the knife, but Rincewind had a feeling that he hadn't talked her into believing him, only into not killing him. He groped for a straw. 'I've got a magic box on legs,' he said, with a touch of pride. 'It follows me around. It seems to have got itself mislaid right now, but it's quite an amazing thing.' The girl gave him a wooden look. Then she reached down with a delicate hand and hauled him upright. 'Is it,' she said, 'something like this?' She twitched aside the curtains at the rear of the cart. Two boxes were trundling along in the dust. They were more battered and cheaper looking than the Luggage, but recognizably the same general species, if you could apply the word to travel accessories. 'Er. Yes.' She let go. Rincewind's head hit the floor. 'Listen to me,' she said. 'A lot of bad things are happening. I don't believe in great wizards, but other people do, and sometimes people need something to believe in. And if these other people die because we've got a wizard who is not so very great, then he will be a very unlucky wizard indeed. You may be the Great Wizard. If you are not, then I suggest you study very hard to be great. Do I make myself clear?' 'Er. Yes.' Rincewind had been faced with death on numerous occasions. Often there was armour and swords involved. This occasion just involved a pretty girl and a knife, but somehow managed to be among the worst. She sat back. 'We are a travelling theatre,' she said. 'It is convenient. Noh actors are allowed to move around.' 'Aren't they?' said Rincewind. 'You do not understand. We are Noh actors.' 'Oh, you weren't too bad.' 'Great Wizard, "Noh" is a non-realist symbolic form of theatre employing archaic language, stylized gestures and an accompaniment of flutes and drums. Your pretence of stupidity is masterly. So much so that I could even believe that you are no actor.' 'Excuse me, what is your name?' Rincewind said. 'Pretty Butterfly.' 'Er. Yes?' She glared at him and slipped away towards the front of the cart. It rumbled on. Rincewind lay with his head in a sack smelling of onions and methodically cursed things. He cursed women with knives, and history generally, and the entire faculty of Unseen University, and his absent Luggage, and the population of the Agatean Empire. But right now, at the top of the list, was whoever had designed this cart. By the feel of it, whoever had thought that rough, splintery wood was the right surface for a floor was also the person who thought 'triangular' was a nice shape for a wheel.   The Luggage lurked in a ditch, watched without much interest by a man holding a water buffalo on the end of a piece of string. It was feeling ashamed, and baffled, and lost. It was lost because everywhere around it was . . . familiar. The light, the smells, the feel of the soil . . . But it didn't feel owned. It was made of wood. Wood is sensitive to these things. One of its many feet idly traced an outline in the mud. It was a random, wretched pattern familiar to anyone who's had to stand in front of the class and be scolded. Finally, it reached something that was probably as close as timber can get to a decision. It had been given away. It had spent many years trailing through strange lands, meeting exotic creatures and jumping up and down on them. Now it was back in the country where it had once been a tree. Therefore, it was free. It was not the most logical chain of thought, but pretty good when all you've got to think with are knotholes. And there was something it very much wanted to do.   'When you're ready, Teach?' 'Sorry, Ghenghiz. I'm just finishing . . .' Cohen sighed. The Horde were taking advantage of the rest to sit in the shade of a tree and tell one another lies about their exploits, while Mr Saveloy stood on top of a boulder squinting through some kind of home-made device and doodling on his maps. Bits of paper ruled the world now, Cohen told himself. It certainly ruled this part of it. And Teach . . . well, Teach ruled bits of paper. He might not be traditional barbarian hero material, despite his deeply held belief that all headmasters should be riveted to a cowshed door, but the man was amazing with bits of paper. And he could speak Agatean. Well, speak it better than Cohen, who'd picked it up in a rough and ready way. He said he'd learned it out of some old book. He said it was amazing how much interesting stuff was in old books. Cohen struggled up alongside him. 'What exactly you plannin', Teach?' he said. Mr Saveloy squinted at Hunghung, just visible on the dusty horizon. 'Do you see that hill behind the city?' he said. 'The huge round mound?' 'Looks like my dad's burial mound to me,' said Cohen. 'No, it must be a natural formation. It's far too big. There's some kind of pagoda on top, I see. Interesting. Perhaps, later, I shall take a closer look.' Cohen peered at the big round hill. It was a big round hill. It wasn't threatening him and it didn't look valuable. End of saga as far as he was concerned. There were more pressing matters. 'People appear to be entering and leaving the outer city,' Mr Saveloy continued. 'The siege is more a threat than a reality. So getting inside should not be a problem. Of course, getting into the Forbidden City itself will be a lot more difficult.' 'How about if we kill everyone?' said Cohen. 'A good idea, but impractical,' said Mr Saveloy. 'And liable to cause comment. No, my current methodology is predicated on the fact that Hunghung is some considerable way from the river yet has almost a million inhabitants.' 'Predicated, yeah,' said Cohen. 'And the local geography is quite wrong for artesian wells.' 'Yeah, 's what I thought . . .' 'And yet there is no visible aqueduct, you notice.' 'No aqueduct, right,' said Cohen. 'Prob'ly flown to the Rim for the summer. Some birds do that.' 'Which rather leads me to doubt the saying that not even a mouse can get into the Forbidden City,' said Mr Saveloy, with just a trace of smugness. 'I suspect a mouse could get into the Forbidden City if it could hold its breath.' 'Or ride on one of them invisible ducks,' said Cohen. 'Indeed.'   The cart stopped. The sack came off. Instead of the cheesegrater Rincewind was secretly expecting, the view consisted of a couple of young, concerned faces. One of them was female, but Rincewind was relieved to see that she wasn't Pretty Butterfly. This one looked younger, and made Rincewind think a little of potatoes.[20] 'How are you?' she said, in fractured but recognizable Morporkian. 'We are very sorry. All better now? We speak you in language of celestial city of Ankh-More-Pork. Language of freedom and progress. Language of One Man, One Vote!' 'Yes,' said Rincewind. A vision of Ankh-Morpork's Patrician floated across his memory. One man, one vote. Yes. 'I've met him. He's definitely got the vote. But—' 'Extra Luck To The People's Endeavour!' said the boy. 'Advance Judiciously!' He looked as though he'd been built with bricks. 'Excuse me,' said Rincewind, 'but why did you . . . a paper lantern for ceremonial purposes . . . bale of cotton . . . rescue me? Uh, that is, when I say rescue, I suppose I mean: why did you hit me on the head, tie me up, and bring me to wherever this is? Because the worst that could have happened to me in the inn was a ding around the ear for not paying for lunch—' 'The worst that would have happened was an agonizing death over several years,' said the voice of Butterfly. She appeared around the cart and smiled grimly at Rincewind. Her hands were tucked demurely in her kimono, presumably to hide the knives. 'Oh. Hello,' he said. 'Great Wizard,' said Butterfly, bowing. 'I you already know, but these two are Lotus Blossom and Three Yoked Oxen, other members of our cadre. We had to bring you here like this. There are spies everywhere.' 'Timely Demise To All Enemies!' said the boy, beaming. 'Good, yes, right,' said Rincewind. 'All enemies, yes.' The cart was in a courtyard. The general noise level on the other side of the very high walls suggested a large city. Nasty certainty crystallized. 'And you've brought me to Hunghung, haven't you?' he said. Lotus Blossom's eyes widened. 'Then it are true,' she said, in Rincewind's own language. 'You are the Great Wizard!' 'Oh, you'd be amazed at the things I can foresee,' said Rincewind despondently. 'You two, go and stable the horses,' said Butterfly, not taking her eyes off Rincewind. When they'd hurried away, with several backward glances, she walked up to him. 'They believe,' she said. 'Personally, I have my doubts. But Ly Tin Wheedle says an ass may do the work of an ox in a time of no horses. One of his less convincing aphorisms, I've always thought.' 'Thank you. What is a cadre?' 'Have you heard of the Red Army?' 'No. Well. . . I heard someone shout something . . .' 'According to legend, an unknown person known only as the Great Wizard led the first Red Army to an impossible victory. Of course, that was thousands of years ago. But the people believe that he - that is, you - will return to do it again. So . . . there should be a Red Army ready and waiting.' 'Well, of course, a man can get a little stiff after several thousand years—' Her face was suddenly level with his own. 'Personally I suspect there has been a misunderstanding,' she hissed. 'But now you're here you'll be a Great Wizard. If I have to prod you every step of the way!' The other two returned. Butterfly went from snarling tiger to demure doe in an instant. 'And now you must come and meet the Red Army,' she said. 'Won't they be a little smelly—' Rincewind began, and stopped when he saw her expression. 'The original Red Army was clearly only a legend,' she said, in fast and faultless Ankh-Morporkian. 'But legends have their uses. You'd better know the legend . . . Great Wizard. When One Sun Mirror was fighting all the armies of the world the Great Wizard came to his aid and the earth itself rose up and fought for the new Empire. And lightning was involved. The army was made from the earth but in some way driven by the lightning. Now, lightning may kill but I suspect it lacks discipline. And earth cannot fight. But no doubt our army of the earth and sky was nothing more nor less than an uprising of the peasants themselves. Well, now we have a new army, and a name that fires the imagination. And a Great Wizard. I don't believe in legends. But I believe that other people believe.' The younger girl, who had been trying to follow this, stepped forward and gripped his arm. 'You come seeing Red Army now,' she said. 'Forward Motion With Masses!' said the boy, taking Rincewind's other arm. 'Does he always talk like that?' said Rincewind, as he was propelled gently towards a door. 'Three Yoked Oxen does not study,' said the girl. 'Extra Success Attend Our Leaders!' ' "Tuppence A Bucket, Well Stamped Down!" ' said Rincewind encouragingly. 'Much Ownership Of Means Of Production!' ' "How's Your Granny Off For Soap?" ' Three Yoked Oxen beamed. Butterfly opened the door. That left Rincewind outside with the other two. 'Very useful slogans,' he said, moving sideways just a little. 'But I would draw your attention to the famous saying of the Great Wizard Rincewind.' 'Indeed, I am all ear,' said Lotus Blossom politely. 'Rincewind, he say . . . Goodbyeeeeeeeee—' His sandals skidded on the cobbles but he was already travelling fast when he hit the doors, which turned out to be made of bamboo and smashed apart easily. There was a street market on the other side. That was something Rincewind remembered later about Hunghung; as soon as there was a space, any kind of space, even the space created by the passage of a cart or a mule, people flowed into it, usually arguing with one another at the tops of their voices over the price of a duck which was being held upside down and quacking. His foot went through a wicker cage containing several chickens, but he pressed on, scattering people and produce. In an Ankh-Morpork street market something like this would have caused some comment, but since everyone around him already seemed to be screaming into other people's faces Rincewind was merely a momentary and unremarked nuisance as he half ran, half limped with one squawking foot past the stalls. Behind him, the people flowed back. There may have been some cries of pursuit, but they were lost in the hubbub. He didn't stop until he found an overlooked alcove between a stall selling songbirds and another purveying something that bubbled in bowls. His foot crowed. He smashed it against cobbles until the cage broke; the cockerel, maddened by the heady air of freedom, pecked him on the knee and fluttered away. There were no sounds of pursuit. However, a battalion of trolls in tin boots would have had trouble making themselves heard above a normal Hunghung street market. He let himself get his breath back. Well, he was his own man again. So much for the Red Army. Admittedly he was in the capital city, where he didn't want to be, and it was only a matter of time before something else unpleasant happened to him, but it wasn't actually happening at the moment. Let him find his bearings and five minutes' start and they could watch his dust. Or mud. There was a lot of both, here. So . . . this was Hunghung . . . There didn't seem to be streets in the sense Rince-wind understood the term. Alleys opened on to alleys, all of them narrow and made narrower by the stalls that lined them. There was a large animal population in the marketplace. Most of the stalls had their share of caged chickens, ducks in sacks and strange wriggling things in bowls. From one stall a tortoise on top of a struggling heap of other tortoises under a sign saying: 3r, each, good for Ying gave Rincewind a slow, 'You think you've got troubles?' look. But it was hard to tell where the stalls ended and the buildings began in any case. Dried-up things hanging on a string might be merchandise or someone's washing or quite possibly next week's dinner. The Hunghungese were an outdoor kind of people; from the look of it, they conducted most of their lives on the street and at the top of their voice. Progress was made by viciously elbowing and shoving people until they got out of the way. Standing still and saying, 'Er, excuse me' was a recipe for immobility. The crowds did part, though, at the banging of a gong and a succession of loud 'pops'. A group of people in white robes danced past, throwing fireworks around and banging on gongs, saucepans and odd bits of metal. The din contrived to be louder than the street noise, but only by very great effort. Rincewind had been getting the occasional puzzled glance from people who stopped screaming long enough to notice him. Perhaps it was time to act like a native. He turned to the nearest person and screamed. 'Pretty good, eh?' The person, a little old lady in a straw hat, stared at him in distaste. 'It's Mr Whu's funeral,' she snapped, and walked off. There were a couple of soldiers nearby. If this had been Ankh-Morpork, then they'd have been sharing a cigarette and trying not to see anything that might upset them. But these had an alert look. Rincewind backed into another alley. An untutored visitor could clearly find himself in big trouble here. This alley was quieter and, at the far end, opened into something much wider and empty looking. On the basis that people also meant trouble, Rincewind headed in that direction. Here, at last, was an open space. It was very open indeed. It was a paved square, big enough to hold a couple of armies. It had cherry trees growing along the verges. And, given the heaving mob everywhere else, a surprising absence of anyone . . . 'You!' . . . apart from the soldiers. They appeared abruptly from behind every tree and statue. Rincewind tried to back away, but that proved unfortunate since there was a guard behind him. A terrifying armoured mask confronted him. 'Peasant! Do you not know this is the Imperial Square?' 'Was that a capital S on Square, please?' said Rincewind. 'You do not ask questions!' 'Ah. I'll take that as a "yes". So it's important, then. Sorry. I'll just sort of go away, then . . .' 'You stay!' But what struck Rincewind as amazingly odd was that none of them actually took hold of him. And then he realized that this must be because they hardly ever needed to. People did what they were told. There's something worse than whips in the Empire, Cohen had said. At this point, he realized, he should be on his knees. He crouched down, hands placed lightly in front of him. 'I wonder,' he said brightly, rising into the starting position, 'if this is the time to draw your attention to a famous saying?'   Cohen was familiar with city gates. He'd broken down a number in his time, by battering ram, siege gun and on one occasion with his head. But the gates of Hunghung were pretty damn good gates. They weren't like the gates of Ankh-Morpork, which were usually wide open to attract the spending customer and whose concession to defence was the sign 'Thank You For Not Attacking Our City. Bonum Diem'. These things were big and made of metal and there was a guardhouse and a squad of unhelpful men in black armour. 'Teach?' 'Yes, Cohen?' 'Why're we doing this? I thought we were going to use the invisible duck the mice use.' Mr Saveloy waggled a finger. 'That's for the Forbidden City itself. I hope we'll find that inside. Now, remember your lessons,' he said. 'It's important that you all learn how to behave in cities.' 'I know how to bloody well behave in cities,' said Truckle the Uncivil. 'Pillage, ravish, loot, set fire to the damn place on your way out. Just like towns only it takes longer.' 'That's all very well if you're just passing through,' said Mr Saveloy, 'but what if you want to come back next day?' 'It ain't bloody well there next day, mister.' 'Gentlemen! Bear with me. You will have to learn the ways of civilization!' People couldn't just walk through. There was a line. And the guards gathered rather offensively around each cowering visitor to examine their papers. And then it was Cohen's turn. 'Papers, old man?' Cohen nodded happily, and handed the guard captain a piece of paper on which was written, in Mr Saveloy's best handwriting:   WE ARE WANDERING MADMEN WHO HAVE NO PAPERS. SORRY.   The guard's gaze lifted from the paper and met Cohen's cheerful grin. 'Indeed,' he said nastily. 'Can't you speak, grandfather?' Cohen, still grinning, looked questioningly at Mr Saveloy. They hadn't rehearsed this part. 'Foolish dummy,' said the guard. Mr Saveloy looked outraged. 'I thought you were supposed to show special consideration for the insane!' he said. 'You cannot be insane without papers to say you're insane,' said the guard. 'Oh, I'm fed up with this,' said Cohen. 'I said it wouldn't work if we came across a thick guard.' 'Insolent peasant!' 'I'm not as insolent as my friends here,' said Cohen. The Horde nodded. 'That's us, flatfoot.' 'Bum to you.' 'Whut?' 'Extremely foolish soldier.' 'Whut?' The captain was taken aback. Deeply ingrained in the Agatean psyche was the habit of obedience. But even stronger was a veneration of one's ancestors and a respect for the elderly, and the captain had never seen anyone so elderly while still vertical. They practically were ancestors. The one in the wheelchair certainly smelled like one. 'Take them to the guardhouse!' he shouted. The Horde let themselves be manhandled, and did it quite well. Mr Saveloy had spent hours training them in this, since he knew he was dealing with men whose response to a tap on the shoulder was to turn around and hack off someone's arm. It was crowded in the guardhouse, with the Horde and the guards and with Mad Hamish's wheelchair. One of the guards looked down at Hamish, glowering under his blanket. 'What do you have there, grandfather?' A sword came up through the cloth and stabbed the guard in the thigh. 'Whut? Whut? Whutzeesay?' 'He said, "Aargh!", Hamish,' said Cohen, a knife appearing in his hand. With one movement his skinny arms had the captain in a lock, the knife at his throat. 'Whut?' 'He said, "Aargh!" ' 'Whut? I ain't even married!' Cohen put a little more pressure on the captain's neck. 'Now then, friend,' he said. 'You can have it the easy way, see, or the hard way. It's up to you.' 'Blood-sucking pig! You call this the easy way?' 'Well, I ain't sweatin'.' 'May you live in interesting times! I would rather die than betray my Emperor!' 'Fair enough.' It took the captain only a fraction of a second to realize that Cohen, being a man of his word, assumed that other people were too. He might, if he had time, have reflected that the purpose of civilization is to make violence the final resort, while to a barbarian it is the first, preferred, only and above all most enjoyable option. But by then it was too late. He slumped forward. 'I always lives in interestin' times,' said Cohen, in the satisfied voice of someone who did a lot to keep them interesting. He pointed his knife at the other guards. Mr Saveloy's mouth was wide open in horror. 'By rights I should be cleanin' this,' said Cohen. 'But I ain't goin' to bother if it's only goin' to get dirty again. Now, person'ly, I'd as soon kill you as look at you but Teach here says I've got to stop doin' that and become respectable.' One of the guards looked sideways at his fellows and then fell on his knees. 'What is your wish, o master?' he said. 'Ah, officer material,' said Cohen. 'What's your name, lad?' 'Nine Orange Trees, master.' Cohen looked at Mr Saveloy. 'What do I do now?' 'Take them prisoner, please.' 'How do I do that?' 'Well . . . I suppose you tie them up, that sort of thing.' 'Ah. And then cut their throats?' 'No! No. You see, once you've got them at your mercy, you're not allowed to kill them.' The Silver Horde, to a man, stared at the ex-teacher. 'I'm afraid that's civilization for you,' he added. 'But you said the sods haven't got any bloody weapons!' said Truckle. 'Yes,' said Mr Saveloy, shuddering a little. 'That's why you're not allowed to kill them.' 'Are you mad? Got mad papers, have you?' Cohen scratched his stubbly chin. The remainder of the guard watched him in trepidation. They were used to cruel and unusual punishment, but they were unaccustomed to argument first. 'You haven't had a lot of military experience, have you, Teach?' he said. 'Apart from Form Four? Not a lot. But I'm afraid this is the way it has to be done. I'm sorry. You did say you wanted me—' 'Well, I vote we just cuts their throats right now,' said Boy Willie. 'I can't be having with this prisoner business either. I mean, who's gonna feed them?' 'I'm afraid you have to.' 'Who me? Not likely! I vote we make them eat their own eyeballs. Hands up all in favour.' There was a chorus of assent from the Horde and, among the raised hands, Cohen noticed one belonging to Nine Orange Trees. 'What you voting for, lad?' he said. 'Please, sir, I would like to go to the lavatory.' 'You listen to me, you lot,' said Cohen. 'This slaughtering and butchering business isn't how you do it these days, right? That's what Mr Saveloy says and he knows how to spell words like "marmalade" which is more than you do. Now, we know why we're here, and we'd better start as we mean to go on.' 'Yeah, but you just killed that guard,' said Truckle. 'I'm breaking myself in,' said Cohen. 'You've got to creep up on civilization a bit at a time.' 'I still say we should cut their heads off. That's what I did to the Mad Demon-Sucking Priests of Ee!' The kneeling guard had cautiously raised his hand again. 'Please, master?' 'Yes, lad?' 'You could lock us up in that cell over there. Then we wouldn't be any trouble to anyone.' 'Good thinking,' said Cohen. 'Good lad. The boy keeps his head in a crisis. Lock 'em up.' Thirty seconds later the Horde had limped off, into the city. The guards sat in the cramped, hot cell. Eventually one said, 'What were they?' 'I think they might have been ancestors.' 'I thought you had to be dead to be an ancestor.' 'The one in the wheelchair looked dead. Right up to the point where he stabbed Four White Fox.' 'Should we shout for help?' They might hear us.' 'Yes, but if we don't get let out we'll be stuck in here. And the walls are very thick and the door is very strong.' 'Good.'   Rincewind stopped running in some alley somewhere. He hadn't bothered to see if they'd followed him. It was true - here, with one mighty bound, you could be free. Provided you realized it was one of your options. Freedom did, of course, include man's age-old right to starve to death. It seemed a long time since his last proper meal. The voice erupted further down the alley, as if on cue. 'Rice cakes! Rice cakes! Get chore nice rice cakes! Tea! Hundred-Year-Old Eggs! Eggs! Get them while they're nice and vintage! Get chore - Yeah, what is it?' An elderly man had approached the salesman. 'Dibhala-san! This egg you sold me—' 'What about it, venerable squire?' 'Would you care to smell it?' The street vendor took a sniff. 'Ah, yes, lovely,' he said. 'Lovely? Lovely? This egg,' said the customer, 'this egg is practically fresh!' 'Hundred years old if it's a day, shogun,' said the vendor happily. 'Look at the colour of that shell, nice and black—' 'It rubs off!' Rincewind listened. There was, he thought, probably something in the idea that there were only a few people in the world. There were lots of bodies, but only a few people. That's why you kept running into the same ones. There was probably some mould somewhere. 'You saying my produce is fresh! May I disembowel myself honourably! Look, I'll tell you what I'll do—' Yes, there seemed to be something familiar and magical about that trader. Someone had come to complain about a fresh egg, and yet within a couple of minutes he'd somehow been talked into forgetting this and purchasing two rice cakes and something strange wrapped in leaves. The rice cakes looked nice. Well . . . nicer than the other things. Rincewind sidled over. The trader was idly jigging from one foot to the other and whistling under his breath, but he stopped and gave Rincewind a big, honest, friendly grin. 'Nice ancient egg, shogun?' The bowl in the middle of the tray was full of gold coins. Rincewind's heart sank. The price of one of Mr Dibhala's foul eggs would have bought a street in Ankh-Morpork. 'I suppose you don't give . . . credit?' he suggested. Dibhala gave him a Look. 'I'll pretend I never heard that, shogun,' he said. 'Tell me,' said Rincewind. 'Do you know if you have any relatives overseas?' This got him another look - a sideways one, full of sudden appraisal. 'What? There's nothing but evil blood-sucking ghosts beyond the seas. Everyone knows that, shogun. I'm surprised you don't.' 'Ghosts?' said Rincewind. 'Trying to get here, do us harm,' said Disembowel-Meself-Honourably. 'Maybe even steal our merchandise. Give 'em a dose of the old firecracker, that's what I say. They don't like a good loud bang, ghosts.' He gave Rincewind another look, even longer and more calculating. 'Where you from, shogun?' he asked, and his voice suddenly had the little barbed edge of suspicion. 'Bes Pelargic,' said Rincewind quickly. 'That ex-plains my strange accent and mannerisms that might otherwise lead people to think I was some sort of foreigner,' he added. 'Oh, Bes Pelargic,' said Disembowel-Meself-Honourably. 'Well, in that case, I expect you know my old friend Five Tongs who lives in the Street of Heavens, yes?' Rincewind was ready for this old trick. 'No,' he said. 'Never heard of him, never heard of the street.' Disembowel-Meself-Honourably Dibhala grinned happily. 'If I yell "foreign devil" loud enough you won't get three steps,' he said in conversational tones. 'The guards will drag you off to the Forbidden City where there's this special thing they do with—' 'I've heard about it,' said Rincewind. 'Five Tongs has been the district commissioner for three years and the Street of Heavens is the man street,' said Disembowel-Meself-Honourably. 'I've always wanted to meet a blood-sucking foreign ghost. Have a rice cake.' Rincewind's gaze darted this way and that. But strangely enough the situation didn't seem dangerous, or at least inevitably dangerous. It seemed that danger was negotiable. 'Supposing I was to admit I was from behind the Wall?' he said, keeping his voice as low as possible. Dibhala nodded. One hand reached into his robe and, in a quick movement, revealed and then concealed the corner of something which Rincewind was not entirely surprised to see was entitled WHAT I DID . . . 'Some people say that beyond the Wall there's nothing but deserts and burning wastes and evil ghosts and terrible monsters,' said Dibhala, 'but I say what about the merchandizing opportunities? A man with the right contacts . . . Know what I mean, shogun? He could go a long way in the land of blood-sucking ghosts.' Rincewind nodded. He didn't like to point out that if you turned up in Ankh-Morpork with a handful of gold then about three hundred people would turn up with a handful of steel. 'The way I see it, what with all this uncertainty about the Emperor and talk of rebels and that - Long Live His Excellency The Son Of Heaven, of course - there might just be a nitch for the open-minded trader, am I right?' 'Nitch?' 'Nitch. Like . . . we've got this stuff - he leaned closer - 'comes out of a caterpillar's [unidentified pictogram]. 'S called . . . silk. It's—' 'Yes, I know. We get it from Klatch,' said Rincewind. 'Or, well, there's this bush, see, you dry the leaves but then you put it in hot water and you drin—' 'Tea, yes,' said Rincewind. 'That comes from Howondaland.' D. M. H. Dibhala looked taken aback. 'Well . . . we've got this powder, you put it in rubes—' 'Fireworks? Got fireworks.' 'How about this really fine china, it's so—' 'In Ankh-Morpork we've got dwarfs that can make china you can read a book through,' said Rincewind. 'Even if it's got tiny footnotes in it.' Dibhala frowned. 'Sounds like you are very clever blood-sucking ghosts,' he said, backing away. 'Maybe it's true and you are dangerous.' 'Us? Don't worry about us,' said Rincewind. 'We hardly ever kill foreigners in Ankh-Morpork. It makes it so hard to sell them things afterwards.' 'What've we got that you want, though? Go on, have a rice cake. On the pagoda. Wanna try some pork balls? Onna chopstick?' Rincewind selected a cake. He didn't like to ask about the other stuff. 'You've got gold,' he said. 'Oh, gold. It's too soft to do much with,' said Dibhala. 'It's all right for pipes and putting on roofs, though.' 'Oh . . . I daresay people in Ankh-Morpork could find a use for some,' said Rincewind. His gaze returned to the coins in Dibhala's tray. A land where gold was as cheap as lead . . . 'What's that?' he said, pointing to a crumpled rectangle half covered with coins. D. M. H. Dibhala looked down. 'It's this thing we have here,' he said, speaking slowly. 'Of course, it's probably all new to you. It's called mon-ey. It's a way of carrying around your—' 'I meant the bit of paper,' said Rincewind. 'So did I,' said Dibhala. 'That's a ten-rhinu note.' 'What does that mean?' said Rincewind. 'Means what it says,' said Dibhala. 'Means it's worth ten of these.' He held up a gold coin about the size of a rice cake. 'Why'd you want to buy a piece of paper?' said Rincewind. 'You don't buy it, it's for buying things with,' said Dibhala. Rincewind looked blank. 'You go to a mark-et stall,' said Dibhala, getting back into the slow-voice-for-the-hard-of-thinking, 'and you say, "Good morn-ing, but-cher, how much for those dog noses?" and he says, "Three rhinu, shogun," and you say, "I've only got a pony, OK?" (look, there's an etch-ing of a pony on it, see, that's what you get on ten-rhinu notes) and he gives you the dog noses and seven coins in what we call "change". Now, if you had a monkey, that's fifty rhinu, he'd say "Got anything smal-ler?" and—' 'But it's only a bit of paper!' Rincewind wailed. 'It may be a bit of paper to you but it's ten rice cakes to me,' said Dibhala. 'What do you foreign bloodsuckers use? Big stones with holes in them?' Rincewind stared at the paper money. There were dozens of papermills in Ankh-Morpork, and some of the craftsmen in the Engravers' Guild could engrave their name and address on a pinhead. He suddenly felt immensely proud of his countrymen. They might be venal and greedy, but by heaven they were good at it and they never assumed that there wasn't any more to learn. 'I think you'll find,' he said, 'that there's a lot of buildings in Ankh-Morpork that need new roofs.' 'Really?' said Dibhala. 'Oh, yes. The rain's just pouring in.' 'And people can pay? Only I heard—' Rincewind looked at the paper money again. He shook his head. Worth more than gold . . . 'They'll pay with notes at least as good as that,' he said. 'Probably even better. I'll put in a good word for you. And now,' he added hurriedly, 'which way is out?' Dibhala scratched his head. 'Could be a bit tricky,' he said. 'There's armies outside. You look a bit foreign with that hat. Could be tricky—' There was a commotion further along the alley or, rather, a general increase in the commotion. The crowd parted in that hurried way common to unarmed crowds in the presence of weaponry, and a group of guards hurried towards Disembowel-Meself-Honourably. He stepped back and gave them the friendly grin of one happy to sell at a discount to anyone with a knife. A limp figure was being dragged between two of the guards. As it went past it raised a slightly bloodstained head and said, 'Extended Duration to the—' before a gloved fist smacked across its mouth. And then the guards were heading down the street. The crowd flowed back. 'Tch, tch,' said D. M. H. 'Seems to be - Hello? Where'd you go?' Rincewind reappeared from around a corner. D. M. H. looked impressed. There had actually been a small thunderclap when Rincewind moved. 'See they got another of 'em,' he said. Tutting up wall posters again, I expect.' 'Another one of who?' said Rincewind. 'Red Army. Huh!' 'Oh.' 'I don't pay much attention,' said D. M. H. 'They say some old legend's going to come true about emperors and stuff. Can't see it myself.' 'He didn't look very legendary,' said Rincewind. 'Ach, some people will believe anything.' 'What'll happen to him?' 'Difficult to say, with the Emperor about to die. Hands and feet cut off, probably.' 'What? Why?' ' 'Cos he's young. That's leniency. A bit older and it's his head on a spike over one of the gates.' 'That's punishment for putting up a poster?' 'Stops 'em doing it again, see,' said D. M. H. Rincewind backed away. 'Thank you,' he said, and hurried off. 'Oh, no,' he said, pushing his way through the crowds. 'I'm not getting mixed up in people's heads getting chopped off—' And then someone hit him again. But politely. As he sank to his knees, and then to his chin, he wondered what had happened to the good, old-fashioned 'Hey, you!'   The Silver Horde wandered through the alleys of Hunghung. 'I don't call this bloody well sweeping through a city, slaughtering every bugger,' muttered Truckle. 'When I was riding with Bruce the Hoon, we never walked in through a front gate like a bunch of soppy mother—' 'Mr Uncivil,' said Mr Saveloy hurriedly, 'I wonder if this might be a good time to refer you to that list I drew up for you?' 'What bloody list?' said Truckle, sticking out his jaw belligerently. 'The list of acceptable civilized words, yes?' He turned to the others. 'Remember I was telling you about civ-il-ized be-hav-iour. Civilized behaviour is vital to our long-term strategy.' 'What's a long-term strategy?' said Caleb the Ripper. 'It's what we're going to do later,' said Cohen. 'And what's that, then?' 'It's the Plan,' said Cohen. 'Well, I'll be f—' Truckle began. 'The list, Mr Uncivil, only the words on the list,' snapped Mr Saveloy. 'Listen, I bow to your expertise when it comes to crossing wildernesses, but this is civilization and you must use the right words. Please?' 'Better do what he says, Truckle,' said Cohen. With bad grace, Truckle fished a grubby piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it. ' "Dang"?' he said. 'Wassat mean? And what's this "darn" and "heck"?' 'They are . . . civilized swearwords,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Well, you can take 'em and—' 'Ah?' said Mr Saveloy, raising a cautionary finger. 'You can shove them up—' 'Ah?' 'You can—' 'Ah?' Truckle shut his eyes and clenched his fists. 'Dang it all to heck!' he shouted. 'Good,' said Mr Saveloy. 'That's much better.' He turned to Cohen, who was grinning happily at Truckle's discomfort. 'Cohen,' he said, 'there's an apple stall over there. Do you fancy an apple?' 'Yeah, might do,' Cohen conceded, in the cautious manner of someone giving a conjuror his watch while remaining aware that the man is grinning and holding a hammer. 'Right. Now, then, cla— I mean, gentlemen. Ghenghiz wants an apple. There's a stall over there selling fruit and nuts. What does he do?' Mr Saveloy looked hopefully at his charges. 'Anyone? Yes?' 'Easy. You kill that little' - there was a rustle of unfolding paper again - 'chap behind the stall, then—' 'No, Mr Uncivil. Anyone else?' 'Whut?' 'You set fire to—' 'No, Mr Vincent. Anyone else . . . ?' 'You rape—' 'No, no, Mr Ripper,' said Mr Saveloy. 'We take out some muh - muh—?' He looked at them expectantly. '—money—' chorused the Horde. '—and we . . . What do we do? Now, we've gone through this hundreds of times. We . . .' This was the difficult bit. The Horde's lined faces creased and puckered still further as they tried to force their minds out of the chasms of habit. 'Gi . . . ?' said Cohen hesitantly. Mr Saveloy gave him a big smile and a nod of encouragement. 'Give? . . . it . . . to . . .' Cohen's lips tensed around the word '. . . him?' 'Yes! Well done. In exchange for the apple. We'll talk about making change and saying "thank you" later on, when you're ready for it. Now then, Cohen, here's the coin. Off you go.' Cohen wiped his forehead. He was beginning to sweat. 'How about if I just cut him up a bit—' 'No! This is civilization.' Cohen nodded uncomfortably. He threw back his shoulders and walked over to the stall, where the apple merchant, who had been eyeing the group suspiciously, nodded at him. Cohen's eyes glazed and his lips moved silently, as if he were rehearsing a script. Then he said: 'Ho, fat merchant, give me all your . . . one apple . . . and I will give you . . . this coin . . .' He looked around. Mr Saveloy had his thumb up. 'You want an apple, is that it?' said the apple merchant. 'Yes!' The apple merchant selected one. Cohen's sword had been hidden in the wheelchair again but the merchant, in response to some buried acknowledgement, made sure it was a good apple. Then he took the coin. This proved a little difficult, since his customer seemed loath to let go of it. 'Come on, hand it over, venerable one,' he said. Seven crowded seconds passed. Then, when they were safely around the corner, Mr Saveloy said, 'Now, everyone: who can tell me what Ghenghiz did wrong?' 'Didn't say please?' 'Whut?' 'No.' 'Didn't say thank you?' 'Whut?' 'No.' 'Hit the man over the head with a melon and thumped him into the strawberries and kicked him in the nuts and set fire to his stall and stole all the money?' 'Whut?' 'Correct!' Mr Saveloy sighed. 'Ghenghiz, you were doing so well up to then.' 'He didn't ort to have called me what he did!' 'But "venerable" means old and wise, Ghenghiz.' 'Oh. Does it?' 'Yes.' 'We-ell . . . I did leave him the money for the apple.' 'Yes, but, you see, I do believe you took all his other money.' 'But I paid for the apple,' said Cohen, rather testily. Mr Saveloy sighed. 'Ghenghiz, I do rather get the impression that several thousand years of the patient development of fiscal propriety have some-what passed you by.' 'Come again?' 'It is possible sometimes for money to legitimately belong to other people,' said Mr Saveloy patiently. The Horde paused to wrap their minds around this, too. It was, of course, something they knew to be true in theory. Merchants always had money. But it seemed wrong to think of it as belonging to them; it belonged to whoever took it off them. Merchants didn't actually own it, they were just looking after it until it was needed. 'Now, there is an elderly lady over there selling ducks,' said Mr Saveloy. 'I think the next stage - Mr Willie, I am not over there, I am sure whatever you are looking at is very interesting, but please pay attention - is to practise our grasp of social intercourse.' 'Hur, hur, hur,' said Caleb the Ripper. 'I mean, Mr Ripper, that you should go and enquire how much it would be for a duck,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Hur, hur, hur - What?' 'And you are not to rip all her clothes off. That's not civilized.' Caleb scratched his head. Flakes fell out. 'Well, what else am I supposed to do?' 'Er . . . engage her in conversation.' 'Eh? What's there to talk about with a woman?' Mr Saveloy hesitated again. To some extent this was unknown territory to him as well. His experience with women at his last school had been limited to an occasional chat with the housekeeper, and on one occasion the matron had let him put his hand on her knee. He had been forty before he found out that oral sex didn't mean talking about it. Women had always been to him strange and distant and wonderful creatures rather than, as the Horde to a man believed, something to do. He was struggling a little. 'The weather?' he hazarded. His memory threw in vague recollections of the staple conversation of the maiden aunt who had brought him up. 'Her health? The trouble with young people today?' 'And then I rip her clothes off?' 'Possibly. Eventually. If she wants you to. I might draw your attention to the discussion we had the other day about taking regular baths' - or even a bath, he added to himself - 'and attention to fingernails and hair and changing your clothes more often.' 'This is leather,' said Caleb. 'You don't have to change it, it don't rot for years.' Once again Mr Saveloy readjusted his sights. He'd thought that Civilization could be overlaid on the Horde like a veneer. He had been mistaken. But the funny thing - he mused, as the Horde watched Caleb's painful attempts at conversation with a representative of half the world's humanity - was that although they were as far away as possible from the kind of people he normally mixed with in staff-rooms, or possibly because they were as far away as possible from the kind of people he normally mixed with in staffrooms, he actually liked them. Every one of them saw a book as either a lavatorial accessory or a set of portable firelighters and thought that hygiene was a greeting. Yet they were honest (from thieir specialized point of view) and decent (from their specialized point of view) and saw the world as hugely simple. They stole from rich merchants and temples and kings. They didn't steal from poor people; this was not because there was anything virtuous about poor people, it was simply because poor people had no money. And although they didn't set out to give the money away to the poor, that was nevertheless what they did (if you accepted that the poor consisted of innkeepers, ladies of negotiable virtue, pickpockets, gamblers and general hangers-on), because although they would go to great lengths to steal money they then had as much control over it as a man trying to herd cats. It was there to be spent and lost. So they kept the money in circulation, always a praiseworthy thing in any society. They never worried about what other people thought. Mr Saveloy, who'd spent his whole life worrying about what other people thought and had been passed over for promotion and generally treated as a piece of furniture as a result, found this strangely attractive. And they never agonized about anything, or wondered if they were doing the right thing. And they enjoyed themselves immensely. They had a kind of honour. He liked the Horde. They weren't his kind of people. Caleb returned, looking unusually thoughtful. 'Congratulations, Mr Ripper!' said Mr Saveloy, a great believer in positive reinforcement. 'She still appears to be fully clothed.' 'Yeah, what'd she say?' said Boy Willie. 'She smiled at me,' said Caleb. He scratched his crusty beard uneasily. 'A bit, anyway,' he added. 'Good,' said Mr Saveloy. 'She, er . . . she said she'd . . . she wouldn't mind seein' me . . . later . . .' 'Well done!' 'Er . . . Teach? What's a shave?' Saveloy explained. Caleb listened carefully, grimacing occasionally. He turned round occasionally to look at the duck seller, who gave him a little wave. 'Cor,' he said. 'Er. I dunno . . .' He looked around again. 'Never seen a woman who wasn't running away before.' 'Oh, women are like deer,' said Cohen loftily. 'You can't just charge in, you gotta stalk 'em—' 'Hur, hur, h - Sorry,' said Caleb, catching Mr Saveloy's stern eye. 'I think perhaps we should end the lesson here,' said Mr Saveloy. 'We don't want to get you too civilized, do we . . . ? I suggest we take a stroll around the Forbidden City, yes?' They'd all seen it. It dominated the centre of Hung-hung. Its walls were forty feet high. 'There's a lot of soldiers guarding the gates,' said Cohen. 'So they should. A great treasure lies within,' said Mr Saveloy. He didn't raise his eyes, though. He seemed to be staring intently at the ground, as though searching for something he'd lost. 'Why don't we just rush up and kill the guards?' Caleb demanded. He was still feeling a bit shaken. 'Whut?' 'Don't be daft,' said Cohen. 'It'd take all day. Anyway,' he added, feeling a little proud despite himself, 'Teach here is goin' to get us in on an invisible duck, ain't that so, Teach?' Mr Saveloy stopped. 'Ah. Eureka,' he said. 'That's Ephebian, that is,' Cohen told the Horde. 'It means "Give me a towel." ' 'Oh yeah,' said Caleb, who had been surreptitiously trying to untangle the knots in his beard. 'And when were you ever in Ephebe?' 'Went bounty hunting there once.' 'Who for?' 'You, I think.' 'Hah! Did you find me?' 'Dunno. Nod your head and see if it falls off.' 'Ah. Gentlemen . . . behold . . .' Mr Saveloy's orthopaedic sandal was prodding an ornamental metal square in the ground. 'Behold what?' said Truckle. 'Whut?' 'We should look for more of these,' said Mr Saveloy. 'But I think we have it. All we need to do now is wait ontil dark.'   There was an argument going on. All Rincewind could make out were the voices; another sack had been tied over his head, while he himself was tied to a pillar. 'Does he even look like a Great Wizard?' 'That's what it says on his hat in the language of ghosts—' 'So you say!' 'What about the testimony of Four Big Sandal, then?' 'He was overtaxed. He could have imagined it!' 'I did not! He came out of thin air, flying like a dragon! He knocked over five soldiers. And Three Maximum Luck saw it also. And the others. And then he freed an ancient man and turned him into a mighty fighting warrior!' 'And he can speak our language, just as it says in the book.' 'All right. Supposing he is the Great Wizard? Then we should kill him now!' In the darkness of his sack, Rincewind shook his head furiously. 'Why?' 'He will be on the side of the Emperor.' 'But the legend says the Great Wizard led the Red Army!' 'Yes, for Emperor One Sun Mirror. It crushed the people!' 'No, it crushed all the bandit chiefs! Then it built the Empire!' 'So? The Empire is so great? Untimely Demise To The Forces Of Oppression!' 'But now the Red Army is on the side of the people! Maximum Advancement With The Great Wizard!' 'The Great Wizard is the Enemy of the People!' 'I saw him, I tell you! A legion of soldiers collapsed with the wind of his passage!' The wind of his passage was beginning to worry Rincewind as well. It always tended to when he was frightened. 'If he is such a great wizard, why is he still tied up? Why has he not made his bonds disappear in puffs of green smoke?' 'Perhaps he is saving his magic for some even mightier deeds. He wouldn't do firecracker tricks for earthworms.' 'Hah!' 'And he had the Book! He was looking for us! It is his destiny to lead the Red Army!' Shake, shake, shake. 'We can lead ourselves!' Nod, nod, nod. 'We don't need any suspicious Great Wizards from illusionary places!' Nod, nod, nod. 'So we should kill him now!' Nod, no - Shakeshakeshake. 'Hah! He laughs at you with scorn! He waits to make your head explode with snakes of fire!' Shake, shake, shake. 'You do know that while we're arguing Three Yoked Oxen is being tortured?' The People's Army is more than just individuals, Lotus Blossom!' In the foetid sack Rincewind grimaced. He was already beginning to take a dislike to the first speaker, as one naturally does with people urging that you be put to death without delay. But when that sort of person started talking about things being more important than people, you knew you were in big trouble. 'I'm sure the Great Wizard could rescue Three Yoked Oxen,' said a voice by his ear. It was Butterfly. 'Yes, he could easily rescue Three Yoked Oxen!' said Lotus Blossom. 'Hah! You say? He could get into the Forbidden City? Impossible! It's certain death!' Nod, nod, nod. 'Not to the Great Wizard,' said the voice of Butter-fly. 'Shut up!' hissed Rincewind. 'Would you like to know how big the meat cleaver is that Two Fire Herb is holding in his hand?' whispered Butterfly. 'No!' 'It's very big.' 'He said that going into the Forbidden City is certain death!' 'No. It's only probable death. I assure you, if you run away from me again that is certain death.' The sack was pulled away. The face immediately in front of him was that of Lotus Blossom, and a man could see a lot worse things with his daylight than her face, which made him think of cream and masses of butter and just the right amount of salt.[21] One of the things he might see, for example, was the face of Two Fire Herb. This was not a nice face. It was podgy and had tiny little pupils in its eyes, and looked like a living example of the fact that although the people could be oppressed by kings and emperors and mandarins, the job could often be done just as well by the man next door. 'Great Wizard? Hah!' Two Fire Herb said now. 'He can do it!' said Lotus Blossom (and cream cheese, thought Rincewind, and maybe coleslaw on the side). 'He is the Great Wizard come back to us! Did he not guide the Master through the lands of ghosts and blood-sucking vampires?' 'Oh, I wouldn't say—' Rincewind began. 'Such a great wizard allowed you to bring him here in a sack?' said Two Fire Herb, sneering. 'Let us see him do some conjuring . . .' 'A truly great wizard would not stoop to doing party tricks!' said Lotus Blossom. 'That's right,' said Rincewind. 'Not stoop.' 'Shame on Herb to suggest such a thing!' 'Shame,' Rincewind agreed. 'Besides, he will need all of his power to enter the Forbidden City,' said Butterfly. Rincewind found himself hating the sound of her voice. 'Forbidden City,' he murmured. 'Everyone knows there are terrible snares and traps and many, many guards.' 'Snares, traps . . .' 'Why, if his magic should fail him because he did tricks for Herb, he would find himself in the deepest dungeon, dying by inches.' 'Inches . . . er . . . which particular inch—' 'So much shame to Two Fire Herb!' Rincewind gave her a sickly grin. 'Actually,' he said, 'I'm not that great. I'm a bit great,' he added quickly, as Butterfly began to frown, but not very great—' 'The writings of the Master say that you defeated many powerful enchanters and resolutely succeeded in dangerous situations.' Rincewind nodded glumly. It was more or less true. But most of the time he hadn't intended to. Whereas the Forbidden City had looked . . . well . . . forbidden. It didn't look inviting. It didn't look as though it sold postcards. The only souvenir they were likely to give you would be, perhaps, your teeth. In a bag. 'Er . . . I expect this Oxen lad is in some deep dungeon, yes?' 'The deepest,' said Two Fire Herb. 'And . . . you've never seen anyone again? Who's been taken prisoner, I mean.' 'We have seen bits of them,' said Lotus Blossom. 'Usually their heads,' said Two Fire Herb. 'On spikes over the gates.' 'But not Three Yoked Oxen,' said Lotus Blossom firmly. 'The Great Wizard has spoken!' 'Actually, I'm not sure I actually said—' 'You have spoken,' said Butterfly firmly. As Rincewind got accustomed to the gloom he realized that he was in some storeroom or cellar; the noise of the city came, rather muffled, from grilles near the ceiling. It was half full of barrels and bundles, and every one of them was a perch for someone. The room was crowded. The people were watching him with expressions of rapt attention, but that wasn't the only thing they had in common. Rincewind turned right around. 'Who are all these children?' he said. 'This,' said Lotus Blossom, 'is the Hunghung cadre of the Red Army.' Two Fire Herb snorted. 'Why did you tell him that?' he said. 'Now we may have to kill him.' 'But they're all so young!' 'They may be underprivileged in years,' said Two Fire Herb, 'but they are ancient in courage and honour.' 'And experienced in fighting?' said Rincewind hotly. 'The guards I've seen do not look like nice people. I mean, do you even have any weapons?' 'We will wrest the weapons we need from our enemies!' said Two Fire Herb. A cheer went up. 'Really? How do you actually make them let go?' said Rincewind. He pointed to a very small girl, who leaned away from his digit as though it were loaded. She looked about seven and was holding a toy rabbit. 'What's your name?' 'One Favourite Pearl, Great Wizard!' 'And what do you do in the Red Army?' 'I have earned a medal for putting up of wall posters, Great Wizard.'' 'What. . . like "Slightly Bad Things Please Happen To Our Enemies"? That sort of thing?' 'Er . . .' said the girl, looking imploringly at Butterfly. 'Rebellion is not easy for us,' said the older girl. 'We don't have . . . experience.' 'Well, I'm here to tell you that you don't do it by singing songs and putting up posters and fighting bare-handed,' said Rincewind. 'Not when you're up against real people with real weapons. You . . .' His voice trailed away as he realized that a hundred pairs of eyes were watching him intently, and two hundred ears were carefully listening. He played back his own words in the echo chamber of his head. He'd said, 'I'm here to tell you . . .' He spread out his hands and waved them frantically. '. . . that is, it's not up to me to tell you anything,' he said. That is correct,' said Two Fire Herb. 'We will overcome because history is on our side.' 'We will overcome because the Great Wizard is on our side,' said Butterfly sharply. 'I'll tell you this!' shouted Rincewind. 'I'd rather trust me than history! Oh, shit, did I just say that?' 'So you will help Three Yoked Oxen,' said Butterfly. 'Please!' said Lotus Blossom. Rincewind looked at her, and the tears in the corners of her eyes, and the bunch of awed teenagers who really thought that you could beat an army by singing rousing songs. There was only one thing he could do, if he really thought about it. He could play along for now and then get the hell out of it at the very first opportunity. Butterfly's anger was bad, but a spike was a spike. Of course, he'd feel a bit of a heel for a while, but that was the point. He'd feel a heel, but he wouldn't feel a spike. The world had too many heroes and didn't need another one. Whereas the world had only one Rince-wind and he owed it to the world to keep this one alive for as long as possible.   There was an inn. There was a courtyard. There was a corral, for the Luggages. There were large travelling trunks, big enough to carry the needs of an entire household for a fortnight. There were merchants' sample cases, mere square boxes oh crude legs. There were sleek overnight bags. They shuffled aimlessly in their pen. Occasionally there was the rattle of a handle or the creak of a hinge, and once or twice the snap of a lid and the bonk-bonk-bonk of boxes trying to get out of the way. Three of them were big and covered with studded leather. They looked the kind of travelling accessories that hang around outside cheap hotels and make suggestive remarks to handbags. The object of their attention was a rather smaller trunk with an inlaid lid and dainty feet. It had already backed into a corner as far as it could go. A large spiked lid creaked open a couple of times as the largest of the boxes edged closer. The smaller box had retreated so far its back legs were trying to climb the corral fence. There was the sound of running feet on the other side of the courtyard wall. They got closer, and then stopped abruptly. Then there was a twang such as would be made by an object landing on the taut roof of a cart. For a moment, against the rising moon, there was the shape of something somersaulting slowly through the evening air. It landed heavily in front of the three big chests, bounced upright and charged. Eventually various travellers spilled out into the night but by then items of clothing were strewn and trampled around the courtyard. Three black chests, battered and scarred, were discovered on the roof, each one scrabbling on the tiles and butting the others in an effort to be the highest. Others had panicked and broken down the wall and headed out across the country. Eventually, all but one of them were found. The Horde were feeling quite proud of themselves when they sat down for dinner. They acted, Mr Saveloy thought, rather like boys who'd just got their first pair of long trousers. Which they had done. Each man had one baggy pair of same, plus a long grey robe. 'We've been shopping,' said Caleb proudly. 'Paying for things with money. We're dressed up like civilized people.' 'Yes indeed,' said Mr Saveloy indulgently. He was hoping that they could all get through this without the Horde finding out what kind of civilized people they were dressed up as. As it was, the beards were a problem. The kind of people who wore these kind of clothes in the Forbidden City didn't usually have beards. They were proverbial for not having them. Actually, they were more properly proverbial for not having other things but, as a sort of consequence of this lack, also for not having beards. Cohen shifted. 'Itchy,' he said. 'This is pants, is it? Never worn 'em before. Same with shirts. What good's a shirt that's not chain mail?' 'We did very well, though,' said Caleb. He had even had a shave, obliging the barber, for the first time in his experience, to use a chisel. He kept rubbing his naked, baby-pink chin. 'Yeah, we're really civilized,' said Vincent. 'Except for the bit where you set fire to that shopkeeper,' said Boy Willie. 'Nah, I only set fire to him a bit.' 'Whut?' 'Teach?' 'Yes, Cohen?' 'Why did you tell that firework merchant that everyone you knew had died suddenly?' Mr Saveloy's foot tapped gently against the large parcel under the table, alongside a nice new cauldron. 'So he wouldn't get suspicious about what I was buying,' he said. 'Five thousand firecrackers?' 'Whut?' 'Well,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Did I ever tell you that after I taught geography in the Assassins' Guild and the Plumbers' Guild I did it for a few terms in the Alchemists' Guild?' 'Alchemists? Loonies, the lot of them,' said Truckle. 'But they're keen on geography,' said Mr Saveloy. 'I suppose they need to know where they've landed. Eat up, gentlemen. It may be a long night.' 'What is this stuff?' said Truckle, spearing something with his chopstick. 'Er. Chow,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Yes, but what is it?' 'Chow. A kind of . . . er . . . dog.' The Horde looked at him. 'There's nothing wrong with it,' he said hurriedly, with the sincerity of a man who had ordered bamboo shoots and bean curd for himself. 'I've eaten everything else,' said Truckle, 'but I ain't eating dog. I had a dog once. Rover.' 'Yeah,' said Cohen. 'The one with the spiked collar? The one who used to eat people?' 'Say what you like, he was a friend to me,' said Truckle, pushing the meat to one side. 'Rabid death to everyone else. I'll eat yours. Order him some chicken, Teach.' 'Et a man once,' mumbled Mad Hamish. 'In a siege, it were.' 'You ate someone?' said Mr Saveloy, beckoning to the waiter. 'Just a leg.' 'That's terrible!' 'Not with mustard.' Just when I think I know them, Mr Saveloy mused . . . He reached for his wine glass. The Horde reached for their glasses too, while watching him carefully. 'A toast, gentlemen,' he said. 'And remember what I said about not quaffing. Quaffing just gets your ears wet. Just sip. To Civilization!' The Horde joined in with their own toasts. ' "Pcharn'kov!" '[22] ' "Lie down on the floor and no-one gets hurt!" ' ' "May you live in interesting pants!" ' ' "What's the magic word? Gimmee!" ' ' "Death to most tyrants!" ' 'Whut?'   'The walls of the Forbidden City are forty feet high,' said Butterfly. 'And the gates are made of brass. There are hundreds of guards. But of course we have the Great Wizard.' 'Who?' 'You.' 'Sorry, I was forgetting.' 'Yes,' said Butterfly, giving Rincewind a long, appraising look. Rincewind remembered tutors giving him a look like that when he'd got high marks in some test by simply guessing at the answers. He looked down hurriedly at the charcoal scrawls Lotus Blossom had made. Cohen'd know what to do, he thought. He'd just slaughter his way through. It'd never cross his mind to be afraid or worried. He's the kind of man you need at a time like this. 'No doubt you have magic spells that can blow down the walls,' said Lotus Blossom. Rincewind wondered what they would do to him when it turned out that he couldn't. Not a lot, he thought, if I'm already running. Of course they could curse his memory and call him names, but he was used to that. Sticks and stones may break my bones, he thought. He was vaguely aware that there was a second half to the saying, but he'd never bothered because the first half always occupied all his attention. Even the Luggage had left him. That was a minor bright spot, but he missed that patter of little feet . . . 'Before we start,' he said, 'I think you ought to sing a revolutionary song.' The cadre liked the idea. Under cover of their chanting he sidled over to Butterfly, who gave him a knowing smile. 'You know I can't do it!' 'The Master said you were very resourceful.' 'I can't magic a hole in a wall!' 'I'm sure you'll think of something. And . . . Great Wizard?' 'Yes, what?' 'Favourite Pearl, the child with the toy rabbit . . . ' 'Yes?' 'The cadre is all she has. The same goes for many of the others. When the warlords fight, lots of people die. Parents. Do you understand? I was one of the first to read What I Did On My Holidays, Great Wizard, and what ,' saw in there was a foolish man who for some reason is always lucky. Great Wizard . . . I hope for everyone's sake you have a great deal of luck. Especially for yours.'   Fountains tinkled in the courts of the Sun Emperor. Peacocks made their call, which sounds like a sound made by something that shouldn't look as beautiful as that. Ornamental trees cast their shade as only they knew how - ornamentally. The gardens occupied the heart of the city and it was possible to hear the noises from outside, although these were muted because of the straw spread daily on the nearest streets and also because any sound considered too loud would earn its originator a very brief stay in prison. Of the gardens, the most aesthetically pleasing was the one laid out by the first Emperor, One Sun Mirror. It consisted entirely of gravel and stones, but artfully raked and laid out as it might be by a mountain torrent with a refined artistic sense. It was here that One Sun Mirror, in whose reign the Empire had been unified and the Great Wall built, came to refresh his soul and dwell upon the essential unity of all things, while drinking wine out of the skull of some enemy or possibly a gardener who had been too clumsy with his rake. At the moment the garden was occupied by Two Little Wang, the Master of Protocol, who came there because he felt it was good for his nerves. Perhaps it was the number two, he'd always told himself. It was an unlucky birth number. Being called Little Wang was merely a lack-of-courtesy detail, a sort of minor seagull dropping after the great heap of buffalo excrement that Heaven had pasted into his very horoscope. Although he had to admit that he hadn't made things any better by allowing himself to become Master of Protocol. It had seemed such a good idea at the time. He'd risen gently through the Agatean civil service by mastering those arts essential to the practice of good government and administration (such as calligraphy, origami, flower arranging and the Five Wonderful Forms of poetry). He'd dutifully got on with the tasks assigned to him and noticed only vaguely that there didn't seem to be quite as many high-ranking members of the civil service as there used to be, and then one day a lot of senior mandarins - most of them a lot more senior than he was, it occurred to him later - had rushed up to him while he was trying to find a rhyme for 'orange blossom' and congratulated him on being the new Master. That had been three months ago. And of the things that had occurred to him in those intervening three months the most shameful was this: he had come to believe that the Sun Emperor was not, in fact, the Lord of Heaven, the Pillar of the Sky and the Great River of Blessings, but an evil-minded madman whose death had been too long delayed. It was an awful thought. It was like hating motherhood and raw fish, or objecting to sunlight. Most people develop their social conscience when young, during that brief period between leaving school and deciding that injustice isn't necessarily all bad, and it was something of a shock to suddenly find one at the age of sixty. It wasn't that he was against the Golden Rules. It made sense that a man prone to thieving should have his hands cut off. It prevented him from thieving again and thus tarnishing his soul. A peasant who could not pay his taxes should be executed, in order to prevent him falling into the temptations of slothfulness and public disorder. And since the Empire was created by Heaven as the only true world of human beings, all else outside being a land of ghosts, it was certainly in order to execute those who questioned this state of affairs. But he felt that it wasn't right to laugh happily while doing so. It wasn't pleasant that these things should happen, it was merely necessary. From somewhere in the distance came the screams. The Emperor was playing chess again. He preferred to use live pieces. Two Little Wang felt heavy with knowledge. There had been better times. He knew that now. Things hadn't always been the way they were. Emperors didn't use to be cruel clowns, around whom it was as safe as mudbanks in the crocodile season. There hadn' t always been a civil war every time an Emperor died. Warlords hadn't run the country. People had rights as well as duties. And then one day the succession had been called into question and there was a war and since then it'd never seemed to go right. Soon, with any luck, the Emperor would die. No doubt a special Hell was being made ready. And there'd be the usual battle, and then there'd be a new Emperor, and if he was very lucky Two Little Wang would be beheaded, which was what tended to happen to people who had risen to high office under a previous incumbent. But that was quite reasonable by modern standards, since it was possible these days to be beheaded for interrupting the Emperor's thoughts or standing in the wrong place. At which point, Two Little Wang heard ghosts. They seemed to be right under his feet. They were talking in a strange language, so to Two Little Wang the speech was merely sounds, which went as follows: 'Where the hell are we?' 'Somewhere under the palace, I'm sure. Look for another manhole in the ceiling . . .' 'Whut?' 'I'm fed up with pushing this damn wheelchair!' 'It's me for a hot footbath after this, I'm telling you.' 'You call this a way to enter a city? You call this a way to enter a city? Waist deep in water? We didn't enter a . . . wretched . . . city like this when I rode with Bruce the Hoon! You enter a . . . lovemaking . . . city by overrunning it with a thousand horsemen, that's how you take a city—!' 'Yeah, but there ain't room for 'em in this pipe.' The sounds had a hollow, booming quality to them. With a kind of fascinated puzzlement Two Little Wang followed them, walking across the manicured gravel in an unthinking way that would have earned him an immediate tongue-extraction from its original lover of peace and tranquillity. 'Can we please hurry? I'd like us to be out of here when the cauldron goes off and I didn't really have much time to experiment with the fuses.' 'I still don't understand about the cauldron, Teach.' 'I hope all those firecrackers will blow a hole in the wall.' 'Right! So why ain't we there? Why are we in this pipe?' 'Because all the guards will rush to see what the bans was.' 'Right! So we should be there!' 'No! We should be here, Cohen. The word is decoy. It's . . . more civilized this way.' Two Little Wang pressed his ear to the ground. 'What's the penalty for entering the Forbidden City again, Teach?' 'I believe it's a punishment similar to hanging, drawing and quartering. So, you see, it would be a good idea if—' There was a very faint splashing. 'How're you drawn, then ?' 'I think your innards are cut out and shown to you.' 'What for?' 'I don't really know. To see if you recognize them, I suppose.' 'What. . . like, "Yep, that's my kidneys, yep, that's my breakfast"?' 'How're you quartered? Is that, like, they give you somewhere to stay?' 'I think not, from context.' For a while there was no sound but the splash of six pairs of feet and the squeak-squeak of what sounded like a wheel. 'Well, how're you hung?' 'Excuse me?' 'Hur, hur, hur . . . sorry, sorry.' Two Little Wang tripped over a two-hundred-year-old bonsai tree and hit his head on a rock chosen for its fundamental serenity. When he came round, a few seconds later, the voices had gone. If there had ever been any. Ghosts. There were a lot of ghosts around these days. Two Little Wang wished he had a few firecrackers to scatter around. Being Master of Protocol was even worse than trying to find a rhyme for 'orange blossom'.   Flares lit the alleys of Hunghung. With the Red Army chattering behind him, Rincewind wandered up to the wall of the Forbidden City. No-one knew better than Rincewind that he was totally incapable of proper magic. He'd only ever done it by accident. So he could be sure that if he waved a hand and said some magic words the wall would in all probability become just a little bit less full of holes than it was now. It was a shame to disappoint Lotus Blossom, with her body that reminded Rincewind of a plate of crinkle-cut chips, but it was about time she learned that you couldn't rely on wizards. And then he could be out of here. What could Butterfly do to him if he tried and failed? And, much to his surprise, he found himself hoping that, on the way out, he could poke Herb in the eye. He was amazed the others couldn't spot him for what he was. This area of wall was between gates. The life of Hunghung lapped against it like a muddy sea; there were stalls and booths everywhere. Rincewind had thought Ankh-Morpork citizens lived out on the streets, but they were agoraphobes compared to the Hunghungese. Funerals (with associated firecrackers) and wedding parties and religious ceremonies went on alongside, and intermingled with, the normal market activities such as free-form livestock slaughter and world-class arguing. Herb pointed to a clear area of wall stacked with timber. 'Just about there, Great Wizard,' he sneered. 'Do not exert yourself unduly. A small hole should be sufficient.' 'But there's hundreds of people around!' 'Is that a problem to such a great wizard? Perhaps you can't do it with people watching?' 'I have no doubt that the Great Wizard will astonish us,' said Butterfly. 'When the people see the power of the Great Wizard they will speak of it for ever!' said Lotus Blossom. 'Probably,' muttered Rincewind. The cadre stopped talking, although it was only possible to notice this by watching their closed mouths. The hole left by their silence was soon filled by the babble of the market. Rincewind rolled up his sleeves. He wasn't even certain about a spell for blowing things up . . . He waved a hand vaguely. 'I should stand well back, everyone,' said Herb, grinning unpleasantly. 'Quanti canicula ilia in fenestre?' said Rincewind. 'Er . . .' He stared desperately at the wall and, with that heightened perception that comes to those on the edge of terror, noticed a cauldron half hidden in the timber. There seemed to be a little glowing string attached to it. 'Er,' he said, 'there seems to be—' 'Having problems?' said Herb, nastily. Rincewind squared his shoulders. '—' he said. There was a sound like a marshmallow gently landing on a plate, and everything in front of him went white. Then the white turned red, streaked with black, and the terrible noise clapped its hands across his ears. A crescent-shaped piece of something glowing, scythed the top off his hat and embedded itself in the nearest house, which caught fire. There was a strong smell of burning eyebrows. When the debris settled Rincewind saw quite a large hole in the wall. Around its edge the brickwork, now a red-hot ceramic, started to cool with a noise like glinka-glinka. He looked down at his soot-blackened hands. 'Gosh,' he said. And then he said, 'All rightl' And then he turned and began to say, 'How about that, then?' but his voice faded when it became apparent that everyone was lying flat on the ground. A duck watched him suspiciously from its cage. Owing to the slight protection afforded by the bars, its feathers were patterned alternately natural and crispy. He'd always wanted to do magic like that. He'd always been able to visualize it perfectly. He'd just never been able to do it . . . A number of guards appeared in the gap. One, whose ferocity of helmet suggested that he was an officer, glared at the charred hole and then at Rincewind. 'Did you do this?' he demanded. 'Stand back!' shouted Rincewind, drunk with power. 'I'm the Great Wizard, I am! You see this ringer? Don't make me use it!' The officer nodded to a couple of his men. 'Get him.' Rincewind took a step back. 'I warn you! Anyone lays a hand on me, he'll be eating flies and hopping for the rest of his life!' The guards advanced with the determination of those who were prepared to risk the uncertainty of magic against the definite prospect of punishment for disobeying orders. 'Stand back! This could go off! All right, then, since you force—' He waved his hand. He snapped his fingers a few times. 'Er—' The guards, after checking that they were still the same shape, each grabbed an arm. 'It may be delayed action,' he ventured, as they gripped harder. 'Alternatively, would you be interested in hearing a famous quotation?' he said. His feet were lifted off the ground. 'Or perhaps not?' Rincewind, running absent-mindedly in mid-air, was brought in front of the officer. 'On your knees, rebel!' said the officer. 'I'd like to, but—' 'I saw what you did to Captain Four White Fox!' 'What? Who's he?' 'Take . . . him . . . to . . . the . . . Emperor.' As he was dragged off Rincewind saw, for one brief moment, the guards closing on the Red Army, swords flashing . . .   A metal plate shuddered for a moment, and then dropped on the floor. 'Careful!' 'I ain't used to being careful! Bruce the Hoon wasn't care—' 'Shut up about Bruce the Hoon!' 'Well, dang you too!' 'Whut?' 'Anyone out there?' Cohen stuck his head out of the pipe. The room was dark, damp and full of pipes and runnels. Water went off in every direction to feed fountains and cisterns. 'No,' he said, in a disappointed voice. 'Very well. Everyone out of the pipe.' There was some echoey swearing and the scrape of metal as Hamish's wheelchair was manoeuvred into the long, low cellar. Mr Saveloy lit a match as the Horde spread out and examined their surroundings. 'Congratulations, gentlemen,' he said. 'I believe we are in the palace.' 'Yeah,' said Truckle. 'We've conquered a f— a lovemaking pipe. What good is that?' 'We could rape it,' said Caleb hopefully. 'Hey, this wheel thing turns . . . ' 'What's a lovemaking pipe?' 'What does this lever do?' 'Whut?' 'How about we find a door, rush out, and kill everyone?' Mr Saveloy closed his eyes. There was something familiar about this situation, and now he realized what it was. He'd once taken an entire class on a school trip to the city armoury. His right leg still hurt him on wet days. 'No, no, no!' he said. 'What good would that do? Boy Willie, please don't pull that lever.' 'Well, I'd feel better, for one,' said Cohen. 'Ain't killed anyone all day except a guard, and they hardly count.' 'Remember that we're here for theft, not murder,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Now, please, out of all that wet leather and into your nice new clothes.' 'I don't like this part,' said Cohen, pulling on a shirt. 'I like people to know who I was.' 'Yeah,' said Boy Willie. 'Without our leather and mail people'll just think we're a load of old men.' 'Exactly,' said Mr Saveloy. 'That is part of the subterfuge.' 'Is that like tactics?' said Cohen. 'Yes.' 'All right, but I don't like it,' said Old Vincent. 'S'posing we win? What kind of song will the minstrels sing about people who invaded through a pipe?' 'An echoey one,' said Boy Willie. 'They won't sing anything like that,' said Cohen firmly. 'You pay a minstrel enough, he'll sing whatever you want.' A flight of damp steps led to a door. Mr Saveloy was already at the top, listening. 'That's right,' said Caleb. 'They say that whoever pays the piper calls the tune.' 'But, gentlemen,' said Mr Saveloy, his eyes bright, 'whoever holds a knife to the piper's throat writes the symphony.'   The assassin moved slowly through Lord Hong's chambers. He was one of the best in Hunghung's small but very select guild, and he certainly was not a rebel. He disliked rebels. They were invariably poor people, and therefore unlikely to be customers. His mode of movement was unusual and cautious. It avoided the floor; Lord Hong was known to tune his floorboards. It made considerable use of furniture and decorative screens, and occasionally of the ceiling as well. And the assassin was very good at it. When a messenger entered the room through a distant door he froze for an instant, and then moved in perfect rhythm towards his quarry, letting the newcomer's clumsy footsteps mask his own. Lord Hong was making another sword. The folding of the metal and all the tedious yet essential bouts of heating and hammering were, he found, conducive to clear thinking. Too much pure cerebration was bad for the mind. Lord Hong liked to use his hands sometimes. He plunged the sword back into the furnace and pumped the bellows a few times. 'Yes?' he said. The messenger looked up from his prone position near the floor. 'Good news, o lord. We have captured the Red Army!' 'Well, that is good news,' said Lord Hong, watching the blade carefully for the change of colour. 'Including the one they call the Great Wizard?' 'Indeed! But he is not that great, o lord!' said the messenger. His cheerfulness faded when Lord Hong raised an eyebrow. 'Really? On the contrary, I suspect him of being in possession of huge and dangerous powers.' 'Yes, o lord! I did not mean—' 'See that they are all locked up. And send a message to Captain Five Hong Man to undertake the orders I gave him today.' 'Yes, o lord!' 'And now, stand up!' The messenger stood up, trembling. Lord Hong pulled on a thick glove and reached for the sword handle. The furnace roared. 'Chin up, man!' 'My lord!' 'Now open your eyes wide!' There was no need for that order. Lord Hong peered into the mask of terror, noted the flicker of movement, nodded, and then in one almost balletic movement pulled the spitting blade from the furnace, turned, thrust . . . There was a very brief scream, and a rather longer hiss. Lord Hong let the assassin sag. Then he tugged the sword free and inspected the steaming blade. 'Hmm,' he said. 'Interesting . . .' He caught sight of the messenger. 'Are you still here?' 'No, my lord!' 'See to it.' Lord Hong turned the sword so that the light caught it, and examined the edge. 'And, er, shall I send some servants to clear away the, er, body?' 'What?' said Lord Hong, lost in thought. 'The body, Lord Hong?' 'What body? Oh. Yes. See to it.'   The walls were beautifully decorated. Even Rincewind noticed this, though they went past in a blur. Some had marvellous birds painted on them, or mountain scenes, or sprays of foliage, every leaf and bud done in exquisite detail with just a couple of brush strokes. Ceramic lions reared on marble pedestals. Vases bigger than Rincewind lined the corridors. Lacquered doors opened ahead of the guards. Rincewind was briefly aware of huge, ornate and empty rooms stretching away on either side. Finally they passed through yet another set of doors and he was flung down on a wooden floor. In these circumstances, he always found, it was best not to look up. Eventually an officious voice said, 'What do you have to say for yourself, miserable louse?' 'Well, I—' 'Silence!' Ah. So it was going to be that kind of interview. A different voice, a cracked, breathless and elderly voice, said, 'Where is the Grand . . . Vizier?' 'He has retired to his rooms, O Great One. He said he had a headache.' 'Summon him at . . . once.' 'Certainly, O Great One.' Rincewind, his nose pressed firmly to the floor, made some further assumptions. Grand Vizier was always a bad sign; it generally meant that people were going to suggest wild horses and red-hot chains. And when people were called things like 'O Great One', it was pretty certain that there was no appeal. 'This is a . . . rebel, is it?' The sentence was wheezed rather than spoken. 'Indeed, O Great One.' 'I think I would like a clo . . . ser look.' There was a general murmur, suggesting that a number of people had been greatly surprised, and then the sound of furniture being moved. Rincewind thought he saw a blanket on the edge of his vision. Someone was wheeling a bed across the floor . . . 'Make it. . . stand up.' The gurgle in the pause was like the last bathwater going down the plughole. It sucked as wetly as an outgoing wave. Once again a foot kicked Rincewind in the kidneys, making its usual explicit request in the Esperanto of brutality. He got up. It was a bed, and quite the biggest Rincewind had ever seen. In it, swathed in brocades and almost lost in pillows, was an old man. Rincewind had never seen anyone look so ill. The face was pale, with a greenish pallor; veins showed up under the skin of his hands like worms in a jar. The Emperor had all the qualifications for a corpse except, as it were, the most vital one. 'So . . . this is the new Great Wizard of . . . whom we have read so much, is . . . it?' he said. When he spoke, people waited expectantly for the final gurgle in mid-sentence. 'Well, I—' Rincewind began. 'Silence!' screamed a chamberlain. Rincewind shrugged. He hadn't known what to expect of an Emperor, but the mental picture had room for a big fat man with lots of rings. Talking to this one was a hair's breadth from necromancy. 'Can you show us some more . . . magic, Great Wizard?' Rincewind glanced at the chamberlain. 'W—' 'Silence!' The Emperor waved a hand vaguely, gurgled with the effort, and gave Rincewind another enquiring look. Rincewind decided to chance things. 'I've got a good one,' he said. 'It's a vanishing trick.' 'Can you . . . do it now?' 'Only if everyone opens all the doors and turns their back.' The Emperor's expression did not change. The court fell silent. Then there was a sound like a number of small rabbits being choked to death. The Emperor was laughing. Once this was established, everyone else laughed too. No-one can get a laugh like a man who can have you put to death more easily than he goes to the lavatory. 'What shall we do with . . . you?' he said. 'Where is the . . . Grand . . . Vizier?' The crowd parted. Rincewind risked a sideways squint. Once you were in the hands of a Grand Vizier, you were dead. Grand Viziers were always scheming megalomaniacs. It was probably in the job description: 'Are you a devious, plotting, unreliable madman? Ah, good, then you can be my most trusted minister.' 'Ah, Lord . . . Hong,' said the Emperor. 'Mercy?' suggested Rincewind. 'Silence!' screamed the chamberlain. 'Tell me, Lord . . . Hong,' said the ancient Emperor. 'What would be the punishment for a . . . foreigner . . . entering the Forbidden City?' 'Removal of all limbs, ears and eyes, and then allowed to go free,' said Lord Hong. Rincewind raised his hand. 'First offence?' he said. 'Silence!' 'We find, generally, that there is no second offence,' said Lord Hong. 'What is this person?' 'I like him,' said the Emperor. 'I think I shall . . . keep him. He makes me . . . laugh.' Rincewind opened his mouth. 'Silence!' screamed the chamberlain, perhaps unwisely in view of current thinking. 'Er . . . could you stop him shouting "Silence!" every time I try to speak?' Rincewind ventured. 'Certainly . . . Great Wizard,' said the Emperor. He nodded at some guards. 'Take the chamberlain . . . away and cut his . . . lips off.' 'Great One, I—!' 'And his ears . . . also.' The wretched man was dragged away. A pair of lacquered doors slammed shut. There was a round of applause from the courtiers. 'Would you . . . like to watch him eat . . . them?' said the Emperor grinning happily. 'It's tre . . . mendous fun.' 'Ahahaha,' said Rincewind. 'A good decision, lord,' said Lord Hong. He turned his head towards Rincewind. To the wizard's immense surprise, and some horror too, he winked. 'O Great One . . .' said a plump courtier, dropping to his knees, bouncing slightly, and then nervously approaching the Emperor, 'I wonder if perhaps it is entirely wise to be so merciful to this foreign dev—' The Emperor looked down. Rincewind would have sworn that dust fell off him. There was a gentle movement among the crowd. Without anyone apparently doing anything so gross as activating their feet, there was nevertheless a widening space around the kneeling man. Then the Emperor smiled. 'Your concern is well . . . received,' he said. The courtier risked a relieved grin. The Emperor added, 'However, your presumption is not. Kill him slowly . . . over several . . . days.' 'Aaargh!' 'Yes in . . . deed! Lots of boiling . . . oil!' 'An excellent idea, o lord,' said Lord Hong. The Emperor turned back to Rincewind. 'I am sure the . . . Great Wizard is my friend,' he suctioned. 'Ahahaha,' said Rincewind. He'd been in this approximate position before, gods knew. But he'd always been facing someone - well, usually someone who looked like Lord Hong, not a near-corpse who was clearly so far round the bend he couldn't poke sanity with a long pole. 'We shall have such . . . fun,' said the Emperor. 'I read . . . all about you.' 'Ahahaha,' said Rincewind. The Emperor waved a hand at the court again. 'Now I will retire,' he said. There was a general movement and much ostensible yawning. Clearly no one stayed up later than the Emperor. 'Emperor,' said Lord Hong wearily, 'what will you have us do with this Great Wizard of yours?' The old man gave Rincewind the look a present gets around the time the batteries have run out. 'Put him in the special . . . dungeon,' he said. 'For . . now.' 'Yes, Emperor,' said Lord Hong. He nodded at a couple of guards. Rincewind managed a quick look back as he was dragged from the room. The Emperor was lying back in his movable bed, quite oblivious to him. 'Is he mad or what?' he said. 'Silence!' Rincewind looked up at the guard who'd said that. 'A mouth like that could get a man into big trouble around here,' he muttered.   Lord Hong always found himself depressed by the general state of humanity. It often seemed to him to be flawed. There was no concentration. Take the Red Army. If he had been a rebel the Emperor would have been assassinated months ago and the country would now be aflame, except for those bits too damp to burn. But these? Despite his best efforts, their idea of revolutionary activity was a surreptitious wall poster saying something like 'Unpleasantness To Oppressors When Convenient!' They had tried to set fire to guardhouses. That was good. That was proper revolutionary activity, except for the bit where they tried to make an appointment first. It had taken Lord Hong some considerable effort to see that the Red Army appeared to achieve any victories at all. Well, he'd given them the Great Wizard they so sincerely believed in. They had no excuse now. And by the look of him, the wretch was as craven and talentless as Lord Hong had hoped. Any army led by him would either flee or be slaughtered, leaving the way open for the counter-revolution. The counter-revolution would not be inefficient. Lord Hong would see to that. But things had to be done one step at a time. There were enemies everywhere. Suspicious enemies. The path of the ambitious man was a nightingale floor. One wrong step and it would sing out. It was a shame the Great Wizard would turn out to be so good at locks. Lord Tang's men were guarding the prison block tonight. Of course, if the Red Army were to escape, no blame at all could possibly attach to Lord Tang . . . Lord Hong risked a little chuckle to himself as he strode back to his suite. Proof, that was the thing. There must never be proof. But that wouldn't matter very long. There was nothing like a fearsomely huge war to unite people, and the fact that the Great Wizard - that is, the leader of the terrible rebel army - was an evil foreign troublemaker was just the spark to light the firecracker. And then . . . Ankh-Morpork [urinating dog]. Hunghung was old. The culture was based on custom, the alimentary tract of the common water buffalo, and base treachery. Lord Hong was in favour of all three, but they did not add up to world domination, and Lord Hong was particularly in favour of that, provided it was achieved by Lord Hong. If I was the traditional type of Grand Vizier, he thought as he sat down before his tea table, I'd cackle with laughter at this point. He smiled to himself, instead. Time for the box again? No. Some things were all the better for the anticipation.   Mad Hamish's wheelchair caused a few heads to turn, but no actual comment. Undue curiosity was not a survival trait in Hunghung. They just got on with their work, which appeared to be the endless carrying of stacks of paper along the corridors. Cohen looked down at what was in his hand. Over the decades he'd fought with many weapons - swords, of course, and bows and spears and clubs and . . . well, now he came to think of it, just about anything. Except this . . . 'I still don't like it,' said Truckle. 'Why're we carrying pieces of paper?' 'Because no-one looks at you in a place like this if you're carrying a piece of paper,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Why?' 'Whut?' 'It's - a kind of magic.' 'I'd feel happier if it was a weapon.' 'As a matter of fact, it can be the greatest weapon there is.' 'I know, I've just cut myself on my bit,' said Boy Willie, sucking his finger. 'Whut?' 'Look at it like this, gentlemen,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Here we are, actually inside the Forbidden City, and no-one is dead!' 'Yes. That's what we're . . . dunging . . . complaining about,' said Truckle. Mr Saveloy sighed. There was something in the way Truckle used words. It didn't matter what he actually said, what you heard was in some strange way the word he actually meant. He could turn the air blue just by saying 'socks'.   The door slammed shut behind Rincewind, and there was the sound of a bolt shooting into place. The Empire's jails were pretty much like the ones at home. When you want to incarcerate such an ingenious creature as the common human being, you tend to rely on the good old-fashioned iron bar and large amounts of stone. It looked as though this well-tried pattern had been established here for a very long time. Well, he'd definitely scored a hit with the Emperor. For some reason this did not reassure him. The man gave Rincewind the distinct impression of being the kind of person who is at least as dangerous to his friends as to his enemies. He remembered Noodle Jackson, back in the days when he was a very young student. Everyone wanted to be friends with Noodle but somehow, if you were in his gang, you found yourself being trodden on or chased by the Watch or being hit in fights you didn't start, while Noodle was somewhere on the edge of things, laughing. Besides, the Emperor wasn't simply at Death's door but well inside the hallway, admiring the carpet and commenting on the hatstand. And you didn't have to be a political genius to know that when someone like that died, scores were being settled before he'd even got cold. Anyone he'd publicly called a friend would have a life expectancy more normally associated with things that hover over trout streams at sunset. Rincewind moved aside a skull and sat down. There was the possibility of rescue, he supposed, but the Red Army would be hard put to it to rescue a rubber duck from drowning. Anyway, that'd put him back in the clutches of Butterfly, who terrified him almost as much as the Emperor. He had to believe that the gods didn't intend for Rincewind, after all his adventures, to rot in a dungeon. No, he added bitterly, they probably had something much more inventive in mind. What light reached the dungeon came from a very small grille and had a second-hand look. The rest of the furnishing was a pile of what had possibly once been straw. There was— —a gentle tapping at the wall. Once, twice, three times. Rincewind picked up the skull and returned the signal. One tap came back. He repeated it. Then there were two. He tapped twice. Well, this was familiar. Communication without meaning . . . it was just like being back at Unseen University. 'Fine,' he said, his voice echoing in the cell. 'Fine. Très prisoner. But what are we saying?' There was a gentle scraping noise and one of the blocks in the wall very gently slid out of the wall, dropping on to Rincewind's foot. 'Aargh!' 'What big hippo?' said a muffled voice. 'What?' 'Sorry?' 'What?' 'You wanted to know about the tapping code? It's how we communicate between cells, you see. One tap means—' 'Excuse me, but aren't we communicating now?' 'Yes, but not formally. Prisoners are not. . . allowed . . . to talk . . .' The voice slowed down, as if the speaker had suddenly remembered something important. 'Ah, yes,' said Rincewind. 'I was forgetting. This is . . . Hunghung. Everyone . . . obeys . . . the rules . . .' Rincewind's voice died away too. On either side of the wall there was a long, thoughtful silence. 'Rincewind?' 'Twoflower?' 'What are you doing here?' said Rincewind. 'Rotting in a dungeon!' 'Me too!' 'Good grief! How long has it been?' said the muffled voice of Twoflower. 'What? How long has what been?' 'But you . . . why are . . .' 'You wrote that damn book!' 'I just thought it would be interesting for people!' 'Interesting? Interesting?' 'I thought people would find it an interesting account of a foreign culture. I never meant it to cause trouble.' Rincewind leaned against his side of the wall. No, of course, Twoflower never wanted to cause any trouble. Some people never did. Probably the last sound heard before the Universe folded up like a paper hat would be someone saying, 'What happens if I do this?' 'It must have been Fate that brought you here,' said Twoflower. 'Yes, it's the sort of thing he likes to do,' said Rincewind. 'You remember the good times we had?' 'Did we? I must have had my eyes shut.' 'The adventures!' 'Oh, them. You mean hanging from high places, that sort of thing . . . ?' 'Rincewind?' 'Yes? What?' 'I feel a lot happier about things now you're here.' 'That's amazing.' Rincewind enjoyed the comfort of the wall. It was rust rock. He felt he could rely on it. 'Everyone seems to have a copy of your book,' he said. 'It's a revolutionary document. And I do mean copy. It looks as though they make their own copy and pass it on.' 'Yes, it's called samizdat.' 'What does that mean?' 'It means each one must be the same as the one before. Oh, dear. I thought it would just be entertainment. I didn't think people would take it seriously. I do hope it's not causing too much bother.' Well, your revolutionaries are still at the slogan-and-poster stage, but I shouldn't think that'll count for much if they're caught.' 'Oh, dear.' 'How come you're still alive?' 'I don't know. I think they may have forgotten about me. That tends to happen, you know. It's the paperwork. Someone makes the wrong stroke with the brush or forgets to copy a line. I believe it happens a lot.' 'You mean that there's people in prison and no-one can remember why?' 'Oh, yes.' 'Then why don't they set them free?' 'I suppose it is felt that they must have done something. All in all, I'm afraid our government does leave something to be desired.' 'Like a new government.' 'Oh, dear. You could get locked up for saying things like that.'   People slept, but the Forbidden City never slept. Torches flickered all night in the great Bureaux as the ceaseless business of Empire went on. This largely involved, as Mr Saveloy had said, moving paper. Six Beneficent Winds was Deputy District Administrator for the Langtang district, and good at a job which he rather enjoyed. He was not a wicked man. True, he had the same sense of humour as a chicken casserole. True, he played the accordion for amusement, and disliked cats intensely, and had a habit of dabbing his upper lip with his napkin after his tea ceremony in a way that had made Mrs Beneficent Winds commit murder in her mind on a regular basis over the years. And he kept his money in a small leather shovel purse, and counted it out very thoroughly whenever he made a purchase, especially if there was a queue behind him. But on the other hand, he was kind to animals and made small but regular contributions to charity. He frequently gave moderate sums to beggars in the street, although he made a note of this in the little notebook he always carried to remind him to visit them in his official capacity later on. And he never took away from people more money than they actually had. He was also, unusually for men employed in the Forbidden City after dark, not a eunuch. Guards were not eunuchs, of course, and people had got around this by classifying them officially as furniture. And it had been found that tax officials also needed every faculty at their disposal to combat the wiles of the average peasant, who had this regrettable tendency to avoid paying taxes. There were much nastier people in the building than Six Beneficent Winds and it was therefore just his inauspicious luck that his paper and bamboo door slid aside to reveal seven strange-looking old eunuchs, one of them in a wheeled contrivance. They didn't even bow, let alone fall on their knees. And he not only had an official red hat but it had a white button on it! His brush dropped from his hands when the men wandered into his office as if they owned it. One of them started poking holes in the wall and speaking gibberish. 'Hey, the walls are just made of paper! Hey, look, if you lick your finger it goes right through! See?' 'I will call for the guards and have you all flogged!' shouted Six Beneficent Winds, his temper moderated slightly by the extreme age of the visitors. 'What did he say?' 'He said he'd call for the guards.' 'Ooo, yes. Please let him call for the guards!' 'No, we don't want that yet. Act normally.' 'You mean cut his throat?' 'I meant a more normal kind of normally.' 'It's what I call normal.' One of the old men faced the speechless official and gave him a big grin. 'Excuse us, your supreme . . . oh dear, what's the word? . . . . pushcart sail? . . . immense rock? . . . ah, yes . . . venerableness, but we seem to be a little lost.' A couple of the old men shuffled around behind Six Beneficent Winds and started to read, or at least try to read, what he'd been working on. A sheet of paper was snatched from his hand. 'What's this say, Teach?' 'Let me see . . . "The first wind of autumn shakes the lotus flower. Seven Lucky Logs to pay one pig and three [looks like a four-armed man waving a flag] of rice on pain of having his [rather a stylized thing here, can't quite make it out] struck with many blows. By order of Six Beneficent Winds, Collector of Revenues, Langtang." ' There was a subtle change among the old men. Now they were all grinning, but not in a way that gave him any comfort. One of them, with teeth like diamonds, leaned towards him and said, in bad Agatean: 'You are a tax collector, Mr Knob on Your Hat?' Six Beneficent Winds wondered if he'd be able to summon the guard. There was something terrible about these old men. They weren't venerable at all. They were horribly menacing and, although he couldn't see any obvious weapons, he knew for a cold frozen fact that he wouldn't be able to get out more than the first syllable before he'd be killed. Besides, his throat had gone dry and his pants had gone wet. 'Nothing wrong with being a tax collector . . .' he croaked. 'We never said that,' said Diamond Teeth. 'We always like to meet tax collectors.' 'Some of our most favouritest people, tax collectors,' said another old man. 'Saves a lot of trouble,' said Diamond Teeth. 'Yeah,' said a third old man. 'Like, it means you don't have to go from house to house killin' everyone for their valuables, you just wait and kill the—' 'Gentlemen, can I have a word?' The speaker was the slightly goat-faced one that didn't seem quite so unpleasant as the others. The terrible men clustered around him and Six Beneficent Winds heard the strange syllables of a coarse foreign tongue: 'What? But he's a tax collector! That's what they're for!' 'Whut?' 'A firm tax base is the foundation of sound governance, gentlemen. Please trust me.' 'I understood all of that up to "A firm tax".' 'Nevertheless, no useful purpose will be served by killing this hard-working tax gatherer.' 'He'd be dead. I call that useful.' There was some more of the same. Six Beneficent Winds jumped when the group broke up and the goat-faced man gave him a smile. 'My humble friends are overawed by your . . . variety of plum . . . small knife for cutting seaweed . . . presence, noble sir,' he said, his every word slandered by Truckle's vigorous gesticulations behind his back. 'How about if we just cut a bit off?' 'Whut?' 'How did you get in here?' said Six Beneficent Winds. 'There are many strong guards.' 'I knew we missed something,' said Diamond Teeth. 'We would like you to show us around the For-bidden City,' said Goat Face. 'My name is . . . Mr Stuffed Tube, I think you would call it. Yes. Stuffed Tube, I'm pretty sure—' Six Beneficent Winds glanced hopefully towards the door. '—and we are here to learn more about your won-derful . . . mountain . . . variety of bamboo . . . sound of running water at evening . . . drat . . . civilization.' Behind him, Truckle was energetically demonstrating to the rest of the Horde what he and Bruce the Hoon's Skeletal Riders once did to a tax gatherer. The sweeping arm movements in particular occupied Six Beneficent Winds' attention. He couldn't understand the words but, somehow, you didn't need to. 'Why are you talking to him like that?' 'Ghenghiz, I'm lost. There are no maps of the Forbidden City. We need a guide.' Goat Face turned back to the taxman. 'Perhaps you would like to come with us?' he said. Out, thought Six Beneficent Winds. Yes! There may be guards out there! 'Just a minute,' said Diamond Teeth, as he nodded. 'Pick up your paintbrush and write down what I say.' A minute later, they'd gone. All that remained in the taxman's office was an amended piece of paper, which read as follows: 'Roses are red, violets are blue. Seven Lucky Logs to be given one pig and all the rice he can carry, because he is now One Lucky Peasant. By order of Six Beneficent Winds, Collector of Revenues, Langtang. Help. Help. If anyone reads this I am being held prisoner by an evil eunuch. Help.'   Rincewind and Twoflower lay in their separate cells and talked about the good old days. At least, Two-flower talked about the good old days. Rincewind worked at a crack in the stone with a piece of straw, it being all he had to hand. It would take several thousand years to make any kind of impression, but that was no reason to give up. 'Do we get fed in here?' he said, interrupting the flow of reminiscence. 'Oh, sometimes. But it's not like the marvellous food in Ankh-Morpork.' 'Really,' murmured Rincewind, scratching away. A tiny piece of mortar seemed ready to move. 'I'll always remember the taste of Mr Dibbler's sausages.' 'People do.' 'A once-in-a-lifetime experience.' 'Frequently.' The straw broke. 'Damn and blast!' Rincewind sat back. 'What's so important about the Red Army?' he said. 'I mean, they're just a bunch of kids. Just a nuisance!' 'Yes, I'm afraid things got rather confused,' said Twoflower. 'Um. Have you ever heard of the theory that History goes in cycles?' 'I saw a drawing in one of Leonard of Quirm's notebooks—' Rincewind began, trying again with another straw. 'No, I mean . . . like a . . . wheel, spinning. If you stand in the same place it all comes round again?' 'Oh, that. Blast!' 'Well, a lot of people believe it here. They think History starts again every three thousand years.' 'Could be,' said Rincewind, who was looking for another straw and wasn't really listening. Then the words sank in. 'Three thousand years? That's a bit short, isn't it? The whole thing? Stars and oceans and intelligent life evolving from arts graduates, that sort of thing?' 'Oh, no. That's just . . . stuff. Proper history started with the founding of the Empire by One Sun Mirror. The first Emperor. And his servant, the Great Wizard. Just a legend, really. It's the sort of thing peasants believe. They look at something like the Great Wall and say, that's such a marvellous thing it must have been built by magic . . . And the Red Army . . . what it probably was was just a well-organized body of trained fighting men. The first real army, you see. All there was before was just undisciplined mobs. That's what it must have been. Not magical at all. The Great Wizard couldn't really have made . . . What the peasants believe is silly . . .' 'Why, what do they believe?' 'They say the Great Wizard made the earth come alive. When all the armies on the continent faced One Sun Mirror the Great Wizard . . . flew a kite.' 'Sounds sensible to me,' said Rincewind. 'When there's war around take the day off, that's my motto.' 'No, you don't understand. This was a special kite. It trapped the lightning in the sky and the Great Wizard stored it in bottles and then took the mud itself and . . . baked it with the lightning, and made it into an army.' 'Never heard of any spells for that.' 'And they have funny ideas about reincarnation, too . . .' Rincewind conceded that they probably would. It probably whiled away those long water-buffaloid hours: hey, after I die I hope I come back as . . . a man holding a water buffalo, but facing a different way. 'Er . . . no,' said Twoflower. They don't think you come back at all. Er . . . I'm not using the right words, am I? . . . Bit corroded on this language . . . I mean ^reincarnation. It's like reincarnation backwards. They think you're born before you die.' 'Oh, really?' said Rincewind, scratching at the stones. 'Amazing! Born before you die? Life before death? People will get really excited when they hear about that.' 'That's not exactly . . . er. It's all tied in with ancestors. You should always venerate ancestors because you might be them one day, and . . . Are you listening?' The little piece of mortar fell away. Not bad for ten minutes' work, thought Rincewind. Come the next Ice Age, we're out of here . . . It dawned on him that he was working on the wall that led to Twoflower's cell. Taking several thousand years to break into an adjoining cell could well be thought a waste of time. He started on a different wall. Scratch . . . scratch . . . There was a terrible scream. Scratchscratchscratch— 'Sounds like the Emperor has woken up,' said Twoflower's voice from the hole in the wall. 'That's kind of an early morning torture, is it?' said Rincewind. He started to hammer at the huge blocks with a piece of shattered stone. 'It's not really his fault. He just doesn't understand about people.' 'Is that so?' 'You know how common kids go through a stage of pulling the wings off flies?' 'I never did,' said Rincewind. 'You can't trust flies. They may look small but they can turn nasty.' 'Kids generally, I mean.' 'Yes? Well?' 'He is an Emperor. No-one ever dared tell him it was wrong. It's just a matter of, you know, scaling up. All the five families fight among themselves for the crown. He killed his nephew to become Emperor. No-one has ever told him that it's not right to keep killing people for fun. At least, no-one who has ever managed to get to the end of the first sentence. And the Hongs and the Fangs and the Tangs and the Sungs and the McSweeneys have been killing one another for thousands of years. It's all part of the royal succession.' 'McSweeneys?' 'Very old-established family.' Rincewind nodded gloomily. It was probably like breeding horses. If you have a system where treacher-ous murderers tend to win, you end up breeding really treacherous murderers. You end up with a situation where it's dangerous to lean over a cradle . . . There was another scream. Rincewind started kicking at the stones. A key turned in the lock. 'Oh,' said Twoflower. But the door didn't open. Finally Rincewind walked over and tried the big iron ring. The door swung outwards, but not too far because the recumbent body of a guard makes an unusual but efficient doorstop. There was a whole ring of keys hanging from the one in the door . . . An inexperienced prisoner would simply have run for it. But Rincewind was a post-graduate student in the art of staying alive, and knew that in circumstances like these much the best thing to do was let out every single prisoner, pat each one hurriedly on the back and say, 'Quick! They're coming for you!' and then go and sit somewhere nice and quiet until the pursuit has disappeared in the distance. He opened the door to Twoflower's cell first. The little man was skinnier and grubbier than he remembered, and had a wispy beard, but in one very significant way he had the feature that Rincewind remembered so well - the big, beaming, trusting smiled that suggested that anything bad currently happening to him was just some sort of laughable mistake and would be bound to be sorted out by reasonable people. 'Rincewind! It is you! I certainly never thought I'd see you again!' he said. 'Yes, I thought something on those lines,' said Rincewind. Twoflower looked past Rincewind at the fallen guard. 'Is he dead?' he said, speaking of a man with a sword half buried in his back. 'Extremely likely.' 'Did you do that?' 'I was inside the cell!' 'Amazing! Good trick!' Despite several years of exposure to the facts of the matter, Rincewind remembered, Twoflower had never really wanted to grasp the fact that his companion had the magical abilities of the common house fly. It was useless to try to dissuade him. It just meant that modesty was added to the list of non-existent virtues. He tried some of the keys in other cell doors. Various raggedy people emerged, blinking in the slightly better light. One of them, turning his body slightly in order to get it through the door, was Three Yoked Oxen. From the look of him he'd been beaten up, but this might just have been someone's attempt to attract his attention. 'This is Rincewind,' said Twoflower proudly. 'The Great Wizard. Did you know he killed the guard from inside the cell?' They politely inspected the corpse. 'I didn't, really,' said Rincewind. 'And he's modest, too!' 'Long Life To The People's Endeavour!' said Three Yoked Oxen through rather swollen lips. ' "Mine's A Pint!" ' said Rincewind. 'Here's bigfella keys belong door, you go lettee people outee chop-chop.' One of the freed prisoners limped to the end of the passage. 'There's a dead guard here,' he said. 'It wasn't me,' said Rincewind plaintively. 'I mean, perhaps I wished they were dead, but—' People edged away. You didn't want to be too close to anyone who could wish like that. If this had been Ankh-Morpork someone would have said, 'Oh, yeah, sure, he magically stabbed them in the back?' But that was because people in Ankh-Morpork knew Rincewind, and they knew that if a wizard really wanted you dead you'd have no back left to stab. Three Yoked Oxen had been able to master the technical business of opening doors. More swung open . . . 'Lotus Blossom?' said Rincewind. She clung to Oxen's arm and smiled at Rincewind. Other members of the cadre trooped out behind her. Then, to Rincewind's amazement, she looked at Twoflower, screamed, and threw her arms around his neck. 'Extended Continuation To Filial Affection!' chanted Three Yoked Oxen. ' "Close Cover Before Striking!" ' said Rincewind. 'Er. What exactly is happening?' A very small Red soldier tugged at his robe. 'He is her daddy,' it said. 'You never said you had children!' 'I'm sure I did. Often,' said Twoflower, disentangling himself. 'Anyway . . . it is allowed.' 'You're married!' 'I was, yes. I'm sure I must have said.' 'We were probably running away from something at the time. So there's a Mrs Twoflower, is there?' 'There was for a while,' said Twoflower, and for a moment an expression almost of anger distorted his preternaturally benign countenance. 'Not, alas, any more.' Rincewind looked away, because that was better than looking at Twoflower's face. Butterfly had also emerged. She stood just outside the cell door, with her hands clasped in front of her. looking down demurely at her feet. Twoflower rushed over to her. 'Butterfly!' Rincewind looked down at the rabbit clutcher. 'She another daughter, Pearl?' 'Yeth.' The little man came towards Rincewind, dragging the girls. 'Have you met my daughters?' he said. This is Rincewind, who—' 'We have had the pleasure,' said Butterfly, gravely. 'How did you all get here?' said Rincewind. 'We fought as hard as we could,' said Butterfly. 'But there were simply too many of them.' 'I hope you didn't try to grab their weapons,' said Rincewind, as sarcastically as he dared. Butterfly glared at him. 'Sorry,' said Rincewind. 'Herb says it is the system that is to blame,' said Lotus Blossom. 'I bet he's got a better system all worked out.' Rincewind looked at the throng of prisoners. 'They usually have. Where is he, by the way?' The girls looked around. 'I don't see him here,' said Lotus Blossom. 'But I think that when the guards attacked us he laid down his life for the cause.' 'Why?' 'Because that's what he said we should do. I am ashamed that I did not. But they seemed to want to capture us, not kill us.' 'I did not see him,' said Butterfly. She and Rince-wind exchanged a glance. 'I think perhaps . . . he was not there.' 'You mean he had been caught already?' said Lotus Blossom. Butterfly looked at Rincewind again. It occurred to him that whereas Lotus Blossom had inherited a Twoflower view of the world, Butterfly must have taken after her mother. She thought more like Rince-wind, i.e., the worst of everyone. 'Perhaps,' she said. 'Make Considerable Sacrifice For The Common Good,' said Three Yoked Oxen. ' "There's One Born Every Minute," ' said Rince-wind, absently. Butterfly seemed to get a grip on herself. 'However,' she said, 'we must make the most of this opportunity.' Rincewind, who had been heading for the stairs, froze. 'Exactly what do you mean?' he said. 'Don't you see? We are at large in the Forbidden City!' 'Not me!' said Rincewind. 'I've never been at large. I've always been at hunched.' 'The enemy brought us in here and now we are free—' 'Thanks to the Great Wizard,' said Lotus Blossom. '—and we must seize the day!' She picked up a sword from a stricken guard and waved it dramatically. 'We must storm the palace, just as Herb suggested!' 'There's only thirty of you!' said Rincewind. 'You're not a storm! You're a shower!' 'There are hardly any guards within the city itself,' said Butterfly. 'If we can overcome those around the Emperor's apartments—' 'You'll be killed!' said Rincewind. She turned on him. 'Then at least we shall have died for something!' 'Cleanse The State With The Blood Of Martyrs,' rumbled Three Yoked Oxen. Rincewind spun around and waved a finger under Three Yoked Oxen's nose, which was as high as he could reach. 'I'll bloody well thump you if you trot out something like that one more time!' he shouted, and then grimaced at the realization that he had just threatened a man three times heavier than he was. 'Listen to me, will you?' he said, settling down a lettle. 'I know about people who talk about suffering for the common good. It's never bloody them! When you hear a man shouting "Forward, brave comrades!" you'll see he's the one behind the bloody big rock and wearing the only really arrow-proof helmet! Understand?' He stopped. The cadre were looking at him as if he was mad. He stared at their young, keen faces, and felt very, very old. 'But there are causes worth dying for,' said Butterfly. 'No, there aren't! Because you've only got one life but you can pick up another five causes on any street corner!' 'Good grief, how can you live with a philosophy like that?' Rincewind took a deep breath. 'Continuously!'   Six Beneficent Winds had thought it was a pretty good plan.. The horrible old men were lost in the Forbidden City. Although they had a wiry look, rather like natural bonsai trees that had managed to flourish on a wind-swept cliff, they were nevertheless very old and not at all heavily armed. So he led them in the direction of the gymnasium. And when they were inside he screamed for help at top of his voice. To his amazement, they didn't turn and run. 'Can we kill him now?' said Truckle. A couple of dozen muscular men had stopped pounding logs of wood and piles of bricks and were regarding them suspiciously. 'Got any ideas?' said Cohen to Mr Saveloy. 'Oh, dear. They're so very tough looking, aren't they?' 'You can't think of anything civilized?' 'No. It's over to you, I'm afraid.' 'Hah! Hah! I bin waiting for this,' said Caleb, pushing forward. 'Bin practising every day, 'n I? With my big lump o' teak.' 'These are ninjas,' said Six Beneficent Winds proudly, as a couple of the men wandered towards the door and pulled it shut. 'The finest fighters in the world! Yield now!' 'That's interesting,' said Cohen. 'Here, you, in the black pyjamas . .. Just got out of bed, have you? Who's the best out of all of you?' One of the men stared fixedly at Cohen and thrust out a hand at the nearest wall. It left a dent. Then he nodded at the tax gatherer. 'What are these old fools you've brought us?' 'I think they're barbarian invaders,' said the tax-man. 'How'd you - How'd he know that?' said Boy Willie. 'We're wearin' itchy trousers and eatin' with forks and every thin'—' The leading ninja sneered. 'Heroic eunuchs?' he said. 'Old men?' 'Who're you calling a eunuch?' Cohen demanded. 'Can I just show him what I've been practising with my lump o' teak?' said Caleb, hopping arthritically from one foot to the other. The ninja eyed the slab of timber. 'You could not make a dent on that, old man,' he said. 'You watch,' said Caleb. He held out the wood at arm's length. Then he raised his other hand, grunting a little as it got past shoulder height. 'You watching this hand? You watching this hand?' he demanded. 'I am watching,' said the laugh. 'Good,' said Caleb. He kicked the man squarely in the groin and then, as he doubled up, hit him over the head with the teak.' 'Cos you should've been watchin' this foot.' And that would have been all there was to it if there had only been one ninja. But there was a clatter of rice flails and an unsheathing of long, curved swords. The Horde drew closer together. Hamish pushed back his rug to reveal their armoury, although the collection of notched blades looked positively homely compared with the shiny toys ranged against them. 'Teach, why don't you take Mr Taxman over to the corner out of harm's way?' said Ghenghiz. This is madness!' said Six Beneficent Winds. 'They're the finest fighters in the world and you're just old men! Give in now and I'll see if I can get you a rebate!' 'Calm down, calm down,' said Mr Saveloy. 'No-one's going to get hurt. Metaphorically, at least.' Ghenghiz Cohen waved his sword a few times. 'OK, you lads,' he said. 'Give us your best ninje.' Six Beneficent Winds looked on in horror as the Horde squared up. 'But it will be terrible slaughter!' he said. 'I'm afraid so,' said Mr Saveloy. He fished in his pockets for a bag of peppermints. 'Who are these mad old men? What do they do?' 'Barbarian heroing, generally,' said Mr Saveloy, 'Rescuing princesses, robbing temples, fighting mon-sters, exploring ancient and terror-filled ruins . . . that sort of thing.' 'But they look old enough to be dead! Why do they do it?' Saveloy shrugged. 'That's all they've ever done.' A ninja somersaulted down the room, screaming, a sword in either hand; Cohen waited in an attitude rather similar to that of a baseball batter. 'I wonder,' said Mr Saveloy, 'if you have ever heard of the term "evolution"?' The two met. The air blurred. 'Or "survival of the fittest"?' said Mr Saveloy. The scream continued, but rather more urgently. 'I didn't even see his sword move!' whispered Six Beneficent Winds. 'Yes. People often don't,' said Mr Saveloy. 'But . . . they're so old!' 'Indeed,' said the teacher, raising his voice above the screams, 'and of course this is true. They are very old barbarian heroes.' The taxman stared. 'Would you like a peppermint?' said Mr Saveloy, as Hamish's wheelchair thundered past in pursuit of a man with a broken sword and a pressing desire to stay alive. 'You may find it helps, if you are around the Horde for any length of time.' The aroma from the proffered paper bag hit Six Beneficent Winds like a flamethrower. 'How can you smell anything after eating those?' 'You can't,' said Mr Saveloy happily. The taxman continued to stare. The fighting was a fast and furious affair but, somehow, only on one side. The Horde fought like you'd expect old men to fight - slowly, and with care. All the activity was on the part of the ninjas, but no matter how well flung the throwing star or speedy the kick, the target was always, without any obvious effort, not there. 'Since we have this moment to chat,' said Mr Saveloy, as something with a lot of blades hit the wall just above the taxman's head, 'I wonder: could you tell me about the big hill just outside the city? It is quite a remarkable feature.' 'What?' said Six Beneficent Winds distractedly. 'The big hill.' 'You want to know about that? Now?' 'Geography is a little hobby of mine.' Someone's ear hit Six Beneficent Winds on the ear. 'Er. What? We call it the Big Hill . . . Hey, look at what he's doing with his—' 'It seems remarkably regular. Is it a natural feature?' 'What? Eh? Oh . . . I don't know, they say it turned up thousands of years ago. During a terrible storm. When the first Emperor died. He . . . he's going to be killed! He's going to be killed! He's going to be - How did he do that?' Six Beneficent Winds suddenly remembered, as a child, playing Shibo Yangcong-san with his grand-father. The old man always won. No matter how carefully he'd assembled his strategy, he'd find Grand-father would place a tile quite innocently right in the crucial place just before he could make his big move. The ancestor had spent his whole life playing shibo. The fight was just like that. 'Oh, my,' he said. 'That's right,' said Mr Saveloy. 'They've had a lifetime's experience of not dying. They've become very good at it.' 'But . . . why here? Why come here?' 'We're going to undertake a robbery,' said Mr Saveloy. Six Beneficent Winds nodded sagely. The wealth of the Forbidden City was legendary. Probably even blood-sucking ghosts had heard of it. 'The Talking Vase of Emperor P'gi Su?' he said. 'No.' 'The Jade Head of Sung Ts'uit Li?' 'No. Wrong track entirely, I'm afraid.' 'Not the secret of how silk is made?' 'Good grief. Silkworms' bottoms. Everyone knows that. No. Something rather more precious than that.' Despite himself, Six Beneficent Winds was impressed. Apart from anything else, only seven ninjas were still standing and Cohen was fencing with one of them while rolling a cigarette in the other hand. And Mr Saveloy could see it dawning in the fat man's eyes. The same thing had happened to him. Cohen came into people's lives like a rogue planet into a peaceful solar system, and you felt yourself being dragged along simply because nothing like that would ever happen to you again. He himself had been peacefully hunting for fossils during the school holidays when he had, more or less, stumbled into the camp of those particular fossils called the Horde. They'd been quite friendly, because he had neither weapons nor money. And they'd taken to him, because he knew things they didn't. And that had been it. He'd decided there and then. It must have been something in the air. His past life had suddenly unrolled behind him and he couldn't remember a single day of it that had been any fun. And it had dawned on him that he could join the Horde or go back to school and, pretty soon, a limp handshake, a round of applause and his pension. It was something about Cohen. Maybe it was what they called charisma. It overpowered even his normal smell of a goat that had just eaten curried asparagus. He did everything wrong. He cursed people and used what Mr Saveloy considered very offensive language to foreigners. He shouted terms that would have earned anyone else a free slit throat from a variety of interesting ethnic weapons - and he got away with it, partly because it was clear that there was no actual malice there but mainly because he was, well, Cohen, a sort of basic natural force on legs. It worked on everything. When he wasn't actually fighting them, he got on a lot better with trolls than did people who merely thought that trolls had rights just like everyone else. Even the Horde, bloody-minded individualists to a man, fell for it. But Mr Saveloy had also seen the aimlessness in their lives and, one night, he'd brought the conversation round to the opportunities offered in the Aurient . . . There was a light in Six Beneficent Winds' expression. 'Have you got an accountant?' he said. 'Well, no, as a matter of fact.' 'Will this theft be treated as income or capital?' 'I haven't really thought like that. The Horde doesn't pay taxes.' 'What? Not to anyone?' 'No. It's funny, but they never seem to keep their money for long. It seems to disappear on drink and women and high living. I suppose, from a heroing point of view, they may count as taxes.' There was a 'pop' as Six Beneficent Winds uncorked a small bottle of ink and licked his writing brush. 'But those sort of things probably count as allowable expenses for a barbarian hero,' he said. 'They are part of the job specification. And then of course there is wear and tear on weaponry, protective clothing . . . They could certainly claim for at least one new loincloth a year—' 'I don't think they've claimed for one per century.' 'And there's pensions, of course.' 'Ah. Don't use that word. They think it's a dirty word. But in a way that is what they're here for. This is their last adventure.' 'When they've stolen this very valuable thing that you won't tell me about.' 'That's right. You'd be very welcome to join us. You could perhaps be a barbarian . . . to push beans . . . a length of knotted string . . . ah . . . accountant. Have you ever killed anyone?' 'Not outright. But I've always thought you can do considerable damage with a well-placed Final Demand.' Mr Saveloy beamed. 'Ah, yes,' he said. 'Civilization.' The last ninja was upright, but only just; Hamish had run his wheelchair over his foot. Mr Saveloy patted the taxman's arm. 'Excuse me,' he said. 'I find I often have to intervene at this stage.' He padded over to the surviving man, who was looking around wildly. Six swords had become interlaced around his neck as though he'd taken part in a rather energetic folk dance. 'Good morning,' said Mr Saveloy. 'I should just point out that Ghenghiz here is, despite appearances, a remarkably honest man. He finds it hard to understand empty bravura. May I venture to suggest therefore that you refrain from phrases like "I would rather die than betray my Erflperor" or "Go ahead and do your worst" unless you redly, really mean them. Should you wish for mercy, a simple hand signal will suffice. I strongly advise you not to attempt to nod.' The young man looked sideways at Cohen, who gave him an encouraging smile. Then he waved a hand quickly. The swords unwove. Truckle hit the ninja over the head with a club. 'It's all right, you don't have to go on about it, I didn't kill him,' he said sulkily. 'Ow!' Boy Willie had been experimenting with a rice flail and had hit his own ear. 'How'd they manage to fight with this rubbish?' 'Whut?' 'These little Hogswatch decoration thingies look the business, though,' said Vincent, picking up a throwing star. 'Aaargh!' He sucked his fingers. 'Useless foreign junk.' 'That bit where that lad sprang backwards right across the room with them axes in his hands was impressive, though.' 'Yeah.' 'You didn't ought to have stuck your sword out like that, I thought.' 'He's learned an important lesson.' 'It won't do him much good now where he's gone.' 'Whut?' Six Beneficent Winds was half laughing, half shocked. 'But . . . but . . . I've seen these guards fight before!' he said. 'They're invincible!' 'No-one told us.' 'But you beat them all!' 'Yep!' 'And you're just eunuchs!' There was a scrape of steel. Six Beneficent Winds closed his eyes. He could feel metal touching his neck in at least five places. 'There's that word again,' said the voice of Cohen the Barbarian. 'But . . . you're . . . dressed . . . as . . . eunuchs . . .' murmured Six Beneficent Winds, trying not to swallow. Mr Saveloy backed away, chuckling nervously. 'You see,' he said, speaking fast, 'you're too old to be taken for guards and you don't look like bureaucrats, so I thought it would be, er, a very good disguise to—' 'Eunuch?' roared Truckle. 'You mean people've been looking at me and thinking I mince around saying, Helluo, Saltat?' Like many men whose testosterone had always sloshed out of their ears, the Horde had never fine-tuned their approach to the more complex areas of sexuality. A teacher to the core, Mr Saveloy couldn't help correcting them, even at swordpoint. 'That means, "the glutton dances", not, as you seem to think, "hello, sailor", which is heus nauta,' he said. 'And eunuchs don't say it. Not as a matter of course. Look, it's an honour to be a eunuch in the Forbidden City. Many of them occupy very exalted positions in—' 'Then prepare yourself for high office, teacher!' Truckle shouted. Cohen knocked the sword out of his hand. 'All right, none of that. I don't like it either,' he said, 'but it's just a disguise. Shouldn't mean anything to a man who once bit a bear's head off, should it?' 'Yeah, but . . . you know . . . it's not . . . I mean, when we went past those young ladies back there they all giggled . . .' 'Maybe later you can find them and make them laugh,' said Cohen. 'But you should've told us, Teach.' 'Sorry.' 'Whut? Whatseesay?' 'He said you're a EUNUCH!' Boy Willie bellowed in Hamish's ear. 'Yep!' said Hamish happily. 'What?' 'That's me! The one an' only!' 'No, he didn't mean—' 'Whut?' 'Oh, never mind. It's all pretty much the same to you, Hamish.' Mr Saveloy surveyed the wrecked gym. 'I wonder what time it is?' he said. 'Ah,' gurgled Six Beneficent Winds, happy to lighten things a little. 'Here, you know, we have an amazing demon-powered device that tells you what the time is even when the sun isn't—' 'Clocks,' said Mr Saveloy. 'We've got them in Ankh-Morpork. Only demons evaporate eventually so now they work by—' He paused. 'Interesting. You don't have a word for it. Er. Shaped metal that does work? Toothed wheels?' The taxman looked frightened. 'Wheels with teeth?' 'What do you call the things that grind corn?' 'Peasants.' 'Yes, but what do they grind corn with?' 'I don't know. Why should I know? Only peasants need to know that.' 'Yes, I suppose that says it all, really,' said Mr Saveloy sadly. 'It's a long way off dawn,' said Truckle. 'Why don't we go and kill everyone in their beds?' 'No, no, no!' said Mr Saveloy. 'I keep telling you, we've got to do it properly.' 'I could show you the treasure house,' said Six Beneficent Winds helpfully. 'Never a good idea to give a monkey the key to a banana plantation,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Can you think of anything else to keep them amused for an hour?'   Down in the basement, there was a man who was talking about the government. At the top of his voice. 'You can't fight for a cause! A cause is just a thing!' Then we are fighting for the peasants,' said Butterfly. She'd backed away. Rincewind's anger was coming off him like steam. 'Oh? Have you ever met them?' 'I - have seen them.' 'Oh, good! And what is it you want to achieve?' 'A better life for the people,' said Butterfly coldly. 'You think you having some uprising and hanging a few people will do it? Well, I come from Ankh-Morpork and we've had more rebellions and civil wars than you've had . . . lukewarm ducks' feet, and you know what? The rulers are still in charge! They always are!' They smiled at him in polite and nervous incomprehension. 'Look,' he said, rubbing his forehead. 'All those people out in the fields, the water buffalo people . . . If you have a revolution it'll all be better for them, will it?' 'Of course,' said Butterfly. 'They will no longer be subject to the cruel and capricious whims of the Forbidden City.' 'Oh, that's good,' said Rincewind. 'So they'll sort of be in charge of themselves, will they?' 'Indeed,' said Lotus Blossom. 'By means of the People's Committee,' said Butter-fly. Rincewind pressed both hands to his head. 'My word,' he said. 'I don't know why, but I had this predictive flash!' They looked impressed. 'I had this sudden feeling,' he went on, 'that there won't be all that many water buffalo string holders on the People's Committee. In fact . . . I get this kind of . . . voice telling me that a lot of the People's Committee, correct me if I'm wrong, are standing in front of me right now?' 'Initially, of course,' said Butterfly. 'The peasants can't even read and write.' 'I expect they don't even know how to farm properly,' said Rincewind, gloomily. 'Not after doing it for only three or four thousand years.' 'We certainly believe that there are many improvements that could be made, yes,' said Butterfly. 'If we act collectively.' 'I bet they'll be really glad when you show them,' said Rincewind. He stared glumly at the floor. He quite liked the job of a water buffalo string holder. It sounded nearly as good as the profession of castaway. He longed for the kind of life where you could really concentrate on the squishiness of the mud underfoot, and make up pictures in the clouds; the kind of life where you could let your mind catch up with you and speculate for hours at a time about when your water buffalo was next going to enrich the loam. But it was probably difficult enough as it was without people trying to improve it . . . He wanted to say: how can you be so nice and yet so dumb? The best thing you can do with the peasants is leave them alone. Let them get on with it. When people who can read and write start fighting on behalf of people who can't, you just end up with another kind of stupidity. If you want to help them, build a big library or something somewhere and leave the door open. But this is Hunghung. You can't think like that in Hunghung. This is where people have learned to do what they're told. The Horde worked that one out. The Empire's got something worse than whips all right. It's got obedience. Whips in the soul. They obey anyone who tells them what to do. Freedom just means being told what to do by someone different. You'll all be killed. I'm a coward. And even ,' know more about fights than you do. I've run away from some really good ones. 'Oh, let's just get out of here,' he said. He gingerly took the sword from a dead guard and held it the right way round on the second attempt. He weighed it for a second, then shook his head and threw it away. The cadre looked a lot happier. 'But I'm not leading you,' said Rincewind. 'I'm just showing you the way. And it's the way out, do you understand?' They stood wearing rather bruised looks, as people do who've been subject to several minutes' ranting. No-one spoke, until Twoflower whispered: 'He often goes on like this, you know. And then he does something very brave.' Rincewind snorted. There was another dead guard at the top of the stairs. Sudden death seemed to be catching. And, leaning against the wall, was a bundle of swords. Tied to it was a scroll. The Great Wizard has shown us the way for only two minutes and already we have extra luck,' said Lotus Blossom. 'Don't touch the swords,' said Rincewind. 'But supposing we see more guards? Should we not resist them with every drop of our life's blood?' said Butterfly. Rincewind looked blank. 'No. Run away.' 'Ah, yes,' said Twoflower. 'And live to fight another day. That is an Ankh-Morpork saying.' Rincewind had always assumed that the purpose of running away was to be able to run away another day. 'However,' he said, 'people don't usually find themselves mysteriously let out of prison with a bunch of weapons handily close by and all the guards out of action. Ever thought of that?' 'And with a map!' said Butterfly. Her eyes shone. She flourished the scroll. 'It's a map of the way out?' said Rincewind. 'No! To the Emperor's chambers! Look, it has been marked! That's what Herb used to talk about sometimes! He must be in the palace! We should assassinate the Emperor!' 'More luck!' said Twoflower. 'But look, you know, I'm sure if we talked to him—' 'Haven't you been listening? We are not going to see the Emperor!' hissed Rincewind. 'Does it occur to you that guards don't stab themselves? Cells don't suddenly become unlocked? You don't find swords lying around so conveniently and you don't, you really don't find maps saying "This Way, Folks"! And anyway, you can't talk to someone who's a plate of prawn crackers short of a Set Meal A for Two!' 'No,' said Butterfly. 'We must make the most of this opportunity.' There will be lots of guards!' 'Well, Great Wizard, you'll have a lot of wishing to do.' 'You think I can snap my fingers like this, and all the guards would drop dead? Hah! I wish they would!' 'These two out here have,' Lotus Blossom reported, from the entrance to the dungeons. She was already in awe of Rincewind. Now she looked positively terrified. 'Coincidence!' 'Let's be serious,' said Butterfly. 'We have a sympathizer in the palace. Perhaps it is someone risking their lives every moment! We know some of the eunuchs are on our side.' They've got nothing left to lose, I suppose.' 'You have a better idea, Great Wizard?' 'Yes. Back into the cells.' 'What?' 'This smells wrong. Would you really kill the Emperor? I mean, really?' Butterfly hesitated. 'We've often talked about it. Two Fire Herb said that if we could assassinate the Emperor we would light the torch of freedom . . .' 'Yes. It'd be you, burning. Look, get back in the cells. It's the safest place. I'll lock you in and . . . scout.' 'That's a very brave suggestion,' said Twoflower. 'And typical of the man,' he added proudly. Butterfly gave Rincewind a look he'd come to dread. 'It is a good idea,' she said. 'And I will accompany you.' 'Oh, but it's bound to be . . . very dangerous,' said Rincewind quickly. 'No harm can possibly come to me when I'm with the Great Wizard,' said Butterfly. 'Very true. Very true,' said Twoflower. 'No harm ever came to me, I know that.' 'Besides,' his daughter went on, 'I have the map. And it would be dreadful if you lost your way and accidentally strayed out of the Forbidden City, wouldn't it?' Rincewind gave in. It struck him that Twoflower's late wife must have been a remarkably intelligent woman. 'Oh, all right,' he said. 'But you're not to get in the way. And you're to do what I tell you, OK?' Butterfly bowed. 'Lead on, O Great Wizard,' she said.   'I knew it!' said Truckle. 'Poison!' 'No, no. You don't eat it. You rub it on your body,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Watch. And you get what we in civilization call dean.' Most of the Horde stood waist-deep in the warm water, every man with his hands chastely wrapped around his body. Hamish had refused to relinquish his wheelchair, so only his head was above the surface. 'It's all prickly,' said Cohen. 'And my skin's peeling off and dissolving.' 'That's not skin,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Haven't any of you seen a bath before?' 'Oh, I seen one,' said Boy Willie. 'I killed the Mad Bishop of Pseudopolis in one. You get' - he furrowed his brow - 'bubbles and stuff. And fifteen naked maidens.' 'Whut?' 'Definitely. Fifteen. Remember it well.' 'That's more like it,' said Caleb. 'All we've got to rub is this soap stuff.' 'The Emperor is ritually bathed by twenty-two bath women,' said Six Beneficent Winds. 'I could go and check with the harem eunuchs and wake them up, if you like. It's probably allowable under Entertaining.' The taxman was warming to his new job. He'd worked out that although the Horde, as individuals, had acquired mountains of cash in their careers as barbarian heroes they'd lost almost all of it engaging in the other activities (he mentally catalogued these as Public Relations) necessary to the profession, and therefore were entitled to quite a considerable rebate. The fact that they were registered with no revenue collecting authority anywhere[23] was entirely a secondary point. It was the principle that counted. And the interest too, of course. 'No, no young women, I insist,' said Mr Saveloy. You're having a bath to get clean. Plenty of time for young women later.' 'Gotta date when all this is over,' said Caleb, a little shyly, thinking wistfully of one of the few women he'd ever had a conversation with. 'She's got her own farm, she said. I could be all right for a duck.' 'I bet Teach don't want you to say that,' said Boy Willie. 'I bet he'd say you gotta call it a waterfowl.' 'Huh, huh, hur!' 'Whut?' Six Beneficent Winds sidled over to the teacher as the Horde experimented with the bath oil, initially by drinking it. 'I've worked out what it is you're going to steal,' he said. 'Oh, yes?' said Mr Saveloy politely. He was watching Caleb who, having had it brought home to him that he might have been adopting the wrong approach all his life, was trying to cut his nails with his sword. 'It's the legendary Diamond Coffin of Schz Yu!' said Six Beneficent Winds. 'No. Wrong again.' 'Oh.' 'Out of the baths, gentlemen,' said the teacher. 'I think . . . yes . . . you've mastered commerce, social intercourse—' '—hur, hur, hur . . . sorry—' '—and the principles of taxation,' Mr Saveloy went on. 'Have we done that? What are they, then?' said Cohen. 'You take away almost all the money that the merchants have got,' said Six Beneficent Winds, handing him a towel. 'Oh, is that it? I've been doing that for years.' 'No, you've been taking away all the money,' said Mr Saveloy. 'That's where you go wrong. You kill too many of them, and the ones you don't kill you leave too poor.' 'Sounds frightfully good to me,' said Truckle, excavating the cretaceous contents of an ear. 'Poor merchants, rich us.' 'No, no, no!' 'No, no, no?' 'Yes! That's not civilized!' 'It's like with sheep,' Six Beneficent Winds explained. 'You don't tear their skin off all in one go, you just shear them every year.' The Horde looked blank. 'Hunter-gatherers,' said Mr Saveloy, with a touch of hopelessness. 'Wrong metaphor.' 'It's the marvellous Singing Sword of Wong, isn't it?' whispered Six Beneficent Winds. 'That's what you're going to steal!' 'No. In fact, "steal" is rather the wrong word. Well, anyway, gentlemen . . . you might not yet be civilized but at least you're nice and clean, and many people think this is identical. Time, I think, for . . . action.' The Horde straightened up. This was back in the area they understood. 'To the Throne Room!' said Ghenghiz Cohen. Six Beneficent Winds wasn't that fast on the uptake, but at last he put two and two together. 'It's the Emperor!' he said, and raised his hand to his mouth in horror tinged with evil delight. 'You're going to kidnap him!' Diamonds glittered when Cohen grinned.   There were two dead guards in the corridor leading to the private Imperial apartments. 'Look, how come you were all taken alive?' whispered Rincewind. 'The guards I saw had big swords. How come you're not dead?' 'I suppose they planned to torture us,' said Butter-fly 'We did injure ten of them.' Oh? Pasted posters on them, did you? Sang revol-utionary songs until they gave in? Listen, someone wanted you alive.' The floors sang in the darkness. Every footstep produced a chorus of squeaks and groans, just like the floorboards at the University. But you didn't expect that sort of thing in a nice shiny palace like this. 'They're called nightingale floors,' said Butterfly. 'The carpenters put little metal collars around the nails so that no-one can creep up unawares.' Rincewind looked down at the corpses. Neither man had drawn his sword. He leaned his weight on his left foot. The floor squeaked. Then he leaned on his right foot. The floor groaned. 'This isn't right, then,' he whispered. 'You can't creep up on someone on a floor like this. So someone they knew killed those guards. Let's get out of here . . .' 'We go on,' said Butterfly firmly. 'It's a trap. Someone's using you to do their dirty work.' She shrugged. 'Turn left by the big jade statue.'   It was four in the morning, an hour before dawn There were guards in the official staterooms, but not very many. After all, this was well inside the Forbidden City, with its high walls and small gates. It wasn't as though anything was going to happen. It needed a special type of mind to stand guard over some empty rooms all night. One Big River had such a mind, orbiting gently within the otherwise blissful emptiness of his skull. They'd happily called him One Big River because he was the same size and moved at the same speed as the Hung. Everyone had expected him to become a tsimo wrestler, but he'd failed the intelligence test because he hadn't eaten the table. It was impossible for him to get bored. He just didn't have the imagination. But, since the visor of his huge helmet registered a permanent expression of metal rage, he'd in any case cultivated the art of going to sleep on his feet. He was dozing happily now, aware only of an occasional squeaking, like that of a very cautious mouse. The helmet's visor swung up. A voice said: 'Would you rather die than betray your Emperor?' A second voice said: 'This is not a trick question.' One Big River blinked, and then turned his gaze downwards. An apparition in a squeaky-wheeled wheelchair had a very large sword pointing at exactly that inconvenient place where his upper armour didn't quite meet his lower armour. A third voice said: 'I should add that the last twenty-nine people who answered wrong are . . . dried shredded fish . . . sorry, dead.' A fourth voice said: 'And we're not eunuchs.' One Big River rumbled with the effort of thought. 'I tink I rather live,' he said. A man with diamonds where his teeth should have been gave him a comradely pat on the shoulder. 'Good man,' he said. 'Join the Horde. We could use a man like you. Maybe as a siege weapon.' 'Who you?' he said. 'This is Ghenghiz Cohen,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Doer of mighty deeds. Slayer of dragons. Ravager of cities. He once bought an apple.' No-one laughed. Mr Saveloy had found that the Horde had no concept whatsoever of sarcasm. Probably no-one had ever tried it on them. One Big River had been raised to do what he was told. Everyone had told him what to do, all through his life. He fell in behind the man with diamond teeth because he was the sort of man you followed when he said 'follow'. 'But, you know, there are tens of thousands of men who would die rather than betray their Emperor,' whispered Six Beneficent Winds, as they filed through the corridors. 'I hope so.' 'Some of them will be on guard around the For-bidden City. We've avoided them, but they're still there. We'll have to deal with them eventually.' 'Oh, good!' said Cohen. 'Bad,' said Mr Saveloy. 'That business with the ninjas was just high spirits—' '—high spirits—' murmured Six Beneficent Winds. '—but you don't want a big fight out in the open. It'll get messy.' Cohen walked over to the nearest wall, which had a gorgeous pattern of peacocks, and took out his knife. 'Paper,' he said. 'Bloody paper. Paper walls.' He poked his head through. There was a shrill whimper. 'Oops, sorry, ma'am. Official wall inspection.' He extracted his head, grinning. 'But you can't go through walls!' said Six Beneficent Winds. 'Why not?' 'They're - well, they're the walls. What would happen if everyone walked through walls? What do you think doors are for?' 'I think they're for other people,' said Cohen. 'Which way's that throne room?' 'Whut?' 'This is lateral thinking,' explained Mr Saveloy, as they followed him. 'Ghenghiz is quite good at a certain kind of lateral thinking.' 'What a lateral?' 'Er. It's a kind of muscle, I believe.' 'Thinking with your muscles . . . Yes. I see,' said Six Beneficent Winds.   Rincewind sidled into a space between the wall and a statue of a rather jolly dog with its tongue hanging out. 'What now?' said Butterfly. 'How big's the Red Army?' 'We number many thousands,' said Butterfly, defiantly. 'In Hunghung?' 'Oh, no. There is a cadre in every city.' 'You know that, do you? You've met them?' 'That would be dangerous. Only Two Fire Herb knows how to contact them . . .' 'Fancy that. Well, do you know what I think? I think someone wants a revolution. And you're all so damn respectful and polite he's having his work cut out trying to organize one! But once you've got rebels you can do anything.' 'That can't be true . . .' The rebels in other cities, they do great revolutionary deeds, do they?' 'We hear reports all the time!' 'From our friend Herb?' Butterfly frowned. 'Yes . . .' 'You're thinking, aren't you?' said Rincewind. 'The old brain cells are finally banging together, yes? Good. Have I convinced you?' 'I . . . don't know.' 'Now let's go back.' 'No. Now I've got to find out if what you're suggesting is true.' 'Dying to find out, eh? Good grief, you people make me so angry. Look, watch this . . .' Rincewind strode to the end of the corridor. There was a pair of wide doors, flanked by a pair of jade dragons. He flung them back. The room inside was low-ceilinged but large. In the centre, under a canopy, was a bed. It was hard to make out the figure lying there, but it had that certain stillness that suggests the kind of sleep from which there is unlikely to be any kind of awakening. 'You see?' he said. 'He's been . . . killed . . . already . . .' A dozen soldiers were staring at Rincewind in amazement. Behind him he heard the creaking of the floor and then some whooshing sounds followed by a noise like wet leather being hit against rock. Rincewind looked at the nearest soldier. The man was holding a sword. One drop of blood coursed down the blade and, with a brief pause for dramatic effect, fell on to the floor. Rincewind looked up and raised his hat. 'I do beg your pardon,' he said, brightly. 'Isn't this room 3B?' And ran for it. The floors screamed under him, and behind him someone screamed Rincewind's nickname, which was: 'Don't let him get away!' Let me get away, Rincewind prayed, oh, please, let me get away. He slipped as he turned the corner, skidded through a paper wall and landed in an ornamental fish pond. But Rincewind in full flight had catlike, even messianic abilities. The water barely rippled under his feet as he bounced off the surface and headed away. Another wall erupted and he was in what was possibly the same corridor. Behind him, someone landed heavily on a valuable koi. Rincewind shot forward again. From; that was the most important factor in any mindless escape. You were always running from. To could look after itself. He cleared a long flight of shallow stone steps, rolled upright at the bottom and set off at random along another corridor. His legs had sorted themselves out now. First the mad, wild dash to get you out of immediate danger and then the good solid strides to put as much distance as possible between you and it. That was the trick. History told of a runner who'd run forty miles after a battle to report its successful outcome to those at home. He was traditionally regarded as the greatest runner of all time, but if he'd been reporting news of an impending battle he'd have been overtaken by Rincewind. And yet . . . someone was gaining.   A knife poked through the wall of the throne room and cut a hole large enough to afford space for an upright man or one wheelchair. There was muttering from the Horde. 'Bruce the Hoon never went in the back way.' 'Shut up.' 'Never one for back gates, Bruce the Hoon.' 'Shut up.' 'When Bruce the Hoon attacked Al Khali, he did it right at the main guard tower, with a thousand screaming men on very small horses.' 'Yeah, but. . . last I saw of Bruce the Hoon, his head was on a spike.' 'All right, I'll grant you that. But at least it was over the main gate. I mean, at least he got in.' 'His head did.' 'Oh, my . . . ' Mr Saveloy was gratified. The room they'd stepped into was enough to silence the Horde, if only briefly. It was large, of course, but that hadn't been its only purpose. One Sun Mirror, as he welded the tribes and countries and little island nations together, had wanted a room built which said to chieftains and ambassadors: this is the biggest space you've ever been in, it is more splendid than anything you could ever imagine, and we've got a lot more rooms like this. He had wanted it to be impressive. He had very clearly wanted it to intimidate mere barbarians so much that they'd give in there and then. Let there be huge statues, he'd said. And vast decorative hangings. Let there be pillars and carvings. Let the visitor be silenced by the sheer magnificence. Let it say to him, 'This is civilization, and you can join it or die. Now drop to your knees or be shortened some other way.' The Horde gave it the benefit of their inspection. Finally Truckle said, 'It's all right, I suppose, but not a patch on our chieftain's longhouse back in Skund. It hasn't even got a fire in the middle of the floor, look.' 'Gaudy, to my mind.' 'Whut?' 'Typically foreign.' 'I'd do away with most of this and get some decent straw on the floor, a few shields round the walls.' 'Whut?' 'Mind you, get in a few hundred tables and you could have a helluva carouse in here.' Cohen walked across the huge expanse towards the throne, which was under a vast ornamental canopy. ' 'S got 'n umbrella over it, look.' 'Probably the roof leaks. You can't trust tiles. A good reed thatch'll give you forty years bone dry.' The throne was lacquered wood, but with many precious gems set in it. Cohen sat down. 'Is this it?' he said. 'We've done it, Teach?' 'Yes. Of course, now you have to get away with it,' said Mr Saveloy. 'I'm sorry,' said Six Beneficent Winds. 'What've you done?' 'You know that thing we were here to steal?' said the teacher. 'Yes?' 'It's the Empire.' The taxman's expression didn't change for a few seconds, and then it flowed into a horrified grin. 'I think some breakfast is called for before we go any further,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Mr Winds, perhaps you would be so good as to summon someone?' The taxman was still grinning fixedly. 'But . . . but . . . you can't conquer an empire like this!' he managed. 'You've got to have an army, like the warlords! Just walking in like this . . . It's against the rules! And . . . and . . . there are thousands of guards!' 'Yes, but they're all out there,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Guarding us,' said Cohen. 'But they're guarding the real Emperor!' 'That's me,' said Cohen. 'Oh yeah?' said Truckle. 'Who died and made you Emperor?' 'No-one has to die,' said Mr Saveloy. 'It's called usurping.' 'That's right,' said Cohen. 'You just say, see here, Gunga Din, you're out on your ear, OK? Piss off to some island somewhere or—' 'Ghenghiz,' said Mr Saveloy gently, 'do you think you could refrain from referring to foreigners in that rather offensive fashion? It's not civilized.' Cohen shrugged. 'You're still going to have big trouble with the guards and things,' said Six Beneficent Winds. 'Maybe not,' said Cohen. 'Tell 'em, Teach.' 'Have you ever seen the, er, former Emperor?' said Mr Saveloy. 'Mr Winds?' 'Of course not. Hardly anyone has seen—' He stopped. 'There you are, then,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Very quick on the uptake, Mr Winds. As befits the Lord High Chief Tax Gatherer.' 'But it won't work because—' Six Beneficent Winds stopped again. Mr Saveloy's words reached his brain. 'Lord High Chief? Me? The black hat with the red ruby button?' 'Yes.' 'And a feather in it, if you like,' said Cohen munificently. The taxman looked in rapt consideration. 'So . . . if there was, say, a mere District Administrator who was incredibly cruel to his staff, particularly to a hard-working deputy, and thoroughly deserving of a good sound thrashing—' 'As the Lord High Chief Tax Gatherer, of course, that would be entirely your affair.' Six Beneficent Winds' grin now threatened to remove the top of his head. 'On the subject of new taxation,' he said, 'I've often had this thought that fresh air is all too readily available at far below the cost of production—' 'We will listen to your ideas with extreme interest,' said Mr Saveloy. 'In the meantime, please arrange breakfast.' 'And have summoned,' said Cohen, 'all those buggers who think they know what the Emperor looks like.'   The pursuer was closing. Rincewind skidded around a corner and there, blocking the passageway, were three guards. These were not dead. They were alive, and they had got swords. Someone cannoned into the back of him, pushed him to the ground, and leapt past. He shut his eyes. There were a couple of thumps, a groan, and then a very strange metallic noise. It was a helmet, spinning round and round on the floor. He was pulled to his feet. 'Are you going to lie around all day?' said Butterfly. 'Come on. They're not far behind!' Rincewind glanced at the recumbent guards, and then loped after the girl. 'How many of them are there?' he managed. 'Seven now. But two of them are limping and one's having trouble breathing. Come on.' 'You hit them?' 'Do you always waste breath like this?' 'Never found anyone who could keep up with me before!' They turned a corner and almost ran into another guard. Butterfly didn't even stop. She took a ladylike step, whirled around on one foot, and kicked the man so hard on his ear that he spun on his own axis and landed on his head. She paused, panted, and tucked a hair back into place. 'We should split up,' she said. 'Oh, no!' said Rincewind. 'I mean, I must protect you!' 'I'll head back to the others. You lead the guards away somewhere—' 'Can you all do that?' 'Of course,' said Butterfly, testily. 'I told you we fought the guards. 'Now, if we split up one of us is bound to escape. The murderers! We were supposed to take the blame for that!' 'Didn't I try to tell you? I thought you wanted him dead!' 'Yes, but we're rebels. They were palace guards!' 'Er—' 'No time. See you in Heaven.' She darted away. 'Oh.' Rincewind looked around. It had all gone quiet. Guards appeared at the end of the corridor, but cautiously, as befitted people who'd just met Butterfly. 'There!' 'Is it her?' 'No, it's him!' 'Get him!' He accelerated again, rounded a corner, and found that he was in a cul-de-sac that would undoubtedly, given the sounds behind, become a dead end. But there was a pair of doors. He kicked them open, ran inside, and slowed . . . The space inside was dark, but the sound and air suggested a large space and a certain flatulent component indicated some kind of stable. There was some light, though, from a fire. Rincewind trotted towards it and saw that it was under a huge cauldron, man-sized, full of boiling rice. And now that his eyes were accustomed to the gloom he realized that there were shapes lying on slabs along both walls of an enormous room. They were snoring gently. They were, in fact, people. They might even have been humans, or at least had humans in their ancestry before someone, hundreds of years ago, had said, 'Let's see how big and fat we can breed people. Let's try for really big bastards.' Each giant frame was dressed in what looked like a nappy to Rincewind's eyes and was dozing happily alongside a bowl holding enough rice to explode twenty people, just in case it woke up in the night and felt like a light snack. A couple of his pursuers appeared in the doorway, and stopped. Then they advanced, but very cautiously, carefully watching the gently moving mounds. 'Oi, oi, oi!' shouted Rincewind. The men stopped and stared at him. 'Wakey wakey! Let's see the rising sons!' He grabbed a mighty ladle and banged it on the rice cauldron. 'Up you get! Hands off - er - whatever you can find and on with socks!' The sleepers stirred. 'Oooorrrrr?' 'Ooooaaaoooooor!' The room shook as forty tree-trunk legs swung off the slabs. Flesh rearranged itself so that, in the gloom, Rincewind appeared to be being watched by twenty small pyramids. 'Haaaroooooohhhh?' 'Those men,' said Rincewind, pointing desperately at his pursuers, who were slowly backing away, 'those men have a pork sandwich!' 'Oorrry orrraaah?' 'Oooorrrr?' 'With mustard!' 'Oooorrrr!' Twenty very small heads turned. A total of eighty specialized neurones fired into life. And the floor shook. The wrestlers started to move hopefully towards the men, in a slow but deliberate run designed to be halted only by collision with another wrestler or a continent. 'Oooorrr!' Rincewind dashed for the far door and burst through it. A couple of men were sitting in a small room drinking tea and playing shibo, watched by a third. 'The wrestlers are wrestless!' he shouted. 'I think you've got a stampede going on!' A man threw down his shibo tiles. 'Blast! And it's been at least an hour since they were fed!' The men grabbed various nets and prods and items of protective clothing, leaving Rincewind alone. There was another door. He sashayed through it. He'd never essayed a sashay before, but he reckoned he was due a sashay for quick thinking. There was another passage. He ran down it, on the basis that absence of pursuit is no reason to stop running.   Lord Hong was folding paper. He was an expert at it because when he did it he gave it his full attention. Lord Hong had a mind like a knife, although possibly a knife with a curved blade. The door slid aside. A guard, red in the face from running, threw himself on to the floor. 'O Lord Hong, who is exalted—' 'Yes, indeed,' said Lord Hong distantly, essaying a taxing crease. 'What has gone wrong this time?' 'My lord?' 'I asked you what has gone wrong.' 'Uh . . . we killed the Emperor as directed—' 'By whom?' 'My lord! You commanded it!' 'Did I?' said Lord Hong, folding the paper lengthwise. The guard shut his eyes. He had a vision, a very short vision, of the future. There was a spike in it. He carried on. 'But the . . . prisoners can't be found anywhere, lord! We heard someone approach and then . . . well, we saw two people, lord. We're chasing them. But the others have vanished.' 'No slogans? No revolutionary posters? No culprits?' 'No, lord.' 'I see. Remain here.' Lord Hong's hands continued with the folding as he looked at the room's other occupant. 'You have something to say, Two Fire Herb?' he said pleasantly. The revolutionary leader looked sheepish. 'The Red Army has been quite expensive,' said Lord Hong. 'The printing costs alone . . . And you cannot say I have not helped you. We unlocked the doors and killed the guards and gave your wretched people swords and a map, did we not? And now I can hardly claim that they killed the Emperor, may he stay dead for ten thousand years, when there is no sign of them. People will ask too many questions. I can hardly kill everyone. And we appear to have some barbarians in the building, too.' 'Something must have gone wrong, my lord.' Herb was hypnotized by the moving hands as they caressed that paper. 'What a pity. I do not like it when things go wrong. Guard? Redeem your miserable self. Take him away. I will have to try a different plan.' 'My lord!' 'Yes, Two Fire Herb?' 'When you . . . when we agreed . . . when it was agreed that the Red Army should be turned over to vou, you did promise me indemnity.' Lord Hong smiled. 'Oh, yes. I recall. I said, did I not, that I would neither say nor write any order for your death? And I must keep my word, otherwise what am I?' He folded the last crease and opened his hands, putting the little paper decoration on the lacquered table beside him. Herb and the guard stared at it. 'Guard . . . take him away,' said Lord Hong. It was a marvellously constructed paper figure of a man. But there didn't seem to have been enough paper for a head.   The immediate court turned out to be about eighty men, women and eunuchs, in various states of sleeplessness. They were astonished at what sat on the throne. The Horde were quite astonished at the court. 'Who're all them vinegar-faced old baggages at the front?' whispered Cohen, who was idly tossing a throwing knife into the air and catching it again. 'I wouldn't even set fire to them.' 'They're the wives of former Emperors,' hissed Six Beneficent Winds. 'We don't have to marry them, do we?' 'I don't think so.' 'Why're their feet so small?' said Cohen. 'I like to see big feet on a woman.' Six Beneficent Winds told him. Cohen's expression hardened. 'I'm learning a lot about civilization, I am,' he said. 'Long fingernails, crippled feet and servants running around without their family jewels. Huh.' 'What is going on here, pray?' said a middle-aged man. 'Who are you? Who are these old eunuchs?' 'Who're you?' said Cohen. He drew his sword. 'I need to know so's it can be put on your gravestone—' 'I wonder if I might effect some introductions at this point?' said Mr Saveloy. He stepped forward. 'This,' he said, 'is Ghenghiz Cohen - put it away, Ghenghiz - who is technically a barbarian, and this is his Horde. They have overrun your city. And you are—?' 'Barbarian invaders?' said the man haughtily, ignoring him. 'Barbarian invaders come in their thousands! Big screaming men on little horses!' 'I told you,' said Truckle. 'But would anyone listen?' '—and there is fire, terror, rapine, looting and blood in the streets!' 'We haven't had breakfast yet,' said Cohen, tossing his knife into the air again. 'Hah! I would rather die than submit to such as you!' Cohen shrugged. 'Why didn't you say earlier?' 'Oops,' said Six Beneficent Winds. It was a very accurate throw. 'Who was he, anyway?' said Cohen, as the body folded up. 'Anyone know who he was?' 'Ghenghiz,' said Mr Saveloy, 'I've kept meaning to tell you: when people say they'd rather die, they don't really mean they'd rather die. Not always.' 'Why'd they say it, then?' 'It's the done thing.' 'Is this civilization again?' 'I'm afraid so.' 'Let's settle this once and for all, shall we?' said Cohen. He stood up. 'Hands up those who'd rather die than have me as Emperor.' 'Anyone?' said Mr Saveloy.   Rincewind trotted along another passage. Was there no outside to this place? Several times he thought he'd found an exit, but it led only to a courtyard within the huge building, filled with tinkling fountains and willow trees. And the place was waking up. There were— —running steps behind him. A voice shouted, 'Hey—' He dived for the nearest door. The room beyond was full of steam. It roiled in great billowing clouds. He could dimly make out a figure toiling at the huge wheel and the words 'torture chamber' crossed his mind until the smell of soap replaced them with the word 'laundry'. Rather wan but incredibly clean figures looked up from their vats and watched him with barely a hint of interest. They did not look like people in close touch with current events. He half ran, half sauntered between the bubbling cauldrons. 'Keep it up. Good man. That's it, scrub, scrub, scrub. Let me see those wringers wringing. Well done. Is there another door out of here? Good bubbles there, very good bubbles. Ah . . .' One of the laundry workers, who appeared to be in charge, gave him a suspicious glare and seemed to be about to say something. Rincewind dodged through a courtyard crisscrossed with washing lines and stopped, panting, with his back to a wall. Although it was against his general principles, it was perhaps time to stop and think. People were chasing him. That is to say, they were chasing a running figure in a faded red robe and a very charred pointy hat. It took a great effort for Rincewind to come to terms with the idea, but it was just possible that if he was wearing something else he might not be chased. On the line in front of him, shirts and trousers flapped in the breeze. Their construction was to tailoring in the same way that woodchopping is to carpentry. Someone had mastered the art of the tube, and left it at that. They looked just like the clothes nearly everyone wore in Hunghung. The palace was almost a city in its own right, said the voice of reason. It must be full of people on all sorts of errands, it added. It would mean . . . taking off our hat, it added. Rincewind hesitated. It would be hard for a non-wizard to grasp the enormity of the suggestion. A wizard would sooner go without his robe and trousers than forgo his hat. Without his hat, people might think he was an ordinary person. There was shouting in the distance. The voice of reason could see that if it wasn't careful it was going to end up as dead as the rest of Rincewind and added sarcastically: all right, keep our wretched hat. Our damn hat is why we're in this mess in the first place. Perhaps you think you're going to have a head left to wear it on? Rincewind's hands, also aware that times were going to be extremely interesting and very short unless they took matters into themselves, reached out slowly and removed a pair of pants and a shirt and rammed them inside his robe. The door burst open. There were still guards behind him, and a couple of the tsimo herders had joined in the chase. One of them waved a prod in Rincewind's direction. He plunged towards an archway and out into a garden. It had a little pagoda. It had willow trees, and a pretty lady on a bridge feeding the birds. And a man painting a plate.   Cohen rubbed his hands together. 'No-one? Good. That's all sorted, then.' 'Ahem.' A small man at the front of the crowd made a great play of keeping his hands to himself, but said: 'Excuse me, but . . . what would happen in the hypothetical situation of us calling the guards and denouncing you?' 'We'd kill you all before they were halfway through the door,' said Cohen, matter of factly. 'Any more questions?' he added, to a chorus of gasps. 'Er . . . the Emperor . . . that is to say, the last Emperor . . . had some very special guards . . .' There was a tinkling sound. Something small and multi-pointed rolled down the steps and spun round on the floor. It was a throwing star. 'Met them,' said Boy Willie. 'Fine, fine,' said the little man. 'That all seems in order. Ten Thousand Years to the Emperor!' The shout was taken up, a little raggedly. 'What's your name, young man?' said Mr Saveloy. 'Four Big Horns, my lord.' 'Very good. Very good. I can see that you will go a long way. What is your job?' 'I am Grand Assistant to the Lord Chamberlain, my lord.' 'Which one of you is the Lord Chamberlain?' Four Big Horns pointed to the man who had preferred to die. 'There we are, you see,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Promotion comes fast to adaptable people, Lord Chamberlain. And now, the Emperor will breakfast.' 'And what-is his pleasure?' said the new Lord Chamberlain, endeavouring to look bright and adaptable. 'All sorts of things. But right now, big lumps of meat and lots of beer. You will find the Emperor very easy to cater for.' Mr Saveloy smiled the knowing little smile he sometimes smiled when he knew he was the only one seeing the joke. 'The Emperor doesn't favour what he calls "fiddly foreign muck full of eyeballs and suchlike" and much prefers simple, wholesome food like sausages, which are made of miscellaneous animal organs minced up in a length of intestine. Ahaha. But if you want to please him, just keep up the big lumps of meat. Isn't that so, my lord?' Cohen had been gazing at the assembled courtiers. When you've survived for ninety years all the attacks that can be thrown at you by men, women, trolls, dwarfs, giants, green things with lots of legs and, on one occasion, an enraged lobster, you can learn a lot by looking at faces. 'Eh?' said Cohen. 'Oh. Yep. Right enough. Big lumps. Here, Mr Taxman . . . what do these people do all day?' 'What would you like them to do?' 'I'd like them to bugger off.' 'Sorry, my lord?' '[Complicated pictogram],' said Mr Saveloy. The new Lord Chamberlain looked a little startled. 'What, here?' 'It's a figure of speech, lad. He just means he wants everyone to go away quickly.' The court scurried out. A sufficiently complicated pictogram is worth a thousand words.   After the stampede the artist Three Solid Frogs got to his feet, retrieved his brush from his nostril, pulled his easel out of a tree, and tried to think placid thoughts. The garden was not what it had been. The willow tree was bent. The pagoda had been demolished by an out-of-control wrestler, who had eaten the roof. The doves had flown. The little bridge had been broken. His model, the concubine Jade Fan, had run off crying after she'd managed to scramble out of the ornamental pond. And someone had stolen his straw hat. Three Solid Frogs adjusted what remained of his dress and endeavoured to compose himself. The plate with his sketch on had been smashed, of course. He pulled another one out of his bag and reached for his palette. There was a huge footprint in the middle of it . . . He wanted to cry. He'd had such a good feeling about this picture. He just knew it would be one that people would remember for a long time. And the colours? Did anyone understand how much vermilion cost these days? He pulled himself together. So there was only blue left. Well, he'd show them . . . He tried to ignore the devastation in front of him and concentrated on the picture in his mind. 'Let me see, now,' he thought. 'Jade Fan being pursued over a bridge by man waving his arms and screaming, "Get out of the way!" followed by man with prod, three guards, five laundry men and a wrestler unable to stop.' He had to simplify it a bit, of course.   The pursuers rounded a corner, except for the wrestler, who wasn't built for such a difficult manoeuvre. 'Where'd he go?' They were in a courtyard. There were pigsties on one side, and middens on the other. And, in the middle of the courtyard, a pointy hat. One of the guards reached out and grabbed a colleague's arm before the man stepped forward. 'Steady now,' he said. 'It's just a hat.' 'So where's the rest of him? He couldn't have just . . . disappeared . . . into . . .' They backed away. 'You heard about him too?' 'They said he blew a hole in the wall just by waving his hands!' 'That's nothing! I heard he appeared on an invisible dragon up in the mountains!' 'What shall we tell Lord Hong?' 'I don't want to be blown to pieces!' 'I don't want to tell Lord Hong we lost him. We're in enough trouble already. And I've only just paid for this helmet.' 'Well. . . we could take the hat. That'd be evidence.' 'Right. You pick it up.' 'Me? You pick it up!' 'It might be surrounded by terrible spells.' 'Really? So it's all right for me to touch it? Thank you! Get one of them to pick it up!' The laundry men backed away, the Hunghungese habit of obedience evaporating like morning dew. The soldiers weren't the only ones to have heard rumours. 'Not us!' 'Got a rush order for socks!' The guard turned. A peasant was stumbling out of one of the pigsties, carrying a sack, his face covered by his big straw hat. 'Hey, you!' The man dropped to his knees and banged his head on the ground. 'Don't kill me!' The guards exchanged a glance. 'We ain't going to kill you,' said one of them. 'We just want you to try and pick up that hat over there.' 'What hat, o mighty warrior?' 'That hat there! Right now!' The man crawled crabwise across the cobbles. 'This hat, o great lord?' 'Yes!' The man's fingers crept over the stones and prodded the hat's ragged brim. Then he screamed. 'Your wife is a big hippo! My face is melting! My race is meltinnnnggg!' Rincewind waited until the sound of fleeing sandals had quite faded, and then stood up, dusted off his hat, and put it in the sack. That had gone a lot better than he'd expected. So there was another valuable thing to know about the Empire: no-one looked at peasants. It must be the clothes and the hat. No-one but the common people dressed like that, so anyone dressed like that must be a common person. It was the advertising principle of a wizard's hat, but in reverse. You were careful and polite around people in a pointy hat, in case they took a very physical offence, whereas someone in a big straw hat was a suitable target for a 'Hey, you!' and a— It was at exactly this point that someone behind him shouted, 'Hey, you!' and hit Rincewind across the shoulders with a stick. The irate face of a servant appeared in front of him. The man waved a finger in front of Rincewind's nose. 'You are late! You are a bad man! Get inside right now!' 'I—' The stick hit Rincewind again. The servant pointed at a distant doorway. 'Insolence! Shame! Go to work!' Rincewind's brain prepared the words: Oh, so we think we're Clever-san just because we've got a big stick, do we? Well, I happen to be a great wizard and you know what you can do with your big stick. Somewhere between the brain and his mouth they became: 'Yessir! Right away!'   The Horde were left alone. 'Well, gentlemen, we did it,' said Mr Saveloy eventually. 'You have the world on a plate.' 'All the treasure we want,' said Truckle. 'That's right.' 'Let's not hang around, then,' said Truckle. 'Let's get some sacks.' 'There's no point,' said Mr Saveloy. 'You'd only be stealing from yourselves. This is an Empire. You don't just shove it in a bag and divvy it up at the next campfire!' 'How about the ravishing?' Mr Saveloy sighed. There are, I understand, three hundred concubines in the imperial harem. I'm sure they will be very pleased to see you, although matters will be improved if you take your boots off.' The old men wore the puzzled look such as might be worn by fish trying to understand the concept of the bicycle. 'We ought to take just small stuff,' said Boy Willie at last. 'Rubies and emeralds, for preference.' 'And chuck a match on the place as we go out,' said Vincent. 'These paper walls and all this lacquered wood should go up a treat.' 'No, no, no!' said Mr Saveloy. 'The vases in this room alone are priceless!' 'Nah, too big to carry. Can't get 'em onna horse.' 'But I've shown you civilization!' said Mr Saveloy. 'Yeah. It's all right to visit. Ain't that so, Cohen?' Cohen was hunched down in the throne, glaring at the far wall. 'What's that?' 'I'm saying we take everything we can carry and head off back home, right?' 'Home . . . yeah . . .' 'That was the Plan, yeah?' Cohen didn't look at Mr Saveloy's face. 'Yeah . . . the Plan . . .' he said. 'It's a good plan,' said Truckle. 'Great idea. You move in as boss? Fine. Great scam. Saves trouble. None of that fiddling with locks and things. So we'll all be off home, OK? With all the treasure we can carry?' 'What for?' said Cohen. 'What for? It's treasure.' Cohen seemed to reach a decision. 'What did you spend your last haul on, Truckle? You said you got three sacks of gold and gems from that haunted castle.' Truckle looked puzzled, as if Cohen had asked what purple smelled like. 'Spend it on? ,' dunno. You know how it is. What's it matter what you spend it on? It's loot. Anyway . . . what do you spend yours on?' Cohen sighed. Truckle gaped at him. 'You're not thinking of really staying here?' He glared at Mr Saveloy. 'Have you two been cooking up something?' Cohen drummed his fingers on the arm of the throne. 'You said go home,' he said. 'Where to?' 'Well . . . wherever . . .' 'And Hamish there—' 'Whut? Whut?' 'I mean . . . he's a hundred and five, right? Time to settle down, maybe?' 'Whut?' 'Settle down?' said Truckle. 'You tried it once. Stole a farm and said you was goin' to raise pigs! Gave it up after . . . What was it? . . . three hours?' 'Whutzeesayin'? Whutzeesayin'?' 'He said IT'S TIME YOU SETTLED DOWN, Hamish.' 'Bugrthat!'   The kitchens were in uproar. Half the court had ended up there, in most cases for the first time. The place was as crowded as a street market, through which the servants tried to go about their business as best they could. The fact that one of them seemed a little unclear as to what his business actually consisted of was quite unnoticed in the turmoil. 'Did you smell him?' said Lady Two Streams. 'The stink!' 'Like a hot day in a pig yard!' said Lady Peach Petal. 'I'm pleased to say I have never experienced that,' said Lady Two Streams haughtily. Lady Jade Night, who was rather younger than the other two, and who had been rather attracted to Cohen's smell of unwashed lion, said nothing. The head cook said: 'Just that? Big lumps? Why doesn't he just eat a cow while he's about it?' 'You wait till you hear about this devil food called sausage,' said the Lord Chamberlain. 'Big lumps.' The cook was almost in tears. 'Where's the skill in big lumps of meat? Not even sauce? I'd rather die than simply heat up big lumps of meat!' 'Ah,' said the new Lord Chamberlain, 'I should think very carefully about that. The new Emperor, may he have a bath for ten thousand years, tends to interpret that as a request—' The babble of voices stopped. The cause of the sudden silence was one small, sharp noise. It was a cork, popping. Lord Hong had a Grand Vizier's talent for apparently turning up out of nowhere. His gaze swept the kitchens. It was certainly the only housework that he had ever done. He stepped forward. He'd taken a small black bottle from out of the sleeve of his robe. 'Bring me the meat,' he said. 'The sauce will take care of itself.' The assembled people watched with horrified interest. Poison was all part of the Hunghungese court etiquette but people generally did it while hidden from sight somewhere, out of good manners. 'Is there anyone,' said Lord Hong, 'who has anything they would like to say?' His gaze was like a scythe. As it swung around the room people wavered, and hesitated, and fell. 'Very well,' said Lord Hong. 'I would rather die than see a . . . barbarian on the Imperial throne. Let him have his . . . big lumps. Bring me the meat.' There was movement in the ground, and the sound of shouting and the thump of a stick. A peasant scuttled forward, reluctantly wheeling a huge covered dish on a trolley. At the sight of Lord Hong he pushed the trolley aside, flung himself forward and grovelled. 'I avert my gaze from your . . . an orchard in a favourable position . . . damn . . . countenance, o lord.' Lord Hong prodded the prone figure with his foot. 'It is good to see the arts of respect maintained,' he observed. 'Remove the lid.' The man got up and, still bowing and ducking, lifted the cover. Lord Hong upended the bottle and held it there until the last drop had hissed out. His audience was transfixed. 'And now let it be taken to the barbarians,' he said. 'Certainly, your celestial . . . ink brush . . . willow frond . . . righteousness.' 'Where are you from, peasant?' 'Bes Pelargic, o lord.' 'Ah. I thought so.'   The big bamboo doors slid back. The new Lord Chamberlain stepped in, followed by a caravan of trolleys. 'Breakfast, o lord of a thousand years,' he said. 'Big lumps of pig, big lumps of goat, big lumps of ox and seven fried rice.' One of the servants lifted the lid of a dish. 'But take my tip and don't go for this pork,' he said. 'It's been poisoned.' The Chamberlain spun around. 'Insolent pig! You will die for this.' 'It's Rincewind, isn't it?' said Cohen. 'Looks like Rincewind—' 'Got my hat here somewhere,' said Rincewind. 'Had to stuff it down my trousers—' 'Poison?' said Cohen. 'You sure?' 'Well, OK, it was a black bottle and it had a skull and crossbones on it and when he tipped it out it smoked,' said Rincewind, as Mr Saveloy helped him up. 'Was it anchovy essence? I don't think so.' 'Poison,' said Cohen. 'I hate poisoners. Just about the worst sort, poisoners. Creeping around, putting muck in a man's grub . . .' He glared at the Chamberlain. 'Was it you?' He looked at Rincewind and jerked a thumb towards the cowering Chamberlain. 'Was it him? Because if it was he's going to get done to him what I did to the mad Snake Priests of Start, and this time I'll use both thumbs!' 'No,' said Rincewind. 'It was someone they called Lord Hong. But they all watched him do it.' A little scream erupted from the Lord Chamberlain. He threw himself to the floor and was about to kiss Cohen's foot until he realized that this would have about the same effect as eating the pork. 'Mercy, o celestial being! We are all pawns in the hands of Lord Hong!' 'What's so special about Lord Hong, then?' 'He's . . . a fine man!' the Chamberlain gibbered. 'I won't say a word against Lord Hong! I certainly don't believe it's true that he has spies everywhere! Long life to Lord Hong, that's what I say!' He risked looking up and found the point of Cohen's sword just in front of his eyes. 'Yeah, but right now who're you more frightened of? Me or this Lord Hong?' 'Uh . . . Lord Hong!' Cohen raised an eyebrow. 'I'm impressed. Spies everywhere, eh?' He looked around the huge room and his gaze came to rest on a very large vase. He sauntered over to it and raised the lid. 'You OK in there?' 'Er . . . yes?' said a voice from the depths of the vase. 'Got everythin' you want? Spare notebook? Potty?' 'Er . . . yes?' 'Would you like, oh, let's say about sixty gallons of boiling water?' 'Er . . . no?' 'Would you rather die than betray Lord Hong?' 'Er . . . can I have a moment to think about it, please?' 'No problem. It takes a long time to heat the water in any case. As you were, then.' He replaced the lid. 'One Big Mother?' he said. 'That's One Big River, Ghenghiz,' said Mr Saveloy. The guard rumbled into life. 'Just you watch this vase and if it moves again you do to it what I once did to the Green Necromancer of the Night, all right?' 'Don't know what that was you did, lord,' said the soldier. Cohen told him. One Big River beamed. From inside the jar came the noise of someone trying not to be sick. Cohen strolled back to the throne. 'So tell me a bit more about Lord Hong, then,' he said. 'He's the Grand Vizier,' said the Chamberlain. Cohen and Rincewind looked at one another. 'That's right. And everyone knows,' said Rincewind, 'that Grand Viziers are always—' '—complete and utter bastards,' said Cohen. 'Dunno why. Give 'em a turban with a point in the middle and their moral wossname just gets eaten away. I always kill 'em soon as I meet 'em. Saves time later on.' 'I thought there was something fishy about him as soon as I saw him,' said Rincewind. 'Look, Cohen—' 'That's Emperor Cohen to you,' said Truckle. 'I've never trusted wizards, mister. Never trusted any man in a dress.' 'Rincewind's all right—' said Cohen. 'Thank you!' said Rincewind. '—but a bloody useless wizard.' 'I just happened to risk my neck to save you, thank you so very much,' said Rincewind. 'Look, some friends of mine are in the prison block. Could you . . . Emperor?' 'Sort of,' said Cohen. 'Temp'ry,' said Truckle. 'Technically,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Does that mean you can get my friends somewhere safe? I think Lord Hong has murdered the old Emperor and wants them to take the blame. I'm rust hoping he won't believe they'll be hiding in the cells.' 'Why in the cells?' said Cohen. 'Because if I had the chance to get away from Lord Hong's cells I would,' said Rincewind, fervently. 'No-one in their right minds'd go back inside if they thought they had a chance to get away.' 'OK,' said Cohen. 'Boy Willie, One Big Mother, go and round up some of your mates and bring those people here.' 'Here?' said Rincewind. 'I wanted them to be somewhere safe!' 'Well, we're here,' said Cohen. 'We can protect 'em.' 'Who's going to protect you?' Cohen ignored this. 'Lord Chamberlain,' he said, 'I don't 'spect Lord Hong'll be around but . . . in the court was a guy with a nose like a badger. A fat bugger, he was, with a big pink hat. And a skinny woman with a face like a hatful of pins.' 'That would be Lord Nine Mountains and Lady Two Streams,' said the Lord Chamberlain. 'Er. You are not angry with me, o lord?' 'Gods bless you, no,' said Cohen. 'In fact, mister, I'm so impressed I'm going to give you extra responsibilities.' 'Lord?' 'Food taster, for a start. And now go and fetch them other two. Didn't like the look of them at all.' Nine Mountains and Two Streams were ushered in a few moments later. Their merest glance from Cohen to the untouched food would have passed entirely unnoticed by those who weren't watching for it. Cohen nodded cheerfully at them. 'Eat it,' he said. 'My lord! I had a large breakfast! I am entirely full!' said Nine Mountains. 'That's a pity,' said Cohen. 'One Big Mother, before you go off just see Mr Nine Mountains over there and make some room in him so he can have another breakfast. The same goes for the lady, too, if I don't hear chomping in the next five seconds, A good mouthful of everything, understand? With lots of sauce.' One Big River drew his sword. The two nobles stared fixedly at the glistening mounds. 'Looks good to me,' said Cohen conversationally. 'The way you're looking at it, any one'd think there was something wrong with it.' Nine Mountains gingerly put a piece of pork into his mouth. 'Extremely good,' he said, indistinctly. 'Now swallow,' said Cohen. The mandarin gulped. 'Marvellous,' he said. 'And nnw, if your excellency will excuse me, I—' 'Don't rush off,' said Cohen. 'We don't want you accidentally sticking your fingers down your throat or anything like that, do we?' Nine Mountains hiccuped. Then he hiccuped again. Smoke appeared to be rising from the bottom of his robe. The Horde dived for cover just as the explosion removed an area of floorboards, a circular part of the ceiling and all of Lord Nine Mountains. A black hat with a ruby button on it spun around on the floor for a moment. 'That's just like me and pickled onions,' said Vincent. Lady Two Streams was standing with her eyes shut. 'Not hungry?' said Cohen. She nodded. Cohen leaned back. 'One Big Mother?' 'It's "River", Cohen,' said Mr Saveloy, as the guard lumbered forward. 'Take her with you and put her in one of the dungeons. See that she has plenty to eat, if you know what I mean.' 'Yes, excellency.' 'And Mr Chamberlain here can push off down to the kitchen again and tell the chef he's going to share what we eat this time, and he's gonna eat it first, all right?' 'Yes indeed, excellency.' 'Call this living?' Caleb burst out, as the Lord Chamberlain scuttled away. 'This is being Emperor, is it? Can't even trust the food? We'll probably be murdered in our beds!' 'Can't see you being murdered in your bed,' said Truckle. 'Yeah, 'cos you're never in it,' said Cohen. He walked over to the big jar and gave it a kick. 'You getting all this?' 'Yessir,' said the jar. There was some laughter. But it had an edge of nervousness. Mr Saveloy realized that the Horde weren't used to this. If a true barbarian wanted to kill someone during a meal, he'd invite him in with all his henchmen, sit them down, get them drunk and sleepy and then summon his own men from hiding places to massacre them instantly in a straight-forward, no-nonsense and honourable manner. It was completely fair. The 'get them drunk and butcher the lot of them' stratagem was the oldest trick in the book, or would have been if barbarians bothered with books. Anyone falling for it would be doing the world a favour by being slaughtered over the pudding. But at least you could trust the food. Barbarians didn't poison food. You never knew when you might be short of a mouthful yourself. 'Excuse me, your excellency,' said Six Beneficent Winds, who had been hovering, 'I think Lord Truckle is right. Er. I know a little history. The correct method of succession is to wade to the throne through seas of blood. That is what Lord Hong is planning to do.' 'You say? Seas of blood, right?' 'Or over a mountain of skulls. That's an option, too.' 'But . . . but . . . I thought the Imperial crown was handed down from father to son,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Well, yes,' said Six Beneficent Winds. 'I suppose that could happen in theory.' 'You said once we were at the top of the pyramid every one'd do what we said,' said Cohen to Mr Saveloy. Truckle looked from one to the other. 'You two planned this?' he said accusingly. 'This is what it's all been about, isn't it? All that learnin' to be civilized? And right at the start you just said it was going to be a really big theft! Eh? I thought we were just going to nick a load of stuff and push off! Loot and pillage, that's the way—' 'Oh, loot and pillage, loot and pillage, I've had it up to here with loot and pillage!' said Mr Saveloy. 'Is that all you can think of, looting and pillaging?' 'Well, there used to be ravishing, too,' said Vincent wistfully. 'I hate to tell you, but they've got a point, Teach,' said Cohen. 'Fightin' and lootin' . . . that's what we do. I ain't happy with all this bowing and scraping business. I ain't sure if I was cut out for civilization.' Mr Saveloy rolled his eyes. 'Even you, Cohen? You're all so . . . dim-witted!' he snapped. 'I don't know why I bother! I mean, look at you! You know what you are? You're legends!' The Horde stepped back. No-one had ever seen Teach lose his temper before. 'From legendum, which means "something written down",' said Mr Saveloy. 'Books, you know. Reading and writing. Which incidentally is as alien to you as the Lost City of Ee—' Truckle's hand went up, a little nervously. 'Actually, I once discovered the Lost City of—' 'Shut up! I'm saying . . . What was I saying? . . . yes . . . you don't read, do you? You never learned to read? Then you've wasted half your life. You could have been accumulating pearls of wisdom instead of rather shoddy gems. It's just as well people read about you and don't meet you face to face because, gentlemen, you are a big disappointment!' Rincewind watched, fascinated, waiting for Mr Saveloy to have his head cut off. But this didn't seem about to happen. He was possibly too angry to be beheaded. 'What have you actually done, gentlemen? And don't tell me about stolen jewels and demon lords. What have you done that's real?' Truckle raised a hand again. 'Well, I once killed all four of the—' 'Yes, yes, yes,' said Mr Saveloy. 'You killed this and you stole that and you defeated the giant man-eating avocados of somewhere else, but . . . it's all . . . stuff. It's just wallpaper, gentlemen! It never changes anything! No-one cares! Back in Ankh-Morpork I've taught boys who think you are myths. That's what you've achieved. They don't believe you ever really existed. They think someone made you up. You're stories, gentlemen. When you die no-one will know, because they think you're already dead.' He paused for breath, and then continued more slowly. 'But here . . . here you could be real. You could stop playing at your lives. You could take this ancient and somewhat rotten Empire back into the world. At least. . .' he trailed off. 'That's what I'd hoped. I really thought that, perhaps, we might actually achieve something . . .' He sat down. The Horde stood staring at its various feet or wheels. 'Um. Can I say something? The warlords will all be against you,' said Six Beneficent Winds. 'They're out there now, with their armies. Normally they'd fight amongst themselves, but they'll all fight you.' 'They'd rather have some poisoner like this Hong instead of me?' said Cohen. 'But he's a bastard!' 'Yes, but . . . he's their bastard, you see.' 'We could hold out here. This place has got thick walls,' said Vincent. 'The ones not made of paper, that is.' 'Don't think about that,' said Truckle. 'Not a siege. Sieges are messy. I hate eating boots and rats.' 'Whut?' 'He said WE DON'T WANT A SIEGE WHERE WE HAVE TO EAT BOOTS AND RATS, Hamish.' 'Run outa legs, have we?' 'How many soldiers have they got?' said Cohen. 'I think . . . six or seven hundred thousand,' said the taxman. 'Excuse us,' said Cohen, getting off the throne. 'I have to join my Horde.' The Horde went into a huddle. There was an occasional 'Whut?' in the hoarse whispered interchanges. Then Cohen turned round. 'Seas of blood, wasn't it?' he said. 'Er. Yes,' said the taxman. The huddle resumed. After some further exchanges Truckle's head poked up. 'Did you say mountain of skulls?' he said. 'Yes. Yes, I think that's what I said,' said the taxman. He glanced nervously at Rincewind and Mr Saveloy, who shrugged. Whisper, whisper, Whut . . . 'Excuse me?' 'Yes?' 'About how big a mountain? Skulls don't pile up that well.' 'I don't know how big a mountain! A lot of skulls!' 'Just checking.' The Horde seemed to reach a decision. They turned to face the other men. 'We're going to fight,' said Cohen. 'Yes, you should have said all that about skulls and Hood before,' said Truckle. 'We'll show ye whether we'm dead or not!' cackled Hamish. Mr Saveloy shook his head. 'I think you must have misheard. The odds are a hundred thousand to one!' he said. 'I reckon that'll show people we're still alive,' said Caleb. 'Yes, but the whole point of my plan was to show you that you could get to the top of the pyramid without having to fight your way up,' said Mr Saveloy. 'It really is possible in such a stale society. But if you try to fight hundreds of thousands of men you'll die.' And then, to his surprise, he found himself adding: 'Probably.' The Horde grinned at him. 'Big odds don't frighten us,' said Truckle. 'We like big odds,' said Caleb. 'Y'see, Teach, odds of a thousand to one ain't a lot worse than ten to one,' said Cohen. 'The reasons bein'—' He counted on his fingers. 'One, your basic soldier who's fightin' for pay rather than his life ain't goin' to stick his neck out when there's all these other blokes around who might as well do the business, and, two, not very many of 'em are goin' to be able to get near us at one time and they'll all be pushin' and shovin', and . . .' He looked at his fingers with an expression of terminal calculation. '. . . Three . . .' said Mr Saveloy, hypnotized by this logic. '. . . three, right. . . Half the time when they swings their swords they'll hit one of their mates, savin' us a bit of effort. See?' 'But even if that were true it'd only work for a little while,' Mr Saveloy protested. 'Even if you killed as many as two hundred you'd be tired and there'd be fresh troops attacking you.' 'Oh, they'd be tired too,' said Cohen cheerfully. 'Why?' 'Because by then, to get to us, they'd have to be running uphill.' 'That's logic, that is,' said Truckle, approvingly. Cohen slapped the shaken teacher on the back. 'Don't you worry about a thing,' he said. 'If we've got the Empire by your kind of plan, we'll keep it by our kind of plan. You've shown us civilization, so we'll show you barbarism.' He walked a few steps and then turned, an evil glint in his eye. 'Barbarism? Hah! When we kills people we do it there and then, lookin' 'em in the eye, and we'd be happy to buy 'em a drink in the next world, no harm done. I never knew a barbarian who cut up people slowly in little rooms, or tortured women to make 'em look pretty, or put poison in people's grub. Civilization? If that's civilization, you can shove it where the sun don't shine!' 'Whut?' 'He said SHOVE IT WHERE THE SUN DOESN'T SHINE, Hamish.' 'Ah? Bin there.' 'But there is more to civilization than that!' said Mr Saveloy. 'There's . . . music, and literature, and the concept of justice, and the ideals of—' The bamboo doors slid aside. As one man, joints creaking, the Horde turned with weapons raised. The men in the doorway were taller and much more richly dressed than the peasants, and they moved in the manner of people who are used to there being no-one in the way. Ahead of them, though, was a trembling peasant holding a red flag on a stick. He was prodded into the room at swordpoint. 'Red flag?' whispered Cohen. 'It means they want to parley,' said Six Beneficent Winds. 'You know . . . it's like our white flag of surrender,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Never heard of it,' said Cohen. 'It means you mustn't kill anyone until they're ready.' Mr Saveloy tried to shut out the whispers behind him. 'Why don't we just invite them to dinner and massacre them all when they're drunk?' 'You heard the man. There's seven hundred thousand of them.' 'Ah? So it'd have to be something simple with pasta, then.' A couple of the lords strode into the middle of the room. Cohen and Mr Saveloy went to meet them. 'And you, too,' said Cohen, grabbing Rincewind as he tried to back away. 'You're a weaselly man with words in a tight spot, so come on.' Lord Hong regarded them with the expression of a man whose ancestry had bequeathed to him the ability to look down on everything. 'My name is Lord Hong. I am the Emperor's Grand Vizier. I order you to quit these premises immediately and submit to judgement.' Mr Saveloy turned to Cohen. 'Ain't gonna,' said Cohen. Mr Saveloy tried to think. 'Um, how shall I phrase this? Ghenghiz Cohen, leader of the Silver Horde, presents his compliments to Lord Hong but—' 'Tell him he can stuff it,' said Cohen. 'I think, Lord Hong, that perhaps you may have perceived the general flow of opinion here,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Where are the rest of your barbarians, peasant?' he demanded. Rincewind watched Mr Saveloy. The old teacher seemed at a loss for words this time. The wizard wanted to run away. But Cohen had been right. Mad as it sounded, it was probably safer to be near him. Running away would put him closer, sooner or later, to Lord Hong. Who believed that there were other barbarians somewhere . . . 'I tell you this, and this only,' said Lord Hong. 'If you quit the Forbidden City now, your deaths, at least, will be quick. And then your heads and significant parts will be paraded through the cities of the Empire so that people will know of the terrible punishment.' 'Punishment?' said Mr Saveloy. 'For killing the Emperor.' 'We ain't killed no Emperor,' said Cohen. 'I've got nothing against killing Emperors, but we ain't killed one.' 'He was killed in his bed an hour ago,' said Lord Hong. 'Not by us,' said Mr Saveloy. 'By you,' said Rincewind. 'Only it's against the rules to kill the Emperor so you wanted it to look as though the Red Army did it.' Lord Hong looked at him as if seeing him for the first time and less than happy about doing so. 'In the circumstances,' said Lord Hong, 'I doubt that anyone will believe you.' 'What will happen if we yield now?' said Mr Saveloy. 'I like to know these things.' 'Then you will die very slowly in . . . interesting ways.' 'That's the saga of my life,' said Cohen. 'I've always been dying very slowly in interesting ways. What's it to be? Street fighting? House to house? Free for all or what?' 'In the real world,' said one of the other lords, 'we battle. We do not scuffle like barbarians. Our armies will meet on the plain before the city.' 'Before the city what?' 'He means in front of the city, Cohen.' 'Ah. Civilized talk again. When?' 'Dawn tomorrow!' 'OK,' said Cohen. 'It'll give us an appetite for our breakfast. Anything else we can do for you?' 'How big is your army, barbarian?' 'You would not believe how big,' said Cohen, which was probably true. 'We have overrun countries. We have wiped whole cities off the map. Where my army passes, nothing grows.' 'That's true, at least,' said Mr Saveloy. 'We have not heard of you!' said the warlord. 'Yeah,' said Cohen. 'That's how good we are.' 'There is one other thing about his army, actually,' said someone. They all turned to Rincewind, who'd been almost as surprised as they were to hear his voice. But a train of thought had just reached the terminus . . . 'Yes?' 'You may have been wondering why you have only seen the . . . generals,' Rincewind went on, slowly, as if working it out as he went along. 'That is because, you see, the men themselves are . . . invisible. Er. Yes. Ghosts, in fact. Everyone knows this, don't they?' Cohen gaped at him in astonishment. 'Blood-sucking ghosts, as a matter of fact,' said Rincewind. 'After all, everyone knows that's what you get beyond the Wall, don't they?' Lord Hong sneered. But the warlords stared at Rincewind with the expressions of people who strongly suspected that the people beyond the Wall were flesh and blood but who also relied on millions of people not believing that this was so. 'Ridiculous! You are not invisible blood-sucking ghosts,' said one of them. Cohen opened his mouth so that the diamond teeth glinted. ' 'S right,' he said. 'Fact is . . . we're the visible sort.' 'Hah! A pathetic attempt!' said Lord Hong. 'Ghosts or no ghosts, we will beat you!' 'Well, that went better than I expected,' Mr Saveloy remarked as the warlords strode out. 'Was that an attempt at a little bit of psychological warfare there, Mr Rincewind?' 'Is that what it was? I know about that kind of stuff,' said Cohen. 'It's where you bang your shield all night before the fight so's the enemy can't get any sleep and you sing, "We're gonna cut yer tankers off," and stuff like that.' 'Similar,' said Mr Saveloy, diplomatically. 'But it failed to work, I'm afraid. Lord Hong and his generals are rather too sophisticated. It's a great shame you couldn't try it on the common soldiers.' There was a faint squeak of rabbit behind them. They turned, and looked at the somewhat under-age cadre of the Red Army that was being ushered in. Butterfly was with them. She even gave Rincewind a very faint smile. Rincewind had always relied on running away. But sometimes, perhaps, you had to stand and fight if only because there was nowhere left to run. But he was no good at all with weapons. At least, the normal sort. 'Um,' he said, 'if we leave the palace now, we'll be killed, right?' 'I doubt it,' said Mr Saveloy. 'It's become a matter of the Art of War now. Someone like Hong would probably slit our throats, but now war is declared things have to be done according to custom.' Rincewind took a deep breath. 'It's a million-to-one chance,' he said, 'but it might just work . . .'   The Four Horsemen whose Ride presages the end of the world are known to be Death, War, Famine and Pestilence. But even less significant events have their own Horsemen. For example, the Four Horsemen of the Common Cold are Sniffles, Chesty, Nostril and Lack of Tissues; the Four Horsemen whose appearance foreshadows any public holiday are Storm, Gales, Sleet and Contra-flow. Among the armies encamped in the broad alluvial plain around Hunghung, the invisible horsemen known as Misinformation, Rumour and Gossip saddled up . . . A large army encamped has all the tedious problems of a city without any of the advantages. Its watchfires and picket lines are, after a while, open to local civilians, especially if they have anything to sell and even more so if they are women whose virtue has a certain commercial element and even, sometimes, if they appear to be selling food which is a break from the monotonous army diet. The food currently on sale was certainly such a break. 'Pork balls! Pork balls! Get them while they're . . .' There was a pause as the vendor mentally tried out ways of ending the sentence, and gave up. 'Pork balls! Onna stick! How about you, shogun, you look like -Here, aren't you the—?' 'Shutupshutupshutup!' Rincewind pulled D. M. H. Dibhala into the shadows by a tent. The trader looked at the anguished face framed between a eunuch outfit and a big straw hat. 'It's the Wizard, isn't it? How are—?' 'You know how you seriously wanted to become very rich in international trade?' Rincewind said. 'Yes? Can we start?' 'Soon. Soon. But there's something you must do. You know this rumour about the army of invisible vampire ghosts that's heading this way?' D. M. H. Dibhala's eyes swivelled nervously. But it was part of his stock in trade never to appear to be ignorant of anything except, perhaps, how to give correct change. 'Yes?' he said. 'The one about there being millions of them?' said Rincewind. 'And very hungry on account of not having eaten on the way? And made specially fierce by the Great Wizard?' 'Um . . . yes?' 'Well, it's not true.' 'It's not?' 'You don't believe me? After all, I ought to know.' 'Good point.' 'And we don't want people to panic, do we?' 'Very bad for business, panic,' said D. M. H., nodding uncomfortably. 'So make sure you tell people there's no truth in this rumour, will you? Set their minds at rest.' 'Good idea. Er. These invisible vampire ghosts . . . Do they carry money of any sort?' 'No. Because they don't exist.' 'Ah, yes. I forgot.' 'And there are not 2,300,009 of them,' said Rincewind. He was rather proud of this little detail. 'Not 2,300,009 of them . . .' said D. M. H., a little glassy-eyed. 'Absolutely not. There are not 2,300,009 of them, no matter what anyone says. Nor has the Great Wizard made them twice as big as normal. Good man. Now I'd better be off—' Rincewind hurried away. The trader stood in thought for a while. It stole over him that he'd probably sold enough things for now, and he might as well go home and spend a quiet night in a barrel in the root cellar with a sack over his head. His route led him through quite a large part of the camp. He made sure that soldiers he met knew there was no truth in the rumour, even though this invariably meant that, first of all, he had to tell them what the rumour actually was.   A toy rabbit squeaked nervously. 'And I'm afraid of the big inwisible wampire ghosts!' sobbed Favourite Pearl. The soldiers around this particular campfire tried to comfort her but, unfortunately, there was no-one to comfort them. 'An' I heard they alweady et some men!' One or two soldiers looked over their shoulders. There was nothing to be seen in the darkness. This wasn't, however, a reassuring sign. The Red Army moved obliquely from campfire to campfire. Rincewind had been very specific. He'd spent all his adult life - at least, those parts of it where he wasn't being chased by things with more legs than teeth - in Unseen University, and he felt he knew what he was talking about here. Don't tell people anything, he said. Don't tell them. You didn't get to survive as a wizard in UU by believing what people told you. You believed what you were not told. Don't tell them. Ask them. Ask them if it's true. You can beg them to tell you it's not true. Or you can even tell them you've been told to tell them it's not true, and that is the best of all. Because Rincewind knew very well that when the four rather small and nasty Horsemen of Panic ride out there is a good job done by Misinformation, Rumour and Gossip, but they are as nothing compared to the fourth horseman, whose name is Denial. After an hour Rincewind felt quite unnecessary. There were conversations breaking out everywhere, particularly in those areas on the edge of the camps, where the night stretched away so big and dark and, so very obviously, empty. 'All right, so how come they're saying there's not 2,300,009 of them, eh? If there's none of them, then why's there a number?' 'Look, there's no such thing as invisible vampire ghosts, all right?' 'Oh yeah? How do you know? Have you ever seen any?' 'Listen, I went and asked the captain and he says he's certain there's no invisible ghosts out there.' 'How can he be certain if he can't see them?' 'He says there's no such things as invisible vampire ghosts at all.' 'Oh? How come he's saying that all of a sudden? My grandfather told me there's millions of them outside the—' 'Hold on . . . What's that out there . . . ?' 'What?' 'Could've sworn I heard something . . .' 'I can't see anything.' 'Oh, no!' Things must have filtered through to High Command because, getting on towards midnight, trumpets were sounded around the camps and a special proclamation was read out. It confirmed the reality of vampire ghosts in general but denied their existence in any specific, here-and-now sense. It was a masterpiece of its type, particularly since it brought the whole subject to the ears of soldiers the Red Army hadn't been able to reach yet. An hour later the situation had reached the point of criticality and Rincewind was hearing things he personally hadn't made up and, on the whole, would much rather not hear. He'd chat with a couple of soldiers and say: 'I'm sure there's no huge hungry army of vampire ghosts' and get told, 'No, there's seven old men.' 'Just seven old men?' 'I heard they're very old,' said a soldier. 'Like, too old to die. I heard from someone at the palace that they can walk through walls and make themselves invisible.' 'Oh, come on,' said Rincewind. 'Seven old men fighting this whole army?' 'Makes you think, eh? Corporal Toshi says the Great Wizard is helping them. Stands to reason. I wouldn't be fighting a whole army if I didn't have a lot of magic on my side.' 'Er. Anyone know what the Great Wizard looks like?' said Rincewind. 'They say he's taller than a house and got three heads.' Rincewind nodded encouragingly. 'I heard,' said a soldier, 'that the Red Army is going to fight on their side, too.' 'So what? Corporal Toshi says they're just a bunch of kids.' 'No, I heard . . . the real Red Army . . . you know . . .' 'The Red Army ain't gonna side with barbarian invaders! Anyway, there's no such thing as the Red Army. That's just a myth.' 'Like the invisible vampire ghosts,' said Rincewind, giving the clockwork of anxiety another little turn. 'Er . . . yeah.' He left them arguing. No-one was deserting. Running off into a night full of non-specific terrors was worse than staying in camp. But that was all to the good, he decided. It meant that the really frightened people were staying put and seeking reassurance from their comrades. And there was nothing like someone repeating 'I'm sure there's no vampire wizards' and going to the latrine four times an hour to put backbone into a platoon. Rincewind crept back towards the city, rounded a tent in the shadows, and collided with a horse, which trod heavily on his foot. 'Your wife is a big hippo!' SORRY. Rincewind froze, both hands clutching his aching foot. He knew only one person with a voice like a cemetery in midwinter. He tried to hop backwards, and collided with another horse. RINCEWIND, ISN'T IT? said Death. YES. GOOD EVENING. I DON'T BELIEVE YOU HAVE MET WAR. RINCEWIND, WAR. WAR, RINCEWIND. War touched his helmet in salute. 'Pleasure's all mine,' he said. He indicated the other three riders. 'Like to introduce you to m'sons, Terror and Panic. And m'daughter, Clancy.' The children chorused a 'hello'. Clancy was scowling, looked about seven years old and was wearing a hard hat and a Pony Club badge. I WASN'T EXPECTING TO SEE YOU HERE, RINCEWIND. 'Oh. Good.' Death pulled an hourglass out of his robe, held it up to the moonlight, and sighed. Rincewind craned to see how much sand was left. HOWEVER, I COULD-— 'Don't you make any special arrangement just on my account,' said Rincewind hurriedly. 'I, er . . . I expect you're all here for the battle?' YES. IT PROMISES TO BE EXTREMELY - SHORT. 'Who's going to win?' NOW, YOU KNOW I WOULDN'T TELL YOU THAT, EVEN IF I KNEW. 'Even if you knew?' said Rincewind. 'I thought you were supposed to know everything!' Death held up a finger. Something fluttered down through the night. Rincewind thought it was a moth, although it looked less fluffy and had a strange speckled pattern on its wings. It settled on the extended digit for a moment, and then flew up and away again. ON A NIGHT LIKE THIS, said Death, THE ONLY CERTAIN THING IS UNCERTAINTY. TRITE, I KNOW, BUT TRUE. Somewhere on the horizon, thunder rumbled. 'I'll, er, just be sort of going, then,' said Rincewind. DON'T BE A STRANGER, said Death, as the wizard hurried off. 'Odd person,' said War. WITH HIM HERE, EVEN UNCERTAINTY IS UNCERTAIN. AND I'M NOT SURE EVEN ABOUT THAT. War pulled a large paper-wrapped package out of his saddlebag. 'We've got . . . let's see now . . . Egg and Cress, Chicken Tikka, and Mature Cheese with Crunchy Pickle, I think.' THEY DO SUCH MARVELLOUS THINGS WITH SANDWICHES THESE DAYS. 'Oh . . . and Bacon Surprise.' REALLY? WHAT IS SO SURPRISING ABOUT BACON? 'I don't know. I suppose it comes as something of a shock to the pig.'   Ridcully had been having a long wrestle with himself, and had won. 'We're going to bring him back,' he said. 'It's been four days. And then we can send them back their bloody tube thing. It gives me the willies.' The senior wizards looked at one another. No-one was very keen on a university with a Rincewind component, but the metal dog did give them the willies. No-one had wanted to go near it. They'd piled some tables around it and tried to pretend it wasn't there. 'All right,' said the Dean. 'But Stibbons kept going on about things weighing the same, right? If we send that back, won't it mean Rincewind arrives here going very fast?' 'Mr Stibbons says he's working on the spell,' said Ridcully. 'Or we could pile some mattresses up at one end of the hall or something.' The Bursar raised a hand. 'Yes, Bursar?' said Ridcully encouragingly. 'Ho, landlord, a pint of your finest ale!' said the Bursar. 'Good,' said Ridcully. 'That's settled, then. I've already told Mr Stibbons to start looking . . .' 'On that demonic device?' 'Yes.' Then nothing can possibly go wrong,' said the Dean sourly. 'A trumpet of lobsters, if you would be so good.' 'And the Bursar agrees.'   The warlords had gathered in Lord Hong's chambers. They carefully kept a distance from one another, as befitted enemies who were in the most shaky of alliances. Once the barbarians were dealt with, the battle might still continue. But they wanted assurance on one particular point. 'No!' said Lord Hong. 'Let me make this absolutely clear! There is no invisible army of blood-sucking ghosts, do you understand? The people beyond the Wall are just like us - except vastly inferior in every respect, of course. But totally visible.' One or two of the lords did not look convinced. 'And all this talk about the Red Army?' said one of them. 'The Red Army, Lord Tang, is an undisciplined rabble that shall be put down with resolute force!' 'You know what Red Army the peasants are talking about,' said Lord Tang. 'They say that thousands of years ago it—' 'They say that thousands of years ago a wizard who did not exist took mud and lightning and made soldiers that couldn't die,' said Lord Hong. 'Yes. It's a story, Lord Tang. A story made up by peasants who did not understand what really happened. One Sun Mirror's army just had' - Lord Hong waved a hand vaguely - 'better armour, better discipline. I am not frightened of ghosts and I am certainly not afraid of a legend that probably never existed.' 'Yes, but—' 'Soothsayer!' snapped Lord Hong. The soothsayer, who hadn't been expecting it, gave a start. 'Yes, my lord?' 'How're those entrails coming along?' 'Er - they're about ready, my lord,' said the soothsayer. The soothsayer was rather worried. This must have been the wrong kind of bird, he told himself. About the only thing the entrails were telling him was that if he got out of this alive he, the soothsayer, might be lucky enough to enjoy a nice chicken dinner. But Lord Hong sounded like a man with the most dangerous kind of impatience. 'And what do they tell you?' 'Er - the future is . . . the future is . . .' Chicken entrails had never looked like this. For a moment he thought they were moving. 'Er . . . it is uncertain,' he hazarded. 'Be certain,' said Lord Hong. 'Who will win in the morning?' Shadows flickered across the table. Something was fluttering around the light. It looked like an undistinguished yellow moth, with black patterns on its wings. The soothsayer's precognitive abilities, which were considerably more powerful than he believed, told him: this is not a good time to be a clairvoyant. On the other hand, there was never a good time to be horribly executed, so . . . 'Without a shadow of doubt,' he said, 'the enemy will be most emphatically beaten.' 'How can you be so certain?' said Lord McSweeney. The soothsayer bridled. 'You see this wobbly bit near the kidneys? You want to argue with this green trickly thing? You know all about liver suddenly? All right?' 'So there you are,' said Lord Hong. 'Fate smiles upon us.' 'Even so—' Lord Tang began. 'The men are very—' 'You can tell the men—' Lord Hong began. He stopped. He smiled. 'You can tell the men', he said, 'that there is a huge army of invisible vampire ghosts.' 'What?' 'Yes!' Lord Hong began to stride up and down, snapping his fingers. 'Yes, there is a terrible army of foreign ghosts. And this has so enraged our own ghosts . . . yes, a thousand generations of our ancestors are riding on the wind to repel this barbaric invasion! The ghosts of the Empire are arising! Millions and millions of them! Even our demons are furious at this intrusion! They will descend like a mist of claws and teeth to -Yes, Lord Sung?' The warlords were looking at one another nervously. 'Are you sure, Lord Hong?' Lord Hong's eyes gleamed behind his tiny spectacles. 'Make the necessary proclamations,' he said. 'But only a few hours ago we told the men there were no—' 'Tell them differently!' 'But will they believe that there—' 'They will believe what they are told!' shouted Lord Hong. 'If the enemy thinks his strength lies in deceit, then we will use their deceit against them. Tell the men that behind them will be a billion ghosts of the Empire!' The other warlords tried to avoid his gaze. No-one was actually going to suggest that your average soldier would not be totally happy with ghosts front and rear, especially given the capriciousness of ghosts. 'Good,' said Lord Hong. He looked down. 'Are you still here?' he said. 'Just clearing up my giblets, my lord!' squealed the soothsayer. He picked up the remains of his stricken chicken and ran for it. After all, he told himself as he pelted back home, it's not as though I said whose enemy. Lord Hong was left alone. He realized he was shaking. It was probably fury. But perhaps . . . perhaps things could be turned to his advantage, even so. Barbarians came from outside, and to most people everywhere outside was the same. Yes. The barbarians were a minute detail, easily disposed of, but carefully managed, perhaps, might figure in his overall strategy. He was breathing heavily, too. He walked into his private study and shut the door. He pulled out the key. He opened the box. There was a few minutes' silence, except for the rustle of cloth. Then Lord Hong looked at himself in the mirror. He'd gone to great lengths to achieve this. He had used several agents, none of whom knew the whole plan. But the Ankh-Morpork tailor had been good at his work and the measurements had been followed exactly. From pointy boots to hose to doublet, cloak and hat with a feather in it, Lord Hong knew he was a perfect Ankh-Morpork gentleman. The cloak was lined with silk. The clothes felt uncomfortable and touched him in unfamiliar ways, but those were minor details. This was how a man looked in a society that breathed, that moved, that could go somewhere . . . He'd walk through the city on that first great day and the people would be silent when they saw their natural leader. It never crossed his mind that anyone would say, ' 'Ere, wot a toff! 'Eave 'arf a brick at 'im!'   The ants scurried. The thing that went 'parp' went parp. The wizards stood back. There wasn't much else to do when Hex was working at full speed, except watch the fish and oil the wheels from time to time. There were occasional flashes of octarine from the tubes. Hex was spelling several hundred times a minute. It was as simple as that. It would take a human more than an hour to do an ordinary finding spell. But Hex could do them faster. Over and over again. It was netting the whole occult sea in the search for one slippery fish. It achieved, after ninety-three minutes, what would otherwise have taken the faculty several months. 'You see?' said Ponder, his voice shaking a little as he took the line of blocks out of the hopper. 'I said he could do it.' 'Who's he?' said Ridcully. 'Hex.' 'Oh, you mean it.' 'That's what I said, sir . . . er . . . yes.'   Another thing about the Horde, Mr Saveloy had noticed, was their ability to relax. The old men had the catlike ability to do nothing when there was nothing to do. They'd sharpened their swords. They'd had a meal - big lumps of meat for most of them, and some kind of gruel for Mad Hamish, who'd dribbled most of it down his beard - and assured its wholesomeness by dragging the cook in, nailing him to the floor by his apron, and suspending a large axe on a rope that crossed a beam in the roof and was held at the other end by Cohen, while he ate. Then they'd sharpened their swords again, out of habit, and . . . stopped. Occasionally one of them would whistle a snatch of a tune, through what remained of his teeth, or search a bodily crevice for a particularly fretful louse. Mainly, though, they just sat and stared at nothing. After a long while, Caleb said, 'Y'know, I've never been to XXXX. Been everywhere else. Often wondered what it's like.' 'Got shipwrecked there once,' said Vincent. 'Weird place. Lousy with magic. There's beavers with beaks and giant rats with long tails that hops around the place and boxes with one another. Black fellas wanderin' around all over the place. They say they're in a dream. Bright, though. Show 'em a bit of desert with one dead tree in it, next minute they've found a three-course meal with fruits and nuts to follow. Beer's good, too.' 'Sounds like it.' There was another long pause. Then: 'I suppose they've got minstrels here? Be a bit of a bloody waste, wouldn't it, if we all got killed and no-one made up any songs about it.' 'Bound to have loads of minstrels, a city like this.' 'No problem there, then.' 'No.' 'No.' There was another lengthy pause. 'Not that we're going to get killed.' 'Right. I don't intend to start getting killed at my time of life, haha.' Another pause. 'Cohen?' 'Yep?' 'You a religious man at all?' 'Well, I've robbed loads of temples and killed a few mad priests in my time. Don't know if that counts.' 'What do your tribe believe happens to you when you die in battle?' 'Oh, these big fat women in horned helmets take you off to the halls of Io where there is fighting and carousing and quaffing for ever.' Another pause. 'You mean, like, really for ever?' 'S'pose so.' ' 'Cos generally you get fed up even with turkey by about day four.' 'All right, what do your lot believe?' 'I think we go off to Hell in a boat made of toenail dippings. Something like that, anyway.' Another pause. 'But it's not worth talking about 'cos we're not going to get killed today.' 'You said it.' 'Hah, it's not worth dying if all you've got to look toward to is leftover meat and floating around in a boat smelling of your socks, is it, eh?' 'Haha.' Another pause. 'Down in Klatch they believe if you lead a good life you're rewarded by being sent to a paradise with lots of young women.' 'That's your reward, is it?' 'Dunno. Maybe it's their punishment. But I do remember you eat sherbet all day.' 'Hah. When I was a lad we had proper sherbet, in little tube things and a liquorice straw to suck it up with. You don't get that sort of thing today. People're too busy rushin' about.' 'Sounds a lot better than quaffing toenails, though.' Another pause. 'Did you ever believe that business about every enemy you killed becoming your servant in the next world?' 'Dunno.' 'How many you killed?' 'What? Oh. Maybe two, three thousand. Not counting dwarfs and trolls, o' course.' 'Definitely not going to be short of a hairbrush or someone to open doors for you after you're dead, then.' A pause. 'We're definitely not going to die, right?' 'Right.' 'I mean, odds of 100,000 to one . . . hah. The difference is just a lot of zeroes, right?' 'Right.' 'I mean, stout comrades at our side, a strong right arm . . . What more could we want?' Pause. 'A volcano'd be favourite.' Pause. 'We're going to die, aren't we?' 'Yep.' The Horde looked at one another. 'Still, to look on the bright side, I recall I still owe Fafa the dwarf fifty dollars for this sword,' said Boy Willie. 'Looks as though I could end up ahead of the game.' Mr Saveloy put his head in his hands. 'I'm really sorry,' he said. 'Don't worry about it,' said Cohen. The grey light of dawn was just visible in the high windows. 'Look,' said Mr Saveloy, 'you don't have to die. We could . . . well, we could sneak out. Back along the pipe, maybe. Perhaps we could carry Hamish. People are coming and going all the time. I'm sure we could get out of . . . the city . . . without . . . any . . .' His voice faded away. No voice could keep going under the pressure of those stares. Even Hamish, whose gaze was generally focused on some point about eighty years away, was glaring at him. 'Ain't gonna run,' said Hamish. 'It's not running away,' he managed. 'It's a sensible withdrawal. Tactics. Good grief, it's common sense!' 'Ain't gonna run.' 'Look, even barbarians can count! And you've admitted you're going to die!' 'Ain't gonna run.' Cohen leaned forward and patted Mr Saveloy on the hand. 'It's the heroing, see,' he said. 'Who's ever heard of a hero running away? All them kids you was telling us about . . . you know, the ones who think we're stories . . . you reckon they'd believe we ran away? Well, then. No, it's not part of the whole deal, running away. Let someone else do the running.' 'Besides,' said Truckle, 'where'd we get another chance like this? Six against five armies! That's bl — that's fantastic! We're not talking legends here. I reckon we've got a good crack at some mythology as well.' 'But . . . you'll . . . die.' Oh, that's part of it, I'll grant you, that's part of it. But what a way to go, eh?' Mr Saveloy looked at them and realized that they were speaking another language in another world. It was one he had no key to, no map for. You could teach them to wear interesting pants and handle money but something in their soul stayed exactly the same. 'Do teachers go anywhere special when they die?' said Cohen. 'I don't think so,' said Mr Saveloy gloomily. He wondered for a moment whether there really was a great Free Period in the sky. It didn't sound very likely. Probably there would be some marking to do. 'Well, whatever happens, when you're dead, if you ever feel like a good quaff, you're welcome to drop in at any time,' said Cohen. 'It's been fun. That's the important thing. And it's been an education, hasn't it, boys?' There was a general murmur of assent. 'Amazing, all those long words.' 'And learnin' to buy things.' 'And social intercourse, hur, hur . . . sorry.' 'Whut?' 'Shame it didn't work out, but I've never been one for plans,' said Cohen. Mr Saveloy stood up. 'I'm going to join you,' he said grimly. 'What, to fight?' 'Yes.' 'Do you know how to handle a sword?' said Truckle. 'Er. No.' 'Then you've wasted all your life.' Mr Saveloy looked offended at this. 'I expect I'll get the hang of it as we go along,' he said. 'Get the hang of it? It's a sword!' 'Yes, but . . . when you're a teacher, you have to pick things up fast.' Mr Saveloy smiled nervously. 'I once taught practical alchemy for a whole term when Mr Schism was off sick after blowing himself up, and up until then I'd never seen a crucible.' 'Here.' Boy Willie handed the teacher a spare sword. He hefted it. 'Er. I expect there's a manual, or something?' 'Manual? No. You hold the blunt end and poke the other end at people.' 'Ah? Really? Well, that seems quite straightforward. I thought there was rather more to it than that.' 'You sure you want to come with us?' said Cohen. Mr Saveloy looked firm. 'Absolutely. I very much doubt if I'll survive if you lose and . . . well, it seems that you heroes get a better class of Heaven. I must say I rather suspect you get a better class of life, too. And I really don't know where teachers go when they're dead, but I've got a horrible suspicion it'll be full of sports masters.' 'It's just that I don't know if you could really go properly berserk,' said Cohen. 'Have you ever had the red mist come down and woke up to find you'd bitten twenty people to death?' 'I used to be reckoned a pretty ratty man if people made too much noise in class,' said Mr Saveloy. 'And something of a dead shot with a piece of chalk, too.' 'How about you, taxman?' Six Beneficent Winds backed away hurriedly. 'I . . . I think I'm probably more cut out for undermining the system from within,' he said. 'Fair enough.' Cohen looked at the others. 'I've never done this official sort of warring before,' he said. 'How's it supposed to go?' 'I think you just line up in front of one another and then charge,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Seems straightforward enough. All right, let's go.' They strode, or in one case wheeled and in another case moved at Mr Saveloy's gentle trot, down the hall, The taxman trailed after them. 'Mr Saveloy!' he shouted. 'You know what's going to happen! Have you lost your senses?' 'Yes,' said the teacher, 'but I may have found some better ones.' He grinned to himself. The whole of his life, so far, had been complicated. There had been timetables and lists and a whole basket of things he must do and things he shouldn't do, and the life of Mr Saveloy had been this little wriggly thing trying to survive in the middle of it all. But now it had suddenly all become very simple. You held one end and you poked the other into people. A man could live his whole life by a maxim like that. And, afterwards, get a very interesting afterlife— 'Here, you'll need this too,' said Caleb, poking something round at him as they stepped into the grey light. 'It's a shield.' 'Ah. It's to protect myself, yes?' 'If you really need to, bite the edge.' 'Oh, I know about that,' said Mr Saveloy. 'That's when you go berserk, right?' 'Could be, could be,' said Caleb. 'That's why a lot of fighters do it. But personally I do it 'cos it's made of chocolate.' 'Chocolate?' 'You can never get a proper meal in these battles.' And this is me, thought Mr Saveloy, marching down the street with heroes. They are the great fi— 'And when in doubt, take all your clothes off,' said Caleb. 'What for?' 'Sign of a good berserk, taking all your clothes off Frightens the hell out of the enemy. If anyone starts laughing, stab 'em one.' There was a movement among the blankets in the wheelchair. 'Whut?' 'I said, STAB 'EM ONE, Hamish.' Hamish waved an arm that looked like bone with skin on it, and apparently far too thin to hold the axe it was in fact holding. 'That's right! Right in the nadgers!' Mr Saveloy nudged Caleb. 'I ought to be writing this down,' he said. 'Where exactly are the nadgers?' 'Small range of mountains near the Hub.' 'Fascinating.'   The citizens of Hunghung were ranged along the city walls. It was not every day you saw a fight like this. Rincewind elbowed and kicked his way through the people until he reached the cadre, who'd managed to occupy a prime position over the main gate. 'What're you hanging around here for?' he said. 'You could be miles away!' 'We want to see what happens, of course,' said Twoflower, his spectacles gleaming. 'I know what happens! The Horde will be instantly slaughtered!' said Rincewind. 'What did you expect to happen?' 'Ah, but you're forgetting the invisible vampire ghosts,' said Twoflower. Rincewind looked at him. 'What?' 'Their secret army. I heard that we've got some, too. Should be interesting to watch.' 'Twoflower, there are no invisible vampire ghosts.' 'Ah, yes, everyone's going round denying it,' said Lotus Blossom. 'So there must be some truth in it.' 'But I made it up!' 'Ah, you may think you made it up,' said Two-flower. 'But perhaps you are a pawn of Fate.' 'Listen, there's no—' 'Same old Rincewind,' said Twoflower, in a jolly way. 'You always were so pessimistic about everything, but it always worked out all right in the end.' 'There are no ghosts, there are no magic armies,' said Rincewind. 'There's just—' 'When seven men go out to fight an army 100,000 times bigger there's only one way it can end,' said Twoflower. 'Right. I'm glad you see sense.' 'They'll win,' said Twoflower. 'They've got to. Otherwise the world's just not working properly.' 'You look educated,' said Rincewind to Butterfly. 'Explain to him why he's wrong. It's because of a little thing we have in our country. I don't know if you've ever heard of it - it's called mathematics.' The girl smiled at him. 'You don't believe me, do you?' said Rincewind flatly. 'You're just like him. What d'you think this is, homeopathic warfare? The smaller your side the more likely you are to win? Well, it's not like that. I wish it was like that, but it isn't. Nothing is. There are no amazing strokes of luck, no magic solutions, and the good people don't win because they're small and plucky!' He waved his hand irritably at something. 'You always survived,' said Twoflower. 'We had amazing adventures and you always survived.' 'That was just coincidence.' 'You kept on surviving.' 'And you got us safely out of prison,' said Lotus Blossom. 'There were just a lot of coinci— Will you go away!' A butterfly skittered away from his flailing hand. 'Damn things,' he mumbled. And added: 'Well, that's it. I'm off. I can't watch. I've got things to do. Besides, afterwards I think nasty people are going to be looking for me.' And then he realized there were tears in Lotus Blossom's eyes. 'We . . . we thought you would do something,' she said. 'Me? I can't do anything! Especially not magic! I'm famous for it! Don't go around believing that Great Wizards solve all your problems, because there aren't any and they don't and I should know because I'm not one!' He backed away. This is always happening to me! I'm just minding my own business and everything goes wrong and suddenly everyone's relying on me and saying, 'Oh, Rincewind, what are you going to do about it?' Well, what Mrs Rincewind's little boy, if she was a Mrs Rincewind of course, what he's going to do about it is nothing, right? You have to sort it all out yourselves! No mysterious magical armies are going to - Will you stop looking at me like that? I don't see why it's my fault! I've got other things to do! It's not my business!' And then he turned and ran. The crowds didn't take much notice of him. The streets were deserted by Hunghung standards, which meant you could quite often see the cobbles. Rincewind pushed and shoved his way along the alleys nearest the Wall, looking for another gateway with guards too busy to ask questions. There were footsteps behind him. 'Look,' he said, spinning round, 'I told you, you can all—' It was the Luggage. It contrived to look a little ashamed of itself. 'Oh, turned up at last, have we?' said Rincewind savagely. 'What happened to the following-master-everywhere thing?' The Luggage shuffled its feet. From out of an alleyway came a slightly larger and far more ornate version of itself. Its lid was inset with decorative wood and, it seemed to Rincewind, its feet were rather more dainty than the horny-nailed, calloused ones of the Luggage. Besides, the toenails had been painted. 'Oh,' he said. 'Well. Good grief. Fair enough, I suppose. Really? I mean . . . yes. Well. Come on, then.' He reached the end of the alley and turned round. The Luggage was gently bumping the larger chest, urging it to follow him. Rincewind's own sexual experiences were not excessive although he had seen diagrams. He hadn't the faintest idea about how it applied to travel accessories. Did they say things like 'What a chest!' or 'Get a load of the hinges on that one!'? If it came to that, he had no real reason for considering that the Luggage was male. Admittedly it had a homicidal nature, but so had a lot of the women that Rincewind had met, and they had often become a little more homicidal as a result of meeting him. Capacity for violence, Rincewind had heard, was unisexual. He wasn't certain what unisex was, but expected that it was what he normally experienced. There was a small gate ahead. It seemed to be unguarded. Despite his fear he walked through it, and refrained from running. Authority always noticed a running man. The time to start running was around about the 'e' in 'Hey, you!' No-one paid him any attention. The attention of the people along the Wall was all on the armies. 'Look at them,' he said bitterly, to the generality of the universe. 'Stupid. If it was seven against seventy, every one'd know who'd lose. Just because it's seven again 700,000, everyone's not sure. As though suddenly numbers don't mean anything any more. Huh! Why should I do anything? It's not as if I even know the guy all that well. Admittedly he saved my life a couple of times, but that's no reason to die horribly just because he can't count. So you can stop looking at me like that!' The Luggage backed away a little. The other Luggage . . . . . . Rincewind supposed it just looked female. Women had bigger luggage than men, didn't they? Because of the - he moved into unknown territory - extra frills and stuff. It was just one of those things, like the fact that they had smaller handkerchiefs than men even though their noses were generally the same size. The Luggage had always been the Luggage. Rincewind wasn't mentally prepared for there to be more than one. There was the Luggage and . . . the other Luggage. 'Come on, both of you,' he said. 'We're getting out of here. I've done what I can. I just don't care any more. It's nothing to do with me. I don't see why everyone depends on me. I'm not dependable. Even ,' don't depend on me, and I'm me.'   Cohen looked at the horizon. Grey-blue clouds were piling up. 'There's a storm coming,' he said. 'It's a mercy that we won't be alive to get wet, then,' said Boy Willie, cheerfully. 'Funny thing, though. It looks like it's coming from every direction at once.' 'Filthy foreign weather. You can't trust it.' Cohen turned his attention to the armies of the five warlords. There seemed to have been some agreement. They'd arranged themselves around the position that Cohen had taken up. The tactic seemed quite clear. It was simply to advance. The Horde could see the commanders riding up and down in front of their legions. 'How's it supposed to start?' said Cohen, the rising wind whipping at what remained of his hair. 'Does someone blow a whistle or something? Or do we just scream and charge?' 'Commencement is generally by agreement,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Oh.' Cohen looked at the forest of lances and pennants. Hundreds of thousands of men looked like quite a lot of men when you saw them close to. 'I suppose,' he said, slowly, 'that none of you has got some amazing plan you've been keeping quiet about?' 'We thought you had one,' said Truckle. Several riders had now left each army and approached the Horde in a group. They stopped a little more than a spear's throw away, and sat and watched. 'All right, then,' said Cohen. 'I hate to say this, but perhaps we should talk about surrender.' 'No!' said Mr Saveloy, and then stopped in embarrassment at the loudness of his own voice. 'No,' he repeated, a little more quietly. 'You won't live if you surrender. You just won't die immediately.' Cohen scratched his nose. 'What's that flag . . . you know . . . when you want to talk to them without them killing you?' 'It's got to be red,' said Mr Saveloy. 'But look, it's no good you—' 'I don't know, red for surrender, white for funerals . . .' muttered Cohen. 'All right. Anyone got something red?' 'I've got a handkerchief,' said Mr Saveloy, 'but it's white and anyway—' 'Give it here.' The barbarian teacher very reluctantly handed it over. Cohen pulled a small, worn knife from his belt. 'I don't believe this!' said Mr Saveloy. He was nearly in tears. 'Cohen the Barbarian talking surrender with people like that!' 'Influence of civilization,' said Cohen. ' 'S probably made me go soft in the head.' He pulled the knife over his arm, and then clamped the handkerchief over the cut. 'There we are,' he said. 'Soon have a nice red flag.' The Horde nodded approvingly. It was an amazingly symbolic, dramatic and above all stupid gesture, in the finest traditions of barbarian heroing. It didn't seem to be lost on some of the nearer soldiers, either. 'Now,' Cohen went on, 'I reckon you, Teach, and you, Truckle . . . you two come with me and we'll go and talk to these people.' They'll drag you off to their dungeons!' said Mr Saveloy. 'They've got torturers that can keep you alive for years!' 'Whut? Whutzeesay?' 'He said THEY CAN KEEP YOU ALIVE FOR YEARS IN THEIR DUNGEONS, Hamish.' 'Good! Fine by me!' 'Oh, dear,' said Mr Saveloy. He trailed after the other two towards the warlords. Lord Hong raised his visor and stared down his nose at them as they approached. 'Red flag, look,' said Cohen, waving the rather I damp object on the end of his sword. 'Yes,' said Lord Hong. 'We saw that little show. It may impress the common soldiers but it does not impress me, barbarian.' 'Please yourself,' said Cohen. 'We've come to talk about surrender.' Mr Saveloy noticed some of the lesser lords relax a little. Then he thought: a real soldier probably doesn't like this sort of thing. You don't want to go to soldier Heaven or wherever you go and say, I once led an army against seven old men. It wasn't medal-winning material. 'Ah. Of course. So much for bravado,' said Lord Hong. 'Then lay down your arms and you will be escorted back to the palace.' Cohen and Truckle looked at one another. 'Sorry?' said Cohen. 'Lay down your arms.' Lord Hong snorted. 'That means put down your weapons.' Cohen gave him a puzzled look. 'Why should we put down our weapons?' 'Are we not talking about your surrender?' 'Our surrender?' Mr Saveloy's mouth opened in a mad, slow grin. Lord Hong stared at Cohen. 'Hah! You can hardly expect me to believe that you have come to ask us . . .' He leaned from the saddle and glared at them. 'You do, don't you?' he said. 'You mindless little barbarians. Is it true that you can only count up to five?' 'We just thought that it might save people getting hurt,' said Cohen. 'You thought it would save you getting hurt,' said the warlord. 'I daresay a few of yours might get hurt, too.' 'They're peasants,' said the warlord. 'Oh, yes. I was forgetting that,' said Cohen. 'And you're their chief, right? It's like your game of chess, right?' 'I am their lord,' said Lord Hong. 'They will die at my bidding, if necessary.' Cohen gave him a big, dangerous grin. 'When do we start?' he said. 'Return to your . . . band,' said Lord Hong. 'And then I think we shall start . . . shortly.' He glared at Truckle, who was unfolding his bit or paper. The barbarian's lips moved awkwardly and he ran a horny finger across the page. 'Misbegotten . . . wretch, so you are,' he said. 'My word,' said Mr Saveloy, who'd created the look-up table. As the three returned to the Horde Mr Saveloy was aware of a grinding sound. Cohen was wearing several carats off his teeth. ' "Die at my bidding",' he said. 'The bugger doesn't even know what a chief is meant to be, the bastard! Him and his horse.'' Mr Saveloy looked around. There seemed to be some arguing among the warlords. 'You know,' he said, 'they probably will try to take us alive. I used to have a headmaster like him. He liked to make people's lives a misery.' 'You mean they'll be trying not to kill us?' said Truckle. 'Yes.' 'Does that mean we have to try not to kill them?' 'No, I don't think so.' 'Sounds OK to me.' 'What do we do now?' said Mr Saveloy. 'Do we do a battle chant or something?' 'We just wait,' said Cohen. 'There's a lot of waiting in warfare,' said Boy Willie. 'Ah, yes,' said Mr Saveloy. 'I've heard people say that. They say there's long periods of boredom followed by short periods of excitement.' 'Not really,' said Cohen. 'It's more like short periods of waiting followed by long periods of being dead.'   'Blast.'; The fields were crisscrossed with drainage ditches, There seemed to be no straight path anywhere. And the ditches were too wide to jump; they looked shallow enough to wade, but only because eighteen inches of water overlay a suffocating depth of rich thick mud. Mr Saveloy said that the Empire owed its prosperity to the mud of the plains, and right now Rincewind was feeling extremely rich. He was also quite close to the big hill that dominated the city. It really was rounded, with a precision apparently far too accurate for mere natural causes; Saveloy had said that hills like that were drumlins, great piles of topsoil left behind by glaciers. Trees covered the lower slopes of this one, and there was a small building on the top. Cover. Now, that was a good word. It was a big plain and the armies weren't too far away. The hill looked curiously peaceful, as if it belonged to a different world. It was strange that the Agateans, who otherwise seemed to farm absolutely everywhere a water buffalo could stand, had left it alone. Someone was watching him. It was a water buffalo. It would be wrong to say it watched him with interest. It just watched him, because its eyes were open and had to be facing in some direction, and it had randomly chosen one which included Rincewind. Its face held the completely serene expression of a creature that had long ago realized that it was, fundamentally, a tube on legs and had been installed in the universe to, broadly speaking, achieve throughput. At the other end of the string was a man, ankle-deep in the mud of the field. He had a broad straw hat, like every other buffalo holder. He had the basic pyjama suit of the Agatean man-in-the-field. And he had an expression not of idiocy, but of preoccupation. He was looking at Rincewind. As with the buffalo, this was only because his eyes had to be doing something. Despite the pressing dangers, Rincewind found himself overcome by a sudden curiosity. 'Er. Good morning,' he said. The man gave him a nod. The water buffalo made the sound of regurgitating cud. 'Er. Sorry if this is a personal question,' said Rincewind, 'but . . . I can't help wondering . . . why do you stand out in the fields all day with the water buffalo?' The man thought about it. 'Good for soil,' he said eventually. 'But doesn't it waste a lot of time?' said Rincewind. The man gave this due appraisal also. 'What's time to a cow?' he said. Rincewind reversed back on to the highway of reality. 'You see those armies over there?' he said. The buffalo holder concentrated his gaze. 'Yes,' he decided. 'They're fighting for you.' The man did not appear moved by this. The water buffalo burped gently. 'Some want to see you enslaved and some want you to run the country, or at least to let them run the country while telling you it's you doing it really,' said Rincewind. There's going to be a terrible battle. I can't help wondering . . . What do you want?' The buffalo holder absorbed this one for consideration, too. And it seemed to Rincewind that the slowness of the thought process wasn't due to native stupidity, but more to do with the sheer size of the question. He could feel it spreading out so that it incorporated the soil and the grass and the sun and headed on out into the universe. Finally the man said: 'A longer piece of string would be nice.' 'Ah. Really? Well, well. There's a thing,' said Rincewind. 'Talking to you has been an education. Goodbye.' The man watched him go. Beside him, the buffalo relaxed some muscles and contracted others and lifted its tail and made the world, in a very small way, a better place.   Rincewind headed on towards the hill. Random as the animal tracks and occasional plank bridges were, they seemed to head right for it. If Rincewind had been thinking clearly, an activity he last remembered doing around the age of twelve, he might have wondered about that. The trees of the lower slopes were sapient pears, and he didn't even think about that. Their leaves turned to watch him as he scrambled past. What he needed now was a cave or a handy— He paused. 'Oh, no,' he said. 'No, no, no. You don't catch me like that. I'll go into a handy cave and there'll be a little door or some wise old man or something and I'll be dragged back into events. Right. Stay out in the open, that's the style.' He half climbed, half walked to the rounded top of the hill, which rose above the trees like a dome. Now he was closer he could see that it wasn't as smooth as it looked from below. Weather had worn gullies and channels in the soil, and bushes had colonized even, sheltered slope. The building on the top was, to Rincewind's surprise, rusty. It had been made of iron - pointed iron roof, iron walls, iron doorway. There were a few old nests and some debris on the floor, but it was otherwise empty. And not a good place to hide. It'd be the first place anyone would look. There was a cloud wall around the world now. Lightning crackled in its heart, and there was the sound of thunder - not the gentle rumble of summer thunder but the crackackack of splitting sky. And yet the heat wrapped the plain like a blanket. The air felt thick. In a minute it was going to rain cats and food. 'Find somewhere where I won't be noticed,' he muttered. 'Keep head down. Only way. Why should I care? Other people's problem.' Panting in the oppressive heat, he wandered on.   Lord Hong was enraged. Those who knew him could tell, by the way he spoke more slowly and smiled continuously. 'And how do the men know the lightning dragons are angry?' he said. 'It may be mere high spirits.' 'Not with a sky that colour,' said Lord Tang. 'That is not an auspicious colour for a sky. It looks like a bruise. A sky like that is portentous,' 'And what, pray, do you think it portends?' 'It's just generally portentous,' 'I know what's behind this,' Lord Hong snarled. 'You're too frightened to fight seven old men, is that it?' 'The men say they're the legendary Seven Indestructible Sages,' said Lord Fang. He tried to smile. 'You know how superstitious they are . . .' 'What Seven Sages?' said Lord Hong. 'I am extremely familiar with the history of the world and there are no legendary Seven Indestructible Sages.' 'Er . . . not yet,' said Lord Fang. 'Uh. But . . . a day like this . . . Perhaps legends have to start somewhere . . .' 'They're barbarians! Oh, gods! Seven men! Can I believe we're afraid of seven men?' 'It feels wrong,' said Lord McSweeney. He added, quickly, 'That's what the men say.' 'You have made the proclamation about our celestial army of ghosts? All of you?' The warlords tried to avoid his gaze. 'Er . . . yes,' said Lord Fang. 'That must have improved morale.' 'Uh. Not . . . entirely . . .' 'What do you mean, man?' 'Uh. Many men have deserted. Uh. They've been saying that foreign ghosts were bad enough, but . . .' 'But what?' 'They are soldiers, Lord Hong,' said Lord Tang sharply. 'They all have people they do not want to meet. Don't you?' Just for a second, there was the suggestion of a twitch on Lord Hong's cheek. It was only for a second, but those who saw it took note. Lord Hong's renowned glaze had shown a crack. 'What would you do, Lord Tang? Let these insolent barbarians go?' 'Of course not. But . . . you don't need an army against seven men. Seven ancient old men. The peasants say . . . they say . . .' Lord Hong's voice was slightly higher. 'Come on, man who talks to peasants. I'm sure you're going to tell us what they say about these foolish and foolhardy old men?' 'Well, that's it, you see. They say, if they're so foolish and foolhardy . . . how did they manage to become so old?' 'Luck!' It was the wrong word. Even Lord Hong realized it. He'd never believed in luck. He'd always taken pains, usually those of other people, to fill life with certainties. But he knew that others believed in luck. It was a foible he'd always been happy to make use of. And now it was turning and stinging him on the hand. 'There is nothing in the Art of War to tell us how five armies attack seven old men,' said Lord Tang. 'Ghosts or no ghosts. And this, Lord Hong, is because no-one ever thought such a thing would be done.' 'If you feel so frightened I'll ride out against them with my mere 250,000 men,' he said. 'I am not frightened,' said Lord Tang. 'I am ashamed.' 'Each man armed with two swords,' Lord Hong went on, ignoring him. 'And I shall see how lucky these . . . sages . . . are. Because, my lords, I will only have to be lucky once. They will have to be lucky a quarter of a million times.' He lowered his visor. 'How lucky do you feel, my lords?' The other four warlords avoided one another's gaze. Lord Hong noticed their resigned silence. 'Very well, then,' he said. 'Let the gongs be sounded and the fire-crackers lit - to ensure good luck, of course.'   There were a large number of ranks in the armies of the Empire, and many of them were untranslatable. Three Pink Pig and Five White Fang were, loosely speaking, privates, and not just because they were pale, vulnerable and inclined to curl up and hide when danger threatened. In fact they were so private as to be downright secretive. Even the army's mules ranked higher than them, because good mules were hard to come by whereas men like Pink Pig and White Fang are found in every army, somewhere where a latrine is in need of cleaning. They were so insignificant that they had, privately, decided that it would be a waste of an invisible foreign blood-sucking ghost's valuable time to attack them. They felt it only fair, after it had come all this way, to give it the chance of fiendishly killing someone superior. They had therefore hospitably decamped just before dawn and were now hiding out. Of course, if victory threatened they could always recamp. It was unlikely that they'd be missed in all the excitement, and both men were somewhat expert at turning up on battlefields in time to join in the victory celebrations. They lay in the long grass, watching the armies manoeuvre. From this height, it looked like an impressive war. The army on one side was so small as to be invisible. Of course, if you accepted the very strong denials of last night, it was so invisible as to be invisible. It was also their elevation which meant that they were the first to notice the ring around the sky. It was just above the thunderous wall on the horizon. Where stray shafts of sunlight hit it, it glowed golden. Elsewhere it was merely yellow. But it was continuous, and thin as a thread. 'Funny-looking cloud,' said White Fang. 'Yeah,' said Pink Pig. 'So what?' It was while they were thus engaged, and sharing a small bottle of rice wine liberated by Pink Pig from an unsuspecting comrade the previous evening, that they heard a groan. 'Oooooohhhhhh . . .' Their drinks froze in their throats. 'Did you hear that?' said Pink Pig. 'You mean the—' 'Ooooohhhh . . .' 'That's it!' They turned, very slowly. Something had pulled itself out of a gully behind them. It was humanoid, more or less. Red mud dripped from it. Strange noises issued from its mouth. 'Oooooohhhhshit!' Pink Pig grabbed White Fang's arm. 'It's an invisible blood-sucking ghost!' 'But I can see it!' Pink Pig squinted. 'It's the Red Army! They've come up outa the earth like everybody says!' White Fang, who had several brain cells more than Pink Pig, and more importantly was only on his second cup of wine, took a closer look. 'It could be just one ordinary man with mud all over him,' he suggested. He raised his voice. 'Hey, you!' The figure turned and tried to run. Pink Pig nudged his friend. 'Is he one of ours?' 'Looking like that?' 'Let's get him!' 'Why?' ' 'Cos he's running away!' 'Let him run.' 'Maybe he's got money. Anyway, what's he running away for?'   Rincewind slid down into another gully. Of all the luck! Soldiers should be where they were expected to be. What had happened to duty and honour and stuff like that? The gully had dead grass and moss in the bottom. He stood still and listened to the voices of the two men. The air was stifling. It was as if the oncoming storm was pushing all the hot air in front of it, turning the plain into a pressure cooker. And then the ground creaked, and sagged suddenly. The faces of the absentee soldiers appeared over the edge of the gully. There was another creak and the ground sank another inch or two. Rincewind didn't dare breathe in, in case the extra weight of air made him too heavy. And it was very clear that the least activity, such as jumping, was going to make things worse . . . Very carefully, he looked down. The dead moss had given way. He seemed to be standing on a baulk of timber buried in the ground, but dirt pouring around it suggested that there was a hole beneath. It was going to give way any second n— Rincewind threw himself forward. The ground fell away underneath so that, instead of standing on a slowly breaking piece of timber, he was hanging with his arms over what felt like another concealed log and, by the feel of it, one which was as riddled with rot as the first one. This one, possibly out of a desire to conform, began to sag. And then jolted to a stop. The faces of the soldiers vanished backwards as the sides of the gully began to slide. Dry earth and small stones slid past Rincewind. He could feel them rattle on his boots and drop away. He felt, as an expert in these things, that he was over a depth. From his point of view, it was also a height. The log began to shift again. This left Rincewind with, as he saw it, two options. He could let go and plunge to an uncertain fate in the darkness, or he could hang on until the timber gave way, and then plunge to an uncertain fate in the darkness. And then, to his delight, there was a third option. The toe of his boot touched something, a root, a protruding rock. It didn't matter. It took some of his weight. It took at least enough to put him in precarious equilibrium - not exactly safe, not exactly falling. Of course, it was only a temporary measure, but Rincewind had always considered that life was no more than a series of temporary measures strung together. A pale yellow butterfly with interesting patterns on its wings fluttered along the gully and settled on the only bit of colour available, which turned out to be Rincewind's hat. The wood sagged slightly. 'Push off!' said Rincewind, trying not to use heavy language. 'Go away.'' The butterfly flattened its wings and sunned itself. Rincewind pursed his lips and tried to blow up his own nostrils. Startled, the creature skittered into the air . . . 'Hah!' said Rincewind. . . . and, in response to its instincts in the face of a threat, moved its wings like this and this. The bushes shivered. And around the sky, the towering clouds curved into unusual patterns. Another cloud formed. It was about the size of an angry grey balloon. And it started to rain. Not rain generally, but specifically. Specifically on about a square foot of ground which contained Rincewind; specifically, on his hat. A very small bolt of lightning stung Rincewind on the nose. 'Ah! So we have' - Pink Pig, appearing around the curve of the gully, hesitated a bit before continuing slightly more thoughtfully - 'a head in a hole . . . with a very small thunderstorm above it.' And then it dawned on him that, storm or no storm, nothing was preventing him from cutting off significant parts. The only significant part available was a head, but that was fine by him. At which point, Rincewind's hat having absorbed enough moisture, the ancient wood gave way under the strain and plunged him to an uncertain fate in the darkness.   It was utterly dark. There had been a painful confusion of tunnels and sliding dirt. Rincewind assumed - or the small part of him that was not sobbing with fear assumed - that the earth had caved in after him. Cave. That was a significant word. He was in a cave. Reaching out carefully, in case he felt something, he felt for something to feef. There was a straight edge. It led to three more straight edges, going off at right angles. So . . . this meant slab. The darkness was still a choking velvet shroud. Slab meant that there was some other entrance, some proper entrance. Even now guards were probably hurrying towards him. Perhaps the Luggage was hurrying towards them. It had been acting very funny lately, that was for certain. He was probably better off without it. Probably. He patted his pockets, saying the mantra that even non-wizards invoke in order to find matches; that is. he said, 'Matches, matches, matches,' madly to himself, under his breath. He found some, and scratched one desperately with his thumbnail. 'Ow!' The smoky yellow flame lit nothing except Rince-wind's hand and part of his sleeve. He ventured a few steps before it burned his fingers, and when it died it left a blue afterglow in the darkness of his vision. There were no sounds of vengeful feet. There were no sounds at all. In theory there should be the drip of water, but the air felt quite dry. He tried another match, and this time raised it as high as he could and peered ahead. A seven-foot warrior smiled at him.   Cohen looked up again. 'It's going to piss down in a minute,' he said. 'Will you look at that sky?' There were hints of purple and red in the mass, and the occasional momentary glow of lightning somewhere inside the clouds. 'Teach?' 'Yes?' 'You know everything. Why's that cloud looking like that?' Mr Saveloy looked where Cohen was pointing. There was a yellowish cloud low on the horizon. Right around the horizon - one thin streak, as though the sun was trying to find a way through. 'Could be the lining?' said Boy Willie. 'What lining?' 'Every cloud's supposed to have a silver one.' 'Yeah, but that's more like gold.' 'Well, gold's cheaper here.' 'Is it me,' said Mr Saveloy, 'or is it getting wider?' Caleb was staring at the enemy lines. There's been a lot of blokes galloping about on their little horses,' he said. 'I hope they get a move on. We don't want to be here all day.' 'I vote we rushes 'em while they're not expectin' it,' said Hamish. 'Hold on . . . hold on . . .' said Truckle. There was the sound of many gongs being beaten, and the crackling of fireworks. 'Looks like the bas— the lovechilds are moving.' 'Thank goodness for that,' said Cohen. He stood up and stubbed out his cigarette. Mr Saveloy trembled with excitement. 'Do we sing a song for the gods before we go into battle?' he said. 'You can if you like,' said Cohen. 'Well, do we say any heathen chants or prayers?' 'Shouldn't think so,' said Cohen. He glanced up at the horizon-girdling band. It was unsettling him far more than the approaching enemy. It was wider now, but slightly paler. For just a moment he found himself wishing that there was one god or goddess somewhere whose temple he hadn't violated, robbed or burned down. 'Don't we bang our swords on our shields and utter defiance?' said the teacher hopefully. 'Too late for that, really,' said Cohen. Mr Saveloy looked so crestfallen at the lack of pagan splendour that the ancient barbarian was, to his own surprise, moved to add: 'But feel free, if that's what you want.' The Horde drew their various swords. In Hamish's case, another axe was produced from under his rug. 'See you in Heaven!' said Mr Saveloy excitedly. 'Yeah, right,' said Caleb, eyeing the line of approaching soldiers. 'Where there's feasting and young ladies and so forth!' 'Yeah, yeah,' said Boy Willie, testing the blade of his sword. 'And carousing and quaffing, I believe!' 'Could be,' said Vincent, trying to ease the tendon-itis in his arm. 'And we'll do that thing, you know, where you throw the axes and cut ladies' plaits off!' 'Yeah, if you like.' 'But—' 'Whut?' 'The actual feasting . . . Do they do anything vegetarian?' And the advancing army screamed and charged. They rushed at the Horde, almost as fast as the clouds boiling in from every direction.   Rincewind's brain unfroze slowly, in the darkness and silence of the hill. It's a statue, he told himself. That's all it is. No problem there. Not even a particularly good one. Just a big statue of a man in armour. Look, there's a couple more, you can just see them at the edge of the light . . . 'Ow!' He dropped the match and sucked his fingers. What he needed now was a wall. Walls had exits. True, they could also be entrances, but now there did not seem much danger of any guards hurrying in here. The air had an ancient smell, with a hint of fox and a slight trace of thunderstorms, but above all it tasted unused. He crept forward, testing each step with his foot. Then there was light. A small blue spark jumped off Rincewind's finger.   Cohen grabbed at his beard. It was straining away from his face. Mr Saveloy's fringe of hair stood out from his head and sparked at the ends. 'Static discharges!' he shouted, above the crackle. Ahead of them the spears of the enemy glowed at the tips. The charge faltered. There was the occasional shriek as sparks leaped from man to man. Cohen looked up. 'Oh, my,' he said. 'Will you look at that!'   Tiny sparks flickered around Rincewind as he eased himself over the unseen floor. The word tomb had presented itself for his consideration, and one thing Rincewind knew about large tombs was that their builders were often jolly inventive in the traps and spikes department. They also put in things like paintings and statues, possibly so that the dead had something to look at if they became bored. Rincewind's hand touched stone, and he moved carefully sideways. Now and again his feet touched something yielding and soft. He very much hoped it was mud. And then, right at hand height, was a lever. It stuck out fully two feet. Now . . . it could be a trap. But traps were generally, well, traps. The first you knew about them was when your head was rolling along the corridor several yards away. And trap builders tended to be straightforwardly homicidal and seldom required victims to actively participate in their own destruction. Rincewind pulled it.   The yellow cloud sailed overhead in its millions, moving much faster on the wind they'd created than the slow beating of their wings would suggest. Behind them came the storm. Mr Saveloy blinked. 'Butterflies?' Both sides stopped as the creatures sleeted past. It was even possible to hear the rustle of their wings. 'All right, Teach,' said Cohen. 'Explain this one.' 'It, it, it could be a natural phenomenon,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Er . . . Monarch butterflies, for example, have been known to . . . er . . . to tell you the truth, I don't know . . .' The cloud swarmed on towards the hill. 'Not some kind of sign?' said Cohen. 'There must have been some temple I didn't rob.' 'The trouble with signs and portents,' said Boy Willie, 'is you never know who they're for. This'n could be a nice one for Hong and his pals.' 'Then I'm nicking it,' said Cohen. 'You can't steal a message from the gods!' said Mr Saveloy. 'Can you see it nailed down anywhere? No? Sure? Right. So it's mine.' He raised his sword as the stragglers fluttered past overhead. 'The gods smile on us!' he bellowed. 'Hahaha!' 'Hahaha?' whispered Mr Saveloy. 'Just to worry 'em,' said Cohen. He glanced at the other members of the Horde. Each man nodded, very slightly. 'All right, lads,' he said quietly. 'This is it.' 'Er . . . what do I do?' said Mr Saveloy. Think of something to make yourself good and angry. That gets the ole blood boiling. Imagine the enemy is everything you hate.' 'Head teachers,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Good.' 'Sports masters!' shouted Mr Saveloy. 'Yep.' 'Boys who chew gum!' screamed Mr Saveloy. 'Look at him, steam coming out of his ears already,' said Cohen. 'First one to the afterlife gets 'em in. Charge!'   The yellow cloud thronged up the slopes of the hill and then, carried on the uprising wind, rose. Above it the storm rose too, piling up and up and spreading into a shape something like a hammer— It struck. Lightning hit the iron pagoda so hard that it exploded into white-hot fragments.   It is confusing for an entire army to be attacked by seven old men. No book of tactics is up to the task of offering advice. There is a tendency towards baffle-nent. The soldiers backed away in the face of the rush and then, driven by currents in the great mass of men, closed in behind. A solid circle of shields surrounded the Horde. It buckled and swayed under the press of men, and also under the blows rained on it by Mr Saveloy's sword. 'Come on, fight!' he shouted. 'Smoke pipes at me, would you? You! That boy there! Answer me back, eh! Take that!' Cohen looked at Caleb, who shrugged. He'd seen berserk rages in his time, but nothing quite so incandescent as Mr Saveloy. The circle broke as a couple of men tried to dart backwards and cannoned into the rank behind and then rebounded on to the swords of the Horde. One of Hamish's wheels caught a soldier a vicious blow on the knee and, as he bent over, one of Hamish's axes met him coming the other way. It wasn't speed. The Horde couldn't move very fast. But it was economy. Mr Saveloy had remarked on it. They were simply always where they wanted to be, which was never where someone's sword was. They let everyone else do the running around. A soldier would risk a slash in the direction of Truckle and find Cohen rising in front of him, grinning and swinging, or Boy Willie giving him a nod of acknowledgement and a stab. Occasionally one of the Horde took time to parry a blow aimed at Mr Saveloy, who was far too excited to defend himself. 'Pull back, you bloody fools!' Lord Hong appeared behind the throng, his horse rearing, his helmet visor flung back. The soldiers tried to obey. Finally, the press eased a little, and then opened. The Horde were left in a widening ring of shields. There was something like silence, broken only by the endless thunder and the crackle of lightning on the hill. And then, pushing their way angrily through the soldiers, came an altogether different breed of warrior. They were taller, and heavier armoured, with splendid helmets and moustaches that looked like a declaration of war in themselves. One of them glared at Cohen. 'Orrrrr! Itiyorshu! Yutimishu!' 'Wassat?' said Cohen. 'He's a samurai,' said Mr Saveloy, wiping his forehead. 'The warrior caste. I think that's their formal challenge. Er. Would you like me to fight him?' One samurai glared at Cohen. He pulled a scrap of silk out of his armour and tossed it into the air. His other hand grabbed the hilt of his long, thin sword . . . There was hardly even a hiss, but three shreds of silk tumbled gently to the ground. 'Get back, Teach,' said Cohen slowly. 'I reckon this one's mine. Got another hanky? Thanks.' The samurai looked at Cohen's sword. It was long, heavy and had so many notches it could have been used as a saw. 'You'll never do it,' he said. 'With that sword? Never.' Cohen blew his nose noisily. 'You say?' he said. 'Watch this.' The handkerchief soared into the air. Cohen gripped his sword . . . He'd beheaded three upward-staring samurai before the handkerchief started to tumble. Other members of the Horde, who tended to think in much the same way as their leader, had accounted for half a dozen more. 'Got the idea from Caleb,' said Cohen. 'And the message is: either fight or muck about, it's up to you.' 'Have you no honour?' screamed Lord Hong. 'Are you just a ruffian?' 'I'm a barbarian,' shouted Cohen. 'And the honour I got, see, is mine. I didn't steal it off'f someone else.' 'I had wanted to take you alive,' said Lord Hong. 'However, I see no reason to stick to this policy.' He drew his sword. 'Back, you scum!' he screamed. 'Right back! Let the bombardiers come forward!' He looked back at Cohen. His face was flushed. His spectacles were askew. Lord Hong had lost his temper. And, as is always the case when a dam bursts, it engulfs whole countries. The soldiers pulled back. The Horde were, once again, in a widening circle. 'What's a bombardier?' said Boy Willie. 'Er, I believe it must mean people who fire some sort of projectile,' said Mr Saveloy. 'The word derives from—' 'Oh, archers,' said Boy Willie, and spat. 'Whut?' 'He said THEY'RE GOING TO USE ARCHERS, Hamish!' 'Heheh, we never let archers stop us at the Battle of Koom Valley!' cackled the antique barbarian. Boy Willie sighed. 'That was between dwarfs and trolls, Hamish,' he said. 'And you ain't either. So whose side were you on?' 'Whut?' 'I said WHOSE SIDE WERE YOU ON?' 'I were on the side of being paid money to fight,' said Hamish. 'Best side there is.'   Rincewind lay on the floor with his hands over his ears. The sound of thunder filled the underground chamber. Blue and purple light shone so brightly that he could see it through his eyelids. Finally the cacophony subsided. There were still the sounds of the storm outside, but the light had faded to a blue-white glow, and the sound into a steady humming. Rincewind risked rolling over and opening his eyes. Hanging from rusted chains in the roof were big glass globes. Each one was the size of a man, and lightning crackled and sizzled inside, stabbing at the glass, seeking a way out. At one time there must have been many more. But dozens of the big globes had fallen down over the years, and lay in pieces on the floor. There were still scores up there, swaying gently on their chains as the imprisoned thunderstorms fought for their freedom. The air felt greasy. Sparks crawled over the floor and crackled on each angle. Rincewind stood up. His beard streamed out as a mass of individual hairs. The lightning globes shone down on a round lake of, to judge from the ripples, pure quicksilver. In the centre was a low, five-sided island. As Rincewind stared, a boat came drifting gently around to his side of the pool, making little slupslup noises as it moved through the mercury. It was not a lot larger than a rowing boat and, lying on its tiny deck, was a figure in armour. Or possibly just the armour. If it was just empty armour, then it was lying in the arms-folded position of a suit of armour that has passed away. Rincewind sidled around the silver lake until he reached a slab of what looked very much like gold, set in the floor in front of a statue. He knew you got inscriptions in tombs, although he was never sure who it was who was supposed to read them. The gods, possibly, although surely they knew everything already? He'd never considered that they'd cluster round and say things like, 'Gosh, "Dearly Beloved" was he? I never knew that.' This one simply said, in pictograms: One Sun Mirror. There wasn't anything about mighty conquests. There was no list of his tremendous achievements. There was nothing down there about wisdom or being the father of his people. There was no explanation. Whoever knows this name, it seemed to say, knows everything. And there was no admitting the possibility that anyone getting this far would not have heard the name of One Sun Mirror. The statue looked like porcelain. It had been painted quite realistically. One Sun Mirror seemed an ordinary sort of man. You would not have pointed him out in a crowd as Emperor material. But this man, with his little round hat and little round shield and little round men on little round ponies, had glued together a thousand warring factions into one great Empire, often using their own blood to do it. Rincewind looked closer. Of course, it was just an impression, but around the set of the mouth and the look of the eyes there was an expression he'd last seen on the face of Ghenghiz Cohen. It was the expression of someone who was absolutely and totally unafraid of anything. The little boat headed towards the far side of the lake. One of the globes flickered a little and then faded to red. It winked out. Another followed it. He had to get out. There was something else, though. At the foot of the statue, lying as if they'd just been dropped there, were a helmet, a pair of gauntlets, and two heavy-looking boots. Rincewind picked up the helmet. It didn't look very strong, but it did look quite light. Normally he didn't bother with protective clothing, reasoning that the best defence against threatening danger was to be on another continent, but right now the idea of armour had its attractions. He removed his hat, put the helmet on, pulled down the visor, and then wedged the hat on top of the helmet. There was a flicker in front of his eyes and Rincewind was staring at the back of his own head. It was a grainy picture, and it was in shades of green rather than proper colours, but it was definitely the back of his own head he was looking at. People had told him what it looked like. He raised the visor and blinked. The pool was still in front of him. He lowered the visor. There he was, about fifty feet away, with this helmet on his head. He waved a hand up and down. The figure in the visor waved a hand up and down. He turned around and faced himself. Yep. That was him. OK, he thought. A magic helmet. It lets you see yourself a long way away. Great. You can have fun watching yourself fall into holes you can't see because they're right up close. He turned around again, raised the visor and inspected the gloves. They seemed as light as the helmet but quite clumsy. You could hold a sword, but not much else. He tried one on. Immediately, with a faint sizzling noise, a row of little pictures lit up on the wide cuff. They showed soldiers. Soldiers digging, soldiers fighting, soldiers climbing . . . Ah. So . . . magic armour. Perfectly normal magic armour. It had never been very popular in Ankh-Morpork. Of course, it was light. You could make it as thin as cloth. But it tended to lose its magic without warning. Many an ancient lord's last words had been, 'You can't kill me because I've got magic aaargh.' Rincewind looked at the boots, with suspicious recollection of the trouble there had been with the University's prototype Seven League boots. Footwear which tried to make you take steps twenty-one miles long imposed unfortunate groinal strains; they'd got the things off the student just in time, but he'd still had to wear a special device for several months, and ate standing up. All right, but even old magic armour would be useful now. It wasn't as if it weighed much, and the mud of Hunghung hadn't improved what was left of his own boots. He put his feet into them. He thought: Well, so what is supposed to happen now? He straightened up. And behind him, with the sound of seven thousand flower pots smashing together, the lightning still crackling over them, the Red Army came to attention.   Hex had grown a bit during the night. Adrian Turnip-seed, who had been on duty to feed the mice and rewind the clockwork and clean out the dead ants, had sworn that he'd done nothing else and that no-one had come in. But now, where there had been the big clumsy arrangement of blocks so that the results could be read, was a quill pen in the middle of a network of pulleys and levers. 'Watch,' said Adrian, nervously tapping out a very simple problem. 'It's come up with this after doing all those spells at suppertime . . .' The ants scuttled. The clockwork spun. The springs and levers jerked so sharply that Ponder took a step back. The quill pen wobbled over to an inkwell, dipped, returned to the sheet of paper Adrian had put under the levers, and began to write. 'It blots a bit,' he said, in a helpless tone of voice. 'What's happening?' Ponder had been thinking further about this. The latest conclusions hadn't been comforting. 'Well . . . we know that books containing magic become a little bit . . . sapient . . .' he began. 'And we've made a machine for . . .' 'You mean it's alive?' 'Come on, let's not get all occult about this,' said Ponder, trying to sound jovial. 'We're wizards, after all.' 'Listen, you know that long problem in thaumic fields you wanted me to put in?' 'Yes. Well?' 'It gave me the answer at midnight,' said Adrian, his face pale. 'Good.' 'Yes, good, except that I didn't actually give it the problem until half past one, Ponder.' 'You're telling me you got the answer before you asked the question?' 'Yes!' 'Why did you ask the question, then?' 'I thought about it, and I thought maybe I had to. I mean, it couldn't have known what the answer was going to be if I didn't give it the problem, yes?' 'Good point. Er. You waited ninety minutes, though.' Adrian looked at his pointy boots. 'I. . . was hiding in the privy. Well, Redo from Start could—' 'All right, all right. Go and have something to eat.' 'Are we meddling with things we don't understand, Ponder?' Ponder looked up at the gnomic bulk of the machine. It didn't seem threatening, merely . . . other. He thought: meddle first, understand later. You had to meddle a bit before you had anything to try to understand. And the thing was never, ever, to go back and hide in the Lavatory of Unreason. You have to try to get your mind around the Universe before you can give it a twist. Perhaps we shouldn't have given you a name. We didn't think about that. It was a joke. But we should have remembered that names are important. A thing with a name is a bit more than a thing. 'Off you go, Adrian,' he said firmly. He sat down and carefully typed: Hello. Things whirred. The quill wrote: + + + ?????? + + + Hello + + + Redo From Start + + + Far above, a butterfly - its wings an undistinguished yellow, with black markings - fluttered through an open window. Ponder began the calculations for the transfer between Hunghung and Ankh-Morpork. The butterfly alighted for a moment on the maze of glass pipes. When it rose again, it left behind a very small blob of nectar. Ponder typed carefully, far below. A small but significant ant, one of the scurrying thousands, emerged from a break in the tube and spent a few seconds sucking at the sweet liquid before going back to work. After a while, Hex gave an answer. Apart from one small but significant point, it was entirely correct.   Rincewind turned around. With an echoing chorus of creaks and groans, the Red Army turned around too. And it was red. It was the same colour, Rincewind realized, as the soil. He'd bumped into a few statues in the darkness. He hadn't realized that there were this many. They stretched, rank on rank, into the distant shadows. Experimentally, he turned around. Behind him, there was another chorus of stampings. After a few false starts he found that the only way to end up facing them was to take off the boots, turn, and put the boots on again. He lowered the visor for a moment, and saw himself lowering the visor for a moment. He stuck up an arm. They stuck out their arms. He jumped up and down. They jumped up and down, with a crash that made the globes swing. Lightning sizzled from their boots. He felt a sudden hysterical urge to laugh. He touched his nose. They touched their noses. He made, with terrible glee, the traditional gesture for the dismissal of demons. Seven thousand terracotta middle fingers stabbed towards the ceiling. He tried to calm down. The word his mind had been groping for finally surfaced, and it was golem. There were one or two of them, even in Ankh-Morpork. You were bound to get them in any area where you had wizards or priests of an experimental turn of mind. They were usually just figures made out of clay and animated with some suitable spell or prayer. They pottered about doing simple odd jobs, but they were not very fashionable these days. The problem was not putting them to work but stopping them from working; if you set a golem to digging the garden and then forgot about it, you'd come back to find it'd planted a row of beans 1500 miles long. Rincewind looked down at one of the gloves. He cautiously touched the little picture of a fighting soldier. The sound of seven thousand swords being simultaneously unsheathed was like the tearing of a thick sheet of steel. Seven thousand points were pointed right at Rincewind. He took a step back. So did the army. He was in a place with thousands of artificial soldiers wearing swords. The fact that he appeared to have control of them was no great comfort. He'd theoretically had control of Rincewind for the whole of his life, and look what had happened to him. He looked at the little pictures again. One of them showed a soldier with two heads. When he touched it, the army turned about smartly. Ah. Now to get out of here . . .   The Horde watched the bustle among Lord Hong's men. Objects were being dragged to the front line. 'They don't look like archers to me,' said Boy Willie. 'Those things are Barking Dogs,' said Cohen. 'I should know. Seen 'em before. They're like a barrel full of fireworks, and when the fireworks are lit a big stone comes rushing out of the other end.' 'Why?' 'Well, would you hang around if someone had just lit a firework by your arse?' 'Here, Teach, he said "arse",' complained Truckle. 'Look, on my bit of paper here it says you mustn't say—' 'We've got shields, haven't we?' said Mr Saveloy. 'I'm sure if we keep close together and put the shields over our heads we'll be as right as rain.' 'The stone's about a foot across and going very fast and it's red hot.' 'Not shields, then?' 'No,' said Cohen. 'Truckle, you push Hamish—' 'We won't get fifty yards, Ghenghiz,' said Caleb. 'Better fifty yards now than six feet in a minute, yes?' said Cohen. 'Bravo!' said Mr Saveloy. 'Whut?' Lord Hong watched them. He saw the Horde hang their shields around the wheelchair to form a crude travelling wall, and saw the wheels begin to turn. He raised his sword. 'Fire!' 'Still tamping the charges, o lord!' 'I said fire!' 'Got to prime the Dogs, o lord.!' The bombardiers worked feverishly, spurred on less by terror of Lord Hong than by the onrushing Horde. Mr Saveloy's hair streamed in the wind. He bounded through the dust, waving his sword and screaming. He'd never been so happy in all his life. So this was the secret at the heart of it all: to look death right in the face and charge . . . It made everything so utterly simple. Lord Hong threw down his helmet. 'Fire, you wretched peasants! You scum of the earth! Why must I ask twice! Give me that torch!' He pushed a bombardier aside, crouched down beside a Dog, heaved on it so that the barrel was pointing at the oncoming Cohen, lifted the torch— The earth heaved. The Dog reared and rolled sideways. A round red head, smiling faintly, rose out of the ground. There were screams in the ranks as the soldiers looked down at the moving dirt under their boots, tried to run on a surface that was just shifting soil, and disappeared in the rising cloud of dust. The ground caved in. Then it caved out again as stricken soldiers climbed up one another to escape because, rising gently through the turmoil, was the soil in human shape. The Horde skidded to a halt. 'What're they? Trolls?' said Cohen. Ten of the figures were visible now, industriously digging at the air. Then they stopped. One of them turned its gently smiling head this way and that. A sergeant must have screamed a handful of archers into line, because a few arrows shattered on the terracotta armour, with absolutely no effect. Other red warriors were climbing up behind the former diggers. They collided with them, with a sound of crockery. Then, as one man - or troll, or demon - they drew their swords, turned around, and headed towards Lord Hong's army. A few soldiers tried to fight them simply because there was too great a crowd behind them to run away They died. It wasn't that the red guards were good fighters. They were very mechanical, each one performing the same thrust, parry, slash, regardless of what their opponent was doing. But they were simply unstoppable. If their opponent escaped one of the blows but didn't get out of the way then he was just trodden on - and by the looks of things, the warriors were extremely heavy. And it was the way the things smiled all the time that added to the terror. 'Well, now, there's a thing,' Cohen said, feeling for his tobacco pouch. 'Never seen trolls fight like that,' said Truckle. Rank after rank was walking up out of the hole, stabbing happily at the air. The front row were moving in a cloud of dust and screams. It is hard for a big army to do anything quickly, and divisions trying to move forward to see what the trouble was were getting in the way of fleeing individuals seeking a hole to hide in and permanent civilian status. Gongs were banging and men were trying to shout orders, but no-one knew what the gongs were meant to mean or how the orders should be obeyed, because there didn't seem to be enough time. Cohen finished rolling his cigarette, and struck a match on his chin. 'Right,' he said, to the world in general. 'Let's get that bloody Hong.' The clouds overhead were less fearsome now. There was less lightning. But there were still a lot of them, greeny-black, heavy with rain. 'But this is amazing!' said Mr Saveloy. A few drops hit the ground, leaving wide craters in the dirt. 'Yeah, right,' said Cohen. 'A most strange phenomenon! Warriors rising out of the ground!' The craters joined up. It felt as though the drops were joining up as well. The rain began to pour down. 'Dunno,' said Cohen, watching a ragged platoon flee past. 'Never been here before. Fraps this happens a lot.' 'I mean, it's just like that myth about the man who sowed dragons' teeth and terrible fighting skeletons came up!' 'I don't believe that,' said Caleb, as they jogged after Cohen. 'Why not?' 'If you sow dragons' teeth, you should get dragons. Noot fighting skeletons. What did it say on the packet?' 'I don't know! The myth never said anything about them coming in a packet!' 'Should've said "Comes up Dragons" on the packet.' 'You can't believe myths,' said Cohen. 'I should know. Right . . . there he is . . .' he added, pointing to a distant horseman. The whole plain was in turmoil now. The red warriors were only the start. The alliance of the five warlords was glass fragile in any case, and panicky flight was instantly interpreted as sneak attack. No-one paid any attention to the Horde. They didn't have any coloured pennants or gongs. They weren't traditional enemies. And, besides, the soil was now mud, and the mud flew, and everyone from the waist down was the same colour and this was rising. 'What're we doing, Ghenghiz?' said Mr Saveloy. 'We're heading back for the palace.' 'Why?' ' 'Cos that's where Hong's gone.' 'But there's this astonishing—' 'Look, Teach, I've seen walking trees and spider gods and big green things with teeth,' said Cohen. 'It's no good goin' around saying "astonishing" all the time, ain't that so, Truckle?' 'Right. D'you know, when I went after that Five-Headed Vampire Goat over in Skund they said I shouldn't on account of it being an endangered species? I said, yes, that was down to me. Were they grateful?' 'Huh,' said Caleb. 'Should've thanked you, giving them all those endangered species to worry about. Turn around and go home right now, soldier boy!' A group of soldiers, fighting to get away from the red warriors, skidded in the mud, stared in terror at the Horde, and headed off in a new direction. Truckle stopped for breath, rain streaming off his beard. 'I can't be having with this running, though,' he said. 'Not and push Hamish's wheelchair in all this mud. Let's have a breather.' 'Whut?' 'Stopping for a breather?' said Cohen. 'My gods! I never thought I'd see the day! A hero having a rest? Did Voltan the Indestructible have a bit of a rest?' 'He's having one now. He's dead, Ghenghiz,' said Caleb. Cohen hesitated. 'What, old Voltan?' 'Didn't you know? And the Immortal Jenkins.' 'Jenkins isn't dead, I saw him only last year.' 'But he's dead now. All the heroes are dead, 'cept us. And I ain't too sure about me, too.' Cohen splashed forward and snatched Caleb upright by his shirt. 'What about Hrun? He can't be dead. He's half our age!' 'Last I heard he got a job. Sergeant of the Guard somewhere.' 'Sergeant of the Guard?' said Cohen. 'What, for pay?' 'Yep.' 'But . . . what, like, for pay?' 'He told me he might make Captain next year. He said . . . he said it's a job with a pension.' Cohen released his grip. 'There's not many of us now, Cohen,' said Truckle. Cohen spun around. 'All right, but there's never been many of us! And I ain't dyin'! Not if it means the world's taken over by bastards like Hong, who don't know what a chieftain is. Scum. That's what he called his soldiers. Scum. It's like that bloody civilized game you showed us, Teach!' 'Chess?' 'Right. The prawns are just there to be slaughtered by the other side! While the king just hangs around at the back.' 'Yeah, but the other side's you, Cohen.' 'Right! Right . . . well, yes, that's fine when I'm the enemy. But I don't shove men in front of me to get killed instead of me. And I never use bows and them dog things. When I kill someone it's up close and personal. Armies? Bloody tactics? There's only one way to fight, and that's everyone charging all at once, waving their swords and shouting! Now on your feet and let's get after him!' 'It's been a long morning, Ghenghiz,' said Boy Willie. 'Don't give me that!' 'I could do with the lavatory. It's all this rain.' 'Let's get Hong first.' 'If he's hiding in the privy that's fine by me.' They reached the city gates. They had been shut. Hundreds of people, citizens as well as guards, watched them from the walls. Cohen waved a finger at them. 'Now I ain't gonna say this twice,' he said. 'I'm coming in, OK? It can be the easy way, or it can be the hard way.' Impassive faces looked down at the skinny old man, and up at the plain, where the armies of the warlords fought one another and, in terror, the terracotta warriors. Down. Up. Down. Up. 'Right,' said Cohen. 'Don't say afterwards I didn't warn youse.' He raised his sword and prepared to charge. 'Wait,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Listen . . .' There was shouting behind the walls, and some confused orders, and then more shouting. And then a couple of screams. The gates swung open, pulled by dozens of citizens. Cohen lowered his sword. 'Ah,' he said, 'they've seen reason, have they?' Wheezing a little, the Horde limped through the gates. The crowd watched them in silence. Several guards lay dead. Rather more had removed their helmets and decided to opt for a bright new future in Civvy Street, where you were less likely to get beaten to death by an angry mob. Every face watched Cohen, turning to follow him as flowers follow the sun. He ignored them. 'Crowdie the Strong?' he said to Caleb. 'Dead.' 'Can't be. He was a picture of health when I saw him a coupla months ago. Going on a new quest and everything.' 'Dead.' 'What happened?' 'You know the Terrible Man-eating Sloth of Clup?' 'The one they say guards the giant ruby of the mad snake god?' 'The very same. Well . . . it was.' The crowd parted to let the Horde through. One or two people tried a cheer, but were shushed into silence. It was a silence that Mr Saveloy had only heard before in the most devout of temples.[24] There was a whispering, though, growing out of that watchful silence like bubbles in a pot of water on a hot fire. It went like this. The Red Army. The Red Army. 'How about Organdy Sloggo? Still going strong down in Howondaland, last I heard.' 'Dead. Metal poisoning.' 'How?' 'Three swords through the stomach.' The Red Army! 'Slasher Mungo?' 'Presumed dead in Skund.' 'Presumed?' 'Well, they only found his head.' The Red Army! The Horde approached the inner gates of the Forbidden City. The crowd followed them at a distance. These gates were shut, too. A couple of heavy-set guards were standing in front of them. They wore the expressions of men who'd been told to guard the gates and were going to guard the gates come what may. The military depends on people who will guard gates or bridges or passes come what may and there are often heroic poems written in their honour, invariably posthumously. 'Gosbar the Wake?' 'Died in bed, I heard.' 'Not old Gosbar!' 'Everyone's got to sleep some time.' 'That's not the only thing they've got to do, mister,' said Boy Willie. 'I really need the wossname.' 'Well, there's the Wall.' 'Not with everyone watching! That ain't . . . civilized.' Cohen strode up to the guards. 'I'm not mucking about,' he said. 'OK? Would you rather die than betray your Emperor?' The guards stared ahead. 'Right, fair enough.' Cohen drew his sword. A thought seemed to strike him. 'Nurker?' he said. 'Big Nurker? Tough as old boots, him.' 'Fishbone,' said Caleb. 'Nurker? He once killed six trolls with a—' 'Choked on a fishbone in his gruel. I thought you knew. Sorry.' Cohen stared at him. And then at his sword. And then at the guards. For a moment there was silence, broken only by the sound of the rain. 'Y'know, lads,' he said, in a voice so suddenly full of weariness that Mr Saveloy felt a pit opening up, here, at the moment of triumph, 'I was goin' to chop your heads off. But . . . what's the point, eh? I mean, when you get right down to it, why bother? What sort of difference does it make?' The guards still stared straight ahead. But their eyes were widening. Mr Saveloy turned. 'You'll end up dead anyway, sooner or later,' Cohen went on. 'Well, that's about it. You live your life best way you can and then it don't actually matter, 'cos you're dead—' 'Er. Cohen?' said Mr Saveloy. 'I mean, look at me. Been chopping heads off my whole life and what've I got to show for it?' 'Cohen . . . ' The guards weren't just staring now. Their faces were dragging themselves into very creditable grimaces of fear. 'Cohen?' 'Yeah, what?' 'I think you should look round, Cohen.' Cohen turned. Half a dozen red warriors were advancing up the street. The crowd had pulled right back and were watching in silent terror. Then a voice shouted: 'Extended Duration To The Red Army!' Cries rose up here and there in the crowd. A young woman raised her hand in a clenched fist. 'Advance Necessarily With The People While Retaining Due Regard For Traditions!' Others joined her. 'Deserved Correction To Enemies!' 'I've lost Mr Bunny!' The red giants clonked to a halt. 'Look at them!' said Mr Saveloy. 'They're not trolls! They move like some kind of engine! Doesn't that interest you?' 'No,' said Cohen, vacantly. 'Abstract thinking is not a major aspect of the barbarian mental process. Now then, where was I?' He sighed. 'Oh, yes. You two . . . you'd rather die than betray your Emperor, would you? The two men were rigid with fear now. Cohen raised his sword. Mr Saveloy took a deep breath, grabbed Cohen's sword arm and shouted: 'Then open the gates and let him through!' There was a moment of utter silence. Mr Saveloy nudged Cohen. 'Go on,' he hissed. 'Act like an Emperor!' 'What . . . you mean giggle, have people tortured, that sort of thing? Blow that!' 'No! Act like an Emperor ought to act!' Cohen glared at Saveloy. Then he turned to the guards. 'Well done,' he said. 'Your loyalty does you . . . wossname . . . credit. Keep on like this and I can see it's promotion for both of you. Now let us all go inside or I will have my flowerpot men chop off your feet so you'll have to kneel in the gutter while you're looking for your head.' The men looked at one another, threw down their swords and tried to kowtow. 'And you can bloody well get up, too,' said Cohen, in a slightly nicer tone of voice. 'Mr Saveloy?' 'Yes?' 'I'm Emperor now, am I?' 'The . . . earth soldiers seem to be on our side. The people think you've won. We're all alive. I'd say we've won, yes.' 'If I'm Emperor, I can tell everyone what to do, right?' 'Oh, indeed.' 'Properly. You know. Scrolls and stuff. Buggers in uniform blowing trumpets and saying. "This is what he wants you to do." ' 'Ah. You want to make a proclamation.' 'Yeah. No more of this bloody kowtowing. It makes me squirm. No kowtowing by anyone to anyone, all right? If anyone sees me they can salute, or maybe give me some money. But none of this banging your head on the ground stuff. It gives me the willies. Now, dress that up in proper writing.' 'Right away. And—' 'Hang on, haven't finished yet,' Cohen bit his lip in unaccustomed cogitation, as the red warriors lurched to a stop. 'Yeah. You can add that I'm letting all prisoners go free, unless they've done something really bad. Like attempted poisoning, for a start. You can work out the details. All torturers to have their heads cut off. And every, peasant can have a free pig, something like that. I'll leave you to put in all the proper curly bits about "by order" and stuff.' Cohen looked down at the guards. 'Get up, I said. I swear, the next bastard that kisses the ground in front of me is gonna get kicked in the antique chicken coops. OK? Now open the gates.' The crowd cheered. As the Horde stepped inside the Forbidden City they followed, in a sort of cross between a revolutionary charge and a respectful walk. The red warriors stood outside. One of them raised a terracotta foot, which groaned a little, and walked towards the Wall until it bumped into it. The warrior staggered drunkenly for a while and then managed to get within a yard or two of the Wall without colliding with it. It raised a finger and wrote, shakily, in red dust that turned to a kind of paint on the wet plaster:   HELP HELP ITS ME IM OUT HERE ON THEE PLAIN HELP I CAN'T GET THIS BLODY ARMER OFF.   The crowd surged along behind Cohen, shouting and singing. If he'd had a surfboard, he could have ridden on it. The rain drummed heavily on the roof and poured into the courtyards. 'Why're they all so excited?' he said. 'They think you're going to sack the palace,' said Mr Saveloy. 'They've heard about barbarians, you see. They want some of it. Anyway, they like the idea about the pig.' 'Hey, you!' shouted Cohen to a boy struggling past under the weight of a huge vase. 'Get your thieving paws off my stuff! That's valuable, that is! It's a . . a . . .' 'It's S'ang Dynasty,' said Mr Saveloy. 'That's right,' said the vase. 'That's a S'ang Dynasty, that is! Put it back! And you lot back there—' He turned and waved his sword. 'Get those shoes off! You're scratching the floor! Look at the state of it already!' 'You never bothered about the floor yesterday,' Truckle grumbled. ' 'Tweren't my floor then.' 'Yes, it was,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Not properly,' said Cohen. 'Rite of conquest, that's the thing. Blood. People understand blood. You just walk in and take over and no-one takes it seriously. But seas of blood . . . Everyone understands that.' 'Mountains of skulls,' said Truckle approvingly. 'Look at history,' said Cohen. 'Whenever you - Hey, you, the man with the hat, that's my . . .' 'Inlaid mahogany Shibo Yangcong-san table,' murmured Mr Saveloy. '—so put it back, d'you hear? Yes, whenever you comes across a king where everyone says, "Oo, he was a good king all right," you can bet your sandals he was a great big bearded bastard who broke heads a lot and laughed about it. Hey? But some king who just passed decent little laws and read books and tried to look intelligent . . . "Oh," they say, "oh, he was all right, a bit wet, not what I'd call a proper king." That's people for you.' Mr Saveloy sighed. Cohen grinned at him and slapped him on the back so hard he stumbled into two women trying to carry off a bronze statue of Ly Tin Wheedle. 'Can't quite face it, Teach, can you? Can't get your mind round it? Don't worry about it. Basically, you ain't a barbarian. Put the damn statue back, missus, or you'll feel the flat of my sword, so you will!' 'But I thought we could do it without anyone getting hurt. By using our brains.' 'Can't. History don't work like that. Blood first, then brains.' 'Mountains of skulls,' said Truckle. 'There's got to be a better way than fighting,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Yep. Lots of 'em. Only none of 'em work. Caleb, take those . . . those . . .' '—fine Bhong jade miniatures—' muttered Mr Saveloy. '—take them off that feller. He's got one under his hat.' Another set of carved doors was swung open. This room was already crowded, but the people shuffled backwards as the doors parted and tried to look keen while avoiding catching Cohen's eye. As they pulled away they left Six Beneficent Winds standing all alone. The court had become very good at this manoeuvre. 'Mountains of skulls,' said Truckle, not a man to let go in a hurry. 'Er. We saw the Red Army rise out of the ground, er, just as the legend foretold. Er. Truly you are the preincarnation of One Sun Mirror.' The little taxman had the decency to look embarrassed. As speeches went it was on a dramatic level with the one that traditionally began, 'As you know, your father - the king—' Besides, he'd never believed in legends up to now - not even the one about the peasant who every year filed a scrupulously honest tax return. 'Yeah, right,' said Cohen. He strode to the throne and stuck his sword in the floor, where it vibrated. 'Some of you are going to get your heads cut off for your own good,' he said. 'But I haven't decided who yet. And someone show Boy Willie where the privy is.' 'No need,' said Boy Willie. 'Not after them big red statues turned up behind me so sudden.' 'Mountains of—' Truckle began. 'Dunno about mountains,' said Cohen. 'And where,' said Six Beneficent Winds tremulously, 'is the Great Wizard?' 'Great Wizard,' said Cohen. 'Yes, the Great Wizard who summoned the Red Army from the earth,' said the taxman. 'Don't know anything about him,' said Cohen. The crowd staggered forward as more people piled into the room. 'They're coming!' A terracotta warrior clomped its way into the room, its face still wearing a very faint smile. It stopped, rocking a little, while water dripped off it. People had crouched back in terror. Except the Horde, Mr Saveloy noticed. Faced with unknown yet terrible dangers, the Horde were either angry or puzzled. Then he cheered up. They weren't better, just different. They're all right facing huge terrible creatures, he told himself, but ask them to go down the street and buy a bag of rice and they go all to pieces . . . 'What's my move now, Teach?' Cohen whispered. 'Well, you're Emperor,' said Mr Saveloy. 'I think you talk to it.' 'OK.' Cohen stood up and nodded cheerfully at the terracotta giant. ' 'Morning,' he said. 'Nice bit of work out there. You and the rest of your lads can have the day off to plant geraniums in yourselves or whatever you do. Er. You got a Number One giant I ought to speak to?' The terracotta warrior creaked as it raised one finger. Then it pressed two fingers against one forearm, then raised a finger again. Everyone in the crowd started talking at once. The giant tugged one vestigial ear with two fingers. 'What can this mean?' said Six Beneficent Winds. 'I find this a little hard to credit,' said Mr Saveloy, 'but it is an ancient method of communication used in the land of blood-sucking vampire ghosts.' 'You can understand it?' 'Oh, yes. I think so. You have to try to guess the word or phrase. It's trying to tell us . . . er . . . one word, two syllables. First syllable sounds like . . .' The giant cupped one hand and made circular, handle-turning motions with the other alongside it. 'Turning,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Winding? Reeling? Revolve? Grind? Grind? Chop? Mince—' The giant tapped its nose hurriedly and did a very heavy, noisy dance, bits of terracotta armour clanking. 'Sounds like mince,' said Mr Saveloy. 'First syllable sounds like mince.' 'Er . . .' A ragged figure pushed its way through the crowd. It wore glasses, one lens of which was cracked. 'Er,' it said, 'I've got an idea about that . . .'   Lord Fang and some of his more trusted warriors had clustered on the side of the hills. A good general always knows when to leave the battlefield, and as far as Lord Fang was concerned, it was when he saw the enemy coming towards him. The men were shaken. They hadn't tried to face the Red Army. Those who had were dead. 'We . . . regroup,' panted Lord Fang. 'And then we'll wait until nightfall and - What's that?' There was a rhythmic noise coming from the bushes further up the slope, where sliding earth had left another bush-filled ravine. 'Sounds like a carpenter, m'lord,' said one of the soldiers. 'Up here? In the middle of a war? Go and see what it is!' The man scrambled away. After a while there was a pause in the sawing noise. Then it started again. Lord Fang had been trying to work out a fresh battle plan according to the Nine Useful Principles. He threw down his map. 'Why is that still going on? Where is Captain Nong?' 'Hasn't come back, m'lord.' 'Then go and see what has happened to him!' Lord Fang tried to remember if the great military sage had ever had anything to say about fighting giant invulnerable statues. He— The sawing paused. Then it was replaced by the sound of hammering. Lord Fang looked around. 'Can I have an order obeyed around here?' he bellowed. He picked up his sword and scrambled up the muddy slope. The bushes parted ahead of him. There was a clearing. There was a rushing shape, on hundreds of little le— There was a snap.   The rain was coming down so fast that the drops were having to queue. The red earth was hundreds of feet deep in places. It produced two or three crops a year. It was rich. It was fecund. It was, when wet, extremely sticky. The surviving armies had squelched from the field of battle, as red from head to toe as the terracotta men. Not counting those merely trodden on, the Red Army had not in fact killed very many people. Terror had done most of their work. Rather more soldiers had been killed in the brief inter-army battles and, in the scramble to escape, by their own sides.[25] The terracotta army had the field to itself. It was celebrating victory in various ways. Many guards were walking around in circles, wading through the clinging mud as if it was so much dirty air. A number were digging a trench, the sides of which were washing in on them in the thundering rain. A few were trying to climb walls that weren't there. Several, possibly as a result of the exertion following centuries of zero maintenance, had spontaneously exploded in a shower of blue sparks, the red-hot clay shrapnel being a major factor in the opposition's death count. And all the time the rain fell, a solid curtain of water. It didn't look natural. It was as though the sea had decided to reclaim the land by air drop. Rincewind shut his eyes. Mud covered the armour. He couldn't make out the pictures any more, and that was something of a relief because he was pretty certain he was messing things up. You could see what any warrior was seeing - at least, presumably you could, if you knew what some of the odder pictures actually did and how to press them in the right order. Rincewind didn't, and in any case whoever had made the magic armour hadn't assumed it would be used in knee-deep mud during a vertical river. Every now and again it sizzled. One of the boots was getting hot. It had started out so well! But there had been what he was coming to think of as the Rincewind factor. Probably some other wizard would have marched the army out and wouldn't have been rained on and even now would be parading through the streets of Hung-hung while people threw flowers and said, 'My word, there's a Great Wizard and no mistake.' Some other wizard wouldn't have pressed the wrong picture and started the things digging. He realized he was wallowing in self-pity. Rather more pertinently, he was also wallowing in mud. And he was sinking. Trying to pull a foot out was no use - it didn't work, and the other foot only went deeper, and got hotter. Lightning struck the ground nearby. He heard it sizzle, saw the steam, felt the tingle of electricity and tasted the taste of burning tin. Another bolt hit a warrior. Its torso exploded, raining a sticky black tar. The legs kept going for a few steps, and then stopped. Water poured past him, thick and red now that the river Hung was overflowing. And the mud continued to suck on his feet like a hollow tooth. Something swirled past on the muddy water. It looked like a scrap of paper. Rincewind hesitated, then reached out awkwardly with a gloved hand and scooped it up. It was, as he'd expected, a butterfly. 'Thank you very much,' he said, bitterly. The water drained through his fingers. He half closed his hand and then sighed and, as gently as he could, manoeuvred the creature on to a finger. Its wings hung damply. He shielded it with his other hand and blew on the wings a few times. 'Go on, push off.' The butterfly turned. Its multi-faceted eyes glinted green for a moment and then it flapped its wings experimentally. It stopped raining. It started to snow, but only where Rincewind was. 'Oh, yes,' said Rincewind. 'Yes indeed. Oh, thank you so very much.' Life was, he had heard, like a bird which flies out of the darkness and across a crowded hall and then through another window into the endless night again. In Rincewind's case it had managed to do something incontinent in his dinner. The snow stopped. The clouds pulled back from the dome of the sky with astonishing speed, letting in hot sunlight which almost immediately made the mud steam. 'There you are! We've been looking everywhere!' Rincewind tried to turn, but the mud made that impossible. There was a wooden thump, as of a plank being laid down on wet ooze. 'Snow on his head? In bright sunshine? I said to myself, that's him all right.' There was the thump of another plank. A small avalanche slid off the helmet and slid down Rincewind's neck. Another thump, and a plank squelched into the mud beside him. 'It's me, Twoflower. Are you all right, old friend?' 'I think my foot is being cooked, but apart from that I'm as happy as anything.' 'I knew it would be you doing the charades,' said Twoflower, sticking his hands under the wizard's shoulders and hauling. 'You got the "Wind" syllable?' said Rincewind. 'That was very hard to do, by remote control.' 'Oh, none of us got that,' said Twoflower, 'but when it did "ohshitohshitohshit I'm going to die" everyone got that first go. Very inventive. Er. You seem to be stuck.' 'I think it's the magic boots.' 'Can't you wiggle them off? This mud dries like - well, like terracotta in the sun. Someone can come along and dig them out afterwards.' Rincewind tried to move his feet. There was some sub-mud bubblings and he felt his feet come free, with a muffled slurping noise. Finally, with considerable effort, he was sitting on the plank. 'Sorry about the warriors,' he said. 'It looked so simple when I started out, and then I got confused with all the pictures and it was impossible to stop some of them doing things—' 'But it was a famous victory!' said Twoflower. 'Was it?' 'Mr Cohen's been made Emperor!' 'He has?' 'Well, not made, no-one made him, he just came along and took it. And everyone says he's the pre-incarnation of the first Emperor and he says if you want to be the Great Wizard that's fine by him.' 'Sorry? You lost me there . . .' 'You led the Red Army, didn't you? You made them rise up in the Empire's hour of need?' 'Well, I wouldn't exactly say that I—' 'So the Emperor wants to reward you. Isn't that nice?' 'How do you mean, reward?' said Rincewind, with deep suspicion. 'Not sure, really. Actually, what he said was . . . ' Twoflower's eyes glazed as he tried to recall. 'He said, "You go and find Rincewind and say he might be a bit of a pillock but at least he's straight so he can be Chief Wizard of the Empire or whatever he wants to call it, 'cos I don't trust you foreign . . ." ' Twoflower squinted upwards as he tried to remember Cohen's precise words ' ". . . house of auspicious aspect . . . scent of pine trees . . . buggers." ' The words trickled into Rincewind's ear, slid up into his brain, and started to bang on the walls. 'Chief Wizard?' he said. 'That's what he said. Well . . . actually what he said was he wanted you to be a blob of swallow's vomit, but that was because he used the low sad tone rather than the high questioning one. He definitely meant wizard.' 'Of the whole Empire?' Rincewind stood up. 'Something very bad is about to happen,' he said flatly. The sky was quite blue now. A few citizens had ventured on to the battlefield to tend the wounded and retrieve the dead. Terracotta warriors stood at various angles, motionless as rocks. 'Any minute now,' said Rincewind. 'Shouldn't we get back?' 'Probably a meteorite strike,' said Rincewind. Twoflower looked up at the peaceful sky. 'You know me,' said Rincewind. 'Just when I'm getting a grip on something Fate comes along and jumps on my fingers.' 'I don't see any meteorites,' said Twoflower. 'How long do we wait?' 'It'll be something else, then,' said Rincewind. 'Someone will come leaping out, or there'll be an earthquake, or something.' 'If you insist,' said Twoflower, politely. 'Um. Do you want to wait for something horrible here or would you like to go back to the palace and have a bath and change your clothes and then see what happens?' Rincewind conceded that he might as well await a dreadful fate in comfort. 'There's going to be a feast,' said Twoflower. 'The Emperor says he's going to teach everyone how to quaff.' They made their way, plank by plank, back towards the city. 'You know, I swear you never told me that you were married.' 'I'm sure I did.' 'I was, er, I was sorry to hear that your wife, er—' 'Things happen in war. I have two dutiful daughters.' Rincewind opened his mouth to say something but Twoflower's bright, brittle smile froze the words in his throat. They worked without speaking, picking up the planks behind them and extending the walkway in front. 'Looking on the bright side,' said Twoflower, breaking the silence, 'the Emperor said you could start your own University, if you wanted.' 'No! No! Someone hit me with an iron bar, please!' 'He said he's well in favour of education provided no-one makes him have one. He's been making proclamations like mad. The eunuchs have threatened to go on strike.' Rincewind's plank dropped on to the mud. 'What is it that eunuchs do,' he said, 'that they stop doing when they go on strike?' 'Serve food, make the beds, things like that.' 'Oh.' 'They run the Forbidden City, really. But the Emperor talked them round to his point of view.' 'Really?' 'He said if they didn't get cracking right now he'd cut off everything else. Um, I think the ground's firm enough now.' His own University. That'd make him . . . Arch-chancellor. Rincewind the Archchancellor pictured himself visiting Unseen University. He could have a hat with a really big point. He'd be able to be rude to everyone. He'd— He tried to stop himself from thinking like that. It'd all go wrong. 'Of course,' said Twoflower, 'it might be that the bad things have already happened to you. Have you considered that? Perhaps you're due something nice?' 'Don't give me any of that karma stuff,' said Rincewind. 'The wheel of fortune has lost a few spokes where I'm concerned.' 'It's worth considering, though,' said Twoflower. 'What, that the rest of my life will be peaceful and enjoyable? Sorry. No. You wait. When my back's turned and - bang!' Twoflower looked around with some interest. 'I don't know why you think your life has been so bad,' he said. 'We had a lot of fun when we were younger. Hey, do you remember the time when we went over the edge of the world?' 'Often,' said Rincewind. 'Usually around 3 a.m.' 'And that time we were on a dragon and it disappeared in mid-air?' 'You know,' said Rincewind, 'sometimes a whole hour will go by when I don't remember that.' 'And that time we were attacked by those people who wanted to kill us?' 'Which of those one hundred and forty-nine occasions are you referring to?' 'Character building, that sort of thing,' said Two-flower, happily. 'Made me what I am today.' 'Oh, yes,' said Rincewind. It was no effort, talking to Twoflower. The little man's trusting nature had no concept of sarcasm and a keen ability not to hear things that might upset him. 'Yes, I can definitely say it was that sort of thing that made me what I am today, too.' They stepped inside the city. The streets were practically empty. Most people had flocked to the huge square in front of the palace. New Emperors tended towards displays of generosity. Besides, the news had got around that this one was different and was giving away free pigs. 'I heard him talking about sending envoys to Ankh-Morpork,' said Twoflower, as they dripped up the street. 'I expect there's going to be a bit of a fuss about that.' 'Was that man Disembowel-Meself-Honourably present at the time?' said Rincewind. 'Yes, as a matter of fact.' 'When you visited Ankh-Morpork, did you ever meet a man called Dibbler?' 'Oh, yes.' 'If those two ever shake hands I think there might be some sort of explosion.' 'But you could go back, I'm sure,' said Twoflower. 'I mean, your new University will need all sorts of things and, well, I seem to recall that people in Ankh-Morpork were very keen on gold.' Rincewind gritted his teeth. The image wouldn't go away - of Archchancellor Rincewind buying the Tower of Art and getting them to number all the stones and send it back to Hunghung, of Arch-chancellor Rincewind hiring all the faculty as college porters, of Archchancellor Rincewi . . . 'No!' 'Pardon?' 'Don't encourage me to think like that! The moment I think that it's all going to be worthwhile something dreadful will happen!' There was a movement behind him, and a knife suddenly pressed against his throat. 'The Great Blob of Swallow's Vomit?' said a voice by his ear. 'There,' said Rincewind. 'You see? Run away! Don't stand there, you bloody idiot! Run!' Twoflower stared for a moment and then turned and scampered away. 'Let him go,' said the voice. 'He doesn't matter.' Hands pulled him into the alley. He had a vague impression of armour, and mud; his captors were skilled in the way of dragging a prisoner so that he had no chance to get a foothold anywhere. Then he was flung on to the cobbles. 'He does not look so great to me,' said an imperious voice. 'Look up, Great Wizard!' There was some nervous laughter from the soldiers. 'You fools!' raged Lord Hong. 'He is just a man! Look at him! Does he look so powerful? He is just a man who has found some old trickery! And we will find out how great he is without his arms and legs.' 'Oh,' said Rincewind. Lord Hong leaned down. There was mud on his face and a wild glint in his eyes. 'We shall see what your barbarian Emperor can do then, won't we?' He indicated the sullen group of mud-encrusted soldiers. 'You know, they half believe you really are a great wizard? That's superstition, I'm afraid. Very useful most of the time, damn inconvenient on occasion. But when we march you into the square and show them how great you really are, I think your barbarian will not have so very long left. What are these?' He snatched the gloves off Rincewind's hand. 'Toys,' he said. 'Made things. The Red Army are just machines, like mills and pumps. There's no magic there.' He tossed them aside and nodded at one of the guards. 'And now,' said Lord Hong, 'let us go to the Imperial Square.'   'How'd you like to be governor of Bhangbhangduc and all these islands around here?' said Cohen, as the Horde pored over a map of the Empire. 'You like the seaside, Hamish?' 'Whut?' The doors of the Throne Room were flung open. Twoflower scuttled in, trailed by One Big River. 'Lord Hong's got Rincewind! He's going to kill him!' Cohen looked up. 'He can wizard himself out of it, can't he?' 'No! He hasn't got the Red Army any more! He's going to kill him! You've got to do something!' 'Ach, well, you know how it is with wizards,' said Truckle. 'There's too many of 'em as it is—' 'No.' Cohen picked up his sword and sighed. 'Come on,' he said. 'But, Cohen—' 'I said come on. We ain't like Hong. Rincewind's a weasel, but he's our weasel. So are you coming or what?'   Lord Hong and his group of soldiers had almost reached the bottom of the wide steps to the palace when the Horde emerged. The crowd surrounded them, held back by the soldiers. Lord Hong held Rincewind tightly, a knife at his throat. 'Ah, Emperor,' he said, in Ankh-Morporkian. 'We meet again. Check, I think.' 'What's he mean?' Cohen whispered. 'He thinks he has you cornered,' said Mr Saveloy. 'How's he know I won't just let the wizard die?' 'Psychology of the individual, I'm afraid.' 'It doesn't make any sense!' Cohen shouted. 'If you kill him, you'll be dead yourself in seconds. I shall see to it pers'nally!' 'Indeed, no,' said Lord Hong. 'When your . . . Great Wizard . . . is dead, when people see how easily he dies . . . how long will you be Emperor? You won by trickery!' 'What are your terms?' said Mr Saveloy. 'There are none. You can give me nothing I cannot take myself.' Lord Hong grabbed Rincewind's hat from one of the guards and rammed it on to Rincewind's head. 'This is yours,' he hissed. ' "Wizzard" hah! You can't even spell! Well, wizzard? Aren't you going to say something?' 'Oh, no!' Lord Hong smiled. 'Ah, that's better,' he said. 'Oh, noooooo!' 'Very good!' 'Aarrgh!' Lord Hong blinked. For a moment the figure in front of him appeared to stretch to twice its height and then have its feet snap up under its chin. And then it disappeared, with a small thunderclap. There was silence in the square, except for the sound of several thousand people being astonished. Lord Hong waved his hand vaguely in the air. 'Lord Hong?' He turned. There was a short man behind him, covered in grime and mud. He wore a pair of spectacles, one lens of which was cracked. Lord Hong hardly glanced at him. He prodded the air again, unwilling to believe his own senses. 'Excuse me, Lord Hong,' said the apparition, 'but do you by any chance remember Bes Pelargic? About six years ago? I think you were quarrelling with Lord Tang? There was something of a skirmish. A few streets destroyed. Nothing vary major.' Lord Hong blinked. 'How dare you address me!' he managed. 'It doesn't really matter,' said Twoflower. 'But it's just that I'd have liked you to have remembered. I got . . . quite angry about it. Er. I want to fight you.' 'You want to fight me? Do you know who you are talking to? Have you any idea?' 'Er. Yes. Oh, yes,' said Twoflower. Lord Hong's attention finally focused. It had not been a good day. 'You foolish, stupid little man! You don't even have a sword!' 'Oi! Four-eyes!' They both turned. Cohen threw his sword. Two-flower caught it clumsily and was almost knocked over by the weight. 'Why did you do that?' said Mr Saveloy. 'Man wants to be a hero. That's fine by me,' said Cohen. 'He'll be slaughtered!' 'Might do. Might do. Might do. He might do that, certainly,' Cohen conceded. 'That's not up to me.' 'Father!' Lotus Blossom grabbed Twoflower's arm. 'He will kill you! Come away!' 'No.' Butterfly took her father's other arm. 'No good purpose will be served,' she said. 'Come on. We can find a better time—' 'He killed your mother,' said Twoflower flatly. 'His soldiers did.' 'That makes it worse. He didn't even know. Please get back, both of you.' 'Look, Father—' 'If you don't both do what you're told I shall get angry.' Lord Hong drew his long sword. The blade gleamed. 'Do you know anything about fighting, clerk?' 'No, not really,' said Twoflower. 'But the important thing is that someone should stand up to you. Whatever happens to them afterwards.' The Horde were watching with considerable interest. Hardened as they were, they had a soft spot for pointless bravery. 'Yes,' said Lord Hong, looking around at the silent crowd. 'Let everyone see what happens.' He raised his sword. The air crackled. The Barking Dog dropped on to the flagstones in front of him. It was very hot. Its string was alight. There was a brief sizzle. Then the world went white. After some time, Twoflower picked himself up. He seemed to be the first one upright; those people who hadn't flung themselves to the ground had fled. All that remained of Lord Hong was one shoe, which was smouldering. But there was a smoking trail all the way up the steps behind it. Staggering a little, Twoflower followed the trail. A wheelchair was on its side, one wheel spinning. He peered over it. 'You all right, Mr Hamish?' 'Whut?' 'Good.' The rest of the Horde were crouched in a circle at the top of the steps. Smoke billowed around them. In its continuing passage, the ball had set fire to part of the palace. 'Can you hear me, Teach?' Cohen was saying. ' 'Course he can't hear you! How can he hear you, looking like that?' said Truckle. 'He could still be alive,' said Cohen defiantly. 'He is dead, Cohen. Really, really dead. Alive people have more body.' 'But you're all alive?' said Twoflower. 'I saw it bark straight at you!' 'We got out of the way,' said Boy Willie. 'We're good at getting out of the way.' 'Poor ole Teach didn't have our experience of not dyin',' said Caleb. Cohen stood up. 'Where's Hong?' he said grimly. 'I'm going to—' 'He's dead too, Mr Cohen,' said Twoflower. Cohen nodded, as if this was all perfectly normal. 'We owe it to ole Teach,' he said. 'He was a good sort,' Truckle conceded. 'Funny ideas about swearing, mind you.' 'He had brains. He cared about stuff! And he might not have lived like a barbarian, but he's bloody well going to be buried like one, all right?' 'In a longship, set on fire,' suggested Boy Willie. 'My word,' said Mr Saveloy. 'In a big pit, on top of the bodies of his enemies,' suggested Caleb. 'Good heavens, all of 4B?' said Mr Saveloy. 'In a burial mound,' suggested Vincent. 'Really, I wouldn't put you to the trouble,' said Mr Saveloy. 'In a longship set on fire, on top of a heap of the bodies of his enemies, under a burial mound,' said Cohen flatly. 'Nothing's too good for ole Teach.' 'But I assure you, I feel fine,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Really, I - er . . . Oh . . .' RONALD SAVELOY? Mr Saveloy turned. 'Ah,' he said. 'Yes. I see.' IF YOU WOULD CARE TO STEP THIS WAY? The palace and the Horde froze and faded gently, like a dream. 'It's funny,' said Mr Saveloy, as he followed Death. 'I didn't expect it to be this way.' FEW PEOPLE EVER EXPECT IT TO BE ANY WAY. Gritty black sand crunched under what Mr Saveloy supposed he should still call his feet. 'Where is this?' THE DESERT. It was brilliantly lit, and yet the sky was midnight-black. He stared at the horizon. 'How big is it?' FOR SOME, VERY BIG. FOR LORD HONG, FOR INSTANCE, IT CONTAINS A LOT OF IMPATIENT GHOSTS. 'I thought Lord Hong didn't believe in ghosts.' HE MAY DO SO NOW. A LOT OF GHOSTS BELIEVE IN LORD HONG. 'Oh. Er. What happens now?' 'Come on, come on, haven't got all day! Step lively, man!' Mr Saveloy turned around and looked up at the woman on the horse. It was a big horse but, then, it was a big woman. She had plaits, a hat with horns on it, and a breastplate that must have been a week's work for an experienced panelbeater. She gave him a look that was not unkind but had impatience in every line. 'I'm sorry?' he said. 'Says here Ronald Saveloy,' she said. 'The what?' 'The what?' 'Everyone I pick up,' said the woman, leaning down, 'is called "Someone the Something". What the are you?' 'I'm sorry, I—' 'I'll put you down as Ronald the Apologetic, then. Come on, hop up, there's a war on, got to be going.' 'Where to?' 'Says here quaffing, carousing, throwing axes at young women's hair?' 'Ah, er, I think perhaps there's been a bit of a—' 'Look, old chap, are you coming or what?' Mr Saveloy looked around at the black desert. He was totally alone. Death had gone about his essential business. He let her pull him up behind her. 'Have they got a library, perhaps?' he asked hopefully, as the horse rose into the dark sky. 'Don't know. No-one's ever asked.' 'Evening classes, perhaps. I could start evening classes?' 'What in?' 'Um. Anything, really. Table manners, perhaps. Is that allowed?' 'I suppose so. I don't think anyone's ever asked that, either.' The Valkyrie turned in the saddle. 'You sure you're coming to the right afterlife?' Mr Saveloy considered the possibilities. 'On the whole,' he said, 'I think it's worth a try.'   The crowd in the square were getting to their feet. They looked at all that remained of Lord Hong, and at the Horde. Butterfly and Lotus Blossom joined their father. Butterfly ran her hand over the cannon, looking for the trick. 'You see,' said Twoflower, a little indistinctly because he couldn't quite hear the sound of his own voice yet, 'I told you he was the Great Wizard.' Butterfly tapped him on the shoulder. 'What about those?' she said. A small procession was picking its way through the square. In front, Twoflower recognized, was something he'd once owned. 'It was a very cheap one,' he said, to no-one in particular. 'I always thought there was something a little warped about it, to tell you the truth.' It was followed by a slightly larger Luggage. And then, in descending order of size, four little chests, the smallest being about the size of a lady's handbag. As it passed a prone Hunghungese who'd been too stunned to flee, it paused to kick him in the ear before hurrying after the others. Twoflower looked at his daughters. 'Can they do that?' he said. 'Make new ones? I thought it needed carpenters.' 'I suppose it learned many things in Ankh-More-Pork,' said Butterfly. The Luggages clustered together in front of the steps. Then the Luggage turned around and, after one or two sad backward glances, or what might have been glances if it had eyes, cantered away. By the time it reached the far side of the square it was a blur. 'Hey, you! Four-eyes!' Twoflower turned, Cohen was advancing down the steps. 'I remember you,' he said. 'D'you know anything about Grand Viziering?' 'Not a thing, Mr Emperor Cohen.' 'Good. The job's yours. Get cracking. First thing, I want a cup of tea. Thick enough to float a horseshoe. Three sugars. In five minutes. Right?' 'A cup of tea in five minutes?' said Twoflower. 'But that's not long enough for even a short ceremony!' Cohen put a companionable arm around the little man's shoulders. 'There's a new ceremony,' he said. 'It goes: "Tea up, luv. Milk? Sugar? Doughnut? Want another one?" And you could tell the eunuchs,' he added, 'that the Emperor is a lit'ral-minded man and used the phrase "heads will roll".' Twoflower's eyes gleamed behind his cracked glasses. Somehow, he liked the sound of that. It looked as though he was living in interesting times— The Luggages sat quietly, and waited.   Fate sat back. The gods relaxed. 'A draw,' he announced. 'Oh, yes. You have appeared to win in Hunghung but you have had to lose your most valuable piece, is that not so?' 'I'm sorry?' said the Lady. 'I don't quite follow you.' 'Insofar as I understand this . . . physics . . .' said Fate, 'I cannot believe that anything could be materialized in the University without dying almost instantly. It is one thing to hit a snowdrift, but quite another to hit a wall.' 'I never sacrifice a pawn,' said the Lady. 'How can you hope to win without sacrificing the occasional pawn?' 'Oh, I never play to win.' She smiled. 'But I do play not to lose. Watch . . .'   The Council of Wizards gathered in front of the wall at the far end of the Great Hall and stared up at the thing which now covered half of it. 'Interesting effect,' said Ridcully, eventually. 'How fast do you think it was going?' 'About five hundred miles an hour,' said Ponder. 'I think perhaps we were a little enthusiastic. Hex says—' 'From a standing start to five hundred miles an hour?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'That must have come as a shock.' 'Yes,' said Ridcully, 'but I suppose it's a mercy for the poor creature that it was such a brief one.' 'And, of course, we must all be thankful that it wasn't Rincewind.' A couple of the wizards coughed. The Dean stood back. 'But what is it?' he said. 'Was,' said Ponder Stibbons. 'We could have a look in the Bestiaries,' said Ridcully. 'Shouldn't be hard to find. Grey. Long hind feet like a clown's boots. Rabbit ears. Tail long and pointy. And, of course, not many creatures are twenty feet across, one inch thick and deep fried, so that narrows it down a bit.' 'I don't want to cast a shadow on things,' said the Dean, 'but if this isn't Rincewind, then where is he?' 'I'm sure Mr Stibbons can give us an explanation as to why his calculations went wrong,' said Ridcully. Ponder's mouth dropped open. Then he said, as sourly as he dared, 'I probably forgot to take into account that there's three right angles in a triangle, didn't I? Er. I'll have to try and work everything back, but I think that somehow a lateral component was introduced into what should have been a bidirectional sortilegic transfer. It's probably that this was most pronounced at the effective median point, causing an extra node to appear in the transfers at a point equidistant to the other two as prediction in Flume's Third Equation, and Turffe's Law would see to it that the distortion would stabilize in such a way as to create three separate points, each moving a roughly equal mass one jump around the triangle. I'm not sure why the third mass arrived here at such speed, but I think the increased velocity might have been caused by the sudden creation of the node. Of course, it might have been going quite fast anyway. But I shouldn't think it is cooked in its natural state.' 'Do you know,' said Ridcully, 'I think I actually understood some of that? Certainly some of the shorter words.' 'Oh, it's perfectly simple,' said the Bursar brightly. 'We sent the . . . dog thing to Hunghung. Rincewind was sent to some other place. And this creature was sent here. Just like Pass the Parcel.' 'You see?' said Ridcully to Stibbons. 'You're using language the Bursar can understand. And he's been chasing the dried frog all morning.' The Librarian staggered into the hall under the weight of a large atlas. 'Oook.' 'At least you can show us where you think our man is,' said Ridcully. Ponder took a ruler and a pair of compasses out of his hat. 'Well, if we assume Rincewind was in the middle of the Counterweight Continent,' he said, 'then all we need do is draw—' 'Oook!' 'I assure you, I was only going to use pencil—' 'Eeek.' 'All we have to do is imagine, all right, a third point equidistant from the other two . . . er . . . that looks like somewhere in the Rim Ocean to me, or probably over the Edge.' 'Can't see that thing in the sea,' said Ridcully, glancing up at the recently laminated corpse. 'In that case, it must have been in the other direction—' The wizards crowded round. There was something there. ' 'S not even properly drawn in,' said the Dean. 'That's because no-one's sure it really exists,' said the Senior Wrangler. It floated in the middle of the sea, a tiny continent by Discworld standards. ' "XXXX",' Ponder read. 'They only put that on the map because no-one knows what it's really called,' said Ridcully. 'And we've sent him there,' said Ponder. 'A place that we're not even certain exists?' 'Oh, we know it exists now,' said Ridcully. 'Must do. Must do. Must be a pretty rich land, too, if the rats grow that big.' 'I'll go and see if we can bring—' Ponder began. 'Oh, no,' said Ridcully firmly. 'No, thank you very much. Next time it might be an elephant whizzing over our heads, and those things make a splash. No. Give the poor chap a rest. We'll have to think of something else . . .' He rubbed his hands together. 'Time for dinner, I feel,' he said. 'Um,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Do you think we were wise to light that string when we sent the thing back?' 'Certainly,' said Ridcully, as they strolled away. 'No-one could say we didn't return it in exactly the same state as it arrived . . .'   Hex dreamed gently in its room. The wizards were right. Hex couldn't think. There weren't words, yet, for what it could do. Even Hex didn't know what it could do. But it was going to find out. The quill pen scritched and blotted its way over a fresh sheet of paper and drew, for no good reason, a calendar for the year surmounted by a rather angular picture of a beagle, standing on its hind legs.   The ground was red, just like at Hunghung. But whereas that was a kind of clay so rich that leaving a chair on the lawn meant that you had four small trees by nightfall, this ground was sand that looked as if it had got red by being baked in a million-year summer. There were occasional clumps of yellowed grass and low stands of grey-green trees. But what there was everywhere was heat. This was especially noticeable in the pond under the ghost gums. It was steaming. A figure emerged from the clouds, absentmindedly picking the burnt bits off his beard. Rincewind waited until his own personal world had stopped spinning and concentrated on the four men who were watching him. They were black with lines and whorls painted on their faces and had, between them, about two square feet of clothing. There were three reasons why Rincewind was no racist. He'd ended up in too many places too suddenly to develop that kind of mind. Besides, if he'd thought about it much, most of the really dreadful things that had happened to him had been done by quite pale people with big wardrobes. Those were two of the reasons. The third was that these men, who were just rising from a half-crouching position, were all holding spears pointing at Rincewind and there is something about the sight of four spears aimed at your throat that causes no end of respect and the word 'sir' to arise spontaneously in the mind. One of the men shrugged, and lowered his spear. 'G'day, bloke,' he said. This meant only three spears, which was an improvement. 'Er. This isn't Unseen University, is it, sir?' said Rincewind. The other spears stopped pointing at him. The men grinned. They had very white teeth. 'Klatch? Howondaland? It looks like Howonda-land,' said Rincewind hopefully. 'Don't know them blokes, bloke,' said one of the men. The other three clustered around him. 'What'll we call him?' 'He's Kangaroo Bloke. No worries there. One minute a kangaroo, next minute a bloke. The old blokes say that sort of thing used to happen all the time, back in the Dream.' 'I reckoned he'd look better than that.' 'Yeah.' 'One way to tell.' The man who was apparently the leader of the group advanced on Rincewind with the kind of grin reserved for imbeciles and people holding guns, and held out a stick. It was flat, and had a bend in the middle. Someone had spent a long time making rather nice designs on it in little coloured dots. Somehow, Rincewind wasn't at all surprised to see a butterfly among them. The hunters watched him expectantly. 'Er, yes,' he said. 'Very good. Very good workmanship, yes. Interesting pointillistic effect. Shame you couldn't find a straighter bit of wood.' One of the men laid down his spear, and squatted down and picked up a long wooden tube, covered with the same designs. He blew into it. The effect was not unpleasant. It sounded like bees would sound if they'd invented full orchestration. 'Um,' said Rincewind. 'Yes.' It was a test, obviously. They'd given him this bent piece of wood. He had to do something with it. It was clearly very important. He'd— Oh, no. He'd say something or do something, wouldn't he, and then they'd say, yes, you are the Great Bloke or something, and they'd drag him off and it'd be the start of another Adventure, i.e., a period of horror and unpleasantness. Life was full of tricks like that. Well, this time Rincewind wasn't going to fall for it. 'I want to go home,' he said. 'I want to go back home to the Library where it was nice and quiet. And I don't know where I am. And I don't care what you do to me, right? I'm not going to have any kind of adventure or start saving the world again and you can't trick me into it with mysterious bits of wood.' He gripped the stick and flung it away from him with all the force he could still muster. They stared at him as he folded his arms. 'I'm not playing,' he said. 'I'm stopping right here.' They were still staring. And now they were grinning, too, at something behind him. He felt himself getting quite annoyed. 'Do you understand? Are you listening?' he said. 'That's the last time the universe is going to trick Rincewi—'   The End [1] People are always a little confused about this, as they are in the case of miracles. When someone is saved from certain death by a strange concatenation of circumstances, they say that's a miracle. But of course if someone is killed by a freak chain of events - the oil spilled just there, the safety fence broken just there - that must also be a miracle. Just because it's not nice doesn't mean it's not miraculous. [2] Usually about six inches across. [3] People wonder how this works, since a terrestrial elephant would be unlikely to bear a revolving load for any length of time without some serious friction burns. But you may as well ask why the axle of a planet doesn't squeak, or where love goes, or what sound yellow makes. [4] Which is like Fuzzy Logic, only less so. [5] All virtual lectures took place in room 3B, a room not locatable on any floor plan of the University and also, it was considered, infinite in size. [6] A policy adopted by almost all managers and several notable I gods. [7] Such as 'Ouch!', 'Aargh!', 'Give me back my money, you scoundrel!' and 'You call these chestnuts? I call them little balls of charcoal, that's what I call them!' [8] And often the phrase 'a bastard you don't want to cross, and I didn't say that'. [9] The UU college porters. Renowned among the entire faculty for the hardness of their skulls, their obtuseness in the face of reasonable explanation, and their deeply held conviction that the whole place would collapse without them. [10] Except during extreme flood conditions it is extremely difficult to make much progress on the Ankh, and the University rowing teams compete by running over the surface of the river. This is generally quite safe provided they don't stand in one place for very long and, of course, it eats the soles off their boots. [11] This at least was true. Rincewind could scream for mercy in nineteen languages, and just scream* in another forty-four. * This is important. Inexperienced travellers might think that 'Aargh!' is universal, but in Betrobi it means 'highly enjoyable' and' in Howondaland it means, variously, 'I would like to eat your foot', 'Your wife is a big hippo' and 'Hello, Thinks Mr Purple Cat.' One particular tribe has a fearsome reputation for cruelty merely because prisoners appear, to them, to be shouting 'Quick! Extra boiling oil!' [12] Named after the wizard Sangrit Heisenberg and not after the more famous Heisenberg who is renowned for inventing what is possibly the finest lager in the world. [13] There was still a certain amount of confusion on this point. [14] KIDS! Only very silly wizards with bad sinus trouble do this Sensible people go off to a roped-off enclosure where they can watch a heavily protected man, in the middle distance, light (with the aid of a very long pole) something that goes 'fsst'. And then they can shout 'Hooray'. [15] The Ankh-Morpork name for the Counterweight Continent and its nearby islands. It means 'place where the gold comes from'. [16] In fact, he'd be about the seventy-third to admit it. [17] Such as Dish of Glistening Brown Stuff, Dish of Glistening Crunchy Orange Stuff, and Dish of Soft White Lumps. [18] According to the history books. However, in common with every other young student, Rincewind had hopefully looked up 'figgin' in the dictionary and found it was 'a small bun with currants in it'. This meant that either the language had changed a little over the years, or that there really was some horrifying aspect to suspending a man alongside a teacake. [19] A dismal prospect, especially when the horses keep sinking. [20] When you're on a desert island, your appetites can become a bit confused. [21] Much later, Rincewind had to have therapy for this. It involved a pretty woman, a huge plate of potatoes and a big stick with a nail in it. [22] 'Your feet shall be cut off and be buried several yards from your body so your ghost won't walk.' [23] Except on posters with legends like 'Wanted - Dedd'. [24] The only sound the Horde had ever heard in temples was people shouting 'Infidel! He has stolen the Jewelled Eye of - your wife is a big hippo!' [25] 'Friendly stab', as it is formally known. 
I Shall Wear Midnight (ta4) - Terry Pratchett	----	I Shall Wear Midnight I SHALL WEAR MIDNIGHT Terry Pratchett DOUBLEDAY Contents Cover Title Copyright By Terry Pratchett Chapter 1: A Fine Big Wee Laddie Chapter 2: Rough Music Chapter 3: Those Who Stir In Their Sleep Chapter 4: The Real Shilling Chapter 5: The Mother Of Tongues Chapter 6: The Coming Of The Cunning Man Chapter 7: Songs In The Night Chapter 8: The King’s Neck Chapter 9: The Duchess And The Cook Chapter 10: The Melting Girl Chapter 11: The Bonfire Of The Witches Chapter 12: The Sin O’ Sins Chapter 13: The Shaking Of The Sheets Chapter 14: Burning The King Chapter 15: A Shadow And A Whisper Epilogue: Midnight By Day Glossary This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly. Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781409096306 www.randomhouse.co.uk I SHALL WEAR MIDNIGHT A DOUBLEDAY BOOK 978 0 385 61107 7 TRADE PAPERBACK 978 0 385 61796 3 Published in Great Britain by Doubleday, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books A Random House Group Company This edition published 2010 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Copyright © Terry and Lyn Pratchett, 2010 Illustrations copyright © Paul Kidby, 2010 Discworld® is a trademark registered by Terry Pratchett Chapters 13 and 14 include lyrics from two songs – ‘The Larks They Sing Melodious’ and ‘The Shaking of the Sheets’ – both traditional folksongs where the lyrics are now, to the best of our knowledge, out of copyright. The publishers would be grateful to be notified if this is erroneous and will be happy to make good any errors in future printings. 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Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc BY TERRY PRATCHETT, FOR YOUNG READERS THE CARPET PEOPLE THE CARPET PEOPLE Illustrated edition TRUCKERS DIGGERS WINGS THE BROMELIAD omnibus edition (contains Truckers, Diggers, Wings)   ONLY YOU CAN SAVE MANKIND* (*www.ifnotyouthenwho.com) JOHNNY AND THE DEAD JOHNNY AND THE BOMB THE JOHNNY MAXWELL OMNIBUS EDITION (contains Only You Can Save Mankind, Johnny and the Dead, Johnny and the Bomb)   Discworld novels THE AMAZING MAURICE AND HIS EDUCATED RODENTS THE WEE FREE MEN A HAT FULL OF SKY WINTERSMITH I SHALL WEAR MIDNIGHT THE ILLUSTRATED WEE FREE MEN   The Discworld series: have you read them all? 1. THE COLOUR OF MAGIC 2. THE LIGHT FANTASTIC 3. EQUAL RITES 4. MORT 5. SOURCERY 6. WYRD SISTERS 7. PYRAMIDS 8. GUARDS! GUARDS! 9. ERIC (illustrated by Josh Kirby) 10. MOVING PICTURES 11. REAPER MAN 12. WITCHES ABROAD 13. SMALL GODS 14. LORDS AND LADIES 15. MEN AT ARMS 16. SOUL MUSIC 17. INTERESTING TIMES 18. MASKERADE 19. FEET OF CLAY 20. HOGFATHER 21. JINGO 22. THE LAST CONTINENT 23. CARPE JUGULUM 24. THE FIFTH ELEPHANT 25. THE TRUTH 26. THIEF OF TIME 27. THE LAST HERO (illustrated by Paul Kidby) 28. THE AMAZING MAURICE AND HIS EDUCATED RODENTS (for young readers) 29. NIGHT WATCH 30. THE WEE FREE MEN (for young readers) 31. MONSTROUS REGIMENT 32. A HAT FULL OF SKY (for young readers) 33. GOING POSTAL 34. THUD! 35. WINTERSMITH (for young readers) 36. MAKING MONEY 37. UNSEEN ACADEMICALS 38. I SHALL WEAR MIDNIGHT (for young readers)   Other books about Discworld THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD (with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen) THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD II: THE GLOBE (with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen) THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD III: DARWIN’S WATCH (with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen) THE NEW DISCWORLD COMPANION (with Stephen Briggs) NANNY OGG’S COOKBOOK (with Stephen Briggs, Tina Hannan and Paul Kidby) THE PRATCHETT PORTFOLIO (with Paul Kidby) THE DISCWORLD ALMANAK (with Bernard Pearson) THE UNSEEN UNIVERSITY CUT-OUT BOOK (with Alan Batley and Bernard Pearson) WHERE’S MY COW? (illustrated by Melvyn Grant)   THE ART OF DISCWORLD (with Paul Kidby) THE WIT AND WISDOM OF DISCWORLD (compiled by Stephen Briggs) THE FOLKLORE OF DISCWORLD (with Jacqueline Simpson)   Discworld maps THE STREETS OF ANKH-MORPORK (with Stephen Briggs, painted by Stephen Player) THE DISCWORLD MAPP (with Stephen Briggs, painted by Stephen Player) A TOURIST GUIDE TO LANCRE – A DISCWORLD MAPP (with Stephen Briggs, illustrated by Paul Kidby) DEATH’S DOMAIN (with Paul Kidby)   A complete list of other books based on the Discworld series – illustrated screenplays, graphic novels, comics and plays, can be found on www.terry pratchett.co.uk.   Non-Discworld titles GOOD OMENS (with Neil Gaiman) STRATA THE DARK SIDE OF THE SUN THE UNADULTERATED CAT (illustrated by Gray Jolliffe) Chapter 1 A FINE BIG WEE LADDIE WHY WAS IT, Tiffany Aching wondered, that people liked noise so much? Why was noise so important? Something quite close sounded like a cow giving birth. It turned out to be an old hurdy-gurdy organ, hand-cranked by a raggedy man in a battered top hat. She sidled away as politely as she could, but as noise went, it was sticky; you got the feeling that if you let it, it would try to follow you home. But that was only one sound in the great cauldron of noise around her, all of it made by people and all of it made by people trying to make noise louder than the other people making noise. Arguing at the makeshift stalls, bobbing for apples or frogs,1 cheering the prize fighters and a spangled lady on the high wire, selling candyfloss at the tops of their voices and, not to put too fine a point on it, boozing quite considerably. The air above the green downland was thick with noise. It was as if the populations of two or three towns had all come up to the top of the hills. And so here, where all you generally heard was the occasional scream of a buzzard, you heard the permanent scream of, well, everyone. It was called having fun. The only people not making any noise were the thieves and pickpockets, who went about their business with commendable silence, and they didn’t come near Tiffany; who would pick a witch’s pocket? You would be lucky to get all your fingers back. At least, that was what they feared, and a sensible witch would encourage them in this fear. When you were a witch, you were all witches, thought Tiffany Aching as she walked through the crowds, pulling her broomstick after her on the end of a length of string. It floated a few feet above the ground. She was getting a bit bothered about that. It seemed to work quite well, but nevertheless, since all around the fair were small children dragging balloons, also on the end of a piece of string, she couldn’t help thinking that it made her look more than a little bit silly, and something that made one witch look silly made all witches look silly. On the other hand, if you tied it to a hedge somewhere, there was bound to be some kid who would untie the string and get on the stick for a dare, in which case most likely he would go straight up all the way to the top of the atmosphere where the air froze, and while she could in theory call the stick back, mothers got very touchy about having to thaw out their children on a bright late-summer day. That would not look good. People would talk. People always talked about witches. She resigned herself to dragging it again. With luck, people would think she was joining in with the spirit of the thing in a humorous way. There was a lot of etiquette involved, even at something so deceptively cheerful as a fair. She was the witch; who knows what would happen if she forgot someone’s name or, worse still, got it wrong? What would happen if you forgot all the little feuds and factions, the people who weren’t talking to their neighbours and so on and so on and a lot more so and even further on? Tiffany had no understanding at all of the word ‘minefield’, but if she had, it would have seemed kind of familiar. She was the witch. For all the villages along the Chalk she was the witch. Not just her own village any more, but for all the other ones as far away as Ham-on-Rye, which was a pretty good day’s walk from here. The area that a witch thought of as her own, and for whose people she did what was needful, was called a steading, and as steadings went, this one was pretty good. Not many witches got a whole geological outcrop to themselves, even if this one was mostly covered in grass, and the grass was mostly covered in sheep. And today the sheep on the downs were left by themselves to do whatever it was that they did when they were by themselves, which would presumably be pretty much the same as they did if you were watching them. And the sheep, usually fussed and herded and generally watched over, were now of no interest whatsoever, because right here the most wonderful attraction in the world was taking place. Admittedly, the scouring fair was only one of the world’s most wonderful attractions if you didn’t usually ever travel more than about four miles from home. If you lived around the Chalk you were bound to meet everyone that you knew2 at the fair. It was quite often where you met the person you were likely to marry. The girls certainly all wore their best dresses, while the boys wore expressions of hopefulness and their hair smoothed down with cheap hair pomade or, more usually, spit. Those who had opted for spit generally came off better since the cheap pomade was very cheap indeed and would often melt and run in the hot weather, causing the young men not to be of interest to the young women, as they had fervently hoped, but to the flies, who would make their lunch off their scalps. However, since the event could hardly be called ‘the fair where you went in the hope of getting a kiss and, if your luck held, the promise of another one’, the fair was called the scouring. The scouring was held over three days at the end of summer. For most people on the Chalk, it was their holiday. This was the third day, and most people said that if you hadn’t had a kiss by now you might as well go home. Tiffany hadn’t had a kiss, but after all, she was the witch. Who knew what they might get turned into? If the late-summer weather was clement, it wasn’t unusual for some people to sleep out under the stars, and under the bushes as well. And that was why if you wanted to take a stroll at night it paid to be careful so as not to trip over someone’s feet. Not to put too fine a point to it, there was a certain amount of what Nanny Ogg – a witch who had been married to three husbands – called making your own entertainment. It was a shame that Nanny lived right up in the mountains, because she would have loved the scouring and Tiffany would have loved to see her face when she saw the giant.3 He – and he was quite definitely a he, there was no possible doubt about that – had been carved out of the turf thousands of years before. A white outline against the green, he belonged to the days when people had to think about survival and fertility in a dangerous world. Oh, and he had also been carved, or so it would appear, before anyone had invented trousers. In fact, to say that he had no trousers on just didn’t do the job. His lack of trousers filled the world. You simply could not stroll down the little road that passed along the bottom of the hills without noticing that there was an enormous, as it were, lack of something – e.g. trousers – and what was there instead. It was definitely a figure of a man without trousers, and certainly not a woman. Everyone who came to the scouring was expected to bring a small shovel, or even a knife, and work their way down the steep slope to grub up all the weeds that had grown there over the previous year, making the chalk underneath glow with freshness and the giant stand out boldly, as if he wasn’t already. There was always a lot of giggling when the girls worked on the giant. And the reason for the giggling, and the circumstances of the giggling, couldn’t help but put Tiffany in mind of Nanny Ogg, who you normally saw somewhere behind Granny Weatherwax with a big grin on her face. She was generally thought of as a jolly old soul, but there was a lot more to the old woman. She had never been Tiffany’s teacher officially, but Tiffany couldn’t help learning things from Nanny Ogg. She smiled to herself when she thought that. Nanny knew all the old, dark stuff – old magic, magic that didn’t need witches, magic that was built into people and the landscape. It concerned things like death, and marriage, and betrothals. And promises that were promises even if there was no one to hear them. And all those things that make people touch wood and never, ever walk under a black cat. You didn’t need to be a witch to understand it. The world around you became more – well, more real and fluid, at those special times. Nanny Ogg called it numinous – an uncharacteristically solemn word from a woman who was much more likely to be saying, ‘I would like a brandy, thank you very much, and could you make it a double while you are about it.’ And she had told Tiffany about the old days, when it seemed that witches had a bit more fun. The things that you did around the changing of the seasons, for example; all the customs that were now dead except in folk memory which, Nanny Ogg said, is deep and dark and breathing and never fades. Little rituals. Tiffany especially liked the one about the fire. Tiffany liked fire. It was her favourite element. It was considered so powerful, and so scary to the powers of darkness that people would even get married by jumping over a fire together4. Apparently it helped if you said a little chant, according to Nanny Ogg, who lost no time in telling Tiffany the words, which immediately stuck in Tiffany’s mind; a lot of what Nanny Ogg told you tended to be sticky. But those were times gone by. Everybody was more respectable now, apart from Nanny Ogg and the giant. There were other carvings on the Chalk lands too. One of them was a white horse that Tiffany thought had once broken its way out of the ground and galloped to her rescue. Now she wondered what would happen if the giant did the same thing, because it would be very hard to find a pair of pants sixty feet long in a hurry. And on the whole, you’d want to hurry. She’d only ever giggled about the giant once, and that had been a very long time ago. There were really only four types of people in the world: men and women and wizards and witches. Wizards mostly lived in universities down in the big cities and weren’t allowed to get married, although the reason why not totally escaped Tiffany. Anyway, you hardly ever saw them around here. Witches were definitely women, but most of the older ones Tiffany knew hadn’t got married either, mostly because Nanny Ogg had already used up all the eligible husbands, but also probably because they didn’t have time. Of course, every now and then, a witch might marry a grand husband, like Magrat Garlick, as was, of Lancre had done, although by all accounts she only did herbs these days. But the only young witch Tiffany knew who had even had time for courting was her best friend up in the mountains: Petulia – a witch who was now specializing in pig magic, and was soon going to marry a nice young man who was shortly going to inherit his father’s pig farm,5 which meant he was practically an aristocrat. But witches were not only very busy, they were also apart , Tiffany had learned that early on. You were among people, but not the same as them. There was always a kind of distance or separation. You didn’t have to work at it, it happened anyway. Girls she had known when they were all so young they used to run about and play with only their vests on would make a tiny little curtsy to her when she passed them in the lane, and even elderly men would touch their forelock, or probably what they thought was their forelock, as she passed. This wasn’t just because of respect, but because of a kind of fear as well. Witches had secrets; they were there to help when babies were being born. When you got married, it was a good idea to have a witch standing by (even if you weren’t sure if it was for good luck or to prevent bad luck), and when you died there would be a witch there too, to show you the way. Witches had secrets they never told … well, to people who weren’t witches. Among themselves, when they could get together on some hillside for a drink or two (or in the case of Mrs Ogg, a drink or nine), they gossiped like geese. But never about the real secrets, the ones you never told, about things done and heard and seen. So many secrets that you were afraid they might leak. Seeing a giant without his trousers was hardly worth commenting on compared to some of the things that a witch might see. No, Tiffany did not envy Petulia her romance, which surely must have taken place in big boots, unflattering rubber aprons and the rain, not to mention an awful lot of ‘oink’. She did, however, envy her for being so sensible. Petulia had got it all worked out. She knew what she wanted her future to be, and had rolled up her sleeves and made it happen, up to her knees in ‘oink’ if necessary. Every family, even up in the mountains, kept at least one pig to act as a garbage can in the summer and as pork, bacon, ham and sausages during the rest of the year. The pig was important; you might dose Granny with turpentine when she was poorly, but when the pig was ill you sent immediately for a pig witch, and paid her too, and paid her well, generally in sausages. On top of everything else, Petulia was a specialist pig borer, and indeed she was this year’s champion in the noble art of boring. Tiffany thought you couldn’t put it better; her friend could sit down with a pig and talk to it gently and calmly about extremely boring things until some strange pig mechanism took over, whereupon it would give a happy little yawn and fall over, no longer a living pig and ready to become a very important contribution to the family’s diet for the following year. This might not appear the best of outcomes for the pig, but given the messy and above all noisy way pigs died before the invention of pig boring, it was definitely, in the great scheme of things, a much better deal all round. Alone in the crowd, Tiffany sighed. It was hard, when you wore the black, pointy hat. Because, like it or not, the witch was the pointy hat, and the pointy hat was the witch. It made people careful about you. They would be respectful, oh yes, and often a little bit nervous, as if they expected you to look inside their heads, which as a matter of fact you could probably do, using the good old witch’s standbys of First Sight and Second Thoughts.6 But these weren’t really magic. Anyone could learn them if they had a lick of sense, but sometimes even a lick is hard to find. People are often so busy living that they never stopped to wonder why. Witches did, and that meant them being needed: oh yes, needed – needed practically all the time, but not, in a very polite and definitely unspoken way, not exactly wanted. This wasn’t the mountains, where people were very used to witches; people on the Chalk could be friendly, but they weren’t friends, not actual friends. The witch was different. The witch knew things that you did not. The witch was another kind of person. The witch was someone that perhaps you should not anger. The witch was not like other people. Tiffany Aching was the witch, and she had made herself the witch because they needed one. Everybody needs a witch, but sometimes they just don’t know it. And it was working. The storybook pictures of the drooling hag were being wiped away, every time Tiffany helped a young mother with her first baby, or smoothed an old man’s path to his grave. Nevertheless, old stories, old rumours and old picture books still seemed to have their own hold on the memory of the world. What made it more difficult was that there was no tradition of witches on the Chalk – none would ever have settled there when Granny Aching had been alive. Granny Aching, as everybody knew, was a wise woman, and wise enough not to be a witch. Nothing ever happened on the Chalk that Granny Aching disapproved of, at least not for more than about ten minutes. So Tiffany was a witch alone. And not only was there no longer any support from the mountain witches like Nanny Ogg, Granny Weatherwax and Miss Level, but the people of the Chalk weren’t very familiar with witches. Other witches would probably come and help if she asked, of course, but although they wouldn’t say so, this might mean that you couldn’t cope with responsibility, weren’t up to the task, weren’t sure, weren’t good enough. ‘Excuse me, miss?’ There was a nervous giggle. Tiffany looked round and there were two little girls in their best new frocks and straw hats. They were looking at her eagerly, with perhaps just a hint of mischief in their eyes. She thought quickly and smiled at them. ‘Oh yes, Becky Pardon and Nancy Upright, yes? What can I do for the two of you?’ Becky Pardon shyly produced a small bouquet from behind her back and held it out. Tiffany recognized it, of course. She had made them herself for the older girls when she was younger, simply because it was what you did, it was part of the scouring: a little bunch of wild flowers picked from the downland, tied in a bunch with – and this was the important bit, the magic bit – some of the grass pulled up as the fresh chalk was exposed. ‘If you put this under your pillow tonight, you will dream of your beau,’ said Becky Pardon, her face quite serious now. Tiffany took the slightly wilting bunch of flowers with care. ‘Let me see …’ she said. ‘We have here sweet mumbles, ladies’ pillows, seven-leaf clover – very lucky – a sprig of old man’s trousers, jack-in-the-wall, oh – love-lies-bleeding and …’ She stared at the little white and red flowers. The girls said, ‘Are you all right, miss?’ ‘Forget-me-lots!’7 said Tiffany, more sharply than she had intended. But the girls hadn’t noticed, so she continued to say, brightly, ‘Quite unusual to see it here. It must be a garden escapee. And, as I’m sure you both know, you have bound them all together with strips of candle rush, which once upon a time people used to make into rush lights. What a lovely surprise. Thank you both very much. I hope you have a lovely time at the fair …’ Becky raised her hand. ‘Excuse me, miss?’ ‘Was there something else, Becky?’ Becky went pink, and had a hurried conversation with her friend. She turned back to Tiffany, looking slightly more pink but nevertheless determined to see things through. ‘You can’t get into trouble for asking a question, can you, miss? I mean, just asking a question?’ It’s going to be ‘How can I be a witch when I’m grown up?’ Tiffany thought, because it generally was. The young girls saw her on her broomstick and thought that was what being a witch was. Out loud she said, ‘Not from me, at least. Do ask your question.’ Becky Pardon looked down at her boots. ‘Do you have any passionate parts, miss?’ Another talent needful in a witch is the ability not to let your face show what you’re thinking, and especially not allowing it, no matter what, to go as stiff as a board. Tiffany managed to say, without a single wobble in her voice and no trace of an embarrassed smirk, ‘That is a very interesting question, Becky. Can I ask you why you want to know?’ The girl looked a lot happier now that the question was, as it were, out in the public domain. ‘Well, miss, I asked my granny if I could be a witch when I was older, and she said I shouldn’t want to, because witches have no passionate parts, miss.’ Tiffany thought quickly in the face of the two solemn owlish stares. These are farm girls, she thought, so they had certainly seen a cat have kittens and a dog have puppies. They’d have seen the birth of lambs, and probably a cow have a calf, which is always a noisy affair that you can hardly miss. They know what they are asking me about. At this point Nancy chimed in with, ‘Only, if that is so, miss, we would quite like to have the flowers back, now we’ve shown them to you, because perhaps it might be a bit of a waste, meaning no offence.’ She stepped back quickly. Tiffany was surprised at her own laughter. It had been a long time since she had laughed. Heads turned to see what the joke was, and she managed to grab both the girls before they fled, and spun them round. ‘Well done, the pair of you,’ she said. ‘I like to see some sensible thinking every now and again. Never hesitate to ask a question. And the answer to your question is that witches are the same as everybody else when it comes to passionate parts, but often they are so busy rushing around that they never have time to think about them.’ The girls looked relieved that their work had not been entirely in vain and Tiffany was ready for the next question, which came from Becky again. ‘So, do you have a beau, miss?’ ‘Not right at the moment,’ Tiffany said briskly, clamping down on her expression lest it give anything away. She held up the little bouquet. ‘But who knows, if you’ve made this properly, then I’ll get another one, and in that case you will be better witches than me, that is for certain.’ They both beamed at this dreadful piece of outright flannel, and it stopped the questions. ‘And now,’ said Tiffany, ‘the cheese rolling will be starting at any minute. I’m sure you won’t want to miss that.’ ‘No, miss,’ they said in unison. Just before they left, full of relief and self-importance, Becky patted Tiffany on her hand. ‘Beaus can be very difficult, miss,’ she said with the assurance of, to Tiffany’s certain knowledge, eight years in the world. ‘Thank you,’ said Tiffany. ‘I shall definitely bear that in mind.’ When it came to the entertainment offered at the fair, such as people making faces through a horse collar or fighting with pillows on the greasy pole or even the bobbing for frogs, well, Tiffany could take them or leave them alone, and in fact much preferred to leave them alone. But she always liked to see a good cheese roll – that is to say, a good cheese roll all the way down a slope of the hill, although not across the giant because no one would want to eat the cheese afterwards. They were hard cheeses, sometimes specially made for the cheese-rolling circuit, and the winning maker of the cheese that reached the bottom unscathed won a belt with a silver buckle and the admiration of all. Tiffany was an expert cheese-maker, but she had never entered. Witches couldn’t enter that sort of competition because if you won – and she knew she had made a cheese or two that could win – everyone would say that was unfair because you were a witch; well, that’s what they would think, but very few would say it. And if you didn’t win, people would say, ‘What kind of witch can’t make a cheese that could be beat by simple cheeses made by simple folk like we?’ There was a gentle movement of the crowd to the start of the cheese rolling, although the frog-bobbing stall still had a big crowd, it being a very humorous and reliable source of entertainment, especially to those people who weren’t actually bobbing. Regrettably, the man who put weasels down his trousers, and apparently had a personal best of nine weasels, hadn’t been there this year, and people were wondering if he had lost his touch. But sooner or later everyone would drift over to the start line for the cheese rolling. It was a tradition. The slope here was very steep indeed and there was always a certain amount of boisterous rivalry between the cheese-owners, which led to pushing and shoving and kicking and bruises; occasionally you got a broken arm or leg. All was going as normal as the waiting men lined up their cheeses, until Tiffany saw, and seemed to be the only one to see, a dangerous cheese roll up all by itself. It was black under the dust and there was a piece of grubby blue and white cloth tied to it. ‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘Horace. And where you are, trouble can’t be far behind.’ She spun around, carefully searching for signs of what should not be there. ‘Now you just listen to me,’ she said under her breath. ‘I know at least one of you must be somewhere near. This isn’t for you, it’s just about people. Understand?’ But it was too late. The Master of the Revels, in his big floppy hat with lace around the brim, blew his whistle and the cheese rolling, as he put it, commenced – which is a far grander word than started. And a man with lace around his hat was never going to use a short word where a long word would do. Tiffany hardly dared to look. The runners didn’t so much run as roll and skid behind their cheeses. But she could hear the cries that went up when the black cheese not only shot into the lead, but occasionally turned round and went back uphill again in order to bang into one of the ordinary innocent cheeses. She could just hear a faint grumbling noise coming from it as it almost shot to the top of the hill. Cheese-runners shouted at it, tried to grab at it and flailed at it with sticks, but the piratical cheese scythed onwards, reached the bottom again just ahead of the terrible carnage of men and cheeses as they piled up, then rolled gently back up to the top and sat there demurely while still gently vibrating. At the bottom of the slope, fights were breaking out among the cheese-jockeys who were still capable of punching somebody, and since everyone was now watching that, Tiffany took the opportunity to snatch up Horace and shove him into her bag. After all, he was hers. Well, that was to say, she had made him, although something odd must’ve got into the mix since Horace was the only cheese that would eat mice and, if you didn’t nail him down, other cheeses as well. No wonder he got on so well with the Nac Mac Feegles,8 who had made him an honorary member of the clan. He was their kind of cheese. Surreptitiously, hoping that no one would notice, Tiffany held the bag up to her mouth and said, ‘Is this any way to behave? Aren’t you ashamed?’ The bag wobbled a little bit, but she knew that the word ‘shame’ was not in Horace’s vocabulary, and neither was anything else. She lowered the bag and moved a little way from the crowd and said, ‘I know you are here, Rob Anybody.’ There he was, sitting on her shoulder. She could smell him. Despite the fact that they generally had little to do with bathing, except when it rained, the Nac Mac Feegles always smelled something like slightly drunk potatoes. ‘The kelda wanted me tae to find out how ye were biding,’ said the Feegle chieftain. ‘You havenae bin tae the mound to see her these past two weeks,’ he went on, ‘and I think she is afeared that a harm may come tae ye, ye are working sae hard an’ all.’ Tiffany groaned, but only to herself. She said, ‘That is very kind of her. There is always so much to do; surely the kelda knows this. It doesn’t matter what I do, there is always more to be done. There is no end to the wanting. But there is nothing to worry about. I am doing fine. And please don’t take Horace out again in public – you know he gets excited.’ ‘Well, in point of fact, it says up on that banner over there that this is for the folk of these hills and we is more than folk. We is folklore ! Ye cannae argue with the lore! Besides, I wanted tae come and pay my ain respects to the big yin without his breeks. He is a fine big wee laddie and nae mistake.’ Rob paused, and then said quietly, ‘So I can tell her that ye are quite well in yourself, aye?’ There was a certain nervousness to him, as if he would like to have said more but knew it wouldn’t be welcome. ‘Rob Anybody, I would be very grateful if you would do just that,’ said Tiffany, ‘because I have a lot of people to bandage, if I’m any judge.’ Rob Anybody, suddenly looking like a man on a thankless errand, frantically said the words he had been told by his wife to say: ‘The kelda says there’s plenty more fish in the sea, miss!’ And Tiffany stood perfectly still for a moment. And then, without looking at Rob, said quietly, ‘Do thank the kelda for her angling information. I have to get on, if you don’t mind, Rob. Do thank the kelda.’ Most of the crowd was reaching the bottom of the slope by now, to gawk or rescue or possibly attempt some amateur first aid on the groaning cheese-runners. For the onlookers, of course, it was just another show; you didn’t often see a satisfying pile-up of men and cheeses, and – who knew? – there might be some really interesting casualties. Tiffany, glad of something to do, did not have to push her way through; the pointy black hat could create a path through a crowd faster than a holy man through a shallow sea. She waved the happy crowd away, with one or two forceful pushes for those of slow uptake. As a matter of fact, as it turned out, the butcher’s bill wasn’t too high this year, with one broken arm, one broken wrist, one broken leg and an enormous number of bruises, cuts and rashes being caused by people sliding most of the way down – grass isn’t always your friend. There were several young men clearly in distress as a result, but they were absolutely definite that they were not going to discuss their injuries with a lady, thank you all the same, so she told them to put a cold compress on the afflicted area, wherever it was, when they got home, and watched them walk unsteadily away. Well, she’d done all right, hadn’t she? She had used her skills in front of the rubbernecking crowd and, according to what she overheard from the old men and women, had performed well enough. Perhaps she imagined that one or two people were embarrassed when an old man with a beard to his waist said with a grin, ‘A girl who can set bones would have no trouble finding a husband,’ but that passed, and with nothing else to do, people started the long climb back up the hill … and then the coach came past, and then, which was worse, it stopped. It had the coat of arms of the Keepsake family on the side. A young man stepped out. Quite handsome in his way, but also so stiff in his way that you could have ironed sheets on him. This was Roland. He hadn’t gone more than a step when a rather unpleasant voice from inside the coach told him that he should have waited for the footman to open the door for him, and to hurry up, because they didn’t have all day. The young man hurried towards the crowd and there was a general smartening-up because, after all, here came the son of the Baron, who owned most of the Chalk and nearly all their houses, and although he was a decent old boy, as old boys go, a little politeness to his family was definitely a wise move … ‘What happened here? Is everybody all right?’ he said. Life on the Chalk was generally pleasant and the relationship between master and man was one of mutual respect; but nevertheless, the farm workers had inherited the idea that it could be unwise to have too many words with powerful people, in case any of those words turned out to be a word out of place. After all, there was still a torture chamber in the castle and even though it hadn’t been used for hundreds of years … well, best to be on the safe side, best to stand back and let the witch do the talking. If she got into trouble, she could fly away. ‘One of those accidents that was bound to happen, I’m afraid,’ said Tiffany, well aware that she was the only woman present who had not curtsied. ‘Some broken bones that will mend and a few red faces. All sorted out, thank you.’ ‘So I see, so I see! Very well done, young lady!’ For a moment Tiffany thought she could taste her teeth. Young lady, from … him? It was almost, but not entirely, insulting. But no one else seemed to have noticed. It was, after all, the kind of language that nobs use when they are trying to be friendly and jolly. He’s trying to talk to them like his father does, she thought, but his father did it by instinct and was good at it. You can’t talk to people as though they are a public meeting. She said, ‘Thank you kindly, sir.’ Well, not too bad so far, except that now the coach door opened again and one dainty white foot touched the flint. It was her: Angelica or Letitia or something else out of the garden; in fact Tiffany knew full well it was Letitia, but surely she could be excused just a tiny touch of nasty in the privacy of her own head? Letitia! What a name. Halfway between a salad and a sneeze. Besides, who was Letitia to keep Roland away from the scouring fair? He should have been there! His father would have been there if the old man possibly could! And look! Tiny white shoes! How long would they last on somebody who had to do a job of work? She stopped herself there: a bit of nasty was enough. Letitia looked at Tiffany and the crowd with something like fear and said, ‘Do let’s get going, can we please? Mother is getting vexed.’ And so the coach left and the hurdy-gurdy man thankfully left and the sun left, and in the warm shadows of the twilight some people stayed. But Tiffany flew home alone, up high where only bats and owls could see her face. 1 This was done blindfolded. 2 Speaking as a witch, she knew them very well. 3 Later on, Tiffany realized that all the witches had probably flown across the giant, especially since you could hardly miss him if you were flying from the mountains to the big city. He kind of stood out, in any case. But in Nanny Ogg’s case, she would probably turn round to look at him again. 4 Obviously, Tiffany thought, when jumping over a fire together, one ought to be concerned about wearing protective clothing and having people with a bucket of water to hand, just in case. Witches may be a lot of things, but first and foremost, they are practical. 5 Possibly Petulia’s romantic ambitions had been helped by the mysterious way the young man’s pigs were forever getting sick and required treating for the scours, the blind heaves, brass neck, floating teeth, scribbling eyeball, grunge, the smarts, the twisting screws, swivelling and gone knees. This was a terrible misfortune, since more than half of those ailments are normally never found in pigs, and one of them is a disease known only in freshwater fish. But the neighbours were impressed at the amount of work Petulia put in to relieve their stress. Her broomstick was coming and going at all hours of the day and night. Being a witch, after all, was about dedication. 6 First Sight means that you can see what really is there, and Second Thoughts mean thinking about what you are thinking. And in Tiffany’s case, there were sometimes Third Thoughts and Fourth Thoughts, although these were quite difficult to manage and sometimes led her to walk into doors. 7 The forget-me-lots is a pretty red and white flower usually given by young ladies to signal to their young men that they never wanted to see them again ever, or at least until they’d learned to wash properly and got a job. 8 If you do not yet know who the Nac Mac Feegles are: 1) be grateful for your uneventful life; and 2) be prepared to beat a retreat if you hear anyone about as high as your ankles shout ‘Crivens!’ They are, strictly speaking, one of the faerie folk, but it is probably not a good idea to tell them this if you are looking forward to a future in which you still have your teeth. Chapter 2 ROUGH MUSIC SHE GOT ONE hour’s sleep before the nightmare began. What she remembered most of all about that evening was the thumping of Mr Petty’s head against the wall and the banisters as she hauled him bodily out of his bed and dragged him by his filthy nightshirt down the stairs. He was a heavy man and half asleep, the other half of him being dead drunk. The important thing was not to give him any time to think, even for one moment, as she towed him behind her like a sack. He was three times her weight, but she knew about leverage. You couldn’t be a witch if you couldn’t manoeuvre someone who was heavier than you. You would never be able to change an invalid’s sheets otherwise. And now he slithered down the last few steps into the cottage’s tiny kitchen, and threw up on the floor. She was quite glad about that; lying in stinking vomit was the very least the man deserved, but she had to be quick to take charge, before he had time to compose himself. The terrified Mrs Petty, a mouse of a woman, had run screaming along the lanes to the village pub as soon as the beating had begun, and Tiffany’s father had sent a lad to wake Tiffany up. Mr Aching was a man with considerable foresight and must have known that the beery cheerfulness after a day at the fair could be the undoing of everybody, and as Tiffany sped towards the cottage on her broom-stick, she had heard the rough music begin. She slapped Petty’s face. ‘Can you hear that?’ she demanded, waving her hand towards the darkened window. ‘Can you hear it? That’s the sound of the rough music, and they are playing it for you, Mister Petty, for you. And they have sticks! And they have stones! They have everything they can pick up, and they have their fists and your daughter’s baby died, Mister Petty. You beat your daughter so hard, Mister Petty, that the baby died, and your wife is being comforted by some of the women and everybody knows that you have done it, everybody knows.’ She stared into his bloodshot eyes. His hands had closed automatically into fists because he had always been a man who thought with them. Soon he would try to use them; she knew it, because it was easier to punch than think. Mr Petty had punched his way through life. The rough music was getting nearer slowly, because it’s hard to walk across fields on a dark night when you’ve had a skinful of beer, no matter how righteous you are currently feeling. She had to hope that they did not go into the barn first, because they would hang him there and then. If he was lucky, they would just hang him. When she had looked into the barn and seen that murder had been done, she knew that, without her, it would be done again. She had put a charm on the girl to take her pain away, holding it just above her own shoulder. It was invisible, of course, but in her mind’s eye it burned a fiery orange. ‘It was that boy,’ mumbled the man, with vomit trickling down his chest. ‘Coming round here, turning her head so as she wouldn’t listen to her mum or me. And her being only thirteen. It’s a scandal.’ ‘William is thirteen too,’ said Tiffany, trying to keep her voice level. It was difficult; the rage was bursting to get out. ‘Are you trying to tell me that she was too young for a bit of romance, but young enough to be beaten so hard that she bled from places where no one should bleed?’ She couldn’t tell if he had really come to his senses, because the man had so few of them at the best of times, it was hard to know if he had any at all. ‘It wasn’t right, what they were doing,’ he said. ‘A man’s got to have discipline in his own house, after all, ain’t that right?’ Tiffany could imagine the fiery language in the pub as the overture to the music got wound up. There were not very many weapons in the villages of the Chalk, but there were such things as reaping hooks and scythes and thatching knives and big, big hammers. They weren’t weapons – until you hit somebody with them. And everyone knew about old Petty’s temper, and the number of times his wife told the neighbours that she had got her black eye by walking into a door. Oh, yes – she could imagine the conversation in the pub, with the beer joining in and people remembering where all those things that weren’t weapons were hanging in their sheds. Every man was king in his little castle. Everyone knew about that – well, at least every man – and so you minded your own business when it came to another man’s castle until the castle began to stink, and then you had to do something about it lest all castles should fall. Mr Petty was one of the neighbourhood’s sullen little secrets, but it was not a secret any more. ‘I am your only chance, Mr Petty,’ she said. ‘Run away. Grab what you can and run away right now. Run away to where they’ve never heard of you, and then run a bit further, just to be on the safe side, because I will not be able to stop them, do you understand? Personally, I could not care less what happens to your miserable frame but I do not wish to see good people get turned into bad people by doing a murder, so you just leg it across the fields and I won’t remember which way you went.’ ‘You can’t turn me out of my own house,’ he mumbled, finding some drunken defiance. ‘You’ve lost your house, your wife, your daughter … and your grandson, Mr Petty. You will find no friends here this night. I am just offering you your life.’ ‘It was the drink what done it!’ Petty burst out. ‘It was done in drink, miss!’ ‘But you drank the drink, and then you drank another drink, and another drink,’ she said. ‘You drank the drink all day at the fair and you only came back because the drink wanted to go to bed.’ Tiffany could feel only coldness in her heart. ‘I’m sorry.’ ‘Not good enough, Mr Petty, not good enough at all. Go away and become a better person and then, maybe, when you come back as a changed man, people here might find it in their hearts to say hello to you, or at least to nod.’ She had been watching his eyes, and she knew the man. Something inside him was boiling up. He was ashamed, bewildered and resentful, and in those circumstances the Pettys of the world struck out. ‘Please don’t, Mr Petty,’ she said. ‘Do you have any idea what would happen to you if you hit a witch?’ She thought to herself, With those fists, you could probably kill me with a punch and that is why I intend to keep you scared. ‘You set the rough music on me, didn’t ya?’ She sighed. ‘No one controls the music, Mr Petty, you know that. It just turns up when people have had enough. No one knows where it starts. People look around, and catch one another’s eye, and give each other a little nod, and other people see that. Other people catch their eye and so, very slowly, the music starts and somebody picks up a spoon and bangs it on a plate, and then somebody else bangs a jug on the table and boots start to stamp on the floor, louder and louder. It is the sound of anger, it is the sound of people who have had enough. Do you want to face the music?’ ‘You think you’re so clever, don’t ya?’ Petty snarled. ‘With your broomstick and your black magic, ordering ordin-ery folks about.’ She almost admired him. There he was, with no friends in the world, covered in his own sick and – she sniffed: yes, there was urine dripping from the bottom of his nightshirt – yet he was stupid enough to talk back like that. ‘Not clever, Mr Petty, just cleverer than you. And that’s not hard.’ ‘Yeah? But clever gets you into trouble. Slip of a gel like you, pokin’ about in other people’s business … What are you going to do when the music comes for you, eh?’ ‘Run, Mr Petty. Get out of here. It’s your last chance,’ she said. And it probably was; she could hear individual voices now. ‘Well, would your majesty let a man put his boots on?’ he said sarcastically. He reached down for them beside the door, but you could read Mr Petty like a very small book, one with fingermarks on all the pages and a piece of bacon as a bookmark. He came up with fists swinging. She took one step backwards, caught his wrist and let the pain out. She felt it flow down her arm, leaving it tingling, into her cupped hand and into Petty: all his daughter’s pain in one second. It flung him clear across the kitchen and it must have burned away everything inside him except animal fear. He rushed at the rickety back door like a bull, broke through it and headed off into the darkness. She staggered back into the barn, where a lamp was burning. According to Granny Weatherwax, you did not feel the pain that you carried, but it was a lie. A necessary lie. You did feel the pain that you carried, and because it wasn’t actually your pain you could somehow bear it, but its departure left you feeling weak and shocked. When the charging, clanging mob arrived, Tiffany was sitting quietly in the barn with the sleeping girl. The noise went all around the house but did not go inside; that was one of the unwritten rules. It was hard to believe that the anarchy of the rough music had rules, but it did; it might go on for three nights, or stop at one, and no one came out of the house when the music was in the air and no one came sneaking home and went back into the house either, unless it was to beg for forgiveness, understanding or ten minutes to pack their bags and run away. The rough music was never organized. It seemed to occur to everybody at once. It played when a village thought that a man had beaten his wife too hard, or his dog too savagely, or if a married man and a married woman forgot that they were married to somebody else. There were other, darker crimes against the music too, but they weren’t talked about openly. Sometimes people could stop the music by mending their ways; quite often they packed up and moved away before the third night. Petty would not have taken the hint; Petty would have come out swinging. And there would have been a fight, and someone would have done something stupid, that is to say even more stupid than what Petty would have done. And then the Baron would find out and people might lose their livelihood, which would mean they would have to leave the Chalk and go for perhaps as much as ten miles to find work and a new life among strangers. Tiffany’s father was a man of keen instinct and he gently opened the barn door a few minutes later when the music was dying down. She knew it was a bit embarrassing for him; he was a well-respected man, but somehow, now, his daughter was more important than he was. A witch did not take orders from anybody, and she knew that he got teased about it by the other men. She smiled and he sat down on the hay next to her while the wild music found nothing to beat, stone or hang. Mr Aching didn’t waste words at the best of times. He looked around and his gaze fell on the little bundle, hastily wrapped in straw and sacking, that Tiffany had put where the girl would not see it. ‘So it’s true, she was with child, then?’ ‘Yes, Dad.’ Tiffany’s father appeared to look at nothing at all. ‘Best if they don’t find him,’ he said after a decent interval. ‘Yes,’ said Tiffany. ‘Some of the lads were talking about stringing him up. We would have stopped them, of course, but it would have been a bad business, with people taking sides. It’s like poison in a village.’ ‘Yes.’ They sat in silence for a while. Then her father looked down at the sleeping girl. ‘What have you done for her?’ he asked. ‘Everything I can,’ said Tiffany. ‘And you did that taking-away-pain thingy you do?’ She sighed. ‘Yes, but that’s not all I shall have to take away. I need to borrow a shovel, Dad. I’ll bury the poor little thing down in the woods, where no one will know.’ He looked away. ‘I wish it wasn’t you doing this, Tiff. You’re not sixteen yet and I see you running around nursing people and bandaging people and who knows what chores. You shouldn’t have to be doing all of that.’ ‘Yes, I know,’ said Tiffany. ‘Why? ’ he asked again. ‘Because other people don’t, or won’t, or can’t, that’s why.’ ‘But it’s not your business, is it?’ ‘I make it my business. I’m a witch. It’s what we do. When it’s nobody else’s business, it’s my business,’ Tiffany said quickly. ‘Yes, but we all thought it was going to be about whizzing around on brooms and suchlike, not cutting old ladies’ toenails for them.’ ‘But people don’t understand what’s needed,’ said Tiffany. ‘It’s not that they are bad; it’s just that they don’t think. Take old Mrs Stocking, who’s got nothing in the world except her cat and a whole lot of arthritis. People were getting her a bite to eat often enough, that is true, but no one was noticing that her toenails were so long they were tangling up inside her boots and so she’d not been able to take them off for a year! People around here are OK when it comes to food and the occasional bunch of flowers, but they are not around when things get a little on the messy side. Witches notice these things. Oh, there’s a certain amount of whizzing about, that’s true enough, but mostly it’s only to get quickly to somewhere there is a mess.’ Her father shook his head. ‘And you like doing this?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Why?’ Tiffany had to think about this, her father’s eyes never leaving her face. ‘Well, Dad, you know how Granny Aching always used to say, “Feed them as is hungry, clothe them as is naked, and speak up for them as has no voices”? Well, I reckon there is room in there for “Grasp for them as can’t bend, reach for them as can’t stretch, wipe for them as can’t twist”, don’t you? And because sometimes you get a good day that makes up for all the bad days and, just for a moment, you hear the world turning,’ said Tiffany. ‘I can’t put it any other way.’ Her father looked at her with a kind of proud puzzlement. ‘And you think that’s worth it, do you?’ ‘Yes, Dad!’ ‘Then I am proud of you, jiggit, you are doing a man’s job!’ He’d used the pet name only the family knew, and so she kissed him politely and did not tell him that he was unlikely to see a man doing the job that she did. ‘What are you all going to do about the Pettys?’ she asked. ‘Your mum and me could take Mrs Petty and her daughter in and …’ Mr Aching paused and gave her a strange look, as if she frightened him. ‘It’s never simple, my girl. Seth Petty was a decent enough lad when we were young. Not the brightest piggy in the litter, I’ll grant you that, but decent enough in his way. It was his dad who was a madman; I mean, things were a bit rough and ready in those days and you could expect a clip around the head if you disobeyed, but Seth’s dad had a thick leather belt with two buckles on it, and he would lay into Seth just for looking at him in a funny way. No word of a lie. Always used to say that he would teach him a lesson.’ ‘It seems that he succeeded,’ Tiffany said, but her father held up a hand. ‘And then there was Molly,’ he went on. ‘You couldn’t say that Molly and Seth were made for one another, because in truth neither of them were rightly made for anybody, but I suppose they were sort of happy together. In those days, Seth was a drover, driving the flocks all the way to the big city sometimes. It wasn’t the kind of job you needed much learning for, and it might be that some of the sheep were a bit brighter than he was, but it was a job that needed doing, and he picked up a wage and no one thought the worse of him for that. The trouble was, that meant he left Molly alone for weeks at a time, and …’ Tiffany’s father paused here, looking embarrassed. ‘I know what you’re going to tell me,’ said Tiffany, to help him out, but he took care to ignore this. ‘It’s not that she was a bad girl,’ he said. ‘It’s just that she never really understood what it was all about, and there wasn’t anyone to tell her, and you got all kinds of strangers and travellers passing through all the time. Quite handsome chaps, some of them.’ Tiffany took pity on him, sitting there looking miserable, embarrassed about telling his little girl things his little girl shouldn’t know. So she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek again. ‘I know, Dad, I really do know. Amber isn’t actually his daughter, right?’ ‘Well, I never said that, did I? She might be,’ said her father awkwardly. And that would be the trick, wouldn’t it, Tiffany thought. Maybe if Seth Petty had known one way or the other, he might have come to terms with the perhaps. Maybe. You never know. But he didn’t know, either, and there would be some days when he thought he did know and some days when he thought the worst. And for a man like Petty, who was a stranger to thinking, the dark thoughts would roll around in his head until they tangled up his brain. And when the brain stops thinking, the fist steps in. Her father was watching her very closely. ‘You know about this sort of thing?’ he said. ‘We call it going round the houses. Every witch does it. Please try and understand me, Dad. I have seen horrible things, and some of them all the more horrible because they were, well, normal. All the little secrets behind closed doors, Dad. Good things and nasty things I am not going to tell you about. It’s just part of being a witch! You learn to sense things.’ ‘Well, you know, life is not exactly a bed of roses for any of us …’ her father began. ‘There was the time when—’ ‘There was this old woman up near Slice,’ Tiffany interrupted him. ‘And she died in her bed. Nothing particularly bad about that, really: she had just run out of life. But she lay there for two months before anyone wondered what had happened. They are a bit strange over in Slice. The worst part of it was that her cats couldn’t get out and started eating her; I mean, she was cat-mad and probably would not have minded, but one of them had kittens in her bed. In her actual bed. It was really very difficult to find the kittens homes in places where people hadn’t already heard the story. They were beautiful kittens too, lovely blue eyes.’ ‘Er,’ her father began. ‘When you say “in her bed”, you mean …’ ‘With her still in it, yes,’ said Tiffany. ‘I’ve had to deal with dead people, yes. You throw up a bit first time, and then you just realize that death is, well, part of life. It is not so bad if you think of it as a list of things to do, and do them one at a time. You might have a bit of a cry as well, but that’s all part of it.’ ‘Didn’t anyone help you?’ ‘Oh, a couple of ladies helped me when I knocked on their doors, but really she was nobody’s business. It can happen like that. People disappear in the cracks.’ She paused. ‘Dad, we’re still not using the old stone barn, are we? Can you get some of the lads to clean it out for me?’ ‘Of course,’ said her father. ‘Do you mind if I ask why?’ Tiffany heard his politeness; he was talking to a witch. ‘I think I’m having a kind of idea,’ she said. ‘And I think I can make good use of that barn. It’s only a thought, and it won’t do any harm to have it tidied up in any case.’ ‘Well, I still feel mightily proud when I see you rushing all over the place on that broomstick of yours,’ said her father. ‘That’s magic, isn’t it?’ Everyone wants magic to exist, Tiffany thought to herself, and what can you say? No, there isn’t? Or: Yes, there is, but it’s not what you think? Everyone wants to believe that we can change the world by snapping our fingers. ‘The dwarfs make them,’ she said. ‘I don’t have a clue how they work. Staying on them, that’s the trick.’ The rough music had died down now, possibly because there was nothing for it to do, or perhaps because – and this was quite likely – if the rough musicians got back to the pub soon, there might be time for another drink before it closed. Mr Aching stood up. ‘I think we should take this girl home, don’t you?’ ‘Young woman,’ corrected Tiffany, leaning over her. ‘What?’ ‘Young woman,’ said Tiffany. ‘She deserves that, at least. And I think I should take her somewhere else first. She needs more help than I can give her. Can you please go and scrounge some rope? I’ve got a leather strap on the broomstick, of course, but I don’t think it will be enough.’ She heard a rustling from the hayloft above, and smiled. Some friends could be so reliable. But Mr Aching looked shocked. ‘You are taking her away?’ ‘Not far. I have to. But look, don’t worry. If Mum makes up an extra bed I’ll soon have her back.’ Her father lowered his voice. ‘It’s them, isn’t it? Do they still follow you?’ ‘Well,’ Tiffany said, ‘they say they don’t, but you know what little liars the Nac Mac Feegle are!’ It had been a long day, and not a good one, otherwise she would not have been so unfair, but – strangely – there was no giveaway reply from above. To her surprise, a lack of Feegle was suddenly almost as distressing as an overdose. And then, to her delight, a small voice said, ‘Ha ha ha, she didnae catch us oot that time, aye, lads? We kept as quiet as little mices! The big wee hag didnae suspect a thing! Lads? Lads?’ ‘Daft Wullie, I swear ye dinnae have enough brains to blow your nose,’ said a similar but angry voice. ‘What part o’ “nae one is tae say one wee word” did ye nae understand? Och, crivens!’ This last remark was followed by the sounds of a scuffle. Mr Aching glanced nervously at the roof and leaned closer. ‘You know your mother is very worried about you? You know she’s just been a grandma again. She’s very proud of them all. And you too, of course,’ he added hurriedly. ‘But all this witchy business, well, that’s not the sort of thing a young man looks for in a wife. And now that you and young Roland …’ Tiffany dealt with this. Dealing was part of witchcraft too. Her father looked so miserable that she put on her cheerful face and said, ‘If I was you, Dad, I would go home and get a decent night’s sleep. I’ll sort things out. Actually, there’s a coil of rope over there, but I’m certain I won’t need to use it now.’ He looked relieved at this. The Nac Mac Feegle could be pretty worrying to those who did not know them very well, although now she thought about it, they could be pretty worrying however long you had known them; a Feegle in your life very soon changed it. ‘Have you been here all this time?’ she demanded, as soon as her father had hurried off. For a moment it rained bits of hay and whole Feegles. The problem with getting angry at Nac Mac Feegles was that it was like getting angry at cardboard or the weather; it didn’t make any difference. She had a go anyway, because by now it was sort of traditional. ‘Rob Anybody! You promised not to spy on me!’ Rob held up a hand. ‘Ah weel, there ye have it, right enough, but it is one of them miss apprehensions, miss, ’cause we wasn’t spying at all, was we, lads?’ The mass of little blue and red shapes that now covered the floor of the barn raised their voices in a chorus of blatant lying and perjury. It slowed down when they saw her expression. ‘Why is it, Rob Anybody, that you persist in lying when you are caught red-handed?’ ‘Ah weel, that’s an easy one, miss,’ said Rob Anybody, who was technically the head man of the Nac Mac Feegles. ‘After all, ye ken, what would be the point of lyin’ when you had nae done anything wrong? Anyway, now I am mortally wounded to my giblets on account of me good name being slandered,’ he said, grinning. ‘How many times have I lied to you, miss?’ ‘Seven hundred and fifty-three times,’ said Tiffany. ‘Every time you promise not to interfere in my business.’ ‘Ah weel,’ said Rob Anybody, ‘ye are still our big wee hag.’ ‘That may or may not be the case,’ said Tiffany haughtily, ‘but I am a lot more big and considerably less wee than I used to be.’ ‘And a lot more hag,’ said a jolly voice. Tiffany did not have to look to know who was talking. Only Daft Wullie could put his foot in it as far up as his neck. She looked down at his beaming little face. And he never did quite understand what it was that he was doing wrong. Hag! It didn’t sound pretty, but every witch was a hag to the Feegles, however young she was. They didn’t mean anything by it – well, probably didn’t mean anything by it, but you could never tell for certain – and sometimes Rob Anybody grinned when he said it, but it was not their fault that to anyone not six inches tall the word meant someone who combed her hair with a rake and had worse teeth than an old sheep. Being called a hag when you are nine can be sort of funny. It isn’t quite so amusing when you are nearly sixteen and have had a very bad day and very little sleep and could really, really do with a bath. Rob Anybody clearly noticed this, because he turned to his brother and said, ‘Ye will bring to mind, brother o’ mine, that there was times when ye should stick your head up a duck’s bottom rather than talk?’ Daft Wullie looked down at his feet. ‘Sorry, Rob. I couldnae find a duck the noo.’ The head man of the Feegles glanced down at the girl on the floor, sleeping gently under her blanket, and suddenly everything was serious. ‘If we had been here when that leathering was happening, it would have been a bad day for him, I’ll tell ye,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Just as well that you weren’t here then,’ said Tiffany. ‘You don’t want to find people coming up to your mound with shovels, do you? You keep away from bigjobs, you hear me? You make them nervous. When people get nervous, they get angry. But since you’re here you can make yourselves useful. I want to get this poor girl up to the mound.’ ‘Aye, we know,’ said Rob. ‘Was it not the kelda herself who was sending us down here to find you?’ ‘She knew about this? Jeannie knew about this?’ ‘I dinnae ken,’ said Rob nervously. He always got nervous when talking about his wife, Tiffany knew. He loved her to distraction, and the thought of her even frowning in his direction turned his knees to jelly. The life of all the other Feegles was generally about fighting, stealing and boozing, with a few extra bits like getting food, which they mostly stole, and doing the laundry, which they mostly did not do. As the kelda’s husband, Rob Anybody had to do the Explaining as well, and that was never an easy job for a Feegle. ‘Jeannie has the kenning o’ things, ye ken,’ he said, not looking directly at Tiffany. She felt sorry for him then; it must be better to be between a rock and a hard place than to be between a kelda and a hag, she thought. Chapter 3 THOSE WHO STIR IN THEIR SLEEP THE MOON WAS well up and turned the world into a sharp-edged jigsaw of black and silver as Tiffany and the Feegles headed up onto the downs. The Nac Mac Feegles could move in absolute silence when they wanted to; Tiffany had been carried by them her- self, and it was always a gentle ride, and really quite pleasant, especially if they had had a bath in the last month or so. Every shepherd on the hills must have seen the Feegle mound at some time or other. No one ever talked about it. Some things were best left unspoken, such as the fact that the loss of lambs on the down where the Feegles lived was much less than it was in more distant parts of the Chalk, but on the other hand a few sheep would disappear; they would be the weak lambs or the very old ewes (Feegles liked old strong mutton, the kind that you could chew for hours) – the flocks were guarded, and guards took their pay. Besides, the mound was very close to all that remained of Granny Aching’s shepherding hut, and that was almost holy ground. Tiffany could smell the smoke leaking up through the thorn bushes as they got nearer. Well, at least it was a blessing that she would not have to slide down the hole to get into it; that sort of thing was all very well when you were nine, but when you were nearly sixteen it was undignified, the ruination of a good dress and, although she would not admit this, far too tight for comfort. But Jeannie the kelda had been making changes. There was an old chalk pit quite close to the mound, reached by a passageway underground. The kelda had got the boys working on this with bits of corrugated iron and tarpaulin which they had ‘found’ in that very distinctive way they had of ‘finding’ things. It still looked like a typical upland chalk pit, because brambles and Climbing Henry and Twirling Betty vines had been trained over it so that barely a mouse would be able to find its way inside. Water could get in though, dripping down the iron and filling barrels down below; there was a much larger space now for cooking, and even enough room for Tiffany to climb down if she remembered to shout out her name first, when hidden hands pulled strings and opened the way through the impassable brambles as if by magic. The kelda had her own private bathroom down there; the Feegles themselves took a bath only when something reminded them, such as an eclipse of the moon. Amber was whisked down the hole and Tiffany waited impatiently close to the right spot in the bramble forest until the thorns magically ‘moved aside’. Jeannie, the kelda, almost as round as a football, was waiting for her, a baby under each arm. ‘I am very pleased to see you, Tiffany,’ she said, and for some reason that sounded odd and out of place. ‘I have told the boys tae go and let off steam outside,’ the kelda went on. ‘This is woman’s work, and not a pretty errand at that, I’m sure ye will agree. They have laid her down by the fire and I have started to put the soothings on her. I do think she will bide fine, but it was a good job that ye have done this night. Your famous Mistress Weatherwax her own self could not have done a better job.’ ‘She taught me to take away pain,’ said Tiffany. ‘Ye dinnae say?’ said the kelda, giving Tiffany a strange look. ‘I hope ye never have occasion to regret the day she did ye that … kindness.’ At this point several Feegles appeared down the tunnel that led into the main mound. They looked uneasily from their kelda to their hag, and a very reluctant spokesfeegle said, ‘Not to be barging in or anything, ladies, but we was cooking up a wee late-night snack, and Rob said to ask if the big wee hag would like a wee tasty?’ Tiffany sniffed. There was a definite scent in the air, and it was the kind of scent you get when you have sheep meat in close conjunction with, for example, a roasting pan. All right, she thought, we know they do it, but they might have the good manners not to do it in front of me! The spokesfeegle must have realized this because, while wringing the edge of his kilt madly with both hands, as a Feegle generally did when he was telling an enormous lie, he added, ‘Weel, I think I did hear that maybe a piece of sheep kind of accidentally fell intae the pan when it was cooking and we tried to drag it oot but – well, ye ken what sheep is like – it panicked and fought back.’ At this point the speaker’s obvious relief at being able to cobble some kind of excuse together led him to attempt greater heights of fiction, and he went on: ‘It is my thinking that it must have been suicidal owing to having nothing to do all day but eat grass.’ He looked hopefully at Tiffany to see if this had worked, just as the kelda cut in sharply and said, ‘Wee Honeymouth Jock, just you go in there and say that the big wee hag would like a mutton sandwich, OK?’ She looked up at Tiffany and said, ‘No arguing, girl. Ye look tae me to be all but swaying for want of a decent hot meal. I ken well that witches looks after everybody but theirselves. Run ye along, boys.’ Tiffany could still feel a tension in the air. The kelda’s solemn little gaze stayed fixed on her, and then Jeannie said, ‘Can you remember yesterday?’ It sounded like a silly question, but Jeannie was never silly. It was worth thinking about, although Tiffany yearned for some suicidal sheep and a decent night’s sleep. ‘Yesterday – well, I suppose it’s the day before yesterday now – I was called over to Buckle-Without,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘The blacksmith there had not been careful with his forge, and it had broken open and shot hot coals all down his leg. I treated him and took away the pain, which I put in his anvil. For the doing of this, I was paid twenty-four pounds of potatoes, three cured deerskins, half a bucket of nails, one old but serviceable sheet good enough to make bandages and one small jar of hedgehog fat which his wife swore was a capital remedy for inflammation of the pipes. I also had a good helping of stew with the family. Then, since I was in the vicinity, I went on to Buckle-With-Many, where I saw to Mr Gower’s little problem. I mentioned to him about the hedgehog fat, and he said it was a wonderful cure for the unmentionables, and traded me one whole ham for the jar. Mrs Gower made me tea and allowed me to pick a bushel basket of love-in-a-pickle, which grows more freely in her garden than I have ever seen it grow anywhere else.’ Tiffany paused a moment. ‘Oh yes, and then I stopped off at Wits End to change a poultice, and then I went and saw to the Baron, and then, of course, the rest of the day was my own, hah! But on the whole it was not a bad day, as days go, as people were too busy thinking about the fair.’ ‘And as days go, the day has gone,’ said the kelda, ‘and no doubt it was a busy and useful one. But all day I had premonitions about ye, Tiffany Aching.’ Jeannie held up a small nut-brown hand as Tiffany began to protest, and went on, ‘Tiffany, ye must know that I watch over you. Ye are the hag o’ the hills, after all, and I have the power to watch ye in my heid, to keep an eye on ye, because somebody must. I know ye know this because ye are clever, and I know that ye pretend to me that ye do not know, just as I pretend not to know that I know, and I am sure that ye know that too, yes?’ ‘I might have to work all that out with a pencil and paper,’ Tiffany said, trying to laugh it off. ‘It is nae funny! I can see ye clouded in my heid. Danger around ye. And the worst of it is, I cannae see from whence it comes. And that is not right!’ Just as Tiffany opened her mouth, half a dozen Feegles came scurrying down the tunnel from the mound, carrying a plate between them. Tiffany couldn’t help noticing, because witches always noticed things if they possibly can, that the blue decoration around the edge of the plate looked very much like that on her mother’s second-best dinner service. The rest of the plate was obscured by a large piece of mutton, along with jacket potatoes. It smelled wonderful, and her stomach took over her brain. A witch took her meals where she could, and was happy to get them. The meat had been cut in half, although the half for the kelda was slightly smaller than the half for Tiffany. Strictly speaking, you cannot have a half that is smaller than the other half, because it wouldn’t be a half, but human beings know what it means. And keldas always had a huge appetite for their size, because they had babies to make. This wasn’t time to talk anyway. A Feegle offered Tiffany a knife which was, in fact, a Feegle claymore, and then held up a rather grubby tin can with a spoon stuck in it. ‘Relish?’ he suggested shyly. This was a bit posh for a Feegle meal, although Jeannie was civilizing them somewhat, in so far as you could civilize a Feegle. At least they were getting the right idea. Nevertheless, Tiffany understood enough to be wary. ‘What’s in it?’ she asked, knowing that this was a dangerous question. ‘Oh, wonderful stuff,’ said the Feegle, rattling the spoon in the can. ‘There’s crabapple, there is, and mustard seed and horseradish and snails and wild herbs and garlic and a sprinkling of Johnny-come-lately—’ But he had gabbled one word a bit too quickly for Tiffany’s taste. ‘Snails?’ she interrupted. ‘Oh aye, yes, very nourishing, full of vit’mins and min’rals, ye ken, and those wee pro-teenies, and the nice thing is, with enough garlic, they taste of garlic.’ ‘What do they taste of if you don’t use garlic?’ said Tiffany. ‘Snails,’ said the kelda, taking pity on the waiter, ‘and I have to say they are good eating, my girl. The boys let them out at night to graze on wild cabbage and dog lettuce. They are quite tasty, and I think ye might approve of the fact that there is no stealing involved.’ Well, that was a good thing, Tiffany had to admit. Feegles did steal, joyously and repeatedly, as much for sport as anything else. On the other hand, to the right people, in the right place, at the right time, they could be very generous, and this was, fortunately, happening right now. ‘Even so, Feegles farming?’ she said aloud. ‘Oh no,’ said the spokesfeegle, while his fellows behind him pantomimed insulted distaste by making ‘yuk’ noises and sticking their fingers down their throat. ‘It is nae farming, it is livestock herding, as is suitable for them who is free o’ spirit and likes to feel the wind up their kilt. Mind ye, the stampedes can be a wee bit embarrassing.’ ‘Have some, please do,’ the kelda pleaded. ‘It will encourage them.’ In fact, the new Feegle cuisine was quite tasty. Perhaps it’s true what they say, thought Tiffany, that anything goes with garlic. Except custard. ‘Don’t mind my boys,’ said Jeannie when they had both eaten their fill. ‘The times are changing and I think they know it. For ye too. How do ye feel?’ ‘Oh, you know. The usual,’ said Tiffany. ‘Tired, flustered and upset. That sort of thing.’ ‘Ye work too hard, my girl. I fear ye do not have enough to eat, and I can certainly see ye don’t get enough sleep. When did ye last sleep the night in a proper bed, I wonder? Ye ken that ye must have sleep; ye cannae think properly without some time to rest. I fear ye will soon need all the strength ye can muster. Would ye like me to put the soothings on ye?’ Tiffany yawned again. ‘Thank you for offering, Jeannie,’ she said, ‘but I don’t think I need them, if it’s all the same to you.’ There was a pile of greasy fleeces in the corner that had probably not long before belonged to sheep who had decided to say goodbye to the cruel world and commit suicide. They looked very inviting. ‘I had better go and see to the girl.’ Tiffany’s legs did not seem to want her to move. ‘Still, I expect she is as safe as houses in a Feegle mound.’ ‘Oh, no,’ said Jeannie softly as Tiffany’s eyes shut. ‘Much, much safer than houses.’ When Tiffany was actually snoring, Jeannie walked slowly up and into the mound itself. Amber was curled up near the fire, but Rob Anybody had stationed some of the older and wiser Feegles around her. This was because the evening fighting was going on. The Nac Mac Feegle fought as often as they breathed, and generally at the same time. It was by way of being a way of life, in a way. Besides, when you were only a few inches tall, you had the whole world to fight and so you might as well learn early. Jeannie sat down by her husband and watched the brawling for a while. Young Feegles were bouncing off the walls, their uncles and one another. Then she said, ‘Rob, do ye think we are bringing our boys up properly?’ Rob Anybody, who was sensitive to Jeannie’s mood, glanced across at the sleeping girl. ‘Oh aye, no doubt about it—Hey, did ye no’ see that? Slightly-more-wee-than-wee-Jock-Jock kicked Daft Wullie in the pog! Wonderful dirty fightin’, and he’s still only three inches high!’ ‘He is going to make a grand warrior one day, Rob, that’s true enough,’ said Jeannie, ‘but …’ ‘I always tell them,’ Rob Anybody went on excitedly as the young Feegle flew over their heads, ‘that the way to success is always to attack only people who are much bigger than ye are! Important rule!’ Jeannie sighed as another young Feegle smacked into the wall, shook his head and rushed back into the fight. It was almost impossible to hurt a Feegle. Any human who tried to stamp on a Feegle would find that the little man he thought was under his boot was now in fact climbing up his trouser leg, and after that the day could only get worse. Besides, if you saw one Feegle, there were probably many more around that you hadn’t spotted, and they had certainly spotted you. Perhaps the bigjobs have bigger problems because they’re bigger than us, the kelda thought. She sighed inwardly. She would never let her husband know this, but sometimes she did wonder whether a young Feegle might profitably be taught something like, well, accountancy. Something that didnae mean ye had to bounce off the walls, and didnae mean you had to fight all the time. But then, would he still be a Feegle? ‘I’m feared for the big wee hag, Rob,’ she said. ‘Something is wrong.’ ‘She wanted to be a hag, lassie,’ said Rob. ‘Now she has to dree her weird, same as us. She is a bonny fighter, ye ken. She kissed the Lord of the Winter to his death and banged the Queen o’ the Elves with a frying pan. And I mind the time that invisible beastie got into her heid, and she wrestled it and sent it away. She fights.’ ‘Oh, I ken that well enough,’ said the kelda. ‘She kissed the face o’ winter and made springtime come again. It was a great thing that she did, sure enough, but she had the mantle of the summer about her. It was that power she dealt to him, not just her own. She did it well, mind, I can think of none who would have done it better, but she must beware.’ ‘What enemy can she have that we cannae face with her?’ Rob asked. ‘I cannae tell,’ said the kelda, ‘but in my heid, it seems like this. When she kissed the winter, it shook me to my roots; it seemed like it shook the world and I cannae but wonder that there might be those who stirred in their slumber. You mak’ certain, Rob Anybody, to keep more than one eye on her.’ Chapter 4 THE REAL SHILLING TIFFANY WOKE HUNGRY and to the sound of laughter. Amber was awake and, against all probability, happy. Tiffany found out why when she managed to squeeze most of herself into the tunnel that led to the mound. The girl was still lying curled up on one side, but a group of young Feegles were entertaining her with somersaults and handsprings and occasionally tripping one another up in humorous ways. The laughter was younger than Amber was; it sounded like the chuckle a baby makes when it sees shiny things in pretty colours. Tiffany did not know how the soothings worked, but they were better than anything a witch could do; they seemed to settle people down and make them better from inside their head outwards. They made you well and, best of all, they made you forget. Sometimes, it seemed to Tiffany, the kelda talked about them as if they were alive – living thoughts perhaps, or kindly living creatures that somehow took away the bad things. ‘She’s doing well,’ said the kelda, appearing out of nowhere. ‘She will bide fine. There will be nightmares as the darkness comes out. The soothings can’t do everything. She’s coming back into herself now, right from the start, and that’s the best thing.’ It was still dark but dawn edged the horizon. Tiffany had a dirty job to do before daylight. ‘Can I leave her here with you for a little while?’ she said. ‘There’s a small task that needs doing.’ I shouldn’t have gone to sleep, she thought as she climbed out of the pit. I should have gone right back! I shouldn’t have left the poor little thing there! She tugged the broomstick out of the thorn bushes around the mound, and stopped dead. Someone was watching her; she could feel it on the back of her neck. She turned sharply, and saw an old woman all in black, quite tall, but leaning on a walkingstick. Even as Tiffany looked, the woman vanished, slowly, as if evaporating into the scenery. ‘Mistress Weatherwax?’ Tiffany said to the empty air, but that was silly. Granny Weatherwax would not be seen dead with a walkingstick, and certainly wouldn’t be seen alive with one. And there was movement in the corner of her eye. When she spun round again there was a hare, right up on her9 hind legs, watching her with interest and no sign of fear. It was what they did, of course. The Feegles didn’t hunt them, and the average sheepdog would run out of legs before a hare ran out of breath. The hare had no stuffy burrow to be trapped in; speed was where a hare lived, shooting across the landscape like a dream of the wind – she could afford to sit and watch the slow world go by. This one burst into flames. She blazed for a moment and then, entirely unharmed, sped away in a blur. All right, thought Tiffany as the broomstick came free, let’s approach this from the point of view of common sense. The turf isn’t scorched and hares are not known for bursting into flames, so–She stopped as a tiny trapdoor flicked open in her memory. The hare runs into the fire. Had she seen that written down anywhere? Had she heard it as part of a song? A nursery rhyme? What had the hare got to do with anything? But she was a witch, after all, and there was a job to do. Mysterious omens could wait. Witches knew that mysterious omens were around all the time. The world was always very nearly drowning in mysterious omens. You just had to pick the one that was convenient. Bats and owls steered effortlessly out of Tiffany’s way as she sped over the sleeping village. The Petty house was on the very edge. It had a garden. Every house in the village had a garden. Most of them had a garden full of vegetables or, if the wife had the upper hand, half vegetables and half flowers. The Petty house was fronted by a quarter of an acre of stinging nettles. That had always annoyed Tiffany right down to her country boots. How hard would it have been to grub up the weeds and put in a decent crop of potatoes? All they needed was muck, and there was plenty of that in a farming village; the trick was to stop it getting into the house. Mr Petty could have made an effort. He had been back to the barn, or at least somebody had. The baby was now on top of the heap of straw. Tiffany had come prepared with some old, but still serviceable linen, which was at least better than sacking and straw. But somebody had disturbed the little body, and put flowers around it, except that the flowers were, in fact, stinging nettles. They had also lit a candle in one of the tin-plate candlesticks that every house in the village owned. A candlestick. A light. On a pile of loose straw. In a barn full of tinder-dry hay and more straw. Tiffany stared in horror, and then heard the grunt overhead. A man was hanging from the barn’s rafters. They creaked. A little dust and some shreds of hay floated down. Tiffany caught them quickly and picked up the candle before the next fall of wisps set the whole barn alight. She was about to blow it out when it struck her that this would leave her in the dark with the gently spinning figure that may or may not be a corpse. She put it down ever so carefully by the door and scrabbled around to find something sharp. But this was Petty’s barn, and everything was blunt, except a saw. It had to be him up there! Who else could it be? ‘Mr Petty?’ she said, clambering into the dusty rafters. There was something like a wheeze. Was this good? Tiffany managed to hook one leg round a beam, leaving one hand free to wield the saw. The trouble was that she needed two more hands. The rope was tight round the man’s neck, and the blunt teeth of the saw bounced on it, making the man swing even more. And he was beginning to struggle too, the fool, so that the rope not only swung, but twisted as well. In a moment, she would fall down. There was a movement in the air, a flash of iron, and Petty dropped like a rock. Tiffany managed to hold her balance long enough to grab a dusty rafter and half climb and half slither after him. Her fingernails clawed at the rope round his neck but it was as tight as a drum … and there should have been a flourish of music because suddenly Rob Anybody was there, right in front of her; he held up a tiny, shiny claymore and looked at her questioningly. She groaned inwardly. What good are you, Mr Petty? What good have you been? You can’t even hang yourself properly. What good will you ever do? Wouldn’t I be doing the world and you a favour by letting you finish what you began? That was the thing about thoughts. They thought themselves, and then dropped into your head in the hope that you would think so too. You had to slap them down, thoughts like that; they would take a witch over if she let them. And then it would all break down, and nothing would be left but the cackling. She had heard it said that, before you could understand anybody, you needed to walk a mile in their shoes, which did not make a whole lot of sense because, probably after you had walked a mile in their shoes you would understand that they were chasing you and accusing you of the theft of a pair of shoes – although, of course, you could probably outrun them owing to their lack of footwear. But she understood what the proverb actually meant, and here was a man one breath away from death. She had no option, no option at all. She had to give him that breath, for the sake of a handful of nettles; something inside the wretched hulk had still managed to be good. It was a tiny spark, but it was there. And there was no argument. Hating herself deep down for being so soppy, she nodded at the Big Man of the Feegle clan. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Try not to hurt him too much.’ The sword sparkled; and the cut was made with the delicacy of a surgeon, although the surgeon would have washed his hands first. The rope actually sprang out as the Feegle severed it, and shot away as though it was a serpent. Petty gasped air so hard that the candle flame by the door seemed to flatten for a moment. Tiffany got up off her knees and brushed herself down. ‘What did you come back for?’ she said. ‘What were you looking for? What did you expect to find?’ Mr Petty lay there. There wasn’t even a grunt in reply. It was hard to hate him now, wheezing on the floor. Being a witch meant you had to make choices, usually the choices that ordinary people did not want to make or even to know about. So she washed his face with a bit of torn cloth moistened from the pump outside and wrapped the dead child in the rather larger and cleaner bit of cloth that she had brought for the purpose. It wasn’t the best of shrouds, but it was honest and civilized. She reminded herself, in a dreamy kind of way, that she needed to build up her store of makeshift bandages and realized how grateful she should be. ‘Thank you, Rob,’ she said. ‘I don’t I think I could have managed by myself.’ ‘I reckon that maybe ye could,’ said Rob Anybody, while they both knew that she couldn’t. ‘It just so happened that I was passing by, ye ken, and not following ye at all. One of them coincidences.’ ‘There have been a lot of those coincidences lately,’ said Tiffany. ‘Aye,’ said Rob, grinning, ‘it must be another coincidence.’ It was impossible to embarrass a Feegle. They just couldn’t grasp the idea. He was watching her. ‘What happens now?’ he said. That was the question, wasn’t it. A witch needed to make people believe she knew what to do next, even if she didn’t. Petty was going to live, and the poor child was not going to stop being dead. ‘I’ll take care of things,’ she said. ‘It’s what we do.’ Only it’s just me; there is no ‘us’, she thought as she flew through the mists of morning to the place of flowers. I wish, I wish there was. In the hazel woods there was a clearing of flowers from early spring to late autumn. There was meadowsweet and foxglove and old man’s trousers and Jack-jump-into-bed and ladies’ bonnets and three-times-Charlie and sage and southernwood and pink yarrow and ladies’ bedstraw and cowslips and primroses and two types of orchid. It was where the old lady that they had called the witch was buried. If you knew where to look, you could see what little was left of her cottage underneath all that greenery, and if you really knew where to look, you could see the place where she had been buried. If you really and truly knew where to look, you could find the spot where Tiffany had buried the old lady’s cat too; there was catnip growing on it. Once upon a time, the rough music had come for the old woman and her cat, oh yes it had, and the people walking to its drumming had dragged her out into the snow and pulled down the rickety cottage and burned her books because they had pictures of stars in them. And why? Because the Baron’s son had gone missing and Mrs Snapperly had no family and no teeth and, to be honest, cackled a bit as well. And that made her a witch, and the people of the Chalk didn’t trust witches, so she was pulled out into the snow, and while the fire ate up the thatch of the cottage, page after page of stars crackled and crinkled into the night sky while the men stoned the cat to death. And that winter, after she had hammered on doors that remained closed to her, the old woman died in the snow, and because she had to be buried somewhere, there was a shallow grave where the old cottage used to be. But the old woman had nothing to do with the loss of the Baron’s son, had she? And soon after, Tiffany had gone all the way to a strange fairyland to bring him back, hadn’t she? And nobody talked about the old lady these days, did they? But when they walked past the place in the summer, the flowers filled the air with delight and bees filled it with the colours of honey. No one talked about it. After all, what would you say? Rare flowers growing on the grave of the old woman and catnip growing where the Aching girl had buried the cat? It was a mystery, and maybe a judgement, although whose judgement it was, on whom, for what and why, was best not thought about, let alone discussed. Nevertheless, wonderful flowers growing over the remains of the possible witch – how could that happen? Tiffany didn’t ask that question. The seeds had been expensive to buy and she had had to go all the way to Twoshirts to get them, but she had vowed that every summer the brilliance in the wood would remind people that there had been an old lady they had hounded to death and been buried there. She did not quite know why she thought that was important, but she was certain to the centre of her soul that it was. When she had finished digging the deep but sad little hole in a patch of love-in-a-hurry, Tiffany looked around to make certain that no early-morning traveller was watching and used both hands to fill the hole with dirt, moving dead leaves and transplanting some forget-me-lots. They weren’t really right here, but they grew fast and that was important because … someone was watching her. It was important not to look round. She knew she couldn’t be seen. In all her life she had met only one person who was better than her at not being seen, and that was Granny Weatherwax. It was still misty too, and she would have heard if anyone had come along the path. It wasn’t a bird or animal, either. They always felt different. A witch should never have to look around because they should know who was behind them. Usually she could work it out, but every sense she had told her that no one but Tiffany Aching was there, and somehow, in some strange way, it felt wrong. ‘Too much to do, not enough sleep,’ she said aloud, and thought she heard a faint voice say, ‘Yes.’ It was like an echo except there was nothing for it to echo from. She flew away as fast as she could make the broomstick go, which, not being very fast at all, at least served to prevent it looking as though she was running away. Going nuts. Witches didn’t often talk about it, but they were aware of it all the time. Going nuts; or, rather not going nuts, was the soul and centre of witchcraft, and this was how it worked. After a while, a witch, who almost always worked by herself in the tradition of witches, had a tendency to go … strange. Of course, it depended on the length of time and the strength of mind of the witch, but sooner or later they tended to get confused about things like right and wrong and good and bad and truth and consequences. That could be very dangerous. So witches had to keep one another normal, or at least what was normal for witches. It didn’t take very much: a tea party, a singsong, a stroll in the woods, and somehow everything balanced up, and they could look at adverts for gingerbread cottages in the builder’s brochure without putting a deposit on one. On top of everything else Tiffany was worried about going nuts. It was two months since she had last been up into the mountains and three months since she had last seen Miss Tick, the only other witch you ever saw down here. There wasn’t time to go visiting. There was always too much to do. Perhaps that was the trick of it, Tiffany thought. If you kept yourself busy you wouldn’t have time to go nuts. The sun was well up when she got back to the Feegle mound and she was shocked to see Amber sitting out on the side of the mound, surrounded by Feegles and laughing. The kelda was waiting for Tiffany by the time she had garaged the broomstick in the thorn bushes. ‘I hope ye do not mind,’ she said when she saw Tiffany’s face. ‘The sunshine is a great healer.’ ‘Jeannie, it was wonderful of you to put the soothings on her, but I don’t want her to see too much of you. She might tell people.’ ‘Oh, it will all seem like a dream tae her, the soothings will see to that,’ said Jeannie calmly, ‘and who will take much heed of a wee girl prattling about the fairies?’ ‘She is thirteen!’ said Tiffany. ‘It’s not supposed to happen!’ ‘Is she no’ happy?’ ‘Well, yes, but …’ There was a steely look in Jeannie’s eye. She had always been very respectful to Tiffany, but respect requires respect in its turn. It was Jeannie’s mound, after all, and probably her land as well. Tiffany settled for saying, ‘Her mother will be worrying.’ ‘Is that so?’ said Jeannie. ‘And did her mam worry when she left the poor thing taking a beating?’ Tiffany wished the kelda wasn’t so astute. People used to tell Tiffany that she was so sharp she would cut herself, but the kelda’s steady grey gaze could chop iron nails. ‘Well, Amber’s mother is … she’s not very … clever.’ ‘So I hear,’ said Jeannie, ‘but most beasts is short on brains, and yet still the doe will stand her ground to defend her fawn, and a fox for her cub will face down the dog.’ ‘Humans are more complicated,’ said Tiffany. ‘So it seems,’ said the kelda, her voice chilly just for that moment. ‘Well, the soothings is working fine, so maybe the girl needs to be back in your complicated world?’ Where her father is still alive, Tiffany reminded herself. I know he is. He was bruised, but he was breathing, and I hope to goodness he sobers up. And is this problem ever going to end? It has to be sorted out! I’ve got other things to do! And I’ve got to go and see the Baron this afternoon! Tiffany’s father met them when they walked into the farmyard; Tiffany generally left the broomstick tied to a tree just outside, in theory because flying overhead frightened the chickens, but mostly because she was never able to land very gracefully and certainly didn’t want an audience. He looked from Amber to his daughter. ‘Is she all right? She looks a bit … dreamy.’ ‘She’s had something to calm her down and make her feel better,’ said Tiffany, ‘and she shouldn’t run around.’ ‘Her mum has been in a dreadful state, you know,’ Tiffany’s father went on reproachfully, ‘but I told her you were looking after Amber in a very safe place.’ There was more than a hint of ‘You are sure about that, aren’t you?’ in the way he spoke, and Tiffany was careful to ignore it, and simply said, ‘I was.’ She tried to imagine Mrs Petty in a dreadful state, and it didn’t work. Every time she had ever seen the woman she had a look of baffled apprehension, as if life had too many puzzles and you just had to wait until the next one hit you. Tiffany’s father pulled his daughter to one side and lowered his voice. ‘Petty came back in the night,’ he hissed, ‘and they say that someone tried to kill him!’ ‘What?’ ‘True as I’m standing here.’ Tiffany turned to Amber. The girl was staring at the sky as if hoping patiently for something interesting to happen. ‘Amber,’ she said carefully, ‘you know how to feed chickens, don’t you?’ ‘Oh yes, miss.’ ‘Well, go and feed ours, will you? There’s grain in the barn.’ ‘Your mum fed them hours ago—’ her father began, but Tiffany dragged him away quickly. ‘When did this happen?’ she asked, watching Amber walking obediently into the barn. ‘Some time last night. Mrs Petty told me. He was beaten badly. In that rackety old barn. Right where we were sitting last night.’ ‘Mrs Petty went back? After everything that happened? What does she see in him?’ Mr Aching gave a shrug. ‘He is her husband.’ ‘But everyone knows he beats her up!’ Her father looked a bit embarrassed. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I suppose to some women any husband is better than none.’ Tiffany opened her mouth to reply, looked into her father’s eyes and saw the truth of what he had said. She had seen some of them up in the mountains, worn out by too many children and not enough money. Of course, if they knew Nanny Ogg, something could be done about the children at least, but you still found the families who sometimes, in order to put food on the table, had to sell the chairs. And there was never anything you could do about it. ‘Mr Petty wasn’t beaten up, Dad, although it wouldn’t be such a bad idea if he was. I found him trying to hang himself, and I cut him down.’ ‘He’s got two broken ribs, and bruises all over him.’ ‘It was a long way down, Dad – he was choking to death! What should I have done? Let him swing? He has lived to see another day, whether he deserves to or not! It’s not my job to be an executioner! There was a bouquet, Dad! Weeds and nettles! His hands were swollen with nettle stings! There’s at least some part of him that deserves to live, do you see?’ ‘But you did steal the baby away.’ ‘No, Dad, I stole away with the baby. Listen, Dad, do get it right. I buried the child, which was dead. I saved the man who was dying. I did those things, Dad. People might not understand – might make up stories. I don’t care. You do the job that is in front of you.’ There was a clucking, and Amber walked across the yard with the chickens following her in a line. The clucking was being done by Amber, and as Tiffany and her father watched, the chickens marched back and forth as if under the command of a drill sergeant. The girl was giggling to herself in between clucks, and after managing to get the chickens to walk solemnly in a circle she looked up at Tiffany and her father as if nothing had happened and led the fowls back into the barn. After a pause Tiffany’s father said, ‘That did just happen, didn’t it?’ ‘Yes,’ said Tiffany. ‘I have no idea why.’ ‘I’ve been talking to some of the other lads,’ said her father, ‘and your mother has been talking to the women. We’ll keep an eye on the Pettys. Things have been let go that shouldn’t have. People can’t expect to leave everything to you. People mustn’t think that you can fix everything, and if you’ll take my advice, neither will you. There are some things a whole village has to do.’ ‘Thanks, Dad,’ said Tiffany, ‘but I think I had better go and see to the Baron now.’ Tiffany could only just remember ever seeing the Baron as a well man. Nor did anyone seem to know what was wrong with him. But, like many other invalids she had seen, he somehow kept on going, living in a holding pattern and waiting to die. She had heard one of the villagers call him a creaking door which never slammed; he was getting worse now, and in her opinion it was not going to be very long before his life slammed shut. But she could take away the pain, and even frighten it a little so it wouldn’t come back for a while. Tiffany hurried to the castle. The nurse, Miss Spruce, was waiting when she arrived, and her face was pale. ‘It’s not one of his good days,’ she said, then added with a modest little smile, ‘I have been praying for him all morning.’ ‘I’m sure that was very kind of you,’ said Tiffany. She had taken care to keep any sarcasm out of her voice, but she got a frown from the nurse anyway. The room Tiffany was ushered into smelled like sickrooms everywhere: all too much of people, and not enough air. The nurse stood in the doorway as if she was on guard. Tiffany could feel her permanently suspicious gaze on the back of her neck. There was more and more of that sort of attitude about. Sometimes you got wandering preachers around who didn’t like witches, and people would listen to them. It seemed to Tiffany that people lived in a very strange world sometimes. Everybody knew, in some mysterious way, that witches ran away with babies and blighted crops, and all the other nonsense. And at the same time, they would come running to the witch when they needed help. The Baron lay in a tangle of sheets, his face grey, his hair totally white now, with little pink patches where it had all gone. He looked neat, though. He had always been a neat man, and every morning one of the guards would come and give him a shave. It cheered him up, as far as anyone could tell, but right now he looked straight through Tiffany. She was used to this; the Baron was what they called ‘a man of the old school’. He was proud and did not have the best of tempers, but he would stand up for himself at all times. To him, the pain was a bully, and what do you do to bullies? You stood up to them, because they always ran away in the end. But the pain didn’t know about that rule. It just bullied even more. And the Baron lay with thin white lips; Tiffany could hear him not screaming. Now, she sat down on a stool beside him, flexed her fingers, took a deep breath, and then received the pain, calling it out of the wasted body and putting it into the invisible ball just above her shoulder. ‘I don’t hold with magic, you know,’ said the nurse from the doorway. Tiffany winced like a tightrope walker who has just felt someone hit the other end of the rope with a big stick. Carefully, she let the flow of pain settle down, a little bit at a time. ‘I mean,’ said the nurse, ‘I know it makes him feel better, but where does all this healing power come from, that’s what I’d like to know?’ ‘Perhaps it comes from all your praying, Miss Spruce,’ said Tiffany sweetly, and was glad to see the moment of fury on the woman’s face. But Miss Spruce had the hide of an elephant. ‘We must be sure that we don’t get involved with dark and demonic forces. Better a little pain in this world than an eternity of suffering in the next!’ Up in the mountains there were sawmills driven by water, and they had big circular saws that spun so fast they were nothing but a silver blur in the air … until an absent-minded man forgot to pay attention, when it became a red disc and the air was raining fingers. Tiffany felt like that now. She needed to concentrate and the woman was determined to go on talking, while the pain was waiting for just one moment’s lack of attention. Oh well, nothing for it … she threw the pain at a candlestick beside the bed. It shattered instantly, and the candle flashed into flame; she stamped on it until it went out. Then she turned to the astonished nurse. ‘Miss Spruce, I am sure that what you have to say is very interesting, but on the whole, Miss Spruce, I don’t really care what you think about anything. I don’t mind you staying in here, Miss Spruce, but what I do mind, Miss Spruce, is that this is very difficult and can be dangerous for me if it goes wrong. Go away, Miss Spruce, or stay, Miss Spruce, but most of all, shut up, Miss Spruce, because I’ve only just started and there is still a lot of pain to shift.’ Miss Spruce gave her another look. It was fearsome. Tiffany returned this with a look of her own, and if there is one thing that a witch learns how to do, it is how to look. The door shut behind the enraged nurse. ‘Talk quietly – she listens at doors.’ The voice came from the Baron, but it was hardly a voice at all; you could just hear in it the tones of someone used to command, but now it was cracked and failing, every word pleading for enough time to say the next word. ‘I’m sorry, sir, but I must concentrate,’ said Tiffany. ‘I would hate for this to go wrong.’ ‘Of course. I shall remain silent.’ Taking away pain was dangerous, difficult and very tiring, but there was, well, a wonderful compensation in seeing the grey face of the old man come back to life. There was already some pinkness to his skin, and it was fleshing out as more and more pain flowed out of him and through Tiffany and into the new little invisible ball floating above her right shoulder. Balance. It was all about balance. That had been one of the first things that she had learned: the centre of the seesaw has neither up nor down, but upness and downness flow through it while it remains unmoved. You had to be the centre of the seesaw so that pain flowed through you, not into you. It was very hard. But she could do it! She prided herself on it; even Granny Weatherwax had grunted when Tiffany had showed her one day how she had mastered the trick. And a grunt from Granny Weatherwax was like a round of applause from anybody else. But the Baron was smiling. ‘Thank you, Miss Tiffany Aching. And now, I would like to sit in my chair.’ This was unusual, and Tiffany had to think about it. ‘Are you sure, sir? You are still very weak.’ ‘Yes, everybody tells me that,’ said the Baron, waving a hand. ‘I can’t imagine why they think I don’t know. Help me up, Miss Tiffany Aching, for I must speak to you.’ It wasn’t very difficult. A girl who could heave Mr Petty out of his bed had little problem with the Baron, whom she handled like a piece of fine china, which he resembled. ‘I do not think that you and I, Miss Tiffany Aching, have had more than the simplest and most practical of conversations in all the time you have been seeing to me, yes?’ he said when she had him settled with his walking-stick in his hands so that he could lean on it. The Baron was not a man to lounge in a chair if he could sit on the edge of it. ‘Well, yes, sir, I think you are right,’ said Tiffany carefully. ‘I dreamed I had a visitor here last night,’ said the Baron, giving her a wicked little grin. ‘What do you think of that then, Miss Tiffany Aching?’ ‘At the moment I have no idea, sir,’ said Tiffany, thinking, Not the Feegles! Let it not be the Feegles! ‘It was your grandmother, Miss Tiffany Aching. She was a fine woman, and extremely handsome. Oh yes. I was rather upset when she married your grandfather, but I suppose it was for the best. I miss her, you know.’ ‘You do?’ said Tiffany. The old man smiled. ‘After my dear wife passed on, she was the only person left who would dare to argue with me. A man of power and responsibility nevertheless needs somebody to tell him when he is being a bloody fool. Granny Aching fulfilled that task with commendable enthusiasm, I must say. And she needed to, because I was often a bloody fool who needed a kick up the arse, metaphorically speaking. It is my hope, Miss Tiffany Aching, that when I am in my grave you will perform the same service to my son Roland who, as you know, is inclined to be a bit too full of himself at times. He will need somebody to kick him up the arse, metaphorically speaking, or indeed in real life if he gets altogether all too snotty.’ Tiffany tried to hide a smile, then took a moment to adjust the spin of the ball of pain as it hovered companionably by her shoulder. ‘Thank you for your trust in me, sir. I shall do my best.’ The Baron gave a polite little cough and said, ‘Indeed, at one point I harboured hopes that you and the boy might make a more … intimate arrangement?’ ‘We are good friends,’ said Tiffany carefully. ‘We were good friends and I trust that we will continue to be … good friends.’ She hurriedly had to stop the pain wobbling dangerously. The Baron nodded. ‘Jolly good, Miss Tiffany Aching, but please don’t let the bond of friendship prevent you from giving him a righteous kick up the arse if he needs one.’ ‘I will take some pleasure in doing so, sir,’ said Tiffany. ‘Well done, young lady,’ said the Baron, ‘and thank you for not chiding me for using the word “arse” or asking me the meaning of the word “metaphorical”.’ ‘No, sir. I know what “metaphorical” means, and “arse” is a traditional usage – nothing to be ashamed of.’ The Baron nodded. ‘It has a commendable grown-up sharpness to it. “Ass”, on the other hand, is quite frankly for spinsters and little children.’ Tiffany turned the words on her tongue for a moment, and said, ‘Yes, sir. I think that is probably the long and the short of it.’ ‘Very good. Incidentally, Miss Tiffany Aching, I cannot conceal my interest in the fact that you do not curtsy in my presence these days. Why not?’ ‘I am a witch now, sir. We don’t do that sort of thing.’ ‘But I am your baron, young lady.’ ‘Yes. And I am your witch.’ ‘But I have soldiers out there who will come running if I call. And I am sure you know, too, that people around here do not always respect witches.’ ‘Yes, sir. I know that, sir. And I am your witch.’ Tiffany watched the Baron’s eyes. They were a pale blue, but right now there was a foxy glint of mischief in them. The worst thing you could possibly do right now, she told herself, would be to show any kind of weakness at all. He’s like Granny Weatherwax: he tests people. As if he was reading her mind exactly at that point, the Baron laughed. ‘Then you are your own person, Miss Tiffany Aching?’ ‘I don’t know about that, sir. Just lately I feel as if I belong to everybody.’ ‘Hah,’ said the Baron. ‘You work very hard and conscientiously, I’m told.’ ‘I am a witch.’ ‘Yes,’ said the Baron. ‘So you have said, clearly and consistently and with some considerable repetition.’ He leaned both skinny hands on his walking-stick and looked at her over the top of them. ‘It is true then, is it?’ he said. ‘That some seven years ago you took an iron skillet and went into some sort of fairyland, where you rescued my son from the Queen of the Elves – a most objectionable woman, I have been given to understand?’ Tiffany hesitated about this. ‘Do you want it to be so?’ she said. The Baron chuckled and pointed a skinny finger at her. ‘Do I want it to be? Indeed! A good question, Miss Tiffany Aching, who is a witch. Let me think … let us say … I want to know the truth.’ ‘Well, the bit about the frying pan is true, I must admit, and well, Roland had been pretty well knocked about so I, well, had to take charge. A bit.’ ‘A … bit?’ said the old man, smiling. ‘Not an unreasonably large bit,’ said Tiffany quickly. ‘And why didn’t anybody tell me this at the time, pray?’ said the Baron. ‘Because you are the Baron,’ said Tiffany simply, ‘and boys with swords rescue girls. That’s how the stories go. That’s how stories work. No one really wanted to think the other way round.’ ‘Didn’t you mind?’ He wasn’t taking his eyes off her, and he hardly seemed to blink. There was no point in lying. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘A bit.’ ‘Was it a reasonably large bit?’ ‘I would say so, yes. But then I went off to learn to be a witch, and it didn’t seem to matter any more. That’s the truth of it, sir. Excuse me, sir, who told you this?’ ‘Your father,’ said the Baron. ‘And I am grateful to him for telling me. He came to see me yesterday, to pay his respects, seeing as I am, as you know, dying. Which is, in fact, another truth. And don’t you dare tell him off, young lady, witch or otherwise. Promise me?’ Tiffany knew that the long lie had hurt her father. She’d never really worried about it, but it had worried him. ‘Yes, sir, I promise.’ The Baron was silent for a moment, staring at her. ‘You know, Miss Tiffany Aching, who is, by regular repetition, a witch, I am at a time when my eyes are cloudy, but my mind, somehow, sees further than you think. But perhaps it is not too late for me to make amends. Under my bed is a chest bound with brass. Go and open it. Go on! Do that now.’ Tiffany pulled out the chest, which felt as if it was full of lead. ‘You will find some leather bags,’ said the old man behind her. ‘Take one of them out. It will contain fifteen dollars.’ The Baron coughed. ‘Thank you for saving my son.’ ‘Look, I can’t take—’ Tiffany began, but the Baron banged his stick on the floor. ‘Shut up and listen, please, Miss Tiffany Aching. When you fought the Queen of the Elves, you were not a witch and therefore the tradition against witches taking money does not apply,’ he said sharply, his eyes glittering like sapphires. ‘With regard to your personal services to myself, I believe you have been paid in food and clean used linen, second-hand footwear and firewood. I trust my housekeeper has been generous? I told her not to stint.’ ‘What? Oh, oh yes, sir.’ And that was true enough. Witches lived in a world of second-hand clothes, old sheets (good for making bandages), boots with some life left in them and, of course, hand-me-downs, hand-me-outs, hands-me-ups, hand-me-rounds and hand-me-overs. In such a world, the pickings to be had from a working castle were like being given the key to a mint. As for the money … she turned the leather bag over and over in her hands. It was very heavy. ‘What do you do with all that stuff, Miss Tiffany Aching?’ ‘What?’ she said absentmindedly, still looking at the bag. ‘Oh, er, trade it, pass it on to people who need it … that sort of thing.’ ‘Miss Tiffany Aching, you are suddenly vague. I believe that you were engrossed in thinking that fifteen dollars isn’t much, is it, for saving the life of the Baron’s son?’ ‘No!’ ‘I’ll take that as a “yes” then, shall I?’ ‘You will take it from me as a no, sir! I am your witch!’ She glared at him, panting. ‘And I am trying to balance a rather difficult ball of pain, sir.’ ‘Ah, Granny Aching’s granddaughter. I humbly beg your forgiveness, as I occasionally should have asked for hers. But nevertheless, will you please do me the favour and honour of taking that bag, Miss Tiffany Aching, and putting its contents to such use as you may determine in memory of me. I’m sure it’s more money than you have ever seen before.’ ‘I don’t often see any money at all,’ she protested, stunned by this. The Baron banged his stick on the floor again, as if applauding. ‘I doubt very much if you have ever seen money like this,’ he said merrily. ‘You see, although there are fifteen dollars in the bag, they are not the dollars that you are used to, or would be if you were used to them at all. They are old dollars, from before they started mucking about with the currency. The modern dollar is mostly brass, in my opinion, and contains as much gold as sea water. These, however, are the real shilling, if you’ll excuse my little joke.’ Tiffany excused his little joke, because she didn’t get it. He smiled at her puzzlement. ‘In short, Miss Tiffany Aching, if you take these coins to the right dealer, he should pay you, oh, I would estimate somewhere in the region of five thousand Ankh-Morpork dollars. I don’t know what that would be in terms of old boots, but quite possibly it could buy you an old boot the size of this castle.’ And Tiffany thought: I can’t take this. Apart from anything else the bag had become extremely heavy. Instead, she said, ‘That’s far too much for a witch.’ ‘But not too much for a son,’ said the Baron. ‘Not too much for an heir, not too much for continuity down the generations. Not too much for removing a lie from the world.’ ‘But it can’t buy me another pair of hands,’ said Tiffany, ‘or change one second of the past.’ ‘Nevertheless, I must insist that you take it,’ said the Baron, ‘if not for your sake, then for mine. It will take a burden off my soul and, believe me, it could do with a bit of shining up at this time, don’t you agree? I am going to die soon, am I not?’ ‘Yes, sir. Very soon, I think, sir.’ Tiffany was beginning to understand something about the Baron by now, and she wasn’t surprised when he laughed. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘most people would have said, “Oh, no, old chap, you’ve got ages yet, you will be up and out of here in no time, lots of life left in you!”’ ‘Yes, sir. I’m a witch, sir.’ ‘And in this context that means …?’ ‘I try very hard not to have to tell lies, sir.’ The old man shifted in his chair, and was suddenly solemn. ‘When the time comes …’ he began, and hesitated. ‘I will keep you company, sir, if you wish,’ said Tiffany. The Baron looked relieved. ‘Have you ever seen Death?’ She had been expecting this and was ready. ‘Usually you just feel him passing, sir, but I have seen him twice, in what would have been the flesh, if he had any. He’s a skeleton with a scythe, just like in the books – in fact, I think it’s because that’s what he looks like in the books. He was polite but firm, sir.’ ‘I’ll bet he is!’ The old man was silent for a little while and then went on. ‘Did he … drop any hints about the afterlife?’ ‘Yes, sir. Apparently it contains no mustard, and I got the impression that it contains no pickles either.’ ‘Really? Bit of a blow, that. I suppose that chutney is out of the question?’ ‘I did not go into the subject of pickled condiments in any depth, sir. He had a big scythe.’ There was a loud knocking at the door, and Miss Spruce called loudly, ‘Are you all right, sir?’ ‘In tip-top condition, dear Miss Spruce,’ said the Baron loudly, then lowered his voice to say conspiratorially, ‘I believe our Miss Spruce does not like you very much, my dear.’ ‘She thinks I’m unhygienic,’ said Tiffany. ‘Never really understood about all that nonsense,’ said the Baron. ‘It’s quite easy,’ said Tiffany. ‘I have to stick my hands in the fire at every opportunity.’ ‘What? You put your hands in the fire?’ Now she was sorry she had mentioned it, but she knew the old man would not now be satisfied until she had shown him. She sighed and crossed over to the fireplace, pulling a large iron poker out of its stand. She admitted to herself that she liked showing off this trick occasionally, and the Baron would be an appreciative audience. But should she do it? Well, the fire trick was not that complicated and the balance of the pain was fine, and it wasn’t as if the Baron had much time left. She drew a bucket of water from the little well at the far end of the room. The well had frogs in it, and therefore so did the bucket, but she was kind and dropped them back into their well. No one likes boiling a frog. The bucket of water was not strictly necessary, but it did have a part to play. Tiffany coughed theatrically. ‘Do you see, sir? I have one poker and one bucket of cold water. Cold metal poker, cold bucket of water. And now … I hold in my left hand the poker, and I stick my right hand into the hottest part of the fire, like this.’ The Baron gasped as flames burst around her hand and the tip of the poker in her other hand suddenly glowed red hot. With the Baron suitably impressed, Tiffany dowsed the poker in the bucket of water, from which erupted a cloud of steam. Then she stood in front of the Baron, holding up both hands, quite unscathed. ‘But I saw flames come up!’ said the Baron, his eyes wide. ‘Well done! Very well done! Some sort of trick, yes?’ ‘More of a skill, sir. I put my hand in the fire and sent the heat into the poker. I just moved the heat around. The flame you saw was caused by the burning of bits of dead skin, dirt, and all those nasty, invisible little biting things that unhygienic people might have on their hands …’ She paused. ‘Are you all right, sir?’ The Baron was staring at her. ‘Sir? Sir?’ The old man spoke as if he was reading from an invisible book: ‘The hare runs into the fire. The hare runs into the fire. The fire, it takes her, she is not burned. The fire, it loves her, she is not burned. The hare runs into the fire. The fire, it loves her, she is free … It all comes back to me! How did I ever forget it! How did I dare to forget it? I told myself I would remember it for ever, but time goes on and the world fills up with things to remember, things to do, calls on your time, calls on your memory. And you forget the things that were important, the real things.’ Tiffany was shocked to see tears streaming down his face. ‘I remember it all,’ he whispered, his voice punctuated with sobs. ‘I remember the heat! I remember the hare!’ At which point the door banged open and Miss Spruce stepped into the room. What happened next took a moment, but seemed to Tiffany to go on for an hour. The nurse looked at her holding the poker, and then at the old man in tears, then at the cloud of steam, then back to Tiffany as she let the poker go, and then back to the old man, and then back to Tiffany as the poker landed in the hearth with a clang that echoed around the world. And then Miss Spruce took a deep breath like a whale preparing to dive to the bottom of the ocean and screamed, ‘What do you think you are doing to him? Get out of here, you brazen hussy!’ Tiffany’s ability to speak came back quickly, and then grew into an ability to shout. ‘I am not brazen and I don’t huss!’ ‘I’m going to fetch the guards, you black and midnight hag!’ the nurse screamed, heading for the door. ‘It’s only eleven thirty!’ Tiffany shouted after her and hurried back to the Baron, totally at a loss as to what to do next. The pain shifted. She could feel it. She wasn’t keeping her mind straight. Things were getting out of balance. She concentrated for a moment and then, trying to smile, turned to the Baron. ‘I’m very sorry if I have upset you, sir,’ she began, and then realized that he was smiling through his tears and his whole face seemed full of sunlight. ‘Upset me? Good gracious no, I’m not upset.’ He tried to pull himself upright in the chair and pointed towards the fire with a trembling finger. ‘I am, in fact, set up! I feel alive! I am young, my dear Miss Tiffany Aching! I remember that perfect day! Can you not see me? Down in the valley? A perfect, crisp September day. A little boy in the tweed jacket that was far too itchy, as I recall, yes, was far too itchy and smelled of wee! And my father was singing “The Larks They Sang Melodious”, and I was trying to harmonize, which of course I couldn’t do then because I had about as much voice as a rabbit, and we were watching them burn the stubbles. There was smoke everywhere, and as the fire swept along, mice, rats, rabbits and even foxes were running towards us away from the flames. Pheasants and partridges were taking off like rockets at the last minute, as they do, and suddenly there was no sound at all and I saw this hare. Oh, she was a big one – did you know that country people used to think all hares were female? – and she just stood there, looking at me, with bits of burning grass falling around us, and the flames behind her, and she was looking directly at me, and I will swear that when she knew that she had caught my eye, she flicked herself into the air and jumped straight into the fire. And of course I cried like anything, because she was so fine. And my father picked me up and said he’d tell me a little secret, and he taught me the hare song, so that I would know the truth of it, and stop crying. And then later on, we walked over the ashes and there was no dead hare.’ The old man turned his head awkwardly towards her, and beamed, really beamed. He shone. Where is that coming from? Tiffany wondered. It’s too yellow for firelight, but the curtains are shut. It’s always too gloomy in here, but now it is the light of a crisp September day … ‘I remember doing a crayon picture of it when we got home, and my father was so proud of it he took it all around the castle so that everybody could admire it,’ the old man went on, as enthusiastic as a boy. ‘A child’s scrawl, of course, but he talked about it as if it were a work of genius. Parents do such things. I found it among his documents after he died, and in fact, if you are interested, you will find it in a leather folder within the money chest. It is, after all, a precious thing. I’ve never told anyone else that,’ said the Baron. ‘People and days and memories come and go but that memory has always been there. No money that I could give you, Miss Tiffany Aching, who is the witch, could ever repay you for bringing back to me that wonderful vision. Which I shall remember until the day I—’ For a moment the flames on the fire stood still and the air was cold. Tiffany was never actually sure that she ever saw Death, not actually saw; perhaps in some strange way it had all happened inside her head. Though wherever he was, well, he was there. WASN’T THAT APPROPRIATE? Death said. Tiffany didn’t step back. There was no point. ‘Did you arrange that?’ she asked. MUCH AS I WOULD LIKE TO TAKE THE CREDIT, OTHER FORCES ARE AT WORK. GOOD MORNING TO YOU, MISS ACHING. Death left, and the Baron followed, a little boy in his new tweed jacket, which was terribly itchy and sometimes smelled of wee,10 following his father across the smoking field. Then Tiffany placed her hand on the dead man’s face and, with respect, closed his eyes, where the light of burning fields was dimming. 9 Whatever sex a hare is, to the true countryman, all hares are referred to as ‘her’. 10 The old cloth-makers used urine as a mordant for the dyes used in making woollen clothes, so that the colours would be fixed and not run; as a result, they can be a bit smelly for years. Not even Miss Tick could have explained it better and stayed so calm, although she would probably have used the term ‘evacuated bodily juices’. Chapter 5 THE MOTHER OF TONGUES THERE SHOULD HAVE been a moment of peace; in fact there was a moment of metal. Some of the castle guard were approaching, their armour making even more noise than armour usually does because none of it fitted properly. There hadn’t been any battles here for hundreds of years, but they still wore armour, because it seldom needed mending and didn’t wear out. The door was pushed open by Brian, the sergeant. He wore a complicated expression. It was the expression of a man who has just been told that an evil witch, whom he has known since she was a kid, has killed the boss, and the boss’s son is away, and the witch is still in the room, and a nurse, whom he does not like very much, is prodding him in the bottom and shouting, ‘What are you waiting for, man? Do your duty!’ All this was getting on his nerves. He gave Tiffany a sheepish look. ‘Morning, miss, is everything all right?’ Then he stared at the Baron in his chair. ‘He’s dead then, is he?’ Tiffany said, ‘Yes, Brian, he is. He died only a couple of minutes ago, and I have reason to believe that he was happy.’ ‘Well, that’s good then, I suppose,’ said the sergeant, and then his face twisted into tears so that the next words were gulped and damp. ‘You know, he was really very good to us when my nan was ill; he had hot meals sent over to her every day, right up until the end.’ She held his unprotesting hand and looked over his shoulder. The other guards were crying too, and crying all the more because they knew they were big strong men, or so they hoped, and shouldn’t cry at all. But the Baron had always been there, part of life, like the sunrise. All right, maybe he’d give you a dressing-down if you were asleep on duty or had a blunt sword (despite the fact that no guard in living memory had needed to use his sword for anything more than levering the lid off a tin of jam), but when all was said and done, he was the Baron and they were his men and now he was gone. ‘Ask her about the poker!’ screamed the nurse behind Brian. ‘Go on, ask her about the money!’ The nurse could not see Brian’s face. Tiffany could. He had probably been prodded in the bottom again, and was suddenly livid. ‘Sorry, Tiff … I mean, miss, but this lady here says she thinks you done a murder and a robbery,’ he said, and his face added that its owner right now was not thinking the same thing and didn’t want to get into trouble with anyone, especially Tiffany. Tiffany rewarded him with a little smile. Always remember you are a witch, she told herself. Don’t start shouting your innocence. You know you are innocent. You don’t have to shout anything. ‘The Baron was kind enough to give me some money for … looking after him,’ she said, ‘and I suppose Miss Spruce must have inadvertently heard him doing so and formed a wrong impression.’ ‘It was a lot of money!’ Miss Spruce insisted, red in the face. ‘The big chest under the Baron’s bed was open!’ ‘All that is true,’ said Tiffany, ‘and it would appear that Miss Spruce was accidentally hearing for quite some time.’ Some of the guards sniggered, which made Miss Spruce even more angry, if that were possible. She pushed her way forward. ‘Do you deny that you were standing there with a poker and your hand on fire?’ she demanded, her face as red as a turkey. ‘I would like to say something, please,’ said Tiffany. ‘It’s rather important.’ She could feel the impatient pain now, fighting to get free. Her hands felt clammy. ‘You were doing black magic, admit it!’ Tiffany took a deep breath. ‘I don’t know what that is,’ she said, ‘but I know I am holding just above my shoulder the last pain that the Baron will ever know, and I have to get rid of it soon, and I can’t get rid of it in here, what with all these people. Please? I need an open space right now!’ She pushed Miss Spruce out of the way and the guards swiftly stood aside for her, to the nurse’s extreme annoyance. ‘Don’t let her go! She will fly away! That’s what they do!’ Tiffany knew the layout of the castle very well; everybody did. There was a courtyard down some steps, and she headed there rapidly, feeling the pain stirring and unfolding. You had to think of it as a kind of animal that you could keep at bay, but that only worked for so long. About as long as … well, now, in fact. The sergeant appeared beside her, and she grabbed his arm. ‘Don’t ask me why,’ she managed to say through gritted teeth, ‘but throw your helmet in the air!’ He was bright enough to follow orders, and spun the helmet into the air like a soup plate. Tiffany hurled the pain after it, feeling its dreadful silkiness as it found its freedom. The helmet stopped in midair as if it had hit an invisible wall, and dropped onto the cobblestones in a cloud of steam and bent almost in half. The sergeant picked it up and immediately dropped it again. ‘It’s bloody hot!’ He stared at Tiffany, who was leaning against the wall and trying to catch her breath. ‘And you’ve been taking away pain like that every day?’ She opened her eyes. ‘Yes, but I normally get plenty of time to find somewhere to dump it. Water and rock aren’t very good, but metal is quite reliable. Don’t ask me why. If I try to think about how it works, it doesn’t work.’ ‘And I’ve heard that you can do all kinds of tricks with fire too?’ said Sergeant Brian admiringly. ‘Fire is easy to work with if you keep your mind clear, but pain … pain fights back. Pain is alive. Pain is the enemy.’ The sergeant gingerly attempted to reclaim his helmet, hoping that by now it was cool enough to hold. ‘I will have to make certain I knock the dent out of it before the boss sees it,’ he began. ‘You know what a stickler he is for smartness … Oh.’ He stared down at the ground. ‘Yes,’ said Tiffany, as kindly as she could. ‘It’s going to take a bit of getting used to, isn’t it?’ Wordlessly, she handed him her hand-kerchief, and he blew his nose. ‘But you can take away pain,’ he began, ‘so does that mean you can …?’ Tiffany held up a hand. ‘Stop right there,’ she said. ‘I know what you’re going to ask, and the answer is no. If you chopped your hand off I could probably make you forget about it until you tried to eat your dinner, but things like loss, grief and sadness? I can’t do that. I wouldn’t dare meddle with them. There is something called “the soothings”, and I know only one person in the world who can do that, and I’m not even going to ask her to teach me. It’s too deep.’ ‘Tiff …’ Brian hesitated and looked around as though he expected the nurse to appear and prod him from behind again. Tiffany waited. Please don’t ask, she thought. You’ve known me all your life. You can’t possibly think … Brian looked at her pleadingly. ‘Did you … take anything?’ His voice tailed off. ‘No, of course not,’ Tiffany said. ‘What maggot’s got into your head? How could you think such a thing?’ ‘Dunno,’ said Brian, flushing with embarrassment. ‘Well, that’s all right then.’ ‘I suppose I had better make sure the young master knows,’ said Brian after another good nose-blow, ‘but all I know is that he’s gone to the big city with his—’ He stopped again, embarrassed. ‘With his fiancée,’ said Tiffany determinedly. ‘You can say it out loud, you know.’ Brian coughed. ‘Well, you see, we thought … well, we all thought that you and him were, well, you know …’ ‘We have always been friends,’ said Tiffany, ‘and that’s all there is to it.’ She felt sorry for Brian, even though he too often opened his mouth before he got it attached to his brain, so she patted him on the shoulder. ‘Look, why don’t I fly down to the big city and find him?’ He almost melted with relief. ‘Would you do that?’ ‘Of course. I can see you have a lot to do here, and it will take a load off your mind.’ Admittedly it will put the load on mine, she thought as she hurried away through the castle. The news had spread. People were standing around, crying or just looking bewildered. The cook ran up to her just as she was leaving. ‘What am I to do? I’ve got the poor soul’s dinner on the stove!’ ‘Then take it off and give it to someone who needs a good dinner,’ said Tiffany briskly. It was important to keep her tone cool and busy. The people were in shock. She would be too, when she had the time, but right at this moment it was important to bounce people back into the world of the here and now. ‘Listen to me, all of you,’ and her voice echoed around the big hall. ‘Yes, your baron is dead but you still have a baron! He will be here soon with his … lady, and you must have this place spotless for them! You all know your jobs! Get on with them! And remember him kindly and clean the place up for his sake.’ It worked. It always did. A voice that sounded as if its owner knew what she was doing could get things done, especially if its owner was wearing a pointy black hat. There was a sudden rush of activity. ‘I suppose you think you’ve got away with it, do you?’ said a voice behind her. Tiffany waited a moment before turning round, and when she did turn round, she was smiling. ‘Why, Miss Spruce,’ she said, ‘are you still here? Well, perhaps there are some floors that need scrubbing?’ The nurse was a vision of fury. ‘I do not scrub floors, you arrogant little—’ ‘No, you don’t scrub anything, do you, Miss Spruce? I’ve noticed that! Now, Miss Flowerdew, who was here before you, now she could scrub a floor. She could scrub a floor so that you could see your face in it, although in your case, Miss Spruce, I can imagine why that would not appeal. Miss Jumper, who we had before her, would even scrub floors with sand, white sand! She chased dirt like a terrier chasing a fox!’ The nurse opened her mouth to speak, but Tiffany didn’t allow the words any space. ‘The cook has told me that you are a very religious woman, always on your knees, and that is fine by me, absolutely fine, but didn’t it ever occur to you to take a mop and bucket down there with you? People don’t need prayers, Miss Spruce; they need you to do the job in front of you, Miss Spruce. And I have had enough of you, Miss Spruce, and especially of your lovely white coat. I think Roland was very impressed by your wonderful white coat, but I am not, Miss Spruce, because you never do anything that will get it dirty.’ The nurse raised a hand. ‘I could slap you!’ ‘No,’ said Tiffany firmly. ‘You couldn’t.’ The hand stayed where it was. ‘I have never been so insulted before in my life!’ screamed the enraged nurse. ‘Really?’ said Tiffany. ‘I’m genuinely surprised.’ She turned on her heel, left the nurse standing and marched over to a young guard who had just come into the hall. ‘I’ve seen you around. I don’t think I know who you are. What’s your name, please?’ The trainee guard gave what he probably thought was a salute. ‘Preston, miss.’ ‘Has the Baron been taken down to the crypt, Preston?’ ‘Yes, miss, and I’ve took down some lanterns and some cloths and a bucket of warm water, miss.’ He grinned when he saw her expression. ‘My grandma used to do the laying out when I was a little boy, miss. I could help, if you wanted.’ ‘Did your grandma let you help?’ ‘No, miss,’ said the young man. ‘She said men weren’t allowed to do that sort of thing unless they had a certificate in doctrine.’ Tiffany looked puzzled for a moment. ‘Doctrine?’ ‘You know, miss. Doctrine: pills and potions and sawing off legs and similar.’ Light dawned. ‘Oh, you mean doctoring. I should hope not. This isn’t about making the poor soul better. I will do it by myself, but thank you for asking, anyway. This is women’s work.’ Exactly why it is women’s work I don’t know, she said to herself as she arrived in the crypt and rolled up her sleeves. The young guard had even thought to bring down a dish of soil and a dish of salt.11 Well done, your granny, she thought. At last someone had taught a boy something useful! She cried as she made the old man ‘presentable’ as Granny Weatherwax called it. She always cried. It was a needful thing. But you didn’t do it where anyone else could see, not if you were a witch. People wouldn’t expect that. It would make them uneasy. She stood back. Well, the old boy looked better than he had done yesterday, she had to admit. As a final touch, she took two pennies out of her pocket and laid them gently over his eyelids. Those were the old customs, taught to her by Nanny Ogg, but now there was a new custom, known only to her. She leaned on the edge of the marble slab with one hand and held the bucket of water in the other. She stayed there, motionless, until the water in the bucket began to boil and ice was forming on the slab. She took the bucket outside and tipped its contents down the drain. The castle was bustling when she had finished, and she left people to get on with things. She hesitated as she stepped out of the castle and stopped to think. People often didn’t stop to think. They thought as they went along. Sometimes it was a good idea. Just to stop moving, in case you moved the wrong way. Roland was the Baron’s only son and, as far as Tiffany knew, his only relative, or at least his only relative who was allowed to come anywhere near the castle; after some horrible and expensive legal fighting, Roland had succeeded in banishing the dreadful aunts, the Baron’s sisters who, frankly, even the old Baron thought were as nasty a pair of old ferrets as any man should find down the trousers of his life. But there was another person who should know, who was in no conceivable way at all kin to the Baron, but was nevertheless, well, someone who should know something as important as this, as soon as possible. Tiffany headed up to the Feegle mound to see the kelda. Amber was sitting outside when Tiffany arrived, doing some sewing in the sunlight. ‘Hello, miss,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I’ll just go and tell Mrs Kelda that you’re here.’ And with that she disappeared down the hole as easily as a snake, just as Tiffany had once been able to do. Why had Amber gone back there? Tiffany wondered. She had taken her to the Aching farm to be safe. Why had the girl walked up the Chalk to the mound? How had she even remembered where it was? ‘Very interesting child, that,’ said a voice, and the Toad12 stuck his head out from under a leaf. ‘I must say you look extremely flustered, miss.’ ‘The old Baron is dead,’ said Tiffany. ‘Well, only to be expected. Long live the Baron,’ said the Toad. ‘He’s not going to live long,’ said Tiffany. ‘He’s dead.’ ‘No,’ croaked the Toad. ‘It’s what you’re supposed to say. When a king dies, you have to immediately announce that there is another king. It’s important. I wonder what the new one will be like. Rob Anybody says that he’s a wet nelly who is not fit to lick your boots. And has scorned you very badly.’ Whatever the circumstances of the past, Tiffany was not going to let that go by unchallenged. ‘I don’t need anybody to lick anything for me, thank you very much. Anyway,’ she added, ‘he’s not their baron, is he? The Feegles pride themselves on not having a lord.’ ‘You are correct in your submission,’ said the Toad ponderously, ‘but you must remember that they also pride themselves on having as much as possible to drink at the slightest possible excuse, which leaves them of an uncertain temper, and that the Baron quite definitely believes that he is, de facto, the owner of all the property hereabouts. A claim that stands up in law. Although I am sorry to say that I can no longer do the same. But the girl, now, she is something strange. Haven’t you noticed?’ Haven’t I noticed? Tiffany thought quickly. What should I have noticed? Amber was just a kid;13 she had seen her around – not so quiet as to be worrying, not so noisy as to be annoying. And that was it. But then she thought, The chickens. That was strange. ‘She can speak Feegle!’ said the Toad. ‘And I don’t mean all that crivens business; that’s just the patois. I mean the serious old-fashioned stuff that the kelda speaks, the language they spoke from wherever it was they came from before they came from there. I am sorry, with preparation I am sure I could have made a better sentence.’ He paused. ‘I don’t understand a word of Feegle myself, but the girl seems to have just picked it up. And another thing, I’ll swear she’s been trying to talk to me in Toad. I’m not much good at it myself, but a little bit of understanding did come with the … shape change, as it were.’ ‘Are you saying that she understands unusual words?’ said Tiffany. ‘I’m not certain,’ said the Toad. ‘I think she understands meaning.’ ‘Are you sure?’ said Tiffany. ‘I’ve always thought she was a bit simple.’ ‘Simple?’ said the Toad, who seemed to be enjoying himself. ‘Well, as a lawyer I can tell you that something that looks very simple indeed can be incredibly complicated, especially if I’m being paid by the hour. The sun is simple. A sword is simple. A storm is simple. Behind everything simple is a huge tail of complicated.’ Amber poked her head out of the hole. ‘Mrs Kelda says to meet her in the chalk pit,’ she said excitedly. There was a faint cheering coming from the chalk pit as Tiffany lowered herself gingerly through the careful camouflage. She liked the pit. It seemed impossible to be truly unhappy there, with the damp white walls cradling her and the light of the blue day pricking through the briars. Sometimes, when she was much younger, she had seen the ancient fish swimming in and out of the chalk pit, ancient fish from the time when the Chalk was the land under the waves. The water had gone long ago, but the souls of the ghost fish hadn’t noticed. They were as armoured as knights and ancient as the chalk. But she didn’t see them any more. Perhaps your eyesight changes as you get older, she thought. There was a strong smell of garlic. A large part of the bottom of the pit was full of snails. Feegles were walking carefully among them, painting numbers on their shells. Amber was sitting next to the kelda, with her hands clasped round her knees. Seen from above, it looked for all the world like a sheepdog trials, but with less barking and a lot more stickiness. The kelda spotted Tiffany, and raised a tiny finger to her lips, followed by a brief nod at Amber, who was now engrossed in the proceedings. Jeannie patted the space on the other side of her, and said, ‘We are watching the lads putting our brand on the livestock, ye ken.’ There was a slight touch of strangeness to her voice. It was the kind of voice a grown-up uses when it tells a child ‘We are having fun, aren’t we?’, in case the child hasn’t reached that conclusion yet. But Amber really did look as if she was enjoying herself. It occurred to Tiffany that being around the Feegles seemed to make Amber happy. She got the impression that the kelda wanted to keep the conversation light, so she simply asked, ‘Why mark them? Who’s going to try to steal them?’ ‘Other Feegles, of course. My Rob reckons they will be queuing up to steal our snails while they are left unprotected, ye ken.’ Tiffany was mystified. ‘Why would they be unprotected?’ ‘Because my lads, ye ken, will be away stealing their livestock. It’s an old Feegle tradition, it means everyone gets in lots of fighting, rustling and stealing and, of course, the all-time favourite, boozing.’ The kelda winked at Tiffany. ‘Well, it keeps the lads happy, and stops them fretting and getting under our feet, ye ken.’ She winked at Tiffany again and patted Amber on the leg, and said something to her in the language that sounded like a very old version of Feegle. Amber answered in the same language. The kelda nodded meaningfully at Tiffany and pointed to the other end of the pit. ‘What did you just say to her?’ said Tiffany, looking back at the girl, who was still watching the Feegles with the same smiling interest. ‘I told her that you and I were going to have a conversation for grown-ups,’ said the kelda, ‘and she just said the boys were very funny, and I don’t know how, but she has picked up the Mother of Tongues. Tiffany, I only use it to a daughter and the gonnagle,14 ye ken, and I was talking to him on the mound last night when she joined in! She picked it up just by listening! That shouldn’t happen! That’s a rare gift she has, and no mistake. She must ken the meanings in her head, and that’s magic, missy, it’s the pure quill and no mistake.’ ‘How could it happen?’ ‘Who knows?’ said the kelda. ‘It’s a gift. And if ye take my advice, ye will set this girl to training.’ ‘Isn’t she a bit too old to be starting?’ said Tiffany. ‘Put her to the craft, or find some channel for her gift. Believe me, my girl, I wouldnae want ye to believe that beating a girl nigh on to death is a good thing, but who kens how our paths are chosen? And so she ended up here, with me. She has the gift of understandin’. Would she have found it else? Ye know full well that the meaning of life is to find your gift. To find your gift is happiness. Never tae find it is misery. Ye said she’s a bit simple: find her a teacher who can bring out the complicated in her. The girl learned a difficult language just by listening to it. The world sore needs folk that can do that.’ It made sense. Everything the kelda said made sense. Jeannie paused and then said, ‘I am very sorry the Baron is dead.’ ‘I’m sorry,’ Tiffany said. ‘I meant to tell you.’ The kelda smiled at her. ‘Do you think a kelda would need to be told something like that, my girl? He was a decent man, and ye did right by him.’ ‘I’ve got to go and find the new Baron,’ said Tiffany. ‘And I’ll need the boys to help me find him. There’s thousands of people in the city, and the lads are very good at finding things.’15 She glanced up at the sky. Tiffany had never flown all the way to the big city before and didn’t much fancy flying there in the darkness. ‘I shall leave at first light. But first of all, Jeannie, I think I’d better take Amber back home. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Amber,’ she said hopelessly … Three quarters of an hour later, Tiffany flew her stick back down towards the village, the screams still ringing in her head. Amber wasn’t going back. She had, in fact, made her reluctance to leave the mound abundantly clear by bracing her arms and legs in the hole and staying there screaming at the top of her voice every time Tiffany gave a gentle pull; when she let go, the girl went back to sit next to the kelda. So that was that. You try to make plans for people, and the people make other plans. However you looked at it, Amber had parents; pretty awful parents, you might say, and you might add that that was giving them the best of it. At least they had to know that she was safe … And in any case, what possible harm could come to Amber in the care of the kelda? Mrs Petty slammed the door shut when she saw that it was Tiffany on the step, then opened it again almost immediately, in a flood of tears. The place stank, not just of stale beer and bad cooking but also of helplessness and bewilderment. A cat, the mangiest that Tiffany had ever seen, was almost certainly another part of the problem. Mrs Petty was frightened out of whatever wits she had and dropped to her knees on the floor, pleading incoherently. Tiffany made her a cup of tea, which was no errand for the squeamish, given that such crockery as the cottage possessed was piled up in the stone sink, which was otherwise filled with slimy water that occasionally bubbled. Tiffany spent several minutes of heavy scrubbing before she had a cup she’d care to drink from, and even then something was rattling inside the kettle. Mrs Petty sat on the one chair that had all four legs and babbled about how her husband was really a good man provided his dinner was on time and Amber wasn’t naughty. Tiffany had grown used to that sort of desperate conversation when she was ‘going round the houses’ up in the mountains. They were generated by fear – fear of what would happen to the speaker when they were left alone again. Granny Weatherwax had a way of dealing with this, which was to put the fear of Granny Weatherwax into absolutely everyone, but Granny Weatherwax had had years of being, well, Granny Weatherwax. Careful non-aggressive questioning brought news that Mr Petty was asleep upstairs, and Tiffany simply told Mrs Petty that Amber was being looked after by a very kind lady while she healed. Mrs Petty started to cry again. The misery of the place was getting on Tiffany’s nerves too, and she tried to stop herself being cruel; but how hard was it to slosh a bucket of cold water over a stone floor and swoosh it out of the door with a broom? How hard was it to make some soap? You could make quite a serviceable one out of wood ash and animal fat. And, as her mother had said once, ‘No one is too poor to wash a window,’ although her father, just to annoy her mother, occasionally changed it to, ‘No one is too poor to wash a widow.’ But where could you start with this family? And whatever it was that was in the kettle was still rattling, presumably trying to get out. Most of the women in the villages had grown up to be tough. You needed to be tough to bring up a family on a farm labourer’s wages. There was a local saying, a sort of recipe for dealing with a trouble-some husband. It was: ‘Tongue pie, cold barn and the copper stick.’ It meant that a troublesome husband got a nagging instead of his dinner, he would be shoved out to the barn to sleep, and if he raised his hand to his wife, he might get a good wallop from the long stick every cottage had for stirring the washing in the wash-tub. They usually learned the error of their ways before the rough music played. ‘Wouldn’t you like a short holiday away from Mr Petty?’ Tiffany suggested. The woman, pale as a slug and skinny as a broom, looked horrified. ‘Oh no!’ she gasped. ‘He wouldn’t know what to do without me!’ And then … it all went wrong, or rather, a lot more wrong than it was already. And it was all so innocent, because the woman was so downcast. ‘Well, at least I can clean your kitchen for you,’ Tiffany said cheerfully. It would have been fine if she had simply grabbed a broom and got to work but, oh no, she had to go and look up at the grey, cobweb-filled ceiling and say, ‘All right, I know you’re here, you always follow me, so make yourself useful and clean this kitchen thoroughly!’ Nothing happened for a few seconds, and then she heard, because she was listening for it, a muffled conversation from up near the ceiling. ‘Did ye no’ hear that? She kens we is here! How come she always gets it right?’ A slightly different Feegle voice said, ‘It’s because we always follow her, ye wee dafty!’ ‘Oh aye, I ken that well enough, but my point is, did we not promise faithfully not to follow her around any more?’ ‘Aye, it was a solemn oath.’ ‘Exactly, and so I cannae but be a wee bit disappointed that the big wee hag will nae take heed of a solemn promise. It’s a wee bit hurtful to the feelings.’ ‘But we have broken the solemn oath; it’s a Feegle thing.’ A third voice said, ‘Look lively, ye scunners, it’s the tapping o’ the feets!’ A whirlwind hit the grubby little kitchen.16 Foaming water swirled across Tiffany’s boots, which had indeed been tapping. It has to be said that no one could create a mess more quickly than a party of Feegles, but strangely, they could clean one up as well, without even the help of bluebirds and miscellaneous woodland creatures. The sink emptied in an instant and filled again with soap suds. Wooden plates and tin mugs hummed through the air as the fire burst into life. With a bang bang bang the log box filled. After that, things speeded up, and a fork shuddered in the wall beside Tiffany’s ear. Steam rose like a fog, with strange noises coming out of it; the sunlight flooded in through the suddenly clean window, filling the room with rainbows; a broom shot past pushing the last of the water in front of it; the kettle boiled; a vase of flowers appeared on the table – some of them, admittedly, upside down – and suddenly the room was fresh and clean and no longer smelled of rotted potatoes. Tiffany looked up at the ceiling. The cat was holding onto it by all four paws. It gave her what was definitely a look. Even a witch can be out-looked by a cat that has had it up to here, and is still up here. Tiffany finally located Mrs Petty under the table, with her hands over her head. When she had finally been persuaded to come out and sit down on a nice clean chair in front of a cup of tea from a wonderfully clean mug, she was very keen to agree that there had been a great improvement, although later on Tiffany couldn’t help but admit that Mrs Petty would probably have agreed to absolutely anything if only Tiffany would go away. Not a success, then, but at least the place was a whole lot cleaner and Mrs Petty was bound to be grateful when she’d had time to think about it. A snarl and a thump that Tiffany heard as she was leaving the ragged garden was probably the cat, parting company with the ceiling. Halfway back to the farm, carrying her broomstick over her shoulder, she thought aloud, ‘Perhaps that was a bit stupid.’ ‘Dinnae fash yourself,’ said a voice. ‘If we had had the time we could have made some bread as well.’ Tiffany looked down, and there was Rob Anybody, along with half a dozen others known variously as the Nac Mac Feegle, the Wee Free Men and, sometimes, the Defendants, the Culprits, people wanted by the police to help them with their enquiries and sometimes as ‘that one, second on the left, I swear it was him.’ ‘You keep on following me!’ she complained. ‘You always promise not to and you always do!’ ‘Ah, but ye dinnae take into account the geas that is laid on us, ye ken. Ye are the hag o’ the hills and we must always be ready to protect ye and help ye, no matter what ye say,’ said Rob Anybody stoutly. There was a rapid shaking of heads among the other Feegles, causing a fallout of bits of pencil, rats’ teeth, last night’s dinner, interesting stones with holes in, beetles, promising bits of snot tucked away for leisurely examination later, and snails. ‘Look,’ said Tiffany, ‘you can’t just go around helping people whether they want you to or not!’ Rob Anybody scratched his head, put back the snail that had fallen out and said, ‘Why not, miss? You do.’ ‘I don’t!’ she said aloud, but inside an arrow struck her heart. I wasn’t kind to Mrs Petty, was I? she thought. Yes, it was true that the woman seemed to have the brains as well as the demeanour of a mouse, but filthy though it was, the stinking house was Mrs Petty’s house, and Tiffany had burst in with a lot of, well, not to put too fine a point on it, Nac Mac Feegles, and just messed it up, even if it was less of a mess than it had been before. I was brusque and bossy and self-righteous. My mother could have handled it better. If it comes to that, probably any other woman in the village could have handled it better, but I am the witch and I blundered in and blundered about and scared the wits out of her. Me, a slip of a girl with a pointy hat. And the other thing she thought about herself was that if she didn’t actually lie down very soon, she was going to fall over. The kelda was right; she couldn’t remember when she’d last slept in a proper bed, and there was one waiting for her at the farm. And, she thought suddenly and guiltily, she still had to let her own parents know that Amber Petty was back with the Feegles … There’s always something, she thought, and then there’s another something on top of the something, and then there is no end to the somethings. No wonder witches were given broomsticks. Feet just couldn’t do it by themselves. * * * Her mother was tending to Tiffany’s brother Wentworth, who had a black eye. ‘He’s been fighting the big boys,’ her mother complained. ‘Got a black eye, didn’t we, Wentworth?’ ‘Yes, but I did kick Billy Teller in the fork.’ Tiffany tried to starve a yawn. ‘What have you been fighting for, Went? I thought you were more sensible.’ ‘They said you was a witch, Tiff,’ said Wentworth. And Tiffany’s mother turned with a strange expression on her face. ‘Yes, well, I am,’ said Tiffany. ‘That’s my job.’ ‘Yeah, but I doubt you do the kind of things they said you was doing,’ said her brother. Tiffany met her mother’s gaze. ‘Were these bad things?’ she said. ‘Hah! That’s not the half of it,’ said Wentworth. Blood and snot covered his shirt, where it had dripped from his nose. ‘Wentworth, you go upstairs to your room,’ Mrs Aching ordered – and probably, Tiffany thought, not even Granny Weatherwax would have been able to speak an order that was so instantly obeyed. And so full of the implicit threat of doomsday if it was not. When the boots of the reluctant boy had disappeared around the staircase, Tiffany’s mother turned to her youngest daughter, folded her arms and said, ‘It’s not the first time he’s been in a fight like this.’ ‘It’s all down to the picture books,’ said Tiffany. ‘I’m trying to teach people that witches aren’t mad old women who go around putting spells on people.’ ‘When your dad comes in, I’ll get him to go and have a word with Billy’s dad,’ said her mother. ‘Billy’s a foot taller than Wentworth but your dad … he’s two foot taller than Billy’s dad. There won’t be any fighting. You know your dad. He’s a calm man, your dad. Never seen him punch a man more than about twice, never has to. He’ll keep people calm. They’ll be calm or else. But something’s not quite right, Tiff. We’re all very proud of you, you know, what you’re doing and everything, but it’s getting to people somehow. They’re saying some ridiculous things. And we’re having difficulties selling the cheeses. And everybody knows you are the best at cheeses. And now, Amber Petty. You think it is right that she is running around there with … them?’ ‘I hope so, Mum,’ said Tiffany. ‘But the girl has a very strong mind of her own and, Mum, when it comes right down to it, all I can do is the best that I can.’ Later that night, Tiffany, dozing in her ancient bed, could hear her parents talking very quietly in the room below. And although, of course, witches didn’t cry, she had an overwhelming urge to do so. 11The soil and the salt were an ancient tradition to keep ghosts away. Tiffany had never seen a ghost, so they probably worked, but in any case they worked on the minds of people, who felt better for knowing that they were there, and once you understood that, you understood quite a lot about magic. 12 The Toad had no other name but that of the Toad and had joined the Feegle clan some years previously, and found life in the mound much to be preferred over his former existence as a lawyer or, to be precise, as a lawyer who had got too smart in the presence of a fairy godmother. The kelda had offered several times to turn him back, but he always refused. The Feegles themselves considered him the brains of the outfit since he knew words that were longer than he was. 13 That was to say, from Tiffany’s point of view, that meant a couple of years younger than Tiffany. 14 see Glossary; page 344. 15 She kept to herself any thought about the fact that what they were most good at finding was things that belonged to other people. It was true, though, that the Feegles could hunt like dogs, as well as drink like fish. 16 Tiffany had earned the admiration of other witches by persuading the Feegles to do chores. The unfortunate fact was that Feegles would do any chore, provided it was loud, messy and flamboyant. And, if possible, included screams. Chapter 6 THE COMING OF THE CUNNING MAN TIFFANY WAS ANGRY at herself for oversleeping. Her mother actually had to bring her up a cup of tea. But the kelda had been right. She hadn’t been sleeping properly and the ancient but homely bed had just closed around her. Still, it could have been worse, she told herself as they set off. For example, there could have been snakes on the broomstick. The Feegles had been only too glad, as Rob Anybody put it, to ‘feel the wind beneath their kilts’. Feegles were probably better than snakes, but that was only a guess. They would do things like run from one side of the stick to the other to look at interesting things they were flying over, and on one occasion she glanced over her shoulder to see about ten of them hanging onto the back of the stick or, to put it more precisely, one of them was hanging onto the back of the stick and then one was hanging onto his heels and one was hanging onto his heels, and so on, all the way to the last Feegle. They were having fun, screaming with laughter, their kilts indeed flapping in the wind. Presumably the thrill of it made up for the danger and the lack of a view, or at least, of a view that anyone else would want to look at. One or two actually did lose their grip on the bristles, floating away and down while waving at their brothers and making Yahoo! noises and generally treating it as a big game. Feegles tended to bounce when they hit the ground, although sometimes they damaged it a little. Tiffany wasn’t worried about their journey home; undoubtedly there would be lots of dangerous creatures prepared to jump out on a little running man, but by the time he got home there would in fact be considerably fewer of them. Actually, the Feegles were – by Feegle standards – pretty well behaved on the flight, and didn’t actually set fire to the broomstick until they were about twenty miles from the city, an incident heralded by Daft Wullie saying ‘Whoops!’ very quietly, and then guiltily trying to conceal the fact that he’d set fire to the bristles by standing in front of the blaze to hide it. ‘You’ve set fire to the broomstick again, haven’t you, Wullie,’ Tiffany stated firmly. ‘What was it that we learned last time? We don’t light fires on the broomstick for no good reason.’ The broomstick began to shake as Daft Wullie and his brothers tried to stamp out the flames. Tiffany searched the landscape below them for something soft and preferably wet to land on. But it was no use getting angry with Wullie; he lived in a Wullie-shaped world of his own. You had to try thinking diagonally. ‘I just wonder, Daft Wullie,’ she said as the broomstick developed a nasty rattle, ‘if, working together, we might find out why my broomstick is on fire? Do you think it might be something to do with the fact that you are holding a match in your hand?’ The Feegle looked at the match as if he had never seen one before, and then put it behind his back and stared at his feet, which was quite brave of him in the circumstances. ‘Don’t really know, miss.’ ‘You see,’ said Tiffany as the wind whipped around them, ‘without enough bristles I can’t steer very well, and we are losing height but still regrettably going quite fast. Perhaps you could help me with this conundrum, Wullie?’ Daft Wullie stuck his little finger in his ear and wiggled it about as if rummaging in his own brain. Then he brightened up. ‘Should we no’ land, miss?’ Tiffany sighed. ‘I would like to do that, Daft Wullie, but, you see, we are going quite fast and the ground is not. What we have in those circumstances is what they call a crash.’ ‘I wasnae considering that ye should land in the dirt, miss,’ said Wullie. He pointed down, and added, ‘I was just considering that ye might like to land on that.’ Tiffany followed the line of his pointing finger. There was a long white road below them, and on it, not too far ahead, was something oblong, moving almost as fast as the broomstick itself. She stared, listening to her brain calculating, and then said, ‘We will still have to lose some speed …’ And that was how a smouldering broomstick carrying one terrified witch and about two dozen of the Nac Mac Feegles, holding their kilts out to slow themselves down, landed on the roof of the Lancre-to-Ankh-Morpork parcel express. The coach had good springs and the driver got the horses back under control quite quickly. There was silence as he climbed down from his seat, while white dust began to settle back on the road. He was a heavy-looking man who winced at every step, and in one hand he held a half-eaten cheese sandwich and in the other an unmistakable length of lead pipe. He sniffed. ‘My supervisor will have to be told. Damage to paintwork, see? Got to do a report when it’s damage to paintwork. I hate reports, never been a man what words come to with ease. Got to do it, though, when it’s damage to paintwork.’ The sandwich and, more importantly, the lead pipe disappeared back into his very large overcoat, and Tiffany was amazed at how happy she felt about that. ‘I really am very sorry,’ she said as the man helped her down from the coach roof. ‘It’s not me, you understand, it’s the paintwork. I tell them, look, I tell them there’s trolls, there’s dwarfs, huh, and you know how they drive, eyes half closed most of the time ’cause of them not liking the sun.’ Tiffany sat still as he inspected the damage and then looked up at her and noticed the pointy hat. ‘Oh,’ he said flatly. ‘A witch. First time for everything, I suppose. Do you know what I’m carrying in here, miss?’ What could be the worst thing? Tiffany thought. She said, ‘Eggs?’ ‘Hah,’ said the man. ‘That we should be so lucky. It’s mirrors, miss. One mirror, in point of fact. Not a flat one, either; it’s a ball, they tell me. It’s all packed up very snug and sound, or so they say, not knowing that somebody was going to drop out of the sky on it.’ He didn’t sound angry, just worn out, as if he permanently expected the world to hand him the dirty end of the stick. ‘It was made by the dwarfs,’ he added. ‘They say it cost more than a thousand Ankh-Morpork dollars, and you know what it’s for? To hang up in a dance hall in the city, where they intend to dance the waltz, which a well-brought-up young lady such as you should not know about, on account of the fact, it says in the paper, that it leads to depravity and goings-on.’ ‘My word!’ said Tiffany, thinking that something like this was expected of her. ‘Well, I suppose I’d better go and see what the damage is,’ said the driver, laboriously opening the back of the coach. A large box filled quite a lot of the space. ‘It’s mostly packed with straw,’ he said. ‘Give me a hand to get it down, will you? And if it tinkles, we’re both in trouble.’ It turned out not to be as heavy as Tiffany expected. Nevertheless, they lowered it gently onto the road and the coachman rummaged among the straw inside, bringing out the mirror ball, holding it aloft like a rare jewel which, indeed, it resembled. It filled the world with sparkling light, dazzling the eyes and sending beams of flashing rays across the landscape. And at this point the man screamed in pain and dropped the ball, which shattered into a million pieces, filling the sky just for a moment with a million images of Tiffany, while he, curling up, landed on the road, raising more white dust and making little whimpering noises as the glass dropped around him. In slightly less than an instant, the moaning man was surrounded by a ring of Feegles, armed to whatever teeth they still possessed with claymores, more claymores, bludgeons, axes, clubs and at least one more claymore. Tiffany had no idea where they had been hiding; a Feegle could hide behind a hair. ‘Don’t hurt him,’ she shouted. ‘He wasn’t going to hurt me! He’s very ill! But make yourselves useful and tidy up all this broken glass!’ She crouched down in the road and held the man’s hand. ‘How long have you had jumping bones, sir?’ ‘Oh, I’ve been a martyr to them these past twenty years, miss, a martyr,’ the coachman moaned. ‘It’s the jolting of the coach, you see. It’s the suspenders – they don’t work! I don’t think I get more than just one decent night’s sleep in five, miss, and that’s the truth; I have a little snooze, turn over, like you do, and there’s this little click and then it’s agony, believe me.’ Except for a few dots on the edge of sight, there was no one else around apart from, of course, for a bunch of Nac Mac Feegles who, against all common sense, had perfected the art of hiding behind one another. ‘Well, I think I may be able to help you,’ Tiffany said. Some witches used a shambles to see into the present, and, with any luck, into the future as well. In the smoky gloom of the Feegle mound, the kelda was practising what she called the hiddlins – the things you did and passed on but, on the whole, passed them on as a secret. And she was acutely aware of Amber watching with clear interest. A strange child, she thought. She sees, she hears, she understands. What would we give for a world full of people like her? She had set up the cauldron17 and lit a small fire underneath the leather. The kelda closed her eyes, concentrated and read the memories of all the keldas who had ever been and would ever be. Millions of voices floated through her brain in no particular order, sometimes soft, never very loud, often tantalizingly beyond her reach. It was a wonderful library of information, except that all the books were out of order and so were all the pages, and there wasn’t an index anywhere. She had to follow threads that faded as she listened. She strained as small sounds, tiny glimpses, stifled cries, currents of meaning pulled her attention this way and that … And there it was, in front of her as if it had always been there, coming into focus. She opened her eyes, stared at the ceiling for a moment, and said, ‘I look for the big wee hag and what is it that I see?’ She peered forward into the mists of memories old and new, and jerked her head back, nearly knocking over Amber, who said, with interest, ‘A man with no eyes?’ ‘Well, I think I may be able to help you, Mr, er …’ ‘Carpetlayer, miss. William Glottal Carpetlayer.’ ‘Carpetlayer?’ said Tiffany. ‘But you’re a coachman.’ ‘Yes, well, there’s a funny story attached to that, miss. Carpetlayer, you see, is my family name. We don’t know how we got it because, you see, none of us have ever laid a carpet!’ Tiffany gave him a kind little smile. ‘And …?’ Mr Carpetlayer gave her a puzzled look. ‘And what? That was the funny story!’ He started to laugh, and screamed again as a bone jumped. ‘Oh yes,’ said Tiffany. ‘Sorry I’m a bit slow.’ She rubbed her hands together. ‘And now, sir, I will sort out your bones.’ The coach horses watched with quiet interest as she helped the man up, lending a hand as he took off his huge overcoat (with many a grunt and minor scream) and stood him so that his hands rested on the coach. Tiffany concentrated, feeling the man’s back through his thin vest and – yes, there it was, a jumping bone. She stepped across to the horses, whispering a word into each fly-flicking ear, just to be on the safe side. Then she went back to Mr Carpetlayer, who was waiting obediently, not daring to move. As she rolled up her sleeves, he said, ‘You’re not going to turn me into anything unnatural, are you, miss? I wouldn’t want to be a spider. Mortally afraid of spiders, and all my clothes are made for a man with two legs.’ ‘Why in the world would you think I’d turn you into anything, Mr Carpetlayer?’ said Tiffany, gently running her hand down his spine. ‘Well, saving your honour’s presence, miss, I thought that’s what witches do, miss – nasty things, miss, earwigs and all that.’ ‘Who told you that?’ ‘Can’t rightly say,’ said the coachman. ‘It’s just sort of … you know, what everybody knows.’ Tiffany placed her fingers carefully, found the jumping bone, said, ‘This might smart a little,’ and pushed the bone back into place. The coachman screamed again. His horses tried to bolt, but their legs were not doing business as usual, not with the word still ringing in their ears. Tiffany had felt ashamed at the time, a year ago, when she had acquired the knowing of the horseman’s word; but then again, the old blacksmith she had helped to his death, with kindness and without pain, well, he had felt ashamed that he had nothing with which to pay her for her painstaking work, and you had to pay the witch, the same as you had to pay the ferryman, and so he had whispered into her ear the horseman’s word, which gave you the control of any horse that heard it. You couldn’t buy it, you couldn’t sell it, but you could give it away and still keep it, and even if it’d been made of lead it would have been worth its weight in gold. The former owner had whispered in her ear, ‘I promised to tell no man the word, and I ain’t!’ And he was chuckling as he died, his sense of humour being somewhat akin to that of Mr Carpetlayer. Mr Carpetlayer was also pretty heavy, and had slipped gently down the side of the coach and— ‘Why are you torturing that old man, you evil witch? Can you not see that he’s in dreadful pain?’ Where had he come from? A shouting man, his face white with fury, his clothes as dark as an unopened cave or – and the word came to Tiffany suddenly – as a crypt. There had been no one around, she was sure of it, and no one on either side except the occasional farmer watching the stubbles burn as they cleared the land. But his face was now a few inches from hers. And he was real, not some kind of monster, because monsters don’t usually have little blobs of spittle on their lapel. And then she noticed – he stank. She’d never smelled anything so bad. It was physical, like an iron bar, and it seemed to her that she wasn’t smelling it with her nose, but with her mind. A foulness that made the average privy as fragrant as a rose. ‘I’m asking you politely to step back, please,’ said Tiffany. ‘I think you might have got hold of the wrong idea.’ ‘I assure you, fiendish creature, that I have only the right idea! And that is to return you to the miserable and stinking hell from which you spawned!’ All right, a madman, thought Tiffany, but if he— Too late. The man’s waggling finger got too close to her nose, and suddenly the empty road contained a lifetime’s supply of Nac Mac Feegles. The man in black flailed at them, but that sort of thing does not work very well with a Feegle. He did manage, despite the Feegle onslaught, to shout, ‘Be gone, nefarious imps!’ Every Feegle head turned hopefully when they heard this. ‘Oh aye,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘If there’s any imps aboot, we are the boys to deal with them! Your move, mister!’ They leaped at him and ended up in a heap on the road behind him, having passed straight through. They automatically punched one another as they staggered up, on the basis that if you’re having a good fight you don’t want to spoil the rhythm. The man in black glanced at them and then paid them no attention whatsoever. Tiffany stared down at the man’s boots. They gleamed in the sunlight, and that was wrong. She had been standing in the dust of the road for only a few minutes and her boots were grey. And there was the ground that the man was standing on, and that was wrong too. Very wrong, on a hot, cloudless day. She glanced at the horses. The word was holding them, but they were trembling with fear, like rabbits in the gaze of a fox. Then she closed her eyes and looked at him with First Sight, and saw. And said, ‘You cast no shadow. I knew something wasn’t right.’ And now she looked directly into the man’s eyes, almost hidden under the wide hat brim and … he … had … no eyes. The understanding dawned on her like ice melting … No eyes at all, not ordinary eyes, not blind eyes, no eye sockets … just two holes in his head: she could see right through to the smouldering fields beyond. She didn’t expect what happened next. The man in black glared at her again and hissed, ‘You are the witch. You are the one. Wherever you go, I will find you.’ And then he vanished, leaving only a pile of fighting Feegles in the dust. Tiffany felt something on her boot. She looked down, and a hare, which must have fled the burning stubbles, stared back at her. They held each other’s gaze for a second, and then the hare jumped into the air like a leaping salmon and headed off across the road. The world is full of omens and signs; and a witch did indeed have to pick the ones that were important. Where could she begin here? Mr Carpetlayer was still slumped against the coach, totally ignorant of what had just happened. So was Tiffany in a way, but she would find out. She said, ‘You can get up again now, Mr Carpetlayer.’ He did so very gingerly, grimacing as he waited for the lightning strokes of agony all down his back. He shifted experimentally, and gave a little jump in the dust, as if he was squashing an ant. That seemed to work, and he tried a second jump and then, throwing his arms out wide, he shouted ‘Yippee!’ and spun like a ballerina. His hat fell off and his hobnailed boots smacked into the dust and Mr Carpetlayer was a very happy man as he twirled and hopped, very nearly turned a cartwheel, and when it turned out to be about half a cartwheel, he rolled back onto his feet, picked up the astonished Tiffany and danced her along the road, shouting, ‘One two three, one two three, one two three,’ until she managed to shake herself loose, laughing. ‘Me and the wife is going to go out tonight, young lady, and we are going to go waltzing!’ ‘But I thought that led to depraved behaviour?’ said Tiffany. The coachman winked at her. ‘Well, we can but hope!’ he said. ‘You don’t want to overdo it, Mr Carpetlayer,’ she warned. ‘As a matter of fact, miss, I rather think I do, if it’s all the same to you. After all the creaking and groaning and not sleeping hardly at all, I think I would like to overdo it a little, or if possible a lot! Oh, what a good girl to think of the horses,’ he added. ‘That shows a kind nature.’ ‘I am pleased to see you in such fine spirits, Mr Carpetlayer.’ The coachman did a little twirl in the middle of the road. ‘I feel twenty years younger!’ He beamed at her, and then his face clouded just a little. ‘Er … how much do I owe you?’ ‘How much will the damage to the paintwork cost me?’ said Tiffany. They looked at one another, and then Mr Carpetlayer said, ‘Well, I can’t ask you for anything, miss, given that it was me that busted the mirror ball.’ A little tinkling sound made Tiffany look behind them, where the mirror ball, apparently unharmed, was spinning gently and, if you looked carefully, just above the dirt. She knelt down on a road totally free of broken glass and said, apparently to nothing at all, ‘Did you stick it back together again?’ ‘Oh aye,’ said Rob Anybody happily from behind the ball. ‘But it was smashed to smithereens!’ ‘Oh aye, but a smithereen is easy, ye ken. See, the tinier bits are, the more they all fit together again. Ye just hae to give them a little push and the wee molly cules remembers where they should be and they sticks together again, nae problemo! Ye dinnae have to act surprised, we dinnae just smash things.’ Mr Carpetlayer stared at her. ‘Did you do that, miss?’ ‘Well, sort of,’ said Tiffany. ‘Well I should say so!’ said Carpetlayer, all smiles. ‘So I says quid pro quo, give and take, knock for knock, tit for tat, one thing for another, an eye for an eye and me for you.’ He winked. ‘I’ll say it worked out even, and the company can put their paperwork where the monkey put his jumper – what you say to that, eh?’ He spat on his hand and held it out. Oh dear, thought Tiffany, a handshake with spit seals an unbreakable accord; thank goodness I have a reasonably clean handkerchief. She nodded speechlessly. And there had been a broken ball, and now it appeared to have mended itself. The day was hot, a man with holes where his eyes should be had vanished into nothing … Where would you even begin? Some days you trimmed toenails, removed splinters and sewed up legs, and some days were days like this. They shook hands, rather damply, the broomstick was shoved among the bundles behind the driver, Tiffany climbed up alongside him, and the journey continued, dust rising up from the road as it passed and forming strangely unpleasant shapes until it settled down again. After a while Mr Carpetlayer said, in a careful kind of voice, ‘Er, that black hat you’ve got on, are you going to carry on wearing it?’ ‘That’s right.’ ‘Only, well, you are wearing a nice green dress and, if I may say so, your teeth are lovely and white.’ The man seemed to be wrestling with a problem. ‘I clean them with soot and salt every day. I can recommend it,’ said Tiffany. It was turning into a difficult conversation. The man seemed to reach a conclusion. ‘So you are not really a witch then?’ he said hopefully. ‘Mr Carpetlayer, are you scared of me?’ ‘That’s a scary question, miss.’ Actually it is, Tiffany thought. Aloud, she said, ‘Look, Mr Carpetlayer, what’s this all about?’ ‘Well, miss, since you ask, there have been some stories lately. You know, about babies being stolen, that sort of thing. Kids running off and that.’ He brightened up a bit. ‘Still, I expect those were wicked old … you know, with, like, hooked noses, warts and evil black dresses – not nice girls like you. Yes, that’s just the sort of thing they would do!’ Having sorted out that conundrum to his satisfaction, the coachman said little for the rest of the journey, although he did whistle a lot. Tiffany, on the other hand, sat quietly. For one thing, she was now very worried, and for another thing she could just about hear the voices of the Feegles back among the mail bags, reading other people’s letters to each other.18 She had to hope that they were putting them back in the right envelopes. The song went: ‘Ankh-Morpork! It’s a wonderful town! The trolls are up and the dwarfs are down! Slightly better than living in a hole in the ground! Ankh-Morpork! It’s a wonderfuuuuuulllll townnn!’ It wasn’t, really. Tiffany had only been there once before and didn’t like the big city very much. It stank, and there were too many people, and far too many places. And the only green was on the surface of the river, which could only be called mud because a more accurate word would not have been printable. The coachman pulled up outside one of the main gates, even though they were open. ‘If you take my advice, miss, you’ll take your hat off and walk in by yourself. That broomstick looks like firewood now, in any case.’ He gave her a nervous grin. ‘Best of luck, miss.’ ‘Mr Carpetlayer,’ she said loudly, aware of people around her. ‘I do hope that when you hear people talk about witches, you will mention that you met one and she made your back better – and, may I suggest, saved your livelihood. Thank you for the ride.’ ‘Oh well, I’ll definitely tell people I met one of the good ones,’ he said. With her head held high, or at least as high as is appropriate when you are carrying your own damaged broomstick over your shoulder, Tiffany walked into the city. The pointy hat got one or two glances, and perhaps a couple of frowns, but mostly people didn’t look at her at all; in the country, everyone you meet is someone you know or a stranger worth investigating, but here it seemed there were so many people that it was a waste of time even to look at them at all, and possibly dangerous in any case. Tiffany bent down. ‘Rob, you know Roland, the Baron’s son?’ ‘Ach, the wee streak o’ nothing,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Well, nevertheless,’ said Tiffany, ‘I know you can find people and I would like you to go and find him for me now please.’ ‘Would you no’ mind if we had just the one wee drink while we are looking?’ said Rob Anybody. ‘A man could drown o’ thirst around here. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t bogging for a wee dram or ten.’ Tiffany knew that it would be foolish to say either yes or no and settled for, ‘Just the one then. When you’ve found him.’ There was the faintest of whooshing noises behind her, and no more Feegles. Still, they would be easy to find; you just had to listen for breaking glass. Oh yes, breaking glass that repaired itself. Another mystery: she had looked at the mirror ball very carefully as they put it back in its box, and there hadn’t been even a scratch on it. She glanced up at the towers of Unseen University, crammed with wise men in pointy hats, or at least men in pointy hats, but there was another address, well known to witches, which was in its own way just as magical: Boffo’s Joke Emporium, number four, Tenth Egg Street. She had never been there, but she did get a catalogue occasionally. People started to notice her more when she got off the main streets and made her way through the neighbourhoods, and she could feel eyeballs on her as she walked over the cobbles. People weren’t angry or unfriendly as such. They were just … watching, as if wondering what to make of her, and she had to hope that it was not, for example, stew. There wasn’t a bell on the door of Boffo’s Joke Emporium. There was a whoopee cushion, and for most of the people who came to buy things in the emporium, a whoopee cushion, perhaps in conjunction with a generous dollop of fake sick, was the last word in entertainment, which indeed it is, unfortunately. But real witches often needed boffo too. There were times when you had to look like a witch, and not every witch was good at it and was just too busy to get her hair in a mess. So Boffo’s was where you bought your fake warts and wigs, stupidly heavy cauldrons and artificial skulls. And, with any luck, you might get the address of a dwarf who could help you repair your broomstick. Tiffany stepped inside and admired the deep-throated farting of the whoopee cushion, pushed her way round and more or less through a ludicrous fake skeleton with glowing red eyes, and reached the counter, at which point somebody blew a squeaker at her. It disappeared, to be replaced by the face of a small, worried-looking man, who said, ‘Did you by any chance find that even remotely amusing?’ His voice suggested that he expected the answer to be ‘no’ and Tiffany saw no reason to disappoint him. ‘Absolutely not,’ she said. The man sighed and pushed the unfunny squeaker down the counter. ‘Alas, no one ever does,’ he said. ‘I’m sure I’m doing something wrong somewhere. Oh well, what can I do for you, miss—Oh – you are a real one, aren’t you? I can always tell, you know!’ ‘Look,’ said Tiffany, ‘I’ve never ordered anything from you, but I used to work with Miss Treason, who …’ But the man wasn’t listening to her. Instead he was shouting at a hole in the floor. ‘Mother? We’ve got a real one!’ A few seconds later, a voice by Tiffany’s ear said, ‘Derek is sometimes mistaken and you might have found the broomstick. You are a witch, aren’t you? Show me!’ Tiffany vanished. She did it without thinking – or, rather, thinking so fast that her thoughts had no time to wave to her as they flashed by. Only when the man, who was apparently Derek, was staring open-mouthed at nothing at all did she realize that she had faded into the foreground so quickly because disobeying that voice behind her would definitely be an unwise thing to do. A witch was standing behind her: most definitely a witch, and a skilled one too. ‘Very good,’ said the voice approvingly. ‘Very good indeed, young woman. I can still see you, of course, because I was watching very carefully. My word, a real one.’ ‘I’m going to turn round, you know,’ Tiffany warned. ‘I don’t recall saying that you couldn’t, my dear.’ Tiffany turned round and was faced with the witch of nightmares: battered hat, wart-encrusted nose, claw-like hands, blackened teeth and – Tiffany looked down – oh yes, big black boots. You did not have to be very familiar with Boffo’s catalogue to see that the speaker was wearing the full range of cosmetics in the ‘Hag in a Hurry’ range (‘Because you’re Worthless’ ). ‘I think we should continue this conversation in my workshop,’ said the horrible hag, disappearing into the floor. ‘Just stand on the trapdoor when it comes back up, will you? Make some coffee, Derek.’ When Tiffany arrived in the basement, the trapdoor working wonderfully smoothly, she found what you would expect in the workshop of the company that made everything needed by a witch who felt she needed some boffo in her life. Rows of rather scary hag masks were hanging on a line, benches were full of brightly coloured bottles, racks of warts had been laid out to dry, and various things that went bloop were doing so in a big cauldron by the fireplace. It was a proper cauldron too.19 The horrible hag was working at a bench, and there was a terrible cackle. She turned round, holding a small square wooden box with a piece of string sticking out of it. ‘First-class cackle, don’t you think? A simple thread and resin arrangement with a sounding board because, quite frankly, cackling is a bit of a pain in the neck, don’t you think? I believe I can make it work by clockwork too. Let me know when you’ve seen the joke.’ ‘Who are you?’ Tiffany burst out. The hag had put the box on her workbench. ‘Oh dear,’ she said, ‘where are my manners?’ ‘I don’t know,’ said Tiffany, who was getting a bit fed up. ‘Perhaps the clockwork has run down?’ The hag grinned a black-toothed grin. ‘Ah, sharpness. I like that in a witch, but not too much.’ She held out a claw. ‘Mrs Proust.’ The claw was less clammy than Tiffany had expected. ‘Tiffany Aching,’ she said. ‘How do you do?’ Feeling that something further was expected of her, Tiffany added, ‘I used to work with Miss Treason.’ ‘Oh yes, a fine witch,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘And a good customer. Very keen on her warts and skulls, as I recall.’ She smiled. ‘And since I doubt that you want to get hagged up for a girls’ night out, I must assume you need my help? The fact that your broomstick has about half the bristles needed for aerodynamic stability confirms my initial surmise. Incidentally, have you seen the joke yet?’ What should she say? ‘I think so …’ ‘Go on then.’ ‘I’m not going to say until I’m sure,’ said Tiffany. ‘Very wise,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘Well, let’s get your broomstick mended, shall we? It will mean a little stroll, and if I was you I would leave your black hat behind.’ Instinctively Tiffany grabbed at the brim of her hat. ‘Why?’ Mrs Proust frowned, causing her nose to very nearly catch her chin. ‘Because you might find … No, I know what we can do.’ She rummaged on the workbench and, without asking any permission, stuck something on Tiffany’s hat, right at the back. ‘There,’ she said. ‘No one will take any notice now. Sorry, but witches are a little bit unpopular at the moment. Let’s get that stick of yours repaired as soon as possible, just in case you need to leave in a hurry.’ Tiffany pulled off her hat and looked at what Mrs Proust had stuck in the hat band. It was a brightly coloured piece of cardboard on a string and it said: Apprentice witch hat with evil glitter. Size 7. Price: AM$2.50. Boffo! A name to conjure with!!! ‘What’s all this?’ she demanded. ‘You’ve even sprinkled evil glitter on it.’ ‘It’s a disguise,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘What? Do you think any self-respecting witch would walk down the street wearing a hat like this?’ said Tiffany angrily. ‘Of course not,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘The best disguise for a witch is a rather cheap witch’s outfit! Would a real witch buy clothes from a shop that also does a pretty good trade in naughty Fido jokes, indoor fireworks, laughable pantomime wigs and – our best and most profitable line – giant inflatable pink willies, suitable for hen nights? That would be unthinkable! It’s boffo, my dear, pure, unadulterated boffo! Disguise, subterfuge and misdirection are our watchwords. All watchwords. And, Amazing value for money, they’re our watchwords too. No refunds under any circumstances, they’re important watchwords. As is our policy of dealing terminally with shoplifters. Oh, and we also have a watchword about people smoking in the shop, although that’s not a very important word.’ ‘What?’ said Tiffany who, out of shock, had not heard the list of watchwords because she was staring at the pink ‘balloons’ hanging from the ceiling. ‘I thought they were piglets!’ Mrs Proust patted her hand. ‘Welcome to life in the big city, my dear. Shall we go?’ ‘Why are witches so unpopular at the moment?’ asked Tiffany. ‘It’s amazing the ideas people get into their heads sometimes,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘Generally speaking, I find it best just to keep your head down and wait until the problem goes away. You just need to be careful.’ And Tiffany thought that she did indeed need to be careful. ‘Mrs Proust,’ she said. ‘I think I know the joke by now.’ ‘Yes, dear?’ ‘I thought you were a real witch disguising herself as a fake witch …’ ‘Yes, dear?’ said Mrs Proust, her voice like treacle. ‘Which would be quite amusing, but I think there’s another joke, and it’s not really very funny.’ ‘Oh, and what would that be, dear?’ said Mrs Proust in a voice which now had sugary gingerbread cottages in it. Tiffany took a deep breath. ‘That really is your face, isn’t it? The masks you sell are masks of you.’ ‘Well spotted! Well spotted, my dear! Only, you didn’t spot it exactly, did you? You felt it, when you shook hands with me. And—But come on now, we’ll get your broomstick over to those dwarfs.’ When they stepped outside, the first thing Tiffany saw was a couple of boys. One of them was poised to throw a stone at the shop window. He spotted Mrs Proust and a sort of dreadful silence descended. Then the witch said, ‘Throw it, my lad.’ The boy looked at her as if she was mad. ‘I said throw it, my lad, or the worst will happen.’ Clearly assuming now that she was mad, the boy threw the stone, which the window caught and threw back at him, knocking him to the ground. Tiffany saw it. She saw the glass hand come out of the glass and catch the stone. She saw it throw the stone back. Mrs Proust leaned over the boy, whose friend had taken to his heels, and said, ‘Hmm, it will heal. It won’t if I ever see you again.’ She turned to Tiffany. ‘Life can be very difficult for the small shopkeeper,’ she said. ‘Come on, it’s this way.’ Tiffany was a bit nervous about how to continue the conversation and so she opted for something innocent, like, ‘I didn’t know there were any real witches in the city.’ ‘Oh, there’s a few of us,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘Doing our bit, helping people when we can. Like that little lad back there, who will now have learned to mind his own business and it does my heart good to think that I may have dissuaded him from a lifetime of vandalism and disrespect for other people’s property that would, you mark my words, have resulted in him getting a new collar courtesy of the hangman.’ ‘I didn’t know you could be a witch in the city,’ said Tiffany. ‘I was told once that you need good rock to grow witches, and everyone says the city is built on slime and mud.’ ‘And masonry,’ said Mrs Proust gleefully. ‘Granite and marble, chert and miscellaneous sedimentary deposits, my dear Tiffany. Rocks that once leaped and flowed when the world was born in fire. And do you see the cobbles on the streets? Surely every single one of them, at some time, has had blood on it. Everywhere you look, stone and rock. Everywhere you can’t see, stone and rock! Can you imagine what it feels like to reach down with your bones and feel the living stones? And what did we make from the stone? Palaces, and castles and mausoleums and gravestones, and fine houses, and city walls, oh my! Not just in this city either. The city is built on itself, all the cities that came before. Can you imagine how it feels to lie down on an ancient flagstone and feel the power of the rock buoying you up against the tug of the world? And it’s mine to use, all of it, every stone of it, and that’s where witchcraft begins. The stones have life, and I’m part of it.’ ‘Yes,’ said Tiffany. ‘I know.’ Suddenly Mrs Proust’s face was a few inches from hers, the fearsome hooked nose almost touching her own, the dark eyes ablaze. Granny Weatherwax could be fearsome, but at least Granny Weatherwax was, in her way, handsome; Mrs Proust was the evil witch from the fairy stories, her face a curse, her voice the sound of the oven door slamming on the children. The sum of all night-time fears, filling the world. ‘Oh, you know, do you, little witch in your jolly little dress? What is it that you know? What is it that you really know?’ She took a step back, and blinked. ‘More than I suspected, as it turns out,’ she said, relaxing. ‘Land under wave. In the heart of the chalk, the flint. Yes, indeed.’ Tiffany had never seen dwarfs on the Chalk, but up in the mountains they were always around, generally with a cart. They bought, and they sold, and for witches they made broomsticks. Very expensive broomsticks. On the other hand, witches seldom ever bought one. They were heirlooms, passed down the generations from witch to witch, sometimes needing a new handle, sometimes needing new bristles, but, of course, always remaining the same broomstick. Tiffany’s stick had been left to her by Miss Treason. It was uncomfortable and not very fast and had the occasional habit of going backwards when it rained, and when the dwarf who was in charge of the clanging, echoing workshop saw it, he shook his head and made a sucking noise through his teeth, as if the sight of the thing had really spoiled his day, and he might have to go away and have a little cry. ‘Well, it’s elm, isn’t it,’ he said to an uncaring world in general. ‘It’s a lowland wood, your elm, heavy and slow, and of course there’s your beetles to consider. Very prone to beetles, your elm. Struck by lightning, was it? Not a good wood for lightning, your elm. Attracts it, so they say. Tendency to owls as well.’ Tiffany nodded and tried to look knowledgeable; she had made up the lightning strike, because the truth, while a valuable thing, was just too stupid, embarrassing and unbelievable. Another, and almost identical, dwarf materialized behind his colleague. ‘Should have gone for ash.’ ‘Oh yes,’ said the first dwarf gloomily. ‘Can’t go wrong with ash.’ He prodded Tiffany’s broomstick and sighed again. ‘Looks like it’s got the start of bracket fungus in the base joint,’ the second dwarf suggested. ‘Wouldn’t be surprised at anything, with your elm,’ said the first dwarf. ‘Look, can you just patch it up enough to get me home?’ Tiffany asked. ‘Oh, we don’t “patch things up”,’ said the first dwarf loftily or, rather, metaphorically loftily. ‘We do a bespoke service.’ ‘I just need a few bristles,’ said Tiffany desperately, and then, because she forgot she hadn’t been going to admit to the truth, ‘Please? It wasn’t my fault the Feegles set fire to the broomstick.’ Up until that point, there had been quite a lot of background noises in the dwarf workshop as dozens of dwarfs had been working away on their own benches and not taking much heed of the discussion, but now there was a silence, and in that silence a single hammer dropped to the floor. The first dwarf said, ‘When you say Feegles, you don’t mean Nac Mac Feegles, do you, miss?’ ‘That’s right.’ ‘The wild ones? Do they say … Crivens ?’ he asked very slowly. ‘Practically all the time,’ said Tiffany. She thought she ought to make things clear and added, ‘They are my friends.’ ‘Oh, are they?’ said the dwarf. ‘And are any of your little friends here at this moment?’ ‘Well, I told them to go and find a young man of my acquaintance,’ said Tiffany, ‘but they are probably in a pub by now. Are there many pubs in the city?’ The two dwarfs looked at one another. ‘About three hundred, I should say,’ said the second dwarf. ‘That many?’ said Tiffany. ‘Then I don’t expect they’ll come looking for me for at least half an hour.’ And suddenly the first dwarf was all frantic good humour. ‘Well, where are our manners?’ he said. ‘Anything for a friend of Mrs Proust! Tell you what: it will be our pleasure to give you our express service gratis and for nothing, including free bristles and creosote at no charge whatsoever!’ ‘Express service meaning you leave straight away afterwards,’ said the second dwarf flatly. He took off his iron helmet, wiped the sweat off the inside with his handkerchief and put it back on his head quickly. ‘Oh yes, indeed,’ said the first dwarf. ‘Right away; that’s what express means.’ ‘Friends with the Feegles, are you?’ said Mrs Proust as the dwarfs hurried to deal with Tiffany’s broomstick. ‘They don’t have many, I understand. But talking of friends,’ she continued in a suddenly chatty tone, ‘you did meet Derek, didn’t you? He’s my son, you know. I met his father in a dance hall with very bad lighting. Mr Proust was a very kind man who was always gracious enough to say that kissing a lady without warts was like eating an egg without salt. He passed on twenty-five years ago, of the crisms. I am very sorry I couldn’t help him.’ Her face brightened. ‘But I’m glad to say that young Derek is the joy of my’ – she hesitated – ‘middle age. A wonderful lad, my dear. It’s going to be some lucky girl who takes her chance on young Derek, I can tell you. He’s totally devoted to his work and pays such attention to detail. Do you know, he tunes all the whoopee cushions every morning and frets if any of them are wrong. And conscientious? When we were developing our forth-coming “Pearls of the Pavement” hilarious artificial dog poo collection, he must have spent weeks following just about every type of dog in the city with a notebook, a scoop and a colour chart, just to get everything exactly right. A very meticulous lad, clean in his ways, with all his own teeth. And very careful about his company …’ She gave Tiffany a hopeful but rather sheepish look. ‘This isn’t working, is it?’ ‘Oh dear, did it show?’ said Tiffany. ‘I heard the spill words,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘What’s a spill word?’ ‘You don’t know? A spill word is a word that somebody almost says, but doesn’t. For a moment they hover in the conversation but aren’t spoken – and may I say that in the case of my son Derek, it is as well that you didn’t say them aloud.’ ‘I’m really very sorry,’ said Tiffany. ‘Yes, well, be told,’ said Mrs Proust. Five minutes later, they walked out of the workshop with Tiffany towing a fully functional broomstick behind her. ‘Actually,’ said Mrs Proust as they walked, ‘now I come to think about it, your Feegles remind me a lot of Wee Mad Arthur. Tough as nails and about the same size. Haven’t heard him say “Crivens”, though. He’s a policeman in the Watch.’ ‘Oh dear, the Feegles really don’t like policemen,’ said Tiffany, but she felt she ought to balance this somewhat, so she added, ‘But they are very loyal, mostly helpful, good-natured in the absence of alcohol, honourable for a given value of honour and, after all, they did introduce the deep-fried stoat to the world.’ ‘What’s a stoat?’ said Mrs Proust. ‘Well, er … you know a weasel? It’s very much like a weasel.’ Mrs Proust raised her eyebrows. ‘My dear, I treasure my ignorance of stoats and weasels. Sounds like countryside stuff to me. Can’t abide countryside. Too much green makes me feel bilious,’ she said, giving Tiffany’s dress a shuddering glance. At which point, on some celestial cue, there was a distant cry of ‘Crivens!’ followed by the ever-popular sound, at least to a Feegle, of breaking glass. 17 A message from the author: not all cauldrons are metal. You can boil water in a leather cauldron, if you know what you are doing. You can even make tea in a paper bag if you are careful and know how to do it. But please don’t, or if you do, don’t tell anyone I told you. 18 Jeannie, a modern kelda, had encouraged literacy among her sons and brothers. With Rob Anybody’s example to follow, they had found the experience very worthwhile, because now they could read the labels on bottles before they drank them, although this didn’t make too much of a difference, because unless there was a skull and crossbones on it, a Feegle would probably drink it anyway, and even then it would have to be a very scary skull and crossbones. 19 Most people who cook with cauldrons use them as a kind of double boiler, with small saucepans filled with water around the edge, picking up the heat of the big cauldron into which perhaps you might put a leg of pork weighted down, and possibly a few dumplings in a bag. This way, quite a large meal for several people can be cooked quite cheaply all in one go, including the pudding. Of course, it meant you had to stomach a lot of boiled food – but eat it up, it’s good for you! Chapter 7 SONGS IN THE NIGHT WHEN TIFFANY AND Mrs Proust got to the source of the shouting, the street was already covered with a rather spectacular layer of broken glass, and worried-looking men with armour and the kind of helmet that you could eat your soup out of in an emergency. One of them was putting up barricades. Other watchmen were clearly unhappy about being on the wrong side of the barricades, especially since at that moment an extremely large watchman came flying out of one of the pubs that occupied almost all of one side of the street. The sign on it proclaimed it to be the King’s Head, but by the look of it, the King’s Head now had a headache. The watchman took what remained of the glass with him, and when he landed on the pavement, his helmet, which could have held enough soup for a large family and all their friends, rolled off down the street making a gloing! gloing! noise. Tiffany heard another watchman shout, ‘They got Sarge!’ As more watchmen came running from both ends of the street, Mrs Proust tapped Tiffany on the shoulder and said sweetly, ‘Tell me again about their good points, will you?’ I’m here to find a boy and tell him that his father is dead, said Tiffany to herself. Not to pull the Feegles out of yet another scrape! ‘Their hearts are in the right place,’ she said. ‘I don’t doubt it,’ said Mrs Proust, who looked as though she was enjoying herself no end, ‘but their arses are on a pile of broken glass. Oh, here come the reinforcements.’ ‘I don’t think they will do much good,’ said Tiffany – and to her surprise turned out to be wrong. The guards were fanning out now, leaving a clear path to the pub entrance; Tiffany had to look hard to see a small figure walking purposely along it. It looked like a Feegle, but it was wearing … She stopped and stared … Yes, it was wearing a watchman’s helmet slightly bigger than the top of a salt cellar, which was unthinkable. A legal Feegle? How could there be such a thing? Nevertheless, it reached the doorway of the pub and shouted, ‘You scunners are all under arrest! Now this is how it’s going to go, ye ken: ye can hae it the hard way, or …’ He paused for a moment. ‘No, that’s about it, aye,’ he finished. ‘I don’t know any other way!’ And with that he sprang through the doorway. Feegles fought all the time. For them, fighting was a hobby, exercise and entertainment all combined. Tiffany had read in Professor Chaffinch’s famous book on mythology that many ancient peoples thought that when heroes died they went to some kind of feasting hall, where they would spend all eternity fighting, eating and boozing. Tiffany thought that this would be rather boring by about day three, but the Feegles would love it, and probably even the legendary heroes would throw them out before eternity was half done, having first shaken them down to get all the cutlery back. The Nac Mac Feegle were indeed ferocious and fearsome fighters, with the minor drawback – from their point of view – that seconds into any fight, sheer enjoyment took over, and they tended to attack one another, nearby trees and, if no other target presented itself, themselves. The watchmen, after reviving their sergeant and finding his helmet for him, sat down to wait for the noise to die away, and it seemed that it was after only a minute or two that the tiny watchman came back out of the stricken building, dragging by one leg Big Yan, a giant among Feegles and now, it appeared, fast asleep. He was dropped, the policeman went back in again and came out with an unconscious Rob Anybody over one shoulder, and Daft Wullie over the other. Tiffany stared, with her mouth open. This could not be happening. The Feegles always won! Nothing beats a Feegle! They were unstoppable! But there they were: stopped, and stopped by a creature so small that he looked like one half of a salt and pepper set. When he had run out of Feegles, the little man ran back into the building and came out very quickly, carrying a turkey-necked woman who was trying to hit him with her umbrella, a fruitless endeavour since he was balancing her carefully over his head. She was followed by a trembling young maidservant, clutching a voluminous carpet bag. The little man put the woman down neatly alongside the pile of Feegles, and while she screamed at the watchmen to arrest him, went back inside and came out again, balancing three heavy suitcases and two hat boxes. Tiffany recognized the woman, but not with any pleasure. She was the Duchess, the mother of Letitia, and fairly fearsome. Did Roland really understand what he was letting himself in for? Letitia herself was all right, if you liked that kind of thing, but her mother apparently had so much blue blood in her veins that she ought to explode, and right now looked as if that was going to happen. And how appropriate that the Feegles should have trashed the very building that the nasty old baggage was staying in. How lucky could one witch get? And what would the Duchess think about Roland and his watercolour-painting wife-to-be being left in the building unchaperoned? This question was answered by the sight of the little man dragging both of them out of the building by some very expensive clothing. Roland was wearing a dinner jacket slightly too big for him, while Letitia’s apparel was simply a mass of flimsy frills upon frills, in Tiffany’s mind not the clothing of anyone who was any use whatsoever. Hah. Still more watchmen were turning up, presumably because they had dealt with Feegles before and had had the sense to walk, not run, to the scene of the crime. But there was a tall one – more than six feet in height – with red hair and wearing armour so polished that it blinded, who was taking a witness statement from the owner; it sounded like a long-drawn-out scream to the effect that the watchmen should make this terrible nightmare not have happened. Tiffany turned away and found herself staring directly into the face of Roland. ‘You? Here?’ he managed. In the background, Letitia was bursting into tears. Hah, just like her! ‘Look, I have to tell you something very—’ ‘The floor fell in,’ said Roland before she could finish, like someone still in a dream. ‘The actual floor actually fell in!’ ‘Look, I must—’ she began again, but this time Letitia’s mother was suddenly in front of Tiffany. ‘I know you! You’re his witch girl, yes? Don’t deny it! How dare you follow us here!’ ‘How did they make the floor fall in?’ Roland demanded, his face white. ‘How did you make the floor fall in? Tell me!’ And then the smell came. It was like being hit, unexpectedly, with a hammer. Under her bewilderment and horror Tiffany sensed something else: a stink, a stench, a foulness in her mind, dreadful and unforgiving, a compost of horrible ideas and rotted thoughts that made her want to take out her brain and wash it. That’s him: the man in black with no eyes! And the smell! A toilet for sick weasels couldn’t smell worse! I thought it was bad last time, but that was a bed of primroses! She looked around desperately, hoping against hope not to see what she was looking for. Letitia’s sobs were getting louder, and mixing very badly with the sounds of the Feegles groaning and swearing as they started to wake up. The mother-in-law-to-be grabbed Roland by his jacket. ‘Come away from her right now; she is nothing but a—’ ‘Roland, your father is dead!’ That silenced everybody, and Tiffany was suddenly in a thicket of stares. Oh dear, she thought. It shouldn’t have happened like this. ‘I’m sorry,’ she managed in the accusing silence. ‘There was nothing I could do.’ She saw colour flow into his face. ‘But you were looking after him,’ said Roland, as if trying to work out a puzzle. ‘Why did you stop keeping him alive?’ ‘All I could do was take the pain away. I’m so very sorry, but that’s all I could do. I’m sorry.’ ‘But you’re a witch! I thought you were good at it, you’re a witch! Why did he die?’ What did the bitch do to him? Do not trust her! She is a witch! Do not suffer a witch to live! Tiffany didn’t hear the words; they seemed to crawl across her mind like some kind of slug, leaving slime behind it, and later she wondered how many other minds it had crawled across, but now she felt Mrs Proust grip her by the arm. She saw Roland’s face contort into fury, and she remembered the screaming figure on the road, shadowless in full sunlight, delivering abuse as if it was vomit and leaving her with a sick feeling that she would never be able to get clean again. And the people around her had a worried, hunted look, like rabbits who have smelled a fox. Then she saw him. Hardly visible, at the edge of the crowd. There they were, or rather there they weren’t. The two holes in the air staring at her just for a moment, before vanishing. And not knowing where they had gone made them worse. She turned to Mrs Proust. ‘What is that ?’ The woman opened her mouth to answer, but the tall watchman’s voice said, ‘Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, or rather just one gentleman in fact. I am Captain Carrot, and since I am the duty officer this evening, the doubtful pleasure of dealing with this incident falls to me, and so …’ He opened his notebook, pulled out a pencil, and gave them a confident smile. ‘Who is going to be the first to help me unravel this little conundrum? To begin with, I would very much like to know what a bunch of Nac Mac Feegle are doing in my city, apart from recovering?’ The glint off his armour hurt the eyes. And also he smelled strongly of soap, and that was good enough for Tiffany. She began to raise her hand, but Mrs Proust grabbed it and held it firmly. This caused Tiffany to shake off Mrs Proust even more firmly and then say in a voice firmer than the grip, ‘That would be me, Captain.’ ‘And you would be … ?’ Running away as soon as possible, Tiffany said to herself, but spoke up with, ‘Tiffany Aching, sir.’ ‘Off to a hen night, are you?’ ‘No,’ said Tiffany. ‘Yes!’ said Mrs Proust quickly. The captain put his head on one side. ‘So only one of you is going? That doesn’t sound like much fun,’ he said, with his pencil poised over the page. This was clearly too much for the Duchess, who pointed an accusing finger at Tiffany; it trembled with anger. ‘It is as clear as the nose on your face, Officer! This … this … this witch knew we were travelling down to the city in order to buy jewellery and gifts, and clearly, I repeat clearly, conspired with her imps to rob us!’ ‘I never did!’ Tiffany yelled. The captain held up a hand, as if the Duchess was a line of traffic. ‘Miss Aching, did you indeed encourage Feegles into the city?’ ‘Well, yes, but I didn’t really intend to. It was a sort of spur-of-themoment thing. I didn’t intend—’ The captain held up his hand again. ‘Stop talking, please.’ He rubbed his nose. Then he sighed. ‘Miss Aching, I’m arresting you on suspicion of … well, I’m just feeling suspicious. Besides, I am well aware that it is impossible to lock up a Feegle who doesn’t want to be locked up. If they are friends of yours, I trust’ – he looked around meaningfully – ‘they will not do anything to get you into further trouble and, with luck, all of us will be able to get a decent night’s sleep. My fellow officer, Captain Angua, will escort you down to the Watch House. Mrs Proust, would you be so good as to go along with them and explain the way of the world to your young friend?’ Captain Angua stepped forward; she was female and beautiful and blonde – and … odd. Captain Carrot turned to her ladyship. ‘Madam, my officers will be happy to escort you to any other hotel or inn of your choice. I see that your maidservant is holding a rather strong-looking bag. Would this be containing the jewellery of which you spoke? In which case, can we ascertain that it has not been stolen?’ Her ladyship was not happy about this, but the captain cheerfully did not notice, in that very professional way policemen have of not seeing things they don’t want to see. And there was a definite sense that he wouldn’t have paid much attention in any case. It was Roland who opened the bag and held the purchase up to the light. The tissue paper was carefully pulled off, and in the light of the lamps something sparkled so brilliantly that it seemed not only to reflect the light but to generate it too, somewhere inside its glowing stones. It was a tiara. Several of the watchmen gasped. Roland looked smug. Letitia looked objectionably winsome. Mrs Proust sighed. And Tiffany … went back in time, just for a second. But in that second she was a little girl again, reading the well-thumbed book of fairy stories that all her sisters had read before her. But she had seen what they had not seen; she had seen through it. It lied. No, well, not exactly lied, but told you truths that you did not want to know: that only blonde and blue-eyed girls could get the prince and wear the glittering crown. It was built into the world. Even worse, it was built into your hair colouring. Redheads and brunettes sometimes got more than a walk-on part in the land of story, but if all you had was a rather mousy shade of brown hair you were marked down to be a servant girl. Or you could be the witch. Yes! You didn’t have to be stuck in the story. You could change it, not just for yourself, but for other people. You could change the story with a wave of your hand. She sighed anyway, because the jewelled headdress was such a wonderful thing. But the sensible witch part of her said, ‘How often would you wear it, miss? Once in a blue moon? Something as expensive as that will spend all its time in a vault!’ ‘Not stolen then,’ said Captain Carrot happily. ‘Well, that’s good, isn’t it? Miss Aching, I suggest you tell your little chums to follow you quietly, yes?’ Tiffany looked down at the Nac Mac Feegle, who were silent, as if in shock. Of course, when about thirty deadly fighters found themselves being beaten into submission by one tiny man, it takes a while to come up with a face-saving excuse. Rob Anybody looked up at her with a very rare expression of shame. ‘Sorry, miss. Sorry, miss,’ he said. ‘We just had considerably too much of the booze. And ye ken, the more ye have of the booze, you ken ye want to have even more of the booze, until ye falls over, which is when ye know ye’ve had enough of the booze. By the way, what the heel is crème-de-menthe? A nice green colour, ye ken, I must have drunk a bucket of that stuff! I suppose there is no point in saying we are verrae sorry? But ye ken, we did find the useless streak of rubbish for ye.’ Tiffany looked up at what remained of the King’s Head. Flickering in the torchlight it looked like some kind of skeleton of a building. Even as she watched, a large beam began to creak and dropped apologetically onto a pile of broken furniture. ‘I told you to find him; I didn’t tell you you were supposed to pull the doors off,’ she said. She folded her arms, and the little men huddled even closer together; the next stage of female anger would be the tapping o’ the feets, which generally led them to burst into tears and walk into trees. Now, though, they formed up neatly behind her and Mrs Proust and Captain Angua. The captain nodded at Mrs Proust and said, ‘I’m sure we can all agree that handcuffs won’t be necessary – yes, ladies?’ ‘Oh, you know me, Captain,’ said Mrs Proust. Captain Angua’s eyes narrowed. ‘Yes, but I don’t know anything about your little friend. I would like you to carry the broomstick, Mrs Proust.’ Tiffany could see there was no point in arguing, and handed the stick over without complaining. They walked on in silence apart from the muted mumbling of the Nac Mac Feegles. After a while the captain said, ‘Not a good time to be wearing pointy black hats, Mrs Proust. There’s been another case, out on the plains. Some dead and alive hole you would never go to. They beat up an old lady for having a book of spells.’ ‘No!’ They turned to look at Tiffany, and the Feegles walked into her ankles. Captain Angua shook her head. ‘Sorry, miss, but it’s true. Turned out to be a book of Klatchian poetry, you know. All that wiggly writing! I suppose it looks like a spell book for those inclined to think that way. She died.’ ‘I blame The Times,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘When they put that sort of thing in the paper, it gives people ideas.’ Angua shrugged. ‘From what I hear the people who did it weren’t much for reading.’ ‘You’ve got to stop it!’ said Tiffany. ‘How, miss? We are the City Watch. We don’t have any real jurisdiction outside the walls. There are places out there in the woods that we probably haven’t even heard of. I don’t know where this stuff comes from. It’s like some mad idea dropping out of the air.’ The captain rubbed her hands together. ‘Of course, we don’t have any witches in the city,’ she said, ‘although there are quite a lot of hen nights, eh, Mrs Proust?’ And the captain winked. She really winked, Tiffany was certain of it, in the same way she had been certain that Captain Carrot really did not like the Duchess very much. ‘Well, I think real witches would soon stop it,’ Tiffany said. ‘They certainly would in the mountains, Mrs Proust.’ ‘Oh, but we don’t have real witches in the city. You heard the captain.’ Mrs Proust glared at Tiffany and then hissed, ‘We do not argue around the normal people. It makes them jittery.’ They stopped outside a large building with blue lamps on either side of the doors. ‘Welcome to the Watch House, ladies,’ said Captain Angua. ‘Now, Miss Aching, I shall have to lock you in a cell, but it will be a clean one – no mice, hardly at all – and if Mrs Proust will keep you company, then, shall we say, I might be a bit forgetful and leave the key in the lock, do you understand? Please do not leave the building, because you will be hunted.’ She looked directly at Tiffany and added, ‘And no one should be hunted. It is a terrible thing, being hunted.’ She led them through the building and down to a row of surprisingly cosy-looking cells, gesturing for them to go inside one of them. The door of the cell clanged behind her and they heard the sound of her boots as she went back down the stone corridor. Mrs Proust walked over to the door and reached through the bars. There was a tinkle of metal and her hand came back in with the key in it. She put it in the keyhole on this side, and turned it. ‘There,’ she said. ‘Now we are doubly safe.’ ‘Och, crivens!’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Will ye no’ look at us? Slammed up in the banger!’ ‘Again!’ said Daft Wullie. ‘I dinnae ken if I will ever look m’self in the face.’ Mrs Proust sat back down and stared at Tiffany. ‘All right, my girl, what was that we saw? No eyes, I noticed. No windows into the soul. No soul, perhaps?’ Tiffany felt wretched. ‘I don’t know! I met him on the road here. The Feegles walked right through him! He seems like a ghost. And he stinks. Did you smell it? And the crowd were turning on us! What harm were we doing?’ ‘I’m not certain he’s a him,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘He might even be an it. Could be a demon of some sort, I suppose … but I don’t know much about them. Small-trade retail is more my forte. Not that that can’t be a bit demonic at times.’ ‘But even Roland turned on me,’ said Tiffany. ‘And we’ve always been … friends.’ ‘Ah-ha,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘Don’t you ah-ha me,’ snapped Tiffany. ‘How dare you ah-ha me. At least I don’t go around making witches look ridiculous!’ Mrs Proust slapped her. It was like being hit with a rubber pencil. ‘You’re a rude slip of a girl, you young hussy. And I go around keeping witches safe.’ Up in the shadows of the ceiling, Daft Wullie nudged Rob Anybody and said, ‘We cannae let somebody smack oor big wee hag, eh, Rob?’ Rob Anybody put a finger to his lips. ‘Ah weel, it can be a wee bit difficult with womenfolk arguing, ye ken. Keep right oot of it, if ye’ll tak’ ma advice as a married man. Any man who interferes in the arguin’ of women is gonnae find both of them jumping up and doon on him in a matter o’ seconds. I’m nae talkin’ about the foldin’ of the arms, the pursin’ of the lips and the tappin’ of the feets. I’m talking about the smacking around with the copper stick.’ The witches stared at one another. Tiffany felt suddenly disorientated, as if she had gone from A to Z without passing through the rest of the alphabet. ‘Did that just happen, my girl?’ said Mrs Proust. ‘Yes, it did,’ said Tiffany sharply. ‘It still stings.’ Mrs Proust said, ‘Why did we do it?’ ‘To tell the truth, I hated you,’ said Tiffany. ‘Just for a moment. It frightened me. I just wanted to be rid of you. You were just—’ ‘All wrong?’ said Mrs Proust. ‘That’s right!’ ‘Ah,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘Discord. Turning on the witch. Always blame the witch. Where does it start? Perhaps we have found out.’ Her ugly face stared at Tiffany, then she said, ‘When did you become a witch, my girl?’ ‘I think it was when I was about eight,’ said Tiffany. And she told Mrs Proust the story about Mrs Snapperly, the witch in the hazel woods. The woman listened carefully and settled down on the straw. ‘We know it happens sometimes,’ she said. ‘Every few hundred years or so, suddenly everyone thinks witches are bad. No one knows why it is. It just seems to happen. Have you been doing anything lately that might attract attention? Any especially important piece of magic or something?’ Tiffany thought back and then said, ‘Well, there was the hiver. But he wasn’t all that bad. And before that there was the Queen of the Fairies, but that was ages ago. It was pretty awful too, but generally speaking, I think hitting her over the head with a frying pan was the best thing I could have done at the time. And, well, I suppose I’d better say that a couple of years ago, I did kiss the winter …’ Mrs Proust had been listening to this with her mouth open, and now she said, ‘That was you?’ ‘Yes,’ said Tiffany. ‘Are you sure?’ said Mrs Proust. ‘Yes. It was me. I was there.’ ‘What was it like?’ ‘Chilly, and then damp. I didn’t want to have to do it. I’m sorry, OK?’ ‘About two years ago?’ said Mrs Proust. ‘That’s interesting. The trouble seemed to start around then, you know. Nothing particularly major; it was just as though people didn’t respect us any more. Just something in the air, you might say. I mean, that kid with the stone this morning. Well, he would never have dared try that a year ago. People always gave me a nod when I passed by in those days. And now they frown. Or they make some little sign, just in case I bring bad luck. The others have told me about this too. What’s it been like where you are?’ ‘Can’t really say,’ said Tiffany. ‘People were a bit nervous of me, but on the whole I suppose I was related to a lot of them. But everything felt odd. And I thought that was how it had to feel. I’d kissed the winter, and everybody knew it. Honestly, they do go on about it. I mean, it was only once.’ ‘Well, people are packed a little more closely together around here. And witches have long memories. I mean, not individual witches, but all the witches put together can remember the really bad times. When wearing a pointy hat got a stone thrown at you, if not something worse. And when you go back further than that … It’s like a disease,’ Mrs Proust said. ‘It sort of creeps up. It’s in the wind, as if it goes from person to person. Poison goes where poison’s welcome. And there’s always an excuse, isn’t there, to throw a stone at the old lady who looks funny. It’s always easier to blame somebody. And once you’ve called someone a witch, then you’d be amazed how many things you can blame her for.’ ‘They stoned her cat to death,’ said Tiffany, almost to herself. ‘And now there’s a man without a soul who’s following you. And the stink of him makes even witches hate witches. You don’t feel inclined to set fire to me, by any chance, Miss Tiffany Aching?’ ‘No, of course not,’ said Tiffany. ‘Or press me flat on the ground with lots of stones on me?’ ‘What are you talking about?’ ‘It wasn’t just stones,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘You hear people talk about witches being burned, but I don’t reckon many real witches ever did get burned unless they were tricked in some way; I think it was mostly poor old women. Witches are mostly too soggy, and it was probably a wicked waste of good timber. But it’s very easy to push an old lady down to the ground and take one of the doors off the barn and put it on top of her like a sandwich and pile stones on it until she can’t breathe any more. And that makes all the badness go away. Except that it doesn’t. Because there are other things going on, and other old ladies. And when they run out, there are always old men. Always strangers. There’s always the outsider. And then, perhaps, one day, there’s always you. That’s when the madness stops. When there’s no one left to be mad. Do you know, Tiffany Aching, that I felt it when you kissed the winter? Anyone with an ounce of magical talent felt something.’ She paused and her eyes narrowed. Now she was staring at Tiffany. ‘What did you wake up, Tiffany Aching? What rough thing opened the eyes that it had not got and wondered who you were? What have you brought upon us, Miss Tiffany Aching? What have you done?’ ‘You think that …’ Tiffany hesitated and then said, ‘That he is after me?’ She closed her eyes so that she couldn’t see the accusing face, and remembered the day she had kissed the winter. There had been terror, and dreadful apprehension, and the strange feeling of being warm whilst surrounded by ice and snow. And as for the kiss, well, it had been as gentle as a silk handkerchief falling on a carpet. Until she had poured all the heat of the sun into the lips of winter and melted him into water. Frost to fire. Fire to frost. She’d always been good with fire. Fire had always been her friend. It wasn’t as if the winter had ever died; there had been other winters since, but not so bad, never so bad. And it hadn’t just been a snog. She had done the right thing at the right time. It was what you did. Why had she had to do it? Because it was her fault; because she had disobeyed Miss Treason and joined in a dance that wasn’t just a dance but the curving of the seasons and the turning of the year. And, with horror, she wondered: Where does it end? You do one foolish thing and then one thing to put it right, and when you put it right something else goes wrong. Where did it ever stop? Mrs Proust was watching her as though fascinated. ‘All I did was dance,’ said Tiffany. Mrs Proust put a hand on her shoulder. ‘My dear, I think you will have to dance again. Could I suggest you do something very sensible at this point, Tiffany Aching?’ ‘Yes,’ said Tiffany. ‘Listen to my advice,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘I don’t usually give things away, but I feel quite chipper about catching that lad who kept breaking my windows. So I’m in the mood for a good mood. There is a lady who I am sure would be very keen to talk to you. She lives in the city, but you’ll never find her no matter how hard you try. She will find you, though, in the blink of a second, and my advice is that when she does, you listen to everything she might tell you.’ ‘So how do I find her?’ said Tiffany. ‘You’re feeling sorry for yourself and not listening,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘She will find you. You’ll know it when she does. Oh my word, yes.’ She reached into a pocket and produced a small round tin, the lid of which she flicked open with a black fingernail. The air suddenly felt prickly. ‘Snuff ?’ she said, offering the tin to Tiffany. ‘Dirty habit, of course, but it clears the tubes and helps me think.’ She took a pinch of the brown powder, tipped it onto the back of the other hand and sniffed it up with a sound like a honk in reverse. She coughed and blinked once or twice and said, ‘Of course, brown bogeys are not to everybody’s liking, but I suppose they add to that nasty witch look. Anyway, I expect they’ll soon give us dinner.’ ‘They’re going to feed us?’ said Tiffany. ‘Oh yes, they’re a decent bunch, although the wine last time was a bit off in my opinion,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘But we’re in prison.’ ‘No, my dear, we’re in the police cells. And, though nobody’s saying it, we’re locked in here for our protection. You see, everyone else is locked out, and although they sometimes act dumb, policemen can’t help being clever. They know that people need witches; they need the unofficial people who understand the difference between right and wrong, and when right is wrong and when wrong is right. The world needs the people who work around the edges. They need the people who can deal with the little bumps and inconveniences. And little problems. After all, we are almost all human. Almost all of the time. And almost every full moon Captain Angua comes to me to make up a prescription for her hardpad.’ The snuff tin was produced again. After a while Tiffany said, ‘Hardpad is a disease of dogs.’ ‘And werewolves,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘Oh. I thought there was something odd about her.’ ‘She stays on top of it, mind you,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘She shares lodgings with Captain Carrot and doesn’t bite anybody – although, come to think about it, she possibly bites Captain Carrot, but least said soonest mended, I’m sure you will agree. Sometimes what is legal isn’t what is right, and sometimes it needs a witch to tell the difference. And sometimes a copper too, if you have the right kind of copper. Clever people know this. Stupid people don’t. And the trouble is, stupid people can be oh so very clever. And by the way, miss, your boisterous little friends have escaped.’ ‘Yes,’ Tiffany said. ‘I know.’ ‘Isn’t that a shame, despite the fact that they faithfully promised the Watch to stay?’ Mrs Proust evidently did like to retain a reputation for nastiness. Tiffany cleared her throat. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I suppose Rob Anybody would tell you that there are times when promises should be kept and times when promises should be broken, and it takes a Feegle to know the difference.’ Mrs Proust grinned hugely. ‘You could almost be from the city, Miss Tiffany Aching.’ If you needed to guard something that didn’t need guarding, possibly because no one in their right mind would want to steal it, then Corporal Nobbs of the City Watch was, for want of a better way of describing him, and in the absence of any hard biological evidence to the contrary, your man. And now he stood in the dark and crunching ruins of the King’s Head, smoking a horrible cigarette made by rolling up all the stinking butts of previously smoked cigarettes into some fresh cigarette paper and sucking the horrible mess until some kind of smoke appeared. He never noticed the hand that lifted his helmet off, hardly even felt the forensic blow to the head, and certainly did not feel the calloused little hands that placed the helmet back on his head as they lowered his sleeping body to the ground. ‘OK,’ said Rob Anybody in a hoarse whisper, looking around at the blackened timbers. ‘Now, we don’t have much time, ye ken, so—’ ‘Well, well, I just knew that you wee scunners would come back here if I waited long enough for ye,’ said a voice in the dark. ‘As a dog returneth to his vomit and a fool to his folly, so the criminal returns to the scene of his crime.’ The watchman known as Wee Mad Arthur struck a match, which was, for a Feegle, a pretty good torch. There was a clink as something that was the size of a shield for a Feegle, but would have been a badge for a human policeman, landed on the floor in front of him. ‘That’s tae show you wee fools that I’m nae on duty, OK? Cannae be a policeman withoot a badge, ain’t that so? I just wanted tae see why ye wee deadbeats talks properly, like what I do, because ye ken, I’m no’ a Feegle.’ The Feegles looked at Rob Anybody, who shrugged and said, ‘What the heel do you think ye are, then?’ Wee Mad Arthur ran his hands through his hair, and nothing fell out. ‘Well, my ma an’ poppa told me I was a gnome, like them—’ He stopped talking because the Feegles were hooting and slapping their legs with mirth, which tends to go on for a long time. Wee Mad Arthur watched for a little while before shouting, ‘I do not find this funny!’ ‘Will ye no’ listen to yourself?’ said Rob Anybody, wiping his eyes. ‘Ye are speaking Feegle, sure enough! Did yer mammy and yer pappy nae tell ye? We Feegles are born knowing how to speak! Crivens! It’s just like a dog knowing how to bark! Ye cannae tell me ye are a gnome! Ye’ll be telling me ye are a pixie next!’ Wee Mad Arthur looked down at his boots. ‘My dad made me these boots,’ he said. ‘I couldnae bring mesel’ to tell him I didnae like boots on my feet. The whole family had been making and repairing shoes for hundreds of years, ye ken, and I wasnae good at the cobbling at all, and then one day all the elders of the tribe called me together and told me I was a lost foundling. They was moving to a new camp, and they ha’ found me, a tiny wee bairn, greeting by the road, right next to a sparrowhawk that I had strangled to death after it had snatched me from me cradle; they reckoned it was taking me home to feed me tae its chicks. And the old gnomes put their hats together, and said that while they were very happy to let me stay, what with being able to bite foxes to death and everything, it might be time for me to go out into the big world and find out who my people were.’ ‘Well, laddie, ye have found them,’ said Rob Anybody, slapping him on the back. ‘Ye did well to listen to a load of old cobblers. That was wisdom they told you, sure enough.’ He hesitated for a moment, and then went on, ‘However, it’s a wee bitty difficult that ye are – no offence meant – a policeman.’ He jumped back slightly, just in case. ‘Granted,’ said Wee Mad Arthur with satisfaction. ‘Whereas ye are a bunch of thieving drunken reprobates and scoff-laws with no respect for the law whatsoever!’ The Feegles nodded happily, although Rob Anybody said, ‘Would you no’ mind adding the words drunk and disorderly? We wouldnae want to be sold short here.’ ‘And what about the snail-rustling, Rob?’ said Daft Wullie happily. ‘Weel,’ said Rob Anybody, ‘in actual point of fact, the snailrustling is still in the early stages of development at this time.’ ‘Have you no good points?’ said Wee Mad Arthur desperately. Rob Anybody looked puzzled. ‘We kind of thought them is our good points, but if you want to get picky, we never steal from them as has nae money, we has hearts of gold, although maybe – OK, mostly – somebody else’s gold, and we did invent the deep-fried stoat. That must count for something.’ ‘How is that a good point?’ said Arthur. ‘Weel, it saves some other poor devil having tae do it. It’s what ye might call a taste explosion; ye take a mouthful, taste it, and then there is an explosion.’ Despite himself, Wee Mad Arthur was grinning. ‘Have you boys got no shame?’ Rob Anybody matched him grin for grin. ‘I couldnae say,’ he replied, ‘but if we have, it probably belonged tae somebody else.’ ‘And what about the poor wee big lassie locked up and down in the Watch House?’ said Wee Mad Arthur. ‘Oh, she’ll bide fine till the morning,’ said Rob Anybody, as loftily as he could in the circumstances. ‘She is a hag o’ considerable resource.’ ‘Ye think so? You wee scunners punched an entire pub to death! How can anyone put that right?’ This time Rob Anybody gave him a longer, more thoughtful look before saying, ‘Well, Mr Policeman, it seems ye are a Feegle and a copper. Well, that’s the way the world spins. But the big question for the pair of ye is: are you a sneak and a snitch?’ In the Watch House the shift was changing. Somebody came in and shyly handed Mrs Proust quite a large plate of cold meats and pickles, and a bottle of wine with two glasses. After a nervous look at Tiffany, the watchman whispered something to Mrs Proust, and in one movement she’d taken a small packet out of her pocket and shoved it into his hand. Then she came back and sat down on the straw again. ‘And I see he’s had the decency to open the bottle and let the wine breathe for a while,’ she said, and added, when she saw Tiffany’s glance, ‘Lance Constable Hopkins has a little problem that he’d rather his mother never found out about and I make a rather helpful ointment. I don’t charge him, of course. One hand washes the other, although in the case of young Hopkins I hope he scrubs it first.’ Tiffany had never drunk wine before; at home you drank small beer or small cider, which had just enough alcohol to kill off the nasty invisible tiny biting things, but not enough alcohol to make you more than a bit silly. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I never thought prison would be like this!’ ‘Prison? I told you, my dear girl, this isn’t prison! If you want to know what a prison is like, visit the Tanty! That’s a dark place if you like! In here the watchmen don’t gob in your grub – at least when you’re watching, and certainly never in mine, you can be sure of that. The Tanty is a tough place; they like to think that anyone who gets put in there will think more than twice before doing anything that will get them put in there again. And they’ve tidied it up a bit these days, and not everybody who goes in comes out in a pine box, but the walls still scream silently to those with hearing. I hear them.’ She opened her snuffbox with a click. ‘And worse than the screaming is the sound of the canaries in D wing, where they lock up the men who they don’t dare hang. They bang up each one by himself in a little room, and they give him a canary as company.’ At this point Mrs Proust took a pinch of snuff, at such speed and volume that Tiffany was surprised that it didn’t come out of her ears. The box’s lid snapped back down. ‘Those men, mark you, are not your average murderer – oh no, they killed people for a hobby, or for a god or for something to do, or because it wasn’t a very nice day. They did worse things than just murder, but murder was how it always ended. I see you haven’t touched your beef …? Oh well, if you’re quite sure …’ Mrs Proust paused with rather a large piece of heavily pickled lean beef on her knife and went on: ‘Funny thing, though, these cruel men used to look after their canaries, and cried when they died. The warders used to say it was all a sham; they said it gave them the creeps, but I’m not sure. When I was young, I used to run errands for the warders and I would look at those great heavy doors and I would listen to the little birds, and I would wonder what it is that makes the difference between a good man and a man so bad that no hangman in the city – not even my dad, who could have a man out of his cell and stone-cold dead in seven and a quarter seconds – would dare to put a rope round his neck in case he escaped from the fires of evil and came back with a vengeance.’ Mrs Proust stopped there and shivered, as if shaking off the memories. ‘That’s life in the big city, my girl; it’s not an easy bed of sweet primroses, like in the country.’ Tiffany wasn’t very happy with being called a girl again, but that wasn’t the worst of it. ‘Sweet primroses?’ she said. ‘It wasn’t sweet primroses the other day when I had to cut down a hanged man.’ And she had to tell Mrs Proust all about Mr Petty and Amber. And about the bouquet of nettles. ‘And your dad told you about the beatings?’ said Mrs Proust. ‘Sooner or later, it’s all about the soul.’ The meal had been tasty, and the wine surprisingly strong. And the straw was a lot cleaner than you might have expected. It had been a long day, piled on top of other long days. ‘Please,’ Tiffany said, ‘can we get some sleep? My father always says that things will look better in the morning.’ There was a pause. ‘Upon reflection,’ Mrs Proust said, ‘I think your father will turn out to be wrong.’ Tiffany let the clouds of tiredness take her. She dreamed about canaries singing in the dark. And perhaps she imagined it, but she thought she woke up for a moment and saw the shadow of an old lady looking at her. It certainly wasn’t Mrs Proust, who snored something terrible. The shape was there for a moment, and then it vanished. Tiffany remembered: the world is full of omens, and you picked the ones you liked. Chapter 8 THE KING’S NECK IFFANY WAS WOKEN by the squeak of the cell door opening. She sat up and looked around. Mrs Proust was still asleep, and snoring so hard that her nose wobbled. Correction: Mrs Proust appeared to be asleep. Tiffany liked her, in a wary kind of way, but could she trust her? Sometimes she seemed to almost … read her mind. ‘I don’t read minds,’ said Mrs Proust, turning over. ‘Mrs Proust!’ Mrs Proust sat up and started to pull bits of straw off her dress. ‘I don’t read minds,’ she said, flicking the straw onto the floor. ‘I really have keen, but not supernatural, skills which I have honed to the sharpest of edges, and don’t you forget it, please. I hope to goodness they’re going to give us a cooked breakfast.’ ‘No problem there – what would ye like us to fetch for ye?’ They looked up to see the Feegles sitting on the beam overhead, and dangling their feet happily. Tiffany sighed. ‘If I asked you what you were doing last night, would you lie to me?’ ‘Absolutely not, on our honour as Feegles,’ said Rob Anybody, with his hand on where he thought his heart was. ‘Well, that seems conclusive,’ said Mrs Proust, standing up. Tiffany shook her head and sighed again. ‘No, it’s not quite as simple as that.’ She looked up at the beam and said, ‘Rob Anybody, was the answer you gave me just then truthful? I’m asking you as the hag o’ the hills.’ ‘Oh aye.’ ‘And that one?’ ‘Oh aye.’ ‘And that one?’ ‘Oh aye.’ ‘And that one?’ ‘Oh … well, only a tiny wee lie, ye ken, hardly a lie, just something that it wouldnae be good for ye tae know.’ Tiffany turned to Mrs Proust, who was grinning. ‘The Nac Mac Feegles feel that the truth is so precious that it shouldn’t be waved about too much,’ she said apologetically. ‘Ah, people after my own heart,’ said Mrs Proust, and then, remembering herself, she added, ‘If I had one, that is.’ There was a sound of heavy boots, which got nearer and no less heavy very quickly, and turned out to belong to a tall and skinny watchman, who touched his helmet politely to Mrs Proust and gave Tiffany a nod. ‘Good morning, ladies! My name is Constable Haddock and I have been told to tell you that you’ve been let go with a warning,’ he said. ‘Although I have to tell you that no one quite knows what to warn you about, as far as I can tell, so if I was you, I’d consider myself generally in the situation of being warned, as it were, in a general and generically non-specific way, and hopefully slightly chastened by the experience, no offence meant, I’m sure.’ He coughed, and went on, after giving Mrs Proust a nervous look, ‘And Commander Vimes has asked me to make it clear that the individuals known jointly as the Nac Mac Feegle are to be out of this city by sunset.’ There was a chorus of complaints from the Feegles on the beam, who in Tiffany’s opinion were as good at astonished indignation as they were at drunkenness and thievery: ‘Och, ye wouldnae pick on us if we was big!’ ‘It wasnae us! A big boy did it and ran awee!’ ‘I wasnae there! Ye can ask them! They wasnae there either!’ And otherrr excuses o’ that ilk, ye ken. Tiffany banged her tin plate on the bars until they subsided into silence. Then she said, ‘Excuse me, please, Constable Haddock. I’m sure they’re all very sorry about the pub—’ she began, and he waved a hand at her. ‘If you’ll take my advice, miss, you would just leave quietly and not talk to anybody about pubs.’ ‘But look … we all know that they smashed up the King’s Head, and—’ The constable stopped her again. ‘I went past the King’s Head this morning,’ he said, ‘and it was very definitely not smashed up. In fact, there were crowds of people there. Everyone in the city is going to have a look at it. The King’s Head is just like it’s always been, as far as I can see, with just the one tiny little detail which is, to wit, that it is now back to front.’ ‘What do you mean, “back to front”?’ said Mrs Proust. ‘I mean that it is the wrong way round,’ said the policeman patiently, ‘and when I was over there just now, you can bet they weren’t calling it the King’s Head any more.’ Tiffany’s forehead wrinkled. ‘So … they’re calling it the King’s Neck?’ Constable Haddock smiled. ‘Well, yes, I can see you are a well-brought-up young lady, miss, because most of the people out there are calling it the King’s—’ ‘I cannot abide smut!’ said Mrs Proust severely. Really? Tiffany thought. With half a shop window full of pink inflatable wossnames and other mysterious items that I didn’t get a chance to see very clearly? But I suppose it would be a strange world if we were all the same, and especially if we were all the same as Mrs Proust. And overhead she could hear the susurration of the Nac Mac Feegles, with Daft Wullie making more noise than usual. ‘I told ye, didn’t I tell ye, I said this lot is back to front, I said, but no, ye would nae pay heed! I may be daft, but I’m no’ stupid.’ The King’s Head, or at least whatever part of the king’s anatomy it now was, was not very far away, but the witches had to push their way through the crowds when they were at least a hundred yards away, and many of the people making up the crowd were holding pint mugs in their hands. Mrs Proust and Tiffany both wore hob-nailed boots, a boon to anyone who must get through a crowd in a hurry and there, in front of them was, for want of a better word – although the Feegles would have used a different word, and indeed the Feegles would not have hesitated to use a different word – was, in fact, the King’s Back, which came as a relief. Standing in front of the back door, which was now doing the duty formerly left to the front door, and handing out mugs of beer with one hand while taking money with the other, was Mr Wilkin, the landlord. He looked like a cat on the day it rained mice. Every now and again he managed to find time in this heroic endeavour to say a few words to a skinny but purposeful-looking lady who was writing things down in a notebook. Mrs Proust nudged Tiffany. ‘See her? That’s Miss Cripslock of The Times, and over there’ – she pointed at a tall man in the uniform of the Watch – ‘see there, the man she’s talking to is Commander Vimes of the City Watch. Decent man, always looks grumpy, won’t stand any nonsense. This is going to be interesting, because he doesn’t like kings of any sort; one of his ancestors chopped off the head of the last king we had.’ ‘That’s dreadful! Did he deserve it?’ Mrs Proust hesitated for a moment, and then said, ‘Well, if it’s true about what they found in his private dungeon, then the answer is “yes” in great big letters. They put the commander’s ancestor on trial anyway, because chopping heads off kings always causes a certain amount of comment, apparently. When the man stood in the dock, all he said was, “Had the beast a hundred heads I would not have rested until I had slain every last one.” Which was taken as a guilty plea. He was hanged, and then much later they put up a statue to him, which tells you more about people than you might wish to know. His nickname was Old Stoneface, and as you can see, it runs in the family.’ Tiffany could, and this was because the commander was moving purposefully towards her, his expression that of a man who had a lot of things to do, all of them more important than what he was having to do right now. He gave a respectful little nod to Mrs Proust, and tried unsuccessfully not to glare at Tiffany. ‘Did you do this?’ ‘No, sir!’ ‘Do you know who did?’ ‘No, sir!’ The commander frowned. ‘Young lady, if a burglar breaks into a house and then comes back later and puts everything back where it was, a crime has still happened, do you understand? And if the building that has been badly damaged, along with its contents, is found next morning looking all shiny and new, albeit facing the wrong way, that too – and therefore those involved – are, nevertheless, still criminals. Except that I have no idea what to call it and quite frankly I would rather be shot of the whole damn business.’ Tiffany blinked. She hadn’t heard that last sentence, not exactly heard it, but could remember it anyway. They must have been spill words! She glanced at Mrs Proust, who nodded happily, and in Tiffany’s head there was a little spill word that said ‘yes’. Out loud, Mrs Proust said, ‘Commander, it seems to me that no real harm has been done, given that, if I’m any judge, Mr Wilkin here is doing a roaring trade in the King’s Back and would probably not welcome it becoming the King’s Head again.’ ‘Too right!’ said the landlord, who was shovelling money into a bag. Commander Vimes was frowning, and Tiffany caught the words that he was almost but not actually saying: ‘No king’s coming back while I’m here!’ Mrs Proust butted in again. ‘How about letting it be called the King’s Neck?’ she suggested. ‘Especially since he appears to have dandruff, greasy hair and a big ripe boil?’ To Tiffany’s delight, the commander’s face stayed as stony as ever, but she caught a tremble of a spill word that was a triumphant ‘Yes!’ And at that point Mrs Proust, who believed in securing victory by every means at her disposal, chimed in again with, ‘This is AnkhMorpork, Mr Vimes; in the summer the river catches fire and it has been known to rain fish and bedsteads, so, in the great scheme of things, when you think about it, what’s so wrong about a pub spinning on its axis? Most of its customers do the same! How is your little boy, by the way?’ This innocent enquiry appeared to floor the commander. ‘Oh! He … oh, I … he’s fine. Oh yes, fine. You were right. All he needed was a fizzy drink and a really big burp. Could I have a word with you in private, Mrs Proust?’ The look he gave Tiffany made it quite clear that ‘private’ didn’t include her, so she carefully made her way through the crowds of jolly, and sometimes too jolly, people waiting to have their pictures taken in front of the King’s Neck, and let herself fade into the foreground and listen to Rob Anybody command the troops, who would listen to him when there was nothing better to do. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘which one of you scunners decided to paint a real neck on the sign? I’m sure it’s no’ normally done like that.’ ‘That was Wullie,’ said Big Yan. ‘He reckoned people would think it had always been like that. He is daft, ye ken.’ ‘Sometimes daft works,’ said Tiffany. She looked around … And there he was, the man with no eyes, walking through the crowd, walking through the crowd, as if they were ghosts, but she could see that they felt his presence in some way; one man brushed his hand across his face, as if feeling the footsteps of a fly; another one slapped at his own ear. But afterwards they were … changed. When their eyes saw Tiffany they narrowed, and the ghostly man headed towards her and the whole of the crowd became one huge frown. And here came the stench, trailing behind him and turning the daylight grey. It was like the bottom of a pond, where things had died and rotted for centuries. Tiffany looked around desperately. The turning of the King’s Head had filled the street with the curious and the thirsty. People were trying to go about their business, but were being hemmed in by the crowd in front and the crowd behind them and, of course, by the people with trays and little carts who swarmed through the city and would try to sell something to anyone who stood still for more than two seconds. She could feel the menace in the air, but in fact it was more than a menace – it was hatred, growing like a plant after rain, and still the man in black came nearer. It scared her. Of course, she had the Feegles with her, but generally speaking the Feegles got you out of trouble by getting you into a different kind of trouble. The ground moved quite suddenly underneath her. There was a metallic scraping noise, and the bottom dropped out of her world, but only by about six feet. As she staggered in the gloom under the pavement, someone pushed past her with a cheerful ‘Excuse me.’ There were more inexplicable metal noises and the round hole now above her head vanished in darkness. ‘Real piece of luck there,’ said the polite voice. ‘The only one we’re going to get today, I fancy. Please try not to panic until I have lit the safety lantern. If you want to panic thereafter, that is entirely up to you. Stay close to me and when I say, “Walk as fast as possible while holding your breath,” do so, for the sake of your sanity, your throat, and possibly your life. I don’t care if you understand or not – just do it, because we may not have much time.’ A match flared. There was a small popping noise and a green-blue glow in the air just in front of Tiffany. ‘Only a bit of marsh gas,’ said the invisible informant. ‘Not too bad, nothing to worry about yet, but stay close, mind you!’ The green-blue glow began to move very fast, and Tiffany had to walk quickly to keep up, which was no mean feat, because the ground beneath her boots was, by turns, like gravel, mud or occasionally a liquid of some sort but probably not a sort that you would want to know about. Here and there, in the distance, there were tiny little glows of other mysterious lights, like will-o’-the-wisps you sometimes got over marshy ground. ‘Do keep up!’ said the voice ahead of her. Soon Tiffany lost all sense of direction and, for that matter, time. Then there was a click and the figure was outlined against what looked like a perfectly ordinary doorway, except that it was in an arch, and so the door itself came to a point at the top. ‘Please be so good as to wipe your feet very thoroughly on the mat just inside; it pays to take precautions down here.’ Behind the still shadowy figure, candles were lighting themselves, and now they illuminated someone in heavy, stiff clothing, big boots and a steel helmet on her head – although, as Tiffany watched, the figure carefully lifted the helmet off. She shook out her ponytail, which suggested that she was young, but her hair was white, suggesting that she was old. She was, Tiffany thought, one of those people who picks for themselves a look that suits them and doesn’t get in the way, and never changes it until they die. There were wrinkles too, and Tiffany’s guide had the preoccupied air of somebody who is trying to think of several things at once; and by the look on her face she was trying to think of everything. There was a small table in the room, set with a teapot, cups and a pile of small cupcakes. ‘Do come on in,’ said the woman. ‘Welcome. But where are my manners? My name is Miss … Smith, for the moment. I believe Mrs Proust may have mentioned me? And you are in the Unreal Estate, quite possibly the most unstable place in the world. Would you like some tea?’ Things tend to look better when the world has stopped spinning and you have a warm drink in front of you, even if it’s standing on an old packing case. ‘I’m sorry it’s not a palace,’ said Miss Smith. ‘I never stay here for more than a few days at a time, but I do need to be close to the University, and to have absolute privacy. This was a little cottage outside the University walls, you see, and the wizards just used to chuck all their waste over: after a while, all the different bits of magical rubbish started to react with one another in what I can only call unpredictable ways. Well, what with talking rats, and people’s eyebrows growing up to six feet long, and shoes walking around by themselves, the people that lived nearby ran away, and so did their shoes. And since there was no one complaining any more, the University simply chucked even more stuff over the wall. Wizards are like cats going to the toilet in that respect; once you’ve walked away from it, it isn’t there any more. ‘Of course, it then became a free-for-all, with just about anybody throwing over just about anything and running away very quickly, often pursued by shoes, but not always successfully. Would you like a cupcake? And don’t worry, I bought them off quite a reliable baker tomorrow, so I know they’re fresh, and I pretty much tamed the magic around here a year ago. It wasn’t too hard; magic is largely a matter of balance, but of course you’d know that. Anyway, the upshot is that there is such a magical fog over this place that I doubt if even a god could see into it.’ Miss Smith delicately ate half a cup-cake, and balanced the other half on her saucer. She leaned closer to Tiffany. ‘How did it feel, Miss Tiffany Aching, when you kissed the winter?’ Tiffany stared at her for a moment. ‘Look, it was just a peck, OK? Certainly no tongues!’ Then she said, ‘You are the person that Mrs Proust said was going to find me, aren’t you?’ ‘Yes,’ said Miss Smith. ‘I would hope that is obvious. I could give you a long, complicated lecture,’ she continued brusquely, ‘but I think it would be better if I told you a story. I know you have been taught by Granny Weatherwax, and she will tell you that the world is made up of stories. I had better admit that this one is one of the nasty ones.’ ‘I am a witch, you know,’ said Tiffany. ‘I have seen nasty things.’ ‘So you may think,’ said Miss Smith. ‘But for now I want you to picture a scene, more than a thousand years ago, and imagine a man, still quite young, and he is a witchfinder and a book-burner and a torturer, because people older than him who are far more vile than him have told him that this is what the Great God Om wants him to be. And on this day he has found a woman who is a witch, and she is beautiful, astonishingly beautiful, which is rather unusual among witches, at least in those days—’ ‘He falls in love with her, doesn’t he?’ Tiffany interrupted. ‘Of course,’ said Miss Smith. ‘Boy meets girl, one of the greatest engines of narrative causality in the multiverse, or as some people might put it, “It had to happen.” I would like to continue this discourse without interruptions, if you don’t mind?’ ‘But he is going to have to kill her, isn’t he?’ Miss Smith sighed. ‘Since you ask, not necessarily. He thinks that if he rescues her and they can get to the river, then they might have a chance. He is bewildered and confused. He has never had feelings like this before. For the first time in his life, he is really having to think for himself. There are horses not far away. There are a few guards, and some other prisoners, and the air is full of smoke because there is a pile of burning books, which is making people’s eyes water.’ Tiffany leaned forward in her seat, listening to the clues, trying to work out the ending in advance. ‘There are some apprentices that he is training, and also some very senior members of the Omnian church who have come to watch and bless the proceedings. And finally there are a number of people from the nearby village who are cheering very loudly because it is not them who are going to be killed and generally they don’t get much entertainment. In fact, it’s pretty much another day at the office, except that the girl being tied to the stake by the apprentices has caught his eye and is now watching him very carefully, not saying a word, not even screaming a word, not yet.’ ‘Does he have a sword?’ asked Tiffany. ‘Yes, he does. May I continue? Good. Now, he walks towards her. She is staring at him, not shouting, just watching, and he is thinking … what is he thinking? He is thinking, “Could I take on both of the guards? Will the apprentices obey me?” And then, as he gets nearer, he wonders if they could make it to the horses in all this smoke. And this is a moment eternally frozen in time. Huge events await his decision. One simple deed either way, and history will be different and you are thinking it depends on what he does next. But you see, what he is thinking doesn’t matter, because she knows who he is and what he has done, and the bad things that he has done and is famous for, and as he walks towards her, uncertain, she knows him for what he is, even if he wishes he wasn’t, and reaches with both hands smoothly through the wicker basket they’ve put around her to keep her upright, and grabs him, and holds him tight as the torch drops down onto the oily wood and the flames spring up. She never takes her eyes off him, and never loosens her grip … Would you like a fresh cup of tea?’ Tiffany blinked away smoke and flames and shock. ‘And how do you know so much about it, please?’ she said. ‘I was there.’ ‘A thousand years ago?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘How did you get there?’ ‘I walked,’ said Miss Smith. ‘But that is not the point. The point is that then was the death – and birth – of the thing we call the Cunning Man. And he was still a man, to begin with. He was terribly injured, of course. For quite some time. And witchfinding went on – oh my word, didn’t it just. You couldn’t tell who the other witchfinders feared most: the witches, or the wrath of the Cunning Man if they didn’t find him the witches he demanded and believe me, with the Cunning Man on your heels, you will find as many witches as he wants, oh yes. ‘And the Cunning Man himself could always find witches. It was quite amazing. You would have some quiet little village where everybody got on reasonably well and no one had noticed any witches at all. But when the Cunning Man arrived, suddenly there were witches everywhere, but unfortunately not for very long. He believed that witches were the reason for just about everything bad that happened, and that they stole babies and caused wives to run away from their husbands, and milk to go sour. I think my favourite one was that witches went to sea in eggshells in order to drown honest sailors.’ At this point Miss Smith held up a hand. ‘No, don’t say that it would be impossible for even a small witch to get inside an eggshell without crushing it, because that is what we in the craft would call a logical argument and therefore no one who wanted to believe that witches sank ships would pay any attention to it. ‘It couldn’t go on, of course. People can be very stupid, and people can be easily frightened, but sometimes you find people who aren’t that stupid and aren’t that fearful, and so the Cunning Man is thrust out of the world. Thrown out like the rubbish he is. ‘But that wasn’t the end of him. So great, so fearsome was his hatred for anything that he thought of as witchcraft that he somehow managed to live on despite finally having no body. Though there was no skin to him, no bone any more, his rage was such that he lived on. As a ghost, perhaps. And, every so often, finding someone who would let him in. There are plenty of people out there whose poisonous minds will open for him. And there are those who would rather be behind evil than in front of it, and one of them wrote for him the book known as The Bonfire of the Witches. ‘But when he takes over a body – and believe me, in the past, there are those unpleasant people who have thought that their terrible ambitions would be furthered by allowing him to do so – the owner of the body soon finds they have no control at all. They become a part of him too. And not until it is too late do they realize that there is no escape, no release. Except death …’ ‘Poison goes where poison’s welcome,’ said Tiffany. ‘But it looks as though it can push its way in, welcome or not.’ ‘I’m sorry,’ said Miss Smith, ‘but I will say “Well done.” You are as good as they say. There really is nothing physical now to the Cunning Man. Nothing you can see. Nothing you can possess. And while he often kills those who have been so generous in their hospitality, he nevertheless still appears to thrive. Without a body to call his own, he drifts on the wind and, I suppose, sleeps in some way. And if he does, I know what he dreams of. He dreams of a beautiful young witch, the most powerful of all the witches. And he thinks of her with such hatred that, according to elasticated string theory, it goes all the way round the universe and comes back from a different direction so that it seems to be a kind of love. And he wants to see her again. In which case, she will almost certainly die. ‘Some witches – real flesh and blood witches – have tried to fight him and have won. And sometimes they tried, and died. And then one day, a girl called Tiffany Aching, because of her disobedience, kissed the winter. Which, I have to say, no one has ever done before. And the Cunning Man woke up.’ Miss Smith put down her cup. ‘As a witch, you know you must have no fear?’ Tiffany nodded. ‘Well, Tiffany, you must make a place for fear, fear under control. We think that the head is important, that the brain sits like a monarch on the throne of the body. But the body is powerful too, and the brain cannot survive without it. If the Cunning Man takes over your body, I don’t think you would be able to fight him. He would be like nothing you have met before. To be caught will be, ultimately, to die. What is worse, to be his creature. In which case, death will be a longed-for release. And there you have it, Miss Tiffany Aching. He wakes up, he drifts, he looks for her. He looks for you.’ ‘Well, at least we’ve found her,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘She’s somewhere in that festering midden.’ The Feegles stood with their mouths open in front of the bubbling, suppurating mess of the Unreal Estate. Mysterious things plopped, spun and exploded under the debris. ‘It will be certain death to go in there,’ said Wee Mad Arthur. ‘Certain death! You’ll be doomed.’ ‘Oh aye, we’re all doomed sooner or later,’ said Rob Anybody jovially. He sniffed. ‘What the heel is that stink?’ ‘Sorry, Rob, that was me,’ said Daft Wullie. ‘Ach no, I ken your smell,’ Rob said. ‘But I ken I smelled it before. It was that walking gawky that we smelled on the road. Ye ken? All in black. Very lacking in the eyeball department. Bad cess to him, and bad cess he smelled. And I recollect he used very bad words about oor big wee hag. My Jeannie said we must stay close to the big wee hag and I reckon this scunner needs a bath.’ Wee Mad Arthur precipitated matters. ‘Weel, Rob, ye going in there is against the law, ye ken?’ He pointed to an ancient and half-melted sign on which, just readable, were the words: ACCESS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN. BY ORDER. Rob Anybody stared at it. ‘Ach, now you give me nae choice at all,’ he said, ‘and you made me remember that we’re all dead already.20 Charge!’ There were dozens of questions that Tiffany could ask but the one struggling to the top was: ‘What will happen if the Cunning Man catches up with me?’ Miss Smith stared at the ceiling for a moment. ‘Well, I suppose from his point of view, it will be rather like a wedding. From your point of view, it will be exactly like being dead. No, worse, because you will be inside, looking out at what he can do with all your powers and all your skills to all the people that you know. Did we have the last cupcake?’ I’m not going to show any fear, said Tiffany to herself. ‘I’m glad to hear that,’ said Miss Smith out loud. Tiffany leaped off the chair in a rage. ‘Don’t you dare do that, Miss Smith!’ ‘I’m sure there was one more cupcake,’ said Miss Smith, and then added, ‘That’s the spirit, Miss Tiffany Aching.’ ‘You know, I did defeat a hiver. I can look after myself.’ ‘And your family? And everybody you know? From an attack that they won’t even know is happening? You don’t understand. The Cunning Man isn’t a man, although he was once, and now he’s not even a ghost. He is an idea. Unfortunately he is an idea whose time has come.’ ‘Well, at least I know when he’s near me,’ Tiffany said thoughtfully. ‘There’s a dreadful stink. Even worse than the Feegles.’ Miss Smith nodded. ‘Yes, it’s coming from his mind. It’s the smell of corruption – corruption of thinking and of action. Your mind picks it up and doesn’t know what to do with it, so it files it under “stink”. All the magically inclined can smell it; but when people encounter it, it changes them, makes them a little bit like him. And so trouble follows wherever he goes.’ And Tiffany knew exactly what kind of trouble she meant, even though her memories shot her back in time to before the Cunning Man had woken again. In her mind’s eye she could see the black-edged pieces blowing back and forth in the late-autumn wind, which sighed with despair in her mind’s ear, and worst of all, oh yes, worst of all, her mind’s nose snuffed up the sharp acrid stink of ancient, half-burned paper. In her memory some of the pieces fluttered in the pitiless wind like moths that had been swatted and broken, but were still hopelessly trying to fly. And there were stars on them. People had marched to the rough music and roughly dragged out the cracked old woman whose only crime, as far as Tiffany could see, was that she had no teeth left and smelled of wee. They had thrown stones, they had smashed windows, they had killed the cat, and all this had been done by good people, nice people, people that she knew and met every day, and they had done all these things which, even now, they never talked about. It was a day that somehow had vanished from the calendar. And on that day, with a pocketful of charred stars, not knowing what it was she was doing, but determined to do it, she had become a witch. ‘You said that others have fought him?’ she said now to Miss Smith. ‘How did they manage it?’ ‘That last cupcake was still in the bag with the baker’s name on it, I’m sure of it. You’re not sitting on it, are you?’ Miss Smith cleared her throat and said, ‘By being very powerful witches, by understanding what it means to be a powerful witch, and by taking every chance, using every trick and, I suspect, understanding the Cunning Man’s mind before he understands theirs. I have trudged through a long time to learn about the Cunning Man,’ she added, ‘and the one thing I can tell you for certain is that the way to kill the Cunning Man is with cunning. You will need to be more cunning than he is.’ ‘He can’t be that cunning if he’s taken all this time to find me,’ said Tiffany. ‘Yes, that puzzles me,’ said Miss Smith. ‘And it should puzzle you. I would have expected it to have taken him a very long time. More than two years, anyway. He’s either been very clever – and frankly he has nothing to be clever with – or somehow something else has drawn you to his attention. Someone magical, I would guess. Do you know any witches who aren’t your friend?’ ‘Certainly not,’ said Tiffany. ‘Are any of the witches who have defeated him still alive?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘I was wondering, if I found one – perhaps they could tell me how they did it?’ ‘I’ve told you. He’s the Cunning Man. Why should he fall for the same trick twice? You have to find your own way. Those who have trained you would expect nothing less.’ ‘This isn’t some kind of test, is it?’ said Tiffany, and then felt embarrassed at how lame that sounded. ‘Don’t you remember what Granny Weatherwax always says?’ said Miss Smith. ‘Everything is a test.’ They said it together with one voice, looked at one another and laughed. At which point, there was a squawk. Miss Smith opened the door and a small white chicken walked in, looked around curiously and exploded. Where it had been was an onion, fully rigged with mast and sails. ‘I’m sorry you had to see that,’ said Miss Smith. She sighed. ‘Happens all the time, I’m afraid. The Unreal Estate is never static, you see. All the magic, banging together, bits of spells winding themselves around other spells, whole new spells being created that nobody has ever thought of before … it’s a mess. It generates things quite randomly. Yesterday I found a book on growing chrysanthemums, printed in copper on water. You would think it would tend to slosh about a bit, but it all seemed to hang together until the magic ran out.’ ‘That was bad luck for the chicken,’ said Tiffany nervously. ‘Well, I can guarantee that it wasn’t a chicken two minutes ago,’ said Miss Smith, ‘and now it’s probably enjoying being a seagoing vegetable. Now perhaps you can see why I don’t spend too much time down here. I had an incident with a toothbrush once that I will not forget in a hurry.’ She pushed open the door still further, and Tiffany saw the shambles. There was no mistaking a shambles.21 Well, there was at first and she mistook it for a heap of rubbish. ‘It’s amazing what you can find in your pockets if you’re in a magical junk yard,’ said Miss Smith calmly. Tiffany stared at the giant shambles again. ‘Isn’t that a horse’s skull?22 And isn’t that a bucket of tadpoles?’ ‘Yes. Something alive always helps, don’t you find?’ Tiffany’s eyes narrowed. ‘But that is a wizard’s staff, isn’t it? I thought they stopped working if a woman touched one!’ Miss Smith smiled. ‘Well, I’ve had mine ever since I was in my cradle. If you know where to look, you can see the marks I made when I was teething. It’s my staff and it works, although I have to say it started to work better when I took the knob off the end. It didn’t do anything practical and it upsets the balance. Now, will you stop standing there with your mouth open?’ Tiffany’s mouth clamped shut, and then sprang open again. A penny had dropped and it felt as if it had dropped from the moon. ‘You’re her, aren’t you? You must be, you’re her! Eskarina Smith, right? The only woman who ever became a wizard!’ ‘Somewhere inside, I suppose so, yes, but it seems such a long time ago, and you know, I never really felt like a wizard, so I never really worried about what anyone said. And anyway, I had the staff, and no one could take that away from me.’ Eskarina hesitated for a moment, and then went on, ‘That’s what I learned at university: to be me, just what I am, and not worry about it. That knowledge is an invisible magical staff, all by itself. Look, I don’t really want to talk about this. It brings back bad memories.’ ‘Please forgive me,’ said Tiffany. ‘I just couldn’t stop myself. I’m very sorry if I have dredged up any scary recollections.’ Eskarina smiled. ‘Oh, the scary ones are never a problem. It’s good ones that can be difficult to deal with.’ There was a click from the shambles. Eskarina stood up and walked over to it. ‘Oh dear, of course, only the witch that makes it can read her own shambles, but trust me when I say that the way the skull has turned and the position of the pincushion along the axis of the spinning wheel mean that he is very close. Almost right on top of us, in fact. Or the random magic in this place may be confusing him, and you seem to be everywhere and nowhere, so he’ll go away soon and try to pick up the trail somewhere else. And, as I mentioned, somewhere on the trail he will eat. He’ll get into some fool’s head, and some old lady or some girl who is wearing quite dangerous cult symbols without an inkling of what they really mean will suddenly find herself hounded. Let us hope she can run.’ Tiffany looked around, bewildered. ‘And what happens will be my fault?’ ‘Is that the sarcastic whine of a little girl or the rhetorical question of a witch with her own steading?’ Tiffany began to reply, and then stopped. ‘You can travel in time, can’t you?’ she said. ‘Yes.’ ‘Then you know what I’m going to answer?’ ‘Well, it’s not quite as simple as that,’ said Eskarina, and looked slightly uncomfortable for a moment, much to Tiffany’s surprise and, it has be said, delight. ‘I know, let me see, there are fifteen different replies you might make, but I don’t know which one it will be until you make it, because of the elasticated string theory.’ ‘Then all I will say,’ said Tiffany, ‘is thank you very much. I am sorry to have taken up your time. But I need to be getting on; I have so many things to do. Do you know what the time is?’ ‘Yes,’ said Eskarina. ‘It is a way of describing one of the notional dimensions of four-dimensional space. But for your purposes, it’s about ten forty-five.’ That seemed to Tiffany to be a bafflingly complicated way of answering the question, but as she opened her mouth to say so, the shambles collapsed and the door opened to let in a stampede of chickens – which did not, however, explode. Eskarina grabbed Tiffany’s hand, shouting, ‘He has found you! I don’t know how!’ A chicken half jumped, half flapped and half tumbled onto the wreck of the shambles and crowed! Cock-a-doodle-crivens! Then the chickens exploded; they exploded into Feegles. On the whole there wasn’t a great deal of difference between the chickens and the Feegles, since both run around in circles making a noise. An important distinction, however, is that chickens are seldom armed. The Feegles, on the other hand, are armed all the time, and once they had shaken off the last of their feathers they fell to fighting one another out of embarrassment – and for something to do. Eskarina took one look at them and kicked at the wall behind her, revealing a hole which a person might just be able to crawl through, and snapped at Tiffany: ‘Go! Get him away from here! Get on the stick as soon as you can and go! Don’t worry about me! Don’t be afraid, you will be all right! You just have to help yourself.’ Heavy, nasty smoke was filling the room. ‘What do you mean?’ Tiffany managed, struggling with the stick. ‘Go!’ Not even Granny Weatherwax could command Tiffany’s legs so thoroughly. She went. 20 In truth, the Nac Mac Feegle believe that the world is such a wonderful place that in order to have got into it they must have been very good in another existence and had arrived in, as it were, heaven. Of course, they appeared to die sometimes, even here, but they like to think of it as going off to be born again. Numerous theologians had speculated that this was a stupid idea, but it was certainly more enjoyable than many other beliefs. 21 A witch made a shambles out of anything you happened to have in your pockets, but if you care about appearances, you paid attention to the things you ‘accidentally’ had in your pockets. It wouldn’t make any difference to how the shambles worked, but if there were going to be other people around, then a mysterious nut, or an interesting bit of wood, a piece of lace and a silver pin suggested ‘witch’ rather more flatteringly than did, say, a broken shoelace, a torn piece of paper bag, half a handful of miscellaneous and unspeakable fluff, and a handkerchief which had been used so many times that, dreadfully, it needed both hands to fold it. Tiffany generally kept one pocket just for shambles ingredients, but if Miss Smith had made this shambles the same way, then she had pockets larger than a wardrobe; it nearly touched the ceiling. 22 A horse’s skull always looks scary, even if someone has put lipstick on it. Chapter 9 THE DUCHESS AND THE COOK TIFFANY LIKED FLYING. What she objected to was being in the air, at least at a height greater than her own head. She did it anyway, because it was ridiculous and unbecoming to witchcraft in general to be seen flying so low that her boots scraped the tops off ant hills. People laughed, and sometimes pointed. But now, navigating the stick through the ruined houses and gloomy, bubbling pools, she ached for the open sky. It was a relief when she slid out from behind a stack of broken mirrors to see good clean daylight, despite the fact that she had emerged next to a sign which said: IF YOU ARE CLOSE ENOUGH TO READ THIS SIGN, YOU REALLY, REALLY, SHOULDN’T BE. That was the last straw. She tipped the stick until it was leaving a groove in the mud behind it, and ascended like a rocket, clinging desperately to the strap, which was creaking, to avoid slipping off. She heard a small voice say, ‘We are experiencing some turbulence, ye ken. If ye look to the right and tae the left ye will see that there are no emergency exits—’ The speaker was interrupted by another voice, which said, ‘In point o’ fact, Rob, the stick has got emergency exits all round, ye ken.’ ‘Oh aye,’ said Rob Anybody, ‘but there is such a thing as style, OK? Just waiting until ye have nearly hit the ground and stepping off makes us look like silly billys.’ Tiffany hung on, trying not to listen, and also trying not to kick Feegles, who had no sense of danger, feeling as they always did that they were more dangerous than anything else. Finally she had the broomstick flying level and risked a look down. There seemed to be a fight going on outside whatever it was they were going to decide was the new name of the King’s Head, but you couldn’t see any sign of Mrs Proust. The witch of the city was a woman of resource, wasn’t she? Mrs Proust could look after herself. Mrs Proust was looking after herself, by running very fast. She hadn’t waited a second once she sensed the danger, but headed for the nearest alley as the smog rose around her. The city was always full of smokes and smogs and fumes, easy work for a witch who had the knack. They were the breath of the city, and its halitosis, and she could play them like a foggy piano. And now she leaned against a wall and got some breath of her own. She had felt it building up like a thunderstorm in a city that was normally remarkably easy-going. Any woman who even looked like a witch was becoming a target. She had to hope that old and ugly women everywhere were going to be as safe as she was. A moment later, a couple of men burst out of the smog, one of them holding a large stick; the other one didn’t need a stick, because he was huge and therefore was his own stick. As the man with the stick ran towards her, Mrs Proust tapped her foot on the pavement and the stone under the man’s feet tilted up, tripping him so that he landed safely on his chin with a crack, the stick rolling away. Mrs Proust folded her arms and glared at the heavy man. He wasn’t as stupid as his friend, but his fists were opening and closing and she knew it would only be a matter of time. She tapped her foot on the stones again before he plucked up courage. The big man was trying to work out what might happen next, but didn’t expect the equestrian statue23 of Lord Alfred Rust – famed for bravely and valiantly losing every military engagement in which he had ever taken part – to gallop out of the fog on bronze hooves and kick him so hard between the legs that he flew backwards and knocked his head on a lamppost before sliding to the ground. Mrs Proust then recognized him as a customer who sometimes bought itching powder and exploding cigars from Derek; it didn’t do to kill customers. She picked him up, groaning, by his hair, and whispered into his ear, ‘You weren’t here. Nor was I. Nothing happened, and you did not see it.’ She thought for a moment and, because business is business added, ‘And when you next go past Boffo’s Joke Emporium, you will be taken with its range of extremely droll, practical jokes for all the family, and this week’s new “Pearls of the Pavement” naughty Fido jokes for the connoisseur who takes his laughter seriously. I look forward to the pleasure of your custom. P.S. our new range of “thunderbolt” exploding cigars are a laugh a minute, and please do try our hilariously funny rubber chocolate. Take a moment also to browse in our new gentlemen’s necessaries department for all that is best in moustache waxes, moustache cups, cut-throat razors, a range of first-class snuffs, ebony-backed nose-hair clippers and our ever-popular glandular trousers, supplied in a plain wrapper and limited to one pair per customer.’ Satisfied, Mrs Proust let the head fall backwards and was forced to accept that unconscious people don’t buy anything, so she turned her attention to the previous owner of the stick, who was groaning. Well, yes, it was the fault of the man with no eyes, she thought, and perhaps that might be an excuse, but Mrs Proust wasn’t known for her forgiving nature. ‘Poison goes where poison’s welcome,’ she said to herself. She snapped her fingers, then climbed onto the bronze horse, taking a cold but comfortable seat in the late Lord Rust’s metal lap. Clanking and groaning, the bronze horse walked away into the bank of smog that followed Mrs Proust all the way back to her shop. Back in the alleyway, though, it seemed to be snowing, until you realized that what was falling from the sky onto the unconscious bodies had previously been in the stomachs of the pigeons who were now flocking in from every quarter of the city at Mrs Proust’s command. She heard them and smiled grimly. ‘In this neighbourhood we don’t just watch!’ she said with satisfaction. Tiffany felt better when the reek and smoke of the city was behind them again. How do they live with the smell? she wondered. It’s worse than a Feegle’s spog.24 But now there were fields below her, and although the smoke from the burning stubbles reached this high, it was a fragrance compared to the world within the city walls. And Eskarina Smith lived there … well, sometimes lived there! Eskarina Smith! She really was real! Tiffany’s mind raced almost as fast as the broomstick itself. Eskarina Smith! Every witch had heard something about her, but no two witches agreed. Miss Tick had said that Eskarina was the girl that got a wizard’s staff by mistake! The first witch ever trained by Granny Weatherwax! Who got her into Unseen University by giving the wizards there a piece of her – that is to say, Granny Weatherwax’s – mind. Quite a large piece, if you listened to some of the stories, which included tales of magical battles. Miss Level had assured Tiffany that she was some kind of fairy story. Miss Treason had changed the subject. Nanny Ogg had tapped the side of her nose conspiratorially and whispered, ‘Least said, soonest mended.’ And Annagramma had loftily assured all the young witches that Eskarina had existed, but was dead. But there was one story that just would not go away and curled around truth and lies like honeysuckle. It told the world that the young Eskarina had met at the University a young man called Simon who, it seemed, had been cursed by the gods with almost every possible ailment that mankind was prone to. But, because the gods have a sense of humour, even though it’s a rather strange one, they had granted him the power to understand – well – everything. He could barely walk without assistance, but was so brilliant that he managed to keep the whole universe in his head. Wizards with beards that went down to the floor would flock to hear him talk about space and time and magic as if they were all part of the same thing. And young Eskarina had fed him and cleaned him and helped him get about and learned from him – well – everything. And, the rumours went, that she had learned secrets that made the mightiest of magics look like nothing more than conjuring tricks. And the story was true! Tiffany had talked to it and had cupcakes with it, and there really was a woman, then, who could walk through time and make it take orders from her. Wow! Yes, and there was something very strange about Eskarina – a sense not that she wasn’t all there, but that somehow she was everywhere else at the same time; and at this point Tiffany saw the Chalk on the skyline, shadowy and mysterious, like a beached whale. It was still a long way off, but her heart leaped. That was her ground; she knew every inch of it, and part of her was always there. She could face anything there. How could the Cunning Man, some old ghost, beat her on her own ground? She had family there, more than she could count, and friends, more than … well, not so many now that she was a witch, but that was the way of the world. Tiffany was aware of somebody climbing up her dress. This was not the problem it might have been; a witch would not, of course, dream of not wearing a dress, but if you were going to ride on a broomstick you definitely invested in some really tough pants, if possible with some padding. It made your bum look bigger but it also made it warmer, and at a hundred feet above the ground, fashion rather took second place to comfort. She glanced down. There was a Feegle there, wearing a watchman’s helmet, which appeared to have been hammered out of the top of an old salt cellar, an equally small breastplate and, amazingly, trousers and boots. You never normally saw boots on a Feegle. ‘You’re Wee Mad Arthur, aren’t you? I saw you at the King’s Head! You’re a policeman!’ ‘Oh aye.’ Wee Mad Arthur grinned a grin that was pure Feegle. ‘It’s a grand life in the Watch, and the money is good. A penny goes a lot further when it buys you food for a week!’ ‘So are you coming over here to keep our lads in order? Are you planning to stay?’ ‘Oh no, I dinnae believe so. I like the city, ye ken. I like coffee that is nae made from them wee acorns and I goes to the theatre and the opera and the ballet.’ The broomstick wobbled a little. Tiffany had heard of ballet, and had even seen pictures in a book, but it was a word that somehow did not fit in any sentence which included the word ‘Feegle’. ‘Ballet?’ she managed. ‘Oh aye, it’s grand! Last week I saw Swan on a Hot Tin Lake, a reworking of a traditional theme by one of our up-and-coming young performance artists; and the day after that, of course, there was a reinterpretation of Die Flabbergast at the Opera House; and ye ken, they had a whole week of porcelain at the Royal Art Museum, with a free thimble of sherry. Oh aye, it’s the city of culture, right enough.’ ‘Are you sure that you are a Feegle?’ said Tiffany in a fascinated voice. ‘That’s what they tell me, miss. There is nae law says I cannot be interested in culture, is there? I told the lads that when I go back I will take them along to see the ballet for themselves.’ The stick seemed to fly itself for a while as Tiffany stared at nothing, or rather at a mental picture of Feegles in a theatre. She had never been inside one herself, but she had seen pictures and the thought of Feegles among ballerinas was so unthinkable that it was better to just let her mind boggle and then forget about it. She remembered in time that she had a broomstick to land, and brought it down very neatly near the mound. To her shock there were guards outside it. Human guards. She stared in disbelief. The Baron’s guards never came up onto the downland. Never! It was unheard of! And … she felt the anger rising – one of them was holding a shovel. She jumped off the stick so fast that it was left to skim over the turf, scattering Feegles until it fetched up against an obstruction, shaking off the last few Feegles that had managed to hang on. ‘You hold onto that shovel, Brian Roberts!’ she screamed at the sergeant of the guard. ‘If you let it cut the turf there will be a reckoning! How dare you! Why are you here? And nobody is to cut anybody into pieces, do you all understand?’ This last order was to the Feegles, who had surrounded the men with a ring of small, but ever so sharp, swords. A Feegle claymore was so sharp that a human might not know his legs had been cut off until he tried to walk. The guards themselves suddenly had the look of men who knew they were supposed to be big and strong but were now faced with the realization that ‘big’ or ‘strong’ wouldn’t be nearly enough. They’d heard the stories, of course – oh yes, everyone on the Chalk had heard the stories about Tiffany Aching and her little … helpers. But they had only been stories, hadn’t they? Until now. And they were threatening to run up their trousers. In a shocked silence, Tiffany looked around, panting for breath. Everyone was watching her now, which was better than everyone fighting, wasn’t it? ‘Very well,’ she said like a schoolteacher who is only just satisfied with the naughty class. She added a sniff, which would usually be translated to mean: I’m only just satisfied, mark you. She sniffed again. ‘Very well, then. Is anybody going to tell me what’s going on here?’ The sergeant actually raised his hand. ‘Can I have a word in private, miss?’ Tiffany was impressed that he had even been able to speak, given that his mind was trying to suddenly make sense of what his eyes were telling him. ‘Very well, follow me.’ She spun round suddenly, causing both guards and Feegles to jump. ‘And nobody, and I mean nobody, is to dig up anybody’s home or cut off anybody’s legs while we are gone, is that understood? I said, is that understood?’ There was a mumbled chorus of yeses and oh ayes, but it didn’t include one from the face she was looking down at. Rob Anybody was trembling with rage and crouching ready to spring. ‘Did you hear me, Rob Anybody?’ He glared at her, eyes ablaze. ‘I will give ye nae promise on that score, miss, hag though you may be! Where is my Jeannie? Where are the others? These scunners hae swords! What were they going to do with them? I will have an answer!’ ‘Listen to me, Rob,’ Tiffany began, but stopped. Rob Anybody’s face was dripping tears, and he was pulling desperately at his beard as he fought the horrors of his own imagination. They were an inch from a war, Tiffany reckoned. ‘Rob Anybody! I am the hag o’ these hills and I put an oath on you not to kill these men until I tell you to! Understand?’ There was a crash as one of the guards fell over backwards in a faint. Now the girl was talking to the creatures! And about killing them! They weren’t used to this sort of thing. Usually the most exciting thing that happened was that the pigs got into the vegetable garden. The Big Man of the Feegles hesitated as his spinning brain digested Tiffany’s order. True, it wasn’t an order to kill anybody right now, but at least it held out the possibility that he might be able to do so very soon, so he could free his head from the terrible pictures in his mind. It was like holding a hungry dog on a leash of cobweb, but at least it bought her time. ‘You will see that the mound has not been touched,’ said Tiffany, ‘so whatever may have been intended has not yet been achieved.’ She turned back to the sergeant, who had gone white, and said, ‘Brian, if you want your men to live with all their arms and legs, you will tell them right now, and very carefully, to put down their weapons. Your lives depend on the honour of one Feegle and he is driving himself mad with horror. Do it now!’ To Tiffany’s relief he gave the command, and the guards – glad to have their sergeant ordering them to do something that every atom in their bodies was telling them was exactly what they should be doing – dropped their weapons from their shaking hands. One even raised his arms in the universal sign of surrender. Tiffany pulled the sergeant a little way away from the glowering Feegles and whispered, ‘What do you think you are doing, you stupid idiot?’ ‘Orders from the Baron, Tiff.’ ‘The Baron? But the Baron is—’ ‘Alive, miss. He’s been back for three hours. Drove through the night, they say. And people have been talking.’ He looked down at his boots. ‘We were … we were, well, we were sent up here to find the girl that you gave to the fairies. Sorry, Tiff.’ ‘Gave? Gave?’ ‘I didn’t say it, Tiff,’ said the sergeant, backing away, ‘but, well, you hear stories. I mean, no smoke without fire, right?’ Stories, thought Tiffany. Oh yes, once upon a time there was a wicked old witch … ‘And you think they apply to me, do you? Am I on fire or just smoking?’ The sergeant shifted uneasily and sat down. ‘Look, I’m just a sergeant, OK? The young Baron’s given me orders, yes? And his word is law, right?’ ‘He may be the law down there. Up here, it’s me. Look over there. Yes, there! What do you see?’ The man looked where she pointed and his face paled. The old cast-iron wheels and stove with its short chimney were clearly visible, even though a flock of sheep was happily grazing around them as usual. He leaped to his feet as if he had been sitting on an ant’s nest. ‘Yes,’ said Tiffany with some satisfaction. ‘Granny Aching’s grave. Remember her? People said she was a wise woman, but at least they had the decency to make up better stories about her! Proposing to cut the turf? I’m amazed that Granny doesn’t rise up through the turf and bite your bum! Now take your men down the hill a little way and I will sort this out, you understand? We don’t want anyone to get jumpy.’ The sergeant nodded. It was not as if he had any other option. As the guards moved away, dragging their unconscious colleague with them and trying not to look like, well, guards who were turning a walk away as closely into a running away as was possible, Tiffany knelt down by Rob Anybody and lowered her voice. ‘Look, Rob, I know about the secret tunnels.’ ‘What scunner told ye about the secret tunnels?’ ‘I am the hag o’ the hills, Rob,’ said Tiffany soothingly. ‘Shouldn’t I know about the tunnels? You are Feegles, and no Feegle will sleep in a house with only one entrance, right?’ The Feegle was calming down a bit now. ‘Oh aye, ye have a point there.’ ‘Then can I please suggest you go and fetch young Amber? Nobody is going to touch the mound.’ After a little hesitation, Rob Anybody sprang into the entrance hole and was gone. It took some time for him to return – time Tiffany thankfully used by getting the sergeant to come back and help her gather up the guards’ dropped weapons – and when Rob did resurface he was accompanied by a great many more Feegles and the kelda. And also by a rather reluctant Amber, who blinked nervously in the daylight and said, ‘Oh, crivens!’ Tiffany knew that her own smile was false when she said, ‘I’ve come to take you home, Amber.’ Well, at least I’m not stupid enough to say something like ‘Won’t that be nice?’ she added to herself. Amber glared at her. ‘Ye willnae get me back in that place,’ she announced, ‘and ye can stick it where the monkey put his jumper!’ And I don’t blame you, thought Tiffany, but now I can pass for being a grown-up and I have to say some stupid grown-up things … ‘But you do have a mother and father, Amber. I’m sure they miss you.’ She winced at the look of scorn the girl gave her. ‘Oh aye, and if the old scunner misses me he’ll aim another blow!’ ‘Maybe we can go together, and help him change his ways?’ Tiffany volunteered, despising herself, but the image of those thick fingers heavy with nettle stings from that awful bouquet wouldn’t go away. This time Amber actually laughed. ‘Sorry, mistress, but Jeannie told me you were clever.’ What was it that Granny Weatherwax had said once? ‘Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.’ And right now it would happen if you thought there was a thing called a father, and a thing called a mother, and a thing called a daughter, and a thing called a cottage, and told yourself that if you put them all together you had a thing called a happy family. Aloud, she said, ‘Amber, I want you to come with me to see the Baron, so that he knows you are safe. After that, you can do as you please. That’s a promise.’ Tiffany felt a knocking on her boot, and looked down at the kelda’s worried face. ‘Can I have a wee word with ye?’ said Jeannie. Beside her, Amber was crouching down so that she could hold the kelda’s other hand. Then Jeannie spoke again, if it was speech, and not song. But what could you sing that stayed in the air, so that the next note twisted around it? What could be sung that seemed to be a living sound that sung itself right back to you? And then the song was gone, leaving only a hole and a loss. ‘That’s a kelda song,’ said Jeannie. ‘Amber heard me singing it to the little ones. It’s part of the soothings, and she understood it, Tiffany! I gave her nae help but she understood it! I know the Toad has tol’ ye this. But do ye ken what I am telling ye now? She recognizes meaning, and learns it. She is as close to being a kelda as any human could be. She is a treasure not to be thrown away! ‘ The words came out with unusual force for the kelda, who was usually so softly spoken. And Tiffany recognized it as helpful information that, ever so nicely, was a kind of threat. Even the journey off the downland and into the village had to be negotiated. Tiffany, holding Amber by the hand, walked past the waiting guards and continued on, much to the embarrassment of the sergeant. After all, if you have been sent to bring somebody in, then you are going to look pretty silly if they go and bring themselves in by, as it were, themselves. But on the other hand, if Tiffany and Amber walked behind the guards, it looked as though they were being driven; this was sheep country, after all, and everybody knew, didn’t they, that the sheep walked in front and a shepherd walked behind. Finally they compromised on a rather awkward method where they all moved forward with a certain amount of revolving and shuffling that made it look as if they were travelling by square dance. Tiffany had to spend a lot of the time stopping Amber from giggling. That was the funny part. It would have been nice if the funny part could have lasted longer. ‘Look, I was only told to fetch the girl,’ said the sergeant desperately as they walked through the castle gates. ‘You don’t have to come.’ He said this in a way which meant: Please, please, don’t barge in and show me up in front of my new boss. But it didn’t work. The castle was what was once called a-bustle, which meant extremely busy, with cross people running around at cross purposes in every direction except straight up. There was going to be a funeral and then there was going to be a wedding, and two big occasions so close together could test the resources of a small castle to the utmost, especially since people who would come a long way for one would probably stay for the other, saving time but causing extra work for everybody. But Tiffany was glad for the absence, now, of Miss Spruce, who had been altogether too unpleasant by half and had never been one to get her hands dirty. And then there would always be the problem of seating. Most of the guests would be aristocrats, and it was vitally important that no one had to sit next to somebody who was related to someone who had killed one of their ancestors at some time in the past. Given that the past is a very big place, and taking into account the fact that everybody’s ancestors were generally trying to kill everybody else’s ancestors, for land, money or something to do, it needed very careful trigonometry to avoid another massacre taking place before people had finished their soup. None of the servants seemed to pay any particular attention to Tiffany, Amber or the guards, though at one point Tiffany thought she saw someone making one of those tiny little signs people make when they think they need protection from evil – here, in her place! – and she had the strong feeling that somehow the people were not paying attention in a very definite way of not paying attention, as if looking at Tiffany might be dangerous to the health. When Tiffany and Amber were ushered into the Baron’s study, it seemed that he was not going to take much notice of them either. He was bent over a sheet of paper that covered the whole of his desk, and was holding in his hand a bundle of different coloured pencils. The sergeant coughed, but even choking to death would not have shaken the Baron’s concentration. Finally, Tiffany shouted ‘Roland!’ quite loudly. He spun round, his face red with embarrassment and a side order of anger. ‘I would prefer “my lord”, Miss Aching,’ he said sharply. ‘And I would prefer “Tiffany”, Roland,’ said Tiffany, with a calmness that she knew annoyed him. He laid down his pencils with a click. ‘The past is past, Miss Aching, and we are different people. It would be just as well if we remembered that, don’t you think?’ ‘The past was only yesterday,’ said Tiffany, ‘and it would be just as well if you remembered that there was a time when I called you Roland and you called me Tiffany, don’t you think?’ She reached up to her neck and pulled off the necklace with the silver horse that he had given her. It felt like a hundred years ago now, but this necklace had been important. She had even stood up to Granny Weatherwax for this necklace! And now she held the necklace like an accusation. ‘The past needs to be remembered. If you do not know where you come from, then you don’t know where you are, and if you don’t know where you are, then you don’t know where you’re going.’ The sergeant looked from one to the other, and with that instinct for survival that any soldier develops by the time he’s become a sergeant, decided to leave the room before things started getting thrown. ‘I’ll just go and see to the, er … the … things that need seeing to, if that’s OK?’ he said, opening and closing the door so quickly that it slammed back tightly on the last syllable. Roland stared at it for a moment, and then turned. ‘I know where I am, Miss Aching. I am standing in my father’s shoes, and he is dead. I have been running this estate for years, but everything I did, I did in his name. Why did he die, Miss Aching? He wasn’t all that old. I thought you could do magic!’ Tiffany looked down at Amber, who was listening with interest. ‘Is this best discussed later?’ she said. ‘You wanted your men to bring you this girl, and here she is, healthy in mind and body. And I did not, as you say, give her to the fairies: she was a guest of the Nac Mac Feegle, whose help you have had on more than one occasion. And she went back there of her own free will.’ She looked carefully at Roland’s face, and said, ‘You don’t remember them, do you?’ She could see that he didn’t, but his mind was struggling with the fact that there was definitely something that he should have remembered. He was a prisoner of the Fairy Queen, Tiffany reminded herself. Forgetfulness can be a blessing, but I wonder what horrors were in his mind when the Pettys told him that she had taken their girl to the Feegles. To fairies. How could I imagine what he felt? She softened her voice a little. ‘You remember something vague about fairies, yes? Nothing bad, I hope, but nothing very clear, as if perhaps it was something you read in a book, or a story that somebody told you when you were little. Am I right?’ He glowered at her, but the spill word that he had strangled on his lips told her that she was right. ‘They call it the last gift,’ she said. ‘It’s part of the soothings. It is for when it is best for everybody that you forget things that were too awful, and also the things that were too wonderful. I’m telling you this, my lord, because Roland is still in there somewhere. By tomorrow you will forget even what I have told you. I don’t know how it works, but it works for nearly everybody.’ ‘You took the child from her parents! They came to see me as soon as I arrived this morning! Everyone came to see me this morning! Did you kill my father? Did you steal money from him? Did you try to throttle old Petty? Did you beat him with nettles? Did you fill his cottage with demons? I can’t believe I just asked you that question, but Mrs Petty appears to think so! Personally, I don’t know what to think, especially since some fairy woman might be messing around with my thoughts! Do you understand me?’ While Tiffany was trying to put together some kind of coherent answer, he flopped down in the ancient chair behind the desk and sighed. ‘I have been told you were standing over my father with a poker in your hand, and that you demanded money from him,’ he said sadly. ‘That’s not true!’ ‘And would you tell me if it was?’ ‘No! Because there never would be a was! I would never do such a thing! Well, perhaps I was standing over him …’ ‘Ah-ha!’ ‘Don’t you dare ah-ha me, Roland, don’t you dare! Look, I know people have been telling you things, but they are not true.’ ‘But you just admitted that you were standing over him, yes?’ ‘It’s simply that he wanted me to show him how I keep my hands clean!’ She regretted this as soon as she said it. It was true, but what did that matter? It didn’t sound true. ‘Look, I can see that it—’ ‘And you didn’t steal a bag of money?’ ‘No!’ ‘And you don’t know anything about a bag of money?’ ‘Yes, your father asked me to take one out of the metal chest. He wanted to—’ Roland interrupted her. ‘Where is that money now?’ His voice was flat and without expression. ‘I have no idea,’ said Tiffany. And as his mouth opened again, she shouted, ‘No! You will listen, understand? Sit there and listen! I attended your father for the better part of two years. I liked the old man and I would do nothing to hurt him or you. He died when it was his time to die. When that time comes, there is nothing anyone can do.’ ‘Then what is magic for?’ Tiffany shook her head. ‘Magic, as you call it, kept the pain away, and don’t you dare think that it came without a price! I have seen people die, and I promise you your father died well, and thinking of happy days.’ Tears were streaming down Roland’s face, and she sensed his anger at being seen like that, stupid anger, as if tears made him less of a man and less of a baron. She heard him mutter, ‘Can you take away this grief?’ ‘I’m sorry,’ she replied quietly. ‘Everyone asks me. And I would not do so even if I knew how. It belongs to you. Only time and tears take away grief; that is what they are for.’ She stood up and took Amber’s hand; the girl was watching the Baron intently. ‘I’m going to take Amber home with me,’ Tiffany announced, ‘and you look as if you need a decent sleep.’ This didn’t get a response. He sat there, staring at the paperwork as if hypnotized by it. That wretched nurse, she thought. I might have known she would make trouble. Poison goes where poison’s welcome, and in Miss Spruce’s case, it would have been welcomed with cheering crowds and possibly a small brass band. Yes, the nurse would have invited the Cunning Man in. She was exactly the sort of person who would let him in, give him power, envious power, jealous power, prideful power. But I know I haven’t done anything wrong, she told herself. Or have I? I can only see my life from the inside, and I suppose that on the inside nobody does anything wrong. Oh, blast it! Everybody brings their troubles to the witch! But I can’t blame the Cunning Man for everything people have said. I just wish there was somebody – other than Jeannie – to talk to who would take no notice of the pointy hat. So what do I do now? Yes, what do I do now, Miss Aching? What would you advise, Miss Aching, who is so good at making decisions for other people? Well, I would advise that you get some sleep as well. You didn’t sleep too well last night, what with Mrs Proust being a champion snorer, and an awful lot has happened since then. Also, I cannot remember when you last ate regular meals, and may I also point out that you are talking to yourself? She looked down at Roland slumped in the chair, his gaze far away. ‘I said I am taking Amber home with me for now.’ Roland shrugged. ‘Well, I can hardly stop you, can I?’ he said sarcastically. ‘You are the witch.’ * * * Tiffany’s mother uncomplainingly made up a bed for Amber, and Tiffany dropped off to sleep in her own bed at the other end of the big bedroom. She woke up on fire. Flames filled the entire room, flickering orange and red but burning as gently as the kitchen stove. There was no smoke, and although the room felt warm, nothing was actually burning. It was as if fire had just dropped in for a friendly visit, not for business. Its flames rustled. Enthralled, Tiffany held a finger to the flame and raised it as if the little flame was as harmless as a baby bird. It seemed to get colder but she blew on it anyway, and it plopped back into life. Tiffany got carefully out of the burning bed, and if this was a dream it was making a very good job of the tinkles and pings that the ancient bed traditionally made. Amber was lying peacefully on the other bed under a blanket of flame; as Tiffany watched, the girl turned over and the flames moved with her. Being a witch meant that you didn’t simply run around shouting just because your bed was on fire. After all, it was no ordinary fire, a fire that did not harm. So it’s in my head, she thought. Fire that does no harm. The hare runs into the fire … Somebody is trying to tell me something. Silently, the flames went out. There was an almost imperceptible blur of movement in the window and she sighed. The Feegles never gave up. Ever since she was nine years old, she had known that they watched over her at night. They still did, which was why she bathed in a hip-bath behind a sheet. In all probability she hadn’t got anything that the Nac Mac Feegles would be interested in looking at, but it made her feel better. The hare runs into the fire … It certainly sounded like a message that she had to work out, but who from? From the mysterious witch who had been watching her, maybe? Omens were all very well, but sometimes it would help if people just wrote things down! It never paid, though, to ignore those little thoughts and coincidences: those sudden memories, little whims. Quite often they were another part of your mind, trying hard to get a message through to you – one that you were too busy to notice. But it was bright daylight outside and puzzles could wait. Other things couldn’t. She’d start at the castle. ‘My dad beat me up, didn’t he?’ said Amber in a matter-of-fact voice as they walked towards the grey towers. ‘Did my baby die?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Oh,’ said Amber in the same flat voice. ‘Yes,’ said Tiffany. ‘I’m sorry.’ ‘I can sort of remember, but not exactly,’ said Amber. ‘It’s all a bit … fuzzy.’ ‘That’s the soothings working. Jeannie has been helping you.’ ‘I understand,’ said the girl. ‘You do?’ said Tiffany. ‘Yes,’ said Amber. ‘But my dad, is he going to get into trouble?’ He would if I told how I found you, Tiffany thought. The wives would see to it. The village people had a robust attitude to the punishing of boys, who almost by definition were imps of mischief and needed to be tamed, but hitting a girl that hard? Not good. ‘Tell me about your young man,’ she said aloud instead. ‘He is a tailor, isn’t he?’ Amber beamed, and Amber could light up the world with a smile. ‘Oh yes! His grandad learned him a lot before he died. He can make just about anything out of cloth, can my William. Everyone around here says he should be put to an apprenticeship and he’d be a master himself in a few years.’ Then she shrugged. ‘But masters want paying for the learning of the knowing, and his mum is never going to find the money to buy him an indenture. Oh, but my William has wonderful fine fingers, and he helps his mum with the sewing of her corsets and making beautiful wedding dresses. That means working with satins and suchlike,’ said the girl proudly. ‘And William’s mum is much complimented on the fineness of the stitching!’ Amber beamed with second-hand pride. Tiffany looked at the glowing face, where the bruises, despite the kelda’s soothing touch, were still quite plain. So the boyfriend is a tailor, she thought. To big beefy men like Mr Petty, a tailor was hardly a man at all, with his soft hands and indoor work. And if he stitched clothes for ladies too, well, that was even more shame that the daughter would be bringing to the unhappy little family. ‘What do you want to do now, Amber?’ she said. ‘I’d like to see my mum,’ said the girl promptly. ‘But supposing you meet your dad?’ Amber turned to her. ‘Then I’ll understand … please don’t do anything nasty to him, like turn him into a pig or something?’ A day as a pig might help him mend his ways, thought Tiffany. But there was something of the kelda in the way that Amber had said, ‘I’ll understand.’ A shining light in a dark world. Tiffany had never seen the gates of the castle closed shut except at night. By day it was a mixture of the village hall, a place for the carpenter and the blacksmith to set up shop, a space for the children to play in when it rained and, for that matter, for temporarily storing the harvests of hay and wheat, at those times when the barns alone could not cope. There wasn’t much room in even the biggest cottage; if you wanted a bit of peace and quiet, or somewhere to think, or somebody to talk to, you wandered over to the castle. It always worked. At least by now the shock of the new Baron’s return had worn off, but the place was still humming with activity when Tiffany entered, but it was rather subdued and people were not talking very much. Possibly the reason for this was the Duchess, Roland’s mother-in-law-to-be, who was striding around in the great hall and occasionally prodding people with a stick. Tiffany didn’t believe it the first time that she saw it, but there it was again – a shiny black stick with a silver knob on the end with which she prodded a maid carrying a basket of laundry. It was only at this point that Tiffany noticed, too, the future bride trailing behind her mother as if she was too embarrassed to go much closer to somebody who prodded people with sticks. Tiffany was going to protest, and then felt curious as she glanced around. She stepped back a few paces and let herself disappear. It was a knack and a knack that she was good at. It wasn’t invisibility, just that people didn’t notice you. All unseen, she drifted close enough to hear what the pair of them were saying, or at least what the mother was saying and the daughter was listening to. The Duchess was complaining. ‘Been allowed to go to rack and ruin. Really, it needs a thorough overhaul! You cannot afford to be lax in a place like this! Firmness is everything! Heaven knows what this family thought it was doing!’ Her speech was punctuated by the whack of the stick on the back of another maid who was hurrying, but clearly not hurrying fast enough, under the weight of a basket full of laundry. ‘You must be rigorous in your duty to see that they are equally rigorous in theirs,’ the Duchess went on, scanning the hall for another target. ‘The laxity will stop. You see? You see? They do learn. You must never relax your guard in your pursuit of slovenliness, both in deed and manner. Do not suffer any undue familiarity! And that, of course, includes smiles. Oh, you may think, what could be so bad about a happy smile? But the innocent smile can so easily become a knowing smirk, and suggests perhaps the sharing of a joke. Are you listening to what I’m telling you?’ Tiffany was astonished. Single-handedly the Duchess had made her do something that she never thought she would do, which was to feel sorry for the bride-to-be, who at this point was standing in front of her mother like a naughty child. Her hobby, and quite possibly one activity in life, was painting in watercolours, and although Tiffany was trying, against the worst of her instincts, to be generous to the girl, there was no denying that she looked like a watercolour – and not just a watercolour, but a watercolour painted by someone who had not much colour but large supplies of water, giving her the impression of not only being colourless but also rather damp. You could add, too, that there was so little of her that in a storm it might be quite possible that she would snap. Unseen as she was, Tiffany felt just the tiniest pang of guilt and stopped inventing other nasty things to think. Besides, compassion was setting in, blast it! ‘Now, Letitia, recite again the little poem that I taught you,’ said the Duchess. The bride-to-be, not just blushing but melting in embarrassment and shame, looked around like a stranded mouse on a great wide floor, uncertain of which way to run. ‘If you,’ her mother prompted irritably, and gave her a prod with the stick. ‘If you …’ the girl managed. ‘If you … if you grasp the nettle lightly, it will sting you for your pain, but if you grasp the nettle boldly, soft as silk it will remain. So it is with human nature, treat them kindly, they rebel, but if you firmly grasp the nettle, then your bidding they do well.’ Tiffany realized, as the damp little voice faded away, that there was otherwise absolute silence in the hall and everybody was staring. She rather hoped that somebody might forget themselves sufficiently to start clapping, although that would probably mean the end of the world. Instead, the bride took one look at the open mouths and fled, sobbing, as fast as her very expensive but seriously impractical shoes would carry her; Tiffany heard them clicking madly all the way up the stairs, followed very shortly afterwards by the slamming of a door. Tiffany walked away slowly, just a shadow in the air to anyone who wasn’t paying attention. She shook her head. Why had he done it? Why in the world had Roland done it? Roland could have married anyone! Not Tiffany herself, of course, but why had he chosen that, well – not to be unpleasant – skinny girl? And her father had been a duke, her mother was a duchess and she was a duckling – well, one might try to be charitable, but she did tend to walk like one. Well, she did. If you looked carefully you could see her feet stuck out. And if you cared about these things, the dreadful mother and the soppy daughter outranked Roland! They could officially bully him! The old Baron, now, had been a different sort of person. Oh yes, he liked it if the children gave a little bow or curtsied if he passed them in the lane, but he knew everybody’s name, and generally their birthdays as well, and he was always polite. Tiffany remembered him stopping her one day and saying, ‘Would you be so kind as to ask your father to come and see me, please?’ It was such a gentle phrase for a man with such power. Her mother and father used to argue about him, when they thought she was safely tucked up in bed. In between the symphony of the bedsprings she often heard them almost, but not exactly, having a row. Her father would say things like: ‘It’s all very well you saying he is generous and all that, but don’t you tell me that his ancestors didn’t get their money by grinding the faces of the poor!’ And her mother would retort: ‘I have never seen him grind anything! Anyway, that was the olden days. You’ve got to have someone to protect us. That stands to reason!’ And her father would come back with something along the lines of: ‘Protect us from who? Another man with a sword? I reckon we could do that by ourselves!’ And around this time the conversation would peter out, since her parents were still in love, in a comfortable type of way, and neither of them really wanted anything to change at all. It seemed to her, looking down the length of the hall, that you didn’t need to grind the faces of the poor if you taught them to do their own grinding. The shock of the thought made her giddy, but it stayed in her mind. The guards were all local boys, or married to local girls, and what would happen if everybody in the village got together and said to the new Baron: ‘Look, we will let you stay here, and you can even sleep in the big bedroom, and of course we’ll give you all your meals and flick a duster around from time to time, but apart from that this land is ours now, do you understand?’ Would it work? Probably not. But she remembered asking her father to get the old stone barn cleaned up. That would be a start. She had plans for the old barn. ‘You there! Yes! You there in the shadows! Are you lollygagging?’ This time she paid attention. All that thinking had meant that she hadn’t paid enough attention to her little don’t-see-me trick. She stepped out of the shadows, which meant that the pointy black hat was not just a shadow. The Duchess glared at it. It was time for Tiffany to break the ice, even though it was so thick as to require an axe. She said politely, ‘I don’t know how to lollygag, madam, but I will do my best.’ ‘What? What! What did you call me?’ The people in the hall were learning fast and they were scuttling as quickly as they could to get out of the place, because the Duchess’s tone of voice was a storm warning, and nobody likes to be out in a storm. The sudden rage overtook Tiffany. It wasn’t as if she had done anything to deserve being shouted at like that. She said, ‘I’m sorry, madam; I did not call you anything, to the best of my belief.’ This did not do anything to help; the Duchess’s eyes narrowed. ‘Oh, I know you. The witch – the witch girl who followed us to the city on who knows what dark errand? Oh, we know about witches where I’m from! Meddlers, sowers of doubt, breeders of discontent, lacking all morality, and charlatans into the bargain!’ The Duchess pulled herself right up and glowered at Tiffany as if she had just won a decisive victory. She tapped her cane on the ground. Tiffany said nothing, but nothing was hard to say. She could sense the watching servants behind curtains and pillars, or peering around doors. The woman was smirking, and really needed that smirk removed, because Tiffany owed it to all witches to show the world that a witch could not be treated like this. On the other hand, if Tiffany spoke her mind it would certainly be taken out on the servants. This needed some delicate wording. It did not get it, because the old bat gave a nasty little snigger and said, ‘Well, child? Aren’t you going to try to turn me into some kind of unspeakable creature?’ Tiffany tried. She really tried. But there are times when things are just too much. She took a deep breath. ‘I don’t think I shall bother, madam, seeing as you are making such a good job of it yourself!’ The sudden silence was nevertheless peppered with little sounds like a guard behind a pillar sticking his hand over his mouth so that his shocked laughter would not be heard, and a splutter as – on the other side of a curtain – a maid almost achieved the same thing. But it was the tiny little click of a door high above that stayed in Tiffany’s memory. Was that Letitia? Had she overheard? Well, it didn’t matter, because the Duchess was gloating now, with Tiffany safely in the palm of her hand. She shouldn’t have risen to the stupid insults, whoever was listening. And now the woman was going to take terrible delight in making trouble for Tiffany, anyone near to her and quite probably everyone she’d ever known. Tiffany felt chilly sweat running down her back. It had never been like this before – not even with the wintersmith; not even Annagramma being unpleasant on a bad day; not even the Fairy Queen, who was good at spite. The Duchess beat them all: she was a bully, the kind of bully who forces her victim into retaliation, which therefore becomes the justification for further and nastier bullying, with collateral damage to any innocent bystanders who would be invited by the bully to put the blame for their discomfiture onto the victim. The Duchess looked around the shadowy hall. ‘Is there a guard here?’ She waited in delighted malice. ‘I know there is a guard here somewhere!’ There was the sound of hesitant footsteps and Preston, the trainee guard, appeared from out of the shadows and walked a nervous walk towards Tiffany and the Duchess. Of course, it would have to be Preston, Tiffany thought; the other guards would be too experienced to risk a generous helping of the Duchess’s wrath. And he was smiling nervously too, not a good thing to do when dealing with people like the Duchess. At least he had the sense to salute when he reached her, and by the standards of people who had never been told how to salute properly, and in any case had to do so very rarely, it was a good salute. The Duchess winced. ‘Why are you grinning, young man?’ Preston gave the question some serious thought, and said, ‘The sun is shining, madam, and I am happy being a guard.’ ‘You will not grin at me, young man. Smiling leads to familiarity, which I will not tolerate at any price. Where is the Baron?’ Preston shifted from one foot to the other. ‘He is in the crypt, madam, paying his respects to his father.’ ‘You will not call me madam! “Madam” is a title for the wives of grocers! Nor can you call me “my lady”, which is a title for the wives of knights and other riffraff! I am a duchess and am therefore to be addressed as “your grace”. Do you understand?’ ‘Yes … m … your grace!’ Preston threw in another salute in self-defence. For a moment, at least, the Duchess seemed satisfied, but it was definitely among the shorter kinds of moments. ‘Very well. And now you will take this creature’ – she waved a hand towards Tiffany – ‘and lock her in your dungeon. Do you understand me?’ Shocked, Preston looked to Tiffany for guidance. She gave him a wink, just to keep his spirits up. He turned back to the Duchess. ‘Lock her in the dungeon?’ The Duchess glared at him. ‘That is what I said!’ Preston frowned. ‘Are you sure?’ he said. ‘It means taking the goats out.’ ‘Young man, it is not my concern what you do with the goats! I order you to incarcerate this witch immediately! Now, get on with it, or I will see to it that you lose your position.’ Tiffany was already impressed with Preston, but now he won a medal. ‘Can’t do that,’ he said, ‘ ‘cause of happy ass. The sergeant told me all about it. Happy ass. Happy ass corp ass. Means you can’t just lock somebody away if they haven’t broken the law. Happy ass corp ass. It’s all written down. Happy ass corp ass,’ he repeated helpfully. This defiance seemed to push the Duchess beyond rage and into some sort of fascinated horror. This spotty-faced youth in ill-fitting armour was defying her over some stupid words. Such a thing had never happened to her before. It was like finding out that frogs talked. That would be very fascinating and everything, but sooner or later a talking frog has to be squashed. ‘You will hand in your armour and leave this castle forthwith, do you understand? You are sacked. You have lost your position and I will make it my business to see that you never get a job as a guard ever again, young man.’ Preston shook his head. ‘Can’t happen like that, your lady grace. ’Cause of happy ass corp ass. The sergeant said to me, “Preston, you stick to happy ass corp ass. It is your friend. You can stand on happy ass corp ass.”’ The Duchess glared at Tiffany, and since Tiffany’s silence appeared to annoy her even more than anything she would have to say, she smiled and said nothing, in the hope that the Duchess might possibly explode. Instead, and as expected, she turned on Preston. ‘How dare you talk back to me like that, you scoundrel!’ She raised the shiny stick with the knob on it. But suddenly, it seemed immovable. ‘You will not hit him, madam,’ said Tiffany in a calm voice. ‘I will see your arm breaks before you strike him. We do not strike people in this castle.’ The Duchess snarled and tugged at the stick, but neither stick nor arm seemed to want to move. ‘In a moment, the stick will come free,’ said Tiffany. ‘If you attempt to strike anyone with it again, I will break it in half. Please understand that this is not a warning – it is a forecast.’ The Duchess glared at her, but must have seen something in Tiffany’s face that her own resolute stupidity could worry about. She let go of the stick and it fell to the floor. ‘You have not heard the last of this, witch girl!’ ‘Just witch, madam. Just witch,’ said Tiffany as the woman strutted at speed out of the hall. ‘Are we going to get into trouble?’ said Preston quietly. Tiffany gave a little shrug. ‘I will see to it that you don’t,’ she said. And she thought, And so will the sergeant. I’ll make sure of it. She looked around the hall and saw the faces of the watching servants hurriedly turn away, as if they were afraid. There wasn’t any real magic, she thought. I just stood my ground. You have to stand your ground, because it’s your ground. ‘I was wondering,’ said Preston, ‘if you were going to turn her into a cockroach and stamp on her. I’ve heard that witches can do that,’ he added hopefully. ‘Well, I won’t say that it is impossible,’ said Tiffany, ‘but you won’t see a witch doing it. Besides, there are practical problems.’ Preston nodded sagely. ‘Well, yes,’ he said. ‘The different body mass for one thing, which would mean you would end up with either one enormous human-sized cockroach, which I think would probably collapse under its own weight, or dozens or even hundreds of people-shaped cockroaches. But the snag there, I think, might be that their brain might work very badly – though, of course, if you had the right spells, I suppose you could magic all the bits of the human that wouldn’t fit into the cockroach into some kind of big bucket so they could use it to get themselves bigger again when they were tired of being small. But the problem there would be what happened if some hungry dog came along when the lid was off. That would be quite bad. Sorry, have I said something wrong?’ ‘Er, no,’ said Tiffany. ‘Er, don’t you think that you’re a bit too smart to be a guard, Preston?’ Preston shrugged. ‘Well, the lads all think that I am useless,’ he said cheerfully. ‘They think that there’s got to be something wrong with someone who can pronounce the word “marvellous”.’ ‘But, Preston … I know you are very clever and sufficiently erudite to know the meaning of the word “erudite”. Why do you sometimes pretend to be stupid – you know, like “doctrine” and “happy ass corp ass”?’ Preston grinned. ‘I was unfortunately born clever, miss, and I’ve learned that sometimes it’s not such a good idea to be all that clever. Saves trouble.’ Right now, it seemed to Tiffany that the clever thing would be not to be in the hall any longer. Surely the horrible woman couldn’t do too much damage, could she? But Roland had been so strange, acting as if they had never been friends, sounding as though he believed every complaint against her … He had never been like that before. Oh, yes … he was mourning his father, but he just didn’t seem … himself. And that dreadful old baggage had just bundled off to harry him while he was saying goodbye to his father in the coolness of the crypt, trying to find a way of saying the words that there had never been time for, trying to make up for too much silence, trying to bring back yesterday and nail it firmly to now. Everyone did that. Tiffany had come back from quite a few deathbeds, and some were very nearly merry, where some decent old soul was peacefully putting down the weight of their years. Or they could be tragic, when Death had needed to bend down to harvest his due; or, well, ordinary – sad but expected, one light blinking off in a sky full of stars. And she had wondered, as she made tea, and comforted people, and listened to the tearful stories about the good old days from people who always had words left over that they thought should have been spoken. And she had decided that they weren’t there to be said in the past, but remembered in the here and now. ‘What do you think about the word “conundrum”?’ Tiffany stared at Preston, her mind still full of words people never said. ‘What was that you asked?’ she said, frowning. ‘The word “conundrum”,’ Preston repeated helpfully. ‘When you say the word, doesn’t it look in your head like a copper-coloured snake, curled up asleep?’ Now, Tiffany thought, during a day like this, anyone who wasn’t a witch would dismiss that as a bit of silliness, so that means I shouldn’t. Preston was the worst-dressed guard in the castle; the newest guard always was. To him were given chain-mail trousers that were mostly full of holes25 and suggested, against everything we know about moths, that moths could eat through steel. To him was given the helmet that, no matter what size your head was, would slide down and make your ears look big; and this was not forgetting that he had also inherited a breastplate with so many holes in it that it might be more useful for straining soup. But his gaze was always alert, to the point where it made people uneasy. Preston looked at things. Really looked at things, so intensely that afterwards they must have felt really looked at. She had no idea what went on in his head, but it was surely pretty crowded. ‘Well, I must say I’ve never thought about that word “conundrum”,’ she said slowly, ‘but it is certainly metallic and slithery.’ ‘I like words,’ said Preston. ‘“Forgiveness”: doesn’t it sound like what it is? Doesn’t it sound like a silk handkerchief gently falling down? And what about “susurration”? Doesn’t it sound to you like whispered plots and dark mysteries? … Sorry, is something wrong?’ ‘Yes, I think something may be wrong,’ said Tiffany, looking at Preston’s worried face. ‘Susurration’ was her favourite word; she had never met anyone else who even knew it. ‘Why are you a guard, Preston?’ ‘Don’t like sheep very much, not very strong so I can’t be a ploughman, too ham-fisted to be a tailor, too scared of drowning to run away to sea. My mother taught me to read and write, much against my dad’s wishes, and since that meant I was no good for a proper job, I got packed off to be an apprentice priest in the Church of Om. I quite liked that; I learned a lot of interesting words, but they threw me out for asking too many questions, such as, “Is this really true or what?”’ He shrugged. ‘Actually, I quite like the guarding.’ He reached down and pulled a book out of his breastplate, which in fact could have accommodated a small library, and went on,‘There’s plenty of time for reading if you keep out of sight, and the metaphysics is quite interesting as well.’ Tiffany blinked. ‘I think you just lost me there, Preston.’ ‘Really?’ said the boy. ‘Well, for example, when I’m on night duty and somebody comes to the gate, I have to say “Who goes there, friend or foe?” To which, of course, the correct answer is “Yes”.’ It took Tiffany a moment to work this one out, and she began to have some insight into how Preston might have a problem holding down a job. He continued, ‘The conundrum begins if the person at the gate says “Friend”, since they may well be lying; but the lads who have to go out at night have very cleverly devised their own shibboleth with which to answer my question, and that is: “Get your nose out of that book, Preston, and let us in right now!”‘ ‘“Shibboleth” being …?’ The boy was fascinating. It was not often you found somebody who could make nonsense sound wonderfully sensible. ‘A kind of code word,’ said Preston. ‘Strictly speaking, it means a word that your enemy would be unable to say. For example, in the case of the Duchess, it might be a good idea to choose a word like “please”.’ Tiffany tried not to laugh. ‘That brain of yours is going to get you into trouble one day, Preston.’ ‘Well, so long as it’s good for something.’ There was a scream from the distant kitchen, and one thing that makes humans different from animals is that they run towards a distress call, rather than away from it. Tiffany arrived only seconds behind Preston, and even they weren’t the first. A couple of girls were comforting Mrs Coble the cook, who was sobbing on a chair while one of the girls was wrapping a kitchen towel around her arm. The floor was steaming and a black cauldron was lying on its side. ‘I tell you, they were there!’ the cook managed between sobs. ‘All wriggling. I shall always remember it. And kicking and crying out “Mother!” I shall remember their little faces for as long as I live!’ She began sobbing again, great big sobs that threatened to choke her. Tiffany beckoned to the nearest kitchen maid, who reacted as though she’d been struck and tried to cower back. ‘Look,’ said Tiffany, ‘can someone please tell me what— What are you doing with that bucket?’ This was to another maid, who was dragging a bucket up from the cellar and who, at the sound of a command on top of the turmoil, dropped it. Shards of ice flew across the floor. Tiffany took a deep breath. ‘Ladies, you don’t put ice on a scald, however sensible it seems. Cool some tea – but don’t make it cold – and soak her arm in it for at least a quarter of an hour. Everybody understand? Good. Now, what happened ?’ ‘It was full of frogs!’ the cook screamed. ‘They was puddings and I set them to boiling, but when I opened it up, they was little frogs, all shouting for their mother! I told everyone, I told them! A wedding and a funeral from the same house, that’s bad luck, that is. It’s witchcraft, that’s what it is!’ Then the woman gasped and clamped her free hand over her mouth. Tiffany kept a straight face. She looked in the cauldron, and she looked around on the floor. There was no sign of any frogs anywhere, although there were two enormous puddings, still wrapped in their pudding cloths, at the bottom of the cauldron. When she picked them out, still very hot, and placed them on the table, she couldn’t help noticing that the maids backed away from them. ‘Perfectly good plum duff,’ she said cheerily. ‘Nothing to worry about here.’ ‘I have often noticed,’ said Preston, ‘that in some circumstances, boiling water can seethe in a very strange way, with water droplets appearing to jump up and down just above the surface, which I might suggest is one reason why Mrs Coble thought she was seeing frogs?’ He leaned closer to Tiffany and whispered, ‘And another reason may quite possibly be that bottle of finest cream sherry I can see on the shelf over there, which appears to be almost empty, coupled with the lone glass noticeable in the washing-up bowl over there.’ Tiffany was impressed; she hadn’t noticed the glass. Everyone was watching her. Somebody ought to have been saying something, and since nobody was, it had better be her. ‘I’m sure the death of our Baron has upset us all,’ she began, and got no further, because the cook sat bolt upright in the chair and pointed a trembling finger at her. ‘All except you, you creature!’ she accused. ‘I seed you, oh yes, I seed you! Everyone was sobbing and crying and wailing, but not you! Oh no! You were just strutting around, giving orders to your elders and betters! Just like your granny! Everybody knows! You was sweet on the young Baron, and when he chucked you over, you killed the old Baron, just to spite him! You was seen! Oh yes, and now the poor lad is beside himself with grief and his bride is in tears and won’t come out of her room! Oh, how you must be laughing inside! People is saying that the marriage should be put off! I’d bet you’d like that, wouldn’t you? That would be a feather in your black hat, and no mistake! I remember when you were small, and then off you went up to the mountains, where the folks are so strange and wild, as everybody knows, and what comes back? Yes, what comes back? What comes back, knowing everything, acting so hoity-toity, treating us like dirt, tearing a young man’s life apart? And that ain’t the worst of it! You just talk to Mrs Petty! Don’t tell me about frogs! I know frogs when I sees them, and that’s what I saw! Frogs! They must—’ Tiffany stepped out of her body. She was good at this now, oh yes. Sometimes she practised the trick on animals, who were generally very hard to fool: even if only a mind seemed to be there, they got nervous and eventually ran away. But humans? Humans were easy to fool. Provided your body stayed where you left it, blinking its eyes, and breathing, and keeping its balance, and all the other little things bodies are good at doing even when you are not there, other humans thought you were. And now she let herself drift towards the drunken cook, while she muttered and shouted and repeated herself, spitting out hurtful idiocies and bile and hatred, and also little flecks of spittle that stayed on her chins. And now Tiffany could smell the stench. It was faint but it was there. She wondered: If I turn round, will I see two holes in a face? No, things weren’t that bad, surely. Perhaps he was just thinking about her. Should she run? No. She might be running to rather than from. He could be anywhere! But at least she could try to stop this mischief. Tiffany was careful not to walk through people; it was possible, but even though she was in theory as insubstantial as a thought, walking through a person was like walking through a swamp – sticky and unpleasant and dark. She had got past the kitchen girls, who seemed hypnotised; time always seemed to pass more slowly when she was out of her body. Yes, the bottle of sherry was almost empty, and there was another empty one just visible behind a sack of potatoes. Mrs Coble herself reeked of it. She had always been partial to a drop of sherry, and possibly another drop as well; it could be a work-related illness among cooks, along with three wobbly chins. But all that foul stuff? Where had that come from? Was it something she’d always wanted to say, or had he put it into her mouth? I have done nothing wrong, she thought again. It might be useful to keep that firmly in mind. But I have been stupid too, and I shall have to remember that as well. The woman, still hypnotising the girls with her ranting, looked very ugly in the slow-motion world: her face was a vicious red, and every time she opened her mouth her breath stank, and there was a piece of food stuck in her uncleaned teeth. Tiffany shifted sideways a little. Would it be possible to reach an invisible hand into her stupid body and see if she could stop the beating of the heart? Nothing like that had ever occurred to her before, and it was a fact that you could not, of course, pick up anything when you were outside your body, but perhaps it would be possible to interrupt some little flow, some tiny spark? Even a big fat wretched creature like the cook could be brought down by the tiniest of upsets, and that stupid red face would shudder, and that stinking breath would gasp, and that foul mouth would shut— First Thoughts, Second Thoughts, Third Thoughts, and the very rare Fourth Thoughts lined up in her head like planets to scream in chorus: That’s not us! Watch what you are thinking! Tiffany slammed back into her body, nearly losing her balance, and was caught by Preston, who was standing right behind her. Quick! Remember that Mrs Coble had lost her husband only seven months ago, she told herself, and remember that she used to give you biscuits when you were small, and remember that she had a row with her daughter-in-law and doesn’t get to see her grand- children any more. Remember this, and see a poor old lady who has drunk too much and has listened to too much gossip – from that nasty Miss Spruce, for one. Remember this, because if you hit back at her, you will become what he wants you to be! Don’t give him space in your head again! Behind her, Preston grunted, and said, ‘I know it’s not the right thing to say to a lady, miss, but you are sweating like a pig!’ Tiffany, trying to get her shattered thoughts together, muttered, ‘My mother always said that horses sweat, men perspire, and ladies merely glow …’ ‘Is that so?’ said Preston cheerfully. ‘Well, miss, you are glowing like a pig!’ This caused a lot of giggling from the girls, already shaken up by the cook’s ranting, but any laughter would be better than that and, it occurred to Tiffany, maybe Preston had worked that out. But Mrs Coble had managed to get to her feet and waved a threatening finger at Tiffany – although she was swaying so much that for some of the time, depending on which way she was leaning, she was also threatening Preston, one of the girls and a rack of cheeses. ‘You don’t fool me, you evil-looking minx,’ she said. ‘Everyone knows you killed the old Baron! The nurse saw you! How dare you show your face in here? You’ll take us all sooner or later, and I won’t have that! I hope the ground opens up and swallows you!’ the cook snarled. She tottered backwards. There was a heavy thud, a creak and, just for a moment until it was cut off, the beginning of a scream as the cook fell into the cellar. 23 There is a lot of folklore about equestrian statues, especially the ones with riders on. There is said to be a code in the number and placement of the horse’s hooves: if one of the horse’s hooves is in the air, the rider was wounded in battle; two legs in the air means that the rider was killed in battle; three legs in the air indicates that the rider got lost on the way to the battle; and four legs in the air means that the sculptor was very, very clever. Five legs in the air means that there’s probably at least one other horse standing behind the horse you’re looking at; and the rider lying on the ground with his horse lying on top of him with all four legs in the air means that the rider was either a very incompetent horseman or owned a very bad-tempered horse. 24 See Glossary, page 344. 25 In fact, chain-mail trousers are always full of holes, but they shouldn’t be full of holes seven inches wide. Chapter 10 THE MELTING GIRL ‘MISS ACHING, I must ask you to leave the Chalk,’ said the Baron, his face wooden. ‘I will not!’ The Baron’s expression did not change. Roland could be like that, she remembered, and it was worse now, of course. The Duchess had insisted on being in his office for this interview, and had further insisted on having two of her own guards there, as well as two from the castle. That pretty much filled all the space in the study, and the two pairs of guards glared at each other in all-out professional rivalry. ‘It is my land, Miss Aching.’ ‘I know I have some rights!’ said Tiffany. Roland nodded like a judge. ‘That is a very important point, Miss Aching, but regrettably you have no rights at all. You are not a leaseholder, you are not a tenant and you own no land. In short, you have nothing on which rights are based.’ He said all this without looking up from the foolscap paper in front of him. Deftly, Tiffany reached across and snatched it from his fingers, and was back in her chair before the guards could react. ‘How dare you talk like that without looking me in the eye!’ But she knew what the words meant. Her father was a tenant of the farm. He had rights. She did not. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘you can’t just turn me out. I’ve done nothing wrong.’ Roland sighed. ‘I really hoped that you would see reason, Miss Aching, but since you assert total innocence, I must spell out the following facts. Item: you admit that you took the child Amber Petty away from her parents and lodged her with the fairy folk who live in holes in the ground. Did you think this was the right place for a young girl? According to my men, there seemed to be a lot of snails in the vicinity.’ ‘Now just hold on, Roland—’ ‘You will address my future son-in-law as “my lord”,’ snapped the Duchess. ‘And if I don’t, will you hit me with your stick, your grace? Will you grasp the nettle firmly?’ ‘How dare you!’ the Duchess said, her eyes blazing. ‘Is this how you like your guests to be addressed, Roland?’ At least his bewilderment seemed genuine. ‘I haven’t the faintest idea what is being talked about here,’ he said. Tiffany pointed her finger at the Duchess, causing the Duchess’s bodyguards to reach for their weapons, thus causing the castle guards to draw theirs too, so as not to be left out. By the time swords were safely disentangled and put where they belonged, the Duchess was already launching a counter-attack. ‘You should not put up with this insubordination, young man! You are the Baron, and you have given this … this creature notice to leave your lands. She is not conducive to public order, and if she still wilfully insists on not leaving, do I need to remind you that her parents are your tenants?’ Tiffany was already seething because of ‘creature’, but to her surprise the young Baron shook his head and said, ‘No, I cannot punish good tenants for having a wayward daughter.’ ‘Wayward’? That was worse than ‘creature’! How dare he …! And her thoughts ran together. He wouldn’t dare. He never had dared, not in all the time they’d known each other, all the time when she had been just Tiffany and he had been just Roland. It had been a strange relationship, mostly because it wasn’t a relationship at all. They hadn’t been drawn to one another: they had been pushed towards one another by the way the world worked. She was a witch, which meant that she was automatically different from the village kids, and he was the Baron’s son, which automatically meant he was different from the village kids. And where they had gone wrong was in believing, somewhere in their minds, that because two things were different, they must therefore be alike. Slowly finding out that this wasn’t true hadn’t been nice for either of them and there had been a certain number of things that both of them wished hadn’t been said. And then it wasn’t over, because it had never begun, not really, of course. And so it was best for both of them. Of course. Certainly. Yes. And in all that time he’d never been like this, never so cold, never so stupid in such a meticulous kind of way that you couldn’t blame it all on the wretched Duchess, although Tiffany would have loved to. No, there were other things happening. She had to be on her guard. And there, watching them watching her, she realized how a person could be both stupid and clever. She picked up her chair, placed it neatly in front of the desk, sat down on it, folded her hands and said, ‘I am very sorry, my lord.’ She turned to the Duchess, bowed her head and said, ‘And to you too, your grace. I temporarily forgot my place. It will not happen again. Thank you.’ The Duchess grunted. It would have been impossible for Tiffany to have thought any less of her but, well, a grunt? After a climb-down like that? Humbling an uppity young witch deserved a lot better than that – some remark so cutting that it blunted on the bone. Honestly, she might have made an effort. Roland was staring at Tiffany, so nonplussed he was nearly minused. She confused him a little more by handing him the now-crumpled sheet of paper and saying, ‘Do you want to deal with the other matters, my lord?’ He struggled for a moment, managed to flatten the paper on the desk to his satisfaction, smoothed it out and said, ‘There is the matter of the death of my father and the theft of money from his strongbox.’ Tiffany fixed him with a helpful smile, which made him nervous. ‘Anything else, my lord? I am anxious that everything should be dealt with.’ ‘Roland, she is up to something,’ said the Duchess. ‘Be on your guard.’ She waved a hand towards the guards. ‘And you guards should be on your guard as well, mind!’ The guards, having some difficulty with the idea of being even more on their guard when they were already – through nervousness – much further on their guard in any case than they had ever been before, strained to look a bit taller. Roland cleared his throat. ‘Ahem, then there is the matter of the late cook, who fell to her death almost coincidentally with, I believe, insulting you. Do you understand these charges?’ ‘No,’ said Tiffany. There was a moment of silence before Roland said, ‘Er, why not?’ ‘Because they aren’t charges, my lord. You are not declaring outright that you think I stole the money and killed your father and the cook. You are simply sort of waving the idea in front of me in the hope that I will burst into tears, I suppose. Witches don’t cry, and I want something that probably no other witch has ever asked for before. I want a hearing. A proper hearing. And that means evidence. And that means witnesses, and that means that the people who say have to say it in front of everybody. And that means a jury of my peers, which means people like me, and that means habeas corpus, thank you very much.’ She stood up and turned towards the doorway, which was blocked by a struggling crowd of guards. Now she looked at Roland, and bobbed a little curtsy. ‘Unless you feel entirely confident enough to have me arrested, my lord, I am leaving.’ They watched with open mouths as she walked up to the guards. ‘Good evening, Sergeant, good evening, Preston, good evening, gentlemen. This won’t take a minute. If you would just excuse me, I am leaving.’ She saw Preston wink at her as she pushed past his sword, and then she heard the guards suddenly collapse in a heap. She walked along the corridor to the hall. There was a huge fire in the even bigger fireplace, which was large enough to be a room all by itself. The fire was peat. It couldn’t do much to heat most of the hall, which never got warm even in the heart of summer, but it was cosy to be close to, and if you have to breathe smoke, then you can’t do better than peat smoke, which rose up to the chimney and drifted like a warm mist around the sides of bacon, which were hung up there to smoke. It was all going to get complicated again, but for the moment Tiffany sat there simply for a rest and, while she was about it, to shout at herself for being so stupid. How much poison can he seep into their heads? How much does he need to? That was the problem with witchcraft: it was as if everybody needed the witches, but hated the fact that they did, and somehow the hatred of the fact could become the hatred of the person. People then started thinking: Who are you to have these skills? Who are you to know these things? Who are you to think you’re better than us? But Tiffany didn’t think she was better than them. She was better than them at witchcraft, that was true, but she couldn’t knit a sock, she didn’t know how to shoe a horse, and while she was pretty good at making cheese, she had to have three tries to bake a loaf that you could actually bite into with your teeth. Everybody was good at something. The only wicked thing was not finding out in time. There was fine dust on the floor of the fireplace, because there is nothing like peat for dust, and as Tiffany watched, tiny little footprints appeared in it. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘what did you do to the guards?’ A shower of Feegles landed lightly on the seat beside her. ‘Weel,’ Rob Anybody said, ‘personally I would have liked to take them to the cleaners, the mound-digging Cromwells that they are, but I could see where that might make it a wee bit difficult for ye, so we just tied their bootlaces together. Maybe they’ll blame it on the wee mice.’ ‘Look, you’re not to hurt anybody, all right? The guards have to do what they are told.’ ‘Nae, they didnae,’ said Rob scornfully. ‘That’s nae errand for a warrior, doing what you’re told. And what would they have done to ye, doing what they were told? That old carlin of a mother-in-law was glaring claymores at ye the whole time, bad cess to her! Hah! Let’s see how she likes her bathwater tonight!’ The edge to his voice put Tiffany on the alert. ‘You are not to hurt anybody, do you understand? Nobody at all, Rob.’ The Big Man grumbled. ‘Och yes, miss, I’ve taken what you said on board!’ ‘And you promise on your honour as a Feegle not to throw it over the side as soon as my back is turned, do you?’ Rob Anybody started grumbling again, using crackling Feegle words that she had never heard before. They sounded like curses, and once or twice, when he spat them out, smoke and sparks came out with them. He was stamping his feet too, always a sign of a Feegle at the end of his tether. ‘They came arrayed with sharp steel to dig up me home, dig up me clan and dig up me family,’ he said, and his words were all the more menacing because they were so level and quiet. Then he spat a short sentence towards the fire, which burned green for a moment when the words hit the flames. ‘I’ll no’ disobey the hag o’ the hills, ye ken, but I put ye on firm notice that if I can see a shovel near my mound again, the owner will find it shoved up his kilt blunt end first, so that he hurts his hands trying to pull it out. And that will only be the start of his problems! And if there is any clearances here, I swear on my spog that it will be us that is doing the clearing!’ He stamped up and down a bit, and then added: ‘And what is this we are hearing about ye demanding the law? We is nae friends of the law, ye ken.’ ‘What about Wee Mad Arthur?’ said Tiffany. It was almost impossible to make a Feegle look sheepish, but Rob Anybody looked as if he was about to say ‘Bah’. ‘Oh, it’s a terrible thing them gnomes did to him,’ he said, looking sad. ‘Do ye ken he washes his face every day? I mean, that sort of thing is OK when the mud gets too thick, but every day? I ask ye, how can a body stand it?’ One moment there were the Feegles, and then there was a faint whoosh, followed by a total lack of Feegles, and the next moment there was a more than adequate supply of guards. Fortunately they were the sergeant and Preston, stamping to attention. The sergeant cleared his throat. ‘Am I addressing Miss Tiffany Aching?’ he said. ‘It looks to me as if you are, Brian,’ said Tiffany, ‘but you be the judge.’ The sergeant looked around quickly and then leaned closer. ‘Please, Tiff,’ he whispered, ‘it’s all gone serious on us.’ He straightened up quickly and then said, far louder than was necessary, ‘Miss Tiffany Aching! I am commanded by my lord the Baron to inform you that it is his command that you must stay within the irons of the castle—’ ‘The what?’ said Tiffany. Wordlessly, his eyes on the ceiling, the sergeant handed her a piece of parchment. ‘Oh, you mean the environs,’ she said. ‘That means the castle and the places around it too,’ she told him helpfully. ‘But I thought the Baron wanted me to leave?’ ‘Look, I’m just reading out what it says here, Tiff, and I am ordered to lock your broomstick in the dungeon.’ ‘That’s an impressive errand that you have there, Officer. It’s leaning against the wall, help yourself.’ The sergeant looked relieved. ‘You’re not going to make any … trouble?’ he said. Tiffany shook her head. ‘Not at all, Sergeant. I have no quarrel with a man who is only doing his duty.’ The sergeant walked cautiously up to the broomstick. They all knew it, of course; they had seen it going overhead, and generally only just overhead, practically every day. But he hesitated, with his hand a few inches from the wood. ‘Er, what happens when I touch it?’ he said. ‘Oh, then it’s ready to fly,’ said Tiffany. The sergeant’s hand very slowly drew back from the vicinity, or possibly the environs, of the broomstick. ‘But it won’t fly for me, right?’ he said in a voice full of air-sickness and pleading. ‘Oh, not very far or very high, probably,’ said Tiffany, without looking round. The sergeant was well known to get vertigo simply by standing on a chair. She walked over to him and picked up the stick. ‘Brian, what were your orders if I refused to obey your orders, if you see what I mean?’ ‘I was supposed to arrest you!’ ‘What? And lock me up in the dungeon?’ The sergeant winced. ‘You know I wouldn’t want to do that,’ he said. ‘Some of us are grateful, and we all knew that poor old Mrs Coble was as drunk as a skunk, poor woman.’ ‘Then I won’t put you to the trouble,’ said Tiffany. ‘So why don’t I put this broomstick, which you seem so worried about, down in the dungeon and lock it in. Then I won’t be going anywhere, yes?’ Relief flooded the sergeant’s face, and as they walked down the stone steps to the dungeon he lowered his voice and said, ‘It’s not me, you understand, it’s them upstairs. It seems like her grace is calling the shots now.’ Tiffany hadn’t seen very many dungeons, but people said that the one in the castle was pretty good by dungeon standards and would probably earn at least five ball and chains if anybody ever decided to write a Good Dungeon Guide. It was spacious and well-drained, with a handy gutter right down the middle, which ended up in the inevitable round hole, which did not smell very bad on, as it were, the whole. Neither did the goats, which unfolded themselves from their snug beds in piles of straw and watched her through slot eyes in case she did anything interesting, such as feeding them. They didn’t stop eating, because being goats, they were already eating their dinner for the second time. The dungeon had two entrances. One went straight outdoors: it was probably there to drag the prisoners in by, back in the old days, because that would save having to pull them across the great hall, getting the floor all mucky with blood and mud. These days the dungeon was mostly used as a goat shed and, on racks higher up – high enough to be out of reach of all but the most determined goat – an apple store. Tiffany lifted the broomstick up onto the lowest apple rack, while the sergeant petted one of the goats, taking care not to look up in case it made him feel dizzy. That meant he was entirely unprepared when Tiffany pushed him back out of the doorway, took the keys out of the lock, swung herself back into the dungeon and locked the door on the inside. ‘I’m sorry, Brian, but, you see, it is you. Not just you, of course, and not even mostly you, and it was rather unfair of me to take advantage of you, but if I’m going to be treated like a criminal, I might as well act like one.’ Brian shook his head. ‘We do have another key, you know.’ ‘Hard to use it if I blocked the keyhole,’ said Tiffany, ‘but look on the bright side. I’m under lock and key, which I think some people would rather like, so all you are worried about is the fine detail. You see, I think you might be looking at this the wrong way round. I’m safe in a dungeon. I haven’t been locked away from you, the rest of you have been locked away from me.’ Brian looked as if he was about to cry and she thought, No, I can’t do it. He’s always been decent to me. He’s trying to be decent now. Just because I’m cleverer than he is doesn’t mean that he should lose his job. And besides, I already know the way out of here. That’s the thing about people who have dungeons; they don’t spend enough time in them themselves. She handed the keys back. His face brightened with relief. ‘Obviously we will bring you food and water,’ he said. ‘You can’t live on apples all the time!’ Tiffany sat down on the straw. ‘You know, it’s quite cosy in here. It’s funny how goat burps make everything sort of warm and comfortable. No, I won’t eat the apples, but some of them do need turning or else they will rot, so I will take care of that while I’m in here too. Of course, when I’m locked in here I can’t be out there. I can’t make medicines. I can’t clip toenails. I can’t help. How is your old mum’s leg these days? Still well, I hope? Would you mind leaving now, please, because I’d like to use the hole.’ She heard his boots on the stairs. It had been a bit cruel, but what else could she have done? She looked around and lifted up a pile of very old and very dirty straw that hadn’t been touched for a long time. All sorts of things crawled, hopped or slithered away. Around her, now that the coast was clear, Feegle heads rose, bits of straw dropping off them. ‘Fetch my lawyer, please,’ Tiffany said brightly. ‘I think he’s going to like working here …’ The Toad turned out to be quite enthusiastic, for a lawyer who knew that he was going to be paid in beetles. ‘I think we will start with wrongful imprisonment. Judges don’t like that sort of thing. If anyone’s going to be put in prison, they like to be the ones who do it.’ ‘Er, actually I locked myself in,’ said Tiffany. ‘Does that count?’ ‘I wouldn’t worry about that at the moment. You were under duress, your freedom of movement was being curtailed and you were put in fear.’ ‘I certainly was not! I was extremely angry!’ The Toad slapped a claw down on an escaping centipede. ‘You were interrogated by two members of the aristocracy in the presence of four armed men, yes? Nobody warned you? Nobody read you your rights? And you say the Baron apparently believes on no evidence that you killed his father, and the cook, and stole some money?’ ‘I think Roland’s trying hard not to believe it,’ said Tiffany. ‘Someone has told him a lie.’ ‘Then we must challenge it, indeed we must. He can’t go around making allegations of murder when they can’t be substantiated. He can get into serious trouble for that!’ ‘Oh,’ said Tiffany, ‘I don’t want any harm to come to him!’ It is hard to see when the Toad is smiling, so Tiffany had to take a guess. ‘Did I say something funny?’ ‘Not funny at all, not really, but in its way rather sad and rather droll,’ said the Toad. ‘Droll, in this case, meaning somewhat bittersweet. This young man is making accusations against you which could, if true, lead to you being executed in many places in this world, and yet you do not wish him to be put to any inconvenience?’ ‘I know it’s soppy, but the Duchess is pushing him all the time, and the girl he’s going to marry is as wet as—’ She stopped. There were footfalls on the stone stairs that led from the hall to the dungeon, and they certainly did not have the heavy ring of guards’ hobnails. It was Letitia, the bride-to-be, all in white and all in tears. She reached the bars of Tiffany’s cell, hung onto them, and carried on crying: not big sobs, but just an endless snivelling, nose-dripping, fumbling-in-the-sleeve-for-the-lace-hanky-that-is-already-totally-soaking-wet kind of tears. The girl didn’t really look at Tiffany, just sobbed in her general direction. ‘I’m so sorry! I really am very sorry! What can you think of me?’ And there, right there, was the drawback of being a witch. Here was a person whose mere existence had led Tiffany, one evening, to wonder about that whole business of sticking pins into a wax figure. She hadn’t actually done it, because it was something that you shouldn’t do, something that witches greatly frowned on, and because it was cruel and dangerous, and above all because she hadn’t been able to find any pins. And now the wretched creature was in some kind of agony, so distraught that modesty and dignity were all being washed away in a rolling flood of gummy tears. How could they not wash away hatred as well? And, in truth, there had never been all that much hatred, more of a kind of miffed feeling. She’d known all along that she’d never be a lady, not without the long blonde hair. It was totally against the whole book of fairytales. She just hadn’t liked being rushed into accepting it. ‘I really never wanted things to happen like this!’ gulped Letitia. ‘I really am very, very sorry, I don’t know what I could’ve been thinking about!’ And so many tears, rolling down that silly, lacy dress and – oh no, there was a perfect snot balloon on a perfect nose. Tiffany watched in fascinated horror as the weeping girl had a great bubbling blow and – oh no, she wasn’t going to, was she? Yes, she was. Yes. She squeezed out the dripping handkerchief onto the floor, which was already wet from the incessant crying. ‘Look, I’m sure things can’t be as bad as all that,’ said Tiffany, trying not to hear the ghastly blobby noises on the stone. ‘If you would only stop crying for a moment, I’m sure everything can be sorted out, whatever it is.’ This caused more tears and some actual, genuine, old-fashioned sobs, the kind you never heard in real life – well, at least, up until now. Tiffany knew that when people cried, they said boo-hoo – or at least, that’s how it was written down in books. No one said it in real life. But Letitia did, while projectile crying all over the steps. There was something else there too, and Tiffany caught the spill words as they were well and truly spilled, and read them as, somewhat soggy, they landed in her brain. She thought, Oh, really? But before she could say anything, there was a clattering on the steps again. Roland, the Duchess, and one of her guards came hurrying down, followed by Brian, who had clearly been getting very annoyed about other people’s guards clattering on his home cobbles, and so was making sure that whenever a clattering was taking place, he was fully involved. Roland skidded on the damp patch, and threw his arms protectively around Letitia, who squelched and oozed slightly. The Duchess loomed over the pair of them, which left little looming space available for the guards, who had to put up with looking angrily at one another. ‘What have you done to her?’ Roland demanded. ‘How did you lure her down here?’ The Toad cleared his throat and Tiffany gave him an undignified nudge with her boot. ‘Don’t you say a word, you amphibian,’ she hissed. He might be her lawyer, but if the Duchess saw a toad acting as her legal counsel, then it could only make things worse. As it happens, her not seeing the Toad did make things worse, because the Duchess screamed, ‘Did you hear that? Is there no end to her insolence? She called me an amphibian.’ Tiffany was about to say, ‘I didn’t mean you, I meant the other amphibian,’ but stopped herself in time. She sat down, one hand shovelling straw over the Toad and turned to Roland. ‘Which question would you like me not to answer first?’ ‘My men know how to make you talk!’ said the Duchess over Roland’s shoulder. ‘I already know how to talk, thank you,’ said Tiffany. ‘I thought that maybe she had come to gloat, but things seem to be more … afloat.’ ‘She can’t get out, can she?’ said Roland to the sergeant. The sergeant saluted smartly and said, ‘No, sir. I have the keys to both doors firmly in my pocket, sir.’ He gave a smug look to the Duchess’s guard when he said this, as if to say: Some people get asked important questions and come back with accurate and snappy answers around here, thank you so very much! This was rather spoiled by the Duchess saying, ‘He twice called you “sir” instead of “my lord”, Roland. You must not let the lower orders act so familiarly to you. I have told you this before.’ Tiffany would cheerfully have kicked Roland for not coming back sharply on that one. Brian had taught him to ride a horse, she knew, and taught him how to hold a sword and how to hunt. Perhaps he should have taught him manners too. ‘Excuse me,’ she said sharply. ‘Do you intend to keep me locked up for ever? I wouldn’t mind some more socks and couple of spare dresses, and, of course, some unmentionables if that is going to be the case.’ Possibly the mention of the word ‘unmentionables’ was what flustered the young Baron. But he rallied quite quickly and said, ‘We, er … that is to say, I, er … feel we should perhaps keep you carefully but humanely where you can do no mischief until after the wedding. You do seem to be the centre of a lot of unfortunate events recently. I’m sorry about this.’ Tiffany didn’t dare say anything, because it isn’t polite to burst out laughing after such a solemn and stupid sentence as that. He went on, trying to smile, ‘You will be made comfortable, and of course we will take the goats out, if you wish.’ ‘I’d like you to leave them in here, if it’s all the same to you,’ said Tiffany. ‘I am beginning to enjoy the pleasure of their company. But may I ask a question?’ ‘Yes, of course.’ ‘This is not going to be about spinning wheels, is it?’ Tiffany asked. Well, after all, there was only one way this stupid reasoning could be taking them. ‘What?’ said Roland. The Duchess laughed triumphantly. ‘Oh yes, it would be just like the saucy and all-too-confident young madam to taunt us with her intentions! How many spinning wheels do we have in this castle, Roland?’ The young man looked startled. He always did when his future mother-in-law addressed him. ‘Er, I don’t really know. I think the housekeeper has one, my mother’s wheel is still in the high tower … there’s always a few around. My father likes – liked – to see people busy with their hands. And … really, I don’t know.’ ‘I shall tell the men to search the castle and destroy every single one of them!’ said the Duchess. ‘I shall call her bluff ! Surely everyone knows about spiteful witches and spinning wheels? One little prick upon the finger and we’ll all end up going to sleep for a hundred years!’ Letitia, who had been standing in a state of snuffle, managed to say, ‘Mother, you know you’ve never let me touch a spinning wheel.’ ‘And you never will touch a spinning wheel, ever, Letitia, never in your life. Such things are there for the labouring classes. You are a lady. Spinning is for servants.’ Roland had gone red. ‘My mother used to spin,’ he said in a deliberate kind of way. ‘I used to sit up in the high tower when she was using it sometimes. It was inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Nobody is to touch it.’ It seemed to Tiffany, watching through the bars, that only someone with half a heart, very little kindness and no common sense at all would have said anything at this point. But the Duchess had no common sense, probably because it was, well, too common. ‘I insist—’ she began. ‘No,’ said Roland. The word wasn’t loud, but it had a quietness that was somehow louder than a shout, and undertones and overtones that would have stopped a herd of elephants in their tracks. Or, in this case, one Duchess. But she gave her son-in-law a look which promised him a hard time when she could be bothered to think of one. Out of sympathy, Tiffany said, ‘Look, I only mentioned about the spinning wheels to be sarcastic. That sort of thing just doesn’t happen any more. I’m not sure that it ever did. I mean, people going to sleep for a hundred years while all the trees and plants grow up over the palace? How is that supposed to work? Why weren’t the plants sleeping as well? Otherwise you would get brambles growing up people’s nostrils, and I bet that would wake up anybody. And what happened when it snowed?’ As she said this she fixed her attention on Letitia, who was almost screaming a very interesting spill word, which Tiffany had noted for later consideration. ‘Well, I can see that a witch causes disruption wherever she walks,’ said the Duchess, ‘and so you will stay here, being treated with more decency than you deserve, until we say so.’ ‘And what will you tell my father, Roland?’ said Tiffany sweetly. He looked as if he’d been punched, and probably he would be if Mr Aching got wind of this. He’d need an awful lot of guards if Mr Aching found out that his youngest daughter had been locked up with goats. ‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Tiffany. ‘Why don’t we say that I am staying in the castle to deal with important matters? I’m sure the sergeant here can be trusted to take a message to my dad without upsetting him?’ She made this into a question and saw Roland nod, but the Duchess couldn’t help herself. ‘Your father is a tenant of the Baron and will do what he is told!’ Now Roland was trying not to squirm. When Mr Aching had worked for the old Baron, they had, as men of the world, reached a sensible arrangement, which was that Mr Aching would do whatever the Baron asked him to do. Provided the Baron asked Mr Aching to do what Mr Aching wanted to do and needed to be done. That was what loyalty meant, her father had told her one day. It meant that good men of all sorts worked well when they understood about rights and duties and the dignity of everyday people. And people treasured that dignity all the more because that was, give or take some bed linen, pots and pans and a few tools and cutlery, more or less all they had. The arrangement didn’t need to be talked about, because every sensible person knew how it worked: while you’re a good master, I will be a good worker. I will be loyal to you, while you are loyal to me, and while the circle is unbroken, this is how things will continue to be. And Roland was breaking the circle, or at least allowing the Duchess to do it for him. His family had ruled the Chalk for a few hundred years, and had pieces of paper to prove it. There was nothing to prove when the first Aching had set foot on the Chalk; no one had invented paper then. People weren’t happy about witches right now – they were upset and confused – but the last thing Roland could do with was Mr Aching seeking an answer. Even with some grey in his hair Mr Aching could ask some very hard questions. And I need to stay here now, Tiffany thought. I’ve found a thread, and what you do with threads is pull them. Aloud, she said, ‘I don’t mind staying here. I’m sure we don’t want any little problems.’ Roland looked relieved about this but the Duchess turned to the sergeant and said, ‘Are you sure she’s locked in?’ Brian stood up straight; he’d been standing up straight already, and was probably now on tiptoe. ‘Yes, m— your graceship, like I said, there’s only one key to fit both the doors, and I have them in my pocket right here.’ He slapped his right-hand pocket, which jingled. Apparently, the jingle was enough to satisfy the Duchess, who said, ‘Then I think we might rest a little happier in our beds tonight, Sergeant. Come, Roland, and do take care of Letitia. I fear she needs her medicine again – goodness knows what the wretched girl said to her.’ Tiffany watched them go, all except Brian, who had the decency to look embarrassed. ‘Could you come over here please, Sergeant?’ Brian sighed, and walked a little nearer to the bars. ‘You’re not going to make trouble for me, are you, Tiff?’ ‘Certainly not, Brian, and I hope and trust that you will not try to make trouble for me.’ The sergeant shut his eyes and groaned. ‘You’re planning something, aren’t you? I knew it!’ ‘Let me put it like this,’ said Tiffany, leaning forward. ‘How likely is it, do you think, that I’m going to stay in the cell tonight?’ Brian went to pat his pocket. ‘Well, don’t forget I’ve got the—’ It was terrible to see his face crumple up like a little puppy that’s been given a sharp telling-off. ‘You picked my pocket!’ He looked at her pleadingly, like a little puppy who was now expecting much worse than a telling-off. To the sergeant’s shock and awe, Tiffany handed the keys back to him again, with a smile. ‘You surely don’t think a witch needs keys? And I promise you that I will be back in here by seven o’clock in the morning. I think you will agree, in the circumstances, that this is very good deal, especially since I will find some time to change the bandage on your mother’s leg.’ The look on his face was enough. He grabbed the keys thankfully. ‘I suppose it’s no good me asking you how you intend to get out?’ he said hopefully. ‘I don’t think you ought to ask that question in the circumstances, do you, Sergeant?’ He hesitated, and then smiled. ‘Thank you for thinking about my mother’s leg,’ he said. ‘It’s looking a bit purple at the moment.’ Tiffany took a deep breath. ‘The trouble is, Brian, you and I are the only ones thinking about your mother’s bad leg. There’s old folks out there who need someone to help them in and out of the bathtub. There’s pills and potions that need making and taking to people in the hard-to-get-to places. There is Mr Bouncer, who can hardly walk at all unless I give him a good rubbing of embrocation.’ She pulled out her diary, held together with bits of string and elastic bands, and waved it at him. ‘This is full of things for me to do, because I am the witch. If I don’t do them, who will? Young Mrs Trollope is due to have twins soon, I’m sure of it, I can hear the separate heartbeats. First-time births too. She is already scared stiff, and the nearest other midwife is ten miles away and, I have to say, a bit short-sighted and forgetful. You are an officer, Brian. Officers are supposed to be men of resource, so if the poor young mother comes looking for help, I am sure you will know what to do.’ She had the pleasure of seeing his face go very nearly white. Before he could stutter a reply she continued, ‘But I can’t help, you see, because the wicked witch must be locked up in case she gets her hands on a loaded spinning wheel! Locked up for a fairy story! And the trouble is, I think somebody might die. And if I let them die, then I am a bad witch. The trouble is, I am a bad witch anyway. I must be, because you have locked me up.’ She did actually feel sorry for him. He hadn’t become a sergeant to deal with things like this; most of his tactical experience lay in catching escaped pigs. Should I blame him for what he’s been ordered to do? she wondered. After all, you can’t blame the hammer for what the carpenter does with it. But Brian has got a brain, and the hammer hasn’t. Maybe he should try to use it. Tiffany waited until the sound of his boots indicated that the sergeant had decided quite correctly that it might be a good idea to have a plausible distance between the cell and himself that evening, and also perhaps a little think about his future. Besides, the Feegles began to appear from every crevice, and they had a wonderful instinct for not getting spotted. ‘You shouldn’t have pick-pocketed his keys,’ she said as Rob Anybody spat out a piece of straw. ‘Aye? He wants to keep you locked up!’ ‘Well, yes, but he’s a decent person.’ She knew that sounded stupid, and Rob Anybody must have known that too. ‘Oh aye, sure, a decent person who will lock you up at the bidding of that snotty old carlin?’ he snarled. ‘And what about that big wee strip o’ dribbling in the white dress? I was reckoning we’d have to build guttering in front of her.’ ‘Was she one o’ them water nymphs?’ said Daft Wullie, but the majority view was that the girl was somehow made of ice and had been melting away. Lower down the steps, a mouse was swimming to safety. Almost without her knowing it, Tiffany’s left hand slid into her pocket and pulled out a piece of string, which was temporarily dropped onto Rob Anybody’s head. The hand went back into her pocket and came back out with one interesting small key she had picked up by the side of the road three weeks ago, an empty packet that had once contained flower seeds, and a small stone with a hole in it. Tiffany always picked up small stones with holes in them, because they were lucky; she kept them in her pocket until the stone wore through the cloth and fell out, leaving only the hole. That was enough to make an emergency shamble, except that you usually needed something alive, of course. The Toad’s dinner of beetles had entirely disappeared, mostly into the Toad, so she picked him up and tied him gently into the pattern, paying no attention to his threats of legal action. ‘I don’t know why you don’t use one of the Feegles,’ he said. ‘They like this sort of thing!’ ‘Yes, but half the time the shamble ends up pointing me to the nearest pub. Now, just hang on, will you?’ The goats carried on chewing as she moved the shamble this way and that, searching for a clue. Letitia had been sorry, deeply damply sorry. And that last set of spill words was a set of words she wasn’t brave enough to say but not quick enough to stop. They were: ‘I didn’t mean it!’ No one knew how a shamble worked. Everybody knew that it did. Perhaps all it did do was make you think. Maybe what it did do was give your eyes something to look at while you thought, and Tiffany thought: Someone else in this building is magical. The shamble twisted, the Toad complained and the silver thread of a conclusion floated across Tiffany’s Second Sight. She turned her eyes towards the ceiling. The silver thread glittered, and she thought: Someone in this building is using magic. Someone who is very sorry that they did. Was it possible that the permanently pale, permanently damp and irrevocably watercolouring Letitia was actually a witch? It seemed unthinkable. Well, there was no sense in wondering what was happening when you could simply go and find out for yourself. It was nice to think that the barons of the Chalk had got along with so many people over the years that they’d forgotten how to lock anybody up. The dungeon had become a goat shed, and the difference between a dungeon and a goat shed is that you don’t need a fire in a goat shed, because goats are pretty good at keeping themselves warm. You do need one in a dungeon, however, if you want to keep your prisoners nice and warm, and if you really don’t like your prisoners then you’ll need a fire to get them nasty and warm. Terminally hot. Granny Aching had told Tiffany once that when she was a girl there had been all kinds of horrible metal things in the dungeon, mostly for taking people apart a little bit at a time, but as it turned out there was never a prisoner bad enough to use them on. And, if it came to that, no one in the castle wanted to use any of the things, which often trapped your fingers if you weren’t careful, so they were all sent down to the blacksmith for turning into more sensible things like shovels and knives, except for the Iron Maiden, which had been used as a turnip clamp until the top fell off. And so, because nobody in the castle had ever been very enthusiastic about the dungeon, everybody had forgotten that it had a chimney. And that is why Tiffany looked up and saw, high above her, that little patch of blue which a prisoner calls the sky, but which she, as soon as it was dark enough, intended to call the exit. It turned out to be a little more tricky to use than she had hoped; it was too narrow for her to go up sitting on the stick, so she had to hang onto the bristles and let the broomstick drag her up while she fended herself off the walls with her boots. At least she knew her way around up there. All the kids did. There probably wasn’t a boy growing up in the Chalk who hadn’t scratched his name in the lead on the roof, quite probably alongside the names of his father, grandfathers, great-grandfathers and even great-great-grandfathers, until the names got lost in the scratches. The whole point about a castle is that nobody should get in if you don’t want them to, and so there were no windows until you got nearly to the top, where the best rooms were. Roland had long ago moved into his father’s room – she knew that because she had helped him move his stuff in when the old Baron had finally accepted that he was too sick to manage the stairs any longer. The Duchess would be in the big guestroom, halfway between that room and the Maiden Tower – which really was its name – where Letitia would be sleeping. No one would draw attention to this, but the arrangement meant that the bride’s mother would be sleeping in the room between the groom and the bride, possibly with her ears highly tuned at all times for any sound of hanky or even panky. Tiffany crept quietly through the gloom and stepped neatly into an alcove when she heard footsteps coming up the stairs. They belonged to a maid, carrying a jug on a tray, which she very nearly spilled when the door to the Duchess’s room was flung open and the Duchess herself was glaring at her, just to check nothing was going on. When the maid moved on again, Tiffany followed her, silently and, as she had the trick of it, invisibly too. The guard sitting by the door looked up hopefully when the tray arrived, and was told sharply to go downstairs and get his own supper; then the maid stepped into the room, the tray was placed beside the big bed, and the maid left, wondering for a moment whether her eyes had been playing tricks on her. Letitia looked as though she was sleeping under freshly fallen snow, and it rather spoiled the effect when you realized that mostly it was screwed-up tissue paper. Used tissue paper, at that. It was very rare indeed on the Chalk, because it was quite expensive, and if you had any, it was not considered bad manners to dry it out in front of the fire for re-use later on. Tiffany’s father said that when he was a little boy he had to blow his nose on mice, but this was probably said in order to make her squeal. Right now, Letitia blew her nose with an unladylike honking noise and, to Tiffany’s surprise, looked suspiciously around the room. She even said, ‘Hello? Is there anybody there?’ – a question which, considered sensibly, is never going to get you anywhere. Tiffany pulled herself further into a shadow. She could sometimes fool Granny Weatherwax on a good day, and a soppy princess had no business sensing her presence. ‘I can scream, you know,’ said Letitia, looking around. ‘There’s a guard right outside my door!’ ‘Actually, he’s gone down to get his dinner,’ said Tiffany, ‘which frankly I call very unprofessional. He should have waited to be relieved by another guard. Personally, I think your mother is more worried about how her guards look than about how they think. Even young Preston guards better than they do. Sometimes people never know he’s there until he taps them on the shoulder. Did you know that people very seldom start screaming while someone is still talking to them? I don’t know why. I suppose it’s because we are brought up to be polite. And if you think you’re going to do so now, I would like to point out that if I was planning to do anything nasty I would have done so already, don’t you think?’ The pause was rather longer than Tiffany liked. Then Letitia said, ‘You have every right to be angry. You are angry, aren’t you?’ ‘Not at the moment. By the way, aren’t you going to drink your milk before it gets cold?’ ‘Actually, I always tip it down the privy. I know that it’s a wicked waste of good food and that there are a lot of poor children who would love a nightcap of warm milk, but they don’t deserve mine because my mother makes the maids put a medicine in it to help me sleep.’ ‘Why?’ said Tiffany incredulously. ‘She thinks I need it. I don’t, really. You have no idea what it’s like. It’s like being in prison.’ ‘Well, I think I know what that’s like now,’ said Tiffany. The girl in the bed started to cry again, and Tiffany hushed her into silence. ‘I didn’t mean it to get that bad,’ said Letitia, blowing her nose like a hunting horn. ‘I just wanted Roland not to like you so much. You can’t imagine what it’s like, being me! The most I’m allowed to do is paint pictures, and only watercolours at that. Not even charcoal sketches!’ ‘I wondered about that,’ said Tiffany absent-mindedly. ‘Roland once used to write to Lord Diver’s daughter, Iodine, and she used to paint watercolours all the time too. I wondered if it was some kind of punishment.’ But Letitia wasn’t listening. ‘You don’t have to just sit and paint pictures. You can fly around all the time,’ she was saying. ‘Order people about, do interesting things. Hah, I wanted to be a witch when I was little. But just my luck, I had long blonde hair and a pale complexion and a very rich father. What good was that? Girls like that can’t be witches!’ Tiffany smiled. They were getting to the truth, and it was important to stay helpful and friendly before the dam broke again and they were all flooded. ‘Did you have a book of fairy stories when you were young?’ Letitia blew her nose again. ‘Oh, yes.’ ‘Was it the one with a very frightening picture of the goblin on page seven by any chance? I used to shut my eyes when I came to that page.’ ‘I scribbled all over him with a black crayon,’ said Letitia in a low voice, as if it was a relief to tell somebody. ‘You didn’t like me. And so you decided to do some magic against me …’ Tiffany said it very quietly, because there was something brittle about Letitia. In fact the girl did reach for some more tissue but appeared to have run out of sobs for a moment – as it turned out, only for a moment. ‘I am so sorry! If only I had known, I would never have—’ ‘Perhaps I should tell you,’ Tiffany went on, ‘that Roland and I were … well, friends. More or less the only friend the other one had. But in a way, it was the wrong kind of friendship. We didn’t come together; things happened that pushed us together. And we didn’t realize that. He was the Baron’s son, and once you know that you’re the Baron’s son and all the kids have been told how to act towards the Baron’s son, then you don’t have many people you can talk to. And then there was me. I was the girl smart enough to be a witch and I have to say that this is not a job which allows you to have that much of a social life. If you like, two people who were left out thought they were the same kind of person. I know that now. Unfortunately Roland was the first to realize that. And that’s the truth of it. I am the witch, and he is the Baron. And you will be the Baroness, and you should not worry if the witch and the Baron – for the benefit of everybody – are on good terms. And that is all there is to is, and in fact there isn’t even an it, just the ghost of an it.’ She saw relief travel across Letitia’s face like the rising sun. ‘And that’s the truth from me, miss, so I would like the truth from you. Look, can we get out of here? I’m afraid that some guards might rush in at any moment and try and put me in a place I can’t get out of.’ Tiffany managed to get Letitia onto the broomstick with her. The girl fidgeted, but simply gasped as the stick sailed down gently from the castle battlements, drifted over the village and touched down in a field. ‘Did you see those bats?’ said Letitia. ‘Oh, they often fly around the stick if you don’t move very fast,’ said Tiffany. ‘You’d think they would avoid it, really. And now, miss, now we’re both far from any help, tell me what you did that made people hate me.’ Panic filled Letitia’s face. ‘No, I’m not going to hurt you,’ said Tiffany. ‘If I was going to, I would have done it a long time ago. But I want to clean up my life. Tell me what you did.’ ‘I used the ostrich trick,’ said Letitia promptly. ‘You know, it’s called unsympathetic magic: you make a model of the person and stick them upside down in a bucket of sand. I really am very, very sorry …’ ‘Yes, you already said so,’ said Tiffany, ‘but I’ve never heard of this trick. I can’t see how it could work. It doesn’t make sense.’ But it worked on me, she thought. This girl isn’t a witch, and whatever she tried wasn’t a real spell, but it worked on me. ‘It doesn’t have to make sense if it’s magic,’ said Letitia hopefully. ‘It has to make some sense somewhere,’ said Tiffany, staring up at the stars that were coming out. ‘Well,’ said Letitia, ‘I got it out of Spells for Lovers by Anathema Bugloss, if that’s any help.’ ‘That’s the one with the picture of the author sitting on a broomstick, isn’t it?’ said Tiffany. ‘Sitting on it the wrong way round, I might add. And it hasn’t got a safety strap. And no witch I’ve ever met wears goggles. And as for having a cat on it with you, that doesn’t bear thinking about. It’s a made-up name too. I’ve seen the book in the Boffo catalogue. It’s rubbish. It’s for soppy girls who think all you need to do to make magic is buy a very expensive stick with a semiprecious stone glued on the end, no offence meant. You might as well pick a stick out of the hedge and call it a wand.’ Without saying anything, Letitia walked a little way down to the hedge that lay between the field and the road. There’s always a useful stick under a hedge if you poke around enough. She waved it vaguely in the air, and it left a light blue line after it. ‘Like this?’ she said. For quite a while, there was no sound apart from the occasional hoot of an owl and, for the really good of hearing, the rustling of the bats. ‘I think it’s time we had a proper little chat, don’t you?’ said Tiffany. Chapter 11 THE BONFIRE OF THE WITCHES ‘I TOLD YOU I ALWAYSwanted to be a witch,’ said Letitia. ‘You don’t know how hard that can be when your family lives in a great big mansion and is so old that the coat of arms has even got a few legs on it as well. All that gets in the way and, if you excuse me, I really wish that I had been born with your disadvantages. I only found out about the Boffo catalogue when I heard two of the maids giggling over it when I went into the kitchen one day. They ran away, still giggling, I might add, but they left it behind. I can’t order as much stuff as I would want to, because my maid spies on me and tells Mother. But the cook is a decent sort, so I give her money and the catalogue numbers and they get delivered to her sister in Ham-on-Rye. I can’t order anything very big, though, because the maids are always dusting and cleaning everywhere. I would really like one of the cauldrons that bubble green, but from what you tell me it’s just a joke.’ Letitia had taken a couple of other sticks from the hedge and stuck them in the ground in front of her. There was a blue glow on the tip of each one. ‘Well, for everybody else it’s a joke,’ Tiffany said, ‘but for you I expect it would produce fried chickens.’ ‘Do you really think so?’ said Letitia eagerly. ‘I’m not sure I can think at all if I am upside down with my head in a bucket of sand,’ said Tiffany. ‘You know that sounds a bit like wizard magic. This trick … it was in Mistress Bugloss’s book, you say. Look, I’m sorry, but that really is boffo stuff. It’s not real. It’s just for people who think that witchcraft is all about flowers and love potions and dancing around without your drawers on – something I can’t imagine any real witch doing …’ Tiffany hesitated, because she was naturally honest, and went on, ‘Well, maybe Nanny Ogg, when the mood takes her. It’s witchcraft with all the crusts cut off, and real witchcraft is all crusts. But you took one of her silly spells for giggling housemaids and used it on me and it’s worked! Is there a real witch in your family?’ Letitia shook her head and her long blonde hair sparkled even in the moonlight. ‘I’ve never heard of one. My grandfather was an alchemist – not professionally, of course. He was the reason why the hall has no east wing any more. My mother … I can’t imagine her doing magic, can you?’ ‘Her? Absolutely!’ ‘Well, I’ve never seen her do any and she does mean well. She says that all she wants is the best for me. She lost all her family in a fire, don’t you know. Lost everything,’ said Letitia. Tiffany couldn’t dislike the girl. It would be like disliking a rather baffled puppy, but she couldn’t help saying, ‘And did you mean well? You know, when you made a model of me and put it upside down in a bucket of sand?’ There must have been reservoirs in Letitia. She was never more than a teacup away from a tear. ‘Look,’ Tiffany said, ‘I don’t mind, honestly. Though frankly I wish I believed that it was just a spell! Just take it out again then, and we can forget all about it. Please don’t start crying again, it makes everything so soggy.’ Letitia sniffed. ‘Oh, it’s just that, well, I didn’t do it here. I left it at home. It’s in the library.’ The last word in that sentence tinkled in Tiffany’s head. ‘A library? With books?’ Witches were not supposed to be particularly bothered about books, but Tiffany had read every one she could. You never knew what you could get out of a book. ‘It’s a very warm night for the time of year,’ she said, ‘and your place is not too far, is it? You could be back in the tower and in bed in a couple of hours.’ For the first time since Tiffany had met her, Letitia smiled, genuinely smiled. ‘Can I go on the front this time then?’ she said. Tiffany flew low over the downs. The moon was well on the way to full, and it was a real harvest moon, the copper colour of blood. That was the smoke from the stubble-burning, hanging in the air. How the blue smoke from burning wheat stalks made the moon go red, she didn’t know, and she wasn’t going to fly all that way to find out. And Letitia seemed to be in some kind of personal heaven. She chattered the whole time, which was admittedly better than the sobbing. The girl was only eight days younger than herself. Tiffany knew that, because she had taken great care to find out. But that was just numbers. It didn’t feel like that. In fact she felt old enough to be the girl’s mother. It was strange, but Petulia and Annagramma and the rest of them back in the mountains had all told her the same thing: witches grew old inside. You had to do things that needed doing but which turned your stomach like a spinning wheel. You saw things sometimes that no one should have to see. And, usually alone and often in darkness, you needed to do the things that had to be done. Out in distant villages, when a new mother was giving birth and things had run into serious trouble, you hoped that there was an old local midwife who might at least give you some moral support; but still, when it came down to it and the life-or-death decision had to be made, then it was made by you, because you were the witch. And sometimes it wasn’t a decision between a good thing and a bad thing, but a decision between two bad things: no right choices, just … choices. And now she saw something speeding over the moonlit turf and easily keeping up with the stick. It kept pace for several minutes and then, with a spinning jump, headed back into the moon-light shadows. The hare runs into the fire, Tiffany thought, and I have a feeling that I do too. Keepsake Hall was at the far end of the Chalk, and it was truly the far end of the Chalk because there the chalk gave way to clay and gravel. There was parkland here, and tall trees – forests of them – and fountains in front of the house itself, which stretched the word ‘hall’ to breaking point, since it looked like half a dozen mansions stuck together. There were outbuildings, wings, a large ornamental lake, and a weathervane in the shape of a heron, which Tiffany nearly ran into. ‘How many people live here?’ she managed to say as she steadied the stick and landed on what she had expected to be a lawn but turned out to be dried grass almost five feet deep. Rabbits scattered, alarmed at the aerial intrusion. ‘Just me and Mother now,’ said Letitia, the dead grass crackling under her feet as she jumped down, ‘and the servants, of course. We have quite a lot of them. Don’t worry, they will all be in bed by now.’ ‘How many servants do you need for two people?’ Tiffany asked. ‘About two hundred and fifty.’ ‘I don’t believe you.’ Letitia turned as she led the way to a distant door. ‘Well, including families, there’s about forty on the farm and another twenty in the dairy, and another twenty-four for working in the woodlands, and seventy-five for the gardens, which include the banana house, the pineapple pit, the melon house, the water-lily house and the trout fishery. The rest work in the house and the pension rooms.’ ‘What are they?’ Letitia stopped with her hand on the corroded brass doorknob. ‘You think my mother is a very rude and bossy person, don’t you?’ Tiffany couldn’t see any alternative to telling the truth, even at the risk of midnight tears. She said, ‘Yes, I do.’ ‘And you are right,’ said Letitia, turning the doorknob. ‘But she is loyal to people who are loyal to us. We always have been. No one is ever sacked for being too old or too ill or too confused. If they can’t manage in their cottages, they live in one of the wings. In fact, most of the servants are looking after the old servants! We may be oldfashioned and a bit snobbish and behind the times, but no one who works for the Keepsakes will ever need to beg for their food at the end of their life.’ At last the cranky doorknob turned, opening into a long corridor that smelled of … that smelled of … that smelled of old. That was the only way to describe it, but if you had enough time to think, you would say it was a mix of dry fungi, damp wood, dust, mice, dead time and old books, which have an intriguing smell of their own. That was it, Tiffany decided. Days and hours had died quietly in here while nobody noticed. Letitia fumbled on a shelf inside the door, and lit a lamp. ‘No one ever comes in here these days except me,’ she said, ‘because it’s haunted.’ ‘Yes,’ said Tiffany, trying to keep her voice matter-of-fact. ‘By a headless lady with a pumpkin under her arm. She is walking towards us right now.’ Had she expected shock? Or tears? Tiffany certainly hadn’t expected Letitia to say, ‘That would be Mavis. I shall have to change her pumpkin as soon as the new ones are ripe. They start to get all, well, manky after a while.’ She raised her voice. ‘It’s only me, Mavis, nothing to be frightened of!’ With a sound like a sigh, the headless woman turned and began to walk back up the corridor. ‘The pumpkin was my idea,’ Letitia continued chattily. ‘She was just impossible to deal with before that. Looking for her head, you know? The pumpkin gives her some comfort, and frankly I don’t think she knows the difference, poor soul. She wasn’t executed, by the way. I think she wants everybody to know that. It was simply a freak accident involving a flight of stairs, a cat and a scythe.’ And this is the girl who spends all her time in tears, thought Tiffany. But this is her place. Aloud, she said, ‘Any more ghosts to show me, just in case I want to wet myself again?’ ‘Well, not now,’ said Letitia, setting off along the corridor. ‘The screaming skeleton stopped screaming when I gave him an old teddy bear, although I’m not certain why that worked and, oh yes, the ghost of the first duke now sticks to haunting the lavatory next to the dining room, which we don’t use very often. He has a habit of pulling the chain at inconvenient moments, but that’s better than the rains of blood we used to have.’ ‘You are a witch.’ The words came out of Tiffany’s mouth all by themselves, unable to stay in the privacy of her mind. The girl looked at her in astonishment. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘We both know how it goes, don’t we? Long blonde hair, milk-white skin, noble – well, a reasonably noble birth – and rich, at least technically. I’m officially a lady.’ ‘You know,’ said Tiffany, ‘maybe it’s wrong to base one’s future on a book of fairy stories. Normally, girls of the princess persuasion don’t help out distressed headless ghosts by giving them a pumpkin to carry. As for stopping the screaming skeleton screaming by giving it a teddy bear, I have to say I am impressed. That is what Granny Weatherwax calls headology. Most of the craft is headology, when you get right down to it: headology and boffo.’ Letitia looked flustered and gratified at the same time, making her face blotch white and pink. It was, Tiffany had to agree, the kind of face that peered out of tower windows, waiting for a knight with nothing better to do with his time than save its owner from dragons, monsters and, if all else failed, boredom. ‘You don’t have to do anything about it,’ Tiffany added. ‘The pointy hat is optional. But if Miss Tick was here, she would definitely suggest a career. It is not good to be a witch alone.’ They had reached the end of the corridor. Letitia turned another creaky doorknob, which complained as the door opened, and so did the door. ‘I’ve certainly found that out,’ said Letitia. ‘And Miss Tick is … ?’ ‘She travels around the country finding girls who have the talent for the craft,’ said Tiffany. ‘They say that you don’t find witchcraft, it finds you, and generally it’s Miss Tick who taps you on the shoulder. She’s a witchfinder, but I don’t suppose she goes into many big houses. They make witches nervous. Oh my!’ And this was because Letitia had lit an oil lamp. The room was full of bookcases, and the books on them gleamed. These weren’t cheap modern books; these were books bound in leather, and not just leather, but leather from clever cows who had given their lives for literature after a happy existence in the very best pastures. The books gleamed as Letitia moved around the large room lighting other lamps. She hauled them up towards the ceiling on their long chains, which swung gently as she pulled so that the shine from the books mixed with the gleam from the brasswork until the room seemed to be full of rich, ripe gold. Letitia was clearly pleased by the way Tiffany stood and stared. ‘My great-grandfather was a huge collector,’ she said. ‘Do you see all the polished brass? That’s not for show, that’s for the point-three-0-three bookworm, which can move so fast that it can bore a hole all the way through an entire shelf of books in a fraction of a second. Hah, but not when they run into solid brass at the speed of sound! The library used to be bigger, but my uncle Charlie ran away with all the books on … I think it was called erotica? I’m not sure, but I can’t find it on any map. I may be the only one who comes in here now, anyway. Mother thinks that reading makes people restless. Pardon me, but why are you sniffing? I hope another mouse hasn’t died in here.’ There is something very wrong about this place, thought Tiffany. Something … strained … straining. Maybe it’s all the knowledge in the books, just bursting to get out. She had heard talk of the library at Unseen University – of the soulful books all pressed together in space and time so that at night, it was said, they spoke to one another and a kind of lightning flashed from book to book. Too many books in one place, who knew what they could do? Miss Tick had told her one day: ‘Knowledge is power, power is energy, energy is matter, matter is mass, and mass changes time and space.’ But Letitia looked so happy among the shelves and desks that Tiffany hadn’t got the heart to object. The girl beckoned her over. ‘And this is where I do my little bits of magic,’ she said, as if she was telling Tiffany this was where she played with her dollies. Tiffany was sweating now; all the little hairs on her skin were trembling, a signal to herself that she should turn and run, but Letitia was chattering away, quite oblivious to the fact that Tiffany was trying not to throw up. His stink was terrible. It rose in the cheery library like a long-dead whale rising again to the surface, full of gas and corruption. Tiffany looked around desperately for something to take her mind off that image. Mrs Proust and Derek had certainly benefited from Letitia Keepsake. She had bought the whole range, warts and all. ‘But I only use warts at the moment. I think they have the right feel, without going overboard, don’t you?’ she was saying. ‘I’ve never bothered with them,’ said Tiffany weakly. Letitia sniffed. ‘Oh dear, I am so sorry about the smell; it’s the mice, I think. They eat the glue out of the books, although I’d say that they must have found a particularly unpleasant book.’ The library was really beginning to upset Tiffany. It was like, well, waking up and finding a family of tigers had wandered in during the night and were fast asleep on the end of the bed: everything was peaceful at the moment, but at any minute now, somebody was going to lose an arm. There was the Boffo stuff, which was sort of witchcraft-for-show. It impressed people, and maybe helped a novice get into the mood, but surely Mrs Proust wasn’t sending out stuff that actually worked, was she? There was a clank of a bucket handle behind her as Letitia came round a bookcase, holding the bucket in both hands. Sand tipped out of it as she dropped it on the floor and she scrabbled in it for a moment. ‘Ah, there you are,’ she said, pulling out something that looked like a carrot which had been chewed by a mouse that wasn’t really very hungry. ‘Is that supposed to be me?’ said Tiffany. ‘I’m afraid I’m not very good at woodcarving,’ said Letitia, ‘but the book says it’s what you’re thinking that counts?’ It was a nervous statement with a wiry little question clinging to the end of it, waiting to burst into tears. ‘Sorry,’ said Tiffany. ‘The book has got that wrong. It’s not as nice as that. It’s what you do that counts. If you want to put a hex on someone, you need something that has belonged to them – hair, a tooth maybe? And you shouldn’t mess about with it, because it’s not nice and it’s very easy to get wrong.’ She looked closely at the very badly carved witch. ‘And I see you’ve written the word “witch” on it in pencil. Er … you know I said it’s easy to get it wrong? Well, there are times when “getting it wrong” just doesn’t cover messing up somebody else’s life.’ Her lower lip trembling, Letitia nodded. The pressure on Tiffany’s head was getting worse and the horrible stench was now so powerful that it felt like a physical thing. She tried to concentrate on the little pile of books on the library table. They were sad little volumes, of the sort that Nanny Ogg, who could be uncharacteristically scathing when she felt like it, called ‘Tiddly Twinkle-Poo’ for girls who played at being witches for fun. But at least Letitia had been thorough; there were a couple of notebooks on the lectern which dominated the table. Tiffany turned to say something to the girl, but somehow her head did not want to stay turned. Her Second Sight was dragging it back. And her hand rose slowly, almost automatically, and moved aside the little pile of silly books. What she had thought was the top of the lectern was in fact a much larger book, so thick and dark it seemed to merge with the wood itself. Dread trickled into her brain like black syrup, telling her to run and … No, that was all. Just run, and go on running, and not stop. Ever. She tried to keep her voice level. ‘Do you know anything about this book?’ Letitia looked over her shoulder. ‘It’s very ancient. I don’t even recognize the writing. Wonderful binding, though, and the funny thing is, it’s always slightly warm.’ Here and now, thought Tiffany, it’s facing me here and now. Eskarina said that there was a book of his. Could this possibly be a copy? But a book can’t hurt, can it? Except that books contain ideas, and ideas can be dangerous. At this point, the book on the lectern opened itself with a leathery creak and a little flap noise as the cover turned over. The pages rustled like a lot of pigeons taking flight, and then there it was, one page filling the midnight room with brilliant, eye-watering sun-light. And in that sunlight, running towards her, across the scorching desert, was a figure in black … Automatically, Tiffany slammed the book shut and held it shut in both hands, clutching it like a schoolgirl. He saw me, she thought. I know he did. The book jumped in her arms as something heavy hit it, and she could hear … words, words she was glad she couldn’t understand. Another blow struck the book, and the cover bulged, nearly knocking her over. When the next thump came, she fell forward, landing with the cover under her and all her weight on the book. Fire, she thought. He hates fire! But I don’t think I could carry this very far and, well, you don’t set fire to libraries, you just don’t. And besides, this whole place is as dry as a bone. ‘Is something trying to get out of the book?’ said Letitia. Tiffany looked up at her pink and white face. ‘Yes,’ she managed, and slammed the book down on the table as it jumped again in her arms. ‘It’s not going to be like that goblin in the fairytale book, is it? I was always so scared that it would squeeze itself out between the pages.’ The book sprang up into the air and slammed back down again on the table, knocking the wind out of Tiffany. She managed to grunt, ‘I think this is a lot worse than the goblin!’ Which was our goblin, she remembered inconveniently. They had the same book, after all. It wasn’t a good book in many respects, but then you grow up and it’s just a silly picture, but part of you never forgets. It seemed to be something that happened to everybody. When she had mentioned to Petulia about being frightened by a picture in a book, the girl confessed that she had been hugely frightened by a happy-looking skeleton in a picture book when she was young. And it turned out all the other girls remembered something like that too. It was as if it was a fact of life. A book would start out by scaring you. ‘I think I know what to do,’ said Letitia. ‘Can you keep it occupied for a while? I won’t be a moment.’ And with that she disappeared from view, and after a few seconds Tiffany, still straining to keep the book closed, heard a squeaking noise. She did not take much notice, because her arms, clinging tightly to the bouncing book, felt redhot. Then, behind her, Letitia said quietly, ‘Look, I’m going to guide you to the book press. When I say so, push the book in and get your hands out of the way really, really quickly. It is quite important that you do it quickly!’ Tiffany felt the girl help her turn, and together they edged along to something metallic waiting in the gloom, while all the time the book rocked with anger and thumped on her chest; it was like holding an elephant’s heart while it was still beating. She hardly heard Letitia’s voice above the pounding as she shouted, ‘Put the book down on the metal plate, push it a little way forward and get your fingers out of the way – right now!’ Something spun. In one pants-wetting moment Tiffany saw a hand thrust its way through the book’s cover before a metal plate slammed down on it, clipping the ends of Tiffany’s fingernails. ‘Help me with this bar, will you? Let’s tighten it down as far as we can.’ That was from Letitia, who was leaning on … what? ‘It’s the old book press,’ she said. ‘My grandfather used to use it all the time when he was tidying up old books that got damaged. It helps when you have to glue a page back in, for example. We hardly use it except at Hogswatch. Very good for the precision cracking of walnuts, you see? Just wind the handle until you hear them start to crack. They look like tiny little human brains.’ Tiffany risked a look at the press, the top and bottom plates of which were now pressed tightly together, to see if any human brains were dripping down the outside. They weren’t, but it didn’t help very much at this point, as a small human skeleton walked out of the wall, through the library shelves as though they were smoke, and disappeared. It had been holding a teddy bear. It was one of those things that the brain files under ‘something I would rather not have seen’. ‘Was that some kind of ghost?’ said Letitia. ‘Not the skeleton – I told you about him, didn’t I? Poor little thing. I mean, the other one. The one in the book …’ ‘He is, well, I suppose you could say that he is something like a disease, and also something like a nightmare that turns out to be standing in your bedroom when you wake up. And I think you may have called him. Summoned him, if you like.’ ‘I don’t like either of those! All I did was a simple little spell out of a book that cost one dollar! All right, I know I must’ve been a silly girl, but I didn’t mean anything like … that!’ She pointed to the press, which was still creaking. ‘Stupid woman,’ said Tiffany. Letitia blinked. ‘What did you say?’ ‘Stupid woman! Or silly woman, if you prefer. You’re going to get married in a few days, remember? And you tried to do a spell on somebody out of jealousy. Did you see the title of that book? I did. It was right in front of me! It was The Bonfire of the Witches! It was dictated by an Omnian priest who was so mad that he wouldn’t have been able to see sanity with a telescope. And you know what? Books live. The pages remember! Have you heard about the library at the Unseen University? They have books in there that have to be chained down, or kept in darkness or even under water! And you, miss, played at magic a matter of inches away from a book that boils with evil, vindictive magic. No wonder you got a result! I woke him up and ever since then he’s been searching, hunting me. And you – with your little spell – have shown him where I was! You helped him! He’s come back, and he’s found me now! The witch-burner. And he is infectious, just as I told you, a kind of disease.’ She paused for breath, which came, and the torrent of tears, which didn’t. Letitia just stood there as if she was thinking deeply. Then she said, ‘I suppose that “sorry” isn’t enough, right?’ ‘As a matter of fact, it would be rather a good start,’ said Tiffany, but she thought: This young woman, who has never realized it’s time to stop wearing girly dresses, gave a headless ghost a pumpkin to carry under its arm so that it would feel better and presented a screaming little skeleton with a teddy bear. Would I have thought to do that? It’s absolutely something that a witch would do. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘you have definitely got some magical talent, I really mean it. But you’ll get into a terrible amount of trouble if you start mucking about when you don’t know what you are doing. Although giving the teddy bear to the poor little skeleton was a stroke of genius. Build on that thought and get some training, and you might have quite a magical future. You will have to go and spend some time with an old witch, just like I did.’ ‘Well, that’s wonderful, Tiffany,’ Letitia said. ‘But I have to go and spend some time getting married! Shall we get back now? And what do you suggest we do with the book? I don’t like the idea of him being in there. Supposing he gets out!’ ‘He is out, already. But the book is … well, a kind of window that makes it easy for him to come through. To reach me. You get that sort of thing occasionally. It’s a sort of way into another world, or perhaps somewhere else in this world.’ Tiffany had felt rather lofty when she explained this, and so was somewhat chastened when Letitia said, ‘Oh yes, the bluebell wood with the cottage that sometimes has smoke coming out of the chimney and sometimes does not; and the girl feeding the ducks on the pond, where the pigeons on the house behind her are sometimes flying and sometimes perched. They are mentioned in H.J. Toadbinder’s book Floating Worlds. Would you like it? I know where it is.’ And before Tiffany could say a word, the girl hurried off among the bookshelves. She came back within a minute, much to Tiffany’s relief, and she was carrying a large, shiny leather volume which was suddenly dropped into Tiffany’s hands. ‘It’s a present. You’ve been kinder to me than I was to you.’ ‘You can’t give me that! It’s part of the library! It’ll leave a gap!’ ‘No, I insist,’ said Letitia. ‘I’m the only one who comes in here now, in any case. My mother keeps all the books of family history, genealogy and heraldry in her own room, and she’s the only one who is interested in them. Apart from me, the only other person who ever comes in here these days is Mr Tyler, and I think I hear him now, making his last round of the night. Well,’ she added, ‘he’s very old and very slow and it takes him about a week to go about his night watching, bearing in mind he sleeps through the day. Let’s go. He’ll have a heart attack if he actually finds anybody.’ There was indeed a creaking sound of a distant doorknob. Letitia lowered her voice. ‘Do you mind if we sneak out the other way? He might have a nasty turn if he actually discovers anybody.’ A light was coming down the long corridor, although you needed to watch it for quite some time to see that it was moving. Letitia opened the door to the outer world and they hurried onto what would have been the lawn if anyone had mown it in the past ten years. Tiffany got the impression that lawn mowing here went at the same decrepit speed as Mr Tyler. There was dew on the grass, and a certain sense that daylight was a distinct possibility sometime in the future. As soon as they reached the broomstick, Letitia made yet another muttered apology and hurried back into the sleeping house via another door, coming out again five minutes later carrying a large bag. ‘My mourning clothes,’ she said as the broomstick rose into the soft air. ‘It will be the old Baron’s funeral tomorrow, the poor man. My mother always travels with her funeral clothes. She says you never know when someone is going to drop down dead.’ ‘That is a very interesting point of view, Letitia, but when you get back to the castle I would like you to tell Roland what you did, please. I don’t care about anything else, but please tell him about the spell you did.’ Tiffany waited. Letitia was sitting behind her and, right now, silent. Very silent. So much silence that you could hear it. Tiffany spent the time looking at the landscape as it wound past. Here and there smoke rose from kitchen fires, even though the sun was still below the horizon. Generally speaking, women in the villages raced to be the first to show smoke; it proved you were a busy housewife. She sighed. The thing about the broomstick was that when you rode it you looked down on people. You couldn’t help it, however much you tried. Human beings seemed to be nothing but a lot of scurrying dots. And when you started thinking like that, it was time you found the company of some other witches, to get your head straight. You shall not be a witch alone, the saying went. It wasn’t so much advice as a demand. Behind her, Letitia said, in a voice that sounded as though she had weighed out every word very carefully before deciding to speak, ‘Why aren’t you angrier with me?’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘You know! After what I did! You are just being dreadfully … nice!’ Tiffany was glad the girl couldn’t see her face and for that matter, she couldn’t see hers. ‘Witches don’t often get angry. All that shouting business never really gets anybody anywhere.’ After another pause Letitia said, ‘If that is true, then maybe I’m not cut out to be a witch. I feel very angry sometimes.’ ‘Oh, I feel very angry a lot of the time,’ said Tiffany, ‘but I just put it away somewhere until I can do something useful with it. That’s the thing about witchcraft – and wizardry, come to that. We don’t do much magic at the best of times, and when we do, we generally do it on ourselves. Now, look, the castle’s right ahead. I’ll drop you off on the roof, and frankly I’m looking forward to seeing how comfortable the straw is going to be.’ ‘Look, I really am very, very—’ ‘I know. You said. There’s no hard feelings, but you have to clear up your own mess. That’s another part of witchcraft, that is.’ And she added to herself: And don’t I know it! Chapter 12 THE SIN O’ SINS THE STRAW TURNED out to be comfortable enough; little cottages usually do not have spare rooms, so a witch there on business, such as the birthing of a child, was lucky to get a bed in the cowshed. Very lucky, in fact. It often smelled better, and Tiffany wasn’t alone in thinking that the breath of a cow, warm and smelling of grass, was a kind of medicine in itself. The goats in the dungeon were nearly as good, though. They sat placidly chewing their supper over and over again, while never taking their solemn gaze off her, as if they expected her to start juggling or doing some kind of song-and-dance act. Her last thought before falling asleep was that somebody must have given them the feed, and must therefore have noticed that the dungeon was minus one prisoner. In that case, she was in more trouble, but it was hard to see how much more trouble she could be in. Possibly not that much, it seemed, because when she woke again, just an hour or so later, somebody had put a cover over her while she was asleep. What was happening? She found out when Preston appeared with a tray of eggs and bacon, the eggs and bacon being slightly coffee-flavoured on account of slopping on their way down the long stone staircase. ‘His lordship says it is with his compliments and apologies,’ said Preston, grinning, ‘and I’m to tell you that if you would like it, he could arrange for a hot bath to be waiting for you in the black-and-white chamber. And when you’re ready, the Baron … the new Baron would like to see you in his study.’ The idea of a bath sounded wonderful, but Tiffany knew that there just wouldn’t be any time, and besides, even a halfway useful bath meant that some poor girls had to drag a load of heavy buckets up four or five flights of stone stairs. She would have to make do with a quick swill out of a wash basin when the opportunity arose26. But she was certainly ready for the bacon and eggs. She made a mental note, as she wiped the plate, that if this was going to be a ‘be nice to Tiffany day’, she might try for another helping later on. Witches liked to make the most of gratitude while it was still warm. People tended to become a little bit forgetful after a day or so. Preston watched with the expression of a boy who had eaten salt porridge for breakfast, and when she had finished said, carefully, ‘And now will you go and see the Baron?’ He is concerned for me, Tiffany thought. ‘First, I’d like to go and see the old Baron,’ she said. ‘He’s still dead,’ Preston volunteered, looking worried. ‘Well, that’s some comfort anyway,’ said Tiffany. ‘Imagine the embarrassment otherwise.’ She smiled at Preston’s puzzlement. ‘And his funeral is tomorrow and that’s why I should see him today, Preston, and right now. Please? Right now, he is more important than his son.’ Tiffany felt people’s eyes on her as she strode towards the crypt with Preston almost running to keep up and clattering down the long steps after her. She felt a bit sorry for him, because he had always been kind and respectful, but no one was to think that she was being led anywhere by a guard. There had been enough of that. The looks that people gave her seemed rather more frightened than angry, and she didn’t know if this was a good sign or not. At the bottom of the steps she took a deep breath. There was just the usual smell of the crypt, chilly with a hint of potatoes. She smiled a little smile of self-congratulation. And there was the Baron, lying peacefully just as she had left him, with his hands crossed on his chest, looking for all the world as though he was sleeping. ‘They thought I was doing witchcraft down here, didn’t they, Preston?’ she said. ‘There was some gossip, yes, miss.’ ‘Well, I was. Your granny taught you about the care of the dead, right? So you know it’s not right for the dead to be too long in the land of the living. The weather is warm, and the summer has been hot, and the stones that could be as chilly as the grave are not as chilly as all that. So, Preston, go and get me two pails of water, please.’ She sat quietly by the side of the slab as he scurried away. Earth and salt and two coins for the ferryman, those were the things that you gave to the dead, and you watched and listened like the mother of a newborn baby … Preston came back, carrying two large pails with – she was pleased to see – only a limited amount of slopping. He put them down quickly and turned to go. ‘No, stay here, Preston,’ she commanded. ‘I want you to see what I do, so that if anyone asks, you can tell them the truth.’ The guard nodded mutely. She was impressed. She placed one of the buckets beside the slab and knelt down by it, put one hand in the chilly bucket, pressed the other hand against the stone of the slab and whispered to herself, ‘Balance is everything.’ Anger helped. It was amazing how useful it could be, if you saved it up until it could do some good, just as she had told Letitia. She heard the young guard gasp as the water in the bucket began to steam, and then to bubble. He jumped to his feet. ‘I understand, miss! I’ll take the boiling bucket away and bring you another cold one, yes?’ Three buckets of boiling water had been tipped away by the time the air in the crypt once again had the chill of the midwinter. Tiffany walked up the steps with her teeth very nearly chattering. ‘My granny would have loved to be able to do something like that,’ Preston whispered. ‘She always said the dead don’t like the heat. You put cold into the stone, right?’ ‘Actually, I moved heat out of the slab and the air and put it in the bucket of water,’ said Tiffany. ‘It’s not exactly magic. It’s just a … a skill. You just have to be a witch to do it, that’s all.’ Preston sighed. ‘I cured my granny’s chickens of fowl crop. I had to cut them open to clean up the mess, and then I sewed them up again. Not one of them died. And then when my mum’s dog got run over by a wagon, I cleaned him up, pushed all the bits back and he ended up right as rain except for the leg I couldn’t save, but I carved him a wooden one, with a leather harness and everything, and he still chases wagons!’ Tiffany tried not to look doubtful. ‘Cutting into chickens to cure fowl crop hardly ever works,’ she said. ‘I know a pig witch who treats chickens when necessary, and she said it never worked for her.’ ‘Ah, but maybe she didn’t have the knowin’ of twister root,’ said Preston cheerfully. ‘If you mix the juice with a little pennyroyal, they heal really well. My granny had the knowing of the roots and she passed it on to me.’ ‘Well,’ said Tiffany, ‘if you can sew up a chicken’s gizzard then you could mend a broken heart. Listen, Preston, why don’t you get yourself apprenticed to be a doctor?’ They had reached the door to the Baron’s study. Preston knocked on it and then opened it for Tiffany. ‘It’s them letters you get to put after your name,’ he whispered. ‘They are very expensive letters! It might not cost money to become a witch, miss, but when you need them letters, oh, don’t you need that money!’ Roland was standing facing the door when Tiffany stepped in, and his mouth was full of spill words, tumbling over themselves not to be said. He did manage to say, ‘Er, Miss Aching … I mean, Tiffany, my fiancée assures me that we are all the victim of a magical plot aimed at your good self. I do hope you will forgive any misunderstanding on our part, and I trust that we have not inconvenienced you too much, and may I add that I take some heart from the fact that you were clearly able to escape from our little dungeon. Er …’ Tiffany wanted to shout, ‘Roland, do you remember that we first met when I was four years old and you were seven, running around in the dust with only our vests on? I liked you better when you didn’t talk like some old lawyer with a broomstick stuck up his bum. You sound as if you are addressing a public meeting.’ But instead, she said, ‘Did Letitia tell you everything?’ Roland looked sheepish. ‘I rather suspect that she did not, Tiffany, but she was very forthright. I may go so far as to say that she was emphatic.’ Tiffany tried not to smile. He looked like a man who was beginning to understand some of the facts of married life. He cleared his throat. ‘She tells me that we have been a victim of some kind of magical disease, which is currently trapped inside a book in Keepsake Hall?’ It certainly sounded like a question, and she wasn’t surprised he was puzzled. ‘Yes, that’s true.’ ‘And … apparently, everything is all right now she has taken your head out of a bucket of sand.’ He looked truly lost at this point, and Tiffany didn’t blame him. ‘I think things may have got a bit garbled,’ she said diplomatically. ‘And she tells me she is going to be a witch.’ He looked a little miserable at this point. Tiffany felt sorry for him, but not very much. ‘Well, I think she’s got the basic talent. It’s up to her how much further she wants to take it.’ ‘I don’t know what her mother will say.’ Tiffany burst out laughing. ‘Well, you can tell the Duchess that Queen Magrat of Lancre is a witch. It’s no secret. Obviously the queening has to come first, but she is one of the best there is when it comes to potions.’ ‘Really? ‘ said Roland. ‘The King and Queen of Lancre have graciously accepted an invitation to our wedding.’ And Tiffany was sure she could see his mind working. In this strange chess game that was nobility, a real live queen beat just about everybody, which meant that the Duchess would have to curtsy until her knees clicked. She saw the spill words: That would of course be very unfortunate. Amazingly, Roland could be careful even with his spill words. However, he couldn’t stop the little grin. ‘Your father gave me fifteen Ankh-Morpork dollars in real gold. It was a gift. Do you believe me?’ He saw the look in her eye, and said, ‘Yes!’ immediately. ‘Good,’ said Tiffany. ‘Then find out where the nurse went.’ Some small part of broomstick might still have been in Roland’s bum when he said, ‘Do you think my father understood the full worth of what he was giving you?’ ‘His mind was as clear as water up until the end, you know that. You can trust him, just as you can trust me, and you can trust me now when I say to you that I will marry you.’ Her hand clamped itself over her mouth just too late. Where had that come from? And he looked as shocked as she felt. He spoke first, loudly and firmly to drive away the silence. ‘I didn’t quite hear what you just said, Tiffany … I expect all your hard work in recent days has overwhelmed your sensibilities in some way. I think we would all be a lot happier if we knew that you are having a good rest. I … love Letitia, you know. She is not very, well, complicated, but I would do anything for her. When she is happy, that makes me happy. And generally speaking, I am not very good at happy.’ She saw a tear trickle down his face and, unable to stop herself, handed him a reasonably clean handkerchief. He took it and tried to blow his nose, laugh and cry all at the same time. ‘And you, Tiffany, I am very fond of, really fond of … but it’s as if you have a handkerchief for the whole world. You are smart. No, don’t shake your head. You are smart. I remember once, when we were younger, you were fascinated by the word “onomatopoeia”. Like making a name or a word from a sound, like cuckoo or hum or … ?’ ‘Jangle?’ said Tiffany, before she could stop herself. ‘That’s right, and I remember that you said “humdrum” was the sound that boredom made, because it sounded like a very tired fly buzzing at the closed window of an old attic room on a boiling hot summer’s day. And I thought, I couldn’t understand that! It makes no sense to me, and I know you are clever and it makes sense to you. I think you need a special kind of head to think like that. And a special kind of clever. And I haven’t got that kind of head.’ ‘What sound does kindness make?’ said Tiffany. ‘I know what kindness is, but I can’t imagine it making a noise. There you go again! I just don’t have the head that lives in a world where kindness has its own sound. I have a head that lives in a world where two and two makes four. It must be very interesting, and I envy you like hell. But I think I understand Letitia. Letitia is uncomplicated, if you see what I mean.’ A girl who once exorcized a noisy ghost from the privy as if it was just another chore, Tiffany thought. Well, good luck with that one, sir. But she didn’t say it out loud. Instead, she said, ‘I think you have made a very wise match, Roland.’ To her surprise, he looked relieved, and went behind his desk again as a soldier might hide behind the battlements. ‘This afternoon, some of the more distant guests will be arriving here for the funeral tomorrow, and indeed some will be staying on for the wedding. Fortuitously’ – that was another little piece of broom handle – ‘Pastor Egg is passing through on the circuit, and has kindly agreed to say a few good words over my father, and he will remain with us as our guest to officiate at the wedding. He is a member of a modern Omnian sect. My future mother-in-law approves of the Omnians but, regrettably, not of this sect, so that is all a little strained.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Moreover, I understand he is fresh from the city, and as you know, city preachers don’t always do well here.27 ‘I would deem it a great favour, Tiffany, if you can help in any way to prevent any little difficulties and disturbances, especially those of an occult nature, in the trying days to come. Please? There are enough stories already going about.’ Tiffany was still blushing after her outburst. She nodded and managed to say, ‘Look, about what I just said back then, I didn’t—’ She stopped, because Roland had raised a hand. ‘This is a bewildering time for all of us. There’s a reason for all the superstitions. The time around weddings and funerals is fraught with stress for all concerned, except in the case of the funeral, for the chief, as it were, player,’ he said. ‘Let us just be calm and careful. I’m very pleased that Letitia likes you. I don’t think she has many friends. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have more arrangements to supervise.’ * * * Tiffany’s own voice still bounced around in her head as she walked out of the room. Why had she said that about marrying? She’d always thought it was going to be true. Well, when she was a bit younger she had thought it was going to be true, but all that was past, wasn’t it? Yes, it was! And to come out with something as wet and stupid as that was so embarrassing. And where was she going now? Well, there were plenty of things to do, there always were. There was no end to the wanting. She was halfway across the hall when one of the maids approached her nervously and told her that Miss Letitia wanted to see her in her room. The girl was sitting on her bed, twisting a handkerchief – a clean one, Tiffany was pleased to see – and looking worried, which was to say more worried than her usual expression, which was that of a hamster that had had its treadmill stopped. ‘So kind of you to come, Tiffany. Can I have a private word?’ Tiffany looked around. There was no one else there. ‘Privately,’ said Letitia, and gave the handkerchief another twist. Hasn’t got many friends of her own age, Tiffany thought. I bet she wasn’t allowed to play with the village children. Doesn’t get out much. Getting married in a couple of days. Oh dear. It wasn’t a very difficult conclusion to reach. A tortoise with a bad leg could have jumped to it. And then there was Roland. Kidnapped by the Queen of the Elves, held in her nasty country for ages without growing older, bullied by his aunts, worried sick about his elderly father, finds it necessary to act as if he is twenty years older than he really is. Oh dear. ‘How can I help you?’ she said brightly. Letitia cleared her throat. ‘After the wedding we will have a honeymoon,’ she said, her face shading to a delicate pink. ‘What exactly is supposed to happen?’ The last few words were mumbled quickly, Tiffany noticed. ‘Do you have any … aunts?’ she asked. Aunts were generally good at this sort of thing. Letitia shook her head. ‘Have you tried talking about it with your mother?’ Tiffany tried, and Letitia turned on her a face that was as red as a boiled lobster. ‘Would you talk about this sort of thing with my mother?’ ‘I can see the problem. Well, broadly speaking, and I don’t speak exactly as an expert here …’ But she was.28 A witch couldn’t help being some kind of expert as to the ways people came and entered the world; by the time she was twelve the older witches had trusted her to go out to a birth by herself. Besides, she had helped lambs to be born, even when she was quite small. It came naturally, as Nanny Ogg said, although not as naturally as you might think. She remembered Mr and Mrs Hamper, quite a decent couple who had three children in a row before they worked out what was causing it. Ever since then she had tried to have a chat with the village girls of a certain age, just to be on the safe side. Letitia listened like someone who was going to make notes afterwards, and possibly get tested on Friday. She didn’t ask any questions until about halfway through, when she said, ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Yes. I’m pretty certain,’ said Tiffany. ‘Well, er, it sounds reasonably straightforward. Of course, I suppose boys know all about this sort of thing … Why are you laughing?’ ‘It’s a matter of opinion,’ said Tiffany. Oh, now I see you. I see you, you filth, you plague, you noxious abomination! Tiffany looked at Letitia’s mirror, which was big and had around it lots of fat, golden cherubs who were clearly catching their death of cold. There was Letitia’s reflection, and there was – faint but visible – the eyeless face of the Cunning Man. The outline of the Cunning Man began to thicken. Tiffany knew that nothing in her face had changed. She knew it. I won’t answer him, she thought. I had almost forgotten all about him. Don’t answer. Don’t let him get a hold on you! She managed to smile while Letitia hauled out from cases and chests what she called her trousseau which, in Tiffany’s opinion, contained the world’s entire supply of frilliness. She tried to focus on it, to let frilliness fill her mind and somehow chase away the words that came pouring from him. The ones she understood were bad enough; the ones that she didn’t were worse. Despite everything, the creaking, choking voice got through again: You think you have been lucky, witch. You hope you will be lucky again. You need to sleep. I never sleep. You have to be lucky time after time. I have to be lucky just once. Just once, and you will … burn. That last word was soft, almost gentle, after the creaking, coughing, scraping words that came before. It sounded worse. ‘You know,’ said Letitia, looking thoughtfully at a garment that Tiffany knew she could never afford. ‘While I am truly looking forward to being the mistress of this castle, I must say that the drainage system here smells dreadful. In fact, it smells like it has never been cleaned since the world began. Honestly, I could believe that prehistoric monsters have done their business in it.’ So she can smell him, Tiffany thought. She is a witch. A witch who needs training because without it she’s going to be a menace to everybody, not least herself. Letitia was still prattling on – there was no other word for it. Tiffany, still trying to defeat the voice of the Cunning Man by sheer will, said aloud, ‘Why?’ ‘Oh, because I think the bows look a lot more fetching than buttons,’ said Letitia, who was holding up a nightdress of considerable splendour, another reminder to Tiffany that witches never really had any money. You burned before and so did I! croaked the voice in her head, but this time you will not take me! I will take you and your confederacy of evil!!!!! Tiffany thought she could actually see the exclamation marks. They shouted for him, even when he spoke softly. They jumped and slashed at his words. She could see his contorted face and the little flecks of foam that accompanied the finger-waving and shouting – gobs of liquid madness flying through the air behind the mirror. How lucky for Letitia that she couldn’t hear him yet, but her mind was currently full of frills, bells, rice and the prospect of being at the centre of a wedding. Not even the Cunning Man could burn his way through that. She managed to say, ‘It’s not going to work for you.’ And part of her kept repeating, inside her head: No eyes. No eyes at all. Two tunnels in his head. ‘Yes, I think you’re right. Possibly the mauve one would look better,’ said Letitia, ‘although I have always been told that eau-de-nil is really my colour. By the way, could I make things up to you in some way by having you as my chief bridesmaid? Of course, I’ve already got a load of tiny distant cousins who I understand have been wearing their bridesmaids’ dresses for the past two weeks.’ Tiffany was still staring at nothing, or rather, at two holes into nothing. At the moment, they were the most important things in her mind, and they were quite bad enough without adding tiny little cousins into the mixture. ‘I don’t think that witches are bridesmaid material, thank you all the same,’ she said. Bridesmaids? A wedding? Tiffany’s heart sank further. There was no help for it. She ran out of the room before the creature could learn anything more. How did it search? What was it looking for? Had they just given it a clue? She fled down to the dungeon, which was right now a place of refuge. There was the book that Letitia had given to her. She opened it and began to read. She had learned to read fast up in the mountains, when the only books you could get were from the travelling library, and if you were late returning them they charged you an extra penny, an appreciable amount when your standard unit of currency is an old boot. The book told stories of windows. Not ordinary windows, although some might be. And behind them … things – monsters, sometimes. A painting, a page in a book – even a puddle in the right place – could be a window. She remembered once more the nasty goblin in the old book of fairytales; sometimes it was laughing and at other times it was grinning. She had always been sure about that. It wasn’t a big change, but it was still a change. And you always wondered: What was it like that last time? Did I remember it wrong? The book rustled under Tiffany’s hands like a hungry squirrel waking up in a hollow tree full of nuts. The author was a wizard, and a long-winded one at that, but the book was fascinating even so. There had been people who walked into a picture, and people who had walked out of one. Windows were a way of getting from one world into another, and anything could be a window and anything could be a world. She had heard that the sign of a good painting was that the eyes followed you around the room, but according to the book it was quite likely that they might follow you home and upstairs to bed, as well – an idea that she would rather not think about right now. Being a wizard, the author had tried to explain it all with graphs and charts, none of which helped in any way. The Cunning Man had run towards her inside a book, and she had slammed it shut before he got out. She had seen his fingers just as the press had spun down. But he couldn’t have been squashed inside the book, she thought, because he wasn’t really in the book at all, except in some magical way, and he’s been finding me in other ways too. How? Right now, those tiresome days of seeing to broken legs, bad stomachs and ingrown toenails suddenly seemed quite attractive. She’d always told people that was what witchcraft was all about, and that was true, right up until the time something horrible could jump out of nowhere. That was when a poultice just wouldn’t do the trick. A piece of straw floated down and landed on the book. ‘It’s safe for you to come out,’ said Tiffany. ‘You are here, aren’t you?’ And right by her ear a voice said, ‘Oh aye, that we are.’ They appeared from behind straw bales, spider webs, apple shelves, goats and one another. ‘Aren’t you Wee Mad Arthur?’ ‘Aye, miss, that is correct. I have to tell ye, to my embarrassment, that Rob Anybody is placing a big trust in me because I am a polisman and Rob appeared to think, ye ken, that if ye are dealing with bigjobs, a polisman will make them even more afeared. Besides, I can speak bigjob! Rob is spending more time up at the mound right now, ye ken. An’ he doesnae trust yon Baron not tae come up there with shovels.’ ‘I will see that does not happen,’ said Tiffany firmly. ‘There has been a misunderstanding.’ Wee Mad Arthur did not look convinced. ‘It is glad I am to hear you say that, miss, and so will the Big Man be, because I can tell ye that when the first shovel breaks into the mound there willnae be a living man left in yonder castle, and great will be the lamentation of the women, present company excepted.’ There was a general murmuring from the other Feegles, on the broad theme of slaughter for whoever laid a hand on a Feegle mound, and how personally each and every one of them would regret what he would have to do. ‘It’s yon troosers,’ said Slightly-Thinner-Than-Fat-Jock-Jock. ‘Once a man gets a Feegle up his troosers, his time of trial and tribulation is only just beginning.’ ‘Oh aye, it will be a great time o’ jumpin’ and leapin’ up and doon for such as them,’ said Wee Jock o’ the White Head. Tiffany was shocked. ‘When was the last time Feegles fought with bigjobs, then?’ After some discussion among the Feegles, this was declared to be the Battle o’ the Middens when, according to Wee Jock o’ the White Head, ‘There was never such a screaming and rushing about and stamping on the ground, and pitiable sobbing, the like of which was never before heard, along with the coarse tittering of the ladies as the men scrambled to divest themselves of troosers that were suddenly no longer their friends, if ye ken what I’m saying.’ Tiffany, who had been listening to the tale with an open mouth, had the presence of mind to shut it, and then open it again to say, ‘But have Feegles ever killed a human?’ This led to a certain amount of deliberate lack of eye contact among the Feegles, plus quite a lot of foot shuffling and head scratching, with the usual fallout of insects, hoarded food, interesting stones and other unspeakable items. In the end, Wee Mad Arthur said, ‘Being as I am, miss, a Feegle who has only but recently learned that he is not a fairy cobbler, I ha’ nae pride tae lose by telling ye that it is true that I have been speaking to my new brothers and learned that, when they lived up in the far mountains, they did have tae fight humans sometimes, when they came a-digging for the fairy gold, and a terror-err-able fighting did take place and, indeed, those bandits as were too stupid to run may have found themselves clever enough to die.’ He coughed. ‘However, in defence of my new brethren I must point out that they always made certain that the odds were fair and just, which is to say one Feegle to every ten men. Ye cannae say fairer than that. And it wasnae their fault that some men just wanted tae commit suicide.’ There was a glint in Wee Mad Arthur’s eye that prompted Tiffany to ask, ‘How exactly did they commit suicide?’ The policeman Feegle shrugged his small broad shoulders. ‘They took a shovel to a Feegle mound, miss. I am a man who knows the law, miss. I never saw a mound until I met these fine gentlemen, but even so my blood boils, miss, it boils, so it does. My heart it does thump, my pulse it does race, and my gorge it arises like the breath of some dragon at the very thought of a bright steel shovel slicing through the clay of a Feegle mound, cutting and crushing. I would kill the man that does this, miss. I would kill him dead, and chase him through the next life to kill him another time, and I would do it again and again, because it would be the sin o’ sins, to kill an entire people, and one death wouldnae be enough for recompense. However, as I am an aforesaid man of the law, I very much hope that the current misunderstanding can be resolved withoot the need for wholesale carnage and bloodletting and screaming and wailing and weeping and people having bits of themselves nailed to trees, such as has never been seen before, ye ken?’ Wee Mad Arthur, holding his full-sized policeman’s badge like a shield, stared at Tiffany with a mixture of shock and defiance. And Tiffany was a witch. ‘I must tell you something, Wee Mad Arthur,’ she said, ‘and you must understand what I say. You have come home, Wee Mad Arthur.’ The shield dropped out of his hand. ‘Aye, miss, I ken that now. A policeman should not say the words I just said. He should talk about judges and juries and prisons and sentences, and he would say ye cannae take the law intae your own hands. So I will hand in my badge, indeed, and stay here among my own folk, although I have to say, with better standards o’ hygiene.’ This got a round of applause from the assembled Feegles, although Tiffany wasn’t sure that most of them fully understood the concept of hygiene or, for that matter, obeying the law. ‘You have my word,’ said Tiffany, ‘that the mound will not be touched again. I will see to it, do you understand?’ ‘Och, weel,’ said Wee Mad Arthur tearfully. ‘That might be all very well, miss, but what will happen behind your back when ye are a-flying and a-whizzing aboot your verrae important business across the hills? What will happen then?’ All eyes turned to Tiffany, including those of the goats. She didn’t do this kind of thing any more because she knew it was bad manners, but Tiffany picked up Wee Mad Arthur bodily and held him at eye level. ‘I am the hag o’ the hills,’ she said. ‘And I will vow to you and all other Feegles that the home of the Feegles will never be threatened with iron again. It will never be behind my back but will always be in front of my eyes. And while this is so, no living man will touch it if he wants to remain a living man. And if I fail the Feegles in this, may I be dragged through the seven hells on a broomstick made of nails.’ Strictly speaking, Tiffany admitted to herself, these were pretty much empty threats, but the Feegles did not think an oath was an oath if it didn’t have lots of thunder and lightning and boasting and blood in it. Blood, somehow, made it official. I will see to it that the mound is never touched again, she thought. There is no way that Roland can refuse me now. And besides, I have a secret weapon: I have the trust and confidence of a young lady who is soon going to be his wife. No man can be safe in those circumstances. In the glow of reassurance Wee Mad Arthur said happily, ‘Well spoken, mistress, and may I take the opportunity on behalf of my new friends and relatives tae thank ye for explaining all aboot the business of the wedding nuptials the noo. It was verrae interesting to those of us who have little to do with such things. Some of us was wondering if we could ask questions?’ Being threatened by a spectral horror was terrible enough right now, but somehow the thought of the Nac Mac Feegle asking questions about the facts of married life among humans was even worse. There was no point in explaining why she wasn’t going to explain; Tiffany simply said ‘No’ in a tone of voice like steel and very carefully put him back down on the ground. She added, ‘You shouldn’t have been listening.’ ‘Why not?’ said Daft Wullie. ‘You just shouldn’t! I’m not going to explain. You just shouldn’t. And now, gentlemen, I’d like a bit of time to myself, if it’s all the same to you.’ Some of them would follow her, of course, she thought. They always did. She went back up to the hall and sat down as close as possible to the huge fire. Even in late summer, the hall was cold. It was hung with tapestries as insulation from the chill of the stone walls. They were the usual sort of thing: men in armour waving swords and bows and axes at other men in armour. Given that battle is very fast and noisy, they presumably had to stop fighting every couple of minutes to give the ladies who were making the tapestry a little time to catch up. Tiffany knew the one nearest the fire by heart. All the kids did. You learned your history off the tapestries, if there was some old man around to explain what was going on. But generally, when she was a lot younger, it had been more fun to make up stories about the different knights, like the one who was desperately running to catch up with his horse, and the one who had been thrown by his horse, and, because he had a helmet with a point on it, was now upright head first in the ground, which, even as children, they had recognized was not a good position to be in on the battle-field. They were like old friends, frozen in a war whose name nobody on the Chalk could remember. And … suddenly there was another one, one that had never been there before, running towards Tiffany through the battle. She stared at him, her body demanding that she get some sleep right now, and whatever bits were still working in her brain insisting that she did something. In the middle of this her hand gripped a log on the edge of the fire and she raised it purposefully towards the tapestry. The cloth had practically crumbled with age as it was. It would burn like dry grass. The figure was walking cautiously now. She couldn’t see any details yet and didn’t want to. The knights on the tapestry had been woven in without any perspective; they were as flat as a child’s nursery painting. But the man in black, who had begun as a distant streak, was getting bigger as he approached and now … She could see the face and the empty eyeholes, which even from here changed colour as he walked past the painted armour of knight after knight, and now he had started running again, getting bigger. And the smell was oozing towards her again … How much was the tapestry worth? Did she have any right to destroy it? With that thing stepping out of it? Oh yes, oh yes! Wouldn’t it be nice to be a wizard and to conjure up those knights to fight one last battle! Wouldn’t it be nice to be a witch who wasn’t here! She raised the crackling log and glared into the holes where the eyes should be. You had to be a witch to be prepared to stare down a stare that wasn’t there, because somehow you felt that it was sucking your own eyeballs out of your head. Those tunnels in the skull were hypnotic, and now he moved from side to side slowly, like a snake. ‘Please don’t.’ She wasn’t expecting that; the voice was urgent but quite friendly – and it belonged to Eskarina Smith. The wind was silver and cold. Tiffany, lying on her back, looked up into a white sky; at the edge of her vision, dried grasses shook and rattled in the wind but, curiously, behind this little bit of countryside there was the big fireplace and the battling knights. ‘It is really quite important that you don’t move,’ said the same voice behind her. ‘The place where you are now has been, as we say, cobbled together for this conversation and did not exist until you arrived here, and will cease to exist the moment you leave. Strictly speaking, by the standards of most philosophical disciplines, it cannot be said to have any existence at all.’ ‘So it’s a magic place, yes? Like the Unreal Estate?’ ‘Very sensible way of putting it,’ said the voice of Eskarina. ‘Those of us who know about it call it the travelling now. It’s an easy way to talk to you in private; when it closes, you will be exactly where you were and no time will have passed. Do you understand?’ ‘No!’ Eskarina sat down on the grass next to her. ‘Thank goodness for that. It would be rather disturbing if you did. You are, you know, an extremely unusual witch. As far as I can tell, you have a natural talent for making cheese, and as talents go, it is a pretty good talent to have. The world needs cheese-makers. A good cheese-maker is worth her weight in, well, cheese. So you were not born with a talent for witchcraft.’ Tiffany opened her mouth to reply before she had any idea what she was going to say, but that is not unusual among human beings. The first thing to push through the throng of questions was: ‘Hang on, I was holding a burning brand. But now you have brought me here, wherever here is exactly. What happened?’ She looked at the fire. The flames were frozen. ‘People will notice me,’ she said, and then, given the nature of the situation, she added, ‘Won’t they?’ ‘The answer is no; the reason is complicated. The travelling now is … tame time. It’s time that is on your side. Believe me, there are stranger things in the universe. Right now, Tiffany, we are truly living on borrowed time.’ The flames were still frozen. Tiffany felt that they should be cold, but she could feel the warmth. And she had time to think too. ‘And when I go back?’ ‘Nothing will have changed,’ said Eskarina, ‘except the contents of your head, which are, at the moment, very important.’ ‘And you’ve gone to all this trouble to tell me I have no talent for witchcraft?’ Tiffany said flatly. ‘That was very kind of you.’ Eskarina laughed. It was her young laugh, which seemed strange when you saw the wrinkles on her face. Tiffany had never seen an old person looking so young. ‘I said you weren’t born with a talent for witchcraft: it didn’t come easily; you worked hard at it because you wanted it. You forced the world to give it to you, no matter the price, and the price is and will always be, high. Have you heard the saying “the reward you get for digging holes is a bigger shovel”?’ ‘Yes,’ said Tiffany, ‘I heard Granny Weatherwax say it once.’ ‘She invented it. People say you don’t find witchcraft; witchcraft finds you. But you’ve found it, even if at the time you didn’t know what it was you were finding, and you grabbed it by its scrawny neck and made it work for you.’ ‘This is all very … interesting,’ said Tiffany, ‘but I have got things I must be doing.’ ‘Not in the travelling now,’ said Eskarina firmly. ‘Look, the Cunning Man has found you again.’ ‘I think he hides in books and pictures,’ Tiffany volunteered. ‘And tapestries.’ She shuddered. ‘And mirrors,’ said Eskarina, ‘and puddles, and the glint of light on a piece of broken glass, or the gleam on a knife. How many ways can you think of? How frightened are you prepared to be?’ ‘I’m going to have to fight him,’ Tiffany said. ‘I think I knew I would have to. He doesn’t seem to me to be someone you can run away from. He’s a bully, isn’t he? He attacks where he thinks he will win, and so I have to find a way to be stronger than he is. I think I can work out a way – after all, he is a bit like the hiver. And that was really quite easy.’ Eskarina did not shout; she spoke very quietly and in a way that seemed to make more noise than a scream would have done. ‘Will you persist in not recognizing how important this is, Tiffany Aching the cheese-maker? You have a chance to defeat the Cunning Man, and if you fail, witchcraft fails – and falls with you. He will possess your body, your knowledge, your talents and your soul. And for your own good – and for the good of all – your sister witches will settle their differences and take the pair of you into oblivion before you can do any more harm. Do you understand? This is important! You have to help yourself.’ ‘The other witches will kill me?’ said Tiffany, aghast. ‘Of course. You are a witch and you know what Granny Weatherwax always says: We do right, we don’t do nice. It will be you or him, Tiffany Aching. The loser will die. In his case, I regret to say we might see him again in a few centuries; in your case, I don’t propose to guess.’ ‘But hold on a moment,’ said Tiffany. ‘If they are prepared to fight him and me, why don’t we all band together to fight him now?’ ‘Of course. Would you like them to? What is it you really want, Tiffany Aching, here and now? It’s your choice. The other witches will not, I am sure, think any the worse of you.’ Eskarina hesitated for a moment, and then said, ‘Well, I expect they will be very kind about it.’ The witch who faced the trial and ran away? thought Tiffany. The witch they were kind to, because they knew she wasn’t good enough? And if you think you’re not good enough, then you are already no kind of witch. Aloud she said, ‘I’d rather die trying to be a witch, than be the girl they were all kind to.’ ‘Miss Aching, you are showing an almost sinful self-assurance and overwhelming pride and certainty, and may I say that I wouldn’t expect anything less of a witch.’ * * * The world wobbled a bit and then changed. Eskarina vanished, even as her words were still sinking into Tiffany’s mind. The tapestry was back in front of her again and she was still raising the burning log, but this time she raised it confidently. She felt as if she was full of air, lifting her up. The world had gone strange, but at least she knew that fire would burn dry tapestry like tinder the moment it touched it. ‘I would burn this old sheet in an instant, mister, trust me. Back to where you came from, mister!’ To her astonishment the dark figure retreated. There was a momentary hiss and Tiffany felt as if a weight had dropped away, dragging the stench with it. ‘That was all very interesting.’ Tiffany spun round and looked into Preston’s cheerful grin. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘I was really worried when you went so stiff for a few moments. I thought you were dead. When I touched your arm – very respectfully, no hanky-panky – it felt like the air on a thundery day. So I thought, This is witch business, and decided to keep an eye on you, and then you threatened an innocent tapestry with fiery death!’ She stared at the boy’s eyes as if they were a mirror. Fire, she thought. Fire killed him once, and he knows it. He won’t go anywhere near fire. Fire is the secret. The hare runs into the fire. Hmm. ‘Actually, I quite like fire,’ said Preston. ‘I don’t think it’s my enemy at all.’ ‘What?’ said Tiffany. ‘I’m afraid you were speaking just under your breath,’ said Preston. ‘I’m not going to ask what it was about. My granny said: Don’t meddle in the affairs of witches because they clout you around the ear.’ Tiffany stared at him and made an instant decision. ‘Can you keep a secret?’ Preston nodded. ‘Certainly! I have never told anybody that the sergeant writes poetry, for example.’ ‘Preston, you have just told me!’ Preston grinned at her. ‘Ah, but a witch isn’t anybody. My granny told me that telling your secret to a witch is like whispering to a wall.’ ‘Well, yes,’ Tiffany began and then paused. ‘How do you know he writes poetry?’ ‘It was hard not to know,’ said Preston. ‘But, you see, he writes it on pages of the events ledger in the guard house, probably when he’s on night duty. He carefully tears out the pages, and does it so neatly that you wouldn’t guess, but he presses so hard with his pencil that it’s quite easy to read the impression on the paper underneath.’ ‘Surely the other men notice?’ said Tiffany. Preston shook his head, which caused his oversized helmet to spin a little. ‘Oh no, miss, you know them: they think reading is cissy stuff for girls. Anyway, if I get in early I tear out the paper underneath so that they don’t laugh at him. I have to say, for a self-taught man he is a pretty good poet – good grasp of the metaphor. They are all written to somebody called Millie.’ ‘That would be his wife,’ said Tiffany. ‘You must have seen her in the village – more freckles than anyone I’ve ever seen. She is very sensitive about it.’ Preston nodded. ‘That might explain why his latest poem is entitled “What Good Is The Sky Without Stars”?’ ‘You wouldn’t know it from looking at the man, would you?’ Preston looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘Excuse me, Tiffany,’ he said, ‘but you don’t look well. In fact, no offence meant, you look absolutely dreadful. If you were somebody else and took a look at you, you would say that you were very ill indeed. You don’t look as if you’ve had any sleep.’ ‘I had at least an hour’s worth last night. And a nap the day before!’ said Tiffany. ‘Really?’ said Preston, looking stern. ‘And apart from breakfast this morning, when did you last have a proper meal?’ For some reason Tiffany still felt full of light inside. ‘I think I might have had a snack yesterday …’ ‘Oh really?’ said Preston. ‘Snacks and naps? That’s not how somebody is supposed to live; it’s how people die!’ He was right. She knew he was. But that only made things worse. ‘Look, I’m being tracked by a horrible creature who can take over somebody else completely, and it’s up to me to deal with it!’ Preston looked around with interest. ‘Could it take me over?’ Poison goes where poison’s welcome, thought Tiffany. Thank you for that useful phrase, Mrs Proust. ‘No, I don’t think so. I think you have to be the right kind of person – which is to say, the wrong kind of person. You know, somebody with a touch of evil.’ For the first time, Preston looked worried. ‘I have done a few bad things in my time, I’m sorry to say.’ Despite her sudden tiredness, Tiffany smiled. ‘What was the worst one?’ ‘I once stole a packet of coloured pencils off a market stall.’ He looked at her defiantly, as if expecting her to scream or point the finger of scorn. Instead, she shook her head and said, ‘How old were you then?’ ‘Six.’ ‘Preston, I don’t think this creature could ever find its way into your head. Quite apart from anything else, it seems pretty crowded and complicated to me.’ ‘Miss Tiffany, you need a rest, a proper rest in a proper bed. What kind of witch can look after everybody if she’s not sensible enough to look after herself? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes. That means: Who guards the guards, that does,’ Preston went on. ‘So who watches the witches? Who cares for the people who care for the people? Right now, it looks like it needs to be me.’ She gave in. * * * The fog of the city was as thick as curtains when Mrs Proust hurried towards the dark, brooding shape of the Tanty, but the billows obediently separated as she approached and closed again after her. The warden was waiting at the main gate, a lantern in his hand. ‘Sorry, missus, but we thought you ought to see this one before it gets all official. I know witches seem a bit unpopular right now, but we’ve always thought of you as family, if you know what I mean. Everyone remembers your dad. What a craftsman! He could hang a man in seven and a quarter seconds! Never been beat. We shall never see his likes again.’ He went solemn. ‘And may I say, missus, I hope I never see again the like of what you will be seeing now. It’s got us rattled, and no mistake. It’s right up your street, I reckon.’ Mrs Proust shook the water droplets off her cloak in the prison office and could smell the fear in the air. There was the general clanging and distant yelling that you always got when things were going bad in a prison: a prison, by definition, being a lot of people all crammed together and every fear and hatred and worry and dread and rumour all sitting on top of one another, choking for space. She hung the cloak on a nail by the door and rubbed her hands together. ‘The lad you sent said something about a breakout?’ ‘D wing,’ said the warder. ‘Macintosh. You remember? Been in here about a year.’ ‘Oh yes, I recall,’ said the witch. ‘They had to stop the trial because the jury kept throwing up. Very nasty indeed. But no one has ever escaped from D wing, right? The window bars are steel?’ ‘Bent,’ said the warder flatly. ‘You’d better come and see. It’s giving us the heebie-jeebies, I don’t mind telling you.’ ‘Macintosh wasn’t a particularly big man, as I recall,’ said the witch as they hurried along the dank corridors. ‘That’s right, Mrs Proust. Short and nasty, that was him. Due to hang next week too. Tore out bars that a strong man wouldn’t have been able to shift with a crowbar and dropped thirty feet to the ground. That’s not natural, that’s not right. But it was the other thing he did – oh my word, it makes me sick thinking about it.’ A warder was waiting outside the cell recently vacated by the absent Macintosh, but for no reason that Mrs Proust could recognize, given that the man had definitely gone. He touched the brim of his hat respectfully when he saw her. ‘Good morning, Mrs Proust,’ he said. ‘May I say it’s an honour to meet the daughter of the finest hangman in history. Fifty-one years before the lever, and never a client down. Mr Trooper now, decent bloke, but sometimes they bounce a bit and I don’t consider that professional. And your dad wouldn’t forego a well-deserved hanging out of the fear that fires of evil and demons of dread would haunt him afterwards. You mark my words; he’d go after them and hang them too! Seven and a quarter seconds, what a gentleman.’ But Mrs Proust was staring down at the floor. ‘Terrible thing for a lady to have to see,’ the warder went on. Almost absentmindedly Mrs Proust said, ‘Witches are not ladies when on business, Frank,’ and then she sniffed the air and swore an oath that made Frank’s eyes water. ‘It makes you wonder what got into him, aye?’ Mrs Proust straightened up. ‘I don’t have to wonder, my lad,’ she said grimly. ‘I know.’ The fog piled up against the buildings in its effort to get out of the way of Mrs Proust as she hurried back to Tenth Egg Street, leaving behind her a Mrs Proust-shaped tunnel in the gloom. Derek was drinking a peaceful mug of cocoa when his mother burst in to the strains, as it were, of a large fart. He looked up, his brow wrinkling. ‘Did that sound like B-flat to you? It didn’t sound like B-flat to me.’ He reached into the drawer under the counter for his tuning fork, but his mother rushed past him. ‘Where’s my broomstick?’ Derek sighed. ‘In the basement, remember? When the dwarfs told you last month how much it would cost to repair, you told them they were a bunch of chiselling little lawn ornaments, remember? Anyway, you never use it.’ ‘I’ve got to go into the … country,’ said Mrs Proust, looking around the crowded shelves in case there was another working broomstick there. Her son stared. ‘Are you sure, Mother? You’ve always said it’s bad for your health.’ ‘Matter of life or death,’ Mrs Proust mumbled. ‘What about Long Tall Short Fat Sally?’ ‘Oh, Mother, you really shouldn’t call her that,’ said Derek reproachfully. ‘She can’t help being allergic to tides.’ ‘She’s got a stick, though! Hah! If it’s not one thing it’s another. Make me some sandwiches, will you?’ ‘Is this about that girl who was in here last week?’ said Derek suspiciously. ‘I don’t think she had much of a sense of humour.’ His mother ignored him and rummaged under the counter, coming back with a large leather cosh. The small traders of Tenth Egg Street worked on narrow margins, and had a very direct approach to shoplifting. ‘I don’t know, I really don’t,’ she moaned. ‘Me? Doing good at my time of life? I must be going soft in the head. And I’m not even going to get paid! I don’t know, I really don’t. Next thing you know, I’ll start giving people three wishes, and if I start doing that, Derek, I would like you to hit me very hard on the head.’ She handed him the cosh. ‘I’m leaving you in charge. Try to shift some of the rubber chocolate and the humorous fake fried eggs, will you? Tell people they are novelty bookmarks or something.’ And with that, Mrs Proust ran out into the night. The lanes and alleyways of the city were very dangerous at night, what with muggers, thieves and similar unpleasantnesses. But they disappeared back into the gloom as she passed. Mrs Proust was bad news, and best left undisturbed if you wanted to keep all the bones in your fingers pointing the right way. The body that was Macintosh ran through the night. It was full of pain. This didn’t matter to the ghost; it wasn’t his pain. Its sinews sang with agony, but it was not the ghost’s agony. The fingers bled where they had torn steel bars out of the wall. But the ghost did not bleed. It never bled. It couldn’t remember when it had had a body that was really its own. Bodies had to be fed and had to drink. That was an annoying feature of the wretched things. Sooner or later they ran out of usefulness. Often, that didn’t matter; there was always somebody – a little mind festering with hatred and envy and resentment that would welcome the ghost inside. But it had to be careful, and it had to be quick. But above all it had to be safe. Out here, on the empty roads, another suitable container would be hard to find. Regretfully, it allowed the body to stop and drink from the murky waters of a pond. It turned out to be full of frogs, but a body had to eat too, didn’t it? 26 Witches always made certain that their hands were scrupulously clean; the rest of the witch had to wait for some time in the busy schedule – or possibly for a thunderstorm. 27 There was no tradition of holy men on the Chalk, but since the hills were between the cities and the mountains, there was generally – in the good weather, at least – a steady procession of priests of one sort or another passing through who would, for a decent meal or a bed for the night, spread some holy words and generally give people’s souls a decent scrubbing. Provided that the priests were clearly of the decent sort, people didn’t worry unduly who their god was, so long as he – or occasionally she and sometimes it – kept the sun and moon spinning properly and didn’t want anything ridiculous or new. It also helped if the preacher knew a little something about sheep. 28 If not through actual personal practice. Chapter 13 THE SHAKING OF THE SHEETS HER PROPER BED in the castle’s black-and-white chamber was so much better than the dungeon, even though Tiffany had missed the soothing burps of the goats. She dreamed of fire, again. And she was being watched. She could feel it, and it wasn’t the goats this time. She was being watched inside her head. But it wasn’t bad watching; someone was caring for her. And in the dream the fire raged, and a dark figure pulled aside the flames as though they were curtains, and there was the hare sitting by the dark figure as if she was a pet. The hare caught Tiffany’s eye and jumped into the fire. And Tiffany knew. Somebody knocked at the door. Tiffany was suddenly awake. ‘Who’s there?’ A voice on the other side of the heavy door said, ‘What sound does forgetfulness make?’ She hardly had to think. ‘It’s the sound of the wind in dead grasses on a hot summer’s day.’ ‘Yes, I think that would about do it,’ said Preston’s voice from the other side of the door. ‘To get right to the point, miss, there’s a lot of people downstairs, miss. I think they need their witch.’ It was a good day for a funeral, Tiffany thought, looking out of the narrow castle window. It shouldn’t rain on a funeral. It made people too gloomy. She tried not to be gloomy at funerals. People lived, and died, and were remembered. It happened in the same way that winter followed summer. It was not a wrong thing. There were tears, of course, but they were for those who were left; those who had gone on did not need them. The staff had been up very early, and the long tables had been put out in the hall to make a breakfast for all-comers. That was a tradition. Rich or poor, lord or lady: the funeral breakfast was there for everyone, and out of respect for the old Baron; and also out of respect for a good meal, the hall was filling up. The Duchess was there, in a black dress that was more black than any black Tiffany had ever seen before. The dress gleamed. The black dress of the average witch was usually only theoretically black. In reality, it was often rather dusty, and quite possibly patched in the vicinity of the knees and somewhat ragged at the hems and, of course, very nearly worn through by frequent washings. It was what it was: working clothes. You couldn’t imagine the Duchess delivering a baby in that dress … Tiffany blinked. She could imagine the Duchess doing just that; if it was an emergency, she would. She would bully and complain and order people around, but she would do it. She was that kind of person. Tiffany blinked again. Her head felt crystal clear. The world seemed understandable but slightly fragile, as if it could be broken, like a mirror ball. ‘Morning, miss!’ That was Amber, and behind her, both her parents, Mr Petty looking scrubbed and sheepish and also quite bashful. He clearly didn’t know what to say. Nor did Tiffany. There was a stir at the main doors, and Roland hurried in that direction and came back with King Verence of Lancre and Magrat, his queen. Tiffany had met them before. You couldn’t help meeting them in Lancre, which was a very small kingdom, and even smaller when you took into consideration that Granny Weatherwax lived there too. And Granny Weatherwax was here, right here and now, with You29 lying across her shoulders like a scarf, behind the King and Queen and just in front of a huge jolly voice that shouted, ‘Watcha, Tiff! How’s your belly off for spots!’ which meant that a couple of feet below it, but hidden by reasons of size, was Nanny Ogg, rumoured by some to be cleverer than Granny Weatherwax, and clever enough at least not to let her find out. Tiffany bowed to them as was the custom. She thought, They gather, do they? She smiled at Granny Weatherwax and said, ‘Very pleased to see you here, Mistress Weatherwax, and a little surprised.’ Granny stared at her but Nanny Ogg said, ‘It’s a long bumpy ride down from Lancre, and so the two of us thought we’d give Magrat and her king a nice ride down.’ Possibly Tiffany was imagining it, but Nanny Ogg’s explanation sounded like something she had been working on for a little while. It felt as if she were reciting a script. But there was no more time to talk. The arrival of the king had triggered something in the air, and for the first time Tiffany saw Pastor Egg, in a black-and-white robe. She adjusted her pointy hat and walked over to him. He seemed quite glad of the company, which is to say that he gave her a grateful smile. ‘Hah, a witch, I see.’ ‘Yes, the pointy hat is a bit of a giveaway, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘But not a black dress, I notice … ?’ Tiffany heard the question mark as it went past. ‘When I am old, I shall wear midnight,’ she said. ‘Entirely appropriate,’ said the pastor, ‘but now you wear green, white and blue, the downland colours, I can’t help remarking!’ Tiffany was impressed. ‘So, you’re not interested in witchfinding, then?’ She felt a bit silly for asking outright, but she was on edge. Pastor Egg shook his head. ‘I can assure you, madam, that the Church has not been seriously involved in that sort of thing for hundreds of years! Unfortunately some people have long memories. Indeed, it was only a matter of a few years ago that the famous Pastor Oats said in his renowned Testament from the Mountains that the women known as witches embody, in a caring and practical way, the very best ideals of Brutha the prophet. That’s good enough for me. I hope it is good enough for you?’ Tiffany gave him her sweetest smile, which wasn’t all that sweet, however hard you tried; she’d never really got the hang of sweet. ‘It’s important to be clear about these things, don’t you think?’ She sniffed, and noticed no odour other than a hint of shaving cream. Even so, she was going to have to be on her guard. It was a good funeral too; from Tiffany’s point of view, a good funeral was one where the main player was very old. She had been to some – too many – where they were small and wrapped in a shroud. Coffins were barely known on the Chalk, and indeed nearly anywhere else. Decent timber was too expensive to be left to rot underground. A practical white woollen shroud did for most people; it was easy to make, not too expensive, and good for the wool industry. The Baron, however, went to his eternal rest inside a tomb of white marble which, him being a practical man, he had designed, bought and paid for twenty years ago. There was a white shroud inside it, because marble can be a bit chilly to lie on. And that was the end of the old Baron, except that only Tiffany knew where he really was. He was walking with his father in the stubbles, where they burned the corn stalks and the weeds, a perfect late-summer’s day, one never-changing perfect moment held in time … She gasped. ‘The drawing!’ Even though she’d spoken under her breath, people around her turned to look. She thought, How selfish of me! And then thought, Surely it will still be there? As soon as the lid of the stone tomb had been slid into place with a sound that Tiffany would always remember, she went and found Brian, who was blowing his nose; when he looked up at her he was pink around the eyes. She took him gently by the arm, trying not to sound urgent. ‘The room that the Baron was living in, is it locked?’ He looked shocked. ‘I should say so! And the money is in the big safe in the office. Why d’you want to know?’ ‘There was something very valuable in there. A leather folder. Did that get put in the big safe too?’ The sergeant shook his head. ‘Believe me, Tiff, after the’ – he hesitated – ‘bit of trouble, I did an inventory of everything in that room. Not a thing went out from there without me seeing it and putting it down in my notebook. With my pencil,’ he added, for maximum accuracy. ‘Nothing like a leather folder was taken out, I’m sure of it.’ ‘No. Because Miss Spruce had already taken it,’ Tiffany said. ‘That wretched nurse! I didn’t mind about the money, because I never expected the money! Maybe she thought it had deeds in it or something!’ Tiffany hurried back to the hall and looked around. Roland was the Baron now, in every respect. And it was in respect that people were clustering around him, saying things like, ‘He was a very good man,’ and ‘He’d had a good innings,’ and ‘At least he didn’t suffer,’ and all the other things people say after a funeral when they don’t know what to say. And now Tiffany headed purposefully towards the Baron, and stopped when a hand landed on her shoulder. She followed the arm up to the face of Nanny Ogg, who had managed to obtain the biggest flagon of ale that Tiffany had ever seen. To be precise, she noticed it was a half-full flagon of ale. ‘Nice to see something like this done well,’ said Nanny. ‘Never knew the old boy, of course, but he sounds like a decent fellow. Nice to see you, Tiff. Managing all right?’ Tiffany looked into those innocent smiling eyes, and past them to the much sterner face of Granny Weatherwax, and the brim of her hat. Tiffany bowed. Granny Weatherwax cleared her throat with a sound like gravel. ‘We ain’t here on business, my girl, we just wanted to help the king make a good entrance.’ ‘We are not here about the Cunning Man neither,’ Nanny Ogg added cheerfully. It sounded like a simple and silly giveaway, and Tiffany heard a disapproving sniff from Granny. But, generally speaking, when Nanny Ogg came out with a silly, embarrassing comment by accident, it was because she had thought about it very carefully beforehand. Tiffany knew this, and Nanny certainly knew that Tiffany knew, and Tiffany knew that too. But it was often the kind of way that witches behaved, and it all worked perfectly if nobody picked up an axe. ‘I know this is my problem. I will sort it out,’ she said. This was on the face of it a really stupid thing to say. The senior witches would be very useful to have at her side. But how would that look? This was a new steading, and she had to be proud. You couldn’t say, ‘I have done difficult and dangerous things before,’ because that was understood. What did matter was what you did today. It was a matter of pride. It was a matter of style. And it was also a matter of age. In twenty years’ time, perhaps, if she asked for help, people would think: Well, even an experienced witch can run up against something really unusual. And they would help as a matter of course. But now, if she asked for help, well … people would help. Witches always helped other witches. But everyone would think: Was she really any good? Can’t she last the distance? Is she strong enough for the long haul? No one would say anything, but everyone would think it. All this was the thought of a second, and when she blinked, the witches were watching her. ‘Self-reliance is a witch’s best friend,’ said Granny Weatherwax, looking stern. Nanny Ogg nodded in agreement, and added, ‘You can always rely on self-reliance, I’ve always said so.’ She laughed at Tiffany’s expression. ‘Do you think you are the only one to have to deal with the Cunning Man, love? Granny here had to deal with him when she was your age. She sent him back to where he came from in very short order, trust me on that.’ Knowing that it was useless, but attempting it anyway, Tiffany turned to Granny Weatherwax and said, ‘Can you give me any tips, Mistress Weatherwax?’ Granny, who was already drifting purposefully towards the buffet lunch, stopped for a moment and turned and said, ‘Trust yourself.’ She walked a few steps further and stood as if lost in thought and added, ‘And don’t lose.’ Nanny Ogg slapped Tiffany on the back. ‘Never met the bugger myself, but I hear he is pretty bad. Here, is the blushing bride having a hen night tonight?’ The old lady winked and poured the remaining contents of the flagon down her throat. Tiffany tried to think quickly. Nanny Ogg got on with everyone. Tiffany had only a vague idea of what a hen night was, but some of Mrs Proust’s stock gave her a few clues, and if Nanny Ogg knew about them too, it was a certainty that alcohol was involved. ‘I don’t think it’s appropriate to have a party like that on a night after a funeral, do you, Nanny? Though I think Letitia might enjoy a little talk,’ she added. ‘She’s your chum, isn’t she? I would have thought you’d have had a little talk with her yourself.’ ‘I did!’ Tiffany protested. ‘But I don’t think she believed me. And you’ve had at least three husbands, Nanny!’ Nanny Ogg stared at her for a moment and then said, ‘That’s quite a lot of conversation, I suppose. All right. But what about the young man? When’s his stag night going to be?’ ‘Ah, I’ve heard of those! It’s where his friends get him drunk, take him a long way away, tie him to a tree and then … I think a bucket of paint and a brush is involved sometimes, but usually they throw him in the pigsty. Why do you ask?’ ‘Oh, the stag night is always much more interesting than the hen night,’ said Nanny, a look of mischief in her eye. ‘Has the lucky groom got any chums?’ ‘Well, there are some nobby lads from other posh families, but the only people he really knows live here in the village. We all grew up together, you see? And none of them would dare throw the Baron in a pigsty!’ ‘What about your young man over there?’ Nanny gestured towards Preston, who was standing nearby. He always seemed to be standing nearby. ‘Preston?’ said Tiffany. ‘I don’t think he knows the Baron very well. And in any case—’ She stopped and thought, Young man? She turned and looked at Nanny, who was standing with her hands behind her back and face turned towards the ceiling with the expression of an angel, although admittedly one who might have met a few demons in her time. And that was Nanny all over. When it came to affairs of the heart – or indeed, of any other parts – you couldn’t fool Nanny Ogg. But he’s not my young man, she insisted to herself. He’s just a friend. Who is a boy. Preston stepped forward and removed his helmet in front of Nanny. ‘I fear, madam, that it would be against the rules for me as a military man to lay a hand on my commanding officer,’ he said. ‘Were it not for that, I would do so with alacrity.’ Nanny nodded appreciatively at the polysyllabic response, and gave Tiffany a wink that made her blush to the soles of her boots. Nanny Ogg’s grin was now so wide you could fit it onto a pumpkin. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,’ she said. ‘I can see this place needs a little fun. Thank goodness I’m here!’ Nanny Ogg had a heart of gold, but if you were easily shocked then it was best to stick your fingers in your ears when she said anything. Yet there had to be common sense, didn’t there? ‘Nanny, we’re at a funeral !’ But her tone of voice would never make Nanny Ogg swerve. ‘Was he a good man?’ Tiffany hesitated only for a moment. ‘He grew into goodness.’ Nanny Ogg noticed everything. ‘Oh yes, your Granny Aching taught him his manners, I believe. But he died a good man, then? Good. Will he be remembered with fondness?’ Tiffany tried to ignore the lump in her throat, and managed to say, ‘Oh yes, by everybody.’ ‘And you saw to it that he died well? Kept the pain away?’ ‘Nanny, if I say it myself, he had a perfect death. The only better death would have been not to die.’ ‘Well done,’ said Nanny. ‘Did he have a favourite song, do you know?’ ‘Oh yes! It’s “The Larks They Sang Melodious”,’ said Tiffany. ‘Ah, I reckon that’s the one we call “Pleasant and Delightful” back home. Just follow me, will you, and we’ll soon get them in the right mood.’ And with that Nanny Ogg grabbed a passing waiter by the shoulder, took a full flagon from his tray, jumped up onto a table, as lively as a girl, and shouted for silence in a voice as brisk as a sergeant-major. ‘Ladies and gentlemen! To celebrate the good life and easeful passing of our late friend and Baron, I have been asked to sing his favourite song. Do join in with me if you’ve got the breath!’ Tiffany listened, enthralled. Nanny Ogg was a one-woman masterclass, or rather mistressclass, in people. She treated perfect strangers as if she had known them for years, and somehow they acted as if she really had. Dragged along, as it were, by an extremely good singing voice for one old woman with one tooth, perplexed people were raising their voices beyond a mumble by the second line, and by the end of the first verse were harmonizing like a choir, and she had them in her hand. Tiffany wept, and saw through the tears a little boy in his new tweed jacket that smelled of wee, walking with his father under different stars. And then she saw the glisten of tears on the faces, including the faces of Pastor Egg and even the Duchess. The echoes were of loss and remembrance, and the hall itself breathed. I should have learned this, she thought. I wanted to learn fire, and pain, but I should have learned people. I should have learned how not to sing like a turkey … The song had finished, and people were looking around sheepishly at one another, but Nanny Ogg’s boot was already making the table rock. ‘Dance, dance, the shaking of the sheets. Dance, dance, when you hear the piper playing,’ she sang. Tiffany thought, Is this the right song for a funeral? And then she thought, Of course it is! It’s a wonderful tune and it tells us that one day all of us will die but – and this is the important thing – we are not dead yet. And now Nanny Ogg had jumped off the table, grabbed a hold of Pastor Egg, and as she spun him round, she sang, ‘Be assured no preacher can keep death away from any man,’ and he had the grace to smile and dance with her. People applauded – not something Tiffany would ever have expected at a funeral. She wished, oh how she wished, to be like Nanny Ogg who understood things and knew how to hammer silence into laughter. And then, as the applause died away, a male voice sang, ‘Down in the valley, the valley so low, hang your head easy, hear the wind blow …’ And silence stood aside in the face of the unexpectedly silver voice of the sergeant. Nanny Ogg drifted to where Tiffany was standing. ‘Well, it looks like I’ve warmed them up. Hear them clearing their throats? I reckon the pastor will be singing by the end of the evening! And I could do with another drink. It’s thirsty work, singing.’ There was a wink, then she said to Tiffany, ‘Human being first, witch second; hard to remember, easy to do.’ It was magic; magic had turned a hall full of people who mostly did not know very many of the other people there into human beings who knew they were among other human beings and, right now, that was all that needed to matter. At which point Preston tapped her on the shoulder. He had a curious kind of worried smile on his face. ‘Sorry, miss, but I’m on duty, worst luck, and I think you ought to know we have three more visitors.’ ‘Can’t you just show them in?’ said Tiffany. ‘I would like to do that, miss, only they are stuck on the roof at the moment. The sound made by three witches is a lot of swearing, miss.’ * * * If there had been swearing, the new arrivals had apparently run out of breath by the time Tiffany located the right window and crawled out onto the lead roof of the castle. There wasn’t very much to hold onto and it was pretty misty, but she carefully made her way out there on her hands and knees and headed towards the grumbling. ‘Are there any witches up here?’ she said. And out of the gloom came the voice of somebody not even trying to keep their temper. ‘And what in the seven hells would you do if I said no, Miss Tiffany Aching?’ ‘Mrs Proust? What are you doing here?’ ‘Holding onto a gargoyle! Get us down right now, my dear, because these are not my stones and Mrs Happenstance needs the privy.’ Tiffany crawled a little further, well aware of the sheer drop an inch away from her hand. ‘Preston has gone to fetch a rope. Do you have a broomstick?’ ‘A sheep crashed into it,’ said Mrs Proust. Tiffany could just make her out now. ‘You crashed into a sheep in the air?’ ‘Maybe it was a cow, or something. What are those things that go snuffle snuffle ?’ ‘You ran into a flying hedgehog?’ ‘No, as it happened. We were down low, looking for a bush for Mrs Happenstance.’ There was a sigh in the gloom. ‘It’s because of her trouble, poor soul. We’ve stopped at a lot of bushes on the way here, believe me! And do you know what? Inside every single one of them is something that stings, bites, kicks, screams, howls, squelches, farts enormously, goes all spiky, tries to knock you over or does an enormous pile of poo! Haven’t you people up here heard about porcelain?’ Tiffany was taken aback. ‘Well, yes, but not in fields!’ ‘They would be all the better for it,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘I’ve ruined a decent pair of boots, I have.’ There was a clinking noise in the mist, and Tiffany was relieved to hear Preston say, ‘I have forced open the old trapdoor, ladies, if you would be kind enough to crawl this way?’ The trapdoor opened into a bedroom, clearly one that had been slept in last night by a woman. Tiffany bit her lip. ‘I think this is where the Duchess is staying. Please don’t touch anything, she’s bad enough as it is.’ ‘Duchess? Sounds posh,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘What kind of a duchess, may I ask?’ Tiffany said, ‘The Duchess of Keepsake. You saw her when we had that bit of difficulty in the city. You know? At the King’s Head? They’ve got a huge property about thirty miles away.’ ‘That’s nice,’ said Mrs Proust in a way that suggested that it probably wasn’t going to be very nice but would be very interesting, and probably embarrassing to somebody who wasn’t Mrs Proust. ‘I remember her, and I remember thinking when I got back from all that, Where have I seen you before, my lady? Do you know anything about her, my dear?’ ‘Well, her daughter told me that a terrible fire took away her property and her whole family before she married the Duke.’ Mrs Proust brightened up, although it was the brightness on the edge of a knife. ‘Oh, really?’ she said, her voice all treacle. ‘Just fancy that. I look forward to meeting the lady again and offering my condolences …’ Tiffany decided that this was a puzzle she had no time to unravel, but there were other things to think about. ‘Er …?’ she began, looking at the very tall lady somehow trying to hide behind Mrs Proust, who turned round and said, ‘Oh dear me, where are my manners? I know, I never had any to start with. Tiffany Aching, this is Miss Cambric, better known as Long Tall Short Fat Sally. Miss Cambric is being trained by old Mrs Happenstance, who was the one you briefly saw hurrying down the stairs with one aim in mind. Sally suffers terribly from tides, poor thing. I had to bring them both because Sally had the only working broomstick I could find and she wouldn’t leave Mrs Happenstance behind. It was the devil, keeping the broomstick trim. Don’t worry, she’ll be back to about five foot six in a few hours. Of course, she’s a martyr to ceilings. And Sally, you’d better get after Mrs Happenstance right now.’ She waved a hand and the younger witch scurried off, looking nervous. When Mrs Proust gave orders, they tended to be obeyed. She turned back to Tiffany. ‘The thing that is after you has got a body now, young lady. He has stolen the body of a murderer locked up in the Tanty. You know what? Before the bloke got out of the building he killed his canary. They never kill their canary. It’s what you don’t do. You might beat another prisoner over the head with an iron bar in a riot, but you never kill a canary. That would be evil.’ It was a strange way to introduce the subject, but Mrs Proust didn’t do small talk or, for that matter, reassurance. ‘I thought something like this would happen,’ said Tiffany. ‘I knew it would. What does he look like?’ ‘We lost him a couple of times,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘Calls of nature, and so on. He might have broken into a house for better clothes, I couldn’t say. He won’t care about the body. He’ll run it until he finds another one or it falls to pieces. We’ll keep an eye out for him. And this is your steading?’ Tiffany sighed, ‘Yes. And now he is chasing me like a wolf after a lamb.’ ‘Then if you care about people, you must get rid of him quick,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘If a wolf gets hungry enough it will eat anything. And now, where are your manners, Miss Aching? We’re cold and wet, and by the sound of it there is food and drink downstairs, am I right?’ ‘Oh, I’m sorry, and you’ve come all this way to warn me,’ said Tiffany. Mrs Proust waved a hand as if it wasn’t important. ‘I’m sure Long Tall Short Fat Sally and Mrs Happenstance would like some refreshment after our long ride, but I’m just tired,’ she said. And then, to Tiffany’s horror, she flung herself backwards and landed on the Duchess’s bed with only her boots sticking off the end, dripping water. ‘This Duchess,’ she said, ‘has she been giving you any more grief at all?’ ‘Well, yes, I’m afraid so,’ said Tiffany. ‘She doesn’t seem to have any respect for anybody lower than a king, and even then I suspect that’s only a maybe. She bullies her daughter too,’ she added, and as an afterthought pointed out, ‘One of your customers, in fact.’ And then she told Mrs Proust everything about Letitia and the Duchess because Mrs Proust was the kind of woman you told everything to, and as the story unfolded, Mrs Proust’s grin grew wider, and Tiffany needed no witch skill to suspect that the Duchess was going to be in some trouble. ‘I thought so. I never forget a face. Have you ever heard of the music hall, my dear? Oh, no. You wouldn’t have, not out here. It’s all about comedians and singers and talking-dog acts – and, of course, dancing girls. I think you are getting the picture here, are you not? Not such a bad job for a girl who could shake a handsome leg, especially since after the show all the posh gentlemen would be waiting outside the stage door to take them out for a lovely dinner and so on.’ The witch took off her pointy hat and dropped it on the floor beside the bed. ‘Can’t abide broomsticks,’ she said. ‘They give me calluses in places where nobody should have calluses.’ Tiffany was at a loss. She couldn’t demand that Mrs Proust get off the bed; it wasn’t her bed. It wasn’t her castle. She smiled. In fact it really wasn’t her problem. How nice to find a problem that wasn’t yours. ‘Mrs Proust,’ she said, ‘could I persuade you to come downstairs? There are some other witches down here who I would really like you to meet.’ Preferably when I’m not in the room, she thought to herself, but I doubt if that would be possible. ‘Hedge witches?’ Mrs Proust sniffed. ‘Although there’s nothing actually wrong with hedge magic,’ she went on. ‘I met one once who could run her hands over a privet hedge and three months later it had grown into the shape of two peacocks and an offensively cute little dog holding a privet bone in its mouth, and all this, mark you, without a pair of shears being anywhere near it.’ ‘Why did she want to do that?’ said Tiffany, astounded. ‘I doubt very much that she actually wanted to do it, but someone asked her to do it, and paid good money too and, strictly speaking, topiary is not actually illegal, although I rather suspect that one or two folk are going to be the first up against the hedge when the revolution comes. Hedge witches – that’s what we call country witches in the city.’ ‘Oh, really,’ said Tiffany innocently. ‘Well, I don’t know what we call city witches in the country, but I am sure that Mistress Weatherwax will tell you.’ She knew she should have felt guilty about this, but it had been a long day, after a long week, and a witch has got to have some fun in her life. The way downstairs took them past Letitia’s room. Tiffany heard voices, and a laugh. It was Nanny Ogg’s laugh. You couldn’t mistake that laugh; it was the kind of laugh that slapped you on the back. Then Letitia’s voice said, ‘Does that really work?’ And Nanny said something under her breath that Tiffany couldn’t quite hear, but whatever it was, it made Letitia almost choke with giggling. Tiffany smiled. The blushing bride was being instructed by somebody who had probably never blushed in her life, and it seemed quite a happy arrangement. At least she was not bursting into tears every five minutes. Tiffany led Mrs Proust down into the hall. It was amazing to see that all people needed to make them happy was food and drink and other people. Even with Nanny Ogg no longer chivvying them along, they were filling the place with, well, people being people. And, standing where she could see very nearly everybody, Granny Weatherwax. She was talking to Pastor Egg. Tiffany drifted up to her carefully, judging from the priest’s face that he wouldn’t mind at all if she intruded. Granny Weatherwax could be very forthright on the subject of religion. She saw him relax as she said, ‘Mistress Weatherwax, may I introduce to you Mrs Proust? From Ankh-Morpork, where she runs a remarkable emporium.’ Swallowing, Tiffany turned to Mrs Proust and said,‘May I present to you Granny Weatherwax.’ She stepped back as the two elderly witches looked at one another and then held her breath. The hall fell silent and neither of them blinked. And then – surely not – Granny Weatherwax winked and Mrs Proust smiled. ‘Very pleased to make your acquaintance,’ said Granny. ‘How very nice to see you,’ said Mrs Proust. They exchanged a further glance and turned to Tiffany Aching, who suddenly understood that old, clever witches had been older and cleverer for much longer than her. Granny Weatherwax almost laughed when Mrs Proust said, ‘We don’t need to know one another’s names to recognize one another, but can I suggest, young lady, that you start breathing again.’ Granny Weatherwax lightly and primly took Mrs Proust’s arm and turned to where Nanny Ogg was coming down the stairs, followed by Letitia, who was blushing in places where people don’t often blush, and said, ‘Do come with me, my dear. You must meet my friend, Mrs Ogg, who buys quite a lot of your merchandise.’ Tiffany walked away. For a brief moment in time, there was nothing for her to do. She looked down the length of the hall, where people were still gathering in little groups, and saw the Duchess by herself. Why did she do it? Why did she walk over to the woman? Maybe, she thought, if you know you are going to be facing a horrible monster, it is as well to get in a little practice. But to her absolute amazement, the Duchess was crying. ‘Can I help in any way?’ said Tiffany. She was the immediate subject of a glare, but the tears were still falling. ‘She’s all I’ve got,’ said the Duchess, looking over at Letitia, who was still trailing Nanny Ogg. ‘I’m sure Roland will be a very considerate husband. I hope she will think that I have given her a good grounding to get her safely through the world.’ ‘I think you’ve definitely taught her many things,’ said Tiffany. But the Duchess was now staring at the witches, and without looking at Tiffany she said, ‘I know we’ve had our differences, young lady, but I wonder if you can tell me who that lady is up there, one of your sister witches, talking to the remarkably tall one.’ Tiffany glanced around for a moment. ‘Oh, that’s Mrs Proust. She’s from Ankh-Morpork, you know. Is she an old friend of yours? She was asking about you, only a little while ago.’ The Duchess smiled, but it was a strange little smile. If smiles had a colour, it would have been green. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘That was, er’ – she paused, swaying a little – ‘very kind of her.’ She coughed. ‘I am so glad that you and my daughter appear to be close chums and I would like to tender you my apologies for any hastiness on my part in recent days. I would also very much like to tender you and the hard-working staff here my apologies for what may have appeared to be high-handed behaviour, and I trust you will accept that these stemmed from a mother’s determination to do the very best for her child.’ She spoke very carefully, the words coming out like children’s coloured building blocks, and between the blocks – like mortar – were the unspoken words: Please, please, don’t tell people I was a dancer in a music hall. Please! ‘Well, of course, we’re all on edge,’ said Tiffany. ‘Least said, soonest mended, as they say.’ ‘Regrettably,’ said the Duchess, ‘I don’t think I said least.’ Tiffany noticed that there was a large wine glass in her hand, and it was almost empty. The Duchess watched Tiffany for a while and then continued, ‘A wedding almost straight after a funeral, is that right?’ ‘Some people think that it’s bad luck to move a wedding once it’s planned,’ said Tiffany. ‘Do you believe in luck?’ said the Duchess. ‘I believe in not having to believe in luck,’ said Tiffany. ‘But, your grace, I can tell you in truth that at such times the universe gets a little closer to us. They are strange times, times of beginnings and endings. Dangerous and powerful. And we feel it even if we don’t know what it is. These times are not necessarily good, and not necessarily bad. In fact, what they are depends on what we are.’ The Duchess looked down at the empty glass in her hand. ‘For some reason, I think I should be taking a nap.’ She turned to head towards the stairs, nearly missing the first step. There was a burst of laughter from the other end of the hall. Tiffany followed the Duchess, but stopped to tap Letitia on the shoulder. ‘If I was you, I’d go and talk to your mum before she goes upstairs. I think she’d like to talk to you now.’ She bent down and whispered in her ear, ‘But don’t tell her too much about what Nanny Ogg said.’ Letitia looked about to object, saw Tiffany’s expression, thought better of it and intercepted her mother. And now, suddenly, Granny Weatherwax was at Tiffany’s side. After a while, as if addressing the air, Granny said, ‘You have a good steading here. Nice people. And I’ll tell you one thing. He is near.’ Tiffany noticed that the other witches – even Long Tall Short Fat Sally – were now lining up just behind Granny Weatherwax. She was the focus of their stares, and when a lot of witches are staring at you, you can feel it like the sun. ‘Is there something you want to say?’ said Tiffany. ‘There is, isn’t there?’ It wasn’t often, and in fact now Tiffany came to think of it, it wasn’t ever that she had seen Granny Weatherwax look worried. ‘You are certain that you can best the Cunning Man, are you not? I see you don’t wear midnight yet.’ ‘When I am old, I shall wear midnight,’ said Tiffany. ‘It’s a matter of choice. And Granny, I know why you are here. It is to kill me if I fail, isn’t it?’ ‘Blast it,’ Granny Weatherwax said. ‘You are a witch, a good witch. But some of us think that it might be best if we insisted on helping you.’ ‘No,’ said Tiffany. ‘My steading. My mess. My problem.’ ‘No matter what?’ said Granny. ‘Definitely!’ ‘Well, I commend you for your adherence to your position and wish you … no, not luck, but certainty!’ There was a susurration among the witches and Granny snapped sharply, ‘She has made her decision and that, ladies, is it.’ ‘No contest,’ said Nanny Ogg with a grin. ‘I very nearly pity him. Kick him in the— Kick him anywhere you can, Tiff!’ ‘It’s your ground,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘How can a witch do anything but succeed on her own home ground?’ Granny Weatherwax nodded. ‘If you have let pride get the better of you, then you have already lost, but if you grab pride by the scruff of the neck and ride it like a stallion, then you may have already won. And now I think it’s time for you to prepare, Miss Tiffany Aching. Do you have a plan for the morning?’ Tiffany looked into the piercing blue eyes. ‘Yes. Not to lose.’ ‘That’s a good plan.’ Mrs Proust shook Tiffany with a hand that was prickly with warts and said, ‘By happy accident, my girl, I think I should go and slay a monster myself …’ 29 You had been a sad little white kitten when Tiffany had given her to the old witch. Now she was a queen, far more snobbish than the Duchess. She must have recognized Tiffany because she graciously condescended to blink at her and then look away as if bored. There were never any mice in Granny’s cottage these days; You just stared at them until they realized how worthless they were and slunk away. Chapter 14 BURNING THE KING TIFFANY KNEW SHE wouldn’t go to sleep that night, and didn’t try. People sat together in little groups, talking, and there was still food and drink on the tables. Possibly because of the drink, the people didn’t actually notice how fast the food and drink were disappearing, but Tiffany was certain she could hear faint noises in the beams high above. Of course, witches were proverbially good at stuffing food into their pockets for later, but probably the Feegles outdid them by sheer numbers. Tiffany moved aimlessly from group to group, and when the Duchess finally left to go upstairs, she didn’t follow her. She was quite emphatic to herself that she wasn’t following. She just happened to be going in the same direction. And, when she darted across the stone floor to reach the door of the Duchess’s room, just after it closed behind the woman, she wasn’t doing this in order to eavesdrop. Certainly not. She was just in time to hear the beginning of an angry scream, and then Mrs Proust’s voice: ‘Why, Deirdre Parsley! Long time, no sequins! Can you still high-kick a man’s top hat off his head?’ And then there was silence. And Tiffany left hurriedly, because the door was very thick and someone would be bound to notice if she stood there any longer with her ear pressed to it. So she went back down in time to talk to Long Tall Short Fat Sally and Mrs Happenstance, who she now realized was blind, which was unfortunate but not – for a witch – too much of a tragedy. They always had a few extra senses to spare. And then she went down into the crypt. There were flowers all around the old Baron’s tomb, but not on it because the marble lid was so beautifully made that it would be a shame even to cover it with roses. On the stone, stonemasons had carved the Baron himself, in armour and holding his sword; it was so perfectly done that it looked as if he might, at any moment, get up and walk away. At the four corners of the slab, candles burned. Tiffany walked to and fro past other dead barons in stone. Here and there was a wife, carved with her hands peacefully folded; it was … strange. There were no gravestones on the Chalk. Stone was too precious. There were burying grounds, and in the castle somewhere was an ancient book of faded maps that showed where people had been put. The only common person to have a memorial, who was in most respects an extremely uncommon person, was Granny Aching; the cast-iron wheels and pot-bellied stove that were all that remained of her shepherding hut would certainly survive for another hundred years. It had been good metal, and the endlessly nibbling sheep kept the ground around it as smooth as a tabletop, and besides, the grease from the sheep’s fleeces as they rubbed up against the wheels were as good as oil for keeping the metal as fine as the day it was cast. In the old days, before a knight became a knight, he would spend a night in his hall with his weapons, praying to whichever gods were listening to give him strength and good wisdom. She was sure she heard those words spoken, at least in her head if not in her ears. She turned and looked at the sleeping knights, and wondered if Mrs Proust was right, and stone had a memory. And what are my weapons? she thought. And the answer came to her instantly: pride. Oh, you hear them say it’s a sin; you hear them say it goes before a fall. And that can’t be true. The blacksmith prides himself on a good weld; the carter is proud that his horses are well turned out, gleaming like fresh chestnuts in the sunshine; the shepherd prides himself on keeping the wolf from the flock; the cook prides herself on her cakes. We pride ourselves on making a good history of our lives, a good story to be told. And I also have fear – the fear that I will let others down – and because I fear, I will overcome that fear. I will not disgrace those who have trained me. And I have trust, even though I am not sure what it is I am trusting. ‘Pride, fear and trust,’ she said aloud. And in front of her the four candles streamed fire, as if driven by the wind, and for a moment she was certain, in the rush of light, that the figure of an old witch was melting into the dark stone. ‘Oh, yes,’ said Tiffany. ‘And I have fire.’ And then, not knowing exactly why, she said, ‘When I am old, I shall wear midnight. But not today.’ Tiffany held up her lantern and the shadows moved, but one, which looked very much like an old woman in black, faded completely. And I know why the hare leaps into the fire, and tomorrow … No, today, I am leaping into it too. She smiled. When Tiffany got back in the hall, the witches were all watching her from the stairs. Tiffany had wondered how Granny and Mrs Proust would get on, given that both of them were as proud as a cat full of sixpences. But they seemed to be getting on well enough in a talking- about-the-weather, the-manners-of-young-people-these-days and the-scandalous-price-of-cheese sort of way. But Nanny Ogg looked unusually worried. Seeing Nanny Ogg looking worried was worrying. It was past midnight – technically speaking, the witching hour. In real life every hour was a witching hour, but nevertheless the way the two hands on the clock stood straight up was slightly eerie. ‘I hear that the lads came back from their stag-night fun,’ said Nanny, ‘but it seems to me they’ve forgotten where they left the groom. I don’t think he is going to go anywhere, though. They are pretty certain they took his trousers down and tied him to something.’ She coughed. ‘That’s generally the usual procedure. Technically the best man is supposed to remember where, but they found him and he can’t remember his own name.’ The clock in the hall struck midnight; it was never on time. Each strike may as well have hit Tiffany’s backbone. And there, marching towards her, was Preston. And it seemed to Tiffany that for quite some time, wherever she had looked, there was Preston, looking smart and clean and – somehow – hopeful. ‘Look, Preston,’ she said. ‘I haven’t got time to explain things, and I’m not certain you would believe them – no, you probably would believe them if I told you them. I have to go out there to kill that monster before it kills me.’ ‘Then I will protect you,’ said Preston. ‘Anyway, my commander-in-chief might be out there somewhere in the pigsty with a sow sniffing his unmentionables! And I represent the temporal power here!’ ‘You?’ Tiffany snapped. Preston stuck out his chest, although it didn’t go very far. ‘As a matter of fact, yes: the lads made me officer of the Watch so that they could all have a drink, and right now the sergeant is in the kitchen, throwing up in the sink. He thought he could outdrink Mrs Ogg!’ He saluted. ‘I’m going out there with you, miss. And you can’t stop me. No offence meant, of course. However by virtue of the power invested in me by the sergeant, in between him throwing up into the sink, I would like to commandeer you and your broomstick to assist me in my search, if that is all right with you?’ It was a dreadful question to ask a witch. On the other hand, it was being asked by Preston. ‘All right then,’ she said, ‘but do try not to scratch it. And there is one thing that I have to do first. Do excuse me.’ She walked a little way over to the open door of the hall and leaned against the cold stonework. ‘I know there are Feegles listening to me,’ she said. ‘Oh aye,’ said a voice about one inch from her ear. ‘Well, I don’t want you to help me tonight. This is a hag thing, you understand?’ ‘Oh aye, we seen the big posse of hags. It’s a big hag night the noo.’ ‘I must—’ Tiffany began. And then an idea struck her. ‘I have to fight the man with no eyes. And they are here to see how good a fighter I am. And so I mustn’t cheat by using Feegles. That’s an important hag rule. Of course, I respect the fact that cheating is an honourable Feegle tradition, but hags don’t cheat,’ she went on, aware that this was a huge lie. ‘If you help me, they will know, and all the hags will put me to scorn.’ And Tiffany thought, And if I lose, it will be Feegles versus hags, and that’s a battle that the world will remember. No pressure, eh? Aloud, she said, ‘You understand, right? This once, just this once, you will do as I tell you and not help me.’ ‘Aye, we understand ye. But ye ken that Jeannie says we must look out for ye at all times, because ye are our hag o’ the hills,’ said Rob. ‘I’m sorry to say that the kelda is not here,’ said Tiffany, ‘but I am and I have to tell you that if you help me this once I will no longer be your hag o’ the hills. I’m under a geas, ye ken. It’s a hag geas, and that’s a big geas indeed.’ She heard a group groan, and added, ‘I mean it. The chief hag is Granny Weatherwax and you know her.’ There was another groan. ‘There you are then,’ said Tiffany. ‘This time, please, let me do things my way. Is that understood?’ There was a pause, and then the voice of Rob Anybody said, ‘Och aye.’ ‘Very well,’ said Tiffany, and took a deep breath and went to find her broomstick. Taking Preston with her didn’t seem such a good idea as they rose above the roofs of the castle. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that you were scared of flying?’ she said. ‘That’s hardly fair,’ said Preston. ‘This is the first time I’ve ever flown.’ When they were at a decent height, Tiffany looked at the weather. There were clouds above the mountains, and the occasional flash of summer lightning. She could hear the rumble of thunder in the distance. You were never far from a thunderstorm in the mountains. The mist had lifted, and the moon was up; it was a perfect night. And there was a breeze. She had hoped for this. And Preston had his arms around her waist; she wasn’t sure whether she had hoped for that or not. They were well down onto the plains at the foot of the Chalk now, and even by moonlight Tiffany could see dark rectangles where earlier fields had been cleared. The men were always meticulous about not letting the fires get out of hand; nobody wanted wildfire – there was no telling what that would burn. The field they reached was the very last one. They always called it the King. Usually when the King was burned, half the village was waiting to catch any rabbits that fled the flames. That should have happened today, but everybody had been … otherwise occupied. The chicken houses and the pigsty were in a field just above it at the top of a bank, and it was said that the King grew such bountiful crops because the men found it much easier to cart the mulch onto the King rather than take it all to the lower fields. They landed by the pigsties, to the usual ferocious screaming of piglets, who believed that no matter what is actually happening, the world is trying to saw them in half. She sniffed. The air smelled of pig; she was sure, absolutely sure, that she would nevertheless smell the ghost if and when he was here. Mucky though they were, the pigs nevertheless had a natural smell; the smell of the ghost, on the other hand, would make a pig smell like violets by comparison. She shuddered. The wind was getting up. ‘Are you sure you can kill it?’ whispered Preston. ‘I think I can make it kill itself. And Preston, I absolutely forbid you to help me.’ ‘I’m sorry,’ said Preston. ‘Temporal power, you understand. You can’t give me orders, Miss Aching, if that’s all right by you.’ ‘You mean your sense of duty and your obedience to your commander means that you must help me?’ she said. ‘Well, yes, miss,’ said Preston, ‘and a few other considerations.’ ‘Then I really need you, Preston, I really do. I think I could do this myself, but it will make it so much easier if you help me. What I want you to do is—’ She was almost certain that the ghost would not be able to over-hear, but she lowered her voice anyway, and Preston absorbed her words without blinking and simply said, ‘That sounds pretty straightforward, miss. You can rely on the temporal power.’ ‘Yuck! How did I end up here?’ Something grey and sticky and smelling very much of pig and beer tried to pull itself over the pigsty wall. Tiffany knew it was Roland, but only because it was highly improbable that two bridegrooms had been thrown into the pigsty tonight. And he rose like something nasty from the swamp, dripping … well, just dripping; there was hardly any necessity to go into details. Bits of him splashed off. He hiccupped. ‘There appears to be an enormous pig in my bedroom, and it would seem that I have mislaid my trousers,’ he said, his voice baffled by alcohol. The young Baron peered around, understanding not so much dawning as bursting. ‘I don’t think this is my bedroom, is it?’ he said, and slowly slipped back into the sty. She smelled the ghost. Over and above the mix of smells coming from the pigsty it stood out like a fox among chickens. And now the ghost spoke, in a voice of horror and decay. I can feel you here, witch, and others too. I do not care about them, but this new body, while not very robust, has … a permanent agenda of its own. I am strong. I am coming. You cannot save everybody. I doubt if your fiendish flying stick can carry four people. Who will you leave behind? Why not leave them all? Why not leave the tiresome rival, the boy who spurned you, and the persistent young man? Oh, I know how you think, witch! But I don’t think that way, Tiffany thought to herself. Oh, I might have liked to see Roland in the pigsty, but people aren’t just people, they are people surrounded by circumstances. But you aren’t. You’re not even people any more. Beside her, with a horrible sucking noise, Preston pulled Roland out of the pigsty, against the protest of the sow. How lucky for both of them that they couldn’t hear the voice. She paused. Four people? The tiresome rival? But there was only herself, Roland and Preston, wasn’t there? She looked towards the far end of the field, in the moon shadow of the castle. A white figure was running towards them at speed. It had to be Letitia. Nobody around here wore so much billowing white all the time. Tiffany’s mind spun with the algebra of tactics. ‘Preston, off you go. Take the broomstick.’ Preston nodded and then saluted, with a grin. ‘At your service, miss.’ Letitia arrived in a flurry and expensive white slippers. She stopped dead when she saw Roland, who was sober enough to try to cover, with his hands, what Tiffany knew she would always now think of as his passionate parts. This simply made a squelching noise, since he was thickly encrusted in pig muck. ‘One of his chums told me they threw him in the pigsty for a laugh!’ Letitia said indignantly. ‘And they call themselves his friends!’ ‘I think they think that’s what friends are for,’ said Tiffany absentmindedly. To herself she thought, Is this going to work? Have I overlooked something? Have I understood what I should do? Who do I think I’m talking to? I suppose I’m looking for a sign, just a sign. There was a rustling noise. She looked down. A hare looked up at her and then, without panicking, lost herself in the stubbles. ‘I’ll take that as a yes, then,’ said Tiffany, and felt panicked herself. After all, was that an omen, or was it just a hare who was old enough not to run instantly when she saw people? And it wasn’t good manners, she was sure, to ask for a second sign to tell you if the first sign wasn’t just a coincidence, was it? At this point, this very point, Roland started to sing, possibly because of drink, but also perhaps because Letitia was industriously wiping him down while keeping her eyes closed so that, as an unmarried woman, she wouldn’t see anything unseemly or surprising. And the song that Roland sang went: ‘Tis pleasant and delightful on the bright summer’s morn, to see the fields and the meadows all covered in corn, and the small birds were singing on every green spray, and the larks they sang melodious, at the dawning of the day …’ He paused. ‘My father used to sing that quite a lot when we walked in these fields …’ he said. He was at that stage when drunken men started to cry, and the tears left little trails of pink behind as the muck was washed from his cheeks. But Tiffany thought, Thank you. An omen was an omen. You picked the ones that worked. And this was the big field, the field where they burned the last of the stubbles. And the hare runs into the fire. Oh, yes, the omens. They were always so important. ‘Listen to me, both of you. I am not going to be argued with by you, because you, Roland, are rascally drunk and you, Letitia, are a witch’ – Letitia beamed at that point – ‘who is junior to me, and therefore both of you will do what I tell you. And that way, all of us may get back to the castle alive.’ They both stopped and listened, Roland swaying gently. ‘When I shout,’ Tiffany continued, ‘I want you to each grab one of my hands and run! Turn if I turn, stop if I stop, although I doubt very much that I shall want to stop. Above all, don’t be afraid, and trust me. I’m almost sure I know what I’m doing.’ Tiffany realized that this wasn’t the best assurance, but they didn’t seem to notice. She added, ‘And when I say leap, leap as if a devil is behind you, because it will be.’ The stink was suddenly unbearable. The sheer hatred in it seemed to beat on Tiffany’s brain. By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes, she thought as she stared into the night-time gloom. By the stinking of my nose, something evil this way goes, she added, to stop herself gibbering as she scanned the distant hedge for movement. And there was a figure. There, heavy-set, walking towards them down the length of the field. It moved slowly, but was gathering speed. There was an awkwardness about it. ‘When he takes over a body, the owner of the body becomes a part of him too. No escape, no release.’ That’s what Eskarina had told her. Nothing good, nothing capable of redemption, could have thoughts that stank like that. She gripped the hands of the arguing couple and dragged them into a run. The … creature was between them and the castle. And was going more slowly than she’d expected. She risked another look and saw the glint of metal in its hands. Knives. ‘Come on!’ ‘These aren’t very good shoes for running in,’ Letitia pointed out. ‘My head aches,’ Roland supplied as Tiffany towed them towards the bottom of the field, ignoring all complaints as dry corn stalks snatched at them, caught hair, scratched legs and stung feet. They were barely going at a jog. The creature was following them doggedly. As soon as they turned to run up towards the castle and safety, it would gain on them … But the creature was having difficulties as well, and Tiffany wondered how far you could push a body if you didn’t feel its pain, couldn’t feel the agony of the lungs, the pounding of the heart, the cracking of the bones, the dreadful ache that pushed you to the last gasp and beyond. Mrs Proust had whispered to her, eventually, the things that the man Macintosh had done, as if saying the words aloud would pollute the air. Against that, how did you rank the crushing of the little songbird? And yet somehow that lodged in the mind as a crime beyond mercy. There will be no mercy for a song now silenced. No redemption for killing hope in the darkness. I know you. You are what whispered in Petty’s ear before he beat up his daughter. You are the first blast of the rough music. You look over the shoulder at the man as he picks up the first stone, and although I think you are part of us all and we will never be rid of you, we can certainly make your life hell. No mercy. No redemption. Glancing back, she saw its face looming bigger now and redoubled her efforts to drag the tired and reluctant couple over the rough ground. She managed a breath to say, ‘Look at him! Look at it! Do you want him to catch us?’ She heard a brief scream from Letitia and a groan of sudden sobriety from her husband-to-be. The eyes of the luckless Macintosh were bloodshot and wide open, the lips stuck in a frenzied grin. It tried to take advantage of the sudden narrowed gap but the other two had found fresh strength in their fear and they were almost pulling Tiffany along. And now there was a clear run up the field. It all depended on Preston. Amazingly, Tiffany felt confident. He is trustworthy, she thought, but there was a horrible gurgle behind them. The ghost was driving its host harder, and she could imagine the swish of a long knife. Timing had to be everything. Preston was trustworthy. He had understood, hadn’t he? Of course he had. She could trust Preston. Later on, what she remembered most was the silence, broken only by the crackling of the stalks and the heavy breathing of Letitia and Roland and the horrible wheezing of their pursuer. In her head the silence was broken by the voice of the Cunning Man. You are setting a trap. Filth! Do you think I can be so easily caught again? Little girls who play with fire will get burned, and you will burn, I promise you, oh you will burn. Where then will be the pride of witches! Vessels of iniquity! Handmaidens of uncleanliness! Defilers of all that is holy! Tiffany kept her eyes fixed on the end of the field as tears streamed out. She couldn’t help it. It was impossible to keep the vileness out; it drizzled in like poison, seeping into her ears and flowing under her skin. Another swish in the air behind them made all three runners find redoubled strength, but she knew it couldn’t go on. Was that Preston she saw in the gloom ahead? Then who was the dark figure beside him, looking like an old witch in a pointy hat? Even as she stared at it, it faded away. But suddenly fire burst up and Tiffany could hear the crackling as it spread like a sunrise across the field towards them, sparks filling the sky with extra stars. And the wind blew hard and she heard the stinking voice again: You will burn. You will burn! And the wind gusted and the flames blew up, and now a wall of fire was racing through the stubbles as fast as the wind itself. Tiffany looked down and the hare was back, running along beside them without any apparent effort; she looked at Tiffany, flicked up her legs and ran, ran directly towards the fire now, seriously ran. ‘Run!’ Tiffany commanded. ‘The fire will not burn you if you do what I say! Run fast! Run fast! Roland, run to save Letitia. Letitia, run to save Roland.’ The fire was almost on them. I need the strength, she thought. I need the power. And she remembered Nanny Ogg saying: ‘The world changes. The world flows. There’s power there, my girl.’ Weddings and funerals are a time of power … yes, weddings. Tiffany grasped their two hands even tighter. And here it came. A crackling, roaring wall of flame … ‘Leap!’ And as they leaped, she screamed: ‘Leap, knave. jump, whore.’ She felt them lift as the fire reached them. Time hesitated. A rabbit sped past beneath them, fleeing in terror from the flames. He will flee, she thought. He will run from the fire, but the fire will run to him. And the fire runs much faster than a dying body. Tiffany floated in a ball of yellow flame. The hare drifted past her, a creature happy in her element. We are not as fast as you, she thought. We will get singed. She looked right and left at the bride and groom, who were staring ahead as if hypnotised, and pulled them towards her. She understood. I am going to marry you, Roland. I said I would. She would make something beautiful out of this fire. ‘Back to the hells you came from, you Cunning Man,’ she yelled above the flames. ‘Leap, knave! jump, whore!’ she screamed again. ‘Be married now for ever more! ‘ And this is a wedding, she said to herself. A fresh start. And for a few seconds in the world, this is a place of power. Oh yes, a place of power. They landed, rolling, behind the wall of fire. Tiffany was ready, stamping out embers and kicking the small flames that remained. Preston was suddenly there too, picking up Letitia and carrying her out of the ash. Tiffany put an arm round Roland, who had had a soft landing (possibly on his head, part of Tiffany thought), and followed him. ‘Looks like very minor burns and some frizzled hair,’ said Preston, ‘and as for your old boyfriend, I think his mud is now baked on. How did you manage it?’ Tiffany took a deep breath. ‘The hare jumps through the flames so fast that she barely feels them,’ she said, ‘and when she lands, she lands on hot ash mostly. A grass fire burns out quickly under a strong wind.’ There was a scream from behind them, and she imagined a lumbering figure trying to outrun the wind-driven flames bearing down on it, and failing. She felt the pain of a creature that had twisted through the world for hundreds of years. ‘The three of you, stay right here. Do not follow me! Preston, look after them!’ Tiffany walked across the cooling ash. I have to see, she thought. I have to witness. I have to know what it is that I have done! The dead man’s clothes were smouldering. There was no pulse. He did terrible things to people, she thought: things that made even the prison warders sick. But what was done to him first? Was he just a much worse version of Mr Petty? Could he ever have been good? How do you change the past? Where does evil begin? She felt the words slide into her mind like a worm: Murderer, filth, killer! And she felt she should apologize to her ears for what they had to hear. But the voice of the ghost was weak and thin and querulous, sliding backwards into history. You can’t reach me, she thought. You are used up. You are too weak now. How hard was it, forcing a man to run himself to death? You can’t get in. I can feel you trying. She reached down into the ash and picked up a lump of flint, still warm from the fire; the soil was full of it, the sharpest of stones. Born in the chalk, and so in a way was Tiffany. Its smoothness was the touch of a friend. ‘You never learn, do you?’ she said. ‘You don’t understand that other people think too. Of course you wouldn’t run into the fire; but in your arrogance you never realized that the fire would run to you.’ Your power is only rumour and lies, she thought. You bore your way into people when they are uncertain and weak and worried and frightened, and they think their enemy is other people when their enemy is, and always will be, you – the master of lies. Outside, you are fearsome; inside, you are nothing but weakness. Inside, I am flint. She felt the heat of the whole field, steadied herself and gripped the stone. How dare you come here, you worm! How dare you trespass on what is mine! She felt the flint get hotter in her hand and then melt and flow between her fingers and drip onto the soil as she concentrated. She had never tried this before and she took a deep breath of air that somehow the flames had cleansed. And if you come back, Cunning Man, there will be another witch like me. There will always be another witch like me, because there are always going to be things like you, because we make space for them. But right now, on this bleeding piece of earth, I am the witch and you are nothing. By the blinking of my eyes, something wicked this way dies. A hiss in her mind faded away and left her alone among her thoughts. ‘No mercy,’ she said aloud, ‘no redemption. You forced a man to kill his harmless songbird, and somehow I think that was the greatest crime of them all.’ By the time she had walked back up the field, she had managed to become, once again, the Tiffany Aching who knew how to make cheese and deal with everyday chores and didn’t squeeze molten rock between her fingers. The happy but slightly singed couple were beginning to take some notice of things. Letitia sat up. ‘I feel cooked,’ she said. ‘What’s that smell?’ ‘Sorry, it’s you,’ said Tiffany, ‘and I’m afraid that wonderful lace nightshirt might just about be usable to clean windows from now on. I’m afraid we didn’t leap as fast as the hare.’ Letitia looked around. ‘Is Roland … is he all right?’ ‘Right as rain,’ said Preston cheerily. ‘The wet pig muck really helped.’ Letitia paused for a moment. ‘And that … thing?’ ‘Gone,’ said Tiffany. ‘Are you sure Roland is all right?’ Letitia insisted. Preston grinned. ‘Absolutely tickety boo, miss. Nothing important has been burned away, although it might be a little painful when we take the crusts off. He’s somewhat baked on, if you get my meaning.’ Letitia nodded and then turned, slowly, to Tiffany. ‘What was that you said when we were jumping?’ Tiffany took a deep breath. ‘I married you.’ ‘You, that is to say you, married, which is to say, wedded … us?’ said Letitia. ‘Yes,’ said Tiffany. ‘That is to say, certainly. Jumping over the fire together is a very ancient form of marriage. Doesn’t need any priests either, which is a great saving on the catering.’ The possible bride weighed this one up. ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Well, that’s what Mrs Ogg told me,’ said Tiffany, ‘and I’ve always wanted to try it.’ This seemed to meet with Letitia’s approval, because she said, ‘Mrs Ogg is a very knowledgeable lady, I must admit. She knows a surprising number of things.’ Tiffany, keeping her face as straight as possible, said, ‘A surprising number of surprising things.’ ‘Oh, yes … Er.’ Letitia cleared her throat rather hesitantly and followed up ‘er’ with an ‘um’. ‘Is something wrong?’ said Tiffany. ‘That word you used about me while we were jumping. I think it was a bad word.’ Tiffany had been expecting this. ‘Well, apparently it’s traditional.’ Her voice almost as hesitant as Letitia’s, she added, ‘And I don’t think Roland is a knave, either. And, of course, words and their usage do change over the years.’ ‘I don’t think that one does!’ said Letitia. ‘Well, it depends on circumstance and context,’ said Tiffany. ‘But frankly, Letitia, a witch will use any tool at hand in an emergency, as you might learn one day. Besides, the way we think about some words does change. For example, do you know the meaning of the word “buxom”?’ She thought to herself, Why am I making this small talk? I know: because it’s an anchor, and reassures me that I am a human being among other humans, and it helps wash the terror out of my soul … ‘Yes,’ said the bride-to-be. ‘I’m afraid I’m not, very, um, large in that department.’ ‘That would have been a bit unfortunate a couple of hundred years ago because the wedding service in those days required a bride to be buxom towards her husband.’ ‘I’d have had to push a cushion down my bodice!’ ‘Not really; it used to mean kind, understanding and obedient,’ said Tiffany. ‘Oh, I can do those,’ said Letitia. ‘At least, the first two,’ she added with a grin. She cleared her throat. ‘What is it, apart from getting married, of course – and I am very amused about that – that we have just done?’ ‘Well,’ said Tiffany. ‘You have helped me trap one of the worst monsters that has ever fouled the world.’ The new bride brightened up. ‘Did we? Well, that’s good,’ she said. ‘I’m very glad we did that. I don’t know how we can repay you for all your help though.’ ‘Well, clean used linen and old boots are always welcome,’ said Tiffany seriously. ‘But you don’t have to thank me for being a witch. I’d much prefer that you thanked my friend Preston. He put himself in real danger for the pair of you. At least we were together. He was out here all by himself.’ ‘That is, in point of actual fact,’ said Preston, ‘not entirely accurate. Apart from anything else, all my matches were damp, but fortuitously Mr Daft Wullie and his chums were very kind enough to lend me some. And I’ve been told to tell ye that that was OK, because they was helping me, not ye! And although there are ladies present, I have to say that they did assist in getting things going quickly by flapping the flames with their kilts. A sight, I may say, that once seen is never forgotten.’ ‘I would very much have liked to have seen it,’ said Letitia politely. ‘Anyway,’ said Tiffany, trying to get the mental picture out of her mind, ‘it might be best to concentrate on the fact that you will be somewhat more acceptably married by Pastor Egg tomorrow. And you know something very important about tomorrow? It’s today!’ Roland, who was holding his head and groaning, blinked and said, ‘What is?’ Chapter 15 A SHADOW AND A WHISPER IT WAS, ON THE WHOLE, a pretty good wedding in Tiffany’s opinion, a pretty good wedding. Pastor Egg, aware of the unusual number of witches in the audience, kept the religion to a minimum. The blushing bride walked up the hall, and Tiffany saw her blush a little more when she caught sight of Nanny Ogg, who gave her a cheerful thumbs-up as she passed. And then there was the throwing of the rice, followed of course by the careful sweeping up of the rice, because it was wicked to waste good food. Then there was general cheering and congratulations and, to the surprise of some, a happy, beaming Duchess, who chatted merrily, even to the maids, and appeared to have a kind and reassuring word for everybody. And only Tiffany knew why the woman shot occasional nervous glances towards Mrs Proust. Tiffany left then, to sneak away and help Preston in the King field, where he was digging a hole deep enough so that the plough would never find the charred remains that were collected and thrown down it. They washed their hands with vicious lye soap, because you could never be too careful. It was not, strictly speaking, a very romantic occasion. ‘Do you think he will ever come back?’ said Preston as they leaned on their shovels. Tiffany nodded. ‘The Cunning Man will, at least. Poison is always welcome somewhere.’ ‘What will you do now he’s gone?’ ‘Oh, you know, all the exciting stuff; somewhere there is always a leg that needs bandaging or a nose that needs blowing. It’s busy, busy all day long.’ ‘It doesn’t sound very exciting.’ ‘Well, I suppose so,’ said Tiffany, ‘but compared to yesterday that kind of day suddenly seems to be a very good day.’ They headed towards the hall, where the wedding breakfast was now being served as lunch. ‘You are a young man of considerable resourcefulness,’ Tiffany said to Preston, ‘and I thank you very much for your help.’ Preston nodded happily. ‘Thank you very much for that, miss, thank you very much indeed, but with just one little – how can I put it – correction. You are, after all, sixteen, more or less, and I am seventeen, so I think you will conclude that calling me young man … I will own up to a cheerful and youthful disposition, but I am older than you, my girl.’ There was a pause. Then Tiffany said carefully, ‘How do you know how old I am?’ ‘I asked around,’ said Preston, his eager smile never leaving his face. ‘Why?’ Tiffany didn’t get an answer because the sergeant came out of the main door with confetti cascading off his helmet. ‘Oh, there you are, miss. The Baron’s been asking after you, and so has the Baroness.’ He paused to smile and said, ‘Nice to have one of them again.’ His gaze fell on Preston and the sergeant frowned. ‘Lollygagging again, as usual, Lance Private Preston?’ Preston saluted smartly, ‘You are correct in your surmise, Sergeant; you have voiced an absolute truth.’ This got Preston the puzzled glare he always got from the sergeant, and there was also a disapproving grunt, which meant: One day I’ll work out what it is you are saying, my lad, and then you’ll be in trouble. Weddings can be rather similar to funerals in that, apart from the main players, when it’s all over, people are never quite sure what they should be doing next, which is why they see if there is any wine left. But Letitia was looking radiant, which is compulsory for brides, and the slightly frizzled bits of her hair had been neatly concealed by her brilliant, sparkly tiara. Roland had also scrubbed up quite well, and you had to be quite close to him to smell pig. ‘About last night …’ he began nervously. ‘Er, it did happen, didn’t it? I mean, I remember the pigsty, and we were all running, but …’ His voice faded away. Tiffany looked at Letitia, who mouthed the words, ‘I remember everything!’ Yes, she really is a witch, Tiffany thought. That’s going to be interesting. Roland coughed. Tiffany smiled. ‘Dear Miss Aching,’ he said, and for once Tiffany forgave him his ‘public meeting’ voice, ‘I am well aware that I have been party to a miscarriage of natural justice vis-à-vis your good self.’ He stopped to clear his throat again and Tiffany thought, I really hope that Letitia can wash some of the starch out of him. ‘With this in mind, I spoke to young Preston here, who talked to the kitchen girls in his cheery way and found out where the nurse had gone. She had spent some of the money, but most of it is here and it is, I am happy to say, yours.’ At this point somebody nudged Tiffany. It was Preston, who hissed, ‘We’ve found this too.’ She looked down, and he pressed a worn leather folder into her hand. She nodded in grateful thanks and looked at Roland. ‘Your father wanted you to have this,’ she said. ‘It may be worth more to you than all that money. I would wait until you are alone before you look at it.’ He turned it over in his hands. ‘What is it?’ ‘Just a memory,’ said Tiffany. ‘Just a memory.’ The sergeant stepped forward then and tipped a heavy leather bag onto the table, among the glasses and flowers. There was a gasp from the guests. I’m being watched like hawks by my sister witches, thought Tiffany, and I am also being watched by practically everyone I know, and who know me. I’ve got to do this right. And I’ve got to do this so that everybody remembers it. ‘I think you should keep it, sir,’ she said. Roland looked relieved, but Tiffany went on, ‘However, I have a few simple requests on behalf of other people.’ Letitia nudged her husband in the ribs and he spread out his hands. ‘This is my wedding day! How can I refuse any request?’ ‘The girl Amber Petty needs a dowry which, incidentally, would allow her young man to buy his indenture to a master craftsman, and you might not be aware that he sewed the gown that is currently adorning your beautiful young wife. Have you ever seen anything finer?’ This got an immediate round of applause, along with whistles from Roland’s chums, who whimsically called out things like, ‘Which one? The girl or the dress!’ When that was over, Tiffany said, ‘And furthermore, sir, and with your indulgence, I would like your pledge that any boy or girl from the Chalk with such a similar request will find you obliging. I think you will agree that I am asking for a lot less than I am returning to you?’ ‘Tiffany, I believe you are correct,’ said Roland, ‘but I suspect you have more up your sleeve?’ ‘How well you know me, sir,’ said Tiffany and Roland, just for a moment, went pink. ‘I want a school, sir. I want a school here on the Chalk. I‘ve been thinking about this for a long time – in fact for longer than I had worked out the name for what I wanted. There’s an old barn on Home Farm that isn’t being used right now and I think we could make it quite acceptable in a week or so.’ ‘Well, the travelling teachers do come through every few months,’ said the Baron. ‘Yes, sir, I know, sir, and they’re useless, sir. They teach facts, not understanding. It’s like teaching people about forests by showing them a saw. I want a proper school, sir, to teach reading and writing, and most of all thinking, sir, so people can find what they’re good at, because someone doing what they really like is always an asset to any country, and too often people never find out until it’s too late.’ She deliberately looked away from the sergeant, but her words had caused a susurration around the room, Tiffany was glad to hear. She drowned it out with, ‘There have been times, lately, when I dearly wished that I could change the past. Well, I can’t, but I can change the present, so that when it becomes the past it will turn out to be a past worth having. And I’d like the boys to learn about girls and I’d like the girls to learn about boys. Learning is about finding out who you are, what you are, where you are and what you are standing on and what you are good at and what’s over the horizon and, well, everything. It’s about finding the place where you fit. I found the place where I fit, and I would like everybody else to find theirs. And may I please propose that Preston is the school’s first teacher? He pretty much knows everything there is to know as it is.’ Preston bowed low with his helmet off, which got a laugh. Tiffany went on, ‘And his reward for a year’s teaching work for you will be, yes, enough money for him to buy the letters to go after his name so that he can become a doctor. Witches can’t do everything and we could do with a doctor in these parts.’ All this got a big cheer, which is what generally happens when people have worked out that they are likely to get something that they won’t have to pay for. When that had died down, Roland looked the sergeant in the eye and said, ‘Do you think you can manage without Preston’s military prowess, Sergeant?’ This precipitated another laugh. That’s good, Tiffany thought; laughter helps things slide into the thinking. Sergeant Brian tried to look solemn, but he was concealing a smile. ‘It would be a bit of a blow, sir, but I think we might just about manage, sir. Yes, I think I can say that the departure of Lance Private Preston will enhance the overall efficiency of the squad, sir.’ This caused more general applause from people who hadn’t worked it out and laughter from those that did. The Baron clapped his hands together. ‘Well then, Miss Aching, it would appear that you have got everything you asked for, yes?’ ‘Actually, sir, I haven’t finished asking yet. There is one more thing and it won’t cost you anything, so don’t worry about that.’ Tiffany took a deep breath, and tried to make herself look taller. ‘I require that you give to the peoples known as the Nac Mac Feegle all the downland above Home Farm, that it should be theirs for ever in law as well as in justice. A proper deed can be drawn up, and don’t worry about the cost – I know a toad that will do it for a handful of beetles – and it will say that for their part the Feegles will allow all shepherds and sheep untrammelled access to the downs but there will be – and this is important – no sharp metal beyond a knife. All this will cost you nothing, my lord Baron, but what you and your descendants, and I hope you are intending to have descendants—’ Tiffany had to stop there because of the gale of laughter, in which Nanny Ogg took a large part, and then she continued, ‘My lord Baron, I think you will assure yourself of a friendship that will never die. Gain all, lose nothing.’ To his credit, Roland hardly hesitated, and said, ‘I would be honoured to present the Nac Mac Feegle with the deeds to their land and I regret, no, I apologize for any misunderstandings between us. As you say, they deserve their land by right and by justice.’ Tiffany was impressed by the short speech. The language was slightly stuffy, but his heart was in the right place, and slightly stuffy language suited the Feegles very well. To her joy there was yet another susurration in the beams high over the castle’s hall. And the Baron, looking a lot more like a real baron now, went on, ‘I only wish that I could tell them this personally right now.’ And from the darkness above came one mighty cry of: The wind was silver and cold. Tiffany opened her eyes, with the cheer of the Feegles still ringing in her ears. It was replaced by the rattle of dried grass in the wind. She tried to sit up but got nowhere, and a voice behind her said, ‘Please don’t wriggle, this is very difficult.’ Tiffany tried to turn her head. ‘Eskarina?’ ‘Yes. There is somebody here who wants to talk to you. You may get up now; I have balanced the nodes. Don’t ask questions, because you would not understand the answers. You are in the travelling now, again. Now and again, you might say. I will leave you to your friend … and I am afraid you cannot have much time, for a given value of time. But I must protect my son …’ Tiffany said, ‘You mean you’ve got—’ She stopped because a figure was forming in front of Tiffany and became a witch, a classic witch with the black dress, black boots – rather nice ones, Tiffany noted – and, of course, the pointy hat. She had a necklace too. On the chain was a golden hare. The woman herself was old, but it was hard to say how old. She stood proudly, like Granny Weatherwax, but like Nanny Ogg she seemed to suggest that old age, or something, wasn’t really being taken seriously. But Tiffany concentrated on the necklace. People wore jewellery to show you something. It always had a meaning, if you concentrated. ‘All right, all right,’ she said, ‘I have just one question: I’m not here to bury you, am I?’ ‘My word, you are quick,’ said the woman. ‘You have immediately devised a remarkably interesting narrative and instantly guessed who I am.’ She laughed. The voice was younger than her face. ‘No, Tiffany. Interestingly macabre though your suggestion is, the answer is no. I remember Granny Weatherwax telling me that when you get right down to it, the world is all about stories, and Tiffany Aching is extremely good at endings.’ ‘I am?’ ‘Oh yes. Classic endings to a romantic story are a wedding or a legacy, and you have been the engineer for one of each. Well done.’ ‘You are me, right?’ said Tiffany. ‘That’s what the “you have to help yourself” business was about, yes?’ The older Tiffany grinned, and Tiffany could not help noticing that it was a very nice grin. ‘As a matter of fact, I only interfered in a few small ways. Like, for example, making certain the wind really did blow very hard for you … although, as I recall, a certain colony of little men added their own special excitement to the venture. I’m never quite certain if my memory is good or bad. That’s time travel for you.’ ‘You can travel in time?’ ‘With some help from our friend Eskarina. And only as a shadow and a whisper. It’s a bit like the don’t-see-me thing that I … that we – You have to persuade time not to take any notice.’ ‘But why did you want to talk to me?’ said Tiffany. ‘Well, the infuriating answer is that I remembered that I did,’ said old Tiffany. ‘Sorry, that’s time travel again. But I think I wanted to tell you that it all works out, more or less. It all falls into place. You’ve taken the first step.’ ‘There’s a second step?’ said Tiffany. ‘No; there’s another first step. Every step is a first step if it’s a step in the right direction.’ ‘But hold on,’ said Tiffany. ‘Won’t I be you one day? And then will I talk to me now, as it were?’ ‘Yes, but the you that you talk to won’t exactly be you. I’m very sorry about this, but I am having to talk about time travel in a language that can’t really account for it. But in short, Tiffany, according to the elasticated string theory, throughout the rest of time, somewhere an old Tiffany will be talking to a young Tiffany, and the fascinating thing is that every time they do they will be a little bit different. When you meet your younger self, you will tell her what you think she needs to know.’ ‘But I have got a question,’ said Tiffany. ‘And it’s one I want to know the answer to.’ ‘Well, do be quick,’ said old Tiffany, ‘The elasticated string thingy, or whatever it is that Eskarina uses, does not allow us very much time.’ ‘Well,’ said Tiffany, ‘can you at least tell me. Do I ever get—?’ Old Tiffany faded, smiling into nothingness, but Tiffany heard one word. It sounded like, ‘Listen.’ And then she was in the hall again, as if she’d never left it at all, and people were cheering and there seemed to be Feegles everywhere. And Preston was by her side. It was as if ice had suddenly melted. But when she got her balance back, and stopped asking herself what had just happened, had really happened, Tiffany looked for the other witches, and saw that they were talking amongst themselves, like judges adding up a score. The huddle broke up, and they came towards her purposefully, led by Granny Weatherwax. When they reached her they bowed and raised their hats, which is a mark of respect in the craft. Granny Weatherwax looked at her sternly. ‘I see you have burned your hand, Tiffany.’ Tiffany looked down. ‘I didn’t notice,’ she said. ‘Can I ask you now, Granny? Would you all have killed me?’ She saw the expressions of the other witches change. Granny Weatherwax looked around and paused for a moment. ‘Let us say, young woman, we would have done our best not to. But all in all, Tiffany, it seems to us that you’ve done a woman’s job today. The place where we looks for witches is at the centre of things. Well, we looks around here and we see that you is so central that this steading spins on you. You are your own mistress, nevertheless, and if you don’t start training somebody, that will be a waste. We leave this steading in the best of hands.’ The witches clapped, and some of the other guests joined in, even though they did not understand what those few sentences had meant. What they did recognize, however, was that these were mostly elderly, experienced, important and scary witches. And they were paying their respect to Tiffany Aching, one of them, their witch. And she was a very important witch, and so the Chalk had to be a very important place. Of course, they had known that all along but it was nice to have it acknowledged. They stood a little straighter and felt proud. Mrs Proust removed her hat again, and said, ‘Please don’t be afraid to come back to the city again, Miss Aching. I think I can promise you a thirty per cent discount on all Boffo products, except for perishables or consumables, an offer not to be sneezed at.’ The group of witches raised their hats in unison again and walked back into the crowd. ‘You know all that just now was organizing people’s lives for them,’ said Preston behind her, but as she spun round he backed away laughing and added, ‘But in a good way. You are the witch, Tiffany. You are the witch!’ And people drank a toast and there was more food, and more dancing and laughter and friendship and tiredness, and at midnight Tiffany Aching lay alone on her broomstick high above the chalk hills and looked up at the universe, and then down on the bit of it that belonged to her. She was the witch, floating high over everything but, it must be said, with the leather strap carefully buckled. The stick rose and fell gently as warm breezes took it and as tiredness and darkness took her, she stretched out her arms to the dark and, just for a moment, as the world turned, Tiffany Aching wore midnight. She didn’t come down until the sun was crusting the horizon with light. And she woke up to birdsong. All across the Chalk the larks were rising as they did every morning in a symphony of liquid sound. They did indeed sing melodious. They streamed up past the stick, paying it no attention at all, and Tiffany listened, entranced, until the last bird had got lost in the brilliant sky. She landed, made breakfast for an old lady who was bed-bound, fed her cat, and went to see how Trivial Boxer’s30 broken leg was doing. She was stopped halfway there by the neighbour of old Miss Swivel, who had apparently become suddenly unable to walk overnight, but Tiffany was fortunately able to point out that she had regrettably put both feet through one knicker leg. Then she went down into the castle to see what else needed doing. After all, she was the witch. 30 Mr and Mrs Boxer had been slightly more educated than was good for them, and thought that ‘trivial’ was a good name for their third child. Epilogue MIDNIGHT BY DAY IT WAS THE scouring fair again, the same noisy hurdy-gurdy, the bobbing for frogs, the fortune-telling, the laughter, the pick-pockets (though never of a witch’s pocket), but this year, by common consent, no cheese rolling. Tiffany walked through it all, nodding at people she knew, which was everybody, and generally enjoying the sunshine. Had it been a year? So much had happened, it all swam together, like the sounds of the fair. ‘Good afternoon, miss.’ And there was Amber, with her boy – with her husband … ‘Nearly didn’t recognize you, miss,’ said Amber cheerfully, ‘what with you not having your pointy hat on, if you see what I mean.’ ‘I thought I’d just be Tiffany Aching today,’ said Tiffany. ‘It is a holiday after all.’ ‘But you are still the witch?’ ‘Oh yes, I’m still the witch, but I’m not necessarily the hat.’ Amber’s husband laughed. ‘I know what you mean, miss! Sometimes I swear that people think I’m a pair of hands!’ Tiffany looked him up and down. They had met properly when she had married him to Amber, of course, and she had been impressed; he was what they called a steady lad and as sharp as his needles. He would go far, and take Amber with him. And after Amber finished her training under the kelda, who knows where she would take him? Amber hung on his arm as if it was an oak. ‘My William done a little present for you, miss,’ she said. ‘Go on, William, show her!’ The young man proffered the package he had been carrying, and cleared his throat. ‘I don’t know if you keep up with the fashions, miss, but they are doing wonderful fabrics now down in the big city, so when Amber suggested this to me I thought of them. But it also has to be washable, for a start, with perhaps a split skirt for the broomstick and leg-of-mutton sleeves, which are all the go this season, and with buttons tight at the wrists to keep them out of the way, and pockets on the inside and styled to be hardly noticeable. I hope it fits, miss. I’m good at measuring without a tape. It’s a knack.’ Amber bounced up and down at his side. ‘Put it on, miss! Go on, miss! Put it on!’ ‘What? In front of all these people?’ said Tiffany, embarrassed and intrigued at the same time. Amber was not to be denied. ‘There’s the mother-and-baby tent, miss! No men in there, miss, no fear! They’d be afraid that they would have to burp somebody, miss!’ Tiffany gave in. The package had a rich feel to it; it felt soft, like a glove. Mothers and babies watched her as she slid into the dress and she heard the envious sighs that interspersed burps. Amber, on fire with enthusiasm, pushed her way in through the flap, and gasped. ‘Oh, miss, oh, miss, it does suit you so! Oh, miss! If only you could see yourself, miss! Do come and show William, miss, he’ll be as proud as a king! Oh, miss!’ You couldn’t disappoint Amber. You just couldn’t. It would be like, well, kicking a puppy. Tiffany felt different without the hat. Lighter, perhaps. And William gasped and said, ‘I wish my master was here, Miss Aching, because you are a masterpiece. I just wish you could see yourself … miss?’ And just for a moment, because people shouldn’t get too suspicious, Tiffany stood outside herself and watched herself twirl the beautiful dress as black as a cat full of sixpences, and she thought: I shall wear midnight, and I will be good at it … She hurried back to her body and shyly thanked the young tailor. ‘It’s wonderful, William, and I will happily fly over to show your master. The cuffs are wonderful!’ Amber was jumping up and down again. ‘We’d better hurry if we’re going to see the tug-of-war, miss – it’s Feegles versus humans! It’s going to be fun!’ And in fact, they could hear the roar of the Feegles warming up, though they had made a slight alteration to their traditional chant: ‘Nae king, nae quin, nae laird! One baron – and underrr mutually ag-rreeeed arrr-angement, ye ken!’ ‘You go on ahead,’ said Tiffany. ‘I’m waiting for somebody.’ Amber paused for a moment. ‘Don’t wait too long, miss, don’t wait too long!’ Tiffany walked slowly in the wonderful dress, wondering if she would dare wear it every day and … hands came past her ears and covered her eyes. A voice behind her said, ‘A nosegay for the pretty lady? You never know, it might help you find your beau.’ She spun round. ‘Preston!’ They talked as they strolled away from the noise, and Tiffany listened to news about the bright young lad that Preston had trained to take over as the school’s new teacher; and about exams and doctors and the Lady Sybil Free Hospital who had – and this was the really important part – just taken on one new apprentice, this being Preston, possibly because since he could talk the hind leg off a donkey, he might have a talent for surgery. ‘I don’t reckon I’ll get many holidays,’ he said. ‘You don’t get many when you’re an apprentice and I shall have to sleep under the autoclave every night and look after all the saws and scalpels, but I know all the bones by heart!’ ‘Well, it’s not too far by broomstick, after all,’ said Tiffany. Preston’s expression changed as he reached into his pocket and pulled out something wrapped in fine tissue, which he handed to her without saying a word. Tiffany unwrapped it, knowing – absolutely knowing – that it would be the golden hare. There was no possibility in the world that it wouldn’t have been. She tried to find the words, but Preston always had an adequate supply. He said, ‘Miss Tiffany, the witch … would you be so good as to tell me: what is the sound of love?’ Tiffany looked at his face. The noise from the tug-of-war was silenced. The birds stopped singing. In the grass, the grasshoppers stopped rubbing their legs together and looked up. The earth moved slightly as even the chalk giant (perhaps) strained to hear, and the silence flowed over the world until all there was was Preston, who was always there. And Tiffany said, ‘Listen.’   A FEEGLE GLOSSARY adjusted for those of a delicate disposition   (A Work In Progress By Miss Perspicacia Tick, witch)   Bigjobs: human beings Big Man: chief of the clan (usually the husband of the kelda) Blethers: rubbish, nonsense Boggin: to be desperate, as in ‘I’m boggin for a cup of tea’ Bunty: a weak person Carlin: old woman Cludgie: the privy Crivens!: a general exclamation that can mean anything from ‘My goodness!’ to ‘I’ve just lost my temper and there is going to be trouble’ Dree your/my/his/her weird: facing the fate that is in store for you/me/him/her Een: eyes Eldritch: weird, strange; sometimes means oblong too, for some reason Fash: worry, upset Geas: a very important obligation, backed up by tradition and magic. Not a bird Gonnagle: the bard of the clan, skilled in musical instruments, poems, stories and songs Hag: a witch, of any age Hag o’ hags: a very important witch Hagging/Haggling: anything a witch does Hiddlins: secrets Kelda: the female head of the clan, and eventually the mother of most of it. Feegle babies are very small, and a kelda will have hundreds in her lifetime Lang syne: long ago Last World: the Feegles believe that they are dead. This world is so nice, they argue, that they must have been really good in a past life and then died and ended up here. Appearing to die here means merely going back to the Last World, which they believe is rather dull Mudlin: useless person Pished: I am assured that this means ‘tired’ Schemie: an unpleasant person Scuggan: a really unpleasant person Scunner: a generally unpleasant person Ships: woolly things that eat grass and go baa. Easily confused with the other kind Spavie: see Mudlin Special Sheep Liniment: probably moonshine whisky, I am very sorry to say. No one knows what it’d do to sheep, but it is said that a drop of it is good for shepherds on a cold winter’s night and for Feegles at any time at all. Do not try to make this at home Spog: a small leather bag at the front of a Feegle’s kilt, which covers whatever he presumably thinks needs to be hidden, and generally holds things like something he is halfway through eating, something he’d found that now therefore belongs to him, and quite often – because even a Feegle can catch a cold – it might hold whatever he was using as a handkerchief, which might not necessarily be dead Steamie: only found in the big Feegle mounds in the mountains, where there’s enough water to allow regular bathing; it’s a kind of sauna. Feegles on the Chalk tend to rely on the fact that you can only get so much dirt on you before it starts to fall off of its own accord Waily: a general cry of despair AUTHOR’S NOTE My job is to make things up, and the best way to make things up is to make them out of real things … When I was a small boy, just after the last Ice Age, we lived in a cottage that Tiffany Aching would recognize: we had cold water, no electricity, and took a bath once a week, because the tin bath had to be brought in from its nail, which was outside on the back of the kitchen wall; and it took a long time to fill it, when all my mother had to heat water with was one kettle. Then I, as the youngest, had the first bath, followed by Mum and then Dad, and finally the dog if Dad thought it was getting a bit niffy. There were old men in the village who had been born in the Jurassic period and looked, to me, all the same, with flat caps and serious trousers held up with very thick leather belts. One of them was called Mr Allen, who wouldn’t drink water from a tap because, he said, ‘It’s got neither taste nor smell.’ He drank water from the roof of his house, which fed a rain barrel. Presumably he drank more than rainwater, because he had a nose that looked like two strawberries that had crashed into one another.31 Mr Allen used to sit out in the sun in front of his cottage on an old kitchen chair, watching the world go by, and we kids used to watch his nose, in case it exploded. One day I was chatting to him, and out of the blue he said to me, ‘You seen stubbles burning, boy?’ I certainly had: not near our home, but when we drove down to the coast on holiday, though sometimes the smoke from the burning stubbles was so thick that it looked like a fog. The stubbles were what was left in the ground after most of the corn stems had been cut. The burning was said to be good for getting rid of pests and diseases, but the process meant lots of small birds and animals were burned. The practice has long since been banned, for that very reason. One day, when the harvest wagon went down our lane, Mr Allen said to me, ‘You ever seen a hare, boy?’ I said, ‘Yes, of course.’ (If you haven’t seen a hare, then imagine a rabbit crossed with a greyhound, one that can leap magnificently.) Mr Allen said, ‘The hare ain’t afraid of fire. She stares it down, and jumps over it, and lands safe on the other side.’ I must have been about six or seven years old, but I remembered it, because Mr Allen died not long afterwards. Then when I was much older, I found in a second-hand bookshop a book called The Leaping Hare written by George Ewart Evans and David Thomson, and I learned things that I would not have dared to make up. Mr Evans, who died in 1988, spoke – during his long life – to the men who worked on the land: not from the cab of a tractor, but with horses, and they saw the wildlife around them. I suspect that maybe they had put a little bit of a shine on the things they told him, but everything is all the better for a little bit of shine, and I have not hesitated to polish up the legend of the hare for you. If it is not the truth, then it is what the truth ought to be. I dedicate this book to Mr Evans, a wonderful man who helped many of us of us to learn about the depths of history over which we float. It is important that we know where we come from, because if you do not know where you come from, then you don’t know where you are, and if you don’t know where you are, then you don’t know where you’re going. And if you don’t know where you’re going, you’re probably going wrong. Terry Pratchett Wiltshire 27 May 2010 31 My dad told me it’s called ‘Drinker’s Nose’, but he was probably wrong, as the condition, I’m told, is a type of adult acne (called Rhinophyma, but I suspect that this is too much information). 
Johnny and the Bomb - Terry Pratchett	----	Johnny and the Bomb Johnny and the Bomb by Terry Prachett Brought to you by Books2Bytes I would like to thank the Meteorological Office, the Royal Mint and my old friend Bernard Pearson - who, if he doesn't know something, always knows a man who does - for their help in the research for this book. When historical details are wrong, it's my fault for not listening. But who knows what really happened in the other leg of the Trousers of Time? After the Bombs It was nine o'clock in the evening, in Blackbury High Street. It was dark; with occasional light from the full moon behind streamers of worn-out cloud. The wind was from the south-west and there had been another thunderstorm, which freshened the air and made the cobbles slippery. A policeman moved, very slowly and sedately, along the street. Here and there, if someone was very close, they might have seen the faintest line of light around a blacked-out window. From within came the quiet sounds of people living their lives - the mufed notes of a piano as someone practiced scales, over and over again, and the munnur and occasional burst of laughter from the wireless. Some of the shop windows had sandbags piled in front of them. A poster outside one shop urged people to Dig For Victory, as if it were some kind of turnip. On the horizon, in the direction of Slate, the thin beams of searchlights tried to pry bombers out of the clouds. The policeman turned the corner, and walked up the next street, his boots seeming very loud in the stillness. The beat took him up as far as the Methodist chapel, and in theory would then take him down Paradise Street, but it didn't do that tonight because there was no Paradise Street any more. Not since last night. There was a lorry parked by the chapel. Light leaked out from the tarpaulin that covered the back. He banged on it. "You can't park that 'ere, gents," he said. "I fine you one mug of tea and we shall say no more about it, eh?" The tarpaulin was pushed back and a soldier jumped out. There was a brief vision of the interior - a warm tent of orange light, with a few soldiers sitting around a little stove, and the air thick with cigarette smoke. The soldier grinned. "Gi'us a mug and a wad for the sergeant," he said, to someone in the lorry. A tin mug of scalding black tea and a brick-thick sandwich were handed out. "Much obliged," said the policeman, taking them. He leaned against the lorry. "How's it going, then?" he said. "Haven't heard a bang." "It's a 25-pounder," said the soldier. "Went right down through the cellar floor. You lot took a real pounding last night, eh? Want a look?" "Is it safe?" "Course not," said the soldier cheerfully. "That's why we're here, right? Come on." He pinched out his cigarette and put it behind his ear. "I thought you lot'd be guarding it," said the policeman. "It's two in the morning and it's been pissing down," said the soldier. "Who's going to steal an unexploded bomb?" "Yes, but. . ." The sergeant looked in the direction of the ruined street. There was the sound of bricks sliding. "Someone is, by the sound of it," he said. "What? We've got warning signs up!" said the soldier. "We only knocked off for a brew-up! Oi!" Their boots crunched on the rubble that had been strewn across the road. "It is safe, isn't it?" said the sergeant. "Not if someone drops a dirty great heap of bricks on it, no! Oi! You!" The moon came out from behind the clouds. They could make out a figure at the other end of what remained of the street, near the wall of the pickle factory. The sergeant skidded to a halt. "Oh, no," he whispered. "It's Mrs. Tachyon." The soldier stared at the small figure that was dragging some sort of cart through the rubble. "Who's she?" "Let's just take it quietly, shall we?" said the policeman, grabbing his arm. He shone his torch and set his face into a sort of mad friendly grin. "That you, Mrs Tachyon?" he said. "It's me, Sergeant Bourke. Bit chilly to be out at this time of night, eh? Got a nice warm cell back at the station, yes? I daresay there could be a big hot mug of cocoa for you if you just come along with me, how about that?" "Can't she read all them warning signs? Is she mental?" said the soldier, under his breath. "She's right by the house with the bomb in the cellar!" "Yes. . . no . . . she's just different," said the sergeant. "Bit . . . touched." He raised his voice. "You just stay where you are, love, and we'll come and get you. Don't want you hurting yourself on all this junk, do we?" "Here, has she been looting?" said the soldier. "She could get shot for that, pinching stuff from bombed out houses!" "No-one's going to shoot Mrs Tachyon," said the sergeant. "We know her, see? She was in the cells the other night." "What'd she done?" "Nothing. We let her kip in a spare cell in the station if it's a nippy night. I gave her a tanner and pair of ole boots what belong to me mum only yesterday. Well, look at her. She's old enough to be your granny, poor old biddy." Mrs Tachyon stood and watched them owlishly as they walked, very cautiously, towards her. The soldier saw a wizened little woman wearing what looked like a party dress with layers of other clothes on top, and a woolly hat with a bobble on it. She was pushing a wire cart on wheels. It had a metal label on it. "Tes-co," he said. "What's that?" "Dunno where she gets half her stuff," muttered the sergeant. The trolley seemed to be full of black bags. But there were other things, which glittered in the moonlight. "I know where she got that stuff," muttered the soldier. "That's been pinched from the pickle factory!" "Oh, half the town was in there this morning," said the sergeant. "A few jars of gherkins won't hurt." "Yeah, but you can't have this sort of thing. "Ere, you! Missus! You just let me have a look at-" He reached towards the trolley. Some sort of demon, all teeth and glowing eyes, erupted from it and clawed the skin off the back of his hand. "Blast! "Ere, help me get hold of-" But the sergeant had backed away. "That's Guilty, that is," he said. "I should come away if I was you!" Mrs Tachyon cackled. "Thunderbirds Are Go!" she chortled. "Wot, no bananas? That's what you think, my old dollypot!" She hauled the trolley round and trotted off, dragging it behind her. "Hey, don't go in there-"the soldier shouted. The old woman hauled the trolley over a pile of bricks. A piece of wall collapsed behind her. The last brick hit something far below, which went boink. The soldier and the policeman froze in mid-run. The moon went behind a cloud again. In the darkness, there was a ticking sound. It was far off, and a bit mufed, but in that pool of silence both men heard it all the way up their spines. The sergeant's foot, which had been in the air, came down slowly. "How long've you got if it starts to tick?" he whispered. There was no-one there. The soldier was accelerating away. The policeman ran after him and was halfway up the ruins of Paradise Street before the world behind him suddenly became full of excitement. It was nine o'clock in the evening, in Blackbury High Street. In the window of the electrical shop, nine TVs showed the same picture. Nine televisions projected their flickering screens at the empty air. A newspaper blew along the deserted pavement until it wrapped around the stalks in an ornamental flowerbed. The wind caught an empty lager tin and bowled it across the pavement until it hit a drain. The High Street was what Blackbury District Council called a Pedestrian Precinct and Amenity Area, although no-one was quite sure what the amenities were, or even what an amenity was. Perhaps it was the benches, cunningly designed so that people wouldn't sit on them for too long and make the place untidy. Or maybe it was the flowerbeds, which sprouted a regular crop of the hardy perennial Crisp Packet. It couldn't have been the ornamental trees. They'd looked quite big and leafy on the original drawings a few years ago, but what with cutbacks and one thing and another, no-one had actually got around to planting any. The sodium lights made the night cold as ice. The newspaper blew on again, and wrapped itself around a yellow litter bin in the shape of a fat dog with its mouth open. Something landed in an alleyway and groaned. "Tick tick tick! Tickety Boo! Ow! National . . . Health . . . Service . . . " The interesting thing about worrying about things, thought Johnny Maxwell, was the way there was always something new to worry about. His friend Kirsty said it was because he was a natural worrier, but that was because she didn't worry about anything. She got angry instead, and did things about it, whatever it was. He really envied the way she decided what it was and knew exactly what to do about it almost instantly. Currently she was saving the planet most evenings, and foxes at weekends. Johnny just worried. Usually they were the same old worries - school, money, whether you could get AIDS from watching television, and so on. But occasionally one would come out of nowhere like a Christmas Number One and knock all the others down a whole division. Right now, it was his mind. "It's not exactly the same as being ill," said Yoless, who'd read all the way through his mother's medical encyclopedia. "It's not being ill at all. If lots of bad things have happened to you it's healthy to be depressed," said Johnny. "That's sense, isn't it? What with the business going down the drain, and Dad pushing off, and Mum just sitting around smoking all the time and everything. I mean, going around smiling and saying, "Oh, it's not so bad" - that would be mental." "That's right," said Yoless, who'd read a bit about psychology as well. "My Bran went mental," said Bigmac. "She- ow!" "Sorry," said Yoless. "I wasn't looking where I put my foot but, fair's fair, you weren't either." "It's just dreams," said Johnny. "It's nothing mad." Although, he had to admit, it was dreams during the day, too. Dreams so real that they filled his eyes and ears. The planes . . . The bombs . . . And the fossil fly. Why that? There'd be these nightmares, and in the middle of it, there'd be the fly. It was a tiny one, in a piece of amber. He'd saved up for it and done a science project on it. But it wasn't even scary-looking. It was just a fly from millions of years ago. Why was that in a nightmare? Huh. School teachers? Why couldn't they be like they were supposed to be and just chuck things at you if you weren't paying attention? Instead they all seemed to have been worrying about him and sending notes home and getting him to see a specialist, although the specialist wasn't too bad and at least it got him out of Maths. One of the notes had said he was "disturbed". Well, who wasn't disturbed? He hadn't shown it to his mum. Things were bad enough as it was. "You getting on all right at your grandad's?" said Yoless. "It's not too bad. Grandad does the housework most of the time anyway. He's good at fried bread. And Surprise. Surprise." "What's that?" "You know that stall on the market that sells tins that've got the labels off?" "Yes?" "Well, he buys loads of those. And you've got to eat them once they're opened." "Yuk." "Oh, pineapple and meatballs isn't too bad." They walked on through the evening street. The thing about all of us, Johnny thought, the sad thing is that we're not very good. Actually that's not the worst part. The worst part is we're not even much good at being not much good. Take Yoless. When you looked at Yoless you might think he had possibilities. He was black. Technically. But he never said "Yo", and only said "check it out" in the supermarket, and the only person he ever called a mother was his mother. Yoless said it was racial stereotyping to say all black kids acted like that but, however you looked at it, Yoless had been born with a defective cool. Trainspotters were cooler than Yoless. If you gave Yoless a baseball cap he'd put it on the right way round. That's how, well, Yoless was. Sometimes he actually wore a tie. Now, Bigmac . . . Bigmac was good. He was good at Maths. Sort of. It made the teachers wild. You could show Bigmac some sort of horrible equation and he'd say "x=2.75" and he'd be right. But he never knew why. "It's just what it is," he'd say. And that was no good. Knowing the answers wasn't what Maths was about. Maths was about showing how you worked them out, even if you got them wrong. Bigmac was also a skinhead. Bigmac and Bazza and Skazz were the last three skinheads in Blackbury. At least, the last three who weren't someone's dad. And he had LOVE and HAT on his knuckles, but only in Biro because when he'd gone to get tattooed he fainted. And he bred tropical fish. As for Wobbler . . . Wobbler wasn't even a nerd. He wanted to be a nerd but they wouldn't let him join. He had a Nerd Pride badge and he messed around with computers. What Wobbler wanted was to be a kid in milk-bottle-bottom glasses and a deformed anorak, who could write amazing software and be a millionaire by the time he was twenty, but he'd probably settle for just being someone whose computer didn't keep smelling of burning plastic every time he touched it. And as for Johnny . . . . . . if you go mad, do you know you've gone mad? If you don't, how do you know you're not mad? "It wasn't a bad film," Wobbler was saying. They'd been to Screen W at the Blackbury Odeon. They generally went to see any film that promised to have laser beams in it somewhere. "But you can't travel in time without messing things up," said Yoless. "That's the whole point," said Bigmac. "That's what you want to do. I wouldn't mind joining the police if they were time police. You'd go back and say, "Hey, are you Adolf Hitler?" and when he said, "Achtung, that's me, ja" . . . Kablooeee! With the pump-action shotgun. End of problem." "Yes, but supposing you accidentally shot your own grandfather," said Yoless patiently. "I wouldn't. He doesn't look a bit like Adolf Hitler." "Anyway, you're not that good a shot," said Wobbler. "You got kicked out of the Paintball Club, didn't you?" "Only `cos they were jealous that they hadn't thought of a paintball hand grenade before I showed them how." "It was a tin of paint, Bigmac. A two-litre tin." "Well, yeah, but in contex" it was a hand grenade." "They said you might at least have loosened the lid a bit. Sean Stevens needed stitches." "I didn't mean actually shooting your actual grandfather," said Yoless, loudly. "I mean messing things up so maybe you're not actually born or your time machine never gets invented. Like in that film where the robot is sent back to kill the mother of the boy who's going to beat the robots when he grows up." "Good one, that," said Bigmac, strafing the silent shops with an invisible machine gun. "But if he never got born how did they know he'd existed?" said Yoless. "Didn't make any sense to me." "How come you're such an expert?" said Wobbler. "Well, I've got three shelves of Star Trek videos," said Yoless. "Anorak alert!" "Nerd!" "Trainspotter!" "Anyway," said Yoless, "if you changed things, maybe you'd end up not going back in time, and there you would be, back in time, I mean, except you never went in the first place, so you wouldn't be able to come back on account of not having gone. Or, even if you could get back, you'd get back to another time, like a sort of parallel dimension, because if the thing you changed hadn't happened then you wouldn't have gone, so you could only come back to somewhere you never went. And there you'd be - stuck." They tried to work this out. "Huh, you'd have to be mad even to understand time travel," said Wobbler eventually. "Job opportunity for you there, Johnny," said Bigmac. "Bigmac," said Yoless, in a warning voice. "It's all right," said Johnny. "The doctor said I just worry about things too much." "What kind of loony tests did you have?" said Bigmac. "Big needles and electric shocks and that?" "No, Bigmac," sighed Johnny. "They don't do that. They just ask you questions." "What, like "are you a loony?" "It's be sound to go a long way back in time," said Wobbler. "Back to the dinosaurs. No chance of killing your grandad then, unless he's really old. Dinosaurs'd be all right." "Great!" said Bigmac. "Then I could wipe èm out with my plasma rifle! Oh, yes!" "Yeah," said Wobbler, rolling his eyes. "That'd explain a lot. Why did the dinosaurs die out sixty-five million years ago? Because Bigmac couldn't get there any earlier." "But you haven't got a plasma rifle," said Johnny. "If Wobbler can have a time machine, then I can have a plasma rifle." "Oh, all right." "And a rocket launcher." A time machine, thought Johnny. That would be something. You could get your life exactly as you wanted it. If something nasty turned up, you could just go back and make sure that it didn't. You could go wherever you wanted and nothing bad would ever have to happen. Around him, the boys" conversation, as their conversations did, took on its own peculiar style. "Anyway, no-one's proved the dinosaurs did die out." "Oh, yeah, right, sure, they're still around, are they?" "I mean p'raps they only come out at night, or are camouflaged or something. . . " "A brick-finished stegosaurus? A bright red Number 9 brontosaurus?" "Hey, neat idea. They'd go round pretending to be a bus, right, and people could get on - but they wouldn't get off again. Oooo-Eee-Oooo . . . " "Nah. False noses. False noses and beards. Then just when people aren't expecting it - UNK! Nothing on the pavement but a pair of shoes and a really big bloke in a mac, shuffling away . . . " Paradise Street, thought Johnny. Paradise Street was on his mind a lot, these days. Especially at night. I bet if you asked the people there if time travel was a good idea they'd say yes. I mean, no one knows what happened to the dinosaurs, but we know what happened to Paradise Street. I wish I could go back to Paradise Street. Something hissed. They looked around. There was an alleyway between the charity clothes shop and the video library. The hissing came from there, except now it had changed into a snarl. It wasn't at all pleasant. It went right into his ears and right through Johnny's modern brain and right down into the memories built into his very bones. When an early ape had cautiously got down out of its tree and wobbled awkwardly along the ground, trying out this new "standing upright" idea all the younger apes were talking about, this was exactly the kind of snarl it hated to hear. It said to every muscle in the body: run away and climb something. And possibly throw down some coconuts, too. "There's something in the alley," said Wobbler, looking around in case there were any trees handy. "A werewolf?" said Bigmac. Wobbler stopped. "Why should it be a werewolf?" he said. "I saw this film, Curse of the Revenge of the Werewolf," said Bigmac, "and someone heard a snarl like that and went into a dark alley, and next thing, he was lying there with all his special effects spilling out on the pavement." "Huh," quavered Wobbler. "There's no such things as werewolves." "You go and tell it, then." Johnny stepped forward. There was a shopping trolley lying on its side just inside the alley, but that wasn't unusual. Herds of shopping trolleys roamed the streets of Blackbury. While he'd never seen one actually moving, he sometimes suspected that they trundled off as soon as his back was turned. Bulging carrier bags and black plastic dustbin liners lay around it, and there was a number of jars. One of them had broken open, and there was a smell of vinegar. One of the bundles was wearing trainers. You didn't see that very often. A terrible monster pulled itself over the top of the trolley and spat at Johnny. It was white, but with bits of brown and black as well. It was scrawny. It had three and a half legs but only one ear. Its face was a mask of absolute, determined evil. Its teeth were jagged and yellow, its breath as nasty as a pepper spray. Johnny knew it well. So did practically everyone else in Blackbury. "Hello, Guilty," he said, taking care to keep his hands by his sides. If Guilty was here, and the shopping trolley was here... He looked down at the bundle with the trainers. "I think something's happened to Mrs Tachyon," he said. The others hurried up. It only looked like a bundle, because Mrs Tachyon tended to wear everything she owned, all at once. This was a woolly hat, about twelve jerseys and a pink ra- skirt, then bare pipe cleaner legs down to several pairs of football socks and the huge trainers. "Is that blood?" said Wobbler. "Ur," said Bigmac. "Yuk." "I think she's alive," said Johnny. "I'm sure I heard a groan." "Er . . . I know first aid," said Yoless, uncertainly. "Kiss of life and stuff." "Kiss of life? Mrs Tachyon? Yuk," said Bigmac. Yoless looked very worried. What seemed simple when you did it in a nice warm hall with the instructor watching seemed a lot more complicated in an alleyway, especially with all the woolly jumpers involved. Whoever invented first aid hadn't had Mrs Tachyon in mind. Yoless knelt down gingerly. He patted Mrs Tachyon vaguely, and something fell out of one of her many pockets. It was fish and chips, wrapped in a piece of newspaper. "She's always eating chips," said Bigmac. "My brother says she picks thrown-away papers out of the bin to see if there's any chips still in 'em. Yuk." "Er . . . " said Yoless desperately, as he tried to find a way of administering first aid without actually touching anything. Finally Johnny came to his rescue and said, "I know how to dial 999." Yoless sagged with relief. "Yes, yes, that's right," he said. "I'm pretty sure you mustn't move people, on account of breaking bones." "Or the crust," said Wobbler. Mrs Tachyon Mrs Tachyon had always been there, as long as Johnny could remember. She was a bag lady before people knew what bag ladies were, although strictly speaking she was a trolley woman. It wasn't a normal supermarket trolley, either. It looked bigger, the wires looked thicker. And it hurt like mad when Mrs Tachyon pushed it into the small of your back, which she did quite a lot. It wasn't that she did it out of nastiness well, it probably wasn't - but other people just didn't exist on Planet Tachyon. Fortunately, one wheel squeaked. And if you didn't get accustomed to moving away quickly when you heard the squee . . . squee . . . squee coming, the monologue was another warning. Mrs Tachyon talked all the time. You could never be quite certain who she was talking to. " . . . I sez, that's what you sez, is it? That's what you think. An' I could get both hands in yer mouth and still wind wool, I sez. Oh, yes. Tell Sid! Yer so skinny yer can close one eye and yer'd look like a needle, I sez. Oh, yes. They done me out of it! Tell that to the boys in khaki! That's a pelter or I don't know what is!" But quite often it was just a mumble, with occasional triumphant shouts of "I told 'em!" and "That's what you think!". The trolley with its squeaky wheel could turn up behind you at any hour of the day or night. No one knew when to expect it. Nor did anyone know what was in all those bags. Mrs Tachyon tended to rummage a lot, in bins and things. So no one wanted to find out. Sometimes she'd disappear for weeks on end. No one knew where she went. Then, just when everyone was beginning to relax, there'd be the squee . . . squee . . . squee behind them and the stabbing pain in the small of the back. Mrs Tachyon picked things out of the gutter. That was probably how she'd acquired Guilty, with his fur like carpet underlay, broken teeth, and boomerang shaped backbone. When Guilty walked, which wasn't often since he preferred to ride in the trolley, he tended to go around in circles. When he ran, usually because he was trying to fight something, the fact that he only had one and a half legs in front meant that sooner or later his back legs would overtake him, and by then he was always in such a rage that he'd bite his own tail. Even DSS, the rabid dog owned by Syd the Crusty, which once ate a police Alsatian, would run away at the sight of Guilty spinning towards him, frantically biting himself. The ambulance drove off, blue light flashing. Guilty watched Johnny from the trolley, going cross-eyed with hatred. "The ambulance man said she looked as if she'd been hit by something," said Wobbler, who was also watching the cat. It was never a good idea to take your eye off Guilty. "What're we going to do with all this stuff?" said Johnny. "Yeah, can't leave it," said Bigmac. "That'd be littering. "But it's her stuff," said Johnny. "Don't look at me," said Bigmac. "Some of those bags squelch." "And there's the cat," said Johnny. "Yeah, we ought to kill the cat," said Bigmac. "It took all the skin off my hand last week." Johnny cautiously pulled the trolley upright. Guilty clung to it, hissing. "He likes you," said Bigmac. "How can you tell?" "You've still got both eyes." "You could take it along to the RSPCA in the morning," said Yoless. "I suppose so," said Johnny, "but what about the trolley? We can't just leave it here." "Yeah, let's push it off the top of the multistorey," said Bigmac. Johnny prodded a bag. It moved a bit, and then flowed back, with an unpleasant oozing noise. "Y'know, my brother said Mrs Tachyon killed her husband years ago and then went mental and they never found his body," said Bigmac. They looked at the bags. "None of them is big enough for a dead body," said Yoless, who wasn't allowed to watch horror movies. "Not a whole one, no," said Bigmac. Yoless took a step back. "I heard she stuck his head in the oven," said Wobbler. "Very messy." "Messy?" said Yoless. "It was a microwave oven. Get it? If you put a-" "Shut up," said Yoless. "I heard she's really, really rich," said Bigmac. "Stinking rich," said Wobbler. "Look, I'll just . . . I'll just put in it in my grandad's garage," said Johnny. "I don't see why we have to do it," said Yoless. "There's supposed to be Care in the Community or something." "He doesn't keep much in there now. And then in the morning . . . " Oh, well. The morning was another day. "And while you've got it you could have a rummage to see if there's any money," said Bigmac. Johnny glanced at Guilty, who snarled. "No, I like a hand with all its fingers on," he said. "You lot come with me. I'd feel a right clod pushing this by myself." The fourth wheel squeaked and bounced as he pushed the trolley down the street. "Looks heavy," said Yoless. There was a snigger from beside him. "Well, they say Mr Tachyon was a very big man-" "Just shut up, Bigmac." It's me, he thought, as the procession went down the street. It's like on the Lottery, only it's the opposite. There's this big finger in the sky and it comes through your window and flicks you on the ear and says "It's YOU - har har har". And you get up and think you're going to have a normal day and suddenly you're in charge of a trolley with one squeaky wheel and an insane cat. "Here," said Wobbler. "These fish and chips are still warm." "What?" said Johnny. "You picked up her actual fish and chips?" Wobbler backed away. "Well, yeah, why not, shame to let them go to waste-" "They might have got her spit on 'em," said Bigmac. "Yuk." "They haven't even been unwrapped, actually," said Wobbler, but he did stop unwrapping them. "Put them in the trolley, Wobbler," said Johnny. "Dunno who wraps fish and chips in newspaper round here," said Wobbler, tossing the package onto the pile in the trolley. "Hong Kong Henry doesn't. Where'd she get them?" Sir John was normally awakened at half past eight every morning by a butler who brought him his breakfast, another butler who brought him his clothes, a third butler whose job it was to feed Adolf and Stalin if necessary, and a fourth butler who was basically a spare. At nine o'clock his secretary came and read him his appointments for today. When he did so this morning, though, he found him still staring at his plate with a strange expression. Adolf and Stalin swam contentedly in the tank by his desk. "Five different kinds of pill, some biscuits made of cardboard and a glass of orange juice with all the excitement removed," said Sir John. "Mat's the point of being the richest man in the world -I am still the richest man in the world, aren't I?" "Yes, Sir John." "Well, what's the point if it all boils down to pills for breakfast?" He drummed his fingers on the table. "Well . . . I've had enough, d'y'hear? Tell Hickson to get the car out." "Which car, Sir John." "The Bentley." "Mich Bentley, Sir John." "Oh, one I haven't used lately. He can choose. And find Blackbury on the map. We own a burger bar there, don't we?" "Er . . . I think so, Sir John." Wasn't that the one where you personally chose the site? You said you just knew it would be a good one. Er . . . but today you've got appointments to see the chairman of-" "Cancel 'em all. I'm going to Blackbury. Don't tell 'em I'm coming. Call it . . . a lightning inspection. The secret of success in business is to pay attention to the little details, am I right? People get underdone burgers or the fries turn out to be too soggy and before you know where you are the entire business is down around your ears." Er . . . if you say so, Sir John." "Right. I'll be ready in twenty minutes." "Er . . . you could, perhaps, leave it until tomorrow? Only the committee did ask that-" "No!" The old mars slapped the table. "It's got to be today! Today's when it all happens, you see. Mrs Tachyon. The trolley. Johnny and the rest of them. It's got to be today. Otherwise . . . " He pushed away the dull yet healthy breakfast. "Otherwise it's this for the rest of my life." The secretary was used to Sir John's moods, and tried to lighten things a little. "Blackbury . . . " he said. "That's where you were evacuated during the war, wasn't it? And you were the only person to escape when one of the streets got bombed?" "Me and two goldfish called Adolf and Stalin. That's right. That's where it all started," said Sir John, getting up and going over to the window. "Go on, jump to it." The secretary didn't go straightaway. One of his jobs was to keep an eye on Sir John. The old boy was acting a bit odd, people had said. He'd taken to reading very old newspapers and books with words like "Time" and "Physics" in the title, and sometimes he even wrote angry letters to very important scientists. When you're the richest man in the world, people watch you very closely. "Adolf and Stalin," said Sir John. To the whole world in general. "Of course, these two are only their descendants. It turned out that Adolf was female. Or was it Stalin?" Outside the window, the gardens stretched all the way to some rolling hills that Sir John's landscape gardener had imported specially. "Blackbury," said Sir John staring at them. "That's where it all started. The whole thing. There was a boy called Johnny Maxwell. And Mrs Tachyon. And a cat, I think." He turned. "Are you still here?" "Sorry, Sir John, said the secretary, backing out and shutting the door behind him. "That's where it all started," said Sir John. "And that's where it's all going to end." Johnny always enjoyed those first few moments in the morning before the day leapt out at him. His head was peacefully full of flowers, clouds, kittens His hand still hurt. Horrible bits of last night rushed out from hiding and bounced and gibbered in front of him. There was a shopping trolley full of unspeakable bags in the garage. There was also a spray of milk across the wall and ceiling where Guilty had showed what he thought of people who tried to give him an unprovoked meal. Johnny had had to use the biggest Elastoplast in the medicine tin afterwards. He got up, dressed, and went downstairs. His mother wouldn't be up yet and his grandad was definitely in the front room watching Saturday morning TV. Johnny opened the garage door and stepped back hurriedly, in case a ball of maddened fur came spinning out. Nothing happened. The dreadful trolley stood in the middle of the floor. There was no sign of Guilty. It was, Johnny thought, just like those scenes in films where you know the monster is in the room somewhere . . . He jumped sideways, just in case Guilty was about to drop out of the ceiling. It was bad enough seeing the wretched cat. Not seeing it was worse. He scurried out and shut the door quickly, then went back into the house. He probably ought to tell someone official. The trolley belonged to Mrs Tachyon (actually, it probably belonged to Mr Tesco or Mr Safeway) so it might be stealing if he kept it. As he went back inside, the phone rang. There were two ways he could tell. Firstly, the phone rang. Then his grandfather shouted "Phone!", because he never answered the phone if he thought there was a chance it could be answered by someone else. Johnny picked it up. "Can I speak to-" said Yoless, in his Speaking to Parents voice. "It's me, Yoless," said Johnny. "Hey, you know Mrs Tachyon?" "Of course I-" "Well, my mum was on duty at the hospital last night. She's got horrible bruises and everything. Mrs Tachyon, I mean, not my mum. Someone really had a go at her, she said. My mum, not Mrs Tachyon. She said we ought to tell the police." "What for?" "We might have seen something. Anyway . . . er . . . someone might think it was . . . us . . . " "Us? But we called the ambulance!" "I know that. Er . . . and you've got her stuff . . . " "Well, we couldn't just leave it there!" "I know that. But . . . well, we did have Bigmac with us . . . " And that was it, really. It wasn't that Bigmac was actually evil. He'd happily fire imaginary nuclear missiles at people but he wouldn't hurt a fly, unless perhaps it was a real hard biker fly which's given him serious grief. However, he did have a problem with cars, especially big fast ones with the keys still in the ignition. And he was a skinhead. His boots were so big that it was quite hard for him to fall over. According to Sergeant Comely of Blackbury police station, Bigmac was guilty of every unsolved crime in the town, whereas in real life he was probably only guilty of ten per cent, maximum. He looked like trouble. No one looking at Bigmac would think he was innocent of anything. "And Wobbler, too," Yoless added. And Wobbler would admit to anything if you got him frightened enough. All the great unsolved mysteries of the world - the Bermuda Triangle, the Marie Celeste, the Loch Ness Monster - could be sorted out in about half an hour if you leaned a bit on Wobbler. "I'll go by myself, then," said Johnny. "Simpler that way. Yoless sighed with relief. "Thanks." The phone rang just as Johnny put it down again. It started saying "Hello? Hello?" before he got it to his ear. "Er . . . hello?" he said. "Is that you?" said a female voice. It wasn't exactly an unpleasant one, but it had a sharp, penetrating quality. It seemed to be saying that if you weren't you, then it was your fault. Johnny recognized it instantly. It was the voice of someone who dialed wrong numbers and then complained that the phone was answered by people she didn't want to speak to. "Yes. Er . . . yes. Hello, Kirsty. "It's Kasandra, actually." "Oh. Right," said Johnny. He'd have to make a note. Kirsty changed her name about as often as she changed her clothes, although at least these days she was sticking to ones beginning with K. "Have you heard about old Mrs Tachyon?" "I think so," said Johnny, guardedly. "Apparently a gang of yobs beat her up last night. She looked as though a bomb'd hit her. Hello? Hello? Hello?" "I'm still here," said Johnny. Someone had filled his stomach with ice. "Don't you think that's shameful?" "Er. Yes." "One of them was black." Johnny nodded dismally at the phone. Yoless had explained about this sort of thing. He'd said that if one of his ancestors had joined Attila the Hun's huge horde of millions of barbarians and helped them raid Ancient Rome, people would've definitely remembered that one of them was black. And this was Yoless, who collected brass bands, had a matchbox collection and was a known spod. "Er," he said, "it was us. I mean, we didn't beat her up, but we found her. I got the ambulance and Yoless tried- Yoless was definitely thinking about first aid..." "Didn't you tell the police?" "No-" "Honestly, I don't know what would happen if I wasn't around! You've got to tell them now. I'll meet you at the police station in half an hour. You know how to tell the time? The big hand is-" "Yes," said Johnny, miserably. "It's only two stops on the bus from your house. You know about catching buses?" "Yes, yes, yes, of course I-" "You need money. That's the round stuff you find in your pockets. Ciao." Actually, after he'd been to the toilet, he felt a bit better about it all. Kirs- Kasandra took charge of things. She was the most organized person Johnny knew. In fact she was so organized that she had too much organization for one person, and it overflowed in every direction. He was her friend. More or less, anyway. He wasn't sure he'd ever been given a choice in the matter. Kirs- Kasandra wasn't good at friends. She told him so herself. She'd said it was because of a character flaw, only because she was KiKasandra, she thought it was a character flaw in everyone else. The more she tried to help people by explaining to them how stupid they were, the more they just wandered off for no reason at all. The only reason Johnny hadn't was that he knew how stupid he was. But sometimes - not often - when the light was right and she wasn't organizing anything, he'd look at KiKasandra and wonder if there weren't two kinds of stupidity: the basic El Thicko kind that he had, and a highly specialized sort that you only got when you were stuffed too full of intelligence. He'd better tell Grandad where he was going, he thought, just in case the power went off or the TV broke down and he wondered where Johnny had gone. "I'm just off to-" he began, and then said, "I'm just off out." "Right," said Grandad, without taking his eyes off the set. "Hah! Look, there he goes! Right in the gunge tank!" Nothing much was going on in the garage. After a while, Guilty crawled out from his nest among the black plastic sacks and took up his usual position in the front of the cart, where he was wont to travel on the off chance that he could claw somebody. A fly banged on the window pane for a while and then went back to sleep. And the bags moved. They moved like frogs in oil, slithering very slowly around each other. They made a rubbery, squeaky noise, like a clever conjurer trying to twist an animal out of balloons. There were other noises, too. Guilty didn't pay them much attention because you couldn't attack noises and, besides, he was pretty well used to them by now. They weren't very clear. They might have been snatches of music. They might have been voices. They might have been a radio left on, but slightly off station and two rooms away, or the distant roar of a crowd. Johnny met Kasandra outside the police station. "You're lucky I've got some spare time," she said. "Come on." Sergeant Comely was on the desk. He looked up as Johnny and Kasandra came in, then looked back at the book he was writing in, and then looked up again slowly. "You?" "Er, hello, Sergeant Comely," said Johnny. "What is it this time? Seen any aliens lately?" "We've come about Mrs Tachyon, Sergeant," said Kasandra. "Oh yes?" Kasandra turned to Johnny. "Go on," she said. "Tell him." "Er . . . " said Johnny. "Well . . . me and Wobbler and Yoless and Bigmac . . . " "Wobbler and Yoless and Bigmac and I," said Kasandra. Sergeant Comely looked at her. "All five of you?" he said. "I was just correcting his grammar," said Kasandra. "Do you do that a lot?" said the sergeant. He looked at Johnny. "Does she do that a lot?" "All the time," said Johnny. "Good grief. Well, go on. You, not her." When Sergeant Comely had been merely PC Comely he'd visited Johnny's school to show everyone how nice the police were, and had accidentally locked himself into his own handcuffs. He was also a member of the Blackbury Morris Men. Johnny had actually seen him wearing bells around his knees and waving two hankies in the air. These were important things to remember at a time like this. "Well . . . we were proceeding along. . . " he began. "And no jokes." Twenty minutes later, they walked slowly down the steps of the police station. "Well, that wasn't too bad," said Kasandra. "It's not as though you were arrested or anything. Have you really got her trolley?" "Oh, yes." "I liked the look on his face when you said you'd bring Guilty in. He went quite pale, I thought." "What's next-of-kin mean? He said she'd got no next-of kin." "Relatives," said Kasandra. "Basically, it means relatives." "None at all?" "That isn't unusual." "Yes," said Johnny, "but generally there's a cousin in Australia you don't know about." "Is there?" "Well, apparently I've got a cousin in Australia, and I didn't know about her till last month, so it can't be that unusual." "The state of Mrs Tachyon is a terrible Indictment on Society," said Kasandra. "What's indictment mean?" "It means it's wrong., "That she's got no relatives? I don't think you can get them from the Governm-" "No, that she's got no home and just wanders around the place living on what she can find. Something ought to be done." "Well, I suppose we could go and see her," said Johnny. "She's only in St Mark's." "What good would that do?" "Well, it might cheer her up a bit." "Do you know, you start almost every sentence with "Well"?" "Well-" "Going hospital visiting won't do anything about the disgusting neglect of street people and the mentally ill, will it?" "Probably not. She just might be a bit cheered up, I suppose. Kasandra walked in silence for a moment. "It's just that . . . I've got a thing about hospitals, if you must know. They're full of sick people." "We could take her something she likes. And she'd probably be glad to know that Guilty is okay." "They smell bad, too," said Kasandra, not listening to him. "That horrible disinfectant smell." "When you're up close to Mrs Tachyon you won't notice." "You're just going on about it because you know I hate hospitals, aren't you?" "I . . . just think we ought to do it. Anyway, I thought you did things like this for your Duke of Edinburgh award or whatever it was." "Yes, but there was some point in that." "We could go towards the end of visiting time so we won't be there very long. That's what everyone else does." "Oh, all right," said Kasandra. "We'd better take her something, too. You have to." "Like grapes, you mean?" Johnny tried to picture Mrs Tachyon eating grapes. It didn't work. "I'll think about it." The garage door swung back and forth, slowly. Inside the garage there was: A concrete floor. It was old and cracked and soaked in oil. Animal footprints crossed it, embedded in the concrete, suggesting that a dog had run across it when it was being laid. This happens in every patch of wet concrete, everywhere. There were also a couple of human footprints, fossilized in time, and now filled with black grease and dust. In other words, it was more or less like any piece of concrete. There was also: A tool bench. Most of a bicycle, upside down, and surrounded by tools and bits of bike in a haphazard manner which suggested that someone had mastered the art of taking a bike to bits without succeeding in the craft of putting it back together again. A lawnmower entangled in a garden hosepipe, which is what always happens in garages, and isn't at all relevant. A trolley, overflowing with plastic bags of all kinds, but most particularly six large black ones. A small pile of jars of pickles, where Johnny had carefully stacked them last night. The remains of some fish and chips. As far as Guilty was concerned, catfood only happened to other cats. A pair of yellow eyes, watching intently from the shadows under the bench. And that was all. Bags of Time To be honest about it, Johnny didn't much like hospitals either. Mostly, the people he'd gone to visit in them were not going to come out again. And no matter how they tried to cheer the place up with plants and pictures, it never looked friendly. After all, no-one was there because they wanted to be. But Kirsty was good at finding out things and getting harassed people to give her answers, and it didn't take long to find Mrs Tachyon's ward. "That's her, isn't it?" she said. Kasandra pointed along the line of beds. One or two of them didn't have visitors around them, but there was no mistaking the one belonging to Mrs Tachyon. She was sitting up in bed in a hospital nightgown and her woolly hat, over which she had a pair of hospital headphones. Mrs Tachyon stared intently in front of her, and jigged happily among the pillows. "She looks happy enough," said Kasandra. "What's she listening to?" "I couldn't say for sure," said the nurse. "All I know is the headphones aren't plugged in. Are you relatives?" "No. We're-" Kasandra began. "It's a sort of project," said Johnny. "You know . . . like weeding old people's gardens and that sort of thing." The nurse gave him an odd look, but the magic 'project' word did its usual helpful stuff. She sniffed. "Can I smell vinegar?" she said. Kasandra glared at Johnny. He tried to look innocent. "We've just brought some grapes," he said, showing her the bag. Mrs Tachyon didn't look up as they dragged chairs over to her bed. Johnny had never spoken to her in his life, except to say "sorry" when she rammed him with her trolley. He wasn't sure how to start now. Kasandra leaned over and pulled one earphone aside. "Hello, Mrs Tachyon!" she said Mrs Tachyon stopped jigging. She turned a beady eye on Kasandra, and then on Johnny. She had a black eye, and her stained white hair looked frizzled at the front, but there was something horribly unstoppable about Mrs Tachyon. "Indeed? That's what you think!" she said. "Call again tomorrow, baker, and we'll take a crusty one! Poor old biddy, is it? That's what you think! Millennium hand and shrimp? Free teeth and corsets? Maybe, for them as likes it, but not me, thank you so much. Wot, no bananas? I had a house, oh yes, but it's all black men now. Hats." "Are they treating you all right?" said Kasandra. "Don't you worry! Right as rain and twice as ninepence. Hah! Tick tick bang! I'd like to see them try. There's puddings. Of course, I remember when it was all fields, but would they listen?" Kasandra looked at Johnny. "I think she's a bit . . . confused," she said. "She doesn't understand anything I'm saying." "But we don't understand anything she's saying, either," said Johnny, who felt confused all the time in any case. Mrs Tachyon adjusted her headphones and started to boogie again. "I don't believe this," said Kasandra. "Excuse me." She pulled the headphones off the woolly hat and listened to them. "The nurse was right," she said. "There's nothing at all." Mrs Tachyon bounced up and down happily. "One born every minute!" she chortled. Then she winked at Johnny. It was a bright, knowing wink, from Planet Tachyon to Planet Johnny. "We've brought you some grapes, Mrs Tachyon," he said. "That's what you think." "Grapes," said Johnny firmly. He opened the bag, exposing the steaming greaseproof fish and chip paper inside. Her eyes widened. A scrawny hand shot out from under the covers, grabbed the packet, and disappeared under the blanket again. "Him and his coat," she said. "Don't mention it. Er. I'm keeping your trolley safe. And Guilty is all right, although I don't think he's eaten anything apart from some chips and my hand." "I blame Mr Chamberlain," said Mrs Tachyon. A bell tinkled. "Oh dear that's the end of visiting time my word don't the hours just fly past what a shame," said Kasandra, standing up quickly. "Nice to have met you Mrs Tachyon sorry we have to be going come on Johnny." "Lady Muck," said Mrs Tachyon. She nodded at Johnny. "What's the word on the street, mister man?" Johnny tried to think like Mrs Tachyon. "Er . . . "No Parking"?" he suggested. "That's what you think. Themes bags of time, mister man. Mind me bike! Where your mind goes, the rest of yours bound to follow. Here today and gone yesterday! Doing it's the trick! Eh?" Johnny stared. It was as though he had been listening to a lot of static on the radio and then, just for a second, there was this one clear signal. The other Mrs Tachyon came back. "He's mixing sugar with the sand, Mr McPhee!" she said. "That's what you think." "What did you have to go and give her them for?" Kasandra hissed, as she strode out of the ward. "She needs a proper healthy balanced diet! Not hot chips! What did you give her them for?" "Well, I thought hot chips would be exactly what someone's like who'd got used to cold chips. Anyway, she didn't get any supper last night. Hey, there was something very odd about-" "She is very odd." "You don't like her much, do you?" "Well, she didn't even say thank you." "But I thought she was an unfortunate victim of a repressive political system," said Johnny. "That's what you said when we were coming here." "Yes, all right, but courtesy doesn't cost anything, actually. Come on, let's get out of here." "Hello?" said someone behind them. "They've found out about the chips," muttered Kirsty, as she and Johnny turned around. But it wasn't a nurse bearing down on them, unless the hospital had a plain clothes division. It was a young woman in glasses and a worried hairstyle. She also had boots that would have impressed Bigmac, and a clipboard. "Um . . . do you two know Mrs . . . er . . . Tachyon?" she said. "Is that her name?" "I suppose so," said Johnny. "I mean, that's what everyone calls her." "It's a very odd name," said the woman. "I suppose it's foreign." "We don't actually know her," said Kasandra. "We were just visiting her out of social concern." The woman looked at her. "Good grief," she said. She glanced at her clipboard. "Do you know anything about her?" she said. "Anything at all?" "Like what?" said Johnny. "Anything. Where she lives. Where she comes from. How old she is. Anything." "Not really," said Johnny. "She's just around. You know." "She must sleep somewhere." "Don't know." "There's no records of her anywhere. There's no records of anyone called Tachyon anywhere," said the woman, her voice suggesting that this was a major criminal offence. "Are you a social worker?" said Kasandra. "Yes. I'm Ms Partridge." "I think I've seen you talking to Bigmac," said Johnny. "Bigmac? Who's Bigmac?" "Er . . . Simon . . . Wrigley, I think." "Oh, yes," said Ms Partridge darkly. "Simon. The one who wanted to know how many cars he had to steal to get a free holiday in Africa." "And he said you said you'd only send him if cannibalism was still-" "Yes, yes," said Ms Partridge, hurriedly. When she'd started the job, less than a year ago, she'd firmly believed that everything that was wrong with the world was the fault of Big Business and the Government. She believed even more firmly now that it was all the fault of Bigmac. "He was dead impressed, he said-" "But you don't actually know anything about Mrs Tachyon, do you?" said the social worker. "She had a trolley full of junk, but no-one seems to know where it is." "Actually-" Kasandra began. "I don't know where it is either," said Johnny firmly. "It's be very helpful if we could find it. It's amazing what they hoard," said Ms Partridge. "When I was in Bolton there was an old lady who'd saved every-" "We'll miss the bus," said Kasandra. "Sorry we can't help, Miss Partridge. Come on, Johnny." She pulled him out of the building and down the steps. "You have got the trolley, haven't you," she said. "You told me." "Yes, but I don't see why people should take it away from her or poke around in it. You wouldn't want people poking around in your stuff" "My mother said she was married to an airman in the Second World War and he never came back and she went a bit strange." "My grandad said he and his friends used to tip up her trolley when he was a boy. He said they did it just to hear her swear." Kasandra hesitated. "What? How old is your grandad?" "Dunno. About sixty-five." "And how old is Mrs Tachyon, would you say?" "It's hard to tell under all those wrinkles. Sixty?" "Doesn't that strike you as odd?" "What?" "Are you dense or something? She's younger than your grandfather!" "Oh . . . well . . . perhaps there was another Mrs Tachyon?" "That isn't very likely, is it?" "So you're saying she's a hundred years old?" "Of course not. There's bound to be a sensible explanation. What's your grandfather's memory like?" "He's good at television programs. You'll be watching, and then he'll say something like, "Hey, him . . . the one in the suit . . . he was the policemen in that program, you know, the one with the man with the curly hair, couple of years ago, you know." And if you buy anything, he can always tell you that you could get it for sixpence and still have change when he was a lad." "Everyone's grandad does that," said Kasandra severely. "Sorry." "Haven't you looked in the bags?" "No . . . but she's got some odd stuff." "How do you mean?" "Well . . . there are these jars of pickles . . . " "Well? Old people like pickles." "Yes, but these are . . . kind of new and old at the same time. And there was fish and chips wrapped up in a newspaper." "Well?" "No-one wraps up fish and chips in newspaper these days. But they all looked fresh. I had a look because I thought I might as well give the fish to the cat, and the newspaper . . . " Johnny stopped. What could he say? That he knew that front page? He knew every word of it. He'd found the same one on the microfiche in the library and the librarian had given him a copy to help him with his history project. He'd never seen it apart from the copy and the fuzzy image on the screen and suddenly there it was, unfolded in front of him, greasy and vinegary but undoubtedly . . . . . . new. "Well, let's have a look at them, at least. That can't hurt." Kasandra was like that. When all else failed, she tried being reasonable. The big black car sped up the motorway. There were two motorcyclists in front and two more behind, and another car trailing behind them containing some serious men in suits who listened to little radios a lot and wouldn't even trust their mothers. Sir John sat by himself in the back of the black car, with his hands crossed on his silver-topped walking stick and his chin on his hands. There were two screens in front of him, which showed him various facts and figures to do with his companies around the world, beamed down to him from a satellite, which he also owned. There were also two fax machines and three telephones. Sir John sat and stared at them. Then he reached over and pressed the button that operated the driver's intercom. He'd never liked Hickson much. The man had a red neck. On the other hand, he was the only person there was to talk to right now. "Do you believe it's possible to travel in time, Hickson?" "Couldn't say, sir," said the chauffeur, without turning his head. "It's been done, you know." "If you say so, sir." "Time's been changed." "Yes, sir." "Of course, you wouldn't know about it, because you were in the time that it changed into." "Good thing for me then, sir." "Did you know that when you change time you get two futures heading off side by side?" "Must have missed that in school, sir." "Like a pair of trousers." "Definitely something to think about, Sir John Sir John stared at the back of the man's neck. It really was very red, and had unpleasant little patches of hair on it. He hadn't hired the man, of course. He had people who had people who had people who did things like that. It had never occurred to them to employ a chauffeur with an interest in something else besides what the car in front was doing. "Take the next left turn," he snapped. "We're still twenty miles from Blackbury, sir." "Do what you're told! Right now!" The car skidded, spun half around, and headed up the off-ramp with smoke coming from its tires. "Turn left!" "But there's traffic coming, Sir John!" "If they haven't got good brakes they shouldn't be on the road! Good! You see? Turn right!" "That's just a lane! I'll lose my job, Sir John!" Sir John!" sighed. "Hickson, I'd like to lose all our little helpers. If you can get me to Blackbury by myself I will personally give you a million pounds. I'm serious." The chauffeur glanced at his mirror. "Why didn't you say, sir? Hold on to something, sir!" As the car plunged down between high hedges, all three of the telephones started to ring. Sir John stared at them for a while. Then he pressed the button that wound down the nearest window and, one by one, threw them out. The fax machine followed. After some effort he managed to detach the two screens, and they went out too, exploding very satisfactorily when they hit the ground. He felt a lot better for that. Men in Black The bus rumbled along the road towards Johnny's house. "There's no sense in getting excited about Mrs Tachyon," said Kasandra. "If she's really been a bag lady here for years and years, then there's a whole range of perfectly acceptable explanations without having to resort to far-fetched ones." "What's an acceptable explanation?" said Johnny. He was still wrapped up in the puzzle of the newspaper. "She's an alien, possibly." "That's acceptable?" "Or she could be an Atlantean. From Atlantis. You know? The continent that sank under the sea thousands of years ago. The inhabitants were said to be very long-lived." "They could breathe underwater?" "Don't be silly. They sailed away just before it sank, and built Stonehenge and the Pyramids and so on. They were scientifically very advanced, actually." Johnny looked at her with his mouth open. You expected this sort of thing from Bigmac and the others, but not from KiKasandra, who was already doing A-levels at fourteen years old. "I didn't know that," he said. "It was hushed up by the government." "Ali." Kasandra was good at knowing things that were hushed up by the government, especially considering that they had been, well, hushed up. They were always slightly occult. When giant footprints had appeared around the town centre during some snow last year there had been two theories. There was KiKasandra's, which was that it was Bigfoot, and Johnny's, which was that it was a combination of Bigmac and two "Giant Rubber Feet, A Wow at Parties!!!!" from the joke Emporium in Penny Street. KiKasandra"s theory had the backing of so many official sources in the books she'd read that it practically outweighed Johnny's, which was merely based on watching him do it. Johnny thought about the Atlanteans, who'd all be two metres tall in Greek togas and golden hair, leaving the sinking continent in their amazing golden ships. And on the deck of one of them, Mrs Tachyon, ferociously wheeling her trolley. Or you could imagine Attila the Hun's barbarians galloping across the plain and, in the middle of the line of horsemen, Mrs Tachyon on her trolley. Off her trolley, too. "What happens", said Kasandra, "is that if you see a UFO or a yeti or something like that, you get a visit from the Men in Black. They drive around in big black cars and menace people who've seen strange things. They say they're working for the government but they're really working for the secret society that runs everything." "How d'you know all this?" "Everyone knows. It's a well-known fact. I've been waiting for something like this, ever since the mysterious rain of fish we had in September," said Kasandra. "You mean, when there was that gas leak under the tropical fish shop?" "Yes, we were told it was a leak under the tropical fish shop," said Kasandra darkly. "What? Of course it was the gas leak! They found the shopkeeper's wig in the telephone wires in the High Street! Everyone had guppies in their gutters!" "The two might have been coincidentally connected," said Kasandra reluctantly. "And you still believe that those crop circles last year weren't made by Bigmac even though he swears they were?" "All right, perhaps some of them might have been made by Bigmac, but who made the first ones, eh?" "Bazza and Skazz, of course. They read about 'em in the paper and decided we should have some, too." "They didn't necessarily make all of them." Johnny sighed. As if life wasn't complicated enough, people had to set out to make it worse. It had been difficult enough before he'd heard about spontaneous combustion. You could be sitting peacefully in your chair, minding your own business, and next minute, whoosh, you were just a pair of shoes with smoke coming out. He'd taken to keeping a bucket of water in his bedroom for some weeks after reading about that. And then there were all these programs about aliens swooping down on people and taking them away for serious medical examinations in their flying saucers. If you were captured and taken away by aliens, but then they messed around with your brain so you forgot about them and they had time travel, so they could put you back exactly where you were before they'd taken you away . . . how would you know? It was a bit of a worry. Kasandra seemed to think all this sort of thing was interesting, instead of some kind of a nuisance. "Kasandra," he said. "Yes? What?" "I wish you'd go back to Kirsty." "Horrible name. Sounds like someone who makes scones. " . . . I didn't mind Kimberly . . . " "Hah! I now realize that was a name with "trainee hairdresser" written all over it." " . . . although Klymenystra was a bit over the top." "When was that?" "About a fortnight ago." "I was probably feeling a bit gothy at the time." The bus pulled up at the end of Johnny's road, and they got off. The garages were in a little cul-de-sac around the back of the houses. They weren't used much, at least for cars. Most of Grandad's neighbors parked in the street, so that they could enjoy complaining about stealing one another's parking spaces. "You haven't even peeked in the bags?" said Kasandra, as Johnny fished in his pockets for the garage key. "No. I mean, supposing they were full of old knickers or something?" He pushed open the door. The trolley was where he left it. There was something odd about it that he couldn't quite put his finger on. It was clearly standing in the middle of the floor but managed to give the impression of moving very fast at the same time, as though it were a still frame from a movie. Kasandra-formerly-Kirsty looked around. "Bit of a dump," she said. "Why's that bike upside down over there?" "It's mine," said Johnny. "It got a puncture yesterday. I haven't managed to repair it yet." Kasandra picked up one of the jars of pickle from the bench. The label was sooty. She wiped it and turned it towards the light. "Blackbury Preserves Ltd Gold-Medal Empire Brand Mustard Pickle"," she read. "Six Premier Awards. Grand Prix de Foire Internationale des Conichons Nancy 1933. Festival of Pickles, Manchester, 1929. Danzig Pokelnfest 1928. Supreme Prize, Michigan State Fair, 1933. Gold Medal, Madras, 1931. Bonza Feed Award, Sydney, 1932. Made from the Finest Ingredients." And then there's a picture of some sort of crazed street kid jumping about, and it says underneath, "Up In The Air Leaps Little Tim, Blackbury Pickles Have Bitten Him." Very clever. Well, they're pickles. So what?" "They're from the old pickle factory," said Johnny. "It got blown up during the war. At the same time as Paradise Street. Pickles haven't been made here for more than fifty years!" "Oh, no!" said Kasandra. "You don't mean . . . we're in a town where no pickles are made? That's creepy, that is." "You don't have to be sarcastic. It's just odd, was all I meant." Kasandra shook the jar. Then she picked up another sooty jar of gherkins, which sloshed as she turned it over. "They've kept well, then," she said. "I tried one this morning," said Johnny. "It was nice and crunchy. And what about this?" Out of his pocket came the newspaper that had wrapped Mrs Tachyon's fish and chips. He spread it out. "It's an old newspaper," said Johnny. "I mean . . . it's very old, but not old. That's all stuff about the Second World War. But . . . it doesn't look old or feel old or smell old. It's . . ." "Yes, I know, it's probably one of those reprinted newspapers you can get for the day you were born, my father got me one for-" "Wrapping fish and chips?" said Johnny. "It's odd, I must admit," said Kasandra. She turned and looked at him as though seeing him for the first time. "I've waited years for something like this," she said. "Haven't you?" "For something like Mrs Tachyon's trolley?" "Try to pay attention, will you?" "Sorry." "Haven't you ever wondered what'd happen if a flying saucer landed in your garden? Or you found some sort of magical item that let you travel in time? Or some old cave with a wizard that'd been asleep for a thousand years?" "Well, as a matter of fact I did once find an old cave with-" "I've read books and books about that sort of thing, and they're full of unintelligent children who go around saying "gosh". They just drift along having an adventure, for goodness" sake. They never seem to think of it as any kind of opportunity. They're never prepared. Well, I am." Johnny tried to imagine what'd happen if Kirsty was ever kidnapped by aliens. You'd probably end up with a galactic empire where everyone had sharp pencils and always carried a small torch in case of emergencies. Or they'd make a million robot copies who'd fly around the universe telling everyone not to be stupid and forcing them to be sensible. "This is obviously something very odd," she said. "Possibly mystic. Possibly a time machine of some sort." And that was the thing about her. She arrived at an explanation. She didn't mess around with uncertainty. "Didn't you think that?" she said. "A time machine? A time shopping trolley?" "Well, what other explanation fits the facts? Apart from possibly she was kidnapped by aliens and brought here at the speed of light, which is something they do a lot for some reason. But there might be something else, I'm sure you've thought of it." She glanced at her watch. "No hurry," she added sarcastically. "Take your time." "Well..." "No rush." "Well . . . a time machined have flashing lights . . ." "Why?" "You've got to have flashing lights." "What for?" Johnny wasn't going to give in. "To flash," he said. "Really? Well, who says a time machine has to look like anything?" said Kasandra in a superior tone of voice, or at least an even more superior voice than the one she usually used. "Or has to be powered by electricity?" "Yoless says you can't have time machines because everyone'd keep changing the future," said Johnny. "Oh? So what's the alternative? How come she turned up with this new old newspaper and all these new old pickle jars?" "All right, but I don't go leaping to great big conclusions!" In fact he did. He knew he did. All the time. But there was something about the way Kasandra argued that automatically made you take the other side. He waved a hand at the trolley. "I mean," he said, "do you really think something could just press the . . . oh, the handle, or the bags or something, and suddenly it's hello, Norman the Conqueror?" He thumped his hand down on a black bag. The world flashed in front of his eyes. There was concrete under his feet, but there were no walls. At least, not much in the way of walls. They were one brick high. A man cementing the new row looked up very slowly. "Blimey," he said, "how did you get there?" Then he seemed to get a grip on himself. "Hey, that concrete's still Fred! You come here!" A spaniel sitting by the man barked at Johnny and rushed forward, jumping up at Johnny and knocking him back against the trolley. There was another flash. It was red and blue and it seemed to Johnny that he was squashed very flat and then pulled out again. There were walls, and the shopping trolley was still in the middle of the floor, as was Kasandra, staring at him. "You vanished for a moment," she said, as if he'd done something wrong. "What happened?" "I . . . I don't know, how should I know?" said Johnny. "Move your feet," she said. "Very slowly." He did. They met a very slight obstacle, a tiny ridge in the floor. He looked down. "Oh, they're just the footprints in the cement," he said, "They've been . . . there . . . ages . . . " Kasandra knelt down to look at the footprints he'd been standing in. They were ingrained with dust and dirt, but she made him take off his trainer and held it upside down by the print. It matched exactly. "See?" she said triumphantly. "You're standing in your own footprints." Johnny stepped gingerly aside and looked at the footprints where he'd been standing. There was no doubt they'd been there a long time. "Where did you go?" "Back in time . . . I think. There was a man building this place, and a dog." "A dog," said Kasandra. Her voice suggested that she would have seen something much more interesting. "Oh, well. It's a start." She shifted the trolley. It was standing in four small grooves in the concrete. They were dirty and oily. They'd been there a long time, too. "This," said Kirsty, "is no ordinary shopping trolley." "It's got Tesco written on it," Johnny pointed out, hopping up and down as he replaced his shoe. "And a squeaky wheel." "Obviously it's still switched on or something," Kirsty went on, ignoring him. "And that's time travel, is it?" said Johnny. "I thought it's be more exciting. You know - battles and monsters and things? And it's not much fun if all we can do is - don't touch it!" Kasandra prodded a bag. The air flickered and changed. Kasandra looked around her. The garage hadn't changed in any way. Except "Who repaired your bike?" she said. Johnny turned. His bike was no longer upside down with a wheel off, but leaning against the wall, both tires quite full. "You see, I notice things," said Kasandra. "I am remarkably observant. We must have gone into the future, when you've mended it." Johnny wasn't sure. He'd torn three inner tubes already, plus he'd also lost the thingy from the inside of the valve. Probably no time machine could ever go so far into the future that he'd be good at cycle repair. "Let's have a look round," said Kirsty. "Obviously where we go is controlled by some factor I haven't discovered yet. If we're in the fixture, the important thing is to find out which horses are going to win races, and so on. "Why?" "So we can bet money on them and become rich, of course." "I don't know how to bet!" "One problem at a time." Johnny looked though the grimy window. The weather didn't look very different. There were no flying cars or other definite signs of futurosity. But Guilty was no longer under the bench. "Grandad has a racing paper," he said, feeling a bit lightheaded. "Let's go, then." "What? Into my house?" "Of course." "Supposing I meet me?" "Well, you've always been good at making friends." Reluctantly, Johnny led the way out of the garage. Garden paths in the future, he noted, were made of some gritty grey substance which was amazingly like cracked concrete. Back doors were an excitingly futuristic faded blue colour, with little dried flakes where the paint had bubbled up. It was locked, but his ancient key still fitted. There was a rectangle on the floor consisting of spiky brown hairs. He wiped his feet on it, and looked at the time measurement module on the wall. It said ten past three. The future was amazingly like the present. "Now we've got to find a newspaper," said Kirsty. "It won't be a lot of help," said Johnny. "Grandad keeps them around until he's got time to read them. They go back months. Anyway, everything's normal. This doesn't look very futuristic to me." "Don't you even have a calendar?" "Yes. There's one on my bedside clock. I just hope I'm at school, that's all." According to the clock, it was the third of October. "The day before yesterday," said Johnny. "Mind you, it could be the clock. It doesn't work very well." "Yuk. You sleep in here?" said Kirsty, looking around with an expression like a vegetarian in a sausage factory. "Yes. It's my room." Kirsty ran her hand over his desk, which was fairly crowded at the moment. "What're all these photocopies and photos and things?" "That's the project I'm doing in History. We're doing the Second World War. So I'm doing Blackbury in the war." He tried to get between her and the desk, but Kirsty was always interested in things people didn't want her to see. "Hey, this is you, isn't it?" she said, grabbing a sepia photograph. "Since when did you wear a uniform and a pudding-basin haircut?" Johnny tried to grab it. "And that's Grandad when he was a bit older than me," he mumbled. "I tried to get him to talk about the war like the teacher said but he tells me to shut up about it." "You're so local, aren't you," said Kirsty. "I can't imagine much happening here-" "Something did happen," said Johnny. He pulled out Mrs Tachyon's chip paper and jabbed at the front page with his finger. "At 11.07pm on May 21, 1941. Bombs! Real bombs! They called it the Blackbury Blitz. And this is the paper from the day after. Look." He rummaged among the stuff on his desk and pulled out a photocopy. "See? I got a copy of the same page out of the library! But this paper's real, it's new!" "If she is . . . from the past . . . why does she wear an old rara skirt and trainers?" said Kirsty. Johnny glared angrily at her. She had no right not to care about Paradise Street! "Nineteen people got killed! In one night!" he said. "There wasn't any warning! The only bombs that fell on Blackbury in the whole of the war! The only survivors were two goldfish in a bowl! It got blown into a tree and still had water in it! All the people got killed!" Kirsty picked up a felt-tipped pen, but it didn't write because it had dried up. Johnny had a world-class collection of pens that didn't work. She had this infuriating habit of appearing not to notice him when he was excited about something. "You know you've still got Thomas the Tank Engine on your wallpaper?" she said. "What? Have I? Gosh, I hadn't realized," said Johnny, with what he hoped was sarcasm. "It's okay to have Thomas the Tank Engine when you're seven, and it's quite cool to have it when you're nineteen, but it's not cool at thirteen. Honestly, if I wasn't here to help from time to time, you just wouldn't have a clue." "Grandad put it up a couple of years ago," said Johnny. "This was my room when I stayed with them. You know grandparents. It's Thomas the Tank Engine until you die." Then there was the click of the front door opening. "Your grandad?" hissed Kirsty. "He always goes shopping in town on Thursdays!" whispered Johnny. "And Mum's at work!" "Who else has got a key?" "Only me!" Someone started to climb the stairs. "But I can't meet me!" said Johnny. "I'd remember, wouldn't I? Yoless says if you meet yourself the whole universe explodes! I'd remember that happening!" Kirsty picked up the bedside lamp, and glanced at the design on it. "Good grief, the Mister Men, you've still got Mister-" "Shutupshutupshutup. What're you going to do with it?" "Don't worry, you won't feel a thing, I learned how to do this in self-defense classes-" The door handle turned. The door opened a fraction. Downstairs, the phone rang. The handle clicked back. Footsteps went downstairs again. Johnny heard the phone picked up. A distant voice said: "Oh, hi, Wobbler." Kirsty looked at Johnny and raised her eyebrows. "Wobbler phoned," said Johnny. "About going to the movies yest- tomorrow. I just remembered." "Were you on the phone long?" "Don't . . . think so. And I went to get a sandwich afterwards." "Where's your phone?" "In the front room." "Let's go, then!" Kirsty opened the door and darted down the stairs, with Johnny trailing behind her. His coat was on the coat rack. He was also wearing it. He stood and stared. "Come on," hissed Kirsty. She was almost at the bottom when the door started to open. Johnny opened his mouth to say: oh, yes, I remember, I had to go and get my wallet to see if I'd got any money. He desperately wanted not to meet himself: If the entire universe exploded, people would be bound to blame him afterwards . . . . . . and there was a flash in front of his eyes. The black car slid surreptitiously out of a side road just before a sign indicating that it was about to enter BLACKBURY (twinned with Aix-et-Pains). "Nearly there, Sir John." "Good. What time are we in?" "Er . . . quarter past eleven, sir." "That wasn't what I meant. If time was a pair of trousers, what leg would we be in?" It occurred to Hickson the chauffeur that this might be quite a difficult million pounds to earn. "They all got mixed up today, you see," said a voice from the seat behind him. "Right, sir. I, if I see any trousers, sir, you just tell me what leg to drive down." The Truth is Out of Here Johnny was still on the stairs. Kirsty was still in front of him. The door was shut. His coat wasn't on the coat rack. The Blackbury Shopper, which was delivered on Fridays and stayed on the hall table until someone threw it away, was indeed on the table. "We've time traveled again, haven't we," said Kirsty, calmly. "I think we're back to where we started. Possibly . . . "I saw the back of my own head!" whispered Johnny. "My actual own back of my own head! Without mirrors or anything! No-one's ever done that since the Spanish Inquisition! How can you be so calm about this?" "I'm just acting calm," said Kirsty. "This is even worse wallpaper, isn't it? Looks like an Indian restaurant." She opened the front door, and slammed it again. "You know I said that if you started getting too interested in mysterious occult things these men in black cars turn up?" "Yes? Well?" "Look through the letterbox, will you?" Johnny levered it open with a finger. There was a car pulling up outside. It was black. Utterly. Black. Black tires, black wheels, black headlights. Even the windows were darker than a pair of Mafia sunglasses. Here and there were bits of chrome, but they only made the blackness blacker by comparison. It stopped. Johnny could just make out the shadow of the driver behind the tinted glass. "S . . . just . . . coincidence," he said. "Your grandad often gets visitors like this, does he?" Kasandra demanded. "Well . . . " He didn't. Someone came round on Thursday to collect his football pools coupon and that was about it. Grandad was not one for the social whirl. The car door opened. A man got out. He was wearing a black chauffeur's uniform. The car door shut. It shut with the kind of final, heavy thonk that only the most expensive car doors can achieve, because they are lined with money. Johnny let go of the letterbox and jumped back. A few seconds later, someone banged heavily on the door. Run!" whispered Kasandra "Where?" "The back door? Come on!" "We haven't done anything wrong!" "How do you know?" Kasandra opened the back door and humied down the path and into the garage, dragging Johnny behind her. The trolley was still in the middle of the floor. "Get ready to open the big doors and don't stop for anything!" "Why?" "Open the doors now!" Johnny opened them, because practically anything was better than arguing with Kirsty. The little garage area was empty, except for someone washing their car. Johnny was nearly knocked aside as the trolley rattled out, with Kasandra pushing determinedly on the handle. It rattled across the concrete and lurched uncertainly into the alleyway that led to the next road. "Didn't you see that program about the flying saucer that crashed and these mysterious men turned up and hushed it all up?" said Kasandra. No. "Well, did you even hear about the flying saucer crashing?" "No" "See?" "All right, but in that case how come there was a TV program about it, then?" A car edged around the corner into the road. "I can't waste time answering silly questions," said Kasandra. "Come on." She shoved the trolley as hard as she could. It rolled down the sloping pavement, the squeaky wheel bouncing and juddering over the slabs. The car turned the corner very slowly, as though driven by someone who didn't know the area very well. Johnny caught up with Kir-Kasandra and clung to the handle because the trolley was rocking all over the pavement. The trolley, under its heavy load, began to pick up speed. "Try to hold it back!" "I'm trying! Are you?" Johnny risked a look behind. The car seemed to be catching up. He jumped onto the trolley. "What are you playing at?" said Kirsty, who was far too worried to remember any new names now. "Come on!" He grabbed her hand and pulled her up on the other side of the cart. Now she was no longer holding the handle, it surged forward. "Do you think this is really a time machine?" he said, as the rushing wind made the bags flutter. "It must be!" "D'you see that film where the car travelled in time when it went at eighty-eight miles an hour?" They looked down. The wheels were screaming. Smoke was coming out of the axles. They looked up the hill. The car was catching them up. They looked down the hill. There were the traffic lights. The Blackbury by-pass was a solid wall of thundering traffic. Then they looked up into each other's frightened faces. "The lights are red! The lights are red! I don't want to die!" said Kirsty. "I haven't even been to university!" One hundred metres ahead, sixteen-wheeled lorriies barrelled onwards, taking a million English razor blades from Sheffield to Italy and, coming the other way, a million Italian razor blades from Rome to England. The trolley was, without a shadow of a doubt, going to smash right into the middle of them. The air flickered. And there were no lorries, or, rather, there were lorries, snorting and hissing and waiting at the lights. The lights ahead of Johnny were green. The trolley rolled through, wheels screaming. Johnny looked up into the puzzled faces of the drivers. Then he risked a look behind. The black car had vanished. There were no other turnings off the hill. Wherever it had gone, it hadn't got there by any means known to normal cars. He met Kristy's eyes. "Where did it go?" she said. "And what happened with the lights? Did we travel in time again?" "You're wearing your mac!" said Johnny. "You were wearing your old coat but now you're wearing your mac! Something's changed!" She looked down, and then back up at him. Beside the crossroads was the Neil Armstrong Shopping Mall. Johnny pointed to it. "We can make this go into the car park!" he shouted. The big black Bentley jerked to a halt at the side of the road. "They just vanished!" said Hickson, staring over the top of the wheel. "That wasn't . . . this time travel stuff, was it? I mean, they just vanished!" "I think they went from one now to another now," said Sir John. "Is that . . . like . . . these trousers you were going on about, sir?" "I suppose you could say they went from one knee to the other. One 1996 to another 1996." Hickson turned around in his seat. "Are you serious, sir? I saw this scientist on TV... you know, the one in the wheelchair . . . and there was all this stuff about other universes all crammed in, and-" "He'd know the proper way of talking about it," said Sir John. "For the rest of us, it's easier to think about trousers." "What shall we do now, sir?" "Oh, I think we wait until they come back to our now." "How longs that going to be?" "About two seconds, I think . . . " In the shopping mall, a joke was going wrong. "Make me . . . er," said Bigmac, "make me one with pickle and onion rings and fries." "Make me one with extra salad and fries, please," said Yoless. Wobbler took a long look at the girl in the cardboard hat. "Make me one with everything," he said. "Because . . . I'm going to become a Muslim!" Bigmac and Yoless exchanged glances. "Buddhist," said Yoless, patiently. "It's Buddhist! Make me one with everything because I'm going to become a Buddhist! It's Buddhists that want to be one with everything. Singing 'om' and all that. You mucked it up! You were practicing all the way down here and you still mucked it up!" "Buddhists wouldn't have the burger," said the girl. "They'd have the jumbo Beanburger. Or just fries and a salad." They stared at her. "Vegetarianism," said the girl. "I may have to wear a paper hat but I haven't got a cardboard brain, thank you." She glared at Wobbler. "You want a bun with everything. You want fries with that?" "Er . . . yes." "There you go. Have a day." The boys took their burgers and wandered back out into the mall. "We do this every Saturday," said Bigmac. "Yes," said Wobbler. "And every Saturday we work out a joke." "Yes." "And you always mess up the punch line." "Well . . . it's something to do." And there wasn't much else to do at the mall. Sometimes there were displays and things. At Christmas there'd been a nice tableau of reindeers and Dolls of Many Countries that really moved (jerkily) to music, but Bigmac had found out where the controls were and speeded up everything four times, and a Norwegian's head had gone through the window of the cookie shop on the second floor. All there was today in the way of entertainment were the people selling plastic window frames and someone else trying to get people to try a new artificial baked potato mix. The boys sat down by the ornamental pond, and watched out for the security guards. You could always tell where Bigmac was in the mall by watching the flow of the security guards, several of whom had been hit by bits of disintegrating Scandinavian and bore a grudge. As far as anyone knew, Bigmac had never been guilty of anything other than the occasional confused approach to the ownership of other people's cars, but he had an amazing way of looking as though he was thinking about committing some rather daft crime, probably with a can of spray paint. His camouflage jacket didn't help. It might have worked in a jungle, but it tended to stand out when the background was the Olde Card and Cookie Shoppe. "Old Johnny may be a bit of a nerd but it's always interesting when he's around," said Wobbler. "Stuff happens." "Yeah, but he hangs around with Kimberly or Kirsty or whoever she is today and she gives me the creeps," said Yoless. "She's weird. She always looks at me as if I haven't answered a question properly." "Her brother told me everyone expects her to go to university next year," said Bigmac. Yoless shrugged. "You don't have to be dumb to be weird," he said. "If you're brainy you can be even weirder. It's all that intelligence looking for something to do. That's what I think." "Well, Johnny's weird," said Bigmac. "Well, he is. It's amazing the stuff that goes on in his head. Maybe he is a bit mental." "It's amazing the stuff that goes on outside his head," said Wobbler. "He's just-" There was a crash somewhere in the mall, and people started to shout. A shopping trolley rolled at high speed up the aisle, with shoppers running to get out of the way. It had a plastic window frame hanging on the front and was splashed with artificial potato. Johnny and Kirsty were hanging on either side. He waved at them as he drifted past. "Help us get this out of the back door!" "That's old Mrs Tachyon's trolley, isn't it?" said Yoless. "Who cares?" said Bigmac. He put his burger down on the edge of the pond, where it was surreptitiously picked up by Wobbler, and ran after the trolley. "Someone's chasing us," Johnny panted, as they caught up. "Brilliant!" said Bigmac. "Who?" "Some people in a big black car," said Johnny. "Only . . . they've vanished . . . " "Oh, an invisible big black car," said Yoless. "I see them all the time," said Bigmac. "Are you going to stand around all day?" Kirsty demanded. "It's probably got some kind of special shield! Come on!" The trolley wasn't massively heavy, although the piles of bags did weigh it down. But it did need a lot of steering. Even with all of them helping - or, Johnny thought later, perhaps because of all of them helping it skidded and wobbled as they tried to keep it in a straight line. "If we can get out of the other doors, we're in the High Street," said Johnny. "And it can't go in there because there's bollards and things." "I wish I had my five-megawatt laser cannon," said Bigmac, as they fought the trolley round a corner. "You haven't got a laser cannon," said Yoless. "I know, that's why I wish I had one." Ow. Wobbler leapt back. "It bit me!" he screamed. Guilty stuck his head out of the heap of bags and hissed at Johnny. Security guards were strolling towards them. There were five kids arguing around a trolley, Bigmac was among them and, as Yoless would have pointed out, one of them was black. This sort of thing attracts attention. "This trolley might be a time machine," said Johnny. "And that car . . . Kirsty thinks someone's after it. I mean me. I mean us." "Great, how do we make it work?" said Bigmac. "A time machine," said Yoless. "Ali. Yes?" "Where's this invisible car got to?" said Wobbler. "We can't go out of the other doors," said Kirsty, flatly. "There's a couple of guards there." Johnny stared at the black dustbin liners. Then he picked one up and undid the string. For a moment his fingers felt cold and the air was full of faint whispers The mall vanished. It vanished above them, and around them. And below them. They landed in a heap on the grass, about a metre below where they'd been standing. The trolley landed on top of them, one wheel slamming into the small of Johnny's back. Bags bounced out, and Guilty took the opportunity to scratch Bigmac's ear. And then there was silence, except for Bigmac swearing. Johnny opened his eyes. The ground sloped up all around him. There were low bushes at the tap. "If I asked what happened," said Yoless, from somewhere under Bigmac, "what'd you say?" "I think we may have travelled in time," said Johnny. D'you get an electric feeling?" said Wobbler, clutching his jaw. "Like . . . all your teeth standing on end?" "Which way did we go?" said Yoless, still talking in his deliberate voice. "Are we talking dinosaurs, or mutant robots? I want to know this before I open my eyes. Kirsty groaned. "Oh dear, it's going to be that kind of adventure after all," she hissed, sitting up. "It's just the sort of thing I didn't want to happen. Me, and four token boys. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. It's only a mercy we haven't got a dog." She sat up and brushed some grass off her coat. "Anyone got the least idea of where we are?" "Ali," said Yoless. "I see there's grass. That means no dinosaurs. I saw that in a film. Grass didn't evolve until after there were dinosaurs." Johnny stood up. His head was aching. He walked to the edge of the little hollow they'd landed in, and looked out. "Really. Someone's been paying attention," said Kirsty. "Well, that narrows it down to some time in the last sixty million years." "Proper time travellers have proper digital readouts," Wobbler grumbled. "No grass? What did dinosaurs eat, then?" "You only get digital time machine clocks in America," said Bigmac. "I saw a film about a time machine in Victorian England and it just had light bulbs. They ate other dinosaurs, didn't they?" "You're not allowed to call them dinosaurs any more, " said Yoless. "It's speciesist. You have to call them pre-petroleum persons." "Yeah," said Bigmac. "One Million Years PC. Get it? "Cos there was this film called One Million Years BC, but-" Kristy's mouth was open. "Do you lot go on like this all the time?" she said. "Yes, you do. I've noticed it before, actually. Rather than face up to facts, you start yakking on about weird things. When are we?" "May the twenty-first," said Johnny, sitting down next to her. "Just gone half past three." "Oh yes?" said Kirsty. "And how come you're so sure?" "I went and asked a man who was walking his dog," said Johnny. "Did he say what year?" Johnny met Kristy's gaze. "No," he said. "But I know what year." They climbed out of the hollow and pushed their way through the bushes. A scrubby field stretched away below them. There were some allotment gardens at the bottom end of the field, and then a river, and then the town of Blackbury. It was definitely Blackbury. There was the familiar rubber boot factory chimney. There were a few other tall chimneys as well. He'd never seen those before. The man with the dog was watching them from some way off. So was the dog. Neither of them seemed particularly Jurassic, although the dog looked somewhat suspicious. "Wha..?" said Wobbler. "Here, what's been happening? What have you done?" "I told you we'd travelled in time," said Kirsty. "Weren't you listening?" "I thought it was just some trick! I thought you were just messing about!" He gave Johnny a very worried look. "This is just messing about, isn't it?" "Yes." Wobbler relaxed. "It's messing about with time travel," said Johnny. Wobbler looked scared again. "Sorry. But that's Blackbury all right. It's just smaller. I think we're where the mall is going to be." "How do we get back?" said Yoless. "It just sort of happens, I think." "You're just doing it with hallucinations, aren't you," said Wobbler, never a boy to let go of hope. "It's probably the smell from the trolley. We'll come round in a minute and have a headache and it'll all be all right." "It just sort of happens?" said Yoless. He was using his careful voice again, the voice that said there was something nasty on his mind. "How do you get back? "There's a flash, and there you are," said Kirsty. "And you're back where you left?" "Of course not. Only if you didn't move. Otherwise you go back to wherever where you are now is going to be then." There was silence while they all worked this out. "You mean," said Bigmac, "that if you walk a couple of metres, you'll be a couple of metres away from where you started when you get back?" "Yes." "Even if there's been something built there?" said Yoless. "Yes . . . no . . . I don't know." "So," said Yoless, still speaking very slowly, "if there's a lot of concrete, what happens? They all looked at Kirsty. She looked at Johnny. "I don't know," he said. "Probably you kind of . . . get lumped together." "Yuk," said Bigmac. There was a wail from Wobbler. Sometimes, when it involved something horrible, his mind worked very fast. "I don't want to end up with just my arms sticking out of a concrete wall!" "Oh, I don't think it's happen like that," said Yoless. Wobbler relaxed, but not much. "How would it happen, then?" he said. "What I think would happen is, see, all the atoms in your body, right, and all the atoms in the wall would be trying to be in the same place at the same time and they'd all smash together suddenly and-" "And what?" said Kirsty. "-and . . . er . . . bang, goodnight, Europe," said Yoless. "You can't argue with nuclear physics, sorry." "My arms wouldn't end up sticking out of a wall?" said Wobbler, who hadn't quite caught up. "No," said Yoless. "Not a wall near here, anyway," said Bigmac, grinning. "Don't wind him up," said Yoless severely. "This is serious. It could happen to any of us. We dropped when we landed, right? Does that mean that if we suddenly go back now we'll be sticking out of the floor of the mall, causing an instant atomic explosion?" "They make enough fuss when you drop a Coke tin," said Johnny. "Where's Wobbler gone?" said Kirsty. Wobbler was a disappearing shape, heading for the allotments. He shouted something. "What'd he say?" she said. "He said "I'm off home!" said Johnny. "Yeah, but," said Bigmac, " . . . where he's running now . . . if we're where the mall is . . . will be . . . then over there's the shopping estate. That field he's running across." He squinted. "That's where Currys is going to be." "How will we know we're about to go back?" said Yoless. "There's a sort of flicker for a moment," said Johnny. "Then . . . zap. Er . . . what'll happen if he comes out where there's a fridge or something? Is that as bad as a concrete wall?" "I don't know much about fridge atoms," said Yoless. "They might not be as bad as concrete atoms. But I shouldn't think anyone around here would need new wallpaper ever again." "Wow! An atomic Wobbler!" said Bigmac. "Let's get the trolley and go after him," said Johnny. "We don't need it. Leave it here," said Kirsty. "No. It's Mrs Tachyon's." "There's just one thing I don't understand," said Yoless, as they hauled the trolley across the field. "There's millions of things I don't understand," said Johnny. "What? What? What are you going on about now?" "Televisions. Algebra. How skinless sausages hold together. Chinese," said Johnny. "I don't understand any of them." "The trolley's got no works," said Yoless. "There's no time machinery." "Maybe the time is in the bags," said Johnny. "Oh, right! Bags of time? You can't just shove time in a bag!" "Maybe Mrs Tachyon didn't know that. She's always picking up odds and ends of stuff" "You can't pick up time, actually. Time's what you pick things up in," said Kirsty. "My granny saves string," said Bigmac, in the manner of someone who wants to make a contribution. "Really? Well, you can't pick up the odd half=hour and knot it on to another ten minutes you've got spare, in case you haven't noticed," said Kirsty. "Honestly, don't they teach you any physics at your school? Fridge atoms was bad enough! What on earth's a fridge atom?' "The smallest possible particle of fridge,' said Yoless. Perhaps you could save time, Johnny thought rebelliously. You could waste it, it could run through your fingers and you could put a stitch in it. Of course, perhaps that was only a manner of speaking and it all depended on how you looked at it, but Mrs Tachyon looked at things in a corkscrew kind of way. He remembered touching a bag. Had time leaked out? Something had hissed through his fingers. "You can't have the smallest possible particle of fridge! It'd just be iron atoms and so on!" "A fridge molecule, then. One atom of everything you need to make a fridge," said Yo-less. "You couldn't ha- well, all right, you could have one atom of everything you need to make a fridge but that wouldn't make it a fridge molecule because-" She rolled her eyes. "What am I saying? You've got me thinking like that now!" The rest of the universe said that time wasn't an object, it was just Nature's way of preventing everything from happening at once, and Mrs Tachyon had said: that's what you think . . . The path across the field led through the allotments. They looked like allotments everywhere, with the occasional old man who looked exactly like the old men who worked on allotments. They wore the special old man's allotment trousers. One by one, they stopped digging as the trolley bumped along the path. They turned and watched in a silent allotment way. "It's probably Yoless's coat they're looking at," Kirsty hissed. "Purple, green and yellow. It's plastic, right? Plastic hasn't been around for long. Of course, it might be Bigmac's Heavy Mental T-shirt." They're planting beans and hoeing potatoes, thought Johnny. And tonight there's going to be a crop of great big bomb craters . . . "I can't see the by-pass," said Bigmac. "And there's no TV tower on Blackdown." "There's all those extra factory chimneys, though," said Yoless. "I don't remember any of those. And where's the traffic noise?" It's May 21, 1941, thought Johnny. I know it. There was a very narrow stone bridge over the river. Johnny stopped in the middle of it and looked back the way they'd come. A couple of the allotment men were still watching them. Beyond them was the sloping field they'd arrived in. It wasn't particularly pretty. It had that slightly grey tint that fields get when they're right next to a town and know that it's only a matter of time before they're under concrete. "I remember when all this was buildings," he said to himself. "What're you going on about now?" "Oh, nothing." "I recognize some of this," said Bigmac. "This is River Street. That's old Patel's shop on the corner, isn't it?" But the sign over the window said: *SMOKE WOODBINES* J. Wilkinson (prop.). "Woodbines?" said Bigmac. "It's a kind of cigarette, obviously," said Kirsty. A car went past. It was black, but not the dire black of the one on the hill. It had mud and rust marks on it. It looked as though someone had started out with the idea of making a very large mobile jelly mould and had changed their mind about halfway through, when it was slightly too late. Johnny saw the driver crane his head to stare at them. It was hard to tell much from the people on the streets. There were a lot of overcoats and hats, in a hundred shades of boredom. "We shouldn't hang around," said Kirsty. "People are looking at us. Let's go and see if we can get a newspaper. I want to know when we are. It's so gloomy." "Perhaps it's the Depression," said Johnny. "My grandad's always going on about when he was growing up in the Depression." "No TV, everyone wearing old-fashioned clothes, no decent cars," said Bigmac. "No wonder everyone was depressed." "Oh, God," said Kirsty. "Look, try to be careful, will you? Any little thing you do could seriously affect the future. Understand?" They entered the corner shop, leaving Bigmac outside to guard the trolley. It was dark inside, and smelled of floorboards. Johnny had been on a school visit once, to a sort of theme park that showed you what things had been like in the all purpose Olden Days. It had been quite interesting, although everyone had been careful not to show it, because if you weren't careful they'd sneak education up on you while your guard was down. The shop was a bit like that, only it had things the school one hadn't shown, like the cat asleep in the sack of dog biscuits. And the smell. It wasn't only floorboards in it. There was paraffin in it, and cooking, and candles. A small lady in glasses looked at them carefully. "Yes. What can I do for you?" she said. She nodded at Yoless. "Sambo's with you, dear, is he?" she added. The Olden Days Guilty lay on top of the bags and purred. Bigmac watched the traffic. There wasn't a lot. A couple of women met one another as they were both crossing the street, and stood there chatting in the middle of the road, although occasionally one of them would turn to look at Bigmac. He folded his arms over HEAVY MENTAL. And then a car pulled up, right in front of him. The driver got out, glanced at Bigmac, and walked off down the street. Bigmac stared at the car. He'd seen ones like it on television, normally in those costume dramas where one car and two women with a selection of different hats keep going up and down the same street to try to fool people that this isn't really the present day. The keys were still in the ignition. Bigmac wasn't a criminal, he was just around when crimes happened. This was because of stupidity. That is, other people's stupidity. Mainly other people's stupidity in designing cars that could go from 0-120mph in ten seconds and then selling them to even more stupid people who were only interested in dull things like fuel consumption and what colour the seats were. What was the point in that? That wasn't what a car was for. The keys were still in the ignition. As far as Bigmac was concerned, he was practically doing people a favour by really seeing what their cars could do, and no way was that stealing, because he always put the cars back if he could and they were often nearly the same shape. You'd think peopled be proud to know their car could do 130mph along the Blackbury by-pass instead of complaining all the time. The keys were still in the ignition. There were a million places in the world where the keys could have been, but in the ignition was where they were. Old cars like this probably couldn't go at any speed at all. The keys were still in the ignition. Firmly, invitingly, in the ignition. Bigmac shifted uncomfortably. He was aware that there were people in the world who considered it wrong to take cars that didn't belong to them but, however you looked at it . . . . . . the keys were still in the ignition. Johnny heard Kristy's indrawn breath. It sounded like Concorde taking off in reverse. He felt the room grow bigger, rushing away on every side, with Yoless all by himself in the middle of it. Then Yoless said, "Yes, indeed. I'm with them. Lawdy, lawdy." The old lady looked surprised. "My word, you speak English very well," she said. "I learned it from my grandfather," said Yoless, his voice as sharp as a knife. "He ate only very educated missionaries. Sometimes Johnny's mind worked fast. Normally it worked so slowly that it embarrassed him, but just occasionally it had a burst of speed. "He's a prince," he said. "Prince Sega," said Yoless. "All the way from Nintendo," said Johnny. "He's here to buy a newspaper," said Kirsty, who in some ways did not have a lot of imagination. Johnny reached into his own pocket, and then hesitated. "Only we haven't got any money," he said. "Yes we have, I've got a least two pou-" Kirsty began. "We haven't got the right money," said Johnny meaningfully. "It was pounds and shillings and pence in those days, not pounds and pee-" "Pee?" said the woman. She looked from one to the other like someone who hopes that it'll all make sense if they pay enough attention. Johnny craned his head. There were a few newspapers still on the counter, even though it was the afternoon. One was The Times. He could just make out the date. May 21, 1941. "Oh, you have a paper, dear," said the old woman, giving up, "I don't suppose I shall sell any more today." "Thank you very much," said Johnny, grabbing a paper and hurrying the other two out of the shop. "Sambo," said Yoless, when they were outside. "What?" said Kirsty. "Oh, that. Never mind about that. Give me that newspaper." "My grandad came here in 1952," said Yoless, in the same plonking, hollow voice. "He said little kids thought his colour'd come off if he washed." "Yes, well, I can see you're upset, but that's just how things were, it's all changed since then," said Kirsty, turning the pages. "Then hasn't even happened yet," said Yoless. "I'm not stupid. I've read old books. We're back in golliwog history. Plucky niggers and hooray for the Empire. She called me Sambo." "Look," said Kirsty, still reading the newspaper. "This is the olden days. She didn't mean it . . . YOU know, nastily. It's just how she was brought up. You people can't expect us to rewrite history, you know." Johnny suddenly felt as though he'd stepped into a deep freeze. It was almost certainly the you people. Sambo had been an insult, but you people was worse, because it wasn't even personal. He had never seen Yoless so angry. It was a kind of rigid, brittle anger. How could someone as intelligent as Kirsty be so dumb? What she needed to do now was say something sensible. "Well, I'm certainly glad you're here," said Yoless, sarcasm gleaming on his words. "So's you can explain all this to me." "All right, don't go on about it," she said, without looking up. "It's not that important." It was amazing, Johnny thought. Kirsty had a sort of talent for striking matches in a firework factory. Yoless took a deep breath. Johnny patted him on the arm. "She didn't mean it . . . you know, nastily," he said. "It's just how she was brought up." Yoless sagged, and nodded coldly. "You know we're in the middle of a war, don't you," said Kirsty. "That's what we've ended up in. World War Two. It was very popular around this time." Johnny nodded. May the twenty-first, 1941. Not many people cared or even knew about it now. Just him, and the librarian at the public library who'd helped him find the stuff for the project, and a few old people. It was ancient history, after all. The olden days. And here he was. And so was Paradise Street. Until tonight. "Are you all right?" said Yoless. He hadn't even known about it until he'd found the old newspapers in the library. It was - it was as if it hadn't counted. It had happened, but it wasn't a proper part of the war. And worse things had happened in a lot of other places. Nineteen people hardly mattered. But he'd imagined it happening in his town. It was horribly easy. The old men would go home from their allotments. The shops would shut. There wouldn't be many lights in any case, because of the blackout, but bit by bit the town would go to sleep. And then, a few hours later, it'd happen. It'd happen tonight. Wobbler wheezed along the road. And he did wobble. It wasn't his fault he was fat, he'd always said, it was just his genetics. He had too many of them. He was trying to run but most of the energy was getting lost in the wobbling. He was trying to think, too, but it wasn't happening very clearly. They hadn't gone time travelling! It was just a windup! They were always trying to wind him up! He'd get home and have a sit down, and it's all be all right . . . And this was home. Sort of. Everything was . . . smaller, somehow. The trees in the street were the wrong size and the cars were wrong. The houses looked . . . newer. And this was Gregory Road. He'd been along it millions of times. You went along halfway and turned into . . . ...into... A man was clipping a hedge. He wore a high collar and tie and a pullover with a zig-zag pattern. He was also smoking a pipe. When he saw Wobbler he stopped clipping and took his pipe out of his mouth. "Can I help you, son?" he said. "I . . . er . . . I was looking for Seeley Crescent," whispered Wobbler. The man smiled. "Well, I'm Councillor Edward Seeley," he said, "but I've never heard of a Seeley Crescent." He called over his shoulder to a woman who was weeding a flowerbed. "Have you heard of a Seeley Crescent, Mildred?" "There's a big chestnut tree on the corner-" Wobbler began. "We've got a chestnut tree," said Mr Seeley, pointing to what looked like a stick with a couple of leaves on it. He smiled. "It doesn't look much at the moment, but just you come back in fifty years" time, eh?" Wobbler stared at it, and then at him. It was a wide garden here, with a field beyond it. It struck him that it was quite wide enough for a road, if . . . one day . . . someone wanted to build a road . . . "I will," he said. "Are you all right, young man?" said Mrs Seeley. Wobbler realized that he wasn't panicking any more. He'd run out of panic. It was like being in a dream. Afterwards, it all sounded daft, but while you were in the dream you just got on with it. It was like a rocket taking off. There was a lot of noise and worry and then you were in orbit, floating free, and able to look down on everything as if it weren't real. It was an amazing feeling. Wobbler had spent a large part of his life being frightened of things, in a vague kind of way. There were always things he should have been doing, or shouldn't have done. But here it all didn't seem to matter. He wasn't even born yet in a way, anyway - so absolutely nothing could be his fault. "I'm fine," he said. "Thank you very much for asking. I'll . . . just be off back into town." He could feel them watching him as he wandered back down the road. This was his home town. There were all sorts of clues that told him so. But all sorts of other things were . . . strange. There were more trees and fewer houses, more factory chimneys and fewer cars. A lot less colour, too. It didn't look much fun. He was pretty certain no-one here would even know what a pizza was. "Ere, mister," said a hoarse voice. He looked down. A boy was sitting by the side of the road. It was almost certainly a boy. But its short trousers reached almost to its ankles, it had a pair of glasses with one lens blanked out with brown paper, its hair had been cut apparently with a lawnmower, and its nose was running. And its ears stuck out. No-one had ever called Wobbler "mister" before, except teachers when they wanted to be sarcastic. "Yes?" he said. "Which way's London?" said the boy. There was a cardboard suitcase next to him, held together with string. Wobbler thought for a moment. "Back that way," he said, pointing. "Dunno why there's no road signs." "Our Ron says they took "em all down so Jerry won't know where he was," said the boy. He had a line of small stones on the kerb beside him. Every so often he'd pick one up and throw it with great accuracy at a tin can on the other side of the road. "Who's Jerry?" One eye looked at him with deep suspicion. "The Germans," said the boy. "Only I wants 'em to come here and blow up Mrs Density a bit." "Why? Are we fighting the Germans?" said Wobbler. "Are you 'n American? Our dad says the Americans ought to fight, only they're waitin" to see who's winnin"." "Er . . . " Wobbler decided it might be best to be American for a bit. "Yes. Sure." "Garn! Say something American!" "Er . . . right on. Republican. Microsoft. Spiderman. Have a nice day." This demonstration of transatlantic origins seemed to satisfy the small boy. He threw another stone at the tin can. "Our mam said I've got to stop along of Mrs Density's and the food's all rubbish," said the boy. "You know what, she makes me drink milk! I dint mind the proper milk at home but round here, you know what, it comes out of a cow's bum. I seen it. They took us to a farm with all muck all over the place and, you know what, you know how eggs come out? Urrr! And she makes us go to bed at seven o'clock and I miss our main and I'm going home. I've had enough of being "vacuated!" "It can really make your arm ache," said Wobbler. "I had it done for tetanus." "Our Ron says it's good fun, going down the Underground station when the siren goes off," the boy went on. "Our Ron says the school got hit an" none of the kids has to go any more." It seemed to Wobbler that it didn't matter what he said. The boy was really talking to himself. Another stone turned the can upside down. "Huh," said the boy. "Like to see 'em hit the school here. They just pick on us just "cos we're from London and, you know what, that Atterbury kid pinched my piece of shrapnel! Our Ron give it me. Our Ron's a copper, he gets a chance to pick up really good stuff for me. You don't get shrapnel round here, huh!" "What's shrapnel?" said Wobbler. "Are you a loony? It's bits of bomb! Our Ron says Alf Harvey got a whole collection an" a bit off a Heinkel. Our Ron said Alf Harvey found a real Nazi ring with an actual finger still in it." The boy looked wistful, as though unfairly shut off from untold treasures. "Huh! Our Ron says other kids down our street have gone back home and I reckon I'm old enough, too, so I'm goin'." Wobbler had never bothered much with history. As far as he was concerned it was something that had happened to other people. He vaguely remembered a TV program with some film shot back in the days when people were so poor they could only afford to be in black and white. Kids with labels round their necks, waiting at railway stations. Every single adult wearing a hat . . . Evacuees, that was it. Sent out from the big cities so's they wouldn't get bombed, it said. "What year's this?" he said. The boy looked at him sideways. "You're a spy, incha," he said, standing up. "You don't know anyfink about nuffink. You ain't American "cos I seen 'em on the pictures. If you're 'n American, where's your gun?" "Don't be daft, Americans don't all have guns," said Wobbler. "Lots of them don't have guns. Well . . . some don't, anyway." "Our Ron said there was something in the paper about German parachuters landing disguised as nuns," said the boy, backing away. "Seems to me you could've been a parachuter, if it was a big parachute." "All right, I'm English," said Wobbler. "Oh, yeah? Who's the Prime Minster, then?" Wobbler hesitated. "I don't think we've done that at school," he said. "You don't get no lessons in knowing about Winston Churchill," said the boy dismissively. "Hah, you're just trying to mess me around," said Wobbler. "Cos I know for a fact we've never had a black Prime Minister." "You don't know nuffink," said the boy, grabbing his battered suitcase. "And you're fat." "I don't have to stand here listening to you," said Wobbler, heading off down the road. "spy spy spy," said the boy. "Oh, shut up." "An" you wobble. I saw that Goering on the newsreels. You look jus" like him. An" you're dressed up all funny. Spy spy spy!" Wobbler sighed. He was fairly used to this, only not so much these days because once he'd just been fat and now he was big and fat. "And you're stupid," he said. "But at least I could get slimmer." Biting sarcasm didn't work. "Spy spy spy! Nasty nasty Nazi!" Wobbler tried walking faster. "I'm goin" to tell Mrs Density an" she can telephone our Ron and he can come an" arrest you!" shouted the boy, jumping along behind him. Wobbler tried walking faster still. "He's got a gun, our Ron." A man went by slowly on his bike. "He's a spy," said the boy, pointing at Wobbler. "I'm arresting him for our Ron." The man just grinned at Wobbler and pedalled onwards. "Our Ron says you spies send Morse code messages to Nazi submarines by flashing torches," said the boy. "We're twenty miles from the sea," said Wobbler, who'd almost broken into a run. "You could stand on something high. Nyer nyer nyer. Spy spy spy." It was just plain stupid, thought Bigmac, as he watched the two plumes of steam in front of him. What kind of idiots built a car without power steering or synchromesh gears and put in brakes apparently operated by string? He was practically doing the world a favour by taking the car off the road. Not just off the road, in fact, but over the pavement and across a flowerbed and into the Alderman Bowler Memorial Horsetrough. The plumes of steam were quite pretty, really. There were little rainbows in them. "Well, now," said a voice, as someone opened a car door, "what do we have here?" "I think I banged my head," said Bigmac. A large hand encircled his arm and pulled him out of the car. Bigmac looked up into two round faces that had "policeman" written all over them. There was room for quite a lot of things to be written all over them. They were very large faces. "That is Dr Roberts" car," they said, "and you, my lad, are in for it. What's your name?" "Simon Wrigley," mumbled Bigmac. "Ms Partridge knows all about me . . . " "She does, does she? And who's she?" Bigmac blinked at the two faces which miraculously flowed together and became one. He'd quite liked Ms Partridge. She was nasty. The two social workers he'd had before had made out that he was wet, whereas Ms Partridge made it clear that if she had her way Bigmac would have been strangled at birth. You could respect someone like that. They didn't make you feel like some kind of a useless nerd. Something prodded at his memory. "When is this?" he said, rubbing his head. "You can start by telling me where you live-" The policeman leaned closer. There was something about Bigmac that bothered him. "What do you mean, when is this?" he said. "What year?" The policeman had fairly fixed ideas about what should happen to car thieves, but they usually knew what year it was. "It's 1941," he said, and straightened up. His eyes narrowed. "Who's the captain of the England cricket team?" he said. Bigmac blinked. "What? How should I know?" "Who won the Boat Race last year?" "What boat race?" The policeman looked again. "And what's that on your belt?" Bigmac blinked again, and looked down. "I didn't nick it," he said quickly. "It's only a transistor, anyway." "What's that wire going into your ear?" "Don't be daft. It's only the earphone-" The policeman's hand landed on his shoulder with the kind of thud that suggested it wasn't going to let go in a hurry. "You come along with me, Fritz," he said. "I wasn't born yesterday." Bigmac's brain drifted into focus. He looked at the uniform, and at the crowd behind it, and it began to dawn on him that he was all alone and a long, long way from home. "I wasn't born yesterday, either," he said. "Does that help?" * * * * * Johnny, Kirsty and Yoless sat in a little garden. As far as Johnny could tell, it was where part of the ring road and a traffic island were going to be one day. Now it contained a bench and some geraniums. "They'll blow up Paradise Street tonight," said Johnny. "Where's that?" said Yoless. "Here. It's where the sports centre was . . . will be, I mean." "Never heard of it." "Yes. I did say. It got blown up. And you know the funny thing about it?" "There's something funny about it?" said Kirsty. "It was by accident! The Germans had meant to bomb the big goods yard at Slate! But they got a bit lost and the weather turned bad and they saw the railway yards here and dropped all their bombs and went home. Everyone was in bed because the air raid sirens didn't go off in time!" "All right, all right, I know, you've told me before, and all about Adolf and Stalin. It's very sad but you shouldn't get worked up about it," said Kirsty. "It's history. That sort of thing happens in history." "Aren't you listening? It hasn't happened yet. This is now. It's going to happen tonight." They stared at the geraniums. "Why haven't we gone back yet?" said Kirsty. "We've been here ages." "How should I know?" said Johnny. "Maybe the further you go, the longer you stay." "And we just happened to go to somewhere you know all about," said Yoless. "That's a bit strange, in my opinion." It had worried Johnny, too. Everything felt real, but maybe he'd just gone mad and taken everyone else with him. "I don't want to stay here, that's definite," said Yoless. "Being Little Black Sambo wasn't my idea of a full life." Johnny stood up and grasped the handles of the trolley. "I'm going to see Paradise Street," he said. "That's a very bad idea," said Kirsty. "I told you, anything you do affects the future." "I'm only going to have a look." "Oh yes? I find that very hard to believe, actually." "She's right," said Yoless, trying to keep up. "You shouldn't mess around with Time. I read this book where a man went right back in time and trod on . . . on a dinosaur, and changed the whole future." "A dinosaur?" said Kirsty. "I think it was a dinosaur. Maybe they had small ones." "Huh. Or he was a very big man, perhaps," said Kirsty. The trolley bumped off the pavement, rattled across a road, and clanked up the pavement on the other side. "What're you going to do?" said Kirsty. "Knock on people's doors and say, "Excuse me, some bombers are going to bomb this street tonight."? "Why not?" "Because they'll lock you up, that's why," said Yoless. Right," said Kirsty. "It'll be just like the man who trod on Yoless's dinosaur." "It may have been some sort of insect, now I come to think of it," said Yoless. "Anyway, there's nothing you can do. It's already happened, otherwise how come you know about it? You can't mess up history." The trolley stopped so quickly that they ran into the back of Johnny. "Why does everyone always talk like that?" he said. "It's stupid. You would really watch someone run over by a car because that's what was supposed to happen, would you? Everything we do changes the future, all the time. So we ought to do what's right." "Don't shout, people are looking at us," said Kirsty. The trolley bumped over the kerb and started to bounce on some cobbles. They were already out of the town centre. And there was Paradise Street. It wasn't very long. There were only ten terraced houses on either side, and some of them were boarded up. The far end was a pair of double wooden gates to a factory. They'd once been painted green, but time and the weather had turned the colour into a sort of mossy grey. Someone had chalked a set of goalposts on the doors, and half a dozen small boys in knee-length shorts were kicking a ball about. Johnny watched them as they scuffled and perpetrated fouls that would have gladdened the heart of any football manager. About halfway along the street a young man was repairing a motorcycle. Tools lay on a piece of sacking on the pavement. The football emerged from a complicated tackle, hit the spanners, and almost knocked the bike over. "Turn it up, you little devils," said the man, pushing the ball away. "You never said anything about children," said Kirsty, so quietly that Johnny nearly didn't hear her. Johnny shrugged. "It's all going to get blown up?" said Yoless. Johnny nodded. "There wasn't very much detail in the local paper," he said. "They didn't used to put very much in, in case the enemy read it. It was all to do with something they called the war effort. You know . . . not wanting to let the enemy know you'd been hurt. There was a photo of a lady with her thumb up saying "Blackbury can take it, Mister Hitler!" but there was hardly anything else about the raid until a couple of years afterwards." "You mean the government hushed it up?" said Kirsty. "Makes sense, I suppose," said Yoless gloomily. "I mean, you don't want to say to the enemy, "Hey, you missed your target, have another go"." The football slammed against the factory gates, rattling them. There didn't seem to be any teams. The ball just went everywhere, surrounded by a mob of small boys. "I don't see what we could do," said Kirsty. Her voice sounded uneasy, now. "What? Just now you were telling me I shouldn't do anything," said Johnny. "It's different when you see people, isn't it?" "Yes." "I suppose it wouldn't work if we just told someone?" "They'd say "how do you know?" and then you'd probably get shot as a spy," said Yoless. "They used to shoot spies." Heavy Mental The man in the khaki uniform turned Bigmac's transistor radio over and over in his hands. Bigmac watched nervously. There was a police sergeant in the room, and Bigmac was familiar with policemen. But there was a soldier standing by the door, and he had a gun in a holster. And the one sitting down looked tired but had a very sharp expression. Bigmac was not the fastest of thinkers, but it had dawned on him that this was unlikely to be the kind of situation where you got let off with a caution. "Let's start again," said the seated soldier, who had introduced himself as Captain Harris. "Your name is...?" Bigmac hesitated. He wanted to say, "You get Ms Partridge, she'll sort it all out, it's not my fault, she says I'm socially dysfunctional", but there was an expression on the captain's face that suggested that this might be a very unfortunate move. "Simon Wrigley." "And you say you are fourteen years old and live in-" Captain Harris glanced at his notes, "the Joshua Chen Clement "block" which is near here, you say?" "You can see it easily," said Bigmac, trying to be helpful. "Or you could do, if it was here." The captain and the police sergeant glanced at one another. "It's not here?" said the captain. "Yes. I don't know why," said Bigmac. "Tell me again what Heavy Mental is," said the captain. "They're a neo-punk thrash band," said Bigmac. "A music band?" "Er, yes." "And we would have heard them on the wireless, perhaps?" "I shouldn't think so," said Bigmac. "Their last single was "I'm going to rip off your head and spit down the hole"." "Rip off your head-" said the policeman, who was taking notes. "-and spit down the hole"," said Bigmac helpfully. "This watch of yours with the numbers on it," said the captain. "I see it's got little buttons, too. What happens if I press them?" The policeman tried to move away a little. "The one on the left lights it up so you can see it in the dark," said Bigmac. "Really? And why would you want to do that?" "When you wake up in the night and want to know what time it is?" Bigmac suggested, after some deep thought. "I see. And the other button?" "Oh, that's to tell you what time it is in another country." Everyone suddenly seemed very interested. "What other country?" said the captain sharply. "It's stuck on Singapore," said Bigmac. The captain laid it down very carefully. The sergeant wrote out a label and tied it to the watch strap. Then the captain picked up Bigmac's jacket. "What is this made of?" he said. "I dunno. Some kind of plastic," said Bigmac. "They sell them down the market." The captain pulled it this way and that. "How is it made?" "Ali, I know that," said Bigmac. "I read about it. You mix some chemicals together, and you get plastic. Easy." "In camouflage colours," said the captain. Bigmac licked his lips. He was sure that he was in deep trouble, so there was no sense in pretending. "That's just to make you look hard," he said. "Hard. I see," said the captain, and his eyes didn't give away whether he really saw or not. He held up the back of the jacket and pointed to two words done rather badly in biro. "What exactly are BLACKBURY SKINS?" he said. "Er. That's me and Bazza and Skazz. Er. Skinheads. A . . . kind of gang. . . " "Clang," said the captain. "Er. Yes." "Skinheads?" "Er . . . the haircut," said Bigmac. "Looks like an ordinary military haircut to me," said the sergeant. "And these," said the captain, pointing to the swastikas en either side of the name. "Gang badges, are they? Also to make you look . . . hard?" "Er . . . it's just . . . you know . . . Adolf Hitler and that," said Bigmac. All the men were staring at him. "It's just decoration," said Bigmac. The captain put the coat down very slowly. "It's nothing to get excited about," said Bigmac. "Where I come from, you can buy badges and things down the market, you can get Gestapo knives-" "That's enough!" said the captain. "Now listen to me. You'll make it easier on yourself if you tell me the truth right now. I want your name, the names of your contacts . . . everything. A unit is coming from headquarters and they aren't as patient as I am, do you understand?" He stood up and started to put Bigmac's labelled belongings into a sack. "Hey, that's my stuff-" mumbled Bigmac. "Lock him up." "You can't lock me up just for some old car-" "We can for spying," said Captain Harris. "Oh, yes, we can." He strode out of the room. "Spying?" said Bigmac. "Me?" "Are you one of them Hitler Youths?" said the sergeant, conversationally. "I saw you lot on the newsreel. Waving all them torches. Nasty pieces of work, I thought. Like Boy Scouts gone bad." "I haven't spied for anyone!" shouted Bigmac. "I don't know how to spy! I don't even like Germany! My brother got sent home from Munich for stitching up one of their football supporters with a scaffolding pole even though it wasn't his fault!" Such rock-solid evidence of anti-Germanic feeling did not seem to impress the sergeant. "You can get shot, you know," he said. "For the first offence." The door was still open. Bigmac could hear noises in the corridor. Someone was talking on the phone, somewhere in the distance. Bigmac wasn't an athlete. If there was an Olympic Sick Note event, he would have been in the British team. He would've won the 100 metres I've Got Asthma, the half-marathon Lurk in the Changing Rooms, and the freestyle got to go to the Doctor. But his boots dug into the floor and he rose out of his chair like a missile going off. His feet barely touched the table top. He went past the policeman's shoulder with his legs already making running motions. Fear gave him superhuman acceleration. Ms Partridge might make cutting remarks but she wasn't allowed to use bullets however much she wanted to. Bigmac landed in the doorway, turned at random, put his head down and charged. It was a hard head. It hit someone around belt level. There was a shout and a crash. He saw another gap and headed for it. There was another crash, and the sound of a telephone smashing on the floor. Someone yelled at him to halt or they'd fire. Bigmac didn't stop to find out what'd happened. He just hoped that a pair of 1990s Doc Martens that had been practically bought legally by his brother off a man with a lorry full of them were much better for dodging and running than huge police boots. Whoever had been shouting stop or they'd fire . . . fired. There was a crack and a clang somewhere ahead of Bigmac, but he turned down a corridor, ran under the outstretched arms of another policeman, and out into a yard. A policeman was standing next to a Jurassic bicycle, a huge machine that looked as if it were made of drainpipes welded together. Bigmac went past him in a blur, grabbed the handlebars, swung onto the saddle and rammed his feet onto the pedals. "Ere, what're you doin'-" The policeman's voice faded behind him. The bike swung out into the lane behind the station. It was a cobbled street. The saddle was solid leather. Bigmac's trousers were very thin. "No wonder everyone was very depressed," he thought, trying to cycle standing up. "Nyer nyer nyer. Spy spy spy." "Shut up!" said Wobbler. "Why don't you run away to London?" "Ain't gonna run away to London now," said the boy. "S'lot more fun catchin' spies here." They were back in the heart of the town now. The boy trailed behind Wobbler, pointing him out to passers-by. Admittedly, no-one seemed to be about to arrest him, but he was getting some odd looks. "My brother Ron's a policeman," said the boy. "He'll come up from London and shoot you with his gun." "Go away!" "Sharn't!" Opposite the entrance to Paradise Street was a small church. It was a non-conformist chapel, according to Yoless. It had a shut-up, wet Sunday look. A couple of elderly evergreen trees on either side of the door looked as though it'd take a shovel just to get the soot off their leaves. The three of them sat on the steps, watching the street. A woman had come out and was industriously scrubbing her doorstep. "Did this chapel get hit?" said Kirsty. "You mean will. I don't think so." "Pity." "It's still here . . . I mean, in 1996," said Yoless. "Only it's just used as a social hall. You know, for keep-fit classes and stuff. I know, "cos I come here for Morns Dance practice every Wednesday. Will, I mean." "You?" said Kirsty. "You do Morris Dancing? With sticks and hankies and stuff? You?" "There's something wrong?" said Yoless coldly. "Well . . . no . . . no, of course not . . . but . . . it's just an unusual interest for someone of your-" Yoless let her squirm for a bit and then said, "Height?" He dropped the word like a weight. Kirsty shut her mouth. "Yes," she said. Another woman appeared, next door to the one scrubbing her front doorstep, and started scrubbing her doorstep. "What are we going to do?" said Kirsty. "I'm thinking," said Yoless. Somewhere in the distance a bell went off, and kept on going off. "I'm thinking, too," said Johnny. "I'm thinking: we haven't seen Bigmac for ages." "Good," said Kirsty. "He might be in some trouble, I mean," said Johnny. "What do you mean, might be?" said Yoless. "And we haven't seen Wobbler, either," said Johnny. "Oh, you know Wobbler. He's probably hiding somewhere." Another woman opened the door on the other side of the street and entered the doorstep-scrubbing competition. Kirsty straightened up. "Why're we acting so miserable?" she said. "We're Nineties people. We should be able to think of something. We could . . . we could. . . " "We could ring up Adolf Hitler," Yoless suggested. "Can't remember his phone number, sorry, but directory inquiries in Germany're bound to know." Johnny stared glumly at the shopping trolley. He hadn't expected time travel to be this hard. He thought of all those wasted lessons when they could have been telling him what to do if some mad woman left him a trolley full of time. School never taught you anything that was useful in real life. There probably wasn't a single text book that told you what to do if it turned out you were living next door to Elvis Presley. He looked down the length of Paradise Street, and felt Time streaming past him. Yoless and Kirsty faded away. He could feel them there, though, as insubstantial as dreams, as the light faded from the sky and the footballers went indoors and the wind got up and the clouds rolled in from the southwest and the town went to sleep and the bombers came out of the east and fire rained down on the houses and the allotments and the people and the goalposts chalked on the wall and all the nice, clean, white doorsteps . . . Captain Harris turned Bigmac's watch over. "Amazing," he said. "And it says "Made In Japan"." "Fiendishly cunning," said the police sergeant. The captain picked up the radio. "Japanese again," he said. "Why? Why put it on the back? See here. Made in Japan." "I thought it was all rice," said the sergeant. "That's what my dad said. He was out there." Captain Harris fiddled one of the tiny headphones into his ear and moved a switch. He listened to the hiss that was due to be replaced by Radio Blackbury in forty-eight years" time, and nodded. "It's doing something," he said. His thumb touched the wave change switch, and he blinked. "It's the Home Service," he said. "Clear as a bell!" "We could have the back off it in no time," said the sergeant. "No," said Sergeant Harris. "This has got to go to the Ministry. The men in white coats can have a look at it. How can you get valves to fit in this? Where's the aerial?" "Very small feet," said the sergeant. "Sorry, sergeant?" "That's what my dad said. Japanese. The women. Very small feet, he said. So maybe they've got small hands, too. Just a thought." The sergeant tried to extend his line of technological speculation. "Good for making small things? You know. Like ships in bottles?" The captain put the tiny radio back in the box. "I've seen people do them," said the sergeant, still anxious to be of assistance. "You get a bottle, then you get a lot of very thin thread-" "He's the best actor I've ever seen, I know that," said Captain Harris. "You could really think he was just a stupid boy. But this stuff... I just can't believe it. It's all very . . . odd." "We've got every man out after him," said the sergeant. "And the inspector has called out the army from West Underton. We'll have him in no time." The captain sealed the box with sticky tape. "I want this guarded," he said. "We'll keep an eye on it in the main office." "No. I want it secure." "Well, there's an empty cell. Actually there's someone in it but I'll soon have 'em out." "More secure than that." The sergeant scratched an ear. "There's the Lost Property cupboard," he said. "But there's important stuff in it-" "Lost Property cupboard! Haven't you got a safe?" No. "What'd happen if the Crown jewels were found in the gutter, then?" "We'd put "em in the Lost Property cupboard," said the sergeant promptly. "And then ring up the King. If his name was in them, of course. Look, it's a good thick door and there's only one key and I've got it." "All right, take out what's in there and put it in your cell and put the box in the cupboard," said the captain. "Chief Inspector won't like that. Very important stuff, Lost Property." "Tell him we can co-operate in a very friendly fashion now or if he prefers he can take a call from the Chief Constable in two minutes," said Captain Harris, putting his hand on the phone. "One way or the other, hmm?" The sergeant looked worried. "You serious about this, sir?" he said. "Oh, yes." "That stuff's not going to go off bang or anything, is it?" "I'm not sure. I don't think so." Five minutes later the sergeant walked down to the cells with his arms full of the contents of the cupboard, and a put upon expression on his face. He put them on a bench in the corridor and fished out his keys. Then he pulled aside the hatch in a cell door. "You all right, old girl?" "That's what you think. Talk about a blue pencil! You can tell he's a lad, can't yeh, Mister Shadwell?" "Yes, yes," said the sergeant, opening the door. The old lady sat on the bed. She was so short that her feet swung several inches above the floor. And there was a cat on her lap. It growled when it saw the sergeant - a slow, rising growl which suggested that, if there was any attempt to pick the cat up, it was all going to end in claws. The sergeant had long ago stopped worrying about how the cat could get into the cells. It happened every time. There wasn't room via the windows and it certainly couldn't have got in through the door, but every night the old lady was in the cells, the cat would be in there, too, in the morning. "Finished your breakfast, have you?" "Millennium hand and shrimp," said Mrs Tachyon happily. "Good. Then you just come along with me. It's a nice day outside," said the sergeant. "Beam me up, Scotty," said Mrs Tachyon, standing up and following him obediently. The sergeant shook his head sadly. She trailed behind him into the station yard where, under a hit of canvas the sergeant had thrown over it the night before, was a wire trolley loaded down with bags. Mrs Tachyon looked at it. "No-one nicked anything?" she said. She was like that, the sergeant thought. Mad as a hatter most of the time and then suddenly a sentenced come out at you like a razor blade in candy floss. "Now then, old love, as if anyone'd touch that lot," he said, as kindly as possible. "Points win prizes. Hats." The sergeant reached under the trolley and produced a pair of boots. "These belonged to my mum," he said. "She was going to throw 'em out, but I said, there's still some good leather on them-" Mrs Tachyon snatched them out of his hand. In seconds they were somewhere in the pile of bags on the trolley. "It's a small step for a man," said Mrs Tachyon. "Yes, they're size sixes," said the sergeant. "Ah, Bisto. It's a great life if yer don't weaken, but of course they've put a bridge there now." The sergeant looked down at the trolley. "Dunno where you get this stuff from," he said. "What're these bags made of, love? Looks like rubber or something." "Obbly Obbly Ob. Weeeed!" said Mrs Tachyon. "I told them, but no-one listens to a teapot. Fab!" The sergeant sighed, put his hand in his pocket and produced a sixpence. "Get yourself a cup of tea and a bun," he said. "Hats. That's what you think," said Mrs Tachyon, taking it. "Don't mention it." The sergeant headed back into the police station. He was used to Mrs Tachyon. When nights were cold you'd sometimes hear a milk bottle smash on the step outside. This was technically a crime, and it meant that Mrs Tachyon was looking for somewhere warm for the night. Not on every cold night, though. That was a puzzler, and no mistake. Last winter it had been very nippy indeed for quite a long time and the lads had got a bit worried. It came as quite a relief when they'd heard the crash of breaking glass and the cry of "I told 'em! That's what you think!" Mrs Tachyon came and went, and no-one knew where she came from, and you never found out where she'd gone . . . Beam me up, Snotty? Mad as a hatter, of course. But . . . strange, too. Like, after you'd given her something you ended up feeling as if she'd done you a favour. He heard the rattle of the trolley behind him, and then a sudden silence. He turned around. The trolley, and Mrs Tachyon, had gone. Johnny felt the hereness of here. It's happen here, not in some far-off country full of odd names and foreign people with thick moustaches shouting slogans. It's happen here, where there were public libraries and zebra crossings and people who did the football pools. Bombs would come crashing through roofs and ceilings and down to the cellars, and turn the world white. And it would happen, because as Yoless said, it had happened. It was going to have happened, and he couldn't possibly stop it, because if he did find some way of stopping it, then he wouldn't know about it happening, would he? Maybe Mrs Tachyon collected Time. Johnny felt in a way that he couldn't quite put into words that Time wasn't just something that was on clocks and calendars but lived in people's heads, too. And if that meant you had to think like this, no wonder she sounded mad. "Are you all right?" said a voice, a long way away. Miraculously, the rubble became houses again, the light came up, the football rattled against the goal in the warm afternoon air. Kirsty waved a hand in front of his face. "Are you okay?" "I was just . . . thinking," said Johnny. "I hate it when you switch off like that." "Sorry." Johnny stood up. "We didn't come back here by accident," he said. "I was thinking a lot about tonight, and we ended up coming here just in time. I don't know why. But we've got to do something, even if there's nothing we can do. So I'm going to" A bicycle came around the comer. It was bouncing up and down on the cobbles and the skinny figure riding it was a mere blur. It clanked to a halt in front of them. They stared at the cyclist. He was shaking so much he looked slightly out of focus. "Bigmac?" "Ur-ur-ur-"shuddered Bigmac. "How many fingers am I holding up?" said Kirsty. "Ur-ur-ur-n-n-nineteen? H-h-hide the bike!" "Why?" said Kirsty. "I didn't do anything!" "Ali," said Yoless, knowingly. "It's like that, is it?" He picked up the bike and wheeled it into the sooty shrubs. "Like what?" said Kirsty, looking bewildered. "Bigmac always never does anything," said Johnny. "That's right," said Yoless. "There can't be anyone in the whole universe who's got into so much trouble for things he didn't do in places he wasn't at that weren't his fault." "Th-th-they shot at me!" "Wow!" said Yoless. "You must've not done anything really big this time!" "Th-there was th-this c-car-" The ringing Johnny had heard before started again, somewhere behind the buildings. "Th-that's a police car!" said Bigmac. "I tried to give them the slip down Harold Wilson Drive and - it wasn't there! And one of them shot at me! With an actual gun! Soldiers aren't supposed to shoot people!" They dragged the trembling Bigmac into the horrible bushes. Kirsty gave him her mac to stop him shivering. "All right, game over. I said game over!" he moaned. "Let's pack it in, all right? Let's go home!" "I think we should try to tell people about the bombs," Johnny said. "Someone might listen." "And if they ask how do you know, you'll say you're from 1996, will you?" "Maybe you could . . . you know . . . write a note," said Yoless. "slip it into someone's letterbox?" "Oh, yes?" said Kirsty, hotly. "What should we write? "Go for a long walk" perhaps? Or "Wear a very hard hat"?" She stopped when she saw Johnny's expression. "Sorry," she said. "I didn't mean that." "Wobbler!" said Yoless. They turned. Wobbler was toiling along the street. It took some effort for Wobbler to manage a run, but when he did so, there was also something terribly unstoppable about him. He spotted them, and changed direction. "Am I glad to see you," he panted. "Let's get out of here! Some loony kid chased me all the way down the hill. He kept shouting out that I was a spy!" "Did he try to shoot you?" said Bigmac. "He threw stones!" "Hah! I got shot at!" said Bigmac, with a sort of pride. "All right," said Kirsty. "We're all here. Let's go." "You know I don't know how!" said Johnny. The bags lay there in the trolley. There were the words "Shop At Tescos" on a piece of metal on the front of the wire. Probably Mr Tesco just owned a tiny grocery shop or something back here, Johnny thought wildly. Or hadn't been born yet. "It's your mind that works it," said Kirsty. "It must be. You go where you're thinking." "Oh, come on," said Yoless. "That's like magic." Johnny stared at the trolley again. "I could . . . try," he said. A police car went by, a street away. "Let's get somewhere more hidden," said Yoless. "Good idea," muttered Bigmac. A cinder path went around the back of the little church, to an area with dustbins and a heap of dead flowers. There was a small green door. It opened easily. "In those - in these days, they didn't lock churches," said Yoless. "But there's silver candlesticks and stuff, isn't there?" said Bigmac. "Anyone could walk right in and nick 'em. "Don't," said Johnny. They manhandled the trolley into a back room. It contained a tea urn on a trestle table, a pile of battered hymnbooks, and not much else except the smell of old embroidery, furniture polish and stale air, which is known as the odour of sanctity. There was no sign of any silver candlesticks anywhere "Bigmac! Shut that cupboard!" said Yoless. "I was only looking." Johnny stared at the sacks. All right, he thought. Let's say they're full of time. It's a daft idea. After all, they're quite small sacks On the other hand, how much space does time take up? Perhaps it's compressed . . . folded up . . . Mrs Tachyon collects time like other old ladies collect string? This is daft. But... There was a deep, rumbling sound. Guilty had sat up in the trolley and was purring happily. Johnny took a sack and held it carefully by the neck. It felt warm, and he was sure it moved slightly under his grip. "This probably won't work," he said. "Should we hold on to the trolley?" said Yoless. "I don't think so. I don't know! Look, are you all sure? I really don't know what I'm doing!" "Yes, but you've never really known what you're doing, have you?" said Kirsty. "That's right," said Yoless. "So you've had a lot of practice." Johnny shut his eyes and tried to think of... 1996. The thought crept into his mind from somewhere outside. It's not a time, it's a place. It's a place where the model of the Space Shuttle on the ceiling hangs by a bit of red wool because you ran out of black thread. And the model's got streaks of glue on it because you always get it wrong somewhere. It's a place where your mum just smokes a lot and looks out of the window. It's a place where your grandad watches TV all day. It's where you want to be. His mind began to go fuzzy at the edges. He thought of Thomas the Tank Engine wallpaper and the Mr Men lamp, until they were so close he could almost taste them. He could hear the place where Grandad had hung the wallpaper wrong so that there was an engine that was half Thomas and half James. It hung like a beacon in his head. He opened his eyes. The images were still around him; the others looked like ghosts. They were staring at him. He opened the bag, just a fraction. Wobbler swallowed. "Er . . . " he said. He turned around. And then, just in case, he looked behind the table. "Er . . . guys? Johnny? Bigmac? Yoless?" He swallowed again, but sometimes you just had to face up to unpleasant facts, and so he bravely said: "Er . . . Kirsty?" No-one answered. There was no-one there to answer. He was all alone with the tea urn. "Hey, I was even holding on!" he said. "Oi! I'm still here! Very funny, ha ha, now joke over, all right? Guys? Johnny? You've left me behind! All right? It worked, yes. Joke over, ha ha ha, all right? Please?" He opened the door and looked out into the shadowy yard. "I know you're only doing this to wind me up, well, it hasn't worked," he moaned. Then he went back and sat on a bench with his hands on his lap. After a while he fished out a grubby paper handkerchief and blew his nose. He was about to throw it away when he stopped and glared at it. It was probably the only paper handkerchief in the world. "I can see you peering out at me," he said, but his heart wasn't in it. "You're going to jump out any minute, I know. Well, It's not working. "Cos I'm not worried, see. Let's all go home and get a burger, eh? Good idea, eh? Tell you what, I've got some money, I don't mind buyin' 'em, eh? Hey? Or we could go down the Chinese and get a takeaway-" He stopped, and looked exactly like someone who'd realized that it was going to be a long, long time before there were any beansprouts in this town. Or burgers, come to that. All there probably was to eat was meat and fish and stuff. "All right, fair enough, you can come out now. . ." A fly stirred on the windowsill, and started to bang itself absentmindedly on the glass. "Look, it's not funny any m . . . more, all right?" There was a movement of air behind him, and a definite sensation that, where there had been no-one, there was now someone. Wobbler turned around, a huge relieved grin on his face. "Ha, I bet you thought you'd got me going - what?" The Over-50s" Keep-Fit class was in full wheeze. The tutor had long ago given up expecting everyone to keep up, so she just pressed on in the hope that people would do what they could manage and, if possible, not actually die while on the premises. "And bend and bend and bend and - do the best you can, Miss Windex - step and step and - what?" She blinked. Johnny looked around. The keep-fit class, after ten minutes of aerobics, were not the most observant people. One or two of them actually made space for the newcomers. The tutor hesitated. She'd been brought up to believe in a healthy mind in a healthy body, and, since she was pretty sure she had a healthy body, it was not possible, she reasoned, that a group of people and an overloaded shopping trolley could have suddenly appeared at the back of the old church hall. They must have just come in, she reasoned. Admittedly, there was no actual door there, but people certainly didn't just appear out of thin air. "Where are we?" Kirsty hissed. "Same place," whispered Yoless. "Different time!" Even some of the slower fitness fans had caught up by now. The whole class had stopped and turned around and were watching them with interest. "Well, say something!" said Kirsty. "Everyone's looking." "Er . . . is this Pottery?" said Johnny. "What?" said the tutor. "We're looking for Beginners" Pottery," said Johnny. It was a wild stab, but every hall and but and spare room in Blackbury seemed to have its time filled up with people doing weird hobbies or industriously learning Russian. A small light went on behind the tutor's eyes. She grabbed at the familiar words like a singer snatching a microphone. "That's Thursdays," she said. "In the Red Cross Hall." "Oh. Is it? Tch. We're always getting it wrong," said Johnny. "And after we've lugged all this clay up here, too," said Yoless. "That's a nuisance, isn't it, Bigmac?" "Don't look at me," said Bigmac. "They shot at me!" The tutor was staring from one to the other. "Er. Yes. Well, it can get pretty nasty in Beginners" Pottery," said Johnny. "Come on, everyone." They all grabbed hold of the trolley. Track suited figures limped politely out of the way as it squeaked its way across the floor, bumped down the step and landed in the damp yard outside. Johnny pushed the door shut behind them, and listened for a moment. " . . . well, then . . . bend and stretch and wheeze and bend..." He straightened up. It was amazing what you could get away with. Ten-legged aliens would be immediately accepted in Blackbury if they were bright enough to ask the way to the Post Office and complain about the weather. People had a way of just not seeing anything that common sense said they shouldn't see. "I bet something's gone wrong," said Bigmac. "Er . . . " said Yoless. "No, this has got to be the 1990s," said Kirsty. "It's the only period in history when you wouldn't be burned at the stake for wearing a green and purple tracksuit, isn't it?" The bulk of the sports centre loomed opposite them. Five minutes ago, thought Johnny, five of my minutes ago, that was a street. Get your head round that. "Er . . . " said Yoless again. "They shot at me," said Bigmac. "A real bullet! I heard it hit the actual wall!" "Er . . . " said Yoless. "Oh, what's the matter with you?" said Kirsty. "Er . . . where's Wobbler?" They looked around. "Oh, no . . . " said Johnny. They were Wobblerless. "I ain't going back!" said Bigmac, backing away. "Not to get shot at!" "He wouldn't have wandered off again, would he?" said Kirsty. "No," said Johnny. "He must still be there!" "Look, get a grip, will you?" said Kirsty. "You said the church doesn't get hit! He's okay." "Yes . . . but he's okay in 1941!" "S'posing something goes wrong?" said Bigmac. "He didn't come back this time, s'posing we go back and all get stuck? I'll get shot!" "You think you've got problems?" said Yoless. "I'd have to learn to play the banjo." "Will you all stop panicking and think far a moment?" said Kirsty. "This is time travel. He's always going to be there, whenever we go back! Of course we ought to go and get him! But we don't have to rush." Of course, it was true. He'd always be there, thought Johnny . They could go back in ten years" time and he'd still be there. Just like something on a tape you could play it, and fast forward, and rewind, and it would always be there. And later that night, the bombs would land in Paradise Street - and that night would always be there. Forever. Every second, always there. Like little fossils. Kirsty hauled the trolley away and pushed it down the steps towards the pavement. "His mum "n dad'll worry," said Yoless, uncertainly. "No, they won't," said Kirsty. "Because we can bring him back to right here." "Really? Why can't we see us doing it, then?" said Yoless. "You mean any minute we're just going to pop up with Wobbler and say "hi, us, here's Wobbler, see you later"?" "Oh, good grief," said Kirsty. "I can't think about that. You can't think about time travel with a logical mind." Yoless turned and looked at Johnny's face. "Oh, no," he said, "He's off again. . . " Everything's there waiting, Johnny thought. That's the thing about time. It doesn't matter how long it takes to build a time machine. We could all die out and evolution could start again with moles or something, it could take millions of years, but sooner or later someone will find out how to do it. It might not even be a machine. It might just be a way of understanding what time is, like everyone was scared of lightning and then one day someone said, look, you can store it in little bottles and then it was just electricity. But it wouldn't actually matter, because once you'd worked out how to use it, everything would be there. If someone ever finds a way of travelling in time, ever, in the entire history of the universe, then they could be here today. And then he thought of the bombers, nosing through the clouds over the houses and the footballers and all those clean doorsteps . . . "Uh?" he said. "You all right?" said Yoless. "Let's get a drink, at least," said Kirsty, shoving the trolley firmly towards the town centre. And then she stopped. Johnny hadn't often seen her shocked. Kirsty normally dealt with the terrible and the unexpected by getting angry with it. But now she stopped, and went pale. "Oh, no . . . " she said. The road from the old church led down the hill towards traffic lights at the bottom. An overloaded shopping trolley, with a boy and a girl clinging to it, was hurtling down the other road. As they watched, it heeled over like a yacht tacking against the wind, turned a full ninety degrees, and plunged into the car park of the Neil Armstrong Shopping Mall. A long black car followed it. He'd forgotten all about the car. Maybe there were secret societies. Maybe there were men in black in long black cars who said things like, "The truth is out there" and came and found you if you got your hand trapped in the occult. Johnny could see a map in his head. But it was a map of time. They'd moved in time at his house. But Yoless was right, you probably could move in time like a train on a track, so you flipped over onto another track just a little bit further along. You moved in space, really. And he'd done it again, when he thought they were going to die at the traffic lights. And the black car had vanished . . . because it didn't exist in this time. He definitely hadn't seen it when he'd looked behind him. They'd come back to a time when it existed. The car pulled to a halt outside the mall. A feeling of absolute certainty stole over Johnny. He knew the answer. Later on, with any luck, he'd find out what the question was, but right now he was sure of the answer. Forget about secret societies. Forget about time police. Policemen had to have nice logical minds, and to deal with time you needed a mind like Mrs Tachyon. But there was someone else who'd know where they'd be today, wasn't there . . . Because . . . supposing we didn't go back? Supposing . . . maybe we went back and did things wrong? He started to run. Johnny dodged across the road. A car hooted at him. Across in the car park, a man in black, with black sunglasses and a peaked black hat, got out of the car and burned into the mall. Johnny leapt over the low wall into the car park and weaved between shoppers and their trolleys . . . . . . And panted to a halt in front of the car. It had stopped right in front of the entrance, where no-one was ever allowed to park. In the bright sunlight it looked even blacker than Johnny remembered. Its engine ticked occasionally as it cooled down. On the hood was a silver ornament. It looked very much like a hamburger. If he squinted, Johnny could just make out a figure in the rear seat, a mere shadow behind the darkness of the glass. He ran around and snatched at the handle of the back door, yanking it open. "All right! I know you're in there! Who are you, really?" Most of the figure was in deep shade, but there were a pair of hands visible, resting on a black cane with a silver tip. Then the figure moved. It unfolded slowly, and became a large man in a coat that was half coat, half cloak. He emerged carefully, making sure both feet were firmly on the ground before easing the rest of his body out of the car. He was quite tall, tall enough so that he was big rather than fat. He wore a large black hat and had a short, silvery beard. He smiled at Johnny, and nodded at the others as they hurried up. "Who am I?" he said. "Well, now . . . why don't you guess? You were always good at this sort of thing." Johnny looked at him, and then at the car, and then back up the hill to where the old church was just visible. "I think . . . " he said. "Yes?" said the old man. "Yes? Go on?" "I think that . . . I mean, I don't know . . . but I know I'm going to know . . . I mean, I think I know why you've come to find us . . . " "Yes?" Johnny swallowed. "But we were-" he began. The old man patted him on the shoulder. "Call me Sir John," he said. Trousers of Time There were differences in the mall. One big difference, certainly. The burger bar had changed. There were different shaped paper hats, and the colour scheme was blue and white instead of red and yellow. The old man led the way. "Who is he?" hissed Kirsty. "You'll laugh if I tell you! This is time travel! I'm still trying to work out the rules!" Sir John sat down heavily in a seat, motioned them to sit down as well, and then did the second-worst thing anyone could do in a fast-food restaurant. He snapped his fingers at a waitress. All the staff were watching them anxiously. "Young lady," said Sir John, wheezing slightly, "these people will have whatever they want. I will have a glass of water. Thank you." "Yes, Sir John," said the waitress, and hurried away. "You're not s'posed to do that," said Bigmac hoarsely. "You're s'posed to queue up." "No, you're supposed to queue up," said Sir John. "I don't have to." "Have you always been called Sir John?" said Johnny. The man winked at him. "You know, don't you," he said. "You've worked it out. You're right. Names are easily changed, especially in wartime. I thought it might be better. I got the knighthood in 1964 for services to making huge amounts of money." The waitress hurried back with the water, and then produced a notebook and looked expectantly at them all with the bright, brittle smile of someone who is expecting to be sacked at any moment. "I'll have . . . well, I'll have everything," said Yoless. "Me too," said Bigmac. "Cheeseburger?" said Johnny. "Chilli beanburger," said Kirsty. "And I want to know what's going on, okay?" Sir John beamed at her in a slightly distracting way. Then he nodded at the waitress. "Make me one with everything," he said, slowly and carefully, as if quoting something he'd heard a long time ago, "because I want to become a Muslim." "A Buddhist," said Yoless, without thinking. "You always muck up the punchl-" Then his mouth dropped open. "Do I?" said Wobbler. "Well . . . I hung around for a while and you didn't come back," said Wobbler. "And then-" "But we did! I mean, we will!" said Kirsty. "This is where it gets difficult," said Wobbler, patiently. "Johnny knows. Supposing you didn't go back? Supposing you were scared to, or you found that you couldn't? The possibility exists, and that means the future forks off in two different ways. In one you went back, in one you didn't. Now you've ended up in the future where you didn't go back. I've been here since 1941. Don't try to think too hard about this, because it'll make your brain hurt. "Anyway . . . first I stayed with Mr and Mrs Seeley," he continued. "I'd met them that first day. Their son was away in the Navy and everyone thought I was an evacuee who was a bit daft and, what with one thing and another, there's too much to worry about in a big war for people to ask too many questions about one fat boy. They were very nice people. They sort of... adopted me, I suppose, because their son got torpedoed. But I moved away after a few years." "Why?" said Kirsty. "I didn't want to meet my own parents or anything like that," said Wobbler. He still seemed out of breath. "History is full of patches as it is, without causing any more trouble, eh? Changing my name wasn't hard, either. In a war . . . well, records go missing, people get killed, everything gets shaken up. A person can duck down and pop up somewhere else as someone else. I was in the Army for a few years, after the war." "You?" said Bigmac. "Oh, everyone had to be. National Service, it was called. Out in Berlin. And then I came back and had to make a living. Would you like another milkshake? I personally wouldn't, if I were you. I know how they're made." "You could've invented computers!" said Bigmac. "Really? You think so?" The old man laughed. "Who'd have listened to a boy who hadn't even been to university? Besides . . . well, look at this . . . " He picked up a plastic fork and tapped it on the table. "See this?" he said. "We throw away millions of them every day. After five minutes" use they're in the trash, right?" "Yes, of course," said Kirsty. Behind Wobbler, the staff were watching nervously, like monks in some quiet monastery somewhere who've just had St Peter drop in for tea. "A hundred years ago it'd have been a marvel. And now we throw them away without a second thought. So . . . how do you make one?" "Well . . . you get some oil, and . . . I've think there's something about it in a book I've got-" "Right," said Wobbler, leaning back. "You don't know. I don't know, either." "But I wouldn't bother with that. I'd write science fiction," said Kirsty. "Moon landings and stuff." "You probably could," said Wobbler. A tired expression crossed his face, and he started to pat the pockets of his coat as if looking for something. "But I've never had much of a way with words, I'm afraid. No. I opened a hamburger bar." Johnny looked around, and then started to grin. "That's right," said Wobbler. "In 1952. I knew it all, you see. Thick shakes, Double Smashers with Cheese'n Egg, paper hats for the staff, red sauce in those little round plastic bottles that look like tomatoes . . . oh, yes. I had three bars in the first year, and ten the year after that. There's thousands, now. Other people just couldn't keep up. I knew what would work, you see. Birthday treats for the kids, the Willie Wobbler clown-" "Willie Wobbler?" said Kirsty. "Sorry. They were more innocent times," said Wobbler. "And then I started . . . other things. Soft toilet paper, for a start. Honestly, the stuff they had back in the 1940s you could use as roofing felt! And when that was going well, I started to listen to people. People with bright ideas. Like "I think I could make a tape recorder really small so that people could carry it around" and I'd say "That might just catch on, you know, here's some money to get started". Or "You know, I think I know a way of making a machine to record television signals on tape so that people could watch them later" and I'd say "Amazing Whatever will they think of next! Here's some money, why don't we form a company and build some? And while we're about it, why don't we see if movies can be put on these tape thingies too?... "That's dishonest," said Kirsty. "That's cheating." "I don't see why," said Wobbler. "People were amazed that I'd listen to them, because everyone else thought they were crazy. I made money, but so did they." "Are you a millionaire?" said Bigmac. "Oh, no. I was a millionaire back in 1955. I'm a billionaire now, I think." He snapped his fingers again. The chauffeur in black, who had silently appeared behind them, stepped forward. "I am a billionaire, aren't I, Hickson?" "Yes, Sir John. Many times." "Thought so. And I think I own some island somewhere. What was it called now . . . Tasmania, I think." Wobbler patted his pockets again, and finally brought out a slim silver case. He flicked it open and took out two white pills, which he swallowed. He grimaced, and sipped from his glass of water. "You haven't touched your One with Everything," said Johnny, watching him. "Oh, I asked for it just to make the point," said Wobbler. "I'm not allowed to eat them. Good heavens. I have a diet. No sodium, no cholesterol, low starch, no sugar." He sighed. "Even a glass of water is probably too exciting." The manager of the burger bar had at last plucked up the courage to approach the table. "Sir John!" he said, "This is a such an honour-" "Yes, yes, thank you, please go away, I'm talking to my friends-" Wobbler stopped, and smiled evilly. "Fries all right, Bigmac? Properly crisp?" he said. "What about that milkshake, Yoless? Right sort of texture, is it?" The boys glanced up at the manager, who suddenly looked like a man praying to the god of everyone who has to work while wearing a name-badge saying "My name is KEITH". "Er . . . they're fine," said Bigmac. "Great," said Yoless. KEITH gave them a relieved grin. "They're always good," said Yoless. "I expect", said Bigmac, "that they'll go on being good." KEITH nodded hurriedly. "We're genially in most Saturdays," added Bigmac, helpfully. "If you want us to make sure." "Thank you, Keith, you may go," said Wobbler. He winked at Bigmac as the man almost ran away. "I know I shouldn't do it," he said, "but it's about the only fun I get these days." "Why did you come here?" said Johnny quietly. "You know, I couldn't resist doing a little checking," said Wobbler, ignoring him. "I thought it might be . . . interesting . . . to watch myself growing up. Not interfering, of course." He stopped smiling. "And then I found I wasn't born. I'd never been born. Nor was my father. My mother lived in London and was married to someone else. That's one thing about money. You can buy any amount of private detectives." "That's nonsense," said Kirsty. "You're alive." "Oh, yes," said Wobbler. "I was born. In another time. In the leg of the trousers of time that we were all born in. And then I went back in time with you all, and . . . something went wrong. I'm not sure what. So . . . I had to come back the long way. You could say I had to walk home." "I'm sure that's not logical," said Kirsty. Wobbler shrugged. "I don't think time is all that logical," he said. "It bends itself around humans. It's probably full of loose ends. Whoever said it shouldn't be? Sometimes loose ends are necessary. If they weren't, spaghetti would be merely an embarrassing experience." He chuckled. "Spoke to a lot of scientists about this. Damn fools. Idiots! Time's in our heads. Any fool can see that-" "You're ill, aren't you," said Johnny. "Is it obvious?" "You keep taking pills, and your breathing doesn't sound right." Wobbler smiled again. But this time there was no humour in it. "I'm suffering from life," he said. "However, I'm nearly cured." "Look," said Kirsty, in the voice of one who is trying to be reasonable against the odds, "we weren't going to leave you there. We were going to go back. We will go back." "Good," said Wobbler. "You don't mind? Because surely, if we do, you won't exist, will you?" "Oh, I will. Somewhere," said Wobbler. "That's right," said Johnny. "Everything that happens . . . stays happened. Somewhere. There's lots of times side by side." "You always were a bit of an odd thinker," said Wobbler. "I remember that. An imagination so big it's outside your head. Now . . . what was the other thing? Oh, yes. I think I have to give you this." The chauffeur stepped forward. "Er . . . Sir John, you know the Board did want-" There was a blur in the air. Wobbler's silver-headed cane hit the table so hard that Bigmac's fries flew into the air. The crack echoed around the restaurant. "God damn it, man, I'm paying you, and you will do what I say! The Board can wait! I'm not dead yet! I didn't get where I am today by listening to a lot of lawyers whining! I'm having some time off! Go away!" Wobbler reached into his jacket and took out an envelope. He handed it to Johnny. "I'm not telling you to go back," he said. "I've got no right. I've had a pretty good life, one way and the other-" "But," said Johnny. Through the glass doors of the mall he could see a car and four motorcycles pull up. "I'm sorry?" said Wobbler. "The next word you were going to say was "but"," said Johnny. Men were hurrying up the steps. "Oh, yes. But . . . " Wobbler leaned forward, and began speaking quickly. "If you go back, I've written a letter to . . . well, you'll know what to do with it. I know I really shouldn't do it, but who could pass up an opportunity like this?" He stood up, or at least attempted to. Hickson rushed up as Wobbler caught the edge of his chair, but was waved away. "I never had any children," said Wobbler. "Never got married. Don't know why, really. It just didn't seem right." He leaned heavily on his stick and turned back to them. "I want to be young again," he said. "Somewhere." "We were going to go back," said Johnny. "Honestly., "Good. But, you see . . . it's not just a case of going back. It's going back and doing the right things." And then he was gone, walking heavily towards the men with the suits, who closed in behind him. Bigmac was staring so much that a long rivulet of mustard, tomato sauce, special chilli relish and vivid green chutney had dripped out of his burger and down his sleeve without him noticing. "Wow," said Yoless, under his breath. "Will we be like that one day?" "What? Old? Probably," said Johnny. "I just can't get my head around old Wobbler being old," said Bigmac, sucking at his sleeve. "We've got to go and get him," said Johnny. "We can't let him get . . . " "Rich?" said Yoless. "I don't think we can do anything about the "old" bit." "If we bring him back, then he - the old one - won't exist here," said Kirsty. "No, he'll exist in this here, but not in the other here. I don't think he'll be existing anywhere for very long anyway," said Johnny. "Come on." "What's in the envelope?" said Kirsty, as they left. Johnny was surprised. Usually she'd say something like "Let's see what's in this, then," while snatching it out of his hand. "It's for Wobbler," said Johnny. "He's written a letter to himself? What's he say?" "How do I know? I don't open other people's letters!" Johnny shoved the envelope back into his inside pocket. "The keep-fit club should have finished by now," he said. "Come on." "Wait," said Kirsty. "If we're going back to 1941, Let's go prepared this time, shall we?" "Yeah," said Bigmac. "Armed." "No. Properly dressed, I mean." "Every Little Girl It was an hour later. They met behind the church, in the damp little yard where they'd left the trolley. "All right," said Kirsty. "Where did you get that outfit, Johnny?" "Grandad's got loads of stuff in the attic. These are his old football shorts. And he always wears old pullovers, so I thought that was probably okay, too. And I've got my project stuff in this box in case it helps. It's genuine 1940s. It's what they carried gasmasks in." "Oh, is that what they are?" said Bigmac. "I thought people had rather big Walkmans." "At least take the cap off, you look like Just William," said Kirsty. "What's this, Yoless?" "Me and Bigmac went along to that theatre shop in Wallace Street," said Yoless. "What do you think?" he added uncertainly. He shuffled round nervously. He was wearing a broadbrimmed hat, shoes with soles like two bumper cars parked side by side, and tight trousers. At least, what could be seen of the trousers looked tight. "Is that an overcoat?" said Johnny critically. "It's called a drape jacket," said Yoless. "Bright red," said Kirsty. "Yes, I can see no-one will notice you at all. And those trousers ... you must have had to grease your feet to get them on." "It looks a bit ... stylish," said Johnny. "You know ... jazzy. "The man in the shop said it's about right for the period," said Yoless defensively. "You look like you're about to play the saxophone," said Johnny. "I mean . . . well, I've never seen you looking so ... you know ... cool." "That's why it's a disguise," said Yoless. Kirsty turned to Bigmac, and sighed. "Bigmac, why is it I get this feeling you've missed the point?" "I told him," said Yoless. "But he wouldn't listen." "The man said they wore this in 1941," said Bigmac defensively. "Yes, but don't you think that people might notice it's a German uniform?" Bigmac looked panicky. "Is it? I thought Yoless was trying to wind me up! I thought they had all swastikas and stuff!" "That's the Gestapo. You're dressed up like an ordinary German soldier." "I can't help it, it's the only one they had left, it was this or chain mail!" "At least leave the jacket and helmet off, all right? Then it'll probably look like any other uniform." "Why've you wearing that fur coat, Kirsty?" said Johnny. "You always say that wearing the skins of dead animals is murder." "Yeah, but she only says it to old ladies in fur coats," muttered Bigmac under his breath, "Bet she never says it to Hell's Angels in leather jackets." "I took some care," said Kirsty, ignoring him. She adjusted her hat and shoulder bag. "This is pretty accurate." "What, even the shoulders?" "Yes. Shoulders were being worn wide." "Do you have to go through doors sideways?" said Yoless. "Let's get on with it, shall we?" "What's worrying me is when old Wobb . . . I mean, old old Wobbler . . . said we've got to do the right things to bring him back," said Yoless. "What things?" "We'll have to find out," said Johnny. "He didn't say it was easy." "Come on," said Bigmac, opening the door. "I miss old Wobbler." "Why?" said Kirsty. "Cos I don't throw straight." The keep-fit people had long ago staggered home. Johnny shoved the trolley into the middle of the floor, and stared at the sacks. Guilty was still asleep on a couple of them. "Er . . . " said Yoless. "This isn't magic, is it?" "I don't think so," said Johnny. "It's probably just very, very, very strange science. "Oh, good," said Yoless. "Er . . . what's the difference?" "Who cares?" said Kirsty. "Get on with it." Guilty started to purr. Johnny picked up a bag. It seemed to wriggle in his grasp. With great care, he loosened the string. And concentrated. It was easier this time. Before, he'd just been dragged along like a cork in a current. This time he knew where he was going. He could feel the time. Minds moved in time all the time. All the sacks did was let your body come too, just like Mrs Tachyon had said. Years spiralled into the bag like water down a plughole. Time sucked out of the room. And then there were the pews, and the scent of highly polished holiness. And Wobbler, turning around with his mouth open. " What-?" "It's all right, it's us," said Johnny. "Are you all right?" said Yoless. Wobbler might not have been the winner of the All-Europe Uptake Speed Trials, but an expression of deep suspicion spread across his face as he looked at them. "What's up?" he said. "You're all looking at me as if I'd gone weird! And what're you all dressed up for? Why's Bigmac wearing a German uniform?" "See?" said Yoless triumphantly. "I said so, and does anyone listen?" "We've just come back to fetch you," said Johnny. "There's no problem." "That's right. No problem at all," said Yoless. "Everything's fine." "Yeah, fine. Everything's fine," said Bigmac. "Er . . . you're not feeling . . . old, are you?" "What? After five minutes?" said Wobbler. "I've brung you something," said Bigmac. He took a square, flat shape from his pocket. It was rather battered, but it was nevertheless the only Styrofoam box currently existing on the planet. It was a BigWob . . . One with Everything. "Did you nick that?" said Yoless. "Well, the old bloke said he wasn't going to eat it," Said Bigmac. "So it'd only get chucked away, all right? It's not stealing if it'd only get chucked away. Anyway, it is his, isn't it, because-" "You're not going to eat that, are you?" said Kirsty quickly. "It's cold and greasy and it's been in Bigmac's pocket, for heaven's sake." Wobbler lifted out the bun. "I could eat it even if a giraffe's licked it," he said, and bit into the cold bread. "Hey, this isn't bad! Whose is it?" He looked at the face printed on the box. "Who's the old fart with the beard?" "Just some old fart," said Johnny. "Yeah, we don't know anything about him at all," said Bigmac. Wobbler gave them a suspicious look. "What's going on here?" he said. "Look, I can't explain now," said Johnny. "You're . . . stuck here. Er. Apparently, er, something's gone wrong. Er. There's been a snag." "What kind of snag?" "Er. Quite a big one." Wobbler stopped eating. It was that serious. "How big?" he said. "Er. You're not going to be born . . . er." Wobbler stared at him. Then he stared at the half eaten burger. "Am I eating this burger? Are these my teeth marks?" he demanded. "Look, it's perfectly simple," said Kirsty. "You're alive here, yes, but when we first came back, something must have happened which changed history. Everything anyone does changes history. So there's two histories. You were born in one, but things have been changed and when we got back it was into a different history where you weren't. All we have to do is put things back the way they should be, and then everything will be all right." "Hah! You haven't got a shelf of Star Trek videos as well, have you?" said Wobbler. Kirsty looked as though someone had hit her. "Well, er, I don't, er, what?" she said. "Er . . . one or two . . . a few . . . not many . . . so what, anyway? I hardly ever look at them!" "Hey," said Yoless, brightening up, "have you got that one where a mysterious force-" "Just shut up! Just shut up right now! Just because the programme happens to be an accurate reflection of late 20th century social concerns, actually, it doesn't mean you can go around winding people up just because they've been taking an academic interest!" "Have you got a Star Trek uniform?" said Yoless. Kirsty started to go red. "If any of you tell anybody else there'll be big trouble," said Kirsty. "I mean it!" Johnny opened the door of the church. Outside, Wednesday afternoon was turning into Wednesday evening. It was raining gently. He took a deep breath of 1941 air. It smelled of coal and pickles and jam, with a hint of hot rubber. People were making things. All those chimneys . . . No-one made anything in Blackbury in 1996. There was a factory that put together computers, and some big warehouses, and the Department of Road Signs regional headquarters. People just moved things around, or added up numbers. "So I watch some science fiction films," said a plaintive voice behind him. "At least I do it in a spirit of intelligent deconstruction. I don't just sit there saying "Cor, lasers, brill!" "No-one said you did," said Yoless, managing to sound infuriatingly reasonable. "You're not going to let me forget this, are you?" said Kirsty. "Won't mention it ever again," said Yoless. "If we do, may we be pulled apart by wild Vegans," said Bigmac, smirking. "No, vegans are the people who don't eat animal products," said Yoless. "You mean Vulcans. Vulcans are the ones with green blood-" "Will you lot shut up? Here's me not even being born and you're goin' on about daft aliens!" said Wobbler. "What did we do here that changed the future?" said Johnny, turning around. "Practically everything, I suppose," said Kirsty. "And Bigmac left all his stuff at the police station." "They shot at me-" "Let's face it," said Yoless, "anything we do changes the future. Maybe we bumped into someone so he was five seconds late crossing the road and got hit by a car or something. Like treading on a dinosaur. Any little thing changes the whole of history." "That's daft," said Bigmac "I mean, rivers still flow the same way no matter how the little fish swim." "Er . . . " said Wobbler. "There was this . . . kid . . ." He said it in the slow, plonking tones of someone who is afraid that he might have come up with an important piece of evidence. "What kid?" said Johnny. "Just some kid," said Wobbler. "He was running away from home or something. To home, I mean. All long shorts and bogeys up the nose." "What do you mean, running to home?" "Oh, he was goin' on about being evacuated here and being fed up and running off back to London. But he followed me back into town throwing stones at me 'cos he said I was a spy. He's probably still outside, "s'matter of fact. He ran off down that road there." "Paradise Street?" said Johnny. "What about it?" said Wobbler, looking worried. "It's going to be bombed tonight," said Kirsty. "Johnny's got a thing about it." "Hah, can't see any Germans wanting to bomb him, he was practically on their side," said Wobbler. "Are you sure it was Paradise Street?" said Johnny. "Are you sure? Did you have any relatives there? Grandparents? Great-grandparents?" "How should I know? That was ages ago!" Johnny took a deep breath. "It's right now!" "I-I-I don't know! One of my grandads lives in Spain and the other one died before I was born!" "How?" said Kirsty. "Fell off a motorbike, I think. In 1971." Wobbler brightened up. "See? So that's all right." "Oh, Wobbler, Wobbler, it's not all right!" said Johnny. "Get it into your head! Where did he live?" Wobbler was trembling, as he always did when life was getting too exciting. "I dunno! London, I think! My dad said he came up here in the war! And then later on he came back on a visit and met my grandma! Er! Er!" "Go on! Go on!" said Johnny. "Er! Er!" Wobbler stuttered. "How old was he when he died?" said Yoless. "Er! Forty, my dad said! Er! He'd bought the bike for his birthday!" "So he's . . . " Johnny subtracted in his head, " . . . ten now?" "Er! Er!" "You don't think he was that boy, do you?" said Yoless. "Oh, yes," said Wobbler, finally giving up panic for anger. "I should have asked him, should I? "Hello, are you going to be my grandad? PS don't buy a motorbike"?" Johnny fished in his gas mask box and pulled out a crumpled folder stuffed with bits of paper. "Did he mention any names?" he said, flicking through the pages. "Er! Er! Someone called Mrs Density!" said Wobbler, desperation throwing up a memory. "Number Eleven," said Johnny, pulling out a photocopy of a newspaper clipping. "Lived there with her daughter Gladys. I got all the names for my project." "My gran's name was Gladys!" said Wobbler. "You mean, because he didn't run off back to London, he's going to die tonight and I'm not going to be born?" "Could be," said Yoless. "What'll happen to me?" "You'll just have to stay here," said Johnny. "No ways This is the olden days! It's awful! I went past a cinema and it's all old movies! In black and white! And there was this cafe and you know what they'd got chalked on a board in front? "Meat and two veg"! What kind of food is that? Even Hong Kong Henry's takeaway tells you what kind of meat! Everyone dresses like someone out of Eastern Europe! I'd go round the bend here!" "My grandad always goes on about how they used to have so much fun when he was a kid even though they didn't have anything," said Bigmac. "Yes, but everyone's grandad says that," said Kirsty. "It's compulsory. It's like where they say "50p for a chocolate bar? When I was young you could get one and still have change out of sixpence." "I think they had fun," said Johnny, "because they didn't know they didn't have anything." "Well, I know," said Wobbler. "I know about food that's more than two colours, and stereo systems, and decent music and . . . and all kinds of stuff! I want to go home!" They all looked at Johnny. "You got us into this," said Yoless. Me. "It's your imagination," said Kirsty. "It's too big for your head, just like Sir J . . . " She stopped. "Just like I've always said," she corrected herself, "and it drags everyone else along with it. I don't know how, but it does. You got all worked up about Paradise Street, and now here we are." "You said it didn't make any difference if the street got bombed or not," said Johnny. "You said it was just history!" "I don't want to be history!" moaned Wobbler. "All right, you win," said Kirsty. "What do you want us to do?" Johnny shuffled the papers. "Well . . . what I found out for my project was that . . . there was a big storm, you see. The weather got very bad. And the bombers must've seen Blackbury and dropped their bombs anyway and turned around. That used to happen. There was . . . there is an air raid siren. It was supposed to go off if bombers were near," he said. "Only it didn't." "Why not?" The folder shut with a snap. "Let's start by finding out," said Johnny. It was on a pole on the roof in the High Street. It didn't look very big. "That's all it is?" said Yoless. "Looks like a giant yoyo." "That's an air-raid siren all right," said Kirsty. "I saw a picture in a book." "How d'they work? Set off by radar or something?" "I'm sure that's not been invented yet," said Johnny. "Well, how then?" "Maybe there's a switch somewhere?" "It'd be somewhere safe, then," said Yoless. "Somewhere where people wouldn't be able to set it off for a laugh." Their joint gaze travelled down the pole, across the roof, down the wall, past the blue lamp, and stopped when it met the words: "Police Station". "Oh, dear," said Yoless. They sat down on a bench by a civic flowerbed, opposite the door. A policeman came out and stood in the sunshine, watching them back. "It's a good job we left Bigmac to guard the trolley," said Yoless. "Yes," said Johnny. "He's always been allergic to policemen." Kirsty sighed. "Honestly, you boys haven't got a clue." She stood up, crossed the road and began to talk to the policeman. They could hear the conversation. It went like this: "Excuse me, officer-" He gave her a friendly smile. "Yes, little lady? Out in your mum's clothes, are you?" Kristy's eyes narrowed. "Oh, dear," said Johnny, under his breath. "What's the matter?" said Yoless. "Well, you know you and wouldn't "Sambo"? That's Kirsty and words like "little lady"."*** "I was just wondering", said the little lady, through clenched teeth, "how that big siren works." "Oh, I shouldn't worry your head about that, love," said the policeman. "It's very complicated. You wouldn't understand." "Look for something to hide behind," said Johnny. "Like another planet." Then his mouth dropped open as Kirsty won a medal. "It's just that I get so worried," she said, and managed a simper, or what she probably thought was a simper. "I'm sure Mr Hitler"s bombers are going to come one night and the siren won't go off. I can't get to sleep for worrying!" The policeman laid a hand on the shoulder of the girl who had left Blackbury Karate Club because no boy would dare come within two metres of her. "Oh, we can't have that, love," he said. He pointed. "See up there on Blackdown? Well, Mr Hodder and his very brave men are up there every night, keeping a look-out. If any planes come near here tonight he'll ring the station in a brace of shakes, don't you worry." "But supposing the phone doesn't work?" "Oh, then he'll be down here on his bike in no time." "Bike? A bike? That's all?" "It's a motorbike," said the policeman, giving her the nervous looks everyone eventually gave Kirsty. She just stared at him. "It's a Blackbury Phantom," he added still further, in a tone of voice that suggested this should impress even a girl. "Oh? Really? Oh, that's a relief," said Kirsty. "I feel a lot better for knowing that. Really." "That's right. There's nothing for you to worry about, love," said the policeman happily. "I'll just go off and play with my dolls, I expect," said Kirsty. "That's a good idea. Have a tea party," said the policeman, who apparently didn't know withering scorn when he heard it. Kirsty crossed the road and sat down on the seat. "Yes, I expect I should have a party with all my dollies," she said, glaring at the flowers. Yoless looked at Johnny over her head. "What?" he said. "Did you hear what that ridiculous policeman said?" said Kirsty. "Honestly, It's obvious that the stupid man thinks that just because I'm female I've got the brains of a baby. I mean, good grief! Imagine living in a time when people could even think like that without being prosecuted!" "Imagine living in a time when a bomb could come through your ceiling," said Johnny. "Mind you, my father said he lived in the shadow of the atomic bomb all through the Sixties," said Kirsty. "I think that was why he wore flares. Hah! Dollies! Pink dresses and pink ribbons. "Don't worry your head about that, girlie." This is the dark ages." Yoless patted her on the arm. "He didn't mean it . . . you know, nastily," he said. "It's just how he was brought up. You people can't expect us to rewrite history, you know-" Kirsty frowned at him. "Is that sarcasm?" she said. "Who? Me?" said Yoless innocently. "All right, all right, you've made your point. What's so special about a Blackbury Phantom, anyway?" "They used to make them here," said Johnny. "They were quite famous, I think. Grandad used to have one." They raised their eyes to the dark shape of Blackdown. It had loomed over the town even back in 1996, but then it had a TV mast. "That's it?" said Kirsty. "Men just sitting on hills and listening?" "Well, Blackbury wasn't very important," said Johnny. "We made jam and pickles and rubber boots and that was about it." "I wonder what's going to go wrong tonight?" said Yoless. "We could climb up there and find out," said Johnny. "Let's go and get the others-" "Hang on," said Kirsty. "Think, will you? How do you know we might not cause what's going to go wrong tonight?" Johnny hesitated. For a moment he looked like a statue. Then he said: "No. If we start thinking like that we'll never do anything." "We've already messed up the future once! Everything we do affects the future!" "It always has. It always will. So what? Let's get the others." Running Into Time There was no question of using the roads, not with the police still looking for a Bigmac who, with a wardrobe of costumes to chose from, had chosen to go back in time wearing a German soldier's uniform. They'd have to use the fields and footpaths. Which meant we'll have to leave the trolley," said Yoless. "We can shove it in the bushes here." "That means we'll be stuck here if anything goes wrong!" said Bigmac. "Well, I'm not lugging it through mud and stuff." "What if someone finds it?" "There's Guilty," said Kirsty. "He's better than a guard dog." The cat that was better than a guard dog opened one eye and yawned. It was true. No-one would want to be bitten by that mouth. It would be like being savaged by a plague laboratory. Then he curled into a more comfortable ball. "Yes, but it belongs to Mrs Tachyon," said Johnny, weakly. "Hey, we're not thinking sensibly - again," said Kirsty. "All we have to do is go back to 1996, go up to Blackdown on the bus, then come back in time again and we'll be up there-" "No!" shouted Wobbler. His face was bright red with terror. "I'm not stopping here by myself again! I'm stuck here, remember? Supposing you don't come back?" "Of course we'll come back," said Johnny. "We came back this time, didn't we?" "Yes, but supposing you don't? Supposing you get run over by a lorry or something? What'll happen to me?" Johnny thought about the long envelope in his inside pocket. Yoless and Bigmac were looking at their feet. Even Kirsty was looking away. "Here," said Wobbler suspiciously. "This is time travel, right? Do you know something horrible?" "We don't know anything," said Bigmac. "Absolutely right," said Kirsty. "What, us? We don't know a thing," said Johnny miserably. "Especially about burgers," said Bigmac. Kirsty groaned. "Bigmac!" Wobbler glared at them. "Oh, yes," he muttered. "It's "wind up ole Wobbler" time again, right? Well, I'm going to stay with the trolley, right? It's not going anywhere without me, right?" He stared from one to the other, daring them to disagree. "All right, I'll stay with you," said Bigmac. "I'll probably only get shot anyway, if I go anywhere." "What're you going to do up on Blackdown, anyway?" said Wobbler. "Find this Mr Hodder and tell him to listen really carefully? Wash out his ears? Eat plenty of carrots?" "They're for good eyesight," said Yoless helpfully. "My granny said they used to believe carrots helped you see in-" "Who cares!" "I don't know what we can do," said Johnny. "But . . . something must have gone wrong, right? Maybe the message didn't get through. We'll have to make sure it does." "Look," said Kirsty. The sun had already set, leaving an afterglow in the sky. And there were clouds over Blackdown. Dark clouds. "Thunderstorm," she said. "They always start up there." There was a growl in the distance. Blackbury was a lot smaller once they were in the hills. A lot of it wasn't there at all. "Wouldn't it be great if we could tell everyone what they're going to do wrong," said Johnny, when they paused for breath. "No-one'd listen," said Yoless. "Supposing someone turned up in 1996 and said they were from 2040 and started telling everyone what to do? They'd get arrested, wouldn't they?" Johnny looked ahead of them. The sunset sky lurked behind bars of angry cloud. "The listeners'll be up at the Tumps," said Kirsty. "There's an old windmill up there. It was some kind of look-out post during the war. Is, I mean." "Why didn't you say so before?" said Johnny. "It's different when it's now." The Tumps were five mounds on top of the down. They grew heather and wortleberries. It was said that dead kings were buried there in the days when your enemy was at arm's length rather than ten thousand feet above your head. The clouds were getting lower. It was going to be one of those Blackbury storms, a sort of angry fog that hugged the hills. "You know what I'm thinking?" said Kirsty. "Telephone lines," said Johnny. "They go out in thunderstorms." "Right." "But the policeman said there was a motorbike," said Yoless. "Starts first time, does it?" said Johnny. "I remember my grandad said that before you were qualified to ride a Blackbury Phantom you had to learn to push it fifty metres, cursing all the way. He said they were great bikes when they got started." "How long is it till . . . you know . . . the bombs?" "About an hour." Which means they're already on the way, Johnny thought. Men have walked out onto airfields and loaded bombs onto planes with names like Dormers and Heinkels. And other men have sat round in front of a big map of England, only it'd be in German, and there'd be crayon marks around Slate. Blackbury probably wasn't even on the map. And then they'd get up and walk out and get into the planes and take off. And men on the planes would get out their maps and draw lines on them; lines which crossed at Slate. Your mission for tonight: bomb the goods yard at Slate. And then the roar filled his ears. The drone of the engines came up through his legs. He could taste the oil and the sweat and the stale rubber smell of the oxygen mask. His body shook with the throb of the engines and also with the thump of distant explosions. One was very close and the whole aircraft seemed to slide sideways. And he knew what the mission for tonight was. Your mission for tonight is to get home safely. It always was. Another explosion shook the plane, and someone grabbed him. "What?" "It's weird when you do that!" shouted Kirsty, above the thunder. "Come on! It's dangerous out here! Haven't you got enough sense to get out of the rain?" "It's starting to happen," Johnny whispered, while the storm broke around him. "What is?" "The future!" He blinked as the rain started to plaster his hair against his head. He could feel time stretching out around him. He could feel its slow movement as it carried forward all those grey bombs and those white doorsteps, pulling them together like bubbles being swirled around a whirlpool. They were all earned along by it. You couldn't break out of it because you were part of it. You couldn't steer a train. "We'd better get him under cover!" shouted Yoless as lightning hit something a little way off. "He doesn't look well at all!" They staggered on, occasionally lurking under a wind-bent tree to get their breath back. There was a windmill among the Tumps. It had been built on one of the mounds, although the sails had long gone. The others put their arms around Johnny and ran through the soaking heather until they reached it and climbed the steps. Yoless hammered on the door. It opened a fraction. "Good lord!" said a voice. It sounded like the voice of a young man. "What're you? A circus?" "You've got to let us in!" said Kirsty. "He's ill!" "Can't do that," said the voice. "Not allowed, see?" "Do we look like spies?" shouted Yoless. "Please!" said Kirsty. The door started to close, and then stopped. "Well . . . all right," said the voice, as unseen hands pulled the door open. "But Mr Hodder says to stand where we can see you, okay? Come on in." "It's happening," said Johnny, who still had his eyes closed. "The telephone won't work." "What's he going on about?" "Can you try the telephone?" said Kirsty. "Why? What's wrong with it?" said the boy. "We tested it out at the beginning of the shift just now. Has anyone been mucking about with it?" There was an older man sitting at a table. He gave them a suspicious look, which lingered for a while on Yoless. "I reckon you'd better try the station," he said. "I don't like the sound of all this. Seems altogether a bit suspicious to me." The first man reached out towards the phone. There was a sound outside as lightning struck somewhere close. It wasn't a zzzippp-it was almost a gentle silken hiss, as the sky was cut in half. Then the phone exploded. Bits of bakelite and copper clattered off the walls. Kristy's hand flew to her head. "My hair stood on end!" "So did mine," said Yoless. "And that doesn't often happen, believe me," he added. "Lightning hit the wire," said Johnny. "I knew that. Not just here. Other stations on the hills, too. And now he'll have trouble with the motorbike." "What's he going on about?" "You've got a motorbike, haven't you?" said Kirsty. "So what?" "Good grief, man, you've lost your telephone! Aren't you supposed to do something about that?" The men looked at one another. Girls weren't supposed to shout like Kirsty. "Tom, nip down to Doctor Atkinson's and use his phone and tell the station ours has gone for a burton," said Mr Hodder, not taking his eyes off the three. "Tell them about these kids, too." "It won't start," said Johnny. "It's the carburettor, I think. That . . . always gives trouble." The one called Tom looked at him sideways. There was a change in the air. Up until now the men had just been suspicious. Now they were uneasy, too. "How did you know that?" he said. Johnny opened his mouth. And shut it again. He couldn't tell them about the feel of the time around him. He felt that if he could only focus his eyes properly, he could even see it. The past and future were there, just around some kind of corner, bound up to the ever-travelling now by a billion connections. He felt that he could almost reach out and point, not there or over there or up there but there, at right angles to everywhere else. "They're on their way," he said. "They'll be here in half an hour." "What will? What's he going on about?" "Blackbury's going to be bombed tonight," said Kirsty. Thunder rolled again. "We think," said Yoless. "Five planes," said Johnny. He opened his eyes. Everything overlapped like a scene in a kaleidoscope. Everyone was staring at him, but they were surrounded by something like fog. When they moved, images followed them like some kind of special effect. "It's the storm and the clouds," he managed to say. "They think they're going to Slate but they'll drop their bombs over Blackbury." "Oh, yes? And how d'you know this, then? They told you, did they?" "Listen, you stupid man," said Kirsty. "We're not spies! Why would we tell you if we were?" Mr Hodder pulled open the door. "I'm going down to use the doctor's phone," he said. "Then maybe we can sort out what's going on." "What about the bombers?" said Kirsty. The older man opened the door. The thunder had rolled away to the north-east, and there was no sound but the hiss of the rain. "What bombers?" he said, and shut it behind him. Johnny sat down with his head in his hands, blinking his eyes again to shut out the flickering images. "You lot'd better get out," said Tom. "It's against the rules, having people in here . . . " Johnny blinked. There were more bombers in front on his eyes. and they didn't go away. He scrabbled at the playing cards on the table. "What're these for?" he said urgently. "Playing cards with bombers on them?" "Eh? What? Oh . . . that's for learning aircraft recognition," said Tom, who'd been careful to keep the table between him and Johnny. "You plays cards with "em and you sort of picks up the shapes, like." "You learn subliminally?" said Kirsty. "Oh, no, you learn from playing with these here cards," said Tom desperately. Outside, there was the sound of someone trying to start a motorbike. Johnny stood up. "All right," he said. "I can prove it. The next card ... the next card you show me . . . the next card . . . " Images filled his eyes. If this is how Mrs Tachyon sees the world, he thought, no wonder she never seems all there because she's everywhere. Outside, there was the sound of someone trying to start a motorbike even harder. " . . . the next card . . . will be the five of diamonds." "I don't see why I should have to play games-" The man glanced nervously at Kirsty, who had that effect on people. "Scared?" she said. He grabbed a card at random and held it up. "It's the five of diamonds all right," said Yoless. Johnny nodded. "The next one.. . the next one . . . the next one will be the knave of hearts." It was. Outside, there was the sound of someone trying to start a motorbike very hard and swearing. "It's a trick," said the man. "One of you messed around with the pack." "Shuffle them all you like," said Johnny. "And the next one you show me will be . . . the ten of clubs." "How did you do that?" said Yoless, as the boy turned the card over and stared at it. "Er . . . " It had felt like memory, he told himself. "I remembered seeing it," said Johnny. "You remembered seeing it before you actually saw it?" said Kirsty. Outside, there was the sound of someone trying to start a motorbike very hard and swearing even harder. "Er . . . yes." "Oh, wow," she said. "Precognition. You're probably a natural medium." "Er, I'm a size eleven," said Johnny, but they weren't listening. Kirsty had turned to Tom. "You see?" she said. "Now do you believe us?" "I don't like this. This isn't right," he said. "Anyway . . . anyway, There's no phone-" The door burst open. "All right!" roared Mr Hodder. "What did you kids do to my bike?" "It's the carburettor," said Johnny. "I told you." "Here, Arthur, you ought to listen to this, this boy knows things-" Kirsty glanced at her watch. "Twenty minutes," she said. "It's more than two miles down to the town. Even if we ran I'm not sure we could do it." "What're you talking about now?" said Mr Hodder. "There must be some kind of code," said Kirsty. "If you have to ring up and tell them to sound the siren, what do you say?" "Don't tell them!" snapped Mr Hodder. " "This is station BD3"," said Johnny, his eyes looking unfocussed. "How did you know that? Did he tell you? Did you tell them?" "No, Arthur!" "Come on," said Kirsty, hurrying towards the door. "I got a county medal in athletics!" She elbowed the older man aside. The thunder was growling away in the east. The storm had settled down to a steady, grey rain. "We'll never make it," said Yoless. "I thought you people were good at running," said Kirsty, stepping out. "People of my height, you mean?" "You were right," said the young man, as Johnny was dragged out into the night, "This is station BD3!" "I know," said Johnny. "I remembered you just telling me." He staggered and grabbed at Yoless to stay upright. The world was spinning around him. He hadn't felt like this since that business with the cider at Christmas. The voices around him seemed to be muffled, and he couldn't be sure whether they were really there, or voices he was remembering, or words that hadn't even been spoken yet. He felt that his mind was being shaken loose in time, and it was only still here because his body was a huge great anchor. "It's downhill all the way," said Kirsty, and sped off Yoless followed her. Far away, down in the town, a church clock began to strike eleven. Johnny tried to lumber into a run, but the ground kept shifting under his feet. Why are we doing this? He thought. We know it happened, I've got a copy of the paper in my pocket, the bombs will land and the siren won't go off You can't steer a train! That's what you think, said a voice in his head . . . He wished he'd been better at this. He wished he'd been a hero. From up ahead, he heard Yoless's desperate cry. "I've tripped over a sheep! I've tripped over a sheep!" The lights of Blackbury spread out below them. There weren't many of them - the occasional smudge from a car, the tiny gleam from a window where the moths had got at the blackout curtain. A wind had followed the storm. Streamers of cloud blew across the sky. Here and there a star shone through. They ran on. Yoless ran into another sheep in the blackness. There was the crunch of heavy boots on the road behind them and Tom caught them up. "If you're wrong there's going to be big trouble!" he panted. "What if we're right?" said Kirsty. "I hope You're wrong!" Thunder rumbled again, but the four runners plunged on in a bubble of desperate silence. They were leaving the moor behind. There were hedges on either side of the road now. Tom's boots skidded to a halt. "Listen!" They stopped. There was the grumbling of the thunder and the hiss of the rain. And, behind the noises of the weather, a faint and distant droning. Gravel flew up as the young man started to run again. He'd been moving fast before but now he flew down the road. A large house loomed up against the night. He leapt over the fence, pounded across the lawns, and started to hammer on the front door. "Open up! Open up! It's an emergency!" Johnny and the others reached the gate. The droning was louder now. We could have done something, Johnny thought. I could have done something. I could've . . . well, there must have been something. We thought it would be so easy. Just because we're from the future. What do we know about anything? And now the bombers are nearly here and there's nothing we can do. "Come on! Open up!" Yoless found a gate and hurried through it. There was a splash in the darkness. "I think I've stepped into some sort of pond," said a damp voice. Tom stepped away from the house and groped on the ground for something. "Maybe I can smash a window," he mumbled. "Er . . . It's quite deep," said Yoless, damply. "And I'm caught up on some kind of fountain thing. . . " Glass tinkled. Tom reached through the window beside the door. There was a click, and the door opened. They heard him trip over something inside, and then a weak light went on. Another click and "This phone's dead too! The lightning must've got the exchange!" "Where's the next house?" said Kirsty, as Tom hurtled down the path. "Not till Roberts Road!" They ran after him, Yoless squelching slightly. The drone was much louder now. Johnny could hear it above the sound of his own breath. Someone must notice it in the town, he thought. It fills the whole sky! Without saying anything, they all began to run faster And, at last, the siren began to wail. But the clouds were parting and the moon shone through and there were shadows nosing through the rags of cloud and Johnny could feel the unseen shapes turning over and over as they drifted towards the ground. First there was the allotment, and then the pickle factory, and then Paradise Street exploded gently, like a row of roses opening. The petals were orange tinged with black and unfolded one after another, as the bombs fell along the street. Then the sounds arrived. They weren't bangs but crunches, punches, great wads of noise hammered into the head. Finally they died away, leaving only a distant crackling and the rising sound of a fire bell. "Oh, no!" said Kirsty. Tom had stopped. He stood and stared at the distant flames. "The phone wasn't working," he whispered. "I tried to get here but the phone wasn't working." "We're time travellers!" said Yoless. "This isn't supposed to happen!" Johnny swayed slightly. The feeling was like flu, but much worse. He felt as if he were outside his own body, watching himself. It was the hereness of here, the nowness of now . . . People survived by not paying any attention to feelings like this. If you stopped, and opened your head to them, the world would roll over you like a tank . . . Paradise Street was always going to be bombed. It was being bombed. It would have been bombed. Tonight was a fossil in time. It was a thing. Somewhere, it would always have happened. You couldn't steer a train! That's what you think . . . Somewhere . . . Flames flickered over the housetops. More bells were ringing. "The bike wouldn't start!" mumbled Tom. "The phone wouldn't work! There was a storm! I tried to get down here in time! How could it have been my fault?" Somewhere . . . Johnny felt it again . . . the sense that he could reach out and go in directions not found on any map or compass but only on a clock. It poured up from inside him until he felt that it was leaking out of his fingers. He hadn't got the trolley or the bags but . . . maybe he could remember how it felt . . . "We've got time," he said. "Are you mad?" said Kirsty. "Are you going to come or not?" said Johnny. "Where?" Johnny took her hand, and reached out for Yoless with his other hand. Then he nodded towards Tom, who was still staring at the flames. "Grab him, too," he said. "We'll need him when we get there." "Where?" Johnny tried to grin. "Trust me," he said. "Someone has to." He started to walk. Tom was dragged along with them like a sleepwalker. "Faster," said Johnny. "Or we'll never get there." "Look, the bombs have fallen," said Kirsty, wearily. "It's happened." "Right. It had to," said Johnny. "Otherwise we couldn't get there before it did. Faster. Run." He pushed forward, dragging them after him. "I suppose we might be able to . . . help," panted Yoless. "I know . . . first aid." "First aid?" said Kirsty. "You saw the explosions!" Beside her, the young man suddenly seemed to wake up. He stared at the fire in the town and lurched forward. And then they were all running, all trying to keep up, all causing the others to go faster. And there was the road, in that direction. Johnny took it. The dark landscape lit up in shades of grey, like a very old film. The sky went from black to an inky purple. And everything around them looked cold, like crystal; all the leaves and bushes glittering as if they were covered in frost. He couldn't feel cold. He couldn't feel anything. Johnny ran. The road under his feet was sticky, as though he was trying to sprint in treacle. And the air filled with the noise he'd last heard from the bags, a great whispering rush of sound, like a million radio stations slightly out of tune. Beside him Yoless tried to say something, but no words came out. He pointed with his free hand, instead. Blackbury lay ahead of them. It wasn't the town he knew in 1996, and it wasn't the one from 1941 either. It glowed. Johnny had never seen the Northern Lights. He'd read about them, though. The book said that on very cold nights sometimes the lights would come marching down from the North Pole, hanging in the sky like curtains of frozen blue fire. That was how the town looked. It gleamed, as cold as starlight on a winter night. He risked a glance behind. There, the sky was red, a deep crimson that brightened to a ruby glow at its centre. And he knew that if he stopped running it would all end. The road would be a road again, the sky would be the sky . . . but if he just kept going in this direction . . . He forced his legs to move onward, pedalling in slow motion through the thick, cold, silent air. The town got closer, brighter. Now the others were pulling on his arms. Kirsty was trying to shout too, but there was no sound here except the roar of all the tiny noises. He snatched, at their fingers, trying to hold on . . . And then the blue rushed towards him and met the red coming the other way and he was toppling forward onto the road. He heard Kirsty say, "I'm covered in ice!" Johnny pushed himself to his feet and stared at his own arms. Ice crackled and fell off his sleeves as he moved. Yoless looked white. Frost steamed off his face. "What did we do? What did we do?" said Kirsty. "Listen, will you?" said Yoless. "Listen!" There was a whirring somewhere in the darkness, and a clock began to strike. Johnny listened. They were on the edge of town. There was no traffic in the dark streets. But there were no fires, either. There was the muffled sound of laughter from a nearby pub, and the chink of glasses. The clock went on striking. The last note died away. A cat yowled. "Eleven o'clock?" said Kirsty. "But we heard eleven o'clock when we . . . were . . . on the downs . . . " She turned and stared at Johnny. "You took us back in time?" "Not . . . back, I think," said Johnny. "I think . . . behind. Outside. Around. Across. I don't know!" Tom had managed to get to his knees. What they could see of his face in the dusk said that here was a man to whom too much had happened, and whose brain was floating loose. "We've got seven minutes," said Johnny. "Huh?" said Tom. "To get them to sound the siren!" shouted Kirsty. "Huh? The bombs . . . I saw the fires . . . it wasn't my fault, the phone-" "They didn't! But they will! Unless you do something! Right now! On your feet right now!" shouted Kirsty. No-one could resist a voice like that. It went right through the brain and gave its commands directly to the muscles. Tom rose like a lift. "Good! Now come on!" The police station was at the end of the street. They reached the door in a group and fought one another to get through it. There was an office inside, with a counter running across it to separate the public from the forces of Law and Order. A policeman was standing behind it. He had been writing in a large book, but now he was looking up with his mouth open. "Hello, Tom," he said. "What's going on?" "You've got to sound the siren!" said Johnny. "Right now!" said Kirsty. The sergeant looked from one to the other and then at Yoless, where his gaze lingered for a while. Then he turned and glanced at a man in military uniform who was sitting writing at a desk in the office. The sergeant was the sort of man who liked an audience if he thought he was going to be funny. "Oh, yes?" he said. "And why should I do that, then?" "They're right, sergeant," said Tom. "You've got to do it! We . . . ran all the way!" "What, off the down?" said the sergeant. "That's two miles, that is. Sounds a bit fishy to me, young man. Been round the back of the pub again, have you? Hah . . . remember that Dormer 111 bomber you heard last week?" He turned and smirked at the officer again. "A lorry on the Slate road, that was!" Kristy's patience, which in any case was only visible with special scientific equipment, came to an end. "Don't you patronize us, you ridiculous buffoon!" she screamed. The sergeant went red and took a deep breath. Then it was let out suddenly. "Hey, where do you think You're going?" Tom had scrambled over the desk. The soldier stood up but was pushed out of the way. The young man reached the switch, and pulled it down. You Want Fries With That? Wobbler and Bigmac skulked behind the church. "They've been gone a long time," said Bigmac. "It's a long way up there," said Wobbler. "I bet something's happened. They've been shot or something." "Huh, I thought you liked guns," said Wobbler. "I don't mind guns. I don't like bullets," said Bigmac. "And I don't want to get stuck here with you!" "We've got the time trolley," said Wobbler. "But do you know how to work it? I reckon you've got to be half mental like Johnny to work it. I don't want to end up fighting Romans or something." "You won't," said Bigmac. He froze as he realized what he'd said. Wobbler homed in. "What do you mean, stuck here with you? What does happen if I don't go home?" he said. "You lot went back to 1996. I wasn't there, right?" "Oh, you don't want to know any stuff like that," said Bigmac. "Oh, yeah?" "You come in here and act cheeky-" the sergeant began. "Be quiet!" snapped Captain Harris, standing up. "Why doesn't your siren work?" "We tests it every Tuesday and Friday, reg'lar-" said the sergeant. "There's a hole in the ceiling," said Yoless. Tom stood looking at the switch. He was certain he'd done his bit. He wasn't sure how, but he'd done it. And things that should be happening next weren't happening. "It wasn't my fault," he mumbled. "Your man fired a gun," said the sergeant. "We never did know where the bullet went." "We know now," said the captain grimly. "It's hit a wire somewhere." "There's got to be some other way," said Johnny. "It mustn't end like this! Not after everything! Look!" He pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket and held it up. "What's that?" said the captain. "It's tomorrow's newspaper," said Johnny. "If the siren doesn't go off." The captain stared at it. "Oh, trying to pull our leg, eh?" said the police sergeant nervously. The captain turned his eyes from the paper to Johnny's wrist. He grabbed it. "Where did you get this watch?" he snapped. "I've seen one like it before! Where do you come from, boy?" "Here," said Johnny. "Sort of. But not . . . now." There was a moment's silence. Then the captain nodded at the sergeant. "Ring up the local newspaper, will you?" he said. "It's a morning paper, isn't it? Someone should still be there." "You're not seriously-" "Please do it." Seconds ticked by as the policeman huddled over the big black phone. He muttered a few words. "I've got Mr Stickers, the chief compositor," he said. "He says They're just clearing the front page and what do we want?" The captain glanced at the paper, and sniffed at it. "Fish? Never mind . . . is there an advertisement for Johnson's Cocoa in the bottom left hand corner of the page? Don't stare. Ask him." There was some mumbling. "He says yes, but-" The captain turned the page over. "On page two, is there a single column story headed "Fined 2/6p for Bike Offence"? On the crossword, is One Down "Bird of Stone, We Hear" with three letters? Next to an advertisement for Plant's Brushless Shaving Creams? Ask him." The sergeant glared at him, but spoke to the distant Stickers. "Roc," said Kirsty, in an absentminded way. The captain raised an eyebrow. "It's a mythical bird, I think," said Yoless, in the same hypnotized voice. "Spelled like "rock" but without a K. "We hear" means it sounds the same." "He says yes," said the sergeant. "He says-" "Thank you. Tell him to be ready in case . . . no, Let's not be hasty . . . just thank him." There was a click when the sergeant put the phone down. Then the captain said, "Do you know how long We've got?" "Three minutes," said Johnny. "Can we get on the roof, sergeant?" said the captain. "Dunno, but-" "Is there some other siren in the town?" "There's a manky old wind-up thing we used to use, but-" "Where is it?" "It's under the bench in the Lost Property cupboard but-" There was a leathery noise and suddenly the captain was holding a pistol. "You can argue with me afterwards," he said. "You can report me to whomever you like. But right now you can give me the keys or unlock the blasted cupboard, or I'll shoot the lock off. And I've always wanted to try that, believe me." "You don't believe these kids, do-" "Sergeant!" In a sudden panic, the sergeant fumbled in his pockets and trotted across the room. "You do believe us?" said Kirsty. "I'm not sure," said the captain, as the sergeant dragged out something big and heavy. "Thank you, sergeant. Let's get it outside. No. I'm not sure at all, young lady. But I might believe that watch. Besides . . . if I'm wrong, then all that will happen is that I'll look foolish, and I daresay the sergeant will give you all a thick ear. If I'm right then . . . this won't happen?" He waved the paper. "I . . . think so," said Johnny. "I don't even know if arty of this will happen . . . " Bigmac was on the floor with Wobbler on top of him. Wobbler might not know how to fight, but he did know how to weigh. "Get off!" said Bigmac, flailing around. Trying vicious street-fight punches on Wobbler was like hitting a pillow. "I'm still alive in 1996, Aren't I?" said Wobbler. "Cos I've been born, right? So even if I never time travel back I ought to still be alive in 1996, right? I bet you know something about me!" "No, no, we never met you!" "I'm alive, then? You do know something, right?" "Get off, I can't breathe!" "Come on, tell me! "You're not supposed to know what's going to happen!" "Who says? Who says?" There was a yowl behind him. Wobbler turned his head. Bigmac looked up. Guilty the cat stretched lazily, yawned, and hopped down off the bags. He padded confidently alongside the mossy wall, moving in his lurching diagonal fashion, and disappeared around the building. "Where's it going?" said Wobbler. "How should I know? Get off "f me!" The boys followed the cat, who didn't seem at all bothered by their presence. He stopped at the church door and lay down with his front paws outstretched. "First time I've seen him go away from the trolley," said Bigmac. And then they heard it. Nothing. The faint noises of the town didn't stop. There was the sound of a piano from a pub somewhere. A door opened, and there was laughter. A car went by slowly, in the distance. But suddenly the sounds were coming from a long way off, as if there was some sort of thick invisible wall. "You know those bombs . . . " said Wobbler, not taking his eyes off the cat. "What bombs?" said Bigmac. "The bombs Johnny's been going on about." "Yeah?" said Bigmac. "Can you remember what time he said? It was pretty soon, I think." "Brilliant! I've never seen anywhere bombed," said Bigmac. Guilty started to purr, very loudly. "Er . . . you know my sister lives in Canada," said Wobbler, in a worried voice. "What about her? What's she got to do with anything?" "Well . . . she sent me a postcard once. There's this cliff there, right, where the Indians used to drive herds of buffalo over to kill them . . . " "Isn't geography wonderful." "Yeah, only . . . there was this Indian, right, and he wondered what the drive would look like from underneath . . . and that's why It's called Head-Bashed-In Jump. Really." They both turned and looked at the chapel. "This is still here in 1996," said Bigmac. "I mean, It's not going to get bombed. . . " "Yeah, but don't you think it'd be better to be sort of behind it" The wail of a siren rose and fell. There were faint noises in Paradise Street. Someone must have moved a blackout curtain, because light showed for a moment. Someone else shouted, in a back garden somewhere. "Great!" said Bigmac. "All we need is popcorn." "But It's going to happen to real people!" said Wobbler, aware that real people could include him. "No, "cos the siren's gone off. They'll all be down their bomb shelters. That's the whole point. Anyway, it'd happen anyway, right? It's history, okay? It'd be like going back to 1066 and watching the Battle of... whatever it was. It's not often you get to see an entire pickled onion factory blow up, either." People were certainly moving. Wobbler could hear them in the night. A sound from this end of the street was exactly like someone walking into a tin bath in the darkness. And then . . . "Listen," said Bigmac, uncertainly. Guilty sat up and looked alert. There was a faint droning noise in the east. "Brilliant," said Bigmac. Wobbler edged towards the side of the church. "This isn't television," he mumbled. The droning got closer. "Wish I'd brought my camera," said Bigmac. A door opened. An avenue of yellow light spilled out into the night and a small figure dashed along it and came to a halt in the middle street. It shouted: "Our Ron'll get you!" The drone filled the sky. Bigmac and Wobbler started running together. They cleared the churchyard steps in one jump and pounded towards the boy, who was dancing around waving a fist at the sky. The aircraft were right overhead. Bigmac got to him first and lifted him off his feet. Then he skidded on the cobbles as he turned and headed back towards the church. They were halfway there when they heard the whistling. They were at the top of the steps when the first bomb hit the allotments. They were jumping behind the wall when the second and third bombs hit the pickle factory. They were landing on the grass as the bombs marched up the street and filled the air with a noise so loud it couldn't be heard and a light so white it came right through the eyelids, and then the roar picked up the ground and shook it like a blanket. That was the worst part, Wobbler said later. And it was hard to find the worst part because all the others were so bad. But the ground should be the ground, there, solid, dependably under you. It shouldn't drop away and then come back up and hit you so hard. Then there was a sound like a swarm of angry bees. And then there was just the clink of collapsing brickwork and the crackle of fires. Wobbler raised his head, very slowly. "Ugh," he said. There were no leaves on the trees behind them. And the trunks sparkled. He got up very slowly, and reached out. It was glass. Bits of glass studded the whole trunk of the tree. There were no leaves any more. Just glass. Beside him, Bigmac got to his feet like someone in a dream. A flying pan had hit the church door so hard that it had been driven in halfway, like a very domesticated martial arts weapon. A stone doorstep had smashed a chunk out of the brickwork. And everywhere there was glass, crunching underfoot like permanent hail. It glittered on the walls, reflecting the fires in the ruins. There seemed far too much to be from just a few house windows. And then it began to rain. First it rained vinegar. And then it rained pickles. There was red liquid all over Bigmac. He licked a finger and then held it up. "Tomato sauce!" A gherkin bounced off Wobbler's head. Bigmac started to laugh. People can start laughing for all sorts of reasons. But sometimes they laugh because, against all expectations, They're still alive and have a mouth left to laugh with. "You-" he tried to say, "You- you- you want fries with that?" It was the funniest thing Wobbler had ever heard. Right now it was the funniest thing anyone had ever said anywhere. He laughed until the tears ran down his face and mingled with the mustard pickle. From somewhere in the shadows by the wall a small voice said, "Ere, did anyone get any shrapnel?" Bigmac started to laugh on top of the laugh he was already laughing, which caused a sound like a boiler trying not to burst. "What, what, what's shrapnel anyway?" he managed to say. "It's . . . It's . . . It's bits of bomb!" "You want fries with that?" said Bigmac, and almost collapsed with laughing. The siren sang out again. But this time it wasn't the rising and falling wail but one long tone, which eventually died away. "They're coming back!" said Wobbler. The laughter drained out of him as though a trapdoor had been opened. "Nah, that's the All Clear," said the voice by the wall. "Don't you know nuffin'?" Wobbler's grandfather stood up and looked down the length of what had once been Paradise Street. "Cor!" he said, obviously impressed. There wasn't a whole house left standing. Roofs had gone, windows had blown out. Half of the buildings had simply vanished into rubble, which spilled across the street. Bells rang in the distance. Two fire engines skidded to a halt right outside the church. An ambulance pulled up behind them. "You want-" Bigmac began. "Shut up, will you?" said Wobbler. There were fires everywhere. Big fires, little fires. The pickle factory was well alight and smelled like the biggest fish and chip shop in the world. People were running from every direction. Some of them were pulling at the rubble. There was a lot of shouting. "I suppose everyone . . . would've got out, right?" said Wobbler. "They would have got out, wouldn't they?" The siren's wail slowed to a growl and then a clicking noise, and then stopped. Johnny felt as though his feet weren't exactly on the ground. If he were any lighter he'd float away. "They must have got out. They had nearly a whole minute," he said. The sergeant had already headed toward Paradise Street. The three of them had been left with Tom and the captain, who was watching Johnny thoughtfully. Things pattered onto the roof of the police station and bounced down into the street. Yoless picked one up. "Pickled onions?" he said. They could see the flames over the rooftops. "So . . . " said the captain. "You were right. A bit of an adventure, yes? And this is where I say "Well done, chums", isn't it . . . " He walked to the yard door and shut it. Then he turned. "I can't let you go," he said. "You must know that. You were with that other boy, weren't you. The one with the strange devices." There seemed no point in denying it. "Yes," said Johnny. "I think you might know a lot of things. Things that we need. And we certainly need them. Perhaps you know that?" He sighed. "I don't like this. You may have saved some lives tonight. But It's possible that you could save a lot more. Do you understand?" "We won't tell you anything," said Kirsty. "Just name, rank and serial number, eh?" said the captain. "Supposing we . . . did know things," said Johnny. "It wouldn't do you any good. And those things won't help, either. They won't make the war better; They'll just make it different. Everything happens somewhere." "Right now, I think we'd settle for different. We've got some very clever men," said the captain. "Please, captain." It was Tom. "Yes?" "They didn't have to do all this, sir. I mean, they came and told us about the bombing, didn't they? And . . . I don't know how they got me down here, sir, but they did. "S not right to put them in prison, sir." "Oh, not prison," said the captain. "A country house somewhere. Three square meals a day. And lots of people who'll want to talk to them." Kirsty burst into tears. "Now, no-one's going to hurt you, little girl," said the captain. He moved over and put his arm around her shaking shoulders. Johnny and Yoless looked at one another, and took a few steps backwards. "It's all right," said the captain. "We just need to know some things, that's all. Things that may be going to happen." "Well, one thing. . . " sobbed Kirsty, "one thing . . . one thing that's going to happen is . . . one thing is . . ." "Yes?" said the captain. Kirsty reached out and took his hand. Then her leg shot out and she pivoted, hauling on the man's arm. He somersaulted over her shoulder and landed on his back on the cobbles. Even as he tried to struggle upright she was spinning around again, and caught him full in the chest with a foot. He slumped backwards. Kirsty straightened her hat and nodded at the others. "Chauvinist. Honestly, It's like being back with the dinosaurs. Shall we go?" she said. Tom backed away. "Where do girls learn to do that?" he said. "At school," said Johnny. "You'd be amazed." Kirsty reached down and took the captain's pistol. "Oh, no," said Yoless. "Not guns! You can get into real trouble with guns!" "I happen to be the under-18 county champion," said Kirsty, unloading the gun. "But I'm not intending to use it. I just don't want him to get excited." She threw the pistol behind some dustbins. "Now, are we going, or what?" Johnny looked around at Tom. "Sorry about this," he said. "Can you, er, explain things to him when he wakes up?" "I wouldn't know how to start! I don't know what happened myself!" "Good," said Kirsty firmly. "I mean, did I run down here or not?" said Tom. "I thought I saw the bombing but - I must've imagined it, because it didn't happen until after we got here!" "It was probably the excitement," said Yoless. "The mind plays strange tricks," said Kirsty. They both glared at Johnny. "Don't look at me," he said. "I don't know anything about anything." Up Another Leg What Bigmac said afterwards was that he'd never intended to help. It had been like watching a film until he'd seen people scrabbling at the wreckage. Then he'd stepped through the screen. Fireman were pouring water on the flames. People were pulling at fallen timbers, or moving gingerly through each stricken house, calling out names - in a strange, polite way, in the circumstances. "Yoo-hoo, Mr Johnson?" "Excuse me, Mrs Density, are you there?" "Mrs Williams? Anyone?" And Wobbler said afterwards that he could remember three things. One was the strange metallic clinking sound bricks make as piles of them slide around. One was the smell of wet burnt wood. And one was the bed. The blast had taken off the roof and half the walls of a house but there was a double bed hanging out over the road. It even still had the sheets on it. It creaked up and down in the wind. The two boys scrambled over the sliding rubble until they reached a back garden. Glass and bricks covered everything. An elderly man wearing a nightshirt tucked into his trousers was standing and staring at the wreckage on his garden. "Well, that's my potatoes gone," he said. "It was late frost last year, and now this." "Still," said Bigmac, in a mad cheerful voice, "you've got a nice crop of pickled cucumbers." "Can't abide 'em. Pickles give me wind." Fences had been laid flat. Sheds had been lifted up and dealt like cards across the gardens. And, as though the All Clear had been the Last Trump, people were rising out of the ground. "I just hope the others are still there," said Kirsty, as they ran through the streets. "What do you think?" said Yoless. "Sorry?" "I mean, maybe They're sitting quietly waiting for us or They've got into some kind of trouble. Bets?" Kirsty slowed down. "Hang on a minute," she said. "There's something I've got to know. Johnny?" "Yes?" he said. He'd been dreading this moment. Kirsty asked such penetrating questions. "What did we do? Back there? I saw the bombs drop! And I'm a very good observer! But we got down to the police station before it happened! So either I'm mad - and I'm not mad - or we-" "Ran through time," said Yoless. "Look, it was just a direction," said Johnny. "I just saw the way to go . . . " Kirsty rolled her eyes. "Can you do it again?" "I . . . don't think so. I can't remember how I did it." "He was probably in a state of heightened awareness," said Yoless. "I've read about them." "What . . . drugs?" said Kirsty suspiciously. "Me? I don't even like coffee!" said Johnny. The world had always seemed so strange in any case that he'd never dared try anything that'd make it even weirder. "But It's an amazing talent! Think of the things you-" Johnny shook his head. He could remember seeing the way, and he could remember the feelings, but he couldn't remember the how. It was as if he was looking at his memories behind thick amber glass. "Come on," he said, and started running again. "But-" Kirsty began. "I can't do it again," said Johnny. "It'll never be the right time again." Bigmac and Wobbler weren't in trouble, if only because there had been so much trouble just recently that there was, for a while, no more to get into. "This is an air-raid shelter?" said Bigmac. "I thought they were all - you know, steel and stuff Big doors that go hiss. Lights flashing on and off. You know." He heaved on one end of a shed which had smashed into the air-raid shelter belonging to No. 9. "Not just some corrugated iron and dirt with lettuces growing on top." Wobbler had rescued a shovel from the ruin of someone's greenhouse, and used it to heave bricks out of the way. The shelter door opened and a middleaged woman staggered out. She was wearing a floral pinny over a nightdress, and holding a goldfish bowl with two fish in it. A small girl was clinging to her skirts. "Where's Michael?" the woman shouted. "Where is he? Has anyone seen him? I turned my back for two seconds to grab Adolf and Stalin and he was out the door like a-" "Kid in a green jersey?" said Wobbler. "Got glasses? Ears like the World Cup? He's looking for shrapnel." "He's safe?" She sagged with relief. "I don't know what I'd have told his mother!" "You all right?" said Bigmac. "I'm afraid your house is a bit . . . flatter than it was . . . " Mrs Density looked at what was left of No. 9. "Oh, well. Worse things happen at sea," she said vaguely. "Do they?" said Bigmac, mystified. "It's just a blessing we weren't in it," said Mrs Density. There was a clink of brickwork and a firemen slid down the debris towards them. "All right, Mrs Density?" he said. "I reckon You're the last one. Fancy a nice cup of tea?" "Oh, hello, Bill," she said. "Who're these lads, then?" said the fireman. "We . . . were just helping out," said Wobbler "Were you? Oh. Right. Well, come away out of it, the pair of you. We reckon There's an unexploded one at Number 12." The fireman stared at Bigmac's clothes for a moment, and then shrugged. He gently took the goldfish bowl from Mrs Density and put his other arm around her shoulders. "A nice cup of tea and a blanket," he said. "Just the thing, eh? Come along, luv." The boys watched them slide and scramble through the fallen bricks. "You get bombed and they give you a cup of tea?" said Bigmac. "I s'pose It's better than getting bombed and never ever getting one again," said Wobbler. "Anyway, there-" "Eeeeyyyyooooowwwwmmmm!" screamed a voice behind them. They turned. Wobbler's grandfather was standing on a pile of bricks and looked like a small devil in the light of the fires. He was covered in soot, and was waving something through the air and making aeroplane noises. "That looks like-"Bigmac began. "It's a bit off'f a bomb!" said the boy. "Nearly the whole tail fin! I don't know anyone who's got nearly a whole tail fin!" He zoomed the twisted metal through the air again. "Er . . . kid?" said Wobbler. The boy lowered the fin. "You know about . . . motorbikes?" said Wobbler. "Oh, no," said Bigmac. "You can't tell him anything about-" "You just shut up!" said Wobbler. "You've got a grandad!" "Yes, but there has to be a warder there when I go an" see him." Wobbler looked back at the boy. "Dangerous things, motorbikes," he said. "I'm going to have a big one when I grow up," said his grandfather. "With rockets on it, an" machine guns and everythin'. Eeeooowwmmmm!" "Oh, I wouldn't do that if I were you," said Wobbler, in the special dumb voice for talking to children. "You don't want to go crashing it, do you." "Oh, I won't crash," said his grandfather, confidently. "Mrs Density"s daughter"s a nice little girl, isn't she," said Wobbler desperately. "She's all smelly and horrible. Eeeeeoowwmmm! Anyway, You're fat, mister!" He ran down the far side of the heap. They saw his shadow darting between the firemen, and heard the occasional "Voommrnm!" "Come on," said Bigmac. "Let's get back to the church. The man said they thought there was an unexploded bomb-" "He just didn't want to listen!" said Wobbler. "I would've listened!" "Yeah, sure," said Bigmac. "Well, I would!" "Sure. Come on." "I could've helped him if only he'd listened! I know stuff? Why won't he listen? I could make life a lot easier for him!" "All right, I believe you. Now Let's go, shall we?" They reached the church just as Johnny and the others came running up the street. "Everyone all right?" said Kirsty. "Why are you covered in soot, you two?" "We've been rescuing people," said Wobbler, proudly. "Well, sort of." They looked at the wreck of Paradise Street. People were standing around in small groups, and sitting on the ruins. Some ladies in official-looking hats had set up a table with a tea urn on it. There were still a few small fires, however, and the occasional crash and tinkle as a high-altitude cocktail onion fell back to earth in a coating of ice. Johnny stared. "Everyone got out, Johnny," said Wobbler, watching him carefully. "I know." "The siren was just in time." "I know." Behind him, Johnny heard Kirsty say: "I hope they get counselling?" "We found out about that," said Bigmac's voice. "They get a nice cup of tea and told to cheer up because it could be worse." "That's all?" "Well . . . There's biscuits, too." Johnny watched the street. The firelight almost made it look cheerful. And his mind's eye saw the other street. It was here, too, happening at the same time. There were the same fires and the same piles of rubble and the same fire engines. But there were no people - except the ones carrying stretchers. We're in a new time, he thought. Everything you do changes everything. And every time you move in time you arrive in a time a little bit different to the one you left. What you do doesn't change the future, just a future. There's millions of places when the bombs killed everyone in Paradise Street. But it didn't happen here. The ghostly images faded away as the other time veered off into it's own future. "Johnny?" said Yoless. "We'd better get out of here." "Yeah, no point in staying," said Bigmac. Johnny turned. "Okay," he said. "Are we going by trolley or are we going to . . . walk?" said Kirsty. Johnny shook his head. "Trolley," he said. It was waiting where they'd left it. But there was no sign of Guilty. "Oh, no!" said Kirsty. "We're not going to look for a cat." "He went to watch the bombing," said Wobbler. "Don't know what happened to him after that." Johnny gripped the handle of the trolley. The bags creaked in the darkness. "Don't worry about the cat," he said. "Cats find their own way home." The Golden Threads Club occupied the old church on Friday mornings. Sometimes there was a folk singer, or entertainment from local schools, if this couldn't be avoided. Mainly there was tea and a chat. This was usually about how things were worse now than they had ever been, especially those golden days when you could buy practically anything for sixpence and still have change. There was a change in the air and five figures appeared. The Golden Threaders watched them suspiciously, in case they broke into "The Streets of London". They also noted that they were under thirty years old, and therefore almost certainly criminals. For one thing, They'd apparently stolen a shopping trolley. And one of them was black. "Er. . . " said Johnny. "Is this the theatre group?" said Kirsty. The others were astonished at the quick thinking. "Oh, no, wrong church hall, very sorry." They edged towards the door, pushing the trolley. The Threaders watched them owlishly, tea-cups cooling in their hands. Wobbler opened the door and ushered the others through it. "Don't forget, one of them was black," said Yoless, as he stepped out. He rolled his eyes sarcastically and waved his hands in the air. "We's goin' to de carnivaaal!" Some Other Now . . . The air outside smelled of 1996. Kirsty looked at her watch. "Ten-thirty on Saturday morning," she said. "Not bad." "Er, your watch is at ten-thirty on Saturday morning," said Johnny. "That doesn't mean we are." "Good point." "But I think we are, anyway. This all looks right." "Looks fine to me," said Wobbler. "We've been out all night," said Yoless. "My mum'll go spare. "Tell her you stopped at my place and the phone was broken," said Wobbler. "I don't like lying." "Are you going to tell her the truth?" Yoless thought for a few agonized seconds. "Your phone was broken, right?" "Yeah, and I'll tell my mum I was staying at your place," said Wobbler. "I shouldn't think my grandad's noticed I'm not in," said Johnny. "He always drops off in front of the telly., "My parents have a very modern outlook," said Kirsty. "My brother doesn't mind where I am so long as the police don't come round," said Bigmac. Before time travelling to any extent, Johnny thought, you should always get your alibi sorted out. He stared at the place where Paradise Street had been. It was still the Sports Centre. That hadn't changed. But Paradise Street was still there, underneath. Not underground. Just . . . somewhere else. Another fossil. "Did we change anything?" said Kirsty. "Well, I'm back," said Wobbler. "And that's good enough for me." "But those people are alive when they ought to've been dead" Kirsty began, and stopped when she saw Johnny's expression. "All right, not exactly ought, but you know what I mean. One of them might've invented the Z-bomb or something." "What's the Z-bomb?" said Bigmac. "How should I know? It wasn't invented when we left!" "Someone in Paradise Street invented a bomb?" said Johnny. "Well, all right, not a bomb. Something else that'd change history. Any little thing. And you know we left all Bigmac's stuff in the police station?" "Ahem." Yoless removed his hat and produced a watch and a Walkman. "The sergeant was so flustered he forgot to lock the cupboard after he got the siren out," said Yoless. "So I nipped in." "Did you get the jacket?" "Chucked it in a dustbin." "That was mine," said Bigmac reproachfully. "Well, maybe that's all right," Kirsty conceded reluctantly. "But There's bound to be some other changes. We'd better find out pretty fast." "We'd better have a bath, too," said Wobbler. "Your hands have got blood on them," said Johnny. Wobbler looked down vaguely. "Oh, yeah. Well . . . we were pulling at smashedup walls and things," he said. "You know . . . in case there was anyone trapped . . . " "You should've seen him grab his grandad!" said Bigmac. "It was brilliant!" Wobbler looked proud. They met up an hour later in the mall. The burger bar was back to the way it had always been. No-one said anything about it, but from the way he sighed occasionally it was clear that Bigmac was thinking of free burgers every week for the rest of his life. That jogged Johnny's memory. "Oh . . . yes," said Johnny. "Er. We've got this letter . . . for you . . . " He pulled it out. It was crumpled, and covered in vinegar and sooty fingerprints. "Er, It's for you," he repeated. "Someone . . . asked us to give it to you. "Yeah, someone," said Yoless. "Who we don't know who he was," said Bigmac. "A completely mysterious person. So It's no use you asking us questions." Wobbler gave them a suspicious look, and ripped open the envelope. "Go on, what's he say?" said Bigmac. "Who?" said Wobbler. "Y- this mysterious person," said Bigmac. "Dumb stuff," said Wobbler. "Read it yourself." Johnny took the paper that had been in the envelope. It contained a list, numbered from one to ten. "1) I Eat healthy food in moderation", he read. "2) An hour's exercise every day is essential. 3) Invest money wisely in a mixture of-" "What's the point of all this junk? It's the sort of thing grandads say," said Wobbler. "Why'd anyone want to tell me that? You'd have to be some kind of loony to go around telling people that. This was one of those religious blokes that hang around in the mall, right? Huh. I thought it might be something important." Bigmac glanced at the burger bar again, and sighed deeply. "There have been changes," said Kirsty. "Clark Street isn't Clark Street any more. I noticed when I went past. It's Evershott Street." "That's frightening," said Bigmac. "Oooeeeoooeee . . . a street name was mysteriously changed . . . " "I thought it was always Evershott Street," said Yoless. "Me too," said Wobbler. "And that shop over there . . . that used to sell cards and things. Now It's a jeweler's," said Kirsty insistently. The boys craned around to look at it. "It's always been a jeweler's, hasn't it?" said Wobbler. He yawned. "Well, You're an unobservant bunch, I-" Kirsty began. "Hold on," said Johnny. "How did you get all those cuts on your hands, Wobbler? You too, Bigmac." "Well, er, I . . . er . . . " Wobbler's eyes glazed. "We . . . were messing around," said Bigmac. "Weren't we?" "Yeah. Messing around. Somewhere." "Don't you remember-?" Kirsty began. "Forget about it," said Johnny. "Come on, Kirsty, We've got to go." "Where to?" "Visiting time. We've got to see Mrs Tachyon." Kirsty waved a hand frantically at the other three. "But they don't seem to-" "It doesn't matter! Come on!" "They can't just forget!" said Kirsty, as they hurried out of the mall. "They can't just think: "Oh, it was all a dream"!" "I think It's all sort of healing over," said Johnny. "Didn't you see it happening back in 1941? Tom didn't really believe anything that had happened. I bet by now . . . I mean, a few hours after . . . I bet They're remembering . . . I mean, they remembered . . . something different. He ran all the way and got there just in time. Everyone was a bit shocked because of the bombing. Something like that. People have to forget what really happened because . . . well, it didn't happen. Not here." "We can remember what really happened," said Kirsty. "Perhaps that's because You're hyper-intelligent and I'm mega-stupid," said Johnny. "Oh, I wouldn't say that," said Kirsty. "You're being a bit unfair." "Oh. Good." "I meant I wouldn't go so far as to say "hyper". Just "very". Why do we have to see Mrs Tachyon?" "Someone ought to. She's a time-bag-lady," said Johnny. "I think It's all the same to her. Round the corner or 1933, they're all just directions to her. She goes where she likes." "She's mad." They'd reached the hospital steps. Johnny trudged up them. She probably is mad, he thought. Or eccentric, anyway. I mean, if she went to a specialist and he showed her all those cards and ink blots she'd just nick them or something. Yes. Eccentric. But she wouldn't do things like dropping bombs on Paradise Street. You have to be sane to think of things like that. She's totally round the bend. But perhaps she gets a better view from there. It was quite a cheerful thought, in the circumstances. Mrs Tachyon had gone. The ward sister seemed quite angry about it. "Do you know anything about this?" she demanded. "Us?" said Kirsty. "We've just come in. Know about what?" Mrs Tachyon had gone to the lavatory. She'd locked herself in. And in the end They'd had to get someone to take the lock off, in case she'd fallen down in there. She wasn't in there at all. They were three floors up and the window was too small even for someone as skinny as Mrs Tachyon to climb through. "Was there any toilet paper?" said Johnny. The sister gave him a look of deep suspicion. "The whole roll's gone," she said. Johnny nodded. That sounded like Mrs Tachyon. "And the headphones have vanished," said the sister. "Do you know about any of this? You've been visiting her." "That's only been because It's, you know, like a project," said Kirsty, defensively. There was the sound of sensible shoes behind them. They turned out to belong to Ms Partridge the social worker. "I've phoned the police," she said. "Why?" said Johnny. "Well, she- oh, It's you. Well, she . . . needs help. Not that they were any help. They said she always turns up." Johnny sighed. Mrs Tachyon, he suspected, never needed help. If she wanted help she just took it. If she needed a hospital, she went where there was one. She could be anywhere now. "Must have slipped out when no-one was looking," said Ms Partridge. "She couldn't," said the sister stoutly. "We can see the door from here. We're very careful about that sort of thing." "Then she must have vanished into thin air!" said Ms Partridge. Kirsty sidled closer to Johnny while they argued and said, out of the corner of her mouth: "Where did you leave the trolley?" "Behind our garage," said Johnny. "D'you think she's taken it?" "Yes," said Johnny happily. Johnny was quiet on the bus home. They'd gone to the library and he'd wangled a photocopy of the local paper for the day after the raid. There was a picture of people looking very cheerful in the ruins of Paradise Street. Of course, things were pretty faded now, but there was Mrs Density with her goldfish bowl, and Wobbler's grandfather with his bit of bomb and, just behind them, grinning and holding his thumb up, you could just make out Wobbler. It hadn't been a good photo to start with and it hadn't improved with age and he had soot all over his face but, if you knew it was Wobbler, you could see it was him all right. They're all forgetting except me, he thought. I bet even if I showed them the paper They'd say, "Oh yes, that bloke looks like Wobbler, so what?" Because . . . they live here. They've always lived here. In a way. When you travel in time it really happens, but It's like a little loop in a tape. You go round the loop and then carry on from where you were before. And everything that's changed turns out to be history. "You've gone very quiet," said Kirsty. "I was just thinking," said Johnny. "I was thinking that if I showed the others this piece from the paper They'd say, oh, yeah, that looks like ole Wobbler, so what?" Kirsty leaned across. "Oh, yes," she said. "Well? It does look like Wobbler. So what?" Johnny stared out of the window. "I mean," he said, "It's Wobbler in the paper. Remember?" "Remember what?" "Well . . . yesterday?" She wrinkled her forehead. "Didn't we go to some sort of party?" Johnny's heart sank. It all settles down, he thought. That's what's so horrible about time travel. You come back to a different place. You come back to the place where you didn't go in the first place, and it's not your place. Because here was where no-one died in Paradise Street. So here's where I didn't want to go back. So I didn't. So they didn't, either. When the newspaper picture was taken we were back there, but, now we're back here, we never went. So they don't remember because here there's nothing to remember. Here, we did something else. Hung on. Hung around. Here I'm remembering things that never happened. "It's your stop," said Kirsty. "Are you all right?" "No," said Johnny, and got off the bus. It was raining heavily, but he went and checked to see if the trolley was where he'd left it. It wasn't. On the other hand, maybe it had never been there at all. When he went up to his bedroom he could hear the rain drumming on the roof. He'd vaguely hoped that he might have been a different person in this world but there it all was: the same bedroom, the same mess, the same space shuttle on its bit of red wool. The same stuff for the project all over the table. He sat on his bed and watched the rain for a while. He could feel the shadows in the air, hovering around the corners of the room. He'd lost Mrs Tachyon's paper somewhere. That would have been proof. But no-one else would believe it. He could remember it all - the rain on the moor, the thunderstorm, the sting on his whole body when they'd run through time - and it hadn't happened. Not exactly. Normal, dull, boring, everyday life had just poured right in again. Johnny went through his pockets. If only there was something . . . His fingers touched a piece of card . . . The sound of Australian accents from downstairs suggested that his grandad was in. He trailed downstairs and into the little front room. "Grandad?" "Yes?" said his grandfather, who was watching Cobbers. "You know the war-" "Yes?" "You know you said that before you went in the army you were a sort of aircraft spotter-" "Got a medal for it," said his grandfather. He picked up the remote control and switched off the set, which never usually happened. "Showed it you, didn't I? Must've done." "Don't think so," said Johnny, as diplomatically as possible. Before, his grandfather had always told him not to go on about things. His grandfather reached down beside his chair. There was an old wickerwork sewing box there, which had belonged to Johnny's grandmother. It hadn't been used for cotton and needles for a long time, though. It was full of old newspaper cuttings, keys that didn't fit any door in the house, stamps for one half-penny in old money, and all the other stuff that accumulates in odd corners of a house that has been lived in for a long time. Finally, after much grunting, he produced a small wooden box and opened it. "They said they never knew how I done it," he said proudly. "But Mr Hodder and Captain Harris spoke up for me. Oh, yes. Had to be possible, they said, otherwise I couldn't 've done it, could I? The phones'd got hit by lightning and the bike wouldn't start no matter what he yelled so I had to run all the way down into the town. So they had to give it to me "cos they spoke up." Johnny turned the silver medal over in his hands. There was a yellowing bit of paper with it, badly typed by someone who hadn't changed the ribbon on his typewriter for years. "Gallant action . . . " he read, " . . . ensuring the safety of the people of Blackbury . . ." "Some men from the Olympics came to see me after the war," said his grandfather. "But I told them I didn't want any." "How did you do it?" said Johnny. "They said someone's watch must've been wrong," said Grandad. "I don't know about that. I just ran for it. "S'all a bit of a blur now, tell you the truth . . . " He put the medal back in the box. Beside it, held together with an elastic band, was a grubby pack of cards. Johnny took them out and removed the band. They had aircraft on them. Johnny reached into his pocket and took out the five of clubs. It was a lot less worn, but there was no doubt that it was part of the pack. He slipped it under the band and put the pack back in the box. Grandad and Johnny sat and looked at one another for a moment. There was no sound but the rain and the ticking of the mantelpiece clock. Johnny felt the time drip around them, thick as amber . . . Then Grandad blinked, picked up the remote control, and aimed it at the TV. "Anyway, We've all passed a lot of water under the bridge since those days," he said, and that was that. The doorbell rang. Johnny trooped out into the hall. The bell rang again, urgently. Johnny opened the door. "Oh," he said gloomily. "Hello, Kirsty." Rain had plastered her hair to her head. "I ran back from the next stop," she said. "oh. Why?" She held up a pickled onion. "I found it in my pocket. And . . . I remembered. We did go back." "Not back," said Johnny. "It's more like there." The elation rose up inside him like a big pink cloud. "Come on in. "Everything. Even the pickles." "Good!" "I thought I ought to tell you." "Rights." "Do you think Mrs Tachyon will ever find her cat?" Johnny nodded. "Wherever he is," he said. The sergeant and the soldier picked themselves up off the ground and staggered towards the wreckage where the house had been. "That poor old biddy! That poor old biddy!" said the sergeant. "D'you think she might've got out in time?" said the soldier. "That poor old biddy!" "She was sort of close to the wall," moaned the soldier hopefully. "The house isn't there any more! What do you think?" They scrambled through the damp ruins of Paradise Street. "Oh God, There's going to be hell to pay for this. . ." "You're telling me! You shouldn't 've left it unguarded! That poor old biddy!" "D'you know how much sleep We've had this past week? Do you? And we lost Corporal Williams over in Slate! We knocked off for five minutes in the middle of the night, that's all!" A crater lay in front of them. Something bubbled in the bottom. "She got any relatives?" said the soldier. "No. No-one. Been here ages. My dad says he remembers seeing her about sometimes when he was a lad," said the sergeant. He removed his helmet. "Poor old biddy," he said. "That's what you think! Dinner dinner dinner dinner-" They turned. A skinny figure, wearing an old coat over a nightdress, and a woolly hat, ran along the road, expertly steering a wire cart between the mounds of rubble. "-dinner dinner-" The sergeant stared at the soldier. "How did she do that?" "Search me!" "-dinner dinner Batman!" Some way away, Guilty ambled in his sideways fashion through the back streets. He'd had an interesting morning hunting through the remains of Paradise Street, and had passed some quality time during the afternoon in the ruins of the pickle factory, where there were mice, some of them fried. It had been a good day. Around him, Blackbury went back to sleep. There was still a terrible smell of vinegar everywhere. By some miracle of preservation, a large jar of pickled beetroot had been blown right across the town and landed, unbroken and unnoticed, in a civic flowerbed, from whence it had bounced into the gutter. Guilty waited by it, washing himself. After a while he looked up as a familiar squeaking sound came around the corner, and stopped. A hand wearing a woolly glove with the fingers cut out reached down and picked up the jar. There was a series of complicated unscrewing noises, and then a sound like . . . well, like someone eating pickled beetroot until the juice ran down their chin. "Ali," said a voice, and then belched. "That's the stuff to give the troops! Bromide? That's what you think! Laugh? I nearly brought a tractor!" Guilty hopped up onto the trolley. Mrs Tachyon reached up and adjusted the headphones under her bobble hat. She scratched at a surgical dressing. Dratted thing. She'd have to get someone to take it off her, but she knew a decent nurse over in 1917. Then she scrabbled in her pockets and fished out the sixpence the sergeant had given her. She remembered him giving it to her. Mrs Tachyon remembered everything, and had long ago given up wondering whether the things she remembered had already happened or not. Take life as it was going to come was her motto. And if it didn't come, go and fetch it. The past and the future were all the same, but you could get a good feed off of a sixpence, if you knew the right way to do it. She squinted at it in the grey light of dawn. It was a bit old and grubby, but the date was quite clear. It said: 1903. "Tea and buns? That's what you think, Mr Copper!" And she went back to 1903 and spent it on fish and chips. And still had change. THE END About this Title This eBook was created using ReaderWorks®Publisher 2.0, produced by OverDrive, Inc. 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Johnny and the Dead - Terry Pratchett	----	Johnny and the Dead Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt TERRY PRATCHETT JOHNNY AND THE DEAD Chapter I Johnny never knew for certain why he started seeing the dead. The Alderman said it was probably because he was too lazy not to. Most people's minds don't let them see things that might upset them, he said. The Alderman said he should know if anyone did, because he'd spent his whole life (1822-1906) not seeing things. Wobbler Johnson, who was technically Johnny's best friend, said it was because he was mental. But Yo-less, who read medical books, said it was probably because he couldn't focus his mind like normal people. Normal people just ignored almost everything that was going on around them, so that they could concentrate on important things like, well, getting up, going to the lavatory and getting on with their lives. Whereas Johnny just opened his eyes in the morning and the whole universe hit him in the face. Wobbler said this sounded like 'mental' to him. Whatever it was called, what it meant was this. Johnny saw things other people didn't. Like the dead people hanging around in the cemetery. The Alderman - at least, the old Alderman - was a bit snobby about most of the rest of the dead, even about Mr Vicenti, who had a huge black marble grave with angels and a photograph of Mr Vicenti (1897-1958) looking not at all dead behind a little window. The Alderman said Mr Vicenti had been a Capo de Monte in the Mafia. Mr Vicenti told Johnny that, on the contrary, he had spent his entire life being a wholesale novelty salesman, amateur escapologist and children's entertainer, which in a number of important respects was as exactly like not being in the Mafia as it was possible to get. But all this was later. After he'd got to know the dead a lot better. After the raising of the ghost of the Ford Capri. Johnny really discovered the cemetery after he'd started living at Grandad's. This was Phase Three of Trying Times, after the shouting, which had been bad, and the Being Sensible About Things (which had been worse; people are better at shouting). Now his dad was getting a new job somewhere on the other side of the country. There was a vague feeling that it might all work out, now that people had stopped trying to be sensible. On the whole, he tried not to think about it. He'd started using the path along the canal in- stead of going home on the bus, and found that if you climbed over the place where the wall had fallen down, and then went around behind the crematorium, you could cut off half the journey. The graves went right up to the canal's edge. It was one of those old cemeteries you got owls and foxes in and sometimes, in the Sunday papers, people going on about Our Victorian Heritage, although they didn't go on about this one because it was the wrong kind of heritage, being too far from London. Wobbler said it was spooky and sometimes went home the long way, but Johnny was disappointed that it wasn't spookier. Once you sort of put out of your mind what it was — once you forgot about all the skeletons underground, grinning away in the dark - it was quite friendly. Birds sang. All the traffic sounded a long way off. It was peaceful. He'd had to check a few things, though. Some of the older graves had big stone boxes on top, and in the wilder parts these had cracked and even fallen open. He'd had a look inside, just in case. It had been sort of disappointing to find nothing there. And then there were the mausoleums. These were much bigger and had doors in, like little houses. They looked a bit like allotment sheds with extra angels. The angels were generally more lifelike than you'd expect, especially one near the entrance who looked as though he'd just remembered that he should have gone to the toilet before he left heaven. The two boys walked through the cemetery now, kicking up the drifts of fallen leaves. 'It's Halloween next week,' said Wobbler. 'I'm having a disco.- You have to come as something horrible. Don't bother to find a disguise.' 'Thanks,' said Johnny. Page 1 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt 'You notice how there's a lot more Halloween stuff in the shops these days?' said Wobbler. 'It's because ofBonfire Night,' said Johnny. 'Too many people were blowing themselves up with fireworks, so they invented Halloween, where you just wear masks and stuff' 'Mrs Nugent says all that sort of thing is tampering with the occult,' said Wobbler. Mrs Nugent was the Johnsons' next door neighbour, and known to be unreasonable on subjects like Madonna played at full volume at 3 a.m. 'Probably it is,' said Johnny. 'She says witches are abroad on Halloween,' said Wobbler. 'What?' Johnny's forehead wrinkled. 'Like . . . Marjorca and places?' 'Suppose so,' said Wobbler. 'Makes . . . sense, I suppose. They probably get special out-of-season bargains, being old ladies,' said Johnny. 'My aunt can go anywhere on the buses for almost nothing and she's not even a witch.' 'Don't see why Mrs Nugent is worried, then,' said Wobbler. 'It ort to be a lot safer round here, with all the witches on holiday.' They passed a very ornate mausoleum, which even had little stained-glass windows. It was hard to imagine who'd want to see in, but then, it was even harder to imagine who'd want to look out. 'Shouldn't like to be on the same plane as 'em,' said Wobbler, who'd been thinking hard. 'Just think, p'raps you can only afford to go on holiday in the autumn, and you get on the plane, 10 and there's all these old witches going abroad.' 'Singing "Here we go, here we go, here we go"?' said Johnny. 'And "Viva a spanner"?' 'But I bet you'd get really good service in the hotel,' said Johnny. 'Yeah.' 'Funny, really,' said Johnny. 'What?' ' I saw a thing in a book once,' said Johnny,' about these people in Mexico or somewhere, where they all go down to the cemetery for a big fiesta at Halloween every year. Like, they don't see why people should be left out of things just because they're dead.' 'Yuk. A picnic? In the actual cemetery?' 'Yes.' 'Reckon you'd get green glowing hands pushing up through the earth and nicking the sarnies?' 'Don't think so. Anyway . . . they don't eat sarnies in Mexico. They eat tort . . . something.' 'Tortoises.' 'Yeah?' 'I bet,' said Wobbler, looking around, 'I bet . . . I bet you wouldn't dare knock on one of those doors. I bet you'd hear dead people lurchin' about inside/ 'Why do they lurch?' Wobbler thought about this. 'They always lurch,' he said. 'Dunno why. I've seen them in videos. And they can push their way through walls.' 'Why?' said Johnny. ii 'Why what?' 'Why push their way through walls? I mean . . . living people can't do that. Why should dead people do it?' Wobbler's mother was very easy-going in the matter of videos. According to him, he was allowed to watch ones which even people aged a hundred had to watch with their parents. 'Don't know,' he said. 'They're usually very angry about something.' 'Being dead, you mean?' 'Probably,' said Wobbler. 'It can't be much of a life.' Johnny thought about this that evening, after meeting the Alderman. The only dead people he had known had been Mr Page, who 'd died in hospi- tal of something, and his great-grandmother, who'd been ninety-six and had just generally died. Neither of Page 2 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt them had been particularly angry people. His great-grandmother had been a bit confused about things, but never angry. He'd visited her in Sun- shine Acres, when she watched a lot of television and waited for the next meal to turn up. And Mr Page had walked around quietly, the only man in the street still at home in the middle of the day. They didn't seem the sort of people who would get up after being dead just to dance with Michael Jackson. And the only thing his great-grandmother would have pushed her way through walls for would be a television that she could watch without having to fight fifteen other old ladies for the remote control. 12 It seemed to Johnny that a lot of people were getting things all wrong. He said this to Wobbler. Wobbler disagreed. 'It's prob'ly all different from a dead point of view,' he said. Now they were walking along West Avenue. The cemetery was laid out like a town, with streets. They weren't named very originally — North Drive and South Walk joined West Avenue, for example, at a little gravelled area with seats in. A kind of city centre. But the silence of the big Victorian mausoleums made the place look as though it was having the longest early-closing day in the world. 'My dad says this is all going to be built on,' said Wobbler. 'He said the Council sold it to some big company for fivepence because it was costing so much to keep it going.' 'What, all of it?' said Johnny. 'That's what he said,' said Wobbler. Even he looked a bit uncertain. 'He said it was a scandal.' 'Even the bit with the poplar trees?' 'All of it,' said Wobbler. 'It's going to be offices or something.' Johnny looked at the cemetery. It was the only open space for miles. 'I'd have given them at least a pound,' he said. 'Yes, but you wouldn't have been able to build things on it,' said Wobbler. 'That's the important thing.' 'I wouldn't want to build anything on it. I'd have given them a pound just to leave it as it is. 'Yes,' said Wobbler, the voice of reason, 'but people have got to work somewhere. We Need jobs.' 'I bet the people here won't be very happy about it,' said Johnny. 'If they knew.' 'I think they get moved somewhere else,' said Wobbler. 'It's got to be something like that. Other- wise you'll never dare dig your garden.' Johnny looked up at the nearest tomb. It was one of the ones that looked like a shed built of marble. Bronze lettering over the door said: ALDERMAN THOMAS BOWLER 1822-1906 Pro Bono Publico There was a stone carving of - presumably - the Alderman himself, looking seriously into the distance as if he, too, was wondering what Pro Bono Publico meant. 'I bet he'd be pretty angry,' said Johnny. He hesitated for a moment, and then walked up the couple of broken steps to the metal door, and knocked on it. He never did know why he'd done that. 'Here, you mustn't!' hissed Wobbler. 'Supposing he comes lurchin' out! Anyway,' he said, lowering his voice a bit, 'it's wrong to try to talk to the dead. It can lead to satanic practices, it said on television.' 'Don't see why,' said Johnny. He knocked again. And the door opened. Alderman Thomas Bowler blinked in the sun- light, and then glared at Johnny. 'Yes?' he said. Johnny turned and ran for it. Wobbler caught him up halfway along North Drive. Wobbler wasn't normally the athletic type, and his speed would have surprised quite a lot of people who knew him. 'What happened? What happened?' he panted. 'Didn't you see?' said Johnny. Page 3 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt 'I didn't see anything!' 'The door opened!' 'It never!' 'It did!' Wobbler slowed down. 'No, it didn't,' he muttered. 'No one of 'em can open. I've looked at 'em. They've all got padlocks on.' 'To keep people out or keep people in?' said Johnny. A look of panic crossed Wobbler's face. Since he had a big face, this took some time. He started to run again. 'You're just trying to wind me up!' he yelled. 'I'm not going to hang around practising being satanic! I'm going home!' He turned the corner into East Way and sprinted towards the main gate. Johnny slowed down. He thought: padlocks. It was true, actually. He'd noticed it in the past. All the mausoleums had locks on them, to stop vandals getting in. And yet . . . and yet . . . If he shut his eyes he could see Alderman Thomas Bowler. Not one of the lurchin' dead from out of Wobbler's videos, but a huge fat man in a fur-trimmed robe and a gold chain and a hat with corners on. He stopped running and then, slowly, walked back the way he had come. There was a padlock on the door of the Alder- man's tomb. It had a rusty look. It was the talking to Wobbler that did it, Johnny decided. It had given him silly ideas. He knocked again, anyway. 'Yes?' said Alderman Thomas Bowler. 'Er . . . hah . . . sorry. . .' 'What do you want?' 'Are you dead? The Alderman raised his eyes to the bronze letters over the door. 'See what it says up there?' he said. 'Er . . . ' 'Nineteen hundred and six, it says. It was a very good funeral, I understand. I didn't attend, myself The Alderman gave this some thought. 'Rather, I did, but not in any position where I could observe events. I believe the vicar gave a very moving sermon. What was it you were wanting?' 'Er.. .'Johnny looked around desperately. 'What ... er ... what does Pro Bono Publico mean? 'For the Public Good,' said the Alderman. 16 'Oh. Well . . . thank you.'Johnny backed away. 'Thank you very much.' 'Was that all?' 'Er . . . yes.' The Alderman nodded sadly. 'I didn't think it'd be anything important,' he said. 'I haven't had a visitor since nineteen twenty-three. And then they'd got the name wrongJ They weren't even relatives. And they were American. Oh, well. Goodbye, then.' Johnny hesitated. I could turn around now, he thought, and go home. And if I turn around, I'll never find out what happens next. I'll go away and I'll never know why it happened now and what would have happened next. I'll go away and grow up and get a job and get married and have children and become a grandad and retire and take up bowls and go into Sunshine Acres and watch daytime television until I die, and I'll never know. And he thought: perhaps I did. Perhaps that all happened and then, just when I was dying, some kind of angel turned up and said would you like a wish? And I said, yes, I'd like to know what would have happened if I hadn't run away, and the angel said, OK, you can go back. And here I am, back again. I can't let myself down. The world waited. Johnny took a step forward. 'You're dead, right?' he said slowly. 'Oh, yes. It's one of those things one is pretty certain about.' 'You don't look dead. I mean, I thought. . . you know . . . coffins and things Page 4 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt ..." 'Oh, there's all that,' said the Alderman, airily, 'and then there's this, too.' 'You're a ghost?'Johnny was rather relieved. He could come to terms with a ghost. 'I should hope I've got more pride than that,' said the Alderman. 'My friend Wobbler'11 be really amazed to meet you,' said Johnny. A thought crossed his mind. 'You're no good at dancing, are you?' he said. 'I used to be able to waltz quite well,' said the Alderman. 'I meant . . . sort of. . . like this,' said Johnny. He gave the best impression he could remem- ber of Michael Jackson dancing. 'Sort of with your feet,' he said apologetically. 'That looks grand,' said Alderman Tom Bowler. 'Yes, and you have to have a glittery glove on one hand—' 'That's important, is it?' 'Yes, and you have to say "Ow!"' 'I should think anyone would, dancing like that,' said the Alderman. 'No, I mean like "Oooowwwwweeeeeah!", with Johnny stopped. He realized that he was getting a bit carried away. 'But, look,' he said, stopping at the end of a groove in the gravel. 'I don't see how you can be dead and walking and talking at the same time ..." 'That's probably all because of relativity,' said the 18 Alderman. He moonwalked stiffly across the path. 'Like this, was it? Otich!' 'A bit,' said Johnny, kindly. 'Um. What do you mean about relativity?' 'Einstein explains all that quite well,' said the Alderman. 'What, Albert Einstein?' said Johnny. 'Who?' 'He was a famous scientist. He . . . invented the speed of light and things.' 'Did he? I meant Solomon Einstein. He was a famous taxidermist in Cable Street. Stuffing dead animals, you know. I think he invented some kind of machine for making glass eyes. Got knocked down by a motor car in nineteen thirty-two. But a very keen thinker, all the same.' 'I never knew that,' said Johnny. He looked around. It was getting darker. 'I think I'd better be getting home,' he said, and began to back away. 'I think I'm getting the hang of this,' said the Alderman, moonwalking back across the path. Til ... er ... I'll see you again. Perhaps,' said Johnny. 'Call any time you like,' said the Alderman, as Johnny walked away as quickly yet politely as possible. 'I'm always in.' 'Always in,' he added. 'That's something you learn to be good at, when you're dead. Er. Eeeeyooowh, was it?' Chapter 2 Johnny raised the subject of the cemetery after tea. 'It's disgusting, what the Council are doing,' said his grandfather. 'But the cemetery costs a lot to keep up,' said his mother. 'No-one visits most of the graves now, except old Mrs Tachyon, and she's barmy.' 'Not visiting graves has nothing to do with it, girl. Anyway, there's history in there.' 'Alderman Thomas Bowler,' said Johnny. 'Never heard of him. I was referring,' said his grandfather, 'to William Stickers. There was very nearly a monument to him. There would have been a monument to him. Everyone round here donated money, only someone ran off with it. And I'd given sixpence.' 'Was he famous?' 'Nearly famous. Nearly famous. You've heard of Karl Marx?' 'He invented communism, didn't he?' said Johnny. 'Right. Well, William Stickers didn't. But he'd have been Karl Marx if Karl Marx hadn't beaten him to it. Tell you what . . . tomorrow, I'll show you.' 20 It was tomorrow. Page 5 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt It was raining softly out of a dark grey sky. Grandad and Johnny stood in front of a large gravestone which read: William Stickers 1897-1949 Workers of the World Unit 'A great man,' said Grandad. He had taken his cap off. 'What was the World Unit?' said Johnny. 'It should have been unite,' said Grandad. 'They ran out of money before they did the "E". It was a scandal. He was a hero of the working class. He would have fought in the Spanish Civil War except he got on the wrong boat and ended up in Hull.' Johnny looked around. 'Um,' he said. 'What sort of a man was he?' 'A hero of the proletariat, like I said.' 'I mean, what did he look like?' said Johnny. 'Was he quite big with a huge black beard and gold-rimmed spectacles?' 'That's right. Seen pictures, have you?' 'No,' said Johnny. 'Not exactly.' Grandad put his cap back on. 'I'm going down to the shops,' he said. 'Want to come?' 'No, thanks. Er ... I'm going round to Wob- bler's house.' 21 'Righto.' Grandad wandered off towards the main gate. Johnny took a deep breath. 'Hello,' he said. 'It was a scandal, them not giving me the "E",' said William Stickers. He stopped leaning against his memorial. 'What's your name, comrade?' 'John Maxwell,' said Johnny. 'I knew you could see me,' said William Stickers. 'I could see you looking right at me while the old man was talking.' 'I could tell you were you,' said Johnny. 'You look . . . um . . . thinner.' He wanted to say: not thin like in thick. Just. . . not all there. Transparent. He said, 'Um.' And then he said, 'I don't under- stand this. You are dead, right? Some kind of... ghost?' 'Ghost?' said dead William Stickers angrily. 'Well . . . spirit, then.' 'There's no such thing. A relic of an outmoded belief system.' 'Um, only. . . you're talking to me . . .' 'It's a perfectly understandable scientific phenomenon,' said William Stickers. 'Never let superstition get in the way of rational thought, boy. It's time for Mankind to put old cul- tural shibboleths aside and step into the bright socialist dawn. What year is it?' 'Nineteen ninety-three,' said Johnny. 'Ah! And have the downtrodden masses risen 22 up to overthrow the capitalist oppressors in the glorious name of communism?' 'Um. Sorry?' Johnny hesitated, and then a few vague memories slid into place. 'You mean like . . . Russia and stuff? When they shot the Tsar? There was something on television about that.' 'Oh, I know that. That was just the start. What's been happening since nineteen forty-nine? I ex- pect the global revolution is well established, yes? No-one tells us anything in here.' 'Well . . . there's been a lot of revolutions, I think,' said Johnny. 'All over the place ..." 'Capital!' 'Um.' It occurred to Johnny that people doing quite a lot of the revolutions-recently had said they were overthrowing communist oppressors, but William Stickers looked so eager he didn't quite know how to say this. 'Tell you what . . . can you read a newspaper if I bring you one?' 'Of course. But it's hard to turn the pages.' 'Um. Are there a lot of you in here?' Page 6 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt 'Hah! Most of them don't bother. They just aren't prepared to make the effort.' 'Can you . . . you know . . . walk around? You could get into things for free.' William Stickers looked slightly panicky. 'It's hard to go far,' he mumbled. 'It's not really allowed.' 'I read in a book once that ghosts can't move much,' said Johnny. 'Ghost? I'm just . . . dead.' He waved a trans- parent finger in the air. 'Hah! But they're not getting me that way,' he snapped. 'Just because it turns out that I'm still . . . here after I'm dead, doesn't mean I'm prepared to believe in the whole stupid nonsense, you know. Oh, no. Logical, rational thought, boy. And don't forget the newspaper.' William Stickers faded away a bit at a time. The last thing to go was the finger, still demonstrating its total disbelief in life after death. Johnny waited around a bit, but no other dead people seemed to be ready to make an appearance. He felt he was being watched in some way that had nothing to do with eyes. It wasn't exactly creepy, but it was uncomfortable. You didn't dare scratch your bottom or pick your nose. For the first time he really began to notice the cemetery. It had a leftover look, really. Behind it there was the canal, which wasn't used any more, except as a rubbish dump; old prams and busted televisions and erupting settees lined its banks like monsters from the Garbage Age. Then on one side there was the crematorium and its Garden of Remembrance, which was all right in a gravel-pathed, keep-off-the-grass sort of way. In front was Cemetery Road, which had once had houses on the other side of it; now there was the back wall of the Bonanza Carpet (Save £££££11) Warehouse. There was still an old phone box and a letter box, which suggested that once upon a time this had been a place that people thought of as home. But now it was just a road you cut through to get to the bypass from the industrial estate. 24 On the fourth side was nothing much except a wasteground of fallen brick and one tall chimney - all that remained of the Blackbury Rubber Boot Company ('If It's a Boot, It's a Blackbury' had been one of the most famously stupid slogans in the world.) Johnny vaguely remembered there'd been some- thing in the papers. People had been protesting about something - but then, they always were. There was always so much news going on you never had time to find out anything important. He walked round to the old factory site. Bull- dozers were parked around it now, although they were all empty. There was a wire fence which had been broken down here and there despite the notices about Guard Dogs on Patrol. Perhaps the guard dogs had broken out. And there was a big sign, showing the office building that was going to be built on the site. It was beautiful. There were fountains in front of it, and quite old trees carefully placed here and there, and neat people standing chatting outside it. And the sky above it was a glorious blue, which was pretty unusual for Blackbury, where most of the time the sky was that odd, soapy colour you'd get if you lived in a Tupperware box. Johnny stared at it for some time, while the rain fell in the real world and the blue sky glittered on the sign. It was pretty obvious that the building was going to take up more room than the site of the old boot factory. The words above the picture said, 'An Exciting Development for United Amalagamated Consoli- dated Holdings: Forward to the Future!' Johnny didn't feel very excited, but he did feel that 'Forward to the Future' was even dafter than 'If It's a Boot, It's a Blackbury'. Before school next day he pinched the newspaper and tucked it out of sight behind William Sticker's grave. He felt more daft than afraid. He wished he could talk to someone about it. He didn't have anyone to talk to. But he did have three people to talk with. There were various gangs and alliances in the school, such as the sporty group, and the bright kids, and the Computer Club Nerds. And then there was Johnny, and Wobbler, and Bigmac, who said he was the last of the well hard skinheads but was actually a skinny kid with short hair and flat feet Page 7 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt and asthma who had difficulty even walking in Doc Martens, and there was Yo- less, who was technically black. But at least they listened, during break, on the bit of Avail between the school kitchens and the library. It was where they normally hung out — or at least, hung around. 'Ghosts,' said Yo-less, when he'd finished. 'No-oo,' said Johnny uncertainly. 'They don't like being called ghosts. It upsets them, for some reason. They're just . . . dead. I suppose it's like not calling people handicapped or backward.' 26 'Politically incorrect,' said Yo-less. 'I read about that.' 'You mean they want to be called,' Wobbler paused for thought, 'post-senior citizens.' 'Breathily challenged,' said Yo-less. 'Vertically disadvantaged,' said Wobbler. 'What? You mean they're short?' said Yo-less. 'Buried,' said Wobbler. 'How about zombies?' said Bigmac. 'No, you've got to have a body to be a zom- bie,' said Yo-less. 'You're not really dead, you just get fed this secret voodoo mixture of fish and roots and you turn into a zombie.' 'Wow. What mixture?' 'I don't know. How should I know? Just some kind offish and some kind of root.' 'I bet it's a real adventure going down the chippie in voodoo country,' said Wobbler. 'Well, you ought to know about voodoo,' said Bigmac. 'Why?' said Yo-less. ' 'Cos you're West Indian, right?' 'Do you know all about druids?' 'No.' 'There you are, then.' 'I 'spect your mum knows about it, though,' said Bigmac. 'Shouldn't think so. My mum spends more time in church than the Pope,' said Yo-less. 'My mum spends more time in church than God.' 'You're not taking this seriously,' said Johnny severely. 'I really saw them.' 'It might be something wrong with your eyes,' said Yo-less. 'Perhaps there's a—' ' I saw this old film once, about a man with X-ray eyes,' said Bigmac. 'He could use 'em to see right through things.' 'Women's clothes and stuff?' enquired Wobbler. 'There wasn't much of that,' said Bigmac. They discussed this waste of a useful talent. 'I don't see through anything,' said Johnny, eventually. 'I just see people who aren't ther— I mean, people other people don't see.' 'My uncle used to see things other people couldn't see,' said Wobbler. 'Especially on a Saturday night.' 'Don't be daft. I'm trying to be serious.' 'Yeah, but once you said you'd seen a Loch Ness Monster in your goldfish pond,' said Bigmac. 'All right, but—' 'Probably just a plesiosaur,' said Yo-less. 'Just some old dinosaur that ought to've been extinct seventy million years ago. Nothing special at all.'" 'Yes, but—' 'And then there was the Lost City of the Incas,' said Wobbler. 'Well, I found it, didn't I?' 'Yes, but it wasn't that lost,' said Yo-less. 'Behind Tesco's isn't exactly lost.' Bigmac sighed. 'You're all weird,' he said. 'All right,' said Johnny. 'You all come down there after school, right?' 'Well—' Wobbler began, and shifted uneasily. 28 'Not scared, are you?' said Johnny. He knew that was unfair, but he was annoyed. 'You ran away before,' he said, 'when the Alderman came out.' Page 8 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt 'I never saw no Alderman,' said Wobbler. 'Any- way, I wasn't scared. I ran away to wind you up.' 'You certainly had me fooled,' said Johnny. 'Me? Scared? I watched Night of the Killer Zom- bies three times — with freeze frame,' said Wobbler. 'All right, then. You come. All three of you come. After school.' 'After Cobbers,' said Bigmac. 'Look, this is a lot more important than—' 'Yes, but tonight Janine is going to tell Mick that Doraleen took Ron's surfboard—' Johnny hesitated. 'All right, then,' he said. 'After Cobbers.' 'And then I promised to help my brother load up his van,' said Bigmac. 'Well, not exactly promised ... he said he'd rip my arms off if I didn't.' 'And I've got to do some Geography home- work,' said Yo-less. 'We haven't got any,' said Johnny. 'No, but I thought if I did an extra essay on rainforests I could pull up my marks average,' said Yo-less. There was nothing odd about this, if you were used to Yo-less. Yo-less wore school uniform. Ex- cept that it wasn't really school uniform. Well, all right, technically it was school uniform, because everyone got these bits of paper at the start of every year saying what the school uniform was, but no-one ever wore it much, except for Yo-less, and 29 so if hardly anyone else was wearing it, Wobbler said, how could it be a uniform? Whereas, said Wobbler, since at any one time nearly everyone was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, then really jeans and T-shirt were the real school uniform and Yo-less should be sent home for not wearing it. 'Tell you what,' said Johnny. 'Let's meet up later, then. Six o'clock. We can meet at Bigmac's place. That's right near the cemetery, anyway.' 'But it'll be getting dark,' said Wobbler. 'Well?' said Johnny. 'You're not scared, are you?' 'Me? Scared? Huh! Me? Scared? Me? Scared?' If you had to be somewhere frightening when it got dark, Johnny thought, the Joshua N'Clement block rated a lot higher on the Aaargh scale than any cemetery. At least the dead didn't mug you. It was originally going to be the Sir Alec Douglas- Home block, and then it became the Harold Wilson block, and then finally the new Council named it the Joshua Che N'Clement block after a famous freedom fighter, who then became president of his country, and who was now being an ex-freedom fighter and president somewhere in Switzerland while some of his countrymen tried to find him and ask him questions like: What happened to the two hundred million dollars we thought we had, and how come your wife owned seven hundred hats? The block had been described in 1965 as' an over- whelming and dynamic relationship of voids and solids, majestic in its uncompromising simplicity'. Often the Blackbury Guardian had pictures of people complaining about the damp, or the cold, or the way the windows fell out in high winds (it was always windy around the block, even on a calm day everywhere else), or the way gangs roamed its dank passageways and pushed shopping trolleys off the roof into the Great Lost Shop- ping Trolley Graveyard. The lifts hadn't worked properly since 1966. They lurked in the basement, too scared to go anywhere else. The passages and walkways ('an excitingly brutal brushed concrete finish') had two smells, depend- ing on whether or not the Council's ninja caretaker had been round in his van. The other one was disinfectant. No-one liked the Joshua N'Clement block. There were two schools of thought about what should be done with it. The people who lived there thought everyone should be taken out and then the block should be blown up, and the people who lived near the block just wanted it blown up. The odd thing was that although the block was cramped and fourteen storeys high, it had been built in the middle of a huge area of what was theoreti- cally grass ('environmental open space'), but which was now the home of the Common Crisp Packet and Hardy-Perennial Burned-Out Car. 'Horrible place,' said Wobbler. Page 9 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt 'People've got to live somewhere,' said Yo-less. 'Reckon the man who designed it lives here?' said Johnny. 'Shouldn't think so.' 'I'm not going too near Bigmac's brother,' said Wobbler. 'He's a nutter. He's got tattoos and every- thing. And everyone knows he pinches stuff" Videos and things. Out of factories. And he killed Bigmac's hamster when he was little. And he chucks his stuff out of the window when he's angry. And if Glint's been let out—' Glint was Bigmac's brother's dog, which had reputedly been banned from the Rottweiler/Pit Bull Terrier Crossbreed Club for being too nasty. 'Poor old Bigmac,' said Johnny. 'No wonder he's always sending off for martial arts stuff.' 'I reckon he wants to join the Army so's he can bring his gun home one weekend,' said Yo- less. Wobbler looked up apprehensively at the huge towering bulk of the block. 'Huh! Bringing his tank home'd be favourite,' he said. Bigmac's brother's van was parked in what had been designed as the washing-drying area. Both the doors and the front wing were different colours. Glint was in the front seat, chained to the steering wheel. The van was the one vehicle that could be left unlocked anywhere near Joshua N'Clement. 'Weird, really,' said Johnny. 'When you think about it, I mean.' 'What is?' said Yo-less. 'Well, there's a huge cemetery for dead people, and all the living people are crammed up in that thing,' said Johnny. 'I mean, it sounds like someone got something Wrong . . .' Bigmac emerged from the block, carrying a stack of cardboard boxes. He nodded hopelessly at Johnny, and put the boxes in the back of the van. 'Yo, duds,' he said. 'Where's your brother?' 'He's upstairs. Come on, let's go.' 'Before he comes down, you mean,' said Wobbler. 'Shut up.' The breeze moved in the poplar trees, and whis- pered around the antique urns and broken stones. 'I don't know as this is right,' said Wobbler, when the four of them had gathered by the gate. 'There's crosses all over the place,' said Yo-less. 'Yes, but I'm an atheist,' said Wobbler. 'Then you shouldn't believe in ghosts—' 'Post-living citizens,' Bigmac corrected him. 'Bigmac?' said Johnny. 'Yeah?' 'What're you holding behind your back?' 'Nothing.' Wobbler craned to see. 'It's a bit of sharpened wood,' he reported. 'And a hammer.' 'Bigmac!' 'Well, you never know—' 'Leave them here!' 'Oh, all right.' 'Anyway, it's not stakes for ghosts. That's for vampires,' said Yo-less. 'Oh, thank you,' said Wobbler. 'Look, this is just the cemetery,' said Johnny. 33 'It's got by-laws and things! It's not Transylvania! There's just dead people here! That doesn't make it scary, does it? Dead people are people who were living once! You wouldn't be so daft if there were living people buried here, would you?' They set off along North Drive. It was amazing how sounds died away in the cemetery. There was only a set of overgrown iron railings and some unpruned trees between them and the road, but noises were suddenly cut right down, as if they were being heard through a blanket. In- stead, silence seemed to pour in — pour up, Johnny thought - like breathable Page 10 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt water. It hissed. In the cemetery, silence made a noise. The gravel crunched underfoot. Some of the more recent graves had a raised area in front of them which someone had thought would be a good idea to cover with little green stones. Now, tiny rockery plants were flourishing. A crow cawed in one of the trees, unless it was a rook. It didn't really break the silence. It just underlined it. 'Peaceful, isn't it,' said Yo-less. 'Quiet as the grave,' said Bigmac. 'Hah, hah.' 'A lot of people come for walks here,' said Johnny. 'I mean, the park's miles away, and all there is there is grass. But this place has got tons of bushes and plants and trees and, and—' 'Environment,' said Yo-less. 'And probably some ecology as well,' said Johnny. 'Hey, look at this grave,' said Wobbler. 34 They looked. It had a huge raised archway made of carved black marble, and a lot of angels wound around it, and a Madonna, and a faded photograph in a little glass window under the name: Antonio Vicenti (1897-1958). It looked like a kind of Rolls-Royce of a grave. 'Yeah. Dead impressive,' said Bigmac. 'Why bother with such a big stone arch?' said Yo-less. 'It's just showing off,' said Yo-less. 'There's probably a sticker on the back saying "My Other Grave Is A Porch".' 'Yo-less!' said Johnny. 'Actually, I think that was very funny,' said Mr Vicenti. 'He is a very funny boy.' Johnny turned, very slowly. There was a man in black clothes leaning on the grave. He had neat black hair, plastered down, and a carnation in his buttonhole and a slightly grey look, as if the light wasn't quite right. 'Oh,' said Johnny. 'Hello.' 'And what is the joke, exactly?' said Mr Vicenti, in a very solemn voice. He stood very politely with his hands clasped in front of him, like an old-fashioned shop assistant. 'Well, you can get these stickers for cars, you see, and they say "My Other Car is A Porsche",' said Johnny. 'It's not a very good joke,' he added quickly. 'A Porsche is a kind of car?' said dead Mr Vicenti. 'Yes. Sorry. I didn't think he should joke about things like that.' 35 'Back in the old country I used to do magical entertainment for kiddies,' said Mr Vicenti. 'With doves and similar items. On Saturdays. At parties. The Great Vicenti and Ethel. I like to laugh.' 'The old country?' said Johnny. 'The alive country.' The three boys were watching Johnny carefully. 'You don't fool us,' said Wobbler. 'There's - there's no-one there.' 'And I did escapology, too,' said Mr Vicenti, ab- sent-mindedly pulling an egg from Yo-less's ear. 'You're just talking to the air,' said Yo-less. 'Escapology?' said Johnny. Here we go again, he thought. The dead always want to talk about themselves ... 'What?' said Bigmac. 'Escaping from things.' Mr Vicenti cracked the egg. The ghost of a dove flew away, and vanished as it reached the trees. 'Sacks and chains and handcuffs and so on. Like the Great Houdini? Only in a semi-professional way, of course. My greatest trick involved getting out of a locked sack underwater while wearing twenty feet of chain and three pairs of handcuffs.' 'Gosh, how often did you do that?' said Johnny. 'Nearly once,' said Mr Vicenti. 'Come on,' said Wobbler. 'Joke over. No-one's taken in. Come on. Time's getting on.' 'Shut up, this is interesting,' said Johnny. He was aware of a rustling noise around him, like someone walking very slowly Page 11 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt through dead leaves. 'And you're John Maxwell,' said Mr Vicenti. 'The Alderman told us about you.' 'Us?' The rustling grew louder. Johnny turned. 'He's not joking,' said Yo-less. 'Look at his face!' I mustn't be frightened, Johnny told himself I mustn't be frightened! Why should I be frightened? These are just . . . post-life citizens. A few years ago they were just mowing lawns and putting up Christmas decora- tions and being grandparents and things. They're nothing to be frightened of The sun was well behind the poplar trees. There was a bit of mist on the ground. And, walking slowly towards him, through its coils, were the dead. 37 Chapter 3 There was the Alderman, and William Stickers, and an old woman in a long dress and a hat covered in fruit, and some small children running on ahead, and dozens, hundreds of others. They didn't lurch. They didn't ooze any green. They just looked grey, and very slightly out of focus. You notice things when you're terrified. Little details grow bigger. He realized there were differences among the dead. Mr Vicenti had looked almost . . . well, alive. William Stickers was slightly more colourless. The Alderman was definitely transparent around the edges. But many of the others, in Victorian clothes and odd assortments of coats and breeches from earlier ages, were almost completely with- out colour and almost without substance, so that they were little more than shaped air, but air that walked. It wasn't that they had faded. It was just that they were further away, in some strange di- rection that had nothing much to do with the normal three. Wobbler and the other two were still staring at him. 'Johnny? You all right?' said Wobbler. Johnny remembered a piece about over popu- lation in a school Geography book. For everyone who was alive today, it said, there were twenty historical people, all the way back to when people had only just become people. Or, to put it another way, behind every living person were twenty dead ones. Quite a lot of them were behind Wobbler. Johnny didn't feel it would be a good idea to point this out, though. 'It's gone all cold,' said Bigmac. 'We ought to be getting back,' said Wobbler, his voice shaking. 'I ought to be doing my homework.' Which showed he was frightened. It'd take zom- bies to make Wobbler prefer to do homework. 'You can't see them, can you,' said Johnny. 'They're all around us, but you can't see them.' 'The living can't generally see the dead,' said Mr Vicenti. 'It's for their own good, I expect.' The three boys had drawn closer together. 'Come on, stop mucking about,' said Bigmac. 'Huh,' said Wobbler. 'He's just trying to spook us. Huh. Like Dead Man's Hand at parties. Huh. Well, it's not working. I'm off home. Come on, you lot.' He turned and walked a few steps. 'Hang on,' said Yo-less. 'There's something odd—' He looked around at the empty cemetery. The rook had flown away, unless it was a crow. 'Something odd,' he mumbled. 39 'Look,' said Johnny. 'They're here! They're all around us!' Til tell my mum of you!' said Wobbler. 'This is practising bein' satanic again!' 'John Maxwell!' boomed the Alderman. 'We must talk to you!' 'That's right!' shouted William Stickers. 'This is important!' 'What about?' said Johnny. He was balancing on his fear, and he felt oddly calm. Page 12 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt The funny thing was, when you were on top of your fear you were a little bit taller. 'This!' said William Stickers, waving the newspaper. Wobbler gasped. There was a rolled-up news- paper floating in the air. 'Poltergeist activity!' he said. He waved a shaking finger at Johnny. 'You get that around adolescents! I read something in a magazine! Saucepans flying through the air and stuff! His head'11 spin round in a minute!' 'What is the fat boy talking about?' said the Alderman. 'And what is Dead Man's Hand?' said Mr Vicenti. 'There's probably a scientific explanation,' said Yo-less, as the newspaper fluttered through the air. 'What?' said Bigmac. 'I'm trying to think of one!' 'It's holding itself open!' William Stickers opened the paper. 40 'It's probably just a freak wind!' said Yo-less, backing away. 'I can't feel any wind!' 'That's why it's freaky!' 'What are you going to do about this?' the Alderman demanded. 'Excuse me, but this Dead Man's Hand. What is it?' 'Will everyone SHUT UP?' said Johnny. Even the dead obeyed. 'Right,' he said, settling down a bit. 'Um. Look, um, you lot, these . . . people . . . want to talk to us. Me, anyway—' Yo-less, Wobbler and Bigmac were staring in- tently at the newspaper. It hung, motionless, more than a metre above the ground. 'Are they... the breath-impaired?' said Wobbler. 'Don't be daft! That sounds like asthma,' said Yo-less. 'Come on. If you mean it, say it. Come right out with it. Are they . . .' He looked around at the darkening landscape, and hesitated. 'Er . . . post-senior citizens?' 'Are they lurching?' said Wobbler. Now he and the other two were so close that they looked like one very wide person with six legs. 'You didn't tell us about this,' said the Alderman. 'This what?' said Johnny. 'In the newspaper. Well, it is called a newspaper. But it has pictures of women in the altogether! Which may well be seen by respectable married women and young children!' William Stickers was, with great effort, holding the paper open at the Entertainment Section. Johnny craned to read it. There was a rather poor photo of a couple of girls at Blackbury Swimming Pool and Leisure Centre. 'They've got swimsuits on,' he said. 'Swimming suits? But I can see almost all of their legs!' the Alderman roared. 'Nothing wrong with that at all,' snapped the elderly woman in the huge fruity hat. 'Healthy bodies enjoying calisthenics in the God-given sun- light. And very practical clothing, I may say.' 'Practical, madam? I dread to think for what!' Mr Vicenti leaned towards Johnny. 'The lady in the hat is Mrs Sylvia Liberty,' he whispered. 'Died nineteen fourteen. Tireless suffragette.' 'Suffragette?' said Johnny. 'Don't they teach you that sort of thing now? They campaigned for votes for women. They used to chain themselves to railings and chuck eggs at policemen and throw themselves under the Prince of Wales's horse on Derby days.' 'Wow.' 'But Mrs Liberty got the instructions wrong and threw herself under the Prince of Wales.' 'What?' 'Killed outright,' said Mr Vicenti. He clicked his disapproval. 'He was a very heavy man, I believe.' 'When you two have ceased this bourgeois ar- guing,' shouted William Stickers, 'perhaps we can get back to important matters?' He rustled the paper. Wobbler blinked. Page 13 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt 42 1 'It says in this newspaper,' said William Stickers, 'that the cemetery is going to be closed. Going to be built on. Do you know about it?' 'Um. Yes. Yes. Um. Didn't you know?' 'Was anyone supposed to tell us?' 'What're they saying?' said Bigmac. 'They're annoyed about the cemetery being sold. There's a story in the paper.' 'Hurry up!' said William Stickers. 'I can't hold it much longer . . .' The newspaper sagged. Then it fell through his hands and landed on the path. 'Not as alive as I was,' he said. 'Definitely a freak whirlwind,' said Yo-less. 'I've heard about them. Nothing supernal—' 'This is our home,' boomed the Alderman. 'What will happen to us, young man?' 'Just a minute,' said Johnny. 'Hold on. Yo-less?' 'Yes?' 'They want to know what happens to people in graveyards if they get built on.' 'The . . . dead want to know that?' 'Yes,' said the Alderman and Johnny at the same time. 'I bet Michael Jackson didn't do this,' said Bigmac. 'He—' 'I saw this film,' gabbled Wobbler, 'where these houses were built on an old graveyard and someone dug a swimming pool and all these skeletons came out and tried to strangle people—' 'Why?' said the Alderman. 'He wants to know why,' said Johnny. 43 'Search me,' said Wobbler. 'I think,' said Yo-less uncertainly, 'that the . . . coffins and that get dug up and put somewhere else. I think there's special places.' 'I'm not standing for that!' said dead Mrs Sylvia Liberty. 'I paid five pounds, seven shillings and sixpence for my plot! I remember the document Distinctly. Last Resting Place, it said. It didn't say After Eighty Years You'll Be Dug Up and Moved just so the living can build . . . what did it say?' 'Modern Purpose-Designed Offices,' said William Stickers. 'Whatever they are.' ' I think it means they were designed on purpose,' said Johnny. 'And how shameful to be sold for fivepence!' said dead Mrs Liberty. 'That's the living for you,' said William Stickers. 'No thought for the downtrodden masses.' 'Well, you see,' said Johnny wretchedly, 'the Council says it costs too much to keep up and the land was worth—' 'And what's this here about Blackbury Municipal Authority?' said the Alderman. 'What happened to Blackbury City Council?' 'I don't know,' said Johnny. 'I've never heard of it. Look, it's not my fault. I like this place, too. I was only saying to Wobbler, I didn't like what's happening.' 'So what are you going to do about it?' said the Alderman. Johnny backed away, but came up against Mr Vicenti's Rolls-Royce of a grave. 44 'Oh, no,' he said. 'Not me. It's not up to me!' 'I don't see why not,' said dead Mrs Sylvia Liberty. 'After all, you can see and hear us.' 'No-one else takes any notice,' said Mr Vicenti. 'We've been trying all day,' said the Alderman. 'People walking their dogs. Hah! Theyjust hurry away,' said William Stickers. 'Not even old Mrs Tachyon,' said Mr Vicenti. 'And she's mad,' said the Alderman. 'Poor soul.' 'So there's only you,' said William Stickers. 'So you must go and tell this Municipal whateveritis that we aren't . . . going ... to ... move!' 'They won't listen to me! I'm twelve! I can't even vote!' 'Yes, but we can,' said the Alderman. 'Can we?' said Mr Vicenti. The dead clustered around him, like an American football team. 'We're still over twenty-one, aren't we? I mean, technically.' 'Yes, but we're dead,' said Mr Vicenti, in a reasonable tone of voice. Page 14 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt 'You can vote at eighteen now,' said Johnny. 'No wonder people have no respect,' said the Alderman. 'I said the rot'd set in if they gave the vote to women—' Mrs Liberty glared at him. 'Anyway, you can't use a dead person's vote,' said William Stickers. 'It's called Personation. I stood as Revolutionary Solidarity Fraternal Workers' Party Candidate. I know about this sort of thing.' 'I'm not proposing to let anyone use my vote,' 45 said the Alderman. 'I want to use it myself. No law against that.' 'Good point.' 'I served this city faithfully for more than fifty years,' said the Alderman. 'I do not see why I should lose my vote just because I'm dead. Democracy. That's the point.' 'People's democracy,' said William Stickers. The dead fell silent. 'Well . . .' said Johnny miserably. Til see what I can do.' 'Good man,' said the Alderman. 'And we'd also like a paper delivered every day.' 'No, no,' Mr Vicenti shook his head. 'It's so hard to turn the pages.' 'Well, we must know what is happening,' said Mrs Liberty. 'There's no telling what the living are getting up to out there while our backs are turned.' Til... think of something,' said Johnny. 'Some- thing better than newspapers.' 'Right,' said William Stickers. 'And then you get along to these Council people and tell them—' 'Tell them we're not going to take this lying down!' shouted the Alderman. 'Yes, right,' said Johnny. And the dead faded. Again there was the sen- sation of travelling, as if the dead people were going back into a different world . . . 'Have they gone?' said Wobbler. 'Not that they were here,' said Yo-less, the scien- tific thinker. 46 'They were here, and they've gone,' said Johnny. 'It definitely felt a bit weird,' said Bigmac. 'Very cold.' 'Let's get out of here,' said Johnny. 'I need to think. They want me to stop this place being built on.' 'How?' Johnny led the way quickly towards the gates. 'Huh! They've left it up to me.' 'We'll help,' said Yo-less, promptly. 'Will we?' said Wobbler. 'I mean, Johnny's OK, but ... I mean . . . it's meddlin' with the oc- cult. And your mum'11 go spare.' 'Yes, but if it's true then it's helping Chris- tian souls,' said Yo-less. 'That's all right. They are Christian souls, aren't they?' 'I think there's a Jewish part of the cemetery,' said Johnny. 'That's all right/Jewish is the same as Christian,' said Bigmac. 'Not exactly,' said Yo-less, very carefully. 'But similar.' 'Yeah, but . . .' said Wobbler, awkwardly. 'I mean . . . dead people and that ... I mean ... he can see 'em, so it's up to him ... I mean . . .' 'We all supported Bigmac when he was in juv- enile court, didn't we?' said Yo-less. 'You said he was going to get hung,' said Wobbler. 'And I spent all morning doing that "Free the Blackbury One" poster.' 'It was a political crime,' said Bigmac. 47 'You stole the Minister of Education's car when he was opening the school,' said Yo-less. 'It wasn't stealing. I meant to give it back,' said Bigmac. 'You drove it into a wall. You couldn't even give it back on a shovel.' 'Oh, so it was my fault the brakes were faulty? I could have got badly hurt, right? I notice no- one worried about that. It was basically his fault, leaving cars around with Noddy locks and bad brakes—' 'I bet he doesn't have to repair his own brakes.' 'It's society's fault, then—' Page 15 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt 'Anyway,' said Yo-less, 'we were behind you that time, right?' 'Wouldn't like to be in front of him,' said Wobbler. 'And we were right behind Wobbler when he got into trouble for complaining to the record shop about the messages from God he heard when he played Cliff Richard records backwards—' 'You said you heard it too,' said Wobbler. 'Hey, you said you heard it!' ' Only after you told me what it was,' said Yo-less. 'Before you told me what I was listening for, it just sounded like someone going ayip-ayeep-mwerp- ayeep.'1 'They shouldn't do that sort of thing on records,' 1 But according to Wobbler it was really: 'Hey, kids! Go to school and get a good education! Listen to your parents! It's cool to go to church!' said Wobbler defensively. 'Gettin' at impressionable minds.' 'The point I'm making,' said Yo-less, 'is that you've got to help your friends, right?' He turned to Johnny. 'Now, personally, I think you're very nearly totally disturbed and suffer- ing from psychosomatica and hearing voices and seeing delusions,' he said, 'and probably ought to be locked up in one of those white jackets with the stylish long sleeves. But that doesn't matter, 'cos we're friends.' 'I'm touched,'said Johnny. 'Probably,' said Wobbler, 'but we don't care, do we, guys?' His mother was out, at her second job. Grandad was watching Video Whoopsy. 'Grandad?' 'Yes?' 'How famous was William Stickers?' 'Very famous. Very famous man,' said the old man, without looking around. 'I can't find him in the encyclopedia.' 'Very famous man, was William Stickers. Haha! Look, the man's just fallen off his bicycle! Right into the bush!' Johnny took down the volume L-MIN, and was silent for a few minutes. Grandad had a complete set of huge encyclopedias. No-one really knew why. Somewhere in 1950 or something, Grandad had said to himself, 'get educated', and had bought the massive books on hire purchase. He'd never 49 opened them. He'd just built a bookcase for them. Grandad was superstitious about books. He thought that if you had enough of them around, educa- tion leaked out, like radioactivity. 'How about Mrs Sylvia Liberty?' 'Who's she?' 'She was a suffragette, I think. Votes for women and things.' 'Never heard of her.' 'She's not in here under "Liberty" or "Suf- fragette".' 'Never heard of her. Whoa, look here, the cat's fallen in the pond—!' 'All right . . . how about Mr Antonio Vicenti?' 'What? Old Tony Vicenti? What's he up to now?' 'Was he famous for anything?' For a moment, Grandad's eyes left the TV screen and focused on the past instead. 'He ran a joke shop in Alma Street where the multi-storey car park is now. You could buy stink bombs and itchy-powder. And he used to do conjuring tricks at kids' parties when your mum was a girl.' 'Was he a famous man?' 'All the kids knew him. Only children's enter- tainer in these parts, see. They all knew his tricks. They used to shout out: "It's in your pocket!" And things like that. Alma Street. And Paradise Street, that was there, too. And Balaclava Terrace. That's where I was born. Number Twelve, Balaclava Terrace. All under the car park now. Oh, dear ... he's going to fall off that building . . .' 'So he wasn't really famous. Not like really famous.' 'All the kids knew him. Prisoner of war in Germany, he was. But he escaped. And he mar- ried . . . Ethel Plover, that's right. Never had any kids. Used to do conjuring tricks and escap- ing from things. Always escaping from things, he was.' 'He wore a carnation pinned to his coat,' said Johnny. 'That's right! Every day. Never saw him without one. Always very smart, he was. He used to be a conjuror. Haven't seen him around for years.' 'Grandad?' Page 16 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt 'It's all changed around here now. I hardly see anywhere I recognize when I go into town these days. Someone told me they've pulled down the old boot factory.' 'You know that little transistor radio?' said Johnny. 'What little transistor radio?' 'The one you've got.' 'What about it?' 'You said it's too fiddly and not loud enough?' 'That's right.' 'Can I have it?' 'I thought you'd got one of those ghetto- blowers.' 'This is ... for some friends.'Johnny hesitated. He was by nature an honest person, because apart from anything else, lying was always too complicated. 'They're quite old,' he added. 'And a bit shut in.' 'Oh, all right. You'll have to put some new batteries in — the old ones have gone all manky.' 'I've got some batteries.' 'You don't get proper wireless any more. We used to get oscillation when I was a boy. You never get it now. Hehe! There he goes - look, right through the ice—!' Johnny went down to the cemetery before break- fast. The gates had been locked, but since there were holes all along the walls this didn't make a lot of difference. He'd bought a plastic bag for the radio and had sorted out some new batteries, after scraping out the chemical porridge that was all that was left of the old ones. The cemetery was deserted. There wasn't a soul there, living or dead. But there was the silence, the big empty silence. If ears could make a noise, they'd sound like that silence. Johnny tried to fill it. 'Um,' he said. 'Anyone there?' A fox leapt up from behind one of the stones and scurried away into the undergrowth. 'Hello? It's me?' The absence of the dead was scarier than see- ing them in the flesh - or at least, not in the flesh. 'I brought this radio. It's probably easier for you than newspapers. Um. I looked up radio in the encyclopedia and most of you ought to know what it is. Um. You twiddle the knobs and radio comes out. Um. So I'll just tuck it down behind Mr Vicenti's slab, all right? Then you can find out what's going on.' He coughed. 'I ... I did some thinking last night, and . . . and I thought maybe if people knew about all the . . . famous . . . people here, they'd be bound to leave it alone. I know it's not a very good idea,' he said, hopelessly, 'but it's the best I could come up with. I'm going to make a list of names. If you don't mind?' He'd hoped Mr Vicenti would be about. He quite liked him. Perhaps it was because he hadn't been dead as long as the others. He seemed friendlier. Less stiff. Johnny walked from gravestone to gravestone, noting down names. Some of the older stones were quite ornate, with fat cherubs on them. But one had a pair of football boots carved on it. He made a special note of the name: STANLEY 'WRONG WAY' ROUNDWAY 1892-1936 The Last Whistle He nearly missed the one under the trees. It had a flat stone in the grass, without even one of the ugly flower vases, and all it declared was that this 53 was the last resting place of Eric Grimm (1885- 1927)- No 'Just Resting', no 'Deeply Missed', not even 'Died', although probably he had. Johnny wrote the name down, anyway. Mr Grimm waited until after Johnny had gone before he emerged, and glared after him. 54 Chapter 4 It was later that morning. There was a new library in the Civic Centre. It was so new it didn't even have librarians. It had Assistant Information Officers. And it had com- puters. Wobbler was banned from the computers because of an incident involving a library terminal, Page 17 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt the telephone connection to the main computer, another telephone line to the computer at East Slate Air Base ten miles away, another telephone line to a much bigger computer under a mountain somewhere in America, and almost World War Three. At least, that's what Wobbler said. The As- sistant Information Officers said it was because he got chocolate in the keyboard. But he was allowed to use the microfiche readers. They couldn't think of a good reason to stop him. 'What're we looking for, anyway,' said Bigmac. 'Nearly everyone that died here used to get buried in that cemetery,' said Johnny. 'So if we can find someone famous who lived here, and then we can find them in the cemetery, then it's a famous place. There's a cemetery in London with Karl Marx in it. It's famous for him being dead in it.' 55 'Karl Marx?' said Bigmac. 'What was he famous for?' 'You're ignorant, you are,' said Wobbler. 'He was the one who played the harp.' 'No, Karl was the one who usedta talka lika dis,' said Yo-less. 'Actually, he was the one with the cigar,' said Wobbler. 'That's a very old joke,' said Johnny severely. 'The Marx Brothers. Hah, hah. Look, I've got the old newspaper files. The Blackbury Guardian. They go back nearly a hundred years. All we've got to do is look at the front pages. That's where famous people'd be.' 'And the back pages,' said Bigmac. 'Why the back pages?' 'Sports. Famous footballers and that.' 'Yeah, right. Hadn't thought of that. All right, then. Let's get started 'Yeah, but . . .' said Bigmac. 'What?' said Johnny. 'So this Karl Marx, then,' said Bigmac. 'What films was he in?' Johnny sighed. 'Listen, he wasn't in any films. He was ... he led the Russian Revolution.' 'No he didn't,' said Wobbler. 'He just wrote a book called, oh, something like It's About Time There Was a Revolution, and the Russians just fol- lowed the instructions. The actual leaders were a lot of people with names ending in ski.' 'Like Stalin,' said Yo-less. 'Right.' 'Stalin means Man Of Steel,' said Yo-less. 'I read where he didn't like his real name, so he changed it. It's Man of Steel in English.' 'What was his real name?' 'His secret identity, you mean,' said Yo-less. 'What are you talking about now?' said Bigmac. 'No, I get it. Man of Steel? Yo-less means he could leap Kremlins in a single bound,' said Johnny. 'Don't see why not,' said Wobbler. 'I always thought it was unfair, the way the Americans got Superman. They've got all the superheroes. I don't see why we couldn't have had Superman round here.' They thought about it. Wobbler then spoke for them all. 'Mind you,' he said, 'round here he would have had trouble even being Clark Kent.' They disappeared under the hoods again. 'What did you say the Alderman was called?' said Wobbler, after a while. 'Alderman Thomas Bowler,' said Johnny. 'Why?' 'It says he got the Council to build a memorial horse trough in the square in nineteen hundred and five,' said Wobbler. 'It came in useful very quickly too, it says here.' 'Why?' 'Well ... it says here, the next day the first motor car ever to arrive in Blackbury crashed into it and caught fire. They used the water to put the fire out. Says here, the Council praised Alderman Bowler for his forward thinking.' They looked at the microfilm viewer. 57 'What's a horse trough?' said Bigmac. 'It's that big stone trough thing that's outside Loggitt and Burnett's Building Society,' said Johnny. 'The one that's been filled with soil for a tasteful display Page 18 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt of dead flowers and lager cans. They used to put water in those things for coach horses to drink out of.' 'But if cars were just coming in,' said Bigmac slowly, 'then building things for horses to drink out of was a bit—' 'Yes,' said Johnny. 'I know. Come on. Let's keep going.' . . . WHEEEsssh ... we built this city on ... ssshshhh ... on the phone right now . . . wheeesshhh . . . that was at Number Two . . . ssshwupwup . . . told a meeting in Kiev . . . wsswssshsss . . . Prime Minister . . . shsss . . . today . . . shhssss . . . scaramouche, can you . . . shssssss , . . The tuning knob of the little radio behind Mr Vicenti's grave turned back and forth very slowly, as if it was being moved with great effort. Occasionally it would stop on a programme, and then move again. . . . ssshhhwwwss . . . and the next caller . . . shhwwsss . . . Babylon . . . And around it, for quite some distance, the air was cold. In the library, the boys read on. Silence surrounded them. The Assistant Information Officers grew worried, and one of them went to find the cleaning fluid and the bent paperclip for get- ting chocolate out of keyboards. 'Let's face it,' said Wobbler, eventually, 'this is a town where famous people don't come from. It's famous for it.' 'It says here,' said Yo-less, from his viewer, 'that Addison Vincent Fletcher of Alma Terrace in- vented a form of telephone in nineteen twenty- two.' 'Oh, great,' said Wobbler. 'Telephones had been invented years before that.' 'It says he said this one was better.' 'Oh, yes,' said Wobbler. He dialled an imaginary number. 'Hello, is that— Who invented the real telephone, anyone?' 'Thomas Eddison,' said Yo-less. 'Sir Humphrey Telephone,' said Bigmac. 'Alexander Graham Bell,' said Johnny. 'Sir Humphrey Telephone? 'Hello, Mr Bell,' said Wobbler, speaking into an imaginary mouthpiece, 'You know that telephone you invented years ago? Well, mine's better. And I'm just off to discover America. Yes, I know Christopher Columbus discovered it first, but I'm discovering it better.' 'It makes sense,' said Bigmac. 'If you're going to discover somewhere, you might as well wait until there's proper hotels and stuff.' 'When did Columbus discover America, any- way?' said Wobbler. 'Fourteen ninety-two,' said Johnny. 'There's a rhyme: In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, 59 Columbus sailed the ocean blue.' Wobbler and Bigmac looked at him. 'Actually, he could have got there in fourteen ninety-one,' said Yo-less, without looking up, 'but he had to sail around a bit because no-one could think up a rhyme for "one".' 'It could have been Sir Humphrey Telephone,' said Bigmac. 'Stuff gets named after inventors.' 'They didn't name the telephone after Bell,' said Wobbler. 'They named the bell after Bell, though,' said Bigmac. 'Telephone bells. Proves my point.' 'Telephones haven't had bells on for years,' said Wobbler. 'That,' said Yo-less, 'is due to the famous inven- tion by Fred Buzzer.' 'I think it's impossible for anyone famous to come from here,' said Wobbler, 'because everyone around here is mental.' 'Got one,' said Bigmac, turning the microfiche knob. 'Who? Which one?' 'The footballer. Stanley "Wrong Way" Round- way. He played for Blackbury Wanderers. There's his obituary here. Amost half a page.' 'Any good?' 'Says he scored a record number of goals.' 'Sounds good,' said Wobbler. 'Own goals.' 'What?' 'Greatest number of own goals in the history of any sport, it says. It says he kept getting 60 over-excited and losing his sense of direction.' Page 19 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt 'Oh.' 'But he was a good footballer, it says. Apart from that. Not exactly a Hall of Fame, though—' 'Here, look at this,' said Yo-less. They clustered around his viewer. He'd found an ancient group photograph of about thirty sol- diers, all beaming at the camera. 'Well?' said Wobbler. 'This is from nineteen sixteen,' said Yo-less. 'They're all going off to war.' 'Which one?' said Wobbler. 'The first one, you nerd. World War One.' 'I always wondered why they numbered it,' said Bigmac. 'Like they expected to have a few more. You know. Like Buy Two, Get One Free.' 'Says here,' Yo-less squinted, 'it's the Blackbury Old Pals Battalion. They're just going off to fight. They all joined up at the same time Johnny stared. He could hear people's voices, and the background noises of the library. But the picture looked as if it was at the bottom of a dark, square tunnel. And he was falling down it. Things outside the picture were inky and slow. The picture was the centre of the world. Johnny looked at the grinning faces, the terrible haircuts, the jug-handle ears, the thumbs all up. Even today nearly everyone in the Blackbury Guardian had their photo taken with their thumb up, unless they'd won Super Bingo, in which case they were shown doing what the photographer thought was a high kick. The newspaper's one 61 photographer was known as Jeremy the Thumb. The people in the picture didn't look muct older than Bigmac. Well, a couple of them die There was a sergeant with a moustache like scrubbing brush, and an officer in jodhpurs, bu| the rest of them looked like a school photo. And now he was coming back from wherever! he'd been. The picture dropped away again, came just an oblong on a page on a screen. Hei blinked. There was a feeling, like— —like on an aeroplane when it's about to land, and his ears went 'pop'. But it was happening with his brain, instead. 'Anyone know what the Somme is?' said Yo- less. 'No.' 'That's where they went, anyway. Some place in France.' 'Any of them win any medals?' said Johnny, struggling back into the real world. 'That'd be famous. If there's someone in the cemetery with a lot of medals.' Yo-less spun the wheels of the viewer. Til look ahead a few issues,' he said. 'There's bound to be something if— Hey . . . look at this They all tried to get under the hood at once. Silence came back as they realized what he'd found. I knew it was important, Johnny thought. What's happening to me? 'Wow,' said Wobbler. 'I mean - all those names . everyone killed in this big battle . . .' Without saying anything, Johnny ducked into the other reader and wound it backward until he found the cheery photograph. 'Are they listed in alphabetical order?' he said. 'Yes,' said Yo-less. Til read out the names under the photo, then. Um . . . Armitage, K. . . . Atkins, T. . . . ' 'Yes . . . no . . .' said Yo-less. 'Sergeant Atterbury, F. . . . ' 'Yes.' 'Hey, there's three from Canal Street,' said Wobbler. 'That's where my gran lives!' 'Blazer . . . Constantine . . . Fraser . . . Frobisher . . .' 'Yes . . . yes . . . yes . . . yes . . .' They carried on to the end of the caption. 'They all died,' said Johnny, eventually. 'Four weeks after the picture was taken. All of them.' Page 20 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt 'Except for Atkins, T.,' said Yo-less. 'It says here what a Pals' Battalion was. It says, people all from one town or even one street could all join the Army together if they wanted, and all get sent to ... the same place.' 'I wonder if they all got there?' said Yo-less. 'Eventually,' he added. 'That's dreadful,' said Bigmac. 'It probably sounded like a good idea at the time. Sort of. . .jolly.' 'Yes, but . . . four weeks . . .' said Bigmac. 'I mean . . .' 'You're always saying you can't wait to join the 62 Army,' said Wobbler. 'You said you were sorry the Gulf War was over. And all the legs of your bed are off the ground because of all them copies of Guns and Ammo underneath it.' 'Well . . . yeah . . . war, yeah,' said Bigmac. 'Proper fighting, with Mi6s and stuff Not just all going off grinning and getting shot.' 'They all marched off together because they were friends, and got killed,' said Yo-less. They stared at the little square of light with the names on it, and the long, long line of cheery thumbs. 'Except for Atkins, T.,' said Johnny. 'I wonder what happened to him?' 'It was nineteen sixteen,' said Yo-less. 'If he's still alive, he'll be dead.' 'Any of them on your list?' said Wobbler. Johnny checked. 'No-oo,' he said, eventually. 'There's one or two people with the same name but the wrong initial. Everyone round here used to get buried up there.' 'Perhaps he came back from the war and moved away somewhere else,' said Yo-less. 'It'd be a bit lonely around here, after all,' said Bigmac. They looked at him. 'Sorry,' he said. 'I'm fed up with this,' said Wobbler, pushing his chair back. 'It's not real. There's no-one special in there. It's just people. And it's creepy. Come on, let's go down to the mall.' 'I've found out what happens to dead bodies when old graveyards are built on,' said Yo-less, as they stepped out into the Tupperware daylight. 'My mum knows. They get taken to some kind of storage place called a necropolis. That's Latin for City of the Dead.' 'Yuk,' said Wobbler. ' Sounds like where Superman lives,' said Bigmac. 'Necropolis!' said Wobbler, zooming his hands through the air. 'By day, mild-mannered corpse - by night . . . duh duh duhduh DAH . . . ZombieMan!' Johnny remembered the grinning young faces, not much older than Wobbler. 'Wobbler,' he said, 'If you make another joke like that—' 'What?' ' . . . well . . . just don't. Right? I mean it.' . . . ssshhhh . . . mean, yo, youknowhatl'msayin'? . . , sipsipsip . . . told the government that . . . sswwwsss . . . fact the whales enjoy being hunted, Bob, and . . . wwwhhhhh . . . Click! 'So that's wireless telegraphy, is it? Hah! So much for Countess Alice Radioni!' ' I was an Ovalteenie when I was a little boy. That was during the war. The one against the Germans. Did I ever tell you? We used to sing along with the people on the wireless: "We are the Ov—" WHAT? Who was Countess Alice Radioni?' 'Which war against the Germans?' 'What? How many have we had?' 64 'Two so far.' 'Now, come ON! Radioni? It was Marconi who invented the radio!' 'Hah! And do you know who he stole the idea from?' 'Who cares who invented the wretched thing? Will you listen to what the living are doing?' 'Plotting to steal our cemetery, that is what they are doing!' 'Yes, but... I didn't know that all this was going on, did you? All this music and ... the things they were talking about! Who is Shakespeare's Sister and why is she singing on the wireless? What is a Batman? And they said the last Prime Minister Page 21 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt was a woman! That can't be possible. Women can't even vote.' 'Yes, they can.' 'Hurrah!' 'Well, they couldn't in MY time!' 'There's so much we don't know!' 'So why don't we find out?' The dead fell silent - or rather, more silent than usual. 'How?' 'The man on the wireless said you can ring the wireless station on the telephone to Discuss Problems That Affect Us All Today. A Phone-Ing Program, he said.' 'Well?' 'There's a phone box out in the street.' 'Yes, but . . . that's . . . outside 'Not far outside.' 66 'Yes, but . . .' 'The little boy stood in front of us and talked to us. And he was so frightened. And we can't walk six feet?' The speaker was Mr Vicenti. He looked through the crumbling railings to the street outside, with the eye of a man who'd spent much of his life escaping. 'But this is our PLACE! This is where we BE- LONG!' 'It's only a few steps . . .' It wasn't really much of a mall. But it was all there was to hang out in. Johnny had seen films of American shopping malls. They must have different sorts of people in America, he'd thought. They all looked cool, all the girls were beautiful, and the place wasn't crowded with little kamikaze grandmothers. Or mothers with seven children. Or Blackbury United football fans walking ten abreast singing the famous football song,'UFlRRurrrURRR-UH!' (dapdapclap). You couldn't hang out properly in a place like that. All you could do was hang on. The four of them hung on in the burger bar. Yo-less carefully read the pamphlet about how no rainforests were chopped down to make beef- burgers. Bigmac had his favourite Megajumbo Fries with fifteen packets of relish. 'Wonder if I could get a job here?' said Wobbler. 'No chance,' said Bigmac. 'The manager'd take one look at you and see where the profits would go.' 67 'You saying I'm fat?' said Wobbler. 'Gravitationally challenged,' said Yo-less, with- out looking up. 'Enhanced,' said Bigmac. Wobbler's lips moved as he tried these out. 'I'd rather be fat,' he said. 'Can I finish up your onion rings?' 'Anyway, there's loads of people want jobs here,' said Bigmac. 'You have to have three A-levels.' 'What, just to make burgers?' 'No other jobs around,' said Bigmac. 'They're shutting all the factories around here. Nothing to do. No-one's making anything any more.' 'Someone's making something,' said Wobbler. 'What about all the stuff in the shops?' 'That's all made in Taiwanaland or somewhere. Hah! What sort of future are we going to have, eh? That's right, eh? Johnny?' 'What?' 'You've just been staring at nothing the whole time, you know that?' 'Yeah, what's happened?' said Wobbler. 'Some dead people come in for a takeaway?' 'No,' said Johnny. 'What're you thinking about, then?' 'Thumbs,' said Johnny, still staring at the wall. 'What?' 'What?' said Johnny, waking up. 'What about thumbs?' 'Oh . . . nothing.' 'My mother said last night that there's a lot of people angry about the cemetery being sold,' said 68 Page 22 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt Yo-less. 'Everyone's moaning about it. And Pastor William says anyone who builds on there will be cursed unto the seventh generation.' 'Yes, but he always says that kind of thing,' said Wobbler. 'Anyway, United Amalagamated Consolidated Holdings probably don't worry about that sort of thing. They've probably got a Vice- President in Charge of Being Cursed.' 'And he probably gets his secretary to deal with it,' said Bigmac. 'It won't stop anything, anyway,' said Yo-less. 'There's bulldozers just the other side of the fence.' 'Anyone know what United Amalagamated Consolidated Holdings doT said Wobbler. 'It said in the paper that they're a multinational information-retrieval and enhancement facility,' said Yo-less. 'It said on the news it'll provide three hundred jobs.' 'For all the people who used to work at the old rubber boot factory?' said Bigmac. Yo-less shrugged. 'That's how it goes,' he said. 'You all right, Johnny?' 'What?' 'You OK? You're staring at the wall.' 'What? Oh. Yeah. I'm OK.' 'He's upset about the dead soldiers,' said Wobbler. Yo-less leaned across the table. 'Look . . . that's all in the past, right? It's just gone. It's a shame they died but. . . well. . . they'd be dead anyway, wouldn't they? It's just history. It's nothing to do with . . . well, with now.' 69 * * * Mrs Ivy Witherslade was talking to her sister in the phone box on Cemetery Road when someone knocked impatiently on the glass, and that was odd, because there was no-one there. But she felt very cold and suddenly uneasy, as though she was walking on someone's grave. She stopped telling her sister about her legs and what the doctor said about them, and went home quickly. If Johnny had been there, he would have heard what happened next. But he wasn't, so everyone else would have just heard the wind, and perhaps, just perhaps, the faintest of arguments: 'You should know, Mr Fletcher. YOU invented it.' 'Actually, that was Alexander Graham Bell, Mrs Liberty. I just improved upon it.' 'Well . . . make it work. Let me speak to the man on the wireless machine.' 'Was it really Alexander Graham Bell?' 'Yes, Alderman.' 'I thought it was Sir Humphrey Telephone.' The telephone stayed on its hook, but there were a few electric crackles and pops from somewhere in the machinery. 7 think I have mastered the intricacies, Mrs Liberty—' 'Let ME do the talking. The people's voice must be heard!' Frost was forming on the inside of the telephone box. 'Certainly not. You are a bolshevik!' 'What did Sir Humphrey Telephone invent, then?' 70 'Mr Fletcher! Be so good as to expedite the electric communication!' When there wasn't the burger bar to hang out in, and when they weren't allowed in J&J Software because of whatever Wobbler's latest crime was, there was only the fountain area with the sad, dying trees in it or Groovy Sounds record store, which was pretty much like any record store would be if it was called Groovy Sounds. Anyway, Yo-less wanted to buy a tape for his collection. 'Famous British Brass Bands,' said Wobbler, look- ing over his shoulder. 'Yes, but this is a good one,' said Yo-less. 'It's got the old Blackbury Rubber Boot Factory Band playing The Floral Dance. Very famous piece.' 'You're just basically not black, are you,' said Wobbler. 'I'm going to report, you to the Rastafarians.' 'You like reggae and blues,' said Yo-less. 'That's different.' Johnny listlessly shuffled through the tapes. And froze. There was a voice he recognized. It was crackly with static, but it sounded a lot Page 23 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt like Mrs Sylvia Liberty, and it was coming over the radio. The radio was on the counter, turned to Won- derful Radio Blackbury's Mike Mikes Radio Show, which was as excellent and totally bodacious as two hours of phone-ins and traffic reports from the Blackbury bypass could be. This time it was different. The phone-in had been about the Council's proposal to knock down the old Fish Market, which was going to happen no matter what anyone said, but it was a good subject for people to moan about. 'Well, what I say is hello? Hello? This is Mrs Sylvia Liberty speaking on the electric telephone! Hello? not to be allowed, er, in my opinion, er, it is totally hello? (click . . . fizz . . . crackle) / demand to be heard this INSTANT! The Fish Market is of NO importance whatsoever! er . . . er . . . and . . .' In his little studio on top of the Blackbury and Slate Insurance Society, Mike Mikes stared at his engineer, who stared at his switchboard. There was no way of cutting off the intrusive voice. It was coming in on all telephone lines at once. 'Er, hi,' he said. 'The caller on ... er ... all the lines 'Here, someone's You listen to me, young man! And don't cut me off to start playing any more of your phonograph cylinders! crossed line here, Mike, I Do you realize that innocent citizens are being EVICTED (click . . . garble . . . whirr . . . fizz) many years of VALUED service to the community (wheeeowwwwwh . . . crackle) merely because of an ACCIDENT of birth (fizzle . . . whipwhipwhip . . . crackle) you listen to young Johnn (snap . . . fizz . . . ) The People's Shroud is Deepest Black (wheeeyooowwww . . . pop) We're Coming BACK . . . stop that this minute, William, you are nothing but a bolshevik agit...' 72 But no-one heard the rest of the sentence be- cause the engineer had pulled all the plugs and hit the switchboard with a hammer. Johnny and his friends had gathered around the radio. 'You get some real loonies on these phone-ins,' said Wobbler. 'You ever listen to Mad Jim's Late Night Explosion?' 'He's not mad,' said Yo-less. 'He just says he is. And all he does is play old records and go "yeah!" and "yowsahyowsah!" a lot. That's not mad. That's just pathetic.' 'Yes,' said Wobbler. 'Yes,' said Bigmac. 'Yes,' said Yo-less. They all looked at Johnny. They all looked like people with something on their minds. 'Ahem,' said Wobbler. 'Er,' said Bigmac. 'That was them, was it?' said Yo-less. 'Yes,' said Johnny. 'It was them.' 'It didn't sound like normal radio. How can they use the phone?' 'I don't know. I suppose some of them knew how to use the phone when they were alive. And maybe being dead's a bit like . . . electricity or something.' 'They nearly said your name,' said Wobbler. 'Yes.' 'Who was that one singing?' 'I think it was William Stickers. He's a bit of a communist.' 73 'I didn't think there were any communists left these days,' said Yo-less. 'There aren't. And he's one of them.' 'You know, any minute now Rod Serling is going to come walking in here with a big book,' saidBigmac. 'You know. Like in The Twilight Zone.' 'How come they know what's on the radio?' said Yo-less. 'I lent them Grandad's transistor.' 'You know what I think?' said Yo-less. 'I think you've started something.' 'That's what I think, too.' 'Nah!' said Wobbler. 'Come on\ Voices on the radio? I mean! That's just mucking about. Could be anything. Kids ringing up and messing about. Oh, come on! Ghosts don't phone up radio stations!' 'I saw this film once where they came out of the telephone,' said Bigmac, winner of the All- Blackbury Mr Tactful Championship. 'Just you shut up! I don't believe you!' Page 24 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt It was very, very chilly inside the phone box. 'I must say, electricity is very easy to master when you're dead.' 'What are you doing, Mr Fletcher?' 'Very easy indeed. Who shall we talk to next?' 'We must speak to the Town Hall!' 'But it is a Saturday, Mrs Liberty. There will be no-one there.' 'Then try to find young Johnny. I don't know what he means about trying to find famous people 74 buried in the cemetery. WE'RE here, after all.' 'I'll keep trying. It's amazingly easy to understand.' ' Where's Mr Stickers gone?' 'He's trying to listen to Radio Moscow, what- ever that is. On the wireless telegraphy apparatus.' 'I say, this is rather invigorating, you know. I've never been out of the cemetery before.' 'Yes. It's a new lease of life.' 'You can escape from almost anything,' said Mr Vicenti. There was a faint cough. They looked around. Mr Grimm was watching them through the railings. The dead seemed to sober up. They always be- came more serious in front of Mr Grimm. They shuffled their spectral feet. 'You're outside,' said Mr Grimm. 'You know that's wrong.' 'Only a little way, Eric,' said the Alderman. 'That can't do any harm. It's for the good of the—' 'It's WRONG.' 'We don't have to listen to him,' said Mr Vicenti. 'You'll get into terrible trouble,' said Mr Grimm. 'No we won't,' said Mr Vicenti. 'It's dabbling with the Known,' said Mr Grimm. 'You'll get into dreadful trouble and it won't be my fault. You are bad people.' He turned, and walked back to his grave. 'Dial the number,' said Mr Vicenti. The others seemed to wake up. 75 'You know,' said Mrs Liberty, 'he may have a point—' 'Forget about Mr Grimm,' said Mr Vicenti. He opened his hands. A white dove shot out of his sleeve and perched on the phone box, blinking. 'Dial the number, Mr Fletcher.' 'Hello, directory enquiries, what name please?' 'He's called Johnny Maxwell and he lives in Blackbury.' 'I'm afraid that is not sufficient information—' 'That's all we—' (Listen, I can see how it works, there's a connection—)(How many of us are there in here?)(Can I try, please?)(This is a lot better than those seances) ... The operator rubbed her headset. For some reason, her ear had gone cold. 'Ow!' She ripped it off The operator on her right leaned over. 'What's up, Dawn?' 'It went - it felt—' They looked at the switchboard. Lights were coming on everywhere, and it was beginning to be covered in frost. The point is— —that all through history there have been people who couldn't invent things because the rest of the world wasn't ready. Leonardo da Vinci hadn't got the motors or materials to make his helicopter. Sir George Cayley invented the internal combustion 76 engine before anyone else had invented petrol.1 And in his life Addison Vincent Fletcher had spent long hours with motors and Page 25 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt relays and glow- ing valves and bits of wire, pursuing a dream the world didn't even have a name for yet. In his phone box, dead Mr Fletcher laughed. It had a name now. He knew exactly what a computer was when he saw one. lSo he ran it on pellets of gunpowder. Really. It was nearly the external combustion engine. 77 Chapter 5 Johnny went home. He didn't dare go back to the cemetery. It was Saturday evening. He'd forgotten about the Visit. 'You've got to come,' said his mother. 'You know she likes to see you.' 'No she doesn't,' said Johnny. 'She forgets who I am. She calls me Peter. I mean, that's my dad's name. And the place smells of old ladies. Anyway, why doesn't Grandad ever come? She's his wife.' 'He says he likes to remember her as she was,' said his mother. 'Besides, it's Markie and Mo's Saturday Spectacular. You know he doesn't like to miss it.' 'Oh ... all right.' 'We don't have to stay long.' About ten minutes after Johnny had gone, the phone rang. Grandad dealt with it in his normal way, which was to shout 'Phone!' while not taking his eyes off the screen. But it went on ringing. Eventually, grumbling and losing the remote control down the side of the cushion where it wouldn't be found for two days, he got up and shuffled out into the hall. 'Yes? He's not here. Gone out. Who? Well, I'll ... is it? Never! Still doing the conjuring tricks, are you? Haven't seen you about the town much lately. No. Right. That's right. I don't get out much myself these days. How are you, in yourself? Dead. I see. But you've got out to use the telephone. It's wonderful, what they can do with science. You sound a long way off. Right. You are a long way off. I remember that trick you used to do with the handcuffs and the chains and - Well, nearly did. Yes. Yes. Right. I'll tell him. Nice to hear from you. Goodbye.' He went back and settled down in front of the TV again. After a few minutes a small worried frown crossed his face. He got up and went and glared at the telephone for a while. It wasn't that Sunshine Acres was a bad place. As far as Johnny could see, it was clean enough and the staff seemed OK. There were bright murals on the walls and a big tank of goldfish in the TV room. But it was more gloomy than the cemetery. It was the way everyone shuffled around quietly, and sat waiting at the table for the next meal hours before it was due, because there wasn't anything else to do. It was as if life had stopped and being dead hadn't started, so all there was to do was hang around. His grandmother spent a lot of time watching TV in the main lounge, or watching her begonias in her room. At least, his grandmother's body did. 79 He was never certain where her mind was, except that it was often far away and long ago. After a while he got even more depressed at the conversation between his mother and his grand- mother, which was exactly the same as the one last week and the week before that, and did what he always did, which was wander out into the corridor. He mooched towards the door that led out into the garden, staring vaguely at nothing. They never told you about this ghost stuff at school. Sometimes the world was so weird you didn't know where to start, and Social Education and GCSE Maths weren't a lot of help. Why didn't this sort of thing happen to anyone else? It wasn't as if he went looking for it. He just tried to keep his head down, he just tried to be someone at the back of the crowd. But somehow everything was more complicated than it was for anyone else. The thing was . . . Mr T. Atkins. He probably wouldn't have noticed it, except that the name was in the back of his mind. It was written on a little curling piece of paper stuck in a frame on one of the Page 26 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt doors. He stared at it. It filled the whole world, just for a second or two. Well, there could be lots of Atkinses . . . He'd never find out unless he knocked, though . . . would he? ... 80 'Open the door, will you, love? M'hands are foil.' There was a large black woman behind him, her arms full of sheets. Johnny nodded mutely and turned the handle. The room was more or less bare. There was certainly no-one else there. 'I see you come up here every week to see your gran,' said the nurse, dumping the sheets on the bare bed. 'You're a good boy to come see her.' 'Uh. Yes.' 'What was it you were wanting?' 'Uh. I thought I'd . . . you know . . . drop in to have a chat with Mr Atkins? Uh.' Inspiration seized him. 'I'm doing a project at school. About the Blackbury Pals.' A project! You could get away with anything if you said you were doing a project. 'Who were they then, dear?' 'Oh . . . some soldiers. Mr Atkins was one of them, I think. Uh . . . where . . . ?' 'Well, he passed away yesterday, dear. Nearly ninety-seven, I think he was. Did you know him?' 'Not ... really.' 'He was here for years. He was a nice old man. He used to say that when he died the war'd be over. It was his joke. He used to show us his old Army pay book. "Tommy Atkins," he'd say. "I'm the one, I'm the boy, when I'm gone it's all over." He used to laugh about that.' 'What did he mean?' 81 'Don't know, dear. I just used to smile. You know how it is.' The nurse smoothed out the new sheets and pulled a cardboard box from under the bed. 'This was his stuff,' she said. She gave him an odd look. 'I expect it's all right for you to see. No-one ever visited him, except a man from the British Legion regular as clockwork every Christmas, God bless them. They've asked for his medals, you know. But I expect it's all right for you to have a look. If it's a project.' Johnny peered into the box while the nurse bustled around the room. There were a few odds and ends — a pipe, a tobacco tin, a huge old penknife. There was a scrap- book, full of sepia postcards of flowers and fields of cabbages and simpering French ladies dressed in what someone must once have thought was a very daring way. Yellowing newspaper cuttings were stuck between the pages. And there was a small wooden box lined with toilet paper and containing several medals. And there was a photograph of the Blackbury Pals, just like the one in the old newspaper. Johnny lifted it out very carefully, and turned it over. It crackled. Someone had written, in violet ink, a long time ago, the words: Old Comrades!!! We're the Boys, Kaiser Bill! If You Know A Better 'ole, Go To IT!! And there were thirty signatures underneath. Beside twenty-nine of the signatures, in pencil, someone had made a small cross. 82 'They all signed it,' he said, quietly. 'He must have got a copy from the paper, and they all signed it.' 'What was that, dear?' 'This photo.' 'Oh, yes. He showed it to me once. That was him in the war, you know.' Johnny turned it over again and found Atkins, T. He looked a bit like Bigmac, with jughandle ears and a second-hand haircut. He was grinning. They all were. All the same kind of grin. 'He used to talk about them a lot,' said the nurse. 'Yes.' 'His funeral's on Monday. At the crem. One of us always goes, you know. Well, you have to, don't you? It's only right.' Page 27 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt He dreamed, on Saturday night . . . He dreamed of Rod Serling walking along Blackbury High Street, but as he was trying to speak impressively to the camera, Bigmac, Yo-less and Wobbler started to peer over his shoulder and say things like, 'What's this book about, then?' and 'Turn over the page, I've read this bit' ... He dreamed of thumbs . . . And woke up, and stared at the ceiling. He still hadn't replaced the bits of cotton that held up the plastic model of the Space Shuttle. It was forever doing a nosedive. He was pretty sure other kids didn't have lives like this. It just kept on happening. Just when he thought he'd got a grip on the world, and saw how it all worked, it sprang something new on him, and what he thought was the whole thing, ticking away nicely, turned out to be just some kind of joke. His grandad had mumbled a very odd message when Johnny had arrived home. As far as he could understand, Wobbler or someone had been making odd phone calls. His grandad had also muttered something about conjuring tricks. He looked at his clock radio. It said 2.45. There was no chance of going back to sleep. He tried Radio Blackbury. '—yowsahyowsahyowsah! And the next caller on Uncle Mad Jim's bodaaaacious Problem Corner iiiissss—' Johnny froze. He had a feeling . . . 'William Stickers, Mad Jim.' 'Hi, Bill. You sound a bit depressed, to me.' 'It's worse than that. I'm dead, Jim.' 'Wow! I can see that could be a real downer, Bill. Care to tell us about it?' 'You sound very understanding, comrade. Well. . .' Of course he's understanding, thought Johnny as he struggled into his dressing gown. Everyone phones up Mad Jim in the middle of the night. Last week he talked for twenty minutes to a lady who thought she was a roll of wallpaper. You sound totally sane compared to most of them. He snatched up his Walkman and switched on its radio so that he could go on listening as 84 he ran down the stairs and out into the night. '—and now I just heard there isn't even ANY Soviet Union any more. What happened?' 'Seems to me you haven't been keeping up with current events, Bill.' '/ thought I explained about that.' 'Oh, sure. You said. You've been dead. But you're alive again, right?' Mad Jim's voice had that little chuckle in it that it always got when he'd found a real dingdong on the line and could picture all his insomniac listeners turning up the volume. 'No. Still dead. It's not something you get better from, Jim. Now—' Johnny pattered around the corner and sped along John Lennon Avenue. Mad Jim was saying, in his special dealing-with- loonies velvet voice: 'So tell us all out here in the land of the living, Bill - what's it like, being dead?' 'Like? LIKE? It is extremely DULL.' 'I'm sure everyone out there would like to know, Bill ... are there angels?' Johnny groaned as he turned the corner into Eden Road. 'Angels? Certainly not!' Johnny scurried past the silent houses and dodged between the bollards into Woodville Road. 'Oh, dear,' said Mad Jim in his headset. 'I hope there aren't any naughty men with pitchforks, then?' 'What on earth are you blathering about, man? There's just me and old Tom Bowler and Sylvia Liberty and all the rest of them—' Johnny lost the thread of things when a sticking- out piece of laurel hedge knocked his headset off! When he managed to put it back on, it turned out that William Stickers had been invited to request a record. 'Don't think I know "The Red Flag", Bill. Who's it by?' 'It's the Internationale! The song of the downtrodden masses!' 'Doesn't fire a neuron, Bill. But for you and all the other dead people out there Page 28 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt every- where, tonight,' the change in Mad Jim's tone suggested that William Stickers had been cut off, 'and we're all dead sooner or later, ain't that the truth, here's one from the vaults by Michael Jackson . . . "Thriller"—' The streetlamp by the phone box was alight. And the little pool of light was all there was to see, unless you were Johnny. . . The dead had spilled out on to the road. They'd managed to drag the radio with them. Quite a few of them were watching the Alderman. 'This is how you have to do it, apparently,' he said, moonwalking backwards across the frosty street. 'Johnny showed me.' 'It is certainly a very interesting syncopated rhythm,' said Mrs Liberty. 'Like this, you say?' The ghostly wax cherries on her hat bounced up and down as she twirled. 'That's right. And apparently you spin around with your arms out and shout "ow!",' said the Alderman, demonstrating. Oh no, thought Johnny, hurrying towards them. On top of everything else, Michael Jackson's going to sue me— 'Get down and — what was it the man on the wireless said?' said the Alderman. 'Bogey, I believe.' They weren't actually very good at it, but they made up for being eighty years behind the times by sheer enthusiasm. In feet, it was a party. Johnny stuck his hands on his hips. 'You shouldn't be doing this!' 'Why not?' said a dancing dead. 'It's the middle of the night!' 'Well? We don't sleep!' 'I mean, what would your . . . your descendants think if they could see you acting like this?' 'Serve them right for not visiting us!' 'We're making carpets!' shouted Mrs Liberty. 'Cutting a rung,' corrected one of the dead. 'A rug,' said the Alderman, slowing down a bit. 'A rug. Cutting a rug. That's what Mr Benbow, who died in nineteen thirty-one, says it is called. Getting down and bogeying.' 'It's been like this all evening,' said Mr Vicenti. He was sitting on the pavement. In feet, he was sit- ting about half a metre above the pavement. 'We've found some very interesting stations. What exactly « a DJ?' 'A disc jockey,' said Johnny, giving up and 86 sitting down. 'He plays the discs and stuff' 'Is it some kind of punishment?' 'Quite a lot of people like to do it.' 'How very strange. They are not mentally ill, or anything?' The song finished. The dancers stopped twirling, but slowly and with great reluctance. Mrs Liberty pushed her hat back. It had tipped over her eyes. 'That was extremely enjoyable,' she said. 'Mr Fletcher! Be so good as to instruct the man on the wireless to play something more!' Interested despite himself, Johnny padded over to the phone box. Mr Fletcher was actually kneeling down with his hands inside the telephone. A couple of other dead people were watching him. One of them was William Stickers, who didn't look very happy. The other was an old man with a mass of white hair in that dandelion-clock style known as Mad Scientist Afro. 'Oh, it's you,' said William Stickers. 'Call this a world, do you?' 'Me?' said Johnny. 'I don't call it anything.' 'Was that man on the radio making fun of me, do you think?' 'Oh, no,' said Johnny, crossing his fingers. 'Mr Sticker iz annoyed because he telephoned Moscow,' said the white-haired man. 'They said they've had enough revolutions to be going on wiz, but vould like some soap.' 'They're nothing but dirty capitalists!' said William Stickers. 88 'But at least they want to be dean capitalists,' said Mr Fletcher. 'Where shall Page 29 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt we try next?' 'Don't you have to put money in?' said Johnny. Mr Fletcher laughed. 'I don't zink we've met,' said the white- haired man, extending a slightly transparent hand. 'Solomon Einstein (1869-1932).' 'Like Albert Einstein?' said Johnny. 'He vas my distant cousin,' said Solomon Einstein. 'Relatively speaking. Haha.' Johnny got the impression Mr Einstein had said that line a million times, and still wasn't tired of it. 'Who're you ringing up?' said Johnny. 'We're just having a look at the world,' said Mr Fletcher. 'What are those things that go round and round in the sky?' 'I don't know. Frisbees?' 'Mr Vicenti just remembers them. They go round and round the world.' 'Oh. You mean satellites?' 'Whee!' 'But how do you know how to—' 'I can't explain. Things are a lot simpler, I think. I can see it all laid out.' 'All of what?' 'All the cables, all the ... the satellites . . . Not having a body makes them a lot easier to use, too.' 'What do you mean?' 'For one thing, you don't have to stay in one place.' 'But I thought you—' 89 Mr Fletcher vanished. He reappeared a few seconds later. 'Amazing things,' he said. 'My word, but we shall have fun.' 'I don't underst—' 'Johnny?' It was Mr Vicenti. Someone living had managed to get through to Mad Jim. The dead, with much laughter, were try- ing to dance to a Country-and-Western number. 'What's going OM?' said Johnny. 'You said you couldn't leave the cemetery!' 'No-one has explained this to you? They do not teach you in schools?' 'Well, we don't get lessons in dealing with ghos— Sorry. Sorry. With dead people, I mean.' 'We're not ghosts, Johnny. A ghost is a very sad thing. Oh, dear. It's hard to explain things to the living. I was alive once, and I know what I 'm talking about.' Dead Mr Vicenti looked at Johnny's blank face. 'We're . . . something else,' he said. 'But now you see us and hear us, you're making us free. You're giving us what we don't have.' 'What's that?' 'I can't explain. But while you're thinking of us, we're free.' 'My head doesn't have to spin round and round, does it?' 'That sounds like a good trick. Can you make it do that?' 'No.' 90 'Then it won't.' 'Only I'm a bit worried I'm dabblin' with the occult.' It seemed daft to say it, to Mr Vicenti in his pin- stripe trousers and little black tie and fresh ghostly carnation every day. Or Mrs Liberty. Or the big bearded shape of William Stickers, who would have been Karl Marx if Karl Marx hadn't been Karl Marx first. 'Dear me, I hope you're not dabbling with the occult,' said Mr Vicenti. 'Father Kearny (1891- 1949) wouldn't like that at all.' 'Who's Father Kearny?' 'A few moments ago he was dancing with Mrs Liberty. Oh dear. We do mix things up, don't we?' 'Send him away.' Johnny turned. One of the dead was still in the cemetery. He was standing right up against the railings, clasping them like a prisoner might hold the bars of his cell. He didn't look a lot different to Mr Vicenti, except that he had a pair of glasses. It was Page 30 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt amazing that they weren't melting; he had the strongest stare Johnny had ever seen. He seemed to be glaring at Johnny's left ear. 'Who's that?' he said. 'Mr Grimm,' said Mr Vicenti, without looking around. 'Oh, yes. I couldn't find anything about him in the paper.' 'I'm not surprised,' said Mr Vicenti, in a low and level voice. 'In those days, there were things they didn't put in.' 'You go away, boy. You're meddling with things you don't understand,' said Mr Grimm. 'You're imperilling your immortal soul. And theirs. You go away, you bad boy.' Johnny stared. Then he looked back at the street, at the dancers, and the scientists around the tele- phone box. A bit further along there was Stanley Roundway, in shorts that came down to his knees, showing a group of somewhat older dead how to play football. He had 'L' and 'R' stencilled on his football boots. Mr Vicenti was staring straight ahead. 'Um—' said Johnny. 'I can't help you there,' said Mr Vicenti. 'That sort of thing is up to you.' He must have walked home. He didn't really remember. But he woke up in bed. Johnny wondered what the dead did on Sundays. Blackbury on Sundays went through some sort of boredom barrier and out the other side. Most people did what people traditionally do on Sundays, which was dress up neatly and get in the car and go for family worship at the MegasuperSaver Garden Centre, just outside the town. There was a kind of tide of potted plants that were brought back to get killed off by the central heating in time for next week's visit. And the mall was locked up. There wasn't even anywhere to hang around. 'The point about being dead in this town,' said Wobbler, as they mooched along the towpath, 'is that it's probably hard to tell the difference.' 'Did anyone hear the radio last night?' said Johnny. No-one had. He felt a bit relieved. 'When I grow up,' said Wobbler, 'I'm going to be out of here like a shot. Just you watch. That's what this place is. It's a place to come from. It's not a place to stay.' 'Where're you going to go, then?' said Johnny. 'There's a huge big world out there!' said Wobbler. 'Mountains! America! Australia! Tons of places!' 'You told me the other day you'd probably get a job working at your uncle's place over on the trading estate,' said Bigmac. 'Yes . . . well ... I mean, all those places'11 be there, won't they, for when I get time to go,' said Wobbler. 7 thought you were going to be a big man in computers,' said Yo-less. 'I could be. I could be. If I wanted.' 'If there's a miracle and you pass Maths and English, you mean,' said Bigmac. 'I'm just more practically gifted,' said Wobbler. 'You mean you just press keys until something happens.' 'Well? Often things do happen.' 'I'm going to join the Army,' said Bigmac. 'The SAS.' 'Huh. The flat feet and the asthma will be a 92 93 big help there, then,' said Wobbler. 'I can just see they'll want you to limp out and wheeze on terrorists.' ' I 'm pretty certain I want to get a law degree and a medical degree,' said Yo-less, to keep the peace. 'That's good. That way they won't be able to sue you if you chop the wrong bits off,' said Bigmac. No-one really lost their temper. This was all part of hanging around. 'What about you?' said Wobbler. 'What do you want to be?' 'Dunno,' said Johnny. 'Didn't you go to the careers evening last week?' Johnny nodded. It had been full of Great Futures. There was a Great Future in Page 31 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt retail marketing. There was a Great Future in wholesale distri- bution. There was a Great Future in the armed forces, although probably not for Bigmac, who'd been allowed to hold a machine gun and had dropped it on his foot. But Johnny couldn't find a Great Future with any future in it. 'What I want to be,' he said, 'is something they haven't got a name for yet.' 'Oh, yeah?' said Wobbler. 'Like, in two years' time someone's going to invent the Vurglesplat, and when they start looking around for Vurglesplat operators, you're going to be first in the queue, right?' They went through the cemetery. The others, without saying anything, bunched up slightly. But there were no dead people around. 'You can't just hang around waiting for Great 94 Futures, that's the point,' Johnny murmured. 'Hey,' said Yo-less, in a dismally jolly voice, 'my mum says why don't you guys come to church tonight?' 'It won't work,' said Wobbler, afterawhile. 'You say that every week.' ' She says it'd be good for you. Especially Simon.' 'Simon?' said Wobbler. 'Me,' said Bigmac. 'She says you need looking after,' said Yo-less. 'I didn't know you were called Simon,' said Wobbler. Bigmac sighed. He had 'Blackbury Skins' on his T-shirt, a suede haircut, great big boots, great big braces and LOVE and HAT in Biro on his knuck- les1, but for some reason Yo-less's mum thought he needed a proper home. Bigmac lived in dread that Bazza and Skazz, the only other Skins in Blackbury, would find out and confiscate his official braces. 'She said you're all growing up heathens,' said Yo-less. 'Well, I'm going to a funeral at the crem tomor- row,' said Johnny. 'That's almost church.' 'Anyone important?' said Wobbler. 'I'm not sure,' said Johnny. Johnny was amazed that so many people had come to Thomas Atkins's funeral, but that was because they'd really come to the one before it. All there was for Atkins's was himself and a stiff-looking old 1 Th'e '£' kept rubbing off. 95 man in a blazer from the British Legion and the nurse from Sunshine Acres. And the vicar, who did his best, but had never met Tommy Atkins so had to put together his sermon out of a sort of kit of Proper Things to Say. And then some recorded organ music. And that was it. The chapel smelled of new wood and floor polish. The three others kept looking at Johnny in an embarrassed way, as if they felt he shouldn't be there but didn't know exactly how to put it. He heard a faint sound behind him, just as the recorded music started up. He turned around, and there were the dead, seated in rows. The Alderman had taken his hat off and was sitting stiffly at attention. Even William Stickers had tried to look respectable. Solomon Einstein's hair stood out like a halo. The nurse was talking to the man in the blazer. Johnny leaned back so that he could speak to Mr Fletcher. 'Why are you here?' he whispered. 'It's allowed,' said Mr Fletcher. 'We used to go to all the funerals in the cemetery. Help them settle in. Make them welcome. It's always a bit of a shock.' 'Oh.' 'And . . . seeing as you were here... we thought we'd see if we could make it. Mr Vicenti said it was worth a try. We're getting better at it!' The nurse handed Tommy Atkins's box to the British Legion man and walked out, waving at Johnny uncertainly as she went past. And then the vicar ushered the man through another door, giving Johnny another funny look. Outside, the October sun was shining weakly, but it was managing to shine. Johnny went outside and waited. Eventually the man came out, holding two boxes this time. 'Uh,' said Johnny, standing up. 'Um.' 'Yes, lad? The lady from the Home said you're doing a project for school.' Page 32 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt Doing a project. It was amazing. If Saddam Hussein had said he was doing a school project on Kuwait, he'd have found life a lot easier . . . 'Um, yes. Uh. Can I ask you some stuff?' 'Of course, yes.' The man sat down heavily on one of the benches. He walked with a limp, and sat with one leg stretched out straight in front of him. Johnny was surprised to see that he was probably as old as Grandad, but he had that dried- out, suntanned look of a man who keeps himself fit and is probably still going to be captain of the bowls club when he's eighty. 'Well . . . when Mr Atkins said . . .' Johnny began. 'I mean, he used to say that he was "the one". I know about the Blackbury Pals. I know they all got killed except him. But I don't think that's what he meant . . .' 'You know about the Pals, do you? How?' 'Read it in an old newspaper.' 'Oh. But you don't know about Tommy Atkins?' 'Well, yes, he—' 96 97 'No, I mean Tommy Atkins. I meant, why he' so proud of the name. What the name meant? 'I don't understand that,' said Johnny. 'What do they teach you in school these days?' Johnny didn't answer. He could tell it wasn't* really a question. j 'You see - in the Great War, the First World War . . . when a new recruit joined the Army he had to fill in his pay book, yes? You know? Name and address and that sort of thing? And to help them do it, the Army did a kind of guide to how to fill it in, and on the guide, where it said Name, they put: Thomas Atkins. It was just a name. Just to show them that's where their name should be. Like: John Smith. But it ... well, it became a sort of joke. Tommy Atkins came to mean the average soldier—' 'Like The Man In The Street?' 'Yes . . . very much like that. It was a nickname for a soldier, I do know that. Tommy Atkins — the British Tommy.' 'So . . . in a way . . . all soldiers were Tommy Atkins?' 'Yes. I suppose you could put it like that. Of course, that's a rather fanciful way of—' 'But he was a real person. He smoked a pipe and everything.' 'Well, I suppose the Army used it because they thought it was a common sort of name. So there was bound to be a real Tommy Atkins somewhere. I know he was very proud of his name. I do know that.' 'Was he the last man alive who fought in the war?' 'Oh, no. Good heavens, no. But he was the last one from around here, that's for certain. The last of the Pals.' Johnny felt a change in the air. 'He was a strange old boy. I used to go and see him every year at—' There was a noise that might be made if a handful of silence was stretched thin and then plucked, like a guitar string. Johnny looked around. Now there were three people sitting on the bench. Tommy Atkins had his peaked hat on his knees. The uniform didn't really fit. He was still an old man, so his skinny neck stuck out of his collar like a tortoise's. He had an old-fashioned sort of face - one designed to wear a cloth cap and work in the rubber boot factory. He saw Johnny staring at him, and winked, and gave him the thumbs-up sign. Then he went back to gazing intently at the road leading into the car park. Behind Johnny, the dead filed quietly out of the building, the older ones coming through the wall, the younger ones still using the door out of habit. They didn't say anything. They just stood and looked expectantly towards the main road. Where, marching through the cars, were the Blackbury Pals. 98 99 Chapter 6 The Pals swung up the road, keeping perfectly in step. None of them were old. They all looked like their photograph. But then, Tommy Atkins didn't look old any more. It was a young man who got to Page 33 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt his feet, marched out into the car park, turned, and saluted Johnny and the dead. Then, as the Pals strode past, he stepped neatly into the gap they'd left for him. All thirty men wheeled about, and marched away. The dead streamed after them. They appeared to walk slowly while at the same time moved very fast, so that, in a few seconds, the car park was empty even of its ghosts. 'He's going back to France,' said Johnny. Sud- denly, he felt quite cheerful, even though he could feel the tears running down his face. The British Legion man, who had been talking, stopped. 'What?' he said. 'Tommy Atkins. He's going back.' 'How did you know that?' Johnny realized he'd been talking aloud. 'Uh—' 100 The British Legion man relaxed. 'I expect the lady from the Home told you, did she? He mentioned it in his will. Would you like a handkerchief?' 'Uh. No. I'm all right,' said Johnny. 'Yes. She told me.' 'Yes, we're taking him back this week. He gave us a map reference. Very precise, too.' The man patted the second box he'd been given which, Johnny suddenly realized, probably contained all that was left in this world of Atkins, T, apart from a few medals and some faded photographs. 'What will you have to do?' he said. 'Just scatter his ashes. We'll have a little ceremony.' 'Where ... the Pals died?' 'That's right. He was always talking about them, I do know that.' 'Sir?' The man looked up. 'Yes?' 'My name's John Maxwell. What's yours?' 'Atterbury. Ronald Atterbury.' He extended a hand. They shook hands, solemnly. 'Are you Arthur Maxwell's grandson? He used to work for me at the boot factory.' 'Yes. Sir?' 'Yes?' Johnny knew what the answer was going to be. He could feel it looming ahead of him. But you had to ask the question, so that the 101 answer could exist. He took a deep breath. 'Are you related to Sergeant Atterbury? He was one of the Pals.' 'He was my father.' 'Oh.' 'I never saw him. He married my mother before' he went off to the war. There was a lot of that sort of thing. There always is. Excuse me, young man, but shouldn't you be in school?' 'No,' said Johnny. 'Really?' 'I should be here. I'm absolutely sure about that,' said Johnny. 'But I'd better be getting to school, anyway. Thanks for talking to me.' 'I hope you haven't missed any important lessons.' 'History.' 'That's very important.' 'Can I ask you one more question?' 'Yes?' 'Tommy Atkins's medals. Were they for any- thing special?' 'They were campaign medals. Soldiers got them, really, for just staying alive. And for being there. He went all the way through the war, you know. Right to the end. Didn't even get wounded.' Johnny walked back down the drive barely no- ticing the world around him. Something important had happened, and he alone of all the living had seen it, and it was right. Getting medals for being there was right, too. Sometimes being there was all you Page 34 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt could do. 102 He looked back when he reached the road. Mr Atterbury was still sitting on the bench with the two boxes beside him, staring at the trees as if he'd never seen them before. Just staring, as if he could see right through them, all the way to France. Johnny hesitated, and then started back. 'No,' said Mr Vicenti, right behind him. He'd been waiting by the bus shelter. Haunting it, almost. 'I was only going to—' 'Yes, you were,' said Mr Vicenti. 'And what would you say? That you'd seen them? What good would that do? Perhaps he's seeing them too, inside his head.' 'Well—' 'It wouldn't work.' 'But if I—' 'If you did something like that a few hundred years ago you'd probably be hung for witchcraft. Last century they'd lock you up. I don't know what they'd do now.' Johnny relaxed a little. The urge to run back up the driveway had faded. 'Put me on television, I expect,' he said, walking along the road. 'Well, we don't want that,' said Mr Vicenti. He walked too, although his feet didn't always meet the ground. 'It's just that if I could make people see that—' 'Maybe,' said Mr Vicenti. 'But making people see anything is a long, hard job - excuse me . . .' He jerked his shoulder a bit, like a man trying to 103 find a difficult itch, and then pulled a pair of doves from inside his jacket. 'They breed in there, I'm sure,' he said, watching them fly away and disappear. 'What are you going to do now?' 'School. And don't say it's very important.' 'I said nothing.' They reached the entrance to the cemetery. Johnny could just see the big sign on the old factory site next door, its blue sky glowing again the dustier blue-grey of the real sky. 'They'll start taking us out the day after tomorrow,' said Mr Vicenti. 'I'm sorry. Like I said, I wish there was something I could do.' 'You may have done it already.' Johnny sighed. 'If I ask you what you mean, you'll say it's hard to explain, right?' 'I think so. Come. You might enjoy this.' There wasn't even a dead soul in the cemetery. Even the rook had gone, unless it was a crow. But there was a lot of noise coming from the canal. The dead were swimming. Well, some of them were. Mrs Liberty was. She was wearing a long swimming costume that reached from neck to knees, but she still kept her hat on. The Alderman had stripped off his long robe and chain, and was sitting on the canal bank in his shirtsleeves and some braces that could have moored a ship. Johnny wondered how the dead changed clothes, or felt the heat, but he supposed it was all habit. If you thought your shirt was off, there it was . . . off As for swimming . . . there was no splash when they dived, just the faintest of shimmers, that spread out like ripples and vanished very quickly. And when they surfaced they didn't look wet. It dawned on Johnny that when a ghost (he had to use that word in his head) jumped into the water, the ghost didn't get wet, the water got ghostly. Not all of them were having fun, though. At least, not the usual sort. Mr Fletcher and Solomon Einstein and a few others were clustered around one of the dumped televisions. 'What are they doing?' said Johnny. 'Trying to make it work,' said Mr Vicenti. Johnny laughed. The screen had been smashed. Rain had dripped into the case for years. There was even grass growing out of it. 'That'll never—' he began. Page 35 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt There was a crackle. A picture formed in the air, on a screen that wasn't there any more. Mr Fletcher stood up and solemnly shook Solomon Einstein's hand. 'Another successful marriage of advanced theor- etics and practical know-how, Mr Einstein.' 'A shtep in the right direction, Mr Fletcher.' Johnny stared at the flickering images. The pic- ture was in beautiful colour. Enlightenment dawned. 'It's the ghost of the television?' he said. 104 105 'Vot a clever boy!' said Solomon Einstein. 'But with improvements,' said Mr Fletcher. Johnny peered inside the case. It was full of; old leaves and stained, twisted metal. But over the top of it, shimmering gently, was the pearly outline of the ghost of the machine, purring away without electricity. At least, apparently without electricity. Who knew where the electricity went when the light was switched off? 'Oh, wow.' He stood up and pointed to the scummy green surface of the canal. 'Somewhere down there there's an old Ford Capri,' he said. 'Wobbler said he saw some men dump it in there once.' 'I shall see to it directly,' said Mr Fletcher. 'The internal combustion engine certainly could do with some improvements.' 'But. . . look . . . machines aren't alive, so how can they have ghosts?' 'But zey have existence,' said Einstein. 'From mo- ment to moment. Zo, we find the right moment, yes?' 'Sounds a bit occult,' said Johnny. 'No! It is physicsl It is beyond physics. It is—' he waved both hands excitedly, 'metaphysics. From the Greek meta, meaning "beyond", and physika, meaning . . . er . . .' 'Physics,' said Mr Vicenti. 'Exactly!' 'Nothing ever finishes. Nothing's ever really over.' 106 It was Johnny who said that. He was surprised at himself. 'Correct! Are you a physicist?' 'Me?' said Johnny. 'I don't know anything about science!' 'Marvellous! Ideal qualification!' said Einstein. 'What?' 'Ignorance is very important! It is an absolutely essential step in the learning process!' Mr Fletcher twiddled the ghost of a tuning knob. 'Well, we're all right now,' he said, watching a programme in what sounded like Spanish. 'Over here, everyone!' 'How very interesting,' said Mrs Liberty, dress- ing herself in the blink of an eye. 'Miniature cinematography?' When Johnny left they were all in front of the busted television, arguing over what to watch . . . Except for Mr Grimm. He stood a little apart, hands folded obediently, watching them. 'There will be trouble because of this,' he said. 'This is disobedience. Meddling with the physical.' He had a small moustache as well as glasses and, in daylight, Johnny saw that the lenses were those thick ones that seem to hide the person's eyes. 'There'll be trouble,' he said again. 'And it will be your fault, John Maxwell. You're getting them excited. Is this any way for the dead to behave?' Two invisible eyes followed him. 'Mr Grimm?' said Johnny. 'Yes?' 'Who are you?' 107 'That's none of your business.' 'No, but it's just that everyone else always talks | about—' 7 happen to believe in decency. I believe life J should be taken seriously. There is a proper way ; to conduct oneself. / certainly don't intend to indulge in this foolish behaviour.' Page 36 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt 'I didn't mean to—' Mr Grimm turned around and walked stiffly to his little stone under the trees. He sat down with his arms folded, and glared at Johnny. 'No good will come of it,' he said. He said he'd been to see a specialist. That was always a good one. Teachers generally didn't ask any more questions. At break, Wobbler had News. 'My mum said there's going to be a big meet- ing about it in the Civic Centre tonight, with television there and everything.' 'It won't do any good,' said Yo-less. 'It's been going on for ages. It's too late. There's been all kinds of inquiries and stuff.' 'I asked my mum about building things on old graveyards and she says they have to get a vicar in to desecrate the site first,' said Wobbler. 'That should be worth seeing.' 'It's de-consecrate,' said Yo-less. 'Desecrate is all to do with sacrificing goats and things.' Wobbler looked wistful. 'I suppose there's no chance—' 'None!' 108 'I'm going to go along tonight,' said Johnny. 'And you lot ought to come.' 'It won't do any good,' said Yo-less. 'Yes it will,' said Johnny. 'Look, the place has still been sold,' said Yo-less. 'I know you're sort of wound up about it, but it's all over.' 'Going along will still do some good.' He knew it, in the same way he'd known the Pals were important. Not for reasons. Just-because it was. 'Will there be any. . . freak winds?' said Bigmac. 'How do / know? Shouldn't think so. They're all watching television.' The other three exchanged glances. 'The dead are watching television?' said Wobbler. 'That's right. And I know you're all trying to think of funny things to say. Just don't say them. They're watching television. They've made an old TV set work.' 'Well, I suppose it passes the time,' said Wobbler. 'I don't think they experience time like we do,' said Johnny. Yo-less slid down off the wall. 'Talking of time,' he said, 'I'm not sure tomor- row would be a good time to go hanging around cemeteries.' 'Why not?' said Bigmac. 'You know what day it is?' 'Tuesday,' said Johnny. 'Halloween,' said Wobbler. 'You're all coming to my party, remember?' 109 'Whoops,' said Bigmac. 'The principle is astonishingly simple,' said Mr Fletcher. 'A tiny point of light! That's all it is! Whizzing backwards and forwards inside a glass bottle. Basically it's a thermionic valve. Much easier to control than sound waves—' 'Excuse me,' said Mrs Liberty. 'When you stand in front of the screen you make the picture go blurred.' 'Sorry.' Mr Fletcher went back and sat down. 'What's happening now?' The dead were ranged in rows, fascinated. 'Mr McKenzie has told Dawn that Janine can't go to Doraleen's party,' said William Stickers, with- out taking his eyes off the screen. 'I must say,' said the Alderman, 'I thought Australia was a bit different. More kangaroos and fewer young women in unsuitable clothing.' 'I'm quite happy with the young women,' said William Stickers. 'Mr Stickers! For shame! You're deadV 'But I have a very good memory, Mrs Liberty.' 'Oh. Is it over?' said Solomon Einstein, as the credits rolled up the screen and the Cobbers theme tune rolled over the canal. 'But there iss the mystery of who took the money from Mick's coat!' 'The man in the television just said there will be another performance tomorrow,' said Mrs Liberty. 'We must be sure not to miss it.' Page 37 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt 'It is getting dark,' said Mr Vicenti, from the back of the group. 'Time we were getting back.' no The dead looked across at the cemetery. 'If we want to go, that is,' he added. He was smiling faintly. The dead were silent. Then the Alderman said, 'Well, I'm blowed if I'm going back in there.' 'Thomas Bowler!' snapped Mrs Liberty. 'Well, if a man can't swear when he's dead, it's a poor lookout. Blowed, blowed, blowed. And damn,' said the Alderman. 'I mean, look, will you? There's radio and television and all sorts. There's things going on! I don't see why we should go back in there. It's dull. No way.' 'No way?' William Stickers nudged Mrs Liberty. 'That's Australian for "certainly not",' he whispered. 'But staying where we're put is proper' said Mrs Liberty. 'We have to stay where we've been put—' 'Ahem.' It was Mr Grimm. The dead looked at their feet. 'I entirely agree,' he said. 'Oh. Hello, Eric,' said the Alderman coldly. Eric Grimm folded his hands on his chest and beamed at them. This worried even the dead. The thickness of his glasses somehow made his eyes get lost, so that all that was on the other side of them was pinkness. 'Will you listen to what you are saying?' he said. 'You're dead. Act your age. It's over.' He waved a finger. 'You know what will happen if you leave. You know what will happen if you're too long in away. It's dreadful to think about, isn't it? You're letting this idiot child get you all upset.' The dead tried not to meet his gaze. When you were dead, there were some things that you knew, in the same way that when you were alive you knew about breathing. It was that a day would come. And you had to be prepared. There'd be a final sunrise, and you had to face it, and be ready. A final sunrise. The day of judgement. It could be any day. You had to be ready. 'Not gallivanting offapeing your juniors,' said Mr Grimm, who seemed to read their thoughts. 'We're dead. So we wait here, like decent people. Not go dabbling in the Ordinary.' - The dead shuffled their feet. 'Well, I've waited eighty years,' said the Alderman, at last. 'If it happens tonight, it happens. I'm going to go and have a look around. Anyone else coming?' 'Yes. Me,' said William Stickers, standing up. 'Anyone else?' About half the dead stood up. A few more looked around and decided to join them. There was something about Mr Grimm that made you want to be on the other side. 'You will get lost!' warned Mr Grimm. 'Some- thing will go wrong, you know! And then you'll be wandering around forever, and you'll . . . forget.' 'I've got descendants out there,' said the Alderman. 'We've all got descendants,' said Mrs Liberty. 112 'And we know what the rules are. And so do you.' She looked embarrassed. There were rules. You were never told them, any more than you were told that things dropped when you let go of them. They were just there. But the Alderman was unbudgeable in a sullen kind of way. 'At least I'm going to have a look around. Check out my old haunts,' he muttered. 'Haunts?'said William Stickers. 'Check out?' said Mrs Liberty. 'That's modern talk for—' William Stickers began. 'I'm sure I don't want to know!' Mrs Liberty stood up. 'The very idea!' 'There's a world out there, and we helped to make it, and now I want to find out what it's like,' said the Alderman sulkily. 'Besides,' said Mr Vicenti, 'if we stick together no-one will forget who they are, and we'll all go further.' Mrs Liberty shook her head. 'Well, if you insist on going, then I suppose someone with some Sense should accompany you,' she said. The dead marched off in, as it were, a body, down the canal path and towards to the town centre. That left only Mr Einstein and Mr Fletcher, still sitting happily Page 38 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt beside their television. 'What's got into them?' said Mr Fletcher. 'They're acting almost alive.' 'It is disgusting,' said Mr Grimm, but somehow in a triumphant tone of voice, as if seeing people acting badly was very satisfying. 'Solomon here says that space is a delusion,' said Mr Fletcher. 'Therefore, it is impossible to go anywhere. Or to be anywhere, either.' Einstein spat on his hands and tried to smooth down his hair. 'On ze other hand—' he said, 'there was a nice little pub in Cable Street.' 'You wouldn't get a drink, Solly,' said Mr Fletcher. 'They don't serve spirits.' 'I used to like it in there,' said Einstein, wistfully. 'After a hard day stuffing foxes, it wass nice to relax of an evenink.' 'You did say space was a delusion,' said Mr Fletcher. 'Anyway, I thought we were going to do some more work on the television. You said there was no theoretical reason why we shouldn't be able to make—' 'I zink,' said Mr Einstein carefully, 'I would like to fool myself a little.' And then there was only Mr Grimm. He turned back, still smiling in a glassy kind of way, and settled down and waited for them to return. 114 Chapter 7 The Frank W. Arnold Civic Centre meeting room was about half full. It smelled of chlorine from the swimming baths, and of dust, and floor polish, and wooden chairs. Occasionally people would wander in thinking the meeting was the AGM of the bowls club, and then try to wander out again, pushing on the bar on the door marked 'Pull' and then glaring at it as if only an idiot would put 'Pull' on a door you pulled. The speakers spent a lot of the time asking people at the back if they could hear, and then holding the microphone too close to the loudspeakers, and then someone tried to make the PA system work properly, and blew a fuse, and went to find the caretaker, pushing on the door for a while like a hamster trying to find the way out of its treadmill. In fact, it was like every other public meet- ing Johnny had ever attended. Probably on Jupiter seven-legged aliens had meetings in icy halls smell- ing of chlorine, he thought, with the microphones howling, and creatures frantically TZaing'at doors clearly marked 'pnr'. There were one or two of his teachers in the audience. That was amazing. You never really thought of them doing anything after school. You never knew about people, like you never knew how; deep a pond was because all you saw was the top. And he recognized one or two people he'd seen in the cemetery walking their dogs or just sitting' on the seats. They looked out of place. There were a couple of people from United Amalgamated Consolidated Holdings, and a man from the Council planning office, and the chairman of Blackbury Municipal Authority, who looked a lot like Mrs Liberty and turned out to be a Miss Liberty. (Johnny wondered if Mrs Liberty was her great-grandmother or something, but it would be hard to ask; you couldn't very well say, 'Hey, you look like this dead lady, are you related?') They didn't look out of place. They looked as though they were used to platforms. Johnny found he couldn't listen to them properly. The pock-pock from the squash court on the other side of the wall punctuated the sentences like a rain of full stops, and the rattling of the door bar was a semi-colon. '—better. Future. For the young; people of our city—' Most of the people in the audience were mid- dle aged. They listened to all the speakers very intently. '—assure the good. People, of Blackbury; that. We. At United Consolidated; Holdings value. Pub- lic. Opinion most highly: and have no intention. Of—' Words poured out. He could feel them filling up the hall. 116 And afterwards - he told himself, in the priv- acy of his own head — afterwards, the day after tomorrow, the cemetery would be shut, no matter what anyone said. It'd vanished into the past just like the old boot factory. And then the past would be rolled up and tucked away in old newspapers, just like the Pals. Unless someone did something. Life was difficult enough already. Let someone else say something. '—not even a particularly fine example. Of Edwardian funereal sculpture. With—' Page 39 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt The words would fill up the hall until they were higher than people's heads. They were smooth, soothing words. Soon they'd close over the top of all the trilbies and woolly hats, and everyone would be sitting there like sea anemones. They'd come here with things to say, even if they didn't know how to say them. The thing was to keep your head down. But if you did keep your head down, you'd drown in other people's words. '—fully taken into. Account; at every stage of the planning process—' Johnny stood up, because it was that or drown- ing. He felt his head break through the tide of words, and he breathed in. And then out. 'Excuse me, please?' he said. The White Swan in Cable Street, known for years as The Dirty Duck, was a traditional English pub, with a 'Nuke the Gook' video machine that Shakespeare himself might have played. It was crowded, and 117 noisy with electronic explosions and the jukebox. In one corner, wedged between the video quiz game and the wall, in a black felt hat, nursing half a pint of Guinness, was mad old Mrs Tachyon. Mad is a word used about people who've either got no senses or several more than most other people. Mrs Tachyon was the only one who noticed the drop in temperature. She looked up, and grinned a one-toothed grin. The patch of chilly air drifted across the crowded room until it came up against the jukebox. Frost steamed off it for a second. The tune changed. ' "Roses are Blooming in Piccardy",' said Mrs Tachyon happily. 'Yes!' She watched carefully as people clustered around the machine and started to thump it. Then they pulled the plug, which made no difference. The barmaid screamed and dropped a tray of drinks when the games machine exploded and caught fire. Then the lights fused. A minute or two later, Mrs Tachyon was left in the dark, listening to the barman cursing some- where in a back room as fuses kept blowing. It was quite pleasant, sitting in the warm glow of the melted machinery. From the wreckage on the floor, the ghosts of two pints of beer detached themselves and floated across to the table. 'Cheers!' said Mrs Tachyon. 118 * * * The chairman of the Council looked over her glasses. 'Questions at the end, please.' Johnny wavered. But if he sat down, the words would close over his head again. 'When is the end, please?' he said. Johnny felt everyone looking at him. The chairman glanced at the other speakers. She had a habit, Johnny noticed, of closing her eyes when she started a sentence and opening them suddenly at the end, so that they'd leap out and surprise you. 'When [close] we've fully. Discussed. The situa- tion. And then I will call for [open!] questions.' Johnny decided to swim for the shore. 'But I'll have to leave before the end,' he said. 'I have to be in bed by ten.' There was a general murmur of approval from the audience. It was clear that most of them ap- proved of the idea of anyone under thirty being in bed by ten. It was almost true, anyway. He was generally in his room around ten, although there was no telling when the lights actually went off. 'Let the lad ask his question,' said a voice from near the front. ' He's doing a project,' said another voice. Johnny recognized Mr Atterbury, sitting bolt upright. 'Oh . . . very well. What was it, young man?' 'Um.'Johnny felt them all looking at him. 'Well, the thing is ... the thing I want to know is ... is there anything that anyone can say here, 119 tonight, that's going to make any difference?' 'That [close] hardly seems an appropriate sort of [open!] question,' said the chairman severely. Page 40 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt 'Seems damned good to me,' said Mr Atterbury. 'Why doesn't the man from United Amalagamated Consolidated Holdings answer the boy? Just a sim- ple answer would do.' The United man gave Johnny a frank, open smile. 'We shall, of course, take all views very deeply into consideration,' he said. 'And—' 'But there's a sign up saying that you're going to build anyway,' said Johnny. 'Only I don't think many people want the old cemetery built on. So you'll take the sign down, will you?' 'We have in fact bought the—' 'You paid fivepence,' said Johnny. 'I'll give you a pound.' People started to laugh. 'I've got a question too,' said Yo-less, standing up. The chairman, who had her mouth open, hesi- tated. Yo-less was beaming at her, defying her to tell him to sit down. 'We'll take the question from the other young man, the one in the shirt - no, not you, the—' she began. 'The black one,' said Yo-less, helpfully. 'Why did the Council sell the cemetery in the first place?' The chairman brightened up at this one. 'I [close] think we have covered that very fully [open!],' she said. 'The cost of upkeep—' 120 Bigmac nudged Johnny, pointed at a sheet of figures everyone had been given, and whispered in his ear. 'But I don't see how there's much upkeep in a cemetery,' said Yo-less. 'Sending someone in once or twice a year to cut the brambles down doesn't sound like much of a cost to me.' 'We'd do it for nothing,' said Johnny. 'Would we?' whispered Wobbler, who liked fresh air to be something that happened to other people, preferably a long way off People were turning round in their seats. The chairman gave a loud sigh, to make it clear that Johnny was being just too stupid but that she was putting up with him nevertheless. "The fact, young man, as I have explained time and again, is that it is simply too expensive to maintain a cemetery that is—' As he listened, red with embarrassment, Johnny remembered about the chance to have another go. He could just put up with it and shut up, and for ever after he'd wonder what would have happened, and then when he died that angel - although, as things were going at the moment, angels were in short supply even after you were dead — would say, hey, would you have liked to have found out what happened? And he'd say yes, really, and the angel would send him back and maybe this was— He pulled himself together. 'No,' he said, 'it isn't simply too expensive.' The woman stopped in mid-sentence. 'How dare you interrupt me!' she snapped. 121 Johnny ploughed on. 'It says in your papers here that the cemetery makes a loss. But a cemetery can't make a loss. It's not like a business or something. It just is. My friend Bigmac here says what you're calling a loss is just the value of the land for building offices. It's the rates and taxes you'd get from United Amalagamated Consolidated Holdings. But the dead can't pay taxes so they're not worth anything.' The man from United Amalagamated Consoli- dated Holdings opened his mouth to say something, but the chairman stopped him. 'A democratically elected Council—' she began. 'I'd like to raise a few points concerning that,' said Mr Atterbury. 'There are certain things about this sale which I should like to see more clearly explained in a democratic way.' 'I've had a good look round the cemetery,' said Johnny, plunging on. 'I've been . . . do- ing a project. I've walked round it a lot. It's full of stuff It doesn't matter that no-one in there is really famous. They were famous here. They lived and got on with things and died. They were people. It's wrong to think that the past is some- thing that's just gone. It's still there. It's just that you've gone past. If you drive through a town, it's still there in the rear-view mirror. Time is a road, but it doesn't roll up behind you. Things aren't over just because they're past. Do you see that?' Page 41 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt 122 People told one another that it was getting chilly for the time of year. Little points of coldness drifted around the town. Screen K at the Blackbury Odeon was showing a 24-hour, non-stop Halloween Special, but people kept coming out. It was too cold in there, they said. And it was creepy. Armpit, the manager, who was one of Wobbler's mortal enemies, and who looked like two men in one dinner jacket, said it was supposed to be creepy. They said not that creepy. There were voices that you didn't exactly hear, and they - well, you kept getting the impres- sion that people were sitting right beh— Well, let's go and get a burger. Somewhere brightly- lit. Pretty soon there was hardly anyone in there at all except Mrs Tachyori, who'd bought a ticket because it was somewhere in the warm, and spent most of the time asleep. 'Elm Street? Elm Street? Wasn't there an Elm Street down by Beech Lane?' 'I don't think it was this one. I don't remember this sort of thing going on.' She didn't mind the voices at all. 'Freddie. Now that's a NICE name.' They were company, in a way. 'And that's a nice jumper.' And a lot of people had left popcorn and things behind in their hurry to get out. 'But I don't think THAT'S very nice.' The next film was Ghostbusters, followed by Wednesday of the Living Dead. 123 It seemed to Mrs Tachyon that the voices, whicl didn't exist anyway, had gone very quiet. Everyone was staring at Johnny now. 'And . . . and,' said Johnny, ' ... if we forget; about them, we're just a lot of people living in ... in buildings. We need them to tell us who we are. They built this city. They did all the daft human things that turn a lot of buildings into a place for people. It's wrong to throw all that away.' The chairman shuffled the papers in front of her. 'Nevertheless [closeJ, we have to deal with the [open!] present day,' she said brusquely. 'The dead are no longer here and I am afraid they do not vote.' 'You're wrong. They are here and they have got a vote,' said Johnny. 'I've been working it out. In my head. It's called tradition. And they outvote us twenty to one.' Everyone went quiet. Nearly as quiet as the unseen audience in Screen K. Then Mr Atterbury started to clap. Someone else joined in -Johnny saw it was the nurse from Sunshine Acres. Pretty soon everyone was clapping, in a polite yet firm way. Mr Atterbury stood up again. 'Mr Atterbury, sit down,' said the chairman. 'I am running this meeting, you know.' 'I am afraid this does not appear to be the case,' said Mr Atterbury. 'I'm standing up and I'm going to speak. The boy is right. Too much has been taken away, I do know that. You dug up the High Street. It had a lot of small shops. People lived there. Now it's all walkways and plastic signs and people are afraid of it at night. Afraid of the town where they live! I'd be ashamed of that, if I was you. And we had a coat of arms for the town, up on the Town Hall. Now we've got some kind of plastic logo thing. And you took the old allotments and built the Neil Armstrong Shopping Mall and all the little shops went out of business. And they were beautiful, those allotments.' 'They were a mess!' 'Oh, yes. A beautiful mess. Home-made green- houses made of old window frames nailed together. Old men sitting out in front of their sheds in old chairs. Vegetables and dogs and children all over the place. I don't know where all those people went, do you? And then you knocked down a lot of houses and built the big tower block where no-one wants to live and named it after a crook.' 'I didn't even live here in those days,' said the chairman. 'Besides, it's generally agreed that the Joshua N'Clement block was a ... misplaced idea.' 'A bad idea, you mean.' 'Yes, if you must put it like that.' ' So mistakes can be made, can they?' Page 42 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt 'Nevertheless, the plain fact is that we have to build for the future—' 'I'm very glad to hear you say that, madam chairman, because I'm sure you'll agree that the most successful buildings have got very deep foundations.' 124 125 There was another round of applause. The people on the platform looked at one another. 'I feel I have no alternative but to close the meeting,' said the chairman stiffly. 'This was sup- posed to be an informative occasion.' 'I think it has been,' said Mr Atterbury. 'But you can't close the meeting,' said Johnny. 'Indeed, I can!' 'You can't,' said Johnny, 'because this is a public hall, and we're all public, and no-one's done any- thing wrong.' 'Then we shall leave, and there will really be no point in the meeting!' said the chairman. She swept up her papers and stalked across the plat- form, down the steps and across the hall. The rest of the platform party, with one or two helpless glances at the audience, followed her. She led the way to the door. Johnny offered up a silent prayer. Someone, somewhere, heard it. She pushed when she should have pulled. The rattling was the only noise, and it grew frantic as she began to lose her temper. Finally, one of the men from United Amalagamated Consolidated Holdings yanked the bar and the door jolted open. Johnny risked looking behind him. He couldn't see anyone who looked dead. A week ago that would have sounded really odd. It didn't sound much better now. 'I thought I felt a draught,' he said. 'Just now?' 'They've left the windows open at the back,' said Yo-less. They're not here, Johnny thought. I'm going to have to do this by myself. Oh, well . . . 'Are we going to get into trouble?' said Wobbler. 'This was supposed to be a public meeting.' 'Well, we're public, aren't we?' said Johnny. 'Are we?' 'Why not?' Everyone sat for a while looking at the empty platform. Then Mr Atterbury got up and limped up the steps. ' Shall we have a meeting?' he said. Cold air swirled out of the cinema. 'Well, THAT was an education.' 'Some of those tricks must have been done with mirrors, if you want MY opinion.' 'What shall we do now?' 'We should be getting back.' 'Back where?' 'Back to the cemetery, of course.' 'Madam, the night is young!' 'That's right! We've only just started enjoying ourselves.' 'Yes! Anyway, you're a long time dead, that's what I always say.' 'I want to get out there and enjoy life. I never enjoyed it much when I WAS alive.' 'Thomas Bowler! That's no way for a respectable man to behave!' The crowd queuing outside the burger bar drew closer together as the chilly wind drove past. 126 127 'Thomas Bowler? Do you know . . . I never really enjoyed being Thomas Bowler.' The audience in the Frank W. Arnold Civic Cen- tre looked a bit sheepish, like a class after the teacher has stormed out. Democracy only work very well if people are told how to do it. Someone raised a hand. 'Can we actually stop it happening?' she said. 'It all sounded very . . . official.' 'Officially, I don't think we can,' said MH Atterbury. 'There was a proper sale. Page 43 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt United Amalagamated Consolidated Holdings could get unpleasant.' 'There's plenty of other sites,' said someone else. 'There's the old jam works in Slate Road, and all that area where the old goods yard used to be.' 'And we could give them their money back.' 'We could give them double their money back,' said Johnny. There was more laughter at this. 'It seems to me,' said Mr Atterbury, 'that a company like United Amalagamated Consolidated Holdings has to take notice of people. The boot factory never took any notice of people, I do know that. It didn't have to. It made boots. That was all there was to it. But no-one's quite certain about what UACH does, so they have to be nice about it.' He rubbed his chin. 'Big companies like that don't like fuss. And they don't like being laughed at. If there was another site . . . and if they thought we were serious . . . and if we threaten to offer them, yes, double their money back . . .' 'And then we ought to do something about the High Street,' said someone. 'And get some decent playgrounds and things again, instead of all these Amenities all over the place.' 'And blow up Joshua N'Clement and get some proper houses built—' 'Yo!' said Bigmac. 'Here here,' said Yo-less. Mr Atterbury waved his hands calmly. 'One thing at a time,' he said. 'Let's rebuild Blackbury first. We can see about Jerusalem tomorrow.' 'And we ought to find a name for ourselves!' 'The Blackbury Preservation Society?' 'Sounds like something you put in ajar.' 'All right, the Blackbury Conservation Society.' 'Still sounds like jam to me.' 'The Blackbury Pals,' said Johnny. Mr Atterbury hesitated. 'It's a good name,' he said eventually, while lots of people in the hall started asking one another who the Blackbury Pals were. 'But . . . no. Not now. But they were officially the Blackbury Volunteers. That's a good name.' 'But that doesn't say what we're going to do, does it?' 'If we start off not knowing what we're going to do, we could do anything,' said Johnny. 'Einstein said that,' he added, proudly. 'What, Albert Einstein?' said Yo-less. 128 129 'No, Solomon Einstein,' said Mr Atterbury. 'Hah! Know about him too, do you?' 'Er . . . yes.' 'I remember him. He used to keep a taxidermist and fishing tackle shop in Cable Street when I was a lad. He was always saying that sort of thing. A bit of a philosopher, was Solomon Einstein.' 'And all he did was stuff things?' said Yo-less. 'And think,' said Johnny. 'Well, that kind of cogitation runs in the family, you might say,' said Mr Atterbury. 'Besides, you've got a lot of time for abstract thought when you've got your hand stuck up a dead badger.' 'Yes, you certainly wouldn't want to think about what you were doing,' said Wobbler. 'Blackbury Volunteers it is, then,' said Mr Atterbury. Frost formed on the receiver of the public phone in The White Swan. 'Ready, Mr Einstein?' 'Let's go, Mr Fletcher!' The telephone clicked, and was silent. The air warmed up again. Thirty seconds later, the air grew cold in the little wooden hut twenty miles away that housed the controls of Blackbury University's radio telescope. 'It works!' 'Off course. Off all the forces in the universe, the hardest to overcome is the force of habit. Gravity is easy-peasy by comparison.' 'When did you think of that?' 'It came to me ven I was working on a particularly large trout.' Page 44 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt 'Really? Well . . . let's see what we can do . . .' Mr Fletcher looked around the little room. It was currently occupied only by Adrian 'Nozzer' Miller, who'd wanted to be an astronomer because he thought it was all to do with staving up late looking through telescopes, and hadn't bargained on it being basically about adding columns of figures in a little shed in the middle of a windy field. The figures the telescope was producing were all that was left of an exploding star twenty million years ago. A billion small rubbery things on two planets who had been getting on with life in a quiet sort of way had been totally destroyed, but they were certainly helping Adrian get his Ph.D. and, who knows, they might have thought it all worthwhile if anyone had asked them. He looked up as the telescope motors ground into action. Lights flickered on the control panel. He stared at the main switches, and then reached out for them. They were so cold they hurt. 'Ow!' The big dish turned towards the moon, which was just over Blackbury. There was a clattering from the printer beside him, and the endless stream of paper it was pro- ducing now read: OIOIOIOOIOIOIOIOOOIOOOOIOOOOIIOOIIOOIOIO HEREGOESNOTHINGGGGoooooooooi 1101111 WELLIMB^CKboooioooi . . . 130 Mr Fletcher had just bounced off the moon. 'Vot was it like?' 'I didn't have time to see much, but I don't think I'd like to live there. It worked, though. The sky's the limit, Mr Einstein!' 'Exactly, Mr Fletcher! By the vay, where did that young man go?' 'I think he had to rush off somewhere.' 'Oh. Well. . . we should go and tell the others, don't you think?' It was a quiet night in Blackbury Central police station. Sergeant Comely had time to sit back and watch the little lights on the radio. He'd never really been happy about the ra- dio, even when he was younger. It was the bane of his life. He suffered from education, and he'd never been able to remember all that 'Foxtrot Tango Piper' business - at least when he was, e.g., pelting down the street at 2 a.m. in pur- suit of miscreants. He'd end up sending messages about 'Photograph Teapot Psychological'. It had definitely blighted his promotion chances. He especially hated radio on nights like this, when he was in charge. He hadn't joined the police to be good at technology. Then the phones started to ring. There was the manager of the Odeon. Sergeant Comely couldn't quite make out what he was saying. 'Yes, yes, all right, Halloween Spectacular,' he said. 'What do you mean, it's all gone cold? What 132 do you want me to do? Arrest a cinema for being cold? I'm a police officer, not a central heating specialist! I don't repair video machines, either!' The phone rang again as soon as he put it down, but this time one of the young constables answered it. 'It's someone from the university,' he said, put- ting his hand over the mouthpiece. 'He says a strange alien force has invaded the radio telescope. You know, that big satellite dish thing over towards Slate?' Sergeant Comely sighed. 'Canyou get a descrip- tion?' he said. 'I saw a film about this, Sarge,' said another policeman. 'These aliens landed and replaced everyone in the town with giant vegetables.' 'Really? Round here it'd be days before anyone noticed,' said the sergeant. The constable put the phone down. 'He just said it was like a strange alien force,' he said. 'Very cold, too.' 'Oh, a cold strange alien force,' said Sergeant Comely. 'And it was invisible, too.' 'Right. Would he recognize it if he didn't see it again?' The young policemen looked puzzled. I'm too good for this, the sergeant thought. 'All right,' he said. 'So we know the following. Strange invisible aliens have invaded Blackbury. They dropped in at The Dirty Duck, where they blew up the Space Page 45 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt Invaders machine, which makes 133 sense. And then they went to the pictures. Well, that makes sense too. It's probably years before new films get as far as Alfred Centuri . . .' The phone rang again. The constable answered it. 'And what, we ask ourselves, is their next course of action?' 'It's the manager of Pizza Surprise, Sarge,' said the constable. 'He says—' 'Right!' said the sergeant. 'That's right! They drop in for a Number Three with Extra Pepperoni! It probably looks like a friend of theirs.' 'Wouldn't do any harm to go and chat to him,' said the constable. It had been a long time since dinner. 'You know, just to show a bit of—' '/'// go,' said Sergeant Comely, picking up his hat. 'But if I come back as a giant cucumber, there's going to be trouble.' 'No anchovies on mine, Sarge,' said the con- stable, as Sergeant Comely stepped out into the night. There was something strange in the air. Sergeant Comely had lived in Blackbury all his life, and it had never felt like this. There was an electrical tingle to things, and the air tasted of tin. It suddenly struck him. What if it were real? Just because they made silly films about aliens and things didn't actually mean, did it, that it couldn't ever happen? He watched them on late night television. They always picked small towns to land near. He shook his head. Nah . . . 134 William Stickers walked through him. 'You know, you really shouldn't have done that, William,' said the Alderman, as Sergeant Comely hurried away. 'He's nothing but a symbol of the oppression of the proletariat,' said William Stickers. 'You've got to have policemen,' said Mrs Liberty. 'Otherwise people would simply do as they liked.' 'Well, we can't have that, can we?' said Mr Vicenti. The Alderman looked around at the brightly lit street as they strolled along it. There weren't many living people around, but there were quite a lot of dead ones, looking in shop windows or, in the case of some of the older ones, looking at shop windows and wondering what they were. ' I certainly don't remember all these shopkeepers from my time,' he said. 'They must have moved in recently. Mr Boots and Mr Mothercare and Mr Spudjulicay.' 'Whom?' said Mrs Liberty. The Alderman pointed to the sign on the other side of the street. 'Spud-u-like,' said Mr Vicenti. 'Hmm.' 'Is that how you pronounce it?' said the Alderman. 'I thought perhaps he was French. My word. And electric light all over the place. And no horse -. . . manure in the streets at all.' 'Really!' snapped Mrs Liberty. 'Please remember you are in company with a Lady.' 135 'That's why he said manure,' said William Stickers, happily. 'And the food!' said the Alderman. 'Hindoo and Chinese! Chicken from Kentucky! And what did you say the stuff was that the clothes are made of?' 'Plastic, I think,' said Mr Vicenti. 'Very colourful and long-lasting,' said Mrs Liberty. 'And many of the girls wear bloomers, too. Extremely practical and emancipated.' 'And many of them are extremely handsome,' said William Stickers. 'And everyone's taller and I haven't seen anyone on crutches,' said the Alderman. 'It wasn't always like this,' said Mr Vicenti. 'The nineteen thirties were rather gloomy.' 'Yes, but now..." The Alderman spread his arms and turned around. 'Shops full of cinematography televisions! Bright colours everywhere! Tall people with their own teeth! An age of miracles and wonders!' 'The people don't look very happy,' said Mr Vicenti. 'That's just a trick of the light,' said the Alderman. It was almost midnight. The dead met in the aban- doned arcades of the shopping mall. The grilles were up and locked, but that doesn't matter when you're dead. Page 46 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt 'Well, that was fun,' said the Alderman. 'I have to agree,' said Mrs Sylvia Liberty. 'I 136 haven't enjoyed myself so much since I was alive. It's a shame we have to go back.' The Alderman crossed his arms. 'Go back?' he said. 'Now, then, Thomas,' said Mrs Liberty, but in a rather softer voice than she'd used earlier that evening, 'I don't want to sound like Eric Grimm, but you know the rules. We have to return. A day will come.' 'I'm not going back. I've really enjoyed myself. I'm not going back!' 'Me neither,' said William Stickers. 'Down with tyranny!' 'We must be ready for Judgement Day,' said Mrs Liberty. 'You never can tell. It could be tomorrow. Supposing it happened, and we missed it?' 'Hah!' said William Stickers. 'More than eighty years I've been sitting there,' said Alderman Bowler. 'You know, I wasn't expect- ing that. I thought things went dark for a moment and then there was a man handing out harps.' 'For shame!' 'Well, isn't that what you expected?' he demanded. 'Not me,' said William Stickers. 'Belief in the survival of what is laughably called the soul after death is a primitive superstition which has no place in a dynamic socialist society!' They looked at him. 'You don't tzink,' said Solomon Einstein, care- fully, 'that it is worth reconsidering your opinions in the light of experimental evidence?' 137 'Don't think you can get round me just because you're accidentally right! Just because I happen to find myself still . . . basically here,' said William Stickers, 'does not invalidate the general theory!' Mrs Liberty banged her phantom umbrella on the floor. 'I won't say it hasn't been enjoyable,' she said, 'but the rules are that we must be back in our places at dawn. Supposing we stayed away too long and forgot who we were? Supposing tomorrow was Judgement Day?' Thomas Bowler sighed. 'Well, supposing it is?' he said. 'You know what I'd say? I'd say: I did the best I could for eighty-four years. And no-one ever told me that afterwards I'd still be this fat old man who gets out of breath. Why do I get out of breath? I don't breathe. I passed away, and next thing I knew I was sitting in a marble hut like a man waiting an extremely long time for an appointment with the doctor. For nearly ninety years! I'd say: you call this justice? Why are we waiting? A day will come. We all ... arrive knowing it, but no-one says when! 'Just when I was beginning to enjoy life,' he said. 'I wish this night would never end.' Mr Fletcher nudged Solomon Einstein. 'Shall we tell them?' he said. 'Tell us what?' said William Stickers. 'Veil, you see—' Einstein began. 'Times have changed,' said Mr Fletcher. 'All that stuff about being home at dawn and not hearing the cock crow and stufflike that. That was all very well 138 once upon a time, when people thought the Earth was flat. But no-one believes that now—' 'Er—' One of the dead raised a hand. 'Oh, yes,' said Mr Fletcher. 'Thank you, Mr Ronald Newton (1878-1934), former chairman of the Blackbury Flat Earth Society. I know you have Views. But the point I'm trying to make is—' '—dawn is a place as well as a time,' said Einstein, spreading his hands. 'What on earth do you mean?' said Mrs Liberty. 'On Earth, and around earth,' said Einstein, getting excited. 'One night and one day, forever chasing one another.' 'There is a night that never comes to an end,' said Mr Fletcher. 'All you need is speed . . .' Page 47 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt 'Relatively speaking,' said Einstein. 139 Chapter 8 There is a night that never comes to an end . . . The clock of the world turns under its own shadow. Midnight is a moving place, hurtling around the planet at a thousand miles an hour like a dark knife, cutting slices of daily bread off the endless loaf of Time. Time passes everywhere. But days and nights are little local things that happen only to people who stay in one place. If you go fast enough, you can overtake the clock . . . 'How many of us are in this phone box?' said Mr Fletcher. 'Seventy-three,' said the Alderman. 'Very well. Where shall we go? Iceland? It's not even midnight yet in Iceland.' 'Can we have fun in Iceland?' said the Alderman. 'How do you feel about fish?' 'Can't abide fish.' 'Not Iceland, then. I believe it's very hard to have fun in Iceland without fish being involved in some way. Well, now ... it'll be early evening in New York.' 'America?' said Mrs. Liberty. 'Won't we get scalped?' 'Good grief, no!' said William Stickers, who was 140 a bit more up to date about the world. 'Probably not,' said Mr Fletcher, who had been watching the news lately and was even more up to date than William Stickers. 'Look, we're dead,' said the Alderman. 'What else have we got to worry about?' 'Now, this may strike you as an unusual means of travel,' said Mr Fletcher, as something in the telephone began to click, 'but all you have to do, really, is follow me. Incidentally, is Stanley Roundway here?' The footballer raised his hand. 'We're going west, Stanley. For once in your death, try to get the directions right. And now One by one, they vanished. Johnny lay in bed, watching the stricken shuttle turning gently in the moonlight. It had been quite busy after the meeting. Some- one from the Blackbury Guardian had talked to him, and then Mid-Midlands TV had filmed him, and people had shaken his hand, and he hadn't got home until nearly eleven. There hadn't been any trouble over that, at least. His mum hadn't come in yet and Grandad was watching a programme about bicycle racing in Germany. He kept thinking about the Pals. They'd come all the way from France. Yet the dead in the cemetery were so frightened of moving. But they were all the same type of people, really. There had to be a reason for that. 141 The dead in the cemetery just hung around. Why? The Pals had marched from France, be- cause it was the right thing to do. You didn't have to stay where you were put. 'New York, New York.' 'Why did they name it twice?' 'Well, they ARE Americans. I suppose they wanted to be sure.' 'The lights are extremely plentiful. What's that?' 'The Statue of Liberty.' 'Looks a bit like you, Sylvia.' 'Sauce!' 'Is everyone keeping a look out for those Ghost- breakers?' 'I think that-was just cinematography, William.' 'How long to morning?' 'Hours, yet! Follow me, everyone! Let's get a better view!' No-one ever did work out why all the elevators in the World Trade Centre went up and down all by themselves for almost an hour . . . October the 3 ist dawned foggy. Johnny wondered about having a one-day illness in preparation for what he suspected was going to be a busy evening, but decided to go to school instead. They always felt happier if you dropped in sometimes. He went via the cemetery. There wasn't a living soul. He hated it when it was like this. It was like the bits in the film when you were waiting for the aliens to jump out. Page 48 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt 142 Somehow, they were always more dreadful than the bits with the fangs in. Then he found Mr Grimm. Anyone else walking along the towpath would have just seen the busted set. But Johnny saw the little man in his neat suit, watching the ghost of the television. 'Ah, boy,' he said. 'You have been causing trouble, have you?' He pointed to the screen. Johnny gasped. There was Mr Atterbury, very calmly talking to a lady on a sofa. There was also one of the people from United Amalagamated Consolidated Holdings. And he was having some difficulty, was the Consolidated man. He'd come along with some prepared things to say and he was having problems getting his mind round the idea that they weren't working any more. Mr Grimm turned up the volume control. '—at every stage, fully sensitive to public opinion in this matter, I can assure you, but there is no doubt that we entered into a proper and legal contract with the relevant Authority.' 'But the Blackbury Volunteers say too much was decided behind closed doors,' said the lady, who looked as though she was enjoying herself. 'They say things were never fully discussed and that no-one listened to the local people.' 'Of course, this is not the fault of United Amalagamated Consolidated Holdings,' said Mr Atterbury, smiling benevolently. 'They have an enviable record of civic service and co-operation with the public. I think what we have here is a mistake rather than any near-criminal activity, and we in the Volunteers would be more than happy to assist them in any constructive way and, indeed, possibly even compensate them.' Probably no-one else but Johnny and the Consolidated man noticed Mr Atterbury take a ten-pence piece out of his pocket. He turned it over and over in his fingers. The man from the company watched it like a mouse might watch a cat. He's going to offer him double his money back, Johnny thought. Right there on television. He didn't. He just kept turning the coin over and over, so that the man could see it. 'That seems a very diplomatic offer,' said the interviewer. 'Tell me, Mr — er—' 'A spokesman,' said the Consolidated man. He looked quite ill. There was a glint as light flashed off the coin. 'Tell me, Mr Spokesman . . . what is it that United Amalgamated Consolidated Holdings ac- tually does?' Mr Atterbury would probably have been a good man in the Spanish Inquisition, Johnny told himself Mr Grimm turned the sound down again. ' Where's everyone else?' said Johnny. 'Haven't come back,' said Mr Grimm, with horrible satisfaction. 'Their graves haven't been slept in. That's what happens when people don't listen. And do you know what's going to happen to them?' 'No.' 'They're going to fade away. Oh, yes. You've put 144 ideas in their heads. They think they can go gadding about. But people who go gadding about and not staying where they're put... they don't come back. And that's an end to it. It could be Judgement Day tomorrow, and they won't be here. Hah! Serves them right.' There was something about Mr Grimm that made Johnny want to hit him, except that it wouldn't work anyway and, besides, hitting him would be like hitting mud. You'd get dirtier for doing it. 'I don't know where they've gone,' he said, 'but I don't think anything bad's happened to them.' 'Think what you like,' said Mr Grimm, turning back to the television. 'Did you know it's Halloween?' said Johnny. 'Is it?' said Mr Grimm, watching an advert for chocolate. 'I shall have to be careful tonight, then.' When Johnny reached the bridge he looked back. Mr Grimm was still there, all alone. The dead rode a radio signal over Wyoming . . . Page 49 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt They were already changing. They were still recognizable, but only when they thought about it. 'You see, /told you it was possible,' said the person who was occasionally Mr Fletcher. 'We don't need wires!' They ran into an electric storm high over the Rocky Mountains. That was fun. And then they surfed down the radio waves to California. 'What time is it?' 'Midnight!' Johnny was a sort of hero in school. The Blackbury Guardian had a front page story headed: COUNCIL SLAMMED IN CEMETERY SALE RUMPUS. The Guardian often used words like 'slammed' and 'rumpus'; you wondered how the editor talked at home. Johnny was in the story with his name spelled wrong, and there was a quote which ran: 'War hero Arthur Atterbury, president of the newly formed "Blackbury Volunteers", told the Guardian: "There are young people in this town with more sense of history in their little fingers than some adults have in their entire committee-bound bodies". This is thought to be a reference to Cllr Miss Ethel Liberty, who was not available for comment last night.' Even one or two of the teachers mentioned it; it was unusual for people from the school to appear in the paper, except very close to headlines like TWO FINED AFTER JOYRIDE ESCAPADE. Even the History master asked him about the Blackbury Pals. And then Johnny found himself telling the class about the Alderman and William Stickers and Mrs Sylvia Liberty, although he said he'd got the information out of the library. One of the girls said she was definitely going to do a project on Mrs Liberty, Champion of Women's Rights, and Wobbler said, yes, champion of women's right to get things wrong, and that started a good argu- ment which lasted until the end of the lesson. Even the headmaster took an interest - probably out of aforesaid relief that Johnny wasn't involved in one of those YOUTH GANG FINED FOR SHOP- LIFTING stories. Johnny had to find his way to his office. The recommended method was to tie one end of a piece of string to somewhere you knew and get your friends to come and look for you if you were away more than two days. He got a short speech about 'social awareness', and was out again a minute later. He met the other three in the lunch break. 'Come on,' he said. 'Where to?' 'The cemetery. I think something's gone wrong.' 'I haven't had my lunch yet,' said Wobbler. 'It's very important for me to have regular meals. Otherwise my stomach acid plays up.' 'Oh, shut up.' By the time they raced one another across the heart of Australia, they didn't even need the radio. The dawn dragged its slow way across the Pacific after them, but they were running free. 'Do we ever need to stop?' 'No!' 'I always wanted to see the world before I died!' 'Well, then, it was just a matter of timing.' 'What time is it?' 'Midnight!' The cemetery wasn't empty now. There were a 146 couple of photographers there, for one thing, in- cluding one from a Sunday newspaper. There was a film crew from Mid-Midlands Television. And the dog-walking people had been joined by others, just walking around and looking. In a neglected corner, Mrs Tachyon was in- dustriously Vim-ing a gravestone. 'Never seen so many people here,' said Johnny. He added, 'At least, ones who're breathing.' Yo-less wandered over from where he'd been talking to a couple of enthusiastic people in woolly bobble hats, who were peering through the huge thicket behind Mrs Liberty's grave. 'They say we've not only got environment and ecology, but some habitat as well,' he said. 'They think they've seen a rare Scandinavian thrush.' Page 50 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt 'Yeah, full of life, this place,' said Bigmac. A Council lorry had driven a little way up the towpath. Some men in donkey jackets were har- vesting the old mattresses. The zombie television had already gone. Mr Grimm was nowhere to be seen, even by Johnny. And a police car was parked just outside the gates. Sergeant Comely was working on the gen- eral assumption that where you got lots of people gathered together, something illegal was bound to happen sooner or later. The cemetery was alive. 'They've gone,' said Johnny. 'I can feel them . . . not here.' The other three found that, quite by accident, they'd all moved closer together. 148 A rare Scandinavian thrush, unless it was a rook, cawed in the elms. 'Gone where?' said Wobbler. 'I don't know!' 'I knew it! I knew it!' said Wobbler. 'His eyes'11 start to glow any minute, you watch. You've let 'em out! There'll be lurchin' goin' on before this day's over, you wait and see!' 'Mr Grimm said that if they're away too long, they. . . they forget who they were . . .' said Johnny, uncertainly. 'See? See?' said Wobbler. 'You laughed at me! Maybe they're OK when they're remembering who they were, but once they forget . . .' 'Night of the Killer Zombies?' said Bigmac. 'We've been through all that,' said Johnny. 'They're not zombies!' 'Yeah, but maybe they've been eating voodoo fish and chips,' said Bigmac. 'They're just not here.' 'Then where are they?' 'I don't know\' 'And it's Halloween, too,' moaned Wobbler. Johhny walked over to the fence around the old boot works. There were quite a few cars parked there. He could see the tall thin figure of Mr Atterbury, talking to a group of men in grey suits. ' I wanted to tell them,' he said.' I mean, we might win. Now. People are here. There's TV and every- thing. Last week it looked hopeless and now there's just a chance and last night I wanted to tell them and now they've gone! And this was their home!' 149 'Perhaps all these people have frightened them away,' said Yo-less. 'Day of the Living,' said Bigmac. 'I should have had my lunch!' said Wobbler. 'My stomach's definitely playing up!' 'They're probably waiting under your bed,' said Bigmac. 'I'm not scared,' said Wobbler. 'I've just got a stomach upset.' 'We ought to be getting back,' said Yo-less. 'I've got to do a project on projects.' 'What?' said Johnny. 'It's for Maths,' said Yo-less. 'How many people in the school are doing projects. That kind of stuff Statistics.' 'I'm going to look for them,' said Johnny. 'You'll get into trouble when they do the register.' 'I'll say I've been doing something . . . social. That'll probably work. Anyone coming with me?' Wobbler looked at his feet, or where his feet would be if Wobbler wasn't in the way. 'What about you, Bigmac? You've got your Everlasting Note, haven't you?' 'Yeah, but it's going a bit yellow now . . .' No-one knew when it had been written. Ru- mour had it that it had been handed down through the generations in Bigmac's family. It was in three pieces. But it generally worked. Although Bigmac kept tropical fish and generally out of trouble, there was something about the way he looked and the way he lived in the Joshua N'Clement block that 150 saw to it no teacher ever questioned the Note, which excused him from doing everything. 'Anyway, they could be anywhere,' he said. 'Anyway, I can't look for 'em, can I? Page 51 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt Anyway, they're probably just inside your head.' 'You heard them on the radio!' 'I heard voices. That's what radio's for, innit?' It occurred to Johnny, not for the first time, that the human mind, of which each of his friends was in possession of one almost standard sample, was like a compass. No matter how much you shook it up, no matter what happened to it, sooner or later it'd carry on pointing the same way. If three- metre-tall green Martians landed on the shopping mall, bought some greetings cards and a bag of sugar cookies and then took off again, within a day or two people would believe it never happened. 'Not even Mr Grimm's here, and he's always here,' said Johnny. He looked at Mr Vicenti's ornate grave. Some people were taking photographs of it. 'Always here,' he said. 'He's gone weird again,' said Wobbler. 'You all go back,' said Johnny, quietly. 'I just thought of something.' They all looked round. Their brains don't believe in the dead, Johnny thought, but they keep getting outvoted by all the rest of them. 'I'm OK,' said Johnny. 'You go on back. I'll see you at Wobbler's party tonight, all right?' 'Remember not to bring any. . . you know. . . friends,' said Wobbler, as the three of them left. Johnny wandered down North Drive. He'd never tried to talk to the dead. He'd said things when he knew they were listening, and sometimes they'd been clearly visible, but; apart from that first time, when he'd knocked on the door of the Alderman's mausoleum for a joke . . . 'Will you look at this?' One of the people who'd been examining the grave had picked up the radio, which had been lodged behind a tuft of grass. 'Honestly, people have no respect.' 'Does it work?' It didn't. A couple of days of damp grass had done for the batteries. 'No.' ' Give it to the men dumping the rubbish on the lorry, then.' 'I'll do it,' said Johnny. He hurried off with it, keeping a lookout, trying to find one dead person among the living. 'Ah, Johnny.' It was Mr Atterbury, leaning over the wall of the old boot works. 'Exciting day, isn't it? You started something, eh?' 'Didn't mean to,' said Johnny, automatically. Things were generally his fault. 'It could go either way,' said Mr Atterbury. 'The old railway site isn't so good, but . . . things look promising, I do know that. People have woken up.' 'That's true. A lot of people.' 'United Consolidated don't like fuss. The District Auditor is here, and a man from the Development Commission. It could go very well.' 'Good. Urn.' 'Yes?' 'I saw you on television,' said Johnny. 'You called United Consolidated public-spirited and co- operative.' 'Well, they might be. If they've got no choice. They're a bit shifty but we might win through. It's amazing what you can do with a kind word.' 'Oh. Right. Well, then ... I've got to go and find someone, if you don't mind . . .' There was no sign of Mr Grimm anywhere. Or any of the others. Johnny hung around for hours, with the birdwatchers and the people from the Blackbury Wildlife Trust, who'd. found a fox's den behind William Stickers' memorial, and some Japanese tourists. No-one quite knew why the Japanese tourists were there, but Mrs Liberty's grave was getting very well photographed. Eventually, though, even Japanese tourists run out of film. They took one last shot of them- selves in front of William Stickers' monument, and headed back towards their coach. The cemetery emptied. The sun began to set over the carpet warehouse. Mrs Tachyon went past with her loaded shopping trolley to wherever it was she Page 52 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt spent her nights. The cars left the old boot works, and only the bulldozers were left, like prehistoric monsters sur- prised by a sudden cold snap. 152 153 Johnny sidled up to the forlorn little stone under the trees. 'I know you're here,' he whispered. 'You can't leave like the others. You have to stay. Because you're a ghost. A real ghost. You're still here, Mr Grimm. You're not just hanging around like the rest of them. You're haunting.' There was no sound. 'What did you do? Were you a murderer or something?' There was still no sound. In fact, there was even more silence than before. 'Sorry about the television,' said Johnny nervously. More silence, so heavy and deep it could have stuffed mattresses. He walked away, as fast as he dared. 154 Chapter 9 'This fuss over the cemetery's certainly breathed a bit of life into this town,' said his mother. 'Go and give your grandad his tray, will you? And tell him about it. You know he takes an interest.' Grandad was watching the News in Hindi. He didn't want to. But the thingy for controlling the set had got lost and everyone had forgotten how to change channels without it. 'Brought you your tray, Grandad.' 'Right.' 'You know the old cemetery? Where you showed me William Stickers' grave?' 'Right.' 'Well, maybe it won't be built on now. There was a meeting last night.' 'Right?' 'I spoke up at the meeting.' 'Right.' 'So it might be all right.' 'Right.' Johnny sighed. He went back into the kitchen. 'Can I have an old sheet, Mum?' 'What on earth for?' 'Wobbler's Halloween party. I can't think of anything else.' 155 'There's the one I used as a dustcover, if you're going to cut holes in it.' 'Thanks, Mum.' 'It's pink.' 'Aaaaooow, Mum!' 'It's practically washed out. No-one'11 notice.' It also, as it turned out, had the remains of some flowers embroidered on one end. Johnny did his best with a pair of scissors. He'd promised he'd go. But he went the long way round, with the sheet in a bag, just in case the dead had come back and might see him. And there was Mr Grimm to think about now. After he'd been gone a few minutes, the TV started showing the News in English, which looked less interesting than the Hindi News. Grandad watched it for a while, and then sat up. 'Hey, girl, it says they're trying to save the old cemetery.' 'Yes, Dad.' 'It looked like our Johnny on the stage there.' 'Yes, Dad.' 'No-one tells me anything around here. What's this?' 'Chicken, Dad.' 'Right.' They were somewhere in the high plateaus of Asia, where once camel trains had traded silk across five thousand miles and now madmen with guns shot one another in the various names of God. 'How far to morning?' 156 'Nearly there . . .' Page 53 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt 'What?' The dead slowed down in a mountain pass, full of driving snow. 'We owe the boy something. He took an interest. He remembered us.' 'Zat's absolutely correct. Conservation of energy. Be- sides, he'll be worrying.' 'Yes, but . . . if we go back now . . . we'll become like we were, won't we? I can feel the weight of that gravestone now.' 'Sylvia Liberty! You said we shouldn't leave!' 'I've changed my mind, William.' 'Yes. I spent half my life beingjrightened of dying, and now I'm deadJ'm going to stop beingjrightened,' said the Alderman. 'Besides . . . I'm remembering things . . .' There was a murmur from the rest of the dead. 7 think ve all are,' said Solomon Einstein. 'All the zings we forgot when we were alive . . .' 'That's the trouble with life,' said the Alderman. 'It takes up your whole time. I mean, I won't say it wasn't fun. Bits of it. Quite a lot of it, really. In its own way. But it wasn't what you'd call living . . .' 'We don't have to be frightened of the morning,' said Mr Vicenti. 'We don't have to be frightened of anything.' A skeleton opened the door. 'It's me, Johnny.' 'It's me, Bigmac. What're you, a gay ghost?' 'It's not that pink.' 'The flowers are good.' 157 'Come on, let me in, it's freezing out here.' 'Can you float and mince at the same time?' 'Bigmac!' 'Come on, then.' Somehow, it looked as if Wobbler hadn't really put his heart into the decorations. There were a few streamers and some rubber spiders around the place, and a bowl of the dreadful punch you always get in these circumstances (the one with the brownish bits of orange in it) and bowls full of nibbles with names like Curly-Wigglies. And a vegetable marrow that looked as though it had walked into a combine harvester. 'It was sposed to be a Jack-o'-Lantern,' Wobbler kept telling everyone, 'but I couldn't find a pumpkin.' 'Met Hannibal Lecter in a dark alley, did it?' said Yo-less. 'The plastic bats are good, aren't they,' said Wobbler. 'They cost fifty-pence each. Have some more punch?' There were other people there, too, although in the semi-darkness it was hard to make out who they thought they were. There was someone with a lot of stitches and a bolt through his neck, but that was only Nodj, who looked like that anyway. There were a bunch from Wobbler's computer group, who could get drunk on non-alcoholic alcohol and would then stagger around saying things like, 'I'm totally mad\' There were a couple of girls Wobbler vaguely knew. It was that sort of party. You just knew someone would put something daft in the 158 punch, and everyone would talk about school, and one of the girls' dads'd turn up at eleven o'clock and hang around looking determined and put a damper on things, as if they weren't soaking wet already. 'We could play a game,' said Bigmac. 'Not Dead Man's Hand,' said Wobbler. 'Not after last year. You're supposed to pass around grapes and stuff, not just anything you find in the fridge.' 'It wasn't what it was' said one of the girls. 'It was what he said it was.' 'All right,' said Johnny to Yo-less, 'I've been trying to work it out. Who are yew?' Yo-less had covered half his face with white make-up. He wasn't wearing a shirt, just his or- dinary string vest, but he'd found a piece of fake leopard-skin-pattern material which he'd draped over his shoulders. And he had a black hat. 'Baron Samedi, the voodoo god,' said Yo-less. 'I got the idea out of James Bond.' 'That's racial stereotyping,' someone said. 'No, it's not,' said Yo-less. 'Not if I'm doing it.' 'I'm pretty sure Baron Samedi didn't wear a bowler hat,' said Johnny. 'I'm pretty sure it was a top hat. A bowler hat makes you look a bit like you're going to an Page 54 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt office somewhere.' 'I can't help it, it was all I could get.' 'Maybe he's Baron Samedi, the voodoo god of chartered accountancy,' said Wobbler. For a moment Johnny thought of Mr Grimm; his face was all one colour, but he looked like a 159 voodoo god of chartered accountancy if ever there was one. 'In the film he was all mixed up with tarot cards and stuff,' said Bigmac. 'Not really,' said Johnny, waking up. 'Tarot cards are European occult. Voodoo is African occult.' 'Don't be daft, it's American,' said Wobbler. 'No, American occult is Elvis Presley not being dead and that sort of thing,' said Yo-less. 'Voodoo is basically West African with a bit of Christian influence. I looked it up.' 'I've got some ordinary cards,' said Wobbler. 'No messing around with cards,' said Baron Yo- less severely. 'My mum'd go spare.' 'What about the thing with the letters and glasses?' 'The postman?' 'You know what I mean.' 'No. That could lead to dark forces taking over,' said Baron Yo-less. 'It's as bad as ouija boards.' Someone put on a tape and started to dance. Johnny stared into his glass of horrible punch. There was an orange pip floating in it. Cards and boards, he thought. And the dead. That's not dark forces. Making a fuss about cards and heavy metal and going on about Dungeons and Dragons stuff because it's got demon gods in it is like guarding the door when it is really coming up through the floorboards. Real dark forces. . . aren't dark. They're sort of grey, like Mr Grimm. They take all the colour out of life; they take a town like Blackbury and turn it into frightened streets and 160 plastic signs and Bright New Futures and towers where no-one wants to live and no-one really does live. The dead seem more alive than us. And every- one becomes grey and turns into numbers and then, somewhere, someone starts to do arithmetic . . . The Demon God Yoth-Ziggurat might want to chop your soul up into little pieces, but at least he doesn't tell you that you haven't got one. And at least you've got half a chance of finding a magic sword. He kept thinking about Mr Grimm. Even the dead kept away from him. He woke up to hear Wobbler say, 'We could go Trick or Treating.' 'My mother says that's no better than begging,' said Yo-less. 'Hah, it's worse than that around Joshua N'Clement,' said Bigmac. 'It's called, "Giss five quid or kiss your tyres night-night".' 'We could do it around here,' said Wobbler. 'Or we could go down the mall.' 'That'll just be full of kids in costume running around screaming.' 'A few more won't hurt, then,' said Johnny. 'All right, then, everybody,' Wobbler said. 'Come on . . .' In fact Neil Armstrong Mall was full of all the other people who'd run out of ideas at Halloween parties. They wandered around in groups look- ing at one another's clothes and talking, which was pretty much what people did normally in 161 any case, except that tonight the mall looked like Transylvania on late-shopping night. Zombies lurched under the sodium lights. Witches walked around in groups and giggled at the boys. Grinning pumpkins bobbed on the escalators. Vampires gibbered among the sad indoor trees, and kept fumbling their false fangs back in. Mrs Tachyon rummaged for tins in the litter bins. Johnny's pink ghost outfit caused a lot of interest. 'Seen any dead around lately?' said Baron Yo- less, when Wobbler and Bigmac had gone off to buy some snacks. 'Hundreds,' said Johnny. 'You know what I mean.' Page 55 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt 'No. Not them.' 'I'm worried something may have happened to them.' 'They're dead. If they exist, that is,' said Yo-less. 'It's not as though they could get run over or something. If you've saved their cemetery for them, they probably just aren't bothering to talk to you any more. That's probably what it is. I think—' 'Anyone want a raspberry snake?' said Wobbler, rustling a large paper bag. 'The skulls are good, too.' 'I'm going home,' said Johnny. 'There's some- thing wrong, and I don't know what it is.' A ten-year-old Bride of Dracula flapped past. 'I've got to admit, this isn't big fun,' said Wobbler. 'Tell you what . . . there's Night of the Vampire Nerds on TV. We could go and watch that.' 'What about everyone else?' said Bigmac. The rest of the party had drifted off. 'Oh, well, they know where I live,' said Wobbler philosophically, as a blood-streaked ghoul went by eating an ice cream. 'I don't believe in vampire nerds,' said Bigmac, as they stepped into the night air. It was a lot colder now, and the mist was coming back. 'Oh, I dunno,' said Wobbler. 'It's the sort we'd have round here.' 'They'd suck fruit juice,' said Yo-less. 'Their mum'd make them go to bed late,' said Bigmac, but they had to think about that. 'Why are we going this way?' said Wobbler. 'This isn't the way back.' 'It's foggy, too,' said Bigmac. 'It's just the mist off the canal,' said Johnny. Wobbler stopped. 'Oh, no,' he said. 'It's quicker this way,' said Johnny. 'Oh, yes. Quicker. Oh, yes. Because I'm gonna raw!' 'Don't be daft.' 'It's Halloween!' ' So what? You 're dressed up as Dracula - what 're you worried about!' 'I'm not going past there tonight!' 'It's no different than going past during the day.' 'All right, it's the same, but I'm different!' ' Scared?' said Bigmac. 'What? Me? Scared? Huh? Me? I'm not scared.' 'Actually, it is a bit risky,' said Baron Yo-less. 'Yes, risky,' said Wobbler hurriedly. 162 163 'I mean, you never know,' said Yo-less. 'Never know,' Wobbler echoed. 'Look, it's a street in our town. There's lights and a phone box and everything,' said Johnny. 'I just... I won't be happy until I've checked, OK? Anyway, there's four of us, after all.' 'That just means something bad can happen four times,' said Wobbler. But they'd been walking as they talked; now the little light in the phone box loomed in the fog like a blurred star. The other three went quiet. The fog hushed all sounds. Johnny listened. There wasn'vt even that blotting- paper silence that the dead made. 'See?' he whispered. 'I said—' Someone coughed, a long way off. All four boys suddenly tried to occupy the same spot. 'Dead people don't cough!' hissed Johnny. 'Then someone's in the cemetery!' said Yo-less. 'Body snatchers!' said Wobbler. 'Burke 'n Head!' said Bigmac. 'I've read about this in the papers!' whispered Wobbler. 'People digging up graves for satanic rites!' 'Shutup!' said Johnny. They sagged. 'Sounded to me like it came from the old boot factory,' he said. Page 56 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt 'But it's the middle of the night,' said Yo-less. They crept forward. There was a dim shape pulled on to the pavement where the streetlights barely shone. 'It's a van,' said Johnny. 'There. Count Dracula never drove a van.' 164 Bigmac tried to grin. 'Unless he was a Vanpire—' There was a metallic clink somewhere in the fog. 'Wobbler?' said Johnny, in what he hoped was a calm voice. 'Yes?' 'You said you were going to run. Go round to Mr Atterbury's house right now and tell him to come here.' 'What? By myself?' 'You'll run faster if you're by yourself.' 'Right!' Wobbler gave them a frightened look and vanished. 'What, exactly, are we doing?' said Yo-less, as the other three peered into the fog. There was no mistaking the noise this time. It was wrapped about with fog, but it was definitely the sound of a big diesel engine starting up. 'Someone's nicking a bulldozer!' said Bigmac. 'I wish that's what they were doing,' said Johnny, 'but I don't think they are. Come on, will you?' 'Listen, if someone's driving a bulldozer without lights in the fog, I'm not hanging around!' said Yo-less. Lights came on, fifty metres away. They didn't show much. They just lit up two cones of fog. 'Is that better?' said Johnny. 'No.' The lights ground forward. The machine was bumping towards the cemetery railings. Old buddleia bushes and dead stinging nettles 165 smashed under the treads, and there was a clang as the blade hit the low wall. Johnny ran alongside the machine and shouted, 'Oi!' The engine stopped. 'Run away!' hissed Johnny to Yo-less. 'Go on! Tell someone what's happening!' A man unfolded himself from the cab and jumped down. He advanced towards the boys, waving a finger. 'You kids,' he said, 'are in real trouble.' Johnny backed away, and someone grabbed his shoulders. 'You heard the man,' said a voice by his ear. 'It's your fault, this. So you'd better not have seen anything, right? Because we know where you live— Oh, no you don't.' A hand shot out and grabbed Yo-less as he tried to back away. 'Know what I think?' said the man who had been driving the bulldozer. 7 think it's lucky we happened to be passing and found 'em messing around, eh? Shame they'd driven it right through the place already, eh? Kids today, eh?' A half-brick sailed past Johnny's face and hit the man beside him on the shoulder. 'What the—' Til smash your **** head in! I'll smash your **** head in!' Bigmac emerged from the fog. He looked ter- rifying. He reached beside him, yanked a railing from the broken wall and started to whirl it round his head as he advanced. 166 'You what? You what? You what? I'm MENTAL, me!' Then he started to run forward. 'Aaaaaaamrrr—' And it dawned on all four people at once that he wasn't going to stop. 167 Chapter 10 Bigmac bounded over the rubble, an enraged skin- head skeleton. 'Get him!' 'You get him!' The railing smacked into the side of the bull- dozer, and Bigmac leapt. Page 57 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt Even fighting mad, he was still Bigmac, and the driver was a large man. But what Bigmac had going for him was that he was, just for a few seconds, unstoppable. If the man had managed to get one good punch in that would have been it, but there seemed to be too many arms and legs in the way, and also Bigmac was trying to bite his ear. Even so— But a pair of headlights appeared near the gate and started to bounce up and down in a way that suggested a car being driven at high speed across rough ground. The man holding Johnny let go and vanished into the fog. The other one thumped Bigmac hard in the stomach and followed him. The car skidded to a halt and a fat vampire leapt out, shouting 'Make my night, make my night!' Mr Atterbury unfolded himself a little more sedately from the driver's seat. 'It's all right, they're gone,' said Johnny. 'We'll never find them in this fog.' There was the sound of an engine starting some- where in the distance, and then wheels skidded out on to the unseen road. 'But I got the number!' shouted Wobbler, hop- ping from foot to foot.' I dint have a pen so I huffed on the window and wrote it in the huff!' 'They were going to drive the bulldozer into the cemetery!' said Yo-less. 'Right in the huff, look!' 'Dear me, I expect a bit more than this of United Consolidated,' said Mr Atterbury. 'Hadn't we better see to your friend?' Bigmac was kneeling on the ground, making small 'oof, oof noises. 'I'll have to keep huffing on it to keep them there, mind!' 'You all right, Bigmac?' They knelt down beside him. He was wheezing with his asthma. 'I ... I really frightened him . . . yeah?' he managed. 'Right, right,' said Johnny. 'Come on, we'll give you a hand up ..." 'I jus' saw them there—' 'How do you feel?' 'Jus' winded.' 'Hang on, I've got to go and huff on it again—' 'Help him into the car.' "S'all right—' 'I'll drive him to the hospital, just in case.' 168 169 'No!' Bigmac pushed them away, and rose unsteadily to his feet. ' 'm all right,' he said. 'Tough as old boots, me.' Red and blue lights bloomed in the fog and a police siren dee-dahed once or twice and then stopped out of embarrassment. 'Ah,' said Mr Atterbury. 'I rather think my wife got a bit excited about things and phoned the police. Er... Bigmac, isn't it? Would you recognize those men if you saw them again?' 'Sure. One of 'em's got teethmarks in his ear.' Bigmac suddenly had the hunted look of one who has never quite seen eye to eye with the constabu- lary. 'But I ain't going in any police station. No way.' Mr Atterbury straightened up as the police car crunched to a halt. 'I think it might be a good idea if I do most of the talking,' he said, when Sergeant Comely stepped out into the night. 'Ah, Ray,' he said. 'Glad you could drop by. Can I have a word?' The boys stood in a huddle, watching as the men walked over to the bulldozer, and then in- spected the remains of the wall. 'We're going to be in trouble,' said Bigmac. 'Old Comely's probably going to do me for ear-biting. Or pinching the bulldozer. You wait.' Wobbler tapped Johnny on the shoulder. 'You knew something was going to happen,' he said. 'Yes. Don't know how.' They watched the policemen peer into Mr Atterbury's car for a moment. 'He's reading my huff,' said Wobbler. 'That was lateral thinking, that was.' Then Comely went back to the police car. They heard him speaking into the radio. 'No! I say again. That's H for Hirsute, W for Wagner - Wagner! Wagner! No! W as Page 58 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt in Westphalia, A for Aardvark—' Mr Atterbury appeared from the direction of the bulldozer, waving a pair of pliers. 'I don't think it's going to move again tonight,' he said. 'What's going to happen?' said Johnny. 'Not sure. We can probably trace the van. I think I've persuaded Sergeant Comely that we ought to deal with this quietly, for now. He '11 take statements from you, though. That might be enough.' 'Were they from United Consolidated?' The old man shrugged. 'Perhaps someone thought everything might be a lot simpler if the cemetery wasn't worth saving,' he said. 'Perhaps a couple of likely lads were slipped a handful of notes to do ... er ... a Halloween prank—' There was a burst of noise from the police radio. 'We've stopped a van on the East Slate Road,' the sergeant called out. 'Sounds like our lads.' 'Well Done, Said PC Plonk,' said Yo-less, in a hollow voice. 'You Have Captured The Whole Gang! Good Work, Fumbling Four! And They All Went Home For Tea And Cakes.' 170 171 'It would help if you'd come along to the police station, Bigmac,' said Mr Atterbury. 'No way!' 'I'll come along with you. And one of your friends could come, too.' 'It'd really help,' said Johnny. 'I'll go with you,' said Yo-less. 'And then,' said Mr Atterbury, 'I'm going to take considerable pleasure in ringing up the chairman of United Consolidated. Considerable pleasure.' It was ten minutes later. Bigmac had gone to the police station, accompanied by Yo-less and Mr Atterbury and an assurance that he wasn't going to be asked any questions about certain other minor matters relating to things like cars not being where the owners had expected them to be, and other things of that nature. The sodium lights of Blackbury glowed in the fog, which was thinning out a bit now. They made the darkness beyond the carpet warehouse a lot deeper and much darker. 'Well, that's it, then,' said Wobbler. 'Game over. Let's go home.' The fog was being torn apart by the wind. It was even possible to see the moon through the flying streamers. 'Come on,' he repeated. 'It's still not right,' said Johnny. 'It can't end like this.' 'Best ending,' said Wobbler. 'Just like Yo-less 172 said. Nasty men foiled. Kids save the day. Everyone gets a bun.' The abandoned bulldozer seemed a lot bigger in this pale light. The air had a fizz to it. 'Something's going to happen,' said Johnny, run- ning towards the cemetery. 'Now, look—' 'Come on!' 'No! Not in there!' Johnny turned around. 'And you're pretending to be a vampire?' 'But—' 'Come on, the railings have been knocked down.' 'But it's nearly midnight! And there's dead people in there!' 'Well? We're all dead, sooner or later.' 'Yeah, but me, I'd like it to be later, thank you!' Johnny could feel it all around him — a squashed feel to things, like the air gets before a thunder- storm. It cracked off the buckled gravestones and tingled on the dusty shrubberies. The fog was pouring away now, as if it was trying to escape from something. The moon shone out of a damp blue-black sky, casting darker shadows on the ground. North Drive and East Way . . . they were still there, but they didn't look the same now. They be- longed somewhere else — somewhere where people didn't take the Page 59 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt roads of the dead and give them the names of the streets of the living . . . 173 'Wobbler?' said Johnny, without looking around. 'Yeah?' 'You there?' 'Yeah.' 'Thanks.' He could feel something lifting off him, like a heavy blanket. He was amazed his feet still touched the ground. He ran along North Drive, to the little area where all the dead roads met. There was someone already there. She spun around with her arms out and her eyes blissfully shut, the gravel crunching under her feet, the moonlight glinting off her ancient hat. All alone, twirling and twirling, Mrs Tachyon danced in the night. Not all alone . . . The air sparkled. Glowing lines, blue as elec- tricity, thin as smoke, poured out of the clear sky. Where they touched the fingers of the danc- ing woman they stretched out and broke, then re-formed. They crawled over the grass. They whirred through the air. The whole cemetery was alive with pale blue comets. Alive ... Mrs Tachyon's feet were off the ground. Johnny looked at his own fingers. There was a blue glow crackling over his right hand, like St Elmo's Fire. It sparkled as he waved it towards the stars and felt his feet leave the gravel path. ' Ooowwwwwah!' The lights spun him around and let him drift gently back down. 'Who are you?' A line of fire screamed across the night and then exploded. Sparks flew out and traced lines in the air, which took on, as though it was outlined in neon, a familiar shape. 'Well, until tonight,' it said, blue fire sizzling in his beard, 'I thought I was William Stickers. Watch this!' Blue glows arched over the gravestones again and clustered around the dark bulk of the bulldozer, flowing across it so that it glowed. The engine started. There was a clash of gears. It moved forward. The railings clanged and cart- wheeled away. The brick wall crumbled. Lights orbited around the bulldozed as it ploughed onward. 'Hey! Stop!' Metal groaned. The engine note dropped to a dull, insistent throbbing. The lights turned to look at Johnny. He could feel their attention. 'What are you doing'?' A light burst into a glittering diagram of the Alderman. 'Isn't this what people wanted?' he said. 'We don't need it any more. So if anyone's going to do it, it should be us. That's only right.' 'But you said this was your place!' said Johnny. Mrs Sylvia Liberty outlined herself in the air. 175 'We have left Nothing there,' she said, 'of any Importance.' 'Force of habit,' said William Stickers, 'is what has subjugated the working man for too long. I was right about that, anyway.' 'The_ disgusting bolshevik, although he needs a shave, is Quite correct,' said Mrs Liberty. And then she laughed. 'It seems to me we've spent Far too long moping around because of what we're not, without any Consideration of what we might be.' 'Chronologically gifted,' said Mr Einstein, crack- ling into existence. 'Dimensionally advantaged,' said Mr Fletcher, sparkling like a flashbulb. 'Bodily unencumbered,' said the Alderman. 'Into Extra Time,' said Stanley Roundway. 'Enhanced,' said Mr Vicenti. 'We had to find it out,' said Mr Fletcher. 'You have to find it out. You have to forget who you were. That's the first step. And stop being fright- ened of old Page 60 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt ghosts. Then you've got room to find out what you are. What you can be.' 'So we're off,' said the Alderman. 'Where to?' 'We don't know. It iss going to be very inter- esting to find out,' said Solomon Einstein. 'But . . . but . . . we've saved the cemetery!' said Johnny. 'We had a meeting! And Bigmac . . . and I spoke up and . . . there's been things on the television and people have really been talking about this place! No-one's going to build any- thing on it! There's been birdwatchers here and everything! Turn the machine off! We've saved the cemetery.' 'But we don't need it any more,' said the Alderman. 'We do!' The dead looked at him. 'We do,' Johnny repeated. 'We . . . need it to be there.' The diesel engine chugged. The machine vi- brated. The dead, if that's what they still were, seemed to be thinking. Then Solomon Einstein nodded. 'This iss of course very true,' he said, in his excited squeaky voice. 'It all balances, you see. The living have to remember, the dead have to forget. Conservation of energy.' The bulldozer's engine stuttered into silence. Mr Vicenti held up a hand. It glowed like a firework. 'We came back to say goodbye. And thank you,' he said. 'I hardly did anything.' 'You listened. You tried. You were there. You can get medals just for being there. People forget the people who were just there.' 'Yes. I know.' 'But, now ... we must be somewhere else.' 'No . . . don't go yet,' said Johnny. 'I have to ask you—' Mr Vicenti turned. 'Yes?' 'Urn . . .' 176 177 'Yes?' 'Are there . . . angels involved? You know? Or . . . devils and things? A lot of people would like to know.' 'Oh, no. I don't think so. That sort of thing . . . no. That's for the living. No.' The Alderman rubbed his spectral hands. 'I rather think it's going to be a lot more interesting than that.' The dead were walking away, some of them fading back into shining smoke as they moved. Some were heading for the canal. There was a boat there. It looked vaguely like a gondola. A dark figure stood at one end, leaning on a pole that vanished into the water. 'This is my lift,' said William Stickers. 'It looks a bit ... spooky. No offence meant,' said Johnny. 'Well, I thought I'd give it a try. If I don't like it, I'll go somewhere else,' said William Stickers, stepping aboard. 'Off we go, comrade.' RIGHT said the ferryman. The boat moved away from the bank. The canal was only a few metres wide, but the boat seemed to be drifting off a long, long way. . . Voices came back over the waters. 'You know, an outboard motor on this and it'd go like a bird.' I LIKE IT THE WAY IT IS, MR STICKERS. 'What's the pay like?' SHOCKING. 'I wouldn't stand for it, if I was you—' 178 'I'm not sure where he's going,' said the Alderman, 'but he's certainly going to reor- ganize things when he gets there. Bit of a traditional thinker, our William.' There was a click and hum from further along the bank. Einstein and Fletcher were Page 61 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt sitting proudly in some sort of - well, it looked partly like an electronic circuit diagram, and partly like a ma- chine, and partly like mathematics would look if it was solid. It glowed and fizzled. 'Good, isn't it,' said Mr Fletcher. 'You've heard of a train of thought?' 'This is a flight of the imagination,' said Solomon Einstein. ' We 're going to have a good look at some things.' 'That's right. Starting with everything.' Mr Fletcher thumped the machine happily. 'Right! The sky's the limit, Mr Einstein!' 'Not even that, Mr Fletcher!' The lines grew bright, drew together, became more like a diagram. And vanished. Just before they vanished, though, they seemed to be accelerating. And then there were three. 'Did I see them waving?' said Mrs Liberty. 'And particling, I shouldn't wonder,' said the Alderman. 'Come, Sylvia. I feel a more down-to- earth mode of transport would be suitable for us.' He took her hand. They ignored Johnny and stepped on to the black waters of the canal. And sank, slowly, leaving a pearly sheen on the water which gradually faded away. Then there was the sound of a motor starting up. 179 Out of the water, transparent as a bubble, the spirit of the dead Ford Capri rose gently towards the sky. The Alderman wound down an invisible window. 'Mrs Liberty thinks we ought to tell you some- thing,' he said. 'But ... it's hard to explain, you know.' 'What is?' said Johnny. 'By the way, why are you wearing a pink sheet?' 'Urn—' 'I expect it's not important.' 'Yes.' 'Well—' The car turned slowly; Johnny could see the moon through it. 'You know those games where this ball runs up and bounces around and ends up in a slot at the bottom?' 'Pinball machines?' 'Is that what they're called now?' 'I think so.' 'Oh. Right.' The Alderman nodded. 'Well . . . when you're bouncing around from pin to pin, it is probably very difficult to know that outside the game there's a room and outside the room there's a town and outside the town there's a country and outside the country there's a world and outside the world there's a billion trillion stars and that's only the start of it ... but it's there, d'you see? Once you know about it, you can stop worry- ing about the slot at the bottom. And you might bounce around a good deal longer.' 'I'll . . . try to remember it.' 180 'Good man. Well, we'd better be going . . .' Ghostly gears went crunch. The car juddered. 'Drat the thing. Ah ... Be seeing you . . .' It rose gently, turned towards the east, and sped away and up ... And then there was one. 'Well, I think I might as well be off;' said Mr Vicenti. He produced a top hat and an old-fashioned walking cane out of thin air. 'Why are you all leaving?' said Johnny. 'Oh, yes. It's Judgement Day,' said Mr Vicenti. 'We decided.' 'I thought that was chariots and things.' 'I think you'll have to use your own judgement on that one. No point in waiting for what you've already got. It's different for everybody, you see. Enjoy looking after the cemetery. They're places for the living, after all.' Mr Vicenti pulled on a pair of white gloves and pressed an invisible lift button. He began to rise. White feathers cascaded out of his sleeves. 'Dear me,' he said, and opened his jacket. 'Go on, away with you! All of you! Shoo!' Page 62 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt Half a dozen ghostly pigeons untangled them- selves and rocketed off into the dawn. 'There. That proves it. You can escape from anything, eventually,' he called down. Johnny just managed to hear him add, ' . . . although I will admit that three sets of manacles, twenty feet of chain and a canvas sack can present a considerable amount of difficulty in certain circumstances . . .' The light glinted off his hat. 181 And then there was . . . one. Johnny turned around. Mr Grimm was standing neatly in the middle of the path, with his neat hands neatly folded. Darkness surrounded him like a fog. He was watching the sky. Johnny had never seen such an expression . . . He remembered the time, many years ago, when Bigmac had a party and hadn't invited him. He'd said afterwards, 'Well, of course not. I knew you'd come, you didn't have to be asked, you didn't need to be asked, you could just have turned up.' But everyone else was going to go, and was talking about going, and he'd felt like a pit had opened up in his life! That sort of thing was pretty awful when you were seven. It looked much, much worse when you were dead. Mr Grimm saw Johnny staring at him. 'Huh,' he said, pulling himself together. 'They'll be sorry.' 'I'm going to find out about you, Mr Grimm,' said Johnny. 'Nothing to find out,' snapped the ghost. Johnny walked through him. There was a chilly moment, and then Mr Grimm was gone. And then there were none. Real night flowed back in. The sounds of the town, the distant hum of the traffic, filled the space taken up by the silence. Johnny walked back along the gravel path. 'Wobbler?' he whispered. 'Wobbler?' 182 He found him crouched behind a gravestone with his eyes shut. 'Come on,' said Johnny. 'Look, I—' 'Everything's OK.' ' It was fireworks, right?' said Wobbler. His Count Dracula make-up was streaked and smudged, and he'd lost his fangs. 'Someone was letting some fireworks off, yes?' 'That's right.' 'Of course, I wasn't scared.' 'No.' 'But those things can be dangerous . . .' 'Oh, that's right.' They turned as a rattling sound started up behind them. Mrs Tachyon appeared, pushing her shop- ping trolley; the wheels bounced and skidded on the gravel. She ignored both of them. They stepped aside hurriedly as the trolley, one wheel squeaking, van- ished into the gloom. Then they walked home, through the morning mists. 183 Chapter n As Tommy Atkins had once said, things aren't necessarily over just because they've stopped. There was Bigmac, for a start. Yo-less had gone home with him, and Bigmac's brother had been waiting up and had started on at him and Bigmac had looked at him strangely for a few seconds and then hit him so hard that he knocked him out. Yo-less said, with awe in his voice, that it'd been so hard that the word 'TAH' was printed in Biro on the brother's chin. And then he'd growled at Glint and the dog had hid under the sofa. So Yo-less had to get his mother out of bed to bring her car round to carry Bigmac's suitcase, three tropical fish tanks and two hundred copies of Guns and Ammo back to her spare room. And there was the generous donation to the Blackbury Volunteers by United Page 63 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt Amalgamated Consolidated Holdings. As Mr Atterbury said, it's amazing what you can do with a kind word, pro- vided you've also got a big stick. The cemetery was already looking more lived- in. There were endless arguments between the Volunteers who wanted it to be habitat and the ones who wanted it to be ecology and a middle group who just wanted it to be clean and tidy, but 184 at least it was wanted, which seemed to Johnny to be the most important thing. It took Johnny a week to find what he wanted, and when he found it he took it along to the cemetery after school, when no-one was about. There was frost on the ground. 'Mr Grimm?' He found him by the canal, sitting staring at the water. 'Mr Grimm?' 'Go away. You're dangerous.' 'I thought you'd be a bit... lonely. So I bought you this.' He opened the bag. 'Mr Atterbury helped,' he said. 'He phoned around some of his friends who've got electrical shops. It's been repaired. It'll work until the bat- teries die, and then I thought maybe it'd work on ghost batteries.' 'What is it?' 'A very small television,' said Johnny. 'I thought I could put it right in a bush or somewhere and no-one'11 know it's there except you.' 'What are you doing this for?' said Mr Grimm, suspiciously. 'Because I looked you up in the newspaper. May the twenty-first, nineteen twenty-seven. There wasn't very much. Just the bit about them finding . . . you in the canal, and the coroner's inquest.' 'Oh? Poking around, eh? And what do you think you know about anything?' 'Nothing.' 185 'I don't have to explain.' 'Is that why you couldn't leave with the others?' 'What? I can leave whenever I like,' said the ghost of Mr Grimm, very quickly. 'If I'm stay- ing here, it's because I want to be here. I know my place. I know how to do the right thing. I could leave whenever I want. But I've got more pride than that. People like you don't understand that. You don't take life seriously.' It hadn't been a long report in the paper. Mr Vicenti was right. In those days, some things didn't get a lot of reporting. Mr Grimm had been a respectable citizen, keeping his head down, a man at the back of the crowd, and then his business had failed and there'd been some other trouble involving money, and then there'd been the canal. Mr Grimm had taken life very seriously, starting with his own. People didn't talk much about that sort of thing in those days. Suicide was against the law. Johnny had wondered why. It meant that if you missed, or the gas ran out, or the rope broke, you could get locked up in prison to show you that life was really very jolly and thoroughly worth living. Mr Grimm sat with his hands clasped around his knees. Johnny realized that he could think of nothing to say, so he said nothing. Instead, he wedged the little pocket television deep in a bush, where no-one, not even the keenest birdwatcher, would find it. 'Can you turn it on with your mind?' he said. 186 'Who says I shall want to?' The picture came on, and there was the faint tinkly sound of the familiar signature tune. 'Let's see,' said Johnny. 'You've missed a week . . . Mrs Swede has just found out Janine didn't go to the party . . . Mr Hatt has sacked Jason from the shop because he thinks he took the money. . . and . . .' 'I see.' 'So ... I'll be off, then, shall I?' 'Right.' Johnny backed away. Page 64 Pratchett, Terry - Johnny 02 - Johnny And The Dead.txt 'I'm sure the hours'11 just fly by.' 'Right.' 'So ... cheerio, then.' 'Right.' 'Mr Grimm?' Johnny wanted to say: you can leave any time you want. But there seemed to be no point. 'Right.' Johnny watched for a while, and then turned and walked away. The other three were waiting for him by the phone box. 'Was he there?' said Yo-less. 'Yes.' 'What's he doing now?' 'Watching television,' said Johnny. 'I expect ghosts do that a lot,' said Wobbler. ' 'Spect so.' 'You all right?' 'Just thinking about the difference between heaven and hell.' 187 'That doesn't sound like "all right" to me.' Johnny blinked. And looked around at the world. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, won- derful. Which wasn't the same as nice. It wasn't even the same as good. But it was full of... stuff. You'd never get to the end of it. It was always springing new things on you . . . 'Yeah,' he said. 'All right. What shall we do now?' THE END . Page 65 
Lords and Ladies - Terry Pratchett	----	Lords And Ladies Lords And Ladies Terry Pratchett   Authors Note By and large, most Discworld novels have stood by themselves, as complete books. It helps to have read them in some kind of order, but it is not essential. This one is different. I can’t ignore the history of what has gone before. Granny Weatherwax first turned up in Equal Rites. In Wyrd Sisters she became the unofficial head of a tiny coven consisting of the easy-going, much-married Nanny Ogg and young Magrat, she of the red nose and unkempt hair and tendency to be soppy about raindrops and roses and whiskers on kittens. And what took place was a plot not unadjacent to a play about a Scottish king, which ended with Verence II becoming king of the little hilly, forested country of Lancre. Technically, this shouldn’t have happened, since strictly speaking he was not the heir, but to the witches he looked like being the best man for the job and, as they say, all’s well that ends well. It also ended with Magrat reaching a very tentative Understanding with Verence. . . very tentative indeed, since both of them were so shy they immediately forgot whatever it was they were going to say to one another whenever they met, and whenever either of them did manage to say anything the other one misunderstood it and took offence, and both of them spent a lot of time wondering what the other one was thinking. This might be love, or the next best thing. In Witches Abroad the three witches had to travel half-way across the continent to face down the Godmother (who had made Destiny an offer it couldn’t refuse). This is the story of what happened when they arrived home. NOW READ ON . . . Now read on . . . When does it start? There are very few starts. Oh, some things seem to be beginnings. The curtain goes up, the first pawn moves, the first shot is fired [1] but that’s not the start. The play, the game, the war is just a little window on a ribbon of events that may extend back thousands of years. The point is, there’s always something before. It’s always a case of Now Read On. Much human ingenuity has gone into finding the ultimate Before. The current state of knowledge can be summarized thus: In the beginning, there was nothing, which exploded. Other theories about the ultimate start involve gods creating the universe out of the ribs, entrails, and testicles of their father. [2] There are quite a lot of these. They are interesting, not for what they tell you about cosmology, but for what they say about people. Hey, kids, which part do you think they made your town out of? But this story starts on the Discworld, which travels through space on the back of four giant elephants which stand on the shell of an enormous turtle and is not made of any bits of anyone’s bodies. But when to begin? Thousands of years ago? When a great hot cascade of stones came screaming out of the sky, gouged a hole out of Copperhead Mountain, and flattened the forest for ten miles around? The dwarfs dug them up, because they were made of a kind of iron, and dwarfs, contrary to general opinion, love iron more than gold. It’s just that although there’s more iron than gold it’s harder to sing songs about. Dwarfs love iron. And that’s what the stones contained. The love of iron. A love so strong that it drew all iron things to itself. The three dwarfs who found the first of the rocks only got free by struggling out of their chain-mail trousers. Many worlds are iron, at the core. But the Discworld is as coreless as a pancake. On the Disc, if you enchant a needle it will point to the Hub, where the magical field is strongest. It’s simple. Elsewhere, on worlds designed with less imagination, the needle turns because of the love of iron. At the time, the dwarfs and the humans had a very pressing need for the love of iron. And now, spool time forward for thousands of years to a point fifty years or more before the ever-moving now, to a hillside and a young woman, running. Not running away from something, exactly, or precisely running toward anything, but running just fast enough to keep ahead of a young man although, of course, not so far ahead that he’ll give up. Out from the trees and into the rushy valley where, on a slight rise in the ground, are the stones. They’re about man-height, and barely thicker than a fat man. And somehow they don’t seem worth it. If there’s a stone circle you mustn’t go near, the imagination suggests, then there should be big brooding trilithons and ancient altar stones screaming with the dark memory of blood-soaked sacrifice. Not these dull stubby lumps. It will turn out that she was running a bit too fast this time, and in fact the young man in laughing pursuit will get lost and fed up and will eventually wander off back to the town alone. She does not, at this point, know this, but stands absentmindedly adjusting the flowers twined in her hair. It’s been that kind of afternoon. She knows about the stones. No one ever gets told about the stones. And no one is ever told not to go there, because those who refrain from talking about the stones also know how powerful is the attraction of prohibition. It’s just that going to the stones is not. . . what we do. Especially if we’re nice girls. But what we have here is not a nice girl, as generally understood. For one thing, she’s not beautiful. There’s a certain set to the jaw and arch to the nose that might, with a following wind and in the right light, be called handsome by a good-natured liar. Also, there’s a certain glint in her eye generally possessed by those people who have found that they are more intelligent than most people around them but who haven’t yet learned that one of the most intelligent things they can do is prevent said people ever finding this out. Along with the nose, this gives her a piercing expression which is extremely disconcerting. It’s not a face you can talk to. Open your mouth and you’re suddenly the focus of a penetrating stare which declares: what you’re about to say had better be interesting. Now the eight little stones on their little hill are being subjected to the same penetrating gaze. Hmm. And then she approaches, cautiously. It’s not the caution of a rabbit about to run. It’s closer to the way a hunter moves. She puts her hands on her hips, such as they are. There’s a skylark in the hot summer sky. Apart from that, there’s no sound. Down in the little valley, and higher in the hills, grasshoppers are sizzling and bees are buzzing and the grass is alive with micro-noise. But it’s always quiet around the stones. “I’m here,” she says. “Show me.” A figure of a dark-haired woman in a red dress appears inside the circle. The circle is wide enough to throw a stone across, but somehow the figure manages to approach from a great distance. Other people would have run away. But the girl doesn’t, and the woman in the circle is immediately interested. “So you’re real, then.” “Of course. What is your name, girl?” “Esmerelda.” “And what do you want?” “I don’t want anything.” “Everyone wants something. Otherwise, why are you here?” “I just wanted to find out if you was real.” “To you, certainly . . . you have good sight.” The girl nods. You could bounce rocks off her pride. “And now you have learned this,” said the woman in the circle, “what is it that you really want?” “Nothing.” “Really? Last week you went all the way up to the mountains above Copperhead to talk to the trolls. What did you want from them?” The girl put her head on one side. “How do you know I did that?” “It’s at the top of your mind, girl. Anyone could see it. Anyone with . . . good sight.” “I shall be able to do that one day,” said the girl smugly. “Who knows? Possibly. What did you want from the trolls?” “I . . . wanted to talk to them. D’you know they think time goes backward? Because you can see the past, they say, and-“ The woman in the circle laughed. “But they are like the stupid dwarfs! All they are interested in is pebbles. There is nothing of interest in pebbles.” The girl gives a kind of one-shoulder uni-shrug, as if indicating that pebbles may be full of quiet interest. “Why can’t you come out from between the stones?” There was a distinct impression that this was the wrong question to have asked. The woman carefully ignored it. “I can help you find far more than pebbles,” she said. “You can’t come out of the circle, can you?” “Let me give you what you want.” “I can go anywhere, but you’re stuck in the circle,” said the girl. “Can you go anywhere?” “When I am a witch I shall be able to go anywhere.” “But you’ll never be a witch.” “What?” “They say you won’t listen. They say you can’t keep your temper. They say you have no discipline.” The girl tossed her hair. “Oh, you know that too, do you? Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they? But I mean to be a witch whatever they say. You can find things out for yourself. You don’t have to listen to a lot of daft old ladies who’ve never had a life. And, circle lady, I shall be the best witch there has ever been.” “With my help, I believe you may,” said the woman in the circle. “Your young man is looking for you, I think,” she added mildly Another of those one-shoulder shrugs, indicating that the young man can go on looking all day. “I will, will I?” “You could be a great witch. You could be anything. Anything you want. Come into the circle. Let me show you.” The girl takes a few steps forward, and then hesitates. There is something about the woman’s tone. The smile is pleasant and friendly, but there is something in the voice too desperate, too urgent, too hungry. “But I’m learning a lot-“ “Step through the stones now!” The girl hesitates again. “How do I know-“ “Circle time is nearly over! Think of what you can learn! Now!” “But-“ “Step through!” But that was a long time ago, in the past. [3] And besides, the bitch is . . . . . . older.   A land of ice . . . Not winter, because that presumes an autumn and perhaps one day a spring. This is a land of ice, not just a time of ice. And three figures on horseback, looking down the snow covered slope to a ring of eight stones. From this side they look much bigger. You might watch the figures for some time before you realised what it was about them that was strange-stranger, that is, than their clothing. The hot breath of their horses hung in the freezing air. But the breath of the riders did not. “And this time,” said the figure in the centre, a woman in red, “there will be no defeat. The land will welcome us. It must hate humans now.” “But there were witches,” said one of the other riders. “I remember the witches.” “Once, yes,” said the woman. “But now . . . poor things, poor things. Scarce any power in them at all. And suggestible. Pliant minds. I have crept about, my deary. I have crept about o’nights. I know the witches they have now. Leave the witches to me.” “I remember the witches,” said the third rider insistently. “Minds like . . . like metal.” “Not anymore. I tell you, leave them to me.” The Queen smiled benevolently at the stone circle. “And then you can have them,” she said. “For me, I rather fancy a mortal husband. A special mortal. A union of the worlds. To show them that this time we mean to stay.” “The King will not like that.” “And when has that ever mattered?” “Never, lady.” “The time is right, Lankin. The circles are opening. Soon we can return.” The second rider leaned on the saddlehorn. “And I can hunt again,” it said. “When? When?” “Soon,” said the Queen. “Soon.”   It was a dark night, the kind of darkness which is not simply explainable by absence of moon or stars, but the darkness that appears to flow in from somewhere else-so thick and tangible that maybe you could snatch a handful of air and squeeze the night out of it. It was the kind of darkness which causes sheep to leap fences and dogs to skulk in kennels. Yet the wind was warm, and not so much strong as loud - it howled around the forests and wailed in chimneys. On nights like this, normal people would pull the covers over their head, sensing that there were times when the world belonged to something else. In the morning it would be human again; there would be fallen branches, a few tiles off the roof, but human. For now . . . better to snuggle down. . But there was one man awake. Jason Ogg, master blacksmith and farrier, pumped the bellows of his forge once or twice for the look of the thing, and sat down on his anvil again. It was always warm in the forge, even with the wind whistling around the eaves. He could shoe anything, could Jason Ogg. They’d brought him an ant once, for a joke, and he’d sat up all night with a magnifying glass and an anvil made out of the head of a pin. The ant was still around, somewhere-some-times he could hear it clatter across the floor. But tonight. . . well, tonight, in some way, he was going to pay the rent. Of course, he owned the forge. It had been passed down for generations. But there was more to a forge than bricks and mortar and iron. He couldn’t put a name to it, but it was there. It was the difference between being a master farrier and just someone who bent iron in complicated ways for a living. And it had something to do with iron. And something to do with being allowed to be very good at his job. Some kind of rent. One day his dad had taken him aside and explained what he had to do, on nights like this. There’d be times, he said, there’d be times - and he’d know when they were without being told - there’d be times when someone would come with a horse to shoe. Make them welcome. Shoe the horse. Don’t let your mind wander. And try not to think about anything except horseshoes. He’d got quite used to it now. The wind rose, and somewhere there was the creak of a tree going over. The latch rattled. Then there was a knock at the door. Once. Twice. Jason Ogg picked up his blindfold and put it on. That was important, his dad had said. It saved you getting distracted. He undid the door. “Evening, m’lord,” he said. A WILD NIGHT. He smelled wet horse as it was led into the forge, hooves clattering on the stones. “There’s tea brewing on the forge and our Dreen done us some biscuits in the tin with A Present from Ankh-Morpork on it.” THANK YOU. I TRUST YOU ARE WELL. “Yes, m’lord. I done the shoes already. Won’t hold you up long. I know you’re . . . very busy, like.” He heard the click-click of footsteps cross the floor to the old kitchen chair reserved for customers, or at least for the owners of customers. Jason had laid the tools and the horseshoes and the nails ready to hand on the bench beside the anvil. He wiped his hands on his apron, picked up a file, and set to work. He didn’t like cold shoeing, but he’d shod horses ever since he was ten. He could do it by feel. He picked up a rasp and set to work. And he had to admit it. It was the most obedient horse he’d ever encountered. Pity he’d never actually seen it. It’d be a pretty good horse, a horse like that. . . His dad had said: don’t try to sneak a look at it. He heard the glug of the teapot and then the gling-glong sound of a spoon being stirred and then the clink as the spoon was laid down. Never any sound, his dad had said. Except when he walks and talks, you’ll never hear him make a sound. No smacking of lips, stuff like that. No breathing. Oh, and another thing. When you takes the old shoes off, don’t chuck ‘em in the comer for to go for melt with the other scrap. Keep ‘em separate. Melt ‘em separate. Keep a pot special for it, and make the new shoes out of that metal. Whatever else you do, never put that iron on another living thing. In fact, Jason had saved one set of the old shoes for pitching contests at the various village fairs, and never lost when he used them. He won so often that it made him nervous, and now they spent most of their time hanging on a nail behind the door. Sometimes the wind rattled the window frame, or made the coals crackle. A series of thumps and a squawk a little way off suggested that the chicken house at the end of the garden had parted company with the ground. The customer’s owner poured himself another cup of tea. Jason finished one hoof and let it go. Then he held out his hand. The horse shifted its weight and raised the last hoof. This was a horse in a million. Perhaps more. Eventually, he had finished. Funny, that. It never seemed to take very long. Jason had no use for a clock, but he had a suspicion that a job which took the best part of an hour was at the same time over in a matter of minutes. “There,” he said. “Tis done.” THANK YOU. I MUST SAY THESE ARE VERY GOOD BISCUITS. HOW DO THEY GET THE BITS OF CHOCOLATE IN? “Dunno, m’lord,” said Jason, staring fixedly at the inside of his blindfold. I MEAN, THE CHOCOLATE OUGHT TO MELT OUT WHEN THEY’RE BAKED. HOW DO THEY DO IT, DO YOU THINK? “Tis probably a craft secret,” said Jason. “I never asks that kind o’question.” GOOD MAN. VERY WISE. I MUST- He had to ask, if only so’s he’d always know that he had asked. “M’lord?” YES, MR. OGG? “I ‘as got one question . . .” YES, MR. OGG? Jason ran his tongue over his lips. “If I were to . . . take the blindfold off, what’d I see?” There. It was done now. There was a clicking sound on the flagstones, and a change in the air movement which suggested to Jason that the speaker was now standing in front of him. ARE YOU A MAN OF FAITH, MR. OGG? Jason gave this some swift consideration. Lancre was not knee-deep in religions. There were the Nine Day Wonderers, and the Strict Offlians, and there were various altars to small gods of one sort or another, tucked away in distant clearings. He’d never really felt the need, just like the dwarfs. Iron was iron and fire was fire - start getting metaphysical and you were scraping your thumb on the bottom of your hammer. WHAT DO YOU REALLY HAVE FAITH IN, RIGHT AT THIS MOMENT? He’s inches away, Jason thought. I could reach out and touch . . . There was a smell. It wasn’t unpleasant. It was hardly anything at all. It was the smell of air in old forgotten rooms. If centuries could smell, then old ones would smell like that. MR. OGG? Jason swallowed. “Well, m’lord,” he said, “right now . . . I really believe in this blindfold.” GOOD MAN. GOOD MAN. AND NOW . . . I MUST BE GOING. Jason heard the latch lift. There was a thud as the doors scraped back, driven by the wind, and then there was the sound of hooves on the cobbles again. YOUR WORK, AS ALWAYS, IS SUPERB. “Thank you, m’lord.” I SPEAK AS ONE CRAFTSMAN TO ANOTHER. “Thank you, m’lord.” WE WILL MEET AGAIN. “Yes, m’lord.” WHEN NEXT MY HORSE NEEDS SHOEING. “Yes, m’lord.” Jason closed the door and bolted it, although there was probably no point, when you thought about it. But that was the bargain - you shod anything they brought to you, anything, and the payment was that your could shoe anything. There had always been a smith in Lancre, and everyone knew the smith in Lancre was a very powerful smith indeed. It was an ancient bargain, and it had something to do with iron. The wind slackened. Now it was a whisper around the horizons, as the sun rose. This was the octarine grass country. Good growing country, especially for corn. And here was a field of it, waving gently between the hedges. Not a big field. Not a remarkable one, really It was just a field with corn in it, except of course during the winter, when there were just pigeons and crows in it. The wind dropped. The corn still waved. They weren’t the normal swells of the wind. They spread out from the centre of the field like ripples from a dropped stone. The air sizzled and was filled with an angry buzzing. Then, in the centre of the field, rustling as it bent, the young corn lay down. In a circle. And in the sky the bees swarmed and teemed, buzzing angrily. It was a few weeks to midsummer. The kingdom of Lancre dozed in the heat, which shimmered on the forests and the fields. Three dots appeared in the sky. After a while, they became identifiable as three female figures on broomsticks, flying in a manner reminiscent of the famous three plaster flying ducks. Observe them closely The first one - let us call her the leader - flies sitting bolt upright, in defiance of air resistance, and seems to be winning. She has features that would  generally be described as striking, or even handsome, but she couldn’t be called beautiful, at least by anyone who didn’t want their nose to grow by three feet. The second is dumpy and bandy-legged with a face like an apple that’s been left for too long and an expression of near-terminal good nature. She is playing a banjo and, until a better word comes to mind, singing. It is a song about a hedgehog. Unlike the broomstick belonging to the first figure, which is more or less unburdened except for a sack or two, this one is over laden with things like fluffy purple toy donkeys, corkscrews in the shape of small boys urinating, bottles of wine in straw baskets, and other international cultural items. Nestling among them is the smelliest and most evil-minded cat in the world, currently asleep. The third, and definitely the last, broomstick rider is also the youngest. Unlike the other two, who dress like ravens, she wears bright, cheerful clothes which don’t suit her now and probably didn’t even suit her ten years ago. She travels with an air of vague good-natured hopefulness. There are flowers in her hair but they’re wilting slightly, just like her. The three witches pass over the borders of Lancre, the kingdom, and very shortly afterward over the town of Lancre itself. They begin their descent over the moor lands beyond, eventually touching down near a standing stone which happens to mark the boundaries of their territories. They’re back. And everything’s all right again. For about five minutes.   There was a badger in the privy. Granny Weatherwax poked it with her broom until it got the message and lumbered off. Then she took down the key which hung on the nail beside the copy of last year’s Almanack And Booke Of Dayes, and walked back up the path to her cottage. A whole winter away! There’d be a lot to do. Go and pick the goats up from Mr. Skindle, get the spiders out of the chimney, fish the frogs out of the well, and generally get back into the business of minding everyone’s business for them because there’d be no telling what business people’d get up to without a witch around . . . But she could afford an hour with her feet up first. There was a robin’s nest in the kettle, too. The birds had got in through a broken window pane. She carefully took the kettle outside and wedged it over the door so’s to be safe from weasels, and boiled up some water in a saucepan. Then she wound up the clock. Witches didn’t have much use for clocks, but she kept it for the tick . . . well, mainly for the tick. It made a place seem lived in. It had belonged to her mother, who’d wound it up every day. It hadn’t come as a surprise to her when her mother died, firstly because Esme Weatherwax was a witch and witches have an insight into the future and secondly because she was already pretty experienced in medicine and knew the signs. So she’d had a chance to prepare herself, and hadn’t cried at all until the day afterward, when the clock stopped right in the middle of the funeral lunch. She’d dropped a tray of ham rolls and then had to go and sit by herself in the privy for a while, so that no one would see. Time to think about that sort of thing, now. Time to think about the past. . . The clock ticked. The water boiled. Granny Weatherwax fished a bag of tea from the meagre luggage on her broomstick, and swilled out the teapot. The fire settled down. The clamminess of a room unlived-in for months was gradually dispelled. The shadows lengthened. Time to think about the past. Witches have an insight into the future. The business she’d have to mind soon enough would be her own. . . And then she looked out of the window. Nanny Ogg balanced carefully on a stool and ran a finger along the top of the dresser. Then she inspected the finger. It was spotless. “Hummph,” she said. “Seems to be moderately clean.” The daughters-in-law shivered with relief. “So far,” Nanny added. The three young women drew together in their mute terror. Her relationship with her daughters-in-law was the only stain on Nanny Ogg’s otherwise amiable character. Sons-in-law were different-she could remember their names, even their birthdays, and they joined the family like overgrown chicks creeping under the wings of a broody bantam. And grandchildren were treasures, every one. But any woman incautious enough to marry an Ogg son might as well resign herself to a life of mental torture and nameless domestic servitude. Nanny Ogg never did any housework herself, but she was the cause of housework in other people. She got down from the stool and beamed at them. “You kept the place quite nice,” she said. “Well done.” Her smile faded. “Under the bed in the spare room,” she said. “Haven’t looked under there yet, have I?” Inquisitors would have thrown Nanny Ogg out of their ranks for being too nasty. She turned as more members of the family filed into the room, and her face contorted into the misty grin with which she always greeted grandchildren. Jason Ogg pushed his youngest son forward. This was Pewsey Ogg, aged four, who was holding something in his hands. “What you got there, then?” said Nanny. “You can show your Nan.” Pewsey held it up. “My word, you have been a-“ It happened right there, right then, right in front of her.   *   *   *   And then there was Magrat. She’d been away eight months. Now panic was setting in. Technically she was engaged to the king, Verence II. Well . . . not exactly engaged, as such. There was, she was almost sure, a general unspoken understanding that engagement was a definite option. Admittedly she’d kept on telling him that she was a free spirit and definitely didn’t want to be tied down in any way, and of course this was the case, more or less, but. . . but. . . But. . . well . . . eight months. Anything could have happened in eight months. She should have come straight back from Genua, but the other two had been enjoying themselves. She wiped the dust off her mirror and examined herself critically. Not a lot to work with, really. No matter what she did with her hair it took about three minutes for it to tangle itself up again, like a garden hosepipe left in a shed.[4] She’d bought herself a new green dress, but what had looked exciting and attractive on the plaster model looked like a furled umbrella on a Magrat. Whereas Verence had been here reigning for eight months. Of course, Lancre was so small that you couldn’t lie down without a passport, but he was a genuine king and genuine kings tended to attract young women looking for career opportunities in the queening department. She did her best with the dress and dragged a vengeful brush through her hair. Then she went up to the castle. Guard duty at Lancre castle was the province of anyone who didn’t have much of anything else to do at the moment. On duty today was Nanny Ogg’s youngest son Shawn, in ill-fitting chain-mail. He brought himself to what he probably thought was attention as Magrat pattered past, and then dropped his pike and hurried after her. “Can you slow down a bit, please, miss?” He overtook her, ran up the steps to the door, picked up a trumpet that was hanging from a nail by a bit of string, and blew an amateurish fanfare. Then he looked panicky again. “Wait right there, miss, right there . . ., count to five, and then knock,” he said, and darted through the door, slamming it behind him. Magrat waited, and then tried the knocker. After a few seconds Shawn opened the door. He was red in the face and had a powdered wig on back to front. “Yeeeuss?” he drawled, and tried to look like a butler. “You’ve still got your helmet on under the wig,” said Magrat helpfully. Shawn deflated. His eyes swivelled upward. “Everyone at the haymaking?” said Magrat. Shawn raised his wig, removed the helmet, and put the wig back. Then he distractedly put the helmet back on top of the wig. “Yes, and Mr. Spriggins the butler is in bed with his trouble again,” said Shawn. “There’s only me, miss. And I’ve got to get the dinner started before I’m off ‘ome because Mrs. Scorbic is poorly.” “You don’t have to show me in,” said Magrat. “I do know the way.” “No, it’s got to be done proper,” said Shawn. “You just keep movin’ slow and leave it to me.” He ran on ahead and flung open some double doors- “Meeeyisss Magraaaaat Garrrrrliick!” -and scurried toward the next set of doors. By the third pair he was out of breath, but he did his best. “Meeeyisss . . . Magraaaaa . . . Garrrrrliick . . . His Majesteeeyyaa the Ki - Oh, bugger, now where’s he gone?” The throne room was empty. They eventually found Verence II, King of Lancre, in the stable yard. Some people are born to kingship. Some achieve kingship, or at least Arch-Generalissimo-Father-of-His-Countryship. But Verence had kingship thrust upon him. He hadn’t been raised to it, and had only arrived at the throne by way of one of those complicated mix-ups of fraternity and parentage that are all too common in royal families. He had in fact been raised to be a Fool, a man whose job it was to caper and tell jokes and have custard poured down his trousers. This had naturally given him a grave and solemn approach to life and a grim determination never to laugh at anything ever again, especially in the presence of custard. In the role of ruler, then, he had started with the advantage of ignorance. No one had ever told him how to be a king, so he had to find out for himself. He’d sent off for books on the subject. Verence was a great believer in the usefulness of knowledge derived from books. He had formed the unusual opinion that the job of a king is to make the kingdom a better place for everyone to live in. Now he was inspecting a complicated piece of equipment. It had a pair of shafts for a horse, and the rest of it looked like a cartful of windmills. He glanced up, and smiled in an absentminded way. “Oh, hello,” he said. “All back safe then?” “Um-“ Magrat began. “It’s a patent crop rotator,” said Verence. He tapped the machine. “Just arrived from Ankh-Morpork. The wave of the future, you know. I’ve really been getting interested in agricultural improvement and soil efficiency. We’ll really have to get cracking on this new three-field system.” Magrat was caught off balance. “But I think we’ve only got three fields,” she said, “and there isn’t much soil in-“ “It’s very important to maintain the correct relationship between grains, legumes, and roots,” said Verence, raising his voice. “Also, I’m seriously considering clover. I should be interested to know what you think!” “Um-“ “And I think we should do something about the pigs!” Verence shouted, “The Lancre Stripe! Is very hardy! But we could really bring the poundage up! By careful cross-breeding! With, say, the Sto Saddleback! I’m having a boar sent up - Shawn, will you only stop blowing that damn trumpet!” Shawn lowered the trumpet. “I’m doin’ a fanfare, your majesty.” “Yes, yes, but you’re not supposed to go on. A few brief notes are a sufficiency.” Verence sniffed. “And something’s burning.” “Oh, blow . . . it’s the carrots . . .” Shawn hurried away “That’s better,” said Verence. “Where were we?” “Pigs, I think,” said Magrat, “but I really came to-“ “It all comes down to the soil,” said Verence. “Get the soil right, and everything else follows. Incidentally, I’m arranging the marriage for Midsummer Day I thought you’d like that.” Magrat’s mouth formed an 0. “We could move it, of course, but not too much because of the harvest,” said Verence. “I’ve had some invitations sent out already, to the more obvious guests,” said Verence. “And I thought it might be a nice idea to have some sort of fair or festival beforehand,” said Verence. “I asked Boggi’s in Ankh-Morpork to send up their best dressmaker with a selection of materials and one of the maids is about your size and I think you’ll be very pleased with the result,” said Verence. “And Mr. Ironfoundersson, the dwarf, came down the mountain specially to make the crown,” said Verence. “And my brother and Mr. Vittoller’s Men can’t come because they’re touring Klatch, apparently, but Hwel the playsmith has written a special play for the wedding entertainment. Something even rustics can’t muck up, he says,” said Verence. “So that’s all settled then?” said Verence. Finally, Magrat’s voice returned from some distant apogee, slightly hoarse. “Aren’t you supposed to ask me?” she demanded. “What? Urn. No, actually,” said Verence. “No. Kings don’t ask. I looked it up. I’m the king, you see, and you are, no offence meant, a subject. I don’t have to ask.” Magrat’s mouth opened for the scream of rage but, at last, her brain jolted into operation. Yes, it said, of course you can yell at him and sweep away. And he’ll probably come after you. Very probably. Urn. Maybe not that probably. Because he might be a nice little man with gentle runny eyes but he’s also a king and he’s been looking things up. But very probably quite probably But. . . Do you want to bet the rest of your life? Isn’t this what you wanted anyway? Isn’t it what you came here hoping for? Really? Verence was looking at her with some concern. “Is it the witching?” he said. “You don’t have to give that up entirely, of course. I’ve got a great respect for witches. And you can be a witch queen, although I think that means you have to wear rather revealing clothes and keep cats and give people poisoned apples. I read that somewhere. The witching’s a problem, is it?” “No,” Magrat mumbled, “it’s not that. . . um . . . did you mention a crown?” “You’ve got to have a crown,” said Verence. “Queens do. I looked it up.” Her brain cut in again. Queen Magrat, it suggested. It held up the mirror of the imagination . . . “You’re not upset, are you?” said Verence. “What? Oh. No. Me? No.” “Good. That’s all sorted out, then. I think that just about covers everything, don’t you?” “Um-“ Verence rubbed his hands together. “We’re doing some marvellous things with legumes,” he said, as if he hadn’t just completely rearranged Magrat’s life without consulting her. “Beans, peas . . . you know. Nitrogen fixers. And marl and lime, of course. Scientific husbandry. Come and look at this.” He bounced away enthusiastically. “You know,” he said, “we could really make this kingdom work.” Magrat trailed after him. So that was all settled, then. Not a proposal, just a statement. She hadn’t been quite sure how the moment would be, even in the darkest hours of the night, but she’d had an idea that roses and sunsets and bluebirds might just possibly be involved. Clover had not figured largely Beans and other leguminous nitrogen fixers were not a central feature. On the other hand Magrat was, at the core, far more practical than most people believed who saw no further than her vague smile and collection of more than three hundred pieces of occult jewellery, none of which worked. So this was how you got married to a king. It all got arranged for you. There were no white horses. The past flipped straight into the future, carrying you with it. Perhaps that was normal. Kings were busy people. Magrat’s experience of marrying them was limited. “Where are we going?” she said. “The old rose garden.” Ah . . . well, this was more like it. Except that there weren’t any roses. The walled garden had been stripped of its walks and arbors and was now waist high in green stalks with white flowers. Bees were furiously at work in the blossoms. “Beans?” said Magrat. “Yes! A specimen crop. I keep bringing the farmers up here to show them,” said Verence. He sighed. “They nod and mumble and smile but I’m afraid they just go off and do the same old things.” “I know,” said Magrat. “The same thing happened when I tried to give people lessons in natural childbirth.” Verence raised an eyebrow. Even to him the thought of Magrat giving lessons in childbirth to the fecund and teak-faced women of Lancre was slightly unreal. “Really? How had they been having babies before?” he said. “Oh, any old way,” said Magrat. They looked at the little buzzing bean field. “Of course, when you’re queen, you won’t need to-“ Verence began. It happened softly, almost like a kiss, as light as the touch of sunlight. There was no wind, only a sudden heavy calmness that made the ears pop. The stems bent and broke, and lay down in a circle. The bees roared, and fled.   The three witches arrived at the standing stone together. They didn’t even bother with explanations. There were some things you know. “In the middle of my bloody herbs!” said Granny Weatherwax. “On the palace garden!” said Magrat. “Poor little mite! And he was holding it up to show me, too!” said Nanny Ogg. Granny Weatherwax paused. “What’re you talking about, Gytha Ogg?” she said. “Our Pewsey was growing mustard-and-cress on a flannel for his Nan,” said Nanny Ogg, patiently. “He shows it to me, right enough, and just as I bends down and - splat! Crop circle!” “This,” said Granny Weatherwax, “is serious. It’s been years since they’ve been as bad as this. We all know what it means, don’t we. What we’ve got-“ “Um,” said Magrat. “-to do now is-“ “Excuse me,” said Magrat. There were some things you had to be told. “Yes?” “I don’t know what it means,” said Magrat. “I mean, old Goodie Whemper-“ “-maysherestinpeace-“ the older witches chorused. “-told me once that the circles were dangerous, but she never said anything about why.” The older witches shared a glance. “Never told you about the Dancers?” said Granny Weatherwax. “Never told you about the Long Man?” said Nanny Ogg. “What Dancers? You mean those old stones up on the moor?” “All you need to know right now,” said Granny Weatherwax, “is that we’ve got to put a stop to Them.” “What Them?” Granny radiated innocence. . . “The circles, of course,” she said. “Oh, no,” said Magrat. “I can tell by the way you said it. You said Them as though it was some sort of curse. It wasn’t just a them, it was a them with a capital The.” The old witches looked awkward again. “And who’s the Long Man?” said Magrat. “We do not,” said Granny, “ever talk about the Long Man.” “No harm in telling her about the Dancers, at any rate,” mumbled Nanny Ogg. “Yes, but . . . you know . . . I mean . . . she’s Magrat,” said Granny. “What’s that meant to mean?” Magrat demanded. “You probably won’t feel the same way about Them, is what I am saying,” said Granny. “We’re talking about the-“ Nanny Ogg began. “Don’t name ‘em!” “Yeah, right. Sorry.” “Mind you, a circle might not find the Dancers,” said Granny. “We can always hope. Could be just random.” “But if one opens up inside the-“ said Nanny Ogg. Magrat snapped. “You just do this on purpose! You talk in code the whole time! You always do this! But you won’t be able to when I’m queen!” That stopped them. Nanny Ogg put her head on one side. “Oh?” she said. “Young Verence popped the question, then?” “Yes!” “When’s the happy event?” said Granny Weatherwax, icily.   “Two weeks’ time,” said Magrat. “Midsummer Day.” “Bad choice, bad choice,” said Nanny Ogg. “Shortest night o’ the year-“ “Gytha Ogg!” “And you’ll be my subjects,” said Magrat, ignoring this. “And you’ll have to curtsy and everything!” She knew as soon as she said it that it was stupid, but anger drove her on. Granny Weatherwax’s eyes narrowed. “Hmm,” she said. “We will, will we?” “Yes, and if you don’t,” said Magrat, “you can get thrown in prison.” “My word,” said Granny. “Deary deary me. I wouldn’t like that. I wouldn’t like that at all.” All three of them knew that the castle dungeons, which in any case had never been its most notable feature, were now totally unused. Verence II was the most amiable monarch in the history of Lancre. His subjects regarded him with the sort of good-natured contempt that is the fate of all those who work quietly and conscientiously for the public good. Besides, Verence would rather cut his own leg off than put a witch in prison, since it’d save trouble in the long run and probably be less painful. “Queen Magrat, eh?” said Nanny Ogg, trying to lighten the atmosphere a bit. “Cor. Well, the old castle could do with a bit of lightening up-“ “Oh, it’ll lighten up all right,” said Granny. “Well, anyway, I don’t have to bother with this sort of thing,” said Magrat. “Whatever it is. It’s your business. I just shan’t have time, I’m sure.” “I’m sure you can please yourself, your going-to-be-majesty,” said Granny Weatherwax. “Hah!” said Magrat. “I can! You can jol - you can damn well find another witch for Lancre! All right? Another soppy girl to do all the dreary work and never be told anything and be talked over the head of the whole time. I’ve got better things to do!” “Better things than being a witch?” said Granny Magrat walked into it. “Yes!” “Oh, dear,” murmured Nanny “Oh. Well, then I expect you’ll be wanting to be off,” said Granny, her voice like knives. “Back to your palace, I’ll be bound.” “Yes!” Magrat picked up her broomstick. Granny’s arm shot out very fast and grabbed the handle. “Oh, no,” she said, “you don’t. Queens ride around in golden coaches and whatnot. Each to their own. Brooms is for witches.” “Now come on, you two,” began Nanny Ogg, one of nature’s mediators. “Anyway, someone can be a queen and a w-“ “Who cares?” said Magrat, dropping the broomstick. “I don’t have to bother with that sort of thing anymore.” She turned, clutched at her dress, and ran. She became a figure outlined against the sunset. “You daft old besom, Esme,” said Nanny Ogg. “Just because she’s getting wed.” “You know what she’d say if we told her,” said Granny Weatherwax. “She’d get it all wrong. The Gentry. Circles. She’d say it was . . . nice. Best for her if she’s out of it.” “They ain’t been active for years and years,” said Nanny. “We’ll need some help. I mean . . . when did you last go up to the Dancers?” “You know how it is,” said Granny “When it’s so quiet. . . you don’t think about ‘em.” “We ought to have kept ‘em cleared.” “True.” “We better get up there first thing tomorrow,” said Nanny Ogg. “Yes.” “Better bring a sickle, too.”   There isn’t much of the kingdom of Lancre where you could drop a football and not have it roll away from you. Most of it is moor land and steeply forested hillside, giving way to sharp and ragged mountains where even trolls wouldn’t go and valleys so deep that they have to pipe the sunlight in. There was an overgrown path up to the moor land where the Dancers stood, even though it was only a few miles from the town. Hunters tracked up there sometimes, but only by accident. It wasn’t that the hunting was bad but, well - there were the stones. Stone circles were common enough everywhere in the mountains. Druids built them as weather computers and since it was always cheaper to build a new 33-MegaLith circle than upgrade an old slow one there were generally plenty of ancient ones around. No druids ever came near the Dancers. The stones weren’t shaped. They weren’t even positioned in any particularly significant way. There wasn’t any of that stuff about the sun striking the right stone at dawn on the right day. Someone had just dragged eight red rocks into a rough circle. But the weather was different. People said that, if it started to rain, it always began to fall inside the circle a few seconds after it had started outside, as if the rain was coming from further away. If clouds crossed the sun, it’d be a moment or two before the light faded inside the circle. William Scrope is going to die in a couple of minutes. It has to be said that he shouldn’t have been hunting deer out of season, and especially not the fine stag he was tracking, and certainly not a fine stag of the Ramtop Red species, which is officially endangered although not as endangered, right now, as William Scrope. It was ahead of him, pushing through the bracken, making so much noise that a blind man could have tracked it. Scrope waded through after it. Mist was still hanging around the stones, not in a blanket but in long raggedy strings. The stag reached the circle now, and stopped. It trotted back and forth once or twice, and then looked up at Scrope. He raised the crossbow. The stag turned, and leapt between the stones. There were only confused impressions from then on. The first was of distance. The circle was a few yards across, it shouldn’t suddenly appear to contain so much distance. And the next was of speed. Something was coming out of the circle, a white dot growing bigger and bigger. He knew he’d aimed the bow. But it was whirled out of his hands as the thing struck, and suddenly there was only the sensation of peace. And the brief remembrance of pain. William Scrope died. William Scrope looked through his hands at the crushed bracken. The reason that it was crushed was that his own body was sprawled upon it. His newly deceased eyes surveyed the landscape. There are no delusions for the dead. Dying is like waking up after a really good party, when you have one or two seconds of innocent freedom before you recollect all the things you did last night which seemed so logical and hilarious at the time, and then you remember the really amazing thing you did with a lampshade and two balloons, which had them in stitches, and now you realise you’re going to have to look a lot of people in the eye today and you’re sober now and so are they but you can both remember. “Oh,” he said. The landscape flowed around the stones. It was all so obvious now, when you saw it from the outside. . . Obvious. No walls, only doors. No edges, only comers- WILLIAM SCROPE. “Yes?” IF YOU WOULD PLEASE STEP THIS WAY. “Are you a hunter?” I LIKE TO THINK I AM A PICKER-UP OF UNCONSIDERED TRIFLES. Death grinned hopefully. Scrope’s post-physical brow furrowed. “What? Like . . . sherry, custard . . . that sort of thing?” Death sighed. Metaphors were wasted on people. Sometimes he felt that no one took him seriously enough. I TAKE AWAY PEOPLE’S LIVES IS WHAT I MEAN, he said testily. “Where to?” WE SHALL HAVE TO SEE, WON’T WE? William Scrope was already fading into the mist. “That thing that got me-“ YES? “I thought they were extinct!” “NO. THEY JUST WENT AWAY. “Where to?” Death extended a bony digit. OVER THERE. Magrat hadn’t originally intended to move into the palace before the wedding, because people would talk. Admittedly a dozen people lived in the palace, which had a huge number of rooms, but she’d still be under the same roof, and that was good enough. Or bad enough. That was before. Now her blood was sizzling. Let people talk. She had a pretty good idea which people they’d be, too. Which person, anyway. Witch person. Hah. Let them talk all they liked. She got up early and packed her possessions, such as they were. It wasn’t exactly her cottage, and most of the furniture went with it. Witches came and went, but witches’ cottages went on for ever, usually with the same thatch they started with. But she did own the set of magical knives, the mystic collared cords, the assorted grails and crucibles, and a box full of rings, necklaces, and bracelets heavy with the hermetic symbols of a dozen religions. She tipped them all into a sack. Then there were the books. Goodie Whemper had been something of a bookworm among witches. There were almost a dozen. She hesitated about the books, and finally she let them stay on the shelves. There was the statutory pointy hat. She’d never liked it anyway, and had always avoided wearing it. Into the sack with it. She looked around wild-eyed until she spotted the small cauldron in the inglenook. That’d do. Into the sack with that, and then tie the neck with string. On the way up to the palace she crossed the bridge over Lancre Gorge and tossed the sack into the river. It bobbed for a moment in the strong current, and then sank. She’d secretly hoped for a string of multicoloured bubbles, or even a hiss. But it just sank. Just as if it wasn’t anything very important.   Another world, another castle. . . The elf galloped over the frozen moat, steam billowing from its black horse and from the thing it carried over its neck. It rode up the steps and into the hall itself, where the Queen sat amidst her dreams . . . “My lord Lankin?” “A stag!” It was still alive. Elves were skilled at leaving things alive, often for weeks. “From out of the circle?” “Yes, lady!” “It’s weakening. Did I not tell you?” “How long? How long?” “Soon. Soon. What went through the other way?” The elf tried to avoid her face. “Your . . . pet, lady.” “No doubt it won’t go far.” The Queen laughed. “No doubt it will have an amusing time . . .”   It rained briefly at dawn. There’s nothing nastier to walk through than shoulder-high wet bracken. Well, there is. There are an uncountable number of things nastier to walk through, especially if they’re shoulder-high. But here and now, thought Nanny Ogg, it was hard to think of more than one or two. They hadn’t landed inside the Dancers, of course. Even birds detoured rather than cross that airspace. Migrating spiders on gossamer threads floating half a mile up curved around it. Clouds split in two and flowed around it. Mist hung around the stones. Sticky, damp mist. Nanny hacked vaguely at the clinging bracken with her sickle. “You there, Esme?” she muttered. Granny Weatherwax’s head rose from a clump of bracken a few feet away. “There’s been things going on,” she said, in a cold and deliberate tone. “Like what?” “All the bracken and weeds is trampled around the stones. I reckon someone’s been dancing.” Nanny Ogg gave this the same consideration as would a nuclear physicist who’d just been told that someone was banging two bits of sub-critical uranium together to keep warm. “They never,” she said. “They have. And another thing. . .”  It was hard to imagine what other thing there could be, but Nanny Ogg said “Yes?” anyway. “Someone got killed up here.” “Oh, no,” moaned Nanny Ogg. “Not inside the circle too.” “Nope. Don’t be daft. It was outside. A tall man. He had one leg longer’n the other. And a beard. He was probably a hunter.” “How’d you know all that?” “I just trod on ‘im.” The sun rose through the mists.   The morning rays were already caressing the ancient stones of Unseen University, premier college of wizardry, five hundred miles away. Not that many wizards were aware of this. For roost of the wizards of Unseen University their lunch was the first meal of the day. They were not, by and large, breakfast people. The Archchancellor and the Librarian were the only two who knew what the dawn looked like from the front, and they tended to have the entire campus to themselves for several hours. The Librarian was always up early because he was an orang-utan, and they are naturally early risers, although in his case he didn’t bellow a few times to keep other males off his territory. He just unlocked the Library and fed the books. And Mustrum Ridcully, the current Archchancellor, liked to wander around the sleepy buildings, nodding to the servants and leaving little notes for his subordinates, usually designed for no other purpose than to make it absolutely clear that he was up and attending to the business of the day while they were still fast asleep.[5] Today, however, he had something else on his mind. More or less literally. It was round. There was healthy growth all around it. He could swear it hadn’t been there yesterday. He turned his head this way and that, squinting at the reflection in the mirror of the other mirror he was holding above his head. The next member of staff to wake up after Ridcully and the Librarian was the Bursar; not because he was a naturally early riser, but because by around ten o’clock the Archchancellor’s very limited supply of patience came to an end and he would stand at the bottom of the stairs and shout: “Bursaaar!” -until the Bursar appeared. In fact it happened so often that the Bursar, a natural neurovore,[6] frequently found that he’d got up and dressed himself in his sleep several minutes before the bellow. On this occasion he was upright and fully clothed and halfway to the door before his eyes snapped open. Ridcully never wasted time on small talk. It was always large talk or nothing. “Yes, Archchancellor?” said the Bursar, glumly. The Archchancellor removed his hat. “What about this, then?” he demanded. “Um, um, um . . . what, Archchancellor?” “This, man! This!” Close to panic, the Bursar stared desperately at the top of Ridcully’s head. “The what? Oh. The bald spot?” “I have not got a bald spot!” “Um, then-“ “I mean it wasn’t there yesterday!” “Ah. Well. Um.” At a certain point something always snapped inside the Bursar, and he couldn’t stop himself. “Of course these things do happen and my grandfather always swore by a mixture of honey and horse manure, he rubbed it on every day-“ “I’m not going bald!” A tic started to dance across the Bursar’s face. The words started to come out by themselves, without the apparent intervention of his brain. “-and then he got this device with a glass rod and, and, and you rubbed it with a silk cloth and-“ “I mean it’s ridiculous! My family have never gone bald, except for one of my aunts!” “-and, and, and then he’d collect morning dew and wash his head, and, and, and-“ Ridcully subsided. He was not an unkind man. “What’re you taking for it at the moment?” he murmured. “Dried, dried, dried, dried,” stuttered the Bursar. “The old dried frog pills, right?” “R-r-r-r.” “Left-hand pocket?” “R-r-r-r.” “OK. . . right. . . swallow. . .” They stared at one another for a moment. The Bursar sagged. “M-m-much better now, Archchancellor, thank you.” “Something’s definitely happening. Bursar. I can feel it in my water.” “Anything you say, Archchancellor.” “Bursar?” “Yes, Archchancellor?” “You ain’t a member of some secret society or somethin’, are you?” “Me? No, Archchancellor.” “Then it’d be a damn good idea to take your underpants off your head.”   “Know him?” said Granny Weatherwax. Nanny Ogg knew everyone in Lancre, even the forlorn thing on the bracken. “It’s William Scrope, from over Slice way,” she said. “One of three brothers. He married that Palliard girl, remember? The one with the air-cooled teeth?” “I hope the poor woman’s got some respectable black clothes,” said Granny Weatherwax. “Looks like he’s been stabbed,” said Nanny. She turned the body over, gently but firmly. Corpses as such didn’t worry her. Witches generally act as layers-out of the dead as well as midwives; there were plenty of people in Lancre for whom Nanny Ogg’s face had been the first and last thing they’d ever seen, which had probably made all the bit in the middle seem quite uneventful by comparison. “Right through,” she said. “Stabbed right through. Blimey who’d do a thing like that?” Both the witches turned to look at the stones. “I don’t know what, but I knows where it come from,” said Granny. Now Nanny Ogg could see that the bracken all around the stones was indeed well trodden down, and quite brown. “I’m going to get to the bottom of this,” said Granny. “You’d better not go into-“ “I knows exactly where I should go, thank you.” There were eight stones in the Dancers. Three of them had names. Granny walked around the ring until she reached the one known as the Piper. She removed a hatpin from among the many that riveted her pointy hat to her hair and held it about six inches from the stone. Then she let it go, and watched what happened. She went back to Nanny. “There’s still power there,” she said. “Not much, but the ring is holding.” “But who’d be daft enough to come up here and dance around the stones?” said Nanny Ogg, and then, as a treacherous thought drifted across her mind, she added, “Magrat’s been away with us the whole time.” “We shall have to find out,” said Granny, setting her face in a grim smile. “Now help me up with the poor man.” Nanny Ogg bent to the task. “Coo, he’s heavy. We could’ve done with young Magrat up here.” “No. Flighty,” said Granny Weatherwax. “Head easily turned.” “Nice girl, though.” “But soppy. She thinks you can lead your life as if fairy stories work and folk songs are really true. Not that I don’t wish her every happiness.” “Hope she does all right as queen,” said Nanny. “We taught her everything she knows,” said Granny Weatherwax. “Yeah,” said Nanny Ogg, as they disappeared into the bracken. “D’you think. . . maybe. . . ?” “What?” “D’you think maybe we ought to have taught her everything we know?” “It’d take too long.” “Yeah, right.”   It took a while for letters to get as far as the Archchancellor. The post tended to be picked up from the University gates by anyone who happened to be passing, and then left lying on a shelf somewhere or used as a pipe lighter or a bookmark or, in the case of the Librarian, as bedding. This one had only taken two days, and was quite intact apart from a couple of cup rings and a bananary fingerprint. It arrived on the table along with the other post while the faculty were at breakfast. The Dean opened it with a spoon. “Anyone here know where Lancre is?” he said. “Why?” said Ridcully, looking up sharply. “Some king’s getting married and wants us to come.” “Oh dear, oh dear,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “Some tinpot king gets wed and he wants us to come?” “It’s up in the mountains,” said the Archchancellor, quietly “Good trout fishin’ in those parts, as I recall. My word. Lancre. Good grief. Hadn’t thought about the place in years. You know, there’s glacier lakes up there where the fish’ve never seen a rod. Lancre. Yes.” “And it’s far too far,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. Ridcully wasn’t listening. “And there’s deer. Thousands of head of deer. And elk. Wolves all over the place. Mountain lions too, I shouldn’t wonder. I heard that Ice Eagles have been seen up there again, too.” His eyes gleamed. “There’s only half a dozen of ‘em left,” he said. Mustrum Ridcully did a lot for rare species. For one thing, he kept them rare. “It’s the back of beyond,” said the Dean. “Right off the edge of the map.” “Used to stay with my uncle up there, in the holidays,” said Ridcully, his eyes misty with distance. “Great days I had up there. Great days. The summers up there . . . and the sky’s a deeper blue than anywhere else, it’s very . . . and the grass. . . and. . .” He returned abruptly from the landscapes of memory. “Got to go, then,” he said. “Duty calls. Head of state gettin’ married. Important occasion. Got to have a few wizards there. Look of the thing. Nobblyess obligay.” “Well, I’m not going,” said the Dean. “It’s not natural, the countryside. Far too many trees. Never could stand it.” “The Bursar could do with an outing,” said Ridcully. “Seems a bit jumpy just lately, can’t imagine why.” He leaned forward to look along the High Table. “Bursaaar!” The Bursar dropped his spoon into his oatmeal. “See what I mean?” said Ridcully. “Bundle o’ nerves the whole time. I WAS SAYING YOU COULD DO WITH SOME FRESH AIR, BURSAR.” He nudged the Dean heavily. “Hope he’s not going off his rocker, poor fella,” he said, in what he chose to believe was a whisper. “Spends too much time indoors, if you get my drift.” The Dean, who went outdoors about once a month, shrugged his shoulders. “I EXPECT YOU’D LIKE A LITTLE TIME AWAY FROM THE UNIVERSITY, EH?” said the Archchancellor, nodding and grimacing madly. “Peace and quiet? Healthy country livin’?” “I, I, I, I should like that very much, Archchancellor,” said the Bursar, hope rising in his face like an autumn mushroom. “Good man. Good man. You shall come with me,” said Ridcully, beaming. The Bursar’s expression froze. “Got to be someone else, too,” said Ridcully. “Volunteers, anyone?” The wizards, townies to a man, bent industriously over their food. They always bent industriously over their food in any case, but this time they were doing it to avoid catching Ridcully’s eye. “What about the Librarian?” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, throwing a random victim to the wolves. There was a sudden babble of relieved agreement. “Good choice,” said the Dean. “Just the thing for him. Countryside. Trees. And. . . and. . . trees.” “Mountain air,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “Yes, he’s been looking peaky lately,” said the Reader in Invisible Writings.[7] “It’d be a real treat for him,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “Home away from home, I expect,” said the Dean. “Trees all over the place.” They all looked expectantly at the Archchancellor. “He doesn’t wear clothes,” said Ridcully. “And he goes ‘ook’ all the time.” “He does wear the old green robe thing,” said the Dean. “Only when he’s had a bath.” Ridcully rubbed his beard. In fact he quite liked the Librarian, who never argued with him and always kept himself in shape, even if that shape was a pear shape. It was the right shape for an orang-utan. The thing about the Librarian was that no one noticed he was an orang-utan anymore, unless a visitor to the University happened to point it out. In which case someone would say, “Oh, yes. Some kind of magical accident, wasn’t it? Pretty sure it was something like that. One minute human, next minute an ape. Funny thing, really . . . can’t remember what he looked like before. I mean, he must have been human, I suppose. Always thought of him as an ape, really. It’s more him.” And indeed it had been an accident among the potent and magical books of the University library that had as it were bounced the Librarian’s genotype down the evolutionary tree and back up a different branch, with the significant difference that now he could hang on to it upside down with his feet. “Oh, all right,” said the Archchancellor. “But he’s got to wear something during the ceremony, if only for the sake of the poor bride.” There was a whimper from the Bursar. All the wizards turned toward him. His spoon landed on the floor with a small thud. It was wooden. The wizards had gently prevented him from having metal cutlery since what was now known as the Unfortunate Incident At Dinner. “A-a-a-a,” gurgled the Bursar, trying to push himself away from the table. “Dried frog pills,” said the Archchancellor. “Someone fish ‘em out of his pocket.” Wizards didn’t rush this. You could find anything in a wizard’s pocket-peas, unreasonable things with legs, small experimental universes, anything. . . The Reader in Invisible Writings craned to see what had unglued his colleague. “Here, look at his porridge,” he said. There was a perfect round depression in the oatmeal. “Oh dear, another crop circle,” said the Dean. The wizards relaxed. “Damn things turning up everywhere this year,” said the Archchancellor. He hadn’t taken his hat off to eat the meal. This was because it was holding down a poultice of honey and horse manure and a small mouse-powered electrostatic generator he’d got those clever young fellas in the High Energy Magic research building to knock together for him, clever fellas they were, one day he might even understand half of what they were always gabblin’ on about. . . In the meantime, he’d keep his hat on. “Particularly strong, too,” said the Dean. “The gardener told me yesterday they’re playing merry hell with the cabbages.” “I thought them things only turned up out in fields and things,” said Ridcully. “Perfectly normal natural phenomenon.” “If there is a suitably high flux level, the inter-continuum pressure can probably overcome quite a high base reality quotient,” said the Reader in Invisible Writings. The conversation stopped. Everyone turned to look at this most wretched and least senior member of the staff. The Archchancellor glowered. “I don’t even want you to begin to start explainin’ that,” he said. “You’re probably goin’ to go on about the universe bein’ a rubber sheet with weights on it again, right?” “Not exactly a-“ “And the word ‘quantum’ is hurryin’ toward your lips again,” said Ridcully. “Well, the-“ “And ‘continuinuinuum’ too, I expect,” said Ridcully. The Reader in Invisible Writings, a young wizard whose name was Ponder Stibbons, sighed deeply. “No, Archchancellor, I was merely pointing out-“ “It’s not wormholes again, is it?” Stibbons gave up. Using a metaphor in front of a man as unimaginative as Ridcully was like a red rag to a bu-was like putting something very annoying in front of someone who was annoyed by it. It was very hard, being a reader in Invisible Writings. “I reckon you’d better come too,” said Ridcully. “Me, Archchancellor?” “Can’t have you skulking around the place inventing millions of other universes that’re too small to see and all the rest of that continuinuinuum stuff,” said Ridcully. “Anyway, I shall need someone to carry my rods and crossbo - my stuff,” he corrected himself. Stibbons stared at his plate. It was no good arguing. What he had really wanted out of life was to spend the next hundred years of it in the University, eating big meals and not moving much in between them. He was a plump young man with a complexion the colour of something that lives under a rock. People were always telling him to make something of his life, and that’s what he wanted to do. He wanted to make a bed of it. “But, Archchancellor,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, “it’s still too damn far.” “Nonsense,” said Ridcully. “They’ve got that new turnpike open all the way to Sto Helit now. Coaches every Wednesday, reg’lar. Bursaaar! Oh, give him a dried frog pill, someone . . . Mr. Stibbons, if you could happen to find yourself in this universe for five minutes, go and arrange some tickets. There. All sorted out, right?”   Magrat woke up. And knew she wasn’t a witch anymore. The feeling just crept over her, as part of the normal stock-taking that any body automatically does in the first seconds of emergence from the pit of dreams: arms: 2, legs: 2, existential dread: 58%, randomised guilt: 94%, witchcraft level: 00.00. The point was, she couldn’t remember ever being anything else. She’d always been a witch. Magrat Garlick, third witch, that was what she was. The soft one. She knew she’d never been much good at it. Oh, she could do some spells and do them quite well, and she was good at herbs, but she wasn’t a witch in the bone like the old ones. They made sure she knew it. Well, she’d just have to learn queening. At least she was the only one in Lancre. No one’d be looking over her shoulder the whole time, saying things like “You ain’t holding that sceptre right’.” Right. . . Someone had stolen her clothes in the night. She got up in her nightshirt and hopped over the cold flagstones to the door. She was halfway there when it opened of its own accord. She recognised the small dark girl that came in, barely visible behind a stack of linen. Most people in Lancre knew everyone else. “Millie Chillum?” The linen bobbed a curtsy. “Yes’m?” Magrat lifted up part of the stack. “It’s me, Magrat,” she said. “Hello.” “Yes’m.” Another bob. “What’s up with you, Millie?” “Yes’m.” Bob, bob. “I said it’s me. You don’t have to look at me like that.” “Yes’m.” The nervous bobbing continued. Magrat found her own knees beginning to jerk in sympathy but as it were behind the beat, so that as she was bobbing down she overtook the girl bobbing up. “If you say ‘yes’m’ again, it will go very hard with you,” she managed, as she went past. “Y-right, your majesty, m’m.” Faint light began to dawn. “I’m not queen yet, Millie. And you’ve known me for twenty years,” panted Magrat, on the way up. “Yes’m. But you’re going to be queen. So me mam told me I was to be respectful,” said Millie, still curtsying nervously “Oh. Well. All right, then. Where are my clothes?” “Got ‘em here, your pre-majesty.” “They’re not mine. And please stop going up and down all the time. I feel a bit sick.” “The king ordered ‘em from Sto Helit special, m’m.” “Did he, eh? How long ago?” “Dunno, m’m.” He knew I was coming home, thought Magrat. How? What’s going on here? There was a good deal more lace than Magrat was used to, but that was, as it were, the icing on the cake. Magrat normally wore a simple dress with not much underneath it except Magrat. Ladies of quality couldn’t get away with that kind of thing. Millie had been provided with a sort of technical diagram, but it wasn’t much help. They studied it for some time. “This is a standard queen outfit, then?” “Couldn’t say, m’m. I think his majesty just sent ‘em a lot of money and said to send you everything.” They spread out the bits on the floor. “Is this the pantoffle?” Outside, on the battlements, the guard changed. In fact he changed into his gardening apron and went off to hoe the beans. Inside, there was considerable sartorial discussion. “I think you’ve got it up the wrong way, m’m. Which bit’s the farthingale?” “Says here Insert Tabbe A into Slotte B. Can’t find slotte B.” “These’re like saddlebags. I’m not wearing these. And this thing?” “A ruff, m’m. Um. They’re all the rage in Sto Helit, my brother says.” “You mean they make people angry? And what’s this?” “Brocade, I think.” “It’s like cardboard. Do I have to wear this sort of thing every day?” “Don’t know, I’m sure, m’m.” “But Verence just trots around in leather gaiters and an old jacket!” “Ah, but you’re queen. Queens can’t do that sort of thing. Everyone knows that, m’m. It’s all right for kings to go wandering around with their arse half out their trous-“ She rammed her hand over her mouth. “It’s all right,” said Magrat. “I’m sure even kings have . . . tops to their legs just like everyone else. Just go on with what you were saying.” Millie had gone bright red. “I mean, I mean, I mean, queens has got to be ladylike,” she managed. “The king got books about it. Etti-quetty and stuff.” Magrat surveyed herself critically in the mirror. “It really suits you, your soon-going-to-be-majesty,” said Millie. Magrat turned this way and that. “My hair’s a mess,” she said, after a while. “Please m’m, the king said he’s having a hairdresser come all the way from Ankh-Morpork, m’m. For the wedding.” Magrat patted a tress into place. It was beginning to dawn on her that being a queen was a whole new life. “My word,” she said. “And what happens now?” “Dunno, m’m.” “What’s the king doing?” “Oh, he had breakfast early and buggered off over to Slice to show old Muckloe how to breed his pigs out of a book.” “So what do I do? What’s my job?” Millie looked puzzled although this did not involve much of a change in her general expression. “Dunno, m’m. Reigning, I suppose. Walking around in the garden. Holding court. Doin’ tapestry. That’s very popular among queens. And then. . . er. . . later on there’s the royal succession. . .” “At the moment,” said Magrat firmly, “we’ll have a go at the tapestry.”   Ridcully was having difficulty with the Librarian. “I happen to be your Archchancellor, sir!” “Oook.” “You’ll like it up there! Fresh air! Bags of trees! More woods than you can shake a stick at!” “Oook!” “Come down this minute!” “Oook!” “The books’ll be quite safe here during the holidays. Good grief, it’s hard enough to get students to come in here at the best of times-“ “Oook!” Ridcully glared at the Librarian, who was hanging by his toes from the top shelf of Parazoology Ba to Mn. ‘Oh, well,” he said, his voice suddenly low and cunning, “it’s a great shame, in the circumstances. They’ve got a pretty good library in Lancre castle, I heard. Well, they call it a library - it’s just a lot of old books. Never had a catalogue near ‘em, apparently.” “Oook?” “Thousands of books. Someone told me there’s incunibles, too. Shame, really, you not wanting to see them.” Ridcully’s voice could have greased axles. “Oook?” “But I can see your mind is quite made up. So I shall be going. Farewell.” Ridcully paused outside the Library door, counting under his breath. He’d reached “three” when the Librarian knuckled through at high speed, caught by the incunibles. “So that’ll be four tickets, then?” said Ridcully.   Granny Weatherwax set about finding out what had been happening around the stones in her own distinctive way. People underestimate bees. Granny Weatherwax didn’t. She had half a dozen hives of them and knew, for example, there is no such creature as an individual bee. But there is such a creature as a swarm, whose component cells are just a bit more mobile than those of, say, the common whelk. Swarms see everything and sense a lot more, and they can remember things for years, although their memory tends to be external and built out of wax. A honeycomb is a hive’s memory - the placement of egg cells, pollen cells, queen cells, honey cells, different types of honey, are all part of the memory array. And then there are the big fat drones. People think all they do is hang around the hive all year, waiting for those few brief minutes when the queen even notices their existence, but that doesn’t explain why they’ve got more sense organs than the roof of the CIA building. Granny didn’t really keep bees. She took some old wax every year, for candles, and the occasional pound of honey that the hives felt they could spare, but mainly she had them for someone to talk to. For the first time since she’d returned home, she went to the hives. And stared. Bees were boiling out of the entrances. The thrum of wings filled the normally calm little patch behind the raspberry bushes. Brown bodies zipped through the air like horizontal hail. She wished she knew why. Bees were her one failure. There wasn’t a mind in Lancre she couldn’t Borrow. She could even see the world through the eyes of earthworms.[9] But a swarm, a mind made up of thousands of mobile parts, was beyond her. It was the toughest test of all. She’d tried over and over again to ride on one, to see the world through ten thousand pairs of multifaceted eyes all at once, and all she’d ever got was a migraine and an inclination to make love to flowers. But you could tell a lot from just watching bees. The activity, the direction, the way the guard bees acted. . . They were acting extremely worried. So she went for a lie down, as only Granny Weatherwax knew how.   Nanny Ogg tried a different way, which didn’t have much to do with witchcraft but did have a lot to do with her general Oggishness. She sat for a while in her spotless kitchen, drinking rum and smoking her foul pipe and staring at the paintings on the wall. They had been done by her youngest grandchildren in a dozen shades of mud, most of them of blobby stick figures with the word GRAN blobbily blobbed in underneath in muddy blobby letters. In front of her the cat Greebo, glad to be home again, lay on his back with all four paws in the air, doing his celebrated something-found-in-the-gutter impersonation. Finally Nanny got up and ambled thoughtfully down to Jason Ogg’s smithy. A smithy always occupied an important position in the villages, doing the duty of town hall, meeting room, and general clearing house for gossip. Several men were lounging around in it now, filling in time between the normal Lancre occupations of poaching and watching the women do the work. “Jason Ogg, I wants a word with you.” The smithy emptied like magic. It was probably something in Nanny Ogg’s tone of voice. But Nanny reached out and grabbed one man by the arm as he tried to go past at a sort of stumbling crouch. “I’m glad I’ve run into you, Mr. Quarney,” she said. “Don’t rush off. Store doing all right, is it?” Lancre’s only storekeeper gave her the look a threelegged mouse gives an athletic cat. Nevertheless, he tried. “Oh, terrible bad, terrible bad business is right now, Mrs. Ogg.” “Same as normal, eh?” Mr. Quarney’s expression was pleading. He knew he wasn’t going to get out without something, he just wanted to know what it was. “Well, now,” said Nanny, “you know the widow Scrope, lives over in Slice?” Quarney’s mouth opened. “She’s not a widow,” he said. “She-“ “Bet you half a dollar?” said Nanny. Quarney’s mouth stayed open, and around it the rest of his face recomposed itself in an expression of fascinated horror. “So she’s to be allowed credit, right, until she gets the farm on its feet,” said Nanny, in the silence. Quarney nodded mutely. “That goes for the rest of you men listening outside the door,” said Nanny, raising her voice. “Dropping a cut of meat on her doorstep once a week wouldn’t come amiss, eh? And she’ll probably want extra help come harvest. I knows I can depend on you all. Now, off you go. . .” They ran for it, leaving Nanny Ogg standing triumphantly in the doorway. Jason Ogg looked at her hopelessly, a fifteen-stone man reduced to a four-year-old boy. “Jason?” “I got to do this bit of brazing for old-“ “So,” said Nanny, ignoring him, “what’s been happening in these parts while we’ve been away, my lad?” Jason poked at the fire distractedly with an iron bar. “Oh, well, us had a big whirlwind on Hogswatchnight and one of Mother Peason’s hens laid the same egg three times, and old Poorchick’s cow gave birth to a seven-headed snake, and there was a rain of frogs over in Slice-“ “Been pretty normal, then,” said Nanny Ogg. She refilled her pipe in a casual but meaningful way. “All very quiet, really,” said Jason. He pulled the bar out of the fire, laid it on the anvil, and raised his hammer. “I’ll find out sooner or later, you know,” said Nanny Ogg. Jason didn’t turn his head, but his hammer stopped in mid-air. “I always does, you know,” said Nanny Ogg. The iron cooled from the colour of fresh straw to bright red. “You knows you always feels better for telling your old mum,” said Nanny Ogg. The iron cooled from red to spitting black. But Jason, used all day to the searing heat of a forge, seemed to be uncomfortably warm. “I should beat it up before it gets cold,” said Nanny Ogg. “Weren’t my fault. Mum! How could I stop ‘em?” Nanny sat back in the chair, smiling happily “What them would these be, my son?” “That young Diamanda and that Perdita and that girl with the red hair from over in Bad Ass and them others. I says to old Peason, I says you’d have something to say, I tole ’em Mistress Weatherwax’d get her knic - would definitely be sarcastic when she found out,” said Jason. “But they just laughs. They said they could teach ‘emselves witching.” Nanny nodded. Actually, they were quite right. You could teach yourself witchcraft. But both the teacher and the pupil had to be the right kind of person. “Diamanda?” she said. “Don’t recall the name.” “Really she’s Lucy Tockley,” said Jason. “She says Diamanda is more. . . more witchy.” “Ah. The one that wears the big floppy felt hat?” “Yes, Mum.” “She’s the one that paints her nails black, too?” “Yes, Mum.” “Old Tockley sent her off to school, didn’t he?” “Yes, Mum. She came back while you was gone.” “Ah.” Nanny Ogg lit her pipe from the forge. Floppy hat and black nails and education. Oh, dear. “How many of these gels are there, then?” she said. “Bout half a dozen. But they’m good at it. Mum.” “Yeah?” “And it ain’t as if they’ve been doing anything bad.” Nanny Ogg stared reflectively at the glow in the forge. There was a bottomless quality to Nanny Ogg’s silences. And also a certain directional component. Jason was quite clear that the silence was being aimed at him. He always fell for it. He tried to fill it up. “And that Diamanda’s been properly educated,” he said. “She knows some lovely words.” Silence. “And I knows you’ve always said there weren’t enough young girls interested in learnin’ witching these days,” said Jason. He removed the iron bar and hit it a few times, for the look of the thing. More silence flowed in Jason’s direction. “They goes and dances up in the mountains every full moon.” Nanny Ogg removed her pipe and inspected the bowl carefully. “People do say,” said Jason, lowering his voice, “that they dances in the altogether.” “Altogether what?” said Nanny Ogg. “You know. Mum. In the nudd.” “Cor. There’s a thing. Anyone see where they go?” “Nah. Weaver the thatcher says they always gives him the slip.” “Jason?” “Yes, Mum?” “They bin dancin’ around the stones.” Jason hit his thumb.   There were a number of gods in the mountains and forests of Lancre. One of them was known as Heme the Hunted. He was a god of the chase and the hunt. More or less. Most gods are created and sustained by belief and hope. Hunters danced in animal skins and created gods of the chase, who tended to be hearty and boisterous with the tact of a tidal wave. But they are not the only gods of hunting. The prey has an occult voice too, as the blood pounds and the hounds bay. Heme was the god of the chased and the hunted and all small animals whose ultimate destiny is to be an abrupt damp squeak. He was about three feet high with rabbit ears and very small horns. But he did have an extremely good turn of speed, and was using it to the full as he tore madly through the woods. “They’re coming! They’re coming! They’re all coming back!”   “Who are?” said Jason Ogg. He was holding his thumb in the water trough. Nanny Ogg sighed. “Them.” she said. “You know. Them. We ain’t certain, but. . .” “Who’s Them?” Nanny hesitated. There were some things you didn’t tell ordinary people. On the other hand, Jason was a blacksmith, which meant he wasn’t ordinary. Blacksmiths had to keep secrets. And he was family; Nanny Ogg had had an adventurous youth and wasn’t very good at counting, but she was pretty certain he was her son. “You see,” she said, waving her hands vaguely, “them stones. . . the Dancers . . . see, in the old days . . . see, once upon a time. . .” She stopped, and tried again to explain the essentially fractal nature of reality. “Like . . . there’s some places that’re thinner than others, where the old doorways used to be, well, not doorways, never exactly understood it myself, not doorways as such, more places where the world is thinner . . . Anyway, the thing is, the Dancers . . . are a kind of fence . . . we, well, when I say we I mean thousands of years ago . . . I mean, but they’re not just stones, they’re some kind of thunderbolt iron but . . . there’s things like tides, only not with water, it’s when worlds get closer together’n you can nearly step between ‘em . . . anyway, if people’ve been hangin’ around the stones, playin’ around . . . then They’ll be back, if we’re not careful.” “What They?” “That’s the whole trouble,” said Nanny, miserably. “If I tells you, you’ll get it all wrong. They lives on the other side of the Dancers.” Her son stared at her. Then a faint grin of realisation wandered across his face. “Ah,” he said. “I knows. I heard them wizards down in Ankh is always accidentally rippin’ holes in this fabric o’ reality they got down there, and you get them horrible things coming out o’ the Dungeon Dimensions. Huge buggers with dozens o’ eyeballs and more legs’n a Morris team.” He gripped his No. 5 hammer. “Don’t you worry. Mum. If they starts poppin’ out here, we’ll soon-“ “No, it ain’t like that,” said Nanny “Those live outside. But Them lives. . . over there.” Jason looked completely lost. Nanny shrugged. She’d have to tell someone, sooner or later. “The Lords and Ladies,” she said. “Who’re they?” Nanny looked around. But, after all, this was a forge. There had been a forge here long before there was a castle, long before there was even a kingdom. There were horseshoes everywhere. Iron had entered the very walls. It wasn’t just a place of iron, it was a place where iron died and was reborn. If you couldn’t speak the words here, you couldn’t speak ‘em anywhere. Even so, she’d rather not. “You know,” she said. “The Fair Folk. The Gentry. The Shining Ones. The Star People. You know.” “What?” Nanny put her hand on the anvil, just in case, and said the word. Jason’s frown very gently cleared, at about the same speed as a sunrise. “Them?” he said. “But aren’t they nice and-?” ‘”See?” said Nanny. “I told you you’d get it wrong!”   “How much?” said Ridcully. The coachman shrugged. “Take it or leave it,” he said. “I’m sorry, sir,” said Ponder Stibbons. “It’s the only coach.” “Fifty dollars each is daylight robbery!” “No,” said the coachman patiently. “Daylight robbery,” he said, in the authoritative tones of the experienced, “is when someone steps out into the road with an arrow pointing at us and then all his friends swings down from the rocks and trees and take away all our money and things. And then there’s nighttime robbery, which is like daytime robbery except they set fire to the coach so’s they can see what they’re about. Twilight robbery, now, your basic twilight robbery is-“ “Are you saying,” said Ridcully, “that getting robbed is included in the price?” “Bandits’ Guild,” said the coachman. “Forty dollars per head, see. It’s a kind of flat rate.” “What happens if we don’t pay it?” said Ridcully. “You end up flat.” The wizards went into a huddle. “We’ve got a hundred and fifty dollars,” said Ridcully. “We can’t get any more out of the safe because the Bursar ate the key yesterday” “Can I try an idea, sir?” said Ponder. “All right.” Ponder gave the coachman a bright smile. “Pets travel free?” he suggested. “Oook?”   Nanny Ogg’s broomstick skimmed a few feet above the forest paths, cornering so fast that her boots scraped through the leaves. She leapt off at Granny Weather-wax’s cottage so quickly that she didn’t switch it off, and it kept going until it stuck in the privy. The door was open. “Cooee?” Nanny glanced into the scullery, and then thumped up the small narrow staircase. Granny Weatherwax was stretched rigid on her bed. Her face was grey, her skin was cold. People had discovered her like this before, and it always caused embarrassment. So now she reassured visitors but tempted fate by always holding, in her rigid hands, a small handwritten sign which read: I ATE’NT DEAD. The window was propped open with a piece of wood. “Ah,” said Nanny, far more for her own benefit than for anyone else’s, “I sees you’re out. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll just put the kettle on, shall I, and wait ‘til you comes back?” Esme’s skill at Borrowing unnerved her. It was all very well entering the minds of animals and such, but too many witches had never come back. For several years Nanny had put out lumps of fat and bacon rind for a bluetit that she was sure was old Granny Postalute, who’d gone out Borrowing one day and never came back. Insofar as a witch could consider things uncanny. Nanny Ogg considered it uncanny. She went back down to the scullery and lowered a bucket down the well, remembering to fish the newts out this time before she boiled the kettle. Then she watched the garden. After a while a small shape flittered across it, heading for the upstairs window. Nanny poured out the tea. She carefully took one spoonful of sugar out of the sugar basin, tipped the rest of the sugar into her cup, put the spoonful back in the basin, put both cups on a tray, and climbed the stairs. Granny Weatherwax was sitting up in her bed. Nanny looked around. There was a large bat hanging upside down from a beam. Granny Weatherwax rubbed her ears. “Shove the po under it, will you, Gytha?” she mumbled. “They’re a devil for excusing themselves on the carpet.” Nanny unearthed the shyest article of Granny Weatherwax’s bedroom crockery and moved it across the rug with her foot. “I brought you a cup of tea,” she said. “Good job, too. Mouth tastes of moths,” said Granny. “Thought you did owls at night?” said Nanny. “Yeah, but you ends up for days trying to twist your head right round,” said Granny. “At least bats always faces the same way. Tried rabbits first off, but you know what they are for remembering things. Anyway, you know what they thinks about the whole time. They’re famous for it.” “Grass.” “Right.” “Find out anything?” said Nanny “Half a dozen people have been going up there. Every full moon!” said Granny. “Gels, by the shape of them. You only see silhouettes, with bats.” “You done well there,” said Nanny, carefully. “Girls from round here, you reckon?” “Got to be. They ain’t using broomsticks.” Nanny Ogg sighed. “There’s Agnes Nitt, old Threepenny’s daughter,” she said. “And the Tockley girl. And some others.” Granny Weatherwax looked at her with her mouth open. “I asked our Jason,” she said. “Sorry.” The bat burped. Granny genteelly covered her hand with her mouth. “I’m a silly old fool, ain’t I?” she said, after a while. “No, no,” said Nanny. “Borrowing’s a real skill. You’re really good at it.” “Prideful, that’s what I am. Once upon a time I’d of thought of asking people, too, instead of fooling around being a bat.” “Our Jason wouldn’t have told you. He only told me ‘cos I would’ve made ‘is life a living hell if he didn’t,” said Nanny Ogg. “That’s what a mother’s for.” “I’m losing my touch, that’s what it is. Getting old, Gytha.” “You’re as old as you feel, that’s what I always say.” “That’s what I mean.” Nanny Ogg looked worried. “Supposing Magrat’d been here,” said Granny. “She’d see me being daft.” “Well, she’s safe in the castle,” said Nanny. “Learning how to be queen.” “At least the thing about queening,” said Granny, “is that no one notices if you’re doing it wrong. It has to be right ‘cos it’s you doing it.” “S’funny, royalty,” said Nanny. “It’s like magic. You take some girl with a bum like two pigs in a blanket and a head full of air and then she marries a king or a prince or someone and suddenly she’s this radiant right royal princess. It’s a funny old world.” “I ain’t going to kowtow to her, mind,” said Granny. “You never kowtow to anyone anyway,” said Nanny Ogg patiently. “You never bowed to the old king. You barely gives young Verence a nod. You never kowtows to anyone ever, anyway.” “That’s right!” said Granny. “That’s part of being a witch, that is.” Nanny relaxed a bit. Granny being an old woman made her uneasy. Granny in her normal state of barely controlled anger was far more her old self. Granny stood up. “Old Toekley’s girl, eh?” “That’s right.” “Her mother was a Keeble, wasn’t she? Fine woman, as I recall.” “Yeah, but when she died the old man sent her off to Sto Lat to school.” “Don’t hold with schools,” said Granny Weatherwax. “They gets in the way of education. All them books. Books? What good are they? There’s too much reading these days. We never had time to read when we was young, I know that.” “We were too busy makin’ our own entertainment.” “Right. Come on - we ain’t got much time.” “What d’you mean?” “It’s not just the girls. There’s something out there, too. Some kind of mind, movin’ around.” Granny shivered. She’d been aware of it in the same way that a skilled hunter, moving through the hills, is aware of another hunter - by the silences where there should have been noise, by the trampling of a stem, by the anger of the bees. Nanny Ogg had never liked the idea of Borrowing, and Magrat had always refused even to give it a try. The old witches on the other side of the mountain had too much trouble with inconvenient in-body experiences to cope with the out-of-body kind. So Granny was used to having the mental dimension to herself. There was a mind moving around in the kingdom, and Granny Weatherwax didn’t understand it. She Borrowed. You had to be careful. It was like a drug. You could ride the minds of animals and birds, but never bees, steering them gently, seeing through their eyes. Granny Weatherwax had many times flicked through the channels of consciousness around her. It was, to her, part of the heart of witchcraft. To see through other eyes . . . . . . through the eyes of gnats, seeing the slow patterns of time in the fast pattern of one day, their minds travelling rapidly as lightning . . . . . . to listen with the body of a beetle, so that the world is a three-dimensional pattern of vibrations . . . . . . to see with the nose of a dog, all smells now colours . . . But there was a price. No one asked you to pay it, but the very absence of demand was a moral obligation. You tended not to swat. You dug lightly. You fed the dog. You paid. You cared; not because it was kind or good, but because it was right. You left nothing but memories, you took nothing but experience. But this other roving intelligence . . . it’d go in and out of another mind like a chainsaw, taking, taking, taking. She could sense the shape of it, the predatory shape, all cruelty and cool unkindness; a mind full of intelligence, that’d use other living things and hurt them because it was fun. She could put a name to a mind like that. Elf.   Branches thrashed high in the trees. Granny and Nanny strode through the forest. At least, Granny Weatherwax strode. Nanny Ogg scurried. “The Lords and Ladies are trying to find a way,” said Granny. “And there’s something else. Something’s already come through. Some kind of animal from the other side. Scrope chased a deer into the circle and the thing must have been there, and they always used to say something can come through if something goes the other way-“ “What thing?” “You know what a bat’s eyesight is like. Just a big shape is all it saw. Something killed old Scrope. It’s still around. Not an . . . not one o’ the Lords and Ladies,” said Granny, “but something from El . . . that place.” Nanny looked at the shadows. There are a lot of shadows in a forest at night. ”Ain’t you scared?” she said. Granny cracked her knuckles. “No. But I hope it is.” “Ooo, it’s true what they say. You’re a prideful one, Esmerelda Weatherwax.” “Who says that?” “Well, you did. Just now.” “I wasn’t feeling well.” Other people would probably say: I wasn’t myself. But Granny Weatherwax didn’t have anyone else to be. The two witches hurried on through the gale. From the shelter of a thorn thicket, the unicorn watched them go.   Diamanda Tockley did indeed wear a floppy black velvet hat. It had a veil, too. Perdita Nitt, who had once been merely Agnes Nitt before she got witchcraft, wore a black hat with a veil too, because Diamanda did. Both of them were seventeen. And she wished she was naturally skinny, like Diamanda, but if you can’t be skinny you can at least look unhealthy. So she wore so much thick white make-up in order to conceal her naturally rosy complexion that if she turned around suddenly her face would probably end up on the back of her head. They’d done the Raising of the Cone of Power, and some candle magic, and some scrying. Now Diamanda was showing them how to do the cards. She said they contained the distilled wisdom of the Ancients. Perdita had found herself treacherously wondering who these Ancients were - they clearly weren’t the same as old people, who were stupid, Diamanda said, but she wasn’t quite clear why they were wiser than, say, modem people. Also, she didn’t understand what the Feminine Principle was. And she wasn’t too clear about this Inner Self business. She was coming to suspect that she didn’t have one. And she wished she could do her eyes like Diamanda did. And she wished she could wear heels like Diamanda did. Amanita DeVice had told her that Diamanda slept in a real coffin. She wished she had the nerve to have a dagger-and-skull tattoo on her arm like Amanita did, even if it was only in ordinary ink and she had to wash it off every night in case her mother saw it. A tiny, nasty voice from Perdita’s inner self suggested that Amanita wasn’t a good choice of name. Or Perdita, for that matter. And it said that maybe Perdita shouldn’t meddle with things she didn’t understand. The trouble was, she knew, that this meant nearly everything. She wished she could wear black lace like Diamanda did. Diamanda got results. Perdita wouldn’t have believed it. She’d always known about witches, of course. They were old women who dressed like crows, except for Magrat Garlick, who was frankly mental and always looked as if she was going to burst into tears. Perdita remembered Magrat bringing a guitar to a Hogswatchnight party once and singing wobbly folk songs with her eyes shut in a way that suggested that she really believed in them. She hadn’t been able to play, but this was all right because she couldn’t sing, either. People had applauded because, well, what else could you do? But Diamanda had read books. She knew about stuff. Raising power at the stones, for one thing. It really worked. Currently she was showing them the cards. The wind had got up again tonight. It rattled the shutters and made soot fall down the chimney. It seemed to Perdita that it had blown all the shadows into the comers of the room- “Are you paying attention, sister?” said Diamanda coldly. That was another thing. You had to call one another ‘sister,’ out of fraternity. “Yes, Diamanda,” she said, meekly. “This is the Moon,” Diamanda repeated, “for those who weren’t paying attention.” She held up the card. “And what do we see here - you, Muscara?” “Um . . . it’s got a picture of the moon on it?” said Muscara (nee Susan) in a hopeful voice. “Of course it’s not the moon. It’s a nonmimetic convention, not tied to a conventional referencing system, actually,” said Diamanda. “Ah.” A gust rocked the cottage. The door burst open and slammed back against the wall, giving a glimpse of cloud-wracked sky in which a non-mimetic convention was showing a crescent. Diamanda waved a hand. There was a brief flash of octarine light. The door jerked shut. Diamanda smiled in what Perdita thought of as her cool, knowing way. She placed the card on the black velvet cloth in front of her. Perdita looked at it gloomily It was all very pretty, the cards were coloured like little pasteboard jewels, and they had interesting names. But that little traitor voice whispered: how the hell can they know what the future holds? Cardboard isn’t very bright. On the other hand, the coven was helping people . . . more or less. Raising power and all that sort of thing. Oh dear, supposing she asks me? Perdita realized that she was feeling worried. Something was wrong. It had just gone wrong. She didn’t know what it was, but it had gone wrong now. She looked up. “Blessings be upon this house,” said Granny Weatherwax. In much the same tone of voice have people said, “Eat hot lead, Kincaid,” and, “I expect you’re wondering after all that excitement whether I’ve got any balloons and lampshades left.” Diamanda’s mouth dropped open. “ ‘Ere, you’re doing that wrong. You don’t want to muck about with a hand like that,” said Nanny Ogg helpfully, looking over her shoulder. “You’ve got a Double Onion there.” “Who are you? Suddenly they were there. Perdita thought: one minute there’s shadows, the next minute they were there, solid as anything. “What’s all the chalk on the floor, then?” said Nanny Ogg. “You’ve got all chalk on the floor. And heathen writing. Not that I’ve got anything against heathens,” she added. She appeared to think about it. “I’m practic’ly one,” she added further, “but I don’t write on the floor. What’d you want to write all on the floor for?” She nudged Perdita. “You’ll never get the chalk out,” she said, “it gets right into the grain.” “Um, it’s a magic circle,” said Perdita. “Um, hello, Mrs. Ogg. Um. It’s to keep bad influences away . . .” Granny Weatherwax leaned forward slightly. “Tell me, my dear,” she said to Diamanda, “do you think it’s working?” She leaned forward further. Diamanda leaned backward. And then slowly leaned forward again. They ended up nose to nose. “Who’s this?” said Diamanda, out of the comer of her mouth. “Um, it’s Granny Weatherwax,” said Perdita. “Um. She’s a witch, um. . .” “What level?” said Diamanda. Nanny Ogg looked around for something to hide behind. Granny Weatherwax’s eyebrow twitched. “Levels, eh?” she said. “Well, I suppose I’m level one.” “Just starting?” said Diamanda. “Oh dear. Tell you what,” said Nanny Ogg quietly to Perdita, “if we was to turn the table over, we could probably hide behind it, no problem.” But to herself she was thinking: Esme can never resist a challenge. None of us can. You ain’t a witch if you ain’t got self-confidence. But we’re not getting any younger. It’s like being a hired swordfighter, being a top witch. You think you’re good, but you know there’s got to be someone younger, practicing every day, polishing up their craft, and one day you’re walkin’ down the road and you hears this voice behind you sayin’: go for your toad, or similar. Even for Esme. Sooner or later, she’ll come up against someone faster on the craftiness than she is. “Oh, yes,” said Granny, quietly “Just starting. Every day, just starting.” Nanny Ogg thought: but it won’t be today. “You stupid old woman,” said Diamanda, “you don’t frighten me. Oh, yes. I know all about the way you old ones frighten superstitious peasants, actually. Muttering and squinting. It’s all in the mind. Simple psychology. It’s not real witchcraft.” “I’ll, er, I’ll just go into the scullery and, er, see if I can fill any buckets with water, shall I?” said Nanny Ogg, to no one in particular. “I ‘spect you’d know all about witchcraft,” said Granny Weatherwax. “I’m studying, yes,” said Diamanda. Nanny Ogg realized that she had removed her own hat and was biting nervously at the brim. “I ‘spect you’re really good at it,” said Granny Weatherwax. “Quite good,” said Diamanda. “Show me.” She is good, thought Nanny Ogg. She’s been facing down Esme’s stare for more’n a minute. Even snakes generally give up after a minute. If a fly had darted through the few inches of space between their stares it would have flashed into flame in the air. “I learned my craft from Nanny Gripes,” said Granny Weatherwax, “who learned it from Goody Heggety, who got it from Nanna Plumb, who was taught it by Black Aliss, who-“ “So what you’re saying is,” said Diamanda, loading the words into the sentence like cartridges in a chamber, “that no one has actually learned anything new?” The silence that followed was broken by Nanny Ogg saying: “Bugger, I’ve bitten right through the brim. Right through.” “I see, said Granny Weatherwax. “Look,” said Nanny Ogg hurriedly, nudging the trembling Perdita, “right through the lining and everything. Two dollars and curing his pig that hat cost me. That’s two dollars and a pig cure I shan’t see again in a hurry.” “So you can just go away, old woman,” said Diamanda.  “But we ought to meet again,” said Granny Weatherwax. The old witch and the young witch weighed one another up. “Midnight?” said Diamanda. “Midnight? Nothing special about midnight. Practically anyone can be a witch at midnight,” said Granny Weatherwax. “How about noon?” “Certainly. What are we fighting for?” said Diamanda. “Fighting? We ain’t fighting. We’re just showing each other what we can do. Friendly like,” said Granny Weatherwax. She stood up. “I’d better be goin’,” she said. “Us old people need our sleep, you know how it is.” “And what does the winner get?” said Diamanda. There was just a trace of uncertainty in her voice now. It was very faint, on the Richter scale of doubt it was probably no more than a plastic teacup five miles away falling off a low shelf onto a carpet, but it was there. “Oh, the winner gets to win,” said Granny Weatherwax. “That’s what it’s all about. Don’t bother to see us out. You didn’t see us in.” The door slammed back. “Simple psychokinesis,” said Diamanda. “Oh, well. That’s all right then,” said Granny Weatherwax, disappearing into the night. “Explains it all, that does.” There used to be such simple directions, back in the days before they invented parallel universes - Up and Down, Right and Left, Backward and Forward, Past and Future . . . But normal directions don’t work in the multiverse, which has far too many dimensions for anyone to find their way so new ones have to be invented so that the way can be found. Like: East of the Sun, West of the Moon. Or: Behind the North Wind. Or: At the Back of Beyond. Or: There and Back Again. Or: Beyond the Fields We Know. And sometimes there’s a short cut. A door or a gate. Some standing stones, a tree cleft by lightning, a filing cabinet. Maybe just a spot on some moor land somewhere . . . A place where there is very nearly here. Nearly, but not quite. There’s enough leakage to make pendulums swing and psychics get nasty headaches, to give a house a reputation for being haunted, to make the occasional pot hurl across a room. There’s enough leakage to make the drones fly guard. Oh, yes. The drones. There are things called drone assemblies. Sometimes, on fine summer days, the drones from hives for miles around will congregate in some spot, and fly circles in the air, buzzing like tiny early warning systems, which is what they are. Bees are sensible. It’s a human word. But bees are creatures of order, and programmed into their very genes is a hatred of chaos. If some people once knew where such a spot was, if they had experience of what happens when here and there become entangled, then they might - if they knew how - mark such a spot with certain stones. In the hope that enough daft buggers would take it as a warning, and keep away. “Well, what’d you think?” said Granny, as the witches hurried home. “The little fat quiet one’s got a bit of natural talent,” said Nanny Ogg. “I could feel it. The rest of ‘em are just along for the excitement, to my mind. Playing at witches. You know, ooh-jar boards and cards and wearing black lace gloves with no fingers to ‘em and paddlin’ with the occult.” “I don’t hold with paddlin’ with the occult,” said Granny firmly. “Once you start paddlin’ with the occult you start believing in spirits, and when you start believing in spirits you start believing in demons, and then before you know where you are you’re believing in gods. And then you’re in touble.” “But all them things exist,” said Nanny Ogg. “That’s no call to go around believing in them. It only encourages ‘em.” Granny Weatherwax slowed to a walk. “What about her?” she said. “What exactly about her do you mean?” “You felt the power there?” “Oh, yeah. Made my hair stand on end.” “Someone gave it to her, and I know who. Just a slip of a gel with a head full of wet ideas out of books, and suddenly she’s got the power and don’t know how to deal with it. Cards! Candles! That’s not witchcraft, that’s just party games. Paddlin’ with the occult. Did you see she’d got black fingernails?” “Well, mine ain’t so clean-“ “I mean painted.” “I used to paint my toenails red when I was young,” said Nanny, wistfully. “Toenails is different. So’s red. Anyway,” said Granny, “you only did it to appear allurin’.” “It worked, too.” “Hah!” They walked along in silence for a bit. “I felt a lot of power there,” Nanny Ogg said, eventually. “Yes. I know.” “A lot.” “Yes.” “I’m not saying you couldn’t beat her,” said Nanny quickly. “I’m not saying that. But I don’t reckon I could, and it seemed to me it’d raise a bit of a sweat even on you. You’ll have to hurt her to beat her.” “I’m losin’ my judgment, aren’t I?” “Oh, I-“ “She riled me, Gytha. Couldn’t help myself. Now I’ve got to duel with a gel of seventeen, and if I wins I’m a wicked bullyin’ old witch, and if I loses . . .” She kicked up a drift of old leaves. “Can’t stop myself, that’s my trouble.” Nanny Ogg said nothing. “And I loses my temper over the least little-“ “Yes, but-“ “I hadn’t finished talkin’.” “Sorry, Esme.” A bat fluttered by. Granny nodded to it. “Heard how Magrat’s getting along?” she said, in a tone of voice which forced casualness embraced like a corset. “Settling in fine, our Shawn says.” “Right.” They reached a crossroads; the white dust glowed very faintly in the moonlight. One way led into Lancre, where Nanny Ogg lived. Another eventually got lost in the forest, became a footpath, then a track, and eventually reached Granny Weatherwax’s cottage. “When shall we . . . two . . . meet again?” said Nanny Ogg. “Listen,” said Granny Weatherwax. “She’s well out of it, d’you hear? She’ll be a lot happier as a queen!” “I never said nothing,” said Nanny Ogg mildly. “I know you never! I could hear you not saying anything! You’ve got the loudest silences I ever did hear from anyone who wasn’t dead!” “See you about eleven o’clock, then?” “Right!” The wind got up again as Granny walked along the track to her cottage. She knew she was on edge. There was just too much to do. She’d got Magrat sorted out, and Nanny could look after herself, but the Lords and the Ladies . . . she hadn’t counted on them. The point was . . . The point was that Granny Weatherwax had a feeling she was going to die. This was beginning to get on her nerves. Knowing the time of your death is one of those strange bonuses that comes with being a true magic user. And, on the whole, it is a bonus. Many a wizard has passed away happily drinking the last of his wine cellar and incidentally owing very large sums of money. Granny Weatherwax had always wondered how it felt, what it was that you suddenly saw looming up. And what it turned out to be was a blankness. People think that they live life as a moving dot travelling from the Past into the Future, with memory streaming out behind them like some kind of mental cometary tail. But memory spreads out in front as well as behind. It’s just that most humans aren’t good at dealing with it, and so it arrives as premonitions, forebodings, intuitions, and hunches. Witches are good at dealing with it, and to suddenly find a blank where these tendrils of the future should be has much the same effect on a witch as emerging from a cloud bank and seeing a team of sherpas looking down on him does on an airline pilot. She’d got a few days, and then that was it. She’d always expected to have a bit of time to herself, get the garden in order, have a good clean up around the place so that whatever witch took over wouldn’t think she’d been a sloven, pick out a decent burial plot, and then spend some time sitting out in the rocking chair, doing nothing at all except looking at the trees and thinking about the past. Now . . . no chance. And other things were happening. Her memory seemed to be playing up. Perhaps this is what happened. Perhaps you just drained away toward the end, like old Nanny Gripes, who ended up putting the cat on the stove and the kettle out for the night. Granny shut the door behind her and lit a candle. There was a box in the dresser drawer. She opened it on the kitchen table and took out the carefully folded piece of paper. There was a pen and ink in there, too. After some thought, she picked up where she had left off: . . . and to my friend Gytha Ogg I leave my bedde and the rag rugge the smith in Bad Ass made for me, and the matchin jug and basin and wosiname sett she always had her eye on, and my broomstick what will be Right as Rain with a bit of work.   To Magrat Garlick I leave the Contentes elsewhere in this box, my silver tea service with the milk jug in the shape of a humorous cow what is an Heir Loom, also the Clocke what belonged to my mother, but I charge her alwayes to keep it wound, for when the clocke stops-   There was a noise outside. If anyone else had been in the room with her Granny Weatherwax would have thrown open the door boldly, but she was by herself. She picked up the poker very carefully, moved surprisingly soundlessly to the door given the nature of her boots, and listened intently. There was something in the garden. It wasn’t much of a garden. There were the Herbs, and the soft fruit bushes, a bit of lawn and, of course, the beehives. And it was open to the woods. The local wildlife knew better than to invade a witch’s garden. Granny opened the door carefully. The moon was setting. Pale silver light turned the world into monochrome. There was a unicorn on the lawn. The stink of it hit her. Granny advanced, holding the poker in front of her. The unicorn backed away, and pawed at the ground. Granny saw the future plain. She already knew the when. Now she was beginning to apprehend the how. “So,” she said, under her breath, “I knows where you came from. And you can damn well get back there.” The thing made a feint at her, but the poker swung toward it. “Can’t stand the iron, eh? Well, just you trot back to your mistress and tell her that we know all about iron in Lancre. And I knows about her. She’s to keep away, understand? This is my place!” Then it was moonlight. Now it was day. There was quite a crowd in what passed for Lancre’s main square. Not much happened in Lancre anyway, and a duel between witches was a sight worth seeing. Granny Weatherwax arrived at a quarter to noon. Nanny Ogg was waiting on a bench by the tavern. She had a towel around her neck, and was carrying a bucket of water in which floated a sponge. “What’s that for?” said Granny. “Half time. And I done you a plate of oranges.” She held up the plate. Granny snorted. “You look as if you could do with eating something, anyway,” said Nanny. “You don’t look as if you’ve had anything today. . .” She glanced down at Granny’s boots, and the grubby hem of her long black dress. There were scraps of bracken and bits of heather caught on it. “You daft old besom!” she hissed. “What’ve you been doing!” “I had to-“ “You’ve been up at the Stones, haven’t you! Trying to hold back the Gentry.” “Of course,” said Granny. Her voice wasn’t faint. She wasn’t swaying. But her voice wasn’t faint and she wasn’t swaying. Nanny Ogg could see, because Granny Weatherwax’s body was in the grip of Granny Weatherwax’s mind. “Someone’s got to,” she added. “You could have come and asked me!” “You’d have talked me out of it.” Nanny Ogg leaned forward. “You all right, Esme?” “Fine! I’m fine! Nothing wrong with me, all right?” “Have you had any sleep at all?” she said. “Well-“ “You haven’t, have you? And then you think you can just stroll down here and confound this girl, just like that?” “I don’t know,” said Granny Weatherwax. Nanny Ogg looked hard at her. “You don’t, do you?” she said, in a softer tone of voice. “Oh, well . . . you better sit down here, before you fall down. Suck an orange. They’ll be here in a few minutes.” “No she won’t,” said Granny “She’ll be late.” “How d’you know?” “No good making an entrance if everyone isn’t there to see you, is it? That’s headology.” In fact the young coven arrived at twenty past twelve, and took up station on the steps of the market pentangle on the other side of the square. “Look at ‘em,” said Granny Weatherwax. “All in black, again.” “Well, we wear black too,” said Nanny Ogg the reasonable. “Only ‘cos it’s respectable and serviceable,” said Granny morosely. “Not because it’s romantic. Hah. The Lords and Ladies might as well be here already.” After some eye contact. Nanny Ogg ambled across the square and met Perdita in the middle. The young would-be witch looked worried under her makeup. She held a black lace handkerchief in her hands, and was twisting it nervously. “Morning, Mrs. Ogg,” she said. “Afternoon, Agnes.” “Um. What happens now?” Nanny Ogg took out her pipe and scratched her ear with it. “Dunno. Up to you, I suppose.” “Diamanda says why does it have to be here and now?” “So’s everyone can see,” said Nanny Ogg. “That’s the point, ain’t it? Nothing hole and comer about it. Everyone’s got to know who’s best at witchcraft. The whole town. Everyone sees the winner win and the loser lose. That way there’s no argument, eh?” Perdita glanced toward the tavern. Granny Weatherwax had dozed off. “Quietly confident,” said Nanny Ogg, crossing her fingers behind her back. “Um, what happens to the loser?” said Perdita. “Nothing, really,” said Nanny Ogg. “Generally she leaves the place. You can’t be a witch if people’ve seen you beat.” “Diamanda says she doesn’t want to hurt the old lady too much,” said Perdita. “Just teach her a lesson.” “That’s nice. Esme’s a quick learner.” “Um. I wish this wasn’t happening, Mrs. Ogg.” “That’s nice.” “Diamanda says Mistress Weatherwax has got a very impressive stare, Mrs. Ogg.” “That’s nice.” “So the test is . . . just staring, Mrs. Ogg.” Nanny put her pipe in her mouth. “You mean the old first-one-to-blink-or-look-away challenge?” “Um, yes.” “Right.” Nanny thought about it, and shrugged. “Right. But we’d better do a magic circle first. Don’t want anyone else getting hurt, do we?” “Do you mean using Skorhian Runes or the Triple Invocation octogram?” said Perdita. Nanny Ogg put her head on one side. “Never heard of them things, dear,” she said. “I always does a magic circle like this . . .” She sidled crabwise away from the fat girl, dragging one toe in the dust. She edged around in a rough circle about fifteen feet across, still dragging her boot, until she backed into Perdita. “Sorry. There. Done it.” “That’s a magic circle?” “Right. People can come to harm else. All kinds of magic zipping around the place when witches fight.” “But you didn’t chant or anything.” “No?” “There has to be a chant, doesn’t there?” “Dunno. Never done one.” “Oh.” “I could sing you a comic song if you likes,” said Nanny helpfully. “Um, no. Um.” Perdita had never heard Nanny sing, but news gets around. “I like your black lace hanky,” said Nanny, not a bit abashed. “Very good for not showing the bogies.” Perdita stared at the circle as though hypnotized. “Um. Shall we start, then?” “Right.” Nanny Ogg scurried back to the bench and elbowed Granny in the ribs. “Wake up!” Granny opened an eye. “I weren’t asleep, I was just resting me eyes.” “All you’ve got to do is stare her down!” “At least she knows about the importance of the stare, then. Hah! Who does she think she is? I’ve been staring at people all my life!” “Yes, that’s what’s bothering me - aaahh . . . who’s Nona’s little boy, then?” The rest of the Ogg clan had arrived. Granny Weatherwax personally disliked young Pewsey. She disliked all small children, which is why she got on with them so well. In Pewsey’s case, she felt that no one should be allowed to wander around in just a vest even if they were four years old. And the child had a permanently runny nose and ought to be provided with a handkerchief or, failing that, a cork. Nanny Ogg, on the other hand, was instant putty in the hands of any grandchild, even one as sticky as Pewsey “Want sweetie,” growled Pewsey, in that curiously deep voice some young children have. “Just in a moment, my duck, I’m talking to the lady,” Nanny Ogg fluted. “Want sweetie now.” “Bugger off, my precious, Nana’s busy right this minute.” Pewsey pulled hard on Nanny Ogg’s skirts. “Now sweetie now!” Granny Weatherwax leaned down until her impressive nose was about level with Pewsey’s gushing one. “If you don’t go away,” she said gravely, “I will personally rip your head off and fill it with snakes.” “There!” said Nanny Ogg. “There’s lots of poor children in Klatch that’d be grateful for a curse like that.” Pewsey’s little face, after a second or two of uncertainty, split into a pumpkin grin. “Funny lady,” he said. “Tell you what,” said Nanny, patting Pewsey on the head and then absentmindedly wiping her hand on her dress, “you see them young ladies on the other side of the square? They’ve got lots of sweeties.” Pewsey waddled off. “That’s germ warfare, that is,” said Granny Weatherwax. “Come on,” said Nanny. “Our Jason’s put a couple of chairs in the circle. You sure you’re all right?” “I’ll do.” Perdita Nitt traipsed across the road again. “Er . . . Mrs. Ogg?” “Yes, dear?” “Er. Diamanda says you don’t understand, she says they won’t be trying to outstare one another . . .”   Magrat was bored. She’d never been bored when she was a witch. Permanently bewildered and overworked yes, but not bored. She kept telling herself it’d probably be better when she really was queen, although she couldn’t quite see how. In the meantime she wandered aimlessly through the castle’s many rooms, the swishing of her dress almost unheard above the background roar of the turbines of tedium: -humdrumhumdrumhumdrum- She’d spent the whole morning trying to learn to do tapestry, because Millie assured her that’s what queens did, and the sampler with its message “Gods bless this House” was even now lying forlornly on her chair. In the Long Gallery were huge tapestries of ancient battles, done by previous bored regal incumbents; it was amazing how all the fighters had been persuaded to stay still long enough. And she’d looked at the many, many paintings of the queens themselves, all of them pretty, all of them well-dressed according to the fashion of their times, and all of them bored out of their tiny well-shaped skulls. Finally she went back to the solar. This was the big room on top of the main tower. In theory, it was there to catch the sun. It did. It also caught the wind and the rain. It was a sort of drift net for anything the sky happened to throw. She yanked on the bellpull that in theory summoned a servant. Nothing happened. After a couple of further pulls, and secretly glad of the exercise, she went down to the kitchen. She would have liked to spend more time there. It was always warm and there was generally someone to talk to. But nobblyess obligay - queens had to live Above Stairs. Below Stairs there was only Shawn Ogg, who was cleaning the oven of the huge iron stove and reflecting that this was no job for a military man. “Where’s everyone gone?” Shawn leapt up, banging his head on the stove. “Ow! Sorry, miss! Um! Everyone’s . . . everyone’s down in the square, miss. I’m only here because Mrs. Scorbic said she’d have my hide if I didn’t get all the yuk off.” “What’s happening in the square, then?” “They say there’s a couple of witches having a real set-to, miss.” “What? Not your mother and Granny Weatherwax!” “Oh no, miss. Some new witch.” “In Lancre? A new witch?” “I think that’s what Mum said.” “I’m going to have a look.” “Oh, I don’t think that’d be a good idea, miss,” said Shawn. Magrat drew herself up regally. “We happen to be Queen,” she said. “Nearly. So you don’t tell one one can’t do things, or one’ll have you cleaning the privies!” “But I does clean the privies,” said Shawn, in a reasonable voice. “Even the garderobe-“ “And that’s going to go, for a start,” said Magrat, shuddering. “One’s seen it.” “Doesn’t bother me, miss, it’ll give me Wednesday afternoons free,” said Shawn, “but what I meant was, you’ll have to wait till I’ve gone down to the armoury to fetch my horn for the fanfare.” “One won’t need a fanfare, thank you very much.” “But you got to have a fanfare, miss.” “One can blow my own trumpet, thank you.” “Yes, miss.” “Miss what?” “Miss Queen.” “And don’t you forget it.”   Magrat arrived at as near to a run as was possible in the queen outfit, which ought to have had castors. She found a circle of several hundred people and, near the edge, a very pensive Nanny Ogg. “What’s happening, Nanny?” Nanny turned. “Oops, sorry. Didn’t hear no fanfare,” she said. “I’d curtsy, only it’s my legs.” Magrat looked past her at the two seated figures in the circle. “What’re they doing?” “Staring contest.” “But they’re looking at the sky.” “Bugger that Diamanda girl! She’s got Esme trying to outstare the sun,” said Nanny Ogg. “No looking away, no blinking. . .” “How long have they been doing it?” “About an hour,” said Nanny gloomily. “That’s terrible!” “It’s bloody stupid is what it is,” said Nanny. “Can’t think what’s got into Esme. As if power’s all there is to witching! She knows that. Witching’s not power, it’s how you harness it.” There was a pale gold haze over the circle, from magical fallout. “They’ll have to stop at sunset,” said Magrat. “Esme won’t last until sunset,” said Nanny. “Look at her. All slumped up.” “I suppose you couldn’t use some magic to-“ Magrat began. “Talk sense,” said Nanny. “If Esme found out, she’d kick me round the kingdom. Anyway, the others’d spot it.” “Perhaps we could create a small cloud or something?” said Magrat. “No! That’s cheating!” “Well, you always cheat.” “I cheat for myself. You can’t cheat for other people.” Granny Weatherwax slumped again. “I could have it stopped,” said Magrat. “You’d make an enemy for life.” “I thought Granny was my enemy for life.” “If you think that, my girl, you’ve got no understanding,” said Nanny. “One day you’ll find out Esme Weatherwax is the best friend you ever had.” “But we’ve got to do something! Can’t you think of anything?” Nanny Ogg looked thoughtfully at the circle. Occasionally a little wisp of smoke curled up from her pipe. The magical duel was subsequently recorded in Birdwhistle’s book Legendes and Antiquities of the Ramptops and went as follows: “The duel beinge ninety minutes advanced, a small boy child upon a sudden ran across the square and stept within the magic circle, whereup he fell down with a terrible scream also a flash. The olde witche looked around, got out of her chair, picked him up, and carried him to his grandmother, then went back to her seat, whilom the young witch never averted her eyes from the Sunne. But the other young witches stopped the duel averring, Look, Diamanda has wonne, the reason being, Weatherwax looked away. Whereupon the child’s grandmother said in a loude voice, Oh yes? Pulle the other onne, it have got bells on. This is not a contest about power, you stupid girls, it is a contest about witchcraft, do you not even begin to know what being a witch IS? “Is a witch someone who would look round when she heard a child scream? “And the townspeople said, Yess!” “That was wonderful,” said Mrs. Quamey, the storekeeper’s wife. “The whole town cheered. A true miffic quality.” They were in the tavern’s back room. Granny Weatherwax was lying on a bench with a damp towel over her face. “Yes, it was, wasn’t it?” said Magrat. “That girl was left without a leg to stand-on, everyone says.” “Yes,” said Magrat. “Strutted off with her nose in a sling, as they say.” “Yes,” said Magrat. “Is the little boy all right?” They all looked at Pewsey, who was sitting in a suspicious puddle on the floor in the comer with a bag of sweets and a sticky ring around his mouth. “Right as rain,” said Nanny Ogg. “Nothing worse’n a bit of sunburn. He screams his head off at the least little thing, bless him,” she said proudly, as if this was some kind of rare talent. “Gytha?” said Granny, from under the towel. “Yes?” “You knows I don’t normally touch strong licker, but I’ve heard you mention the use of brandy for medicinal purposes.” “Coming right up.” Granny raised her towel and focused one eye on Magrat. “Good afternoon, your pre-majesty,” she said. “Come to be gracious at me, have you?” “Well done,” said Magrat, coldly. “Can one have a word with you, Na-Mrs. Ogg? Outside?” “Right you are, your queen,” said Nanny. In the alley outside Magrat spun around with her mouth open. “You-“ Nanny held up her hand. “I know what you’re going to say,” she said. “But there wasn’t any danger to the little mite.” “But you-“ “Me?” said Nanny. “I hardly did anything. They didn’t know he was going to run into the circle, did they? They both reacted just like they normally would, didn’t they? Fair’s fair.” “Well, in a way, but-“ “No one cheated,” said Nanny Margrat sagged into silence. Nanny patted her on the shoulder. “So you won’t be telling anyone you saw me wave the bag of sweets at him, will you?” she said. “No, Nanny.” “There’s a good going-to-be-queen.” “Nanny?” “Yes, dear?” Magrat took a deep breath. “How did Verence know when we were coming back?” It seemed to Magrat that Nanny thought for just a few seconds too long. “Couldn’t say,” she said at last. “Kings are a bit magical, mind. They can cure dandruff and that. Probably he woke up one morning and his royal prerogative gave him a tickle.” The trouble with Nanny Ogg was that she always looked as if she was lying. Nanny Ogg had a pragmatic attitude to the truth; she told it if it was convenient and she couldn’t be bothered to make up something more interesting. “Keeping busy up there, are you?” she said. “One’s doing very well, thank you,” said Magrat, with what she hoped was queenly hauteur. “Which one?” said Nanny. “Which one what?” “Which one’s doing very well?” “Me!” “You should have said,” said Nanny, her face poker straight. “So long as you’re keeping busy, that’s the important thing.” “He knew we were coming back,” said Magrat firmly. “He’d even got the invitations sorted out. Oh, by the way . . . there’s one for you-“ “I know, one got it this morning,” said Nanny. “Got all that fancy nibbling on the edges and gold and everything. Who’s Ruservup?” Magrat had long ago got a handle on Nanny Ogg’s world-view. “RSVP,” she said. “It means you ought to say if you’re coming.” “Oh, one’ll be along all right, catch one staying away,” said Nanny. “Has one’s Jason sent one his invite yet? Thought not. Not a skilled man with a pen, our Jason.” “Invitation to what?” said Magrat. She was getting fed up with ones. “Didn’t Verence tell one?” said Nanny. “It’s a special play that’s been written special for you.” “Oh, yes,” said Magrat. “The Entertainment.” “Right,” said Nanny. “It’s going to be on Midsummer’s Eve.”   “It’s got to be special, on Midsummer’s Eve,” said Jason Ogg. The door to the smithy had been bolted shut. Within were the eight members of the Lancre Morris Men, six times winners of the Fifteen Mountains All-Comers Morris Championship,[10] now getting to grips with a new art form. “I feel a right twit,” said Bestiality Carter, Lancre’s only baker. “A dress on! I just hope my wife doesn’t see me!” “Says here,” said Jason Ogg, his enormous forefinger hesitantly tracing its way along the page, “that it’s a beaut-i-ful story of the love of the Queen of the Fairies - that’s you, Bestiality-“ “-thank you very much-“ “-for a mortal man. Plus a hum-our-rus int-ter-lude with Comic Artisans. . .” “What’s an artisan?” said Weaver the thatcher. “Dunno. Type of well, I reckon.” Jason scratched his head. “Yeah. They’ve got ‘em down on the plains. I repaired a pump for one once. Artisan wells.” “What’s comic about them?” “Maybe people fall down ‘em in a funny way?” “Why can’t we do a Morris like normal?” said Obidiah Carpenter the tailor.[11] “Morris is for every day,” said Jason. “We got to do something cultural. This come all the way from Ankh-Morpork.” “We could do the Stick and Bucket Dance,” volunteered Baker the weaver. “No one is to do the Stick and Bucket Dance ever again,” said Jason. “Old Mr. Thrum still walks with a limp, and it were three months ago.” Weaver the thatcher squinted at his copy of the script. “Who’s this bugger Exeunt Omnes?” he said. “I don’t think much of my part,” said Carpenter, “it’s too small.” “It’s his poor wife I feel sorry for,” said Weaver, automatically. “Why?” said Jason.[13] “And why’s there got to be a lion in it?” said Baker the weaver. “’Cos it’s a play!” said Jason. “No one’d want to see it if it had a . . . a donkey in it! Oi can just see people comin’ to see a play ‘cos it had a donkey in it. This play was written by a real playsmith! Hah, I can just see a real playsmith putting donkeys in a play! He says he’ll be very interested to hear how we get on! Now just you all shut up!” “I don’t feel like the Queen of the Fairies,” moaned Bestiality Carter.[14] “You’ll grow into it,” said Weaver. “I hope not.” “And you’ve got to rehearse,” said Jason. “There’s no room,” said Thatcher the carter. “Well, I ain’t doin’ it where anyone else can see,” said Bestiality. “Even if we go out in the woods somewhere, people’ll be bound to see. Me in a dress!” “They won’t recognize you in your makeup,” said Weaver. “Make-up?” “Yeah, and your wig,” said Tailor the other weaver. “He’s right, though,” said Weaver. “If we’re going to make fools of ourselves, I don’t want no one to see me until we’re good at it.” “Somewhere off the beaten track, like,” said Thatcher the carter. “Out in the country,” said Tinker the tinker. “Where no one goes,” said Carter. Jason scratched his cheese-grater chin. He was bound to think of somewhere. “And who’s going to play Exeunt Omnes?” said Weaver. “He doesn’t have much to say, does he?”   The coach rattled across the featureless plains. The land between Ankh-Morpork and the Ramtops was fertile, well-cultivated and dull, dull, dull. Travel broadens the mind. This landscape broadened the mind because the mind just flowed out from the ears like porridge. It was the kind of landscape where, if you saw a distant figure cutting cabbages, you’d watch him until he was out of sight because there was simply nothing else for the eye to do. “I spy,” said the Bursar, “with my little eye, something beginning with . . . H.” “Oook.” “No.” “Horizon,” said Ponder. “You guessed!” “Of course I guessed. I’m supposed to guess. We’ve had S for Sky, C for Cabbage, 0 for . . . for Ook, and there’s nothing else.” “I’m not going to play anymore if you’re going to guess.” The Bursar pulled his hat down over his ears and tried to curl up on the hard seat. “There’ll be lots to see in Lancre,” said the Archchancellor. “The only piece of flat land they’ve got up there is in a museum.” Ponder said nothing. “Used to spend whole summers up there,” said Ridcully. He sighed. “You know . . . things could have been very different.” Ridcully looked around. If you’re going to relate an intimate piece of personal history, you want to be sure it’s going to be heard. The Librarian looked out at the jolting scenery. He was sulking. This had a lot to do with the new bright blue collar around his neck with the word “PONGO’ on it. Someone was going to suffer for this. The Bursar was trying to use his hat like a limpet uses its shell. “There was this girl.” Ponder Stibbons, chosen by a cruel fate to be the only one listening, looked surprised. He was aware that, technically, even the Archchancellor had been young once. After all, it was just a matter of time. Common sense suggested that wizards didn’t flash into existence aged seventy and weighing nineteen stone. But common sense needed reminding. He felt he ought to say something. “Pretty, was she, sir?” he said. “No. No, I can’t say she was. Striking. That’s the word. Tall. Hair so blond it was nearly white. And eyes like gimlets, I tell you.” Ponder tried to work this out. “You don’t mean that dwarf who runs the delicatessen in-“ he began. “I mean you always got the impression she could see right through you,” said Ridcully, slightly more sharply than he had intended. “And she could run . . .” He lapsed into silence again, staring at the newsreels of memory. “I would’ve married her, you know,” he said. Ponder said nothing. When you’re a cork in someone else’s stream of consciousness, all you can do is spin and bob in the eddies. “What a summer,” murmured Ridcully. “Very like this one, really. Crop circles were bursting like raindrops. And . . . well, I was having doubts, you know. Magic didn’t seem to be enough. I was a bit . . . lost. I’d have given it all up for her. Every blasted octogram and magic spell. Without a second thought. You know when they say things like ‘she had a laugh like a mountain stream’?” “I’m not personally familiar with it,” said Ponder, “but I have read poetry that-“ “Load of cobblers, poetry,” said Ridcully. “I’ve listened to mountain streams and they just go trickle, trickle, gurgle. And you get them things in them, you know, insect things with little . . . anyway. Doesn’t sound like laughter at all, is my point. Poets always get it wrong. ‘S’like ‘she had lips like cherries.’ Small, round, and got a stone in the middle? Hah!” He shut his eyes. After a while Ponder said, “So what happened, sir?” “What?” “The girl you were telling me about.” “What girl?” “This girl.” “Oh, that girl. Oh, she turned me down. Said there were things she wanted to do. Said there’d be time enough.” There was another pause. “What happened then?” Ponder prompted. “Happened? What d’you think happened? I went off and studied. Term started. Wrote her a lot of letters but she never answered ‘em. Probably never got ‘em, they probably eat the mail up there. Next year I was studying all summer and never had time to go back. Never did go back. Exams and so on. Expect she’s dead now, or some fat old granny with a dozen kids. Would’ve wed her like a shot. Like a shot.” Ridcully scratched his head. “Hah . . . just wish I could remember her name . . .” He stretched out with his feet on the Bursar. “’S’funny, that,” he said. “Can’t even remember her name. Hah! She could outrun a horse-“ “Kneel and deliver!” The coach rattled to a halt. Ridcully opened an eye. “What’s that?” he said. Ponder jerked awake from a reverie of lips like mountain streams and looked out of the window. “I think,” he said, “it’s a very small highwayman.”   The coachman peered down at the figure in the road. It was hard to see much from this angle, because of the short body and the wide hat. It was like looking at a well-dressed mushroom with a feather in it. “I do apologize for this,” said the very small highwayman. “I find myself a little short.” The coachman sighed and put down the reins. Properly arranged holdups by the Bandits’ Guild were one thing, but he was blowed if he was going to be threatened by an outlaw that came up to his waist and didn’t even have a crossbow. “You little bastard,” he said. “I’m going to knock your block off.” He peered closer. “What’s that on your back? A hump?” “Ah, you’ve noticed the stepladder,” said the low highwayman. “Let me demonstrate-“ “What’s happening?” said Ridcully, back in the coach. “Um, a dwarf has just climbed up a small stepladder and kicked the coachman in the middle of the road,” said Ponder. “That’s something you don’t see every day,” said Ridcully. He looked happy. Up to now, the journey had been quite uneventful. “Now he’s coming toward us.” “Oh, good.”  The highwayman stepped over the groaning body of the driver and marched toward the door of the coach, dragging his stepladder behind him. He opened the door. “Your money or, I’m sorry to say, your-“ A blast of octarine fire blew his hat off.  The dwarfs expression did not change. ‘ “I wonder if I might be allowed to rephrase my demands?” Ridcully looked the elegantly dressed stranger up and down or, rather, down and further down. “You don’t look like a dwarf,” he said, “apart from the height, that is.” “Don’t look like a dwarf apart from the height?” “I mean, the helmet and iron boots department is among those you are lacking in,” said Ridcully. The dwarf bowed and produced a slip of pasteboard from one grubby but lace-clad sleeve. “My card,” he said. It read: Giamo Casanunda WORLD’S SECOND GREATEST LOVER We Never Sleep FINEST SWORDSMAN - SOLDIER OF FORTUNE OUTRAGEOUS LIAR - STEPLADDERS REPAIRED   Ponder peered over Ridcully’s shoulder. “Are you really an outrageous liar?” “No.” “Why are you trying to rob coaches, then?” “I am afraid I was waylaid by bandits.” “But it says here,” said Ridcully, “that you are a finest swordsman.” “I was outnumbered.” “How many of them were there?” “Three million.” “Hop in,” said Ridcully Casanunda threw his stepladder into the coach and then peered into the gloom. “Is that an ape asleep in there?” “Yes.” The Librarian opened one eye. “What about the smell?” “He won’t mind.” “Hadn’t you better apologize to the coachman?” said Ponder. “No, but I could kick him again harder if he likes.” “And that’s the Bursar,” said Ridcully, pointing to Exhibit B, who was sleeping the sleep of the near-terminally overdosed on dried frog pills. “Hey, Bursar? Bursssaaar? No, he’s out like a light. Just push him under the seat. Can you play Cripple Mr. Onion?” “Not very well.” “Capital!” Half an hour later Ridcully owed the dwarf $8,000. “But I put it on my visiting card,” Casanunda pointed out. “Outrageous liar. Right there.” “Yes, but I thought you were lying!” Ridcully sighed and, to Ponder’s amazement, produced a bag of coins from some inner recess. They were large coins and looked suspiciously realistic and golden. Casanunda might have been a libidinous soldier of fortune by profession but he was a dwarf by genetics, and there are some things dwarfs know. “Hmm,” he said. “You don’t have “outrageous liar” on your visiting card, by any chance?” “No!” said Ridcully excitedly “It’s just that I can recognize chocolate money when I see it.” “You know,” said Ponder, as the coach jolted along a canyon, “this reminds me of that famous logical puzzle.” “What logical puzzle?” said the Archchancellor. “Well,” said Ponder, gratified at the attention, “it appears that there was this man, right, who had to choose between going through two doors, apparently, and the guard on one door always told the truth and the guard on the other door always told a lie, and the thing was, behind one door was certain death, and behind the other door was freedom, and he didn’t know which guard was which, and he could only ask them one question and so: what did he ask?” The coach bounced over a pothole. The Librarian turned over in his sleep. “Sounds like Psychotic Lord Hargon of Quirm to me,” said Ridcully, after a while. “That’s right,” said Casanunda. “He was a devil for jokes like that. How many students can you get in an Iron Maiden, that kind of thing.” “So this was at his place, then, was it?” said Ridcully. “What? I don’t know,” said Ponder. “Why not? You seem to know all about it.” “I don’t think it was anywhere. It’s a puzzle.” “Hang on,” said Casanunda, “I think I’ve worked it out. One question, right?” “Yes,” said Ponder, relieved. “And he can ask either guard?” “Yes.” “Oh, right. Well, in that case he goes up to the smallest guard and says, Tell me which is the door to freedom if you don’t want to see the colour of your kidneys and incidentally I’m walking through it behind you, so if you’re trying for the Mr. Clever Award just remember who’s going through it first.’” “No, no, no!” “Sounds logical to me,” said Ridcully “Very good thinking.” “But you haven’t got a weapon!” “Yes I have. I wrested it from the guard while he was considering the question,” said Casanunda. “Clever,” said Ridcully. “Now that, Mr. Stibbons, is logical thought. You could learn a lot from this man-“ “-dwarf-“ “-sorry, dwarf. He doesn’t go on about parasite universes all the time.” “Parallel!” snapped Ponder, who had developed a very strong suspicion that Ridcully was getting it wrong on purpose. “Which ones are the parasite ones, then?” “There aren’t any! I mean, there aren’t any, Archchancellor.[15] Parallel universes, I said. Universes where things didn’t happen like-“ He hesitated. “Well, you know that girl?” “What girl?” “The girl you wanted to marry?” “How’d you know that?” “You were talking about her just after lunch.” “Was I? More fool me. Well, what about her?” “Well. . . in a way, you did marry her,” said Ponder. Ridcully shook his head. “Nope. Pretty certain I didn’t. You remember that sort of thing.” “Ah, but not in this universe-“ The Librarian opened one eye. “You suggestin’ I nipped into some other universe to get married?” said Ridcully. “No! I mean, you got married in that universe and not in this universe,” said Ponder. “Did I? What? A proper ceremony and everything?” “Yes!” “Hmm.” Ridcully stroked his beard. “You sure?” “Certain, Archchancellor.” “My word! I never knew that.” Ponder felt he was getting somewhere. “So-“ “Yes?” “Why don’t I remember it?” Ponder had been ready for this. “Because the you in the other universe is different from the you here,” he said. “It was a different you that got married. He’s probably settled down somewhere. He’s probably a great-grandad by now.” “He never writes, I know that,” said Ridcully “And the bastard never invited me to the wedding.” “Who?” “Him.” “But he’s you!” “Is he? Huh! You’d think I’d think of me, wouldn’t you? What a bastard!”   It wasn’t that Ridcully was stupid. Truly stupid wizards have the life expectancy of a glass hammer. He had quite a powerful intellect, but it was powerful like a locomotive, and ran on rails and was therefore almost impossible to steer. There are indeed such things as parallel universes, although parallel is hardly the right word - universes swoop and spiral around one another like some mad weaving machine or a squadron of Yossarians with middle-ear trouble. And they branch. But, and this is important, not all the time. The universe doesn’t much care if you tread on a butterfly. There are plenty more butterflies. Gods might note the fall of a sparrow but they don’t make any effort to catch them. Shoot the dictator and prevent the war? But the dictator is merely the tip of the whole festering boil of social pus from which dictators emerge; shoot one, and there’ll be another one along in a minute. Shoot him too? Why not shoot everyone and invade Poland? In fifty years’, thirty years’, ten years’ time the world will be very nearly back on its old course. History always has a great weight of inertia. Almost always . . . At circle time, when the walls between this and that are thinner, when there are all sorts of strange leakages . . . Ah, then choices are made, then the universe can be sent careening down a different leg of the well-known Trousers of Time. But there are also stagnant pools, universes cut off from past and future. They have to steal pasts and futures from other universes; their only hope is to batten on to the dynamic universes as they pass through the fragile period, as remora fish hang on to a passing shark. These are the parasite universes and, when the crop circles burst like raindrops, they have their chance . . .   *   *   *   Lancre castle was far bigger than it needed to be. It wasn’t as if Lancre could have been bigger at one time; inhospitable mountains crowded it on three sides, and a more or less sheer drop occupied where the fourth side would have been if a sheer drop hadn’t been there. As far as anyone knew, the mountains didn’t belong to anyone. They were just mountains.  The castle rambled everywhere. No one even knew how far the cellars went. These days everyone lived in the turrets and halls near the gate. “I mean, look at the crenellations,” said Magrat. “What, m’m?” “The cut-out bits on top of the walls. You could hold off an army here.” “That’s what a castle’s for, isn’t it, m’m?” Magrat sighed. “Can we stop the ‘m’m’, please? It makes you sound uncertain.” “Mm, m’m?” “I mean, who is there to fight up here? Not even trolls could come over the mountains, and anyone coming up the road is asking for a rock on the head. Besides, you only have to cut down Lancre bridge.” “Dunno, m’m. Kings’ve got to have castles, I s’pose.” “Don’t you ever wonder about anything, you stupid girl?” “What good does that do, m’m?” I called her a stupid girl, thought Magrat. Royalty is rubbing off on me. “Oh, well,” she said, “where’ve we got to?” “We’re going to need two thousand yards of the blue chintz material with the little white flowers,” said Millie. “And we haven’t even measured half the windows yet,” said Magrat, rolling up the tape measure. She looked down the length of the Long Gallery. The thing about it, the thing that made it so noticeable, the first thing anyone noticed about it, was that it was very long. It shared certain distinctive traits with the Great Hall and the Deep Dungeons. Its name was a perfectly accurate description. And it would be, as Nanny Ogg would say, a bugger to carpet. “Why? Why a castle in Lancre?” she said, mainly to herself, because talking to Millie was like talking to yourself. “We’ve never fought anyone. Apart from outside the tavern on a Saturday night.” “Couldn’t say, I’m sure, m’m,” said Millie. Magrat sighed. “Where’s the king today?” “He’s opening Parliament, m’m.” “Hah! Parliament!” Which had been another of Verence’s ideas. He’d tried to introduce Ephebian democracy to Lancre, giving the vote to everyone, or at least everyone “who be of good report and who be male and hath forty years and owneth a house[16] worth more than three and a half goats a year,” because there’s no sense in being stupid about things and giving the vote to people who were poor or criminal or insane or female, who’d only use it irresponsibly. It worked, more or less, although the Members of Parliament only turned up when they felt like it and in any case no one ever wrote anything down and, besides, no one ever disagreed with whatever Verence said because he was King. What’s the point of having a king, they thought, if you have to rule yourself? He should do his job, even if he couldn’t spell properly. No one was asking him to thatch roofs or milk cows, were they? “I’m bored, Millie. Bored, bored, bored. I’m going for a walk in the gardens.” “Shall I fetch Shawn with the trumpet?” “Not if you want to live.” Not all the gardens had been dug up for agricultural experiments. There was, for example, the herb garden. To Magrat’s expert eye it was a pretty poor herb garden, since it just contained plants that flavoured food. And at that Mrs. Scorbic’s repertoire stopped short at mint and sage. There wasn’t a sprig of vervain or yarrow or Old Man’s Trousers anywhere in it. And there was the famous maze or, at least, it would be a famous maze. Verence had planted it because he’d heard that stately castles should have a maze and everyone agreed that, once the bushes were a bit higher than their current height of about one foot, it would indeed be a very famous maze and people would be able to get lost in it without having to shut their eyes and bend down. Magrat drifted disconsolately along the gravel path, her huge wide dress leaving a smooth trail. There was a scream from the other side of the hedge, but Magrat recognized the voice. There were certain traditions in Lancre castle which she had learned. “Good morning, Hodgesaargh,” she said. The castle falconer appeared around the comer, dabbing at his face with a handkerchief. On his other arm, claws gripping like a torture instrument, was a bird. Evil red eyes glared at Magrat over a razor-sharp beak. “I’ve got a new hawk,” said Hodgesaargh proudly. “It’s a Lancre crowhawk. They’ve never been tamed before. I’m taming it. I’ve already stopped it pecking myooooow-“ He flailed the hawk madly against the wall until it let go of his nose. Strictly speaking, Hodgesaargh wasn’t his real name. On the other hand, on the basis that someone’s real name is the name they introduce themselves to you by, he was definitely Hodgesaargh. This was because the hawks and falcons in the castle mews were all Lancre birds and therefore naturally possessed of a certain “sod you” independence of mind. After much patient breeding and training Hodgesaargh had managed to get them to let go of someone’s wrist, and now he was working on stopping them viciously attacking the person who had just been holding them, i.e., invariably Hodgesaargh. He was nevertheless a remarkably optimistic and good-natured man who lived for the day when his hawks would be the finest in the world. The hawks lived for the day when they could eat his other ear. “I can see you’re doing very well,” said Magrat. “You don’t think, do you, that they might respond better to cruelty?” “Oh, no, miss,” said Hodgesaargh, “you have to be kind. You have to build up a bond, you see. If they don’t trust you theyaaaagh-“ “I’ll just leave you to get on with it then, shall I?” said Magrat, as feathers filled the air. Magrat had been gloomily unsurprised to learn that there was a precise class and gender distinction in falconry - Verence, being king, was allowed a gyrfalcon, whatever the hell that was, any earls in the vicinity could fly a peregrine, and priests were allowed sparrowhawks. Commoners were just about allowed a stick to throw.[17] Magrat found herself wondering what Nanny Ogg would be allowed - a small chicken on a spring, probably. There was no specific falcon for a witch but, as a queen, the Lancre rules of falconry allowed her to fly the wowhawk or Lappet-faced Worrier. It was small and short sighted and preferred to walk everywhere. It fainted at the sight of blood. And about twenty wowhawks could kill a pigeon, if it was a sick pigeon. She’d spent an hour with one on her wrist. It had wheezed at her, and eventually it had dozed off upside down. But at least Hodgesaargh had a job to do. The castle was full of people doing jobs. Everyone had something useful to do except Magrat. She just had to exist. Of course, everyone would talk to her, provided she talked to them first. But she was always interrupting something important. Apart from ensuring the royal succession, which Verence had sent off for a book about, she- “You just keep back there, girl. You don’t want to come no further,” said a voice. Magrat bridled. “Girl? One happens to be very nearly of the royal blood by marriage!” “Maybe, but the bees don’t know that,” said the voice. Magrat stopped. She’d stepped out beyond what were the gardens from the point of view of the royal family and into what were the gardens from the point of view of everyone else - beyond the world of hedges and topiary and herb gardens and into the world of old sheds, piles of flowerpots, compost and, just here, beehives. One of the hives had the lid off. Beside it, in the middle of a brown cloud, smoking his special bee pipe, was Mr. Brooks. “Oh,” she said, “it’s you, Mr. Brooks.” Technically, Mr. Brooks was the Royal Beekeeper. But the relationship was a careful one. For one thing, although most of the staff were called by their last names Mr. Brooks shared with the cook and the butler the privilege of an honorific. Because Mr. Brooks had secret powers. He knew all about honey flows and the mating of queens. He knew about swarms, and how to destroy wasps’ nests. He got the general respect shown to those, like witches and blacksmiths, whose responsibilities are not entirely to the world of the humdrum and everyday-people who, in fact, know things that others don’t about things that others can’t fathom. And he was generally found doing something fiddly with the hives, ambling across the kingdom in pursuit of a swarm, or smoking his pipe in his secret shed which smelled of old honey and wasp poison. You didn’t offend Mr. Brooks, not unless you wanted swarms in your privy while he sat cackling in his shed. He carefully replaced the lid on the hive and walked away. A few bees escaped from the gaping holes in his beekeeping veil. “Afternoon, your ladyship,” he conceded. “Hello, Mr. Brooks. What’ve you been doing?” Mr. Brooks opened the door of his secret shed, and rummaged about inside. “They’re late swarming,” said the beekeeper. “I was just checking up on ‘em. Fancy a cup of tea, girl?” You couldn’t stand on ceremony with Mr. Brooks. He treated everyone as an equal, or more often as a slight inferior; it probably came of ruling thousands, every day and at least she could talk to him. Mr. Brooks had always seemed to her as close to a witch as it was possible to be while still being male. The shed was stuffed full of bits of hive, mysterious torture instruments for extracting honey, old jars, and a small stove on which a grubby teapot steamed next to a huge saucepan. He took her silence for acceptance, and poured out two mugs. “Is it herbal?” she quavered. “Buggered if I know. It’s just brown leaves out of a tin.” Magrat looked uncertainly into a mug which pure tannin was staining brown. But she rallied. One thing you had to do when you were queen, she knew, was Put Commoners at their Ease. She cast around for some easeful question. “It must be very interesting, being a beekeeper,” she said. “Yes. It is.” “One’s often wondered-“ “What?” “How do you actually milk them?”   The unicorn prowled through the forest. It felt blind, and out of place. This wasn’t a proper land. The sky was blue, not flaming with all the colours of the aurora. And time was passing. To a creature not born subject to time, it was a sensation not unakin to falling. It could feel its mistress inside its head, too. That was worse even than the passing of time. In short, it was mad.   Magrat sat with her mouth open. “I thought queens were born,” she said. “Oh, no,” said Mr. Brooks. “There ain’t no such thing as a queen egg. The bees just decides to feed one of ‘em up as a queen. Feeds ‘em royal jelly” “What happens if they don’t?” “Then it just becomes an ordinary worker, your ladyship,” said Mr. Brooks, with a suspiciously republican grin. Lucky for it, Magrat thought. “So they have a new queen, and then what happens to the old one?” “Usually the old girl swarms,” said Mr. Brooks. “Pushes off and takes some of the colony with her. I must’ve seen a thousand swarms, me. Never seen a Royal swarm, though.” “What’s a Royal swarm?” “Can’t say for sure. It’s in some of the old bee books. A swarm of swarms. It’s something to see, they say.” The old beekeeper looked wistful for a moment. ‘”Course,” he went on, righting himself, “the real fun starts if the weather’s bad and the ole queen can’t swarm, right?” He moved his hand in a sly circular motion. “What happens then is, the two queens - that’s the old queen, right? And the new queen - the two queens start astalkin’ one another among the combs, with the rain adrummin’ on the roof of the hive, and the business of the hive agoin’ on all around them,” Mr. Brooks moved his hands graphically, and Magrat leaned forward, “all among the combs, the drones all hummin’, and all the time they can sense one another, ‘cos they can tell, see, and then they spots one another and-“ “Yes? Yes?” said Magrat, leaning forward. “Slash! Stab!” Magrat hit her head on the wall of the hut. “Can’t have more’n one queen in a hive,” said Mr. Brooks calmly. Magrat looked out at the hives. She’d always liked the look of beehives, up until now. “Many’s the time I’ve found a dead queen in front of the hive after a spell of wet weather,” said Mr. Brooks, happily. “Can’t abide another queen around the place, you know. And it’s a right old battle, too. The old queen’s more cunnin’. But the new queen, she’s really got everything to fight for.” “Sorry?” “If she wants to be mated.” “Oh.” “But it gets really interestin’ in the autumn,” said Mr. Brooks. “Hive don’t need any dead weight in the winter, see, and there’s all these drones hangin’ around not doing anything, so the workers drag all the drones down to the hive entrance, see, and they bite their-“ “Stop! This is horrible!” said Magrat. “I thought beekeeping was, well, nice.” “Of course, that’s around the time of year when the bees wear out,” said Mr. Brooks. “What happens is, see, your basic bee, why, it works ‘til it can’t work no more, and you’ll see a lot of old workers acrawlin’ around in front of the hive ‘cos-“ “Stop it! Honestly, this is too much. I’m queen, you know. Almost.” “Sorry, miss,” said Mr. Brooks. “I thought you wanted to know a bit about beekeeping.” “Yes, but not this!” Magrat swept out. “Oh, I dunno,” said Mr. Brooks. “Does you good to get close to Nature.” He shook his head cheerfully as she disappeared among the hedges. “Can’t have more than one queen in a hive,” he said. “Slash! Stab! Hehheh!” From somewhere in the distance came the scream of Hodgesaargh as nature got close to him. Crop circles opened everywhere. Now the universes swung into line. They ceased their boiling spaghetti dance and, to pass through this chicane of history, charged forward neck and neck in their race across the rubber sheet of incontinent Time. At such time, as Ponder Stibbons dimly perceived, they had an effect on one another - shafts of reality crackled back and forward as the universes jostled for position. If you were someone who had trained their mind to be the finest of receivers, and were running it at the moment with the gain turned up until the knob broke, you might pick up some very strange signals indeed . . . The clock ticked. Granny Weatherwax sat in front of the open box, reading. Occasionally she stopped and closed her eyes and pinched her nose. Not knowing the future was bad enough, but at least she understood why. Now she was getting flashes of deja vu. It had been going on all week. But they weren’t her deja vus. She was getting them for the first time, as it were - flashes of memory that couldn’t have existed. Couldn’t have existed. She was Esme Weatherwax, sane as a brick, always had been, she’d never been- There was a knock at the door. She blinked, glad to be free of those thoughts. It took her a second or two to focus on the present. Then she folded up the paper, slipped it into its envelope, pushed the envelope back into its bundle, put the bundle into the box, locked the box with a small key which she hung over the fireplace, and walked to the door. She did a last-minute check to make sure she hadn’t absentmindedly taken all her clothes off, or something, and opened it. “Evenin’,” said Nanny Ogg, holding out a bowl with a cloth over it, “I’ve brung you some-“ Granny Weatherwax was looking past her. “Who’re these people?” she said. The three girls looked embarrassed. “See, they came round my house and said-“ Nanny Ogg began. “Don’t tell me. Let me guess,” said Granny. She strode out, and inspected the trio. “Well, well, well,” she said. “My word. My word. Three girls who want to be witches, am I right?” Her voice went falsetto. “’Oh, please, Mrs. Ogg, we has seen the error of our ways, we want to learn proper witchcraft.” Yes?” “Yes. Something like that,” said Nanny. “But-“ “This is witchcraft,” said Granny Weatherwax. “It’s not. . . it’s not a game of conkers. Oh, deary, deary me.” She walked along the very short row of trembling girls. “What’s your name, girl?” “Magenta Frottidge, ma’am.” “I bet that’s not what your mum calls you?” Magenta looked at her feet. “She calls me Violet, ma’am.” “Well, it’s a better colour than magenta,” said Granny. “Want to be a bit mysterious, eh? Want to make folks feel you got a grip on the occult? Can you do magic? Your friend taught you anything, did she? Knock my hat off.” “What, ma’am?” Granny Weatherwax stood back, and turned around. “Knock it off. I ain’t trying to stop you. Go on.” Magenta-shading-to-Violet shaded to pink. “Er . . . I never got the hang of the psycho-thingy . . .” “Oh, dear. Well, just let’s see what the rest can do . . . Who’re you, girl?” “Amanita, ma’am.” “Such a pretty name. Let’s see what you can do.” Amanita looked around nervously. “I, er, don’t think I can while you’re watching me-“ she began. “That’s a shame. What about you, on the end?” “Agnes Nitt,” said Agnes, who was much faster on the uptake than the other two and saw that there was no point in pushing Perdita. “Go on, then. Try.” Agnes concentrated. “Oh, deary, deary me,” said Granny. “And my hat’s still on. Show them, Gytha.” Nanny Ogg sighed, picked up a piece of fallen branch, and hurled it at Granny’s hat. Granny caught the stick in mid-air. “But, but - you said we had to use magic-“ Amanita began. “No, I didn’t,” said Granny. “But anyone could have done that,” said Magenta. “Yes, but that’s not the point,” said Granny. “The point is that you didn’t.” She smiled, which was unusual for her. “Look, I don’t want to be nasty to you. You’re young. The world’s full of things you could be doing. You don’t want to be witches. Not if you knew what it means. Now just go away. Go home. Don’t try the paranormal until you know what’s normal. Go on. Run along.” “But that’s just trickery! That’s what Diamanda said! You just use words and trickery-“ Magenta protested. Granny raised a hand. In the trees, the birds stopped singing. “Gytha?” Nanny Ogg gripped her own hat brim defensively. “Esme, listen, this hat cost me two whole dollars-“ The boom echoed through the woods. Bits of hat lining zigzagged gently out of the sky. Granny pointed her finger at the girls, who tried to lean out of the way. “Now,” she said, “why don’t you go and see to your friend? She was beat. She probably ain’t very happy. That’s no time to go leaving people.” They still stared at her. Her finger seemed to fascinate them. “I just asked you to go home. Perfectly reasonable voice. Do you want me to shout?” They turned and ran. Nanny Ogg glumly pushed her hand through the stricken hat brim. “It took me ages to get that pig cure together,” she mumbled. “You need eight types of leaves. Willow leaves, tansy leaves, Old Man’s Trousers leaves . . . I was collecting ‘em all day. It’s not as though leaves grow on trees-“ Granny Weatherwax watched the disappearing girls. Nanny Ogg paused. Then she said: “Takes you back, eh? I remember when I was fifteen, standing in front of old Biddy Spective, and she said in that voice of hers, ‘You want to be a what and I was that frightened I near widd-“ “I never stood in front of no one,” said Granny Weatherwax distantly. “I camped on old Nanny Gripes’ garden until she promised to tell me everything she knew. Hah. That took her a week and I had the afternoons free.” “You mean you weren’t Chosen?” “Me? No. I chose,” said Granny. The face she turned to Nanny Ogg was one she wouldn’t forget in a hurry, although she might try. “I chose, Gytha Ogg. And I want that you should know this right now. Whatever happens. I ain’t never regretted anything. Never regretted one single thing. Right?” “If you say so, Esme.”   What is magic? There is the wizards’ explanation, which comes in two forms, depending on the age of the wizard. Older wizards talk about candles, circles, planets, stars, bananas, chants, runes, and the importance of having at least four good meals every day. Younger wizards, particularly the pale ones who spend most of their time in the High Energy Magic building,[18] chatter at length about fluxes in the morphic nature of the universe, the essentially impermanent quality of even the most apparently rigid time-space framework, the implausibility of reality, and so on: what this means is that they have got hold of something hot and are gabbling the physics as they go along . . . It was almost midnight. Diamanda ran up the hill toward the Dancers, the briars and heather tearing at her dress. The humiliation banged back and forth in her skull. Stupid malicious old women! And stupid people, too! She’d won. According to the rules, she’d won! But everyone had laughed at her. That stung. The recollection of those stupid faces, all grinning. And everyone supporting those horrible old women, who had no idea about the meaning of witchcraft and what it could become. She’d show them. Ahead of her, the Dancers were dark against the moonlit clouds.   Nanny Ogg looked under her bed in case there was a man there. Well, you never knew your luck. She was going to have an early night. It had been a busy day There was a jar of boiled sweets by her bed, and a thick glass bottle of the clear fluid from her complicated still out behind the woodshed. It wasn’t exactly whiskey, and it wasn’t exactly gin, but it was exactly 90° proof, and a great comfort during those worrying moments that sometimes occurred around 3 A.M. when you woke up and forgot who you were. After a glass of the clear liquid you still didn’t remember who you were, but that was all right now because you were someone else anyway. She plumped up the four pillows, kicked her fluffy slippers into the comer, and pulled the blankets over her head, creating a small, warm, and slightly rank cave. She sucked a boiled sweet; Nanny had only one tooth left, and that had taken all she could throw at it for many years, so a sweet at bedtime wasn’t going to worry it much. After a few seconds a sense of pressure on her feet indicated that the cat Greebo had taken up his accustomed place on the end of the bed. Greebo always slept on Nanny’s bed; the way he’d affectionately try to claw your eyeballs out in the morning was as good as an alarm clock. But she always left a window open all night in case he wanted to go out and disembowel something, bless him. Well, well. Elves. (They couldn’t hear you say the word inside your head, anyway. At least, not unless they were real close.) She really thought they’d seen the last of them. How long was it, now? Must be hundreds and hundreds of years, maybe thousands. Witches didn’t like to talk about it, because they’d made a big mistake about the elves. They’d seen through the buggers in the end, of course, but it had been a close thing. And there’d been a lot of witches in those days. They’d been able to stop them at every turn, make life in this world too hot for them. Fought them with iron. Nothing elvish could stand iron. It blinded them, or something. Blinded them all over. There weren’t many witches now. Not proper witches. More of a problem, though, was that people didn’t seem to be able to remember what it was like with the elves around. Life was certainly more interesting then, but usually because it was shorter. And it was more colourful, if you liked the colour of blood. It got so people didn’t even dare talk openly about the bastards. You said: The Shining Ones. You said: The Fair Folk. And you spat, and touched iron. But generations later, you forgot about the spitting and the iron, and you forgot why you used those names for them, and you remembered only that they were beautiful. Yes, there’d been a lot of witches in them days. Too many women found an empty cradle, or a husband that never came home from the hunt. Had been the hunt. Elves! The bastards . . . and yet . . . and yet . . . somehow, yes, they did things to memory. Nanny Ogg turned over in bed. Greebo growled in protest. Take dwarfs and trolls, for e.g. People said: Oh, you can’t trust ‘em, trolls are OK if you’ve got ‘em in front of you, and some of ‘em are decent enough in their way, but they’re cowardly and stupid, and as for dwarfs, well, they’re greedy and devious devils, all right, fair enough, sometimes you meet one of the clever little sods that’s not too bad, but overall they’re no better’n trolls, in fact- -they’re just like us. But they ain’t any prettier to look at and they’ve got no style. And we’re stupid, and the memory plays tricks, and we remember the elves for their beauty and the way they move, and forget what they were. We’re like mice saying, “Say what you like, cats have got real style.” People never quaked in their beds for fear of dwarfs. They never hid under the stairs from trolls. They might have chased ‘em out of the henhouse, but trolls and dwarfs were never any more than a bloody nuisance. They were never a terror in the night. We only remembers that the elves sang. We forgets what it was they were singing about. Nanny Ogg turned over again. There was a slithering noise from the end of the bed, and a muffled yowl as Greebo hit the floor. And Nanny sat up. “Get your walking paws on, young fella-me-lad. We’re going out.” As she passed through the midnight kitchen she paused, took one of the big black flatirons from the hob by the fire, and attached it to a length of clothesline. For all her life she’d walked at night through Lancre with no thought of carrying a weapon of any sort. Of course, for most of that time she’d recognizably been a witch, and any importunate prowler would’ve ended up taking his essentials away in a paper bag, but even so it was generally true of any woman in Lancre. Man too, come to that. Now she could sense her own fear. The elves were coming back all right, casting their shadows before them.   Diamanda reached the crest of the hill. She paused. She wouldn’t put it past that old Weatherwax woman to have followed her. She felt sure there had been something tracking her in the woods. There was no one else around. She turned. “Evenin’, miss.” “You? You did follow me!” Granny got to her feet from the shadow of the Piper, where she had been sitting quite invisibly in the blackness. “Learned that from my dad,” she said. “When he went hunting. He always used to say a bad hunter chases, a good hunter waits.” “Oh? So you’re hunting me now?” “No. I was just waiting. I knew you’d come up here. You haven’t got anywhere else to go. You’ve come to call her, haven’t you? Let me see your hands.” It wasn’t a request, it was a command. Diamanda found her hands moving of their own accord. Before she could pull them back the old woman had grabbed them and held them firmly; her skin felt like sacking. “Never done a hard day’s work in your life, have you?” said Granny, pleasantly. “Never picked cabbages with the ice on ‘em, or dug a grave, or milked a cow, or laid out a corpse.” “You don’t have to do all that to be a witch!” Diamanda snapped. “Did I say so? And let me tell you something. About beautiful women in red with stars in their hair. And probably moons, too. And voices in your head when you slept. And power when you came up here. She offered you lots of power, I expect. All you wanted. For free.” Diamanda was silent. “Because it happened before. There’s always someone who’ll listen.” Granny Weatherwax’s eyes seemed to lose their focus. “When you’re lonely, and people around you seem too stupid for words, and the world is full of secrets that no one’ll tell you . . . “ “Are you reading my mind?” “Yours?” Granny’s attention snapped back, and her voice lost its distant quality. “Hah! Flowers and suchlike. Dancing about without yer drawers on. Mucking about with cards and bits of string. And it worked, I expect. She gave you power, for a while. Oh, she must have laughed. And then there is less power and more price. And then no power, and you’re payin’ every day. They always take more than they give. And what they give has less than no value. And they end up taking everything. What they like to get from us is our fear. What they want from us most of all is our belief. If you call them, they will come. You’ll give them a channel if you call them here, at circle time, where the world’s thin enough to hear. The power in the Dancers is weak enough now as it is. And I’m not having the . . . the Lords and Ladies back.” Diamanda opened her mouth. “I ain’t finished yet. You’re a bright girl. Lots of things you could be doing. But you don’t want to be a witch. It’s not an easy life.” “You mad old woman, you’ve got it all wrong! Elves aren’t like that-“ “Don’t say the word. Don’t say the word. They come when called.” “Good! Elf, elf, elf! Elf-“ Granny slapped her face, hard. “Even you knows that’s stupid and childish,” she said. “Now you listen to me. If you stay here, there’s to be none of this stuff anymore. Or you can go somewhere else and find a future, be a great lady, you’ve got the mind for it. And maybe you’ll come back in ten years loaded down with jewels and stuff, and lord it over all us stay-at-homes, and that will be fine. But if you stay here and keep trying to call the . . . Lords and Ladies, then you’ll be up against me again. Not playing stupid games in the daylight, but real witchcraft. Not messing around with moons and circles, but the true stuff, out of the blood and the bone and out of the head. And you don’t know nothin’ about that. Right? And it don’t allow for mercy.” Diamanda looked up. Her face was red where the slap had landed. “Go?” she said. Granny reacted a second too late. Diamanda darted between the stones. “You stupid child! Not that way.” The figure was already getting smaller, even though it appeared to be only a few feet away. “Oh, drat!” Granny dived after her, and heard her skirt rip as the pocket tore. The poker she’d brought along whirred away and clanked against one of the Dancers. There was a series of jerks and tings as the hobnails tore out of her boots and sped toward the stones. No iron could go through the stones, no iron at all. Granny was already racing over the turf when she realized what that meant. But it didn’t matter. She’d made a choice. There was a feeling of dislocation, as directions danced and twirled around. And then snow underfoot. It was white. It had to be white, because it was snow. But patterns of colour moved across it, reflecting the wild dance of the permanent aurora in the sky Diamanda was struggling. Her footwear was barely suitable for a city summer, and certainly not for a foot of snow. Whereas Granny Weatherwax’s boots, even without their hobnails, could have survived a trot across lava. Even so, the muscles that were propelling them had been doing it for too long. Diamanda was outrunning her. More snow was falling, out of a night sky. There was a ring of riders waiting a little way from the stones, with the Queen slightly ahead. Every witch knew her, or the shape of her. Diamanda tripped and fell, and then managed to bring herself up to a kneeling position. Granny stopped. The Queen’s horse whinnied. “Kneel before your Queen, you,” said the elf. She was wearing red, with a copper crown in her hair. “Shan’t. Won’t,” said Granny Weatherwax. “You are in my kingdom, woman,” said the Queen. “You do not come or go without the leave of me. You will kneel!” “I come and go without the leave of anyone,” said Granny Weatherwax. “Never done it before, ain’t starting now.” She put a hand on Diamanda’s shoulder. “These are your elves,” she said. “Beautiful, ain’t they?” The warriors must have been more than two meters tall. They did not wear clothes so much as items strung together - scraps of fur, bronze plates, strings of brightly coloured feathers. Blue and green tattoos covered most of their exposed skin. Several of them held drawn bows, the tips of their arrows following Granny’s every move. Their hair massed around their heads like a halo, thick with grease. And although their faces were indeed the most beautiful Diamanda had ever seen, it was beginning to creep over her that there was something subtly wrong, some quirk of expression that did not quite fit. “The only reason we’re still alive now is that we’re more fun alive than dead,” said Granny’s voice behind her. “You know you shouldn’t listen to the crabbed old woman,” said the Queen. “What can she offer?” “More than snow in summertime,” said Granny. “Look at their eyes. Look at their eyes.” The Queen dismounted. “Take my hand, child,” she said. Diamanda stuck out a hand gingerly.  There was something about the eyes. It wasn’t the shape or the colour. There was no evil glint. But there was . . . . . . a look. It was such a look that a microbe might encounter if it could see up from the bottom end of the microscope. It said: You are nothing. It said: You are flawed, you have no value. It said: You are animal. It said: Perhaps you may be a pet, or perhaps you may be a quarry. It said: And the choice is not yours. She tried to pull her hand away. “Get out of her mind, old crone.” Granny’s face was running with sweat. “I ain’t in her mind, elf. I’m keeping you out.” The Queen smiled. It was the most beautiful smile Diamanda had ever seen. “And you have some power, too. Amazing. I never thought you’d amount to anything, Esmerelda Weatherwax. But it’s no good here. Kill them both. But not at the same time. Let the other one watch.” She climbed on to her horse again, turned it around, and galloped off. Two of the elves dismounted, drawing thin bronze daggers from their belts. “Well, that’s about it, then,” said Granny Weatherwax, as the warriors approached. She dropped her voice. “When the time comes,” she said, “run.” “What time?” “You’ll know.” Granny fell to her knees as the elves approached. “Oh, deary me, oh spare my life, I am but a poor old woman and skinny also,” she said. “Oh spare my life, young sir. Oh lawks.” She curled up, sobbing. Diamanda looked at her in astonishment, not least at how anyone could expect to get away with something like that. Elves had been away from humans for a long time. The first elf reached her, hauled her up by her shoulder, and got a doubled-handed, bony-knuckled punch in an area that Nanny Ogg would be surprised that Esme Weatherwax even knew about. Diamanda was already running. Granny’s elbow caught the other elf in the chest as she set off after her. Behind her, she heard the merry laughter of the elves. Diamanda had been surprised at Granny’s old lady act. She was far more surprised when Granny drew level. But Granny had more to run away from. “They’ve got horses!” Granny nodded. And it’s true that horses go faster than people, but it’s not instantly obvious to everyone that this is only true over moderate distances. Over short distances a determined human can outrun a horse, because they’ve only got half as many legs to sort out. Granny reached over and gripped Diamanda’s arm. “Head for the gap between the Piper and the Drummer!” “Which ones are they?” “You don’t even know that?” Humans can outrun a horse, indeed. It was preying on Granny Weatherwax’s mind that no one can outrun an arrow. Something whined past her ear. The circle of stones seemed as far away as ever. Nothing for it. It oughtn’t to be possible. She’d only ever tried it seriously when she was lying down, or at least when she had something to lean against. She tried it now . . . There were four elves chasing them. She didn’t even think about looking into their minds. But the horses . . . ah, the horses . . . They were carnivores, minds like an arrowhead. The rules of Borrowing were: you didn’t hurt, you just rode inside their heads, you didn’t involve the subject in any way . . . Well, not so much a rule, as such, more of a general guideline. A stone-tipped arrow went through her hat. Hardly really a guideline, even. In fact, not even- Oh, drat. She plunged into the lead horse’s mind, down through the layers of barely controlled madness which is what is inside even a normal horse’s brain. For a moment she looked out through its bloodshot eyes at her own figure, staggering through the snow. For a moment she was trying to control six legs at once, two of them in a separate body. In terms of difficulty, playing one tune on a musical instrument and singing a totally different one[20] was a stroll in the country by comparison. She knew she couldn’t do it for more than a few seconds before total confusion overwhelmed mind and body. But a second was all she needed. She let the confusion arise, dumped it in its entirety in the horse’s mind, and withdrew sharply, picking up control of her own body as it began to fall. There was one horrible moment in the horse’s head. It wasn’t sure what it was, or how it had got there. More importantly, it didn’t know how many legs it had. There was a choice of two or four, or possibly even six. It compromised on three. Granny heard it scream and collapse noisily, by the sound of things taking a couple of others with it. “Hah!” She risked a look sideways at Diamanda. Who wasn’t there. She was in the snow some way back, trying with difficulty to get to her feet. The face she turned to Granny was as pale as the snow. There was an arrow sticking out of her shoulder. Granny darted back, grabbed the girl and hauled her upright. “Come on! Nearly there!” “Can’t r’n . . . c’ld . . .” Diamanda slumped forward. Granny caught her before she hit the snow and, with a grunt of effort, slung her over her shoulder. A few more steps, and all she had to do was fall forward . . . A clawed hand snatched at her dress . . . And three figures fell, rolling over and over in the summer bracken. The elf was first to its feet, looking around in dazed triumph. It already had a long copper knife in its hand. It focused on Granny, who had landed on her back. She could smell the rankness of it as it raised the knife, and she sought desperately for a way into its head . . . Something flashed past her vision. A length of rope had caught the elf’s neck, and went tight as something swished through the air. The creature stared in horror as a flatiron whirred a few feet away from its face and swung past its ear, winding around and around with increasing speed but a decreasing orbital radius until it connected heavily with the back of the elf’s head, lifting it off its feet and dropping it heavily on the turf. Nanny Ogg appeared in Granny’s vision. “Cor, it doesn’t half whiff, don’t it?” she said. “You can smell elves a mile off.” Granny scrambled upright. There was nothing but grass inside the circle. No snow, no elves. She turned to Diamanda. So did Nanny. The girl was lying unconscious. “Elf-shot,” said Granny. “Oh, bugger.” “The point’s still in there.” Nanny scratched her head. “I could probably get the point out, no problem,” she said, “but I don’t know about the poison . . . we could tie a tourniquet around the affected part.” “Hah! Her neck’d be favourite, then.” Granny sat down with her chin on her knees. Her shoulders ached. “Got to get me breath back,” she said. Images swam in the forefront of her mind. Here it came again. She knew there were such things as alternative futures, after all, that’s what the future meant. But she’d never heard of alternative pasts. She could remember having just gone through the stones, if she concentrated. But she could remember other things. She could remember being in bed in her own house, but that was it, it was a house, not a cottage, but she was her, they were her own memories. . . she had a nagging feeling that she was asleep, right now . . . Dully, she tried to focus on Nanny Ogg. There was something comfortingly solid about Gytha Ogg. Nanny had produced a penknife. “What the hell are you doing?” “Going to put it out of its misery, Esme.” “Doesn’t look miserable to me.” Nanny Ogg’s eyes gleamed speculatively. “Could soon arrange that, Esme.” “Don’t go torturing it just because it’s lying down, Gytha.” “Damn well ain’t waiting for it to stand up again, Esme.” “Gytha.” “Well, they used to carry off babies. I ain’t having that again. The thought of someone carrying off our Pewsey-“ “Even elves ain’t that daft. Never seen such a sticky child in all my life.” Granny pulled gently at Diamanda’s eyelid. “Out cold,” she said. “Off playing with the fairies.” She picked the girl up. “Come on. I’ll carry her, you bring Mr. Tinkerbell.” “That was brave of you, carrying her over your shoulder,” said Nanny. “With them elves firing arrows, too.” “And it meant less chance of one hitting me, too,” said Granny. Nanny Ogg was shocked. “What? You never thought that, did you?” “Well, she’d been hit already. If I’d been hit too, neither of us’d get out,” said Granny, simply. “But that’s - that’s a bit heartless, Esme.” “Heartless it may be, but headless it ain’t. I’ve never claimed to be nice, just to be sensible. No need to look like that. Now, are you coming or are you going to stand there with your mouth open all day?” Nanny closed her mouth, and then opened it again to say: “What’re you going to do?” “Well, do you know how to cure her?” “Me? No!” “Right! Me neither. But I know someone who might know,” she said. “And we can shove him in the dungeons for now. Lots of iron bars down there. That should keep him quiet.” “How’d he get through?” “He was holding on to me. I don’t know how it works. Maybe the stone . . . force opens to let humans through, or something. Just so long as his friends stay inside, that’s all I’m bothered about.” Nanny heaved the unconscious elf on to her shoulders without much effort.[21] “Smells worse than the bottom of a goat’s bed,” she said. “It’s a bath for me when I get home.” “Oh, dear,” said Granny “It gets worse, don’t it?”   *   *   *   What is magic? Then there is the witches’ explanation, which comes in two forms, depending on the age of the witch. Older witches hardly put words to it at all, but may suspect in their hearts that the universe really doesn’t know what the hell is going on and consists of a zillion trillion billion possibilities, and could become any one of them if a trained mind rigid with quantum certainty was inserted in the crack and twisted; that, if you really had to make someone’s hat explode, all you needed to do was twist into that universe where a large number of hat molecules all decide at the same time to bounce off in different directions. Younger witches, on the other hand, talk about it all the time and believe it involves crystals, mystic forces, and dancing about without yer drawers on. Everyone may be right, all at the same time. That’s the thing about quantum. It was early morning. Shawn Ogg was on guard on the battlements of Lancre castle, all that stood between the inmates and any mighty barbarian hordes that might be in the area. He enjoyed the military life. Sometimes he wished a small horde would attack, just so’s he could Save the Day. He daydreamed of leading an army into battle, and wished the king would get one. A brief scream indicated that Hodgesaargh was giving his charges their morning finger. Shawn ignored the noise. It was part of the background hum of the castle. He was passing the time by seeing how long he could hold his breath. He had any amount of ways of passing the time, since guard duty in Lancre involved such an awful lot of it. There was Getting The Nostrils Really Clean, that was a good one. Or Farting Tunes. Or Standing On One Leg. Holding His Breath and Counting was something he fell back on when he couldn’t think of anything else and his meals hadn’t been too rich in carbohydrates. There were a couple of loud creaks from the door knocker, far below. There was so much rust on it now that the only way it could be coaxed into making any sound was to lift it up, which made it squeak, and then force it mightily downward, which caused another squeak and, if the visitor was lucky, a faint thud. Shawn took a deep breath and leaned over the battlements. “Halt! Who Goes There?” he said. A ringing voice came up from below. “It’s me, Shawn. Your mum.” “Oh, hello. Mum. Hello, Mistress Weatherwax.” “Let us in, there’s a good boy.” “Friend or Foe?” “What?” “It’s what I’ve got to say, Mum. It’s official. And then you’ve got to say Friend.” “I’m your mum.” “You’ve got to do it properly, Mum,” said Shawn, in the wretched tones of one who knows he’s going to lose no matter what happens next, “otherwise what’s the point?” “It’s going to be Foe in a minute, my lad.” “Oooaaaww, Mum!” “Oh, all right. Friend, then.” “Yes, but you could just be saying that-“ “Let us in right now, Shawn Ogg.” Shawn saluted, slightly stunning himself with the butt of his spear. “Right you are. Mistress Weatherwax.” His round, honest face disappeared from view. After a minute or two they heard the creaking of the portcullis. “How did you do that?” said Nanny Ogg. “Simple,” said Granny. “He knows you wouldn’t make his daft head explode.” “Well, I know you wouldn’t, too.” “No you don’t. You just know I ain’t done it up to now.”   Magrat had thought this sort of thing was just a joke, but it was true. The castle’s Great Hall had one long, one very long dining table, and she and Verence sat at either end of it. It was all to do with etiquette. The king had to sit at the head of the table. That was obvious. But if she sat on one side of him it made them both uneasy, because they had to keep turning to talk to each other. Opposite ends and shouting was the only way. Then there was the logistics of the sideboard. Again, the easy option - them just going over and helping themselves - was out of the question. If kings went round putting their own food on their own plate, the whole system of monarchy would come crashing down. Unfortunately, this meant that service had to be by means of Mr. Spriggins the butler, who had a bad memory, a nervous twitch and a rubber knee, and a sort of medieval elevator system that connected with the kitchen and sounded like the rattle of a tumbril. The elevator shaft was a kind of heat sink. Hot food was cold by the time it arrived. Cold food got colder. No one knew what would happen to ice cream, but it would probably involve some rewriting of the laws of thermodynamics. Also, the cook couldn’t get the hang of vegetarianism. The traditional palace cuisine was heavy in artery-clogging dishes so full of saturated fats that they oozed out in great wobbly globules. Vegetables existed as things to soak up spare gravy, and were generally boiled to a uniform shade of yellow in any case. Magrat had tried explaining things to Mrs. Scorbic the cook, but the woman’s three chins wobbled so menacingly at words like “vitamins” that she’d made an excuse to back out of the kitchen. At the moment she was making do with an apple. The cook knew about apples. They were big roasted floury things scooped out and filled with raisins and cream. So Magrat had resorted to stealing a raw one from the apple loft. She was also plotting to find out where the carrots were kept. Verence was distantly visible behind the silver candlesticks and a pile of account books. Occasionally they looked up and smiled at each other. At least, it looked like a smile but it was a little hard to be sure at this distance. Apparently he’d just said something. Magrat cupped her hands around her mouth. “Pardon?” “We need a-“ “Sorry?” “What?” “What?” Finally Magrat got up and waited while Spriggins, purple in the face with the effort, moved her chair down toward Verence. She could have done it herself, but it wasn’t what queens did. “We ought to have a Poet Laureate,” said Verence, marking his place in a book. “Kingdoms have to have one. They write poems for special celebrations.” “Yes?” “I thought perhaps Mrs. Ogg? I hear she’s quite an amusing songstress.” Magrat kept a straight face. “I . . . er . . . I think she knows lots of rhymes for certain words,” she said. “Apparently the going rate is fourpence a year and a butt of sack,” said Verence, peering at the page. “Or it may be a sack of butt.” “What exactly will she have to do?” said Magrat. “It says here the role of the Poet Laureate is to recite poems on State occasions,” said Verence. Magrat had witnessed some of Nanny Ogg’s humorous recitations, especially the ones with the gestures. She nodded gravely. “Provided,” she said, “and I want to be absolutely sure you understand me on this, provided she takes up her post after the wedding.” “Oh, dear? Really?” “After the wedding.” “Oh.” “Trust me.” “Well, of course, if it makes you happy-“ There was a commotion outside the double doors, which were flung back. Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax stamped in, with Shawn trying to overtake them. “Oooaaww, Mum! I’m supposed to go in first to say who it is!” “We’ll tell them who we are. Wotcha, your majesties,” said Nanny. “Blessing be upon this castle,” said Granny. “Magrat, there’s some doctorin’ needs doing. Here.” Granny swept a candlestick and some crockery on to the floor with a dramatic motion and laid Diamanda on the table. In fact there were several acres of table totally devoid of any obstruction, but there’s no sense in making an entrance unless you’re prepared to make a mess. “But I thought she was fighting you yesterday!” said Magrat. “Makes no difference,” said Granny. “Morning, your majesty.” King Verence nodded. Some kings would have shouted for the guards at this point but Verence did not because he was sensible, this was Granny Weatherwax and in any case the only available guard was Shawn Ogg, who was trying to straighten out his trumpet. Nanny Ogg had drifted over to the sideboard. It wasn’t that she was callous, but it had been a busy few hours and there was a lot of breakfast that no one seemed to be interested in. “What happened to her?” said Magrat, inspecting the girl carefully. Granny looked around the room. Suits of armour, shields hanging on the walls, rusty old swords and pikes . . . probably enough iron here . . . “She was shot by an elf-“ “But-“ said Magrat and Verence at the same time. “Don’t ask questions now, got no time. Shot by an elf. Them horrible arrows of theirs. They make the mind go wandering off all by itself. Now - can you do anything?” Despite her better nature, Magrat felt a spark of righteous ire. “Oh, so suddenly I’m a witch again when you-“ Granny Weatherwax sighed. “No time for that, either,” she said. “I’m just askin’. All you have to do is say no. Then I’ll take her away and won’t bother you again.” The quietness of her voice was so unexpected that Magrat tripped over her own anger, and tried to right herself. “I wasn’t saying I wouldn’t, I was just-“ “Good.” There was a series of clangs as Nanny Ogg lifted the silver tureen lids. “Hey, they’ve got three kinds of eggs!” “Well, there’s no fever,” said Magrat. “Slow pulse. Eyes unfocused. Shawn?” “Yes, Miss Queen?” “Boiled, scrambled and fried. That’s what I call posh.” “Run down to my cottage and bring back all the books you can find. I’m sure I read something about this once, Granny. Shawn?” Shawn paused halfway to the door. “Yes, Miss Queen?” “On your way out, stop off in the kitchens and ask them to boil up a lot of water. We can start by getting the wound clean, at any rate. But look, elves-“ “I’ll let you get on with it, then,” said Granny, turning away. “Can I have a word with you, your majesty? There’s something downstairs you ought to see.” “I shall need some help,” said Magrat. “Nanny’ll do it.” “That’s me,” said Nanny indistinctly, spraying crumbs. “What are you eating?” “Fried egg and ketchup sandwich,” said Nanny happily. “You better get the cook to boil you, too,” said Magrat, rolling up her sleeves. “Go and see her.” She looked at the wound. “And see if she’s got any mouldy bread . . .”   The basic unit of wizardry is the Order or the College or, of course, the University. The basic unit of witchcraft is the witch, but the basic continuous unit, as has already been indicated, is the cottage. A witch’s cottage is a very specific architectural item. It is not exactly built, but put together over the years as the areas of repair join up, like a sock made entirely of dams. The chimney twists like a corkscrew. The roof is thatch so old that small but flourishing trees are growing in it, the floors are switchbacks, it creaks at night like a tea clipper in a gale. If at least two walls aren’t shored up with balks of timber then it’s not a true witch’s cottage at all, but merely the home of some daft old bat who reads tea leaves and talks to her cat. Cottages tend to attract similar kinds of witches. It’s natural. Every witch trains up one or two young witches in their life, and when in the course of mortal time the cottage becomes vacant it’s only sense for one of them to move in. Magrat’s cottage traditionally housed thoughtful witches who noticed things and wrote things down. Which herbs were better than others for headaches, fragments of old stories, odds and ends like that. There were a dozen books of tiny handwriting and drawings, the occasional interesting flower or unusual frog pressed carefully between the pages. It was a cottage of questioning witches, research witches. Eye of what newt? What species of ravined salt-sea shark? It’s all very well a potion calling for Love-in-idleness, but which of the thirty-seven common plants called by that name in various parts of the continent was actually meant? The reason that Granny Weatherwax was a better witch than Magrat was that she knew that in witchcraft it didn’t matter a damn which one it was, or even if it was a piece of grass. The reason that Magrat was a better doctor than Granny was that she thought it did.   The coach slowed to a halt in front of the barricade across the road. The bandit chieftain adjusted his eyepatch. He had two good eyes, but people respect uniforms. Then he strolled toward the coach. “Morning, Jim. What’ve we got today, then?” “Uh. This could be difficult,” said the coachman. “Uh, there’s a handful of wizards. And a dwarf. And an ape.” He rubbed his head, and winced. “Yes. Definitely an ape. Not, and I think I should make this clear, any other kind of manshaped thing with hair on.” “You all right, Jim?” “I’ve had this lot ever since Ankh-Morpork. Don’t talk to me about dried frog pills.” The bandit chief raised his eyebrows. “All right. I won’t.” He knocked on the coach door. The window slid down. “I wouldn’t like you to think of this as a robbery,” he said. “I’d like you to think of it more as a colourful anecdote you might enjoy telling your grandchildren about.” A voice from within said, “That’s him! He stole my horse!” A wizard’s staff poked out. The chieftain saw the knob on the end. “Now, then,” he said, pleasantly. “I know the rules. Wizards aren’t allowed to use magic against civilians except in genuine life-threatening situa-“ There was a burst of octarine light. “Actually, it’s not a rule,” said Ridcully. “It’s more a guideline.” He turned to Ponder Stibbons. “Interestin’ use of Stacklady’s Morphic Resonator here, I hope you noticed.” Ponder looked down. The chieftain had been turned into a pumpkin although, in accordance with the rules of universal humour, he still had his hat on. “And now,” said Ridcully, “I’d be obliged if all you fellows hidin’ behind the rocks and things would just step out where I can see you. Very good. Mr. Stibbons, you and the Librarian just pass around with the hat, please.” “But this is robbery!” said the coachman. “And you’ve turned him into a fruit!” “A vegetable,” said Ridcully “Anyway, it’ll wear off in a couple of hours.” “And I’m owed a horse,” said Casanunda. The bandits paid up, reluctantly handing over money to Ponder and reluctantly but very quickly handing over money to the Librarian. “There’s almost three hundred dollars, sir,” said Ponder. “And a horse, remember. In fact, there were two horses. I’d forgotten about the other horse until now.” “Capital! We’re in pocket on the trip. So if these gentlemen would just remove the roadblock, we’ll be on our way.” “In fact, there was a third horse I’ve just remembered about.” “This isn’t what you’re supposed to do! You’re supposed to be robbed!” shouted the coachman. Ridcully pushed him off the board. “We’re on holiday,” he said. The coach rattled away There was a distant cry of “And four horses, don’t forget” before it rounded a bend. The pumpkin developed a mouth. “Have they gone?” “Yes, boss.” “Roll me into the shade, will you? And no one say anything about this ever again. Has anyone got any dried frog pills?”   Verence II respected witches. They’d put him on the throne. He was pretty certain of that, although he couldn’t quite work out how it had happened. And he was in awe of Granny Weatherwax. He followed her meekly toward the dungeons, hurrying to keep up with her long stride. “What’s happening, Mistress Weatherwax?” “Got something to show you.” “You mentioned elves.” “That’s right.” “I thought they were a fairy story.” “Well?” “I mean . . . you know . . . an old wives’ tale?” “So?” Granny Weatherwax seemed to generate a gyroscopic field - if you started out off-balance, she saw to it that you remained there. He tried again. “Don’t exist, is what I’m trying to say.” Granny reached a dungeon door. It was mainly age-blackened oak, but with a large barred grille occupying some of the top half. “In there.” Verence peered inside. “Good grief!” “I got Shawn to unlock it. I don’t reckon anyone else saw us come in. Don’t tell anyone. If the dwarfs and the trolls find out, they’ll tear the walls apart to get him out.” “Why? To kill him?” “Of course. They’ve got better memories than humans.” “What am I supposed to do with it?” “Just keep it locked up. How should I know? I’ve got to think!” Verence peered in again at the elf. It was lying curled up in the centre of the floor. “That’s an elf? But it’s . . . just a long, thin human with a foxy face. More or less. I thought they were supposed to be beautiful?” “Oh, they are when they’re conscious,” said Granny, waving a hand vaguely “They project this . . . this . . . when people look at them, they see beauty, they see something they want to please. They can look just like you want them to look. ‘S’called glamour. You can tell when elves are around. People act funny. They stop thinking clear. Don’t you know anything?” “I thought . . . elves were just stories . . . like the Tooth Fairy. . .” “Nothing funny about the Tooth Fairy,” said Granny. “Very hard-working woman. I’ll never know how she manages with the ladder and everything. No. Elves are real. Oh, drat. Listen. . .” She turned, and held up a finger. “Feudal system, right?” “What?” “Feudal system! Pay attention. Feudal system. King on top, then barons and whatnot, then everyone else . . . witches off to one side a bit,” Granny added diplomatically. She steepled her fingers. “Feudal system. Like them pointy buildings heathen kings get buried in. Understand?” “Yes.” “Right. That’s how the elves see things, yes? When they get into a world, everyone else is on the bottom. Slaves. Worse than slaves. Worse than animals, even. They take what they want, and they want everything. But worst of all, the worst bit is . . . they read your mind. They hear what you think, and in self-defence you think what they want. Glamour. And it’s barred windows at night, and food out for the fairies, and turning around three times before you talks about ‘em, and horseshoes over the door.” “I thought that sort of thing was, you know,” the king grinned sickly, “folklore?” “Of course it’s folklore, you stupid man!” “I do happen to be king, you know,” said Verence reproachfully. “You stupid king, your majesty,” “Thank you.” “I mean it doesn’t mean it’s not true! Maybe it gets a little muddled over the years, folks forget details, they forget why they do things. Like the horseshoe thing.” “I know my granny had one over the door,” said the king. “There you are. Nothing to do with its shape. But if you lives in an old cottage and you’re poor, it’s probably the nearest bit of iron with holes in it that you can find.” “Ah.” “The thing about elves is they’ve got no . . . begins with m,” Granny snapped her fingers irritably. “Manners?” “Hah! Right, but no.” “Muscle? Mucus? Mystery?” “No. No. No. Means like . . . seein’ the other person’s point of view.” Verence tried to see the world from a Granny Weatherwax perspective, and suspicion dawned. “Empathy?” “Right. None at all. Even a hunter, a good hunter, can feel for the quarry. That’s what makes ‘em a good hunter. Elves aren’t like that. They’re cruel for fun, and they can’t understand things like mercy. They can’t understand that anything apart from themselves might have feelings. They laugh a lot, especially if they’ve caught a lonely human or a dwarf or a troll. Trolls might be made out of rock, your majesty, but I’m telling you that a troll is your brother compared to elves. In the head, I mean.” “But why don’t I know all this?” “Glamour. Elves are beautiful. They’ve got,” she spat the word, “style. Beauty. Grace. That’s what matters. If cats looked like frogs we’d realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are. Style. That’s what people remember. They remember the glamour. All the rest of it, all the truth of it, becomes . . . old wives’ tales.” “Magrat’s never said anything about them.” Granny hesitated. “Magrat doesn’t know too much about elves,” she said. “Hah. She ain’t even a young wife yet. They’re not something that gets talked about a lot these days. It’s not good to talk about them. It’s better if everyone forgets about them. They . . . come when they’re called. Not called like ‘Cooee.’ Called inside people’s heads. It’s enough for people just to want them to be here.” Verence waved his hands in the air. “I’m still learning about monarchy,” he said. “I don’t understand this stuff.” “You don’t have to understand. You’re a king. Listen. You know about weak places in the world? Where it joins other worlds?” “No.” “There’s one up on the moor. That’s why the Dancers were put up around it. They’re a kind of wall.” “But sometimes the barriers between worlds is weaker, see? Like tides. At circle time.” “Ah.” “And if people act stupidly then, even the Dancers can’t keep the gateway shut. ‘Cos where the world’s thin, even the wrong thought can make the link.” “Ah.” Verence felt the conversation had orbited back to that area where he could make a contribution. “Stupidly?” he said. “Calling them. Attracting them.” “Ah. So what do I do?” “Just go on reigning. I think we’re safe. They can’t get through. I’ve stopped the girls, so there’ll be no more channeling. You keep this one firmly under lock and key, and don’t tell Magrat. No sense in worrying her, is there? Something came through, but I’m keeping an eye on it.” Granny rubbed her hands together in grim satisfaction. “I think I’ve got it sorted,” she said. She blinked. She pinched the bridge of her nose. “What did I just say?” she said. “Uh. You said you thought you’d got it sorted,” said the king. Granny Weatherwax blinked. “That’s right,” she said. “I said that. Yes. And I’m in the castle, aren’t I? Yes.” “Are you all right. Mistress Weatherwax?” said the king, his voice taut with sudden worry. “Fine, fine. Fine. In the castle. And the children are all right, too?” “Sorry?” She blinked again. “What?” “You don’t look well. . .” Granny screwed up her face and shook her head. “Yes. The castle. I’m me, you’re you, Gytha’s upstairs with Magrat. That’s right.” She focused on the king. “Just a bit of . . . of overtiredness there. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to worry about at all.”   Nanny Ogg looked doubtfully at Magrat’s preparation. “A mouldy bread poultice doesn’t sound very magical to me,” she said. “Goodie Whemper used to swear by it. But I don’t know what we can do about the coma.” Magrat thumbed hopefully through the crackling, ancient pages. Her ancestral witches had written things down pretty much as they occurred to them, so that quite important spells and observations would be interspersed with comments about the state of their feet. “It says here ‘The smalle pointy stones sometimes found are knowne as Elf-shot, beinge the heads of Elf arrows from Times Past.’ “ That’s all I can find. And there’s a drawing. But I’ve seen these little stones around, too.” “Oh, there’s lots of them,” said Nanny, bandaging Diamanda’s shoulder. “Dig ‘em up all the time, in my garden.” “But elves don’t shoot people! Elves are good.” “They probably just fired at Esme and the girl in fun, like?” “But-“ “Look, dear, you’re going to be queen. It’s an important job. You look after the king now, and let me and Esme look after . . . other stuff.” “Being Queen? It’s all tapestry and walking around in unsuitable dresses! I know Granny. She doesn’t like anything that’s . . . that’s got style and grace. She’s so sour.” “I daresay she’s got her reasons,” said Nanny amiably. “Well, that’s got the girl patched up. What shall we do with her now?” “We’ve got dozens of spare bedrooms,” said Magrat, “and they’re all ready for the guests. We can put her in one of them. Um. Nanny?” “Yes?” “Would you like to be a bridesmaid?” “Not really, dear. Bit old for that sort of thing.” Nanny hovered. “There isn’t anything you need to ask me, though, is there?” “What do you mean?” “What with your mum being dead and you having no female relatives and everything. . .” Magrat still looked puzzled. “After the wedding, is what I’m hinting about,” said Nanny. “Oh, that. No, most of that’s being done by a caterer. The cook here isn’t much good at canapes and things.” Nanny looked carefully at the ceiling. “And what about after that?” she said. “If you catch my meaning.” “I’m getting a lot of girls in to do the clearing up. Look, don’t worry. I’ve thought of everything. I wish you and Granny wouldn’t treat me as if I don’t know anything.” Nanny coughed. “Your man,” she said. “Been around a bit, I expect? Been walking out with dozens of young women, I’ve no doubt.” “Why do you say that? I don’t think he has. Fools don’t have much of a private life and, of course, he’s been very busy since he’s been king. He’s a bit shy with girls.” Nanny gave up. “Oh, well,” she said, “I’m sure you’ll work it all out as you-“ Granny and the king reappeared. “How’s the girl?” said Granny. “We took out the arrow and cleaned up the wound, anyway,” said Magrat. “But she won’t wake up. Best if she stays here.” “You sure?” said Granny. “She needs keeping an eye on. I’ve got a spare bedroom.” “She shouldn’t be moved,” said Magrat, briskly. “They’ve put their mark on her,” said Granny. “You sure you know how to deal with it?” “I do know it’s quite a nasty wound,” said Magrat, briskly. “I ain’t exactly thinking about the wound,” said Granny. “She’s been touched by them is what I mean. She’s-“ “I’m sure I know how to deal with a sick person,” said Magrat. “I’m not totally stupid, you know.” “She’s not to be left alone,” Granny persisted. “There’ll be plenty of people around,” said Verence. “The guests start arriving tomorrow.” “Being alone isn’t the same as not having other people around,” said Granny. “This is a castle. Granny.” “Right. Well. We won’t keep you, then,” said Granny. “Come, Gytha.” Nanny Ogg helped herself to an elderly lamb chop from under one of the silver covers, and waved it vaguely at the royal pair. “Have fun,” she said. “Insofar as that’s possible.” “Gytha!” “Coming.”   Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder. Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels. Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies. Elves are glamorous. They project glamour. Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment. Elves are terrific. They beget terror. The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning. No one ever said elves are nice. Elves are bad.   “Well, that’s it,” said Nanny Ogg, as the witches walked out over the castle’s drawbridge. “Well done, Esme.” “It ain’t over,” said Granny Weatherwax. “You said yourself they can’t get through now. No one else round here’s going to try any magic at the stones, that’s sure enough.” “Yes, but it’ll be circle time for another day or so yet. Anything could happen.” “That Diamanda girl’s out of it, and you’ve put the wind up the others,” said Nanny Ogg, tossing the lamb bone into the dry moat. “Ain’t no one else going to call ‘em, I know that.” “There’s still the one in the dungeon.” “You want to get rid of it?” said Nanny. “I’ll send our Shawn to King Ironfoundersson up at Copperhead, if you like. Or I could hop on the old broomstick meself and go and drop the word to the Mountain King. The dwarfs and trolls’ll take it off our hands like a shot. No more problem.” Granny ignored this. “There’s something else,” she said. “Something we haven’t thought of. She’ll still be looking for a way.” They’d reached the town square now. She surveyed it. Of course, Verence was king and that was right and proper, and this was his kingdom and that was right and proper too. But in a deeper sense the kingdom belonged to her. And to Gytha Ogg, of course. Verence’s writ only ran to the doings of mankind; even the dwarfs and trolls didn’t acknowledge him as king, although they were very polite about it. But when it came to the trees and the rocks and the soil. Granny Weatherwax saw it as hers. She was sensitive to its moods. It was still being watched. She could sense the watchfulness. Sufficiently close examination changes the thing being observed, and what was being observed was the whole country. The whole country was under attack, and here she was, her mind unravelling . . . “Funny thing,” said Nanny Ogg, to no one in particular, “while I was sitting up there at the Dancers this morning I thought, funny thing. . .” “What’re you going on about now?” “I remember when I was young there was a girl like Diamanda. Bad-tempered and impatient and talented and a real pain in the bum to the old witches. I don’t know if you happen to remember her, by any chance?” They passed Jason’s forge, which rang to the sound of his hammer. “I never forgot her,” said Granny, quietly. “Funny thing, how things go round in circles . . .” “No they don’t,” said Granny Weatherwax firmly. “I wasn’t like her. You know what the old witches round here were like. Set in their ways. No more than a bunch of old wart-charmers. And I wasn’t rude to them. I was just . . . firm. Forthright. I stood up for meself. Part of being a witch is standing up for yourself - you’re grinning.” “Just wind, I promise.” “It’s completely different with her. No one’s ever been able to say I wasn’t open to new ideas.” “Well known for being open to new ideas, you are,” said Nanny Ogg. “I’m always saying, that Esme Weatherwax, she’s always open to new ideas.” “Right.” Granny Weatherwax looked up at the forested hills around the town, and frowned. “The thing is,” she said, “girls these days don’t know how to think with a clear mind. You’ve got to think clearly and not be distracted. That’s Magrat for you, always being distracted. It gets in the way of doing the proper thing.” She stopped. “I can feel her, Gytha. The Queen of the Fairies. She can get her mind past the stones. Blast that girl! She’s got a way in. She’s everywhere. Everywhere I look with my mind, I can smell her.” “Everything’s going to be all right,” said Nanny, patting her on the shoulder. “You’ll see.” “She’s looking for a way,” Granny repeated.   “Good morrow, brothers, and wherehap do we whist this merry day?” said Carter the baker. The rest of the Lancre Morris Men looked at him. “You on some kind of medication or what?” said Weaver the thatcher. “Just trying to enter into the spirit of the thing,” said Carter. “That’s how rude mechanicals talk.” “Who’re rude mechanicals?” said Baker the weaver. “They’re the same as Comic Artisans, I think,” said Carter the baker. “I asked my mum what artisans are,” said Jason. “Yeah?” “They’re us.” “And we’re Rude Mechanicals as well?” said Baker the weaver. “I reckon.” “Bum!” “Well, we certainly don’t talk like these buggers in the writing,” said Carter the baker. “I never said ‘fol-de-rol’ in my life. And I can’t understand any of the jokes.” “You ain’t supposed to understand the jokes, this is a play,” said Jason. “Drawers!” said Baker the weaver. “Oh, shut up. And push the cart.” “Don’t see why we couldn’t do the Stick and Bucket Dance . . .” mumbled Tailor the other weaver. “We’re not doing the Stick and Bucket dance! I never want to hear any more ever about the Stick and Bucket dance! I still get twinges in my knee! So shut up about the Stick and Bucket dance!” “Belly!” shouted Baker, who wasn’t a man to let go of an idea. The cart containing the props bumped and skidded on the rutted track. Jason had to admit that Morris dancing was a lot easier than acting. People didn’t keep turning up to watch and giggle. Small children didn’t stand around jeering. Weaver and Thatcher were in almost open rebellion now, and mucking up the words. The evenings were becoming a constant search for somewhere to rehearse. Even the forest wasn’t private enough. It was amazing how people would just happen to be passing. Weaver stopped pushing, and wiped his brow. “You’d have thought the Blasted Oak would’ve been safe,” he said. “Half a mile from the nearest path, and damn me if after five minutes you can’t move for charcoal burners, hermits, trappers, tree tappers, hunters, trolls, bird-limers, hurdle-makers, swine-herds, truffle hunters, dwarfs, bodgers and suspicious buggers with big coats on. I’m surprised there’s room in the forest for the bloody trees. Where to now?” They’d reached a crossroads, if such it could be called. “Don’t remember this one,” said Carpenter the poacher. “Thought I knew all the paths around here.” “That’s ‘cos you only ever sees ‘em in the dark,” said Jason. “Yeah, everyone knows ‘tis your delight on a shining night,” said Thatcher the carter. “Tis his delight every night,” said Jason. “Hey,” said Baker the weaver, “we’re getting really good at this rude mechanism, ain’t we?” “Let’s go right,” said Jason. “Nah, it’s all briars and thorns that way.” “All right, then, left then.” “It’s all winding,” said Weaver. “What about the middle road?” said Carter. Jason peered ahead. There was a middle track, hardly more than an animal path, which wound away under shady trees. Ferns grew thickly alongside it. There was a general green, rich, dark feel to it, suggested by the word “bosky”[22] His blacksmith’s senses stood up and screamed. “Not that way,” he said. “Ah, come on,” said Weaver. “What’s wrong with it?” “Goes up to the Dancers, that path does,” said Jason. “Me mam said no one was to go up to the Dancers ‘cos of them young women dancing round ‘em in the nudd.” “Yeah, but they’ve been stopped from that,” said Thatcher. “Old Granny Weatherwax put her foot down hard and made ‘em put their drawers on.” “And they ain’t to go there anymore, neither,” said Carter. “So it’ll be nice and quiet for the rehearsing.” “Me mam said no one was to go there,” said Jason, a shade uncertainly. “Yeah, but she probably meant . . . you know . . . with magical intent,” said Carter. “Nothing magical about prancing around in wigs and stuff.” “Right,” said Thatcher. “And it’ll be really private.” “And,” said Weaver, “if any young women fancies sneaking back up there to dance around without their drawers on, we’ll be sure to see ‘em.” There was a moment of absolute, introspective silence. “I reckon,” said Thatcher, voicing the unspoken views of nearly all of them, “we owes it to the community.” “We-ell,” said Jason, “me mam said . . .” “Anyway, your mum’s a fine one to talk,” said Weaver. “My dad said that when he was young, your mum hardly ever had-“ “Oh, all right,” said Jason, clearly outnumbered. “Can’t see it can do any harm. We’re only actin’. It’s . . . it’s make-believe. It’s not as if it’s anything real. But no one’s to do any dancing. Especially, and I want everyone to be absolutely definite about this, the Stick and Bucket dance.” “Oh, we’ll be acting all right,” said Weaver. “And keeping watch as well, o’course.” “It’s our duty to the community,” said Thatcher, again. “Make-believe is bound to be all right,” said Jason, uncertainly.   Clang boinng clang ding . . . The sound echoed around Lancre. Grown men, digging in their gardens, flung down their spades and hurried for the safety of their cottages . . . Clang boinnng goinng ding . . . Women appeared in doorways and yelled desperately for their children to come in at once . . . . . . BANG buggrit Dong boinng . . . Shutters thundered shut. Some men, watched by their frightened families, poured water on the fire and tried to stuff sacks up the chimney . . . Nanny Ogg lived alone, because she said old people needed their pride and independence. Besides, Jason lived on one side, and he or his wife whatshername could easily be roused by means of a boot applied heavily to the wall, and Shawn lived on the other side and Nanny had got him to fix up a long length of string with some tin cans on it in case his presence was required. But this was only for emergencies, such as when she wanted a cup of tea or felt bored. Bond drat clang . . . Nanny Ogg had no bathroom but she did have a tin bath, which normally hung on a nail on the back of the privy. Now she was dragging it indoors. It was almost up the garden, after being bounced off various trees, walls, and garden gnomes on the way. Three large black kettles steamed by her fireside. Beside them were half a dozen towels, the loofah, the pumice stone, the soap, the soap for when the first soap got lost, the ladle for fishing spiders out, the waterlogged rubber duck with the prolapsed squeaker, the bunion chisel, the big scrubbing brush, the small scrubbing brush, the scrubbing brush on a stick for difficult crevices, the banjo, the thing with the pipes and spigots that no one ever really knew the purpose of, and a bottle of Klatchian Nights bath essence, one drop of which could crinkle paint. Bong clang slam . . . Everyone in Lancre had learned to recognize Nanny’s pre-ablutive activities, out of self-defense. “But it ain’t April!” neighbours told themselves, as they drew the curtains. In the house just up the hill from Nanny Ogg’s cottage Mrs. Skindle grabbed her husband’s arm. “The goat’s still outside!” “Are you mad? I ain’t going out there! Not now!” “You know what happened last time! It was paralysed all down one side for three days, man, and we couldn’t get it down off the roof!” Mr. Skindle poked his head out of the door. It had all gone quiet. Too quiet. “She’s probably pouring the water in,” he said. “You’ve got a minute or two,” said his wife. “Go on, or we’ll be drinking yoghurt for weeks.” Mr. Skindle took down a halter from behind the door, and crept out to where his goat was tethered near the hedge. It too had learned to recognize the bathtime ritual, and was rigid with apprehension. There was no point in trying to drag it. Eventually he picked it up bodily. There was a distant but insistent sloshing noise, and the bonging sound of a floating pumice stone bouncing on the side of a tin bath. Mr. Skindle started to run. Then there was the distant tinkle of a banjo being tuned. The world held its breath. Then it came, like a tornado sweeping across a prairie. “AAaaaaeeeeeee-“ Three flowerpots outside the door cracked, one after the other. Shrapnel whizzed past Mr. Skindle’s ear. “-wizzaaardsah staaafff has a knobontheend, knobontheend-“ He threw the goat through the doorway and leapt after it. His wife was waiting, and slammed the door shut behind him. The whole family, including the goat, got under the table. It wasn’t that Nanny Ogg sang badly. It was just that she could hit notes which, when amplified by a tin bath half full of water, ceased to be sound and became some sort of invasive presence. There had been plenty of singers whose high notes could smash a glass, but Nanny’s high C could clean it. The Lancre Morris Men sat glumly on the turf, passing an earthenware jug between them. It had not been a good rehearsal. “Don’t work, does it?” said Thatcher. “’S’not funny, that I do know,” said Weaver. “Can’t see the king killing himself laughing at us playing a bunch of mechanical artisans not being very good at doin’ a play.” “You’re just no good at it,” said Jason. “We’re sposed to be no good at it,” said Weaver. “Yeah, but you’re no good at acting like someone who’s ho good at acting,” said Tinker. “I don’t know how, but you ain’t. You can’t expect all the fine lords and ladies-“ A breeze blew over the moor, tasting of ice at midsummer. “-to laugh at us not being any good at being no good at acting.” “I don’t see what’s funny about a bunch of rude artisans trying to do a play anyway,” said Weaver. Jason shrugged. “It says all the gentry-“ A tang on the wind, the sharp tin taste of snow . . . “-in Ankh-Morpork laughed at it for weeks and weeks,” he said. “It was on Broad Way for three months.” “What’s Broad Way?” “That’s where all the theatres are. The Dysk, Lord Wynkin’s Men, the Bearpit . . .” “They’d laugh at any damn thing down there,” said Weaver. “Anyway, they all think we’re all simpletons up here. They all think we say oo-aah and sings daft folk songs and has three brain cells huddlin’ together for warmth ‘cos of drinking scumble all the time.” “Yeah. Pass that jug.” “Swish city bastards.” “They don’t know what it’s like to be up to the armpit in a cow’s backside on a snowy night. Hah!” “And there ain’t one of ‘em that - what’re you talking about? You ain’t got a cow.” “No, but I know what it’s like.” “They don’t know what it’s like to get one wellie sucked off in a farmyard full of gyppoe and that horrible moment where you waves the foot around knowin’ that wherever you puts it down it’s going to go through the crust.” The stoneware jug glugged gently as it was passed from hand to unsteady hand. “True. That’s very true. And you ever seen ‘em Morris dancing? “Muff to make you hang up your hanky.” “What, Morris dancing in a city?” “Well, down in Sto Helit, anyway. Bunch o’ soft wizards and merchants. I watched ‘em a whole hour and there wasn’t even a groinin’.” “Swish city bastards. Comin’ up here, takin’ our jobs. . .” “Don’t be daft. They don’t know what a proper job is.” The jug glugged, but with a deeper tone, suggesting that it contained a lot of emptiness. “Bet they’ve never been up to the armpit-“ “The point is. The point is. The point. The point is. Hah. All laughin’ at decent rude artisans, eh? I mean. I mean. I mean. What’s it all about? I mean. I mean. I mean. Play’s all about some mechanical. . . rude buggers makin’ a pig’s ear out of doin’ a play about a bunch of lords and ladies-“ A chill in the air, sharp as icicles . . . “It needs something else.” “Right. Right.” “A mythic element.” “Right. My point. My point. My point. Needs a plot they can go home whistlin’. Exactly.” “So it should be done here, in the open air. Open to the sky and the hills.” Jason Ogg wrinkled his brows. They were always pretty wrinkled anyway, whenever he was dealing with the complexities of the world. Only when it came to iron did he know exactly what to do. But he held up a wavering finger and tried to count his fellow thespians. Given that the jug was now empty, this was an effort. There seemed, on average, to be seven other people. But he had a vague, nagging feeling that something wasn’t right. “Out here,” he said, uncertainly. “Good idea,” said Weaver. “Wasn’t it your idea?” said Jason. “I thought you said it.” “I thought you did.” “Who cares who said it?” said Thatcher. “’S’a good idea. Seems . . . right.” “What was that about the miffic quality?” “What’s miffic?” “Something you’ve got to have,” said Weaver, theatrical expert. “Very important, your miffics.” “Me mam said no one was to go-“ Jason began. “We shan’t be doing any dancing or anything,” said Carter. “I can see you don’t want people skulking around up here by ‘emselves, doin’ magic. But it can’t be wrong if everyone comes here. I mean, the king and everyone. Your mam, too. Hah, I’d like to see any girls with no drawers on get past her!” “I don’t think it’s just-“ Jason began. “And the other one’ll be there, too,” said Weaver. They considered Granny Weatherwax. “Cor, she frightens the life out of me, her,” said Thatcher, eventually. “The way she looks right through you. I wouldn’t say a word against her, mark you, a fine figure of a woman,” he said loudly, and then added rather more quietly, “but they do say she creeps around the place o’nights, as a hare or a bat or something. Changes her shape and all. Not that I believes a word of it,” he raised his voice, then let it sink again, “but old Weezen over in Slice told me once he shot a hare in the leg one night and next day she passed him on the lane and said ‘Ouch’ and gave him a right ding across the back of his head.” “My dad said,” said Weaver, “that one day he was leading our old cow to market and it took ill and fell down in the lane near her cottage and he couldn’t get it to move and he went up to her place and he knocked on the door and she opened it and before he could open his mouth she said, “Yer cow’s ill, Weaver” . . . just like that . . . And then she said-“ “Was that the old brindled cow what your dad had?” said Carter. “No, it were my uncle had the brindled cow, we had the one with the crumpled horn,” said Weaver. “Anyway-“ “Could have sworn it was brindled,” said Carter. “I remember my dad looking at it over the hedge one day and saying, ‘That’s fine brindling on that cow, you don’t get brindling like that these days.’ That was when you had that old field alongside Cabb’s Well.” “We never had that field, it was my cousin had that field,” said Weaver. “Anyway-“ “You sure?” “Anyway,” said Weaver, she said, “You wait there, I’ll give you something for it,” and she goes out into her back kitchen and comes back with a couple of big red pills, and she-“ “How’d it get crumpled, then?” said Carter. “-and she gave him one of the pills and said, ‘What you do, you raise the old cow’s tail and shove this pill where the sun don’t shine, and in half a minute she’ll be up and running as fast as she can,’ and he thanked her, and then as he was going out of the door he said, ‘What’s the other pill for?’ and she gave him a look and said, ‘Well, you want to catch her, don’t you?’” “That’d be that deep valley up near Slice,” said Carter. They looked at him. “What, exactly, are you talking about?” said Weaver. “It’s right behind the mountain,” said Carter, nodding knowingly. “Very shady there. That’s what she meant, I expect. The place where the sun doesn’t shine. Long way to go for a pill, but I suppose that’s witches for you.” Weaver winked at the others. “Listen,” he said, “I’m telling you she meant . . . well, where the monkey put his nut.” Carter shook his head. “No monkeys in Slice,” he said. His face became suffused with a slow grin. “Oh, I get it! She was daft!” “Them playwriters down in Ankh,” said Baker, “boy, they certainly know about us. Pass me the jug.” Jason turned his head again. He was getting more and more uneasy. His hands, which were always in daily contact with iron, were itching. “Reckon we ought to be getting along home now, lads,” he managed. “’S’nice night,” said Baker, staying put. “Look at them stars a-twinklin’.” “Turned a bit cold, though,” said Jason. “Smells like snow,” said Carter. “Oh, yeah,” said Baker. “That’s right. Snow at midsummer. That’s what they get where the sun don’t shine.” “Shutup, shutup, shutup,” said Jason. “What’s up with you?” “It’s wrong! We shouldn’t be up here! Can’t you feel it?” “Oh, sit down, man,” said Weaver. “It’s fine. Can’t feel nothing but the air. And there’s still more scumble in the jug.” Baker leaned back. “I remember an old story about this place,” he said. “Some man went to sleep up here once, when he was out hunting.” The bottle glugged in the dusk. “So what? I can do that,” said Carter. “I go to sleep every night, reg’lar.” “Ah, but this man, when he woke up and went home, his wife was carrying on with someone else and all his children had grown up and didn’t know who he was.” “Happens to me just about every day,” said Weaver gloomily. Baker sniffed. “You know, it does smell a bit like snow. You know? That kind of sharp smell.” Thatcher leaned back, cradling his head on his arm. “Tell you what,” he said, “if I thought my old woman’d marry someone else and my hulking great kids’d bugger off and stop eating up the larder every day I’d come up here with a blanket like a shot. Who’s got that jug?” Jason took a pull out of nervousness, and found that he felt better as the alcohol dissolved his synapses. But he made an effort. “Hey, lads,” he slurred, “’ve got ‘nother jug coolin’ in the water trough down in the forge, what d’you say? We could all go down there now. Lads? Lads?” There was the soft sound of snoring. “Oh, lads.” Jason stood up. The stars wheeled. Jason fell down, very gently. The jug rolled out of his hands and bounced across the grass. The stars twinkled, the breeze was cold, and it smelled of snow.   The king dined alone, which is to say, he dined at one end of the big table and Magrat dined at the other.  But they managed to meet up for a last glass of wine in front of the fire. They always found it difficult to know what to say at moments like this. Neither of them was used to spending what might be called quality time in the company of another person. The conversation tended toward the cryptic. And mostly it was about the wedding. It’s different, for royalty. For one thing, you’ve already got everything. The traditional wedding list with the complete set of Tupperware and the twelve-piece dining set looks a bit out of place when you’ve already got a castle with so many furnished rooms that have been closed up for so long that the spiders have evolved into distinct species in accordance with strict evolutionary principles. And you can’t simply multiply it all up and ask for An Army in a Red and White Motif to match the kitchen wallpaper. Royalty, when they marry, either get very small things, like exquisitely constructed clockwork eggs, or large bulky items, like duchesses. And then there’s the guest list. It’s bad enough at an ordinary wedding, what with old relatives who dribble and swear, brothers who get belligerent after one drink, and various people who Aren’t Talking to other people because of What They Said About Our Sharon. Royalty has to deal with entire countries who get belligerent after one drink, and entire kingdoms who Have Broken Off Diplomatic Relations after what the Crown Prince Said About Our Sharon. Verence had managed to work that all out, but then there were the species to consider. Trolls and dwarfs got on all right in Lancre by the simple expedient of having nothing to do with one another, but too many of them under one roof, especially if drink was flowing, and especially if it was flowing in the direction of the dwarfs, and people would Be Breaking People’s Arms Off because of what, more or less, Their Ancestors Said About Our Sharon. And then there’s other things . . . “How’s the girl they brought in?” “I’ve told Millie to keep an eye on her. What are they doing, those two?” “I don’t know.” “You’re king, aren’t you?” Verence shifted uneasily. “But they’re witches. I don’t like to ask them questions.” “Why not?” “They might give me answers. And then what would I do?” “What did Granny want to talk to you about?” “Oh . . . you know . . . things . . .” “It wasn’t about . . . sex, was it?” Verence suddenly looked like a man who had been expecting a frontal attack and suddenly finds nasty things happening behind him. “No! Why?” “Nanny was trying to give me motherly advice. It was all I could do to keep a straight face. Honestly, they both treat me as if I’m a big child.” “Oh, no. Nothing like that.” They sat on either side of the huge fireplace, both crimson with embarrassment. Then Magrat said: “Er . . . you did send off for that book, did you? You know . . . the one with the woodcuts?” “Oh, yes. Yes, I did.” “It ought to have arrived by now.” “Well, we only get a mail coach once a week. I expect it’ll come tomorrow. I’m fed up with running down there every week in case Shawn gets there first.” “You are king. You could tell him not to.” “Don’t like to, really. He’s so keen.” A large log crackled into two across the iron dogs. “Can you really get books about. . . that?” “You can get books about anything.” They both stared at the fire. Verence thought: she doesn’t like being a queen, I can see that, but that’s what you are when you marry a king, all the books say so . . . And Magrat thought: he was much nicer when he was a man with silver bells on his hat and slept every night on the floor in front of his master’s door. I could talk to him then . . . Verence clapped his hands together. “Well, that’s about it, then. Busy day tomorrow, what with all the guests coming and everything.” “Yes. It’s going to be a long day.” “Very nearly the longest day. Haha.” “Yes.” “I expect they’ve put warming pans in our beds.” “Has Shawn got the hang of it now?” “I hope so. I can’t afford any more mattresses.” It was a great hall. Shadows piled up in the corners, clustered at either end. “I suppose,” said Magrat, very slowly, as they stared at the fire, “they haven’t really had many books here in Lancre. Up until now.” “Literacy is a great thing.” “They got along without them, I suppose.” “Yes, but not properly. Their husbandry is really very primitive.” Magrat looked at the fire. Their wifery wasn’t up to much either, she thought. “So we’d better be off to bed, then, do you think?” “I suppose so.” Verence took down two silver candlesticks, and lit the candles with a taper. He handed one to Magrat. “Goodnight, then.” “Goodnight.” They kissed, and turned away, and headed for their own rooms. The sheets on Magrat’s bed were just beginning to turn brown. She pulled out the warming pan and dropped it out of the window. She glared at the garderobe. Magrat was probably the only person in Lancre who worried about things being biodegradable. Everyone else just hoped things would last and knew that damn near everything went rotten if you left it long enough. At home - correction, at the cottage where she used to live - there had been a privy at the bottom of the garden. She’d approved of it. With a regular bucket of ashes and a copy of last year’s Almanack on a nail and a bunch-of-grapes cut out on the door it functioned quite effectively. About once every few months she’d have to dig a big hole and get someone to help her move the shed itself. The garderobe was this: a sort of small roofed-in room inside the wall, with a wooden seat positioned over a large square hole that went down all the way to the foot of the castle wall far below, where there was an opening from which biodegradability took place once a week by means of an organodynamic process known as Shawn Ogg and his wheelbarrow. That much Magrat understood. It kind of fitted in with the whole idea of royalty and commonality. What shocked her were the hooks. They were for storing clothes in the garderobe. Millie had explained that the more expensive furs and things were hung there. Moths were kept away by the draught from the hole and . . . the smell.[23] Magrat had put her foot down about that, at least. Now she lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. Of course she wanted to marry Verence, even with his weak chin and slightly runny eyes. In the pit of the night Magrat knew that she was in no position to be choosy, and getting a king in the circumstances was a stroke of luck. It was just that she had preferred him when he’d been a Fool. There’s something about a man who tinkles gently as he moves. It was just that she could see a future of bad tapestry and sitting looking wistfully out of the window. It was just that she was fed up with books of etiquette and lineage and Twurp’s Peerage of the Fifteen Mountains and the Sto Plains. You had to know this kind of thing, to be a queen. There were books full of the stuff in the Long Gallery, and she hadn’t even explored the far end. How to address the third cousin of an earl. What the pictures on shields meant, all those lions passant and regardant. And the clothes weren’t getting any better. Magrat had drawn the line at a wimple, and she wasn’t at all happy about the big pointy hat with the scarf dangling from it. It probably looked beautiful on the Lady of Shallot, but on Magrat it looked as though someone had dropped a big ice cream on her neck.   Nanny Ogg sat in front of her fire in her dressing gown, smoking her pipe and idly cutting her toenails. There was the occasional ping and ricochet from distant parts of the room, and a small tinkle as an oil lamp was smashed.   Granny Weatherwax lay on her bed, still and cold. In her blue-veined hands, the words: I ATE’NT DEAD . . . Her mind drifted across the forest, searching, searching. . . The trouble was, she could not go where there were no eyes to see or ears to hear. So she never noticed the hollow near the stones, where eight men slept. And dreamed . . .   Lancre is cut off from the rest of the lands of mankind by a bridge over Lancre Gorge, above the shallow but poisonously fast and treacherous Lancre River.[24] The coach pulled up at the far end. There was a badly painted red, black, and white post across the road. The coachman sounded his horn. “What’s up?” said Ridcully, leaning out of the window. “Troll bridge.” “Whoops.” After a while there was a booming sound under the bridge, and a troll clambered over the parapet. It was quite overdressed, for a troll. In addition to the statutory loincloth, it was wearing a helmet. Admittedly it had been designed for a human head, and was attached to the much larger troll head by string, but there probably wasn’t a better word than “wearing.” “What’s up?” said the Bursar, waking up. “There’s a troll on the bridge,” said Ridcully, “but it’s underneath a helmet, so it’s probably official and will get into serious trouble if it eats people.[25] Nothing to worry about.” The Bursar giggled, because he was on the upcurve of whatever switchback his mind was currently riding. The troll appeared at the coach window. “Afternoon, your lordships,” it said. “Customs inspection.” “I don’t think we have any,” babbled the Bursar happily. “I mean, we used to have a tradition of rolling boiled eggs downhill on Soul Cake Tuesday, but-“ “I means,” said the troll, “do you have any beer, spirits, wines, liquors, hallucinogenic herbage, or books of a lewd or licentious nature?” Ridcully pulled the Bursar back from the window. “No,” he said. “No?” “No.” “Sure?” “Yes.” “Would you like some?” “We haven’t even got,” said the Bursar, despite Ridcully’s efforts to sit on his head, “any billygoats.” There are some people that would whistle “Yankee Doodle” in a crowded bar in Atlanta. Even these people would consider it tactless to mention the word “billygoat” to a troll. The troll’s expression changed very slowly, like a glacier eroding half a mountain. Ponder tried to get under the seat. “So we’ll just trit-trot along, shall we?” said the Bursar, his voice by now slightly muffled. “He doesn’t mean it,” said the Archchancellor quickly. “It’s the dried frog talking.” “You don’t want to eat me,” said the Bursar. “You want to eat my brother, he’s much mfmfph mfmfph . . .” “Well, now,” said the troll, “seems to me that-“ He spotted Casanunda. “Oh-ho,” he said, “dwarf smuggling, eh?” “Don’t be ridiculous, man,” said Ridcully, “there’s no such thing as dwarf smuggling.” “Yeah? Then what’s that you’ve got there?” “I’m a giant,” said Casanunda. “Giants are a lot bigger.” “I’ve been ill.” The troll looked perplexed. This was post-graduate thinking for a troll. But he was looking for trouble. He found it on the roof of the coach, where the Librarian had been sunbathing. “What’s in that sack up there?” “That’s not a sack. That’s the Librarian.” The troll prodded the large mass of red hair. “Ook. . .” “What? A monkey?” “Oook?” Several minutes later, the travellers leaned on the parapet, looking down reflectively at the river far below. “Happen often, does it?” said Casanunda. “Not so much these days,” said Ridcully. “It’s like - what’s that word, Stibbons? About breedin’ and passin’ on stuff to yer kids?” “Evolution,” said Ponder. The ripples were still sloshing against the banks. “Right. Like, my father had a waistcoat with embroidered peacocks on it, and he left it to me, and now I’ve got it. They call it hereditarery-“ “No, that’s not-“ Ponder began, with no hope whatsoever that Ridcully would listen. “-so anyway, most people left back home know the difference between apes and monkeys now,” said Ridcully. “Evolution, that is. It’s hard to breed when you’ve got a headache from being bounced up and down on the pavement.” The ripples had stopped now. “Do you think trolls can swim?” said Casanunda. “No. They just sink and walk ashore,” said Ridcully He turned, and leaned back on his elbows. “This really takes me back, you know. The old Lancre River. There’s trout down there that’d take your arm off.” “Not just trout,” said Ponder, watching a helmet emerge from the water. “And limpid pools further up,” said Ridcully. “Full of, of, of . . . limpids, stuff like that. And you can bathe naked and no one’d see. And water meadows full of . . . water, don’tyerknow, and flowers and stuff.” He sighed. “You know, it was on this very bridge that she told me she-“ “He’s got out of the river,” said Ponder. But the troll wasn’t moving very fast, because the Librarian was nonchalantly levering one of the big stones out of the parapet. “On this very bridge I asked-“ “That’s a big club he’s got,” said Casanunda. “This bridge, I may say, was where I nearly-“ “Could you stop holding that rock in such a provocative way?” said Ponder. “Oook.” “It’d be a help.” “The actual bridge, if anyone’s interested, is where my whole life took a diff-“ “Why don’t we just go on?” said Ponder. “He’s got a steep climb.” “Good thing for him he hasn’t got up here, eh?” said Casanunda. Ponder swiveled the Librarian around and pushed him toward the coach. “This is the bridge, in fact, where-“ Ridcully turned around. “Are you coming or not?” said Casanunda, with the reins in his hand. “I was actually having a quality moment of misty nostalgic remembrance,” said Ridcully. “Not that any of you buggers noticed, of course.” Ponder held the door open. “Well, you know what they say. You can’t cross the same river twice, Archchancellor,” he said. Ridcully stared at him. “Why not? This is a bridge.”   On the roof of the coach the Librarian picked up the coach-horn, bit the end of it reflectively - well, you never knew - and then blew it so hard that it uncurled. It was early morning in Lancre town, and it was more or less deserted. Farmers had got up hours before to curse and swear and throw a bucket at the cows and had then gone back to bed. The sound of the horn bounced off the houses. Ridcully leapt out of the coach and took a deep, theatrical breath. “Can’t you smell that?” he said. “That’s real fresh mountain air, that is.” He thumped his chest. “I’ve just trodden in something rural,” said Ponder. “Where is the castle, sir?” “I think it could be that huge black towering thing looming over the town,” said Casanunda. The Archchancellor stood in the middle of the square and turned slowly with his arms spread wide. “See that tavern?” he said. “Hah! If I had a penny for every time they threw me out of there, I’d have . . . five dollars and thirty-eight pence. And over there is the old forge, and there’s Mrs. Persifleur’s, where I had lodgings. See that peak up there? That’s Copperhead, that is. I climbed that one day with old Carbonaceous the troll. Oh, great days, great days. And see that wood down there, on the hill? That’s where she-“ His voice trailed into a mumble. “Oh, my word. It all comes back to me . . . What a summer that was. They don’t make ‘em like that anymore.” He sighed. “You know,” he said, “I’d give anything to walk through those woods with her again. There were so many things we never - oh, well. Come on.” Ponder looked around at Lancre. He’d been born and raised in Ankh-Morpork. As far as he was concerned, the countryside was something that happened to other people, and most of them had four legs. As far as he was concerned, the countryside was like raw chaos before the universe, which was to say something with cobbles and walls, something civilized, was created. “This is the capital city?” he said. “More or less,” said Casanunda, who tended to feel the same way about places that weren’t paved. “I bet there’s not a single delicatessen anywhere,” said Ponder. “And the beer here,” said Ridcully, “the beer here - well, you’d just better taste the beer here! And there’s stuff called scumble, they make it from apples and . . . and damned if I know what else they put in it, except you daren’t pour it into metal mugs. You ought to try it, Mr. Stibbons. It’d put hair on your chest. And yours-“ he turned to the next one down from the coach, who turned out to be the Librarian. “Oook?” “Well, I, er, I should just drink anything you like, in your case,” said Ridcully. He hauled the mail sack down from the roof. “What do we do with this?” he said. There were ambling footsteps behind him, and he turned to see a short, red-faced youth in ill-fitting and baggy chain-mail, which made him look like a lizard that had lost a lot of weight very quickly. “Where’s the coach driver?” said Shawn Ogg. “He’s ill,” said Ridcully. “He had a sudden attack of bandits. What do we do with the mail?” “I take the palace stuff, and we generally leave the sack hanging up on a nail outside the tavern so that people can help themselves,” said Shawn. “Isn’t that dangerous?” said Ponder. “Don’t think so. It’s a strong nail,” said Shawn, rummaging in the sack. “I meant, don’t people steal letters?” “Oh, they wouldn’t do that, they wouldn’t do that. One of the witches’d go and stare at ‘em if they did that.” Shawn stuffed a few packages under his arm and hung the sack on the aforesaid nail. “Yes, that’s another thing they used to have round here,” said Ridcully. “Witches! Let me tell you about the witches round here-“ “Our mum’s a witch,” said Shawn conversationally, rummaging in the sack. “As fine a body of women as you could hope to meet,” said Ridcully, with barely a hint of mental gear-clashing. “And not a bunch of interfering power-mad old crones at all, whatever anyone might say.” “Are you here for the wedding?” “That’s right. I’m the Archchancellor of Unseen University, this is Mr. Stibbons, a wizard, this - where are you? Oh, there you are - this is Mr. Casanunda-“ “Count,” said Casanunda. “I’m a Count.” “Really? You never said.” “Well, you don’t, do you? It’s not the first thing you say.” Ridcully’s eyes narrowed. “But I thought dwarfs didn’t have titles,” he said. “I performed a small service for Queen Agantia of Skund,” said Casanunda. “Did you? My word. How small?” “Not that small.” “My word. And that’s the Bursar, and this is the Librarian.” Ridcully took a step backward, waved his hands in the air, and silently mouthed the words: Don’t Say Monkey. “Pleased to meet you,” said Shawn, politely. Ridcully felt moved to investigate. “The Librarian,” he repeated. “Yes. You said.” Shawn nodded at the orang-utan. “How d’you do?” “Ook.” “You might be wondering why he looks like that,” Ridcully prompted. “No, sir.” “No?” “My mum says none of us can help how we’re made,” said Shawn. “What a singular lady. And what is her name?” said Ridcully. “Mrs. Ogg, sir.” “Ogg? Ogg? Name rings a bell. Any relation to Sobriety Ogg?” “He was my dad, sir.” “Good grief. Old Sobriety’s son? How is the old devil?” “Dunno, sir, what with him being dead.” “Oh dear. How long ago?” “These past thirty years,” said Shawn. “But you don’t look any older than twen-“ Ponder began. Ridcully elbowed him sharply in the ribcage. “This is the countryside,” he hissed. “People do things differently here. And more often.” He turned back to Shawn’s pink and helpful face. “Things seem to be waking up a bit,” he said, and indeed shutters were coming down around the square. “We’ll get some breakfast in the tavern. They used to do wonderful breakfasts.” He sniffed again, and beamed. “Now that” he said, “is what I call fresh air.” Shawn looked around carefully. “Yes, sir,” he said. “That’s what we call it, too.” There was the sound of someone frantically running, and then a pause, and King Verence II appeared around the comer, walking slowly and calmly with a very red face. “Certainly gives people a rosy complexion,” said Ridcully cheerfully. “It’s the king!” hissed Shawn. “And me without my trumpet!” “Um,” said Verence. “Post been yet, Shawn?” “Oh, yes, sire!” said Shawn, almost as flustered as the king. “Got it right here. Don’t you worry about it! I’ll open it all up and have it on your desk right away, sire!” “Um. . .” “Something the matter, sire?” “Um . . . I think perhaps . . .” Shawn was already tearing at the wrappers. “Here’s that book on etiquette you’ve been waiting for, sire, and the pig stockbook, and . . . what’s this one . . . ?” Verence made a grab for it. Shawn automatically tried to hang on to it. The wrapping split, and the large bulky book thumped on to the cobbles. Its fluttering pages played their woodcuts to the breeze. They looked down. “Wow!” said Shawn. “My word,” said Ridcully. “Um,” said the king. “Oook?” Shawn picked up the book very, very carefully, and turned a few pages. “Hey, look at this one! He’s doing it with his feet! I didn’t know you could do it with your feet!” He nudged Ponder Stibbons. “Look, sir!” Ridcully peered at the king. “You all right, your majesty?” he said. Verence squirmed. “Um . . .” “And, look, here’s one where both chaps are doing it with sticks . . .” “What?” said Verence. “Wow,” said Shawn. “Thank you, sire. This is going to really come in handy, I can tell you. I mean, I’ve picked up bits and pieces here and there, but-“ Verence snatched the book from Shawn’s hands and looked at the title page. “Martial Arts”? Martial Arts. But I’m sure I wrote Marit-“ “Sire?” There was one exquisite moment while Verence fought for mental balance, but he won. “Ah. Yes. Right. Uh. Well, yes. Uh. Of course. Yes. Well, you see, a well-trained army is . . . is essential to the security of any kingdom. That’s right. Yes. Fine. Magrat and me, we thought. . . yes. It’s for you, Shawn.” “I’ll start practicing right away, sire!” “Um. Good.”   Jason Ogg awoke, and wished he hadn’t. Let’s be clear. Many authorities have tried to describe a hangover. Dancing elephants and so on are often employed for this purpose. The descriptions never work. The always smack of, hoho, here’s one for the lads, let’s have some hangover machismo, hoho, landlord, another nineteen pints of lager, hey, we supped some stuff last night, hoho . . . Anyway, you can’t describe a scumble hangover. The best bit of it is a feeling that your teeth have dissolved and coated themselves on your tongue. Eventually the blacksmith sat up and opened his eyes.[26] His clothes were soaked with dew. His head felt full of wisps and whispers. He stared at the stones. The scumble jar was lying in the leather. After a moment or two he picked it up, and took an experimental swig. It was empty. He nudged Weaver in the ribs with his boot. “Wake up, you old bugger. We’ve been up here all night!” One by one, the Morris Men made the short but painful journey into consciousness. “I’m going to get some stick from our Eva when I get home,” moaned Carter. “You might not,” said Thatcher, who was on his hands and knees looking for his hat. “Maybe when you gets ‘ome she’ll have married someone else, eh?” “Maybe a hundred years’ll have gone past,” said Carter, hopefully. “Cor, I hope so,” said Weaver, brightening up. “I had sevenpence invested in The Thrift Bank down in Ohulan. I’ll be a millionaire at complicated interest. I’ll be as rich as Creosote.” “Who’s Creosote?” said Thatcher. “Famous rich bugger,” said Barker, fishing one of his boots out of a peat pool. “Foreign.” “Wasn’t he the one, everything he touched turned to gold?” said Carter. “Nah, that was someone else. Some king or other. That’s what happens in foreign parts. One minute you’re all right, next minute, everything you touch turns to gold. He was plagued with it.” Carter looked puzzled. “How did he manage when he had to-“ “Let that be a lesson to you, young Carter,” said Baker. “You stay here where folks are sensible, not go gadding off abroad where you might suddenly be holding a fortune in your hands and not have anything to spend it on.” “We’ve slept out here all night,” said Jason uncertainly “That’s dangerous, that is.” “You’re right there, Mr. Ogg,” said Carter, “I think something went to the toilet in my ear.” “I mean strange things can enter your head.” “That’s what I mean, too.” Jason blinked. He was certain he’d dreamed. He could remember dreaming. But he couldn’t remember what the dream had been about. But there was still the feeling in his head of voices talking to him, but too far away to be heard. “Oh, well,” he said, managing to stand up at the third attempt, “probably no harm done. Let’s get on home and see what century it is.” “What century is it, anyway?” said Thatcher. “Century of the Fruitbat, isn’t it?” said Baker. “Might not be anymore,” said Carter hopefully. It turned out that it was, indeed, the Century of the Fruitbat. Lancre didn’t have much use for units of time any smaller than an hour or larger than a year, but people were clearly putting up bunting in the town square and a gang of men were erecting the Maypole. Someone was nailing up a very badly painted picture of Verence and Magrat under which was the slogan: God Bless Their Majestieys. With hardly a word exchanged, the men parted and staggered their separate ways.   A hare lolloped through the morning mist until it reached the drunken, ancient cottage in its clearing in the woods. It reached a tree stump between the privy and The Herbs. Most woodland animals avoided The Herbs. This was because animals that didn’t avoid The Herbs over the past fifty years had tended not to have descendants. A few tendrils waved in the breeze and this was odd because there wasn’t any breeze. It sat on the stump. And then there was a sensation of movement. Something left the hare and moved across the air to an open upstairs window. It was invisible, at least to normal eyesight. The hare changed. Before, it had moved with purpose. Now it flopped down and began to wash its ears. After a while the back door opened and Granny Weatherwax walked out stiffly, holding a bowl of bread and milk. She put it down on the step and turned back without a second glance, closing the door again behind her. The hare hopped closer. It’s hard to know if animals understand obligations, or the nature of transactions. But that doesn’t matter. They’re built into witchcraft. If you want to really upset a witch, do her a favour which she has no means of repaying. The unfulfilled obligation will nag at her like a hangnail. Granny Weatherwax had been riding the hare’s mind all night. Now she owed it something. There’s be bread and milk left outside for a few days. You had to repay, good or bad. There was more than one type of obligation. That’s what people never really understood, she told herself as she stepped back into the kitchen. Magrat hadn’t understood it, nor that new girl. Things had to balance. You couldn’t set out to be a good witch or a bad witch. It never worked for long. All you could try to be was a witch, as hard as you could. She sat down by the cold hearth, and resisted a temptation to comb her ears. They had broken in somewhere. She could feel it in the trees, in the minds of tiny animals. She was planning something. Something soon. There was of course nothing special about midsummer in the occult sense, but there was in the minds of people. And the minds of people was where eleves were strong. Granny knew that sooner or later she’d have to face the Queen. Not Magrat, but the real Queen. And she would lose. She’d worked all her life on controlling the insides of her own head. She’d prided herself on being the best there was. But no longer. Just when she needed all her self reliance, she couldn’t rely on her mind. She could sense the probing of the Queen - she could remember the feel of that mind, from all those decades ago. And she seemed to have her usual skill at Borrowing. But herself - if she didn’t leave little notes for herself, she’d be totally at sea. Being a witch meant knowing exactly who you were and where you were, and she was losing the ability to know both. Last night she’d found herself setting the table for two people. She’d tried to walk into a room she didn’t have. And soon she’d have to fight an elf. If you fought an elf and lost. . . then, if you were lucky, you would die.   Magrat was brought breakfast in bed by a giggling Millie Chillum. “Guests are arriving already, ma’am. And there’s flags and everything down in the square! And Shawn has found the coronation coach!” “How can you lose a coach?” said Magrat. “It was locked up in one of the old stables, ma’am. He’s giving it a fresh coat of gold paint right now.” “But we’re going to be married here,” said Magrat. “We don’t have to go anywhere.” “The king said perhaps you could both ride around a bit. Maybe as far as Bad Ass, he said. With Shawn Ogg as a military escort. So people can wave and shout hooray. And then come back here.” Magrat put on her dressing gown and crossed to the tower window. She could see down over the outer walls and into Lancre town square, which was already quite full of people. It would have been a market day in any case, but people were erecting benches as well and the Maypole was already up. There were even a few dwarfs and trolls, politely maintaining a distance from one another. “I just saw a monkey walk across the square,” said Magrat. “The whole world’s coming to Lancre!” said Millie, who had once been as far as Slice. Magrat caught sight of the distant picture of herself and her fiance. “This is stupid,” she said to herself, but Millie heard her and was shocked. “What can you mean, ma’am?” Magrat spun around. “All this! For me!” Millie backed away in sudden fright. “I’m just Magrat Garlick! Kings ought to marry princesses and duchesses and people like that! People who are used to it! I don’t want people shouting hooray just because I’ve gone by in a coach! And especially not people who’ve known me all my life! All this - this,” her frantic gesture took in the hated garderobe, the huge four-poster bed, and the dressing room full of stiff and expensive clothes, “this stuff . . . it’s not for me! It’s for some kind of idea. Didn’t you ever get those cut-outs, those dolls, you know, when you were a girl . . . dolls you cut out, and there were cut-out clothes as well? And you could make her anything you wanted? That’s me! It’s . . . it’s like the bees! I’m being turned into a queen whether I want to or not! That’s what’s happening to me!” “I’m sure the king bought you all those nice clothes because-“ “I don’t mean just clothes. I mean people’d be shouting hooray if - if anyone went past in the coach!” “But you were the one who fell in love with the king, ma’am,” said Millie, bravely. Magrat hesitated for a moment. She’d never quite analysed that emotion. Eventually she said, “No. He wasn’t king then. No one knew he was going to be king. He was just a sad, nice little man in a cap and bells who everyone ignored.” Millie backed away a bit more. “I expect it’s nerves, ma’am,” she gabbled. “Everyone feels nervous on the day before their wedding. Shall I . . . shall I see if I can make you some herbal-“ “I’m not nervous! And I can do my own herbal tea if I happen to want any!” “Cook’s very particular who goes into the herb garden, ma’am,” said Millie. “I’ve seen that herb garden! It’s all leggy sage and yellowy parsley! If you can’t stuff it up a chicken’s bum, she doesn’t think it’s an herb! Anyway . . . who’s queen in this vicinity?” “I thought you didn’t want to be, ma’am?” said Millie. Magrat stared at her. For a moment she looked as if she was arguing with herself. Millie might not have been the best-informed girl in the world, but she wasn’t stupid. She was at the door and through it just as the breakfast tray hit the wall. Magrat sat down on the bed with her head in her hands. She didn’t want to be queen. Being a queen was like being an actor, and Magrat had never been any good at acting. She’d always felt she wasn’t very good at being Magrat, if it came to that. The bustle of the pre-nuptial activities rose up from the town. There’d be folk dancing, of course - there seemed to be no way of preventing it - and probably folk singing would be perpetrated. And there’d be dancing bears and comic jugglers and the greasy pole competition, which for some reason Nanny Ogg always won. And bowling-with-a-pig. And the bran tub, which Nanny Ogg usually ran; it was a brave man who plunged his hand into a bran tub stocked by a witch with a broad sense of humour. Magrat had always liked the fairs. Up until now. Well, there were still some things she could do. She dressed herself in her commoner’s clothes for the last time, and let herself out and down the back stairs to the widdershins tower and the room where Diamanda lay Magrat had instructed Shawn to keep a good fire going in the grate, and Diamanda was still sleeping, peacefully, the unwakeable sleep. Magrat couldn’t help noticing that Diamanda was strikingly good-looking and, from what she’d heard, quite brave enough to stand up to Granny Weatherwax. She could hardly wait to get her better so that she could envy her properly. The wound seemed to be healing up nicely, but there seemed to be - Magrat strode to the bellpull in the comer and hauled on it. After a minute or two Shawn Ogg arrived, panting. There was gold paint on his hands. “What,” said Magrat, “are all these things?” “Um. Don’t like to say, ma’am . . .” “One happens to be . . . very nearly . . . the queen,” said Magrat. “Yes, but the king said . . . well. Granny said-“ “Granny Weatherwax does not happen to rule the kingdom,” said Magrat. She hated herself when she spoke like this, but it seemed to work. “And anyway she’s not here. One is here, however, and if you don’t tell one what’s going on I’ll see to it that you do all the dirty jobs around the palace.” “But I do all the dirty jobs anyway,” said Shawn. “I shall see to it that there are dirtier ones.” Magrat picked up one of the bundles. It was made up of strips of sheet wrapped around what turned out to be an iron bar. “They’re all around her,” she said. “Why?” Shawn looked at his feet. There was gold paint on his boots, too. “Well, our mum said . . .” “Yes?” “Our mum said I was to see to it that there was iron round her. So me and Millie got some bars from down the smithy and wrapped ‘em up like this and Millie packed ‘em round her.” “Why?” “To keep away the . . . the Lords and Ladies, ma’am.” “What? That’s just old superstition! Anyway, everyone knows elves were good, whatever Granny Weatherwax says.” Behind her, Shawn flinched. Magrat pulled the wrapped iron lumps out of the bed and tossed them into the comer. “No old wives’ tales here, thank you very much. Is there anything else people haven’t been telling me, by any chance?” Shawn shook his head, guiltily aware of the thing in the dungeon. “Huh! Well, go away. Verence wants the kingdom to be modem and efficient, and that means no horseshoes and stuff around the place. Go on, go away.” “Yes, Miss Queen.” At least I can do something positive around here, Magrat told herself. Yes. Be sensible. Go and see him. Talk. Magrat clung to the idea that practically anything could be sorted out if only people talked to one another. “Shawn?” He paused at the door. “Yes, ma’am?” “Has the king gone down to the Great Hall yet?” “I think he’s still dressing, Miss Queen. He hasn’t rung for me to do the trumpet, I know that.” In fact, Verence, who didn’t like going everywhere preceded by Shawn’s idea of a fanfare, had already gone downstairs incognito. But Magrat slipped along to his room, and knocked on the door. Why be bashful? It’d be her room as well from tomorrow, wouldn’t it? She tried the handle. It turned. Without quite willing it, Magrat went in. Rooms in the castle could hardly be said to belong to anyone in any case. They’d had too many occupants over the centuries. The very atmosphere was the equivalent of those walls scattered with outbreaks of drawing-pin holes where last term’s occupants hung the posters of rock groups long disbanded. You couldn’t stamp your personality on that stone. It stamped back harder. For Magrat, stepping into a man’s bedroom was like an explorer stepping on to that part of the map marked Here Be Dragons.[27] And it wasn’t exactly what it ought to have been. Verence had arrived at the bedroom concept fairly late in life. When he was a boy, the entire family slept on straw in the cottage attic. As an apprentice in the Guild of Joculators, he’d slept on a pallet in a long dormitory of other sad, beaten young men. When he was a fully fledged Fool he’d slept, by tradition, curled up in front of his master’s door. Suddenly, at a later age than is usual, he’d been introduced to the notion of soft mattresses. And now Magrat was privy to the big secret. It hadn’t worked. There was the Great Bed of Lancre, which was said to be able to sleep a dozen people, although in what circumstances and why it should be necessary history had never made clear. It was huge and made of oak. It was also, very clearly, unslept in. Magrat pulled back the sheets, and smelled the scorched smell of linen. But it also smelled unaired, as if it hadn’t been slept in. She stared around the room until her eye lit on the little still-life by the door. There was a folded nightshirt, a candlestick, and a small pillow. As far as Verence had been concerned, a crown merely changed which side of the door you slept. Oh, gods. He’d always slept in front of the door of his master. And now he was king, he slept in front of the door to his kingdom. Magrat felt her eyes fill with tears. You couldn’t help loving someone as soppy as that. Fascinated, and aware that she was where she technically shouldn’t be, Magrat blew her nose and explored further. A heap of discarded garments by the bed suggested that Verence had mastered the art of hanging up clothes as practiced by half the population of the world, and also that he had equally had difficulty with the complex topological manoeuvres necessary to turn his socks the right way out. There was a tiny dressing table and a mirror. Stuck to the mirror frame was a dried and faded flower that looked, to Magrat, very like the ones she habitually wore in her hair. She shouldn’t have gone on looking. She admitted that to herself, afterward. But she seemed to have no self-control. There was a wooden bowl in the middle of the dresser table, full of odd coins, bits of string, and the general detritus of the nightly emptied pocket. And a folded paper. Much folded, as if it had stayed in said pocket for some time. She picked it up, and unfolded it. There were little kingdoms all over the hubward slopes of the Ramtops. Every narrow valley, every ledge that something other than a goat could stand on, was a kingdom. There were kingdoms in the Ramtops so small that, if they were ravaged by a dragon, and that dragon had been killed by a young hero, and the king had given him half his kingdom as per Section Three of the Heroic Code, then there wouldn’t have been any kingdom left. There were wars of annexation that went on for years just because someone wanted a place to keep the coal. Lancre was one of the biggest kingdoms. It could actually afford a standing army.[28] Kings and queens and various sub-orders of aristocracy were even now streaming over Lancre bridge, watched by a sulking and soaking-wet troll who had given up on bridge-keeping for the day. The Great Hall had been thrown open. Jugglers and fire-eaters strolled among the crowd. Up in the minstrels gallery a small orchestra were playing the Lancre one-string fiddle and famed Ramtop bagpipes, but fortunately they were more or less drowned out by the noise of the crowd. Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax moved through said crowd. In deference to this being a festive occasion, Nanny Ogg had exchanged her normal black pointy hat for one the same shape but in red, with wax cherries on it. “All the hort mond are here,” Nanny observed, taking a drink off a passing tray. “Even some wizards from Ankh-Morpork, our Shawn said. One of them said I had a fine body, he said. Been tryin’ to remember all morning who that could have been.” “Spoilled for choice,” said Granny, but it was automatic nastiness, with no real heart to it. It worried Nanny Ogg. Her friend seemed preoccupied. “There’s some gentry we don’t want to see here,” said Granny. “I won’t be happy until all this is over.” Nanny Ogg craned to try and see over the head of a small emperor. “Can’t see Magrat around,” she said. “There’s Verence talking to some other kings, but can’t see our Magrat at all. Our Shawn said Millie Chillum said she was just a bag of nerves this morning.” “All these high-born folks,” said Granny, looking around at the crowned heads. “I feel like a fish out of water.” “Well, the way I see it, it’s up to you to make your own water,” said Nanny, picking up a cold roast chicken leg from the buffet and stuffing it up a sleeve. “Don’t drink too much. We’ve got to keep alert, Gytha. Remember what I said. Don’t let yourself get distracted-“ “That’s never the delectable Mrs. Ogg, is it?” Nanny turned. There was no one behind her. “Down here,” said the voice. She looked down, into a wide grin. “Oh, blast,” she said. “It’s me, Casanunda,” said Casanunda, who was dwarfed still further by an enormous[30] powdered wig. “You remember? We danced the night away in Genua?” “No we didn’t.” “Well, we could have done.” “Fancy you turning up here,” said Nanny, weakly. The thing about Casanunda, she recalled, was that the harder you slapped him down the faster he bounced back, often in an unexpected direction. “Our stars are entwined,” said Casanunda. “We’re fated for one another. I wants your body, Mrs. Ogg.” “I’m still using it.” And while she suspected, quite accurately, that this was an approach the world’s second greatest lover used on anything that appeared to be even vaguely female, Nanny Ogg had to admit that she was flattered. She’d had many admirers in her younger days, but time had left her with a body that could only be called comfortable and a face like Mr. Grape the Happy Raisin. Long-banked fires gave off a little smoke. Besides, she’d rather liked Casanunda. Most men were oblique in their approach, whereas his direct attack was refreshing. “It’d never work,” she said. “We’re basically incompatible. When I’m 5’ 4” you’ll still only be 3’ 9”. Anyway, I’m old enough to be your mother.” “You can’t be. My mother’s nearly 300, and she’s got a better beard than you.” And of course that was another point. By dwarf standards, Nanny Ogg was hardly more than a teenager. “La, sir,” she said, giving him a playful tap that made his ears ring, “you do know how to turn a simple country girl’s head and no mistake!” Casanunda picked himself up and adjusted his wig happily “I like a girl with spirit,” he said. “How about you and me having a little tete-a-tete when this is over?” Nanny Ogg’s face went blank. Her cosmopolitan grip of language had momentarily let her down. “Excuse me a minute,” she said. She put her drink down on his head and pushed through the crowd until she found a likely looking duchess, and prodded her in the bustle regions. “Hey, your grace, what’s a tater tate?” “I beg your pardon?” “A tater tate? Do you do it with your clothes on or what?” “It means an intimate meeting, my good woman.” “Is that all? Oh. Ta.” Nanny Ogg elbowed her way back to the vibrating dwarf. “You’re on,” she said. “I thought we could have a little private dinner, just you and me,” said Casanunda. “In one of the taverns?” Never, in a long history of romance, had Nanny Ogg ever been taken out for an intimate dinner. Her courtships had been more noted for their quantity than their quality. “OK,” was all she could think of to say. “Dodge your chaperone and meet me at six o’clock?” Nanny Ogg glanced at Granny Weatherwax, who was watching them disapprovingly from a distance. “She’s not my-“ she began. Then it dawned on her that Casanunda couldn’t possibly have really thought that Granny Weatherwax was chaperoning her. Compliments and flattery had also been very minor components in the machinery of Nanny Ogg’s courtships. “Yes, all right,” she said. “And now I shall circulate, so that people don’t talk and ruin your reputation,” said Casanunda, bowing and kissing Nanny Ogg’s hand. Her mouth dropped open. No one had ever kissed her hand before, either, and certainly no one had ever worried about her reputation, least of all Nanny Ogg. As the world’s second greatest lover bustled off to accost a countess. Granny Weatherwax - who had been watching from a discreet distance[31] - said, in an amiable voice: “You haven’t got the morals of a cat, Gytha Ogg.” “Now, Esme, you know that’s not true.” “All right. You have got the morals of a cat, then.” “That’s better.” Nanny Ogg patted her mass of white curls and wondered if she had time to go home and put her corsets on. “We must stay on our guard, Gytha.” “Yes, yes.” “Can’t let other considerations turn our heads.” “No, no.” “You’re not listening to a word I say, are you?” “What?” “You could at least find out why Magrat isn’t down here.” “All right.” Nanny Ogg wandered off, dreamily. Granny Weatherwax turned- -there should have been violins. The murmur of the crowd should have faded away, and the crowd itself should have parted in a quite natural movement to leave an empty path between her and Ridcully There should have been violins. There should have been something. There shouldn’t have been the Librarian accidentally knuckling her on the toe on his way to the buffet, but this, in fact, there was. She hardly noticed. “Esme?” said Ridcully “Mustrum?” said Granny Weatherwax. Nanny Ogg bustled up. “Esme, I saw Millie Chillum and she said-“ Granny Weatherwax’s vicious elbow jab winded her. Nanny took in the scene. “Ah,” she said, “I’ll just, I’ll just. . . I’ll just go away, then.” The gazes locked again. The Librarian knuckled past again with an entire display of fruit. Granny Weatherwax paid him no heed. The Bursar, who was currently on the median point of his cycle, tapped Ridcully on the shoulder. “I say, Archchancellor, these quails’ eggs are amazingly go-“ “DROP DEAD. Mr. Stibbons, fish out the frog pills and keep knives away from him, please.” The gazes locked again. “Well, well,” said Granny, after a year or so. “This must be some enchanted evening,” said Ridcully. “Yes. That’s what I’m afraid of.” “That really is you, isn’t it?” “It’s really me,” said Granny “You haven’t changed a bit, Esme.” “Nor have you, then. You’re still a rotten liar, Mustrum Ridcully” They walked toward one another. The Librarian shuttled between them with a tray of meringues. Behind them, Ponder Stibbons grovelled on the floor for a spilled bottle of dried frog pills. “Well, well,” said Ridcully. “Fancy that.” “Small world.” “Yes indeed.” “You’re you and I’m me. Amazing. And it’s here and now.” “Yes, but then was then.” “I sent you a lot of letters,” said Ridcully “Never got ‘em.” There was a glint in Ridcully’s eye. “That’s odd. And there was me putting all those destination spells on them too,” he said. He gave her a critical up-and-down glance. “How much do you weigh, Esme? Not a spare ounce on you, I’ll be bound.” “What do you want to know for?” “Indulge an old man.” “Nine stones, then.” “Hmm . . . should be about right . . . three miles hubward . . . you’ll feel a slight lurch to the left, nothing to worry about. . .” In a lightning movement, he grabbed her hand. He felt young and light-headed. The wizards back at the University would have been astonished. “Let me take you away from all this.” He snapped his fingers. There has to be at least an approximate conservation of mass. It’s a fundamental magical rule. If something is moved from A to B, something that was at B has got to find itself at A. And then there’s momentum. Slow as the disc spins, various points of its radii are moving at different speeds relative to the Hub, and a wizard projecting himself any distance toward the Rim had better be prepared to land jogging. The three miles to Lancre Bridge merely involved a faint tug, which Ridcully had been ready for, and he landed up leaning against the parapet with Esme Weatherwax in his arms. The customs troll who had until a fraction of a second previously been sitting there ended up lying full length on the floor of the Great Hall, coincidentally on top of the Bursar. Granny Weatherwax looked over at the rushing water, and then at Ridcully. “Take me back this instant,” she said. “You’ve got no right to do that.” “Dear me, I seem to have run out of power. Can’t understand it, very embarrassing, fingers gone all limp,” said Ridcully. “Of course, we could walk. It’s a lovely evening. You always did get lovely evenings here.” “It was all fifty or sixty years ago!” said Granny. “You can’t suddenly turn up and say all those years haven’t happened.” “Oh, I know they’ve happened all right,” said Ridcully. “I’m the head wizard now. I’ve only got to give an order and a thousand wizards will. . . uh . . . disobey, come to think of it, or say ‘What?’, or start to argue. But they have to take notice.” “I’ve been to that University a few times,” said Granny. “A bunch of fat old men in beards.” “That’s right! That’s them!” “A lot of ‘em come from the Ramtops,” said Granny. “I knew a few boys from Lancre who became wizards.” “Very magical area,” Ridcully agreed. “Something in the air.” Below them, the cold black waters raced, always dancing to gravity, never flowing uphill. “There was even a Weatherwax as Archchancellor, years ago,” said Ridcully. “So I understand. Distant cousin. Never knew him,” said Granny. They both stared down at the river for a moment. Occasionally a twig or a branch would whirl along in the current. “Do you remember-“ “I have a . . . very good memory, thank you.” “Do you ever wonder what life would have been like if you’d said yes?” said Ridcully. “No.” “I suppose we’d have settled down, had children, grandchildren, that sort of thing . . .” Granny shrugged. It was the sort of thing romantic idiots said. But there was something in the air tonight. . . “What about the fire?” she said. “What fire?” “Swept through our house just after we were married. Killed us both.” “What fire? I don’t know anything about any fire?” Granny turned around. “Of course not! It didn’t happen. But the point is, it might have happened. You can’t say ‘if this didn’t happen then that would have happened’ because you don’t know everything that might have happened. You might think something’d be good, but for all you know it could have turned out horrible. You can’t say ‘If only I’d . . . ‘ because you could be wishing for anything. The point is, you’ll never know. You’ve gone past. So there’s no use thinking about it. So I don’t.” “The Trousers of Time,” said Ridcully, moodily. He picked a fragment off the crumbling stonework and dropped it into the water. It went plunk, as is so often the case. “What?” “That’s the sort of thing they go on about in the High Energy Magic building. And they call themselves wizards! You should hear them talk. The buggers wouldn’t know a magic sword if it bit them on the knee. That’s young wizards today. Think they bloody invented magic.” “Yes? You should see the girls that want to be witches these days,” said Granny Weatherwax. “Velvet hats and black lipstick and lacy gloves with no fingers to ‘em. Cheeky, too.” They were side by side now, watching the river. “Trousers of Time,” said Ridcully. “One of you goes down one leg, one of you goes down the other. And there’s all these continuinuinuums all over the place. When I was a lad there was just one decent universe and this was it, and all you had to worry about was creatures breaking through from the Dungeon Dimensions, but at least there was this actual damn universe and you knew where you stood. Now it turns out there’s millions of the damn things. And there’s this damn cat they’ve discovered that you can put in a box and it’s dead and alive at the same time. Or something. And they all run around saying marvellous, marvellous, hooray, here comes another quantum. Ask ‘em to do a decent levitation spell and they look at you as if you’ve started to dribble. You should hear young Stibbons talk. Went on about me not inviting me to my own wedding. Me!” From the side of the gorge a kingfisher flashed, hit the water with barely a ripple, and ricocheted away with something silver and wriggly in its beak. “Kept going on about everything happening at the same time,” Ridcully went on morosely. “Like there’s no such thing as a choice. You just decide which leg you’re heading for. He says that we did get married, see. He says all the things that might have been have to be. So there’s thousands of me out there who never became a wizard, just like there’s thousands of you who, oh, answered letters. Hah! To them, we’re something that might have been. Now, d’you call that proper thinking for a growing lad? When I started wizarding, old ‘Tudgy’ Spold was Archchancellor, and if any young wizard’d even mentioned that sort of daft thing, he’d feel a staff across his backside. Hah!” Somewhere far below, a frog plopped off a stone. “Mind you, I suppose we’ve all passed a lot of water since then.” It dawned gently on Ridcully that the dialogue had become a monologue. He turned to Granny, who was staring round-eyed at the river as if she’d never seen water before. “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she said. “I beg your pardon? I was only-“ “Not you. I wasn’t talking to you. Stupid! I’ve been stupid. But I ain’t been daft! Hah! And I thought it was my memory going! And it was, too. It was going and fetching!” “What?” “I was getting scared! Me! And not thinking clear! Except I was thinking clear!” “What!” “Never mind! Well, I won’t say this hasn’t been . . . nice,” said Granny. “But I’ve got to get back. Do the thing with the fingers again. And hurry.” Ridcully deflated a little. “Can’t,” he said. “You did it just now.” “That’s the point. I wasn’t joking when I said I couldn’t do it again. It takes a lot out of you, transmigration.” “You used to be able to do it all the time, as I recall,” said Granny. She risked a smile. “Our feet hardly touched the ground.” “I was younger then. Now, once is enough.” Granny’s boots creaked as she turned and started to walk quickly back toward the town. Ridcully lumbered after her. “What’s the hurry?” “Got important things to do,” said Granny, without turning around. “Been letting everyone down.” “Some people might say this is important.” “No. It’s just personal. Personal’s not the same as important. People just think it is.” “You’re doing it again!” “What?” “I don’t know what the other future would have been like,” said Ridcully, “but I for one would have liked to give it a try.” Granny paused. Her mind was crackling with relief. Should she tell him about the memories? She opened her mouth to do so, and then thought again. No. He’d get soppy. “I’d have been crabby and bad-tempered,” she said, instead. “That goes without saying.” “Hah! And what about you? I’d have put up with all your womanizing and drunkenness, would I?” Ridcully looked bewildered. “What womanizing?” “We’re talking about what might have been.” “But I’m a wizard! We hardly ever womanize. There’s laws about it. Well. . . rules. Guidelines, anyway.” “But you wouldn’t have been a wizard then.” “And I’m hardly ever drunk.” “You would have been if you’d been wedded to me.” He caught up with her. “Even young Ponder doesn’t think like this,” he said. “You’ve made up your mind that it would have been dreadful, have you?” “Yes.” “Why?” “Why’d you think?” “I asked you!” “I’m too busy for this,” said Granny. “Like I said, personal ain’t the same as important. Make yourself useful, Mr. Wizard. You know it’s circle time, don’t you?” Ridcully’s hand touched the brim of his hat. “Oh, yes.” “And you know what that means?” “They tell me it means that the walls between realities get weaker. The circles are . . . what’s the word Stibbons uses? Isoresons. They connect levels of, oh, something daft . . . similar levels of reality. Which is bloody stupid. You’d be able to walk from one universe to another.” “Ever tried it?” “No!” “A circle is a door half open. It doesn’t need much to open it up all the way. Even belief’ll do it. That’s why they put the Dancers up, years ago. We got the dwarfs to do it. Thunderbolt iron, those stones. There’s something special about ‘em. They’ve got the love of iron. Don’t ask me how it works. Elves hate it even more than ordinary iron. It . . . upsets their senses, or something. But minds can get through. . .” “Elves? Everyone knows elves don’t exist anymore. Not proper elves. I mean, there’s a few folk who say they’re elves-“ “Oh, yeah. Elvish ancestry. Elves and humans breed all right, as if that’s anything to be proud of. But you just get a race o’skinny types with pointy ears and a tendency to giggle and burn easily in sunshine. I ain’t talking about them. There’s no harm in them. I’m talking about real wild elves, what we ain’t seen here for-“ The road from the bridge to the town curved between high banks, with the forest crowding in on either side and in places even meeting overhead. Thick ferns, already curling like green breakers, lined the clay banks. They rustled. The unicorn leapt on the road.   Thousands of universes, twisting together like a rope being plaited from threads . . . There’s bound to be leakages, a sort of mental equivalent of the channel breakthrough on a cheap hi-fi that gets you the news in Swedish during quiet bits in the music. Especially if you’ve spent your life using your mind as a receiver. Picking up the thoughts of another human being is very hard, because no two minds are on the same, er, wavelength. But somewhere out there, at the point where the parallel universes tangle, are a million minds just like yours. For a very obvious reason. Granny Weatherwax smiled. Millie Chillum and the king and one or two hangers-on were clustered around the door to Magrat’s room when Nanny Ogg arrived. “What’s happening?” “I know she’s in there,” said Verence, holding his crown in his hands in the famous Ah-Senor-Mexican-Bandits-Have-Raided-Our-Village position. “Millie heard her shout go away and I think she threw something at the door.” Nanny Ogg nodded sagely. “Wedding nerves,” she said. “Bound to happen.” “But we’re all going to attend the Entertainment,” said Verence. “She really ought to attend the Entertainment.” “Well, I dunno,” said Nanny. “Seeing our Jason and the rest of ‘em prancing about in straw wigs . . . I mean, they mean well, but it’s not something a young - a fairly young - girl has to see on the night before her nuptials. You asked her to unlock the door?” “I did better than that,” said Verence. “I instructed her to. That was right, wasn’t it? If even Magrat won’t obey me, I’m a poor lookout as king.” “Ah,” said Nanny, after a moment’s slow consideration. “You’ve not entirely spent a lot of time in female company, have you? In a generalized sort of way?” “Well, I-“ The crown spun in Verence’s nervous fingers. Not only had the bandits invaded the village, but the Magnificent Seven had decided to go bowling instead. “Tell you what,” said Nanny, patting him on the back, “you go and preside over the Entertainment and hobnob with the other nobs. I’ll see to Magrat, don’t you worry. I’ve been a bride three times, and that’s only the official score.” “Yes, but she should-“ “I think if we go easy on the ‘shoulds,’” said Nanny, “we might all make it to the wedding. Now, off you all go.” “Someone ought to stay here,” said Verence. “Shawn will be on guard, but-“ “No one’s going to invade, are they?” said Nanny. “Let me sort this out.” “Well. . . if you’re sure . . .” “Go on!” Nanny Ogg waited until she heard them go down the main staircase. After a while a rattle of coaches and general shouting suggested that the wedding party was leaving, minus the bride-to-be. She counted to a hundred, under her breath. Then: “Magrat?” “Go away!” “I know how it is,” said Nanny. “I was a bit worried on the night before my wedding.” She refrained from adding: because there was a reasonable chance Jason would turn up as an extra guest. “I am not worried! I am angry!” “Why?” “You know!” Nanny took off her hat and scratched her head. “You’ve got me there,” she said. “And he knew. I know he knew, and I know who told him,” said the muffled voice behind the door. “It was all arranged. You must all have been laughing!” Nanny frowned at the impassive woodwork. “Nope,” she said. “Still all at sea this end.” “Well, I’m not saying anymore.” “Everyone’s gone to the Entertainment,” said Nanny Ogg. No reply. “And later they’ll be back.” A further absence of dialogue. “Then there’ll be carousing and jugglers and fellas that put weasels down their trousers,” said Nanny. Silence. “And then it’ll be tomorrow, and then what’re you going to do?” Silence. “You can always go back to your cottage. No one’s moved in. Or you can stop along of me, if you like. But you’ll have to decide, d’you see, because you can’t stay locked in there.” Nanny leaned against the wall. “I remember years ago my granny telling me about Queen Amonia, well, I say queen, but she never was queen except for about three hours because of what I’m about to unfold, on account of them playing hide-and-seek at the wedding party and her hiding in a big heavy old chest in some attic and the lid slamming shut and no one finding her for seven months, by which time you could definitely say the wedding cake was getting a bit stale.” Silence. “Well, if you ain’t telling me, I can’t hang around all night,” said Nanny. “It’ll all be better in the morning, you’ll see.” Silence. “Why don’t you have an early night?” said Nanny. “Our Shawn’ll do you a hot drink if you ring down. It’s a bit nippy out here, to tell you the truth. It’s amazing how these old stone places hang on to the chill.” Silence. “So I’ll be off then, shall I?” said Nanny, to the unyielding silence. “Not doing much good here, I can see that. Sure you don’t want to talk?” Silence. “Stand before your god, bow before your king, and kneel before your man. Recipe for a happy life, that is,” said Nanny, to the world in general. “Well, I’m going away now. Tell you what, I’ll come back early tomorrow, help you get ready, that sort of thing. How about it?” Silence. “So that’s all sorted out then,” said Nanny. “Cheerio.” She waited a full minute. By rights, by the human mechanics of situations like this, the bolts should have been drawn back and Magrat should have peeped out into the corridor, or possibly even called out to her. She did not. Nanny shook her head. She could think of at least three ways of getting into the room, and only one of them involved going through the door. But there was a time and a place for witchcraft, and this wasn’t it. Nanny Ogg had led a long and generally happy life by knowing when not to be a witch, and this was one of those times. She went down the stairs and out of the castle. Shawn was standing guard at the main gate, surreptitiously practicing karate chops on the evening air. He stopped and looked embarrassed as Nanny Ogg approached. “Wish I was going to the Entertainment, Mum.” “I daresay the king will be very generous to you come payday on account of your duty,” said Nanny Ogg. “Remind me to remind him.” “Aren’t you going?” “Well, I’m . . . I’m just going for a stroll into town,” said Nanny. “I expect Esme went with ‘em, did she?” “Couldn’t say, Mum.” “Just a few things I got to do.” She hadn’t gone much further before a voice behind her said, “Ello, oh moon of my delight.” “You do sneak up on people, Casanunda.” “I’ve arranged for us to have dinner at the Goat and Bush,” said the dwarf Count. “Ooo, that’s a horrible expensive place,” said Nanny Ogg. “Never eaten there.” “They’ve got some special provisions in, what with the wedding and all the gentry here,” said Casanunda. “I’ve made special arrangements.” These had been quite difficult. Food as an aphrodisiac was not a concept that had ever caught on in Lancre, apart from Nanny Ogg’s famous Carrot and Oyster Pie.[32] As far as the cook at the Goat and Bush was concerned, food and sex were only linked in certain humorous gestures involving things like cucumbers. He’d never heard of chocolate, banana skins, avocado and ginger, marshmallow and the thousand other foods people had occasionally employed to drive an A-to-B freeway through the rambling pathways of romance. Casanunda had spent a busy ten minutes sketching out a detailed menu, and quite a lot of money had changed hands. He’d arranged a careful romantic candlelit supper. Casanunda had always believed in the art of seduction. Many tall women accessible by stepladder across the continent had reflected how odd it was that the dwarfs, a race to whom the aforesaid art of seduction consisted in the main part of tactfully finding out what sex, underneath all that leather and chain-mail, another dwarf was, had generated someone like Casanunda. It was as if Eskimos had produced a natural expert in the care and attention of rare tropical plants. The great pent up waters of dwarfish sexuality had found a leak at the bottom of the dam-small, but with enough power to drive a dynamo. Everything that his fellow dwarfs did very occasionally as nature demanded he did all the time, sometimes in the back of a sedan chair and once upside down in a tree - but, and this is important, with care and attention to detail that was typically dwarfish. Dwarfs would spend months working on an exquisite piece of jewellery, and for broadly similar reasons Casanunda was a popular visitor to many courts and palaces, for some strange reason generally while the local lord was away. He also had a dwarfish ability with locks, always a useful talent for those awkward moments sur la boudoir. And Nanny Ogg was an attractive lady, which is not the same as being beautiful. She fascinated Casanunda. She was an incredibly comfortable person to be around, partly because she had a mind so broad it could accommodate three football fields and a bowling alley.   *   *   *   “I wish I had my crossbow,” muttered Ridcully. “With that head on my wall I’d always have a place to hang my hat.” The unicorn tossed its head and pawed the ground. Steam rose from its flanks. “I ain’t sure that would work,” said Granny. “You sure you’ve got no whoosh left in them fingers of yours?” “I could create an illusion,” said the wizard. “That’s not hard.” “It wouldn’t work. The unicorn is an elvish creature. Magic don’t work on ‘em. They see through illusions. They ought to, they’re good enough at ‘em. How about the bank? Reckon you could scramble up it?” They both glanced at the banks. They were red clay, slippery as priests. “Let’s walk backward,” said Granny. “Slowly.” “How about its mind? Can you get in?” “There’s someone in there already. The poor thing’s her pet. It obeys only her.” The unicorn walked after them, trying to watch both of them at the same time. “What shall we do when we come to the bridge?” “You can still swim, can’t you?” “The river’s a long way down.” “But there’s a deep pool there. Don’t you remember? You dived in there once. One moonlit night. . .” “I was young and foolish then.” “Well? You’re old and foolish now.” “I thought unicorns were more . . . fluffy.” “See clear! Don’t let the glamour get you! See what’s in front of your eyes! It’s a damn great horse with a horn on the end!” said Granny. The unicorn pawed the ground. Granny’s feet scraped the bridge. “Got here by accident, can’t get back,” she said. “Ifn there’d been one of us it’d be charging by now. We’re about halfway across the bridge-“ “Lot of snow runoff in that river,” said Ridcully, doubtfully “Oh, yes,” said Granny “See you at the weir.” And she was gone. The unicorn, which had been trying to decide between targets, was left with Ridcully. It could count up to one. It lowered its head. Ridcully had never liked horses, animals which seemed to him to have only the weakest possible grip on sanity As the unicorn charged, he vaulted the parapet and dropped, without much aerodynamic grace, into the icy waters of the Lancre.   The Librarian liked the stage. He was always in the front seat on the first night of a new production at any of Ankh’s theatres, his prehensile abilities allowing him to clap twice as hard as anyone else or, if necessary, hurl peanut shells. And he was feeling let down. There were hardly any books in the castle, except for serious volumes on etiquette and animal breeding and estate management. As a rule, royalty doesn’t read much. He wasn’t expecting to be amazed at the Entertainment. He’d peered behind the bit of sacking that was doing service as a dressing room, and seen half a dozen heavily built men arguing with one another. This did not bode well for an evening of thespianic splendor, although there was always the possibility that one of them might hit another one in the face with a custard pie.[33] He had managed to get the three of them seats in the front row. This wasn’t according to the rules of precedence, but it was amazing how everyone squeezed up to make room. He’d also found some peanuts. No one ever knew how he managed that. “Oook?” “No, thank you,” said Ponder Stibbons. “They give me wind.” “Oook?” “I like to listen to a man who likes to talk! Whoops! Sawdust and treacle! Put that in your herring and smoke it!” “I don’t think he wants one,” said Ponder. The curtain went up, or at least was pulled aside by Carter the baker. The Entertainment began. The Librarian watched in deepening gloom. It was amazing. Normally he quite liked a badly acted play, provided enough confectionery stayed airborne, but these people weren’t even good at bad acting. Also, no one seemed to be on the point of throwing anything. He fished a peanut out of the bag and rolled it in his fingers, while staring intently at the left ear of Tailor the other weaver. And felt his hair rise. This is very noticeable on an orang-utan. He glanced up at the hill behind the erratic actors, and growled under his breath. “Oook?” Ponder nudged him. “Quiet!” he hissed. “They’re getting the hang of it. . .” There was an echo to the voice of the one in the straw wig. “What’d she say?” said Ponder. “Oook!” “How’d she do that? That’s good makeup, that-“ Ponder fell silent. Suddenly the Librarian felt very alone. Everyone else in the audience had their gaze fastened firmly on the turf stage. He moved a hand up and down in front of Stibbons’s face. The air was wavering over the hill, and the grass on its side moved in a way that made the ape’s eyes ache. “Oook?” Over the hill, between the little stones, it began to snow. “Oook?”   Alone in her room, Magrat unpacked the wedding dress. And that was another thing. She ought to have been involved in the dress, at least. She was going to - would have been the one wearing it, after all. There should have been weeks of choosing the material, and fittings, and changing her mind, and changing the material, and changing the pattern, and more fittings . . . . . . although of course she was her own woman and didn’t need that kind of thing at all. . . . . . but she should have had the choice. It was white silk, with a tasteful amount of lace. Magrat knew she wasn’t much up on the language of dressmaking. She knew what things were, she just didn’t know the names. All those ruches and pleats and gores and things. She held the dress against her and gave it a critical examination. There was a small mirror against the wall. After a certain amount of internal tussling Magrat gave in and tried the dress on. It wasn’t as if she’d be wearing it tomorrow. If she never did try it on, she’d always wonder if it had fitted. It fitted. Or, rather, it didn’t fit but in a flattering way. Whatever Verence had paid, it had been worth it. The dressmaker had done cunning things with the material, so that it went in where Magrat went straight up and down and billowed out where Magrat didn’t. The veil had silk flowers on the headband. I’m not going to start crying again, Magrat told herself. I’m going to stay angry. I’m going to wind up the anger until it’s thick enough to become rage, and when they come back I shall- -what? She could try being icy. She could sweep majestically past them . . . this was a good dress for that . . . and that’d teach them. And then what? She couldn’t stay here, not with everyone knowing. And they’d find out. About the letter. News went around Lancre faster than turpentine through a sick donkey. She’d have to go away. Perhaps find somewhere where there were no witches and start up again, although at the moment her feelings about witches were such that she’d prefer practically any other profession, insofar as there were other professions for an ex-witch. Magrat stuck out her chin. The way she felt now, with the bile bubbling like a hot spring, she’d create a new profession. One that with any luck didn’t involve men and meddling old women. And she’d keep that damn letter, just to remind her. All the time she’d wondered how Verence was able to have things arranged weeks before she got back, and it was as simple as this. How they must have laughed . . .   *   *   *   It occurred briefly to Nanny Ogg that she really should be somewhere else, but at her time of life invitations to intimate candlelit suppers were not a daily occurrence. There had to be a time when you stopped worrying about the rest of the world and cared a little for yourself. There had to be a time for a quiet, inner moment. “This is damn good wine,” she said, picking up another bottle. “What did you say it’s called?” She peered at the label. “Chateau Maison? Chat-eau . . . that’s foreign for cat’s water, you know, but that’s only their way, I know it ain’t real cat’s water. Real cat’s water is sharper.” She hammered the cork into the bottle with the end of her knife, then stuck her finger over the neck and gave it a vigorous shaking “to mix the goodness in.” “But I don’t hold with drinking it out of ladies’ boots,” she said. “I know it’s supposed to be the thing to do, but I can’t see what’s so wonderful about walking home with your boots full of wine. Ain’t you hungry? If you don’t want that bit of gristle, I’ll eat it. Anymore of them lobsters? Never had lobster before. And that mayonnaise. And them little eggs stuffed with stuff. Mind you, that bramble jam tasted of fish, to my mind.” “’S caviar,” murmured Casanunda. He was sitting with his chin on his hand, watching her in rapt infatuation. He was, he was surprised to find, enjoying himself immensely while not horizontal. He knew how this sort of dinner was supposed to go. It was one of the basic weapons in the seducer’s armoury. The amoratrix was plied with fine wines and expensive yet light dishes. There was much knowing eye contact across the table, and tangling of feet underneath it. There was much pointed eating of pears and bananas and so on. And thus the ship of temptation steered, gently yet inexorably, to a good docking. And then there was Nanny Ogg. Nanny Ogg appreciated fine wine in her very own way. It would never have occurred to Casanunda that anyone would top up white wine with port merely because she’d reached the end of the bottle. As for the food . . . well, she enjoyed that, too. Casanunda had never seen that elbow action before. Show Nanny Ogg a good dinner and she went at it with knife, fork, and rammer. Watching her eat a lobster was a particular experience he would not forget in a hurry. They’d be picking bits of claw out of the woodwork for weeks. And the asparagus . . . he might actually try to forget Nanny Ogg putting away asparagus, but he suspected the memory would come creeping back. It must be a witch thing, he told himself. They’re always very clear about what they want. If you climbed cliffs and braved rivers and skied down mountains to bring a box of chocolates to Gytha Ogg, she’d have the nougat centres out of the bottom layer even before you got your crampons off. That’s it. Whatever a witch does, she does one hundred percent. Hubba, hubba! “Ain’t you going to eat all those prawns? Just push the plate this way, then.” He had tried a little footsie to keep his hand in, as it were, but an accidental blow on the ankle from one of Nanny’s heavy iron-nailed boots had put a stop to that. And then there had been the gypsy violinist. At first Nanny had complained about people playin’ the fiddle while she was trying to concentrate on her eatin’, but between courses she’d snatched it off the man, thrown the bow into a bowl of camellias, retuned the instrument to something approaching a banjo, and had given Casanunda three rousing verses of what, him being foreign, she chose to call Il Porcupine Nil Sodomy Est. Then she’d drunk more wine. What also captivated Casanunda was the way Nanny Ogg’s face became a mass of cheerful horizontal lines when she laughed, and Nanny Ogg laughed a lot. In fact Casanunda was finding, through the faint haze of wine, that he was actually having fun. “I take it there is no Mr. Ogg?” he said, eventually. “Oh, yes, there’s a Mr. Ogg,” said Nanny. “We buried him years ago. Well, we had to. He was dead.” “It must be very hard for a woman living all alone?” “Dreadful,” said Nanny Ogg, who had never prepared a meal or wielded a duster since her eldest daughter had been old enough to do it for her, and who had at least four meals cooked for her every day by various terrified daughters-in-law. “It must be especially lonely at night,” said Casanunda, out of habit as much as anything else. “Well, there’s Greebo,” said Nanny “He keeps my feet warm.” “Greebo-“ “The cat. I say, do you think there’s any pudding?” Later, she asked for a doggy bottle.   Mr. Brooks the beekeeper ladled some greenish, foul smelling liquid out of the saucepan that was always simmering in his secret hut, and filled his squirter. There was a wasps’ nest in the garden wall. It’d be a mortuary by morning. That was the thing about bees. They always guarded the entrance to the hive, with their lives if necessary. But wasps were adept at finding the odd chink in the woodwork around the back somewhere and the sleek little devils’d be in and robbing the hive before you knew it. Funny. The bees in the hive’d let them do it, too. They guarded the entrance, but if a wasp found another way in, they didn’t know what to do. He gave the plunger a push. A stream of liquid bubbled out and left a smoking streak on the floor. Wasps looked pretty enough. But if you were for bees, you had to be against wasps. There seemed to be some sort of party going on in the hall. He vaguely remembered getting an invitation but, on the whole, that sort of thing never really caught his imagination. And especially now. Things were wrong. None of the hives showed any signs of swarming. Not one. As he passed the hives in the dusk he heard the humming. You got that, on a warm night. Battalions of bees stood at the hive entrance, fanning the air with their wings to keep the brood cool. But there was also the roar of bees circling the hive. They were angry, and on guard.   There was a series of small weirs just on the borders of Lancre. Granny Weatherwax hauled herself up on to the damp woodwork, and squelched to the bank where she emptied her boots. After a while a pointy wizard’s hat drifted downriver, and rose to reveal a pointy wizard underneath it. Granny lent a hand to help Ridcully out of the water. “There,” she said, “bracing, wasn’t it? Seemed to me you could do with a cold bath.” Ridcully tried to clean some mud out of his ear. He glared at Granny. “Why aren’t you wet?” “I am.” “No you’re not. You’re just damp. I’m wet through. How can you float down a river and just be damp?” “I dries out quick.” Granny Weatherwax glared up the rocks. A short distance away the steep road ran on to Lancre, but there were other, more private ways known to her among the trees, “So,” she said, more or less to herself. “She wants to stop me going there, does she? Well, we’ll see about that.” “Going where?” said Ridcully. “Ain’t sure,” said Granny. “All I know is, if she don’t want me to go there, that’s where I’m going. But I hadn’t bargained on you tumin’ up and having a rush of blood to the heart. Come on.” Ridcully wrung out his robe. A lot of the sequins had come off. He removed his hat and unscrewed the point. Headgear picks up morphic vibrations. Quite a lot of trouble had once been caused in Unseen University by a former Archchancellor’s hat, which had picked up too many magical vibrations after spending so much time on wizardly heads and had developed a personality of its very own. Ridcully had put a stop to this by having his own hat made to particular specifications by an Ankh-Morpork firm of completely insane hatters. It was not a normal wizard hat. Few wizards have ever made much use of the pointy bit, except maybe to keep the odd pair of socks in it. But Ridcully’s hat had small cupboards. It had surprises. It had four telescopic legs and a roll of oiled silk in the brim that extended downward to make a small but serviceable tent, and a patent spirit stove just above it. It had inner pockets with three days’ supply of iron rations. And the tip unscrewed to dispense an adequate supply of spirituous liquors for use in emergencies, such as when Ridcully was thirsty. Ridcully waved the small pointed cup at Granny. “Brandy?” he said. “What have you got on your head?” Ridcully felt his pate gingerly. “Urn . . .” “Smells like honey and horse apples to me. And what’s that thing?” Ridcully lifted the small cage off his head. There was a small treadmill in it, in a complex network of glass rods. A couple of feeding bowls were visible. And there was a small, hairy and currently quite wet mouse. “Oh, it’s something some of the young wizards came up with,” said Ridcully diffidently “I said I’d . . . try it out for them. The mouse hair rubs against the glass rods and there’s sparks, don’t’y’know, and . . . and . . .” Granny Weatherwax looked at the Archchancellor’s somewhat grubby hair and raised an eyebrow. “My word,” she said. “What will they think of next?” “Don’t really understand how it works, Stibbons is the man for this sort of thing, I thought I’d help them out. . .” “Lucky you were going bald, eh?” In the darkness of her sickroom Diamanda opened her eyes, if they were her eyes. There was a pearly sheen to them. The song was as yet only on the threshold of hearing. And the world was different. A small part of her mind was still Diamanda, and looked out through the mists of enchantment. The world was a pattern of fine silver lines, constantly moving, as though everything was coated with filigree. Except where there was iron. There the lines were crushed and tight and bent. There, the whole world was invisible. Iron distorted the world. Keep away from iron. She slipped out of bed, using the edge of the blanket to grasp the door handle, and opened the door. Shawn Ogg was standing very nearly to attention. Currently he was guarding the castle and Seeing How Long He Could Stand On One Leg. Then it occurred to him that this wasn’t a proper activity for a martial artist, and he turned it into No. 19, the Flying Chrysanthemum Double Drop Kick. After a while he realized that he had been hearing something. It was vaguely rhythmical, and put him in mind of a grasshopper chirruping. It was coming from inside the castle. He turned carefully, keeping alert in case the massed armies of Foreign Parts tried to invade while his back was turned. This needed working out. He wasn’t on guard from things inside the castle, was he? “On guard” meant things outside. That was the point of castles. That’s why you had all the walls and things. He’d got the big poster they gave away free with Jane’s All the World’s Siege Weapons. He knew what he was talking about. Shawn was not the quickest of thinkers, but his thoughts turned inexorably to the elf in the dungeon. But that was locked up. He’d locked the door himself. And there was iron all over the place, and Mum had been very definite about the iron. Nevertheless. . . He was methodical about it. He raised the drawbridge and dropped the portcullis and peered over the wall for good measure, but there was just the dusk and the night breeze. He could feel the sound now. It seemed to be coming out of the stone, and had a saw-toothed edge to it that grated on his nerves. It couldn’t have got out, could it? No, it stood to reason. People hadn’t gone around building dungeons you could get out of. The sound swung back and forth across the scale. Shawn leaned his rusty pike against the wall and drew his sword. He knew how to use it. He practiced for ten minutes every day, and it was one sorry hanging sack of straw when he’d finished with it. He slipped into the keep by the back door and sidled along the passages toward the dungeon. There was no one else around. Of course, everyone was at the Entertainment. And they’d be back any time now, carousing all over the place. The castle felt big, and old, and cold. Any time now. Bound to. The noise stopped. Shawn peered around the comer. There were the steps, there was the open doorway to the dungeons. “Stop!” shouted Shawn, just in case. The sound echoed off the stones. “Stop! Or . . . or . . . or . . . Stop!” He eased his way down the steps and looked through the archway “I warn you! I’m learning the Path of the Happy Jade Lotus!” There was the door to the cell, standing ajar. And a white-clad figure next to it. Shawn blinked. “Aren’t you Miss Tockley?” She smiled at him. Her eyes glowed in the dim light. “You’re wearing chain-mail, Shawn,” she said. “What, miss?” He glanced at the open door again. “That’s terrible. You must take it off, Shawn. How can you hear with all that stuff around your ears?” Shawn was aware of the empty space behind him. But he daren’t look around. “I can hear fine, miss,” he said, trying to ease himself around so that his back was against a wall. “But you can’t hear truly,” said Diamanda, drifting forward. “The iron makes you deaf.” Shawn was not yet used to thinly clad young women approaching him with a dreamy look on their faces. He fervently wished he could take the Path of the Retreating Back. He glanced sideways. There was a tall skinny shape outlined in the open cell doorway. It was standing very carefully, as if it wanted to keep as far away from its surroundings as possible. Diamanda was smiling at him in a funny way. He ran.   Somehow, the woods had changed. Ridcully was certain that in his youth they’d been full of bluebells and primroses and - and bluebells and whatnot and so on. Not bloody great briars all over the place. They snagged at his robe and once or twice some tree-climbing equivalent knocked his hat off. What made it worse was that Esme Weatherwax seemed to avoid all of them. “How do you manage that?” “I just know where I am all the time,” said Granny. “Well? I know where I am, too.” “No you don’t. You just happen to be present. That’s not the same.” “Well, do you happen to know where a proper path is?” “This is a short cut.” “Between two places where you’re not lost, d’you mean?” “I keep tellin’ you, I ain’t lost! I’m . . . directionally challenged.” “Hah!” But it was a fact about Esme Weatherwax, he had to admit. She might be lost, and he had reason to suspect this was the case now, unless there were in this forest two trees with exactly the same arrangement of branches and a strip of his robe caught on one of them, but she did have a quality that in anyone not wearing a battered pointy hat and an antique black dress might have been called poise. Absolute poise. It would be hard to imagine her making an awkward movement unless she wanted to. He’d seen that years ago, although of course at the time he’d just been amazed at the way her shape fitted perfectly into the space around it. And- He’d got caught up again. “Wait a minute!” “Entirely the wrong sort of clothes for the country!” “I wasn’t expecting a hike through the woods! This is ceremonial damn costume!” “Take it off, then.” “Then how will anyone know I’m a wizard?” “I’ll be sure to tell them!” Granny Weatherwax was getting rattled. She was also, despite everything that she’d said, getting lost. But the point was that you couldn’t get lost between the weir at the bottom of the Lancre rapids and Lancre town itself. It was uphill all the way Besides, she’d walked through the local forests all her life. They were her forests. She was pretty sure they’d passed the same tree twice. There was a bit of Ridcully’s robe hanging on it. It was like getting lost in her own garden. She was also sure she’d seen the unicorn a couple of times. It was tracking them. She’d tried to get into its mind. She might as well have tried to climb an ice wall. It wasn’t as if her own mind was tranquil. But now at least she knew she was sane. When the walls between the universes are thin, when the parallel strands of If bunch together to pass through the Now, then certain things leak across. Tiny signals, perhaps, but audible to a receiver skilled enough. In her head were the faint, insistent thoughts of a thousand Esme Weatherwaxes.   Magrat wasn’t sure what to pack. Most of her original clothes seemed to have evaporated since she’d been in the castle, and it was hardly good manners to take the ones Verence had bought for her. The same applied to the engagement ring. She wasn’t sure if you were allowed to keep it. She glared at herself in the mirror. She’d have to stop thinking like this. She seemed to have spent her whole life trying to make herself small, trying to be polite, apologizing when people walked over her, trying to be good-mannered. And what had happened? People had treated her as if she was small and polite and good-mannered. She’d stick the, the, the damn letter on the mirror, so they’d all know why she’d gone. She’d a damn good mind to go off to one of the cities and become a courtesan. Whatever that was. And then she heard the singing. It was, without a doubt, the most beautiful sound Magrat had ever heard. It flowed straight through the ears and into the hindbrain, into the blood, into the bone . . . A silk camisole dropped from her fingers on to the floor. She wrenched at the door, and a tiny part of her mind still capable of rational thought remembered about the key. The song filled the passageway. She gripped some folds of the wedding dress to make running easier and hurried toward the stairs . . . Something bulleted out of another doorway and bore her to the floor. It was Shawn Ogg. Through the chromatic haze she could see his worried face peering out from its hood of rusty iron. The song changed while staying the same. The complex harmonies, the fascinating rhythm did not alter but suddenly grated, as if she was hearing the song through different ears. She was dragged into the doorway. “Are you all right. Miss Queen?” “What’s happening?” “Dunno, Miss Queen. But I think we’ve got elves.” “Elves?” “And they’ve got Miss Tockley. Um. You know you took the iron away-“ “What are you talking about, Shawn?” Shawn’s face was white. “That one down the dungeons started singing, and they’d put their mark on her, so she’s doing what they want-“ “Shawn!” “And Mum said they don’t kill you, if they can help it. Not right away. You’re much more fun if you’re not dead.” Magrat stared at him. “I had to run away! She was trying to get my hood off! I had to leave her, miss! You understand, miss?” “Elves?” “You got to hold on to something iron, miss! They hate iron!” She slapped his face, hurting her fingers on the mail. “You’re gabbling, Shawn!” “They’re out there, miss! I heard the drawbridge go down! They’re out there and we’re in here and they don’t kill you, they keep you alive-“ “Stand to attention, soldier!” It was all she could think of. It seemed to work. Shawn pulled himself together. “Look,” said Magrat, “everyone knows there really aren’t any elves any mo . . . “ Her voice faded. Her eyes narrowed. “Everyone but Magrat Garlick knows different, yes?” Shawn shook. Magrat grabbed his shoulders. “Me mum and Mistress Weatherwax said you wasn’t to know!” Shawn wailed. “They said it was witch business!” “And where are they now, when they’ve got some witch business to mind?” said Magrat. “I don’t see them, do you? Are they behind the door? No! Are they under the bed? How strange, they’re not . . . there’s just me, Shawn Ogg. And if you don’t tell me everything you know right now I’ll make you regret the day I was born.” Shawn’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he considered this. Then he shook himself free of Magrat’s grasp and listened at the door. The singing had stopped. For a moment Magrat thought she heard footsteps outside the door, hurrying away. “Well, Miss Queen, our mum and Mistress Weatherwax was up at the Dancers-“ Magrat listened. Finally she said, “And where’s everyone now?” “Dunno, miss. All gone to the Entertainment . . . but they ought to’ve been back by now.” “Where’s the Entertainment?” “Dunno, miss. Miss?” “Yes?” “Why’ve you got your wedding dress on?” “Never you mind.” “It’s unlucky for the groom to see the bride in her dress before the wedding,” said Shawn, taking refuge in run-of-the-mill idiocies to relieve his terror. “It will be for him if I see him first,” snarled Magrat. “Miss?” “Yes?” “I’m feared about what’s happened to everyone. Our Jason said they’d be back in an hour or so, and that was hours ago.” “But there’s almost a hundred guests and everyone from the town, practically. Elves couldn’t do anything to them.” “They wouldn’t have to, miss.” Shawn went to the unglazed window. “Look, miss. I can drop down on to the granary in the stable yard from here. It’s thatch, I’ll be all right. Then I can sneak around the kitchens and out by the little gate by the hubward tower with military precision.” “What for?” “To get help, miss.” “But you don’t know if there’s any help to get.” “Can you think of anything else, miss?” She couldn’t. “It’s very . . . brave of you, Shawn,” said Magrat. “You stay here and you’ll be right as rain,” said Shawn. “Tell you what. . . How about if I lock the door and take the key with me? Then even if they sing at you they can’t get you to open the door.” Magrat nodded. Shawn tried to smile. “Wish we had another suit of mail,” he said. “But it’s all in the armoury.” “I’ll be fine,” said Magrat. “Off you go, then.” Shawn nodded. He waited for a moment on the window ledge, and then dropped into the darkness. Magrat pushed the bed against the door and sat on it. It occurred to her that she should have gone as well. But that would mean leaving the castle empty, and that didn’t feel right. Besides, she was scared. There was one candle in the room, and that was half burned down. When it was gone, there’d be nothing but the moonlight. Magrat had always liked moonlight. Up to now. It was quiet outside. There should be the noises of the town. It crept over her that letting Shawn go away with a key to the door was not a wholly sensible thing, because if they caught him they could open- There was a scream, which went on for a long time. And then the night rolled back in again. After a few minutes there was a scrabbling at the lock, such as might be made by someone trying to manipulate a key held in several thicknesses of cloth, so as not to come into contact with the iron. The door began to open, and wedged up against the bed. “Will you not step outside, lady?” The door creaked again. “Will you not come dance with us, pretty lady?” The voice had strange harmonics and an echo that buzzed around the inside of the head for several seconds after the last word had been spoken. The door burst open. Three figures slid into the room. One looked up the bed, and the others poked into dark comers. Then one of them crossed to the window and looked out. The crumbling wall stretched down to the thatched roof entirely unoccupied. The figure nodded to two more shapes in the courtyard, its blond hair glowing in the moonlight. One of them pointed up, to where a figure, its long white dress billowing in the breeze, was climbing up the wall of the keep. The elf laughed. This was going to be more enjoyable than it’d suspected. Magrat pulled herself over the windowsill and collapsed, panting, on the floor. Then she staggered across to the door, which was missing its key. But there were two heavy wooden bars, which she slotted into place. There was a wooden shutter for the window. They’d never let her get away with it again. She’d been expecting an arrow but . . . no, something as simple as that wouldn’t have been enough fun. She glared at the darkness. So . . . there was this room. She didn’t even know which one it was. She found a candlestick and a bundle of matches and, after some scrabbling, got it lit. There were some boxes and cases piled by the bed. So . . . a guest room. The thoughts trickled through the silence of her brain, one after another. She wondered if they’d sing to her, and if she could stand it again. Maybe if you knew what to expect. . . There was a gentle tap at the door. “We have your friends downstairs, lady. Come dance with me.” Magrat stared desperately around the room. It was as featureless as guest bedrooms everywhere. Jug and basin on a stand, the horrible garderobe alcove inadequately concealed behind a curtain, the bed which had a few bags and bundles tossed on it, a battered chair with all the varnish gone and a small square of carpet made grey with age and ground-in dust. The door rattled. “Let me in, sweet lady.” The window was no escape this time. There was the bed to hide under, and that’d work for all of two seconds, wouldn’t it? Her eye was drawn by some kind of horrible magic back to the room’s garderobe, lurking behind its curtain. Magrat lifted the lid. The shaft was definitely wide enough to admit a body. Garderobes were notorious in that respect. Several unpopular kings had met their end, as it were, in the garderobe, at the hands of an assassin with good climbing ability, a spear, and a fundamental approach to politics. Something hit the door hard. “Lady, shall I sing to you?” Magrat reached a decision. It was the hinges that gave way eventually, the rusty bolts finally losing their grip on the stone. The alcove’s half-drawn curtain moved in the breeze. The elf smiled, strode to the curtain, and pulled it aside. The oak lid was up. The elf looked down. Magrat rose up behind it like a white ghost and hit it hard across the back of the neck with the chair, which shattered. The elf tried to turn and keep its balance, but there was still enough chair left in Magrat’s hands for her to catch it on the desperate upswing. It toppled backward, flailed at the lid, and only succeeded in pulling it shut behind it. Magrat heard a thump and a scream of rage as it dropped into the noisome darkness. It’d be too much to hope that the fall would kill it. After all, it’d land in something soft. “Not just high,” said Magrat to herself, “but stinking.” Hiding under the bed is only good for about two seconds, but sometimes two seconds is enough. She let go of the chair. She was shaking. But she was still alive, and that felt good. That’s the thing about being alive. You’re alive to enjoy it. Magrat peered out into the passage. She had to move. She picked up a stricken chair leg for the little comfort that it gave, and ventured out. There was a scream again, from the direction of the Great Hall. Magrat looked the other way, toward the Long Gallery She ran. There had to be a way out, somewhere, some gate, some window . . . Some enterprising monarch had glazed the windows some time ago. The moonlight shone through in big silver blocks, interspersed with squares of deep shadow. Magrat ran from light to shade, light to shade, down the endless room. Monarch after monarch flashed past, like a speeded-up film. King after king, all whiskers and crowns and beards. Queen after queen, all corsages and stiff bodices and Lappet-faced wowhawks and small dogs and- Some shape, some trick of moonlight, some expression on a painted face somehow cut through her terror and caught her eye.  That was a portrait she’d never seen before. She’d never walked down this far. The idiot vapidity of the assembled queens had depressed her. But this one . . . This one, somehow, reached out to her. She stopped. It couldn’t have been done from life. In the days of this queen, the only paint known locally was a sort of blue, and generally used on the body But a few generations ago King Lully I had been a bit of a historian and a romantic. He’d researched what was known of the early days of Lancre, and where actual evidence had been a bit sparse he had, in the best traditions of the keen ethnic historian, inferred from revealed self-evident wisdom[34] and extrapolated from associated sources.[35] He’d commissioned the portrait of Queen Ynci the Short-Tempered, one of the founders of the kingdom. She had a helmet with wings and a spike on it and a mass of black hair plaited into dreadlocks with blood as a setting lotion. She was heavily made-up in the woad-and-blood-and-spirals school of barbarian cosmetics. She had a 42 D-cup breastplate and shoulder pads with spikes. She had knee pads with spikes on, and spikes on her sandals, and a rather short skirt in the fashionable tartan and blood motif. One hand rested nonchalantly on a double-headed battle axe with a spike on it, the other caressed the hand of a captured enemy warrior. The rest of the captured enemy warrior was hanging from various pine trees in the background. Also in the picture was Spike, her favourite war pony, of the now extinct Lancre hill breed which was the same general shape and disposition as a barrel of gunpowder, and her war chariot, which picked up the popular spiky theme. It had wheels you could shave with. Magrat stared. They’d never mentioned this. They’d told her about tapestries, and embroidery, and farthingales, and how to shake hands with lords. They’d never told her about spikes. There was a sound at the end of the gallery, from back the way she’d come. She grabbed her skirts and ran. There were footsteps behind her, and laughter. Left down the cloisters, then along the dark passage above the kitchens, and past the- A shape moved in the shadows. Teeth flashed. Magrat raised the chair leg, and stopped in mid-strike. “Greebo?” Nanny Ogg’s cat rubbed against her legs. His hair was flat against his body. This unnerved Magrat even more. This was Greebo, undisputed king of Lancre’s cat population and father of most of it, in whose presence wolves trod softly and bears climbed trees. He was frightened. “Come here, you bloody idiot!” She grabbed him by the scruff of his scarred neck and ran on, while Greebo gratefully sank his claws into her arm to the bone[36] and scrambled up to her shoulder. She must be somewhere near the kitchen now, because that was Greebo’s territory. This was an unknown and shadowy area, terror incognita, where the flesh of carpets and the plaster pillars ran out and the stone bone of the castle showed through. She was sure there were footsteps behind her, very fast and light. If she hurried around the next comer- In her arms, Greebo tensed like a spring. Magrat stopped. Around the next comer- Without her apparently willing it, the hand holding the broken wood came up, moving slowly back. She stepped to the comer and stabbed in one movement. There was a triumphant hiss which turned into a screech as the wood scraped down the side of the waiting elfs neck. It reeled away Magrat bolted for the nearest doorway, weeping in panic, and wrenched at the handle. It swung open. She darted through, slammed the door, flailed in the dark for the bars, felt them clonk home, and collapsed on to her knees. Something hit the door outside. After a while Magrat opened her eyes, and then wondered if she really had opened her eyes, because the darkness was no less dark. There was a feeling of space in front of her. There were all sorts of things in the castle, old hidden rooms, anything . . . there could be a pit there, there could be anything. She fumbled for the doorframe, guided herself upright, and then groped cautiously in the general direction of the wall. There was a shelf. This was a candle. And this was a bundle of matches. So, she insisted above her own heartbeat, this was a room that got used recently. Most people in Lancre still used tinderboxes. Only the king could afford matches all the way from Ankh-Morpork. Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg got them too, but they didn’t buy them. They got given them. It was easy to get given things, if you were a witch. Magrat lit the stub of candle, and turned to see what kind of room she’d scuttled into. Oh, no . . .   “Well, well,” said Ridcully “There’s a familiar tree.” “Shut up.” “I thought someone said we just had to walk up hill,” said Ridcully. “Shut up.” “I remember once when we were in these woods you let “me-“ “Shut up.” Granny Weatherwax sat down on a stump. “We’re being mazed,” she said. “Someone’s playing tricks on us.” “I remember a story once,” said Ridcully, “where these two children were lost in the woods and a lot of birds came and covered them with leaves.” Hope showed in his voice like a toe peeking out from under a crinoline. “Yes, that’s just the sort of bloody stupid thing a bird would think of,” said Granny. She rubbed her head. “She’s doing it,” she said. “It’s an elvish trick. Leading travellers astray. She’s mucking up my head. My actual head. Oh, she’s good. Making us go where she wants. Making us go round in circles. Doing it to me.” “Maybe you’ve got your mind on other things,” said Ridcully, not quite giving up hope. “Course I’ve got my mind on other things, with you falling over all the time and gabbling a lot of nonsense,” said Granny. “If Mr. Cleverdick Wizard hadn’t wanted to dredge up things that never existed in the first place I wouldn’t be here, I’d be in the centre of things, knowing what’s going on.” She clenched her fists. “Well, you don’t have to be,” said Ridcully. “It’s a fine night. We could sit here and-“ “You’re falling for it too,” said Granny. “All that dreamy-weamy, eyes-across-a-crowded-room stuff. Can’t imagine how you keep your job as head wizard.” “Mainly by checking my bed carefully and makin’ sure someone else has already had a slice of whatever it is I’m eating,” said Ridcully, with disarming honesty. “There’s not much to it, really. Mainly it’s signin’ things and having a good shout-“ Ridcully gave up. “Anyway, you looked pretty surprised when you saw me,” he said. “Your face went white.” “Anyone’d go white, seeing a full-grown man standing there looking like a sheep about to choke,” said Granny. “You really don’t let up, do you?” said Ridcully. “Amazing. You don’t give an inch.” Another leaf drifted past. Ridcully didn’t move his head. “You know,” he said, his voice staying quite level, “either autumn comes really early in these parts, or the birds here are the ones out of that story I mentioned, or someone’s in the tree above us.” “I know.” “You know?” “Yes, because I’ve been paying attention while you were dodging the traffic in Memory Lane,” said Granny. “There’s at least five of ‘em, and they’re right above us. How’s those magic fingers of yours?” “I could probably manage a fireball.” “Wouldn’t work. Can you carry us out of here?” “Not both of us.” “Just you?” “Probably, but I’m not going to leave you.” Granny rolled her eyes. “It’s true, you know,” she said. “All men are swains. Push off, you soft old bugger. They’re not intending to kill me. At least, not yet. But they don’t hardly know nothing about wizards and they’ll chop you down without thinking.” “Now who’s being soft?” “I don’t want to see you dead when you could be doin’ something useful.” “Running away isn’t useful.” “It’s going to be a lot more useful than staying here.” “I’d never forgive myself if I went.” “And I’d never forgive you if you stayed, and I’m a lot more unforgiving than you are,” said Granny. “When it’s all over, try to find Gytha Ogg. Tell her to look in my old box. She’ll know what’s in there. And if you don’t go now-“ An arrow hit the stump beside Ridcully. “The buggers are firing at me!” he shouted. “If I had my crossbow-“ “I should go and get it, then,” said Granny. “Right! I’ll be back instantly!” Ridcully vanished. A moment later several lumps of castle masonry dropped out of the space he had just occupied. “That’s him out of the way, then,” said Granny, to no one in particular. She stood up, and gazed around at the trees. “All right,” she said, “here I am. I ain’t running. Come and get me. Here I am. All of me.”   Magrat calmed down. Of course it existed. Every castle had one. And of course this one was used. There was a trodden path through the dust to the rack a few feet away from the door, where a few suits of unravelling chain-mail hung on a rack, next to the pikes. Shawn probably came in here every day. It was the armoury. Greebo hopped down from Magrat’s shoulders and wandered off down the cobwebbed avenues, in his endless search for anything small and squeaky. Magrat followed him, in a daze. The kings of Lancre had never thrown anything away. At least, they’d never thrown anything away if it was possible to kill someone with it. There was armour for men. There was armour for horses. There was armour for fighting dogs. There was even armour for ravens, although King Gumt the Stupid’s plan for an aerial attack force had never really got off the ground. There were more pikes, and swords, cutlasses, rapiers, epees, broadswords, flails, momingstars, maces, clubs, and huge knobs with spikes. They were all piled together and, in those places where the roof had leaked, were rusted into a lump. There were longbows, short bows, pistol bows, stirrup bows, and crossbows, piled like firewood and stacked with the same lack of care. Odd bits of armour were piled in more heaps, and were red with rust. In fact rust was everywhere. The whole huge room was full of the death of iron. Magrat went on, like some clockwork toy that won’t change direction until it bumps into something. The candlelight was reflected dully in helmets and breastplates. The sets of horse armour in particular were terrible, on their rotting wooden frames - they stood like exterior skeletons, and, like skeletons, nudged the mind into thoughts of mortality. Empty eye sockets stared sightlessly down at the little candlelit figure. “Lady?” The voice came from outside the door, far behind Magrat. But it echoed around her, bouncing off the centuries of mouldering armaments. They can’t come in here, Magrat thought. Too much iron. In here, I’m safe. “If lady wants to play, we will fetch her friends.” As Magrat turned, the light caught the edge of something, and gleamed. Magrat pulled aside a huge shield. “Lady?” Magrat reached out. “Lady?” Magrat’s hands held a rusty iron helmet, with wings. “Come dance at the wedding, lady.” Magrat’s hands closed on a well-endowed breastplate, with spikes. Greebo, who had been tracking mice through a prone suit of armour, stuck his head out of a leg. A change had come over Magrat. It showed in her breathing. She’d been panting, with fear and exhaustion. Then, for a few seconds, there was no sound of her breathing at all. And finally it returned. Slowly. Deeply. Deliberately. Greebo saw Magrat, who he’d always put down as basically a kind of mouse in human shape, lift the hat with the wings on it and put it on her head. Magrat knew all about the power of hats. In her mind’s ear she could hear the rattle of the chariots. “Lady? We will bring your friends to sing to you.” She turned. The candlelight sparkled off her eyes. Greebo drew back into the safety of his armour. He recalled a particular time when he’d leapt out on a vixen. Normally Greebo could take on a fox without raising a sweat but, as it turned out, this one had cubs. He hadn’t found out until he chased her into her den. He’d lost a bit of one ear and quite a lot of fur before he’d got away. The vixen had a very similar expression to the one Magrat had now. “Greebo? Come here!” The cat turned and tried to find a place of safety in the suit’s breastplate. He was beginning to doubt he’d make it through the knight. Elves prowled the castle gardens. They’d killed the fish in the ornamental pond, eventually. Mr. Brooks was perched on a kitchen chair, working at a crevice in the stable wall. He’d been aware of some sort of excitement, but it was involving humans and therefore of secondary importance. But he did notice the change in the sound from the hives, and the splintering of wood. A hive had already been tipped over. Angry bees clouded around three figures as feet ripped through comb and honey and brood. The laughter stopped as a white-coated, veiled figure appeared over the hedge. It raised a long metal tube. No one ever knew what Mr. Brooks put in his squirter. There was old tobacco in it, and boiled-up roots, and bark scrapings, and herbs that even Magrat had never heard of. It shot a glistening stream over the hedge which hit the middle elf between the eyes, and sprayed over the other two. Mr. Brooks watched dispassionately until their struggles stopped. “Wasps,” he said. Then he went and found a box, lit a lantern and, with great care and delicacy, oblivious to the stings, began to repair the damaged combs.   *   *   *   Shawn couldn’t feel much in his arm anymore, except in the hot dull way that indicated at least one broken bone, and he knew that two of his fingers shouldn’t be looking like that. He was sweating, despite being only in his vest and drawers. He should never have taken his chain-mail off, but it’s hard to say no when an elf is pointing a bow at you. Shawn knew what, fortunately, many people didn’t - chain-mail isn’t much defence against an arrow. It certainly isn’t when the arrow is being aimed between your eyes. He’d been dragged along the corridors to the armoury. There were at least four elves, but it was hard to see their faces. Shawn remembered when the travelling Magic Lanthorn show had come to Lancre. He’d watched entranced as different pictures had been projected on to one of Nanny Ogg’s bedsheets. The elf faces put him in mind of that. There were eyes and a mouth in there somewhere, but everything else seemed to be temporary, the elves’ features passing across their faces like the pictures on the screen. They didn’t say much. They just laughed a lot. They were a merry folk, especially when they were twisting your arm to see how far it could go. The elves spoke to one another in their own language. Then one of them turned to Shawn, and indicated the armoury door. “We wish the lady to come out,” it said. “You must say to her, if she does not come out, we will play with you some more.” “What will you do to us if she does come out?” said Shawn. “Oh, we shall still play with you,” said the elf. “That’s what makes it so much fun. But she must hope, must she not? Talk to her now.” He was pushed up to the door. He knocked on it, in what he hoped was a respectful way. “Urn. Miss Queen?” Magrat’s voice was muffled. “Yes?” “It’s me, Shawn.” “I know.” “I’m out here. Um. I think they’ve hurt Miss Tockley. Um. They say they’ll hurt me some more if you don’t come out. But you don’t have to come out because they daren’t come in there because of all the iron. So I shouldn’t listen to them if I was you.” There were some distant clankings, and then a twang. “Miss Magrat?” “Ask her,” said the elf, “if there is any food and water in there.” “Miss, they say-“ One of the elves jerked him away. Two of them took up station either side of the doorway, and one put his pointed ear to it. Then it knelt down and peered through the keyhole, taking care not to come too near the metal of the lock. There was a sound no louder than a click. The elf remained motionless for a moment, and then keeled over gently, without a sound. Shawn blinked. There was about an inch of crossbow bolt sticking out of its eye. The feathers had been sheared off by its passage through the keyhole. “Wow,” he said. The armoury door swung open, revealing nothing but darkness. One of the elves started to laugh. “So much for him,” it said. “How stupid . . . Lady? Will you listen to your warrior?” He gripped Shawn’s broken arm, and twisted. Shawn tried not to scream. Purple lights flashed in front of his eyes. He wondered what would happen if he passed out. He wished his mum was here. “Lady,” said the elf, “if you-“ “All right,” said Magrat’s voice, from somewhere in the darkness. “I’m going to come out. You must promise not to hurt me.” “Oh, indeed I do, lady.” “And you’ll let Shawn go.” “Yes.” The elves on either side of the doorway nodded at each other. “Please?” Magrat pleaded. “Yes.” Shawn groaned. If it had been Mum or Mistress Weatherwax, they’d have fought to the death. Mum was right - Magrat always was the nice soft one . . . . . . who’d just fired a crossbow through a keyhole. Some eighth sense made Shawn shift his weight. If the elf relaxed his grip for just one second, Shawn was ready to stagger. Magrat appeared in the doorway. She was carrying an ancient wooden box with the word “Candles” on the side in peeling paint. Shawn looked hopefully along the corridor. Magrat smiled brightly at the elf beside him. “This is for you,” she said, handing over the box. The elf took it automatically. “But you mustn’t open it. And remember you promised not to hurt me.” The elves closed in behind Magrat. One of them raised a hand, with a stone knife in it. “Lady?” said the elf holding the box, which was rocking gently in its hands. “Yes?” said Magrat, meekly. “I lied to you.” The knife plunged toward her back. And shattered. The elf looked at Magrat’s innocent expression, and opened the box. Greebo had spent an irritating two minutes in that box. Technically, a cat locked in a box may be alive or it may be dead. You never know until you look. In fact, the mere act of opening the box will determine the state of the cat, although in this case there were three determinate states the cat could be in: these being Alive, Dead, and Bloody Furious. Shawn dived sideways as Greebo went off like a Claymore mine. “Don’t worry about him,” said Magrat dreamily, as the elf flailed at the maddened cat. “He’s just a big softy.” She drew a knife out of the folds of her dress, turned, and stabbed the elf behind her. It wasn’t an accurate thrust, but it didn’t have to be. Not with an iron blade. She completed the movement by daintily raising the hem of her dress and kicking the third elf just under the knee. Shawn saw a flash of metal as her foot retreated under the silk again. She elbowed the screaming elf aside, trotted into the doorway, and came back with a crossbow. “Shawn,” she said, “which one hurt you?” “All of them,” said Shawn, weakly. “But the one fighting Greebo stabbed Diamanda.” The elf pulled Greebo off his face. Green-blue blood was streaming from a dozen wounds and Greebo hung on to its arm as he was flailed against the wall. “Stop it,” said Magrat. The elf looked down at the bow, and froze. “I will not beg for mercy,” it said. “Good,” said Magrat, and fired. That left one elf rolling in circles on the flagstones, clutching at its knee. Magrat stepped daintily over the body of another elf, vanished into the armoury for a moment, and came back with an axe. The elf stopped moving, and focused all its attention on her. “Now,” said Magrat, conversationally, “I’m not going to lie to you about your chances, because you haven’t got any. I’m going to ask you some questions. But first of all, I’m going to get your attention.” The elf was expecting it, and managed to roll aside as the axe splintered the stones. “Miss?” said Shawn weakly, as Magrat raised the axe again. “Yes?” “Mum says they don’t feel pain, miss.” “No? But they can certainly be put to inconvenience.” Magrat lowered the axe. “Of course, there’s armour,” she said. “We could put this one in a suit of armour. How about it?” “No!” The elf tried to pull away across the floor. “Why not?” said Magrat. “Better than axes, yes?” “No!” “Why not?” “It is like being buried in the earth,” hissed the elf. “No eyes, no ears, no mouth!” “Chain-mail, then,” said Magrat. “No!” “Where is the king? Where is everyone?” “I will not say!” “All right.” Magrat vanished into the armoury again, and came back dragging a suit of chain-mail. The elf tried to scramble away. “You won’t get it on,” said Shawn, from where he lay. “You’ll never get it over its arms-“ Magrat picked up the axe. “Oh, no,” said Shawn. “Miss!” “You will never get him back,” said the elf. “She has him.” “We shall see,” said Magrat. “All right, Shawn. What shall we do with it?” In the end they dragged it into a storeroom next to the dungeon and manacled it to the bars of the window. It was still whimpering at the touch of the iron as Magrat slammed the door. Shawn was trying to keep at a respectful distance. It was the way Magrat kept smiling all the time. “Now let’s have a look at that arm of yours,” she said. “I’m all right,” said Shawn, “but they stabbed Diamanda in the kitchen.” “Was it her I heard screaming?” “Uh. Partly. Uh.” Shawn stared down in fascination at the dead elves as Magrat stepped over them. “You killed them,” he said. “Did I do it wrong?” “Um. No,” said Shawn cautiously. “No, you did it . . . quite well, really.” “And there’s one in the pit,” said Magrat. “You know . . . the pit. What day is it?” “Tuesday.” “And you clean it out on . . . ?” “Wednesdays. Only I missed last Wednesday because I had-“ “Then we probably don’t need to worry about it. Are there anymore around?” “I. . . don’t think so. Uh. Miss Queen?” “Yes, Shawn?” “Could you put the axe down, please? I’d feel a lot better if you put the axe down. The axe. Miss Queen. You keep swinging it about. It could go off at any second.” “What axe?” “The one you’re holding.” “Oh, this axe.” Magrat appeared to notice it for the first time. “That arm looks bad. Let’s get down to the kitchen and I’ll splint it. Those fingers don’t look good, either. Did they kill Diamanda?” “I don’t know. And I don’t know why. I mean, she was helping them.” “Yes. Wait a moment.” Magrat disappeared one more time into the armoury, and came back carrying a sack. “Come on. Greebo!” Greebo gave her a sly look, and stopped washing himself. “D’you know a funny thing about Lancre?” said Magrat, as they sidled down the stairs. “What’s that, miss?” “We never throw anything away. And you know another thing?” “No, miss.” “They couldn’t have painted her from life, of course. I mean, people didn’t paint portraits in those days. But the armour . . . hah! All they had to do was look. And you know what?” Shawn suddenly felt frightened. He’d been scared before, but it had been immediate and physical. But Magrat, like this, frightened him more than the elves. It was like being charged by a sheep. “No, miss?” he said. “No one told me about her. You’d think it’s all tapestry and walking around in long dresses!” “What, miss?” Magrat waved an arm expressively. “All this!” “Miss!” said Shawn, from knee level. Magrat looked down. “What?” “Please put the axe down!” “Oh. Sorry.”   Hodgesaargh spent his nights in a little shed adjoining the mews. He too had received an invitation to the wedding, but it had been snatched from his hand and eaten in mistake for one of his fingers by Lady Jane, an ancient and evil-tempered gyrfalcon. So he’d gone through his usual nightly routine, bathing his wounds and eating a meal of stale bread and ancient cheese and going to bed early to bleed gently by candlelight over a copy of Beaks and Talons. He looked up at a sound from the mews, picked up the candlestick, and wandered out. An elf was looking at the birds. It had Lady Jane perched on its arm. Hodgesaargh, like Mr. Brooks, didn’t take much interest in events beyond his immediate passion. He was aware that there were a lot of visitors in the castle and, as far as he was concerned, anyone looking at the hawks was a fellow enthusiast. “That’s my best bird,” he said proudly. “I’ve nearly got her trained. She’s very good. I’m training her. She’s very intelligent. She knows eleven words of command.” The elf nodded solemnly. Then it slipped the hood off the bird’s head, and nodded toward Hodgesaargh. “Kill,” it commanded. Lady Jane’s eyes glittered in the torchlight. Then she leapt, and hit the elf full in the throat with two sets of talons and a beak. “She does that with me, too,” said Hodgesaargh. “Sorry about that. She’s very intelligent.”   *   *   *   Diamanda was lying on the kitchen floor, in a pool of blood. Magrat knelt beside her. “She’s still alive. Just.” She grabbed the hem of her dress, and tried to rip it. “Damn the thing. Help me, Shawn.” “Miss?” “We need bandages!” “But-“ “Oh, stop gawping.” The skirt tore. A dozen lace roses unravelled. Shawn had never been privy to what queens wore under their clothes, but even starting with certain observations concerning Millie Chillum and working his way up, he’d never considered metal underwear. Magrat thumped the breastplate. “Fairly good fit,” she said, defying Shawn to point out that in certain areas there was quite a lot of air between the metal and Magrat. “Not that a few tucks and a rivet here and there wouldn’t help. Don’t you think it looks good?” “Oh, yes,” said Shawn. “Uh. Sheet iron is really you.” “You really think so?” “Oh, yes,” said Shawn, inventing madly. “You’ve got the figure for it.” She set and splinted his arm and fingers, working methodically, using strips of silk as bandages. Diamanda was less easy. Magrat cleaned and stitched and bandaged, while Shawn sat and watched, trying to ignore the insistent hot-ice pain from his arm. He kept repeating, “They just laughed and stabbed her. She didn’t even try to run away. It was like they were playing.” For some reason Magrat shot a glance at Greebo, who had the decency to look embarrassed. “Pointy ears and hair you want to stroke,” she said, vaguely. “And they can fascinate you. And when they’re happy they make a pleasing noise.” “What?” “Just thinking to myself.” Magrat stood up. “OK. I’ll build up the fire and fetch a couple of crossbows and load them up for you. And you keep the door shut and let no one in, d’you hear? And if I don’t come back . . . try and go somewhere where there’s people. Get up to the dwarfs at Copperhead. Or the trolls.” “What are you going to do?” “I’m going to see what’s happened to everyone.” Magrat opened the sack she’d brought down from the armoury. There was a helmet in it. It had wings on, and to Shawn’s mind was quite impractical.[37] There was also a pair of mail gloves and a choice assortment of rusty weaponry. “But there’s probably more of those things out there!” “Better out there than in here.” “Can you fight?” “Don’t know. Never tried,” said Magrat. “But if we wait here, someone’s bound to come.” “Yes. I’m afraid they will.” “What I mean is, you don’t have to do this!” “Yes I do. I’m getting married tomorrow. One way or the other.” “But-“ “Shut up!” She’s going to get killed, Shawn thought. It’s enough to be able to pick up a sword. You have to know which end to poke into the enemy. I’m supposed to be on guard and she’s going to get killed- But- But- She shot one of them in the eye, right through the keyhole. I couldn’t have done that. I’d have said something like “Hands up!” first. But they were in the way and she just. . . got them out of her way. She’s still going to die. She’s just probably going to die bravely. I wish my mum was here. Magrat finished rolling up the stained remnant of the wedding dress and stowed it in the sack. “Have we got any horses?” “There’s . . . elf horses in the courtyard, miss. But I don’t think you’ll be able to ride one.” It struck Shawn immediately that this wasn’t the right thing to say. It was black, and larger than what Magrat had to think of as a human horse. It rolled red eyes at her, and tried to get into position to kick. Magrat managed to mount only by practically tethering every leg to the rings in the stable wall, but when she was on, the horse changed. It had the docility of the severely whipped, and seemed to have no mind of its own. “It’s the iron,” said Shawn. “What does it do to them? It can’t hurt.” “Don’t know, miss. Seems they just freeze up, kind of thing.” “Drop the portcullis after I’m through.” “Miss-“ “Are you going to tell me not to go?” “But-“ “Shut up, then.” “But-“ “I remember a folksong about a situation just like this,” said Magrat. “This girl had her fiance stolen by the Queen of the Elves and she didn’t hang around whining, she jolly well got on her horse and went and rescued him. Well, I’m going to do that too.” Shawn tried to grin. “You’re going to sing7” he said. “I’m going to fight. I’ve got everything to fight for, haven’t I? And I’ve tried everything else.” Shawn wanted to say: but that’s not the same! Going and fighting when you’re a real person isn’t like folksongs! In real life you die! In folksongs you just have to remember to keep one finger in your ear and how to get to the next chorus! In real life no one goes wack-fol-a-diddle-di-do-sing-too-rah-li-ay! But he said: “But, miss, if you don’t come back-“ Magrat turned in the saddle. “I’ll be back.” Shawn watched her urge the sluggish horse into a trot and disappear over the drawbridge. “Good luck!” he shouted. Then he lowered the portcullis and went back into the keep, where there were three loaded crossbows on the kitchen table. There was also the book on martial arts that the king had sent for specially. He pumped up the fire, turned a chair to face the door, and turned to the Advanced Section. Magrat was halfway down the road to the square when the adrenaline wore off and her past life caught up with her. She looked down at the armour, and the horse, and thought: I’m out of my mind. It was that bloody letter. And I was frightened. I thought I’d show everyone what I’m made of. And now they’ll probably find out: I’m made of lots of tubes and greeny purple wobbly bits. I was just lucky with those elves. And I didn’t think. As soon as I think, I get things wrong. I don’t think I’ll be that lucky again . . . Luck? She thought wistfully of her bags of charms and talismans at the bottom of the river. They’d never really worked, if her life was anything to go by, but maybe - it was a horrible thought - maybe they’d just stopped it getting worse. There were hardly any lights in the town, and a lot of the houses had their shutters up. The horse’s hooves clattered loudly on the cobbles. Magrat peered into the shadows. Once, they’d just been shadows. Now they could be gateways to anything. Clouds were pressing in from the Hub. Magrat shivered. This was something she’d never seen before. It was true night. Night had fallen in Lancre, and it was an old night. It was not the simple absence of day, patrolled by the moon and stars, but an extension of something that had existed long before there was any light to define it by absence. It was unfolding itself from under tree roots and inside stones, crawling back across the land. Magrat’s sack of what she considered to be essential props might be at the bottom of the river but she had been a witch for more than ten years, and she could feel the terror in the air. People remember badly. But societies remember well, the swarm remembers, encoding the information to slip it past the censors of the mind, passing it on from grandmother to grandchild in little bits of nonsense they won’t bother to forget. Sometimes the truth keeps itself alive in devious ways despite the best efforts of the official keepers of information. Ancient fragments chimed together now in Magrat’s head. Up the airy mountain, down the rushy glen . . . From ghosties and bogles and long-leggity beasties . . . My mother said I never should . . . We dare not go a-hunting, for fear . . . And things that go bump . . . Play with the fairies in the wood . . . Magrat sat on the horse she didn’t trust and gripped the sword she didn’t know how to use while the ciphers crept out of memory and climbed into a shape. They steal cattle and babies. . . They steal milk. . . They love music, and steal away musicians. . . In fact they steal everything. We’ll never be as free as them, as beautiful as them, as clever as them, as light as them; we are animals. Chilly wind soughed in the forest beyond the town. It had always been a pleasant forest to walk in at nights but now, she knew, it would not be so again. The trees would have eyes. There would be distant laughter in the wind. What they take is everything. Magrat spurred the horse into a walk. Somewhere in the town a door slammed shut. And what they give you is fear. There was the sound of hammering from across the street. A man was nailing something on his door. He glanced around in terror, saw Magrat, and darted inside. What he had been nailing on the door was a horseshoe. Magrat tied the horse firmly to a tree and slid off its back. There was no reply to her knocking. Who was it who lived here? Carter the weaver, wasn’t it, or Weaver the baker?  “Open up, man! It’s me, Magrat Garlick!” There was something white beside the doorstep. It turned out to be a bowl of cream. Again, Magrat thought of the cat Greebo. Smelly, unreliable, cruel and vindictive - but who purred nicely, and had a bowl of milk every night. “Come on! Open up!” After a while the bolts slid back, and an eye was applied to a very narrow crack. “Yes?” “You’re Carter the baker, aren’t you?” “I’m Weaver the thatcher.” “And you know who I am?” “Miss Garlick?” “Come on, let me in!” “Are you alone, miss?” “Yes.” The crack widened to a Magrat width. There was one candle alight in the room. Weaver backed away from Magrat until he was leaning awkwardly over the table. Magrat peered around him. The rest of the Weaver family were hiding under the table. Four pairs of frightened eyes peered up at Magrat. “What’s going on?” she said. “Er . . .” said Weaver. “Didn’t recognize you in your flying hat, miss . . .” “I thought you were doing the Entertainment? What’s happened? Where is everyone? Where is my going-to-be-husband?” “Er . . .” Yes, it was probably the helmet. That’s what Magrat decided afterward. There are certain items, such as swords and wizards’ hats and crowns and rings, which pick up something of the nature of their owners. Queen Ynci had probably never sewn a tapestry in her life and undoubtedly had a temper shorter than a wet cowpat.[38] It was better to think that something of her had rubbed off on the helmet and was being transmitted to Magrat like some kind of royal scalp disease. It was better to let Ynci take over. She grabbed Weaver by his collar. “If you say ‘Er’ one more time,” she said, “I’ll chop your ears off.” “Er . . . aargh . . . I mean, miss . . . it’s the Lords and Ladies, miss!” “It really is the elves?” “Miss!” said Weaver, his eyes full of pleading. “Don’t say it! We heard ‘em go down the street. Dozens of ‘em. And they’ve stolen old Thatcher’s cow and Skindle’s goat and they broke down the door of-“ “Why’d you put a bowl of milk out?” Magrat demanded. Weaver’s mouth opened and shut a few times. Then he managed: “You see, my Eva said her granny always put a bowl of milk out for them, to keep them hap-“ “I see,” said Magrat, icily. “And the king?” “The king, miss?” said Weaver, buying time. “The king,” said Magrat. “Short man, runny eyes, ears that stick out a bit, unlike other ears in this vicinity very shortly.” Weaver’s fingers wove around one another like tormented snakes. “Well. . . well. . . well. . .” He caught the look on Magrat’s face, and sagged. “We done the play,” he said. “I told ‘em, let’s do the Stick and Bucket Dance instead, but they were set on this play. And it all started all right and then, and then, and then. . . suddenly They were there, hundreds of ‘em, and everyone was runnin’, and someone bashed into me, and I rolled into the stream, and then there was all this noise, and I saw Jason Ogg hitting four elves with the first thing he could get hold of-“ “Another elf?” “Right, and then I found Eva and the kids, and then lots of people were running like hell for home, and there were these Gentry on horseback, and I could hear ‘em laughing, and we got home and Eva said to put a horseshoe on the door and-“ “What about the king?” “Dunno, miss. Last I remember, he was laughin’ at Thatcher in his straw wig.” “And Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax? What happened to them?” “Dunno, miss. Don’t remember seein’ ‘em, but there was people runnin’ everywhere-“ “And where was all this?” “Miss?” “Where did it happen?” said Magrat, trying to speak slowly and distinctly. “Up at the Dancers, miss. You know. Them old stones.” Magrat let him go. “Oh, yes,” she said. “Don’t tell Magrat, Magrat’s not to know about this sort of thing. The Dancers? Right.” “It wasn’t us, miss! It was only make-believe!” “Hah!” She unbolted the door again. “Where’re you going, miss?” said Weaver, who was not a competitor in the All-Lancre Uptake Stakes. “Where d’you think?” “But, miss, you can’t take iron-“ Magrat slammed the door. Then she kicked the bowl of milk so hard that it sprayed across the street.   Jason Ogg crawled cautiously through the dripping bracken. There was a figure a few feet away. He hefted the stone in his hand- “Jason?” “Is that you, Weaver?” “No, it’s me - Tailor.” “Where’s everyone else?” “Tinker’n Baker found Carpenter just now. Have you seen Weaver?” “No, but I saw Carter and Thatcher.” Mist curled up as the rain drummed into the warm earth. The seven surviving Morris Men crawled under a dripping bush. “There’s going to be hell to pay in the morning!” moaned Carter. “When she finds us we’re done for!” “We’ll be all right if we can find some iron,” said Jason. “Iron don’t have no effect on her! She’ll tan our hides for us!” Carter clutched his knees to his chest in terror. “Who?” “Mistress Weatherwax!” Thatcher jabbed him in the ribs. Water cascaded off the leaves above them and tunnelled down every neck. “Don’t be so daft! You saw them things! What’re you worrying about that old baggage for?” “She’ll tan our hides for us, right enough! ‘Twas all our fault, she’ll say!” “I just hopes she gets a chance,” muttered Tinker. “We are,” said Thatcher, “between a rock and a hard place.” “No we ain’t,” sobbed Carter. “I been there. That’s that gorge just above Bad Ass. We ain’t there! I wish we was there! We’re under this bush! And they’ll be looking for us! And so shall she!” “What happened when we was doing the Ent-“ Carpenter began. “I ain’t asking that question right now,” said Jason. “The question I’m asking right now is, how do we get home tonight?” “She’ll be waiting for us!” Carter wailed. There was a tinkle in the darkness. “What’ve you got there?” said Jason. “It’s the props sack,” said Carter. “You said as how it was my job to look after the props sack!” “You dragged that all the way down here?” “I ain’t about to get into more trouble ‘cos of losing the props sack!” Carter started to shiver. “If we gets back home,” said Jason, “I’m going to talk to our mam about getting you some of these new dried frog pills.” He pulled the sack toward him and undid the top. “There’s our bells in here,” he said, “and the sticks. And who told you to pack the accordion?” “I thought we might want to do the Stick and-“ “No one’s ever to do the Stick and-“ There was a laugh, away on the rain-soaked hill, and a crackling in the bracken. Jason suddenly felt the focus of attention. “They’re out there!” said Carter. “And we ain’t got any weapons,” said Tinker. A set of heavy brass bells hit him in the chest. “Shut up,” said Jason, “and put your bells on. Carter?” “They’re waiting for us!” “I’ll say this just once,” said Jason. “After tonight no one’s ever to talk about the Stick and Bucket dance ever again. All right?” The Lancre Morris Men faced one another, rain plastering their clothes to their bodies. Carter, tears of terror mingling with make-up and the rain, squeezed the accordion. There was the long-drawn-out chord that by law must precede all folk music to give bystanders time to get away Jason held up his hand and counted his fingers. “One, two . . .” His forehead wrinkled. “One, two, three . . .” “. . . four . . .” hissed Tinker. “. . . four,” said Jason. “Dance, lads!” Six heavy ash sticks clashed in mid-air. “. . . one, two, forward, one, back, spin . . .” Slowly, as the leaky strains of Mrs. Widgery’s Lodger wound around the mist, the dancers leapt and squelched their way slowly through the night. . . “. . . two, back, jump . . .” The sticks clashed again. “They’re watching us!” panted Tailor, as he bounced past Jason, “I can see ‘em!” “. . . one . . . two . . . they won’t do nothing ‘til the music stops! . . . back, two, spin . . . they loves music! . . . forward, hop, turn . . . one and six, beetle crushers! . . . hop, back, spin . . .” “They’re coming out of the bracken!” shouted Carpenter, as the sticks met again. “I see ‘em . . . two, three, forward, turn . . . Carter . . . back, spin . . . you do a double . . . two, back . . . wandering angus down the middle . . .” “I’m losing it, Jason!” “Play! . . . two, three, spin . . .” “They’re all round us!” “Dance!” “They’re watching us! They’re closing in!” “. . . spin, back . . . jump . . . we’re nearly at the road . . .” “Jason!” “Remember when . . . three, turn . . . we won the cup against Ohulan Casuals? . . . spin . . .” The sticks met, with a thump of wood against wood. Clods of earth were kicked into the night. “Jason, you don’t mean-“ “. . . back, two . . . do it. . . “ “Carter’s getting . . . one, two . . . out of wind . . .” “. . . two, spin. . .” “The accordion’s melting, Jason,” sobbed Carter. “. . . one, two, forward . . . bean setting!” The accordion wheezed. The elves pressed in. Out of the corner of his eye Jason saw a dozen grinning, fascinated faces. “Jason!” “. . . one, two . . . Carter into the middle . . . one, two, spin. . .” Seven pairs of boots thudded down . . . “Jason!” “. . . one, two . . . spin . . . ready . . . one, two . . . back . . . back . . . one, two . . . turn . . . KILL . . . and back, one, two. . .”   The inn was a wreck. The elves had stripped it of everything edible and rolled out every barrel, although a couple of rogue cheeses in the cellar had put up quite a fight. The table had collapsed. Lobster claws and candlesticks lay among the ruined meal. Nothing moved. Then someone sneezed, and some soot fell into the empty grate, followed by Nanny Ogg and, eventually, by the small, black, and irate figure of Casanunda. “Yuk,” said Nanny, looking around at the debris. “This really is the pips.” “You should have let me fight them!” “There were too many of them, my lad.” Casanunda threw his sword on the floor in disgust. “We were just getting to know one another properly and fifty elves burst into the place! Damn! This kind of thing happens to me all the time!” “That’s the best thing about black, it doesn’t show the soot,” said Nanny Ogg vaguely, dusting herself off. “They managed it, then. Esme was right. Wonder where she is? Oh, well. Come on.” “Where’re we going?” said the dwarf. “Down to my cottage.” “Ah!” “To get my broomstick,” said Nanny Ogg firmly. “I ain’t having the Queen of the Fairies ruling my children. So we’d better get some help. This has gone too far.” “We could go up into the mountains,” said Casanunda, as they crept down the stairs. “There’s thousands of dwarfs up there.” “No,” said Nanny Ogg. “Esme won’t thank me for this, but I’m the one who has to wave the bag o’ sweets when she overreaches herself . . . and I’m thinking about someone who really hates the Queen.” “You won’t find anyone who hates her worse than dwarfs do,” said Casanunda. “Oh, you will,” said Nanny Ogg, “if you knows where to look.” The elves had been into Nanny Ogg’s cottage, too. There weren’t two pieces of furniture left whole. “What they don’t take they smash,” said Nanny Ogg. She stirred the debris with her foot. Glass tinkled. “That vase was a present from Esme,” she said, to the unfeeling world in general. “Never liked it much.” “Why’d they do it?” said Casanunda, looking around. “Oh, they’d smash the world if they thought it’d make a pretty noise,” said Nanny She stepped outside again and felt around under the eaves of the low thatched roof, and pulled out her broomstick with a small grunt of triumph. “I always shove it up there,” she said, “otherwise the kids nick it and go joy-riding. You ride behind me, and I say this against my better judgement.” Casanunda shuddered. Dwarfs are generally scared of heights, since they don’t often have the opportunity to get used to them. Nanny scratched her chin, making a sandpapery sound. “And we’ll need a crowbar,” she said. “There’ll be one in Jason’s forge. Hop on, my lad.” “I really wasn’t expecting this,” said Casanunda, feeling his way on to the broomstick with his eyes shut. “I was looking forward to a convivial evening, just me and you.” “It is just me and you.” “Yes, but I hadn’t assumed there’d be a broomstick involved.” The stick left the ground slowly Casanunda clung miserably to the bristles. “Where’re we going?” he said weakly “Place I know, up in the hills,” said Nanny “Ages since I’ve been there. Esme won’t go near it, and Magrat’s too young to be tole. I used to go there a lot, though. When I was a girl. Girls used to go up there if they wanted to get-oh, bugger. . .” “What?” “Thought I saw something fly across the moon, and I’m damn sure it wasn’t Esme.” Casanunda tried to look around while keeping his eyes shut. “Elves can’t fly,” he muttered. “That’s all you know,” said Nanny. “They ride yarrow stalks.” “Yarrow stalks?” “Yep. Tried it meself, once. You can get some lift out of ‘em, but it plays merry hell with the gussets. Give me a nice bundle of bristles every time. Anyway,” she nudged Casanunda, “you should be right at home on one of these. Magrat says a broomstick is one of them sexual metaphor things”[39] Casanunda had opened one eye just long enough to see a rooftop drift silently below him. He felt sick. “The difference being,” said Nanny Ogg, “that a broomstick stays up longer. And you can use it to keep the house clean, which is more than you can say for - are you all right?” “I really don’t like this at all, Mrs. Ogg.” “Just trying to cheer you up, Mr. Casanunda.” “’Cheer’ I like, Mrs. Ogg,” said the dwarf, “but can we avoid the ‘up’?” “Soon be down.” “That I like.” Nanny Ogg’s boots scraped along the hard-packed mud of the smithy’s yard. “I’ll leave the magic running, won’t be a mo,” she said. Ignoring the dwarfs bleat for help, she hopped off the stick and disappeared through the back door. The elves hadn’t been there, at least. Too much iron. She pulled a crowbar from the toolbench and hurried out again. “You can hold this,” she said to Casanunda. She hesitated. “Can’t have too much luck, can we?” she said, and scurried back into the forge. This time she was out again much faster, slipping something into her pocket. “Ready?” she said. ‘ “No.” “Then let’s go. And keep a look out. With your eyes open.” “I’m looking for elves?” said Casanunda, as the stick rose into the moonlight. “Could be. It wasn’t Esme, and the only other one ever flying around here is Mr. Ixolite the banshee, and he’s very good about slipping us a note under the door when he’s going to be about. For air traffic control, see?” Most of the town was dark. The moonlight made a black and silver checkerboard across the country. After a while, Casanunda began to feel better about things. The motion of the broomstick was actually quite soothing. “Carried lots of passengers, have you?” he said. “On and off, yes,” said Nanny. Casanunda appeared to be thinking about things. And then he said, in a voice dripping with scientific inquiry, “Tell me, has anyone ever tried to mak-“ “No,” said Nanny Ogg firmly. “You’d fall off.” “You don’t know what I was going to ask.” “Bet you half a dollar?” They flew in silence for a couple of minutes, and then Casanunda tapped Nanny Ogg on the shoulder. “Elves at three o’clock!” “That’s all right, then. That’s hours away.” “I mean they’re over there!” Nanny squinted at the stars. Something ragged moved across the night. “Oh, blast.” “Can’t you outfly them?” “Nope. They can put a girdle round the world in forty minutes.” “Why? It’s not that fat,” said Casanunda, who was feeling in the mood for a handful of dried frog pills. “I mean they’re fast. We can’t outrun ‘em, even if we lost some weight.” “I think I’m losing a tiny bit,” said Casanunda, as the broomstick dived toward the trees. Leaves scraped on Nanny Ogg’s boots. Moonlight glinted briefly off ash-blond hair, away to her left. “Bugger, bugger, bugger.” Three elves were keeping station with the broomstick. That was the thing about elves. They chased you till you dropped, until your blood was curdling with dread; if a dwarf wanted you dead, on the other hand, they’d simply cut you in half with an axe first chance they got. But that was because dwarfs were a lot nicer than elves. “They’re gaming on us!” said Casanunda. “Got the crowbar?” “Yes!” “Right. . .”   The broomstick zigzagged over the silent forest. One of the elves drew its sword and swung down. Knock them down into the trees, leave them alive as long as possible . . . The broomstick went into reverse. Nanny Ogg’s head and legs went forward, so that partly she was sitting on her hands but mainly she was sitting on nothing. The elf swooped toward her, laughing- Casanunda stuck out the crowbar. There was a sound very like doioinng. The broomstick jerked ahead again, dumping Nanny Ogg in Casanunda’s lap. “Sorry.” “Don’t mention it. In fact, do it again if you like.” “Get him, did you?” “Took his breath away.” “Good. Where’re the others?” “Can’t see them.” Casanunda grinned madly. “We showed them, eh?” Something went zip and stuck into Nanny Ogg’s hat. “They know we’ve got iron,” she said. “They won’t come close again. They don’t need to,” she added bitterly. The broomstick swerved around a tree and ploughed through some bracken. Then it swung out on to an overgrown path. “They aren’t following us anymore,” said Casanunda, after a while. “We’ve frightened them off, yes?” “Not us. They’re nervy of going close to the Long Man. It’s not their turf. Huh, look at the state of this path. There’s trees growing in it now. When I was a girl, you wouldn’t find a blade of grass growing on the path.” She smiled at a distant memory. “Very popular place on a summer night, the Long Man was.” There was a change in the texture of the forest now. It was old even by the standards of Lancre forestry. Beards of moss hung from gnarled low branches. Ancient leaves crackled underfoot as the witch and the dwarf flew between the trees. Something heard them and crashed away through the thick undergrowth. By the sound of it, it was something with horns. Nanny let the broomstick glide to a halt. “There,” she said, pushing aside a bracken frond, “the Long Man.’” Casanunda peered under her elbow. “Is that all? It’s just an old burial mound.” “Three old burial mounds,” said Nanny Casanunda took in the overgrown landscape. “Yes, I see them,” he said. “Two round ones and a long one. Well?” “The first time I saw ‘em from the air,” said Nanny, “I nearly fell off the bloody broomstick for laughin’.” There was one of those pauses known as the delayed drop while the dwarf worked out the topography of the situation. Then: “Blimey,” said Casanunda. “I thought the people who built burial mounds and earthworks and things were serious druids and people like that, not. . . not people who drew on privy walls with 200,000 tons of earth, in a manner of speaking.” “Doesn’t sound like you to be shocked by that sort of thing.” She could have sworn the dwarf was blushing under his wig. “Well, there’s such a thing as style,” said Casanunda. “There’s such a thing as subtlety. You don’t just shout: I’ve got a great big tonker.” “It’s a bit more complicated than that,” said Nanny, pushing through the bushes. “Here it’s the landscape saying: I’ve got a great big tonker. That’s a dwarf word, is it?” “Yes.” “It’s a good word.” Casanunda tried to untangle himself from a briar. “Esme doesn’t ever come up here,” said Nanny, from somewhere up ahead. “She says it’s bad enough about folksongs and maypoles and suchlike, without the whole scenery getting suggestive. ‘Course,” she went on, “this was never intended as a women’s place. My great-gran said in the real old days the men used to come up for strange rites what no women ever saw.” “Except your great-grandmother, who hid in the bushes,” said Casanunda. Nanny stopped dead. “How did you know that?” “Let’s just say I’m developing a bit of an insight into Ogg womanhood as well, Mrs. Ogg,” said the dwarf. A thorn bush had ripped his coat. “She said they just used to build sweat lodges and smell like a blacksmith’s armpit and drink scumble and dance around the fire with horns on and piss in the trees any old how,” said Nanny. “She said it was a bit sissy, to be honest. But I always reckon a man’s got to be a man, even if it is sissy. What happened to your wig?” “I think it’s on that tree back there.” “Still got the crowbar?” “Yes, Mrs. Ogg.” “Here we are, then.” They had arrived at the foot of the long mound. There were three large irregular stones there, forming a low cave. Nanny Ogg ducked under the lintel into the fusty and somewhat ammonia-scented darkness. “About here’d do,” she said. “Got a match?” The sulphurous glow revealed a flat rock with a crude drawing scratched on it. Ochre had been rubbed into the lines. They showed a figure of an owl-eyed man wearing an animal skin and horns. In the flickering light he seemed to dance. There was a runic inscription underneath. “Anyone ever worked out what that says?” said Casanunda. Nanny Ogg nodded. “It’s a variant of Oggham,” she said. “Basically, it means ‘I’ve Got a Great Big Tonker.’” “Oggham?” said the dwarf. “My family has been in these, how shall I put it, in these parts for a very long time,” said Nanny. “Knowing you is a real education, Mrs. Ogg,” said Casanunda. “Everyone says that. Just shove the crowbar down the side of the stone, will you? I’ve always wanted an excuse to go down there.” “What is down there?” “Well, it leads into Lancre Caves. They run everywhere, I’ve heard. Even up to Copperhead. There’s supposed to be an entrance in the castle, but I’ve never found it. But mainly they lead to the world of the elves.” “I thought the Dancers led to the world of the elves?” “This is the other world of the elves.” “I thought they only had one.” “They don’t talk about this one.” “And you want to go into it?” “Yes.” “You want to find elves?” “That’s right. Now, are you going to stand here all night, or are you going to crowbar that stone?” She gave him a nudge. “There’s gold down there, you know.” “Oh, yes, thanks very much,” said Casanunda sarcastically. “That’s speciesist, that is. Just because I am . . . vertically disadvantaged, you’re trying to get round me with gold, yes? Dwarfs are just a lot of appetites on legs, that’s what you think. Hah!” Nanny sighed. “Oh, all right,” she said. “Tell you what. . . when we get back home, I’ll bake you some proper dwarf bread, how about that?” Casanunda’s face split into a disbelieving grin. “Real dwarf bread?” “Yes. I reckon I’ve still got the recipe, and anyway it’s been weeks since I emptied out the cat box.”[40] “Well, all right-.” Casanunda rammed one end of the crowbar under the stone and pulled on it with dwarfish strength. After a moment’s resistance the stone swung up. There were steps below, thick with earth and old roots. Nanny started down them without a look back, and then realized that the dwarf wasn’t following. “What’s the matter?” “Never liked dark and enclosed spaces much.” “What? You’re a dwarf.” “Born a dwarf, born a dwarf. But I even get nervous when I’m hiding in wardrobes. That’s a bit of a drawback in my line of work.” “Don’t be daft. I’m not scared.” “You’re not me.” “Tell you what - I’ll bake ‘em with extra gravel.” “Ooh . . . you’re a temptress, Mrs. Ogg.” “And bring the torches.” The caves were dry, and warm. Casanunda trotted along after Nanny, anxious to stay in the torchlight. “You haven’t been down here before?” “No, but I know the way.” After a while Casanunda began to feel better. The caves were better than wardrobes. For one thing, you weren’t tripping over shoes all the time, and there probably wasn’t much chance of a sword-wielding husband opening the door. In fact, he began to feel happy. The words rose unbidden into his head, from somewhere in the back pocket of his genes. “Hiho, hiho-“ Nanny Ogg grinned in the darkness. The tunnel opened into a cavern. The torchlight picked up the suggestion of distant walls. “This it?” said Casanunda, gripping the crowbar. “No. This is something else. We . . . know about this place. It’s mythical.” “It’s not real?” “Oh, it’s real. And mythical.” The torch flared. There were hundreds of dust-covered slabs ranged around the cavern in a spiral; at the centre of the spiral was a huge bell, suspended from a rope that disappeared into the darkness of the ceiling. Just under the hanging bell was one pile of silver coins and one pile of gold coins. “Don’t touch the money,” said Nanny “’Ere, watch this, my dad told me about this, it’s a good trick.” She reached out and tapped the bell very gently, causing a faint ting. Dust cascaded off the nearest slab. What Casanunda had thought was just a carving sat up, in a creaky way. It was an armed warrior. Since he’d sat up he almost certainly was alive, but he looked as though he’d gone from life to rigor mortis without passing through death on the way. He focused deepset eyes on Nanny Ogg. “What bloody tyme d’you call thys, then?” “Not time yet,” said Nanny. “What did you goe and bang the bell for? I don’t know, I haven’t had a wynke of sleep for two hundred years, some sodde alwayes bangs the bell. Go awaye.” The warrior lay back. “It’s some old king and his warriors,” whispered Nanny, as they hurried away. “Some kind of magical sleep, I’m told. Some old wizard did it. They’re supposed to wake up for some final battle when a wolf eats the sun.” “Those wizards, always smoking something,” said Casanunda. “Could be. Go right here. Always go right.” “We’re walking in a circle?” “A spiral. We’re right under the Long Man now.” “No, that can’t be right,” said Casanunda. “We climbed down a hole under the Long Man . . . hold on . . . you mean we’re in the place where we started and it’s a different place?” “You’re getting the hang of this, I can see that.” They followed the spiral. Which, at length, brought them to a door, of sorts. The air was hotter here. Red light glowed from side passages. Two massive stones had been set up against a rock wall, with a third stone across them. Animal skins hung across the crude entrance thus formed; wisps of steam curled around them. “They got put up at the same time as the Dancers,” said Nanny, conversationally. “Only the hole here’s vertical, so they only needed three. Might as well leave your crowbar here and take your boots off if they’ve got nails in ‘em.” “These boots were stitched by the finest shoemaker in Ankh-Morpork,” said Casanunda, “and one day I shall pay him.” Nanny pulled aside the skins. Steam billowed out. There was darkness inside, thick and hot as treacle and smelling of a fox’s locker room. As Casanunda followed Nanny Ogg he sensed unseen figures in the reeking air, and heard the silence of murmured conversations suddenly curtailed. At one point he thought he saw a bowl of red hot stones, and then a shadowy hand moved across them and upturned a ladle, hiding them in steam. This can’t be inside the Long Man, he told himself. That’s an earthworks, this is a long tent of skins. They can’t both be the same thing. He realized he was dripping with sweat. Two torches became visible as the steam swirled, their light hardly more than a red tint to the darkness. But they were enough to show a huge sprawled figure lying by another bowl of hot stones. It looked up. Antlers moved in the damp, clinging heat. “Ah. Mrs. Ogg.” The voice was like chocolate. “Y’lordship,” said Nanny. “I suppose it is too much to expect you to kneel?” “Yes indeed, y’honor,” said Nanny, grinning. “You know, Mrs. Ogg, you have a way of showing respect to your god that would make the average atheist green with envy,” said the dark figure. It yawned. “Thank you, y’grace.” “No one even dances for me now. Is that too much to ask?” “Just as you say, y’lordship.” “You witches don’t believe in me anymore.” “Right again, your homishness.” “Ah, little Mrs. Ogg - and how, having got in here, do you possibly think you are going to get out?” said the slumped one. “Because I have iron,” said Nanny, her voice suddenly sharp. “Of course you have not, little Mrs. Ogg. No iron can enter this realm.” “I have the iron that goes everywhere,” said Nanny. She took her hand out of her apron pocket, and held up a horseshoe. Casanunda heard scuffles around him, as the hidden elves fought to get out of the way More steam hissed up as a brazier of hot stones was overturned. “Take it away!” “I’ll take it away when I go,” said Nanny. “Now you listen to me. She’s making trouble again. You’ve got to put a stop to it. Fair’s fair. We’re not having all the Old Trouble again.” “Why should I do that?” “You want her to be powerful, then?” There was a snort. “You can’t ever rule again, back in the world,” said Nanny. “There’s too much music. There’s too much iron.” “Iron rusts.” “Not the iron in the head.” The King snorted. “Nevertheless . . . even that. . . one day . . .” “One day.” Nanny nodded. “Yes. I’ll drink to that. One day. Who knows? One day. Everyone needs ‘one day.’ But it ain’t today. D’you see? So you come on out and balance things up. Otherwise, this is what I’ll do. I’ll get ‘em to dig into the Long Man with iron shovels, y’see, and they’ll say, why, it’s just an old earthworks, and pensioned-off wizards and priests with nothin’ better to do will pick over the heaps and write dull old books about burial traditions and such-like, and that’ll be another iron nail in your coffin. And I’d be a little bit sorry about that, ‘cos you know I’ve always had a soft spot for you. But I’ve got kiddies, y’see, and they don’t hide under the stairs because they’re frit of the thunder, and they don’t put milk out for the elves, and they don’t hurry home because of the night, and before we go back to them dark old ways I’ll see you nailed.” The words sliced through the air. The homed man stood up. And further up. His antlers touched the roof. Casanunda’s mouth dropped open. “So you see,” said Nanny, subsiding, “not today. One day, maybe. You just stay down here and sweat it out ‘til One Day. But not today.” “I . . . will decide.” “Very good. You decide. And I’ll be getting along.” The horned man looked down at Casanunda. “What are you staring at, dwarf?” Nanny Ogg nudged Casanunda. “Go on, answer the nice gentleman.” Casanunda swallowed. “Blimey,” he said, “you don’t half look like your picture.”   In a narrow little valley a few miles away a party of elves had found a nest of young rabbits which, in conjunction with a nearby antheap, kept them amused for a while. Even the meek and blind and voiceless have gods. Heme the Hunted, god of the chased, crept through the bushes and wished fervently that gods had gods. The elves had their backs to him as they hunkered down to watch closely. Heme the Hunted crawled under a clump of bramble, tensed, and sprang. He sank his teeth in an elfs calf until they met, and was flung away as it screamed and turned. He dropped and ran. That was the problem. He wasn’t built to fight, there was not an ounce of predator in him. Attack and run, that was the only option. And elves could run faster. He bounced over logs and skidded through drifts of leaves, aware even as his vision fogged that elves were overtaking him on either side, pacing him, waiting for him to . . . The leaves exploded. The little god was briefly aware of a fanged shape, all arms and vengeance. Then there were a couple of disheveled humans, one of them waving an iron bar around its head. Heme didn’t wait to see what happened next. He dived through the apparition’s legs and ran on, but a distant war-cry echoed in his long, floppy ears: “Why, certainly, I’ll have your whelk! How do we do it? Volume!”   Nanny Ogg and Casanunda walked in silence back to the cave entrance and the flight of steps. Finally, as they stepped out into the night air, the dwarf said, “Wow.” “It leaks out even up here,” said Nanny. “Very mackko place, this.” “But I mean, good grief-“ “He’s brighter than she is. Or more lazy,” said Nanny. “He’s going to wait it out.” “But he was-“ “They can look like whatever they want, to us,” said Nanny. “We see the shape we’ve given ‘em.” She let the rock drop back, and dusted off her hands. “But why should he want to stop her?” “Well, he’s her husband, after all. He can’t stand her. It’s what you might call an open marriage.” “Wait what out?” said Casanunda, looking around to see if there were any more elves. “Oh, you know,” said Nanny, waving a hand. “All this iron and books and clockwork and universities and reading and suchlike. He reckons it’ll all pass, see. And one day it’ll all be over, and people’ll look up at the skyline at sunset and there he’ll be.” Casanunda found himself turning to look at the sunset beyond the mound, half-imagining the huge figure outlined against the afterglow. “One day he’ll be back,” said Nanny softly “When even the iron in the head is rusty” Casanunda put his head on one side. You don’t move around among a different species for most of your life without learning to read a lot of their body language, especially since it’s in such large print. “You won’t entirely be sorry, eh?” he said. “Me? I don’t want ‘em back! They’re untrustworthy and cruel and arrogant parasites and we don’t need ‘em one bit.” “Bet you half a dollar?” Nanny was suddenly flustered. “Don’t you look at me like that! Esme’s right. Of course she’s right. We don’t want elves anymore. Stands to reason.” “Esme’s the short one, is she?” “Hah, no, Esme’s the tall one with the nose. You know her.” “Right, yes.” “The short one is Magrat. She’s a kind-hearted soul and a bit soft. Wears flowers in her hair and believes in songs, I reckon she’d be off dancing with the elves quick as a wink, her.”   More doubts were entering Magrat’s life. They concerned crossbows, for one thing. A crossbow is a very useful and usable weapon designed for speed and convenience and deadliness in the hands of the inexperienced, like a faster version of an out-of-code TV dinner. But it is designed to be used once, by someone who has somewhere safe to duck while they reload. Otherwise it is just so much metal and wood with a piece of string on it. Then there was the sword. Despite Shawn’s misgivings, Magrat did in theory know what you did with a sword. You tried to stick it into the enemy by a vigorous arm motion, and the enemy tried to stop you. She was a little uncertain about what happened next. She hoped you were allowed another go. She was also having doubts about her armour. The helmet and the breastplate were OK, but the rest of it was chain-mail. And, as Shawn Ogg knew, chain-mail from the point of view of an arrow can be thought of as a series of loosely connected holes. The rage was still there, the pure fury still gripped her at the core. But there was no getting away from the fact that the heart it gripped was surrounded by the rest of Magrat Garlick, spinster of this parish and likely to remain so. There were no elves visible in the town, but she could see where they had been. Doors hung off their hinges. The place looked as though it had been visited by Genghiz Cohen.[41] Now she was on the track that led to the stones. It was wider than it had been; the horses and carriages had churned it on the way up, and the fleeing people had turned it into a mire on the way down. She knew she was being watched, and it almost came as a relief when three elves stepped out from under the trees before she’d even lost sight of the castle. The middle one grinned. “Good evening, girl,” it said. “My name is Lord Lankin, and you will curtsy when you talk to me.” The tone suggested that there was absolutely no possibility that she would disobey She felt her muscles strain to comply. Queen Ynci wouldn’t have obeyed . . . “I happen to be practically the queen,” she said. It was the first time she’d looked an elf in the face when she was in any condition to notice details. This one was currently wearing high cheekbones and hair tied in a ponytail; it wore odds and ends of rags and lace and fur, confident in the knowledge that anything would look good on an elf. It wrinkled its perfect nose at her. “There is only one Queen in Lancre,” it said. “And you are, most definitely, not her.” Magrat tried to concentrate. “Where is she, then?” she said. The other two raised their bows. “You are looking for the Queen? Then we will take you to her,” Lankin stated. “And, lady, should you be inclined to make use of that nasty iron bow there are more archers hidden in the trees.”  There was indeed a rustling in the trees on one side of the track, but it was followed by a thump. The elves looked disconcerted. “Get out of my way,” said Magrat. “I think you have a very wrong idea,” said the elf. Its smile widened, but vanished when there was another sylvan crash from the other side of the track. “We felt you coming all the way up the track,” said the elf. “The brave girl off to rescue her lover! Oh, the romance! Take her.” A shadow rose up behind the two armed elves, took a head in either hand, and banged them together. The shadow stepped forward over their bodies and, as Lankin turned, caught it with one roundarm punch that picked it up and slammed it into a tree. Magrat drew her sword. Whatever this was, it looked worse than elves. It was muddy and hairy and almost troll-like in its build, and it reached out for the bridle with an arm that seemed to extend for ever. She raised the sword- “Oook?” “Put the sword down, please, miss!” The voice came from somewhere behind her, but it sounded human and worried. Elves never sounded worried. “Who are you?” she said, without turning around. The monster in front of her gave her a big, yellow-toothed grin. “Um, I’m Ponder Stibbons. A wizard. And he’s a wizard, too.” “He’s got no clothes on!” “I could get him to have a bath, if you like,” said Ponder, slightly hysterically. “He always puts on an old green dressing gown when he’s had a bath.” Magrat relaxed a bit. No one who sounded like that could be much of a threat, except to themselves. “Whose side are you on, Mr. Wizard?” “How many are there?” “Oook?” “When I get off this horse,” said Magrat, “it’ll bolt. So can you ask your . . . friend to let go of the bridle? He’ll be hurt.” “Oook?” “Um. Probably not.” Magrat slid off. The horse, relieved of the presence of iron, bolted. For about two yards. “Oook.” The horse was struggling to get back on its feet. Magrat blinked. “Um, he’s just a bit annoyed at the moment,” said Ponder. “One of the . . . elves . . . shot him with an arrow.” “But they do that to control people!” “Um. He’s not a person.” “Oook!” “Genetically, I mean.” Magrat had met wizards before. Occasionally one visited Lancre, although they didn’t stay very long. There was something about the presence of Granny Weatherwax that made them move on. They didn’t look like Ponder Stibbons. He’d lost most of his robe and, of his hat, only the brim remained. Most of his face was covered in mud, and there was a multicoloured bruise over one eye. “Did they do that to you?” “Well, the mud and the torn clothes is just from, you know, the forest. And we’ve run into-“ “Ook.” “-over elves a few times. But this is when the Librarian hit me.” “Oook.” “Thank goodness,” Ponder added. “Knocked me cold. Otherwise I’d be like the others.” A foreboding of a conversation to come swept over Magrat. “What others?” she snapped. “Are you alone?” “What others?” “Have you any idea what’s been happening?” Magrat thought about the castle, and the town. “I might be able to hazard a guess,” she said. Ponder shook his head. “It’s worse than that,” he said. “What others?” said Magrat. “I think there’s definitely been a cross-continuum break-through, and I’m sure there’s a difference in energy levels.” “But what others?” Magrat insisted. Ponder Stibbons glanced nervously at the surrounding forest. “Let’s get off the path. There’s a lot more elves back there.” Ponder disappeared into the undergrowth. Magrat followed him, and found a second wizard propped against a tree like a ladder. He had a huge smile creasing his face. “The Bursar,” said Ponder. “I think we may have overdone the dried frog pills a bit.” He raised his voice. “How . . . are . . . you . . . doing . . . sir?” “Why, I’ll have a little of the roast weasel, if you would be so good,” said the Bursar, beaming happily at nothing. “Why’s he gone so stiff?” said Magrat. “We think it’s some kind of side effect,” said Ponder. “Can’t you do anything about it?” “What, and have nothing to cross streams on?” “Call again tomorrow, baker, and we’ll have a crusty one!” said the Bursar. “Besides, he seems quite happy,” said Ponder. “Are you a warrior, miss?” “What?” said Magrat. “Well, I mean, the armour and everything . . .” Magrat looked down. She was still holding the sword. The helmet kept falling over her eyes, but she’d padded it a bit with a scrap of wedding dress. “I . . . er . . . yes. Yes, that’s right. That’s what I am,” she said. “Absolutely. Yes.” “Here for the wedding, I expect. Like us.” “That’s right. Definitely here for the wedding. That’s true.” She changed her grip on the sword. “Now tell me what happened,” she said. “Paying particular attention to what happened to the others.” “Well . . .” Ponder absentmindedly picked up a corner of his torn robe and began to screw it up in his fingers. “We all went to see this Entertainment, you see. A play. You know. Acting? And, and it was very funny. There were all these yokels in their big boots and everything, straw wigs and everything, clumping around pretending to be lords and ladies and everything, and getting it all wrong. It was very funny. The Bursar laughed at them a lot. Mind you, he’s been laughing at trees and rocks, too. But everyone was having fun. And then . . . and then . . .” “I want to know everything,” said Magrat. “Well . . . well . . . then there was this bit I can’t really remember. It was something to do with the acting, I think. I mean, suddenly . . . suddenly it all seemed real. Do you know what I mean?” “No.” “There was this chap with a red nose and bandy legs and he was playing the Queen of the Fairies or something and suddenly he was still him but. . . everything felt. . . everything round me just vanished, there was just the actors . . . and there was this hill . . . I mean, they must have been good, because I really believed . . . I think at some point I remember someone asking us to clap our hands . . . and everyone was looking very strange and there was this singing and it was wonderful and . . . and . . .” “Oook.” “Then the Librarian hit me,” said Ponder simply. “Why?” “Best if he tells it in his own words,” said Ponder. “Oook ook eek. Ook! Ook!” “Cough, Julia! Over the bender!” said the Bursar. “I didn’t understand what the Librarian said,” said Magrat. “Um. We were all present at an interdimensional rip,” said Ponder. “Caused by belief. The play was the last little thing that opened it up. There must have been a very delicate area of instability very close. It’s hard to describe, but if you had a rubber sheet and some lead weights I could demonstrate-“ “You’re trying to tell me those . . . things exist because people believe in them?” “Oh, no. I imagine they exist anyway. They’re here because people believe in them here.” “Ook.” “He ran off with us. They shot an arrow at him.” “Eeek.” “But it just made him itch.” “Ook.” “Normally he’s as gentle as a lamb. Really he is.” “Ook.” “But he can’t abide elves. They smell wrong to him.” The Librarian flared his nostrils. Magrat didn’t know much about jungles, but she thought about apes in trees, smelling the rank of the tiger. Apes never admired the sleek of the fur and the burn of the eye, because they were too well aware of the teeth of the mouth. “Yes,” she said, “I expect they would. Dwarfs and trolls hate them, too. But I think they don’t hate them as much as I do.” “You can’t fight them all,” said Ponder. “They’re swarming like bees up there. There’s flying ones, too. The Librarian says they made people get fallen trees and things and push those, you know, those stones down? There were some stones on the hill. They attacked them. Don’t know why.” “Did you see any witches at the Entertainment?” said Magrat. “Witches, witches . . .” muttered Ponder. “You couldn’t have missed them,” said Magrat. “There’d be a thin one glaring at everyone and a small fat one cracking nuts and laughing a lot. And they’d be talking to each other very loudly. And they’d both have tall pointy hats.” “Can’t say I noticed them,” said Ponder. “Then they couldn’t have been there,” said Magrat. “Being noticed is what being a witch is all about.” She was about to add that she’d never been good at it, but didn’t. Instead she said: “I’m going on up there.” “You’ll need an army, miss. I mean, you’d have been in trouble just now if the Librarian hadn’t been up in the trees.” “But I haven’t got an army. So I’m going to have to try by myself, aren’t I?” This time Magrat managed to spur the horse into a gallop. Ponder watched her go. “You know, folksongs have got a lot to answer for,” he said to the night air. “Oook.” “She’s going to get utterly killed.” “Oook.” “Hello, Mr. Flowerpot, two pints of eels if you would be so good.” “Of course, it could be her destiny, or one of those sort of things.” “Oook.” “Millennium hand and shrimp.” Ponder Stibbons looked embarrassed. “Anyone want to follow her?” “Oook.” “Whoops, there he goes with his big clock.” “Was that a ‘yes’?” “Oook.” “Not yours, his.” “Flobby wobbly, here comes our jelly.” “I think that probably counts as a ‘yes’,” said Ponder, reluctantly. “Oook?” “I’ve got a lovely new vest.” “But look,” said Ponder, “the graveyards are full of people who rushed in bravely but unwisely.” “Ook.” “What’d he say?” said the Bursar, passing briefly through reality on his way somewhere else. “I think he said, ‘Sooner or later the graveyards are full of everybody,’” said Ponder. “Oh, blast. Come on.” “Yes indeedy,” said the Bursar, “hands up the mittens, Mr. Bosun!” “Oh, shut up.”   *   *   *   Magrat dismounted and let the horse go. She knew she was near the Dancers now. Collared light flickered in the sky. She wished she could go home. The air was colder here, far too cold for a midsummer night. As she plodded onward, flakes of snow swirled in the breeze and turned to rain.   Ridcully materialized inside the castle, and then clung on to a pillar for support until he got his breath back. Transmigration always made blue spots appear in front of his eyes. No one noticed him. The castle was in turmoil. Not everyone had run home. Armies had marched across Lancre many times over the last few thousand years, and the recollection of the castle’s thick safe walls had been practically engraved in the folk memory. Run to the castle. And now it held most of the little country’s population. Ridcully blinked. People were milling around and being harangued by a small young man in loose-fitting chain-mail and one arm in a sling, who seemed to be the only person with any grip on things. When he was certain he could walk straight, Ridcully headed toward him. “What’s going on, young-“ he began, and then stopped. Shawn Ogg looked around. “The scheming minx!” said Ridcully, to the air in general. ‘”Oh, go back and get it then,’ she said, and I fell right for it! Even if I could cut the mustard again I don’t know where we were!” “Sir?” said Shawn. Ridcully shook himself. “What’s happening?” he said. “I don’t know!” said Shawn, who was almost in tears. “I think we’re being attacked by elves! Nothing anyone’s telling me’s making any sense! Somehow they arrived during the Entertainment! Or something!” Ridcully looked around at the frightened, bewildered people. “And Miss Magrat’s gone out to fight them alone!”  Ridcully looked perplexed. “Who’s Miss Magrat?” “She’s going to be queen! The bride! You know? Magrat Garlick?” Ridcully’s mind could digest one fact at a time. “What’s she gone out for?” “They captured the king!” “Did you know they’ve got Esme Weatherwax as well?” “What, Granny Weatherwax?” “I came back to rescue her,” said Ridcully, and then realized that this sounded either nonsense or cowardly. Shawn was too upset to notice. “I just hope they’re not collecting witches,” he said. “They’ll need our mum to get the complete set.” “They ain’t got me, then,” said Nanny Ogg, behind him. “Mum? How did you get in?” “Broomstick. You’d better get some people with bows up on the roof. I came down that way. So can others.” “What’re we going to do, Mum?” “There’s bands of elves all over the place,” said Nanny, “and there’s a big glow over the Dancers-“ “We must attack them!” shouted Casanunda. “Give ‘em a taste of cold steel!” “Good man, that dwarf!” said Ridcully. “That’s right! I’ll get my crossbow!” “There’s too many of them,” said Nanny flatly. “Granny and Miss Magrat are out there, Mum,” said Shawn. “Miss Magrat came over all strange and put on armour and went out to fight all of them!” “But the hills are crawling with elves,” said Nanny. “It’s a double helping of hell with extra devils. Certain death.” “It’s certain death anyway,” said Ridcully. “That’s the thing about Death, certainty.” “We’d have no chance at all,” said Nanny. “Actually, we’d have one chance,” said Ridcully. “I don’t understand all this continuinuinuum stuff, but from what young Stibbons says it means that everything has to happen somewhere, d’y’see, so that means it could happen here. Even if it’s a million to one chance, ma’am.” “That’s all very well,” said Nanny, “but what you’re saying is, for every Mr. Ridcully that survives tonight’s work, 999,999 are going to get killed?” “Yes, but I’m not bothered about those other buggers,” said Ridcully. “They can look after themselves. Serve ‘em right for not inviting me to their weddings.” “What?” “Nothing.” Shawn was hopping from one foot to the other. “We ought to be fighting ‘em. Mum!” “Look at everyone!” said Nanny. “They’re dog tired and wet and confused! That’s not an army!” “Mum, Mum, Mum!” “What?” “I’ll pussike ‘em up, Mum! That’s what you have to do before troops go into battle. Mum! I read about that in books! You can take a rabble of thingy and make the right kind of speech and pussike them up and turn ‘em into a terrible fighting force. Mum!” “They look terrible anyway!” “I mean terrible like fierce. Mum!” Nanny Ogg looked at the hundred or so Lancre subjects. The thought of them managing to fight anyone at all took some getting used to. “You been studyin’ this, Shawn?” she inquired. “I’ve got five years’ worth of Bows and Ammo, Mum,” said Shawn reproachfully. “Give it a try, then. If you think it’ll work.” Trembling with excitement, Shawn climbed on to a table, drew his sword with his good hand, and banged it on the planks until people were silent. He made a speech. He pointed out that their king had been captured and their prospective queen had gone out to save him. He pointed out their responsibility as loyal subjects. He pointed out that other people currently not here but at home hiding under the bed would, after the glorious victory, wish they’d been there too instead of under the aforesaid bed which they were hiding under, you know, the bed he’d just mentioned. In fact it was better that there were so few here to face the enemy, because that meant that there would be a higher percentage of honour per surviving head. He used the word “glory” three times. He said that in times to come people would look back on this day, whatever the date was, and proudly show their scars, at least those who’d survived would show their scars, and be very proud and probably have drinks bought for them. He advised people to imitate the action of the Lancre Reciprocating Fox and stiffen some sinews while leaving them flexible enough so’s they could move their arms and legs, in fact, probably it’d be better to relax them a bit now and stiffen them properly when the time came. He suggested that Lancre expected everyone to do their duty. And urn. And uh. Please? The silence that followed was broken by Nanny Ogg, who said, “They’re probably considering it a bit, Shawn. Why don’t you take Mr. Wizard here up to his room and help him with his crossbow?” She nodded meaningfully in the direction of the stairs. Shawn wavered, but not for long. He’d seen the glint in his mother’s eye. When he’d gone. Nanny climbed up on the same table. “Well,” she said, “it’s like this. If you go out there you may have to face elves. But if you stops here, you definitely have to face me. Now, elves is worse than me, I’ll admit. But I’m persistent.” Weaver put up a tentative hand. “Please, Mrs. Ogg?” “Yes, Weaver?” “What exactly is the action of the Reciprocating Fox?” Nanny scratched her ear. “As I recall,” she said, “its back legs go like this but its front legs go like this.” “No, no, no,” said Quamey the storekeeper. “It’s its tail that goes like that. Its legs go like this.” “That’s not reciprocating, that’s just oscillating,” said someone. “You’re thinking of the Ring-tailed Ocelot.” Nanny nodded. “That’s settled, then,” she said. “Hold on, I’m not sure-“ “Yes, Mr. Quamey?” “Oh . . . well. . .” “Good, good,” said Nanny, as Shawn reappeared. “They was just saying, our Shawn, how they was swayed by your speech. Really pussiked up.” “Cor!” “They’re ready to follow you into the jaws of hell itself, I expect,” said Nanny. Someone put up their hand. “Are you coming too, Mrs. Ogg?” “I’ll just stroll along behind,” said Nanny. “Oh. Well. Maybe as far as the jaws of hell, then.” “Amazing,” said Casanunda to Nanny, as the crowd filed reluctantly toward the armoury. “You just got to know how to deal with people.” “They’ll follow where an Ogg leads?” “Not exactly,” said Nanny, “but if they know what’s good for ‘em they’ll go where an Ogg follows.”   Magrat stepped out from under the trees, and the moor land lay ahead of her. A whirlpool of cloud swirled over the Dancers, or at least, over the place where the Dancers had been. She could make out one or two stones by the flickering light, lying on their side or rolled down the slope of the hill. The hill itself glowed. Something was wrong with the landscape. It curved where it shouldn’t curve. Distances weren’t right. Magrat remembered a woodcut shoved in as a place marker in one of her old books. It showed the face of an old crone but, if you stared at it, you saw it was also the head of a young woman; a nose became a neck, an eyebrow became a necklace. The images seesawed back and forth. And like everyone else, she’d squinted herself silly trying to see them both at the same time. The landscape was doing pretty much the same thing. What was a hill was also at the same time a vast snowbound panorama. Lancre and the land of the elves were trying to occupy the same space. The intrusive country wasn’t having it all its own way. Lancre was fighting back. There was a circle of tents just on the cusp of the warring landscapes, like a beachhead on an alien shore. They were brightly collared. Everything about the elves was beautiful, until the image tilted, and you saw it from the other side. . . Something was happening. Several elves were on horseback, and more horses were being led between the tents. It looked as though they were breaking camp. The Queen sat on a makeshift throne in her tent. She sat with her elbow resting on one arm of the throne and her fingers curling pensively around her mouth. There were other elves seated in a semicircle, except that “seated” was a barely satisfactory word. They lounged; elves could make themselves at home on a wire. And here there was more lace and velvet and fewer feathers, although it was hard to know if it meant that these were aristocrats - elves seemed to wear whatever they felt like wearing, confident of looking absolutely stunning.[42] Every one of them watched the Queen, and was a mirror of her moods. When she smiled, they smiled. When she said something she thought was amusing, they laughed. Currently the object of her attention was Granny Weatherwax. “What is happening, old woman?” she said. “It ain’t easy, is it?” said Granny. “Thought it would be easy, didn’t you?” “You’ve done some magic, haven’t you? Something is fighting us.” “No magic,” said Granny. “No magic at all. It’s just that you’ve been away too long. Things change. The land belongs to humans now.” “That can’t be the case,” said the Queen. “Humans take. They plough with iron. They ravage the land.” “Some do, I’ll grant you that. Others put back more’n they take. They put back love. They’ve got soil in their bones. They tell the land what it is. That’s what humans are for. Without humans, Lancre’d just be a bit of ground with green bits on it. They wouldn’t even know they’re trees. We’re all down here together, madam - us and the land. It’s not just land anymore, it’s a country. It’s like a horse that’s been broken and shod or a dog that’s been tamed. Every time people put a plough in the soil or planted a seed they took the land further away from you,” said Granny. “Things change.” Verence sat beside the Queen. His pupils were tiny pinpoints; he smiled faintly, permanently, in a way very reminiscent of the Bursar. “Ah. But when we are married,” said the Queen, “the land must accept me. By your own rules. I know how it works. There’s more to being a king than wearing a crown. The king and the land are one. The king and the queen are one. And I shall be queen.” She smiled at Granny. There was an elf on either side of her and. Granny knew, at least one behind her. Elves were not given to introspection; if she moved without permission, she’d die. “What you shall be is something I have yet to decide,” said the Queen. She held up an exquisitely thin hand and curled the thumb and forefinger into a ring, which she held up to her eye. “And now someone comes,” she said, “with armour that doesn’t fit and a sword she cannot use and an axe she can hardly even lift, because it is so romantic, is it not? What is her name?” “Magrat Garlick,” said Granny. “She is a mighty enchantress, is she?” “She’s good with herbs.” The Queen laughed. “I could kill her from here.” “Yes,” said Granny, “but that wouldn’t be much fun, would it? Humiliation is the key.” The Queen nodded. “You know, you think very much like an elf.” “I think it will soon be dawn,” said Granny. “A fine day. Clear light.” “Not soon enough,” The Queen stood up. She glanced at King Verence for a moment, and changed. Her dress went from red to silver, catching the torchlight like glittering fish scales. Her hair unraveled and reshaped itself, became corn blond. And a subtle ripple of alterations flowed across her face before she said, “What do you think?” She looked like Magrat. Or, at least, like Magrat wished she looked and maybe as Verence always thought of her. Granny nodded. As one expert to another, she recognized accomplished nastiness when she saw it. “And you’re going to face her like that,” she said. “Certainly. Eventually. At the finish. But don’t feel sorry for her. She’s only going to die. Would you like me to show you what you might have been?” “No.” “I could do it easily. There are other times than this. I could show you grandmother Weatherwax.” “No.” “It must be terrible, knowing that you have no friends. That no one will care when you die. That you never touched a heart.” “Yes.” “And I’m sure you think about it. . . in those long evenings when there’s no company but the ticking of the clock and the coldness of the room and you open the box and look at-“ The Queen waved a hand vaguely as Granny tried to break free. “Don’t kill her,” she said. “She is much more fun alive.” Magrat stuck the sword in the mud and hefted the battleaxe. Woods pressed in on either side. The elves would have to come this way There looked like hundreds of them and there was only one Magrat Garlick. She knew there was such a thing as heroic odds. Songs and ballads and stories and poems were full of stories about one person single-handedly taking on and defeating a vast number of enemies. Only now was it dawning on her that the trouble was that they were songs and ballads and stories and poems because they dealt with things that were, not to put too fine a point on it, untrue. She couldn’t, now she had time to think about it, ever remember an example from history. In the woods to one side of her an elf raised its bow and took careful aim. A twig snapped behind it. It turned. The Bursar beamed.  “Whoopsy daisy, old trouser, my bean’s all runny.” The elf swung the bow. A pair of prehensile feet dropped out of the greenery, gripped it by the shoulders, and pulled it upward sharply. There was a crack as its head hit the underside of a branch. “Oook.” “Move right along!” On the other side of the path another elf took aim. And then its world flowed away from it. . . This is the inside of the mind of an elf: Here are the normal five senses but they are all subordinate to the sixth sense. There is no formal word for it on the Discworld, because the force is so weak that it is only ever encountered by observant blacksmiths, who call it the Love of Iron. Navigators might have discovered it were it not that the Disc’s standing magical field is much more reliable. But bees sense it, because bees sense everything. Pigeons navigate by it. And everywhere in the multiverse elves use it to know exactly where they are. It must be hard for humans, forever floundering through inconvenient geography. Humans are always slightly lost. It’s a basic characteristic. It explains a lot about them. Elves are never lost at all. It’s a basic characteristic. It explains a lot about them. Elves have absolute position. The flow of the silvery force dimly outlines the landscape. Creatures generate small amounts of it themselves, and become perceptible in the flux. Their muscles crackle with it, their minds buzz with it. For those who learn how, even thoughts can be read by the tiny local changes in the flow. For an elf, the world is something to reach out and take. Except for the terrible metal that drinks the force and deforms the flux universe like a heavy weight on a rubber sheet and blinds them and deafens them and leaves them rudderless and more alone than most humans could ever be. . . The elf toppled forward. Ponder Stibbons lowered the sword. Almost everyone else would not have thought much about it. But Ponder’s wretched fate was to look for patterns in an uncaring world. “But I hardly touched him,” he said, to no one except himself.   “-And I kissed her in the shrubbery where the nightingales sing it, you bastards! Two, three!” They didn’t know where they were. They didn’t know where they’d been. They were not fully certain who they were. But the Lancre Morris Men had reached some sort of state now where it was easier to go on than stop. Singing attracted elves, but singing also fascinated them . . . The dancers whirled and hopped, gyrated and skipped along the paths. They pranced through isolated hamlets, where elves left whoever they were torturing to draw closer in the light of the burning buildings. . . “’With a WACK foladiddle-di-do, sing too-rah-li-ay!’” Six sticks did their work, right on the beat. “Where’re we goin’, Jason?” “I reckon we’ve gone down Slippery Hollow and’re circling back toward the town,” said Jason, hopping past Baker. “Keep goin’. Carter!” “The rain’s got in the keys, Jason!” “Don’t matter! They don’t know the difference! It’s good enough for folk music!” “I think I broke my stick on that last one, Jason!” “Just you keep dancing, Tinker! Now, lads . . . how about Gathering Peasecods? We might as well get some practice in, since we’re here . . .” “There’s some people up ahead,” said Tailor, as he skipped past, “I can see torches an’ that.” “Human, two, three, or more elves?” “Dunno!” Jason spun and danced back. “Is that you, our Jason?” Jason cackled as the voice echoed among the dripping trees. “It’s our mam! And our Shawn. And - and lots of people! We’ve made it, lads!” “Jason,” said Carter. “Yes?” “I ain’t sure I can stop!”   The Queen examined her face in a mirror attached to the tent pole. “Why?” said Granny. “What is it you see?” “Whatever I want to see,” said the Queen. “You know that. And now . . . let us ride to the castle. Tie her hands together. But leave her legs free.” It rained again, gently, although around the stones it turned to sleet. The water dripped off Magrat’s hair and temporarily unraveled the tangles. Mist coiled out from among the trees where summer and winter fought. Magrat watched the elven court mount up. She made out the figure of Verence, moving like a puppet. And Granny Weatherwax, tied behind the Queen’s horse by a long length of rope. The horses splashed through the mud. They had silver bells on their harness, dozens of them. The elves in the castle, the night of ghosts and shadows, all of this was just a hard knot in her memory. But the jingling of the bells was like a nailfile rubbed across her teeth. The Queen halted the procession a few yards away. “Ah, the brave girl,” she said. “Come to save her fiance, all alone? How sweet. Someone kill her.” An elf spurred its horse forward, and raised its sword. Magrat gripped the battleaxe. Somewhere behind her a bowstring slammed against wood. The elf jerked. So did one behind it. The arrow kept going, curving a little as it passed over one of the fallen Dancers. Then Shawn Ogg’s ragbag army charged out from under the trees, except for Ridcully, who was feverishly trying to rewind his crossbow. The Queen did not look surprised. “And there’s only about a hundred of them,” she said. “What do you think, Esme Weatherwax? A valiant last stand? It’s so beautiful, isn’t it? I love the way humans think. They think like songs.” “You get down off that horse!” Magrat shouted. The Queen smiled at her. Shawn felt it. Ridcully felt it. Ponder felt it. The glamour swept over them. Elves feared iron, but they didn’t need to go near it. You couldn’t fight elves, because you were so much more worthless than them. It was right that you should be so worthless. And they were so beautiful. And you weren’t. You were always the one metaphorically picked last for any team, even after the fat kid with one permanently blocked runny nostril; you were always the one who wasn’t told the rules until you’d lost, and then wasn’t told the new rules; you were the one who always knew that everything interesting was happening to other people. All those hot self-consuming feelings were rolled together. You couldn’t fight an elf. Someone as useless as you, as stolid as you, as human as you, could never win; the universe wasn’t built like that- Hunters say that, just sometimes, an animal will step out of the bushes and stand there waiting for the spear . . . Magrat managed to half-raise the axe, and then her hand slumped to her side. She looked down. The correct attitude of a human before an elf was one of shame. She had shouted so coarsely at something as beautiful as an elf. . . The Queen dismounted and walked over to her. “Don’t touch her,” said Granny. The Queen nodded. “You can resist,” she said. “But you see, it doesn’t matter. We can take Lancre without a fight. There is nothing you can do about it. Look at the brave little army, standing like sheep. Humans are so enthusiastic.” Granny looked at her boots. “You can’t rule while I’m alive,” she said. “There’s no trickery here,” said the Queen. “No silly women with bags of sweets.” “You noticed that, did you?” said Granny. “Gytha meant well, I expect. Daft old biddy. Mind if I sit down?” “Of course you may,” said the Queen. “You are an old woman now, after all.” She nodded to the elves. Granny subsided gratefully on to a rock, her hands still tied behind her. “That’s the thing about witchcraft,” she said. “It doesn’t exactly keep you young, but you do stay old for longer. Whereas you, of course, do not age,” she added. “Indeed, we do not.” “But I suspect you may be capable of being reduced.” The Queen’s smile didn’t vanish, but it did freeze, as smiles do when their owner is not certain about what has just been said and isn’t sure what to say next. “You meddled in a play,” said Granny. “I believe you don’t realize what you’ve done. Plays and books . . . you’ve got to keep an eye on the buggers. They’ll turn on you. I mean to see that they do.” She nodded amicably at an elf covered in woad and badly tanned skins. “Ain’t that so, Fairy Peaseblossom?” The Queen’s brows knotted. “But that is not his name,” she said. Granny Weatherwax gave the Queen a bright smile. “We shall see,” she said. “There’s a lot more humans these days, and lots of them live in cities, and they don’t know much about elves one way or another. And they’ve got iron in their heads. You’re too late.” “No. Humans always need us,” said the Queen. “They don’t. Sometimes they want you. That’s different. But all you can give ‘em is gold that melts away in the morning.” “There are those who would say that gold for one night is enough.” “No.” “Better than iron, you stupid old hag, you stupid child who has grown older and done nothing and been nothing.” “No. It’s just soft and shiny. Pretty to look at and no damn use at all,” said Granny, her voice still quite calm and level. “But this is a real world, madam. That’s what I had to learn. And real people in it. You got no right to ‘em. People’ve got enough to cope with just being people. They don’t need you swanking around with your shiny hair and shiny eyes and shiny gold, going sideways through life, always young, always singing, never learning.” “You didn’t always think like this.” “That was a long time ago. And, my lady, old I may be, and hag I may be, but stupid I ain’t. You’re no kind of goddess. I ain’t against gods and goddesses, in their place. But they’ve got to be the ones we make ourselves. Then we can take ‘em to bits for the parts when we don’t need ‘em anymore, see? And elves far away in fairyland, well, maybe that’s something people need to get ‘emselves through the iron times. But I ain’t having elves here. You make us want what we can’t have and what you give us is worth nothing and what you take is everything and all there is left for us is the cold hillside, and emptiness, and the laughter of the elves.” She took a deep breath. “So bugger off.” “Make us, old woman.” “I thought you’d say that.” “We don’t want the world. Just this little kingdom will do. And we will take it, whether it wants us or not.” “Over my dead body, madam.” “If that is a condition.” The Queen lashed out mentally, like a cat. Granny Weatherwax winced, and leaned backward for a moment. “Madam?” “Yes?” said the Queen. “There aren’t any rules, are there?” “Rules? What are rules?” said the Queen. “I thought so,” said Granny. “Gytha Ogg?” Nanny managed to turn her head. “Yes, Esme?” “My box. You know. The one in the dresser. You’ll know what to do.” Granny Weatherwax smiled. The Queen swayed sideways, as if she’d been slapped. “You have learned,” she said. “Oh, yes. You know I never entered your circle. I could see where it led. So I had to learn. All my life. The hard way. And the hard way’s pretty hard, but not so hard as the easy way. I learned. From the trolls and the dwarfs and from people. Even from pebbles.” The Queen lowered her voice. “You will not be killed,” she whispered. “I promise you that. You’ll be left alive, to dribble and gibber and soil yourself and wander from door to door for scraps. And they’ll say: there goes the mad old woman.” “They say that now,” said Granny Weatherwax. “They think I can’t hear.” “But inside,” said the Queen, ignoring this, “inside I’ll keep just a part of you which looks out through your eyes and knows what you’ve become. “And there will be none to help,” said the Queen. She was closer now, her eyes pinpoints of hatred. “No charity for the mad old woman. You’ll see what you have to eat to stay alive. And we’ll be with you all the time inside your head, just to remind you. You could have been the great one, there was so much you could have done. And inside you’ll know it, and you’ll plead all the dark night long for the silence of the elves.” The Queen wasn’t expecting it. Granny Weatherwax’s hand shot out, pieces of rope falling away from it, and slapped her across the face. “You threaten me with that?” she said. “Me? Who am becoming old?” The elf woman’s hand rose slowly to the livid mark across her cheek. The elves raised their bows, waiting for an order. “Go back,” said Granny. “You call yourself some kind of goddess and you know nothing, madam, nothing. What don’t die can’t live. What don’t live can’t change. What don’t change can’t learn. The smallest creature that dies in the grass knows more than you. You’re right. I’m older. You’ve lived longer than me but I’m older than you. And better’n you. And, madam, that ain’t hard.” The Queen struck wildly. The rebounded force of the mental blow knocked Nanny Ogg to her knees. Granny Weatherwax blinked. “A good one,” she croaked. “But still I stand, and still I’ll not kneel. And still I have strength-“ An elf keeled over. This time the Queen swayed. “Oh, and I have no time for this,” she said, and snapped her fingers. There was a pause. The Queen glanced around at her elves. “They can’t fire,” said Granny. “And you wouldn’t want that, would you? So simple an end?” “You can’t be holding them! You have not that much power!” “Do you want to find out how much power I have, madam? Here, on the grass of Lancre?” She stepped forward. Power crackled in the air. The Queen had to step back. “My own turf?” said Granny She slapped the Queen again, almost gently. “What’s this?” said Granny Weatherwax. “Can’t you resist me? Where’s your power now, madam? Gather your power, madam!” “You foolish old crone!” It was felt by every living creature for a mile around. Small things died. Birds spiraled out of the sky Elves and humans alike dropped to the ground, clutching their heads. And in Granny Weatherwax’s garden the bees rose out of their hives. They emerged like steam, colliding with one another in their rush to get airborne. The deep gunship hum of the drones underpinned the frantic roars of the workers. But, louder than the drones, was the piccolo piping of the queens. The swarms spiraled up over the clearing, circled once, and then broke and headed away. Others joined them, out of backyard steps and hollow trees, blackening the sky. After a while, order became apparent in the great circling cloud. The drones flew on the wings, throbbing like bombers. The workers were a cone made up of thousands of tiny bodies. And at its tip, a hundred queens flew. The fields lay silent after the arrow-shaped swarm of swarms had gone. Flowers stood alone and uncourted. Nectar flowed undrunk. Blossoms were left to go fertilize themselves. The bees headed toward the Dancers. Granny Weatherwax dropped to her knees, clutching at her head. “No-“ “Oh, but yes,” said the Queen. Esme Weatherwax raised her hands. The fingers were curled tightly with effort and pain. Magrat found she could move her eyes. The rest of her felt weak and useless, even with chain-mail and the breast-plates. So this was it. She could feel the ghost of Queen Ynci laughing scornfully from a thousand years ago. She’d not give up. Magrat was just another one of those dozens of simpering stiff women who’d just hung around in long dresses, ensuring the royal succession- Bees poured down out of the sky. Granny Weatherwax turned her face toward Magrat. Magrat heard the voice clearly in her head. “You want to be queen?” And she was free. She felt the weariness drop away from her and it also felt as though pure Queen Ynci poured out of the helmet. More bees rained down, covering the slumped figure of the old witch. The Queen turned, and her smile froze as Magrat straightened up, stepped forward and, with hardly a thought in her head, raised the battleaxe and brought it around in one long sweep. The Queen moved faster. Her hand snaked out and gripped Magrat’s wrist. “Oh yes,” she said, grinning into Magrat’s face. “Really? You think so?” She twisted. The axe dropped from Magrat’s fingers. “And you wanted to be a witch?” Bees were a brown fog, hiding the elves - too small to hit, impervious to glamour, but determined to kill. Magrat felt the bone scrape. “The old witch is finished,” said the Queen, forcing Magrat down. “I won’t say she wasn’t good. But she wasn’t good enough. And you certainly aren’t.” Slowly and inexorably, Magrat was forced downward. “Why don’t you try some magic?” said the Queen. Magrat kicked. Her foot caught the Queen on the knee, and she heard a crack. As she staggered back Magrat launched herself forward and caught her around the waist, bearing her to the ground. She was amazed at the lightness. Magrat was skinny enough, but the Queen seemed to have no weight at all. “Why,” she said, pulling herself up until the Queen’s face was level with hers, “you’re nothing. It’s all in the mind, isn’t it? Without the glamour, you’re-“ -an almost triangular face, a tiny mouth, the nose hardly existing at all, but eyes larger than human eyes and now focused on Magrat in pinpoint terror. “Iron,” whispered the Queen. Her hands gripped Magrat’s arms. There was no strength there. An elfs strength lay in persuading others they were weak. Magrat could feel her desperately trying to enter her mind, but it wasn’t working. The helmet- -was lying several feet away, in the mud. She just had time to wish she hadn’t noticed that before the Queen attacked again, exploding into her uncertainty like a nova. She was nothing. She was insignificant. She was so worthless and unimportant that even something completely worthless and exhaustively unimportant would consider her beneath contempt. In laying hands upon the Queen she truly deserved an eternity of pain. She had no control of her body. She did not deserve any. She did not deserve a thing. The disdain sleeted over her, tearing the planetary body of Magrat Garlick to pieces. She’d never be any good. She’d never be beautiful, or intelligent, or strong. She’d never be anything at all. Self-confidence? Confidence in what? The eyes of the Queen were all she could see. All she wanted to do was lose herself in them . . . And the ablation of Magrat Garlick roared on, tearing at the strata of her soul. . . . . . exposing the core. She bunched up a fist and hit the Queen between the eyes. There was a moment of terminal perplexity before the Queen screamed, and Magrat hit her again. Only one queen in a hive! Slash! Stab! They rolled over, landing in the mud. Magrat felt something sting her leg, but she ignored it. She took no notice of the noise around her, but she did find the battleaxe under her hand as the two of them landed in a peat puddle. The elf scrabbled at her but this time without strength, and Magrat managed to push herself to her knees and raise the axe -  -and then noticed the silence. It flowed over the Queen’s elves and Shawn Ogg’s makeshift army as the glamour faded. There was a figure silhouetted against the setting moon. Its scent carried on the dawn breeze. It smelled of lions’ cages and leaf mold. “He’s back,” said Nanny Ogg. She glanced sideways and saw Ridcully, his face glowing, raising his crossbow. “Put it down,” she said. “Will you look at the horns on that thing-“ “Put it down.” “But-“ “It’d go right through him. Look, you can see that tree through him. He’s not really here. He can’t get past the doorway. But he can send his thoughts.” “But I can smell-“ “If he was really here, we wouldn’t still be standing up.” The elves parted as the King walked through. His hind legs hadn’t been designed for bipedal walking; the knees were the wrong way round and the hooves were overlarge. It ignored them all and strutted slowly to the fallen Queen. Magrat pulled herself to her feet and hefted the axe uncertainly. The Queen uncoiled, leaping up and raising her hands, her mouth framing the first words of some curse- The King held out a hand, and said nothing. Only Magrat heard it. Something about meeting by moonlight, she said later.   And they awoke. The sun was well over the Rim. People pulled themselves to their feet, staring at one another. There was not an elf in sight. Nanny Ogg was the first to speak. Witches can generally come to terms with what actually is, instead of insisting on what ought to be. She looked up at the moors. “The first thing we do,” she said, “the first thing, is put back the stones.” “The second thing,” corrected Magrat. They both looked down at the still body of Granny Weatherwax. A few stray bees were flying disconsolate circles in the grass near her head. Nanny Ogg winked at Magrat. “You did well there, girl. Didn’t think you had it in you to survive an attack like that. It fairly had me widdling myself.” “I’ve had practice,” said Magrat darkly. Nanny Ogg raised her eyebrows, but made no further comment. Instead she nudged Granny with her boot. “Wake up, Esme,” she said. “Well done. We won.” “Esme?” Ridcully knelt down stiffly and picked up one of Granny’s arms. “It must have taken it out of her, all that effort,” burbled Nanny. “Freeing Magrat and everything-“ Ridcully looked up. “She’s dead,” he said. He thrust both arms underneath the body and got unsteadily to his feet. “Oh, she wouldn’t do a thing like that,” said Nanny, but in the voice of someone whose mouth is running on automatic because their brain has shut down. “She’s not breathing and there’s no pulse,” said the wizard. “She’s probably just resting.” “Yes.” Bees circled, high in the blue sky.   *   *   *   Ponder and the Librarian helped drag the stones back into position, occasionally using the Bursar as a lever. He was going through the rigid phase again. They were unusual stones. Ponder noticed - quite hard, and with a look about them that suggested that once, long ago, they had been melted and cooled. Jason Ogg found him standing deep in thought by one of them. He was holding a nail on a piece of string. But, instead of hanging from the string, the nail was almost at right angles, and straining as if desperate to reach the stone. The string thrummed. Ponder watched it as though mesmerized. Jason hesitated. He seldom encountered wizards and wasn’t at all sure how you were supposed to treat them. He heard the wizard say: “It sucks. But why does it suck?” Jason kept quiet. He heard Ponder say: “Maybe there’s iron and . . . and iron that loves iron? Or male iron and female iron? Or common iron and royal iron? Some iron contains something else? Some iron makes a weight in the world and other iron rolls down the rubber sheet?” The Bursar and the Librarian joined him, and watched the swinging nail. “Damn!” said Ponder, and let go of the nail. It hit the stone with a plink. He turned to the others with the agonized expression of a man who has the whole great whirring machinery of the Universe to dismantle and only a bent paper clip to do it with. “What ho, Mr. Sunshine!” said the Bursar, who was feeling almost cheerful with the fresh air and lack of shouting. “Rocks! Why am I messing around with lumps of stone? When did they ever tell anyone anything?” said Ponder. “You know, sir, sometimes I think there’s a great ocean of truth out there and I’m just sitting on the beach playing with . . . with stones.” He kicked the stone. “But one day we’ll find a way to sail that ocean,” he said. He sighed. “Come on. I suppose we’d better get down to the castle.” The Librarian watched them join the procession of tired men who were staggering down the valley. Then he pulled at the nail a few times, and watched it fly back to the stone. “Oook.” He looked up into the eyes of Jason Ogg. Much to Jason’s surprise, the orang-utan winked. Sometimes, if you pay real close attention to the pebbles you find out about the ocean.   The clock ticked. In the chilly morning gloom of Granny Weatherwax’s cottage. Nanny Ogg opened the box. Everyone in Lancre knew about Esme Weatherwax’s mysterious box. It was variously rumoured to contain books of spells, a small private universe, cures for all ills, the deeds of lost lands and several tons of gold, which was pretty good going for something less than a foot across. Even Nanny Ogg had never been told about the contents, apart from the will. She was a bit disappointed but not at all surprised to find that it contained nothing more than a couple of large envelopes, a bundle of letters, and a miscellaneous assortment of common items in the bottom. Nanny lifted out the paperwork. The first envelope was addressed to her, and bore the legend: To Gytha Ogge, Reade This NOWE. The second envelope was a bit smaller and said: The Will of Esmerelda Weatherwax, Died Midsummer’s Eve. And then there was a bundle of letters with a bit of string round them. They were very old; bits of yellowing paper crackled off them as Magrat picked them up. “They’re all letters to her,” she said. “Nothing odd about that,” said Nanny. “Anyone can get letters.” “And there’s all this stuff at the bottom,” said Magrat. “It looks like pebbles.” She held one up. “This one’s got one of those curly fossil things in it,” she said. “And this one . . . looks like that red rock the Dancers were made of. It’s got a darning needle stuck to it. How strange.” “She always paid attention to small details, did Esme. Always tried to see inside to the real thing.” They were both silent for a moment, and the silence wound out around them and filled the kitchen, to be sliced into gentle pieces by the soft ticking of the clock. “I never thought we’d be doing this,” said Magrat, after a while. “I never thought we’d be reading her will. I thought she’d keep on going for ever.” “Well, there it is,” said Nanny. “Tempus fuggit.” “Nanny?” “Yes, love?” “I don’t understand. She was your friend but you don’t seem . . . well. . . upset?” “Well, I’ve buried a few husbands and one or two kiddies. You get the hang of it. Anyway, if she hasn’t gone to a better place she’ll damn well be setting out to improve it.” “Nanny?” “Yes, love?” “Did you know anything about the letter?” “What letter?” “The letter to Verence.” “Don’t know anything about any letter to Verence.” “He must have got it weeks before we got back. She must have sent it even before we got to Ankh-Morpork.” Nanny Ogg looked, as far as Magrat could tell, genuinely blank. “Oh, hell,” said Magrat. “I mean this letter.” She fished it out of the breastplate. “See?” Nanny Ogg read: “Dear sire. This is to inform youe that Magrate Garlick will bee retouning to Lancre on or aboute Blind Pig Tuesday. Shee is a Wet Hen but shee is clean and has got Good Teeth. If you wishes to marrie her, then starte arranging matters without delae, because if you just proposes and similar she will lede you a Dance because there is noone like Magrat for getting in the way of her own life. She does not Knoe her own Mind. You aere Kinge and you can doe what you like. You muste present her with a Fate Accompli. PS. I hear there is talk aboute making witches pay tax, no kinges of Lancre has tried this for many a Year, you could profit from their example. Yrs. in good health, at the moment. A FRIEND (MSS).”   The ticking of the clock stitched the blanket of silence. Nanny Ogg turned to look at it. “She arranged it all!” said Magrat. “You know what Verence is like. I mean, she hardly disguised who she was, did she? And I got back and it was all arranged-“ “What would you have done if nothing had been arranged?” said Nanny. Magrat looked momentarily taken aback. “Well, I would . . . I mean, if he had . . . I’d-“ “You’d be getting married today, would you?” said Nanny, but in a distant voice, as if she was thinking about something else. “Well, that depends on-“ “You want to, don’t you?” “Well, yes, of course, but-“ “That’s nice, then,” said Nanny, in what Magrat thought of as her nursery voice. “Yes, but she pushed me on one side and shut me up in the castle and I got so wound up-“ “You were so angry that you actually stood Up to the Queen. You actually laid hands on her,” said Nanny. “Well done. The old Magrat wouldn’t have done that, would she? Esme could always see the real thing. Now nip out of the back door and look at the log pile, there’s a love.” “But I hated her and hated her and now she’s dead!” “Yes, dear. Now go and tell Nanny about the log pile.” Magrat opened her mouth to frame the words “I happen to be very nearly queen” but decided not to. Instead she graciously went outside and looked at the log pile. “It’s quite high,” she said, coming back and blowing her nose. “Looks like it’s just been stacked.” And she wound up the clock yesterday,” said Nanny. “And the tea caddy’s half full, I just looked.” “Well?” “She wasn’t sure,” said Nanny. “Hmm.” She opened the envelope addressed to her. It was larger and flatter than the one holding the will, and contained a single piece of card. Nanny read it, and let it drop on to the table. “Come on,” she said. “We ain’t got much time!” “What’s the matter?” “And bring the sugar bowl!” Nanny wrenched open the door and hurried toward her broomstick. “Come on!” Magrat picked up the card. The writing was familiar. She’d seen it several times before, when calling on Granny Weatherwax unexpectedly. It said: I ATE’NT DEAD. “Halt! Who goes there?” “What’re you doing on guard with your arm in a sling, Shawn?” “Duty calls. Mum.” “Well, let us in right now.” “Are you Friend or Foe, Mum?” “Shawn, this is almost-Queen Magrat here with me, all right?” “Yes, but you’ve got to-“ “Right now!” “Oooaaaww, Mum!”   Magrat tried to keep up with Nanny as she scurried through the castle. “The wizard was right. She was dead, you know. I don’t blame you for hoping, but I can tell when people are dead.” “No, you can’t. I remember a few years ago you came running down to my house in tears and it turned out she was just off Borrowing. That’s when she started using the sign.” “But-“ “She wasn’t sure what was going to happen,” said Nanny. “That’s good enough for me.” “Nanny-“ “You never know until you look,” said Nanny Ogg, expounding her own Uncertainty Principle. Nanny kicked open the doors to the Great Hall. “What’s all this?” Ridcully got up from his chair, looking embarrassed. “Well, it didn’t seem right to leave her all alone-“ “Oh dear, oh dear,” said Nanny, gazing at the solemn tableau. “Candles and lilies. I bet you pinched ‘em yourself, out of the garden. And then you all shut her away indoors like this.” “Well-“ “And no one even thought to leave a damn window open! Can’t you hear them?” “Hear what?” Nanny looked around hurriedly and picked up a silver candlestick. “No!” Magrat snatched it out of her hand. “This happens to be,” winding her arm back, “very nearly,” taking aim, “my castle-“ The candlestick flew up, turning end over end, and hit a big stained glass window right in the centre. Fresh sunlight extruded down to the table, visibly moving in the Disc’s slow magical field. And down it, like marbles down a chute, the bees cascaded. The swarm settled on the witch’s head, giving the impression of a very dangerous wig. “What did you-“ Ridcully began. “She’s going to swank about this for weeks,” said Nanny. “No one’s ever done it with bees. Their mind’s everywhere, see? Not just in one bee. In the whole swarm.” “What are you-“ Granny Weatherwax’s fingers twitched. Her eyes flickered. Very slowly, she sat up. She focused on Magrat and Nanny Ogg with some difficulty, and said: “I wantzzz a bunzzch of flowerszz, a pot of honey, and someone to szzzting.” “I brung the sugar bowl, Esme,” said Nanny Ogg. Granny eyed it hungrily, and then looked at the bees that were taking off from her head like planes from a stricken carrier. “Pour a dzzrop of water on it, then, and tip it out on the table for them.” She stared triumphantly at their faces as Nanny Ogg bustled off. “I done it with beezzz! No one can do it with beezzz, and I done it! You endzzz up with your mind all flying in different directionzzz! You got to be good to do it with beezzz!” Nanny Ogg sloshed the bowl of makeshift syrup across the table. The swarm descended. “You’re alive?” Ridcully managed. “That’s what a univerzzity education doezz for you,” said Granny, trying to massage some life into her arms. “You’ve only got to be sitting up and talking for five minutzz and they can work out you’re alive.” Nanny Ogg handed her a glass of water. It hovered in the air for a moment and then crashed to the floor, because Granny had tried to grasp it with her fifth leg. “Zzorry.” “I knew you wasn’t certain!” said Nanny. “Czertain? Of courze I waz certain! Never in any doubt whatsoever.” Magrat thought about the will. “You never had a moment’s doubt?” Granny Weatherwax had the grace not to look her in the eye. Instead, she rubbed her hands together. “What’s been happening while I’ve been away?” “Well,” said Nanny, “Magrat stood up to the-“ “Oh, I knew she’d do that. Had the wedding, have you?” “Wedding?” The rest of them exchanged glances. “Of course not!” said Magrat. “Brother Perdore of the Nine Day Wonderers was going to do it and he was knocked out cold by an elf, and anyway people are all-“ “Don’t let’s have any excuses,” said Granny briskly. “Anyway, a senior wizard can conduct a service at a pinch, ain’t that right?” “I, I, I think so,” said Ridcully, who was falling behind a bit in world events. “Right. A wizard’s only a priest without a god and a damp handshake,” said Granny “But half the guests have run away!” said Magrat. “We’ll round up some more,” said Granny “Mrs. Scorbic will never get the wedding feast done in time!” “You’ll have to tell her to,” said Granny. “The bridesmaids aren’t here!” “We’ll make do.” “I haven’t got a dress!” “What’s that you’ve got on?” Magrat looked down at the stained chain-mail, the mud-encrusted breastplate, and the few damp remnants of white silk that hung over them like a ragged tabard. “Looks good to me,” said Granny “Nanny’ll do your hair.” Magrat reached up instinctively, removed the winged helmet, and patted her hair. Bits of twigs and fragments of heather had twisted themselves in it with comb-breaking complexity It never looked good for five minutes together at the best of times; now it was a bird’s nest. “I think I’ll leave it,” she said. Granny nodded approvingly “That’s the way of it,” she said. “It’s not what you’ve got that matters, it’s how you’ve got it. Well, we’re just about ready, then.” Nanny leaned toward her and whispered. “What? Oh, yes. Where’s the groom?” “He’s a bit muzzy. Not sure what happened,” said Magrat. “Perfectly normal,” said Nanny, “after a stag night.”   There were difficulties to overcome: “We need a Best Man.” “Ook.” “Well, at least put some clothes on.”   Mrs. Scorbic the cook folded her huge pink arms. “Can’t be done,” she said firmly. “I thought perhaps just some salad and quiche and some light-“ Magrat said, imploringly. The cook’s whiskery chin stuck out firmly. “Them elves turned the whole kitchen upside down,” she said. “It’s going to take me days to get it straight. Anyway, everyone knows raw vegetables are bad for you, and I can’t be having with them eggy pies.” Magrat looked beseechingly at Nanny Ogg; Granny Weatherwax had wandered off into the gardens, where she was getting a tendency to stick her nose in flowers right out of her system. “Nothin’ to do with me,” said Nanny. “It’s not my kitchen, dear.” “No, it’s mine. I’ve been cook here for years,” said Mrs. Scorbic, “and I knows how things should be done, and I’m not going to be ordered around in my own kitchen by some chit of a girl.” Magrat sagged. Nanny tapped her on the shoulder. “You might need this at this point,” she said, and handed Magrat the winged helmet. “The king’s been very happy with-“ Mrs. Scorbic began. There was a click. She looked down the length of a crossbow and met Magrat’s steady gaze. “Go ahead,” said the Queen of Lancre softly, “bake my quiche.”   Verence sat in his nightshirt with his head in his hands. He could remember hardly anything about the night, except a feeling of coldness. And no one seemed very inclined to tell him. There was a faint creak as the door opened. He looked up. “Glad to see you’re up and about already,” said Granny Weatherwax. “I’ve come to help you dress.” “I’ve looked in the garderobe,” said Verence. “The . . . elves, was it? . . . they ransacked the place. There’s nothing I can wear.” Granny looked around the room. Then she went to a low chest and opened it. There was a faint tinkling of bells, and a flash of red and yellow. “I thought you never threw them away,” she said. “And you ain’t put on any weight, so they’ll still fit. On with the motley. Magrat’ll appreciate it.” “Oh, no,” said Verence. “I’m very firm about this. I’m king now. It’d be demeaning for Magrat to marry a Fool. I’ve got a position to maintain, for the sake of the kingdom. Besides, there is such a thing as pride.” Granny stared at him for so long that he shifted uncomfortably. “Well, there is,” he said. Granny nodded, and walked toward the doorway. “Why’re you leaving?” said Verence nervously. “I ain’t leaving,” said Granny, quietly, “I’m just shutting the door.”   And then there was the incident with the crown. Ceremonies and Protocols of The Kingdom of Lancre was eventually found after a hurried search of Verence’s bedroom. It was very clear about the procedure. The new queen was crowned, by the king, as part of the ceremony. It wasn’t technically difficult for any king who knew which end of a queen was which, which even the most inbred king figured out in two goes. But it seemed to Ponder Stibbons that the ritual wobbled a bit at this point. It seemed, in fact, that just as he was about to lower the crown on the bride’s head he glanced across the hall to where the skinny old witch was standing. And nearly everyone else did too, including the bride. The old witch nodded very slightly. Magrat was crowned. Wack-fol-a-diddle, etc. The bride and groom stood side by side, shaking hands with the long line of guests in that dazed fashion normal at this point in the ceremony. “I’m sure you’ll be very happy-“ “Thank you.” “Ook!” “Thank you.” “Nail it to the counter, Lord Ferguson, and damn the cheesemongers!” “Thank you.” “Can I kiss the bride?” It dawned on Verence that he was being addressed by fresh air. He looked down. “I’m sorry,” he said, “you are-?” “My card,” said Casanunda. Verence read it. His eyebrows rose. “Ah,” he said. “Uh. Urn. Well, well, well. Number two, eh?” “I try harder,” said Casanunda. Verence looked around guiltily, and then bent down until his mouth was level with the dwarfs ear. “Could I have a word with you in a minute or two?”   The Lancre Morris Men got together again for the first time at the reception. They found it hard to talk to one another. Several of them jigged up and down absentmindedly as they talked. “All right,” said Jason, “anyone remember? Really remember?” “I remember the start,” said Tailor the other weaver. “Definitely remember the start. And the dancing in the woods. But the Entertainment-“ “There was elves in it,” said Tinker the tinker. “That’s why it all got buggered up,” said Thatcher the carter. “There was a lot of shouting, too.” “There was someone with horns on,” said Carter, “and a great big-“ “It was all,” said Jason, “a bit of a dream.” “Hey, look over there, Carter,” said Weaver, winking at the others, “there’s that monkey. You’ve got something to ask it, ain’t you?” Carter blinked. “Coo, yes,” he said. “Shouldn’t waste a golden opportunity if I was you,” said Weaver, with the happy malice often shown by the clever to the simple. The Librarian was chatting to Ponder and the Bursar. He looked around as Carter prodded him. “You’ve been over to Slice, then, have you?” he said, in his cheery open way. The Librarian gave him a look of polite incomprehension. “Oook?” Carter looked perplexed. “That’s where you put your nut, ain’t it?” The Librarian gave him another odd look, and shook his head. “Oook.” “Weaver!” Carter shouted, “the monkey says he didn’t put his nut where the sun don’t shine! You said he did! You didn’t, did you? He said you did.” He turned to the Librarian. “He didn’t. Weaver. See, I knew you’d got it wrong. You’re daft. There’s no monkeys in Slice.” Silence flowed outward from the two of them. Ponder Stibbons held his breath. “This is a lovely party,” said the Bursar to a chair, “I wish I was here.” The Librarian picked up a large bottle from the table. He tapped Carter on the shoulder. Then he poured him a large drink and patted him on the head. Ponder relaxed and turned back to what he was doing. He’d tied a knife to a bit of string and was gloomily watching it spin round and round . . . On his way home that night Weaver was picked up by a mysterious assailant and dropped into the Lancre. No one ever found out why. Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, especially simian ones. They’re not all that subtle. Others went home that night. “She’ll be getting ideas above her station in life,” said Granny Weatherwax, as the two witches strolled through the scented air. “She’s a queen. That’s pretty high,” said Nanny Ogg. “Almost as high as witches.” “Yes . . . well . . . but you ain’t got to give yourself airs,” said Granny Weatherwax. “We’re advantaged, yes, but we act with modesty and we don’t Put Ourselves Forward. No one could say I haven’t been decently modest all my life.” “You’ve always been a bit of a shy violet, I’ve always said,” said Nanny Ogg. “I’m always telling people, when it comes to humility you won’t find anyone more humile than Esme Weatherwax.” “Always keep myself to myself and minded my own business-“ “Barely known you were there half the time,” said Nanny Ogg. “I was talking, Gytha.” “Sorry.” They walked along in silence for a while. It was a warm dry evening. Birds sang in the trees. Nanny said, “Funny to think of our Magrat being married and everything.” “What do you mean, everything?” “Well, you know - married,” said Nanny. “I gave her a few tips. Always wear something in bed. Keeps a man interested.” “You always wore your hat.” “Right.” Nanny waved a sausage on a stick. She always believed in stocking up on any free food that was available. “I thought the wedding feast was very good, didn’t you? And Magrat looked radiant, I thought.” “I thought she looked hot and flustered.” “That is radiant, with brides.” “You’re right, though,” said Granny Weatherwax, who was walking a little way ahead. “It was a good dinner. I never had this Vegetarian Option stuff before.” “When I married Mr. Ogg, we had three dozen oysters at our wedding feast. Mind you, they didn’t all work.” “And I like the way they give us all a bit o’ the wedding cake in a little bag,” said Granny. “Right. You know, they says, if you puts a bit under your pillow, you dream of your future husb . . .” Nanny Ogg’s tongue tripped over itself. She stopped, embarrassed, which was unusual in an Ogg. “It’s all right,” said Granny “I don’t mind.” “Sorry, Esme.” “Everything happens somewhere. I know. I know. Everything happens somewhere. So it’s all the same in the end.” “That’s very continuinuinuum thinking, Esme.” “Cake’s nice,” said Granny, “but. . . right now . . . don’t know why . . . what I could really do with, Gytha, right now . . . is a sweet.” The last word hung in the evening air like the echo of a gunshot. Nanny stopped. Her hand flew to her pocket, where the usual bag of fluff-encrusted boiled sweets resided. She stared at the back of Esme Weatherwax’s head, at the tight bun of grey hair under the brim of the pointy hat. “Sweet?” she said. “I expect you’ve got another bag now,” said Granny, without looking around. “Esme-“ “You got anything to say, Gytha? About bags of sweets?” Granny Weatherwax still hadn’t turned around. Nanny looked at her boots. “No, Esme,” she said meekly. “I knew you’d go up to the Long Man, you know. How’d you get in?” “Used one of the special horseshoes.” Granny nodded. “You didn’t ought to have brung him into it, Gytha.” “Yes, Esme.” “He’s as tricky as she is.” “Yes, Esme.” “You’re trying preemptive meekness on me.” “Yes, Esme.” They walked a little further. “What was that dance your Jason and his men did when they’d got drunk?” said Granny. “It’s the Lancre Stick and Bucket Dance, Esme.” “It’s legal, is it?” “Technically they shouldn’t do it when there’s women present,” said Nanny. “Otherwise it’s sexual morrisment.” “And I thought Magrat was very surprised when you recited that poem at the reception.” “Poem?” “The one where you did the gestures.” “Oh, that poem.” “I saw Verence making notes on his napkin.” Nanny reached again into the shapeless recesses of her clothing and produced an entire bottle of champagne you could have sworn there was no room for. “Mind you, I thought she looked happy,” she said. “Standing there wearing about half of a torn muddy dress and chain-mail underneath. Hey, d’you know what she told me?” “What?” “You know that ole painting of Queen Ynci? You know, the one with the iron bodice? Her with all the spikes and knives on her chariot? Well, she said she was sure the . . . the spirit of Ynci was helping her. She said she wore the armour and she did things she’d never dare do.” “My word,” said Granny, noncommittally. “Funny ole world,” agreed Nanny. They walked in silence for a while. “So you didn’t tell her that Queen Ynci never existed, then?” “No point.” “Old King Lully invented her entirely ‘cos he thought we needed a bit of romantic history. He was a bit mad about that. He even had the armour made.” “I know. My great-grandma’s husband hammered it out of a tin bath and a couple of saucepans.” “But you didn’t think you ought to tell her that?” “No.” Granny nodded. “Funny thing,” she said, “even when Magrat’s completely different, she’s just the same.” Nanny Ogg produced a wooden spoon from somewhere in her apron. Then she raised her hat and carefully lifted down a bowl of cream, custard, and jelly which she had secreted there.[44] “Huh. I really don’t know why you pinches food the whole time,” said Granny. “Verence’d give you a bathful of the stuff if you asked. You know he don’t touch custard himself.” “More fun this way,” said Nanny. “I deserve a bit of fun.” There was a rustling in the thick bushes and the unicorn burst through. It was mad. It was angry. It was in a world where it did not belong. And it was being driven. It pawed the ground a hundred yards away, and lowered its horn. “Whoops,” said Nanny, dropping her just desserts. “Come on. There’s a tree here, come on.” Granny Weatherwax shook her head. “No. I ain’t runnin’ this time. She couldn’t get me before and she’s tryin’ through an animal, eh?” “Will you look at the size of the horn on that thing?” “I can see clear enough,” said Granny calmly. The unicorn lowered its head and charged. Nanny Ogg reached the nearest tree with low branches and leapt upward. . . Granny Weatherwax folded her arms. “Come on, Esme!” “No. I ain’t been thinking clear enough, but I am now. There’s some things I don’t have to run from.” The white shape bulleted down the avenue of trees, a thousand pounds of muscle behind twelve inches of glistening horn. Steam swirled behind it. “Esme!” Circle time was ending. Besides, she knew now why her mind had felt so unravelled, and that was a help. She couldn’t hear the ghostly thoughts of all the other Esme Weatherwaxes anymore. Perhaps some lived in a world ruled by elves. Or had died long ago. Or were living what they thought were happy lives. Granny Weatherwax seldom wished for anything, because wishing was soppy, but she felt a tiny regret that she’d never be able to meet them. Perhaps some were going to die, now, here on this path. Everything you did meant that a million copies of you did something else. Some were going to die. She’d sensed their future deaths . . . the deaths of Esme Weatherwax. And couldn’t save them, because chance did not work like that. On a million hillsides the girl ran, on a million bridges the girl chose, on a million paths the woman stood. . . All different, all one. All she could do for all of them was be herself, here and now, as hard as she could. She stuck out a hand. A few yards away the unicorn hit an invisible wall. Its legs flailed as it tried to stop, its body contorted in pain, and it slid the rest of the way to Granny’s feet on its back. “Gytha,” said Granny, as the beast tried to get upright, “you’ll take off your stockings and knot ‘em into a halter and pass it to me carefully.” “Esme. . .” “What?” “Ain’t got no stockings on, Esme.” “What about the lovely red and white pair I gave you on Hogswatchnight? I knitted ‘em myself. You know how I hates knitting.” “Well, it’s a warm night. I likes to, you know, let the air circulate.” “I had the devil of a time with the heels.” “Sorry, Esme.” “At least you’ll be so good as to run up to my place and bring everything that’s in the bottom of the dresser.” “Yes, Esme.” “But before that you’ll call in at your Jason’s and tell him to get the forge good and hot.” Nanny Ogg stared down at the struggling unicorn. It seemed to be stuck, terrified of Granny but at the same time quite unable to escape. “Oh, Esme, you’re never going to ask our Jason to-“ “I won’t ask him to do anything. And I ain’t asking you, neither.” Granny Weatherwax removed her hat, skimming it into the bushes. Then, her eyes never leaving the animal, she reached up to the iron-grey bun of her hair and removed a few crucial pins. The bun uncoiled a waking snake of fine hair, which unwound down to her waist when she shook her head a couple of times. Nanny watched in paralysed fascination as she reached up again and broke a single hair at its root. Granny Weatherwax’s hands made a complicated motion in the air as she made a noose out of something almost too thin to see. She ignored the thrashing horn and dropped it over the unicorn’s neck. Then she pulled. Struggling, its unshod hooves kicking up great clods of mud, the unicorn struggled to its feet. “That’ll never hold it,” said Nanny, sidling around the tree. “I could hold it with a cobweb, Gytha Ogg. With a cobweb. Now go about your business.” “Yes, Esme.” The unicorn threw back its head and screamed.   Half the town was waiting as Granny led the beast into Lancre, hooves skidding on the cobbles, because when you tell Nanny Ogg you tell everyone. It danced at the end of the impossibly thin tether, kicking out at the terminally unwary, but never quite managing to pull free. Jason Ogg, still in his best clothes, was standing nervously at the open doorway to the forge. Superheated air vibrated over the chimney. “Mister Blacksmith,” said Granny Weatherwax, “I have a job for you.” “Er,” said Jason, “that’s a unicorn, is that.” “Correct.” The unicorn screamed again, and rolled mad red eyes at Jason. “No one’s ever put shoes on a unicorn,” said Jason. “Think of this,” said Granny Weatherwax, “as your big moment.” The crowd clustered round, trying to see and hear while keeping out of the way of the hooves. Jason rubbed his chin with his hammer. “I don’t know-“ “Listen to me, Jason Ogg,” said Granny, hauling on the hair as the creature skittered around in a circle, “you can shoe anything anyone brings you. And there’s a price for that, ain’t there?” Jason gave Nanny Ogg a panic-stricken look. She had the grace to look embarrassed. “She never told me about it,” said Granny, with her usual ability to read Nanny’s expression through the back of her own head. She leaned closer to Jason, almost hanging from the plunging beast. “The price for being able to shoe anything, anything that anyone brings you . . . is having to shoe anything anyone brings you. The price for being the best is always . . . having to be the best. And you pays it, same as me.” The unicorn kicked several inches of timber out of the door frame. “But iron-“ said Jason. “And nails-“ “Yes?” “Iron’ll kill it,” said Jason. “If I nail iron to ‘n, I’ll kill ‘n. Killing’s not part of it. I’ve never killed anything. I was up all night with that ant, it never felt a thing. I won’t hurt a living thing that never done me no harm.” “Did you get that stuff from my dresser, Gytha?” “Yes, Esme.” “Bring it in here, then. And you, Jason, you just get that forge hot.” “But if I nail iron to it I’ll-“ “Did I say anything about iron?” The horn took a stone out of the wall a foot from Jason’s head. He gave in. “You’ll have to come in to keep it calm, then,” he said. “I’ve never shod a stallion like this’n without two men and a boy a-hanging on to it.” “It’ll do what it’s told,” Granny promised. “It can’t cross me.” “It murdered old Scrope,” said Nanny Ogg. “I wouldn’t mind him killing it.” “Then shame on you, woman,” said Granny “It’s an animal. Animals can’t murder. Only us superior races can murder. That’s one of the things that sets us apart from animals. Give me that sack.” She towed the fighting animal through the big double doors and a couple of the villagers hurriedly swung them shut. A moment later a hoof kicked a hole in the planking. Ridcully arrived at a run, his huge crossbow slung over his shoulder. “They told me the unicorn had turned up again!” Another board splintered. “In there?” Nanny nodded. “She dragged it all the way down from the woods,” she said. “But the damn thing’s savage!” Nanny Ogg rubbed her nose. “Yes, well . . . but she’s qualified, ain’t she? When it comes to unicorn taming. Nothing to do with witchcraft.” “What d’you mean?” “I thought there was some things everyone knew about trapping unicorns,” said Nanny archly. “Who could trap ‘em, is what I am delicately hintin’ at. She always could run faster’n you, could Esme. She could outdistance any man.” Ridcully stood there with his mouth open. “Now, me,” said Nanny, “I’d always trip over first ole tree root I came to. Took me ages to find one, sometimes.” “You mean after I went she never-“ “Don’t get soft ideas. It’s all one at our time o’life anyway,” said Nanny “It’d never have crossed her mind if you hadn’t turned up.” An associated thought seemed to strike her. “You haven’t seen Casanunda, have you?” “’Ello, my little rosebud,” said a cheerful, hopeful voice. Nanny didn’t even turn around. “You do turn up where people aren’t looking,” she said. “Famed for it, Mrs. Ogg.” There was silence from inside the forge. Then they could make out the tap-tap-tap of Jason’s hammer. “What they doing in there?” said Ridcully. “It’s stopping it kicking, whatever it is,” said Nanny “What was in the sack, Mrs. Ogg?” said Casanunda. “What she told me to get,” said Nanny “Her old silver tea set. Family heirloom. I’ve only ever seen it but twice, and once was just now when I put it in the sack. I don’t think she’s ever used it. It’s got a cream jug shaped like a humorous cow.” More people had arrived outside the forge. The crowd stretched all the way across the square. The hammering stopped. Jason’s voice, quite close, said: “We’re coming out now.” “They’re coming out now,” said Nanny “What’d she say?” “She said they’re coming out now.” “They’re coming out now!” The crowd pulled back. The doors swung open. Granny emerged, leading the unicorn. It walked sedately, muscles moving under its white coat like frogs in oil. And its hooves clattered on the cobbles. Ridcully couldn’t help noticing how they shone. It walked politely alongside the witch until she reached the centre of the square. Then she turned it loose, and gave it a light slap on the rump. It whinnied softly, turned, and galloped down the street, toward the forest. . . Nanny Ogg appeared silently behind Granny Weatherwax as she watched it go. “Silver shoes?” she said quietly “They’ll last no time at all.” “And silver nails. They’ll last for long enough,” said Granny, speaking to the world in general. “And she’ll never get it back, though she calls it for a thousand years.” “Shoeing the unicorn,” said Nanny, shaking her head. “Only you’d think of shoeing a unicorn, Esme.” “I’ve been doing it all my life,” said Granny. Now the unicorn was a speck on the moor land. As they watched, it disappeared into the evening gloom. Nanny Ogg sighed, and broke whatever spell there was. “So that’s it, then.” “Yes.” “Are you going to the dance up at the castle?” “Are you?” “Well. . . Mr. Casanunda did ask if I could show him the Long Man. You know. Properly. I suppose it’s him being a dwarf. They’re very interested in earthworks.” “Can’t get enough of them,” said Casanunda. Granny rolled her eyes. “Act your age, Gytha.” “Act? Don’t have to act, can do it automatic,” said Nanny. “Acting half my age . . . now that’s the difficult trick. Anyway, you didn’t answer me.” To the surprise of Nanny, and of Ridcully, and possibly even of Granny Weatherwax herself, she slipped her arm around Ridcully’s arm. “Mr. Ridcully and I are going to have a stroll down to the bridge.” “We are?” said Ridcully “Oh, that’s nice.” “Gytha Ogg, if you keep on looking at me like that I shall give you a right ding around the ear.” “Sorry, Esme,” said Nanny. “Good.” “I expect you want to talk about old times,” Nanny volunteered. “Maybe old times. Maybe other times.” The unicorn reached the forest, and galloped onward.   The waters of the Lancre gushed below. No one crossed the same water twice, even on a bridge. Ridcully dropped a pebble. It went plunk. “It all works out,” said Granny Weatherwax, “somewhere. Your young wizard knows that, he just puts daft words around it. He’d be quite bright, if only he’d look at what’s in front of him.” “He wants to stay here for a while,” said Ridcully gloomily. He flicked another pebble into the depths. “Seems fascinated by the stones. I can’t say no, can I? The king’s all for it. He says other kings have always had fools, so he’ll try having a wise man around, just in case that works better.” Granny laughed. “And there’s young Diamanda going to be up and about any day now,” she said. “What do you mean?” “Oh, nothing. That’s the thing about the future. It could turn out to be anything. And everything.” She picked up a pebble. It hit the water at the same time as one of Ridcully’s own, making a double plunk. “Do you think,” said Ridcully, “that . . . somewhere . . .it all went right?” “Yes. Here!” Granny softened at the sight of his sagging shoulders. “But there, too,” she said. “What?” “I mean that somewhere Mustrum Ridcully married Esmerelda Weatherwax and they lived-“ Granny gritted her teeth “-lived happily ever after. More or less. As much as anyone does.” “How d’you know?” “I’ve been picking up bits of her memories. She seemed happy enough. And I ain’t easily pleased.” “How can you do that?” “I try to be good at everything I do.” “Did she say anything about-“ “She didn’t say nothing! She don’t know we exist! Don’t ask questions! It’s enough to know that everything happens somewhere, isn’t it?” Ridcully tried to grin. “Is that the best you can tell me?” he said. “It’s the best there is. Or the next best thing.”   *   *   *   Where does it end? [45] On a summer night, with couples going their own ways, and silky purple twilight growing between the trees. From the castle, long after the celebrations had ended, faint laughter and the ringing of little silver bells. And from the empty hillside, only the silence of the elves. The End   [1] Probably at the first pawn. [2] Gods like a joke as much as anyone else. [3] Which is another country. [4] Which, no matter how carefully coiled, will always uncoil overnight and tie the lawnmower to the bicycles. [5] This happens all the time, everywhere in the multiverse, even on cold planets awash with liquid methane. No one knows why it is, but in any group of employed individuals the only naturally early riser is always the office manager, who will always leave reproachful little notes (or, as it might be, engraved helium crystals) on the desks of their subordinates. In fact the only place this does not happen very often is the world Zyrix, and this is only because Zyrix has eighteen suns and it is only possible to be an early riser there once every 1,789.6 years, but even then, once every 1,789.6 years, resonating to some strange universal signal, smallminded employers slither down to the office with a tentacle full of small reproachful etched frimpt shells at the ready. [6] He lived on his nerves. [7] The study of invisible writings was a new discipline made available by the discovery of the bi-directional nature of Library-Space. The thaumic mathematics are complex, but boil down to the fact that all books, everywhere, affect all other books. This is obvious: books inspire other books written in the future, and cite books written in the past. But the General Theory[8] of L-Space suggests that, in that case, the contents of books as yet unwritten can be deduced from books now in existence. [8] There’s a Special Theory as well, but no one bothers with it much because it’s self-evidently a load of marsh gas. [9] It was largely dark. [10] Three times outright, once after eleven hours extra time, and twice when the other finalists ran away. [11] Who was also general poacher, cesspit cleaner, and approximate carpenter.[12] [12] With a couple of nails it’ll stay up all right.” [13] The thing about iron is that you generally don’t have to think fast in dealing with it. [14] Well, it’s like this . . . The Carter parents were a quiet and respectable Lancre family who got into a bit of a mix-up when it came to naming their children. First, they had four daughters, who were christened Hope, Chastity, Prudence, and Charity, because naming girls after virtues is an ancient and unremarkable tradition. Then their first son was born and out of some misplaced idea about how this naming business was done he was called Anger Carter, followed later by Jealousy Carter, Bestiality Carter, and Covetousness Carter. Life being what it is. Hope turned out to be a depressive. Chastity was enjoying life as a lady of negotiable affection in Ankh-Morpork, Prudence had thirteen children, and Charity expected to get a dollar’s change out of seventy-five pence - whereas the boys had grown into amiable, well-tempered men, and Bestiality Carter was, for example, very kind to animals. [15] Ponder was one hundred percent wrong about this. [16} Verence and Magrat had a lot in common, really. [17] If it wasn’t a big stick. [18] It was here that the thaum, hitherto believed to be the smallest possible particle of magic, was successfully demonstrated to be made up of resons[19] or reality fragments. Currently research indicates that each reson is itself made up of a combination of at least five “flavours,” known as “up,” “down,” “sideways,” “sex appeal,” and “peppermint.” [19] Lit; “Thing-ies.” [20] Except for Nanny Ogg, who did it all the time, although not on purpose. [21] As has been pointed out earlier in the Discworld chronicles, entire agricultural economies have been based on the lifting power of little old ladies in black dresses. [22] i.e., having a lot of bosk. [23] Really true. That’s why people stand aside when kings go past. [24] The Lancratians did not consider geography to be a very original science. [25] Troll, a lifeform on silicon rather than carbon, can’t in fact digest people. But there’s always someone ready to give it a try. [26] Insert the usual “red-hot curried marbles” description here, if you like. [27] In the case of the A-Z Street Mappe of Ankh-Morpork, this would be The Sunshine Home for Sick Dragons in Morphic Street, Please Leave Donations of Coal by Side Door. Remember, A Dragon is For Life, Not Just for Hogswatchnight. [28] Shawn Ogg.[29] [29] Except when he was lying down. [30] But not huge, by wig standards. There have, in the course of decadent history, been many large wigs, often with built-in gewgaws to stop people having to look at boring hair all the time. There had been ones big enough to contain pet mice or clockwork ornaments. Mme. Cupidor, mistress of Mad King Soup II, had one with a bird cage in it, but on special state occasions wore one containing a perpetual calendar, a floral clock, and a take-away linguini shop. [31] i.e., far enough so’s not to look like you’re intruding on the conversation, but close enough to get a pretty good idea of what is going on. [32] Carrots so you can see in the dark, she’d explain, and oysters so’s you’ve got something to look at. [33] The Librarian, an ape of simple but firmly held tastes, considered an episode with custard pies, buckets of whitewash, and especially that bit when someone takes someone else’s hat off, fills it with something oozy, and replaces it on the deadpan head while the orchestra plays “WHAH . . . Whah . . . whah . . . whaaaa . . .” to be an absolutely essential part of any theatrical performance. Since a roasted peanut is a dangerous and painful item when hurled with pinpoint accuracy, directors in Ankh-Morpork had long ago taken the hint. This made some of the grand guignol melodramas a little unusual, but it was considered that plays like “The Blood-Soaked Tragedy of the Mad Monk of Quirm (with Custard-Pie scene)” were far better than being deaf in one ear for five days. [34] Made it up. [35] Had read a lot of stuff that other people had made up, too. [36] “He’s just an old soppy really” - from the Nanny Ogg Book of Cat Sayings. [37] He knew this because the previous month’s issue of Popular Armour had run a feature entitled “We Test The Top Twenty Sub - $50 Helmets.” It had also run a second feature called “Battleaxes: We Put The Ten Best Through Their Paces” and had advertised for half a dozen new testers. [38] The shortest unit of time in the multiverse is the New York Second, defined as the period of time between the traffic lights turning green and the cab behind you honking. [39] Although this is a phallusy. [40] There are many recipes for the flat round loaves of Lancre dwarf bread, but the common aim of all of them is to make a field ration that is long-lasting, easily packed, and can disembowel the enemy if skimmed through the air hard enough. Edibility is a kind of optional extra. Most recipes are a closely guarded secret, apart from the gravel. [41] Hence the term “wholesale destruction.” [42] The Monks of Cool, whose tiny and exclusive monastery is hidden in a really cool and laid-back valley in the lower Ramtops, have a passing-out test for a novice. He is taken into a room full of all types of clothing and asked: Yo,[43] my son, which of these is the most stylish thing to wear? And the correct answer is: Hey, whatever I select. [43] Cool, but not necessarily up to date. [44] Nanny Ogg was also a great picker-up of unconsidered trifles. [45] When Hwel the playwright turned up with the rest of the troupe the next day, they told him all about it, and he wrote it down. But he left out all the bits that wouldn’t fit on a stage, or were too expensive, or which he didn’t believe. In any case, he called it The Taming of the Vole, because no one would be interested in a play called Things that Happened on A Midsummer Night.   
Making Money - Terry Pratchett	----	Making Money Making Money By Terry Pratchett 2 Contents Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Epilogue 3 THE DARK SIDE OF THE SUN THE UNADULTERATED CAT (cartoons by Gray Jolliffe) • (With Stephen Briggs, illustrated by Paul Kidby) DISCWORLD'S UNSEEN UNIVERSITY DIARY 1998 • DISCWORLD'S ANKH-MORPORK CITY WATCH DIARY 1999 • DISCWORLD'S ASSASSINS' GUILD YEARBOOK AND DIARY 2000 • DISCWORLD'S FOOLS' GUILD YEARBOOK AND DIARY 2001 • DISCWORLD'S THIEVES' GUILD YEARBOOK AND DIARY 2002 • DISCWORLD'S (REFORMED) VAMPYRE'S DIARY 2003 • DISCWORLD'S ANKH-MORPORK POST OFFICE HANDBOOK DIARY 2007 • ♣ also available in audio/CD • published by Victor Gollancz ■ published by Samuel French ♦ published by Methuen Drama ☼ published by Ebury Press * published by Oxford University Press ♠ published by Colin Smythe 4 5 TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS 61-63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA A Random House Group Company www.rbooks.co.uk First published in Great Britain in 2007 by Doubleday an imprint of Transworld Publishers Copyright © Terry and Lyn Pratchett 2007 Terry Pratchett has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work. This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Discworld® is a trademark registered by Terry Pratchett A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 9780385611015 6 Addresses for Random House Group Ltd companies outside the UK can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk The Random House Group Ltd Reg. No. 954009 The Random House Group Ltd makes every effort to ensure that the papers used in its books are made from trees that have been legally sourced from well-managed and credibly certified forests. Our paper procurement policy can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk/paper.htm Typeset in 11.75/15pt Minion by Falcon Oast Graphic Art Ltd Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk 7 Author's Note Hemlines as a measure of national crisis (p.64): The author will be forever grateful to the renowned military historian and strategist Sir Basil Liddell Hart for imparting this interesting observation to him in 1968. It may explain why the mini-skirt has, since the sixties, never really gone out of style. Students of the history of computing will recognize in the Glooper a distant echo of the Phillips Economic Computer, built in 1949 by engineer-turned-economist Bill Phillips, which also made an impressive hydraulic model of the national economy. No Igors were involved, apparently. One of the early machines can be found in the Science Museum, London, and a dozen or so others are on display around the world for the interested observer. And finally, as ever, the author is grateful to the British Heritage Joke Foundation for its work in ensuring that the fine old jokes never die… 8 Chapter 1 Waiting in darkness — A bargain sealed — The hanging man — Golem with a blue dress — Crime and punishment — A chance to make real money — The chain of gold-ish — No unkindness to bears — Mr Bent keeps time THEY LAY IN THE DARK, guarding. There was no way of measuring the passage of time, nor any inclination to measure it. There was a time when they had not been here, and there would be a time, presumably, when they would, once more, not be here. They would be somewhere else. This time in between was immaterial. But some had shattered and some, the younger ones, had gone silent. The weight was increasing. Something must be done. One of them raised his mind in song. It was a hard bargain, but hard on whom? That was the question. And Mr Blister the lawyer wasn't getting an answer. He would have liked an answer. When parties are interested in unprepossessing land, it might pay for smaller parties to buy up any neighbouring plots, just in case the party of the first part had heard something, possibly at a party. But it was hard to see what there was to know. 9 He gave the woman on the other side of his desk a suitably concerned smile. 'You understand, Miss Dearheart, that this area is subject to dwarf mining law? That means all metals and metal ore are owned by the Low King of the dwarfs. You will have to pay him a considerable royalty on any that you remove. Not that there will be any, I'm bound to say. It is said to be sand and silt all the way down, and apparently it is a very long way down.' He waited for any kind of reaction from the woman opposite, but she just stared at him. Blue smoke from her cigarette spiralled towards the office ceiling. 'Then there is the matter of antiquities,' said the lawyer, watching as much of her expression as could be seen through the haze. 'The Low King has decreed that all jewellery, armour, ancient items classified as Devices, weaponry, pots, scrolls or bones extracted by you from the land in question will also be subject to a tax or confiscation.' Miss Dearheart paused as if to compare the litany against an internal list, stubbed out her cigarette and said: 'Is there any reason to believe that there are any of these things there?' 'None whatsoever,' said the lawyer, with a wry smile. 'Everyone knows that we are dealing with a barren waste, but the King is insuring against "what everyone knows" being wrong. It so often is.' 'He is asking a lot of money for a very short lease!' 'Which you are willing to pay. This makes dwarfs nervous, you see. It's very unusual for a dwarf to part with land, even for a few years. I gather he needs the money because of all this Koom Valley business.' 'I'm paying the sum demanded!' 'Quite so, quite so. But I—' 'Will he honour the contract?' 10 'To the letter. That at least is certain. Dwarfs are sticklers in such matters. All you need to do is sign and, regrettably, pay.' Miss Dearheart reached into her bag and placed a thick sheet of paper on the table. 'This is a banker's note for five thousand dollars, drawn on the Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork.' The lawyer smiled. 'A name to trust,' he said, and added: 'traditionally, at least. Do sign where I've put the crosses, will you?' He watched carefully as she signed, and she got the impression he was holding his breath. 'There,' she said, pushing the contract across the desk. 'Perhaps you could assuage my curiosity, madam?' he said. 'Since the ink is drying on the lease?' Miss Dearheart glanced around the room, as if the heavy old bookcases concealed a multitude of ears. 'Can you keep a secret, Mr Blister?' 'Oh, indeed, madam. Indeed!' She looked around conspiratorially. 'Even so, this should be said quietly,' she hissed. He nodded hopefully, leaned forward, and for the first time for many years felt a woman's breath in his ear: ' So can I,' she said. That was nearly three weeks ago… Some of the things you could learn up a drainpipe at night were surprising. For example, people paid attention to small sounds — the click of a window catch, the clink of a lockpick — more than they did to big sounds, like a brick falling into the street or even (for this was, after all, Ankh-Morpork) a scream. 11 These were loud sounds which were therefore public sounds, which in turn meant they were everyone's problem and, therefore, not mine. But small sounds were nearby and suggested such things as stealth betrayed, and so were pressing and personal. Therefore, he tried not to make little noises. Below him the coach yard of the Central Post Office buzzed like an overturned hive. They'd got the turntable working really well now. The overnight coaches were arriving and the new Uberwald Flyer was gleaming in the lamplight. Everything was going right, which was, to the night-time climber, why everything was going wrong. The climber thrust a brick key into soft mortar, shifted his weight, moved his foo— Damn pigeon! It flew up in panic, his other foot slipped, his fingers lost their grip on the drainpipe, and when the world had stopped churning he was owing the postponement of his meeting with the distant cobbles to his hold on a brick key which was, let's face it, nothing more than a long flat nail with a t-piece grip. And you can't bluff a wall, he thought. If you swing you might get your hand and foot on the pipe, or the key might come out. Oh… kay… He had more keys and a small hammer. Could he knock one in without losing his grip on the other? Above him the pigeon joined its colleagues on a higher ledge. The climber thrust the nail into the mortar with as much force as he dared, pulled the hammer out of his pocket and, as the Flyer departed below with a clattering and jingling, hit the nail one massive blow. 12 It went in. He dropped the hammer, hoping the sound of its impact would be masked by the general bustle, and grabbed the new hold before the hammer had hit the ground. Oh… kay. And now I am… stuck? The pipe was less than three feet away. Fine. This would work. Move both hands on to the new hold, swing gently, get his left hand around the pipe, and he could drag himself across the gap. Then it would be just— The pigeon was nervous. For pigeons, it's the ground state of being. It chose this point to lighten the load. Oh… kay. Correction: two hands were now gripping the suddenly very slippery nail. Damn. And at this point, because nervousness runs through pigeons faster than a streaker through a convent, a gentle patter began. There are times when 'It does not get any better than this' does not spring to mind. And then a voice from below said: 'Who's up there?' Thank you, hammer. They can't possibly see me, he thought. People look up from the well-lit yard with their night vision in shreds. But so what? They know I'm here now. Oh… kay. 'All right, it's a fair cop, guv,' he called down. 'A thief, eh?' said the voice below. 'Haven't touched a thing, guv. Could do with a hand up, guv.' 13 'Are you Thieves' Guild? You're using their lingo.' 'Not me, guv. I always use the word guv, guv.' He wasn't able to look down very easily now, but sounds below indicated that ostlers and off-duty coachmen were strolling over. That was not going to be helpful. Coachmen met most of their thieves out on lonely roads, where the highwaymen seldom bothered to ask sissy questions like 'Your money or your life?' When one was caught, justice and vengeance were happily combined by means of a handy length of lead pipe. There was a muttering beneath him, and it appeared that a consensus had been reached. 'Right, Mister Post Office Robber,' a cheery voice bellowed. 'Here's what we're gonna do, okay? We're gonna go into the building, right, and lower you a rope. Can't say fairer'n that, right?' 'Right, guv.' It had been the wrong kind of cheery. It had been the cheery of the word 'pal' as in 'You lookin' at me, pal?' The Guild of Thieves paid a twenty-dollar bounty fee for a non-accredited thief brought in alive, and there were oh, so many ways of still being alive when you were dragged in and poured out on the floor. He looked up. The window of the Postmaster General's apartment was right above him. Oh… kay. His hands and arms were numb and yet painful at the same time. He heard the rattle of the big freight elevator inside the building, the thud of a hatch being slapped back, the footsteps across the roof, felt the rope hit his arm. 'Grab it or drop,' said a voice as he flailed to grasp it. 'It's all the same in the long run.' There was laughter in the dark. 14 The men heaved hard at the rope. The figure dangled in the air, then kicked out and swung back. Glass shattered, just below the guttering, and the rope came up empty. The rescue party turned to one another. 'All right, you two, front and back doors right now!' said a coachman who was faster on the uptake. 'Head him off! Go down in the elevator! The rest of you, we'll squeeze him out, floor by floor!' As they clattered back down the stairs and ran along the corridor a man in a dressing gown poked his head out of one of the rooms, stared at them in amazement, and then snapped: 'Who the hell are you lot? Go on, get after him!' 'Oh yeah? And who are you?' said an ostler, slowing down and glaring at him. 'He's Mr Moist von Lipwick, he is!' said a coachman at the back. 'He's the Postmaster General!' 'Someone came crashing through the window, landed right between— I mean, nearly landed on me!' shouted the man in the dressing gown. 'He ran off down the corridor! Ten dollars a man if you catch him! And it's Lipwig, actually!' That would have re-started the stampede, but the ostler said, in a suspicious voice: 'Here, say the word "guv", will you?' 'What are you on about?' said the coachman. 'He doesn't half sound like that bloke,' said the ostler. ' And he's out of breath!' 'Are you stupid?' said the coachman. 'He's the Postmaster! He's got a bloody key! He's got all the keys! Why the hell would he want to break into his own Post Office?' 'I reckon we ought to take a look in that room,' said the ostler. 15 'Really? Well, I reckon what Mr Lipwig does to get out of breath in his own room is his own affair,' said the coachman, giving Moist a huge wink. 'An' I reckon ten dollars a man is running away from me 'cos of you being a tit. Sorry about this, sir,' he said to Lipwig, 'he's new and he ain't got no manners. We will now be leaving you, sir,' he added, touching where he thought his forelock was, 'with further apologies for any inconvenience which may have been caused. Now get cracking, you bastards!' When they were out of sight Moist went back into his room and carefully bolted the door behind him. Well, at least he had some skills. The slight hint that there was a woman in his room had definitely swung it. Anyway, he was the Postmaster General and he did have all the keys. It was only an hour before dawn. He'd never get to sleep again. He might as well rise formally, and enhance a reputation for keenness. They might have shot him right off the wall, he thought, as he sorted out a shirt. They could have left him to hang there and taken bets on how long it'd be before he lost his grip; that would be the Ankh-Morpork way. It was just his good luck that they'd decided to give him a righteous smack or two before posting him through the guild letter box. And luck came to those who left a space for it— There was a heavy yet somehow still polite knock on the door. Are You Decent, Mr Lipwig?' a voice boomed. Regrettably yes, thought Moist, but said aloud: 'Come in, Gladys.' The floorboards creaked and furniture rattled on the other side of the room as Gladys entered. Gladys was a golem, a clay man (or, for the sake of not having an argument, a clay woman) who was nearly seven feet tall. She — well, with 16 a name like Gladys 'it' was unthinkable and 'he' just didn't do the job — wore a very large blue dress. Moist shook his head. The whole silly business had been a matter of etiquette, really. Miss Maccalariat, who ruled the Post Office counters with a rod of steel and lungs of brass, had objected to a male golem cleaning the ladies' privies. How Miss Maccalariat had arrived at the conclusion that they were male by nature rather than custom was a fascinating mystery, but there was no profit in arguing with such as her. And thus, with the addition of one extremely large cotton print dress, a golem became female enough for Miss Maccalariat. The odd thing was that Gladys was female now, somehow. It wasn't just the dress. She tended to spend time around the counter girls, who seemed to accept her into the sisterhood despite the fact that she weighed half a ton. They even passed on their fashion magazines to her, although it was hard to imagine what winter skincare tips would mean to someone a thousand years old with eyes that glowed like holes into a furnace. And now she was asking him if he was decent. How would she tell? She'd brought him a cup of tea and the City edition of the Times, still damp from the press. Both were placed, with care, on the table. And… Oh gods, they'd printed his picture. His actual picture! Him and Vetinari and various notables last night, all looking up at the new chandelier! He'd managed to move slightly so that the picture blurred a little, but it was still the face that looked out at him from the shaving mirror every morning. All the way to Genua there were people who'd been duped, fooled, swindled and cheated by that face. The only thing he hadn't done was hornswoggle, and that was only because he hadn't found out how to. Okay, he did have the kind of all-purpose face that reminded you of lots of other faces, but it was a terrible thing to see it nailed down in print. Some people thought that pictures could steal your soul, but it was liberty that was on Moist's mind. Moist von Lipwig, pillar of the community. Hah… 17 Something made him look closer. Who was that man behind him? He seemed to be staring over Moist's shoulder. Fat face, small beard which looked like Lord Vetinari's, but whereas the Patrician's was a goatee, the same style on the other man looked like the result of haphazard shaving. Someone from the bank, right? There'd been so many faces, so many hands to shake, and everyone wanted to get into the picture. The man looked hypnotized, but having your picture taken often did that to people. Just another guest at just another function… And they'd only used the picture on page one because someone had decided that the main story, which was about another bank going bust and a mob of angry customers trying to hang the manager in the street, did not merit illustration. Did the editor have the common decency to print a picture of that and put a sparkle in everyone's day? Oh no, it had to be a picture of Moist von bloody Lipwig! And the gods, once they've got a man against the ropes, can't resist one more thunderbolt. There, lower down the front page, was the headline STAMP FORGER WILL HANG. They were going to execute Owlswick Jenkins. And for what? For murder? For being a notorious banker? No, just for knocking out a few hundred sheets of stamps. Quality work, too; the Watch would never have had a case if they hadn't burst into his attic and found half a dozen sheets of halfpenny reds hanging up to dry. And Moist had testified, right there in the court. He'd had to. It was his civic duty. Forging stamps was held to be as bad as forging coins, and he couldn't dodge. He was the Postmaster General, after all, a respected figure in the community. He'd have felt a tiny bit better if the man had sworn or glared at him, but he'd just stood in the dock, a little figure with a wispy beard, looking lost and bewildered. He'd forged halfpenny stamps, he really had. It broke your heart, it really did. Oh, he'd done higher values too, but what kind of person takes all that trouble for half a penny? Owlswick Jenkins had, and now he was in one of the condemned cells down in the Tanty, with a tew days to ponder on the nature of cruel fate before he was taken out to dance on air. 18 Been there, done that, Moist thought. It all went black — and then I got a whole new life. But I never thought being an upstanding citizen was going to be this bad. ' Er… thank you, Gladys,' he said to the figure looming genteelly over him. 'You Have An Appointment Now With Lord Vetinari,' said the golem. 'I'm sure I don't.' 'There Are Two Guards Outside Who Are Sure You Do, Mr Lipwig,' Gladys rumbled. Oh, Moist thought. One of those appointments. 'And the time of this appointment would be right now, would it?' 'Yes, Mr Lipwig.' Moist grabbed his trousers, and some relic of his decent upbringing made him hesitate. He looked at the mountain of blue cotton in front of him. 'Do you mind?' he said. Gladys turned away. She's half a ton of clay, Moist thought glumly, as he struggled into his clothes. And insanity is catching. He finished dressing and hurried down the back stairs and out into the coach yard that had so recently threatened to be his penultimate resting place. The Quirm Shuttle was pulling out, but he leapt up beside the coachman, gave the man a nod, and rode in splendour down Widdershins Broadway until he jumped down outside the palace's main entrance. It would be nice, he reflected as he ran up the steps, if his lordship would entertain the idea that an appointment was something made by more than one person. But he was a tyrant, after all. They had to have some fun. 19 Drumknott, the Patrician's secretary, was waiting by the door of the Oblong Office, and quickly ushered him into the seat in front of his lordship's desk. After nine seconds of industrious writing, Lord Vetinari looked up from his paperwork. All, Mr Lipwig,' he said. 'Not in your golden suit?' 'It's being cleaned, sir.' 'I trust the day goes well with you? Up until now, that is?' Moist looked around, sorting hastily through the Post Office's recent little problems. Apart from Drumknott, who was standing by his master with an attitude of deferential alertness, they were alone. 'Look, I can explain,' he said. Lord Vetinari lifted an eyebrow with the care of one who, having found a piece of caterpillar in his salad, raises the rest of the lettuce. 'Pray do,' he said, leaning back. 'We got a bit carried away,' said Moist. 'We were a bit too creative in our thinking. We encouraged mongooses to breed in the posting boxes to keep down the snakes…' Lord Vetinari said nothing. 'Er… which, admittedly, we introduced into the posting boxes to reduce the numbers of toads…' Lord Vetinari repeated himself. 'Er… which, it's true, staff put in the posting boxes to keep down the snails…' 20 Lord Vetinari remained unvocal. 'Er… These, I must in fairness point out, got into the boxes of their own accord, in order to eat the glue on the stamps,' said Moist, aware that he was beginning to burble. 'Well, at least you were saved the trouble of having to introduce them yourselves,' said Lord Vetinari cheerfully. 'As you indicate, this may well have been a case where chilly logic should have been replaced by the common sense of, perhaps, the average chicken. But that is not the reason I asked you to come here today.' 'If it's about the cabbage-flavoured stamp glue—' Moist began. Vetinari waved a hand. 'An amusing incident,' he said, 'and I believe nobody actually died.' 'Er, the Second Issue 50p stamp?' Moist ventured. 'The one they call the "Lovers"?' said Vetinari. 'The League of Decency did complain to me, yes, but—' 'Our artist didn't realize what he was sketching! He doesn't know much about agriculture! He thought the young couple were sowing seeds!' 'Ahem,' said Vetinari. 'But I understand that the offending affair can only be seen in any detail with quite a large magnifying glass, and so the offence, if such it be, is largely self-inflicted.' He gave one of his slightly frightening little smiles. 'I understand the few copies in circulation among the stamp collectors are affixed to a plain brown envelope.' He looked at Moist's blank face and sighed. 'Tell me, Mr Lipwig, would you like to make some real money?' Moist gave this some thought and then said, very carefully: 'What will happen to me if I say yes?' 'You will start a new career of challenge and adventure, Mr Lipwig.' 21 Moist shifted uneasily. He didn't need to look round to know that, by now, someone would be standing by the door. Someone heavily but not grotesquely built, in a cheap black suit, and with absolutely no sense of humour. 'And, just for the sake of argument, what will happen if I say no?' 'You may walk out of that door over there and the matter will not be raised again.' It was a door in a different wall. He had not come in by it. 'That door over there?' Moist stood up and pointed. 'Indeed so, Mr Lipwig.' Moist turned to Drumknott. 'May I borrow your pencil, Mr Drumknott? Thank you.' He walked over to the door and opened it. Then he cupped one hand to his ear, theatrically, and dropped the pencil. 'Let's see how dee—' Clik! The pencil bounced and rolled on some quite solid-looking floorboards. Moist picked it up and stared at it, and then walked slowly back to his chair. 'Didn't there use to be a deep pit full of spikes down there?' he said. 'I can't imagine why you would think that,' said Lord Vetinari. 'I'm sure there was,' Moist insisted. 'Can you recall, Drumknott, why our Mr Lipwig should think that there used to be a deep pit full of spikes behind that door?' said Vetinari. 'I can't imagine why he would think that, my lord,' Drumknott murmured. 22 'I'm very happy at the Post Office, you know,' said Moist, and realized that he sounded defensive. 'I'm sure you are. You make a superb Postmaster General,' said Vetinari. He turned to Drumknott. 'Now I've finished this I'd better deal with the overnights from Genua,' he said, and carefully folded the letter into an envelope. 'Yes, my lord,' said Drumknott. The tyrant of Ankh-Morpork bent to his work. Moist watched blankly as Vetinari took a small but heavy-looking box from a desk drawer, removed a stick of black sealing wax from it and melted a small puddle of the wax on to the envelope with an air of absorption that Moist found infuriating. 'Is that all?' he said. Vetinari looked up and appeared surprised to see him still there. 'Why, yes, Mr Lipwig. You may go.' He laid aside the stick of wax and took a black signet ring out of the box. 'I mean, there's not some kind of problem, is there?' 'No, not at all. You have become an exemplary citizen, Mr Lipwig,' said Vetinari, carefully stamping a V into the cooling wax. 'You rise each morning at eight, you are at your desk at thirty minutes past. You have turned the Post Office from a calamity into a smoothly running machine. You pay your taxes and a little bird tells me that you are tipped to be next year's Chairman of the Merchants' Guild. Well done, Mr Lipwig!' Moist stood up to leave, but hesitated. 'What's wrong with being Chairman of the Merchants' Guild, then?' he said. With slow and ostentatious patience, Lord Vetinari slipped the ring back into its box and the box back into the drawer. 'I beg your pardon, Mr Lipwig?' 23 'It's just that you said it as though there was something wrong with it,' said Moist. 'I don't believe I did,' said Vetinari, looking up at his secretary. 'Did I utter a derogatory inflection, Drumknott?' 'No, my lord. You have often remarked that the traders and shopkeepers of the guild are the backbone of the city,' said Drumknott, handing him a thick file. ' I shall get a very nearly gold chain,' said Moist. 'He will get a very nearly gold chain, Drumknott,' observed Vetinari, paying attention to a new letter. 'And what's so bad about that?' Moist demanded. Vetinari looked up again with an expression of genuinely contrived puzzlement. 'Are you quite well, Mr Lipwig? You appear to have something wrong with your hearing. Now run along, do. The Central Post Office opens in ten minutes and I'm sure you would wish, as ever, to set a good example to your staff.' When Moist had departed, the secretary quietly laid a folder in front of Vetinari. It was labelled 'Albert Spangler/Moist von Lipwig'. 'Thank you, Drumknott, but why?' 'The death warrant on Albert Spangler is still extant, my lord,' Drumknott murmured. 'Ah. I understand,' said Lord Vetinari. 'You think that I will point out to Mr Lipwig that under his nomme de felonie of Albert Spangler he could still be hanged? You think that I might suggest to him that all I would need to do is inform the newspapers of my shock at finding that our honourable Mr Lipwig is none other than the master thief, forger and confidence trickster who over the years has stolen many hundreds of thousands of dollars, breaking banks and forcing honest businesses into penury? You think I will 24 threaten to send in some of my most trusted clerks to audit the Post Office's accounts and, I am certain, uncover evidence of the most flagrant embezzlement? Do you think that they will find, for example, that the entirety of the Post Office Pension Fund has gone missing? You think I will express to the world my horror at how the wretch Lipwig escaped the hangman's noose with the aid of persons unknown? Do you think, in short, that I will explain to him how easily I can bring a man so low that his former friends will have to kneel down to spit on him? Is that what you assumed, Drumknott?' The secretary stared up at the ceiling. His lips moved for twenty seconds or so while Lord Vetinari got on with the paperwork. Then he looked down and said: 'Yes, my lord. That about covers it, I believe.' 'Ah, but there is more than one way of racking a man, Drumknott.' 'Face up or face down, my lord?' 'Thank you, Drumknott. I value your cultivated lack of imagination, as you know.' 'Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.' 'In fact, Drumknott, you get him to build his own rack, and let him turn the screw all by himself.' 'I'm not sure I'm with you there, my lord.' Lord Vetinari laid his pen aside. 'You have to consider the psychology of the individual, Drumknott. Every man may be considered as a sort of lock, to which there is a key. I have great hopes for Mr Lipwig in the coming skirmish. Even now, he still has the instincts of a criminal.' 'How can you tell, my lord?' 'Oh, there are all sorts of little clues, Drumknott. But I think a most persuasive one is that he has just walked off with your pencil.' 25 There were meetings. There were always meetings. And they were dull, which is part of the reason they were meetings. Dull likes company. The Post Office wasn't going places any more. It had gone to places. It had arrived at places. Now those places required staff, and staff rotas, and wages, and pensions, and building maintenance, and cleaning staff to come in at night, and collection schedules, and discipline and investment and on, and on… Moist stared disconsolately at a letter from a Ms Estressa Partleigh of the Campaign for Equal Heights. The Post Office, apparently, was not employing enough dwarfs. Moist had pointed out, very reasonably, he thought, that one in three of the staff were dwarfs. She had replied that this was not the point. The point was that since dwarfs were on average two-thirds the height of humans, the Post Office, as a responsible authority, should employ one and a half dwarfs for every human employed. The Post Office must reach out to the dwarf community, said Ms Partleigh. Moist picked up the letter between thumb and forefinger and dropped it on the floor. It's reach down, Ms Partleigh, reach down. There had also been something about core values. He sighed. It had come to this. He was a responsible authority, and people could the terms like 'core values' at him with impunity. Nevertheless, Moist was prepared to believe that there were people who found a quiet contentment in contemplating columns of figures. Their number did not include him. It had been weeks since he'd last designed a stamp! And much longer since he'd had that tingle, that buzz, that feeling of flying that meant a scam was cooking gently and he was getting the better of someone who thought they were getting the better of him. Everything was all so… worthy. And it was stifling. 26 Then he thought about this morning, and smiled. Okay, he'd got stuck, but the shadowy night-time climbing fraternity reckoned the Post Office to be particularly challenging. And he'd talked his way out of the problem. All in all, it was a win. For a while there, in between the moments of terror, he'd felt alive and flying. A heavy tread in the corridor indicated that Gladys was on the way with his mid-morning tea. She entered with her head bent down to avoid the lintel and, with the skill of something massive yet possessed of incredible coordination, put the cup and saucer down without a ripple. She said: 'Lord Vetinari's Carriage Is Waiting Outside, Sir.' Moist was sure there was more treble in Gladys's voice these days. 'But I saw him an hour ago! Waiting for what?' he said. 'You, Sir.' Gladys dropped a curtsy, and when a golem drops a curtsy you can hear it. Moist looked out of his window. A black coach was outside the Post Office. The coachman was standing next to it, having a quiet smoke. 'Does he say I have an appointment?' he said. 'The Coachman Said He Was Told To Wait,' said Gladys. 'Ha!' Gladys curtsied again before she left. When the door had shut behind her, Moist returned his attention to the pile of paperwork in his in-tray. The top sheaf was headed 'Minutes of the Meeting of the Sub Post Offices Committee', but they looked more like hours. He picked up the mug of tea. On it was printed: YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE MAD TO WORK HERE BUT IT HELPS! He stared at it, and then absentmindedly picked up a thick black pen and drew a comma between 27 'Here' and 'But'. He also crossed out the exclamation mark. He hated that exclamation mark, hated its manic, desperate cheeriness. It meant: You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here. We'll See to That! He forced himself to read the minutes, realizing that his eye was skipping whole paragraphs in self-defence. Then he started on the District Offices' Weekly Reports. After that, the Accidents and Medical Committee sprawled its acres of words. Occasionally Moist glanced at the mug. At twenty-nine minutes past eleven the alarm on his desk clock went 'bing'. Moist got up, put his chair under the desk, walked to the door, counted to three, opened it, said 'Hello, Tiddles' as the Post Office's antique cat padded in, counted to nineteen as the cat did its circuit of the room, said 'Goodbye, Tiddles' as it plodded back into the corridor, shut the door and went back to his desk. You just opened the door for an elderly cat who's lost hold of the concept of walking around things, he told himself, as he rewound the alarm. You do it every day. Do you think that's the action of a sane man? Okay, it's sad to see him standing for hours with his head up against a chair until someone moves it, but now you get up every day to move the chair for him. This is what honest work does to a person. Yes, but dishonest work nearly got me hanged! he protested. So? Hanging only lasts a couple of minutes. The Pension Fund Committee lasts a lifetime! It's all so boring! You're trapped in chains of gold-ish! Moist had ended up near the window. The coachman was eating a biscuit. When he caught sight of Moist he gave him a friendly wave. Moist almost jumped back from the window. He sat down hurriedly and countersigned FG/2 requisition forms for fifteen minutes straight. Then he went out into the corridor, which on its far side was open to the big hall, and looked down. 28 He'd promised to get the big chandeliers back, and now they both hung there glittering like private star systems. The big shiny counter gleamed in its polished splendour. There was the hum of purposeful and largely efficient activity. He'd done it. It all worked. It was the Post Office. And it wasn't fun any more. He went down into the sorting rooms, he dropped into the postmen's locker room to have a convivial cup of tar-like tea, he wandered around the coach yard and got in the way of people who were trying to do their jobs, and at last he plodded back to his office, bowed under the weight of the humdrum. He just happened to glance out of the window, as anyone might. The coachman was eating his lunch! His damn lunch! He had a little folding chair on the pavement, with his meal on a little folding table! It was a large pork pie and a bottle of beer! There was even a white tablecloth! Moist went down the main stairs like a maddened tapdancer and ran out through the big double doors. In one crowded moment, as he hurried towards the coach, the meal, table, cloth and chair were stowed in some unnoticeable compartment, and the man was standing by the invitingly open door. 'Look, what is this about?' Moist demanded, panting for breath. 'I don't have all—' 'All, Mr Lipwig,' said Lord Vetinari's voice from within, 'do step inside. Thank you, Houseman, Mrs Lavish will be waiting. Hurry up, Mr Lipwig, I am not going to eat you. I have just had an acceptable cheese sandwich.' What harm can it do to find out? It's a question that has left bruises down the centuries, even more than 'It can't hurt if I only take one' and 'It's all right if you only do it standing up'. Moist climbed into the shadows. The door clicked behind him, and he turned suddenly. 29 'Oh, really,' said Lord Vetinari. 'It's just shut, it isn't locked, Mr Lipwig. Do compose yourself!' Beside him, Drumknott sat primly with a large leather satchel on his lap. 'What is it you want?' said Moist. Lord Vetinari raised an eyebrow. 'I? Nothing. What do you want?' 'What?' 'Well, you got into my coach, Mr Lipwig.' 'Yes, but I was told it was outside!' 'And if you had been told it was black, would you have found it necessary to do anything about it? There is the door, Mr Lipwig.' 'But you've been parked out here all morning!' 'It is a public street, sir,' said Lord Vetinari. 'Now sit down. Good.' The coach jerked into motion. 'You are restless, Mr Lipwig,' said Vetinari. 'You are careless of your safety. Life has lost its flavour, has it not?' Moist didn't reply. 'Let us talk about angels,' said Lord Vetinari. 'Oh yes, I know that one,' said Moist bitterly. 'I've heard that one. That's the one you got me with after I was hanged—' Vetinari raised an eyebrow again. 'Only mostly hanged, I think you'll find. To within an inch of your life.' 30 'Whatever! I was hanged! And the worst part of that was finding out I only got two paragraphs in the Tanty Bugle!1 Two paragraphs, may I say, for a life of ingenious, inventive and strictly non-violent crime? I could have been an example to youngsters! Page one got hogged by the Dyslectic Alphabet Killer, and he only managed A and W!' 'I confess the editor does appear to believe that it is not a proper crime unless someone is found in three alleys at once, but that is the price of a free Press. And it suits us both, does it not, that Albert Spangler's passage from this world was… unmemorable?' 'Yes, but I wasn't expecting an afterlife like this! I have to do what I'm told for the rest of my life?' 'Correction, your new life. That is a crude summary, yes,' said Vetinari. 'Let me rephrase things, however. Ahead of you, Mr Lipwig, is a life of respectable quiet contentment, of civic dignity and, of course, in the fullness of time a pension. Not to mention the proud gold-ish chain.' Moist winced at this. 'And if I don't do what you say?' 'Hmm? Oh, you misunderstand me, Mr Lipwig. That is what will happen to you if you decline my offer. If you accept it, you will survive on your wits against powerful and dangerous enemies, with every day presenting fresh challenges. Someone may even try to kill you.' 'What? Why?' 'You annoy people. A hat goes with the job, incidentally.' 'And this job makes real money?' 'Nothing but money, Mr Lipwig. It is in fact that of Master of the Royal Mint.' 1 A periodical published throughout the Plains, noted for its coverage of murders (preferably 'orrible), trials, prison escapes, and the world that in general is surrounded by a chalk outline. Very popular. 31 'What? Banging out pennies all day?' 'In short, yes. But it is traditionally attached to a senior post at the Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork, which will occupy most of your attention. You can make money, as it were, in your spare time.' 'A banker! Me?' 'Yes, Mr Lipwig.' 'But I don't know anything about running a bank!' 'Good. No preconceived ideas.' 'I've robbed banks!' 'Capital! Just reverse your thinking,' said Lord Vetinari, beaming. 'The money should be on the inside! The coach slowed to a stop. 'What is this about?' said Moist. 'Actually about?' 'When you took over the Post Office, Mr Lipwig, it was a disgrace. Now it works quite efficiently. Efficiently enough to be boring, in fact. Why, a young man might find himself climbing by night, perhaps, or picking locks for the thrill of it, or even flirting with Extreme Sneezing. How are you finding the lockpicks, by the way?' It had been a poky little shop in a poky alley, and there had been no one in there but the little old lady who'd sold him the picks. He still didn't know exactly why he'd bought them. They were only geographically illegal, but it gave him a little thrill to know they were in his jacket. It was sad, like those businessmen who come to work in serious clothes but wear colourful ties in a mad despairing attempt to show there is a free spirit in there somewhere. 32 Oh gods, I've become one of them. But at least he doesn't seem to know about the blackjack. 'I'm not too bad,' he said. 'And the blackjack? You, who have never struck another man? You clamber on rooftops and pick the locks on your own desks. You're like a caged animal, dreaming of the jungle! I'd like to give you what you long for. I'd like to throw you to the lions.' Moist began to protest, but Vetinari held up a hand. 'You took our joke of a Post Office, Mr Lipwig, and made it a solemn undertaking. But the banks of Ankh-Morpork, sir, are very serious indeed. They are serious donkeys, Mr Lipwig. There have been too many failures. They're stuck in the mud, they live in the past, they are hypnotized by class and wealth, they think gold is important.' 'Er…isn't it?' 'No. And thief and swindler that you are, pardon me, once were, you know it, deep down. For you, it was just a way of keeping score,' said Vetinari. 'What does gold know of true worth? Look out of the window and tell me what you see.' 'Um, a small scruffy dog watching a man taking a piss in an alley,' said Moist. 'Sorry, but you chose the wrong time.' 'Had I been taken less literally,' said Lord Vetinari, giving him a look, 'you would have seen a large, bustling city, full of ingenious people spinning wealth out of the common clay of the world. They construct, build, carve, bake, cast, mould, forge and devise strange and inventive crimes. But they keep their money in old socks. They trust their socks more than they trust banks. Coinage is in artificially short supply, which is why your postage stamps are now a de facto currency. Our serious banking system is a mess. A joke, in fact.' 'It'll be a bigger joke if you put me in charge,' said Moist. 33 Vetinari gave him a brief little smile. 'Will it?' he said. 'Well, we all need a chuckle sometimes.' The coachman opened the door, and they stepped out. Why temples? thought Moist, as he gazed up at the façade of the Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork. Why do they always build banks to look like temples, despite the fact that several major religions a) are canonically against what they do inside and b) bank there. He'd looked at it before, of course, but had never really bothered to see it until now. As temples of money went, this one wasn't bad. The architect at least knew how to design a decent column, and also knew when to stop. He had set his face like flint against any prospect of cherubs, although above the columns was a high-minded frieze showing something allegorical involving maidens and urns. Most of the urns, and, Moist noticed, some of the young women, had birds nesting in them. An angry pigeon looked down at Moist from a stony bosom. Moist had walked past the place many times. It never looked very busy. And behind it was the Royal Mint, which never showed any signs of life at all. It would be hard to imagine an uglier building that hadn't won a major architectural award. The Mint was a gaunt brick and stone block, its windows high, small, many and barred, its doors protected by portcullises, its whole construction saying to the world: Don't Even Think About It. Up until now Moist hadn't even thought about it. It was a mint. That sort of place held you upside down over a bucket and shook you hard before they let you out. They had guards, and doors with spikes. And Vetinari wanted to make him the boss of it. There was going to have to be a huge razor blade in a stick of candyfloss this big. 'Tell me, my lord,' he said carefully. 'What happened to the man who used to occupy the post?' 34 'I thought you would ask, so I looked it up. He died aged ninety, of a schism of the heart.' That didn't sound too bad, but Moist knew enough to probe further. 'Anyone else died lately?' 'Sir Joshua Lavish, the chairman of the bank. He died six months ago in his own bed, aged eighty.' 'A man can die in some very unpleasant ways in his own bed,' Moist pointed out. 'So I believe,' said Lord Vetinari. 'In this case, however, it was in the arms of a young woman called Honey after a very large meal of devilled oysters. How unpleasant that was I suppose we shall never know.' 'She was his wife? You said it was his own—' 'He had an apartment in the bank,' said Lord Vetinari. 'A traditional perk that was useful when he was' — here Vetinari paused lor a fraction of a second — 'working late. Mrs Lavish was not present at the time.' 'If he was a Sir, shouldn't she be a Lady?' said Moist. 'It is rather characteristic of Mrs Lavish that she does not like being a Lady,' said Lord Vetinari. 'And I bow to her wishes.' 'Did he often "work" late?' said Moist, carefully quoting. 'With astonishing regularity for his age, I understand,' said Vetinari. 'Oh, really?' said Moist. 'You know, I think I recall the obituary in the Times. But I don't remember any of that sort of detail.' 'Yes, what is the Press coming to, one wonders.' 35 Vetinari turned and surveyed the building. 'Of the two, I prefer the honesty of the Mint,' he said. 'It growls at the world. What do you think, Mr Lipwig?' 'What's that round thing I always see poking out of the roof?' said Moist. 'It makes it look like a money box with a big coin stuck in the slot!' 'Oddly enough, it did use to be known as the Bad Penny,' said Vetinari. 'It is a large treadmill to provide power for the coin stamping and so forth. Powered by prisoners once upon a time, when "community service" wasn't just a word. Or even two. It was considered cruel and unusual punishment, however, which does rather suggest a lack of imagination. Shall we go in?' 'Look, sir, what is it you would want me to do?' said Moist, as they climbed the marble steps. 'I know a bit about banking, but how do I run a mint?' Vetinari shrugged. 'I have no idea. People turn handles, I assume. Someone tells them how often, and when to stop.' 'And why will anyone want to kill me?' 'I couldn't say, Mr Lipwig. But there was at least one attempt on your life when you were innocently delivering letters, so I expect your career in banking will be an exciting one.' They reached the top of the steps. An elderly man in what might have been the uniform of a general in one of the more unstable kinds of armies held open the door for them. Lord Vetinari gestured for Moist to enter first. 'I'm just going to have a look around, all right?' said Moist, stumbling through the doorway. 'I really haven't had time to think about this.' 'That is understood,' said Vetinari. 'I'm committing myself to nothing by it, right?' 36 'Nothing,' said Vetinari. He strolled to a leather sofa and sat down, beckoning Moist to sit beside him. Drumknott, ever attentive, hovered behind them. 'The smell of banks is always pleasing, don't you think?' said Vetinari. 'A mix of polish and ink and wealth.' And ursery,' said Moist. 'That would be cruelty to bears. You mean usury, I suspect. The churches don't seem to be so much against it these days. Incidentally, only the current chairman of the bank knows my intentions. To everyone else here today, you are merely carrying out a brief inspection on my behalf. It is just as well you are not wearing the famous gold suit.' There was a hush in the bank, mostly because the ceiling was so high that sounds were just lost, but partly because people lower their voices in the presence of large sums of money. Red velvet and brass were much in evidence. There were pictures everywhere, of serious men in frock coats. Sometimes footsteps echoed briefly on the white marble floor and were suddenly swallowed when their owner stepped on to an island of carpet. And the big desks were covered with sage-green leather. Ever since he was small, a sage-green leather desktop had been Wealth to Moist. Red leather? Pah! That was for parvenus and wannabes. Sage green meant that you'd got there, and that your ancestors had got there too. It should be a little bit worn, for the best effect. On the wall above the counter a big clock, supported by cherubs, ticked away. Lord Vetinari was having an effect on the bank. Staff were nudging one another and pointing with their expressions. In truth, Moist realized, they were not a readily noticeable pair. Nature had blessed him with the ability to be a face in the background, even when he was standing only a few feet away. He wasn't ugly, he wasn't handsome, he was just so forgettable he sometimes surprised himself whilst shaving. And Vetinari wore black, not a forward colour at all, but nevertheless his presence was like a lead weight on a rubber sheet. It distorted the space around it. People didn't immediately see him, but they sensed his presence. 37 Now people were whispering into speaking tubes. The Patrician was here and no one was formally greeting him! There would be trouble! ' How is Miss Dearheart?' said Vetinari, apparently oblivious of the growing stir. 'She's away,' said Moist bluntly. 'Ah, the Trust has located another buried golem, no doubt.' 'Yes.' 'Still trying to carry out orders given to it thousands of years ago?' 'Probably. It's out in the wilderness somewhere.' 'She is indefatigable,' said Vetinari happily. 'Those people are resurrected from darkness to turn the wheels of commerce, for the general good. Just like you, Mr Lipwig. She is doing the city a great service. And the Golem Trust, too.' 'Yes,' said Moist, letting the whole resurrection thing pass. 'But your tone says otherwise.' 'Well…' Moist knew he was squirming, but squam anyway. 'She's always rushing off because they've traced another golem in some ancient sewer or something—' 'And not rushing off after you, as it were?' 'And she's been away for weeks on this one,' said Moist, ignoring the comment because it was probably accurate, 'and she won't tell me what it's about. She just says it's very important. Something new.' 'I think she's mining,' said Vetinari. He began to tap his cane on the marble, slowly. It made a ringing sound. 'I have heard that golems appear to be mining on dwarf land this side of Chimeria, near the coach road. Much to 38 the interest of the dwarfs, I might add. The King leased the land to the Trust and wants to make certain he gets a look at what is dug up.' 'Is she in trouble?' 'Miss Dearheart? No. Knowing her, the king of the dwarfs might be. She's a very… composed young lady, I've noticed.' 'Hah! You don't know the half of it.' Moist made a mental note to send Adora Belle a message as soon as this was over. The whole situation with golems was heating up once more, what with the guilds complaining about them taking jobs. She was needed in the city — by the golems, obviously. He became aware of a subtle noise. It came from below, and sounded very much like air bubbling through liquid, or maybe water being poured out of a bottle with the familiar blomp-blomp sound. 'Can you hear that?' he said. 'Yes.' 'Do you know what it is?' 'The future of economic planning, I understand.' Lord Vetinari looked, if not worried, then at least unaccustomedly puzzled. 'Something must have happened,' he said. 'Mr Bent is normally oiling his way across the floor within seconds of my entrance. I hope nothing unamusing has happened to him.' A pair of big elevator doors opened at the far end of the hall, and a man stepped through. For just a moment, probably unnoticed by anyone who had never had to read faces for a living, he was anxious and upset, but it passed with speed as he adjusted his cuffs and set his face in the warm, benevolent smile of someone who is about to take some money off you. 39 Mr Bent was in every way smooth and uncreased. Moist had been expecting a traditional banker's frock coat, but instead there was a very well cut black jacket above pinstripe trousers. Mr Bent was also silent. His feet, soundless even on the marble, were unusually large for such a dapper man, but the shoes, black and polished, mirror-shiny, were well made. Perhaps he wanted to show them off, because he walked like a dressage horse, lifting each foot very deliberately off the ground before setting it down again. Apart from that incongruity, Mr Bent had the air about him of one who stands quietly in a cupboard when not in use. 'Lord Vetinari, I am so sorry!' he began. 'I'm afraid there was unfinished business—' Lord Vetinari got to his feet. 'Mr Mavolio Bent, allow me to present Mr Moist von Lipwig,' he said. 'Mr Bent is the chief cashier here.' 'Ah, the inventor of the revolutionary unsecured One Penny note?' said Bent, extending a thin hand. 'Such audacity! I'm very pleased to meet you, Mr Lipwig.' 'One penny note?' said Moist, mystified. Mr Bent, despite his protestation, did not look pleased at all. 'Did you not listen to what I was saying?' said Vetinari. 'Your stamps, Mr Lipwig.' 'A de facto currency,' said Bent and light dawned on Moist. Well, it was true, he knew it. He'd meant stamps to be stuck to letters, but people had decided, in their untutored way, that a penny stamp was nothing more than a very light, government-guaranteed penny and, moreover, one that you could put in an envelope. The advertising pages were full of the businesses that had sprouted on the back of the beguilingly transferable postage stamps: 'Learn The Uttermost Secrets Of The Cosmos! Send 8 penny Stamps for booklet!' A lot of stamps wore out as currency without ever seeing the inside of a posting box. Something in Bent's smile annoyed Moist, though. It was not quite as kind when seen close to. 'What do you mean by "unsecured"?' he said. 40 'How do you validate its claim to be worth a penny?' 'Er, if you stick it on a letter you get a penny's worth of travel?' said Moist. 'I don't see what you're getting at—' 'Mr Bent is one of those who believe in the pre-eminence of gold, Mr Lipwig,' said Vetinari. 'I'm sure you'll get along exactly like a house on fire. I shall leave you now, and await your decision with, ah, compound interest. Come, Drumknott. Perhaps you will drop in to see me tomorrow, Mr Lipwig?' Moist and Bent watched them go. Then Bent glared at Moist. I suppose I must show you around… sir,' he said. 'I have a feeling that we haven't quite hit it off, Mr Bent,' said Moist. Bent shrugged, an impressive manoeuvre on that gaunt frame. It was like watching an ironing-board threatening to unfold. 'I know nothing to your discredit, Mr Lipwig. But I believe the chairman and Lord Vetinari have a dangerous scheme in mind, and you are their catspaw, Mr Lipwig, you are their implement.' 'This would be the new chairman?' 'That is correct.' 'I don't particularly want or intend to be an implement,' said Moist. 'Good for you, sir. But events are eventuating—' There was a crash of broken glass from below, and a faint muffled voice shouted: 'Damn! There goes the Balance of Payments!' 'Let's have that tour, shall we?' said Moist brightly. 'Starting with what that was?' 41 'That abomination?' Bent gave a little shudder. 'I think we should leave that until Hubert has cleaned up. Oh, will you look at that? It really is terrible…' Mr Bent strode across the floor until he was under the big, solemn clock. He glared at it as if it had mortally offended him, and snapped his fingers, but a junior clerk was already hurrying across the floor with a small stepladder. Mr Bent mounted the steps, opened the clock, and moved the second hand forward by two seconds. The clock was slammed shut, the steps dismounted, and the accountant returned to Moist, adjusting his cuffs. He looked Moist up and down. 'It loses almost a minute a week. Am I the only person who finds this offensive? It would appear so, alas. Let's start with the gold, shall we?' 'Ooo, yes,' said Moist. 'Let's!' 42 Chapter 2 The promise of gold — The Men of the Sheds — The cost of a penny and the usefulness of widows — Overheads underfoot — Security, the importance thereof — A fascination with transactions — A son of many fathers — Alleged untrustworthiness in a case of flaming underwear — The Panopticon of the World and the blindness of Mr Bent — An Arch Comment 'SOMEHOW I WAS expecting something… bigger,' said Moist, looking through the steel bars into the little room that held the gold. The metal, in open bags and boxes, gleamed dully in the torchlight. 'That is almost ten tons of gold,' said Bent reproachfully. 'It does not have to look big.' 'But all the ingots and bags put together aren't much bigger than the desks out there!' 'It is very heavy, Mr Lipwig. It is the one true metal, pure and unsullied,' said Bent. His left eye twitched. 'It is the metal that never fell from grace.' 'Really?' said Moist, checking that the door out of there was still open. 'And it is also the only basis of a sound financial system,' Mr Bent went on, while the torchlight reflected off the bullion and gilded his face. 'There is Value! There is Worth! Without the anchor of gold, all would be chaos.' 'Why?' 43 'Who would set the value of the dollar?' 'Our dollars are not pure gold, though, are they?' 'Aha, yes. Gold-coloured, Mr Lipwig,' said Bent. 'Less gold than seawater, gold-ish. We adulterated our own currency! Infamy! There can be no greater crime!' His eye twitched again. 'Er… murder?' Moist ventured. Yep, the door was still open. Mr Bent waved a hand. 'Murder only happens once,' he said, 'but when the trust in gold breaks down, chaos rules. But it had to be done. The abominable coins are, admittedly, only gold-ish, but they are at least a solid token of the true gold in the reserves. In their wretchedness, they nevertheless acknowledge the primacy of gold and our independence from the machinations of government! We ourselves have more gold than any other bank in the city, and only I have a key to that door! And the chairman has one too, of course,' he added, very much as a grudging and unwelcome afterthought. 'I read somewhere that the coin represents a promise to hand over a dollar's worth of gold,' said Moist helpfully. Mr Bent steepled his hands in front of his face and turned his eyes upwards, as though praying. 'In theory, yes,' he said after a few moments. 'I would prefer to say that it is a tacit understanding that we will honour our promise to exchange it for a dollar's worth of gold provided we are not, in point of fact, asked to.' 'So… it's not really a promise?' 'It certainly is, sir, in financial circles. It is, you see, about trust.' 'You mean, trust us, we've got a big expensive building?' 'You jest, Mr Lipwig, but there may be a grain of truth there.' Bent sighed. 'I can see you have a lot to learn. At least you'll have me to teach you. And 44 now, I think, you would like to see the Mint. People always like to see the Mint. It's twenty-seven minutes and thirty-six seconds past one, so they should have finished their lunch hour.' It was a cavern. Moist was pleased about that, at least. A mint should be lit by flames. Its main hall was three storeys high, and picked up some grey daylight from the rows of barred windows. And, in terms of primary architecture, that was it. Everything else was sheds. Sheds were built on to the walls and even hung like swallows' nests up near the ceiling, accessed by unsafe-looking wooden stairs. The uneven floor itself was a small village of sheds, placed any old how, no two alike, each one carefully roofed against the non-existent prospect of rain. Wisps of smoke spiralled gently through the thick air. Against one wall a forge glowed dark orange, providing the right Stygian atmosphere. The place looked like the after-death destination for people who had committed small and rather dull sins. This was, however, just the background. What dominated the hall was the Bad Penny. The treadmill was… strange. Moist had seen treadmills before. There had been one in the Tanty, wherein inmates could invigorate their cardiovascular systems whether they wanted to or not. Moist had taken a turn or two before he worked out how to play the system. It had been a brute of a thing, cramped, heavy and depressing. The Bad Penny was much larger, but hardly seemed to be there at all. There was a metal rim that, from here, looked frighteningly thin. Moist tried in vain to see the spokes, until he realized that there weren't any, just hundreds of thin wires. 'All right, I can see it must work, but—' he began, staring up at the huge gearbox. 45 'It works very well, I gather,' said Bent. 'They have a golem to power it when needed.' 'But surely it should fall to bits!' 'Should it? I am not in a position to say, sir. Ah, here they come…' Figures were heading towards them from various sheds and from the door at the far end of the building. They walked slowly and deliberately and with one purpose, rather like the living dead. In the end, Moist thought of them as the Men of the Sheds. They weren't, all of them, that old, but even the young ones, most of them, appeared to have donned the mantle of middle age very early. Apparently, to get a job in the Mint, you had to wait until someone died; it was a case of Dead Man's Sheds. Illuminating the bright side, however, was the fact that when your prospective vacancy became available you got the job even if you were only slightly less dead than the previous incumbent. The Men of the Sheds ran the linishing shed, the milling shed, the finishing shed, the Foundry (two sheds) and the Security (one shed, but quite a big one) and the storage shed, which had a lock Moist could have opened with a sneeze. The other sheds were a mystery, but presumably had been built in case someone needed a shed in a hurry. The Men of the Sheds had what passed within the sheds as names: Alf, Young Alf, Gobber, Boy Charlie, King Henry… but the one who was, as it were, the designated speaker to the world beyond the sheds had a whole name. 'This is Mr Shady the Eighteenth, Mr Lipwig,' said Bent. 'Mr Lipwig is… just visiting.' 'The Eighteenth?' said Moist. 'There are another seventeen of you?' 'Not any more, sir,' said Shady, grinning. 'Mr Shady is the hereditary foreman, sir,' Bent supplied. 46 'Hereditary foreman…' Moist repeated blankly. 'That's right, sir,' said Shady. 'Does Mr Lipwig want to know the history, sir?' 'No,' said Bent firmly. 'Yes,' said Moist, seeing his firmly and raising him an emphatically. 'Oh, it appears that he does,' sighed Bent. Mr Shady smiled. It was a very full history, and took some telling. At one point Moist was sure it was time for an ice age. Words streamed past him like sleet but, like sleet, some stuck. The post of hereditary foreman had been treated hundreds of years before, when the post of Master of the Mint was a sinecure handed to a drinking pal of the current king or patrician, who used it as a money box and did nothing more than turn up now and again with a big sack, a hangover and a meaningful look. The foremanship was instituted because it was dimly realized that someone ought to be in charge and, if possible, sober. 'So you actually run it all?' said Moist quickly, to stem the flow of really interesting facts about money. "That's right, sir. Pro tern. There hasn't been a master for a hundred years.' 'So how do you get paid?' There was a moment's silence, and then Mr Shady said, like a man talking to a child: 'This is a mint, sir.' 'You make your own wages?' 'Who else is going to, sir? But it's all official, isn't that right, Mr Bent? He gets all the dockets. We cut out the middle man, really.' 'Well, at least you're in a profitable business,' said Moist cheerfully. 'I mean, you must be making money hand over fist!' 47 'We manage to break even, sir, yes,' said Shady, as if it was a close-run thing. 'Break even? You're a mint!' said Moist. 'How can you not make a profit by making money?' 'Overheads, sir. There's overheads wherever you look.' 'Even underfoot?' 'There too, sir,' said Shady. 'It's ruinous, sir, it really is. Y'see, it costs a ha'penny to make a farthin' an' nearly a penny to make a ha'penny. A penny comes in at a penny farthin'. Sixpences costs tuppence farthin', so we're in pocket there. Half a dollar costs seven pence. And it's only sixpence to make a dollar, a definite improvement, but that's 'cos we does 'em here. The real buggers are the mites, 'cos they're worth half a farthin' but cost sixpence 'cos it's fiddly work, their bein' so small and havin' that hole in the middle. The thruppenny bit, sir, we've only got a couple of people makin' those, a lot of work which runs out at seven pence. And don't ask me about the tuppenny piece!' 'What about the tuppenny piece?' 'I'm glad you asked me that, sir. Fine work, sir, tots up to seven and one-sixteenth pence. And, yes, there's one sixteenth of a penny, sir, the elim.' 'I've never heard of it!' 'Well, no, sir, you wouldn't, a gentleman of class like yourself, but it has its place, sir, it has its place. Nice little thing, sir, lot of tiny detail, made by widow women according to tradition, costs a whole shilling 'cos the engraving is so fine. Takes the old girls days to do one, what with their eyesight and everything, but it makes 'em feel they're bein' useful.' 'But a sixteenth of a penny? One quarter of a farthing? What can you buy with that?' 48 'You'd be amazed, sir, down some streets. A candle stub, a small potato that's only a bit green,' said Shady. 'Maybe an apple core that ain't been entirely et. And of course it's handy to drop in the charity box.' And gold is the anchor, is it? Moist thought. He looked around the huge space. There were about a dozen people working there, if you included the golem, whom Moist had learned to think of as part of a species to be treated as 'human for a given value of human', and the pimply boy who made the tea, whom he hadn't. 'You don't seem to need many people,' he said. 'Ah, well, we only do the silver and gold—' 'Gold-ish,' Mr Bent intervened quickly. '—gold-ish coins here, you see. And unusual stuff, like medals. We make the blanks for the copper and brass, but the outworkers do the rest.' 'Outworkers? A mint with outworkers? 'That's right, sir. Like the widows. They work at home. Huh, you couldn't expect the old dears to totter in here, most of 'em need two sticks to get about!' 'The Mint… that is, the place that makes money… employs people who work at home? I mean, I know it's fashionable, but I mean… well, don't you think it's odd?' 'Gods bless you, sir, there are families out there who've been making a few coppers every evening for generations!' said Shady happily. 'Dad doing the basic punching, mum chasing and finishing, the kids cleanin' and polishin'… it's traditional. Our outworkers are like one big family.' 'Okay, but what about security?' 49 'If they steal so much as a farthing they can be hanged,' said Bent. 'It counts as treason, you know.' 'What kind of families are you used to?' said Moist, aghast. 'I must point out that no one ever has, though, because they're very loyal,' said the foreman, glaring at Bent. 'It used to be a hand cut off for a first offence,' said Mr Bent the family man. 'Do they make a lot of money?' said Moist, carefully, getting between the two men. 'I mean, in terms of wages?' 'About fifteen dollars a month. It's detailed work,' said Shady. 'Some of the old ladies don't get as much. We get a lot of bad elims.' Moist stared up at the Bad Penny. It rose through the central well of the building and looked gossamer-frail for something so big. The lone golem plodding along inside had a slate hanging around its neck, which meant it was one of those that couldn't talk. Moist wondered if the Golem Trust knew about it. They had amazing ways of finding golems. As he watched, the wheel swung gently to a halt. The silent golem stood still. 'Tell me,' said Moist. 'Why bother with gold-ish coins? Why not just, well, make the dollars out of gold? Did you get a lot of clipping and sweating?' 'I'm surprised a gentleman like you knows them names, sir,' said the foreman, taken aback. 'I take a keen interest in the criminal mind,' said Moist, slightly faster than he'd intended. It was true. You just needed a talent for introspection. 'Good for you, sir. Oh yes, we've had them tricks and a lot more, oh yes! I swear we see 'em all. And painting an' plating an' plugging. Even re-casting, sir, adulterated with copper, very neat. I swear, sir, there are 50 people out there that will spend two days scheming and fiddling to make the amount of money they could earn by honest means in one day!' 'No! Really?' 'As I stand here, sir,' said Shady. 'And what kind o' sane mind does that?' Well, mine, once upon a time, Moist thought. It was more fun. 'I really don't know,' he said. 'So the city council said the dollars were to be gold-ish, mostly navy brass to tell you the truth, 'cos it shines up nice. Oh, they still forge, sir, but it's hard to get right and the Watch comes down heavily on 'em and at least no one's nicking the gold,' said Shady. 'Is that all, sir? Only we've got stuff to finish before our knocking-off time, you see, and if we stay late we have to make more money to pay our overtime, and if the lads is a bit tired we ends up earning the money faster'n we can make it, which leads to a bit of what I can only call a conundrum—' 'You mean that if you do overtime you have to do more overtime to pay for it?' said Moist, still pondering on how illogical logical thinking can be if a big enough committee is doing it. 'That's right, sir,' said Shady. 'And down that road madness lies.' 'It's a very short road,' said Moist, nodding. 'But one last thing, if I may. What do you do about security?' Bent coughed. 'The Mint is impossible to get into from outside the bank once it is locked, Mr Lipwig. By arrangement with the Watch, off-duty officers patrol both buildings at night, with some of our own guards. They wear proper bank uniforms in here, of course, because the Watch is so shabby, but they ensure a professional approach, you understand.' Well, yes, thought Moist, who suspected that his experience of coppers was rather more in-depth than that of Bent. The money is probably safe, but I bet you get through a hell of a lot of coffee and pens. 51 'I was thinking about… during the day,' he said. The Men of the Sheds were watching him with blank stares. 'Oh, that,' said Mr Shady. 'We do that ourselves. We take turns. Boy Charlie's the Security this week. Show him your truncheon, Charlie.' One of the men pulled a large stick from inside his coat and shyly held it up. 'There used to be a badge, too, but it got lost,' said Shady. 'But that doesn't matter much 'cos we all know who he is. And when we're leaving, he's sure to remind us not to steal anything.' Silence followed. 'Well, that seems to cover it nicely,' said Moist, rubbing his hands together. 'Thank you, gentlemen!' And they filed away, each man to his shed. 'Probably very little,' said Mr Bent, watching them go. 'Hmm?' said Moist. 'You were wondering how much money is walking out with them, I believe.' 'Well, yes.' 'Very little, I think. They say that after a while the money becomes just… stuff,' said the chief cashier, leading the way back into the bank. 'It costs more than a penny to make a penny,' Moist murmured. 'Is it just me, or is that wrong?' 'But, you see, once you have made it, a penny keeps on being a penny,' said Mr Bent. 'That's the magic of it.' 52 'It is?' said Moist. 'Look, it's a copper disc. What do you expect it to become?' 'In the course of a year, just about everything,' said Mr Bent smoothly. 'It becomes some apples, part of a cart, a pair of shoelaces, some hay, an hour's occupancy of a theatre seat. It may even become a stamp and send a letter, Mr Lipwig. It might be spent three hundred times and yet — and this is the good part — it is still one penny, ready and willing to be spent again. It is not an apple, which will go bad. Its worth is fixed and stable. It is not consumed.' Mr Bent's eyes gleamed dangerously, and one of them twitched. 'And this is because it is ultimately worth a tiny fraction of the everlasting gold!' 'But it's just a lump of metal. If we used apples instead of coins, you could at least eat the apple,' said Moist. 'Yes, but you can only eat it once. A penny is, as it were, an everlasting apple.' 'Which you can't eat. And you can plant an apple tree.' 'You can use money to make more money,' said Bent. 'Yes, but how do you make more gold? The alchemists can't, the dwarfs hang on to what they've got, the Agateans won't let us have any. Why not go on the silver standard? They do that in BhangBhangduc.' 'I imagine they would, being foreign,' said Bent. 'But silver blackens. Gold is the one untarnishable metal.' And once again there was that tic: gold clearly had a tight hold on the man. 'Have you seen enough, Mr Lipwig?' 'Slightly too much for comfort, I think.' 'Then let us go and meet the chairman.' 53 Moist followed Bent's jerky walk up two flights of marble stairs and along a corridor. They halted in front of a pair of dark wooden doors and Mr Bent knocked, not once but with a sequence of taps that suggested a code. Then he pushed the door open, very carefully. The chairman's office was large, and simply furnished with very expensive things. Bronze and brass were much in evidence. Probably the last remaining tree of some rare, exotic species had been hewn to make the chairman's desk, which was an object of desire and big enough to bury people in. It gleamed a deep, deep green, and spoke of power and probity. Moist assumed, as a matter of course, that it was lying. There was a very small dog sitting in a brass in-tray, but it was only when Bent said 'Mr Lipwig, madam chairman' that Moist realized that the desk also had a human occupant. The head of a very small, very elderly, grey-haired woman was peering over the top of it at him. Resting on the desk on either side of her, gleaming silver steel in this world of gold-coloured things, were two loaded crossbows, fixed on little swivels. The lady's thin little hands were just drawing back from the stocks. 'Oh yes, how nice,' she trilled. 'I am Mrs Lavish. Do take a seat, Mr Lipwig.' He did so, as much out of the current field of the bows as possible, and the dog leapt down from the desk and on to his lap with happy, scrotum-crushing enthusiasm. It was the smallest and ugliest dog Moist had ever seen. It resembled those goldfish with the huge bulging eyes that look as though they are about to explode. Its nose, on the other hand, looked staved in. It wheezed, and its legs were so bandy that it must sometimes trip over its own feet. 'That's Mr Fusspot,' said the old woman. 'He doesn't normally take to people, Mr Lipwig. I am impressed.' 'Hello, Mr Fusspot,' said Moist. The dog gave a little yappy bark and then covered Moist's face in all that was best in dog slobber. 54 'He likes you, Mr Lipwig,' said Mrs Lavish approvingly. 'Can you guess at the breed?' Moist had grown up with dogs and was pretty good at breeds, but with Mr Fusspot there was no place to start. He plumped for honesty. 'All of them?' he suggested. Mrs Lavish laughed, and the laugh sounded at least sixty years younger than she was. 'Quite right! His mother was a spoon hound, very popular in royal palaces in the olden days. But she got out one night and there was an awful lot of barking and I fear Mr Fusspot is the son of many fathers, poor thing.' Mr Fusspot turned two soulful eyes on Moist, and his expression began to become a little strained. 'Bent, Mr Fusspot is looking rather uncomfortable,' said Mrs Lavish. 'Please take him for his little walk in the garden, will you? I really don't think the young clerks give him enough time.' A brief spell of thundery weather passed across the chief cashier's face, but he obediently took a red leash from a hook. The little dog began to growl. Bent also took down a pair of heavy leather gloves and deftly put them on. As the growling increased he picked up the dog very carefully and held it under one arm. Without uttering a word, he left the room. 'So you are the famous Postmaster General,' said Mrs Lavish. 'The man in the golden suit, no less. But not this morning, I note. Come here, dear boy. Let me look at you in the light.' Moist advanced, and the old lady got awkwardly to her feet by means of a pair of ivory-handled walking sticks. Then she dropped one and grabbed Moist's chin. She stared intently at him, turning his head this way and that. 55 'Hmm,' she said, stepping back. 'It's as I thought…' The remaining walking stick caught Moist a whack across the back of the legs, scything him over like a straw. As he lay stunned on the thick carpet Mrs Lavish went on, triumphantly: 'You're a thief, a trickster, a charlie artful and all-round bunco artist! Admit it!' 'I'm not!' Moist protested weakly. 'Liar, too,' said Mrs Lavish cheerfully. 'And probably an impostor! Oh, don't waste that innocent look on me! I said you are a rogue, sir! I wouldn't trust you with a bucket of water if my knickers were on fire!' Then she prodded Moist in the chest, hard. 'Well, are you going to lie there all day?' she snapped. 'Get up, man. I didn't say I didn't like you!' Head spinning, Moist got cautiously to his feet. 'Give me your hand, Mr Lipwig,' said Mrs Lavish. 'Postmaster General? You are a work of art! Put it here!' 'What? Oh…' Moist grasped the old woman's hand. It was like shaking hands with cold parchment. Mrs Lavish laughed. 'Ah, yes. Just like the forthright and reassuring grasp of my late husband. No honest man has a handshake as honest as that. How in the world has it taken you so long to find the financial sector?' Moist looked around. They were alone, his calves were sore, and there was no fooling some people. What we have here, he told himself, is a Mkl Feisty Old Lady: turkey neck, embarrassing sense of humour, a gleeful pleasure in mild cruelty, direct way of speaking that flirts with rudeness and, more importantly, also flirts with flirting. Likes to think she's no 'lady'. Game for anything that doesn't carry the risk of falling over and with a look in her eye that says 'I can do what I like, because I am old. And I have a soft spot for rascals.' Old ladies like that were hard to fool, but there was no need to. He relaxed. Sometimes it was a sheer relief to drop the mask. 56 'I'm not an impostor, at least,' he said. 'Moist von Lipwig is my given name.' 'Yes, I can't imagine that you would have had any choice in the matter,' said Mrs Lavish, heading back to her seat. 'However, you seem to be fooling all of the people all of the time. Sit down, Mr Lipwig. I shall not bite.' This last was said with a look that transmitted: 'But give me half a bottle of gin and five minutes to find my teeth and we shall see!' She indicated a chair next to her. 'What? I thought I was being dismissed!' said Moist, playing along. 'Really? Why?' 'For being all those things you said?' 'I didn't say I thought you were a bad person,' said Mrs Lavish. 'And Mr Fusspot likes you and he is a remarkably good judge of people. Besides, you've done wonders with our Post Office, just as Havelock says.' Mrs Lavish reached down beside her and pulled a large bottle of gin on to the desktop. 'A drink, Mr Lipwig?' 'Er, not at this time.' Mrs Lavish sniffed. 'I don't have much time, sir, but fortunately I have a lot of gin.' Moist watched her pour a marginally sub-lethal measure into a tumbler. 'Do you have a young lady?' she asked, raising the glass. 'Yes.' 'Does she know what you're like?' 'Yes. I keep telling her.' 'Doesn't believe you, eh? Ah, such is the way of a woman in love,' sighed Mrs Lavish. 'I don't think it worries her, actually. She's not your average girl.' 57 'Ah, and she sees your inner self? Or, perhaps, the carefully constructed inner self you keep around for people to find? People like you…' She paused and went on:'… people like us always keep at least one inner self for inquisitive visitors, don't we?' Moist didn't rise to this. Talking to Mrs Lavish was like standing in front of a magic mirror that stripped you to your marrow. He just said: 'Most of the people she knows are golems.' 'Oh? Great big clay men who are utterly trustworthy and don't have anything to declare in the trouser department? What does she see in you, Mr Lipwig?' She prodded him with a finger like a cheese straw. Moist's mouth dropped open. 'A contrast, I trust,' said Mrs Lavish, patting him on the arm. 'And now Havelock has sent you here to tell me how to run my bank. You may call me Topsy.' 'Well, I—' Tell her how to run her bank? It hadn't been put like that. Topsy leaned forward. 'I never minded about Honey, you know,' she said, slightly lowering her voice. 'Quite a nice girl, but thick as a yard of lard. She wasn't the first, either. Not by a long way. I was Joshua's mistress once myself.' 'Really?' He knew he was going to hear it all, whether he wanted to or not. 'Oh, yes,' said Mrs Lavish. 'People understood more then. It was all quite acceptable. I used to take tea with his wife once a month to sort out his schedule, and she always said she was glad to have him out from under her feet. Of course, a mistress was expected to be a woman of some accomplishment in those days.' She sighed. 'Now, of course, the ability to spin upside down around a pole seems to be sufficient.' 'Standards are falling everywhere,' said Moist. It was a pretty good bet. They always were. 58 'Banking is really rather similar,' said Topsy, as though thinking aloud. 'Pardon?' 'I mean the mere physical end in view is going to be the same, but style should count for something, don't you think? There should be flair. There should be inventiveness. There should be an experience rather than a mere function. Havelock says you understand these tilings.' She gave Moist a questioning look. 'After all, you have made the Post Office an almost heroic enterprise, yes? People set their watches by the arrival of the Genua express. They used to set their calendars!' 'The clacks still makes a loss,' said Moist. 'A marvellously small one, while enriching the commonality of mankind in all sorts of ways, and I've no doubt that Havelock's tax men take their share of that. You have the gift of enthusing people, Mr Lipwig.' 'Well, I… well, I suppose I do,' he managed. 'I know if you want to sell the sausage you have to know how to sell the sizzle.' 'Well and good, well and good,' said Topsy, 'but I hope you know that however gifted you are as a sizzle salesman, sooner or later you must be able to produce the sausage, hmm?' She gave him a wink which would have got a younger woman jailed. 'Incidentally,' she went on, 'I recall hearing that the gods led you to the treasure trove that helped you to rebuild the Post Office. What really happened? You can tell Topsy.' He probably could, he decided, and noticed that although her hair was indeed thinning and almost white, it still held a pale trace of orange that hinted of more vivid reds in the past. 'It was my stashed loot from years of swindling,' he said. Mrs Lavish clapped her hands. 'Wonderful! A sausage indeed! That is so… satisfying. Havelock has always had an instinct for people. He has plans for the city, you know.' 59 'The Undertaking,' said Moist. 'Yes, I know.' 'Underground streets and new docks and everything,' said Topsy, 'and for that a government needs money, and money needs banks. Unfortunately, people have rather lost their faith in banks.' 'Why?' 'Because we lost their money, usually. Mostly not on purpose. We have been badly buffeted in recent years. The Crash of '88, the Crash of '93, the Crash of '98… although that one was more of a ding. My late husband was a man who loaned unwisely, so we must carry bad debts and the other results of questionable decisions. Now we're where little old ladies keep their money because they always have done and the nice young clerks are still polite and there's still a brass bowl by the door for their little dogs to drink out of. Could you do anything about this? The supply of old ladies is running out, as I'm well aware.' 'Well, er, I may have a few ideas,' said Moist. 'But it's all still a bit of a shock. I don't really understand how banks work.' 'You've never put money in a bank?' 'Not in, no.' 'How do you think they work?' 'Well, you take rich people's money and lend it to suitable people at interest, and give as little as possible of the interest back.' 'Yes, and what is a suitable person?' 'Someone who can prove they don't need the money?' 'Oh, you cynic. But you have got the general idea.' 'No poor people, then?' 60 'Not in banks, Mr Lipwig. No one with an income under a hundred and fifty dollars a year. That is why socks and mattresses were invented. My late husband always said that the only way to make money out of poor people is by keeping them poor. He was not, in his business life, a very nice man. Do you have any more questions?' 'How did you become the bank's chairman?' said Moist. 'Chairman and manager,' said Topsy proudly. 'Joshua liked to be in control. 'Oh yes, didn't he just,' she added, as if to herself. 'And I am now both of them because of a bit of ancient magic called "being left fifty per cent of the shares".' 'I thought that bit of magic was fifty-one per cent of the shares,' said Moist. 'Couldn't the other shareholders force—' A door opened at the far side of the room and a tall woman in white entered, carrying a tray with its contents concealed by a cloth. 'It really is time for your medicine, Mrs Lavish,' she said. 'It does me no good at all, Sister!' snapped the old woman. 'Now, you know the doctor said no more alcohol,' said the nurse. she looked accusingly at Moist. 'She's to have no more alcohol,' she repeated, on the apparent assumption that he had a few bottles on his person. 'Well, I say no more doctor!' said Mrs Lavish, winking conspiratorially at Moist. 'My so-called stepchildren are paying for this, can you believe it? They're out to poison me! And they tell everyone I've gone mad—' There was a knock at the door, less a request to enter than a declaration of intent. Mrs Lavish moved with impressive speed and the bows were already swivelling when the door swung open. Mr Bent came in with Mr Fusspot under his arm, still growling. 61 'I said five times, Mr Bent!' Mrs Lavish yelled. 'I might have shot Mr Fusspot! Can't you count?' 'I do beg your pardon,' said Bent, placing Mr Fusspot carefully in the in-tray. 'And I can count.' 'Who's a little fusspot, then?' said Mrs Lavish, as the little dog almost exploded with mad excitement at seeing someone he'd last seen at most ten minutes ago. 'Has oo been a good boy? Has he been a good boy, Mr Bent?' 'Yes, madam. Excessively.' The venom of a snake ice cream could not have been chillier. 'May I return to my duties now?' 'Mr Bent thinks I don't know how to run a bank, doesn't he, Mr Fusspot?' Mrs Lavish crooned to the dog. 'He's a silly Mr Bent, isn't he? Yes, Mr Bent, you may go.' Moist recalled an old BhangBhangduc proverb: 'When old ladies talk maliciously to their dog, that dog is lunch.' It seemed amazingly appropriate at a time like this, and a time like this was not a good time to be around. 'Well, it's been nice meeting you, Mrs Lavish,' he said, standing up. 'I shall… think things over.' 'Has he been to see Hubert?' said Mrs Lavish, apparently to the dog. 'He must see Hubert before he goes. I think he is a little confused about finance. Take him to see Hubert, Mr Bent. Hubert is so good at explaining.' 'As you wish, madam,' said Bent, glaring at Mr Fusspot. 'I'm certain that having heard Hubert explain the flow of money he will no longer be a little confused. Please follow me, Mr Lipwig.' Bent was silent as they walked downstairs. He lifted his oversized feet with care, like a man walking across a floor strewn with pins. 'Mrs Lavish is a jolly old stick, isn't she?' Moist ventured. 62 'I believe she is what is known as a "character", sir,' said Bent sombrely. 'A bit tiresome at times?' 'I will not comment, sir. Mrs Lavish owns fifty-one per cent of the shares in my bank.' His bank, Moist noted. 'That's strange,' he said. 'She just told me she owned only fifty per cent.' 'And the dog,' said Bent. 'The dog owns one share, a legacy from the late Sir Joshua, and Mrs Lavish owns the dog. The late Sir Joshua had what I understand is called a puckish sense of humour, Mr Lipwig.' And the dog owns a piece of the bank, thought Moist. What jolly people the Lavishes are, indeed. 'I can see that you might not find it very funny, Mr Bent,' he said. 'I am pleased to say I find nothing funny, sir,' Bent replied, as they reached the bottom of the stairs. 'I have no sense of humour whatsoever. None at all. It has been proved by phrenology. I have Nichtlachen-Keinwortz Syndrome, which for some curious reason is considered a lamentable affliction. I, on the other hand, consider it a gift. I am happy to say that I regard the sight of a fat man slipping on a banana skin as nothing more than an unfortunate accident that highlights the need for care in the disposal of household waste.' 'Have you tried—' Moist began, but Bent held up a hand. 'Please! I repeat, I do not regard it as a burden! And may I say it annoys me when people assume it is such! Do not feel impelled to try to make me laugh, sir! If I had no legs, would you try to make me run? I am quite happy, thank you!' He paused by another pair of doors, calmed down a little and gripped the handles. 63 'And now, perhaps, I should take this opportunity to show you where the… may I say serious work is done, Mr Lipwig. This used to be called the counting house, but I prefer to think of it as' — he pulled at the doors, which swung open majestically — 'my world.' It was impressive. And the first impression it gave Moist was: this is Hell on the day they couldn't find the matches. He stared at the rows of bent backs, scribbling frantically. No one looked up. 'I will not have abacuses, Calculating Bones or other inhuman devices under this roof, Mr Lipwig,' said Bent, leading the way down the central aisle. 'The human brain is capable of infallibility in the world of numbers. Since we invented them, how should it be otherwise? We are rigorous here, rigorous—' In one swift movement Bent pulled a sheet of paper from the out-tray of the nearest desk, scanned it briefly and dropped it back again with a little grunt that signified either his approval that the clerk had got things right or his own disappointment that he had not found anything wrong. The sheet had been crammed with calculations, and surely no mortal could have followed them at a glance. But Moist would not have bet a penny that Bent hadn't accounted for every line. 'Here in this room we are at the heart of the bank,' said the chief cashier proudly. 'The heart,' said Moist blankly. 'Here we calculate interest and charges and mortgages and costs and — everything, in fact. And we do not make mistakes.' 'What, never?' 'Well, hardly ever. Oh, some individuals occasionally make an error,' Bent conceded, with distaste. 'Fortunately, I check every calculation. No errors get past me, you may depend upon it. An error, sir, is worse than a sin, the 64 reason being that a sin is often a matter of opinion or viewpoint or even of timing but an error is a fact and it cries out for correction. I see you are carefully not sneering, Mr Lipwig.' 'I'm not? I mean, no. I'm not!' said Moist. Damn. He'd forgotten the ancient wisdom: take care, when you are closely observing, that you are not closely observed. 'But you are appalled, nevertheless,' said Bent. 'You use words, and I'm told you do it well, but words are soft and can be pummelled into different meanings by a skilled tongue. Numbers are hard. Oh, you can cheat with them but you cannot change their nature. Three is three. You cannot persuade it to be four, even if you give it a great big kiss.' There was a very faint snigger from somewhere in the hall, but Mr Bent apparently did not notice. 'And they are not very forgiving. We work very hard here, at things that must be done,' he said. 'And this is where I sit, at the very centre…' They'd reached the big stepped dais in the centre of the room. As they did so, a skinny woman in a white blouse and long black skirt edged respectfully past them and carefully placed a wad of paper in a tray that was already piled high. She glanced at Mr Bent, who said Thank you, Miss Drapes'. He was too busy pointing out the marvels of the dais, on which a semicircular desk of complex design had been mounted, to notice the expression that passed across her pale little face. But Moist did, and read a thousand words, probably written in her diary and never ever shown to anyone. 'Do you see?' said the chief cashier impatiently. 'Hmm?' said Moist, watching the woman scurry away. 'See here, you see?' said Bent, sitting down and pointing with what almost seemed like enthusiasm. 'By means of these treadles I can move my desk to face anywhere in the room! It is the panopticon of my little world. Nothing is beyond my eye!' He pedalled furiously and the whole dais began to rumble round on its turntable. 'And it can turn at two speeds, too, as you can see, because of this ingenious—' 65 'I can see that almost nothing is beyond your eye,' said Moist as Miss Drapes sat down. 'But I'm sorry to interrupt your work.' Bent glanced at the in-tray and gave a little shrug. 'That pile? That will not take me long,' he said, setting the handbrake and standing up. Besides, I think it important that you see what we are really about at this point, because I must now take you to meet Hubert.' He gave a little cough. 'Hubert is not what you're about?' Moist suggested, and then headed back to the main hall. 'I'm sure he means well,' said Bent, leaving the words hanging in the air like a noose. Out in the hall a dignified hush prevailed. A few people were at the counters, an old lady watched her little dog drink from the brass bowl inside the door, and any words that were uttered were spoken in a suitably hushed voice. Moist was all for money, it was one of his favourite things, but it didn't have to be something you mentioned very quietly in case it woke up. If money talked in here, it whispered. The chief cashier opened a small and not very grand door behind the stairs and half hidden by some potted plants. 'Please be careful, the floor is always wet here,' he said, and led the way down some wide steps into the grandest cellar Moist had ever seen. Fine stone vaulting supported beautifully tiled ceilings stretching away into the gloom. There were candles everywhere, and in the middle distance something was sparkling and filling the colonnaded space with a blue-white glow. 'This was the undercroft of the temple,' said Bent, leading the way. 'Are you telling me this place doesn't just look like a temple?' 'It was built as a temple, yes, but never used as one.' 66 'Really?' said Moist. 'Which god?' 'None, as it turned out. One of the kings of Ankh commanded it to be built about nine hundred years ago,' said Bent. 'I suppose it was a case of speculative building. That is to say, he had no god in mind.' 'He hoped one would turn up?' 'Exactly, sir.' 'Like blue-tits?' said Moist, peering around. 'This place was a kind of celestial bird box?' Bent sighed. 'You express yourself colourfully, Mr Lipwig, but I suppose there is some truth there. It didn't work, anyway. Then it got used as storage in case of siege, became an indoor market, and so on, and then Jocatello La Vice got the place when the city defaulted on a loan. It is all in the official history. Isn't the fornication wonderful?' After quite a lengthy pause, Moist ventured: 'It is?' 'Don't you think so? There's more here than anywhere else in the city, I'm told.' 'Really?' said Moist, looking around nervously. 'Er, do you have to come down here at some special time?' 'Well, in banking hours usually, but we let groups in by appointment.' 'You know,' said Moist, 'I think this conversation has somehow got away from me…' Bent waved vaguely at the ceiling. 'I refer to the wonderful vaulting,' he said. 'The word derives from fornix, meaning "arch".' 'Ah! Yes? Right!' said Moist. 'You know, I wouldn't be surprised if not many people knew that.' 67 And then Moist saw the Glooper, glowing among the arches. 68 Chapter 3 The Glooper — A proper Hubert — One very big mattress — Some observations on tourism — Gladys makes a sandwich — The Blind Letter Office — Mrs Lavish's posterity — An ominous note — Flight planning — An even more ominous note, and certainly more ominous than the first note — Mr Lipwig boards the wrong coach MOIST HAD SEEN GLASS being bent and blown, and marvelled at the skill of the people who did it — marvelled as only a man can marvel whose sole skill is in bending words. Some of those geniuses had probably worked on this. But so had their counterparts from the hypothetical Other Side, glassblowers who had sold their souls to some molten god for the skill to blow glass into spirals and intersecting bottles and shapes that seemed to be quite close but some distance away at the same time. Water gurgled, sloshed and, yes, glooped along glass tubing. There was a smell of salt. Bent nudged Moist, pointed to an improbable wooden hatstand, and wordlessly handed him a long yellow oilskin coat and a matching rain hat. He had already donned a similar outfit, and had magically procured an umbrella from somewhere. 'It's the Balance of Payments,' he said, as Moist struggled into the coat. 'He never gets it right.' There was a crash from somewhere, and water droplets rained down on them. 'See?' Bent added. 'What's it doing?' said Moist. Bent rolled his eyes. 'Hell knows, Heaven suspects,' he said. He raised his voice. 'Hubert? We have a visitor!' 69 A distant splashing grew louder and a figure appeared around the edge of the glassware. Rightly or wrongly, Hubert is one of those names you put a shape to. There may well be tall, slim Huberts, Moist would be the first to agree, but this Hubert was shaped like a proper Hubert, which is to say, stubby and plump. He had red hair, unusual, in Moist's experience, in the standard model Hubert. It grew thickly, straight up from his head, like the bristles of a brush; about five inches up, it appeared to have been cut short with the aid of shears and a spirit level. You could have stood a cup and saucer on it. 'A visitor?' said Hubert nervously. 'Wonderful! We don't get many down here!' Hubert wore a long white coat, with a breast pocket full of pencils. 'Really?' said Moist. 'Hubert, this is Mr Lipwig,' said Bent. 'He is here to… learn about us.' 'I'm Moist,' said Moist, stepping forward with his best smile and an extended hand. 'Oh, I'm sorry. We should have hung the raincoats nearer the door,' said Hubert. He looked at Moist's hand as if it was some interesting device, and then shook it carefully. 'You're not seeing us at our best, Mr Lipwick,' he said. 'Really?' said Moist, still smiling. How does the hair stay up like that, he wondered. Does he use glue, or what? 'Mr Lipwig is the Postmaster General, Hubert,' said Bent. 'Is he? Oh. I don't get out of the cellar very much these days,' said Hubert. 'Really?' said Moist, his smile now a bit glassy. 'No, we're so close to perfection, you see,' said Hubert. 'I really think we're nearly there…' 70 'Mr Hubert believes that this… device is a sort of crystal ball for showing the future,' said Bent, and rolled his eyes. ' Possible futures. Would Mr Lipstick like to see it in operation?' said Hubert, vibrating with enthusiasm and eagerness. Only a man with a heart of stone would have said no, so Moist made a wonderful attempt at indicating that all his dreams were coming true. 'I'd love to,' he said, 'but what does it actually do?' too late, he saw the signs. Hubert grasped the lapels of his jacket, as if addressing a meeting, and swelled with the urge to communicate, or at least talk at length in the belief that it was the same thing. 'The Glooper, as it is affectionately known, is what I call a quote analogy machine unquote. It solves problems not by considering them as a numerical exercise but by actually duplicating them in a form we can manipulate: in this case, the flow of money and its effects within our society become water flowing through a glass matrix — the Glooper. The geometrical shape of certain vessels, the operation of valves and, although I say so myself, ingenious tipping buckets and flow-rate propellers enable the Glooper to simulate quite complex transactions. We can change the starting conditions, too, to learn the rules inherent in the system. For example, we can find out what happens if you halve the labour force in the city by the adjustment of a few valves, rather than by going out into the streets and killing people.' 'A big improvement! Bravo!' said Moist desperately, and started to clap. No one joined in. He shoved his hands in his pockets. 'Er, perhaps you would like a less, um, dramatic demonstration?' Hubert volunteered. Moist nodded. 'Yes,' he said. 'Show me… show me what happens when people get fed up with banks,' he said. 71 'Ah, yes, a familiar one! Igor, set up program five!' Hubert shouted to some figure in the forest of glassware. There was the sound of squeaky screws being turned and the glug of reservoirs being topped up. 'Igor?' said Moist. 'You have an Igor?' 'Oh, yes,' said Hubert. 'That's how I get this wonderful light. They know the secret of storing lightning in jars! But don't let that worry you, Mr Lipspick. Just because I'm employing an Igor and working in a cellar doesn't mean I'm some sort of madman, ha ha ha!' 'Ha ha,' agreed Moist. 'Ha hah hah!,' said Hubert. 'Hahahahahaha!! Ahahaha-hahah!!!!!—' Bent slapped him on the back. Hubert coughed. 'Sorry about that, it's the air down here,' he mumbled. 'It certainly looks very… complex, this thing of yours,' said Moist, striking out for normality. 'Er, yes,' said Hubert, a little bit thrown. 'And we are refining it all the time. For example, floats coupled to ingenious spring-loaded sluice gates elsewhere on the Glooper can allow changes in the level in one flask to automatically adjust flows in several other places in the system—' 'What's that for?' said Moist, pointing at random to a round bottle suspended in the tubing. 'Phase of the Moon valve,' said Hubert promptly. 'The moon affects how money moves around?' 'We don't know. It might. The weather certainly does.' 'Really?' 72 'Certainly!' Hubert beamed. 'And we're adding fresh influences all the time. Indeed, I will not be satisfied until my wonderful machine can completely mimic every last detail of our great city's economic cycle!' A bell rang, and he went on: 'Thank you, Igor! Let it go!' Something clanked, and coloured waters began to foam and slosh along the bigger pipes. Hubert raised not only his voice but also a long pointer. 'Now, if we reduce public confidence in the banking system — watch that tube there — you will see here a flow of cash out of the banks and into Flask Twenty-eight, currently designated the Old Sock Under the Mattress. Even quite rich people don't want their money outside their control. See the mattress getting fuller, or perhaps I should say… thicker?' 'That's a lot of mattresses,' Moist agreed. 'I prefer to think of it as one mattress a third of a mile high.' 'Really?' said Moist. Slosh! Valves opened somewhere, and water rushed along a new path. 'Now see how bank lending is emptying as the money drains into the Sock?' Gurgle! 'Watch Reservoir Eleven, over there. That means business expansion is slowing… there it goes, there it goes…' Drip! 'Now watch Bucket Thirty-four. It's tipping, it's tipping… there! The scale on the left of Flask Seventeen shows collapsing businesses, by the way. See Flask Nine beginning to fill? That's foreclosures. Job losses is Flask Seven… and there goes the valve on Flask Twenty-eight, as the socks are pulled out.' Flush! 'But what is there to buy? Over here we see that Flask Eleven has also drained…' Drip. Except for the occasional gurgle, the aquatic activity subsided. 'And we end up in a position where we can't move because we're standing on our own hands, as it were,' said Hubert. 'Jobs vanishing, people without 73 savings suffering, wages low, farms going back to wilderness, rampaging trolls coming down from the mountains—' 'They're here already,' said Moist. 'Some of them are even in the Watch.' 'Are you sure?' said Hubert. 'Yes, they've got helmets and everything. I've seen them.' 'Then I expect they'll be wanting to rampage back to the mountains,' said Hubert. 'I think I would if I were them.' 'You believe all that could really happen?' said Moist. 'A bunch of tubes and buckets can tell you that?' 'They are correlated to events very carefully, Mr Lips wick,' said Hubert, looking hurt. 'Correlation is everything. Did you know it is an established fact that hemlines tend to rise in times of national crisis?' 'You mean—?' Moist began, not at all certain how the sentence was going to end. 'Women's dresses get shorter,' said Hubert. And that causes a national crisis? Really? How high do they go?' Mr Bent coughed a leaden cough. 'I think perhaps we should go, Mr Lipwig,' he said. 'If you have seen all you want, no doubt you are in a hurry to leave.' There was a slight emphasis on 'leave'. 'What? Oh… yes,' said Moist. 'I probably should be getting along. Well, thank you, Hubert. It has been an education and no mistake.' 'I just can't get rid of the leaks,' said the little man, looking crestfallen. 'I swear that every joint is watertight, but we never end up with the same amount of water that we started with.' 74 'Of course not, Hubert,' said Moist, patting him on the shoulder. 'And that's because you're close to achieving perfection!' 'It is?' said Hubert, wide-eyed. 'Certainly. Everyone knows that at the end of the week you never have quite as much money as you think you should. It's a well-known fact!' The sunrise of delight dawned on Hubert's face. Topsy was right, Moist told himself. I am good with people. 'Now demonstrated by the Glooper!' Hubert breathed. 'I shall write a paper on it!' 'Or you could write it on paper!' said Moist, shaking him warmly by the hand. 'Okay, Mr Bent, let us tear ourselves away!' When they were walking up the main stairs Moist said: 'What relation is Hubert to the current chairman?' 'Nephew,' said Bent. 'How did you—?' 'I'm always interested in people,' said Moist, smiling to himself. 'And there's the red hair, of course. Why does Mrs Lavish have two crossbows on her desk?' 'Family heirlooms, sir,' lied Bent. It was a deliberate, flagrant lie, and he must have meant it to be seen as such. Family heirlooms. And she sleeps in her office. All right, she's an invalid, but people usually do that at home. She doesn't intend to step out of the room. She's on guard. And she's very particular about who comes in. 'Do you have any interests, Mr Bent?' 'I do my job with care and attention, sir.' 'Yes, but what do you do in the evenings?' 75 'I double-check the day's totals in my office, sir. I find counting very… satisfying.' 'You're very good at it, yes?' 'Better than you can imagine, sir.' 'So if I save ninety-three dollars forty-seven a year for seven years at two and a quarter per cent, compound, how—' '$835.13 calculated once annually, sir,' said Bent calmly. Yes, and twice you've known the exact time, thought Moist. And you didn't look at a watch. You are good with numbers. Inhumanly good, perhaps… 'No holidays?' he said aloud. 'I did a walking tour of the major banking houses of Uberwald last summer, sir. It was most instructive.' 'That must have taken weeks. I'm glad you felt able to tear yourself away!' 'Oh, it was easy, sir. Miss Drapes, who is the senior clerk, sent a coded clacks of the day's business to each of my lodging houses at the close of business every day. I was able to review it over my after-dinner strudel and respond instantly with advice and instructions.' 'Is Miss Drapes a useful member of staff?' 'Indeed. She performs her duties with care and alacrity.' He paused. They were at the top of the stairs. Bent turned and looked directly at Moist. 'I have worked here all my life, Mr Lipwig. Be careful of the Lavish family. Mrs Lavish is the best of them, a wonderful woman. The others… are used to getting their own way.' Old family, old money. That kind of family. Moist felt a distant call, like the song of the skylark. It came back to taunt him every time, for example, he saw an out-of-towner in the street with a map and a perplexed 76 expression, crying out to be relieved of his money in some helpful and hard-to-follow way. 'Dangerously so?' he said. Bent looked a little affronted at this directness. 'They are not at home to disappointment, sir. They have tried to declare Mrs Lavish insane, sir.' 'Really?' said Moist. 'Compared to who?' The wind blew through the town of Big Cabbage, which liked to call itself the Green Heart of the Plains. It was called Big Cabbage because it was home to the Biggest Cabbage in the World, and the town's inhabitants were not very creative when it came to names. People travelled miles to see this wonder; they'd go inside its concrete interior and peer out through the windows, buy cabbage-leaf bookmarks, cabbage ink, cabbage shirts, Captain Cabbage dolls, musical boxes carefully crafted from kohlrabi and cauliflower that played 'The Cabbage Eater's Song', cabbage jam, kale ale, and green cigars made from a newly developed species of cabbage and rolled on the thighs of local maidens, presumably because they liked it. Then there was the excitement of BrassicaWorld, where very small children could burst into terrified screams at the huge head of Captain Cabbage himself, along with his friends Cauliflower the Clown and Billy Broccoli. For older visitors there was of course the Cabbage Research Institute, over which a green pall always hung and downwind of which plants tended to be rather strange and sometimes turned to watch you as you passed. And then… what better way to record the day of a lifetime than pose for a picture at the behest of the black-clad man with the iconograph who took the happy family and promised a framed, coloured picture, sent right to their home, for a mere three dollars, P&P included, one dollar deposit to cover expenses, if you would be so good, sir, and may I say what 77 wonderful children you have there, madam, they are a credit to you and no mistake, oh, and did I say that if you are not delighted with the framed picture then send no further money and we shall say no more about it? The kale ale was generally pretty good, and there's no such thing as too much flattery where mothers are concerned and, all right, the man had rather strange teeth, which seemed determined to make a break from his mouth, but none of us is perfect and what was there to lose? What there was to lose was a dollar, and they add up. Whoever said you can't fool an honest man wasn't one. Round about the seventh family, a watchman started taking a distant interest, so the man in dusty black made a show of taking the last name and address and strolled into an alley. He tossed the broken iconograph back on the pile of junk where he had found it — it was a cheap one and the imps had long since evaporated — and was about to set off across the fields when he saw the newspaper being bowled along by the wind. To a man travelling on his wits, a newspaper was a useful treasure. Stuck down your shirt, it kept the wind off your chest. You could use it to light fires. For the fastidious, it saved a daily resort to dockweed, burdock or other broad-leaved plants. And, as a last resort, you could read it. This evening, the breeze was getting up. He gave the front page of the paper a cursory glance and tucked it under his vest. His teeth tried to tell him something, but he never listened to them. A man could go mad, listening to his teeth. When he got back to the Post Office, Moist looked up the Lavish family in Whom's Whom. They were indeed what was known as 'old money', which meant that it had been made so long ago that the black deeds which had originally filled the coffers were now historically irrelevant. Funny, that: a brigand for a father was something you kept quiet about, but a slave-taking pirate for a great-great-great-grandfather was something to boast of over the port. Time turned the evil bastards into rogues, and rogue was a word with a twinkle in its eye and nothing to be ashamed of. 78 They'd been rich for centuries. The key players in the current crop of Lavishes, apart from Topsy, were first her brother-in-law Marko Lavish and his wife Capricia Lavish, daughter of a famous trust fund. They lived in Genua, as far away from other Lavishes as possible, which was a very Lavish thing to do. Then there were Topsy's stepchildren, the twins Cosmo and Pucci, who had, the story ran, been born with their little hands around one another's throat, like true Lavishes. There were also plenty more cousins, aunts and genetic hangers-on, all watching one another like cats. From what he'd heard, the family business was traditionally banking, but the recent generations, buoyed by a complex network of long-term investments and ancient trust funds, had diversified into disinheriting and suing one another, apparently with great enthusiasm and a commendable lack of mercy. He recalled pictures of them in the Times's society pages, getting in or out of sleek black coaches and not smiling very much, in case the money escaped. There was no mention of Topsy's side of the family. They were Turvys, apparently not grand enough to be Whoms. Topsy Turvy… there was a music-hall sound to it, and probably Moist could believe that. Moist's in-tray had been topped up in his absence. It was all unimportant stuff, and really didn't need anything from him, but it was this newfangled carbon paper that was the trouble. He got copies of everything, and they took up time. It wasn't that he wasn't good at delegating. He was extremely good at delegating. But the talent requires people on the other end of the chain to be good at being delegated on to. They weren't. Something about the Post Office discouraged original thinking. The letters went in the slots, okay? There was no room for people who wanted to experiment with sticking them in their ear, up the chimney or down the privy. It'd do them good to— He spotted the pink flimsy clacks amongst the other stuff and tugged it out quickly. It was from Spike! He read: 79 Success. Returning day after tomorrow. All will be revealed . S. Moist put it down carefully. Obviously she'd missed him terribly and was desperate to see him again, but she was stingy about spending Golem Trust money. Also, she'd probably run out of cigarettes. Moist drummed his fingers on the desk. A year ago he'd asked Adora Belle Dearheart to be his wife, and she'd explained that in fact he was going to be her husband. It was going to be… well, it was going to be some time in the near future, when Mrs Dearheart finally lost patience with her daughter's busy schedule and arranged the wedding herself. But he was a nearly married man, however you looked at it. And nearly married men didn't get mixed up with the Lavish family. A nearly married man was steadfast and dependable and always ready to hand his nearly wife an ashtray. He had to be there for his oneday children, and make sure they slept in a well-ventilated nursery. He smoothed out the message. And he would stop the night climbing, too. Was it grown up? Was it sensible? Was he a tool of Vetinari? No! But a memory stirred. Moist got up and went over to his filing cabinet, which he normally avoided at all costs. Under 'Stamps' he found the little report he'd had two months ago from Stanley Howler, the Head of Stamps. It noted in passing the continued high sales of one- and two-dollar stamps, which was higher than even Stanley had expected. Maybe 'stamp money' was more prevalent than he'd thought. After all, the government backed it, right? It was even easy to carry. He'd have to check on exactly how much they— 80 There was a dainty knock at the door, and Gladys entered. She bore with extreme care a plate of ham sandwiches, made very, very thin the way only Gladys could make them, which was to put one ham between two loaves and bring her shovel-sized hand down on it very hard. 'I Anticipated That You Would Have Had No Lunch, Postmaster,' she rumbled. 'Thank you, Gladys,' said Moist, mentally shaking himself. 'And Lord Vetinari Is Downstairs,' Gladys went on. 'He Says There Is No Rush.' The sandwich stopped an inch from Moist's lips. 'He's in the building?' 'Yes, Mr Lipwig.' 'Wandering about by himself?' said Moist, horror mounting. 'Currently He Is In The Blind Letter Office, Mr Lipwig.' 'What's he doing there?' 'Reading The Letters, Mr Lipwig.' No rush, thought Moist grimly. Oh, yes. Well, I'm going to finish my sandwiches that the nice lady golem has made for me. 'Thank you, Gladys,' he said. When she had gone Moist took a pair of tweezers out of his desk drawer, opened the sandwich and began to disembowel it of the bone fragments caused by Gladys's drop-hammer technique. It was a little over three minutes later when the golem reappeared and stood patiently in front of the desk. 'Yes, Gladys?' said Moist. 81 'His Lordship Desired Me To Inform You That There Is Still No Rush.' Moist ran downstairs and Lord Vetinari was indeed sitting in the Blind Letter Office2 with his boots on a desk, a sheaf of letters in his hand and a smile on his face. 'Ah, Lipwig,' he said, waving the grubby envelopes. 'Wonderful stuff! Better than the crossword! I like this one: "Duzbuns Hopsit pfarmerrsc". I've put the correct address underneath.' He passed the letter over to Moist. He had written: K. Whistler, Baker, 3 Pigsty Hill. 'There are three bakeries in the city that could be said to be opposite a pharmacy,' said Vetinari, 'but Whistler does those rather good curly buns that regrettably look as though a dog has just done his business on your plate and somehow managed to add a blob of icing.' 'Well done, sir,' said Moist weakly. At the other end of the room Frank and Dave, who spent their time deciphering the illegible, misspelled, misdirected or simply insane mail that sleeted through the Blind Letter Office every day, were watching Vetinari in shock and awe. In the corner, Drumknott appeared to be brewing tea. 'I think it is just a matter of getting into the mind of the writer,' Vetinari went on, looking at a letter covered with grubby fingerprints and what looked like the remains of someone's breakfast. He added: 'In some cases, I imagine, there is a lot of room.' 'Frank and Dave manage to sort out five out of every six,' said Moist. 2 An invention of which Moist was very proud The people of Ankh-Morpork took a straightforward approach to letter writing which could be summarized as: if I know what I mean, so should you As a result, the Post Office was used to envelopes addressed to 'My brofer John, tall, by the brij' or 'Mrs Smith wot does, Dolly Sistres' The keen and somewhat worrying intellects employed in the Blind Letter Office enjoyed the challenge, and during their tea break they played chess in their heads 82 'They are veritable magicians,' said Vetinari. He turned to the men, who smiled nervously and backed away, leaving the smiles hanging awkwardly in the air, as protection. He added: 'But I think it is time for their tea break?' The two looked at Drumknott, who was pouring tea into two cups. 'Somewhere else?' Vetinari suggested. No express delivery had ever moved faster than Frank and Dave. When the door had shut behind them, Vetinari went on: 'You have looked round the bank? Your conclusions?' 'I think I'd rather stick my thumb in a mincing machine than get involved with the Lavish family,' said Moist. 'Oh, I could probably do things with it, and the Mint needs a good shaking. But the bank needs to be run by someone who understands banks.' 'People who understand banks got it into the position it is in now,' said Vetinari. 'And I did not become ruler of Ankh-Morpork by understanding the city. Like banking, the city is depressingly easy to understand. I have remained ruler by getting the city to understand me.' 'I understood you, sir, when you said something about angels, remember? Well, it worked. I am a reformed character and I will act like one.' 'Even as far as the gold-ish chain?' said Vetinari, as Drumknott handed him a cup of tea. 'Damn right!' 'Mrs Lavish was very impressed with you.' 'She said I was an out-and-out crook!' 'High praise indeed, coming from Topsy,' said Vetinari. He sighed. 'Well, I can't force such a reformed person as you to—' He paused as Drumknott leaned down to whisper in his ear, and then continued: '—well, clearly I 83 can force you, but on this occasion I don't think I will. Drumknott, take this down, please. "I, Moist von Lipwig, wish to make it clear that I have no desire or intention to run or be involved in the running of any bank in Ankh-Morpork, preferring instead to devote my energies to the further improvement of the Post Office and the clacks system." Leave a space for Mr Lipwig's signature and the date. And then—' 'Look, why is this necessary—' Moist began. '—continue: "I, Havelock Vetinari, etc., confirm that I have indeed discussed the future of the Ankh-Morpork banking system with Mr Lipwig and fully accept his express wish to continue his fine work at the Post Office, freely and without hindrance or penalty." Space for signature, etc. Thank you, Drumknott.' 'What is all that about?' said Moist, bewildered. 'The Times seems to think I intend to nationalize the Royal Bank,' said Vetinari. 'Nationalize?' said Moist. 'Steal,' Vetinari translated. 'I don't know how these rumours get about.' 'I suppose even tyrants have enemies?' said Moist. 'Well put as usual, Mr Lipwig,' said Vetinari, giving him a sharp look. 'Give him the memorandum to sign, Drumknott.' Drumknott did so, taking care to retrieve the pencil afterwards with a rather smug look. Then Vetinari stood up and brushed off his robe. 'I well recall our interesting conversation about angels, Mr Lipwig, and I recall telling you that you only get one,' he said, a little stiffly. 'Do bear that in mind.' 'It would appear that the leopard does change his shorts, sir,' mused Drumknott, as the evening mist drifted, waist high, along the street. 84 'It would appear so, indeed. But Moist von Lipwig is a man of appearances. I'm sure he believes everything he said, but one must look beyond the surface to the Lipwig beneath, an honest soul with a fine criminal mind.' 'You have said something similar before, sir,' said the secretary, holding open the coach door, 'but it seems that honesty has got the better of him.' Vetinari paused with his foot on the step. 'Indeed, but I take some heart, Drumknott, from the fact that, once again, he has stolen your pencil.' 'In fact he has not, sir, because I was most careful to put it in my pocket!' said Drumknott, in some triumph. 'Yes,' said Vetinari, happily, sinking into the creaking leather as Drumknott started to pat himself down with an increasing desperation, 'I know.' There were guards in the bank at night. They patrolled the corridors in a leisurely way, whistling under their breath, safe in the knowledge that the very best locks kept miscreants out and all the ground floor was paved with marble which, in the long silent watches of the night, rang like a bell at every step. Some dozed, standing upright with their eyes half open. But someone ignored the locks of iron, passed through the bars of brass, trod soundlessly on the ringing tiles, moved under the very noses of the slumbering men. Nevertheless, when the figure walked through the big doors to the chairman's office, two crossbow bolts passed through it and splintered the fine woodwork. 'Well, you can't blame a body for trying,' said Mrs Lavish. I am not concerned with your body, Mrs Topsy Lavish, said Death. 'It's been quite a while since anyone was,' sighed Topsy. This is the reckoning, Mrs Lavish. The final accounting. 85 'Do you always use banking allusions at a time like this?' said Topsy, standing up. Something remained slumped in the chair, but it wasn't Mrs Lavish any more. I try to acknowledge the ambience, Mrs Lavish. 'The "Closing of the Ledger" would have the right ring, too.' Thank you. I shall make a note. And now, you must come with me. 'I made my will just in time, it seems,' said Topsy, letting her white hair down. One should always take care of one's posterity, Mrs Lavish. 'My posterity? The Lavishes can kiss my bum, sir! I've fixed 'em for good. Oh yes! Now what, Mr Death?' Now? said Death. Now, you could say, comes... the audit. 'Oh. There is one, is there? Well, I'm not ashamed.' That counts. 'Good. It should,' said Topsy. She took Death's arm and followed him through the doors and on to the black desert under the endless night. After a while Mr Fusspot sat up and started to whine. There was a small article about the banking business in the Times next morning. It used the word crisis quite a lot. Ah, here we are, thought Moist, when he got to paragraph four. Or, rather, here I am. 86 'Lord Vetinari told the Times: "It is true that, with the permission of the bank's chairman, I discussed with the Postmaster General the possibility of his offering his services to the Royal Bank in these difficult times. He has declined, and the matter ends there. It is not the business of the government to run banks. The future of the Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork is in the hands of its directors and shareholders."' And gods help it, thought Moist. He tackled the in-tray with vigour. He threw himself at the paperwork, checking figures, correcting spelling, and humming to himself to drown out the inner voice of temptation. Lunchtime arrived, and with it a plate of one-foot-wide cheese sandwiches delivered by Gladys, along with the midday copy of the Times. Mrs Lavish had died in the night. Moist stared at the news. It said she had passed away quietly in her sleep, after a long illness. He dropped the paper and stared at the wall. She'd seemed like someone hanging together by sheer grit and gin. Even so, that vitality, that spark… well, she couldn't hold on for ever. So what would happen now? Ye gods, he was well out of it! And it was probably not a good day to be Mr Fusspot. He'd looked a waddly sort of dog, so he'd better learn to run really quickly. The latest post that Gladys had brought up contained a long and thoroughly second-hand envelope addressed to him 'personly' in thick black letters. He slit it open with the paperknife and shook it out into the waste bin, just in case. 87 There was a folded newspaper inside. It was, it turned out, yesterday's Times, and there was Moist von Lipwig on the front page. Circled. Moist turned it over. On the other side, in tiny neat handwriting, were the words: Dear Sir, I have took the small precawtion of loging certain affedavids with trusted associates. You will here from me gain. a friend Take it slowly, take it slowly… It can't be from a friend. Everyone I think of as a friend can spell. This must be some kind of con, yes? But there were no skeletons in his closet… Oh, all right, if you were going for the fine detail, there were in fact enough skeletons in his closet to fill a big crypt, with enough left over to equip a funfair House of Horrors and maybe also make a macabre but mildly amusing ashtray. But they'd never been associated with the name Lipwig. He'd been careful about that. His crimes had died with Albert Spangler. A good hangman knows exactly how much rope to give a man, and had dropped him out of one life and into another. Could anyone have recognized him? But he was the least recognizable person in the world when he wasn't wearing his golden suit! When he was young his mother had sometimes gone home from school with the wrong child! And when he wore the suit, people recognized the suit. He hid by being conspicuous… 88 It had to be a scam of some kind. Yes, that was it. The old 'guilty secret' job. Probably no one got to a position like this without accumulating some things they'd rather not see made public. But it was a nice touch to include the bit about affidavits. It was there to set a nervous man to wondering. It suggested that the sender knew something so dangerous that you, the recipient, might try to silence him, and he was in a position to set the lawyers on you. Hah! And he was being given some time in which, presumably, to stew. Him! Moist von Lipwig! Well, they might just find out how hot a stew could get. For now, he shoved the paper in a bottom drawer. Hah! There was a knock at the door. 'Come in, Gladys,' he said, rummaging in the in-tray again. The door opened and the worried, pale face of Stanley Howler appeared around it. 'It's me, sir. Stanley, sir,' it said. 'Yes, Stanley?' 'Head of Stamps at the Post Office, sir,' Stanley added, in case pinpoint identification was required. 'Yes, Stanley, I know,' said Moist patiently. 'I see you every day. What is it that you want?' 'Nothing, sir,' said Stanley. There was a pause, and Moist adjusted his mind to the world as seen through the brain of Stanley Howler. Stanley was very… precise, and as patient as the grave. 'What is the reason for you, coming here, to see me, today, Stanley?' Moist tried, enunciating carefully in order to deliver the sentence in bite-sized chunks. 'There is a lawyer downstairs, sir,' Stanley announced. 89 'But I've only just read the threatening—' Moist began, and then relaxed. 'A lawyer? Did he say why?' he said. 'A matter of great importance, he said. There's two watchmen with him, sir. And a dog.' 'Really?' said Moist calmly. 'Well, you'd better show them up, then.' He glanced at his watch. O-kay… Not good. The Lancre Flyer would be leaving in forty-five seconds. He knew he could be down that damn drainpipe in eleven seconds. Stanley was on his way below to bring them up here, call that thirty seconds, maybe. Get them off the ground floor, that was the thing. Scramble on to the back of the coach, jump off when it slowed down for the Hubwards Gate, pick up the tin chest he'd got stashed in the beams of the old stable in Lobbin Clout, get changed and adjust his face, stroll across the city to have a coffee in that shop near the main Watch House, keep an eye on the clacks traffic for a while, stroll over to Hen and Chickens Court where he had another trunk stored with 'I don't know' Jack, get changed, leave with his little bag and his tweed cap (which he'd change for the old brown bowler in the bag in some alley, just in case Jack had a sudden attack of memory brought on by excessive money), and he'd mosey down to the slaughterhouse district and step into the persona of Jeff the drover and hang out in the huge fetid bar of the Butcher's Eagle, which was where the drovers traditionally damped down the road dust. There was a vampire in the Watch these days and they'd had a werewolf for years, too. Well, let those famously sharp noses snuff up the mixed cocktail stink of manure, fear, sweat, offal and urine and see how they liked it! And that was just in the bar — if anything, it was worse in the slaughterhouses. Then maybe he'd wait until evening to hitch a lift on the steaming dung carts heading out of the city, along with the other drunk drovers. The gate guards never bothered to check them. On the other hand, if his sixth sense was still squawking, then he'd run the thimble game with some drunk until he'd got enough for a little bottle of perfume and a cheap but decent third-90 hand suit at some shonky shop and repair to Mrs Eucrasia Arcanum's Lodging House for Respectable Working Men, where with a tip of a hat and some wire-rimmed spectacles he'd be Mr Trespass Hatchcock, a wool salesman, who stayed there every time his business brought him to the city and who always brought her a little gift suitable for a widow of the age she'd like people to think she was. Yes, that'd be a better idea. At Mrs Arcanum's the food was solid and plentiful. The beds were good and you seldom had to share. Then he could make real plans. The itinerary of evasion wound across his inner eye at the speed of flight. The outer eye alighted on something less pleasing. There was a copper in the coach yard, chatting to a couple of the drivers. Moist recognized Sergeant Fred Colon, whose chief duty appeared to be ambling around the city chattering to elderly men of the same age and demeanour as himself. The watchman spotted Moist at the window and gave him a little wave. No, it was going to get complicated and messy if he ran. He'd have to bluff it out up here. It wasn't as though he'd done anything wrong, technically. The letter had thrown him, that's all it was. Moist was sitting at his desk looking busy when Stanley came back, ushering in Mr Slant, the city's best-known and, at 351, probably also its oldest lawyer. He was accompanied by Sergeant Angua and Corporal Nobbs, widely rumoured to be the Watch's secret werewolf. Corporal Nobbs was accompanied by a large wicker hamper and Sergeant Angua was holding a squeaky rubber bone, which she occasionally, in an absentminded way, squeaked. Things were looking up, but strange. The exchanged pleasantries were not that pleasant, this close to Nobby Nobbs and the lawyer, who smelled of embalming fluid, but when they were over Mr Slant said: 'I believe you visited Mrs Topsy Lavish yesterday, Mr Lipwig.' 'Oh, yes. Er, when she was alive,' said Moist, and cursed himself and the unknown letter writer. He was losing it, he really was. 91 'This is not a murder investigation, sir,' said the sergeant calmly. 'Are you sure? In the circumstances—' 'We've made it our business to be sure, sir,' said the sergeant, ' in the circumstances! 'Don't think it was the family, then?' 'No, sir. Or you.' 'Me?' Moist was suitably open-mouthed at the suggestion. 'Mrs Lavish was known to be very ill,' said Mr Slant. 'And it seems that she took quite a shine to you, Mr Lipwig. She has left you her little dog, Mr Fusspot.' 'And also a bag of toys, rugs, tartan coats, little bootees, eight collars including one set with diamonds and, oh, a vast amount of other stuff,' said Sergeant Angua. She squeaked the rubber bone again. Moist's mouth shut. 'The dog,' he said in a hollow voice. 'Just the dog? And the toys?' 'You were expecting something more?' said Angua. 'I wasn't expecting even that!' Moist looked at the hamper. It was suspiciously silent. 'I gave him one of his little blue pills,' said Nobby Nobbs helpfully. 'They knocks him out for a little while. Don't work on people, though. They tastes of aniseed.' 'All this is a bit… odd, isn't it?' said Moist. 'Why's the Watch here? The diamond collar? Anyway, I thought the will wasn't read until after the funeral…' 92 Mr Slant coughed. A moth flew out of his mouth. 'Yes indeed. But knowing the contents of her will, I thought it prudent to hasten to the Royal Bank and deal with the most…' There was a very long pause. For a zombie, the whole of life is a pause, but it seemed that he was looking for the right word. '… problematical bequests immediately,' he finished. 'Yes, well, I suppose the little doggie needs feeding,' said Moist, 'but I wouldn't have thought that—' 'The… problem, if such it be, is in fact his paperwork,' said Mr Slant. 'Wrong pedigree?' said Moist. 'Not his pedigree,' said Mr Slant, opening his briefcase. 'You may be aware that the late Sir Joshua left a one per cent share in the bank to Mr Fusspot?' A cold, black wind began to blow through Moist's mind. 'Yes,' he said. 'I am.' 'The late Mrs Lavish has left him another fifty per cent. That, by the customs of the bank, means that he is the new chairman, Mr Lipwig. And you own him.' 'Hold on, an animal can't own—' 'Oh, but it can, Mr Lipwig, it can!' said Slant, with lawyerly glee. 'There is a huge body of case law. There was even, once, a donkey who was ordained and a tortoise who was appointed a judge. Obviously the more difficult trades are less well represented. No horse has yet held down a job as a carpenter, for example. But dog as chairman is relatively usual.' 'This makes no sense! She hardly knows me!' And his mind chimed in with: oh yes she does! She had you bang to rights in a blink! 93 'The will was dictated to me last night, Mr Lipwig, in the presence of two witnesses and Mrs Lavish's physician, who declared her very sound of mind if not of body.' Mr Slant stood up. 'The will, in short, is legal. It does not have to make sense.' 'But how can he, well, chair meetings? All he does with chairs is sniff the legs!' 'I assume he will in fact act as chairman through you,' said the lawyer. There was a squeak from Sergeant Angua. And what happens if he dies?' said Moist. Ah, thank you for reminding me,' said Mr Slant, taking a document from the case. 'Yes, it says here: the shares will be distributed among any remaining members of the family.' 'Any remaining members of the family? What, his family? I don't think he's had much of a chance to have one!' 'No, Mr Lipwig,' said Slant, 'the Lavish family.' Moist felt the winds grow colder. 'How long does a dog live?' 'An ordin'ry dog?' said Nobby Nobbs. 'Or a dog who stands between a bunch of Lavishes and another fortune?' 'Corporal Nobbs, that was a pertinent remark!' snapped Sergeant Angua. 'Sorry, sarge.' 'Ahem.' A cough from Mr Slant liberated another moth. 'Mr Fusspot is used to sleeping in the Manager's Suite at the bank, Mr Lipwig,' he said. 'You will sleep there too. It is a condition of the bequest.' Moist stood up. 'I don't have to do any of this,' he snapped. 'It's not like I've committed a crime! You can't run people's lives from beyond the grav— well, you can, sir, no problem there, but she can't just—' 94 A further envelope was produced from the briefcase. Mr Slant was smiling, which is never a good sign. 'Mrs Lavish also wrote this personal heartfelt plea to you,' he said. 'And now, sergeant, I think we should leave Mr Lipwig alone.' They departed, although after a few seconds Sergeant Angua walked back in and without saying a word or catching his eye walked over to the bag of toys and dropped the squeaky rubber bone. Moist walked over to the basket and lifted the lid. Mr Fusspot looked up, yawned, and then reared up on his cushion and begged. His tail wagged uncertainly once or twice and his huge eyes filled with hope. 'Don't look at me, kid,' said Moist, and turned his back. Mrs Lavish's letter was drenched in lavender water, slightly spiced with gin. She wrote in a very neat, old-lady hand: Dear Mr Lipwig, I feel that you are a dear, sweet man who will look after my little Mr Fusspot. Please be kind to him. He has been my only friend in difficult times. Money is such a crude thing in these circumstances, but the sum of $20,000 annually will be paid to you (in arrears) for performing this duty, which I beg you to accept. If you do not, or if he dies of unnatural causes, your arse will belong to the Guild of Assassins. $100,000 is lodged with lord Downey, and his young gentlemen will hunt you down and gut you like the weasel you are, Smart Boy! May the gods bless you for your kindness to a widow in distress. Moist was impressed. Stick and carrot. Vetinari just used stick, or hit you over the head with the carrot. 95 Vetinari! Now there was a man with some questions to answer! The hairs on the back of his neck, trained by decades of dodging in any case and suddenly made extra sensitive with Mrs Lavish's words still bouncing in his skull, bristled in terror. Something came through the window and thunked! into the door. But Moist was already diving for the carpet when the glass broke. Shuddering in the door was a black arrow. Moist crawled across the carpet, reached up, grabbed the arrow and ducked down again. In exquisite white writing, like the inscription on some ancient ring, were the words: GUILD OF ASSASSINS — 'WHEN STYLE MATTERS'. It had to be a warning shot, right? Just a little grace note, yes? A sort of emphasis? Just in case? Mr Fusspot took this opportunity to leap out of his basket and lick Moist's face. Mr Fusspot didn't care who he was or what he'd done, he just wanted to be friends. 'I think,' said Moist, giving in, 'that you and me ought to go walkies.' The dog gave an excited little yip and went and tugged at the bag of accessories until it fell over. He disappeared inside, tail wagging madly, and came out dragging a little red velvet doggie coat on which the word 'Tuesday' was embroidered. 'Lucky guess, boy,' said Moist, as he buckled it up. This was difficult, because he was being washed by dog goo all the while. 'Er, you wouldn't know where your lead is, would you?' Moist ventured, trying not to swallow. Mr Fusspot bounced off to the bag and returned again with a red leash. 96 'O-kay,' said Moist. 'This is going to be the fastest walky in the history of walkies. It is, in fact, going to be a runny…' As he reached up for the door handle, the door opened. Moist found himself staring up at two terracotta-coloured legs that were as thick as tree trunks. 'I Hope You Are Not Looking Up My Dress, Mr Lipwig?' rumbled Gladys, far above. At what, exactly? Moist thought. 'Ah, Gladys,' he said. 'Would you just go and stand at the window? Thank you!' There was a little tick! sound and Gladys turned round, holding another black arrow between thumb and forefinger. Its sudden deceleration in Gladys's grasp had caused it to catch fire. 'Someone Has Sent You An Arrow, Mr Lipwig,' she announced. 'Really? Just blow it out and put it in the in-tray, will you?' said Moist, crawling out of the door. 'I'm just going to see a man about a dog.' He picked up Mr Fusspot and hurried down the stairs through the thronged hall, down the stone steps — and there, just pulling up to the kerb, was a black coach. Ha! The man was always one jump ahead, right? He wrenched open the door as the coach came to a stop, landed heavily in an unoccupied seat with Mr Fusspot barking happily in his arms, glared across the carpet and said— 'Oh… sorry, I thought this was Lord Vetinari's coach…' A hand leaned over and slammed the door shut. It was wearing a large, black and very expensive glove, with jet beads embroidered into it. Moist's gaze followed it up an arm to a face, which said: 'No, Mr Lipwig. My name is Cosmo Lavish. I was just coming to see you. How do you do?' 97 Chapter 4 The dark ring — An unusual chin — A job for life but not for long' — Getting started — Fun with Journalism — It's all about the city — A mile in his shoes — A Lavish Occasion THE MAN… MADE THINGS. He was an unsung craftsman, because the things he made never ended up with his name on them. No, they usually bore the names of dead men on them, men who were masters of their craft. He, in his turn, was the master of one craft. It was the craft of seeming. 'Do you have the money?' 'Yes.' The man in the brown robe indicated the stolid troll next to him. 'Why did you bring that? Can't abide 'em.' 'Five hundred dollars is a lot to carry, Mr Morpeth. And a lot to pay for jewellery that isn't even silver, I may add,' said the young man, whose name was Heretofore. 'Yes, well, that's the trick, ain't it?' said the old man. 'I know this ain't exactly proper, what you're doing. An' I told you stygium's rarer than gold. It just don't sparkle… Well, unless you do things wrong. Believe me, I could sell all I could get to the Assassins. Those fine gentlemen do like their black, so they do. They love it to bits.' 'It's not illegal. No one owns the letter V. Look, we've been through this. Let me see it.' 98 The old man gave Heretofore a look, then opened a drawer and put a small box on top of his desk. He adjusted the reflectors on the lamps and said: 'Okay, open it.' The young man lifted the lid, and there it was, black as night, the serifed V a deeper, sharper shadow. He took a deep breath, reached out for the ring, and dropped it in horror. 'It's warm!' There was a snort from the maker of things that seemed.' 'course it is. That's stygium, that is. It drinks the light. If you was out in full daylight you'd be sucking your fingers and yellin'. Keep it in a box when it's bright outside, right? Or wear a glove over it if you're a swanker.' 'It's perfect!' 'Yes. It is.' The old man snatched the ring back, and Heretofore began to tumble into his own private Hell. 'It's just like the real thing, ain't it,' growled the seemer. 'Oh, don't look surprised. You think I don't know what I've made? I've seen the real one a coupla times, and this'd fool Vetinari hisself. That takes a lot of forgetting.' 'I don't know what you mean!' Heretofore protested. 'You are stupid, then.' 'I told you, no one owns the letter V!' 'You'll tell that to his lordship, will you? No, you won't. But you'll pay me another five hundred. I'm thinking of retiring anyway, and a little extra will get me a long way away' 'We had an agreement!' 'An' now we're having another one,' said Morpeth. 'This time you're buying forgetfulness.' The maker of things that seemed beamed happily. The young man looked unhappy and uncertain. 99 'This is priceless to someone, right?' Morpeth prompted. 'All right, five hundred, damn you.' 'Except it's a thousand now,' said the old man. 'See? You were too fast. You didn't haggle. Someone really needs my little toy, right? Fifteen hundred all in. You try to find anyone else in this city who can work stygium like me. An' if you open your mouth to say anything but "yes" it'll be two thousand. Have it my way' There was a longer pause, and Heretofore said: 'Yes. But I'll have to come back with the rest.' 'You do that, mister. I'll be here waiting. There, that wasn't too hard, was it? Nothing personal, it's just business.' The ring went back in the box, the box went back in the drawer. At a signal from the young man the troll dropped the bags on the floor and, job done, wandered off into the night. Heretofore turned suddenly, and the seemer's right hand flew down behind the desk. It relaxed when the young man said: 'You'll be here later, yes?' 'Me? I'm always here. See yourself out.' 'You'll be here?' 'I just said yes, didn't I?' In the darkness of the stinking hallway the young man opened the door, his heart thumping. A black-clad figure stepped inside. He couldn't see the face behind the mask, but he whispered: 'Box is in the top left drawer. Some kind of weapon on the right side. Keep the money. Just don't… hurt him, okay?' 'Hurt? That's not why I'm here!' hissed the dark figure. 'I know, but… do it neatly, all right?' 100 And then Heretofore was shutting the door behind him. It was raining. He went and stood in the doorway opposite. It was hard to hear noises above the rain and the sound of overflowing gutters, but he fancied he heard, above all this, a faint thump. It may have been his imagination, because he did not hear the door open or the approach of the killer, and he nearly swallowed his tongue when the man loomed in front of him, pressed the box into his hand and vanished into the rain. A smell of peppermint drifted out on to the street; the man was thorough, and he used a peppermint bomb to cover his scent. You stupid, stupid old fool! Heretofore said, in the turmoil of his skull. Why didn't you take the money and shut up! I had no choice! He wouldn't risk you telling anyone! Heretofore felt his stomach heave. He'd never meant it to be like this! He'd never meant for anyone to die! And then he threw up. That was last week. Things hadn't got any better. Lord Vetinari has a black coach. Other people also have black coaches. Therefore, not everyone in a black coach is Lord Vetinari. It was an important philosophical insight that Moist, to his regret, had forgotten in the heat of the moment. There was no heat now. Cosmo Lavish was cool, or at least making a spirited effort to be so. He wore black, of course, as people do to show how rich they are, but the real giveaway was the beard. It was, technically, a goatee similar to that of Lord Vetinari. A thin line of black hair came down each cheek, made a detour to loop equally thinly 101 under the nose, and met in a black triangle just below the lip, thus giving what Cosmo must have thought was a look of menacing elegance. And indeed, on Vetinari it was. On Cosmo the elegant facial topiary floated unhappily on blue jowls glistening with little tiny beads of sweat, and gave the effect of a pubic chin. Some master barber had to deal with it hair by hair every day, and his job wouldn't have been made any easier by the fact that Cosmo had inflated somewhat since the day he had adopted the style. There is a time in a thoughtless young man's life when his six-pack becomes a keg, but for Cosmo it had become a tub of lard. And then you saw the eyes, and they made up for everything. They had the faraway look of a man who can already see you dead… But probably not those of a killer himself, Moist hazarded. He probably bought death when he needed it. True, on fingers that were slightly too podgy for them were ostensibly knobbly poison rings, but surely anyone really in the business wouldn't have so many, would they? Real killers didn't bother to advertise. And why was the elegant black glove on the other hand? That was an Assassins' Guild affectation. Yep, guild-school trained, then. Lots of upper-class kids went there for the education but didn't do the Black Syllabus. He probably had a note from his mother saying he was excused stabbing. Mr Fusspot was trembling with fear or, perhaps, rage. In Moist's arms he was growling like a leopard. 'Ah, my stepmother's little dog,' said Cosmo as the coach began to move. 'How sweet. I do not waste words. I will give you ten thousand dollars for him, Mr Lipwig.' He held out a piece of paper in the ungloved hand. 'My note of hand for the money. Anyone in this city will accept it.' The voice of Cosmo was a kind of modulated sigh, as if talking was somehow painful. Moist read: 102 Please pay the sum of Ten Thousand Dollars to Moist von Lipwig And it was signed across a One Penny stamp by Cosmo Lavish, with many a flourish. Signed across a stamp… Where had that come from? But you saw it more and more in the city, and if you asked anyone why, they said: ' 'cos it makes it legal, see?' And it was cheaper than lawyers, and so it worked. And here it was, ten thousand dollars pointing directly at him. How dare he try to bribe me, thought Moist. In fact, that was his second thought, that of the soon-to-be wearer of a gold-ish chain. His first thought, courtesy of the old Moist, was: how dare he try to bribe me so small. 'No,' he said. 'Anyway, I'll get more than that for looking after him for a few months!' 'Ah yes, but my offer is less… risky.' 'You think?' Cosmo smiled. 'Come now, Mr Lipwig. We're men of the world—' '—you and I, yes?' Moist finished. 'That's so predictable. Besides, you should have offered me more money first.' At this point something happened in the vicinity of Cosmo's forehead. Both eyebrows began to twist like Mr Fusspot's when he was puzzled. They writhed for a moment, and then Cosmo saw Moist's expression, whereupon he slapped his brow and his momentary glare indicated that instant death would reward any comment. He cleared his throat and said: 'For what I can get free? We are making a very good case that my stepmother was insane when she made that will.' 103 'She seemed sharp as a tack to me, sir,' said Moist. 'With two loaded crossbows on her desk?' 'Ah, I see your point. Yes, if she was really sane she'd have hired a couple of trolls with big, big clubs.' Cosmo gave Moist a long, appraising look, or what he clearly thought was one, but Moist knew that tactic. It was supposed to make the lookee think they were being weighed up for a serious kicking, but it could just as easily mean 'I'll give him the ol' hard eyeball while I'm wondering what to do next'. Cosmo might be a ruthless man, but he wasn't a stupid one. A man in a gold suit gets noticed, and someone would remember whose coach he got into. 'I fear that my stepmother has landed you in a lot of trouble,' said Cosmo. 'I've been in trouble before,' said Moist. 'Oh? When was that?' And this came sharp and sudden. Ah. The past. Not a good place to go. Moist tried to avoid it. 'Very little is known about you, Mr Lipwig,' Cosmo went on. 'You were born in Uberwald, and you became our Postmaster General. In between…' 'I've managed to survive,' said Moist. 'An enviable achievement indeed,' said Cosmo. He tapped on the side of the coach and it began to slow. 'I trust it will continue. In the meantime, let me at least give you this…' He tore the bill in half and dropped the half that very emphatically did not carry his seal or signature on to Moist's lap. 'What's this for?' said Moist, picking it up while trying to restrain the frantic Mr Fusspot with the other hand. 104 'Oh, just a declaration of good faith,' said Cosmo, as the coach stopped. 'One day you might feel inclined to ask me for the other half. But understand me, Mr Lipwig, I don't usually take the trouble to do things the hard way.' 'Don't bother to do so on my account, please,' said Moist, wrenching the door open. Sator Square was outside, full of carts and people and embarrassingly potential witnesses. lor a moment Cosmo's forehead did that… eyebrow thing again. He gave it a slap, and said: 'Mr Lipwig, you misunderstand. This was the hard way. Goodbye. My regards to your young lady.' Moist spun on the cobbles, but the door had slammed shut and the coach was speeding away. 'Why didn't you add "We know where your children will go to school"?' he shouted after it. What now? Hell's bells, he had been dropped right in it! A little way up the street, the palace beckoned. Vetinari had some questions to answer. How had the man arranged it? The Watch said she'd died of natural causes! But he'd been trained as an assassin, yes? A real one, specializing in poisons, maybe. He strode in through the open gates, but the guards stopped him at the building itself. Moist knew them of old. There was probably an entrance exam for them. If they answered the question 'What is your name?' and got it wrong, they were hired. There were trolls that could out-think them. But you couldn't fool them, or talk them round. They had a list of people who could walk right in, and another of people who needed an appointment. If you weren't on either, you didn't get in. However, their captain, bright enough to read large type, did recognize 'Postmaster General' and 'Chairman of the Royal Bank' and sent one of the 105 lads knuckling off to see Drumknott, carrying a scribbled note. To Moist's surprise, ten minutes later he was being ushered into the Oblong Office. Seats around the big conference table at one end of the room were fully occupied. Moist recognized a few guild leaders, but quite a few were average-looking citizens, working men, men who looked ill at ease indoors. Maps of the city were strewn across the table. He'd interrupted something. Or rather, Vetinari had interrupted something for him. Lord Vetinari got up as soon as Moist entered, and beckoned him forward. 'Please excuse me, ladies, gentlemen, but I do need some time with the Postmaster General. Drumknott, do take everyone through the figures again, will you? Mr Lipwig, this way, if you please.' Moist thought he heard muffled laughter behind them as he was ushered into what he at first thought was a high-ceilinged corridor but which turned out to be a sort of art gallery. Vetinari shut the door behind them. The click seemed, to Moist, to be very loud. His anger was draining fast, to be replaced by a very chilly feeling. Vetinari was a tyrant, after all. If Moist was never seen again his lordship's reputation would only be enhanced. 'Do put Mr Fusspot down,' said Vetinari. 'It will do the little chap good to run about.' Moist lowered the dog to the ground. It was like dropping a shield. And now he could take in what it was this gallery exhibited. What he'd thought were carved stone busts were faces, made of wax. And Moist knew how and when they were made, too. They were death masks. 'My predecessors,' said Vetinari, strolling down the line. 'Not a complete collection, of course. In some cases the head could not be found or was, as you might say, in a rather untidy state.' There was a silence. Foolishly, Moist filled it. 106 'It must be strange, having them look down on you every day,' he managed. 'Oh, do you think so? I have to say I've rather looked down on them. Gross men, for the most part, greedy, venal and clumsy. Cunning can do duty for thought up to a point, and then you die. Most of them died rich, fat and terrified. They left the city the worse for their incumbency and the better for their death. But now the city works, Mr Lipwig. We progress. We would not do so if the ruler was the kind of man who would kill elderly ladies, do you understand?' 'I never said—' 'I know exactly what you never said. You refrained from saying it very loudly.' Vetinari raised an eyebrow. 'I am extremely angry, Mr Lipwig.' 'But I've been dropped right in it!' 'Not by me,' said Vetinari. 'I can assure you that if I had, as your ill-assumed street patois has it, "dropped you in it" you would fully understand all meanings of "drop" and have an unenviable knowledge of "it".' 'You know what I mean!' 'Dear me, is this the real Moist von Lipwig speaking, or is it just the man looking forward to his very nearly gold chain? Topsy Lavish knew she was going and simply changed her will. I salute her for it. The staff will accept you more easily, too. And she's done you a great favour.' 'Favour? I was shot at!' 'That was just the Assassins' Guild dropping you a note to say they are watching you.' 'There were two shots!' 'Possibly for emphasis?' said Vetinari, sitting down on a velvet-covered chair. 107 'Look, banking is supposed to be dull! Numbers, pensions, a job for life!' 'For life possibly, but apparently not for long,' said Vetinari, clearly enjoying this. 'Can't you do something?' 'About Cosmo Lavish? Why should I? Offering to buy a dog is not illegal.' 'But the whole family is— How did you know that? I didn't tell you!' Vetinari waved a hand dismissively. 'Know the man, know the method. I know Cosmo. In this sort of situation he will not resort to force if money will work. He can be very personable when he wants to be.' 'But I've heard about the rest of them. They sound a pretty poisonous bunch.' 'I couldn't possibly comment. However, Topsy has helped you there. The Assassins' Guild won't take out a second contract on you. Conflict of interests, you see. I suppose technically they could accept a contract on the chairman, but I doubt if they will. Killing a lap-dog? It would not look good on anyone's resume.' 'I didn't sign up to deal with something like this!' 'No, Mr Lipwig, you signed up to die,' snapped Vetinari, his voice suddenly as cold and deadly as a falling icicle. 'You signed up to be justly hanged by the neck until dead for crimes against the city, against the public good, against the trust of man for man. And you were resurrected, because the city required you to be. This is about the city, Mr Lipwig. It is always about the city. You know, of course, that I have plans?' 'It was in the Times. The Undertaking. You want to build roads and drains and streets under the city. There's some dwarf machine we've got hold of, called a Device. And the dwarfs can make waterproof tunnels. The Artificers' Guild are very excited about it all.' 108 'I gather by your sombre tones that you are not?' Moist gave a shrug. Engines of any sort had never interested him. 'I don't think much about it one way or the other.' 'Astonishing,' said Vetinari, taken aback. 'Well, Mr Lipwig, you can at least guess at what we will need in very large amounts for this project.' 'Shovels?' 'Finance, Mr Lipwig. And I would have it, if we had a banking system suitable for the times. I have every confidence in your ability to… shake things up a little.' Moist tried one last throw. 'The Post Office needs me—' he began. 'At the moment it does not, and you chafe at the thought,' said Vetinari. 'You are not a man for the humdrum. I hereby grant you leave of absence. Mr Groat has been your deputy, and while he may not have your… flair, let us say, he will I am sure keep things moving along.' He stood up, indicating that the audience was at an end. 'The city bleeds, Mr Lipwig, and you are the clot I need. Go away and make money. Unlock the wealth of Ankh-Morpork. Mrs Lavish gave you the bank in trust. Run it well.' 'It's the dog that's got the bank, you know!' 'And what a trusting little face he has,' said Vetinari, ushering Moist to the door. 'Don't let me detain you, Mr Lipwig. Remember: it's all about the city.' There was another protest march going on when Moist walked to the bank. There'd been more and more of them lately. It was a funny thing, but everyone seemed to want to live under the despotic rule of the tyrannical 109 Lord Vetinari. They poured into the city whose streets were apparently paved with gold. It wasn't gold. But the influx was having an effect, no doubt about it. Wages were falling, to start with. This march was against the employment of golems, who uncomplainingly did the dirtiest jobs, worked around the clock, and were so honest they paid their taxes. But they weren't human and they had glowing eyes, and people could get touchy about that sort of thing. Mr Bent must have been waiting behind a pillar. Moist was no sooner through the doors of the bank, Mr Fusspot tucked happily under his arm, than the chief cashier was by his side. 'The staff are very concerned, sir,' he said, piloting Moist towards the stairs. 'I took the liberty of telling them that you would speak to them later.' Moist was aware of the worried stares. And of other things, too, now that he was looking with an almost proprietorial eye. Yes, the bank had been built well out of fine materials; get past that and you could see the neglect and the marks of time. It was like the now inconveniently large house of a poor old widow who just couldn't see the dust any more. The brass was rather tarnished, the red velvet curtains frayed and a little bald in places, the marble floor was only erratically shiny— 'What?' he said. 'Oh, yes. Good idea. Can you get this place cleaned up?' 'Sir?' 'The carpets are mucky, the plush ropes are unravelled, the curtains have seen better centuries and the brass needs a jolly good scrub. The bank should look smart, Mr Bent. You might give money to a beggar but you wouldn't lend it to him, eh?' Bent's eyebrows rose. 'And that's the chairman's view, is it?' he said. 110 'The chairman? Oh, yes. Mr Fusspot's very keen on clean. Isn't that right, Mr Fusspot?' Mr Fusspot stopped growling at Mr Bent long enough to bark a couple of times. 'See?' said Moist. 'When you don't know what to do, comb your hair and clean your shoes. Words of wisdom, Mr Bent. Jump to it.' 'I shall elevate myself to the best of my ability, sir,' said Bent. 'Meanwhile, a young lady has called, sir. She seemed reluctant to give her name but said you would be pleased to see her. I have ushered her into the small boardroom.' 'Did you have to open a window?' said Moist hopefully. 'No, sir.' That ruled out Adora Belle, then, to replace her with a horrifying thought. 'She's not one of the Lavish family, is she?' 'No, sir. And it's time for Mr… it's time for the chairman's lunch, sir. He has cold boned chicken because of his stomach. I'll have it sent along to the small boardroom, shall I?' 'Yes, please. Could you rustle up something for me?' 'Rustle, sir?' Bent looked puzzled. 'You mean steal?' Ah, that kind of man, Moist thought. 'I meant find me something to eat,' he translated. 'Certainly, sir. There is a small kitchen in the suite and we have a chef on call. Mrs Lavish has lived here for some time. It will be interesting to have a Master of the Royal Mint again.' 111 'I like the sound of Master of the Royal Mint,' Moist said. 'How about that, Mr Fusspot?' On cue, the chairman barked. 'Hmm,' said Bent. 'One final thing, sir. Could you please sign these?' He indicated a pile of paperwork. 'What are they? They're not minutes, are they? I don't do minutes.' 'They are various formalities, sir. Basically, they add up to your signing a receipt for the bank on the chairman's behalf, but I am advised that Mr Fusspot's paw mark should appear in the places ticked.' 'Does he have to read all this?' said Moist. 'No, sir.' 'Then I won't. It's a bank. You've given me the big tour. It's not as though it's got a wheel missing. Just show me where to sign.' 'Just here, sir. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here… The lady in the boardroom was certainly an attractive woman, but since she worked for the Times Moist felt unable to award her total ladylike status. Ladies didn't fiendishly quote exactly what you said but didn't exactly mean, or hit you around the ear with unexpectedly difficult questions. Well, come to think of it, they did, quite often, but she got paid for it. But, he had to admit, Sacharissa Cripslock was fun. 'Sacharissa! This is a should-have-been-expected surprise!' he declared, as he stepped into the room. 112 'Mr Lipwig! Always a pleasure!' said the woman. 'So you are a dog's body now?' That kind of fun. A bit like juggling knives. You were constantly on your toes. It was as good as a workout. 'Writing the headlines already, Sacharissa?' he said. 'I am merely carrying out the terms of Mrs Lavish's will.' He put Mr Fusspot on the polished tabletop and sat down. 'So you're now chairman of the bank?' 'No, Mr Fusspot here is the chairman,' said Moist. 'Bark circumspectly at the nice lady with the busy pencil, Mr Fusspot!' 'Woof,' said Mr Fusspot. 'Mr Fusspot is the chairman,' said Sacharissa, rolling her eyes. 'Of course. And you take orders from him, do you?' 'Yes. I am Master of the Royal Mint, by the way.' 'A dog and his master,' said Sacharissa. 'How nice. And I expect you can read his thoughts because of some mystic bond between dog and man?' 'Sacharissa, I could not have put it better.' They smiled at each other. This was only round one. Both knew they were barely warming up. 'So, I take it that you would not agree with those who say that this is one last ruse by the late Mrs Lavish to keep the bank out of the hands of the rest of her family, believed by some to be totally incapable of running it anywhere but further into the ground? Or would you confirm the opinion of many that the Patrician has every intention of bringing the city's uncooperative banking industry to heel, and finds in this situation the perfect opportunity?' 113 'Some who believe, those who say… Who are these mysterious people?' said Moist, trying to raise an eyebrow as good as Vetinari's. And how is it that you know so many of them?' Sacharissa sighed. 'And you wouldn't describe Mr Fusspot as really little more than a convenient sock puppet?' 'Woof?' said the dog at the mention of his name. 'I find the very question offensive!' said Moist. 'And so does he!' 'Moist, you are just no fun any more.' Sacharissa closed her notebook. 'You're talking like… well, like a banker.' 'I'm glad you think so.' Remember, just because she's shut the notebook doesn't mean you can relax! 'No dashing around on mad stallions? Nothing to make us cheer? No wild dreams?' said Sacharissa. 'Well, I'm already tidying up the foyer.' Sacharissa's eyes narrowed. 'Tidying the foyer? Who are you, and what have you done with the real Moist von Lipwig?' 'No, I'm serious. We have to clean up ourselves before we can clean up the economy,' said Moist, and felt his brain shift seductively into a higher gear. 'I intend to throw out what we don't need. For example, we have a room full of useless metal in the vault. That'll have to go.' Sacharissa frowned. 'Are you talking about the gold?' Where had that come from? Well, don't try to back away, or she'll go for the throat. Tough it out! Besides, it's good to see her looking astonished. 'Yes,' he said. 'You can't be serious!' 114 The notebook was instantly flipped open, and Moist's tongue began to gallop. He couldn't stop it. It would have been nice if it had talked to him first. Taking over his brain, it said: 'Deadly serious! I am recommending to Lord Vetinari that we sell it all to the dwarfs. We do not need it. It's a commodity and nothing more.' 'But what's worth more than gold?' 'Practically everything. You, for example. Gold is heavy. Your weight in gold is not very much gold at all. Aren't you worth more than that?' Sacharissa looked momentarily flustered, to Moist's glee. 'Well, in a manner of speaking—' 'The only manner of speaking worth talking about,' said Moist flatly. 'The world is full of things worth more than gold. But we dig the damn stuff up and then bury it in a different hole. Where's the sense in that? What are we, magpies? Is it all about the gleam? Good heavens, potatoes are worth more than gold!' 'Surely not!' 'If you were shipwrecked on a desert island, what would you prefer, a bag of potatoes or a bag of gold?' 'Yes, but a desert island isn't Ankh-Morpork!' 'And that proves gold is only valuable because we agree it is, right? It's just a dream. But a potato is always worth a potato, anywhere. A knob of butter and a pinch of salt and you've got a meal, anywhere. Bury gold in the ground and you'll be worrying about thieves for ever. Bury a potato and in due season you could be looking at a dividend of a thousand per cent.' 'Can I assume for a moment that you don't intend to put us on the potato standard?' said Sacharissa sharply. Moist smiled. 'No, it won't be that. But in a few days I shall be giving away money. It doesn't like to stand still, you know. It likes to get out and make 115 new friends.' The bit of Moist's brain that was trying to keep up with his mouth thought: I wish I could make notes about this, I'm not sure I can remember it all. But the conversations of the last day were banging together in his memory and making a kind of music. He wasn't sure he had all the notes yet, but there were bits he could hum. He just had to listen to himself for long enough to find out what he was talking about. 'By give away you mean—' said Sacharissa. 'Hand over. Make a gift of. Seriously.' 'How? Why?' 'All in good time!' 'You are smirking at me, Moist!' No, I've frozen because I've just heard what my mouth said, Moist thought. I don't have a clue, I've just got some random thoughts. It's… 'It's about desert islands,' he said. 'And why this city isn't one.' 'And that's it?' Moist rubbed his forehead. 'Miss Cripslock, Miss Cripslock… this morning I got up with nothing in mind but to seriously make headway with the Post Office paperwork and maybe lick the problem of that Special 25p Cabbage Green Special stamp. You know, the one that'll grow into a cabbage if you plant it? How can you expect me to come up with a new fiscal initiative by teatime?' 'All right, but—' 'It'll take me at least until breakfast.' He saw her write that down. Then she tucked the notebook in her handbag. 116 'This is going to be fun, isn't it?' she said, and Moist thought: never trust her when she's put her notebook away, either. She's got a good memory. 'Seriously, I think this is an opportunity for me to do something big and important for my adopted city,' said Moist, in his sincere voice. 'That's your sincere voice,' she said. 'Well, I'm being sincere,' said Moist. 'But since you raise the subject, Moist, what were you doing with your life before the citizens of Ankh-Morpork greeted you with open palms?' 'Surviving,' said Moist. 'In Uberwald the old empire was breaking up. It was not unusual for a government to change twice over lunch. I worked at anything I could to make a living. By the way, I think you meant "arms" back there,' he added. 'And when you got here you impressed the gods so much that they led you to a treasure trove so that you could rebuild our Post Office.' 'I'm very humble about that,' said Moist, trying to look it. 'Ye-ess. And the god-given gold was all in used coinage from the Plains cities…' 'You know what, I've often lain awake wondering about that myself,' said Moist, 'and I reached the conclusion that the gods, in their wisdom, decided that the gift should be instantly negotiable.' I can go on like this for as long as you like, he thought, and you're trying to play poker with no cards. You can suspect all you like, but I gave that money back! Okay, I stole it in the first place, but giving it back counts for something, doesn't it? The slate is clean, isn't it? Well, acceptably grubby, yes? The door opened slowly, and a young and nervous woman crept in, holding a plate of cold chicken. Mr Fusspot brightened up as she placed it in front of him. 117 'Sorry, can we get you a coffee or something?' said Moist, as the girl headed back towards the door. Sacharissa stood up. 'Thank you, but no. I'm on a deadline, Mr Lipwig. I'm sure we'll be talking again very soon.' 'I'm certain of it, Miss Cripslock,' said Moist. She took a step towards him and lowered her voice. 'Do you know who that girl was?' 'No, I hardly know anyone yet.' 'So you don't know if you can trust her?' 'Trust her?' Sacharissa sighed. 'This is not like you, Moist. She's just given a plate of food to the most valuable dog in the world. A dog that some people might like to see dead.' 'Why shouldn't—' Moist began. They both turned to Mr Fusspot, who was already licking the empty plate up the length of the table with an appreciative gronf-gronf noise. 'Er… can you see yourself out?' said Moist, hurrying towards the sliding plate. 'If you're in any doubt, stick your fingers down his throat!' said Sacharissa from the door with, Moist considered, an inappropriate amount of amusement. He grabbed the dog and hurried through the far door, after the girl. It led to a narrow and not particularly well decorated corridor with a green door at the end, from which came the sound of voices. Moist barged through it. 118 In the small, neat kitchen beyond, a tableau greeted him. The young woman was backed against a table, and a bearded man in a white suit was wielding a big knife. They looked shocked. 'What's going on?' Moist yelled. 'Er, er… you just ran through the door and shouted?' said the girl. 'Was something wrong? I always give Mr Fusspot his appetizer about now.' 'And I'm doing his entree,' said the man, bringing the knife down on a tray of offal. 'It's chicken necks stuffed with giblets, with his special toffee pudding for afters. And who's asking?' 'I'm the— I'm his owner,' said Moist, as haughtily as he could manage. The chef removed his white hat. 'Sorry, sir, of course you are. The gold suit and everything. This is Peggy, my daughter. I'm Aimsbury, sir.' Moist had managed to calm down a little. 'Sorry,' he said. 'I was just worried that someone might try to poison Mr Fusspot…' 'We were just talking about that,' said Aimsbury. 'I thought that— Hold on, you don't mean me, do you?' 'No, no, certainly not!' said Moist to the man still holding a knife. 'Well, all right,' said Aimsbury, mollified. 'You're new, sir, you're not to know. That Cosmo kicked Mr Fusspot once!' 'He'd poison anyone, he would,' said Peggy. 'But I go down to the market every day, sir, and select the little dog's food myself. And it's stored downstairs in the cool room, and I have the only key.' Moist relaxed. 'You couldn't knock up an omelette for me, could you?' he said. 119 The chef looked panicky. 'That's eggs, right?' he said nervously. 'Never really got involved with cooking eggs, sir. He has a raw one in his steak tartare on Fridays and Mrs Lavish used to have two raw ones in her gin and orange juice every morning, and that is about it between me 'n' eggs. I've got a pig's head sousing if you'd fancy some of that. Got tongue, hearts, marrowbone, sheep's head, nice bit o' dewlap, melts, slaps, lights, liver, kidneys, beccles—' In his youth, Moist had been served a lot off that menu. It was exactly the sort of food that you should serve to kids if you want them to grow up skilled in the arts of barefaced lying, sleight of hand and camouflage. As a matter of course Moist had hidden those strange wobbly meats under his vegetables, on one occasion achieving a potato twelve inches high. Light dawned. 'Did you cook much for Mrs Lavish?' said Moist. 'Nosir. She lived on gin, vegetable soup, her morning pick-me-up and—' 'Gin,' said Peggy firmly. 'So you're basically a dog chef?' 'Canine, sir, if it's all the same to you. You may have read my book? Cooking with Brains?' Aimsbury said this rather hopelessly, and rightly so. 'Unusual path to follow,' said Moist. 'Well, sir, it enables me to… it's safer… well, the truth is, I have an allergy, sir.' The chef sighed. 'Show him, Peggy.' The girl nodded and pulled a grubby card out of her pocket. 'Please don't say this word, sir,' she said, and held it up. Moist stared. 'You just can't avoid it in the catering business, sir,' said Aimsbury miserably. 120 This wasn't the time, really wasn't the time. But if you weren't interested in people, then you didn't have the heart of a trickster. 'You're allergic to g— this stuff?' he said, correcting himself just in time. 'No, sir. The word, sir. I can handle the actual allium in question, I can even eat it, but the sound of it, well…' Moist looked at the word again, and shook his head sadly. 'So I have to shun restaurants, sir.' 'I can see that. How are you with the word… "leek"?' 'Yes, sir, I know where you're going, I've been there. Far leek, tar lick… no effect at all' 'Just garlic, then— Oh, sorry…' Aimsbury froze, with a distant expression on his face. 'Gods, I'm so sorry, I honestly didn't mean—' Moist began. 'I know,' said Peggy wearily. 'The word just forces its way out, doesn't it? He'll be like this for fifteen seconds, then he'll throw the knife straight ahead of him, and then he'll speak in fluent Quirmian for about four seconds, and then he'll be fine. Here' — she handed Moist a bowl containing a large brown lump — 'you go back in there with the sticky toffee pudding and I'll hide in the pantry. I'm used to it. And I can do you an omelette, too.' She pushed Moist through the door and shut it behind him. He put down the bowl, to the immediate and fully focused interest of Mr Fusspot. Watching a dog try to chew a large piece of toffee is a pastime fit for gods. Mr Fusspot's mixed ancestry had given him a dexterity of jaw that was 121 truly awesome. He somersaulted happily around the floor making faces like a rubber gargoyle in a washing machine. After a few seconds Moist distinctly heard the twang of a knife vibrating in woodwork, followed by a scream of: ' Nom d'une bouilloire! Pourquoi est-ce que je suis hardiment ri sous cape a part les dieux?' There was a knock at the double doors, followed instantly by the entry of Bent. He was carrying a large round box. 'The suite is now ready for you, Master,' he announced. 'That is to say, for Mr Fusspot.' 'A suite?' 'Oh, yes. The chairman has a suite.' 'Oh, that suite. He has to live above the shop, as it were?' 'Indeed. Mr Slant has been kind enough to give me a copy of the conditions of the legacy. The chairman must sleep in the bank every night—' 'But I've got a perfectly good apartment in the—' 'Ahem. They are the Conditions, sir,' said Bent. 'You can have the bed, of course,' he added generously. 'Mr Fusspot will sleep in his in-tray. He was born in it, as a matter of interest.' 'I have to stay locked up here every night?' In fact, when Moist saw the suite the prospect looked much less like a penance. He had to open four doors even before he found a bed. It had a dining room, a dressing room, a bathroom, a separate flushing privy, a spare bedroom, a passage to the office which was a kind of public room, and a little private study. The master bedroom contained a huge oak four-poster with damask hangings, and Moist fell in love with it at once. He tried it for size. It was so soft that it was like lying in a huge warm puddle — 122 He sat bolt upright. 'Did Mrs Lavish—' he began, panic rising. 'She died sitting at her desk, Master,' said Bent soothingly, as he untied the string on the big round box. 'We have replaced the chair. By the way, she is to be buried tomorrow. Small Gods, at noon, family members only by request.' 'Small Gods? That's a bit downmarket for a Lavish, isn't it?' 'I believe a number of Mrs Lavish's ancestors are buried there. She did once tell me in a moment of confidence that she would be damned if she was going to be a Lavish for all eternity.' There was a rustle of paper, and Bent added: 'Your hat, sir.' 'What hat?' 'For the Master of the Royal Mint.' Bent held it up. It was a black silk hat. Once it had been shiny. Now it was mostly bald. Old tramps wore better hats. It could have been designed to look like a big pile of dollars, it could have been a crown, it could have been set with small jewelled scenes depicting embezzlement through the ages, the progression of negotiable currency from snot to little white shells and cows and all the way to gold. It could have said something about the magic of money. It could have been good. A black top hat. No style. No style at all. 'Mr Bent, can you arrange for someone to go over to the Post Office and get them to bring my stuff over here?' said Moist, looking glumly at the wreck. 'Of course, Master.' 'I think "Mr Lipwig" will be fine, thank you.' 'Yes, sir. Of course.' 123 Moist sat down at the enormous desk and ran his hands lovingly across the worn green leather. Vetinari, damn him, had been right. The Post Office had made him cautious and defensive. He'd run out of challenges, run out of fun. Thunder grumbled, away in the distance, and the afternoon sun was being threatened by blue-black clouds. One of those heavy all-night storms was rolling in from the plains. There tended to be more crimes on rainy nights these days, according to the Times. Apparently it was because of the werewolf in the Watch: rain made smells hard to track. After a while Peggy brought him an omelette containing absolutely no mention of the word 'garlic'. And shortly after that, Gladys arrived with his wardrobe. All of it, including the door, carried under one arm. It bounced off the walls and ceiling as she lumbered with it across the carpet and dropped it in the middle of the big bedroom floor. Moist went to follow her, but she held up her huge hands in horror. 'No, Sir! Let Me Come Out First!' She clumped past him into the hallway. 'That Was Nearly Very Bad,' she said. Moist waited to see if anything more was forthcoming, and then prompted: 'Why, exactly?' 'A Man And A Young Woman Should Not Be In The Same Bedroom,' said the golem with solemn certitude. 'Er, how old are you, Gladys?' said Moist carefully. 'One Thousand And Fifty-Four Years, Mr Lipwig.' 'Er, right. And you are made of clay. I mean, everyone's made of clay, in a manner of speaking, but, as a golem, you are, as it were, er… very made of clay…' 124 'Yes, Mr Lipwig, But I Am Not Married.' Moist groaned. 'Gladys, what did the counter girls give you to read this time?' he said. 'It Is Lady Deirdre Waggon's Prudent Advice For Young Women,' said Gladys. 'It Is Most Interesting. It Is How Things Are Done.' She pulled a slim book out of the huge pocket in her dress. It had a chintzy look. Moist sighed. It was the kind of old-fashioned etiquette book that'd tell you Ten Things Not To Do With Your Parasol. 'I see,' he said. He didn't know how to explain. Even worse, he didn't know what he'd be explaining. Golems were… golems. Big lumps of clay with the spark of life in them. Clothes? What for? Even the male golems in the Post Office just had a lick of blue and gold paint to make them look smart— Hold on, he was catching it now! There were no male golems! Golems were golems, and had been happy to be just golems for thousands of years! And now they were in modern Ankh-Morpork, where all kinds of races and people and ideas were shaken up and it was amazing what dripped out of the bottle. Without a further word Gladys clumped across the hallway, turned round and stood still. The glow in her eyes settled down to a dull red. And that was it. She had decided to stay. In his in-tray, Mr Fusspot snored. Moist took out the half-bill that Cosmo had given him. Desert island. Desert island. I know I think best when I'm under pressure, but what exactly did I mean? On a desert island gold is worthless. Food gets you through times of no gold much better than gold gets you through times of no food. If it comes to that, gold is worthless in a goldmine, too. The medium of exchange in a goldmine is the pickaxe. 125 Hmm. Moist stared at the bill. What does it need to make it worth ten thousand dollars? The seal and signature of Cosmo, that's what. Everyone knows he's good for it. Good for nothing but money, the bastard. Banks use these all the time, he thought. Any bank in the Plains would give me the cash, withholding a commission, of course, because banks skim you top and bottom. Still, it's much easier than lugging bags of coins around. Of course, I'd have to sign it too, otherwise it wouldn't be secure. I mean, if it was blank after 'pay', anyone could use it. Desert island, desert island… On a desert island a bag of vegetables is worth more than gold, in the city gold is more valuable than the bag of vegetables. This is a sort of equation, yes? Where's the value? He stared. It's in the city itself. The city says: in exchange for that gold, you will have all these things. The city is the magician, the alchemist in reverse. It turns worthless gold into… everything. How much is Ankh-Morpork worth? Add it all up! The buildings, the streets, the people, the skills, the art in the galleries, the guilds, the laws, the libraries… Billions? No. No money would be enough. The city was one big gold bar. What did you need to back the currency? You just needed the city. The city says a dollar is worth a dollar. It was a dream, but Moist was good at selling dreams. And if you could sell the dream to enough people, no one dared wake up. In a little rack on the desk are an ink pad and two rubber stamps, showing the city's coat of arms and the seal of the bank. But in Moist's eyes, there is a haze of gold around these simple things, too. They have value. 'Mr Fusspot?' said Moist. The dog sat up in his tray, looking expectant. 126 Moist pushed his sleeves back and flexed his fingers. 'Shall we make some money, Mr Chairman?' he said. The chairman expressed unconditional agreement by means of going 'woof!' ' Pay The Bearer The Sum Of One Dollar,' Moist wrote on a piece of crisp bank paper. He stamped the paper with both the stamps, and gave the result a long critical look. It needed something more. You had to give people a show. The eye was everything. It needed… a touch of gravitas, like the bank itself. Who'd bank in a wooden hut? Hmm. Ah, yes. It was all about the city, right? Underneath he wrote, in large ornate letters: AD URBEM PERTINET And, in smaller letters, after some thought: 'Promitto fore ut possessori postulanti nummum unum solvent, an apte satisfaciam. Signed Moist von Lipwig pp The Chairman. 127 'Excuse me, Mr Chairman,' he said, and lifted the dog up. It was the work of a moment to press a front paw on the damp pad and leave a neat little footprint beside the signature. Moist went through this a dozen or more times, tucked five of the resulting bills under the blotter and took the rest of the new money, and the chairman, for walkies. Cosmo Lavish glared at his reflection in the mirror. Often he got it right in the glass three or four times in a row, and then — oh, the shame — he'd try it in public and people, if they were foolish enough to mention it, would say: 'Have you got something in your eye?' He'd even had a device constructed that pulled at one eyebrow repeatedly, by means of clockwork. He'd poisoned the man who made it, there and then as he took delivery, chatting with him in his smelly little workshop while the stuff took hold. He'd been nearly eighty and Cosmo had been very careful, so it never came to the attention of the Watch. Anyway, at that age it shouldn't really count as murder, should it? It was more like a favour, really. And obviously he couldn't risk the old fool blabbing happily to someone after Cosmo had become Patrician. On reflection, he thought, he should have waited until he was certain that the eyebrow-training machine was working properly. It had given him a black eye before he'd made a few hesitant adjustments. How did Vetinari do it? It was what had got him the Patricianship, Cosmo was sure. Well, a couple of mysterious murders had helped, admittedly, but it was the way the man could raise an eyebrow that kept him there. Cosmo had studied Vetinari for a long time. It was easy enough, at social gatherings. He'd cut out every picture that appeared in the Times, too. What was the secret that kept the man so powerful and unscathed? How might he be understood? And then one day he'd read in some book or other: ' If you want to understand a man, walk a mile in his shoes' . 128 And he'd had a great and glorious idea… He sighed happily and tugged at the black glove. He'd been sent to the Assassins' school as a matter of course. It was the natural destination for young men of a certain class and accent. He'd survived, and had made a study of poisons because he'd heard that was Vetinari's speciality, but the place had bored him. It was so stylized now. They'd got so wrapped up in some ridiculous concepts of honour and elegance that they seemed to forget what it was an assassin was supposed to do… The glove came free, and there it was. Oh yes… Heretofore had done magnificently. Cosmo stared at the wondrous thing, moving his hand so that it caught the light. Light did strange things to stygium: sometimes it reflected silver, sometimes an oily yellow, sometimes it remained resolutely black. And it was warm, even here. In direct sunlight it would burst into flame. It was a metal that might have been intended for those who move in shadow… The ring of Vetinari. Vetinari's signet ring. Such a small thing, and yet so powerful. It was entirely without ornamentation unless you counted the tiny border to the cartouche which surrounded, sharply incised and serifed, the single letter: V He could only guess at all the things his secretary had had to do to get it. He'd had a replica made, 'reversed-devised', whatever that was, from the wax seals it had so impressively stamped. And there had been bribes 129 (expensive ones) and hints of hasty meetings and cautious exchanges and last-minute changes to get the replica exactly right— And here the real one was, on his finger. Very much on his finger in fact. From Cosmo's point of view Vetinari had very slender fingers for a man, and getting the ring over the knuckle had been a real effort. Heretofore had fretted about getting it enlarged, foolishly not realizing that this would completely ruin it. The magic, and surely Vetinari had a magic all his own, would leak out. It wouldn't be totally the real thing any more. Yes, it had hurt like hell for a few days, but now he was floating above the pain, in a clear blue sky. He prided himself he was no fool. He'd have known at once if his secretary had tried to palm him off with a mere copy. The shock that went up his arm when he slid the ring, all right forced the ring over the knuckle was enough to tell him that he had got the real thing. Already he could feel his thoughts getting sharper and faster. He brushed a forefinger across the deeply cut V and looked up at Drumk— at Heretofore. 'You seem concerned, Heretofore,' he said kindly. 'The finger has gone very white, sir. Almost pale blue. Are you sure it doesn't hurt?' 'Not a bit. I feel… utterly in control. You seem very… worried lately, Heretofore. Are you well?' 'Um… fine, sir,' said Heretofore. 'You must understand I sent Mr Cranberry with you for the best of reasons,' said Cosmo. 'Morpeth would have told someone, sooner or later, however much you paid him.' 'But the boy in the hat shop—' 130 'Exactly the same situation. And it was a fair fight. Was that not so, Cranberry?' Cranberry's shiny bald head looked up from his book. 'Yes, sir. He was armed.' 'Bu—' Heretofore began. 'Yes?' said Cosmo calmly. 'Er… nothing, sir. You are right, of course.' In possession of a small knife and very drunk. Heretofore wondered how much that counted against a professional killer. 'I am, aren't I?' said Cosmo in a kindly voice, 'and you are excellent at what you do. As is Cranberry. I shall have another little quest for you soon, I feel it. Now do go and get your supper. As Heretofore opened the door Cranberry glanced up at Cosmo, who shook his head almost imperceptibly. Unfortunately for Heretofore, he had excellent peripheral vision. He's going to find out, he's going to find out, he's going to find oouuuttt!!! he moaned to himself as he scurried along the corridors. It's the damn ring, that's what it is! It's not my fault Vetinari has thin fingers! He would have smelled a rat if the bloody thing had fitted! Why didn't he let me have it made bigger? Hah, and if I had he'd have sent Cranberry along later to murder the jeweller! I know he'll send him after me, I know it! Cranberry frightened Heretofore. The man was quietly spoken and modestly dressed. And when Cosmo did not require his services he sat and read books all day. That upset Heretofore. If the man were an illiterate thug things would, in some strange way, have been better, more… understandable. The man apparently had no body hair, too, and the gleam from his head could blind you in sunlight. 131 And it had all begun with a lie. Why had Cosmo believed him? Because he was mad, but regrettably not all the time; he was a sort of hobby madman. He had this… thing about Lord Vetinari. Heretofore hadn't spotted that at first, he'd just wondered why Cosmo had fussed about his height at the job interview. And when Heretofore had told him he'd worked at the palace he'd been hired on the spot. And that was the lie, right there, although Heretofore preferred to think of it as an unfortunate conjunction of two truths. Heretofore had indeed been employed for a while at the palace, and thus far Cosmo had not found out that this was as a gardener. He had been a minor secretary at the Armourers' Guild before that, which was why he'd felt confident in saying 'I was a minor secretary and I was employed at the palace', a phrase that he felt Lord Vetinari would have examined with more care than the delighted Cosmo had done. And now here he was, advising a very important and clever man on the basis of as much rumour as he could remember or, in desperation, make up. And he was getting away with it. In his everyday business dealings Cosmo was cunning, ruthless and sharp as a tack, but when it came to anything to do with Vetinari he was as credulous as a child. Heretofore noticed that his boss occasionally called him by the name of the Patrician's secretary, but he was being paid fifty dollars a month, food and own bed thrown in, and for that kind of money he'd answer to 'Daisy'. Well, perhaps not Daisy, but certainly Clive. And then the nightmare had begun, and in the way of nightmares, everyday objects took on a sinister importance. Cosmo had asked for an old pair of Vetinari's boots. That had been a poser; Heretofore had never been inside the actual palace, but he'd got into the grounds that night by scaling the fence next to the old green garden gate, met one of his old mates who had to stay up all night to keep the hothouse boilers going, had a little chat, and the following night returned for a pair of old but serviceable black boots, size eight, and 132 information from the boot boy that his lordship wore down the left heel slightly more than the right. Heretofore couldn't see any difference in the boots presented, and no one was actually claiming as a fact that these were the fabled Boots Of Vetinari, but well-worn yet still useful boots floated down from the upper floors to the servants' quarters on a tide of noblesse oblige, and if these weren't the boots of the man himself then they had almost certainly, at the very least, sometimes been in the same room as his feet. Heretofore handed over ten dollars for them and spent an evening wearing down the left heel enough to be noticeable. Cosmo paid him fifty dollars without flinching, although he did wince when he tried them on. 'If you want to understand a man, walk a mile in his shoes,' he'd said, hobbling the length of his office. What insight he'd glean if they were the man's under-butler's shoes, Heretofore couldn't guess at, but after half an hour Cosmo rang for a basin of cold water and some soothing herbs, and the shoes had not made an appearance since. And then there had been the black skullcap. That had been the one stroke of luck in this whole business. It was even genuine. It was a safe bet that Vetinari bought them from Bolters in the Maul, and Heretofore had cased the place, entered when the senior partners were at lunch, spoke to the impecunious youth who worked the steamy cleaning and stretching machines in the back room — and found that one had been sent in for cleaning. Heretofore walked out with it, uncleaned, leaving the young man extremely pecunious and with instructions to wash a new cap for return to the palace. Cosmo was beside himself and wanted to know all the details. Next evening, it turned out that the pecunious youth spent the evening in a bar and died outside in a drunken brawl around midnight, short of money and even shorter of breath. Heretofore's room was next to Cranberry's. On reflection, he'd heard the man come in late that night. 133 And now there was the signet ring. Heretofore had told Cosmo that he could get a replica made and use his contacts — his very expensive contacts — at the palace to get it swapped for the real thing. He'd been paid five thousand dollars! Five thousand dollars! And the boss was overjoyed. Overjoyed and mad. He'd got a fake ring but he swore it had the spirit of Vetinari flowing in it. Perhaps it did, because Cranberry became part of the arrangement. If you got drawn into Cosmo's little hobby, Heretofore realized too late, you died. He reached his room, darted inside and shut the door. Then he leaned on it. He ought to run, right now. His savings would buy a lot of distance. But the fear subsided a little as he collected his thoughts. They told him: relax, relax. The Watch hadn't come knocking yet, had they? Cranberry was a professional, and the boss was full of gratitude. So… why not one last trick? Make some real money! What could he 'obtain' that the boss would pay him another five thousand for? Something simple but impressive, that would be the trick, and by the time he found out — if he ever did — Heretofore would be on the other side of the continent, with a new name and suntanned beyond recognition. Yes… the very thing… The sun was hot, and so were the dwarfs. They were mountain dwarfs and were not at home under open skies. And what were they here for? The King wanted to know if anything valuable was taken out of the hole that the golems were digging for the mad smoking woman, but they weren't allowed to set foot in it, because that would be trespass. So they sat in the shade and sweated while, about once a day, the mad smoking woman who smoked all the time came and laid… things on a crude trestle table in front of them. The things had this in common: they were dull. 134 Theere was nothing to mine here, everyone knew. It was barren silt and sand all the way down. There was no fresh water. Such plants as survived here stored winter rain in swollen, hollow roots, or lived off the moisture in the sea mist. The place contained nothing of interest, and what came out of the long sloping tunnel bore this out to the point of boredom. There were bones of old ships, and occasionally the bones of old sailors. There were a couple of coins, one silver, one gold, which were not dull enough and were duly confiscated. There were broken pots and pieces of statue, which were puzzled over, part of an iron cauldron, an anchor with a few links of chain. It was clear, the dwarfs considered as they sat in the shade, that nothing came here except by boat. But remember: in matters of commerce and gold, never trust anyone who could see over your helmet. And then there were the golems. They hated golems, because they moved silently, for all their weight, and looked like trolls. They arrived and departed all the time, fetching timbers from who knew where, marching down into the dark… And then one day golems came pouring out of the hole, there was a lengthy discussion and the smoking woman marched over to the watchers. They watched her nervously, as fighters do when approached by a self-confident civilian they know they're not allowed to kill. In broken dwarfish she told them that the tunnel had collapsed, and she was going to leave. All the things they'd dug out, she said, were gifts for the King. And she left, taking the wretched golems with her.3 That was last week. Since then the tunnel had completely fallen in and the blowing sand had covered everything. The money looked after itself. It sailed down the centuries, buried in paperwork, hidden behind lawyers, groomed, invested, diverted, converted, laundered, dried, ironed and polished and kept safe from harm and taxes, 3 The dwarfs didn't think to count them and see if any had been left behind It wouldn't have made any difference, but later on the King might not have shouted at them so much. 135 and above all kept safe from the Lavishes themselves. They knew their descendants — they'd raised them, after all — and so the money came with bodyguards of trustees, managers and covenants, disgorging only a measured amount of itself to the next generation, enough to maintain the lifestyle for which their name had become synonymous and with a bit left over for them to indulge in the family tradition of fighting amongst themselves over, yes, the money. Now they were arriving, each family branch and often each individual with their own lawyer and bodyguards, being careful about whom they deigned to notice, just in case they inadvertently smiled at someone they were currently suing. As a family, people said, the Lavishes got along like a bagful of cats. Cosmo had watched them at the funeral, and they spent all their time watching one another, very much like cats, each one waiting for someone else to attack. But even so it would have been a decently dignified occasion, if only that moron nephew the old bitch had allowed to live in the cellar hadn't turned up in a grubby white coat and a yellow rain hat and kept on blubbing all through the ceremony. He had completely spoiled the occasion for everyone. But now the funeral was over and the Lavishes were doing what they always did after funerals, which was talk about The Money. You couldn't sit Lavishes around a table. Cosmo had set out small tables in a pattern that represented to the best of his knowledge the current state of the alliances and minor fratricidal wars, but there was a lot of shifting and scraping and threats of legal action before people settled down. Behind them the alert ranks of their lawyers paid careful attention, earning a total of a dollar every four seconds. Apparently the only relative that Vetinari had was an aunt, Cosmo mused. That man had all the luck. When he was Vetinari, there would have to be a cull. 'Ladies and gentlemen,' he said, when the hissing and name-calling had died away, 'I am so glad to see so many of you here today—' 'Liar!' 136 'Especially you, Pucci,' said Cosmo, smiling at his sister. Vetinari didn't have a sister like Pucci, either. No one did, Cosmo was prepared to bet. She was a fiend in vaguely human shape. 'You've still got something wrong with your eyebrow, you know,' said Pucci. She had a table by herself, a voice like a saw encountering a nail with a slight additional touch of foghorn, and was always referred to as 'a society beauty', which showed just how rich the Lavishes were. Cut in half, she might make two society beauties but not, at that point, very beautiful ones. While it was said that men she had spurned jumped off bridges in despair, the only person known to have said this was Pucci herself. 'I'm sure you all know—' Cosmo began. 'Thanks to your side of the family's total incompetence you have lost us the bank!' That came from the far corner of the room, but it triggered a rising chorus of complaint. 'We are all Lavishes here, Josephine,' he said sternly. 'Some of us were even born a Lavish.' That didn't work. It ought to have done. It would have done for Vetinari, Cosmo was sure. But for Cosmo, it only upset people. The growls of objection got louder. 'Some of us make a better job of it!' snapped Josephine. She was wearing a necklace of emeralds, and they reflected a greenish light on her face. Cosmo was impressed. Whenever possible, Lavishes married distant cousins, but it wasn't uncommon for a few, every generation, to marry outside, in order to avoid the whole 'three thumbs' situation. The women found handsome husbands who did what they were told, while the men found wives who, amazingly, were remarkably good at picking up the petulance and shaved-monkey touchiness that was the mark of a true Lavish. 137 Josephine sat down with a poisonous look of satisfaction at the muttered chorus of agreement. She sprang up again, for an encore: 'And what do you intend to do about this unforgivable situation? Your branch has put a mountebank in control of our bank! Again!' Pucci span in her seat. 'How dare you say that about Father!' 'And how dare you say that about Mr Fusspot!' said Cosmo. It would have worked for Vetinari, he knew it. It would have made Josephine look silly and raised Cosmo's stock in the room. It would have worked for Vetinari, who could raise his eyebrow like a visual rim shot. 'What? What? What are you talking about?' said Josephine. 'Don't be so silly, child! I'm talking about this Lipwig creature! He's a postman, for goodness' sake! Why haven't you offered him money?' 'I have,' said Cosmo, and added for his inner ear: III remember 'child', you whey-faced old boot. When I am a master of the eyebrow we shall see what you say then! 'And?' 'I believe he is not interested in money.' 'Nonsense!' 'What about the little doggie?' said an elderly voice. 'What happens if it passes away, gods forbid?' 'The bank comes back to us, Aunt Careful,' said Cosmo, to a very small old lady in black lace, who was engaged in some embroidery. 'No matter how the little doggie dies?' said Aunt Carefulness Lavish, paying fastidious attention to her needlework. 'There is always the option of poison, I am sure.' 138 With an audible whoosh Aunt Careful's lawyer rose to his feet and said, 'My client wishes to make it clear that she is merely referring to the general availability of noxious substances in general and this is not intended to be and in no way should be taken as an espousal of any illegal course of action.' He sat down again, fee earned.4 'Regrettably, the Watch would be all over us like cheap chain mail,' said Cosmo. 'Watchmen in our bank? Shut the door on them!' 'Times have moved on, Auntie. We can't do that any more.' 'When your great-grandfather pushed his brother over the balcony the Watch even took the body away for five shillings and a pint of ale all round!' 'Yes, Auntie. Lord Vetinari is the Patrician now.' 'And he'd allow watchmen to clump around in our bank?' 'Without a doubt, Auntie.' 'Then he is no gentleman,' the aunt observed sadly. 'He lets vampires and werewolves into the Watch,' said Miss Tarantella Lavish. 'It's disgusting, the way they're allowed to walk the streets like real people.' — and something went ping! in Cosmo's memory. ' He's just like real people' , said the voice of his father. 'This is your problem, Cosmo Lavish!' said Josephine, unwilling to see targets switched. 'It was your wretched father who—' 4 To considering implications and intervening with due clarification: $12.98. 139 'Shut up,' said Cosmo calmly. 'Shut up. And those emeralds do not suit you, by the way.' This was unusual. Lavishes might sue and conspire and belittle and slander, but there was such a thing as good manners, after all. In Cosmo's head there was another ping, and his father saying: ' And he's managed to hide what he is so well, and at great pain. What he was is probably not even there any more. But you'd better know in case he starts acting funny. . .' 'My father rebuilt the business of the bank,' said Cosmo, the voice still ringing in his head as Josephine drew breath for a tirade, 'and you all let him. Yes, you let him. You didn't care what he did so long as the bank was available to you for all your little schemes, the ones we so carefully conceal and don't talk about. He bought out all the small shareholders, and you didn't mind so long as you got your dividends. It was just a shame that his choice in chums was flawed—' 'Not as bad as his choice of that upstart music-hall girl!' said Josephine. '—although his choice in his last wife, however, was not,' Cosmo went on. 'Topsy was cunning, devious, ruthless and merciless. The problem I have is simply that she was better at all this than you are. And now I must ask you all to leave. I am going to get our bank back. Do see yourselves out.' He got up, walked to the door, shut it carefully behind him, and then ran like hell for his study, where he stood with his back to the door and gloated, an exercise he had just the face for. Good old Dad! Of course, that little talk had been back when he was ten and didn't have his own lawyer yet, and hadn't fully embraced the Lavish tradition of prickly and guarded involvement. But Dad had been sensible. He hadn't just been giving Cosmo advice, he'd been giving him ammunition which could be used against the others. What else was a father for? 140 Mr Bent! Was… not just Mr Bent. He was something out of nightmares. At the time the revelation had scared young Cosmo, and later on he'd been ready to sue his father over those sleepless nights, in the very best Lavish tradition, but he'd hesitated and that was just as well. It would all have come out in court and he'd have thrown away a wonderful gift. So the Lipwig fellow thought he controlled the bank, did he? Well, you couldn't run the bank without Mavolio Bent, and by this time tomorrow he, Cosmo Lavish, would own Mr Bent. Hmm, yes… leave it perhaps a little longer. Another day of dealing with Lipwig's bizarre recklessness would wind up poor Mr Bent to the point where Cranberry's special powers of persuasion would hardly be required. Oh, yes. Cosmo pushed his eyebrow up. He was getting the hang of it, he was sure. He'd been just like Vetinari out there, hadn't he? Yes, he had. The look on the family's faces when he'd told Josephine to shut up! Even the recollection made his spine tingle… Was this the time? Yes, just for a minute, perhaps. He deserved it… He unlocked a drawer in his desk, reached inside, and pressed the hidden button. On the other side of his desk a secret compartment slid out. From it, Cosmo took a small black skullcap. It seemed as good as new. Heretofore was a genius. Cosmo lowered the cap on to his head with great solemnity. Someone knocked on the study door. This was pointless, since it was then slammed open. 'Locking yourself in your room again, bro?' said Pucci triumphantly. At least Cosmo had strangled the impulse to snatch the cap from his head as if he'd been caught doing something dirty. 'It was not in fact locked, as you see,' he said, 'and you are forbidden to come within fifteen yards of me. I have an injunction.' 141 'And you are not allowed to be within twenty yards of me, so you broke it first,' said Pucci, pulling up a chair. She straddled it heavily and rested her arms on the back. The wood creaked. 'I wasn't the one who moved, I think?' 'Well, cosmically it's all the same,' said Pucci. 'You know, that's a dangerous obsession you have there.' Now Cosmo took off the cap. 'I'm simply trying to get inside the man,' he said. 'A very dangerous obsession.' 'You know what I mean. I want to know how his mind works.' 'And this?' Pucci said, waving a hand at the large picture that hung on the wall opposite the desk. 'William Pouter's Man with dog. It's a painting of Vetinari. Notice how the eyes follow you around the room.' 'The dog's nose follows me around the room! Vetinari has a dog?' 'Had. Wuffles. Died some time ago. There's a little grave in the palace grounds. He goes there alone once a week and puts a dog biscuit on it.' 'Vetinari does that?' 'Yes.' 'Vetinari the cool, heartless, calculating tyrant?' said Pucci. 'Indeed!' 'You're lying to your sweet dear sister, yes?' 142 'You can choose to believe that if you wish.' Cosmo exulted, deep inside. He loved to see that irate-chicken expression of furious curiosity on his sister's face. 'Information like that is worth money,' she said. 'Indeed. And I'm only telling you because it's useless unless you know where he goes, at what time, and on which day. It just may be, dear sweet Pucci, that what you call my obsession is in fact of great practical use. I watch, study and learn. And I believe that Moist von Lipwig and Vetinari must share some dangerous secret which could even—' 'But you just weighed in and offered Lipwig a bribe!' You could say this about Pucci: she was easy to confide in because she never bothered to listen. She used the time to think about what to say next. 'A ridiculously small one. And a threat, too. And so now he thinks he knows all about me,' said Cosmo, not even trying not to look smug. 'And I know nothing about him, which is even more interesting. How did he turn up out of nowhere and immediately get one of the highest jobs in—' 'What the hell is that?' demanded Pucci, whose massive inquisitiveness was hampered by the attention span of a kitten. She was pointing at the little diorama in front of the window. 'That? Oh—' 'Looks like an ornamental window-box. Is it Toytown? What's that all about? Tell me right now!' Cosmo sighed. He didn't actually dislike his sister — well, more than the natural basic feeling of irksomeness all Lavishes felt for one another — but it was hard to like that loud, nasal, perpetually irritated voice, which treated anything Pucci didn't immediately understand, which was practically everything, as a personal affront. 143 'It is an attempt to achieve, by means of scale models, a view similar to that seen from the Oblong Office by Lord Vetinari,' he explained. 'It helps me think.' 'That's crazy. What kind of dog biscuit?' said Pucci. Information also travelled through Pucci's apprehension at different speeds. It must be all that hair, thought Cosmo. 'Tracklement's Yums,' he said. 'The bone-shaped ones that come in five different colours. But he never leaves a yellow one because Wuffles didn't like them.' 'You know they say Vetinari is a vampire?' said Pucci, going off at a tangent to a tangent. 'Do you believe it?' said Cosmo. 'Because he's tall and thin and wears black? I think it takes a bit more than that!' 'And is secretive and calculating?' said Cosmo. ' You don't believe it, do you?' 'No, and it wouldn't make any real difference if he was, would it? But there are other people with more… dangerous secrets. Dangerous to them, I mean.' 'Mr Lipwig?' 'He could be one, yes.' Pucci's eyes lit up. 'You know something, don't you?' 'Not exactly, but I think I know where there is something to be known.' 'Where?' 144 'Do you really want to know?' 'Of course I do!' 'Well, I have no intention of telling you,' said Cosmo, smiling. 'Don't let me detain you!' he added, as Pucci stormed out of the room. Don't let me detain you. What a wonderful phrase Vetinari had devised. The jangling double meaning set up undercurrents of uneasiness in the most innocent of minds. The man had found ways of bloodless tyranny that put the rack to shame. What a genius! And there, but for an eyebrow, went Cosmo Lavish. He would have to make good the failings of cruel nature. The mysterious Lipwig was the key to Vetinari, and the key to Lipwig— It was time to talk to Mr Bent. 145 Chapter 5 Spending spree — Inadvisability of golem back-rubs — Giving away money — Some observations on the nature of trust — Mr Bent has a visitor — One of the Family WHERE DO YOU TEST a bankable idea? Not in a bank, that was certain. You needed to test it where people paid far more attention to money, and juggled their finances in a world of constant risk where a split-second decision meant the difference between triumphant profit or ignominious loss. Generically it was known as the real world, but one of its proprietary names was Tenth Egg Street. The Boffo Novelty and Joke Shop, in Tenth Egg Street, prop. J. Proust, was a haven for everyone who thought that fart powder was the last word in humour, which in many respects it is. It had caught Moist's eye, though, as a source of material for disguises and other useful things. Moist had always been careful about disguises. A moustache that could come off at a tug had no place in his life. But since he had the world's most forgettable face, a face that was still a face in the crowd even when it was by itself, it helped, sometimes, to give people something to tell the Watch about. Spectacles were an obvious choice, but Moist got very good results with his own design of nose and ear wigs. Show a man a pair of ears that small songbirds had apparently nested in, watch the polite horror in his eyes, and you could be certain that that would be all he remembered. Now, of course, Moist was an honest man, but part of him felt it necessary that he keep his hand in, just in case. 146 Today he bought a pot of glue and a large jar of fine gold sprinkles, because he could see a use for them. 'That will be thirty-five pence, Mr Lipwig,' said Mr Proust. 'Any new stamps coming along?' 'One or two, Jack,' said Moist. 'How's Ethel? And little Roger,' he added, after only a moment's shuffle through the files in his head. 'Very well, thank you for asking. Can I get you anything else?' Proust added hopefully, in case Moist might have a sudden recollection that life would be considerably improved by the purchase of a dozen false noses. Moist glanced at the array of masks, scary rubber hands and joke noses, and considered his needs satisfied. 'Only my change, Jack,' he said, and carefully laid one of his new creations on the counter. 'Just give me half a dollar.' Proust stared at it as if it might explode or vent some mind-altering gas. 'What's this, sir?' 'A note for a dollar. A dollar bill. It's the latest thing.' 'Do I have to sign it or anything?' 'No. That's the interesting bit. It's a dollar. It can be anyone's.' 'I'd like it to be mine, thank you!' 'It is, now,' said Moist. 'But you can use it to buy things.' 'There's no gold in it,' said the shopkeeper, picking it up and holding it away from his body, just in case. 'Well, if I paid in pennies and shillings there would be no gold in them either, right? As it is, you're fifteen pence ahead, and that's a good place to be, agreed? And that note is worth a dollar. If you take it along to my bank, they'll give you a dollar for it.' 147 'But I've already got a dollar! Er, haven't I?' Proust added. 'Good man! So why not go out in the street and spend it right now? Come on, I want to see how it works.' 'Is this like the stamps, Mr Lipwig?' said Proust, clutching for something he could understand. 'People sometimes pay me in stamps, me doing a lot of mail-order—' 'Yes! Yes! Exactly! Think of it as a big stamp. Look, I'll tell you what, this is an introductory offer. Spend that dollar and I'll give you another bill for a dollar, so that you'll still have a dollar. So what are you risking?' 'Only if this is, like, one of the first dollar bills, right… well, my lad bought some of the first stamps you did, right, and now they're worth a mint, so if I hang on to it, it'll be worth money some day—' ' It's worth money now? Moist wailed. That was the trouble with slow people. Give him a fool any day. Slow people took some time to catch up, but when they did they rolled right over you. 'Yes, but, see,' and here the shopkeeper grinned what he probably thought was an artful grin that in fact made him look like Mr Fusspot halfway through a toffee, 'you're a sly one with them stamps, Mr Lipwig, bringin' out different ones all the time. My granny says if it's true a man's got enough iron in his blood to make a nail then you've got enough brass in your neck to make a doorknob, no offence meant, she speaks her mind does my granny—' 'I've made the mail run on time, haven't I?' 'Oh, yes, Gran says you may be a Slippery Jim but you get things done, no doubt about it—' 'Right! Let's spend a damn dollar, then, shall we?' Is it some kind of duplex magical power I have, he wondered, that lets old ladies see right through me but like what they see? 148 And thus Mr Proust decided to hazard his dollar in the shop next door, on an ounce of Jolly Sailor pipe tobacco, some mints and a copy of What Novelty?. And Mr 'Natty' Poleforth, once the exercise was explained, accepted the note and took it across the road to Mr Drayman the butcher, who cautiously accepted it, after having things set out fair and square for him, in payment for some sausages and also gave Moist a bone 'for your little doggie'. It was more than likely that Mr Fusspot had never seen a real bone before. He circled it carefully, waiting for it to squeak. Tenth Egg Street was a street of small traders, who sold small things in small quantities for small sums on small profits. In a street like that, you had to be small-minded. It wasn't the place for big ideas. You had to look at the detail. These were men who saw far more farthings than dollars. Some of the other shopkeepers were already pulling down the shutters and closing up for the day. Drawn by the Ankh-Morporkian's instinct for something interesting, the traders drifted over to see what was going on. They all knew one another. They all dealt with one another. And everyone knew Moist von Lipwig, the man in the gold suit. The notes were examined with much care and solemn discussion. 'It's just an IOU or marker, really.' 'All right, but supposing you needed the money?' 'But, correct me if I'm wrong, isn't the IOU the money?' 'All right then, who owes it to you?' 'Er… Jack here, because… No, hang on… it is the money, right?' Moist grinned as the discussion wobbled back and forth. Whole new theories of money were growing here like mushrooms, in the dark and based on bullshit. But these were men who counted every half-farthing and slept at night with the cash box under their bed. They'd weigh out flour and raisins and hundreds-and-thousands with their eyes ferociously focused on the scale's pointer, because they were men who lived in the margins. If he 149 could get the idea of paper money past them then he was home and, if not dry, then at least merely Moist. 'So you think these could catch on?' he said, during a lull. The consensus was, yes, they could, but they should look 'fancier', in the words of Natty Poleforth: 'You know, with more fancy lettering and similar.' Moist agreed, and handed over a note to every man, as a souvenir. It was worth it. 'And if it all goes wahoonie-shaped,' said Mr Proust, 'you've still got the gold, right? Locked up down there in the cellar?' 'Oh, yes, you've got to have the gold,' said Mr Drayman. There was a general murmur of agreement, and Moist felt his spirits slump. 'But I thought we'd all agreed that you don't need the gold?' he said. In fact they hadn't, but it was worth a try. 'Ah, yes, but it's got to be there somewhere,' said Mr Drayman. 'It keeps banks honest,' said Mr Poleforth, in that tone of plonking certainty that is the hallmark of that most knowledgeable of beings, The Man In The Pub. 'But I thought you understood,' said Moist. 'You don't need the gold!' 'Right, sir, right,' said Poleforth soothingly. 'Just so long as it's there.' 'Er, do you happen to know why it has to be there?' said Moist. 'Keeps banks honest,' said Poleforth, on the basis that truth is achieved by repetition. And, with nods all round, this was the feeling of Tenth Egg Street. So long as the gold was somewhere, it kept banks honest and everything was okay. Moist felt humbled by such faith. If the gold was 150 somewhere, herons would no longer eat frogs, either. But in fact there was no power in the world that could keep a bank honest if it didn't want to be. Still, not a bad start to his first day, even so. He could build on it. It started to rain, not hard, but the kind of fine rain where you can almost get away without an umbrella. No cabs bothered to trawl Tenth Egg Street for trade, but there was one at the kerb in Losing Street, the horse sagging in the harness, the driver hunched into his greatcoat, the lamps flickering in the dusk. With the rain getting to the blobby, soaking stage, it was a sight for damp feet. He hurried over, climbed in, and a voice in the gloom said: 'Good evening, Mr Lipwig. It's so nice to meet you at last. I'm Pucci. I'm sure we will be friends…' 'Now, you see, that was good,' said Sergeant Colon of the Watch, as the figure of Moist von Lipwig disappeared round the corner, still accelerating. 'He went right through the cab window without touching the sides, bounced off that bloke creepin' up, very nice roll as he landed, I thought, and he still had hold of the little dog the whole time. Done it before, I shouldn't wonder. Nevertheless, I'm forced, on balance, to consider him a twit.' 'The first cab,' said Corporal Nobbs, shaking his head. 'Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I would not have thought it of a man like him.' 'My point exactly,' said Colon. 'When you know you've got enemies at large, never, never get in the first cab. Fact of life. Even things what live under rocks know it.' They watched the former creeper gloomily picking up the remains of his iconograph, while Pucci screamed at him from the coach. 151 'I bet when the first cab was built, no one dared to get into it, eh, sarge?' said Nobby happily. 'I bet the first cabby used to go home every night starvin' on account of everyone knowin', right?' 'Oh, no, Nobby, people with no enemies at large would be okay. Now let's go and report.' 'What does it mean, "at large", anyway,' said Nobby, as they ambled towards the Chittling Street Watch House and the certain prospect of a cup of hot sweet tea. 'It means large enemies, Nobby. It's as clear as the nose on your face. Especially yours.' 'Well, she's a large girl, that Pucci Lavish.' 'And nasty enemies to have, that family,' Colon opined. 'What's the odds?' 'Odds, sarge?' said Nobby innocently. 'You're runnin' a book, Nobby. You always run a book.' 'Can't get any takers, sarge. Foregone conclusion,' said Nobby. 'Ah, right. Sensible. Lipwig goin' to be found lyin' in chalk by Sunday?' 'No, sarge. Everyone thinks he'll win.' Moist woke up in the big soft bed and strangled a scream. Pucci! Aaagh! And in a state of what the delicately inclined called dishabille. He'd always wondered what dishabille looked like, but he'd never expected to see so much of it in one go. Even now some of his memory cells were still trying to die. 152 But he wouldn't be Moist von Lipwig if a certain amount of insouciance didn't rise to heal the wounds. He'd got away, after all. Oh, yes. It wasn't as though it was the first window he'd jumped through. And the sound of Pucci's scream of rage was almost as loud as the crack the man's iconograph made as it hit the cobbles. The ol' honey trap game. Hah. But it was high time he did something illegal, just to get his mind back to a proper state of cynical self-preservation. He wouldn't have got into the first cab a year ago, that was for sure. Mind you, it would be a strange jury that believed he could be attracted to Pucci Lavish; he couldn't see that standing up in court. He got up, dressed and listened hopefully for signs of life from the kitchen. In their absence, he made himself some black coffee. Armed with this he made his way into the office, where Mr Fusspot dozed in his in-tray and the official top hat sat, accusingly black. Ah, yes, he was going to do something about that, wasn't he? He reached into his pocket and pulled out the little pot of glue, which was one of the convenient ones with a brush in the lid, and after some careful spreading began to pour the glittering flakes as smoothly as he could. He was still engrossed in this exercise when Gladys loomed in his vision like an eclipse of the sun, holding what turned out to be a bacon and egg sandwich two feet long and one-eighth of an inch thick. She'd also picked up his copy of the Times. He groaned. He'd made the front page. He usually did. It was his athletic mouth. It ran away with him whenever he saw a notebook. Er… he'd made page two as well. Oh, and the lead editorial. Bugger, even the political cartoon, too, the one that was never much of a laugh. First Urchin: 'Why ain't Ankh-Morpork like a desert island?' 153 Second Urchin: "cos when yer on a desert island the sharks can't bite yer!' It was side-splitting. His bleary eyes strayed back to the editorial. They, on the other hand, could be quite funny, since they were based on the assumption that the world would be a much better place if it was run by journalists. They were— What? What was this? Time to consider the unthinkable… a wind of change blowing through the vaults at last… undoubted success of the new Post Office… stamps already a de facto currency… fresh ideas needed… youth at the helm… Youth at the helm? This from William de Worde, who was almost certainly the same age as Moist but wrote editorials that suggested his bum was stuffed with tweed. It was sometimes hard to tell in all the ponderousness what de Worde actually thought about anything, but it appeared through the rolling fog of polysyllables that the Times believed Moist von Lipwig to be, on the whole and all things considered, taking the long view and one thing with another, probably the right man in the right job. He was aware of Gladys behind him when red light glinted off the brasswork on the desk. 'You Are Very Tense, Mr Lipwig,' she said. 'Yeah, right,' said Moist, reading the editorial again. Ye gods, the man really did write as though he was chipping the letters in stone. 154 'There Was An Interesting Article About Back-Rubs In The Ladies' Own Magazine,' Gladys went on. Later, Moist felt that perhaps he should have heeded the hopeful note in her voice. But he was thinking: not just carved, but with big serifs, too. 'They Are Very Good For Relieving Tension Caused By The Hurly-Burly Of Modern Life,' Gladys intoned. 'Well, we certainly don't want any of that,' said Moist, and everything went black. The strange thing was, he thought, when Peggy and Aimsbury had brought him round and clicked bones back into the right sockets, that he actually felt a lot better. Perhaps that was the idea. Perhaps the hideous white-hot pain was there to make you realize that there were worse things in the world than the occasional twinge. 'I Am Very Sorry,' said Gladys, 'I Did Not Know That Was Going To Happen. It Said In The Magazine That The Recipient Would Experience A Delightful Frisson.' 'I don't think that means you should be able to see your own eyeball,' said Moist, rubbing his neck. Gladys's eyes dimmed so much that he was moved to add: 'I feel much better now, though. It's so nice to look down and not see my heels.' 'Don't you listen to him, it wasn't that bad,' said Peggy, with sisterly fellow feeling. 'Men always make a big fuss over a little pain.' 'They Are Just Big Cuddly Babies, Really,' said Gladys. That caused a thoughtful pause. 'Where did that come from?' said Moist. 'The Information Was Imparted To Me By Glenda At The Stamp Counter.' 'Well, from now on I don't want you to—' 155 The big doors swung open. They let in a hubbub from the floors below, and riding the noise like some kind of aural surfer was Mr Bent, saturnine and far too shiny for this time of the morning. 'Good morning, Master,' he said icily. 'The street outside is full of people. And might I take this opportunity to congratulate you on disproving a theory currently much in vogue at Unseen University?' 'Huh?' said Moist. 'There are, some like to suggest, an infinite number of universes in order to allow everything that may happen a place to happen in. This is of course nonsense, which we entertain only because we believe words are the same as reality. Now, however, I can prove my point, since in such an infinity of worlds there would have to be one where I would applaud your recent actions and, let me assure you, sir, infinity is not that big!' He drew himself up. 'People are hammering on the doors! They want to close their accounts! I told you banking was about trust and confidence!' 'Oh dear,' said Moist. 'They are asking for gold!' 'I thought that's what you prom—' 'It is only a metaphorical promise! I told you, it is based on the understanding that no one will actually demand it!' 'How many people want to withdraw their money?' said Moist. 'Nearly twenty!' 'Then they are making a lot of noise, aren't they?' Mr Bent looked uncomfortable. 'Well, there are some others,' he said. 'A few misguided people are seeking to open accounts, but—' 'How many?' 156 'About two or three hundred, but—' ' Opening accounts, you say?' said Moist. Mr Bent was squirming. 'Only for trifling sums, a few dollars here and there,' he said dismissively. 'It would appear that they think you have "something up your sleeve".' The inverted commas shuddered like a well-bred girl picking up a dead vole. Some of Moist recoiled. But part of him began to feel the wind on his face. 'Well, let's not disappoint them, shall we?' he said, picking up the gold top hat, which was still a bit sticky. Bent glared at it. 'The other banks are furious, you know,' he said, high-stepping hurriedly after Moist as the Master of the Mint headed for the stairs. 'Is that good or bad?' said Moist over his shoulder. 'Listen, what's the rule about bank lending? I heard it once. It's about interest.' 'Do you mean "Borrow at one-half, lend at two, go home at three"?' said Bent. 'Right! I've been thinking about that. We could shave those numbers, couldn't we?' 'This is Ankh-Morpork! A bank has to be a fortress! That is expensive!' 'But we could alter them a bit, couldn't we? And we don't pay interest on balances of less than a hundred dollars, correct?' 'Yes, that is so.' 'Well, from now on anyone can open an account with five dollars and we'll start paying interest a lot earlier. That'll smooth out the lumps in the mattresses, won't it?' 'Master, I protest! Banking is not a game!' 157 'Dear Mr Bent, it is a game, and it's an old game called "What can we get away with?".' A cheer went up. They had reached an open landing that overlooked the hall of the bank as a pulpit overlooks the sinners, and a field of faces stared up at Moist in silence for a moment. Then someone called out: 'Are you going to make us all rich, Mr Lipwig?' Oh damn, thought Moist. Why are they all here? 'Well, I'm going to do my best to get my hands on your money!' he promised. This got a cheer. Moist wasn't surprised. Tell someone you were going to rob them and all that happened was that you got a reputation as a truthful man. The waiting ears sucked at his tongue, and his common sense went and hid. It heard his mouth add: And so I can get more of it, I think — that is to say, the chairman thinks — that we should be looking at one per cent interest on all accounts that have five dollars in them for a whole year.' There was a choking sound from the chief cashier, but no great stir from the crowd, most of whom were of the Sock Under The Mattress persuasion. In fact, the news did not appear to please. Then someone raised his hand and said: 'That's a lot to pay just to have you stick our money in your cellar, isn't it?' 'No, it's what I'll pay you to let me stick your money in my cellar for a year,' said Moist. 'You will?' 'Certainly. Trust me.' The enquirer's face twisted into the familiar mask of a slow thinker trying to speed up. 'So where's the catch?' he managed. 158 Everywhere, thought Moist. For one thing, I won't be storing it in my cellar, I'll be storing it in someone else's pocket. But you really don't need to know that right now. 'No catch,' he said. 'If you put a hundred dollars on deposit, then after a year it'll be worth one hundred and one dollars.' 'That's all very well for you to say, but where would the likes of me get a hundred dollars?' 'Right here, if you invest just one dollar and wait for — how long, Mr Bent?' The chief cashier snorted. 'Four hundred and sixty-one years!' 'Okay, it's a bit of a wait, but your great-great-great-et cetera grandchildren will be proud of you,' said Moist, above the laughter. 'But I'll tell you what I'll do: if you open an account here today for, oh, five dollars, we'll give you a free dollar on Monday. A free dollar to take away, ladies and gentlemen, and where are you going to get a better deal than—' 'A real dollar, pray, or one of these fakes?' There was a commotion near the door, and Pucci Lavish swept in. Or, at least, tried to sweep. But a good sweep needs planning, and probably a rehearsal. You shouldn't just go for it and hope. All you get is a lot of shoving. The two heavies there to clear a way through the press of people were defeated by sheer numbers, which meant that the rather slimmer young men leading her exquisitely bred blond hounds got stuck behind them. Pucci had to shoulder her way through. It could have been so good, Moist felt. It had all the right ingredients: the black-clad bruisers so menacing, the dogs so sleek and blond. But Pucci herself had been blessed with beady, suspicious little eyes and a generous upper lip which combined with the long neck to put the honest observer in mind of a duck who'd just been offended by a passing trout. 159 Someone should have told her that black was not her colour, that the expensive fur had looked better on its original owners, that if you are going to wear high heels then this week's fashion tip is don't wear sunglasses at the same time because when you walk out of the bright sunlight into the relative gloom of, say, a bank, you will lose all sense of direction and impale the foot of one of your own bodyguards. Someone should have told her, in fact, that true style comes from innate cunning and mendacity. You can't buy it. 'Miss Pucci Lavish, ladies and gentlemen!' said Moist, starting to clap as Pucci whipped her sunglasses off and advanced on the counter with murder in her eyes. 'One of the directors who will join us all in making money.' There was some clapping from the crowd, most of whom had never seen Pucci before but wanted the free show. 'I say! Listen to me! Everyone listen to me,' she commanded. Once again she waved what seemed to Moist to look very much like one of the experimental dollar bills. 'This is just worthless paper! This is what he will be giving you!' 'No, it's the same as an open cheque or a banker's draft,' said Moist. 'Really? We shall see! I say! Good people of Ankh-Morpork! Do any of you think this piece of paper could be worth a dollar? Would anyone give me a dollar for it?' Pucci waved the paper dismissively. 'Dunno. What is it?' said someone, and there was a buzz from the crowd. 'An experimental banknote,' said Moist, over the growing hubbub. 'Just to try out the idea.' 'How many of them are there, then?' said the enquiring man. 'About twelve,' said Moist. The man turned to Pucci. 'I'll give you five dollars for it, how about that?' 160 'Five? It says it's worth one!' said Pucci, aghast. 'Yeah, right. Five dollars, miss.' 'Why? Are you insane?' 'I'm as sane as the next man, thank you, young lady!' 'Seven dollars here!' said the next man, raising a hand. 'This is madness!' wailed Pucci. 'Mad?' said the next man. He pointed a finger at Moist. 'If I'd bought a pocketful of the black penny stamps when that feller brought them out last year I'd be a rich man!' 'Anyone remember the Triangular Blue?' said another bidder. 'Fifty pence, it cost. I put one on a letter to my aunt; by the time it got there it was worth fifty dollars! And the ol' baggage wouldn't give it back!' 'It's worth a hundred and sixty now,' said someone behind him. 'Auctioned at Dave's Stamp and Pin Emporium last week. Ten dollars is my bid, miss!' 'Fifteen here!' Moist had a good view from the stairs. A small consortium had formed at the back of the hall, working on the basis that it was better to have small shares than none at all. Stamp collecting! It had started on day one, and then ballooned like some huge… thing, running on strange, mad rules. Was there any other field where flaws made things worth more? Would you buy a suit just because one arm was shorter than the other? Or because a bit of spare cloth was still attached? Of course, when Moist had spotted this he'd put in flaws on purpose, as a matter of public entertainment, but he certainly hadn't planned for Lord Vetinari's head to appear upside down just once on every 161 sheet of Blues. One of the printers had been about to destroy them when Moist brought him down with a flying tackle. The whole business was unreal, and unreal was Moist's world. Back when he'd been a naughty boy he'd sold dreams, and the big seller in that world was the one where you got very rich by a stroke of luck. He'd sold glass as diamond because greed clouded men's eyes. Sensible, upright people, who worked hard every day, nevertheless believed, against all experience, in money for nothing. But the stamp collectors… they believed in small perfections. It was possible to get one small part of the world right. And even if you couldn't get it right, you at least knew what bit was missing. It might be, f'r instance, the flawed 50p Triangular Blue, but there were still six of them out there, and who knew what piece of luck might attend the dedicated searcher? Rather a large piece would be needed, Moist had to admit, because four of them were safely tucked away for a rainy day in a little lead box under the floorboards in Moist's office. Even so, two were out there somewhere, perhaps destroyed, lost, eaten by snails or — and here hope lay thick as winter snow — still in some unregarded bundle of letters at the back of a drawer. —and Miss Pucci simply didn't know how to work a crowd. She stamped and demanded attention and bullied and insulted and it didn't help that she'd called them 'good people', because no one likes an outright liar. And now she was losing her temper, because the bidding had reached thirty-four dollars. And now- -she'd torn it up! 'That's what I think of this silly money!' she announced, throwing the pieces in the air. Then she stood there panting and looking triumphant, as if she'd done something clever. A kick in the teeth to everyone there. It made you want to cry, it really did. Oh, well… Moist pulled one of the new notes out of his pocket and held it up. 162 'Ladies and gentlemen!' he announced. 'I have here one of the increasingly rare first-generation One Dollar notes' — he had to pause for the laughter — 'signed by myself and the chairman. Bids over forty dollars, please! All proceeds to the little kiddies!' He ran it up to fifty, bouncing a couple of bids off the wall. Pucci stood ignored and steaming with rage for a while and then flounced out. It was a good flounce, too. She had no idea how to handle people and she tried to make self-esteem do the work of self-respect, but the girl could flounce better than a fat turkey on a trampoline. The lucky winner was already surrounded by his unlucky fellow bidders by the time he reached the bank's doors. The rest of the crowd surged towards the counters, not sure what was going on but determined to have a piece of it. Moist cupped his hands and shouted: 'And this afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, Mr Bent and myself will be available to discuss bank loans!' This caused a further stir. 'Smoke and mirrors, Mr Lipwig,' said Bent, turning away from the balustrade. 'Nothing but smoke and mirrors…' 'But done without smoke and in a total absence of mirror, Mr Bent!' said Moist cheerfully. 'And the "kiddies"?' said Bent. 'Find some. There's bound to be an orphanage that needs fifty dollars. It'll be an anonymous donation, of course.' Bent looked surprised. 'Really, Mr Lipwig? I'll make no bones about saying that you seem to me to be the sort of man who makes a great Razz Arm Ma Tazz about giving money to charity.' He made razzmatazz sound like some esoteric perversion. 163 'Well, I'm not. Do good by stealth, that is my watchword.' It'll get found out soon enough, he added to himself, and then I'm not only a jolly good chap but a decently modest one, too. I wonder… Am I really a bastard or am I just really good at thinking like one? Something nudged at his mind. Tiny hairs on the back of his neck were twitching. Something was wrong, out of place… dangerous. He turned and looked down again at the hall. People were milling around, forming into lines, talking in groups— In a world of movement, the eye is drawn to stillness. In the middle of the banking hall, unheeded by the throng, a man was standing as if frozen in time. He was all in black, with one of those flat wide hats often worn by the more sombre Omnian sects. He just… stood. And watched. Just another gawper along to see the show, Moist told himself, and knew at once that he was lying. The man was causing a weight in his world. I have lodged affidavits… Him? About what? Moist had no past. Oh, a dozen aliases had managed a pretty busy and eventful past between them, but they had evaporated along with Albert Spangler, hanged by the neck until not-quite-dead and awoken by Lord Vetinari, who'd offered Moist von Lipwig a life all shiny and new — Ye gods, he was getting jumpy, just because some old guy was looking at him with a funny little smile! No one knew him! He was Mr Forgettable! If he walked around the town without the gold suit on, he was just another face. 'Are you all right, Mr Lipwig?' Moist turned and looked into the face of the chief cashier. 'What? Oh… no. I mean yes. Er… have you ever seen that man before?' 164 'What man would that be?' Moist turned back to point out the man in black, but he had gone. 'Looked like a preacher,' he mumbled. 'He was… well, he was looking at me.' 'Well, you do rather invite it. Perhaps you'd agree that the golden hat was a mistake?' 'I like the hat! There's no hat like it!' Bent nodded. 'Fortunately, this is true, sir. Oh, dear. Paper money. A practice used only by the heathen Agateans…' 'Heathen? They've got far more gods than us! And over there gold is worth less than iron!' Moist relented. Bent's face, usually so controlled and aloof, had crumpled like a piece of paper. 'Look, I've been reading. The banks issue coins to four times the amount of the gold they hold. That's a nonsense we could do without. It's a dream world. This city is rich enough to be its own gold bar!' 'They're trusting you for no good reason,' said Bent. 'They trust you because you make them laugh. I do not make people laugh, and this is not my world. I don't know how to smile like you do and talk like you do. Don't you understand? There must be something which has a worth that goes beyond fashion and politics, a worth that endures. Are you putting Vetinari in charge of my bank? What guarantees the savings that those people are thrusting over our counter?' 'Not what, who. It's me. I am personally going to see that this bank does not fail.' 'You?' 'Yes.' 165 'Oh yes, the man in the gold suit,' said Bent sourly. 'And if all else fails, will you pray?' 'It worked last time,' said Moist calmly. Bent's eye twitched. For the first time since Moist had met him he seemed… lost. 'I don't know what you want me to do!' It was almost a wail. Moist patted him on the shoulder. 'Run the bank, like you always have. I think we should set up some loans, with all this cash coming in. Are you a good judge of character?' 'I thought I was,' said Bent. 'Now? I have no idea. Sir Joshua, I am sorry to say, was not. Mrs Lavish was very, very good, in my opinion.' 'Better than you could possibly know,' said Moist. 'Good. I shall take the chairman for his walkies, and then… we'll spread some money around. How about that?' Mr Bent shuddered. The Times did an early-afternoon edition with a big picture on the front page of the queue winding out of the bank. Most of the queue wanted to get in on the act, whatever the act turned out to be, and the rest were queueing on the basis that there might be something interesting at the other end. There was a boy selling the paper, and people were buying it to read the story entitled 'Huge Queue Swamps Bank', which seemed a bit odd to Moist. They were in the queue, weren't they? Was it only real if they read about it? 'There are already some… people wishing to enquire about loans, sir,' said Bent, behind him. 'I suggest you let me deal with them.' 166 'No, we will, Mr Bent,' said Moist, turning away from the window. 'Show them into the downstairs office, please.' 'I really think you should leave this to me, sir. Some of them are rather new to the idea of banking,' Bent persisted. 'In fact I don't think some of them have ever been in a bank before, except perhaps during the hours of darkness.' 'I would like you to be present, of course, but I will make the final decision,' said Moist, as loftily as he could manage. 'Aided by the chairman, naturally.' "Mr Fusspot? 'Oh yes.' 'He is an expert judge, is he?' 'Oh, yes!' Moist picked up the dog and headed for the office. He could feel the chief cashier glaring at his back. Bent had been right. Some of the people waiting hopefully to see him about a loan were thinking in terms of a couple of dollars until Friday. They were easy enough to deal with. And then there were others… 'Mr Dibbler, isn't it?' said Moist. He knew it was, but you had to speak like that when you sat behind a desk. 'That's right, sir, man and boy,' said Mr Dibbler, who had a permanently eager, rodent-like cast to his countenance. 'I could be someone else if you like.' 'And you sell pork pies, sausages, rat-on-a-stick…' 'Er, I purvey them, sir,' Dibbler corrected him, 'on account of being a purveyor.' 167 Moist looked at him over the paperwork. Claude Maximillian Overton Transpire Dibbler, a name bigger than the man himself. Everyone knew C. M. O. T. Dibbler. He sold pies and sausages off a tray, usually to people who were the worse for drink who then became the worse for pies. Moist had eaten the odd pork pie and occasional sausage in a bun, however, and that very fact interested him. There was something about the stuff that drove you back for more. There had to be some secret ingredient, or maybe the brain just didn't believe what the taste buds told it, and wanted to feel once again that flood of hot, greasy, not entirely organic, slightly crunchy substances surfing across the tongue. So you bought another one. And, it had to be said, there were times when a Dibbler sausage in a bun was just what you wanted. Sad, yet true. Everyone had moments like that. Life brought you so low that for a vital few seconds that charivari of strange greases and worrying textures was your only friend in all the world. 'Do you have an account with us, Mr Dibbler?' 'Yessir, thankyousir,' said Dibbler, who had refused an invitation to put down his tray and sat with it held defensively in front of him. The bank seemed to make the streetwise trader nervous. Of course, it was meant to. That was the reason for all the pillars and marble. They were there to make you feel out of place. 'Mr Dibbler has opened an account with five dollars,' said Bent. 'And I have brought along a sausage for your little doggie,' said Dibbler. 'Why do you need a loan, Mr Dibbler?' said Moist, watching Mr Fusspot sniff the sausage carefully. 'I want to expand the business, sir,' said Dibbler. 'You've been trading for more than thirty years,' said Moist. 168 'Yessir, thankyousir.' 'And your products are, I think I can say, unique…' 'Yessir, thankyousir.' 'So I imagine that now you need our help to open a chain of franchised cafes trading on the Dibbler name, offering a variety of meals and drinks bearing your distinctive likeness?' said Moist. Mr Fusspot jumped down from the desk with the sausage held gently in his mouth, dropped it in the corner of the office, and tried industriously to kick the carpet over it. Dibbler stared at Moist, and then said: 'Yessir, if you insist, but actually I was thinking about a barrow.' 'A barrow?' said Bent. 'Yessir. I know where I can get a nice little second-hand one with an oven and everything. Painted up nice, too. Wally the Gimp is quitting the jacket potato business 'cos of stress and he'll let me have it for fifteen dollars, cash down. A not-to-be-missed opportunity, sir.' He looked nervously at Mr Bent and added: 'I could pay you back at a dollar a week.' 'For twenty weeks,' said Bent. 'Seventeen,' said Moist. 'But the dog just tried to—' Bent began. Moist waved away the objection. 'So we have a deal, Mr Dibbler?' 'Yessir, thankyousir,' said Dibbler. 'That's a good idea you've got there, about the chain and everything, though, and I thank you. But I find that in this business it pays to be mobile.' 169 Mr Bent counted out fifteen dollars with bad grace and began to speak as soon as the door closed behind the trader. 'Even the dog wouldn't—' 'But humans will, Mr Bent,' said Moist. 'And therein lies genius. I think he makes most of his money on the mustard, but there's a man who can sell sizzle, Mr Bent. And that is a seller's market.' The last prospective borrower was heralded first by a couple of muscular men who took up positions on either side of the door, and then by a smell that overruled even the persistent odour of a Dibbler sausage. It wasn't a particularly bad smell, putting you in mind of old potatoes or abandoned tunnels; it was what you got when you started out with a severely foul stink and then scrubbed hard but ineffectually, and it surrounded King like an emperor's cloak. Moist was astonished. King of the Golden River, they called him, because the foundation of his fortune was the daily collection his men made of the urine from every inn and pub in the city. The customers paid him to take it away, and the alchemists, tanners and dyers paid him to bring it to them. But that had been only the start. Harry King's men took away everything. You saw their carts everywhere, especially around dawn. Every rag-and-bone man and rubbish siever, every dunnikin diver, every gongfermor, every scrap-metal merchant… you worked for Harry King, they said, because a broken leg was bad for business, and Harry was all about business. They said that if a dog in the street looked even a bit strained a King's man would be there in a flash to hold a shovel under its arse, because prime dog muck fetched 9p a bucket from the high-class tanners. They paid Harry. The city paid Harry. Everyone paid Harry. And what he couldn't sell back to them in more fragrant form went to feed his giant compost heaps downriver, which on frosty days sent up such great plumes of steam that kids called them the cloud factories. Apart from his hired help, King was accompanied by a skinny young man clutching a briefcase. 170 'Nice place you got here,' said Harry, sitting down in the chair opposite Moist. 'Very sound. The wife's been on at me to get curtains like that. I'm Harry King, Mr Lipwig. I've just put fifty thousand dollars in your bank.' 'Thank you very much, Mr King. We shall do our best to look after it.' 'You do that. And now I'd like to borrow one hundred thousand, thank you,' said Harry, pulling out a fat cigar. 'Have you got any security, Mr King?' said Bent. Harry King didn't even look at him. He lit the cigar, puffed it into life, and waved it in the general direction of Bent. 'Who's this, Mr Lipwig?' 'Mr Bent is our chief cashier,' said Moist, not daring to look at Bent's face. 'A clerk, then,' said Harry King dismissively, 'an' that was a clerk's question.' He leaned forward. 'My name is Harry King. That's your security, right there, an' it should be good for a hundred grand in these parts. Harry King. Everyone knows me. I pay what's owing an' I take what's owed, my word, don't I just. My handshake is my fortune. Harry King.' He slammed his huge hands down on the table. Except for the pinky of his left hand, which was missing, there was a heavy gold ring on each finger, and each ring was incised with a letter. If you saw them coming at you, as for instance in an alley because you'd been skimming something off the take, the last name you would see would be H*A*R*R*Y*K*I*N*G. It was a fact worth keeping in the forefront of your brain, in the interests of keeping the forefront of your brain. Moist looked up into the man's eyes. 'We shall need a lot more than that,' growled Bent, from somewhere above Moist. 171 Harry King didn't bother to look up. He said: 'I only talks to the organ grinder.' 'Mr Bent, could you step outside for a few minutes,' said Moist brightly, 'and perhaps Mr King's… associates will do the same?' Harry King nodded almost imperceptibly. 'Mr Lipwig, I really—' 'Please, Mr Bent.' The chief cashier snorted, but followed the thugs out of the office. The young man with the briefcase made as if to leave, but Harry waved him back into his seat. 'You want to watch that Bent,' he said. 'There's something funny about him.' 'Odd, maybe, but he wouldn't like to be called funny,' said Moist. 'So why does Harry King need money, Mr King? Everyone knows you're rich. Has the bottom dropped out of the dog-muck business? Or vice versa?' 'I'm cons-sol-id-ating,' said King. 'This Undertaking business… there's going to be a few opportunities for a man in the right place. There's land to buy, palms to grease… you know how it is. But them other banks, they won't lend to King of the Golden River, for all it's my lads what keeps their cesspits fragrant as a violet. Them stuck-up ponces'd be up to their ankles in their own piss if it weren't for me, but they holds their noses when I walks by, oh yeah.' He stopped, as if a thought had occurred, and went on: 'Well, most people do, o'course, it's not like a man can take a bath every five bloody minutes, but that bunch of bankers still gives me the cold shoulder even when the wife has scrubbed me raw. How dare they! I'm a better risk than most of their smarmy customers, you can bet on that. I employs a thousand people in this city, mister, one way or another. That's a thousand families lookin' to me for their dinner. I might be about muck, but I don't muck about.' 172 He's not a crook, Moist reminded himself. He pulled himself out of the gutter and beat his way to the top in a world where a length of lead pipe was the standard negotiating tool. That world wouldn't trust paper. In that world, reputation was all. 'A hundred thousand is a lot of money,' he said aloud. 'You'll give it to me, though,' said King, grinning. 'I knows you will, 'cos you're a chancer, same as me. I can smell it on you. I smell a lad who's done a thing or two in his time, eh?' 'We all have to eat, Mr King.' ' 'course we do. 'course we do. An' now we can sit back like a coupla judges an' be pillows of the community, eh? So we'll shake hands on it like the gentlemen we ain't. This here,' he went on, laying a huge hand on the shoulder of the young man, 'is Wallace, my clerk what does the sums for me. He's new, on account of the last one I had I caught fiddlin' me. That was a laugh, as you can imagine!' Wallace didn't smile. 'I probably can,' said Moist. Harry King guarded his various premises with creatures that could only be called dogs because wolves aren't that insane. And they were kept hungry. There were rumours, and Harry King was probably happy about that. It paid to advertise. You didn't double-cross Harry King. But it worked both ways. 'Wallace can talk numbers with your monkey,' said Harry, standing up. 'You'll want to squeeze me, right enough. Business is business, and don't I know it. What do you say?' 'Well, I'd say we have an agreement, Mr King,' Moist said. Then he spat on his hand and held it out. It was worth it to see the look on the man's face. 'I didn't know bankers did that,' said Harry. 173 'They don't often shake hands with Harry King, then,' said Moist. That was probably overdoing it, but King winked, spat on his own hand, and grasped Moist's. Moist had been prepared, but even so the man's grip ground his finger bones together. 'You're more full of bullshit than a frightened herd on fresh pasture, Mr Lipwig.' 'Thank you, sir. I take that as a compliment.' 'And just to keep your monkey happy, I'll deposit the deeds of the paper mill, the big yard and a few other properties,' said Harry. 'Give 'em to the man, Wallace.' 'You should have said that in the first place, Mr King,' said Moist, as some impressive scrolls were handed over. 'Yeah, but I didn't. Wanted to make sure of you. When can I have my money?' 'Soon. When I've printed it.' Harry King wrinkled his nose. 'Oh, yeah, the paper stuff. Me, I like money that clinks, but Wallace here says paper's the coming thing.' He winked. 'And it's not like I can complain, since ol' Spools buys his paper off'f me these days. Can't turn me nose up at me own manufacture now, can I? Good day to you, sir!' Mr Bent strode back into the office twenty minutes later, his face like a tax demand, to find Moist vaguely staring at a sheet of paper on the worn green leather desk. 'Sir, I must protest—' 'Did you nail him down to a good rate?' said Moist. 'I pride myself that I did, but the way you—' 174 'We will do well out of Harry King, Mr Bent, and he will do well out of us.' 'But you're turning my bank into some sort of—' 'Not counting friend Harry, we took in more than four thousand dollars today. Most of them were from what you'd call poor people, but there's far more of them than rich people. We can set that money to work. And we won't lend to scoundrels this time, don't you worry about that. I'm a scoundrel, and I can spot them a mile off. Please pass on our compliments to the counter staff. And now, Mr Bent, Mr Fusspot and I are going to see a man about making money.' Teemer & Spools had gone up in the world because of the big stamp contract. They'd always done the best printing work in any case, but now they had the men and muscle to bid for all the big contracts. And you could trust them. Moist always felt rather guilty when he went into the place; Teemer & Spools seemed to represent everything that he only pretended to be. There were plenty of lights on when he went in. And Mr Spools was in his office, writing in a ledger. He looked up and when he saw Moist smiled the smile you save for your very best customer. 'Mr Lipwig! What can I do for you? Do take a seat! We don't see so much of you these days!' Moist sat and chatted, because Mr Spools liked to chat. Things were difficult. Things are always difficult. There were a lot more presses around these days. T&S were staying ahead of the game by staying on top of it. Regrettably, said Mr Spools, with a straight face, their 'friendly' rivals, the wizards at Unseen University Press, had come a cropper with their talking books— 'Talking books? That sounds a good idea,' said Moist. 175 'Quite possibly,' said Spools with a sniff. 'But these weren't meant to, and certainly not to complain about the quality of their glue and the hamfistedness of the typesetter. And of course now the university can't pulp them.' 'Why not?' 'Think of the screaming! No, I pride myself that we are still riding the wave. Er… was there something special you wanted?' 'What can you do with this?' said Moist, putting one of the new dollars on the table. Spools picked it up and read it carefully. Then, in a faraway voice, he said: 'I did hear something. Does Vetinari know you're planning this?' 'Mr Spools, I'll bet he knows my shoe size and what I had for breakfast.' The printer put down the bill as if it was ticking. 'I can see what you're doing. Such a small thing, and yet so dangerous.' 'Can you print them?' said Moist. 'Oh, not that one. I made up a batch just to test the idea. I mean high-quality banknotes, if I can find an artist to draw them.' 'Oh, yes. We are a byword for quality. We're building a new press to keep pace with demand. But what about security?' 'What, in here? No one has ever bothered you so far, have they?' 'No, they haven't. But up until now we haven't had lots of money lying around, if you see what I mean.' Spools held up the note and let it go. It wafted gently from side to side until it landed on the desk. 'So light, too,' he went on. 'A few thousand dollars would be no problem to carry.' 176 'But kind of hard to melt down. Look, build the new press in the Mint. There's a lot of space. End of problem,' said Moist. 'Well, yes, that would make sense. But a press is a big thing to move, you know. It'll take days to shift it. Are you in a hurry? Of course you are.' 'Hire some golems. Four golems will lift anything. Print me dollars by the day after tomorrow and the first thousand you print are a bonus.' 'Why are you always in such a hurry, Mr Lipwig?' 'Because people don't like change. But make the change happen fast enough and you go from one type of normal to another.' 'Well, we could hire some golems, I suppose,' said the printer. 'But I fear there are other difficulties less easy to overcome. Do you realize that if you start printing money then you will get forgeries. It's not worth the trouble, maybe, for a twenty-pence stamp, but if you want, say, a ten-dollar note… ?' He raised his eyebrows. 'Probably, yes. Problems?' 'Big ones, my friend. Oh, we can help. Decent linen paper with a pattern of raised threads, watermarks, a good spirit ink, change the plates often to keep it sharp, little tricks with the design… and make it complex, too. That's important. Yes, we could do it for you. They will be expensive. I strongly suggest you find an engraver as good as this…' Mr Spools unlocked one of the lower drawers of his desk and tossed a sheet of 50p Green 'Tower of Art' stamps on to the blotter. Then he handed Moist a large magnifying glass. 'That's top-quality paper, of course,' the printer said as Moist stared. 'You're getting very good. I can see every detail,' Moist breathed, poring over the sheet. 177 'No,' said Spools, with some satisfaction. 'In fact, you cannot. You might, though, with this.' He unlocked a cupboard and handed Moist a heavy brass microscope. 'He's put in more detail than we did,' he said, as Moist focused. 'It's at the very limit of what metal and paper can be persuaded to do. It is, I declare, a work of genius. He would be your salvation.' 'Amazing,' said Moist. 'Well, we've got to have him! Who does he work for now?' 'No one, Mr Lipwig. He is in prison, awaiting the noose.' ' Owlswick Jenkins?' 'You testified against him, Mr Lipwig,' said Spools mildly. 'Well, yes, but only to confirm that they were our stamps he was copying, and how much we might be losing! I didn't expect he'd be hanged!' 'His lordship is always touchy when it's a case of treason against the city, as he describes it. I think Jenkins was badly served by his lawyer. After all, his work made our stamps look like the real forgeries. You know, I got the impression the poor chap didn't really realize that what he was doing was wrong.' Moist recalled the watery frightened eyes and the expression of helpless puzzlement. 'Yes,' he said. 'You may be right.' 'Could you perhaps use your influence with Vetinari't—' 'No. It wouldn't work.' 'Ah. Are you sure?' 'Yes,' said Moist flatly. 178 'Well, you see, there's only so much we can do. We can even number the bills automatically now. But the artwork must be of the finest kind. Oh dear. I'm sorry. I wish I could help. We owe you a great debt, Mr Lipwig. So much official work is coming in now that we'd need the space in the Mint. My word, we're practically the government's printer!' 'Really?' said Moist. 'That's very… interesting.' It rained ungracefully. The gutters gargled, and tried to spit. Occasionally the wind caught the cascading overflow from the rooftops and slapped a sheet of water across the face of anyone who looked up. But this was not a night to look up. This was a night to scurry, bent double, for home. Raindrops hit the windows of Mrs Cake's boarding house, specifically the one in the rear room occupied by Mavolio Bent, at the rate of twenty-seven a second, plus or minus fifteen per cent. Mr Bent liked counting. You could trust numbers, except perhaps for pi, but he was working on that in his spare time and it was bound to give in sooner or later. He sat on his bed, watching the numbers dance in his head. They'd always danced for him, even in the bad times. And the bad times had been so very bad. Now, perhaps, there were more ahead. Someone knocked at his door. He said, 'Come in, Mrs Cake.' The landlady pushed open the door. 'You always know it's me, don't you, Mr Bent,' said Mrs Cake, who was more than a trifle nervous of her best lodger. He paid his rent on time — exactly on time — and he kept his room scrupulously clean and, of course, he was a professional gentleman. All right, he had a haunted look about him and there was that odd business with his carefully adjusting the clock before he went to work every day, but she was prepared to put up with that. There was no shortage of lodgers in this crowded city, but clean ones who 179 paid regularly and never complained about the food were thin enough on the ground to be worth cherishing, and if they put a strange padlock on their wardrobe, well, least said soonest mended. 'Yes, Mrs Cake,' said Bent. 'I always know it's you because there is a distinctive one point four seconds between the knocks.' 'Really? Fancy!' said Mrs Cake, who rather liked the sound of 'distinctive'. 'I always say you're the man for the adding-up. Er, there is going to be three gentlemen downstairs asking after you…' 'When?' 'In about two minutes,' said Mrs Cake. Bent stood up in one unfolding movement, like a Jack-in-the-box. 'Men? What will they be wearing?' 'Well, er, just, you know, clothes?' said Mrs Cake uncertainly. 'Black clothes. One of them will hand me his card, but I won't be able to read it because I'll have my wrong spectacles on. Of course, I could go and put the right ones on, obviously, but I get such a headache if I don't let a premonition go properly. Er… and now you're going to say "Please let me know when they arrive, Mrs Cake".' She looked at him expectantly. 'Sorry, but I had a premonition that I'd come up to tell you I had a premonition, so thought I'd better. It's a bit silly, but none of us can change how we're made, I always say.' 'Please let me know when they arrive, Mrs Cake,' said Bent. Mrs Cake gave him a grateful look before hurrying away. Mr Bent sat down again. Life with Mrs Cake's premonitions could get a little intricate at times, especially now they were becoming recursive, but it was part of the Elm Street ethos that you were charitable towards the foibles of others in the hope of a similar attitude to your own. He liked Mrs Cake, but she was wrong. You could change how you were made. If you couldn't, there was no hope. 180 After a couple of minutes he heard the ring of the bell, the muted conversation, and went through the motions of surprise when she knocked on his door. Bent inspected the visiting card. 'Mr Cosmo? Oh. How strange. You had better send them up.' He paused, and looked around. Subdivision was rife in the city now. The room was exactly twice the size of the bed, and it was a narrow bed. Three people in here would have to know one another well. Four would know one another well whether they wanted to or not. There was a small chair, but Bent kept it on top of the wardrobe, out of the way. 'Perhaps just Mr Cosmo,' he suggested. The man was proudly escorted in a minute later. 'Well, this is a wonderful little hideaway, Mr Bent,' Cosmo began. 'So handy for, um—' 'Nearby places,' said Bent, lifting the chair off the wardrobe. 'There you are, sir. I don't often have visitors.' 'I'll come straight to the point, Mr Bent,' said Cosmo, sitting down. 'The directors do not like the, ha, direction things are going. I'm sure you don't, either.' 'I could wish for them to be otherwise, sir, yes.' 'He should have held a directors' meeting!' 'Yes, sir, but bank rules say he needn't do so for a week, I'm afraid.' 'He will ruin the bank!' 'We are in fact getting many new customers, sir.' 'You can't possibly like the man? Not you, Mr Bent?' 181 'He is easy to like, sir. But you know me, sir. I do not trust those who laugh too easily. The heart of a fool is in the house of mirth. He should not be in charge of your bank.' 'I like to think of it as our bank, Mr Bent,' said Cosmo generously, 'because, in a very real way, it is ours.' 'You are too kind, sir,' said Bent, staring down at the floorboards visible through the hole in the cheap oilcloth which was itself laid bare, in a very real way, by the bald patch in the carpet which, in a very real way, was his. 'You joined us quite young, I believe,' Cosmo went on. 'My father himself gave you a job as trainee clerk, didn't he?' 'That is correct, sir.' 'He was very… understanding, my father,' said Cosmo. 'And rightly so. No sense in dredging up the past.' He paused for a little while to let this sink in. Bent was intelligent, after all. No need to use a hammer when a feather would float down with as much effect. 'Perhaps you could find some way that will allow him to be removed from office without fuss or bloodshed? There must be something,' he prompted. 'No one just steps out of nowhere. But people know even less about his past than they do about, for the sake of argument, yours.' Another little reminder. Bent's eye twitched. 'But Mr Fusspot will still be chairman,' he mumbled, while the rain rattled on the glass. 'Oh yes. But I'm sure he will then be looked after by someone who is, shall we say, better capable of translating his little barks along more traditional lines?' 'I see.' 'And now I must be going,' said Cosmo, standing up. 'I'm sure you have a lot of things to' — he looked around the barren room which showed no 182 sign of real human occupation, no pictures, no books, no debris of living, and concluded — 'do?' 'I will go to sleep shortly,' said Mr Bent. 'Tell me, Mr Bent, how much do we pay you?' said Cosmo, glancing at the wardrobe. 'Forty-one dollars per month, sir,' said Bent. 'Ah, but of course you get wonderful job security.' 'So I had hitherto believed, sir.' 'I just wonder why you choose to live here?' 'I like the dullness, sir. It expects nothing of me.' 'Well, time to go,' said Cosmo, slightly faster than he really should. 'I'm sure you can be of help, Mr Bent. You have always been a great help. It would be such a shame if you could not be of help at this time.' Bent stared at the floor. He was trembling. 'I speak for all of us when I say that we think of you as one of the family,' Cosmo went on. He rethought this sentence with reference to the peculiar charms of the Lavishes and added: 'but in a good way.' 183 Chapter 6 Jailbreak — The prospect of the kidney sandwich — The barber-surgeon's knock — Suicide by paint, inadvisability of — Angels at one remove — Igor goes shopping — The use of understudies at a hanging, reflections on — Places suitable for putting a head — Moist awaits the sunshine — Tricks with your brain — 'We're going to need some bigger notes' — Fun with root vegetables — The lure of clipboards — The impossible cabinet ON THE ROOF OF the Tanty, the city's oldest jail, Moist was more than moist. He'd reached the point where he was so wet that he should be approaching dryness from the other end. With care, he lifted the last of the oil lamps from the little semaphore tower on the flat roof, and tossed its contents into the howling night. They had been only half full in any case. It was amazing that anyone had even bothered to light them on a night like this. He felt his way back to the edge of the roof and located his grapnel, moving it gently around the stern crenellation and then letting out more rope to lower it down to the invisible ground. Now he had the rope around the big stone bulk he slid down holding on to both lengths and pulled the rope down after him. He stashed both grapnel and rope among the debris in an alley; they would be stolen within an hour or so. Right, then. Now for it… The Watch armour he'd lifted from the bank's locker room fitted like a glove. He'd have preferred it to fit like a helmet and breastplate. But in truth it probably didn't look any better on its owner, currently swanking 184 along the corridors in the bank's own shiny but impractical armour. It was common knowledge that the Watch's approach to uniforms was one-size-doesn't-exactly-fit-anybody, and that Commander Vimes disapproved of armour that didn't have that kicked-by-trolls look. He liked armour to state clearly that it had been doing its job. Moist took some time to get his breath back, and then walked round to the big black door and rang the bell. The mechanism rattled and clanked. They wouldn't rush, not on a night like this. He was as naked and exposed as a baby lobster. He hoped he'd covered all the angles, but angles were — what did they call it, he'd gone to a lecture at the university… ah, yes. Angles were fractal. Each one was full of smaller angles. You couldn't cover them all. The watchman at the bank might be called back to work and find his locker empty, someone might have seen Moist take it, Jenkins might have been moved… The hell with it. When time was pressing you just had to spin the wheel and be ready to run. Or, in this case, lift the huge door knocker in both hands and bring it down sharply, twice, on the nail. He waited until, with difficulty, a small hatch in the door was pulled aside. 'What?' said a petulant voice in a shadowy face. 'Prisoner pick-up. Name of Jenkins.' 'What? It's the middle of the bleedin' night!' 'Got a signed Form 37,' said Moist stolidly. The little hatch slammed shut. He waited in the rain again. This time it was three minutes before it opened. 'What?' said a new voice, marinated in suspicion. Ah, good. It was Bellyster. Moist was glad of that. What he was going to do tonight was going to make one of the warders a very uncomfortable screw, and some of them were decent enough, especially on Death Row. 185 But Bellyster was a real old-school screw, a craftsman of small evils, the kind of bully who would take every opportunity to make a prisoner's life a misery. It wasn't just that he'd gob in your bowl of greasy skilly; but he wouldn't even have the common decency to do it where you couldn't see him. He picked on the weak and frightened, too. And there was another good thing. Bellyster hated the Watch, and the feeling was mutual. A man could use that. 'Come for a pris'ner,' Moist complained. An' I been standing in the rain for five minutes!' 'And you shall continue to do so, my son, oh, yes indeed, until I'm ready. Show me the docket!' 'Says here Jenkins, Owlswick,' said Moist. 'Let me see it, then!' 'They said I has to hand it over when you give me the pris'ner,' said Moist, a model of stolid insistence. 'Oh, we have a lawyer here, do we? All right, Abe, let my learned friend in.' The hatch slid back and, after some more clanking, a wicket door opened. Moist stepped through. It was raining just as hard inside the compound. 'Have I seen you before?' said Bellyster, his head on one side. 'Only started last week,' said Moist. Behind him, the door was locked again. The slamming of the bolts echoed in his head. 'Why's there only one of you?' Bellyster demanded. 'Don't know, sir. You'd have to ask my mum and dad.' 'Don't you be funny with me! There should be two on escort duty!' 186 Moist gave a wet and weary shrug of pure uninterest. 'Should there? Don't ask me. They just told me he's a little piece of piss who'll be no trouble. You can check if you like. I heard the palace wants to see him right away.' The palace. That changed the gleam in the warder's nasty little eyes. A sensible man didn't get in the way of the palace. And sending out some dim newbie to do a thankless task on a wild night like this made sense; it was exactly what Bellyster would have done. He held out his hand and demanded: 'Docket!' Moist handed over the flimsy paper. The man read it, lips perceptibly moving, clearly willing it to be wrong in some way. There'd be no problem there, however much the man glared; Moist had pocketed a handful of the forms while Mr Spools had been making him a cup of coffee. 'He's goin' to hang in the morning,' Bellyster said, holding the sheet up to the lantern. 'What d'they want him for now?' 'Dunno,' said Moist. 'Get a move on, will you? I'm on my break in ten minutes.' The warder leaned forward. 'Just for that, friend, I will go and check. Just one escort? Can't be too careful, can I?' O-kay, thought Moist. All going to plan. He'll be ten minutes having a nice cup of tea, just to teach me a lesson, five minutes to find out the clacks isn't working, about one second to decide that he'll be blowed if he's going to sort out the fault on a night like this, another second to think: the paperwork was okay, he'd checked for the watermark, and that was the main thing… call it twenty minutes, give or take. Of course, he could be wrong. Anything could happen. Bellyster could be rounding up a couple of his mates right now, or maybe he'd get someone to run out the back way and find a real copper. The future was uncertain. Exposure could be a few seconds away. It didn't get any better than this. 187 Bellyster left it for twenty-two minutes. Footsteps approached, slowly, and Jenkins appeared, tottering under the weight of the irons, with Bellyster prodding him occasionally with his stick. There was no way the little man could have gone any faster, but he was going to get prodded anyway. 'I don't think I'm going to need the shackles,' said Moist quickly. 'You ain't getting 'em,' said the warder. 'The reason bein', you buggers never bring 'em back!' 'Okay,' said Moist. 'C'mon, it's freezing out here.' Bellyster grunted. He was not a happy man. He bent down, unlocked the shackles, and stood up again with his hand once more on the man's shoulder. His other hand thrust out, holding a clipboard. 'Sign!' he commanded. Moist did so. And then came the magic bit. It was why the paperwork was so important, in the greasy world of turnkeys, thief-takers and bang-beggars, because what really mattered at any one moment was habeas corpus: whose hand is on the collar? Who is responsible for this corpus? Moist had been through this before as the body in question, and knew the drill. The prisoner moved on a trail of paper. If he was found without a head, then the last person to have signed for a prisoner whose hat was not resting on his neck might well have to answer some stern questions. Bellyster pushed the prisoner forward and spake the time-honoured words: 'To you, sir!' he barked. 'Habby arse corparse!' Moist thrust the clipboard back at him and laid his other hand on Owlswick's other shoulder. ' From you, sir!' he replied. 'I habby his arse all right!' Bellyster grunted and removed his hand. The deed was done, the law was observed, honour was satisfied and Owlswick Jenkins — 188 — looked up sadly at Moist, kicked him hard in the groin, and went off down the street like a hare. As Moist bent double, all he was aware of outside his little world of pain was the sound of Bellyster laughing himself silly and shouting: 'Your bird, milord! You habbyed him all right! Ho yus!' Moist had managed to walk normally by the time he got back to the little room he rented from I-don't-know Jack. He struggled into the golden suit, dried off the armour, bundled it into the bag, stepped out into the alley and hurried back to the bank. It was harder to get back in than it had been to get out. The guards changed over at the same time as the staff left, and in the general milling about Moist, wearing the tatty grey suit he wore when he wanted to stop being Moist von Lipwig and turn into the world's most unmemorable man, had strolled out unquestioned. It was all in the mind: the night guards started guarding when everyone had gone home, right? So people going home were no problem or, if they were, they were not mine. The guard who finally turned up to see who was struggling to unlock the front door gave him a bit of trouble until a second guard, who was capable of modest intelligence, pointed out that if the chairman wanted to get into the bank at midnight then that was fine. He was the damn boss, wasn't he? Don't you read the papers? See the gold suit? And he had a key! So what if he had a big fat bag? He was coming in with it, right? If he was leaving with it that might be a different matter, ho ho, just my little joke, sir, sorry about that sir… It was amazing what you could do if you had the nerve to try, thought Moist, as he bid the men goodnight. F'r instance, he'd been so theatrically working the key in the lock because it was a Post Office key. He didn't have one for the bank yet. 189 Even putting the armour back in the locker was not a problem. The guards still walked set routes and the buildings were big and not very well lit. The locker room was empty and unregarded for hours at a time. A lamp was still alight in his new suite. Mr Fusspot was snoring on his back in the middle of the in-tray. A night-light was burning by the bedroom door. In fact there were two, and they were the red, smouldering eyes of Gladys. 'Would You Like Me To Make You A Sandwich, Mr Lipwig?' 'No, thank you, Gladys.' 'It Would Be No Trouble. There Are Kidneys In The Ice Room.' 'Thank you, but no, Gladys. I'm really not hungry,' said Moist, carefully shutting the door. Moist lay on the bed. Up here, the building was absolutely silent. He'd grown used to his bed in the Post Office, where there was always noise drifting up from the yard. But it was not the silence that kept him awake. He stared up at the ceiling and thought: stupid, stupid, stupid! In a few hours there would be a shift change at the Tanty. People wouldn't get too worried about the missing Owlswick until the hangman turned up looking busy, and then there would be a nervous time when they decided who was going to go to the palace to see if there was any chance of being allowed to hang their prisoner this morning. The man would be miles away by now, and not even a werewolf could smell him on a wet and windy night like this. They couldn't pin anything on Moist, but in the cold wet light of two a.m. he could imagine bloody Commander Vimes worrying at this, picking away at it in that thick-headed way of his. 190 He blinked. Where would the little man run to? He wasn't part of a gang, according to the Watch. He'd just made his own stamps. What kind of a man goes to the trouble of forging a ha'penny stamp? What kind of a man… Moist sat up. Could it be that easy? Well, it might be. Owlswick was crazy enough in a mild, bewildered sort of way. He had the look of one who'd long ago given up trying to understand the world beyond his easel, a man for whom cause and effect had no obvious linkage. Where would a man like that hide? Moist lit the lamp and walked over to the battered wreckage of his wardrobe. Once again he selected the tatty grey suit. It had sentimental value; he had been hanged in it. And it was an unmemorable suit for an unmemorable man, with the additional advantage, unlike black, of not showing up in the dark. Thinking ahead, he went into the kitchen, too, and stole a couple of dusters from a cupboard. The corridor was reasonably well lit by the lamps every few yards. But lamps create shadows and in one of them, beside a huge Ping Dynasty vase from Hunghung, Moist was just a patch of grey on grey. A guard walked past, treacherously silent on the thick carpet. When he'd gone, Moist hurried down the flight of marble steps and tucked himself behind a potted palm that someone had thought it necessary to put there. The floors of the bank all opened on to the main hall which, like the one in the Post Office, went from ground floor to roof. Sometimes, depending on the layout, a guard on a floor above could see the floor below. Sometimes, the guards walked over uncarpeted marble. Sometimes, on the upper floors, they crossed patches of fine tiling which rang like a bell. Moist stood and listened, trying to pick up the rhythm of the patrols. There were more than he'd expected. Come on, lads, you're working security: what about the traditional all-night poker game! Don't you know how to behave? 191 It was like a wonderful puzzle. It was better than night-climbing, better even than Extreme Sneezing! And the really good thing about it was this: if he was caught, why, he was just testing the security! Well done, lads, you found me… But he mustn't be caught. A guard came upstairs, walking slowly and deliberately. He leaned against the balustrade and, to Moist's annoyance, lit the stub of a cigarette. Moist watched from between the fronds while the man leaned comfortably on the marble, looking down at the floor below. He was sure that guards weren't supposed to do this. And smoking, too! After a few reflective drags, the guard dropped the dog-end, trod on it and continued up the stairs. Two thoughts struggled for dominance in Moist's mind. Screaming slightly louder was: he had a crossbow! Do they shoot first to avoid having to ask questions later? But also there, vibrating with indignation, was a voice saying: he stubbed out that damn cigarette right there on the marble! Those tall brass wossnames with the little bowls of white sand are there for a reason, you know! When the man had disappeared above him Moist ran down the rest of the flight, slid across the polished marble on his duster-covered boots, found the door that led down to the basement, opened it quickly and remembered just in time to close it quietly behind him. He shut his eyes and waited for cries or sounds of pursuit. He opened his eyes. There was the usual brilliant light at the far end of the undercroft, but there was no rushing of water. Only the occasional drip demonstrated the depth of the otherwise all-pervading silence. Moist walked carefully past the Glooper, which tinkled faintly, and into the unexplored shadows beneath the wonderful fornication. 192 If we build it, wilt thou comest? he thought. But the hoped-for god never came. It was sad but, in some celestial way, a bit stupid. Well, wasn't it? Moist had heard that there were maybe millions of little gods floating around in the world, living under rocks, blown about like tumbleweed, clinging to the topmost branches of trees… They awaited the big moment, the lucky break that might end up with a temple and a priesthood and worshippers to call your own. But they hadn't come here, and it was easy to see why. Gods wanted belief, not rational thinking. Building the temple first was like giving a pair of wonderful shoes to a man with no legs. Building a temple didn't mean you believed in gods, it just meant you believed in architecture. Something akin to a workshop had been built on the end wall of the undercroft, around a huge and ancient fireplace. An Igor was working over an intense, blue-white flame, carefully bending a piece of glass pipe. Behind him, green liquid surged and fizzed in giant bottles: Igors seemed to have a natural affinity with lightning. You could always recognize an Igor. They went out of their way to be recognized. It wasn't just the musty dusty old suits, or even the occasional extra digit or mismatched eyes. It was that you could probably stand a ball on the top of their head without it falling off. The Igor looked up. 'Good morning, thur. And you are… ?' 'Moist von Lipwig,' said Moist. 'And you would be Igor.' 'Got it in one, thur. I have heard many good thingth about you.' 'Down here?' 'I alwayth keep an ear to the ground, thur.' Moist resisted the impulse to look down. Igors and metaphors didn't go well together. 193 'Well, Igor… the thing is… I want to bring someone into the building without troubling the guards, and I wondered if there was another door down here?' What he did not say, but which passed between them on the ether, was: you're an Igor, right? And when the mob are sharpening their sickles and trying to break down the door, the Igor is never there. Igors were masters of the unobtrusive exit. 'There ith a thmall door we uthe, thur. It can't be opened from the outthide, tho it'th never guarded.' Moist looked longingly at the rainwear on its stand. 'Fine. Fine. I'm just popping out, then.' 'You're the bothth, thur.' 'And I shall be popping back shortly with a man. Er, a gentleman who is not anxious to meet civic authority.' 'Quite, thur. Give them a pitchfork and they think they own the bloody plathe, thur.' 'But he's not a murderer or anything.' 'I'm an Igor, thur. We don't athk quethtionth.' 'Really? Why not? 'I don't know, thur. I didn't athk.' Igor took Moist to a small door that opened into a grimy trash-filled stairwell, half flooded by the unremitting rain. Moist paused on the threshold, the water already soaking into his cheap suit. 'Just one thing, Igor…' 'Yeth, thur?' 194 'When I walked past the Glooper just now, there was water in it.' 'Oh, yeth, thur. Ith that a problem?' 'It was moving, Igor. Should that be happening at this time of night?' 'That? Oh, jutht thyphonic variableth, thur. It happenth all the time.' 'Oh, the old syphonics, eh? Ah, well, that's a relief—' 'Jutht give the barber-thurgeon'th knock when you return, thur.' 'What is the—' The door closed. Inside, Igor went back to his workbench and fired up the gas again. Some of the little glass tubes lying beside him on a piece of green felt looked… odd, and reflected the light in disconcerting ways. The point about Igors… the thing about Igors… Well, most people looked no further than the musty suit, lank hair, cosmetic clan scars and stitching, and the lisp. And this was probably because, apart from the lisp, this was all there was to see. And people forgot, therefore, that most of the people who employed Igors were not conventionally sane. Ask them to build a storm attractor and a set of lightning storage jars and they would laugh at you.5 They needed, oh, how they needed someone in possession of a fully working brain, and every Igor was guaranteed to have at least one of those. Igors were, in fact, smart, which was why they were always elsewhere when the fiery torches hit the windmill. And they were perfectionists. Ask them to build you a device and you wouldn't get what you asked for. You'd get what you wanted. 5 In fact they would probably laugh at you if you said 'sausages'. They laugh at lots of things. 195 In its web of reflections, the Glooper glooped. Water rose in a thin glass tube and dripped into a little glass bucket, which tipped on to a tiny seesaw and caused a tiny valve to open. Owlswick Jenkins's recent abode, according to the Times, was Short Alley. There wasn't a house number because Short Alley was only big enough for one front door. The door in question was shut but hanging by one hinge. A scrap of black and yellow rope indicated, for those who hadn't spotted the clue of the door, that the place had come to the recent attention of the Watch. The door fell off the hinge when Moist pushed at it, and landed in the stream of water that was gushing down the alley. It wasn't much of a search, because Owlswick hadn't bothered to hide. He was in a room on the first floor, surrounded by mirrors and candles, a dreamy look on his face, peacefully painting. He dropped the brush when he saw Moist, grabbed a tube that lay on a bench, and held it in front of his mouth, ready to swallow. 'Don't make me use this! Don't make me use this!' he warbled, his whole body trembling. 'Is it some kind of toothpaste?' said Moist. He sniffed the very lived-in air of the studio and added: 'That could help, you know.' 'This is Uba Yellow, the most poisonous paint in the world! Stand back or I will die horribly!' said the forger. 'Er, in fact the most poisonous paint is probably Agatean White, but I've run out of that, it is most vexing.' It occurred to Owlswick that he had lost the tone slightly, and he quickly raised his voice again. 'But this is pretty poisonous, all the same!' A gifted amateur picks up a lot, and Moist had always found poisons interesting. An arsenical compound, eh?' he said. Everyone knew about 196 Agatean White. He hadn't heard of Uba Yellow, but arsenic came in many inviting shades. Just don't lick your brush. 'It's a horrible way to die,' he continued. 'You more or less melt over several days.' 'I'm not going back! I'm not going back!' squeaked Owlswick. 'They used to use it to make skin whiter,' said Moist, moving a little closer. 'Get back! I'll use it! I swear I'll use it!' 'That's where we get the phrase "drop-dead gorgeous",' said Moist, closing in. He snatched at Owlswick, who rammed the tube in his mouth. Moist tugged it out, pushing the forger's clammy little hands out of the way, and examined it. 'Just as I thought,' he said, pocketing the tube. 'You forgot to take the cap off. It's the kind of mistake amateurs always make!' Owlswick hesitated, and then said: 'You mean there's people who commit suicide professionally?' 'Look, Mr Jenkins, I'm here to—' Moist began. 'I'm not going back to that jail! I'm not going back!' said the little man, backing away. 'That's fine by me. I want to offer you a—' 'They watch me, you know,' Owlswick volunteered. 'All the time.' Ah. This was slightly better than suicide by paint, but only just. 'Er… you mean in jail?' said Moist, just to make sure. 197 'They watch me everywhere! There's one of Them right behind you!' Moist stopped himself from turning, because that way madness lay. Mind you, quite a lot of it was standing right here in front of him. 'I'm sorry to hear that, Owlswick. That's why—' He hesitated, and thought: why not? It had worked on him. 'That's why I'm going to tell you about angels,' he said. People said there were more thunderstorms now that Igors were living in the city. There was no more thunder now, but the rain fell as if it had got all night. Some of it swirled over the top of Moist's boots as he stood in front of the bank's unobtrusive side door and tried to remember the barber-surgeon's knock. Oh, yes. It was the old one that went: rat tat a tat-tat TAT TAT! Or, to put it another way: Shave and a haircut — no legs! The door opened instantly. 'I would like to apologithe about the lack of creak, thur, but the hingeth jutht don't theem to—' 'Just give me a hand with this lot, will you?' said Moist, bent under the weight of two heavy boxes. 'This is Mr Jenkins. Can you make up a bed for him down here? And is there any chance you could change what he looks like?' 'More than you could poththibly imagine, thur,' said Igor happily. 'I was thinking of, well, a shave and a haircut. You can do that, can't you?' 198 Igor gave Moist a pained look. 'It ith true that technically thurgeonth can perform tonthorial operationth—' 'No, no, don't touch his throat, please.' 'That meanth yeth, I can give him a haircut, thur,' Igor sighed. 'I had my tonsils out when I was ten,' said Owlswick. 'Would you like thome more?' said Igor, looking for some bright edge to the situation. 'This is wonderful light!' Owlswick exclaimed, ignoring the offer. 'It's like day!' 'Jolly good,' said Moist. 'Now get some sleep, Owlswick. Remember what I told you. In the morning, you are going to design the first proper one-dollar banknote, understand?' Owlswick nodded, but his mind was already elsewhere. 'You're with me on this, are you?' said Moist. 'A note so good that no one else could do it? I showed you my attempt, yes? I know you can do better, of course.' He looked nervously at the little man. He wasn't insane, Moist was sure, but it was clear that mostly, for him, the world happened elsewhere. Owlswick paused in the act of unpacking his box. 'Um… I can't make things up,' he said. 'What do you mean?' said Moist. 'I don't know how to make things up,' said Owlswick, staring at a paintbrush as if expecting it to whistle. 'But you're a forger! Your stamps look better than ours!' 199 'Er, yes. But I don't have your… I don't know how to get started… I mean, I need something to work from… I mean, once it's there, I can…' It must be about four o'clock, thought Moist. Four o'clock! I hate it when there are two four o'clocks in the same day… He snatched a piece of paper from Owlswick's box, and pulled out a pencil. 'Look,' he said, 'you start with…' What? 'Richness,' he told himself, aloud, 'richness and solidity, like the front of the bank. Lots of ornate scrolling, which is hard to copy. A… panorama, a cityscape… Yes! Ankh-Morpork, it's all about the city! Vetinari's head, because they'll expect that, and a great big One so they get the message. Oh, the coat of arms, we must have that. And down here' — the pencil scribbled fast — 'a space for the chairman's signature, pardon me, I mean paw print. On the back… well, we are talking fine detail, Owlswick. Some god would give us a bit of gravitas. One of the jollier ones. What's the name of that god with the three-pronged fork? One like him, anyway. Fine lines, Owlswick, that's what we want. Oh, and a boat. I like boats. Tell 'em it's worth a dollar again, too. Um… oh yes, mystic stuff doesn't hurt, people'll believe in any damn thing if it sounds old and mysterious. "Doth not a penny to the widow outshine the unconquered sun?"' 'What does that mean?' 'I haven't the foggiest idea,' said Moist. 'I just made it up.' He sketched away for a while and then pushed the paper across to Owlswick. 'Something like that,' he said. 'Have a go. Think you can make something of it?' 'I'll try,' Owlswick promised. 'Good. I'll see you tomo— later on. Igor here will look after you.' Owlswick was already staring at nothing. Moist pulled Igor aside. 200 'Just a shave and a haircut, okay?' 'Ath you withth, thur. Am I right in thinking that the gentleman doeth not want any entanglementth with the Watch?' 'Correct.' 'No problem there, thur. Could I thuggetht a change of name?' 'Good idea. Any suggestions?' 'I like the name Clamp, thur. And for a firtht name, Exorbit thpringth to mind.' 'Really? Where did it spring from? No, don't answer that. Exorbit Clamp…' Moist hesitated, but at this time of the night, why argue? Especially when it was this time of the morning. 'Exorbit Clamp it is, then. Make certain he forgets even the name of Jenkins,' Moist added, with what, he later realized, was in the circumstances a definite lack of foresight. Moist slipped back up to bed without ever having to duck out of sight. No guard is at his best in the small hours. The place was locked up tight, wasn't it? Who could break in? Down in the well-fornicated vault, the artist formerly known as Owlswick stared at Moist's sketches and felt his brain begin to fizz. It was true that he was not, in any proper sense, a madman. He was, by certain standards, very sane. Faced with a world too busy, complex and incomprehensible to deal with, he'd reduced it to a small bubble just big enough to hold him and his palette. It was nice and quiet in there. All the noises were far away, and They couldn't spy on him. 'Mr Igor?' he said. Igor looked up from a crate in which he had been rummaging. He held what looked like a metal colander in his hands. 'How may I be of thurvithe, thur?' 201 'Can you get me some old books with pictures of gods and boats and maybe some views of the city too?' 'Indeed, thur. There ith an antiquarian booktheller in Lobbin Clout.' Igor put the metal device on one side, pulled a battered leather bag from under the table and, after a moment's thought, put a hammer in it. Even in the world of the newly fledged Mr Clamp, it was still so late at night that it was too early in the morning. 'Er, I'm sure it can wait until daylight,' he volunteered. 'Oh, I alwayth ththop at night, thur,' said Igor. 'When I'm after… bargainth.' Moist woke far too early, with Mr Fusspot standing on his chest and squeaking his rubber bone very loudly. As a result, Moist was being dribbled on in no small way. Behind Mr Fusspot was Gladys. Behind her were two men in black suits. 'His lordship has agreed to see you, Mr Lipwig,' said one of them quite cheerfully. Moist tried to wipe the slobber off his lapel, and only succeeded in shining the suit. 'Do I want to see him?' One of the men smiled. ' Ooooh, yes!' 'A hanging always makes me hungry,' said Lord Vetinari, working carefully on a hard-boiled egg. 'Don't you find this so?' 202 'Um… I've only been hanged once,' said Moist. 'I didn't feel like eating much.' 'I think it's the chilly early-morning air,' said Vetinari, apparently not hearing this. 'It puts an edge on the appetite.' He looked directly at Moist for the first time, and appeared concerned. 'Oh dear, you're not eating, Mr Lipwig? You must eat. You look a little peaky. I trust your job is not getting on top of you?' Somewhere en route to the palace, Moist thought, he must have stepped into another world. It had to be something like that. It was the only explanation. 'Er, who was hanged?' he said. 'Owlswick Jenkins, the forger,' said Vetinari, devoting himself again to his surgical removal of the white from the yolk. 'Drumknott, perhaps Mr Lipwig would like some fruit? Or some of that bowel-lacerating grain and nut concoction you favour so much?' 'Indeed, sir,' said the secretary. Vetinari leaned forward as if inviting Moist to join a conspiracy and added: 'I believe the cook does kippers for the guards. Very fortifying. You really do look quite pale. Don't you think he looks pale, Drumknott?' 'Verging on the wan, sir.' It was like having acid dropped slowly into your ear. Moist thought frantically, but the best he could come up with was: 'Was it a well-attended hanging?' 'Not very. I don't think it was properly advertised,' said Vetinari, 'and of course, his crime was not associated with buckets of gore. That always makes the crowd cheer. But Owlswick Jenkins was there, oh yes. He never cut a throat but he bled the city, drop by drop.' 203 Vetinari had removed and eaten the whole of the white of the egg, leaving the yolk glowing and unsullied. What would I have done if I was Vetinari and found my prison was about to be a laughing stock? There's nothing like laughter for undermining authority, Moist thought. More importantly, what would he have done if he was him, which of course he is… You'd hang someone else, that's what you'd do. You'd find some wretch of the right general shape who was waiting in the slammer for the hemp fandango and cut him a deal. Oh, he'd hang right enough, but under the name of Owlswick Jenkins. News would get out that the stand-in had been pardoned but died accidentally or something, and his dear ol' mum or his wife and kids would get an anonymous bag of wonga and escape a little bit of shame. And then the crowd would get their hanging. Now, with any luck, Bellyster had a job washing spittoons; justice, or something vaguely similar, would be seen to have been done; and the message would have been sent out that crimes against the city should be contemplated exclusively by those with cast-iron necks, and even then only maybe. Moist realized he was touching his own neck. Sometimes he woke up in the night, even now, just a moment after the void opened under his feet— Vetinari was looking at him. It wasn't exactly a smile on his face, but Moist got the nape-twitching feeling that, when he tried to think like Vetinari, his lordship slid in on those thoughts like some big black spider on a bunch of bananas and scuttled around where he shouldn't. And the certainty hit him. Owlswick wouldn't have died anyway. Not with a talent like that. He would have dropped through the trap door to a new life, just as Moist had. He'd have woken up to be given the angel offer, which for Owlswick would have been a nice light room somewhere, three meals a day, his potty emptied on demand and all the ink he wanted. From an Owlswick point of view, he'd be getting heaven. And Vetinari… would get the world's best forger, working for the city. 204 Oh, damn. I'm right in his way. I'm in Vetinari's way. The orange-gold ball of the rejected yolk glowed on Vetinari's plate. 'Your wonderful plans for paper money are progressing?' said his lordship. 'I'm hearing such a lot about them.' 'What? Oh, yes. Er, I'd like to put your head on a dollar bill, please.' 'But of course. A good place to put a head, considering all the places a head might be put.' Like a spike, yeah. He needs me, Moist thought, as the totally-not-a-threat sank in. But how much? 'Look, I—' 'Possibly your fertile mind can assist me with a little puzzle, Mr Lipwig.' Vetinari dabbed at his lips and pushed back his chair. 'Do follow me. Drumknott, please bring the ring. And the tongs, of course, just in case.' He led the way out on to the balcony, trailed by Moist, and leaned on the balustrade with his back to the foggy city. 'Still a lot of cloud about, but I think the sun should break through at any time, don't you?' he said. Moist glanced up at the sky. There was a patch of pale gold among the billows like the yolk of an egg. What was the man doing? 'Pretty soon, yes,' he ventured. The secretary handed Vetinari a small box. 'That's the box for your signet ring,' said Moist. 'Well done, Mr Lipwig, observant as ever! Do take it.' 205 Guardedly, Moist picked up the ring. It was black and had an odd, organic feel to it. The V seemed to stare at him. 'Do you find anything unusual about it?' said Vetinari, watching him carefully. 'Feels warm,' said Moist. 'Yes it does, doesn't it,' said Vetinari. 'That is because it is made of stygium. It's called a metal, but I strongly believe that it is an alloy, and a magically constructed one at that. The dwarfs sometimes find it in the Loko region, and it is extremely expensive. One day I shall write a monograph on its fascinating history, but for now all I will say is that it is usually only of interest to those who by inclination or lifestyle move in darkness — and also, of course, to those who find a life without danger hardly worth living. It can kill, you see. In direct sunshine it heats within a few seconds to a temperature that will melt iron. No one knows why.' Moist glanced up at the hazy sky. The boiled-egg glow of the sun drifted into another bank of fog. The ring cooled. 'Occasionally there is a fad among young assassins for stygium rings. Classically, they wear an ornate black glove over the ring during the day. It's all about risk, Mr Lipwig. It's about living with Death in your pocket. I swear, there are people who will pull a tiger's tail for mischief. Of course, people who are interested in coolth rather than danger just wear the glove. Be that as it may, less than two weeks ago the only man in the city who carries a stock of stygium and knows how to work it was murdered, late at night. The murderer dropped a peppermint bomb afterwards. Who do you think did it?' I'm not going to look up, thought Moist. This is just a game. He wants me to sweat. 'What was taken?' he said. 'The Watch does not know because, you see, what was taken was, de facto, not there.' 206 'All right, what was left behind?' said Moist, and thought: he's not looking at the sky, either… 'Some gems and a few ounces of stygium in the safe,' said Vetinari. 'You didn't ask how the man was killed.' 'How was—' 'Crossbow shot to the head, while he was seated. Is this exciting, Mr Lipwig?' 'Hit man, then,' said Moist desperately. 'It was planned. He didn't pay a debt. Perhaps he was a fence and tried to pull a scam. There's not enough information!' 'There never is,' said Vetinari. 'My cap comes back from the cleaners subtly changed, and a young man who works there dies in a brawl. A former gardener here comes in at dead of night to buy a rather worn pair of Drumknott's old boots. Why? Perhaps we shall never know. Why was a picture of myself stolen from the Royal Art Gallery last month? Who benefits?' 'Uh, why was this stygium left in the safe?' 'Good question. The key was in the man's pocket. So what is our motive?' 'Not enough information! Revenge? Silence? Maybe he's made something he shouldn't? Can you make a dagger out of this stuff?' 'Ah, I think you are getting warm, Mr Lipwig. Not about a weapon, because accretions of stygium much bigger than a ring tend to explode without warning. But he was a rather greedy man, that is true.' 'An argument over something?' said Moist. Yes, I am getting warm, thank you! And what are the tongs for? To pick it up after it's dropped through my hand? 207 The light was growing; he could see faint shadows on the wall, he felt the sweat trickle down his spine— 'An interesting thought. Do give me that ring back,' said Vetinari, proffering the box. Hah! So it was just a show to scare me, after all, Moist thought, flicking the wretched ring into the box. I've never even heard of stygium before! He must have made it up— He sensed the heat and saw the ring blaze white-hot as it fell into the box. The lid snapped shut, leaving a purple hole in Moist's vision. 'Remarkable, isn't it?' said Vetinari. 'Incidentally, I think you were needlessly silly to hold it all that time. I'm not a monster, you know.' No, monsters don't play tricks with your brain, thought Moist. At least, while it's still inside your head… 'Look, about Owlswick, I didn't mean—' he began, but Vetinari held up a hand. 'I don't know what you are talking about, Mr Lipwig. In fact, I invited you here in your capacity as de facto deputy chairman of the Royal Bank. I want you to loan me — that is to say, the city — half a million dollars at two per cent. You are, of course, at liberty to refuse.' So many thoughts scrambled for the emergency exit in Moist's brain that only one remained. We're going to need some bigger notes… Moist ran back to the bank, and straight to the little door under the stairs. He liked it down in the undercroft. It was cool and peaceful, apart from the gurgling of the Glooper and the screams. That last bit was wrong, wasn't it? 208 The pink poisons of involuntary insomnia slopped around in his head as he broke once more into a run. The former Owlswick was sitting in a chair, apparently clean shaven except for a pointy little beard. Some kind of metal helmet had been attached to his head, and from it wires ran down into a glowing, clicking device that only an Igor would want to understand. The air smelled of thunderstorms. 'What are you doing to this poor man?' Moist yelled. 'Changing hith mind, thur,' said Igor, pulling a huge knife switch. The helmet buzzed. Clamp blinked. 'It tickles,' he said. 'And for some reason it tastes of strawberries.' 'You're putting lightning right into his head!' said Moist. 'That's barbaric!' 'No, thur. Barbarianth don't have the capability,' said Igor smoothly. 'All I'm doing, thur, ith taking out all the bad memorieth and thtoring them' — here he pulled a cloth aside to reveal a big jar full of green liquid, in which was something rounded and studded with still more wires — 'in thith!' 'You're putting his brain into a… parsnip?' 'It'th a turnip,' said Igor. 'It's amazing what they can do, isn't it?' said a voice by Moist's elbow. He looked down. Mr Clamp, now helmetless, beamed up at him. He looked shiny and alert, like a better class of shoe salesman. Igor had even managed a suit transplant. 'Are you all right?' said Moist. 'Fine!' 209 'What did… it feel like?' 'Hard to explain,' said Clamp. 'But it sounded like the smell of raspberries tastes.' 'Really? Oh. I suppose that's all right, then. And you really feel okay? In yourself?' said Moist, probing for the dreadful drawback. It had to be there. But Owls— Exorbit looked happy and full of confidence and vim, a man ready to take what life threw at him and knock it out of the court. Igor was winding up his wiring with a very smug look on what, under all those scars, was probably his face. Moist felt a pang of guilt. He was an Uberwald boy, he'd come down the Vilinus Pass like everyone else, trying to seek his fortune — correction, everybody else's fortune — and he had no right to pick up the fashionable lowland prejudice against the clan of Igors. After all, didn't they simply put into practice what so many priests professed to believe: that the body was just a rather heavy suit of cheap material clothing the invisible, everlasting soul, and therefore, swapping around bits and pieces like spare parts was surely no worse than running a shonky shop for used clothing? It was a constant source of hurt amazement to Igors that people couldn't see that this was both sensible and provident, at least up until the time when the axe slipped and people needed someone to lend a hand in a hurry. At a time like that, even an Igor looked good. Mostly they looked… serviceable. Igors, with their obliviousness to pain, wonderful aids to healing and marvellous ability to carry out surgery on themselves with the help of a hand mirror, could presumably not look like a stumpy butler who'd been left in the rain for a month. Igorinas all looked stunning, but there was invariably something — a beautifully curved scar under one eye, a ring of decorative stitching around a wrist — that was for the Look. That was disconcerting, but an Igor always had his heart in the right place. Or a heart, at least. 'Well, er… well done, Igor,' Moist managed. 'Ready to make a start on the ol' dollar bill, then, Mr, er… Clamp?' 210 Mr Clamp's smile was full of sunbeams. 'Done it!' he announced. 'Did it this morning!' 'Surely not!' 'Indeed I have! Come and see!' The little man walked over to a table and lifted a sheet of paper. The banknote gleamed, in purple and gold. It gave off money in rays. It seemed to float above the paper like a small magic carpet. It said wealth and mystery and tradition— 'We're going to make so much money!' said Moist. We'd better, he added to himself. We'll need to print at least 600,000 of these, unless I can come up with some bigger denominations. But there it was, so beautiful you wanted to cry, and make lots like it, and put them in your wallet. 'How did you do it so quickly?' 'Well, a lot of it is just geometry,' said Mr Clamp. 'Mr Igor here was kind enough to make me a little device which was a great help there. It's not finished, of course, and I haven't even started on the other side yet. I think I'll make a start on that now, in fact, while I'm still fresh.' 'You think you can do better?' said Moist, awed in the presence of genius. 'I feel so… full of energy!' said Clamp. 'That would be the elecktrical fluid, I expect,' said Moist. 'No, I mean I can see so clearly what needs to be done! Before, it was all like some horrible weight I had to lift, but now everything is clear and light!' 'Well, I'm glad to hear it,' said Moist, not totally certain that he was. 'Do excuse me, I have a bank to run.' 211 He hurried through the arches and entered the main hall via the unassuming door in time to very nearly collide with Bent. 'Ah, Mr Lipwig, I wondered where you were—' 'Is this going to be important, Mr Bent?' The chief cashier looked offended — as if he'd ever trouble Moist about anything that was not important. 'There are lots of men outside the Mint,' he said. 'With trolls and carts. They say you want them to install a' — Bent shuddered — 'a printing engine!' 'That's right,' said Moist. 'They're from Teemer & Spools. We must print the money here. It'll look more official and we can control what goes out of the doors.' 'Mr Lipwig. You are turning the bank into a… a circus!' 'Well, I'm the man with the top hat, Mr Bent, so I suppose I'm the ringmaster!' He said it with a laugh, to lighten the mood a little, but Bent's face was a sudden thundercloud. 'Really, Mr Lipwig? And whoever told you the ringmaster runs the circus? You are very much mistaken, sir! Why are you cutting out the other shareholders?' 'Because they don't know what a bank is about. Come with me to the Mint, will you?' He strode through the main hall, having to dodge and weave between the queues. 'And you know what a bank is about, do you, sir?' said Bent, following behind with his jerky flamingo step. 'I'm learning. Why do we have one queue in front of each clerk?' Moist demanded. 'It means that if one customer takes up a lot of time, the whole queue has to wait. Then they'll start hopping sideways from one queue to 212 another and the next thing you know someone has a nasty head wound. Have one big queue and tell people to go to the next clerk free. People don't mind a long queue if they can see that it's moving— Sorry, sir!' This was to a customer he'd collided with, who steadied himself, grinned at Moist and said, in a voice from a past that should have stayed buried: 'Why, if it isn't my old friend Albert. You're doin' well for yourself, ain't you?' The stranger spluttered his words through ill-fitting teeth: 'You in your shuit o' lightsh!' Moist's past life flashed before his eyes. He didn't even need to go to the bother of dying, although he felt as though he was going to. It was Cribbins! It could only be Cribbins! Moist's memory sandbagged him, one bag after another. The teeth! Those damn false teeth! They were that man's pride and joy. He'd prised them out of the mouth of an old man he'd robbed, while the poor devil lay dying of fear! He'd joked that they had a mind of their own! And they spluttered and popped and slurped and fitted so badly that they once turned round in his mouth and bit him in the throat! He used to take them out and talk to them! And, aargh, they were so old, and the stained teeth had been carved from walrus ivory and the spring was so strong that sometimes it'd force the top of his head back so that you could see right up his nose!! It all came back like a bad oyster. He was just Cribbins. No one knew his first name. Moist had teamed up with him, oh, ten years ago and they'd run the old legacy con in Uberwald one winter. He was much older than Moist and still had the serious personal problem that made him smell of bananas. 213 And he was a nasty piece of work. Professionals had their pride. There had to be some people you wouldn't rob, some things you didn't steal. And you had to have style. If you didn't have style, you'd never fly. Cribbins didn't have style. He wasn't violent, unless there was absolutely no chance of retaliation, but there was some generalized, wretched, wheedling malice about the man that had got on Moist's soul. 'Is there a problem, Mr Lipwig?' said Bent, glaring at Cribbins. 'What? Oh… no…' said Moist. It's a shakedown, he thought. That bloody picture in the paper. But he can't prove a thing, not a thing. 'You are mistaken, sir,' said Moist. He looked around. The queues were moving, and no one was paying them any attention. Cribbins put his head on one side and gave Moist an amused look. 'Mishtaken, shir? Could be. I could be mistaken. Life on the road, making new chums every day, you know — well, you wouldn't, would you, on account of not being Albert Shpangler. Funny, though, 'cos you have his smile, sir, hard to change a man's smile, and your smile ish, like, in front of your face, like you ish looking out from behind it slurp. Just like young Albert's smile. Bright lad he was, very quick, very quick, I taught him everything I knew.' —and that took about ten minutes, Moist thought, and a year to forget some of it. You're the sort that gives criminals a bad name— "course, sir, you're wonderin', can the leopard change his shorts? Can that ol' rascal I knew all them years ago have forsook the wide and wobbly for the straight an' narrow?' He glanced at Moist, and amended: 'Whoopsh! No, 'course you ain't, on account of you never seein' me before. But I was scrobbled in Pseudopolis, you see, thrown into the clink for malicious lingering, and that's where I found Om.' 'Why? What had he done?' It was stupid, but Moist couldn't resist it. 214 'Do not jest, sir, do not jest,' said Cribbins solemnly. 'I am a changed man, a changed man. It is my task to pass on the good news, shir.' Here, with the speed of a snake's tongue, Cribbins produced a battered tin from inside his greasy jacket. 'My crimes weigh me down like chains of hot iron, sir, like chains, but I am a man anxious to unburden himself by means of good works and confession, the last bein' most important. I have to get a lot off my chest before I can sleep easy, sir.' He rattled the box. 'For the kiddies, sir?' This would probably work better if I hadn't seen you do this before, Moist thought. The penitent thief must be one of the oldest cons in the book. He said: 'Well, I'm glad to hear it, Mr Cribbins. I'm sorry I'm not the old friend you are looking for. Let me give you a couple of dollars… for the kiddies.' The coins clanked on the bottom of the tin. 'Thank you kindly, Mister Spangler,' said Cribbins. Moist flashed a little smile. 'In fact I'm not Mr Spangler, Mr—' I called him Cribbins! Just then! I called him Cribbins! Did he tell me his name? Did he notice? He must have noticed! '—I beg your pardon, I mean reverend,' he managed, and the average person would not have noticed the tiny pause and quite adroit save. But Cribbins wasn't average. 'Thank you, Mister Lipwig,' he said, and Moist heard the drawn-out 'Mister' and the explosively sardonic 'Lipwig'. They meant Gotcha! Cribbins winked at Moist and strolled off through the banking hall, shaking his tin, his teeth accompanying him with a medley of horrible dental noises. 'Woe and thrice woe !szss is the man who stealssh by words, for his tongue shall cleave to the roof of his mouth pock! Spare a few coppersh for the 215 poor orphans sweessh! Brothers and shisters! To those svhip! that hath shall be giveneth generally shpeaking…' 'I shall call the guards,' said Mr Bent firmly. 'We don't allow beggars in the bank.' Moist grabbed his arm. 'No,' he said urgently, 'not with all these people in here. Manhandling a man of the cloth and all that. It won't look good. I think he'll be going soon.' Now he'll let me stew, thought Moist, as Cribbins headed nonchalantly towards the door. That's his way. He'll spin it out. Then he'll hit me for money, again and again. Okay, but what could Cribbins prove? But did there need to be proof? If he started talking about Albert Spangler, it could get bad. Would Vetinari throw him to the wolves? He might. He probably would. You could bet your hat that he wouldn't play the resurrection game without lots of contingency plans. Well, he had some time, at least. Cribbins wouldn't go for a quick kill. He liked to watch people wriggle. 'Are you all right?' said Bent. Moist came back to reality. 'What? Oh, fine,' he said. 'You should not encourage that sort of person in here, you know.' Moist shook himself. 'You are right about that, Mr Bent. Let's get to the Mint, shall we?' 'Yes, sir. But I warn you, Mr Lipwig, these men will not be won over by fancy words!' 216 'Inspectors…' said Mr Shady, ten minutes later, turning the word over in his mouth like a sweet. 'I need people who value the high traditions of the Mint,' said Moist, and did not add: like making coins very, very slowly and taking your work home with you. 'Inspectors,' said Mr Shady again. Behind him, the Men of the Sheds held their caps in their hands and watched Moist owlishly, except when Mr Shady was speaking, when they stared at the back of the man's neck. They were all in Mr Shady's official shed, which was built high up on the wall, like a swallow's nest. It creaked whenever anyone moved. 'And of course, some of you will still be needed to deal with the outworkers,' Moist went on, 'but in the main it will be your job to see that Mr Spools's men arrive on time, comport themselves as they should and observe proper security.' 'Security,' said Mr Shady, as if tasting the word. Moist saw a flicker of evil light in the eyes of the Men. It said: these buggers will be taking over our Mint but they'll have to go past us to get out of the door. Hoho! 'And of course you can keep the sheds,' said Moist. 'I also have plans for commemorative coins and other items, so your skills will not be wasted. Fair enough?' Mr Shady looked at his fellows and then back to Moist. 'We'd like to talk about this,' he said. Moist nodded to him, and to Bent, and led the way down the creaking, swaying staircase to the floor of the Mint, where the parts of the new press were already being stacked up. Bent gave a little shudder when he saw it. 'They won't accept, you know,' he said with unconcealed hope in his voice. 'They've been doing things the same way here for hundreds of years! And they are craftsmen!' 217 'So were the people who used to make knives out of flint,' said Moist. In truth, he'd been amazed at himself. It must have been the encounter with Cribbins. It had made his brain race. 'Look, I don't like to see skills unused,' he said, 'but I'll give them better wages and a decent job and use of the sheds. They wouldn't get an offer like that in a hundred years—' Someone was coming down the swaying stairs. Moist recognized it as Young Alf, who, amazingly, had managed to be employed in the Mint while still too young to shave but definitely old enough to have spots. 'Er, the Men say will there be badges?' said the boy. 'Actually, I was thinking of uniforms,' said Moist. 'Silver breastplate with the city's arms on it and lightweight silver chain mail, to look impressive when we have visitors.' The boy pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and consulted it. 'What about clipboards?' he said. 'Certainly,' said Moist. 'And whistles, too.' 'And, er, it's def'nite about the sheds, right?' 'I'm a man of my word,' said Moist. 'You are a man of words, Mr Lipwig,' said Bent as the boy scuttled back up the rocking steps, 'but I fear they will lead us into ruin. The bank needs solidity, reliability… everything that gold represents!' Moist spun round. It had not been a good day. It had not been a good night, either. 'Mr Bent, if you do not like what I am doing, feel free to leave. You'll have a good reference and all the wages due to you!' Bent looked as though he'd been slapped. 'Leave the bank? Leave the bank? How could I do that? How dare you!' A door slammed above them. They looked up. The Men of the Sheds were coming down the stairs in solemn procession. 218 'Now we shall see,' hissed Bent. 'These are men of solid worth. They'll have nothing to do with your gaudy offer, Mr… Ringmaster!' The Men reached the bottom of the steps. Without a word they all looked at Mr Shady, except for Mr Shady, who looked at Moist. 'The sheds stay, right?' he said. 'You're giving in?' said Mr Bent, aghast. 'After hundreds of years?' 'We-ell,' said Mr Shady, 'me and the boys had a bit of a talk and, well, at a time like this, a man's got to think of his shed. And the outworkers will be all right, right?' 'Mr Shady, I'd go to the barricades for the elim,' said Moist. 'And we talked to some of the lads from the Post Office last night and they said we could trust Mr Lipwig's word 'cos he's as straight as a corkscrew.' 'A corkscrew?' said Bent, shocked. 'Yeah, we asked about that, too,' said Shady. 'And they said he acts curly but that's okay 'cos he damn well gets the corks out!' Mr Bent's expression went blank. 'Oh,' he said. 'This is clearly some kind of judgement-clouding joke, which I do not understand. If you will excuse me, I have a great deal of work to attend to.' His feet rising and falling, as though he was walking on some kind of shifting staircase, Mr Bent departed in jerky haste. 'Very well, gentlemen, thank you for your helpful attitude,' said Moist, watching the retreating figure, 'and for my part I will get those uniforms ordered this afternoon.' 'You're a fast mover, Master,' said Mr Shady. 219 'Stand still and your mistakes catch up with you!' said Moist. They laughed, because he'd said it, but the face of Cribbins rose up in his mind and, quite unconsciously, he put his hand in his pocket and touched the blackjack. He'd have to learn how to use it now, because a weapon you held and didn't know how to use belonged to your enemy. He'd bought it — why? Because it was like the lockpicks: a token to prove, if only to himself, that he hadn't given in, not all the way, that a part of him was still free. It was like the other ready-made identities, the escape plans, the caches of money and clothes. They told him that any day he could leave all this, melt into the crowd, say goodbye to the paperwork and the timetable and the endless, endless wanting. They told him that he could give it up any time he liked. Any hour, any minute, any second. And because he could, he didn't… every hour, every minute, every second. There had to be a reason why. 'Mr Lipwig! Mr Lipwig!' A young clerk dodged and weaved through the busyness of the Mint, and stopped in front of Moist, panting. 'Mr Lipwig, there's a lady in the hall to see you and we've thanked her for not smoking three times and she's still doing it!' The image of the wretched Cribbins vanished and was replaced by a much better one. Ah, yes. That reason. Miss Adora Belle Dearheart, known to Moist as Spike, was standing in the middle of the banking hall. Moist just headed for the smoke. 'Hello, you,' she said, and that was that. 'Can you take me away from all this?' She gestured with her non-smoking hand. Staff had meaningfully surrounded her with tall brass ashtrays, full of white sand. Moist shifted a couple of them, and let her out. 'How was—' he began, but she interrupted. 220 'We can talk on the way.' 'Where are we going?' Moist asked hopefully. 'Unseen University,' said Adora Belle, heading for the door. She had a large woven bag on her shoulder. It seemed to be stuffed with straw. 'Not lunch, then?' said Moist. 'Lunch can wait. This is important.' 'Oh.' It was lunchtime at Unseen University, where every meal is important. It was hard to find a time when some meal or other was not in progress there. The Library was unusually empty, and Adora Belle walked up to the nearest wizard who did not seem gainfully employed and demanded: 'I want to see the Cabinet of Curiosity right away!' 'I don't think we have anything like that,' said the wizard. 'Who's it by?' 'Please don't lie. My name is Adora Belle Dearheart, so as you can imagine I've got a pretty short temper. My father brought me with him when you people asked him to come and look at the Cabinet, about twenty years ago. You wanted to find out how the doors worked. Someone must remember. It was in a big room. A very big room. And it had lots and lots of drawers. And the funny thing about them was—' The wizard raised his hands quickly, as if to ward off further words. 'Can you wait just one minute?' he suggested. They waited for five. Occasionally a pointy-hatted head peered around a bookshelf to look at them, and ducked away if it thought it'd been spotted. Adora Belle lit a fresh cigarette. Moist pointed to a sign which said 'If you are smoking, thank you for being beaten about the head.' 221 'That's just for show,' said Adora Belle, expelling a stream of blue smoke. 'All wizards smoke like chimneys.' 'Not in here, I notice,' said Moist, 'and possibly this is because of all the highly inflammable books? It might be a good idea to—' He felt the swish of air and got a whiff of rainforest as something heavy swung overhead and disappeared upwards into the gloom, now trailing a stream of blue smoke. 'Hey, someone took my—' Adora Belle began, but Moist pushed her out of the way as the thing swung back again and a banana knocked his hat off. 'They are a bit more definite about things here,' he said, picking up his hat. 'If it's any comfort, the Librarian probably intended to hit me. He can be quite gallant.' 'Ah, you're Mr Lipwig, I recognize the suit!' said an elderly wizard, who clearly hoped he was appearing as if by magic but in fact had appeared by stepping out from behind a bookcase. 'I know I am the Chair of Indefinite Studies here, for my sins. And you, ahaha, by a process of elimination, will be Miss Dearheart, who remembers the Cabinet of Curiosity?' The Chair of Indefinite Studies stepped closer and looked conspiratorial. He lowered his voice. 'I wonder if I can persuade you to forget about it?' 'Not a chance,' said Adora Belle. 'We like to think of it as one of our better-kept secrets, you see…' 'Good. I'll help you keep it,' said Adora Belle. 'Nothing I could say could change your mind?' 'I don't know,' said Adora Belle. 'Abracadabra, maybe? Got your spell book?' Moist was impressed at that. She could be so… spiky. 'Oh… that type of lady,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies wearily. ' Modern. Oh well, I suppose you'd better come with me, then.' 222 'What's this all about, please?' hissed Moist, as they followed the wizard. 'I need something translated,' said Adora Belle, 'in a hurry.' 'Aren't you glad to see me?' 'Oh yes. Lots. But I need something translated in a hurry.' 'And this cabinet thing can help?' 'Perhaps.' 'Perhaps? "Perhaps" could wait until after lunch, couldn't it? If it was "Definitely", now, I could have seen the point—' 'Oh dear, I'm afraid I'm lost again, and through no fault of my own, I might add,' grumbled the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'I'm afraid they keep changing the parameters and they do leak so. I don't know, what with one thing and another you can't call your door your own these days…' 'What were your sins?' said Moist, giving up on Adora Belle. 'Pardon? Oh dear, what is that stain on the ceiling? Probably best not to know…' 'What were the sins you committed in order to become the Chair of Indefinite Studies?' Moist persisted. 'Oh, I just tend to say that for something to say,' said the wizard, opening a door and slamming it again quickly. 'But right now I'm inclined to think I must have committed a few, and they must have been whoppers. It's quite unbearable at the moment, of course. They're saying that everything in the whole wretched universe is technically indefinable, but what am I supposed to do about it? And of course this damn Cabinet is playing havoc with the place again. I thought we'd seen the last of it fifteen years ago… Oh, yes, mind the squid, we're a bit puzzled about that, actually… Ah, here's the right door.' The Chair sniffed. 'And it's twenty-five feet away from where it ought to be. What did I tell you…' 223 The door opened and then it was just a matter of knowing where to start. Moist opted for letting his jaw drop, which was clean and simple. The room was bigger than it ought to be. No room ought to be more than a mile across, especially when from outside in the corridor, which was quite ordinary if you ignored the giant squid, it appeared to have perfectly normal rooms on either side of it. It shouldn't have a ceiling so high that you couldn't see it, either. It simply should not fit. 'It's quite easy to do this, actually,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies as they stared. 'At least, so they tell me,' he added wistfully. 'Apparently, if you shrink time you can expand space.' 'How do they do that?' Moist asked, staring at the… structure that was the Cabinet of Curiosity. 'I'm proud to say I haven't got the faintest idea,' said the Chair. 'Frankly, I'm afraid I got rather lost round about the time we stopped using dribbly candles. I know it's technically my department but I find it best just to let them get on with it. They do insist on trying to explain things, which of course does not help…' Moist, if he'd had any mental picture at all, was expecting a cabinet. After all, that's what it was called, yes? But what filled most of the impossible room was a tree, in the general shape of a venerable spreading oak. It was a tree in winter; there were no leaves. And then, when the mind had found a familiar, friendly simile, it had to come to terms with the fact that the tree was made of filing cabinets. They appeared to be wooden ones, but this didn't help much. High up in what had to be called the branches, wizards on broomsticks were engaged in who-knew-what. They looked like insects. 'It is a bit of a shock when you see it for the first time, isn't it?' said a friendly voice. Moist looked round at a young wizard, at least young by the standards of wizards, who had round spectacles, a clipboard, and the shiny sort of 224 expression that says: I probably know more than you can possibly imagine but I am still reasonably happy to talk even to people like yourself. 'You're Ponder Stibbons, right?' said Moist. 'The only one who does any work in the university?' Other wizards turned their heads at this, and Ponder went red. 'That's quite untrue! I just pull my weight, like any other member of the faculty,' he said, but a slight tone to his voice suggested that perhaps the other faculty members had far too much weight and not enough pull. 'I am in charge of the Cabinet Project, for my sins.' 'Why? What did you do?' said Moist, at sea in a world of sin. 'Something worse?' 'Er, volunteered to take it over,' said Ponder. 'And I have to say we have learned more in the last six months than in the past twenty-five years. The Cabinet is a truly amazing artefact.' 'Where did you find it?' 'In the attic, tucked behind a collection of stuffed frogs. We think people gave up trying to make it work years ago. Of course, that was back in the dribbly candle era,' said Ponder, earning a snort from the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'Modern technomancy is somewhat more useful.' 'All right, then,' said Moist, ' what is it for? 'We don't know.' 'How does it work?' 'We don't know.' 'Where did it come from?' 'We don't know.' 225 'Well, that seems to be all,' said Moist sarcastically. 'Oh no, one last one: what is it? And let me tell you, I'm agog.' 'That may be the wrong sort of question to ask,' said Ponder, shaking his head. 'Technically it appears to be a classic Bag of Holding but with n mouths, where n is the number of items in an eleven-dimensional universe which are not currently alive, not pink and can fit in a cubical drawer 14.14 inches on a side, divided by P.' 'What's P?' 'That may be the wrong sort of question.' 'When I was a little girl it was just a magic box,' Adora Belle broke in, in a dreamy voice. 'It was in a much smaller room and when it unfolded a few times there was a box with a golem's foot in it.' 'Ah, yes, in the third iteration,' said Ponder. 'They couldn't get much further than that in those days. Now, of course, we've got controlled recursion and aim-driven folding that effectively reduces collateral boxing to 0.13 per cent, a twelvefold improvement in the last year alone!' 'That's great!' said Moist, feeling that it was the least he could do. 'Does Miss Dearheart want to see the item again?' said Ponder, lowering his voice. Adora Belle still had a faraway look in her eyes. 'I think so,' said Moist. 'She's very big on golems.' 'We were about to fold up for today in any case,' said Ponder. 'It won't hurt to pick up the Foot on the way' He took a large megaphone from a bench and held it to his lips. 'THE CABINET CLOSES IN THREE MINUTES, GENTLEMEN. ALL RESEARCHERS INSIDE THE SAFETY AREA NOW, PLEASE. BE THERE OR BE SQUARE!' 226 'Be there or be square?' said Moist, as Ponder lowered the megaphone. 'Oh, a couple of years ago someone ignored the warning and, um, when the Cabinet folded up he temporarily became a curiosity' 'You mean he ended up inside a fourteen-inch cube?' said Moist, horrified. 'Mostly. Look, we really would be very happy if you didn't tell anyone about the Cabinet, thank you. We know how to use it, we think, but it might not be the way it was intended to be used. We don't know what it's for, as you put it, or who built it or even if they are completely the wrong questions to ask. Nothing in it is bigger than about fourteen inches square, but we don't know why this is or who it is who decides they are curious, or why, and we certainly don't know why it contains nothing pink. It's all very embarrassing. I'm sure you can keep a secret, Mr Lipwig?' 'You'd be amazed.' 'Oh? Why?' 'That's the wrong kind of question.' 'You do know something quite important about the Cabinet,' said Adora Belle, apparently waking up. 'You know it wasn't built for or by a girl between the ages of four and, oh, eleven years old.' 'How do we know that?' 'No pink. Trust me. No girl in that age group would leave out pink.' 'Are you sure? That's wonderful!' said Ponder, making a note on his clipboard. 'That's certainly worth knowing. Let's get the Foot, then, shall we?' The broomstick-riding wizards had touched down now. Ponder cleared his throat and picked up the megaphone. 'ALL DOWN? WONDERFUL. HEX — BE SO GOOD AS TO FOLD, PLEASE!' 227 There was silence for a while, and then a distant clattering noise began to grow, up near the ceiling. It sounded like gods shuffling wooden playing cards that happened to be a mile high. 'Hex is our thinking engine,' said Ponder. 'We'd hardly be able to explore the box at all without him.' The clattering was becoming louder and faster. 'You might find your ears aching,' said Ponder, raising his voice. 'Hex tries to control the speed, but it takes finite time for the ventilators to get air back into the room. THE VOLUME OF THE CABINET CHANGES VERY FAST, YOU SEE!' This was shouted against the thunder of collapsing drawers. They slammed in on themselves far too fast for the human eye to follow as the edifice shrank and folded and slid and rattled down into house size, shed size and, finally, in the middle of the huge space — unless it was some kind of time — became a small polished cabinet, about a foot and a half on a side, standing on four beautifully carved legs. The Cabinet's doors clicked shut. 'Slowly unfold to specimen 1,109,' said Ponder, in the ringing silence. The doors opened. A deep drawer slid out. It went on sliding. 'Just follow me,' said Ponder, strolling towards the Cabinet. 'It's fairly safe.' 'Er, a drawer about a hundred yards long has just slid out of a box about fourteen inches square,' said Moist, in case he was the only one to notice. 'Yes. That's what happens,' said Ponder, as the drawer slid back about halfway. Its side, Moist saw, was a line of drawers. So drawers opened… out of drawers. Of course, Moist thought, in eleven-dimensional space that was the wrong thing to think. 228 'It's a sliding puzzle,' said Adora Belle, 'but with lots more directions to slide.' 'That is a very graphic analogy which aids understanding wonderfully while being, strictly speaking, wrong in every possible way,' said Ponder. Adora Belle's eyes narrowed. She had not had a cigarette for ten minutes. The long drawer extruded another drawer at right angles. All along the sides of it were, yes, yet more drawers. One of these extended slowly. Moist took a risk, and tapped on what appeared to be perfectly ordinary wood. It made a perfectly ordinary noise. 'Should I worry that I just saw a drawer slide through another drawer?' he said. 'No,' said Ponder. 'The Cabinet is trying to make four-dimensional sense of something that is happening in eleven or, possibly, ten dimensions.' 'Trying? Do you mean it's alive?' 'Aha! The right type of question!' 'I bet you don't know the answer, though.' 'You are correct. But you must admit it's an interesting question not to know the answer to. And, yes, here we have the Foot. Hold and collapse, please, Hex.' The drawers collapsed back into themselves in a series of crashes, much shorter and less dramatic than before, leaving the Cabinet looking demure and antique and slightly bow-legged. It had little claws as feet, a cabinet-makers' affectation that always annoyed Moist in a low-grade way. Did they think the things moved around in the night? Or maybe the Cabinet really did. And the Cabinet's doors were open. Nestling inside, and only just fitting, was a golem's foot, or at least most of one. 229 Once, golems were beautiful. Once, the very best sculptors probably made them to rival the most beautiful of statues, but long since then the fumble-fingered many who could barely make a snake out of clay found that bashing the stuff into the shape of a big hulking gingerbread man worked just as well. This foot was one of the early kind. It was made of a clay-like white china, with patterns of tiny raised markings in yellow, black and red. A little brass plate in front of it was engraved in Uberwaldian: 'Foot of Umnian Golem, Middle Period.' 'Well, whoever made the Cabinet comes from—' 'Anyone looking at the label sees it in their native tongue,' said Ponder wearily. 'The markings apparently indicate that it did indeed come from the city of Um, according to the late Professor Head.' 'Um?' said Moist. 'Um what? They weren't sure what to call the place?' 'Just Um,' said Ponder. 'Very ancient. About sixty thousand years, I believe. Back in the Clay Age.' 'The first golem-makers,' said Adora Belle. She unslung the bag and started to rummage in the straw. Moist tapped the foot. It seemed eggshell thin. 'It's some sort of ceramic,' said Ponder. 'No one knows how they made it. The Umnians even baked boats out of the stuff.' 'Did they work?' 'Up to a point,' said Ponder. 'Anyway, the city was totally destroyed in the first war with the ice giants. There's nothing there now. We think that the foot was put in the Cabinet a long time ago.' 'Or will be dug up some time in the future, perhaps?' said Moist. 230 'That could very well be the case,' said Ponder gravely. 'In which case, won't that be a bit of a problem? I mean, can it be in the ground and in the Cabinet at the same time?' 'That, Mr Lipwig, is—' 'The wrong type of question?' 'Yes. The box exists in ten or possibly eleven dimensions. Practically anything may be possible.' 'Why only eleven dimensions?' 'We don't know,' said Ponder. 'It might be simply that more would be silly.' 'Can you take the foot out, please?' said Adora Belle, who was now brushing wisps of straw off a long package. Ponder nodded, lifted out the relic with great care, and placed it gently on the bench behind them. 'What would have happened if you had drop—' Moist began. 'Wrong type of question, Mr Lipwig!' Adora Belle put the bundle down beside the foot and unwrapped it with care. It contained a part of a golem's arm, two feet long. 'I knew it! The markings are the same!' she said. 'And there's a lot more on my piece. Can you translate it?' 'Me? No,' said Ponder. 'The Arts are not my field,' he added, in a way that suggested his was a pretty superior field with much better flowers in it. 'You need Professor Flead.' 'You mean the one who's dead?' said Moist. 231 'He's dead at the moment, but I'm sure that in the interests of discretion my colleague Dr Hicks can arrange for the professor to talk to you after lunch.' 'When he'll be less dead?' said Moist. 'When Dr Hicks has had lunch,' said Ponder patiently. 'The Professor will be pleased to receive visitors, er, especially Miss Dearheart. He is the world expert on Umnian. Every word has hundreds of meanings, I understand.' 'Can I take the Foot?' said Adora Belle. 'No,' said Ponder. 'It's ours.' 'That was the wrong type of answer,' said Adora Belle, picking up the Foot. 'On behalf of the Golem Trust, I am acquiring this golem. If you can prove ownership, we will pay you a fair price for it.' 'Would that it were that simple,' said Ponder, politely taking it from her, 'but, you see, if a Curiosity is taken away from the Cabinet Room for more than fourteen hours and fourteen seconds, the Cabinet stops working. Last time it took us three months to restart it. But you can drop in at any time to, er, check that we're not mistreating it.' Moist laid a hand on Adora Belle's arm to forestall an Incident. 'She's very passionate about golems,' he said. 'The Trust digs them up all the time.' 'That's very commendable,' said Ponder. 'I'll talk to Dr Hicks. He's the head of the Department of Post-Mortem Communications.' 'Post-Mortem Com—' Moist began. 'Isn't that the same as necroman—' 'I said the Department of Post-Mortem Communications! said Ponder very firmly. 'I suggest you come back at three o'clock.' 232 'Did anything about that conversation strike you as normal?' said Moist, as they stepped out into the sunlight. 'Actually, I thought it went very well,' said Adora Belle. 'This wasn't how I imagined your homecoming,' said Moist. 'Why the rush? Is there some problem?' 'Look, we found four golems at the dig,' said Adora Belle. 'That's… good, yes?' said Moist. 'Yes! And you know how deep they were?' 'I couldn't guess.' 'Guess!' 'I don't know!' said Moist, bewildered at suddenly having to play 'What's My Depth?'. 'Two hundred feet down? That's more tha—' 'Half a mile underground.' 'Impossible! That's deeper than coal!' 'Keep it down, will you? Look, is there somewhere we can go and talk?' 'How about — the Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork? There's a private dining room.' And they'll let us eat there, will they?' 'Oh yes. The chairman is a great friend of mine,' said Moist. 'He is, is he?' 'He certainly is,' said Moist. 'Why, only this morning he licked my face!' 233 Adora Belle stopped and turned to stare at him. 'Really?' she said. 'Then it's just as well I got back when I did.' 234 Chapter 7 The Joy of Collops — Mr Bent goes out to lunch — The Dark Fine Arts — Amateur thespians, avoidance of embarrassment by — The Pen of Doom! — Professor Plead gets cosy — 'Lust comes in many varieties' — A Hero of Banking! — Cribbins's cup runneth over THE SUN SHONE THROUGH the window of the bank's dining room on to a scene of perfect pleasure. 'You should sell tickets,' said Adora Belle dreamily, with her chin in her hands. 'People who are depressed would come here and go away cured.' 'It's certainly hard to watch it happening and be sad,' said Moist. 'It's the enthusiastic way he tries to turn his mouth inside out,' said Adora Belle. There was a gulp from Mr Fusspot as the last of the sticky toffee pudding went down. He then turned the bowl over hopefully, in case there was any more. There never had been, but Mr Fusspot was not a dog to bow down to the laws of causality. 'So…' said Adora Belle, 'a mad old lady — all right, a very astute mad old lady — died and gave you her dog, which sort of wears this bank on its collar, and you've told everyone that gold is worth less than potatoes, and you broke a dastardly criminal out of your actual Death Row, he's in the cellar designing "banknotes" for you, you've upset the nastiest family in the city, people are queueing to join the bank because you make them laugh… what have I missed?' 235 'I think my secretary is, uh, getting sweet on me. Well, I say secretary, she's sort of assumed that she is.' Some fiancees would have burst into tears or shouted. Adora Belle burst out laughing. And she's a golem,' said Moist. The laughter stopped. 'That's not possible. They don't work that way. Anyway, why should a golem think he's female? It's never happened before.' 'I bet there haven't been many emancipated golems before. Besides, why should he think he's male? And she bats her eyelashes at me… well, that's what she thinks she's doing, I think. The counter girls are behind this. Look, I'm serious. Trouble is, so is she.' 'I'll have a word with him… or, as you say, her.' 'Good. The other thing is, there's this man—' Aimsbury poked his head around the door. He was in love. 'Would you like some more minced collops, miss?' he said, waggling his eyebrows as if to indicate that the joys of minced collops were a secret known only to a few.6 'You've still got more?' said Adora Belle, looking down at her plate. Not even Mr Fusspot could have cleaned it better, and she'd already cleaned it twice. 'Do you know what they are?' said Moist, who'd settled again for an omelette, made by Peggy. 'Do you?' 'No!' 6 Fortunately, this is the case. 236 'Nor do I. But my granny used to do them and they are one of my happiest childhood memories, thank you very much. Don't spoil it.' Adora Belle beamed at the delighted chef. 'Yes please, Aimsbury, just a little more, then. And could I just say that the flavour could really be brought out by just a touch of gar—' 'You are not eating, Mr Bent,' said Cosmo. 'Perhaps a little of this pheasant?' The chief cashier looked around nervously, uneasy in this grand house full of art and servants. 'I… I want to make it clear that my loyalty to the bank is—' '—beyond question, Mr Bent. Of course.' Cosmo pushed a silver tray towards him. 'Do eat something, now you have come all this way.' 'But you are hardly eating at all, Mr Cosmo. Just bread and water!' 'I find it helps me think. Now, what was it you wanted to—' 'They all like him, Mr Cosmo! He just talks to people and they like him! And he is really set on dismissing gold. Think of it, sir! Where would we find true worth? He says it's all about the city but that puts us at the mercy of politicians! It's trickery again!' 'A little brandy would do you good, I think,' said Cosmo. 'And what you say is solid gold truth, but where is our way forward?' Bent hesitated. He did not like the Lavish family. They crawled over the bank like ivy, but at least they didn't try to change things and at least they believed in the gold. And they weren't silly. Mavolio Bent had a definition of 'silly' that most people would have considered a touch on the broad side. Laughter was silly. Theatricals, poetry and music were silly. Clothes that weren't grey, black or at least of undyed cloth were silly. Pictures of things that weren't real were silly 237 (pictures of things that were real were unnecessary). The ground state of being was silliness, which had to be overcome with every mortal fibre. Missionaries from the stricter religions would have found in Mavolio Bent an ideal convert, except that religion was extremely silly. Numbers were not silly. Numbers held everything together. And gold was not silly. The Lavishes believed in counting and in gold. Mr Lipwig treated numbers as if they were something to play with and he said gold was just lead on holiday! That was more than silly, it was inappropriate behaviour, a scourge that he had torn from his breast after years of struggle. A man had to go. Bent had worked his way up the echelons of the. bank over many years, fighting every natural disadvantage, and it hadn't been to see this… person make a mockery of it all! No! 'That man came to the bank again today,' he said. 'He was very odd. And he seemed to know Mr Lipwig, but he called him Albert Spangler. Talked as if he knew him from long ago and I think Mr Lipwig was upset at that. Name of Cribbins, or so Mr Lipwig called him. Very old clothes, very dusty. He made out he was a holy man, but I don't think so.' 'And that was what was odd, was it?' 'No, Mr Cosmo—' 'Just call me Cosmo, Malcolm. We surely needn't stand on ceremony.' 'Er… yes,' said Mavolio Bent. 'Well, no, it wasn't that. It was his teeth. They were those dine-chewers, and they moved and rattled when he spoke, causing him to slurp.' 'Ah, the old type with the springs,' said Cosmo. 'Very good. And Lipwig was annoyed?' 'Oh, yes. And the strange thing was, he said he didn't know the man but he called him by name.' 238 Cosmo smiled. 'Yes, that is strange. And the man left?' 'Well, yes, si— Mr— Cosmo,' said Bent. 'And then I came here.' 'You have done very well, Matthew! Should the man come in again, could you please follow him and try to find out where he is staying?' 'If I can, si— Mr— Cosmo.' 'Good man!' Cosmo helped Bent out of his chair, shook his hand, waltzed him to the door, opened it and ushered him out all in one smooth, balletic movement. 'Hurry back, Mr Bent, the bank needs you!' he said, closing the door. 'He's a strange creature, don't you think, Drumknott?' I wish he'd stop doing that, Heretofore thought. Does he think he's Vetinari? What do they call those fishes that swim alongside sharks, making themselves useful so they don't get eaten? That's me, that's what I'm doing, just hanging on, because it's much safer than letting go. 'How would Vetinari find a badly dressed man, new to the city, with ill-fitting teeth, Drumknott?' said Cosmo. Fifty dollars a month and all found, thought Heretofore, snapping out of a brief marine nightmare. Never forget it. And in another few clays you're free. 'He makes much use of the Beggars' Guild, sir,' he said. 'Ah, of course. See to it.' 'There will be expenses, sir.' 'Yes, Drumknott, I'm conscious of the fact. There are always expenses. And the other matter?' 239 'Soon, sir, soon. This is not a job for Cranberry, sir. I'm having to bribe at the highest level.' Heretofore coughed. 'Silence is expensive, sir…' Moist escorted Adora Belle back to the university in silence. But the important thing was that nothing had been broken and no one had been killed. Then as if reaching a conclusion after much careful thought, Adora Belle said: 'I worked in a bank for a while, you know, and hardly anyone got stabbed.' 'I'm sorry, I forgot to warn you. And I did push you out of the way in time.' 'I must admit that the way you threw me to the floor quite turned my head.' 'Look, I'm sorry, okay? And so is Aimsbury! And now will you tell me what all this is about? You found four golems, right? Have you brought them back?' 'No, the tunnel collapsed before we got down that far. I told you, they were half a mile down under millions of tons of sand and mud. For what it's worth, we think there was a natural ice dam up in the mountains, which burst and flooded half the continent. The stories about Um say it was destroyed in a flood, so that fits. The golems were washed away with the rubble, which ended up against some chalk cliffs by the sea.' 'How did you find out they were down there? It's… well, it's nowhere!' 'The usual way. One of our golems heard one singing. Imagine that. It's been underground for sixty thousand years…' In the night under the world, in the pressure of the depth, in the crushing of the dark… a golem sang. There were no words. The song was older than words; it was older than tongues. It was the call of the common clay, and it carried for miles. It travelled along fault lines, made crystals sing in 240 harmony in dark unmeasured caverns, followed rivers that never saw the sun… … and out of the ground and up the legs of a golem from the Golem Trust, who was pulling a waggon loaded with coal along the region's one road. When he arrived in Ankh-Morpork he told the Trust. That was what the Trust did: it found golems. Cities, kingdoms, countries came and went, but the golems that their priests had baked from clay and filled with holy fire tended to go on for ever. When they had no more orders, no more water to fetch or wood to hew, perhaps because the land was now on the sea bed or the city was inconveniently under fifty feet of volcanic ash, they did nothing but wait for the next order. They were, after all, property. Each obeyed whatever instructions were written on the little scroll in his head. Sooner or later, rock erodes. Sooner or later a new city would arise. One day there would be orders. Golems had no concept of freedom. They knew they were artefacts; some even still bore, on their clay, the finger marks of the long-dead priest. They were made to be owned. There had always been a few in Ankh-Morpork, running errands, doing chores, pumping water deep underground, unseen and silent and not getting in anyone's way. Then one day, someone freed a golem by inserting in its head the receipt for the money he'd paid for it. And then he told it that it owned itself. A golem could not be freed by orders, or a war, or a whim. But it could be freed by freehold. When you have been a possession, then you really understand what freedom means, in all its magnificent terror. Dorfl, the first freed golem, had a plan. He worked hard, around the clock he had no time for, and bought another golem. The two golems worked hard and bought a third golem… and now there was the Golem Trust, which bought golems, found golems entombed underground of in the depths of the sea, and helped golems buy themselves. 241 In the booming city golems were worth their weight in gold. They would accept small wages but they earned them for twenty-four hours a day. It was still a bargain — stronger than trolls, more reliable than oxen, and more indefatigable and intelligent than a dozen of each, a golem could power every machine in a workshop. This didn't make them popular. There was always a reason to dislike a golem. They didn't drink, eat, gamble, swear or smile. They worked. If a fire broke out, they hurried en masse to put it out and then walked back to what they had been doing. No one knew why a creature that had been baked into life had the urge to do this, but all it won them was a kind of awkward resentment. You couldn't be grateful to an unmoving face with glowing eyes. 'How many are down there?' said Moist. 'I told you. Four.' Moist felt relieved. 'Well, that's good. Well done. Can we have a proper celebratory meal tonight? Of something the animal wasn't so attached to? And then, who knows—' 'There may be a snag,' said Adora Belle slowly. 'No, really?' 'Oh, please.' Adora Belle sighed. 'Look, the Umnians were the first golem-builders, do you understand? Golem legend says that the Umnians invented golems. It's easy to believe, too. Some priest baking a votive offering says the right words, and the clay sits up. It was their only invention. They didn't need any more. Golems built their city, golems tilled their fields. They invented the wheel, but as a children's toy. They didn't need wheels, you see. You don't need weapons, either, when you've got golems instead of city walls. You don't even need shovels—' 'You're not going to tell me they built fifty-foot-high killer golems, are you?' 242 'Only a man would think of that.' 'It's our job,' said Moist. 'If you don't think of fifty-foot-high killer golems first, someone else will.' 'Well, there's no evidence of them,' said Adora Belle briskly. 'The Umnians never even worked iron. They did work bronze, though… and gold.' There was something about the way 'gold' was left hanging there that Moist didn't like. 'Gold,' he said. 'Umnian is the most complex language ever,' said Adora Belle quickly. 'None of the Trust golems know much about it, so we can't be certain—' 'Gold,' said Moist, but his voice was leaden. 'So when the digging team found caves down there we came up with a plan. The tunnel was getting unstable anyway so they closed it off, we said it had collapsed, and by now some of the team will have brought the golems out under the sea and are bringing them underwater all the way into the city,' said Adora Belle. Moist pointed at the golem's arm in its bag, 'That one isn't gold,' he said hopefully. 'We found a lot of golem remains about halfway down,' said Adora Belle with a sigh. 'The others are deeper… er, perhaps because they're heavier.' 'Gold's twice the weight of lead,' said Moist gloomily. 'The buried golem is singing in Umnian,' said Adora Belle. 'I can't be certain of our translation, so I thought, let's start by getting them into Ankh-Morpork, where they'll be safe.' Moist took a deep breath. 'Do you know how much trouble you can get into by breaking a contract with a dwarf?' 243 'Oh, come on! I'm not starting a war!' 'No, you're starting a legal action! And with the dwarfs that's even worse! You told me the contract said you couldn't take precious metals off the land!' 'Yes, but these are golems. They're alive.' 'Look, you've taken—' '— may have taken—' '—all right, may have taken, good grief, tons of gold out of dwarf land—' 'Golem Trust land—' 'All right, but there was a covenant! Which you broke when you took—' '—didn't take. It walked off by itself,' said Adora Belle calmly. 'For heavens' sake, only a woman could think like this! You think because you believe there's a perfectly good justification for your actions the legal issues don't matter! And here am I, this close to persuading people here that a dollar doesn't have to be round and shiny and I'm finding that at any minute four big shiny beaming golems are going to stroll into town, waving and glittering at everybody!' 'There's no need to get hysterical,' said Adora Belle. 'Yes, there is! What there isn't a need for is staying calm!' 'Yes, but that's when you come alive, right? That's when your brain works best. You always find a way, right?' And there was nothing you could do about a woman like that. She just turned herself into a hammer and you ran right into her. Fortunately. 244 They'd reached the entrance to the university. Above them loomed the forbidding statue of Alberto Malich, the founder. It had a chamber pot on its head. This had inconvenienced the pigeon which, by family tradition, spent most of its time perched on Alberto's head and now wore on its own head a miniature version of the same pottery receptacle. Must be Rag Week again, thought Moist. Students, eh? Love 'em or hate 'em, you're not allowed to hit 'em with a shovel. 'Look, golems or not, let's have dinner tonight, just you and me, up in the suite. Aimsbury would love it. He doesn't often get a chance to cook for humans and it'd make him feel better. He'll do anything you want, I'm sure.' Adora Belle gave him a lopsided look. 'I thought you'd suggest that," so I ordered sheep's head. He was overjoyed.' 'Sheep's head?' said Moist gloomily. 'You know I hate food that stares back. I won't even look a sardine in the face.' 'He promised to blindfold it.' 'Oh, good.' 'My granny did a wonderful sheep's head mould,' said Adora Belle. 'That's where you use pig's trotters to thicken the broth so that when it gets cold you—' 'You know, sometimes there's such a thing as too much information?' said Moist. 'This evening, then. Now let's go and see your dead wizard. You should enjoy it. There's bound to be skulls.' There were skulls. There were black drapes. There were complex symbols drawn on the floor. There were spirals of incense from black thuribles. And in the middle of all this the Head of Post-Mortem Communications, in a fearsome mask, was fiddling with a candle. He stopped when he heard them come in, and straightened up hurriedly. 245 'Oh, you're early,' he said, his voice somewhat muffled by the fangs. 'Sorry. It's the candles. They should be cheap tallow for the proper black smoke, but wouldn't you know it, they've given me beeswax. I told them just dribbling is no good to me, acrid smoke is what we want. Or what they want, anyway. Sorry, John Hicks, head of department. Ponder has told me all about you.' He took off the mask and extended a hand. The man looked as though he'd tried, like any self-respecting necromancer, to grow a proper goatee beard, but owing to some basic lack of malevolence it had turned out a bit sheepish. After a few seconds Hicks realized why they were staring, and pulled off the fake rubber hand with the black fingernails. 'I thought necromancy was banned,' said Moist. 'Oh, we don't do necromancy here,' said Hicks. 'What made you think that?' Moist looked around at the furnishings, shrugged, and said, 'Well, I suppose it first crossed my mind when I saw the way the paint was flaking off the door and you can still just see a crude skull and the letters NECR…' 'Ancient history, ancient history,' said Hicks quickly. ' We are the Department of Post-Mortem Communications. A force for good, you understand. Necromancy, on the other hand, is a very bad form of magic done by evil wizards.' 'And since you are not evil wizards, what you are doing can't be called necromancy?' 'Exactly!' 'And, er, what defines an evil wizard?' said Adora Belle. 'Well, doing necromancy would definitely be there right on top of the list.' 'Could you just remind us what you are going to do?' 246 'We're going to talk to the late Professor Flead,' said Hicks. 'Who is dead, yes?' 'Very much so. Extremely dead.' 'Isn't that just a tiny bit like necromancy?' 'Ah, but, you see, for necromancy you require skulls and bones and a general necropolitan feel,' said Dr Hicks. He looked at their expressions. 'Ah, I see where you're going here,' he said, with a little laugh that cracked a bit around the edges. 'Don't be deceived by appearances. I don't need all this. Professor Flead does. He's a bit of a traditionalist and wouldn't get out of his urn for anything less than the full Rite of Souls complete with Dread Mask of Summoning.' He twanged a fang. 'And that's the Dread Mask of Summoning, is it?' said Moist. The wizard hesitated for a moment before saying: 'Of course.' 'Only it looks just like the Dread Sorcerer mask they sell in Boffo's shop in Tenth Egg Street,' said Moist. 'Excellent value at five dollars, I thought.' 'I, er, think you must be mistaken,' said Hicks. 'I don't think so,' said Moist. 'You left the label on.' 'Where? Where?' The I'm-not-a-necromancer-at-all snatched up the mask and turned it over in his hands, looking for— He saw Moist's grin and rolled his eyes. 'All right, yes,' he muttered. 'We lost the real one. Everything gets lost round here, you just wouldn't believe it. They're not clearing up the spells properly. Was there a huge squid in the corridor?' 'Not this afternoon,' said Adora Belle. 'Yes, what's the reason for the squid?' 247 'Oooh, let me tell you about the squid!' said Hicks. 'Yes?' 'You don't want to know about the squid!' 'We don't?' 'Believe me! Are you sure it wasn't there?' 'It's the sort of thing you notice,' said Adora Belle. 'With any luck that one's worn off, then,' said Hicks, relaxing. 'It really is getting impossible. Last week everything in my filing cabinet filed itself under "W". No one seems to know why.' 'And you were going to tell us about the skulls,' said Adora Belle. 'All fake,' said Hicks. 'Excuse me?' The voice was dry and crackly and came from the shadows in the far corner. 'Apart from Charlie, of course,' Hicks added hurriedly. 'He's been here for ever! 'I'm the backbone of the department,' said the voice, a shade proudly. 'Look, shall we get started?' said Hicks, rummaging in a black velvet sack. 'There are some hooded black robes on the hook behind the door. They're just for show, of course, but nee— Post-Mortem Communications is all about theatre, really. Most of the people we… communicate with are wizards, and frankly they don't like change.' 'We're not going to do anything… ghoulish, are we?' said Adora Belle, looking at a robe doubtfully. 248 'Apart from talk to someone who's been dead for three hundred years,' said Moist. He was not naturally at ease in the presence of skulls. Humans have been genetically programmed not to be ever since monkey times, because a) whatever turned that skull into a skull might still be around and you should head for a tree now, and b) skulls look like they're having a laugh at one's expense. 'Don't worry about that,' said Hicks, taking a small ornamental jar out of the black bag and polishing it on his sleeve. 'Professor Flead willed his soul to the university. He's a bit crabby, I have to say, but he can be cooperative if we put on a decent show.' He stood back. 'Let's see… grisly candles, Circle of Namareth, Glass of Silent Time, the Mask, of course, the Curtains of, er, Curtains and' — here he put a small box down beside the jar — 'the vital ingredients.' 'Sorry? You mean all those expensive-sounding things aren't vital?' said Moist. 'They're more like… scenery,' said Hicks, adjusting the hood. 'I mean, we could all sit round reading the script out loud, but without the costumes and scenery who'd want to turn up? Are you interested in the theatre at all?' he added, in a hopeful voice. 'I go when I can,' said Moist guardedly, because he recognized the hope. 'You didn't by any chance see ' Tis Pity She's an Instructor in Unarmed Combat at the Little Theatre recently? It was put on by the Dolly Sisters Players?' 'Uh, no, I'm afraid not.' 'I played Sir Andrew Fartswell,' said Dr Hicks, in case Moist was due a sudden attack of recollection. 'Oh, that was you, was it?' said Moist, who'd met actors before. 'Everyone at work was talking about it!' 249 I'm okay just so long as he doesn't ask which night they talked about, he thought. There's always one night in every play when something hilariously dreadful happens. But he was fortunate; an experienced actor knows when not to push his luck. Instead Hicks said: 'Do you know ancient languages?' 'I can do Basic Droning,' said Moist. 'Is this ancient enough for you?' ' ' said Adora Belle, and made Moist's spine tingle. The private language of the golems was usually hell on the human tongue, but it sounded unbearably sexy when Adora Belle uttered it. It was like silver in the air. 'What was that?' said Hicks. 'The common language of golems for the last twenty thousand years,' said Adora Belle. 'Really? Most, er, moving… er… We'll begin…' In the counting house no one dared to look up as the desk of the chief cashier rumbled around on its turntable like some ancient tumbril. Papers flew under Mavolio Bent's hands while his brain drowned in poisons and his feet treadled continually to release the dark energies choking his soul. He didn't calculate, not as other men saw it. Calculation was for people who couldn't see the answer turning gently in their head. To see was to know. It always had been. The mound of accumulated paperwork dwindled as the fury of his thinking racked him. 250 There were new accounts being opened all the time. And why? Was it because of trust? Probity? An urge towards thrift? Was it because of anything that could be called worth? No! It was because of Lipwig! People whom Mr Bent had never seen before and hoped never to see again were pouring into the bank, their money in boxes, their money in piggy banks and quite often their money in socks. Sometimes they were actually wearing the socks! And they were doing this because of words! The bank's coffers were filling up because the wretched Mr Lipwig made people laugh and made people hope. People liked him. No one had ever liked Mr Bent, as far as he was aware. Oh, there had been a mother's love and a father's arms, the one chilly, the other too late, but where had they got him? In the end he'd been left alone. So he'd run away and found the grey caravan and entered a new life based on numbers and on worth and solid respect, and he had worked his way up and, yes, he was a man of worth and, yes, he had respect. Yes, respect. Even Mr Cosmo respected him. And from nowhere there was Lipwig, and who was he? No one seemed to know except for the suspicious man with the unstable teeth. One day there was no Lipwig, next day he was the Postmaster General! And now he was in the bank, a man whose worth was in his mouth and who showed no respect for anyone! And he made people laugh — and the bank filled up with money! And did the Lavishes lavish anything on you? said a familiar little voice in his head. It was a hated little part of himself that he had beaten and starved and punched back into its wardrobe for years. It wasn't the voice of his conscience. He was the voice of his conscience. It was the voice of the… the mask. 'No!' snapped Bent. Some of the nearest clerks looked up at the unaccustomed noise and then hurriedly lowered their heads for fear of catching his eye. Bent stared fixedly at the sheet in front of him, watching the numbers roll past. Rely on the numbers! They didn't let you down… 251 Cosmo doesn't respect you, you fool, you fool. You have run their bank for them and cleaned up after them! You made, they spent… and they laugh at you. You know they do. Silly Mr Bent with his funny walk, silly, silly, silly… 'Get away from me, get away,' he whispered. The people like him because he likes them. No one likes Mr Bent. 'But I have worth. I have value!' Mr Bent pulled another worksheet towards him and sought solace in its columns. But he was pursued… Where was your worth and value when you made the numbers dance, Mr Bent? The innocent numbers? You made them dance and somersault and cartwheel when you cracked your whip, and they danced into the wrong places, didn't they, because Sir Joshua demanded his price! Where did the gold dance off to, Mr Bent? Smoke and mirrors! 'No!' In the counting house all the pens ceased moving for a few seconds, before scribbling again with frantic activity. Eyes watering with shame and rage, Mr Bent tried to unscrew the top from his patent fountain pen. In the muted silence of the banking hall, the click of the green pen being deployed had the same effect as the sound of the axe-man sharpening his blade. Every clerk bent low to his desk. Mr Bent Had Found A Mistake. All anyone could do was keep their eyes on the paper in front of them and hope against hope that it was not theirs. Someone, and please gods it would not be them, would have to go and stand in front of the high desk. They knew that Mr Bent did not like mistakes: Mr Bent believed that mistakes were the result of a deformity of the soul. At the sound of the Pen of Doom, one of the senior clerks hurried to Mr Bent's side. Those workers who risked being turned to water by the ferocity of Mr Bent's stare essayed a quick glance, saw her being shown 252 the offending document. There was a distant tut-tut sound. Her tread as she came down the steps and crossed the floor echoed in deadly, praying silence. She did not know it as she scurried, button-boots flashing, to the desk of one of the youngest and newest clerks, but she was about to meet a young man who was destined to go down in history as one of the great heroes of banking. The dark organ music filled the Department of Post-Mortem Communications. Moist assumed it was all part of the ambience, although the mood would have been more precisely obtained if the tune it was playing did not appear to be Cantata and Fugue for Someone Who Has Trouble with the Pedals. As the last note died, after a long illness, Dr Hicks spun round on the stool and raised the mask. 'Sorry about that, I have two left feet sometimes. Could you both just chant a bit while I do the mystic waving, please? Don't worry about words. Anything seems to work if it sounds sepulchral enough.' As he walked around the circle chanting variants on oo! and raah! Moist wondered how many bankers raised the dead during the course of an afternoon. Probably not a high number. He shouldn't be doing this, surely. He should be out there making money. Owls— Clamp must have finished the design by now. He could be holding his first note in his hands by tomorrow! And then there was damn Cribbins, who could be talking to anyone. True, the man had a sheet as long as a roller towel, but the city worked by alliances and if he met up with the Lavishes then Moist's life would unravel all the way back to the gallows— 'In my day we at least hired a decent mask,' growled an elderly voice. 'I say, is that a woman over there?' A figure had appeared in the circle, without any bother or fuss, apart from the grumbling. It was in every respect the picture of a wizard — robed, 253 pointy-hatted, bearded and elderly — with the addition of a silvery monochrome effect overall and some slight transparency. 'Ah, Professor Flead,' said Hicks, 'it's kind of you to join us…' 'You know you brought me here and it's not as if I had anything else to do,' said Flead. He turned back to Adora Belle and his voice became pure syrup. 'What is your name, my dear?' 'Adora Belle Dearheart.' The warning tone of voice was lost on Flead. 'How delightful,' he said, giving her a gummy smile. Regrettably, this made little strings of saliva vibrate in his mouth like the web of a very old spider. 'And would you believe me if I told you that you bear a striking resemblance to my beloved concubine Fenti, who died more than three hundred years ago? The likeness is astounding!' 'I'd say that was a pick-up line,' said Adora Belle. 'Oh dear, such cynicism,' sighed the late Flead, turning to the Head of Post-Mortem Communications. 'Apart from this young lady's wonderful chanting it was frankly a mess, Hicks,' he said sharply. He tried to pat Adora Belle's hand, but his fingers passed right through. 'I'm sorry, professor, we just don't get the funding these days,' said Hicks. 'I know, I know. It was ever thus, doctor. Even in my day, if you needed a corpse you had to go out and find your own! And if you couldn't find one, you jolly well had to make one! It's all so nice now, so damn correct. So a fresh egg technically does the trick, but whatever happened to style? They tell me they've made an engine that can think now, but of course the Fine Arts are always last in the queue! And so I'm brought to this: one barely competent Post-Mortem Communicator and two people from Central Groaning!' 'Necromancy is a Fine Art?' said Moist. 254 'None finer, young man. Get things just a tiny bit wrong and the spirits of the vengeful dead may enter your head via your ears and blow your brains out down your nose.' The eyes of Moist and Adora Belle focused on Dr Hicks like those of an archer on his target. He waved his hands frantically and mouthed, 'Not very often!' 'What is a pretty young woman like you doing here, hmm?' said Flead, trying to grab Adora Belle's hand again. 'I'm trying to translate a phrase from Umnian,' she said, giving him a wooden smile and absent-mindedly wiping her hand on her dress. 'Are women allowed to do that sort of thing these days? What fun! One of my greatest regrets, you know, is that when I was in possession of a body I didn't let it spend enough time in the company of young ladies…' Moist looked around to see if there was any kind of emergency lever. There had to be something, if only in the event of nasal brain explosion. He sidled up to Hicks. 'It's going to go really bad in a moment!' he hissed. 'It's all right, I can banish him to the Undead Zone in a moment,' Hicks whispered. 'That won't be far enough if she loses her temper! I once saw her put a stiletto heel right through a man's foot while she was smoking a cigarette. She hasn't had a cigarette for more than fifteen minutes, so there's no telling what she'll do!' But Adora Belle had pulled the golem's arm out of her bag, and the late Professor Flead's eyes twinkled with something more compelling than romance. Lust comes in many varieties. He picked up the arm. That was the second surprising thing. And then Moist realized that the arm was still there, by Flead's feet, and what he was lifting was a pearly, tenuous ghost. 255 'Ah, part of an Umnian golem,' he said. 'Bad condition. Immensely rare. Probably dug up on the site of Um, yes?' 'Possibly,' said Adora Belle. 'Hmm. Possibly, eh?' said Flead, turning the spectral arm around. 'Look at the wafer-thinness! Light as a feather but strong as steel while the fires burned within! There has been nothing like them since!' 'I might know where such fires still burn,' said Adora Belle. 'After sixty thousand years? I think not, madam!' 'I think otherwise.' She could say things in that tone of voice and turn heads. She projected absolute certainty. Moist had worked hard for years to get a voice like that. 'Are you saying an Umnian golem has survived? 'Yes. Four of them, I think,' said Adora Belle. 'Can they sing?' 'At least one can.' 'I'd give anything to see one before I die,' said Flead. 'Er…' Moist began. 'Figure of speech, figure of speech,' said Flead, waving a hand irritably. 'I think that could be arranged,' said Adora Belle. 'In the meantime, we've transcribed their song into Boddely's Phonetic Runes.' She dipped into her bag and produced a small scroll. Flead reached out and once again an iridescent ghost of the scroll was now in his hands. 256 'It appears to be gibberish,' he said, glancing at it, 'although I have to say that Umnian always does at first glance. I shall need some time to work it out. Umnian is entirely a contextual language. Have you seen these golems?' 'No, our tunnel collapsed. We can't even talk to the golems who were digging any more. Song doesn't travel well under salt water. But we think they are… unusual golems.' 'Golden, probably,' said Flead, the words leaving a thoughtful silence in their wake. Then Adora Belle said, 'Oh.' Moist shut his eyes; on the inside of the lids the gold reserves of Ankh-Morpork walked up and down, gleaming. 'Anyone who researches Um finds the golden golem legend,' said Flead. 'Sixty thousand years ago some witch doctor sitting by a fire made a clay figure and worked out how to make it live and that was the only invention they ever needed, do you understand? Even had horse golems, did you know that? No one has ever been able to create one since. Yet the Umnians never worked iron! They never invented the spade or the wheel! Golems herded their animals and span their cloth! The Umnians did make their own jewellery, though, which largely consisted of scenes of human sacrifice, badly executed in every sense of the word. They were incredibly inventive in that area. A theocracy, of course,' he added, with a shrug. 'I don't know what it is about stepped pyramids that brings out the worst in a god… Anyway, yes, they did work gold. They dressed their priests in it. Quite possibly they made a few golems out of it. Or, equally, the "golden golem" was a metaphor referring to the value of golems to the Umnians. When people wish to express the concept of worth, "gold" is always the word of choice—' 'Isn't it just,' murmured Moist. '—or it is simply a legend without foundation. Exploration of the site has never found anything except a few fragments of broken golem,' said Flead, sitting back and making himself comfortable on empty air. 257 He winked at Adora Belle. 'Perhaps you looked elsewhere? One story tells us that upon the death of all the humans, the golems walked into the sea… ?' The question mark hung in the air like the hook it was. 'What an interesting story,' said Adora Belle, poker-faced. Flead smiled. 'I will find the sense of this message. Of course you will come and see me again tomorrow? Moist didn't like the sound of that, whatever it was. It didn't help that Adora Belle was smiling. Flead added: ' ' 'Have you, sir?' said Adora Belle, laughing. 'No, but I have an excellent memory!' Moist frowned. He liked it better when she was giving the old devil the cold shoulder. 'Can we go now?' he said. Probationary Trainee Junior Clerk Hammersmith Coot watched Miss Drapes looming ever closer with slightly less apprehension than his older colleagues did, and they knew this was because the poor kid had not been there long enough to know the meaning of what was about to happen. The senior clerk put the paper on his desk with some force. The total had been ringed around in green ink which was still wet. 'Mr Bent,' she said, with a tincture of satisfaction, 'says you must do this again properly.' And because Hammersmith was a well-brought-up young man and because this was only his first week in the bank, he said: 'Yes, Miss Drapes,' took the paper neatly and set to work. 258 There were many different stories told about what happened next. In years to come, clerks measured their banking experience by how close they were when the Thing Happened. There were disagreements on what was actually said. Certainly there was no violence, no matter what some of the stories implied. But it was a day that brought the world, or at least the part of it that included the counting house, to its knees. Everyone agreed that Hammersmith spent some time working on the percentages. They say he produced a notebook — a personal notebook, which was an offence in itself— and did some work in it. Then, after some say fifteen minutes, some say nearly half an hour, he walked back to the desk of Miss Drapes, and declared: 'I'm sorry, Miss Drapes, but I can't find where the mistake is. I have checked my workings and believe my total is correct.' His voice was not loud, but the room went silent. In fact, it was more than silent. The sheer straining of hundreds of ears meant that spiders spinning cobwebs near the ceiling wobbled in the suction. He was sent back to his desk to 'do it again and don't waste people's time' and after a further ten minutes, some say fifteen, Miss Drapes went to his desk and looked over his shoulder. Most people agree that after half a minute or so she picked up the paper, pulled a pencil from the tight bun on the back of her head, ordered the young man out of his seat, sat down and spent some time staring at the numbers. She got up. She went to the desk of another senior clerk. Together they pored over the piece of paper. A third clerk was summoned. He copied out the offending columns, worked on them for a while and looked up, his face grey. No one needed to say it aloud. By now all work had stopped, but Mr Bent, up on the high stool, was still engrossed in the numbers before him and, significantly, he was muttering under his breath. People sensed it in the air. Mr Bent had Made a Mistake. The most senior clerks conferred hastily in a corner. There was no higher authority that they could appeal to. Mr Bent was the higher authority, 259 second only to the inexorable Lord of Mathematics. In the end it was left to the luckless Miss Drapes, who so recently had been the agent of Mr Bent's displeasure, to write on the document, 'I am sorry, Mr Bent, I believe the young man is right.' She placed this at the bottom of a number of working slips that she was delivering to the in-tray, dropped it in as the tray rumbled past, and then the sound of her little boots echoed as she rushed, weeping, the length of the hall to the ladies' restroom, where she had hysterics. The remaining members of the staff looked around, warily, like ancient monsters who can see a second sun getting bigger in the sky but have absolutely no idea what they should do about it. Mr Bent was a fast man with an in-tray and by the look of it there was about two minutes or less before he was confronted with the message. Suddenly and all at once, they fled for the exits. 'And how was that for you?' said Moist, stepping out into the sunlight. 'Do I detect a note of peevishness?' said Adora Belle. 'Well, my plans for today did not include dropping in to chat with a three-hundred-year-old letch.' 'I think you mean lych, and anyway he was a ghost, not a corpse.' 'He was letching!' 'All in his mind,' said Adora Belle. 'Your mind, too.' 'Normally you go crazy if people try to patronize you!' 'True. But most people aren't able to translate a language so old that even golems can hardly understand a tenth of it. Get a talent like that and it could be you getting the girls when you are three centuries dead.' 'You were just flirting to get what you wanted?' 260 Adora Belle stopped dead in the middle of the square to confront him. 'And? You flirt with people all the time. You flirt with the whole world! That's what makes you interesting, because you're more like a musician than a thief. You want to play the world, especially the fiddly bits. And now I'm going home for a bath. I got off the coach this morning, remember?' 'This morning,' said Moist, 'I found that one of my staff had swapped the mind of another of my staff with that of a turnip.' 'Was that good?' said Adora Belle. 'I'm not sure. In fact I'd better go and check. Look, we've both had a busy day. I'll send a cab at half past seven, all right?' Cribbins was enjoying himself. He'd never gone in much for reading, up until now. Oh, he could read, and write too, in a nice cursive script that people thought was quite distinguished. And he'd always liked the Times for its clear, readable font, and had, with the aid of some scissors and a pot of paste, often accepted its assistance in producing those missives that attract attention not by fine writing but by having the messages created in cut-out words and letters and even whole phrases if you were lucky. Reading for pleasure had passed him by, however. But he was reading now, oh yes, and it was extremely pleasurable, goodness yes! It was amazing what you could find if you knew what you were looking for! And now, all his Hogswatches were about to come at once— 'A cup of tea, reverend?' said a voice by his side. It was the plump lady in charge of the Times's back numbers department, who had taken to him as soon as he doffed his hat to her. She had the slightly wistful, slightly hungry look that so many women of a certain age wore when they'd decided to trust in gods because of the absolute impossibility of continuing to trust in men. 'Why, thank you, shister,' he said, beaming. 'And is it not written: "The eleemosynary cup is more worthy than the thrown hen"?' 261 Then he noticed the discreet little silver ladle pinned to her bosom, and that her earrings were two tiny fish slices. The holy symbols of Anoia, yes. He'd just been reading about her in the religious pages. All the rage these days, thanks to the help of young Spangler. Started out way down the ladder as the Goddess of Things That Get Stuck In Drawers, but the talk in the religious pages was that she was being tipped for Goddess of Lost Causes, a very profitable area, very profitable indeed for a man with a flexible approach but, and he sighed inwardly, it was not such a good idea to do business when the god in question was active, in case Anoia got angry and found a new use for a fish slice. Besides, he'd soon be able to put all that behind him. What a clever lad young Spangler had turned out to be! Smarmy little devil! This wasn't going to be over quick, oh no. This was going to be a pension for life. And it'd be a long, long life, or else— 'Is there anything more I can get you, reverend?' said the woman anxiously. 'My cup runneth over, shister,' said Cribbins. The woman's anxious expression intensified. 'Oh, I'm sorry, I hope it hasn't gone on the—' Cribbins carefully put his hand over the cup. 'I meant that I am more than shatisfied,' he said, and he was. It was a bloody miracle, that's what it was. If Om was going to hand them out like this, he might even start believing in Him. And it got better the more you thought about it, Cribbins told himself, as the woman hurried away. How'd the kid done it? There must have been cronies. The hangman, for one, a couple of jailers… Reflectively, he removed his false teeth with a twang, swilled them gently in the tea, patted them dry with his handkerchief and wrestled them back into his mouth a few seconds before footsteps told him the woman was returning. She was positively vibrating with genteel courage. 'Excuse me, reverend, but can I ask a favour?' she said, going pink. 262 'Og orsk… ugger! Usht arg ogent—' Cribbins turned his back, and against a chorus of snaps and two ings dragged the wretched dentures around the right way. Damned things! Why he'd ever bothered to lever them out of the old man's mouth he'd never know. 'I do beg your pardon, shister, a little dental mishap there…' he murmured, turning back and dabbing at his mouth. 'Pray continue.' 'It's funny you should say that, reverend,' said the woman, her eyes bright with nervousness, 'because I belong to a small group of ladies who run, well, a god of the month club. Er… that is, we pick a god and believe in him… or her, obviously, or it, although we draw the line at the ones with teeth and too many legs, er, and then we pray to them for a month and then we sit down and discuss it. Well, there's so many, aren't there? Thousands! We've not really considered Om, though, but if you would care to give us a little talk next Tuesday I'm sure we'll be happy to give him a jolly good try!' Springs pinged as Cribbins gave her a huge smile. 'What is your name, shister?' he asked. 'Berenice,' she said. 'Berenice, er, Houser.' Ah, no longer using the bastard's name, very wise, thought Cribbins. 'What a wonderful idea, Berenice,' he said. 'I would consider it a pleshure!' She beamed. 'There wouldn't be any biscuits, would there, Berenice?' Cribbins added. Ms Houser blushed. 'I believe I have some chocolate ones somewhere,' she volunteered, as if letting him into a big secret. 'May Anoia rattle your drawers, shister,' said Cribbins to her retreating back. Wonderful, he thought, as she bustled off, blushing and happy. He tucked his notebook into his jacket and sat back and listened to the ticking of the 263 clock on the wall and the gentle snores of the beggars, who were the normal habitues of this office on a hot afternoon. All was peaceful, settled, organized, just like life ought to be. It was going to be the gravy boat for him from this day forward. If he was very, very careful. Moist ran down the lengths of the vaults towards the brilliant light at the far end. There was a tableau of peacefulness. Hubert was standing in front of the Glooper, occasionally tapping a pipe. Igor was blowing some curious glass creation over his little forge and Mr Clamp, formerly known as Owlswick Jenkins, was sitting at his desk with a faraway look on his face. Moist sensed the doom ahead. Something was wrong. It might not be even a particular thing, it was just a sheer platonic wrongness — and he did not like Mr Clamp's expression at all. Nevertheless, the human brain which survives by hoping from one second to another will always endeavour to put off the moment of truth. Moist approached the desk, rubbing his hands together. 'How's it going then, Owl — I mean Mr Clamp', he said. 'Finished it yet, have we?' 'Oh, yes,' said Clamp, a strange, mirthless little smile on his face. 'Here it is.' On the desk in front of him was the other side of the first proper dollar bill ever to be designed. Moist had seen pictures quite like it, but they had been when he was four years old in nursery school. The face of what was presumably meant to be Lord Vetinari had two dots for eyes and a broad grin. The panorama of the vibrant city of Ankh-Morpork appeared to consist of a lot of square houses, with a window, all square, in each corner and a door in the middle. 'I think it's one of the best things I have ever done,' said Clamp. 264 Moist patted him convivially on the shoulder and then marched towards Igor, who was already looking defensive. 'What have you done to that man?' said Moist. 'I have made him a well-balanthed perthonality, no longer bethet with ancthietieth, fearth and the demonth of paranoia,' said Igor. Moist glanced at Igor's workbench, a brave thing to do by any standards. On it was a jar with something indistinct floating in it. Moist looked closer, another minor act of heroism when you were in an Igor-rich environment. It was not a happy turnip. It was blotchy. It was bouncing gently from one side of the jar to another, occasionally turning over. 'I see,' said Moist. 'But it would appear, regrettably, that by giving our friend the relaxed and hopeful attitude to life of, not to put too fine a point on it, a turnip, you have also given him the artistic abilities of, and I have no hesitation in using the term again, a turnip.' 'But he ith much happier in himthelf,' said Igor. 'Granted, but how much of himself is, and I really don't wish to keep repeating myself here, of a root-vegetable-like nature?' Igor considered this for some time. 'Ath a medical man, thur,' he said, 'I mutht conthider what ith betht for the pathient. At the moment he ith happy and content and hath no careth in the world. Why would he give up all thith for a mere fathility with a penthil?' Moist was aware of an insistent bonk-bonk. It was the turnip banging itself against the side of the jar. 'That is an interesting and philosophical point,' he said, once again looking at Clamp's happy yet somewhat unfocused expression. 'But it seems to me that all those nasty little details were what made him, well, him.' The frantic banging of the vegetable grew louder. Igor and Moist stared from the jar to the eerily smiling man. 'Igor, I'm not sure you know what makes people tick.' 265 Igor gave an avuncular little chuckle. 'Oh, believe me, thur—' 'Igor?' said Moist. 'Yeth, Marthter,' said Igor gloomily. 'Go and fetch the damn wires again, will you.' 'Yeth, Marthter.' Moist got back upstairs again to find himself in the middle of a panic. A tearful Miss Drapes spotted him and click-clicked over, at speed. 'It's Mr Bent, sir. He just rushed out, yelling! We can't find him anywhere!' 'Why are you looking?' said Moist, and then realized he'd said it aloud. 'I meant, what is the reason for you looking?' The story unfolded. As Miss Drapes talked Moist got the impression that all the other listeners were getting the point and he wasn't. 'So, okay, he made a mistake,' he said. 'No harm done, is there? It's all been sorted out, right? A bit embarrassing, I dare say…' But, he reminded himself, an error is worse than a sin, isn't it? But that's plain daft, his sensible self pointed out. He could have said something like: 'You see? Even I can make a mistake through a moment's inattention! We must be forever vigilant!' Or he could have said: 'I did this on purpose to test you!' Even schoolteachers know that one. I can think of half a dozen ways to wriggle out of something like that. But then I'm a wriggler. I don't think he's ever wriggled in his life. 'I hope he hasn't done something… silly,' said Miss Drapes, fishing a crumpled handkerchief out of a sleeve. Something… silly, thought Moist. That's the phrase people used when they were thinking about someone jumping into the river or taking the entire contents of the medicine box in one go. Silly things like that. 266 'I've never met a less silly man,' he said. 'Well, er… we've always wondered about him, to be honest,' said a clerk. 'I mean, he's in at dawn and one of the cleaners told me he's often in here late at night— What? What? That hurt!' Miss Drapes, who had nudged him hard, now whispered urgently in his ear. The man deflated and looked awkwardly at Moist. 'Sorry, sir, I spoke out of turn,' he mumbled. 'Mr Bent is a good man, Mr Lipwig,' said Miss Drapes. 'He drives himself hard.' 'Drives all of you hard, it seems to me,' said Moist. This attempt at solidarity with the labouring masses didn't seem to hit the mark. 'If you can't stand the heat, get off the pot, that's what I say,' said a senior clerk, and there was a general murmur of agreement. 'Er, I think you get out of the kitchen,' said Moist.' "Get off the pot" is the alternative when—' 'Half the chief cashiers in the Plains have worked in this room,' said Miss Drapes. 'And quite a few managers, now. And Miss Lee, who's deputy manager of Apsly's Commercial Bank in Sto Lat, she got the job because of the letter Mr Bent wrote. Bent-trained, you see. That counts for a lot. If you've got a reference from Mr Bent, you can walk into any bank and get a job with a snap of your fingers.' 'And if you stay, the pay here is better than anywhere,' a clerk put in. 'He told the Board, if they want the best, they'd have to pay for it!' 'Oh, he's demanding,' said another clerk, 'but I hear they're all working for a Human Resources Manager at Pipeworth's Bank now, and if it comes to that I'll take Mr Bent any day of the week. At least he thinks I'm a person. I was hearing where she was timing how long people spent in the privy!' 267 'They call it Time and Motion study,' said Moist. 'Look, I expect Mr Bent just wants to be alone for a while. Who was he yelling at, the lad who'd made a mistake?… or didn't make it, I mean.' 'That was young Hammersmith,' said Miss Drapes. 'We sent him home because he was in a bit of a state. And no, Mr Bent wasn't really shouting at him. He wasn't really shouting at anybody. He was—' She paused, searching for a word. 'Gibbering,' said the clerk who had spoken out of turn, giving the turn another twist, 'and you don't all have to look at me like that. You all heard him. And he looked as though he'd seen a ghost.' Clerks were wandering back into the counting house in ones and twos. They'd searched everywhere, was the general agreement, and there was strong support for the theory that he'd gone out through the Mint, it being rather busy in there with all the work still going on. Moist doubted it. The bank was old, and old buildings have all sorts of crannies, and Mr Bent had been here for— 'How long has he been here?' he wondered aloud. The general consensus was 'since the mind of man can remember' but Miss Drapes, who it seemed for some reason had made herself well informed on the subject of Mavolio Bent, volunteered that it was thirty-nine years and that he had got a job when he was thirteen by sitting on the steps all night until the chairman came to work and impressing him with his command of numbers. He went from messenger boy to chief cashier in twenty years. 'Speedy!' said Moist. 'Never had a day off for illness, either,' Miss Drapes concluded. 'Well. Perhaps he's entitled to some now,' said Moist. 'Do you know where he lives, Miss Drapes?' 'Mrs Cake's boarding house.' 268 'Really? That's a bit' — Moist stopped and chose from a number of options — 'low rent, isn't it?' 'He says that as a bachelor it meets his needs,' said Miss Drapes, and avoided Moist's gaze. Moist could feel the day slipping away from him. But they were all staring at him. There was only one thing he could say if he was to maintain his image. 'Then I think I ought to see if he's gone there,' said Moist. Their faces broke into smiles of relief. He added: 'But I think that one of you should come with me. After all, you know him.' It looks as though I don't, he thought. 'I'll fetch my coat,' said Miss Drapes. The only reason that her words came out at the speed of sound was that she couldn't make them go any faster. 269 Chapter 8 As Below, so Above — No gain without pain — A mind for puzzles — Mr Bent's sad past — Something in the wardrobe — Wonderful money — Thoughts on madness, by Igor — A pot thickens HUBERT TAPPED THOUGHTFULLY on one of the Glooper's tubes. 'Igor?' he said. 'Yeth, marthter?' said Igor, behind him. Hubert jumped. 'I thought you were over by your lightning cells!' he managed. 'I wath, thur, but I am here now. What wath it you wanted?' 'You've wired up all the valves, Igor. I can't make any changes!' 'Yeth, thur,' said Igor calmly. 'There would be amathingly dire conthequentheth, thur.' 'But I want to change some parameters, Igor,' said Hubert, absent-mindedly taking a rain hat off the peg. 'I'm afraid there ith a problem, thur. You athked me to make the Glooper ath accurate ath poththible.' 'Well, of course. Accuracy is vital.' 270 'It ith… extremely accurate, thur,' said Igor, looking uncomfortable. 'Poththibly too accurate, thur.' This 'poththibly' caused Hubert to grope for an umbrella. 'How can anything be too accurate?' Igor looked round. Suddenly he was on edge. 'Would you mind if I wind down on the lisp a little?' 'Can you do that?' 'Oh yeth… or, indeed, yes, sir. But it's a clan thing, you see. It's expected, like the stitcheth. But I think you will find the explanation hard enough to understand as it is.' 'Well, er, thank you. Go ahead, please.' It was quite a long explanation. Hubert listened with care, his mouth open. The term 'cargo cult' whirled past, and was followed by a short dissertation on the hypothesis that all water, everywhere, knows where all the other water is, some interesting facts about hyphenated silicon and what happens to it in the presence of cheese, the benefits and hazards of morphic resonation in areas of high background magic, the truth about identical twins and the fact that if the fundamental occult maxim 'As Above, so Below' was true, then so was 'As Below, so Above'… The silence that followed was broken only by the tinkle of water in the Glooper, and the sound of the former Owlswick's pencil as he worked away with demon-haunted skill. 'Do you mind going back to lisping, please?' said Hubert. 'I don't know why, it just sounds better that way.' 'Very good, thur.' 'All right. Now, are you really saying that I can now change the economic life of the city by adjusting the Glooper? It's like a witch's wax doll and I've got all the pins?' 271 'That ith correct, thur. A very nithe analogy.' Hubert stared at the crystal masterpiece. The light in the undercroft was changing all the time as the economic life of the city pumped itself around the tubes, some of them no thicker than a hair. 'It's an economic model, in fact, which is the real thing?' 'They are identical, thur.' 'So with one hammer blow I could throw the city into an irrevocable economic crash?' 'Yes, thur. Do you want me to fetch a hammer?' Hubert stared up at the rushing, trickling, foaming thing that was the Glooper and his eyes bulged. He started to giggle but it grew very quickly into a laugh. 'Haha! Ahahaha!!! AHAHAHAHA!!!!… Can you get me a glass of water, please?… HAHAHAHA!!! Hahahahaha! !… HAHA HAHA!!! —' The laughter stopped abruptly. 'That can't be right, Igor.' 'Really, thur?' 'Yes indeed! Look at our old friend Flask 244a! Can you see it? It's empty!' 'Indeed, thur?' 'Indeed indeed' , said Hubert. 'Flask 244a represents the gold in our very own vaults, Igor. And ten tons of gold don't just get up and walk away! Eh? HAHAHAHA!!! Could you get me that glass of water I asked for? Hahaha aha!!… HAHA HAHA!!! —' A smile played around Cosmo's lips, which was a dangerous playground for anything as innocent as a smile. 272 'All of them?' he said. 'Well, all the counting house clerks,' said Heretofore. 'They just ran out into the street. Some of them were in tears.' 'A panic in fact,' murmured Cosmo. He looked at the picture of Vetinari opposite his desk and was sure it winked at him. 'Apparently it was some problem with the chief cashier, sir.' 'Mr Bent?' 'Apparently he made a mistake, sir. They said he was muttering to himself and then just ran out of the room. They said that some of the staff had gone back in to search for him.' 'Mavolio Bent made a mistake? I think not,' said Cosmo. 'They say he ran off, sir.' Cosmo very nearly raised an eyebrow without mechanical aid. It was that close. 'Ran off? Was he carrying any large and heavy bags? They usually do.' 'I believe he wasn't, sir,' said Heretofore. 'That would have been… helpful.' Cosmo leaned back in his chair, pulled off the black glove for the third time today, and held out his hand at arm's length. The ring did look impressive, especially against the pale blue of his finger. 'Have you ever seen a run on a bank, Drumknott?' he said. 'Have you ever seen the crowds fighting for their money?' 'No, sir,' said Heretofore, who was beginning to worry again. The tight boots had been, well, funny, but surely a finger shouldn't look that colour? 273 'It's a dreadful sight. It's like watching a beached whale being eaten alive by crabs,' said Cosmo, turning his hand so that the light showed up the shadowy V. 'It may squirm in its agony, but there can be only one outcome. It is a terrible thing, if done properly.' This is how Vetinari thinks, his soul exulted. Plans can break down. You cannot plan the future. Only presumptuous fools plan. The wise man steers. 'As a director of the bank and, of course, a concerned citizen,' he said dreamily, 'I shall now write a letter to the Times! 'Yes, sir, of course,' said Heretofore, 'and shall I send for a jeweller, sir? I understand they have some fine little snips that—' 'No pain without gain, Drumknott. It sharpens my thinking.' The glove went back on. 'Er…' and then Heretofore gave up. He'd tried his best, but Cosmo was bent on his own destruction, and all a sensible man could do was to make as much money as possible and then stay alive to spend it. 'I've had another stroke of luck, sir,' he ventured. He'd have liked more time, but it was clear that time was getting short. 'Indeed? What is this?' 'That project I have been working on…' 'Very expensively? Yes?' 'I believe I can get you Vetinari's stick, sir.' 'You mean his swordstick?' 'Yes, sir. As far as I know the blade has never been drawn in anger.' 'I understood it was always close to him.' 274 'I didn't say it would be easy, sir. Or cheap. But after much, much work I now see a clear way,' said Heretofore. 'They say the steel of the blade was taken from the iron in the blood of a thousand men…' 'So I have heard, sir.' 'Have you seen it?' 'Very briefly, sir.' For the first time in his career, Heretofore found himself feeling sorry for Cosmo. There was a kind of yearning in the man's voice. He didn't want to usurp Vetinari. There were plenty of people in the city who wanted to usurp Vetinari. But Cosmo wanted to be Vetinari. 'What was it like?' The voice was pleading. The poison must have got to his brain, thought Heretofore. But his mind was pretty poisonous to begin with. Perhaps they will be friends. 'Er… well, the handle and scabbard are just like yours, sir, but a little worn. The blade, though, is grey and looks—' 'Grey?' 'Yes, sir. It looks aged and slightly pitted. But here and there, when the light catches it, there are little red and gold flecks. I have to say that it looks ominous.' 'The flecks of light would be the blood, of course,' said Cosmo thoughtfully, 'or, possibly, yes, very possibly the trapped souls of those who died to make the dreadful blade.' 'I had not thought of that, sir,' said Heretofore, who had spent two nights with a new blade, some haematite, a brass brush and some chemicals to produce a weapon that looked as though it'd spring for your throat of its own accord. 275 'You could get it tonight?' 'I think so, sir. It will be dangerous, of course.' 'And require yet more expense, I imagine,' said Cosmo, with rather more insight than Heretofore would have expected in his current state. 'There are so many bribes, sir. He will not be happy when he finds out, and I daren't risk the time it would take to make an exact replacement.' 'Yes. I see.' Cosmo pulled off the black glove again and looked at his hand. There seemed to be a greenish tint to his finger now, and he wondered if there was some copper in the ring's alloy. But the pink, almost red streaks moving up his arm looked very healthy. 'Yes. Get the stick,' he murmured, turning his hand to catch the light from the lamps. Odd, though, he couldn't feel any heat on the finger, but that didn't matter. He could see the future so clearly. The shoes, the cap, the ring, the stick… Surely, as he filled the occult space occupied by Vetinari, the wretched man would feel himself getting weaker and more confused, and he'd get things wrong and make mistakes… 'See to it, Drumknott,' he said. Havelock, Lord Vetinari pinched the bridge of his nose. It had been a long day and was clearly going to be a long evening. 'I think I need a moment to relax. Let's get it over with,' he said. Drumknott walked over to the long table, which at this time of day held copies of several editions of the Times, his lordship being keen on keeping track of what people thought was going on. 276 Vetinari sighed. People told him things all the time. Lots of people had been telling him things in the last hour. They told him things for all sorts of reasons: to gain some credit, to gain some money, for a favour quid pro quo, out of malice, mischief or, suspiciously, out of a professed regard for the public good. What it amounted to was not information, but a huge Argus-eyed ball of little, wiggling factoids, out of which some information could, with care, be teased. His secretary laid before him the paper, carefully folded to the correct page and place, which was occupied by a square filled with a lot of smaller squares, some of them containing numbers. 'Today's "Jikan no Muda", sir,' he said. Vetinari glanced at it for a few seconds, and then handed it back to him. The Patrician shut his eyes and drummed his fingers on the desktop for a moment. 'Hm… 9 6 3 1 7 4' — Drumknott scribbled hastily as the numbers streamed and eventually concluded — '8 4 2 3. And I'm sure they used that one last month. On a Monday, I believe.' 'Seventeen seconds, sir,' said Drumknott, his pencil still catching up. 'Well, it has been a tiring day,' said Vetinari. 'And what is the point? Numbers are easy to outwit. They can't think back. The people who devise the crosswords, now they are indeed devious. Who would know that "pysdxes" are ancient Ephebian carved-bone needle-holders?' 'Well, you, sir, of course,' said Drumknott, carefully stacking the files, 'and the Curator of Ephebian Antiquities at the Royal Art Museum, "Puzzler" of the Times and Miss Grace Speaker, who runs the pet shop in Pellicool Steps.' 'We should keep an eye on that pet shop, Drumknott. A woman with a mind like that content to dispense dog food? I think not.' 'Indeed, sir. I shall make a note.' 277 'I'm pleased to hear that your new boots have ceased squeaking, by the way.' 'Thank you, sir. They have broken in nicely.' Vetinari stared pensively at the day's files. 'Mr Bent, Mr Bent, Mr Bent,' he said. 'The mysterious Mr Bent. Without him, the Royal Bank would be in far more trouble than it has been. And now that it is without him it will fall over. It revolves around him. It beats to his pulse. Old Lavish was frightened of him, I'm sure. He said he thought that Bent was a…' He paused. 'Sir?' said Drumknott. 'Let us just accept the fact that he has, in every way, proved to be a model citizen,' said Vetinari. 'The past is a dangerous country, is it not?' 'There is no file on him, sir.' 'He has never drawn attention to himself. All I know for sure is that he arrived here as a child, on a cart owned by some travelling accountants…' 'What, like tinkers and fortune-tellers?' said Moist, as the cab rocked its way through streets that grew narrower and darker. 'I suppose you could say so,' said Miss Drapes with a hint of disapproval. 'They do big, you know, circuits all the way up to the mountains, doing the books for little businesses, helping people with their taxes, that sort of thing.' She cleared her throat. 'Whole families of them. It must be a wonderful life.' 'Every day a new ledger,' said Moist, nodding gravely, 'and by night they drink beer and happy laughing accountants dance the Double Entry Polka to the sound of accordions…' 'Do they?' said Miss Drapes nervously. 278 'I don't know. It would be nice to think so,' said Moist. 'Well, that explains something, at least. He was obviously ambitious. All he could hope for on the road was being allowed to steer the horse, I suppose.' 'He was thirteen,' said Miss Drapes, and she blew her nose loudly. 'It's so sad.' She turned a tearful face towards Moist. 'There's something dreadful in his past, Mr Lipstick. They say one day some men came to the bank and asked—' 'This is it, Mrs Cake's,' said the cabman, pulling up sharply, 'an' that'll be eleven pence and don't ask me to hang about 'cos they'll have the 'orse up on bricks and its shoes off in a wink.' The door of the boarding house was opened by the hairiest woman Moist had ever seen, but in the area of Elm Street you learned to discount this sort of thing. Mrs Cake was famously accommodating to the city's newly arrived undead, giving them a safe and understanding haven until they could get on their feet, however many they had. 'Mrs Cake?' he said. 'Mother's at church,' said the woman. 'She said to expect you, Mr Lipwig.' 'You have a Mr Bent staying here, I believe?' 'The banker? Room Seven on the second floor. But I don't think he's in. He's not in trouble, is he?' Moist explained the situation, aware all the while of doors opening a fraction in the shadows beyond the woman. The air was sharp with the smell of disinfectant; Mrs Cake believed that cleanliness was more to be trusted than godliness and, besides, without that sharp note of pine half the clientele would be driven mad by the smell of the other half. And in the middle of all this was the silent, featureless room of Mr Bent, chief cashier. The woman, who volunteered that her name was Ludmilla, let them in, very reluctantly, with a master key. 279 'He's always been a good guest,' she said, 'never a moment's trouble.' One glance took in everything: the narrow room, the narrow bed, the clothes hanging neatly around the walls, the tiny jug and basin set, the incongruously large wardrobe. Lives collect clutter, but Mr Bent's did not. Unless, of course, it was all in the wardrobe. 'Most of your long-term guests are unde—' '—differently alive,' said Ludmilla sharply. 'Yes, of course, so I'm wondering why… Mr Bent would stay here.' 'Mr Lipwick, what are you suggesting?' said Miss Drapes. 'You must admit it's rather unexpected,' said Moist. And, because she was already distraught enough, he didn't add: I don't have to suggest anything. It suggests itself. Tall. Dark. Gets in before dawn, leaves after dark. Mr Fusspot growls at him. Compulsive counter. Obsessive over detail. Gives you a gentle attack of the creeps which makes you feel mildly ashamed. Sleeps on a long thin bed. Stays at Mrs Cakes, where the vampires hang up. It's not very hard to join up the dots. 'This isn't about the man who was here the other night, is it?' said Ludmilla. 'What man would that be?' 'Didn't give a name. Just said he was a friend. All in black, had a black cane with a silver skull on it. Nasty piece of work, Mum said. Mind you,' Ludmilla added, 'she says that about nearly everyone. He had a black coach.' 'Not Lord Vetinari, surely?' 'Oh, no, Mum's all for him, except she thinks he ought to hang more people. No, this one was pretty stout, Mum said.' 280 'Oh, really?' said Moist. 'Well, thank you, ma'am. Perhaps we should be going. By the way, do you by any chance have a key to that wardrobe?' 'No key. He put a new lock on it years ago, but Mum didn't complain because he's never any trouble. It's one of those magic ones they sell at the University,' Ludmilla went on, as Moist examined the lock. The trouble with the wretched magical ones was that just about anything could be a key, from a word to a touch. 'It's rather strange that he hangs all his clothes on the walls, isn't it?' he said, straightening up. Ludmilla looked disapproving. 'We don't use the word strange in this household.' 'Differently normal?' Moist suggested. 'That'll do.' There was a warning glint in Ludmilla's eye. 'Who can say who is truly normal in this world?' Well, someone whose fingernails don't visibly extend when they're annoyed would be a definite candidate, thought Moist. 'Well, we should get back to the bank,' he said. 'If Mr Bent turns up, do tell him that people are looking for him.' 'And care about him,' said Miss Drapes quickly, and then put a hand over her mouth and blushed. I just wanted to make money, thought Moist, as he led the trembling Miss Drapes back to the area where cabs dared to go. I thought life in banking was profitable boredom punctuated by big cigars. Instead, it has turned out differently normal. The only really sane person in there is Igor, and possibly the turnip. And I'm not sure about the turnip. He dropped the snuffling Miss Drapes at her lodgings in Welcome Soap, with a promise to let her know when the errant Mr Bent broke cover, and took the cab onwards to the bank. The night guards had already arrived, 281 but quite a few clerks were still hanging around, apparently unable to come to terms with the new reality. Mr Bent had been a fixture, like the pillars. Cosmo had been to see him. It wouldn't have been a social call. What had it been? A threat? Well, no one liked being beaten up. But perhaps it was more sophisticated. Perhaps it was we'll tell people you are a vampire. To which a sensible person would reply: stick it where the sun shineth not. That would have been a threat twenty years ago, but today? There were plenty of vampires in the city, neurotic as hell, wearing the Black Ribbon to show they'd signed the pledge, and in general getting on with, for want of a better word, their lives. Mostly, people just accepted it. Day after day went past with no trouble, and so the situation became regarded as normal. Differently normal, but still normal. Okay, Mr Bent had kept quiet about his past, but that was hardly a pitchforking matter. He'd been sitting in a bank for forty years doing sums, for heavens' sake. But perhaps he didn't see it that way. You measured common sense with a ruler, other people measured it with a potato. He didn't hear Gladys's approach. He just became aware that she was standing behind him. 'I Have Been Very Worried About You, Mr Lipwig,' she rumbled. 'Thank you, Gladys,' he said cautiously. 'I Will Make You A Sandwich. You Like My Sandwiches.' 'That would be kind of you, Gladys, but Miss Dearheart will be joining me shortly for dinner upstairs.' The glow in the golem's eyes faded for a moment and then grew brighter. 'Miss Dearheart.' 'Yes, she was here this morning.' 282 'A Lady' 'She's my fiancee, Gladys. She will be here quite a lot, I expect.' 'Fiancee,' said Gladys. 'Ah, Yes. I Am Reading Twenty Tips To Make Your Wedding Go With A Swing.' Her eyes dimmed. She turned round and plodded towards the stairs. Moist felt like a heel. Of course he was a heel. But that didn't make feeling like one feel any better. On the other hand, she— damn, he… it… Gladys was the fault of misplaced female solidarity. What could he hope to achieve against that? Adora Belle would have to do something about it. He was aware that one of the senior clerks was hovering politely. 'Yes?' he said. 'Can I help you?' 'What do you want us to do, sir?' 'What's your name?' 'Spittle, sir. Robert Spittle.' 'Why are you asking me, Bob?' 'Because the chairman goes woof, sir. Safes need locking up. So does the ledger room. Mr Bent had all the keys. It's Robert, sir, if you don't mind.' 'Are there any spare keys?' 'They might be in the chairman's office, sir,' said Spittle. 'Look… Robert, I want you to go home and get a good night's sleep, okay? And I'll find the keys and turn every lock I can find. I'm sure Mr Bent will be with us tomorrow, but if he's not, I'll call a meeting of the senior clerks. I mean, hah, you must know how it all works!' 283 'Well, yes. Of course. Only… well… but…' The clerk's voice faded into silence. But there's no Mr Bent, thought Moist. And he delegated with the same ease that oysters tango. What the hell are we going to do? 'There's people here? So much for bankers' hours,' said a voice from the doorway. 'In trouble again I hear.' It was Adora Belle, and of course she meant 'Hello! It's good to see you.' 'You look stunning,' said Moist. 'Yes, I know,' said Adora Belle. 'What's happening? The cabby told me all the staff had walked out of your bank.' Later Moist thought: that was when it all went wrong. You have to leap on the stallion of Rumour before he's out of the yard, so that you might be able to pull on the reins. You should have thought: what did it look like with staff running out of the bank? You should have run to the Times office. You should have got in the saddle and turned it right around, there and then. But Adora Belle did look stunning. Besides, all that had happened was that a member of staff had had a funny turn and had left the building. What could anyone make of that? And the answer, of course, was: anything they wanted to. He was aware of someone else behind him. 'Mr Lipwig, thur?' Moist turned. It was even less fun looking at Igor when you'd just been looking at Adora Belle. 'Igor, this is really not the time—' Moist began. 284 'I know I'm not thuppothed to come upthtairth, thur, but Mr Clamp thayth he hath finithed hith drawing. It ith very good.' 'What was all that about?' said Adora Belle. 'I think I nearly got two of the words.' 'Oh, there's a man down in the forni— the cellar who is designing a dollar note for me. Paper money, in fact.' 'Really? I'd love to see that.' 'You would?' It was truly wonderful. Moist looked at the designs for the back and the front of the dollar note. Under Igor's brilliant white lights they looked rich as plum pudding and more complicated than a dwarf contract. 'We're going to make so much money,' he said aloud. 'Wonderful job, Owls — Mr Clamp!' 'I'm going to hold on to the Owlswick,' said the artist nervously. 'It's the Jenkins that matters, after all' 'Well, yes,' said Moist, 'there must be dozens of Owlswicks around.' He looked over at Hubert, who was on a stepladder and peering hopelessly at the tubing. 'How's it going, Hubert?' he said. 'The money still rushing around okay, is it?' 'What? Oh, fine. Fine. Fine,' said Hubert, almost knocking over the ladder in his haste to get down. He looked at Adora Belle with an expression of uncertain dread. 285 'This is Adora Belle Dearheart, Hubert,' said Moist, in case the man was about to flee. 'She is my fiancee. She's a woman,' he added, in view of the worried look. Adora Belle held out her hand and said, 'Hello, Hubert.' Hubert stared. 'It's okay to shake hands, Hubert,' said Moist carefully. 'Hubert's an economist. That's like an alchemist, but less messy.' 'So you know how the money moves around, do you, Hubert?' said Adora Belle, shaking an unresisting hand. At last the notion of speech dawned on Hubert. 'I welded one thousand and ninety-seven joints,' he said, 'and blew the Law of Diminishing Returns.' 'I shouldn't think anyone's ever done that before,' said Adora Belle. Hubert brightened up. This was easy! 'We are not doing anything wrong, you know!' he said. 'I'm sure you aren't,' said Adora Belle, trying to pull her hand away. 'It can keep track of every dollar in the city, you know. The possibilities are endless! But, but, but, um, of course we're not upsetting things in any way!' 'I'm very glad to hear it, Hubert,' said Adora Belle, tugging harder. 'Of course we are having teething troubles! But everything is being done with immense care! Nothing has been lost because we've left a valve open or anything like that!' 'How intriguing!' said Adora Belle, bracing her free hand on Hubert's shoulder and wrenching the other one from his grasp. 'We have to go, Hubert,' said Moist. 'Keep up the good work, though. I'm very proud of you.' 286 'You are?' said Hubert. 'Mr Cosmo said I was insane, and wanted Auntie to sell the Glooper for scrap!' 'Typical hidebound, old-fashioned thinking,' said Moist. 'This is the Century of the Anchovy. The future belongs to men like you, who can tell us how everything works.' 'It does?' said Hubert. 'You mark my words,' said Moist, ushering Adora Belle firmly towards the distant exit. When they had gone, Hubert sniffed the palm of his hand and shivered. 'They were nice people, weren't they?' he said. 'Yeth, marthter.' Hubert looked up at the glittering, trickling pipes of the Glooper, faithfully mirroring in its ebbing and flowing the tides of money around the city. Just one blow could rattle the world. It was a terrible responsibility. Igor joined him. They stood in a silence broken only by the sloshing of commerce. 'What shall I do, Igor?' said Hubert. 'In the Old Country we have a thaying,' Igor volunteered. 'A what?' 'A thaying. We thay: "If you don't want the monthter you don't pull the lever".' 'You don't think I've gone mad, do you, Igor?' 'Many great men have been conthidered mad, Mr Hubert. Even Dr Hanth Forvord wath called mad. But I put it to you: could a madman have created a revoluthionary living-brain ecthtractor?' 287 'Is Hubert quite… normal?' said Adora Belle, as they climbed the marble staircases towards dinner. 'By the standards of obsessive men who don't get out into the sunlight?' said Moist. 'Pretty normal, I'd say.' 'But he acted as if he'd never seen a woman before!' 'He's just not used to things that don't come with a manual,' said Moist. 'Hah,' said Adora Belle. 'Why is it that only men get like that?' Earns a tiny wage working for golems, thought Moist. Puts up with graffiti and smashed windows because of golems. Camps out in wildernesses, argues with powerful men. All for golems. But he didn't say anything, because he'd read the manual. They had reached the managerial floor. Adora Belle sniffed. 'Smell that? Isn't that just wonderful?' she said. 'Wouldn't it turn a rabbit into a carnivore?' 'Sheep's head,' said Moist gloomily. 'Only to make the broth,' said Adora Belle. 'All the soft wobbly bits get taken out first. Don't worry. You've just been put off by the old joke, that's all' 'What old joke?' 'Oh, come on! A boy goes into a butcher's shop and says: "Mum says can we please have a sheep's head and you're to leave the eyes in 'cos it's got to see us through the week." You don't get it? It's using "see" in the sense of "to last" and also in the sense of, well, to see…' 'I just think it's a bit unfair to the sheep, that's all.' 'Interesting,' said Adora Belle. 'You eat nice anonymous lumps of animals but think it's unfair to eat the other bits? You think the head goes off 288 thinking: at least he didn't eat me? Strictly speaking, the more we eat of an animal the happier its species should be, since we wouldn't need to kill so many of them.' Moist pushed open the double doors, and the air was full of wrongness again. There was no Mr Fusspot. Normally he'd be waiting in his in-tray, ready to greet Moist with a big slobbery welcome. But the tray was empty. The room seemed larger, too, and this was because it also contained no Gladys. There was a little blue collar on the floor. The smell of cooking filled the air. Moist ran down the passage to the kitchen where the golem was standing solemnly by the stove, watching the rattling lid of a very large pot. Grubby foam slid down and dripped on to the stove. Gladys turned when she saw Moist. 'I Am Cooking Your Dinner, Mr Lipwig.' The dark moppets of dread played their paranoid hopscotch across Moist's inner eyeballs. 'Could you just put the ladle down and step away from the pot, please?' said Adora Belle, suddenly beside him. 'I Am Cooking Mr Lipwig's Dinner,' said Gladys, with a touch of defiance. The scummy bubbles, it seemed to Moist, were getting bigger. 'Yes, and it looks as if it's nearly done,' said Adora Belle. 'So I Would Like To See It, Gladys.' There was silence. 'Gladys?' 289 In one movement the golem handed her the ladle and stood back, half a ton of living clay moving as lightly and silently as smoke. Cautiously, Adora Belle lifted the pot's lid and plunged the ladle into the seething mass. Something scratched at Moist's boot. He looked down into the worried goldfish eyes of Mr Fusspot. Then he looked back at what was rising out of the pot, and realized that it was at least thirty seconds since he'd last drawn breath. Peggy came bustling in. 'Oh, there you are, you naughty boy!' she said, picking up the little dog. 'Would you believe it, he got all the way down to the cold room!' She looked around, brushing hair out of her eyes. 'Oh, Gladys, I did tell you to move it on to the cool plate when it started to thicken!' Moist looked at the rising ladle, and in the flood of relief various awkward observations scrambled to be heard. I've been in this job less than a week. The man I really depend on has run away screaming. I'm going to be exposed as a criminal. That's a sheep's head… And — thank you for the thought, Aimsbury — it's wearing sunglasses. 290 Chapter 9 Cribbins fights his teeth — Theological advice — 'That's what I call< entertainment' — Mr Fusspot's magic toy — Sir Joshua's books — Breaking in to banking — The minds of policemen — What about the gold? — Cribbins warms up — The return of Professor Flead, unfortunately — Moist counts his blessings — A werewolf revealed — Splot: it does you good — Time to pray 'I'M AFRAID I HAVE TO close the office now, reverend.' The voice of Ms Houser broke into Cribbins's dreams. 'We open up again at nine o'clock tomorrow,' it added, hopefully. Cribbins opened his eyes. The warmth and the steady ticking of the clock had lulled him into a wonderful doze. Ms Houser was standing there, not gloriously naked and pink as so recently featured in the reverie, but in a plain brown coat and an unsuitable hat with feathers in it. Suddenly awake, he fumbled urgently in his pocket for his dentures, not trusting them with the custody of his mouth while he slept. He turned his head away in a flurry of unaccustomed embarrassment, as he fought to get them in, and then fought again to get them in and the right way up. They always fought back. In desperation he wrenched them out and banged them sharply on the arm of the chair once or twice to break their spirit before ramming them into his mouth once more. 291 'Wshg!' said Cribbins, and slapped the side of his face. 'Why, thank you, ma'am,' he said, dabbing at his mouth with a handkerchief. 'I am sorry about that, but I'm a martyr to them, I shwear.' 'I didn't like to disturb you,' Ms Houser went on, her horrified expression fading. 'I'm sure you needed your sleep.' 'Not sleeping, ma'am, but contemplating,' said Cribbins, standing up. 'Contemplating the fall of the unrighteous and the elevation of the godly. Is it not said that the last shall be first and the first shall be last?' 'You know, I've always been a bit worried about that,' said Ms Houser. 'I mean, what happens to the people who aren't first but aren't really last, either. You know… jogging along, doing their best?' She strolled towards the door in a manner which, not quite as subtly as she thought, invited him to accompany her. 'A conundrum indeed, Berenice,' said Cribbins, following her. 'The holy texts don't mention it, but I have no doubt that…' His forehead creased. Cribbins was seldom troubled by religious questions, and this one was pretty difficult. He rose to it like a born theologian. 'I have no doubt that they will be found shtill jogging along, but possibly in the opposite direction! 'Back towards the Last?' she said, looking worried. 'Ah, dear lady, remember that they will by then be the First.' 'Oh yes, I hadn't thought of it like that. That's the only way it could work, unless of course the original First would wait for the Last to catch up.' 'That would be a miracle indeed,' said Cribbins, watching her lock the door behind them. The evening air was sharp and unwelcoming after the warmth of the newspaper room, and made the prospect of another night in the flop-house in Monkey Street seem doubly unappealing. He needed his own miracle right now, and he had a feeling that one was shaping up right here. 292 'I expect it's very hard for you, reverend, finding a place to stay,' Ms Houser said. He couldn't make out her expression in the gloom. 'Oh, I have faith, shister,' he said. 'If Om does not come, He schends— Arrg!' And at a time like this! A spring had slipped! It was a judgement! But agonizing as it was, it might yet have its blessing. Ms Houser was bearing down on him with the look of a woman determined to do good at any price. Oh, it hurt, though; it had snapped right across his tongue. A voice behind him said: 'Excuse me, I couldn't help noticing… Are you Mr Cribbins, by any chance?' Enraged by the pain in his mouth, Cribbins turned with murder in his heart, but 'That's Reverend Cribbins, thank you,' said Ms Houser, and his fists unclenched. "Shme,' he muttered. A pale young man in an old-fashioned clerk's robe was staring at him. 'My name is Heretofore,' he said, 'and if you are Cribbins I know a rich man who wants to meet you. It could be your lucky day.' 'Ish zat sho?' muttered Cribbins. 'And if zat man ish called Coshmo, I want to meet him. It could be hish lucky day, too. Ain't we the lucky onesh!' 'You must have had a moment of dread,' said Moist, as they relaxed in the marble-floored sitting room. At least Adora Belle relaxed. Moist was searching. 'I don't know what you're talking about,' she said as he opened a cupboard. 'Golems weren't built to be free. They don't know how to handle… stuff.' 'They'll learn. And she wouldn't have hurt the dog,' said Adora Belle, watching him pace the room. 293 'You weren't sure. I heard the way you were talking to her. "Put down the ladle and turn around slowly" sort of thing.' Moist pulled open a drawer. 'Are you looking for something?' 'Some bank keys. There should be a set of them somewhere around.' Adora Belle joined in. It was that or argue about Gladys. Besides, the suite had a great many drawers and cupboards, and it was something to do while dinner was prepared. 'What is this key for?' she asked, after a mere few seconds. Moist turned. Adora Belle held up a silvery key on a ring. 'No, there'll be a lot more than that,' said Moist. 'Where did you find it, anyway?' She pointed to the big desk. 'I just touched the side here and— Oh, it didn't do it this time…' It took Moist more than a minute to find the trigger that slid the little drawer out. Shut, it disappeared seamlessly into the grain of the wood. 'It must be for something important,' he said, heading for another desk. 'Maybe the rest of the keys were kept somewhere else. Just try it on anything. I've only been camping here, really. I don't know what's in half of these drawers.' He returned to a bureau and was sifting through its contents when he heard a click and creak behind him and Adora Belle said, in a rather flat voice: 'You did say Sir Joshua entertained young ladies up here, right?' 'Apparently, yes. Why?' 'Well, that's what I call entertainment.' Moist turned. The door of a heavy cupboard stood wide open. 'Oh, no,' he said. 'What's all that for?' 294 'You are joking?' 'Well, yes, all right. But it's all so… so black.' 'And leathery,' said Adora Belle. 'Possibly rubbery, too.' They advanced on the museum of inventive erotica just revealed. Some of it, freed at last from confinement, unfolded, slid or, in a few cases, bounced on to the floor. 'This…' Moist prodded something, which went spoing! … 'is, yes, rubbery. Definitely rubbery.' 'But all this here is pretty much frilly,' said Adora Belle. 'He must have run out of ideas.' 'Either that or there were no more ideas to have. I think he was eighty when he died,' said Moist, as a seismic shift caused some more piles to slide and slither downwards. 'Well done him,' said Adora Belle. 'Oh, and there's a couple of shelves of books, too,' she went on, investigating the gloom at the back of the cupboard. 'Just here, behind the rather curious saddle and the whips. Bedtime reading, I assume.' 'I don't think so,' said Moist, pulling out a leather-bound volume and flicking it open at a random page. 'Look, it's the old boy's journal. Years and years of it. Good grief, there's decades! 'Let's publish it and make a fortune,' said Adora Belle, kicking the heap. 'Plain covers, of course.' 'No, you don't understand. There may be something in here about Mr Bent! There's some secret…' Moist ran a finger along the spines. 'Let's see, he's forty-seven, he came here when he was about thirteen, and a few months later some people came looking for him. Old Lavish didn't like the look of them— Ah!' He pulled out a couple of volumes. 'These should tell us something, they're around the right time…' 295 'What are these, and why do they jingle?' Adora Belle said, holding up a couple of strange devices. 'How should I know?' 'You're a man.' 'Well, yes. And? I mean, I don't go in for this stuff.' 'You know, I think it's like horseradish,' said Adora Belle thoughtfully. 'Pardon?' 'Like… well, horseradish is good in a beef sandwich, so you have some. But one day a spoonful just doesn't cut the mustard—' 'As it were,' said Moist, fascinated. '—and so you have two, and soon it's three, and eventually there's more horseradish than beef, and then one day you realize the beef fell out and you didn't notice.' 'I don't think that is the metaphor you're looking for,' said Moist, 'because I have known you to make yourself a horseradish sandwich.' 'All right, but it's still a good one,' said Adora Belle. She reached down and picked up something from the floor. 'Your keys, I think. What they were doing in there we shall never know, with any luck.' Moist took them. The ring was heavy with keys of all sizes. 'And what shall we do with all this stuff?' Adora Belle kicked the heap again. It quivered, and somewhere inside something squeaked. 'Put it back in the cupboard?' Moist suggested uncertainly. The pile of passionless frippery had a brooding, alien look, like some sea monster of the abyss that had been dragged unceremoniously from its native darkness into the light of the sun. 296 'I don't think I could face it,' said Adora Belle. 'Let's just leave the door open and let it crawl back by itself. Hey!' This was to Mr Fusspot, who'd trotted smartly out of the room with something in his mouth. 'Tell me that was just an old rubber bone,' she said. 'Please?' 'No-o,' said Moist, shaking his head. 'I think that would definitely be the wrong description. I think it was… was… it was not an old rubber bone, is what it was.' 'Now look,' said Hubert, 'don't you think we'd know if the gold had been stolen? People talk about that sort of thing! I'm pretty certain it's a fault in the crossover multivalve, right here.' He tapped a thin glass tube. 'I don't think the Glooper ith wrong, thur,' said Igor gloomily. 'Igor, you realize that if the Glooper is right then I'll have to believe there is practically no gold in our vaults?' 'I believe the Glooper ith not in error, thur.' Igor took a dollar out of his pocket and walked over to the well. 'If you would be tho good ath to watch the "Lotht Money" column, thur?' he said, and dropped the coin into the dark waters. It gleamed for a moment as it sank beyond the pockets of Mankind. In one corner of the Glooper's convoluted glass tubing a small blue bubble drifted up, dawdling from side to side as it rose, and burst on the surface with a faint 'gloop'. 'Oh dear,' said Hubert. The comic convention, when two people are dining at a table designed to accommodate twenty, is that they sit at either end. Moist and Adora Belle 297 didn't try it, but instead huddled together. Gladys stood at the other end, a napkin over one arm, her eyes two sullen glows. The sheep skull didn't help Moist's frame of mind at all. Peggy had arranged it as a centrepiece, with flowers around it, but the cool sunglasses were getting on his nerves. 'How good is a golem's hearing?' he said. 'Extremely,' said Adora Belle. 'Look, don't worry, I have a plan.' 'Oh, good.' 'No, seriously. I'll take her out tomorrow'. 'Can't you just—' Moist hesitated, and then mouthed: 'change the words in her head?' 'She's a free golem!' said Adora Belle sharply. 'How would you like it?' Moist remembered Owlswick and the turnip. 'Not much,' he admitted. 'With free golems you should change minds by persuasion. I think I can do that.' 'Aren't your golden golems due to arrive tomorrow?' 'I hope so.' 'It's going to be a busy day. I'm going to launch paper money and you're going to march gold through the streets.' 'We couldn't leave them underground. Anyway, they might not be golden. I'll go and see Flead in the morning.' 'We will go and see him. Together!' 298 She patted Moist's arm. 'Never mind. There could be worse things than golden golems.' 'I can't think what they are,' said Moist, a phrase that he later regretted. 'I'd like to take people's minds off gold—' He stopped, and stared at the sheep, which stared back in a calm, enigmatic way. For some reason Moist felt it should have a saxophone and a little black beret. 'Surely they looked in the vault,' he said aloud. 'Who looked?' said Adora Belle. 'That's where he'd go. The one thing you can depend on, right? The foundation of all that's worthy?' 'Who'd go?' 'Mr Bent is in the gold vault!' said Moist, standing up so quickly that his chair fell over. 'He's got all the keys!' 'Sorry? Is this the man who went haywire after making a simple mistake?' 'That's him. He's got a Past.' 'One of those with a capital P?' 'Exactly. Come on, let's get down there!' 'I thought we were going to have a romantic evening?' 'We will! Right after we get him out!' The only sound in the vaults was the tap-tap-tapping of Adora Belle's foot. It was really annoying Moist as he paced up and down in front of the gold 299 room, by the light of silver candlesticks that had been gracing the dining-room table. 'I just hope Aimsbury is keeping the broth warm,' said Adora Belle. Tap-tap tap-tap. 'Look,' said Moist. 'Firstly, to open a safe like this you need to have a name like Fingers McGee, and secondly these little lockpicks aren't up to the job.' 'Well, let's go and find Mr McGee. He's probably got the right sort.' Tap-tap tap-tap. 'That won't be any good because, thirdly, there's probably no such person and, fourthly, the vault is locked from the inside and I think he's left the key in the lock, which is why none of these work.' He waved the key ring. 'Fifthly, I'm trying to turn the key from this side with tweezers, an old trick which, it turns out, does not work!' 'Good. So we can go back to the suite?' Tap-tap tap-tap. Moist peered again through the little spyhole in the door. A heavy plate had been slid across it on the inside, and he could just make out a glimmer of light around the edges. There was a lamp in there. What there was not, as far as he knew, was any kind of ventilation. It looked as though the vault had been built before the idea of breathing caught on. It was a man-made cave, built to contain something you never intended to take out. Gold didn't choke. 'I don't think we have the option,' he said, 'because sixthly, he's running out of air. He may even be dead!' 'If he's dead, can we leave him until tomorrow? It's freezing down here.' Tap-tap tap-tap. Moist looked up at the ceiling. It was made of ancient oak beams, strapped together with iron bands. He knew what old oak could be like. It could be 300 like steel, only nastier. It blunted axes and bounced hammers back in their owners' faces. 'Can't the guards help?' Adora Belle ventured. 'I doubt it,' said Moist. 'Anyway, I don't particularly want to encourage the idea that they can spend the night breaking into the vault.' 'But they're mostly City Watch, aren't they?' 'So? When a man is legging it for the horizon with as much gold as he can carry he doesn't worry much about what his old job was. I'm a criminal. Trust me.' He walked towards the stairs, counting under his breath. 'And now what are you doing?' 'Working out which part of the bank is directly over the gold,' said Moist. 'But you know what? I think I already know. The gold room is right under his desk.' The lamp had burned low, and oily smoke swirled and settled on the sacks where Mr Bent lay curled up in a tight ball. There was sound above, and voices muffled by the ancient ceiling. One of them said: 'I can't budge it. All right, Gladys, over to you.' 'Is This Ladylike Behaviour?' a second voice rumbled. 'Oh yes, it counts as moving the furniture,' said a voice that was clearly female. 'Very Well. I Shall Lift It Up And Dust Underneath It.' 301 There was the thunder of wood being scraped on wood, and a little dust fell on to the piled bullion. 'Very Dusty Indeed. I Shall Fetch A Broom.' 'Actually, Gladys, I'd like you to lift up the floor now,' said the first voice. 'There May Be Dust Underneath That Too?' 'I'm certain of it.' 'Very Well.' There were several thumps that made the beams creak, and then a rumble of: 'It Does Not Say Anything About Dusting Under The Floor In Lady Waggons Book Of Household Management! 'Gladys, a man may be dying under there!' 'I See. That Would Be Untidy.' The beams rattled under a blow. 'Lady Waggon Says That Any Bodies Found During A Week-End Party Should Be Disposed Of Discreetly, In Case Of Scandal.' Three more blows, and a beam shattered. 'Lady Waggon Says Watchmen Are Disrespectful And Do Not Wipe Their Dirty Boots.' Another beam cracked. Light lanced down. A hand the size of a shovel appeared, grabbed one of the iron straps, and snapped it— Moist peered into the gloom, while smoke poured up past him. 'He's down there! Ye gods, this reeks!' Adora Belle looked over his shoulder. 'Is he alive?' 302 'I certainly hope so.' Moist eased himself between the beams and dropped on to the bullion boxes. After a moment he called up: 'There's a pulse. And there's a key in the lock, too. Can you come down the stairs and give me a hand?' 'Er, we have visitors,' Adora Belle called down. A couple of helmeted heads were now outlined against the light. Damn it! Using off-duty watchmen was all very well, but they tended to take their badges everywhere with them, and were just the sort of people who'd jump to conclusions merely because they'd found a man standing in the wreckage of a bank vault after hours. The words 'Look, I can explain' presented themselves for utterance, but he strangled them just in time. It was his bank, after all. 'Well, what do you want?' he demanded. This was sufficiently unexpected to throw the men, but one of them rallied. 'Is this your bank vault, sir?' he said. 'I'm the deputy chairman, you idiot! And there's a sick man down here!' 'Did he fall when you were breaking into the vault, sir?' Oh gods, you just couldn't budge a born copper. They just kept going, in that patient grinding tone. When you were a policeman, everything was a crime. 'Officer— You are a copper, right?' 'Constable Haddock, sir.' 'Well, constable, can we get my colleague into the fresh air? He's wheezing. I'll unlock the door down here.' Haddock nodded to the other guard, who hurried away towards the stairs. 303 'If you had a key, sir, why did you break in?' 'To get him out, of course!' 'So how—' 'It's all perfectly sensible,' said Moist. 'Once I've got out of here we will all have a laugh.' 'I shall look forward to that, sir,' said Haddock, 'because I like a laugh.' Talking to the Watch was like tap-dancing on a landslide. If you were nimble you could stay upright, but you couldn't steer and there were no brakes and you just knew that it was going to end in a certain amount of fuss. It wasn't Constable Haddock any more. It had stopped being Constable Haddock just as soon as Constable Haddock had found that the pockets of the Master of the Royal Mint contained a velvet roll of lockpicks and a blackjack, and it then became Sergeant Detritus. Lockpicks, as Moist knew, were technically not illegal. Owning them was fine. Owning them while standing in someone else's house was not fine. Owning them while being found in a stricken bank vault was so far from fine it could see the curvature of the universe. So far, to Sergeant Detritus, so good. However, the sergeant's grasp began to slip when confronted with the evidence that Moist quite legitimately had the keys for the vault he had broken into. This seemed to the troll to be a criminal act in itself, and he'd toyed for a while with the charge of 'Wasting Watch time by breaking in when you didn't have to'."7 He didn't understand about the visceral need for the lockpicks; trolls didn't have a word for machismo in the same way that puddles don't have a word for water. He also had a problem with the mind-set and actions of the nearly late Mr 7 'Wasting Watch time' is an offence commited by citizens who have found ways of wasting said time that haven't already been invented by the Watch themselves 304 Bent. Trolls don't go mad, they get mad. So he gave up, and it became Captain Carrot. Moist knew him of old. He was big and smelled of soap and his normal expression was one of blue-eyed innocence. Moist couldn't see behind that amiable face, just couldn't see a thing. He could read most people but the captain was a closed book in a locked bookcase. And the man was always courteous, in that really annoying way police have. He said 'Good evening', politely, as he sat down opposite Moist in the little office that had suddenly become an interview room. 'Can I start, sir, by asking you about the three men down in the cellar? And the big glass… thing?' 'Mr Hubert Turvy and his assistants,' said Moist. 'They are studying the economic system of the city. They're not involved in this. Come to think of it, I'm not involved in this either! There is, in fact, no this. I have explained all this to the sergeant.' 'Sergeant Detritus thinks you are too smart, Mr Lipwig,' said Captain Carrot, opening his notebook. 'Well, yes, I expect he thinks that about most people, doesn't he?' Carrot's expression changed not one iota. 'Can you tell me why there is a golem downstairs who is wearing a dress and keeps ordering my men to wipe their dirty boots?' he said. 'Not without sounding mad, no. What has this got to do with anything?' 'I don't know, sir. I hope to find out. Who is Lady Deirdre Waggon?' 'She writes rather out-of-date books on etiquette and household management for young ladies who would like to be the type of women who have time to arrange flowers. Look, is this relevant?' 305 'I don't know, sir. I am endeavouring to assess the situation. Can you tell me why a small dog is running around the building in possession of what I shall call a wind-up clockwork item of an intimate nature?' 'I think it is because my sanity is slipping away,' said Moist. 'Look, the only thing that is important here is that Mr Bent had… a nasty turn and locked himself in the gold vault. I had to get him out quickly.' 'Ah, yes, the gold vault,' said the captain. 'Can we talk about the gold for a moment?' 'What's wrong with the gold?' 'I was hoping you could tell us, sir. I believe you wanted to sell it to the dwarfs?' 'What? Well, yes, I said that, but it was only to make a point—' 'A point,' said Captain Carrot solemnly, writing this down. 'Look, I know how this sort of thing goes,' said Moist. 'You just keep me talking in the hope that I'll suddenly forget where I am and say something stupid and incriminating, right?' 'Thank you for that, sir,' said Captain Carrot, turning over another page in his notebook. 'Thank me for what?' 'For telling me you know how this sort of thing goes, sir.' See? Moist told himself. This is what happens when you get too comfortable. You lose the edge. Even a copper can outsmart you. The captain looked up. 'I will tell you, Mr Lipwig, that some of what you say has been corroborated by an unbiased witness who could not possibly be an accomplice.' 306 'You talked to Gladys?' said Moist. 'Gladys being?' 'She's the one going on about dirty boots.' 'How can a golem be a "she", sir?' 'Ah, I know this one. The correct answer is: how can a golem be a "he"?' 'An interesting point, sir. That explains the dress, then. Out of interest, how much weight would you say a golem can carry?' 'I don't know. A couple of tons, maybe. What are you getting at?' 'I don't know, sir,' said Carrot cheerfully. 'Commander Vimes says, when life hands you a mess of spaghetti, just keep pulling until you find the meatball. In fact your version of events agrees, insofar as he understood things at the time, with that given to us by a Mr Fusspot.' 'You talked to the dog?' 'Well, he is the chairman of the bank, sir,' said the captain. 'How did you understand what— Ah, you have a werewolf, right?' said Moist, grinning. 'We don't confirm that, sir.' 'Everyone knows it's Nobby Nobbs, you know.' 'Do they, sir? Gosh. Anyway, your movements this evening are accounted for.' 'Good. Thank you.' Moist started to rise. 'However, your movements earlier this week, sir, are not.' Moist sat down again. 307 'Well? I don't have to account for them, do I?' 'It might help us, sir.' 'How would it help you?' 'It might help us understand why there is no gold in the vault, sir. It's a small detail in the great scheme of things, but it is something of a puzzler.' At which point, somewhere close at hand, Mr Fusspot began to bark… Cosmo Lavish sat at his desk with his fingers steepled in front of his mouth, watching Cribbins eat. Not many people in a state to make a choice had ever done this for more than thirty seconds. 'The soup is good?' he said. Cribbins lowered the bowl after one lengthy final gurgle. 'Champion, your lordship.' He removed a grey rag from his pocket and— He's going to take his teeth out, right now, here at the table, thought Cosmo. Amazing. Ah, yes, and there's still bits of carrot in them… 'Don't hesitate to repair your teeth,' he said, as Cribbins removed a bent fork from a pocket. 'I'm a martyr to them, shir,' said Cribbins. 'I'll shwear they're out to get me.' Springs twanged as he fought them with the fork and then, apparently satisfied, he wrestled them back on to his grey gums and champed them into place. 'That's better,' he announced. 'Good,' said Cosmo. 'And now, in view of the nature of your allegations, which Drumknott here has carefully transcribed and you have signed, let me ask you: why have you not gone to Lord Vetinari?' 308 'I've knowed men escape the nooshe, sir,' said Cribbins. 'It ain't too hard if you've got the readies. But I never heard of one get a big plum job the very next day. Gov'ment job, too. Then suddenly he's a banker, no lesh. Shomeone's watching over him, and I don't think it'sh a bleeding fairy. If I was to go to Vetinari, then, I'd be a bit shilly, right? But he's got your bank, and you ain't, which is a shame. Sho I'm your man, shir.' 'At a price, I have no doubt.' 'Well, yes, shomething in the way of expenses would help, yesh.' 'And you are sure that Lipwig and Spangler are one and the same?' 'It's the smile, sir. You never forget it. And he has this gift of chatting to people, he makes people want to do things his way. It's like magic, the little ingrate.' Cosmo stared at him and then said, 'Give the reverend fifty dollars, Drum — Heretofore, and direct him to a good hotel. One where they might have a hot tub available.' ' Fifty dollarsh? growled Cribbins. 'And then please go ahead with that little acquisition, will you?' 'Yes, sir. Of course.' Cosmo pulled a piece of paper towards him, dipped a pen in the inkwell, and began to write furiously. 'Fifty dollarsh?' said Cribbins again, appalled at the minimum wage of sin. Cosmo looked up and stared at the man as if seeing him for the first time and not enjoying the novelty. 'Hah, yes. Fifty dollars indeed for now, reverend,' said Cosmo soothingly. 'And in the morning, if your memory is still as good, we will all look forward to a richer and righteous future. Do not let me detain you.' 309 He returned to his paperwork. Heretofore grabbed Cribbins's arm and towed him forcibly out of the room. He'd seen what Cosmo was writing. VetinariVetinariVetinari VetinariVetinariVetinari VetinariVetinariVetinari VetinariVetinariVetinari VetinariVetinariVetinari VetinariVetinariVetinari VetinariVetinariVetinari VetinariVetinariVetinari… It was time for the swordstick, he thought. Get it, hand it over, take the money and run. Things were quiet in the Department of Post-Mortem Communications. They were never very loud at the best of times, although you always got, when the sounds of the university slid into silence, the reedy little gnat-sized voices leaking through from the Other Side. The trouble was, thought Hicks, that too many of his predecessors had never had any kind of a life outside the department, where social skills were not a priority, and even when dead had still completely failed to get a life. So they hung around the department, reluctant to leave the place. Sometimes, when they were feeling strong and the Dolly Sisters Players were doing a new production, he let them out to paint the scenery. Hicks sighed. That was the trouble with working in the DPMC, you could never exactly be the boss. In an ordinary job people retired, wandered back to the ol' workplace a few times while there was anyone who remembered 310 them, and then faded into the ever-swelling past. But the former staff here never seemed to go… There was a saying: 'Old necromancers never die'. When he told them this, people would say:'… and?' and Hicks would have to reply: 'That's all of it, I'm afraid. Just "Old necromancers never die".' He was just tidying up for the night when, from his shadowy corner, Charlie said, 'Somebody coming through. Well, I say some body…' Hicks spun round. The magic circle was glowing and a pearly pointy hat was already rising through the solid floor. 'Professor Head?' he said. 'Yes, and we must hurry, young man,' said the shade of Flead, still rising. 'But I banished you! I used the Ninefold Erasure! It banishes everything.' 'I wrote it,' said Flead, looking smug. 'Oh, don't worry, I'm the only one it doesn't work on. Ha, I'd be a damn fool to design a spell to work on myself, eh?' Hicks pointed a shaking finger. 'You put in a hidden portal, didn't you?' 'Of course. A bloody good one. Don't worry, I'm the only one who knows where it is, too.' The whole of Flead was floating above the circle now. And don't try to look for it; a man of your limited talent will never find the hidden runes.' Flead looked around the room. 'Isn't that wonderful young lady here?' he said hopefully. 'Well, never mind. You must get me out of this place, Hicks. I want to see the fun!' 'Fun? What fun?' said Hicks, a man planning to look through the Ninefold Erasure spell very, very carefully. 'I know what kind of golems are coming!' 311 When he was a child Moist had prayed every night before going to bed. His family were very active in the Plain Potato Church, which shunned the excesses of the Ancient and Orthodox Potato Church. Its followers were retiring, industrious and inventive, and their strict adherence to oil lamps and home-made furniture made them stand out in the region, where most people used candles and sat on sheep. He'd hated praying. It felt as though he was opening a big black hole into space, and at any moment something might reach through and grab him. This may have been because the standard bedtime prayer included the line 'If I die before I wake', which on bad nights caused him to try to sit up until morning. He'd also been instructed to use the hours before sleep to count his blessings. Lying here now, in the darkness of the bank, rather cold and significantly alone, he sought for some. His teeth were good and he wasn't suffering from premature hair loss. There! That wasn't so hard, was it? And the Watch hadn't actually arrested him, as such. But there was a troll guarding the vault, which had ominous black and yellow ropes strung around it. No gold in the vault. Well, even that wasn't entirely true. There was five pounds of it, at least, coating the lead ingots. Someone had done a pretty good job there. That was a silver lining, right? At least it was some gold. It wasn't as if there was no gold at all, right? He was alone because Adora Belle was spending a night in the cells for assaulting an officer of the Watch. Moist considered that this was unfair. Of course, depending on what kind of day a copper has had there is no action, short of being physically somewhere else, that may not be construed as assault, but Adora Belle hadn't actually assaulted Sergeant Detritus, she'd merely attempted to stab his huge foot with her shoe, 312 resulting in a broken heel and a twisted ankle. Captain Carrot said this had been taken into consideration. The clocks of the city chimed four, and Moist considered his future, specifically in terms of length. Look on the bright side. He might just be hanged. He should have gone down to the vaults on Day 1, with an alchemist and a lawyer in tow. Didn't they ever audit the vaults? Was it done by a bunch of jolly decent chaps who'd poke their heads into some other chaps' vault and sign it off quickly so's not to miss lunch? Can't go doubting a chap's word, eh? Especially when you didn't want him to doubt yours. Maybe the late Sir Joshua had blown it all on exotic leather goods and young ladies. How many nights in the arms of beautiful women were worth a sack of gold? The price of a good woman was proverbially above rubies, so a skilfully bad one was presumably worth a lot more. He sat up and lit the candle, and his eye fell on Sir Joshua's journal, on the bedside table. Thirty-nine years ago… well, it was the right year, and since at the moment he had nothing else to do… The luck that had been draining from his boots all day came back to him. Even though he wasn't certain what he was looking for, he found it on the sixth random page: A pair of funny-looking people came to the bank today, asking for the boy Bent. I bade the staff send them away. He is doing exceedingly well. One wonders what he must have suffered. 313 Quite a lot of the journal seemed to be in some sort of code, but the nature of the secret symbols suggested that Sir Joshua painstakingly recorded every amorous affair. You had to admire his directness, at least. He'd worked out what he wanted to get from life, and had set out to get as much of it as he could. Moist had to take his hat off to the man. And what had he wanted? He'd never sat down to think about it. But mostly, he wanted tomorrow to be different from today. He looked at his watch. Four-fifteen, and no one about but the guards. There were watchmen on the main doors. He was indeed not under arrest, but this was one of those civilized little arrangements: he was not under arrest provided that he didn't try to act like a man who was not under arrest. Ah, he thought, as he pulled on his trousers, there was another small blessing: he had been there when Mr Fusspot proposed to the werewolf — — which was, by then, balancing on one of the huge ornamental urns that grew like toadstools in the bank's corridors. It was rocking. So was Corporal Nobbs, who was laughing himself sick at — — Mr Fusspot, who was bouncing up and down with wonderfully optimistic enthusiasm. But he was holding in his mouth his new toy, which appeared to have been mysteriously wound up, and beneficent fate had decreed that at the top of each jump its unbalancing action would cause the little dog to do one slow cartwheel in the air. And Moist thought: so the werewolf is female and has a Watch badge on her collar, and I've seen that hair colour before. Ha! But his gaze had gone straight back to Mr Fusspot, who was jumping and spinning with a look of total bliss on his little face — — and then Captain Carrot had plucked him out of the air, the werewolf fled, and the show was over. But Moist would always have the memory. Next time he walked past Sergeant Angua he'd growl under his breath, although that would probably constitute assault. 314 Now, fully dressed, he went for a walk along endless corridors. The Watch had put a lot of new guards in the bank for the night. Captain Carrot was clever, you had to give him that. They were trolls. Trolls were very hard to talk round to your point of view. He could sense them watching him everywhere he went. There wasn't one at the door into the undercroft, but Moist's heart sank when he neared the pool of brilliant light around the Glooper and saw one standing by the door to freedom. Owlswick was lying on a mattress and snoring, with his paintbrush in his hand. Moist envied him. Hubert and Igor were working on the tangle of glassware which, Moist could swear, looked bigger every time he came down here. 'What's wrong?' 'Wrong? Nothing. Nothing's wrong!' said Hubert. 'It's all fine! Is something wrong? Why do you think something is wrong? What would make you think there's something wrong?' Moist yawned. 'Any coffee? Tea?' he suggested. 'For you, Mr Lipwig,' said Igor, 'I will make Thplot.' 'Splot? Real Splot?' 'Indeed, thur,' said Igor smugly. 'You can't buy it here, you know.' 'I am aware of that, thur. It hath now been outlawed in motht of the old country, too,' said Igor, rummaging in a sack. 'Outlawed? It's been outlawed? But it's just a herbal drink! My granny used to make it!' 315 'Indeed, it wath very traditional,' Igor agreed. 'It put hairth on your chetht.' 'Yes, she used to complain about that.' 'This is an alcoholic beverage?' said Hubert nervously. 'Absolutely not,' said Moist. 'My granny never touched alcohol.' He thought for a moment and then added: 'Except maybe aftershave. Splot's made from tree bark.' 'Oh? Well, that sounds nice,' said Hubert. Igor retired to his jungle of equipment, and there was the clinking of glassware. Moist sat down at the cluttered bench. 'How's it going in your world, Hubert?' he said. 'The water gurgling around okay, is it?' 'It's fine! Fine! It's all fine! Nothing is wrong at all!' Hubert went blank, fished out his notebook, glanced at a page, and put it back. 'How are you?' 'Me? Oh, great. Except that there should be ten tons of gold in the gold vaults and there isn't.' It sounded as though a glass had broken in the direction of Igor, and Hubert stared in horror at Moist. 'Ha? Hahahaha?' he said. 'Ha ha ha ha a HAHAHA!! HA HA HA!!! HA HA—' There was a blur as Igor leapt to the table and grabbed Hubert. 'Thorry, Mr Lipwig,' he said over his shoulder, 'thith can go on for hourth—' He slapped Hubert twice across the face and pulled a jar out of his pocket. 'Mr Hubert? How many fingerth am I holding up?' Hubert slowly focused. 'Thirteen?' he quavered. 316 Igor relaxed and dropped the jar back into his pocket. 'Jutht in time. Well done, thur!' 'I am so sorry—' Hubert began. 'Don't worry about it. I'm feeling a bit that way myself,' said Moist. 'So… this gold… have you any idea who took it?' 'No, but it must have been an inside job,' said Moist. 'And now the Watch are going to pin it on me, I suspect.' 'Will that mean you won't be in charge?' said Hubert. 'I doubt I'll be allowed to run the bank from inside the Tanty.' 'Oh dear,' said Hubert, looking at Igor. 'Um… what would happen if it was put back?' Igor coughed loudly. 'I think that's unlikely, don't you?' said Moist. 'Yes, but Igor told me that when the Post Office burned down last year the gods themselves gave you the money to rebuild it!' 'Harrumph,' said Igor. 'I doubt if that's likely twice,' said Moist. 'And I don't think there's a god of banking.' 'One might take it on for the publicity,' said Hubert desperately. 'It could be worth a prayer.' 'Harrumph!' said Igor, louder this time. Moist looked from one to the other. Okay, he thought, something's going on, and I'm not going to be told what it is. 317 Pray to the gods to get a big heap of gold? When had that ever worked? Well, last year it worked, true, but that was because I already knew where a big heap of gold was buried. The gods help those who help themselves, and my word, didn't I help myself. 'You think it's really worth it?' said Moist. A small steaming mug was placed in front of him. 'Your Thplot,' said Igor. The words 'Now please drink it up and go' accompanied it in every respect but the vocal. 'Do you think I should pray, Igor?' said Moist, watching his face. 'I couldn't thay. The Igor position on prayer is that it is nothing more than hope with a beat to it.' Moist leaned closer and whispered: 'Igor, as one Uberwald lad to another, your lisp just departed.' Igor's frown grew. 'Thorry, thur, I have a lot on my mind,' he said, rolling his eyes to indicate the nervous Hubert. 'My fault, I'm disturbing you good people,' said Moist, emptying the cup in one go. 'Any minute now the dhdldlkp;kvyv vbdf[ ;jvjvf;llljvmmk;wbvlm bnxgcgbnme—' Ah yes, Splot, thought Moist. It contained herbs and all natural ingredients. But belladonna was a herb, and arsenic was natural. There was no alcohol in it, people said, because alcohol couldn't survive. But a cup of hot Splot got men out of bed and off to work when there was six feet of snow outside and the well was frozen. It left you clear-headed and quick-thinking. It was only a shame that the human tongue couldn't keep up. Moist blinked once or twice and said: 'Ughx…' He said his goodbyes, even if they were his 'gnyrxs', and headed back up the length of the undercroft, the light from the Glooper pushing his shadow in front of him. Trolls watched him suspiciously as he climbed the steps, 318 trying to keep his feet from flying away from him. His brain buzzed, but it had nothing to do. There was nothing to grab hold of, to worry a solution from. And in an hour or so the country edition of the Times would be out and, very shortly after, so would he. There would be a run on the bank, which is a horrifying thing at best, and the other banks wouldn't help him out, would they, because he wasn't a chap. Disgrace and Ignominy and Mr Fusspot were staring him in the face, but only one of them was licking it. He'd made it to his office, then. Splot certainly took your mind off all your little problems by rolling them into the big one of keeping all of yourself on one planet. He accepted the little dog's ritual slobbering kiss, got off his knees, and made it as far as the chair. Okay… sitting down, he could do that. But his mind raced. People would be here soon. There were too many unanswered questions. What to do, what to do? Pray? Moist wasn't too keen on prayer, not because he thought the gods didn't exist but because he was afraid they might. All right, Anoia had got a good deal out of him and he'd noticed her shiny new temple the other day, its frontage already hung with votive egg-slicers, fondant whisks, ladles, parsnip butterers and many other useless appliances donated by grateful worshippers who had faced the prospect of a life with their drawers stuck. Anoia delivered, because she specialized. She didn't even pretend to offer a paradise, eternal verities or any kind of salvation. She just left you with a smooth pulling action and access to the forks. And practically no one had believed in her before he'd picked her, at random, as one of the gods to thank for the miraculous windfall. Would she remember? If he had some gold stuck in a drawer, then maybe. Turning dross into gold, probably not. Still, you turned to the gods when all you had left was a prayer. He wandered into the little kitchen and took a ladle off the hook. Then he went back to the office and rammed it into a desk drawer, where it stuck, this being the chief function of ladles in the world. Rattle your drawers, that was it. She was attracted to the noise, apparently. 319 'O Anoia,' he said, tugging at the drawer handle, 'this is me, Moist von Lipwig, penitent sinner. I don't know if you remember? We are, all of us, mere utensils, stuck in drawers of our own making, and none more than I. If you could find time in your busy schedule to unstick me in my hour of need you will not find me wanting in gratitude, yea indeed, when we put the statues of the gods on the roof of the new Post Office. I never liked the urns on the old one. Covered in gold leaf too, by the way. Thanking you in anticipation. Amen.' He gave the drawer one last tug. The ladle sprang out, twanging through the air like a leaping salmon, and smashed a vase in the corner. Moist decided to take that as a hopeful sign. You were supposed to smell cigarette smoke if Anoia was present, but since Adora Belle had spent more than ten minutes in this room there was no point in sniffing. What next? Well, the gods helped those who helped themselves, and there was always one last Lipwig-friendly option. It floated up in his mind: wing it. 320 Chapter 10 Doing it in style — 'The chairman goes woof — Harry King puts something by — The screaming starts — One kiss, no tongue — Council of wars — Moist takes charge — A little magic, with stamps — Arousing the professor's interest — A vision of Paradise WING IT! THERE'S NOTHING LEFT. Remember the gold-ish chain? This is the other end of the rainbow. Talk yourself out of a situation you can't talk your way out of. Make your own luck. Put on a show. If you fall, let them remember how you turned it into a dive. Sometimes the finest hour is the last one. He went to the wardrobe and took out the best golden suit, the one he wore on special occasions. Then he went and found Gladys, who was staring out of the window. He had to speak her name quite loudly before she turned to face him, very slowly. 'They Are Coming,' she said. 'Yes, they are,' said Moist, 'and I'd better look my best. Could you press these trousers, please?' Wordlessly, Gladys took the trousers from him, held them against the wall, and ran a huge palm down them before handing them back. Moist could have shaved with the crease. Then she turned back to the window. 321 Moist joined her. There was already a crowd in front of the bank, and coaches were pulling up as he watched. There were a fair number of guards around, too. A brief flash indicated that Otto Chriek of the Times was already taking pictures. Ah, yes, a deputation was now forming. People wanted to be in at the death. Sooner or later, someone would hammer at the door. Blow that. He couldn't let that happen. Wash, shave, trim errant nose hairs, clean teeth. Comb hair, shine boots. Don hat, walk down stairs, unlock door very slowly so that the click is unlikely to be heard outside, wait until you hear a tread getting louder— Moist opened the door, sharply. 'Well, gentlemen?' Cosmo Lavish wobbled as the knock failed to connect, but recovered and thrust a sheet of paper at him. 'Emergency audit,' he said. 'These gentlemen' — and here he indicated a number of worthy-looking men behind him — 'are representatives of the major guilds and some of the other banks. This is standard procedure and you can't stand in their way. You will note that we have brought Commander Vimes of the Watch. When we have established that there is indeed no gold in the vault, I shall instruct him to arrest you on suspicion of theft.' Moist glanced at the commander. He did not like the man much, and was certain that Vimes did not like him at all. He was even more certain, though, that Vimes did not readily take orders from the likes of Cosmo Lavish. 'I'm sure that the commander will do as he sees fit,' said Moist meekly. 'You know the way to the vault. I am sorry it's a bit of a mess at the moment.' Cosmo half-turned to make certain the crowd heard everything he said. 'You are a thief, Mr Lipwig. A cheat and a liar, an embezzler and you have no dress sense whatsoever.' 322 'I say, that's a bit on the harsh side,' said Moist as the men swept through. 'I happen to think I dress rather snappily!' Now he was alone on the steps, facing the crowd. They weren't a mob yet, but it could only be a matter of time. 'Can I help anyone else?' he said. 'What about our money?' someone said. 'What about it?' said Moist. 'Says in the paper you've got no gold,' said the enquirer. He pushed a damp copy of the Times towards Moist. The newspaper had, on the whole, been quite restrained. He had expected bad headlines, but the story was a single column on the front page and it was full of 'we understand that' and 'we believe that' and 'the Times has been informed that' and all the phrases that journalists use when they are dealing with facts about large sums of money they don't fully understand and are not quite certain that what they have been told is true. He looked up into the face of Sacharissa Cripslock. 'Sorry,' she said, 'but there were watchmen and guards all round the place last night and we didn't have much time. And frankly, Mr Bent's… attack was enough of a story in its own right. Everyone knows he runs the bank.' 'The chairman runs the bank,' said Moist stiffly. 'No, Moist, the chairman goes woof,' said Sacharissa. 'Look, didn't you sign anything when you took over the job? A receipt or something?' 'Well, maybe. There was a mass of paperwork. I just signed where I was told. So did Mr Fusspot.' 323 'Ye gods, the lawyers would have fun with that,' said Sacharissa, her notebook magically appearing in her hand. 'And it's no joke, either.8 He could end up in debtor's prison!' 'Kennel,' said Moist. 'He goes woof, remember? And that's not going to happen.' Sacharissa bent down to pat Mr Fusspot on his little head, and froze in mid-bend. ' What has he got in his—?' she began. 'Sacharissa, can we go into this later? I really have not got time for it right now. I swear by any three gods you believe in, even though you are a journalist, that when this is over I will give you a story that will tax even the Times's ability to avoid inelegant and suggestive subjects. Trust me.' 'Yes, but it looks like a—' she began. 'Ah, so you do know what it is and I don't need to explain,' said Moist briskly. He handed the newspaper back to its worried owner. 'You are Mr Cusper, aren't you?' he said. 'You have a balance of AM$7 with us, I believe?' For a moment the man looked impressed. Moist was really good at faces. 'I told you we aren't bothered about gold here,' said Moist. 'Yeah, but…' the man began. 'Well, it's not much of a bank if people can take the gold out of it, is it?' he said. 'But it doesn't make any difference,' said Moist. 'I did tell you all.' They looked uncertain. In theory, they should be stampeding up the steps. Moist knew what was holding them back. It was hope. It was the little voice inside that said: this isn't really happening. It was the voice that drove people to turn out the same pocket three times in a fruitless search for lost keys. It was the mad belief that the world is bound to start working properly again if I truly believe, and there will be keys. It was the voice 8 The strange thing about what lawyers have fun with is that no one else ever sees the joke. 324 that said 'This can't be happening' very loudly, in order to drown out the creeping dread that it was. He had about thirty seconds, while hope lasted. And then the crowd parted. Pucci Lavish did not know how to make an entrance. Harry King, on the other hand, did. The milling, uncertain throng opened up like the sea in front of a hydrophobic prophet, leaving a channel that was suddenly lined on either side by large, weathered-looking men with broken noses and a useful cross-section of scars. Along this recent avenue strode Harry King trailing cigar smoke. Moist managed to stand his ground until Mr King was a foot away, and made sure to look him in the eye. 'How much money did I put in your bank, Mr Lipwig?' asked Harry. 'Er, I believe it was fifty thousand dollars, Mr King,' said Moist. 'Yes, I believe it was something like that,' said Mr King. 'Can yer guess what I am going to do now, Mr Lipwig?' Moist did not guess. The Splot was still circulating in his system and in his brain the answer clanged like a funeral bell. 'You're going to put some more in, aren't you, Mr King?' Harry King beamed, as if Moist was a dog that had just done a new trick. 'That's right, Mr Lipwig! I thought to myself: Harry, I thought. Fifty thousand dollars seems a bit on the lonely side, so I've come along to round it up to sixty thousand.' On signal, some more of Harry King's men came up behind him, carrying large chests between them. 'Most of it's gold and silver, Mr Lipwig,' said Harry. 'But I know you got lots of bright young men who can count it all up for you.' 325 'This is very kind of you, Mr King,' said Moist, 'but at any minute the auditors are going to come back and the bank is going to be in big, big trouble. Please! I can't accept your money.' Harry leaned closer to Moist, enveloping him in cigar smoke and a hint of decayed cabbage. 'I know you're up to something,' he whispered, tapping the side of his nose. 'The bastards are out to get you, I can see that! I know a winner when I sees one, and I know you've got something up your sleeves, eh?' 'Just my arms, Mr King, just my arms,' said Moist. 'And long may you keep them,' said Harry, slapping him on the back. The men filed past Moist and deposited their cases on the floor. 'I don't need a receipt,' said Harry. 'You know me, Mr Lipwig. You know you can trust me, just like I know I can trust you.' Moist shut his eyes, just for a moment. To think that he had worried about ending the day hanging. 'Your money is safe with me, Mr King,' he said. 'I know,' said Harry King. 'And when you've won the day, I'll send young Wallace along and he'll have a little chat with your monkey about how much interest I'm gonna get paid on this little lot, all right? Fair's fair?' 'It certainly is, Mr King.' 'Right,' said Harry. 'Now I'm off to buy some land.' There was some uncertain murmuring from the crowd, as he departed. The new deposit had thrown them. It had thrown Moist, too. People were wondering what Harry King knew. So did Moist. It was a terrible thing to have someone like Harry believing in you. 326 Now the crowd had evolved a spokesman, who said: 'Look, what's going on? Has the gold gone or not?' 'I don't know,' said Moist. 'I haven't had a look today.' 'You say that as if it doesn't matter,' said Sacharissa. 'Well, as I have explained,' Moist said, 'the city is still here. The bank is still here. I am still here.' He cast a glance towards Harry King's broad, retreating back. 'For the moment. So it doesn't look as if we need the gold cluttering up the place, do we?' Cosmo Lavish appeared in the doorway behind Moist. 'So, Mr Lipwig, it would appear that you are a trickster to the end.' 'I beg your pardon?' said Moist. Other members of the ad hoc audit committee were pushing their way out, looking satisfied. They had, after all, been woken up very early in the morning and those who are awakened very early in the morning expect to kill before breakfast. 'Have you finished already?' said Moist. 'Surely you must know why we were brought here,' said one of the bankers. 'You know very well that last night the City Watch found no gold in your vaults. We can confirm this unhappy state of affairs.' 'Oh well, you know how it is with money,' said Moist. 'You think you are broke and there it was all the time in your other trousers.' 'No, Mr Lipwig, the joke is on you,' said Cosmo. 'The bank is a sham.' He raised his voice. 'I would advise all the investors you have misled to take their money back while they can!' ' No! Squad, to me!' Commander Vimes pushed his way through the bewildered bankers at the same time as half a dozen troll officers pounded up the steps and ended up shoulder to shoulder in front of the double doors. 327 'Are you a bloody fool, sir?' said Vimes, nose to nose with Cosmo. 'That sounded to me like incitement to riot! This bank is closed until further notice!' 'I am a director of the bank, commander,' said Cosmo. 'You cannot keep me out.' 'Watch me,' said Vimes. 'I suggest you direct your complaint to his lordship. Sergeant Detritus!' 'Yessir!' 'Nobody goes in there without a chitty signed by me. And Mr Lipwig, you will not leave the city, understood?' 'Yes, commander.' Moist turned to Cosmo. 'You know, you're not looking well,' he said. 'That's not a good complexion you have there.' 'No more words, Lipwig.' Cosmo leaned down. Close to, his face looked even worse, like the face of a wax doll, if a wax doll could sweat. 'We'll meet in court. It's the end of the road, Mr Lipwig. Or should I say… Mr Spangler?' Oh, gods, I should have done something about Cribbins, thought Moist. I was too busy trying to make money… And there was Adora Belle, being ushered through the crowd by a couple of watchmen who were also acting as crutches. Vimes hurried down the steps as if he'd been expecting her. Moist became aware that the background noise of the city was getting louder. The crowd had noticed it too. Somewhere, something big was happening, and this little confrontation was just a sideshow. 'You think you are clever, Mr Lipwig?' said Cosmo. 'No, I know I am clever. I think I'm unlucky,' said Moist. But he thought: I didn't have that many customers, surely? I can hear screams! 328 With Cosmo shouting triumphantly behind him he pushed his way down to Adora Belle and the cluster of coppers. 'Your golems, right?' he said. 'Every golem in the city just stopped moving,' said Adora Belle. Their gazes met. 'They're coming?' said Moist. 'Yes, I think they are.' 'Who are?' said Vimes suspiciously. 'Er, them?' said Moist, pointing. A few people came running around the corner from the Maul and sprinted, grey-faced, past the crowd outside the bank. But they were only the flecks of foam driven before the tidal wave of people fleeing from the river area, and the wave of people broke on the bank as if it was a rock in the way of the flood. But floating on the sea of heads, as it were, was a circular canvas about ten feet across of the sort that gets used to catch people who who very wisely jump from burning buildings. The five people carrying it were Dr Hicks and four other wizards and it was at this point you would notice the chalked circle and the magic symbols. In the middle of the portable magic circle sat Professor Flead, belabouring the wizards unsuccessfully with his ethereal staff. They fetched up alongside the steps as the crowd ran onwards. 'I am sorry about this,' panted Hicks. 'It's the only way we could get him here and he insisted, oh how he insisted…' 'Where's the young lady?' Flead shouted. His voice was barely audible in the living daylight. Adora Belle pushed her way through the policemen. 'Yes, Professor Flead?' she said. 329 'I have found your answer! I have spoken with several Umnians!' 'I thought they all died thousands of years ago!' 'Well, it is a department of necromancy,' Flead said. 'But I must admit they were a wee bit indistinct, even for me. Can I have a kiss? One kiss, one answer?' Adora Belle looked at Moist. He shrugged. The day was totally beyond him. He wasn't flying any more; he was simply being blown along by the gale. All right,' she said. 'But no tongues.' 'Tongues?' said Flead sadly. 'I wish.' There was the briefest of pecks, but the ghostly necromancer beamed. 'Wonderful,' he said. 'I feel at least a hundred years younger.' 'You have done the translations?' said Adora Belle. And at that moment Moist felt a vibration underfoot. 'What? Oh that,' said Flead. 'It was those golden golems you were talking about—' — and another vibration, enough to cause a sense of unease in the bowels — '—although it turns out that the word in context doesn't mean golden at all. There are more than one hundred and twenty things it can mean, but in this case taken in conjunction with the rest of the paragraph it means a thousand.' The street shook again. 'Four thousand golems, I think you'll find,' said Flead cheerfully. 'Oh, and here they are now!' 330 They came along the streets six abreast, wall to wall and ten feet high. Water and mud cascaded off them. The city echoed to their tread. They did not trample people, but mere market stalls and coaches splintered under their massive feet. They spread out as they moved, fanning out across the city, thundering down side streets, heading for the gates which in Ankh-Morpork were always open, because there was no point in discouraging customers. And there were the horses, perhaps no more than a score in all the hurrying throng, saddles built into the clay of their backs, overtaking the two-legged golems, and not a man watched but thought: where can I get one of those? One man-shaped golem alone stopped in the middle of Sator Square, raised a fist as if in salute, dropped on one knee, and went still. The horses halted beside it, as if awaiting riders. The rest of the golems marched on with the sound of thunder, heading out of the city. And when the many-walled city of Ankh-Morpork had one more wall, out beyond the gates, they stopped. As one, they raised their right hands in a fist. Shoulder to shoulder, ringing the city, the golems… guarded. Silence fell. In Sator Square, Commander Vimes looked up at the poised fist and then at Moist. 'Am I under arrest?' said Moist meekly. Vimes sighed. 'Mr Lipwig,' he said, 'there's no word for what you are.' The palace's big ground-floor council chamber was packed. Most people had to stand. Every guild, every interest group and everyone who just wanted to say they had been there… was there. The crowd overflowed into the palace grounds and out on to the streets. Children were climbing on the 331 golem in the square, despite the efforts of the watchmen who were guarding it.9 There was a large axe buried in the big table, Moist noticed; the force of it had split the wood. It had clearly been there for some time. Perhaps it was some kind of warning, or some kind of symbol. This was a council of war, after all, but without the war. 'However, we are already getting some very threatening notes from the other cities,' said Lord Vetinari, 'so it is only a matter of time.' 'Why?' said Archchancellor Ridcully of Unseen University, who had managed to get a seat by dint of elevating its protesting occupant out of it. 'All the things are doin' is standin' around outside the walls, yes?' 'Quite so,' said Vetinari. 'And it's called aggressive defence. That is practically a declaration of war.' He gave a sad little sigh, the sign of a brain shifting down a gear. 'May I remind you of the famous dictum of General Tacticus: "Those who desire war, prepare for war"? Our city is surrounded by a wall of creatures each one of which, I gather, could only be stopped by a siege weapon. Miss Dearheart' — he paused to give Adora Belle a sharp little smile — 'has been kind enough to bring Ankh-Morpork an army capable of conquering the world, although I'm happy to accept her assurance that she didn't actually mean to.' 'Then why don't we?' said Lord Downey, head of the Assassins' Guild. 'Ah, Lord Downey. Yes, I thought someone would say that,' said Vetinari. 'Miss Dearheart? You have studied these golems.' 'I've had half an hour!' Adora Belle protested. 'Hopping on one foot, I might add!' 'Nevertheless, you are our expert. And you have had the assistance of the famously deceased Professor Flead.' 9 Who was being guarded from whom was not, at this point, either certain or germane. Guarding was in the process of happening. 332 'He kept trying to see up my dress!' 'Please, madam?' 'They have no chem that I can get at,' said Adora Belle. 'There's no way of opening their heads. As far as we can tell they have one overriding imperative, which is to defend the city. And that's all. It's actually carved into their clay.' 'Nevertheless, there is such a thing as pre-emptive defence. That might be considered as "guarding". In your opinion, would they attack another city?' 'I don't think so. Which city would you like me to test them on, my lord?' Moist shuddered. Sometimes Adora Belle just didn't care. 'None,' said Vetinari. 'We are not going to have another wretched empire while I am Patrician. We've only just got over the last one. Professor Flead, have you been able to give them any instructions at all?' All heads turned to Flead and his portable circle, which had remained near the door out of the sheer impossibility of struggling further into the room. 'What? No! I am certain I have the gist of Umnian, but I cannot make it move a step! I have tried every likely command, to no avail. It is most vexing!' He waved his staff at Dr Hicks. 'Come on, make yourself useful, you fellows. One more try!' 'I think I might be able to communicate with them,' said Moist, staring at the axe, but his voice was lost in the disturbance as the grumbling students tried to manhandle the portable magic circle back through the crowded doorway. Let me just work out why, he thought. Yep… yep. It's actually… simple. Far too simple for a committee. 333 'As' chairman of the, Merchant's' Guild gentlemen may, I point out that these thing's represent a valuable labour force in this' city—' said Mr Robert Parker.10 'No slaves in Ankh-Morpork!' said Adora Belle, pointing a finger at Vetinari. 'You've always said that!' Vetinari lifted an eyebrow at her. Then he held the eyebrow and raised her a further eyebrow. But Adora Belle was unabashable. 'Miss Dearheart, you have yourself explained that they have no chem. You cannot free them. I am ruling that they are tools, and since they regard themselves as servants of the city I will treat them as such.' He raised both hands at the general uproar, and went on: 'They will not be sold and will be treated with care, as tools should be. They will work for the good of the city and—' 'No, that would be a terribly bad idea!' A white coat was struggling to get to the front of the crowd. It was topped by a yellow rain hat. 'And you are… ?' said Vetinari. The figure removed its yellow hat, looked around and went rigid. A groan managed to escape from its mouth. 'Aren't you Hubert Turvy?' said Vetinari. Hubert's face remained locked in a mask of terror, so Vetinari, in a kinder tone, added: 'Do you want some time to think about that last question?' 'I… only… just heard… about…' Hubert began. He looked around at the hundreds of faces, and blinked. 'Mr Turvy, the alchemist of money?' Vetinari prompted. 'It may be written down on your clothes somewhere?' 10 As a member of the Ancient and Venerable Order of Greengrocers', Mr Parker was honour bound never to put his punctuation in the right place. 334 'I think I can assist here,' said Moist, and elbowed his way to the tongue-tied economist. 'Hubert,' he said, putting a hand on the man's shoulder, 'all the people are here because they want to hear your amazing theory that demonstrates the inadvisability of putting these new golems to work. You don't want to disappoint them, do you? I know you don't meet many people, but everyone's heard of your wonderful work. Can you help them understand what you just shouted?' 'We are agog,' said Lord Vetinari. In Hubert's head the rising terror of crowds was overturned by the urge to impart knowledge to the ignorant, which meant everyone except him. His hands grasped the lapels of his jacket. He cleared his throat. 'Well, the problem is that, considered as a labour force, the golems are capable of doing the work per day of one hundred and twenty thousand men.' 'Think of what they could do for the city!' said Mr Cowslick of the Artificers' Guild. 'Well, yes. To begin with, they would put one hundred and twenty thousand men out of work,' said Hubert, 'but that would only be the start. They do not require food, clothing or shelter. Most people spend their money on food, shelter, clothing, entertainment and, not least, taxes. What would these golems spend it on? The demand for many things would drop and further unemployment would result. You see, circulation is everything. The money goes around, creating wealth as it does so.' 'You seem to be saying that these things could beggar us!' said Vetinari. 'There would be… difficult times,' said Hubert. 'Then what course of action do you propose, Mr Turvy?' 335 Hubert looked puzzled. 'I don't know, sir. I didn't know I had to find solutions as well' 'Any of the other cities would attack us if they had these golems,' said Lord Downey, 'and surely we don't have to think of their jobs, do we? Surely a little bit of conquest would be in order?' 'An empirette, perhaps?' said Vetinari sourly. 'We use our slaves to create more slaves? But do we want to face the whole world in arms? For that is what we would do, at the finish. The best that we could hope for is that some of us would survive. The worst is that we would triumph. Triumph and rot. That is the lesson of history, Lord Downey. Are we not rich enough?' That started another clamour. Moist, unnoticed, pushed his way through the heaving crowd until he reached Dr Hicks and his crew, who were fighting their way back to the big golem. 'Can I come with you, please?' he said. 'I want to try something.' Hicks nodded, but while the portable circle was being dragged out into the street he said: 'I think Miss Dearheart tried everything. The professor was very impressed.' 'There's something she didn't try. Trust me. Talking of trust, who are these lads holding the blanket?' 'My students,' said Hicks, trying to keep the circle steady. 'They want to study necro— er, post-mortem communications? Why?' 'Apparently it's good for getting girls,' sighed Hicks. There were sniggers. 'In a necromancy department? What kind of girls do they get?' 336 'No, it's because when they graduate they get to wear the hooded black robe and the skull ring. I think the term one of them used was "babe magnet".' 'But I thought wizards aren't allowed to marry?' 'Marriage?' said Hicks. 'Oh, I don't think they think about that! 'We never did in my day!' shouted Flead, who was being shaken back and forth as the circle was dragged through the crowds. 'Can't you blast some of these people with Black Fire, Hicks? You're a necromancer, for the sake of the seven hells! You are not supposed to be nice! Now I can see what's going on I think I shall have to spend a lot more time in the department!' 'Could I have a quiet word?' whispered Moist to Hicks. 'The lads can manage by themselves, can't they? Tell them to catch us up at the big golem.' He hurried on, and was not at all surprised to find Hicks hurrying to catch him up. He pulled the not-really-a-necromancer into the shelter of a doorway and said: 'Do you trust your students?' 'Are you mad?' 'It's just that I have a little plan to save the day, the downside of which is that Professor Flead will no longer, alas, be available to you in your department.' 'By unavailable you mean… ?' 'Alas, you would never see him again,' said Moist. 'I can tell that would be a blow.' Hicks coughed. 'Oh dear. He wouldn't be able to come back at all?' 'I think not.' 'Are you sure?' said Hicks carefully. 'No possibility?' 337 'I'm pretty sure.' 'Hm. Well, of course it would indeed be a blow.' 'A big blow. A big blow,' Moist agreed. 'I wouldn't want him… hurt, of course.' 'Anything but. Anything but,' said Moist, trying not to laugh. We humans are good at this curly thinking, aren't we, he thought. 'And he has had a good innings, when all's said and done.' 'Two of them,' said Moist, 'when you come to think about it.' 'What do you want us to do?' said Hicks, against the distant shouts of the ghostly professor berating the students. 'There's such a thing, I believe, as… an insorcism?' 'Those? We're not allowed to do those! They're totally against university rules!' 'Well, wearing the black robe and the skull ring has got to count for something, hasn't it? I mean, your predecessors would turn in their dark coffins if they thought you wouldn't agree to the minor naughtiness I have in mind…' And Moist explained, in one simple sentence. Louder shouts and curses indicated that the portable circle was almost upon them. 'Well, doctor?' said Moist. A complex spectrum of expressions chased one another across Dr Hicks's face. 'Well, I suppose…' 'Yes, doctor?' 338 'Well, it'd be like sending him to Heaven, right?' ' Exactly! I couldn't have put it better myself!' 'Anyone could put it better than this shower!' snapped Flead, right behind him. 'The department has really been allowed to go uphill since my day! Well, we shall see what we can do about that!' 'Before you do, professor, I must speak to the golem,' said Moist. 'Can you translate for me?' 'Can but won't,' snapped Flead. 'You tried to help Miss Dearheart earlier on.' ' She is attractive. Why should I bequeath to you knowledge it took me a century to acquire?' 'Because there're fools back there who want to use these golems to start a war?' 'Then that will reduce the number of fools.' In front of them now was the lone golem. Even kneeling, this one's face was level with Moist's eyes. The head turned to look blankly at him. The guards around the golem, on the other hand, looked at Moist with deep suspicion. 'We are going to perform a little magic, officers,' Moist told them. The corporal in charge looked as if this did not meet with his approval. 'We've got to guard it,' he pointed out, eyeing the black robes and the shimmering Professor Flead. 'That's fine, we can work around you,' said Moist. 'Do please stay. I'm sure there's not much risk.' 'Risk?' said the corporal. 339 'Although perhaps it might be better if you fanned out to keep the public away,' Moist went on. 'We would not want anything to happen to members of the public. If, perhaps, you could push them back a hundred yards or so?' 'Told to stay here,' said the corporal, looking Moist up and down. He lowered his voice. 'Er, aren't you the Postmaster General?' Moist recognized the look and the tone. Here we go… 'Yes, indeed,' he said. The watchman lowered his voice still further. 'So, er, do you by any chance have any of the Blue—' 'Can't help you there,' said Moist quickly, reaching into his pocket, 'but I do just happen to have here a very rare 20p Cabbage Green stamp with the highly amusing "misprint" that caused a bit of a stir last year, you may remember. This is the only one left. Very collectable.' A small envelope appeared in his hand. Just as quickly, it vanished into the corporal's pocket. 'We can't let anything happen to members of the public,' he said, 'so I suggest we'd better keep them back a hundred yards or so.' 'Good thinking,' said Moist. A few minutes later Moist had the square to himself, the watchmen having worked out quite quickly that the further back from danger they pushed the public the further from said danger they too would be. And now, Moist thought, for the Moment of Truth. If possible, though, it would become the Moment of Plausible Lies, since most people were happier with them. The Umnian golems were bigger and heavier than the ones commonly seen around the city, but they were beautiful. Of course they were — they had probably been made by golems. And their builders had given them what 340 looked like muscles, and calm, sad faces. In the last hour or so, in defiance of the watchmen, the lovable kids of the city had managed to scrawl a black moustache on this one. O-kay. Now for the professor… 'Tell me, professor, do you enjoy being dead?' he said. 'Enjoy? How can anyone enjoy it, you fool?' said Flead. 'Not much fun?' 'Young man, the word "fun" is not applicable to existence beyond the grave,' said Flead. 'And is that why you hang around the department?' 'Yes! It maybe run by amateurs these days, but there's always something going on.' 'Certainly,' said Moist. 'However, I'm wondering if someone of your… interests would not find them better served somewhere where there is always something coming off.' 'I do not understand your meaning.' 'Tell me, professor, have you heard of the Pink PussyCat Club?' 'No, I have not. Cats are not normally pink in these times, are they?' 'Really? Well, let me tell you about the Pink PussyCat Club,' said Moist. 'Excuse us, Dr Hicks.' He waved away Hicks, who winked and led his students back to the crowd. Moist put his arm around the ghostly shoulders. It was uncomfortable to hold it there with no actual shoulder to take the weight, but style was everything in these matters. Some urgent whispering passed to and fro, and then Flead said: 'You mean it's… smutty?' 341 Smut, thought Moist. He really is old. 'Oh, yes. Even, I might go so far as to say, suggestive.' 'Do they show their… ankles?' said Flead, his eyes gleaming. 'Ankles,' said Moist. 'Yes, yes, I rather think they do.' Ye gods, he wondered, is he that old? 'All the time?' 'Twenty-four hours a day. They never clothe,' said Moist. 'And sometimes they spin around a pole upside down. Take it from me, professor, for you, eternity might not be long enough.' 'And you just want a few words translated?' 'A small glossary of instructions.' 'And then I can go?' 'Yes!' 'I have your word?' 'Trust me. I'll just explain this to Dr Hicks. He may take some persuading.' Moist strolled over to the huddle of people who weren't necromancers at all. The post-mortem communicator's response was other than he expected. Second thoughts were arising. 'I wonder if we'd be doing the right thing, setting him loose in a pole-dancing establishment?' said Hicks doubtfully. 'No one will see him. And he can't touch. They're very big on not touching in that place, I'm told.' 342 'Yes, I suppose all he can do is ogle the young ladies.' There was some sniggering from the students. 'So? They're paid to be ogled at,' said Moist. 'They are professional oglees. It's an ogling establishment. For oglers. And you heard what's going on in the palace. We could be at war in a day. Do you trust them? Trust me.' 'You use that phrase an awful lot, Mr Lipwig,' said Hicks. 'Well, I'm very trustworthy. Ready, then? Hold back until I summon you, and then you can take him to his last resting place.' There were people in the crowd with sledgehammers. You'd have a job to crack a golem if it didn't want you to, but he ought to get them out of here as soon as possible. This probably wouldn't work. It was too simple. But Adora Belle had missed it, and so had Flead. The corporal now so bravely holding back the crowds wouldn't have, because it was all about orders, but nobody had asked him. You just had to think a little. 'Come on, young man,' said Flead, still where his bearers had left him. 'Let's get on with it, shall we?' Moist took a deep breath. 'Tell me how to say: "Trust me, and only me. Form ranks of four and march ten miles hubwards of the city. Walk slowly,"' he said. 'Hee, hee. You are a sharp one, Mr Lipstick!' said Flead, his mind full of ankles. 'But it won't work, you know. We tried things like that.' 'I can be very persuasive.' 'It won't work, I tell you. I have found not one single word that they will react to.' 343 'Well, professor, it's not what you say, it's the way that you say it, isn't it? Sooner or later it's all about style.' 'Ha! You are a fool, man.' 'I thought we had a deal, professor? And I shall want a number of other phrases.' He looked around at the golem horses, as still as statues. 'And one phrase I shall need is the equivalent of "Giddyup", and while I think of it I shall need "Whoa", too. Or do you want to go back to the place where they've never heard of pole-dancing?' 344 Chapter 11 The golems go — True worth — At work: servants of a higher truth — Back in trouble again — The beautiful butterfly — The insanity of Vetinari — Mr Bent wakes up — Mysterious requirements THINGS WERE GETTING HEATED in the conference room. This, to Lord Vetinari, was not a problem. He was a great believer in letting a thousand voices be heard, because this meant that all he actually needed to do was listen only to the ones that had anything useful to say, 'useful' in this case being defined in the classic civil service way as 'inclining to my point of view'. In his experience, it was a number generally smaller than ten. The people who wanted a thousand, etc., really meant that they wanted their own voice to be heard while the other 999 were ignored, and for this purpose the gods had invented the committee. Vetinari was very good at committees, especially when Drumknott took the minutes. What the Iron Maiden was to stupid tyrants, the committee was to Lord Vetinari; it was only slightly more expensive,11 far less messy, considerably more efficient and, best of all, you had to force people to climb inside the Iron Maiden. He was just about to appoint the ten noisiest people on to a Golem Committee that could be locked in a distant office when a Dark Clerk appeared, apparently out of a shadow, and whispered something in Drumknott's ear. The secretary leaned down towards his master. 'Ah, it would appear that the golems have gone,' said Vetinari cheerfully, as the dutiful Drumknott stepped back. 11 The only real expense was tea and biscuits halfway through, which seldom happened with the Iron Maiden 345 'Gone?' said Adora Belle, trying to see across to the window. 'What do you mean, gone?' 'Not here any more,' said Vetinari. 'Mr Lipwig, it seems, has taken them away. They are leaving the vicinity of the city in an orderly fashion.' 'But he can't do that!' Lord Downey was enraged. 'We haven't decided what to do with them yet!' 'He, however, has,' said Vetinari, beaming. 'He shouldn't be allowed to leave the city! He is a bank robber! Commander Vimes, do your duty and arrest him!' This was from Cosmo. Vimes's look would have frozen a saner man. 'I doubt if he's going far, sir' , he said. 'What do you wish me to do, your lordship?' 'Well, the ingenious Mr Lipwig appears to have a purpose,' said Vetinari, 'so perhaps we should go and find out what it is?' The crowd made for the door, where it got stuck and fought itself. As it piled out into the street, Vetinari put his hands behind his head and leaned back with his eyes shut. 'I love democracy. I could listen to it all day. Get the coach out, will you, Drumknott?' 'That is being done at this moment, sir.' 'Did you put him up to this?' Vetinari opened his eyes. 'Miss Dearheart, always a pleasure,' he murmured, waving away the smoke. 'I thought you had gone. Imagine my delight at finding you have not.' 'Well, did you?' said Adora Belle, her cigarette noticeably shortening as she took another drag. She smoked as if it was a kind of warfare. 346 'Miss Dearheart, I believe it would be impossible for me to put Moist von Lipwig up to anything that could be more dangerous than the things he finds to do of his own free will. While you were away he took to climbing high buildings for fun, picked every lock in the Post Office and took up with the Extreme Sneezing fraternity, who are frankly insane. He needs the heady whiff of danger to make his life worth living.' 'He never does that sort of thing when I'm here!' 'Indeed. Can I invite you to ride with me?' 'What did you mean by saying "indeed" like that?' said Adora Belle suspiciously. Vetinari raised an eyebrow. 'By now, if I have been adept at judging the way your fiance thinks, we should be going to see an enormous hole…' We're going to need stone, thought Moist as the golems dug. Lots of stone. Can they make mortar? Of course they can. They're the Lancre army knife of tools. It was fearful, the way they could dig, even in this worn-out, hopeless soil. Dirt was fountaining into the air. Half a mile away, the Old Wizarding Tower, a landmark on the road to Sto Lat, brooded over an area of scrub and desolation that was unusual on the heavily farmed plains. A lot of magic had been used here once. Plants grew twisty or not at all. The owls that haunted the ruins made sure their meals came from some distance away. It was the perfect site. No one wanted it. It was a wasteland, and a wasteland shouldn't be allowed to go to waste. What a weapon, he thought, as his golem horse circled the diggers. They could collapse a city in a day. What a terrible force they would be in the wrong hands. Thank goodness they are in mine… 347 The crowd was keeping its distance, but was also getting bigger and bigger. The city had turned out to watch. To be a true citizen of Ankh-Morpork was to never miss a show. As for Mr Fusspot, he was apparently having the time of his life standing on the horse's head. There's nothing a small dog likes more than a high place from which to yap madly at people… No, actually, there was, and the chairman had managed to wedge his toy between a clay ear and a paw, and stopped barking to growl every time Moist made a tentative grab at it. 'Mr Lipwig!' He looked round to see Sacharissa hurrying towards him, waving her notebook. How does she do it? he wondered, watching her as, dirt raining around her, she scurried past lines of digging golems. She's even here before the Watch. 'You have a golem horse, I see,' she shouted as she reached him. 'It looks beautiful.' 'It's rather like riding a flowerpot that you can't steer,' said Moist, having to yell to make himself heard over the noise. 'The saddle could use some padding, too. Good, though, aren't they? Notice how they keep jinking all the time, just like the real thing?' 'And why are the golems burying themselves?' 'I ordered them to!' 'But they are immensely valuable!' 'Yes. So we should keep them safe, right?' 'But they belong to the city!' 'They were taking up a lot of room, don't you think? I'm not claiming them, in any case!' 348 'They could do wonderful things for the city, couldn't they?' More people were arriving now, and gravitating towards the man in the golden suit because he was always good value for money. 'Like embroil it in a war or create an army of beggars? My way's better!' 'I'm sure you are going to tell us what it is!' shouted Sacharissa. 'I want to base the currency on them! I want to make them into money! Gold that guards itself! You can't fake it!' 'You want to put us on the golem standard?' 'Certainly! Look at them! How much are they worth?' shouted Moist, as his horse reared very convincingly. 'They could build canals and dam floods, level mountains and make roads! If we need them to, they will! And if we don't, then they'll help to make us rich by doing nothing! The dollar will be so sound you could bounce trolls off it!' The horse, with an astonishing grasp of public relations, reared again as Moist pointed at the labouring masses. ' That is value! That is worth! What is the worth of a gold coin compared to the dexterity of the hand that holds it?' He replayed that line in his head and added: 'That would make a good strapline on page one, don't you think? And it's Lipwig with a G!' Sacharissa laughed. 'Page one is already crowded! What's going to happen to these things?' 'They stay here until cool heads decide what to do next!' 'And what are they guarding the city from right now, exactly?' 'Stupidity!' 'One last thing, Moist. You are the only one who knows the secret of the golems, yes?' 349 'Inexplicably, this seems to be the case!' 'Why is this?' 'I suppose I'm just a very persuasive person!' This got another laugh. 'Who just happens to command a huge unstoppable army? What demands are you going to make?' 'None! No, on second thoughts a coffee would be nice. I didn't have any breakfast!' That got a much bigger laugh from the crowd. 'And do you think the citizens should be glad it's you in the saddle, as it were?' 'Hell, yes! Trust me!' said Moist, dismounting and lifting a reluctant Mr Fusspot from his perch. 'Well, you should know about that, Mr Lipwig.' This got a round of applause. 'You wouldn't care to tell us what happened to the gold from the bank, would you?' ' 'e's wearin' it!' shouted a wag in the crowd, to cheering. 'Miss Cripslock, your cynicism is, as ever, a dagger to my heart!' said Moist. 'I intended to get to the bottom of that today, but "best-laid plans" and all that. I just don't seem to be able to clear my desk!' Even this got a laugh, and it wasn't very funny. 'Mr Lipwig? I want you to come with me…' Commander Vimes shoved his way through the crowd, with other watchmen materializing behind him. 'Am I under arrest?' 'Hell, yes! You did leave the city!' 350 'I think he could successfully argue, commander, that the city has come with him.' All heads turned. A path cleared itself for Lord Vetinari; paths do for men known to have dungeons in their basements. And Adora Belle hobbled past him, threw herself at Moist and started beating on his chest, shouting: 'How did you get through to them? How did you make them understand? Tell me or I'll never marry you again!' 'What are your intentions, Mr Lipwig?' said Vetinari. 'I was planning to hand them over to the Golem Trust, sir,' said Moist, fending off Adora Belle as gently as possible. 'You were?' 'But not the golem horses, sir. I'll bet they are faster than any flesh-and-blood creatures. There are nineteen of them, and if you'll take my advice, sir, you'll give one to the king of the dwarfs, because I imagine he's a bit angry right now. It's up to you what you do with the others. But I'd like to ask for half a dozen of them for the Post Office. In the meantime, the rest of them will be safe under ground. I want them to be the basis of the currency, because—' 'Yes, I couldn't help overhearing,' said Vetinari. 'Well done, Mr Lipwig, I can see you've been thinking about this. You have presented us with a sensible way forward, indeed. I have also been giving the situation much thought, and all that remains is for me—' 'Oh, no thanks are necessary—' '—to say arrest this man, commander. Be so good as to handcuff him to a sturdy officer and put him in my coach.' ' What? said Moist. 'What?' screamed Adora Belle. 351 'The directors of the Royal Bank are pressing charges of embezzlement against you and the chairman, Mr Lipwig.' Vetinari reached down and picked up Mr Fusspot by the scruff of his neck. The little dog swung gently back and forth in the Patrician's grasp, wide eyes open wider in terror, his toy vibrating apologetically in his mouth. 'You can't seriously blame him for anything,' Moist protested. 'Alas, he is the chairman, Mr Lipwig. His paws are on the documents.' 'How can you do this to Moist after what's just happened?' said Adora Belle. 'Hasn't he just saved the day?' 'Possibly, although I'm not sure who he has saved it for. The law must be obeyed, Miss Dearheart. Even tyrants have to obey the law.' He paused, looking thoughtful, and continued: 'No, I tell a lie, tyrants do not have to obey the law, obviously, but they do have to observe the niceties. At least, I do.' 'But he didn't take—' Adora Belle began. 'Nine o'clock tomorrow, in the Great Hall,' said Vetinari. 'I invite all interested parties to attend. We shall get to the bottom of this.' He raised his voice. 'Are there any directors of the Royal Bank here? Ah, Mr Lavish. Are you well?' Cosmo Lavish, walking unsteadily, pushed his way through the crowd, supported on one arm by a young man in a brown robe. 'You have had him arrested?' said Cosmo. 'One uncontested fact is that Mr Lipwig, on behalf of Mr Fusspot, did formally take responsibility for the gold.' 'Indeed he did,' said Cosmo, glaring at Moist. 'But in the circumstances I feel I should look into all aspects of the situation.' 352 'We are in agreement there,' said Cosmo. 'And to that end I am arranging for my clerks to enter the bank tonight and examine its records,' Vetinari went on. 'I cannot agree to your request,' said Cosmo. 'Fortunately, it was not a request.' Lord Vetinari tucked Mr Fusspot under his arm, and went on: 'I have the chairman with me, you see. Commander Vimes, conduct Mr Lipwig into my coach, please. See that Miss Dearheart is escorted safely home, will you? We shall sort things out in the morning.' Vetinari looked at the tower of dust that now enveloped the industrious golems, and added: 'We've all had a very busy day.' Out in the back alley behind the Pink PussyCat Club the insistent, pumping music was muffled but still pervasive. Dark figures lurked… 'Dr Hicks, sir?' The head of the Department of Post-Mortem Communications paused in the act of drawing a complicated rune amongst the rather less complex everyday graffiti and looked up at the concerned face of his student. 'Yes, Barnsforth?' 'Is this exactly legal under college rules, sir?' 'Of course not! Think of what might happen if this sort of thing fell into the wrong hands! Hold the lantern higher, Goatly, we're losing the light.' 'And whose hands would that be, sir?' 'Well, technically ours, as a matter of fact. But it's perfectly all right if the Council don't find out. And they won't, of course. They know better than to go around finding things out.' 353 'So it is illegal, technically?' 'Well now,' said Hicks, drawing a glyph which flamed blue for a moment, 'who among us, when you get right down to it, can say what is right and what is wrong?' 'The College Council, sir?' said Barnsforth. Hicks threw down the chalk and straightened up. 'Now listen to me, you four! We are going to insorcize Flead, understand? To his eternal satisfaction and the not inconsiderable good of the department, believe me! This is a difficult ritual but if you assist me you'll be Doctors of Post-Mortem Communications by the end of term, understand? Straight As for the lot of you and, of course, the skull ring! Since you so far have managed to turn in one-third of an essay between you all, I would say that is a bargain, wouldn't you, Barnsforth?' The student blinked in the force of the question, but natural talent came to his aid. He coughed in a curiously academic way, and said: 'I think I understand you, sir. What we are doing here goes beyond mundane definitions of right and wrong, does it not? We serve a higher truth.' 'Well done, Barnsforth, you will go a long way. Everyone got that? Higher truth. Good! Now let's decant the old bugger and get out of here before anyone catches us!' A troll officer in a coach is hard to ignore. He just looms. That was Vimes's little joke, perhaps. Sergeant Detritus sat beside Moist, effectively clamping him into his seat. Lord Vetinari and Drumknott sat opposite, his lordship with his hands crossed on the silver-topped cane and his chin resting on his hands. He watched Moist intently. There was a rumour that the sword in the stick had been made with the iron taken from the blood of a thousand men. It seemed a waste, thought Moist, 354 when for a bit of extra work you could get enough to make a ploughshare. Who made up these things, anyway? But with Vetinari it seemed possible, if a bit messy. 'Look, if you let Cosmo—' he began. ' Pas devant le gendarme,' said Lord Vetinari. 'Dat mean no talkin' in front o' me,' Sergeant Detritus supplied helpfully. 'Then can we talk about angels?' said Moist, after a period of silence. 'No, we can't. Mr Lipwig, you appear to be the only person able to command the biggest army since the days of the Empire. Do you think that is a good idea?' 'I didn't want to! I just worked out how to do it!' 'You know, Mr Lipwig, killing you right now would solve an incredibly large number of problems.' 'I didn't intend this! Well… not exactly like this.' 'We didn't intend the Empire. It just became a bad habit. So, Mr Lipwig, now that you have your golems, what else do you intend to do with them?' 'Put one in to power every clacks tower. The donkey treadmills have never worked properly. The other cities can't object to that. It will be a boon to ma— to people-kind and the donkeys won't object either, I expect.' 'That will account for a few hundred, perhaps. And the rest?' 'I intend to turn them into gold, sir. And I think it will solve all our problems.' Vetinari raised a quizzical eyebrow. ' All our problems?' 355 The pain was breaking through again but was somehow reassuring. He was becoming Vetinari, certainly. The pain was good. It was a good pain. It concentrated him, it helped him think. Right now, Cosmo was thinking that Pucci really should have been strangled at birth, which family folklore said he had tried to achieve. Everything about her was annoying. She was selfish, arrogant, greedy, vain, cruel, headstrong and totally lacking in tact and the slightest amount of introspection. Those were not, within the clan, considered to be drawbacks in a person; one could hardly get rich if one bothered all the time about whether what one was doing was wrong or right. But Pucci thought she was beautiful, and that grated on his nerves. She did have good hair, that was true, but those high heels! She looked like a tethered balloon! The only reason she had any figure at all was because of the wonders of corsetry. And, while he'd heard that fat girls had lovely personalities, she just had a lot, and all of it was Lavish. On the other hand, she was his age and at least had ambition and a wonderful gift for hatred. She wasn't lazy, like the rest of them. They spent their lives huddled round the money. They had no vision. Pucci was someone he could talk to. She saw things from a softer, female perspective. 'You should have Bent killed,' she said. 'I'm sure he knows something. Let's hang him from one of the bridges by his ankles. That's what Granddaddy used to do. Why are you still wearing that glove?' 'He's been a loyal servant of the bank,' said Cosmo, ignoring the last remark. 'Well? What's that got to do with it? Is there still something wrong with your hand?' 'My hand is fine,' said Cosmo, as another red rose of pain bloomed all the way to his shoulder. I'm so close, he thought. So close! Vetinari thinks he 356 has me, but I have him! Oh, yes! Nevertheless… perhaps it was time to start tidying up. 'I will send Cranberry to see Mr Bent tonight,' he said. 'The man is of no further use now I have Cribbins.' 'Good. And then Lipsbig will go to prison and we'll get our bank back. You don't look well, you know. You are very pale.' 'As pale as Vetinari?' said Cosmo, pointing at the painting. 'What? What are you talking about? Don't be silly,' said Pucci. 'And there's a funny smell in here, too. Has something died?' 'My thoughts are unclouded. Tomorrow will be Vetinari's last day as Patrician, I assure you.' 'You're being silly again. And ever so sweaty, I might add,' said Pucci. 'Honestly, it's dripping off your chin. Pull yourself together!' 'I imagine the caterpillar feels it is dying when it begins to turn into a beautiful butterfly,' said Cosmo dreamily. 'What? What? Who knows? What's that got to do with anything?' Pucci demanded. 'That's not how it works in any case, because, listen, this is very interesting: the caterpillar dies, right, and goes all mushy, and then a tiny bit of it, like a kidney or something, suddenly wakes up and eats the caterpillar soup, and that's what comes out as the butterfly. It's a wonder of nature. You've just got a touch of flu. Don't be a big baby. I have a date. See you in the morning.' She flounced out, leaving Cosmo alone except for Cranberry, who was reading in the corner. It occurred to Cosmo that he really knew very little about the man. As Vetinari, of course, he would soon know everything about everybody. 'You were at the Assassins' School, weren't you, Cranberry?' he said. 357 Cranberry took the little silver bookmark from his top pocket, placed it carefully on the page, and closed the book. 'Yes, sir. Scholarship boy' 'Oh, yes. I remember them, scuttling about all the time. They tended to get bullied.' 'Yes, sir. Some of us survived.' 'Never bullied you, did I?' 'No, sir. I would have remembered.' 'That's good. That's good. What is your first name, Cranberry?' 'Don't know, sir. Foundling.' 'How sad. Your life must have been very hard.' 'Yes, sir.' 'The world can be so very harsh at times.' 'Yes, sir.' 'Would you be so good as to kill Mr Bent tonight?' 'I have made a mental note, sir. I will take an associate and undertake the task an hour before dawn. Most of Mrs Cake's lodgers will be out at that time and the fog will be thickest. Fortunately, Mrs Cake is staying with her old friend Mrs Harms-Beetle in Welcome Soap tonight. I checked earlier, having anticipated this eventuality.' 'You are a craftsman, Cranberry. I salute you.' 'Thank you, sir.' 'Have you seen Heretofore anywhere?' 358 'No, sir.' 'I wonder where he's got to? Now go off and have your supper, anyway. I will not be dining tonight. 'Tomorrow I will change,' he said aloud, when the door had shut behind Cranberry. He reached down and drew the sword. It was a thing of beauty. In the picture opposite, Lord Vetinari raised an eyebrow and said: 'Tomorrow you will be a beautiful butterfly.' Cosmo smiled. He was nearly there. Vetinari had gone completely mad. Mr Bent opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. After a few seconds this uninspiring view was replaced by an enormous nose, with the rest of a worried face some distance beyond it. 'You're awake!' Mr Bent blinked and refocused and looked up at Miss Drapes, a shadow against the lamplight. 'You had a bit of a funny turn, Mr Bent,' she said, in the slow, careful voice people use for talking to mental patients, the elderly, and the dangerously armed. 'A funny turn? I did something funny?' He raised his head from the pillow, and sniffed. 'You are wearing a necklace of garlic, Miss Drapes?' he said. 'It's… a precaution,' said Miss Drapes, looking guilty, 'against… colds… yes, colds. You can't be too careful. How do you feel, in yourself?' 359 Mr Bent hesitated. He wasn't certain how he felt. He wasn't certain who he was. There seemed to be a hole inside him. There was no himself in himself. 'What has been happening, Miss Drapes?' 'Oh, you don't want to worry about all that,' said Miss Drapes, with fragile cheerfulness. 'I believe I do, Miss Drapes.' 'The doctor said you weren't to get excited, Mr Bent.' 'I to the best of my knowledge have never been excited in my life, Miss Drapes.' The woman nodded. Alas, the statement was so easy to believe. 'Well, you know Mr Lipwig? They say he stole all the gold out of the vault!…' And the story unfolded. It was in many places speculation both new and second-hand, and because Miss Drapes was a regular reader of the Tanty Bugle it was recounted in the style and language in which tales of 'orrible murder are discussed. What shocked her was the way the man just lay there. Once or twice he asked her to go back over a detail, but his expression never changed. She tried to add excitement, she painted the walls with exclamation marks, and he did not budge. '—and now he's banged up in the Tanty,' Miss Drapes said. 'They say he will be hanged by the neck until dead. I think hanged is worse than just being hanged.' 'But they cannot find the gold…' whispered Mavolio Bent, leaning back against the pillow. 360 'That's right! Some say it has been spirited away by dire accomplices!' said Miss Drapes. They say informations have been laid against him by Mr Lavish.' 'I am a damned man, Miss Drapes, judged and damned,' said Mr Bent, staring at the wall. 'You, Mr Bent? That's no way to talk! You, who've never made a mistake?' 'But I have sinned. Oh, indeed I have! I have worshipped false idols!' 'Well, sometimes you can't get real ones,' said Miss Drapes, patting his hand and wondering if she should call someone. 'Look, if you want absolution, I understand the Ionians are doing two sins for one this week—' 'It's caught me,' he whispered. 'Oh dear, Miss Drapes. There is something rising inside that wants to get out!' 'Don't you worry, we've got a bucket,' said Miss Drapes. 'No! You should go, now! This will be horrible!' 'I'm not going anywhere, Mr Bent,' said Miss Drapes, a study in determination. 'You're just having a funny turn, that's all.' 'Ha!' said Mr Bent. 'Ha… ha… haha…' The laugh climbed up his throat like something from the crypt. His skinny body went rigid and arched as if it was rising from the mattress. Miss Drapes flung herself across the bed, but she was too late. The man's hand rose, trembling, and extended a finger towards the wardrobe. 'Here we are again!' Bent screamed. The lock clicked. The doors swung open. In the cupboard was a pile of ledgers, and something… shrouded. Mr Bent opened his eyes and looked up into those of Miss Drapes. 361 'I brought it with me,' he said, as if talking to himself. 'I hated it so much but I brought it with me. Why? Who runs the circus?' Miss Drapes was silent. All she knew was that she was going to follow this to the end. After all, she'd spent the night in a man's bedroom, and Lady Deirdre Waggon had a lot to say about that. She was technically a Ruined Woman, which seemed unfair given that, even more technically, she wasn't. She watched as Mr Bent… changed. He had the decency to do so with his back turned, but she closed her eyes anyway. Then she remembered that she was Ruined, and so there wasn't much point, was there? She opened them again. 'Miss Drapes?' said Mr Bent dreamily. 'Yes, Mr Bent?' she said, through chattering teeth. 'We need to find… a bakery.' Cranberry and his associate stepped into the room, and stopped dead. This was not according to the plan. 'And possibly a ladder,' said Mr Bent. He pulled a strip of pink rubber from his pocket, and bowed. 362 Chapter 12 No help from on high — Drumknott reports — A possible jape — Mr Fusspot takes the stage — Strange things in the air — The return of Mr Bent — 'Look out, he's got a daisy!' — Pucci's big moment — Cosmo needs a hand THERE WAS CLEAN STRAW in Moist's cell and he was pretty certain no one had gobbed in the stirabout, which contained what, if you were forced to name it, you would have to concede was meat. News had somehow got around that Moist was the reason that Bellyster was no longer on the staff. Even his fellow screws had hated the bullying bastard, so Moist also got a second helping without asking, his shoes cleaned and a complimentary copy of the Times in the morning. The marching golems had forced the bank's troubles on to page 5. The golems were all over the front page, and a lot of the inner pages were full of Vox Pops — which meant people in the street who didn't know anything told other people what they knew — and lengthy articles by people who also didn't know anything but could say it very elegantly in 250 words. He was just staring at the crossword puzzle12 when someone knocked very politely on the cell door. It was the warden, who hoped Mr Lipwig had enjoyed his brief stay with them, would like to show him to his carriage, and looked forward to the pleasure of his custom again should there be any further temporary doubts about his honesty. In the meantime, he would be grateful if Mr Lipwig would be kind enough to wear these lightweight manacles, for the look of the thing, and when they were taken off him, as they surely would be when his character was proved to be spotless, would 12 1 down: Shaken players shift the load (9 letters). Lord Vetinari had sneered at it. 363 he please remind the officer in charge that they were prison property, thank you very much. There was a crowd outside the prison, though they were standing back from the large golem which, down on one knee and with a fist thrust into the air, was waiting outside the gate. It had turned up last night and if Mr Lipwig could see his way clear to getting it to move, said the warden, everyone would be most appreciative. Moist tried to look as though he'd expected it. He had told Black Moustache to await further orders. He hadn't expected this. In fact it stamped after the coach all the way to the palace. There were a lot of watchmen lining the route and there seemed to be a black-clad figure on every rooftop. It looked as though Vetinari was not taking any chances on him escaping. There were more guards waiting in the back courtyard — more than was efficient, Moist could tell, since it can be easier for a swift-thinking man to get away from twenty men than from five. But somebody was Making a Statement. It didn't matter what it was, so long as it looked impressive. He was led by dark passages into the sudden light of the Great Hall, which was packed. There was a smattering of applause, one or two cheers, and a ringing series of boos from Pucci, who was sitting next to her brother in the front row of the big block of seats. Moist was led to a small podium which was going to do duty as a dock, where he could look around at the guild leaders, senior wizards, important priests and members of the Great and the Good, or at least the Big and the Noisy. There was Harry King, grinning at him, and the cloud of smoke that indicated the presence of Adora Belle and — oh yes, the new High Priestess of Anoia, her crown of bent spoons all shiny, her ceremonial ladle held stiffly, her face rigid with nerves and importance. You owe me, girl, Moist thought, 'cos a year ago you had to work in a bar in the evenings to make a living and Anoia was just one of half a dozen semi-goddesses who shared an altar which, let's face it, was your kitchen table with a cloth on it. What's one little miracle compared to that? 364 There was a whisking of cloth and suddenly Lord Vetinari was in his seat, with Drumknott by his side. The buzz of conversation ceased, as the Patrician looked around the hall. 'Thank you for coming, ladies and gentlemen,' he said. 'Let us get on, shall we? This is not a court of law, as such. It is a court of inquiry, which I have convened to look into the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of ten tons of gold bullion from the Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork. The good name of the bank has been called into question, and so we will consider all matters apparently pertaining to it—' 'No matter where they lead?' 'Indeed, Mr Cosmo Lavish. No matter where they lead.' 'We have your assurance on this?' Cosmo insisted. 'I believe I have already given it, Mr Lavish. Can we proceed? I have appointed the learned Mr Slant, of Morecombe, Slant and Honeyplace, as Counsel to the Inquiry. He will examine and cross-examine as he sees fit. I think it is known to all that Mr Slant commands the total respect of Ankh-Morpork's legal profession.' Mr Slant bowed to Vetinari and let his steady gaze take in the rest of the room. It lingered a long time on the ranks of the Lavishes. 'First, the matter of the gold,' said Vetinari. 'I present Drumknott, my secretary and chief clerk, who overnight took a team of my senior clerks into the bank—' 'Am I in the dock here?' said Moist. Vetinari glanced at him and looked down at his paperwork. 'I have here your signature on a receipt for some ten tons of gold,' he said. 'Do you dispute its authenticity?' 'No, but I thought that was just a formality!' 365 'Ten tons of gold is a formality, is it? And did you later break into the vault?' 'Well, yes, technically. I couldn't unlock it because Mr Bent had fainted inside and left the key in the lock.' 'Ah, yes, Mr Bent, the chief cashier. Is he with us today?' A quick survey found the room Bentless. 'I understood that he was in a somewhat distressed state but not seriously harmed,' said Lord Vetinari. 'Commander Vimes, please be so good as to send some men along to his lodgings, will you? I would like him to join us.' He turned back to Moist. 'No, Mr Lipwig, you are not on trial, as yet. Generally speaking, before someone is put on trial it helps to have some clear reason for doing so. It is considered neater. I must point out, though, that you took formal responsibility for the gold which we must assume was clearly gold and clearly in the vault at that time. In order to have a thorough understanding of the bank's disposition at this time I asked my secretary to audit the bank's affairs, which he and his team did last nigh—' 'If I'm not actually on trial at this moment can I get rid of these shackles? They do rather bias the case against me,' said Moist. 'Yes, very well. Guards, see to it. Now, Mr Drumknott, if you please?' I'm going to be hung out to dry, thought Moist, as Drumknott started speaking. What is Vetinari playing at? He stared at the crowds as Drumknott went through the tedious litany of accountancy. Right in front, in a great black mass, was the Lavish family. From here they looked like vultures. This was going to take a long time, by the sound of Drumknott's earnest drone. They were going to set him up, and Vetinari wa— Ah, yes, and then it would be, in some quiet room: 'Mr Lipwig, if you could see your way clear to telling me how you controlled those golems…' 366 A commotion near the door came as welcome relief, and now Sergeant Fred Colon, trailed by his inseparable associate Nobby Nobbs, was practically swimming through the crowd. Vimes pushed his way towards them, with Sacharissa drifting in his wake. There was a hurried conversation, and a ripple of horrified excitement rolled through the crowd. Moist caught the word 'Murdered!' Vetinari stood up and brought his stick down flat on the table, ending the noise like the punctuation of the gods. 'What has happened, Commander?' he said. 'Bodies, sir. In Mr Bent's lodgings!' 'He's been murdered?' 'Nosir!' Vimes conferred briefly and urgently with his sergeant. 'Body provisionally identified as Professor Cranberry, sir, not a real professor, he's a nasty hired killer. We thought he'd left the city. Sounds like the other one is Ribcage Jack, who was kicked to death' — there was another whispered briefing, but Commander Vimes tended to raise his voice when he was angry — 'by a what? On the second floor? Don't be daft! So what got Cranberry? Eh? Did you just mean what I thought you said?' He straightened up. 'Sorry, sir, I'm going to have to go and see this for myself. I think someone is having a jape.' 'And poor Bent?' said Vetinari. 'No sign of him, sir.' 'Thank you, commander.' Vetinari waved a hand. 'Do hurry back when you know more. We cannot have japes. Thank you, Drumknott. I gather you found nothing untoward apart from the lack of gold. I'm sure that comes as a relief to us all. The floor is yours, Mr Slant.' The lawyer rose with an air of dignity and mothballs. 'Tell me, Mr Lipwig, what was your job before you came to Ankh-Morpork?' he said. 367 O-kay, thought Moist, looking at Vetinari, I've worked it out. If I'm good and say the right things, I might live. At a price. Well, no thanks. All I wanted to do was make some money. 'Your job, Mr Lipwig?' Slant repeated. Moist looked along the rows of watchers, and saw the face of Cribbins. The man winked. 'Hmm?' he said. 'I asked you what your job was before you arrived in this city!' It was at this point that Moist became aware of a regrettably familiar whirring sound, and from his raised position he was the first to see the chairman of the Royal Bank appear from behind the curtains at the far end of the hall with his wonderful new toy clamped firmly in his mouth. Some trick of the vibrations was propelling Mr Fusspot backwards across the shiny marble. People in the audience craned their necks as, with tail wagging, the little dog passed behind Vetinari's chair and disappeared behind the curtains on the opposite side. I'm in a world where that just happened, Moist thought. Nothing matters. It was an insight of incredible liberation. 'Mr Lipwig, I asked you a question,' Slant growled. 'Oh, sorry. I was a crook'… and he flew! This was it! This was better than hanging off some old building! Look at the expression on Cosmo's face! Look at Cribbins! They had it all planned out, and now it had got away from them. He had them all in his hand, and he was flying! Slant hesitated. 'By crook you mean—' 'Confidence trickster. Occasional forgery. I'd like to think I was more of a scallywag, to be frank.' 368 Moist saw the looks that passed between Cosmo and Cribbins, and exulted within. No, this wasn't supposed to happen, was it? And now you're going to have to run to keep up… Mr Slant was certainly having trouble in that area. 'Can I be clear here? You broke the law for a living?' 'Mostly I took advantage of other people's greed, Mr Slant. I think there was an element of education, too.' Mr Slant shook his head in amazement, causing an earwig to fall, with a keen sense of the appropriate, out of his ear. 'Education?' he said. 'Yes. A lot of people learned that no one sells a real diamond ring for one tenth of its value.' 'And then you stepped into one of the highest public offices in the city?' said Mr Slant, above the laughter. It was a release. People had been holding their breath for too long. 'I had to. It was that or be hanged,' said Moist, and added: 'again.' Mr Slant looked flustered, and turned his eyes to Vetinari. 'Are you sure you wish me to continue, my lord?' 'Oh yes,' said Vetinari. 'To the death, Mr Slant.' 'Er… you have been hanged before?' Slant said to Moist. 'Oh, yes. I did not wish it to become a habit.' That got another laugh. Mr Slant turned again to Vetinari, who was smiling faintly. 'Is this true, my lord?' 369 'Indeed,' said Vetinari calmly. 'Mr Lipwig was hanged last year under the name of Albert Spangler, but it turned out that he had a very tough neck, as was found when he was being placed in his coffin. You may be aware, Mr Slant, of the ancient principle Quia Ego Sic Dico? A man who survives being hanged may have been selected by the gods for a different destiny, as yet unfulfilled? And since fortune had favoured him, I resolved, therefore, to put him on parole and charge him with resurrecting the Post Office, a task which had already taken the lives of four of my clerks. If he succeeded, well and good. If he failed, the city would have been spared the cost of another hanging. It was a cruel joke which, I am happy to say, rebounded to the general good. I don't think that anyone here would argue that the Post Office is now a veritable jewel of the city? Indeed, the leopard can change his shorts!' Mr Slant nodded automatically, remembered himself, sat down and fumbled with his notes. He had lost his place. 'And now we come to, er, the matter of the bank—' 'Mrs Lavish, a lady many of us were privileged to know, recently confided in me that she was dying,' said Lord Vetinari briskly. 'She asked me for advice on the future of the bank, given that her obvious heirs were, in her words, "as nasty a bunch of weasels as you could hope not to meet"—' All thirty-one of the Lavish lawyers stood up and spoke at once, incurring a total cost to their clients of AM$119.28. Mr Slant glared up at them. Mr Slant did not, despite what had been said, have the respect of Ankh-Morpork's legal profession. He commanded its fear. Death had not diminished his encyclopedic memory, his guile, his talent for corkscrew reasoning and the vitriol of his stare. Do not cross me this day, it advised the lawyers. Do not cross me, lor if you do I will have the flesh from your very bones and the marrow therein. You know those leather-bound tomes you have on the wall behind your desk to impress your clients? I have read them all, and I wrote half of them. Do not try me. I am not in a good mood. 370 One by one, they sat down.13 'If I may continue?' said Vetinari. 'I understand that Mrs Lavish subsequently interviewed Mr Lipwig and considered that he would be a superb manager in the very best traditions of the Lavish family and the ideal guardian for the dog Mr Fusspot, who is, by the custom of the bank, its chairman.' Cosmo rose slowly to his feet and stepped out into the centre of the floor. 'I object most strongly to the suggestion that this scoundrel is in the best tradition of my—' he began. Mr Slant was on his feet as though propelled by a spring. Quick as he was, Moist was faster. 'I object!' he said. 'How do you dare object,' Cosmo spat, 'when you have admitted to being an arrogant scofflaw?' 'I object to Lord Vetinari's allegation that I have anything to do with the fine traditions of the Lavish family,' said Moist, staring into eyes that now seemed to be weeping green tears. 'For example, I have never been a pirate or traded in slaves—' There was a great rising of lawyers. Mr Slant glared. There was a great seating. 'They admit it,' said Moist. 'It's in the bank's own official history!' 'That is correct, Mr Slant,' said Vetinari. 'I have read it. Volenti non fit injuria clearly applies.' The whirring started again. Mr Fusspot was coming back the other way. Moist forced himself not to look. 13 Total cost including time and disbursements AM$253.16 371 'Oh, this is low indeed!' snarled Cosmo. 'Whose history could withstand this type of malice?' Moist raised a hand. 'Ooo, ooo, I know this one!' he said. 'Mine can. The worst I ever did was rob people who thought they were robbing me, but I never used violence and I gave it all back. Okay, I robbed a couple of banks, well, defrauded, really, but only because they made it so easy—' 'Gave it back?' said Slant, looking for some kind of response from Vetinari. But the Patrician was staring over the heads of the crowd, who were almost all engrossed in the transit of Mr Fusspot, and merely raised a finger in acknowledgement or dismissal. 'Yes, you may recall that I saw the error of my ways last year when the gods—' Moist began. 'Robbed a couple of banks?' said Cosmo. 'Vetinari, are we to believe that you knowingly put the most important bank in the city into the charge of a known bank robber?' The massed ranks of the Lavishes rose, united in defence of the money. Vetinari still stared at the ceiling. Moist looked up. A disc, something white, was skimming through the air near the ceiling; it descended as it circled, and hit Cosmo between the eyes. A second one swooped on over Moist's hand and landed in the bosoms of the Lavishes. 'Should he have left it in the hands of unknown bank robbers?' a voice shouted, as collateral custard landed on every smart black suit. 'Here we are again!' A second wave of pies was already in the air, circling the room in trajectories that dropped them into the struggling Lavishes. And then a figure fought its way out of the crowd, to the groans and screams of those who'd temporarily been in its way; this was because those who managed to escape having their feet trodden on by the big shoes jumped back in time to be scythed down by the ladder the newcomer was carrying. It innocently 372 turned to see what mayhem it had caused, and the swinging ladder would fell anyone too slow to get away. There was a method to it, though: as Moist watched, the clown stepped away from the ladder, leaving four people trapped among the rungs in such a way that any attempt to get out would cause huge pain to the other three and, in the case of one of the watchmen, a serious impairment of marriage prospects. Red-nosed and raggedy-hatted, it bounced into the arena in great leaping strides, its enormous boots flapping on the floor with every familiar step. 'Mr Bent?' said Moist. 'Is that you?' 'My jolly good pal Mr Lipwig!' shouted the clown. 'You think the ringmaster runs the circus, do you? Only by the consent of the clowns, Mr Lipwig! Only by the consent of the clowns!' Bent drew back his arm and hurled a pie at Lord Vetinari. But Moist was already in full leap before the pie started its journey. His brain came a poor third, and delivered its thoughts all in one go, telling him what his legs had apparently worked out for themselves: that the dignity of the great could rarely survive a face full of custard, that a picture of an encustarded Patrician on the front page of the Times would rock the power-politics of the city, and most of all that in a post-Vetinari world he, Moist, would not see tomorrow, which was one of his lifelong ambitions. As in a silent dream he sailed towards the oncoming nemesis, reaching out with snail-pace fingers while the pie spun on to its date with history. It hit him in the face. Vetinari had not moved. Custard flew up and four hundred fascinated eyes watched as a glob of the stuff headed on towards the Patrician, who caught it in an upraised hand. The little smack as it landed on his palm was the only sound in the room. Vetinari inspected the captured custard. He dipped a finger into it and tasted the blob thereon. He cast his eyes upwards, thoughtfully, while the 373 room held its communal breath, and then said, pensively: 'I do believe it is pineapple.' There was a thunder of applause. There had to be; even if you hated Vetinari, you had to admire the timing. And now he was coming down the steps, advancing on a frozen and fearful clown. 'The clowns do not run my circus, sir,' he said, grabbing the man by his big red nose and pulling it to the full extent of the elastic. 'Is that understood?' The clown produced a bulbous horn and gave a mournful honk. 'Good. I'm glad you agree. And now I want to talk to Mr Bent, please.' There were two honks this time. 'Oh yes he is,' said Vetinari. 'Shall we get him out for the boys and girls? What is 15.3 per cent of 59.66? 'You leave him alone! Just you leave him alone!' The battered crowd parted yet again, this time for a dishevelled Miss Drapes, as outraged and indignant as a mother hen. She was clasping something heavy to her sparse bosom, and Moist realized that it was a stack of ledgers. 'This is what it's all about!' she announced triumphantly, flinging her arms wide. 'It's not his fault! They took advantage of him!' She pointed an accusatory finger at the dripping ranks of the Lavishes. If a battle goddess were allowed to have a respectable blouse and hair escaping rapidly from a tight bun, then Miss Drapes could have been deified. 'It was them! They sold the gold years ago!' This caused a general and enthusiastic uproar on all sides not containing a Lavish. 'There will be silence!' shouted Vetinari. 374 The lawyers rose. Mr Slant glared. The lawyers sank. And Moist wiped pineapple custard from his eyes just in time. 'Look out! He's got a daisy!' he shouted, and then thought: I just shouted 'Look out! He's got a daisy!', and I think I'm going to remember, for ever, just how embarrassing this is. Lord Vetinari looked down at the improbably large flower in the clown's buttonhole. A tiny drop of water glistened in the almost well-concealed nozzle. 'Yes,' he said, 'I know. Now, sir, I do indeed believe you are Mr Bent. I recognize the walk, you see. If you are not, then all you have to do is squeeze. And all I have to do is let go. I repeat: I'd like to hear from Mr Bent.' Sometimes the gods don't have the right sense of occasion, Moist thought. There should be thunder, a plangent tone, a chord of tension, some kind of celestial acknowledgement that here was the moment of tru— '9.12798,' said the clown. Vetinari smiled and patted him on the shoulder. 'Welcome back,' he said, and looked around until he found Dr Whiteface of the Fools' Guild. 'Doctor, would you take care of Mr Bent, please? I think he needs to be among his own.' 'It would be an honour, my lord. Seven pies in the air at once and a four-man ladder tie? Exemplary! Whoever you are, brother, I offer you the joke handshake of welcome…' 'He's not going anywhere without me,' said Miss Drapes grimly, as the white-faced clown stepped forward. 'Indeed, who could imagine how he would,' said Vetinari. 'And please extend the courtesy of your guild to Mr Bent's young lady, doctor,' he 375 added, to the surprise and delight of Miss Drapes, who clung on daily to the 'lady' but had reluctantly said goodbye to the 'young' years ago. 'And will somebody please release those people from that ladder? I think a saw will be required,' Vetinari went on. 'Drumknott, collect up these intriguing new ledgers that Mr Bent's young lady has so kindly supplied. And I think Mr Lavish needs medical attention—' 'I… do… not!' Cosmo, dripping custard, was trying to remain upright. It was painful to watch. He managed to point a furious but wavering finger at the tumbled books. 'Those,' he declared, 'are the property of the bank!' 'Mr Lavish, it is clear to us all that you are ill—' Vetinari began. 'Yes, you'd like everyone to believe that, wouldn't you — impostor!' Cosmo said, visibly swaying. In his head the crowd cheered. 'The Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork,' said Vetinari, without taking his eyes off Cosmo, 'prides itself on its red-leather ledgers, which without fail are embossed with the seal of the city in gold leaf. Drumknott?' 'These are cheap card-bound ones, sir. You can buy them anywhere. The writing within, however, is the unmistakable fine copperplate hand of Mr Bent.' 'You are sure?' 'Oh, yes. He does a wonderful cursive script.' 'Fake,' said Cosmo, as if his tongue was an inch thick, 'all fake. Stolen!' Moist looked at the watching people, and saw the shared expression. Whatever you thought of him, it was not good to see a man fall to bits where he stood. A couple of watchmen were sidling carefully towards him. 'I never stole a thing in my life!' said Miss Drapes, bridling enough for a gymkhana. 'They were in his wardrobe—' She hesitated, and decided she'd rather be scarlet than grey. 'I don't care what Lady Deirdre Waggon thinks! 376 And I've taken a look inside them, too! Your father took the gold and sold it and forced him to hide it in the numbers! And that's not the half of it!' '… Beautiful but'fly,' Cosmo slurred, blinking at Vetinari. 'You not me any mo'. Walked mile in y'shoes!' Moist also edged in his direction. Cosmo had the look of someone who might explode at any moment, or collapse, or just possibly fall on Moist's neck mumbling things like: 'You're m'bestest pal, you are, it's you'n'me 'gainst the worl', pal.' Greenish sweat was pouring down the man's face. 'I think you need a lie-down, Mr Lavish,' said Moist cheerfully. Cosmo tried to focus on him. ''s a good pain,' the dripping man confided. 'Got li'l hat, got sword o' t'ousand men's—' and with a whisper of steel a grey blade, with an evil red glitter to it, was pointing between Moist's eyes. It didn't waver. Behind it, Cosmo was trembling and twitching, but the sword stayed rigid and unmoving. The advancing watchmen slowed down a little. Their job had a pension. 'Will no one at all make any move, please? I think I can deal with this,' said Moist, squinting along the blade. This was a time for delicacy… 'Oh, this is so silly,' said Pucci, strutting forward with a clatter of heels. 'We've got nothing to be ashamed of. It's our gold, isn't it? Who cares what he wrote down in his books?' The phalanx of Lavish lawyers rose very cautiously to their feet, while the two employed by Pucci began to whisper urgently to her. She ignored them. Everyone was staring at her now, not her brother. Everyone was paying attention to her. 'Could you please be quiet, Miss Lavish?' said Moist. The stillness of the blade worried him. Some part of Cosmo was functioning very well indeed. 377 'Oh yes, I expect you just would like me to shut up, and I'm not going to!' said Pucci gleefully. Like Moist confronted by an open notebook, she triumphantly plunged on without a care: 'We can't steal what already belongs to us, can we? So what if Father put the wretched gold to better use? It was just sitting there! Honestly, why are you all so dense? Everybody does it. It's not stealing. I mean, the gold still exists, yes? In rings and things. It's not as though anyone's going to throw it away. Who cares where it is?' Moist resisted the impulse to look at the other bankers in the room. Everyone does it, eh? Pucci was not going to get many Hogswatch cards this year. And her brother was staring at her in horror. The rest of the clan, those who weren't still engrossed in decustarding themselves, were contriving to give the impression that they had never seen Pucci before. Who is this mad woman? said their faces. Who let her in? What is she talking about? 'I think your brother is very ill, miss,' Moist said. Pucci tossed her admittedly fine locks dismissively. 'Don't worry about him, he's just being silly,' she said. 'He's only doing it to attract attention. Silly boyish stuff about wanting to be Vetinari, as if anyone in their right mind would—' 'He's dribbling green,' said Moist, but nothing cut through the barrage of chatter. He stared at Cosmo's ravaged face, and everything made sense. Beard. Cap. Swordstick, yes, with someone's tacky idea of what a blade made from the iron in the blood of a thousand men should look like. And what about the murder of a man who made rings? What was in that stinking glove… This is my world. I know how to do this. 'I beg your pardon! You are Lord Vetinari, aren't you?' he said. For a moment Cosmo drew himself up and a spark of imperiousness shone through. 'Indeed! Yes indeed,' he said, raising one eyebrow. Then it sagged, and his puffy face sagged with it. 378 'Got ring. Vetin'ri ring,' he mumbled. ''s mine really. Good pain…' The sword dropped, too. Moist grabbed the man's left hand and tore the glove off. It came away with a sucking sound and a smell that was unimaginably, nose-cakingly bad. The nearest guard threw up. So many colours, thought Moist. So many… wiggling things… And there, still visible in the suppurating mass, the unmistakable sullen gleam of stygium. Moist grabbed Cosmo's other hand. 'I think you ought to come outside, my lord, now you are the Patrician,' he said loudly. 'You must meet the people…' Once again some inner Cosmo got a slippery grip, enough to cause the dribbling mouth to utter: 'Yes, this is very important…' before reverting to: 'Feel ill. Finger looks funny…' 'The sunshine will do it good,' said Moist, taking him gently in tow. 'Trust me.' 379 Chapter 13 Gladys Does It For Herself — To the House of Mirth — The history of Mr Bent — Usefulness of clowns as nurses is questioned — Owlswick gets an angel — The golden secret (not exactly dragon magic) — The return of the teeth — Vetinari looks ahead — The Bank Triumphant — The Glooper's little gift — How to spoil a perfect day ON THE FIRST DAY of the rest of his life Moist von Lipwig woke up, which was nice given that on any particular day a number of people do not, but woke up alone, which was less pleasing. It was 6 a.m., and the fog seemed glued to the windows, so thick that it should have contained croutons. But he liked these moments, before the fragments of yesterday reassembled themselves. Hold on, this wasn't the suite, was it? This was his room in the Post Office, which had all the luxury and comfort that you would normally associate with the term 'civil service issue'. A piece of yesterday fell into place. Oh yes, Vetinari had ordered the bank shut while his clerks looked at everything this time. Moist wished them luck with the late Sir Joshua's special cupboard… There was no Mr Fusspot, which was a shame. You don't appreciate an early-morning slobber until it's gone. And there was no Gladys, either, which was worrying. She didn't turn up while he was getting dressed, either, and there was no copy of the Times on his desk. His suit needed pressing, too. 380 He eventually found her pushing a trolley of mail in the sorting room. The blue dress had gone, to be replaced by a grey one which, by the nascent standard of golem dressmaking, looked quite smart. 'Good morning, Gladys,' Moist ventured. 'Any chance of some pressed trouser?' 'There Is Always A Warm Iron In The Postmen's Locker Room, Mr Lipwig.' 'Oh? Ah. Right. And, er… the Times? 'Four Copies Are Delivered To Mr Groat's Office Every Morning, Mr Lipwig,' said Gladys reproachfully. 'I suppose a sandwich is totally out of—' 'I Really Must Get On With My Duties, Mr Lipwig,' said the golem reproachfully. 'You know, Gladys, I can't help thinking that there's something different about you,' said Moist. 'Yes! I Am Doing It For Myself,' said Gladys, her eyes glowing. 'Doing what, exactly?' 'I Have Not Ascertained This Yet, But I Am Only Ten Pages Into The Book.' 'Ah. You've been reading a new book? But not one by Lady Deirdre Waggon, I'll wager.' 'No, Because She Is Out Of Touch With Modern Thought. I Laugh With Scorn.' 'Yes, I imagine she would be,' said Moist thoughtfully. 'And I expect Miss Dearheart gave you said book?' 381 'Yes. It Is Entitled Why Men Get Under Your Feet By Releventia Flout,' said Gladys earnestly. And we start out with the best of intentions, thought Moist: find 'em out, dig 'em up, make 'em free. But we don't know what we're doing, or what we're doing it to. 'Gladys, the thing about books… well, the thing… I mean, just because it's written down, you don't have to… that is to say, it doesn't mean it's… what I'm getting at is that every book is—' He stopped. They believe in words. Words give them life. I can't tell her that we just throw them around like jugglers, we change their meaning to suit ourselves… He patted Gladys on the shoulder. 'Well, read them all and make up your own mind, eh?' 'That Was Very Nearly Inappropriate Touching, Mr Lipwig.' Moist started to laugh, and stopped at the sight of her grave expression. 'Er, only for Ms Flout, I expect,' he said, and went to grab a Times before they were all stolen. It must have been another bittersweet day for the editor. After all, there can only be one front page. In the end he'd stuffed in everything: the 'I do believe it is pineapple' line, plus picture, with the dripping Lavishes in the background, and, oh yes, here was Pucci's speech, in detail. It was wonderful. And she'd gone on and on. It was all perfectly clear from her point of view: she was right and everyone was silly. She was so in love with her own voice that the watchmen had to write down their official caution on a piece of paper and hold it up in front of her before they towed her away, still talking… And someone had got a picture of Cosmo's ring catching the sunlight. It was near perfect surgery, they said down at the hospital, and had probably saved his life, they said, and how had Moist known what to do, they said, 382 when the entirety of Moist's relevant medical knowledge was that a finger shouldn't have green mushrooms growing on it— The paper was twitched out of his hands. 'What have you done with Professor Flead?' Adora Belle demanded. 'I know you've done something! Don't lie.' 'I haven't done anything!' Moist protested, and checked the wording. Yes, technically true. 'I've been to the Department of Post-Mortem Communications, you know!' 'And what did they say?' 'I don't know! There was a squid blocking the door! But you've done something, I know it! He told you the secret of getting through to the golems, didn't he?' 'No.' Absolutely true. Adora Belle hesitated. 'He didn't?' 'No. I got some extra vocabulary, but that's no secret.' 'Will it work for me?' 'No.' Currently true. 'They'd only take orders from a man? I bet that's it!' 'I don't think so.' True enough. 'So there is a secret?' 'It's not really a secret. Flead told us. He just didn't know it was a secret.' True. 383 'It's a word?' 'No.' True. 'Look, why won't you tell me? You know you can trust me!' 'Well, yes. Of course. But can I trust you if someone holds a knife to your throat?' 'Why should they do that?' Moist sighed. 'Because you'll know how to command the biggest army there has ever been! Did you look around outside? Didn't you see all the coppers? They turned up right after the hearing!' 'What coppers?' 'Those trolls re-laying the cobbles? How often do you see that happening? The line of cabs that aren't interested in passengers? The battalion of beggars? And the coach yard around the back is full of hangers-on, lounging about and watching the windows. Those coppers. It's called a stake-out, and I'm the meat—' There was a knock at the door. Moist recognized it; it sought to alert without disturbing. 'Come in, Stanley,' he said. The door opened. 'It's me, sir,' said Stanley, who went through life with the care of a man reading a manual translated from a foreign language. 'Yes, Stanley.' 'Head of Stamps, sir,' said Stanley. 'Yes, Stanley?' 384 'Lord Vetinari is in the coach yard, sir, inspecting the new automatic pick-up mechanism. He says there is no rush, sir.' 'He says there is no rush,' said Moist to Adora Belle. 'We'd better hurry, then?' 'Exactly.' 'Remarkably like a gibbet,' said Lord Vetinari, while behind him coaches rumbled in and out. 'It will allow a fast coach to pick up mailbags without slowing,' said Moist. 'That means letters going from small country offices can travel express without slowing the coach. It could save a few minutes on a long run.' 'And of course if I let you have some of the golem horses the coaches might travel at a hundred miles an hour, I'm told, and I wonder if those glowing eyes could see even through this murk.' 'Possibly, sir. But in fact I already have all the golem horses,' said Moist. Vetinari gave him a cool look, and then said: 'Hah! And you also have all your ears. What exchange rate are we discussing?' 'Look, it's not that I want to be Lord of the Golems—' Moist began. 'On the way, please. Do join me in my coach,' said Vetinari. 'Where are we going?' 'Hardly any distance. We're going to see Mr Bent.' The clown who opened the little sliding door in the Fools' Guild's forbidding gates looked from Vetinari to Moist to Adora Belle, and wasn't very happy about any of them. 385 'We are here to see Dr Whiteface,' said Vetinari. 'I require you to let us in with the minimum of mirth.' The door snapped back. There was some hurried whispering and a clanking noise, and one half of the double doors opened a little way, just enough for people to walk through in single file. Moist stepped forward, but Vetinari put a restraining hand on his shoulder and pointed up with his stick. 'This is the Fools' Guild,' he said. 'Expect… fun.' There was a bucket balanced on the door. He sighed and gave it a push with his stick. There was a thud and a splash from the other side. 'I don't know why they persist in this, I really don't,' he said, sweeping through. 'It's not funny and it could hurt someone. Mind the custard.' There was a groan from the dark behind the door. 'Mr Bent was born Charlie Benito, according to Dr Whiteface,' said Vetinari, pushing his way through the tent that occupied the guild's quadrangle. 'And he was born a clown.' Dozens of clowns paused in their daily training to watch them pass. Pies remained unflung, trousers did not fill with whitewash, invisible dogs paused in mid-widdle. ' Born a clown?' said Moist. 'Indeed, Mr Lipwig. A great clown, from a family of clowns. You saw him yesterday. The Charlie Benito make-up has been passed down for centuries.' 'I thought he'd gone mad!' 'Dr Whiteface, on the other hand, thinks he has come to his senses. Young Bent had a terrible childhood, I gather. No one told him he was a clown until he was thirteen. And his mother, for reasons of her own, discouraged all clownishness in him.' 386 'She must have liked clowns once,' said Adora Belle. She looked around her. All the clowns hurriedly looked away. 'She loved clowns,' said Vetinari. 'Or should I say, one clown. And for one night.' 'Oh. I see,' said Moist. 'And then the circus moved on?' 'As circuses do, alas. After which I suspect she rather went off men with red noses.' 'How do you know all this?' said Moist. 'Some of it is informed conjecture, but Miss Drapes has got a lot out of him in the last couple of days. She is a lady of some depth and determination.' On the far side of the big tent there was another doorway, where the head of the guild was waiting for them. He was white all over — white hat, white boots, white costume and white face — and on that face, delineated in thin lines of red greasepaint, a smile belying the real face, which was as cold and proud as that of a prince of Hell. Dr Whiteface nodded at Vetinari. 'My lord…' 'Dr Whiteface,' said the Patrician. 'And how is the patient?' 'Oh, if only he had come to us when he was young,' said Whiteface, 'what a clown he would have been! What timing! Oh, by the way, we do not normally allow women visitors into the guild building, but in these special circumstances we are waiving this rule.' 'Oh, I'm so glad,' said Adora Belle, acid etching every syllable. 'It is simply that, whatever the Jokes For Women group says, women are just not funny.' 387 'It is a terrible affliction,' Adora Belle agreed. 'An interesting dichotomy, in fact, since neither are clowns,' said Vetinari. 'I've always thought so,' said Adora Belle. 'They are tragic,' said Vetinari, 'and we laugh at their tragedy as we laugh at our own. The painted grin leers out at us from the darkness, mocking our insane belief in order, logic, status, the reality of reality. The mask knows that we are born on the banana skin that leads only to the open manhole cover of doom, and all we can hope for are the cheers of the crowd.' 'Where do the squeaky balloon animals fit in?' said Moist. 'I have no idea. But I understand that when the would-be murderers broke in Mr Bent strangled one with quite a lifelike humorous pink elephant made out of balloons.' 'Just imagine the noise,' said Adora Belle cheerfully. 'Yes! What a turn! And without any training! And the business with the ladder? Pure battle-clowning! Superb!' said Whiteface. 'We know it all now, Havelock. After his mother died, his father came back and of course took him off to the circus. Any clown could see the boy had funny bones. Those feet! They should have sent him to us! A boy of that age, it can be very tricky! But no, he was bundled into his grandfather's old gear and shoved out into the ring in some tiny little town, and, well, that's where clowning lost a king.' 'Why? What happened?' said Moist. 'Why do you think? They laughed at him.' It was raining, and wet branches lashed at him as he bounded through the woods, whitewash still dribbling from his baggy trousers. The pants themselves bounced up and down on their elastic braces, occasionally hitting him under the chin. 388 The boots were good, though. They were amazing boots. They were the only ones he'd ever had that fitted. But his mother had brought him up properly. Clothes should be a respectable grey, mirth was indecent, and make-up was a sin. Well, punishment had come fast enough! At dawn he found a barn. He scraped off the dried custard and caked greasepaint and washed himself in a puddle. Oh, that face! The fat nose, the huge mouth, the white tear painted on — he would remember it in nightmares, he knew it. At least he still had his own shirt and drawers, which covered all the important bits. He was about to throw everything else away when an inner voice stopped him. His mother was dead and he hadn't been able to stop the bailiffs taking everything, even the brass ring Mother polished every day. He'd never see his father again… he had to keep something, there had to be something, something so that he might remember who and why he was and where he'd come from and even why he'd left. The barn yielded a sack full of holes; that was good enough. The hated suit was stuffed inside. Later that day he'd come across some caravans parked under the trees, but they were not the garish wagons of the circus. Probably they were religious, he thought, and Mother had approved of the quieter religions, provided the gods weren't foreign. They gave him rabbit stew. And when he looked over the shoulder of a man sitting quietly at a small folding table, he saw a book full of numbers, all written down. He liked numbers. They'd always made sense in a world that didn't. And then he'd asked the man, very politely, what the number at the bottom was, and the answer had been: 'It's what we call the total', and he'd replied: 'No, that's not the total, that's three farthings short of the total.' 'How do you know?' said the man, and he'd said: 'I can see it is', and the man had said: 'But you only just glanced at it!' And he'd said: 'Well, yes, isn't that how?' 389 And then more books were opened and the people gathered round and gave him sums to do, and they were all so, so easy… It was all the fun the circus couldn't be, and involved no custard, ever. He opened his eyes, and made out the indistinct figures. 'Am I going to be arrested?' Moist glanced at Vetinari, who waved a hand vaguely. 'Not necessarily,' said Moist carefully. 'We know about the gold.' 'Sir Joshua said he would let it be known about my… family.' 'Yes, we know.' 'People would laugh. I couldn't stand that. And then I think I… you know, I think I convinced myself that the gold was all a dream? That provided I never looked for it, it would still be there.' He paused, as if random thoughts were queueing for the use of the mouth. 'Dr Whiteface has been kind enough to show me the history of the Charlie Benito face…' Another pause. 'I hear I threw custard pies with considerable accuracy. Perhaps my ancestors will be proud.' 'How do you feel now?' said Moist. 'Oh, quite well in myself,' said Bent. 'Whoever that is.' 'Good. Then I want to see you at work tomorrow, Mr Bent.' 'You can't ask him to go back so soon!' Miss Drapes protested. Moist turned to Whiteface and Vetinari. 'Could you please leave us, gentlemen?' There was an affronted look on the chief clown's face, which was made worse by the permanent happy smile, but the door shut behind them. 390 'Listen, Mr Bent,' said Moist urgently. 'We're in a mess—' 'I believed in the gold, you know,' said Bent. 'Didn't know where it was, but I believed.' 'Good. And it probably still exists in Pucci's jewellery box,' said Moist. 'But I want to open the bank again tomorrow, and Vetinari's people have been through every piece of paper in the place, and you can guess what kind of mess they leave. And I want to launch the notes tomorrow, you know? The money that doesn't need gold? And the bank doesn't need gold. We know this. It worked for years with a vault full of junk! But the bank needs you, Mr Bent. The Lavishes are in real trouble, Cosmo's locked up somewhere, the staff are all over the place and tomorrow, Mr Bent, the bank opens and you must be there. Please? Oh, and the chairman has graciously barked assent to putting you on a salary of sixty-five dollars a month. I know you are not a man to be influenced by money, but the rise might be worth considering by a man contemplating a, ah, change in his domestic arrangements?' It wasn't a shot in the dark. It was a shot in the light, clear blazing light. Miss Drapes was definitely a woman with a plan, and it had to be a better one than the rest of a life spent in a narrow room in Elm Street. 'It's your choice, of course,' he said, standing up. 'Are they treating him all right, Miss Drapes?' 'Only because I'm here,' she said smartly. 'This morning three clowns came in with a big rope and a small elephant and wanted to pull one of his poor teeth! And then I'd hardly got them out when two more came in and started to whitewash the room, very inefficiently in my opinion! I got them out of here in very short order, I can tell you!' 'Well done, Miss Drapes!' Vetinari was waiting outside the building with the coach door open. 'You will get in,' he said. 391 'Actually it's a very short walk to—' 'Get in, Mr Lipwig. We will go the pretty way. 'I believe you think our relationship is a game,' said Vetinari, as the coach pulled away. 'You believe that all sins will be forgiven. So let me give you this.' He took up a black walking stick, topped with a silver skull, and tugged at the handle. 'This curious thing was in the possession of Cosmo Lavish,' he said, as the blade slid out. 'I know. Isn't it a replica of yours?' said Moist. 'Oh really!' said Vetinari. 'Am I a "sword made of the blood of a thousand men" kind of ruler? It'll be a crown of skulls next, I suppose. I believe Cosmo had it made.' 'So it's a replica of a rumour?' Outside the coach, some gates were swung open. 'Indeed,' said Vetinari. 'A copy of something that does not exist. One can only hope that it is not authentic in every respect.' The coach door was opened, and Moist stepped down into the palace gardens. They had the usual look of such places — neat, tidy, lots of gravel and pointy trees and no vegetables. 'Why are we here?' said Adora Belle. 'It's about the golems, isn't it?' 'Miss Dearheart, what do our local golems think about this new army?' 'They don't like them. They think they will be the cause of trouble. They have no chem that can be changed. They're worse than zombies.' 'Thank you. A further question: will they kill?' 392 'Historically, golem-makers have learned not to make golems that kill—' 'Is that a no?' 'I don't know!' 'We make progress. Is it possible to give them an order which cannot be countermanded by another person?' 'Well, er… Yes. If no one else knows the secret.' 'Which is?' Vetinari turned back to Moist, and drew the sword. 'It must be the way I give the orders, sir,' said Moist, squinting downwards at the blade for the second time. It really did glint. He was braced for what happened, except that it happened in entirely the wrong way. Vetinari handed him the sword and said: 'Miss Dearheart, I really wish you would not leave the city for long periods. It makes this man seek danger. Tell us the secret, Mr Lipwig.' 'I think it could be too dangerous, sir.' 'Mr Lipwig, do I need a badge that says tyrant?' 'Can I make a bargain?' 'Of course. I am a reasonable man.' 'Will you keep to it?' 'No. But I will make a different bargain. The Post Office can have six golem horses. The other golem warriors will be considered wards of the Golem Trust, but the use of four hundred of them to improve the operation of the clacks system will, I am sure, meet with international approval. We will replace gold with golems as a basis for our currency, as you have so 393 eloquently pleaded. The two of you have made the international situation very… interesting—' 'Sorry, why is it me that's holding this sword?' said Moist. '—and you tell us the secret and, best of all, you live,' Vetinari finished, 'and who is going to give you a better offer?' 'Oh, all right,' said Moist, 'I knew this would have to happen. The golems obey me be—' '—because you wear a golden suit and therefore in their eyes must be an Umnian priest,' said Vetinari. 'Because for an order to be fully realized the right person must say the right words to the right recipient. And I used to be quite a scholar. It's a matter of reasoning. Do not continue to stand there with your mouth open.' 'You already knew?' 'It wasn't exactly dragon magic' 'And why did you give me this horrible sword?' 'It is tasteless, isn't it,' said Vetinari, taking it from him. 'One might imagine it belonging to someone with a name like Krax the Mighty. I was just interested to see that you were more fearful when you were holding it. You really are not a violent man, are you…' 'That wasn't necessary!' said Moist. Adora Belle was grinning. 'Mr Lipwig, Mr Lipwig, Mr Lipwig, will you never learn?' said Vetinari, sheathing the sword. 'One of my predecessors used to have people torn apart by wild tortoises. It was not a quick death. He thought it was a hoot. Forgive me if my pleasures are a little more cerebal, will you? Let me see, now, what was the other thing? Oh yes, I regret to tell you that a man called Owlswick Clamp has died.' There was something about the way he said it… 394 'Did an angel call him?' 'Very likely, Mr Lipwig. But should you find yourself in need of more designs, I'm sure I can find someone in the palace to assist.' 'It was meant to be, I'm sure,' said Moist. 'I'm glad he's gone to a better place.' 'Less damp, certainly. Go now. My coach is at your disposal. You have a bank to open! The world spins on, and this morning it is spinning on my desk. Come, Mr Fusspot.' 'Can I make a suggestion that might help?' said Moist, as Vetinari turned away. 'What is it?' 'Well, why don't you tell all the other Plains governments about the golden secret? That would mean no one could use them as soldiers. That would take the pressure off.' 'Hmm, interesting. And would you agree with that, Miss Dearheart?' 'Yes! We don't want golem armies! It's a very good idea!' Vetinari reached down and gave Mr Fusspot a dog biscuit. When he straightened up there was an almost imperceptible change in his expression. 'Last night,' he said, 'some traitor sent the golden secret to the rulers of every major city in the Plains via a clacks message, the origin of which appears to be untraceable. It wasn't you, was it, Mr Lipwig?' 'Me? No!' 'But you just suggested it, did you not? Some would call it treason, incidentally.' 395 'I only just mentioned it,' said Moist. 'You can't pin it on me! Anyway it was a good idea,' he added, trying not to catch Adora Belle's eye. 'If you don't think of not using fifty-foot-high killer golems first, someone else will! He heard her giggle, for the first time ever. 'You have found forty-foot killer golems now, Miss Dearheart?' said Vetinari, looking stern, as though he might add, 'Well, I hope you brought enough for everybody!' 'No, sir. There aren't any,' said Adora Belle, trying to look serious and not succeeding. 'Well, never mind. I'm sure some ingenious person will devise one for you eventually. When they do, don't hesitate to refrain from bringing it home. In the meantime, we have this wretched fait accompli.' Vetinari shook his head in what Moist was sure was genuinely contrived annoyance and went on: 'An army that will obey anyone with a shiny jacket, a megaphone and the Umnian words for "Dig a hole and bury yourselves" would turn war into nothing but a rather entertaining farce. You may be assured, I'm putting together a committee of inquiry. It will not rest, apart from statutory tea and biscuit breaks, until it has found the culprit. I shall take a personal interest, of course.' Of course you will, Moist thought. And I know that lots of people heard me shout Umnian commands, but I'm betting on a man who thinks war is a wicked waste of customers. A man who's a better con artist than I'll ever be, who thinks committees are a kind of wastepaper basket, who can turn sizzle into sausage every day… Moist and Adora Belle looked at one another. Their glances agreed: it's him. Of course it's him. Downey and all the rest of them will know it's him. Things that live on damp walls will know it's him. And no one will ever prove it. 'You can trust us,' said Moist. 396 'Yes. I know,' said Vetinari. 'Come, Mr Fusspot. There maybe cake.' Moist didn't fancy another ride in the coach. Coaches carried some unpleasant associations right now. 'He's won, hasn't he?' said Adora Belle, as the fog billowed around them. 'Well, he's got the chairman eating out of his hand.' 'Is he allowed to do that?' 'I think that comes under the rule of Quia Ego Sic Dico.' 'Yes, what does that mean?' ' "Because I say so", I think.' 'That doesn't sound like much of a rule!' 'Actually, it's the only one he needs. All in all he could be—' 'You owe me five grand, Mishter Spangler!' The figure was out of the gloom and behind Adora Belle in one movement. 'No tricks, mish, on account o' this knife,' said Cribbins, and Moist heard Adora Belle's sharp intake of breath. 'Your chum promised it to me for peaching you, and since you peached yourshelf and shent him to the loony house I reckon you owe me, right?' Moist's slowly moving hand found his pocket, but it was bereft of aid. His little helpers had been confiscated; the Tanty didn't like you to bring blackjacks and lockpicks in with you and expected you to buy such things from the warders, like everyone else. 'Put the knife away and we can talk,' he said. 397 'Oh yeah, talk! You like talkin', you do! You got a magic tongue, you have! I sheen you! You flap it about and you're the golden boy! You tell 'em you're goin' to rob them and they laugh! How d'you get away with that, eh?' Cribbins was champing and spitting with rage. Angry people make mistakes, but that's no comfort when they're holding a knife a few inches from your girlfriend's kidneys. She'd gone pale, and Moist had to hope that she'd worked out that this was no time to stamp her foot. Above all, he had to stop himself from looking over Cribbins's shoulder, because in the edge of his vision he was sure someone was creeping up. 'This is no time for rash moves,' he said loudly. The shadow in the fog appeared to halt. 'Cribbins, this is why you never made it,' Moist went on. 'I mean, do you expect me to have that money on me?' 'Plenty of places round here for ush to be coshy while we wait, eh?' Dumb, thought Moist. Dumb but dangerous. And a thought said: it's brain against brain. And a weapon he doesn't know how to use belongs to you. Push him. 'Just back away and we'll forget we saw you,' he said. 'That's the best offer you're going to get.' 'You're going to try to talk your way out of this, you shmarmy bashtard? I'm goin' to—' There was a loud twang, and Cribbins made a noise. It was the sound of someone trying to scream, except that even screaming was too painful. Moist grabbed Adora Belle as the man bent double, clutching at his mouth. There was a ping, and blood appeared on Cribbins's cheek, causing him to whimper and roll up into a ball. Even then, there were more twangs as a dead man's dentures, mistreated and ill-used over the years, finally gave up the ghost who made a determined effort to take the hated Cribbins with him. Later on, the doctor said one spring even made it into his sinuses. 398 Captain Carrot and Nobby Nobbs ran out of the fog and stared down at the man who twitched now and again with a ping. 'Sorry, sir, we lost you in the murk,' said Carrot. 'What happened to him?' Moist held Adora Belle tightly. 'His dentures exploded,' he said. 'How could that happen, sir?' 'I have no idea, captain. Why not do a good deed and get him to the hospital?' 'Will you want to prefer charges, Mr Lipwig?' said Carrot, lifting the whimpering Cribbins with some care. 'I'd prefer a brandy,' said Moist. He thought perhaps Anoia was just awaiting her moment. I'd better go to her temple and hang up a big, big ladle. It may not be a good idea to be ungrateful… Secretary Drumknott tiptoed into Lord Vetinari's office on velvet-shod feet. 'Good morning,' said his lordship, turning away from the window. 'The fog has a very pleasing tint of yellow this morning. Any news about Heretofore?' 'The Watch in Quirm are searching for him, sir,' said Drumknott, putting the city edition of the Times in front of him. 'Why?' 'He bought a ticket for Quirm.' 'But he will have bought another one from the coachman for Genua. He will run as far as he can. Send a short clacks to our man there, will you?' 'I hope you are right, sir.' 399 'Do you? I hope I am wrong. It will be good for me. Ah. Ahaha.' 'Sir?' 'I see the Times has put colour on the front page again. The front and back of the one-dollar note.' 'Yes, sir. Very nice.' 'Actual size, too,' said Vetinari, still smiling. 'I see here that this is to familiarize people with the look of the thing. Even now, Drumknott, even now, honest citizens are carefully cutting out both sides of this note and gluing them together.' 'Shall I have a word with the editor, sir?' 'Don't. It will be more entertaining to let things take their course.' Vetinari leaned back in his chair and shut his eyes with a sigh. 'Very well, Drumknott, I feel strong enough now to hear what the political cartoon looks like.' There was a crackle of paper as Drumknott found the right page. 'Well, there is a very good likeness of Mr Fusspot.' Under Vetinari's chair the dog opened his eyes at the sound of his name. So did his new master, with more urgency. 'Surely he has nothing in his mouth?' 'No, sir,' said Drumknott calmly. 'This is the Times of Ankh-Morpork, sir.' Vetinari relaxed again. 'Continue.' 'He is on a leash, sir, and looking unaccustomedly ferocious. You are holding the leash, sir. In front of him, and backing nervously into a corner, are a group of very fat cats. They are wearing top hats, sir.' 400 'As cats do, yes.' 'And they have the words "The Banks" on them,' Drumknott added. 'Subtle indeed!' 'Whilst you, sir, are waving a handful of paper money at them and the speech bubble says—' 'Don't tell me. "THIS does NOT taste of pineapple"?' 'Well done, sir. Incidentally, it does so happen that the chairmen of the rest of the city banks wish to see you, at your convenience.' 'Good. This afternoon, then.' Vetinari got up and walked over to the window. The fog was thinning, but its drifting cloud still obscured the city. 'Mr Lipwig is a very… popular young man, is he not, Drumknott?' said Vetinari, staring into the gloom. 'Oh yes, sir,' said the secretary, folding up the newspaper. 'Extremely so.' 'And very confident in himself, I think.' 'I would say so.' And loyal?' 'He took a pie for you, sir.' A tactical thinker at speed, then.' 'Oh yes.' 'Bearing in mind his own future was riding on the pie as well.' 401 'He is certainly sensitive to political currents, no doubt about it,' said Drumknott, picking up his bundle of files. And, as you say, popular,' said Vetinari, still a gaunt outline against the fog. Drumknott waited. Moist was not the only one sensitive to political currents. An asset to the city, indeed,' said Vetinari, after a while. And we should not waste him. Obviously, though, he should be at the Royal Bank long enough to bend it to his satisfaction,' he mused. Drumknott said nothing, but arranged some of the files into a more pleasing order. A name struck him, and he shifted a file to the top. 'Of course, then he will get restless again and a danger to others as well as himself…' Drumknott smiled at his files. His hand hovered… 'Apropos of nothing, how old is Mr Creaser?' 'The Taxmaster? In his seventies, sir,' said Drumknott, opening the file he had just selected. 'Yes, seventy-four, it says here.' 'We have recently pondered his methods, have we not?' 'Indeed we have, sir. Last week.' 'Not a man with a flexible cast of mind, I feel. A little at sea in the modern world. Holding someone upside down over a bucket and giving them a good shaking is not the way forward. I won't blame him when he decides to take an honourable and well-earned retirement.' 'Yes, sir. When would you like him to decide that, sir?' said Drumknott. 'No rush,' said Vetinari. 'No rush.' 402 'Have you given any thought to his successor? It's not a job that creates friends,' said Drumknott. 'It would need a special sort of person.' 'I shall ponder it,' said Vetinari. 'No doubt a name will present itself.' The bank staff were at work early, pushing through the crowds who were filling the street because a) this was another act in the wonderful street theatre that was Ankh-Morpork and b) there was going to be big trouble if their money had gone missing. There was, however, no sign of Mr Bent or Miss Drapes. Moist was in the Mint. Mr Spools's men had, well, they'd done their best. It's an apologetic phrase, commonly used to mean that the result is just one step above mediocre, but their best was one leap above superb. 'I'm sure we can improve them,' said Mr Spools, as Moist gloated. 'They arc perfect, Mr Spools!' 'Anything but. But it's kind of you to say so. We've done seventy thousand so far.' 'Nothing like enough!' 'With respect, we are not printing a newspaper here. But we're getting better. You have talked about other denominations… ?' 'Oh, yes. Two, five and ten dollars to start with. And the fives and tens will talk.' Nothing like enough, he thought, as the colours of money flowed through his fingers. People will queue up for this. They won't want the grubby, heavy coins, not when they see this! Backed by golems! What is a coin compared to the hand that holds it? That's worth! That's value! Hm, yes, that'd look good on the two-dollar note, too, I'd better remember that. 403 'The money… will talk?' said Mr Spools carefully. 'Imps,' said Moist. 'They're only a sort of intelligent spell. They don't even have to have a shape. We'll print them on the higher denominations.' 'Do you think the university will agree to that?' said Spools. 'Yes, because I'm going to put Ridcully's head on the five-dollar note. I'll go and talk to Ponder Stibbons. This looks like a job for inadvisably applied magic if ever I saw one.' 'And what would the money say?' 'Anything we want it to. "Is your purchase really necessary?" perhaps, or "Why not save me for a rainy day?" The possibilities are endless!' 'It usually says goodbye to me,' said a printer, to ritual amusement. 'Well, maybe we can make it blow you a kiss as well,' said Moist. He turned to the Men of the Sheds, who were beaming and gleaming with new-found importance. 'Now, if some of you gentlemen will help me carry this lot into the bank…' The hands of the clock were chasing one another to the top of the hour when Moist arrived, and there was still no sign of Mr Bent. 'Is that clock right?' said Moist, as the hands began the relaxing stroll to the half-hour. 'Oh yes, sir,' said a counter clerk. 'Mr Bent sets it twice a day.' 'Maybe, but he hasn't been here for more than—' The doors swung open, and there he was. Moist had for some reason expected the clown outfit, but this was the smooth and shiny, ironed-in-his-clothes Bent with the smart jacket and pinstripe trousers and- -the red nose. And he was arm in arm with Miss Drapes. 404 The staff stared at it all, too shocked for a reaction. 'Ladies and gentlemen,' said Bent, his voice echoing in the sudden silence, 'I owe so many apologies. I have made many mistakes. Indeed, my whole life has been a mistake. I believed that true worth lodged in lumps of metal. Much of what I believed is worthless, in fact, but Mr Lipwig believed in me and so I am here today. Let us make money based not on a trick of geology but on the ingenuity of hand and brain. And now—' He paused, because Miss Drapes had squeezed his arm. 'Oh, yes, how could I forget?' Bent went on. 'What I do now believe with all my heart is that Miss Drapes will marry me in the Chapel of Fun in the Fools' Guild on Saturday, the ceremony to be conducted by the Reverend Brother "Whacko" Whopply. You are all of course invited—' '—but be careful what you wear because it's a whitewash wedding,' said Miss Drapes coyly, or what she probably thought was coyly. 'And with that it only remains for me to—' Bent tried to continue, but the staff had realized what their ears had heard, and closed in on the couple, the women drawn to the soon-not-to-be-Miss Drapes by the legendarily high gravity of an engagement ring, while the men went from slapping Mr Bent on the back to the unthinkable, which involved picking him up and carrying him around the room on their shoulders. Eventually it was Moist who had to cup his hands and shout: 'Look at the time, ladies and gentlemen! Our customers are waiting, ladies and gentlemen! Let us not stand in the way of making money! We mustn't be a dam in the economic flow!' … and he wondered what Hubert was doing now… With his tongue out in concentration, Igor removed a slim tube from the gurgling bowels of the Glooper. 405 A few bubbles zigzagged to the top of the central hydro unit and burst on the surface with a gloop. Hubert breathed a deep sigh of relief. 'Well done, Igor, only one more to… Igor?' 'Right here, thur,' said Igor, stepping out from behind him. 'It looks as though it's working, Igor. Good old hyphenated silicon! But you're sure it'll still work as an economic modeller afterwards?' 'Yeth, thur. I am confident in the new valve array. The thity will affect the Glooper, if you withth, but not the other way around.' 'Even so, it would be dreadful if it fell into the wrong hands, Igor. I wonder if I should present the Glooper to the government. What do you think?' Igor gave this some thought. In his experience a prime definition of 'the wrong hands' was 'the government'. 'I think you ought to take the opportunity to get out a bit more, thur,' he said kindly. 'Yes, I suppose I have been overdoing it,' said Hubert. 'Um… about Mr Lipwig…' 'Yeth?' Hubert looked like a man who had been wrestling with his conscience and got a knee in his eye. 'I want to put the gold back in the vault. That'll stop all this trouble.' 'But it wath thtolen away yearth ago, thur,' Igor explained patiently. 'It wathn't your fault.' 'No, but they were blaming Mr Lipwig, who's always been very kind to us.' 406 'I think he got off on that one, thur.' 'But we could put it back,' Hubert insisted. 'It would come back from wherever it was taken to, wouldn't it?' Igor scratched his head, causing a faint metallic noise. He had been following events with more care than Hubert employed and as far as he could see the missing gold had been spent by the Lavishes years ago. Mr Lipwig had been in trouble, but it seemed to Igor that trouble hit Mr Lipwig like a big wave hitting a flotilla of ducks. Afterwards there was no wave but there was still a lot of duck. 'It might,' he conceded. 'So that would be a good thing, yes?' Hubert insisted. 'And he's been very kind to us. We owe him that little favour.' 'I don't think—' 'That is an order, Igor!' Igor beamed. At last! All this politeness had been getting on his nerves. What an Igor expected was insane orders. That was what an Igor was born (and to some extent, made) for. A shouted order to do something of dubious morality with an unpredictable outcome? Thweet! Of course, thunder and lightning would have been more appropriate. Instead there was nothing more than the bubbling of the Glooper and gentle glassy noises that always made Igor think he was in a wind-chime factory. But sometimes you just had to improvise. He topped up the little Gold Reserve flask to the ten tons marker, fiddled with the shiny valve array for a minute or two, and then stood back. 'When I turn thith wheel, marthter, the Glooper will depothit an analogue of the gold in the vault and then clothe the connection.' 'Very good, Igor.' 407 'Er, you wouldn't like to thout thomething, would you,' he hinted. 'Like what?' 'Oh, I don't know… perhapth: "They said… sorry, thaid… thorry… I wath mad but thith will thow them!!"' 'That's not really me.' 'No?' said Igor. 'Perhapth a laugh, then?' 'Would that help?' 'Yeth, thur,' said Igor. 'It will help me.' 'Oh, very well, if you think it will help,' said Hubert. He took a sip from the jug Igor had just used, and cleared his throat. 'Hah,' he said. 'Er, hahahh hah HA HA HA HA HA HA…' What a waste of a wonderful gift, thought Igor, and turned the handle. Gloop! Even from down here in the vaults you could hear the buzz of activity in the banking hall. Moist walked under the weight of a crate of banknotes, to Adora Belle's annoyance. 'Why can't you put them in a safe?' 'Because those're full of coins. Anyway, we'll have to keep them in here for now, until we get sorted out.' 'It's really just a victory thing, isn't it? Your triumph over gold.' 'A bit, yes.' 408 'You got away with it again.' 'I wouldn't exactly put it like that. Gladys has applied to be my secretary' 'Here's a tip: don't let her sit on your lap.' 'I'm being serious here! She's ferocious! She probably wants my job now! She believes everything she reads!' 'There's your answer, then. Good grief, she's the least of your problems!' 'Every problem is an opportunity,' said Moist primly. 'Well, if you upset Vetinari again you will have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to never have to buy another hat.' 'No, I think he likes a little opposition.' 'And are you any good at knowing how much?' 'No. It's what I enjoy. You get a wonderful view from the point of no return.' Moist opened the vault and put the crate on a shelf. It looked a bit lost and alone, but he could just make out the thudding of the press in the Mint as Mr Spools's men worked hard at providing it with company. Adora Belle leaned on the doorframe, watching him carefully. 'They tell me that while I was away you did all kinds of risky things. Is that true?' 'I like to flirt with risk. It's always been part of my life.' 'But you don't do that kind of stuff while I'm around,' said Adora Belle. 'So I'm enough of a thrill, am I?' 409 She advanced. The heels helped, of course, but Spike could move like a snake trying to sashay, and the severe, tight and ostensibly modest dresses she wore left everything to the imagination, which is much more inflammatory than leaving nothing. Speculation is always more interesting than facts. 'What are you thinking about right now?' she said. She dropped her cigarette stub and pinned it with a heel. 'Money boxes,' said Moist instantly. 'Money boxes?' 'Yes, in the shape of the bank and the Mint. To teach the kiddies the habits of thrift. The money could go in the slot where the Bad Penny is—' 'Are you really thinking about money boxes?' 'Er, no. I'm flirting with risk again.' 'That's better!' 'Although you must admit that it's a pretty clev—' Adora Belle grabbed Moist by the shoulders. 'Moist von Lipwig, if you don't give me a big wet kiss right now— Ow! Are there fleas down here?' It felt like a hailstorm. The air in the vault had become a golden mist. It would have been pretty, if it wasn't so heavy. It stung where it touched. Moist grabbed her hand and dragged her out as the teeming particles became a torrent. Outside, he took off his hat, which was already so heavy that it was endangering his ears, and tipped a small fortune in gold on to the floor. The vault was already half full. 'Oh no,' he moaned, ' Just when it was going so well…' 410 Epilogue WHITENESS, COOLNESS, the smell of starch. 'Good morning, my lord.' Cosmo opened his eyes. A female face, surrounded by a white cap, was looking down at him. Ah, so it had worked. He had known it would. 'Would you like to get up?' said the woman, stepping back. There were a couple of heavily built men behind her, also in white. This was just as it should be. He looked down at the place where a whole finger should be, and saw a stump covered in a bandage. He couldn't quite remember how this had happened, but that was fine. After all, in order to change, something had to be lost as well as gained. That was fine. So this was a hospital. That was fine. 'This is a hospital, yes?' he said, sitting up in the bed. 'Well done, your lordship. You are in the Lord Vetinari ward, as a matter of fact.' That is fine, Cosmo thought. I endowed a ward at some time. That was very forward-looking of me. 'And those men are bodyguards?' he said, nodding at the men. 411 'Well, they are here to see that no harm comes to you,' said the nurse, 'so I suppose that's true.' There were a number of other patients in the long ward, all in white robes, some of them seated and playing board games, and a number of them standing at the big window, staring out. They stood in identical poses, their hands clasped behind their backs. Cosmo watched them for some time. Then he stared at the small table where two men were sitting opposite one another, apparently taking it in turns to measure each other's forehead. He had to pay careful attention for some time before he worked out what was going on. But Lord Vetinari was not a man to jump to conclusions. 'Excuse me, nurse,' said Cosmo, and she hurried over. He beckoned her closer, and the two burly men drew nearer, too, watching him carefully. 'I know those people are not entirely sane,' he said. 'They think they are Lord Vetinari, am I right? This is a ward for such people, yes? Those two are having an eyebrow-raising competition!' 'You are quite right,' said the nurse. 'Well done, my lord.' 'Doesn't it puzzle them when they see one another?' 'Not really, my lord. Each one thinks he's the real one.' 'So they don't know that I am the real one?' One of the guards leaned forward. 'No, my lord, we're keeping very quiet about it,' he said, winking at his colleague. Cosmo nodded. 'Very good. This is a wonderful place to stay while I'm getting better. The perfect place to be incognito. Who would think of looking for me in this room of poor, sad madmen?' 'That's exactly the plan, sir.' 412 'You know, some sort of artificial skyline would make things more interesting for the poor souls at the window,' he said. 'Ah, we can tell you're the real thing, sir,' said the man. Cosmo beamed. And two weeks later, when he won the eyebrow-raising competition, he was happier than he'd ever been before. The Pink PussyCat Club was packed — except for seat seven (front row, centre). The record for anyone remaining in seat seven was nine seconds. The baffled management had replaced the cushions and the springs several times. It made no difference. On the other hand, everything else was going so inexplicably well there seemed to be a good atmosphere in the place, especially among the dancers, who were working extra hard now that someone had invented a currency that could be stuck into a garter. The place was happy, the management concluded. That was worth a seat, especially in view of what had happened when they tried to take the damn thing away… 413 Document Outline �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� 
Maskerade - Terry Pratchett	----	Maskerade Maskerade by Terry Pratchett   v1.0 (01-feb-01) by 4i Publications. Layout corrections and quick proof in Word2000.     DEDICATION My thanks to the people who showed me that opera was stranger than I could imagine. I can best repay their kindness by not mentioning their names here.           The wind howled. The storm crackled on the mountains. Lightning prodded the crags like an old man trying to get an elusive blackberry pip out of his false teeth. Among the hissing furze bushes a fire blazed, the flames driven this way and that by the gusts. An eldritch voice shrieked: 'When shall we... two... meet again?' Thunder rolled. A rather more ordinary voice said: 'What'd you go and shout that for? You made me drop my toast in the fire.' Nanny Ogg sat down again. 'Sorry, Esme. I was just doing it for... you know... old time's sake... Doesn't roll off the tongue, though.' 'I'd just got it nice and brown, too.' 'Sorry.' 'Anyway, you didn't have to shout.' 'Sorry.' 'I mean, I ain't deaf. You could've just asked me in a normal voice. And I'd have said, "Next Wednesday." ' 'Sorry, Esme.' 'Just you cut me another slice.' Nanny Ogg nodded, and turned her head. 'Magrat, cut Granny ano... oh. Mind wandering there for a minute. I'll do it myself, shall I?? 'Hah!' said Granny Weatherwax, staring into the fire. There was no sound for a while but the roar of the wind and the sound of Nanny Ogg cutting bread, which she did with about as much efficiency as a man trying to chainsaw a mattress. 'I thought it'd cheer you up, coming up here,' she said after a while. 'Really.' It wasn't a question. 'Take you out of yourself, sort of thing...' Nanny went on, watching her friend carefully. 'Mm?' said Granny, still staring moodily at the fire. Oh dear, thought Nanny. I shouldn't've said that. The point was... well, the point was that Nanny Ogg was worried. Very worried. She wasn't at all sure that her friend wasn't... well... going... well, sort of... in a manner of speaking... well... black... She knew it happened, with the really powerful ones. And Granny Weatherwax was pretty damn' powerful. She was probably an even more accomplished witch now than the infamous Black Aliss, and everyone knew what had happened to her at the finish. Pushed into her own stove by a couple of kids, and everyone said it was a damn' good thing, even if it took a whole week to clean the oven. But Aliss, up until that terrible day, had terrorized the Ramtops. She'd become so good at magic that there wasn't room in her head for anything else. They said weapons couldn't pierce her. Swords bounced off her skin. They said you could hear her mad laughter a mile off, and of course, while mad laughter was always part of a witch's stock-in-trade in necessary circumstances, this was insane mad laughter, the worst kind. And she turned people into gingerbread and had a house made of frogs. It had been very nasty, towards the end. It always was, when a witch went bad. Sometimes, of course, they didn't go bad. They just went... somewhere. Granny's intellect needed something to do. She did not take kindly to boredom. She'd take to her bed instead and send her mind out Borrowing, inside the head of some forest creature, listening with its ears, seeing with its eyes. That was all very well for general purposes, but she was too good at it. She could stay away longer than anyone Nanny Ogg had ever heard of. One day, almost certainly, she wouldn't bother to come back... and this was the worst time of the year, with the geese honking and rushing across the sky every night, and the autumn air crisp and inviting. There was something terribly tempting about that. Nanny Ogg reckoned she knew what the cause of the problem was. She coughed. 'Saw Magrat the other day,' she ventured, looking sidelong at Granny. There was no reaction. 'She's looking well. Queening suits her.' 'Hmm?' Nanny groaned inwardly. If Granny couldn't even be bothered to make a nasty remark, then she was really missing Magrat. Nanny Ogg had never believed it at the start, but Magrat Garlick, wet as a sponge though she was half the time, had been dead right about one thing. Three was a natural number for witches. And they'd lost one. Well, not lost, exactly. Magrat was queen now, and queens were hard to mislay. But... that meant that there were only two of them instead of three. When you had three, you had one to run around getting people to make up when there'd been a row. Magrat had been good for that. Without Magrat, Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax got on one another's nerves. With her, all three had been able to get on the nerves of absolutely everyone else in the whole world, which had been a lot more fun. And there was no having Magrat back... at least, to be precise about it, there was no having Magrat back yet. Because, while three was a good number for witches... it had to be the right sort of three. The right sort of... types. Nanny Ogg found herself embarrassed even to think about this, and this was unusual because embarrassment normally came as naturally to Nanny as altruism comes to a cat. As a witch, she naturally didn't believe in any occult nonsense of any sort. But there were one or two truths down below the bedrock of the soul which had to be faced, and right in among them was this business of, well, of the maiden, the mother and the... other one. There. She'd put words around it. Of course, it was nothing but an old superstition and belonged to the unenlightened days when 'maiden' or 'mother' or... the other one... encompassed every woman over the age of twelve or so, except maybe for nine months of her life. These days, any girl bright enough to count and sensible enough to take Nanny's advice could put off being at least one of them for quite some time. Even so... it was an old superstition–older than books, older than writing–and beliefs like that were heavy weights on the rubber sheet of human experience, tending to pull people into their orbit. And Magrat had been married for three months. That ought to mean she was out of the first category. At least- Nanny twitched her train of thought on to a branch line–she probably was. Oh, surely. Young Verence had sent off for a helpful manual. It had pictures in it, and numbered parts. Nanny knew this because she had sneaked into the royal bedroom while visiting one day, and had spent an instructive ten minutes drawing moustaches and spectacles on some of the figures. Surely even Magrat and Verence could hardly fail to... No, they must have worked it out, even though Nanny had heard that Verence had been seen enquiring of people where he might buy a couple of false moustaches. It'd not be long before Magrat was eligible for the second category, even if they were both slow readers. Of course, Granny Weatherwax made a great play of her independence and self-reliance. But the point about that kind of stuff was that you needed someone around to be proudly independent and self-reliant at. People who didn't need people needed people around to know that they were the kind of people who didn't need people. It was like hermits- There was no point freezing your nadgers off on top of some mountain while communing with the Infinite unless you could rely on a lot of impressionable young women to come along occasionally and say 'Gosh' . ...They needed to be three again. Things got exciting, when there were three of you. There were rows, and adventures, and things for Granny to get angry about, and she was only happy when she was angry. In fact, it seemed to Nanny, she was only Granny Weatherwax when she was angry. Yes. They needed to be three. Or else... it was going to be grey wings in the night, or the clang of the oven door...     The manuscript fell apart as soon as Mr Goatberger picked it up. It wasn't even on proper paper. It had been written on old sugar bags, and the backs of envelopes, and bits of out-of-date calendar. He grunted, and grabbed a handful of the musty pages to throw them on the fire. A word caught his eye. He read it, and his eye was dragged to the end of the sentence. Then he read to the end of the page, doubling back a few times because he hadn't quite believed what he'd just read. He turned the page. And then he turned back. And then he read on. At one point he took a ruler out of his drawer and looked at it thoughtfully. He opened his drinks cabinet. The bottle tinkled cheerfully on the edge of the glass as he tried to pour himself a drink. Then he stared out of the window at the Opera House on the other side of the road. A small figure was brushing the steps. And then he said, 'Oh, my.' Finally he went to the door and said, 'Could you come in here, Mr Cropper?' His chief printer entered, clutching a sheaf of proofs. 'We're going to have to get Mr Cripslock to engrave page 11 again,' he said mournfully. 'He's spelled "famine" with seven letters–' 'Read this,' said Goatberger. 'I was just off to lunch–' 'Read this.' 'Guild agreement says–' 'Read this and see if you still have an appetite.' Mr Cropper sat down with bad grace and glanced at the first page. Then he turned to the second page. After a while he opened the desk drawer and pulled out a ruler, which he looked at thoughtfully. 'You've just read about Bananana Soup Surprise?' said Goatberger. 'Yes!' 'You wait till you get to Spotted Dick.' 'Well, my old granny used to make Spotted Dick–' 'Not to this recipe,' said Goatberger, with absolute certainty. Cropper fumbled through the pages. 'Blimey! Do you think any of this stuff works?' 'Who cares? Go down to the Guild. right now and hire all the engravers that're free. Preferably elderly ones.' 'But I've still got the Grune, June, August and Spune predictions for next year's Almanack to–' 'Forget them. Use some old ones.' 'People'll notice.' 'They've never noticed before,' said Mr Goatberger. 'You know the drill. Astounding Rains of Curry in Klatch, Amazing Death of the Seriph of Ee, Plague of Wasps in Howondaland. This is a lot more important.' He stared unseeing out of the window again. 'Considerably more important.' And he dreamed the dream of all those who publish books, which was to have so much gold in your pockets that you would have to employ two people just to hold your trousers up.     The huge, be-columned, gargoyle-haunted face of Ankh-Morpork's Opera House was there, in front of Agnes Nitt. She stopped. At least, most of Agnes stopped. There was a lot of Agnes. It took some time for outlying regions to come to rest. Well, this was it. At last. She could go in, or she could go away. It was what they called a life choice. She'd never had one of those before. Finally, after standing still for long enough for a pigeon to consider the perching possibilities of her huge and rather sad black floppy hat, she climbed the steps. A man was theoretically sweeping them. What he was in fact doing was moving the dirt around with a broom, to give it a change of scenery and a chance to make new friends. He was dressed in a long coat that was slightly too small for him, and had a black beret perched incongruously on spiky black hair. 'Excuse me,' said Agnes. The effect was electric. He turned around, tangled one foot with the other, and collapsed on to his broom. Agnes's hand flew to her mouth, and then she reached down. 'Oh, I'm so sorry!' The hand had that clammy feel that makes a holder think longingly of soap. He pulled it away quickly, pushed his greasy hair out of his eyes and gave her a terrified smile; he had what Nanny Ogg called an underdone face, its features rubbery and pale. 'No trouble miss!' 'Are you all right?' He scrambled up, got the broom somehow tangled between his knees, and sat down again sharply. 'Er... shall I hold the broom?' said Agnes helpfully. She pulled it out of the tangle. He got up again, after a couple of false starts. 'Do you work for the Opera House?' said Agnes. 'Yes miss!' 'Er, can you tell me where I have to go for the auditions?' He looked around wildly. 'Stage-door!' he said. 'I'll show you!' The words came out in a rush, as if he had to line them up and fire them all in one go before they had time to wander off. He snatched the broom out of her hands and set off down the steps and towards the corner of the building. He had a unique stride: it looked as though his body were being dragged forward and his legs had to flail around underneath it, landing wherever they could find room. It wasn't so much a walk as a collapse, indefinitely postponed. His erratic footsteps led towards a door in the side wall. Agnes followed them in. just inside was a sort of shed, with one open wall and a counter positioned so that someone standing there could watch the door. The person behind it must have been a human being because walruses don't wear coats. The strange man had disappeared somewhere in the gloom beyond. Agnes looked around desperately. 'Yes, miss?' said the walrus man. It really was an impressive moustache, which had sapped all the growth from the rest of its owner. 'Er... I'm here for the... the auditions,' said Agnes. 'I saw a notice that said you were auditioning–' She gave a helpless little smile. The doorkeeper's face proclaimed that it had seen and been unimpressed by more desperate smiles than even Agnes could have eaten hot dinners. He produced a clipboard and a stub of pencil. 'You got to sign here,' he said. 'Who was that...person who came in with me?' The moustache moved, suggesting a smile was buried somewhere below. 'Everyone knows our Walter Plinge.' This seemed to be all the information that was likely to be imparted. Agnes gripped the pencil. The most important question was: what should she call herself? Her name had many sterling qualities, no doubt, but it didn't exactly roll off the tongue. It snapped off the palate and clicked between the teeth, but it didn't roll off the tongue. The trouble was, she couldn't think of one with great rotational capabilities. Catherine, possibly. Or... Perdita. She could go back to trying Perdita. She'd been embarrassed out of using that name in Lancre. It was a mysterious name, hinting of darkness and intrigue and, incidentally, of someone who was quite thin. She'd even given herself a middle initial–X–which stood for 'someone who has a cool and exciting middle initial'. It hadn't worked. Lancre people were depressingly resistant to cool. She had just been known as 'that Agnes who calls herself Perditax'. She'd never dared tell anyone that she'd like her full name to be Perdita X Dream. They just wouldn't understand. They'd say things like: if you think that's the right name for you, why have you still got two shelves full of soft toys? Well, here she could start afresh. She was good. She knew she was good. Probably no hope for the Dream, though. She was probably stuck with the Nitt.     Nanny Ogg usually went to bed early. After all, she was an old lady. Sometimes she went to bed as early as 6 a. m. Her breath puffed in the air as she walked through the woods. Her boots crunched on the leaves. The wind had died away, leaving the sky wide and clear and open for the first frost of the season, a petalnipping, fruit-withering little scorcher that showed you why they called Nature a mother... A third witch. Three witches could sort of... spread the load. Maiden, mother and... crone. There. The trouble was that Granny Weatherwax combined all three in one. She was a maiden, as far as Nanny knew, and she was at least in the right age-bracket for a crone; and, as for the third, well... cross Granny Weatherwax on a bad day and you'd be like a blossom in the frost. There was bound to be a candidate for the vacancy, though. There were several young girls in Lancre who were just about the right age. Trouble was, the young men of Lancre knew it too. Nanny wandered the summer hayfields regularly, and had a sharp if compassionate eye and damn' good over-the-horizon hearing. Violet Frottidge was walking out with young Deviousness Carter, or at least doing something within ninety degrees of walking out. Bonnie Quarney had been gathering nuts in May with William Simple, and it was only because she'd thought ahead and taken a little advice from Nanny that she wouldn't be bearing fruit in February. And pretty soon now young Mildred Tinker's mother would have a quiet word with Mildred Tinker's father, and he'd have a word with his friend Thatcher and he'd have a word with his son Hob, and then there'd be a wedding, all done in a properly civilized way except for maybe a black eye or two.[1] No doubt about it, thought Nanny with a misty-eyed smile: innocence, in a hot Lancre summer, was that state in which innocence is lost. And then a name rose out of the throng. Oh, yes. Her. Why hadn't she thought of her? But you didn't, of course. Whenever you thought about the young girls of Lancre, you didn't remember her. And then you said, 'Oh, yes, her too, of course. O' course, she's got a wonderful personality. And good hair, of course.' She was bright, and talented. In many ways. Her voice, for one thing. That was her power, finding its way out. And of course she also had a wonderful personality, so there'd be not much chance of her being... disqualified... Well, that was settled, then. Another witch to bully and impress would set Granny up a treat, and Agnes would be bound to thank her eventually. Nanny Ogg was relieved. You needed at least three witches for a coven. Two witches was just an argument. She opened the door of her cottage and climbed the stairs to bed. Her cat, the tom Greebo, was spread out on the eiderdown like a puddle of grey fur. He didn't even awake as Nanny lifted him up bodily so that, nightdress-clad, she could slide between the sheets. Just to keep bad dreams at bay, she took a swig out of a bottle that smelled of apples and happy braindeath. Then she pummelled her pillow, thought 'Her... yes,' and drifted off to sleep. Presently Greebo awoke, stretched, yawned and hopped silently to the floor. Then the most vicious and cunning a pile of fur that ever had the intelligence to sit on a bird table with its mouth open and a piece of toast balanced on its nose vanished through the open window. A few minutes later, the cockerel in the garden next door stuck up his head to greet the bright new day and died instantly mid–'doodle-doo'.     There was a huge darkness in front of Agnes while, at the same time, she was half-blinded by the light. Just below the edge of the stage, giant flat candles floated in a long trough of water, producing a strong yellow glare quite unlike the oil lamps of home. Beyond the light, the auditorium waited like the mouth of a very big and extremely hungry animal. From somewhere on the far side of the lights a voice said, 'When you're ready, miss.' It wasn't a particularly unfriendly voice. It just wanted her to get on with it, sing her piece, and go. 'I've, er, got this song, it's a–' 'You've given your music to Miss Proudlet?' 'Er, there isn't an accompaniment actually, it–' 'Oh, it's a folk song, is it?' There was a whispering in the darkness, and someone laughed quietly. 'Off you go then... Perdita, right?' Agnes launched into the Hedgehog Song, and knew by about word seven that it had been the wrong choice. You needed a tavern, with people leering and thumping their mugs on the table. This big brilliant emptiness just sucked at it and made her voice hesitant and shrill. She stopped at the end of verse three. She could feel the blush starting somewhere around her knees. It'd take some time to get to her face, because it had a lot of skin to cover, but by then it'd be strawberry pink. She could hear whispering. Words like 'timbre' emerged from the susurration and then, she wasn't surprised to hear, came 'impressive build'. She did, she knew, have an impressive build. So did the Opera House. She didn't have to feel good about it. The voice spoke up. 'You haven't had much training, have you, dear?' 'No.' Which was true. Lancre's only other singer of note was Nanny Ogg, whose attitude to songs was purely ballistic. You just pointed your voice at the end of the verse and went for it. Whisper, whisper. 'Sing us a few scales, dear.' The blush was at chest-height now, thundering across the rolling acres... 'Scales?' Whisper. Muffled laugh. 'Do-Re-Mi? You know, dear? Starting low? La-la-lah?' 'Oh. Yes.' As the armies of embarrassment stormed her neckline, Agnes pitched her voice as low as she could and went for it. She concentrated on the notes, working her way stolidly upwards from sea-level to mountaintop, and took no notice at the start when a chair vibrated across the stage or, at the end, when a glass broke somewhere and several bats fell out of the roof. There was silence from the big emptiness, except for the thud of another bat and, far above, a gentle tinkle of glass. 'Is... is that your full range, lass?' People were clustering in the wings and staring at her. 'No.' 'No.' 'If I go any higher people faint,' said Agnes. 'And if I go lower everyone says it makes them feel uncomfortable.' Whisper, whisper. Whisper, whisper, whisper. 'And, er, any other–?' 'I can sing with myself in thirds. Nanny Ogg says not everyone can do that.' 'Sorry?'                                            'Up here? 'Like... Do-Mi. At the same time.' Whisper, whisper. 'Show us, lass.' ' ¯ Laaaaaa ¯ ' The people at the side of the stage were talking excitedly. Whisper, whisper. The voice from the darkness said: 'Now, your voice projection–' 'Oh, I can do that,' snapped Agnes. She was getting rather fed up. 'Where would you like it projected?' 'I'm sorry? We're talking about–' Agnes ground her teeth. She was good. And she'd show them...                 'To here?' 'Or there?' 'Or here?' It wasn't that much of a trick, she thought. It could be very impressive if you put the words in the mouth of a nearby dummy, like some of the travelling showmen did, but you couldn't pitch it far away and still manage to fool a whole audience. Now that she was accustomed to the gloom she could just make out people turning around in their seats, bewildered. 'What's your name again, dear?' The voice, which had at one point shown traces of condescension, had a distinct beaten-up sound. 'Ag- Per... Perdita,' said Agnes. 'Perdita Nitt. Perdita X... Nitt.' 'We may have to do something about the Nitt, dear.'     Granny Weatherwax's door opened by itself. Jarge Weaver hesitated. Of course, she were a witch. Peopled told him this sort of thing happened. He didn't like it. But he didn't like his back, either, especially when his back didn't like him. It came to something when your vertebrae ganged up on you. He eased himself forward, grimacing, balancing himself on two sticks. The witch was sitting in a rocking chair, facing away from the door. Jarge hesitated. 'Come on in, Jarge Weaver,' said Granny Weatherwax, 'and let me give you something for that back of yours.' The shock made him try to stand upright, and this made something white-hot explode somewhere in the region of his belt. Granny Weatherwax rolled her eyes, and sighed. 'Can you sit down?' she said. 'No, miss. I can fall over on a chair, though.' Granny produced a small black bottle from an apron pocket and shook it vigorously. Jarge's eyes widened. 'You got that all ready for me?' he said. 'Yes,' said Granny truthfully. She'd long ago been resigned to the fact that people expected a bottle of something funny-coloured and sticky. It wasn't the medicine that did the trick, though. It was, in a way, the spoon. 'This is a mixture of rare herbs and suchlike,' she said. 'Including suckrose and akwa.' 'My word,' said Jarge, impressed. 'Take a swig now.' He obeyed. It tasted faintly of liquorice. 'You got to take another swig last thing at night,' Granny went on. 'An' then walk three times round a chestnut tree.' '...three times round a chestnut tree...' 'An'...an' put a pine board under your mattress. Got to be pine from a twenty-year-old tree, mind.' '...twenty-year-old tree...' said Jarge. He felt he should make a contribution. 'So's the knots in me back end up in the pine?' he hazarded. Granny was impressed. It was an outrageously ingenious bit of folk hokum worth remembering for another occasion. 'You got it exactly right,' she said. 'And that's it?' 'You wanted more?' 'I... thought there were dancin' and chantin' and stuff.' 'Did that before you got here,' said Granny. 'My word. Yes. Er... about payin'...' 'Oh, I don't want payin',' said Granny. ' 'S bad luck, taking money.' 'Oh. Right.' Jarge brightened up. 'But maybe... if your wife's got any old clothes, p'raps, I'm a size 12, black for preference, or bakes the odd cake, no plums, they gives me wind, or got a bit of old mead put by, could be, or p'raps you'll be killing a hog about now, best back's my favourite, maybe some ham, a few pig knuckles... anything you can spare, really. No obligation. I wouldn't go around puttin' anyone under obligation, just 'cos I'm a witch. Everyone all right in your house, are they? Blessed with good health, I hope?' She watched this sink in. 'And now let me help you out of the door,' she added. Weaver was never quite certain about what happened next. Granny, usually so sure on her feet, seemed to trip over one of his sticks as she went through the door, and fell backward, holding his shoulders, and somehow her knee came up and hit a spot on his backbone as she twisted sideways, and there was a click– 'Aargh!' 'Sorry!' 'Me back! Me back!' Still, Jarge reasoned later, she was an old woman. And she might be getting clumsy and she'd always been daft, but she made good potions. They worked damn' fast, too. He was carrying his sticks by the time he got home. Granny watched him go, shaking her head. People were so blind, she reflected. They preferred to believe in gibberish rather than chiropracty. Of course, it was just as well this was so. She'd much rather they went 'oo' when she seemed to know who was approaching her cottage than work out that it conveniently overlooked a bend in the track, and as for the door-latch and the trick with the length of black thread...[2] But what had she done? She'd just tricked a rather dim old man. She'd faced wizards, monsters and elves... and now she was feeling pleased with herself because she'd fooled Jarge Weaver, a man who'd twice failed to become Village Idiot through being overqualified. It was the slippery slope. Next thing it'd be cackling and gibbering and luring children into the oven. And it wasn't as if she even liked children. For years Granny Weatherwax had been contented enough with the challenge that village witchcraft could offer. And then she'd been forced to go travelling, and she'd seen a bit of the world, and it had made her itchy–especially at this time of the year, when the geese were flying overhead and the first frost had mugged innocent leaves in the deeper valleys. She looked around at the kitchen. It needed sweeping. The washing-up needed doing. The walls had grown grubby. There seemed to be so much to do that she couldn't bring herself to do any of it. There was a honking far above, and a ragged V of geese sped over the clearing. They were heading for warmer weather in places Granny Weatherwax had only heard about. It was tempting.     The selection committee sat around the table in the office of Mr Seldom Bucket, the Opera House's new owner. He'd been joined by Salzella, the musical director, and Dr Undershaft, the chorus master. 'And so,' said Mr Bucket, 'we come to... let's see... yes, Christine... Marvellous stage presence, eh? Good figure, too.' He winked at Dr Undershaft. 'Yes. Very pretty,' said Dr Undershaft flatly. 'Can't sing, though.' 'What you artistic types don't realize is this is the Century of the Fruitbat,' said Bucket. 'Opera is a production, not just a lot of songs.' 'So you say. But...' 'The idea that a soprano should be fifteen acres of bosom in a horned helmet belongs to the past, like.' Salzella and Undershaft exchanged glances. So he was going to be that kind of owner... 'Unfortunately,' said Salzella sourly, 'the idea that a soprano should have a reasonable singing voice does not belong to the past. She has a good figure, yes. She certainly has a... sparkle. But she can't sing.' 'You can train her, can't you?' said Bucket. 'A few years in the chorus...' 'Yes, maybe after a few years, if I persevere, she will be merely very bad,' said Undershaft. 'Er, gentlemen,' said Mr Bucket. 'Ahem. All right. Cards on the table, eh? I'm a simple man, me. No beating about the bush, speak as you find, call a spade a spade–' 'Do give us your forthright views,' said Salzella. Definitely that kind of owner, he thought. Self-made man proud of his handiwork. Confuses bluffness and honesty with merely being rude. I wouldn't mind betting a dollar that he thinks he can tell a man's character by testing the firmness of his handshake and looking deeply into his eyes. 'I've been through the mill, I have,' Bucket began, 'and I made myself what I am today–' Self-raising flour? thought Salzella. '–but I have to, er, declare a bit of a financial interest. Her dad did, er, in fact, er, lend me a fair whack of money to help me buy this place, and he made a heartfelt fatherly request in regard to his daughter. If I bring it to mind correctly, his exact words, er, were: "Don't make me have to break your legs." I don't expect you artistes to understand. It's a business thing. The gods help those who help themselves, that's my motto.' Salzella stuck his hands in his waistcoat pockets, leaned back and started to whistle softly. 'I see,' said Undershaft. 'Well, it's not the first time it's happened. Normally it's a ballerina, of course.' 'Oh, it's nothing like that,' said Bucket hurriedly. 'It's just that with the money comes this girl Christine. And you have to admit, she does look good.' 'Oh, very well,' said Salzella. 'It's your Opera House, I'm sure. And now... Perdita...?' They smiled at one another. 'Perdita!' said Bucket, relieved to get the Christine business over so that he could go back to being bluff and honest again. 'Perdita X,' Salzella corrected him. 'What will these girls think of next?' 'I think she will prove an asset,' said Undershaft. 'Yes, if we ever do that opera with the elephants.' 'But the range... what a range she's got...' 'Quite. I saw you staring.' 'I meant her voice, Salzella. She will add body to the chorus.' 'She is a chorus. We could sack everyone else. Ye gods, she can even sing in harmony with herself. But can you see her in a major role?' 'Good grief, no. We'd be a laughing-stock.' 'Quite so. She seems quite... amenable, though.' 'Wonderful personality, I thought. And good hair, of course.'     She'd never expected it to be this easy... Agnes listened in a kind of trance while people talked at her about wages (very little), the need for training (a lot), and accommodation (members of the chorus lived in the Opera House itself, up near the roof). And then, more or less, she was forgotten about. She stood and watched at the side of the stage while a group of ballet hopefuls were put through their delicate paces. 'You do have an amazing voice,' said someone behind her. She turned. As Nanny Ogg had once remarked, it was an education seeing Agnes turn around. She was light enough on her feet but the inertia of outlying parts meant that bits of Agnes were still trying to work out which way to face for some time afterwards. The girl who had spoken to her was slightly built, even by ordinary standards, and had gone to some pains to make herself look even thinner. She had long blond hair and the happy smile of someone who is aware that she is thin and has long blond hair. 'My name's Christine!' she said. 'Isn't this exciting?!' And she had the type of voice that can exclaim a question. It seemed to have an excited little squeak permanently screwed to it. 'Er, yes,' said Agnes. 'I've been waiting for this day for years!' Agnes had been waiting for it for about twenty-four hours, ever since she'd seen the notice outside the Opera House. But she'd be danged if she'd say that. 'Where did you train?!' said Christine. 'I spent three years with Mme Venturi at the Quirm Conservatory!' 'Um. I was...' Agnes hesitated, trying out the upcoming sentence in her head. '... I trained with... Dame Ogg. But she hasn't got a conservatory, because it's hard to get the glass up the mountain.' Christine didn't appear to want to question this. Anything she found too difficult to understand, she ignored. 'The money in the chorus isn't very good, is it?!' she said. 'No.' It was less than you'd get for scrubbing floors. The reason was that, when you advertised a dirty floor, hundreds of hopefuls didn't turn up. 'But it's what I've always wanted to do! Besides, there's the status!' 'Yes, I expect there is.' 'I've been to look at the rooms we get! They're very poky! What room have you been given?!' Agnes looked down blankly at the key she had been handed, along with many sharp instructions about no men and an unpleasant not-that-you-need-telling expression on the chorus mistress's face. 'Oh ... 17.' Christine clapped her hands. 'Oh, goody!!' 'Pardon?' 'I'm so glad!! You're next to me!!' Agnes was taken aback. She'd always been resigned to being the last to be picked in the great team game of Life. 'Well... yes, I suppose so...' she said. 'You're so lucky!! You've got such a majestic figure for opera!! And such marvellous hair, the way you pile it up like that!! Black suits you, by the way!!' Majestic, thought Agnes. It was a word that would never, ever have occurred to her. And she'd always steered away from white because in white she looked like a washing-line on a windy day. She followed Christine. It occurred to Agnes, as she trudged after the girl en route to her new lodgings, that if you spent much time in the same room as Christine you'd need to open a window to stop from drowning in punctuation. From somewhere at the back of the stage, quite unheeded, someone watched them go.     People were generally glad to see Nanny Ogg. She was good at making them feel at home in their own home. But she was a witch, and therefore also expert at arriving just after cakes were baked or sausages were made. Nanny Ogg generally travelled with a string bag stuffed up one knee-length knicker leg–in case, as she put it, someone wants to give me something. 'So, Mrs Nitt,' she observed, around about the third cake and fourth cup of tea, 'how's that daughter of yours? Agnes it is to whom I refer.' 'Oh, didn't you hear, Mrs Ogg? She's gone off to Ankh-Morpork to be a singer.' Nanny Ogg's heart sank. 'That's nice,' she said. 'She has a good singing voice, I remember. Of course, I gave her a few tips. I used to hear her singing in the woods.' 'It's the air here,' said Mrs Nitt. 'She's always had such a good chest.' 'Yes, indeed. Noted for it. So... er... she's not here, then?' 'You know our Agnes. She never says much. I think she thought it was a bit dull.' 'Dull? Lancre?' said Nanny Ogg. 'That's what I said,' said Mrs Nitt. 'I said we get some lovely sunsets up here. And there's the fair every Soul Cake Tuesday, regular.' Nanny Ogg thought about Agnes. You needed quite large thoughts to fit all of Agnes in. Lancre had always bred strong, capable women. A Lancre farmer needed a wife who'd think nothing of beating a wolf to death with her apron when she went out to get some firewood. And, while kissing initially seemed to have more charms than cookery, a stolid Lancre lad looking for a bride would bear in mind his father's advice that kisses eventually lost their fire but cookery tended to get even better over the years, and direct his courting to those families that clearly showed a tradition of enjoying their food. Agnes was, Nanny considered, quite good-looking in an expansive kind of way; she was a fine figure of typical young Lancre womanhood. This meant she was approximately two womanhoods from anywhere else. Nanny also recalled her as being rather thoughtful and shy, as if trying to reduce the amount of world she took up. But she had shown signs of craft ability. That was only to be expected. There was nothing like that not fitting in feeling to stimulate the old magical nerves; that was why Esme was so good at it. In Agnes's case this had manifested itself in a tendency to wear soppy black lace gloves and pale makeup and call herself Perdita plus an initial from the arse of the alphabet, but Nanny had assumed that would soon burn off when she got some serious witchcraft under her rather strained belt. She should have paid more attention to the thing about music. Power found its way out by all sorts of routes... Music and magic had a lot in common. They were only two letters apart, for one thing. And you couldn't do both. Damn. Nanny had rather been counting on the girl. 'She used to send off to Ankh-Morpork for music,' said Mrs Nitt. 'See?' She handed Nanny several piles of papers. Nanny leafed through them. Song-sheets were common enough in the Ramtops, and a singsong in the parlour was considered the third best thing to do on long dark evenings. But Nanny could see this wasn't ordinary music. It was far too crowded for that. 'Cosi fan Hita,' she read. 'Die Meistersinger von Scrote.' 'That's foreign,' said Mrs Nitt proudly. 'It certainly is,' said Nanny. Mrs Nitt was looking expectantly at her. 'What?' said Nanny, and then, 'Oh.' Mrs Nitt's eyes flickered to her emptied teacup and back again. Nanny Ogg sighed and laid the music aside. Occasionally she saw Granny Weatherwax's point. Sometimes people expected too little of witches. 'Yes, indeedy,' she said, trying to smile. 'Let us see what destiny in the form of these dried-up bits of leaf has in store for us, eh?' She set her features in a suitable occult expression and looked down into the cup. Which, a second later, smashed into fragments when it hit the floor.     It was a small room. In fact it was half a small room, since a thin wall had been built across it. Junior members of the chorus ranked rather lower than apprentice scene-shifters in the opera. There was room for a bed, a wardrobe, a dressing-table and, quite out of place, a huge mirror, as big as the door. 'Impressive, isn't it?!' said Christine. 'They tried to take it out but it's built into the wall, apparently!! I'm sure it will be very useful!!' Agnes said nothing. Her own half-room, the other half of this one, didn't have a mirror. She was glad of that. She did not regard mirrors as naturally friendly. It wasn't just the images they showed her. There was something... worrying... about mirrors. She'd always felt that. They seemed to be looking at her. Agnes hated being looked at. Christine stepped into the small space in the middle of the floor and twirled. There was something very enjoyable about watching her. It was the sparkle, Agnes thought. Something about Christine suggested sequins. 'Isn't this nice?!' she said. Not liking Christine would be like not liking small fluffy animals. And Christine was just like a small fluffy animal. A rabbit, perhaps. It was certainly impossible for her to get a whole idea into her head in one go. She had to nibble it into manageable bits. Agnes glanced at the mirror again. Her reflection stared at her. She could have done with some time to herself right now. Everything had happened so quickly. And this place made her uneasy. Everything would feel a lot better if she could just have some time to herself. Christine stopped twirling. 'Are you all right?!' Agnes nodded. 'Do tell me about yourself?!' 'Er... well...' Agnes was gratified, despite herself. 'I'm from somewhere up in the mountains you've probably never heard of...' She stopped. A light had gone off in Christine's head, and Agnes realized that the question had been asked not because Christine in any way wanted to know the answer but for something to say. She went on: '...and my father is the Emperor of Klatch and my mother is a small tray of raspberry puddings.' 'That's interesting!' said Christine, who was looking at the mirror. 'Do you think my hair looks right?!'     What Agnes would have said, if Christine had been capable of listening to anything for more than a couple of seconds, was: She'd woken up one morning with the horrible realization that she'd been saddled with a lovely personality. It was as simple as that. Oh, and very good hair. It wasn't so much the personality, it was the 'but' that people always added when they talked about it. But she's got a lovely personality, they said. It was the lack of choice that rankled. No one had asked her, before she was born, whether she wanted a lovely personality or whether she'd prefer, say, a miserable personality but a body that could take size 9 in dresses. Instead, people would take pains to tell her that beauty was only skin-deep, as if a man ever fell for an attractive pair of kidneys. She could feel a future trying to land on her. She'd caught herself saying 'poot!' and 'dang!' when she wanted to swear, and using pink writing paper. She'd got a reputation for being calm and capable in a crisis. Next thing she knew she'd be making shortbread and apple pies as good as her mother's, and then there'd be no hope for her. So she'd introduced Perdita. She'd heard somewhere that inside every fat woman was a thin woman trying to get out,[3] so she'd named her Perdita. She was a good repository for all those thoughts that Agnes couldn't think on account of her wonderful personality. Perdita would use black writing paper if she could get away with it, and would be beautifully pale instead of embarrassingly flushed. Perdita wanted to be an interestingly lost soul in plumcoloured lipstick. Just occasionally, though, Agnes thought Perdita was as dumb as she was. Was the only alternative the witches? She'd felt their interest in her, in a way she couldn't exactly identify. It was of a piece with knowing when someone was watching you, although she had, in fact, occasionally seen Nanny Ogg watching her in a critical kind of fashion, like someone inspecting a second-hand horse. She knew she did have some talent. Sometimes she knew things that were going to happen, although always in a sufficiently confused way that the knowledge was totally useless until afterwards. And there was her voice. She was aware it wasn't quite natural. She'd always enjoyed singing and, somehow, her voice had just done everything she'd wanted it to do. But she'd seen the ways the witches lived. Oh, Nanny Ogg was all right–quite a nice old baggage really. But the others were weird, lying crosswise on the world instead of nicely parallel to it like everyone else... old Mother Dismass who could see into the past and the future but was totally blind in the present, and Millie Hopwood over in Slice, who stuttered and had runny ears, and as for Granny Weatherwax... Oh, yes. Finest job in the world? Being a sour old woman with no friends? They were always looking for weird people like themselves. Well, they could look in vain for Agnes Nitt. Fed up with living in Lancre, and fed up with the witches, and above all fed up with being Agnes Nitt, she'd... escaped.     Nanny Ogg didn't look built for running, but she covered the ground deceptively fast, her great heavy boots kicking up shoals of leaves. There was a trumpeting overhead. Another skein of geese passed across the sky, so fast in pursuit of the summer that their wings were hardly moving in the ballistic rush. Granny Weatherwax's cottage looked deserted. It had, Nanny felt, a particularly empty feel. She scurried around to the back door and burst through, pounded up the stairs, saw the gaunt figure on the bed, reached an instant conclusion, grabbed the pitcher of water from its place on the marble washstand, ran forward... A hand shot up and grabbed her wrist. 'I was having a nap,' said Granny, opening her eyes. 'Gytha, I swear I could feel you comin' half a mile away–' 'We got to make a cup of tea quick!' gasped Nanny, almost sagging with relief. Granny Weatherwax was more than bright enough not to ask questions. But you couldn't hurry a good cup of tea. Nanny Ogg jiggled from one foot to the other while the fire was pumped up, the small frogs fished out of the water bucket, the water boiled, the dried leaves allowed to seep. 'I ain't saying nothing,' said Nanny, sitting down at last. Just pour a cup, that's all.' On the whole, witches despised fortune-telling from tealeaves. Tea-leaves are not uniquely fortunate in knowing what the future holds. They are really just something for the eyes to rest on while the mind does the work. Practically anything would do. The scum on a puddle, the skin on a custard... anything. Nanny Ogg could see the future in the froth on a beermug. It invariably showed that she was going to enjoy a refreshing drink which she almost certainly was not going to pay for. 'You recall young Agnes Nitt?' said Nanny as Granny Weatherwax tried to find the milk. Granny hesitated. 'Agnes who calls herself Perditax?' 'Perdita X,' said Nanny. She at least respected anyone's right to recreate themselves. Granny shrugged. 'Fat girl. Big hair. Walks with her feet turned out. Sings to herself in the woods. Good voice. Reads books. Says "poot!" instead of swearing. Blushes when anyone looks at her. Wears black lace gloves with the fingers cut out.' 'You remember we once talked about maybe how possibly she might be... suitable.' 'Oh, there's a twist in the soul there, you're right,' said Granny. 'But... it's an unfortunate name.' 'Her father's name was Terminal,' said Nanny Ogg reflectively. 'There were three sons: Primal, Medial and Terminal. I'm afraid the family's always had a problem with education.' 'I meant Agnes,' said Granny. 'Always puts me in mind of carpet fluff, that name.' 'Prob'ly that's why she called herself Perdita,' said Nanny. 'Worse.' 'Got her fixed in your mind?' said Nanny. 'Yes, I suppose so.' 'Good. Now look at them tea-leaves.' Granny looked down. There was no particular drama, perhaps because of the way Nanny had built up expectations. But Granny did hiss between her teeth. 'Well, now. There's a thing,' she said. 'See it? See it?' 'Yep., 'Like...a skull?' 'Yep.' 'And them eyes? I nearly pi- I was pretty damn' surprised by them eyes, I can tell you.' Granny carefully replaced the cup. 'Her main showed me her letters home,' said Nanny. 'I brung 'em with me. It's worrying, Esme. She could be facing something bad. She's a Lancre girl. One of ours. Nothing's too much trouble when it's one of your own, I always say.' 'Tea-leaves can't tell the future,' said Granny quietly. 'Everyone knows that.' 'Tea-leaves don't know.' 'Well, who'd be so daft as to tell anything to a bunch of dried leaves?' Nanny Ogg looked down at Agnes's letters home. They were written in the careful rounded script of someone who'd been taught to write as a child by copying letters on a slate, and had never written enough as an adult to change their style. The person writing them had also very conscientiously drawn faint pencil lines on the paper before writing.   Dear Mam, I hope this finds you as it leaves me. Here I am in Ankh-Morpork and everything is all right, I have not been ravished yet!! I am staying at 4 Treacle Mine Road, it is alright and...   Granny tried another.   Dear Mum, I hope you are well. Everything is fine but, the money runs away like water here. I am doing some singing in taverns but I am not making much so I went to see the Guild of Seamstresses about getting a sewing job and I took along some stitching to show them and you'd be AMAZED, that's all I can say...   And another...   Dear Mother, Some good news at last. Next week they're holding auditions at the Opera House...   'What's opera?' said Granny Weatherwax. 'It's like theatre, with singing,' said Nanny Ogg. 'Hah! Theatre,' said Granny darkly. 'Our Nev told me about it. It's all singing in foreign languages, he said. He couldn't understand any of it.' Granny put down the letters. 'Yes, but your Nev can't understand a lot of things. What was he doing at this opera theatre, anyway?' 'Nicking the lead off the roof.' Nanny said this quite happily. It wasn't theft if an Ogg was doing it. 'Can't tell much from the letters, except that's she's picking up an education,' said Granny. 'But it's a long way to–' There was a hesitant knock on the door. It was Shawn Ogg, Nanny's youngest son and Lancre's entire civil and public service. Currently he had his postman's badge on; the Lancre postal service consisted of taking the mailbag off the nail where the coach left it and delivering it to the outlying homesteads when he had a moment, although many citizens were in the habit of going down to the sack and rummaging until they found some mail they liked. He touched his helmet respectfully at Granny Weatherwax. 'Got a lot of letters, mum,' he said to Nanny Ogg. 'Er. They're all addressed to, er, well... er... you'd better have a look, mum.' Nanny Ogg took the proffered bundle. ' "The Lancre Witch",' she said aloud. 'That'd be me, then,' said Granny Weatherwax firmly, and took the letters. 'Ah. Well, I'd better be going...' said Nanny, backing towards the door. 'Can't imagine why peopled be writing to me,' said Granny, slitting an envelope. 'Still, I suppose news gets around.' She focused on the words. ' "Dear Witch," ' she read, ' "I would just like to say how much I appreciated the Famous Carrot and Oyster Pie recipe. My husband–" ' Nanny Ogg made it halfway down the path before her boots became, suddenly, too heavy to lift. 'Gytha Ogg, you come back here right now!'     Agnes tried again. She didn't really know anyone in Ankh-Morpork and she did need someone to talk to, even if they didn't listen. 'I suppose mainly I came because of the witches,' she said. Christine turned, her eyes wide with fascination. So was her mouth. It was like looking at a rather pretty bowling ball. 'Witches?!' she breathed. 'Oh, yes,' said Agnes wearily. Yes. People were always fascinated by the idea of witches. They should try living around them, she thought. 'Do they do spells and ride around on broomsticks?!' 'Oh, yes.' 'No wonder you ran away!' 'What? Oh... no... it's not like that. I mean, they're not bad. It's much... worse than that.' 'Worse than bad?!' 'They think they know what's best for everybody.' Christine's forehead wrinkled, as it tended to when she was contemplating a problem more complex than 'What is your name?' 'That doesn't sound very ba–' 'They... mess people around. They think that just because they're right that's the same as good! It's not even as though they do any real magic. It's all fooling people and being clever! They think they can do what they like!' The force of the words knocked even Christine back. 'Oh, dear!! Did they want you to do something?!' 'They want me to be something. But I'm not going to!' Christine stared at her. And then, automatically, forgot everything she'd just heard. 'Come on,' she said, 'let's have a look around!!'     Nanny Ogg balanced on a chair and took down an oblong wrapped in paper. Granny watched sternly with her arms folded. 'Thing is,' Nanny babbled, under the laser glare, 'my late husband, I remember him once sayin' to me, after dinner, he said, "You know, mother, it'd be a real shame if all the stuff you know just passed away when you did. Why don't you write some of it down?" So I scribbled the odd one, when I had a moment, and then I thought it'd be nice to have it all properly done so I sent it off to the Almanack people in Ankh-Morpork and they hardly charged me anything and a little while ago they sent me this, I think it's a very good job, it's amazing how they get all the letters so neat–' 'You done a book,' said Granny. 'Only cookery,' said Nanny Ogg meekly, as one might plead a first offence. 'What do you know about it? You hardly ever do any cooking,' said Granny. 'I do specialities,' said Nanny. Granny looked at the offending volume. ' "The Joye of Snacks," ' she read out loud. ' "Bye A Lancre Witch." Hah! Why dint you put your own name on it, eh? Books've got to have a name on 'em so's everyone knows who's guilty.' 'It's my gnome de plum,' said Nanny. 'Mr Goatberger the Almanack man said it'd make it sound more mysterious.' Granny cast her gimlet gaze to the bottom of the crowded cover, where it said, in very small lettering, 'CXX viith Printyng. More Than Twenty Thoufand Solde! One half dollar.' 'You sent them some money to get it all printed?' she said. 'Only a couple of dollars,' said Nanny. 'Damn' good job they made of it, too. And then they sent the money back afterwards, only they got it wrong and sent three dollars extra.' Granny Weatherwax was grudgingly literate but keenly numerate. She assumed that anything written down was probably a lie, and that applied to numbers too. Numbers were used only by people who wanted to put one over on you. Her lips moved silently as she thought about numbers. 'Oh,' she said, quietly. 'And that was it, was it? You never wrote to him again?' 'Not on your life. Three dollars, mind. I dint want him saying he wanted 'em back.' 'I can see that,' said Granny, still dwelling in the world of numbers. She wondered how much it cost to do a book. It couldn't be a lot: they had sort of printing mills to do the actual work. 'After all, there's a lot you can do with three dollars,' said Nanny. 'Right enough,' said Granny. 'You ain't got a pencil about you, have you? You being a literary type and all?' 'I got a slate,' said Nanny. 'Pass it over, then.' 'I bin keeping it by me in case I wake up in the night and I get an idea for a recipe, see,' said Nanny. 'Good,' said Granny vaguely. The slate pencil squeaked across the grey tablet. The paper must cost something. And you'd probably have to tip someone a couple of pennies to sell it...Angular figures danced from column to column. 'I'll make another cup of tea, shall I?' said Nanny, relieved that the conversation appeared to be coming to a peaceful end. 'Hmm?' said Granny. She stared at the result and drew two lines under it. 'But you enjoyed it, did you?' she called out. 'The writin'?' Nanny Ogg poked her head around the scullery door. 'Oh, yes. The money dint matter,' she said. 'You've never been very good at numbers, have you?' said Granny. Now she drew a circle around the final figure. 'Oh, you know me, Esme,' said Nanny cheerfully. 'I couldn't subtract a fart from a plate of beans.' 'That's good, 'cos I reckon this Master Goatberger owes you a bit more than you got, if there's any justice in the world,' said Granny. 'Money ain't everything, Esme. What I say is, if you've got your health–' 'I reckon, if there's any justice, it's about four or five thousand dollars,' said Granny quietly. There was a crash from the scullery. 'So it's a good job the money don't matter,' Granny Weatherwax went on. 'It'd be a terrible thing otherwise. All that money, matterin'.' Nanny Ogg's white face appeared around the edge of the door. 'He never!' 'Could be a bit more,' said Granny. 'It never!9 'You just adds up and divides and that.' Nanny Ogg stared in horrified fascination at her own fingers. 'But that's a–' She stopped. The only word she could think of was 'fortune' and that wasn't adequate. Witches didn't operate in a cash economy. The whole of the Ramtops, by and large, got by without the complications of capital. Fifty dollars was a fortune. A hundred dollars was a, was a, was... well, it was two fortunes, that was what it was. 'It's a lot of money,' she said weakly. 'What couldn't I do with money like that?' 'Dunno,' said Granny Weatherwax. ' What did you do with the three dollars?' 'Got it in a tin up the chimney,' said Nanny Ogg. Granny nodded approvingly. This was the kind of good fiscal practice she liked to see. 'Beats me why peopled fall over themselves to read a cookery book, though,' she added. 'I mean, it's not the sort of thing that–' The room fell silent. Nanny Ogg shuffled her boots. Granny said, in a voice laden with a suspicion that was all the worse because it wasn't yet quite sure what it was suspicious of 'It is a cookery book, isn't it?' 'Oh, yes,' said Nanny hurriedly, avoiding Granny's gaze. 'Yes. Recipes and that. Yes.' Granny glared at her. 'Just recipes?' 'Yes. Oh, yes. Yes. And some... cookery anecdotes, yes.' Granny went on glaring. Nanny gave in. 'Er... look under Famous Carrot and Oyster Pie,' she said. 'Page 25.' Granny turned the pages. Her lips moved silently. Then: 'I see. Anything else?' 'Er... Cinnamon and Marshmallow Fingers...page 17...' Granny looked it up. 'And?' 'Er...Celery Astonishment... page 10.' Granny looked that up, too. 'Can't say it astonished me,' she said. 'And... ?' 'Er... well, more or less all of Humorous Puddings and Cake Decoration. That's all of Chapter Six. I done illustrations for that.' Granny turned to Chapter Six. She had to turn the book around a couple of times. 'What one you looking at?' said Nanny Ogg, because an author is always keen to get feedback. 'Strawberry Wobbler,' said Granny. 'Ah. That one always gets a laugh.' It did not appear to be obtaining one from Granny. She carefully closed the book. 'Gytha,' she said, 'this is me askin' you this. Is there any page in this book, is there any single recipe, which does not in some way relate to... goingson?' Nanny Ogg, her face red as her apples, seemed to give this some lengthy consideration. 'Porridge,' she said, eventually. 'Really?' 'Yes. Er. No, I tell a lie, it's got my special honey mixture in it.' Granny turned a page. 'What about this one? Maids of Honour?' 'Weeelll, they starts out as Maids of Honour,' said Nanny, fidgeting with her feet, 'but they ends up Tarts.' Granny looked at the front cover again. The Joye of Snacks. 'An' you actually set out to–' 'It just sort of turned out that way, really.' Granny Weatherwax was not a jouster in the lists of love but, as an intelligent onlooker, she knew how the game was played. No wonder the book had sold like hot cakes. Half the recipes told you how to make them. It was surprising the pages hadn't singed. And it was by 'A Lancre Witch'. The world was, Granny Weatherwax modestly admitted, well aware of who the witch of Lancre was; viz, it was her. 'Gytha Ogg,' she said. 'Yes, Esme?' 'Gytha Ogg, you look me in the eye.' 'Sorry, Esme.' ' "A Lancre Witch", it says here.' 'I never thought, Esme.' 'So you'll go and see Mr Goatberger and have this stopped, right? I don't want people lookin' at me and thinkin' about the Bananana Soup Surprise. I don't even believe the Bananana Soup Surprise. And I ain't relishin' going down the street and hearin' people makin' cracks about bananas.' 'Yes, Esme.' 'And I'll come with you to make sure you do.' 'Yes, Esme.' 'And we'll talk to the man about your money.' 'Yes, Esme.' 'And we might just drop in on young Agnes to make sure she's all right.' 'Yes, Esme.' 'But we'll do it diplomatic like. We don't want people thinkin' we're pokin' our noses in.' 'Yes, Esme.' 'No one could say I interfere where I'm not wanted. You won't find anyone callin' me a busybody.' 'Yes, Esme.' 'That was, "Yes, Esme, you won't find anyone callin' you a busybody", was it?' 'Oh, yes, Esme.' 'You sure about that?' 'Yes, Esme.' 'Good.' Granny looked out at the dull grey sky and the dying leaves and felt, amazingly enough, her sap rising. A day ago the future had looked aching and desolate, and now it looked full of surprises and terror and bad things happening to people... If she had anything to do with it, anyway. In the scullery, Nanny Ogg grinned to herself.     Agnes had known a little bit about the theatre. A travelling company came to Lancre sometimes. Their stage was about twice the size of a door, and 'backstage' consisted of a bit of sacking behind which was usually a man trying to change trousers and wigs at the same time and another man, dressed as a king, having a surreptitious smoke. The Opera House was almost as big as the Patrician's palace, and far more palatial. It covered three acres. There was stabling for twenty horses and two elephants in the cellar; Agnes spent some time there, because the elephants were reassuringly larger than her. There were rooms behind the stage so big that entire sets were stored there. There was a whole ballet school somewhere in the building. Some of the girls were on stage now, ugly in woolly jumpers, going through a routine. The inside of the Opera House–at least, the backstage inside–put Agnes strongly in mind of the clock her brother had taken apart to find the tick. It was hardly a building. It was more like a machine. Sets and curtains and ropes hung in the darkness like dreadful things in a forgotten cellar. The stage was only a small part of the place, a little rectangle of light in a huge, complicated darkness full of significant machinery... A piece of dust floated down from the blackness high above. She brushed it off. 'I thought I heard someone up there,' she said. 'It's probably the Ghost!!' said Christine. 'We've got one, you know! Oh, I said we!! Isn't this exciting?!' 'A man with his face covered by a white mask,' said Agnes. 'Oh?! You've heard about him, then?!' 'What? Who?' 'The Ghost!!' Blast, thought Agnes. It was always ready to catch her out. Just when she thought she'd put all that behind her. She'd know things without quite knowing why. It upset people. It certainly upset her. 'Oh, I... suppose someone must have told me. . .'she mumbled. 'He moves around the Opera House invisibly, they say!! One moment he'll be in the Gods, next moment he'll be backstage somewhere!! No one knows how he does it!!' 'Really?' 'They say he watches every performance!! That's why they never sell tickets for Box Eight, didn't you know?!' 'Box Eight?' said Agnes. 'What's a Box?' 'Boxes! You know? That's where you get the best people?! Look, I shall show you!' Christine marched to the front of the stage and waved a hand grandly at the empty auditorium. 'The Boxes!' she said. 'Over there! And right up there, the Gods!' Her voice bounced back from the distant wall. 'Aren't the best people in the Gods? It sounds–' 'Oh, no! The best people will be in Boxes! Or possibly in the Stalls!' Agnes pointed. 'Who's down there? They must get a good view–' 'Don't be silly!! That's the Pit!! That's for the musicians!!' 'Well, that makes sense, anyway. Er. Which one's Box Eight?' 'I don't know! But they say if ever they sell seats in Box Eight there'll be a dreadful tragedy!! Isn't that romantic?!' For some reason Agnes's practical eye was drawn to the huge chandelier that hung over the auditorium like a fantastic sea monster. Its thick rope disappeared into the darkness near the ceiling. The glass chimes tinkled. Another flare of that certain power which Agnes did her best to suppress at every turn flashed a treacherous image across her mind. 'That looks like an accident waiting to happen if ever I saw one,' she mumbled. 'I'm sure it's perfectly safe!!' trilled Christine. 'I'm sure they wouldn't allow–' A chord rolled out, shaking the stage. The chandelier tinkled, and more dust came down. 'What was that?' said Agnes. 'It was the organ!! It's so big it's behind the stage!! Come on, let's go and see!!' Other members of the staff were hurrying towards the organ. There was an overturned bucket nearby, and a spreading pool of green paint. A carpenter reached past Agnes and picked up an envelope that was lying on the organ seat. 'It's for the boss,' he said. 'When it's my mail, the postman usually just knocks,' said a ballerina, and giggled. Agnes looked up. Ropes swung lazily in the musty darkness. For a moment she thought she saw a flash of white, and then it was gone. There was a shape, just visible, tangled in the ropes. Something wet and sticky dripped down and splashed on the keyboard. People were already screaming when Agnes reached past, dipped her finger in the growing puddle, and sniffed. 'It's blood!' said the carpenter. 'It's blood, isn't it?' said a musician. 'Blood!!' screamed Christine. 'Blood!!' It was Agnes's terrible fate to keep her head in a crisis. She sniffed her finger again. 'It's turpentine,' said Agnes. 'Er. Sorry. Is that wrong? Up in the tangle of ropes, the figure moaned. 'Shouldn't we get him down? she added.     Cando Cutoff was a humble woodcutter. He wasn't humble because he was a woodcutter. He would still have been quite humble if he'd owned five logging mills. He was just naturally humble. And he was unpretentiously stacking some logs at the point .where the Lancre road met the main mountain road when he saw a farm cart rumble to a halt and unload two elderly ladies in black. Both carried a broomstick in one hand and a sack in the other. They were arguing. It was not a raised-voice argument, but a chronic wrangle that had clearly been going on for some time and was set in for the rest of the decade. 'It's all very well for you, but it's my three dollars so I don't see why I can't say how we go.' 'I likes flying.' 'And I'm telling you it's too draughty on broomsticks this time of year, Esme. The breeze gets into places I wouldn't dream of talking about.' 'Really? Can't imagine where those'd be, then.' 'Oh, Esme!' 'Don't "Oh, Esme" me. It weren't me that come up with the Amusing Wedding Trifle with the Special Sponge Fingers.' 'Anyway, Greebo don't like it on the broomstick. He's got a delicate stomach.' Cutoff noticed that one of the sacks was moving in a lazy way. 'Gytha, I've seen him eat half a skunk, so don't tell me about his delicate stomach,' said Granny, who disliked cats on principle. 'Anyway... he's been doing It again.' Nanny Ogg waved her hands airily. 'Oh, he only does It sometimes, when he's really in a corner,' she said. 'He did It in ole Mrs Grope's henhouse last week. She went into see what all the ruckus was, and he did It right in front of her. She had to have a liedown.' 'He was probably more frightened than she was,' said Nanny defensively. 'That's what comes of getting strange ideas in foreign parts,' said Granny. 'Now you've got a cat who– Yes, what is it?' Cutoff had meekly approached them and was hovering in the kind of half-crouch of someone trying to be noticed while also not wanting to intrude. 'Are you ladies waiting for the stagecoach?' 'Yes,' said the taller of the ladies. 'Um, I'm afraid the next coach doesn't stop here. It doesn't stop until Creel Springs.' They gave him a couple of polite stares. 'Thank you,' said the tall one. She turned to her companion. 'It gave her a nasty shock, anyway. I dread to think what he'll learn this time.' 'He pines when I'm gone. He won't take food from anyone else.' 'Only 'cos they try to poison him, and no wonder.' Cutoff shook his head sadly and wandered back to his log pile. The coach turned up five minutes later, coming around the corner at speed. It drew level with the women– –and stopped. That is, the horses tried to stand still and the wheels locked. It wasn't so much a skid as a spin, and the whole thing gradually came to rest about fifty yards down the road, with the driver in a tree. The women strolled towards it, still arguing. One of them poked the driver with her broomstick. 'Two tickets to Ankh-Morpork, please.' He landed in the road. 'What do you mean, two tickets to Ankh-Morpork? The coach doesn't stop here!' 'Looks stopped to me.' 'Did you do something?' 'What, us?' 'Listen, lady, even if I was stopping here the tickets are forty damn' dollars each!' 'Oh.' 'Why've you got broomsticks?' shouted the driver. 'Are you witches?' 'Yes. Have you got any special low terms for witches?' 'Yeah, how about "meddling, interfering old baggages"?' Cutoff felt that he must have missed part of the conversation, because the next exchange went like this: 'What was that again, young man?' 'Two complimentary tickets to Ankh-Morpork, ma'am. No problem.' 'Inside seats, mind. No travelling on the top.' 'Certainly, ma'am. Excuse me while I just kneel in the dirt so's you can step up, ma'am.' Cutoff nodded happily to himself as the coach pulled away again. It was nice to see that good manners and courtesy were still alive.     With great difficulty and much shouting and untangling of ropes far above, the figure was lowered to the stage. He was soaked in paint and turpentine. The swelling audience of off duty staff and rehearsal truants crowded in around him. Agnes knelt down, loosened his collar and tried to unwind the rope that had caught around arm and neck. 'Does anyone know him?' she said. 'It's Tommy Cripps,' said a musician. 'He paints scenery.' Tommy moaned, and opened his eyes. 'I saw him!' he muttered. 'It was horrible!' 'Saw what?' said Agnes. And then she had a sudden feeling that she'd intruded on some private conversation. Around her there was a babble of voices. 'Giselle said she saw him last week!' 'He's here!' 'It's happening again!' 'Are we all doomed?!' squeaked Christine. Tommy Cripps gripped Agnes's arm. 'He's got a face like death!' 'Who?' 'The Ghost!' 'What gho-?' 'It's white bone! He has no nose!' A couple of ballet dancers fainted, but carefully, so as not to get their clothes dirty. 'Then how does hue' Agnes began. 'I saw him too!' On cue, the company turned. An elderly man advanced across the stage. He wore an ancient opera hat and carried a sack over one shoulder, while his spare hand made the needlessly expansive gestures of someone who has got hold of some direful information and can't wait to freeze all nearby spines. The sack must have contained something alive, because it was bouncing around. 'I saw him! Ooooooh yes! Wi' his great black cloak and his white face with no eyes but only two holes where eyes should be! Ooohhhh! And–' 'He had a mask on?' said Agnes. The old man paused and shot her the dark look reserved for all those who insist on injecting a note of sanity when things are getting interestingly ghastly. 'And he had no nose!' he went on, ignoring her. 'I just said that,' muttered Tommy Cripps, in a rather annoyed voice. 'I told them that. They already know that.' 'If he had no nose, how did he sme–' Agnes began, but no one was listening to her. 'Did you mention about the eyes?' said the old man. 'I was just getting round to the eyes,' snapped Tommy. 'Yes, he had eyes like–' 'Are we talking about some kind of mask here?' said Agnes. Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.' The man with the sack coughed and regrouped. 'Like great holes, they were–' he began, but it was clear that it had all been spoiled for him. 'Great holes,' he said sourly. 'That's what I saw. And no nose, I might add, thank you so very much.' 'It's the Ghost again!' said a scene-shifter. 'He jumped out from behind the organ,' said Tommy Cripps. 'Next thing I knew, there was a rope around my neck and I was upside-down!' The company looked at the man with the sack, in case he could trump this. 'Great big black holes,' he managed, sticking to what he knew. 'All right, everyone, what's going on here?' An imposing figure strode out of the wings. He had flowing black hair, carefully brushed to give it a carefree alfresco look, but the face underneath was the face of an organizer. He nodded at the old man with the sack. 'What are you staring at, Mr Pounder?' he said. The old man looked down. 'I knows what I saw, Mr Salzella,' he said. 'I see lots o' things, I do.' 'As much as is visible through the bottom of a bottle, I have no doubt, you old reprobate. What happened to Tommy?' 'It was the Ghost!' said Tommy, delighted to have centrestage again. 'He swooped out at me, Mr Salzella! I think my leg is broken,' he added quickly, in the voice of one who is suddenly aware of the time-off opportunities of the situation. Agnes expected the newcomer to say something like 'Ghosts? There's no such thing.' He had the kind of face that said that. Instead, he said, 'Back again, is he? Where did he go?' 'Didn't see, Mr Salzella. He just swooped off again!' 'Some of you help Tommy down to the canteen,' said Salzella. 'And someone else fetch a doctor–' 'His leg isn't broken,' said Agnes. 'But that's a nasty rope burn on his neck and he's filled his own ear with paint.' 'What do you know about it, miss?' said Tommy. A paintfilled ear didn't sound as though it had the possibilities of a broken leg. 'I've ... er ... had some training,' said Agnes, and then added quickly, 'It's a nasty burn, though, and of course there may be some delayed shock.' 'Brandy is very good for that, isn't it?' said Tommy. 'Perhaps you could try forcing some between my lips?' 'Thank you, Perdita. The rest of you, go back to what you were doing,' said Salzella. 'Big dark holes,' said Mr Pounder. 'Big ones.' 'Yes, thank you, Mr Pounder. Help Ron with Mr Cripps, will you? Perdita, you come here. And you, Christine.' The two girls stood before the director of music. 'Did you see anything?' said Salzella. 'I saw a great creature with great flapping wings and great big holes where his eyes should be!!' said Christine. 'I'm afraid I just saw something white up in the ceiling,' said Agnes. 'Sorry.' She blushed, aware of how useless that sounded. Perdita would have seen a mysterious cloaked figure or something... something interesting... Salzella smiled at her. 'You mean you just see things that are really there?' he said. 'I can see you haven't been with the opera for long, dear. But I may say I'm pleased to have a level-headed person around here for once–' 'Oh, no!' screamed someone. 'It's the Ghost!!' shrieked Christine, automatically. 'Er. It's the young man behind the organ,' said Agnes. 'Sorry.' 'Observant as well as level-headed,' said Salzella. 'Whereas I can see that you, Christine, will fit right in here. What's the matter, André?' A fair-haired young man peered around the organ pipes. 'Someone's been smashing things, Mr Salzella,' he said mournfully. 'The pallet springs and the backfalls and everything. Completely ruined. I'm sure I won't be able to get a tune out of it. And it's priceless.' Salzella sighed. 'All right. I'll tell Mister Bucket,' he said. 'Thank you, everyone.' He gave Agnes a gloomy nod, and strode off:     'You shouldn't ort to do that to people,' said Nanny Ogg in a vague sort of way, as the coach began to get up speed. She looked around with a wide, friendly grin at the now rather dishevelled occupants of the coach. 'Morning,' she said, delving into the sack. 'I'm Gytha Ogg, I've got fifteen children, this is my friend Esme Weatherwax, we're going to Ankh-Morpork, would anyone like an egg sandwich? I've brung plenty. The cat's been sleepin' on them but they're fine, look, they bend back all right. No? Please yourself, I'm sure. Let's see what else we've got... ah, has anybody got an opener for a bottle of beer?' A man in the corner indicated that he might have such a thing. 'Fine,' said Nanny Ogg. 'Anyone got something to drink a bottle of beer out of?' Another man nodded hopefully. 'Good,' said Nanny Ogg. 'Now, has anybody got a bottle of beer?' Granny, for once not the centre of attention as all horrified eyes were on Nanny and her sack, surveyed the other occupants of the coach. The express stage went right over the Ramtops and all the way through the patchwork of little countries beyond. If it cost forty dollars just from Lancre, then it must have cost these people a lot more. What sort of folk spent the best part of two months' wages just to travel fast and uncomfortably? The thin man who sat clutching his bag was probably a spy, she decided. The fat man who'd volunteered the glass looked as if he sold things; he had the unpleasant complexion of someone who'd hit too many bottles but missed too many meals. They were huddled together on their seat because the rest of it was occupied by a man of almost wizardly proportions. He didn't appear to have woken up when the coach stopped. There was a handkerchief over his face. He was snoring with the regularity of a geyser, and looked as though the only worries he might have in the world were a tendency for small objects to gravitate towards him and the occasional tide. Nanny Ogg continued to rummage around in her bag and, as was the case when she was preoccupied, her mouth had wired itself to her eyeballs without her brain intervening. She was used to travelling by broomstick. Longdistance ground travel was a novelty to her, so she'd prepared with some care. '...lessee now... book of puzzles for long journeys ... cushion ... foot powder ... mosquito trap... phrase book... bag to be sick into... oh dear...' The audience, which against all probability had managed to squeeze itself further away from Nanny during the litany, waited with horrified interest. 'What?' said Granny. 'How often d'you reckon this coach stops?' 'What's the matter?' 'I should've gone before we left. Sorry. It's the jolting. Anyone know if there's a privy on this thing?' she added brightly. 'Er,' said the probable spy, 'we generally wait until the next stop, or–' He stopped. He had been about to add 'there's always the window', which was a manly option on the bumpier rural stretches, but he stopped himself in the horrible apprehension that this ghastly old woman might seriously consider the possibility. 'There's Ohulan just a bit further on the road,' said Granny, who was trying to doze. 'You just wait.' 'This coach doesn't stop at Ohulan,' said the spy helpfully. Granny Weatherwax raised her head. 'Up until now, that is,' said the spy.     Mr Bucket was sitting in his office trying to make sense of the Opera House's books. They didn't make any kind of sense. He reckoned he was as good as the next man at reading a balance-sheet, but these were to book-keeping what grit was to clockwork. Seldom Bucket had always enjoyed opera. He didn't understand it and never had, but he didn't understand the ocean either and he enjoyed that, too. He'd looked upon the purchase as, well, something to do, a sort of working retirement. The offer had been too good to pass up. Things had been getting pretty tough in the wholesale cheese-and-milk-derivatives business, and he'd been looking forward to the quieter climes of the world of art. The previous owners had put on some good operas. It was only a shame that their genius hadn't run to bookkeeping as well. Money seemed to have been taken out of the accounts when anyone needed it. The financial-record system largely consisted of notes on torn bits of paper saying: 'I've taken $30 to pay Q. See you Monday. R.' Who was R? Who was Q? What was the money for? You wouldn't get away with this sort of thing in the world of cheese. He looked up as the door opened. 'Ah, Salzella,' he said. 'Thank you for coming. You don't know who Q is, by any chance?' 'No, Mr Bucket.' 'Or R?' 'I'm afraid not.' Salzella pulled up a chair. 'It's taken me all morning, but I've worked out we pay more than fifteen hundred dollars a year for ballet shoes,' said Bucket, waving a piece of paper in the air. Salzella nodded. 'Yes, they do rather go through them at the toes.' 'I mean, it's ridiculous! I've still got a pair of boots belonging to my father!' 'But ballet shoes, sir, are rather more like foot gloves,' Salzella explained. 'You're telling me! They cost seven dollars a pair and they last hardly any time at all! A few performances! There must be some way we can make a saving... ?' Salzella gave his new employer a long, cool stare. 'Possibly we could ask the girls to spend more time in the air?' he said. 'A few extra grands jetes?' Bucket looked puzzled. 'Would that work?' he said suspiciously. 'Well, their feet wouldn't be on the ground for so long, would they?' said Salzella, in the tones of one who knows for a fact that he's much more intelligent than anyone else in the room. 'Good point. Good point. Have a word with the ballet mistress, will you?' 'Of course. I am sure she will welcome the suggestion. You may well have halved costs at a stroke.' Bucket beamed. 'Which is perhaps just as well,' said Salzella. 'There is, in fact, another matter that I've come to see you about...' 'Yes?' 'It is to do with the organ we had.' 'Had? What do you mean, had?' said Bucket, adding, 'You're going to tell me something expensive, are you? What have we got now?' 'A lot of pipes and some keyboards,' said Salzella. 'Everything else has been smashed.' 'Smashed? Who by?' Salzella leaned back. He was not a man to whom amusement came easily, but he realized that he was rather enjoying this. 'Tell me,' he said, 'when Mr Pnigeus and Mr Cavaille sold you this Opera House, did they mention anything... supernatural?' Bucket scratched his head. 'Well... yes. After I'd signed and paid. It was a bit of a joke. They said: "Oh, and by the way, people say there's some man in evening dress who haunts the place, haha, ridiculous, isn't it, these theatrical people, like children really, haha, but you may find it keeps them happy if you always keep Box Eight free on first nights, haha." I remember that quite well. Handing over thirty thousand dollars concentrates the memory a bit. And then they rode off: Quite a fast carriage, now I come to think about it.' 'Ah,' said Salzella, and he almost smiled. 'Well, now that the ink is dry, I wonder if I might fill you in on the fine detail...' 'You make yourself useful, Esme Weatherwax,' said the voice from the bushes, 'by obligin' me and findin' any dock or burdock plants that might happen to be around out there, thank you very much.' 'Herbs? What're you plannin' with them?' 'I'm plannin' to say, "Thank goodness, big leaves, just what I need." '     Birds sang. The wind rattled the dried seed-heads of moorland flowers. Granny Weatherwax poked in the ditches to see if there were any interesting herbs hereabouts. High over the hills, a buzzard screamed and wheeled. The coach stood by the side of the road, despite the fact that it should have been speeding along at least twenty miles away. At last Granny grew bored, and sidled towards a clump of gorse bushes. 'How're you doing, Gytha?' 'Fine, fine,' said a muffled voice. 'Only I reckon the coach driver is getting a bit impatient.' 'You can't hurry Nature,' said Nanny Ogg. 'Well, don't blame me. You was the one who said it was too draughty on the broomsticks.'   Some distance from the bushes where Nanny Ogg was communing with Nature there was, placid under the autumn sky, a lake. In the reeds, a swan was dying. Or was due to die. There was, however, an unforeseen snag. Death sat down on the bank. NOW LOOK, he said, I KNOW HOW IT IS SUPPOSED TO GO. SWANS SING JUST ONCE, BEAUTIFULLY, BEFORE THEY DIE. THAT'S WHERE THE WORD 'SWANSONG' ORIGINATES. IT IS VERY MOVING. NOW, LET US TRY THIS AGAIN... He produced a tuning fork from the shadowy recesses of his robe and twanged it on the side of his scythe. THERE'S YOUR NOTE... 'Uh-uh,' said the swan, shaking its head. WHY MAKE IT DIFFICULT? 'I like it here,' said the swan. THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. 'Did you know I can break a man's arm with a blow of my wing?' HOW ABOUT IF I GET YOU STARTED? DO YOU KNOW 'MOONLIGHT BAY'? 'That's no more than a barbershop ditty! I happen to be a swan!' 'LITTLE BROWN JUG'? Death cleared his throat. HA HA HA, HEE HEE HEE, LITTLE– 'That's a song?' The swan hissed angrily and swayed from one crabbed foot to the other. 'I don't know who you are, sirrah, but where I come from we've got better taste in music.' REALLY? WOULD YOU CARE TO SHOW ME AN EXAMPLE? 'Uh-uh!' DAMN. 'Thought you'd got me there, didn't you,' said the swan. 'Thought you'd tricked me, eh? Thought I might unthinkingly give you a couple of bars of the Pedlar's Song from Lohenshaak, eh?' I DON'T KNOW THAT ONE. The swan took a deep, laboured breath. 'That's the one that goes "Schneide meinen eigenen Hals-" ' THANK YOU, said Death. The scythe moved. 'Bugger!' A moment later the swan stepped out of its body and ruffled fresh but slightly transparent wings. 'Now what?' it said. THAT'S UP TO YOU. IT'S ALWAYS UP TO YOU.     Mr Bucket leaned back in his creaky leather chair with his eyes shut until his director of music had finished. 'So,' Bucket said. 'Let me see if I've got this right. There's this Ghost. Every time anyone loses a hammer in this place, it's been stolen by the Ghost. Every time someone cracks a note, it's because of the Ghost. But also, every time someone finds a lost object, it's because of the Ghost. Every time someone has a very good scene, it must be because of the Ghost. He sort of comes with the building, like the rats. Every so often someone sees him, but not for long because he comes and goes like a... well, a Ghost. Apparently we let him use Box Eight for free on every first-night performance. And you say people like him?' ' "Like" isn't quite the right word,' said Salzella. 'It would be more correct to say that... well, it's pure superstition, of course, but they think he's lucky. Thought he was, anyway.' And you wouldn't understand a thing about that, would you, you coarse little cheesemonger, he added to himself. Cheese is cheese. Milk goes rotten naturally. You don't have to make it happen by having several hundred people wound up until their nerves go twang... 'Lucky,' said Bucket flatly. 'Luck is very important,' said Salzella, in a voice in which pained patience floated like ice cubes. 'I imagine that temperament is not an important factor in the cheese business?' 'We rely on rennet,' said Bucket. , Salzella sighed. 'Anyway, the company feel that the Ghost is... lucky. He used to send people little notes of encouragement. After a really good performance, sopranos would find a box of chocolates in their dressing-room, that sort of thing. And dead flowers, for some reason.' 'Dead flowers?' 'Well, not flowers at all, as such. Just a bouquet of dead rose-stems with no roses on them. It's something of a trademark of his. It's considered lucky.' 'Dead flowers are lucky?' 'Possibly. Live flowers, certainly, are terribly bad luck on stage. Some singers won't even have them in their dressing-room. So... dead flowers are safe, you might say. Odd, but safe. And it didn't worry people because everyone thought the Ghost was on their side. At least, they did. Until about six months ago.' Mr Bucket shut his eyes again. 'Tell me,' he said. 'There have been... accidents.' 'What kind of accidents?' 'The kind of accidents that you prefer to call... accidents.' Mr Bucket's eyes stayed closed. 'Like... the time when Reg Plenty and Fred Chiswell were working late one night up on the curdling vats and it turned out Reg had been seeing Fred's wife and somehow–' Bucket swallowed –'somehow he must have tripped, Fred said, and fallen–' 'I am not familiar with the gentlemen concerned but... that kind of accident. Yes.' Bucket sighed. 'That was some of the finest Farmhouse Nutty we ever made.' 'Do you want me to tell you about our accidents?' 'I'm sure you're going to.' 'A seamstress stitched herself to the wall. A deputy stage manager was found stabbed with a prop sword. Oh, and you wouldn't like me to tell you what happened to the man who worked the trapdoor. And all the lead mysteriously disappeared from the roof, although personally I don't think that was the work of the Ghost.' 'And everyone... calls these... accidents?' 'Well, you wanted to sell your cheese, didn't you? I can't imagine anything that would depress the house like news that dead bodies are dropping like flies out of the flies.' He took an envelope out of his pocket and placed it on the table. 'The Ghost likes to leave little messages,' he said. 'There was one by the organ. A scenery painter spotted him and ....nearly had an accident.' Bucket sniffed the envelope. It reeked of turpentine. The letter inside was on a sheet of the Opera House's own notepaper. In neat, copperplate writing, it said:   Ahahahahaha! Ahahahaha! Aahahaha! BEWARE!!!!!        Yrs Sincerely,                  The Opera Ghost   'What sort of person,' said Salzella patiently, 'sits down and writes a maniacal laugh? And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head. Opera can do that to a man. Look, at least let's search the building. The cellars go on for ever. I'll need a boat–' 'A boat? In the cellar?' 'Oh. Didn't they tell you about the sub-basement?' Bucket smiled the bright, crazed smile of a man who was nearing double exclamation marks himself. 'No,' he said. 'They didn't tell me about the subbasement. They were too busy not telling me that someone goes around killing the company. I don't recall anyone saying "Oh, by the way, people are dying a lot, and incidentally there's a touch of rising damp-" ' 'They're flooded.' 'Oh, good!' said Bucket. 'What with? Buckets of blood?' 'Didn't you have a look?' 'They said the cellars were fine!' 'And you believed them?' 'Well, there was rather a lot of champagne...' Salzella sighed. Bucket took offence at the sigh. 'I happen to pride myself that I am a good judge of character,' he said. 'Look a man deeply in the eye and give him a firm handshake and you know everything about him.' 'Yes, indeed,' said Salzella. 'Oh, blast... Senor Enrico Basilica will be here the day after tomorrow. Do you think something might happen to him?' 'Oh, not much. Cut throat, perhaps.' 'What? You think so?' 'How should I know?' 'What do you want me to do? Close the place? As far as I can see it doesn't make any money as it is! Why hasn't anyone told the Watch?' 'That would be worse,' said Salzella. 'Big trolls in rusty chainmail tramping everywhere, getting in everyone's way and asking stupid questions. They'd close us down.' Bucket swallowed. 'Oh, we can't have that,' he said. 'Can't have them... putting everyone on edge.' Salzella sat back. He seemed to relax a little. 'On edge? Mr Bucket,' he said, 'this is opera. Everyone is always on edge. Have you ever heard of a catastrophe curve, Mr Bucket?' Seldom Bucket did his best. 'Well, I know there's a dreadful bend in the road up by–' 'A catastrophe curve, Mr Bucket, is what opera runs along. Opera happens because a large number of things amazingly fail to go wrong, Mr Bucket. It works because of hatred and love and nerves. All the time. This isn't cheese. This is opera. If you wanted a quiet retirement, Mr Bucket, you shouldn't have bought the Opera House. You should have done something peaceful, like alligator dentistry.'     Nanny Ogg was easily bored. But, on the other hand, she was also easy to amuse. 'Certainly an interestin' way to travel,' she said. 'You do get to see places.' 'Yes,' said Granny. 'Every five miles, it seems to me.' 'Can't think what's got into me.' 'I shouldn't think the horses have managed to get faster'n a walk all morning.' They were, by now, alone except for the huge snoring man. The other two had got out and joined the travellers on top. The main cause of this was Greebo. With a cat's unerring instinct for people who dislike cats he'd leapt heavily into their laps and given them the 'young masser back on de ole plantation' treatment. And he'd treadled them into submission and then settled down and gone to sleep, claws gripping not sufficiently to draw blood but definitely to suggest that this was an option should the person move or breathe. And then, when he was sure they were resigned to the situation, he'd started to smell. No one knew where it came from. It was not associated with any known orifice. It was just that, after five minutes' doze, the air above Greebo had a penetrating smell of fermented carpets. He was now trying it out on the very large man. It wasn't working. At last Greebo had found a stomach too big for him. Also, the continuing going up and down was beginning to make him feel ill. The snores reverberated around the coach. 'Wouldn't like to come between him and his pudding,' said Nanny Ogg. Granny was staring out of the window. At least, her face was turned that way, but her eyes were focused on infinity. 'Gytha?' 'Yes, Esme?' 'Mind if I ask you a question?' 'You don't normally ask if I mind,' said Nanny. 'Doesn't it ever get you down, the way people don't think properly?' Oh-oh, thought Nanny. I reckon I got her out just in time. Thank goodness for literature. 'How d'you mean?' she said. 'I means the way they distracts themselves.' 'Can't say I ever really thought about it, Esme.' 'Like...s'pose I was to say to you, Gytha Ogg, your house is on fire, what's the first thing you'd try to take out?' Nanny bit her lip. 'This is one of them personality questions, ain't it?' she said. 'That's right.' 'Like, you try to guess what I'm like by what I say...' 'Gytha Ogg, I've known you all my life, I knows what you're like. I don't need to guess. But answer me, all the same.' 'I reckon I'd take Greebo.' Granny nodded. ' 'Cos that shows I've got a warm and considerate nature,' Nanny went on. 'No, it shows you're the kind of person who tries to work out what the right answer's supposed to be,' said Granny. 'Untrustworthy. That was a witch's answer if ever I heard one. Devious.' Nanny looked proud. The snores changed to a blurt-blurt noise and the handkerchief quivered. '...treacle pudding, with lots of custard...' 'Hey, he just said something,' said Nanny. 'He talks in his sleep,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'He's been doing it on and off.' 'I never heard him!' 'You were out of the coach.' 'Oh.' 'At the last stop he was going on about pancakes with lemon,' said Granny. 'And mashed potatoes with butter.' 'Makes me feel hungry just listening to that,' said Nanny. 'I've got a pork pie in the bag somewhere–' The snoring stopped abruptly. A hand came up and moved the handkerchief aside. The face beyond was friendly, bearded and small. It gave the witches a shy smile which turned inexorably towards the pork pie. 'Want a slice, mister?' said Nanny. 'I've got some mustard here, too.' 'Oo, would you, dear lady?' said the man, in a squeaky voice. 'Don't know when I last had a pork pie–oh, dear...' He grimaced as if he'd just said something wrong, and then relaxed. 'Got a bottle of beer if you want a drop, too,' said Nanny. She was one of those women who enjoy seeing people eat almost as much as eating itself. 'Beer?' said the man. 'Beer? You know, they don't let me drink beer. Hah, it's supposed to be the wrong ambience. I'd give anything for a pint of beer–' 'Just a "thank you" would do,' said Nanny, passing it over. 'Who's this "they" to whom you refers?' said Granny. ' 'S my fault really,' said the man, through a faint spray of pork crumbs. 'Got caught up, I suppose...' There was a change in the sounds from outside. The lights of a town were going past and the coach was slowing down. The man forced the last of the pie into his mouth and washed it down with the dregs of the beer. 'Oo, lovely,' he said. Then he leaned back and put the handkerchief over his face. He raised a corner. 'Don't tell anyone I spoke to you,' he said, 'but you've made a friend of Henry Slugg.' 'And what do you do, Henry Slugg?' said Granny, carefully. 'I'm... I'm on the stage.' 'Yes. We can see,' said Nanny Ogg. 'No, I meant–' The coach stopped. Gravel crunched as people climbed down. The door was pulled open. Granny saw a crowd of people peering excitedly through the doorway, and reached up automatically to straighten her hat. But several hands reached out for Henry Slugg, who sat up, smiled nervously, and let himself be helped out. Several people also shouted out a name, but it wasn't the name of Henry Slugg. 'Who's Enrico Basilica?' said Nanny Ogg. 'Don't know,' said Granny. 'Maybe he's the person Mr Slugg's afraid of.' The coaching inn was a run-down shack, with only two bedrooms for guests. As helpless old ladies travelling alone, the witches got one, simply because all hell would have been let loose if they hadn't.     Mr Bucket looked pained. 'I may just be a big man in cheese to you,' he said, 'you may think I'm just some hard-headed businessman who wouldn't know culture if he found it floating in his tea, but I have been a patron of the opera here and elsewhere for many years. I can hum nearly the whole of–' 'I am sure you've seen a lot of opera,' said Salzella. 'But... how much do you know about production?' 'I've been behind the scenes in lots of theatres–' 'Oh, theatre,' said Salzella. 'Theatre doesn't even approach it. Opera isn't theatre with singing and dancing. Opera's opera. You might think a production like Lohenshaak is full of passion, but it's a sandpit of toddlers compared to what goes on behind the scenes. The singers all loathe the sight of one another, the chorus despises the singers, they both hate the orchestra, and everyone fears the conductor; the staff on one prompt side won't talk to the staff on the opposite prompt side, the dancers are all crazed from hunger in any case, and that's only the start of it, because what is really–' There was a series of knocks at the door. They were painfully irregular, as if the knocker were having to concentrate quite hard. 'Come in, Walter,' said Salzella. Walter Plinge shuffled in, a pail dangling at the end of each arm. 'Come to fill your coalscuttle Mr Bucket!' Bucket waved a hand vaguely, and turned back to the director of music. 'You were saying?' Salzella stared at Walter as the man carefully piled lumps of coal in the scuttle, one at a time. 'Salzella?' 'What? Oh. I'm sorry... what was I saying?' 'Something about it being only the start?' 'What? Oh. Yes. Yes... you see, it's fine for actors. There's plenty of parts for old men. Acting's something you can do all your life. You get better at it. But when your talent is singing or dancing... Time creeps up behind you, all the...' He fumbled for a word, and settled lamely for 'Time. Time is the poison. You watch backstage one night and you'll see the dancers checking all the time in any mirror they can find for that first little imperfection. You watch the singers. Everyone's on edge, everyone knows that this might be their last perfect night, that tomorrow might be the beginning of the end. That's why everyone worries about luck, you see? All the stuff about live flowers being unlucky, you remember? Well, so's green. And real jewellery worn on stage. And real mirrors on stage. And whistling on stage. And peeking at the audience through the main curtains. And using new makeup on a first night. And knitting on stage, even at rehearsals. A yellow clarinet in the orchestra is very unlucky, don't ask me why. And as for stopping a performance before its proper ending, well, that's worst of all. You might as well sit under a ladder and break mirrors.' Behind Salzella, Walter carefully placed the last lump of coal on the pile in the scuttle and dusted it carefully. 'Good grief,' said Bucket; at last. 'I thought it was tough in cheese.' He waved a hand at the pile of papers and what passed for the accounts. 'I paid thirty thousand for this place,' he said. 'It's in the centre of the city! Prime site! I thought it was hard bargaining!' 'They'd have probably accepted twenty-five.' 'And tell me again about Box Eight. You let this Ghost have it?' 'The Ghost considers it is his for every first night, yes.' 'How does he get in?' 'No one knows. We've searched and searched for secret entrances...' 'He really doesn't pay?' No. 'It's worth fifty dollars a night!' 'There will be trouble if you sell it,' said Salzella. 'Good grief, Salzella, you're an educated man! How can you sit there so calmly and accept this sort of madness? Some creature in a mask has the run of the place, gets a prime Box all to himself, kills people, and you sit there saying there will be trouble?' 'I told you: the show must go on.' 'Why? We never said "the cheese must go on"! What's so special about the show going on?' Salzella smiled. 'As far as I understand it,' he said, 'the... power behind the show, the soul of the show, all the effort that's gone into it, call it what you will... it leaks out and spills everywhere. That's why they burble about "the show must go on". It must go on. But most of the company wouldn't even understand why anyone should ask the question.' Bucket glared at the pile of what passed for the Opera House's financial records. 'They certainly don't understand book-keeping! Who does the accounts?' 'All of us, really,' said Salzella. 'All of you?' 'Money gets put in, money gets taken out...' said Salzella vaguely. 'Is it important?' Bucket's jaw dropped. 'Is it important?' 'Because,' Salzella went on, smoothly, 'opera doesn't make money. Opera never makes money.' 'Good grief, man! Important? What'd I ever have achieved in the cheese business, I'd like to know, if I'd said that money wasn't important?' Salzella smiled humourlessly. 'There are people out on the stage right now, sir,' he said, 'who'd say that you would probably have made better cheeses.' He sighed, and leaned over the desk. 'You see,' he said, 'cheese does make money. And opera doesn't. Opera's what you spend money on.' 'But... what do you get out of it?' 'You get opera. You put money in, you see, and opera comes out,' said Salzella wearily. 'There's no profit?' 'Profit... profit,' murmured the director of music, Scratching his forehead. 'No, I don't believe I've come across the word.' 'Then how do we manage?' 'We seem to rub along.' Bucket put his head in his hands. 'I mean,' he muttered, half to himself, 'I knew the place wasn't making much, but I thought that was just because it was run badly. We have big audiences! We charge a mint for tickets! Now I'm told that a Ghost runs around killing people and we don't even make any money!' Salzella beamed. 'Ah, opera,' he said.     Greebo stalked over the inn's rooftops. Most cats are nervous and ill at ease when taken out of their territory, which is why cat books go on about putting butter on their paws and so on, presumably because constantly skidding into the walls will take the animal's mind off where the walls actually are. But Greebo travelled well, purely because he took it for granted that the whole world was his dirtbox. He dropped heavily on to an outhouse roof and padded towards a small open window. Greebo also had a cat's approach to possessions, which was simply that nothing edible had a right to belong to other people. From the window came a variety of smells which included pork pies and cream. He squeezed through and dropped on to the pantry shelf. Of course, sometimes he got caught. At least, sometimes he got discovered... There was cream. He settled down. He was halfway down the bowl when the door opened. Greebo's ears flattened. His one good eye sought desperately for an escape route. The window was too high, the person opening the door was wearing a long dress that militated against the old 'through the legs' routine and... and... and... there was no escape... His claws scrabbled on the floor... Oh no... here it came... Something flipped in his body's morphogenic field. Here was a problem a cat shape couldn't deal with. Oh, well, we know another one... Crockery crashed around him. Shelves erupted as his head rose. A bag of flour exploded outwards to make room for his broadening shoulders. The cook stared up at him. Then she looked down. And then up. And then, her gaze dragged as though it were on a winch, down again. She screamed. Greebo screamed. He grabbed desperately at a bowl to cover that part which, as a cat, he never had to worry about exposing. He screamed again, this time because he'd just poured lukewarm pork dripping all over himself. His groping fingers found a large copper jellymould. Clasping it to his groinal areas, he barrelled forward and fled out of the pantry and out of the kitchen and out of the dining-room and out of the inn and into the night. The spy, who was dining with the travelling salesman, put down his knife. 'That's something you don't often see,' he said. 'What?' said the salesman, who'd had his back to the excitement. 'One of those old copper jelly-moulds. They're worth quite a lot now. My aunt had a very good one.' The hysterical cook was given a big drink and several members of staff went out into the darkness to investigate. All they found was a jelly-mould, lying forlornly in the yard.     At home Granny Weatherwax slept with open windows and an unlocked door, secure in the knowledge that the Ramtops' various creatures of the night would rather eat their own ears than break in. In dangerously civilized lands, however, she took a different view. 'I really don't think we need to shove the bed in front of the door, Esme,' said Nanny Ogg, heaving on her end. 'You can't be too careful,' said Granny. 'Supposing some man started rattlin' the knob in the middle of the night?' 'Not at our time of life,' said Nanny sadly. 'Gytha Ogg, you are the most–' Granny was interrupted by a watery sound. It came from behind the wall and went on for some time. It stopped, and then started again–a steady splashing that gradually became a trickle. Nanny started to grin. 'Someone fillin' a bath?' said Granny. '...or I suppose it could be someone fillin' a bath,' Nanny conceded. There was the sound of a third jug being emptied. Footsteps left the room. A few seconds later a door opened and there was a rather heavier tread, followed after a brief interval by a few splashes and a grunt. 'Yes, a man gettin' into a bath,' said Granny. 'What're you doin', Gytha?' 'Seem' if there's a knothole in this wood somewhere,' said Nanny. 'Ah, here's one–' 'Come back here!' 'Sorry, Esme.' And then the singing started. It was a very pleasant tenor voice, given added timbre by the bath itself. 'Show me the way to go home, I'm tired and I want to go to bed–' 'Someone's enjoyin' themselves, anyway,' said Nanny. '-wherever I may roam–' There was a knock at the distant bathroom door, upon which the singer slipped smoothly into another language: '– per via di terra, mare o schiuma–' The witches looked at one another. A muffled voice said, 'I've brought you your hotwater bottle, sir.' 'Thank you verr' mucha,' said the bather, his voice dripping with accent. Footsteps went away in the distance. '–Indicame la strada... to go home.' Splash, Splash. 'Good eeeeevening, frieeeends...' 'Well, well, well,' said Granny, more or less to herself. 'It seems once again that our Mr Slugg is a secret polyglot.' 'Fancy! And you haven't even looked through the knothole,' said Nanny. 'Gytha, is there anything in the whole world you can't make sound grubby?' 'Not found it yet, Esme,' said Nanny brightly. 'I meant that when he mutters in his sleep and sings in his bath he talks just like us, but when he thinks people are listening he comes over all foreign.' 'That's probably to throw that Basilica person off the scent,' Nanny said. 'Oh, I reckon Mr Basilica is very close to Henry Slugg,' said Granny. 'In fact, I reckon that they're one and–' There was a gentle knock at the door. 'Who's there?' Granny demanded. 'It's me, ma'am. Mr Slot. This is my tavern.' The witches pushed the bed aside and Granny opened the door a fraction. 'Yes?' she said suspiciously. 'Er... the coachman said you were... witches?' 'Yes?' 'Maybe you could... help us?' 'What's wrong?' 'It's my boy...' Granny opened the door further and saw the woman standing behind Mr Slot. One look at her face was enough. There was a bundle in her arms. Granny stepped back. 'Bring him in and let me have a look at him.' She took the baby from the woman, sat down on the room's one chair, and pulled back the blanket. Nanny Ogg peered over her shoulder. 'Hmm,' said Granny, after awhile. She glanced at Nanny, who gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head. 'There's a curse on this house, that's what it is,' said Slot. 'My best cow's been taken mortally sick, too.' 'Oh? You have a cowshed?' said Granny. 'Very good place for a sickroom, a cowshed. It's the warmth. You better show me where it is.' 'You want to take the boy down there?' 'Right now.' The man looked at his wife, and shrugged. 'Well, I'm sure you know your business best,' he said. 'It's this way.' He led the witches down some back stairs and across a yard and into the foetid sweet air of the byre. A cow was stretched out on the straw. It rolled an eye madly as-they entered, and tried to moo. Granny took in the scene and stood looking thoughtful for a moment. Then she said, 'This will do.' 'What do you need?' said Slot. 'Just peace and quiet.' The man scratched his head. 'I thought you did a chant or made up some potion or something,' he said. 'Sometimes.' 'I mean, I know where there's a toad...' 'All I shall require is a candle,' said Granny. 'A new one, for preference.' 'That's all?' 'Yes.' Mr Slot looked a little put out. Despite his distraction, something about his manner suggested that Granny Weatherwax was possibly not that much of a witch if she didn't want a toad. 'And some matches,' said Granny, noting this. 'A pack of cards might be useful, too.' 'And I'll need three cold lamb chops and exactly two pints of beer,' said Nanny Ogg. The man nodded. This didn't sound too toad-like, but it was better than nothing. 'What'd you ask for that for?' hissed Granny, as the man bustled off. 'Can't imagine what good those'd do! Anyway, you already had a big dinner.' 'Well, I'm always prepared to go that extra meal. You won't want me around and I'll get bored,' said Nanny. 'Did I say I didn't want you around?' 'Well... even I can see that boy is in a coma, and the cow has the Red Bugge if I'm any judge. That's bad, too. So I reckon you're planning some... direct action.' Granny shrugged. 'Time like that, a witch needs to be alone,' said Nanny. 'But you just mind what you're doing, Esme Weatherwax.' The child was brought down in a blanket and made as comfortable as possible. The man followed behind his wife with a tray. 'Mrs Ogg will do her necessary procedures with the tray in her room,' said Granny haughtily. 'You just leave me in here tonight. And no one is to come in, right? No matter what.' The mother gave a worried curtsey. 'But I thought I might look in about midn–' 'No one. Now, off you go.' When they'd been gently but firmly ushered out, Nanny Ogg stuck her head around the door. 'What exactly are you planning, Esme?' 'You've sat up with the dyin' often enough, Gytha.' 'Oh, yes, it's...' Nanny's face fell. 'Oh, Esme... you're not going to...' 'Enjoy your supper, Gytha.' Granny closed the door. She spent some time arranging boxes and barrels so that she had a crude table and something to sit on. The air was warm and smelled of bovine flatulence. Periodically she checked the health of both patients, although there was little enough to check. In the distance the sounds of the inn gradually subsided. The last one was the clink of the innkeeper's keys as he locked the doors. Granny heard him walk across to the cowshed door and hesitate. Then he went away, and began to climb the stairs. She waited a little longer and then lit the candle. Its cheery flame gave the place a warm and comforting glow. On the plank table she laid out the cards and attempted to play Patience, a game she'd never been able to master. The candle burned down. She pushed the cards away, and sat watching the flame. After some immeasurable piece of time the flame flickered. It would have passed unnoticed by anyone who hadn't been concentrating on it for some while. She took a deep breath and– 'Good morning,' said Granny Weatherwax. GOOD MORNING, said a voice by her ear.     Nanny Ogg had long ago polished off the chops and the beer, but she hadn't got into bed. She lay on it, fully clothed, with her arms behind her head, staring at the dark ceiling. After a while there was a scratching on the shutters. She got up and opened them. A huge figure leapt into the room. For a moment the moonlight lit a glistening torso and a mane of black hair. Then the creature dived under the bed. 'Oh, deary deary me,' said Nanny. She waited for a while, and then fished a chop bone off her tray. There was still a bit of meat on it. She lowered it towards the floor. A hand shot out and grabbed it. Nanny sat back. 'Poor little man,' she said. It was only on the subject of Greebo that Nanny's otherwise keen sense of reality found itself all twisted. To Nanny Ogg he was merely a larger version of the little fluffy kitten he had once been. To everyone else he was a scarred ball of inventive malignancy. But now he had to deal with a problem seldom encountered by cats. The witches had, a year ago, turned him into a human, for reasons that had seemed quite necessary at the time. It had taken a lot of effort, and his morphogenic field had reasserted itself after a few hours, much to everyone's relief. But magic is never as simple as people think. It has to obey certain universal laws. And one is that, no matter how hard a thing is to do, once it has been done it'll become a whole lot easier and will therefore be done a lot. A huge mountain might be scaled by strong men only after many centuries of failed attempts, but a few decades later grandmothers will be strolling up it for tea 'and then wandering back afterwards to see where they left their glasses. In accordance with this law, Greebo's soul had noted that there was one extra option for use in a tight corner (in addition to the usual cat assortment of run, fight, crap or all three together) and that was: Become Human. It tended to wear off after a short time, most of which he spent searching desperately for a pair of pants. There were snores from under the bed. Gradually, to Nanny's relief, they turned into a purr. Then she sat bolt upright. She was some way from the cowshed but... 'He's here,' she said.     Granny breathed out, slowly. 'Come and sit where I can see you. That's good manners. And let me tell you right now that I ain't at all afraid of you.' The tall, black-robed figure walked across the floor and sat down on a handy barrel, leaning its scythe against the wall. Then it pushed back its hood. Granny folded her arms and stared calmly at the visitor, meeting his gaze eye-to-socket. I AM IMPRESSED. 'I have faith.' REALLY? IN WHAT PARTICULAR DEITY? 'Oh, none of them.' THEN FAITH IN WHAT? 'Just faith, you know. In general.' Death leaned forward. The candlelight raised new shadows on his skull. COURAGE IS EASY BY CANDLELIGHT. YOUR FAITH, I SUSPECT, IS IN THE FLAME. Death grinned. Granny leaned forward, and blew out the candle. Then she folded her arms again and stared fiercely ahead of her. After some length of time a voice said, ALL RIGHT, YOU'VE MADE YOUR POINT. Granny lit a match. Its flare illuminated the skull opposite, which hadn't moved. 'Fair enough,' she said, as she relit the candle. 'We don't want to be sitting here all night, do we? How many have you come for?' ONE. 'The cow?' Death shook his head. 'It could be the cow.' NO. THAT WOULD BE CHANGING HISTORY. 'History is about things changing.' NO. Granny sat back. 'Then I challenge you to a game. That's traditional. That's allowed.' Death was silent for a moment. THIS IS TRUE. 'Good.' CHALLENGING ME BY MEANS OF A GAME IS ALLOWABLE. 'Yes.' HOWEVER... YOU UNDERSTAND THAT TO WIN ALL YOU MUST GAMBLE ALL? 'Double or quits? Yes, I know.' BUT NOT CHESS. 'Can't abide chess.' OR CRIPPLE MR ONION. I'VE NEVER BEEN ABLE TO UNDERSTAND THE RULES. 'Very well. How about one hand of poker? Five cards each, no draws? Sudden death, as they say.' Death thought about this, too. YOU KNOW THIS FAMILY? No. THEN WHY? 'Are we talking or are we playing?' OH, VERY WELL. Granny picked up the pack of cards and shuffled it, not looking at her hands, and smiling at Death all the time. She dealt five cards each, and reached down. . . A bony hand grasped hers. BUT FIRST, MISTRESS WEATHERWAX–WE WILL EXCHANGE CARDS. He picked up the two piles and transposed them, and then nodded at Granny. MADAM? Granny looked at her cards, and threw them down. FOUR QUEENS. HMM. THAT IS VERY HIGH. Death looked down at his cards, and then up into Granny's steady, blue-eyed gaze. Neither moved for some time. Then Death laid the hand on the table. I LOSE, he said. ALL I HAVE IS FOUR ONES. He looked back into Granny's eyes for a moment. There was a blue glow in the depth of his eye sockets. Maybe, for the merest fraction of a second, barely noticeable even to the closest observation, one winked off. Granny nodded, and extended a hand. She prided herself on the ability to judge people by their gaze and their handshake, which in this case was a rather chilly one. 'Take the cow,' she said. IT IS A VALUABLE CREATURE. 'Who knows what the child will become?' Death stood up, and reached for his scythe. He said, OW. 'Ah, yes. I couldn't help noticing,' said Granny Weatherwax, as the tension drained out of the atmosphere, 'that you seem to be sparing that arm.' OH, YOU KNOW HOW IT IS. REPETITIVE ACTIONS AND SO ON... 'It could get serious if you left it.' HOW SERIOUS? 'Want me to have a look?' WOULD YOU MIND? IT CERTAINLY ACHES ON COLD NIGHTS. Granny stood up and reached out, but her hands went straight through. 'Look, you're going to have to make yourself a bit more solid if I'm to do anything–' POSSIBLY A BOTTLE OF SUCKROSE AND AKWA? 'Sugar and water? I expect you know that's only for the hard of thinking. Come on, roll up that sleeve. Don't be a big baby. What's the worst I can do to you? Granny's hands touched smooth bone. She'd felt worse. At least these had never had flesh on them. She felt, thought, gripped, twisted... There was a click. OW. 'Now try it above the shoulder.' ER. HMM. YES. IT DOES SEEM CONSIDERABLY MORE FREE. YES, INDEED. MY WORD, YES. THANK YOU VERY MUCH. 'If it gives you trouble again, you know where I live.' THANK YOU. THANK YOU VERY MUCH. 'You know where everyone lives. Tuesday mornings is a good time. I'm generally in.' I SHALL REMEMBER. THANK YOU. 'By appointment, in your case. No offence meant..' THANK YOU. Death walked away. A moment later there was a faint gasp from the cow. That and a slight sagging of the skin were all that apparently marked the transition from living animal to cooling meat. Granny picked up the baby and laid a hand on its forehead. 'Fever's gone,' she said. MISTRESS WEATHERWAX? said Death from the doorway. 'Yes, Sir?' I HAVE TO KNOW. WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF I HAD NOT... LOST? 'At the cards, you mean?' YES. WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE? Granny laid the baby down carefully on the straw, and smiled. 'Well,' she said, 'for a start... I'd have broken your bloody arm.'     Agnes stayed up late, simply because of the novelty. Most people in Lancre, as the saying goes, went to bed with the chickens and got up with the cows.[4] But she watched the evening's performance, and watched the set being struck afterwards, and watched the actors leave or, in the case of younger chorus members, head off for their lodgings in odd corners of the building. And then there was no one else, except Walter Plinge and his mother sweeping up. She headed for the staircase. There didn't seem to be a candle anywhere back here, but the few left burning in the auditorium were just enough to give the darkness a few shades. The stairs went up the wall at the rear of the stage, with nothing but a rickety handrail between them and the drop. Besides leading to the attics and storeroom on the upper floors, they were also one route to the fly loft and the other secret platforms where men in flat hats and grey overalls worked the magic of the theatre, usually by means of pulleys– There was a figure on one of the gantries over the stage. Agnes saw it only because it moved slightly. It was kneeling down, looking at something. In the darkness. She stepped back. The stair creaked. The figure jerked around. A square of yellow light opened in the darkness, its beam pinning her against the brickwork. 'Who's there?' she said, raising a hand to shade her eyes. 'Who's that?' said a voice. And then, after a moment, 'Oh. It's... Perdita, isn't it?' The square of light swung towards her as the figure made its way over the stage. 'André?' she said. She felt inclined to back away, if only the brickwork would let her. And suddenly he was on the stairs, quite an ordinary person, no shadow at all, holding a very large lantern. 'What are you doing here?' said the organist. 'I... was just going to bed.' 'Oh, Yes.' He relaxed a little. 'Some of you girls have got rooms here. The management thought it was safer than having you going home alone late at night.' 'What are you doing up here?' said Agnes, suddenly aware that there was just the two of them. 'I was... looking at the place where the Ghost tried to strangle Mr Cripps,' said André. ,Why?. 'I wanted to make certain everything was safe now, of course.' 'Didn't the stage-hands do that?' 'Oh, you know them. I just thought I'd better make certain.' Agnes looked down at the lantern. 'I've never seen one like that before. How did you make it light up so quickly?' 'Er. It's a dark lantern. There's this flap, you see,' he demonstrated, 'so you can shut it right down and open it up again...' 'That must be very useful when you're looking for the black notes.' 'Don't be sarcastic. I just don't want there to be any more trouble. You'll find that you start looking around when–' 'Goodnight, André.' 'Goodnight, then.' She hurried up the rest of the flights and ducked into her bedroom. No one followed her. When she'd calmed down, which took some time, she undressed in the voluminous tent of her red flannel nightdress and got into bed, resisting any temptation to pull the covers over her head. She stared at the dark ceiling. 'That's stupid,' she thought, eventually. 'He was on the stage this morning. No one could move that fast...' She never knew whether she actually got some sleep or whether it happened just as she was dozing off, but there was a very faint knock at the door. 'Perdita!?' Only one person she knew could exclaim a whisper. Agnes got up and padded over to the door. She opened the door a fraction, just to check, and Christine half-fell into the room. 'What's the matter?' 'I'm frightened!!' 'What of?' 'The mirror!! It's talking to me!! Can I sleep in your room?!' Agnes looked around. It was crowded enough with the two of them standing up in it. 'The mirror's talking?' 'Yes!!' 'Are you sure?' Christine dived into Agnes's bed and pulled the covers over her. 'Yes!!' she said, indistinctly. Agnes stood alone in the darkness. People always tended to assume that she could cope, as if capability went with mass, like gravity. And merely saying briskly, 'Nonsense, mirrors don't talk', would probably not be any help, especially with one half of the dialogue buried beneath the bedclothes. She felt her way into the next room, stubbing her foot on the bed in the darkness. There must be a candle in here, somewhere. She felt for the tiny bedside table, hoping to start the reassuring rattle of a matchbox. A faint glimmer from the midnight city filtered through the window. The mirror seemed to glow. She sat down on the bed, which creaked ominously under her. Oh well... one bed was as good as another... She was about to lie back when something in the darkness went:... ting. It was a tuning fork. And a voice said: 'Christine... please attend.' She sat upright, staring at the darkness. And then realization dawned. No men, they'd said. They'd been very strict about that, as if opera were some kind of religion. It was not a problem in Agnes's case, at least in the way they meant, but for someone like Christine... They said love always found a way and, of course, so did a number of associated activities. Oh, good grief. She felt the blush start. In darkness! What kind of a reaction was that? Agnes's life unrolled in front of her. It didn't look as though it were going to have many high points. But it did hold years and years of being capable and having a lovely personality. It almost certainly held chocolate rather than sex and, while Agnes was not in a position to make a direct comparison, and regardless of the fact that a bar of chocolate could be made to last all day, it did not seem a very fair exchange. She felt the same feeling she'd felt back home. Sometimes life reaches that desperate point where the wrong thing to do has to be the right thing to do. It doesn't matter what direction you go. Sometimes you just have to go. She gripped the bedclothes and replayed in her mind the way her friend spoke. You had to have that little gulp, that breathless tinkle in the tone that people got whose minds played with the fairies half the time. She tried it out in her head, and then delivered it to her vocal cords. 'Yes?! Who's there?!' 'A friend.' Agnes pulled the bedclothes up higher. 'In the middle of the night?!' 'Night is nothing to me. I belong to the night. And I can help you.' It was a pleasant voice. It seemed to be coming from the mirror. 'Help me to do what?!' 'Don't you want to be the best singer in the opera?' 'Oh, Perdita is a lot better than me!!' There was silence for a moment, and then the voice said: 'But while I cannot teach her to look and move like you, I can teach you to sing like her.' Agnes stared into the darkness, shock and humiliation rising from her like steam. 'Tomorrow you will sing the part of Iodine. But I will teach you how to sing it perfectly...'     Next morning the witches had the interior of the coach almost to themselves. News like Greebo gets around. But Henry Slugg was there, if that was indeed his name, sitting next to a very well-dressed, thin little man. 'Well, here we are again, then,' said Nanny Ogg. Henry smiled nervously. 'That was some good singing last night,' Nanny went on. Henry's face set in a good-natured grimace. In his eyes, terror waved a white flag. 'I am afraid Senor Basilica doesn't speak Morporkian, ma'am,' said the thin man. 'But I will translate for you, if you like.' 'What?' said Nanny. 'Then how come– Ow!' 'Sorry,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'My elbow must have slipped.' Nanny Ogg rubbed her side. 'I was saying,' she said, 'that he was– Ow!' 'Dear me, I seem to have done it again,' said Granny. 'This gentleman was telling us that his friend doesn't speak our language, Gytha.' 'Eh? But–What? Oh. But- Ah. Really? Oh. All right,' said Nanny. 'Oh, yes. Eats our pies, though, when– Ow!' 'Excuse my friend, it's her time of life. She gets confused,' said Granny. 'We did enjoy his singing. Heard him through the wall.' 'You were very fortunate,' said the thin man primly. 'Sometimes people have to wait years to hear Senor Basilica–' '-probably waiting for him to finish his dinner–' a voice muttered. '-in fact, at La Scalda in Genua last month his singing made ten thousand people shed tears.' '-hah, I can do that, I don't see there's anything special about that–' Granny's eyes hadn't left Henry 'Senor Basilica' Slugg's face. He had the expression of a man whose profound relief was horribly tempered by a dread that it wouldn't last very long. 'Senor Basilica's fame has spread far and wide,' said the manager primly. '–just like Senior Basilica,' muttered Nanny. 'On other people's pies, I expect. Oh, yes, too posh for us now, just because he's the only man you could find on an atlas–Ow!' 'Well, well,' said Granny, smiling in a way that everyone except Nanny Ogg would think of as innocent. 'It's nice and warm in Genua. I expect Senor Basilica really misses his home. And what do you do, young sir?' 'I am his manager and translator. Er. You have the advantage of me, ma'am.' 'Yes, indeed.' Granny nodded. 'We have some good singers where we come from too,' said Nanny Ogg, rebelliously. 'Really?' said the manager. 'And where do you ladies come from?' 'Lancre.' The man politely endeavoured to position Lancre on his mental map of great centres of music. 'Do you have a conservatory there?' 'Yes, indeed,' said Nanny Ogg stoutly, and then, just to make sure, she added, 'You should see the size of my tomatoes.' Granny rolled her eyes. 'Gytha, you haven't got a conservatory. It's just a big windowsill.' 'Yes, but it catches the sun nearly all day – Ow...' 'I expect Senor Basilica is going to Ankh-Morpork?' said Granny. 'We,' said the manager, primly, 'have allowed the Opera House to engage us for the rest of the season–' His voice faltered. He'd looked up at the luggage rack. 'What's that?' Granny glanced up. 'Oh, that's Greebo,' she said. 'And Mister Basilica's not to eat him,' said Nanny. 'What is it?' 'He's a cat.' 'It's grinning at me.' The manager shifted uneasily. 'And I can smell something,' he said. ' 'S funny,' said Nanny. 'I can't smell a thing.' There was a change in the sound of the hooves outside, and the coach lurched as it slowed. 'Ah,' said the manager awkwardly, 'I... er...I see we're stopping to change horses. It's a, a nice day. I think I may just, er, see if there's room on the seats outside.' He left when the coach stopped. When it started again, a few minutes later, he hadn't come back. 'Well, well,' said Granny, as they lurched away again, 'it seems there's just you and me, Gytha. And Senor Basilica, who doesn't speak our language. Does he, Mr Henry Slugg?' Henry Slugg took out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead. 'Ladies! Dear ladies! I beg you, for pity's sake...' 'Have you done anything bad, Mr Slugg?' said Nanny. 'Took advantage of women who dint want to be took advantage of? Stole? (Apart from lead on roofs and other stuff people wouldn't miss.) Done any murders of anyone who dint deserve it?' 'No.!' 'He tellin' the truth, Esme?' Henry writhed under Granny Weatherwax's stare. 'Yes.' 'Oh, well, that's all right, then,' said Nanny. 'I understand. I don't have to pay taxes myself, but I know all about people not wantin' to.' 'Oh, it's not that, I assure you,' said Henry. 'I have people to pay my taxes for me...' 'That's a good trick,' said Nanny. 'Mr Slugg's got a different trick,' said Granny. 'I reckon I know the trick. It's like sugar and water.' Henry waved his hands uncertainly. 'It's just that if they knew...' he began. 'Everything's better if it comes from a long way away. That's the secret,' said Granny. 'It's... yes, that's part of it,' said Henry. 'I mean, no one wants to listen to a Slugg.' 'Where're you from, Henry?' said Nanny. 'Really from,' said Granny. 'I grew up in Rookery Yard in the Shades. They're in Ankh-Morpork,' said Henry. 'It was a terrible rough place. There were only three ways out. You could sing your way out or you could fight your way out.' 'What was the third way?' said Nanny. 'Oh, you could go down that little alleyway into Shamlegger Street and then cut down into Treacle Mine Road,' said Henry. 'But no one ever amounted to anything who went that way.' He sighed. 'I made a few coppers singing in taverns and suchlike,' he said, 'but when I tried for anything better they said "What is your name?" and I said "Henry Slugg" and they'd laugh. I thought of changing my name, but everyone in Ankh-Morpork knew who I was. And no one wanted to listen to anyone called plain Henry Slugg.' Nanny nodded. 'It's like with conjurers,' she said. 'They're never called Fred Wossname. It's always something like The Great Astoundo, Fresh From the Court of the King of Klatch, and Gladys.' 'And everyone takes notice,' said Granny, 'and are always careful not to ask themselves: if he's come from the King of Klatch, why's he doing card tricks here in Slice, population seven.' 'The trick is to make sure that everywhere you go, you are from somewhere else,' said Henry. 'And then I was famous, but...' 'You'd got stuck as Enrico,' said Granny. He nodded. 'I was only going to do it to make some money. I was going to come back and marry my little Angeline–' 'Who was she?' said Granny. 'Oh, a girl I grew up with,' said Henry, vaguely. 'Sharing the same gutter in the back streets of Ankh-Morpork, kind of thing?' said Nanny, in an understanding voice. 'Gutter? In those days you had to put your name down and wait five years for a gutter,' said Henry. 'We thought people in gutters were nobs. We shared a drain. With two other families. And a man who juggled eels.' He sighed. 'But I moved on, and then there was always somewhere else to go, and they liked me in Brindisi... and... and...' He blew his nose on the handkerchief, carefully folded it up, and produced another one from his pocket. 'I don't mind the pasta and the squid,' he said. 'Well, not much... But you can't get a .decent pint for love nor money and they put olive oil on everything and tomatoes give me a rash and there isn't what I'd call a good hard cheese in the whole country.' He dabbed at his face with the handkerchief. 'And people are so kind,' he said. 'I thought I'd get a few beefsteaks when I travelled but, wherever I go, they do pasta especially for me. In tomato sauce! Sometimes they fry it! And what they do to the squid...' He shuddered. 'Then they all grin and watch me eat it. They think I enjoy it! What I'd give for a plate of nice roast mutton with clootie dumplings. . .' 'Why don't you say?' said Nanny. He shrugged. 'Enrico Basilica eats pasta,' he said. 'There's not much I can do about it now.' He sat back. 'You're interested in music, Mrs Ogg?' Nanny nodded proudly. 'I can get a tune out of just about anything if you give me five minutes to study it,' she said. 'And our Jason can play the violin and our Kev can blow the trombone and all my kids can sing and our Shawn can fart any melody you care to name. 'A very talented family, indeed,' said Enrico. He fumbled in a waistcoat pocket and took out two oblongs of cardboard. 'So please, ladies, accept these as a small token of gratitude from someone who eats other people's pies. Our little secret, eh?' He winked desperately at Nanny. 'They're open tickets for the opera.' 'Well, that's amazin',' said Nanny, 'because we're going to–Ow!' 'Why, thank you very much,' said Granny Weatherwax, taking the tickets. 'How very gracious of you. We shall be sure to go.' 'And if you'll excuse me,' said Enrico, 'I must catch up on my sleep.' 'Don't worry, I shouldn't think it's had time to get far away,' said Nanny. The singer leaned back, pulled the handkerchief over his face and, after a few minutes, began to snore the happy snore of someone who had done his duty and now with any luck wouldn't have to meet these rather disconcerting old women ever again. 'He's well away,' said Nanny, after a while. She glanced at the tickets in Granny's hand. 'You want to visit the opera?' she said. Granny stared into space. 'I said, do you want to visit the opera?' Granny looked at the tickets. 'What I want don't signify, I suspect;' she said. Nanny Ogg nodded. Granny Weatherwax was firmly against fiction. Life was hard enough without lies floating around and changing the way people thought. And because the theatre was fiction made flesh, she hated the theatre most of all. But that was it–hate was exactly the right word. Hate is a force of attraction. Hate is just love with its back turned. She didn't loathe the theatre, because, had she done so, she would have avoided it completely. Granny now took every opportunity to visit the travelling theatre that came to Lancre, and sat bolt upright in the front row of every performance, staring fiercely. Even honest Punch and Judy men found her sitting among the children, snapping things like ' 'Tain't so!' and 'Is that any way to behave?' As a result, Lancre was becoming known throughout the Sto Plains as a really tough gig. But what she wanted wasn't important. Like it or not, witches are drawn to the edge of things, where two states collide. They feel the pull of doors, circumferences, boundaries, gates, mirrors, masks... ...and stages.     Breakfast was served in the Opera House's refectory at half-past nine. Actors were not known for their habit of early rising. Agnes started to fall forward into her eggs and bacon, and stopped herself just in time. 'Good morning!!' Christine sat down with a tray on which was, Agnes was not surprised to see, a plate holding one stick of celery, one raisin and about a spoonful of milk. She leaned towards Agnes and her face very briefly expressed some concern. 'Are you all right?! You look a little peaky!!' Agnes caught herself in mid-snore. 'I'm fine,' she said. 'Just a bit tired...' 'Oh, good!!' This exchange having exhausted her higher mental processes,. Christine went back to operating on automatic. 'Do you like my new dress?!' she exclaimed. 'Isn't it fetching?!' Agnes looked at it. 'Yes,' she said. 'Very... white. Very lacy. Very figure-hugging.' 'And do you know what?!' 'No. What?' 'I already have a secret admirer!! Isn't that thrilling?! All the great singers have them, you know!!' 'A secret admirer...' 'Yes!! This dress!! It arrived at the stage door just now!! Isn't that exciting?!' 'Amazing,' said Agnes, glumly. 'And it's not as if you've even sung. Er. Who's it from?' 'He didn't say, of course!! It has to be a secret admirer!! He'll probably want to send me flowers and drink champagne out of my shoe!!' 'Really?' Agnes made a face. 'Do people do that?' 'It's traditional!!' Christine, boiling over with cheerfulness, had some to share... 'You do look very tired!' she said. Her hand went to her mouth. 'Oh!! We swapped rooms, didn't we!! I was so silly!! And, d'you know,' she added with that look of half-empty cunning that was the nearest she came to guile, 'I could have sworn I heard singing in the night... someone trying scales and things?!' Agnes had been brought up to tell the truth. She knew she should say: 'I'm sorry, I appear to have got your life by mistake. There seems to have been a bit of a confusion...' But, she decided, she'd also been brought up to do what she was told, not to put herself first, to be respectful to her elders and to use no swearword stronger than 'poot'. She could borrow a more interesting future. Just for a night or two. She could give it up any time she liked. 'You know, that's funny,' she said, 'because I'm right next door to you and I didn't.' 'Oh?! Well, that's all right, then!!' Agnes stared at the tiny meal on Christine's tray. 'Is that all you're having for breakfast?' 'Oh, yes! I can just blow up like a balloon, dear!! It's lucky for you, you can eat anything!! Don't forget it's practice in half an hour!' And she skipped off. She's got a head full of air, Agnes thought. I'm sure she doesn't mean to say anything hurtful. But, deep inside her, Perdita X Dream thought a rude word.     Mrs Plinge took her broom out of the cleaning cupboard, and turned. 'Walter!' Her voice echoed around the empty stage. 'Walter?' She tapped the broom-handle warily. Walter had a routine. It had taken her years to train him into it. It wasn't like him not to be in the right place at the right time. She shook her head, and started work. She could see it'd be a mop job later. It would probably be ages before they got rid of the smell of turpentine. Someone came walking across the stage. They were whistling. Mrs Plinge was shocked. 'Mr Pounder!' The Opera House's professional ratcatcher stopped, and lowered his struggling sack. Mr Pounder wore an old opera hat to show that he was a cut above your normal rodent operative, and its brim was thick with wax and the old candle ends he used to light his way through the darker cellars. He'd worked among the rats so long that there was something rat-like about him now. His face seemed to be merely a rearward extension of his nose. His moustache was bristly. His front teeth were prominent. People found themselves looking for his tail. 'What's that, Mrs Plinge?' 'You know you mustn't whistle on stage! That's terrible bad luck!' 'Ah, well, it's 'cos of good luck, Mrs Plinge. Oh, yes! If you did know what I d'know, you'd be a happy man, too. O' course, in your case you'd be a happy woman, on account of you being a woman. Ah! Some of the things I've seen, Mrs Plinge!' 'Found gold down there, Mr Pounder?' Mrs Plinge knelt down carefully to scrape away a spot of paint. Mr Pounder picked up his sack and continued on his way. 'Could be gold, Mrs Plinge. Ah. Could very well be gold–' It took a moment for Mrs Plinge to coax her arthritic knees into letting her stand up and shuffle around. 'Pardon, Mr Pounder?' she said. Somewhere in the distance, there was a soft thump as a bundle of sandbags landed gently on the boards. The stage was big and bare and empty, except for a sack which was scuttling determinedly for freedom. Mrs Plinge looked both ways very carefully. 'Mr Pounder? Are you there?' It suddenly seemed to her that the stage was even bigger and even more distinctly empty than before. 'Mr Pounder? Cooo-eee?' She craned around. 'Hello? Mr Pounder?' Something floated down from above and landed beside her. It was a grubby black hat, with candle ends around the brim. She looked up. 'Mr Pounder?' she said.     Mr Pounder was used to darkness. It held no fears for him. And he'd always prided himself on his night vision. If there was any light at all, any speck, any glimmer of phosphorescent rot, he could make use of it. His candled hat was as much for show as anything else. His candled hat... he'd thought I He'd lost it but, it was strange, here it was, still on his head. Yes, indeed. He rubbed his throat thoughtfully. There was something important he couldn't quite remember... It was very dark. SQUEAK? He looked up. Standing in the air, at eye-level, was a robed figure about six inches high. A bony nose, with bent grey whiskers, protruded from the hood. Tiny skeletal fingers gripped a very small scythe. Mr Pounder nodded thoughtfully to himself. You didn't rise to membership of the Inner Circle of the Guild of Ratcatchers without hearing a few whispered rumours. Rats had their own Death, they said, as well as their own kings, parliaments and nations. No human had ever seen it, though. Up until now. He felt honoured. He'd won the Golden Mallet for most rats caught every year for the past five years, but he respected them, as a soldier. might respect a cunning and valiant enemy. 'Er... I'm dead, aren't I... ?' SQUEAK. Mr Pounder felt that many eyes were watching him. Many small, shining eyes. 'And... what happens now?' SQUEAK. The soul of Mr Pounder looked at his hands. They seemed to be elongating, and getting hairier. He could feel his ears growing, and a certain rather embarrassing elongation happening at the base of his spine. He'd spent most of his life in a single-minded activity in dark places, yet even so... 'But I don't believe in reincarnation!' he protested. SQUEAK. And this, Mr Pounder understood with absolute rodent clarity, meant: reincarnation believes in you.     Mr Bucket went through his mail very carefully, and finally breathed out when the pile failed to disgorge another letter with the Opera House crest. He sat back and pulled open his desk drawer for a pen. There was an envelope there. He stared at it, and then slowly picked up his paperknife. Sliiiiit... ...rustle...   I will be obliged if Christine sings the role of Iodine in 'La Triviata' tonight. The weather continues fine. I trust you are well.        Yrs.                  The Opera Ghost         'Mr Salzella! Mr Salzella!' Bucket pushed back his chair and hurried to the door, opening it just in time to confront a ballerina, who screamed at him. Since his nerves were already strained, he responded by screaming back at her. This seemed to have the effect that usually a wet flannel or a slap was necessary to achieve. She stopped and gave him an affronted look. 'He's struck again, hasn't he!' moaned Bucket. 'He's here! It's the Ghost!' said the girl, determined to get the line out even though it was not required. 'Yes, yes, I think I know,' muttered Bucket. 'I just hope it wasn't anybody expensive.' He stopped halfway along the corridor and then spun around. The girl cringed away from his wavering finger. 'At least stand on tiptoe!' he shouted. 'You probably cost me a dollar just running up here!' There was a crowd in a huddle on the stage. In the centre was that new girl, the fat one, kneeling down and comforting an old woman. Bucket vaguely recognized the latter. She was one of the staff that had come with the Opera House, as much part of the whole thing as the rats or the gargoyles that infested the rooftops. She was holding something in front of her. 'It just fell out of the flies,' she said. 'His poor hat!' Bucket looked up. As his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness he made out a shape up among the battens, spinning slowly... 'Oh, dear,' he said. 'And I thought he'd written such a polite letter...' 'Really? Then now read this one,' said Salzella, coming up behind him. 'Must I?' 'It's addressed to you.' Bucket unfolded the piece of paper.   Hahahaha! Ahahahaha! Yrs. The Opera Ghost PS: Ahahahaha!!!!   He gave Salzella an agonized look. 'Who's the poor fellow up there?' 'Mr Pounder, the ratcatcher. Rope dropped around his neck, other end attached to some sandbags. They went down. He went... up.' 'I don't understand! Is this man mad?' Salzella put an arm around his shoulders and led him away from the crowd. 'Well, now,' he said, as kindly as he could. 'A man who wears evening dress all the time, lurks in the shadows and occasionally kills people. Then he sends little notes, writing maniacal laughter. Five exclamation marks again, I notice. We have to ask ourselves: is this the career of a sane man?' 'But why is he doing it?' wailed Bucket. 'That is only a relevant question if he is sane,' said Salzella calmly. 'He may be doing it because the little yellow pixies tell him to.' 'Sane? How can he be sane?' said Bucket. 'You were right, you know. The atmosphere in this placed drive anyone crazy. I very well may be the only one here with both feet on the ground!' He turned. His eyes narrowed when he saw a group of, chorus girls whispering nervously. 'You girls! Don't just stand there! Let's see you jump up and down!' he rasped. 'On one leg!' He turned back to Salzella. 'What was I saying?' 'You were saying,' said Salzella, 'that you have both feet on. the ground. Unlike the corps de ballet. And the corpse de Mr Pounder.' 'I think that comment was in rather poor taste,' said Bucket coldly. 'My view,' said the director of music, 'is that we should shut down, get all the able-bodied men together, issue them with torches, go through this place from top to bottom, flush him out, chase him through the city, catch him and beat him to a pulp, and then throw what's left into the river. It's the only way to be sure.' 'You know we can't afford to shut down,' Bucket said. 'We seem to make thousands a week but we seem to spend thousands a week, too. I'm sure I don't know where it goes- I thought running this place was just a matter of getting bums on seats, but every time I look up there's a bum spinning gently in the air- What's he going to do next, I ask myself–' They looked at one another and then, as if pulled by some kind of animal magnetism, their gazes turned and flew out over the auditorium until they found the huge, glittering bulk of the chandelier. 'Oh, no...' moaned Bucket. 'He wouldn't, would he? That would shut us down.' Salzella sighed. 'Look, it weighs more than a ton,' he said. 'The supporting rope is thicker than your arm. The winch is padlocked when it's not in use. It's safe.' They looked at one another. 'I'll have a man guard it every minute there's a performance,' said Salzella. 'I'll do it personally, if you like.' 'And he wants Christine to sing Iodine tonight! She's got a voice like a whistle!' Salzella raised his eyebrows. 'That at least is not ,a problem, is it?' he said. 'Isn't it? It's a key role!' Salzella put his arm around the owner's shoulders. 'I think perhaps it is time for you to explore a few more little-known corners of the wonderful world that is opera,' he said.     The stagecoach rolled to. a halt in Sator Square, Ankh-Morpork. The coach agent was waiting impatiently. 'You're fifteen hours late, Mr Reever!' he shouted. The coach-driver nodded impassively. He laid the reins down, jumped off the box, and inspected the horses. There was a certain woodenness about his movements. Passengers were grabbing their baggage and hurrying away. 'Well?' said the agent. 'We had a picnic,' said the coach-driver. His face was grey. 'You stopped for a picnic?' 'And a bit of a singsong,' said the driver, pulling the horses' feedbags from under the seat. 'You are telling me that you stopped the mail coach for a picnic and a singsong?' 'Oh, and the cat got stuck up a tree.' He sucked his hand, and the agent noticed that a handkerchief was tied around it. A hazy look of recollection clouded the driver's eyes. 'And then there were the stories,' he said. 'What stories?' 'The little fat one said everyone had to tell a story to help pass the time.' 'Yes? Well? I don't see how that could slow you down!' 'You should've heard her story. The one about the very tall man and the piano? I was so embarrassed I fell off the coach. I wouldn't use words like that even to my own dear grandmother!' 'And of course,' said the agent, who prided himself on his ironic approach, 'the word timetable never crossed your mind while all this was going on?' The driver turned to look directly at him for the first time. The agent took a step back. Here was a man who had hang-glided over Hell. 'You tell them,' said the driver, and walked away. The agent stared after him, and then walked around to the door. A small man with a hunted look climbed out, dragging a huge fat man behind him and gabbling urgently in a language the agent didn't understand. And then the agent was left alone with a coach and horses and an expanding circle of hurrying passengers. He opened the door and peered inside. 'Good morning, mister,' said Nanny Ogg. He looked, in some puzzlement, from her to Granny Weatherwax. 'Is everything all right, ladies?' 'Very nice journey,' said Nanny Ogg, taking his arm. 'We shall def'nitly patronize you another time.' 'The driver seemed to think there was a problem..., 'Problem?' said Granny. 'I didn't notice any problems. Did you, Gytha?' 'He could've been a bit quicker fetching the ladder,' said Nanny, climbing down. 'And I'm sure he muttered something under his breath that time we stopped to admire the view. But I'm prepared to be gracious about it.' 'You stopped to admire the view?' said the agent. 'When?' 'Oh, several times,' said Nanny. 'No sense in rushing around the whole time, is there? More haste less speed, ekcetra. Could you point us in the direction of Elm Street? Only we've lodgings at Mrs Palm's. Our Nev speaks highly of the place, he says no one ever looked for him there...' The agent stepped back, as people generally did in the face of Nanny's pump-action chatter. 'Elm Street?' he stuttered. 'But... respectable ladies shouldn't go there...' Nanny patted him on the shoulder. 'That's good,' she said. 'That way we won't run into anyone we know.' As Granny walked past the horses they tried to hide behind the coach.     Bucket smiled brightly. There were little beads of sweat around the edges of his face. 'Ah, Perdita,' he said. 'Do sit down, lass. Er. You are enjoying your time with us so far?' 'Yes, thank you, Mr Bucket,' said Agnes dutifully. 'Good. That's good. Isn't that good, Mr Salzella? Don't you think that's good, Dr Undershaft?' Agnes looked at the three worried faces. 'We're all very pleased,' said Mr Bucket. 'And, er, well, we have an amazing offer for you which I'm sure will help you to enjoy it even more.' Agnes watched the assembled faces. 'Yes?' she said guardedly. 'I know you, er, have only been with us hardly any time but we have decided to, er'- Bucket swallowed, and glanced at the other two for moral support–'let you sing the part of Iodine in tonight's production of La Triviata.' 'Yes?' 'Um. It isn't the major role but of course it does include the famous "Departure" aria...' 'Oh. Yes?' 'Er... there is, er... that is, er...' Bucket gave up and looked helplessly at his director of music. 'Mr Salzella?' Salzella leaned forward. 'What in fact we would like you to do... Perdita... is sing the role, indeed, but not, in fact... play the role.' Agnes listened while they explained. She'd stand in the chorus, just behind Christine. Christine would be told to sing very softly. It had been done dozens of times before, Salzella explained. It was done far more often than the audiences ever realized–when singers had a sore throat, or had completely dried, or had turned up so drunk they could barely stand, or, in one notorious instance many years previously, had died in the interval and subsequently sung their famous aria by means of a broom-handle stuck up their back and their jaw operated with a piece of string. It wasn't immoral. The show had to go on. The ring of desperately grinning faces watched her. I could just walk away, she thought. Walk away from these grinning faces and the mysterious Ghost. They couldn't stop me. But there's nowhere to walk to except back. 'Yes, er, yes,' she said. 'I'm very... er... but why do it like this? Couldn't I simply take her place and sing the part?' The men looked at one another, and then all started talking at once. 'Yes, but you see, Christine is... has... more stage experience–' '–technical grasp–' '–stage presence–' '–apparent lyrical ability–' '–fits the costume–' Agnes looked down at her big hands. She could feel the blush advancing like a barbarian horde, burning everything as it came. 'We would like you, as it were,' said Bucket, 'to ghost the part...' 'Ghost?' said Agnes. 'It's a stage term,' said Salzella. 'Oh, I see,' said Agnes. 'Yes. Well, of course. I shall certainly do my best.' 'Jolly good,' said Bucket. 'We won't forget this. And I'm certain a very suitable part for you will come along very soon. See Dr Undershaft this afternoon and he will take you through the role.' 'Er. I know it quite well, I think,' said Agnes, uncertainly. 'Really? How?' 'I've been... taking lessons.' 'That is good, lass,' said Mr Bucket. 'Shows keenness. We're very impressed. But see Dr Undershaft in any case...' Agnes got up and, still looking down, trooped out. Undershaft sighed and shook his head. 'Poor child,' he said. 'Born too late. Opera used to be just about voices. You know, I remember the days of the great sopranos. Dame Violetta Gigh, Dame Clarissa Extendo... whatever became of them, I sometimes wonder.' 'Didn't the climate change?' said Salzella nastily. 'There goes a figure that should prompt a revival of The Ring of the Nibelungingung,' Undershaft went on. 'Now that was an opera.' 'Three days of gods shouting at one another and twenty minutes of memorable tunes?' said Salzella. 'No, thank you very much.' 'But can't you hear her singing Hildabrun, leader of the Valkyries?' 'Yes. Oh, yes. But unfortunately I can also hear her singing Nobbo the dwarf and lo, Chief of the Gods.' 'Those were the days,' said Undershaft sadly, shaking his head. 'We had proper opera then. I recall when Dame Veritasi stuffed a musician into his own tuba for yawning–' 'Yes, yes, but this is the Century of the Fruitbat,' said Salzella, standing up. He glanced at the door again, and shook his head. 'Amazing,' he said. 'Do you think she knows how fat she is?'     The door of Mrs Palm's discreet establishment opened at Granny's knock. The person on the other side was a young woman. Very obviously a young woman. There was no possible way that she could have been mistaken for a young man in any language, especially Braille. Nanny peered around the young lady's powdered shoulder at the red plush and gilt interior beyond, and then up at Granny Weatherwax's impassive face, and then back at the young lady. 'I'll tan our Nev's hide when I get home,' she muttered. 'Come away, Esme, you don't want to go in there. It'd take too long to explain–' 'Why, Granny Weatherwax!' said the girl happily. 'And who's this?' Nanny looked up at Granny, whose expression hadn't changed. 'Nanny Ogg,' Nanny said eventually. 'Yes, I'm Nanny Ogg. Nev's mum,' she added darkly. 'Yes, indeed. Yes. On account of me bein' a'–the words 'respectable widow woman' tried to range themselves in her vocal cords, and shrivelled at the sheer enormity of the falsehood, forcing her to settle for 'mother to him. Nev. Yes. Nev's mum.' 'Hello, Colette,' said Granny. 'What fascinatin' earrings you are wearing. Is Mrs Palm at home?' 'She's always at home to important visitors,' said Colette. 'Do come in, everyone will be so pleased to see you again!' There were cries of welcome as Granny stepped into the scarlet gloom. 'What? You've been here before?' said Nanny, eyeing the pink flesh and white late that made up much of the scenery. 'Oh, yes. Mrs Palm is an old friend. Practic'ly a witch.' 'You... you do know what kind of place this is, do you, Esme?' said Nanny Ogg. She felt curiously annoyed. She'd happily give way to Granny's expertise in the worlds of mind and magic, but she felt very strongly that there were some more specialized areas that were definitely Ogg territory, and Granny Weatherwax had no business even to know what they were. 'Oh, yes,' said Granny, calmly. Nanny's patience gave out. 'It's a house of ill repute, is what it is!' 'On the contrary,' said Granny. 'I believe people speak very highly of it.' 'You knew? And you never told me?' Granny raised an ironic eyebrow. 'The lady who invented the Strawberry Wobbler?' 'Well, yes, but–' 'We all live life the best way we can, Gytha. And there's a lot of people who think witches are bad.' 'Yes, but–' 'Before you criticize someone, Gytha, walk a mile in their shoes,' said Granny, with a faint smile. 'In those shoes she was wearin', I'd twist my ankle,' said Nanny, gritting her teeth. 'I'd need a ladder just to get in 'em.' It was infuriating, the way Granny tricked you into reading her half of the dialogue. And opened your mind to yourself in unexpected ways. 'And it's a welcoming place and the beds are soft,' said Granny. 'Warm too, I expect,' said Nanny Ogg, giving in. 'And there's always a friendly light in the window.' 'Dear me, Gytha Ogg. I always thought you were unshockable.' 'Shockable, no,' said Nanny. 'Easily surprised, yes.     Dr Undershaft the chorus master peered at Agnes over the top of his half-moon spectacles. 'The, um, "Departure" aria, as it is known,' he said, 'is quite a little masterpiece. Not one of the great operatic highlights, but very memorable nevertheless.' His eyes misted over. ' "Questa maledetta" sings Iodine, as she tells Peccadillo how hard it is for her to leave him... "Questa maledetta porta si blocccccca, Si blocca comunque diavolo to faccccc-cio... !" ' He stopped and made great play of cleaning his glasses with his handkerchief. 'When Gigh sang it, there wasn't a dry eye in the house,' he mumbled. 'I was there. It was then that I decided that I would... oh, great days, indeed.' He put his glasses on and blew his nose. 'I'll run through it once,' he said, 'just so that you can understand how it is supposed to go. Very well, André.' The young man who had been drafted in to play the piano in the rehearsal room nodded, and winked surreptitiously at Agnes. She pretended not to have seen him, and listened with an expression of acute studiousness as the old man worked his way through the score. 'And now,' he said, 'let us see how you manage.' He handed her the score and nodded at the pianist. Agnes sang the aria, or at least a few bars of it. André stopped playing and leaned his head against the piano, trying to stifle a laugh. 'Ahem,' said Undershaft. 'Was I doing something wrong?' 'You were singing tenor,' said Undershaft, looking sternly at André. 'She was singing in your voice, sir!' 'Perhaps you can sing it like, er, Christine would sing it?' They started again. 'Kwesta!? Maledetta!!...' Undershaft held up both hands. André's shoulders were shaking with the effort of not laughing. 'Yes, yes. Accurately observed. I daresay you're right. But could we start again and, er, perhaps you would sing it how you think it should be sung?' Agnes nodded. They started again... ...and finished. Undershaft had sat down, half-turned away. He wouldn't look round to face her. Agnes stood watching him uncertainly. 'Er. Was that all right?' she said. André the pianist got up slowly and took her hand. 'I think we'd better leave him,' he said softly, pulling her towards the door. 'Was it that bad?' 'Not... exactly.' Undershaft raised his head, but didn't turn it towards her. 'More practice on those Rs, madam, and strive for greater security above the stave,' he said hoarsely. 'Yes. Yes, I will.' André led her out into the corridor, shut the door, and then turned to her. 'That was astounding,' he said. 'Did you ever hear the great Gigh sing?' 'I don't even know who Gigh is. What was I singing?' 'You didn't know that either?' 'I don't know what it means, no.' André looked down at the score in his hand. 'Well, I'm not much good at the language, but I suppose the opening could be sung something like this: This damn' door sticks This damn' door sticks It sticks no matter what the hell I do It's marked "Pull" and indeed I am pulling Perhaps it should be marked "Push"?'   Agnes blinked. 'That's it?' 'Yes.' 'But I thought it was supposed to be very moving and romantic!' 'It is,' said André. 'It was. This isn't real life, this is opera. It doesn't matter what the words mean. It's the feeling that matters. Hasn't anyone told–? Look, I'm in rehearsals for the rest of the afternoon, but perhaps we could meet tomorrow? Perhaps after breakfast?' Oh, no, thought Agnes. Here it comes. The blush was moving inexorably upwards. She wondered if one day it might reach her face and carry on going, so that it ended up as a big pink cloud over her head. 'Er, yes,' she said. 'Yes. That would be... very helpful.' 'Now I've got to go.' He gave her a weak little smile, and patted her hand. 'And... I'm really sorry it's happening this way. Because... that was astounding.' He went to walk away, and then stopped. 'Uh...sorry if I frightened you last night,' he said. 'What?' 'On the stairs.' 'Oh, that. I wasn't frightened.' 'You... er... didn't mention it to anyone, did you? I'd hate people to think I was worrying over nothing.' 'Hadn't given it another thought, to tell you the truth. I know you can't be the Ghost, if that's what you're worried about. Eh?' 'Me? The Ghost. Haha!' 'Haha,' said Agnes. 'So, er... see you tomorrow, then...' 'Fine.' Agnes headed back to her room, deep in thought. Christine was there, looking critically at herself in the mirror. She spun around as Agnes entered; she even moved with exclamation marks. 'Oh, Perdita!! Have you heard?! I'm to sing the part of Iodine tonight!! Isn't that wonderful?!' She dashed across the room and endeavoured to pick Agnes up and hug her, settling eventually for just hugging her. 'And I heard they're already letting you in the chorus!?' 'Yes, indeed.' 'Isn't that nice?! I've been practising all morning with Mr Salzella. Kesta!? Mallydetta!! Porter see bloker!!' She twirled happily. Invisible sequins filled the air with their shine. 'When I am very famous,' she said, 'you won't regret having a friend in me!! I shall do my very best to help you!! I am sure you bring me luck!!' 'Yes, indeed,' said Agnes, hopelessly. 'Because my dear father told me that one day a dear little pixie would arrive to help me achieve my great ambition, and, do you know, I think that little pixie is you!!' Agnes smiled unhappily. After you'd known Christine for any length of time, you found yourself fighting a desire to look into her ear to see if you could spot daylight coming the other way. 'Er. I thought we had swapped rooms?' 'Oh, that!!' said Christine, smiling. 'Wasn't I silly?! Anyway, I shall need the big mirror now that I am to be a prima donna! You don't mind, do you!?' 'What? Oh. No. No, of course not. Er. If you're sure...' Agnes looked at the mirror, and then at the bed. And then at Christine. 'No,' she said, shocked at the enormity of the idea that had just presented itself, delivered from the Perdita of her soul. 'I'm sure that will be fine.'     Dr Undershaft blew his nose and tried to tidy himself up. Well, he didn't have to stand for it. Perhaps the child was somewhat on the heavy side, but Gigli, for example, had once crushed a tenor to death and no one had thought any worse of her for it. He'd protest to Mr Bucket. Dr Undershaft was a single-minded man. He believed in voices. It didn't matter what anyone looked like. He never watched opera with his eyes open. It was the music that mattered, not the acting and certainly not the shape of the singers. What did it matter what shape she was? Dame Tessitura had a beard you could strike a match on and a nose flattened half across her face, but she was still one of the best basses who ever opened beer bottles with her thumb. Of course, Salzella said that, while everyone accepted that large women of fifty could play thin girls of seventeen, people wouldn't accept that a fat girl of seventeen could do it. He said they'd cheerfully swallow a big lie and choke on a little fib. Salzella said that sort of thing. Something was going wrong these days. The whole place seemed... sick, if a building could be sick. The crowds were still coming, but the money just didn't seem to be there any more; everything seemed to be so expensive... And now they were owned by a cheesemonger, for heaven's sake, some grubby counter jumper who'd probably want to bring in fancy ideas. What they needed was a businessman, some clerk who could add up columns of figures properly and not interfere. That was the trouble with all the owners he had experienced-they started off thinking of themselves as businessmen, and then suddenly began to think they could make an artistic contribution. Still, possibly cheesemongers had to add up cheeses. just so long as this one stayed in his office with the books, and didn't go around acting as though he owned the place just because he happened to own the place...     Undershaft blinked. He'd gone the wrong way again. No matter how long you'd been here, this place was a maze. He was behind the stage, in the orchestra's room. Instruments and folding chairs had been stacked everywhere. His foot toppled a beer bottle. The twang of a string made him look around. Broken instruments littered the floor. There were half a dozen smashed violins. Several oboes had been broken. The from had been pulled right out of a trombone. He looked up into someone's face. 'But... why are you–' The half-moon spectacles tumbled over and over, and smashed on the boards. Then the attacker lowered his mask, as smooth and white as the skull of an angel, and stepped forward purposefully... Dr Undershaft blinked. There was darkness. A cloaked figure raised its head and looked at him through bony white sockets. Dr Undershaft's recent memories were a little confused, but one fact stood out. 'Aha,' he said. 'Got you! You're the Ghost!' YOU KNOW, YOU'RE RATHER AMUSINGLY WRONG. Dr Undershaft watched another masked figure pick up the body of... Dr Undershaft, and drag it into the shadows. 'Oh, I see. I'm dead.' Death nodded. SUCH WOULD APPEAR TO BE THE CASE. 'That was murder! Does anyone know?' THE MURDERER. AND YOU, OF COURSE. 'But him? How can-?' Undershaft began. WE MUST GO, said Death. 'But he just killed me! Strangled me with his bare hands!' YES. CHALK IT UP TO EXPERIENCE. 'You mean I can't do anything about it?' LEAVE IT TO THE LIVING. GENERALLY SPEAKING, THEY GET UNEASY WHEN THE DECEASED TAKES A CONSTRUCTIVE ROLE IN A MURDER INVESTIGATION. THEY TEND TO LOSE CONCENTRATION. 'You know, you do have a very good bass voice.' THANK YOU. 'Are there going to be... choirs and things?' WOULD YOU LIKE SOME?     Agnes slipped out through the stage-door and into the streets of Ankh-Morpork. She blinked in the light. The air felt slightly prickly, and sharp, and too cold. What she was about to do was wrong. Very wrong. And all her life she'd done things that were right. Go on, said Perdita. In fact, she probably wouldn't even do it. But there was no harm in just asking where there was a herbal shop, so she asked. And there was no harm in going in, so she went in. And it certainly wasn't against any kind of law to buy the ingredients she bought. After all, she might get a headache later on, or be unable to sleep. And it would mean nothing at all to take them back to her room and tuck them under the mattress. That's right, said Perdita. In fact, if you averaged out the moral difficulty of what she was proposing over all the little activities she had to undergo in order to do it, it probably wasn't that bad at all, really– These comforting thoughts were arranging themselves in her mind as she headed back. She turned a corner and nearly walked into Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax. She flung herself against the wall and stopped breathing. They hadn't seen her, although Nanny's foul cat leered at her over its owner's shoulder. They'd take her back! She just knew they would! The fact that she was a free agent and her own mistress and quite at liberty to go off to Ankh-Morpork had nothing to do with it. They'd interfere. They always did. She scurried back along the alley and ran as fast as she could to the rear of the Opera House. The stage-doorkeeper took no notice of her.     Granny and Nanny strolled through the city towards the area known as the Isle of Gods. It wasn't exactly Ankh and it wasn't exactly Morpork, being situated where the river bent so much it almost formed an island. It was where the city kept all those things it occasionally needed but was uneasy about, like the Watch-house, the theatres, the prison and the publishers. It was the place for all those things which might go off bang in unexpected ways. Greebo ambled along behind them. The air was full of new smells, and he was looking forward to seeing if any of them belonged to anything he could eat, fight or ravish. Nanny Ogg found herself getting increasingly worried. 'This isn't really us, Esme,' she said. 'Who is it, then?' 'I mean the book was just a bit of fun. No sense in making ourselves unpopular, is there?' 'Can't have witches being done down, Gytha.' 'I don't feel done down. I felt fine until you told me I was done down,' said Nanny, putting her finger on a major sociological point. 'You've been exploited,' said Granny firmly. 'No I ain't.' 'Yes you have. You're a downtrodden mass.' 'No I ain't.' 'You've been swindled out of your life savings,' said Granny. , 'Two dollars?' 'Well, it's all you'd actually saved,' said Granny, accurately. 'Only 'cos I spent everything else,' said Nanny. Other people salted away money for their old age, but Nanny preferred to accumulate memories. 'Well, there you are, then.' 'I was putting that by for some new piping for my still up at Copperhead,' said Nanny.[5] 'You know how that scumble eats away at the metal–' 'You were putting a little something by for some security and peace of mind in your old age,' Granny translated. 'You don't get peace of mind with my scumble,' said Nanny happily. 'Pieces, yes; but not peace. It's made from the finest apples, you know,' she added. 'Well, mainly apples.' Granny stopped outside an ornate doorway, and peered at the brass plate affixed thereon. 'This is the place,' she said. They looked at the door. 'I've never been one for front doors,' said Nanny, shifting from one foot to the other. Granny nodded. Witches had a thing about front doors. A brief search located an alleyway which led around the back of the building. Here was a pair of much larger doors, wide open. Several dwarfs were loading bundles of books on to a cart. A rhythmic thumping came from somewhere beyond the doorway. No one took any notice of the witches as they wandered inside. Movable type was known in Ankh-Morpork, but if wizards heard about it they moved it where no one could find it. They generally didn't interfere with the running of the city, but when it came to movable type the pointy foot was put down hard. They had never explained why, ' and people didn't press the issue because you didn't press the issue with wizards, not if you liked yourself the shape you were. They simply worked around the problem, and engraved everything. This took a long time and meant that Ankh-Morpork was, for example, denied the benefit of newspapers, leaving the population to fool themselves as best they could. A press was thumping gently at one end of the warehouse. Beside it, at long tables, a number of dwarfs and humans were stitching pages together and gluing on the covers. Nanny took a book off a pile. It was The Joye of Snacks. 'Can I help you, ladies?' said a voice. Its tone suggested very clearly that it wasn't anticipating offering any kind of help whatsoever, except out into the street at speed. 'We've come about this book,' said Granny. 'I'm Mrs Ogg,' said Nanny Ogg. The man looked her up and down. 'Oh yes? Can you identify yourself?' 'Certainly. I'd know me anywhere.' 'Hah! Well, I happen to know what Gytha Ogg looks like, madam, and she does not look like you.' Nanny Ogg opened her mouth to reply, and then said, in the voice of one who has stepped happily into the road and only now remembers about the onrushing coach:'... Oh.' 'And how do you know what Mrs Ogg looks like?' said Granny. 'Oh, is that the time? We'd better be going–'said Nanny. 'Because, as a matter of fact, she sent me a picture,' said Goatberger, taking out his wallet. 'I'm sure we're not at all interested,' said Nanny hurriedly, pulling on Granny's arm. 'I'm extremely interested,' said Granny. She snatched a folded piece of paper out of Goatberger's hands, and peered at it. 'Hah! Yes... that's Gytha Ogg all right,' she said. 'Yes, indeed. I remember when that young artist came to Lancre for the summer.' 'I wore my hair longer in those days,' muttered Nanny. 'Just as well, considering,' said Granny. 'I didn't know you had copies, though.' 'Oh, you know how it is when you're young,' said Nanny dreamily. 'It was doodle, doodle, doodle all summer long.' She awoke from her reverie. 'And I still weigh the same now as I did then,' she added. 'Except that it's shifted,' said Granny, nastily. She handed the sketch back to Goatberger. 'That's her all right,' she said. 'But it's out by about sixty years and several layers of clothing. This is Gytha Ogg, right here.' 'You're telling me this came up with Bananana Soup Surprise?' 'Did you try it?' said Nanny. 'Mr Cropper the head printer did, yes.' 'Was he surprised?' 'Not half as surprised as Mrs Cropper.' 'It can take people like that,' said Nanny. 'I think perhaps I overdo the nutmeg.' Goatberger stared at her. Doubt was beginning to assail him. You only had to look at Nanny Ogg grinning back at you to believe she could write something like The Joye of Snacks. 'Did you really write this?' he said. 'From memory,' said Nanny, proudly. 'And now she'd like some money,' said Granny. Mr Goatberger's face twisted up as though he'd just eaten a lemon and washed it down with vinegar. 'But we gave her the money back,' he said. 'See?' said Nanny, her face falling. 'I told you, Esme–' 'She wants some more,' said Granny. 'No, I don't–' 'No, she doesn't!' Goatberger agreed. 'She does,' said Granny. 'She wants a little bit of money for every book you've sold.' 'I don't expect to be treated like royalty,' said Nanny.[6] 'You shut up,' said Granny. 'I know what you want. We want some money, Mr Goatberger.' 'And what if I won't give it to you?' Granny glared at him. 'Then we shall go away and think about what to do next,' she said. 'That's no idle threat,' said Nanny. 'There's a lot of people've regretted Esme thinking about what to do next.' 'Come back when you've thought, then!' snapped Goatberger. He stormed off: 'I don't know, authors wanting to be paid, good grief–' He disappeared among the stacks of books. 'Er... do you think that could have gone better?' said Nanny. Granny glanced at the table beside them. It was stacked with long sheets of paper. She nudged a dwarf, who had been watching the argument with some amusement. 'What're these?' she said. 'They're proofs for the Almanack.' He saw her blank expression. 'They're sort of a trial run for the book so's we can check that all the spelling mistakes have been left in.' Granny picked it up. 'Come, Gytha,' she said. 'I don't want trouble, Esme,' said Nanny Ogg as she hurried after her. 'It's only money.' 'It ain't money any more,' said Granny. 'It's a way of keepin' score.'     Mr Bucket picked up a violin. It was in two pieces, held together by the strings. One of them broke. 'Who'd do something like this?' he said. 'Honestly, Salzella... what is the difference between opera and madness?' 'Is this a trick question?' 'No!' 'Then I'd say: better scenery. Ah... I thought so...' Salzella rooted among the destruction, and stood up with a letter in his hand. 'Would you like me to open it?' he said. 'It's addressed to you.' Bucket shut his eyes. 'Go on,' he said. 'Don't bother about the details. Just tell me, how many exclamation marks?' 'Five.' 'Oh.' Salzella passed the paper over. Bucket read:   Dear Bucket, Whoops! Ahahahahahahahaha!!!!!        Yrs,                  The Opera Ghost    'What can we do?' he said. 'One moment he writes polite little notes, the next he goes mad on paper!' 'Herr Trubelmacher has got everyone out hunting for new instruments,' said Salzella. 'Are violins more expensive than ballet shoes?' 'There are few things in the world more expensive than ballet shoes. Violins happen to be among them,' said Salzella. 'Further expense!' 'It seems so, yes.' 'But I thought the Ghost liked music! Herr Trubelmacher tells me the organ is beyond repair!!!' He stopped. He was aware that he had exclaimed a little less rationally than a sane man should. 'Oh, well,' Bucket continued wearily. 'The show must go on, I suppose.' 'Yes, indeed,' said Salzella. Bucket shook his head. 'How's it all going for tonight?' 'I think it will work, if that's what you mean. Perdita seems to have a very good grasp of the part.' 'And Christine?' 'She has an astonishingly good grasp of wearing a dress. Between them, they make one prima donna.' The proud owner of the Opera House got slowly to his feet. 'It all seemed so simple,' he moaned. 'I thought: opera, how hard can it be? Songs. Pretty girls dancing. Nice scenery. Lots of people handing over cash. Got to be better than the cut-throat world of yoghurt, I thought. Now everywhere I go there's–' Something crunched under his shoe. He picked up the remains of a pair of half-moon spectacles. 'These are Dr Undershaft's, aren't they?' he said. 'What're they doing here?' His eyes met Salzella's steady gaze. 'Oh, no,' he groaned. Salzella turned slightly, and stared hard at a big doublebass case leaning against the wall. He raised his eyebrows. 'Oh, no,' said Bucket, again. 'Go on. Open it. My hands have gone all sweaty...' Salzella padded across to the case and grasped the lid. 'Ready?' Bucket nodded, wearily. The case was flung open. 'Oh, no!' Salzella craned round to see. 'Ah, yes,' he said. 'A broken neck, and the body has been kicked in considerably. That'll cost a dollar or two to repair, and no mistake.' 'And all the strings are busted! Are double basses more expensive to rebuild than violins?' 'I am afraid that all musical instruments are incredibly expensive to repair, with the possible exception of the triangle,' said Salzella. 'However, it could have been worse, hmm?' 'What?' 'Well, it could have been Dr Undershaft in there, yes?' Bucket gaped at him, and then shut his mouth. 'Oh. Yes. Of course. Oh, yes. That would have been worse. Yes. Bit of luck there, I suppose. Yes. Um.'     'So that's an opera house, is it?' said Granny. 'Looks like someone built a great big box and glued the architecture on afterwards.' She coughed, and appeared to be waiting for something. 'Can we have a look around?' said Nanny dutifully, aware that Granny's curiosity was equalled only by her desire not to show it. 'It can't do any harm, I suppose,' said Granny, as if granting a big favour. 'Seein' as we've nothing else to do right this minute.' The Opera House was, indeed, that most efficiently multifunctional of building designs. It was a cube. But, as Granny had pointed out, the architect had suddenly realized late in the day that there ought to be some sort of decoration, and had shoved it on hurriedly, in a riot of friezes, pillars, corybants and curly bits. Gargoyles had colonized the higher reaches. The effect, seen from the front, was of a huge wall of tortured stone. Round the back, of course, there was the usual drab mess of windows, pipes and damp stone walls. One of the rules of a certain type of public architecture is that it only happens at the front. Granny paused under a window. 'Someone's singing,' she said. 'Listen.' 'La-la-la-la-la-LAH,' trilled someone. 'Do-Re-Mi-Fah-SoLa-Ti-Do...' 'That's opera, right enough,' said Granny. 'Sounds foreign to me.' Nanny had an unexpected gift for languages; she could be comprehensibly incompetent in a new one within an hour or two. What she spoke was one step away from gibberish but it was authentically foreign gibberish. And she knew that Granny Weatherwax, whatever her other qualities, had an even bigger tin ear for languages than she did for music. 'Er. Could be,' she said. 'There's always a lot going on, I know that. Our Nev said they sometimes do different operations every night.' 'How did he find that out?' said Granny. 'Well, there was a lot of lead. That takes some shifting. He said he liked the noisy ones. He could hum along and also no one heard the hammering.' The witches strolled onwards. 'Did you notice young Agnes nearly bump into us back there?' said Granny. 'Yes. It was all I could do not to turn around,' said Nanny. 'She wasn't very pleased to see us, was she? I practically heard her gasp.' 'That's very suspicious, if you ask me,' said Nanny. 'I mean, she sees two friendly faces from back home, you'd expect her . to come runnin' up...' 'We're old friends, after all. Old friends of her grandma and her mum, anyway, and that's practic'ly the same.' 'Remember those eyes in the teacup?' said Nanny. 'She could be under the gaze of some strange occult force! We got to be careful. People can be very tricky when they're in the grip of a strange occult force. Remember Mr Scruple over in Slice?' 'That wasn't a strange occult force. That was acid stomach.' 'Well, it certainly seemed strangely occult for a while. Especially if the windows were shut.' Their perambulation had taken them to the Opera House's stage-door. Granny looked up at a line of posters. 'La Triviata,' she read aloud. 'The Ring of the Nibelungingung... ?' 'Well, basically there are two sorts of opera,' said Nanny, who also had the true witch's ability to be confidently expert on the basis of no experience whatsoever. 'There's your heavy opera, where basically people sing foreign and it goes like "Oh oh oh, I am dyin', oh, I am dyin', oh, oh, oh, that's what I'm doin"', and there's your light opera, where they sing in foreign and it basically goes "Beer! Beer! Beer! Beer! I like to drink lots of beer!", although sometimes they drink champagne instead. That's basically all of opera, reely.' 'What? Either dyin' or drinkin' beer?' 'Basically, yes,' said Nanny, contriving to suggest that this was the whole gamut of human experience. 'And that's opera?' 'We-ll... there might be some other stuff. But mostly it's stout or stabbin'.' Granny was aware of a presence. She turned. A figure had emerged from the stage-door, carrying a poster, a bucket of glue and a brush. It was a strange figure, a sort of neat scarecrow in clothes slightly too small for it, although, to be truthful, there were probably no clothes that would have fit that body. The ankles and wrists seemed infinitely extensible and independently guided. It encountered the two witches standing at the poster board, and stopped politely. They could see the sentence marshalling itself behind the unfocused eyes. 'Excuse me ladies! The show must go on!' The words were all there and they made sense, but each sentence was fired out into the world as a unit. Granny pulled Nanny to one side. 'Thank you!' They watched in silence as the man, with great and meticulous care, applied paste to a neat rectangle and then affixed the poster, smoothing every crease methodically. 'What's your name, young man?' said Granny. 'Walter!' 'That's a nice beret you have there.' 'My mum bought it for me!' Walter chased the last air bubble to the edge of the paper and stood back. Then, completely ignoring the witches in his preoccupation with his task, he picked up the paste-pot and went back inside. The witches stared at the new poster in silence. 'Y'know, I wouldn't mind seein' an operation,' said Nanny, after a while. 'Senior Basilica did give us the tickets.' 'Oh, you know me,' said Granny. 'Can't be having with that sort of thing at all.' Nanny looked sideways at her, and grinned to herself. This was a familiar Weatherwax opening line. It meant: Of course I want to, but you've got to persuade me. 'You're right, o' course,' she said. 'It's for them folks in all their fine carriages. It's not for the likes of us.' Granny looked hesitant for a moment. 'I expect it's having ideas above our station,' Nanny went on. 'I expect if we went in they'd say: Be off, you nasty ole crones...' 'Oh, they would, would they?' 'I don't expect they want common folk like what we are comin' in with all those smart nobby people,' said Nanny. 'Is that a fact? Is that a fact, madam? You just come with me!' Granny stalked round to the front of the building, where people were already alighting from coaches. She pushed her way up the steps and shouldered through the crowd to the ticket office. She leaned forward. The man behind the grille leaned back. 'Nasty old crones, eh?' she snapped. 'I beg your pardon-?' 'Not before time! See here, we've got tickets for–' She looked down at the pieces of cardboard, and pulled Nanny Ogg over. 'It says here Stalls. The cheek of it! Stalls? Us?' She turned back to the ticket man. 'See here, Stalls aren't good enough, we want seats in'–she looked up at the board by the ticket window–'the Gods. Yes, that sounds about right.' 'I'm sorry? You've got tickets for Stalls seats and you want to exchange them for seats in the Gods?' 'Yes, and don't you go expecting us to pay any more money!' 'I wasn't going to ask you for–' 'Just as well!' said Granny, smiling triumphantly. She looked approvingly at the new tickets. 'Come, Gytha.' 'Er, excuse me,' said the man as Nanny Ogg turned away, 'but what is that on your shoulders?' 'It's... a fur collar,' said Nanny. 'Excuse me, but I just saw it flick its tail.' 'Yes. I happen to believe in beauty without cruelty.'     Agnes was aware of something happening backstage. Little groups of men were forming, and then breaking up as various individuals hurried away about their mysterious tasks. Out in front the orchestra was already tuning up. The chorus was filing on to be A Busy Marketplace, in which various jugglers, gypsies, sword-swallowers and gaily dressed yokels would be entirely unsurprised at an apparently drunken baritone strolling on to sing an enormous amount of plot at a passing tenor. She saw Mr Bucket and Mr Salzella deep in argument with the stage manager. 'How can we search the entire building? This place is a maze!' 'He might have just wandered off somewhere... ?' 'He's as blind as a bat without those glasses.' 'But we can't be certain something's happened to him.' 'Oh, Yes? You didn't say that when we opened the double-bass case. You were certain' he was going to be inside. Admit it.' 'I... wasn't expecting just to find a smashed double bass, yes. But I was feeling a bit mithered at that point.' A sword-swallower nudged Agnes. 'What?' 'Curtain up in one minute, dear,' he said, smearing mustard on his sword. 'Has something happened to Dr Undershaft?' 'Couldn't say, dear. You wouldn't have any salt, would you?'   ' 'Scuse me. 'Scuse me. Sorry. 'Scuse me. Was that your foot? 'Scuse me...' Leaving a trail of annoyed and pained patrons in their wake, the witches trod their way to their seats. Granny elbowed herself comfortable and then, having in some matters the boredom threshold of a four-year-old, said: 'What's happenin' now?' Nanny's skimpy knowledge of opera didn't come to her aid. So she turned to the lady beside her. ' 'Scuse me, could I borrow your programme? Thank you. 'Scuse me, could I borrow your spectacles? So kind.' She spent a few moments in careful study. 'This is the overture,' she said. 'It's kind of a free sample of what's going to happen. 'S got a summary of the story, too. La Triviata.' Her lips moved as she read. Occasionally her brow wrinkled. 'Well, it's quite simple reely,' she said, at last. 'A lot of people are in love with one another, there's considerable dressing up as other people and general confusion, there's a cheeky servant, no one really knows who anyone is, a couple of ole dukes go mad, chorus of gypsies, etc. Your basic opera. Someone's prob'ly going to turn out to be someone else's longlost son or daughter or wife or something.' 'Shh!' said a voice behind them. 'Wish we'd brought something to eat,' muttered Granny. 'I think I've got some peppermints in my knicker leg.' 'Shh!' 'I would like my spectacles back, please.' 'Here you are, ma'am. They're not very good, are they?' Someone tapped Nanny Ogg on the shoulder. 'Madam, your fur stole is eating my chocolates!' And someone tapped Granny Weatherwax on her shoulder. 'Madam, kindly remove your hat.' Nanny Ogg choked on her peppermint. Granny Weatherwax turned to the red-faced gentleman behind her. 'You do know what a woman in a pointy hat is, don't you?' she said. 'Yes, madam. A woman in a pointy hat is sitting in front of me.' Granny gave him a stare. And then, to Nanny's surprise, she removed her hat. 'I do beg your pardon,' she said. 'I can see I was inadvertently bad-mannered. Pray excuse me.' She turned back to the stage. Nanny Ogg started breathing again. 'You feeling all right, Esme?' 'Never better.' Granny Weatherwax surveyed the auditorium, oblivious to the sounds around her. 'I assure you, madam, your fur is eating my chocolates. It's started on the second layer!' 'Oh, dear. Show him the little map inside the lid, will you? He's only after the truffles, and you can soon rub the dribble off the others.' 'Do you mind being quiet?' 'I don't mind, it's this man and his chocolates that's making the noise–' A big room, Granny thought. A great big room without windows... There was a tingling in her thumbs. She looked at the chandelier. The rope disappeared into an alcove in the ceiling. Her gaze passed along the rows of Boxes. They were all quite crowded. On one, though, the curtains were almost closed, as if someone inside wanted to see out without being seen. Then Granny looked among the Stalls. The audience was mainly human. Here and there was the hulking shape of a troll, although the troll equivalent of operas usually went on for a couple of years. A few dwarf helmets gleamed, although dwarfs normally weren't interested in anything without dwarfs in. There seemed to be a lot of feathers down there, and here and there the glint of jewellery. Shoulders were being worn bare this season. A lot of attention had been paid to appearances. The people were here to look, not to see. She closed her eyes. This was when you started being a witch. It wasn't when you did headology on daft old men, or mixed up medicines, or stuck up for yourself, or knew one herb from another. It was when you opened your mind to the world and carefully examined everything it picked up. She ignored her ears until the sounds of the audience became just a distant buzz. Or, at least, a distant buzz broken by the voice of Nanny Ogg. 'Says here that Dame Timpani, who sings the part of Quizella, is a diva,' said Nanny. 'So I reckon this is like a part-time job, then. Prob'ly quite a good idea, on account of you have to be able to hold your breath. Good trainin' for the singin'.' Granny nodded without opening her eyes. She kept them closed as the opera started. Nanny, who knew when to leave her friend to her own devices, tried to keep quiet but felt impelled to give out a running commentary. Then she said, 'There's Agnes! Hey, that's Agnes!' 'Stop wavin' and sit down,' murmured Granny, trying to hold on to her waking dream. - Nanny leaned over the balcony. 'She's .dressed up as a gypsy,' she said. 'And now there's a girl come forward to sing'- she peered at the stolen programme–'the famous "Departure" aria, it says here. Now that's what I call a good voice–' 'That's Agnes singin',' said Granny. 'No, it's this girl Christine.' 'Shut your eyes, you daft old woman, and tell me if that isn't Agnes singin',' said Granny. Nanny Ogg obediently shut her eyes for a moment, and then opened them again. 'It's Agnes singing!' 'Yes.' 'But there's that girl with the big smile right out there in front moving her lips and everything!' 'Yes.' Nanny scratched her head. 'Something a bit wrong here, Esme. Can't have people stealing our Agnes's voice.' Granny's eyes were still shut. 'Tell me if the curtains on that Box down there on the right have moved,' she said. 'I just saw them twitch, Esme.' 'Ah.' Granny let herself relax again. She sank into the seat as the aria washed over her, and opened her mind once more... Edges, walls, doors... Once a space was enclosed it became a universe of its own. Some things remained trapped in it. The music passed through one side of her head and out the other, but with it. came other things, strands of things, echoes of old screams... She drifted down further, down below the conscious, into the darkness beyond the circle of firelight. There was fear here. It stalked the place like a great dark animal. It lurked in every corner. It was in the stones. Old terror crouched in the shadows. It was one of the most ancient terrors, the one that meant that no sooner had mankind learned to walk on two legs than it dropped to its knees. It was the terror of impermanence, the knowledge that all this would pass away, that a beautiful voice or a wonderful figure was something whose arrival you couldn't control and whose departure you couldn't delay. It wasn't what she had been looking for, but it was perhaps the sea in which it swam. She went deeper. And there it was, roaring through the night-time of the soul of the place like a deep cold current. As she drew closer she saw that it was not one thing but two, twisted around one another. She reached out... Trickery. Lies. Deceit. Murder. 'No!' She blinked. Everyone had turned to look at her. Nanny tugged at her dress. 'Sit down, Esme!' Granny stared. The chandelier hung peacefully over the crowded seats. 'They beat him to death!' 'What's that, Esme?? 'And they throw him into the river!' 'Esme!' 'Sh!' 'Madam, will you sit down at once!' '...and now it's started on the Nougat Whirls!' Granny snatched at her hat and did a crabwise run along the row, crushing some of the finest footwear in Ankh-Morpork under her thick Lancre soles. Nanny hung back reluctantly. She'd quite enjoyed the song, and she wanted to applaud. But her pair of hands wasn't necessary. The audience had exploded as soon as the last note had died away. Nanny Ogg looked at the stage, and took note of something, and smiled. 'Like that, eh?' 'Gytha!' She sighed. 'Coming, Esme. 'Scuse me. 'Scuse me. Sorry. 'Scuse me...' Granny Weatherwax was out in the red plush corridor, leaning with her forehead against the wall. 'This is a bad one, Gytha,' she muttered. 'It's all twisted up. I ain't at all sure I can make it happen right. The poor soul...' She straightened up. 'Look at me, Gytha, will you? Gytha obediently opened her eyes wide. She winced a little as a fragment of Granny Weatherwax's consciousness crept behind her eyes. Granny put her hat on, tucking in the occasional errant wisp of grey hair and then taking, one by one, the eight hatpins and ramming them home with the same frowning deliberation with which a mercenary might check his weapons. 'All right,' she said at last. Nanny Ogg relaxed. 'It's not that I mind, Esme,' she said, 'but I wish you'd use a mirror.' 'Waste of money,' said Granny. Now fully armoured, she strode off along the corridor. 'Glad to see you didn't lose your temper with the man who went on about your hat,' said Nanny, running along behind. 'No point. He's going to be dead tomorrow.' 'Oh, dear. What of?' 'Run over by a cart, I think.' 'Why didn't you tell him?' 'I could be wrong.' Granny reached the stairs and thundered down them. 'Where're we going?' 'I want to see who's behind those curtains.' The applause, distant but still thunderous, filled the stairwell. 'They certainly like Agnes's voice,' said Nanny. 'Yes. I hopes we're in time.' 'Oh, bugger!' 'What?' 'I left Greebo up there!' 'Well, he likes meeting new people. Good grief, this place is a maze.' Granny stepped out into a curved corridor, rather plusher than the one they had left. There was a series of doors along it. 'Ah. Now, then. . .' She walked along the row, counting, and then tried a handle. 'Can I help you, ladies?' They turned. A little old woman had come up softly behind them, carrying a tray of drinks. Granny smiled at her. Nanny Ogg smiled at the tray. 'We were just wondering,' said Granny, 'which person in these Boxes likes to sit with the curtains nearly shut?' The tray began to shake. 'Here, shall I hold that for you?' .said Nanny. 'You'll spill something if you're not careful.' 'What do you know about Box Eight?'said the old lady. 'Ah. Box Eight,' said Granny. 'That'd be the one, yes. That's this one over here, isn't it... ?' 'No, please...' Granny strode forward and grasped the handle. The door was locked. The tray was thrust into Nanny's welcoming hands. 'Well, thank you, I don't mind if I do...' she said. The woman pulled at Granny's arm. 'Don't! It'll bring terrible bad luck!' Granny thrust out her hand. 'The key, madam!' Behind her, Nanny inspected a glass of champagne. 'Don't make him angry! It's bad enough as it is!' The woman was clearly terrified. 'Iron,' said Granny, rattling the handle. 'Can't magic iron. . .' 'Here,' said Nanny, stepping forward a little unsteadily. 'Give me one of your hatpins. Our Nev's taught me all kindsa tricks...' Granny's hand rose to her hat, and then she looked at Mrs Plinge's lined face. She lowered her hand. 'No,' she said. 'No, I reckon we'll leave it for now... 'I don't know what's happening...' sobbed Mrs Plinge. 'It never used to be like this...' 'Have a good blow,' said Nanny, handing her a grubby handkerchief and patting her kindly on the back. '...there was none of this killing people... he just wanted somewhere to watch the opera... it made him feel better...' 'Who's this we're talking about?' said Granny. Nanny Ogg gave her a warning look over the top of the old woman's head. There were some things best left to Nanny. '... he'd unlock it for an hour every Friday for me to tidy up and there was always his little note saying thank you or apologizing for the chocolates down the seat... and where was the harm in it, that's what I'd like to know...' 'Have another good blow,' said Nanny. '...and now there's people dropping like flies out of the flies... they say it's him, but I know he never meant any harm...' ' 'Course not,' said Nanny, soothingly. '...many's the time I've seen 'em look up at the Box. They always felt the better for it if they saw him... and then poor Mr Pounder was strangulated. I looked around and there was his hat, just like that. . .' 'It's terrible when that happens,' said Nanny Ogg. 'What's your name, dear?' 'Mrs Plinge,' sniffed Mrs Plinge. 'It came right down in front of me. I'd have recognized it anywhere...' 'I think it would be a good idea if we took you home, Mrs Plinge,' said Granny. 'Oh, dear! I've got all these ladies and gentlemen to see to! And anyway it's dangerous going home this time of night... Walter walks me home but he's got to stay late tonight... oh dear...' 'Have another good blow,' said Nanny. 'Find a bit that isn't too soggy.' There was a series of sharp pops. Granny Weatherwax had interlocked her fingers and extended her hands at arm's length, so that her knuckles cracked. 'Dangerous, eh?' she said. 'Well, we can't see you all upset like this. I'll walk you home and Mrs Ogg will see to things here.' '...only I've got to attend to the Boxes... I've got all these drinks to serve... could've sworn I had them a moment ago...' 'Mrs Ogg knows all about drinks,' said Granny, glaring at her friend. 'There's nothing I don't know about drinks,' agreed Nanny, shamelessly emptying the last glass. 'Especially these.' '...and what about our Walter? He'll worry himself silly...' 'Walter's your son?' said Granny. 'Wears a beret?' The old woman nodded. 'Only I always comes back for him if he's working late...' she began. 'You come back for him... but he sees you home?' said Granny. 'It's... he's... he's...' Mrs Plinge rallied. 'He's a good boy,' she said defiantly. 'I'm sure he is, Mrs Plinge,' said Granny. She carefully lifted the little white bonnet off Mrs Plinge's head and handed it to Nanny, who put it on, and also took the little white apron. That was the good thing about black. You could be nearly anything, wearing black. Mother Superior or Madam, it was really just a matter of the style. It just depended on the details. There was a click. Box Eight had bolted itself. And then there was the very faint scrape of a chair being wedged under the doorhandle. Granny smiled, and took Mrs Plinge's arm. 'I'll be back as soon as I can,' she said. Nanny nodded, and watched them go. There was a little cupboard at the end of the corridor. It contained a stool, Mrs Plinge's knitting, and a small but very well stocked bar. There were also, on a polished mahogany plank, a number of bells on big coiled springs. Several of them were bouncing up and down angrily. Nanny poured herself a gin and gin with a dash of gin and inspected the rows of bottles with considerable interest. Another bell started to ring. There was a huge jar of stuffed olives. Nanny helped herself to a handful and blew the dust off a bottle of port. A bell fell off its spring. Somewhere out in the corridor a door opened and a young man's voice bellowed, 'Where are those drinks, woman!' Nanny tried the port. Nanny Ogg was used to the idea of domestic service. As a girl, she'd been a maid at Lancre Castle, where the king was inclined to press his intentions and anything else he could get hold of. Young Gytha Ogg had already lost her innocence[7] but she had some clear ideas about unwelcome intentions, and when he jumped out at her in the scullery she had technically committed treason with a large leg of lamb swung in both hands. That had ended her life below stairs and put a lengthy crimp in the king's activities above them. The brief experience had given her certain views which weren't anything so definite as political but were very firmly Oggish. And Mrs Plinge had looked as if she didn't get very much to eat and not a lot of time to sleep, either. Her hands had been thin and red. Nanny had a lot of time for the Plinges of the world. Did port go with sherry? Oh, well, no harm in trying... All the bells were ringing now. It must be coming up to the interval. She methodically unscrewed the top off ajar of cocktail onions, and thoughtfully crunched a couple. Then, as other people started to poke their heads around the doors and make angry demands, she went to the champagne shelf and took down a couple of magnums. She gave them a damn good shake, tucked one under each arm with a thumb on the corks, and stepped out into the corridor. Nanny's philosophy of life was to do what seemed like a good idea at the time, and do it as hard as possible. It had never let her down.     The curtains closed. The audience was still on its feet, applauding. 'What happens now?' whispered Agnes to the next gypsy. He pulled off his bandanna. 'Well, dear, we generally nip out to– Oh, no, they're going for a curtain call!' The curtains opened again. The light caught Christine, who curtsied and waved and sparkled. Her fellow-gypsy nudged Agnes. 'Look at Dame Timpani,' he said. 'There's a nose in a sling if ever I saw one.' Agnes stared at the prima donna. 'She's smiling,' she said. 'So does a tiger, dear.' The curtains shut once more, with a finality that said the stage manager was going to strike the set and would scream at someone if they dared to touch those ropes again . .. . Agnes ran off with the others. There wasn't too much to do in the next act. She'd tried to memorize the plot earlier–although other members of the chorus had done their best to dissuade her, on the basis that you could either sing them or understand them, but not both. Nevertheless, Agnes was conscientious. '...so Peccadillo (ten.), the son of Duke Tagliatella (bass), has secretly disguised himself as a swineherd to woo Quizella, not knowing that Doctor Bufola (bar.) has sold the elixir to Ludi the servant, without realizing he is really the maid Iodine (sop.) dressed up as a boy because Count Artaud (bar.) claims that...' A deputy stage manager pulled her out of the way and waved at someone in the wings. 'Lose the countryside, Ron.' There was a series of whistles from offstage, answered by another from above. The backcloth rose. From the gloom above, the sandbag counterweights began to descend. '... then Artaud reveals, er, that Zibeline must marry Fideli, I mean Fiabe, not knowing, er, that the family fortunes...' The sandbags came down. On one side of the stage, at least. On the other side, Agnes was interrupted in her impossible task by the screaming, and looked around into the upside-down and not at all well features of the late Dr Undershaft.     Nanny skipped through a handy door, shut it behind her, and leaned on it. After a few moments the sound of running feet clattered past. Well, that had been fun. She removed the lace bonnet and apron and, because there was a basic honesty in Nanny, she tucked them in a pocket to give back to Mrs Plinge later. Then she pulled out a flat, round black shape and banged it against her arm. The point shot out. After a few adjustments her official hat was almost as good as new. She looked around. A certain absence of light and carpeting, together with a very presence of dust, suggested that this was a part of the place the public weren't supposed to see. Oh, damn. She supposed she had better find another door. Of course, that'd mean she'd have to leave Greebo, wherever he was, but he'd turn up. He always did when he wanted feeding. There was a flight of steps leading down. She followed them to a corridor which was slightly better lit and ambled along it for quite a way. And then all she had to do was follow the screams. She emerged among the flats and jumbled props backstage. No one bothered about her. The appearance of a small, amiable old lady was not about to cause comment at this point. People were running backwards and forwards, shouting. More impressionable people were just standing in one place and screaming. A large lady was sprawled over two chairs having hysterics, while some distracted stage-hands tried to fan her with a script. Nanny Ogg was not certain whether something important had happened or whether this was just a continuation of opera by other means. 'I should loosen her corsets, if I was you,' she said as she ambled past. 'Good heavens, madam, there's enough panic in here as it is!' Nanny moved on to an interesting crowd of gypsies, noblemen and stage-hands. Witches are curious by definition and inquisitive by nature. She moved in. 'Let me through. I'm a nosy person,' she said, employing both elbows. It worked, as this sort of approach generally does. There was a dead person lying on the floor. Nanny had seen death in a wide variety of guises, and certainly knew strangulation when it presented itself. It wasn't the nicest end, although it could be quite colourful. 'Oh dear,' she said. 'Poor man. What happened to him?' 'Mr Bucket says he must have got caught up in the–' someone began. 'He didn't get caught in anything! This is the Ghost's work!' said someone else. 'He could still be up there!' All eyes turned upwards. 'Mr Salzella's sent some stage-hands to flush him out.' 'Have they got flaming torches?' said Nanny. Several of them looked at her as if wondering, for the first time, who she was. 'What?' 'Got to have flaming torches when you're tracking down evil monsters,' said Nanny. 'Well-known fact.' There was a moment while this sunk in, and then: 'That's true.' 'She's right, you know.' 'Well-known fact, dear.' 'Did they have flaming torches?' 'Don't think so. Just ordinary lanterns.' 'Oh, they're no good,' said Nanny. 'That's for smugglers, lanterns. For evil monsters you need flaming–' 'Excuse me, boys and girls!' The stage manager had stood on a box. 'Now,' he said, a little pale around the face, 'I know you're all familiar with the phrase "the show must go on"...' There was a chorus of groans from the chorus. 'It's very hard to sing a jolly song about eating hedgehogs when you're waiting for an accident to happen to you,' shouted a gypsy king. 'Funny thing, if we're talking about songs about hedgehogs, I myself–' Nanny began, but no one was paying her any attention. 'Now, we don't actually know what happened–' 'Really? Shall we guess?' said a gypsy. '-but we have men up in the fly loft now–' 'Oh? In case of more accidents?' '-and Mr Bucket has authorized me to say that there will be an additional two dollars' bonus tonight in recognition of your bravely agreeing to continue with the show–' 'Money? After a shock like this? Money? He thinks he can offer us a couple of dollars and we'll agree to stay on this cursed stage?' 'Shame!' 'Heartless!, 'Unthinkable!' 'Should be at least four!' 'Right! Right!' 'For shame, my friends! To talk about a few dollars when there is a dead man lying there... Have you no respect for his memory?' 'Exactly! A few dollars is disrespectful. Five dollars or nothing!' Nanny Ogg nodded to herself, and wandered off and found a sufficiently big piece of cloth to cover the late Dr Undershaft. Nanny rather liked the theatrical world. It was its own kind of magic. That was why Esme disliked it, she reckoned. It was the magic of illusions and misdirection and foolery, and that was fine by Nanny Ogg, because you couldn't be married three times without a little fooling. But it was just close enough to Granny's own kind of magic to make Granny uneasy. Which meant she couldn't leave it alone. It was like scratching an itch. People didn't take any notice of little old ladies who looked as though they fitted in, and Nanny Ogg could fit in faster than a dead chicken in a maggot factory. Besides, Nanny had one additional little talent, which was a mind like a buzzsaw behind a face like an elderly apple. Someone was crying. A strange figure was kneeling beside the late chorus master. It looked like a puppet with the strings cut. 'Can you give me a hand with this sheet, mister?' said Nanny quietly. The face looked up. Two watery eyes, running with tears, blinked at Nanny. 'He won't wake up!' Nanny mentally changed gear. 'That's right, luv,' she said. 'You're Walter, ain't you?' 'He was always very good to me and our mum! He never gave me a kick!' It was obvious to Nanny that there was no help here. She knelt down and began to do her best with the departed. 'Miss they say it were the Ghost miss! It weren't the Ghost miss! He'd never do a thing like that! He was always good to me and our mum!' Nanny changed gear again. You had to slow down a bit for Walter Plinge. 'My mum'd know what to do!' 'Yes, well... she's gone home early, Walter.' Walter's waxy face started to contort into an expression of terminal horror. 'She mustn't walk home without Walter to look after her!' he shouted. 'I bet she always says that,' said Nanny. 'I bet she always makes sure her Walter's with her when she goes home. But I expect that right now she'd want her Walter to just get on with things so's she can be proud of him. Show's not half over yet.' ' 'S dangerous for our mum!' Nanny patted his hand and absent-mindedly wiped her own hand on her dress. 'That's a good boy,' she said. 'Now, I've got to go off–' 'The Ghost wouldn't harm no one!' 'Yes, Walter, only I've got to go but I'll find someone to help you and you must put poor Dr Undershaft somewhere safe until after the show. Understand? And I'm Mrs Ogg.' Walter gawped at her, and then nodded sharply. 'Good boy.' Nanny left him still looking at the body and headed further backstage. A young man hurrying past found that he'd suddenly acquired an Ogg. ' 'Scuse me, young man,' said Nanny, still holding his arm, 'but d'you know anyone around here called Agnes? Agnes Nitt?' 'Can't say I do, ma'am. What does she do?' He made to hurry on as politely as possible, but Nanny's grip was steel. 'She sings a bit. Big girl. Voice with double joints in it. Wears black.' 'You don't mean Perdita?' 'Perdita? Oh, yes. That'd be her all right.' 'I think she's seeing to Christine. They're in Mr Salzella's office.' 'Would Christine be the thin girl in white?' 'Yes, ma'am.' 'And I expect you're going to show me where this Mr Salzella's office is?' 'Er, am I- Er, yes. It's just along the stage there, first door on the right.' 'What a good boy to help an old lady,' said Nanny. Her grip increased to a few ounces short of cutting off circulation. 'And wouldn't it be a good idea if you helped young Walter back there do something respectful for the poor dead man?' 'Back where?' Nanny turned around. The late Dr Undershaft had gone nowhere, but Walter had vanished. 'Poor chap was a bit upset, I shouldn't wonder,' said Nanny. 'Only to be expected. So... how about if you got another strapping young lad to help you out instead?' 'Er... yes.' 'What a good boy,' Nanny repeated.     It was mid-evening. Granny and Mrs Plinge pushed their way through the crowds towards the Shades, a part of the city that was as thronged as a rookery, fragrant as a cesspit, and vice versa. 'So,' said Granny, as they entered the network of foetid alleys, 'your boy Walter usually sees you home, does he?' 'He's a good boy, Mistress Weatherwax,' said Mrs Plinge defensively. 'I'm sure you're grateful for a strong lad to lean on,' said Granny. Mrs Plinge looked up. Looking into Granny's eyes was like looking into a mirror. What you saw looking back at you was yourself, and there was no hiding-place. 'They torment him so,' she mumbled. 'They poke at him and hide his broom. They're not bad boys round here, but they will torment him.' 'He brings his broom home, does he?' 'He looks after his things,' said Mrs Plinge. 'I've always brought him up to look after his things and not be a trouble. But they will poke the poor soul and call him such names...' The alleyway opened into a yard, like a well between the high buildings. Washing-lines crisscrossed the rectangle of moonlit sky. 'I'm just in here,' said Mrs Plinge. 'Much obliged to you.' 'How does Walter get home without you?' said Granny. 'Oh, there's plenty of places to sleep in the Opera House. He knows that if I don't come for him he's to stop there for the night. He does what he's told, Mistress Weatherwax. He's never any trouble.' 'I never said he was.' Mrs Plinge fumbled in her purse, as much to escape Granny's stare as to look for the key. 'I expect your Walter sees most of what goes on in the Opera House,' said Granny, taking one of Mrs Plinge's wrists in her hand. 'I wonder what your Walter... saw?' The pulse jumped at the same time as the thieves did. Shadows unfolded themselves. There was the scrape of metal. A low voice said, 'There's two of you, ladies, and there's six of us. There's no use in screaming.' 'Oh, deary deary me,' said Granny. Mrs Plinge dropped to her knees. 'Oh, please don't hurt us, kind sirs, we are harmless old ladies! Haven't you got mothers?' Granny rolled her eyes. Damn, damn and blast. She was a good witch. That was her role in life. That was the burden she had to bear. Good and Evil were quite superfluous when you'd grown up with a highly developed sense of Right and Wrong. She hoped, oh she hoped, that young though these were, they were dyed-in-the-wool criminals . . 'I 'ad a mother once,' said the nearest thief. 'Only I think I must of et 'er...' Ah. Top marks. Granny raised both hands to her hat to draw out two long hatpins... A tile slid off the roof, and splashed into a puddle. They looked up. A caped figure was visible for a moment against the moonlight. It thrust out a sword at arm's length. Then it dropped, landing lightly in front of one astonished man. The sword whirled. The first thief spun and thrust at the shadowy shape in front of him, which turned out to be another thief, whose arm jerked up and dragged its own knife along the ribcage of the thief beside him. The masked figure danced among the gang, his sword almost leaving trails in the air. It occurred to Granny later that it never actually made contact, but then, it never needed to–when six are against one in a melee in the shadows, and especially if those six aren't used to a target that is harder to hit than a wasp, and even more so if they got all their ideas of knifefighting from other amateurs, then there's six chances in seven that they'll stab a crony and about one chance in twelve that they'll nick their own earlobe. The two that remained uninjured after ten seconds looked at one another, turned, and ran. And then it was over. The surviving vertical figure bowed low in front of Granny Weatherwax. 'Ah. Bella Donna!' There was a swirl of black cloak and red silk, and it too was gone. For a moment soft footsteps could be heard skimming over the cobbles. Granny's hand was still halfway to her hat. 'Well I never!' she said. She looked down. Various bodies were groaning or making soft bubbling noises. 'Deary deary me,' she said. Then she pulled herself together. 'I reckon we're going to need some nice hot water and some bits of bandage, and a good sharp needle for the stitching, Mrs Plinge,' she said. 'We can't let these poor men bleed to death now, can we, even if they do try to rob old ladies...' Mrs Plinge looked horrified. 'We've got to be charitable, Mrs Plinge,' Granny insisted. 'I'll pump up the fire and tear up a sheet,' said Mrs Plinge. 'Don't know if I can find a needle...' 'Oh, I 'spect I've got a needle,' said Granny, extracting one' from the brim of her hat. She knelt down by a fallen thief. 'It's rather rusty and blunt,' she added, 'but we shall have to do the best we can.' The needle gleamed in the moonlight. His round, frightened eyes focused on it, and then on Granny's face. He whimpered. His shoulderblades tried to dig him into the cobbles. It was perhaps as well that no one else could see Granny's face in the shadows. 'Let's do some good,' she said.     Salzella threw his hands in the air. 'Supposing he'd come down in the middle of the act?' he said. 'All right, all right,' said Bucket, who was sitting behind his desk as a man might hide behind a bunker. 'I agree. After the show we call in the Watch. No two ways about it. We shall just have to ask them to be discreet.' 'Discreet? Have you ever met a Watchman?' said Salzella. 'Not that they'll find anything. He'll have been over the rooftops and away, you may depend upon it. Whoever he is. Poor Dr Undershaft. He was always so highly strung.' 'Never more so than tonight,' said Salzella. 'That was tasteless!' Salzella leaned over the desk. 'Tasteless or not, the company are theatre people. Superstitious. One little thing like someone being murdered on stage and they go all to pieces.' 'He wasn't murdered on stage, he was murdered off stage. And we can't be sure it was murder! He'd been very... depressed, lately.' Agnes had been shocked, but it hadn't been shock at Dr Undershaft's death. She'd been astonished at her own reaction. It had been startling and unpleasant to see the man, but even worse to see herself actually being interested in what was happening–in the way people reacted, in the way they moved, in the things they said. It had been as if she'd stood outside herself, watching the whole thing. Christine, on the other hand, had just folded up. So had Dame Timpani. Far more people had fussed over Christine than around the prima donna, despite the fact that Dame Timpani had come around and fainted again quite pointedly several times and had eventually been forced to go for hysterics. No one had assumed for a minute that Agnes couldn't cope. Christine had been carried into Salzella's backstage office and put on a couch. Agnes had fetched a bowl of water and a cloth and was wiping her forehead, for there are some people who are destined to be carried to comfortable couches and some people whose only fate is fetching a bowl of cold water. 'Curtain goes up again in two minutes,' said Salzella. 'I'd better go and round up the orchestra. They'll all be in the Stab In The Back over the road. The swine can get through half a pint before the applause has died away.' 'Are they capable of playing?' 'They never have been, so I don't see why they should start now,' said Salzella. 'They're musicians, Bucket. The only way a dead body would upset them is if it fell in their beer, and even then they'd play if you offered them Dead Body Money.' Bucket walked over to the recumbent Christine. 'How is she?' 'She keeps mumbling a bit–' Agnes began. 'Cup of tea? Tea? Cup of tea, anyone? Nothing nicer than a cup of tea, well, I tell a lie, but I see the couch is occupied, just my little joke, no offence meant, anyone for a nice cup of tea?' Agnes looked around in horror. 'Well, I could certainly do with one,' said Bucket, with false joviality. 'How about you, miss?' Nanny winked at Agnes. 'Er...no, thank you... do you work here?' said Agnes. 'I'm just helping out for Mrs Plinge, who has been taken poorly,' said Nanny, giving her another wink. 'I'm Mrs Ogg. Don't mind me.' This seemed to satisfy Bucket, if only because random teadistributors represented the most minor of threats at this point. 'It's more like Grand Guignol than opera out there tonight,' said Nanny. She nudged Bucket. ' 'S foreign for "blood all over the stage",' she said helpfully. 'Really.' 'Yep. It means... Big Gignol.' Music started in the distance. 'That's the overture to Act Two,' said Bucket. 'Well, if Christine is still unwell, then...' He looked desperately at Agnes. Well, at a time like this people would understand. Agnes's chest swelled further with pride. 'Yes, Mr Bucket?' 'Perhaps we could find you a white–' Christine, her eyes still shut, raised her wrist to her forehead and groaned. 'Oh, dear, what happened?' Bucket knelt down instantly. 'Are you all right? You had a nasty shock! Do you think you could go on for the sake of your art and people not asking for their money back?' She gave him a brave smile. Unnecessarily brave, it seemed to Agnes. 'I can't disappoint the dear public!' she said.. 'Jolly good!' said Bucket. 'I should hurry on out there, then. Perdita will help you–won't you, Perdita?' 'Yes. Of course.' 'And you'll be in the chorus for the duet,' said Bucket. 'Nearby in the chorus.' Agnes sighed. 'Yes, I know. Come on, Christine.' 'Dear Perdita...' said Christine. Nanny watched them go. Then she said, 'I'll have that cup if you've finished with it.' 'Oh. Yes. Yes, it was very nice,' said Bucket. 'Er... I had a bit of an accident up at the Boxes,' said Nanny. Bucket clutched at his chest. 'How many died?' 'Oh, no one died, no one died. They got a bit damp because I spilled some champagne.' Bucket sagged with relief. 'Oh, I wouldn't worry about that,' he said. 'When I say spilled... I mean, it went on happening...' He waved her away. 'It cleans up well off the carpet,' he said. 'Does it stain ceilings?' 'Mrs... ?' 'Ogg., 'Please just go away.' Nanny nodded, gathered up the teacups and wandered out of the office. If no one questioned an old lady with a tray of tea, they certainly weren't bothered about one behind a pile of washing-up. Washing-up is a badge of membership anywhere. As far as Nanny Ogg was concerned, washing-up was also something that happened to other people, but she felt that it might be a good idea to stay in character. She found an alcove with a pump and a sink in it, rolled up her sleeves, and set to work. Someone tapped her on the shoulder. 'You shouldn't do that, you know,' said a voice. 'That's very unlucky.' She glanced around at a stage-hand. 'What, washing-up causes seven years' bad luck?' she said. 'You were whistling.' 'Well? I always whistle when I'm thinkin'.' 'You shouldn't whistle on stage, I meant.' It's unlucky?' 'I suppose you could say that. We use whistle codes when we're shifting the scenery. Having a sack of sandbags land on you could be unlucky, I suppose.' Nanny glanced up. His gaze followed hers. just here the ceiling was about two feet away. 'It's just safest not to whistle,' the boy mumbled. 'I'll remember that,' said Nanny. 'No whistlin'. Interestin'. We do live and learn, don't we?'     The curtain went up on Act Two. Nanny watched from the wings. The interesting thing was the way in which people contrived to keep one hand higher than their necks in case of accidents. There seemed to be far more salutes and waves and dramatic gestures than were strictly called for in the opera. She watched the duet between Iodine and Bufola, possibly the first in the history of the opera where both singers kept their eyes turned resolutely upwards. Nanny enjoyed music, as well. If music were the food of love, she was game for a sonata and chips at any time. But it was clear that the sparkle -had gone out of things tonight. She shook her head. A figure moved through the shadows behind her, and reached out. She turned, and looked at a fearsome face. 'Oh, hello, Esme. How did you get in?' 'You've still -got the tickets so I had to talk to the man on the door. But he'll be right as rain in a minute or two. What's been happening?' 'Well... the Duke's sung a long song to say that he must be going, and the Count has sung a song saying how nice it is in the springtime, and a dead body's fallen out of the ceiling.' 'That goes on a lot in opera, does it?' 'Shouldn't think so.' 'Ah. In the theatre, I've noticed, if you watch dead bodies long enough you can see them move.' 'Doubt if this one'll move. Strangled. Someone's murdering opera people. I bin chatting to the ballet girls.' 'Indeed?' 'It's this Ghost they're all talking about.' 'Hmm. Wears one of those black opera suits and a white mask?' 'How did you know that?' Granny looked smug. 'I mean, I can't imagine who'd want to murder opera people...' Nanny thought of the expression on Dame Timpani's face. 'Except p'raps other opera people. And p'raps the musicians. And some of the audience, p'raps.' 'I don't believe in ghosts,' said Granny firmly. 'Oh, Esme! You know I've got a dozen of 'em in my house!' 'Oh, I believe in ghosts,' said Granny. 'Sad things hangin' around goin' woogy woogy woogy... but I don't believe they kill people or use swords.' She walked away a little. 'There's too many ghosts here already.' Nanny kept quiet. It was best to do so when Granny was listening without using her ears. 'Gytha?' 'Yes, Esme?' 'What does "Bella Donna" mean?' 'It's the nobby name for Deadly Nightshade, Esme.' 'I thought so. Huh! The cheek of it!' 'Only, in opera, it means Beautiful Woman.' 'Really? Oh.' Granny's hand reached up and patted the iron-hard bun of her hair. 'Foolishness!' ...he'd moved like music, like someone dancing to a rhythm inside his head. And his face for a moment in the moonlight was the skull of an angel...     The duet got another standing ovation. Agnes faded gently back into the chorus. She had to do little else during the remainder of the act except dance, or at least move as rhythmically as she could, with the rest of the chorus during the Gypsy Fair, and listen to the Duke singing a song about how lovely the countryside was in summer. With an arm extended dramatically above his head. She kept peering into the wings. If Nanny Ogg was here then the other one would be around somewhere. She wished she'd never written those wretched letters home. Well... they wouldn't drag her back, no matter what they tried...     The remainder of the opera passed without anyone dying, except where the score required them to do so at some length. There was a minor upset when a member of the chorus was almost brained by a sandbag dislodged from a gantry by the stage-hands stationed there to prevent accidents. There was more applause at the end. Christine got most of it. And then the curtains closed. And opened and closed a few times as Christine took her bows. Agnes felt perhaps she took one more bow than the applause really justified. Perdita, looking out through her eyes, said: of course she did. And then they closed the curtains for the last time. The audience went home. From the wings, and up in the flies, the stagehands whistled their commands. Parts of the world vanished into the aerial darkness. Someone went round and put out most of the lights. Rising like a birthday cake, the chandelier was winched into its loft so that the candles could be snuffed. Then there were the footsteps of the men leaving the loft... Within twenty minutes of the last handclap of applause the auditorium was empty and dark, except for just a few lights. There was the clank of a bucket. Walter Plinge walked on to the stage, if such a word could be employed for his mode of progress. He moved like a puppet on elastic strings, so that it seemed only coincidentally that his feet touched the ground. Very slowly, and very conscientiously, he began to mop the stage. After a few minutes a shadow detached itself from the curtains and walked over to him. Walter looked down. 'Hello Mister Pussy Cat,' he said. Greebo rubbed against his legs. Cats have an instinct for anyone daft enough to give them food, and Walter certainly was well qualified. 'I shall go and find you some milk shall I Mister Cat?' Greebo purred like a thunderstorm. Walking his strange walk, advancing only by averages, Walter disappeared into the wings. There were two dark figures sitting in the balcony. 'Sad,' said Nanny. 'He's got a good job in the warm and his mother keeps an eye on him,' said Granny. 'A lot of people fare worse.' 'Not a big future for him, though,' said Nanny. 'Not when you think about it.' 'There was a couple of cold potatoes and half a herring for their supper,' said Granny. 'Hardly a stick of furniture, too.' 'Shame.' 'Mind you, she's a little bit richer now,' Granny conceded. 'Especially if she sells all those knives and boots,' she added to herself. 'It's a cruel world for old ladies,' said Nanny, matriarch of a vast extended tribe and undisputed tyrant of half the Ramtops. 'Especially one as terrified as Mrs Phnge,' said Granny. 'Well, I'd be frightened too, if I was old and had Walter to think about.' 'I ain't talking about that, Gytha. I know about fear.' 'That's true,' said Nanny. 'Most of the people you meet are full of fear.' 'Mrs Phnge is living in fear,' said Granny, appearing not to hear this. 'Her mind is flat with it. She can't hardly think for the terror. I could feel it coming off of her like mist.' 'Why? Because of the Ghost?' 'I don't know yet. Not all of it, anyway. But I will find out.' Nanny fished in the recesses of her clothing. 'Fancy a drink?' she said. There was a muffled clink from somewhere in her petticoats. 'I got champagne, brandy and port. Also some nibbles and biscuits.' 'Gytha Ogg, I believe you are a thief,' said Granny. 'I ain't!' said Nanny, and added, with that grasp of advanced morality that comes naturally to a witch: 'Just because I occasionally technic'ly steal something, that doesn't make me a thief. I don't think thief.' 'Let's get back to Mrs Palm's.' 'All right,' said Nanny. 'But can we get something to eat first? I don't mind the cooking, but the grub there is a bit of an all-day breakfast, if you know what I mean...' There was a sound from the stage as they stood up. Walter had returned, followed by a slightly fatter Greebo. Oblivious to the watchers, he continued to mop the stage. 'First thing tomorrow,' said Granny, 'we'll go and see Mr Goatberger the Almanack man again. I've had time to think about what to do next. And then we're going to sort this out.' She glared at the innocent figure washing the stage arid said, under her breath: 'What is it you know, Walter Plinge? What is it you've seen?'     'Wasn't it amazing?!' said Christine, sitting up in bed. Her nightdress, Agnes had noted, was white. And extremely lacy. 'Yes, indeed,' said Agnes. 'Five curtain calls!! Mr Bucket says that's more than anyone's ever had since Dame Gigli!! I'm sure I won't be able to sleep for the excitement!!' 'So you just drink up that lovely hot milk drink I've done for us,' said Agnes. 'It took me ages to carry the saucepan up those stairs.' 'And the flowers!!' said Christine, ignoring the mug Agnes had placed beside her. 'They started arriving right after the performance, Mr Bucket said!! He said–' There was a soft knock at the door. Christine adjusted her dress. 'Come!!' The door opened and Walter Plinge shuffled in, hidden under the bouquets of flowers. After a few steps he stumbled on his own feet, plunged forward, and dropped them. Then he stared at the two girls in mute embarrassment, turned suddenly, and walked into the door. Christine giggled. 'Sorry mu-miss,' said Walter. 'Thank you, Walter,' said Agnes. The door closed. 'Isn't he strange?! Have you seen the way he stares at me?! Do you think you could find some water for these, Perdita?!' 'Certainly, Christine. It's only seven flights of stairs.' 'And as a reward I shall drink this lovely drink you have made for me!! Has it got spices in it?' 'Oh, yes. Spices,' said Agnes. 'It's not like one of those potions your witches cook up, is it?!' 'Er, no,' said Agnes. After all, everyone in Lancre used fresh herbs. 'Er... there's not going to be anything like enough vases for them all, even if I use the guzunder...' 'The what?!' 'The... you know. It's goes-under... the bed. Guzunder.' 'You're so funny!!' 'There won't be, anyway,' said Agnes, blushing hotly. Behind her eyes, Perdita committed murder. 'Then put in all the ones from the earls and knights and I shall see to the others tomorrow!' said Christine, picking up the drink. Agnes picked up the kettle and started towards the door. 'Perdita, dear?' said Christine, the mug halfway to her lips. Agnes turned. 'It did seem to me you were singing the teensiest bit loud, dear! I'm sure it must have been a little difficult for everyone to hear me.' 'Sorry, Christine,' said Agnes. She walked down in darkness. Tonight there was a candle burning in a niche on every second landing. Without them the stairs would have been merely dark; with them, shadows crept arid leapt at every corner. She reached the pump in the little alcove by the stage manager's office, and filled the kettle. Out on the stage, someone began to sing. It was Peccadillo's part of a duet of three hours earlier, but sung without music and in a tenor voice of such tone and purity that the kettle dropped out of Agnes's hand and spilled cold water over her feet. She listened for a while, and then realized that she was singing the soprano part under her breath. The song came to an end. She could hear, far off, the hollow sound of footsteps retreating in the distance. She ran to the door to the stage, .paused a moment, and then opened it and went forward and out on to the huge dim emptiness. The candles left burning were as much illumination as stars on a clear night. There was no one there. She walked into the centre of the stage, and stopped, and caught her breath at the shock. She could feel the auditorium in front of her, the huge empty space making the sound that velvet would make if it could snore. It wasn't silence. A stage is never silent. It was the noise produced by a million other sounds that have never quite died away–the thunder of applause, the overtures, the arias. They poured down... fragments of tunes, lost chords, snatches of song. She stepped back, and trod on someone's foot. Agnes spun around. 'André, there's no–' Someone crouched back. 'Sorry miss!' Agnes breathed out. 'Walter?' 'Sorry miss!' 'It's all right! You just startled me.' 'Didn't see you miss!' Walter was holding something. To Agnes's amazement, the darker shape in the darkness was a cat, flopped over Walter's arms like an old rug and purring happily. It was like seeing someone poking their arm into a mincing machine to see what was jamming it. 'That's Greebo, isn't it?' 'He's a happy cat! He's full of milk!' 'Walter, why're you in the middle of the stage in the dark when everyone's gone home?' 'What were you doing miss?' It was the first time she'd heard Walter ask a question. And he's sort of a janitor, after all, she told herself. He can go anywhere. 'I... got lost,' she said, ashamed at the lie. 'I... I'll be going up to my room now. Er. Did you hear someone singing?' 'All the time miss!' 'I meant just now.' 'Just now I'm talking to you miss!' 'Oh...' 'G'night miss!' She walked through the soft warm gloom to the backstage door, resisting at every step the urge to look round. She collected the kettle and hurried up the stairs. . Behind her, on the stage, Walter carefully lowered Greebo to the floor, took off his beret, and removed something white and papery from inside it. 'What shall we listen to, Mister Cat? I know, we shall listen to the overture to Die Flederleiv by J. Q. Bubbla, cond. Vochua Doinov.' Greebo gave him the fat-cheeked look of a cat prepared to put up with practically anything for food. And Walter sat down beside him and listened to the music coming out of the walls.     When Agnes got back to the room Christine was already fast asleep, snoring the snore of those in herbal heaven. The mug lay by the bed. It wasn't a bad thing to do, Agnes reassured herself. Christine probably needed a good night's sleep. It was practically a kindly act. She turned her attention to the flowers. There were quite a lot of roses and orchids. Most of them had cards attached. Many aristocratic men apparently appreciated good singing or, at least, good singing that appeared to come from a face like Christine's. Agnes arranged the flowers Lancre fashion, which was to hold the pot with one hand and the bouquet in the other and forcibly bring the two into conjunction. The last bunch was the smallest, and wrapped in red paper. There was no card. In fact, there were no flowers. Someone had merely wrapped up half a dozen blackened and spindly rose-stems and then, for some reason, sprayed them with scent. It was musky and rather pleasant, but a bad joke all the same. She threw them in the bin with the rubbish, blew out the candle, and sat down to wait. She wasn't certain for whom. Or what. After a minute or two she was aware that there was a glow coming from the wastebin. It was the barest fluorescence, like a sick glow-worm, but it was there. She crawled across the floor and peered in. There were rosebuds on the dead sticks, transparent as glass, visible only by the glimmer on the edge of each petal. They flickered like marsh lights. Agnes lifted them out carefully and fumbled in the darkness for the empty mug. It wasn't the best of vases, but it would have to do. Then she sat and watched the ghostly flowers until... ...someone coughed. She jerked her head up, aware that she'd fallen asleep. 'Madam?' 'Sir?!' The voice was melodious. It suggested that, at any minute, it might break into song. 'Attend. Tomorrow you must sing the part of Laura in Il Truccatore. We have much to do. One night is barely enough. The aria in Act One will occupy much of our time.' There was a brief passage of violin music. 'Your performance tonight was... good. But there are areas that we must build upon. Attend.' 'Did you send the roses?!' 'You like the roses? They bloom only in darkness.' 'Who are you?! Was it you I heard singing just now!?' There was silence for a moment. 'Yes.' Then: 'Let us examine the role of Laura in Il Truccatore "The Master of Disguise", also sometimes vulgarly known as "The Man with a Thousand Faces"...'     When the witches arrived at Goatberger's offices next morning they found a very large troll sitting on the stairs. It had a club across its knees and held up a shovel-sized hand to prevent them going any further. 'No one's allowed in,' it said. 'Mr Goatberger is in a meetin'.' 'How long is this meetin' going to be?' said Granny. 'Mr Goatberger is a very elongated meeter.' Granny gave the troll an appraising stare. 'You been in publishin' long?' she said. 'Since dis mornin',' said the troll proudly. 'Mr Goatberger gave you the job?' 'Yup. Come up Quarry Lane and picked me special for...'–the troll's brow creased as it tried to remember the unfamiliar words–'...the fast track inns fast-movin'_ worlds publishin'.' 'And what exactly is your job?' ' 'Ead 'fitter.' ' 'Souse me,' said Nanny, pushing forward. 'I'd know that stratum anywhere. You're from Copperhead in Lancre, ain't you?' 'So what?' 'We're from Lancre, too.' 'Yeah?' 'This is Granny Weatherwax, you know.' The troll gave her a disbelieving grin, and then its brow corrugated again, and then it looked at Granny. She nodded. 'The one you boys call Aaoograha hoa, you know?' said Nanny. ' "She Who Must Be Avoided"?' The troll looked at its club as if seriously considering the possibility of beating itself to death. Granny patted it on the lichen-encrusted shoulder. 'What's your name, lad?' 'Carborundum, miss,' it mumbled. One of its legs began to tremble. 'Well, I'm sure you're going to make a good life for yourself here in the big city,' said Granny. 'Yes, why don't you go and start now?' said Nanny. The troll gave her a grateful look and fled, without even bothering to open the door. 'Do they really call me that?' said Granny. 'Er. Yes,' said Nanny, kicking herself. 'It's a mark of respect, of course.' 'Oh.' 'Er...' 'I've always done my best to get along with trolls, you know that.' 'Oh, yes.' 'How about the dwarfs?' said Granny, as someone might who had found a hitherto unsuspected boil and couldn't resist poking it. 'Have they got a name for me, too?' 'Let's go and see Mr Goatberger, shall we?' said Nanny brightly. 'Gytha!' 'Er... well... I think it's K'ez'rek d'b'duz,' said Nanny. 'What does that mean?' 'Er... "Go Around the Other Side of the Mountain",' said Nanny. 'Oh.' Granny was uncharacteristically silent as they made their way up the stairs. Nanny didn't bother to knock. She opened the door and said, 'Coo-ee, Mr Goatberger! It's us again, just like you said. Oh, I shouldn't try to get out of the window like that–you're three flights up and that bag of money is a bit dangerous if you're climbing around.' The man edged around the room so that his desk was between him and the witches. 'Wasn't there a troll downstairs?' he said. 'It's decided to break out of publishing,' said Nanny. She sat down and gave him a big smile. 'I 'spect you've got some money for us.' Mr Goatberger realized that he was trapped. His face contorted into a series of twisted expressions as he experimented with some replies. Then he smiled as widely as Nanny and sat down opposite her. 'Of course, things are very difficult at the moment,' he said. 'In fact I can't recall a worse time,' he added, with considerable honesty. He looked at Granny's face. His grin stayed where it was but the rest of his face began to edge away. 'People just don't seem to be buying books,' he said. 'And the cost of the etchings, well, it's wicked.' 'Everyone I knows buys the Almanack,' said Granny. 'I reckon everyone in Lancre buys your Almanack. Everyone in the whole Ramtops buys the Almanack, even the dwarfs. That's a lot of half dollars. And Gytha's book seems to be doing very well.' 'Well, of course, I'm glad it's so popular, but what with distribution, paying the peddlers, the wear and tear on–' 'Your Almanack will last a household all winter, with care,' said Granny. 'Providing no one's ill and the paper's nice and thin.' 'My son Jason buys two copies,' said Nanny. 'Of course, he's got a big family. The privy door never stops swinging' 'Yes but, you see, the point is... I don't actually have to pay you anything,' said Mr Goatberger, trying to ignore this. His smile had the face all to itself now. 'You paid me to print it, and I gave you your money back. In fact I think our accounts department made a slight error in your favour, but I won't–' His voice trailed away. Granny Weatherwax was unfolding a sheet of paper. 'These predictions for next year...' she said. 'Where'd you get that?' 'I borrowed it. You can have it back if you like–' 'Well, what about them?' 'They're wrong.' 'What do you mean, they're wrong? They're predictions!' 'I don't see there being a rain of curry in Klatch next May. You don't get curry that early.' 'You know about the predictions business?' said Goatberger. 'You? I've been printing predictions for years. 'I don't do clever stuff for years ahead, like you do,' Granny admitted. 'But I'm pretty accurate if you want a thirty-second one.' 'Indeed? What's going to happen in thirty seconds?' Granny told him. Goatberger roared with laughter. 'Oh, yes, that's a good one, you should be writing them for us!' he said. 'Oh, my word. Nothing like being ambitious; eh? That's better than the spontaneous combustion of the Bishop of Quirm, and that didn't even happen! In thirty seconds, eh?' 'No.' 'No?' 'Twenty-one seconds now,' said Granny.     Mr Bucket had arrived at the Opera House early to see if anyone had died so far today. He made it as far as his office without a single body dropping out of the shadows. He really hadn't expected it to be like this. He'd liked opera. It had all seemed so artistic. He'd watched hundreds of operas and practically no one had died, except once during the ballet scene in La Triviata when a ballerina had rather over-enthusiastically been flung into the lap of an elderly gentleman in the front row of the Stalls. She hadn't been hurt, but the old man had died in one incredibly happy instant. Someone knocked at the door. Mr Bucket opened it about a quarter of an inch. 'Who's dead?' he said. 'N-no one Mr Bucket! I've got your letters!' 'Oh, it's you, Walter. Thank you.' He took the bundle and shut the door. There were bills. There were always bills. The Opera House practically runs itself, they'd told him. Well, yes, but it practically ran on money. He rummaged through the let– There was an envelope with the Opera House crest on it. He looked at it like a man looks at a very fierce dog on a very thin leash. It did nothing except lie there and look as gummed as an envelope can be. Finally he disembowelled it with the, paperknife and then flung it down on the desk again, as if it would bite. When it did not do so he reached out hesitantly and withdrew the folded letter. It read as follows:   My Dear Bucket, I should be most grateful if Christine sings the role of Laura tonight. I assure you she is more than capable. The second violinist is a little slow, I feel, and the second act last night was frankly extremely wooden. This really is not good enough. My I extend my own welcome to Senor Basilica. I congratulate you on his arrival. Wishing you the very best, The Opera Ghost    'Mr Salzella!' Salzella was eventually located. He read the note. 'You do not intend to accede to this?' he said. 'She does sing superbly, Salzella.' 'You mean the Nitt girl?' 'Well... yes... you know what I mean.' 'But this is nothing less than blackmail!' 'Is it? He's not actually threatening anything.' 'You let her... I mean them, of course... you let them sing last night, and much good it did poor Dr Undershaft.' 'What do you advise, then?' There was another series of disjointed knocks on the door. 'Come in, Walter,' said Bucket and Salzella together. Walter jerked in, holding the coalscuttle. 'I've been to see Commander Vimes of the city Watch,' said Salzella. 'He said he'll have some of his best men here tonight. Undercover.' 'I thought you said they were all incompetent.' Salzella shrugged. 'We've got to do this properly. Did you know Dr Undershaft was strangled before he was hung?' 'Hanged,' said Bucket, without thinking. 'Men are hanged. It's dead meat that's hung.' 'Indeed?' said Salzella. 'I appreciate the information. Well, poor old Undershaft was strangled, apparently. And then he was hung.' 'Really, Salzella, you do have a misplaced sense–' 'I've finished now Mr Bucket!' 'Yes, thank you, Walter. You may go.' 'Yes Mr Bucket!' Walter closed the door behind him, very conscientiously. 'I'm afraid it's working here,' said Salzella. 'If you don't find some way of dealing with... are you all right, Mr Bucket?' 'What?' Bucket, who'd been staring at the closed door, shook his head. 'Oh. Yes. Er. Walter...' 'What about him?' 'He's... all right, is he?' 'Oh, he's got his... funny little ways. He's harmless enough, if that's what you mean. Some of the stage-hands and musicians are a bit cruel to him... you know, sending him out for a tin of invisible paint or a bag of nail-holes and so on. He believes what he's told. Why?' 'Oh... I just wondered. Silly, really.' 'I suppose he is, technically.' 'No, I meant- Oh, it doesn't matter...'     Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg left Goatberger's office and walked demurely down the street. At least, Granny walked demurely. Nanny leaned somewhat. Every thirty seconds she'd say, 'How much was that again?' 'Three thousand, two hundred and seventy dollars and eighty-seven pence,' said Granny. She was looking thoughtful. 'I thought it was nice of him to look in all the ashtrays for all the odd coppers he could round up,' said Nanny. 'Those he could reach, anyway. How much was that again?' 'Three thousand, two hundred and seventy dollars and eighty-seven pence.' 'I've never had seventy dollars before,' said Nanny. 'I didn't say just seventy dollars, I said–' 'Yes, I know. But I'm working my way up to it gradual. I'll say this about money. It really chafes.' 'I don't know why you have to keep your purse in your knicker leg,' said Granny. 'It's the last place anybody would look.' Nanny sighed. 'How much did you say it was?' 'Three thousand, two hundred and seventy dollars and eighty-seven pence.' 'I'm going to need a bigger tin.' 'You're going to need a bigger chimney.' 'I could certainly do with a bigger knicker leg.' She nudged Granny. 'You're going to have to be polite to me now I'm rich,' she said. 'Yes, indeed,' said Granny, with a faraway look in her eyes. 'Don't think I'm not considering that.' She stopped. Nanny walked into her, with a tinkle of lingerie. The frontage of the Opera House loomed over them. 'We've got to get back in there,' Granny said. 'And into Box Eight.' 'Crowbar,' said Nanny, firmly. 'A No. 3 claw end should do it.' 'We're not your Nev,' said Granny. 'Anyway, breaking in wouldn't be the same thing. We've got to have a right to be there.' 'Cleaners,' said Nanny. 'We could be cleaners, and... no, 's not right me being a cleaner now, in my position.' 'No, we can't have that, with you in your position.' Granny glanced down at Nanny as a coach pulled up outside the Opera House. 'O' course,' she said, artfulness dripping off her voice like toffee, 'we could always buy Box Eight.' 'Wouldn't work,' said Nanny. People were hurrying down the steps with the cuff-adjusting, sticky looks of welcoming committees everywhere. 'They're scared of selling it.' 'Why not?' said Granny. 'There's people dying and the opera goes on. That means someone's prepared to sell his own grandmother if he'd make enough money.' 'It'd cost a fortune, anyway,' said Nanny. She looked at Granny's triumphant expression and groaned. 'Oh, Esme! I was going to save that money for me old age!' She thought for a moment. 'Anyway, it still wouldn't work. I mean, look at us, we don't look like the right kind of people...' Enrico Basilica got out of the coach. 'But we know the right kind of people,' said Granny. 'Oh, Esme!'     The shop bell tinkled in a refined tone,, as if it were embarrassed to do something as vulgar as ring. It would have much preferred to give a polite cough. This was Ankh-Morpork's most prestigious dress shop, and one way of telling was the apparent absence of anything so crass as merchandise. The occasional carefully placed piece of expensive material merely hinted at the possibilities available. This was not a shop where things were bought. This was an emporium where you had a cup of coffee and a chat. Possibly, as a result of that muted conversation, four or five yards of exquisite fabric would change ownership in some ethereal way, and yet nothing so crass as trade would have taken place. 'Shop!' yelled Nanny. A lady appeared from behind a curtain and observed the visitors, quite possibly with her nose. 'Have you come to the right entrance?' she said. Madame Dawning had been brought up to be polite to servants and tradespeople, even when they were as scruffy as these two old crows. 'My friend here wants a new dress,' said the dumpier of the two. 'One of the nobby ones with a train and a padded bum.' 'In black,' said the thin one. 'And we wants all the trimmings,' said the dumpy one. 'Little handbag onna string, pair of glasses onna stick, the whole thing.' 'I think perhaps that might be a leetle more than you're thinking of spending,' said Madame Dawning. 'How much is a leetle?' said the dumpy one. 'I mean that this is rather a select dress shop.' 'That's why we're here. We don't want rubbish. My name's Nanny Ogg and this here is... Lady Esmerelda Weatherwax.' Madame Dawning regarded Lady Esmerelda quizzically. There was no doubt that the woman had a certain bearing. And she stared like a duchess. 'From Lancre,' said Nanny Ogg. 'And she could have a conservatory if she liked, but she doesn't want one.' 'Er...'Madame Dawning decided to play along for a while. 'What style were you considering?' 'Something nobby,' said Nanny Ogg. 'I perhaps would like a leetle more guidance than that–' 'Perhaps you could show us some things,' said Lady Esmerelda, sitting down. 'It's for the opera.' 'Oh, you patronize the opera?' 'Lady Esmerelda patronizes everything,' said Nanny Ogg stoutly. Madame Dawning had a manner peculiar to her class and upbringing. She'd been raised to see the world in a certain way. When it didn't act in that certain way she wobbled a bit but, like a gyroscope, eventually recovered and went on spinning just as if it had. If civilization were to collapse totally and the survivors were reduced to eating cockroaches, Madame Dawning would still use a napkin and look down on people who ate their cockroaches the wrong way round. 'I will, er, show you, some examples,' she said. 'Excuse me one moment.' She scuttled into the long workrooms behind the shop, where there was considerably less gilt, and leaned against the wall and summoned her chief seamstress. 'Mildred, there are two very strange–' She stopped. They'd followed her! They were wandering down the aisle between the rows of dressmakers, nodding at people and inspecting some of the dresses on the dummies. She hurried back. 'I'm sure you'd prefer–' 'How much is this one?' said Lady Esmerelda, fingering a creation intended for the Dowager Duchess of Quirm. 'I am afraid that one is not for sale–' 'How much would it be if it was for sale?' 'Three hundred dollars, I believe,' said Madame Dawning. 'Five hundred seems about right,' said Lady Esmerelda. 'Does it?' said Nanny Ogg. 'Oh, it does, does it?' The dress was black. At least, in theory it was black. It was black in the same. way that a starling's wing is black. It was black silk, with jet beads and sequins. It was black on holiday. 'It looks about my size. We'll take it. Pay the woman, Gytha.' Madame's gyroscope precessed rapidly. 'Take it? Now? Five hundred dollars? Pay? Pay now? Cash?' 'See to it, Gytha.' 'Oh, all right.' Nanny Ogg turned away modestly and raised her skirt. There was a series of rustlings and elasticated twangings, and then she turned around, holding a bag. She counted out fifty rather warm ten-dollar pieces into Madame Dawning's unprotesting hand. 'And now we'll go back into the shop and have a poke around for the other stuff,' said Lady Esmerelda. 'I fancy ostrich feathers myself. And one of those big cloaks the ladies wear. And one of those fans edged with lace.' 'Why don't we get some great big diamonds while we're about it?' said Nanny Ogg sharply. 'Good idea.' Madame Dawning could hear them bickering as they ambled away up the aisle. She looked down at the money in her hand. She knew about old money, which was somehow hallowed by the fact that people had hung on to it for years, and she knew about new money, which seemed to be being made by all these upstarts that were flooding into the city these days. But under her powdered bosom she was an Ankh-Morpork shopkeeper, and knew that the best kind of money was the sort that was in her hand rather than someone else's. The best kind of money was mine, not yours. Besides, she was also enough of a snob to confuse rudeness with .good breeding. In the same way that the really rich can never be mad (they're eccentric), so they can also never be rude (they're outspoken and forthright). She hurried after Lady Esmerelda and her rather strange friend. Salt of the earth, she told herself. She was in time to overhear a mysterious conversation. 'I'm being punished, ain't I, Esme?' 'Can't imagine what you're talking about, Gytha.' 'Just 'cos I had my little moment.' 'I really don't follow you. Anyway, you said you were at your wits' end with thinking what you'd do with the money.' 'Yes, but I'd have quite liked to have been at my wits' end on a big comfy chase longyou somewhere with lots of big strong men buyin' me chocolates and pressin' their favours .on me.' 'Money don't buy happiness, Gytha.' 'I only wanted to rent it for a few weeks.'     Agnes rose late, the music still ringing in her ears, and dressed in a dream. But she hung a bedsheet over the mirror first, just in case. There were half a dozen of the chorus dancers in the canteen, sharing a stick of celery and giggling. And there was André. He was eating something absentmindedly while staring at a sheet of music. Occasionally he'd wave his spoon in the air with a faraway look on his face, and then put it down and make a few notes. In mid-beat he caught sight of Agnes, and grinned. 'Hello. You look tired.' 'Er... yes.' 'You've missed all the excitement.' 'Have I?' 'The Watch have been here, talking to everyone and asking lots of questions and writing things down very slowly.' 'What sort of questions?' 'Well, knowing the Watch, probably "Was it you what did it, then?" They're rather slow thinkers.' 'Oh dear. Does that mean tonight's performance is cancelled?' André laughed. He had a rather pleasant laugh. 'I don't think Mr Bucket could possibly cancel it!' he said. 'Even if people are dropping like flies out of the flies.' 'Why not?' 'People have been queuing for tickets!' 'Why?' He told her. 'That's disgusting!' said Agnes. 'You mean they're coming because it might be dangerous?' 'Human nature, I'm afraid. Of course, some of them want to hear Enrico Basilica. And... well... Christine seems popular...' He gave her a sorrowful look. 'I don't mind, honestly,' lied Agnes. 'Um... how long have you worked here, André?' 'Er... only a few months. I... used to teach music to the Seriph's children in Klatch.' 'Um... what do you think about the Ghost?' He shrugged. 'Just some kind of madman, I suppose. 'Um... do you know if he sings? I mean, is good at singing?' 'I heard that he sends little critiques to the manager. Some of the girls say they've heard someone singing in the night, but they're always saying silly things.' 'Um... are there any secret passages here?' He looked at her with his head on one side. 'Who've you been talking to?' 'Sorry?' 'The girls say there are. Of course, they say they see the Ghost all the time. And sometimes in two places at once.' 'Why should they see him more?' 'Perhaps he just likes looking at young ladies. They're always practising in odd corners. Besides, they're all halfcrazed with hunger anyway.' 'Aren't you interested in the Ghost? People have been killed!' 'Well, people are saying it might have been Dr Undershaft.' 'But he was killed!' 'He might have hanged himself. He'd been very depressed lately. And he'd always been a bit strange. Nervy. It's going to be a bit difficult without him, though. Here, I've brought you a stack of old programmes. Some of the notes may help, since you haven't been in the opera long.' Agnes stared at them, unseeing. People were disappearing and the first thought that everyone had was that it was going to be inconvenient without them. The show must go on. Everyone said that. People said it all the time. Often they smiled when they said it, but they were serious all the same, under the smile. No one ever said why. But yesterday, when the chorus had been arguing about the money, everyone knew that they weren't actually going to refuse to sing. It was all a game. The show went on. She'd heard all the stories. She'd heard about shows continuing while fire raged around the city, while a dragon was roosting on the roof, while there was rioting in the streets outside. Scenery collapsed? The show went on. Leading tenor died? Then appeal to the audience for any student of music who knew the part, and give him his big chance while his predecessor's body cooled gently in the wings. Why? It was only a performance, for heaven's sake. It wasn't like something important. But... the show goes on. Everyone took this so much for granted that they didn't even think about it any more, as though there were fog in their heads. On the other hand... someone was teaching her to sing at night. A mysterious person sang songs on the stage when everyone had gone home. She tried to think of that voice belonging to someone who killed people. It didn't work. Maybe she'd caught some of the fog and didn't want it to work. What sort of person could have that feel for music and kill people? She'd been idly turning the pages of an old programme and a name caught her eye. She quickly shufed through the others beneath. There it was again. Not in every performance, and never in a major role, but it. was there. Generally it played an innkeeper or a servant. 'Walter Plinge?' she said. 'Walter? But... he doesn't sing, does he?' She held up a programme and pointed. 'What? Oh, no!' André laughed. 'Good heavens... it's a... a kind of convenient name, I suppose. Sometimes someone has to sing a very minor part... perhaps a singer is in a role that they'd rather not be remembered in... well, here, they just go down on the programme as Walter Plinge. Lots of theatres have a useful name like that. Like A. N. Other. It's convenient for everyone.' 'But... Walter Plinge?' 'Well, I suppose it started as a joke. I mean, can you imagine Walter Plinge on stage?' André grinned. 'In that little beret he wears?' 'What does he think about it?' 'I don't think he minds. It's hard to tell, isn't it?' There was a crash from the direction of the kitchen, although it was really more of a crashendo the longdrawn-out clatter that begins when a pile of plates begins to slip, continues when someone tries to grab at them, develops a desperate counter-theme when the person realizes they don't have three hands, and ends with the roinroinroin of the one miraculously intact plate spinning round and round on the floor. They heard an irate female voice. 'Walter Plinge!' 'Sorry Mrs Clamp!' 'Damn' thing keeps holding on to the edge of the pan! Let go, you wretched insect–' There was the sound of crockery being swept up, and then a rubbery noise that could approximately be described as a spoing. 'Now where's it gone?' 'Don't know Mrs Clamp!' 'And what's that cat doing in here?' André turned back to Agnes and flashed her a sad smile. 'It is a little cruel, I suppose,' he said. 'The poor chap is a bit daft.' 'I'm not at all sure,' said Agnes, 'that I've met anyone here who isn't.' He grinned again. 'I know,' he said. 'I mean, everyone acts as if it's only the music that matters! The plots don't make sense! Half the stories rely on people not recognizing their servants or wives because they've got a tiny mask on! Large ladies play the part of consumptive girls! No one can act properly! No wonder everyone accepts me singing for Christine-that's practically normal compared to opera! It's an operatic kind of idea! There should be a sign on the door saying "Leave your common sense here"! If it wasn't for the music the whole thing would be ridiculous!' She realized he was looking at her with an opera face. 'Of course, that's it, isn't it? It is the show that matters, isn't it?' she said. 'It's all show.' 'It's not meant to be real,' said André. 'It's not like theatre. No one's saying, "You've got to pretend this is a big battlefield and that guy in the cardboard crown is really a king." The plot's only there to fill in time before the next song.' He leaned forward and took her hand. 'This must be wretched for you,' he said. No male had ever touched Agnes before, except perhaps to push her over and steal her sweets. She pulled her hand away. 'I, er, better go and practise,' she said, feeling the blush start. 'You really picked up the role of Iodine very well,' said André. 'I, er, have a private tutor,' said Agnes. 'Then he's really studied opera; that's all I can say.' 'I... think he has.'     'Esme?' 'Yes, Gytha?' 'It's not that I' m complaining or anything...' 'Yes?' '...but why isn't it me who's being the posh opera patronizes?' 'Because you're as common as muck, Gytha.' 'Oh. Right.' Nanny subjected this statement to some thought and couldn't see any point of inaccuracy that would sway a jury. 'Fair enough.' 'It's not as though I like this.' 'Shall I do madam's feet?' said the manicurist. She stared at Granny's boots and wondered if it might be necessary to use a hammer. 'I got to admit, it's a nice hairstyle,' said Nanny. 'Madam has marvellous hair,' said the hairdresser. 'What is the secret?' 'You've got to make sure there's no newts in the water,' said Granny. She looked at her reflection in the mirror over the washbasin, and went to look away... and then sneaked another glance. Her lips pursed. 'Hmm,' she said. At the other end, the manicurist had succeeded in getting Granny's boots and socks off. Much to her amazement there was revealed, instead of the corned and bunioned monstrosities she'd been expecting, a pair of perfect feet. She didn't know where to start because there was nowhere to begin, but this manicure was costing twenty dollars and in those circumstances you damn well find something to do. Nanny sat beside their pile of packages and tried to work everything out on a scrap of paper. She didn't have Granny's gift for numbers. They tended to writhe under her gaze and add themselves up wrong. 'Esme? I reckon we've spent... probably more'n a thousand dollars so far, and that's not including hirin' the coach, and we haven't paid Mrs Palm for the room.' 'You said nothing was too much trouble to help a Lancre girl,' said Granny. But I didn't say nothing was too much money, thought Nanny, and then scolded herself for thinking like that. But she was definitely feeling a little lighter in the underwear regions. There seemed to be a general consensus among the artisans of beauty that they'd done what they could. Granny swivelled the chair around. 'What do you think?' she said. Nanny Ogg stared. She'd seen many strange things in her life, some of them twice. She'd seen elves and walking stones and the shoeing of a unicorn. She'd had a farmhouse dropped on her head. But she'd never seen Granny Weatherwax in rouge. All her normal expletives of shock and surprise fused instantly, and she found herself resorting to an ancient curse belonging to her grandmother. 'Well, I'll be mogadored!' she said. 'Madam has extremely good skin,' said the cosmetics lady. 'I know,' said Granny. 'Can't seem to do anything about it.' 'I'll be mogadored!' said Nanny again. 'Powder and paint,' said Granny. 'Huh. Just another kind of mask. Oh, well.' She gave the hairdresser a dreadful smile. 'How much do we owe you?' she said. 'Er... thirty dollars?' said the hairdresser. 'That is..., 'Give the w... man thirty dollars and another twenty to make up for his trouble,' said Granny, clutching at her head. 'Fifty dollars? You could buy a shop for–' 'Gytha!' 'Oh, all right. 'Scuse me, I'm just going to the bank.' She turned away demurely, raised the hem of her skirt -twangtwingtwongtwang -and turned back with a handful of coins. 'There you go, my good wo... sir,' she said sourly. There was a coach waiting outside. It was the best Granny had been able to hire with Nanny's money. A footman held open the door as Nanny helped her friend aboard. 'We'll go straight to Mrs Palm's so's I can change,' said Granny as they pulled away. 'And then to the Opera House. We ain't got much time.' 'Are you all right?' 'Never felt better.' Granny patted her hair. 'Gytha Ogg, you wouldn't be a witch if you couldn't jump to conclusions, right?' Nanny nodded. 'Oh, yes.' There was no shame in it. Sometimes there wasn't time to do anything else but take a flying leap. Sometimes you had to trust to experience and intuition and general awareness and take a running jump. Nanny herself could clear quite a tall conclusion from a standing start. 'So I've no doubt at all that there's some kind of idea floating around in your mind about this Ghost. . .' 'Well... sort of an idea, yes...' 'A name, perhaps?' Nanny shifted uncomfortably, and not only because of the moneybags under her skirt. 'I got to admit something crossed my mind. A kind of... feeling. I mean, you never can tell...' Granny nodded. 'Yes. It's all neat, isn't it? It's a lie.' 'You said last night you saw the whole thing!' 'It's still a lie. Like the lie about masks.' 'What lie about masks?' 'The way people say they hide faces.' 'They do hide faces;' said Nanny Ogg. 'Only the one on the outside.'     No one took much notice of Agnes. The stage was being set for the new performance tonight. The orchestra was rehearsing. The ballerinas had been herded into their practice-room. In various other rooms people were singing at cross-purposes. But no one seemed to want her to do anything. I'm just a wandering voice, she thought. She climbed the stairs to her room and sat on the bed. The curtains were still drawn and, in the gloom, the strange roses glowed. She had rescued them from the bin because they were beautiful, but, in a way, she'd have been happier if they weren't there. Then she could have believed she'd imagined the whole thing. There was no sound from Christine's room. Telling herself that it was really her room anyway, and Christine had just been allowed to borrow it, Agnes went in. It was a mess. Christine had got up, got dressed either that or a thorough but overenthusiastic burglar had gone through every drawer in the place–and gone. The bouquets that Agnes had put into whatever receptacles she could find last night were where she had left them. The others were where she had left them, too, and they were already dying. She caught herself wondering where she could find some jars and pots for them, and hated herself for it. It was as bad as saying 'poot!' You might as well paint WELCOME on yourself and lie down on the doorstep of the universe. It was no fun at all, having a wonderful personality. Oh... and good hair. And then she went and found pots for them anyway. The mirror dominated the room. It seemed to grow a little larger each time she looked at it. All right. She had to know, didn't she? Heart pounding, she felt around the edges of it. There was a little raised area that might have looked like part of the frame, but as her fingers moved across it there was a 'click' and the mirror swung inwards a fraction of an inch. When she pushed at it, it moved. She breathed out. And stepped in.     'It's disgusting!' said Salzella. 'It's pandering to the most depraved taste!' Mr Bucket shrugged. 'It's not as though we're putting "Good Chance of Seeing Someone Throttled on Stage" on the posters,' he said. 'But news has got around. People like... drama.' 'You mean the Watch didn't want us to shut down?' 'No. They just said we should mount guards like last night and they'd take steps.' 'Steps to the nearest place of safety, no doubt.' 'I don't like it any more than you do, but it's gone too far. We need the Watch now. Anyway, there'd be a riot if we closed. Ankh-Morpork has always enjoyed... excitement. We're completely sold out. The show must go on.' 'Oh, yes,' said Salzella nastily. 'Would you like me to slit a few throats in the second act? Just so no one feels disappointed?' 'Of course not,' said Bucket. 'We don't want any deaths. But...' The 'but' hung in the air like the late Dr Undershaft. Salzella threw up his hands. 'Anyway, I believe we are past the worst,' said Mr Bucket. 'I hope so,' said Salzella. 'Where's Senor Basilica?' said Bucket. 'Mrs Plinge is showing him his dressing-room.' 'Mrs Plinge hasn't been murdered?' 'No, no one has been found dead so far today,' said Salzella. 'That is good news.' 'Yes, and it must be, oh, at least ten past twelve,' said Salzella with an irony that Bucket quite failed to notice. 'I will go and fetch him up so that we can have lunch, shall I? It must be a good half an hour since he had a snack.' Bucket nodded. After the director had gone he surreptitiously checked his desk drawers again. There was no letter. Perhaps it was over... Perhaps it was true what they were saying about the late doctor. Someone knocked at the door, four times. Only one person could achieve four knocks without any rhythm whatsoever. 'Come in, Walter.' Walter Plinge stumbled into the room. 'There's a lady!' he said. 'She's to see Mr Bucket!' Nanny Ogg poked her head around the door. 'Coo-ee,' she said. 'It's only me.' 'It's... Mrs Ogg, isn't it?' said Mr Bucket. There was something slightly worrying about the woman. He didn't recall her name on the list of employees. On the other hand, she was clearly around the place, she wasn't dead, and she made a decent cup of tea, so was it his worry if she wasn't getting paid? 'Good gracious, I'm not the lady,' said Nanny Ogg. 'I'm as common as muck, me, on the highest authority. No, she's waiting down in the foyer. I thought I'd better nip round here and warn you.' 'Warn me? Warn me about what? I don't have any other appointments this morning. Who is this lady?' 'Have you ever heard of Lady Esmerelda Weatherwax?' 'No. Should I?' 'Famous patron of the opera. Conservatories all over the place,' said Nanny. 'Pots of money, too.' 'Really? But I'm due to–' Bucket looked out of the window. There was a coach and four horses outside. It had so much rococo ornamentation on it that it was surprising it ever managed to move. 'Well, I–' he began again. 'It is really very incon–' 'She ain't the sort of person who likes to be kept waiting,' said Nanny, with absolute honesty. And then, because Granny had been getting on her nerves all morning and the initial embarrassment at Mrs Palm's still rankled and there was a streak of mischief in Nanny a mile wide, she added, 'They say she was a famous courtesan in her younger days. They say she didn't like to be kept waiting then, either. Retired now, of course. So they say.' 'You know, I've visited most of the major opera houses and I've never heard the name,' mused Bucket. 'Ah, I heard she likes to keep her donations secret,' said Nanny. Mr Bucket's mental compass once again swung around to point due Money. 'You'd better show her up,' he said. 'I could perhaps give her a few minutes–' 'No one ever gave Lady Esmerelda less than half an hour,' said Nanny, and gave Bucket a wink. 'I'll go and fetch her, shall I?' She bustled away, towing Walter behind her. Mr Bucket stared after her. Then, after a moment's thought, he got up and checked the set of his moustache in the mirror over the fireplace. He heard the door open and turned with his finest smile in place. It faded only slightly at the sight of Salzella, ushering the impressive bulk of Basilica in front of him. The little manager and interpreter fussed along beside him, like a tugboat. 'Ah, Senor Basilica,' said Bucket. 'I trust the dressingrooms are to your satisfaction?' Basilica gave him a blank smile while the interpreter spoke in Brindisian, and then replied. 'Senor Basilica says they are fine but the larder isn't big enough,' he said. 'Haha,' said Bucket, and then stopped when no one else laughed. 'In fact,' he said hurriedly, 'Senor Basilica will I'm sure be very happy to hear that our kitchens have made a special effort to–' There was another knock at the door. He hurried across and opened it. Granny Weatherwax stood there, but not for long. She pushed him aside and swept into the room. There was a choking noise from Enrico Basilica. 'Which one of you is Bucket?' she demanded. 'Er... me...' Granny removed a glove and extended her hand. 'So sorry,' she said. 'Ai am not used to important people opening their own doors. Ai am Esmerelda Weatherwax.' 'How charming. I've heard so much about you,' lied Bucket. 'Pray let me introduce you. No doubt you know Senor Basilica?' 'Of course,' said Granny, looking Henry Slugg in the eye. 'I'm sure Senor Basilica recalls the many happy times we've had in other opera houses whose names I can't quite remember at the moment.' Henry grimaced a smile, and said something to the interpreter. 'That is astonishing,' said the interpreter. 'Senor Basilica has just said how fondly he recalls meeting you many times before at opera houses that have just slipped his mind at present.' Henry kissed Granny's hand, and looked up at her with pleading in his eyes. My word, thought Bucket, that look he's giving her... I wonder if they ever– 'Oh, uh, and this is Mr Salzella, our director of music,' he said, remembering himself. 'Honoured,' said Salzella, giving Granny a firm handshake and looking her squarely in the eye. She nodded. 'And what's the first thing you'd take out of a burning house, Mr Salzella?' she enquired. He smiled politely. 'What would you like me to take, madam?' She nodded thoughtfully and let go of his hand. 'May I get you a drink? said Bucket. 'A small sherry,' said Granny. Salzella sidled up to Bucket as he was pouring the drink. 'Who the hell is she?' 'Apparently she's rolling in money,' whispered Bucket. 'And very keen on opera.' 'Never heard of her.' 'Well, Senor Basilica has, and that's good enough for me. Make yourself pleasant to them, will you, while I try to sort out lunch.' He pulled open the door and tripped over Nanny Ogg. 'Sorry!' said Nanny, standing up and giving him a cheerful grin. 'These doorknobs are a bugger to polish, aren't they?' 'Er, Mrs–' ,Ogg., '--Ogg, could you run along to the kitchens and tell Mrs Clamp there will be another one for lunch, please.' 'Right you are.' Nanny bustled away. Bucket nodded approvingly. What a reliable old lady, he thought.     It wasn't exactly a secret. When the room had been divided a space had been left between the walls. At the far end it opened on to a staircase, a perfectly ordinary staircase, which even had some grubby daylight via a dirt-encrusted window. Agnes was vaguely disappointed. She had expected, well, a real secret passage, perhaps with a few torches flickering secretly in rather valuable secret wrought-iron holders. But the staircase had just been walled off from the rest of the place at some time. It wasn't secret–it had merely been forgotten. There were cobwebs in the corners. The cocoons of extinct flies hung down from the ceiling. The air smelled of long-dead birds. But there was a clear track through the dust. Someone had used the stairs several times. She hesitated between up and down, and headed up. That was no great journey–after one more flight it ended at a trapdoor that wasn't even bolted. She pushed at it, and then blinked in the unaccustomed light. Wind caught at her hair. A pigeon stared at her, and flew away as she poked her head into the fresh air. The door had opened out on to the Opera House's roof, just one more item in a forest of skylights and airshafts. She went back inside and headed downwards. And became aware, as she did so, of the voices... The old stairs hadn't been totally forgotten. Someone had at least seen their usefulness as an airshaft. Voices filtered up. There were scales, distant music, snatches of conversation. As she went down she passed through layers of noise, like a very carefully made sundae of sound.     Greebo sat on top of the kitchen cupboard and watched the performance with interest. 'Use the ladle, why don't you?' said a scene-shifter. 'It won't reach! Walter!' 'Yes Mrs Clamp?' 'Give me that broom!' 'Yes Mrs Clamp!' Greebo looked up at the high ceiling, to which was affixed a sort of thin, ten-pointed star. In the middle of it was a pair of very frightened eyes. ' "Plunge it into boiling water",'said Mrs Clamp, 'that's what it said in the cook-book. It never said "Watch out, it'll grip the sides of the pot and spring straight up in the air"–' She flailed around with the broom-handle. The squid shrank back. 'And that pasta's all gone wrong,' she muttered. 'I've had it grilling for hours and it's still hard as nails, the wretched stuff.' 'Coo-ee, it's only me,' said Nanny Ogg, poking her head around the door, and such was the allembracing nature of her personality that even those who didn't know who she was took this on trust. 'Having a bit of trouble, are you?' She surveyed the scene, including the ceiling. There was a smell of burning pasta in the air. 'Ah,' she said. 'This'd be the special lunch for Senior Basilica, would it?' 'It was meant to be,' said the cook, still making ineffectual swipes. 'Blasted thing won't come down, though.' Other pots were simmering on the long iron range. Nanny nodded towards them. 'What's everyone else having?' she said. 'Mutton and clootie dumplings, with slumpie,' said the cook. 'Ah. Good honest food,' said Nanny, speaking of wall-towall suet oiled with lard. 'And there's supposed to be Jammy Devils for pudding and I've been so tied up with this wretched thing I haven't even made a start!' Nanny carefully took the broom out of the cook's hands. 'Tell you what,' she said, 'you make enough dumplings and slumpie for five people, and I'll help by knocking up a quick pudding, how about that?' 'Well, that's a very. handsome offer, Mrs–' 'Ogg.' 'The jam's in the jar by–' 'Oh, I won't bother about jam,' said Nanny. She looked at the spice-rack, grinned, and then stepped behind a table for modesty -twingtwangtwongtwang –'Got any chocolate?' she said, producing a slim volume. 'I've got a recipe right here that might be fun...' She licked her thumb and opened the book at page 53. Chocolate Delight with Special Secret Sauce. Yes, thought Nanny, that would be fun. If people wanted to go around teaching people lessons, other people should remember that those people knew a thing or two about people.     Scraps of conversation floated out of the walls as Agnes wound her secret way down the forgotten stairs. It was... thrilling. No one was saying anything important. There were no convenient guilty secrets. There were just the sounds of people getting through the day. But they were secret sounds. It was wrong to listen, of course. Agnes had been brought up in the knowledge that a lot of things were wrong. It was wrong to listen at doors, to look people directly in the eye, to talk out of turn, to answer back, to put yourself forward... But behind the walls she could be the Perdita she'd always wanted to be. Perdita didn't care about anything. Perdita got things done. Perdita could wear anything she wanted. Perdita X Nitt, mistress of the darkness, magdalen of cool, could listen in to other people's lives. And never, ever have to have a wonderful personality. Agnes knew she should go back up to her room. Whatever lay in the increasingly shadowy depths was probably something she ought not to find. Perdita continued downwards. Agnes went along for the ride.     The pre-luncheon drinks were going quite well, Mr Bucket thought. Everyone was making polite conversation and absolutely no one had been killed up to the present moment. And it had been very gratifying to see the tears of gratitude in Senor Basilica's eyes when he was told that the cook was preparing a special Brindisian meal, just for him. He'd seemed quite overcome. It was reassuring that he knew Lady Esmerelda. There was something about the woman that left Mr Bucket terribly perplexed. He was finding it a little difficult to converse with her. As a conversational gambit, 'Hello, I understand you have a lot of money, can I have some please?' lacked, he felt, a certain subtlety. 'So, er, madam,' he ventured, 'what brings you to our, er, city?' 'I thought perhaps I could come and spend some money,' said Granny. 'Got rather a lot of it, you know. Keep havin' to change banks 'cos they get filled up.' Somewhere in Bucket's tortured brain, part of his mind went 'whoopee' and clicked its heels. 'I'm sure if there's anything I can do–' he murmured. 'As a matter of fact, there is,' said Granny. 'I was thinking of–' A gong banged. 'Ah,' said Mr Bucket. 'Luncheon is served.' He extended his arm to Granny, who gave it an odd look before remembering who she was and taking it. There was a small exclusive dining-room off his office. It contained a table set for five and, looking rather fetching in a waitress's lacy bonnet, Nanny Ogg. She bobbed a curtsey. Enrico Basilica made a tiny strangling noise at the back of his throat. ' 'Scuse me, there's been a bit of a problem,' said Nanny. 'Who's dead?' said Bucket. 'Oh, no one's dead,' said Nanny. 'It's the dinner, it's still alive and hangin' on to the ceiling. And the pasta's all gone black, see. I said to Mrs Clamp, I said, it may be foreign but I don't reckon it should be crunchy 'This is terrible! What a way to treat an honoured guest!' said Bucket. He turned to the interpreter. 'Please assure Senor Basilica that we will send out for fresh pasta straight away. What were we having, Mrs Ogg?' 'Roast mutton with clootie dumplings,' said Nanny. Behind the face of Senor Basilica the throat of Henry Slugg made another little growling sound. 'And there's some nice slumpie with a knob of butter,' Nanny went on. Bucket looked around, puzzled. 'Is there a dog somewhere in here?' he said. 'Well, I for one don't believe in pandering to singers,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'Fancy food, indeed! I never heard the like! Why not give him mutton with the rest of us?' 'Oh, Lady Esmerelda, that's hardly a way to treat–' Bucket began. Enrico's elbow nudged his interpreter, with the special nudge of a man who could see clootie dumplings vanishing into the long grass if he weren't careful. He rumbled out a very pointed sentence. 'Senor Basilica says he would be more than happy to taste the indigenous food of Ankh-Morpork,' said the interpreter. 'No, we really can't–' Bucket tried again. 'In fact Senor Basilica insists that he tries the indigenous food of Ankh-Morpork,' said the interpreter. 'S' right. Si,' said Basilica. 'Good,' said Granny. 'And give him some beer while you're about it.' She gave the tenor's stomach a playful poke, losing her finger down to the second joint. 'Why, in a day or two I expect you could practically turn him into a native!'     The wooden stairs gave way to stone. Perdita said: He'll have a vast cave somewhere under the Opera House. There will be hundreds of candles, casting an exciting yet romantic light over the, yes, the lake, and there will be a dinner-table shining with crystal glass and silverware, and of course he will have, yes, a huge organ– Agnes blushed hotly in the darkness. –on which, that is to say, he will play in a virtuoso style many operatic classics. Agnes said: It'll be damp. There will be rats.     'Another clootie dumpling, Senior?' said Nanny Ogg. 'Mmfmmfmmf!' 'Take two while you're about it.' It was an education watching Enrico Basilica eat. It wasn't as though he gobbled his food, but he did eat continuously, like a man who intends to go on doing it all day on industrial lines, his napkin tucked neatly into his collar. The fork was loaded while the current consignment was being thoroughly masticated, so that the actual time between mouthfuls was as small as possible. Even Nanny, no stranger to a metabolism going for the burn, was impressed. Enrico Basilica ate like a man freed at last from the tyranny of tomatoes with everything. 'I'll order another mint-sauce tanker, shall I?' she said. Mr Bucket turned to Granny Weatherwax. 'You were saying that you might be inclined to patronize our Opera House,' he murmured. 'Oh, yes,' said Granny. 'Is Senor Basilica going to sing tonight?' 'Mmfmmf' 'I hope so,' muttered Salzella. 'That or explode.' 'Then I shall definitely want to be there,' said Granny. 'A little more lamb here, my good woman.' 'Yes ma'am,' said Nanny Ogg, making a face at the back of Granny's head. 'Er... seats for tonight, in fact, are–' Bucket began. 'A Box would do me,' said Granny. 'I'm not fussy.' 'In fact, even the Boxes are–' 'How about Box Eight? I've heard as Box Eight is always empty.' Bucket's knife rattled on his plate. 'Er, Box Eight, Box Eight, you see, we don't...' 'I was thinking of donating a little something,' said Granny. 'But Box Eight, you see, although technically unsold, is...' 'Two thousand dollars was what I had in mind,' said Granny. 'Oh, dear me, your waitress has let her dumplings go all over the place. It's so difficult to get reliable and polite staff these days, ain't it... ?' Salzella and Bucket stared at one another across the table. Then Bucket said, 'Excuse me, my lady, I must just have a brief discussion with my director of music.' The two men hurried to the far end of the room, where they began to argue in whispers. 'Two thousand dollars!' hissed Nanny, watching them. 'It might not be enough,' said Granny. 'They're both looking very red in the face.' 'Yes, but two thousand dollars!' 'It's only money.' 'Yes, but it's only my money, not only your money,' Nanny pointed out. 'We witches have always held everything in common, you know that,' said Granny. 'Well, yes,' said Nanny, and once again cut to the heart of the sociopolitical debate. 'It's easy to hold everything in common when no one's got anything.' 'Why, Gytha Ogg,' said Granny, 'I thought you despised riches!' 'Right, so I'd like to get the chance to despise them up close.' , 'But I knows you, Gytha Ogg. Money'd spoil you.' 'I'd just like the chance to prove that it wouldn't, that's all I'm saying.' 'Hush, they're coming back–' Mr Bucket approached, smiled uneasily, and sat down. 'Er,' he began, 'it has to be Box Eight, does it? Only we could perhaps persuade someone in one of the other–' 'Wouldn't hear of it,' said Granny. 'I've heard that there's no one ever seen in Box Eight.' 'Er... haha... it's laughable, I know, but there are some old theatrical traditions associated with Box Eight,, absolute rubbish of course, but...' He left the 'but' hanging there hopefully. It froze in the face of Granny's stare. 'You see, it's haunted,' he mumbled. 'Oh lawks,' said Nanny Ogg, vaguely remembering to stay in character. 'Another vat of slumpie, Senior Basilica? And how about another quart of beer?' 'Mmfmmf,' said the tenor encouragingly, taking time out from his eating to point a fork at his empty mug. Granny went on staring. 'Excuse me,' said Bucket again. He and Salzella went into another huddle, out of which came sounds like 'But two thousand dollars! That's a lot of shoes!' Bucket surfaced again. His face was grey. Granny's stare could do that to people. 'Er... because of the danger, er, which of course doesn't exist, haha, we... that is, the management... feel it incumbent on us to insist, that is, politely request, that if you do enter Box Eight you do so in company with a... man.' He ducked slightly. 'A man?' said Granny. 'For protection,' said Bucket in a little voice. 'Although who'd protect him we really couldn't say,' said Salzella under his breath. 'We thought perhaps one of the staff...' Bucket mumbled. 'Ai am quate capable of finding my own man should the need arise,' said Granny, in a voice with snow on it. Bucket's polite reply died in his throat when he saw, just behind Lady Esmerelda, Mrs Ogg grinning like a full moon. 'Anyone for pudding?' she said. She held a big bowl on a tray. There seemed to be a heat haze over it. 'My word,' he said, 'that looks delicious!' Enrico Basilica looked over the top of his food with the expression of a man who has had the amazing privilege of going to heaven while still alive. 'Mmmf!'     It was damp. And, with the demise of Mr Pounder, there were indeed rats. The stone looked old, too. Of course, all stone was old, Agnes told herself, but this had grown old as masonry. Ankh-Morpork had been here for thousands of years. Where other cities were built on clay or rock or loam, Ankh-Morpork was built on Ankh-Morpork. People constructed new buildings on the remains of earlier ones, knocking out a few doorways here and there to turn ancient bedrooms into cellars. The stairs petered out on damp flagstones, in almost total darkness. Perdita thought it looked romantic and gothic. Agnes thought it looked gloomy. If someone used this place they'd need lights, wouldn't they? And a fumbling search confirmed it. She found a candle and some matches tucked into a niche in the wall. That was sobering for Agnes and Perdita together. Someone used this prosaic book of matches with a picture of a grinning troll on the cover, and this piece of perfectly ordinary candle. Perdita would have preferred a flaming torch. Agnes didn't know what she would have preferred. It was just that, if a mysterious person came and sang in the walls, and moved around the place like a ghost, and possibly killed people... well, you'd prefer a bit more style than a box of matches with a picture of a grinning troll on it. That was the sort of thing a murderer would use. She lit the candle and, in two minds about it all, went on into the dark.     Chocolate Delight with Special Secret Sauce was a great success and heading down the little red lane as though hotwired. 'More, Mr Salzella?' said Bucket. 'This really is first-class stuff; isn't it? I must congratulate Mrs Clamp.' 'There is a certain piquancy, I must say,' said the director of music. 'How about you, Senor Basilica?' 'Mmmf.' 'Lady Esmerelda?' 'I don't mind if I do,' said Granny, passing her plate across. 'I'm sure I detect a hint of cinnamon,' said the interpreter, a brown ring around his mouth. 'Indeed, and possibly just a trace of nutmeg,' said Mr Bucket. 'I thought... cardamom?' said Salzella. 'Creamy yet spicy,' said Bucket. His eyes unfocused slightly. 'And curiously... warming.' Granny stopped chewing, and looked down suspiciously at her plate. Then she sniffed at her spoon. 'Is it, er...is it just me, or is it a trifle... warm in here?' said Bucket. Salzella had gripped the arms of his chair. His forehead glistened. 'Do you think we could open a window?' he said. 'I feel a little... strange.' 'Yes, by all means,' said Bucket. Salzella half-rose, and then a preoccupied expression suffused his features. He sat down suddenly. 'No, I rather believe I'll just sit quietly for a moment,' he said. 'Oh, dear,' said the interpreter. There was a hint of vapour around his collar. Basilica tapped him politely on the shoulder, grunted hopefully, and made pass-it-here motions in the direction of the half-finished dish of chocolate pudding. 'Mmmf?' he said. 'Oh, dear,' said the interpreter. Mr Bucket ran a finger around his collar. Sweat was beginning to roll down his face. Basilica gave up on his stricken colleague and reached across in a businesslike way to hook the dish with his fork. 'Er... Yes,' said Bucket, trying to keep his eyes away from Granny. 'Yes... indeed,' said Salzella, his voice coming from a long way away. 'Oh, dear,' said the interpreter, his eyes watering. 'Ai! Meu Deus! Dio Mio! O Goden! D'zuk f't! Aagorahaa!' Senor Basilica upended the rest of the Special Secret Sauce on to his plate and carefully scraped out the dish with his spoon, holding it upside-down to reach the last little bit. 'The weather has been a little... cool of late,' Bucket managed. 'Very cold, in fact.' Enrico held the sauce-dish up to the light and regarded it critically in case there was any drop hiding in a corner. 'Snow, ice, frost... that sort of thing,' said Salzella. 'Yes, indeed! Coldness of all descriptions, in fact.' 'Yes! Yes!' said Bucket gratefully. 'And at a time like this I think it is very important to try to remember the names of, say, any number of boring and hopefully chilly things!' 'Wind, glaciers, icicles–' 'Not icicles!' 'Oh,' said the interpreter, and slumped forward into his plate. His head hit a spoon, which cartwheeled into the air and bounced off Enrico's head. Salzella started to whistle under his breath and pound the arm of his chair. Bucket blinked. In front of him was the water jug. The cold water jug. He reached out... 'Oh, oh, oh, dear me, what can I say, I seem to have spilled it all over myself,' he said, through the rising clouds of steam. 'What a butterfingers I am, to be sure. I shall ring for Mrs Ogg to bring us another one.' 'Yes, indeed,' said Salzella. 'And perhaps you would care to do it soon? I am also feeling very... accident-prone.' Basilica, still chewing, lifted his interpreter's head off the table and carefully tipped the man's unfinished pudding into his own plate. 'In fact, in fact, in fact,' said Salzella, 'I think I shall just... have a brisk... have a nice cold...if you would excuse me a minute...' He pushed back his chair and fled the room in a kind of crouching gait. Mr Bucket glistened. 'I'll just, I'll just, I'll just... be back quite shortly,' he said, and scurried away. There was silence, broken only by the scrape of Senor Basilica's spoon and a sizzling noise from the interpreter. Then the tenor belched baritone. 'Whoops, pardon my Klatchian,' he said. 'Oh... damn.' He appeared to notice the depleted table for the first time. He shrugged, and smiled hopefully at Granny. 'Is there a cheeseboard, do you think?' he said. The door flew open and Nanny Ogg burst in, holding a bucket of water in both hands. 'All right, all right, that's–' she began, and then stopped. Granny dabbed primly at the corners of her mouth with her napkin. 'I'm sorry, Mrs Ogg?' she said. Nanny looked at the empty dish in front of Basilica. 'Or perhaps some fruit?' said the tenor. 'A few nuts?' 'How much has he had?' she whispered. 'Best part of half,' said Granny. 'But I don't reckon it's having any effect on account of not touching the sides.' Nanny turned her attention to Granny's plate. 'How about you?' she said. 'Two helpings,' said Granny. 'With extra sauce, Gytha Ogg, may you be forgiven.' Nanny looked at her with something like admiration in her eyes. 'You ain't even sweating!' she said. Granny picked up her water glass and held it at arm's length. After a few seconds, the water began to boil. 'All right, you're getting really good, I've got to admit it,' said Nanny. 'I reckon I should have to get up real early to put one over on you.' 'I reckon you should never go to sleep,' said Granny. 'Sorry, Esme.' Senor Basilica, at a loss to follow the conversation, realized with reluctance that the meal was probably over. 'Absolutely superb,' he said. 'I just loved that pudding, Mrs Ogg.' 'I should just jolly well expect you did, Henry Slugg,' said Nanny. Henry carefully removed a clean handkerchief from his pocket, put it over his face, and leaned back in his chair. The first snore occurred a few seconds later. 'He's easy to have around, isn't he?' said Nanny. 'Eat, sleep and sing. You certainly know where you are with him. I've found Greebo, by the way. He's still following Walter Plinge around.' Her expression became a little defiant. 'Say what you like, young Walter's all right by me if Greebo likes him.' Granny sighed. 'Gytha, Greebo would like Norris the Eyeball-Eating Maniac of Quirm if he knew how to put food in a bowl.'     And now she was lost. She'd done her best not to be. As Agnes had walked through each dank room she'd thoughtfully taken note of details. She'd carefully remembered right and left turns. And yet she was lost. Here and there were steps down to lower cellars, but the water-level was so high that it was lapping at the first step. And it stank. The candle burned with a greenish-blue edge to the flame. Somewhere, said Perdita, there was the secret room. If there wasn't a huge and glittering secret cavern, what on earth was life for? There had to be a secret room. A room, full of... giant candles, and enormous stalagmites... But it certainly isn't here, said Agnes. She felt a complete idiot. She'd gone through the mirror looking for... well, she wasn't quite prepared to admit what she might have been looking for, but whatever it was it certainly wasn't this. She'd have to shout for help. Of course, someone might hear, but that was always a risk when you shouted for help. She coughed. 'Er... hello?' The water gurgled. 'Er... help? Is there anyone there?' A rat ran over her foot. Oh, yes, she thought bitterly with Perdita's part of her brain, if Christine had come down here there probably would have been some great glistening cave and delicious danger. The world saved up rats and smelly cellars for Agnes, because she had such a wonderful personality. 'Um...anyone?' More rats scuttled across the floor. There was a faint squeaking from the side-passages. 'Hello?' She was lost in some cellars with a candle getting shorter by the second. The air was foul, the flagstones were slippery, no one knew where she was, she could die down here, she could be– Eyes glowed in the darkness. One was green-yellow, the other pearly white. A light appeared behind them. Something was coming along the passageway, casting long shadows. Rats tumbled over themselves in their panic to get away... Agnes tried to press herself into the stone. 'Hello Miss Perdita X Nitt!' A familiar shape juddered out of the darkness, just behind Greebo. It was all knees and elbows; it carried a sack over one shoulder and held a lantern in its other hand. Something fled from the darkness. The terror leached out of it... 'You don't want to be down here Miss Nitt with all the rats!' 'Walter!' 'Got to do Mister Pounder's job now the poor man is passed away! I am a person of all jobs! No peas for the wicked! But Mister Greebo just hits them with his paws and they're off to rat heaven in a jiff!' 'Walter!' repeated Agnes, out of sheer relief. 'Come for an explore have you? These ole tunnels goes all the way to the river! You have to keep your wits about you not to get lost down here! Want to come back with me?' It was impossible to be frightened of Walter Plinge. Walter attracted a number of emotions, but terror wasn't among them. 'Er... yes,' said Agnes. 'I got lost. Sorry.' Greebo sat down and started to wash himself in what Agnes considered to be a supercilious way. If a cat could snigger, he would be sniggering. 'Now I've got a full sack I have to take it to Mister Gimlet's shop!' announced Walter, turning around and loping out of the cellar without bothering to see if she was following him. 'We get a ha'penny each which is not to be sneezed at! The dwarfs think a rat is a good meal which only goes to show it would be a strange world if we were all alike!' It seemed a ridiculously short journey to the foot of some different stairs, which had a well-used look to them. 'Have you ever seen the Ghost, Walter?' said Agnes, as Walter put his foot on the first step. He didn't turn around. 'It is wrong to tell lies!' 'Er... yes, so I believe. So... when did you last see the Ghost?' 'I last saw the Ghost in the big room in the ballet school!' 'Really? What did he do?' Walter paused for a moment, and then the words came out all together. 'He ran off?' He stamped up the stairs in a way that suggested very emphatically that the exchange was over. Greebo sneered at Agnes and followed him. The stairs went up just one flight and came out through a trapdoor backstage. She had been lost only a door or two from the real world. No one noticed her emerge. But then no one noticed her at all. They just assumed that she'd be around when she was needed. Walter Plinge had already loped off, in something of a hurry. Agnes hesitated. They probably wouldn't even notice she wasn't there, right up to the point when Christine opened her mouth... He hadn't wanted to answer, but Walter Plinge spoke when spoken to and she had a feeling that he wasn't able to lie. Telling lies would be being bad. She'd never seen the ballet school. It wasn't far backstage, but it was a world of its own. The dancers issued from it every day like so many very thin and twittering sheep under the control of elderly women who looked as though they breakfasted on pickled limes. It was only after she'd timidly asked a few questions of the stage-hands that she'd realized that the girls had joined the ballet because they'd wanted to. She had seen the dancers' dressing-room, where thirty girls washed and changed in a space rather smaller than Bucket's office. It bore the same relationship to ballet as compost did to roses. She looked around again. Still no one had paid any attention to her. She headed for the school. It was up a few steps, along a foetid corridor lined with notice-boards and smelling of ancient grease. A couple of girls fluttered past. You never saw just one: they went around in groups, like mayflies. She pushed open the door and stepped into the school. Reflections of reflections of reflections... There were mirrors on every wall. A few girls, practising on the bars that lined the room, looked up as she entered. Mirrors... Out in the passage she leaned against the wall and got her breath back. She'd never liked mirrors. They always seemed to be laughing at her. But didn't they say it was the mark of a witch, not liking to get between two mirrors? It sucked out your soul, or something. A witch would never get between two mirrors if she could help it... But, of course, she very definitely wasn't a witch. So she took a deep breath, and went back into the room. Images of herself stretched away in every direction. She managed a few steps, then wheeled around and groped for the doorway again, watched by the surprised dancers. Lack of sleep, she told herself. And general over-excitement. Anyway, she didn't need to go right into the room, now that she knew who the Ghost was. It was so obvious. The Ghost didn't require any mysterious nonexistent caves when all he needed to do was hide where everyone could see him.     Mr Bucket knocked at the door of Salzella's office. A muffled voice said, 'Come in.' There was no one in the office, but there was another closed door in the far wall. Bucket knocked again, and then rattled the door handle. 'I'm in the bath,' said Salzella. 'Are you decent?' 'I'm fully clothed, if that's what you mean. Is there a pail of ice out there?' 'Was it you who ordered it?' said Bucket guiltily. 'Yes!' 'Only I, er, I had it taken to my office so I could stick my feet in it...' 'Your feet?' 'Yes. Er... I went for a brisk run around the city, don't know why, just felt like it...' 'Well?' 'My boots caught fire on the second lap.' There was a sloshing noise and some sotto voce grumbling and then the door swung open, revealing Salzella in a purple dressing-gown. 'Has Senor Basilica been safely tethered?' he said, dripping on the floor. 'He's going through the music with Herr Trubelmacher.' 'And he's... all right?' 'He sent along to the kitchen for a snack.' Salzella shook his head. 'Astonishing.' 'And they've put the interpreter in a cupboard. They don't seem to be able to get him unfolded.' Bucket sat down carefully. He was wearing carpet slippers. 'And–' Salzella prompted. 'And what?' 'Where did that dreadful woman go?' 'Mrs Ogg is showing her around. Well, what else could I do? Two thousand dollars, remember!' 'I am endeavouring to forget,' said Salzella. 'I promise never to talk about that lunch ever again, if you don't either.' 'What lunch?' said Bucket innocently. 'Well done.' 'She does seem to have an amazing effect though, doesn't she...' 'I don't know who you are talking about.' 'I mean, it's not hard to see how she made her money...' 'Good heavens, man, she's got a face like a hatchet!' 'They say that Queen Ezeriel of Klatch had a squint, but that didn't stop her having fourteen husbands, and that was only the official score. Besides, she's knocking on a bit...' 'I thought she'd been dead for two hundred years!' 'I'm talking about Lady Esmerelda.' 'So am I.' 'At least try to be civil to her at the soiree before the performance tonight.' 'I'll try.' 'The two thousand might be only the start, I hope. Every time I open a drawer there are more bills! We seem to owe money to everyone!' 'Opera is expensive.' 'You're telling me: Whenever I try to make a start on the books, something dreadful happens. Do you think I might just have a few hours without something awful happening?' 'In an opera house?'     The voice was muffled by the half-dismantled mechanism of the organ. 'All right–give me middle C.' A hairy finger pressed a key. It made a thudding noise and somewhere in the mechanism something else went woing. 'Blast, it's come off the peg... hold on again... The note rang out sweet and clear. 'O-kay,' said the voice of the man hidden in the exposed entrails of the organ. 'Wait until I tighten the peg...' Agnes stepped closer. The hulking figure seated at the organ turned around and gave her a friendly grin, which was much wider than the average grin. Its owner was covered in red hair and, while short-changed in the leg department, had obviously been first in the queue when the arm counter opened. And had also been given a special free offer of lip. ...try 'André?' said Agnes weakly. The organist extracted himself from the mechanism. He was holding a complicated wooden bar with springs on it. 'Oh, hello,' he said. 'Er... who is this?' said Agnes, backing away from the primaeval organist. 'Oh, this is the Librarian. I don't think he has a name. He's the Librarian at Unseen University but, much more importantly, he's their organist and it turns out our organ is a Johnson[8], just like theirs. He's given us some spare parts–' 'Ook' 'Sorry, lent us some spare parts.' 'He plays the organ?' 'In an amazingly prehensile way, yes.' Agnes relaxed. The creature didn't seem about to attack. 'Oh,' she said. 'Well... I suppose it's natural, because sometimes barrel-organ men came to our village and they often had a dear little mon–' There was a crashing chord. The orangutan raised its other hand and waved a finger politely in front of Agnes's face. 'He doesn't like being called a monkey,' said André. 'And he likes you.' 'How can you tell?, 'He doesn't usually go in for warnings.' She stepped back quickly and grabbed the boy's arm. 'Can I have a word with you?' she said. 'We've got only a few hours and I'd really like to get this–' 'It's important.' He followed her into the wings. Behind them, the Librarian tapped a few keys on the half-repaired keyboard and then ducked underneath. 'I know who the Ghost is,' whispered Agnes. André stared at her. Then he pulled her further into the shadows. 'The Ghost isn't anybody,' he said softly. 'Don't be silly. It's just the Ghost.' 'I mean he's someone else when he takes his mask off.' Who. 'Should I tell Mr Bucket and Mr Salzella?' 'Who? Tell them about who?' 'Walter Plinge.' He stared at her again. 'If you laugh I'll... I'll kick you,' said Agnes. 'But Walter isn't even–' 'I didn't believe it either but he said he saw the Ghost in the ballet school and there's mirrors all over the walls and he'd be quite tall if he stood up properly and he roams around in the cellars–' 'Oh, come on...' 'The other night I thought I heard him singing on the stage when everyone else had gone.' 'You saw him?' 'It was dark.' 'Oh, well. . .' André began dismissively. 'But afterwards I'm certain I heard him talking to the cat. Talking normally, I mean. I mean like a normal person, I mean. And you've got to admit... he is strange. Isn't he just the sort of person who'd want to wear a mask to hide who he is?' She sagged. 'Look, I can see you don't want to listen–' 'No! No, I think... well...' 'I just thought I'd feel better if I told someone.' André smiled in the gloom. 'I wouldn't mention it to anyone else, though.' Agnes looked down at her feet. 'I suppose it does sound a bit far-fetched...' André laid a hand on her arm. Perdita felt Agnes draw herself back. 'Do you feel better?' he said. 'I... don't know... I mean... I don't know... I mean, I just can't imagine him hurting anyone... I feel so stupid...' 'Everyone's on edge. Don't worry about it.' 'I'd... hate you to think I was being silly–' 'I'll keep an eye on Walter, if you like.' He smiled at her. 'But I'd better get on with things,' he added. He gave her another smile, as fast and brief as summer lightning. 'Thank y–' He was already walking back to the organ.     This shop was a gentlemen's outfitters. 'It's not for me,' said Nanny Ogg. 'It's for a friend. He's six foot tall, very broad shoulders.' 'Inside leg?' 'Oh, yes.' She looked around the store. Might as well go all the way. It was her money, after all. 'And a black coat, long black tights, shoes with them shiny buckles, one of those top hats, a big cloak with a red silk lining, a bow-tie, a really posh black cane with a very nobby silver knob on it... and... a black eye-patch.' 'An eye-patch?' 'Yes. Maybe with sequins or something on it, since it's the opera.' The tailor stared at Nanny. 'This is a little irregular,' he said. 'Why can't the gentleman come in himself?' 'He ain't quite a gentleman yet.' 'But, madam, I meant that we have to get the size right.' Nanny Ogg looked around the shop. 'Tell you what,' she said, 'you sell me something that looks about right and we'll adjust him to fit. 'Souse me...' She turned away demurely -twingtwangtwong -and turned back, smoothing down her dress and holding a leather bag. 'How much'll it be?' she said. The tailor looked blankly at the bag. 'I'm afraid we won't be able to have all that ready until at least next Wednesday,' he said. Nanny Ogg sighed. She felt she was becoming familiar with one of the most fundamental laws of physics. Time equalled money. Therefore, money equalled time. 'I was sort of hoping to get it all a bit quicker than that,' she said, jingling the bag up and down. The tailor looked down his nose at her. 'We are craftsmen, madam. How long did you think it should take?' 'How about ten minutes?' ' Twelve minutes later she left the shop with a large packet under one arm, a hatbox under the other, and an ebony cane between her teeth. Granny was waiting outside. 'Got it all?' 'Ess.' 'I'll take the eye-patch, shall I?' 'We've got to get a third witch,' said Nanny, trying to rearrange the parcels. 'Young Agnes has got good strong arms.' 'You know if we was to drag her out of there by the scruff of her neck we'd never hear the last of it,' said Granny. 'She'll be a witch when she wants to be.' They headed for the Opera House's stage-door. 'Afternoon, Les,' said Nanny cheerfully as they entered. 'Stopped itching now, has it?' 'Marvellous bit of ointment that was you gave me, Mrs Ogg,' said the stage-doorkeeper, his moustache bending into something that might have been a smile. 'Mrs Les keeping well? How's her sister's leg?' 'Doing very well, Mrs Ogg, thank you for asking.' 'This is just Esme Weatherwax who's helping me with some stuff,' said Nanny. The doorkeeper nodded. It was clear that any friend of Mrs Ogg was a friend of his. 'No trouble at all, Mrs Ogg.' As they passed through into the dusty network of corridors Granny reflected, not for the first time, that Nanny had a magic all of her own. Nanny didn't so much enter places as insinuate herself; she had unconsciously taken a natural talent for liking people and developed it into an occult science. Granny Weatherwax did not doubt that her friend already knew the names, family histories, birthdays and favourite topics of conversation of half the people here, and probably also the vital wedge that would cause them to open up. It might be talking about their children, or a potion for their bad feet, or one of Nanny's really filthy stories, but Nanny would be in and after twenty-four hours they'd have known her all their lives. And they'd tell her things. Of their own free will. Nanny Got On with people. Nanny could get a statue to cry on her shoulder and say what it really thought about pigeons. It was a knack. Granny had never had the patience to acquire it. just occasionally, she wondered whether it might have been a good idea. 'Curtain up in an hour and a half,' said Nanny. 'I promised Giselle I'd give her a hand...' 'Who's Giselle?' 'She does makeup.' 'You don't know how to do makeup!' 'I distempered our privy, didn't I?' said Nanny. 'And I paint faces on eggs for the kiddies every Soul Cake Tuesday.' 'Got to do anything else, have you?' said Granny sarcastically. 'Open the curtains? Fill in for a ballet dancer who's been taken poorly?' 'I did say I'd help with the drinks at the swarray,' said Nanny, letting the irony slide off like water on a red-hot stove. 'Well, a lot of the staff have buggered off 'cos of the Ghost. It's in the big foyer in half an hour. I expect you ought to be there, being a patronizer.' 'What's a swarray?' said Granny suspiciously. 'It's a sort of posh party before the opera.' 'What do I have to do?' 'Drink sherry and make polite conversation,' said Nanny. 'Or conversation, anyway. I saw the grub being done for it. They've even got little cubes of cheese on sticks stuck in a grapefruit, and you don't get much posher than that.' 'Gytha Ogg, you ain't done any... special dishes, have you?' 'No, Esme,' said Nanny Ogg meekly. 'Only you've got an imp of mischief in you.' 'Been far too busy for anything like that,' said Nanny. Granny nodded. 'Then we'd better find Greebo,' she said. 'You sure about this, Esme?' said Nanny. 'We might have a lot to do tonight,' said Granny. 'Maybe we could do with an extra pair of hands.' 'Paws.' 'At the moment, yes.'     It was Walter. Agnes knew it. It wasn't knowledge in her mind, exactly. It was practically something she breathed. She felt it as a tree feels the sun. It all fitted. He could go anywhere, and no one took any notice of Walter Plinge. In a way he was invisible, because he was always there. And, if you were someone like Walter Plinge, wouldn't you long to be someone as debonair and dashing as the Ghost? If you were someone like Agnes Nitt, wouldn't you long to be someone as dark and mysterious as Perdita X Dream? The traitor thought was there before she could choke it off. She added hurriedly: But I've never killed anyone. Because that's what I'd have to believe, isn't it? If he's the Ghost, then he's killed people. All the same... he does look odd, and he talks as if the words are trying to escape... A hand touched her shoulder. She spun round. 'It's only me!' said Christine. '...Oh.' 'Don't you think this is a marvellous dress!?' 'What?' 'This dress, silly!!' Agnes looked her up and down. 'Oh. Yes. Very nice,' she said, disinterest lying on her voice like rain on a midnight pavement. 'You don't sound very impressed!! Really, Perdita, there's no need to be jealous!!' 'I'm not jealous, I was thinking...' She'd only seen the Ghost for a moment, but he certainly hadn't moved like Walter. Walter walked as though his body were being dragged along by his head. But the certainty was as hard as marble now. 'Well, you don't seem very impressed, I must say!!' 'I'm wondering if Walter Plinge is the Ghost,' said Agnes, and immediately cursed herself, or at least pooted. She felt embarrassed enough about André's reaction. Christine's eyes widened. 'But he's a clown!!' 'He walks odd and he talks odd,' said Agnes, 'but if he stood up straight–' Christine laughed. Agnes felt herself getting angry. 'And he practically told me he was!' 'You believed him, did you?!' Christine made a little tutting sound that Agnes considered quite offensive. 'Really, you girls believe the strangest things!!' 'What do you mean, we girls?' 'Oh, you know! The dancers are always saying they've seen the Ghost all over the place–' 'Good grief! Do you think I'm some sort of impressionable idiot? Think for a minute before answering!' 'Well, of course I don't, but–' 'Huh!' Agnes strode off into the wings, concerned more with effect than direction. The background noise of the stage faded behind her as she stepped into the scenery store. It didn't lead anywhere except to a pair of big double doors opening to the world outside. It was full of bits of castles, balconies and romantic prison cells, stacked any old how. Christine hurried up behind her. 'I really didn't mean... look, not Walter... he's just a very odd odd-job man!' 'He does all kinds of jobs! No one ever knows where he is–they all just assume he's around!' 'All right, but you don't have to get so worked up–' There was the faintest of sounds behind them. They turned. The Ghost bowed.     'Who's a good boy, then? Nanny's got a bowl of fish eggs for a good boy,' said Nanny, trying to see under the big dresser in the kitchen. 'Fish eggs?' said Granny, coldly. 'I borrowed them from the stuff they've done for the swarray,' said Nanny. 'Borrowed?' said Granny. 'That's right. Come along, Greebo, who's a good boy then?' 'Borrowed. You mean... when the cat's finished with them, you're going to give them back?' 'It's only a manner of speaking, Esme,' said Nanny in a hurt little voice. 'It's not the same as stealing if you don't mean it. Come along, boy, here's some lovely fish eggs for you...' Greebo pulled himself further into the shadows.     There was a little sigh from Christine and she folded up into a faint. But she managed, Agnes noticed sourly, to collapse in a way that probably didn't hurt when she hit the ground and which showed off her dress to the best effect. It was beginning to dawn on Agnes that Christine was remarkably clever in some specialized ways. She looked back at the mask. 'It's all right,' she said, her voice sounding hoarse even to her. 'I know why you're doing it. I really do.' No expression could cross that ivory face, but the eyes flickered. Agnes swallowed. The Perdita part of her wanted to give in right now, because that would be more exciting, but she stood her ground. 'You want to be something else and you're stuck with what you are,' said Agnes. 'I know all about that. You're lucky. All you have to do is put on a mask. At least you're the right shape. But why did you have to go and kill people? Why? Mr Pounder couldn't have done you any harm! But... he poked around in odd places, didn't he, and he... found something?' The Ghost nodded slightly, and then held out his ebony cane. He grasped both ends and pulled, so that a long thin sword slid out. 'I know who you are!' Agnes burst out, as he stepped forward. 'I... I could probably help you! It might not have been your fault!' She backed away. 'I haven't done anything to you! You don't have to be afraid of me!' She backed away further as the figure advanced. The eyes, in the dark hollows of the mask, glinted like tiny jewels. 'I'm your friend, don't you see? Please, Walter! Walter!' There was, far off, an answering sound that seemed as loud as thunder and as impossible, in the circumstances, as a chocolate kettle. It was the clank of a bucket handle. 'What's the matter Miss Perdita Nitt?' The Ghost hesitated. There was the sound of footsteps. Irregular footsteps. The Ghost lowered the sword, opened a door in a piece of scenery painted to represent a castle wall, bowed ironically and slipped away. Walter rounded a corner. He was an unlikely knight errant. For one thing, he had on evening dress obviously designed for someone of a different shape. He was still wearing his beret. He also wore an apron and was carrying a mop and bucket. But no heroic lance-wielding rescuer ever galloped over a drawbridge more happily. He was practically surrounded by a golden glow. '...Walter?' 'What's the matter with Miss Christine?' 'She... er... she fainted,' said Agnes. 'Er' Probably... yes, probably the excitement. With the opera. Tonight. Yes. Probably. The excitement. Because of the opera tonight.' Walter gave her a slightly worried look. 'Yes,' he said, and added patiently, 'I know where there's a medicine box shall I get it?' Christine groaned and fluttered her eyelashes. 'Where am I?' Perdita gritted Agnes's teeth. Where am I? That didn't sound the sort of thing someone said when they woke up from a faint; it sounded more like the sort of thing they said because they'd heard it was the sort of thing people said. 'You fainted,' she said. She looked hard at Walter. 'Why were you in here, Walter?' 'Got to mop out the stage-hands' privy Miss Nitt. Always having trouble I've been working on it for months!' 'But you're wearing evening dress!' 'Yes then I got to be a waiter afterwards because we're short-handed and there's no one else to be a waiter when they have drinks and sausages on poles before the opera.' No one could have moved that fast. True, Walter and the Ghost hadn't both been in the room at the same time, but she'd heard his voice. No one could have had time to duck around behind the piles of flats and turn up at the opposite side of the room in seconds, unless they were some sort of wizard. Some of the girls did say the Ghost could almost seem to be in two places at once. Perhaps there were other secret places like the old staircase. Perhaps he– She stopped herself. Walter Plinge wasn't the Ghost, then. There was no sense in trying to find some excitable explanation to prove wrong right. She'd told Christine. Well, Christine was giving her just a slightly bemused look as Walter helped her up. And she'd told André, but he hadn't seemed to believe her so probably that was all right. Which meant that the Ghost was... ...someone else. She'd been so certain.     'You'll enjoy it, mother. You really will.' ' 'Tain't for the likes of us, Henry. I don't see why Mr Morecombe couldn't give you tickets to see Nellie Stamp at the music hall. Now that's what I call music. Proper tunes you can understand.' 'Songs like "She Sits Among the Cabbages and Leeks" are not very cultural, mother.' Two figures wandered through the crowds heading for the Opera House. This was their conversation. ' 'S a good laugh, though. And you don't have to hire suits. Seems daft to me, havin' to wear a special suit just to listen to music.' 'It enhances the experience,' said young Henry, who had read this somewhere. 'I mean, how does the music know?' said his mother. 'Now, Nellie Stamp–' 'Come along, mother.' It was going to be one of those evenings, he knew it. Henry Lawsy did his best. And, given the starting point, it wasn't a bad best. He was a clerk in the firm of Morecombe, Slant & Honeyplace, a somewhat oldfashioned legal partnership. One reason for its less-than-modern approach was the fact that Messrs Morecombe and Honeyplace were vampires and Mr Slant was a zombie. The three partners were, therefore, technically dead, although this did not prevent them putting in a proper day's work–normally during the night, in the case of Mr Morecombe and Mr Honeyplace. From Henry's point of view the hours were good and the job was not onerous, but he chafed somewhat about his promotion prospects because clearly dead men's shoes were being fully occupied by dead men. He'd decided that the only way to succeed was to better himself by Improving His Mind, which he tried to do at every opportunity. It is probably a full description of Henry Lawsy's mind that if you had given him a book called How to Improve Your Mind in Five Minutes, he would have read it with a stopwatch. His progress through life was hampered by his tremendous sense of his own ignorance, a disability which affects all too few people. Mr Morecombe had given him two opera tickets as a reward for sorting out a particularly problematical tort. He'd invited his mother because she represented 100 per cent of all the women he knew. People tended to shake Henry's hand cautiously, in case it came off. He'd bought a book about the opera and read it carefully, because he'd heard that it was absolutely unheard-of to go to an opera without knowing what it was about, and the chance of finding out while you were actually watching it was remote. The book's reassuring weight was in his pocket right now. All he needed to complete the evening was a less embarrassing parent. 'Can we get some peanuts before we go in?' said his mother. 'Mother, they don't sell peanuts at the opera.' 'No peanuts? What're you supposed to do if you don't like the songs?'     Greebo's suspicious eyes were two glows in the gloom. 'Poke him with a broom-handle,' suggested Granny. 'No,' said Nanny. 'With someone like Greebo you have to use a little bit of kindness.' Granny closed her eyes and waved a hand. There was a yowl from under the kitchen's dresser and a sound .of frantic scrabbling. Then, his claws scoring tracks in the floor, Greebo came out backwards, fighting all the way. 'Mind you, a lot of cruelty does the trick as well,' Nanny conceded. 'You've never been much of a cat person, have you, Esme?' Greebo would have hissed at Granny, except that even his cat brain was just bright enough to realize this was not the best move he could make. 'Give him his fish eggs,' Granny said. 'He might as well have them now as later.' Greebo inspected the dish. Oh, this was all right, then. They wanted to give him food. Granny nodded at Nanny Ogg. They held out their hands, palm-up. Greebo was halfway through the caviar when he felt It happening. 'Wrrroowlllll–' he wailed, and then the voice went deeper as his chest expanded, and rose physically as his back legs lengthened under him. His ears flattened against his head, and then crept down the sides. '–llllwwaaaa–' 'The jacket's a forty-four-inch chest,' said Nanny. Granny nodded. '–aaaaoooo–' His face flattened. His whiskers spread out. Greebo's nose developed a life of its own. '–oooooss... sshit!' 'He certainly gets the hang of it quicker these days,' said Nanny. 'You put some clothes on right now, my lad,' said Granny, who had shut her eyes. Not that this made much difference, she had to admit later. Greebo fully clothed still managed to communicate the nakedness beneath. The insouciant moustache, the long sideburns and the tousled black hair combined with the well-developed muscles to give the impression of the more louche kind of buccaneer or a romantic poet who'd given up on the opium and tried red meat instead. He had a scar running across his face, and a black patch now where it crossed the eye. When he smiled, he exuded an easy air of undistilled, excitingly dangerous lasciviousness. He could swagger while asleep. Greebo could, in fact, commit sexual harassment simply by sitting very quietly in the next room. Except as far as the witches were concerned. To Granny a cat was a damn' cat whatever shape it was, and Nanny Ogg always thought of him as Mister Fluffy. She adjusted the bow-tie and stood back critically. 'What do you think?' she said. 'He looks like an assassin, but he'll do,' said Granny. 'Oh, what a nasty thing to say!' Greebo waved his arms experimentally and fumbled with the ebony cane. Fingers took a bit of getting used to, but cat reflexes learned fast. Nanny waved a finger playfully under his nose. He took a half-hearted swipe at it. 'Now you just stay with Granny and do what she tells you like a good boy,' she said. 'Yess, Nan-ny,' said Greebo reluctantly. He managed to grip the stick properly. 'And no fighting.' 'No, Nan-ny.' 'And no leaving bits of people on the doormat.' 'No, Nan-ny.' 'We'll have no trouble like we did with those robbers last month.' 'No, Nan-ny.' He looked depressed. Humans had no fun. Incredible complications surrounded the most basic activities. 'And no turning back into a cat again until we say.' 'Yess, Nan-ny.' 'Play your cards right and there could be a kipper in this for you.' 'Yess, Nan-ny.' 'What're we going to call him?' said Granny. 'He can't just be Greebo, which I've always said was a damn' silly name for a cat.' 'Well, he looks aristocratic–' Nanny began. 'He looks like a beautiful brainless bully,' Granny corrected her. 'Aristocratic,' repeated Nanny. 'Same thing.' 'We can't call him Greebo, anyway.' 'We'll think of something.'     Salzella leaned disconsolately against the marble banister of the foyer's grand staircase and stared gloomily into his drink. It had always seemed to him that one of the major flaws in the whole business of opera was the audience. They were quite unsuitable. The only ones worse than the ones who didn't know anything at all about music, and whose idea of a sensible observation was 'I liked that bit near the end when her voice went wobbly', were the ones who thought they did... 'Want a drink do you Mister Salzella? There's lots you know!' Walter Plinge ambled by, his black suit making him look like a very good class of scarecrow. 'Plinge, you just say "Drink, sir?" ' said the director of music. 'And please take off that ridiculous beret.' 'My mum made it for me!' 'I'm sure she did, but–' Bucket sidled up to him. 'I thought I told you to keep Senor Basilica away from the canapes!' he hissed. 'I'm sorry, I couldn't find a big enough crowbar,' said Salzella, waving away Walter and his beret. 'Anyway, isn't he supposed to be communing with his muse in his dressing-room? The curtain goes up in twenty minutes!' 'He says he sings better on a full stomach.' 'Then we're in for a big treat tonight.' Bucket turned and surveyed the scene. 'It's going well, anyway,' he said. 'I suppose so.' 'The Watch are here, you know. In secret. They're mingling.' 'Ah... let me guess...' Salzella looked around at the crowds. There was, indeed, a very short man in a suit intended for a rather larger man; this was especially the case with the opera cloak, which actually trailed on the floor behind him to give the overall impression of a superhero who had spent too much time around the Kryptonite. He was wearing a deformed fur hat and trying surreptitiously to smoke a cigarette. 'You mean that little man with the words "Watchman in Disguise" flashing on and off just above his head?' 'Where? I didn't see that!' Salzella sighed. 'It's Corporal Nobby Nobbs,' he said wearily. 'The only known person to require an identity card to prove his species. I've watched him mingle with three large sherries.' 'He's not the only one, though,' said Mr Bucket. 'They're taking this seriously., 'Oh, yes,' said Salzella. 'If we look over there, for example, we see Sergeant Detritus, who is a toll, and who is wearing what in the circumstances is actually a rather well-fitting suit. It is therefore, I feel, something of a pity he has neglected to remove his helmet. And these, you understand, the Watch has chosen for their ability to blend.' 'Well, they'll certainly be useful if the Ghost strikes again,' said Bucket, hopelessly. 'The Ghost would have to–' Salzella stopped. He blinked. 'Oh, good grief,' he whispered. 'What has she found?' Bucket turned. 'That's Lady Esmerelda... oh.' Greebo strolled in alongside her with the gentle swagger that makes women thoughtful and men's knuckles go white. The buzz of conversation was momentarily hushed, and then rose again to -a slightly shriller buzz. 'I'm impressed,' said Salzella. 'He certainly doesn't look like a gentleman,' said Bucket. 'Look at the colour of that eye!' He set his face into what he hoped was a smile, and bowed. 'Lady Esmerelda!' he said. 'How pleasant to see you again! Won't you introduce us to your... guest?' 'This is Lord Gribeau,' said Granny. 'Mr Bucket, the owner, and Mr Salzella, who seems to run the place.' 'Haha,' said Salzella. Gribeau snarled, revealing longer incisors than any that Bucket had seen outside a zoo. And Bucket had never seen such a greenish-yellow eye. The pupil was all wrong... 'Ahaha...' he said. 'And may I order you something?' 'He'll have milk,' said Granny firmly. 'I expect he has to keep up his strength,' said Salzella. Granny spun around. Her expression would have etched steel. 'Anyone for a drink?' said Nanny Ogg, appearing out of nowhere with a tray and adroitly stepping between them like a very small peace-keeping force. 'Got a bit of everything here...' 'Including a glass of milk, I see,' said Bucket. Salzella looked from one witch to the other. 'That's remarkably foresighted of you,' he said. 'Well, you never know,' said Nanny. Gribeau took the glass in both hands and lapped at it with his tongue. Then he looked at Salzella. 'What yourrr lookin aat? Neverrr seem mil-uk drun beforr?' 'Never quite...like that, I must admit.' Nanny winked at Granny Weatherwax as she turned to scurry away. Granny caught her arm. 'Remember,' she whispered, 'when we go into the Box... you keep an eye on Mrs Plinge. Mrs Plinge knows something. I ain't sure what's going to happen. But it is going to happen.' 'Right,' said Nanny. She bustled off, muttering under her breath, 'Oh, yes... do this, do that–' 'Drink here, please, ma'am.' Nanny looked down. 'Good grief,' she said. 'What are you?' The apparition in the fur hat winked at her. 'I'm the Count de Nobbs,' it said, 'and this here,' it added, indicating a mobile wall, 'is the Count de Tritus.' Nanny glanced at the troll. 'Another Count? I'm sure there's unaccountably more Counts here than I can count. And what can I get you, officers?' she said. 'Officers? Us?' said the Count de Nobbs. 'What makes you think we're Watchmen?' 'He's got a helmet on,' Nanny pointed out. 'Also, he's got his badge pinned to his coat.' 'I told you to put it away!' Nobby hissed. He looked at Nanny and smiled uneasily. 'Milit'ry chic,' he said. 'It's just a fashion accessory. Actually, we are gentlemen of means and have nothing to do with the city Watch whatsoever.' 'Well, gentlemen, would you like some wine?' 'Not while we on duty, yanks,' said the troll. 'Oh, yes, thank you very much, Count de Tritus,' said Nobby bitterly. 'Oh, yes, very undercover, that is! Why don't you just wave your truncheon around where everyone can see it?' 'Well, if you t'ink it'd help–' 'Put it away!' The Count de Tritus's eyebrows met with the effort of thought. 'Dat was irony, den, was it? To a superior officer?' 'Can't be a superior officer, can you, 'cos we ain't Watchmen. Look, Commander Vimes explained it three times...' Nanny Ogg tactfully moved away. It was bad enough watching them blow their cover without sucking at it as well. This was a new world, all right. She was used to a life where the men wore the bright clothes and the women wore black. It made it a lot easier to decide what to put on in the mornings. But inside the Opera House the rules of clothing were all in reverse, just like the laws of common sense. Here the women dressed like frosted peacocks and the men looked like penguins. So... there were coppers here. Nanny Ogg was basically a law-abiding person when she had no reason to break the law, and therefore had that kind of person's attitude to law-enforcement officers, which was one of deep and permanent distrust. There was their approach to theft, for example. Nanny had a witch's view of theft, which was a lot more complicated than the attitude adopted by the law and, if it came to it, people who owned property worth stealing. They tended to wield the huge blunt axe of the law in circumstances that required the delicate scalpel of common sense. No, thought Nanny. Policemen with their great big boots were not required here on a night like this. It would be a good idea to put a thumbtack under the ponderous feet of Justice. She ducked behind a gilt statue and fumbled in the recesses of her clothing while people nearby looked around in puzzlement at the erratic twanging of elastic. She was sure she had one around somewhere–she'd packed it in case of emergencies... There was the clink of a small bottle. Ah, yes. A moment later Nanny Ogg emerged decorously with two small glasses on her tray, and headed purposefully for the Watchmen. 'Fruit drink, officers?' she said. 'Oh, silly me, what am I saying, I didn't mean officers. Home-made fruit drink?' Detritus sniffed suspiciously, immediately clearing his sinuses. 'What's in it?' he said. 'Apples,' said Nanny Ogg promptly. 'Well... mainly apples.' Under her hand, a couple of spilt drops finished eating their way through the metal of the tray and dropped on to the carpet, where they smoked.     The auditorium buzzed with the sound of operagoers settling down and Mrs Lawsy trying to find her shoes. 'You really shouldn't have taken them off, mother.' 'My feet are giving me gyp.' 'Did you bring your knitting?' 'I think I must've left it in the Ladies.' 'Oh, mother.' Henry Lawsy marked his place in his book and raised his runny eyes heavenward, and blinked. Right above him–a long way above him–was a glittering circle of light. His mother followed his gaze. 'What's that, then?' 'I think it's a chandelier, mother.' 'It's a pretty big one. What's holding it up?' 'I'm sure they've got special ropes and things, mother.' 'Looks a bit dangerous, to my mind.' 'I'm sure it's absolutely safe, mother.' 'What do you know about chandeliers?' 'I'm sure people wouldn't come into the Opera House if there was any chance of a chandelier dropping on their heads, mother,' said Henry, trying to read his book.   Il Truccatore, The Master of Disguise. Il Truccatore (ten.), a mysterious nobleman, causes scandal in the city when he woos high-born ladies while disguised as their husbands. However, Laura (sop.), the new bride of Capriccio (bar.), refuses to give in to his blandishments–   Henry put a bookmark in the book, took a smaller book from his pocket, and carefully looked up 'blandishments'. He was moving in a world he wasn't quite sure of; embarrassment lay waiting at every turn, and he wasn't going to get caught out over a word. Henry lived his life in permanent dread of Being Asked Questions Later.   –and with the help of his servant Wingie (ten.) he adopts a subterfuge–   The dictionary came out again for a moment.   --culminating–   And again.   –in the scene at the famous Masked Ball at the Duke's Palace. But Il Truccatore has not reckoned with his old adversary the Count de–   'Adversary'...Henry sighed, and reached for his pocket.     Curtain up in five minutes... Salzella reviewed his troops. They consisted of scenebuilders and painters and all those other employees who could be spared for the evening. At the end of the line, about fifty per cent of Walter Plinge had managed to stand to attention. 'Now, you all know your positions,' said Salzella. 'And if you see anything, anything at all, you are to let me know at once. Do you understand ?' 'Mr Salzella!' 'Yes, Walter?' 'We mustn't interrupt the opera Mr Salzella!' Salzella shook his head. 'People will understand, I'm sure–' 'Show must go on Mr Salzella!' 'Walter, you will do what you're told!' Someone raised a hand. 'He's got a point, though, Mr Salzella...' Salzella rolled his eyes. 'Just catch the Ghost,' he said. 'If we can do it without a lot of shouting, that's good. Of course I don't want to stop the show.' He saw them relax. A deep chord rolled out over the stage. 'What the hell was that?' Salzella strode behind the stage and was met by André, looking excited. 'What's going on?' 'We repaired it, Mr Salzella! Only... well, he doesn't want to give up the seat...' The Librarian nodded at the director of music. Salzella knew the orang-utan, and among the things he knew was that, if the Librarian wanted to sit somewhere, then that was where he sat. But he was a first-class organist, Salzella had to admit. His lunchtime recitals in the Great Hall of Unseen University were extremely popular, especially since the University's organ had every single sound-effect that Bloody Stupid Johnson's inverted genius had been able to contrive. No one would have believed, before a pair of simian hands had worked on the project, that something like Doinov's romantic Prelude in G could be rescored for Whoopee Cushion and Squashed Rabbits. 'There's the overtures,' said André, 'and the ballroom scene...' 'At least get him a bow-tie,' said Salzella. 'No one can see him, Mr Salzella, and he hasn't really got much of a neck...' 'We do have standards, André.' 'Yes, Mr Salzella.' 'Since you seem to have been relieved of employment this evening, then perhaps you could help us apprehend the Ghost.' 'Certainly, Mr Salzella.' 'Fetch him a tie, then, and come with me.' A little later, left to himself, the Librarian opened his copy of the score and placed it carefully on the stand. He reached down under the seat and pulled out a large brown paper bag of peanuts. He wasn't entirely sure why André, having talked him into playing the organ this evening, had told the other man that it was because he, the Librarian, wouldn't budge. In fact, he'd got some interesting cataloguing to do and had been looking forward to it. Instead, he seemed to be here for the night, although a pound of shelled peanuts was handsome pay by any ape's standards. The human mind was a deep and abiding mystery and the Librarian was glad he didn't have one any more. He inspected the bow-tie. As André had foreseen, it presented certain problems to someone who'd been behind the door when the necks were handed out.     Granny Weatherwax stopped in front of Box Eight and looked around. Mrs Plinge wasn't visible. She unlocked the door with what was probably the most expensive key in the world. 'And you behave yourself,' she said. 'Ye-ess, Gran-ny,' moaned Greebo. 'No going to the lavatory in the corners.' 'No, Gran-ny.' Granny glared at her escort. Even in a bow-tie, even with his fine moustaches waxed, he was still a cat. You just couldn't trust them to do anything except turn up for meals. The inside of the Box was rich red plush, picked out with gilt decoration. It was like a soft little private room. There were a couple of fat pillars on either side, supporting part of the weight of the balcony above. She looked over the edge and noted the drop to the Stalls below. Of course, someone could probably climb in from one of the adjacent Boxes, but that'd be in full view of the audience and would be bound to cause some comment. She peeked under the seats. She stood on a chair and felt around the ceiling, which had gilt stars on it. She inspected the carpet minutely. She smiled at what she saw. She'd been prepared to bet that she knew how the Ghost got in, and now she was certain. Greebo spat on his hand and tried ineffectually to groom his hair. 'You sit quiet and eat your fish eggs,' said Granny. 'Ye-ess, Gran-ny.' 'And watch the opera, it's good for you.' 'Ye-ess, Gran-ny.'   'Evenin', Mrs Phnge!' said Nanny cheerfully. 'Ain't this excitin'? The buzz of the audience, the air of expectation, the blokes in the orchestra findin' somewhere to hide the bottles and tryin' to remember how to play... all the exhilaration an' drama of the operatic experience waitin' to unfold...' 'Oh, hello, Mrs Ogg,' said Mrs Plinge. She was polishing glasses in her tiny bar. 'Certainly very packed,' said Nanny. She looked sidelong at the old woman.[9] 'Every seat sold, I heard.' This didn't achieve the expected reaction. 'Shall I give you a hand cleaning out Box Eight?' she went on. 'Oh, I cleaned it out last week,' said Mrs Plinge. She held a glass up to the light. 'Yes, but I heard her ladyship is very particular,' said Nanny. 'Very picky about things.' 'What ladyship?' 'Mr Bucket has sold Box Eight, see,' said Nanny. She heard a faint tinkle of glass. Ah. Mrs Plinge appeared at the doorway of her nook. 'But he can't do that!' 'It's his Opera House,' said Nanny, watching Mrs Plinge carefully. 'I suppose he thinks he can.' 'It's the Ghost's Box!' Opera-goers were appearing along the corridor. 'I shouldn't think he'd mind just for one night,' said Nanny Ogg. 'The show must go on, eh? Are you all right, Mrs Plinge?' 'I think I'd just better go and–' she began, stepping forward. 'No, you have a good sit down and a rest,' said Nanny, pressing her back with gentle but irresistible force. 'But I should go and–' 'And what, Mrs Plinge? said Nanny. The old woman went pale. Granny Weatherwax could be nasty, but then nastiness was always in the window: you were aware that it might turn up on the menu. Sharpness from Nanny Ogg, though, was like being bitten by a big friendly dog. It was all the worse for being unexpected. 'I daresay you wanted to go and have a word with somebody, did you, Mrs Plinge?' said Nanny softly. 'Someone who might be a little shocked to find his Box full, perhaps? I reckon I could put a name to that someone, Mrs Plinge. Now, if–' The old woman's hand came up holding a bottle of champagne and then came down hard in an effort to launch the SS Gytha Ogg on to the seas of unconsciousness. The bottle bounced. Then Mrs Plinge leapt past and scuttled away, her polished little black boots twinkling. Nanny Ogg caught the doorframe and swayed a little while blue and purple fireworks went off behind her eyes. But there was dwarf in the Ogg ancestry, and that meant a skull you could go mining with. She stared muzzily at the bottle. 'Year of the Insulted Goat,' she mumbled. ' 'S a good year.' Then consciousness gained the upper hand. She grinned as she galloped after the retreating figure. In Mrs Plinge's place she'd have done exactly the same thing, except a good deal harder.     Agnes waited with the others for the curtain to go up. She was one of the crowd of fifty or so townspeople who would hear Enrico Basilica sing of his success as a master of disguise, it being a vital part of the entire process that, while the chorus would listen to expositions of the plot, and even sing along, they would suffer an instant lapse of memory afterwards so that later unmaskings would come as a surprise. For some reason, without any word being spoken, as many people as possible seemed to have acquired very broad-brimmed hats. Those who hadn't were taking every opportunity to glance upwards. Beyond the curtain, Herr Trubelmacher launched the overture. Enrico, who had been chewing a chicken leg, carefully put the bone on a plate and nodded. The waiting stage-hand dashed off. The opera had begun.     Mrs Plinge reached the bottom of the grand staircase and hung on to the banister, panting. The opera had started. There was no one around. And no sounds of pursuit, either. She straightened up, and tried to get her breath back. 'Coo-ee, Mrs Plinge!' Nanny Ogg, waving the champagne bottle like a club, was already travelling at speed when she hit the first turn in the banister, but she leaned like a professional and kept her balance as she went into the straight, and then tilted again for the next curve... ...which left only the big gilt statue at the bottom. It is the fate of all banisters worth sliding down that there is something nasty waiting at the far end. But Nanny Ogg's response was superb. She swung a leg over as she hurtled downwards and pushed herself off, her nailed boots leaving grooves in the marble as she spun to a halt in front of the old woman. Mrs Plinge was lifted off her feet and carried into the shadows behind another statue. 'You don't want to try and outrun me, Mrs Plinge,' Nanny whispered, as she clamped a hand firmly over Mrs Plinge's mouth. 'You just want to wait here quietly with me. And don't go thinking I'm nice. I'm only nice compared to Esme, but so is practic'ly everyone...' 'Mmf!' With one hand tightly around Mrs Plinge's arm and another over her mouth, Nanny peered round the statue. She could hear the singing, far off: Nothing else happened. After a while, she started to fret. Perhaps he'd taken fright. Perhaps Mrs Plinge had left him some sort of signal. Perhaps he'd decided that the world was currently too dangerous for Ghosts, although Nanny doubted he could ever decide that... At this rate the first act would be over before– A door opened somewhere. A lanky figure in a black suit and a ridiculous beret crossed the foyer and went up the stairs. At the top, they saw it turn in the direction of the Boxes and disappear. 'Y'see,' said Nanny, trying to get the stiffness out of her limbs, 'the thing about Esme is, she's stupid...' 'Mmf?' '...so she thinks that the most obvious way, d'y'see, for the Ghost to get in and out of the Box is through the door. If you can't find a secret panel, she reckons, it's because it ain't there. A secret panel that ain't there is the best kind there is, the reason bein', no bugger can find it. That's where you people all think too operatic, see? You're all cooped up in this place, listening to daft plots what don't make sense, and I reckon it does something to your minds. People can't find a trapdoor so they say, oh, deary me, what a hidden trapdoor it must be. Whereas a normal person, e.g., me and Esme, we'd say: Maybe there ain't one, then. And the best way for the Ghost to get around the place without being seen is for him to be seen and not noticed. Especially if he's got keys. People don't notice Walter. They looks the other way.' She gently released her grip. 'Now, I don't blame you, Mrs Plinge, 'cos I'd do the same for one of mine, but you'd have done better to trust Esme right at the start. She'll help you if she can.' Nanny let Mrs Plinge go, but kept a grip on the champagne bottle, just in case. 'What if she can't?' said Mrs Plinge bitterly. 'You think Walter did those murders?' 'He's a good boy!' 'I'm sure that's the same as a "no", isn't it?' 'They'll put him in prison!' 'If he done them murders, Esme won't let that happen,' said Nanny. Something sank into Mrs Plinge's not very alert mind. 'What do you mean, she won't let that happen?' she said. 'I mean,' said Nanny, 'that if you throw yourself on Esme's mercy, you better be damn' sure you deserve to bounce.' 'Oh, Mrs Ogg!' 'Now, don't you worry about anything,' said Nanny, perhaps a little late under the circumstances. It occurred to her that the immediate future might be a little bit easier on everyone if Mrs Plinge got some well-earned rest. She fumbled in her clothing and produced a bottle, half-full of some cloudy orange liquid. 'I'll just give you a sip of a little something to calm your nerves...' 'What is it?' 'It's a sort of tonic,' said Nanny. She flicked the cork out with her thumb; on the ceiling above her, the paint crinkled. 'It's made from apples. Well... mainly apples...'     Walter Plinge stopped outside Box Eight and looked around. Then he removed his beret and pulled out the mask. The beret went into his pocket. He straightened up, and it looked very much as though Walter Plinge with the mask on was several inches taller. He took a key from his pocket and unlocked the door, and the figure that stepped into the Box did not move like Walter Plinge. It moved as though every nerve and muscle were under full and athletic control. The sounds of the opera filled the Box. The walls had been lined with red velvet and were hung with curtains. The chairs were high and well padded. The Ghost slipped into one of them and settled down. A figure leaned forward out of the other chair and said, 'You carrn't havve my fisssh eggs!' The Ghost leapt up. The door clicked behind him. Granny stepped out from the curtains. 'Well, well, we meet again,' she said. He backed away to the edge of the Box. 'I shouldn't think you could jump,' said Granny. 'It's a long way down.' She focused her best stare on the white mask. 'And now, Mister Ghost–' He sprang back on to the edge of the Box, saluted Granny flamboyantly, and leapt upwards. Granny blinked. Up until now the Stare had always worked... 'Too damn' dark,' she muttered. 'Greebo!' The bowl of caviar flew out of his nervous fingers and caused a Fortean experience somewhere in the Stalls. 'Yess, Gran-ny!' 'Catch him! And there could be a kipper in it for you!' Greebo snarled happily. This was more like it. Opera had begun to pall for him the moment he realized that no one was going to pour a bucket of cold water over the singers. He understood chasing things. Besides, he liked to play with his friends.     Agnes saw the movement out of the corner of her eye. A figure had jumped out of one of the Boxes and was climbing up to the balcony. Then another figure clambered after it, scrambling over the gilt cherubs. Singers faltered in mid-note. There was no mistaking the leading figure. It was the Ghost.     The Librarian was aware that the orchestra had stopped playing. Somewhere on the other side of the backcloth the singers had stopped too. There was a buzz of excited conversation and one or two cries. The hairs all over his body began to prickle. Senses designed to protect his species in the depths of the rainforest had adjusted nicely to the conditions of a big city, which was merely drier and had more carnivores. He picked up the discarded bow-tie and, with great deliberation, tied it around his forehead so that he looked like a really formal Kamikaze warrior. Then he threw away the opera score and stared blankly into space for a moment. He knew instinctively that some situations required musical accompaniment. This organ lacked what he considered the most basic of facilities, such as the Thunder pedal, a 128-foot Earthquake pipe and a complete keyboard of animal noises, but he was certain there was something exciting that could be done in the bass register. He stretched out his arms and cracked his knuckles. This took some time. And then he began to play.     The Ghost danced along the edge of the balcony, scattering hats and opera-glasses. The audience watched in astonishment, and then began to clap. They couldn't quite see how it fitted into the plot of the opera–but this was an opera, after all. He reached the centre of the balcony, trotted a little way up the aisle, and then turned and ran down again at speed. He reached the edge, jumped, jumped again, soared out into the auditorium... ...and landed on the chandelier, which jingled and began to sway gently. The audience stood up and applauded as he climbed through the jangling tiers towards the central cable. Then another shape clambered over the edge of the balcony and loped along in pursuit. This was a stockier figure than the first man, one-eyed, broad in the shoulders and tapering at the waist; he looked evil in an interesting kind of way, like a pirate who really understood the words 'Jolly Roger'. He didn't even take a run but, when he reached the closest part to the chandelier, simply launched himself into space. It was clear that he wasn't going to make it. And then it wasn't clear how he did. Those watching through opera-glasses swore later that the man thrust out an arm which merely seemed to graze the chandelier and yet was then somehow able to swivel his entire body in mid-air: A couple of people swore even harder that, just as the man reached out, his fingernails appeared to grow by several inches. The huge glass mountain swung ponderously on its rope and, as it reached the end of the swing, Greebo swung out further, like a trapeze artist. There was an appreciative 'oo' from the audience. He twisted again. The chandelier hesitated for a moment at the extremity of its arc, and then swept back again. As it jangled and creaked over the Stalls the hanging figure swung upwards, let go and did a backward somersault that dropped him in the middle of the crystals. Candles and prisms were scattered over the seats below. And then, with the audience clapping and cheering, he scrambled up the rope after the fleeing Ghost.     Henry Lawsy tried to move his arm, but a fallen crystal had stapled the sleeve of his coat to his armrest. It was a quandary. He was pretty sure this wasn't supposed to happen, but he wasn't certain. Around him he could hear people hissing questions. 'Was that part of the plot?' 'I'm sure it must have been.' 'Oh, yes. Yes. It certainly was,' said someone further down the row, authoritatively. 'Yes. Yes. The famous chase scene. Indeed. Oh, yes. They did it in Quirm, you know.' 'Oh...yes. Yes, of course. I'm sure I heard about it..., 'I thought it was bloody good,' said Mrs Lawsy. 'Mother!' 'About time something interesting happened. You should've told me. I'd've put my glasses on.'     Nanny Ogg pounded up the back stairs towards the fly loft. 'Something's gone wrong!' she muttered under her breath as she took the stairs two at a time. 'She reckons she's only got to stare at 'em and they're toffee in her hands, and then who has to sort it out afterwards, eh? Go on, guess...' The ancient wooden door at the top of the stairs gave way to Nanny Ogg's boot with Nanny Ogg's momentum behind it, and cracked open on to a big, shadowy space. It was full of running figures. Legs flickered in the light of lanterns. People were shouting. A figure ran straight towards her. Nanny sprang into a crouch, both thumbs on the cork of the badly shaken champagne bottle she held cradled under one arm. 'This is a magnum,' she said, 'and I'm not afraid to drink it!' The figure stopped. 'Oh, it's you, Mrs Ogg...' Nanny's infallible memory for personal details threw up a card. 'Peter, isn't it?' she said, relaxing. 'The one with the bad feet?' 'That's right, Mrs Ogg.' 'The powder I give you is working, is it?' 'They're a lot better now, Mrs Ogg–' 'So what's been happening?' 'Mr Salzella caught the Ghost!' 'Really?' Now that Nanny's eyes had–managed to discern some order in the chaos, she could see a cluster of people in the middle of the floor, around the chandelier. Salzella was sitting on the planking. His collar was torn and a sleeve had been ripped off his jacket, but he had a triumphant look in his eyes. He waved something in the air. It was white. It looked like a piece of a skull. 'It was Plinge!' he said. 'I tell you, it was Walter Plinge! Why are you all standing around? Get after him!' 'Walter?' said one of the men, doubtfully. 'Yes, Walter!' Another man hurried up, waving his lantern. 'I saw the Ghost heading up to the roof! And there was some big one-eyed bastard going after him like a scalded cat!' That's wrong, thought Nanny. Something wrong here. 'To the roof!' shouted Salzella. 'Hadn't we better get the flaming torches first?' 'Flaming torches are not compulsory!' 'Pitchforks and scythes?' 'That's only for vampires!' 'How about just one torch?' 'Get up there now! Understand?'     The curtains closed. There was a smattering of applause which was barely audible above the chatter from the audience. The chorus turned to one another. 'Was that supposed to happen?' Dust rained down. Stage-hands were scampering across the gantries far above. Shouts echoed among the ropes and dusty backdrops. A stage-hand ran across the stage, holding a flaming torch. 'Here, what's going on?' said a tenor. 'They've got the Ghost! He's heading for the roof! It's Walter Plinge!' 'What, Walter?' 'Our Walter Plinge?' 'Yes!' The stage-hand ran on in a trail of sparks, leaving the yeast of rumour to ferment in the ready dough that was the chorus. 'Walter? Surely not!' 'Weeelll... he's a bit odd, isn't he... ?' 'But only this morning he said to me, "It's a nice day Mr Sidney!" Just like that. Normal as anything. Well... normal for Walter...' 'As a matter of fact, it's always worried me, the way his eyes move as though they don't talk to each other–' 'And he's always around the place!' 'Yes, but he's the odd job man–' 'No argument about that!' 'It's not Walter,' said Agnes. They looked at her. 'That's who he said they're chasing, dear.' 'I don't know who they're chasing, but Walter's not the Ghost. Fancy anyone thinking Walter's the Ghost!' said Agnes, hotly. 'He wouldn't hurt a fly! Anyway, I've seen–' 'He's always struck me as a bit slimy, though.' 'And they say he goes down into the cellars a lot. What for, I ask myself? Let's face it. Fair's fair. He's crazy.' 'He doesn't act crazy!' said Agnes. 'Well, he always looks as though he's about to, you must admit. I'm going to see what's happening. Anyone coming?' Agnes gave up. It was a horrible thing to learn, but there are times when evidence gets trampled and the hunt is on.     A hatch flew open. The Ghost clambered out, looked down, and slammed the hatch shut. There was a yowl from below. Then he danced across the leads until he reached the gargoyle-encrusted parapet, black and silver in the moonlight. The wind caught at his cloak as he ran along the very edge of the roof and dropped down again near another door. And a gargoyle was suddenly no longer a gargoyle, but a figure that reached down suddenly and twitched off his mask. It was like cutting strings. 'Good evening, Walter,' said Granny, as he sagged to his knees. 'Hello Missus Weatherwax!' 'Mistress,' Granny corrected him. 'Now stand up.' There was a growl further along the roof, and then a thump. Bits of trapdoor rose for a moment against the moonlight. 'It's nice up here, ain't it?' said Granny. 'There's fresh air and stars. I thought: up or down? But there's only rats down below.' In another swift movement she grabbed Walter's chin and tilted it, just as Greebo pulled himself on to the roof with prolonged murder in his heart. 'How does your mind work, Walter Plinge? If your house was on fire, what's the first thing you'd try to take out? Greebo stalked along the rooftop, growling. He liked rooftops in general, and some of his fondest memories involved them, but a trapdoor had just been slammed on his head and he was looking for anything he could disembowel. Then he recognized the shape of Walter Plinge as someone who had given him food. And, standing right next to him, the much more unwelcome shape of Granny Weatherwax, who had once caught him digging in her garden and had kicked him in the cucumbers. Walter said something. Greebo didn't take much notice of it. Granny Weatherwax said: 'Well done. A good answer. Greebo!' Greebo nudged Walter heavily in the back. 'Want milluk right noaow! Purr, purr!' Granny thrust the mask at the cat. In the distance people were running up stairs and shouting. 'You put this on! And you stay down real low, Walter Plinge. One man in a mask is pretty much like another, after all. And when they chase you, Greebo... give them a run for their money. Do it right and there could be–' 'Yurr, I knoaow,' said Greebo despondently, taking the mask. It was turning out to be a long and busy evening for a kipper. Someone poked their head out of the stricken trapdoor. The light glinted off Greebo's mask... and it had to be said, even by Granny, that he made a good Ghost. For one thing, his morphogenic field was trying to reassert itself. His claws could no longer even remotely be thought of as fingernails. He spat at the pursuit as they poured up the steps, arched his back dramatically on the very edge of the roof, and stepped off. One storey down he thrust out an arm, caught a windowsill, and landed on the head of a gargoyle, which said 'Oh, fank oo ver' mush' in a reproachful voice. The pursuers looked down at him. Some of them had managed to get hold of flaming torches, because sometimes convention is too strong to be lightly denied. Greebo snarled defiance and dropped again, springing from sill to drainpipe to balcony and pausing every now and again for another dramatic pose and another snarl at the pursuers. 'We'd better get after him, Corporal de Nobbs,' said one of them, who was staggering along behind. 'We'd better get after him by carefully going back down the stairs, you mean. 'Cos somethin' I drank don't want to stay drunk. Much more runnin' and I'll be droppin' a custard, I'm tellin' you.' The other members of the posse also seemed to be reaching the conclusion that there was no extended future in chasing a man down the sheer wall of a building. As one mob they turned and, shouting and waving their torches in the air, headed back to the stairs. The parting crowd revealed Nanny Ogg, holding a pitchfork in one hand and a torch in the other and thrusting them both in the air while muttering, 'Rhubarb, rhubarb.' Granny walked over and tapped her on the shoulder. 'They've gone, Gytha.' 'Rhuba- Oh, hello, Esme,' said Nanny, lowering the implements of righteous retribution. 'I was just tagging along to see it didn't get out of hand. Was that Greebo I saw just then?' 'Yes.' 'Awww, bless him,' said Nanny. 'He looked a bit bothered, though. I hope he doesn't happen to anybody.' 'Where's your broomstick?' said Granny. 'It's in the cleaners' cupboard backstage.' 'Then I'll borrow it and keep an eye on things,' said Granny. 'Hey, he's my cat, I ought to be looking after him–' Nanny began. Granny stepped aside, revealing a huddled shape sitting hugging its knees. 'You look after Walter Plinge,' she said. 'It's something you'd be better at than me.' 'Hello Mrs Ogg!' said Walter, mournfully. Nanny looked at him for a moment. 'So he is the-?' 'Yes.' 'You mean he really did do the mur-?' 'What do you think?' said Granny. 'Well, if it comes to it, I think he didn't,' said Nanny. 'Can I have a word in your ear, Esme? I don't reckon I should say this in front of young Walter.' The witches bent their heads together. There was a brief whispered conversation. 'Everything is simple when you know the answer,' said Granny. 'I'll be back soon.' She hurried off. Nanny heard her shoes clattering on the stairs. Nanny looked down at Walter again, and held out her hand. 'Up you get, Walter.' 'Yes Mrs Ogg!' 'I expect we'd better find somewhere for you to lie low, eh?' 'I know a hidden place Mrs Ogg!' 'You do, do you?' Walter lurched across the roof towards another trapdoor, and pointed to it proudly. 'That?' said Nanny. 'That doesn't look very hidden to-me, Walter.' Walter gave it a puzzled look, and then grinned in the way a scientist might after he'd solved a particularly difficult equation. 'It's hidden where everyone can see it Mrs Ogg!' Nanny gave him a sharp look, but there was nothing but a slightly glazed innocence in Walter's eyes. He lifted up the trapdoor and pointed politely downwards. 'You go down the ladder first so I will not see your drawers!' 'Very... kind of you,' said Nanny. It was the first time anyone had ever said anything like that to her. The man waited patiently until she had reached the bottom of the ladder, and then climbed laboriously down after her. 'This is just an old staircase, isn't it?' said Nanny, prodding at the darkness with her torch. 'Yes! It goes all the way down! Except at the bottom where it goes all the way up!' 'Anyone else know about it?' 'The Ghost Mrs Ogg!' said Walter, climbing down. 'Oh, yes,' said Nanny slowly. 'And where's the Ghost now, Walter?' 'He ran away!' She held up the torch. There was still nothing to be read in Walter's expression. 'What does the Ghost do here, Walter?' 'He watches over the Opera!' 'That's very kind of him, I'm sure.' Nanny started downwards, and as the shadows danced around her she heard Walter say: 'You know she asked me a very silly question Mrs Ogg! It was a silly question any fool knows the answer!' 'Oh, yes,' said Nanny, peering at the walls. 'About houses on fire, I expect...' 'Yes! What would I take out of our house if it was on fire!' 'I expect you were a good boy and said you'd take your mum,' said Nanny. 'No! My mum would take herself!' Nanny ran her hands over the nearest wall. Doors had been nailed shut when the staircase had been abandoned. Someone walking up and down here, with a keen pair of ears, could hear a lot of things... 'What would you take out then, Walter?' she said. 'The fire!' Nanny stared unseeing at the wall, and then her face slowly broke into a grin. 'You're daft, Walter Plinge,' she said. 'Daft as a broom Mrs Ogg!' said Walter cheerfully. But you ain't insane, she thought. You're daft but you're sane. That's what Esme would say. And there's worser things.     Greebo pounded along Broadway. He was suddenly not feeling very well. Muscles were twitching in odd ways. A tingling at the base of his spine indicated that his tail wanted to grow, and his ears definitely wanted to creep up the sides of his head, which is always embarrassing when it happens in company. In this case the company was about a hundred yards behind and apparently intent on moving his ears quite a long way from their current position, embarrassment or not. It was gaining, too. Greebo normally had a famous turn of speed, but not when his knees were trying to reverse direction every few seconds. His normal plan when pursued was to jump on to the water-butt behind Nanny Ogg's cottage and rake the pursuer across the nose with his claws when it came around the corner. Since this would now involve a fivehundred-mile dash, an alternative had to be sought. There was a coach waiting outside one of the houses. He lurched over to it, pulled himself up, grabbed the reins and briefly turned his attention to the driver. 'Get orffl.' Greebo's teeth shone in the moonlight. The coachman, with great presence of mind and urgent absence of body, somersaulted backwards into the night. The horses reared, and tried to break into a gallop from a standing start. Animals are less capable of being fooled than are humans; they knew that what they had behind them was a very large cat, and the fact that it was manshaped didn't make them any happier. The coach lumbered off. Greebo looked over his twitching shoulder at the torchlit crowd and waved a paw derisively. The effect pleased him so much that he clambered on to the roof of the swaying coach and continued to jeer. It is a cat-like attribute to spit defiance at the enemy from a place of safety. In the circumstances it would have been better if cat-like attributes had included the ability to steer. A wheel hit the parapet of the Brass Bridge and scraped along it, the iron rim kicking up sparks. The shock knocked Greebo from his perch in midgesture. He landed on his feet in the middle of the road, while the terrified horses continued on with the coach rocking dangerously from side to side. The pursuers stopped. 'What's he doing now?' 'He's just standing there.' 'There's only one of him and there's lots of us, right? We could easily overpower him.' 'Good idea. On the count of three, we'll all rush him, right? One... two... three...'Pause. 'You didn't run.' 'Well, nor did you.' 'Yes, but I was the one saying "one, two, three".' 'Remember what he did to Mr Pounder!' 'Yes, well, I never liked the man all that much...' Greebo snarled. Ticklish things were happening to his body. He threw his head back and roared. 'Look, at worst he'd only be able to get one or two of us' 'Oh, that's good, is it?' 'Here, why's he twisting around like that?' 'Maybe he hurt himself falling off the coach–' 'Let's get .him!' The mob closed in. Greebo, struggling against a morphogenic field swinging wildly between species, punched the first man in the face with a hand and clawed the shirt off another man with something more like a giant paw. 'Oh, shiiiooooo–' Twenty hands grabbed him. And then, in the melee and the darkness, twenty hands were holding just cloth and emptiness. Vengeful boots connected with nothing more than air. Clubs that had been swung at a snarling face whirled through empty space and returned to hit their owner on the ear. '-ooooaaawwwwl!' Quite unnoticed in the scrum, a flat-eared bullet of grey fur shot out from between the scuffling legs. The kicking and punching stopped only when it became apparent that all the mob was attacking was itself. And, since the IQ of a mob is the IQ of its most stupid member divided by the number of mobsters, it was never very clear to anyone what had happened. Obviously they'd closed in on the Ghost, and he certainly couldn't have escaped. All that was left was a mask and some torn clothing. So, the mob reasoned, he must have ended up in the river. And good riddance, too. Happy in the knowledge of a job well done, they adjourned to the nearest pub. This left Sergeant Count de Tntus and Corporal the Count de Nobby Nobbs, who lurched to the middle of the bridge and regarded the few scraps of cloth. 'Commander Vimes isn't...isn't... isn't goin' to like dis,' said Detritus. 'You know he likes prisoners to be alive.' 'Yeah, but this one would've been hung anyway,' said Nobby, who was trying to stand upright. 'This way was just a bit more... democratic. A great saving in terms of rope, not to mention wear and tear on locks and keys.' Detritus scratched his head. 'Shouldn't there be some blood?' he ventured. Nobby gave him a sour look. 'He couldn't've got away,' he said. 'So don't go asking questions like that.' 'Only, if humans is hit hard enough, they leaks all over der place,' said Detritus. Nobby sighed. That was the calibre of people you got in the Watch these days. They had to make a mystery of things. In days gone by, when it had been just the old gang and an unofficial policy of lazy fair, they'd have said a heartfelt 'Well done, lads' to the vigilantes and turned in early. But now old Vimes had been promoted to Commander he seemed to be enrolling people who asked questions all the time. It was even affecting Detritus, considered by other trolls to be as dim as a dead glowworm. Detritus reached down and picked up an eyepatch. 'What d'you think, then?' said Nobby scornfully. 'You think he turned into a bat and flew away?' 'Ha! I do not t'ink that 'cos it is in... consist... ent with modern policing,' said Detritus. 'Well, I think,' said Nobby, 'that when you have ruled out the impossible, what is left, however improbable, ain't worth hanging around on a cold night wonderin' about when you could be getting on the outside of a big drink. Come on. I want to try a leg of the elephant that bit me.' 'Was dat irony?' 'That was metaphor.' Detritus, uneasy in what was technically his mind, prodded at the torn pieces of clothing. Something brushed against his leg. It was a cat. It had tattered ears, one good eye, and a face like a fist with fur on it. 'Hello, little cat,' said Detritus. The cat stretched and grinned. 'Gerrt lorssst, coppuurrrr...' Detritus blinked. There are no such things as troll cats, and Detritus had never seen a cat before he'd arrived in AnkhMorpork and discovered that they were very, very hard to eat. And he'd never heard of them talking. On the other hand, he was very much aware of his reputation as the most stupid person in the city, and he wasn't going to draw attention to a talking cat if it were going to turn out that everybody except him knew that they talked all the time. In the gutter, a few feet away, there was something white. He picked it up carefully. It looked like the mask the Ghost had worn. This was probably a Clue. He waved it urgently. 'Hey, Nobby–' 'Thank you.' Something dipped through the darkness, snatched the mask from the troll's hand, and soared into the night. Corporal Nobbs turned around. 'Yes?' he said. 'Er... how big are birds? Normally?' 'Oh, blimey, I dunno. Some are small, some are big. Who cares?' Detritus sucked his finger. 'Oh, no reason,' he said. 'I am far too smart to be taken in by perfec'ly normal t'ings.'     Something squelched underfoot. 'It's pretty damp down here, Walter,' said Nanny. And the air was stale and heavy and seemed to be squeezing the light from the torch. There was a dark edge to the flame. 'Not far now Mrs Ogg!' Keys jingled in the darkness, and some hinges creaked. 'I found this Mrs Ogg! It's the Ghost's secret cave!' 'Secret cave, eh?' 'You got to shut your eyes! You got to shut your eyes!' said Walter urgently. Nanny did so, but to her shame kept a grip on the torch, just in case. She said: 'And is the Ghost in there, Walter?' 'No!' There was the rattle of a matchbox and some scuffling, and then 'You can open them now Mrs Ogg!' Nanny did so. Colour and light blurred and then swam into focus, first in her eyes and then, eventually, in her brain. 'Oh, my,' she murmured. 'Oh, my, my...' There were candles, the big flat ones used to illuminate the stage, floating in shallow bowls. The light they gave was soft, and it rippled over the room like the soul of water. It glinted off the beak of a huge swan. It glittered in the eye of a vast, sagging dragon. Nanny Ogg turned slowly. Her experience of opera had not been a lengthy one but witches pick things up quickly, and there was the winged helmet worn by Hildabrun in The Ring of the Nibelungingung, and here was the striped pole from The Barber of Pseudopolis, and there was the pantomime horse with the humorous trapdoor from The Enchanted Piccolo, and here... ...here was opera, all piled in a heap. Once the eye had taken it all in, it had time to notice the peeling paint and rotting plaster and the general air of gentle mouldering. The decrepit props and threadbare costumes had been dumped in here because people didn't want them anywhere else. But someone did want them here. After the eye had seen the ruin, then there was time for it to see the little patches of recent repair, the careful areas of fresh paint. There was something like a desk in the tiny area of floor not occupied by the props. And then Nanny realized that it had a keyboard and a stool, and there were neat piles of paper on top of it. Walter was watching her with a big, proud grin. Nanny ambled over to the thing. 'It's a harmonium, ain't it? A tiny organ?' 'That's right Mrs Ogg!' Nanny picked up one of the sheaves of paper. Her lips moved as she read the meticulous copperplate writing. 'An opera about cats?' she said. 'Never heard of an opera about cats...' She thought for a moment, and then added to herself But why not? It's a damn good idea. The lives of cats are just like operas, when you come to think about it. She leafed through the other piles. 'Guys and Trolls? Hubwards Side Story? Miserable Les? Who's he? Seven Dwarfs for Seven Other Dwarfs? What're all these, Walter?' She sat down on the stool and pressed a few of the cracked yellow keys, which moved with an audible creak. There were a couple of large pedals under the harmonium. You pedalled these and that worked the bellows and these spongy keys produced something which was to organ music what 'poot' was to cursing. So this was where Wal... where the Ghost sat, thought Nanny, down under the stage, among the discarded wreckage of old performances; down under the huge windowless room where, night after night, music and songs and rampant emotion echoed back and forth and never escaped or entirely died away. The Ghost worked down here, with a mind as open as a well, and it filled up with opera. Opera went in at the ears, and something else came out of the mind. Nanny pumped the pedals a few times. Air hissed from inefficient seams. She tried a few notes. They were reedy. But, she considered, sometimes the old lie was true, and size really did not matter. It really was what you did with it that counted. Walter watched her expectantly. She took down another wad of paper and peered at the first page. But Walter leaned over and snatched at the script. 'That one's not finished Mrs Ogg!'     The Opera House was still in uproar. Half the audience had gone outside and the other half was hanging around in case further interesting events were going to transpire. The orchestra was in a huddle in the pit, preparing its request for a special Being Upset By A Ghost Allowance. The curtains were closed. Some of the chorus had stayed on stage; others had hurried off to take part in the chase. The air had the excited electric feel it gets when normal civilized life is temporarily short-circuited. Agnes bounced frantically from rumour to rumour. The Ghost had been caught, and it was Walter Plinge. The Ghost had been caught by Walter Plinge. The Ghost had been caught by someone else. The Ghost had escaped. The Ghost was dead. There were arguments breaking out everywhere. 'I still can't believe it was Walter! I mean, good grief... Walter?' 'What about the show? We can't just stop! You never stop the show, not even if someone dies!' 'Oh, we have stopped when people died...' 'Yes, but only as long as it took to get the body off-stage!' Agnes stepped back into the wings, and trod on something. 'Sorry,' she said automatically. 'It was only my foot,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'So... how is life in the big city, Agnes Nitt?' Agnes turned. 'Oh... hello, Granny...' she mumbled. 'And I'm not Agnes here, thank you,' she added, a shade more defiantly. 'It's a good job, is it, bein' someone else's voice?' 'I'm doing what I want to do,' said Agnes. She drew herself up to her full width. 'And you can't stop me!' 'But you ain't part of it, are you?' said Granny conversationally. 'You try, but you always find yourself watchin' yourself watchin' people, eh? Never quite believin' anything? Thinkin' the wrong thoughts?' 'Shut up!' 'Ah. Thought so.' 'I have no intention of becoming a witch, thank you very much!' 'Now, don't go getting upset just because you know it's going to happen. A witch you're going to be because a witch you are, and if you turn your back on him now then I don't know what's going to happen to Walter Plinge.' 'He's not dead?' No. Agnes hesitated. 'I knew he was the Ghost,' she began. 'But then I saw he couldn't be.' 'Ah,' said Granny. 'Believed the evidence of your own eyes, did you? In a place like this?' 'One of the stage-hands just told me they chased him up on to the roof and then down into the street and beat him to death!' 'Oh, well,' said Granny, 'you'll never get anywhere if you believe what you hear. What do you know?' 'What do you mean, what do I know?' 'Don't try cleverness on me, miss.' Agnes looked at Granny's expression, and knew when to fold. 'I know he's the Ghost,' she said. 'Right.' 'But I can see that he isn't.' 'Yes?' 'And I know... I'm pretty sure he doesn't mean any harm.' 'Good. Well done. Walter might not know his right from his left, but he does know his right from his wrong.' Granny rubbed her hands together. 'Well, we're already home and looking for a clean towel, eh?' 'What? You haven't solved anything!' ' 'Course we have. We know that it wasn't Walter what done the murders, so now we just have to find out who it was. Easy.' 'Where's Walter now?' 'Nanny's got him somewhere.' 'She's all by herself?' 'I told you, she's got Walter.' 'I meant... well, he's a bit strange.' 'Only where it shows.' Agnes sighed, and started to say that it wasn't her problem. And realized it was useless even to try. The knowledge sat like a smug intruder in her mind. Whatever it was, it was her problem. 'All right,' she said. 'I'll help you if I can, because I'm here. But afterwards... that's it! Afterwards, you'll leave me alone. Promise?' 'Certainly.' 'Well... all right, then...' Agnes stopped. 'Oh, no,' she said. 'That was too easy. I don't trust you.' 'Don't trust me?' said Granny. 'You're saying you don't trust me?' 'Yes. I don't. You'll find a way to wriggle around it.' 'I never wriggle,' said Granny. 'It's Nanny Ogg who thinks we ought to have a third witch. I reckon life's difficult enough without some girl cluttering up the place just because she thinks she looks good in a pointy hat.' There was a pause. Then Agnes said, 'I'm not falling for that one, either. It's where you say I'm too stupid to be a witch and I say, oh no I'm not, and you end up winning again. I'd rather be someone else's voice than some old witch with no friends and having everyone frightened of me and being nothing more than just a bit cleverer than other people and not doing any real magic at all...' Granny put her head on one side. 'Seems to me you're so sharp you might cut yourself,' she said. 'All right. When it's all over, I'll let you go your own way. I won't stop you. Now show me the way to Mr Bucket's office...'     Nanny smiled her jolly-wrinkled-old-apple smile. 'Now, you just hand it over, Walter,' she said. 'No harm in letting me see it, is there? Not old Nanny.' 'Can't see it till it's finished!' 'Well, now,' said Nanny, hating herself for dropping the atom bomb, 'I'm sure your main wouldn't want to hear that you've been a bad boy, would she?' Expressions floated over Walter's waxen features as he struggled with several ideas at once. Finally, without a word, he thrust the bundle at her, his arms trembling with tension. 'There's a good boy,' said Nanny. She glanced at the first few pages, and then moved them nearer to the light. 'Hmm.' She treadled the harmonium for a while and played a few notes with her left hand. They represented most of the musical notes she knew how to read. It was a very simple little theme, such as might be picked out on the keyboard with one finger. 'Hey...' Her lips moved as she read the narrative. 'Well now, Walter,' she said, 'isn't this a sort of opera about a ghost who lives in an opera house?' She turned a page. 'Very smart and debonair, he is. He's got a secret cave, I see...' She played another short riff. 'Catchy music, too.' She read on, occasionally saying things like 'Well, well' and 'Lawks'. Every now and again she'd give Walter an appraising look. 'I wonder why the Ghost wrote this, Walter?' she said, after a while. 'Quiet sort of chap, ain't he? Put it all into his music.' Walter stared at his feet. 'There's going to be a lot of trouble Mrs Ogg.' 'Oh, me and Granny will sort it all out,' said Nanny. 'It's wrong to tell lies,' said Walter. 'Probably,' said Nanny, who'd never let it worry her up to now. 'It wouldn't be right for our mum to lose her job Mrs Ogg.' 'It wouldn't be right, no.' The feeling drifted over Nanny that Walter was trying to put across some sort of message. 'Er... what sort of lies would it be wrong to tell, Walter?' Walter's eyes bulged. 'Lies... about things you see Mrs Ogg! Even if you did see them!' Nanny thought it was probably time to present the Oggish point of view. 'It's all right to tell lies if you don't think lies,' she said. 'He said our mum would lose her job and I'd be locked up if I said Mrs Ogg!' 'Did he? Which "he" was he?' 'The Ghost Mrs Ogg!' 'I reckon Granny ought to have a good look at you, Walter,' said Nanny. 'I reckon your mind's all tangled up like a ball of string what's been dropped.' She pedalled the harmonium thoughtfully. 'Was it the Ghost that wrote all this music, Walter?' 'It's wrong to tell lies about the room with the sacks in it Mrs Ogg!' Ah, thought Nanny. 'That'd be down here, would it?' 'He said I wasn't to tell anyone!' 'Who did?' 'The Ghost Mrs Ogg!' 'But you're–' Nanny began, and then tried another way. 'Ah, but I ain't anyone,' she said. 'Anyway, if you was to go to this room with the sacks and I was to follow you, that wouldn't be telling anyone, would it? It wouldn't be your fault if some ole woman followed you, would it?' Walter's face was an agony of indecision but, erratic though his thinking might have been, it was no match for Nanny Ogg's meretricious duplicity. He was up against a mind that regarded truth as a reference point but certainly not as a shackle. Nanny Ogg could think her way through a corkscrew in a tornado without touching the sides. 'Anyway, it's all right if it's me,' she added for good measure. 'In fact, he prob'ly meant to say "except for Mrs Ogg", only he forgot.' Slowly, Walter reached out and picked up a candle. Without saying a word he walked out of the door and into the damp darkness of the cellars. Nanny Ogg followed him, her boots making squelching noises in the mud. It didn't seem like much of a distance. As far as Nanny could work out they were no longer under the Opera House, but it was hard to be sure. Their shadows danced around them and they walked through other rooms, even more dark and dripping than the ones they'd been in. Walter stopped in front of a pile of timber that glistened with rot, and pulled a few of the spongy planks aside. There were some sacks neatly piled. Nanny kicked one, and it broke. In the flickering candlelight all that she could really see were sparkles of light as the cascade poured out, but there was no mistaking the gentle metallic scraping of lots of money. Lots and lots of money. Enough money to suggest very clearly that it belonged to either a thief or a publisher, and there didn't seem to be any books around. 'What's this, Walter?' 'It's the Ghost's money Mrs Ogg!' There was a square hole in the opposite corner of the room. Water glinted a few inches below. Beside the hole were half a dozen containers of various sorts–old biscuit tins, broken bowls and the like. There was a stick, or possibly a dead shrub, in each one. 'And those, Walter? What are those?' 'Rose bushes Mrs Ogg!' 'Down here? But nothing could gr–' Nanny stopped. She squelched over to the pots. They'd been filled with muck scraped from the floor. The dead stems glistened with slime. Nothing could grow down here, of course. There was no light. Everything that grew needed something else to feed on. And...she moved the candle closer, and sniffed the fragrance. Yes. It was subtle, but it was there. Roses in darkness. 'Well, my word, Walter Plinge,' she said. 'Always one for the surprises, you are.'     Books were piled on Mr Bucket's desk. 'What you're doing is wrong, Granny Weatherwax,' said Agnes from the doorway. Granny glanced up. 'Wrong as living other people's lives for them?' she said. 'S' matter of fact, there's something even worse than that, which is living other people's lives for yourself. That kind of wrong?' Agnes said nothing. Granny Weatherwax couldn't know. Granny turned back to the books. 'Anyway, this only looks wrong. Appearances is deceivin'. You just pay attention to watching the corridor, madam.' She riffled through the bits of torn envelope and scribbled notes that seemed to be the Opera House's equivalent of proper accounts. It was a mess. In fact, it was more than a mess. It was far too much of a mess to be. a real mess, because a real mess has occasional bits of coherence, bits of what might be called random order. Rather, it was the kind of erratic mess that suggested that someone had set out to be messy. Take the account books. They were full of tiny rows and columns, but someone hadn't thought it worthwhile to invest in lined paper and had handwriting that wandered a bit. There were forty rows on the left-hand side but only thirty-six by the time they reached the other side of the page. It was hard to spot because of the way your eyes watered. 'What are you doing?' said Agnes, tearing her gaze away from the corridor. 'Amazin',' said Granny. 'Some things is entered twice! And I reckon there's a page here where someone's added the month and taken away the time of day!' 'I thought you didn't like books,' said Agnes. 'I don't,' said Granny, turning a page. 'They can look you right in the face and still lie. How many fiddle players are there in the band?' 'I think there are nine violinists in the orchestra.' The correction appeared to pass unnoticed. 'Well, there's a thing,' said Granny, without moving her head. 'Seems that twelve of 'em are drawing wages, but three of 'em is over the page, so you mightn't notice.' She looked up and rubbed her hands happily. 'Unless you've got a good memory, that is.' She ran a skinny finger down another erratic column. 'What's a flying ratchet?' 'I don't know!' 'Says here "Repairs to flying ratchet, new springs for rotation cog assembly, and making good. Hundred and sixty dollars and sixty-three pence." Hah!' She licked her finger and tried another page – 'Even Nanny ain't this bad at numbers,' she said. 'To be this bad at numbers you've got to be good. Hah! No wonder this place never makes any money. You might as well try to fill a sieve.' Agnes darted into the room. 'There's someone coming!' Granny got up and blew out the lamp. 'You get behind the curtains,' she commanded. 'What're you going to do?' 'Oh... I'll just have to make myself inconspicuous...' Agnes hurried across to the big window and turned to look at Granny, who was standing by the fireplace. The old witch faded. She didn't disappear. She merely slid into the background. An arm gradually became part of the mantelpiece. A fold of her dress was a piece of shadow. An elbow became the top of the chair behind her. Her face became one with a vase of faded flowers. She was still there, like the old woman in the puzzle picture they sometimes printed in the Almanack, where you could see the old woman or the young girl but not both at once, because one was made of the shadows of the other. Granny Weatherwax was standing by the fireplace, but you could see her only if you knew she was there. Agnes blinked. And there were just the shadows, the chair and the fire. The door opened. She ducked behind the curtains, feeling as conspicuous as a strawberry in a stew, certain that the sound of her heart would give her away. The door shut, carefully, with barely a click. Footsteps crossed the floor. A wooden scraping noise might have been a chair being moved slightly. A scratch and a hiss were the sound of a match, striking. A clink was the glass of the lamp, being lifted... All noise ceased. Agnes crouched, every muscle suddenly screaming with the strain. The lamp hadn't been lit–she'd have seen the light around the curtain. Someone out there was making no noise. Someone out there was suddenly suspicious. A floorboard squeaked verrrry slowwwly, as someone shifted their weight. She felt as if she was going to scream, or burst with the effort of silence. The handle of the window behind her, a mere point of pressure a moment ago, was trying seriously to become part of her life. Her mouth was so dry that she knew it'd creak like a hinge if she dared to swallow. It couldn't be anyone who had a right to be here. People who had a right to be in places walked around noisily. The handle was getting really personal. Try to think of something else... The curtain moved. Someone was standing on the other side of it. If her throat weren't so arid she might be able to scream. She could feel the presence through the cloth. Any moment now, someone was going to twitch the curtain aside. She leapt, or as close to a leap as was feasible–it was a kind of vertical lumber, billowing the curtain aside, colliding with a slim body behind it, and ending on the floor in a tangle of limbs and ripping velvet. She gulped air, and pressed down on the squirming bundle below her. 'I'll scream!' she said. 'And if I do your eardrums will come down your nose!' The writhing stopped. 'Perdifa?' said a muffled voice. Above her, the curtain-rail sagged at one end and the brass rings, one at a time, spun towards the floor.     Nanny went back to the sacks. Each one bulged with round hard shapes that clinked gently under her questing finger. 'This is a lot of money, Walter,' she said carefully. 'Yes Mrs Ogg!' Nanny lost track of money fairly easily although this didn't mean the subject didn't interest her: it was just that, beyond a certain point, it became dream-like. All she could be sure of was that the amount in front of her would make anyone's drawers drop. 'I suppose,' she said, 'that if I was to ask you how it'd got here, you'd say it was the Ghost, yes? Like the roses?' 'Yes Mrs Ogg!' She gave him a worried look. 'You'll be all right down here, will you?' she said. 'You'll sit quiet? I reckon I need to talk to some people.' 'Where's my mum Mrs Ogg?' 'She's having a nice sleep, Walter.' Walter seemed satisfied with this. 'You'll sit quiet in your... in that room, will you?' 'Yes Mrs Ogg!' 'There's a good boy.' She glanced at the money-bags again. Money was trouble.     Agnes sat back. André raised himself on his elbows and pulled the curtain off his face. 'What the hell were you doing there?' he said. 'I was- What do you mean, what was I doing there? You were creeping around!' 'You were hiding behind the curtain!' said André, getting to his feet and fumbling for the matches again. 'Next time you blow out a lamp, remember it'll still be warm.' 'We were... on important business...' The lamp glowed. André turned. 'We?' he said. Agnes nodded, and looked across at Granny. The witch hadn't moved, although it took a deliberate effort of will to focus on her among the shapes and shadows. André picked up the lamp and stepped forward. The shadows shifted. 'Well?' he said. Agnes strode across the room and waved a hand in the air. There was the chair back, there was the vase, there was... nothing else. 'But she was there!' 'A ghost, eh?' said André sarcastically. Agnes backed away. There is something about the light of a lamp held lower than someone's face. The shadows are wrong. They fall into unfortunate places. Teeth seem more prominent. Agnes came to realize that she was alone in a room in suspicious circumstances with a man whose face suddenly looked a lot more unpleasant than it had before. 'I suggest,' he said, 'that you get back to the stage right now, yes? That would be the very best thing you could do. And don't meddle in things that don't concern you. You've done too much as it is.' The fear hadn't drained out of Agnes, but it had found a space in which to metamorphose into anger. 'I don't have to put up with that! For all I know, you might be the Ghost!' 'Really? I was told that Walter Plinge was the Ghost,' said André. 'How many people did you tell? And now it turns out that he's dead...' 'No, he's not!' It was out before she could stop it. She'd said it merely to wipe the sneer off his face. This happened. But the expression that replaced it was no improvement. A floorboard creaked. They both turned. There was a hat-stand in the corner, next to a bookcase. There were a few coats and scarves hanging from it. It was surely only the way that the shadows fell that made it look, from this angle, like an old woman. Or. . . 'Damn floors,' said Granny, fading into the foreground. She stepped away from the coats. As Agnes said, later: it wasn't as though she'd been invisible. She'd simply become part of the scenery until she put herself forward again; she was there, but not there. She didn't stand out at all. She was as unnoticeable as the very best of butlers. 'How did you get in?' said André. 'I looked all round the room!' 'Seein' is believin',' said Granny, calmly. 'Of course, the trouble is that believin' is also seein', and there's been too much of that round here lately. Now, I know you ain't the Ghost... so what are you, to be sneaking around in places where you shouldn't be?' 'I could ask you the same quest–' 'Me? I'm a witch, and I'm pretty good at it.' 'She's, er, from Lancre. Where I come from,' Agnes mumbled, trying to look at her feet. 'Oh? Not the one who wrote the book?' said André. 'I've heard people talking about–' 'No! I'm much worse than her, understand?' 'She is,' mumbled Agnes. André gave Granny a long look, like a man weighing up his chances. He must have decided that they were bobbing along the ceiling. 'I... hang around in dark places looking for trouble,' he said. 'Really? There's a nasty name for people like that, ' snapped Granny. 'Yes,' said André. 'It's "policeman".'     Nanny Ogg climbed out of the cellars, rubbing her chin thoughtfully. Musicians and singers were still milling around, uncertain about what was going to happen next. The Ghost had had the decency to be chased and killed during the interval. In theory that meant there was no reason why there shouldn't be a third act, as soon as Herr Trubelmacher had scoured the nearby pubs and dragged the orchestra back. The show must go on. Yes, she thought, it has to go on. It's like the build-up to a thunderstorm... no... it's more like making love. Yes. That was a far more Oggish metaphor. You put everything you've got into it, so sooner or later there's a point where it's got to go on, because you can't imagine stopping. The stage manager could dock a couple of dollars from their wages and they'd still go on, and everyone knew it. And they would still go on. She reached a ladder and climbed slowly into the flies. She hadn't been certain. She needed to be certain now. The fly loft was empty. She walked carefully along the catwalk until she was over the auditorium. The buzz of the audience came through the ceiling beneath her, slightly muffled. Light shone up at the point where the thick cable for the chandelier disappeared into the hole. She stepped out over the creaking trapdoor and peered down. Terrific heat almost frizzled her hair. A few yards below her hundreds of candles were burning. 'Dreadful if that lot fell down,' she said quietly. 'I 'spect this place'd go up like a haystack...' She let her gaze travel up and up .the cable to the point, at just about waist-height, where it was halfcut through. You'd never see it, if you weren't expecting to find it. Then her gaze dropped again, and moved across the gloomy, dusty floor until it found something half-hidden in the dust: Behind her, a shadow among the shadows rose to its feet, balanced itself carefully, and started to run.     'I knows about policemen,' said Granny. 'They've got big helmets and big feet and you can see them a mile off. There's a couple lurching around backstage. Anyone can see they're policemen. You don't look like one.' She turned the badge over and over in her hands. 'I ain't happy with the idea of secret policemen,' she said. 'Why do you need secret policemen?' 'Because,' said André, 'sometimes you have secret criminals.' Granny almost smiled. 'That's a fact,' she said. She peered at the small engraving on the back of the badge. 'Says here "Cable Street Particulars"...' 'There aren't many of us,' said André. 'We've only just started. Commander Vimes said that, since we can't do anything about the Thieves' Guild and the Assassins' Guild, we'd better look for other crimes. Hidden crimes. That need Watchmen with... different skills. And I can play the piano quite well..., 'What kind of skills have that troll and that dwarf got?' said Granny. 'Seems to me the only thing they're really good at is standing around looking obvious and stupiHah! Yes...' 'Right. And they didn't even need much training,' said André. 'Commander Vimes says they're the most obvious policemen anyone could think of. Incidentally, Corporal Nobbs has got some papers to prove he's a human being.' 'Forged?' 'I don't think so.' Granny Weatherwax put her head on one side. 'If your house was on fire, what's the first thing you'd take out of it?' 'Oh, Granny–' Agnes began. 'Hmm. Who set fire to it?' said André. 'You're a policeman, right enough.' Granny handed him his badge. 'You come to arrest poor Walter?' she said. 'I know he didn't murder Dr Undershaft. I was watching him. He was trying to unblock the privies all afternoon–' 'I've had proof that Walter isn't the Ghost,' said Agnes. 'I was almost sure it was Salzella,' said André. 'I know he creeps off to the cellars sometimes and I'm sure he's stealing money. But the Ghost has been seen when Salzella is perfectly visible. So now I think–' 'Think? Think?' said Granny. 'Someone thinking around here at last? How'd you recognize the Ghost, Mister Policeman?' 'Well... he's got a mask on...' 'Really? Now say it again, and listen to what you say. Good grief! You can recognize him because he's got a mask on? You recognize him because you don't know who he is? Life isn't neat! Whoever said there's only one Ghost?'     The figure ran through the shadows of the fly loft, cloak billowing around it. Nanny Ogg was outlined against the light, peering down. She said, without turning her head: 'Hello, Mr Ghost. Come back for your saw, have you?' Then she darted around behind the cable until she faced the shadow. 'Millions of people knows I'm up here! You wouldn't hurt a little old lady, would you? Oh, dear... me poor old heart!' She keeled over backwards, hitting the floor hard enough to make the cable swing. The figure hesitated. Then it took a length of thin rope from a pocket and advanced cautiously towards the fallen witch. It knelt down, wound an end of the rope around each hand, and leaned forward. , Nanny's knee came up sharply. 'Feels a lot -better now, mister,' she said, as he reared backwards. She scrambled up again and grabbed the saw. 'Come back to finish it, eh?' she said, waving the implement in the air. 'Wonder how you'd blame that on Walter! Make you happy, would it, the whole place burning down?' The figure, moving awkwardly, backed away as she advanced. Then it turned, lurched along the wobbling catwalk and disappeared into the gloom. Nanny pounded after him and saw the figure climbing down a ladder. She looked around quickly, grabbed a rope to slide after him, and heard a pulley somewhere above start to clatter. She descended, skirts billowing around her. When she was about halfway down, a bunch of sandbags went upwards past her in a hurry. As she rattled onwards she saw, between her boots, someone struggling with the trapdoor to the cellars. She landed a few feet away, still holding the rope. 'Mr Salzella?' Nanny stuck two fingers in her mouth and let out a whistle that could have melted ear-wax. She let go of the rope. Salzella glanced up at her as he raised the trapdoor, and then saw the shape dropping out of the roof. One hundred and eighty pounds of sandbag hit the door, slamming it shut. 'Watch out!' said Nanny, cheerfully.     Bucket waited nervously in the wings. Unnecessarily nervously, of course. The Ghost was dead. There couldn't be anything to worry about. People said they'd seen him killed, although they were, Bucket had to admit, a bit hazy on the actual details. Nothing to worry about. Not a thing. Nothing whatsoever in any way. Everything was absolutely nothing to worry about in any way. He ran a finger around the inside of his collar. It hadn't been such a bad life in wholesale cheese. The most you had to worry about was ogle of poor old Reg Plenty's trouser buttons in the Farmhouse Nutty and the time young Weevins minced his thumb in the stirring machine and it was only by luck they happened to be doing strawberry yoghurt at the time– A figure loomed up beside him. He clutched at a curtain for support and then turned to see, with relief, the majestic and reassuring stomach of Enrico Basilica. The tenor looked magnificent in a huge cockerel costume, complete with giant beak, wattles and comb. 'Ah, senor,' Bucket burbled. 'Very impressive, may I say.' 'Si,' said a muffed voice from somewhere behind the beak, as other members of the company hurried past on to the stage. 'May I say how sorry I am about all that business earlier. I can assure you that it doesn't happen every night, ahahah...' 'Si?' 'Probably just high spirits, ahaha...' The beak turned towards him. Bucket backed away. 'Si!' '...yes... well, I'm glad you're so understanding...' Temperamental, he thought, as the tenor strode on to the stage and the overture to Act Three drifted to its close. They're like that, the real artistes. Nerves stretched like rubber bands, I expect. It's just like waiting for the cheese, really. You can get really edgy waiting to see whether you've got half a ton of best blue-vein or just a vat full of pig food. It's probably like that when you've got an aria working its way up– 'Where'd he go? Where'd he go?' 'What? Oh... Mrs Ogg. . .' The old woman waved a saw in front of his face. It was not, in Mr Bucket's current state of mental tension, a helpful gesture. He was suddenly surrounded by other figures, equally conducive to multiple exclamation marks. 'Perdita? Why aren't you on stage... oh, Lady Esmerelda, I didn't see you there, of course if you want to come backstage you only have to–' 'Where's Salzella?' said André. Bucket looked around vaguely. 'He was here a few minutes ago... That is,' he said, pulling himself together, 'Mr Salzella is probably attending to his duties somewhere which, young man, is more than I can say for–' 'I demand you stop the show now,' said André. 'Oh, you do, do you? And by what authority, may I ask?' 'He's been sawing through the rope!' said Nanny. André pulled out a badge. 'This!' Bucket looked closely. ' "Ankh-Morpork Guild of Musicians member z 244"?' André glared at him, then at the badge, and started to pat his pockets urgently. 'No! Blast, I know I had the other one a moment ago... Look, you've got to clear the theatre, we've got to search it, and that means–' 'Don't stop the show,' said Granny. 'I won't stop the show,' said Bucket. ' 'Cos I reckon he'd like to see the show stopped. The show must go on, eh? Isn't that what you believe? Could he have got out of the building?' 'I sent Corporal Nobbs to the stage-door and Sergeant Detritus is in the foyer,' said André. 'When it comes to standing in doorways, they're among the best.' 'Excuse me, what's happening?' said Bucket. 'He could be anywhere!' said Agnes. 'There're hundreds of hiding-places!' 'Who?' said Bucket. 'How about these cellars everyone talks about?' said Granny. 'Where?' 'There's only one entrance,' said André. 'He's not stupid.' 'He can't get into the cellars,' said Nanny. 'He ran off? Probably in a cupboard somewhere by now!' 'No, he'll stay where there's crowds,' said Granny. 'That's what I'd do.' 'What?' said Bucket. 'Could he have got into the audience from here?' said Nanny. 'Who?' said Bucket. Granny jerked a thumb towards the stage. 'He's somewhere on there. I can feel him.' 'Then we'll wait until he comes off!' 'Eighty people coming off stage all at once?' said Agnes. 'Don't you know what it's like when the curtain goes down?' 'And we don't want to stop the show,' Granny mused. 'No, we don't want to stop the show,' said Bucket, grasping at a familiar idea as it swept by on a tide of incomprehensibility. 'Or give people their money back in any fashion whatsoever. What are we talking about, does anyone know?' 'The show must go on. . .' murmured Granny Weatherwax, still staring out of the wings. 'Things have to end right. This is an opera house. They should end... operatically...' Nanny Ogg hopped up and down excitedly. 'Oo, I know what you're thinking, Esme!' she squeaked. 'Oo, yes! Can we? Just so's I can say I done it! Eh? Can we? Go on! Let's!'     Henry Lawsy peered closely at his opera notes. He had not, of course, fully understood the events of the first two acts, but knew that this was perfectly OK because one would have to be quite naive to expect good sense as well as good songs. Anyway, it would all be explained in the last act, which was the Masked Ball in the Duke's Palace. It would almost certainly turn out that the woman one of the men had been rather daringly courting would be his own wife, but so cunningly disguised by a very small mask that her husband wouldn't have spotted that she wore the same clothes and had the same hairstyle. Someone's serving man would turn out to be someone else's daughter in disguise; someone would die of something that didn't prevent them from singing about it for several minutes; and the plot would be resolved by some coincidences which, in real life, would be as likely as a cardboard hammer. He didn't know any of this for a fact. He was making a calculated guess. In the meantime Act Three opened with the traditional ballet, this time apparently a country dance by the Maidens of the Court. Henry was aware of muffled laughter around him. This was because, if you ran an eye at head-height along the row of ballerinas as they tripped, arm in arm, on to the stage, there was an apparent gap. This was only filled if the gaze went downwards a foot or two, to a small fat ballerina in a huge grin, an overstretched tutu, long white drawers and... boots. Henry stared. They were big boots. They moved back and forth at an astonishing speed. The satin slippers of the other dancers twinkled as they drifted across the floor, but the boots flashed and clattered like a tap dancer afraid of falling into the sink. The pirouettes were novel, too. While the other dancers whirled like snowflakes, the little fat one spun like a top and moved across the floor like one too, bits of her anatomy trying to achieve local orbit. Around Henry members of the audience were whispering to one another. 'Oh yes,' he heard someone declare, 'they tried this in Pseudopolis...' His mother nudged him. 'This supposed to happen?' 'Er... I don't think so...' ' 'S bloody good, though! A good laugh!' As the fat ballerina collided with a donkey in evening dress she staggered and grabbed at his mask, which came off... Herr Trubelmacher, the conductor, froze in horror and astonishment. Around him the orchestra rattled to a standstill, except for the tuba player -oom-BAH-oom-BAH-oom-BAH– -who had memorized his score years ago and never took much interest in current affairs. Two figures rose up right in front of Trubelmacher. A hand grabbed his baton. 'Sorry, sir,' said André, 'but the show must go on, yes?' He handed the stick to the other figure. 'There you are,' he said. 'And don't let them stop.' 'Ook!' The Librarian carefully lifted Herr Trubelmacher aside with one hand, licked the baton thoughtfully, and then focused his gaze on the tuba player. -oom-BAH-oom-BAHhhh... oom... om... The tuba player tapped a trombonist on the shoulder. 'hey, Frank, there's a monkey where old troublemaker should be–' 'shutupshutupshutup!' Satisfied, the orang-utan raised his arms. The orchestra looked up. And then looked up a bit more. No conductor in musical history, not even the one who once fried and ate the piccolo-player's liver on a cymbal for one wrong note too many, not even the one who skewered three troublesome violinists on his baton, not even the one who made really hurtful sarcastic remarks in a loud voice, was ever the focus of such reverential attention. On stage, Nanny Ogg took advantage of the hush to pull the head off a frog. 'Madam!' 'Sorry, thought you might be someone else...' The long arms dropped. The orchestra, in one huge muddled chord, slammed back into life. The dancers, after a moment's confusion during which Nanny Ogg took the opportunity to decapitate a clown and a phoenix, tried to continue. The chorus watched in bemusement. Christine felt a tap on her shoulder, and turned to see Agnes. 'Perdita! Where have you been!?' she hissed. 'It's nearly time for my duet with Enrico!' 'You've got to help!' hissed Agnes. But down in her soul Perdita said: Enrico, eh? It's Senor Basilica to everyone else... 'Help you what!?' said Christine. 'Take everyone's masks off!' Christine's forehead wrinkled beautifully. 'That's not supposed to happen until the end of the opera, is it?' 'Er... it's all been changed!' said Agnes urgently. She turned to a nobleman in a zebra mask and tugged it desperately. The singer underneath glared at her. 'Sorry!' she whispered. 'I thought you were someone else!' 'We're not supposed to take them off until the end!' 'It's been changed!' 'Has it? No one told me!' A short-necked giraffe next to him leaned sideways. 'What's that?' 'The big unmasking scene is now, apparently!' 'No one told me!' 'Yes, but when does anyone ever tell us anything? We're only the chorus... here, why is old Troublemaker wearing a monkey mask... ?' Nanny Ogg pirouetted past, cannoned into an elephant in evening dress and beheaded him by the trunk. She whispered: 'We're looking for the Ghost, see?' 'But... the Ghost is dead, isn't he?' 'Hard things to kill, ghosts,' said Nanny. The whisper spread outwards from that point. There is nothing like a chorus for rumour. People who would not believe a High Priest if he said the sky was blue, and was able to produce signed affidavits to this effect from his white-haired old mother and three Vestal virgins, would trust just about anything whispered darkly behind their hand by a complete stranger in a pub. A cockatoo spun around and pulled the mask off a parrot...     Bucket sobbed. This was worse than the day the buttermilk exploded. This was worse than the flash heatwave that had led a whole warehouseful of Lancre Extra Strong to riot. The opera had turned into a pantomime. The audience was laughing. About the only character still with a mask on was Senor Basilica, who was watching the struggling chorus with as much aloof amazement as his own mask could convey -and this, amazingly enough, was quite a lot. 'Oh, no...' moaned Bucket. 'We'll never live it down! He'll never come back! It'll be all over the opera circuit and no one will ever want to come here ever again!' 'Ever again wha'?' mumbled a voice behind him. Bucket turned. 'Oh, Senor Basilica,' he said. 'Didn't see you there... I was just thinking, I do hope you don't think this is typical!' Senor Basilica stared through him, swaying slightly from side to side. He was wearing a torn shirt. 'Summon. . .' he said. 'I'm sorry?' 'Summon... summon hit me onna head,' said the tenor. 'Wanna glassa water pliss...' 'But you're... just about... to... sing... aren't you?' said Bucket. He grabbed the stunned man by the collar to pull him closer, but this simply meant that he dragged himself off the floor, bringing his shoes about level with Basilica's knees. 'Tell me... you're out there... on the stage... please!!!' Even in his stunned state, Enrico Basilica a.k.a. Henry Slugg recognized what might be called the essential dichotomy of the statement. He stuck to what he knew. 'Summon bashed me inna corridor...' he volunteered. 'That's not you out there?' Basilica blinked heavily. "M not me?' 'You're going to sing the famous duet in a moment!!!' Another thought staggered through Basilica's abused skull. "M I?' he said. "S good... 'll look forwa' to that. Ne'er had a chance to hear me befo'...' He gave a happy little sigh and fell full-length backwards. Bucket leaned against a pillar for support. Then his brow furrowed and, in the best traditions of the extended double-take, he stared at the fallen tenor and counted to one on his fingers. Then he turned towards the stage and counted to two. He could feel a fourth exclamation mark coming on any time now.     The Enrico Basilica on stage turned his mask this way and that. Stage right, Bucket was whispering to a group of stage-hands. Stage left, André the secret pianist was waiting. A large troll loomed next to him. The fat red singer walked to centre-stage as the prelude to the duet began. The audience settled down again. Fun and games among the chorus was all very well–it might even be in the plot–but this was what they'd paid for. This was what it was all about. Agnes stared at him as Christine walked towards him. Now she could see he wasn't right. Oh, he was fat, in a pillow-up-your-shirt sort of way, but he didn't move like Basilica. Basilica moved lightly on his feet, as fat men often do, giving the effect of a barely tethered balloon. She glanced at Nanny, who was also watching him carefully. She couldn't see Granny Weatherwax anywhere. That probably meant she was really close. The expectancy of the audience dragged at them all. Ears opened like petals. The fourth wall of the stage, the big black sucking darkness outside, was a well of silence begging to be filled up. Christine was walking towards him quite unconcerned. Christine would walk into a dragon's mouth if it had a sign on it saying 'Totally harmless, I promise you'... at least, if it was printed in large, easy-to-understand letters. No one seemed to want to do anything. It was a famous duet. And a beautiful one. Agnes ought to know. She'd been singing it all last night. Christine took the false Basilica's hand and, as the opening bars of the duet began, opened her mouth 'Stop right there!' Agnes put everything she could into it. The chandelier tinkled. The orchestra went silent in a skid of wheezes and twangs. In a fading of chords and a dying of echoes, the show stopped.     Walter Plinge sat in the candlelit gloom under the stage, his hands resting on his lap. It was not often that Walter Plinge had nothing to do, but, when he did have nothing to do, he did nothing. He liked it down here. It was familiar. The sounds of the opera filtered through. They were muffled, but that didn't matter. Walter knew all the words, every note of music, every step of every dance. He needed the actual performances only in the same way that a clock needs its tiny little escapement mechanism; it kept him ticking nicely. Mrs Plinge had taught him to read using the old programmes. That's how he knew he was part of it all. But he knew that anyway. He'd cut what teeth he had on a helmet with horns on it. The first bed he could remember was the very same trampoline used by Dame Gigli in the infamous Bouncing Gigli incident. Walter Plinge lived opera. He breathed its songs, painted its scenery, lit its fires, washed its floors and shined its shoes. Opera filled up places in Walter Plinge that might otherwise have been empty. And now the show had stopped. But all the energy, all the raw pent-up emotion that is dammed up behind a show–all the screaming, the fears, the hopes, the desires–flew on, like a body hurled from the wreckage. The terrible momentum smashed into Walter Plinge like a tidal wave hitting a teacup. It propelled him out of his chair and flung him against the crumbling scenery. He slid down and rolled into a twitching heap on the floor, clapping his hands over his ears to shut out the sudden, unnatural silence. A shape stepped out of the shadows. Granny Weatherwax had never heard of psychiatry and would have had no truck with it even if she had. There are some arts too black even for a witch. She practised headology–practised, in fact, until she was very good at it. And though there may be some superficial similarities between a psychiatrist and a headologist, there is a huge practical difference. A psychiatrist, dealing with a man who fears he is being followed by a large and terrible monster, will endeavour to convince him that monsters don't exist. Granny Weatherwax would simply give him a chair to stand on and a very heavy stick. 'Stand up, Walter Plinge,' she said. Walter stood up, staring straight ahead of him. 'It's stopped! It's stopped! It's bad luck to stop the show!' he said hoarsely. 'Someone better start it again,' said Granny. 'You can't stop the show! It's the show!' 'Yes. Someone better start it again, Walter Plinge.' Walter didn't appear to notice her. He pawed aimlessly through his stack of music and ran his hands through the drifts of old programmes. One hand touched the keyboard of the harmonium and played a few neurotic notes. 'Wrong to stop. Show must go on...' 'Mr Salzella is trying to stop the show, isn't he, Walter?' Walter's head shot up. He stared straight ahead of him. 'You haven't seen anything, Walter Plinge!' he said, in a voice so like Salzella's that even Granny raised an eyebrow. 'And if you tell lies, you will be locked up and I'll see to it that there's big trouble for your mother!' Granny nodded. 'He found out about the Ghost, didn't he?' she said. 'The Ghost who comes out when he has a mask on... doesn't he, Walter Plinge? And the man thought: I can use that. And when it's time for the Ghost to be caught... well, there is a Ghost that can be caught. And the best thing is that everyone will believe it. They'll feel bad about themselves, maybe, but they'll believe it. Even Walter Plinge won't be certain, 'cos his mind's all tangled up.' Granny took a deep breath. 'It's tangled, but it ain't twisted.' There was a sigh. 'Well, matters will have to resolve themselves. There's nothing else for it.' She removed her hat and fished around in the point. 'I don't mind tellin' you this, Walter,' she said, 'because you won't understand and you won't remember. There was a wicked ole witch once called Black Aliss. She was an unholy terror. There's never been one worse or more powerful. Until now. Because I could spit in her eye and steal her teeth, see. Because she didn't know Right from Wrong, so she got all twisted up and that was the end of her. 'The trouble is, you see, that if you do know Right from Wrong you can't choose Wrong. You just can't do it and live. So... if I was a bad witch I could make Mister Salzella's muscles turn against his bones and break them where he stood... if I was bad. I could do things inside his head, change the shape he thinks he is, and he'd be down on what'd been his knees and begging to be turned into a frog... if I was bad. I could leave him with a mind like a scrambled egg, listening to colours and hearing smells... if I was bad. Oh, yes.' There was another sigh, deeper and more heartfelt. 'But I can't do none of that stuff: That wouldn't be Right.' She gave a deprecating little chuckle. And if Nanny Ogg had been listening, she would have resolved as follows: that no maddened cackle from Black Aliss of infamous memory, no evil little giggle from some crazed vampyre whose morals were worse than his spelling, no sidesplitting guffaw from the most inventive torturer, was quite so unnerving as a happy little chuckle from a Granny Weatherwax about to do what's best. From the point of her hat Granny withdrew a paper-thin mask. It was a simple face–smooth, white, basic. There were semi-circular holes for the eyes. It was neither happy nor sad. She turned it over in her hands. Walter seemed to stop breathing. 'Simple thing, ain't it?' said Granny. 'Looks beautiful, but it's really just a simple bit of stuff, just like any other mask. Wizards could poke at this for a year and still say there was nothing magic about it, eh? Which just shows how much they know, Walter Plinge. ' She tossed it to him. He caught it hungrily and pulled it over his face. Then he stood up in one flowing movement, moving like a dancer. 'I don't know what you are when you're behind the mask,' said Granny, 'but "ghost" is just another word for "spirit" and "spirit" is just another word for "soul". Off you go, Walter Plinge.' The masked figure did not move. 'I meant... off you go, Ghost. The show must go on.' The mask nodded, and darted away. Granny slapped her hands together like the crack of doom. 'Right! Let's do some good!' she said, to the universe at large.     Everyone was looking at her. This was a moment in time, a little point between the past and future, when a second could stretch out and out... Agnes felt the blush begin. It was heading for her face like the revenge of the volcano god. When it got there, she knew, it would be all over for her. You'll apologize, Perdita jeered. 'Shut up!' shouted Agnes. She strode forward before the echo had had time to come back from the further ends of the auditorium, and wrenched at the red mask. The entire chorus came in on cue. This was opera, after all. The show had stopped, but opera continued... 'Salzella!' He grabbed Agnes, clamping his hand over her mouth. His other hand flew to his belt and drew his sword. It wasn't a stage prop. The blade hissed through the air as he spun to face the chorus. 'Oh dear oh dear oh dear,' he said. 'How extremely operatic of me. And now, I fear, I shall have to take this poor girl hostage. It's the appropriate thing to do, isn't it?' He looked around triumphantly. The audience watched in fascinated silence. 'Isn't anyone going to say "You won't get away with this"?' he said. 'You won't get away with this,' said André, from the wings. 'You have the place surrounded, I have no doubt?' said Salzella brightly. 'Yes, we have the place surrounded.' Christine screamed and fainted. Salzella smiled even more brightly. 'Ah, now there's someone operatic!' he said. 'But, you see, I am going to get away with it, because I don't think operatically. Myself and this young lady here are going to go down to the cellars where I may, possibly, leave her unharmed. I doubt very much that you have the cellars surrounded. Even I don't know everywhere they go, and believe me my knowledge is really rather extensive' He paused. Agnes tried to break free, but his grip tightened around her neck. 'By now,' he said, 'someone should have said: "But why, Salzella?" Honestly, do I have to do everything around here?' Bucket realized he had his mouth open. 'That's what I was going to say!' he said. 'Ah, good. Well, in that case, I should say something like: Because I wanted to. Because I rather like money, you see. But more than that'- he took a deep breath–'I really hate opera. I don't want to get needlessly excited about this, but opera, I am afraid, really is dreadful. And I have had enough. So, while I have the stage, let me tell you what a wretched, selfadoring, totally unrealistic, worthless artform it is, what a terrible waste of fine music, what a–' There was a whirr off on one side of the stage. The skirts of costumes began to flap. Dust flew up. André looked around. Beside him, the wind machine had started up. The handle was turning by itself. Salzella turned to see what everyone was staring at. The Ghost had dropped lightly on to the stage. His opera cloak billowed around him... operatically. He bowed slightly, and drew his sword. 'But you're dea–' Salzella began. 'Oh, yes! A ghost of a Ghost! Totally unbelievable and an offence against common sense, in the best operatic tradition! This was really too much to hope for!' He thrust Agnes away, and nodded happily. 'That's what opera does to a man,' he said. 'It rots the brain, you see, and I doubt whether he had too much of that to begin with. It drives people mad. Mad, d'you hear me, mad!! Ahem. They act irrationally. Don't you think I've watched you, over the years? It's like a hothouse for insanity!! D'you hear me? Insanity!!' He and the Ghost began to circle one another. 'You don't know what it has been like, I assure you, being the only sane man in this madhouse!! You believe anything!! You'd prefer to believe a ghost can be in two places at once than that there might simply be two people!! Even Pounder thought he could blackmail me!! Poking around in places that he shouldn't!! Well, of course, I had to kill him for his own good. This place sends even ratcatchers mad!! And Undershaft... well, why couldn't he have forgotten his glasses like he usually did, eh?' He lashed out with his sword. The Ghost parried. 'And now I'll fight your Ghost,' he said, moving forward in a flurry of strokes, 'and you'll notice that our Ghost here doesn't actually know how to fence... because he only knows stage-fencing, you see... where the whole point, of course, is simply to hit the other fellow's sword with a suitably impressive metallic noise... so that you can die very dramatically merely because he's carefully thrust his sword under your armpit...' The Ghost was forced to retreat under the onslaught, until he fell backwards over the unconscious body of Christine. 'See?' said Salzella. 'That's what comes of believing in opera!!!' He reached down quickly and tugged the mask off Walter Plinge's face. 'Really, Walter!!! You are a bad boy!!!!' 'Sorry Mr Salzella!' 'Look how everyone's staring!!!!' 'Sorry Mr Salzella!' The mask crumpled in Salzella's fingers. He let the fragments tumble to the floor. Then he pulled Walter to his feet. 'See, company? This is your luck!!! This is your Ghost!!! Without his mask he's just an idiot who can hardly tie his shoelaces!!! Ahahaha!!!! Ahem. It's all your fault, Walter Plinge...' 'Yes Mr Salzella!' 'No.' Salzella looked around. 'No one would believe Walter Plinge. Even Walter Plinge gets confused about the things Walter Plinge sees. Even his mother was afraid he might have murdered people. People could accept just about anything of a Walter Plinge.' There was a steady tapping noise. The trapdoor opened beside Salzella. A pointy hat appeared slowly, followed by the rest of Granny Weatherwax, with her arms folded. She glared at Salzella as the floor clicked into place. Her foot stopped tapping on the boards. 'Well, well,' he said. 'Lady Esmerelda, eh?' 'I'm stoppin' bein' a lady, Mr Salzella.' He glanced up at the pointy hat. 'So you are a witch instead?' 'Yes, indeed.' 'A bad witch, no doubt?' 'Worse.' 'But this,' said Salzella, 'is a sword. Everyone knows witches can't magic iron and steel. Get out of my way!!!' The sword hissed down. Granny thrust out her hand. There was a blur of flesh and steel and... ...she held the sword, by the blade. 'Tell you what, Mr Salzella,' she said, levelly, 'it ought to be Walter Plinge who finishes this, eh? It's him you harmed, apart from the ones you murdered, o' course. You didn't need to do that. But you wore a mask, didn't you? There's a kind of magic in masks. Masks conceal one face, but they reveal another. The one that only comes out in darkness. I bet you could do just what you liked, behind a mask... ?' Salzella blinked at her. He pulled on his sword, tugged hard on a sharp blade held in an unprotected hand. There was a groan from several members of the chorus. Granny grinned. Her knuckles whitened as she redoubled her grip. She turned her head towards Walter Plinge. 'Put your mask on, Walter.' Everyone looked down at the crumpled cardboard on the stage. 'Don't have one any more Mistress Weatherwax!' Granny followed his gaze. 'Oh deary, deary me,' she said. 'Well, I can see we shall have to do something about that. Look at me, Walter.' He did as he was told. Granny's eyes half-closed. 'You... trust Perdita, don't you, Walter?' 'Yes Mistress Weatherwax!' 'That's good, because she's got a new mask for you, Walter Plinge. A magic one. It's just like your old one, d'you see, only you wear it under your skin and you don't have to take it off and no one but you will ever need to know it's there. Got it, Perdita?' 'But I–' Agnes began. 'Got it?' 'Er... oh, yes. Here it is. Yes. I've got it in my hand.' She waved an empty hand vaguely. 'You're holding it the wrong way up, my girl!' 'Oh. Sorry.' 'Well? Give it to him, then.' 'Er. Yes.' Agnes advanced on Walter. 'Now you take it, Walter,' said Granny, still gripping the sword. 'Yes Mistress Weatherwax...' He reached out towards Agnes. As he did so, she was sure that, just for a moment, there was a faint pressure on her fingertips. 'Well? Put it on!' Walter looked uncertain. 'You do believe there's a mask there, don't you, Walter?' Granny demanded. 'Perdita's sensible and she knows an invisible mask when she sees one.' He nodded, slowly, and raised his hands to his face. And Agnes was sure that he'd somehow come into focus. Almost certainly nothing had happened that could be measured with any kind of instrument, any more than you could weigh an idea or sell good fortune by the yard. But Walter stood up, smiling faintly. 'Good,' said Granny. She stared at Salzella. 'I reckon you two should fight again,' she said. 'But it can't be said I'm unfair. I expect you've got a Ghost mask somewhere? Mrs Ogg saw you waving it, see. And she's not as gormless as she looks–' 'Thank you,' said a fat ballerina. '-so she thought, how could people still say afterwards that they'd seen the Ghost? 'Cos that's how you recognize the Ghost, by his mask. So there's two masks.' Under her gaze, telling himself that he could resist any time he wanted to, Salzella reached into his jacket and produced his own mask. 'Put it on, then.' She let go of the sword. 'Then who you are can fight who he is.' Down in the pit, the percussionist stared as his sticks rose and began a drum roll. 'Are you doing that, Gytha?' said Granny Weatherwax. 'I thought you were.' 'It's opera, then. The show must go on.' Walter Plinge raised his sword. The masked Salzella glanced from him to Granny, and then lunged. The swords met. It was, Agnes realized, stage-fighting. The swords clashed and rattled as the fighters danced back and forth across the stage. Walter wasn't trying to hit Salzella. Every thrust was parried. Every opportunity to strike back, as the director of music grew more angry, was ignored. 'This isn't fighting!' Salzella shouted, standing back. 'This is' Walter thrust. Salzella staggered away, until he cannoned into Nanny Ogg. He lurched sideways. Then he staggered forward, dropped on to one knee, got unsteadily to his feet again, and staggered into the centre of the stage. 'Whatever happens,' he gasped, wrenching off his mask, 'it can't be worse than a season of opera!!!! I don't mind where I'm going so long as there are no fat men pretending to be thin boys, and no huge long songs which everyone says are so beautiful just because they don't understand what the hell they're actually about!!!! Ah- Ahargh...' He slumped to the floor. 'But Walter didn't–' Agnes began. 'Shut up,' said Nanny Ogg, out of the corner of her mouth. 'But he hasn't–' Bucket began. 'Incidentally, another thing I can't stand about opera,' said Salzella, rising to his feet and reeling crabwise towards the curtains, 'are the plots. They make no sense!! And no one ever says so!!! And the quality of the acting? It's nonexistent!! Everyone stands around watching the person who's singing. Ye gods, it's going to be a relief to put that behind... ah... argh...' He slumped to the floor. 'Is that it?' said Nanny. 'Shouldn't think so,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'As for the people who attend opera,' said Salzella, struggling upright again and staggering sideways, 'I think I just possibly hate them even worse!!! They're so ignorant!!! There's hardly a one of them out there who knows the first thing about music!!! They go on about tunes!!! They spend all day endeavouring to be sensible human beings, and then they walk in here and they leave their intelligence on a nail by the door–' 'Then why didn't you just leave?' snapped Agnes. 'If you'd stolen all this money why didn't you just go away somewhere, if you hated it so much?' Salzella stared at her while swaying back and forth. His mouth opened and shut once or twice, as if he were trying out unfamiliar words. 'Leave?' he managed. 'Leave? Leave the opera?... Argh argh argh...' He hit the floor again. André prodded the fallen director. 'Is he dead yet?' he said. 'How can he be dead?' said Agnes. 'Good grief, can't anyone see that ?' 'You know what really gets me down,' said Salzella, rising to his knees, 'is the way that in opera everyone takes such a long!!!!!... time!!!!!... to!!!!!... argh... argh... argh...' He keeled over. The company waited for a while. The audience held its collective breath. Nanny Ogg poked him with a boot. 'Yep, that's about it. Looks like he's gone down for the last curtain call,' she said. 'But Walter didn't stab him!' said Agnes. 'Why won't anyone listen? Look, the sword isn't even sticking in him! It's just tucked between his body and his arm, for heaven's sake!' 'Yes,' said Nanny. 'I s'pose, really, it's a shame he dint notice that.' She scratched at her shoulder. 'Here, these ballet dresses really tickle...' 'But he's dead!' 'Got a bit overexcited, perhaps,' said Nanny, fidgeting with a strap. 'Overexcited?' 'Frantic. You know these artistic types. Well, you are one, of course.' 'He's really dead?' said Bucket. 'Seems to be,' said Granny. 'One of the best operatic deaths ever, I wouldn't mind betting.' 'That's terrible!!' Bucket grabbed the former Salzella by the collar and hauled him upright. 'Where's my money? Come on, out with it, tell me what you've done with my money!!! I don't hear you!!!! He's not saying anything!!!' 'That's on account of being dead,' said Granny. 'Not talkative, the deceased. As a rule.' 'Well, you're a witch!!! Can't you do that thing with the cards and the glasses?' 'Well, yes... we could have a poker game,' said Nanny. 'Good idea.' 'The money is in the cellars,' said Granny. 'Walter'll show you.' Walter Plinge clicked his heels. 'Certainly,' he said. 'I would be glad to.' Bucket stared. It was Walter Plinge's voice and it was coming out of Walter Plinge's face, but both face and voice were different. Subtly different. The voice had lost the uncertain, frightened edge. The lopsided look had gone from the face. 'Good grief,' Bucket murmured, and let go of Salzella's coat. There was a thump. 'And since you're going to be needing a new director of music,' said Granny, 'you could do worse than look to Walter here.' 'Walter?' 'He knows everything there is to know about opera,' said Granny. 'And everything about the Opera House, too.' 'You should see the music he's written–' said Nanny. 'Walter? Musical director?' said Bucket. '-stuff you can really hum–' 'Yes, I think you might be surprised,' said Granny. '-there's one with lots of sailors dancin' around singin' about how there's no women–' 'This is Walter, isn't it?' '-and then some bloke called Les who's miserable all the time–' 'Oh, this is Walter,' said Granny. 'The same person. '-and there's one, hah, with all cats all leapin' around all singin', that was fun,' Nanny burbled. 'Can't imagine how he thought up that one–' Bucket scratched his chin. He was feeling lightheaded enough as it was. 'And he's trustworthy,' said Granny. 'And he's honest. And he knows all about the Opera House, as I said. And... where everything is...' That was enough for Mr Bucket. 'Want to be director of music, Walter?' he said. 'Thank you, Mr Bucket,' said Walter Plinge. 'I should like that very much. But what about cleaning the privies?' 'Sorry?' 'I won't have to stop doing them, will I? I've just got them working right.' 'Oh? Right. Really?' Mr Bucket's eyes crossed for a moment. 'Well, fine. You can sing while you're doing it, if you like,' he added generously. 'And I won't even cut your pay! I'll... I'll raise it! Six... no, seven shiny dollars!' Walter rubbed his face thoughtfully. 'Mr Bucket...' 'Yes, Walter?' 'I think... you paid Mr Salzella forty shiny dollars...' Bucket turned to Granny. 'Is he some kind of monster?' 'You just listen to the stuff he's been writin',' said Nanny. 'Amazin' songs, not even in foreign. Will you just look at this stuff...'scuse me...' She turned her back on the audience– –twingtwangtwong– –and twirled round again with a wad of music paper in her hands. 'I know good music when I sees it,' she said, handing it to Bucket and pointing excitedly at extracts. 'It's got blobs and curly bits all over it, see?' 'You have been writing this music?' said Bucket to Walter. 'Which is unaccountably warm?' 'Indeed, Mr Bucket.' 'In my time?' 'There's a lovely song here,' said Nanny, ' "Don't cry for me, Genua". It's very sad. That reminds me, I'd better go and see if Mrs Plinge has come rou... has woken up. I may have overdone it a bit on the stumble.' She ambled off, twitching at bits of her costume, and nudged a fascinated ballerina. 'This balleting doesn't half make you sweat, don't you find?' 'Excuse me, there's something I didn't quite believe,' said André. He took Salzella's sword and tested the blade carefully. 'Ow!' he shouted. 'Sharp, is it?' said Agnes. 'Yes!' André sucked his thumb. 'She caught it in her hand.' 'She's a witch,' said Agnes. 'But it was steel! I thought no one could magic steel! Everyone knows that.' 'I wouldn't be too impressed if I was you,' said Agnes sourly. 'It was probably just some kind of trick...' André turned to Granny. 'Your hand isn't even scratched! How did... you...' Her stare held him in its sapphire vice for a moment. When he turned away he looked vaguely puzzled, like a man who can't remember where he's just put something down. 'I hope he didn't hurt Christine,' he mumbled. 'Why isn't anyone seeing to her?' 'Probably because she makes sure she screams and faints before anything happens,' said Perdita, through Agnes. André set off across the stage. Agnes trailed after him. A couple of dancers were kneeling down next to Christine. 'It'd be terrible if anything happened to her,' said André. 'Oh... yes.' 'Everyone says she's showing such promise...' Walter stepped up beside him. 'Yes. We should get her somewhere,' he said. His voice was clipped and precise. Agnes felt the bottom start to drop out of her world. 'Yes, but... you know it was me doing the singing.' 'Oh, yes... yes, of course...' said André, awkwardly. 'But...well... this is opera... you know...' Walter took her hand. 'But it was me you taught!' she said desperately. 'Then you were very good,' said Walter. 'I suspect she will never be quite that good, even with many months of my tuition. But, Perdita, have you ever heard of the words "star quality"?' 'Is it the same as talent?' snapped Agnes. 'It is rarer.' She stared at him. His face, however it was controlled now, was quite handsome in the glare of the footlights. She pulled her hand free. 'I liked you better when you were Walter Plinge,' she said. Agnes turned away, and felt Granny Weatherwax's gaze on her. She was sure it was a mocking gaze. 'Er... we ought to get Christine into Mr Bucket's office,' André said. This seemed to break some sort of spell. 'Yes, indeed!!!' said Bucket. 'And we can't leave Mr Salzella corpsing on stage, either. You two, you'd better take him backstage. The rest of you... well, it was nearly over anyway... er... that's it. The... opera is over...' 'Walter Plinge!' Nanny Ogg entered, supporting Mrs Plinge. Walter's mother fixed him with a beady gaze. 'Have you been a bad boy?' Mr Bucket walked over to her and patted her hand. 'I think you'd better come along to my office, too,' he said. He handed the sheaf of music to André, who opened it at random. André gave it a glance, and then stared. 'Hey... this is good,' he said. 'Is it?' André looked at another page. 'Good heavens!' 'What? What?' said Bucket. 'I've just never... I mean, even I can see... tum-ti TUM tum-tum...yes... Mr Bucket, you do know this isn't opera? There's music and... yes... dancing and singing all right, but it's not opera. Not opera at all. A long way from opera.' 'How far? You don't mean...' Bucket hesitated, savouring the idea, 'you don't mean that it's just possible that you put music in and you get money out?' André hummed a few bars. 'This could very well be the case, Mr Bucket.' Bucket beamed. He put one arm around André and the other around Walter. 'Good!!!!!' he said. 'This calls for a very lar... for a medium-sized mm drink ..... One by one, or in groups, the singers and dancers left the stage. And the witches and Agnes were left alone. 'Is that it?' said Agnes. 'Not quite yet,' said Granny. Someone staggered on to the stage. A kindly hand had bandaged Enrico Basilica's head, and presumably another kindly hand had given him the plate of spaghetti he was holding. Mild concussion still seemed to have him in its grip. He blinked at the witches and then spoke like a man who'd lost his hold on immediate events and so was clinging hard to more ancient considerations. 'Summon give me some 'ghetti,' he said. 'That's nice,' said Nanny. 'Hah! 'Ghetti is fine for them as likes it... but not me! Hah! Yes!' He turned and peered muzzily at the darkness of the audience. 'You know what I'm goin' to do? You know what I'm goin' to do now? I'm sayin' goodbye to Enrico Basilica! Oh yes! He's chewed his last tentacle! I'm goin' to go right out now and have eight pints of Turbot's Really Odd. Yes! And probably a sausage in a bun! And then I'm goin' down to the music hall to hear Nellie Stamp sing "A Winkles No Use if You Don't Have a Pin"–and if I sing again here it's goin' to be under the proud old name of Henry Slugg, do you hear-?' There was a shriek from somewhere in the audience. 'Henry Slugg?' 'Er... yes?' 'I thought it was you! You've grown a beard and stuffed a haystack down your trousers but, I thought, under that little mask, that's my Henry, that was!' Henry Slugg shaded his eyes from the footlights' glare. '...Angeline?' 'Oh, no!' said Agnes, wearily. 'This sort of thing does not happen.' 'Happens in the theatre all the time,' said Nanny Ogg. 'It certainly does,' said Granny. 'It's only a mercy he doesn't have a long-lost twin brother.' There was the sound of much scuffling in the audience. Someone was climbing along a row, dragging someone else. 'Mother!' came a voice from the gloom. 'What do you think you are doing?' 'You just come with me, young Henry!' 'Mother, we can't go up on the stage... !' Henry Slugg frisbeed the plate into the wings, clambered down from the stage and heaved himself over the edge of the orchestra pit, assisted by a couple of violinists. They met at the first row of seats. Agnes could just hear their voices. 'I meant to come back. You know that!' 'I wanted to wait but, what with one thing and another... especially one thing. Come here, young Henry. . .' 'Mother, what is happening?' 'Son... you know I always said your father was Mr Lawsy the eel juggler?' 'Yes, of–' 'Please, both of you, come back to my dressingroom! I can see we've got such a lot to talk about.' 'Oh, yes. A lot...' Agnes watched them go. The audience, who could spot opera even if it wasn't being sung, applauded. 'All right,' she said. 'And now is it the end?' 'Nearly,' said Granny. 'Did you do something to everyone's heads?' 'No, but I felt like smacking a few,' said Nanny. 'But no one said "thank you" or anything!' 'Often the case,' said Granny. 'Too busy thinking about the next performance,' said Nanny. 'The show must go on,' she added. 'That's... that's madness!' 'It's opera. I noticed that even Mr Bucket's caught it, too,' said Nanny. 'And that young André has been rescued from being a policeman, if I'm any judge.' 'But what about me?' 'Oh, them as makes the endings don't get them,' said Granny. She brushed an invisible speck of dust off her shoulder. 'I expect we'd better be gettin' along, Gytha,' she said, turning her back on Agnes. 'Early start tomorrow.' Nanny walked forward, shading her eyes as she stared out into the dark maw of the auditorium. 'The audience haven't gone, you know,' she said. 'They're still sitting out there.' Granny joined her, and peered into the gloom. 'I can't imagine why,' she said. 'He did say the opera's over... They turned and looked at Agnes, who was standing in the centre of the stage and glowering at nothing. 'Feeling a bit angry?' said Nanny. 'Only to be expected.' 'Yes!' 'Feeling that everything's happened for other people and not for you?' 'Yes!' 'But,' said Granny Weatherwax, 'look at it like this: what's Christine got to look forward to? She'll just become a singer. Stuck in a little world. Oh, maybe she'll be good enough to get a little fame, but one day the voice'll crack and that's the end of her life. You have got a choice. You can either be on the stage, just a performer, just going through the lines... or you can be outside it, and know how the script works, where the scenery hangs, and where the trapdoors are. Isn't that better?' 'No!' The infuriating thing about Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax, Agnes thought later, was the way they sometimes acted in tandem, without exchanging a word. Of course, there were plenty of other things–the way they never thought that meddling was meddling if they did it; the way they automatically assumed that everyone else's business was their own; the way they went through life in a straight line; the way, in fact, that they arrived in any situation and immediately started to change it. Compared to that, acting on unspoken agreement was a mere minor annoyance, but it was here and up close. They walked towards her, and each laid a hand on her shoulder. 'Feeling angry?' said Granny. 'Yes!' 'I should let it out then, if I was you,' said Nanny. Agnes shut her eyes, clenched her fists, opened her mouth and screamed. It started low. Plaster dust drifted down from the ceiling. The prisms on the chandelier chimed gently as they shook. It rose, passing quickly through the mysterious pitch at fourteen cycles per second where the human spirit begins to feel distinctly uncomfortable about the universe and the place in it of the bowels. Small items around the Opera House vibrated off shelves and smashed on the floor. The note climbed, rang like a bell, climbed again. In the Pit, all the violin strings snapped, one by one. As the tone rose, the crystal prisms shook in the chandelier. In the bar, champagne corks fired a salvo. Ice jingled and shattered in its bucket. A line of wine-glasses joined in the chorus, blurred around the rims, and then exploded like hazardous thistledown with attitude. There were harmonics and echoes that caused strange effects. In the dressing-rooms the No. 3 greasepaint melted. Mirrors cracked, filling the ballet school with a million fractured images. Dust rose, insects fell. In the stones of the Opera House tiny particles of quartz danced briefly... Then there was silence, broken by the occasional thud and tinkle. Nanny grinned. 'Ah,' she said, 'now the opera's over.'     Salzella opened his eyes. The stage was empty, and dark, and nevertheless brilliantly lit. That is, a huge shadowless light was streaming from some unseen source and yet, apart from Salzella himself, there was nothing for it to illuminate. Footsteps sounded in the distance. Their owner took some time to arrive, but when he stepped into the liquid air around Salzella he seemed to burst into flame. He wore red: a red suit with red lace, a red cloak, red shoes with ruby buckles, and a broad-brimmed red hat with a huge red feather. He even walked with a long red stick, bedecked with red ribbons. But for someone who had taken such meticulous trouble with his costume, he'd been remiss in the matter of his mask. It was a crude one of a skull, such as might be bought in any theatrical shop–Salzella. could even see the string. 'Where did everyone go?' Salzella demanded. Unpleasant recent memories were beginning to bubble up in his mind. He couldn't quite recall them clearly at the moment, but the taste of them was bad. The figure said nothing. 'Where's the orchestra? What happened to the audience?' There was a barely perceptible shrug from the tall red figure. Salzella began to notice other details. What he had thought was the stage seemed slightly gritty underfoot. The ceiling above him was a long way away, perhaps as far away as anything could be, and was filled with cold, hard points of light. 'I asked you a question!' THREE QUESTIONS, IN FACT. The words turned up on the inside of Salzella's ears with no suggestion that they had had to travel like normal sound. 'You didn't answer me!' SOME THINGS YOU HAVE TO WORK OUT FOR YOURSELF, AND THIS IS ONE OF THEM, BELIEVE ME. 'Who are you? You're not a member of the cast, I know that! Take off that mask!' AS YOU WISH. I DO LIKE TO GET INTO THE SPIRIT OF THE THING. The figure removed its mask. 'And now take off that other mask!' said Salzella, as the frozen fingers of dread rose through him. Death touched a secret spring on the stick. A blade shot out, so thin that it was transparent, its edge glittering blue as air molecules were sliced into their component atoms. AH, he said, raising the scythe. THERE I THINK YOU HAVE ME.     It was dark in the cellars, but Nanny Ogg had walked alone in the strange caverns under Lancre and through the night-time forests with Granny Weatherwax. Darkness held no fears for an Ogg. She struck a match. 'Greebo?' People had been tramping to and fro for hours. The darkness wasn't private any more. It had taken quite a lot of people to carry all the money, for a start. Up until the end of the opera, there had been something mysterious about these cellars. Now they were just... well... damp underground rooms. Something that had lived here had moved on. Her foot rattled a piece of pottery. She grunted as she went down on one knee. Spilt mud and shards of broken pot littered the floor. Here and there, unrooted and snapped, were some unheeded pieces of dead twig. Only some kind of fool would have stuck bits of wood in pots of mud far underground and expected anything to happen. Nanny picked one up and sniffed it tentatively. It smelled of mud. And nothing else. She'd have liked to have-known how it had been done. Just professional interest, of course. And she knew she never would, now. Walter was a busy man now, up in the light. And, for something to begin, other things had to end. 'We all wears a mask of one sort or another,' she said to the damp air. 'No sense in upsetting things now, eh...'     The coach didn't leave until seven o'clock in the morning. By Lancre standards that was practically midday. The witches got there early. 'I was hoping to shop for a few souvenirs,' said Nanny, stamping her feet on the cobbles to keep warm. 'For the kiddies.' 'No time,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'Not that it would have made any difference on account of me not having any money to buy 'em with,' Nanny went on. 'Not my fault if you fritter your money away,' said Granny. 'I don't recall having a single chance to frit.' 'Money's only useful for the things it can do.' 'Well, yes. I could've done with having some new boots, for a start.' Nanny jiggled up and down a bit, and whistled around her tooth. 'Nice of Mrs Palm to let us stay there gratis,' she said. 'Yes.' 'O' course, I helped out playin' the piano and tellin' jokes.' 'An added bonus,' said Granny, nodding. 'An' of course there was all those little nibbles I prepared. With the Special Party Dip.' 'Yes indeed,' said Granny, poker-faced. 'Mrs Palm was saying only this morning that she's thinking of retiring next year.' Nanny looked up and down the street again. 'I 'spect young Agnes'll be turning up any minute now,' she said. 'I really couldn't say,' said Granny haughtily. 'Not as though there's much for her here, after all.' Granny sniffed. 'That's up to her, I'm sure.' 'Everyone was very impressed, I reckon, when you caught that sword in your hand...' Granny sighed. 'Hah! Yes, I expect they were. They didn't think clearly, did they? People're just lazy. They never think: maybe she had something in her hand, a bit of metal or something. They don't think for a minute it was just a trick. They don't think there's always a perfectly good explanation if you look for it. They probably think it was some kind of magic.' 'Yeah, but... you didn't have anything in your hand, did you?' 'That's not the point. I might have done.' Granny looked up and down the square. 'Besides, you can't magic iron. 'That's very true. Not iron. Now, someone like ole Black Aliss, they could make their skin tougher than steel... but that's just an ole legend, I expect...' 'She could do it all right,' said Granny. 'But you can't go round messin' with cause and effect. That's what sent her mad, come the finish. She thought she could put herself outside of things like cause and effect. Well, you can't. You grab a sharp sword by the blade, you get hurt. World'd be a terrible place if people forgot that.' 'You weren't hurt.' 'Not my fault. I didn't have time.' Nanny blew on her hands. 'One good thing, though,' she said. 'It's a blessing the chandelier never came down. I was worried about that soon as I saw it. Looks too dramatic for its own good, I thought. First thing I'd smash, if I was a loony.' 'Yes.' 'Haven't been able to find Greebo since last night.' 'Good.' 'He always turns up, though.' 'Unfortunately.' There was a clatter as the coach swung around the corner. It stopped. Then the coachman tugged on the reins and it did a Uturn and disappeared again. 'Esme?' said Nanny, after a while. 'Yes?' 'There's a man and two horses peering at us around the corner.' She raised her voice. 'Come on, I know you're there! Seven o'clock, this coach is supposed to leave! Did you get the tickets, Esme?' 'Me?' 'Ah,' said Nanny uncertainly. 'So... we haven't got eighty dollars for the tickets, then?' 'What've you got stuffed up your elastic?' said Granny as the coach advanced cautiously. 'Nothin' that is legal tender for travellin' purposes, I fear.' 'Then... no, we can't afford tickets.' Nanny sighed. 'Oh, well, I'll just have to use charm.' 'It's going to be a long walk,' said Granny. The coach pulled up. Nanny looked up at the driver, and smiled innocently. 'Good morning, my good sir!' He gave her a slightly frightened but mainly suspicious look. 'Is it?' 'We are desirous of travelling to Lancre but unfortunately we find ourselves a bit embarrassed in the knicker department.' 'You are?? 'But we are witches and could prob'ly pay for our travel by, e.g., curing any embarrassing little ailments you may have.' The coachman frowned. 'I ain't carrying you for nothing, old crone. And I haven't got any embarrassing little ailments!' Granny stepped forward. 'How many would you like?' she said.     Rain rolled over the plains. It wasn't an impressive Ramtops thunderstorm but a lazy, persistent, low-cloud rain, like a fat fog. It had been following them all day. The witches had the coach to themselves. Several people had opened the door while it had been waiting to leave, but for some reason had suddenly decided that today's travel plans didn't include a coach ride. 'Making good time,' said Nanny, opening the curtains and peering out of the window. 'I expect the driver's in a hurry.' 'Yes, I 'spect he is.' 'Shut the window, though. It's getting wet in here.' 'Righty-ho.' Nanny grabbed the strap and then suddenly poked her head out into the rain. 'Stop! Stop! Tell the man to stop!' The coach dewed to a halt in a sheet of mud. Nanny threw open the door. 'I don't know, trying to walk home, and in this weather too! You'll catch your death!' Rain and fog rolled in through the open doorway. Then a bedraggled shape pulled itself over the sill and slunk under the seats, leaving small puddles behind it. 'Tryin' to be independent,' said Nanny. 'Bless 'im.' The coach got under way again. Granny stared out at the endless darkening fields and the relentless drizzle, and saw another figure toiling along in the mud by the road that would, eventually, reach Lancre. As the coach swept past, it drenched the walker in thin slurry. 'Yes, indeed. Being independent's a fine ambition,' she said, drawing the curtains.     The trees were bare when Granny Weatherwax got back to her cottage. Twigs and seeds had blown in under the door. Soot had fallen down the chimney. Her home, always somewhat organic, had grown a little closer to its roots in the clay. There were things to do, so she did them. There were leaves to be swept, and the woodpile to be built up under the eaves. The windsock behind the beehives, tattered by autumn storms, needed to be darned. Hay had to be got in for the goats. Apples had to be stored in the loft. The walls could do with another coat of whitewash. But there was something that had to be done first. It'd make the other jobs a bit more difficult, but there was no help for that. You couldn't magic iron. And you couldn't grab a sword without being hurt. If that wasn't true, the world'd be all over the place. Granny made herself some tea, and then boiled up the kettle again. She took a handful of herbs out of a box on the dresser, and dropped them in a bowl with the steaming water. She took a length of clean bandage out of a drawer and set it carefully on the table beside the bowl. She threaded an extremely sharp needle and laid needle and thread beside the bandage. She scooped a fingerful of greenish ointment out of a small tin, and smeared it on a square of lint. That seemed to be it. She sat down, and rested her arm on the table, palm-up. 'Well,' she said, to no one in particular, 'I reckon I've got time now.'     The privy had to be moved. It was a job Granny preferred to do for herself. There was something incredibly satisfying in digging a very deep hole. It was uncomplicated. You knew where you were with a hole in the ground. Dirt didn't get strange ideas, or believe that people were honest because they had a steady gaze and a firm handshake. It just lay there, waiting for you to move it. And, after you'd done it, you could sit there in the lovely warm knowledge that it'd be months before you had to do it again. It was while she was at the bottom of the hole that a shadow fell across it. 'Afternoon, Perdita,' she said without looking up. She lifted another shovelful to head-height and flung it over the edge. 'Come home for a visit, have you?' she said. She rammed the shovel into the clay at the bottom of the hole again, winced, and forced it down with her foot. 'Thought you were doing very well in the opera,' she went on. "Course, I'm not an expert in these things. Good to see young people seeking their fortune in the big city, though.' She looked up with a bright, friendly smile. 'I see you've lost a bit of weight, too.' Innocence hung from her words like loops of toffee. 'I've been... taking exercise,' said Agnes. 'Exercise is a fine thing, certainly,' said Granny, getting back to her digging. 'Though they do say you can have too much of it. When are you going back?' 'I... haven't decided.' 'Weeelll, it doesn't pay to be always planning. Don't tie yourself down the whole time, I've always said that. Staying with your ma, are you?' 'Yes,' said Agnes. 'Ah? Only Magrat's old cottage is still empty. You'd be doing everyone a favour if you aired it out a bit. You know... as long as you're here.' Agnes said nothing. She couldn't think of anything to say. 'Funny ole thing,' said Granny, hacking around a particularly troublesome tree root. 'I wouldn't tell everyone, but I was only thinking the other day, about when I was younger and called myself Endemonidia...' 'You did? When?' Granny rubbed her forehead with her bandaged hand, leaving a clay-red smudge. 'Oh, for about three, four hours,' she said. 'Some names don't have the stayin' power. Never pick yourself a name you can't scrub the floor in.' She threw her shovel out of the hole. 'Give me a hand up, will you?' Agnes did so. Granny brushed the dirt and leafmould off her apron and tried to stamp the clay off her boots. 'Time for a cup of tea, eh?' she said. 'My, you are looking well. It's the fresh air. Too much stuffy air in that Opera House, I thought.' Agnes tried in vain to detect anything in Granny Weatherwax's eyes other than transparent honesty and goodwill. 'Yes. I thought so, too,' she said. 'Er... you've hurt your hand?' 'It'll heal. A lot of things do.' She shouldered her shovel and headed towards the cottage; and then, halfway up the path, turned and looked back. 'This is just me askin', you understand, in a kind neighbourly way, takin' an interest sort of thing, wouldn't be human if I didn't–' Agnes sighed. 'Yes?' '...you got much to do with your evenin's these days?' There was just enough rebellion left in Agnes to put a sarcastic edge on her voice. 'Oh? Are you offering to teach me something?' 'Teach? No,' said Granny. 'Ain't got the patience for teaching. But I might let you learn.'     'When shall we three meet again?' 'We haven't met once, yet.' 'O' course we have. I've person'ly known you for at least' 'I mean we Three haven't Met. You know... officially...' 'All right... When shall we three meet?' 'We're already here.' 'All right. When shall-?' Just shut up and get out the marshmallows. Agnes, give Nanny the marshmallows.' 'Yes, Granny.' 'And mind you don't burn mine.' Granny sat back. It was a clear night, although clouds mounting towards the hub promised snow soon. A few sparks flew up towards the stars. She looked around proudly. 'Isn't this nice,' she said. THE END [1] The people of Lancre thought that marriage was a very serious step that ought to be done properly, so they practised quite a lot. [2] Not that she sat looking out of the window. She'd been watching the fire when she picked up the approach of Jarge Weaver. But that wasn't the point. [3] Or, at least, dying for a chocolate. [4] Er. That is to say, they went to bed at the same time as the chickens went to bed, and got up at the same time as the cows got up. Loosely worded sayings can really cause misunderstandings. [5] Distillation of alcohol was illegal in Lancre. On the other hand, King Verence had long ago given up any idea of stopping a witch doing something she wanted to do, so merely required Nanny Ogg to keep her still somewhere it wasn't obvious. She thoroughly approved of the prohibition, since this gave her an unchallenged market for her own product, known wherever men fell backwards into a ditch as 'suicider'. [6] Strictly speaking, this means being chased by photographers anxious to get a picture of you with your vest off. [7] Without regret, since she hadn't found any use for it. [8] Bergholt Stuttley ('Bloody Stupid') Johnson was Ankh-Morpork's most famous, or rather most notorious, inventor. He was renowned for never letting his number-blindness, his lack of any skill whatsoever or his complete failure to grasp the essence of a problem stand in the way of his cheerful progress as the first Counter-Renaissance man. Shortly after building the famous Collapsed Tower of Quirm he turned his attention to the world of music, particularly large organs and mechanical orchestras. Examples of his handiwork still occasionally come to light in sales, auctions and, quite frequently, wreckage.   [9] It was central to Nanny Ogg's soul that she never considered herself an old woman, while of course availing herself of every advantage that other people's perceptions of her as such would bring.   Unknown Maskerade by Terry Pratchettv1.0 (01-feb-01) by 4i Publications. Layout corrections and quick proof in Word2000. 
Men at Arms - Terry Pratchett	----	Men at Arms Men at Arms Terry Pratchett   Corporal Carrot, Ankh-Morpork City Guard (Night Watch), sat down in his nightshirt, took up his pencil, sucked the end for a moment, and then wrote: “Dearest Mume and Dad, “Well here is another fine Turnup for the Books, for I have been made Corporal!! It means another Five Dollars a month plus also I have a new jerkin with, two stripes upon it as well. And a new copper badge! It is a Great responsibility!! This is all because we have got new recruits because the Patrician who, as I have formerly vouchsafed is the ruler of the city, has agreed the Watch must reflect the ethnic makeup of the City—” Carrot paused for a moment and stared out of the small dusty bedroom window at the early evening sunlight sidling across the river. Then he bent over the paper again. “—which I do not Fulley understand but must have something to do with the dwarf Grabpot Thundergust’s Cosmetic Factory. Also, Captain Vimes of who I have often written to you of is, leaving the Watch to get married and Become a Fine Gentleman and, I’m sure we wish him All the Best, he taught me All I Know apart, from the things I taught myself. We are clubbing together to get him a Surprise Present, I thought one of those new Watches that don’t need demons to make them go and we could inscribe on the back something like “A Watch from, your Old Freinds in the Watch”, this is a pune or Play on Words. We do not know who will be the new Captain, Sgt Colon says he will Resign if it’s him, Cpl Nobbs—” Carrot stared out of the window again. His big honest forehead wrinkled with effort as he tried to think of something positive to say about Corporal Nobbs. “—is more suited in his current Roll, and I have not been in the Watch long enough. So we shall just have to wait and See—” It began, as many things do, with a death. And a burial, on a spring morning, with mist on the ground so thick that it poured into the grave and the coffin was lowered into cloud. A small greyish mongrel, host to so many assorted doggy diseases that it was surrounded by a cloud of dust, watched impassively from the mound of earth. Various elderly female relatives cried. But Edward d’Eath didn’t cry, for three reasons. He was the eldest son, the thirty-seventh Lord d’Eath, and it was Not Done for a d’Eath to cry; he was – just, the diploma still had the crackle in it – an Assassin, and Assassins didn’t cry at a death, otherwise they’d never be stopping; and he was angry. In fact, he was enraged. Enraged at having to borrow money for this poor funeral. Enraged at the weather, at this common cemetery, at the way the background noise of the city didn’t change in any way, even on such an occasion as this. Enraged at history. It was never meant to be like this. It shouldn’t have been like this. He looked across the river to the brooding bulk of the Palace, and his anger screwed itself up and became a lens. Edward had been sent to the Assassins’ Guild because they had the best school for those whose social rank is rather higher than their intelligence. If he’d been trained as a Fool, he’d have invented satire and made dangerous jokes about the Patrician. If he’d been trained as a Thief,[1] he’d have broken into the Palace and stolen something very valuable from the Patrician. However . . . he’d been sent to the Assassins . . . That afternoon he sold what remained of the d’Eath estates, and enrolled again at the Guild school. For the post-graduate course. He got full marks, the first person in the history of the Guild ever to do so. His seniors described him as a man to watch – and, because there was something about him that made even Assassins uneasy, preferably from a long way away. In the cemetery the solitary gravedigger filled in the hole that was the last resting place of d’Eath senior. He became aware of what seemed to be thoughts in his head. They went something like this: Any chance of a bone? No, no, sorry, bad taste there, forget I mentioned it. You’ve got beef sandwiches in your wossname, lunchbox thingy, though. Why not give one to the nice little doggy over there? The man leaned on his shovel and looked around. The grey mongrel was watching him intently. It said, “Woof?”   It took Edward d’Eath five months to find what he was looking for. The search was hampered by the fact that he did not know what he was looking for, only that he’d know it when he found it. Edward was a great believer in Destiny. Such people often are. The Guild library was one of the largest in the city. In certain specialized areas it was the largest. These areas mainly had to do with the regrettable brevity of human life and the means of bringing it about. Edward spent a lot of time there, often at the top of a ladder, often surrounded by dust. He read every known work on armaments. He didn’t know what he was looking for and he found it in a note in the margin of an otherwise very dull and inaccurate treatise on the ballistics of crossbows. He copied it out, carefully. Edward spent a lot of time among history books as well. The Assassins’ Guild was an association of gentlemen of breeding, and people like that regard the whole of recorded history as a kind of stock book. There were a great many books in the Guild library, and a whole portrait gallery of kings and queens,[2] and Edward d’Eath came to know their aristocratic faces better than he did his own. He spent his lunch hours there. It was said later that he came under bad influences at this stage. But the secret of the history of Edward d’Eath was that he came under no outside influences at all, unless you count all those dead kings. He just came under the influence of himself. That’s where people get it wrong. Individuals aren’t naturally paid-up members of the human race, except biologically. They need to be bounced around by the Brownian motion of society, which is a mechanism by which human beings constantly remind one another that they are . . . well . . . human beings. He was also spiralling inwards, as tends to happen in cases like this. He’d had no plan. He’d just retreated, as people do when they feel under attack, to a more defensible position, i.e. the past, and then something happened which had the same effect on Edward as finding a plesiosaur in his goldfish pond would on a student of ancient reptiles. He’d stepped out blinking in the sunlight one hot afternoon, after a day spent in the company of departed glory, and had seen the face of the past strolling by, nodding amiably to people. He hadn’t been able to control himself. He’d said, “Hey, you! Who are y-ou?” The past had said, “Corporal Carrot, sir. Night Watch. Mr d’Eath, isn’t it? Can I help you?” “What? No! No. Be about your b-usiness!” The past nodded and smiled at him, and strolled on, into the future. Carrot stopped staring at the wall. “I have expended three dollars on an iconograph box which, is a thing with a brownei inside that paints pictures of thing’s, this is all the Rage these days. Please find enclosed pictures of my room and my freinds in the Watch, Nobby is the one making the Humerous Gesture but he is a Rough Diamond and a good soul deep down.” He stopped again. Carrot wrote home at least once a week. Dwarfs generally did. Carrot was two metres tall but he’d been brought up as a dwarf, and then further up as a human. Literary endeavour did not come easily to him, but he persevered. “The weather,” he wrote, very slowly and carefully, “continues Very Hot . . .” Edward could not believe it. He checked the records. He double-checked. He asked questions and, because they were innocent enough questions, people gave him answers. And finally he took a holiday in the Ram-tops, where careful questioning led him to the dwarf mines around Copperhead, and thence to an otherwise unremarkable glade in a beech wood where, sure enough, a few minutes of patient digging unearthed traces of charcoal. He spent the whole day there. When he’d finished, carefully replacing the leafmould as the sun went down, he was quite certain. Ankh-Morpork had a king again. And this was right. And it was fate that had let Edward recognize this just when he’d got his Plan. And it was right that it was Fate, and the city would be Saved from its ignoble present by its glorious past. He had the Means, and he had the end. And so on . . . Edward’s thoughts often ran like this. He could think in italics. Such people need watching. Preferably from a safe distance.   “I was Interested in your letter where you said people have been coming and asking about me, this is Amazing, I have been here hardly Five Minutes and already I am Famus. “I was very pleased to hear about the opening of #7 shaft. I don’t mind Telling You that although, I am very happy here I miss the Good Times back Home. Sometimes on my day Off I go and, sit in the Cellar and hit my head with an axe handle but, it is Not the Same. “Hoping this finds you in Good Health, Yrs faithfully, “Your loving son, adopted, Carrot.” He folded the letter up, inserted the iconographs, sealed it with a blob of candle wax pressed into place with his thumb, and put it in his pants pocket. Dwarf mail to the Ramtops was quite reliable. More and more dwarfs were coming to work in the city, and because dwarfs are very conscientious many of them sent money home. This made dwarf mail just about as safe as anything, since their mail was closely guarded. Dwarfs are very attached to gold. Any highwayman demanding ‘Your money or your life’ had better bring a folding chair and packed lunch and a book to read while the debate goes on. Then Carrot washed his face, donned his leather shirt and trousers and chainmail, buckled on his breastplate and, with his helmet under his arm, stepped out cheerfully, ready to face whatever the future would bring. This was another room, somewhere else. It was a poky room, the plaster walls crumbling, the ceilings sagging like the underside of a fat man’s bed. And it was made even more crowded by the furniture. It was old, good furniture, but this wasn’t the place for it. It belonged in high echoing halls. Here, it was crammed. There were dark oak chairs. There were long sideboards. There was even a suit of armour. There was barely room for the half dozen or so people who sat at the huge table. There was barely room for the table. A clock ticked in the shadows. The heavy velvet curtains were drawn, even though there was still plenty of daylight left in the sky. The air was stifling, both from the heat of the day and the candles in the magic lantern. The only illumination was from the screen which, at that moment, was portraying a very good profile of Corporal Carrot Ironfoundersson. The small but very select audience watched it with the carefully blank expressions of people who are half convinced that their host is several cards short of a full deck but are putting up with it because they’ve just eaten a meal and it would be rude to leave too soon. “Well?” said one of them. “I think I’ve seen him walking around the city. So? He’s just a watchman, Edward.” “Of course. It is essential that he should be. A humble station in life. It all fits the classic p-attern.” Edward d’Eath gave a signal. There was a click as another glass slide was slotted in. “This one was not p-ainted from life. King P-paragore. Taken from an old p-ainting. This one’ – click! - ‘is King Veltrick III. From another p-portrait. This one is Queen Alguinna IV . . . note the line of the chin? This one’ – click! —‘is a sevenpenny p-iece from the reign of Webblethorpe the Unconscious, note again the detail of the chin and general b-bone structure, and this’ – click! - ‘is. . .an upside d-own picture of a vase of flowers. D-elphiniums, I believe. Why is this?” “Er, sorry, Mr Edward, I ‘ad a few glass plates left and the demons weren’t tired and—” “Next slide, please. And then you may leave us.” “Yes, Mr Edward.” “Report to the d-uty torturer.” “Yes, Mr Edward.” Click! “And this is a rather good – well done, Bl-enkin – image of the bust of Queen Coanna.” “Thank you, Mr Edward.” “More of her face would have enabled us to be certain of the likeness, however. There is sufficient, I believe. You may go, Bl-enkin.” “Yes, Mr Edward.” “A little something off the ears, I th-ink.” “Yes, Mr Edward.” The servant respectfully shut the door behind him, and then went down to the kitchen shaking his head sadly. The d’Eaths hadn’t been able to afford a family torturer for years. For the boy’s sake he’d just have to do the best he could with a kitchen knife. The visitors waited for the host to speak, but he didn’t seem about to do so, although it was sometimes hard to tell with Edward. When he was excited, he suffered not so much from a speech impediment as from misplaced pauses, as if his brain were temporarily putting his mouth on hold. Eventually, one of the audience said: ‘Very well. So what is your point?” “You’ve seen the likeness. Isn’t it ob-vious?” “Oh, come now—” Edward d’Eath pulled a leather case towards him and began undoing the thongs. “But, but the boy was adopted by Discworld dwarfs. They found him as a baby in the forests of the Ramtop mountains. There were some b-urning wagons, corpses, that sort of thing. B-andit attack, apparently. The dwarfs found a sword in the wreckage. He has it now. A very old sword. And it’s always sharp.” “So? The world is full of old swords. And grindstones.” “This one had been very well hidden in one of the carts, which had broken up. Strange. One would expect it to be ready to hand, yes? To be used? In b-andit country? And then the boy grows up and, and . . . Fate . . . conspires that he and his sword come to Ankh-Morpork, where he is currently a watchman in the Night Watch. I couldn’t believe it!” “That’s still not—” Edward raised his hand a moment, and then pulled out a package from the case. “I made careful enq-uiries, you know, and was able to find the place where the attack occurred. A most careful search of the ground revealed old cart n-ails, a few copper coins and, in some charcoal . . . this.” They craned to see. “Looks like a ring.” “Yes. It’s, it’s, it’s superficially d-iscoloured, of course, otherwise someone would have spot-ted it. Probably secreted somewhere on a cart. I’ve had it p-artly cleaned. You can just read the inscription. Now, here is an ill-ustrated inventory of the royal jewellery of Ankh done in AM 907, in the reign of King Tyrril. May I, please, may I draw your a-ttention to the small wedding ring in the b-ottom left-hand corner of the page? You will see that the artist has hel-pfully drawn the inscription.” It took several minutes for everyone to examine it. They were naturally suspicious people. They were all descendants of people for whom suspicion and paranoia had been prime survival traits. Because they were all aristocrats. Not one among them did not know the name of his or her great-great-greatgrandfather and what embarrassing disease he’d died of. They had just eaten a not-very-good meal which had, however, included some ancient and worthwhile wines. They’d attended because they’d all known Edward’s father, and the d’Eaths were a fine old family, if now in very reduced circumstances. “So you see,” said Edward proudly, “the evidence is overwhelming. We have a king!” His audience tried to avoid looking at one another’s faces. “I thought you’d be pl-eased,” said Edward. Finally, Lord Rust voiced the unspoken consensus. There was no room in those true-blue eyes for pity, which was not a survival trait, but sometimes it was possible to risk a little kindness. “Edward,” he said, “the last king of Ankh-Morpork died centuries ago.” “Executed by t-raitors!” “Even if a descendant could still be found, the royal blood would be somewhat watered down by now, don’t you think?” “The royal b-lood cannot be wa-tered down!” Ah, thought Lord Rust. So he’s that kind. Young Edward thinks the touch of a king can cure scrofula, as if royalty was the equivalent of a sulphur ointment. Young Edward thinks that there is no lake of blood too big to wade through to put a rightful king on a throne, no deed too base in defence of a crown. A romantic, in fact. Lord Rust was not a romantic. The Rusts had adapted well to Ankh-Morpork’s post-monarchy centuries by buying and selling and renting and making contacts and doing what aristocrats have always done, which is trim sails and survive. “Well, maybe,” he conceded, in the gentle tones of someone trying to talk someone else off a ledge, “but we must ask ourselves: does Ankh-Morpork, at this point in time, require a king?” Edward looked at him as though he were mad. “Need? Need? While our fair city languishes under the heel of the ty-rant?” “Oh. You mean Vetinari.” “Can’t you see what he’s done to this city?” “He is a very unpleasant, jumped-up little man,” said Lady Selachii, “but I would not say he actually terrorizes much. Not as such.” “You have to hand it to him,” said Viscount Skater, “the city operates. More or less. Fellas and whatnot do things.” “The streets are safer than they used to be under Mad Lord Snapcase,” said Lady Selachii. “Sa-fer? Vetinari set up the Thieves’ Guild!” shouted Edward. “Yes, yes, of course, very reprehensible, certainly. On the other hand, a modest annual payment and one walks in safety . . .” “He always says,” said Lord Rust, “that if you’re going to have crime, it might as well be organized crime.” “Seems to me,” said Viscount Skater, “that all the Guild chappies put up with him because anyone else would be worse, yes? We’ve certainly had some . . . difficult ones. Anyone remember Homicidal Lord Winder?” “Deranged Lord Harmoni,” said Lord Monflathers. “Laughing Lord Scapula,” said Lady Selachii. “A man with a very pointed sense of humour.” “Mind you, Vetinari . . . there’s something not entirely . . .” Lord Rust began. “I know what you mean,” said Viscount Skater. “I don’t like the way he always knows what you’re thinking before you think it.” “Everyone knows the Assassins have set his fee at a million dollars,” said Lady Selachii. “That’s how much it would cost to have him killed.” “One can’t help feeling,” said Lord Rust, “that it would cost a lot more than that to make sure he stayed dead.” “Ye gods! What happened to pride? What happened to honour?” They perceptibly jumped as the last Lord d’Eath thrust himself out of his chair. “Will you listen to yourselves? Please? Look at you. What man among you has not seen his family name degraded since the days of the kings? Can’t you remember the men your forefathers were?” He strode rapidly around the table, so that they had to turn to watch him. He pointed an angry finger. “You, Lord Rust! Your ancestor was cr-eated a Baron after single-handedly killing thirty-seven Klatchians while armed with nothing more than a p-in, isn’t that so?” “Yes, but—“ “You, sir . . . Lord Monflathers! The first Duke led six hundred men to a glorious and epic de-feat at the Battle of Quirm! Does that mean n-othing? And you, Lord Venturii, and you, Sir George . . . sitting in Ankh in your old houses with your old names and your old money, while Guilds – Guilds! Ragtags of tradesmen and merchants! – Guilds, I say, have a voice in the r-unning of the city!” He reached a bookshelf in two strides and threw a huge leather-bound book on the table, where it upset Lord Rust’s glass. “Twurp’s P-eerage,” he shouted. “We all have pages in there! We own it. But this man has you mesmerized! I assure you he is flesh and blood, a mere mortal! No-one dares remove him because they th-ink it will make things a little worse for themselves! Ye g-ods!” His audience looked glum. It was all true, of course. . . if you put it that way. And it didn’t sound any better coming from a wild-eyed, pompous young man. “Yes, yes, the good old days. Towerin’ spires and pennants and chivalry and all that,” said Viscount Skater. “Ladies in pointy hats. Chappies in armour bashin’ one another and whatnot. But, y’know, we have to move with the times—” “It was a golden age,” said Edward. My god, thought Lord Rust. He actually does believe it. “You see, dear boy,” said Lady Selachii, “a few chance likenesses and a piece of jewellery – that doesn’t really add up to much, does it?” “My nurse told me,” said Viscount Skater, “that a true king could pull a sword from a stone.” “Hah, yes, and cure dandruff,” said Lord Rust. “That’s just a legend. That’s not real. Anyway, I’ve always been a bit puzzled about that story. What’s so hard about pulling a sword out of a stone? The real work’s already been done. You ought to make yourself useful and find the man who put the sword in the stone in the first place, eh?” There was a sort of relieved laughter. That’s what Edward remembered. It all ended up in laughter. Not exactly at him, but he was the type of person who always takes laughter personally. Ten minutes later, Edward d’Eath was alone. They’re being so nice about it. Moving with the times! He’d expected more than that of them. A lot more. He’d dared to hope that they might be inspired by his lead. He’d pictured himself at the head of an army — Blenkin came in at a respectful shuffle. “I saw ‘em all off, Mr Edward,” he said. “Thank you, Blenkin. You may clear the table.” “Yes, Mr Edward.” “Whatever happened to honour, Blenkin?” “Dunno, sir. I never took it.” “They didn’t want to listen.” “No, sir.” “They didn’t want to l-isten.” Edward sat by the dying fire, with a dog-eared copy of Thighbiter’s The Ankh-Morpork Succesfion open on his lap. Dead kings and queens looked at him reproachfully. And there it might have ended. In fact it did end there, in millions of universes. Edward d’Eath grew older and obsession turned to a sort of bookish insanity of the gloves-with-the-fingers-cut-out and carpet slippers variety, and became an expert on royalty although no-one ever knew this because he seldom left his rooms. Corporal Carrot became Sergeant Carrot and, in the fullness of time, died in uniform aged seventy in an unlikely accident involving an anteater. In a million universes, Lance-Constables Cuddy and Detritus didn’t fall through the hole. In a million universes, Vimes didn’t find the pipes. (In one strange but theoretically possible universe the Watch House was redecorated in pastel colours by a freak whirlwind, which also repaired the door latch and did a few other odd jobs around the place.) In a million universes, the Watch failed. -In a million universes, this was a very short book. Edward dozed off with the book on his knees and had a dream. He dreamed of glorious struggle. Glorious was another important word in his personal vocabulary, like honour. If traitors and dishonourable men would not see the truth then he, Edward d’Eath, was the finger of Destiny. The problem with Destiny, of course, is that she is often not careful where she puts her finger. Captain Sam Vimes, Ankh-Morpork City Guard (Night Watch), sat in the draughty anteroom to the Patrician’s audience chamber with his best cloak on and his breastplate polished and his helmet on his knees. He stared woodenly at the wall. He ought to be happy, he told himself. And he was. In a way. Definitely. Happy as anything. He was going to get married in a few days. He was going to stop being a guard. He was going to be a gentleman of leisure. He took off his copper badge and buffed it absent-mindedly on the edge of his cloak. Then he held it up so that the light glinted off the patina’d surface. AMCW No.177. He sometimes wondered how many other guards had had the badge before him. Well, now someone was going to have it after him. This is Ankh-Morpork, Citie of One Thousand Surprises (according to the Guild of Merchants’ guidebook). What more need be said? A sprawling place, home to a million people, greatest of cities on the Discworld, located on either side of the river Ankh, a waterway so muddy that it looks as if it is flowing upside down. And visitors say: how does such a big city exist? What keeps it going? Since it’s got a river you can chew, where does the drinking water come from? What is, in fact, the basis of its civic economy? How come it, against all probability, works? Actually, visitors don’t often say this. They usually say things like ‘Which way to the, you know, the . . . er . . . you know, the young ladies, right?” But if they started thinking with their brains for a little while, that’s what they’d be thinking. The Patrician of Ankh-Morpork sat back on his austere chair with the sudden bright smile of a very busy person at the end of a crowded day who’s suddenly found in his schedule a reminder saying: 7.00-7.05, Be Cheerful and Relaxed and a People Person. “Well, of course I was very saddened to receive your letter, captain . . .” “Yes, sir,” said Vimes, still as wooden as a furniture warehouse. “Please sit down, captain.” “Yes, sir.” Vimes remained standing. It was a matter of pride. “But of course I quite understand. The Ramkin country estates are very extensive, I believe. I’m sure Lady Ramkin will appreciate your strong right hand.” “Sir?” Captain Vimes, while in the presence of the ruler of the city, always concentrated his gaze on a point one foot above and six inches to the left of the man’s head. “And of course you will be quite a rich man, captain.” “Yes, sir.” “I hope you have thought about that. You will have new responsibilities:” “Yes, sir.” It dawned on the Patrician that he was working on both ends of this conversation. He shuffled through the papers on his desk. “And of course I shall have to promote a new chief officer for the Night Watch,” said the Patrician. “Have you any suggestions, captain?” Vimes appeared to descend from whatever cloud his mind had been occupying. This was guard work. “Well, not Fred Colon . . . He’s one of Nature’s sergeants . . .” Sergeant Colon, Ankh-Morpork City Guard (Night Watch) surveyed the bright faces of the new recruits. He sighed. He remembered his first day. Old Sergeant Wimbler. What a tartar! Tongue like a whiplash! If the old boy had lived to see this . . . What was it called? Oh, yeah. Affirmative action hirin’ procedure, or something. Silicon Anti-Defamation League had been going on at the Patrician, and now— “Try it one more time, Lance-Constable Detritus,” he said. “The trick is, you stops your hand just above your ear. Now, just get up off the floor and try salutin’ one more time. Now, then . . . Lance-Constable Cuddy?” “Here!” “Where?” “In front of you, sergeant.” Colon looked down and took a step back. The swelling curve of his more than adequate stomach moved aside to reveal the upturned face of Lance-Constable Cuddy, with its helpful intelligent expression and one glass eye. “Oh. Right.” “I’m taller than I look.” Oh, gods, thought Sergeant Colon wearily. Add ‘em up and divide by two and you’ve got two normal men, except normal men don’t join the Guard. A troll and a dwarf. And that ain’t the worst of it— Vimes drummed his fingers on the desk. “Not Colon, then,” he said. “He’s not as young as he was. Time he stayed in the Watch House, keeping up on the paperwork. Besides, he’s got a lot on his plate.” “Sergeant Colon has always had a lot on his plate, I should say,” said the Patrician. “With the new recruits, I mean,” said Vimes, meaningfully. “You remember, sir?” The ones you told me I had to have? he added in the privacy of his head. They weren’t to go in the Day Watch, of course. And those bastards in the Palace Guard wouldn’t take them, either. Oh, no. Put ‘em in the Night Watch, because it’s a joke anyway and no-one’ll really see ‘em. No-one important, anyway. Vimes had only given in because he knew it wouldn’t be his problem for long. It wasn’t as if he was speciesist, he told himself. But the Watch was a job for men. “How about Corporal Nobbs?” said the Patrician. “Nobby?” They shared a mental picture of Corporal Nobbs. “No.” “No.” “Then of course there is,” the Patrician smiled, “Corporal Carrot. A fine young man. Already making a name for himself, I gather.” “That’s . . . true,” said Vimes. “A further promotion opportunity, perhaps? I would value your advice.” Vimes formed a mental picture of Corporal Carrot— “This,” said Corporal Carrot, “is the Hubwards Gate. To the whole city. Which is what we guard.” “What from?” said Lance-Constable Angua, the last of the new recruits. “Oh, you know. Barbarian hordes, warring tribesmen, bandit armies . . . that sort of thing.” “What? Just us?” “Us? Oh, no!” Carrot laughed. “That’d be silly, wouldn’t it? No, if you see anything like that, you just ring your bell as hard as you like.” “What happens then?” “Sergeant Colon and Nobby and the rest of ‘em will come running along just as soon as they can.” Lance-Constable Angua scanned the hazy horizon. She smiled. Carrot blushed. Constable Angua had mastered saluting first go. She wouldn’t have a full uniform yet, not until someone had taken a, well, let’s face it, a breastplate along to old Remitt the armourer and told him to beat it out really well here and here, and no helmet in the world would cover all that mass of ash-blond hair but, it occurred to Carrot, Constable Angua wouldn’t need any of that stuff really. People would be queuing up to get arrested. “So what do we do now?” she said. “Proceed back to the Watch House, I suppose,” said Carrot. “Sergeant Colon’ll be reading out the evening report, I expect.” She’d mastered ‘proceeding’, too. It’s a special walk devised by beat officers throughout the multiverse – a gentle lifting of the instep, a careful swing of the leg, a walking pace that can be kept up hour after hour, street after street. Lance-Constable Detritus wasn’t going to be ready to learn ‘proceeding’ for some time, or at least until he stopped knocking himself out every time he saluted. “Sergeant Colon,” said Angua. “He was the fat one, yes?” “That’s right.” “Why has he got a pet monkey?” “Ah,” said Carrot. “I think it is Corporal Nobbs to whom you refer . . .” “It’s human? He’s got a face like a join-the-dots puzzle!” “He does have a very good collection of boils, poor man. He does tricks with them. Just never get between him and a mirror.” Not many people were on the streets. It was too hot, even for an Ankh-Morpork summer. Heat radiated from every surface. The river slunk sullenly in the bottom of its bed, like a student around 11 a.m. People with no pressing business out of doors lurked in cellars and only came out at night. Carrot moved through the baking streets with a proprietorial air and a slight patina of honest sweat, occasionally exchanging a greeting. Everyone knew Carrot. He was easily recognizable. No-one else was about two metres tall with flame-red hair. Besides, he walked as if he owned the city. “Who was that man with the granite face I saw in the Watch House?” said Angua, as they proceeded along Broad Way. “That was Detritus the troll,” said Carrot. “He used to be a bit of a criminal, but now he’s courting Ruby she says he’s got to—” “No, that man,” said Angua, learning as had so many others that Carrot tended to have a bit of trouble with metaphors. “Face like thu—face like someone very disgruntled.” “Oh, that was Captain Vimes. But he’s never been gruntled, I think. He’s retiring at the end of the week, and getting married.” “Doesn’t look very happy about it,” said Angua. “Couldn’t say.” “I don’t think he likes the new recruits.” The other thing about Constable Carrot was that he was incapable of lying. “Well, he doesn’t like trolls much,” he said. “We couldn’t get a word out of him all day when he heard we had to advertise for a troll recruit. And then we had to have a dwarf, otherwise they’d be trouble. I’m a dwarf, too, but the dwarfs here don’t believe it.” “You don’t say?” said Angua, looking up at him. “My mother had me by adoption.” “Oh. Yes, but I’m not a troll or a dwarf,” said Angua sweetly. “No, but you’re a w—” Angua stopped. “That’s it, is it? Good grief! This is the Century of the Fruitbat, you know. Ye gods, does he really think like that?” “He’s a bit set in his ways.” “Congealed, I should think.” “The Patrician said we had to have a bit of representation from the minority groups,” said Carrot. “Minority groups!” “Sorry. Anyway, he’s only got a few more days—” There was a splintering noise across the street. They turned as a figure sprinted out of a tavern and hared away up the street, closely followed – at least for a few steps – by a fat man in an apron. “Stop! Stop! Unlicensed thief!” “Ah,” said Carrot. He crossed the road, with Angua padding along behind him, as the fat man slowed to a waddle. “ ‘Morning, Mr Flannel,” he said. “Bit of trouble?” “He took seven dollars and I never saw no Thief Licence!” said Mr Flannel. “What you going to do about it? I pay my taxes!” “We shall be hotly in pursuit any moment,” said Carrot calmly, taking out his notebook. “Seven dollars, was it?” “At least fourteen.” Mr Flannel looked Angua up and down. Men seldom missed the opportunity. “Why’s she got a helmet on?” he said. “She’s a new recruit, Mr Flannel.” Angua gave Mr Flannel a smile. He stepped back. “But she’s a—” “Got to move with the times, Mr Flannel,” said Carrot, putting his notebook away. Mr Flannel drew his mind back to business. “In the meantime, there’s eighteen dollars of mine that I won’t see again,” he said sharply. “Oh, nil desperandum, Mr Flannel, nil desperandum,” said Carrot cheerfully. “Come, Constable Angua. Let us proceed upon our inquiries.” He proceeded off, with Flannel staring at them with his mouth open. “Don’t forget my twenty-five dollars,” he shouted. “Aren’t you going to chase the man?” said Angua, running to keep up. “No point,” said Carrot, stepping sideways into an alley that was so narrow as to be barely visible. He strolled between the damp, moss-grown walls, in deep shadow. “Interesting thing,” he said. “I bet there’s not many people know that you can get to Zephire Street from Broad Way. You ask anyone. They’ll say you can’t get out of the other end of Shirt Alley. But you can because, all you do, you go up Mormius Street, and then you can squeeze between these bollards here into Borborygmic Lane – good, aren’t they, very good iron – and here we are in Whilom Alley—” He wandered to the end of the alley and stood listening for a while. “What are we waiting for?” said Angua. There was the sound of running feet. Carrot leaned against the wall, and stuck out one arm into Zephire Street. There was a thud. Carrot’s arm didn’t move an inch. It must have been like running into a girder. They looked down at the unconscious figure. Silver dollars rolled across the cobbles. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,” said Carrot. “Poor old Here’n’now. He promised me he was going to give it up, too. Oh well.” He picked up a leg. “How much money?” he said. “Looks like three dollars,” said Angua. “Well done. The exact amount.” “No, the shopkeeper said—” “Come on. Back to the Watch House. Come on, Here’n’now. It’s your lucky day.” “Why is it his lucky day?” said Angua. “He was caught, wasn’t he?” “Yes. By us. Thieves’ Guild didn’t get him first. They aren’t so kind as us.” Here’n’now’s head bounced from cobblestone to cobblestone. “Pinching three dollars and then trotting straight home,” sighed Carrot. “That’s Here’n’now. Worst thief in the world.” “But you said Thieves’ Guild—” “When you’ve been here a while, you’ll understand how it all works,” said Carrot. Here’n’now’s head banged on the kerb. “Eventually,” Carrot added. “But it all does work. You’d be amazed. It all works. I wish it didn’t. But it does.” While Here’n’now was being mildly concussed on the way to the safety of the Watch’s jail, a clown was being killed. He was ambling along an alley with the assurance of one who is fully paid up this year with the Thieves’ Guild when a hooded figure stepped out in front of him. “Beano?” “Oh, hello . . . it’s Edward, right?” The figure hesitated. “I was just going back to the Guild,” said Beano. The hooded figure nodded. “Are you OK?” said Beano. “I’m sorry about th-is,” it said. “But it is for the good of the city. It is nothing p-ersonal.” He stepped behind the clown. Beano felt a crunch, and then his own personal internal universe switched off. Then he sat up. “Ow,” he said, “that hur—” But it didn’t. Edward d’Eath was looking down at him with a horrified expression. “Oh . . . I didn’t mean to hit you that hard! I only wanted you out of the way!” “Why’d you have to hit me at all?” And then the feeling stole over Beano that Edward wasn’t exactly looking at him, and certainly wasn’t talking to him. He glanced at the ground, and experienced that peculiar sensation known only to the recently dead -horror at what you see lying in front of you, followed by the nagging question: so who’s doing the looking? KNOCK KNOCK. He looked up. “Who’s there?” DEATH. “Death who?” There was a chill in the air. Beano waited. Edward was frantically patting his face . . . well, what until recently had been his face. I WONDER . . . CAN WE  START AGAIN? I DON’T SEEM TO HAVE THE HANG OF THIS. “Sorry?” said Beano. “I’m s-orry!” moaned Edward, “I meant it for the best!” Beano watched his murderer drag his . . . the . . . body away. “Nothing personal, he says,” he said. “I’m glad it wasn’t anything personal. I should hate to think I’ve just been killed because it was personal.” IT’S JUST THAT IT HAS BEEN SUGGESTED THAT I SHOULD BE MORE OF A PEOPLE PERSON. “I mean, why ? I thought we were getting on really well. It’s very hard to make friends in my job. In your job too, I suppose.” BREAK IT TO THEM GENTLY, AS IT WERE. “One minute walking along, the next minute dead. Why?” THINK OF IT MORE AS BEING . . . DIMENSIONALLY DIS-ADVANTAGED. The shade of Beano the clown turned to Death. “What are you talking about?” YOU’RE DEAD. “Yes. I know.” Beano relaxed, and stopped wondering too much about events in an increasingly irrelevant world. Death found that people often did, after the initial confusion. After all, the worst had already happened. At least . . . with any luck. IF YOU WOULD CARE TO FOLLOW ME . . . “Will there be custard pies? Red noses? Juggling? Are there likely to be baggy trousers?” NO. Beano had spent almost all his short life as a clown. He smiled grimly, under his make-up. “I like it.” Vimes’ meeting with the Patrician ended as all such meetings did, with the guest going away in possession of an unfocused yet nagging suspicion that he’d only just escaped with his life. Vimes trudged on to see his bride-to-be. He knew where she would be found. The sign scrawled across the big double gates in Morphic Street said: Here be Dragns. The brass plaque beside the gates said: The Ankh-Morpork Sunshine Sanctuary for Sick Dragons. There was a small and hollow and pathetic dragon made out of papier-mache and holding a collection box, chained very heavily to the wall, and bearing the sign: Don’t Let My Flame Go Out. This was where Lady Sybil Ramkin spent most of her days. She was, Vimes had been told, the richest woman in Ankh-Morpork. In fact she was richer than all the other women in Ankh-Morpork rolled, if that were possible, into one. It was going to be a strange wedding, people said. Vimes treated his social superiors with barely concealed distaste, because the women made his head ache and the men made his fists itch. And Sybil Ramkin was the last survivor of one of the oldest families in Ankh. But they’d been thrown together like twigs in a whirlpool, and had yielded to the inevitable . . . When he was a little boy, Sam Vimes had thought that the very rich ate off gold plates and lived in marble houses. He’d learned something new: the very very rich could afford to be poor. Sybil Ramkin lived in the kind of poverty that was only available to the very rich, a poverty approached from the other side. Women who were merely well-off saved up and bought dresses made of silk edged with lace and pearls, but Lady Ramkin was so rich she could afford to stomp around the place in rubber boots and a tweed skirt that had belonged to her mother. She was so rich she could afford to live on biscuits and cheese sandwiches. She was so rich she lived in three rooms in a thirty-four-roomed mansion; the rest of them were full of very expensive and very old furniture, covered in dust sheets. The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness. The point was that Sybil Ramkin hardly ever had to buy anything. The mansion was full of this big, solid furniture, bought by her ancestors. It never wore out. She had whole boxes full of jewellery which just seemed to have accumulated over the centuries. Vimes had seen a wine cellar that a regiment of speleologists could get so happily drunk in that they wouldn’t mind that they’d got lost without trace. Lady Sybil Ramkin lived quite comfortably from day to day by spending, Vimes estimated, about half as much as he did. But she spent a lot more on dragons. The Sunshine Sanctuary for Sick Dragons was built with very, very thick walls and a very, very lightweight roof, an idiosyncrasy of architecture normally only found elsewhere in firework factories. And this is because the natural condition of the common swamp dragon is to be chronically ill, and the natural state of an unhealthy dragon is to be laminated across the walls, floor and ceiling of whatever room it is in. A swamp dragon is a badly run, dangerously unstable chemical factory one step from disaster. One quite small step. It has been speculated that its habit of exploding violently when angry, excited, frightened or merely plain bored is a developed survival trait[3] to discourage predators. Eat dragons, it proclaims, and you’ll have a case of indigestion to which the term ‘blast radius’ will be appropriate. Vimes therefore pushed the door open carefully. The smell of dragons engulfed him. It was an unusual smell, even by Ankh-Morpork standards – it put Vimes in mind of a pond that had been used to dump alchemical waste for several years and then drained. Small dragons whistled and yammered at him from pens on either side of the path. Several excited gusts of flame sizzled the hair on his bare shins. He found Sybil Ramkin with a couple of the miscellaneous young women in breeches who helped run the Sanctuary; they were generally called Sara or Emma, and all looked exactly the same to Vimes. They were struggling with what seemed to be an irate sack. She looked up as he approached. “Ah, here’s Sam,” she said. “Hold this, there’s a lamb.” The sack was thrust into his arms. At the same moment a talon ripped out of the bottom of the sack and scraped down his breastplate in a spirited attempt to disembowel him. A spiky-eared head thrust its way out of the other end, two glowing red eyes focused on him briefly, a tooth-serrated mouth gaped open and a gush of evil-smelling vapour washed over him. Lady Ramkin grabbed the lower jaw triumphantly, and thrust the other arm up to the elbow down the little dragon’s throat. “Got you!” She turned to Vimes, who was still rigid with shock. “Little devil wouldn’t take his limestone tablet. Swallow. Swallow!, there! Who’s a good boy then? You can let him go now.” The sack slipped from Vimes’ arms. “Bad case of Flameless Gripe,” said Lady Ramkin. “Hope we’ve got it in time—” The dragon ripped its way out of the sack and looked around for something to incinerate. Everyone tried to get out of the way. Then its eyes crossed, and it hiccuped. The limestone tablet pinged off the opposite wall. “Everybody down!” They leapt for such cover as was provided by a watertrough and a pile of clinkers. The dragon hiccuped again, and looked puzzled. Then it exploded. They stuck their heads up when the smoke had cleared and looked down at the sad little crater. Lady Ramkin took a handkerchief out of a pocket of her leather overall and blew her nose. “Silly little bugger,” she said. “Oh, well. How are you, Sam? Did you go to see Havelock?” Vimes nodded. Never in his life, he thought, would he get used to the idea of the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork having a first name, or that anyone could ever know him well enough to call him by it. “I’ve been thinking about this dinner tomorrow night.” he said desperately. “You know, I really don’t think I can—” “Don’t be silly,” said Lady Ramkin. “You’ll enjoy it. It’s time you met the Right People. You know that.” He nodded mournfully. “We shall expect you up at the house at eight o’clock, then,” she said. “And don’t look like that. It’ll help you tremendously. You’re far too good a man to spend his nights traipsing around dark wet streets. It’s time you got on in the world.” Vimes wanted to say that he liked traipsing around dark wet streets, but it would be no use. He didn’t like it much. It was just what he’d always done. He thought about his badge in the same way he thought about his nose. He didn’t love it or hate it. It was just his badge. “So just you run along. It’ll be terrific fun. Have you got a handkerchief?” Vimes panicked. “What?” “Give it to me.” She held it close to his mouth. “Spit. . .” she commanded. She dabbed at a smudge on his cheek. One of the Interchangeable Emmas gave a giggle that was just audible. Lady Ramkin ignored it. “There,” she said. “That’s better. Now off you go and keep the streets safe for all of us. And if you want to do something really useful, you could find Chubby.” “Chubby?” “He got out of his pen last night.” “A dragon?” Vimes groaned, and pulled a cheap cigar out of his pocket. Swamp dragons were becoming a minor nuisance in the city. Lady Ramkin got very angry about it. People would buy them when they were six inches long and a cute way of lighting fires and then, when they were burning the furniture and leaving corrosive holes in the carpet, the floor and the cellar ceiling underneath it, they’d be shoved out to fend for themselves. “We rescued him from a blacksmith in Easy Street,” said Lady Ramkin. “I said, “My good man, you can use a forge like everyone else”. Poor little thing.” “Chubby,” said Vimes. “Got a light?” “He’s got a blue collar,” said Lady Ramkin. “Right, yes.” “He’ll follow you like a lamb if he thinks you’ve got a charcoal biscuit.” “Right.” Vimes patted his pockets. “They’re a little bit over-excited in this heat.” Vimes reached down into a pen of hatchlings and picked up a small one, which flapped its stubby wings excitedly. It spurted a brief jet of blue flame. Vimes inhaled quickly. “Sam, I really wish you wouldn’t do that.” “Sorry.” “So if you could get young Carrot and that nice Corporal Nobbs to keep an eye out for—” “No problem.” For some reason Lady Sybil, keen of eye in every other respect, persisted in thinking of Corporal Nobbs as a cheeky, lovable rascal. It had always puzzled Sam Vimes. It must be the attraction of opposites. The Ram-kins were more highly bred than a hilltop bakery, whereas Corporal Nobbs had been disqualified from the human race for shoving. As he walked down the street in his old leather and rusty mail, with his helmet screwed on his head, and the feel of the cobbles through the worn soles of his boots telling him he was in Acre Alley, no-one would have believed that they were looking at a man who was very soon going to marry the richest woman in Ankh-Morpork.   Chubby was not a happy dragon. He missed the forge. He’d quite liked it in the forge. He got all the coal he could eat and the blacksmith hadn’t been a particularly unkind man. Chubby had not demanded much out of life, and had got it. Then this large woman had taken him away and put him in a pen. There had been other dragons around. Chubby didn’t particularly like other dragons. And people’d given him unfamiliar coal. He’d been quite pleased when someone had taken him out of the pen in the middle of the night. He’d thought he was going back to the blacksmith. Now it was dawning on him that this was not happening. He was in a box, he was being bumped around, and now he was getting angry . . .   Sergeant Colon fanned himself with his clipboard, and then glared at the assembled guards. He coughed. “Right then, people,” he said. “Settle down.” “We are settled down, Fred,” said Corporal Nobbs. “That’s Sergeant to you, Nobby,” said Sergeant Colon. “What do we have to sit down for anyway? We didn’t used to do all this. I feel a right berk, sitting down listenin’ to you goin’ on about—” “We got to do it proper, now there’s more of us,” said Sergeant Colon. “Right! Ahem. Right. OK. We welcome to the guard today Lance-Constable Detritus – don’t salute! - and Lance-Constable Cuddy, also Lance-Constable Angua. We hope you will have a long and – what’s that you’ve got there, Cuddy?” “What?” said Cuddy, innocently. “I can’t help noticing that you still has got there what appears to be a double-headed throwing axe, lance-constable, despite what I vouchsafed to you earlier re Guard rules.” “Cultural weapon, sergeant?” said Cuddy hopefully. “You can leave it in your locker. Guards carry one sword, short, and one truncheon.” With the exception of Detritus, he added mentally. Firstly, because even the longest sword nestled in the troll’s huge hand like a toothpick, and secondly, because until they’d got this saluting business sorted out he wasn’t about to see a member of the Watch nail his own hand to his own ear. He’d have a truncheon, and like it. Even then, he’d probably beat himself to death. Trolls and dwarfs! Dwarfs and trolls! He didn’t deserve it, not at his time of life. And that wasn’t the worst of it. He coughed again. When he read from his clipboard, it was in the sing-song voice of someone who learned his public speaking at school. “Right,” he said again, a little uncertainly. “So. Says here—” “Sergeant?” “Now wh – Oh, it’s you, Corporal Carrot. Yes?” Aren’t you forgetting something, sergeant?” said Carrot. “I dunno,” said Colon cautiously. Am I?” “About the recruits, sarge. Something they’ve got to take?” Carrot prompted. Sergeant Colon rubbed his nose. Let’s see . . . they had, as per standing orders, taken and signed for one shirt (mail, chain) one helmet, iron and copper, one breastplate, iron (except in the case of Lance-Constable Angua, who’d need to be fitted special, and Lance-Constable Detritus, who’d signed for a hastily adapted piece of armour which had once belonged to a war elephant), one truncheon, oak, one emergency pike or halberd, one crossbow, one hourglass, one short sword (except for Lance-Constable Detritus) and one badge, office of, Night Watchman’s, copper. “I think they’ve got the lot, Carrot,” he said. “All signed for. Even Detritus got someone to make an X for him.” “They’ve got to take the oath, sarge.” “Oh. Er. Have they?” “Yes, sarge. It’s the law.” Sergeant Colon looked embarrassed. It probably was the law, at that. Carrot was much better at this sort of thing. He knew the laws of Ankh-Morpork by heart. He was the only person who did. All Colon knew was that he’d never taken an oath when he joined, and as for Nobby, the best he’d ever get to an oath was something like ‘bugger this for a game of soldiers’. “All right, then,” he said. “You’ve all, er, got to take the oath . . . eh . . . and Corporal Carrot will show you how. Did you take the, er, oath when you joined us, Carrot?” “Oh, yes, sarge. Only no-one asked me, so I gave it to myself, quiet like.” “Oh? Right. Carry on, then.” Carrot stood up and removed his helmet. He smoothed down his hair. Then he raised his right hand. “Raise your right hands, too,” he said. “Er. . . that’s the one nearest Lance-Constable Angua, Lance-Constable Detritus. And repeat after me . . .” He closed his eyes and his lips moved for a moment, as though he was reading something off the inside of his skull. “ “I comma square bracket recruit’s name square bracket comma” . . .” He nodded at them. “You say it.” They chorused a reply. Angua tried not to laugh. “ “. . . do solemnly swear by square bracket recruit’s deity of choice square bracket . . .” ‘ Angua couldn’t trust herself to look at Carrot’s face. “ “. . . to uphold the Laws and Ordinances of the city of Ankh-Morpork, serve the public truft comma and defend the fubjects of His ftroke Her bracket delete whichever is inappropriate bracket Majefty bracket name of reigning monarch bracket . . .” ‘ Angua tried to look at a point behind Carrot’s ear. On top of everything else, Detritus’ patient monotone was already several dozen words behind everyone else. “ “. . . without fear comma favour comma or thought of perfonal fafety semi-colon to purfue evildoers and protect the innocent comma laying down my life if necefsary in the caufe of said duty comma so help me bracket aforefaid deity bracket full stop Gods Save the King stroke Queen bracket delete whichever is inappropriate bracket full stop.” ‘ Angua subsided gratefully, and then did see Carrot’s face. There were unmistakable tears trickling down his cheek. “Er . . . right . . . that’s it, then, thank you,” said Sergeant Colon, after a while. “—pro-tect the in-no-cent com-ma—” “In your own time, Lance-Constable Detritus.” The sergeant cleared his throat and consulted the clipboard again. “Now, Grabber Hoskins has been let out of jail again, so be on the look out, you know what he’s like when he’s had his celebratory drink, and bloody Coalface the troll beat up four men last night—” “—in the caufe of said du-ty com-ma—” “Where’s Captain Vimes?” demanded Nobby. “He should be doing this.” “Captain Vimes is . . . sorting things out,” said Sergeant Colon. “ ‘S’not easy, learning civilianing. Right.” He glanced at his clipboard again, and back to the guardsmen. Men . . . hah. His lips moved as he counted. There, sitting between Nobby and Constable Cuddy, was a very small, raggedy man, whose beard and hair were so overgrown and matted together that he looked like a ferret peering out of a bush. “—me brack-et af-ore-said de-it-y brack-et full stop.” “Oh, no,” he said. “What’re you doing here, Here’n’now? Thank you, Detritus – don’t salute - you can sit down now.” “Mr Carrot brings me in,” said Here’n’now. “Protective custody, sarge,” said Carrot. “Again?” Colon unhooked the cell keys from their nail over the desk and tossed them to the thief. “All right. Cell Three. Take the keys in with you, we’ll holler if we need ‘em back.” “You’re a toff, Mr Colon,” said Here’n’now, wandering down the steps to the cells. Colon shook his head. “Worst thief in the world,” he said. “He doesn’t look that good,” said Angua. “No, I mean the worst,” said Colon. “As in “not good at it”.” “Remember when he was going to go all the way up to Dunmanifestin to steal the Secret of Fire from the gods?” said Nobby. “And I said “but we’ve got it, Here’n’now, we’ve had it for thousands of years,” ‘ said Carrot. And he said, “that’s right, so it has antique value”.”[4] “Poor old chap,” said Sergeant Colon. “OK. What else have we got. . . yes, Carrot?” “Now, they’ve got to take the King’s Shilling,” said Carrot. “Right. Yes. OK.” Colon fished in his pocket, and took out three sequin-sized Ankh-Morpork dollars, which had about the gold content of seawater. He tossed them one at a time to the recruits. “This is called the King’s Shilling,” he said, glancing at Carrot. “Dunno why. You gotta get give it when you join. Regulations, see. Shows you’ve joined.” He looked embarrassed for a moment, and then coughed. “Right. Oh, yeah. Loada roc—some trolls,” he corrected himself, “got some kind of march down Short Street. Lance-Constable Detritus – don’t let him salute! Right. What’s this about, then?” “It Troll New Year,” said Detritus. “Is it? S’pose we got to learn about this sort of thing now. And says here there’s this gritsuc—this dwarf rally or something—” “Battle of Koom Valley Day,” said Constable Cuddy. “Famous victory over the trolls.” He looked smug, insofar as anything could be seen behind the beard. “Yeah? From ambush,” grunted Detritus, glowering at the dwarf. “What? It was the trolls—“ Cuddy began. “Shut up,” said Colon. “Look, it says here. . . says here they’re marching. . . says here they’re marching up Short Street.” He turned the paper over. “Is this right?” “Trolls going one way, dwarfs going the other?” said Carrot. “Now there’s a parade you don’t want to miss,” said Nobby. “What’s wrong?” said Angua. Carrot waved his hands vaguely in the air. “Oh, dear. It’s going to be dreadful. We must do something.” “Dwarfs and trolls get along like a house on fire,” said Nobby. “Ever been in a burning house, miss?” Sergeant Colon’s normally red face had gone pale pink. He buckled on his sword belt and picked up his truncheon. “Remember,” he said, “let’s be careful out there.” “Yeah,” said Nobby, “let’s be careful to stay in here.”   To understand why dwarfs and trolls don’t like each other you have to go back a long way. They get along like chalk and cheese. Very like chalk and cheese, really. One is organic, the other isn’t, and also smells a bit cheesy. Dwarfs make a living by smashing up rocks with valuable minerals in them and the silicon-based lifeform known as trolls are, basically, rocks with valuable minerals in them. In the wild they also spend most of the daylight hours dormant, and that’s not a situation a rock containing valuable minerals needs to be in when there are dwarfs around. And dwarfs hate trolls because, after you’ve just found an interesting seam of valuable minerals, you don’t like rocks that suddenly stand up and tear your arm off because you’ve just stuck a pick-axe in their ear. It was a state of permanent inter-species vendetta and, like all good vendettas, didn’t really need a reason any more. It was enough that it had always existed.[5] Dwarfs hated trolls because trolls hated dwarfs, and vice versa. The Watch lurked in Three Lamps Alley, which was about halfway down Short Street. There was a distant crackle of fireworks. Dwarfs let them off to drive away evil mine spirits. Trolls let them off because they tasted nice. “Don’t see why we can’t let ‘em fight it out amongst themselves and then arrest the losers,” said Corporal Nobbs. “That’s what we always used to do.” “The Patrician gets really shirty about ethnic trouble,” said Sergeant Colon moodily. “He gets really sarcastic about it.” A thought struck him. He brightened up a little bit. “Got any ideas, Carrot?” he said. A second thought struck him. Carrot was a simple lad. “Corporal Carrot?” “Sarge?” “Sort this lot out, will you?” Carrot peered around the corner at the advancing walls of trolls and dwarfs. They’d already seen each other. “Right you are, sergeant,” he said. “Lance-Constables Cuddy and Detritus – don’t salute! – you come with me.” “You can’t let him go out there!” said Angua. “It’s certain death!” “Got a real sense o’duty, that boy,” said Corporal Nobbs. He took a minute length of dog-end from behind his ear and struck a match on the sole of his boot. “Don’t worry, miss,” said Colon. “He—” “Lance-Constable,” said Angua. “What?” “Lance-Constable,” she repeated. “Not miss. Carrot says I don’t have any sex while I’m on duty.” To the background of Nobby’s frantic coughing, Colon said, very quickly, “What I mean is, lance-constable, young Carrot’s got krisma. Bags of krisma.” “Krisma?” “Bags of it.”   The jolting had stopped. Chubby was really annoyed now. Really, really annoyed. There was a rustling noise. A piece of sacking moved aside and there, staring at Chubby, was another male dragon. It looked annoyed. Chubby reacted in the only way he knew how.   Carrot stood in the middle of the street, arms folded, while the two new recruits stood just behind him, trying to keep an eye on both approaching marches at the same time. Colon thought Carrot was simple. Carrot often struck people as simple. And he was. Where people went wrong was thinking that simple meant the same thing as stupid. Carrot was not stupid. He was direct, and honest, and good-natured and honourable in all his dealings. In Ankh-Morpork this would normally have added up to ‘stupid’ in any case and would have given him the survival quotient of a jellyfish in a blast furnace, but there were a couple of other factors. One was a punch that even trolls had learned to respect. The other was that Carrot was genuinely, almost supernaturally, likeable. He got on well with people, even while arresting them. He had an exceptional memory for names. For most of his young life he’d lived in a small dwarf colony where there were hardly any other people to know. Then, suddenly, he was in a huge city, and it was as if a talent had been waiting to unfold. And was still unfolding. He waved cheerfully at the approaching dwarfs. “ ‘Morning Mr Cumblethigh! ‘Morning, Mr Stronginthearm!” Then he turned and waved at the leading troll. There was a muffled ‘pop’ as a firework went off. “ ‘Morning, Mr Bauxite!” He cupped his hands. “If you could all just stop and listen to me—‘ he bellowed. The two marches did stop, with some hesitation and a general piling up of the people in the back. It was that or walk over Carrot. If Carrot did have a minor fault, it lay in not paying attention to small details around him when his mind was on other things. So the whispered conversation behind his back was currently escaping him. “—hah! It was too an ambush! And your mother was an ore—” “Now then, gentlemen,” said Carrot, in a reasoned and amiable voice, “I’m sure there’s no need for this belligerent manner—” “—you ambush us too! my great-great-grandfather he at Koom Valley, he tell me!” “—in our fair city on such a lovely day. I must ask you as good citizens of Ankh-Morpork—” “—yeah? you even know who your father is, do you?” “—that, while you must certainly celebrate your proud ethnic folkways, to profit by the example of my fellow officers here, who have sunk their ancient differences—” “—I smash you head, you roguesome dwarfs!” “—for the greater benefit of—” “—I could take you with one hand tied behind my back!” “—the city, whose badge they are—” “ —you get opportunity! I tie BOTH hands behind you back!” “—proud and privileged to wear.” “Aargh!” “Ooow!” It dawned on Carrot that hardly anyone was paying any attention to him. He turned. Lance-Constable Cuddy was upside down, because Lance-Constable Detritus was trying to bounce him on the cobbles by his helmet, although Lance-Constable Cuddy was putting the position to good effect by gripping Lance-Constable Detritus around the knee and trying to sink his teeth into Lance-Constable Detritus’ ankle. The opposing marchers watched in fascination. “We should do something!” said Angua, from the guards’ hiding place in the alley. “Weeell,” said Sergeant Colon, slowly, “it’s always very tricky, ethnic.” “Can put a foot wrong very easily,” said Nobby. “Very thin-skinned, your basic ethnic.” “Thin-skinned? They’re trying to kill one another!” “It’s cultural,” said Sergeant Colon, miserably. “No sense us tryin’ to force our culture on ‘em, is there? That’s speciesist.” Out in the street, Corporal Carrot had gone very red in the face. “If he lays a finger on either of ‘em, with all their friends watching,” said Nobby, “the plan is, we run away like hell—” Veins stood out on Carrot’s mighty neck. He stuck his hands on his waist and bellowed: “Lance-Constable Detritus! Salute!” They’d spent hours trying to teach him. Detritus’ brain took some time to latch on to an idea, but once it was there, it didn’t fade away fast. He saluted. His hand was full of dwarf. So he saluted while holding Lance-Constable Cuddy, swinging him up and over like a small angry club. The sound of their helmets meeting echoed off the buildings, and it was followed a moment later by the crash of them both hitting the ground. Carrot prodded them with the toe of his sandal. Then he turned and strode towards the dwarf marchers, shaking with anger. In the alleyway, Sergeant Colon started to suck the rim of his helmet out of terror. “You’ve got weapons, haven’t you?” snarled Carrot at a hundred dwarfs. “Own up! If the dwarfs who’ve got weapons don’t drop them right this minute the entire parade, and I mean the entire parade, will be put in the cells! I’m serious about this!” The dwarfs in the front row took a step backwards. There was a desultory tinkle of metallic objects hitting the ground. “All of them,” said Carrot menacingly. “That includes you with the black beard trying to hide behind Mr Hamslinger! I can see you, Mr Stronginthearm! Put it down. No-one’s amused!” “He’s going to die, isn’t he,” said Angua, quietly. “Funny, that,” said Nobby. “If we was to try it, we’d be little bits of mince. But it seems to work for him.” “Krisma,” said Sergeant Colon, who was having to lean on the wall. “Do you mean charisma?” said Angua. “Yeah. One of them things. Yeah.” “How does he manage it?” “Dunno,” said Nobby. “S’pose he’s an easy lad to like?” Carrot had turned on the trolls, who were smirking at the dwarfs’ discomfiture. “And as for you,” he said, “I shall definitely be patrolling around Quarry Lane tonight, and I won’t be seeing any trouble. Will I?” There was a shuffling of huge oversized feet, and a general muttering. Carrot cupped his hand to his ear. “I couldn’t quite hear,” he said. There was a louder mutter, a sort of toccata scored for one hundred reluctant voices on the theme of ‘Yes, Corporal Carrot.” “Right. Now off you go. And let’s have no more of this nonsense, there’s good chaps.” Carrot brushed the dust off his hands and smiled at everyone. The trolls looked puzzled. In theory, Carrot was a thin film of grease on the street. But somehow it just didn’t seem to be happening . . . Angua said, “He just called a hundred trolls “good chaps”. Some of them are just down off the mountains! Some of them have got lichen on them!” “Smartest thing on a troll,” said Sergeant Colon. And then the world exploded.   The Watch had left before Captain Vimes got back to Pseudopolis Yard. He plodded up the stairs to his office, and sat down in the sticky leather chair. He gazed blankly at the wall. He wanted to leave the Guard. Of course he did. It wasn’t what you could call a way of life. Not life. Unsocial hours. Never being certain from one day to the next what the Law actually was, in this pragmatic city. No home life, to speak of. Bad food, eaten when you could; he’d even eaten some of Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler’s sausages-in-a-bun before now. It always seemed to be raining or baking hot. No friends, except for the rest of the squad, because they were the only people who lived in your world. Whereas in a few days he would, as Sergeant Colon had said, be on the gravy boat. Nothing to do all day but eat his meals and ride around on a big horse shouting orders at people. At times like this the image of old Sergeant Kepple floated across his memory. He’d been head of the Watch when Vimes was a recruit. And, soon afterwards, he retired. They’d all clubbed together and bought him a cheap watch, one of those that’d keep going for a few years until the demon inside it evaporated. Bloody stupid idea, Vimes thought moodily, staring at the wall. Bloke leaves work, hands in his badge and hourglass and bell, and what’d we get him? A watch. But he’d still come in to work the next day, with his new watch. To show everyone the ropes, he said; to tidy up a few loose ends, haha. See you youngsters don’t get into trouble, haha. A month later he was bringing the coal in and sweeping the floor and running errands and helping people write reports. He was still there five years later. He was still there six years later, when one of the Watch got in early and found him lying on the floor . . . And it emerged that no-one, no-one, knew where he lived, or even if there was a Mrs Kepple. They had a whip-round to bury him, Vimes remembered. There were just guards at the funeral . . . Come to think of it, there were always just guards at a guard’s funeral. Of course it wasn’t like that now. Sergeant Colon had been happily married for years, perhaps because he and his wife arranged their working lives so that they only met occasionally, normally on the doorstep. But she left him decent meals in the oven, and there was clearly something there; they’d got grandchildren, even, so obviously there had been times when they’d been unable to avoid each other. Young Carrot had to fight young women off with a stick. And Corporal Nobbs . . . well, he probably made his own arrangements. He was said to have the body of a twenty-five year old, although no-one knew where he kept it. The point was that everyone else had someone, even if in Nobby’s case it was probably against their will. So, Captain Vimes, what is it really? Do you care for her? Don’t worry too much about love, that’s a dicey word for the over-forties. Or are you just afraid of becoming some old man dying in the groove of his life and buried out of pity by a bunch of youngsters who never knew you as anything other than some old fart who always seemed to be around the place and got sent out to bring back the coffee and hot figgins and was laughed at behind his back? He’d wanted to avoid that. And now Fate was handing him a fairy tale. Of course he’d known she was rich. But he hadn’t expected the summons to Mr Morecombe’s office. Mr Morecombe had been the Ramkins’ family solicitor for a long time. Centuries, in fact. He was a vampire. Vimes disliked vampires. Dwarfs were law-abiding little buggers when they were sober, and even trolls were all right if you kept them where you could see them. But all the undead made his neck itch. Live and let live was all very well, but there was a problem right there, when you thought about it logically . . . Mr Morecombe was scrawny, like a tortoise, and very pale. It had taken him ages to come to the point, and when it came the point nailed Vimes to his chair. “How much?” “Er. I believe I am right in saying the estate, including the farms, the areas of urban development, and the small area of unreal estate near the University, are together worth approximately . . . seven million dollars a year. Yes. Seven million at current valuation, I would say.” “It’s all mine?” “From the hour of your wedding to Lady Sybil. Although she instructs me in this letter that you are to have access to all her accounts as of the present moment.” The pearly dead eyes had watched Vimes carefully. “Lady Sybil,” he said, “owns approximately one-tenth of Ankh, and extensive properties in Morpork, plus of course considerable farm lands in—” “But . . . but . . . we’ll own them together . . .” “Lady Sybil is very specific. She is deeding all the property to you as her husband. She has a somewhat. . . old-fashioned approach.” He pushed a folded paper across the table. Vimes took it, unfolded it, and stared. “Should you predecease her, of course,” Mr Morecombe droned on, “it will revert to her by common right of marriage. Or to any fruit of the union, of course.” Vimes hadn’t even said anything at that point. He’d just felt his mouth drop open and small areas of his brain fuse together. “Lady Sybil,” said the lawyer, the words coming from far away, “while not as young as she was, is a fine healthy woman and there is no reason why—” Vimes had got through the rest of the interview on automatic. He could hardly think about it now. When he tried, his thoughts kept skidding away. And, just as always happened when the world got too much for him, they skidded somewhere else. He pulled open the bottom drawer of his desk and stared at the shiny bottle of Bearhugger’s Very Fine Whiskey. He wasn’t sure how it had got there. Somehow he’d never got around to throwing it out. Start that again and you won’t even see retirement. Stick to cigars. He shut the drawer and leaned back, taking a half-smoked cigar from his pocket. Maybe the guards weren’t so good now anyway. Politics. Hah! Watchmen like old Kepple would turn in their graves if they knew that the Watch had taken on a w— And the world exploded. The window blew in, peppering the wall behind Vimes’ desk with fragments and cutting one of his ears. He threw himself to the floor and rolled under the desk. Right, that did it! The alchemists had blown up their Guild House for the last time, if Vimes had anything to do with it . . . But when he peered over the window sill he saw, across the river, the column of dust rising over the Assassins’ Guild . . . The rest of the Watch came trotting along Filigree Street as Vimes reached the Guild entrance. A couple of black-clad Assassins barred his way, in a polite manner which nevertheless indicated that impoliteness was a future option. There were sounds of hurrying feet behind the gates. “You see this badge? You see it?” Vimes demanded. “Nevertheless, this is Guild property,” said an Assassin. “Let us in, in the name of the law!” bellowed Vimes. The Assassin smiled nervously at him. “The law is that Guild law prevails inside Guild walls,” he said. Vimes glared at him. But it was true. The laws of the city, such as they were, stopped outside the Guild Houses. The Guilds had their own laws. The Guild owned the . . . He stopped. Behind him, Lance-Constable Angua reached down and picked up a fragment of glass. Then she stirred the debris with her foot. And then her gaze met that of a small, non-descript mongrel dog watching her very intently from under a cart. In fact non-descript was not what it was. It was very easy to descript. It looked like halitosis with a wet nose. “Woof, woof,” said the dog, in a bored way. “Woof, woof, woof, and growl, growl.” The dog trotted into the mouth of an alleyway. Angua glanced around, and followed it. The rest of the squad were gathered around Vimes, who’d gone very quiet. “Fetch me the Master of Assassins,” he said. “Now!” The young Assassin tried to sneer. “Hah! Your uniform doesn’t scare me,” he said. Vimes looked down at his battered breastplate and worn mail. “You’re right,” he said. “This is not a scary uniform. I’m sorry. Forward, Corporal Carrot and Lance-Constable Detritus.” The Assassin was suddenly aware of the sunlight being blocked out. “Now these, I think you’ll agree,” said Vimes, from somewhere behind the eclipse, “are scary uniforms.” The Assassin nodded slowly. He hadn’t asked for this. Usually there were never any guards outside the Guild. What would be the point? He had, tucked away in his exquisitely tailored black clothes, at least eighteen devices for killing people, but he was becoming aware that Lance-Constable Detritus had one on the end of each of his arms. Closer, as it were, to hand. “I’ll, er, I’ll go and get the Master, then, shall I?” he said. Carrot leaned down. “Thank you for your co-operation,” he said gravely.   Angua watched the dog. The dog watched her. She squatted on her haunches as it sat down and scratched an ear furiously. Looking around carefully to make sure that no-one could see them, she barked an inquiry. “Don’t bower,” said the dog. “You can talk?” “Huh. That don’t take much intelligence,” said the dog. “And it don’t take much intelligence to spot what you are, neither.” Angua looked panicky. “Where does it show?” “It’s the smell, girl. Din’t you learn nuffm? Smelled you a mile orf. I thought, oh-ho, what’s one of them doing in the Watch, eh?” Angua waved a finger wildly. “If you tell anyone—!” The dog looked more pained than normal. “No-one’d listen,” it said. “Why not?” “ ‘Cos everyone knows dogs can’t talk. They hear me, see, but unless things are really tough they just think they’re thinking to ‘emselves.” The little dog sighed. “Trust me. I know what I’m talking about. I’ve read books. Well . . . chewed books.” It scratched an ear again. “Seems to me,” it said, “we could help each other . . .” “In what way?” “Well, you could put me in the way of a pound of steak. That does wonders for my memory, steak. Makes it go clean away.” Angua frowned. “People don’t like the word “blackmail”,” she said. “It ain’t the only word they don’t like,” said the dog. “Take my case, now. I’ve got chronic intelligence. Is that any use to a dog? Did I ask for it? Not me. I just finds a cushy spot to spend my nights along at the High Energy Magic building at the University, no-one told me about all this bloody magic leaking out the whole time, next thing I know I open me eyes, head starts fizzing like a dose of salts, oh-oh, thinks I, here we go again, hello abstract conceptualizing, intellectual development here we come. . . What bloody use is that to me? Larst time it happened, I ended up savin’ the world from horrible wossnames from the Dungeon Dimensions, and did anyone say fanks? Wot a Good Dog, Give Him A Bone? Har har.” It held up a threadbare paw. “My name’s Gaspode. Something like this happens to me just about every week. Apart from that, I’m just a dog.” Angua gave up. She grasped the moth-eaten limb and shook it. “My name’s Angua. You know what I am.” “Forgotten it already,” said Gaspode. Captain Vimes looked at the debris scattered across the courtyard from a hole in one of the ground-floor rooms. All the surrounding windows had broken, and there was a lot of glass underfoot. Mirror glass. Of course, assassins were notoriously vain, but mirrors would be in rooms, wouldn’t they? You wouldn’t expect a lot of glass outside. Glass got blown in, not out. He saw Lance-Constable Cuddy bend down and pick up a couple of pulleys attached to a piece of rope, which was burned at one end. There was a rectangle of card in the debris. The hairs on the back of Vimes’ hand prickled. He sniffed rankness in the air. Vimes would be the first to admit that he wasn’t a good copper, but he’d probably be spared the chore because lots of other people would happily admit it for him. There was a certain core of stubborn bloody-mindedness there which upset important people, and anyone who upsets important people is automatically not a good copper. But he’d developed instincts. You couldn’t live on the streets of a city all your life without them. In the same way that the whole jungle subtly changes at the distant approach of the hunter, there was an alteration in the feel of the city. There was something happening here, something wrong, and he couldn’t quite see what it was. He started to reach down— “What is the meaning of this?” Vimes straightened up. He did not turn around. “Sergeant Colon, I want you to go back to the Watch House with Nobby and Detritus,” he said. “Corporal Carrot and Lance-Constable Cuddy, you stay with me.” “Yes, sah!” said Sergeant Colon, stamping heavily and ripping off a smart salute to annoy the Assassins. Vimes acknowledged it. Then he turned around. “Ah, Dr Cruces,” he said. The Master of Assassins was white with rage, contrasting nicely with the extreme black of his clothing. “No-one sent for you!” he said. “What gives you the right to be here, mister policeman? Walking around as if you own the place?” Vimes paused, his heart singing. He savoured the moment. He’d like to take this moment and press it carefully in a big book, so that when he was old he could take it out occasionally and remember it. He reached into his breastplate and pulled out the lawyer’s letter. “Well, if you would like the most fundamental reason,” he said, “it is because I rather think I do.” A man can be defined by the things he hates. There were quite a lot of things that Captain Vimes hated. Assassins were near the top of the list, just after kings and the undead. He had to allow, though, that Dr Cruces recovered very quickly. He didn’t explode when he read the letter, or argue, or claim it was a forgery. He simply folded it up, handed it back, and said, coldly, “I see. The freehold, at least.” “Quite so. Could you tell me what has been happening, please?” He was aware of other senior Assassins entering the courtyard through the hole in the wall. They were very carefully looking at the debris. Dr Cruces hesitated for a moment. “Fireworks,” he said.   “What happened,” said Gaspode, “was that someone put a dragon in a box right up against the wall inside the courtyard, right, and then they went and hid behind one of the statues and pulled a string and next minute – bang!” “Bang?” “ ‘S’right. Then our friend nips into the hole for a few seconds, right, comes out again, trots around the courtyard and next minute there’s Assassins everywhere and he’s among ‘em. What the hell. Another man in black. No-one notices, see?” “You mean he’s still in there?” “How do I know? Hoods and cloaks, everyone in black “How come you were able to see this?” “Oh, I always nip into the Assassins’ Guild on a Wednesday night. Mixed grill night, see?” Gaspode sighed at Angua’s blank expression. “The cook always does a mixed grill of a Wednesday night. No-one ever eats the black pudding. So it’s round the kitchens, see, woof woof, beg beg, who’s a good boy then, look at the little bugger, he looks as though he understands every word I’m sayin’, let’s see what we’ve got here for a good doggy . . .” He looked embarrassed for a moment. “Pride is all very well, but a sausage is a sausage,” he said. “Fireworks?” said Vimes. Dr Cruces looked like a man grasping a floating log in a choppy sea. “Yes. Fireworks. Yes. For Founder’s Day. Unfortunately someone threw away a lighted match which ignited the box.” Dr Cruces suddenly smiled. “My dear Captain Vimes,” he said, clapping his hands, “much as I appreciate your concern, I really—” “They were stored in that room over there?” said Vimes. “Yes, but that’s of no account—” Vimes crossed to the hole in the wall and peered inside. A couple of Assassins glanced at Dr Cruces and reached nonchalantly towards various areas of their clothing. He shook his head. His caution might have had something to do with the way Carrot put his hand on the hilt of his sword, but it could also have been because Assassins did have a certain code, after all. It was dishonourable to kill someone if you weren’t being paid. “It seems to be some kind of . . . museum,” said Vimes. “Guild memorabilia, that sort of thing?” “Yes, exactly. Odd and ends. You know how they mount up over the years.” “Oh. Well, that all seems in order,” said Vimes. “Sorry to have troubled you, doctor. I will be going. I hope I have not inconvenienced you in any way.” “Of course not! Glad to have been able to put your mind at rest.” They were ushered gently yet firmly towards the gateway. “I should clean up this glass,” said Captain Vimes, glancing at the debris again. “Someone could hurt themselves, all this glass lying around. Wouldn’t like to see one of your people get hurt.” “We shall be doing it right this minute, captain,” said Dr Cruces. “Good. Good. Thank you very much.” Captain Vimes paused at the doorway, and then thumped the palm of his hand on his forehead. “Sorry, excuse me – mind like a sieve these days – what was it you said was stolen?” Not a muscle, not a sinew moved on Dr Cruces’ face. “I didn’t say anything was stolen, Captain Vimes.” Vimes gaped at him for a moment. “Right! Sorry! Of course, you didn’t. . . Apologies . . . Work getting on top of me, I expect. I’ll be going, then.” The door slammed in his face. “Right,” said Vimes. “Captain, why—?” Carrot began. Vimes held up a hand. “That wraps it up, then,” he said, slightly louder than necessary. “Nothing to worry about. Let’s get back to the Yard. Where’s Lance-Constable Whatshername?” “Here, captain,” said Angua, stepping out of the alley. “Hiding, eh? And what’s that?” “Woof woof whine whine.” “It’s a little dog, captain.” “Good grief.”   The clang of the big corroded Inhumation Bell echoed through the Assassins’ Guild. Black-clad figures came running from all directions, pushing and shoving in their haste to get to the courtyard. The Guild council, assembled hurriedly outside Dr Cruces’ office. His deputy, Mr Downey, knocked tentatively at the door. “Come.” The council filed in. “Cruces’ office was the biggest room in the building. It always seemed wrong to visitors that the Assassins’ Guild had such light, airy, well-designed premises, more like the premises of a gentlemen’s club than a building where death was plotted on a daily basis. Cheery sporting prints lined the walls, although the quarry was not, when you looked closely, stags or foxes. There were also group etchings – and, more recently, new-fangled iconographs – of the Guild, rows of smiling faces on black-clad bodies and the youngest members sitting cross-legged in front, one of them making a face.[6] Down one side of the room was the big mahogany table where the elders of the Guild sat in weekly session. The other side of the room held Cruces’ private library, and a small workbench. Above the bench was an apothecary cabinet, made up of hundreds of little drawers. The names on the drawer labels were in Assassins’ code, but visitors from outside the Guild were generally sufficiently unnerved not to accept a drink. Four pillars of black granite held up the ceiling. They had been carved with the names of noted Assassins from history. Cruces had his desk foursquare between them. He was standing behind it, his expression almost as wooden as the desk. “I want a roll-call,” he snapped. “Has anyone left the Guild?” “No, sir.” “How can you be so sure?” “The guards on the roofs in Filigree Street say no-one came in or went out, sir.” And who’s watching them?” “They’re watching one another, sir.” “Very well. Listen carefully. I want the mess cleaned up. If anyone needs to go outside the building, I want everyone watched. And then the Guild is going to be searched from top to bottom, do you understand?” “What for, doctor?” said a junior lecturer in poisons. “For . . . anything that is hidden. If you find anything and you don’t know what it is, send for a council member immediately. And don’t touch it.” “But doctor, all sorts of things are hidden—” “This will be different, do you understand?” “No, sir.” “Good. And no-one is to speak to the wretched Watch about this. You, boy . . . bring me my hat.” Dr Cruces sighed. “I suppose I shall have to go and tell the Patrician.” “Hard luck, sir.” The captain didn’t say anything until they were crossing the Brass Bridge. “Now then, Corporal Carrot,” he said, “you know how I’ve always told you how observation is important?” “Yes, captain. I have always paid careful attention to your remarks on the subject.” “So what did you observe?” “Someone’d smashed a mirror. Everyone knows Assassins like mirrors. But if it was a museum, why was there a mirror there?” “Please, sir?” “Who said that?” “Down here, sir. Lance-Constable Cuddy.” “Oh, yes. Yes?” “I know a bit about fireworks, sir. There’s a smell you get after fireworks. Didn’t smell it, sir. Smelled something else.” “Well . . . smelled, Cuddy.” “And there were bits of burned rope and pulleys.” “I smelled dragon,” said Vimes. “Sure, captain?” “Trust me.” Vimes grimaced. If you spent any time in Lady Ramkin’s company, you soon found out what dragons smelled like. If something put its head in your lap while you were dining, you said nothing, you just kept passing it titbits and hoped like hell it didn’t hiccup. “There was a glass case in that room,” he said. “It was smashed open. Hah! Something was stolen. There was a bit of card in the dust, but someone must have pinched it while old Cruces was talking to me. I’d give a hundred dollars to know what it said.” “Why, captain?” said Corporal Carrot. “Because that bastard Cruces doesn’t want me to know.” “I know what could have blown the hole open,” said Angua. “What?” “An exploding dragon.” They walked in stunned silence. “That could do it, sir,” said Carrot loyally. “The little devils go bang at the drop of a helmet.” “Dragon,” muttered Vimes. “What makes you think it was a dragon, Lance-Constable Angua?” Angua hesitated. “Because a dog told me’ was not, she judged, a career-advancing thing to say at this point. “Woman’s intuition?” she suggested. “I suppose,” said Vimes, “you wouldn’t hazard an intuitive guess as to what was stolen?” Angua shrugged. Carrot noticed how interestingly her chest moved. “Something the Assassins wanted to keep where they could look at it?” she said. “Oh, yes,” said Vimes. “I suppose next you’ll tell me this dog saw it all?” “Woof?” Edward d’Eath drew the curtains, bolted the door and leaned on it. It had been so easy! He’d put the bundle on the table. It was thin, and about four feet long. He unwrapped it carefully, and there . . . it . . . was. It looked pretty much like the drawing. Typical of the man – a whole page full of meticulous drawings of crossbows, and this in the margin, as though it hardly mattered. It was so simple! Why hide it away? Probably because people were afraid. People were always afraid of power. It made them nervous. Edward picked it up, cradled it for a while, and found that it seemed to fit his arm and shoulder very snugly. You’re mine. And that, more or less, was the end of Edward d’Eath. Something continued for a while, but what it was, and how it thought, wasn’t entirely human. It was nearly noon. Sergeant Colon had taken the new recruits down to the archery butts in Butts Treat. Vimes went on patrol with Carrot. He felt something inside him bubbling over. Something was brushing the tips of his corroded but nevertheless still-active instincts, trying to draw attention to itself. He had to be on the move. It was all that Carrot could do to keep up. There were trainee Assassins in the streets around the Guild, still sweeping up debris. “Assassins in daylight,” snarled Vimes. “I’m amazed they don’t turn to dust.” “That’s vampires, sir,” said Carrot. “Hah! You’re right. Assassins and licensed thieves and bloody vampires! You know, this was a great old city once, lad.” Unconsciously, they fell into step . . . proceeding. “When we had kings, sir?” “Kings? Kings? Hell, no!” A couple of Assassins looked around in surprise. “I’ll tell you,” said Vimes. “A monarch’s an absolute ruler, right? The head honcho—” “Unless he’s a queen,” said Carrot. Vimes glared at him, and then nodded. “OK, or the head honchette—” “No, that’d only apply if she was a young woman. Queens tend to be older. She’d have to be a . . . a honcharina? No, that’s for very young princesses. No. Um. A honchesa, I think.” Vimes paused. There’s something in the air in this city, he thought. If the Creator had said, “Let there be light’ in Ankh-Morpork, he’d have got no further because of all the people saying ‘What colour?” “The supreme ruler, OK,” he said, starting to stroll forward again. “OK.” “But that’s not right, see? One man with the power of life and death.” “But if he’s a good man—‘ Carrot began. “What? What? OK. OK. Let’s believe he’s a good man. But his second-in-command – is he a good man too? You’d better hope so. Because he’s the supreme ruler, too, in the name of the king. And the rest of the court . . . they’ve got to be good men. Because if just one of them’s a bad man the result is bribery and patronage.” “The Patrician’s a supreme ruler,” Carrot pointed out. He nodded at a passing troll. “G’day, Mr Carbuncle.” “But he doesn’t wear a crown or sit on a throne and he doesn’t tell you it’s right that he should rule,” said Vimes. “I hate the bastard. But he’s honest. Honest like a corkscrew.” “Even so, a good man as king—” “Yes? And then what? Royalty pollutes people’s minds, boy. Honest men start bowing and bobbing just because someone’s grandad was a bigger murdering bastard than theirs was. Listen! We probably had good kings, once! But kings breed other kings! And blood tells, and you end up with a bunch of arrogant, murdering bastards! Chopping off queens’ heads and fighting their cousins every five minutes! And we had centuries of that! And then one day a man said “No more kings!” and we rose up and we fought the bloody nobles and we dragged the king off his throne and we dragged him into Sator Square and we chopped his bloody head off! Job well done!” “Wow,” said Carrot. “Who was he?” “Who?” “The man who said “No More Kings”.” People were staring. Vimes’ face went from the red of anger to the red of embarrassment. There was little difference in the shading, however. “Oh . . . he was Commander of the City Guard in those days,” he mumbled. “They called him Old Stoneface.” “Never heard of him,” said Carrot. “He, er, doesn’t appear much in the history books,” said Vimes. “Sometimes there has to be a civil war, and sometimes, afterwards, it’s best to pretend something didn’t happen. Sometimes people have to do a job, and then they have to be forgotten. He wielded the axe, you know. No-one else’d do it. It was a king’s neck, after all. Kings are,” he spat the word, “special. Even after they’d seen the . . . private rooms, and cleaned up the . . . bits. Even then. No-one’d clean up the world. But he took the axe and cursed them all and did it.” “What king was it?” said Carrot. “Lorenzo the Kind,” said Vimes, distantly. “I’ve seen his picture in the palace museum,” said Carrot. “A fat old man. Surrounded by lots of children.” “Oh yes,” said Vimes, carefully. “He was very fond of children.” Carrot waved at a couple of dwarfs. “I didn’t know this,” he said. “I thought there was just some wicked rebellion or something.” Vimes shrugged. “It’s in the history books, if you know where to look.” “And that was the end of the kings of Ankh-Morpork.” “Oh, there was a surviving son, I think. And a few mad relatives. They were banished. That’s supposed to be a terrible fate, for royalty. I can’t see it myself.” “I think I can. And you like the city, sir.” “Well, yes. But if it was a choice between banishment and having my head chopped off, just help me down with this suitcase. No, we’re well rid of kings. But, I mean . . . the city used to work.” “Still does,” said Carrot. They passed the Assassins’ Guild and drew level with the high, forbidding walls of the Fools’ Guild, which occupied the other corner of the block. “No, it just keeps going. I mean, look up there.” Carrot obediently raised his gaze. There was a familiar building on the junction of Broad Way and Alchemists. The façade was ornate, but covered in grime. Gargoyles had colonized it. The corroded motto over the portico said ‘NEITHER RAIN NOR SNOW NOR GLOM OF NIT CAN STAY THESE MESENGERS ABOT THIER DUTY’ and in more spacious days that may have been the case, but recently someone had found it necessary to nail up an addendum which read: DONT ARSK US ABOUT: rocks troll’s with sticks All sorts of dragons Mrs Cake Huje green things with teeth Any kinds of black dogs with orange eyebrows Rains of spaniel’s. fog. Mrs Cake “Oh,” he said. “The Royal Mail.” “The Post Office,” corrected Vimes. “My granddad said that once you could post a letter there and if d be delivered within a month, without fail. You didn’t have to give it to a passing dwarf and hope the little bugger wouldn’t eat it before . . .” His voice trailed off. “Uh. Sorry. No offence meant.” “None taken,” said Carrot cheerfully. “It’s not that I’ve got anything against dwarfs. I’ve always said you’d have to look very hard before you’d find a, a better bunch of highly skilled, law-abiding, hard-working—” “—little buggers?” “Yes. No!” They proceeded. “That Mrs Cake,” said Carrot, “definitely a strong-minded woman, eh?” “Too true,” said Vimes. Something crunched under Carrot’s enormous sandal. “More glass,” he said. “It went a long way, didn’t it.” “Exploding dragons! What an imagination the girl has.” “Woof woof,” said a voice behind them. “That damn dog’s been following us,” said Vimes. “It’s barking at something on the wall,” said Carrot. Gaspode eyed them coldly. “Woof woof, bloody whine whine,” he said. “Are you bloody blind or what?” It was true that normal people couldn’t hear Gaspode speak, because dogs don’t speak. It’s a well-known fact. It’s well known at the organic level, like a lot of other well-known facts which overrule the observations of the senses. This is because if people went around noticing everything that was going on all the time, no-one would ever get anything done.[7] Besides, almost all dogs don’t talk. Ones that do are merely a statistical error, and can therefore be ignored. However, Gaspode had found he did tend to get heard on a subconscious level. Only the previous day someone had absent-mindedly kicked him into the gutter and had gone a few steps before they suddenly thought: I’m a bastard, what am I? “There is something up there,” said Carrot. “Look . . . something blue, hanging off that gargoyle.” “Woof woof, woof! Would you credit it?” Vimes stood on Carrot’s shoulders and walked his hand up the wall, but the little blue strip was still out of reach. The gargoyle rolled a stony eye towards him. “Do you mind?” said Vimes. “It’s hanging on your ear.” With a grinding of stone on stone, the gargoyle reached up a hand and unhooked the intrusive material. “Thank you.” “ ‘on’t ent-on it.” Vimes climbed down again. “You like gargoyles, don’t you, captain,” said Carrot, as they strolled away. “Yep. They may only be a kind of troll but they keep themselves to themselves and seldom go below the first floor and don’t commit crimes anyone ever finds out about. My type of people.” He unfolded the strip. It was a collar or, at least, what remained of a collar – it was burnt at both ends. The word ‘Chubby’ was just readable through the soot. “The devils!” said Vimes. “They did blow up a dragon!” The most dangerous man in the world should be introduced. He has never, in his entire life, harmed a living creature. He has dissected a few, but only after they were dead,[8] and had marvelled at how well they’d been put together considering it had been done by unskilled labour. For several years he hadn’t moved outside a large, airy room, but this was OK, because he spent most of his time inside his own head in any case. There’s a certain type of person it’s very hard to imprison. He had, however, surmised that an hour’s exercise every day was essential for a healthy appetite and proper bowel movements, and was currently sitting on a machine of his own invention. It consisted of a saddle above a pair of treadles which turned, by means of a chain, a large wooden wheel currently held off the ground on a metal stand. Another, freewheeling, wooden wheel was positioned in front of the saddle and could be turned by means of a tiller arrangement. He’d fitted the extra wheel and tiller so that he could wheel the entire thing over to the wall when he’d finished taking his exercise and, besides, it gave the whole thing a pleasing symmetry. He called it ‘the-turning-the-wheel-with-pedals-and-another-wheel-machine’. Lord Vetinari was also at work. Normally, he was in the Oblong Office or seated in his plain wooden chair at the foot of the steps in the palace of Ankh-Morpork; there was an ornate throne at the top of the steps, covered with dust. It was the throne of Ankh-Morpork and was, indeed, made of gold. He’d never dreamed of sitting on it. But it was a nice day, so he was working in the garden. Visitors to Ankh-Morpork were often surprised to find that there were some interesting gardens attached to the Patrician’s Palace. The Patrician was not a gardens kind of person. But some of his predecessors had been, and Lord Vetinari never changed or destroyed anything if there was no logical reason to do so. He maintained the little zoo, and the racehorse stable, and even recognized that the gardens themselves were of extreme historic interest because this was so obviously the case. They had been laid out by Bloody Stupid Johnson. Many great landscape gardeners have gone down in history and been remembered in a very solid way by the magnificent parks and gardens that they designed with almost god-like power and foresight, thinking nothing of making lakes and shifting hills and planting woodlands to enable future generations to appreciate the sublime beauty of wild Nature transformed by Man. There have been Capability Brown, Sagacity Smith, Intuition De Vere Slade-Gore . . . In Ankh-Morpork, there was Bloody Stupid Johnson. Bloody Stupid ‘It Might Look A Bit Messy Now But Just You Come Back In Five Hundred Years’ Time’ Johnson. Bloody Stupid ‘Look, The Plans Were The Right Way Round When I Drew Them’ Johnson. Bloody Stupid Johnson, who had 2,000 tons of earth built into an artificial hillock in front of Quirm Manor because ‘It’d drive me mad to have to look at a bunch of trees and mountains all day long, how about you?” The Ankh-Morpork palace grounds were considered the high spot, if such it could be called, of his career. For example, they contained the ornamental trout lake, one hundred and fifty yards long and, because of one of those trifling errors of notation that were such a distinctive feature of Bloody Stupid’s designs, one inch wide. It was the home of one trout, which was quite comfortable provided it didn’t try to turn around, and had once featured an ornate fountain which, when first switched on, did nothing but groan ominously for five minutes and then fire a small stone cherub a thousand feet into the air. It contained the hoho, which was like a haha only deeper. A haha is a concealed ditch and wall designed to allow landowners to look out across rolling vistas without getting cattle and inconvenient poor people wandering across the lawns. Under Bloody Stupid’s errant pencil it was dug fifty feet deep and had claimed three gardeners already. The maze was so small that people got lost looking for it. But the Patrician rather liked the gardens, in a quiet kind of way. He had certain views about the mentality of most of mankind, and the gardens made him feel fully justified. Piles of paper were stacked on the lawn around the chair. Clerks renewed them or took them away periodically. They were different clerks. All sorts and types of information flowed into the Palace, but there was only one place where it all came together, very much like strands of gossamer coming together in the centre of a web. A great many rulers, good and bad and quite often dead, know what happened; a rare few actually manage, by dint of much effort, to know what’s happening. Lord Vetinari considered both types to lack ambition. “Yes, Dr Cruces,” he said, without looking up. How the hell does he do it? Cruces wondered. I know I didn’t make any noise . . . “Ah, Havelock—“ he began. “You have something to tell me, doctor?” “It’s been . . . mislaid.” “Yes. And no doubt you are anxiously seeking it. Very well. Good day.” The Patrician hadn’t moved his head the whole time. He hadn’t even bothered to ask what It was. He bloody well knows, thought Cruces. How is it you can never tell him anything he doesn’t know? Lord Vetinari put down a piece of paper on one of the piles, and picked up another. “You are still here, Dr Cruces.” “I can assure you, m’Lord, that—” “I’m sure you can. I’m sure you can. There is one question that intrigues me, however.” “M’Lord?” “Why was it in your Guild House to be stolen? I had been given to understand it had been destroyed. I’m quite sure I gave orders.” This was the question the Assassin had been hoping would not be asked. But the Patrician was good at that game. “Er. We – that is, my predecessor - thought it should serve as a warning and an example.” The Patrician looked up and smiled brightly. “Capital!” he said. “I have always had a great belief in the effectiveness of examples. So I am sure you’ll be able to sort this out with minimum inconvenience all round.” “Certainly, m’Lord,” said the Assassin, glumly. “But—” Noon began. Noon in Ankh-Morpork took some time, since twelve o’clock was established by consensus. Generally, the first bell to start was that one in the Teachers’ Guild, in response to the universal prayers of its members. Then the water clock on the Temple of Small Gods would trigger the big bronze gong. The black bell in the Temple of Fate struck once, unexpectedly, but by then the silver pedal-driven carillon in the Fools’ Guild would be tinkling, the gongs, bells and chimes of all the Guilds and temples would be in full swing, and it was impossible to tell them apart, except for the tongueless and magical octiron bell of Old Tom in the Unseen University clock tower, whose twelve measured silences temporarily overruled the din. And finally, several strokes behind all the others, was the bell of the Assassins’ Guild, which was always last. Beside the Patrician, the ornamental sundial chimed twice and fell over. “You were saying?” said the Patrician mildly. “Captain Vimes,” said Dr Cruces. “He’s taking an interest.” “Dear me. But it is his job.” “Really? I must demand that you call him off!” The words echoed around the garden. Several pigeons flew away. “Demand?” said the Patrician, sweetly. Dr Cruces backed and filled desperately. “He is a servant after all,” he said. “I see no reason why he should be allowed to involve himself in affairs that don’t concern him.” “I rather believe he thinks he’s a servant of the law,” said the Patrician. “He’s a jack-in-office and an insolent upstart!” “Dear me. I did not appreciate your strength of feeling. But since you demand it, I will bring him to heel without delay.” “Thank you.” “Don’t mention it. Do not let me keep you.” Dr Cruces wandered off in the direction of the Patrician’s idle gesture. Lord Vetinari bent over his paperwork again, and did not even look up when there was a distant, muffled cry. Instead, he reached down and rang a small silver bell. A clerk hurried up. “Go and fetch the ladder, will you, Drumknott?” he said. “Dr Cruces seems to have fallen in the hoho.” The back door to the dwarf Bjorn Hammerhock’s workshop lifted off the latch and creaked open. He went to see if there was anyone there, and shivered. He shut the door. “Bit of a chilly breeze,” he said, to the room’s other occupant. “Still, we could do with it.” The ceiling of the workshop was only about five feet above the floor. That was more than tall enough for a dwarf. OW, said a voice that no-one heard. Hammerhock looked at the thing clamped in the vice, and picked up a screwdriver. OW. “Amazing,” he said. “I think that moving this tube down the barrel forces the, er, six chambers to slide along, presenting a new one to the, er, firing hole. That seems clear enough. The triggering mechanism is really just a tinderbox device. The spring . . . here . . . has rusted through. I can easily replace that. You know,” he said, looking up, “this is a very interesting device. With the chemicals in the tubes and all. Such a simple idea. Is it a clown thing? Some kind of automatic slap-stick?” He sorted through a bin of metal offcuts to find a piece of steel, and then selected a file. “I’d like to make a few sketches afterwards,” he said. About thirty seconds later there was a pop and a cloud of smoke. Bjorn Hammerhock picked himself up, shaking his head. “That was lucky!” he said. “Could have been a nasty accident there.” He tried to fan some of the smoke away, and then reached for the file again. His hand went through it. AHEM. Bjorn tried again. The file was as insubstantial as the smoke. “What?” AHEM. The owner of the strange device was staring in horror at something on the floor. Bjorn followed his gaze. “Oh,” he said. Realization, which had been hovering on the edge of Bjorn’s consciousness, finally dawned. That was the thing about death. When it happened to you, you were among the first to know. His visitor grabbed the device from the bench and rammed it into a cloth bag. Then he looked around wildly, picked up the corpse of Mr Hammerhock, and dragged it through the door towards the river. There was a distant splash, or as close to a splash as you could get from the Ankh. “Oh dear,” said Bjorn. “And I can’t swim, either.” THAT WILL NOT, OF COURSE, BE A PROBLEM, said Death. Bjorn looked at him. “You’re a lot shorter than I thought you’d be,” he said. THIS IS BECAUSE I’M KNEELING DOWN, MR HAMMER-HOCK. “That damn thing killed me!” YES. “That’s the first time anything like that has ever happened to me.” , TO ANYONE. BUT NOT, I SUSPECT, THE LAST TIME. Death stood up. There was a clicking of knee joints. He no longer cracked his skull on the ceiling. There wasn’t a ceiling any more. The room had gently faded away. There were such things as dwarf gods. Dwarfs were not a naturally religious species, but in a world where pit props could crack without warning and pockets of fire damp could suddenly explode they’d seen the need for gods as the sort of supernatural equivalent of a hard hat. Besides, when you hit your thumb with an eight-pound hammer it’s nice to be able to blaspheme. It takes a very special and strong-minded kind of atheist to jump up and down with their hand clasped under their other armpit and shout, “Oh, random-fluctuations-in-the-space-time-continuum!” or ‘Aaargh, primitive-and-out-moded-concept on a crutch!” Bjorn didn’t waste time asking questions. A lot of things become a shade urgent when you’re dead. “I believe in reincarnation,” he said. I KNOW. “I tried to live a good life. Does that help?” THAT IS NOT UP TO ME. Death coughed. OF COURSE . . . SINCE YOU BELIEVE IN REINCARNATION . . . YOU’LL BE BJORN AGAIN. He waited. “Yes. That’s right,” said Bjorn. Dwarfs are known for their sense of humour, in a way. People point them out and say: ‘Those little devils haven’t got a sense of humour.” UM. WAS THERE ANYTHING AMUSING IN THE STATEMENT I JUST MADE? “Uh. No. No . . . I don’t think so.” IT WAS A PUN, OR PLAY ON WORDS. BJORN AGAIN. “Yes?” DID YOU NOTICE IT? “I can’t say I did.” OH. “Sorry.” I’VE BEEN TOLD I SHOULD TRY TO MAKE THE OCCASION A LITTLE MORE ENJOYABLE. “Bjorn again.” YES. “I’ll think about it?” THANK YOU. “Hright,” said Sergeant Colon, “this, men, is your truncheon, also nomenclatured your night stick or baton of office.” He paused while he tried to remember his army days, and brightened up. “Hand you will look after hit,” he shouted. “You will eat with hit, you will sleep with hit, you—” “ ‘Scuse me.” “Who said that?” “Down here. It’s me, Lance-Constable Cuddy.” “Yes, pilgrim?” “How do we eat with it, sergeant?” Sergeant Colon’s wound-up machismo wound down. He was suspicious of Lance-Constable Cuddy. He strongly suspected Lance-Constable Cuddy was a trouble-maker. “What?” “Well, do we use it as a knife or a fork or cut in half for chopsticks or what?” “What are you talking about?” “Excuse me, sergeant?” “What is it, Lance-Constable Angua?” “How exactly do we sleep with it, sir?” “Well, I . . . I meant . . . Corporal Nobbs, stop that sniggering right now!” Colon adjusted his breastplate and decided to strike out in a new direction. “Now, hwat we have ‘ere is a puppet, mommet or heffigy’” – indicating a vaguely humanoid shape made of leather and stuffed with straw, mounted on a stake –“called by the hnickname of Harthur, weapons training, for the use hof. Forward, Lance-Constable Angua. Tell me, Lance-Constable, do you think you could kill a man?” “How long will I have?” There was a pause while they picked up Corporal Nobbs and patted him on the back until he settled down. “Very well,” said Sergeant Colon, “what you must do now is take your truncheon like so, and on the command one, proceed smartly to Harthur and on the command two, tap him smartly upon the bonce. Hwun . . . two . . .” The truncheon bounced off Arthur’s helmet. “Very good, only one thing wrong. Anyone tell me what it was?” They shook their heads. “From behind,” said Sergeant Colon. “You hit ‘em from behind. No sense in risking trouble, is there? Now you have a go, Lance-Constable Cuddy.” “But sarge—” “Do it.” They watched. “Perhaps we could fetch him a chair?” said Angua, after an embarrassing fifteen seconds. Detritus sniggered. “Him too little to be a guard,” he said. Lance-Constable Cuddy stopped jumping up and down. “Sorry, sergeant,” he said, “this isn’t how dwarfs do it, see?” “It’s how guards do it,” said Sergeant Colon. “All right, Lance-Constable Detritus – don’t salute – you give it a try.” Detritus held the truncheon between what must technically be called thumb and forefinger, and smashed it over Arthur’s helmet. He stared reflectively at the truncheon’s stump. Then he bunched up his, for want of a better word, fist, and hammered Arthur over what was briefly its head until the stake was driven three feet into the ground. “Now the dwarf, he can have a go,” he said. There was another embarrassed five seconds. Sergeant Colon cleared his throat. “Well, yes, I think we can consider him thoroughly apprehended,” he said. “Make a note, Corporal Nobbs. Lance-Constable Detritus – don’t salute! - deducted one dollar for loss of truncheon. And you’re supposed to be able to ask ‘em questions afterwards.” He looked at the remains of Arthur. “I think around about now is a good time to demonstrate the fine points of harchery,” he said. Lady Sybil Ramkin looked at the sad strip of leather that was all that remained of the late Chubby. “Who’d do something like this to a poor little dragon?” she said. “We’re trying to find out,” said Vimes. “We . . . we think maybe he was tied up next to a wall and exploded.” Carrot leaned over the wall of a pen. “Coochee-coochee-coo?” he said. A friendly flame took his eyebrows off. “I mean, he was as tame as anything,” said Lady Ramkin. “Wouldn’t hurt a fly, poor little thing.” “How could someone make a dragon blow up?” said Vimes. “Could you do it by giving it a kick?” “Oh, yes,” said Sybil. “You’d lose your leg, mind you.” “Then it wasn’t that. Any other way? So you wouldn’t get hurt?” “Not really. It’d be easier to make it blow itself up. Really, Sam, I don’t like talking about—” “I have to know.” “Well . . . at this time of year the males fight. Make themselves look big, you know? That’s why I always keep them apart.” Vimes shook his head. “There was only one dragon,” he said. Behind them, Carrot leaned over the next pen, where a pear-shaped male dragon opened one eye and glared at him. “Whosagoodboyden?” murmured Carrot. “I’m sure I’ve got a bit of coal somewhere—” The dragon opened the other eye, blinked, and then was fully awake and rearing up. Its ears flattened. Its nostrils flared. Its wings unfurled. It breathed in. From its stomach came the gurgle of rushing acids as sluices and valves were opened. Its feet left the floor. Its chest expanded— Vimes hit Carrot at waist height, bearing him to the ground. In its pen the dragon blinked. The enemy had mysteriously gone. Scared off! It subsided, blowing off a huge flame. Vimes unclasped his hands from his head and rolled over. “What’d you do that for, captain?” said Carrot. “I wasn’t—” “It was attacking a dragon!” shouted Vimes. “One that wouldn’t back down!” He pulled himself to his knees and tapped Carrot’s breast-plate. “You polish that up real bright!” he said. “You can see yourself in it. So can anything else!” “Oh, yes, of course there’s that,” said Lady Sybil. “Everyone knows you should keep dragons away from mirrors—” “Mirrors,” said Carrot. “Hey, there were bits of—” “Yes. He showed Chubby a mirror,” said Vimes. “The poor little thing must have been trying to make himself bigger than himself,” said Carrot. “We’re dealing here,” said Vimes, “with a twisted mind.” “Oh, no! You think so?” “Yes.” “But . . . no . . . you can’t be right. Because Nobby was with us all the time.” “Not Nobby,” said Vimes testily. “Whatever he might do to a dragon, I doubt if he’d make it explode. There’s stranger people in this world than Corporal Nobbs, my lad.” Carrot’s expression slid into a rictus of intrigued horror. “Gosh,” he said. Sergeant Colon surveyed the butts. Then he removed his helmet and wiped his forehead. “I think perhaps Lance-Constable Angua shouldn’t have another go with the longbow until we’ve worked out how to stop her . . . her getting in the way.” “Sorry, sergeant.” They turned to Detritus, who was standing sheepishly behind a heap of broken longbows. Crossbows were out of the question. They sat in his massive hands like a hairpin. In theory the longbow would be a deadly weapon in his hands, just as soon as he mastered the art of when to let go. Detritus shrugged. “Sorry, mister,” he said. “Bows aren’t troll weapon.” “Ha!” said Colon. “As for you, Lance-Constable Cuddy—” “Just can’t get the hang of aiming, sergeant.” “I thought dwarfs were famous for their skills in battle!” “Yeah, but . . . not these skills,” said Cuddy. “Ambush,” murmured Detritus. Since he was a troll, the murmur bounced off distant buildings. Cuddy’s beard bristled. “You devious troll, I get my—” “Well now,” said Sergeant Colon quickly, “I think we’ll stop training. You’ll have to . . . sort of pick it up as you go along, all right?” He sighed. He was not a cruel man, but he’d been either a soldier or a guard all his life, and he was feeling put-upon. Otherwise he wouldn’t have said what he said next. “I don’t know, I really don’t. Fighting among yourselves, smashing your own weapons . . . I mean, who do we think we’re fooling? Now, it’s nearly noon, you take a few hours off, we’ll see you again tonight. If you think it’s worth turning up.” There was a spang! noise. Cuddy’s crossbow had gone off in his hand. The bolt whiffled past Corporal Nobbs’ ear and landed in the river, where it stuck. “Sorry,” said Cuddy. “Tsk, tsk,” said Sergeant Colon. That was the worst part. It would have been better all round if he’d called the dwarf some names. It would have been better if he’d made it seem that Cuddy was worth an insult. He turned around and walked off towards Pseudo-polis Yard. They heard his muttered comment. “What him say?” said Detritus. “ “A fine body of men”,” said Angua, going red. Cuddy spat on the ground, which didn’t take long on account of its closeness. Then he reached under his cloak and produced, like a conjuror extracting a size 10 rabbit from a size 5 hat, his double-headed battle axe. And started to run. By the time he reached the virginal target he was a blur. There was a rip and the dummy exploded like a nuclear haystack. The other two wandered up and inspected the result, as pieces of chaff gently drifted to the ground. “Yes, all right,” said Angua. “But he did say you’re supposed to be able to ask them questions afterwards.” “He didn’t say they’ve got to be able to answer them,” said Cuddy grimly. “Lance-Constable Cuddy, deduct one dollar for target,” said Detritus, who already owed eleven dollars for bows. ““If it’s worth turning up”!” said Cuddy, losing the axe somewhere about his person again. “Speciesist!” “I don’t think he meant it that way,” said Angua. “Ho, it’s all right for you,” said Cuddy. “Why?” “ ‘Cos you a man,” said Detritus. Angua was bright enough to pause for a moment to think this over. “A woman,” she said. “Same thing.” “Only in broad terms. Come on, let’s go and have a drink . . .” The transient moment of camaraderie in adversity completely evaporated. “Drink with a troll?” “Drink with a dwarf?” “All right,” said Angua. “How about you and you coming and having a drink with me?” Angua removed her helmet and shook out her hair. Female trolls don’t have hair, although the more fortunate ones are able to cultivate a fine growth of lichen, and a female dwarf is more likely to be complimented on the silkiness of her beard than on her scalp. But it was just possible the sight of Angua scraped little sparks off some shared, ancient, cosmic maleness. “I haven’t really had a chance to look around,” she said. “But I saw a place in Gleam Street.” Which meant that they had to cross the river, at least two of them trying to indicate to passers-by that they weren’t with at least one of the other two. Which meant that, with desperate nonchalance, they were looking around. Which meant that Cuddy saw the dwarf in the water. If you could call it water. If you could still call it a dwarf. They looked down. “You know,” said Detritus, after a while, “that look like that dwarf who make weapons in Rime Street.” “Bjorn Hammerhock?” said Cuddy. “That the one, yeah.” “It looks a bit like him,” Cuddy conceded, still talking in a cold flat voice, “but not exactly like him.” “What d’you mean?” said Angua. “Because Mr Hammerhock,” said Cuddy, “didn’t have such a great big hole where his chest should be.” Doesn’t he ever sleep? thought Vimes. Doesn’t the bloody man ever get his head down? Isn’t there a room somewhere with a black dressing gown hanging on the door? He knocked on the door of the Oblong Office. “Ah, captain,” said the Patrician, looking up from his paperwork. “You were commendably quick.” “Was I?” “You got my message?” said Lord Vetinari. “No, sir. I’ve been . . . occupied.” “Indeed. And what could occupy you?” “Someone has killed Mr Hammerhock, sir. A big man in the dwarf community. He’s been . . . shot with something, some kind of siege weapon or something, and dumped in the river. We’ve just fished him out. I was on the way to tell his wife. I think he lives in Treacle Street. And then I thought, since I was passing . . .” “This is very unfortunate.” “Certainly it was for Mr Hammerhock,” said Vimes. The Patrician leaned back and stared at Vimes. “Tell me,” he said, “how was he killed?” “I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it . . . there was just a great big hole. But I’m going to find out what it was.” “Hmm. Did I mention that Dr Cruces came to see me this morning?” “No, sir.” “He was very . . . concerned.” “Yes, sir.” “I think you upset him.” “Sir?” The Patrician seemed to be reaching a decision. His chair thumped forward. “Captain Vimes—” “Sir?” “I know that you are retiring the day after tomorrow and feel, therefore, a little . . . restless. But while you are captain of the Night Watch I am asking you to follow two very specific instructions . . .” “Sir?” “You will cease any investigations connected with this theft from the Assassins’ Guild. Do you understand? It is entirely Guild business.” “Sir.” Vimes kept his face carefully immobile. “I’m choosing to believe that the unspoken word in that sentence was a yes, captain.” “Sir.” “And that one, too. As for the matter of the unfortunate Mr Hammerhock . . . The body was discovered just a short while ago?” “Yes, sir.” “Then it’s out of your jurisdiction, captain.” “What? Sir?” “The Day Watch can deal with it.” “But we’ve never bothered with that hours-of-daylight jurisdiction stuff!” “Nevertheless, in the current circumstances I shall instruct Captain Quirke to take over the investigation, if it turns out that one is necessary.” If one is necessary. If people don’t end up with half their chest gone by accident. Meteorite strike, perhaps, thought Vimes. He took a deep breath and leaned on the Patrician’s desk. “Mayonnaise Quirke couldn’t find his arse with an atlas! And he’s got no idea about how to talk to dwarfs! He calls them gritsuckers! My men found the body! It’s my jurisdiction!” The Patrician glanced at Vimes’ hands. Vimes removed them from the desk as if it had suddenly grown red-hot. “Night Watch. That’s what you are, captain. Your writ runs in the hours of darkness.” “It’s dwarfs we’re talking about! If we don’t get it right, they’ll take the law into their own hands! That usually means chopping the head off the nearest troll! And you’ll put Quirke on this?” “I’ve given you an order, captain.” “But—” “You may go.” “You can’t—” “I said you may go, Captain Vimes!” “Sir.” Vimes saluted. Then he turned about, and marched out of the room. He closed the door carefully, so that there was barely a click. The Patrician heard him thump the wall outside. Vimes wasn’t aware, but there were a number of barely perceptible dents in the wall outside the Oblong Office, their depths corresponding to his emotional state at the time. By the sound of it, this one would need the services of a plasterer. Lord Vetinari permitted himself a smile, although there was no humour in it. The city operated. It was a self-regulating college of Guilds linked by the inexorable laws of mutual self-interest, and it worked. On average. By and large. Overall. Normally. The last thing you needed was some Watchman blundering around upsetting things, like a loose . . . a loose . . . a loose siege catapult. Normally. Vimes seemed in a suitable emotional state. With any luck, the orders would have the desired effect . . . There’s a bar like it in every big city. It’s where the coppers drink. The Guard seldom drank in Ankh-Morpork’s more cheerful taverns when they were off duty. It was too easy to see something that would put them back on duty again.[9] So they generally went to The Bucket, in Gleam Street. It was small and low-ceilinged, and the presence of city guards tended to discourage other drinkers. But Mr Cheese, the owner, wasn’t too worried about this. No-one drinks like a copper who has seen too much to stay sober. Carrot counted out his change on the counter. “That’s three beers, one milk, one molten sulphur on coke with phosphoric acid—” “With umbrella in it,” said Detritus. “—and A Slow Comfortable Double-Entendre with lemonade.” “With a fruit salad in it,” said Nobby. “Woof?” “And some beer in a bowl,” said Angua. “That little dog seems to have taken quite a shine to you,” said Carrot. “Yes,” said Angua. “I can’t think why.” The drinks were put in front of them. They stared at the drinks. They drank the drinks. Mr Cheese, who knew coppers, wordlessly refilled the glasses and Detritus’ insulated mug. They stared at the drinks. They drank the drinks. “You know,” said Colon, after a while, “what gets me, what really gets me, is they just dumped him in the water. I mean, not even weights. Just dumped him. Like it didn’t matter if he was found. You know what I mean?” “What gets me,” said Cuddy, “is that he was a dwarf.” “What gets me is that he was murdered,” said Carrot. Mr Cheese passed along the line again. They stared at the drinks. They drank the drinks. Because the fact was that, despite all evidence to the contrary, murder was not a commonplace occurrence in Ankh-Morpork. There were, it was true, assassinations. And as aforesaid there were many ways one could inadvertently commit suicide. And there were occasional domestic fracas on a Saturday night as people sought a cheaper alternative to divorce. There were all these things, but at least they had a reason, however unreasonable. “Big man in the dwarfs, was Mr Hammerhock,” said Carrot. “A good citizen, too. Wasn’t always stirring up old trouble like Mr Stronginthearm.” “He’s got a workshop in Rime Street,” said Nobby. “Had,” said Sergeant Colon. They stared at the drinks. They drank the drinks. “What I want to know is,” said Angua, “what put that hole in him?” “Never see anything like that,” said Colon. “Hadn’t someone better go and tell Mrs Hammer-hock?” said Angua. “Captain Vimes is doing it,” said Carrot. “He said he wouldn’t ask anyone else to do it.” “Rather him than me,” said Colon fervently. “I wouldn’t do that for a big clock. They can be fearsome when they’re angry, those little buggers.” Everyone nodded gloomily, including the little bugger and the bigger little bugger by adoption. They stared at the drinks. They drank the drinks. “Shouldn’t we be finding out who did it?” said Angua. “Why?” said Nobby. She opened and shut her mouth once or twice, and finally came out with: ‘In case they do it again?” “It wasn’t an assassination, was it?” said Cuddy. “No,” said Carrot. “They always leave a note. By law.” They looked at the drinks. They drank the drinks. “What a city,” said Angua. “It all works, that’s the funny thing,” said Carrot. “D’you know, when I first joined the Watch I was so simple I arrested the head of the Thieves’ Guild for thieving?” “Sounds good to me,” said Angua. “Got into a bit of trouble for that,” said Carrot. “You see,” said Colon, “thieves are organized here. I mean, it’s official. They’re allowed a certain amount of thieving. Not that they do much these days, mind you. If you pay them a little premium every year they give you a card and leave you alone. Saves time and effort all round.” “And all thieves are members?” said Angua. “Oh, yes,” said Carrot. “Can’t go thieving in Ankh-Morpork without a Guild permit. Not unless you’ve got a special talent.” “Why? What happens? What talent?” she said. “Well, like being able to survive being hung upside down from one of the gates with your ears nailed to your knees,” said Carrot. Then Angua said: ‘That’s terrible.” “Yes, I know. But the thing is,” said Carrot, “the thing is: it works. The whole thing. Guilds and organized crimes and everything. It all seems to work.” “Didn’t work for Mr Hammerhock,” said Sergeant Colon. They looked at their drinks. Very slowly, like a mighty sequoia beginning the first step towards resurrection as a million Save The Trees leaflets, Detritus toppled backwards with his mug still in his hand. Apart from the 90° change in position, he didn’t move a muscle. “It’s the sulphur,” said Cuddy, without looking around. “It goes right to their heads.” Carrot thumped his fist on the bar. “We ought to do something!” “We could nick his boots,” said Nobby. “I mean about Mr Hammerhock.” “Oh, yeah, yeah,” said Nobby. “You sound like old Vimesy. If we was to worry about every dead body in this town—” “But not like this!” snapped Carrot. “Normally it’s just . . . well . . . suicide, or Guild fighting, stuff like that. But he was just a dwarf! Pillar of the community! Spent all day making swords and axes and burial weapons and crossbows and torture implements! And then he’s in the river with a great big hole in his chest! Who’s going to do anything about it, if not us?” “You been putting anything in your milk?” said Colon. “Look, the dwarfs can sort it out. It’s like Quarry Lane. Don’t stick your nose where someone can pull it off and eat it.” “We’re the City Watch,” said Carrot. “That doesn’t mean just that part of the city who happens to be over four feet tall and made of flesh!” “No dwarf did it,” said Cuddy, who was swaying gently. “No troll, neither.” He tried to tap the side of his nose, and missed. “The reason being, he still had all his arms and legs on.” “Captain Vimes’ll want it investigated,” said Carrot. “Captain Vimes is trying to learn to be a civilian,” said Nobby. “Well, I’m not going to—‘ Colon began, and got off his stool. He hopped. He jumped up and down a bit, his mouth opening and shutting. Then the words managed to come out. “My foot!” “What about your foot?” “Something stuck in it!” He hopped backwards, clutching at one sandal, and fell over Detritus. “You’d be amazed what can get stuck to your boots in this town,” said Carrot. “There’s something on the bottom of your sandal,” said Angua. “Stop waving it about, you silly man.” She drew her dagger. “Bit of card or something. With a drawing pin in it. You picked it up somewhere. Probably took a while for you to tread it through . . . there.” “Bit of card?” said Carrot. “There’s something written on it . . .” Angua scraped away the mud. ‘GONNE’   “What does that mean?” she said. “I don’t know. Something’s gone, I suppose. Perhaps it’s Mr Gonne’s visiting card, whoever he is,” said Nobby. “Who cares? Let’s have ano—” Carrot took the card and turned it over and over in his hands. “Save the pin,” said Cuddy. “You only get five of them for a penny. My cousin Gimick makes them.” “This is important,” said Carrot, slowly. “The captain ought to know about this. I think he was looking for it.” “What’s important about it?” said Sergeant Colon. “Apart from my foot hurting like blazes.” “I don’t know. The captain’ll know,” said Carrot stubbornly. “You tell him, then,” said Colon. “He’s staying up at her ladyship’s now.” “Learning to be a gentleman,” said Nobby. “I’m going to tell him,” said Carrot. Angua glanced through the grubby window. The moon would be up soon. That was one trouble with cities. The damn thing could be lurking behind a tower if you weren’t careful. “And I’d better be getting back to my lodgings,” she said. “I’ll accompany you,” said Carrot, quickly. “I ought to go and find Captain Vimes in any case.” “It’ll be out of your way . . .” “Honestly, I’d like to.” She looked at his earnest expression. “I couldn’t put you to the trouble,” she said. “That’s all right. I like walking. It helps me think.” Angua smiled, despite her desperation. They stepped out into the softer heat of the evening. Instinctively, Carrot settled into the policeman’s pace. “Very old street, this,” he said. “They say there’s an underground stream under it. I read that. What do you think?” “Do you really like walking?” said Angua, falling into step. “Oh, yes. There are many interesting byways and historical buildings to be seen. I often go for walks on my day off.” She looked at his face. Ye gods, she thought. “Why did you join the Watch?” she said. “My father said it’d make a man of me.” “It seems to have worked.” “Yes. It’s the best job there is.” “Really?” “Oh, yes. Do you know what “policeman” means?” Angua shrugged. “No.” “It means “man of the polis”. That’s an old word for city.” “Yes?” “I read it in a book. Man of the city.” She glanced sideways at him again. His face glowed in the light of a torch on the street corner, but it had some inner glow of its own. He’s proud. She remembered the oath. Proud of being in the damn Watch, for gods‘ sake— “Why did you join?” he said. “Me? Oh, I . . . I like to eat meals and sleep indoors. Anyway, there isn’t that much choice, is there? It was that or become . . . hah . . . a seamstress.”[10] “And you’re not very good at sewing?” Angua’s sharp glance saw nothing but honest innocence in his face. “Yes,” she said, giving up, “that’s right. And then I saw this poster. “The City Watche Needs Men! Be A Man In The City Watche!” So I thought I’d give it a go. After all, I’d only have something to gain.” She waited to see if he’d fail to pick this one up, too. He did. “Sergeant Colon wrote the notice,” said Carrot. “He’s a fairly direct thinker.” He sniffed. “Can you smell something?” he said. “Smells like . . . a bit like someone’s thrown away an old privy carpet?” “Oh, thank you very much,” said a voice very low down, somewhere in the darkness. “Oh, yes. Thank you very much. That’s very wossname of you. Old privy carpet. Oh, yes.” “Can’t smell anything,” Angua lied. “Liar,” said the voice. “Or hear anything.”   Captain Vimes’ boots told him he was in Scoone Avenue. His feet were doing the walking of their own volition; his mind was somewhere else. In fact, some of it was dissolving gently in Jimkin Bearhugger’s finest nectar. If only they hadn’t been so damn polite! There were a number of things he’d seen in his life which he’d always try, without success, to forget. Up until now he would have put, at the top of the list, looking at the tonsils of a giant dragon as it drew the breath intended to turn him into a small pile of impure charcoal. He still woke up sweating at the memory of the little pilot light. But he dreaded now that it was going to be replaced by the recollection of all those impassive dwarf faces, watching him politely, and the feeling that his words were dropping into a deep pit. After all, what could he say? ‘Sorry he’s dead – and that’s official. We’re putting our worst men on the case’ ? The late Bjorn Hammerhock’s house had been full of dwarfs – silent, owlish, polite dwarfs. The news had got around. He wasn’t telling anyone anything they didn’t know. Many of them were holding weapons. Mr Stronginthearm was there. Captain Vimes had talked to him before about his speeches on the subject of the need for grinding all trolls in little bits and using them to make roads. But the dwarf wasn’t saying anything now. He was just looking smug. There was an air of quiet, polite menace, that said: We’ll listen to you. Then we’ll do what we decide to do. He hadn’t even been sure which one was Mrs Hammerhock. They all looked alike to him. When she was introduced – helmeted, bearded – he’d got polite, noncommittal answers. No, she’d locked his workshop and seemed to have mislaid the key. Thank you. He’d tried to indicate as subtly as possible that a wholesale march on Quarry Lane would be frowned upon by the guard (probably from a vantage point at a safe distance) but hadn’t the face to spell it out. He couldn’t say: don’t take matters into your own hands for the guard are mightily in pursuit of the wrongdoer, because he didn’t have a clue where to start. Had your husband any enemies? Yes, someone put a huge great hole in him, but apart from that, did he have any enemies? So he’d extracted himself with as much dignity as possible, which wasn’t very much, and after a battle with himself which he’d lost, he’d picked up half a bottle of Bearhugger’s Old Persnickety and wandered into the night. Carrot and Angua reached the end of Gleam Street. “Where are you staying?” said Carrot. “Just down there.” She pointed. “Elm Street? Not Mrs Cake’s?” “Yes. Why not? I just wanted a clean place, reasonably priced. What’s wrong with that?” “Well . . . I mean, I’ve nothing against Mrs Cake, a lovely woman, one of the best. . . but. . . well. . . you must have noticed . . .” “Noticed what?” “Well. . . she’s not very . . . you know . . . choosy.” “Sorry. I’m still not with you.” “You must have seen some of the other guests? I mean, doesn’t Reg Shoe still have lodgings there?” “Oh, said Angua, “you mean the zombie.” “And there’s a banshee in the attic.” “Mr Ixolite. Yes.” “And there’s old Mrs Drull.” “The ghoul. But she’s retired. She does children’s party catering now.” “I mean, doesn’t it strike you the place is a bit odd?” “But the rates are reasonable and the beds are clean.” “I shouldn’t think anyone ever sleeps in them.” “All right! I had to take what I could get!” “Sorry. I know how it is. I was like that myself when I first arrived here. But my advice is to move out as soon as it’s polite and find somewhere . . . well . . . more suitable for a young lady, if you know what I mean.” “Not really. Mr Shoe even tried to help me upstairs with my stuff. Mind you, I had to help him upstairs with his arms afterwards. Bits fall off him all the time, poor soul.” “But they’re not really . . . our kind of people,” said Carrot wretchedly. “Don’t get me wrong. I mean . . . dwarfs? Some of my best friends are dwarfs. My parents are dwarfs. Trolls? No problem at all with trolls. Salt of the earth. Literally. Wonderful chaps under all that crust. But . . . undead . . . I just wish they’d go back to where they came from, that’s all.” “Most of them came from round here.” “I just don’t like ‘em. Sorry.” “I’ve got to go,” said Angua, coldly. She paused at the dark entrance of an alley. “Right. Right,” said Carrot. “Um. When shall I see you again?” “Tomorrow. We’re in the same job, yes?” “But maybe when we’re off duty we could take a—” “Got to go!” Angua turned and ran. The moon’s halo was already visible over the rooftops of Unseen University. “OK. Well. Right. Tomorrow, then,” Carrot called after her. Angua could feel the world spinning as she stumbled through the shadows. She shouldn’t have left it so long! She stumbled out into a cross-street with a few people in it and managed to make it to an alley mouth, pawing at her clothes . . . She was seen by Bundo Prung, recently expelled from the Thieves’ Guild for unnecessary enthusiasm and conduct unbecoming in a mugger, and a desperate man. An isolated woman in a dark alley was just about what he felt he could manage. He glanced around, and followed her in. Silence followed, for about five seconds. Then Bundo emerged, very fast, and didn’t stop running until he reached the docks, where a boat was leaving on the tide. He ran up the gangplank just before it was pulled up, and became a seaman, and died three years later when an armadillo fell on his head in a far-off country, and in all that time never said what he’d seen. But he did scream a bit whenever he saw a dog. Angua emerged a few seconds later, and trotted away. Lady Sybil Ramkin opened the door and sniffed the night air. “Samuel Vimes! You’re drunk!” “Not yet! But I hope to be!” said Vimes, in cheerful tones. “And you haven’t changed out of your uniform!” Vimes looked down, and then up again. “That’s right!” he said brightly. “The guests will be here any minute. Go on up to your room. There’s a tub drawn and Willikins has laid out a suit for you. Get along with you . . .” “Jolly good!” Vimes bathed in lukewarm water and a rosy alcoholic glow. Then he dried himself off as best he could and looked at the suit on the bed. It had been made for him by the finest tailor in the city. Sybil Ramkin had a generous heart. She was a woman out for all she could give. The suit was blue and deep purple, with lace on the wrists and at the throat. It was the height of fashion, he had been told. Sybil Ramkin wanted him to go up in the world. She’d never actually said it, but he knew she felt he was far too good to be a copper. He stared at it in muzzy incomprehension. He’d never really worn a suit before. When he was a kid there’d been whatever rags could be tied on, and later on there’d been the leather knee britches and chainmail of the Watch – comfortable, practical clothes. There was a hat with the suit. It had pearls on it. Vimes had never worn any headgear before that hadn’t been hammered out of one piece of metal. The shoes were long and pointy. He’d always worn sandals in the summer, and the traditional cheap boots in the winter. Captain Vimes could just about manage to be an officer. He wasn’t at all sure how to become a gentleman. Putting on the suit would seem to be part of it . . . Guests were arriving. He could hear the crunch of carriage wheels on the driveway, and the flip-flop of the sedan-chair carriers. He glanced out of the window. Scoone Avenue was higher than most of Morpork and offered unrivalled views of the city, if that was your idea of a good time. The Patrician’s Palace was a darker shape in the dusk, with one lighted window high up. It was the centre of a well-lit area, which got darker and darker as the view widened and began to take in those parts of the city where you didn’t light a candle because that was wasting good food. There was red torchlight around Quarry Lane . . . well, Trolls’ New Year, understandable. And a faint glow over the High Energy Magic building at Unseen University; Vimes would arrest all wizards on suspicion of being too bloody clever by half. But more lights than you’d expect to see around Cable and Sheer, the part of the city that people like Captain Quirke referred to as ‘tinytown’ . . . “Samuel!” Vimes adjusted his cravat as best he could. He’d faced trolls and dwarfs and dragons, but now he was having to meet an entirely new species. The rich. It was always hard to remember, afterwards, how the world looked when she was dans une certaine condition, as her mother had delicately called it. For example, she remembered seeing smells. The actual streets and buildings . . . they were there, of course, but only as a drab monochrome background against which the sounds and, yes, the smells seared like brilliant lines of . . . coloured fire and clouds of . . . well, of coloured smoke. That was the point. That was where it all broke down. There were no proper words afterwards for what she heard and smelled. If you could see an eighth distinct colour just for a while, and then describe it back in the seven-coloured world, it’d have to be . . . “something like a sort of greenish-purple’. Experience did not cross over well between species. Sometimes, although not very often, Angua thought she was very lucky to get to see both worlds. And there was always twenty minutes after a Change when all the senses were heightened, so that the world glowed in every sensory spectrum like a rainbow. It was nearly worth it just for that. There were varieties of werewolf. Some people merely had to shave every hour and wear a hat to cover the ears. They could pass for nearly normal. But she could recognize them, nevertheless. Werewolves could spot another werewolf across a crowded street. There was something about the eyes. And, of course, if you had time, there were all sorts of other clues. Werewolves tended to live alone and take jobs that didn’t bring them into contact with animals. They wore scent or aftershave a lot and tended to be very fastidious about their food. And kept diaries with the phases of the moon carefully marked in red ink. It was no life, being a werewolf in the country. A stupid chicken went missing and you were a number one suspect. Everyone said it was better in the city. It was certainly overpowering. Angua could see several hours of Elm Street all in one go. The mugger’s fear was a fading orange line. Carrot’s trail was an expanding pale green cloud, with an edge that suggested he was slightly worried; there were additional tones of old leather and armour polish. Other trails, faint or powerful, crisscrossed the street. There was one that smelled like an old privy carpet. “Yo, bitch,” said a voice behind her. She turned her head. Gaspode looked no better through canine vision, except that he was at the centre of a cloud of mixed odours. “Oh. It’s you.” “ ‘S’right,” said Gaspode, feverishly scratching himself. He gave her a hopeful look. “Just askin’, you understand, just gettin’ it over with right now, for the look of the thing, for wossname’s sake as it might be, but I s’pose there’s no chance of me sniffing—” “None.” “Just askin’. No offence meant.” Angua wrinkled her muzzle. “How come you smell so bad? I mean, you smelled bad enough when I was human, but now—” Gaspode looked proud. “Good, innit,” he said. “It didn’t just happen. I had to work at it. If you was a true dog, this’d be like really great aftershave. By the way, you want to get a collar, miss. No-one bothers you if you’ve got a collar.” “Thanks.” Gaspode seemed to have something on his mind. “Er . . . you don’t rip hearts out, do you?” “Not unless I want to,” said Angua. “Right, right, right,” said Gaspode hurriedly. “Where’re you going?” He broke into a waddling, bow-legged trot to keep up with her. “To have a sniff around Hammerhock’s place. I didn’t ask you to come.” “Got nothing else to do,” said Gaspode. “The House of Ribs don’t put its rubbish out till midnight.” “Haven’t you got a home to go to?” said Angua, as they trotted under a fish-and-chip stall. “Home? Me? Home? Yeah. Of course. No problemo. Laughing kids, big kitchen, three meals a day, humorous cat next door to chase, own blanket and spot by the fire, he’s an old softy but we love him, ekcetra. No problem there. I just like to get out a bit,” said Gaspode. “Only, I see you haven’t got a collar.” “It fell off.” “Right?” “It was the weight of all them rhinestones.” “I expect it was.” “They let me do pretty much as I like,” said Gaspode. “I can see that.” “Sometimes I don’t go home for, oh, days at a time.” “Right?” “Weeks, sometimes.” “Sure.” “But they’re always so glad to see me when I do,” said Gaspode. “I thought you said you slept up at the University,” said Angua, as they dodged a cart in Rime Street. For a moment Gaspode smelled uncertain, but he recovered magnificently. “Yeah, right,” he said. “We-ell, you know how it is, families . . . All them kids picking you up, giving you biscuits and similar, people pattin’ you the whole time. Gets on yer nerves. So I sleeps up there quite often.” “Right.” “More often than not, point of fact.” “Really?” Gaspode whimpered a little. “You want to be careful, you know. A young bitch like you can meet real trouble in this dog’s city.” They had reached the wooden jetty behind Hammerhock’s workshop. “How d’you—“ Angua paused. There was a mixture of smells here, but the overpowering one was as sharp as a saw. “Fireworks?” “And fear,” said Gaspode. “Lots of fear.” He sniffed the planks. “Human fear, not dwarf. You can tell if it’s dwarfs. It’s the rat diet, see? Phew! Must have been real bad to stay this strong.” “I smell one male human, one dwarf,” said Angua. “Yeah. One dead dwarf.” Gaspode stuck his battered nose along the line of the door, and snuffled noisily. “There’s other stuff,” he said, “but it’s a bugger what with the river so close and everything. There’s oil and . . . grease . . . and all sorts – hey, where’re you going?” Gaspode trotted after her as Angua headed back to Rime Street, nose close to the ground. “Following the trail.” “What for? He won’t thank you, you know.” “Who won’t?” “Your young man.” Angua stopped so suddenly that Gaspode ran into her. “You mean Corporal Carrot? He’s not my young man!” “Yeah? I’m a dog, right? It’s all in the nose, right? Smell can’t lie. Pheremonies. It’s the ole sexual alchemy stuff.” “I’ve only known him a couple of nights!” “Aha!” “What do you mean, aha?” “Nothing, nothing. Nothing wrong with it, anyway—” “There isn’t any it to be wrong!” “Right, right. Not that it would be,” said Gaspode, adding hurriedly, “even if there was. Everyone likes Corporal Carrot.” “They do, don’t they,” said Angua, her hackles settling down. “He’s very . . . likeable.” “Even Big Fido only bit his hand when Carrot tried to pat him.” “Who’s Big Fido?” “Chief Barker of the Dog Guild.” “Dogs have got a Guild? Dogs? Pull one of the other ones, it’s got bells on—” “No, straight up. Scavenging rights, sunbathing spots, night-time barking duty, breeding rights, howling rotas . . . the whole bone of rubber.” “Dog Guild,” snarled Angua sarcastically. “Oh, yeah.” “Chase a rat up a pipe in the wrong street and call me a liar. ‘S’good job for you I’m around, else you could get into big trouble. There’s big trouble for a dog in this town who ain’t a Guild member. It’s lucky for you,” said Gaspode, “that you met me.” “I suppose you’re a big ma—dog in the Guild, yes?” “Ain’t a member,” said Gaspode smugly. “How come you survive, then?” “I can think on my paws, me. Anyway, Big Fido leaves me alone. I got the Power.” “What power?” “Never you mind. Big Fido . . . he’s a friend o’ mine.” “Biting a man’s arm for patting you doesn’t sound very friendly.” “Yeah? Last man who tried to pat Big Fido, they only ever found his belt buckle.” “Yes?” “And that was in a tree.” “Where are we?” “Not even a tree near here. What?” Gaspode sniffed the air. His nose could read the city in a way reminiscent of Captain Vimes’ educated soles. “Junction of Scoone Avenue and Prouts,” he said. “Trail’s dying out. It’s mixed up with too much other stuff.” Angua sniffed around for a while. Someone had come up here, but too many people had crossed the trail. The sharp smell was still there, but only as a suggestion in the welter of conflicting scents. She was aware of an overwhelming smell of approaching soap. She’d noticed it before, but only as a woman and only as a faint whiff. As a quadruped, it seemed to fill the world. Corporal Carrot was walking up the road, looking thoughtful. He wasn’t looking where he was going, however, but he didn’t need to. People stood aside for Corporal Carrot. It was the first time she’d seen him through these eyes. Good grief. How did people not notice it? He walked through the city like a tiger through tall grass, or a hubland bear across the snow, wearing the landscape like a skin— Gaspode glanced sideways. Angua was sitting on her haunches, staring. “Yer tongue’s hanging out,” he said. “What? . . . So? So what? That’s natural. I’m panting.” “Har, har.” Carrot noticed them, and stopped. “Why, it’s the little mongrel dog,” he said. “Woof, woof,” said Gaspode, his traitor tail wagging. “I see you’ve got a lady friend, anyway,” said Carrot, patting him on the head and then absent-mindedly wiping his hand on his tunic. “And, my word, what a splendid bitch,” he said. “A Ramtop wolfhound, if I’m any judge.” He stroked Angua in a vague friendly way. “Oh, well,” he said. “This isn’t getting any work done, is it?” “Woof, whine, give the doggy a biscuit,” said Gaspode. Carrot stood up and patted his pockets. “I think I’ve got a piece of biscuit here – well, I could believe you understand every word I say . . .” Gaspode begged, and caught the biscuit easily. “Woof, woof, fawn, fawn,” he said. Carrot gave Gaspode the slightly puzzled look that people always gave him when he said ‘woof instead of barking, nodded at Angua, and carried on towards Scoone Avenue and Lady Ramkin’s house. “There,” said Gaspode, crunching the stale biscuit noisily, “goes a very nice boy. Simple, but nice.” “Yes, he is simple, isn’t he?” said Angua. “That’s what I first noticed about him. He’s simple. And everything else here is complicated.” “He was making sheep’s eyes at you earlier,” said Gaspode. “Not that I’ve got anything against sheep’s eyes, mind you. If they’re fresh.” “You’re disgusting.” “Yeah, but at least I stay the same shape all month, no offence meant.” “You’re asking for a bite.” “Oh, yeah,” moaned Gaspode. “Yeah, you’ll bite me. Aaargh. Oh, yes, that’ll really worry me, that will. I mean, think about it. I’ve got so many dog diseases I’m only alive ‘cos the little buggers are too busy fighting among ‘emselves. I mean, I’ve even got Licky End, and you only get that if you’re a pregnant sheep. Go on. Bite me. Change my life. Every time there’s a full moon, suddenly I grow hair and yellow teeth and have to go around on all fours. Yes, I can see that making a big difference to my ongoing situation. Actually,” he said, “I’m definitely on a losing streak in the hair department, so maybe a, you know, not the whole bite, maybe just a nibble—” “Shut up.” At least you’ve got a lady friend, Carrot had said. As if there was something on his mind . . . “A quick lick, even—” “Shut up.”   “This unrest is all Vetinari’s fault,” said the Duke of Eorle. “The man has no style! So now, of course, we have a city where grocers have as much influence as barons. He even let the plumbers form a Guild! That’s against nature, in my humble opinion.” “It wouldn’t be so bad if he set some kind of social example,” said Lady Omnius, “Or even governed,” said Lady Selachii. “People seem to be able to get away with anything.” “I admit that the old kings were not necessarily our kind of people, towards the end,” said the Duke of Eorle, “but at least they stood for something, in my humble opinion. We had a decent city in those days. People were more respectful and knew their place. People put in a decent day’s work, they didn’t laze around all the time. And we certainly didn’t open the gates to whatever riffraff was capable of walking through. And of course we also had law. Isn’t that so, captain?” Captain Samuel Vimes stared glassily at a point somewhere to the left and just above the speaker’s left ear. Cigar smoke hung almost motionless in the air. Vimes was dimly aware that he’d spent several hours eating too much food in the company of people he didn’t like. He longed for the smell of damp streets and the feel of the cobbles under his cardboard soles. A tray of postprandial drinks was orbiting the table, but Vimes hadn’t touched it, because it upset Sybil. And she tried not to show it, and that upset him even more. The Bearhugger’s had worn off. He hated being sober. It meant he started to think. One of the thoughts jostling for space was that there was no such thing as a humble opinion. He hadn’t had much experience with the rich and powerful. Coppers didn’t, as a rule. It wasn’t that they were less prone to commit crimes, it was just that the crimes they committed tended to be so far above the normal level of criminality that they were beyond the reach of men with bad boots and rusting mail. Owning a hundred slum properties wasn’t a crime, although living in one was, almost; Being an Assassin – the Guild never actually said so, but an important qualification was being the son or daughter of a gentleman – wasn’t a crime. If you had enough money, you could hardly commit crimes at all. You just perpetrated amusing little peccadilloes. “And now everywhere you look it’s uppity dwarfs and trolls and rude people,” said Lady Selachii. “There’s more dwarfs in Ankh-Morpork now than there are in any of their own cities, or whatever they call their holes.” “What do you think, captain?” said the Duke of Eorle. “Hmm?” Captain Vimes picked up a grape and started turning it over and over in his fingers. “The current ethnic problem.” “Are we having one?” “Well, yes . . . Look at Quarry Lane. There’s fighting there every night!” “And they have absolutely no concept of religion!” Vimes examined the grape minutely. What he wanted to say was: Of course they fight. They’re trolls. Of course they bash one another with clubs – trollish is basically body language and, well, they like to shout. In fact, the only one who ever gives anyone any real trouble is that bastard Chrysoprase, and that’s only because he apes humans and is a quick learner. As for religion, troll gods were hitting one another with clubs ten thousand years before we’d even stopped trying to eat rocks. But the memory of the dead dwarf stirred something perverse in his soul. He put the grape back on his plate. “Definitely,” he said. “In my view, the godless bastards should be rounded up and marched out of the city at spearpoint.” There was a moment’s silence. “It’s no more than they deserve,” Vimes added. “Exactly! They’re barely more than animals,” said Lady Omnius. Vimes suspected her first name was Sara. “Have you noticed how massive their heads are?” said Vimes. “That’s really just rock. Very small brains.” “And morally, of course . . .” said Lord Eorle. There was a murmur of vague agreement. Vimes reached for his glass. “Willikins, I don’t think Captain Vimes wants any wine,” said Lady Ramkin. “Wrong!” said Vimes cheerfully. “And while we’re on the subject, how about the dwarfs?” “I don’t know if anyone’s noticed,” said Lord Eorle, “but you certainly don’t see as many dogs about as you used to.” Vimes stared. It was true about the dogs. There didn’t seem to be quite so many mooching around these days, that was a fact. But he’d visited a few dwarf bars with Carrot, and knew that dwarfs would indeed eat dog, but only if they couldn’t get rat. And ten thousand dwarfs eating continuously with knife, fork and shovel wouldn’t make a dent in Ankh-Morpork’s rat population. It was a major feature in dwarfish letters back home: come on, everyone, and bring the ketchup. “Notice how small their heads are?” he managed. “Very limited capacity, surely. Fact of measurement.” “And you never see their women,” said Lady Sara Omnius. “I find that very . . . suspicious. You know what they say about dwarfs,” she added darkly. Vimes sighed. He was just about aware that you saw their women all the time, although they looked just like the male dwarfs. Surely everyone knew that, who knew anything about dwarfs? “Cunning little devils too,” said Lady Selachii. “Sharp as needles.” “You know,” Vimes shook his head, “you know, that’s what’s so damn annoying, isn’t it? The way they can be so incapable of any rational thought and so bloody shrewd at the same time.” Only Vimes saw the look Lady Ramkin flashed him. Lord Eorle stubbed out his cigar. “They just move in and take over. And work away like ants all the time real people should be getting some sleep. It’s not natural.” Vimes’ mind circled the comment and compared it to the earlier one about a decent day’s work. “Well, one of them won’t be working so hard,” said Lady Omnius. “My maid said one of them was found in the river this morning. Probably some tribal war or something.” “Hah . . . it’s a start, anyway,” said Lord Eorle, laughing. “Not that anyone will notice one more or less.” Vimes smiled brightly. There was a wine bottle near his hand, despite Willikins’ tactful best efforts to remove it. The neck looked invitingly grippable— He was aware of eyes on him. He looked across the table into the face of a man who was watching him intently and whose last contribution to the conversation had been “Could you be so kind as to pass me the seasonings, captain?” There was nothing remarkable about the face, except for the gaze – which was absolutely calm and mildly amused. It was Dr Cruces. Vimes had the strong impression that his thoughts were being read. “Samuel!” Vimes’ hand stopped halfway to the bottle. Willikins was standing next to her ladyship. “Apparently there’s a young man at the door asking for you,” said Lady Ramkin. “Corporal Carrot.” “Gosh, this is exciting!” said Lord Eorle. “Has he come to arrest us, do you think? Hahaha.” “Ha,” said Vimes. Lord Eorle nudged his partner. “I expect that somewhere a crime is being committed,” he said. “Yes,” said Vimes. “Quite close, I think.” Carrot was shown in, with his helmet under his arm at a respectful angle. He gazed at the select company, licked his lips nervously, and saluted. Everyone was looking at him. It was hard not to notice Carrot in a room. There were bigger people than him in the city. He didn’t loom. He just seemed, without trying, to distort things around him. Everything became background to Corporal Carrot. “At ease, corporal,” said Vimes. “What’s up? I mean,” he added quickly, knowing Carrot’s erratic approach to colourful language, “what is the reason for you being here at this time?” “Got something to show you, sir. Uh. Sir, I think it’s from the Assass—” “We’ll just go and talk about it outside, shall we?” said Vimes. Dr Cruces hadn’t twitched a muscle. Lord Eorle sat back. “Well, I must say I’m impressed,” he said. “I’d always thought you Watchmen were a pretty ineffective lot, but I see you’re pursuing your duty at all times. Always on the alert for the criminal mind, eh?” “Oh, yes,” said Vimes. “The criminal mind. Yes.” The cooler air of the ancestral hallway came as a blessing. He leaned against the wall and squinted at the card. ““Gonne”?” “You know you said you saw something in the courtyard—“ Carrot began. “What’s a gonne?” “Maybe something wasn’t in the Assassins’ museum, and they put this sign on it?” said Carrot. “You know, like “Removed for Cleaning”? They do that in museums.” “No, I shouldn’t think th—What do you know about museums, anyway?” “Oh, well, sir,” said Carrot. “I sometimes visit them on my day off. The one in the University, of course, and Lord Vetinari lets me look around the old Palace one, and then there’s the Guild ones, they generally let me in if I ask nicely, and there’s the dwarf museum off Rime Street—” “Is there?” said Vimes, interested despite himself. He’d walked along Rime Street a thousand times. “Yes, sir, just up Whirligig Alley.” “Fancy that. What’s in it?” “Many interesting examples of dwarf bread, sir.” Vimes thought about this for a moment. “That’s not important right now,” he said. “This isn’t how you spell gone, anyway.” “Yes it is, sir,” said Carrot. “I meant, it’s not how gone is normally spelled.” He flicked the card back and forth in his fingers. “A man’d have to be a fool to break into the Assassins’ Guild,” he said. “Yes, sir.” The anger had burned away the fumes. Once again he felt . . . not, not the thrill, that wasn’t the right word . . . the sense of something. He still wasn’t sure what it was. But it was there, waiting for him— “Samuel Vimes, what’s going on?” Lady Ramkin shut the dining-room door behind her. “I was watching you,” she said. “You were being very rude, Sam.” “I was trying not to be.” “Lord Eorle is a very old friend.” “Is he?” “Well, I’ve known him a long time. I can’t stand the man, actually. But you were making him look foolish.” “He was making himself look foolish. I was merely helping.” “But I’ve often heard you being . . . rude about dwarfs and trolls.” “That’s different. I’ve got a right. That idiot wouldn’t know a troll if it walked over him.” “Oh, he would know if a troll walked over him,” said Carrot, helpfully. “Some of them weigh as much as—” “What’s so important, anyway?” said Lady Ramkin. “We’re . . . looking for whoever killed Chubby,” said Vimes. Lady Ramkin’s expression changed instantly. “That’s different, of course,” she said. “People like that should be publicly flogged.” Why did I say that? thought Vimes. Maybe because it’s true. The . . . gonne . . . goes missing, next minute there’s a little dwarf artificer thrown in the river with a nasty draught where his chest should be. They’re linked. Now all I have to do is find the links . . . “Carrot, can you come back with me to Hammerhock’s?” “Yes, captain. Why?” “I want to see inside that workshop. And this time I’ve got a dwarf with me.” More than that, he added, I’ve got Corporal Carrot. Everyone likes Corporal Carrot. Vimes listened while the conversation droned on in dwarfish. Carrot seemed to be winning, but it was a near thing. The clan was giving in not because of reason, or in obedience to the law, but because . . . well . . . because it was Carrot who was asking. Finally, the corporal looked up. He was sitting on a dwarf stool, so his knees practically framed his head. “You have to understand, you see, that a dwarf’s workshop is very important.” “Right,” said Vimes. “I understand.” “And, er . . . you’re a bigger.” “Sorry?” “A bigger. Bigger than a dwarf.” “Ah.” “Er. The inside of a dwarf’s workshop is like . . . well, it’s like the inside of his clothes, if you know what I mean. They say you can look, if I’m with you. But you mustn’t touch anything. Er. They’re not very happy about this, captain.” A dwarf who was possibly Mrs Hammerhock produced a bunch of keys. “I’ve always got on well with dwarfs,” said Vimes. “They’re not happy, sir. Um. They don’t think we’ll do any good.” “We’ll do our best!” “Um. I didn’t translate that properly. Um. They don’t think we’re any good. They don’t mean to be offensive, sir. They just don’t think we’ll be allowed to get anywhere, sir.” “Ow!” “Sorry about that, captain,” said Carrot, who was walking like an inverted L. “After you. Mind your head on the—” “Ow!” “Perhaps it’d be best if you sat down and I’ll look around.” The workshop was long and, of course, low, with another small door at the far end. There was a big workbench under a skylight. On the opposite wall was a forge and a tool rack. And a hole. A chunk of plaster had fallen away a few feet above the ground, and cracks radiated away from the shattered brickwork underneath. Vimes pinched the bridge of his nose. He hadn’t found time to sleep today. That was another thing. He’d have to get used to sleeping when it was dark. He couldn’t remember when he’d last slept at night. He sniffed. “I can smell fireworks,” he said. “Could be from the forge,” said Carrot. “Anyway, trolls and dwarfs have been letting fireworks off all over the city.” Vimes nodded. “All right,” he said, “so what can we see?” “Someone thumped the wall pretty hard just here,” said Carrot. “Could have happened at any time,” said Vimes. “No, sir, because there’s the plaster dust underneath and a dwarf always keeps his workshop clean.” “Really?” There were various weapons, some of them half finished, on racks by the bench. Vimes picked up most of a crossbow. “He did good work,” he said. “Very good at mechanisms.” “Well known for it,” said Carrot, poking around aimlessly on the bench. “A very delicate hand. He made musical boxes for a hobby. Could never resist a mechanical challenge. Er. What are we looking for actually, sir?” “Not sure. Now this is good . . .” It was a war axe, and so heavy that Vimes’ arm sagged. Intricate etched lines covered the blade. It must have represented weeks of work. “Not your actual Saturday night special, eh?” “Oh no,” said Carrot, “that’s a burial weapon.” “I should think it is!” “I mean, it’s made to be buried with a dwarf. Every dwarf is buried with a weapon. You know? To take with him to . . . wherever he’s going.” “But it’s fine workmanship! And it’s got an edge like – aargh,” Vimes sucked his finger, “like a razor.” Carrot looked shocked. “Of course. It’d be no good him facing them with an inferior weapon.” “What them are you talking about?” “Anything bad he encounters on his journey after death,” said Carrot, a shade awkwardly. “Ah.” Vimes hesitated. This was an area in which he did not feel comfortable. “It’s an ancient tradition,” said Carrot. “I thought dwarfs didn’t believe in devils and demons and stuff like that.” “That’s true, but . . . we’re not sure if they know.” “Oh.” Vimes laid down the axe and picked up something else from the work rack. It was a knight in armour, about nine inches high. There was a key in its back. He turned it, and then nearly dropped the thing when the figure’s legs started to move. He put it down, and it began to march stiffly across the floor, waving its sword. “Moves a bit like Colon, don’t it,” said Vimes. “Clockwork!” “It’s the coming thing,” said Carrot. “Mr Hammerhock was good at that.” Vimes nodded. “We’re looking for anything that shouldn’t be here,” he said. “Or something that should be and isn’t. Is there anything missing?” “Hard to say, sir. It isn’t here.” “What?” “Anything that’s missing, sir,” said Carrot conscientiously. “I mean,” said Vimes, patiently, “anything not here which you’d expect to find.” “Well, he’s got – he had - all the usual tools, sir. Nice ones, too. Shame, really.” “What is?” “They’ll be melted down, of course.” Vimes stared at the neat racks of hammers and files. “Why? Can’t some other dwarf use them?” “What, use another dwarf’s actual tools?” Carrot’s mouth twisted in distaste, as though someone had suggested he wear Corporal Nobbs’ old shorts. “Oh, no. That’s not . . . right. I mean, they’re . . . part of him. I mean . . . someone else using them, after he’s used them all these years, I mean . . . urrgh.” “Really?” The clockwork soldier marched under the bench. “It’d feel . . . wrong,” said Carrot. “Er. Yukky.” “Oh.” Vimes stood up. “Capt—” “Ow!” “—mind your head. Sorry.” Rubbing his head with one hand, Vimes used the other to examine the hole in the plaster. “There’s . . . something in here,” he said. “Pass me one of those chisels.” There was silence. “A chisel, please. If it makes you feel any better, we are trying to find out who killed Mr Hammerhock. All right?” Carrot picked one up, but with considerable reluctance. “This is Mr Hammerhock’s chisel, this is,” he said reproachfully. “Corporal Carrot, will you stop being a dwarf for two seconds? You’re a guard! And give me the damn chisel! It’s been a long day! Thank you!” Vimes prised at the brickwork, and a rough disc of lead dropped into his hand. “Slingshot?” said Carrot. “No room in here,” said Vimes. “Anyway, how the hell could it get this far into the wall?” He slipped the disc into his pocket. “That seems about it, then,” he said, straightening up. “We’d better – ow! – oh, fish out that clockwork soldier, will you? Better leave the place tidy.” Carrot scrabbled in the darkness under the bench. There was a rustling noise. “There’s a piece of paper under here, sir.” Carrot emerged, waving a small yellowing sheet. Vimes squinted at it. “Looks like nonsense to me,” he said, eventually. “It’s not dwarfish, I know that. But these symbols – these things I’ve seen before. Or something like them.” He passed the paper back to Carrot. “What can you make of it?” Carrot frowned. “I could make a hat,” he said, “or a boat. Or a sort of chrysanthemum—” “I mean the symbols. These symbols, just here.” “Dunno, captain. They do look familiar, though. Sort of . . . like alchemists’ writing?” “Oh, no!” Vimes put his hands over his eyes. “Not the bloody alchemists! Oh, no! Not that bloody gang of mad firework merchants! I can take the Assassins, but not those idiots! No! Please! What time is it?” Carrot glanced at the hourglass on his belt. “About half past eleven, captain.” “Then I’m off to bed. Those clowns can wait until tomorrow. You could make me a happy man by telling me that this paper belonged to Hammerhock.” “Doubt it, sir.” “Me too. Come on. Let’s go out through the back door.” Carrot squeezed through. “Mind your head, sir.” Vimes, almost on his knees, stopped and stared at the doorframe. “Well, corporal,” he said eventually, “we know it wasn’t a troll that did it, don’t we? Two reasons. One, a troll couldn’t get through this door, it’s dwarf sized.” “What’s the other reason, sir?” Vimes carefully pulled something off a splinter on the low door lintel. “The other reason, Carrot, is that trolls don’t have hair.” The couple of strands that had been caught in the grain of the beam were red and long. Someone had left them there inadvertently. Someone tall. Taller than a dwarf, anyway. Vimes peered at them. They looked more like threads than hair. Fine red threads. Oh, well. A clue was a clue. He carefully folded them up in a scrap of paper borrowed from Carrot’s notebook, and handed them to the corporal. “Here. Keep this safe.” They crawled out into the night. There was a narrow, plank walkway attached to the walls, and beyond that was the river. Vimes straightened up carefully. “I don’t like this, Carrot,” he said. “There’s something bad underneath all this.” Carrot looked down. “I mean, there are hidden things happening,” said Vimes, patiently. “Yes, sir.” “Let’s get back to the Yard.” They proceeded to the Brass Bridge, quite slowly, because Carrot cheerfully acknowledged everyone they met. Hard-edged ruffians, whose normal response to a remark from a Watchman would be genteelly paraphrased by a string of symbols generally found on the top row of a typewriter’s keyboard, would actually smile awkwardly and mumble something harmless in response to his hearty, “Good evening, Masher! Mind how you go!” Vimes stopped halfway across the bridge to light his cigar, striking a match on one of the ornamental hippos. Then he looked down into the turbid waters. “Carrot?” “Yes, captain?” “Do you think there’s such a thing as a criminal mind?” Carrot almost audibly tried to work this out. “What . . . you mean like . . . Mr Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, sir?” “He’s not a criminal.” “You have eaten one of his pies, sir?” “I mean . . . yes . . . but . . . he’s just geographically divergent in the financial hemisphere.” “Sir?” “I mean he just disagrees with other people about the position of things. Like money. He thinks it should all be in his pocket. No, I meant—“ Vimes closed his eyes, and thought about cigar smoke and flowing drink and laconic voices. There were people who’d steal money from people. Fair enough. That was just theft. But there were people who, with one easy word, would steal the humanity from people. That was something else. The point was. . . well, he didn’t like dwarfs and trolls. But he didn’t like anyone very much. The point was that he moved in their company every day, and he had a right to dislike them. The point was that no fat idiot had the right to say things like that. He stared at the water. One of the piles of the bridge was right below him; the Ankh sucked and gurgled around it. Debris – baulks of timber, branches, rubbish – had piled up in a sort of sordid floating island. There was even fungus growing on it. What he could do with right now was a bottle of Bearhugger’s. The world swam into focus when you looked at it through the bottom of a bottle. Something else swam into focus. Doctrine of signatures, thought Vimes. That’s what the herbalists call it. It’s like the gods put a ‘Use Me’ label on plants. If a plant looks like a part of the body, it’s good for ailments peculiar to that part. There’s teethwort for teeth, spleenwort for . . . spleens, eyebright for eyes . . . there’s even a toadstool called Phallus impudicus, and I don’t know what that’s for but Nobby is a big man for mushroom omelettes. Now . . . either that fungus down there is exactly the medicine for hands, or . . . Vimes sighed. “Carrot, can you go and get a boathook, please?” Carrot followed his gaze. “Just to the left of that log, Carrot.” “Oh, no!” “I’m afraid so. Haul it out, find out who he was, make out a report for Sergeant Colon.” The corpse was a clown. Once Carrot had climbed down the pile and moved the debris aside, he floated face up, a big sad grin painted on his face. “He’s dead!” “Catching, isn’t it?” Vimes looked at the grinning corpse. Don’t investigate. Keep out of it. Leave it to the Assassins and bloody Quirke. These are your orders. “Corporal Carrot?” “Sir?” These are your orders . . . Well, damn that. What did Vetinari think he was? Some kind of clockwork soldier? “We’re going to find out what’s been going on here.” “Yes, sir!” “Whatever else happens. We’re going to find out.”   The river Ankh is probably the only river in the universe on which the investigators can chalk the outline of the corpse. “Dear Sgt Colon, “I hope you are well. The weather is Fine. This is a corpse who, we fished out of the river last night but, we don’t know who he is except he is a member of the Fools’ Guild called Beano. He has been seriously hit on the back of the head and has been stuck under the bridge for some time, he is not a Pretty sight. Captain Vimes says to find out things. He says he thinks it is mixed up with the Murder of Mr Hammerhock. He says talk to the Fools. He says Do It. Also please find attached Piece of Paper. Captain Vimes says, try it out on the Alchemists—” Sergeant Colon stopped reading for a while to curse all alchemists. “—because it is Puzzling Evidence. Hoping this finds you in Good Health, Yours Faithfully, Carrot Ironfoundersson, (Cpl).” The sergeant scratched his head. What the hell did that all mean? Just after breakfast a couple of senior jesters from the Fools’ Guild had come to pick up the corpse. Corpses in the river . . . well, there was nothing very unusual about that. But it wasn’t the way clowns died, usually. After all, what did a clown have that was worth stealing? What sort of danger was a clown? As for the alchemists, he was blowed if he was— Of course, he didn’t have to. He looked up at the recruits. They had to be good for something. Cuddy and Detritus – don’t salute! - I’ve got a little job for you. Just take this piece of paper to the Alchemists’ Guild, all right? And ask one of the loonies to tell you what he makes of it.” “Where’s the Alchemists’ Guild, sergeant?” said Cuddy. “In the Street of Alchemists, of course,” said Colon, “at the moment. But I should run, if I was you.” The Alchemists’ Guild is opposite the Gamblers’ Guild. Usually. Sometimes it’s above it, or below it, or falling in bits around it. The gamblers are occasionally asked why they continue to maintain an establishment opposite a Guild which accidentally blows up its Guild Hall every few months, and they say: “Did you read the sign on the door when you came in?” The troll and the dwarf walked towards it, occasionally barging into each other by deliberate accident. “Anyway, you so clever, he gave paper to me?” “Hah! Can you read it, then? Can you?” “No, I tell you to read it. That called del-eg-ay-shun.” “Hah! Can’t read! Can’t count! Stupid troll!” “Not stupid!” “Hah! Yes? Everyone knows trolls can’t even count up to four!”[11] “Eater of rats!” “How many fingers am I holding up? You tell me, Mr Clever Rocks in the Head.” “Many,” Detritus hazarded. “Har har, no, five. You’ll be in big trouble on payday. Sergeant Colon’ll say, stupid troll, he won’t know how many dollars I give him! Hah! How come you read the notice about joining the Watch, anyway? Got someone to read it to you?” “How come you read notice? Get someone to hold you up?” They walked into the door of the Alchemists’ Guild. “I knock. My job!” “I’ll knock!” When Mr Sendivoge, the Guild secretary, opened the door it was to find a dwarf hanging on the knocker and being swung up and down by a troll. He adjusted his crash helmet. “Yes?” he said. Cuddy let go. Detritus’ massive brows knitted. “Er. You loony bastard, what you make of this?” he said. Sendivoge stared from Detritus to the paper. Cuddy was struggling to get around the troll, who was almost completely blocking the doorway. “What’d you go and call him that for?” “Sergeant Colon, he said—” “I could make a hat out of it,” said Sendivoge, “or a string of dollies, if I could get some scissors—” “What my . . . colleague means, sir, is can you help us in our inquiries in re the writing on this alleged piece of paper here?” said Cuddy. “That bloody hurt!” Sendivoge peered at him. “Are you Watchmen?” he said. “I’m Lance-Constable Cuddy and this,” said Cuddy, gesturing upwards, “is Lance-trying-to-be-Constable Detritus – don’t salu-oh . . .” There was a thump, and Detritus slumped sideways. “Suicide squad, is he?” said the alchemist. “He’ll come round in a minute,” said Cuddy. “It’s the saluting. It’s too much for him. You know trolls.” Sendivoge shrugged and stared at the writing. “Looks . . . familiar,” he said. “Seen it somewhere before. Here . . . you’re a dwarf, aren’t you?” “It’s the nose, isn’t it?” said Cuddy. “It always gives me away.” “Well, I’m sure we always try to be of help to the community,” said Sendivoge. “Do come in.” Cuddy’s steel-tipped boots kicked Detritus back into semi-sensibility, and he lumbered after them. “Why the, er, why the crash helmet, mister?” said Cuddy, as they walked along the corridor. All around them was the sound of hammering. The Guild was usually being rebuilt. Sendivoge rolled his eyes. “Balls,” he said, “billiard balls, in fact.” “I knew a man who played like that,” said Cuddy. “Oh, no. Mr Silverfish is a good shot. That tends rather to be the problem, in fact.” Cuddy looked at the crash helmet again. “It’s the ivory, you see.” “Ah,” said Cuddy, not seeing, “elephants?” “Ivory without elephants. Transmuted ivory. Sound commercial venture.” “I thought you were working on gold.” “Ah, yes. Of course, you people know all about gold,” said Sendivoge. “Oh, yes,” said Cuddy, reflecting on the phrase ‘you people’. “The gold,” said Sendivoge, thoughtfully, “is turning out to be a bit tricky . . .” “How long have you been trying?” “Three hundred years.” “That’s a long time.” “But we’ve been working on the ivory for only a week and it’s going very well!” said the alchemist quickly. “Except for some side effects which we’ll doubtless soon be able to sort out.” He pushed open a door. It was a large room, heavily outfitted with the usual badly ventilated furnaces, rows of bubbling crucibles, and one stuffed alligator. Things floated in jars. The air smelled of a limited life expectancy. A lot of equipment had been moved away, however, to make room for a billiard table. Half a dozen alchemists were standing around it in the manner of men poised to run. “It’s the third this week,” said Sendivoge, gloomily. He nodded to a figure bent over a cue. “Er, Mr Silverfish—“ he began. “Quiet! Game on!” said the head alchemist, squinting at the white ball. Sendivoge glanced at the score rail. “Twenty-one points,” he said. “My word. Perhaps we’re adding just the right amount of camphor to the nitro-cellulose after all—” There was a click. The cue ball rolled away, bounced off the cushion— —and then accelerated. White smoke poured off it as it bore down on an innocent cluster of red balls. Silverfish shook his head. “Unstable,” he said. “Everybody down!” Everyone in the room ducked, except for the two Watchmen, one of whom was in a sense pre-ducked and the other of whom was several minutes behind events. The black ball took off on a column of flame, whiffled past Detritus’ face trailing black smoke and then shattered a window. The green ball was staying in one spot but spinning furiously. The other balls cannoned back and forth, occasionally bursting into flame or caroming off the walls. A red one hit Detritus between the eyes, curved back on to the table, holed itself in the middle pocket and then blew up. There was silence, except for the occasional bout of coughing. Silverfish appeared through the oily smoke and, with a shaking hand, moved the score point one notch with the burning end of his cue. “One,” he said. “Oh well. Back to the crucible. Someone order another billiard table—” “ ‘Scuse me,” said Cuddy, prodding him in the knee. “Who’s there?” “Down here!” Silverfish looked down. “Oh. Are you a dwarf?” Cuddy gave him a blank stare. “Are you a giant?” he said. “Me? Of course not!” “Ah. Then I must be a dwarf, yes. And that’s a troll behind me,” said Cuddy. Detritus pulled himself into something resembling attention. “We’ve come to see if you can tell us what’s on this paper,” said Cuddy. “Yur,” said Detritus. Silverfish looked at it. “Oh, yes,” he said, “some of old Leonard’s stuff. Well?” “Leonard?” said Cuddy. He glared at Detritus. “Write this down,” he snapped. “Leonard of Quirm,” said the alchemist. Cuddy still looked lost. “Never heard of him?” said Silverfish. “Can’t say I have, sir.” “I thought everyone knew about Leonard da Quirm. Quite barmy. But a genius, too.” “Was he an alchemist?” Write this down, write this down . . . Detritus looked around blearily for a burnt bit of wood and a handy wall. “Leonard? No. He didn’t belong to a Guild. Or he belonged to all the Guilds, I suppose. He got around quite a bit. He tinkered, if you know what I mean?” “No, sir.” “He painted a bit, and messed about with mechanisms. Any old thing.” Or a hammer and chisel even, thought Detritus. “This,” said Silverfish, “is a formula for . . . oh, well, I might as well tell you, it’s hardly a big secret . . . it’s a formula for what we called No. 1 Powder. Sulphur, saltpetre and charcoal. You use it in fireworks. Any fool could make it up. But it looks odd because it’s written back to front.” “This sounds important,” hissed Cuddy to the troll. “Oh, no. He always used to write back to front,” said Silverfish. “He was odd like that. But very clever all the same. Haven’t you seen his portrait of the Mona Ogg?” “I don’t think so.” Silverfish handed the parchment to Detritus, who squinted at it as if he knew what it meant. Maybe he could write on this, he thought. “The teeth followed you around the room. Amazing. In fact some people said they followed them out of the room and all the way down the street.” “I think we should talk to Mr da Quirm,” said Cuddy. “Oh, you could do that, you could do that, certainly,” said Silverfish. “But he might not be in a position to listen. He disappeared a couple of years ago.” . . . then when I find something to write with, thought Detritus, I have to find someone teach me how write . . . “Disappeared? How?” said Cuddy. “We think,” said Silverfish, leaning closer, “that he found a way of making himself invisible.” “Really?” “Because,” said Silverfish, nodding conspiratorially, “no-one’s seen him.” “Ah,” said Cuddy. “Er. This is just off of the top of my head, you understand, but I suppose he couldn’t . . . just have gone somewhere where you couldn’t see him?” “Nah, that wouldn’t be like old Leonard. He wouldn’t disappear. But he might vanish.” “Oh.” “He was a bit . . . unhinged, if you know what I mean. Head too full of brains. Ha, I remember he had this idea once of getting lightning out of lemons! Hey, Sendivoge, you remember Leonard and his lightning lemons?” Sendivoge made little circular motions alongside his head with one finger. “Oh, yes. “If you stick copper and zinc rods in the lemon, hey presto, you get tame lightning.” Man was an idiot!” “Oh, not an idiot,” said Silverfish, picking up a billiard ball that had miraculously escaped the detonations. “Just so sharp he kept cutting himself, as my granny used to say. Lightning lemons! Where’s the sense in that? It was as bad as his “voices-in-the-sky” machine. I told him: Leonard, I said, what are wizards for, eh? There’s perfectly normal magic available for that kind of thing. Lightning lemons? It’ll be men with wings next! And you know what he said? You know what he said? He said: Funny you should say that . . . Poor old chap.” Even Cuddy joined in the laughter. “And did you try it?” he said, afterwards. “Try what?” said Silverfish. “Har. Har. Har,” said Detritus, toiling behind the others. “Putting the metal rods in the lemons?” “Don’t be a damn fool.” “What dis letter mean?” said Detritus, pointing at the paper. They looked. “Oh, that’s not a symbol,” said Silverfish. “That’s just old Leonard’s way. He was always doodling in margins. Doodle, doodle, doodle. I told him: you should call yourself Mr Doodle.” “I thought it was some alchemy thing,” said Cuddy. “It looks a bit like a crossbow without the bow. And this word Ennogeht. What does that mean?” “Search me. Sounds barbarian to me. Anyway . . . if that’s all, officer . . . we’ve got some serious research to do,” said Silverfish, tossing the fake ivory ball up in the air and catching it again. “We’re not all daydreamers like poor old Leonard.” “Ennogeht,” said Cuddy, turning the paper round and round. “T-h-e-g-o-n-n-e—” Silverfish missed the ball. Cuddy got behind Detritus just in time. “I’ve done this before,” said Sergeant Colon, as he and Nobby approached the Fools’ Guild. “Keep up against the wall when I bangs the knocker, all right?” It was shaped like a pair of artificial breasts, the sort that are highly amusing to rugby players and anyone whose sense of humour has been surgically removed. Colon gave it a quick rap and then flung himself to safety. There was a whoop, a few honks on a horn, a little tune that someone somewhere must have thought was very jolly, a small hatch slid aside above the knocker and a custard pie emerged slowly, on the end of a wooden arm. Then the arm snapped and the pie collapsed in a little heap by Colon’s foot. “It’s sad, isn’t it?” said Nobby. The door opened awkwardly, but only by a few inches, and a small clown stared up at him. “I say, I say, I say,” it said, “why did the fat man knock at the door?” “I don’t know,” said Colon automatically. “Why did the fat man knock at the door?” They stared at each other, tangled in the punchline. “That’s what I asked you,” said the clown reproachfully. He had a depressed, hopeless voice. Sergeant Colon struck out towards sanity. “Sergeant Colon, Night Watch,” he said, “and this here is Corporal Nobbs. We’ve come to talk to someone about the man who . . . was found in the river, OK?” “Oh. Yes. Poor Brother Beano. I suppose you’d better come in, then,” said the clown. Nobby was about to push at the door when Colon stopped him, and pointed wordlessly upwards. “There seems to be a bucket of whitewash over the door,” he said. “Is there?” said the clown. He was very small, with huge boots that made him look like a capital L. His face was plastered with flesh-coloured make-up on which a big frown had been painted. His hair had been made from a couple of old mops, painted red. He wasn’t fat, but a sort of hoop in his trousers was supposed to make him look amusingly overweight. A pair of rubber braces, so that his trousers bounced up and down when he walked, were a further component in the overall picture of a complete and utter twerp. “Yes,” said Colon. “There is.” “Sure?” “Positive.” “Sorry about that,” said the clown. “It’s stupid, I know, but kind of traditional. Wait a moment.” There were sounds of a stepladder being lugged into position, and various clankings and swearwords. “All right, come on in.” The clown led the way through the gatehouse. There was no sound but the flop-flop of his boots on the cobbles. Then an idea seemed to occur to him. “It’s a long shot, I know, but I suppose neither of you gentlemen’d like a sniff of my buttonhole?” “No.” “No.” “No, I suppose not.” The clown sighed. “It’s not easy, you know. Clowning, I mean. I’m on gate duty ‘cos I’m on probation.” “You are?” “I keep on forgetting: is it crying on the outside and laughing on the inside? I always get it mixed up.” “About this Beano—“ Colon began. “We’re just holding his funeral,” said the little clown. “That’s why my trousers are at half-mast.” They stepped out into the sunlight again. The inner courtyard was lined with clowns and fools. Bells tinkled in the breeze. Sunlight glinted off red noses and the occasional nervous jet of water from a fake buttonhole. The clown ushered the guards into a line of fools. “I’m sure Dr Whiteface will talk to you as soon as we’ve finished,” he said. “My name’s Boffo, by the way.” He held out his hand hopefully. “Don’t shake it,” Colon warned. Boffo looked crestfallen. A band struck up, and a procession of Guild members emerged from the chapel. A clown walked a little way ahead, carrying a small urn. “This is very moving,” said Boffo. On a dais on the opposite side of the quadrangle was a fat clown in baggy trousers, huge braces, a bow tie that was spinning gently in the breeze, and a top hat. His face had been painted into a picture of misery. He held a bladder on a stick. The clown with the urn reached the dais, climbed the steps, and waited. The band fell silent. The clown in the top hat hit the urn-carrier about the head with the bladder – once, twice, three times . . . The urn-bearer stepped forward, waggled his wig, took the urn in one hand and the clown’s belt in the other and, with great solemnity, poured the ashes of the late Brother Beano into the other clown’s trousers. A sigh went up from the audience. The band struck up the clown anthem ‘The March of the Idiots’, and the end of the trombone flew off and hit a clown on the back of the head. He turned and swung a punch at the clown behind him, who ducked, causing a third clown to be knocked through the bass drum. Colon and Nobby looked at one another and shook their heads. Boffo produced a large red and white handkerchief and blew his nose with a humorous honking sound. “Classic,” he said. “It’s what he would have wanted.” “Have you any idea what happened?” said Colon. “Oh, yes. Brother Grineldi did the old heel-and-toe trick and tipped the urn down—” “I mean, why did Beano die?” “Um. We think it was an accident,” said Boffo. “An accident,” said Colon flatly. “Yes. That’s what Dr Whiteface thinks.” Boffo glanced upwards, briefly. They followed his gaze. The rooftops of the Assassins’ Guild adjoined the Fools’ Guild. It didn’t do to upset neighbours like that, especially when the only weapon you had was a custard pie edged with short-crust pastry. “That’s what Dr Whiteface thinks,” said Boffo again, looking at his enormous shoes. Sergeant Colon liked a quiet life. And the city could spare a clown or two. In his opinion, the loss of the whole boiling could only make the world a slightly happier place. And yet . . . and yet . . . honestly, he didn’t know what had got into the Watch lately. It was Carrot, that was what it was. Even old Vimes had picked it up. We don’t let things lie any more . . . “Maybe he was cleaning a club, sort of thing, and it accidentally went off,” said Nobby. He’d caught it, too. “No-one ‘d want to kill young Beano,” said the down, in a quiet voice. “He was a friendly soul. Friends everywhere.” “Almost everywhere,” said Colon. The funeral was over. The jesters, jokers and clowns were going about their business, getting stuck in door-ways on the way. There was much pushing and shoving and honking of noses and falling of prats. It was a scene to make a happy man slit his wrists on a fine spring rang. “All I know is,” said Boffo, in a low voice, “that when I saw him yesterday he was looking very . . . odd. I called out to him when he was going through the gates and—” “How do you mean, odd?” said Colon. I am detector-ing, he thought, with a faint touch of pride. People are Helping me with My Inquiries. “Dunno. Odd. Not quite himself—” “This was yesterday?” “Oh, yes. In the morning. I know because the gate rota—” “Yesterday morning?” “That’s what I said, mister. Mind you, we were all a bit nervous after the bang—” “Brother Boffo!” “Oh, no—“ mumbled the clown. A figure was striding towards them. A terrible figure. No clowns were funny. That was the whole purpose of a clown. People laughed at clowns, but only out of nervousness. The point of clowns was that, after watching them, anything else that happened seemed enjoyable. It was nice to know there was someone worse off than you. Someone had to be the butt of the world. But even clowns are frightened of something, and that is the white-faced clown. The one who never gets in the way of the custard. The one in the shiny white clothes, and the deadpan white make-up. The one with the little pointy hat and the thin mouth and the delicate black eyebrows. Dr Whiteface. “Who are these gentlemen?” he demanded. “Er—“ Boffo began. “Night Watch, sir,” said Colon, saluting. “And why are you here?” “Investigating our inquiries as to the fatal demise of the clown Beano, sir,” said Colon. “I rather think that is Guild business, sergeant. Don’t you?” “Well, sir, he was found in the—” “I am sure it is something we don’t need to bother the Watch with,” said Dr Whiteface. Colon hesitated. He’d prefer to face Dr Cruces than this apparition. At least the Assassins were supposed to be unpleasant. Clowns, were only one step away from mime artists, too. “No, sir,” he said. “It was obviously an accident, right?” “Quite so. Brother Boffo will show you to the door,” said the head clown. “And then,” he added, “he will report to my office. Does he understand?” “Yes, Dr Whiteface,” mumbled Boffo. “What’ll he do to you?” said Nobby, as they headed for the gate. “Hat full of whitewash, probably,” said Boffo. “Pie inna face if I’m lucky.” He opened the wicket gate. “A lot of us ain’t happy about this,” he whispered. “I don’t see why those buggers should get away with it. We ought to go round to the Assassins and have it out with them.” “Why the Assassins?” said Colon. “Why would they kill a clown?” Boffo looked guilty. “I never said a thing!” Colon glared at him. “There’s definitely something odd happening, Mr Boffo.” Boffo looked around, as if expecting a vengeful custard pie at any moment. “You find his nose,” he hissed. “You just find his nose. His poor nose!” The gate slammed shut. Sergeant Colon turned to Nobby. “Did exhibit A have a nose, Nobby?” “Yes, Fred.” “Then what was that about?” “Search me.” Nobby scratched a promising boil. “P’raps he meant a false nose. You know. Those red ones on elastic? The ones,” said Nobby, grimacing, “they think are funny. He didn’t have one.” Colon rapped on the door, taking care to stand out of the way of any jolly amusing booby traps. The hatch slid aside. “Yes?” hissed Boffo. “Did you mean his false nose?” said Colon. “His real one! Now bugger off!” The hatch snapped back. “Mental,” said Nobby, firmly. “Beano had a real nose. Did it look wrong to you?” said Colon. “No. It had a couple of holes in it.” “Well, I don’t know about noses,” said Colon, “but either Brother Boffo is dead wrong or there’s something fishy going on.” “Like what?” “Well, Nobby, you’re what I might call a career soldier, right?” “ ‘S’right, Fred.” “How many dishonourable discharges have you had?” “Lots,” said Nobby, proudly. “But I always puts a poultice on ‘em.” “You’ve been on a lot of battlefields, ain’t you?” “Dozens.” Sergeant Colon nodded. “So you’ve seen a lot of corpses, right, when you’ve been ministering to the fallen—” Corporal Nobbs nodded. They both knew that ‘ministering’ meant harvesting any personal jewellery and stealing their boots. In many a faraway battlefield the last thing many a mortally wounded foeman ever saw was Corporal Nobbs heading towards him with a sack, a knife and a calculating expression. “Shame to let good stuff go to waste,” said Nobby. “So you’ve noticed how dead bodies get. . . deader,” said Sergeant Colon. “Deader than dead?” “You know. More corpsey,” said Sergeant Colon, forensic expert. “Goin’ stiff and purple and suchlike?” “Right.” “And then sort of manky and runny . . .” “Yes, all right—” “Makes it easier to get the rings off, mind you—” “The point is, Nobby, that you can tell how old a corpse is. That clown, for e.g. You saw him, same as me. How long, would you say?” “About 5’ 9”, I’d say. His boots didn’t fit, I know that. Too floppy.” “I meant how long he’d been dead.” “Couple of days. You can tell because there’s this—” “So how come Boffo saw him yesterday morning?” They strolled onwards. “Bit of a poser, that is,” said Nobby. “You’re right. I expect the captain’ll be very interested.” “Maybe he was a zombie?” “Shouldn’t think so.” “Never could stand zombies,” Nobby mused. “Really?” “It was always so hard to nick their boots.” Sergeant Colon nodded at a passing beggar. “You still doing the folk dancing on your nights off, Nobby?” “Yes, Fred. We’re practising “Gathering Sweet Lilacs” this week. There is a very complicated double crossover-step.” “You’re definitely a man of many parts, Nobby.” “Only if I couldn’t cut the rings off, Fred.” “What I mean is, you presents an intriguing dichotomy.” Nobby took a kick at a small scruffy dog. “You been reading books again, Fred?” “Got to improve my mind, Nobby. It’s these new recruits. Carrot’s got his nose in a book half the time, Angua knows words I has to look up, even the shortarse is brighter’n me. They keep on extracting the urine. I’m definitely a bit under-endowed in the head department.” “You’re brighter than Detritus,” said Nobby. “That’s what I tell myself. I say, “Fred, whatever happens, you’re brighter than Detritus.” But then I say, “Fred – so’s yeast.”” He turned away from the window. So. The damn Watch! That damn Vimes! Exactly the wrong man in the wrong place. Why didn’t people learn from history? Treachery was in his very genes! How could a city run properly with someone like that, poking around? That wasn’t what a Watch was for. Watchmen were supposed to do what they were told, and see to it that other people did too. Someone like Vimes could upset things. Not because he was clever. A clever Watchman was a contradiction in terms. But sheer randomness might cause trouble. The gonne lay on the table. “What shall I do about Vimes?” Kill him. Angua woke up. It was almost noon, she was in her own bed at Mrs Cake’s, and someone was knocking at the door. “Mmm?” she said. “Oi don’t know. Shall I ask him to go away?” said a voice from around keyhole level. Angua thought quickly. The other residents had warned her about this. She waited for her cue. “Oh, thanks, love. Oi was forgetting,” said the voice. You had to pick your time, with Mrs Cake. It was difficult, living in a house run by someone whose mind was only nominally attached to the present. Mrs Cake was a psychic. “You’ve got your precognition switched on again, Mrs Cake,” said Angua, swinging her legs out of bed and rummaging quickly through the pile of clothes on the chair. “Where’d we got to?” said Mrs Cake, still on the other side of the door. “You just said, “I don’t know, shall I ask him to go away?” Mrs Cake,” said Angua. Clothes! That was always the trouble! At least a male werewolf only had to worry about a pair of shorts and pretend he’d been on a brisk run. “Right.” Mrs Cake coughed. ““There’s a young man downstairs asking for you”,” she said. ““Who is it?”,” said Angua. There was a moment’s silence. “Yes, oi think that’s all sorted out,” said Mrs Cake. “Sorry, dear. Oi get terrible headaches if’n people don’t fill in the right bits. Are you human, dear?”[12] “You can come in, Mrs Cake.” It wasn’t much of a room. It was mainly brown. Brown oilcloth flooring, brown walls, a picture over the brown bed of a brown stag being attacked by brown dogs on a brown moorland against a sky which, contrary to established meteorological knowledge, was brown. There was a brown wardrobe. Possibly, if you fought your way through the mysterious old coats[13] hanging in it, you’d break through into a magical fairyland full of talking animals and goblins, but it’d probably not be worth it. Mrs Cake entered. She was a small fat woman, but made up for her lack of height by wearing a huge black hat; not the pointy witch variety, but one covered with stuffed birds, wax fruit and other assorted decorative items, all painted black. Angua quite liked her. The rooms were clean,[14] the rates were cheap, and Mrs Cake had a very understanding approach to people who lived slightly unusual lives and had, for example, an aversion to garlic. Her daughter was a werewolf and she knew all about the need for ground floor windows and doors with long handles that a paw could operate. “He’s got chainmail on,” said Mrs Cake. She was holding a bucket of gravel in either hand. “He’s got soap in his ears, too.” “Oh. Er. Right.” “Oi can tell ‘im to bugger off if you like,” said Mrs Cake. “That’s what I allus does if the wrong sort comes round. Especially if they’ve got a stake. I can’t be having with that sort of thing, people messing up the hallways, waving torches and stuff.” “I think I know who it is,” said Angua. “I’ll see to it.” She tucked in her shirt. “Pull the door to if you go out,” Mrs Cake called after her as she went out into the hall. “Oi’m just off to change the dirt in Mr Winkins’ coffin, on account of his back giving him trouble.” “It looks like gravel to me, Mrs Cake.” “Orthopaedic, see?” Carrot was standing respectfully on the doorstep with his helmet under his arm and a very embarrassed expression on his face. “Well?” said Angua, not unkindly. “Er. Good morning. I thought, you know, perhaps, you not knowing very much about the city, really. I could, if you like, if you don’t mind, not having to go on duty for a while . . . show you some of it. . .?” For a moment Angua thought she’d contracted pre-science from Mrs Cake. Various futures flitted across her imagination. “I haven’t had breakfast,” she said. “They make a very good breakfast in Gimlet’s dwarf delicatessen in Cable Street.” “It’s lunchtime.” “It’s breakfast time for the Night Watch.” “I’m practically vegetarian.” “He does a soya rat.” She gave in. “I’ll fetch my coat.” “Har, har,” said a voice, full of withering cynicism. She looked down. Gaspode was sitting behind Carrot, trying to glare while scratching himself furiously. “Last night we chased a cat up a tree,” said Gaspode. “You and me, eh? We could make it. Fate has thrown us together, style of fing.” “Go away.” “Sorry?” said Carrot. “Not you. That dog.” Carrot turned. “Him? Is he bothering you now? He’s a nice little chap.” “Woof, woof, biscuit.” Carrot automatically patted his pocket. “See?” said Gaspode. “This boy is Mister Simple, am I right?” “Do they let dogs in dwarf shops?” said Angua. “No,” said Carrot. “On a hook,” said Gaspode. “Really? Sounds good to me,” said Angua. “Let’s go.” “Vegetarian?” mumbled Gaspode, limping after them. “Oh, my.” “Shut up.” “Sorry?” said Carrot. “I was just thinking aloud.”   Vimes’ pillow was cold and hard. He felt it gingerly. It was cold and hard because it was not a pillow but a table. His cheek appeared to be stuck to it, and he was not interested in speculating what with. He hadn’t even managed to take his armour off. But he did manage to unstick one eye. He’d been writing in his notebook. Trying to make sense of it all. And then he’d gone to sleep. What time was it? No time to look back. He traced out: Stolen from Afsafsins’ Guild: gonne – > Hammerhock killed. Smell of fireworks. Lump of lead. Alchemical Symbols. 2nd body in river. A clown. Where was his red nose? Gonne. He stared at the scrawled notes. I’m on the path, he thought. I don’t have to know where it leads. I just have to follow. There’s always a crime, if you look hard enough. And the Assassins are in this somewhere. Follow every lead. Check every detail. Chip, chip away. I’m hungry. He staggered to his feet and looked at his face in the cracked mirror over the basin. Events of the previous day filtered through the dogged gauze of memory. Central to all of them was the face of Lord Vetinari. Vimes grew angry just thinking about that. The cool way he’d told Vimes that he mustn’t take an interest in the theft from— Vimes stared at his reflection— —something stung his ear and smashed the glass. Vimes stared at the hole in the plaster, surrounded by the remains of a mirror frame. Around him, the mirror glass tinkled to the floor. Vimes stood stock still for a long moment. Then his legs, reaching the conclusion that his brain was somewhere else, threw the rest of him to the floor. There was another tinkle and a half bottle of Bearhugger’s exploded on the desk. Vines couldn’t even remember buying it. He scrambled forward on hands and knees and pulled himself upright alongside the window. Images flashed through his mind. The dead dwarf. The hole in the wall . . . A thought seemed to start in the small of his back and spread upwards to his brain: These were lath and plaster walls, and old ones at that; you could push a finger through them with a bit of effort. As for a lump of metal— He hit the floor at the same time as a pock coincided with a hole punched through the wall on one side of the window. Plaster dust puffed into the air. His crossbow was leaning against the wall. He wasn’t an expert but, hells, who was? You pointed it and you fired it. He pulled it towards him, rolled on his back, stuck his foot in the stirrup and hauled on the string until it clicked into place. Then he rolled back on to one knee and slotted a quarrel into the groove. A catapult, that’s what it was. It had to be. Troll-sized, perhaps. Someone up on the roof of the opera house or somewhere high . . . Draw their fire, draw their fire . . . he picked up his helmet and balanced it on the end of another quarrel. The thing to do was crouch below the window and . . . He thought for a moment. Then he shuffled across the floor to the corner, where there was a pole with a hook on the end. Once upon a time it had been used to open the upper windows, now long rusted shut. He balanced his helmet on the end, wedged himself into the corner, and with a certain amount of effort moved the pole so that the helmet just showed over the window si . . . Pock. Splinters flew up from a point on the floor where it would undoubtedly have severely inconvenienced anyone lying on the boards cautiously raising a decoy helmet on a stick. Vimes smiled. Someone was trying to kill him, and that made him feel more alive than he had done for days. And they were also slightly less intelligent than he was. This is a quality you should always pray for in your would-be murderer. He dropped the pole, picked up the crossbow, spun past the window, fired at an indistinct shape on the opera house roof opposite as if the bow could possibly carry across that range, leapt across the room and wrenched at the door. Something smashed into the doorframe as the door swung to behind him. Then it was down the back stairs, out of the door, over the privy roof, into Knuckle Passage, up the back steps of Zorgo the Retrophrenologist,[15] into Zorgo’s operating room and over to the window. Zorgo and his current patient looked at him curiously. Pugnant’s roof was empty. Vimes turned back and met a pair of puzzled gazes. “‘Morning, Captain Vimes,” said the retrophrenologist, a hammer still upraised in one massive hand. Vimes smiled manically. “Just thought—“ he began, and then went on, “—I saw an interesting rare butterfly on the roof over there.” Troll and patient stared politely past him. “But there wasn’t,” said Virnes. He walked back to the door. “Sorry to have bothered you,” he said, and left. Zorgo’s patient watched him go with interest. “Didn’t he have a crossbow?” he said. “Bit odd, going after interesting rare butterflies with a crossbow.” Zorgo readjusted the fit of the grid on his patient’s bald head. “Dunno,” he said, “I suppose it stops them creating all these damn thunderstorms.” He picked up the mallet again. “Now, what were we going for today? Decisiveness, yes?” “Yes. Well, no. Maybe.” “Right.” Zorgo took aim. “This,” he said with absolute truth, “won’t hurt a bit.” It was more than just a delicatessen. It was a sort of dwarf community centre and meeting place. The babble of voices stopped when Angua entered, bending almost double, but started up again with slightly more volume and a few laughs when Carrot followed. He waved cheerfully at the other customers. Then he carefully removed two chairs. It was just possible to sit upright if you sat on the floor. “Very . . . nice,” said Angua. “Ethnic.” “I come in here quite a lot,” said Carrot. “The food’s good and, of course, it pays to keep your ear to the ground.” “That’d certainly be easy here,” said Angua, and laughed. “Pardon?” “Well, I mean, the ground is . . . so much . . . closer . . .” She felt a pit opening wider with every word. The noise level had suddenly dropped again. “Er,” said Carrot, staring fixedly at her. “How can I put this? People are talking in Dwarfish . . . but they’re listening in Human.” “Sorry.” Carrot smiled, and then nodded at the cook behind the counter and cleared his throat noisily. “I think I might have a throat sweet somewhere —“ Angua began. “I was ordering breakfast,” said Carrot. “You know the menu off by heart?” “Oh, yes. But it’s written on the wall as well.” Angua turned and looked again at what she’d thought were merely random scratches. “It’s Oggham,” said Carrot. “An ancient and poetic runic script whose origins are lost in the mists of time but it’s thought to have been invented even before the Gods.” “Gosh. What does it say?” Carrot really cleared his throat this time.   “Soss, egg, beans and rat 12p Soss, rat and fried slice 10p Cream-cheese rat 9p Rat and beans 8p Rat and ketchup 7p Rat 4p”   “Why does ketchup cost almost as much as the rat?” said Angua. “Have you tried rat without ketchup?” said Carrot. “Anyway, I ordered you dwarf bread. Have you ever eaten dwarf bread?” “No.” “Everyone should try it once,” said Carrot. He appeared to consider this. “Most people do,” he added.[16] Three and a half minutes after waking up, Captain Samuel Vimes, Night Watch, staggered up the last few steps to the roof of the city’s opera house, gasped for breath and threw up allegro ma non troppo. Then he leaned against the wall, waving his crossbow vaguely in front of him. There wasn’t anyone else on the roof. There were just the leads, stretching away, drinking up the morning sunlight. It was already almost too hot to move. When he felt a bit better he poked around among the chimneys and skylight. But there were a dozen ways down, and a thousand places to hide. He could see right into his room from here. Come to that, he could see into the rooms of most of the city. Catapult . . . no . . . Oh, well. At least there’d been witnesses. He walked to the edge of the roof, and peered over. “Hello, there,” he said. He blinked. It was six storeys down, and not a sight to look at on a recently emptied stomach. “Er . . . could you come up here, please?” he said. “ ‘Ight oo are.” Vimes stood back. There was a scrape of stone and a gargoyle pulled itself laboriously over the parapet, moving like a cheap stop-motion animation. He didn’t know much about gargoyles. Carrot had said something once about how marvellous it was, an urban troll species that had evolved a symbiotic relationship with gutters, and he had admired the way they funnelled run-off water into their ears and out through fine sieves in their mouths. They were probably the strangest species on the Disc.[17] You didn’t get many birds nesting on buildings colonized by gargoyles, and bats tended to fly around them. “What’s your name, friend?” “ ‘ornice-oggerooking-Oardway.” Vimes’ lips moved as he mentally inserted all those sounds unobtainable to a creature whose mouth was stuck permanently open. Cornice-overlooking-Broad-way. A gargoyle’s personal identity was intimately bound up with its normal location, like a limpet. “Well now, Cornice,” he said, “do you know who I am?” “Oh,” said the gargoyle sullenly. Vimes nodded. It sits up here in all weather straining gnats through its ears, he thought. People like that don’t have a crowded address book. Even whelks get out more. “I’m Captain Vimes of the Watch.” The gargoyle pricked up its huge ears. “Ar. Oo erk or Ister Arrot?” Vimes worked this one out, too, and blinked. “You know Corporal Carrot?” “Oh, Ess. Air-ee-un owes Arrot.” Vimes snorted. I grew up here, he thought, and when I walk down the street everyone says, “Who’s that glum bugger?” Carrot’s been here a few months and everyone knows him. And he knows everyone. Everyone likes him. I’d be annoyed about that, if only he wasn’t so likeable. “You live right up here,” said Vimes, interested despite the more pressing problem on his mind, “how come you know Arrot . . . Carrot?” “Ee cuns uk ere um-imes an awks oo ugg.” “Uz ee?” “Egg.” “Did someone else come up here? Just now?” “Egg-‘ “Did you see who it was?” “Oh. Ee oot izh oot on i ed. Ang et ogg a ire-erk. I or ing un ah-ay a-ong Or-oh-Erns Eet.” Holofernes Street, Vimes translated. Whoever it was would be well away by now. “Ee ad a ick,” Cornice volunteered. “A ire-erk htick.” A what?” “Ire-erk. Oo oh? Ang! Ock! Arks! Ockekts! Ang!” “Oh, fireworks.” “Egg. Aks ot I ed.” A firework stick? Like . . . like a rocket stick?” “Oh, ih-ee-ot! A htick, oo oint, ik koes ANG!” “You point it and it goes bang?” “Egg!” Vimes scratched his head. Sounded like a wizard’s staff. But they didn’t go bang. “Well . . . thanks,” he said. “You’ve been . . . eh-ee elkfhull.” He turned back towards the stairs. Someone had tried to kill him. And the Patrician had warned him against investigating the theft from the Assassins’ Guild. Theft, he said. Up until then, Vimes hadn’t even been certain there had been a theft. And then, of course, there are the laws of chance. They play a far greater role in police procedure than narrative causality would like to admit. For every murder solved by the careful discovery of a vital footprint or a cigarette end, a hundred failed to be resolved because the wind blew some leaves the wrong way or it didn’t rain the night before. So many crimes are solved by a happy accident – by the random stopping of a car, by an overheard remark, by someone of the right nationality happening to be within five miles of the scene of the crime without an alibi . . . Even Vimes knew about the power of chance. His sandal clinked against something metallic.   “And this,” said Corporal Carrot, “is the famous commemorative arch celebrating the Battle of Crumhorn. We won it, I think. It’s got over ninety statues of famous soldiers. It’s something of a landmark.” “Should have put up a stachoo to the accountants,” said a doggy voice behind Angua. “First battle in the universe where the enemy were persuaded to sell their weapons.” “Where is it, then?” said Angua, still ignoring Gaspode. “Ah. Yes. That’s the problem,” said Carrot. “Excuse me, Mr Scant. This is Mr Scant. Official Keeper of the Monuments. According to ancient tradition, his pay is one dollar a year and a new vest every Hogswatchday.” There was an old man sitting on a stool at the road junction, with his hat over his eyes. He pushed it up. “Afternoon, Mr Carrot. You’ll be wanting to see the triumphal arch, will you?” “Yes, please.” Carrot turned back to Angua. “Unfortunately, the actual practical design was turned over to Bloody Stupid Johnson.” The old man eventually produced a small cardboard box from a pocket, and reverentially took off the lid. “Where is it?” “Just there,” said Carrot. “Behind that little bit of cotton wool.” “Oh.” “I’m afraid that for Mr Johnson accurate measurements were something that happened to other people.” Mr Scant dosed the lid. “He also did the Quirm Memorial, the Hanging Gardens of Ankh, and the Colossus of Morpork,” said Carrot. “The Colossus of Morpork?” said Angua. Mr Scant held up a skinny finger. “Ah,” he said. “Don’t go away.” He started to pat his pockets. “Got ‘im ‘ere somewhere.” “Didn’t the man ever design anything useful?” “Well, he did design an ornamental cruet set for Mad Lord Snapcase,” said Carrot, as they strolled away. “He got that right?” “Not exactly. But here’s an interesting fact, four families live in a salt shaker and we use the pepper pot for storing grain.” Angua smiled. Interesting facts. Carrot was full of interesting facts about Ankh-Morpork. Angua felt she was floating uneasily on a sea of them. Walking along a street with Carrot was like having three guided tours rolled into one. “Now here,” said Carrot, “is the Beggars’ Guild. They’re the oldest of the Guilds. Not many people know that.” “Is that so?” “People think it’d be the Fools or the Assassins. Ask anyone. They’ll say “the oldest Guild in Ankh-Morpork is certainly the Fools’ Guild or the Assassins’ Guild”. But they aren’t. They’re quite recent. But there’s been a Beggars’ Guild for centuries.” “Really?” said Angua, weakly. In the last hour she’d learned more about Ankh-Morpork than any reasonable person wanted to know. She vaguely suspected that Carrot was trying to court her. But, instead of the usual flowers or chocolate, he seemed to be trying to gift-wrap a city. And, despite all her better instincts, she was feeling jealous. Of a city! Ye gods, I’ve known him a couple of days! It was the way he wore the place. You expected him any moment to break into the kind of song that has suspicious rhymes and phrases like ‘my kind of town’ and ‘I wanna be a part of it’ in it; the kind of song where people dance in the street and give the singer apples and join in and a dozen lowly matchgirls suddenly show amazing choreo-graphical ability and everyone acts like cheery lovable citizens instead of the murderous, evil-minded, self-centred individuals they suspect themselves to be. But the point was that if Carrot had erupted into a song and dance, people would have joined in. Carrot could have jollied a circle of standing stones to form up behind him and do a rumba. “There’s some very interesting old statuary in the main courtyard,” he said. “Including a very good one of Jimi, the God of Beggars. I’ll show you. They won’t mind.” He rapped on the door. “You don’t have to,” said Angua. “It’s no trouble—” The door opened. Angua’s nostrils flared. There was a smell . . . A beggar looked Carrot up and down. His mouth dropped open. “It’s Cumbling Michael, isn’t it?” said Carrot, in his cheery way. The door slammed. “Well, that wasn’t very friendly,” said Carrot. “Stinks, don’t it?” said a nasty little voice from somewhere behind Angua. While she was in no mood to acknowledge Gaspode, she found herself nodding. Although the beggars were an entire cocktail of odours the second biggest one was fear, and the biggest of all was blood. The scent of it made her want to scream. There was a babble of voices behind the door, and it swung open again. This time there was a whole crowd of beggars there. They were all staring at Carrot. “All right, yer honour,” said the one hailed as Cumbling Michael, “we give in. How did you know?” “How did we know wh—“ Carrot began, but Angua nudged him. “Someone’s been killed here,” she said. “Who’s she?” said Cumbling Michael. “Lance-Constable Angua is a man of the Watch,” said Carrot. “Har, har,” said Gaspode. “I must say you people are getting better,” said Cumbling Michael. “We only found the poor thing a few minutes ago.” Angua could feel Carrot opening his mouth to say “Who?” She nudged him again. “You’d better take us to him,” she said. He turned out to be— —for one thing, he turned out to be a she. In a rag-strewn room on the top floor. Angua knelt beside the body. It was very clearly a body now. It certainly wasn’t a person. A person normally had more head on their shoulders. “Why?” she said. “Who’d do such a thing?” Carrot turned to the beggars clustered around the doorway. “Who was she?” “Lettice Knibbs,” said Cumbling Michael. “She was just the lady’s maid to Queen Molly.” Angua glanced up at Carrot. “Queen?” “They sometimes call the head beggar king or queen,” said Carrot. He was breathing heavily. Angua pulled the maid’s velvet cloak over the corpse. “Just the maid,” she muttered. There was a full-length mirror in the middle of the floor, or at least the frame of one. The glass was scattered like sequins around it. So was the glass from a window pane. Carrot kicked aside some shards. There was a groove in the floor, and something metallic embedded in it. “Cumbling Michael, I need a nail and a length of string,” said Carrot, very slowly and carefully. His eyes never left the speck of metal. It was almost as if he expected it to do something. “I don’t think—“ the beggar began. Carrot reached out without turning his head and picked him up by his grubby collar without apparent effort. “A length of string,” he repeated, “and a nail.” “Yes, Corporal Carrot.” “And the rest of you, go away,” said Angua. They goggled at her. “Do it!” she shouted, clenching her fists. “And stop staring at her!” The beggars vanished. “It’ll take a while to get the string,” said Carrot, brushing aside some glass. “They’ll have to beg it off someone, you see.” He drew his knife and started digging at the floorboards, with care. Eventually he excavated a metal slug, flattened slightly by its passage through the window, the mirror, the floorboards and certain parts of the late Lettice Knibbs that had never been designed to see daylight. He turned it over and over in his hand. “Angua?” “Yes?” “How did you know there was someone dead in here?” “I . . . just had a feeling.” The beggars returned, so unnerved that half a dozen of them were trying to carry one piece of string. Carrot hammered the nail into the frame under the smashed pane to hold one end of the string. He stuck his knife in the groove and affixed the other end of the string to it. Then he lay down and sighted up the string. “Good grief.” “What is it?” “It must have come from the roof of the opera house.” “Yes? So?” “That’s more than two hundred yards away.” “Yes?” “The . . . thing went an inch into an oak floor.” “Did you know the girl . . . at all?” said Angua, and felt embarrassed at asking. “Not really.” “I thought you knew everyone.” “She was just someone I’d see around. The city’s full of people who you just see around.” “Why do beggars need servants?” “You don’t think my hair gets like this by itself, dear, do you?” There was an apparition in the doorway. Its face was a mass of sores. There were warts, and they had warts, and they had hair on. It was possibly female, but it was hard to tell under the layers and layers of rags. The aforementioned hair looked as though it had been permed by a hurricane. With treacle on its fingers. Then it straightened up. “Oh. Corporal Carrot. Didn’t know it was you.” The voice was normal now, no trace of whine or wheedle. The figure turned and brought her stick down hard on something in the corridor. “Naughty boy, Dribbling Sidney! You could have told I it were Corporal Carrot!” “Arrgh!” The figure strode into the room. “And who’s your ladyfriend, Mr Carrot?” “This is Lance-Constable Angua. Angua, this is Queen Molly of the Beggars.” For once, Angua noted, someone wasn’t surprised to find a female in the Watch. Queen Molly nodded at her as one working woman to another. The Beggars’ Guild was an equal-opportunity non-employer. “Good day to you. You couldn’t spare I ten thousand dollars for a small mansion, could you?” “No.” “Just asking.” Queen Molly prodded at the gown. “What was it, corporal?” “I think it’s a new kind of weapon.” “We heard the glass smash and there she was,” said Molly. “Why would anyone want to kill her?” Carrot looked at the velvet cloak. “Whose room is this?” he said. “Mine. It’s my dressing room.” “Then whoever did it wasn’t after her. He was after you, Molly. “Some in rags, and some in tags, and one in a velvet gown” . . . it’s in your Charter, isn’t it? Official dress of the chief beggar. She probably couldn’t resist seeing what it looked like on her. Right gown, right room. Wrong person.” Molly put her hand to her mouth, risking instant poisoning. “Assassination?” Carrot shook his head. “That doesn’t sound right. They like to do it up dose. It’s a caring profession,” he added, bitterly. “What should I do?” “Burying the poor thing would be a good start.” Carrot turned the metal slug over in his fingers. Then he sniffed it. “Fireworks,” he said. “Yes,” said Angua. “And what are you going to do?” said Queen Molly. “You’re Watchmen, aren’t you? What’s happening? What are you going to do about it?”   Cuddy and Detritus were proceeding along Phedre Road. It was lined with tanneries and brick kilns and timber yards and was not generally considered a beauty spot which was why, Cuddy suspected, they’d been given it to patrol ‘to get to know the city’. It got them out of the way. Sergeant Colon thought they made the place look untidy. There was no sound but the clink of his boots and the thump of Detritus’ knuckles on the ground. Finally, Cuddy said: “I just want you to know that I don’t like being teamed up with you any more than you like being teamed up with me.” “Right!” “But if we’re going to have to make the best of it, there’d better be some changes, OK?” “Like what?” “Like it’s ridiculous you not even being able to count. I know trolls can count. Why can’t you?” “Can count!” “How many fingers am I holding up, then?” Detritus squinted. “Two?” “OK. Now how many fingers am I holding up?” “Two . . . and one more . . .” “So two and one more is . . . ?” Detritus looked panicky. This was calculus territory. “Two and one more is three.” “Two and one more is three.” “Now how many?” “Two and two.” “That’s four.” “Four-er.” “Now how many?” Cuddy tried eight fingers. “A twofour.” Cuddy looked surprised. He’d expected ‘many’, or possibly ‘lots’. “What’s a twofour?” A two and a two and a two and a two.” Cuddy put his head on one side. “Hmm,” he said. “OK. A twofour is what we call an eight.” “Ate.” “You know,” said Cuddy, subjecting the troll to a long critical stare, “you might not be as stupid as you look. This is not hard. Let’s think about this. I mean . . . I’ll think about this, and you can join in when you know the words.” Vimes slammed the Watch House door behind him. Sergeant Colon looked up from his desk. He had a pleased expression. “What’s been happening, Fred?” Colon took a deep breath. “Interesting stuff, captain. Me and Nobby did some detectoring up at the Fools’ Guild. I’ve writ it all down what we found out. It’s all here. A proper report.” “Fine.” “All written down, look. Properly. Punctuation and everything.” “Well done.” “It’s got commas and everything, look.” “I’m sure I shall enjoy it, Fred.” “And the—and Cuddy and Detritus have found out stuff, too. Cuddy’s done a report, too. But it’s not got so much punctuation as mine.” “How long have I been asleep?” “Six hours.” Vimes tried to make mental space for all of this, and failed. “I’ve got to get something inside me,” he said. “Some coffee or something. And then the world will somehow be better.” Anyone strolling along Phedre Road might have seen a troll and a dwarf apparently shouting at one another in excitement. A two-thirtytwo, and eight, and a one!” “See? How many bricks in that pile?” Pause. A sixteen, an eight, a four, a one!” “Remember what I said about dividing by eight-and-two?” Longer pause. “Two-enty-nine . . .?” “Right!” “Right!” “You can get there!” “I can get there!” “You’re a natural at counting to two!” “I’m a nat’ral at counting to two!” “If you can count to two, you can count to anything!” “If I can count to two, I can count to anything!” And then the world is your mollusc!” “My mollusc! What’s a mollusc?” Angua had to scurry to keep up with Carrot. “Aren’t we going to look at the opera house?” she said. “Later. Anyone up there’ll be long gone by the time we get there. We must tell the captain.” “You think she was killed by the same thing as Hammerhock ?” “Yes.” “There are . . . niner birds.” “That’s right.” “There are . . . one bridge.” “Right.” “There are . . . four-ten boats.” “All right.” “There are . . . one tousand. Three hundret. Six-ty. Four bricks.” “OK.” “There are—” “I should give it a rest now. You don’t want to wear everything out by counting—” “There are – one running man . . .” “What? Where?” Sham Harga’s coffee was like molten lead, but it had this in its favour: when you’d drunk it, there was this overwhelming feeling of relief that you’d got to the bottom of the cup. “That,” said Vimes, “was a bloody awful cup of coffee, Sham.” “Right,” said Harga. “I mean I’ve drunk a lot of bad coffee in my time but that, that was like having a saw dragged across my tongue. How long’d it been boiling?” “What’s today’s date?” said Harga, cleaning a glass. He was generally cleaning glasses. No-one ever found out what happened to the clean ones. “August the fifteenth.” “What year?” Sham Harga smiled, or at least moved various muscles around his mouth. Sham Harga had run a successful eatery for many years by always smiling, never extending credit, and realizing that most of his customers wanted meals properly balanced between the four food groups: sugar, starch, grease and burnt crunchy bits. “I’d like a couple of eggs,” said Vimes, “with the yolks real hard but the whites so runny that they drip like treacle. And I want bacon, that special bacon all covered with bony nodules and dangling bits of fat. And a slice of fried bread. The kind that makes your arteries go clang just by looking at it.” “Tough order,” said Harga. “You managed it yesterday. And give me some more coffee. Black as midnight on a moonless night.” Harga looked surprised. That wasn’t like Vimes. “How black’s that, then?” he said. “Oh, pretty damn black, I should think.” “Not necessarily.” “What?” “You get more stars on a moonless night. Stands to reason. They show up more. It can be quite bright on a moonless night.” Vimes sighed. “An overcast moonless night?” he said. Harga looked carefully at his coffee pot. “Cumulus or cirro-nimbus?” “I’m sorry? What did you say?” “You gets city lights reflected off cumulus, because it’s low lying, see. Mind you, you can get high-altitude scatter off the ice crystals in—” “A moonless night,” said Vimes, in a hollow voice, “that is as black as that coffee.” “Right!” “And a doughnut.” Vimes grabbed Harga’s stained vest and pulled him until they were nose to nose. “A doughnut as doughnutty as a doughnut made of flour, water, one large egg, sugar, a pinch of yeast, cinnamon to taste and a jam, jelly or rat filling depending on national or species preference, OK? Not as doughnutty as something in any way metaphorical. Just a doughnut. One doughnut.” “A doughnut.” “Yes.” “You only had to say.” Harga brushed off his vest, gave Vimes a hurt look, and went back into the kitchen.   “Stop! In the name of the law!” “What the law’s name, then?” “How should I know!” “Why we chasing him?” “Because he’s running away!” Cuddy had only been a guard for a few days, but already he had absorbed one important and basic fact: it is almost impossible for anyone to be in a street without breaking the law. There are a whole quiverful of offences available to a policeman who wishes to pass the time of day with a citizen, ranging from Loitering with Intent through Obstruction to Lingering While Being the Wrong Colour/Shape/Species/Sex. It occurred briefly to him that anyone not making a dash for it when they saw Detritus knuckling along at high speed behind them was probably guilty of contravening the Being Bloody Stupid Act of 1581. But it was too late to take that into account. Someone was running, and they were chasing. They were chasing because he was running, and he was running because they were chasing. Vimes sat down with his coffee and looked at the thing he’d picked up from the rooftop. It looked like a short set of Pan pipes, provided Pan was restricted to six notes, all of them the same. They were made of steel, welded together. There was a strip of serrated metal along one side, like a flattened-out cogwheel, and the whole thing reeked of fireworks. He laid it carefully beside his plate. He read Sergeant Colon’s report. Fred Colon had spent some time on it, probably with a dictionary. It went as follows: “Report of Sgt F. Colon. Approx. 10am today, Auguste 15, I proseeded in the company of Corporal, C. W. St. J. Nobbs, to the Guild of Fools and Joculators in God Street, whereupon we conversed with clown Boffo who said, down Beano, the corpus derelicti, was definitely seen by him, clown Boffo, leaving the Guild the previous morning just after the explosion. {This is dead bent in my opinion, the reason being, the stiff was dead at least two days, Cpl C. W. St. J. Nobbs agrees, so someone is telling meat pies, never trust anyone who falls on his arse for a living.} Whereupon Dr Whiteface met us, and, damn near gave us the derriere velocite out of the place. It seemed to us, viz, me and Cpl C. W. St. J. Nobbs, that the Fools are worried that it might have been the Assassins, but we don’t know why. Also, clown Boffo went on about us looking for Beano’s nose, but he had a nose on when we saw him here, so we said to clown Boffo, did he mean a false nose, he said, no, a real one, bugger off. Whereupon we come back here.” Vimes worked out what derriere velocite meant. The whole nose business looked like a conundrum wrapped up in an enigma, or at least in Sergeant Colon’s handwriting, which was pretty much the same thing. Why be asked to look for a nose that wasn’t lost? He looked at Cuddy’s report, written in the careful angular handwriting of someone more used to runes. And sagas. “Captain Vimes, this herewith is the chronicle of me, Lance-Constable Cvddy. Bright was the morning and high ovr hearts when we proceeded to the Alchemists Gvild, where events eventvated as I shall now sing. These inclvded exploding balls. As to the qvest vpon which we were sent, we were informed that the attached piece of paper [attached] is in the handwriting of Leonard of Qvirm, who vanished in mysteriovs circvmstances. It is how to make a powder called No. 1 powder, which is vsed in fireworks. Mr Silverfish the alchemist says any alchemists knows it. Also, in the margin of the paper, is a drawing of The Gonne, becavse I asked my covsin Grabpot abovt Leonard and he vsed to sell paints to Leonard and he recognized the writing and said Leonard always wrote backwards becavse he was a genivs. I have copied same herewith.” Vimes laid the papers down and put the piece of metal on top of them. Then he reached in his pocket and produced a couple of metal pellets. A stick, the gargoyle had said. Vimes looked at the sketch. It looked, as Cuddy had noted, like the stock of a crossbow with a pipe on the top of it. There were a few sketches of strange mechanical devices alongside it, and a couple of the little six-pipe things. The whole drawing looked like a doodle. Someone, possibly this Leonard, had been reading a book about fireworks and had scribbled in the margins. Fireworks. Well. . . fireworks? But fireworks weren’t a weapon. Crackers went bang. Rockets went up, more or less, but all you could be sure of them hitting was the sky. Hammerhock was noted for his skill with mechanisms. That wasn’t a major dwarfish attribute. People thought it was, but it wasn’t. They were skilled with metal all right, and they made good swords and jewellery, but they weren’t too technical when it came to things like cogwheels and springs. Hammerhock was unusual. So. . . Supposing there was a weapon. Supposing there was something about it that was different, strange, terrifying. No, that couldn’t be it. It’d either end up all over the place, or it’d be destroyed. It wouldn’t end up in the Assassins’ museum. What got put in museums? Things that hadn’t worked, or had got lost, or ought to be remembered . . . so where’s the sense in putting our firework on show? There had been a lot of locks on the door. So . . . not a museum you just wandered into, then. Maybe you had to be a high-up Assassin, and one day one of the Guild leaders’d take you down there at dead, hah, of night, and say . . . and say . . . For some reason the face of the Patrician loomed up at this point. Once again Vimes felt the edge of something, some fundamental central thing . . . “Where’d he go? Where’d he go?” There was a maze of alleys around the doors. Cuddy leaned against a wall and fought for breath. “There he go!” shouted Detritus. “Along Whalebone Lane!” He lumbered off in pursuit. Vimes put down his coffee cup. Whoever had shot those lead balls at him had been very accurate across several hundred yards, and had got off six shots faster than anyone could fire an arrow . . . Vimes picked up the pipes. Six little pipes, six shots. And you could carry a pocketful of these things. You could shoot further, faster, more accurately than anyone else with any other kind of weapon . . . So. A new type of weapon. Much, much faster than a bow. The Assassins wouldn’t like that. They wouldn’t like that at all. They weren’t even keen on bows. The Assassins preferred to kill up close. So they’d put the . . . the gonne safely under lock and key. The gods alone knew how they’d come by it in the first place. And a few senior Assassins would know about it. They’d pass on the secret: beware of things like this . . . “Down there! He went into Grope Alley!” “Slow down! Slow down!” “Why?” said Detritus. “It’s a dead end.” The two Watchmen lumbered to a halt. Cuddy knew that he was currently the brains of the partnership, even though Detritus was presently counting, his face beaming with pride, the stones in the wall beside him. Why had they chased someone halfway across the dry ? Because they’d run away. No-one ran away from the Watch. Thieves just flashed their licences. Unlicensed thieves had nothing to fear from the Watch, since they’d saved up all their fear for the Thieves’ Guild. Assassins always obeyed the letter of the law. And honest men didn’t run away from the Watch.[18] Running away from the Watch was downright suspicious. The origin of Grope Alley’s name was fortunately lost in the celebrated mists of time, but it had come to be deserved. It had turned into a kind of tunnel as upper storeys were built out and over it, leaving a few inches of sky. Cuddy peered around the corner, into the gloom. Click. Click. It came from deep in the darkness. “Detritus?” “Yeah?” “Did he have any weapons?” “Just a stick. One stick.” “Only . . . I smell fireworks.” Cuddy pulled his head back, very carefully. There had been the smell of fireworks in Hammerhock’s workshop. And Mr Hammerhock ended up with a big hole in his chest. And a sense of named dread, which is much more specific and terrifying than nameless dread, was stealing over Cuddy. It was similar to the feeling you get when you’re playing a high stakes game and your opponent suddenly grins and you realize that you don’t know all the rules but you do know you’ll be lucky to get out of this with, if you are very fortunate, your shirt. On the other hand . . . he could picture Sergeant Colon’s face. We chased this man into an alley, sarge, and then we came away . . . He drew his sword. “Lance-Constable Detritus?” “Yes, Lance-Constable Cuddy?” “Follow me.”   Why? The damn thing was made of metal, wasn’t it? Ten minutes in a hot crucible and that’d be the end of the problem. Something like that, something dangerous, why not just get rid of it? Why keep it? But that wasn’t human nature, was it? Sometimes things were too fascinating to destroy. He looked at the strange metal tubes. Six short pipes, welded together, sealed firmly at one end. There was a small hole in the top side of each of the pipes . . . Vimes slowly picked up one of the lumps of lead . . . The alley twisted once or twice, but there were no other alleys or doors off it. There was one at the far end. It was larger than a normal door, and heavily constructed. “Where are we?” whispered Cuddy. “Don’t know,” said Detritus. “Back of the docks somewhere.” Cuddy pushed open the door with his sword. “Cuddy?” “Yeah?” “We walked seven-ty-nine steps!” “That’s nice.” Cold air rushed past them. “Meat store,” whispered Cuddy. “Someone picked the lock.” He slipped through and into a high, gloomy room, as large as a temple, which in some ways it resembled. Faint light crept through the high, ice-covered windows. From rack upon rack, all the way to the ceiling, hung meat carcasses. They were semi-transparent and so very cold Cuddy’s breath turned to crystals in the air. “Oh, my,” said Detritus. “I think this the pork futures warehouse in Morpork Road.” “What?” “Used to work here,” said the troll. “Used to work everywhere. Go away, you stupid troll, you too thick,” he added, gloomily. “Is there any way out?” “The main door is in Morpork Street. But no-one comes in here for months. Till pork exists.”[19] Cuddy shivered. “You in here!” he shouted. “It’s the Watch! Step out now!” A dark figure appeared from between a couple of pre-pigs. “Now what we do?” said Detritus. The distant figure raised what looked like a stick, holding it like a crossbow. And fired. The first shot zinged off Cuddy’s helmet. A stony hand clamped on to the dwarf’s head and Detritus pushed Cuddy behind him, but then the figure was running, running towards them, still firing. Detritus blinked. Five more shots, one after another, punctured his breastplate. And then the running man was through the open door, slamming it behind him. “Captain Vimes?” He looked up. It was Captain Quirke of the Day Watch, with a couple of his men behind him. “Yes?” “You come with us. And give me your sword.” “What?” “I think you heard me, captain.” “Look, it’s me, Quirke. Sam Vimes? Don’t be a fool.” “I ain’t a fool. I’ve got men with crossbows. Men. It’s you that’d be the fool if you resist arrest.” “Oh? I’m under arrest?” “Only if you don’t come with us . . .”   The Patrician was in the Oblong Office, staring out of the window. The multi-belled cacophony of five o’clock was just dying away. Vimes saluted. From the back, Vetinari looked like a carnivorous flamingo. “Ah, Vimes,” he said, without looking around, “come here, will you? And tell me what you see.” Vimes hated guessing games, but he joined the Patrician anyway. The Oblong Office had a view over half the city, although most of it was rooftops and towers. Vimes’ imagination peopled the towers with men holding gonnes. The Patrician would be an easy target. “What do you see out there, captain?” “City of Ankh-Morpork, sir,” said Vimes, keeping his expression carefully blank. “And does it put you in mind of anything, captain?” Vimes scratched his head. If he was going to play games, he was going to play games . . . “Well, sir, when I was a kid we owned a cow once, and one day it got sick, and it was always my job to clean out the cowshed, and—” “It reminds me of a clock,” said the Patrician. “Big wheels, little wheels. All clicking away. The little wheels spin and the big wheels turn, all at different speeds, you see, but the machine works. And that is the most important thing. The machine keeps going. Because when the machine breaks down . . .” He turned suddenly, strode to his desk with his usual predatory stalk, and sat down. “Or, again, sometimes a piece of grit might get into the wheels, throwing them off balance. One speck of grit.” Vetinari looked up and flashed Vimes a mirthless smile. “I won’t have that.” Vimes stared at the wall. “I believe I told you to forget about certain recent events, captain?” “Sir.” “Yet it appears that the Watch have been getting in the wheels.” “Sir.” “What am I to do with you?” “Couldn’t say, sir.” Vimes minutely examined the wall. He wished Carrot was here. The lad might be simple, but he was so simple that sometimes he saw things that the subtle missed. And he kept coming up with simple ideas that stuck in your mind. Policeman, for example. He’d said to Vimes one day, while they were proceeding along the Street of Small Gods: Do you know where ‘policeman’ comes from, sir? Vimes hadn’t. “Polis’ used to mean ‘city’, said Carrot. That’s what policeman means: ‘a man for the city’. Not many people know that. The word ‘polite comes from ‘polis’, too. It used to mean the proper behaviour from someone living in a city. Man of the city . . . Carrot was always throwing out stuff like that. Like ‘copper’. Vimes had believed all his life that the Watch were called coppers because they carried copper badges, but no, said Carrot, it comes from the old word cappere, to capture. Carrot read books in his spare time. Not well. He’d have real difficulty if you cut his index finger off. But continuously. And he wandered around Ankh-Morpork on his day off. “Captain Vimes?” Vimes blinked. “Sir?” “You have no concept of the delicate balance of the dry. I’ll tell you one more time. This business with the Assassins and the dwarf and this clown . . . you are to cease involving yourself.” “No, sir. I can’t.” “Give me your badge.” Vimes looked down at his badge. He never really thought about it. It was just something he’d always had. It didn’t mean anything very much . . . really . . . one way or the other. It was just something he’d always had. “My badge?” “And your sword.” Slowly, with fingers that suddenly felt like bananas, and bananas that didn’t belong to him at that, Vimes undid his sword belt. “And your badge.” “Um. Not my badge.” Why not?” “Um. Because it’s my badge.” “But you’re resigning anyway when you get married.” “Right.” Their eyes met. “How much does it mean to you?” Vimes stared. He couldn’t find the right words. It was just that he’d always been a man with a badge. He wasn’t sure he could be one without the other. Finally Lord Vetinari said: ‘Very well. I believe you’re getting married at noon tomorrow.” His long fingers picked up the gilt-embossed invitation from the desk ‘Yes. You can keep your badge, then. And have an honourable retirement. But I’m keeping the sword. And the Day Watch will be sent down to the Yard shortly to disarm your men. I’m standing the Night Watch down, Captain Vimes. In due course I might appoint another man in charge – at my leisure. Until then, you and your men can consider yourselves on leave.” “The Day Watch? A bunch of—” “I’m sorry?” “Yes, sir.” “One infraction, however, and the badge is mine. Remember.”   Cuddy opened his eyes. “You’re alive?” said Detritus. The dwarf gingerly removed his helmet. There was a gouge in the rim, and his head ached. “It looks like a mild skin abrasion,” said Detritus. “A what? Ooooh.” Cuddy grimaced. “What about you, anyway?” he said. There was something odd about the troll. It hadn’t quite dawned on him what it was, but there was definitely something unfamiliar, quite apart from all the holes. “I suppose the armour was some help,” said Detritus. He pulled at the straps of his breastplate. Five discs of slid out at around belt level. “If it hadn’t slowed down I’d be seriously abraded.” “What’s up with you? Why are you talking like that?” “Lake what, pray?” “What happened to the “me big troll” talk? No offence meant.” “I’m not sure I understand.” Cuddy shivered, and stamped his feet to keep warm. “Let’s get out of here.” They trotted to the door. It was shut fast. “Can you knock it down?” “No. If this place wasn’t troll proof, it’d be empty. Sorry.” “Detritus?” “Yes?” Are you all right? Only there’s steam coming off your head.” “I do feel . . . er . . .” Detritus blinked. There was a tinkle of falling ice. Odd things were happening in his skull. Thoughts that normally ambulated sluggishly around his brain were suddenly springing into vibrant, coruscating life. And there seemed to be more and more of them. “My goodness,” he said, to no-one in particular. This was a sufficiently un-troll-like comment that even Cuddy, whose extremities were already going numb, stared at him. “I do believe,” said Detritus, “that I am genuinely cogitating. How very interesting!” “What do you mean?” More ice cascaded off Detritus as he rubbed his head. “Of course!” he said, holding up a giant finger. “Superconductivity!” “Wha’?” “You see? Brain of impure silicon. Problem of heat dissipation. Daytime temperature too hot, processing speed slows down, weather gets hotter, brain stops completely, trolls turn to stone until nightfall, ie, colder-temperature,however,lowertemperatureenough,brain operatesfasterand—” “I think I’m going to freeze to death soon,” said Cuddy. Detritus looked around. “There are small glazed apertures up there,” he said. “Too hi’ to rea’, e’en if I st’ on y’shoulders,” mumbled Cuddy, slumping down further. “Ah, but my plan involves throwing something through them to attract help,” said Detritus. “Wha’ pla’?” “I have in fact eventuated twenty-three but this one has a ninety-seven per cent chance of success,” said Detritus, beaming. “Ha’nt got an’ting t’throw,” said Cuddy. “I have,” said Detritus, scooping him up. “Do not worry. I can compute your trajectory with astonishing precision. And then all you will need to do is fetch Captain Vimes or Carrot or someone.” Cuddy’s feeble protests described an arc through the freezing air and vanished along with the window glass. Detritus sat down again. Life was so simple, when you really thought about it. And he was really thinking. He was seventy-six per cent sure he was going to get at least seven degrees colder. Mr Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, Purveyor, Merchant Venturer and all-round salesman, had thought long and hard about going into ethnic foodstuffs. But it was a natural career procession. The old sausage-in-a-bun trade had been falling off lately, while there were all these trolls and dwarfs around with money in their pockets or wherever it was trolls kept their money, and money in the possession of other people had always seemed to Throat to be against the proper natural order of things. Dwarfs were easy enough to cater for. Rat-on-a-stick was simple enough, although it meant a general improvement in Dibbler’s normal catering standards. On the other hand, trolls were basically, when you got right down to it, no offence meant, speak as you find . . . basically, they were walking rocks. He’d sought advice about troll food from Chryso-prase, who was also a troll, although you’d hardly know it any more, he’d been around humans so long he wore a suit now and, as he said, had learned all kindsa civilized things, like extortion, money-lending at 300 per cent interest per munf, and stuff like that. Chrysoprase might have been born in a cave above the snowline on some mountain somewhere, but five minutes in Ankh-Morpork and he’d fitted right in. Dibbler liked to think of Chrysoprase as a friend; you’d hate to think of him as an enemy. Throat had chosen today to give his new approach a try. He pushed his hot food barrow through streets broad and narrow, crying: “Sausages! Hot sausages! Inna bun! Meat pies! Get them while they’re hot!” This was by way of a warm up. The chances of a human eating anything off Dibbler’s barrow unless it was stamped flat and pushed under the door after two weeks on a starvation diet was, by now, remote. He looked around conspiratorially – there were always trolls working in the docks – and took the cover off a fresh tray. Now then, what was it? Oh, yes . . . “Dolomitic conglomerates! Get chore dolomitic conglomerates heeyar! Manganese nodules! Manganese nodules! Get them while they’re . . . uh . , . nodule-shaped.” He hesitated a bit, and then rallied. “Pumice! Pumice! Tufa a dollar! Roast limestones—” A few trolls wandered up to stare at him. “You, sir, you look . . . hungry,” said Dibbler, grinning widely at the smallest troll. “Why not try our shale on a bun? Mmm-mmm! Taste that alluvial deposit, know what I mean?” C. M. O. T. Dibbler had a number of bad points, but species prejudice was not one of them. He liked anyone who had money, regardless of the colour and shape of the hand that was proffering it. For Dibbler believed in a world where a sapient creature could walk tall, breathe free, pursue life, liberty and happiness, and step out towards the bright new dawn. If they could be persuaded to gobble something off Dibbler’s hot-food tray at the same time, this was all to the good. The troll inspected the tray suspiciously, and lifted up a bun. “Urrh, yuk,” he said, “it’s got all ammonites in it! Yuk!” “Pardon?” said Dibbler. “Dis shale,” said the troll, “is stale.” “Lovely and fresh! Just like mother used to hew!” “Yeah, and there’s bloody quartz all through dis granite,” said another troll, towering over Dibbler. “Clogs the arteries, quartz.” He slammed the rock back on the tray. The trolls ambled off, occasionally turning around to give Dibbler a suspicious look. “Stale? Stale! How can it be stale? It’s rock!’ shouted Dibbler after them He shrugged. Oh, well. The hallmark of a good businessman was knowing when to cut your losses. He closed the lid of the tray, and opened another one. “Hole food! Hole food! Rat! Rat! Rat-onna-stick! Rat-in-a-bun! Get them while they’re dead! Get chore—” There was a crash of glass above him, and Lance-Constable Cuddy landed head first in the tray. “There’s no need to rush, plenty for everyone,” said Dibbler. “Pull me out,” said Cuddy, in a muffled voice. “Or pass me the ketchup.” Dibbler hauled on the dwarf’s boots. There was ice on them. “Just come down the mountain, have you?” “Where’s the man with the key to this warehouse?” “If you liked our rat, then why not try our fine selection of-‘ Cuddy’s axe appeared almost magically in his hand. “I’ll cut your knees off,” he said. “GerhardtSockoftheButchers’Guildiswhoyouwant.” “Right.” “ Nowpleasetaketheaxeaway.” Cuddy’s boots skidded on the cobbles as he hurried off. Dibbler peered at the broken remains of the cart. His lips moved as he calculated. “Here!” he shouted. “You owe – hey, you owe me for three rats!”   Lord Vetinari had felt slightly ashamed when he watched the door close behind Captain Vimes. He couldn’t work out why. Of course, it was hard on the man, but it was the only way . . . He took a key from a cabinet by his desk and walked over to the wall. His hands touched a mark on the plaster that was apparently no different from a dozen other marks, but this one caused a section of wall to swing aside on well-oiled hinges. No-one knew all the passages and tunnels hidden in the walls of the Palace; it was said that some of them went a lot further than that. And there were any amount of old cellars under the city. A man with a pick-axe and a sense of direction could go where he liked just by knocking down forgotten walls. He walked down several narrow flights of steps and along a passage to a door, which he unlocked. It swung back on well-oiled hinges. It was not, exactly, a dungeon; the room on the other side was quite airy and well lit by several large but high windows. It had a smell of wood shavings and glue. “Look out!” The Patrician ducked. Something batlike clicked and whirred over his head, circled erratically in the middle of the room, and then flew apart into a dozen jerking pieces. “Oh dear,” said a mild voice. “Back to the drawing tablet. Good afternoon, your lordship.” “Good afternoon, Leonard,” said the Patrician. “What was that?” “I call it a flapping-wing-flying-device,” said Leonard da Quirm, getting down off his launching stepladder. “It works by gutta-percha strips twisted tightly together. But not very well, I’m afraid.” Leonard of Quirm was not, in fact, all that old. He was one of those people who started looking venerable around the age of thirty, and would probably still look about the same at the age of ninety. He wasn’t exactly bald, either. His head had just grown up through his hair, rising like a mighty rock dome through heavy forest. Inspirations sleet through the universe continuously. Their destination, as if they cared, is the right mind in the place at the right time. They hit the right neuron, there’s a chain reaction, and a little while later someone is blinking foolishly in the TV lights and wondering how the hell he came up with the idea of pre-sliced bread in the first place. Leonard of Quirm knew about inspirations. One of his earliest inventions was an earthed metal nightcap, worn in the hope that the damn things would stop leaving their white-hot trails across his tortured imagination. It seldom worked. He knew the shame of waking up to find the sheets covered with nocturnal sketches of unfamiliar siege engines and novel designs for apple-peeling machines. The da Quirms had been quite rich and young Leonard had been to a great many schools, where he had absorbed a ragbag of information despite his habit of staring out of the window and sketching the flight of birds. Leonard was one of those unfortunate individuals whose fate it was to be fascinated by the world, the taste, shape and movement of it . . . He fascinated Lord Vetinari as well, which is why he was still alive. Some things are so perfect of their type that they are hard to destroy. One of a kind is always special. He was a model prisoner. Give him enough wood, wire, paint and above all give him paper and pencils, and he stayed put. The Patrician moved a stack of drawings and sat down. “These are good,” he said. “What are they?” “My cartoons,” said Leonard. “This is a good one of the little boy with his kite stuck in a tree,” said Lord Vetinari. “Thank you. May I make you some tea? I’m afraid I don’t see many people these days, apart from the man who oils the hinges.” “I’ve come to . . .” The Patrician stopped and prodded at one of the drawings. “There’s a piece of yellow paper stuck to this one,” he said, suspiciously. He pulled at it. It came away from the drawing with a faint sucking noise, and then stuck to his fingers. On the note, in Leonard’s crabby backward script, were the words: ‘krow ot smees sihT: omeM’. “Oh, I’m rather pleased with that,” said Leonard. “I call it my “Handy-note-scribbling-piece-of-paper-with-glue-that-comes-unstuck-when-you-want”.” The Patrician played with it for a while. “What’s the glue made of?” “Boiled slugs.” The Patrician pulled the paper off one hand. It stuck to the other hand. “Is that what you came to see me about?” said Leonard. “No. I came to talk to you,” said Lord Vetinari, “about the gonne.” “Oh, dear. I’m very sorry.” “I am afraid it has . . . escaped.” “My goodness. I thought you said you’d done away with it.” “I gave it to the Assassins to destroy. After all, they pride themselves on the artistic quality of their work. They should be horrified at the idea of anyone having that sort of power. But the damn fools did not destroy it. They thought they could lock it away. And now they’ve lost it.” “They didn’t destroy it?” “Apparently not, the fools.” And nor did you. I wonder why?” “I . . . do you know, I don’t know?” “I should never have made it. It was merely an application of principles. Ballistics, you know. Simple aerodynamics. Chemical power. Some rather good alloying, although I say it myself. And I’m rather proud of the rifling idea. I had to make a quite complicated tool for that, you know. Milk? Sugar?” “No, thank you.” “People are searching for it, I trust?” “The Assassins are. But they won’t find it. They don’t think the right way.” The Patrician picked up a pile of sketches of the human skeleton. They were extremely good. “Oh, dear.” “So I am relying on the Watch.” “This would be the Captain Vimes you have spoken of.” Lord Vetinari always enjoyed his occasional conversations with Leonard. The man always referred to the city as if it was another world. “Yes.” “I hope you have impressed upon him the importance of the task.” “In a way. I’ve absolutely forbidden him to undertake it. Twice.” Leonard nodded. “Ah. I . . . think I understand. I hope it works.” He sighed. “I suppose I should have dismantled it, but . . . it was so clearly a made thing. I had this strange fancy I was merely assembling something that already existed. Sometimes I wonder where I got the whole idea. It seemed . . . I don’t know . . . sacrilege, I suppose, to dismantle it. It’d be like dismantling a person. Biscuit?” “Dismantling a person is sometimes necessary,” said Lord Vetinari. “This, of course, is a point of view,” said Leonard da Quirm politely. “You mentioned sacrilege,” said Lord Vetinari. “Normally that involves gods of some sort, does it not?” “Did I use the word? I can’t imagine there is a god of gonnes.” “It is quite hard, yes.” The Patrician shifted uneasily, reached down behind him, and pulled out an object. “What,” he said, “is this?” “Oh, I wondered where that had gone,” said Leonard. “It’s a model of my spinning-up-into-the-air machine.”[20] Lord Vetinari prodded the little rotor. “Would it work?” “Oh, yes,” said Leonard. He sighed. “If you can find one man with the strength of ten men who can turn the handle at about one thousand revolutions a minute.” The Patrician relaxed, in a way which only then drew gentle attention to the foregoing moment of tension. “Now there is in this city,” he said, “a man with a gonne. He has used it successfully once, and almost succeeded a second time. Could anyone have invented the gonne?” “No,” said Leonard. “I am a genius.” He said it quite simply. It was a statement of fact. “Understood. But once a gonne has been invented, Leonard, how much of a genius need someone be to make the second one?” “The rifling technique requires considerable finesse, and the cocking mechanism that slides the bullette assembly is finely balanced, and of course the end of the barrel must be very . . .” Leonard saw the Patrician’s expression, and shrugged. “He must be a clever man,” he said. “This city is full of clever men,” said the Patrician. “And dwarfs. Clever men and dwarfs who tinker with things.” “I am so very sorry.” “They never think.” “Indeed.” Lord Vetinari leaned back and stared at the skylight. “They do things like open the Three Jolly Luck Take-Away Fish Bar on the site of the old temple in Dagon Street on the night of the Winter solstice when it also happens to be a full moon.” “That’s people for you, I’m afraid.” “I never did find out what happened to Mr Hong.” “Poor fellow.” “And then there’s the wizards. Tinker, tinker, tinker. Never think twice before grabbing a thread of the fabric of reality and giving it a pull.” “Shocking.” “The alchemists? Their idea of civic duty is mixing up things to see what happens.” “I hear the bangs, even here.” “And then, of course, along comes someone like you—” “I really am terribly sorry.” Lord Vetinari turned the model flying machine over and over in his fingers. “You dream of flying,” he said. “Oh, yes. Then men would be truly free. From the air, there are no boundaries. There could be no more war, because the sky is endless. How happy we would be, if we could but fly.” Vetinari turned the machine over and over in his hands. “Yes,” he said, “I daresay we would.” “I had tried clockwork, you know.” “I’m sorry? I was thinking about something else.” “I meant clockwork to power my flying machine. But it won’t work.” “Oh.” “There’s a limit to the power of a spring, no matter how tightly one winds it.” “Oh, yes. Yes. And you hope that if you wind a spring one way, all its energies will unwind the other way. And sometimes you have to wind the spring as tight as it will go,” said Vetinari, “and pray it doesn’t break.” His expression changed. “Oh dear,” he said. “Pardon?” said Leonard. “He didn’t thump the wall. I may have gone too far.”   Detritus sat and steamed. Now he felt hungry – not for food, but for things to think about. As the temperature sank, the efficiency of his brain increased even more. It needed something to do. He calculated the number of bricks in the wall, first in twos and then in tens and finally in sixteens. The numbers formed up and marched past his brain in terrified obedience. Division and multiplication were discovered. Algebra was invented and provided an interesting diversion for a minute or two. And then he felt the fog of numbers drift away, and looked up and saw the sparkling, distant mountains of calculus. Trolls evolved in high, rocky and above all in cold places. Their silicon brains were used to operating at low temperatures. But down on the muggy plains the heat build-up slowed them down and made them dull. It wasn’t that only stupid trolls came down to the city. Trolls who decided to come down to the city were often quite smart – but they became stupid. Detritus was considered moronic even by city troll standards. But that was simply because his brain was naturally optimized for a temperature seldom reached in Ankh-Morpork even during the coldest winter . . . Now his brain was nearing its ideal temperature of operation. Unfortunately, this was pretty close to a troll’s optimum point of death. Part of his brain gave some thought to this. There was a high probability of rescue. That meant he’d have to leave. That meant he’d become stupid again, as sure as 10-3(Me/Mp)a6aG – N = 10N. Better make the most of it, then. He went back to the world of numbers so complex that they had no meaning, only a transitional point of view. And got on with freezing to death, as well. Dibbler reached the Butchers’ Guild very shortly after Cuddy. The big red doors had been kicked open and a small butcher was sitting just inside them rubbing his nose. “Which way did he go?” “Dat way.” And in the Guild’s main hall the master butcher Gerhardt Sock was staggering around in circles. This was because Cuddy’s boots were planted on his chest. The dwarf was hanging on to the man’s vest like a yachtsman tacking into a gale, and whirling his axe round and round in front of Sock’s face. “You give it to me right now or I’ll make you eat your own nose!” A crowd of apprentice butchers was trying to keep out of the way. “But—” “Don’t you argue with me! I’m an officer of the Watch, I am!” “But you—” “You’ve got one last chance, mister. Give it to me right now!” Sock shut his eyes. “What is it you want?” The crowd waited. “Ah,” said Cuddy. “Ahaha. Didn’t I say?” “No!” “I’m pretty sure I did, you know.” “You didn’t!” “Oh. Well. It’s the key to the pork futures warehouse, if you must know.” Cuddy jumped down. “Why?” The axe hovered in front of his nose again. “I was just asking,” said Sock, in a desperate and distant voice. “There’s a man of the Watch in there freezing to death,” said Cuddy.   There was quite a crowd around them when they finally got the main door open. Lumps of ice clinked on the stones, and there was a rush of supercold air. Frost covered the floor and the rows of hanging carcasses on their backwards journey through time. It also covered a Detritus-shaped lump squatting in the middle of the floor. They carried it out into the sunlight. “Should his eyes be flashing on and off like that?” said Dibbler. “Can you hear me?” shouted Cuddy. “Detritus?” Detritus blinked. Ice slid off him in the day’s heat. He could feel the cracking up of the marvellous universe of numbers. The rising temperature hit his thoughts like a flamethrower caressing a snowflake. “Say something!” said Cuddy. Towers of intellect collapsed as the fire roared through Detritus’ brain. “Hey, look at this,” said one of the apprentices. The inner walls of the warehouse were covered with numbers. Equations as complex as a neural network had been scraped in the frost. At some point in the calculation the mathematician had changed from using numbers to using letters, and then letters themselves hadn’t been sufficient; brackets like cages enclosed expressions which were to normal mathematics what a city is to a map. They got simpler as the goal neared – simpler, yet containing in the flowing lines of their simplicity a spartan and wonderful complexity. Cuddy stared at them. He knew he’d never be able to understand them in a hundred years. The frost crumbled in the warmer air. The equations narrowed as they were carried on down the wall and across the floor to where the troll had been sitting, until they became just a few expressions that appeared to move and sparkle with a life of their own. This was maths without numbers, pure as lightning. They narrowed to a point, and at the point was just the very simple symbol: ‘=’. “Equals what?” said Cuddy. “Equals what?” The frost collapsed. Cuddy went outside. Detritus was now sitting in a puddle of water, surrounded by a crowd of human onlookers. “Can’t one of you get him a blanket or something?” he said. A very fat man said, “Huh? Who’d use a blanket after it had been on a troll?” “Hah, yes, good point,” said Cuddy. He glanced at the five holes in Detritus’ breastplate. They were at about head height, for a dwarf. “Could you come over here for a moment, please?” The man grinned at his friends, and sauntered over. “I expect you can see the holes in his armour, right?” said Cuddy. C. M. O. T. Dibbler was a survivor. In the same way that rodents and insects can sense an earthquake ahead of the first tremors, so he could tell if something big was about to go down on the street. Cuddy was being too nice. When a dwarf was nice like that, it meant he was saving up to be nasty later on. “I’ll just, er, go about my business, then,” he said, and backed away. “I’ve got nothing against dwarfs, mind you,” said the fat man. “I mean, dwarfs is practically people, in my book. Just shorter humans, almost. But trolls . . . weeeelll . . . they’re not the same as us, right?” “ ‘Scuse me, “scuse me, gangway, gangway,” said Dibbler, achieving with his cart the kind of getaway customarily associated with vehicles that have fluffy dice on the windscreen. “That’s a nice coat you’ve got there,” said Cuddy. Dibbler’s cart went around the corner on one wheel. “It’s a nice coat,” said Cuddy. “You know what you should do with a coat like that?” The man’s forehead wrinkled. “Take it off right now,” said Cuddy, “and give it to the troll.” “Why, you little—” The man grabbed Cuddy by his shirt and wrenched him upwards. The dwarf’s hand moved very quickly. There was a scrape of metal. Man and dwarf made an interesting and absolute stationary tableau for a few seconds. Cuddy had been brought up almost level with the man’s face, and watched with interest as the eyes began to water. “Let me down,” said Cuddy. “Gently. I make involuntary muscle movements if I’m startled.” The man did so. “Now take off your coat . . . good . . . just pass it over . . . thank you . . .” “Your axe . . .” the man murmured. “Axe? Axe? My axe?” Cuddy looked down. “Well, well, well. Hardly knew I was holding it there. My axe. Well, there’s a thing.” The man was trying to stand on tiptoe. His eyes were watering. “The thing about this axe,” said Cuddy, “the interesting thing, is that it’s a throwing axe. I was champion three years running up at Copperhead. I could draw it and split a twig thirty yards away in one second. Behind me. And I was ill that day. A bilious attack.” He backed away. The man sank gratefully on to his heels. Cuddy draped the coat over the troll’s shoulders. “Come on, on your feet,” he said. “Let’s get you home.” The troll lumbered upright. “How many fingers am I holding up?” said Cuddy. Detritus peered. “Two and one?” he suggested. “It’ll do,” said Cuddy. “For a start.”   Mr Cheese looked over the bar at Captain Vimes, who hadn’t moved for an hour. The Bucket was used to serious drinkers, who drank without pleasure but with a sort of determination never to see sobriety again. But this was something new. This was worrying. He didn’t want a death on his hands. There was no-one else in the bar. He hung his apron on a nail and hurried out towards the Watch House, almost colliding with Carrot and Angua in the doorway. “Oh, I’m glad that’s you, Corporal Carrot,” he said. “You’d better come. It’s Captain Vimes.” “What’s happened to him?” “I don’t know. He’s drunk an awful lot.” “I thought he was off the stuff!” “I think,” said Mr Cheese cautiously, “that this is not the case any more.”   A scene, somewhere near Quarry Lane: “Where we going?” “I’m going to get someone to have a look at you.” “Not dwarf doctor!” “There must be someone up here who knows how to slap some quick-drying cement on you, or whatever you do. Should you be oozing like that?” “Dunno. Never oozed before. Where we?” “Dunno. Never been down here before.” The area was on the windward side of the cattle yards and the slaughterhouse district. That meant it was shunned as living space by everyone except trolls, to whom the organic odours were about as relevant and noticeable as the smell of granite would be to humans. The old joke went: the trolls live next to the cattleyard? What about the stench? Oh, the cattle don’t mind . . . Which was daft. Trolls didn’t smell, except to other trolls. There was a slabby look about the buildings here. They had been built for humans but adapted by trolls, which broadly had meant kicking the doorways wider and blocking up the windows. It was still daylight. There weren’t any trolls visible. “Ugh,” said Detritus. “Come on, big man,” said Cuddy, pushing Detritus along like a tug pushes a tanker. “Lance-Constable Cuddy?” “Yes.” “You a dwarf. This is Quarry Lane. You found here, you in deep trouble.” “We’re city guards.” “Chrysoprase, he not give a coprolith about that stuff.” Cuddy looked around. “What do you people use for doctors, anyway?” A troll face appeared in a doorway. And another. And another. What Cuddy had thought was a pile of rubble turned out to be a troll. There were, suddenly, trolls everywhere. I’m a guard, thought Cuddy. That’s what Sergeant Colon said. Stop being a dwarf and start being a Watchman. That’s what I am. Not a dwarf. A Watchman. They gave me a badge, shaped like a shield. City Watch, that’s me. I carry a badge. I wish it was a lot bigger. Vimes was sitting quietly at a table in the corner of The Bucket. There were some pieces of paper and a handful of metal objects in front of him, but he was staring at his fist. It was lying on the table, clenched so tight the knuckles were white. “Captain Vimes?” said Carrot, waving a hand in front of his eyes. There was no response. “How much has he had?” “Two nips of whiskey, that’s all.” “That shouldn’t do this to him, even on an empty stomach,” said Carrot. Angua pointed at the neck of a bottle protruding from Vimes’ pocket. “I don’t think he’s been drinking on an empty stomach,” she said. “I think he put some alcohol in it first.” “Captain Vimes?” said Carrot again. “What’s he holding in his hand?” said Angua. “I don’t know. This is bad, I’ve never seen him like this before. Come on. You take the stuff. I’ll take the captain.” “He hasn’t paid for his drink,” said Mr Cheese. Angua and Carrot looked at him. “On the house?” said Mr Cheese.   There was a wall of trolls around Cuddy. It was as good a choice of word as any. Right now their attitude was more of surprise than menace, such as dogs might show if a cat had just sauntered into the kennels. But when they’d finally got used to the idea that he really existed, it was probably only a matter of time before this state of affairs no longer obtained. Finally, one of them said, “What dis, then?” “He a man of the Watch, same as me,” said Detritus. “Him a dwarf.” “He a Watchman.” “Him got bloody cheek, I know that.” A stubby troll finger prodded Cuddy in the back. The trolls crowded in. “I count to ten,” said Detritus. “Then any troll not going about that troll’s business, he a sorry troll.” “You Detritus,” said a particularly wide troll. “Everyone know you stupid troll, you join Watch because stupid troll, you can’t count to—” Wham. “One,” said Detritus. “Two . . . Tree. Four-er . . . Five. Six . . .” The recumbent troll looked up in amazement. “That Detritus, him counting.” There was a whirring noise and an axe bounced off the wall near Detritus’ head. There were dwarfs coming up the street, with a purposeful and deadly air. The trolls scattered. Cuddy ran forward. “What are you lot doing?” he said. “Are you mad, or something?” A dwarf pointed a trembling finger at Detritus. “What’s that?” “He’s a Watchman.” “Looks like a troll to me. Get it!” Cuddy took a step backwards and produced his axe. “I know you, Stronginthearm,” he said. “What’s this all about?” “You know, Watchman,” said Stronginthearm. “The Watch say a troll killed Bjorn Hammerhock. They’ve found the troll!” “No, that’s not—” There was a sound behind Cuddy. The trolls were back, armed for dwarf. Detritus turned around and waved a finger at them. “Any troll move,” he said, “and I start counting.” “Hammerhock was killed by a man,” said Cuddy. “Captain Vimes thinks—” “The Watch have got the troll,” said a dwarf. “Damn rocks!” “Gritsuckers!” “Monoliths!” “Eaters of rats!” “Hah, I been a man only hardly any time,” said Detritus, “and already I fed up with you stupid trolls. What you think humans say, eh? Oh, them ethnic, them don’t know how to behave in big city, go around waving clubs at the drop of a thing you wear on head.” “We’re Watchmen,” said Cuddy. “Our job is to keep the peace.” “Good,” said Stronginthearm. “Go and keep it safe somewhere until we need it.” “This not Koom Valley,” said Detritus. “That’s right!” shouted a dwarf at the back of the crowd. “This time we can see you!” Trolls and dwarfs were pouring in at either end of the street. “What would Corporal Carrot do at a time like this?” whispered Cuddy. “He say, you bad people, make me angry, you stop toot sweet.” “And then they’d go away, right?” “Yeah.” “What would happen if we tried that?” “We look in gutter for our heads.” “I think you’re right.” “You see that alley? It a nice alley. It say, hello. You outnumbered . . . 256+64+8+2+1 to 1. Drop in and see me.” A club bounced off Detritus’ helmet. “Run!” The two Watchmen sprinted for the alley. The impromptu armies watched them and then, differences momentarily forgotten, gave chase. “Where this go?” “It goes away from the people chasing us!” “I like this alley.” Behind them the pursuers, suddenly trying to make progress in a gap barely wide enough to accommodate a troll, realized that they were pushing and shoving with their mortal enemies and started to fight one another in the quickest, nastiest and above all narrowest battle ever held in the city. Cuddy waved Detritus to a halt and peered around a comer. “I think we’re safe,” he said. “All we have to do is get out of the other end of this and get back to the Watch House. OK?” He turned around, failed to see the troll, took a step forward, and vanished temporarily from the world of men. “Oh, no,” said Sergeant Colon. “He promised he wasn’t going to touch it any more! Look, he’s had a whole bottle!” “What is it? Bearhugger’s?” said Nobby. “Shouldn’t think so, he’s still breathing. Come on, help me up with him.” The Night Watch clustered around. Carrot had deposited Captain Vimes on a chair in the middle of the Watch House floor. Angua picked out the bottle and looked at the label. “C M. O. T. Dibbler’s Genuine Authentic Soggy Mountain Dew,” she read. “He’s going to die! It says, “One hundred and fifty per cent proof”!” “Nah, that’s just old Dibbler’s advertising,” said Nobby. “It ain’t got no proof. Just circumstantial evidence.” “Why hasn’t he got his sword?” said Angua. Vimes opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was the concerned face of Nobby. “Aargh!” he said. “Swor’? Gi’ it ‘way! Hooray!” “What?” said Colon. “No mo’ Watsh! All go’ . . .” “I think he’s a bit drunk,” said Carrot. “Drun’? ‘m not drun’! You wouldn’dare call m’ drun’ if I was sober!” “Get him some coffee,” said Angua. “I reckon he’s beyond our coffee,” said Colon. “Nobby, nip along to Fat Sally’s in Squeezebelly Alley and get a jug of their special Klatchian stuff. Not a metal jug, mind.” Vimes blinked as they manhandled him into a chair. All go ‘way,” he said. “Bang! Bang!” “Lady Sybil’s going to be really mad,” said Nobby. “You know he promised to leave it alone.” “Captain Vimes?” said Carrot. “Mm?” “How many fingers am I holding up?” “Mm?” “How many hands, then?” “Fo’?” “Blimey, I haven’t seen him like this for years,” said Colon. “Here, let me try something. Want another drink, captain?” “He certainly doesn’t need a—” “Shut up, I know what I’m doing. Another drink, Captain Vimes?” “Mm?” “I’ve never known him not be able to give a loud clear “yes!”,” said Colon, standing back. “I think we’d better get him up to his room.” “I’ll take him, poor chap,” said Carrot. He lifted Vimes easily, and slung him over his shoulder. “I hate to see him like this,” said Angua, following him into the hallway and up the stairs. “He only drinks when he gets depressed,” said Carrot. “Why does he get depressed?” “Sometimes it’s because he hasn’t had a drink.” The house in Pseudopolis Yard had originally been a Ramkin family residence. Now the first floor was occupied by the guards on an ad hoc basis. Carrot had a room. Nobby had rooms consecutively, four so far, moving out when the floor became hard to find. And Vimes had a room. More or less. It was hard to tell. Even a prisoner in a cell manages to stamp his personality on it somewhere, but Angua had never seen such an unlived-in room. “This is where he lives?” said Angua. “Good grief.” “What did you expect?” “I don’t know. Anything. Something. Not nothing.” There was a joyless iron bedstead. The springs and mattress had sagged so that they formed a sort of mould, forcing anyone who got into it to instantly fold into a sleeping position. There was a washstand, under a broken mirror. On the stand was a razor, carefully aligned towards the Hub because Vimes shared the folk belief that this kept it sharp. There was a brown wooden chair with the cane seat broken. And a small chest at the foot of the bed. And that was all. “I mean, at least a rug,” said Angua. “A picture on the wall. Something.” Carrot deposited Vimes on the bed, where he flowed unconsciously into the shape. “Haven’t you got something in your room?” Angua asked. “Yes. I’ve got a cutaway diagram of No.5 shaft at home. It’s very interesting strata. I helped cut it. And some books and things. Captain Vimes isn’t really an indoors kind of person.” “But there’s not even a candle!” “He finds his way to bed by memory, he says.” “Or an ornament or anything.” “There’s a sheet of cardboard under the bed,” Carrot volunteered. “I remember I was with him in Filigree Street when he found it. He said “There’s a month’s soles in this, if I’m any judge”. He was very pleased about that.” “He can’t even afford boots?” “I don’t think so. I know Lady Sybil offered to buy him all the new boots he wanted, and he got a bit offended about that. He seems to try to make them last.” “But you can buy boots, and you get less than him. And you send money home. He must drink it all, the idiot.” “Don’t think so. I didn’t think he’d touched the stuff for months. Lady Sybil got him on to cigars.” Vimes snored loudly. “How can you admire a man like this?” said Angua. “He’s a very fine man.” Angua raised the lid of the wooden chest with her foot. “Hey, I don’t think you should do that—‘ said Carrot wretchedly. “I’m just looking,” said Angua. “No law against that.” “In fact, under the Privacy Act of 1467, it is an—” “There’s only old boots and stuff. And some paper.” She reached down and picked up a crudely made book. It was merely a wad of irregular shaped bits of paper sandwiched together between card covers. “That belongs to Captain—” She opened the book and read a few lines. Her mouth dropped open. “Will you look at this? No wonder he never has any money!” “What d’you mean?” “He spends it on women! You wouldn’t think it, would you? Look at this entry. Four in one week!” Carrot looked over her shoulder. On the bed, Vimes snorted. There, on the page, in Vimes’ curly handwriting, were the words: Mrs Gafkin, Mincing St: $5 Mrs Scurrick, Treacle St: $4 Mrs Maroon, Wixon’s Alley: $4 Annabel Curry, Lobfneaks: $2 “Annabel Curry couldn’t have been much good, for only two dollars,” said Angua. She was aware of a sudden drop in temperature. “I shouldn’t think so,” said Carrot, slowly. “She’s only nine years old.” One of his hands gripped her wrist tightly and the other prised the book out of her fingers. “Hey, let go!” “Sergeant!” shouted Carrot, over his shoulder, “can you come up here a moment?” Angua tried to pull away. Carrot’s arm was as immovable as an iron bar. There was the creak of Colon’s foot on the stair, and the door swung open. He was holding a very small cup in a pair of tongs. “Nobby got the coff—‘ he began, and stopped. “Sergeant,” said Carrot, staring into Angua’s face, “Lance-Constable Angua wants to know about Mrs Gaskin.” “Old Leggy Gaskin’s widow? She lives in Mincing Street.” “And Mrs Scurrick?” “In Treacle Street? Takes in laundry now.” Sergeant Colon looked from one to the other, trying to get a handle on the situation. “Mrs Maroon?” “That’s Sergeant Maroon’s widow, she sells coal in—” “How about Annabel Curry?” “She still goes to the Spiteful Sisters of Seven-Handed Sek Charity School, doesn’t she?” Colon smiled nervously at Angua, still not sure of what was happening. “She’s the daughter of Corporal Curry, but of course he was before your time—” Angua looked up at Carrot’s face. His expression was unreadable. “They’re the widows of coppers?” she said. He nodded. “And one orphan.” “It’s a tough old life,” said Colon. “No pensions for widows, see.” He looked from one to the other. “Is there something wrong?” he said. Carrot relaxed his grip, turned, slipped the book into the box, and shut the lid. “No,” he said. “Look, I’m sorr—“ Angua began. Carrot ignored her and nodded at the sergeant. “Give him the coffee.” “But . . . fourteen dollars . . . that’s nearly half his pay!” Carrot picked up Vimes’ limp arm and tried to prise his fist open, but even though Vimes was out cold the fingers were locked. “I mean, half his pay!” “I don’t know what he’s holding in here,” said Carrot, ignoring her. “Maybe it’s a clue.” He took the coffee and hauled up Vimes by his collar. “You just drink this, captain,” he said, “and everything will look a lot . . . clearer . . .” Klatchian coffee has an even bigger sobering effect than an unexpected brown envelope from the tax man. In fact, coffee enthusiasts take the precaution of getting thoroughly drunk before touching the stuff, because Klatchian coffee takes you back through sobriety and, if you’re not careful, out the other side, where the mind of man should not go. The Watch was generally of the opinion that Samuel Vimes was at least two drinks under par, and needed a stiff double even to be sober. “Careful . . . careful . . .” Carrot let a few drops dribble between Vimes’ lips. “Look, when I said—“ Angua began. “Forget it.” Carrot didn’t even look round. “I was only—” “I said forget it.” Vimes opened his eyes, took a look at the world, and screamed. “Nobby!” “Yes, sarge?” “Did you buy the Red Desert Special or the Curly Mountain Straight?” “Red Desert, sarge, because—” “You could have said. Better get me—“ He glanced at Vimes’ grimace of horror “—half a glass of Bearhugger’s. We’ve sent him too far the other way.” The glass was fetched and administered. Vimes un-stiffened as it took effect. His palm uncurled. “Oh, my gods,” said Angua. “Have we got any bandages?” The sky was a little white circle, high above. “Where the hell are we, partner?” said Cuddy. “Cave.” “No caves under Ankh-Morpork. It’s on loam.” Cuddy had fallen about thirty feet but had cushioned the fall because he landed on Detritus’ head. The troll had been sitting, surrounded by rotting woodwork, in . . . well . . . a cave. Or, Cuddy thought, as his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, a stone-lined tunnel. “I didn’t do nothing,” said Detritus, “I just stood there, next minute, everything going past upwards.” Cuddy reached down into the mud underfoot and brought up a piece of wood. It was very thick. It was also very rotten. “We fell through something into something,” he said. He ran his hand over the curved tunnel wall. “And this is good masonry. Very good.” “How we get out?” There was no way to climb back. The tunnel roof was much higher than Detritus. “We walk out, I think,” said Cuddy. He sniffed the air, which was dank. Dwarfs have a very good sense of direction underground. “This way,” he added, setting off. “Cuddy?” “Yes?” “No-one ever say there tunnels under the city. No-one know about them.” “So . . .?” “So there no way out. Because way out is way in, too, and if no-one know about tunnels, then it ‘cos no way in.” “But they’ve got to lead somewhere.” “OK.” Black mud, more or less dry, made a path at the bottom of the tunnel. There was slime on the walls, too, indicating that at some point in the recent past the tunnel had been full of water. Here and there huge patches of fungi, luminous with decay, cast a faint glow over the ancient stonework.[21] Cuddy felt his spirits lift as he plodded through the darkness. Dwarfs always felt happier underground. “Bound to find a way out,” he said. “Right.” “So . . . how come you joined the Watch, then?” “Hah! My girl Ruby she say, you want get married, you get proper job, I not marry a troll what people say, him no good troll, him thick as a short plank of wood.” Detritus’ voice echoed in the darkness. “How about you?” “I got bored. I worked for my brother-in-law, Durance. He’s got a good business making fortune rats for dwarf restaurants. But I thought, this isn’t a proper job for a dwarf.” “Sound like easy job to me.” “I had the devil of a time getting them to swallow the fortunes.” Cuddy stopped. A change in the air suggested a vaster tunnel up ahead. And, indeed, the tunnel opened into the side of a much larger one. There was deep mud on the floor, in the middle of which ran a trickle of water. Cuddy fancied he heard rats, or what he hoped were rats, scuttle away into the dark emptiness. He even thought he could hear the sounds of the city – indistinct, intermingled – filtering through the earth. “It’s like a temple,” he said, and his voice boomed away into the distance. “Writing here on wall,” said Detritus. Cuddy peered at the letters hacked deeply into the stone. “ “VIA CLOACA”,” he said. “Hmm. Well, now . . . via is an old word for street or way. Cloaca means . . .” He peered into the gloom. “This is a sewer,” he said. “What that?” “It’s like . . . well, where do trolls dump their . . . rubbish?” said Cuddy. “In street,” said Detritus. “Hygienic.” ‘This is . . . an underground street just for . . . well, for crap,” said Cuddy. “I never knew Ankh-Morpork had them.” “Maybe Ankh-Morpork didn’t know Ankh-Morpork had them,” said Detritus. “Right. You’re right. This place is old. We’re in the bowels of the earth.” “In Ankh-Morpork even the shit have a street to itself,” said Detritus, awe and wonder in his voice. “Truly, this a land of opportunity.” “Here’s some more writing,” said Cuddy. He scraped away some slime. “ “Cirone IV me fabricat”,” he read aloud. “He was one of the early kings, wasn’t he? Hey . . . do you know what that means?” “No-one’s been down here since yesterday,” said Detritus. “No! This place . . . this place is more than two thousand years old. We’re quite probably the first people to come down here since—” “Yesterday,” said the troll. “Yesterday? Yesterday? What’s yesterday got to do with it?” “Footprints still fresh,” said Detritus. He pointed. There were footprints in the mud. “How long have you lived here?” said Cuddy, suddenly feeling very conspicuous in the middle of the tunnel. “Nine-er years. That is the number of years I have lived here. Nine-er,” said Detritus, proudly. “It only one of a large . . . number of numbers I can count to.” “Have you ever heard of tunnels under the city?” “No.” “Someone knows about them, though.” “Yes.” “What shall we do?” The answer was inevitable. They’d chased a man into the pork futures warehouse, and nearly died. Then they’d ended up in the middle of a small war, and nearly died. Now they were in a mysterious tunnel where there were fresh footprints. If Corporal Carrot-or Sergeant Colon said, “And what did you do then?”, neither of them could face up to the thought of saying “We came back.” “The footprints go this way,” said Cuddy, “and then they return. But the ones coming back aren’t so deep as the ones going. You can see they’re later ones because they’re over the top of the other ones. So he was heavier going than he was coming back, yes?” “Blight,” said Detritus. “So that means . . .?” “He lose weight?” “He was carrying something, and he left it . . . up ahead somewhere.” They stared at the darkness. “So we go and find what it was?” said Detritus. “I think so. How do you feel?” “Feel OK.” Different species though they were, their minds had focused on a single image, involving a muzzle flash and a lead slug singing through the subterranean night. “He came back,” said Cuddy. “Yes,” said Detritus. They looked at the darkness again. “It has not been a nice day,” said Cuddy. “That the truth.” “I’d just like to know something, in case . . . I mean . . . look, what happened in the pork store? You did all that maths! All that counting!” “I . . . dunno. I saw it all.” “All what?” “Just all of it. Everything. All the numbers in the world. I could count them all.” “What did they equal?” “Dunno. What does equal mean?” They trudged on, to see what the future held. The trail led eventually into a narrower tunnel, barely wide enough for the troll to stand upright. Finally they could go no further. A stone had dropped out of the roof and rubble and mud had percolated through, blocking the tunnel. But that didn’t matter because they’d found what they were looking for, even though they hadn’t been looking for it. “Oh dear,” said Detritus. “Very definitely,” said Cuddy. He looked around vaguely. “You know,” he said, “I reckon these tunnels are usually full of water. They’re well below the normal river level.” He looked back to the pathetic discovery. “There’s going to be a lot of trouble about this,” he said. “It’s his badge,” said Carrot. “Good grief. He’s holding it so tight it’s cut right into his hand.” Technically Ankh-Morpork is built on loam, but what it is mainly built on is Ankh-Morpork; it has been constructed, burned down, silted up, and rebuilt so many times that its foundations are old cellars, buried roads and the fossil bones and middens of earlier cities. Below these, in the darkness, sat the troll and the dwarf. “What we doing now?” “We ought to leave it here and fetch Corporal Carrot. He’ll know what to do.” Detritus looked over his shoulder at the thing behind them. “I don’t like that,” he said. “It not right to leave it here.” “Right. Yes, you’re right. But you’re a troll and I’m a dwarf. What do you think would happen if people saw us carrying that along the streets?” “Big trouble.” “Correct. Come on. Let’s follow the footprints back out.” “Supposing it gone when we come back?” said Detritus, lumbering to his feet. “How? And we’re following the tracks out, so if whoever it was who put it there comes back, we’ll run straight into them.” “Oh, good. I glad you said that.” Vimes sat on the edge of his bed while Angua bandaged his hand. “Captain Quirke?” said Carrot. “But he’s . . . not a good choice.” “Mayonnaise Quirke, we used to call him,” said Colon. “He’s a pillock.” “Don’t tell me,” said Angua. “He’s rich, thick and oily, yes?” “And smells faintly of eggs,” said Carrot. “Plumes in his helmet,” said Colon, “and a breastplate you can see your face in.” “Well, Carrot’s got one of those too,” said Nobby. “Yes, but the difference is, Carrot keeps his armour polished because he . . . likes nice clean armour,” said Colon loyally. “While Quirke keeps his shiny because he’s a pillock.” “But he’s wrapped up the case,” said Nobby. “I heard about it when I went out for the coffee. He’s arrested Coalface the troll. You know, captain? The privy cleaner. Someone saw him near Rime Street just before the dwarf got killed.” “But he’s massive,” said Carrot. “He couldn’t have got through the door.” “He’s got a motive,” said Nobby. “Yes?” “Yes. Hammerhock was a dwarf.” “That’s not a motive.” “It is for a troll. Anyway, if he didn’t do that, he probably did something. There’s plenty of evidence against him.” “Like what?” said Angua. “He’s a troll.” “That’s not evidence.” “It is to Captain Quirke,” said the sergeant. “He’s bound to have done something,” Nobby repeated. In this he was echoing the Patrician’s view of crime and punishment. If there was crime, there should be punishment. If the specific criminal should be involved in the punishment process then this was a happy accident, but if not then any criminal would do, and since everyone was undoubtedly guilty of something, the net result was that, in general terms, justice was done. “He’s a nasty piece of work, that Coalface,” said Colon. “A righthand troll for Chrysoprase.” “Yes, but he couldn’t have killed Bjorn,” said Carrot. “And what about the beggar girl?” Vimes sat looking at the floor. “What do you think, captain?” said Carrot. Vimes shrugged. “Who cares?” he said. “Well, you care,” said Carrot. “You always care. We can’t let even someone like—” “Listen to me,” said Vimes, in a small voice. “Supposing we’d found who killed the dwarf and the clown? Or the girl. It wouldn’t make any difference. It’s all rotten anyway.” “What is, captain?” said Colon. “All of it. You might as well try and empty a well with a sieve. Let the Assassins try to sort it out. Or the thieves. He can try the rats next. Why not? We’re not the people for this. We ought to have just stayed with ringing our bells and shouting “All’s well!” ‘ “But all isn’t well, captain,” said Carrot. “So what? When has that ever mattered?” “Oh, dear,” said Angua, under her breath. “I think perhaps you gave him too much of that coffee . . .” Vimes said, “I’m retiring from the Watch tomorrow. Twenty-five years on the streets—” Nobby started to grin nervously and stopped as the sergeant, without apparently shifting position, grabbed one of his arms and twisted it gently but meaningfully up his back. “—and what good’s it all been? What good have I done? I’ve just worn out a lot of boots. There’s no place in Ankh-Morpork for policemen! Who cares what’s right or wrong? Assassins and thieves and trolls and dwarfs! Might as well have a bloody king and have done with it!” The rest of the Night Watch stood looking at their feet in mute embarrassment. Then Carrot said, “It’s better to light a candle than curse the darkness, captain. That’s what they say.” “What?” Vimes’ sudden rage was like a thunderclap. “Who says that? When has that ever been true? It’s never been true! It’s the kind of thing people without power say to make it all seem less bloody awful, but it’s just words, it never makes any difference—” Someone hammered at the door. “That’ll be Quirke,” said Vimes. “You’re to hand over your weapons. The Night Watch is being stood down for a day. Can’t have coppers running around upsetting things, can we? Open the door, Carrot.” “But—“ Carrot began. “That was an order. I might not be any good for anything else, but I can bloody well order you to open the door, so open the door!” Quirke was accompanied by half a dozen members of the Day Watch. They had crossbows. In deference to the fact that they were doing a mildly unpleasant job involving fellow officers, they had them pointing slightly downwards. In deference to the fact that they weren’t damn fools, they had the safety catches off. Quirke wasn’t actually a bad man. He didn’t have the imagination. He dealt more in that sort of generalized low-grade unpleasantness which slightly tarnishes the soul of all who come into contact with it.[22] Many people are in jobs that are a little beyond them, but there are ways of reacting to the situation. Sometimes they’re flustered and nice, sometimes they’re Quirke. Quirke handled them with the maxim: it doesn’t matter if you’re right or wrong, so long as you’re definite. There was, on the whole, no real racial prejudice in Ankh-Morpork; when you’ve got dwarfs and trolls, the mere colour of other, humans is not a major item. But Quirke was the kind of man to whom it comes naturally to pronounce the word negro with two gs. He had a hat with plumes in it. “Come in, come in,” said Vimes. “It wasn’t as if we were doing anything.” “Captain Vimes—” “It’s all right. We know. Give him your weapons, people. That’s an order, Carrot. One official issue sword, one pike or halberd, one night stick or truncheon, one crossbow. That’s right, isn’t it, Sergeant Colon?” “Yessir.” Carrot hesitated only a moment. “Oh, well,” he said. “My official sword is in the rack.” “What’s that one in your belt?” Carrot said nothing. However, he shifted position slightly. His biceps strained against the leather of his jerkin. “Official sword. Right,” said Quirke. He turned. He was one of those people who would recoil from an assault on strength, but attack weakness without mercy. “Where’s the gritsucker?” he said. “And the rock?” “Ah,” said Vimes, “you are referring to those representative members of our fellow sapient races who have chosen to throw in their lots with the people of this city?” “I mean the dwarf and the troll,” said Quirke. “Haven’t the faintest idea,” said Vimes cheerfully. It seemed to Angua that he was drunk again, if people could get drunk on despair. “We dunno, sir,” said Colon. “Haven’t seen ‘em all day.” “Probably fighting up in Quarry Lane with the rest of them,” said Quirke. “You can’t trust people of their type. You ought to know that.” And it also seemed to Angua that although words like halfpint and gritsucker were offensive, they were as terms of universal brotherhood compared to words like ‘people of their type’ in the mouth of men like Quirke. Much to her shock, she found her gaze concentrating on the man’s jugular vein. “Fighting?” said Carrot. “Why?” Quirke shrugged. “Who knows?” “Let me think now,” said Vimes. “It could be something to do with a wrongful arrest. It could be something to do with some of the more restless dwarfs just needing any excuse to have a go at the trolls. What do you think, Quirke?” “I don’t think, Vimes.” “Good man. You’re just the type the city needs.” Vimes stood up. “I’ll be going, then,” he said. “I’ll see you all tomorrow. If there is one.” The door slammed behind him.   This hall was huge. It was the size of a city square, with pillars every few yards to support the roof. Tunnels radiated off it in every direction, and at various heights in the walls. Water trickled out of many of them, from small springs and underground streams. That was the problem. The film of running water over the stone floor of the hall had wiped away traces of the footprints. A very large tunnel, almost blocked with debris and silt, led off in what Cuddy was pretty sure was the direction of the estuary. It was almost pleasant. There was no smell, other than a damp, under-a-stone mustiness. And it was cool. “I’ve seen big dwarf halls in the mountains,” said Cuddy, “but I’ve got to admit this is something else.” His voice echoed back and forth in the chamber. “Oh, yes,” said Detritus, “it’s got to be something else, because it’s not a dwarf hall in the mountains.” “Can you see any way up?” “No.” “We could have passed a dozen ways to the surface and not known it.” “Yes,” said the troll. “It’s a knotty problem.” “Detritus?” “Yes?” “Did you know you’re getting smarter again, down here in the cool?” “Really?” “Can you use it to think of a way out?” “Digging?” the troll suggested. There were fallen blocks here and there in the tunnels. Not many; the place had been well built . . . “Nah. Haven’t got a shovel,” said Cuddy. Detritus nodded. “Give me your breastplate,” he said. He leaned it up against the wall. His fist pounded into it a few times. He handed it back. It was, more or less, shovel shaped. “It’s a long way up,” Cuddy said doubtfully. “But we know the way,” said Detritus. “It’s either that, or stay down here eating rat for rest of your life.” Cuddy hesitated. The idea had a certain appeal. . . “Without ketchup,” Detritus added. “I think I saw a fallen stone just a way back there,” said the dwarf.   Captain Quirke looked around the Watch room with the air of one who was doing the scenery a favour by glancing at it. “Nice place, this,” he said. “I think we’ll move in here. Better than the quarters near the Palace.” “But we’re here,” said Sergeant Colon. “You’ll just have to squash up,” said Captain Quirke. He glanced at Angua. Her stare was getting on his nerves. “There’ll be a few changes, too,” he said. Behind him, the door creaked open. A small, smelly dog limped in. “But Lord Vetinari hasn’t said who’s commanding Night Watch,” said Carrot. “Ho, yes? Seems to me, seems to me,” said Quirke, “that it’s not likely to be one of you lot, eh? Seems to me it’s likely the Watches’ll be combined. Seems to me there’s too much sloppiness around the place. Seems to me there’s a bit too much of a ragtag.” He glanced at Angua again. The way she was looking at him was putting him off. “Seems to me—‘ Quirke began again, and then noticed the dog. “Look at this!” he said. “Dogs in the Watch House!” He kicked Gaspode hard, and grinned as the dog ran yelping under the table. “What about Lettice Knibbs, the beggar girl?” said Angua. “No troll killed her. Or the clown.” “You got to see the big picture,” said Quirke. “Mister Captain,” said a low voice from under the table, audible at a conscious level only to Angua, “you got an itchy bottom.” “What big picture’s this, then?” said Sergeant Colon. “Got to think in terms of the whole city,” said Quirke. He shifted uneasily. “Really itchy,” said the sub-table voice. “You feeling all right, Captain Quirke?” said Angua. The captain squirmed. “Trickle, prickle, prickle,” said the voice. “I mean, some things are important, some ain’t,” said Quirke. “Aargh!” “Sorry?” Trickle.” “Can’t hang around here talking to you all day,” said Quirke. “You. Report to me. Tomorrow afternoon—” “Trickle, prickle, prickle—” “Abouuut face!” The Day Watch scurried out, with Quirke hopping and squirming in, as it were, the rear. “My word, he seemed anxious to get away,” said Carrot. “Yes,” said Angua. “Can’t think why.” They looked at one another. “Is that it?” said Carrot. “No more Night Watch?”   It’s generally very quiet in the Unseen University library. There’s perhaps the shuffling of feet as wizards wander between the shelves, the occasional hacking cough to disturb the academic silence, and every once in a while a dying scream as an unwary student fails to treat an old magical book with the caution it deserves. Consider orang-utans. In all the worlds graced by their presence, it is suspected that they can talk but choose not to do so in case humans put them to work, possibly in the television industry. In fact they can talk. It’s just that they talk in Otang-utan. Humans are only capable of listening in Bewilderment. The Librarian of Unseen University had unilaterally decided to aid comprehension by producing arn Orang-utan/Human Dictionary. He’d been working on it for three months. It wasn’t easy. He’d got as far as ‘Oook.”[23] He was down in the Stacks, where it was cool. And suddenly someone was singing. He took the pen out of his foot and listened. A human would have decided they couldn’t believe their ears. Orangs are more sensible. If you won’t believe your own ears, whose ears will you believe? Someone was singing, underground. Or trying to sing. The chthonic voices went something like this: “Dlog, glod, Dlog, glod—” “Listen, you . . . troll! It’s the simplest song there is. Look, like this “Gold, Gold, Gold, Gold”?” “Gold, Gold, Gold, Gold—” “No! That’s the second verse!” There was also the rhythmical sound of dirt being shovelled and rubble being moved. The Librarian considered matters for a while. So . . . a dwarf and a troll. He preferred both species to humans. For one thing, neither of them were great readers. The Librarian was, of course, very much in favour of reading in general, but readers in particular got on his nerves. There was something, well, sacrilegious about the way they kept taking books off the shelves and wearing out the words by reading them. He liked people who loved and respected books, and the best way to do that, in the Librarian’s opinion, was to leave them on the shelves where Nature intended them to be. The muffled voices seemed to be getting closer. “Gold, gold, gold—” “Now you’re singing the chorus!” On the other hand, there were proper ways of entering a library. He waddled over to the shelves and selected Hump-tulip’s seminal work How to Kille Insects. All 2,000 pages of it. Vimes felt quite light-hearted as he walked up Scoone Avenue. He was aware that there was an inner Vimes screaming his head off. He ignored him. You couldn’t be a real copper in Ankh-Morpork and stay sane. You had to care. And caring in Ankh-Morpork was like opening a tin of meat in the middle of a piranha school. Everyone dealt with it in their own way. Colon never thought about it, and Nobby didn’t worry about it, and the new ones hadn’t been in long enough to be worn down by it, and Carrot . . . was just himself. Hundreds of people died in the city every day, often of suicide. So what did a few more matter? The Vimes inside hammered on the walls. There were quite a few coaches outside the Ramkin mansion, and the place seemed to be infested with assorted female relatives and Interchangeable Emmas. They were baking things and polishing things. Vimes strolled through, more or less unregarded. He found Sybil out in the dragon house, in her rubber boots and protective dragon armour. She was mucking out, apparently blissfully unaware of the controlled uproar in the mansion. She looked up as the door shut behind Vimes. “Oh, there you are. You’re home early,” she said. “I couldn’t stand the fuss, so I came out here. But I’ll have to go and change soon—” She stopped when she saw his expression. “There’s something wrong, isn’t there?” “I’m not going back,” said Vimes. “Really? Last week you said you’d do a full watch. You said you were looking forward to it.” Not much gets past old Sybil, Vimes thought. She patted his hand. “I’m glad you’re out of it,” she said.   Corporal Nobbs darted into the Watch House and slammed the door behind him. “Well?” said Carrot. “It’s not good,” said Nobby. “They say the trolls are planning to march to the Palace to get Coalface out. There’s gangs of dwarfs and trolls wandering around looking for trouble. And beggars. Lettice was very popular. And there’s a lot of Guild people out there, too. The city,” he said, importantly, “is def’nitely a keg of No.1 Powder.” “How do you like the idea of camping out on the open plain?” said Colon. “What’s that got to do with it?” “If anyone puts a match to anything tonight, it’s goodbye Ankh,” said the sergeant morosely. “Usually we can shut the city gates, right? But there’s hardly more’n a few feet of water in the river.” “You flood the city just to put out fires?” said Angua. “Yep.” “Another thing,” said Nobby. “People threw stuff at me!” Carrot had been staring at the wall. Now he produced a small, battered black book from his pocket, and started to thumb through the pages. “Tell me,” he said, in a slightly distant voice, “has there been an irretrievable breakdown of law and order?” “Yeah. For about five hundred years,” said Colon. “Irretrievable breakdown of law’n’order is what Ankh-Morpork is all about.” “No, I mean more than usual. It’s important.” Carrot turned a page. His lips moved silently as he read. “Throwing stuff at me sounds like a breakdown in law and order,” said Nobby. He was aware of their expressions. “I don’t think we could make that stick,” said Colon. “It stuck all right,” said Nobby, “and some of it went down my shirt.” “Why throw things at you?” said Angua. “It’s ‘cos I was a Watchman,” said Nobby. “The dwarfs don’t like the Watch ‘cos of Mr Hammerhock, and the trolls don’t like the Watch ‘cos of Coalface being arrested, and people don’t like the Watch ‘cos of all these angry dwarfs and trolls around.” Someone thumped at the door. “That’s probably an angry mob right now,” said Nobby. Carrot opened the door. “It’s not an angry mob,” he announced. “Ook.” “It’s an orang-utan carrying a stunned dwarf followed by a troll. But he is quite angry, if that’s any help.” Lady Ramkin’s butler, Willikins, had filled him a big bath. Hah! Tomorrow it’d be his butler, and his bath. And this wasn’t one of the old hip bath, drag-it-in- front-of-the-fire jobs, no. The Ramkin mansion collected water off the roof into a big cistern, after straining out the pigeons, and then it was heated by an ancient geyser[24] and flowed along drumming, groaning lead pipes to a pair of mighty brass taps and then into an enamelled tub. There were things laid out on a fluffy towel beside it -huge scrubbing brushes, three kinds of soap, a loofah. Willikins was standing patiently beside the bath, like a barely heated towel rail. “Yes?” said Vimes. “His lordship . . . that is, her ladyship’s father . . . he required to have his back scrubbed,” said Willikins. “You go and help the old geyser stoke the furnace,” said Vimes firmly. Left alone, he struggled out of his breastplate and threw it in the corner. The chainmail shirt followed it, and the helmet, and the money pouch, and various leather and cotton oddments that came between a Watchman and the world. And then he sank, gingerly at first, into the suds. “Try soap. Soap’ll work,” said Detritus. “Hold still, will you?” said Carrot. “You’re twisting my head off!” “Go on, soap him head.” “Soap your own head!” There was a thung noise and Cuddy’s helmet came free. Cuddy emerged, blinking, into the light. He focused on the Librarian, and growled. “He hit me on the head!” “Oook.” “He says you came up through the floor,” said Carrot. “That’s no reason to hit me on the head.” “Some of the things that come up through the floor at Unseen University don’t even have a head,” said Carrot. “Oook!” “Or they have hundreds. Why were you digging down there?” “We weren’t digging down. We were digging up . . .” Carrot sat and listened. He interrupted only twice. “Shot at you?” “Five time,” said Detritus, happily. “Have to report damage to breastplate but not to backplate on account of fortunately my body got in way, saving valuable city property worth three dollars.” Carrot listened some more. “Sewers?” he said, eventually. “It’s like the whole city, underground. We saw crowns and stuff carved on the walls.” Carrot’s eyes sparkled. “That means they must date right back to the days when we had kings! And then when we kept on rebuilding the city we forgot they were down there . . .” “Um. That’s not all that’s down there,” said Cuddy. “We . . . found something.” “Oh?” “Something bad.” “You won’t like it at all,” said Detritus. “Bad, bad, bad. Even worse.” “We thought it would be best to leave it there,” said Cuddy, “on account of it being Evidence. But you ought to see it.” “It’s going to upset everything,” said the troll, warming to the part. “What was it?” “If we tell you, you say, stupid ethnic people, you pulling my leg off,” said Detritus. “So you’d better come and see,” said Cuddy. Sergeant Colon looked at the rest of the Watch. “All of us?” he said, nervously. “Er. Shouldn’t a couple of senior officers stay up here? In case anything happens?” “Do you mean in case anything happens up here?” said Angua, tartly. “Or in case anything happens down there?” “I’ll go with Lance-Constable Cuddy and Lance-Constable Detritus,” said Carrot. “I don’t think anyone else ought to come.” “But it could be dangerous!” said Angua. “If I find who’s been shooting at Watchmen,” said Carrot, “it will be.” Samuel Vimes reached up with a big toe and turned on the hot tap. There was a respectful knock at the door, and Willikins old-retainer’d in. “Would sir be wanting anything?” Vimes thought about it. “Lady Ramkin said you wouldn’t be wanting any alcohol,” said Willikins, as if reading his thoughts. “Did she?” “Emphatically, sir. But I have here a very fine cigar.” He winced as Vimes bit the end off and spat it over the side of the bath, but produced some matches and lit it for him. “Thank you, Willikins. What’s your first name?” “First name, sir?” “I mean, what do people call you when they’ve got to know you better?” “Willikins, sir.” “Oh. Right, then. Well. You may go, Willikins.” “Yes, sir.” Vimes lay back in the warm water. The inner voice was still in there somewhere, but he tried not to pay any attention. About now, it was saying, you’d be proceeding along the Street of Small Gods, just by the bit of old city wall where you could stop and smoke a rollup out of the wind . . . To drown it out, he started to sing at the top of his voice. The cavernous sewers under the city echoed with human and near-human voices for the first time in millennia. “Hi-ho—” “—hi-ho—” “Oook oook oook oook ook—” “You all stupid!” “I can’t help it. It’s my nearly-dwarfish blood. We just like singing underground. It comes naturally to us.” “All right, but why him singing? Him ape.” “He’s a people person.” They’d brought torches. Shadows jumped among the pillars in the big cavern, and fled along the tunnels. Whatever the possible lurking dangers, Carrot was beside himself with the joy of discovery. “It’s amazing! The Via Cloaca is mentioned in some old book I read, but everyone thought it was a lost street! Superb workmanship. Lucky for you the river was so low. It looks as though these are normally full of water.” “That’s what I said,” said Cuddy. “Full of water, I said.” He glanced cautiously at the dancing shadows, which made weird and worrying shapes on the far wall -strange biped animals, eldritch underground things . . . Carrot sighed. “Stop making shadow pictures, Detritus.” “Oook.” “What him say?”- “He said “Do Deformed Rabbit, it’s my favourite”,” Carrot translated. Rats rustled in the darkness. Cuddy peered around. He kept imagining figures, back there, sighting along some kind of pipe . . . There were a disturbing few moments when he lost sight of the tracks on the wet stone, but he picked them up again near a mould-hung wall. And then, there was the particular pipe. He’d made a scratch on the stones. “It’s not far along,” he said, handing Carrot the torch. Carrot disappeared. They heard his footsteps in the mud, and then a whistle of surprise, and then silence for a while. Carrot reappeared. “My word,” he said. “You two know who this is?” “It looks like—“ Cuddy began. “It looks like trouble,” said Carrot. “You see why we didn’t bring it back up?” said Cuddy. “Carrying a human’s corpse through the streets right now would not be a good idea, I thought. Especially this one.” “I thought some of that, too,” Detritus volunteered. “Right enough,” said Carrot. “Well done, men. I think we’d better . . . leave it for now, and come back with a sack later on. And . . . don’t tell anyone else.” “Except the sergeant and everyone,” said Cuddy. “No . . . not even them. If d make everyone very . . . jumpy.” “Just as you say, Corporal Carrot.” “We’re dealing with a sick mind here, men.” Underground light dawned on Cuddy. “Ah,” he said. “You suspect Corporal Nobbs, sir?” “This is worse. Come on, let’s get back up.” He looked back towards the big pillar-barred cavern. “Any idea where we are, Cuddy?” “Could be under the Palace, sir.” “That’s what I reckoned. Of course, the tunnels go everywhere . . .” Carrot’s worried train of thought faltered away on some distant track. There was water in the sewers, even in this drought. Springs flowed into them, or water filtered down from far above. Everywhere was the drip and splash of water. And cool, cool air. It would almost be pleasant were it not for the sad, hunched corpse of someone that looked for all the world like Beano the clown. Vimes dried himself off. Willikins had also laid out a dressing gown with brocade on the sleeves. He put it on, and wandered into his dressing room. That was another new thing. The rich even had rooms for dressing in, and clothes to wear while you went into the dressing rooms to get dressed. Fresh clothes had been laid out for him. Tonight there was something dashing in red and yellow . . . . . . about now he’d be patrolling Treacle Mine Road . . . . . . and a hat. It had a feather in it. Vimes dressed himself, and even wore the hat. And he seemed quite normal and composed, until you realized that he avoided meeting his own gaze in the mirror. The Watch sat around the big table in the guardroom and in deep gloom. They were Off Duty. They’d never really been Off Duty before. “What say we have a game of cards?” said Nobby, brightly. He produced a greasy pack from somewhere in the noisome recesses of his uniform. “You won everyone’s wages off them yesterday,” said Sergeant Colon. “Now’s the chance to win ‘em back, then.” “Yeah, but there were five kings in your hand, Nobby.” Nobby shuffled the cards. “ ‘S’funny, that,” he said, “there’s kings everywhere, when you look.” “There certainly is if you look up your sleeve.” “No, I mean, there’s Kings Way in Ankh, and kings in cards, and we get the King’s Shilling when we join up,” said Nobby. “We got kings all over the place except on that gold throne in the Palace. I’ll tell you . . . there wouldn’t be all this trouble around the place if we had a king.” Carrot was staring at the ceiling, his eyebrows locked in concentration. Detritus was counting on his fingers. “Oh, yes,” said Sergeant Colon. “Beer’d be a penny a pint, the trees’d bloom again. Oh, yeah. Every time someone stubs a toe in this town, turns out it wouldn’t have happened if there’d been a king. Vimes’d go spare to hear you talk like that.” “People’d listen to a king, though,” said Nobby. “Vimes’d say that’s the trouble,” said Colon. “It’s like that thing of his about using magic. That stuff makes him angry.” “How you get king inna first place?” said Detritus. “Someone sawed up a stone,” said Colon. “Hah! Anti-siliconism!” “Nah, someone pulled a sword out of a stone,” said Nobby. “How’d he know it was in there, then?” Colon demanded. “It . . . it was sticking out, wasn’t it?” “Where anyone could’ve grabbed it? In this town?” “Only the rightful king could do it, see,” said Nobby. “Oh, right,” said Colon. “I understand. Oh, yes. So what you’re saying is, someone’d decided who the rightful king was before he pulled it out? Sounds like a fix to me. Prob’ly someone had a fake hollow stone and some dwarf inside hanging on the other end with a pair of pliers until the right guy came along—” A fly bounced on the window pane for a while, then zigzagged across the room and settled on a beam, where Cuddy’s idly thrown axe cut it in half. “You got no soul, Fred,” said Nobby. “I wouldn’t’ve minded being a knight in shining armour. That’s what a king does if you’re useful. He makes you a knight.” “A night watchman in crappy armour is about your métier,” said Colon, who looked around proudly to see if anyone had noticed the slanty thing over the e. “Nah, catch me being respectful to some bloke because he just pulled a sword out of a stone. That don’t make you a king. Mind you,” he said, “someone who could shove a sword into a stone . . . a man like that, now, he’s a king.“ “A man like that’d be an ace,” said Nobby. Angua yawned. Ding-ding a-ding-ding— “What the hell’s that?” said Colon. Carrot’s chair thumped forward. He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a velvet bag, which he upended on to the table. Out slid a golden disc about three inches across. When he pressed a catch on one side it opened like a clamshell. The stopped Watch peered at it. “It’s a clock?” said Angua. “A watch,” said Carrot. “It’s very big.” “That’s because of the clockwork. There has to be room for all the little wheels. The small watches just have those little time demons in and they don’t last and anyway they keep rotten time—” Ding-ding a-ding-ding, ding dingle ding ding . . . “And it plays a tune!” said Angua. “Every hour,” said Carrot. “It’s part of the clockwork.” Ding. Ding. Ding. “And it chimes the hours afterwards,” said Carrot. “It’s slow, then,” said Sergeant Colon. “All the others just struck, you couldn’t miss ‘em.” “My cousin Jorgen makes ones like these,” said Cuddy. “They keep better time than demons or water clocks or candles. Or those big pendulum things.” “There’s a spring and wheels,” said Carrot. “The important bit,” said Cuddy, taking an eyeglass from somewhere in his beard and examining the watch carefully, “is a little rocking-thingummy that stops the wheels from going too fast.” “How does it know if they’re going too fast?” said Angua. “It’s kind of built-in,” said Cuddy. “Don’t understand it much myself. What’s this inscription here . . .” He read it aloud. ““A Watch From, Your Old Freinds in the Watch”?” “It’s a play on words,” said Carrot. There was a long, embarrassed silence. “Um. I chipped in a few dollars each from you new recruits,” he added, blushing. “I mean . . . you can pay me back when you like. If you want to. I mean . . . you’d be bound to be friends. Once you got to know him.” The rest of the Watch exchanged glances. He could lead armies, Angua thought. He really could. Some people have inspired whole countries to great deeds because of the power of their vision. And so could he. Not because he dreams about marching hordes, or world domination, or an empire of a thousand years. Just because he thinks that everyone’s really decent underneath and would get along just fine if only they made the effort, and he believes that so strongly it burns like a flame which is bigger than he is. He’s got a dream and we’re all part of it, so that it shapes the world around him. And the weird thing is that no-one wants to disappoint him. It’d be like kicking the biggest puppy in the universe. It’s a kind of magic. “The gold’s rubbing off,” said Cuddy. “But it’s a good watch,” he added quickly. “I was hoping we could give it to him tonight,” said Carrot. “And all go out for a . . . drink . . .” “Not a good idea,” said Angua. “Leave it until tomorrow,” said Colon. “We’ll form a guard of honour at the wedding. That’s traditional. Everyone holds their swords up in a kind of arch.” “We’ve only got one sword between us,” said Carrot glumly. They all stared at the floor. “It’s not fair,” said Angua. “I don’t care who stole whatever they stole from the Assassins, but he was right to try to find out who killed Mr Hammerhock And no-one cares about Lettice Knibbs.” “I like to find out who shoot me,” said Detritus. “Beats me why anyone’d be daft enough to steal from the Assassins,” said Carrot. “That’s what Captain Vimes said. He said you’d have to be a fool to think of breaking into that place.” They stared at the floor again. “Like a clown or a jester?” said Detritus. “Detritus, he didn’t mean a cap-and-bells Fool,” said Carrot, in a kindly voice. “He just meant you’d have to be some sort of idi—” He stopped. He stared at the ceiling. “Oh, my,” he said. “It’s as simple as that?” “Simple as what?” said Angua. Someone hammered at the door. It wasn’t a polite knock. It was the thumping of someone who was either going to have the door opened for them or break it down. A guard stumbled into the room. Half his armour was off and he had a black eye, but he was just recognizable as Skully Muldoon of the Day Watch. Colon helped him up. “Been in a fight, Skully?” Skully looked up at Detritus, and whimpered. “The buggers attacked the Watch House!” “Who?” “Them!” Carrot patted him on the shoulder. “This isn’t a troll,” he said. “This is Lance-Constable Detritus – don’t salute. Trolls attacked the Day Watch?” “They’re chucking cobbles!” “You can’t trust ‘em,” said Detritus. “Who?” said Skully. “Trolls. Nasty pieces of work in my opinion,” said Detritus, with all the conviction of a troll with a badge. “They need keeping a eye on.” “What’s happened to Quirke?” said Carrot. “I don’t know! You lot have got to do something’.” “We’re stood down,” said Colon. “Official.” “Don’t give me that!” “Ah,” said Carrot, brightly. He pulled a stub of pencil out of his pocket and made a little tick in his black book. “You still got that little house in Easy Street, Sergeant Muldoon?” “What? What? Yes! What about it?” “Is the rent worth more than a farthing a month?” Muldoon stared at him with his one operating eye. “Are you simple or what?” Carrot gave him a big smile. “That’s right, Sergeant Muldoon. Is it, though? Worth a farthing, would you say?” “There’s dwarfs running around the streets looking for a fight and you want to know about property prices?” “A farthing?” “Don’t be daft! It’s worth at least five dollars a month!” “Ah,” said Carrot, ticking the book again. “That’d be inflation, of course. And I expect you’ve got a cooking pot . . . do you own at least two-and-one-third acres and more than half a cow?” “All right, all right,” said Muldoon. “It’s some kind of joke, right?” “I think probably the property qualification can be waived,” said Carrot. “It says here that it can be waived for a citizen in good standing. Finally, has there been, in your opinion, an irreparable breakdown of law and order in the city?” “They turned over Throat Dibbler’s barrow and made him eat two of his sausages-inna-bun!” “Oh, I say!” said Colon. “Without mustard!” “I think we can call that a Yes,” said Carrot. He ticked the page again, and closed the book with a definite snap. “We’d better be going,” he said. “We were told—“ Colon began. “According to the Laws and Ordinances of Ankh-Morpork,” said Carrot, “any residents of the city, in times of the irreparable breakdown of law and order, shall, at the requeft of an officer of the city who is a citizen in good standing – there’s a lot of stuff here about property and stuff, and then it goes on – form themselves into a militia for city defence.” “What does that mean?” said Angua. “Militia . . .” mused Sergeant Colon. “Hang on, you can’t do that!” said Muldoon. “That’s nonsense!” “It’s the law. Never been repealed,” said Carrot. “We’ve never had a militia! Never needed one!” “Until now, I think.” “Now look here,” said Muldoon, “you come back with me to the Palace. You’re men of the Watch—” “And we’re going to defend the city,” said Carrot. People were streaming past the Watch House. Carrot stopped a couple by the simple expedient of sticking out his hand. “Mr Poppley, isn’t it?” he said. “How’s the grocery business? Hello, Mrs Poppley.” “Ain’t you heard?” said the flustered man. “The trolls have set fire to the Palace!” He followed Carrot’s gaze up Broad Way, to where the Palace stood squat and dark in the early evening light. Ungovernable flames failed to billow from every window. “My word,” said Carrot. “And there’s dwarfs breaking windows and everything!” said the grocer. “A dog’s not safe!” “You can’t trust ‘em,” said Cuddy. The grocer stared at him. “Are you a dwarf?” he said. “Amazing! How do people do it,” said Cuddy. “Well, I’m off! I’m not stopping to see Mrs Poppley ravished by the little devils! You know what they say about dwarfs!” The Watch watched the couple head off into the crowd again. “Well, I don’t,” said Cuddy, to no-one in particular. “What is it they say about dwarfs?” Carrot fielded a man pushing a barrow. “Would you mind telling me what’s going on, sir?” he said. “And do you know what it is they say about dwarfs?” said a voice behind him. “That’s not a sir, that’s Throat,” said Colon. “And will you look at the colour of him!” “Should he be all shiny like that?” said Detritus. “Feeling fine! Feeling fine!” said Dibbler. “Hah! So much for people importuning the standard of my merchandise!” “What’s happening, Throat?” said Colon. “They say—“ Dibbler began, green in the face. “Who says?” said Carrot. “They say,” said Dibbler. “You know. They. Everyone. They say the trolls have killed someone up at Dolly Sisters and the dwarfs have smashed up Chalky the troll’s all-night pottery and they’ve broken down the Brass Bridge and—” Carrot looked up the road. “You just came over the Brass Bridge,” he said. “Yeah, well . . . that’s what they say,” said Dibbler. “Oh, I see.” Carrot straightened up. “Did they happen to say . . . sort of, in passing . . . anything else about dwarfs?” said Cuddy. “I think we’re going to have to go and have a word with the Day Watch about the arrest of Coalface,” Carrot said. “We ain’t got no weapons,” said Colon. “I’m certain Coalface has nothing to do with the murder of Hammerhock,” said Carrot. “We are armed with the truth. What can harm us if we are armed with the truth?” “Well, a crossbow bolt can, e.g., go right through your eye and out the back of your head,” said Sergeant Colon. “All right, sergeant,” said Carrot, “so where do we get some more weapons?” The bulk of the Armoury loomed against the sunset. It was strange to find an armoury in a city which relied on deceit, bribery and assimilation to defeat its enemies but, as Sergeant Colon said, once you’d won their weapons off ‘em you needed somewhere to store the things. Carrot rapped on the door. After a while there were footsteps, and a small window slid back. A suspicious voice said: “Yes?” “Corporal Carrot, city militia.” “Never heard of it. Bugger off.” The hatch snapped back. Carrot heard Nobby snigger. He thumped on the door again. “Yes?” “I’m Corporal Carrot—‘ The hatch moved, but hit Carrot’s truncheon as he rammed it in the hole. “—and I’m here to collect some arms for my men.” “Yeah? Where’s your authority?” “What? But I’m—” The truncheon was knocked away and the hatch thudded into place. “ ‘Scuse me,” said Corporal Nobbs, pushing past. “Let me have a go. I’ve been here before, sort of thing.” He kicked the door with his steel capped boots, known and feared wherever men were on the floor and in no position to fight back. Snap. “I told you to bug—” “Auditors,” said Nobby. There was a moment’s silence. “What?” “Here to take inventory.” “Where’s your auth—” “Oh? Oh? He says where’s my authority?” Nobby leered at the guards. “Oh? Keeps me hanging around here while his cronies can nip out the back to bring the stuff back out of hock, eh?” “I nev—” “And, and then, yeah, we’ll get the old thousand swords trick, yeah? Fifty crates stacked up, turns out the bottom forty are full of rocks?” “I—” “What’s your name, mister?” “I—” “You open this door right now!” The hatch shut. There was the sound of bolts being pulled back by someone who was not at all convinced it was a good idea and would be asking searching questions in a minute. “Got a piece of paper on you, Fred? Quick!” “Yes, but—“ said Sergeant Colon. “Any paper! Now!” Colon fumbled in his pocket and handed Nobby his grocery bill just as the door opened. Nobby swaggered in at high speed, forcing the man inside to walk backwards. “Don’t run off!” he shouted, “I haven’t found anything wrong—” “I wasn’t r—” “—YET!” Carrot had time to get an impression of a cavernous place full of complicated shadows. Apart from the man, who was fatter than Colon, there were a couple of trolls who appeared to be operating a grindstone. Current events did not seem to have penetrated the thick walls. “All right, no-one panic, just stop what you’re doing, stop what you’re doing, please. I’m Corporal Nobbs, Ankh-Morpork City Ordnance Inspection City Audit—“ The piece of paper was waved in front of the man’s eyes at vision-blurring speed, and Nobby’s voice faltered a bit as he contemplated the end of the sentence, “—Bureau . . . Special . . . Audit . . . Inspection. How many people work here?” “Just me—” Nobby pointed at the trolls. “What about them?” The man spat on the floor. “Oh, I thought you said people.” Carrot stuck out his hand automatically and it slammed against Detritus’ breastplate. “OK,” said Nobby, “let’s see what we’ve got here . . .” He walked fast along the racks, so that everyone else had to run to keep up. “What’s this?” “Er—” “Don’t know, eh?” “Sure . . . it’s . . . it’s . . .” “A triple-stringed 2,000lb carriage-mounted siege crossbow with the double-action windlass?” “Right.” “Isn’t this a Klatchian reinforced crossbow with the goat-leg cocking mechanism and the underhaft bayonet?” “Er . . . yeah?” Nobby gave it a cursory examination, and then tossed it aside. The rest of the Night Watch looked on in astonishment. Nobby had never been known to wield any weapon beyond a knife. “Have you got one of those Hershebian twelve-shot bows with the gravity feed?” he snapped. “Eh? What you see is what we got, mister.” Nobby pulled a hunting crossbow from its rack. His skinny arms twanged as he hauled on the cocking lever. “Sold the bolts for this thing?” “They’re right there!” Nobby selected one from the shelf and dropped it into its slot. Then he sighted along the shaft. He turned. “I like this inventory,” said Nobby. “We’ll take it all.” The man looked down the sights at Nobby’s eye and, to Angua’s horrified admiration, didn’t faint. “That little bow don’t scare me,” he said. “This little bow scare you?” said Nobby. “No. Right. This is a little bow. A little bow like this wouldn’t scare a man like you, because it’s such a little bow. It’d need a bigger bow than this to scare a man like you.” Angua would have given a month’s pay to see the quartermaster’s face from the front. She’d watched as Detritus had lifted down the siege bow, cocked it with one hand and a barely audible grunt, and stepped forward. Now she could imagine the eyeballs swivelling as the coldness of the metal penetrated the back of the armourer’s fleshy red neck. “Now, the one behind you, that’s a big bow,” said Nobby. It wasn’t as if the six-foot iron arrow was sharp. It was supposed to smash through doorways, not do surgery. “Can I pull the trigger yet?” Detritus rumbled, into the man’s ear. “You wouldn’t dare fire that thing in here! That’s a siege weapon! It’d go right through the wall!” “Eventually,” said Nobby. “What this bit for?” said Detritus. “Now, look—” “I hope you keep that thing maintained,” said Nobby. “Them things were a bugger for metal fatigue. Especially on the safety catch.” “What are a safety catch?” said Detritus. Everything went quiet. Carrot found his voice, a long way off. “Corporal Nobbs?” “Yessir?” “I’ll take over from this point, if you don’t mind.” He gently pushed the siege bow away, but Detritus hadn’t liked the crack about people and it kept swinging back again. “Now,” said Carrot, “I don’t like this element of coercion. We’re not here to bully this poor man. He’s a city employee, just like us. It’s very wrong of you to put him in fear. Why not just ask?” “Sorry, sir,” said Nobby. Carrot patted the armourer on the shoulder. “May we take some weapons?” he said. “What?” “Some weapons? For official purposes?” The armourer looked unable to cope with this. “You mean I got a choice?” he said. “Why, certainly. We practise policing by consent in Ankh-Morpork. If you feel unable to agree to our request, you only have to say the word.” There was a faint bong as the tip of the iron arrow once again bounced on the back of the armourer’s skull. He sought in vain for something to say, because the only word he could think of right now was “Fire!” “Uh,” he said. “Uh. Yeah. Right. Sure. Take what you want.” “Fine, fine. And Sergeant Colon will give you a receipt, adding of course that you release the weapons of your own free will.” “My own free will?” “You have absolute choice in the matter, of course.” The man’s face screwed up in the effort of desperate cogitation. “I reckon . . .” “Yes?” “I reckon it’s OK for you to take ‘em. Take ‘em right away.” “Good man. Do you have a trolley?” “And do you happen to know what it is they say about dwarfs?” said Cuddy. It crept over Angua once again that Carrot had no irony in his soul. He meant every word. If the man had really held out, Carrot would probably have given in. Of course, there was a bit of a gap between probably and certainly. Nobby was down the end of the row, occasionally squeaking with delight as he found an interesting war hammer or an especially evil-looking glaive. He was trying to hold everything, all at once. Then he dropped the lot and ran forward. “Oh, wow! A Klatchian fire engine! This is more my meteor!” They heard him rummaging around in the gloom. He emerged pushing a sort of bin on small squeaky wheels. It had various handles and fat leathery bags, and a nozzle at the front. It looked like a very large kettle. “The leather’s been kept greased, too!” “What is it?” said Carrot. “And there’s oil in the reservoir!” Nobby pumped a handle energetically. “Last I heard, this thing had been banned in eight countries and three religions said they’d excommunicate any soldiers found using it![25] Anyone got a light?” “Here,” said Carrot, “but what’s—” “Watch!” Nobby lit a match, applied it to the tube at the front of the device, and pulled a lever. They put out the flames eventually. “Needs a bit of adjustment,” said Nobby, through his mask of soot. “No,” said Carrot. For the rest of his life he’d remember the jet of fire scorching his face en route to the opposite wall. “But it’s—” “No. It’s too dangerous.” “It’s meant to be—” “I mean it could hurt people.” “Ah,” said Nobby, “right. You should have said. We’re after weapons that don’t hurt people, right?” “Corporal Nobbs?” said Sergeant Colon, who’d been even closer to the flame than Carrot. “Yes, sarge?” “You heard Corporal Carrot. No heathen weapons. Anyway, how come you know so much about all this stuff?” “Milit’ry service.” “Really, Nobby?” said Carrot. “Had a special job, sir. Very responsible.” “And what was that?” “Quartermaster, sir,” said Nobby, saluting smartly. “You were a quartermaster?” said Carrot. “In whose army?” “Duke of Pseudopolis, sir.” “But Pseudopolis always lost its wars!” “Ah . . . well . . .” “Who did you sell the weapons to?” “That’s a slander, that is! They just used to spend a lot of time away for polishing and sharpening.” “Nobby, this is Carrot talking to you. How much time, approximately?” “Approximately? Oh. About a hundred per cent, if we’re talking approximately, sir.” “Nobby?” “Sir?” “You don’t have to call me sir.” “Yessir.” In the end, Cuddy remained faithful to his axe, but added a couple more as an afterthought; Sergeant Colon chose a pike because the thing about a pike, the important thing, was that everything happened at the other end of it, i.e., a long way off; Lance-Constable Angua selected, without much enthusiasm, a short sword, and Corporal Nobbs— —Corporal Nobbs was a kind of mechanical porcupine of blades, bows, points and knobbly things on the end of chains. “You sure, Nobby?” said Carrot. “There’s nothing you want to leave?” “It’s so hard to choose, sir.” Detritus was hanging on to his huge bow. “That all you’re taking, Detritus?” “No sir! Taking Hint and Morraine, sir!” The two trolls who had been working in the armoury had formed up behind Detritus. “Swore ‘em in, sir,” said Detritus. “Used troll oath.” Flint saluted amateurishly. “He said he’d kick our goohuloog heads in if we didn’t join up and do what we’re told, sir,” he said. “Very old troll oath,” said Detritus. “Very famous, very traditional.” “One of ‘em could carry the Klatchian fire engine—“ Nobby began hopefully. “No, Nobby. Well . . . welcome to the Watch, men.” “Corporal Carrot?” “Yes, Cuddy?” “It’s not fair. They’re trolls.” “We need every man we can get, Cuddy.” Carrot stood back. “Now, we don’t want people to think we’re looking for trouble,” he said. “Oh, dressed like this, sir, we won’t have to look for trouble,” said Sergeant Colon despondently. “Question, sir?” said Angua. “Yes, Lance-Constable Angua?” “Who’s the enemy?” “Looking like this, we won’t have any problem finding enemies,” said Sergeant Colon. “We’re not looking for enemies, we’re looking for information,” said Carrot. “The best weapon we can use right now is the truth, and to start with, we’re going to the Fools’ Guild to find out why Brother Beano stole the gonne.” “Did he steal the gonne?” “I think he may have, yes.” “But he died before the gonne was stolen!” said Colon. “Yes,” said Carrot. “I know that.” “Now that,” said Colon, “is what I calls an alibi.” The squad formed up and, after a brief discussion among the trolls as to which was their left foot and which was their right, marched away. Nobby kept looking back longingly to the fire machine. Sometimes it’s better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness. Ten minutes later they’d pushed through the crowds and were outside the Guilds. “See?” Carrot said. “They back on to each other,” said Nobby. “So what? There’s still a wall between them.” “I’m not so sure,” said Carrot. “We’ll jolly well find out.” “Have we got time?” said Angua, “I thought we were going to see the Day Watch.” “There’s something I must find out first,” said Carrot. “The Fools haven’t told me the truth.”- “Hang on a minute, hang on a minute,” said Sergeant Colon. “This is going altogether just a bit too far by half. Look, I don’t want us to kill anyone, right? I happen to be sergeant around here, if anyone’s interested. Understand, Carrot? Nobby? No shooting or swordplay. It’s bad enough barging into Guild property, but we’ll get into really serious trouble if we shoot anyone. Lord Vetinari won’t stop at sarcasm. He might use” – Colon swallowed – “irony. So that’s an order. What do you want to do, anyway?” “I just want people to tell me things,” said Carrot. “Well, if they don’t, you’re not to hurt them,” said Colon. “Look, you can ask questions, fair enough. But if Dr Whiteface starts getting difficult, we’re to come away, right? Clowns give me the creeps. And he’s worst of all. If he won’t answer, we’re to leave peacefully and, oh, I don’t know, think of something else. That’s an order, like I said. Are you clear about this? It’s an order.” “If he won’t answer my questions,” said Carrot, “I’m to leave peacefully. Right.” “So long as that’s understood.” Carrot knocked on the Fools’ door, reached up, caught the custard pie as it emerged from the slot and rammed it back hard. Then he kicked the door so that it swung inwards a few inches. Someone behind it said “Ow.” The door opened a bit further to reveal a small clown covered in whitewash and custard. “You didn’t have to do that,” he said. “I just wanted to get into the spirit of the thing,” said Carrot. “I’m Corporal Carrot and this is the citizens’ militia, and we all enjoy a good laugh.” “ ‘Scuse me—” “Except for Lance-Constable Cuddy. And Lance-Constable Detritus enjoys a good laugh too, although some minutes after everyone else. And we’re here to see Dr Whiteface.” The clown’s hair rose. Water squirted from his buttonhole. “Have – have you got an appointment?” he said. “I don’t know,” said Carrot. “Have we got an appointment?” “I’ve got an iron ball with spikes on,” Nobby volunteered. “That’s a morningstar, Nobby.” “Is it?” “Yes,” said Carrot. “An appointment is an engagement to see someone, while a morningstar is a large lump of metal used for viciously crushing skulls. It is important not to confuse the two, isn’t it, Mr—?” He raised his eyebrows. “Boffo, sir. But—” “So if you could perhaps run along and tell Dr White-face we’re here with an iron ball with spi— What am I saying? I mean, without an appointment to see him? Please? Thank you.” The clown scuttled off. “There,” said Carrot. “Was that all right, sergeant?” “He’s probably going to be satirical, even,” said Colon, morosely. They waited. After a while Lance-Constable Cuddy took a screwdriver from his pocket and inspected the custard-pie-throwing machine bolted to the door. The rest of them shuffled their feet, except for Nobby, who kept dropping things on his. Boffo reappeared, flanked by two muscular jesters who didn’t look as though they had a sense of humour at all. “Dr Whiteface says there’s no such thing as a city militia,” he ventured. “But. Um. Dr Whiteface says, if it’s really important he’ll see some of you. But not the trolls or the dwarf. We heard there’s gangs of trolls and dwarfs terrorizing the city.” “Dat’s what they say,” said Detritus, nodding. “Incidentally, do you know what it is they—“ Cuddy began, but Nobby nudged him into silence. “You and me, sergeant?” said Carrot. “And you, Lance-Constable Angua.” “Oh dear,” said Sergeant Colon. But they followed Carrot into the sombre buildings and along the gloomy corridors to Dr Whiteface’s office. The chief of all the clowns, fools and jesters was standing in the middle of the floor, while a jester tried to sew extra sequins on his coat. “Well?” “Evening, doctor,” said Carrot. “I should like to make it clear that Lord Vetinari will be hearing about this directly,” said Dr Whiteface. “Oh, yes. I shall tell him,” said Carrot. “I can’t imagine why you’re bothering me when there’s rioting in the streets.” “Ah, well . . . we shall deal with that later. But Captain Vimes always told me, sir, that there’s big crimes and little crimes. Sometimes the little crimes look big and the big crimes you can hardly see, but the crucial thing is to decide which is which.” They stared at one another. “Well?” the clown demanded. “I should like you to tell me,” said Carrot, “about events in this Guild House the night before last.” Dr Whiteface stared at him in silence. Then he said, “If I don’t?” “Then,” said Carrot, “I am afraid I shall, with extreme reluctance, be forced to carry out the order I was given just before entering.” He glanced at Colon. “That’s right, isn’t it, sergeant?” “What? Eh? Well, yes—” “I would much prefer not to do so, but I have no choice,” said Carrot. Dr Whiteface glared at the two of them. “But this is Guild property! You have no right to . . . to . . .” “I don’t know about that, I’m only a corporal,” said Carrot. “But I’ve never disobeyed a direct order yet, and I am sorry to have to tell you that I will carry out this one fully and to the letter.” “Now, see here—” Carrot moved a little closer. “If it’s any comfort, I’ll probably be ashamed about it,” he said. The clown stared into his honest eyes and saw, as did everyone, only simple truth. “Listen! If I shout,” said Dr Whiteface, going red under his makeup, “I can have a dozen men in here.” “Believe me,” said Carrot, “that will only make it easier for me to obey.” Dr Whiteface prided himself on his ability to judge character. In Carrot’s resolute expression there was nothing but absolute, meticulous honesty. He fiddled with a quill pen and then threw it down in a sudden movement. “Confound it!” he shouted. “How did you find out, eh? Who told you?” “I really couldn’t say,” said Carrot. “But it makes sense anyway. There’s only one entrance to each Guild, but the Guild Houses are back to back. Someone just had to cut through the wall.” “I assure you we didn’t know about it,” said the clown. Sergeant Colon was lost in admiration. He’d seen people bluff on a bad hand, but he’d never seen anyone bluff with no cards. “We thought it was just a prank,” said the clown. “We thought young Beano had just done it with humorous intent, and then he turned up dead and we didn’t—‘” “You’d better show me the hole,” said Carrot. The rest of the Watch stood to variations on the theme of At Ease in the courtyard. “Corporal Nobbs?” “Yes, Lance-Constable Cuddy?” “What is it everyone says about dwarfs?” “Oh, come on, you’re pulling my leg, right? Everyone knows that who knows anything about dwarfs,” said Nobby. Cuddy coughed. “Dwarfs don’t,” he said. “What do you mean, dwarfs don’t?” “No-one’s told us what everyone knows about dwarfs,” said Cuddy. “Well . . . I expect they thought you knew,” said Nobby, weakly. “Not me.” “Oh, all right,” said Nobby. He glanced at the trolls, then leaned across to Cuddy and whispered in the approximate region of his ear. Cuddy nodded. “Oh, is that all?” “Yes. Er . . . is it true?” “What? Oh, yes. Of course. It’s nat’ral for a dwarf. Some have got more than others, of course.” “That’s the case all round,” said Nobby. “I myself, for example, have saved more than seventy-eight dollars.” “No! I mean, no. I mean, I don’t mean well-endowed with money. I mean . . .” Nobby whispered again. Cuddy’s expression didn’t change. Nobby waggled his eyebrows. “True, is it?” “How should I know? I don’t know how much money humans generally have.” Nobby subsided. “There’s one thing that’s true at least,” he said. “You dwarfs really love gold, don’t you?” “Of course we don’t. Don’t be silly.” “Well—” “We just say that to get it into bed.”   It was in a clown’s bedroom. Colon had occasionally wondered what clowns did in private, and it was all here – the overlarge shoe tree, the very wide trouser press, the mirror with all the candles round it, some industrial-sized sticks of make-up . . . and a bed which looked like nothing more complicated than a blanket on the floor, because that’s what it was. Clowns and fools weren’t encouraged to live the soft life. Humour was a serious business. There was also a hole in the wall, just big enough to admit a man. A little pile of crumbling bricks was heaped next to it. There was darkness on the other side. On the other side, people killed other people for money. Carrot stuck his head and shoulders through the hole, but Colon tried to pull him back. “Hang on, lad, you don’t know what horrors lie beyond these walls—” “I’m just having a look to find out.” “It could be a torture chamber or a dungeon or a hideous pit or anything!” “It’s just a student’s bedroom, sergeant.” “You see?” Carrot stepped through. They could hear him moving around in the gloom. It was Assassin’s gloom, somehow richer and less gloomy than clown’s gloom. He poked his head through again. “No-one’s been in here for a while, though,” he said. “There’s dust all over the floor but there’s footprints in it. And the door’s locked and bolted. On this side.” The rest of his body followed Carrot. “I just want to make sure I fully understand this,” he said to Dr Whiteface. “Beano made a hole into the Assassins’ Guild, yes? And then he went and exploded that dragon? And then he came back through this hole? So how did he get killed?” “By the Assassins, surely,” said Dr Whiteface. “They’d be within their rights. Trespass on Guild property is a very serious offence, after all.” “Did anyone see Beano after the explosion?” said Carrot. “Oh yes. Boffo was on gate duty and he distinctly remembers him going out.” “He knows it was him?” Dr Whiteface looked blank. “Of course.” “How?” “How? He recognized him, of course. That’s how you know who people are. You look at them and you say . . . that’s him. That’s called re-cog-nit-ion,” said the clown, with pointed deliberation. “It was Beano. Boffo said he looked very worried.” “Ah. Fine. No more questions, doctor. Did Beano have any friends among the Assassins?” “Well . . . possibly, possibly. We don’t discourage visitors.” Carrot stared at the clown’s face. Then he smiled. “Of course. Well, that about wraps it all up, I think.” “If only he’d stuck to something, you know, original,” said Dr Whiteface. “Like a bucket of whitewash over the door, or a custard pie?” said Sergeant Colon. “That’s right!” “Well, we might as well be going,” said Carrot. “I imagine you don’t want to lay a complaint about the Assassins?” Dr Whiteface tried to look panicky, but this did not work very well under a mouth painted into a wide grin. “What? No! I mean – if an Assassin broke into our Guild, I mean, not on proper business, and stole something, well, we’d definitely consider we were within our rights to, well—” “Pour jelly into his shirt?” said Angua. “Hit him around the head with a bladder on a stick?” said Colon. “Possibly.” “Each Guild to their own, of course,” said Carrot. “I suggest we might as well be going, sergeant. Nothing more for us to do here. Sorry to have troubled you, Dr Whiteface. I can see this must have been a great strain on you.” The clown was limp with relief. “Don’t mention it. Don’t mention it. Happy to help. I know you have your job to do.” He ushered them down the stairs and into the courtyard, bubbling with small talk now. The rest of the Watch clanked to attention. “Actually . . .” said Carrot, just as he was being ushered out of the gate, “there is one thing you could do.” “Of course, of course.” “Um, I know it’s a bit cheeky,” said Carrot, “but I’ve always been very interested in Guild customs . . . so . . . do you think someone could show me your museum?” “Sorry? What museum?” “The clown museum?” “Oh, you mean the Hall of Faces. That’s not a museum. Of course. Nothing secret about it. Boffo, make a note. We’d be happy to show you around any time, corporal.” “Thank you very much, Dr Whiteface.” Any time.” “I’m just going off duty,” said Carrot. “Right now would be nice. Since I happen to be here.” “You can’t go off duty when— ow!” said Colon. “Sorry, sergeant?” “You kicked me!” “I accidentally trod on your sandal, sergeant. I’m sorry.” Colon tried to see a message in Carrot’s face. He’d got used to simple Carrot. Complicated Carrot was as unnerving as being savaged by a duck. “We’ll, er, we’ll just be going, then, shall we?” he said. “No point in staying here now it’s all settled,” said Carrot, mugging furiously. “May as well take the night off, really.” He glanced at the rooftops. “Oh, well, now it’s all settled we’ll be off, right,” said Colon. “Right, Nobby?” “Oh, yeah, we’ll be off all right, because it’s all settled,” said Nobby. “You hear that, Cuddy?” “What, that it’s all settled?” said Cuddy. “Oh, yeah. We might as well be off. OK, Detritus?” Detritus was staring moodily at nothing with his knuckles resting on the ground. This was a normal stance for a troll while waiting for the next thought to arrive. The syllables of his name kicked a neuron into fitful activity. “What?” he said. “It’s all settled.” “What is?” “You know – Mr Hammerhock’s death and everything.” “Is it?” “Yes!” “Oh.” Detritus considered this for a while, nodded, and settled back into whatever state of mind he normally occupied. Another neuron gave a fizzle. “Right,” he said. Cuddy watched him for a moment. “That’s about it,” he said, sadly. “That’s all we’re getting.” “I’ll be back shortly,” said Carrot. “Shall we be off . . . Joey, wasn’t it? Dr Whiteface?” “I suppose there’s no harm,” said Dr Whiteface. “Very well. Show Corporal Carrot anything he likes, Boffo.” “Right, sir,” said the little clown. “It must be a jolly job, being a clown,” said Carrot. “Must it?” “Lots of japes and jokes, I mean.” Boffo gave Carrot a lopsided look. “Well . . .” he said. “It has its moments . . .” “I bet it does. I bet it does.”   “Are you often on gate duty, Boffo?” said Carrot pleasantly, as they strolled through the Fools’ Guild. “Huh! Just about all the time,” said Boffo. “So when did that friend of his, you know, the Assassin . . . visit him?” “Oh, you know about him, then,” said Boffo. “Oh, yes,” said Carrot. “About ten days ago,” said Boffo. “It’s through here, past the pie range.” “He’d forgotten Beano’s name, but he did know the room. He didn’t know the number but he went straight to it,” Carrot went on. “That’s right. I expect Dr Whiteface told you,” said Boffo. “I’ve spoken to Dr Whiteface,” said Carrot. Angua felt she was beginning to understand the way Carrot asked questions. He asked them by not asking them. He simply told people what he thought or suspected, and they found themselves filling in the details in an attempt to keep up. And he never, actually, told lies. Boffo pushed open a door and fussed around lighting a candle. “Here we are then,” he said. “I’m in charge of this, when I’m not on the bloody gate.” “Ye gods,” said Angua, under her breath. “It’s horrible.” “It’s very interesting,” said Carrot. “It’s historical,” said Boffo the clown. All those little heads . . .” They stretched away in the candlelight, shelf on shelf of them, tiny little clown faces – as if a tribe of head-hunters had suddenly developed a sophisticated sense of humour and a desire to make the world a better place. “Eggs,” said Carrot. “Ordinary hens’ eggs. What you do is, you get a hen’s egg, and you make a hole in either end and you blow the egg stuff out, and then a clown paints his make-up on the egg and that’s his official make-up and no other clown can use it. That’s very important. Some faces have been in the same family for generations, you know. Very valuable thing, a clown’s face. Isn’t that so, Boffo?” The clown was staring at him. “How do you know all that?” “I read it in a book.” Angua picked up an ancient egg. There was a label attached to it, and on the label were a dozen names, all crossed out except the last one. The ink on the earlier ones had faded almost to nothing. She put it down and unconsciously wiped her hand on her tunic. “What happens if a clown wants to use another clown’s face?” she said. “Oh, we compare all the new eggs with the ones on the shelves,” said Boffo. “It’s not allowed.” They walked between aisles of faces. Angua fancied she could hear the squelch of a million custard-filled trousers and the echoes of a thousand honking noses and a million grins of faces that weren’t smiling. About halfway along was a sort of alcove containing a desk and chair, a shelf piled with old ledgers, and a workbench covered with crusted pots of paint, scraps of coloured horsehair, sequins and other odds and ends of the egg-painter’s spedalized art. Carrot picked up a wisp of coloured horsehair and twiddled it thoughtfully. “But supposing,” he said, “that a clown, I mean a clown with his own face . . . supposing he used another clown’s face?” “Pardon?” said Boffo. “Supposing you used another clown’s make-up?” said Angua. “Oh, that happens all the time,” said Boffo. “People’re always borrowing slap off each other—” “Slap?” said Angua. “Make-up,” Carrot translated. “No, I think what the lance-constable is asking, Boffo, is: could a clown make himself up to look like another clown?” Boffo’s brow wrinkled, like someone trying hard to understand an impossible question. “Pardon?” “Where’s Beano’s egg, Boffo?” “That’s here on the desk,” said Boffo. “You can have a look if you like.” An egg was handed up. It had a blobby red nose and a red wig. Angua saw Carrot hold it up to the light and produce a couple of red strands from his pocket. “But,” she said, trying one more time to get Boffo to understand, “couldn’t you wake up one morning and put on make-up so that you looked like a different clown?” He looked at her. It was hard to tell his expression under the permanently downcast mouth, but as far as she could tell she might as well have suggested that he performed a specific sex act with a small chicken. “How could I do that?” he said. “Then I wouldn’t be me.” “Someone else might do it, though?” Boffo’s buttonhole squirted. “I don’t have to listen to this sort of dirty talk, miss.” “What you’re saying, then,” said Carrot, “is that no clown would ever make up his face in another clown’s, um, design?” “You’re doing it again!” “Yes, but perhaps sometimes by accident a young down might perhaps—” “Look, we’re decent people, all right?” “Sorry,” said Carrot. “I think I understand. Now . . . when we found poor Mr Beano, he didn’t have his clown wig on, but something like that could easily have got knocked off in the river. But his nose, now . . . you told Sergeant Colon that someone had taken his nose. His real nose. Could you,” said Carrot, in the pleasant tones of someone talking to a simpleton, “point to your real nose, Boffo?” Boffo tapped the big red nose on his face. “But that’s—“ Angua began. “—your real nose,” said Carrot. “Thank you.” The clown wound down a little. “I think you’d better go,” he said. “I don’t like this sort of thing. It upsets me.” “Sorry,” said Carrot again. “It’s just that . . . I think I’m having an idea. I wondered about it before . . . and I’m pretty certain now. I think I know about the person who did it. But I had to see the eggs to be sure.” “You saying another clown killed him?” said Boffo belligerently. “ ‘Cos if you are, I’m going straight to—” “Not exactly,” said Carrot. “But I can show you the killer’s face.” He reached down and took something from the debris on the table. Then he turned to Boffo and opened his hand. He had his back to Angua, and she could not quite see what he was holding. But Boffo gave a strangled cry and ran away down the avenue of faces, his big shoes flip-flopping hugely on the stone flags. “Thank you,” said Carrot, at his retreating back. “You’ve been very helpful.” He folded his hand again. “Come on,” he said. “We’d better begoing. I don’t think we’re going to be popular here in a minute or two.” “What was that you showed him?” Angua asked, as they proceeded with dignity yet speed towards the gate. “It was something you came here to find, wasn’t it? All that stuff about wanting to see the museum—” “I did want to see it. A good copper should always be open to new experiences,” said Carrot. They made it to the gate. No vengeful pies floated out of the darkness. Angua leaned against the wall outside. The air smelled sweeter here, which was an unusual thing to say about Ankh-Morpork air. But at least out here people could laugh without getting paid for it. “You didn’t show me what frightened him,” she said. “I showed him a murderer,” said Carrot. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think he’d take it like that. I suppose they’re all a bit wound up right now. And it’s like dwarfs and tools. Everyone thinks in their own ways.” “You found the murderer’s face in there?” “Yes.” Carrot opened his hand. It contained a bare egg. “He looks like this,” he said. “He didn’t have a face?” “No, you’re thinking like a clown. I am very simple,” said Carrot, “but I think what happened was this. Someone in the Assassins wanted a way of getting in and out without being seen. He realized there’s only a thin wall between the two Guilds. He had a room. All he had to do was find out who lived on the other side. Later he killed Beano, and he took his wig and his nose. His real nose. That’s how clowns think. Make-up wouldn’t have been hard. You can get that anywhere. He walked into the Guild made up to look like Beano. He cut through the wall. Then he strolled down to the quad outside the museum, only this time he was dressed as an Assassin. He got the . . . the gonne and came back here. He went through the wall again, dressed up as Beano, and strolled away. And then someone killed him.” “Boffo said Beano looked worried,” said Angua. “And I thought: that’s odd, because you’d have to see a clown right up close to know what his real expression was. But you might notice if the make-up wasn’t on quite right. Like, maybe, if it was put on by someone who wasn’t too used to it. But the important thing is that if another clown sees Beano’s face go out of the door, he’s seen the person leave. They can’t think about someone else wearing that face. It’s not how they think. A clown and his make-up are the same thing. Without his makeup a clown doesn’t exist. A clown wouldn’t wear another clown’s face in the same way a dwarf wouldn’t use another dwarfs tools.” “Sounds risky, though,” said Angua. “It was. It was very risky.” “Carrot? What are you going to do now?” “I think it might be a good idea to find out whose room was on the other side of the hole, don’t you? I think it might belong to Beano’s little friend.” “In the Assassins’ Guild? Just us?” “Um. You’ve got a point.” Carrot looked so crestfallen that Angua gave in. “What time is it?” she said. Carrot very carefully took Captain Vimes’ presentation watch out of its cloth case. “It’s—” —abing, abing, abong, bong . . . bing . . . bing . . . They waited patiently until it had finished. “A quarter to seven,” said Carrot. Absolutely accurate, too. I put it right by the big sundial in the University.” Angua glanced at the sky. “OK,” she said. “I can find out, I think. Leave it to me.” “How?” “Er . . . I . . . well, I could get out of uniform, couldn’t I, and, oh, talk my way in as a kitchen maid’s sister or something . . .” Carrot looked doubtful. “You think that’ll work?” “Can you think of anything better?” “Not right now.” “Well, then. I’ll . . . er . . . look . . . you go back to the rest of the men and . . . I’ll find somewhere to change into something more suitable.” She didn’t have to look around to recognize where the snigger came from. Gaspode had a way of turning up silently like a small puff of methane in a crowded room, and with the latter’s distressing ability to fill up all available space. “Where can you get a change of clothes around here?” said Carrot. A good Watchman is always ready to improvise,” said Angua. “That little dog is awfully wheezy,” said Carrot. “Why does he always follow us around?” “I really couldn’t say.” “He’s got a present for you.” Angua risked a glance. Gaspode was holding, but only just, a very large bone in his mouth. It was wider than he was long, and might have belonged to something that died in a tar pit. It was green and furry in places. “How nice,” she said, coldly. “Look, you go on. Let me see what I can do . . .” “If you’re sure . . .” Carrot began, in a reluctant tone of voice. “Yes.” When he’d gone Angua headed for the nearest alley. There were only a few minutes to moonrise. Sergeant Colon saluted when Carrot came back, frowning in thought. “We can go home now, sir?” he suggested. “What? Why?” “Now it’s all sorted out?” “I just said that to waylay suspicion,” said Carrot. “Ah. Very clever,” said the sergeant quickly. “That’s what I thought. He’s saying that to waylay suspicion, I thought.” “There’s still a murderer out there somewhere. Or something worse.” Carrot ran his gaze over the ill-assorted soldiery. “But right now I think we’re going to have to sort out this business with the Day Watch,” he said. “Er. People say it’s practically a riot up there,” said Colon. “That’s why we’ve got to sort it out.” Colon bit his lip. He was not, as such, a coward. Last year the city had been invaded by a dragon and he’d actually stood on a rooftop and fired arrows at it while it was bearing down on him with its mouth open, although admittedly he’d had to change his underwear afterwards. But that had been simple. A great big fire-breathing dragon was straightforward. There it was, right in front of you, about to broil you alive. That was all you had to worry about. Admittedly, it was a lot to worry about, but it was . . . simple. It wasn’t any kind of mystery. “We’re going to have to sort it out?” he said. “Yes.” “Oh. Good. I like sorting things out.”   Foul Ole Ron was a Beggars’ Guild member in good standing. He was a Mutterer, and a good one. He would walk behind people muttering in his own private language until they gave him money not to. People thought he was mad, but this was not, technically, the case. It was just that he was in touch with reality on the cosmic level, and had a bit of trouble focusing on things smaller, like other people, walls and soap (although on very small things, such as coins, his eyesight was Grade A). Therefore he was not surprised when a handsome young woman streaked past him and removed all her clothes. This sort of thing happened all the time, although up until now only on the inner side of his head. Then he saw what happened next. He watched as the sleek golden shape streaked away. “I told ‘em! I told ‘em! I told ‘em!” he said. “Til give ‘em the wrong end of a ragman’s trumpet, so I shall. Bug’r’em. Millennium hand and shrimp! I told ‘em!” Gaspode wagged what was technically a tail when Angua re-emerged. “ “Change into fomefing more fuitable”,” he said, his voice slightly muffled by the bone. “Good one. I brung you thif little token—” He dropped it on the cobbles. It didn’t look any better to Angua’s lupine eyes. “What for?” she said. “Stuffed with nourishin’ marrowbone jelly, that bone,” he said accusingly. “Forget it,” said Angua. “Now, how do you normally get into the Assassins’ Guild?” “And maybe afterwards we could kind of hang out in the middens along Phedre Road?” said Gaspode, his stump of a tail still thumping the ground. “There’s rats along there that’ll make your hair stand on—No, all right, forget I mentioned it,” he finished quickly, when fire flashed for a moment in Angua’s eyes. He sighed. “There’s a drain by the kitchens,” he said. “Big enough for a human?” “Not even for a dwarf. But it won’t be worth it. It’s spaghetti tonight. You don’t get many bones in spaghetti—” “Come on.” He limped along. “That was a good bone,” he said. “Hardly even started going green. Hah! I bet you wouldn’t say no to a box of chocolates from Mr Hunk, though.” He cringed as she rounded on him. “What are you talking about?” “Nothing! Nothing!” He trailed after her, whining. Angua wasn’t happy, either. It was always a problem, growing hair and fangs every full moon. Just when she thought she’d been lucky before, she’d found that few men are happy in a relationship where their partner grows hair and howls. She’d sworn: no more entanglements like that. As for Gaspode, he was resigning himself to a life without love, or at least any more than the practical affection experienced so far, which had consisted of an unsuspecting chihuahua and a brief liaison with a postman’s leg. The No.1 powder slid down the folded paper into the metal tube. Blast Vimes! Who’d have thought he’d actually head for the opera house? He’d lost a set of rubes up there. But there were still three left, packed neatly in the hollow stock. A bag of No. 1 powder and a rudimentary knowledge of lead casting was all a man needed to rule the city . . . The gonne lay on the table. There was a bluish sheen to the metal. Or, perhaps, not so much a sheen as a glisten. And, of course, that was only the oil. You had to believe it was only the oil. It was clearly a thing of metal. It couldn’t possibly be alive. And yet . . . And yet . . . “They say it was only a beggar girl in the Guild.” Well ? What of it ? She was a target of opportunity. That was not my fault. That was your fault. I am merely the gonne. Gonnes don’t kill people. People kill people. “You killed Hammerhock! The boy said you fired yourself! And he’d repaired you!” You expect gratitude? He would have made another gonne. “Was that a reason to kill him?” Certainly. You have no understanding. Was the voice in his head or in the gonne? He couldn’t be certain. Edward had said there was a voice . . . it said that everything you wanted, it could give you . . . Getting into the Guild was easy for Angua, even through the angry crowds. Some of the Assassins, the ones from noble homes that had big floppy dogs around the place in the same way that lesser folk have rugs, had brought a few with them. Besides, Angua was pure pedigree. She drew admiring glances as she trotted through the buildings. Finding the right corridor was easy, too. She’d remembered the view from the Guild next door, and counted the number of floors. In any case, she didn’t have to look hard. The reek of fireworks hung in the air all along the corridor. There was a crowd of Assassins in the corridor, too. The door of the room had been forced open. As Angua peered around the corner she saw Dr Cruces emerge, his face suffused with rage. “Mr Downey?” A white-haired Assassin drew himself to attention. “Sir?” “I want him found!” “Yes, doctor—” “In fact I want him inhumed! With Extreme Impoliteness! And I’m setting the fee at ten thousand dollars – I shall pay it personally, you understand? Without Guild tax, either.” Several Assassins nonchalantly strolled away from the crowd. Ten thousand untaxed dollars was good money. Downey looked uncomfortable. “Doctor, I think—” “Think? You’re not paid to think! Heaven knows where the idiot has got to. I ordered the Guild searched! Why didn’t anyone force the door?” “Sorry, doctor, Edward left us weeks ago and I didn’t think—” “You didn’t think? What are you paid for?” “Never seen him in such a temper,” said Gaspode. There was a cough behind the chief Assassin. Dr Whiteface had emerged from the room. Ah, doctor,” said Dr Cruces. “I think perhaps we’d better go and discuss this further in my study, yes?” “I really am most terribly sorry, my lord—” “Don’t mention it. The little . . . devil has made us both look like fools. Oh . . . nothing personal, of course. Mr Downey, the Fools and the Assassins will be guarding this hole until we can get some masons in tomorrow. No-one is to go through, you understand?” “Yes, doctor.” “Very well.” “That’s Mr Downey,” said Gaspode, as Dr Cruces and the chief clown disappeared down the corridor. “Number two in the Assassins.” He scratched his ear. “He’d knock off old Cruces for tuppence if it wasn’t against the rules.” Angua trotted forward. Downey, who was wiping his forehead with a black handkerchief, looked down. “Hello, you’re new,” he said. He glanced at Gaspode. “And the mutt’s back, I see.” “Woof, woof,” said Gaspode, his stump of a tail thump-ing the floor. “Incident’ly,” he added for Angua’s benefit, he’s often good for a peppermint if you catch him in the right mood. He’s poisoned fifteen people this year. He’s almost as good with poisons as old Cruces.” “Do I need to know that?” said Angua. Downey patted her on the head. “Oh, Assassins shouldn’t kill unless they’re being paid. It’s these little tips that make all the difference.” Now Angua was in a position to see the door. There was a name written on a piece of card stuck in a metal bracket. Edward d’Eath. “Edward d’Eath,” she said. “There’s a name that tolls a bell,” said Gaspode. “Family used to live up Kingsway. Used to be as rich as Creosote.” “Who was Creosote?” “Some foreign bugger who was rich.” “Oh.” “But great-grandad had a terrible thirst, and grandad chased anything in a dress, his dress, you understand, and old d’Eath, well, he was sober and clean but lost the rest of the family money on account of having a blind spot when it came to telling the difference between a one and an eleven.” “I can’t see how that loses you money.” “It does if you think you can play Cripple Mr Onion with the big boys.” The werewolf and the dog padded back down the corridor. “Do you know anything about Master Edward?” said Angua. “Nope. The house was flogged off recently. Family debts. Haven’t seen him around.” “You’re certainly a mine of information,” she said. “I gets around. No-one notices dogs.” Gaspode wrinkled his nose. It looked like a withered truffle. “Blimey. Stinks of gonne, doesn’t it.” “Yes. Something odd about that,” said Angua. “What?” “Something not right.” There were other smells. Unwashed socks, other dogs, Dr Whiteface’s greasepaint, yesterday’s dinner – the scents filled the air. But the firework smell of what Angua was now automatically thinking of as the gonne wound around everything else, acrid as acid. “What’s not right?” “Don’t know . . . maybe it’s the gonne smell . . .” “Nah. That started off here. The gonne was kept here for years.” “Right. OK. Well, we’ve got a name. It might mean something to Carrot—” Angua trotted down the stairs. “ ‘Scuse me . . .” said Gaspode. “Yes?” “How can you turn back into a woman again?” “I just get out of the moonlight and . . . concentrate. That’s how it works.” “Cor. That’s all?” “If it’s technically full moon I can Change even during the day if I want to. I only have to Change when I’m in the moonlight.” “Get away? What about wolfbane?” “Wolfbane? It’s a plant. A type of aconite, I think. What about it?” “Don’t it kill you?” “Look, you don’t have to believe everything you hear about werewolves. We’re human, just like everyone else. Most of the time,” she added. By now they were outside the Guild and heading for the alley, which indeed they reached, but it lacked certain important features that it had included when they were last there. Most notable of these was Angua’s uniform, but there was also a world shortage of Foul Ole Ron. “Damn.” They looked at the empty patch of mud. “Got any other clothes?” said Gaspode. “Yes, but only back in Elm Street. This is my only uniform.” “You have to put some clothes on when you’re human?” “Yes.” “Why? I would have thought a nude woman would be at home in any company, no offence meant.” “I prefer clothes.” Gaspode sniffed at the dirt. “Come on, then,” he sighed. “We’d better catch up Foul Ole Ron before your chainmail becomes a bottle of Bearhugger’s, yes?” Angua looked around. The scent of Foul Ole Ron was practically tangible. “All right. But let’s be quick about it.” Wolfbane? You didn’t need daft old herbs to make your life a problem, if you spent one week every month with two extra legs and four extra nipples. There were crowds around the Patrician’s Palace, and outside the Assassins’ Guild. A lot of beggars were in evidence. They looked ugly. Looking ugly is a beggar’s stock in trade in any case. These looked uglier than necessary. The militia peered around a corner. “There’s hundreds of people,” said Colon. “And loads of trolls outside the Day Watch.” “Where’s the crowd thickest?” said Carrot. Anywhere the trolls are,” said Colon. He remembered himself. “Only joking,” he added. “Very well,” said Carrot. “Everyone follow me.” The babble stopped as the militia marched, lumbered, trotted and knuckled towards the Day Watch House. A couple of very large trolls blocked the way. The crowd watched in expectant silence. Any minute now, Colon thought, someone’s going to throw something. And then we’re all going to die. He glanced up. Slowly and jerkily, gargoyle heads were appearing along the gutters. No-one wanted to miss a good fight. Carrot nodded at the two trolls. They’d got lichen all over them, Colon noticed. “It’s Bluejohn and Bauxite, isn’t it?” said Carrot. Bluejohn, despite himself, nodded. Bauxite was tougher, and merely glared. “You’re just the sort I was looking for,” Carrot went on. Colon gripped his helmet like a size #10 limpet trying to crawl up into a size #1 shell. Bauxite was an avalanche with feet. “You’re conscripted,” said Carrot. Colon peeked out from under the brim. “Report to Corporal Nobbs for your weapons. Lance-Constable Detritus will administer the oath.” He stood back. “Welcome to the Citizens’ Watch. Remember, every lance-constable has a fieldmarshal’s baton in his knapsack.” The trolls hadn’t moved. “Ain’t gonna be inna Watch,” said Bauxite. “Officer material if ever I saw it,” said Carrot. “Hey, you can’t put them in the Watch!” shouted a dwarf from the crowd. “Why, hello, Mr Stronginthearm,” said Carrot. “Good to see community leaders here. Why can’t they be in the militia?” All the trolls listened intently. Stronginthearm realized that he was suddenly the centre of attention, and hesitated. “Well . . . you’ve only got the one dwarf, for one thing . . .” he began. “I’m a dwarf,” said Carrot, “technically.” Stronginthearm looked a little nervous. The whole issue of Carrot’s keenly embraced dwarfishness was a difficult one for the more politically minded dwarfs. “You’re a bit big,” he said lamely. “Big? What’s size got to do with being a dwarf?” Carrot demanded. “Um . . . a lot?” whispered Cuddy. “Good point,” said Carrot. “That’s a good point.” He scanned the faces. “Right. We need some honest, law-abiding dwarfs . . . you there . . .” “Me?” said an unwary dwarf. “Have you got any previous convictions?” “Well, I dunno . . . I suppose I used to believe very firmly that a penny saved is a penny earned—” “Good. And I’ll take . . . you two . . . and you. Four more dwarfs, yes? Can’t complain about that, eh?” “Ain’t gonna be inna Watch,” said Bauxite again, but uncertainty modulated his tone. “You trolls can’t leave now,” said Detritus. “Otherwise, too many dwarfs. That’s numbers, that is.” “I’m not joining any Watch!” said a dwarf. “Not man enough, eh?” said Cuddy. “What? I’m as good as any bloody troll any day!” “Right, that’s sorted out then,” said Carrot, rubbing his hands together. “Acting-Constable Cuddy?” “Sir?” “Hey,” said Detritus, “how come he suddenly full constable?” “Since he was in charge of the dwarf recruits,” said Carrot. “And you’re in charge of the troll recruits, Acting-Constable Detritus.” “I full acting-constable in charge of the troll recruits?” “Of course. Now, if you would step out of the way, Lance-Constable Bauxite—” Behind Carrot, Detritus drew a big proud breath. “Ain’t gonna—” “Lance-Constable Bauxite! You horrible big troll! You standing up straight! You saluting right now! You stepping out of the way of Corporal Carrot! You two troll, you come here! Wurn . . . two-er . . . tree . . . four-er! You in the Watch now! Aaargh, I cannot believe it what my eye it seeing! Where you from, Bauxite?” “Slice Mountain, but—” “Slice Mountain! Slice Mountain? Only . . .” Detritus looked at his fingers for a moment, and rammed them behind his back. “Only two-er things come from Slice Mountain! Rocks . . . an’ . . . an’ . . .” he struck out wildly, “other sortsa rocks! What kind you, Bauxite?” “What the hell’s going on here?” The Watch House door had opened. Captain Quirke emerged, sword in hand. “You two horrible troll! You raise your hand right now, you repeat troll oath—” “Ah, captain,” said Carrot. “Can we have a word?” “You’re in real trouble, Corporal Garret,” snarled Quirke. “Who do you think you are?” “I will do what I told—” “Don’t wanna be inna—” Wham! “I will do what I told—” “Just the man on the spot, captain,” said Carrot cheerfully. “Well, man on the spot, I’m the senior officer here, and you can damn well—” “Interesting point,” said Carrot. He produced his black book. “I’m relieving you of your command.” “—otherwise I get my goohuloog head kicked in.” “—otherwise I get my goohuloog head kicked in.” “Wha—? Are you mad?” “No, sir, but I’m choosing to believe that you are. There are regulations laid down for this eventuality.” “Where is your authority?” Quirke stared at the crowd. “Hah! I suppose you’ll say this armed mob is your authority, eh?” Carrot looked shocked. “No. The Laws and Ordinances of Ankh-Morpork, sir. It’s all down here. Can you tell me what evidence you have against the prisoner Coalface?” “That damn troll? It’s a troll!” “Yes?” Quirke looked around. “Look, I don’t have to tell you with everyone here—” “As a matter of fact, according to the rules, you do. That’s why it’s called evidence. It means “that which is seen”.” “Listen!” hissed Quirke, leaning towards Carrot. “He’s a troll. He’s as guilty as hell of something. They all are!” Carrot smiled brightly. Colon had come to know that smile. Carrot’s face seemed to go waxy and glisten when he smiled like that. “And so you locked him up?” “Right!” “Oh. I see. I understand now.” Carrot turned away. “I don’t know what you think you’re—‘ Quirke began. People hardly saw Carrot move. There was just a blur, a sound like a steak being thumped on a slab, and the captain was flat on the cobbles. A couple of members of the Day Watch appeared cautiously in the doorway. Everyone became aware of a rattling noise. Nobby was spinning the morningstar round and round on the end of its chain, except that because the spiky ball was a very heavy spiky ball, and because the difference between Nobby and a dwarf was species rather than height, it was more a case of both of them orbiting around each other. If he let go, it was an even chance that the target would be hit by a spiky ball or an unexploded Corporal Nobbs. Neither prospect pleased. “Tut it down, Nobby,” hissed Colon, “I don’t think they’re going to make trouble . . .” “I can’t let go, Fred!” Carrot sucked his knuckles. “Do you think that comes under the heading of “minimum necessary force”, sergeant?” he asked. He appeared to be genuinely worried. “Fred! Fred! What’ll I do?” Nobby was a terrified blur. When you are swinging a spiky ball on a chain, the only realistic option is to keep moving. Standing still is an interesting but brief demon- stration of a spiral in action. “Is he still breathing?” said Colon. “Oh, yes. I pulled the punch.” “Sounds minimum enough to me, sir,” said Colon loyally. “Fredddd!” Carrot reached out absent-mindedly as the morning-star rocketed past and caught it by the chain. Then he threw it against the wall, where it stuck. “You men in there in the Watch House,” he said, “come out now.” Five men emerged, edging cautiously around the prone captain. “Good. Now go and get Coalface.” “Er . . . he’s in a bit of a bad temper, Corporal Carrot.” “On account of being chained to the floor,” volunteered another guard. “Well, now,” said Carrot. “The thing is, he’s going to be unchained right now.” The men shuffled their feet nervously, possibly remembering an old proverb that fitted the occasion very well.[26] Carrot nodded. “I won’t ask you to do it, but I might suggest you take some time off,” he said. “Quirm is very nice at this time of year,” said Sergeant Colon helpfully. “They’ve got a floral clock.” “Er . . . since you mention it . . . I’ve got some sick leave coming up,” one of them said. “I should think that’s very probable, if you hang around,” said Carrot. They sidled off as fast as decency allowed. The crowd hardly paid them any attention. There was still a lot more mileage in watching Carrot. “Right,” said Carrot. “Detritus, you take some men and go and bring out the prisoner.” “I don’t see why—“ a dwarf began. “You shut up, you horrible man,” said Detritus, drunk with power. You could have heard a guillotine drop. In the crowd, a number of different-sized knobbly hands gripped a variety of concealed weapons. Everyone looked at Carrot. That was the strange thing, Colon remembered later. Everyone looked at Carrot. Gaspode sniffed a lamp-post. “I see Three-legged Shep has been ill again,” he said ‘And old Willy the Pup is back in town.” To a dog, a well-placed hitching post or lamp is a social calendar. “Where are we?” said Angua. Foul Ole Ron’s trail was hard to follow. There were so many other smells. “Somewhere in the Shades,” said Gaspode. “Sweethear Lane, smells like.” He snuffled across the ground. “Ah here he is again, the little . . .” “ ‘ullo, Gaspode . . .” It was a deep, hoarse voice, a kind of whisper wit? sand in it. It came from somewhere in an alley. “ ‘o’s yer fwiend, Gaspode?” There was a snigger. “Ah,” said Gaspode. “Uh. Hi, guys.” Two dogs emerged from the alley. They were huge. Their species was indeterminate. One of them was jet black and looked like a pit bull terrier crossed with a mincing machine. The other . . . the other looked like a dog whose name was almost certainly ‘Butch’. Both sop and bottom set of fangs had grown so large that he appeared to be looking at the world through bars. He was also bow-legged, although it would probably be a tad if not terminal move for anyone to comment on. Gaspode’s tail vibrated nervously. “These are my friends Black Roger and —” “Butch?” suggested Angua. “How did you know that?” “A lucky guess,” said Angua. The two big dogs had moved around so that they were e either side of them. “Well, well, well,” said Black Roger. “Who’s this, then?” “Angua,” said Gaspode. “She’s a —” “— wolfhound,” said Angua. The two dogs paced around them hungrily. “Big Fido know about her?” said Black Roger. “I was just —“ Gaspode began. “Well, now,” said Black Roger, “I reckon you’d be wanting to come with us. Guild night tonight.” “Sure, sure,” said Gaspode. “No problem there.” I could certainly manage either of them, Angua thought. But not both at once. Being a werewolf meant having the dexterity and jaw power to instantly rip out a man’s jugular. It was a trick of her father’s that had always annoyed her mother, especially when he did it just before meals. But Angua had never been able to bring herself to do it. She’d preferred the vegetarian option. “ ‘ullo,” said Butch, in her ear. “Don’t you worry about anything,” moaned Gaspode. “Me an’ Big Fido . . . we’re like that.” “What’re you trying to do? Cross your claws? I didn’t know dogs could do that.” “We can’t,” said Gaspode miserably. Other dogs slunk out of the shadows as the two of them were half led, half driven along byways that weren’t even alleys any more, just gaps between walls. They opened out eventually into a bare area, nothing more than a large light well for the buildings around it. There was a very large barrel on its side in one corner, with a ragged bit of blanket in it. A variety of dogs were waiting around in front of it, looking expectant; some of them had only one eye, some of them had only one ear, all of them had scars, and all of them had teeth. “You,” said Black Roger, “wait here.” “Do not twy to wun away,” said Butch, “ ‘cos having your intestines chewed often offends.” Angua lowered her head to Gaspode level. The little dog was shaking. “What have you got me into?” she growled. “This is the dog Guild, right? A pack of strays?” “Shsssh! Don’t say that! These aren’t strays. Oh, blimey.” Gaspode glanced around. “You don’t just get any hound in the Guild. Oh, dear me, no. These are dogs that have been . . .” he lowered his voice, “. . . er . . . bad dogs.” “Bad dogs?” “Bad dogs. You naughty boy. Give him a smack. You bad dog,” muttered Gaspode, like some horrible litany. “Every dog you see here, right, every dog . . . run away. Run away from his or her actual owner.” “Is that all?” “All? All ? Well. Of course. You ain’t exactly a dog. You wouldn’t understand. You wouldn’t know what it was like. But Big Fido . . . he told ‘em. Throw off your choke chains, he said. Bite the hand that feeds you. Rise up and howl. He gave ‘em pride,” said Gaspode, his voice a mixture of fear and fascination, “He told ‘em. Any dog he finds not bein’ a free spirit – that dog is a dead dog. He killed a Dobermann last week, just for wagging his tail when a human went past.” Angua looked at some of the other dogs. They were all unkempt. They were also, in a strange way, un-doglike. There was a small and rather dainty white poodle that still just about had the overgrown remains of its poodle cut, and a lapdog with the tattered remains of a tartan jacket still hanging from its shoulder. But they weren’t milling around, or squabbling. They had a uniform intent look that she’d seen before, although never on dogs. Gaspode was clearly trembling now. Angua slunk over to the poodle. It still had a diamante collar visible under the crusty fur. “This Big Fido,” she said, “is he some kind of wolf, or what?” “Spiritually, all dogs are wolves,” said the poodle, “but cynically and cruelly severed from their true destiny by the manipulations of so-called humanity.” It sounded like a quote. “Big Fido said that?” Angua hazarded. The poodle turned its head. For the first time she saw its eyes. They were red, and as mad as hell. Anything with eyes like that could kill anything it wanted because madness, true madness, can drive a fist through a plank. “Yes,” said Big Fido. He had been a normal dog. He’d begged, and rolled over, and heeled, and fetched. Every night he’d been taken for a walk. There was no flash of light when It happened. He’d just been lying in his basket one night and he’d thought about his name, which was Fido, and the name on the basket, which was Fido. And he thought about his blanket with Fido on it, and his bowl with Fido on it, and above all he brooded on the collar with Fido on it, and something somewhere deep in his brain had gone ‘click’ and he’d eaten his blanket, savaged his owner and dived out through the kitchen window. In the street outside a labrador four times the size of Fido had sniggered at the collar, and thirty seconds later had fled, whimpering. That had just been the start. The dog hierarchy was a simple matter. Fido had simply asked around, generally in a muffled voice because he had someone’s leg in his jaws, until he located the leader of the largest gang of feral dogs in the city. People – that is, dogs -still talked about the fight between Fido and Barking Mad Arthur, a rottweiler with one eye and a very bad temper. But most animals don’t fight to the death, only to the defeat, and Fido was impossible to defeat; he was simply a very small fast killing streak with a collar. He’d hung on to bits of Barking Mad Arthur until Barking Mad Arthur had given in, and then to his amazement Fido had killed him. There was something inexplicably determined about the dog – you could have sandblasted him for five minutes and what was left still wouldn’t have given up and you’d better not turn your back on it. Because Big Fido had a dream. “Is there a problem?” said Carrot. “That troll insulted that dwarf,” said Stronginthearm the dwarf. “I heard Acting-Constable Detritus give an order to Lance-Constable . . . Hrolf Pyjama,” said Carrot. “What about it?” “He’s a troll!” “Well?” “He insulted a dwarf!” “Actually, it’s a technical milit’ry term—“ said Sergeant Colon. “That damn troll just happened to save my life today,” shouted Cuddy. “What for?” “What for? What for? ‘Cos it was my life, that’s what for! I happen to be very attached to it!” “I didn’t mean—” “You just shut up, Abba Stronginthearm! What do you know about anything, you civilian! Why’re you so stupid? Aargh! I’m too short for this shit!” A shadow loomed in the doorway. Coalface was a basically horizontal shape, a dark mass of fracture lines and sheer surfaces. His eyes gleamed red and suspicious. “Now you’re letting it go!” moaned a dwarf. “This is because we have no reason to keep him locked up,” said Carrot. “Whoever killed Mr Hammerhock was small enough to get through a dwarf’s doorway. A troll his size couldn’t manage that.” “But everyone knows he’s a bad troll!” shouted Stronginthearm. “I never done nuffin,” said Coalface. “You can’t turn him loose now, sir,” hissed Colon. “They’ll set on him!” “I never done nuffin.” “Good point, sergeant. Acting-Constable Detritus!” “Sir?” “Volunteer him.” “I never done nuffin.” “You can’t do that!” shouted the dwarf. “Ain’t gonna be in no Watch,” growled Coalface. Carrot leaned towards him. “There’s a hundred dwarfs over there. With great big axes,” he whispered. Coalface blinked. “I’ll join.” “Swear him in, acting-constable.” “Permission to enrol another dwarf, sir? To maintain parity?” “Go ahead, Acting-Constable Cuddy.” Carrot removed his helmet and wiped his forehead. “I think that’s about it, then,” he said. The crowd stared at him. He smiled brightly. “No-one has to stay here unless they want to,” he said. “I never done nuffin.” “Yes . . . but . . . look,” said Stronginthearm. “If he didn’t kill old Hammerhock, who did?” “I never done nuffin.” “Our inquiries are proceeding.” “You don’t know!” “But I’m finding out.” “Oh, yes? And when, pray, will you know?” “Tomorrow.” The dwarf hesitated. “All right, then,” he said, with extreme reluctance. “Tomorrow. But it had better be tomorrow.” “All right,” said Carrot. The crowd dispersed, or at least spread out a bit. Trolls, dwarfs and humans alike, an Ankh-Morpork citizen is never keen on moving on if there’s some street theatre left. Acting-Constable Detritus, his chest so swollen with pride and pomposity that his knuckles barely touched the ground, reviewed his troops. “You listen up, you horrible trolls!” He paused, while the next thoughts shuffled into position. “You listen up good right now! You in the Watch, boy! It a job with opportunity!” said Detritus. “I only been doin’ it ten minute and already I get promoted! Also got education and training for a good job in Civilian Street! “This your club with a nail in it. You will eat it. You will sleep on it! When Detritus say Jump, you say . . . what colour! We goin’ to do this by the numbers! And I got lotsa numbers!” “I never done nuffin.” “You Coalface, you smarten up, you got a field-marshal’s button in your knapsack!” “Never took nuffin, neither.” “You get down now and give me thirty-two! No! Make it sixty-four!” Sergeant Colon pinched the bridge of his nose. We’re alive, he thought. A troll insulted a dwarf in front of a lot of other dwarfs. Coalface . . . I mean, Coalface, I mean, Detritus is Mr Clean by comparison . . . is free and now he’s a guard. Carrot laid out Mayonnaise. Carrot’s said we’ll sort it all out by tomorrow, and it’s dark already. But we’re alive. Corporal Carrot is a crazy man. Hark at them dogs. Everyone’s on edge, in this heat.   Angua listened to the other dogs howling, and thought about wolves. She’d run with the pack a few times, and knew about wolves. These dogs weren’t wolves. Wolves were peaceful creatures, on the whole, and fairly simple. Come to think of it, the leader of the pack had been rather like Carrot. Carrot fitted into the city in the same way he’d fitted into the high forests. Dogs were brighter than wolves. Wolves didn’t need intelligence. They had other things. But dogs . . . they’d been given intelligence by humans. Whether they wanted it or not. They were certainly more vicious than wolves. They’d got that from humans, too. Big Fido was forging his band of strays into what the ignorant thought a wolf pack was. A kind of furry killing machine. She looked around. Big dogs, little dogs, fat dogs, skinny dogs. They were all watching, bright-eyed, as the poodle talked. About Destiny. About Discipline. About the Natural Superiority of the Canine Race. About Wolves. Only Big Fido’s vision of wolves weren’t wolves as Angua knew them. They were bigger, fiercer, wiser, the wolves of Big Fido’s dream. They were Kings of the Forest, Terrors of the Night. They had names like Quickfang and Silverback. They were what every dog should aspire to. Big Fido had approved of Angua. She looked very much like a wolf, he said. They all listened, totally entranced, to a small dog who farted nervously while he talked and told them that the natural shape for a dog was a whole lot bigger. Angua would have laughed, were it not for the fact that she doubted very much if she’d get out of there alive. And then she watched what happened to a small rat-like mongrel which was dragged into the centre of the circle by a couple of terriers and accused of fetching a stick. Not even wolves did that to other wolves. There was no code of wolf behaviour. There didn’t need to be. Wolves didn’t need rules about being wolves. When the execution was over, she found Gaspode sitting in a corner and trying to be unobtrusive. “Will they chase us if we sneak off now?” she said. “Don’t think so. Meeting’s over, see?” “Come on, then.” They sauntered into an alley and, when they were sure they hadn’t been noticed, ran like hell. “Good grief,” said Angua, when they had put several streets between them and the crowd of dogs. “He’s mad, isn’t he?” “No, mad’s when you froth at the mouf,” said Gaspode. “He’s insane. That’s when you froth at the brain.” “All that stuff about wolves—” “I suppose a dog’s got a right to dream,” said Gaspode. “But wolves aren’t like that! They don’t even have names!” “Everyone’s got a name.” “Wolves haven’t. Why should they? They know who they are, and they know who the rest of the pack are. It’s all . . . an image. Smell and feel and shape. Wolves don’t even have a word for wolves! It’s not like that. Names are human things.” “Dogs have got names. I’ve got a name. Gaspode. “S’my name,” said Gaspode, a shade sullenly. “Well . . . I can’t explain why,” said Angua. “But wolves don’t have names.” The moon was high now, in a sky as black as a cup of coffee that wasn’t very black at all. Its light turned the city into a network of silver lines and shadows. Once upon a time the Tower of Art had been the centre of the city, but cities tend to migrate gently with time and Ankh-Morpork’s centre was now several hundred yards away. The tower still dominated the city, though; its black shape reared against the evening sky, contriving to look blacker than mere shadows would suggest. Hardly anyone ever looked at the Tower of Art, because it was always there. It was just a thing. People hardly ever look at familiar things. There was a very faint clink of metal on stone. For a moment, anyone close to the tower and looking in exactly the right place might have fancied that a patch of even blacker darkness was slowly but inexorably moving towards the top. For a moment, the moonlight caught a slim metal tube, slung across the figure’s back. Then it swung into shadow again as it climbed onwards. The window was resolutely shut. “But she always leaves it open,” Angua whined “Must have shut it tonight,” said Gaspode. “There’s a lot of strange people about.” “But she knows about strange people,” said Angua. “Most of them live in her house!” “You’ll just have to change back to human and smash the window.” “I can’t do that! I’d be naked!” “Well, you’re naked now, ain’t you?” “But I’m a wolf! That’s different!” “I’ve never worn anything in my whole life. It’s never bothered me.” “The Watch House,” muttered Angua. “There’ll be something at the Watch House. Spare chainmail, at least. A sheet or something. And the door doesn’t shut properly. Come on.” She trotted off along the street, with Gaspode whimpering along behind her. Someone was singing. “Blimey,” said Gaspode, “look at that.” Four Watchmen slogged past. Two dwarfs, two trolls. Angua recognized Detritus. “Hut, hut, hut! You without doubt the horriblest recruits I ever see! Pick up them feet!” “I never done nuffin!” “Now you doin somefin for the first time in your horrible life, Lance-Constable Coalface! It a man life in the Watch!” The squad rounded the corner. “What’s been going on?” said Angua. “Search me. I might know more if one of ‘em stops for a widdle.” There was a small crowd around the Watch House in Pseudopolis Yard. They seemed to be Watchmen, too. Sergeant Colon was standing under a flickering lamp, scribbling on his clipboard and talking to a small man with a large moustache. “And your name, mister?” “SILAS! CUMBERBATCH!” “Didn’t you used to be town crier?” “THAT’S RIGHT!” “Right. Give him his shilling. Acting-Constable Cuddy? One for your squad.” “WHO’S ACTING-CONSTABLE CUDDY?” said Cumberbatch. “Down here, mister.” The man looked down. “BUT YOU’RE! A DWARF! I NEVER—” “Stand to attention when you’re talking to a super-ierierior officer!” Cuddy bellowed. Ain’t no dwarfs or trolls or humans in the Watch, see,” said Colon. “Just Watchmen, see? That’s what Corporal Carrot says. Of course, if you’d like to be in Acting-Constable Detritus’ squad—” “I LIKE DWARFS,” said Cumberbatch, hurriedly. “ALWAYS HAVE. NOT THAT THERE ARE ANY IN THE WATCH, MIND,” he added, after barely a second’s thought. “You learn quick. You’ll go a long way in this man’s army,” said Cuddy. “You could have a field-marshal’s bottom in your napkin any day now. AAAAaabbbb-wut tn! Hut, hut, hut—” “Fifth volunteer so far,” said Colon to Corporal Nobbs, as Cuddy and his new recruit pounded off into the darkness. “Even the Dean at the University tried to join. Amazing.” Angua looked at Gaspode, who shrugged. “Detritus is certainly clubbing ‘em into line,” said Colon. “After ten minutes they’re putty in his hands. Mind you,” he added, “after ten minutes anything’s putty in them hands. Reminds me of the drill sergeant we had when I was first in the army.” “Tough, was he?” said Nobby, lighting a cigarette. “Tough? Tough? Blimey! Thirteen weeks of pure misery, that was! Ten-mile run every morning, up to our necks in muck half the time, and him yelling a blue streak and cussin’ us every living moment! One time he made me stay up all night cleaning the lawies with a toothbrush! He’d hit us with a spiky stick to get us out of bed! We had to jump through hoops for that man, we hated his damn guts, we’d have stuck one on him if any of us had the nerve but, of course, none of us did. He put us through three months of living death. But . . . y’know . . . after the passing-out parade . . . us looking at ourselves all in our new uniforms an’ all, real soldiers at last, seein’ what we’d become . . . well, we saw him in the bar and, well . . . I don’t mind telling you . . .” The dogs watched Colon wipe away the suspicion of a tear. “. . . Me and Tonker Jackson and Hoggy Spuds waited for him in the alley and beat seven kinds of hell out of him, it took three days for my knuckles to heal.” Colon blew his nose. “Happy days . . . Fancy a boiled sweet, Nobby?” “Don’t mind if I do, Fred.” “Give one to the little dog,” said Gaspode. Colon did, and then wondered why. “See?” said Gaspode, crunching it up in his dreadful teeth. “I’m brilliant. Brilliant.” “You’d better pray Big Fido doesn’t find out,” said Angua. “Nah. He won’t touch me. I worry him. I’ve got the Power.” He scratched an ear vigorously. “Look, you don’t have to go back in there, we could go and—” “No.” “Story of my life,” said Gaspode. “There’s Gaspode. Give him a kick.” “I thought you had this big happy family to go back to.” said Angua, as she pushed open the door. “Eh? Oh, yes. Right,” said Gaspode hurriedly. “Yes. But I like my, sort of, independence. I could stroll back home like a shot, any time I wanted.” Angua bounded up the stairs, and clawed open the nearest door. It was Carrot’s bedroom. The smell of him, a kind of golden-pink colour, filled it from edge to edge. There was a drawing of a dwarf mine carefully pinned to one wall. Another held a large sheet of cheap paper on which had been drawn, in careful pencil line, with many crossings-out and smudges, a map of the city. In front of the window, where a conscientious person would put it to take as much advantage as possible of the available light so’s not to have to waste too many of the city’s candles, was a small table. There was some paper on it, and a jar of pencils. There was an old chair, too; a piece of paper had been folded up and wedged under a wobbly leg. And that, apart from a clothes chest, was it. It reminded her of Vimes’ room. This was a place where someone came to sleep, not to live. Angua wondered if there was ever a time when anyone in the Watch was ever, really, off duty. She couldn’t imagine Sergeant Colon in civilian clothes. When you were a Watchman, you were a Watchman all the time, which was a bit of a bargain for the city since it only paid you to be a Watchman for ten hours of every day. “All right,” she said. “I can use a sheet off the bed. You shut your eyes.” “Why?” said Gaspode. “For decency’s sake!” Gaspode looked blank. Then he said, “Oh, I get it. Yes, I can see your point, def’nitely. Dear me, you can’t have me looking at a naked woman, oh no. Oggling. Gettin’ ideas. Deary deary me.” “You know what I mean!” “Can’t say I do. Can’t say I do. Clothing has never been what you might call a thingy of dog wossname.” Gaspode scratched his ear. “Two metasyntactic variables there. Sorry.” “It’s different with you. You know what I am. Anyway, dogs are naturally naked.” “So’re humans—” Angua changed. Gaspode’s ear flattened against his head. Despite himself, he whimpered. Angua stretched. “You know the worst bit?” she said. “It’s my hair. You can hardly get the tangles out. And my feet are covered in mud.” She tugged a sheet off the bed and draped it around herself as a makeshift toga. “There,” she said, “you see worse on the street every day. Gaspode?” “What?” “You can open your eyes now.” Gaspode blinked. Angua in both shapes was OK to look at, but the second or two in between, as the morphic signal hunted between stations, was not a sight you wished to see on a full stomach. “I thought you rolled around on the floor grunting and growing hair and stretching,” he whimpered. Angua peered at her hair in the mirror while her night vision lasted. “Whatever for?” “Does . . . all that stuff . . . hurt?” “It’s a bit like a whole-body sneeze. You’d think he’d have a comb, wouldn’t you? I mean, a comb? Everyone’s got a comb . . .” “A really . . . big . . . sneeze?” “Even a clothes brush would be something.” They froze as the door creaked open. Carrot walked in. He didn’t notice them in the gloom, but trudged to the table. There was a flare and a reek of sulphur as he lit first a match and then a candle. He removed his helmet, and then sagged as if he’d finally allowed a weight to drop on his shoulders. They heard him say: “It can’t be right!” “What can’t?” said Angua. Carrot spun around. “What’re you doing here?” “Your uniform got stolen while you were spying in the Assassins’ Guild,” Gaspode prompted. “My uniform got stolen,” said Angua, “while I was in the Assassins’ Guild. Spying.” Carrot was still staring at her. “There was some old bloke who kept muttering all the time,” she went on desperately. “Buggrit? Millennium hand and shrimp?” “Yes, that’s right—” “Foul Ole Ron.” Carrot sighed. “Probably sold it for a drink. I know where he lives, though. Remind me to go and have a word with him when I’ve got time.” “You don’t want to ask her what she was wearing when she was in the Guild,” said Gaspode, who had crept under the bed. “Shut up!” said Angua. “What?” said Carrot. “I found out about the room,” said Angua quickly. “Someone called—” “Edward d’Eath?” said Carrot, sitting down on the bed. The ancient springs went groing-groing-grink. “How did you know that?” “I think d’Eath stole the gonne. I think he killed Beano. But . . . Assassins killing without being paid? It’s worse than dwarfs and tools. It’s worse than clowns and faces. I hear Cruces is really upset. He’s got Assassins looking for the boy all over the city.” “Oh. Well. I’d hate to be in Edward’s shoes when they find him.” “I’d hate to be in his shoes now. And I know where they are, you see. They’re on his poor feet. And they’re dead.” “The Assassins have found him, then?” “No. Someone else did. And then Cuddy and Detritus did. If I’m any judge, he’s been dead for several days. You see? That can’t be right! But I rubbed the Beano make-up off and took off the red nose, and it was definitely him. And the wig’s the right kind of red hair. He must have gone straight to Hammerhock.” “But . . . someone shot at Detritus. And killed the beggar girl.” “Yes.” Angua sat down beside him. And it couldn’t have been Edward . . .” “Hah!” Carrot undid his breastplate and pulled off his mail shirt. “So we’re looking for someone else. A third man.” “But there’s no clues! There’s just some man with a gonne! Somewhere in the city! Anywhere! And I’m bred!” The springs went glink again as Carrot stood up and staggered over to the chair and table. He sat down, pulled a piece of paper towards him, inspected a pencil, sharpened it on his sword and, after a moment’s thought, began to write. Angua watched him in silence. Carrot had a short-sleeved leather vest under his mail. There was a birthmark at the top of his left arm. It was crown-shaped. “Are you writing it all down, like Captain Vimes did?” she said, after a while. “No.” “What are you doing, then?” “I’m writing to my mum and dad.” “Really?” “I always write to my mum and dad. I promised them. Anyway, it helps me think. I always write letters home when I’m thinking. My dad sends me lots of good advice, too.” There was a wooden box in front of Carrot. Letters were stacked in it. Carrot’s father had been in the habit of replying to Carrot on the back of Carrot’s own letters, because paper was hard to come by at the bottom of a dwarf mine. “What kind of good advice?” “About mining, usually. Moving rocks. You know. Propping and shoring. You can’t get things wrong in a mine. You have to do things right.” His pencil scritched on the paper. The door was still ajar, but there was a tentative tap on it which said, in a kind of metaphorical morse code, that the tapper could see very well that Carrot was in his room with a scantily clad woman and was trying to knock without actually being heard. Sergeant Colon coughed. The cough had a leer in it. “Yes, sergeant?” said Carrot, without looking around. “What do you want me to do next, sir?” “Send them out in squads, sergeant. At least one human, one dwarf and one troll in each.” “Yessir. What’ll they be doing, sir?” “They’ll be being visible, sergeant.” “Right, sir. Sir? One of the volunteers just now . . . it’s Mr Bleakley, sir. From Elm Street? He’s a vampire, well. technic’ly, but he works up at the slaughterhouse so it’s not really—” “Thank him very much and send him home, sergeant.” Colon glanced at Angua. “Yessir. Right,” he said reluctantly. “But he’s not a problem, it’s just that he needs these extra homogoblins in his bio—” “No!” “Right. Fine. I’ll, er, I’ll tell him to go away, then.” Colon shut the door. The hinge leered. “They call you sir,” said Angua. “Do you notice that?” “I know. It’s not right. People ought to think for themselves, Captain Vimes says. The problem is, people only think for themselves if you tell them to. How do you spell “eventuality”?” “I don’t.” “OK.” Carrot still didn’t look around. “We’ll hold the city together through the rest of the night, I think. Everyone’s seen sense.” No they haven’t, said Angua in the privacy of her own head. They’ve seen you. It’s like hypnotism. People live your vision. You-dream, just like Big Fido, only he dreamed a nightmare and you dream for everyone. You really think everyone is basically nice. Just for a moment, while they are near you, everyone else believes it too. From somewhere outside came the sound of marching knuckles. Detritus’ troop was making another circuit. Oh, well. He’s got to know sooner or later . . . “Carrot?” “Hmm?” “You know . . . when Cuddy and the troll and me pined the Watch – well, you know why it was us three, don’t you?” “Of course. Minority group representation. One troll, one dwarf, one woman.” “Ah.” Angua hesitated. It was still moonlight outside. She could tell him, run downstairs, Change and be well outside the city by dawn. She’d have to do it. She was an expert at running away from cities. “It wasn’t exactly like that,” she said. “You see, there’s a lot of undead in the city and the Patrician insisted that—” “Give her a kiss,” said Gaspode, from under the bed. Angua froze. Carrot’s face took on the usual vaguely puzzled look of someone whose ears have just heard what their brain is programmed to believe doesn’t exist. He began to blush. “Gaspode!” snapped Angua, dropping into Canine. “I know what I’m doin’. A Man, a Woman. It is Fate,” said Gaspode. Angua stood up. Carrot shot up too, so fast that his chair fell over. “I must be going,” she said. “Um. Don’t go—” “Now you just reach out,” said Gaspode. It’d never work, Angua told herself. It never does. Werewolves have to hang around with other werewolves, they’re the only ones who understand . . . But . . . On the other hand . . . since she ‘d have to run anyway . . . She held up a finger. “Just one moment,” she said brightly and, in one movement, reached under the bed and pulled out Gaspode by the scruff of his neck. “You need me!” the dog whimpered, as he was carried to the door. “I mean, what does he know? His idea of a good time is showing you the Colossus of Morpork! Put me—” The door slammed. Angua leaned on it. It’ll end up just like it did in Pseudopolis and Quirm and— “Angua?” said Carrot. She turned. “Don’t say anything,” she said. “And it might be all right.” After a while the bedsprings went glink. And shortly after that, for Corporal Carrot, the Disc-world moved. And didn’t even bother to stop to cancel the bread and newspapers. Corporal Carrot awoke around four a.m., that secret hour known only to the night people, such as criminals, policemen and other misfits. He lay on his half of the narrow bed and stared at the wall. It had definitely been an interesting night. Although he was indeed simple, he wasn’t stupid, and he’d always been aware of what might be called the mechanics. He’d been acquainted with several young ladies, and had taken them on many invigorating walks to see fascinating ironwork and interesting civic buildings until they’d unaccountably lost interest. He’d patrolled the Whore Pits often enough, although Mrs Palm and the Guild of Seamstresses were trying to persuade the Patrician to rename the area The Street of Negotiable Affection. But he’d never seen them in relation to himself, had never been quite sure, as it were, where he fitted in. This was probably not something he was going to write to his parents about. They almost certainly knew. He slid out of bed. The room was stifling hot with the curtains drawn. Behind him, he heard Angua roll over into the hollow left by his body. Then, with both hands, and considerable vigour, he threw open the curtains and let in the round, white light of the full moon. Behind him, he thought he heard Angua sigh in her sleep. There were thunderstorms out on the plain. Carrot could see lightning flashes stitching the horizon, and he could smell rain. But the air of the city was still and baking, all the hotter for the distant prospect of storms. The University’s Tower of Art loomed in front of him. He saw it every day. It dominated half the city. Behind him, the bed went glink. “I think there’s going to be—‘ he began, and turned. As he turned away, he missed the glint of moonlight on metal from the top of the tower.   Sergeant Colon sat on the bench outside the baking air of the Watch House. There was a hammering noise from somewhere inside. Cuddy had come in ten minutes before with a bag of tools, a couple of helmets and a determined expression. Colon was damned if he knew what the little devil was working on. He counted again, very slowly, ticking off names on his clipboard. No doubt about it. The Night Watch had almost twenty members now. Maybe more. Detritus had gone critical, and had sworn in a further two men, another troll and a wooden dummy from outside Corksock’s Natty Clothing Co.[27] If this went on they’d be able to open up the old Watch Houses near the main gates, just like the old days. He couldn’t remember when the Watch last had twenty men. It had all seemed a good idea at the time. It was certainly keeping the lid on things. But in the morning the Patrician was going to get to hear about it, and demand to see the superior officer. Now, Sergeant Colon was not entirely clear in his own mind who was the superior officer at the moment. He felt that it should be either Captain Vimes or, in some way he couldn’t quite define, Corporal Carrot. But the captain wasn’t around and Corporal Carrot was only a corporal, and Fred Colon had a dreadful apprehension that when Lord Vetinari summoned someone in order to be ironical at them and say things like ‘Who’s going to pay their wages, pray?” it would be him, Fred Colon, well and truly up the Ankh without a paddle. They were also running out of ranks. There were only four ranks below the rank of sergeant. Nobby was getting stroppy about anyone else being promoted to corporal, so there was a certain amount of career congestion taking place. Besides, some of the Watch had got it into their heads that the way you got promoted was to conscript half a dozen other guards. At Detritus’ current rate of progress, he was going to be High Supreme Major General by the end of the month. And what made it all strange was that Carrot was still only a— Colon looked up when he heard the tinkle of broken glass. Something golden and indistinct crashed through an upper window, landed in the shadows and fled before he could make out what it was. The Watch House door slammed open and Carrot emerged, sword in hand. “Where’d it go? Where’d it go?” “Dunno. What the hell was it?” Carrot stopped. “Uh. Not sure,” he said. “Carrot?” “Sarge?” “I should put some clothes on if I was you, lad.” Carrot stayed looking into the pre-dawn gloom. “I mean, I turned around and there it was, and—” He looked down at the sword in his hand as if he hadn’t realized that he was carrying it. “Oh, damn!” he said. He ran back to his room and grabbed his britches. As he struggled into them, he was suddenly aware of a thought in his head, clear as ice. You are a pillock, what are you? Picked up the sword automatically, didn’t you? Did it all wrong! Now she’s run off and you’ll never see her again! He turned. A small grey dog was watching him intently from the doorway. Shock like that, she might never Change back again said his thoughts. Who cares if she’s a werewolf? That didn’t bother you until you knew! Incident’ly, any biscuits about your person could be usefully thrown to the small dog in the doorway, although come to think of it the chances of having a biscuit on you right now are very small, so forget you ever thought it. Blimey, you really messed that up, right? . . thought Carrot. “Woof woof,” said the dog. Carrot’s forehead wrinkled. “It’s you, isn’t it?” he said, pointing his sword. “Me? Dogs don’t talk,” said Gaspode, hurriedly. “Listen, I should know. I am one.” “You tell me where she’s gone. Right now! Or . . .” “Yeah? Look,” said Gaspode gloomily, “the first thing I remember in my life, right, the first thing, was being thrown into the river in a sack. With a brick. Me. I mean, I had wobbly legs and a humorously inside-out ear, I mean, I was fluffy. OK, right, so it was the Ankh. OK, so I could walk ashore. But that was the start, and it ain’t never got much better, I mean, I walked ashore inside the sack, dragging the brick. It took me three days to chew my way out. Go on. Threaten me.” “Please?” said Carrot. Gaspode scratched his ear. “Maybe I could track her down,” said Gaspode. “Given the right, you know, encouragement.” He waggled his eyebrows encouragingly. “If you find her, I’ll give you anything you want,” said Carrot. “Oh, well. If. Right. Oh, yes. That’s all very well, is if. What about something up front? Look at these paws, hey? Wear and tear. And this nose doesn’t smell by itself. It is a finely tuned instrument.” “If you don’t start looking right away,” said Carrot, “I will personally—“ He hesitated. He’d never been cruel to an animal in his life. “I’ll turn the matter over to Corporal Nobbs,” he said. “That’s what I like,” said Gaspode bitterly. “Incentive.” He presssed his blotchy nose to the ground. It was all show, anyway. Angua’s scent hung in the air like a rainbow. “You can really talk?” said Carrot. Gaspode rolled his eyes. “ ‘Course not,” he said. The figure had reached the top of the tower. Lamps and candles were alight all over the city. It was spread out below him. Ten thousand little earthbound stars . . . and he could turn off any one he wanted, just like that. It was like being a god. It was amazing how sounds were so audible up here. It was like being a god. He could hear the howl of dogs, the sound of voices. Occasionally one would be louder than the rest, rising up into the night sky. This was power. The power he had below, the power to say: do this, do that . . . that was just something human, but this . . . this was like being a god. He pulled the gonne into position, clicked a rack of six bullets into position, and sighted at random on a light. And then on another one. And another one. He really shouldn’t have let it shoot that beggar girl. That wasn’t the plan. Guild leaders, that was poor little Edward’s plan. Guild leaders, to start with. Leave the city leaderless and in turmoil, and then confront his silly candidate and say: Go forth and rule, it is your destiny That was an old disease, that kind of thinking. You caught it from crowns, and silly stories. You believed . . . hah . . . you believed that some trick like, like pulling a sword from a stone was somehow a qualification for kingly office. A sword from a stone? The gonne was more magical than that. He lay down, stroked the gonne, and waited. Day broke. “I never touched nuffin,” said Coalface, and turned over on his slab. Detritus hit him over the head with his club. “Up you get, soldiers! Hand off rock and on with sock! It another beautiful day inna Watch! Lance-Constable Coalface, on your feet, you horrible little man!” Twenty minutes later a bleary-eyed Sergeant Colon surveyed the troops. They were slumped on the benches, except for Acting-Constable Detritus, who was sitting bolt upright with an air of official helpfulness. “Right, men,” Colon began, “now, as you—” “You men, you listen up good right now!” Detritus boomed. “Thank you, Acting-Constable Detritus,” said Colon wearily. “Captain Vimes is getting married today. We’re going to provide a guard of honour. That’s what we always used to do in the old days when a Watchman got wed. So I want helmets and breastplates bright and shiny. And cohorts gleaming. Not a speck of muck . . . where’s Corporal Nobbs?” There was a dink as Acting-Constable Detritus’ hand bounced off his new helmet. “Hasn’t been seen for hours, sir!” he reported. Colon rolled his eyes. “And some of you will . . . Where’s Lance-Constable Angua?” Dink. “No-one’s seen her since last night, sir.” “All right. We got through the night, we’re going to get through the day. Corporal Carrot says we’re to look sharp.” Dink. “Yes, sir!” “Acting-Constable Detritus?” “Sir?” “What’s that you’ve got on your head?” Dink. “Acting-Constable Cuddy made it for me, sir. Special clockwork thinking helmet.” Cuddy coughed. “These big bits are cooling fins, see? Painted black. I glommed a clockwork engine off my cousin, and this fan here blows air over—“ He stopped when he saw Colon’s expression. “That’s what you’ve been working on all night, is it?” “Yes, because I reckon troll brains get too—” The sergeant waved him into silence. “So we’ve got a clockwork soldier, have we?” said Colon. “We’re a real model army, we are.” Gaspode was geographically embarrassed. He knew where he was, more or less. He was somewhere beyond the Shades, in the network of dock basins and cattle-yards. Even though he thought of the whole city as belonging to him, this wasn’t his territory. There were rats here almost as big as he was, and he was basically a sort of terrier shape, and Ankh-Morpork rats were intelligent enough to recognize it. He’d also been kicked by two horses and almost run over by a cart. And he’d lost the scent. She’d doubled back and forth and used rooftops and crossed the river a few times. Werewolves were instinctively good at avoiding pursuit; after all, the surviving ones were descendants of those who could outrun an angry mob. Those who couldn’t outwit a mob never had descendants, or even graves. Several times the scent petered out at a wall or a low-roofed hut, and Gaspode would limp around in circles until he found it again. Random thoughts wavered in his schizophrenic doggy mind. “Clever Dog Saves The Day,” he muttered. “Everyone Says, Good Doggy. No they don’t, I’m only doing it ‘cos I was threatened. The Marvellous Nose. I didn’t want to do this. You Shall Have A Bone. I’m just flotsam on the sea of life, me. Who’s a Good Boy? Shut up.” The sun toiled up the sky. Down below, Gaspode toiled on. Willikins opened the curtains. Sunlight poured in. Vimes groaned and sat up slowly in what remained of his bed. “Good grief, man,” he mumbled. “What sort of time d’you call this?” “Almost nine in the morning, sir,” said the butler. “Nine in the morning? What sort of time is that to get up? I don’t normally get up until the afternoon’s got the shine worn off!” “But sir is not at work any more, sir.” Vimes looked down at the tangle of sheets and blankets. They were wrapped around his legs and knotted together. Then he remembered the dream. He’d been walking around the city. Well, maybe not so much a dream as a memory. After all, he walked the city every night. Some part of him wasn’t giving up; some part of Vimes was learning to be a civilian, but an old part was marching, no, proceeding to a different beat. He’d thought the place seemed deserted and harder to walk through than usual. “Does sir wish me to shave him or will sir do it himself?” “I get nervous if people hold blades near my face,” said Vimes. “But if you harness the horse and cart I’ll try and get to the other end of the bathroom.” “Very amusing, sir.” Vimes had another bath, just for the novelty of it. He was aware from a general background noise that the mansion was busily humming towards W-hour. Lady Sybil was devoting to her wedding all the directness of thought she’d normally apply to breeding out a tendency towards floppy ears in swamp dragons. Half a dozen cooks had been busy in the kitchens for three days. They were roasting a whole ox and doing amazing stuff with rare fruit. Hitherto Sam Vimes’ idea of a good meal was liver without tubes. Haute cuisine had been bits of cheese on sticks stuck into half a grapefruit. He was vaguely aware that prospective grooms were not supposed to see putative brides on the morning of the wedding, possibly in case they took to their heels. That was unfortunate. He’d have liked to have talked to someone. If he could talk to someone, it might all make sense. He picked up the razor, and looked in the mirror at the face of Captain Samuel Vimes. Colon saluted, and then peered at Carrot. “You all right, sir? You look like you could do with some sleep.” Ten o’clock, or various attempts thereof, began to boom around the city. Carrot turned away from the window. “I’ve been out looking,” he said. “Three more recruits this morning already,” said Colon. They’d asked to join ‘Mr Carrot’s army’. He was slightly worried about that. “Good.” “Detritus is giving ‘em very basic training,” said Colon. “It works, too. After an hour of him shouting in their ear, they do anything I tell ‘em.” “I want all the men we can spare up on the rooftops between the Palace and the University,” said Carrot. “There’s Assassins up there already,” said Colon. “And the Thieves’ Guild have got men up there, too.” “They’re Thieves and Assassins. We’re not. Make sure someone’s up on the Tower of Art as well—” “Sir?” “Yes, sergeant?” “We’ve been talking . . . me and the lads . . . and, well . . .” “Yes?” “It’d save a lot of trouble if we went to the wizards and asked them—” “Captain Vimes never had any truck with magic.” “No, but. . .” “No magic, sergeant.” “Yes, sir.” “Guard of honour all sorted out?” “Yes, sir. Their cohorts all gleaming in purple and gold, sir.” “Really?” “Very important, sir, good clean cohorts. Frighten the life out the enemy.” “Good.” “But I can’t find Corporal Nobbs, sir.” “Is that a problem?” “Well, it means the honour guard’ll be a bit smarter, sir.” “I’ve sent him on a special errand.” “Er . . . can’t find Lance-Constable Angua, either.” “Sergeant?” Colon braced himself. Outside, the bells were dying away. “Did you know she was a werewolf?” “Um . . . Captain Vimes kind of hinted, sir . . .” “How did he hint?” Colon took a step back. “He sort of said, “Fred, she’s a damn werewolf. I don’t like it any more than you do, but Vetinari says we’ve got to take one of them as well, and a werewolf’s better than a vampire or a zombie, and that’s all there is to it.” That’s what he hinted.” “I see.” “Er . . . sorry about that, sir.” “Just let’s get through the day, Fred. That’s all—” —abing, abing, a-bing-bong— “We never even presented the captain with his watch,” said Carrot, taking it out of his pocket. “He must have gone off thinking we didn’t care. He was probably looking forward to getting a watch. I know it always used to be a tradition.” “It’s been a busy few days, sir. Anyway, we can give it to him after the wedding.” Carrot slipped the watch back into its bag. “I suppose so. Well, let’s get organized, sergeant.”   Corporal Nobbs toiled through the darkness under the city. His eyes had got accustomed to the gloom now. He was dying for a smoke, but Carrot had warned him about that. Just take the sack, follow the trail, bring back the body. And don’t nick any jewellery. People were already filing into the Great Hall of Unseen University. Vimes had been firm about this. It was the only thing he’d held out for. He wasn’t exactly an atheist, because atheism was a non-survival trait on a world with several thousand gods. He just didn’t like any of them very much, and didn’t see what business it was of theirs that he was getting married. He’d turned down any of the temples and churches, but the Great Hall had a sufficiently churchy look, which is what people always feel is mandatory on these occasions. It’s not actually essential for any gods to drop in, but they should feel at home if they do. Vimes strolled down there early, because there’s nothing more useless in the world than a groom just before the wedding. Interchangeable Emmas had taken over the house. There were already a couple of ushers in place, ready to ask guests whose side they were on. And there were a number of senior wizards hanging around. They were automatically guests at such a society wedding, and certainly at the reception afterwards. Probably one roast ox wouldn’t be enough. Despite his deep distrust of magic, he quite liked the wizards. They didn’t cause trouble. At least, they didn’t cause his kind of trouble. True, occasionally they fractured the time/space continuum or took the canoe of reality too close to the white waters of chaos, but they never broke the actual law. “Good morning, Archchancellor,” he said. Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully, supreme leader of all the wizards in Ankh-Morpork whenever they could be bothered, gave him a cheery nod. “Good morning, captain,” he said. “I must say you’ve got a nice day for it!” “Hahaha, a nice day for it!” leered the Bursar. “Oh dear,” said Ridcully, “he’s off again. Can’t understand the man. Anyone got the dried frog pills?” It was a complete mystery to Mustrum Ridcully, a man designed by Nature to live outdoors and happily slaughter anything that coughed in the bushes, why the Bursar (a man designed by Nature to sit in a small room somewhere, adding up figures) was so nervous. He’d tried all sorts of things to, as he put it, buck him up. These included practical jokes, surprise early morning runs, and leaping out at him from behind doors while wearing Willie the Vampire masks in order, he said, to take him out of himself. The service itself was going to be performed by the Dean, who had carefully made one up; there was no official civil marriage service in Ankh-Morpork, other than something approximating to “Oh, all right then, if you really must.” He nodded enthusiastically at Vimes. “We’ve cleaned our organ especially for the occasion,” he said. “Hahaha, organ!” said the Bursar. “And a mighty one it is, as organs go—“  Ridcully stopped, and signalled to a couple of student wizards. “Just take the Bursar away and make him lie down for a while, will you?” he said. “I think someone’s been feeding him meat again.” There was a hiss from the far end of the Great Hall, and then a strangled squeak. Vimes stared at the monstrous array of pipes. “Got eight students pumping the bellows,” said Ridcully, to a background of wheezes. “It’s got three keyboards and a hundred extra knobs, including twelve with “?” on them.” “Sounds impossible for a man to play,” said Vimes politely. “Ah. We had a stroke of luck there—” There was a moment of sound so loud that the aural nerves shut down. When they opened again, somewhere around the pain threshold, they could just make out the opening and extremely bent bars of Fondel’s ‘Wedding March’, being played with gusto by someone who’d discovered that the instrument didn’t just have three keyboards but a whole range of special acoustic effects, ranging from Flatulence to Humorous Chicken Squawk. The occasional “oook!” of appreciation could be heard amidst the sonic explosion. Somewhere under the table, Vimes screamed at Ridcully: “Amazing! Who built it!” “I don’t know! But it’s got the name B.S. Johnson on the keyboard cover!” There was a descending wail, one last Hurdy-Gurdy Effect, and then silence. “Twenty minutes those lads were pumping up the reservoirs,” said Ridcully, dusting himself off as he stood op. “Go easy on the Vox Dei stop, there’s a good chap!” “Ook!” The Archchancellor turned back to Vimes, who was wearing the standard waxen pre-nuptial grimace. The hall was filling up quite well now. “I’m not an expert on this stuff,” he said, “but you’ve got the ring, have you?” “Yes.” “Who’s giving away the bride?” “Her Uncle Lofthouse. He’s a bit gaga, but she insisted.” “And the best man?” “What?” “The best man. You know? He hands you the ring and has to marry the bride if you run away and so on. The Dean’s been reading up on it, haven’t you, Dean?” “Oh, yes,” said the Dean, who’d spent all the previous day with Lady Deirdre Waggon’s Book of Etiquette. “She’s got to marry someone once she’s turned up. You can’t have unmarried brides flapping around the place, being a danger to society.” “I completely forgot about a best man!” said Vimes. The Librarian, who’d given up on the organ until it had some more puff, brightened up. “Ook?” “Well, go and find one,” said Ridcully. “You’ve got nearly half an hour.” “It’s not as easy as that, is it? They don’t grow on trees!” “Oook?” “I can’t think who to ask!” “Oook.” . The Librarian liked being best man. You were allowed to kiss bridesmaids, and they weren’t allowed to run away. He was really disappointed when Vimes ignored him. Acting-Constable Cuddy climbed laboriously up the steps inside the Tower of Art, grumbling to himself He knew he couldn’t complain. They’d drawn lots because, Carrot said, you shouldn’t ask the men to do anything you wouldn’t do yourself. And he’d drawn the short straw, harhar, which meant the tallest building. That meant if there was any trouble, he’d miss it. He paid no attention to the thin rope dangling from the trapdoor far above. Even if he’d thought about it . . . so what? It was just a rope. Gaspode looked up into the shadows. There was a growl from somewhere in the darkness. It was no ordinary dog growl. Early man had heard sounds like that in deep caves. Gaspode sat down. His tail thumped uncertainly. “Knew I’d find you sooner or later,” he said. “The old nose, eh? Finest instrument known to dog.” There was another growl. Gaspode whimpered a bit. “The thing is,” he said, “the thing is . . . the actual thing is, see . . . the thing what I’ve been sent to do . . .” Late man heard sounds like that, too. Just before he became late. “I can see you . . . don’t want to talk right now,” said Gaspode. “But the thing is . . . now, I know what you’re thinking, is this Gaspode obeyin’ orders from a human?” Gaspode looked conspiratorially over his shoulder, as if there could be anything worse than what was in front of him. “That’s the whole mess about being a dog, see ?” he said. “That’s the thing what Big Fido can’t get his mind around, see ? You looked at the dogs in the Guild, right ? You heard ‘em howl. Oh, yes, Death To The Humans, All Right. But under all that there’s the fear. There’s the voice sayin’: Bad Dog. And it don’t come from anywhere but inside, right from inside the bones, “cos humans made dogs. I knows this. I wish I didn’t, but there it is. That’s the Power, knowin’. I’ve read books, I have. Well, chewed books.” The darkness was silent. “And you’re a wolf and human at the same time, right? Tricky, that. I can see that. Bit of a dichotomy, sort of thing. Makes you kind of like a dog. “Cos that’s what a dog is, really. Half a wolf and half a human. You were right about that. We’ve even got names. Hah! So our bodies tell us one thing, our heads tell us another. It’s a dog’s life, being a dog. And I bet you can’t run away from him. Not really. He’s your master.” The darkness was more silent. Gaspode thought he heard movement. “He wants you to come back. The thing is, if he finds you, that’s it. He’ll speak, and you’ll have to obey. But if you goes back of your own accord, then it’s your decision. You’d be happier as a human. I mean, what can I offer you except rats and a choice of fleas? I mean, I don’t know, I don’t see it as much of a problem, you just have to stay indoors six or seven nights every month—” Angua howled. The hairs that still remained on Gaspode’s back stood on end. He tried to remember which was his jugular vein. “I don’t want to have to come in there and get you,” he said. Truth rang on every word. “The thing is . . . the actual thing is . . . I will, though,” he added, trembling. “It’s a bugger, bein’ a dog.” He thought some more, and sighed. “Oh, I remember. It’s the one in the throat,” he said.   Vimes stepped out into the sunlight, except that there wasn’t much of it. Clouds were blowing in from the Hub. And— “Detritus?” Dink. “Captain Vimes, sah!” “Who’re all these people?” “Watchmen, sir.” Vimes stared in puzzlement at the half-dozen assorted guards. “Who’re you?” “Lance-Constable Hrolf Pyjama, sir.” And y— Coalface?” “I never done nuffin.” “I never done nuffin, sah!” yelled Detritus. “Coalface? In the Watch?” Dink. “Corporal Carrot says there’s some good buried somewhere in everyone,” said Detritus. “And what’s your job, Detritus.” Dink. “Engineer in charge of deep mining operations, sah!” Vimes scratched his head. “That was very nearly a joke, wasn’t it?” he said. “It this new helmet my mate Cuddy made me, sir. Hah! People can’t say, there go stupid troll. They have to say, who that goodlooking military troll there, acting-constable already, great future behind him, he got Destiny written all over him like writing.” Vimes digested this. Detritus beamed at him. “And where is Sergeant Colon?” “Here, Captain Vimes.” “I need a best man, Fred.” “Right, sir. I’ll get Corporal Carrot. He’s just checking the roofs—” “Fred! I’ve known you more than twenty years! Good grief, all you have to do is stand there. Fred, you’re good at that!” Carrot appeared at the trot. “Sorry I’m late, Captain Vimes. Er. We really wanted this to be a surprise—” “What? What sort of surprise?” Carrot fished in his pouch. “Well, captain . . . on behalf of the Watch . . . that is, most of the Watch—” “Hold on a minute,” said Colon, “here comes his lordship.” The clop of hooves and the rattle of harness signalled the approach of Lord Vetinari’s carriage. Carrot glanced around at it. Then he looked at it again. And looked up. There was a glint of metal, on the roof of the Tower “Sergeant, who’s on the Tower?” he said. “Cuddy, sir.” “Oh. Right.” He coughed. “Anyway, captain . . . we all clubbed together and—“ He paused. “Acting-Constable Cuddy, right?” “Yeah. He’s reliable.” The Patrician’s carriage was halfway towards Sator Square now. Carrot could see the thin dark figure in the back seat. He glanced up at the great grey bulk of the tower. He started to run. “What’s up?” said Colon. Vimes started to run, too. Detritus’ knuckles hit the ground as he swung after the others. And then it hit Colon – a sort of frantic tingle, as though someone had blown on his naked brain. “Oh, shit,” he said, under his breath. Claws scrabbled on the dirt. “He drew his sword!” “What did you expect? One minute the lad is on top of the world, he’s got a whole new interest in his life, something probably even better than goin’ for walks, and then he turns round and what he sees is, basically, a wolf. You could of hinted. It’s that time of the month, that sort of thing. You can’t blame him for being surprised, really.” Gaspode got to his feet. “Now, are you going to come on out or have I got to come in there and be brutally savaged?” Lord Vetinari stood up as he saw the Watch running towards him. That was why the first shot went through his thigh, instead of his chest. Then Carrot cleared the door of the carriage and flung himself across the man, which is why the next shot went through Carrot. Angua slunk out. Gaspode relaxed slightly. “I can’t go back,” said Angua. “I—” She froze. Her ears twitched. “What? What?” “He’s been hurt!” Angua sprang away. “Here! Wait for me!” barked Gaspode. “That’s the Shades that way!”   A third shot knocked a chip out of Detritus, who slammed into the carriage, knocking it on its side and severing the traces. The horses scrambled away. The coachman had already made a lightning comparison between current job conditions and his rates of pay and had vanished into the crowd. Vimes slid to a halt behind the overturned carriage. Another shot spanged off the cobbles near his arm. “Detritus?” “Sir?” “How are you?” “Oozing a bit, sir.” A shot hit the carriage wheel above Vimes’ head, making it spin. “Carrot?” “Right through my shoulder, sir.” Vimes eased himself along on his elbows. “Good morning, your lordship,” he said, manically. He leaned back and pulled out a mangled cigar. “Got a light?” The Patrician opened his eyes. “Ah, Captain Vimes. And what happens now?” Vimes grinned. Funny, he thought, how I never feel really alive until someone tries to kill me. That’s when you notice that the sky is blue. Actually, not very blue right now. There’s big clouds up there. But I’m noticing them. “We wait for one more shot,” he said. “And then we run for proper cover.” “I appear . . . to be losing a lot of blood,” said Lord Vetinari. “Who would have thought you had it in you,” said Vimes, with the frankness of those probably about to die. “What about you, Carrot?” “I can move my hand. Hurts like . . . heck, sir. But you look worse.” Vimes looked down. There was blood all over his coat. “A bit of stone must have caught me,” he said. “I didn’t even feel it!” He tried to form a mental picture of the gonne. Six tubes, all in a line. Each one with its lead slug and charge of No.1 powder, delivered into the gonne like crossbow bolts. He wondered how long it’d take to put in another six . . . But we’ve got him where we want him! There’s only one way down out of the Tower! Yep, we might be sitting out here in the open with him shooting lead pellets at us, but we’ve got him just where we want him! Wheezing and farting nervously, Gaspode moved at a shambling run through the Shades and saw, with a heart that sank even further, a knot of dogs ahead of him. He pushed and squirmed through the tangle of legs. Angua was at bay in a ring of teeth. The barking stopped. A couple of large dogs moved aside, and Big Fido stepped delicately forward. “So,” he said, “what we have here is not a dog at all. A spy, perhaps? There’s always an enemy. Everywhere. They look like dogs but, inside, they’re not dogs. What were you doing?” Angua growled. Oh lor’, thought Gaspode. She could probably take down a few of ‘em, but these are street dogs. He wriggled under a couple of bodies and emerged in the circle. Big Fido turned his red-eyed gaze on him. “And Gaspode, too,” said the poodle. “I might have known.” “You leave her alone,” said Gaspode. “Oh? You’ll fight us all for her, will you?” said Big Fido. “I got the Power,” said Gaspode. “You know that. I’ll do it. I’ll use it.” “There’s no time for this!” snarled Angua. “You won’t do it,” said Big Fido. “I’ll do it.” “Every dog’s paw’ll be turned against you—” “I got the Power, me. You back off, all of you.” “What power?” said Butch. He was drooling. “Big Fido knows,” said Gaspode. “He’s studied. Now, me an’ her are going to walk out of here, right? Nice and slow.” The dogs looked at Big Fido. “Get them,” he said. Angua bared her teeth. The dogs hesitated. “A wolf’s got a jaw four times stronger’n any dog,” said Gaspode. “And that’s just a ordinary wolf—” “What are you all?” snapped Big Fido. “You’re the pack! No mercy! Get them!” But a pack doesn’t act like that, Angua had said. A pack is an association of free individuals. A pack doesn’t leap because it’s told – a pack leaps because every individual, all at once, decides to leap. A couple of the bigger dogs crouched . . . Angua moved her head from side to side, waiting for the first assault . . . A dog scraped the ground with its paw . . . Gaspode took a deep breath and adjusted his jaw. Dogs leapt. “SIT!” said Gaspode, in passable Human. The command bounced back and forth around the alley, and fifty per cent of the animals obeyed. In most cases, it was the hind fifty per cent. Dogs in mid-spring found their treacherous legs coiling under them— “BAD DOG!” —and this was followed by an overpowering sense of racial shame that made them cringe automatically, a bad move in mid-air. Gaspode glanced up at Angua as bewildered dogs rained around them. “I said I got the Power, didn’t I?” he said. “Now run!” Dogs are not like cats, who amusingly tolerate humans only until someone comes up with a tin opener that can be operated with a paw. Men made dogs, they took wolves and gave them human things – unnecessary intelligence, names, a desire to belong, and a twitching inferiority complex. All dogs dream wolf dreams, and know they’re dreaming of biting their Maker. Every dog knows, deep in his heart, that he is a Bad Dog . . . But Big Fido’s furious yapping broke the spell. “Get them!” Angua galloped over the cobbles. There was a cart at the other end of the alley. And, beyond the cart, a wall. “Not that way!” whined Gaspode. Dogs were piling along behind them. Angua leapt on to the cart. “I can’t get up there!” said Gaspode. “Not with my leg!” She jumped down, picked him up by the scruff of his neck, and leapt back. There was a shed roof behind the cart, a ledge above that and – a few tiles slid under her paws and tumbled into the alley – a house. “I feel sick!” “Futupf!” Angua ran along the ridge of the roof and jumped the alley on the other side, landing heavily in some ancient thatch. “Aargh!” “Futupf!” But the dogs were following them. It wasn’t as though the alleys of the Shades were very wide. Another narrow alley passed below. Gaspode swung perilously from the werewolf’s jaws. “They’re still behind us!” Gaspode shut his eyes as Angua bunched her muscles. “Oh, no! Not Treacle Mine Road!” There was a burst of acceleration followed by a moment of calmness. Gaspode shut his eyes . . . . . . Angua landed. Her paws scrabbled on the wet roof for a moment. Slates cascaded off into the street, and then she was bounding up to the ridge. “You can put me down right now,” said Gaspode. “Right now this minute! Here they come!” The leading dogs arrived on the opposite roof, saw the gap, and tried to turn. Claws slid on the tiles. Angua turned, fighting for breath. She’d tried to avoid breathing, during that first mad dash. She’d have breathed Gaspode. They heard Big Fido’s irate yapping. “Cowards! That’s not twenty feet across! That’s nothing to a wolf!” The dogs measured the distance doubtfully. Sometimes a dog has to get right down and ask himself: what species am I? “It’s easy! I’ll show you! Look!” Big Fido ran back a little way, paused, turned, ran . . . and leapt. There was hardly a curve to the trajectory. The little poodle accelerated out into space, powered less by muscles than by whatever it was that burned in his soul. His forepaws touched the slates, clawed for a moment on the slick surface, and found no hold. In silence he skidded backwards down the roof, over the edge— —and hung. He turned his eyes upwards, to the dog that was gripping him. “Gaspode? Is that you?” “Yeff,” said Gaspode, his mouth full. There was hardly any weight to the poodle but, then, there was hardly any weight to Gaspode. He’d darted forward and braced his legs to take the strain, but there was nothing much to brace them against. He slid down inexorably until his front legs were in the gutter, which began to creak. Gaspode had an amazingly clear view of the street, three storeys down. “Oh, hell!” said Gaspode. Jaws gripped his tail. “Let him go,” said Angua indistinctly. Gaspode tried to shake his head. “Stop ftruggling!” he said, out of the corner of his mouth. “Brave Dog Faves the Day! Valiant Hound in Wooftop Wefcue! No!” The gutter creaked again. It’s going to go, he thought. Story of my life . . . Big Fido struggled around. “What are you holding me up by?” “Yer collar,” said Gaspode, through his teeth. “What? To hell with that!” The poodle tried to twist, flailing viciously at the air. “Ftop it, you daft fbugger! You’ll haf uff all off!” Gaspode growled. On the opposite roof, the dog pack watched in horror. The gutter creaked again. Angua’s claws scored white lines on the slates. Big Fido wrenched and spun, fighting the grip of the collar. Which, finally, snapped. The dog turned in the air, hanging for a moment before gravity took hold. “Free!” And then he fell. Gaspode shot backwards as Angua’s paws slipped from under her, and landed further up the roof, legs spinning. Both of them made it to the crest and hung there, panting. Then Angua bounded away, clearing the next alley before Gaspode had stopped seeing a red mist in front of his eyes. He spat out Big Fido’s collar, which slid down the roof and vanished over the edge. “Oh, thank you!” he shouted. “Thank you very much’ Yes! Leave me here, that’s right! Me with only three good legs! Don’t you worry about me! If I’m lucky I’ll fall oft before I starve! Oh yes! Story of my life! You and me, kid. Together! We could have made it!” He turned and looked at the dogs lining the roofs or, the other side of the street. “You lot! Go home! BAD DOG!” he barked. He slithered down the other side of the roof. There was an alley there, but it was a sheer drop. He crept along the roof to the adjoining building, but there was no way down. There was a balcony a storey below, though. “Lat’ral thinking,” he muttered. “That’s the stuff. Now, a wolf, your basic wolf, he’d jump, and if he couldn’t jump, he’d be stuck. Whereas me, on account of uperior intelligence, can assess the whole wossname and arrive at a solution through application of mental processes.” He nudged the gargoyle squatting on the angle of the gutter. “Ot oo oo ont?” “If you don’t help me down to that balcony, I’ll widdk in your ear.” BIG FIDO? “Yes?” HEEL. There were, eventually, two theories about the end of Big Fido. The one put forward by the dog Gaspode, based on observational evidence, was that his remains were picked up by Foul Ole Ron and sold within five minutes to a furrier, and that Big Fido eventually saw the light of day again as a set of ear muffs and a pair of fleecy gloves. The one believed by every other dog, based on what might tentatively be called the truth of the heart, was that he survived his fall, fled the city, and eventually led a huge pack of mountain wolves who nightly struck terror into isolated farmsteads. It made digging in the middens and hanging around back doors for scraps seem . . . well, more bearable. They were, after all, only doing it until Big Fido came back. His collar was kept in a secret place and visited regularly by dogs until they forgot about it. Sergeant Colon pushed open the door with the end of his pike. The Tower had floors, a long time ago. Now it was hollow all the way up, criss-crossed by golden shafts of light from ancient window embrasures. One of them, filled with glittering motes of dust, lanced down on what, not long before, had been Acting-Constable Cuddy. Colon gave the body a cautious prod. It didn’t move. Nothing looking like that should move. A twisted axe lay beside it. “Oh, no,” he breathed. There was a thin rope, the sort the Assassins used, hanging down from the heights. It was twitching. Colon looked up at the haze, and drew his sword. He could see all the way to the top, and there was no-one on the rope. Which meant— He didn’t even look around, which saved his life. His dive for the floor and the explosion of the gonne behind him happened at exactly the same time. He swore afterwards that he felt the wind of the slug as it passed over his head. Then a figure stepped through the smoke and hit him very hard before escaping through the open door, into the rain. ACTING-CONSTABLE CUDDY? Cuddy brushed himself off. “Oh,” he said. “I see. I didn’t think I was going to survive that. Not after the first hundred feet.” YOU WERE CORRECT. The unreal world of the living was already fading, but Cuddy glared at the twisted remains of his axe. It seemed to worry him far more than the twisted remains erf Cuddy. And will you look at that?” he said. “My dad made that axe for me! A fine weapon to take into the afterlife, I don’t think!” IS THAT SOME KIND OF BURIAL CUSTOM? “Don’t you know? You are Death, aren’t you?” THAT DOESN’T MEAN I HAVE TO KNOW ABOUT BURIAL CUSTOMS. GENERALLY, I MEET PEOPLE BEFORE THEY’RE BURIED. THE ONES I MEET AFTER THEY’VE BEEN BURIED TEND TO BE A BIT OVER-EXCITED AND DISINCLINED TO DISCUSS THINGS. Cuddy folded his arms. “If I’m not going to be properly buried,” he said, “I ain’t going. My tortured soul will walk the world in torment.” IT DOESN’T HAVE TO. “It can if it wants to,” snapped the ghost of Cuddy. “Detritus! You haven’t got time to ooze! Get over to the Tower! Take some people with you!” Vimes reached the doorway of the Great Hall with the Patrician over his shoulder and Carrot stumbling along behind him. The wizards were clustered around the door. Big heavy drops of rain were beginning to fall, hissing on the hot stones. Ridcully rolled up his sleeves. “Hell’s bells! What did that to his leg?” “That’s the gonne for you! Sort him out! And Corporal Carrot too!” “There’s no need,” said Vetinari, trying to smile and stand up. “It’s just a flesh—” The leg collapsed under him. Vimes blinked. He’d never expected this. The Patrician was the man who always had the answers, who was never surprised. Vimes had a sense that history was flapping loose . . . “We can handle it, sir,” said Carrot. “I’ve got men on the roofs, and—” “Shut up! Stay here! That’s an order!” Vimes fumbled in his pouch and hung his badge on his torn jacket. “Hey, you . . . Pyjama! I need a sword!” Pyjama looked sullen. “I only take orders from Corporal Carrot—” “Give me a sword right now, you horrible little man! Right! Thank you! Now let’s get to the Tow—” A shadow appeared in the doorway. Detritus walked in. They looked at the limp shape in his hands. He laid it carefully on a bench, without saying a word, and went and sat in a corner. While the others gathered round the mortal remains of Acting-Constable Cuddy, the troll removed his homemade cooling helmet and sat staring at it, turning it over and over in his hands. “He was on the floor,” said Sergeant Colon, leaning against the doorframe. “He must have been pushed off the stairs right at the top. Someone else was in there, too Must’ve shinned down a rope and caught me a right bang on the side of the head.” “Being pushed down the Tower’s not worth it for a shilling,” said Carrot, vaguely. It was better when the dragon came, thought Vimes After it’d killed someone it was at least still a dragon. It went somewhere else but you could say: that’s a dragon, that is. It couldn’t nip over a wall and become just another person. You always knew what you were fighting. You didn’t have to— “What’s that in Cuddy’s hand?” he said. He realized he’d been staring at it without seeing it for some time. He tugged at it. It was a strip of black cloth. “Assassins wear that,” said Colon blankly. “So do lots of other people,” said Ridcully. “Black’s black.” “You’re right,” said Vimes. “Taking any action on the basis of this would be premature. You know, it’d probably get me fired.” He waved the cloth in front of Lord Vetinari. “Assassins everywhere,” he said, “on guard. Seems they didn’t notice anything, eh? You gave them the bloody gonne because you thought they were the best to guard it! You never thought of giving it to the guards!” “Aren’t we going to give chase, Corporal Carrot?” said Pyjama. “Chase who? Chase where?” said Vimes. “He hit old Fred on the head and did a runner. He could trot around a corner, chuck the gonne over a wall, and who’d know? We don’t know who we’re looking for!” “I do,” said Carrot. He stood up, holding his shoulder. “It’s easy to run,” he said. “We’ve done a lot of running. But that’s not how you hunt. You hunt by sitting still in the right place. Captain, I want the sergeant to go out there and tell people we’ve got the killer.” “What?” “His name is Edward d’Eath. Say we’ve got him in custody. Say he was caught and badly injured, but he’s alive.” “But we haven’t—” “He’s an Assassin.” “We haven’t—” “Yes, captain. I don’t like telling lies. But it might be worth it. Anyway, it’s not your problem, sir.” “It isn’t? Why not?” “You’re retiring in less than an hour.” “I’m still captain right now, corporal. So you have to tell me what’s going on. That’s how things work.” “We haven’t got time, sir. Do it, Sergeant Colon.” “Carrot, I still run the Watch! I’m the one supposed to give the orders.” Carrot hung his head. “Sorry, captain.” “Right. So long as that’s understood. Sergeant Colon?” “Sir?” “Put out the news that we’ve arrested Edward d’Eath. Whoever he is.” “Yessir.” “And your next move, Mr Carrot?” said Vimes. Carrot looked at the assembled wizards. - “Excuse me, sir?” “Ook?” “First, we need to get into the library—” “First,” said Vimes, “someone can lend me a helmet. I don’t feel I’m at work without a helmet. Thanks, Fred. Right . . . helmet . . . sword . . . badge. Now . . .” There was sound under the city. It filtered down by all sorts of routes, but it was indistinct, a hive noise. And there was the faintest of glows. The waters of the Ankh, to use the element in its broadest sense, had washed, to bend the definition to its limit, these tunnels for centuries. Now there was an extra sound. Footsteps padded over the silt, barely perceptible unless ears had become accustomed to the background noise. And an indistinct shape moved through the gloom, paused at a circle of darkness leading to a smaller tunnel . . . “How do you feel, your lordship?” said Corporal Nobbs the upwardly mobile. “Who are you?” “Corporal Nobbs, sir!” said Nobby, saluting. “Do we employ you?” “Yessir!” Ah. You’re the dwarf, are you?” “Nossir. That was the late Cuddy, sir! I’m one of the human beings, sir!” “You’re not employed as the result of any . . . special hiring procedures?” “Nossir,” said Nobby, proudly. “My word,” said the Patrician. He was feeling a little light-headed from loss of blood. The Archchancellor had also given him a long drink of something he said was a marvellous remedy, although he’d been unspecific as to what it cured. Verticality, apparently. It was wise to remain sitting upright, though. It was a good idea to be seen to be alive. A lot of inquisitive people were peering around the door. It was important to ensure that rumours of his death were greatly exaggerated. Corporal self-proclaimed-human Nobbs and some other guards had closed in around the Patrician, on Captain Vimes’ orders. Some of them were a lot bulkier than he rather muzzily remembered. “You there, my man. Have you taken the King’s Shilling?” he inquired of one. “I never took nuffin.” “Capital, well done.” And then the crowds scattered. Something golden and vaguely dog-like burst through, growling, its nose close to the ground. And was gone again, covering the ground to the library in long, easy strides. The Patrician was aware of conversation. “Fred?” “Yes, Nobby?” “Did that look a bit familiar to you?” “I know what you mean.” Nobby fidgeted awkwardly. “You should’ve bawled her out for not being in uniform,” he said. “Bit tricky, that.” “If I’d run through here without me clothes on, you’d fine me a half a dollar for being improperly dressed—” “Here’s half a dollar, Nobby. Now shut up.” Lord Vetinari beamed at them. Then there was the guard in the corner, another of the big lumpy ones— “Still all right, your lordship?” said Nobby. “Who’s that gentleman?” He followed the Patrician’s gaze. “That’s Detritus the troll, sir.” “Why is he sitting like that?” “He’s thinking, sir.” “He hasn’t moved for some time.” “He thinks slow, sir.” Detritus stood up. There was something about the way he did it, some hint of a mighty continent beginning a tectonic movement that would end in the fearsome creation of some unscalable mountain range, which made people stop and look. Not one of the watchers was familiar with the experience of watching mountain building, but now they had some vague idea of what it was like: it was like Detritus standing up, with Cuddy’s twisted axe in his hand. “But deep, sometimes,” said Nobby, eyeing various possible escape routes. The troll stared at the crowd as if wondering what they were doing there. Then, arms swinging, he began to walk forward. “Acting-Constable Detritus . . . er . . . as you were,” Colon ventured. Detritus ignored him. He was moving quite fast now, in the deceptive way that lava does. He reached the wall, and punched it out of the way. “Has anyone been giving him sulphur?” said Nobby. Colon looked around at the guard. “Lance-Constable Bauxite! Lance-Constable Coalface! Apprehend Acting-Constable Detritus!” The two trolls looked first at the retreating form of Detritus, then at one another, and finally at Sergeant Colon. Bauxite managed a salute. “Permission for leave to attend grandmother’s funeral, sir?” “Why?” “It her or me, sarge.” “We get our goohuloog heads kicked in,” said Coalface, the less circuitous thinker.   A match flared. In the sewers, its light was like a nova. Vimes lit first his cigar, and then a lamp. “Dr Cruces?” he said. The chief of Assassins froze. “Corporal Carrot here has a crossbow too,” he said. “I’m not sure if he’d use it. He’s a good man. He thinks everyone else is a good man. I’m not. I’m mean, nasty and tired. And now, doctor, you’ve had time to think, you’re an intelligent man . . . What were you doing down here, please? It can’t be to look for the mortal remains of young Edward, because our Corporal Nobbs has taken him off to the Watch morgue this morning, probably nicking any small items of personal jewellery he had on him, but that’s just Nobby’s way. He’s got a criminal mind, has our Nobby. But I’ll say this for him: he hasn’t got a criminal soul. “I hope he’s cleaned the clown make-up off the poor chap. Dear me. You used him, didn’t you? He killed poor old Beano, and then he got the gonne, and he was there when it killed Hammerhock, he even left a bit of his Beano wig in the timbers, and just when he could have done with some good advice, such as to turn himself in, you killed him. The point, the interesting point, is that young Edward couldn’t have been the man on the Tower a little while ago. Not with the stab wound in his heart and everything. I know that being dead isn’t always a barrier to quiet enjoyment in this city, but I don’t think young Edward has been up and about much. The piece of cloth was a nice touch. But, you know, I’ve never believed in that stuff – footprints in the flower bed, telltale buttons, stuff like that. People think that stuff’s policing. It’s not. Policing’s luck and slog, most of the time. But lots of people’d believe it. I mean, he’s been dead . . . what. . . not two days, and it’s nice and cool down here . . . you could haul him up, I daresay you could fool people who didn’t look too close once he was on a slab, and you’d have got the man who shot the Patrician. Mind you, half the city would be fighting the other half by then, I daresay. Some more deaths would be involved. I wonder if you’d care.” He paused. “You still haven’t said anything.” “You have no understanding,” said Cruces. “Yes?” “d’Eath was right. He was mad, but he was right.” “About what, Dr Cruces?” said Vimes. And then the Assassin was gone, diving into a shadow. “Oh, no,” said Vimes. A whisper echoed around the man-made cavern. “Captain Vimes? One thing a good Assassin learns is—” There was a thunderous explosion, and the lamp disintegrated. “—never stand near the light.” Vimes hit the floor and rolled. Another shot hit a foot away, and he felt the splash of cold water. There was water under him, too. The Ankh was rising and, in accordance with laws older than those of the city, the water was finding its way back up the tunnels. “Carrot,” Vimes whispered. “Yes?” The voice came from somewhere in the pitch blackness to his right. “I can’t see a thing. I lost my night vision lighting that damn lamp.” “I can feel water coming in.” “We—“ Vimes began, and stopped as he formed a mental picture of the hidden Cruces aiming at a patch of sound. I should have shot him first, he thought. He’s an Assassin! He had to raise himself slightly to keep his face out of the rising water. Then he heard a gentle splashing. Cruces was walking towards them. There was a scratching noise, and then light. Cruces had lit a torch, and Vimes looked up to see the skinny shape in the glow. His other hand was steadying the gonne. Something Vimes had learned as a young guard drifted up from memory. If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you entirely at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you’re going to die. So they’ll talk. They’ll gloat. They’ll watch you squirm. They’ll put off the moment of murder like another man will put off a good cigar. So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word. Then, to his everlasting horror, he heard Carrot stand up. “Dr Cruces, I arrest you for the murder of Bjorn Hammerhock, Edward d’Eath, Beano the clown, Let-tice Knibbs and Acting-Constable Cuddy of the City Watch.” “Dear me, all those? I’m afraid Edward killed Brother Beano. That was his own idea, the little fool. He said he hadn’t meant to. And I understand that Hammerhock was killed accidentally. A freak accident. He poked around and the charge fired and the slug bounced off his anvil and killed him. That’s what Edward said. He came to see me afterwards. He was very upset. Made a clean breast of the whole thing, you know. So I killed him. Well, what else could I do? He was quite mad. There’s no dealing with that sort of person. May I suggest you step back, sire? I’d prefer not to shoot you. No! Not unless I have to!” It seemed to Vimes that Cruces was arguing with himself. The gonne swung violently. “He was babbling,” said Cruces. “He said the gonne killed Hammerhock. I said, it was an accident? And he said no, no accident, the gonne killed Hammerhock.” Carrot took another step forward. Cruces seemed to be in his own world now. “No! The gonne killed the beggar girl, too. It wasn’t me! Why should I do a thing like that?” Cruces took a step back, but the gonne swung up towards Carrot. It looked to Vimes as though it moved of its own accord, like an animal sniffing the air . . . “Get down!” Vimes hissed. He reached out and tried to find his crossbow. “He said the gonne was jealous! Hammerhock would have made more gonnes! Stop where you are!” Carrot took another step. “I had to kill Edward! He was a romantic, he would have got it wrong! But Ankh-Morpork needs a king!” The gun jerked and fired at the same moment as Carrot leapt sideways. The tunnels were brilliant with smells, mostly the acrid yellows and earthy oranges of ancient drains. And there were hardly any air currents to disturb things; the line that was Cruces snaked through the heavy air. And there was the smell of the gonne, as vivid as a wound. I smelled gonne in the Guild, she thought, just after Cruces walked past. And Gaspode said that was all right, because the gonne had been in the Guild – but it hadn’t been fired in the Guild. I smelled it because someone there had fired the thing. She splashed through the water into the big cavern and saw, with her nose, the three of them – the indistinct figure that smelled of Vimes, the falling figure that was Carrot, the turning shape with the gonne . . . And then she stopped thinking with her head and let her body take over. Wolf muscle drove her forward and up into a leap, water droplets flying from her mane, her eyes fixed on Cruces’ neck. The gonne fired, four times. It didn’t miss once. She hit the man heavily, knocking him backwards. Vimes rose in an explosion of spray. “Six shots! That’s six shots, you bastard! I’ve got you now!” Cruces turned as Vimes waded towards him, and scurried towards a tunnel, throwing up more spray. Vimes snatched the bow from Carrot, aimed desperately and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. “Carrot! You idiot! You never cocked the damn thing!” Vimes turned. “Come on, man! We can’t let him get away!” “It’s Angua, captain.” “What?” “She’s dead!” “Carrot! Listen. Can you find the way out in this stuff? No! So come with me!” “I . . . can’t leave her here. I—” “Corporal Carrot! Follow me!” Vimes half ran, half waded through the rising water towards the tunnel that had swallowed Cruces. It was up a slope; he could feel the water dropping as he ran. Never give the quarry time to rest. He’d learned that on his first day in the Watch. If you had to chase, then stay with it. Give the pursued time to stop and think and you’d go round a corner to find a sock full of sand coming the other way. The walls and ceiling were closing in. There were other tunnels here. Carrot had been right. Hundreds of people must have worked for years to build this. What Ankh-Morpork was built on was Ankh-Morpork. Vimes stopped. There was no sound of splashing, and tunnel mouths all around. Then there was a flash of light, up a side tunnel. Vimes scrambled towards it, and saw a pair of legs in a shaft of light from an open trapdoor. He launched himself at them, and caught a boot just as it was disappearing into the room above. It kicked at him, and he heard Cruces hit the floor. Vimes grabbed the edge of the hatchway and struggled through it. This wasn’t a tunnel. It looked like a cellar. He slipped on mud and hit a wall clammy with slime. What was Ankh-Morpork built on? Right. . . Cruces was only a few yards away, scrambling and slipping up a flight of steps. There had been a door at the top but it had long ago rotted. There were more steps, and more rooms. Fire and flood, flood and rebuilding. Rooms had become cellars, cellars had become foundations. It wasn’t an elegant pursuit; both men slithered and fell, clambered up again, fought their way through hanging curtains of slime. Cruces had left candles here and there. They gave just enough light to make Vimes wish they didn’t. And then there was dry stone underfoot and this wasn’t a door, but a hole knocked through a wall. And there were barrels, and sticks of furniture, ancient stuff that had been locked up and forgotten. Cruces was lying a few feet away, fighting for breath and hammering another rack of pipes into the gonne. Vimes managed to pull himself up on to his hands and knees, and gulped air. There was a candle wedged into the wall nearby. “Got. . . you,” he panted. Cruces tried to get to his feet, still clutching the gonne. “You’re . . . too old . . . to run . . .” Vimes managed. Cruces made it up upright, and lurched away. Vimes thought about it. “I’m too old to run,” he added, and leapt. The two men rolled in the dust, the gonne between them. It struck Vimes much later that the last thing any man of sense would do was fight an Assassin. They had concealed weapons everywhere. But Cruces wasn’t going to let go of the gonne. He held it grimly in both hands, trying to hit Vimes with the barrel or the butt. Curiously enough, Assassins learned hardly any unarmed combat. They were generally good enough at armed combat not to need it. Gentlemen bore arms; only the lower classes used their hands. “I’ve got you,” Vimes panted. “You’re under arrest. Be under arrest, will you?” But Cruces wouldn’t let go. Vimes didn’t dare let go; the gonne would be twisted out of his grip. It was pulled backwards and forwards between them in desperate, grunting concentration. The gonne exploded. There was a tongue of red fire, a firework stink and a zing-zing noise from three walls. Something struck Vimes’ helmet and zinged away towards the ceiling. Vimes stared at Cruces’ contorted features. Then he lowered his head and yanked the gonne hard. The Assassin screamed and let go, clutching at his nose. Vimes rolled back, gonne in both hands. It moved. Suddenly the stock was against his shoulder and his finger was on the trigger. You’re mine. We don’t need him any more. The shock of the voice was so great that he cried out. He swore afterwards that he didn’t pull the trigger. It moved of its own accord, pulling his finger with it. The gonne slammed into his shoulder and a six-inch hole appeared in the wall by the Assassin’s head, spraying him with plaster. Vimes was vaguely aware, through the red mist rising around his vision, of Cruces staggering to a door and lurching through it, slamming it behind him. All that you hate, all that is wrong – I can put it right. Vimes reached the door, and tried the handle. It was locked. He brought the gonne around, not aware of thinking, and let the trigger pull his finger again. A large area of the door and frame became a splinter-bordered hole. Vimes kicked the rest of it away and followed the gonne. He was in a passageway. A dozen young men were looking at him in astonishment from half-open doors. They were all wearing black. He was inside the Assassins’ Guild. A trainee Assassin looked at Vimes with his nostrils. “Who are you, pray?” The gonne swung towards him. Vimes managed to haul the barrel upwards just as it fired, and the shot took away a lot Of ceiling. “The law, you sons of bitchesl’ he shouted. They stared at him. Shoot them all. Clean up the world. “Shut up!” Vimes, a red-eyed, dust-coated, slime-dripping thing from out of the earth, glared at the quaking student. “Where did Cruces go?” The mist rolled around his head. His hand creaked with the effort of not firing. The young man jerked a finger urgently towards a flight of stairs. He’d been standing very close when the gonne fired. Plaster dust draped him like devil’s dandruff. The gonne sped away again, dragging Vimes past the boys and up the stairs, where black mud still trailed. There was another corridor there. Doors were opening. Doors closed again after the gonne fired again, smashing a chandelier. The corridor gave out on to a wide landing at the top of a much more impressive flight of stairs and, opposite, a big oaken door. Vimes shot the lock off, kicked at the door and then fought the gonne long enough to duck. A crossbow bolt whirred over his head and hit someone, far down the corridor. Shoot him! SHOOT HIM! Cruces was standing by his desk, feverishly trying to slot another bolt into his bow— Vimes tried to silence the singing in his ears. But . . . why not? Why not fire? Who was this man? He’d always wanted to make the city a cleaner place, and he might as well start here. And then people would find out what the law was . . . Clean up the world. Noon started. The cracked bronze bell in the Teachers’ Guild began the chime, and had midday all to itself for at least seven clangs before the Guild of Bakers’ clock, running fast, caught up with it. Cruces straightened up, and began to edge towards the cover of one of the stone pillars. “You can’t shoot me,” he said, watching the gonne. “I know the law. And so do you. You’re a guard. You can’t shoot me in cold blood.” Vimes squinted along the barrel. It’d be so easy. The trigger tugged at his finger. A third bell began chiming. “You can’t just kill me. That’s the law. And you’re a guard,” Dr Cruces repeated. He licked his dry lips. The barrel lowered a little. Cruces almost relaxed. “Yes. I am a guard.” The barrel rose again, pointed at Cruces’ forehead. “But when the bells stop,” said Vimes, quietly, “I won’t be a guard any more.” Shoot him! SHOOT HIM! Vimes forced the butt under his arm, so that he had one hand free. “We’ll do it by the rules,” he said. “By the rules. Got to do it by the rules.” Without looking down, he tugged his badge off the remains of his jacket. Even through the mud, it still had a gleam. He’d always kept it polished. When he spun it once or twice, like a coin, the copper caught the light. Cruces watched it like a cat. The bells were slackening. Most of the towers had stopped. Now there was only the sound of the gong on the Temple of Small Gods, and the bells of the Assassins’ Guild, which were always fashionably late. The gong stopped. Dr Cruces put the crossbow, neatly and meticulously, on the desk beside him. “There! I’ve put it down!” “Ah,” said Vimes. “But I want to make sure you don’t pick it up again.” The black bell of the Assassins’ Guild hammered its way to noon. And stopped. Silence slammed in like a thunderclap. The little metallic sound as Vimes’ badge bounced on the floor filled it from edge to edge. He raised the gonne and, gently, let the tension ease out of his hand. A bell started. It was a tinny, jolly little tune, barely to be heard at all except in this pool of silence . . . Cling, bing, a-bing, bong . . . . . . but much more accurate than hourglasses, water-clocks and pendulums. “Put down the gonne, captain,” said Carrot, climbing slowly up the stairs. He held his sword in one hand, and the presentation watch in the other. . . . bing, bing, a-bing, ding . . . Vimes didn’t move. “Put it down. Put it down now, captain.” “I can wait out another bell,” said Vimes . . . a-bing, a-bing . . . “Can’t let you do that, captain. It’d be murder.” . . . clong, a-bing . . . “You’ll stop me, will you?” “Yes.” . . . bing . . . bing . . . Vimes turned his head slightly. “He killed Angua. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?” . . . bing . . . bing . . . bing . . . bing . . . Carrot nodded. “Yes. But personal isn’t the same as important.” Vimes looked along his arm. The face of Dr Cruces, mouth open in terror, pivoted on the tip of the barrel. . . . bing . . . bing . . . bing . . . bing . . . bing . . . “Captain Vimes?” . . . bing. “Captain? Badge 177, captain. It’s never had more than dirt on it.” The pounding spirit of the gonne flowing up Vimes’ arms met the armies of sheer stone-headed Vimesness surging the other way. “I should put it down, captain. You don’t need it,” said Carrot, like someone speaking to a child. Vimes stared at the thing in his hands. The screaming was muted now. “Put that down now, Watchman! That’s an order!” The gonne hit the floor. Vimes saluted, and then realized what he was doing. He blinked at Carrot. “Personal isn’t the same as important?” he said. “Listen,” Cruces said, “I’m sorry about the . . . the girl, that was an accident, but I only wanted— There’s evidence! There’s a—” Cruces was hardly paying any attention to the Watchmen. He pulled a leather satchel off the table and waved it at them. “It’s here! All of it, sire! Evidence! Edward was stupid, he thought it was all crowns and ceremony, he had no idea what he’d found! And then, last night, it was as if—” “I’m not interested,” mumbled Vimes. “The city needs a king!” “It does not need murderers,” said Carrot. “But—” And then Cruces dived for the gonne and scooped it up. One moment Vimes was trying to reassemble his thoughts, and the next they were fleeing to far corners of his consciousness. He was looking into the mouth of the gonne. It grinned at him. Cruces slumped against the pillar, but the gonne remained steady, pointing itself at Vimes. “It’s all there, sire,” he said. “Everything written down. The whole thing. Birthmarks and prophecies and genealogy and everything. Even your sword. It’s the sword!” “Really?” said Carrot. “May I see?” Carrot lowered his sword and, to Vimes’ horror, walked over to the desk and pulled the bundle of documents out of the case. Cruces nodded approvingly, as if rewarding a good boy. Carrot read a page, and turned to the next one. “This is interesting,” he said. “Exactly. But now we must remove this annoying policeman,” said Cruces. Vimes felt that he could see all the way along the tube, to the little slug of metal that was soon to launch itself at him . . . “It’s a shame,” said Cruces, “if only you had—” Carrot stepped in front of the gonne. His arm moved in a blur. There was hardly a sound. Pray you never face a good man, Vimes thought. He’ll kill you with hardly a word. Cruces looked down. There was blood on his shirt. He raised a hand to the sword hilt protruding from his chest, and looked back up into Carrot’s eyes. “But why? You could have been—” And he died. The gonne fell from his hands, and fired at the floor. There was silence. Carrot grasped the hilt of his sword and pulled it back. The body slumped. Vimes leaned on the table and fought to get his breath back. “Damn . . . his . . . hide,” he panted. “Sir?” “He . . . he called you sire,” he said. “What was in that—” “You’re late, captain,” said Carrot. “Late? Late? What do you mean?” Vimes fought to prevent his brain parting company with reality. “You were supposed to have been married—“ Carrot looked at the watch, then snapped it shut and handed it to Vimes. “—two minutes ago.” “Yes, yes. But he called you sire, I heard him—” “Just a trick of the echo, I expect, Mr Vimes.” A thought broke through to Vimes’ attention. Carrot’s sword was a couple of feet long. He’d run Cruces clean through. But Cruces had been standing with his back to— Vimes looked at the pillar. It was granite, and a foot thick. There was no cracking. There was just a blade-shaped hole, front to back. “Carrot—“ he began. “And you look a mess, sir. Got to get you cleaned up.” Carrot pulled the leather satchel towards him and slung it over his shoulder. “Carrot—” “Sir?” “I order you to give—” “No, sir. You can’t order me. Because you are now, sir, no offence meant, a civilian. It’s a new life.” “A civilian?” Vimes rubbed his forehead. It was all colliding in his brain now – the gonne, the sewers, Carrot and the fact that he’d been operating on pure adrenalin, which soon presents its bill and does not give credit. He sagged. “But this is my life. Carrot! This is my job.” “A hot bath and a drink, sir. That’s what you need,” said Carrot. “Do you a world of good. Let’s go.” Vimes’ gaze took in the fallen body of Cruces and, then, the gonne. He went to pick it up, and stopped himself in time. Not even the wizards had something like this. One burst from a staff and they had to go and lie down. No wonder no-one had destroyed it. You couldn’t destroy something as perfect as this. It called out to something deep in the soul. Hold it in your hand, and you had power. More power than any bow or spear – they just stored up your own muscles’ power, when you thought about it. But the gonne gave you power from outside. You didn’t use it, it used you. Cruces had probably been a good man. He’d probably listened kindly enough to Edward, and then he’d taken the gonne, and he’d belonged to it as well. “Captain Vimes? I think we’d better get that out of here,” said Carrot, reaching down. “Whatever you do, don’t touch it!” Vimes warned. “Why not? It’s only a device,” said Carrot. He picked up the gonne by the barrel, regarded it for a moment, and then smashed it against the wall. Bits of metal pin-wheeled away. “One of a kind,” he said. “One of a kind is always special, my father used to say. Let’s be going.” He opened the door. He shut the door. “There’s about a hundred Assassins at the bottom of the stairs,” he said. “How many bolts have you got for your bow?” said Vimes. He was still staring at the twisted gonne. “One.” “Then it’s a good thing you won’t have any chance to reload anyway.” There was a polite knock at the door. Carrot glanced at Vimes, who shrugged. He opened the door. It was Downey. He raised an empty hand. “You can put down your weapons. I assure you they will not be necessary. Where is Dr Cruces?” Carrot pointed. Ah.” He glanced up at the two Watchmen. “Would you, please, leave his body with us? We will inhume him in our crypt.” Vimes pointed at the body. “He killed—” And now he is dead. And now I must ask you to leave.” Downey opened the door. Assassins lined the wide stairs. There wasn’t a weapon in sight. But, with Assassins, there didn’t need to be. At the bottom lay the body of Angua. The Watchmen walked down slowly, and Carrot knelt and picked it up. He nodded to Downey. “Shortly we will be sending someone to collect the body of Dr Cruces,” he said. “But I thought we had agreed that—” “No. It must be seen that he is dead. Things must be seen. Things mustn’t happen in the dark, or behind closed doors.” “I am afraid I cannot accede to your request,” said the Assassin firmly. “It wasn’t a request, sir.” Scores of Assassins watched them walk across the courtyard. The black gates were shut. No-one seemed about to open them. “I agree with you, but perhaps you should have put that another way,” said Vimes. “They don’t look at all happy—” The doors shattered. A six-foot iron arrow passed Carrot and Vimes and removed a large section of wall on the far side of the courtyard. A couple of blows removed the rest of the gates, and Detritus stepped through. He looked around at the assembled Assassins, a red glow in his eyes. And growled. It dawned on the smarter Assassins that there was nothing in their armoury that could kill a troll. They had fine stiletto knives, but they needed sledgehammers. They had darts armed with exquisite poisons, none of which worked on a troll. No-one had ever thought trolls were important enough to be assassinated. Suddenly, Detritus was very important indeed. He had Cuddy’s axe in one hand and his mighty crossbow in the other. Some of the brighter Assassins turned and ran for it. Some were not as bright. A couple of arrows bounced off Detritus. Their owners saw his face as he turned towards them, and dropped their bows. Detritus hefted his club. “Acting-Constable Detritus!” The words rang out across the courtyard. “Acting-Constable Detritus! Atten-shun!” Detritus very slowly raised his hand. Dink. “You listen to me, Acting-Constable Detritus,” said Carrot. “If there’s a heaven for Watchmen, and gods I hope there is, then Acting-Constable Cuddy is there right now, drunk as a bloody monkey, with a rat in one hand and a pint of Bearhugger’s in the other, and he’s looking up[28] at us right now and he’s saying: my friend Acting-Constable Detritus won’t forget he’s a guard. Not Detritus.” There was a long dangerous moment, and then another dink. “Thank you, Acting-Constable. You’ll escort Mr Vimes to the University.” Carrot looked around at the Assassins. “Good afternoon, gentlemen. We may be back.” The three Watchmen stepped over the wreckage. Vimes said nothing until they were well out in the street, and then he turned to Carrot. “Why did he call you—” “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll take her back to the Watch House.” Vimes looked down at Angua’s corpse and felt a train of thought derail itself. Some things were too hard to think about. He wanted a nice quiet hour somewhere to put it all together. Personal isn’t the same as important. What sort of person could think like that? And it dawned on him that while Ankh in the past had had its share of evil rulers, and simply bad rulers, it had never yet come under the heel of a good ruler. That might be the most terrifying prospect of all. “Sir?” said Carrot, politely. “Uh. We’ll bury her up at Small Gods, how about that?” said Vimes. “It’s sort of a Watch tradition . . .” “Yes, sir. You go off with Detritus. He’s all right when you give him orders. If you don’t mind, I don’t think I’ll be along to the wedding. You know how it is . . .” “Yes. Yes, of course. Um. Carrot?” Vimes blinked, to drive away suspicions that clamoured for consideration. “We shouldn’t be too hard on Cruces. I hated the bastard like hell, so I want to be fair to him. I know what the gonne does to people. We’re all the same, to the gonne. I’d have been just like him.” “No, captain. You put it down.” Vimes smiled wanly. “They call me Mister Vimes,” he said.   Carrot walked back to the Watch House, and laid the body of Angua on the slab in the makeshift morgue. Rigor mortis was already setting in. He fetched some water and cleaned her fur as best he could. What he did next would have surprised, say, a troll or a dwarf or anyone who didn’t know about the human mind’s reaction to stressful circumstances. He wrote his report. He swept the main room’s floor; there was a rota, and it was his turn. He had a wash. He changed his shirt, and dressed the wound on his shoulder, and cleaned his armour, rubbing with wire wool and a graded series of cloths until he could, once again, see his face in it. He heard, far off, Fondel’s ‘Wedding March’ scored for Monstrous Organ with Miscellaneous Farmyard Noises accompaniment. He fished out a half bottle of rum from what Sergeant Colon thought was his secure hiding place, poured himself a very small amount, and drank a toast to the sound, saying, “Here’s to Mr Vimes and Lady Ramkin!” in a clear, sincere voice which would have severely embarrassed anyone who had heard it. There was a scratching at the door. He let Gaspode in. The little dog slunk under the table, saying nothing. Then Carrot went up to his room, and sat in his chair and looked out of the window. The afternoon wore on. The rain stopped around teatime. Lights came on, all over the city. Presently, the moon rose. The door opened. Angua entered, walking softly. Carrot turned, and smiled. “I wasn’t certain,” he said. “But I thought, well, isn’t it only silver that kills them? I just had to hope.” It was two days later. The rain had set in. It didn’t pour, it slouched out of the grey clouds, running in rivulets through the mud. It filled the Ankh, which slurped once again through its underground kingdom. It poured from the mouths of gargoyles. It hit the ground so hard there was sort of a mist of ricochets. It drummed off the gravestones in the cemetery behind the Temple of Small Gods, and into the small pit dug for Acting-Constable Cuddy. There were always only guards at a guard’s funeral, Vimes told himself. Oh, sometimes there were relatives, like Lady Ramkin and Detritus’ Ruby here today, but you never got crowds. Perhaps Carrot was right. When you became a guard, you stopped being everything else. Although there were other people today, standing silently at the railings around the cemetery. They weren’t at the funeral, but they were watching it. There was a small priest who gave the generic fill-in-deceased’s-name-here service, designed to be vaguely satisfactory to any gods who might be listening. Then Detritus lowered the coffin into the grave, and the priest threw a ceremonial handful of dirt on to the coffin, except that instead of the rattle of soil there was a very final splat. And Carrot, to Vimes’ surprise, made a speech. It echoed across the soggy ground to the rain-dripping trees. It was really based around the only text you could use on this occasion: he was my friend, he was one of us, he was a good copper. He was a good copper. That had got said at every guard funeral Vimes had ever attended. If d probably be said even at Corporal Nobbs’ funeral, although everyone would have their fingers crossed behind their backs. It was what you had to say. Vimes stared at the coffin. And then a strange feeling came creeping over him, as insidiously as the rain trickling down the back of his neck. It wasn’t exactly a suspicion. If it stayed in his mind long enough it would be a suspicion, but right now it was only a faint tingle of a hunch. He had to ask. He’d never stop thinking about it if he didn’t at least ask. So as they were walking away from the grave he said, “Corporal?” “Yessir?” “No-one’s found the gonne, then?” “No, sir.” “Someone said you had it last.” “I must have put it down somewhere. You know how busy it all was.” “Yes. Oh, yes. I’m pretty sure I saw you carry most of it out of the Guild . . .” “Must have done, sir.” “Yes. Er. I hope you put it somewhere safe, then. Do you, er, do you think you left it somewhere safe?” Behind them, the gravedigger began to shovel the wet, clinging loam of Ankh-Morpork into the hole. “I think I must have done, sir. Don’t you? Seeing as no-one has found it. I mean, we’d soon know if anyone’d found it!” “Maybe it’s all for the best, Corporal Carrot.” “I certainly hope so.” “He was a good copper.” “Yes, sir.” Vimes went for broke. “And . . . it seemed to me, as we were carrying that little coffin . . . slightly heavier . . .?” “Really, sir? I really couldn’t say I noticed.” “But at least he’s got a proper dwarf burial.” “Oh, yes. I saw to that, sir,” said Carrot.   The rain gurgled off the roofs of the Palace. The gargoyles had taken up their stations at every corner, straining gnats and flies via their ears. Corporal Carrot shook the drops off his leather rain cape and exchanged salutes with the troll on guard. He strolled through the clerks in the outer rooms and knocked respectfully on the door of the Oblong Office. “Come.” Carrot entered, marched to the desk, saluted and stood at ease. Lord Vetinari tensed, very slightly. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Corporal Carrot. I was expecting . . . something like this. I’m sure you’ve come to ask me for . . . something?” Carrot unfolded a piece of grubby paper, and cleared his throat. “Well, sir . . . we could do with a new dartboard. You know. For when we’re off duty?” The Patrician blinked. It was not often that he blinked. “I beg your pardon?” “A new dartboard, sir. It helps the men relax after their shift, sir.” Vetinari recovered a little. “Another one? But you had one only last year!” “It’s the Librarian, sir. Nobby lets him play and he just leans a bit and hammers the darts in with his fist. It ruins the board. Anyway, Detritus threw one through it. Through the wall behind it, too.” “Very well. And?” “Well . . . Acting-Constable Detritus needs to be let off having to pay for five holes in his breastplate.” “Granted. Tell him not to do it again.” “Yes, sir. Well, I think that’s about it. Except for a new kettle.” The Patrician’s hand moved in front of his lips. He was trying not to smile. “Dear me. Another kettle as well? What happened to the old one?” “Oh, we still use it, sir, we still use it. But we’re going to need another because of the new arrangements.” “I’m sorry? What new arrangements?” Carrot unfolded a second, and rather larger, piece of paper. “The Watch to be brought up to an establishment strength of fifty-six; the old Watch Houses at the River Gate, the Deosil Gate and the Hubwards Gate to be reopened and manned on a twenty-four hour basis—” The Patrician’s smile remained, but his face seemed to pull away from it, leaving it stranded and all alone in the world. “—a department for, well, we haven’t got a name for it yet, but for looking at clues and things like dead bodies, e.g., how long they’ve been dead, and to start with we’ll need an alchemist and possibly a ghoul provided they promise not to take anything home and eat it; a special unit using dogs, which could be very useful, and Lance-Constable Angua can deal with that since she can, um, be her own handler a lot of the time; a request here from Corporal Nobbs that Watchmen be allowed all the weapons they can carry, although I’d be obliged if you said no to that; a—” Lord Vetinari waved a hand. “All right, all right,” he said. “I can see how this is going. And supposing I say no?” There was another of those long, long pauses, wherein may be seen the possibilities of several different futures. “Do you know, sir, I never even considered that you’d say no?” “You didn’t?” “No, sir.” “I’m intrigued. Why not?” “It’s all for the good of the city, sir. Do you know where the word “policeman” comes from? It means “man of the city”, sir. From the old word polis.” “Yes. I do know.” The Patrician looked at Carrot. He seemed to be shuffling futures in his head. Then: “Yes. I accede to all the requests, except the one involving Corporal Nobbs. And you, I think, should be promoted to Captain.” “Ye-es. I agree, sir. That would be a good thing for Ankh-Morpork. But I will not command the Watch, if that’s what you mean.” “Why not?” “Because I could command the Watch. Because . . . people should do things because an officer tells them. They shouldn’t do it just because Corporal Carrot says so. Just because Corporal Carrot is . . . good at being obeyed.” Carrot’s face was carefully blank. An interesting point.” “But there used to be a rank, in the old days. Commander of the Watch. I suggest Samuel Vimes.” The Patrician leaned back. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Commander of the Watch. Of course, that became a rather unpopular job, after all that business with Lorenzo the Kind. It was a Vimes who held the post in those days. I’ve never liked to ask him if he was an ancestor.” “He was, sir. I looked it up.” “Would he accept?” “Is the High Priest an Offlian? Does a dragon explode in the woods?” The Patrician steepled his ringers and looked at Carrot over the top of them. It was a mannerism that had unnerved many. “But, you see, captain, the trouble with Sam Vimes is that he upsets a lot of important people. And I think that a Commander of the Watch would have to move in very exalted circles, attend Guild functions . . .” They exchanged glances. The Patrician got the best of the bargain, since Carrot’s face was bigger. Both of them were trying not to grin. “An excellent choice, in fact,” said the Patrician. “I’d taken the liberty, sir, of drafting a letter to the cap— to Mr Vimes on your behalf. Just to save you trouble, sir. Perhaps you’d care to have a look?” “You think of everything, don’t you?” “I hope so, sir.” Lord Vetinari read the letter. He smiled once or twice. Then he picked up his pen, signed at the bottom, and handed it back. “And is that the last of your dema— requests?” Carrot scratched his ear. “There is one, actually. I need a home for a small dog. It must have a large garden, a warm spot by the fire, and happy laughing children.” “Good heavens. Really? Well, I suppose we can find one.” “Thank you, sir. That’s all, I think.” The Patrician stood up and limped over to the window. It was dusk. Lights were being lit all over the city. With his back to Carrot he said, “Tell me, captain . . . this business about there being an heir to the throne . . . What do you think about it?” “I don’t think about it, sir. That’s all sword-in-a-stone nonsense. Kings don’t come out of nowhere, waving a sword and putting everything right. Everyone knows that.” “But there was some talk of . . . evidence?” “No-one seems to know where it is, sir.” “When I spoke to Captain . . . to Commander Vimes he said you’d got it.” “Then I must have put it down somewhere. I’m sure I couldn’t say where, sir.” “My word, I hope you absent-mindedly put it down somewhere safe.” “I’m sure it’s . . . well guarded, sir.” “I think you’ve learned a lot from Cap— Commander Vimes, captain.” “Sir. My father always said I was a quick learner, sir.” “Perhaps the city does need a king, though. Have you considered that?” “Like a fish needs a . . . er . . . a thing that doesn’t work underwater, sir.” “Yet a king can appeal to the emotions of his subjects, captain. In . . . very much the same way as you did recently, I understand.” “Yes, sir. But what will he do next day? You can’t treat people like puppet dolls. No, sir. Mr Vimes always said a man has got to know his limitations. If there was a king, then the best thing he could do would be to get on with a decent day’s work—” “Indeed.” “But if there was some pressing need . . . then perhaps he’d think again.” Carrot brightened up. “It’s a bit like being a guard, really. When you need us, you really need us. And when you don’t . . . well, best if we just walk around the streets and shout All’s Well. Providing all is well, of course.” “Captain Carrot,” said Lord Vetinari, “because we understand one another so well, and I think we do understand one another . . . there is something I’d like to show you. Come this way.” He led the way into the throne room, which was, empty at this time of day. As he hobbled across the wide floor he pointed ahead of him. “I expect you know what that is, captain?” “Oh, yes. The golden throne of Ankh-Morpork.” “And no-one has sat in it for many hundreds of years. Have you ever wondered about it?” “Exactly what do you mean, sir?” “So much gold, when even the brass has been stripped off the Brass Bridge? Take a look behind the throne, will you?” Carrot mounted the steps. “Good grief!” The Patrician looked over his shoulder. “It’s just gold foil over wood . . .” “Quite so.” It was hardly even wood any more. Rot and worms had fought one another to a standstill over the last biodegradable fragment. Carrot prodded it with his sword, and part of it drifted gently away in a puff of dust. “What do you think about this, captain?” Carrot stood up. “On the whole, sir, it’s probably just as well that people don’t know.” “So I have always thought. Well, I will not keep you. I’m sure you have a lot to organize.” Carrot saluted. “Thank you, sir.” “I gather that you and, er, Constable Angua are getting along well?” “We have a very good Understanding, sir. Of course, there will be minor difficulties,” said Carrot, “but, to look on the positive side, I’ve got someone who’s always ready for a walk around the city.” As Carrot had his hand on the door handle Lord Vetinari called out to him. “Yes, sir?” Carrot looked back at the tall thin man, standing in the big bare room beside the golden throne filled with decay. “You’re a man interested in words, captain. I’d just invite you to consider something your predecessor never fully grasped.” “Sir?” “Have you ever wondered where the word “politician” comes from?” said the Patrician. “And then there’s the committee of the Sunshine Sanctuary,” said Lady Ramkin, from her side of the dining table. “We must get you on that. And the Country Landowners’ Association. And the Friendly Flamethrowers’ League. Cheer up. You’ll find your time will just fill up like nobody’s business.” “Yes, dear,” said Vimes. The days stretched ahead of him, just filling up like nobody’s business with committees and good works and . . . nobody’s business. It was probably better than walking the streets. Lady Sybil and Mr Vimes. He sighed. Sybil Vimes, née Ramkin, looked at him with an expression of faint concern. For as long as she’d known him, Sam Vimes had been vibrating with the internal anger of a man who wants to arrest the gods for not doing it right, and then he’d handed in his badge and he was . . . well, not exactly Sam Vimes any more. The clock in the corner chimed eight o’clock. Vimes pulled out his presentation watch and opened it. “That clock’s five minutes fast,” he said, above the tinkling chimes. He snapped the lid shut, and read again the words on it: ‘A Watch From, Your Old Freinds In The Watch’. Carrot had been behind that, sure enough. Vimes had grown to recognize that blindness to the position of ‘i’s and ‘e’s and that wanton cruelty to the common comma. They said goodbye to you, they took you out of the measure of your days, and they gave you a watch . . . “Excuse me, m’lady?” “Yes, Willikins?” “There is a Watchman at the door, m’lady. The tradesman’s entrance.” “You sent a Watchman to the tradesman’s entrance?” said Lady Sybil. “No, m’lady. That’s the one he came to. It’s Captain Carrot.” Vimes put his hand over his eyes. “He’s been made captain and he comes to the back door,” he said. “That’s Carrot, that is. Bring him on in.” It was barely noticeable, except to Vimes but the butler glanced at Lady Ramkin for her approval. “Do as your master says,” she said, gallantly. “I’m no-one’s mas—“ Vimes began. “Now, Sam,” said Lady Ramkin. “Well, I’m not,” said Vimes sullenly. Carrot marched in, and stood to attention. As usual, the room subtly became a mere background to him. “It’s all right, lad,” said Vimes, as nicely as he could manage. “You don’t need to salute.” “Yes I do, sir,” said Carrot. He handed Vimes an envelope. It had the seal of the Patrician on it. Vimes picked up a knife and broke the seal. “Probably charging me five dollars for unnecessary wear and tear on my chainmail,” he said. His lips moved as he read. “Blimey,” he said eventually. “Fifty-six?” “Yes, sir. Detritus is looking forward to breaking them in.” “Including undead? It says here open to all, regardless of species or mortal status—” “Yes, sir,” said Carrot, firmly. “They’re all citizens.” “You mean you could have vampires in the Watch?” “Very good on night duty, sir. And aerial surveillance.” “And always useful if you want to stake out somewhere.” “Yes, sir?” Vimes watched the feeble pun go right through Carrot ‘s head without triggering his brain. He turned back to the paper. “Hmm. Pensions for widows, I see.” “Yessir.” “Re-opening the old Watch Houses?” “That’s what he says, sir.” Vimes read on: We consider particularly that, this enlarged Watch will need an expereinced man in charge who, is held in Esteem by all parts of soceity and, we are convinced that you should fulfil this Roll. You will therefore take up your Duties immediately as, Commander of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. This post traditionally carreis with it the rank of Knight which, we are minded to resurrect on this one occasion. Hoping this finds you in good health, Yrs. faithfully Havelock Vetinari (Patrician) Vimes read it again. He drummed his fingers on the table. There was no doubt that the signature was genuine. But . . . “Corp— Captain Carrot?” “Sah!” Carrot stared straight ahead of him with the glistening air of one busting with duty and efficiency and an absolute resolve to duck and dodge any direct questions put to him. “I—“ Vimes picked up the paper again, put it down, picked it up, and then passed it over to Sybil. “My word!” she said. “A knighthood? Not a moment too soon, either!” “Oh, no! Not me! You know what I think about the so-called aristocrats in this city – apart from you, Sybil, of course.” “Perhaps it’s about time the general stock was improved, then,” said Lady Ramkin. “His lordship did say,” said Carrot, “that no part of the package was negotiable, sir. I mean, it’s all or nothing, if you understand me.” “All . . .?” “Yessir.” “. . . or nothing.” “Yessir.” Vimes drummed his ringers on the table. “You’ve won, haven’t you?” he said. “You’ve won.” “Sir? Don’t understand, sir,” said Carrot, radiating honest ignorance. There was another dangerous silence. “But, of course,” said Vimes, “there’s no possible way I could oversee this sort of thing.” “What do you mean, sir?” said Carrot. Vimes pulled the candelabra towards him and thumped the paper with a finger. “Well, look what it says here. I mean, opening those old Watch Houses? On the gates? What’s the point in that? Right out there on the edge?” “Oh, I’m sure matters of organization detail can be changed, sir,” said Carrot. “Keep a general gate guard, yes, but if you’re going to have any kind of finger on the pulse of . . . look, you’d need one along Elm Street somewhere, dose to the Shades and the docks, and another one halfway up Short Street, and maybe a smaller one in Kingsway. Somewhere up there, anyway. You’ve got to think about population centres. How many men based per Watch House?” “I thought ten, sir. Allowing for shifts.” “No, can’t do that. Use six at most. A corporal, say, and one other per shift. The rest you’ll move around on, oh, a monthly rota. You want to keep everyone on their toes, yes? And that way everyone gets to walk every street. That’s very important. And . . . wish I had a map here . . . oh . . . thank you, dear. Right. Now, see here. You’ve got a strength of fixty-six, nominal, OK? But you’re taking over day watch too, plus you’ve got to allow for days off, two grandmother’s funerals per year per man – gods know how your undead’ll sort out that one, maybe they get time off to go to their own funerals – and then there’s sickness and so on. So . . . we want four shifts, staggered around the city. Got a light? Thanks. We don’t want the whole guard changing shift at once. On the other hand, you’ve got to allow each Watch House officer a certain amount of initiative. But we should maintain a special squad in Pseudopolis Yard for emergencies . . . look, give me that pencil. Now give me that notebook. Right . . .” Cigar smoke filled the room. The little presentation watch played every quarter of an hour, entirely unheeded. Lady Sybil smiled and shut the door behind her, and went to feed the dragons. “Dearest Mumm and Dad, Well here is Amazing news for, I am now Captain!! It has been a very busy and vareid Week all round as, I shall now recount. . .” And only one thing more . . . There was a large house in one of the nicer areas of Ankh, with a spacious garden with a children’s tree-house in it and, quite probably, a warm spot by the fire. And a window, breaking . . . Gaspode landed on the lawn, and ran like hell towards the fence. Flower-scented bubbles streamed off his coat. He was wearing a ribbon with a bow on it, and carrying in his mouth a bowl labelled MR HUGGY. He dug his way frantically under the fence and squirmed into the road. A fresh pile of horse droppings took care of the floral smell, and five minutes of scratching removed the bow. “Not a bloody flea left,” he moaned, dropping the bowl. “An’ I had nearly the complete set. Whee-ooo! I’m well out of that. Huh!” Gaspode brightened up. It was Tuesday. That meant steak-and-suspicious-organs pie at the Thieves’ Guild, and the head cook there was known to be susceptible to a thumping tail and a penetrating stare. And holding an empty bowl in your mouth and looking pathetic was a sure-fire winner, if Gaspode was any judge. It shouldn’t take too long to claw off MR HUGGY. Perhaps this wasn’t the way it ought to be. But it was the way it was. On the whole, he reflected, it could have been a lot worse. The End [1] But no gentleman would dream of being trained as a Thief. [2] Often with discreet plaques under them modestly recording the name of the person who’d killed them. This was the Assassins’ portrait gallery, after all. [3] From the point of view of the species as a whole. Not from the point of view of the dragon now landing in small pieces around the landscape. [4] Fingers-Mazda, the first thief in the world, stole fire from the gods. But he was unable to fence it. It was too hot.* He got really burned on that deal. [5] The Battle of Koom Valley is the only one known to history where both sides ambushed each other. [6] There’s always one. [7] This is another survival trait. [8] Because he was an early form of free-thinking scientist, and did not believe that human beings had been created by some sort of divine being. Dissecting people when they were still alive tended to be a priestly preoccupation; they thought mankind had been created by some sort of divine being and wanted to have a closer look at His handiwork. [9] Suicide, for example. Murder was in fact a fairly uncommon event in Ankh-Morpork, but there were a lot of suicides. Walking in the night-time alleyways of The Shades was suicide. Asking for a short in a dwarf bar was suicide. Saying ‘Got rocks in your head?” to a troll was suicide. You could commit suicide very easily, if you weren’t careful. [10] A survey by the Ankh-Morpork Guild of Merchants of tradespeople in the dock areas of Morpork found 987 women who gave their profession as ‘seamstress’. Oh . . . and two needles. [11] In fact, trolls traditionally count like this: one, two, three . . . many, and people assume this means they can have no grasp of higher numbers. They don’t realize that many can be a number. As in: one, two, three, many, many-one, many-two, many-three, many many, many-many-one, many-many-two, many-many-three, many many many, many-many-many-one, many-many-many-two, many-many-many-three, LOTS. [12] More usually a landlady would ask ‘Are you decent?”, but Mrs Cake knew her lodgers. [13] Brown [14] And Brown [15] It works like this. Phrenology, as everyone knows, is a way of reading someone’s character, aptitude and abilities by examining the bumps and hollows on their head. Therefore – according to the kind of logical thinking that characterizes the Ankh-Morpork mind – it should be possible to mould someone’s character by giving them carefully graded bumps in all the right places. You can go into a shop and order an artistic temperament with a tendency to introspection and a side order of hysteria. What you actually get is hit on the head with a selection of different size mallets, but it creates employment and keeps the money in circulation, and that’s the main thing. [16] Rat and cream cheese is only one of the famous Discworld dishes available in cosmopolitan Ankh-Morpork. According to the Guild of Merchants’ publication Wellcome to Ankh-Morpork, Citie of One Thousand Surprises: ‘Also to be bought in its well-stuffed emporia are Slumpie, Jammy Devils, Fikkun haddock, Distressed Pudding, Clooty Dumplings* and, not to be forgotten, the Knuckle Sandwich, made from finest pig knuckles. Not for something is it said, For a True Taste of Ankh-Morpork, Try a Knuckle Sandwich.” * Not to be confused with the Scottish Clootie Dumpling, which is a kind of suet padding full of fruit. The Ankh-Morpork version sits on the tongue like finest meringue, and on the stomach like a concrete bowling ball. [17] Wrong. Vimes didn’t travel much except on foot, and knew little of the Lancre Suicide Thrush, for example, or the Shadowing Lemma, which exists in only two dimensions and eats mathematicians, or the quantum weather butterfly. But it is possible that the strangest, and possibly saddest, species on Discworld is the hermit elephant. This creature, lacking the thick hide of its near relatives, lives in huts, moving up and building extensions as its size increases. It’s not unknown for a traveller on the plains of Howondaland to wake up in the morning in the middle of a village that wasn’t there the night before. [18] The axiom ‘Honest men have nothing to fear from the police’ currently under review by the Axioms Appeal Board. [19] Probably no other world in the multiverse has warehouses for things which only exist in potentia, but the pork futures warehouse in Ankh-Morpork is a product of the Patrician’s rules about baseless metaphors, the literal-mindedness of citizens who assume that everything must exist somewhere, and the general thinness of the fabric of reality around Ankh, which is so thin that it’s as thin as a very thin thing. The net result is that trading in pork futures – in pork that doesn’t exist yet – led to the building of the warehouse to store it in until it does. The extremely low temperatures are caused by the imbalance in the temporal energy flow. At least, that’s what the wizards in the High Energy Magic building say. And they’ve got proper pointy hats and letters after their name, so they know what they’re talking about. [20] It has probably been gathered that although Leonard da Quirm was absolutely the greatest technological genius of all time, he was a bit of a Detritus when it came to thinking up names. [21] It didn’t need to. Cuddy, belonging to a race that worked underground for preference, and Detritus, a member of a race notoriously nocturnal, had excellent vision in the dark. But mysterious caves and tunnels always have luminous fungi, strangely bright crystals or at a pinch merely an eldritch glow in the air, just in case a human hero comes in and needs to see in the dark. Strange but true. [22] Rather like British Rail. [23] Which can mean . . . well . . . meanings include: ‘Pardon me, you’re hanging from my rubber ring, thank you so very much’, “It may be just vital biomass oxygenating the planet to you, but it’s home to me’ and ‘I’m sure there was a rain forest around here a moment ago’. [24] Who stoked the boiler. [25] Five more embraced it as a holy weapon and instructed that it be used on all infidels, heretics, gnostics and people who fidgeted during the sermon. [26] It runs: ‘He who chains down a troll, especially taking advantage of the situation to put the boot in a few times, had better not be the one who unchains it again.” [27] And was the origin, long after the events chronicled here were over, of an Ankh-Morpork folk song scored for tin whistle and nasal passage: “As I was a-walking along Lower Broadway, The recruiting party came picking up people by their ankles and saying they were going to volunteer to join the Watch unless they wanted their goohuloog heads kicked in, So I went via Peach Pie Street and Holofernes instead, Singing: Too-ra-li, etc.”   It never really caught on. [28] To trolls, heaven is below. 
Monstrous Regiment - Terry Pratchett	----	Monstrous Regiment Monstrous Regiment by TERRY PRATCHETT Polly cut off her hair in front of the mirror, feeling slightly guilty about not feeling very guilty about doing so. It was supposed to be her crowning glory, and everyone said it was beautiful, but she generally wore it in a net when she was working. She’d always told herself it was wasted on her. But she was careful to see that the long golden coils all landed on the small sheet spread out for the purpose. If she would admit to any strong emotion at all at this time, it was sheer annoyance that a haircut was all she needed to pass for a young man. She didn’t even need to bind up her bosom, which she’d heard was the normal practice. Nature had seen to it that she had barely any problems in this area. The effect that the scissors had was . . . erratic, but it was no worse than other male haircuts here. It’d do. She did feel cold on the back of her neck, but that was only partly because of the loss of her long hair. It was also because of the Stare. The Duchess watched her from above the bed. It was a poor woodcut, hand-coloured mostly in blue and red. It was of a plain, middle-aged woman whose sagging chin and slightly bulging eyes gave the cynical the feeling that someone had put a large fish in a dress, but the artist had managed to capture something extra in that strange, blank expression. Some pictures had eyes that followed you around the room; this one looked right through you. It was a face you found in every home. In Borogravia, you grew up with the Duchess watching you. Polly knew her parents had one of the pictures in their room, and knew also that when her mother was alive she used to curtsy to it every night. She reached up and turned this picture round so that it faced the wall. A thought in her head said No. It was overruled. She’d made up her mind. Then she dressed herself in her brother’s clothes, tipped the contents of the sheet into a small bag which went into the bottom of her pack along with the spare clothes, put the note on her bed, picked up the pack and climbed out of the window. At least, Polly climbed out of the window, but it was Oliver’s feet that landed lightly on the ground. Dawn was just turning the dark world into monochrome when she slipped across the inn’s yard. The Duchess watched her from the inn sign, too. Her father had been a great loyalist, at least up to the death of her mother. The sign hadn’t been repainted this year, and a random bird-dropping had given the Duchess a squint. Polly checked that the recruiting sergeant’s cart was still in front of the bar, its bright banners now drab and heavy with last night’s rain. By the look of that big fat sergeant, it would be hours before it was on the road again. She had plenty of time. He looked like a slow breakfaster. She let herself out of the door in the back wall and headed uphill. At the top, she turned back and looked at the waking town. Smoke was rising from a few chimneys, but since Polly was always the first to wake, and had to yell the maids out of their beds, the inn was still sleeping. She knew that the Widow Clambers had stayed overnight (it had been ‘raining too hard for her to go home’, according to Polly’s father) and, personally, she hoped for his sake that she’d stay every night. The town had no shortage of widows, and Eva Clambers was a warm-hearted lady who baked like a champion. His wife’s long illness and Paul’s long absence had taken a lot out of her father. Polly was glad some of it was being put back. The old ladies who spent their days glowering from their windows might spy and peeve and mumble, but they had been doing that for too long. No one listened any more. She raised her gaze. Smoke and steam was already rising from the laundry of the Girls’ Working School. It hung over one end of the town like a threat, big and grey with tall, thin windows. It was always silent. When she was small, she’d been told that that was where the Bad Girls went. The nature of ‘badness’ was not explained, and at the age of five Polly had received the vague idea that it consisted of not going to bed when you were told. At the age of eight she’d learned it was where you were lucky not to go for buying your brother a paint box. She turned her back and set off between the trees, which were full of birdsong. Forget you were ever Polly. Think young male, that was the thing. Fart loudly and with self-satisfaction at a job well done, move like a puppet that’d had a couple of random strings cut, never hug anyone and, if you meet a friend, punch them. A few years working in the bar had provided plenty of observational material. No problem about not swinging her hips, at least. Nature had been pretty sparing there, too. And then there was the young male walk to master. At least women swung only their hips. Young men swung everything, from the shoulders down. You have to try to occupy a lot of space, she thought. It makes you look bigger, like a tomcat fluffing his tail. She’d seen it a lot in the inn. The boys tried to walk big in self-defence against all those other big boys out there. I’m bad, I’m fierce, I’m cool, I’d like a pint of shandy and me mam wants me home by nine . . . Let’s see, now . . . arms out from the body as though holding a couple of bags of flour . . . check. Shoulders swaying as though she was elbowing her way through a crowd . . . check. Hands slightly bunched and making rhythmical circling motions as though turning two independent handles attached to the waist • . . check. Legs moving forward loosely and ape-like . . . check . . . It worked fine for a few yards until she got something wrong and the resultant muscular confusion somersaulted her into a holly bush. After that, she gave up. The thunderstorm came back as she hurried along the trail; sometimes one would hang around the mountains for days. But at least up here the path wasn’t a river of mud, and the trees still had enough leaves to give her some protection. There was no time to wait out the weather, anyway. She had a long way to go. The recruiting party would cross at the ferry, but Polly was known to all the ferrymen by sight and the guard would want to see her permit to travel, which Oliver Perks certainly didn’t have. So that meant a long diversion all the way to the troll bridge at Tiibz. To the trolls all humans looked alike and any piece of paper would do as a permit, since they didn’t read. Then she could walk down through the pine forests to Plün. The cart would have to stop there for the night, but the place was one of those nowhere villages that existed only in order to avoid the embarrassment of having large empty spaces on the map. No one knew her in Plün. No one ever went there. It was a dump. It was, in fact, just the place she needed. The recruiting party would stop there, and she could enlist. She was pretty certain the big fat sergeant and his greasy little corporal wouldn’t notice the girl who’d served them last night. She was not, as they said, conventionally beautiful. The corporal had tried to pinch her bottom, but probably out of habit, like swatting a fly, and there was not enough for a big pinch, at that. She sat on the hill above the ferry and had a late breakfast of cold potato and sausage while she watched the cart cross over. No one was marching behind it. No lads had been recruited back in Munz this time. People had kept away. Too many young men had left over the last few years, and not enough had come back. And, of the ones who’d come back, sometimes not enough of each man had come back. The corporal could bang his big drum all he liked. Munz was running out of sons almost as fast as it accumulated widows. The afternoon hung heavy and humid, and a yellow pine warbler followed her from bush to bush. Last night’s mud was steaming when Polly reached the troll bridge, which crossed the river in a narrow gorge. It was a thin, graceful affair, put together, it was said, with no mortar at all. And it was said that the weight of the bridge anchored it ever more deeply into the rock on either side. It was said to be a wonder of the world, except that very few people around here ever wondered much about anything and were barely aware of the world. It cost one penny to cross, or one hundred gold pieces if you had a billygoat.* Halfway across Polly peered over the parapet and saw the cart far, far below, working its way along the narrow road just above the white water. * Trolls might not be quick thinkers but they don’t forget in a hurry, either. The afternoon’s journey was downhill all the way, through dark pines on this side of the gorge. She didn’t hurry and, towards sunset, she spotted the inn. The cart had already arrived, but by the looks of it the recruiting sergeant had not even bothered to make an effort. There was no drum-banging like there had been last night, no cries of ‘Roll up, my young shavers! It’s a great life in the Ins-and-Outs!’ There was always a war. Usually it was a border dispute, the national equivalent of complaining that the neighbour was letting his hedge grow too long. Sometimes it was bigger. Borogravia was a peace-loving country in the midst of treacherous, devious, warlike enemies. They had to be treacherous, devious and warlike, otherwise we wouldn’t be fighting them, eh? There was always a war. Polly’s father had been in the army before he took over The Duchess from Polly’s grandfather. He didn’t talk about it much. He’d brought his sword back with him, but instead of hanging it over the fireplace he used it to poke the fire. Sometimes old friends would turn up and, when the bars were shut for the night, they’d gather round the fire and drink and sing. The young Polly found excuses to stay up and listen to the songs they sang, but that had stopped when she’d got into trouble for using one of the more interesting words in front of her mother; now she was older, and served the beer, it was presumably assumed that she knew the words or would find out what they meant soon enough. Besides, her mother had gone where bad words would no longer offend and, in theory, never got said. The songs had been part of her childhood. She knew all the words of ‘The World Turned Upside Down’ and ‘The Devil Shall Be My Sergeant’ and ‘Johnny Has Gone For A Soldier’ and ‘The Girl I Left Behind Me’ and, after the drink had been flowing for a while, she’d memorized ‘Colonel Crapski’ and ‘I Wish I’d Never Kissed Her’. And then, of course, there had been ‘Sweet Polly Oliver’. Her father used to sing it when she was small and fretful or sad, and she’d laughed to hear it simply because it had her name in it. She was word perfect on the words before she’d known what most of them meant. And now . . . . . . Polly pushed open the door. The recruiting sergeant and his corporal looked up from the stained table where they were sitting, beer mugs halfway to their lips. She took a deep breath, marched over, and made an attempt at saluting. ‘What do you want, kid?’ growled the corporal. ‘Want to join up, sir!’ The sergeant turned to Polly and grinned, which made his scars move oddly and caused a tremor to shake all his chins. The word ‘fat’ could not honestly be applied to him, not when the word ‘gross’ was lumbering forward to catch your attention. He was one of those people who didn’t have a waist. He had an equator. He had gravity. If he fell over, in any direction, he would rock. Sun and drink had burned his face red. Small dark eyes twinkled in the redness like the sparkle on the edge of a knife. Beside him, on the table, were a couple of old-fashioned cutlasses, weapons that had more in common with a meat cleaver than a sword. ‘Just like that?’ he said. ‘Yessir!’ ‘Really?’ ‘Yessir!’ ‘You don’t want us to get you stinking drunk first? It’s traditional, you know.’ ‘Nosir!’ ‘I haven’t told you about the wonderful opportunities for advancement and good fortune, have I?’ ‘Nosir!’ ‘Did I mention how the spanking red uniform will mean you’ll have to beat the girls off with a stick?’ ‘Don’t think so, sir!’ ‘Or the grub? Every meal’s a banquet when you march along with us!’ The sergeant smacked his belly, which caused tremors in outlying regions. ‘I’m the living proof!’ ‘Yes, sir. No, sir. I just want to join up to fight for my country and the honour of the Duchess, sir!’ ‘You do?’ said the corporal incredulously, but the sergeant appeared not to hear this. He looked Polly up and down, and Polly got the definite impression that the man was neither as drunk nor as stupid as he looked. ‘Upon my oath, Corporal Strappi, it seems that what we’ve got ourselves here is nothin’ less than a good, old-fashioned patriot,’ he said, his eyes searching Polly’s face. ‘Well, you’ve come to the right place, my lad!’ He pulled a sheaf of papers towards him with an air of bustle. ‘You know who we are?’ ‘The Tenth Foot, sir. Light infantry, sir. Known as the “Ins-and-Outs”, sir,’ said Polly, relief bubbling through her. She’d clearly passed some sort of test. ‘Right, lad. The jolly old Cheesemongers. Finest regiment there is, in the finest army in the world. Keen to join, then, are yer?’ ‘Keen as mustard, sir!’ said Polly, aware of the corporal’s suspicious eyes on her. ‘Good lad!’ The sergeant unscrewed the top from a bottle of ink and dipped a nib pen in it. His hand hovered over the paperwork. ‘Name, lad?’ he said. ‘Oliver, sir. Oliver Perks,’ said Polly. ‘Age?’ ‘Seventeen come Sunday, sir.’ ‘Yeah, right,’ said the sergeant. ‘You’re seventeen and I’m the Grand Duchess Annagovia. What’re you running away from, eh? Got a young lady in the family way?’ ‘ ‘e’d ‘ave ‘ad to ‘ave ‘elp,’ said the corporal, grinning. ‘He squeaks like a little lad.’ Polly realized she was starting to blush. But then, young Oliver would blush too, wouldn’t he? It was very easy to make a boy blush. Polly could do it just by staring. ‘Don’t matter anyway,’ said the sergeant. ‘You make your mark on this here document and kiss the Duchess and you’re my little lad, you understand? My name is Sergeant Jackrum. I will be your mother and your father and Corporal Strappi here will be just like your big brother. And life will be steak and bacon every day, and anyone who wants to drag you away’ll have to drag me away too, because I’ll be holding on to your collar. And you might well be thinking there’s no one that can drag that much, Mr Perks.’ A thick thumb jabbed at the paper. ‘Just there, right?’ Polly picked up the pen and signed. ‘What’s that?’ said the corporal. ‘My signature,’ said Polly. She heard the door open behind her, and spun round. Several young men— she corrected herself, several other young men had clattered into the bar, and were looking around warily. ‘You can read and write, too?’ said the sergeant, glancing up at them and then back to her. ‘Yeah, I see. A nice round hand, as well. Officer material, you are. Give him the shilling, corporal. And the picture, of course.’ ‘Right, sergeant,’ said Corporal Strappi, holding up a picture frame on a handle, like a looking-glass.’ ‘Pucker up, Private Parts.’ ‘It’s Perks, sir,’ said Polly. ‘Yeah, right. Now kiss the Duchess.’ It was not a good copy of the famous picture. The painting behind the glass was faded and something, some kind of moss or something, was growing on the inside of the cracked glass itself. Polly let her lips brush it while holding her breath. ‘Huh,’ said Strappi, and pressed something into her hand. ‘What’s this?’ said Polly, looking at the small square of paper. ‘An IOU. Bit short of shillings right now,’ said the sergeant, while Strappi smirked. ‘But the innkeeper’ll stand you a pint of ale, courtesy of her grace.’ He turned and looked up at the newcomers. ‘Well, it never rains but it pours. You boys here to join up too? My word, and we didn’t even have to bang the drum. It must be Corporal Strappi’s amazin’ charisma. Step up, don’t be shy. Who’s the next likely lad?’ Polly looked at the next recruit with horror that she hoped she was concealing. She hadn’t really noticed him in the gloom, because he was wearing black - not cool, styled black, but a dusty black, the kind of suit people got buried in. By the look of it, that person had been him. There were cobwebs all over it. The boy himself had stitches across his forehead. ‘Your name, lad?’ said Jackrum. ‘Igor, thur.’ Jackrum counted the stitches. ‘You know, I had a feeling it was going to be,’ he said. ‘And I see you’re eighteen.’ ‘Awake!’ ‘Oh, gods . . .’ Commander Samuel Vimes put his hands over his eyes. ‘I beg your pardon, your grace?’ said the Ankh-Morpork consul to Zlobenia. ‘Are you ill, your grace?’ ‘What’s your name again, young man?’ said Vimes. ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve been travelling for two weeks and not getting a lot of sleep and I’ve spent all day being introduced to people with difficult names. That’s bad for the brain.’ ‘It’s Clarence, your grace. Clarence Chinny.’ ‘Chinny?’ said Vimes, and Clarence read everything in his expression. ‘I’m afraid so, sir,’ he said. ‘Were you a good fighter at school?’ said Vimes. ‘No, your grace, but no one could beat me over the one-hundred-yard dash.’ Vimes laughed. ‘Well, Clarence, any national anthem that starts “Awake!” is going to lead to trouble. They didn’t teach you this in the Patrician’s office?’ ‘Er . . . no, your grace,’ said Chinny. ‘Well, you’ll find out. Carry on, then.’ ‘Yes, sir.’ Chinny cleared his throat. ‘The Borogravian National Anthem,’ he announced, for the second time. ‘Awake sorry, your grace , ye sons of the Motherland! Taste no more the wine of the sour apples Woodsmen, grasp your choppers! Farmers, slaughter with the tool formerly used for lifting beets the foe! Frustrate the endless wiles of our enemies We into the darkness march singing Against the whole world in arms coming But see the golden light upon the mountain tops! The new day is a great big fish!’ ‘Er . . .’ Vimes said. ‘That last bit . . . ?’ ‘That is a literal translation, your grace,’ said Clarence nervously. ‘It means something like “an amazing opportunity” or “a glittering prize”, your grace.’ ‘When we’re not in public, Clarence, “sir” will do. “Your grace” is just to impress the natives.’ Vimes slumped back in his uncomfortable chair, chin in his hand, and then winced. ‘Two thousand three hundred miles,’ he said, shifting his position. ‘And it’s freezing on a broomstick, however low they fly. And then the barge, and then the coach . . .’ He winced again. ‘I read your report. Do you think it’s possible for an entire nation to be insane?’ Clarence swallowed. He’d been told that he was talking to the second most powerful man in Ankh-Morpork, even if the man himself acted as though he was ignorant of the fact. His desk in this chilly tower room was rickety; it had belonged to the head janitor of the Kneck garrison until yesterday. Paperwork cluttered its scarred surface and was stacked in piles behind Vimes’s chair. Vimes himself did not look, to Clarence, like a duke. He looked like a watchman which, in fact, Clarence understood, he was. This offended Clarence Chinny. People at the top should look as though they belonged there. •’That’s a very . . . interesting question, sir,’ he said. ‘You mean the people—’ ‘Not the people, the nation,’ said Vimes. ‘Borogravia looks off its head, to me, from what I’ve read. I expect the people just do the best they can and get on with raising their kids which, I might say, I’d rather be doing right now, too. Look, you know what I mean. You take a bunch of people who don’t seem any different from you and me, but when you add them all together you get this sort of huge raving maniac with national borders and an anthem.’ ‘It’s a fascinating idea, sir,’ said Clarence diplomatically. Vimes looked round the room. The walls were bare stone. The windows were narrow. It was damn cold, even on a sunny day. All that bad food, and that bumping about and sleeping on bad beds . . . and all that travelling in the dark, too, on dwarf barges in their secret canals under the mountains - the gods alone knew what intricate diplomacy Lord Vetinari had pulled off to get that, although the Low King owed Vimes a few favours . . . . . . all of that for this cold castle over this cold river between these stupid countries, with their stupid war. He knew what he wanted to do. If they’d been people, scuffling in the gutter, he’d have known what to do. He’d have banged their heads together and maybe shoved them in the cells overnight. You couldn’t bang countries together. Vimes picked up some paperwork, fiddled with it, and threw it down again. ‘To hell with this,’ he said. ‘What’s happening out there?’ ‘I understand there are a few pockets of resistance in some of the more inaccessible areas of the keep, but they are being dealt with. For all practical purposes the keep is in our hands. That was a clever ruse of yours, your gr— sir.’ Vimes sighed. ‘No, Clarence, it was a dull old ruse. It should not be possible to get men into a fortress dressed as washerwomen. Three of them had moustaches, for goodness’ sake!’ ‘The Borogravians are rather . . . old-fashioned about things like that, sir. On that subject, we appear to have zombies in the lower crypts. Dreadful things. A lot of high-ranking Borogravian military men were interred down there over the centuries, apparently.’ ‘Really? What are they doing now?’ Clarence raised his eyebrows. ‘Lurching, sir, I think. Groaning. Zombie things. Something seems to have stirred them up.’ ‘Us, probably,’ said Vimes. He got up, strode across the room, and pulled open the big heavy door. ‘Reg!’ he yelled. After a moment another watchman appeared, and saluted. He was grey-faced, and Clarence couldn’t help noticing when the man saluted that the hand and fingers were held together with stitching. ‘Have you met Constable Shoe, Clarence?’ said Vimes cheerfully. ‘One of my staff. Been dead for more than thirty years, and loves every minute of it, eh, Reg?’ ‘Right, Mister Vimes,’ said Reg, grinning and revealing a lot of brown teeth. ‘Some fellow countrymen of yours down in the cellar, Reg.’ ‘Oh, dear. Lurching, are they?’ ‘ ‘fraid so, Reg.’ ‘I shall go and have a word with them,’ said Reg. He saluted again and marched out, with a hint of lurch. ‘He’s, er, from here?’ said Chinny, who had gone quite pale. ‘Oh, no. The undiscovered country,’ said Vimes. ‘He’s dead. However, credit where it’s due, he hasn’t let that stop him. You didn’t know we have a zombie in the Watch, Clarence?’ ‘Er . . . no, sir. I’ve haven’t been back to the city in five years.’ He swallowed. ‘I gather things have changed.’ Horribly so, in Clarence Chinny’s opinion. Being consul to Zlobenia had been an easy job, which left him a lot of time to get on with his business. And then the big semaphore towers marched through, all along the valley, and suddenly Ankh-Morpork was an hour away. Before the clacks, a letter from Ankh-Morpork would take more than a two weeks to get to him, and so no one worried if he took a day or two to answer it. Now people expected a reply overnight. He’d been quite glad when Borogravia had destroyed several of those wretched towers. And then all hell had been let loose. ‘We’ve got all sorts in the Watch,’ said Vimes. ‘And we bloody well need ‘em now, Clarence, with Zlobenians and Borogravians scrapping in the streets over some damn quarrel that began a thousand years ago. It’s worse than dwarfs and trolls! All because someone’s great-to-the-power-of-umpteen-grandmother slapped the face of someone’s great-ditto-uncle! Borogravia and Zlobenia can’t even agree a border. They chose the river, and that changes course every spring. Suddenly the clacks towers are now on Borogravian soil - or mud, anyway -so the idiots burn them down for religious reasons.’ ‘Er, there is more to it than that, sir,’ said Chinny. ‘Yes, I know. I read the history. The annual scrap with Zlobenia is just the local derby. Borogravia fights everybody. Why?’ ‘National pride, sir.’ ‘What in? There’s nothing there! There’s some tallow mines, and they’re not bad farmers, but there’s no great architecture, no big libraries, no famous composers, no very high mountains, no wonderful views. All you can say about the place is that it isn’t anywhere else. What’s so special about Borogravia?’ ‘I suppose it’s special because it’s theirs. And of course there’s Nuggan, sir. Their god. I’ve brought you a copy of the Book of Nuggan.’ ‘I looked through one back in the city, Chinny,’ said Vimes. ‘Seemed pretty stu—’ ‘That wouldn’t have been a recent edition, sir. And I suspect it wouldn’t be, er, very current that far from here. This one is more up to date,’ said Chinny, putting a small but thick book on the desk. ‘Up to date? What do you mean, up to date?’ said Vimes, looking puzzled. ‘Holy writ gets . . . written. Do this, don’t do that, no coveting your neighbour’s ox . . .’ ‘Um . . . Nuggan doesn’t just leave it at that, sir. He, er . . . updates things. Mostly the Abominations, to be frank.’ Vimes took the new copy. It was noticeably thicker than the one he’d brought with him. ‘It’s what they call a Living Testament,’ Chinny explained. ‘They - well, I suppose you could say they “die” if they’re taken out of Borogravia. They no longer . . . get added to. The latest Abominations are at the end, sir,’ said Chinny helpfully. ‘This is a holy book with an appendix?’ ‘Exactly, sir.’ ‘In a ring binder ?’ ‘Quite so, sir. People put blank pages in and the Abominations . . . turn up.’ ‘You mean magically?’ ‘I suppose I mean religiously, sir.’ Vimes opened a page at random. ‘Chocolate?’ he said. ‘He doesn’t like chocolate?’ ‘Yes, sir. That’s an Abomination.’ ‘Garlic? Well, I don’t much like that, so fair enough . . . cats?’ ‘Oh, yes. He really doesn’t like cats, sir.’ ‘Dwarfs? It says here “The dwarfish race which worships Gold is an Abomination unto Nuggan”! He must be mad. What happened there?’ ‘Oh, the dwarfs that were here sealed their mines and vanished, your grace.’ “ ‘I bet they did. They know trouble when they see it,’ said Vimes. He let ‘your grace’ pass this time; Chinny clearly derived some satisfaction from talking to a duke. He leafed through the pages, and stopped. ‘The colour blue?’ ‘Correct, sir.’ ‘What’s abominable about the colour blue? It’s just a colour! The sky is blue!’ ‘Yes, sir. Devout Nugganites try not to look at it these days. Um . . .’ Chinny had been trained as a diplomat. Some things he didn’t like to say directly. ‘Nuggan, sir . . . um . . . is rather . . . tetchy,’ he managed. ‘Tetchy?’ said Vimes. ‘A tetchy god? What, he complains about the noise their kids make? Objects to loud music after nine p.m.?’ ‘Um . . . we get the Ankh-Morpork Times here, sir, eventually, and, er, I’d say, er, that Nuggan is very much like, er, the kind of people who write to its letter column. You know, sir. The kind who sign their letters “Disgusted of Ankh-Morpork” . . .’ ‘Oh, you mean he really is mad,’ said Vimes. ‘Oh, I’d never mean anything like that, sir,’ said Chinny hurriedly. ‘What do the priests do about this?’ ‘Not a lot, sir. I think they quietly ignore some of the more, er, extreme Abominations.’ ‘You mean Nuggan objects to dwarfs, cats and the colour blue and there’re more insane commandments?’ Chinny coughed politely. ‘All right, then,’ growled Vimes. ‘More extreme commandments?’ ‘Oysters, sir. He doesn’t like them. But that’s not a problem because no one there has ever seen an oyster. Oh, and babies. He Abominated them, too.’ ‘I take it people still make them here?’ ‘Oh, yes, your gr— I’m sorry. Yes, sir. But they feel guilty about it. Barking dogs, that was another one. Shirts with six buttons, too. And cheese. Er . . . people just sort of, er, avoid the trickier ones. Even the priests seem to have given up trying to explain them.’ ‘Yes, I think I can see why. So what we have here is a country that tries to run itself on the commandments of a god who, the people feel, may be wearing his underpants on his head. Has he Abominated underpants?’ ‘No, sir,’ Chinny sighed. ‘But it’s probably only a matter of time.’ ‘So how do they manage?’ ‘These days, people mostly pray to the Duchess Annagovia. You see icons of her in every house. They call her the Little Mother.’ ‘Ah, yes, the Duchess. Can I get to see her?’ ‘Oh, no one sees her, sir. No one except her servants has seen her for more than thirty years. To be honest, sir, she’s probably dead.’ ‘Only probably?’ ‘No one really knows. The official story is that she’s in mourning. It’s rather sad, sir. The young Duke died a week after they got married. Gored by a wild pig during a hunt, I believe. She went into mourning at the old castle at Prince-MarmadukePiotreAlbertHansJosephBernhardtWilhelmsberg and hasn’t appeared in public since. The official portrait was painted when she was about forty, I believe.’ ‘No children?’ ‘No, sir. On her death, the line is extinct.’ ‘And they pray to her? Like a god?’ Chinny sighed. ‘I did put this in my briefing notes, sir. The royal family in Borogravia have always had a quasi-religious status, you see. They’re the head of the church and the peasants, at least, pray to them in the hope that they’ll put in a good word with Nuggan. They’re like . . . living saints. Celestial intermediaries. To be honest, that’s how these countries work in any case. If you want something done, you have to know the right people. And I suppose it’s easier to pray to someone in a picture than to a god you can’t see.’ Vimes sat looking at the consul for some time. When he next spoke, he frightened the man to his boots. ‘Who’d inherit?’ he said. ‘Sir?’ ‘Just following the monarchy, Mr Chinny. If the Duchess isn’t on the throne, who should be?’ ‘Um, it’s incredibly complex, sir, because of the intermarriages and the various legal systems, which for example—’ ‘Who’s the smart money on, Mr Chinny?’ ‘Um, Prince Heinrich of Zlobenia.’ To Chinny’s astonishment Vimes laughed. ‘And he’s wondering how auntie’s gettin’ on, I expect. I met him this morning, didn’t I? Can’t say I took to him.’ ‘But he is a friend of Ankh-Morpork,’ said Chinny reproachfully. ‘That was in my report. Educated. Very interested in the clacks. Got great plans for his country. They used to be Nugganatic in Zlobenia, but he’s banned the religion and, frankly, hardly anyone objected. He wants Zlobenia to move forward. He admires Ankh-Morpork very much.’ ‘Yes, I know. He sounds almost as insane as Nuggan,’ said Vimes. ‘Okay, so what we’ve probably got is an elaborate charade to keep Heinrich out. How’s this place governed?’ ‘There isn’t much. A bit of tax collecting, and that’s about all. We think some of the senior court officials just drift on as if the Duchess was alive. The only thing that really works is the aimy.’ ‘All right, how about coppers? Everyone needs coppers. At least they have their feet on the ground.’ ‘I believe informal citizens’ committees enforce Nugganatic law,’ said Chinny. ‘Oh, gods. Prodnoses, curtain-twitchers and vigilantes,’ said Vimes. He stood up and peered out through the narrow window at the plain below. It was night-time. Cooking-fires in the enemy camp made demonic constellations in the darkness. ‘Did they tell you why I’ve been sent here, Clarence?’ he said. ‘No, sir. My instructions were that you would, um, oversee things. Prince Heinrich is not very happy about it.’ ‘Oh, well, the interests of Ankh-Morpork are the interests of all money-lov— oops, sorry, all freedom-loving people everywhere,’ said Vimes. ‘We can’t have a country that turns back our mail coaches and keeps cutting down the clacks towers. That’s expensive. They’re cutting the continent in half, they’re the pinch in the hourglass. I’m to bring things to a “satisfactory” conclusion. And frankly, Clarence, I’m wondering if it’s even worth attacking Borogravia. It’ll be cheaper to sit here and wait for it to explode. Although I notice . . . where was that report . . . ah, yes . . . it will starve first.’ ‘Regrettably so, sir.’ Igor stood mutely in front of the recruiting table. ‘Don’t often see you people these days,’ said Jackrum. ‘Yeah, run out of fresh brains, ‘ave yer?’ said the corporal nastily. ‘Now then, corporal, no call for that,’ said the sergeant, leaning back in his creaking chair. ‘There’s plenty of lads out there walking around on legs they wouldn’t still have if there hadn’t been a friendly Igor around, eh, Igor?’ ‘Yeah? Well, I heard about people waking up and findin’ their friendly Igor had whipped out their brains in the middle of the night and buggered off to flog ‘em,’ said the corporal, glaring at Igor. ‘I promith you your brain ith entirely thafe from me, corporal,’ said Igor. Polly started to laugh, and stopped when she realized absolutely no one else was doing so. ‘Yeah, well, I met a sergeant who said an Igor put a man’s legs on backwards,’ said Corporal Strappi. ‘What good’s that to a soldier, eh?’ ‘Could advance and retreat at the thame time?’ said Igor levelly. ‘Thargent, I know all the thtorieth, and they are nothing but vile calumnieth. I theek only to therve my country. I do not want trouble.’ ‘Right,’ said the sergeant. ‘Nor do we. Make your mark, and you’ve got to promise”not to mess about with Corporal Strappi’s brain, right? Another signature? My word, I can see we’ve got ourselves a bleedin’ college of recruits today. Give him his cardboard shilling, corporal.’ ‘Thank you,’ said Igor. ‘And I would like to give the picture a wipe, if it’th all the thame to you.’ He produced a small cloth. ‘Wipe it?’ said Strappi. ‘Is that allowed, sergeant?’ ‘What do you want to wipe it for, mister?’ said Jackrum. ‘To remove the invithible demonth,’ said Igor. ‘I can’t see any invis—’ Strappi began, and stopped. ‘Just let him, all right?’ said Jackrum. ‘It’s one of their funny little ways.’ ‘Dun’t seem right,’ muttered Strappi. ‘Practically treason . . .’ ‘Can’t see why it’d be wrong just to give the old girl a wash,’ said the sergeant shortly. ‘Next. Oh . . .’ Igor, after carefully wiping the stained picture and giving it a perfunctory peck, came and stood next to Polly, giving her a sheepish grin. But she was watching the next recruit. He was short and quite slim, which was fairly usual in a country where it was rare to get enough food to make you fat. But he was dressed in black and expensively, like an aristocrat; he even had a sword. The sergeant was, therefore, looking worried. Clearly a man could get into trouble talking wrong to a nob who might have important friends. ‘You sure you’ve come to the right place, sir?’ he said. ‘Yes, sergeant. I wish to enlist.’ Sergeant Jackrum shifted uneasily. ‘Yes, sir, but I’m not sure a gentleman like you—’ ‘Are you going to enlist me or not, sergeant?’ ‘Not usual for a gentleman to enlist as a common soldier, sir,’ mumbled the sergeant. ‘What you mean, sergeant, is: is anyone after me? Is there a price on my head? And the answer is no.’ ‘How about a mob with pitchforks?’ said Corporal Strappi. ‘He’s a bloody vampire, sarge! Anyone can see that! He’s a Black Ribboner! Look, he’s got the badge!’ ‘Which says “Not One Drop”,’ said the young man calmly. ‘Not one drop of human blood, sergeant. A prohibition I have accepted for almost two years, thanks to the League of Temperance. Of course, if you have a personal objection, sergeant, you only need to give it to me in writing.’ Which was quite a clever thing to say, Polly thought. Those clothes cost serious money. Most of the vampire families were highly nobby. You never knew who was connected to who . . . not just connected to who, in fact, but to whom. Whoms were likely to be far more trouble than your common everyday who. The sergeant was looking down a mile of rough road. ‘Got to move with the times, corporal,’ he said, deciding not to go there. ‘And we certainly need the men.’ ‘Yeah, but s’posin’ he wants to suck all my blood out in the middle of the night?’ said Strappi. ‘Well, he’ll just have to wait until Private Igor’s finished looking for your brain, won’t he?’ snapped the sergeant. ‘Sign here, mister.’ The pen scratched on the paper. After a minute or two the vampire turned the paper over and continued writing on the other side. Vampires had long names. ‘But you can call me Maladict,’ he said, dropping the pen back in the inkwell. ‘Thank you very much, I must say, si— private. Give him the shilling, corporal. Good job it’s not a silver one, eh? Haha!’ ‘Yes,’ said Maladict. ‘It is.’ ‘Next!’ said the sergeant. Polly watched as a farm boy, breeches held up with string, shuffled in front of the table and looked at the quill pen with the resentful perplexity of those confronted with new technology. She turned back to the bar. The landlord glared at her in the manner of bad landlords everywhere. As her father always said, if you kept an inn you either liked people or went mad. Oddly enough, some of the mad ones were the best at looking after their beer. But by the smell of the place, this wasn’t one of those. She leaned on the bar. ‘Pint, please,’ she said, and watched glumly as the man gave a scowl of acknowledgement and turned to the big barrels. It’d be sour, she knew, with the slop bucket under the tap tipped back in every night, and the spigot not put back, and . . . yes, it was going to be served in a leather tankard that had probably never been washed. A couple of new recruits were already knocking back their pints, though, with every audible sign of enjoyment. But this was Pliin, after all. Anything that made you forget you were there was probably worth drinking. One of them said, ‘Lovely pint, this, eh?’ and the boy next to him belched and said, ‘Best I’ve tasted, yeah.’ Polly sniffed at the tankard. The contents smelled like something she wouldn’t feed to pigs. She took a sip, and completely changed her opinion. She would feed it to pigs. Those lads have never tasted beer before, she told herself. It’s like dad said. Out in the country there’s lads who’d join up for an uninhabited pair of breeches. And they’ll drink this muck and pretend to enjoy it like men, hey up, we supped some stuff last night, eh, lads? And then next thing— Oh, lor’ . . . that reminded her. What’d the privy be like here? The men’s one out in the yard back at home was bad enough. Polly sloshed two big pails of water into it every morning while trying not to breathe. There was weird green moss growing on the slate floor. And The Duchess was a good inn. It had customers who took their boots off before going to bed. She narrowed her eyes. This stupid fool in front of her, a man making one long eyebrow do the work of two, was serving them slops and foul vinegar just before they marched off to war— ‘Thith beer,’ said Igor, on her right, ‘tathteth of horthe pith.’ Polly stood back. Even in a bar like this, that was killing talk. ‘Oh, you’d know, would you?’ said the barman, looming over the boy. ‘Drunk horse piss, have you?’ ‘Yeth,’ said Igor. The barman stuck a fist in front of Igor’s face. ‘Now you listen to me, you lisping little—’ A slim black arm appeared with amazing speed and a pale hand caught the man’s wrist. The one eyebrow contorted in sudden agony. ‘Now, it’s like this,’ said Maladict calmly. ‘We’re soldiers of the Duchess, agreed? Just say “aargh”.’ He must have squeezed. The man groaned. ‘Thank you. And you’re serving up as beer a liquid best described as foul water,’ Maladict went on in the same level, conversational tone. ‘I, of course, don’t drink . . . horse piss, but I have a highly developed sense of smell, and really would prefer not to list aloud the things I can smell in this murk, so we’ll just say “rat droppings” and leave it at that, shall we? Just whimper. Good man.’ At the end of the bar, one of the new recruits threw up. The barman’s fingers had gone white. Maladict nodded with satisfaction. ‘Incapacitating a soldier of her grace in wartime is a treasonable offence,’ he said. He leaned forward. ‘Punishable, of course, by . . . death.’ Maladict pronounced the word with a certain delight. ‘However, if there happened to be another barrel of beer around the place, you know, good stuff, the stuff you’d keep for your friends if you had any friends, then I’m sure we can forget this little incident. Now, I’m going to let go of your wrist. I can tell by your eyebrow that you are a thinker, and if you’re thinking of rushing back in here with a big stick, I’d like you to think about this instead: I’d like you to think about this black ribbon I’m wearing. Know what it means, do you?’ The barman winced, and mumbled: ‘Temp’rance League . . .’ ‘Right! Well done!’ said Maladict. ‘And one more thought for you, if you’ve got room. I’ve only taken a pledge not to drink human blood. It doesn’t mean I can’t kick you in the fork so hard you suddenly go deaf.’ He released his grip. The barman slowly straightened up. Under the bar he would have a short wooden club, Polly knew. Every bar had one. Even her father had one. It was a great help, he said, in times of worry and confusion. She saw the fingers of the usable hand twitch. ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘I think he means it.’ The barman relaxed. ‘Bit of a misunderstanding there, gents,’ he mumbled. ‘Got the wrong barrel in. No offence meant.’ He shuffled off, his hand almost visibly throbbing. ‘I only thaid it wath horthe pith,’ said Igor. ‘He won’t cause trouble,’ said Polly to Maladict. ‘He’ll be your friend from now on. He’s worked out he can’t beat you so he’s going to be your best mate.’ Maladict subjected her to a thoughtful stare. ‘ I know that,’ he said. ‘How do you?’ ‘I used to work in an inn,’ said Polly, feeling her heart begin to beat faster, as it always did when the lies lined up. ‘You learn to read people.’ ‘What did you do in the inn?’ ‘Barman.’ ‘There’s another inn in this hole, is there?’ ‘Oh no, I’m not from round here.’ Polly groaned at the sound of her own voice, and waited for the question: ‘Then why come here to join up?’ It didn’t come. Instead, Maladict just shrugged and said, ‘I shouldn’t think anyone is from round here.’ A couple more new recruits arrived at the bar. They had the same look - sheepish, a bit defiant, in clothes that didn’t fit well. Eyebrow reappeared with a small keg, which he laid reverentially on a stand and gently tapped. He pulled a genuine pewter tankard from under the bar, filled it, and timorously proffered it to Maladict. ‘Igor?’ said the vampire, waving it away. ‘I’ll thtick with the horthe pith, if it’th all the thame to you,’ said Igor. He looked around in the sudden silence. ‘Look, I never thaid I didn’t like it,’ said Igor. He pushed his mug across the sticky bar. ‘Thame again?’ Polly took the new tankard and sniffed at it. Then she took a sip. ‘Not bad,’ she said. ‘At least it tastes like it’s—’ The door pushed open, letting in the sounds of the storm. About two-thirds of a troll eased its way inside, and then managed to get the rest of itself through. Polly was okay about trolls. She met them up in the woods sometimes, sitting amongst the trees or purposefully lumbering along the tracks on the way to whatever it was trolls did. They weren’t friendly, they were . . . resigned. The world’s got humans in it, live with it. They’re not worth the indigestion. You can’t kill ‘em all. Step around ‘em. Stepping on ‘em doesn’t work in the long term. Occasionally a farmer would hire one to do some heavy work. Sometimes they turned up, sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes they’d turn up, lumber around a field pulling out tree stumps as if they were carrots, and then wander off without waiting to be paid. A lot of things humans did mystified trolls, and vice versa. Generally, they avoided one another. But she didn’t often see trolls as . . . trollish as this one. It looked like a boulder that had spent centuries in the damp pine forests. Lichen covered it. Stringy grey moss hung in curtains from its head and its chin. It had a bird’s nest in one ear. It had a genuine troll club, made from an uprooted sapling. It was almost a joke troll, except that no one would laugh. The root end of the sapling bumped across the floor as the troll, watched by the recruits and a horrified Corporal Strappi, trudged to the table. ‘Gonna En List,’ it said. ‘Gonna do my bit. Gimme shillin’.’ ‘You’re a troll!’ Strappi burst out. ‘Now, now, none of that, corporal,’ said Sergeant Jackrum. ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell.’ ‘Don’t ask? Don’t ask? It’s a troll, sarge! It’s got crags! There’s grass growing under its fingernails! It’s a troll!’ ‘Right,’ said the sergeant. ‘Enlist him.’ ‘You want to fight with us?’ Strappi squeaked. Trolls had no sense of personal space, and a ton of what was, for practical purposes, a kind of rock was looming right over the table. The troll analysed the question. The recruits stood in silence, mugs halfway to mouths. ‘No,’ said the troll at last. ‘Gonna fight wi’ En Army. Gods save the . . .’ The troll paused, and looked at the ceiling. Whatever it was seeking there didn’t appear to be visible. Then it looked at its feet, which had grass growing on them. Then it looked at its free hand and moved its fingers as if counting something. ‘. . . Duchess,’ it said. It had been a long wait. The table creaked as the troll laid a hand on it, palm upwards. ‘Gimme shillin’.’ ‘We’ve only got the bits of pape—’ Corporal Strappi began. Sergeant Jackrum jabbed an elbow into his ribs. ‘Upon my oath, are you mad?’ he hissed. ‘There’s a ten-man bounty for enlisting a troll!’ With his other hand he reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a real silver shilling, and placed it delicately in the huge hand. ‘Welcome to your new life, friend! I’ll just write your name down, shall I? What is it?’ The troll looked at ceiling, feet, sergeant, wall and table. Polly saw its lips move. ‘Carborundum?’ it volunteered. ‘Yeah, probably,’ said the sergeant. ‘Er, how’d you like to shav— to cut off some of that hai— moss? We’ve got a, a sort of a . . . regulation . . .’ Wall, floor, ceiling, table, fingers, sergeant. ‘No,’ said Carborundum. ‘Right. Right. Right,’ said the sergeant quickly. ‘It’s not a regulation as per such, actually, it’s more of an advisory. Silly one, too, eh? I’ve always thought so. Glad to have you with us,’ he added fervently. The troll licked the coin, which gleamed like a diamond in its hand. It actually did have grass growing under its fingernails too, Polly noticed. Then Carborundum trudged to the bar. The crowd parted instantly, because trolls never had to stand at the back of the press of bodies, waving money and trying to catch the barman’s eye. He broke the coin in two and dropped both halves on the bar top. Eyebrow swallowed. He looked as though he would have said ‘Are you sure?’ except that this was not a question barmen addressed to people weighing over half a ton. Carborundum thought for a while, and then said: ‘Gimme drink.’ Eyebrow nodded, disappeared briefly into the room behind the bar, and came back holding a double-handled mug. Maladict sneezed. Polly’s eyes watered. It was the kind of smell you sense with your teeth. The pub might make foul beer as a matter of course, but this was eye-stinging vinegar. Eyebrow dropped one half of the silver coin into it, and then took a copper penny out of the money drawer and held it over the fuming mug. The troll nodded. With just a hint of ceremony, like a cocktail waiter dropping the little umbrella into a Double Entendre, Eyebrow let the copper fall. More bubbles welled up. Igor watched with interest. Carborundum picked the mug up in two fingers of each shovel-like hand, and swallowed the contents in one gulp. He stood stock still for a moment, then carefully put the mug back on the bar. ‘You gentlemen might like to move back a bit,’ murmured Eyebrow. ‘What’s going to happen?’ said Polly. ‘It takes ‘em all differently,’ said Eyebrow. ‘Looks like this one’s - no, there he goes . . .’ With considerable style, Carborundum went over backwards. There was no sagging at the knees, no girly attempt to soften the fall. He just went from standing up, one hand out, to lying down, one hand up. He even rocked gently for some time after hitting the floor. ‘Got no head for his drink,’ said Eyebrow. ‘Typical of the young bucks. Wants to play the big troll, comes in here, orders an Electrick Floorbanger, doesn’t know how to handle it.’ ‘Is he going to come round?’ said Maladict. ‘No, that’s it until dawn, I reckon,’ said Eyebrow. ‘Brain stops working.’ ‘Shouldn’t affect him too much, then,’ said Corporal Strappi, stepping up. ‘Right, you miserable lot. You’re sleeping in the shed out the back, understand? Practically waterproof, hardly any rats. We’re out of here at dawn! You’re in the army now!’ Polly lay in the dark, on a bed of musty straw. There was no question of anyone’s getting undressed. The rain hammered on the roof and the wind blew through a crack under the door, despite Igor’s attempt to stuff it with straw. There was some desultory conversation, during which Polly found that she was sharing the dank shed with ‘Tonker’ Halter, ‘Shufti’ Manickle, ‘Wazzer’ Goom and ‘Lofty’ Tewt. Maladict and Igor didn’t seem to have acquired repeatable nicknames. She’d become Ozzer by general agreement. Slightly to Polly’s surprise the boy now known as Wazzer had taken a small picture of the Duchess out of his pack and had nervously hung it on an old nail. No one else said anything as he prayed to it. It was what you were supposed to do. They said the Duchess was dead . . . Polly had been washing up when she’d heard the men talking late one night, and it’s a poor woman who can’t eavesdrop while making a noise at the same time. Dead, they said, but the people up at PrinceMarmadukePiotreAlbertHansJosephBernhardtWilhelmsberg weren’t admitting it. That was ‘cos what with there being no children, and with royalty marrying one another’s cousins and grannies all the time, the ducal throne would go to Prince Heinrich of Zlobenia! There! Can you believe that? That’s why we never see her, right? And there hasn’t been a new picture all these years? Makes you think, eh? Oh, they say she’s been in mourning ‘cos of the young Duke, but that was more’n seventy years ago! They say she was buried in secret and— At which point her father had stopped the speaker dead. There are some conversations where you don’t even want people to remember you were in the same room. Dead or alive, the Duchess watched over you. The recruits tried to sleep. Occasionally, someone belched or expelled wind noisily, and Polly responded with a few fake eructations of her own. That seemed to inspire greater effort on the part of the other sleepers, to the point where the roof rattled and dust fell down, before everyone subsided. Once or twice she heard people stagger out into the windy darkness, in theory for the privy but probably, given male impatience in these matters, to aim much closer to home. Once, coasting in and out of a troubled dream, she thought she heard someone sobbing. Taking care not to rustle too much, Polly pulled out the much-folded, much-read, much-stained last letter from her brother, and read it by the light of the solitary, guttering candle. It had been opened and heavily mangled by the censors, and bore the stamp of the Duchy. It read: Dear all, We are in ■■■■■ which is ■■■ with a ■■big thing with knobs. On ■■■■we will ■■■■■ which is just as well because ■■■ out of. I am keeping well. The food is ■■■■. ■■■ we’ll ■■ at the ■■■ but my mate ■■er says not to worry, it’ll be all over by ■■■■ and we shall all have medals. Chins up! Paul It was in a careful hand, the excessively clear and well-shaped writing of someone who has to think about every letter. She slowly folded it up again. Paul had wanted medals, because they were shiny. That’d been almost a year ago, when any recruiting party that came past went away with the best part of a battalion, and there had been people waving them off with flags and music. Sometimes, now, smaller parties of men came back. The lucky ones were missing only one arm or one leg. There were no flags. She unfolded another piece of paper. It was a pamphlet. It was headed ‘From the Mothers of Borogravia!’ The mothers of Borogravia were very definite about wanting to send their sons off to war against the Zlobenian Aggressor and used a great many exclamation marks to say so. And this was odd, because the mothers in Munz had not seemed keen on the idea of their sons going off to war, and positively tried to drag them back. Several copies of the pamphlet seemed to have reached every home, even so. It was very patriotic. That is, it talked about killing foreigners. Polly had learned to read and write after a fashion because the inn was big and it was a business and things had to be tallied and recorded. Her mother had taught her to read, which was acceptable to Nuggan, and her father made sure that she learned how to write, which was not. A woman who could write was an Abomination unto Nuggan, according to Father Jupe; anything she wrote would by definition be a lie. But Polly had learned anyway because Paul hadn’t, at least to the standard needed to run an inn as busy as The Duchess. He could read if he could run his finger slowly along the lines, and he wrote letters at a snail’s pace, with a lot of care and heavy breathing, like a man assembling a piece of jewellery. He was big and kind and slow and could lift beer kegs as though they were toys, but he wasn’t a man at home with paperwork. Their father had hinted to Polly, very gently but very often, that Polly would need to be right behind him when the time came for him to run The Duchess. Left to himself, with no one to tell him what to do next, her brother just stood and watched birds. At Paul’s insistence, she’d read the whole of ‘From the Mothers of Borogravia!’ to him, including the bits about heroes and there being no greater good than to die for your country. She wished, now, she hadn’t done that. Paul did what he was told. Unfortunately, he believed what he was told, too. Polly put the papers away and dozed again, until her bladder woke her up. Oh, well, at least at this time of the morning she’d have a clear run. She reached out for her pack and stepped as softly as she could out into the rain. It was mostly just coming off the trees now, which were roaring in the wind that blew up the valley. The moon was hidden in the clouds, but there was just enough light to make out the inn’s buildings. A certain greyness suggested that what passed for dawn in Pliin was on the way. She located the men’s privy which, indeed, stank of inaccuracy. A lot of planning and practice had gone into this moment. She was helped by the design of the breeches, which were the old-fashioned kind with generous buttoned trapdoors, and also by the experiments she’d made very early in the mornings when she was doing the cleaning. In short, with care and attention to detail, she’d found that a woman could pee standing up. It certainly worked back home in the inn’s privy, which had been designed and built in the certain expectation of the aimlessness of the customers. The wind shook the dank building. In the dark she thought of Auntie Hattie, who’d gone a bit strange round her sixtieth birthday and persistently accused passing young men of looking up her dress. She was even worse after a glass of wine, and she had one joke: ‘What does a man stand up to do, a woman sit down to do and a dog lift its leg to do?’ And then, when everyone was too embarrassed to answer, she’d triumphantly shriek, ‘Shake hands!’ and fall over. Auntie Hattie was an Abomination all by herself. Polly buttoned up the breeches with a sense of exhilaration. She felt she’d crossed a bridge, a sensation that was helped by the realization that she’d kept her feet dry. Someone said, ‘Psst!’ It was just as well she’d already taken a leak. Panic instantly squeezed every muscle. Where were they hiding? This was just a rotten old shed! Oh, there were a few cubicles, but the smell alone suggested very strongly that the woods outside would be a much better proposition. Even on a wild night. Even with extra wolves. ‘Yes?’ she quavered, and then cleared her throat and demanded, with a little more gruffness: ‘Yes? ’ ‘You’ll need these,’ whispered the voice. In the fetid gloom she made out something rising over the top of a cubicle. She reached up nervously and touched softness. It was a bundle of wool. Her fingers explored it. ‘A pair of socks?’ she said. ‘Right. Wear ‘em,’ said the mystery voice hoarsely. ‘Thank you, but I’ve brought several pairs . . .’ Polly began. There was a faint sigh. ‘No. Not on your feet. Shove ‘em down the front of your trousers.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Look,’ said the whisperer patiently, ‘you don’t bulge where you shouldn’t bulge. That’s good. But you don’t bulge where you should bulge, either. You know? Lower down?’ ‘Oh! Er . . . I. . . but . . . I didn’t think people noticed . . .’ said Polly, glowing with embarrassment. She’d been spotted! But there was no hue and cry, no angry quotations from the Book of Nuggan. Someone was helping. Someone who had seen her . . . ‘It’s a funny thing,’ said the voice, ‘but they notice what’s missing more than they notice what’s there. Just one pair, mark you. Don’t get ambitious.’ Polly hesitated. ‘Um . . . is it obvious?’ she said. ‘No. That’s why I gave you the socks.’ ‘I meant that . . . that I’m not . . . that I’m . . .’ ‘Not really,’ said the voice in the dark. ‘You’re pretty good. You come over as a frightened young lad trying to look big and brave. You might pick your nose a bit more often. Just a tip. Few things interest a young man more than the contents of his nostrils. Now I’ve got a favour to ask you in return.’ I didn’t ask you for one, Polly thought, quite annoyed at being taken for being a frightened young lad when she was sure she’d come over as quite a cool, non-ruffled young lad. But she said calmly: ‘What is it?’ ‘Got any paper?’ Wordlessly, Polly pulled ‘From the Mothers of Borogravia!’ out of her shirt and handed it up. She heard the sound of a match striking, and a sulphurous smell which only improved the general conditions. ‘Why, is this the escutcheon of her grace the Duchess I see in front of me?’ said the whisperer. ‘Well, it won’t be in front of me for long. Beat it . . . boy.’ Polly hurried out into the night, shocked, dazed, confused and almost asphyxiated, and made it to the shed door. But she’d barely shut it behind her and was still blinking in the blackness when it was thrust open again, to let in the wind, rain and Corporal Strappi. ‘All right, all right! Hands off . . . well, you lot wouldn’t be able to find ‘em . . . and on with socks! Hup hup hi ho hup hup . . .’ Bodies were suddenly springing up or falling over all round Polly. Their muscles must have been obeying the voice directly, because no brain could have got into gear that quickly. Corporal Strappi, in obedience to the law of non-commissioned officers, responded by making the confusion more confusing. ‘Good grief, a lot of old women could shift better’n you!’ he shouted with satisfaction as people flailed around looking for coats and boots. Tall in! Get shaved! Every man in the regiment to be clean shaven, by order! Get dressed! Wazzer, I’ve got my eye on you! Move! Move! Breakfast in five minutes! Last one there doesn’t get a sausage! Oh deary me, what a bloody shower!’ The four lesser horsemen of Panic, Bewilderment, Ignorance and Shouting took control of the room, to Corporal Strappi’s obscene glee. Polly, though, ducked out of the door, pulled a small tin mug out of her pack, dipped it into a water butt, balanced it on an old barrel behind the inn, and started to shave. She’d practised this, too. The secret was in the old cut-throat razor that she’d carefully blunted. After that, it was all in the shaving brush and soap. Get a lot of lather on, shave a lot of lather off, and you’d had a shave, hadn’t you? Must have done, sir, feel how smooth the skin is . . . She was halfway through when a voice by her ear screamed: ‘What d’you think you’re doing, Private Parts?’ It was just as well the blade was blunt. ‘Perks, sir!’ she said, rubbing her nose. ‘I’m shaving, sir! It’s Perks, sir!’ ‘Sir? Sir? I’m not a sir, Parts, I’m a bloody corporal, Parts. That means you calls me “corporal”, Parts. And you are shaving in an official regimental mug,” Parts, what you have not been issued with, right? You a deserter, Parts?’ ‘No, s— corporal!’ ‘A thief, then?’ ‘No, corporal!’ ‘Then how come you got a bloody mug, Parts?’ ‘Got it off a dead man, sir— corporal!’ Strappi’s voice, pitched to a scream in any case, became a screech of rage. ‘You’re a looter?’ ‘No, corporal! The soldier . . .’ . . . had died almost in her arms, on the floor of the inn. There had been half a dozen men in that party of returning heroes. They must have been trekking with grey-faced patience for days, making their way back to little villages in the mountains. Polly counted nine arms and ten legs between them, and ten eyes. But it was the apparently whole who were worse, in a way. They kept their stinking coats buttoned tight, in lieu of bandages, over whatever unspeakable mess lay beneath, and they had the smell of death about them. The inn’s regulars made space for them, and talked quietly, like people in a sacred place. Her father, not usually a man given to sentiment, quietly put a generous tot of brandy into each mug of ale, and refused all payment. Then it turned out that they were carrying letters from soldiers still fighting, and one of them had brought the letter from Paul. He pushed it across the table to Polly as she served them stew and then, with very little fuss, he died. The rest of the men moved unsteadily on later that day, taking with them, to give to his parents, the pot-metal medal that had been in the soldier’s coat pocket and the official commendation from the Duchy that went with it. Polly had taken a look at it. It was printed, including the Duchess’s signature, and the man’s name had been filled in, rather cramped, because it was longer than average. The last few letters were rammed up tight together. It’s little details like that which get remembered, as undirected white-hot rage fills the mind. Apart from the letter and the medal, all the man left behind was a tin mug and, on the floor, a stain which wouldn’t scrub out. Corporal Strappi listened impatiently to a slightly adjusted version. Polly could see his mind working. The mug had belonged to a soldier; now it belonged to another soldier. Those were the facts of the matter, and there wasn’t much he could do about it. He resorted, instead, to the safer ground of general abuse. ‘So you think you’re smart, Parts?’ he said. ‘No, corporal.’ ‘Oh? So you’re stupid, are you?’ ‘Well, I did enlist, corporal,’ said Polly meekly. Somewhere behind Strappi, someone sniggered. ‘I’ve got my eye on you, Parts,’ growled Strappi, temporarily defeated. ‘Just you put a foot wrong, that’s all.’ He strode off. ‘Um . . .’ said a voice beside Polly. She turned to see another youth, wearing secondhand clothes and an air of nervousness that didn’t quite conceal some bubbling anger. He was big and red-haired, but it was cut so close that it was just head fuzz. ‘You’re Tonker, right?’ she said. ‘Yeah, and, er . . . could I have a borrow of your shaving gear, right?’ Polly looked at a chin as free of hair as a billiard ball. The boy blushed. ‘Got to start sometime, right?’ he said defiantly. ‘The razor’ll need sharpening,’ said Polly. ‘That’s all right, I know how to do that,’ said Tonker. Polly wordlessly handed over the mug and razor, and took the opportunity to duck into the privy while everyone else was occupied. It was the work of a moment to put the socks in place. Anchoring them was a problem, which she solved by unwinding part of one sock and tucking it up under her belt. They felt odd, and strangely heavy for a little package of wool. Walking a little awkwardly, Polly went in to see what horrors breakfast would bring. It brought stale horse-bread and sausage and very weak beer. She grabbed a sausage and a slab of bread and sat down. You had to concentrate to eat horse-bread. There was a lot more about these days, a bread made from flour ground up with dried pease and beans and vegetable scrapings. It used to be made just for horses, to put them in fine condition. Now you hardly ever saw anything else on the table, and there tended to be less and less of it, too. You needed time and good teeth to work your way through a slice of horse-bread, just as you needed a complete lack of imagination to eat a modern sausage. Polly sat and concentrated on chewing. The only other area of calm was around Private Maladict, who was drinking coffee like a young man relaxing in a pavement cafe, with the air of someone who has life thoroughly worked out. He nodded at Polly. Was that him in the privy? she wondered. I got back in just as Strappi started yelling and everyone started running around and rushing in and out. It could have been anyone. Do vampires use the privy? Well, do they? Has anyone ever dared ask? ‘Sleep well?’ he asked. ‘Yeah. Did you?’ said Polly. ‘I couldn’t stand that shed, but Mr Eyebrow kindly allowed me to use his cellar,’ said Maladict. ‘Old habits die hard, you know? At least,’ he added, ‘old acceptable habits. I’ve never felt happy not hanging down.’ ‘And you got coffee?’ ‘I carry my own supply,’ said Maladict, indicating an exquisite little silver and gilt coffee-making engine on the table by his cup, ‘and Mr Eyebrow kindly boiled some water for me.’ He grinned, showing two long canine teeth. ‘It’s amazing what you can achieve with a smile, Oliver.’ Polly nodded. ‘Er . . . is Igor a friend of yours?’ she said. At the next table Igor had obtained a sausage, presumably raw, from the kitchen, and was watching it intently. A couple of wires ran from the sausage to a mug of the horrible vinegary beer, which was bubbling. ‘Never seen him before in my life,’ said the vampire. ‘Of course, if you’ve met one you have in a sense met them all. We had an Igor at home. Wonderful workers. Very reliable. Very trustworthy. And, of course, so good at stitching things together, if you know what I mean.’ ‘Those stitches round his head don’t look very professional,’ said Polly, who was beginning to object to Maladict’s permanent expression of effortless superiority. ‘Oh, that? It’s an Igor thing,’ said Maladict. ‘It’s a Look. Like . . . tribal markings, you know? They like them to show. Ha, we had a servant once who had stitches all the way round his neck, and he was extremely proud of them.’ ‘Really?’ said Polly weakly. ‘Yes, and the droll part of it all was that it wasn’t even his head!’ Now Igor had a syringe in his hand, and was watching the sausage with an air of satisfaction. For a moment, Polly thought that the sausage moved . . . ‘All right, all right, time’s up, you horrible lot!’ barked Corporal Strappi, strutting into the room. ‘Fall in! That means line up, you shower! That means you too, Parts! And you, Mr Vampire, sir, will you be joining us for a morning’s light soldiering? On your feet! And where’s that bloody Igor?’ ‘Here, thur,’ said Igor, from three inches behind Strappi’s backbone. The corporal spun round. ‘How did you get there?’ he bellowed. ‘It’th a gift, thur,’ said Igor. ‘Don’t you ever get behind me again! Fall in with the rest of them! Now . . . Attention!’ Strappi sighed theatrically. ‘That means “stand up straight”. Got it? Once more with feeling! Attention! Ah, I see the problem! You’ve got trousers that are permanently at ease! I think I shall have to write to the Duchess and tell her she should ask for her money back! What are you smiling about, Mr Vampire sir?’ Strappi positioned himself in front of Maladict, who stood faultlessly to attention. ‘Happy to be in the regiment, corporal!’ ‘Yeah, right,’ mumbled Strappi. ‘Well, you won’t be so—’ ‘Everything all right, corporal?’ asked Sergeant Jackrum, appearing in the doorway. ‘Best we could expect, sergeant,’ sighed the corporal. ‘We ought to throw ‘em back, oh dear me, yes. Useless, useless, useless . . .’ ‘Okay, lads. Stand easy,’ said Jackrum, glancing at Strappi in a less than friendly way. ‘Today we’re heading on down towards Plotz, where we’ll meet up with the other recruiting parties and you’ll be issued with your uniforms and weapons, you lucky lads. Any of you ever used a weapon? You have, Perks?’ Polly lowered her hand. ‘A bit, sarge. My brother taught me a bit when he was home on leave, and some of the old men in the bar where I worked gave me some, er, tips.’ They had, too. It was funny to watch a girl waving a sword around, and they’d been kind enough when they weren’t laughing. She was a quick learner, but she’d made a point of staying clumsy long after she’d got the feel for the blade, because using a sword was also ‘the work of an Man’ and a woman doing it was an Abomination unto Nuggan. Old soldiers, on the whole, were on the easygoing side when it came to Abominations. She’d be funny just as long as she was useless, and safe as long as she was funny. ‘Expert, are yer?’ said Strappi, grinning nastily. ‘A real fencin’ genius, are yer?’ ‘No, corporal,’ said Polly meekly. ‘All right,’ said Jackrum. ‘Anyone else—’ ‘Hang on, sarge, I reckon we’d all like a bit of instruction from swordmeister Parts,’ said Strappi. ‘Ain’t that right, lads?’ There was a general murmuring and shrugging from the squad, who recognized a right little bullying bastard when they saw one but, treacherously, were glad he hadn’t picked on them. Strappi drew his own sword. ‘Lend him one of yours, sarge,’ he said. ‘Go on. Just a little bit of fun, eh?’ Jackrum hesitated, and glanced at Polly. ‘How about it, lad? You don’t have to,’ he said. I’ll have to sooner or later, Polly thought. The world was full of Strappies. If you backed away from them, they only kept on coming. You had to stop them at the start. She sighed. ‘Okay, sarge.’ Jackrum pulled one of his cutlasses out of his sash and handed it to Polly. It looked amazingly sharp. ‘He won’t hurt you, Perks,’ he said, while looking at the smirking Strappi. ‘I’ll try not to hurt him either, sir,’ said Polly, and then cursed herself for the idiot bravado. It must have been the socks talking. ‘Oh, good,’ said Strappi, stepping back. ‘We’ll just see what you’re made of, Parts.’ Flesh, thought Polly. Blood. Easily cut things. Oh, well . . . Strappi waved his sabre like the old boys had done, down low, in case she was one of those people who thought the whole idea was to hit the other man’s sword. She ignored it, and watched his eyes, which was no great treat. He wouldn’t stick her, not mortally, not with Jackrum watching. He’d try for something that’d hurt and make everyone laugh at her. That was the Strappi type through and through. Every inn counted one or two amongst its regulars. The corporal tested her more aggressively a couple of times, and twice, by luck, she managed to knock the blade out of the way. Luck would run out, though, and if she looked like putting up a decent show Strappi would sort her out good and proper. Then she remembered the cackled advice of old Gummy Abbens, a retired sergeant who’d lost his left arm to a broadsword and all his teeth to cider: ‘A good swordsman ‘ates comin’ up against a newbie, gel! The reason bein’, he don’t know what the bugger’s gonna do!’ She swung the cutlass wildly. Strappi had to block it, and for a moment the swords locked. That the best you can do, Parts?’ the corporal jeered. Polly reached out and grabbed his shirt. ‘No, corporal,’ she said, ‘but this is.’ She pulled hard and lowered her head. The collision hurt more than she’d hoped, but she heard something crunch and it didn’t belong to her. She stepped back quickly, slightly dizzy, “with the cutlass at the ready. Strappi had sunk to his knees, blood gushing from his nose. When he got up, someone was going to die . . . Panting, Polly appealed wordlessly to Sergeant Jackrum, who had folded his arms and was looking innocently at the ceiling. ‘I bet you didn’t learn that from your brother, Perks,’ he said. ‘No, sarge. Got that from Gummy Abbens, sarge.’ Jackrum suddenly looked down at her, grinning. ‘What, old Sergeant Abbens?’ ‘Yes, sarge!’ ‘There’s a name from the past! He’s still alive? How is the evil old sot?’ ‘Er . . . well preserved, sarge,’ said Polly, still trying to get her breath. Jackrum laughed. ‘Yeah, I’ll bet. Did his best fighting in bars, he did. And I’ll bet that’s not the only trick he told you about, eh?’ ‘No, sir.’ And the other men had scolded the old boy for telling her, and Gummy had chuckled into his cider mug, and anyway it had taken Polly a long time to find out what ‘family jewels’ meant. ‘Hear that, Strappi?’ said the sergeant to the cursing man dribbling blood on to the floor. ‘Looks like you was lucky. But there’s no prizes for fighting fair in a melee, lads, as you will learn. All right, fun over. Go and put some cold water on that, corporal. It always looks worse than it is. And that’s an end of it, the pair of you. That is an order. A word to the wise. Understood?’ ‘Yes, sarge,’ said Polly meekly. Strappi grunted. Jackrum looked at the rest of the recruits. ‘Okay. Any of the rest of you boys ever held a stick? Right. I can see we’re going to have to start slow and work up . . .’ There was another grunt from Strappi. You had to admire the man. On his knees, with blood bubbling through the hand cupping his injured nose, he could find time to make life difficult for someone in some small way. ‘Private Bloodfnucker hnas a fnord, fnargeant,’ he said accusingly. ‘Any good with it?’ said the sergeant to Maladict. ‘Not really, sir,’ said Maladict. ‘Never had training. I carry it for protection, sir.’ ‘How can you protect yourself by carrying a sword if you don’t know how to use it?’ ‘Not me, sir. Other people. They see the sword and don’t attack me,’ said Maladict patiently. ‘Yes, but if they did, lad, you wouldn’t be any good with it,’ said the sergeant. ‘No, sir. I’d probably settle for just ripping their heads off, sir. That’s what I mean by protection, sir. Theirs, not mine. And I’d get hell from the League if I did that, sir.’ The sergeant stared at him for a while. ‘Well thought out,’ he mumbled. There was a thud behind them and a table overturned. Carborundum the troll sat up, groaned, and crashed back down again. At the second attempt, he managed to stay upright, both hands clutching his head. Corporal Strappi, now on his feet, must have been made fearless by fury. He headed for the troll in a high-speed strut and stood in front of him, vibrating with rage and still oozing blood in sticky strings. ‘You ‘orrible little man!’ he screamed. ‘You—’ Carborundum reached down and, with care and no apparent effort, picked the corporal up by his head. He brought him to one crusted eye and turned him this way and that. ‘Did I join th’ army?’ he rumbled. ‘Oh, coprolite . . .’ ‘This is affnault on a fnuperior officer!’ screamed the muffled voice of the corporal. ‘Put Corporal Strappi down, please,’ said Sergeant Jackrum. The troll grunted, and lowered the man to the floor. ‘Sorry about dat,’ he said. ‘Thought you was a dwarf.’ ‘I dnemand this man is affrested for—’ Strappi began. ‘No you don’t, corporal, no you don’t,’ said the sergeant. ‘This is not the time. On your feet, Carborundum, and get in line. Upon my oath, you try that little trick one more time and there will be trouble, understand?’ ‘Yes, sergeant,’ growled the troll, and knuckled himself to his feet. ‘Right, then,’ said the sergeant, stepping back. ‘Now today, my lucky lads, we’re goin’ to learn about something we call marching . . .’ They left Plün to the wind and rain. About an hour after they’d vanished round a bend in the valley, the shed they’d slept in mysteriously burned down. There have been better attempts at marching, and they have been made by penguins. Sergeant Jackrum brought up the rear in the cart, shouting instructions, but the recruits moved as if they’d never before had to get from place to place. The sergeant yelled the swagger out of their steps, stopped the cart and for a few of them held an impromptu lesson in the concepts of ‘right’ and ‘left’ and, by degrees, they left the mountains. Polly remembered those first days with mixed feelings. All they did was march, but she was used to long walks and her boots were good. The trousers ceased to chafe. A watery sun took the trouble to shine. It wasn’t cold. It would have been fine, if it hadn’t been for the corporal. She’d wondered how Strappi, whose nose was now about the same colour as a plum, was going to handle the situation between them. It turned out that he intended to deal with it by pretending it hadn’t happened, and also by having as little as possible to do with Polly. He didn’t spare the others, although he was selective. Maladict was left strictly alone, as was Carborundum; whatever else Strappi was, he wasn’t suicidal. And he was bewildered by Igor. The little man did whatever stupid chore Strappi found for him, and he did it quickly, competently, and giving every impression of someone happy in his work, and that left the corporal completely mystified. He’d pick on the others for no reason at all, harangue them until they made some trivial mistake, and then bawl them out. His target of choice was Private Goom, better known as Wazzer, who was stick-thin and round-eyed and nervous and said grace loudly before meals. By the end of the first day, Strappi could make him throw up just by shouting. And then he’d laugh. Only he never really laughed, Polly noted. What you got instead was a sort of harsh gargling of spit at the back of the throat, a noise like ghnssssh. The presence of the man cast a damper on everything. Jackrum seldom interfered. He often watched Strappi, though, and once when Polly caught his eye, he winked. On the first night a tent was shouted off the cart by Strappi and shouted up and, after a supper of stale bread and sausage, they were shouted in front of a blackboard to be shouted at. Across the top of the board Strappi had written WHAT WE ARE FIGHTING FOR and down the side he had written 1, 2, 3. ‘Right, pay attention!’ he said, slapping the board with a stick. There’s some who think that you boys ought to know why we are fighting this war, okay? Well, here it comes. Point One, remember the town of Lipz? It was viciously attacked by Zlobenian troops a year ago! They—’ ‘Sorry, but I thought we attacked Lipz, didn’t we, corporal? Last year they said—’ said Shufti. ‘Are you trying to be smart, Private Manickle?’ Strappi demanded, naming the biggest sin in his personal list. ‘Just want to know corporal,’ said Shufti. He was stocky, running to plump, and one of those people who bustle about being helpful in a mildly annoying way, taking over small jobs that you wouldn’t have minded doing for yourself. There was something odd about him, although you had to bear in mind he was currently sitting next to Wazzer, who had enough odd for everybody and was probably contagious . . . . . . and had caught Strappi’s eye. There was no fun in having a go at Shufti, but Wazzer, now, Wazzer was always worth a shout. ‘Are you listening, Private Goom?’ he screamed. Wazzer, who had been sitting and looking up with his eyes closed, jerked awake. ‘Corporal?’ he quavered, as Strappi advanced. ‘I said, are you listening, Goom?’ ‘Yes, corporal!’ ‘Really? And what did you hear, may I ask?’ said Strappi, in a voice of treacle and acid. ‘Nothing, corporal. She’s not speaking.’ Strappi took a deep, delighted breath of evil air. ‘You are a useless, worthless pile of—’ There was a sound. It was a small, nondescript sound, one that you heard every day, a noise that did its job but never expected to be, for example, whistled or part of an interesting sonata. It was simply the sound of stone scraping on metal. On the other side of the fire Jackrum lowered his cutlass. He had a sharpening stone in his other hand. He returned their group gaze. ‘What? Oh. Just maintaining the edge,’ he said innocently. ‘Sorry if I interrupted your flow there, corporal. Carry on.’ A basic animal survival instinct came to the corporal’s aid. He left the trembling Wazzer alone, and turned back to Shufti. ‘Yes, yes, we attacked Lipz, too—’ said Strappi. ‘Was that before the Zlobenians did?’ said Maladict. ‘Will you listen?’ Strappi demanded. ‘We valiantly attacked Lipz to reclaim what is Borogravian territory! And then the treacherous swede-eaters stole it back . . .’ Polly tuned out a little at this point, now that there was no immediate prospect of seeing Strappi decapitated. She knew about Lipz. Half the old men who came and drank with her father had attacked the place. But no one had expected them to want to do it. Someone had just shouted, ‘Attack!’ The trouble was the Kneck River. It wandered across the wide, rich, silty plain like a piece of dropped string, but sometimes a flash flood or even a big fallen tree would cause it to crack like a whip, throwing coils of river round areas of land miles from its previous bed. And the river was the international border . . . She surfaced to hear: ‘. . . but this time everyone’s on their side, the bastards! And you know why? It’s ‘cos of Ankh-Morpork! Because we stopped the mail coaches going over our country and tore down their clacks towers, which are an Abomination unto Nuggan. Ankh-Morpork is a godless city—’ ‘I thought it had more than three hundred places of worship?’ said Maladict. Strappi stared at him in a rage that was incoherent until he managed to touch bottom again. ‘Ankh-Morpork is a godawful city,’ he recovered. ‘Poisonous, just like its river. Barely fit for humans now. They let everything in - zombies, werewolves, dwarfs, vampires, trolls . . .’ He remembered his audience, faltered and recovered. ‘. . . which in some cases can be a good thing, of course. But it is a foul, lewd, lawless, overcrowded mess of a place, which is why Prince Heinrich loves it so much! He’s been taken over by it, bought by cheap toys, because that’s the way Ankh-Morpork plays it, men. They buy you, they will you stop interrupting! What’s the good of me trying to teach you stuff if you’re going to keep on asking questions?’ ‘I was just wondering why it’s so crowded, corp,’ said Tonker. ‘If it’s so bad, I mean.’ ‘That’s because they are a degraded people, private! And they’ve sent a regiment up here to help Heinrich take over our beloved Motherland. He has turned aside from the ways of Nuggan and embraced Ankh-Morpork’s godlessn— godawful-ness.’ Strappi looked pleased at having spotted that one, and went on, ‘Point Two: in addition to its soldiers, Ankh-Morpork has sent Vimes the Butcher, the most evil man in that evil city. They are bent on nothing less than our destruction!’ ‘I heard that Ankh-Morpork was just angry that we cut the clacks towers down,’ said Polly. ‘They were on our sovereign territory!’ ‘Well, it was Zlobenian until—’ Polly began. Strappi waved an angry finger at her. ‘You listen to me, Parts! You can’t get to be a great country like Borogravia without making enemies! Which leads me on to Point Three, Parts, who’s sitting there thinking he’s so smart. You all are. I can see it. Well, be smart about this: you might not like everything about your country, eh? It might not be the perfect place, but it’s ours. You might think we don’t have the best laws, but they’re ours. The mountains might not be the prettiest ones or the tallest ones, but they’re ours. We’re fighting for what’s ours, men!’ Strappi slammed his hand over his heart. ‘Awake, ye sons of the Motherland! Taste no more the wine of the sour apples . . .’ They joined in, at various levels of drone. You had to. Even if you just opened and shut your mouth, you had to. Even if you just went ‘ner, ner, ner’, you had to. Polly, who was exactly the kind of person who looks around surreptitiously at times like these, saw that Shufti was singing it word-perfectly and Strappi actually did have tears in his eyes. Wazzer wasn’t singing at all. He was praying. That was a good wheeze, said one of the more treacherous areas at the back of Polly’s mind. To the bewilderment of all, Strappi continued - alone - all through the second verse, which nobody ever remembered, and then gave them a smug, I’m-more-patriotic-than-you smile. Afterwards, they tried to sleep on as much softness as two blankets could provide. They lay there in silence for some time. Jackrum and Strappi had tents of their own, but instinctively they knew that Strappi at least would be a sneaker and a listener at tent flaps. After about an hour, when rain was drumming on the canvas, Carborundum said: ‘Okay, den, I fink I’ve worked it out. If people are groophar stupid, then we’ll fight for groophar stupidity, ‘cos it’s our stupidity. And dat’s good, yeah?’ Several of the squad sat up in the darkness, amazed at this. ‘I realize I ought to know these things, but what does “groophar” mean?’ said the voice of Maladict in the damp darkness. ‘Ah, well . . . when, right, a daddy troll an’ a mummy troll—’ ‘Good, right, yes, I think I’ve got it, thank you,’ said Maladict. ‘And what you’ve got there, my friend, is patriotism. My country, right or wrong.’ ‘You should love your country,’ said Shufti. ‘Okay, what part?’ the voice of Tonker demanded, from the far corner of the tent. ‘The morning sunlight on the mountains? The horrible food? The damn mad Abominations? All of my country except whatever bit Strappi is standing on?’ ‘But we are at war!’ ‘Yes, that’s where they’ve got you,’ sighed Polly. ‘Well, I’m not buying into it. It’s all trickery. They keep you down and when they piss off some other country, you have to fight for them! It’s only your country when they want you to get killed!’ said Tonker. ‘All the good bits in this country are in this tent,’ said the voice of Wazzer. Embarrassed silence descended. The rain settled in. After a while, the tent began to leak. Eventually someone said, ‘What happens, um, if you join up but then you decide you don’t want to?’ That was Shufti. ‘I think it’s called deserting and they cut your head off,’ said the voice of Maladict. ‘In my case that would be a drawback but you, dear Shufti, would find it puts a crimp in your social life.’ ‘I never kissed their damn picture,’ said Tonker. ‘I swivelled it round when Strappi wasn’t looking and kissed it on the back!’ ‘They’ll still say you kissed the Duchess, though,’ said Maladict. ‘You k-kissed the D-Duchess on the b-bottom?’ said Wazzer, horrified. ‘It was the back of the picture, okay?’ said Tonker. ‘It wasn’t her real backside. Huh, wouldn’t have kissed it if it was!’ There was some unidentified sniggering from various corners and just a hint of giggle. ‘That was w-wicked!’ hissed Wazzer. ‘Nuggan in heaven saw you d-do that!’ ‘It was just a picture, all right?’ muttered Tonker. ‘Anyway, what’s the difference? Front or back, we’re all here together and I don’t see any steak and bacon!’ Something rumbled overhead. ‘I joined t’ see exciting forrin places and meet erotic people,’ said Carborundum. That caused a moment’s thought. ‘I think you mean exotic?’ said Igor. ‘Yeah, that kind of stuff,’ agreed the troll. ‘But they always lie,’ said someone, and then Polly realized it was her. ‘They lie all the time. About everything.’ ‘Amen to that,’ said Tonker. ‘We fight for liars.’ ‘Ah, they may be liars,’ snapped Polly, in a passable imitation of Strappi’s yap, ‘but they’re our liars!’ ‘Now, now, children,’ said Maladict. ‘Let’s try to get some sleep, shall we? But here’s a happy little dream from your Uncle Maladict. Dream that when we go into battle, Corporal Strappi is leading us. Wouldn’t that be fun?’ After a while, Tonker said: ‘In front of us, you mean?’ ‘Oh, yes. I can see you’re with me, Tonk. Right in front of you. On the noisy, frantic, confusing battlefield, where oh so much can go wrong.’ ‘And we’ll have weapons?’ said Shufti wistfully. ‘Of course you’ll have weapons. You’re soldiers. And there’s the enemy, right in front of you . . .’ ‘That’s a good dream, Mai.’ ‘Sleep on it, kid.’ Polly turned over, and tried to make herself comfortable. It’s all lies, she thought muzzily. Some of them are just prettier than others, that’s all. People see what they think is there. Even I’m a lie. But I’m getting away with it. A warm autumnal wind was blowing leaves off the rowan trees as the recruits marched among the foothills. It was the morning of the next day, and the mountains were behind them. Polly passed the time identifying the birds in the hedgerows. It was a habit. She knew most of them. She hadn’t set out to be an ornithologist. But birds brought Paul alive. All the . . . slowness in the rest of his thinking became a flash of lightning in the presence of birds. Suddenly he knew their names, habits and habitats, could whistle their songs and, after Polly had saved up for a box of paints off a traveller at the inn, had painted a picture of a wren so real you could hear it. Their mother had been alive then. The row had gone on for days. Pictures of living creatures were an Abomination in the Eyes of Nuggan. Polly had asked why there were pictures of the Duchess everywhere, and had been thrashed for it. The picture had been burned, the paints thrown away. It was a terrible thing. Her mother had been a kind woman, or as kind as a devout woman could be who tried to keep up with the whims of Nuggan, and she’d died slowly amidst pictures of the Duchess and amongst the echoes of unanswered prayers, but that was the memory that crawled treacherously into Polly’s mind every time: the fury and the scolding, while the little bird seemed to flutter in the flames. In the fields women and old men were getting in the spoilt wheat after last night’s rain, hoping to save what they could. There weren’t any young men visible. Polly saw some of the other recruits steal a glance at the scavenging parties, and wondered if they were thinking the same thing. They saw no one else on the road until midday, when the party was marching through a landscape of low hills; the sun had boiled away some of the clouds and, for a moment at least, summer was back - moist and sticky and mildly unpleasant, like a party guest who won’t go home. A red blob in the distance became a rather larger blob and resolved itself into a loose knot of men. Polly knew what to expect as soon as she saw it. By the reaction of some of the others, they did not. There was a moment of collision and confusion as people walked into one another, and then the party stopped, and stared. It took the wounded men some time to draw level, and some time to pass. Two able-bodied men, as far as Polly could tell, were trundling a handcart on which a third man lay. Others were limping on crutches, or had arms in slings, or wore red jackets with an empty sleeve. Perhaps worse were the ones like the man in the inn, grey-faced, staring straight ahead, jackets buttoned tight despite the heat. One or two of the injured glanced at the recruits as they lurched past, but there was no expression in their eyes beyond a terrible determination. Jackrum reined in the horse. ‘All right, twenty minutes’ breather,’ he muttered. Igor turned, nodded to the party of wounded heading grimly onward, and said, ‘Permithion to thee if I can do anything for them, tharge?’ ‘You’ll get your chance soon enough, lad,’ said the sergeant. ‘Tharge?’ said Igor, looking hurt. ‘Oh, all right. If you must. D’you want someone to give you a hand?’ There was a nasty laugh from Corporal Strappi. ‘Some athithtance would be a help, yeth, thargeant,’ said Igor, with dignity. The sergeant looked at the squad, and nodded. ‘Private Halter, step forward! Know anything about doctorin’?’ The red-headed Tonker stepped forward smartly. ‘I’ve butchered pigs for me mam, sarge,’ he said. ‘Capital! Better than an army surgeon, upon my oath. Off you go. Twenty minutes, remember!’ ‘And don’t let Igor bring back any souvenirs!’ said Strappi, and laughed his scraping laugh again. The rest of the boys sat down on the grass by the road, and one or two of them disappeared into the bushes. Polly went on the same errand, but pushed in a lot further, and took the opportunity to make a little sock adjustment. They had a tendency to creep if she wasn’t careful. She froze at a rustling behind her, and then relaxed. She’d been careful. No one would have seen anything. So what if someone else was taking a leak? She’d just push her way back to the road and take no notice— Lofty sprang up as Polly parted the bushes, breeches round one ankle, face red as a beetroot. Polly couldn’t help herself. Maybe it was the socks. Maybe it was the pleading expression on Lofty’s face. When someone’s broadcasting ‘Don’t look!’ the eyes have a mind of their own, and go where they’re not wanted. Lofty jumped up, dragging at her clothes. ‘No, look, it’s all right—’ Polly began, but it was too late. The girl had gone. Polly stared at the bushes, and thought: Blast! There’s two of us! But what would I have said next? ‘It’s okay, I’m a girl too. You can trust me. We could be friends. Oh, and here’s a good tip about socks’? Igor and Tonker arrived back late, without a word. Sergeant Jackrum said nothing. The squad moved off. Polly marched at the back, with Carborundum. This meant she could keep a wary eye on Lofty, whoever she was. For the first time, Polly really looked at her. She was easy to miss, because she was always, as it were, in Tonker’s shadow. She was short, although now Polly knew she was female the word ‘petite’ could be decently used, dark and dark-haired and had a strange, self-absorbed look, and she was always marching with Tonker. Come to think of it, she always slept close to him, too. Ah, so that was it. She’s following her boy, Polly thought. It was kind of romantic, and very, very dumb. Now she knew to look beyond the clothes and haircut, she could see all the little clues that Lofty was a girl, and a girl who hadn’t planned enough. She saw Lofty whisper something to Tonker, who half turned and gave Polly a look of instant hatred and a hint of threat. I can’t tell her, she thought. She would tell him. I can’t afford to let them know. I’ve put too much into this. I didn’t just cut my hair and wear trousers. I planned . . . Ah, yes . . . the plans. It had begun as a sudden strange fancy, but it had continued as a plan. First, Polly had started to watch boys closely. This had been reciprocated hopefully by a few of them, to their subsequent disappointment. She observed how they moved, she listened to the rhythm of what passed, among boys, for conversation, she’d noted how they punched one another in greeting. It was a new world. She already had good muscles for a girl, because running a large inn was all about moving heavy things, and she took over a number of the grittier chores, which coarsened her hands nicely. She’d even worn a pair of her brother’s old breeches under her long skirt, to get the feel of them. A woman could be beaten for that sort of thing. Men dressed like men and women like women; doing it the other way round was ‘a blasphemous Abomination unto Nuggan’, according to Father Jupe. And that was probably the secret of her success so far, she thought, as she trudged through a puddle. People didn’t look for a woman in trousers. To the casual observer, men’s clothes and short hair and a bit of swagger were what it took to be a man. Oh, and a second pair of socks. That had been gnawing at her, too. Someone knew about her, just as she knew about Lofty. And he hadn’t given her away. She’d suspected it was Eyebrow, but doubted it; he’d have told the sergeant about her, he was that sort. Right now she was guessing it was Maladict, but perhaps that was just because he seemed so knowing all the time. Carbor— no, he’d been out cold, and in any case . . . no, not the troll. And Igor lisped. Tonker? After all, he’d know about Lofty so maybe . . . No, because why would he want to help Polly? No, there was nothing but danger in owning up to Lofty. The best she could do was try to see to it that the girl didn’t give both of them away. She could hear Tonker whispering to his girl. ‘. . . had just died so he cut off one of his legs and an arm and sewed ‘em on men who needed ‘em, just like I’d darn a tear! You should’ve seen it! You couldn’t see his fingers move! And he has all these ointments that just . . .’ Tonker’s voice died away. Strappi was haranguing Wazzer again. ‘Dat Strappi really gets on my crags,’ muttered Carborundum. ‘You want I should pull the head off f him? I c’d make it look like a accident.’ ‘Better not,’ said Polly, but she did entertain the thought for a moment. They’d reached a junction, where the road down from the mountains joined what passed for a main highway. It was crowded. There were carts and wheelbarrows, people driving herds of cows, grandmothers carrying all the household possessions on their backs, a general excitement of pigs and children . . . and it was all heading one way. It was the opposite way to the way the squad was going. The people and animals flowed around it like a stream around an inconvenient rock. The recruits bunched up. It was that or be separated by cows. Sergeant Jackrum stood up in the cart. ‘Private Carborundum!’ ‘Yes, sergeant?’ rumbled the troll. ‘To the front!’ That helped. The stream still flowed, but at least the crowds parted some distance further ahead and gave the squad a wide berth. No one wants to barge up against even a slow-moving troll. But faces stared as the people hurried by. An old lady darted out for a moment, pressed a loaf of stale bread into Tonker’s hands, and said, ‘You poor boys!’ before being swept away in the throng. ‘What’s this all about, sarge?’ said Maladict. ‘These look like refugees!’ ‘Talk like that spreads Alarm and Despondency!’ shouted Corporal Strappi. ‘Oh, you mean they’re just people getting away early for the holidays to avoid the rush?’ said Maladict. ‘Sorry, I got confused. It must be that woman carrying a whole haystack we just passed.’ ‘D’you know what can happen to you for cheeking a superior officer?’ screamed Strappi. ‘No! Tell me, is it worse than whatever it is these people are running away from?’ ‘You signed up, Mr Bloodsucker! You obey orders!’ ‘Right! But I don’t remember anyone ordering me not to think!’ ‘Enough of that!’ snapped Jackrum. ‘Less shouting down there! Move on! Carborundum, you give people a push if they don’t make way, y’hear?’ They moved on. After a while the press of people abated a little, so that what had been a torrent became a trickle. Occasionally there would be a family group, or just one hurrying woman, burdened with bags. One old man was struggling with a wheelbarrow full of turnips. They’re even taking the crops out of the fields, Polly noted. And everyone moved at a kind of half-run, as if things would be a little better when they’d caught up with the mass of people ahead. Or merely passed the squad, perhaps. They made way for an old woman bent double under the weight of a black and white pig. And then there was just the road, rutted and muddy. An afternoon mist was rising from the fields on either side, quiet and clammy. After the noise of the refugees, the silence of the low countryside was suddenly oppressive. The only sound was the trudge and splash of the recruits’ boots. ‘Permission to speak, sarge?’ said Polly. ‘Yes, private?’ said Jackrum. ‘How far is it to Plotz?’ ‘You don’t have to tell ‘em, sarge!’ said Strappi. ‘About five miles,’ said Sergeant Jackrum. ‘You’ll get your uniforms and weapons at the depot there.’ ‘That’s a milit’ry secret, sarge,’ Strappi whined. ‘We could shut our eyes so’s we don’t see what we’re wearing, how about that?’ said Maladict. ‘Stop that, Private Maladict,’ said Jackrum. ‘Just keep moving, and guard that tongue.’ They plodded on. The road grew muddier. A breeze sprang up, but instead of carrying the mist away it merely streamed it across the damp fields in twisty, clammy, unpleasant shapes. The sun became an orange ball. Polly saw something large and white flutter across the field, blown by the wind. At first she thought it was a migratory lesser egret that had left things a little late, but it was clearly being blown by the wind. It flopped down once or twice and then, as a gust caught it, blew across the road and wrapped itself across Corporal Strappi’s face. He screamed. Lofty grabbed at the fluttering thing, which was damp. It tore in his— her hands, and most of it dropped away from the struggling corporal. ‘It’s just a bit of paper,’ she said. Strappi flailed at it. ‘I knew that,’ he said. ‘I never asked you!’ Polly picked up one of the torn scraps. The paper was thin, and stained with mud, although she recognized the word Ankh-Morpork. The godawful city. And the genius of Strappi was that anything he was against automatically sounded attractive. ‘Ankh-Morpork Times . . .’ she read aloud, before the corporal snatched it out of her hand. ‘You can’t just read anything you see, Parts!’ he shouted. ‘You don’t know who wrote it!’ He dropped the damp scrap pages on to the mud and stamped on them. ‘Now let’s move on!’ he said. They moved on. When the squad were more or less in rhythm, and staring at nothing more than their boots or the mist ahead of them, Polly raised her right hand to chest height and carefully turned it palm up so that she could see the fragment of paper that had soggily stayed behind when the rest had been pulled away. ‘No Surrender’ to Alliance says Duchess (97) From William de Worde Valley of the Kneck, Sektober 7 Borogrovian troops assisted by Lord V Light Infantry took Kneck Keep this mo after fierce hand-to-hand fig I write its armaments which are being turned on the remn Borogravian forces acr His Grace Commander Sir S told the Times that surrender had been rej view the enemy commande load of stiff-necked fools, don’ in the paper.’ It is understoo desperate situ -spread fami across t No altern invas They were winning, weren’t they? So where did the word ‘surrender’ come from? And what was the Alliance? And then there was the problem of Strappi, which had been growing on her. She could see he got on Jackrum’s nerves as well, and he had a struttiness about him, a certain - er . . . sockiness, as if he was really the one in charge. Perhaps it was just general unpleasantness, but . . . ‘Corporal?’ she said. ‘Yes, Parts?’ said Strappi. His nose was still very red. ‘We are winning this war, aren’t we?’ said Polly. She’d given up correcting him. Suddenly, every ear in the squad was listening. ‘Don’t you bother yourself about that, Parts!’ snapped the corporal. ‘Your job is to fight!’ ‘Right, corp. So . . . I’ll be fighting on the winning side, will I?’ ‘Oho, we’ve got someone who asks too many questions here, sarge!’ said Strappi. ‘Yeah, don’t ask questions, Perks,’ said Jackrum, absent-mindedly. ‘So we’re losing, then?’ said Tonker. Strappi turned on him. ‘That’s spreading Alarm and Despondency again, that is!’ he shrieked. ‘That’s aiding the enemy!’ ‘Yeah, knock it off, Private Halter,’ said Jackrum. ‘Okay? Now get a—’ ‘Halter, I’m placing you under arrest for—’ ‘Corporal Strappi, a word in your shell-like ear, please? You men, you stop here!’ growled the sergeant, clambering down from the cart. Jackrum walked back down the road about fifty feet. Glaring round at the squad, the corporal strutted after him. ‘Are we in trouble?’ said Tonker. ‘You guess,’ said Maladict. ‘Bound to be,’ said Shufti. ‘Strappi can always get you for something.’ ‘They’re having an argument,’ said Maladict. ‘Which is odd, don’t you think? A sergeant is supposed to give orders to a corporal.’ ‘We are winning, aren’t we?’ said Shufti. ‘I mean, I know there’s a war, but . . . I mean, we get weapons, don’t we, and we’ll . . . well, they’ve got to train us, right? It’ll probably be all over by then, right? Everyone says we’re winning.’ ‘I will ask the Duchess in my prayers tonight,’ said Wazzer. The rest of the squad looked at one another with a shared expression. ‘Yeah, right, Wazz,’ said Tonker kindly. ‘You do that.’ The sun was setting fast, half hidden in the mist. Here, on the muddy road between damp fields, it suddenly felt as cold as it could be. ‘No one says we’re winning, except maybe Strappi,’ said Polly. ‘They just say that everyone says we’re winning.’ ‘The men Igor . . . repaired didn’t even say that,’ said Tonker. ‘They said “you poor bastards, you’ll leg it if you’ve any sense.”‘ ‘Thank you for sharing,’ said Maladict. ‘It looks as though everyone’s feeling sorry for us,’ said Polly. ‘Yeah, well, so am I, and I am uth,’ said Igor. ‘Thome of thothe men—’ ‘All right, all right, stop lollygagging, you lot!’ shouted Strappi, marching up. ‘Corporal?’ said the sergeant quietly, hauling himself back on to the cart. Strappi paused, and then in a voice dripping with syrup and sarcasm went on: ‘Excuse me. The sergeant and myself would be obleejed if you brave heroes to be would join us in a little light marching? Jolly good! And there will be embroidery later on. Best foot forward, ladies!’ Polly heard Tonker gasp. Strappi turned, eyes glinting with sinister anticipation. ‘Oh, someone doesn’t like being called a lady, eh?’ he said. ‘Dear me, Private Halter, you’ve got a lot to learn, haven’t you? You’re a sissy little lady until we make a man of you, right? And I dread to think how long that’s going to take. Move!’ I know, thought Polly, as they set off. It takes about ten seconds, and a pair of socks. One sock, and you could make Strappi. Plotz turned out to be like Plün, but it was worse because it was bigger. The rain started again as they marched into the cobbled square. It looked as though it always rained here. The buildings were grey, and mud-spattered near the ground. Roof gutters overflowed, pouring rain on to the cobbles and sending a spray over the recruits. There was no one about. Polly saw open doors banging in the wind, and bits of debris in the streets, and remembered the lines of hurrying people on the road. There was no one here. Sergeant Jackrum climbed down from the cart as Strappi bawled them into line. Then the sergeant took over, leaving the corporal to glower from the sidelines. ‘This is wonderful Plotz!’ he said. ‘Have a look round, so that if you is killed and goes to hell, it won’t come as a shock! You’ll be bivvying in that barracks over there, what is milit’ry property!’ He waved a hand towards a crumbling stone building that looked about as military as a barn. ‘You will be issued with your equipment. And tomorrow it’s a nice long march to Crotz, where you will arrive as boys and leave as men did I just say something funny, Perks? No, I thought so, too! Attention! That means stand up straight!’ ‘That’s straight!’ yelled Strappi. A young man was riding across the square on a tired, skinny brown horse, which was quite suitable because he was a tired, skinny man. The skinniness was helped by the fact that he wore a tunic which had clearly been made for someone a couple of sizes larger. The same applied to his helmet. He must have padded it, Polly thought. One cough and it’ll be over his eyes. Sergeant Jackrum snapped off a salute as the officer approached. ‘Jackrum, sir. You’ll be Lieutenant Blouse, sir?’ ‘Well done, sergeant.’ ‘These are the recruits from upriver, sir. Fine body of men, sir.’ The rider peered at the squad. He actually leaned forward over the horse’s neck, causing rain to pour off his helmet. ‘This is all, sergeant?’ ‘Yessir.’ ‘Most of them look very young,’ said the lieutenant, who didn’t look very old. ‘Yessir.’ ‘And isn’t that one a troll?’ ‘Yessir. Well spotted, sir.’ ‘And the one with stitches all round his head?’ ‘He’s an Igor, sir. Sort of like a special clan up in the mountains, sir.’ ‘Do they fight?’ ‘Can take a man apart very quickly, sir, as I understand it,’ said Jackrum, his expression not changing. The young lieutenant sighed. ‘Well, I’m sure they’re all good fellows,’ he said. ‘Now then, er . . . men, I—’ ‘Pay attention and listen to what the lieutenant has to say!’ bawled Strappi. The lieutenant shuddered. ‘—thank you, corporal,’ he said. ‘Men, I have good news,’ he added, but in the voice of one who hasn’t. ‘You were probably expecting a week or two in the training camp in Crotz, yes? But I’m glad to be able to tell you that the . . . the war is progressing so . . . so . . . so well that you are to go directly to the front.’ Polly heard one or two gasps, and a snigger from Corporal Strappi. ‘All of you are to go to the lines,’ said the lieutenant. ‘That includes you too, corporal. Your time for action has come at last!’ The snigger stopped. ‘Sorry, sir?’ said Strappi. ‘The front? But you know that I’m— well, you know about the special duties—’ ‘My orders said all able-bodied men, corporal,’ said Blouse. ‘I expect that you’ll be itching for the fray after all these years, eh, a young man like you?’ Strappi said nothing. ‘However,’ said the lieutenant, fumbling under his soaking cloak, ‘I do have a package here for you, Sergeant Jackrum. A very welcome one, I’ve no doubt.’ Jackrum took the packet gingerly. ‘Thank you, sir, I’ll look at this later on—’ he began. ‘On the contrary, Sergeant Jackrum!’ said Blouse. ‘Your last recruits should see this, since you are both a soldier and, as it were, a “father of soldiers”! And so it’s only right that they see a fine soldier get his reward: an honourable discharge, sergeant!’ Blouse spoke the words as if they had cream and a little cherry on top. Apart from the rain, the only sound now was Jackrum’s pudgy finger slowly ripping open the package. ‘Oh,’ he said, like a man in shock. ‘Good. A picture of the Duchess. That’s eighteen I have now. Oh, and, oo, a piece of paper saying it’s a medal, so it’s looks like we’ve even run out of pot metal now. Oh, and my discharge with a printing of the Duchess’s very own signature itself!’ He turned the packet over and shook it. ‘Not my three months’ back pay, though.’ ‘Three loud hurrahs for Sergeant Jackrum!’ said the lieutenant to the rain and wind. ‘Hip-hip—’ ‘But I thought we needed every man, sir!’ said Jackrum. ‘Judging by all the notes pinned on that packet, it has been following you around for years, sergeant,’ said Blouse. ‘You know the military. That is your official discharge, I am afraid. I cannot rescind it. I am sorry.’ ‘But—’ Jackrum began. ‘It bears the Duchess’s signature, sergeant. Will you argue with that? I said I am sorry. In any case, what would you do? We will not be sending out any more recruiting parties.’ ‘What? But we always need men, sir!’ Jackrum protested. ‘And I’m fit and well again, got the stamina of a horse—’ ‘You were the only man to return with recruits, sergeant. That is how the matter is.’ The sergeant hesitated for a moment, and then saluted. ‘Yessir! Very good, sir! Will see the new lads settled in, sir! Pleasure to have served, sir!’ ‘Can I ask something?’ said Maladict. ‘You do not address an officer directly, private,’ snapped Jackrum. ‘No, let the man speak, sergeant,’ said the lieutenant. ‘These are . . . unusual times, after all. Yes, my man?’ ‘Did I hear you say we’re going into battle without training, sir?’ ‘Oh, well, most of you will almost certainly be pikemen, haha,’ said the lieutenant nervously. ‘Not a lot of training there, eh? You just need to know which end is which, haha.’ He looked as though he wanted to die. ‘Pikemen?’ said Maladict, looking puzzled. ‘You heard the lieutenant, Private Maladict,’ snapped the sergeant. ‘Yes, sir. Thank you,”sir,’ said Maladict, stepping back into the ranks. ‘Are there any more questions?’ said Blouse, looking along the line. ‘Jolly good, then. We leave by the last boat, at midnight. Carry on, sergeant . . . for now. What was the other thing . . . oh, yes. And I shall need a batman.’ ‘Volunteers to be the lieutenant’s batman step forward! Not you, Private Maladid!’ snapped the sergeant. No one moved. ‘Oh, come now,’ said the lieutenant. Polly slowly raised a hand. ‘What’s a batman, sir?’ The sergeant grinned mirthlessly. ‘Fair question,’ he said. ‘A batman is, like, a personal servant who takes care of the officer. Fetches his meals to him, sees he’s smartly turned out, that style of thing. So’s he is free to perform his duties more adequatelier.’ Igor stepped forward. ‘Igorth are uthed to thervice, thargeant,’ he said. Using the amazing powers of deafness and restricted vision sometimes available even to the most nervous officers, the lieutenant appeared not to notice him. He looked fixedly at Polly. ‘What about you, private?’ he said. ‘Private Perks used to work in a bar, sir,’ the sergeant volunteered. ‘Capital. Report to my quarters in the inn at six, Private Perks. Carry on, sergeant.’ As the skinny horse staggered away, Sergeant Jackrum directed his glare at the squad, but there was no real fire to it. He appeared to be operating on automatic, with his mind elsewhere. ‘Don’t just stand there trying to look pretty! There’s uniforms and weapons inside! Get kitted up! If you want grub, cook it yerself! At the double! Disssssss miss!’ The squad dashed for the barracks, propelled by sheer volume. But Polly hesitated. Corporal Strappi hadn’t moved since the snigger had been cut short. He was staring blankly at the ground. ‘You all right, corporal?’ she said. ‘You go away, Parts,’ said the corporal, in a low voice that was much worse than his normal petulant shout. ‘Just go away, all right?’ She shrugged, and followed the others. But she had noticed the steaming dampness round the corporal’s feet. There was chaos inside. The barracks was really just one large room which did duty as mess, assembly room and kitchen, with big bunk rooms beyond it. It was empty, and well on the way to decay. The roof leaked, the high windows were broken, dead leaves had blown in and lay around on the floor, among the rat droppings. There were no pickets, no sentries, no people. There was a big pot boiling on the sooty hearth, though, and its hiss and seethe were the only liveliness in the place. At some point part of the room had been set up as a kind of quartermaster’s store, but most of the shelves were empty. Polly had expected some sort of queue, some kind of order, possibly someone handing out little piles of clothes. What there was, instead, was a rummage stall. Very much like a rummage stall, in fact, because nothing on it appeared to be new and little on it appeared to be worth having. The rest of the squad were already pawing through what might have been called merchandise if there were any possibility that anyone could be persuaded to buy it. ‘What’s this? One Size, Doesn’t Fit Anyone?’ ‘This tunic’s got blood on it! Blood! ’ ‘Well, it is one of the thtubborn thtainth, it’s alwayth very hard to get it out without—’ ‘Where’s the proper armour?’ ‘Oh, no! There’s an arrow hole in this one!’ ‘What dis? Nuffin fits a troll!’ A small, leathery old man was at bay behind the table, cowering under the ferocity of Maladict’s glare. He wore a red uniform jacket, done up badly, with a corporal’s stripes, stained and faded, on the sleeve. The left breast was covered in medals. One arm ended in a hook. One eye was covered by a patch. ‘We’re going to be pikemen, the lieutenant said!’ said the vampire. ‘That means a sword and pike per man, right? And a shield if there’s an arrow storm, right? And a heavy helmet, right?’ ‘Wrong! You can’t yell at me like that!’ said the man. ‘See these medals? I’m a—’ A hand descended from above and lifted him over the table. Carborundum held the man close to his face and nodded. ‘Yah, can see ‘em, mister,’ he rumbled. ‘And . . . ?’ The recruits had fallen silent. Tut him down, Carborundum,’ said Poily. ‘Gently.’ ‘Why?’ ‘He’s got no legs.’ The troll focused. Then, with exaggerated care, he lowered the old soldier to the ground. There were a couple of little tapping sounds as the two wooden peg-legs touched the planking. ‘Sorry about dat,’ he said. The little man steadied himself against the table and shuffled his arms round a couple of crutches. ‘All right,’ he said gruffly. ‘No harm done. But watch it, another time!’ ‘But this is ridiculous!’ said Maladict, turning to Polly and waving a hand at the heap of rags and bent metal. ‘You couldn’t equip three men out of this mess. There’s not even any decent boots!’ Polly looked along the length of the table. ‘We’re supposed to be well equipped,’ she said to the one-eyed man. ‘We’re supposed to be the finest army in the world. That’s what we’re told. And aren’t we winning?’ The man looked at her. Inside, she stared at herself. She hadn’t meant to speak out like that. ‘So they say,’ he said, in a blank kind of way. ‘And w-what do you say?’ said Wazzer. He’d picked up one of the few swords. It was stained and notched. The corporal glanced up at Carborundum, and then at Maladict. ‘I’m not s-stupid, you know!’ Wazzer went on, red in the face and trembling. ‘All this stuff is off d-dead men!’ ‘Well, it’s a shame to waste good boots—’ the man began. ‘We’re the last o-ones, aren’t we?’ said Wazzer. ‘The last r-recruits!’ The peg-legged corporal eyed the distant doorway, and saw no relief heading in his direction. ‘We’ve got to stay here all night,’ said Maladict. ‘Night!’ he went on, causing the old corporal to wobble on his crutches. ‘When who knows what evil flits through the shadows, dealing death on silent wings, seeking a hapless victim who—’ ‘Yeah, all right, all right, I did see your ribbon,’ said the corporal. ‘Look, I’m closing up after you’ve gone. I just run the stores, that’s all. That’s all I do, honest! I’m on one-tenth pay, me, on account of the leg situation, and I don’t want trouble!’ ‘And this is all you’ve got?’ said Maladict. ‘Don’t you have a little something . . . put by . . .’ ‘Are you saying I’m dishonest?’ said the corporal hotly. ‘Let’s say I’m open to the idea that you might not be,’ said the vampire. ‘C’mon, corporal, you said we’re the last to go. What are you saving up? What’ve you got?’ The corporal sighed, and swung with surprising speed over to a door, which he unlocked. ‘You’d better come and look,’ he said. ‘But it’s not good . . .’ It was worse. They found a few more breastplates, but one was sliced in half and another was one big dent. A shield was in two pieces, too. There were bent swords and crushed helmets, battered hats and torn shirts. ‘I done what I can,’ sighed the corporal. ‘I hammered stuff out and washed out the clothes but it’s been weeks since I had any coal for the forge and you can’t do nothin’ about the swords without a forge. It’s been months since I got any new weapons and, let me tell you, since the dwarfs buggered off the steel we’ve been getting is crap anyway.’ He rubbed his nose. ‘I know you think quartermasters are a thieving bunch and I won’t say we might not skim a bit off the top when things are going well, but this stuff? A beetle couldn’t make a living off this.’ He sniffed again. ‘Ain’t been paid in three months, neither. I guess one-tenth of nothing is not as bad as nothing, but I was never that good at philosophy.’ Then he brightened-up. ‘Got plenty to eat, at least,’ he said. ‘If you like horse, that is. Personally I prefer rat, but there’s no accounting for taste.’ ‘I can’t eat horse!’ said Shufti. ‘Ah, you’d be a rat man?’ said the corporal, leading the way out into the big room. ‘No!’ ‘You’ll learn to be one. You’ll all learn,’ said the little one-tenth corporal, with an evil grin. ‘Ever eaten scubbo? No? Nothing like a bowl of scubbo when you’re hungry. You can put anything in scubbo. Pork, beef, mutton, rabbit, chicken, duck . . . anything. Even rats, if you’ve got ‘em. It’s food for the marching man, scubbo. Got some on the boil out there right now. You can have some of that, if you like.’ The squad brightened up. Thoundth good,’ said Igor. ‘What’th in it?’ ‘Boiling water,’ said the corporal. ‘It’s what we call “blind scubbo”. But there’s going to be old horse in a minute unless you’ve got something better. Could do with some seasonings, at least. Who’s looking after the rupert?’ They looked at one another. The corporal sighed. ‘The officer,’ he explained. ‘They’re all called Rupert or Rodney or Tristram or something. They get better grub than you do. You could try scrounging something at the inn.’ ‘Scrounge?’ said Polly. The old man rolled his one eye. ‘Yeah. Scrounge. Scrounge, nick, have a lend of, borrow, thieve, lift, acquire, purrrr-loin. That’s what you’ll learn, if you’re gonna survive this war. Which they say we’re winnin’, o’ course. Always remember that.’ He spat vaguely in the direction of the fire, possibly missing the cooking pot only by accident. ‘Yeah, an’ all the lads I see coming back down the road walking hand in hand with Death, they probably overdid the celebrating, eh? So easy to take your hand right off if you open a bottle of cham-pag-nee the wrong way, eh? I see you’ve got an Igor with you, you lucky devils. Wish we’d had one when I went off to battle. I wouldn’t be kept awake by woodworm if we had.’ ‘We have to steal our food?’ said Maladict. ‘No, you can starve if that takes your fancy,’ said the corporal. ‘I’ve starved a few times. There’s no future in it. Ate a man’s leg when we were snowed up in the Ibblestarn campaign but, fair’s fair, he ate mine.’ He looked at their faces. ‘Well, it’s not on, is it, eating your own leg ? You’d probably go blind.’ ‘You swapped legs?’ said Polly, horrified. ‘Yeah, me an’ Sergeant Hausegerda. It was his idea. Sensible man, the sergeant. That kept us alive for the week and by then the relief had got through. We were certainly relieved about that. Oh, dear. Where’s my manners? How d’yer do, lads, my name’s Corporal Scallot. They call me Threeparts.’ He held out his hook. ‘But that’s cannibalism!’ said Tonker, backing away. ‘No it’s not, not officially, not unless you eat a whole person,’ said Threeparts Scallot levelly. ‘Milit’ry rules.’ All eyes turned to the big pot bubbling on the fire. ‘Horse,’ said Scallot. ‘Ain’t got nothing but horse. I told you. I wouldn’t lie to you, boys. Now kit yerselves up with the best yer can find. What’s your name, stone man?’ ‘Carborundum,’ said the troll. ‘Got a wee bit o’ decent snacking anthracite saved up out the back, then, and some official red paint for you ‘cos I never met a troll yet that wanted to wear a jacket. The rest of you, mark what I’m telling yer: fill up with grub. Fill yer pack with grub. Fill yer shako with grub. Fill yer boots with soup. If any of you run across a pot of mustard, you hang on to it - it’s amazin’ what mustard’ll help down. And look after your mates. And keep out of the way of officers, ‘cos they ain’t healthy. That’s what you learn in the army. The enemy dun’t really want to fight you, ‘cos the enemy is mostly blokes like you who want to go home with all their bits still on. But officers’ll get you killed.’ Scallot looked round at them. ‘There. I’ve said it. And if there’s a political amongst you: mister, you can go an’ tell tales and to hell with you.’ After a few moments of embarrassed silence Polly said: ‘What’s a political?’ ‘Like a spy, only on your own side,’ said Maladict. ‘That’s right,’ said Scallot. ‘There’s one in every battalion these days, snitching on their mates. Get promotion that way, see? Don’t want dissent in the ranks, eh? Don’t want loose talk about losing battles, right? Which is a load of bloody cludgies, ‘cos the infantry grumbles all the time. Moaning is part of bein’ a soldier.’ He sighed. ‘Anyway, there’s a bunkhouse out the back. I beats the pallyarses regular so there’s probably not too many fleas.’ Once again he looked at blank faces. ‘That’s straw mattresses to you. Go on, help yourselves. Take what you like. I’m closing up after you’ve gone, anyway. We must be winning now you rattling lads are joining, right?’ The clouds had broken when Polly stepped out into the night, and a half-moon filled the world with cold silver and black. The inn opposite was another rubbishy alehouse for selling bad beer to soldiers. It stank of ancient slops, even before she opened the door. The sign was flaked and unrecognizable, but she could read the name: The World Turned Upside Down. She pushed open the door. The smell got worse. There were no customers and no sign of Strappi or Jackrum, but Polly did see a servant methodically spreading the inn’s dirt evenly across the floor with a mop. ‘Excuse m—’ she began, and then remembered the socks, raised her voice and tried to sound angry. ‘Hey, where’s the lieutenant?’ The servant looked at her and gestured up the stairs with a thumb. There was only one candle alight up there, and she knocked on the nearest door. ‘Enter.’ She entered. Lieutenant Blouse was standing in the middle of the floor in his breeches and shirtsleeves, holding a sabre. Polly was no expert in these matters, but she thought she recognized the stylish, flamboyant pose as the one beginners tend to use just before they’re stabbed through the heart by a more experienced fighter. ‘Ah, Perks, isn’t it?’ he said, lowering the blade. ‘Just, er, limbering up.’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘There’s some laundry in the bag over there. I expect someone in the inn will do it. What’s for supper?’ ‘I’ll check, sir.’ ‘What are the men having?’ ‘Scubbo, sir,’ said Polly. ‘Possibly with hor—’ ‘Then bring me some, will you? We are at war, after all, and I must show an example to my men,’ said Blouse, sheathing the sword at the third attempt. ‘That would be good for morale.’ Polly glanced at the table. A book lay open on top of a pile of others. It looked like a manual of swordsmanship, and the page it was open at was page five. Beside it was a thick-lensed pair of spectacles. ‘Are you a reading man, Perks?’ said Blouse, closing the book. Polly hesitated. But, then, what did Ozzer care? ‘A bit, sir,’ she admitted. ‘I suspect I shall have to leave most of these behind,’ he said. ‘Do take one if you want it.’ He waved a hand at the books. Polly read the titles. The Craft of War. Principles of Engagement. Battle Studies. Tactical Defence. ‘All a bit heavy for me, sir,’ she said. ‘Thanks all the same.’ ‘Tell me, Perks,’ said Blouse, ‘are the recruits in, er, good spirits?’ He gave her a look of apparently genuine concern. He really did have no chin, she noticed. His face just eased its way into his neck without much to disturb it on the way, but his Adam’s apple, now, that was a champion. It went up and down his neck like a ball on a spring. Polly had been soldiering for only a couple of days, but already an instinct had developed. In summary, it was this: lie to officers. ‘Yes, sir,’ she said. ‘Getting everything they need?’ The aforesaid instinct weighed the chances of their getting anything more than they’d got already as a result of a complaint, and Polly said, ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Of course, it is not up to us to question our orders,’ said Blouse. ‘Wasn’t doing so, sir,’ said Polly, momentarily perplexed. ‘Even though at times we might feel—’ the lieutenant began, and started again. ‘Obviously warfare is a very volatile thing, and the tide of battle can change in a moment.’ ‘Yessir,’ said Polly, still staring. The man had a small spot where his spectacles had rubbed on his nose. The lieutenant seemed to have something on his mind, too. ‘Why did you join up, Perks?’ he said, groping on the table and finding his spectacles at the third attempt. He had woollen gloves on, with the fingers cut out. ‘Patriotic duty, sir!’ said Polly promptly. ‘You lied about your age?’ ‘Nosir!’ ‘Just patriotic duty, Perks?’ There were lies, and then there were lies. Polly shifted awkwardly. ‘Would quite like to find out what’s happened to my brother Paul, sir,’ she said. ‘Ah, yes.’ Lieutenant Blouse’s face, not a picture of happiness to begin with, suddenly bore a hunted look. ‘Paul Perks, sir,’ Polly prompted. ‘I’m, er, not really in a position to know, Perks,’ said Blouse. ‘I was working as a . . . I was, er, in charge of, er, I was engaged in special work back at headquarters, er . . . obviously I don’t know all the soldiers, Perks. Older brother, w— is he?’ ‘Yessir. Joined the Ins-and-Outs last year, sir.’ ‘And, er, have you any younger brothers?’ said the lieutenant. ‘No, sir.’ ‘Ah, well. That’s something to be thankful for, at any rate,’ said Blouse. It was a strange thing to say. Polly’s brow wrinkled in puzzlement. ‘Sir?’ she said. And then she felt an unpleasant sensation of movement. Something was slipping slowly down the inside of her thigh. ‘Anything the matter, Perks?’ said the lieutenant, catching her expression. ‘Nosir! Just a . . . a bit of cramp, sir! All the marching, sir!’ She clamped both hands around one knee and edged backwards towards the door. ‘I’ll just go and . . . go and see to your supper, sir!’ ‘Yes, yes,’ said Blouse, staring at her leg. ‘Yes . . . please . . .’ Polly paused outside the door to pull her socks up, retucked the end of one under her belt as an anchor, and hurried down to the inn’s kitchens. A look told her all she wanted to know. Food hygiene here consisted of making a half-hearted effort not to gob in the stew. ‘I want onions, salt, pepper—’ she began. The maid who was stirring the soot-black pot on the soot-black stove glanced up, realized she had been addressed by a man, and hastily pushed her damp hair out of her eyes. ‘It’s stoo, sir,’ she announced. ‘I don’t want any. I just want the stuff,’ said Polly. ‘For the officer,’ she added. The kitchen maid pointed a soot-blackened thumb to a nearby door and gave Polly what she probably thought was a saucy grin. ‘I’m sure you can have anything that takes your fancy, sir,’ she said. Polly glanced at the two shelves that had been dignified by the name of pantry, and grabbed a couple of large onions, one in each hand. ‘May I?’ she said. ‘Oh, sir!’ giggled the maid. ‘I do hope you’re not one of them coarse soldiers who’d take advantage of a helpless maiden, sir!’ ‘No, er . . . no. I’m not one of them,’ said Polly. ‘Oh.’ This didn’t seem to be the right answer. The maid put her head on one side. ‘Have you had much to do with young women, sir?’ she asked. ‘Er . . . yes. Quite a lot,’ said Polly. ‘Er . . . lots, really.’ ‘Really?’ The maid drew closer. She smelled mostly of sweat, tinged with soot. Polly raised the onions as a kind of barrier. ‘I’m sure there’s things you’d like to learn,’ the maid purred. ‘I’m sure there’s something you wouldn’t!’ said Polly, and turned and ran. As she made it out into the cold night air, a plaintive voice behind her called out, ‘I’m off at eight o’clock!’ Ten minutes later, Corporal Scallot was impressed. Polly got the feeling this did not happen often. Shufti had wedged an old breastplate beside the fire, had hammered some slabs of horse-meat until they were tender, dipped them in some flour, and was frying them. The sliced onions sizzled next to them. ‘I always just boil ‘em,’ said Scallot, watching him with interest. ‘You just lose all the flavour if you do that,’ said Shufti. ‘Hey, lad, the stuff I’ve ate, you wouldn’t want to taste it!’ ‘Saute stuff first, especially the onions,’ Shufti went on. ‘Improves the flavour. Anyway, when you boil you ought to boil slow. That’s what me mam always says. Roast fast, boil slow, okay? This isn’t bad meat, for horse. Shame to boil it.’ ‘Amazin’,’ said Scallot. ‘We could’ve done with you in Ibblestarn. The sarge was a good man but a bit, you know, tough in the leg?’ ‘A marinade would probably have helped,’ said Shufti absently, flipping over a slice of meat with a broken sword. He turned to Polly. ‘Was there any more stuff in the larder, Ozz? I can make up some stock for tomorrow if we can—’ ‘I’m not going in that kitchen again!’ said Polly. ‘Ah, that’d be Roundheels Molly?’ said Corporal Scallot, looking up and grinning. ‘She’s sent many a lad on his way rejoicing.’ He dipped a ladle in the boiling scubbo pot next to the pan. Disintegrated grey meat seethed in a few inches of water. ‘That’ll do for the rupert,’ he said, and picked up a stained bowl. ‘Well, he did say he wanted to eat what the men eat,’ said Polly. ‘Oh, that kind of officer,’ said Scallot uncharitably. ‘Yeah, some young ones try that stuff, if’n they’ve been readin’ the wrong books. Some of ‘em tries to be friends, the bastards.’ He spat expertly between the two pans. ‘Wait ‘til he tries what the men eat.’ ‘But if we’re having steak and onions—’ ‘No thanks to the likes o’ him,’ said the corporal, ladling the slurry into the bowl. ‘The Zlobenian troops get one pound of beef and a pound of flour a day minimum, plus fat pork or butter and half a pound of pease. A pint o’ molasses sometimes, too. We get stale horse-bread and what we scrounge. He’ll have scubbo and like it.’ ‘No fresh vegetables, no fruit,’ said Shufti. ‘That’s a very binding diet, corp.’ ‘Yeah, well, once battle commences I reckon you’ll find constipation’s the last thing on your mind,’ said Scallot. He reached up, pushed some rags aside, and pulled down a dusty bottle from a shelf. ‘Rupert’s not having none o’ this, neither,’ he said. ‘Got it off’f the baggage of the last officer that went through, but I’ll share it with you, ‘cos you’s good lads.’ He casually knocked the top of the bottle off against the edge of the chimney.’ ‘s only sherry, but it’ll make you drunk.’ ‘Thanks, corp,’ said Shufti, and took the bottle. He sloshed a lot over the sizzling meat. ‘Hey, that’s good drink you’re wastin’!’ said Scallot, making a grab for it. ‘No, it’ll spice up the meat a fair treat,’ said Shufti, trying to hang on to the bottle. ‘It’ll— sugar!’ Half the liquid had gone on the fire as the two hands fought for it, but that wasn’t what had felt like a small steel rod shooting through Polly’s head. She looked round at the rest of the squad, who didn’t appear to have— Maladict winked at her and made a tiny gesture with his head towards the other end of the room, and strolled in that direction. Polly followed. Maladict always found something to lounge against. He relaxed in the shadows, looked up at the rafters, and said: ‘Now, I say a man who knows how to cook is no less of a man for that. But a man who says “sugar” when he swears? Have you ever heard a man say that? You haven’t. I can tell.’ So it was you who gave me the socks, thought Polly. You know about me, I can tell you do, but do you know about Lofty? And maybe Shufti was very politely brought up . . . but one look at Maladict’s knowing smile made her decide not to try that road. Besides, the moment you looked at Shufti with the idea that maybe he was a girl, you saw that he was. No man would say ‘Sugar!’ Three girls now . . . ‘And I’m pretty sure about Lofty, too,’ said Maladict. ‘What’re you going to do about . . . them?’ she said. ‘Do? Why should I do anything about anyone?’ said Maladict. ‘I’m a vampire officially pretending not to be one, right? I’m the last person who’ll say anyone has to play the hand they were dealt. So good luck to . . . him, say I. But you might like to take him aside later on and have a word with him. You know . . . man to man.’ Polly nodded. Was there a knowingness to that comment? ‘I’d better go and take the lieutenant his scubbo,’ she said. ‘And . . . blast it, I forgot about his laundry.’ ‘Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that, old chap,’ said Maladict, and flashed a little smile. ‘The way things are going around here, Igor’s probably a washerwoman in disguise.’ Polly did the laundry, in the end. She wasn’t sure that she’d be able to dodge Molly a second time, and there wasn’t that much of it. Afterwards she hung it in front of the fire, which was roaring. The horse had been surprisingly good, but not as surprising as Blouse’s reaction to the scubbo. He had sat there in his evening dress uniform - wearing special clothes just to sit down and eat all by yourself was a new one on Polly - and had yummed it up and sent her back with the bowl for more. The meat had been boiled white and there was scum on the top. The squad wondered what kind of life an officer could have led that inclined him to like scubbo. ‘Dun’t know much about him,’ said Scallot, upon questioning. ‘He’s been here two weeks, frettin’ to get to the war. Brought a whole cartload of books with him, I heard. Looks like a typical rupert to me. They were all behind the door when the chins were handed out. A sergeant who went through said he’s not really a soldier at all, just some wonk from headquarters that’s good at sums.’ ‘Oh, great,’ said Maladict, who was brewing his coffee by the fire. The little engine gurgled and hissed. ‘I don’t think he can see very well without his glasses,’ said Polly. ‘But he’s very, er, polite.’ ‘Not been a rupert for long, then,’ said Scallot. ‘They’re more “Hey there! You! Damn your eyes, fwah fwah fwah!” I seen your sergeant before, though, old Jackrum. Been everywhere, he has. Everyone knows old Jackrum. He was with us in the snow up at Ibblestarn.’ ‘How many people did he eat?’ said Maladict, to general laughter. The dinner had been good, and there had still been enough sherry for a glass each. ‘Let’s just say I heard he didn’t come down much thinner than when he went up,’ said Scallot. ‘And Corporal Strappi?’ said Polly. ‘Never seen him before, either,’ said Scallot. ‘Cross-grained little bugger. Political, I’d say. Why’s he gone and left you here? Got a nice cushy bed in the inn, has he?’ ‘I hope he’s not g-going to be our sergeant,’ said Wazzer. ‘Him? Why?’ said Scallot. Polly volunteered the events of earlier in the evening. To her surprise, Scallot laughed. ‘They’re trying to get rid of the old bugger again, are they?’ he said. ‘That’s a laugh! Bless you, it’ll take more’n a bunch of gawains and rodneys to lever Jackrum out of his own army. Why, he’s been court-martialled twice. He got off both times. And d’you know he once saved General Froc’s life? He’s been everywhere, got the goods on everyone, knows more strings than me and I know a good few, mark my words. If he wants to march with you tomorrow he will, and no skinny little rupert’ll get in his way.’ ‘So what was a man like that doing as a recruiting officer?’ said Maladict sharply. ‘ ‘cos he got his leg cut open in Zlobenia and bit the sawbones who tried to look at it when the wound went bad, clever dick,’ retorted Scallot. ‘Cleaned it out himself with maggots and honey, then drank a pint of brandy and sewed himself up and lay on his bed with a fever for a week. But the general got him, I heard, came and visited him while he was too weak to protest and told him he was going on the drumming for a year and no argument. Not even Froc hisself would hand him his papers, not after Jackrum’d carried him on his back for fourteen miles through enemy lines—’ The door swung open and Sergeant Jackrum walked in, tucking his hands into his belt. ‘Don’t bother to salute, lads,’ he said, as they turned guiltily. ‘Evening, Threeparts. Nice to see nearly all of you again, you artful ol’ god-dodger. Where’s Corporal Strappi?’ ‘Haven’t seen him all evening, sarge,’ said Maladict. ‘Didn’t he come in here with you?’ ‘No, sarge. We thought he was with you.’ Not a muscle moved on Jackrum’s face. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Well, you heard the lieutenant. The boat leaves at midnight. We should be well down the Kneck by Wednesday’s dawn. Get a few hours’ sleep if you can. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day, if you’re lucky.’ And with that, he turned and went out again. Wind howled outside, and was cut off when the door shut. We’ll be well down the Kneck, Polly noted. Well done, Threeparts. ‘Missing a corporal?’ said Scallot. ‘Now there’s a thing. Usually it’s a recruit that goes ay-wole. Well, you heard the sergeant, boys. Time to wash up and turn in.’ There was a washroom and latrine, in a rough and ready fashion. Polly found a moment when she and Shufti were in it alone. She’d racked her brains about how best to raise the subject, but as it turned out just a look was all it took. ‘It was when I volunteered to do the supper, wasn’t it?’ Shufti mumbled, staring into the stone sink, which had moss growing in it. ‘That was a clue, yes,’ said Polly. ‘A lot of men cook, you know!’ said Shufti hotly. ‘Yes, but not soldiers, and not enthusiastically,’ said Polly. ‘They don’t do marinades.’ ‘Have you told anybody?’ mumbled Shufti, red in the face. ‘No,’ said Polly, which was, after all, strictly true. ‘Look, you were good, you had me fooled right up until “sugar”.’ ‘Yes, yes, I know,’ Shufti whispered. ‘I can do the belching and the walking stupidly and even the nose-picking, but I wasn’t brought up to swear like you men!’ Us men, thought Polly. Oh, boy. ‘We’re the coarse and licentious soldiery. I’m afraid it’s shit or bust,’ she said. ‘Er . . . why are you doing this?’ Shufti stared into the dank stone sink as if strange green slime was really interesting, and mumbled something. ‘Sorry, what was that?’ said Polly. ‘Going to find my husband,’ said Shufti, only a little bit louder. ‘Oh, dear. How long had you been married?’ said Polly, without thinking. ‘. . . not married yet. . .’ said Shufti, in a voice as tall as an ant. Polly glanced down at the plumpness of Shufti. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. She tried to sound reasonable. ‘Don’t you think that you should—’ ‘Don’t you tell me to go home!’ said Shufti, rounding on her. ‘There’s nothing for me back home except disgrace! I’m not going home! I’m going to the war and I’m going to find him! No one’s going to tell me not to, Ozzer! No one! This has happened before, anyway! And it ended right! There’s a song about it and everything!’ ‘Oh, that,’ said Polly. ‘Yes. I know.’ Folk singers should be shot. ‘What I was going to say was that you might find this helps the disguise . . .’ She produced a soft cylinder of woolly socks from her pack and wordlessly handed it over. It was a dangerous thing to do, she knew, but now she was feeling a kind of responsibility to those whose sudden strange fancy hadn’t been followed by a plan. On the way back to her palliasse she caught sight of Wazzer hanging his little picture of the Duchess on a handy hook in the crumbling wall above his mattress. He looked around furtively, failed to spot Polly in the shadows of the doorway, and bobbed a very quick curtsy to the picture. A curtsy, not a bow. Polly frowned. Four. She was barely surprised, now. And she had one pair of clean socks left. This was soon going to be a barefoot army. Polly could tell the time by the fire. You got a feel for how long a fire burned, and the logs on this one were grey with ash over the glow beneath. It was gone eleven, she decided. By the sound of it, no one was getting any sleep. She’d got up after an hour or two of lying on the crackling straw mattress, staring at darkness and listening to things move about underneath her; she’d have stayed on it for longer, but something in the straw seemed to want to push her leg out of the way. Besides, she didn’t have any dry blankets. There were blankets in the barracks, but Threeparts had advised against them on account of their carrying, as he put it, ‘the Itch’. The corporal had left a candle alight. Polly had read Paul’s letter again, and taken another look at the piece of printed paper rescued from the muddy road. The words were fractured and she wasn’t sure about all of them, but she didn’t like the sound of any of them. ‘Invas’ had a particularly unpleasant ring to it. And then there was the third piece of paper. She couldn’t help that. It had been a complete accident. She’d done Blouse’s laundry and of course you went through the pockets before you washed things, because anyone who’d ever tried to unroll a soggy, bleached sausage that’d once been a banknote didn’t want to do it twice. And there had been this folded piece of paper. Admittedly, she needn’t have unfolded it and, having unfolded it, needn’t have read it. But there are some things that you just do. It was a letter. Presumably Blouse had shoved it in a pocket and forgotten about it when he’d changed his shirt. She needn’t read it again but, by candlelight, she did. My Dearest Emmeline, Fame and Fortune await! After only eight years as a 2nd Lieutenant I have now been promoted and am to have a command! Of course this will mean that there will be no officer left in the Adjutant-General’s Blanket’s, Bedding and Horse Fodder Department, but I have explained my new filing system to Cpl Drebb and I believe he is Sound. You know I cannot go into matters of detail, but I believe this will be a very exciting prospect and I am anxious to be ‘at the Foe’. I am bold enough to hope that the name of Blouse will go down in military history. In the meantime, I am brushing up my sword drill and it is definitely all ‘coming back’ to me. Of course, the promotion brings with it no less than One Shilling extra ‘per Diem’, plus Three Pence fodder allowance. To this end I have purchased a ‘charger’ from Mr ‘Honest’ Jack Slacker, a most entertaining gentleman, although I fear that his description of my steed’s ‘prowess’ may have been prone to some exaggeration. Nevertheless, I am ‘moving up ‘at last and if Fate smiles on me this will hurry forward the day when I can And that was it, fortunately. After some thought, Polly went and carefully damped the letter, then dried it quickly over the remains of the fire and slipped it into the pocket of the washed shirt. Blouse might scold her for not removing it before washing, but she doubted it. - A blanket-counter with a new filing system. An ensign for eight years, in a war where promotion could be rather fast. A man who put inverted commas round any word or phrase he thought of as even slightly ‘racy’. Brushing up on his ‘sword drill’. And so short-sighted he’d bought a horse from Jack Slacker, who went around all the horse fairs’ bargain bins and sold winded old screws that dropped a leg before you’d got home. Our leader. They were losing the war. Everyone knew that, but nobody would say it. It was as if they felt that if the words weren’t said out loud then it wasn’t really happening. They were losing the war and this squad, untrained and untried, fighting in dead men’s boots, could only help them lose it faster. Half of them were girls! Because of some bloody stupid song, Shufti was wandering off into a war to look for the father of her child, and that was a desperate errand for a girl even in peacetime. And Lofty was trailing after her boy, which would probably be romantic right up until five minutes into a battle. And she . . . . . . well, yes. She’d heard the song, too. So what? Paul was her brother. She’d always kept an eye on him, even when she was small. Mother was always busy, everyone was always busy at The Duchess, so Polly had become a big sister to a brother fifteen months older than her. She’d taught him to blow his nose, taught him how to form letters, went and found him when crueller boys had got him lost in the woods. Running after Paul was a duty that had become a habit. And then . . . well, it wasn’t the only reason. When her father died The Duchess would be lost to her side of the family if there was no male to inherit. That was the law, plain and simple. Nugganatic law said that men could inherit ‘the Things of Men ‘ such as land, buildings, money and all domestic animals except cats. Women could inherit ‘the Things of Women’, which were mostly small items of personal jewellery and spinning wheels passed from mothers to daughters. They certainly couldn’t inherit a large, famous tavern. So The Duchess would go to Paul if he was alive, or if he was dead it was allowable for it to go to Polly’s husband if she was married. And since Polly saw no prospect of that, she needed a brother. Paul could happily carry barrels around for the rest of his life; she would run The Duchess. But if she was left alone, a woman with no man, then at best all she’d get was maybe the chance to go on living there while the deeds went to cousin Vlopo, who was a drunkard. Of course, all that wasn’t the reason. Certainly not. But it was a reason, all the same. The reason was, simply, Paul. She’d always found him and brought him home. She looked at the shako in her hands. There had been helmets, but since they all had arrow holes or gaping rips in them the squad had wordlessly gone for the softer hats. You’d die anyway, and at least you wouldn’t have a headache. The shako’s badge showed the regimental symbol of a flaming cheese. Maybe one day she’d find out why. Polly put it on, picked up her pack and the small bag of laundry, and stepped out into the night. The moon was gone, the clouds had come back. She was drenched by the time she’d crossed the square; the rain was coming horizontally. She shoved open the inn door and saw, by the light of one guttering candle . . . chaos. Clothing was strewn across the flagstones, cupboards were hanging open. Jackrum was coming down the stairs, cutlass in one hand, lantern in the other. ‘Oh, it’s you, Perks,’ he said. ‘They’ve cleaned the place out and buggered off. Even Molly. I heard ‘em go. Pushing a cart, by the sound of it. What’re you doing here?’ ‘Batman, sarge,’ said Polly, shaking water off her hat. ‘Oh, yeah. Right. Go and wake him up, then. He’s snoring like a sawmill. I hope to hell the boat’s still there.’ ‘Why’d they bug— scarper, sarge?’ said Polly and thought: Sugar! If it comes to it, I don’t swear, either! But the sergeant didn’t appear to notice. He gave her what is known as an old-fashioned look; this one had dinosaurs in it. ‘Got wind of something, I don’t doubt,’ he said. ‘Of course, we’re winning the war, you know.’ ‘Ah. Oh. And we’re not going to be invaded at all, I expect,’ said Polly, with equally exaggerated care. ‘Quite right. I detest those treacherous devils who’d have us believe that a vast army is about to sweep right across the country any day now,’ said Jackrum. ‘Er . . . no sign of Corporal Strappi, sarge?’ ‘No, but I haven’t turned over every stone yet— ssh!’ Polly froze, and strained to listen. There were hoofbeats, getting louder as they approached, and changing from thuds into the ringing sound of horseshoes on cobbles. ‘Cavalry patrol,’ Jackrum whispered, putting the lantern down on the bar. ‘Six or seven horses.’ ‘Ours?’ ‘I bleedin’ doubt it.’ The clattering slowed, and came to a stop outside. ‘Keep ‘em talking,’ said Jackrum, reaching down and sliding the door’s bolt across. He turned and headed towards the rear of the inn. ‘What? What about?’ whispered Polly. ‘Sarge?’ Jackrum had vanished. Polly heard murmuring outside the door, followed by a couple of sharp knocks. She threw off her jacket. She wrenched the shako off her head and tossed it behind the bar. Now she wasn’t a soldier, at least. And, as the door was shaken against the bolt, she saw something white lying in the debris. It was a terrible temptation . . . The door burst open at the second blow, but the soldiers didn’t immediately enter. Lying under the bar, struggling to put the petticoat on over rolled-up trousers, Polly tried to make sense of the sounds. As far as she could tell from the rustles and thuds, anyone waiting inside the doorway with ambush in mind would have been briefly and terminally sorry. She tried to count the invaders; it sounded as though there were at least three. In the tense silence, the sound of a voice speaking in normal tones came as a shock. ‘We heard the bolt slide across. That means you’re in here somewhere. Make it easy on yourself. We don’t want to have to come and find you.’ I don’t want you to either, Polly thought. I’m not a soldier! Go away! And then the next thought was: What do you mean, you’re not a soldier? You took the shilling and kissed the picture, didn’t you? And suddenly an arm had reached under the bar and grabbed her. At least she didn’t have to act. ‘No! Please, sir! Don’t hurt me! I just got frightened! Please!’ But inside there was a certain . . . sock-ness that felt ashamed, and wanted to kick out. ‘Ye gods, what are you?’ said the cavalryman, pulling her upright and looking at her as if she was some kind of exhibit. ‘Polly, sir! Barmaid, sir! Only they cleared out and left me!’ ‘Keep the noise down, girl!’ Polly nodded. The last thing she needed now was for Blouse to run down the stairs with his sabre and Fencing for Beginners. ‘Yes, sir,’ she squeaked. ‘Barmaid, eh? Three pints of what you’d probably call your finest ale, then.’ That at least could happen on automatic. She’d seen the mugs under the bar, and the barrels were behind her. The beer was thin and sharp but probably wouldn’t dissolve a penny. The cavalryman watched her closely as she filled the mugs. ‘What happened to your hair?’ he said. Polly had been ready for this. ‘Oh, sir, they cut it off, sir! ‘cos I smiled at a Zlobenian trooper, sir!’ ‘Here?’ ‘In Drok, sir.’ It was a town much nearer the border. ‘And me mam said it was shaming to the family and I got sent here, sir!’ Her hands shook as she put the mugs on the bar, and she was hardly exaggerating. Hardly . . . but a bit, nevertheless. You’re acting like a girl, she thought. Keep it up! Now she could take stock of the invaders. They wore dark-blue uniforms, and big boots, and heavy cavalry helmets. One of them was standing by the shuttered windows. The other two were watching her. One had a sergeant’s stripes and an expression of deep suspicion. The one who’d grabbed her was a captain. ‘This is terrible beer, girl,’ he said, sniffing the mug. ‘Yes, sir, I know, sir,’ Polly gabbled. ‘They wouldn’t listen to me, sir, and said you have to put a damp sheet over the barrels in this thundery weather, sir, and Molly never cleans the spigot and—’ ‘This town’s empty, you know that?’ ‘They all scarpered, sir,’ said Polly earnestly. ‘Gonna be an invasion, sir. Everyone says. They’re frightened of you, sir.’ ‘Except you, eh?’ said the sergeant. ‘What’s your name, girl who smiles at Zlobenian troopers?’ said the captain, smiling. ‘Polly, sir,’ said Polly. Her questing hand found what it was seeking under the bar. It was the barman’s friend. There always was one. ‘And are you frightened of me, Polly?’ said the captain. There was a snigger from the soldier by the window. The captain had a well-trimmed moustache which had been waxed to points, and was over six feet tall, Polly reckoned. He had a pretty smile, too, which was somehow improved by the scar on his face. A circle of glass covered one eye. Her hand gripped the hidden cudgel. ‘No, sir,’ she said, looking back into one eye and one glass. ‘Er . . . what’s that glass for, sir?’ ‘It’s a monocle,’ said the captain. ‘It helps me see you, for which I am eternally grateful. I always say that if I had two I’d make a spectacle of myself.’ That got a dutiful laugh from the sergeant. Polly looked blank. ‘And are you going to tell me where the recruits are?’ said the captain. She forced her expression not to change. ‘No.’ The captain smiled. He had good teeth, but there was, now, no warmth in his eyes. ‘You are in no position to be ignorant,’ he said. ‘We won’t hurt them, I assure you.’ There was a scream in the distance. ‘Much,’ said the sergeant, with more satisfaction than was necessary. There was another yell. The captain nodded to the man by the door, who slipped out. Polly pulled the shako out from under the bar and put it on. ‘One of them gave you his cap, did he?’ said the sergeant, and his teeth were nowhere near as good as the officer’s. ‘Well, I like a girl who’ll smile at a soldier—’ The cudgel hit him along the head. It was old blackthorn, and he went down like a tree. The captain backed away as Polly came out from behind the bar with the club readied again. But he hadn’t drawn his sword, and he was laughing. ‘Now, girl, if you want—’ He caught her arm as she swung, dragged her towards him in a tight grip, still laughing, and folded up almost silently as her knee connected with his sock drawer. Thank you, Gummy. As he sagged she stepped back and brought the cudgel down on his helmet, making it ring. She was shaking. She felt sick. Her stomach was a small, red-hot lump. What else could she have done? Was she supposed to think We have met the enemy and he is nice? Anyway, he wasn’t. He was smug. She tugged a sabre from a scabbard and crept out into the night. It was still raining, and waist-deep mist was drifting up from the river. Half a dozen or so horses were outside, but not tied up. A trooper was waiting with them. Faintly, against the rustle of the rain, she heard him making soothing noises to comfort one of them. She wished she hadn’t heard that. Well, she’d taken the shilling. Polly gripped the cudgel. She’d gone a step when the mist between her and the man fountained up slowly as something rose out of it. The horses shifted uneasily. The man turned, a shadow moved, the man fell. . . ‘Oil’ whispered Polly. The shadow turned. ‘Ozzer? It’s me, Maladict,’ it said. ‘Sarge sent me to see if you needed help.’ ‘Bloody Jackrum left me surrounded by armed men!’ Polly hissed. ‘And?’ ‘Well, I . . . knocked two of them out,’ she said, feeling as she said it that this rather spoilt her case as a victim. ‘One went over the road, though.’ ‘I think we got that one,’ said Maladict. ‘Well, I say “got” . . . Tonker nearly gutted him. There’s a girl with what I’d call unresolved issues.’ He turned round. ‘Let’s see . . . seven horses, seven men. Yep.’ ‘Tonker?’ said Polly. ‘Oh, yes. Hadn’t you spotted her? She went mad when the man charged at Lofty. Now, let’s have a look at your gentlemen, shall we?’ said Maladict, heading for the inn door. ‘But Lofty and Tonker . . .’ Polly began, running to keep up. ‘I mean, the way they act, they . . . I thought she was his girl . . . but I thought Tonker . . . I mean, I know Lofty is a gi—’ Even in the dark, Maladict’s teeth gleamed as he smiled. ‘The world’s certainly unfolding itself for you, eh? Ozzer? Every day, something new. Cross-dressing now, I see.’ ‘What?’ ‘You are wearing a petticoat, Ozzer,’ said Maladict, stepping into the bar. Polly looked down guiltily and started to tug it off, and then thought: hang on a moment. . . The sergeant had managed to pull himself up against the bar, where he was being sick. The captain was groaning on the floor. ‘Good evening, gentlemen!’ said the vampire. ‘Please pay attention. I am a reformed vampire, which is to say, I am a bundle of suppressed instincts held together with spit and coffee. It would be wrong to say that violent, tearing carnage does not come easily to me. It’s not tearing your throats out that doesn’t come easily to me. Please don’t make it any harder.’ The sergeant pushed himself away from the bar top and took a muzzy swing at Maladict. Almost absent-mindedly, Maladict leaned away from it and then returned a roundhouse blow that knocked him over. ‘The captain looks bad,’ he said. ‘What did he try to do to poor little you?’ ‘Patronize me,’ said Polly, glaring at Maladict. ‘Ah,’ said the vampire. Maladict knocked softly on the barracks door. It opened a fraction, and then all the way. Carborundum lowered his club. Wordlessly, Polly and Maladict dragged the two cavalrymen inside. Sergeant Jackrum was sitting on a stool by the fire, drinking a mug of beer. ‘Well done, lads,’ he said. Tut ‘em with the others.’ He waved the mug vaguely towards the far wall, where four of the soldiers were hunched sullenly under the gaze of Tonker. They had been manacled together. The last soldier was lying on a table, with Igor at work on him with a needle and thread. ‘How’s he coming along, private?’ said Jackrum. ‘He’ll be fine, tharge,’ said Igor. ‘It looked worthe than it wath, really. Jutht ath well, because until we get to the battlefield I won’t get any thpareth.’ ‘Got a couple of legs for ol’ Threeparts?’ said Jackrum. ‘Now then, sarge, none of that,’ said Scallot evenly. He was sitting on the other side of the fireplace. ‘You just leave me their horses and saddles. Your lads could do with their sabres, I’ve no doubt.’ ‘They were looking for us, sarge,’ said Polly. ‘We’re just a bunch of untrained recruits and they were looking for us. I could’ve been killed, sarge!’ ‘No, I know talent when I sees it,’ said Jackrum. ‘Well done, lad. Had to piss off myself, on account of a big man in full enemy uniform isn’t easy to miss. Besides, you lads needed to be woke up. That’s milit’ry thinking, that is.’ ‘But if I hadn’t . . .’ Polly hesitated. ‘If I hadn’t tricked them, they might’ve killed the lieutenant!’ ‘See? There’s always a positive side, any way you look at it,’ said Scallot. The sergeant stood up, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and hitched up his belt. He ambled over to the captain, reached down, and lifted him up by his jacket. ‘Why were you looking for these boys, sir?’ he enquired. The captain opened his eye and focused on the fat man. ‘I am an officer and a gentleman, sergeant,’ he muttered. ‘There are rules.’ ‘Not many gentlemen around here at this moment, sir,’ said the sergeant. ‘Damn right,’ whispered Maladict. Polly, feeling drunk with relief and released tension, had to put her hand over her mouth to stop giggling. ‘Oh, yeah. The rules. Prisoners of war and that,’ Jackrum went on. ‘That means you even have to eat the same things as us, you poor devils. So you’re not going to talk to me?’ ‘I am . . . Captain Horentz of the First Heavy Dragoons. I’ll say nothing more.’ And something about the way he said it elbowed Polly in the brain. He’s lying. Jackrum stared at him blankly for a moment, and then said: ‘Well, now . . . it looks like what we have here is an embugger-ance which, my lads of the Cheesemongers, is defined as an obstruction in the way of progress. I propose to deal with it in this wise!’ He let go of the man’s jacket and the captain fell back. Sergeant Jackrum removed his hat. Then he removed his jacket, too, revealing a stained shirt and bright red braces. He was still almost spherical; from his neck, folds of skin lapped their way down to the tropical regions. The belt must have been there just to conform to regulations, Polly thought. He reached up and undid a piece of string from around his neck. It was looped through a hole in a tarnished coin. ‘Corporal Scallot!’ he said. ‘Yes, sarge!’ said Scallot, saluting. ‘You will note I am divestering myself of my insignia and am handing you my official shilling, which means, since last time I signed up it was for twelve years and that was sixteen years ago, I am now fully and legally a damn civilian!’ ‘Yes, Mister Jackrum,’ said Scallot cheerfully. Among the prisoners, heads jerked up at the sound of the name. ‘And that being the case, and since you, captain, are invading our country by night under the cover of darkness, and I am a humble civilian, I think there’s no rule to stop me beating seven kinds of crap out of you until you tell me why you came here and when the rest of your mates are going to arrive. And that may take me some time, sir, because up until now I’ve only ever discovered five types of crap.’ He rolled up his sleeves, hauled up the captain again and drew back a fist— ‘We just had to take the recruits into custody,’ said a voice. ‘We weren’t going to hurt them! Now put him down, Jackrum, damn you! He’s still seeing stars!’ It was the sergeant from the inn. Polly looked at the other prisoners. Even with Carborundum and Maladict watching them, and Tonker glowering at them, there was a definite sense that the first blow landed on the captain was going to start a riot. And Polly thought: they are very protective, aren’t they . . . Jackrum must have picked it up, too. ‘Ah, now we’re talking,’ he said, lowering the captain gently but still holding his coat. ‘Your men speak up for you well, captain.’ ‘That’s because we’re not slaves, you bloody beeteater,’ growled one of the troopers. ‘Slaves? All my lads joined up of their own free will, turniphead.’ ‘Maybe they thought they did,’ said the sergeant. ‘You just lied to ‘em. Lied to ‘em for years. They’re all gonna die because of your stupid lies! Lies and your raddled, rotting, lying old whore of a duchess!’ ‘Private Goom, as you were! That is an order! As you were, I said! Private Maladict, take that sword off’f Private Goom! That is another order! Sergeant, order your men to ease back slowly! Slowly! Do it now! Upon my oath I am not a violent man, but any man, any man who disobeys me, bigod, that man is lookin’ at a broken rib!’ Jackrum screamed all that in one long explosion of sound without taking his eyes off the captain. Reaction, order and breathless stillness had taken just a few seconds. Polly stared at the sudden tableau as her muscles untensed. The Zlobenian troopers were settling back. Carborundum’s raised club began to lower itself gently. Little Wazzer was held off the ground by Maladict, who’d wrenched a sword from her hand; possibly only a vampire could have moved faster than Wazzer as she’d charged the prisoners. ‘Custody,’ said Jackrum, in a quiet voice. ‘That’s a funny word. Look at my little lads, will you? Not a whisker between them yet, save for the troll, and lichen don’t count. Still wet behind the ears, they are. What’s dangerous about a harmless bunch of farm boys that’d concern a fine bunch of horse-wallopers like yourselves?’ ‘Can thomeone pleathe come and put their finger on thith knot?’ said Igor, from his makeshift operating table. ‘I’ve jutht about done.’ ‘Harmless?’ said the sergeant, staring at the struggling Wazzer. ‘They’re a bunch of bloody madmen!’ ‘I want to speak to your officer, damn you,’ said the captain, who looked a little less unfocused now. ‘You do have an officer, don’t you?’ ‘Yeah, we’ve got one somewhere, as I recall,’ said Jackrum. ‘Perks, go and fetch the rupert, will you? Best if you take that dress off first, too. You never know, with ruperts.’ He carefully lowered the captain on to a bench, and straightened up. ‘Carborundum, Maladict, chop something off any prisoner who moves, and any man who tries to attack a prisoner!’ he said. ‘Now then . . . oh, yes. Threeparts Scallot, I wish to enlist in your wonderful army, with its many opportunities for a young man willing to apply himself.’ ‘Any previous soldierin’?’ said Scallot, grinning. ‘Forty years fighting every bleeder within a hundred miles of Borogravia, corporal.’ ‘Special skills?’ ‘Stayin’ alive, corporal, come what may.’ ‘Then allow me to present you with one shilling and immediate acceleration to the rank of sergeant,’ said Scallot, handing back the coat and the shilling. ‘Want to Osculate the Doxie?’ ‘Not at my time o’ life,’ said Jackrum, putting on his jacket again. ‘There,’ he said. ‘All smart, all neat, all legal. Go on, Perks, I gave you an order.’ Blouse was snoring. His candle had burned down. A book was open on his blanket. Polly gently pulled it out from under his fingers. The title, almost invisible on the stained cover, was: Tacticus: The Campaigns. ‘Sir?’ she whispered. Blouse opened his eyes, saw her, and then turned and frantically scrabbled by the bed. ‘Here they are, sir,’ said Polly, handing him his spectacles. ‘Ah, Perks, thank you,’ said the lieutenant, sitting up. ‘Midnight, is it?’ ‘A bit after, sir.’ ‘Oh, dear! Then we must hurry! Quick, pass me my breeches! Have the men had a good night?’ ‘We were attacked by Zlobenian troops, sir. First Heavy Dragoons. We took them prisoner, sir. No casualties, sir.’ . . . because they didn’t expect us to fight. They wanted to take us alive. And they walked in on Carborundum and Maladict and . . . me. It had been hard, very hard, to force herself to swing that cudgel. But once she had done it, it had been easy. And then she’d felt embarrassed about being caught in a petticoat, even though she had her breeches on underneath. She’d gone from boy to girl just by thinking it, and it had been so . . . easy. She needed some time to consider this. She needed time to think about a lot of things. She suspected that time was going to be in short supply. Blouse was still sitting there with his breeches half on, staring at her. ‘Run that past me again one more time, will you, Perks?’ he said. ‘You have captured some of the enemy?’ ‘Not just me, sir, I only got two of ‘em,’ said Polly. ‘We all, er, piled in, sir.’ ‘Heavy Dragoons?’ ‘Yessir.’ ‘That’s the Prince’s personal regiment! They’ve invaded?’ ‘I think it was more of a patrol, sir. Seven men.’ ‘And none of you are hurt?’ ‘Nosir.’ ‘Pass me my shirt! Oh, blast!’ It was then that Polly noticed the bandage around his right hand. It was red with blood. He saw her expression. ‘Bit of a self-inflicted wound, Perks,’ he said nervously. ‘ “Brushing up” on my sword drill after supper. Nothing serious. Just a bit “rusty”, you know. Can’t quite manage buttons. If you would be so good . . .’ Polly helped the lieutenant struggle into the rest of his clothes, and threw his few other possessions in a bag. It took a special kind of man, she reflected, to cut his sword hand with his own sword. ‘I should pay my bill . . .’ the lieutenant muttered, as they hurried down the darkened stairs. ‘Can’t, sir. Everyone’s fled, sir.’ ‘Perhaps I should leave them a note, do you think? I wouldn’t like them to think that I had “done a runner” without—’ ‘They’ve all gone, sir!’ said Polly, pushing him towards the front door. She stopped outside the barracks, straightened his coat and stared at his face. ‘Did you wash last night, sir?’ ‘There was no—’ Blouse began. The response was automatic. Even though she was fifteen months younger, she’d been mothering Paul for too long. ‘Handkerchief!’ she demanded. And, since some things get programmed into the brain at an early age, one was obediently produced. ‘Spit!’ Polly commanded. Then she used the damp hanky to wipe a mark off Blouse’s face and realized, as she was doing it, that she was doing it. There was no going back. The only way out was ahead. ‘All right,’ she said brusquely. ‘Have you got everything?’ ‘Yes, Perks.’ ‘Have you been to the privy this morning?’ her mouth went on, while her brain cowered in fear of a court martial. I’m in shock, she thought, and so’s he. So you cling to what you know. And you can’t stop . . . ‘No, Perks,’ said the lieutenant. ‘Then you must go properly before we get on the boat, all right?’ ‘Yes, Perks.’ ‘In you go, then, there’s a good lieutenant.’ She leaned against the wall and got her breath back in a few hurried gulps as Blouse stepped into the barracks, then slipped in after him. ‘Officer present!’ Jackrum barked. The squad, already lined up, stood to varying degrees of attention. The sergeant jerked a salute in front of Blouse, causing the young man to sway backwards. ‘Apprehended enemy scouting party, sir! Dangerous business all round, sir! In view of the emergency nature of the emergency sir, and seeing as how you have no NCO what with Corporal Strappi having scarpered, and seeing as how I’m an old soldier in good standing, you are allowed to conscript me as an auxiliary under Duchess’s Regulations, Rule 796, Section 3 [a], Paragraph ii, sir, thank you, sir!’ ‘What?’ said Blouse, staring around blearily and becoming aware that in a world of sudden turmoil there was a big red coat that seemed to know what it was doing. ‘Oh. Yes. Fine. Rule 796, you say? Absolutely. Well done. Carry on, sergeant.’ ‘Are you in command here?’ barked Horentz, standing. ‘Indeed I am, captain,’ said Blouse. Horentz looked him up and down. ‘ You?’ he said, disdain oozing from the word. ‘Indeed, sir,’ said Blouse, his eyes narrowing. ‘Oh well, we shall have to do what we can. That fat bastard,’ said Horentz, pointing a threatening finger at Jackrum, ‘that bastard offered me violence! As a prisoner! In chains! And that . . . boy,’ the captain added, spitting the word towards Polly, ‘kicked me in the privates and almost clubbed me to death! I demand that you let us go!’ Blouse turned to Polly. ‘Did you kick Captain Horentz in the “privates”, Parts?’ ‘Er . . . yessir. Kneed, actually. And it’s Perks actually, sir, although I can see why you made the mistake.’ ‘What was he doing at the time?’ ‘Er . . . embracing me, sir.’ Polly saw Blouse’s eyebrows rise, and plunged on. ‘I was temporarily disguised as a girl, sir, in order to allay suspicion.’ ‘And then you . . . clubbed him?’ ‘Yessir. Once, sir.’ ‘What in the world possessed you to stop at once?’ said Blouse. ‘Sir?’ said Polly, as Horentz gasped. Blouse turned with an almost seraphic look of pleasure on his face. ‘And you, sergeant,’ he went on, ‘did you in fact lay a hand on the captain?’ Jackrum took a step forward and saluted smartly. ‘Not as in fact per se and such, sir, no,’ he said, keeping his eyes fixed on a point some twelve feet high on the far wall. ‘I just considered, since he had invaded our country to capture our lads, sir, that it wouldn’t hurt if he experienced temporary feelings of shock and awe, sir. On my oath, sir, I am not a violent man.’ ‘Of course not, sergeant,’ said Blouse. And now, while he still smiled, it was edged with a kind of malevolent glee. ‘For heaven’s sake, you fool, you can’t believe these ignorant yokels, they’re the dregs of—’ Horentz began. ‘I do believe them, indeed I do,’ said Blouse, shaking with nervous defiance. ‘I would believe their testimony against yours, sir, if they told me the sky was green. And it would appear that untrained as they are, they have bested some of Zlobenia’s finest soldiers by wit and daring. I have every confidence that they have further surprises in store for us—’ ‘Dropping your drawers would do it,’ whispered Maladict. ‘Shutup!’ hissed Polly, and then had to cram a fist into her mouth again. ‘I know you, Captain Horentz,’ said Blouse, and just for a moment the captain looked worried. ‘I mean I know your sort. I’ve had to put up with them all my life. Big jovial bullies, with their brains in their breeches. You dare to come riding into our country and think we’re going to be frightened of you? You think you can appeal to me over the heads of my men? You demand? On the soil of my country?’ ‘Captain?’ murmured the cavalry sergeant, as Horentz stared open-mouthed at the lieutenant, ‘they’ll be here soon . . .’ ‘Ah,’ said Horentz uncertainly. Then he seemed, with some effort, to regain his composure. ‘Reinforcements are coming,’ he snapped. ‘Free us now, you idiot, and I might just put this down to native stupidity. Otherwise I shall see to it that things go very, very badly for you and your . . . ha . . . men.’ ‘Seven cavalrymen were considered not enough to deal with farm boys?’ said Blouse. ‘You’re sweating, captain. You are worried. And yet you have reinforcements coming?’ ‘Permission to speak, sir!’ barked Jackrum, and went straight on to: ‘Cheesemongers! Get bleedin’ armed again right now! Maladict, you give Private Goom his sword back an’ wish him luck! Carborundum, you grab a handful of them twelve-foot pikes! The rest of—’ ‘There’s these as well, sarge,’ said Maladict. ‘Lots of them. I got them off our friends’ saddles.’ He held up what looked to Polly like a couple of large pistol crossbows, steely and sleek. ‘Horsebows?’ said Jackrum, like a child opening a wonderful Hogswatch present. ‘That’s what you gets for leading an honest and sober life, my lads. Dreadful little engines they are. Let’s have two each!’ ‘I don’t want unnecessary violence, sergeant,’ said Blouse. ‘Right you are, sir!’ said the sergeant. ‘Carborundum! First man comes through that door runnin’, I want him nailed to the wall!’ He caught the lieutenant’s eye, and added: ‘But not too hard!’ . . . and someone did knock at the door. Maladict levelled two bows at it. Carborundum lifted a couple of pikes in either hand. Polly raised her cudgel, a weapon she at least knew how to use. The other boys, and girls, raised whatever weapon Threeparts Scallot had been able to procure. There was silence. Polly looked around. ‘Come in?’ she suggested. ‘Yeah, right, that should do it,’ said Jackrum, rolling his eyes. The door was pushed open and a small, dapper man stepped through carefully. In build, colouring and hairstyle he looked rather like Mala— ‘A vampire?’ said Polly softly. ‘Oh, damn,’ said Maladict. The newcomer’s clothing, however, was unusual. It was an old-fashioned evening dress coat with the sleeves removed and many, many pockets sewn all over it. In front of him, slung around his neck, was a large black box. Against all common sense, he beamed at the sight of a dozen weapons poised to deliver perforated death. ‘Vonderful!’ he said, lifting up the box and unfolding three legs to form a tripod for it. ‘But . . . could zer troll move a little to his left please?’ ‘Huh?’ said Carborundum. The squad looked at one another. ‘Yes, and if the sergeant vould be so kind as to move into the centre more, and raise those swords a little bit higher?’ the vampire went on. ‘Great! And you, sir, if you could give me a grrrrh . . . ?’ ‘Grrrrh?’ said Blouse. ‘Very good! Really fierce now . . .’ There was a blinding flash and a brief cry of ‘Oh, sh—’, followed by the tinkle of breaking glass. Where the vampire had been standing was a little cone of dust. Blinking, Polly watched it fountain up into a human shape which coalesced once more into the vampire. ‘Oh dear, I really thought ze new filter vould do it,’ he said. ‘Oh veil, ve live und learn.’ He gave them a bright smile and added, ‘Now - vhich vun of you is Captain Horentz, please?’ Half an hour had passed. Polly was still bewildered. The trouble was not that she didn’t understand what was going on. The problem was that before she could understand that, she had to understand a lot of other things. One of them was the concept of a ‘newspaper’. Blouse was looking proud and worried by turns, but nervous all the time. Polly watched him carefully, not least because he was talking to the man who had come in behind the iconographer. He was wearing a big leather coat and jodhpurs, and spent most of the time writing things down in a notebook, with occasional puzzled glances at the squad. Finally, Maladict, who had good hearing, sauntered over to the recruits from his lounging spot by the wall. ‘Okay,’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘It’s all a bit complicated, but . . . do any of you know about newspapers?’ ‘Yeth, my thecond couthin Igor in Ankh-Morpork told me about them,’ said Igor. ‘They’re like a kind of government announthement.’ ‘Um . . . sort of. Except they’re not written by the government. They’re written by ordinary people who write things down,’ said Maladict. ‘Like a diary?’ said Tonker. ‘Um . . . no . . .’ Maladict tried to explain. The squad tried to understand. It still made no sense. It sounded to Polly like some kind of Punch and Judy show. Anyway, why would you trust anything written down? She certainly didn’t trust ‘Mothers of Borogravia!’ and that was from the government. And if you couldn’t trust the government, who could you trust? Very nearly everyone, come to think of it . . . ‘Mr de Worde works for a newspaper in Ankh-Morpork,’ said Maladict. ‘He says we’re losing. He says casualties are mounting and troops are deserting and all the civilians are heading for the mountains.’ ‘W-why should we believe him?’ Wazzer demanded. ‘Well, we’ve seen a lot of casualties and refugees and Corporal Strappi hasn’t been around since he heard he was going to the front,’ said Maladict. ‘Sorry, but it’s true. We’ve all seen it.’ ‘Yeah, but he’s just some man from a foreign country. Why w-would the Duchess lie to us? I mean, why would she send us out just to die?’ said Wazzer. ‘She w-watches over us!’ ‘Everyone says we’re winning,’ said Tonker, doubtfully, after that moment of embarrassment. Tears were running down Wazzer’s face. ‘No, they don’t,’ said Polly. ‘I don’t think we are, either.’ ‘Does anyone think we are?’ said Maladict. Polly looked from face to face. ‘But saying so . . . it’s like treachery against the Duchess, isn’t it?’ said Wazzer. ‘It’s spreading Alarm and Despondency, isn’t it?’ ‘Maybe we ought to be alarmed,’ said Maladict. ‘Do you know how he came to be here? He travels around writing down things about the war for his paper of news. He met these cavalry just up the road. In our country! And they told him they’d just heard that the very last recruits from Borogravia were here and they were nothing but, er, “a wet little bunch of squeaking boys”. They said they’d capture us for our own good and he could get a picture of us for his paper. He could show everybody how dreadful things were, they said, because we were scraping the bottom of the barrel.’ ‘Yeah, but we beat ‘em so that’s foxed him!’ said Tonker, grinning nastily. ‘Nothing for him to write down now, eh?’ ‘Um . . . not really. He says that this is even better!’ ‘Better? Whose side is he on?’ ‘Bit of a puzzler, really. He comes from Ankh-Morpork, but he’s not exactly on their side. Er . . . Otto Chriek, who makes the pictures for him—’ ‘The vampire? He crumbled to dust when the light flashed!’ said Polly. ‘Then he . . . came back!’ ‘Well, I was standing behind Carborundum at the time,’ said Maladict, ‘but I know the technique. He probably had a thin glass vial of b . . . bl. . . blur . . . no, wait, I can say this . . . blood.’ He sighed. ‘There! No problem. A thin vial of . . . what I said . . . which smashed on the ground and pulled the dust back together again. It’s a great idea.’ Maladict gave them a wan smile. ‘I think he really cares a lot about what he does, you know. Anyway, he told me de Worde just tries to find out the truth. And then he writes it down and sells it to anyone who wants it.’ ‘And people let him do that?’ said Polly. ‘Apparently. Otto says he makes Commander Vimes livid with rage about once a week, but nothing ever happens.’ ‘Vimes? The Butcher?’ said Polly. ‘He’s a duke, Otto says. But not like ours. Otto says he’s never seen him butcher anybody. Otto’s a Black Ribboner, like me. He wouldn’t lie to a fellow Ribboner. And he says that picture he took is going on the clacks from the nearest tower tonight. It will be in the paper of news tomorrow! And they print a copy here!’ ‘How can you send a picture on the clacks?’ said Polly. ‘I know people who’ve seen them. It’s just a lot of boxes on a tower that go clack-clack!’ ‘Ah, Otto explained that to me, too,’ said Maladict. ‘It’s very ingenious.’ ‘How does it work, then?’ ‘Oh, I didn’t understand what he said. It was all about . . . numbers. But it certainly sounded very clever. Anyway, de Worde just told the lieu— the rupert that news about a bunch of boys beating up experienced soldiers would certainly make people sit up and take notice!’ The squad looked at one another sheepishly. ‘It was a bit of a fluke, and anyway we had Carborundum,’ said Tonker. ‘And I used trickery,’ said Polly. ‘I mean, I couldn’t do it twice.’ ‘So what?’ said Maladict. ‘We did it. The squad did it! Next time we’ll do it differently!’ ‘Yeah!’ said Tonker. And there was a shared moment of exhilaration in which they were capable of anything. It lasted all of . . . a moment. ‘But it won’t work,’ said Shufti. ‘We’ve just been lucky. You know it won’t work, Maladict. You all know it won’t work, right?’ ‘Well, I’m not saying we could, you know, take on a regiment all at once,’ said Maladict. ‘And the lieu— rupert might be a bit wet. But we could help make a difference. Old Jackrum knows what he’s doing—’ ‘Upon my oath I am not a violent man . . . whack!’ sniggered Tonker, and there were a few . . . yes, giggles, they were giggles, Polly knew, from the squad. ‘No, you’re not,’ said Shufti flatly. ‘None of us are, right? Because we’re girls.’ There was a dead silence. ‘Well, not Carborundum and Ozzer, okay,’ Shufti went on, as if the silence was sucking unwilling words out of her. ‘And I’m not sure about Maladict and Igor. But I know the rest of us are, right? I’ve got eyes, I’ve got ears, I’ve got a brain. Right?’ In the silence there was the slow rumble that preceded a pronouncement from Carborundum. ‘If it any help,’ she said, in a voice suddenly more sandy than gravelly, ‘my real name’s Jade.’ Polly felt questing eyes boring into her. She was embarrassed, of course. But not for the obvious reason. It was for the other one, the little lesson that life sometimes rams home with a stick: you are not the only one watching the world. Other people are people; while you watch them they watch you, and they think about you while you think about them. The world isn’t just about you. There was going to be no possibility of getting out of this. And, in a way, it was a relief. ‘Polly,’ she said, almost in a whisper. She looked questioningly at Maladict, who smiled in a distinctly non-committal way. ‘Is this the time?’ he said. ‘All right, you lot, what’reyou standing about for?’ bawled Jackrum, six inches from the back of Maladict’s head. No one saw him arrive there; he moved with an NCO’s stealth, which sometimes mystifies even Igors. Maladict’s smile didn’t change. ‘Why, we’re awaiting your orders, sergeant,’ he said, turning round. ‘D’you think you’re clever, Maladict?’ ‘Um . . . yes, sarge. Quite clever,’ the vampire conceded. There wasn’t a lot of humour in Jackrum’s smile. ‘Good. Glad to hear it. Don’t want another stupid corporal. Yeah, I know you ain’t even a proper private yet, but glory be, you’re a corporal now ‘cos I need one and you’re the snappiest dresser. Get some stripes from Threeparts. The rest of you . . . this isn’t a bleedin’ mothers’ meeting, we’re leaving in five minutes. Move!’ ‘But the prisoners, sarge—’ Polly began, still trying to digest the revelation. ‘We’re goin’ to drag ‘em over to the inn an’ leave ‘em tied up in the nood, and shackled together,’ said Jackrum. ‘Vicious little devil when he’s roused, our rupert, eh? And Threeparts is having their boots and horses. They won’t be going too far for a while, not in the nood.’ ‘Won’t the writing man let them out?’ said Tonker. ‘Don’t care,’ said Jackrum. ‘He could probably cut the ropes, but I’m dropping the shackle key in the privy, and that’ll take a bit of fishing out.’ ‘Whose side is he on, sarge?’ said Polly. ‘Dunno. I don’t trust ‘em. Ignore ‘em. Don’t talk to ‘em. Never talk to people who writes things down. Milit’ry rule. Now, I know I just gave you lot an order ‘cos I heard the bleedin’ echo! Get on with it! We are leaving!’ ‘Road to perdition, lad, promotion,’ said Scallot to Maladict, swinging up with two stripes hanging from his hook. He grinned. ‘That’s three pence extra a day you’re due now, only you won’t get it ‘cos they ain’t payin’ us, but to look on the bright side, you won’t get stoppages, and they’re a devil for stoppages. The way I see it, march backwards and yer pockets’ll overflow!’ The rain had stopped. Most of the squad were parading outside the barracks where there was, now, a small covered wagon belonging to the writer of the paper of news. A large flag hung from a pole attached to it, but Polly couldn’t make out the design by moonlight. Beside the wagon, Maladict was deep in conversation with Otto. The centre of attention, though, was the line of cavalry horses. One had been offered to Blouse, but he’d waved it away with a look of alarm, muttering something about ‘being loyal to his steed’, which to Polly’s eye looked like a self-propelled toast-rack with a bad attitude. But he’d probably made the right decision, at that, because they were big beasts, broad, battle-hardened and bright-eyed; sitting astride one of them would have strained the crotch in Blouse’s trousers and an attempt at reining one of them in would have pulled his arms off at the shoulder. Now each horse had a pair of boots hanging from its saddle, except for the leading horse, a truly magnificent beast upon which Corporal Scallot sat like an afterthought. ‘I’m no donkey-walloper as you know, Threeparts,’ said Jackrum, as he finished lashing the crutches behind the saddle, ‘but this is a hell of a good horse you’ve got here.’ ‘Damn right, sarge. You could feed a platoon for a week off’f it!’ said the corporal. ‘Sure you won’t come with us?’ Jackrum added, standing back. ‘I reckon you still must’ve one or two things left for the bastards to cut off, eh?’ ‘Thank you, sarge, it’s a kind offer,’ said Threeparts. ‘But fast horses are going to be at a real premium soon, and I’ll be in on the ground floor, as you might say. This lot’ll be worth three years’ pay.’ He turned in the saddle and nodded at the squad. ‘Best of luck, lads,’ he added cheerfully. ‘You’ll walk with Death every day, but I’ve seen ‘im and he’s been known to wink. And remember: fill your boots with soup!’ He urged the horses into a walk, and disappeared with his trophies into the gloom. Jackrum watched him go, shook his head, and turned to the recruits. ‘All right, ladies— What’s funny, Private Halter?’ ‘Er, nothing, sarge, I just . . . thought of something . . .’ said Tonker, almost choking. ‘You ain’t paid to think of things, you’re paid to march. Do it!’ The squad marched away. The rain slackened to nothing but the wind rose a little, rattling windows, blowing through the deserted houses, opening and shutting doors like someone looking for something they could have sworn they put down here only a moment ago. That was all that moved in Plotz, except for one candle flame, down near the floor in the back room of the deserted barracks. The candle had been tilted so that it leaned against a cotton thread fastened between the legs of a stool. This meant that when the candle burned low enough, it would burn through the thread and fall all the way to the floor and into a ragged trail of straw that led to a pile of palliasses on which had been stood two ancient cans of lamp oil. It took about an hour in the wet, dejected night, for this to happen, and then all the windows blew out. Tomorrow dawned on Borogravia like a great big fish. A pigeon rose over the forests, banked slightly, and headed straight for the valley of the Kneck. Even from here, the black stone bulk of the keep was visible, rising above the sea of trees. The pigeon sped on, one spark of purpose in the fresh new morning— —and squawked as darkness dropped from the sky, gripping it in talons of steel. Buzzard and pigeon tumbled for a moment, and then the buzzard gained a little height and flapped onwards. The pigeon thought: 000000000! But had it been more capable of coherent thought, and known something about how birds of prey catch pigeons*, it might have wondered why it was being gripped so . . . kindly. It was being held, not squeezed. As it was, all it could think was: 000000000! * And allowing for the fact that all pigeons who know how birds of prey catch are dead, and therefore capable of slightly less thought than a living pigeon. The buzzard reached the valley and began to circle low over the keep. As it gyred, a tiny figure detached itself from the leather harness on its back and, with great care, inched itself around the body and down to the talons. It reached the imprisoned pigeon, knelt on it and put its arms round the bird’s neck. The buzzard skimmed low over a stone balcony, reared in the air, and let the pigeon go. Bird and tiny man rolled and bounced across the flagstones in a trail of feathers, and lay still. Eventually a voice from somewhere under the pigeon said: ‘Bugger . . .’ Urgent footsteps ran across the stones and the pigeon was lifted off Corporal Buggy Swires. He was a gnome, and barely six inches tall. On the other hand, as the head and only member of Ankh-Morpork City Watch’s Airborne Section, he spent most of his time so high that everyone looked small. ‘Are you all right, Buggy?’ said Commander Vimes. ‘Not too bad, sir,’ said Buggy, spitting out a feather. ‘But it wasn’t elegant, was it? I’ll do better next time. Trouble is, pigeons are too stupid to be steered—’ ‘What’ve you got me?’ ‘The Times sent this up from their cart, sir! I tracked it all the way!’ ‘Well done, Buggy!’ There was a flurry of wings and the buzzard landed on the battlements. ‘And, er— what is his name?’ Vimes added. The buzzard gave him the mad, distant look of all birds. ‘She’s Morag, sir. Trained by the pictsies. Wonderful bird.’ ‘Was she the one we paid a crate of whisky for?’ ‘Yes, sir, and worth every dram.’ The pigeon struggled in Vimes’s hand. ‘You wait there, then, Buggy, and I’ll get Reg to come out with some raw rabbit,’ he said, and walked into his tower. Sergeant Angua was waiting by his desk, reading the Living Testament of Nuggan. ‘Is that a carrier pigeon, sir?’ she said, as Vimes sat down. ‘No,’ said Vimes. ‘Hold it a minute, will you? I want to have a look inside the message capsule.’ ‘It does look like a carrier pigeon,’ said Angua, putting down the book. ‘Ah, but messages flying through the air are an Abomination unto Nuggan,’ said Vimes. ‘The prayers of the faithful bounce off them, apparently. No, I think I’ve found someone’s lost pet and I’m looking in this little tube here to see if I can find the owner’s name and address, because I am a kind man.’ ‘So you’re not actually waylaying field reports from the Times, then, sir?’ said Angua, grinning. ‘Not as such, no. I’m just such a keen reader that I want to see tomorrow’s news today. And Mr de Worde seems to have a knack of finding things out. Angua, I want to stop these stupid people fighting so that we can all go home, and if that means allowing the occasional pigeon to have a crap on my desk, so be it.’ ‘Oh, sorry, sir, I didn’t notice. I expect it’ll wipe off.’ ‘Go and get Reg to find some rabbit for the buzzard, will you?’ When she’d gone Vimes carefully unscrewed the end of the tube and pulled out a roll of very thin paper. He unfolded it, smoothed it out, and read the tiny writing, smiling as he did so. Then he turned the paper over and looked at the picture. He was still staring at it when Angua returned with Reg and half a bucket of crunchy rabbit bits. ‘Anything interesting, sir?’ said Angua ingenuously. ‘Well, yes. You could say that. All plans are changed, all bets are off. Ha! Oh, Mr de Worde, you poor fool . . .’ He handed her the paper. She read the story carefully. ‘Good for them, sir,’ she said. ‘Most of them look fifteen years old, and when you see the size of those dragoons, well, you’ve got to be impressed.’ ‘Yes, yes, you could say that, you could say that,’ said Vimes, his face gleaming like a man with a joke to share. ‘Tell me, did de Worde interview any Zlobenian high-ups when he arrived?’ ‘No, sir. I understand he was turned away. They don’t really know what a reporter is, so I gather the adjutant threw him out and said he was a nuisance.’ ‘Dear me, the poor man,’ said Vimes, still grinning. ‘You met Prince Heinrich the other day. Describe him to me . . .’ Angua cleared her throat. ‘Well, sir, he was . . . largely green, shading to blue, with overtones of grllss and trail of—’ ‘I meant describe him to me on the assumption that I’m not a werewolf who sees with his nose,’ said Vimes. ‘Oh, yes,’ said Angua. ‘Sorry, sir. Six foot two, a hundred and eighty pounds, fair hair, green-blue eyes, sabre scar on his left cheek, wears a monocle in his right eye, waxed moustache—’ ‘Good, well observed. And now look at “Captain Horentz” in the picture, will you?’ She looked again, and said, very quietly: ‘Oh dear. They didn’t know?’ ‘He wasn’t going to tell them, was he? Would they have seen a picture?’ Angua shrugged. ‘I doubt it, sir. I mean, where would they see it? There’s never been a newspaper here until the Times carts turned up last week.’ ‘Some woodcut, maybe?’ ‘No, they’re an Abomination, unless they’re of the Duchess.’ ‘So they really didn’t know. And de Worde has never seen him,’ said Vimes. ‘But you saw him when we arrived the other day. What did you think of him? Just between ourselves.’ ‘An arrogant son-of-a-bitch, sir, and I know what I’m talking about. The kind of man who thinks he knows what a woman likes and it’s himself. All very friendly right up until they say no.’ ‘Stupid?’ ‘I don’t think so. But not as clever as he thinks he is.’ ‘Right, ‘cos he didn’t tell our writer friend his real name. Did you read the bit at the end?’ Angua read, at the end of the text: ‘Perry, the captain threatened and harangued me after the recruits had gone. Alas, I had no time to fish for the manacle key in the privy. Please let the Prince know where they are soonest. WDW’ ‘Looks like William didn’t take to him, either,’ she said. ‘I wonder why the Prince was out with a scouting party?’ ‘You said he was an arrogant son-of-a-bitch,’ said Vimes. ‘Maybe he just wanted to pop across and see if his auntie was still breathing . . .’ His voice trailed off. Angua looked at Vimes’s face, which was staring through her. She knew her boss. He thought war was simply another crime, like murder. He didn’t much like people with titles, and regarded being a duke as a job description rather than a lever to greatness. He had an odd sense of humour. And he had a sense for what she thought of as harbingers, those little straws in the wind that said there was a storm coming. ‘In the nuddy,’ he chuckled. ‘Could have slit their throats. Didn’t. They took their boots away and left them to hop home in the nood.’ The squad, it seemed, had found a friend. She waited. ‘I feel sorry for the Borogravians,’ he said. ‘Me too, sir,’ said Angua. ‘Oh? Why?’ ‘Their religion’s gone bad on them. Have you seen the latest Abominations? They Abominate the smell of beets and people with red hair. In rather shaky writing, sir. And root vegetables are a staple here. Three years ago it was Abominable to grow root crops on ground which had grown grain or peas.’ Vimes looked blank, and she remembered that he was a city boy. ‘It means no real crop rotation, sir,’ she explained. ‘The ground sours. Diseases build up. You were right when you said they were going mad. These . . . commandments are dumb, and any farmer can see that. I imagine people go along with them as best they can, but sooner or later you either have to break them and feel guilty, or keep them and suffer. For no reason, sir. I’ve had a look around. They’re very religious here, but their god’s let them down. No wonder they mostly pray to their royal family.’ She watched him stare at the piece of pigeon post for a while. Then he said: ‘How far is it to Plotz?’ ‘About fifty miles,’ said Angua, adding, ‘As the wolf runs, maybe six hours.’ ‘Good. Buggy’ll keep an eye on you. Little Henry is going to hop home, or meet one of his patrols, or an enemy patrol . . . whatever. But the midden is going to hit the windmill when everyone sees that picture. I bet de Worde would have let him out if he’d been nice and polite. That’ll teach him to meddle with the awesome power of a fair and free press, haha.’ He sat upright and rubbed his hands together like a man who meant business. ‘Now, let’s get that pigeon on its way again before it gets missed, eh? Get Reg to lurch along to where the Times people are staying and tell them their pigeon flew in the wrong window. Again.’ That was a good time, Polly remembered. They didn’t go down to the river docks. They could see there was no boat there. They hadn’t turned up and the boatman had left without them. Instead, they crossed the bridge and headed up into the forests, with Blouse leading the way on his ancient horse. Maladict went on ahead and . . . Jade brought up the rear. You didn’t need a light at night when a vampire led the way, and a troll at the rear would certainly discourage hangers-on. No one mentioned the boat. No one spoke at all. The thing was . . . the thing was, Polly realized, that they were no longer marching alone. They shared the Secret. That was a huge relief, and right now they didn’t need to talk about it. Nevertheless, it was probably a good idea to keep up a regular output of farts, belches, nose-pickings and groin-scratchings, just in case. Polly didn’t know whether to be proud that they’d taken her for a boy. I mean, she thought, I’d worked hard to get it right, I mastered the walk, except I suppose what I really did was mistress the walk, haha, I invented the fake shaving routine and the others didn’t even think of that, I haven’t cleaned my fingernails for days and I pride myself I can belch with the best of them. So, I mean, I was trying. It was just slightly annoying to find that she’d succeeded so well. After a few hours of this, when true dawn was breaking, they smelled smoke. There was a faint pall of it amongst the trees. Lieutenant Blouse raised a hand for them to halt, and Jackrum joined him in whispered conversation. Polly stepped forward. ‘Permission to whisper too, sarge? I think I know what this is.’ Jackrum and Blouse stared at her. Then the sergeant said: ‘All right, Perks. Go and find out if you’re right, then.’ That was an aspect that hadn’t occurred to Polly, but she’d left herself open. Jackrum relented when he saw her expression, nodded to Maladict, and said, ‘Go with him, corporal.’ They left the squad behind and walked forward carefully, over the beds of new-fallen leaves. The smoke was heavy and fragrant and, above all, reminiscent. Polly headed to where thicker undergrowth was taking advantage of the extra light of a clearing, and pushed through into an airy thicket of hazel trees. The smoke was denser here, and barely moving. The thicket ended. A few yards away, in a wide patch of cleared ground, a mound like a small volcano was spewing flame and smoke into the air. ‘Charcoal oven,’ whispered Polly. ‘Just clay plastered on a stack of hazel. Should sit there smouldering for days. The wind probably caught it last night and the fire’s broken out. Won’t make good charcoal now, it’s burning too fast.’ They edged round it, keeping to the bushes. Other clay domes were dotted about the clearing, with faint wisps of steam and smoke coming from their tops. There were a couple of ovens in the process of being built, the fresh clay stacked alongside some bundles of hazel sticks. There was a hut, and the domes, and nothing else but silence, apart from the crackle of the runaway fire. ‘The charcoal-burner is dead, or nearly dead,’ said Polly. ‘He’s dead,’ said Maladict. ‘There’s a smell of death here.’ ‘You can smell it above the smoke?’ ‘Sure,’ said Maladict. ‘Some things we’re good at smelling. But how did you know?’ ‘They watch the burns like hawks,’ said Polly, staring at the hut. ‘He wouldn’t let it go out of control like that if he was alive. Is he in the hut?’ ‘ They are in the hut,’ said Maladict flatly. He set off across the smoky ground. Polly ran after him. ‘Man and woman?’ she said. ‘Their wives often live out with—’ ‘Can’t tell, not if they’re old.’ The hut was only a temporary thing, made of woven hazel and roofed with tarpaulin; the charcoal-burners moved around a lot, from coppice to coppice. It didn’t have windows, but it did have a doorway, with a rag for a door. The rag had been pulled away; the doorway was dark. I’ve got to be a man about this, Polly thought. There was a woman on the bed, and a man lying on the floor. There were other details, which the eye saw but the brain did not focus on. There was a great deal of blood. The couple had been old. They would not grow older. Back outside, Polly took frantic mouthfuls of air. ‘Do you think those cavalrymen did it?’ she said at last, and then realized that Maladict was shaking. ‘Oh . . . the blood . . .’ she said. ‘I can deal with it! It’s okay! I just have to get my mind right, it’s okay!’ He leaned against the hut, breathing heavily. ‘Okay, I’m fine,’ he said. ‘And I can’t smell horses. Why don’t you use your eyes? Nice soft mud everywhere after the rain, but no hoof-prints. Plenty of footprints, though. We did it.’ ‘Don’t be silly, we were—’ The vampire had reached down and pulled something out of the fallen leaves. He rubbed the mud off it with a thumb. In thin pressed brass, it was the Flaming Cheese badge of the Ins-and-Outs. ‘But . . . I thought we were the good guys,’ said Polly weakly. ‘If we were guys, I mean.’ ‘I think I need a coffee,’ said the vampire. ‘Deserters,’ said Sergeant Jackrum, ten minutes later. ‘It happens.’ He tossed the badge into the fire. ‘But they were on our side!’ said Shufti. ‘So? Not everyone’s a nice gennelman like you, Private Manickle,’ said Jackrum. ‘Not after a few years of gettin’ shot at and eatin’ rat scubbo. On the retreat from Khrusk I had no water for three days and then fell on my face in a puddle of horse piss, a circumstance which did nothing for my feelin’s of goodwill towards my fellow man or horse. Something the matter, corporal?’ Maladict was on his knees, going through his pack with a distracted air. ‘My coffee’s gone, sarge.’ ‘Can’t have packed it properly, then,’ said Jackrum unsympathetically. ‘I did, sarge! I washed out the engine and packed it up with the bean bag after supper last night. I know I did. I don’t take coffee lightly!’ ‘If someone else did, they’re going to wish I’d never been born,’ growled Jackrum, looking round at the rest of the squad. ‘Anyone else lost anything?’ ‘Er . . . I wasn’t going to say anything, ‘cos I wasn’t sure,’ Shufti volunteered, ‘but my stuff looked as if it had been pulled about when I opened my pack just now . . .’ ‘Oh-ho!’ said Jackrum. ‘Well, well, well. I’ll say this once, lads. Pinching from yer mates is a hanging offence, understood? Nothing breaks down morale faster’n some sneaky little sod dipping into people’s packs. And if I find out someone’s been at it, I’ll swing on their heels!’ He glared at the squad. ‘I ain’t gonna demand that you all empty out your packs as if you’s criminals,’ he said, ‘but you’d better check that nothing’s missing. O’ course, one of you might have packed something that wasn’t theirs by accident, okay. Packing in a rush, poor light, easy to do. In which case, you sort it out amongst yourselves, understand? Now, I’m off to have a shave. Lieutenant Blouse is having a throw-up behind the shelter after a-viewin’ of the corpses, poor chap.’ Polly rummaged desperately in her pack. She’d thrown things in any old how last night, but what she was frantically searching for was— —not there. Despite the heat from the charcoal mounds, she shivered. The ringlets had gone. Feverishly, she tried to remember the events of yesterday evening. They’d just dumped their packs as soon as they were in the barracks, right? And Maladict had made himself some coffee at suppertime. He’d washed and dried the little machine— There was a thin little wail. Wazzer, the meagre contents of her pack spread around her, held up the coffee engine. It had been stamped almost flat. ‘B-b-b—’ she began. Polly’s mind worked faster, like a millwheel in a flood. Then everyone took their packs into the back room with all the mattresses, didn’t they? So they’d still be there when the squad fought the troopers— ‘Oh, Wazz,’ said Shufti. ‘Oh, dear . . .’ So who might have sneaked in through the back door? There was no one around except the squad and the cavalrymen. Perhaps someone wanted to watch, and cause a little trouble on the way— ‘Strappi!’ she said aloud. ‘It must have been him! The little weasel ran into the cavalry and then snuck back to watch! He was dar— damn well going through our packs out the back! Oh, come on,’ she added, as they stared at her, ‘can you see Wazzer stealing from anyone? Anyway, when did she have the chance?’ ‘Wouldn’t they have taken him prisoner?’ said Tonker, staring at the crushed machine in Wazzer’s shaking hands. ‘If he’d whipped off his shako and jacket he’d just be another stupid civilian, wouldn’t he? Or he could just say he was a deserter. He could make up some story,’ said Polly. ‘You know how he was with Wazzer. He went through my pack, too. Stole . . . something of mine.’ ‘What was it?’ said Shufti. ‘Just something, okay? He just wanted to . . . make trouble.’ She watched them thinking. ‘Sounds convincing,’ said Maladict, nodding abruptly. ‘Little weasel. Okay, Wazz, just fish out the beans and I’ll do the best I can—’ ‘T-there’s no b-b-b—’ Maladict put a hand over his eyes. ‘No beans?’ he said. ‘Please, has anyone got the beans?’ There was a general rummaging, and a general lack of a result. ‘No beans.’ moaned Maladict. ‘He threw away the beans . . .’ ‘Come on, lads, we’ve got to get sentries posted,’ said Jackrum, approaching. ‘Sorted it all out, have you?’ ‘Yes, sarge. Ozz thinks—’ Shufti began. ‘It was all a bit of mis-packing, sarge!’ said Polly quickly, anxious to keep away from anything connected with missing ringlets. ‘Nothing to worry about! All sorted, sarge. No problem. Nothing to worry anyone. Not . . . a . . . thing, sarge.’ Jackrum looked from the startled squad to Polly, and back, and back again. She felt his gaze boring into her, daring her to change her expression of mad, tense honesty. ‘Ye-es,’ he said slowly. ‘Right. Sorted out, eh? Well done, Perks. Attention! Officer present!’ ‘Yes, yes, sergeant, thank you, but I don’t think we need to be too formal,’ said Blouse, who looked rather pale. ‘A word with you when you have finished, if you please? And I think we should bury the, er, bodies.’ Jackrum saluted. ‘Right you are, sir. Two volunteers to dig a grave for those poor souls! Goom and Tewt— what’s he doing?’ Lofty was over by the blazing charcoal oven. She was holding a burning branch a foot or two from her face and turning it this way and that, watching the flames. ‘I’ll do it, sarge,’ said Tonker, stepping beside Wazzer. ‘What are you, married?’ said Jackrum. ‘You are on guard, Halter. I doubt whoever did it’ll come back, but if they do, you sing out, right? You and Igor come with me, and I’ll show you your stations.’ ‘No coffee,’ moaned Maladict. ‘Foul muck, anyway,’ said Jackrum, walking away. ‘A cup of hot sweet tea is the soldier’s friend.’ Polly grabbed the kettle for Blouse’s shaving water, and hurried away. That was another thing you learned in the milit’ry: look busy. Look busy and no one worried too much about what you were busy at. Bloody, bloody Strappi! He’d got her hair! He’d try to use it against her if he could, that was certain. That’d be his style. What would he do now? Well, he’d want to keep away from Jackrum, that’d be another certainty. He’d wait, somewhere. She’d have to, too. The squad had made camp upwind of the smoke. It was supposed to be a rest stop, since no one had got much sleep last night, but as Jackrum handed out tasks he reminded them: ‘There is an old milit’ry saying, which is: Hard Luck For You.’ There was no question of using the woven hut, but there were a few tarpaulin-covered frames built to keep the coppiced wood dry. Those not given jobs to do lay down on the stacked piles of twigs, which were yielding and didn’t smell and were in any case better than the inhabited palliasses back at the barracks. Blouse, as an officer, had a shelter to himself. Polly had stacked bundles of twigs to make a chair that was at least springy. Now she laid out his shaving things and turned to go— ‘Could you shave me, Perks?’ said the lieutenant. Fortunately, Polly’s back was turned and he didn’t see her expression. ‘This damn hand is quite swollen, I’m afraid,’ Blouse went on. ‘I would not normally ask, but—’ ‘Yes, of course, sir,’ said Polly, because there was no alternative. Well now, let’s see . . . she’d got quite good at scraping a blunt razor across a face bare of hair, yes. Oh, and she’d shaved a few dead pigs in the kitchens at The Duchess, but that was only because nobody likes hairy bacon. They didn’t really count, did they? Panic rose, and rose faster at the sight of Jackrum approaching. She was going to cut an officer’s throat in the presence of a sergeant. Well, when in doubt, bustle. Milit’ry rule. Bustle, and hope there’s a surprise attack. ‘Are you not being a little strict with the men, sergeant?’ said Blouse, as Polly flapped a towel round his neck. ‘No, sir. Keep ‘em occupied, that’s the bunny. Otherwise they’ll mope,’ said Jackrum confidently. ‘Yes, but they have just seen a couple of badly mutilated bodies,’ said Blouse, and shuddered. ‘Good practice for ‘em, sir. They’ll see plenty more.’ Polly turned to the shaving gear she’d laid out on another towel. Let’s see . . . cut-throat razor, oh dear, the grey stone for coarse sharpening, the red stone for fine sharpening, the soap, the brush, the bowl . . . well, at least she knew how to make foam . . . ‘Deserters, sergeant. Bad business,’ Blouse went on. ‘You always get ‘em, sir. That’s why the pay is always late. Walking away from three months’ back pay makes a man think twice.’ ‘Mr de Worde the newspaper man said there had been a great many desertions, sergeant. It is very strange that so many men would desert from a winning side.’ Polly whirled the brush vigorously. Jackrum, for the first time since Maladict had joined, looked uncomfortable. ‘But whose side is he on, sir?’ he said. ‘Sergeant, I am sure you are not a stupid man,’ said Blouse, as, behind him, foam poured over the edge of the bowl and flopped on to the floor. ‘There are desperate deserters abroad. Our borders appear to be sufficiently unguarded to enable enemy cavalry to operate forty miles inside “our fair country”. And High Command appears to be so desperate, yes, desperate, sergeant, that even half a dozen untrained and, frankly, very young men must go to the front.’ The foam had a life of its own now. Polly hesitated. ‘Hot towel first, please, Perks,’ said Blouse. ‘Yessir. Sorry, sir. Forgot, sir,’ said Polly, panic rising. She had a vague recollection of walking past the barber shop in Munz. Hot towel on face. Right. She grabbed a small towel, tipped boiling water on to it, wrung it out and placed it on the lieutenant’s face. He did not actually scream, as such. ‘ Aaaaagh something else worries me, sergeant.’ ‘Yessir?’ ‘The cavalry must have apprehended Corporal Strappi. I cannot see how else they found out about our men.’ ‘Good thinking, sir,’ said the sergeant, watching Polly apply the lather across mouth and nose. ‘I do hope they didn’t pff torture the poor man,’ said the lieutenant. Jackrum was silent on that issue, but meaningfully so. Polly wished he wouldn’t keep glancing at her. ‘But why would a deserter pff head straight for the pff front?’ said Blouse. ‘Makes sense, sir, for an old soldier. Especially a political.’ ‘Really?’ ‘Trust me on that, sir,’ said Jackrum. Behind Blouse, Polly brushed the razor up and down the red stone. It was already as slick as ice. ‘But our boys, sergeant, are not “old soldiers”. It takes pjf two weeks to turn a recruit into a “fighting man”,’ said the lieutenant. ‘They’re promising material, sir. I could do it in a couple of days, sir,’ said Jackrum. ‘Perks?’ Polly nearly sliced her thumb off. ‘Yes, sarge,’ she quavered. ‘Do you think you could kill a man today?’ Polly glanced at the razor. The edge glowed. ‘I’m sorry to say I think I could, sir!’ ‘There you have it, sir,’ said Jackrum, with a lopsided grin. ‘There’s something about these lads, sir. They’re quick.’ He walked behind Blouse, took the razor from Polly’s grateful hand without a word, and said: ‘There’s a few matters we ought to discuss, sir, private like. I think Perks here ought to get some rest.’ ‘Of course, sergeant. Pas devant les soldats jeuttes, eh? ’ ‘And them too, sir,’ said Jackrum. ‘You’re dismissed, Perks.’ Polly walked away, her right hand still trembling. Behind her, she heard Blouse sigh and say: ‘These are tricky times, sergeant. Command has never been so burdensome. The great General Tacticus says that in dangerous times the commander must be like the eagle and see the whole, and yet still be like the hawk and see every detail.’ ‘Yessir,’ said Jackrum, gliding the razor down a cheek. ‘And if he acts like a common tit, sir, he can hang upside down all day and eat fat bacon.’ ‘Er . . . well said, sergeant.’ The charcoal-burner and his wife were buried to the accompaniment of, to Polly’s lack of surprise, a small prayer from Wazzer. It asked the Duchess to intercede with the god Nuggan to give eternal rest and similar items to the departed. Polly had heard it many times before; she’d wondered how the process worked. She’d never prayed since the day the bird burned, not even when her mother was dying. A god that burned painted birds would not save a mother. A god like that was not worth a prayer. But Wazzer prayed for everyone. Wazzer prayed like a child, eyes screwed up and hands clenched until they were white. The reedy little voice trembled with such belief that Polly felt embarrassed, and then ashamed and, finally, after the ringing ‘amen’, amazed that the world appeared no different from before. For a minute or two, it had been a better place . . . There was a cat in the hut. It cowered under the crude bed and spat at anyone who came close. ‘All the food’s been taken but there’s carrots and parsnips in a little garden down the hill a bit,’ Shufti said, as they walked away. ‘It’d be s-stealing from the dead,’ said Wazzer. ‘Well, if they object they can hold on, can’t they?’ said Shufti. ‘They’re underground already!’ For some reason that was, at this time, funny. They’d have laughed at anything. Now there was Jade, Lofty, Shufti and Polly. Everyone else was on guard duty. They sat by the fire, on which a small pot seethed. Lofty tended the fire. She always seemed more animated near a fire, Polly noticed. ‘I’m doing horse scubbo for the rupert,’ said Shufti, easily dropping into a slang learned all of twenty hours ago. ‘He specifically asked for it. Got lots of dry horse jerky from Threeparts, but Tonker says she can knock over some pheasants while she’s on duty.’ ‘I hope she spends some time watching for enemies too,’ said Polly. ‘She’ll be careful,’ said Lofty, prodding the fire with a stick. ‘You know, if we’re found out, we’ll be beaten and sent back,’ said Shufti. ‘Who by?’ said Polly, so suddenly she surprised herself. ‘By whom? Who’s going to try, out here? Who cares out here?’ ‘Well, er, wearing men’s clothes is an Abomination unto Nuggan—’ ‘Why?’ ‘It just is,’ said Shufti firmly. ‘But—’ ‘—you’re wearing them,’ said Polly. ‘Well, it was the only way,’ said Shufti. ‘And I tried them on and they didn’t seem all that abominable to me.’ ‘Have you noticed men talk to you differently?’ said Lofty shyly. ‘Talk?’ said Polly. ‘They listen to you differently, too.’ ‘They don’t keep looking at you all the time,’ said Shufti. ‘You know what I mean. You’re just a . . . another person. If a girl walked down the street wearing a sword a man would try to take it off her.’ ‘Wi’ trolls, we ain’t allowed to carry clubs,’ said Jade. ‘Only large rocks. An’ it ain’t right for a girl to wear lichen, ‘cos der boys say bald is modest. Had to rub bird doin’s inna my head to grow this lot.’ That was quite a long speech for a troll. ‘We didn’t know that,’ said Polly. ‘Er . . . trolls all look the same to us, more or less.’ ‘I’m nat’rally craggy,’ said Jade. ‘I don’t see why I should polish.’ ‘There is a difference,’ said Shufti. ‘I think it’s the socks. It’s like they pull you forward all the time. It’s like the whole world spins around your socks.’ She sighed and looked at the horsemeat, which had been boiled almost white. ‘It’s done,’ she said. ‘You’d better go and give it to the rupert, Polly . . . I mean, Ozzer. I told the sarge I could do something better but he said the lieutenant said how good it was last night—’ A small wild turkey, a brace of pheasants and a couple of rabbits, all tied together, landed in front of Shufti. ‘Good job we were guarding you, eh?’ said Tonker, grinning and whirring an empty sling around in one hand. ‘One rock, one lunch. Maladict’s staying on guard. He said he’ll smell anyone before they see him and he’s too edgy to eat. What can you do with that lot?’ ‘Casserole of game,’ said Shufti firmly. ‘We’ve got the veg and I’ve still got half an onion.* I’m sure I can make an oven out of one of those—’ * A woman always has half an onion left over, no matter what the size of the onion, the dish or the woman. ‘On your feet! Attention!’ snapped the silently moving Jackrum, behind them. He stood back with a faint smile on his face as they scrambled to their feet. ‘Private Halter, I must have bleedin’ amazin’ eyesight,’ he said, when they were approximately upright. ‘Yes, sarge,’ said Tonker, staring straight ahead. ‘Can you guess why, Private Halter?’ ‘No, sarge.’ ‘It’s because I knows you are on perimeter guard, Halter, but I can see you as clear as if you was standing right here in front of me, Halter! Can’t I, Halter?’ ‘Yes, sarge!’ ‘It’s just as well you are still on perimeter duty, Halter, because the penalty for absenting yourself from your post in time of war is death, Halter!’ ‘I only—’ ‘No onlys! I don’t want to hear no onlys! I don’t want you to think that I am a shouty man, Halter! Corporal Strappi was a shouty man, but he was a damn political! Upon my oath I am not a shouty man but if you ain’t back at your post inside of thirty seconds I’ll rip yer tongue out!’ Tonker fled. Sergeant Jackrum cleared his throat and continued, in a level voice: ‘This, my lads, is what we call a real orientation lectchoor, not one of the fancy political ones like Strappi gave yer.’ He cleared his throat. ‘The purpose of this lectchoor is to let you know where we are. We are in the deep cack. It couldn’t be worse if it was raining arseholes. Any questions?’ Since there were none from the bemused recruits, he continued, while beginning a slow stroll around the squad, ‘We know enemy forces are in the area. Currently they have no boots. But there will be others with boots aplenty. Also, there may be deserters in the area. They will not be nice people! They will be impolite! Therefore Lieutenant Blouse has decreed that we will travel off the roads and by night. Yes, we have met the enemy, and we have prevailed. That was a fluke. They weren’t expecting you to be rough, tough soldiers. Nor were you, so I don’t want you to feel cocky about it.’ He leaned forward until his face was inches from Polly’s. ‘Are you feeling cocky, Private Perks?’ ‘No, sarge!’ ‘Good. Good.’ Jackrum stepped back. ‘We are heading for the front, lads. The war. And in a nasty war, where’s the best place to be? Apart from on the moon, o’ course? No one?’ Slowly, Jade raised a hand. ‘Go on, then,’ said the sergeant. ‘In the army, sarge,’ said the troll.’ ‘cos . . .’ She began to count on her fingers. ‘One, you got weapons an’ armour an’ dat. Two, you are surrounded by other armed men. Er . . . Many, youse gettin’ paid and gettin’ better grub than the people in Civilian Street. Er . . . Lots, if’n you gives up, you getting taken pris’ner and dere’s rules about that like Not Kicking Pris’ners Inna Head and stuff, ‘cos if you kick their pris’ners inna head they’ll kick your pris’ners inna head so dat’s, like, you’re kickin’ your own head, but dere’s no rule say you can’t kick enemy civilians inna head. There’s other stuff too, but I ran outa numbers.’ She gave them a diamond grin. ‘We may be slow but we ain’t stoopid,’ she added. ‘I am impressed, private,’ said Jackrum. ‘And you are right. The only wasp in the jam is that you ain’t soldiers! But I can help you there. Bein’ a soldier is not hard. If it was, soldiers would not be able to do it. There is only three things you need to remember, which are, viz: one obey orders two give it to the enemy good and hard three don’t die. Got that? Right! You’re nearly there! Well done! I propose to assist you in the execution of all three! You are my little lads and I will look after you! In the meantime, you got duties! Shufti, get cooking! Private Perks, see to the rupert! And after that, practise your shaving! I will now visit those on guard and deliver unto them the holy word! Dismissed!’ They remained at something like attention until he was probably out of earshot, and then sagged. ‘Why does he always shout?’ said Shufti. ‘I mean, he only has to ask . . .’ Polly upended the horrible scubbo into a tin bowl, and almost ran to the lieutenant’s shelter. He looked up from a map and smiled at her as if she was delivering a feast. ‘Ah, scubbo,’ he said. ‘We are actually having other stuff, sir,’ Polly volunteered. ‘I’m sure there’s enough to go round—’ ‘Good heavens, no, it’s been years since I’ve had food like this,’ said Blouse, picking up the spoon. ‘Of course, at school we didn’t appreciate it so much.’ ‘You had food like this at school, sir?’ said Polly. ‘Yes. Most days,’ said Blouse happily. Polly couldn’t quite fit this in her head. Blouse was a nob. Nobs ate nobby food, didn’t they? ‘Had you done something bad, sir?’ ‘I can’t imagine what you mean, Perks,’ said Blouse, slurping at the horrible thin gruel. ‘Are the men rested?’ ‘Yes, sir. The dead people were a bit of a shock—’ ‘Yes. Bad business,’ sighed the lieutenant. ‘Such is war, alas. I am only sorry you had to learn so fast. Such a terrible waste all the time. I am sure things can be sorted out when we reach Kneck, though. No general can expect young men like yourselves to be instant soldiers. I shall have something to say about that.’ His rabbity features looked unusually determined, as if a hamster had spotted a gap in its treadmill. ‘Do you require me for anything else, sir?’ said Polly. ‘Er . . . do the men talk about me, Perks?’ ‘Not really, sir, no.’ The lieutenant looked disappointed. ‘Oh. Oh, well. Thank you. Perks.’ Polly wondered if Jackrum ever slept. She did a spell of guard duty, and he stepped out from behind her with ‘Guess who, Perks! You’re on lookout. You should see the dreadful enemy before they see you. What’re the four Ss?’ ‘Shape, shadow, silhouette and shine, sarge!’ said Polly, snapping to attention. She’d been expecting this. That caused a moment’s pause from the sergeant before he said: ‘Just knew that, did yer?’ ‘Nosir! A little bird told me when we changed guard, sir! Said you’d asked him, sir!’ ‘Oh, so Jackrum’s little lads are gangin’ up on their kindly ol’ sergeant, are they?’ said Jackrum. ‘Nosir. Sharing information important to the squad in a vital survival situation, sarge!’ ‘You’ve got a quick mouth on you, Perks, I’ll grant you that.’ ‘Thank you, sarge!’ ‘But I see you’re not standing in a bleedin’ shadow, Perks, nor have you done anything to change your bleedin’ shape, you’re silhouetted against the bleedin’ light and your sabre’s shining like a diamond in a chimney-sweep’s bleedin’ ear’ole! Explain!’ ‘It’s because of the one C, sarge!’ said Polly, still staring straight ahead. ‘And that is?’ ‘Colour, sarge! I’m wearing bleedin’ red and white in a bleedin’ grey forest, sarge!’ She risked a sideways glance. In Jackrum’s little piggy eyes there gleamed a gleam. It was the one you got when he was secretly pleased. ‘Ashamed of your lovely, lovely uniform, Perks?’ he said. ‘Don’t want to be seen dead in it, sarge,’ said Polly. ‘Hah. As you were, Perks.’ Polly smiled, straight ahead. When she came off guard for a bowl of game casserole, Jackrum was teaching basic swordcraft to Lofty and Tonker, using hazel sticks as swords. By the time Polly had finished he was teaching Wazzer some of the finer points of using a high-performance pistol crossbow, especially the one about not turning round with it cocked and saying ‘W-what is this bit for, sarge?’ Wazzer handled weapons like a houseproud woman disposing of a dead mouse - at arm’s length and trying not to look. But even she was better with them than Igor, who just didn’t seem at home with the idea of what was, to him, d surgery. Jade was dozing. Maladict was hanging by his knees under the roof of one of the sheds, with his arms folded across his chest; he must have been telling the truth when he said there were some aspects of being a vampire that were hard to give up. Igor and Maladict . . . She still wasn’t sure about Maladict, but Igor had to be a boy, with those stitches around the head, and that face that could only be called homely.* He was quiet, and neat, but maybe that’s how Igors behaved . . . * And even then it was the kind of home that has a burned-out vehicle on the lawn. She woke up with Shufti shaking her. ‘We’re moving! Better go and see to the rupert!’ ‘What? Huh? Oh . . . right!’ \ There was a bustle all around her. Polly staggered to her feet and hurried over to Lieutenant Blouse’s shed, where he was standing in front of his wretched horse and holding the bridle with a lost expression. ‘Ah, Perks,’ he said. ‘I’m not at all sure I’m doing this right . . .’ ‘No, sir. You’ve got the waffles twisted and the snoffles are upside down,’ said Polly, who’d often helped in the inn’s yard. ‘Ah, that would be why he was so difficult last night,’ said Blouse. ‘I suppose I ought to know this sort of thing, but at home we had a man to do it . . .’ ‘Let me, sir,’ said Polly. She untwisted the bridle with a few careful movements. ‘What’s his name, sir?’ Thalacephalos,’ said Blouse sheepishly. ‘That was the legendary stallion of General Tacticus, you know.’ ‘I didn’t know that, sir,’ said Polly. She leaned back and glanced between the horse’s rear legs. Wow, Blouse really was short-sighted, wasn’t he . . . The mare looked at her partly with its eyes, which were small and evil, but mostly with its yellowing teeth, of which it had an enormous amount. She had the impression that it was thinking about sniggering. ‘I’ll hold him for you while you mount, sir,’ she said. ‘Thank you. He certainly moves about a bit when I try!’ ‘I expect he does, sir,’ said Polly. She knew about difficult horses; this one had all the hallmarks of a right bastard, one of those not cowed at all by the obvious superiority of the human race. The mare eyeballed and yellowtoothed her as Blouse mounted, but Polly had positioned herself carefully away from the uprights of the shelter. Thalacephalos wasn’t the sort to buck and kick. She was the sneaky kind, Polly could see, the sort that stepped on your foot— She moved her foot just as the hoof came down. But Thalacephalos, angry at being thwarted, turned, twisted, lowered her head, and bit Polly sharply on the rolled-up socks. ‘Bad horse!’ said Blouse severely. ‘Sorry about that, Perks. I think he’s anxious to get to the fray! Oh, my word!’ he added, looking down. ‘Are you all right, Perks?’ ‘Well, he’s pulling a bit, sir—’ said Polly, being dragged sideways. Blouse had gone white again. ‘But he’s bitten . . . he’s caught you by the . . . right on the . . .’ The penny dropped. Polly looked down, and hastily remembered what she’d heard during numerous rule-free bar fights. ‘Oh . . . ooo . . argh . . . blimey! Right inna fruit! Aargh!’ she lamented, and then, since it seemed a good idea at the time, brought both fists down heavily on the mare’s nose. The lieutenant fainted. It took some time to bring Blouse round, but at least it gave Polly time to think. He opened his eyes and focused on her. ‘Er, you fell off your horse, sir,’ Polly volunteered. ‘Perks? Are you all right? Dear boy, he had you by the—’ ‘Only needs a few stitches, sir!’ said Polly cheerfully. ‘What? From Igor?’ ‘Nosir. Just the cloth, sir,’ said Polly. ‘The trousers are a bit big for me, sir.’ ‘Ah, right. Too big, eh? Phew, eh? Near miss there, eh? Well, I mustn’t lie around here all day—’ The squad helped him on to Thalacephalos, who was still sniggering unrepentantly. On the subject of ‘too big’, Polly made a mental note to do something about his jacket next time they stopped. She wasn’t much good with a needle, but if Igor couldn’t do something to make it look better then he wasn’t the man she thought he was. And that was a sentence that begged a question. Jackrum bellowed them into order. They were better at that now. Neater, too. ‘All right, Ins-and-Outs! Tonight we—’ A set of huge yellow teeth removed his cap. ‘Oh, I do apologize, sergeant!’ said Blouse behind him, trying to rein back the mare. ‘No bother, sir, these things happen!’ said Jackrum, furiously tugging his hat back. ‘I should like to address my men, sergeant.’ ‘Oh? Er . . . yes, sir,’ said Jackrum, looking worried. ‘Of course, sir. Ins-and-Outs! Attenwaitforitshun!’ Blouse coughed. ‘Er . . . men,’ he said. ‘As you know, we must make all speed to the Kneck valley where, apparently, we are needed. Travelling by night will prevent . . . entanglements. Er . . . I. . .’ He stared at them, his face contorted by some inner struggle. ‘Er . . . I have to say I don’t think we are . . . that is, all the evidence is . . . er . . . it doesn’t seem to me that . . . er . . . I think I should tell you . . . er . . .’ ‘Permission to speak, sir?’ said Polly. ‘Are you feeling all right?’ ‘We just have to hope that those put in power over us are making the right decisions,’ mumbled Blouse. ‘But I have every confidence in you and I am sure you will do your best. Long live the Duchess! Carry on, Sergeant Jackrum.’ ‘Ins-and-Outs! Form up! March!’ And they headed into the dusk and off to war. The order of march was as last night, with Maladict going on ahead. The clouds were holding in some heat, and were thin enough to hint at moonlight here and there. Forests by night held no problems for Polly, and this wasn’t true wild forest in any case. Nor was it, in truth, a march that they were doing. It was more like a high-speed creep, in ones and twos. She’d acquired two of the horsebows, now stuck awkwardly between the straps of her pack. They were horrible things, rather like a cross between a small crossbow and a clock. There were mechanisms in the thick shaft, and the bow itself was barely six inches across; somehow, if you leaned your weight on it, you could cock it with enough stored energy to fire a nasty little metal arrow through an inch-thick plank. They were blued metal, sleek and evil. But there is an old milit’ry saying: better me firing it at you than you firing it at me, you bastard. Polly eased her way along the line until she was walking alongside Igor. He nodded to her in the gloom, and then turned his attention to walking. He needed to, because his pack was twice the size of the rest of them. No one felt inclined to ask him what was in it; sometimes, you thought you could hear liquid sloshing. Igors sometimes passed through Munz, although technically they were an Abomination in the eyes of Nuggan. It had seemed to Polly that using bits of someone who was dead to help three or four other people stay alive was a sensible idea, but in the pulpit Father Jupe had argued that Nuggan didn’t want people to live, he wanted them to live properly. There had been general murmurs of agreement from the congregation, but Polly knew for a fact that there were a couple of people sitting there with a hand or arm or leg that was a little less tanned or a little more hairy than the other one. There were lumberjacks everywhere in the mountains. Accidents happened, fast, sudden accidents. And, since there were not many jobs for a one-armed lumberjack, men went off and found an Igor to do what no amount of prayer could manage. The Igors had a motto: What goes around, comes around. You didn’t have to pay them back. You had to pay them forward, and that, frankly, was the bit where people got worried. When you were dying, an Igor would mysteriously arrive on the doorstep and request that he be allowed to take away any bits urgently needed by others on his ‘little litht’. He’d be quite happy to wait until the priest had gone and, it was said, when the time came he’d do very neat work. However, it happened quite often that when an Igor turned up the prospective donor took fright and turned to Nuggan, who liked whole people. In which case the Igor would quietly and politely leave, and never come back. He’d never come back to the whole village, or the whole lumber camp. Nor would other Igors. What goes around comes around - or stops. As far as Polly could tell, Igors believed that the body was nothing more than a more complicated kind of clothing. Oddly enough, that’s what Nugganites thought, too. ‘Glad you joined, Igor?’ said Polly, as they jogged along. ‘Yeth, Ozz.’ ‘Could you take a look at the rupert’s hand next time we stop, please? He’s cut it badly.’ ‘Yeth, Ozz.’ ‘Can I ask you something, Igor?’ ‘Yeth, Ozz.’ ‘What’re female Igors called, Igor?’ Igor stumbled and kept moving. He” was silent for a while, and then said: ‘All right, what did I do wrong?’ ‘Sometimes you forget to lisp,’ said Polly. ‘But mostly . . . it’s just a feeling. Little things about the way you move, maybe.’ ‘The word you’re looking for is “Igorina”,’ said Igorina. ‘We don’t lisp as much as the boys.’ They continued in more silence until Polly said, ‘I thought it was bad enough cutting my hair—’ ‘The stitches?’ said Igorina. ‘I can have them out in five minuteth. They’re just for show.’ Polly hesitated. But, after all, Igors had to be trustworthy, didn’t they? ‘You didn’t cut your hair?’ ‘Actually, I just removed it,’ said Igorina. ‘I put mine in my pack,’ Polly went on, trying not to look at the stitches around Igorina’s head. ‘So did I,’ said Igorina. ‘In a jar. It’s thtill growing.’ Polly swallowed. You needed a lack of graphic imagination to talk about personal issues with an Igor. ‘Mine was stolen back at the barracks. I’m sure it was Strappi,’ she said. ‘Oh dear.’ ‘I hate to think of him with it!’ ‘Why did you bring it?’ And that was the question. She’d planned, and she’d been good at planning. She’d fooled the rest of them, even. She’d been cool and sensible and she hadn’t felt more than a faint pang at cutting off her hair— —and she’d brought it with her. Why? She could have thrown it away. It wasn’t magic. It was just hair. She could have thrown it away, just like that. Easily. But . . . but . . . ah, right, the maids could have found it. That was it. She had to get it out of the house quickly. Right. And then she could bury it somewhere when she was a long way away. Right. But she hadn’t, had she . . . She’d been very busy. Right, said the little voice in inner treachery. She had been very busy fooling everyone but herself, right? ‘What could Strappi do?’ said Igorina. ‘Jackrum’d knock him over the moment he thaw him. He’s a deserter, and a thief!’ ‘Yes, but he could tell someone,’ said Polly. ‘Okay, then say it’s a lock of hair from the sweetheart you left behind you. Lots of soldiers carry a locket or something like that. You know: “Her golden hair in ringletth fair”, like the song says.’ ‘It was all my hair! A locket? You couldn’t hold it all in your hat!’ ‘Ah,’ said Igorina. ‘Then you could thay you loved her very much?’ Despite everything, Polly started to laugh, and couldn’t stop herself. She bit her sleeve and tried to keep going, with her shoulders shaking. Something that felt like a small tree prodded her; in the back. ‘Youse two oughta keep der noise down,’ rumbled Jade. ‘Sorry. Sorry,’ hissed Polly. Igorina started to hum. Polly knew the song. I’m lonesome since I crossed the hill And o’er the moor and valley . . . And she vowed: not that one, too. One song is enough. And I want to leave the girl behind me, but it seems I brought her with me . . . At which point they emerged from the trees and saw the red glow. The rest of the squad were already gathered round, watching it. It covered quite a lot of the horizon, and brightened and faded in places as they watched. ‘Is that hell?’ said Wazzer. ‘No, but men have made it so, I fear,’ said the lieutenant. ‘That is the Kneck valley.’ ‘It’s on fire, sir?’ said Polly. ‘Bless you, that’s just the light of cooking-fires reflected off the clouds,’ said Sergeant Jackrum. ‘Always looks bad by night, a battlefield. Not to worry, lads!’ ‘What’re they cooking, elephants?’ said Maladict. ‘And what’s that?’ said Polly, pointing to a nearby hill, darker still against the night. On it, a little light was flickering on and off, very fast. There was a whoosh and a metallic ‘pop’ as Blouse pulled out a small telescope and opened it up. ‘It’s a light clacks, the devils!’ he said. ‘Dere’s another one over dere,’ rumbled Jade, pointing to a hill a lot further away. ‘Twinkle, twinkle.’ Polly stared at the redness in the sky, and then at the cold little light, winking on and off. Quiet, soft light. Harmless light. And behind it, a burning sky . . . ‘It’ll be in code,’ said Blouse. ‘Spies, I’ll be bound.’ ‘A light clacks?’ said Tonker. ‘What’s that?’ ‘An Abomination in the eyes of Nuggan,’ said Blouse. ‘Unfortunately, because they’d be damn useful if we could have ‘em too, eh, sergeant?’ ‘Yessir,’ said Jackrum automatically. ‘The only messages passing through the air should be the prayers of the faithful. Praise Nuggan, Praise the Duchess and so on and so forth,’ said Blouse, squinting. He sighed. ‘Such a shame. How far to that hill, would you say, sergeant?’ ‘Two miles, sir,’ said Jackrum. ‘Worth trying to sneak up?’ ‘They must know people will see them and come looking, so I expect they won’t “hang around” for long’ mused Blouse. ‘In any case, ah, those things would be highly directional. You’d lose it once you got down in the valley.’ ‘Permission to speak, sir?’ said Polly. ‘Of course,’ said Blouse. ‘How do they get the light so bright, sir? It’s pure white!’ ‘Some kind of firework thingy, I believe. Why?’ ‘And they send messages with light?’ ‘Yes, Perks. And your point is . . . ?’ ‘And the people who get those messages send messages back the same way?’ Polly persevered. ‘Yes, Perks, that is the whole idea.’ ‘Then . . . maybe we don’t have to go all the way to that hill, sir? The light is being aimed towards us, sir.’ They all turned. The hill they were skirting loomed above them. ‘Well done, Perks!’ Blouse whispered. ‘Let’s go, sergeant!’ He swung himself off the horse, which automatically stepped sideways to make sure that he fell over when he landed. ‘Right you are, sir!’ said Jackrum, helping him up. ‘Maladict, you take Goom and Halter and circle round to the left, the rest go round to the right - not you, Carborundum, no offence, but this has got to be quiet, okay? You stay here. Perks, you come with me—’ ‘I shall come too, sergeant,’ said Blouse, and only Polly saw Jackrum grimace. ‘Good idea, sir!’ said the sergeant. ‘I suggest you - I suggest Perks and I come with you. Everyone got that? Get to the top neat and quiet and no one, no one moves until you hear my signal—’ ‘ My signal,’ said Blouse firmly. ‘That’s what I meant, sir. Quick and quiet! Hit ‘em hard but I want at least one left alive! Go!’ The two teams fanned out to right and left and disappeared. The sergeant gave them a minute or two’s start, and then set off with unusual speed for a man of his girth, so that for a moment Polly and the lieutenant were left standing. Behind them, a dejected Jade watched them go. The trees thinned out on the steep slope, but not enough for much underbrush to get a hold. Polly found it easier to go on all fours, grabbing at tufts and saplings to steady herself. After a while she caught a whiff of smoke, chemical and acrid. She was sure, too, that she could hear a faint clicking noise. A tree extended a hand and pulled her into its shadow. ‘Don’t you say a bleedin’ word,’ hissed Jackrum. ‘Where’s the rupert?’ ‘Don’t know, sarge!’ ‘Damn! You can’t let a rupert run’ around loose, there’s no tellin’ what he might take it into his little head to do, now he’s got the idea he’s in charge! You’re ‘is minder! Find ‘im!’ Polly slithered back down the slope and found Blouse steadying himself against a tree, wheezing gently. ‘Ah . . . Perks,’ he panted. ‘My asthma seems to . . . be . . . coming back . . .’ ‘I’ll help you up, sir,’ said Polly, grabbing his hand and tugging him forward. ‘Could you wheeze a little more quietly, sir?’ By degrees, dragging and pushing, she bundled the man up to Jackrum’s tree. ‘Glad you could join us, sir!’ hissed the sergeant, face contorted into an expression of maddened affability. ‘If you’d care to wait here, Perks and me will crawl up the—’ ‘I’m coming too, sergeant,’ Blouse insisted. Jackrum hesitated. ‘Yessir,’ he said. ‘But with respect, sir, I know about skirmishing—’ ‘Let’s go, sergeant,’ said Blouse, dropping flat and beginning to drag himself forward. ‘Yessir,’ muttered Jackrum darkly. Polly eased her way forward, too. The grass here was shorter, rabbit-nibbled, with small bushes here and there. She concentrated on keeping the noise down, and aimed for the clicking. The smell of chemical smoke grew stronger. It hung in the air around her. And, as she moved forward, she saw light, little specks of it. She raised her head. There were three men a few feet away, silhouetted against the night. One of them was holding a large pipe, about five feet long, balanced on his shoulder at one end and on a tripod at the other. That end was aimed at the distant hill. On the other end, a foot or so behind the man’s head, was a big square box. Light was leaking from joints in this; from a little stovepipe chimney on the top of it, heavy smoke poured out. ‘Perks, on the count of three,’ said Jackrum, on Polly’s right. ‘One—’ ‘As you were, sergeant,’ said Blouse quietly, on her left. Polly saw Jackrum’s big florid face turn with an expression of astonishment. ‘Sir?’ ‘Hold position,’ said Blouse. Above them, the clicking continued. Milit’ry secrets, thought Polly. Spies! Enemies! And we’re just watching! It was like seeing blood drain from an artery. ‘Sir!’ hissed Jackrum, rage smoking off him. ‘Hold position, sergeant. That is an order,’ said Blouse calmly. Jackrum subsided, but only into the deceptive calm of a volcano waiting to explode. The relentless chatter of the clacks went on. It seemed to go on for ever. Beside Polly, Sergeant Jackrum seethed and fretted like a dog on a leash. The clicking stopped. Polly heard a distant murmur of conversation. ‘Sergeant Jackrum,’ whispered Blouse, ‘you may “get them” with all speed!’ Jackrum exploded out of the grass like a partridge. ‘All right, my lads! Up boys and at ‘em!’ Polly’s first thought, as she leapt up and ran, was that the distance was suddenly a lot wider than it had appeared. All three men had turned at the sound of Jackrum’s cry. The one with the clacks tube was already dropping it and reaching for a sword, but Jackrum was bearing down on him like a landslide. The man made the mistake of standing his ground. There was a brief clash of swords and then a melee, and Sergeant Jackrum was a sufficiently deadly melee all by himself. The second man flew past Polly but she was running for the third one. He backed away from her, still reaching up to his mouth, then turned to run and found himself face to face with Maladict. ‘Don’t let him swallow!’ Polly yelled. Maladict’s arm shot up, and lifted the struggling man aloft by his throat. It would have been a perfect operation had not the rest of the squad arrived, having put all their effort into running and left none to spare for slowing down. There were collisions. Maladict went down as his captive kicked him in the chest and the man tried to scramble away, cannoning into Tonker. Polly leapt over Igorina, was almost tripped by a fallen Wazzer and threw herself desperately towards the quarry, now on his knees. He had a dagger out and waved it wildly in front of her while he grasped his throat with his other hand and made choking noises. She knocked the knife away, ran behind him and slapped him on the back as hard as she could. He fell forward. Before she could grab him a hand lifted him bodily and Jackrum’s voice roared: ‘Can’t have the poor man chokin’ to death, Perks!’ His other hand punched the man in the stomach with a noise like meat hitting a slab. The man’s eyes crossed and something large and white flew out of his mouth and shot over Jackrum’s shoulder. Jackrum dropped him and turned on Blouse. ‘Sir, I protest, sir!’ he said, quiyering with anger. ‘We lay there and watched these devils sending who knows what messages, sir! Spies, sir! We could’ve got ‘em right there and then, sir!’ ‘And then, sergeant?’ said Blouse. ‘What?’ ‘Don’t you think the people they were talking to would wonder what had happened if the messages had stopped in mid-flow?’ said the lieutenant. ‘Even so, sir—’ ‘Whereas now we have their device, sergeant, and their masters don’t know we have it,’ said Blouse. ‘Yeah, well, but you said they was sending messages in code, sir, and—’ ‘Er, I think we have their cipher book as well, sarge,’ said Maladict, stepping forward with the white object in his hand. ‘That man tried to eat it, sarge. Rice paper. But he rushed his food, you might say.’ ‘And you dislodged it, sergeant, and probably saved his life. Well done!’ said Blouse. ‘But one of ‘em got away, sir,’ said Jackrum. ‘He’ll soon get to—’ ‘Sergeant?’ Jade was rising over the grass. As she plodded nearer they saw she was dragging a man by one foot. When she was closer it was obvious that the man was dead. Living people have more head. ‘I heard the shoutin’ and he come runnin’ and I jumped up and he come straight into me, head first!’ Jade complained. ‘I didn’t even get a chance to hit him!’ ‘Well, private, at least we can definitely say he was stopped,’ said Blouse. Thur, thith man is dying,’ said Igorina, who was kneeling by the man Sergeant Jackrum had so positively saved from choking. ‘He hath been poithened!’ ‘Hath he? By whom?’ said Blouse. ‘Are you sure?’ ‘The green foam coming out of hith mouth ith a definite clue, thur.’ ‘What’s funny, Private Maladict?’ said Blous The vampire chuckled. ‘Oh, sorry, sir. They say to spies “If you’re caught, eat the documents”, don’t they? A good way of making sure they don’t give away any secrets.’ ‘But you’ve got the . . . soggy book in your hands, corporal!’ ‘Vampires can’t be poisoned that easily, sir,’ said Maladict calmly. ‘It wath probably only fatal by mouth in any case, thur,’ said Igorina. ‘Terrible stuff. Th tuff. He’th dead, thur. Nothing I can do.’ ‘Poor fellow. Well, we have the codes, anyway,’ said Blouse. ‘This is a great discovery, men.’ ‘And a prisoner, sir, and a prisoner,’ said Jackrum. The one surviving man, who had been operating the clacks, groaned and tried to move. ‘A bit bruised, I expect,’ Jackrum added, with some satisfaction. ‘When I land on someone, sir, they stay landed on.’ ‘Two of you, bring him with us,’ said Blouse. ‘Sergeant, there’s a few hours to dawn, and I want to be well away from here. I want the other two buried somewhere down in the woods, and—’ ‘You just have to say “carry on, sergeant”, sir,’ said Jackrum, and it was almost a wail. ‘That’s how it works, sir! You tell me what you want, I give ‘em the orders!’ ‘Times are changing, sergeant,’ said Blouse. Messages, flying across the sky. They were an Abomination unto Nuggan. The logic sounded impeccable to Polly as she helped Wazzer to dig two graves. Prayers from the faithful ascended unto Nuggan, going upwards. A variety of unseen things, such as sanctity and grace and a list of this week’s Abominations, descended from Nuggan to the faithful, going downwards. What was forbidden was messages from one human to another going, as it were, from side to side. There could be collisions. If you believed in Nuggan, that is. If you believed in prayer. Wazzer’s real name was Alice, she confided as she dug, but it was hard to apply the name to a small stick-thin lad with a bad haircut and not much skill with a shovel, who had a habit of standing just slightly too close to you and stared just slightly to the left of your face when she talked to you. Wazzer believed in prayer. She believed in everything. That made her kind of . . . awkward to talk to, if you didn’t. But Polly felt she should make the effort. ‘How old are you, Wazz?’ she said, shovelling dirt. ‘N-n-nineteen, Polly,’ said Wazzer. ‘Why’d you join?’ ‘The Duchess told me to,’ said Wazzer. That was why people didn’t talk to Wazzer much. ‘Wazz, you do know that wearing men’s clothes is an Abomination, don’t you?’ ‘Thank you for reminding me, Polly,’ said Wazzer, without a trace of irony. ‘But the Duchess told me that nothing I do in pursuit of my quest will be held Abominable.’ ‘A quest, eh,’ said Polly, trying to sound jovial. ‘And what kind of quest is that?’ ‘I am to take command of the army,’ said Wazzer. Hairs rose on the back of Polly’s neck. ‘Yes?’ she said. ‘Yes, the Duchess stepped out of her picture when I was asleep and told me to go at once to Kneck,’ said Wazzer. ‘The Little Mother spoke to me, Ozz. She commanded me. She guides my steps. She led me out of vile slavery. How can that be an Abomination?’ She’s got a sword, thought Polly. And a shovel. This needs careful handling. ‘That’s nice,’ she said. ‘And . . . and I must tell you that . . . I. . . never in my life have I felt such love and camaraderie,’ Wazzer went on earnestly. ‘The last few days have been the happiest of my life. You have all shown me such kindness, such gentleness. The Little Mother guides me. She guides us all, Ozz. You believe that, too. Don’t you?’ The moonlight revealed the tracks of tears in the grime on Wazzer’s cheeks. ‘Um,’ said Polly, and sought wildly for a way to avoid lying. She found it. ‘Er . . . you know I want to find my brother?’ she said. ‘Well, that does you credit, the Duchess knows,’ said Wazzer quickly. ‘And, well . . . I’m also doing it for The Duchess,’ said Polly, feeling wretched. ‘I think about The Duchess all the time, I must admit.’ Well, that was true. It just wasn’t honest. ‘I’m so very glad to hear that, Ozz, because I had thought you were a backslider,’ said Wazzer. ‘But you said that with such conviction. Perhaps this would be the time for us to get down on our knees and—’ ‘Wazz, you’re standing in another man’s grave,’ said Polly. ‘There’s a time and place, you know? Let’s get back to the others, eh?’ The happiest days of the girl’s life had been spent tramping through forests, digging graves and trying to dodge soldiers on both sides? The trouble with Polly was that she had a mind that asked questions even when she really, really didn’t want to know the answers. ‘So . . . the Duchess is still talking to you, is she?’ she said, as they made their way among the dark trees. ‘Oh, yes. When we were in Plotz, sleeping in the barracks,’ said Wazzer. ‘She said it was all working.’ Don’t, don’t ask another question, said part of Polly’s mind, but she ignored it out of sheer horrible curiosity. Wazzer was nice - well, sort of nice, in a slightly scary way - but talking to her was like picking at a scab; you knew what was likely to be under the crust, but you picked anyway. ‘So . . . what did you use to do back in the world?’ she said. Wazzer gave her a haunting smile. ‘I used to be beaten.’ Tea was brewing in a small hollow near the track. Several of the squad were standing guard. No one liked the idea of men in dark clothes sneaking around. ‘Mug of saloop?’ said Shufti, holding them up. A few days ago they’d have called it ‘sweet milky tea’, but even if they couldn’t walk the walk yet they were determined to talk the talk as soon as possible. ‘What’s happening?’ said Polly. ‘Dunno,’ said Shufti. ‘Sarge and the rupert went off over that way with the prisoner but no one tells us groans anything.’ ‘It’s “grunts”, I think,’ said Wazzer, taking the tea. ‘I’ve done them a couple of mugs, anyway. See what you can find out, eh?’ Polly gulped her tea down, grabbed the mugs and hurried away. On the edge of the hollow Maladict was lounging against a tree. There was this about vampires: they could never look scruffy. Instead, they were . . . what was the word . . . déshabille. It meant untidy, but with bags and bags of style. In this case Maladict’s jacket was open and he’d stuck his packet of cigarettes in the band of his shako. He saluted her with his crossbow as she went past. ‘Ozz?’ he said. ‘Yes, corp?’ ‘Any coffee in their packs?’ ‘Sorry, corp. Only tea.’ ‘Damn!’ Maladict thumped the tree behind him. ‘Hey, you went straight for the man who was swallowing the cipher. Straight for him. How come?’ ‘Just luck,’ said Polly. ‘Yeah, right. Try again. I have very good night vision.’ ‘Oh, all right. Well, the one on the left started to run and the one in the middle was dropping the clacks tube and reaching for his sword, but the one on the right thought that putting something into his mouth was more important even than fighting or running away. Satisfied?’ ‘You worked out all that in a couple of seconds? That was smart.’ ‘Yeah, right. Now please forget it, okay? I don’t want to be noticed. I don’t particularly want to be here. I just want to find my brother. Okay?’ ‘Fine. I just thought that you’d like to know someone saw you. And you’d better get that tea to ‘em before they try to kill one another.’ At least I was someone watching the enemy, Polly thought furiously as she walked away. I wasn’t someone watching another soldier. Who does he think he is? Or she is? She heard the raised voices as she pushed through a thicket. ‘You can’t torture an unarmed man!’ That was Blouse’s voice. ‘Well, I’m not waiting for him to arm himself, sir! He knows stuff! And he’s a spy!’ ‘Don’t you dare kick him in the ribs again! That is an order, sergeant!’ ‘Asking nicely didn’t work, did it, sir? “Pretty please with sprinkles on top” is not a recognized method of interrogation! You shouldn’t be here, sir! You should say “Sergeant, find out what you can from the prisoner!” and then go somewhere and wait until I tell you what I got out of him, sir!’ ‘You did it again!’ ‘What? What?’ ‘You kicked him again!’ ‘No, I didn’t!’ ‘Sergeant, I gave you an order!’ ‘And?’ ‘Tea’s up!’ said Polly cheerfully. Both men turned. Their expression changed. If they had been birds, their feathers would have gently settled back. ‘Ah, Perks,’ said Blouse. ‘Well done.’ ‘Yeah . . . good lad,’ said Sergeant Jackrum. Polly’s presence seemed to lower the temperature. The two men drank their tea and eyed one another warily. ‘You’ll have noticed, sergeant, that the men were wearing the dark-green uniform of the First Battalion the Zlobenian Fifty-ninth Bowmen. A skirmishing battalion,’ said Blouse, with cold politeness. ‘That is not the uniform of a spy, sergeant.’ ‘Yessir? But they’d let their uniforms get very dirty, then. No shine on the buttons, sir.’ ‘Patrolling behind enemy lines is not spying, sergeant. You must have done it in your time.’ ‘More times than you could count, sir,’ said Jackrum. ‘And I knew full well that if I got caught I was due a good kicking in the nadgers. But skirmishers is the worst, sir. You think you’re safe in the lines, next moment it turns out that some bastard sitting in the bushes on a hill has been working out windage and yardage and has dropped an arrow right through your mate’s head.’ He picked up a strange-looking longbow. ‘See these things they’ve got? Burleigh and Stronginthearm Number Five Recurved, made in bloody Ankh-Morpork. A real killing weapon. I say we give him a choice, sir. He can tell us what he knows, and go out easy. Or keep mum, and go out hard.’ ‘ No, sergeant. He is an enemy officer taken in battle and entitled to fair treatment.’ ‘No, sir. He’s a sergeant, and they don’t deserve no respect at all, sir. I should know. They’re cunning and artful, if they’re any good. I wouldn’t mind if he was an officer, sir. But sergeants are clever.’ There was a grunt from the bound prisoner. ‘Loosen his gag. Perks,’ said Blouse. Instinctively, even if the instinct was only a couple of days old, Polly glanced at Jackrum. The sergeant shrugged. She pulled the rag down. ‘I’ll talk,’ said the prisoner, spitting out cotton fluff. ‘But not to that tub of lard! I’ll talk to the officer. You keep that man away from me!’ ‘You’re in no position to negotiate, soldier boy!’ snarled Jackrum. ‘Sergeant,’ said the lieutenant, ‘I’m sure you have things to see to. Please do so. Send a couple of men back here. He can’t do anything against four of us.’ ‘But—’ ‘That was another order, sergeant,’ said Blouse. He turned to the prisoner as Jackrum stumped off. ‘What is your name, man?’ ‘Sergeant Towering, lieutenant. And if you are a sensible man, you will release me and surrender.’ ‘Surrender?’ said Blouse, as Igorina and Wazzer ran into the clearing, armed and bewildered. ‘Yep. I’ll put in a good word for you when the boys catch up with us. You don’t want to know how many men are looking for you. Could I have a drink, please?’ ‘What? Oh, yes. Of course,’ said Blouse, as if caught out in a display of bad manners. ‘Perks, fetch some tea for the sergeant. Why are people looking for us, pray?’ Towering gave him a cockeyed grin. ‘You don’t know?’ ‘No,’ said Blouse coldly. ‘You really don’t know?’ Now Towering was laughing. He was far too relaxed for a bound man, and Blouse sounded far too much like a nice but worried man trying to appear firm and determined. To Polly, it was like watching a child bluffing in poker against a man called Doc. ‘I don’t wish to play games, man. Out with it!’ said Blouse. ‘Everyone knows about you, lieutenant. You’re the Monstrous Regiment, you are!’ he said. ‘No offence meant, of course. They say you’ve got a troll and a vampire and an Igor and a werewolf. They say you . . .’ he began to chuckle ‘. . . they say you overpowered Prince Heinrich and his guard and stole his boots and made him hop away in the altogether!’ In a thicket some way off, a nightingale sang. For quite a while, uninterrupted. Then Blouse said, ‘Hah, no, you are in fact wrong. The man was Captain Horentz—’ ‘Yeah, right, like he’d tell you who he was with you pointing swords at him!’ said Towering. ‘I heard from one of my mates that one of you kicked him in the meat-and-two-veg, but I haven’t seen the picture yet.’ ‘Someone took a picture of him getting kicked?’ squeaked Polly, drenched in a sudden horror. ‘Not of that, no. But there’s copies all over the place of him in chains and I hear it’s been sent by the clacks to Ankh-Morpork.’ ‘Is . . . is he annoyed?’ Polly quavered, cursing Otto Chriek and his picture-making. ‘Well, now, let me see,’ said Towering sarcastically. ‘Annoyed? No, I shouldn’t think he’s annoyed. “Livid” is the word, I think. Or “raging”? Yeah, I think “raging” ’s the word. There’s a lot of people looking for you lads now. Well done!’ Even Blouse could see Polly’s distress. ‘Er . . . Perks,’ he said, ‘it was you, wasn’t it, who—’ Over and over in Polly’s head the words ogodIkickedthePrinceinthefruitandveg were going round and round like a hamster in a runaway treadmill until, suddenly, it ran up against something solid. ‘Yessir,’ she snapped. ‘He was forcing himself upon a young woman, sir. If you recall?’ Blouse’s frown faded, and became a grin of childlike duplicity. ‘Ah, yes, indeed. He was “pressing his suit” in no small way, was he not?’ ‘He didn’t have ironing in mind, sir!’ said Polly fervently. Towering glanced at Wazzer, grimly clutching a crossbow that Polly knew for a fact she was scared of, and Igorina, who’d much rather be holding a surgeon’s knife than the sabre in her hand and looked worried sick. Polly saw his brief smile. ‘And there you have it, Sergeant Towering,’ said the lieutenant, turning to the prisoner. ‘Of course, we all know there is some atrocious behaviour in times of war, but it is not the sort of thing we would expect of a royal prince.* If we are to be pursued because a gallant young soldier prevented matters from becoming even more disgusting, then so be it.’ *Lieutenant Blouse read only the more technical history books. ‘Now I am impressed,’ said Towering. ‘A real knight errant, eh? He’s a credit to you, lieutenant. Any chance of that tea?’ Blouse’s skinny chest visibly swelled at the compliment. ‘Yes, Perks, the tea, if you would be so good.’ Leaving the three of you with this man who’s positively radiating an intention to escape, Polly thought. ‘Could perhaps Private Goom go and fetch—’ she began. ‘A word in private, Perks?’ snapped Blouse. He drew her closer, but Polly kept her eye on Sergeant Towering. He might be bound hand and foot, but she wouldn’t have trusted a man who grinned like that if he’d been nailed to the ceiling. ‘Perks, you are making a great contribution but I really will not have my orders continually questioned,’ said Blouse. ‘You are my batman, after all. I think I run a “happy ship” here, but I will be obeyed. Please?’ It was like being savaged by a goldfish, but she had to admit he had a point. ‘Er . . . sorry, sir,’ she said, backing away as long as possible so as not to miss the end of the tragedy. Then she turned and ran. Jackrum was sitting by the fire, with the prisoner’s bow across his huge knees, slicing some sort of black sausage with a big clasp-knife. He was chewing. ‘Where’s the rest of us, sir?’ said Polly, scrabbling for a mug. ‘I sent ‘em to scout a wide perimeter, Perks. Can’t be too careful if matey-boy’s got pals out there.’ . . . which was perfectly sensible. It just happened to mean that half the squad had been sent away . . . ‘Sarge, you know that captain back at the barracks? That was—’ ‘I’ve got good hearing, Perks. Kicked him in the Royal Prerogative, eh? Hah! Makes it all more interestin’, eh?’ ‘It’s going to go wrong, sarge, I just know it,’ said Polly, dragging the kettle off the hob and spilling half the water as she topped up the teapot. ‘D’you chew at all, Perks?’ said Jackrum. ‘What, sarge?’ said Polly distractedly. The sergeant held out a small piece of sticky, black . . . stuff. ‘Tobacco. Chewing tobacco,’ said Jackrum. ‘I favour Blackheart over Jolly Sailor, ‘cos it’s rum-dipped, but others say—’ ‘Sarge, that man’s going to escape, sarge! I know he is! The lieutenant isn’t in charge, he is. He’s all friendly and everything, but I can tell by his eyes, sarge!’ ‘I’m sure Lieutenant Blouse knows what he’s doing, Perks,’ said Jackrum primly. ‘You’re not telling me a bound man can overcome four of you, are you?’ ‘Oh, sugar!’ said Polly. ‘Just down there, in the old black tin,’ said Jackrum. Polly tipped some into the worst cup of tea ever made by a serving soldier and ran back to the clearing. Amazingly, the man was still in a sitting position, and still bound hand and foot. Her fellow Cheesemongers were watching him dejectedly. Polly relaxed, but only a little. ‘—nd there you have it, lieutenant,’ he was saying. ‘No disgrace in calling it quits, eh? He’ll hunt you down soon enough, ‘cos it’s personal now. But if you were to come along with me, I’d do my best to see it goes easy with you. You don’t want to get caught by the Heavy Dragoons right now. They ain’t got much of a sense of humour—’ ‘Tea up,’ said Polly. ‘Oh, thank you, Perks,’ said Blouse. ‘I think we can at least cut Sergeant Towering’s hands free, don’t you?’ ‘Yes, sir,’ said Polly, meaning ‘no, sir’. The man offered his bound wrists, and Polly reached out gingerly with her knife while holding the mug like a weapon. ‘Artful lad you’ve got here, lieutenant,’ said Towering. ‘He reckons I’m going to grab his knife off of him. Good lad.’ Polly sliced the rope, brought her knife hand back quickly, and then carefully proffered the mug. ‘ And he’s made the tea lukewarm so’s it won’t hurt when I splashes it in his face,’ Towering went on. He gave Polly the steady, honest gaze of the born bastard. Polly held it, lie for lie. ‘Oh, yeah. The Ankh-Morpork people’ve got a little printing press on a cart, over on the other side of the river,’ said Towering, still watching Polly. ‘For morale, they say. And they sent the picture back to the city, too, on the clacks. Don’t ask me how. Oh yeah, a good picture. “Plucky Rookies Trounce Zlobenia’s Finest”, they wrote. Funny thing, but it looks like the writer man didn’t spot it was the Prince. But we all did!’ His voice became even more friendly. ‘Now look, mates, as a foot soldier like yourselves I’m all for seeing the bloody donkey-boys made to look fools, so you come along with me and I’ll see to it that at least you don’t sleep in chains tomorrow. That’s my best offer.’ He took a sip of tea, and added, ‘It’s a better one than most of the Tenth got, I’ll tell you. I heard your regiment got wiped out.’ Polly’s expression didn’t change, but she felt herself curl up into a tiny ball behind it. Look at the eyes, look at the eyes. Liar. Liar. ‘Wiped out?’ said Blouse. Towering dropped his mug of tea. He smacked the crossbow out of Wazzer’s hand with his left hand, grabbed the sabre from Igorina with his right hand, and brought the curved blade down on the rope between his legs. It happened fast, before any of them could quite focus on the change in the situation, and then the sergeant was on his feet, slapping Blouse across the face and grabbing him in an arm lock. ‘And you were right, kiddo,’ he said to Polly, over Blouse’s shoulder. ‘Cryin’ shame you ain’t an officer, eh?’ The last of the fallen tea dribbled into the soil. Polly reached slowly for her crossbow. ‘Don’t. One step, one move from any of you, and I’ll cut him,’ said the sergeant. ‘Won’t be the first officer I’ve killed, believe me—’ ‘The difference between them and me is, I don’t care.’ Five heads turned. There was Jackrum, outlined against the distant firelight. He had the man’s own bow, drawn taut, and aimed directly at the sergeant in complete disregard of the fact that the lieutenant’s head was in the way. Blouse closed his eyes. ‘You’d shoot your own officer?’ said Towering. ‘Yep. Won’t be the first officer I’ve killed, neither,’ said Jackrum. ‘You ain’t going anywhere, friend, except down. Easy or hard . . . I don’t care.’ The bow creaked. ‘You’re just bluffing, mister.’ ‘Upon my oath, I am not a bluffing man. I don’t think we was ever introduced, by the way. Jackrum’s the name.’ The change in the man was a whole body event. He seemed to get smaller, as if every cell had said ‘oh dear’ very quietly to itself. He sagged, and Blouse slumped a little. ‘Can I—’ ‘Too late,’ said Jackrum. Polly never forgot the sound the arrow made. There was silence, and then a thump as Towering’s body finally overbalanced and hit the ground. Jackrum laid the bow aside carefully. ‘Found out who he was messing with,’ he said, as if nothing much had happened. ‘Shame, really. Seemed like a decent sort. Any saloop left, Perks?’ Very slowly, Lieutenant Blouse raised his hand to his ear, which the arrow had perforated en route to its target, and then looked with strange detachment at the blood on his fingers. ‘Oh, sorry about that, sir,’ said Jackrum jovially. ‘Just saw the one chance and I thought, well, it’s the fleshy part. Get yourself a gold earring, sir, and you’ll be the height of fashion! Quite a large gold earring, maybe. ‘Don’t you all believe that stuff about the Ins-and-Outs,’ Jackrum went on. ‘That was just lies. I like it when something’s up. So what we do now is . . . can anyone tell me what we do now?’ ‘Er . . . bury the body?’ hazarded Igorina. ‘Yeah, but check his boots. He’s got small feet and the Zlobenians have much better boots than us.’ ‘Steal the boots off a dead man, sarge?’ said Wazzer, still in shock. ‘Easier than getting ‘em off a live one!’ Jackrum softened his voice a little when he saw their expressions. ‘Lads, this is war, understand? He was a soldier, they were soldiers, you are soldiers . . . more or less. No soldier will see scran or good boots go to waste. Bury ‘em decent and say what prayers you can remember, and hope they’ve gone where there’s no fighting.’ He raised his voice back to the normal bellow. ‘Perks, round up the others! Igor, cover the fire, try to make it look like we were never here! We are moving out in number ten minutes! Can make a few miles before full daylight! That’s right, eh, lieutenant?’ Blouse was still transfixed, but seemed to wake up now. ‘What? Oh. Yes. Right. Yes, indeed. Er . . . yes. Carry on, sergeant.’ The fire gleamed off Jackrum’s triumphal face. In the red glow his little dark eyes were like holes in space, his grinning mouth the gateway to a hell, his bulk some monster from the Abyss. He let it happen, Polly knew. He obeyed orders. He^didn’t do anything wrong. But he could have sent Maladict and Jade to help us, instead of Wazzer and Igor, who aren’t quick with weapons. He sent the others away. He had the bow ready. He played a game with us as pieces, and won . . . Poor old soldier, her father and his friends had sung, while frost formed on the window panes, poor old soldier! If ever I ‘list for a soldier again . . . the devil shall be my sergeant! In the firelight the grin of Sergeant Jackrum was a crescent of blood, his coat the colour of a battlefield sky. ‘You are my little lads,’ he roared. ‘And I will look after you.’ They made more than six miles before Jackrum called a halt, and already the land was changing. There were more rocks, fewer trees. The Kneck valley was rich and fertile and it was from here that the fertility had been washed; it was a landscape of ravines and thick scrub woodland, with a few small communities scratching a living from the poverty-stricken soil. It was a good place to hide. And, in here, someone had already hidden. It was a stream-carved gully, but here at the end of summer the stream was just a trickle between the rocks. Jackrum must have found it by smell, because you couldn’t see it from the track. The ashes of the fire in the small gully were still warm. The sergeant got up, awkwardly, after inspecting them. ‘Some lads like our pals from last night,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t it just be a hunter, sarge?’ said Maladict. ‘It could, corporal, but it ain’t,’ said Jackrum. ‘I brought you in here ‘cos it looks like a blind gully and there’s water and there’s good vantage points up there and over there,’ he pointed, ‘and there’s a decent overhang to keep the weather off and it’s hard for anyone to creep up on us. Milit’ry, in other words. And someone else thought the same as me last night. So while they’re out there looking for us, we’ll sit snug where they’ve already looked. Get a couple of lads up on guard right now.’ Polly drew first watch, atop the small cliff at the edge of the gully. It was a good site, no doubt about it. A regiment could hide here. No one could get near without being seen, too. And she was pulling her weight like a proper member of the squad, so with any luck Blouse would find someone to shave him before she was off duty. Through a gap in the treetops below she could see a road of sorts running through the woodland. She kept an eye on it. Eventually, Tonker relieved her with a cup of soup. On the far side of the gully, Wazzer was being replaced by Lofty. ‘Where’re you from, Ozz?’ said Tonker, while Polly savoured the soup. There couldn’t be any harm in telling. ‘Munz,’ said Polly. ‘Really? Someone said you worked in a bar. What was the inn called?’ Ah . . . there was the harm, right there. But she could hardly lie, now. ‘The Duchess,’ she said. ‘That big place? Very nobby. Did they treat you okay?’ ‘What? Oh . . . yes. Yes. Pretty fair.’ ‘Hit you at all?’ ‘Eh? No. Never,’ said Polly, nervous of where this was going. ‘Work you hard?’ Polly had to consider this. In truth, she worked harder than both the maids, and they at least had an afternoon off every week. ‘I was usually the first one up and the last one to bed, if that’s what you mean,’ she said. And to change the subject quickly, she went on: ‘What about you? You know Munz?’ ‘We both lived there, me and Tilda— I mean Lofty,’ said Tonker. ‘Oh? Where?’ ‘The Girls’ Working School,’ said Tonker, and looked away. And that’s the kind of trap small talk can get you in, Polly thought. ‘Not a nice place, I think,’ she said, feeling stupid. ‘It was not a nice place, yes. A very nasty place,’ said Tonker. ‘Wazzer was there, we think. We think it was her. Used to be sent out a lot on work hire.’ Polly nodded. Once, a girl from the school came and worked as a maid at The Duchess. She’d arrive every morning, scrubbed raw in a clean pinafore, peeling off from a line of very similar girls led by a teacher and flanked by a couple of large men with long sticks. She was skinny, polite in a dull, trained sort of way, worked very hard and never talked to anybody. She was gone in three months, and Polly never found out why. Tonker stared into Polly’s eyes, almost mocking her innocence. ‘We think she was the one they used to lock up sometimes in the special room. That’s the thing about the school. If you don’t toughen up you go funny in the head.’ ‘I expect you were glad to leave,’ was all Polly could think of to say. ‘The basement window was unlocked,’ said Tonker. ‘But I promised Tilda we’d go back one day next summer.’ ‘Oh, so it wasn’t that bad, then?’ said Polly, grateful for some relief. ‘No, it’ll burn better,’ said Tonker. ‘Ever run across someone called Father Jupe?’ ‘Oh, yes,’ said Polly, and, feeling that something more was expected of her, added, ‘He used to come to dinner when my mother— he used to come to dinner. A bit pompous, but he seemed okay.’ ‘Yes,’ said Tonker. ‘He was good at seeming.’ Once again there was a dark chasm in the conversation that not even a troll could bridge, and all you could do was draw back from the edge. ‘I’d better go and see to the lieu— to the rupert,’ Polly said, standing up. ‘Thank you very much for the soup.’ She worked her way down through the scree and birch thickets until she emerged by the little stream that ran through the gully. And there, like some awful river god, was Sergeant Jackrum. His red coat, a tent for lesser men, was draped carefully over a bush. He himself was sitting on a rock with his shirt off and his huge braces dangling, so that only a yellowing woolly vest saved the world from a sight of the man’s bare chests. For some reason, though, he’d kept his shako on. His shaving kit, with a razor like a small machete and a shaving brush you could use to hang wallpaper, was on the rock beside him. Jackrum was bathing his feet in the stream. He glanced up when Polly approached, and nodded amiably.’ ‘morning, Perks,’ he said. ‘Don’t rush. Never rush for ruperts. Sit down for a spell. Get yer boots off. Let yer feet feel the fresh air. Look after your feet, and your feet will look after you.’ He pulled out his big clasp-knife and the rope of chewing tobacco. ‘Sure you won’t join me?’ ‘No thanks, sarge.’ Polly sat down on a rock on the opposite side of the stream, which was only a few feet wide, and started to tug at her boots. She felt as though she’d been given an order. Besides, right now she felt she needed the shock of clean, cold water. ‘Good lad. Filthy habit. Worse’n the smokes,’ said Jackrum, carving off a lump. ‘Got started on it when I was but a lad. Better’n striking a light at night, see? Don’t want to give away your position, ‘course, you gotta gob a bundle every so often, but gobbin’ in the dark don’t show up.’ Polly dabbled her feet. The icy water did indeed feel refreshing. It seemed to jolt her alive. In the trees around the gully, birds sang. ‘Say it, Perks,’ said Jackrum, after a while. ‘Say what, sarge?’ ‘Oh, bleedin’ hell, Perks, it’s a nice day, don’t muck me around. I seen the way you’ve been looking at me.’ ‘All right, sarge. You murdered that man last night.’ ‘Really? Prove it,’ said Jackrum calmly. ‘Well, I can’t, can I? But you set it up. You even sent Igor and Wazzer to guard him. They’re not good with weapons.’ ‘How good would they have to be, d’you think? Four of you against a man tied up?’ said Jackrum. ‘Nah. That sergeant was dead the moment we got ‘im, and he knew it. It took a bloody genius like your rupert to make him think he’d got a chance. We’re out in the woods, lad. What was Blouse gonna do with him? Who’d we hand him over to? Would the lieutenant cart him around with us? Or tie him to a tree and leave him to kick wolves away until he gets too tired? Much more gentlemanly than giving him a quiet cigarette and a swift chop where you go quick, which is what he was expecting and what I’d have given him.’ Jackrum popped the tobacco into his mouth. ‘You know what most of the milit’ry training is, Perks?’ he went on. ‘All that yelling from little spitbubs like Strappi? It’s to turn you into a man who will, on the word of command, stick his blade into some poor sod just like him who happens to be wearing the wrong uniform. He’s like you, you’re like him. He doesn’t really want to kill you, you don’t really want to kill him. But if you don’t kill him first, he’ll kill you. That’s the start and finish of it. It don’t come easy without trainin’. Ruperts don’t get that trainin’, ‘cos they are gentlemen. Well, upon my oath I am no gentleman, and I’ll kill when I have to, and I said I’d keep you safe and no damn rupert’s going to stop me. He gave me my discharge papers!’ Jackrum added, radiating indignance. ‘Me! And expected me to thank him! Every other rupert I’ve served under has had the sense to write “Not posted here” or “On extended patrol” or something and shove it back in the mail, but not him! .’ ‘What was it you said to Corporal Strappi that made him run away?’ said Polly, before she could stop herself. Jackrum looked at her for a while, with no expression in his eyes. Then he gave a strange little chuckle. ‘Now why would a little lad like you say a little thing like that?’ he said. ‘Because he just vanished and suddenly some old rule means you’re back on the strength, sarge,’ said Polly. ‘That’s why I said that little thing.’ ‘Hah! And there’s no such rule, either, not like that one,’ said Jackrum, splashing his feet. ‘But ruperts never read the book of rules unless they’re trying to find a reason to hang you, so I was safe there. Strappi was scared shitless, you know that.’ ‘Yes, but he could have slipped away later on,’ said Polly. ‘He wasn’t stupid. Rushing off into the night? He must’ve had something real close to run from, right?’ ‘Cor, that’s an evil brain you have there, Perks,’ said Jackrum happily. Once again Polly had the definite feeling that the sergeant was enjoying this, just as he’d seemed pleased when she’d protested about the uniform. He wasn’t a bully like Strappi - he treated Igorina and Wazzer with something approaching fatherly concern - but with Polly and Maladict and Tonker he pushed all the time, wanting you to push back. ‘It does the job, sarge,’ she said. ‘I just had a little tate-ah-tate with him, as it were. Quiet, like. Explained all the nasty things that can happen vees-ah-vee the confusion o’ war.’ ‘Like being found with his throat cut?’ said Polly. ‘Has been known to happen,’ said Jackrum innocently. ‘You know, lad, you’re going to make a damn good sergeant one day. Any fool can use his eyes and ears, but you uses that brain to connect ‘em up.’ ‘I’m not going to be a sergeant! I’m going to get the job done and go home!’ said Polly vehemently. ‘Yes, I said that once, too.’ Jackrum grinned. ‘Perks, I don’t need no clacky thing. I don’t need no newsy paper. Sergeant Jackrum knows what’s going on. He talks to the men coming back, the ones that won’t talk to anyone else. I know more than the rupert, for all that he gets little letters from HQ that worry him so much. Everyone talks to Sergeant Jackrum. And in his big fat head, Sergeant Jackrum puts it all together. Sergeant Jackrum knows what’s going on.’ ‘And what’s that, sarge?’ said Polly innocently. Jackrum didn’t reply immediately. Instead, he reached down with a grunt and rubbed one of his feet. The corroded shilling on a string, which had lain innocently on the woollen vest, swung forward. But there was something else. For a moment something golden slipped out of the vest’s open neck. Something oval and golden, on a golden chain, flashed in the sunlight. Then he straightened up and it was dragged back out of sight. ‘This is a bloody odd war, lad,’ he said. ‘It’s true there’s not just Zlobenian soldiers out there. Lads say there’s uniforms they’d never seen before. We’ve kicked a lot of backsides over the years, so maybe they really have ganged up and it’s gonna be our turn. But what I reckon is, they’re stuck. They took the keep. Oh, yes, I know. But they’ve got to hold on to it. And winter’s coming and all those lads from Ankh-Morpork and everywhere are a long way from home. We might have a chance yet. Hah, especially now the Prince is dead set on finding the young soldier that kneed him in the wedding tackle. That means he’s angry. He’ll make mistakes.’ ‘Well, sarge, I think—’ ‘I’m glad you do, Private Perks,’ said Jackrum, suddenly becoming a sergeant again. ‘And I think that after you’ve seen to the rupert and had a nap, you and me is going to show the lads some swordsmanship. Whatever bleedin’ war this is, sooner or later young Wazzer is going to have to use that blade he waggles about. Get going!’ Polly found Lieutenant Blouse sitting with his back to the cliff, eating scubbo out of a bowl. Igorina was packing away her medical kit, and Blouse’s ear was bandaged. ‘Everything all right, sir?’ she said. ‘Sorry I wasn’t—’ ‘I quite understand, Perks, you must stand your turn like the other “lads”,’ said Blouse, and Polly heard the inverted commas clank into place. ‘I had a refreshing nap and the bleeding and, indeed, the shaking has quite stopped. However . . . I do still need a shave.’ ‘You want me to shave you,’ said Polly, her heart sinking. ‘I must set an example, Perks, but I have to say you “lads” make such an effort it puts me to shame. You all seem to have faces “as smooth as a baby’s bottom”, I must say!’ ‘Yes, sir.’ Polly pulled out the shaving gear and walked over to the fire, where the kettle was permanently boiling. Most of the squad was dozing, but Maladict was sitting cross-legged by the fire, doing something to his hat. ‘Heard about the prisoner last night,’ he said, without looking up. ‘I don’t think the el-tee is going to last very long, do you?’ ‘The who?’ ‘The lieutenant. From what I hear, Blouse’s probably going to have a nasty accident. Jackrum thinks he’s dangerous.’ ‘He’s learning, just like us.’ ‘Yes, but the el-tee’s supposed to know what to do. Do you think he does?’ ‘Jackrum’s stuck, too,’ said Polly, topping up the kettle with cold water. ‘I think we just keep going.’ ‘If there’s anything there to get to,’ said Maladict. He held up the shako. ‘What do you think?’ The words ‘Born To Die’ had been chalked on the side of the hat, next to the packet of cigarettes. ‘Very . . . individual,’ said Polly. ‘Why do you smoke? It’s not very . . . vampire, really.’ ‘Well, I’m not supposed to be very vampire,’ said Maladict, lighting up with a shaking hand. ‘It’s the sucking. I need it. I’m on edge. I’m getting the no-coffee jitters. I’m not good with woods in any case.’ ‘But you’re a vam—’ ‘Yeah, yeah, if this was crypts, no problem. But I keep thinking I’m surrounded by lots of pointy stakes. Truth is . . . I’m beginning to hurt. It’s like going cold bat all over again! I’m getting the voices and the sweats . . .’ ‘Sssh,’ said Polly, as Shufti grunted in her sleep. ‘You can’t be,’ she hissed. ‘You said you’d been going straight for two years!’ ‘Oh, bl . . . blur . . . blood? ’ said Maladict. ‘Who said anything about blood? I’m talking about coffee, dammit!’ ‘We’ve got plenty of tea—’ Polly began. ‘You don’t understand! This is about . . . craving. You never stop craving, you just switch it to something that doesn’t cause people to turn you into a short kebab! I need coffee!’ Why me? Polly thought. Do I have this little sign on me saying ‘Tell me your troubles’? ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ she said, and hastily filled the shaving mug. Polly hurried back with the water, ushered Blouse to a rock, and stirred up some foam. She sharpened the razor, taking as long as she dared. When he coughed impatiently she took up position, raised the razor, and prayed . . . . . . but not to Nuggan. Never to Nuggan, since her mother died . . . And then Lofty was running across the ground, trying to shout a whisper. ‘Movement!’ Blouse nearly lost another earlobe. Out from nowhere came Jackrum, boots on but braces dangling. He grabbed Lofty by the shoulder and swung her round. ‘Where?’ he demanded. ‘There’s a track down there! Troopers! Carts! What do we do, sarge?’ ‘We keep the noise down!’ muttered Jackrum. ‘Are they heading up here?’ ‘No, they went right past, sarge!’ Jackrum turned and gave the rest of the squad a satisfied look. ‘O-kay. Corporal, take Carborundum and Perks and go and have a look. The rest of you, tool up and try to be brave. Eh, lieutenant?’ Blouse bemusedly dabbed foam off his face. ‘What? Oh. Yes. See to it, sergeant.’ Twenty seconds later, Polly was running after Maladict, down the slope. Here and there the bottom of the valley could be seen through the trees, and as she glanced down she saw sunlight flash off something metal. At least the trees had coated the woodland floor with a thick layer of needles, and, contrary to received opinion, most woods aren’t littered with branches that snap loudly. They reached the edge of the wood, where bushes fought one another for their place in the sun, and found a spot with a view. There were only four troopers, in an unfamiliar uniform, riding in pairs ahead of and behind a cart. It was small, and had a canvas cover. ‘What’s in a little cart that four men have to protect?’ said Maladict. ‘It must be valuable!’ Polly pointed to the huge flag that hung limply from a pole on the wagon. ‘I think it’s the newspaper man,’ she said. ‘It’s the same cart. Same flag, too.’ ‘Then it’s a good thing they’ve gone right past,’ hissed Maladict. ‘Let’s just see them out of sight and creep away like good little mice, okay?’ The party was travelling at the speed of the cart and, at this point, the two riders in the lead stopped and turned in their saddles, waiting for it to catch up. Then one of them pointed, back past the hidden watchers. There was a shout, too far away to be understood. The troopers in the rear trotted up to the cart, met with their comrades, and all four turned to look up. There was some discussion, and two riders trotted back along the road. ‘Oh, darn,’ said Polly. ‘What have they spotted?’ The horsemen went past their hiding place. A few moments later, they heard the horses enter the woods. ‘Do we run an’ get ‘em?’ said Jade. ‘Let Jackrum do that,’ said Maladict. ‘But if he does, and the men don’t come back—’ Polly began. ‘ When they don’t come back,’ Maladict corrected her. ‘—then those other two will get suspicious, won’t they? One will probably stay here, the other will go to get help.’ ‘Then we’ll sneak up and wait,’ said Maladict. ‘Look, they’ve dismounted. The cart’s pulled in, too. If they look as though they’re worried, we’ll move in.’ ‘And do what, exactly?’ said Polly. ‘Threaten to shoot them,’ said Maladict firmly. ‘And if they don’t believe us?’ ‘Then we’ll threaten to shoot them in a much louder voice,’ said Maladict. ‘Happy? And I hope to hell they’ve got some coffee!’ There are three things a soldier wants to do when there’s a respite on the road. One involves lighting a cigarette, one involves lighting a fire, and the other one involves no flames at all but does, generally, require a tree.* * Actually a tree is not, technically, required, but seems to be insisted upon for reasons of style. The two troopers had a fire going and a billy-can steaming when a young man jumped down from the cart, stretched his arms, looked around, yawned, and sauntered a little way into the forest. He found a convenient tree and, a moment lateV, was apparently examining the bark at eye height with studied enthusiasm. The tip of a steel crossbow bolt pressed against the back of his neck and a voice said: ‘Raise your hands and turn around slowly!’ ‘What, right now?’ ‘Um . . . all right, no. You can finish what you’re doing.’ ‘Actually I think that’s going to be quite impossible. Let me just, er . . . right. Okay.’ The man raised his hands again. ‘You realize I just have to shout?’ ‘So?’ said Polly. ‘I just have to pull this trigger. Shall we have a race?’ The man turned round. ‘See?’ said Polly, stepping back. ‘It’s him again. De Worde. The writer man.’ ‘You’re them!’ he said. ‘Dem who?’ said Jade. ‘Oh dear,’ said Maladict. ‘Look, I’d give anything to talk to you!’ said de Worde. ‘Please?’ ‘You’re with the enemy!’ hissed Polly. ‘What? Them? No! They’re from Lord Rust’s regiment. From Ankh-Morpork! They’ve been sent to protect us!’ ‘Troops to protect you in Borogravia?’ said Maladict. ‘Who from?’ ‘You mean from whom? Er . . . well . . . you, in theory.’ Jade leaned down. ‘ Efficient, aren’t dey . . .’ ‘Look, I must talk to you,’ said the man urgently. ‘This is astounding! Everyone’s looking for you! Did you kill that old couple in the woods?’ Birds sang. Far off, there was the call of the female blue-capped woodpecker. ‘A patrol found the fresh graves,’ said de Worde. High above an ice heron, a winter migrant from the Hub, gave an ugly honk as it searched for lakes. ‘I take it you didn’t, then,’ said de Worde. ‘We buried them,’ said Maladict coldly. ‘We don’t know who killed them.’ ‘We did take some vegetables,’ said Polly. She remembered laughing about it. Admittedly it was only because it was that or start crying, but even so . . . ‘You’ve been living off the land?’ He’d tugged a notebook out of his pocket and was scribbling in it with a pencil. ‘We don’t have to talk to you,’ said Maladict. ‘No, no, you must! There’s so much you need to know! You’re in the . . . Ups-and-Downs, right?’ ‘Ins-and-Outs,’ said Polly. ‘And you—’ the man began. ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ said Maladict, and marched away from the tree and into the clearing. The two cavalry men looked up from their fire, and there was a moment of immobility before one reached for his sword. Maladict swung the bow quickly from one to the other, its point hypnotizing them like a swinging watch. ‘I’ve got only one shot but there’s two of you,’ he said. ‘Who shall I shoot? You choose. Now, listen very carefully: where’s your coffee? You’ve got coffee, haven’t you? C’mon, everyone’s got coffee! Spill the beans!’ They stared at the crossbow and slowly shook their heads. ‘What about you, writer man?’ snarled Maladict. ‘Where’re you hiding the coffee?’ ‘We only have cocoa,’ said the writer, raising his hands quickly as Maladict turned on him. ‘You’re welcome to—’ Maladict dropped his crossbow, which fired straight up into the air*, and sat down with his head in his hands. ‘We’re all gonna die, ’ he said. The troopers shifted as though to stand up, and Jade raised her sapling. * And failed to hit anything, especially a duck. This is so unusual in situations like this that it should be reported under new humour regulations. If it had hit a duck, which quacked and then landed on somebody’s head, this would of course have been very droll and would certainly have been reported. Instead, it drifted in the breeze a little and landed in an oak tree some thirty feet away, where it missed a squirrel. ‘Don’t even fink about it,’ she said. Polly turned to the writer man. ‘You want us to talk to you, sir? Then you talk to us. Is this about . . . Prince Heinrich’s . . . socks?’ Maladict stood up in one mad movement. ‘I say we grease the lot of them and go home!’ he said, to no one in particular. ‘One, Two, Three! What We Are Fighting For!’ ‘Socks?’ said the writer, looking nervously at the vampire. ‘What’ve socks got to do with it?’ ‘I just gave you an order, Polly,’ said Maladict. ‘What is it you think we don’t know?’ Polly insisted, glaring at de Worde. ‘Well, to start with you’re just about all that’s left of the Ins-and-Outs—’ ‘That’s not true!’ ‘Oh, there’s prisoners and wounded, I think. But why should I lie to you? Why did he call you Polly?’ ‘Because I know a lot about birds,’ said Polly, mentally cursing. ‘How do you know what’s been happening to the regiment?’ ‘Because it’s my job to know things,’ said the man. ‘What’s that bird up there?’ Polly glanced up. ‘I don’t have time for stupid games,’ she said. ‘And that’s a—’ She stopped. Something was wheeling high above, in the forbidden blue. ‘You don’t know?’ said de Worde. ‘Yes, of course I know,’ said Polly irritably. ‘It’s a white-necked buzzard. But I thought they never came this far into the mountains. I only ever saw one in a book—’ She raised her bow again, and tried to take control. ‘Am I right, Mr It’s-my-job-to-know-things?’ De Worde raised his hands again and gave her a sickly smile. ‘Probably,’ he said. ‘I live in a city. I know sparrows from starlings. After that everything’s a duck as far as I’m concerned.’ Polly glared at him. ‘Look, please,’ said the man. ‘You need to listen to me. You need to know things. Before it’s too late.’ Polly lowered the bow. ‘If you want to talk to us, wait here,’ she said. ‘Corporal, we are leaving. Carborundum, pick up those troopers!’ ‘Hold it,’ said Maladict. ‘Who’s the corporal in this squad?’ ‘You are,’ said Polly. ‘And you’re drooling, and swaying, and your eyes look weird. So what was your point, please?’ Maladict considered this. Polly was tired and frightened and somewhere inside this was all being transmuted into anger. Hers was not an expression you wanted to see at the far end of a crossbow. An arrow couldn’t kill a vampire, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. ‘Right, yeah,’ he said. ‘Carborundum, pick up those troopers! We are leaving!’ There was a bird whistle as Polly neared the hiding place. She identified this one as the sound of the Very Bad Bird Impersonator, and made a note to teach the girls some bird calls that at least sounded real. They were harder to do than most people thought. The squad were in the gully, armed and at least looking dangerous. There was a certain amount of relaxation when they saw Jade carrying the two bound troopers. Two more were sitting disconsolately against the cliff, hands tied behind them. Maladict walked smartly up to Blouse and saluted. ‘Two prisoners, el-tee, and Perks thinks there’s someone down there you ought to talk to.’ He leaned forward. ‘The newspaper man, sir.’ ‘Then we’ll jolly well keep well away from him,’ said Blouse. ‘Eh, sergeant?’ ‘Right, sir!’ said Jackrum. ‘Nothing but trouble, sir!’ Polly saluted madly. ‘Please, sir! Permission to speak, sir!’ ‘Yes, Perks?’ said Blouse. Polly saw there was one chance, and one only. She had to find out about Paul. Now her mind worked as fast as it had on the hill last night, when she’d gone for the man with the code book. ‘Sir, I don’t know if he’s worth talking to, sir, but he may be worth listening to. Even if you think he’ll only tell us lies. Because sometimes, sir, the way people tell you lies, if they tell you enough lies, well, they sort of . . . show you what shape the truth is, sir. And we don’t have to tell him the truth, sir. We could lie to him, too.’ ‘I am not by nature an untruthful man, Perks,’ said Blouse coldly. ‘Glad to hear it, sir. Are we winning the war, sir?’ ‘You stop that right now, Perks!’ Jackrum roared. ‘It was only a question, sarge,’ said Polly reproachfully. Around the clearing the squad waited, ears sucking up every sound. Everyone knew the answer. They waited for it to be said aloud. ‘Perks, this kind of talk spreads despondency,’ Blouse began, but he said it as if he didn’t believe it and didn’t care who knew. ‘No, sir. It doesn’t really. It’s better than being lied to,’ said Polly. She changed her voice, gave it that edge her mother used to use on her when she was being scolded. ‘It’s evil to lie. No one likes a liar. Tell me the truth, please.’ Some harmonic of that tone must have found a home in an old part of Blouse’s brain. As Jackrum opened his mouth to roar, the lieutenant held up a hand. ‘We are not winning, Perks. But we have not lost yet.’ ‘I think we all know that, sir, but it’s good to hear you say it,’ said Polly, giving him an encouraging smile. That seemed to work, too. ‘I suppose there is no harm in at least being civil to the wretched fellow,’ said Blouse, as if thinking aloud. ‘He may give away valuable information under cunning questioning.’ Polly looked at Sergeant Jackrum, who was staring upwards like a man in prayer. ‘Permission to be the man to interrogate the gentleman, sir,’ said the sergeant. ‘Permission denied, sergeant,’ said Blouse. ‘I’d like him to live and don’t want to lose another lobe. However, you may take Perks back to the cart and drive it up here.’ Jackrum gave him the smart salute. Polly had already learned to recognize it; it meant that Jackrum had already made plans. ‘Very good, sir,’ he said. ‘Come on, Perks.’ Jackrum was quiet as they walked back down over the needle-carpeted slope. Then, after a while, he said: ‘D’you know why them troopers found our little nook, Perks?’ ‘No, sarge.’ ‘The lieutenant ordered Shufti to put the fire out immediately. It wasn’t as if there was even any smoke. So Shufti goes and pours the kettle on it.’ Polly gave this a few seconds’ thought. ‘Steam, sarge?’ ‘Right! In a bloody great rising cloud. Not Shufti’s fault. The gallopers weren’t any trouble, though. Bright enough not to try to outrun half a dozen crossbows, at least. That’s clever for a cavalryman.’ ‘Well done, sarge.’ ‘Don’t talk to me as if I was a rupert, lad,’ said Jackrum easily. ‘Sorry, sarge.’ ‘I see you’re learnin’ how to steer an officer, though. You gotta make sure they gives you the right orders, see? You’ll make a good sergeant, Perks.’ ‘Don’t want to, sarge.’ ‘Yeah, right,’ said Jackrum. It could have meant anything. After watching the track for a minute or two they stepped out and headed towards the cart. De Worde was sitting on a stool beside it, writing in a notebook, but he stood up hurriedly when he saw them. ‘It’d be a good idea to get off the track,’ he said, as soon as they approached. ‘There are a lot of patrols, I understand.’ ‘Zlobenian patrols, sir?’ said Jackrum. ‘Yes. In theory this’ - he pointed to the flag that hung limply from the cart - ‘should keep us safe, but everyone’s a bit jumpy at the moment. Aren’t you Sergeant Jack Ram?’ ‘Jackrum, sir. And I’ll thank you for not writing my name down in your little book, sir.’ ‘Sorry, sergeant, but that’s my job,’ said de Worde breezily. ‘I have to write things down.’ ‘Well, sir, soldierin’ is my job,’ said Jackrum, climbing on to the cart and gathering up the reins. ‘But you’ll note how at this moment in time I am not killin’ you. Let’s go, eh?’ Polly climbed into the back of the cart as it lumbered off. It was full of boxes and equipment, and while it might once have been neatly organized, that organization was now but a distant memory, a clear indication that this cart was the property of a man. Next to her, half a dozen of the largest pigeons she had ever seen dozed on a perch in their wire cage, and she wondered if they were a living larder. One of them opened one eye and lazily went ‘Lollollop?’ which is pigeon for ‘Duh?’ Most of the rest of the boxes had labels like - she leaned closer - ‘Capt Horace Calumney’s Patent Field Biscuits’, and ‘Dried Stew’. As she was musing that Shufti would have very much liked to get her hands on one or two of those boxes, a bundle of clothes hanging from the ceiling of the rocking cart moved slightly and a face appeared. ‘Good mornink,’ it said, upside down. William de Worde turned round on the seat in front. ‘It’s only Otto, private,’ he said. ‘Don’t be afraid.’ ‘Yes, I vill not bite,’ said the face cheerfully. It smiled. A vampire’s face does not look any better upside down, and a smile in these circumstances does nothing to improve matters. ‘That is guaranteed.’ Polly lowered the crossbow. Jackrum would have been impressed by how quickly she had raised it. So was she, and embarrassed too. The socks were doing the thinking again. Otto very elegantly lowered himself to the bed of the cart. ‘Vhere are ve goink?’ he said, steadying himself as they bounced over a rut. ‘A little place I know, sir,’ said Jackrum. ‘Nice and quiet.’ ‘Good. I need to exercise the imps. Zey get fretful if zey are cooped up for too long.’ Otto pushed aside a stack of paper and revealed his large picture-making box. He lifted a small hatch. ‘Rise und shine, lads,’ he said. There was a chorus of high-pitched voices from inside. ‘I’d better just mark your card re Tiger, Mr de Worde,’ said Jackrum, as the cart rolled up an old logging track. ‘Tiger? Who’s Tiger?’ ‘Oops,’ said Jackrum. ‘Sorry, that’s what we call the lieutenant, sir, on account of him being so brave. Forget I said that, will you?’ ‘Brave, is he?’ said de Worde. ‘And clever, sir. Don’t let him fool you, sir. He is one of the great milit’ry minds of his generation, sir.’ Polly’s mouth dropped open. She had suggested they lied to the man, but . . . this? ‘Really? Then why is he just a lieutenant?’ said the writer. ‘Ah, I can see there’s no fooling you, sir,’ said Jackrum, oozing knowingness. ‘Yes, it’s a puzzler, sir, why he calls himself a lieutenant. Still, I dare say he has his reasons, eh? Just like Heinrich calling himself a captain, right?’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘I see everything, sir, and I don’t say a word!’ ‘All I could find out was that he did some kind of desk job at your HQ, sergeant,’ said de Worde. Polly saw him taking his notebook out, slowly and carefully. ‘Yes, I expect that’s what you would find out, sir,’ said Jackrum, with a huge conspiratorial wink. ‘And then, when things are at their worst, they let him out, sir. They unleash him, sir. Me, I don’t know a thing, sir.’ ‘What does he do, explode?’ said de Worde. ‘Haha, nice one, sir!’ said Jackrum. ‘No, sir. What he does, sir, is assess situations, sir. I don’t understand it myself, sir, not being a big thinker, but the proof of the pudding, sir, is in the eating of same, and last night we were jumped by eight— twenty Zlobenian troopers, sir, and the lieutenant just assessed the situation in a flash and skewered five of the buggers, sir. Like a kebab, sir. Mild as milk to look at, but rouse him and he’s a whirlwind of death. Of course, you did not hear it from me, sir.’ ‘And he’s in charge of a bunch of recruits, sergeant?’ said de Worde. ‘That doesn’t sound very likely to me.’ ‘Recruits who captured some crack cavalrymen, sir,’ said Jackrum, looking pained. ‘That’s leadership for you. Comes the hour, comes the man, sir. I’m just a simple old soldier, sir, seen ‘em come and seen ‘em go. Upon my oath I am not a lying man, sir, but I look at Lieutenant Blouse in wonderment.’ ‘He just seemed confused, to me,’ said de Worde, but there was a hint of uncertainty in his voice. ‘That was a bit of concussion, sir. He took a wallop that would have felled a lesser man, and still got back on to his feet. Amazing, sir!’ ‘Hmm,’ said de Worde, making a note. The cart splashed across the shallow little stream and rocked into the gully. Lieutenant Blouse was sitting on a rock. He’d made an effort, but his tunic was grubby, his boots were muddy, his hand was swollen and one ear, despite Igorina’s ministrations, was still inflamed. He had his sword on his knees. Jackrum carefully brought the cart to a halt by a thicket of birch trees. All four of the enemy troopers were tied up against the cliff. Apart from them, the camp appeared to be deserted. ‘Where are the rest of the men, sergeant?’ whispered de Worde, as he slid down off the cart. ‘Oh, they’re around, sir,’ said Jackrum. ‘Watching you. Probably not a good idea to make any sudden move, sir.’ No one else was visible . . . and then Maladict faded into view. People never really looked at things, Polly knew. They glanced. And what had been a patch of scrub was now Corporal Maladict. Polly stared. He’d cut a hole in the centre of his old blanket, and the mud and grass stains on the mildewed greyness had turned him into part of the landscape until he’d saluted. He’d also stuck leafy twigs all over his hat. Sergeant Jackrum goggled. Polly had never really seen proper goggling before, but the sergeant had the face to do it at championship level. She could feel him drawing breath while at the same time assembling cusswords for a right royal thundering - and then he remembered he was playing Sergeant Big Jolly Fat Man, and this was not the time to segue into Sergeant Incandescent. ‘Lads, eh?’ he chuckled to de Worde. ‘What will they think of next?’ De Worde nodded nervously, pulled a wad of newspapers from under his seat, and advanced on the lieutenant. ‘Mr de Worde, isn’t it?’ said Blouse, standing up. ‘Perks, can we manage a cup of, er, “saloop” for Mr de Worde? There’s a good chap. Do take a rock, sir.’ ‘Good of you to see me, lieutenant,’ said de Worde. ‘It looks as though you’ve been in the wars!’ he added, with an attempt at joviality. ‘No, only this one,’ said Blouse, looking puzzled. ‘I meant that you have been wounded, sir,’ said de Worde. ‘These? Oh, they’re nothing, sir. I’m afraid the one on my hand was self-inflicted. Sword drill, you know.’ ‘You’re left-handed then, sir?’ ‘Oh, no.’ Polly, washing out a mug, heard Jackrum say out of the corner of his mouth: ‘Should’ve seen the other two fellows, sir!’ ‘Are you aware of the progress of the war, lieutenant?’ said de Worde. ‘You tell me, sir,’ said Blouse. ‘All your army is bottled up in the Kneck valley. Dug in, mostly, just beyond the reach of the keep’s weaponry. Your forts elsewhere along the border have been captured. The garrisons at Drerp and Glitz and Arblatt have been overwhelmed. As far as I can tell, lieutenant, your squad are the only soldiers still at large. At least,’ he added, ‘the only ones still fighting.’ ‘And my regiment?’ said Blouse quietly. ‘The remnant of the Tenth took part in a brave but, frankly, suicidal attempt to retake Kneck Keep a few days ago, sir. Most of the survivors are prisoners of war, and I have to tell you that almost all your high command have been captured. They were in the keep when it was taken. There are big dungeons in that fort, sir, and they’re pretty full.’ ‘Why should I believe you?’ I do, thought Polly. So Paul is either dead, wounded or captured. And it doesn’t help much by thinking of it as two chances in three that he is alive. De Worde threw his newspapers at the lieutenant’s feet. ‘It’s all there, sir. I didn’t make it up. It’s the truth. It will remain true whether you believe it or not. There are more than six countries ranged against you, including Genua and Mouldavia and Ankh-Morpork. There is no one on your side. You are alone. The only reason you’re not beaten yet is because you won’t admit it. I’ve seen your generals, sir! Great leaders, and your men fight like demons, but they won’t surrender!’ ‘Borogravia doesn’t know the .meaning of the word “surrender”, Mr de Worde,’ said the lieutenant. ‘Can I lend you a dictionary, sir?’ snapped de Worde, going red in the face. ‘It’s very similar to the meaning of “making some kind of peace while you’ve got a chance”, sir! It’s rather like “quitting while you’ve still got a head”, sir! Good heavens, sir, don’t you understand? The reason that there still is an army in the Kneck valley is that the allies haven’t decided what to do with it! They’re fed up with the slaughter!’ ‘Ah, so we still fight back!’ said Blouse. De Worde sighed. ‘You don’t understand, sir. They are fed up with slaughtering you. They’ve got the keep now. There’s some big war engines up there. They . . . frankly, sir, some of the alliance would just as soon wipe out the remains of your army. It’d be like shooting rats in a barrel. They have you at their mercy. And yet you keep on attacking. You attack the keep! It’s on sheer rock and it’s got walls a hundred feet high. You make salients across the river. You’re bottled up and you’ve got nowhere to go and the allies could simply massacre you any time they want, and you act as though you’re just facing some kind of temporary setback. That’s what’s really happening, lieutenant! You are just a last little detail.’ ‘Have a care, please,’ Blouse warned. ‘Excuse me, sir, but do you know anything about recent history? In the past thirty years you have declared war on every single one of your neighbours at least once. All countries fight, but you brawl. And then last year you invaded Zlobenia again! ’ ‘They invaded us, Mr de Worde.’ ‘You have been misinformed, lieutenant. You invaded the Kneck province.’ ‘That was confirmed as Borogravian by the Treaty of Lint, more than a hundred years ago.’ ‘Signed at swordpoint, sir. And no one cares now, in any case. It’s all got beyond your stupid little royal scuffles. Because your men tore down the Grand Trunk, you see. The clacks towers. And tore up the coach road. Ankh-Morpork regards that as bandit activity.’ ‘Have a care, I said!’ said Blouse. ‘I note you are displaying the Ankh-Morpork flag with evident pride on your wagon.’ ‘Civis Morporkias sum, sir. I am an Ankh-Morpork citizen. You could say that Ankh-Morpork shelters me under her wide and rather greasy wing, although I agree the metaphor could use some work.’ ‘Your Ankh-Morpork soldiers aren’t in a position to protect you, however.’ ‘Sir, you are right. You could have me killed right now,’ said de Worde simply. ‘You know that. I know that. But you won’t, for three reasons. The officers of Borogravia tend towards honour. Everyone says that. That’s why they don’t surrender. And I bleed most distressingly. And you don’t need to, because everyone is interested in you. Suddenly, it’s all changed.’ ‘ Interested in us?’ ‘Sir, in a sense you could help a lot right now. Apparently people back in Ankh-Morpork were amazed when . . . look, have you heard about what we call “human interest”, sir?’ ‘No.’ De Worde tried to explain. Blouse listened with his mouth open and, at the end, said: ‘Have I got this right? Although many people have been killed and wounded in this wretched war, it’s not been of much “interest” to your readers? But it is now, just because of us? Because of a little skirmish in a tciwn they’ve never heard of? And because of it, we’re suddenly a “plucky little country” and people are telling your newspaper that your great city should be on our side?’ ‘Yes, lieutenant. We put out a second edition last night, you see. After I’d found out that “Captain Horentz” was really Prince Heinrich. Did you know this at the time, sir?’ ‘Of course not!’ snapped Blouse. ‘And you, Private, er, Perks, would you have kicked him in the . . . would you have kicked him had you known?’ Polly dropped a mug in her nervousness, and looked at Blouse. ‘You may answer, of course, Perks,’ said the lieutenant. ‘Well, yes, sir. I would have kicked him. Harder, probably. I was defending myself, sir,’ Polly said, carefully avoiding further details. You couldn’t be sure what someone like de Worde would do with them. ‘Right, good, yes,’ said de Worde. ‘Then you might be pleased with this. Our cartoonist Fizz drew this for the special edition. It was on the front page. We’ve sold a record number of copies.’ He handed her a flimsy piece of paper, which by the look of the creases had been folded many times. It was a line drawing, with lots of shading. It showed a huge figure, with a large sword, a monstrous monocle and a moustache as wide as a coathanger, menacing a much smaller figure armed with nothing more than an instrument for lifting beets -in fact there was a beet stuck on the end of it. At least, that was clearly what had been happening right up to the point when the smaller figure, wearing a not bad attempt at an Ins-and-Outs shako and a face that looked slightly like Polly’s, had kicked the other one squarely in the groinal regions. A sort of balloon was coming out of Polly’s mouth, containing the words: ‘That for your Royal Prerogative, you Blaggard!’ The balloon issuing from the mouth of the ogre, who could only be Prince Heinrich, said: ‘Oh my Succession! That such A Small Thing could hurt so Much!’ And in the background a fat woman in a rumpled ballgown and a huge old-fashioned helmet was clasping her hands to an unbelievably large bosom, staring at the fight with a mixture of concern and admiration, and ballooning: ‘Oh my Swain! I fear our Liaison is Cut short!’ Since no one else was saying much, but was simply staring, de Worde said, rather nervously: ‘Fizz is rather, er, direct in these matters, but amazingly popular. Ahem. You see, the curious thing is that although Ankh-Morpork is probably the biggest bully around, in a subtle kind of way, we nevertheless have a soft spot for people who stand up to bullies. Especially royal ones. We tend to be on their side, provided it doesn’t cost us too much.’ Blouse cleared his throat. ‘It’s quite a good likeness of you, Perks,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I only used my knee, sir!’ Polly protested. ‘And that fat lady certainly wasn’t there!’ ‘That’s Morporkia,’ said de Worde. ‘She’s a sort of representation of the city, except that in her case she’s not covered in mud and soot.’ ‘And I have to add, for my part,’ said Blouse, in his talking-to-a-meeting voice, ‘that Borogravia is in fact larger than Zlobenia, although most of the country is little more than barren mountainside—’ ‘That doesn’t actually matter,’ said de Worde. ‘It doesn’t?’ said Blouse. ‘No, sir. It’s just a fact. It’s not politics. In politics, sir, pictures like this are powerful. Sir, even the alliance commanders are talking about you, and the Zlobenians are angry and bewildered. If you, the heroes of the hour, could make a plea for a little common sense—’ The lieutenant took a long, deep breath. ‘This is a foolish war, Mr de Worde. But I am a soldier. I have “kissed the Duchess”, as we say. It’s an oath of loyalty. Don’t tempt me to break it. I must fight for my country. We will repel all invaders. If there are deserters, we will find them and rally them again. We know the country. While we are free, Borogravia will be ftjee. You have “had your say”. Thank you. Where is that tea, Perks?’ ‘What? Oh, nearly done, sir!’ said Polly, turning back to the fire. It had been a sudden strange fancy, but a stupid plan. Now, out here, all the drawbacks were visible. How would she have got Paul home? Would he have wanted to come? Could she have managed it? Even if he was still alive, how could she hope to get him out of a prison? ‘So you’ll be guerilla fighters, eh?’ said Mr de Worde, behind her. ‘Madmen, all of you.’ ‘No, we are not irregulars,’ said Blouse. ‘We kissed the Duchess. We are soldiers.’ ‘Oh, well,’ said de Worde. ‘Then I admire your spirit, at least. Ah, Otto . . .’ The vampire iconographer ambled up, and gave them a shy smile. ‘Do not be afraid. I am a Black Ribboner just like your corporal,’ he said. ‘Light is my passion now.’ ‘Oh? Er . . . well done,’ said Blouse. ‘Take the pictures, Otto,’ said de Worde. These gentlemen have a war to fight.’ ‘Out of interest, Mr de Worde,’ Blouse interrupted, ‘how did you get the pictures back to your city so quickly? Magic, I assume?’ ‘What?’ De Worde looked momentarily off balance. ‘Oh no, sir. Wizards are expensive and Commander Vimes has said that there is going to be no first use of magic in this war. We send things by pigeon to our office in the keep and then by clacks from the nearest trunk tower.’ ‘Oh, really?’ said Blouse, showing rather more animation than Polly had seen up until now. ‘Using numbers to indicate a scale of grey shades, perhaps?’ ‘Mein Gotts!’ said Otto. ‘Well, yes, as a matter of fact we do,’ said de Worde. ‘I’m very impressed that you—’ ‘I have seen the clacks towers on the far bank of the Kneck,’ said Blouse, his eyes lighting up. ‘Very clever idea, using big shuttered boxes rather than the old-fashioned semaphore arms. And would I be right in my surmise that the box on the top, which opens its shutters once a second, is a kind of system, er, clock that makes certain the whole clacks line keeps in step? Oh, good. I thought so. One beat a second is probably the limit of the mechanisms, so no doubt all your efforts now are concentrated on maximizing the information content per shutter operation? Yes, I imagined that would be the case. As for sending pictures, well, sooner or later all things are numbers, yes? Of course, you would use each of the two columns of four boxes to send a grey code, but it must be very slow. Have you considered a squeezing algorithm?’ De Worde and Chriek exchanged a glance. ‘Are you sure you haven’t been talking to anyone about this, sir?’ said the writer. ‘Oh, it’s all very elementary,’ said Blouse, smiling happily. ‘I had thought about it in the context of military maps which are, of course, mostly white space. So I wondered if it would be possible to indicate a required shade on one column and, on the other side, indicate how far along that rank that shade would persist. And a delightful bonus here is that if your map is simply in black and white, then you have even more—’ ‘You haven’t seen inside a clacks tower, have you?’ said de Worde. ‘Alas, no,’ said Blouse. ‘This is simply “thinking aloud” based on the de facto existence of your picture. I believe I can see a number of other little mathematical, ahem, tricks to make the passage of information even swifter, but I am sure these have already occurred to you. Of course, a fairly minor modification could potentially double the information burden of the whole system at a stroke. And that is without using coloured filters at night, which I’m sure even with the overhead of extra mechanical effort would surely increase throughput by— I’m sorry, did I say something wrong?’ The two men both wore a glazed expression. De Worde shook himself. ‘Oh . . . er, no. Nothing,’ he said. ‘Er . . . you seem to have got the grasp of things quite . . . quickly.’ ‘Oh, it was perfectly straightforward once I started thinking about it,’ said Blouse. ‘It was exactly the same wr>en I had to redesign the department’s filing system, you see. People build something that works. Then circumstances change, and they have to tinker with it to make it continue to work, and they are so busy tinkering that they cannot see that a much better idea would be to build a whole new system to deal with the new circumstances. But to an outsider, the idea is obvious.’ ‘In politics as well as, er, filing systems and clackses, do you think?’ said de Worde. Blouse’s brow wrinkled. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t think I follow . . .’ he said. “Would you agree that sometimes a country’s system is so out of date that it’s only the outsiders that can see the need for wholesale change?’ said de Worde. He smiled. Lieutenant Blouse did not. ‘Just a point to ponder, maybe,’ said de Worde. ‘Er . . . since you wish to tell the world of your defiance, would you object if my colleague takes your picture?’ Blouse shrugged. ‘If it gives you any satisfaction,’ he said. ‘It’s an Abomination, of course, but these days it’s hard to find something that isn’t. You must tell the world, Mr de Worde, that Borogravia won’t lie down. We will not give in. We will fight on. Write that down in your little notebook, please. While we can stand, we will kick!’ ‘Yes, but once again may I implore you to—’ ‘Mr de Worde, you have I am sure heard the saying that the pen is mightier than the sword?’ De Worde preened a little. ‘Of course, and I—’ ‘Do you want to test it? Take your picture, sir, and then my men will escort you back to your road.’ Otto Chriek stood up and bowed to Blouse. He unslung his picture box. ‘This vill only take vun minute,’ he said. It never does. Polly watched in horrified fascination as Otto took picture after picture of Lieutenant Blouse in a variety of what the lieutenant thought were heroic poses. It is a terrible thing to see a man trying to jut out a chin he does not, in fact, have. ‘Very impressive,’ said de Worde. ‘I just hope you live to see it in my paper, sir.’ ‘I shall look forward to it with the keenest anticipation,’ said Blouse. ‘And now, Perks, please go along with the sergeant and put these two gentlemen back on their way.’ Otto sidled up to Polly as they walked back to the cart. ‘I need to tell you somezing about your vampire,’ he said. ‘Oh, yes?’ ‘You are a friend of his?’ said Otto. ‘Yes,’ said Polly. ‘Is something wrong?’ ‘Zere is a problem . . .’ ‘He’s got twitchy because he has run out of coffee?’ ‘Alas, if only it vas that simple.’ Otto looked awkward. ‘You have to understand that ven a vampire forgoes . . . the b-vord, there is a process that ve call transference? Ve force ourselves to desire something else? For me this vas not painful. I crave the perfection of light and shade. Pictures are my life! But your friend chose . . . coffee. And now he has none.’ ‘Oh. I see.’ ‘I vunder if you do. It probably seemed so sensible to him. It is a human craving, and no one minds if you say, as it might be, “I am dying for a cup of coffee”, or “I’d kill for a cup of coffee”. But without coffee, he vill, I am afraid . . . revert. You understand, this is very difficult for me to talk about. . .’ Otto trailed off. ‘By revert you mean . . . ?’ ‘First vill come mild delusions, I think. A psychic susceptibility to all kinds of influences from who knows vhere, and vampires can hallucinate so stronkly zat zey can be contagious. I zink zat is happening already. He vill become . . . erratic. This may last for several days. And then his conditioning vill break and he vill be, vunce again, a true vampire. No more Mr Nice Coffee Drinker Guy.’ ‘Can’t I do anything to help him?’ Otto reverentially laid his picture box in the back of the cart, and turned to her. ‘You can find him some coffee, or . . . you can keep a vooden stake and a big knife ready. You vould be doink him a favour, believe me.’ ‘I can’t do that!’ Otto shrugged. ‘Find someone who vill.’ ‘He is amazing!’ said de Worde, as the cart rocked back down through the trees. ‘I know the clacks is against your religion, but he seems to understand all about it.’ ‘Like I said, sir, he assesses stuff,’ said Jackrum, beaming. ‘Mind like a razor.’ ‘He was talking about clacks algorithms that the companies are only just now investigating,’ said de Worde. ‘That department he was talking about—’ ‘Ah, I can see nothing gets past you, sir,’ said Jackrum. ‘Very hush-hush. Can’t talk about it.’ ‘To be frank, sergeant, I’d always assumed that Borogravia was, well . . . backward.’ Jackrum’s smile was waxy and bright. ‘If we seem to be a long way back, sir, it’s only so’s we can get a good run-up.’ ‘You know, sergeant, it’s a great shame to see a mind like that wasted,’ said de Worde, as the cart lurched in a rut. ‘This is not an age of heroes and famous last stands and death-or-glory charges. Do your men a favour and try to tell him that, will you?’ ‘Wouldn’t dream of it, sir,’ said Jackrum. ‘Here is your road, sir. Where will you be heading now?’ ‘To the Kneck valley, sergeant. This is a good story, sergeant. Thank you. Allow me to shake you by the hand.’ ‘Glad to hear you think that, sir,’ said Jackrum, extending his hand. Polly heard the faint clink of coins in their passage from palm to palm. De Worde took the reins. ‘But I must tell you, sergeant, that we’ll probably send off our stuff by pigeon within the hour,’ he said. ‘We will have to say you have prisoners.’ ‘Don’t worry about that, sir,’ said Jackrum. ‘By the time their mates come out here to rescue those gallopers, we’ll be halfway back to the mountains. Our mountains.’ They parted. Jackrum watched them out of sight, and turned to Polly. ‘Him with his airs and graces,’ he said. ‘Did you see that? He insulted me by giving me a tip!’ He glanced at his palm. ‘Hmm, five Morpork dollars? Well, at least he’s a man who knows how to insult you handsomely,’ he added, and the coins disappeared into his jacket with remarkable speed. ‘I think he wants to help us, sarge,’ said Polly. Jackrum ignored that. ‘I hate bloody Ankh-Morpork,’ he said. ‘Who’re they to tell us what to do? Who cares what they think?’ ‘Do you think we can really join up with deserters, sarge?’ ‘Nope. They deserted once, what’s to stop ‘em a second time? They spat on the Duchess when they deserted, they can’t kiss and make up now. You get one kiss, that’s all.’ ‘But Lieutenant Blouse—’ ‘The rupert should stick to sums. He thinks he’s a soldier. Never walked on a battlefield in his life. All that rubbish he gave your man was death-or-glory stuff. And I’ll tell you, Perks, I’ve seen Death more often than I care to remember, but I’ve never clapped eyes on Glory. I’m all for sending the fools to look for us where we ain’t, though.’ ‘He’s not my man, sarge,’ said Polly. ‘Yeah, well, you’re at home with the writin’ and readin’,’ grumbled Jackrum. ‘You can’t trust the people who do that stuff. They mess around with the world, and it turns out everything you know is wrong.’ They reached the gully again. The squad had come back from their various hiding places, and most were clustered around one of the newspapers. For the first time, Polly saw the Picture. It was actually quite good, especially of Shufti and Wazzer. She was mostly hidden by the bulk of Jackrum. But you could see the sullen cavalrymen behind them, and their expressions were a picture in themselves. ‘It’s a good one of Tonker,’ said Igorina, who didn’t lisp so much when there were no officers to hear. ‘Do you think having a picture like this is an Abomination in the Eyes of Nuggan?’ said Shufti nervously. ‘Probably,’ said Polly absent-mindedly. ‘Most things are.’ She ran her eye down the text next to the picture. It was full of phrases like ‘plucky farm boys’ and ‘humiliation of some of Zlobenia’s best troops’ and ‘sting in the tail’. She could see why it had caused trouble. She rustled through the other pages. They were crammed with strange stories about places she’d never heard of, and pictures of people she didn’t recognize. But one page was a mass of grey text, under a line of much bigger printing which read: Why This Mad State Must Be Stopped Bewildered, her eye picked up phrases from the sea of letters: ‘disgraceful invasions of neighbouring states’, ‘deluded worshippers of a mad god’, ‘a strutting bully’, ‘outrage after outrage’, ‘flying in the face of international opinion’. . . ‘Don’t you lads read that rubbish, you don’t know where it’s been,’ said Sergeant Jackrum jovially, arriving behind them. ‘It’ll all be lies. We are leaving right— Corporal Maladict!’ Maladict, emerging from the trees, gave a lazy salute. He was still wearing his blanket. ‘What are you doing out of uniform?’ ‘I’m in uniform underneath, sarge. We don’t want to be seen, right? Like this, we become part of the jungle.’ ‘It’s a forest, corporal! And without bloody uniforms, how the hell will we know our friends from our enemies?’ Maladict lit a cigarette before he replied. ‘The way I see it, sarge,’ he said, ‘the enemy is everyone but us.’ ‘Just one moment, sergeant,’ said Blouse, who had looked up from a newspaper and had been watching the apparition with considerable interest. ‘There are precedents in antiquity, you know. General Song Sung Lo moved his army disguised as a field of sunflowers, and General Tacticus once commanded a battalion to dress as spruces.’ ‘ Sunflowers?’ said Jackrum, his voice oozing with disdain. ‘Both actions were successful, sergeant.’ ‘No uniforms? No badges? No stripes, sir?’ ‘Possibly you could be an extra large bloom?’ said Blouse, and his face betrayed no hint of amusement. ‘And you have surely carried out actions at night, when all markings are invisible ?’ ‘Yessir, but night is night, sir, while sunflowers is . . . is sunflowers, sir! I’ve worn this uniform for more’n fift— all my life, sir, and sneaking around without a uniform is downright dishonourable! It’s for spies, sir!’ Jackrum’s face had gone beyond red into crimson, and Polly was amazed to see tears in the corners of his eyes. ‘How can we be spies, sergeant, in our own country?’ said Blouse calmly. ‘The el-tee’s got a point, sarge,’ said Maladict. Jackrum turned like a bull at bay, and then to Polly’s amazement he sagged. But she wasn’t amazed for long. She knew the man. She didn’t know why, but there was something about Jackrum that she could read. It was in the eyes. He could lie with eyes as honest and tranquil as those of an angel. And if he appeared to be backing away, it was indeed only to get a run-up later on. ‘All right, all right,’ the sergeant said. ‘Upon my oath, I am not a man to disobey orders.’ And the eyes twinkled. ‘Well done, sergeant,’ said Blouse. Jackrum pulled himself together. ‘I don’t want to be a sunflower, though,’ he said. ‘Happily there are only fir trees in this area, sergeant.’ ‘Point well made, sir.’ Jackrum turned to the awed squad. ‘All right, Last Detail,’ he bellowed. ‘You heard the man! Spruce up!’ It was an hour later. As far as Polly could tell, they’d started out for the mountains but had travelled in a wide semi-circle so that they ended up facing back the way they had come, but a few miles away. Was Blouse leading, or had he left it to Jackrum? Neither man was complaining. The lieutenant called a halt in a thicket of birch, thus doubling the size of the thicket. You could say that the camouflage effects were effective, because bright red and white shows up against greens and greys. Beyond that, though, language tended to run out. Jade had scraped off her paint, and was green and grey anyway. Igorina looked like a walking brush. Wazzer quivered like an aspen all the time, so her leaves rustled permanently. The others had made more or less reasonable attempts, and Polly was pretty proud of her own efforts. Jackrum was about as tree-like as a big red rubber ball; Polly suspected that he’d surreptitiously shined up his brasswork, too. Every tree held a mug of tea in limb or hand. After all, they’d stopped for five minutes. ‘Men,’ said Blouse, as if he’d only just reached that conclusion. ‘You may have gathered that we are heading back towards the mountains to raise a deserters’ army there. This story is, in fact, a ruse for the benefit of Mr de Worde!’ He paused, as if expecting some reaction. They stared at him. He went on: ‘We are, in fact, continuing our journey to the Kneck valley. This is the last thing the enemy will be expecting.’ Polly glanced at the sergeant. He was grinning. ‘It is an established fact that a small, light force can get into places that a battalion cannot penetrate,’ Blouse went on. ‘Men, we will be that force! Is that not right, Sergeant Jackrum?’ ‘Yessir!’ ‘We will come down like a hammer on those forces smaller than us,’ said Blouse happily. ‘Yessir!’ ‘And from those that outnumber us, we will merge silently into the forest—’ ‘Yessir!’ ‘We will slip past their sentries—’ ‘That’s right, sir,’ said Jackrum. ‘—and take Kneck Keep from under their noses!’ Jackrum’s tea sprayed across the clearing. ‘I dare say our enemy feels impregnable just because he commands a heavily armed fort on a rocky crag with walls a hundred feet high and twenty feet thick,’ Blouse continued, as if half the trees weren’t now dripping tea. ‘But he is in for a surprise!’ ‘You all right, sarge?’ whispered Polly. Jackrum was making strange little noises in his throat. ‘Does anyone have any questions?’ said Blouse. Igorina raised a branch. ‘How will we get in, sir?’ she said. ‘Ah. Good question,’ said Blouse. ‘And all will become apparent in due time.’ ‘Aerial cavalry,’ said Maladict. ‘Pardon, corporal?’ ‘Flying machines, sir!’ said Maladict. ‘They won’t know where to expect us. We touch down in a handy LZ, take them out, and then dust off.’ Blouse’s clear brow wrinkled a little. ‘Flying machines?’ he said. ‘I saw a picture of one by someone called Leonard of Quirm. A sort of . . . flying windmill. It’s just like a big screw up in the sky—’ ‘I don’t think we need one of those, although the advice is welcomed,’ said Blouse. ‘Not when we’ve got a big screw-up down here, sir!’ Jackrum managed. ‘Sir, this is just a bunch of recruits, sir! All that stuff about honour and freedom and that, that was just for the writer man, right? Good idea, sir! Yeah, let’s get to the Kneck valley, and let’s sneak in and join the rest of the lads. That’s where we ought to be, sir. You can’t be serious about taking the keep, sir! I wouldn’t try that with a thousand men.’ ‘I might try it with half a dozen, sergeant.’ Jackrum’s eyes bulged. ‘Really, sir? What’ll Private Goom do? Tremble at them? Young Igor will stitch ‘em up, will he? Private Halter will give ‘em a nasty look? They’re promising lads, sir, but they’re not men.’ ‘General Tacticus said the fate of a battle may depend upon the actions of one man in the right place, sergeant,’ said Blouse calmly. ‘ And having a lot more soldiers than the other bugger, sir,’ Jackrum insisted. ‘Sir, we should get to the rest of the army. Maybe it’s trapped, maybe it isn’t. All that stuff about them not wanting to slaughter us, sir, that makes no sense. The idea is to win, sir. If the rest of ‘em have stopped attacking, it’s because they’re frightened of us. We should be down there. That’s the place for young recruits, sir, where they can learn. The enemy is looking for ‘em, sir!’ ‘If General Froc is among those captured, the keep will be where he is held,’ said Blouse. ‘I believe he was the first officer you served under as sergeant, am I right?’ Jackrum hesitated. ‘That’s right, sir,’ he said eventually. ‘And he was the dumbest lieutenant I’ve ever met, bar one.’ ‘I am positive there is a secret entrance into the keep, sergeant.’ Polly’s memory nudged her. If Paul was alive, he was in the keep. She caught Shufti’s eye. The girl nodded. She’d been thinking along the same lines. She didn’t talk much about her . . . fiance, and Polly wondered how official the arrangement was. ‘Permission to speak, sarge?’ she said. ‘Okay, Perks.’ ‘I’d like to try to find a way into the keep, sarge.’ ‘Perks, are you volunteering to attack the biggest, strongest castle within five hundred miles? Single-handed?’ ‘I’ll go, too,’ said Shufti. ‘Oh, two of you?’ said Jackrum. ‘Oh, well, that’s all right then.’ ‘I’ll go,’ said Wazzer. ‘The Duchess has told me that I should.’ Jackrum looked down at Wazzer’s thin little face and watery eyes, and sighed. He turned back to Blouse. ‘Let’s get a move on, sir, shall we? We can talk about this later. At least we’re headed to Kneck, first stop on the road to hell. Perks and Igor, you take point. Maladict?’ ‘Yo!’ ‘Er . . . you scout on ahead.’ ‘I hear you!’ ‘Good.’ As the vampire walked past Polly the world, just for a moment, changed; the forest became greener, the sky greyer, and she heard a noise overhead, like ‘whopwhopwhop’. And then it was gone. Vampire hallucinations are contagious, she thought. What’s going on in his head? She hurried forward with Igorina, and they set off again through the forest. Birds sang. The effect was peaceful, if you didn’t know about birdsong, but Polly could recognize the alarm calls close by and the territorial threats far off and, everywhere, the preoccupation with sex. That took the edge off the pleasure.* * It’s hard to be an ornithologist and walk through a wood when all around you the world is shouting: ‘Bugger off, this is my bush! Aargh, the nest thief! Have sex with me, I can make my chest big and red!’ ‘Polly?’ said Igorina. ‘Hmm?’ ‘Could you kill someone if you had to?’ Polly came right back to the here and now. ‘What sort of question is that to ask anyone?’ ‘I think it’s the sort you’d ask a tholdier,’ said Igorina. ‘I don’t know. If they were attacking me, I suppose. Hurt them hard enough to keep them lying down, anyway. And you?’ ‘We have a great respect for life, Polly,’ said Igorina solemnly. ‘It’s easy to kill thomeone, and almost impossible to bring them back again.’ ‘Almost?’ ‘Well, if you don’t have a really good lightning rod. And even if you have, they’re never quite the same. Cutlery tends to stick to them.’ ‘Igorina, why are you here? ’ ‘The clan isn’t very . . . keen on girls getting too involved in the Great Work,’ said Igorina, looking downcast. ‘“Stick to your needlework”, my mother keeps saying. Well, that’s all very fine, but I know I’m good at the actual incisions as well. Especially the fiddly bits. And I think a woman on the slab would feel a lot better about things if she knew there was a female hand on the we-belong-dead switch. Tho I thought some battlefield experience would convince my father. Soldiers aren’t choosy about who saves their lives.’ ‘I suppose men are the same the world over,’ said Polly. ‘On the inside, certainly.’ ‘And . . . er . . . you really can put your hair back?’ Polly had seen it in its jar when they’d been breaking camp; it had spun gently in its bottle of green liquid, like some fine, rare seaweed. ‘Oh, yes. Scalp transplants are easy. It stings a bit for a couple of minutes, that’s all—’ There was movement between the trees, and then the blur resolved itself into Maladict. He held a finger to his lips as he drew closer, and whispered urgently: ‘Charlie’s tracking us!’ Polly and Igorina looked at one another. ‘Who’s Charlie? ’ Maladict stared at them, and then rubbed his face distractedly. ‘I’m . . . sorry, er . . . sorry, it’s . . . look, we’re being followed! I know it!’ The sun was setting. Polly peered over the rocky ledge, back the way they had come. She could make out the track, golden and red in the late afternoon light. Nothing was moving. The outcrop was near the top of another rounded hill; the rear of it became the floor of a little enclosed space, surrounded by bushes. It made a good lookout for people who wanted to see without being seen, and it had done so in the recent past, by the look of the old fires. Maladict was sitting with his head in his hands, with Jackrum and Blouse on either side of him. They were trying to understand, and not making much progress. ‘So you can’t hear anything?’ said Blouse. ‘No.’ ‘And you didn’t see anything and can’t smell anything?’ said Jackrum. ‘No! I told you! But there is something after us. Watching us!’ ‘But if you can’t—’ Blouse began. ‘Look, I’m a vampire,’ panted Maladict. ‘Just trust me, okay?’ ‘I thould, tharge,’ said Igorina, from behind Jackrum. ‘We Igorth often therve vampireth. In timeth of strethth their perthonal thpace can extend ath much ath ten mileth from their body.’ There was the usual pause that follows an extended lisp. People need time to think. ‘Streth-th?’ said Blouse. ‘You know how you can feel that someone’s looking at you?’ mumbled Maladict. ‘Well, it’s like that, times a thousand. And it’s not a . . . a feeling, it’s something I know.’ ‘Lots of people are looking for us, corporal,’ said Blouse, patting him kindly on the shoulder. ‘It doesn’t mean that they’ll find us.’ Polly, looking down on the gold-lit woodland, opened her mouth to speak. It was dry. Nothing came out. Maladict shook the lieutenant’s hand away. ‘This . . . person isn’t looking for us! They know where we are!’ Polly forced saliva into her mouth, and tried again. ‘Movement!’ And then it wasn’t there any more. She’d have sworn there had been something on the path, something that merged with the light, revealing itself only by the changing, wavering pattern of shadows as it moved. ‘Er . . . perhaps not,’ she muttered. ‘Look, we’ve all lost sleep and we’re all a little “strung out”,’ said Blouse. ‘Let’s just keep things down, shall we?’ ‘I need coffee!’ moaned Maladict, rocking back and forth. Polly squinted at the distant pathway. The breeze was shaking the trees, and red-gold leaves were drifting down. For a moment there was just a suggestion . . . She got to her feet. Stare at shadows and waving branches for long enough and you could see anything. It was like looking at pictures in the flames. ‘O-kay,’ said Shufti, who’d been working over the fire. ‘This might do it. It smells like coffee, anyway. Well^. . . quite like coffee. Well . . . quite like coffee if coffee was made from acorns, anyway.’ She’d roasted some acorns. At least the woods had plenty of them at this time of year, and everybody knew that roasted, ground acorns could be substituted for coffee, didn’t they? Polly had agreed that it was a worth a try, but as far as she could recall no one had ever, given the choice, said ‘No, I will not touch horrible coffee any more! It’s a Long Black ground-acorn substitute for me, with extra floating gritty bits!’ She took the mug from Shufti and carried it over to the vampire. As she bent down . . . the world changed. . . . whopwhopwhop . . . The sky was a haze of dust, turning the sun into a blood-red disc. For a moment Polly saw them in the sky, giant fat screws spinning in the air, hovering in the air but drifting slowly towards her— ‘He’s having flashsides,’ whispered Igorina, at her elbow. ‘Flashsides?’ ‘Like . . . someone else’s flashbackth. We don’t know anything about them. They could come from anywhere. A vampire at this stage is open to all sorts of influences! Give him the coffee, please!’ Maladict grabbed the mug and tried to down the contents so quickly that they spilled over his chin. They watched him swallow. ‘Tastes like mud,’ he said, putting down the mug. ‘Yes, but is it working?’ Maladict looked up and blinked his eyes. ‘Ye gods, that stuff is gruesome.’ ‘Are we in a forest or a jungle? Any flying screws?’ Igorina demanded. ‘How many fingers am I holding up?’ ‘You know, that’s something an Igor should never say,’ said Maladict, grimacing. ‘But . . . the . . . feelings aren’t so strong. I can suck it down! I can gut it out.’ Polly looked at Igorina, who shrugged and said, ‘That’s nice,’ and motioned to Polly to join her a little way off. ‘He, or possibly she, is right on the edge,’ she said. ‘Well, we all are,’ said Polly. ‘We’re hardly getting any sleep.’ ‘You know what I mean. I’ve, er . . . taken the liberty of, er . . . being prepared.’ Wordlessly, Igorina let her jacket fall open, just for a moment. Polly saw a knife, a wooden stake and a hammer, in neatly stitched little pockets. ‘It’s not going to come to that, is it?’ ‘I hope not,’ said Igorina. ‘But if it does, I’m the only one who can reliably find the heart. People always think it’s more to the left than—’ ‘It’s not going to come to that,’ said Polly firmly. The sky was red. The war was a day away. Polly crept along just below the ridge with the tea can. It was tea that kept the army on its feet. Remember what’s real. . . well, that took some doing. Tonker and Lofty, for example. It didn’t matter which of them was on guard, the other one would be there as well. And there they were, sitting side by side on a fallen tree, staring down the slope. They were holding hands. They always held hands, when they thought they were alone. But it seemed to Polly that they didn’t hold hands like people who were, well, friends. They held hands tightly, as someone who has slipped over a cliff would hold hands with a rescuer, fearing that to let go would be to fall away. ‘Tea up!’ she quavered. The girls turned, and she dipped a couple of mugs into the scalding tea. ‘You know,’ she said quietly, ‘no one would hate you if you ran away tonight.’ ‘What do you mean, Ozz?’ said Lofty. ‘Well, what’s there in Kneck for you? You got away from the school. You could go anywhere. I bet the two of you could sneak—’ ‘We’re staying,’ said Tonker severely. ‘We talked about it. Where else would we go? Anyway, supposing^ something is following us?’ ‘Probably just an animal,’ said Polly, who didn’t believe it herself. ‘Animals don’t do that,’ said Tonker. ‘And I don’t think Maladict would get so excited. It’s probably more spies. Well, we’ll get them.’ ‘Nobody is going to take us back,’ said Lofty. ‘Oh. Er . . . good,’ said Polly, backing away. ‘Well, must get on, no one likes cold tea, eh?’ She hurried round the hill. Whenever Lofty and Tonker were together, she felt like a trespasser. Wazzer was on guard in a small dell, watching the land below with her usual expression of slightly worrying intensity. She turned as Polly approached. ‘Oh, Polly,’ said Wazzer. ‘Good news!’ ‘Oh, good,’ said Polly weakly. ‘I like good news.’ ‘She says it will be all right for us not to wear our dimity scarves,’ said Wazzer. ‘What? Oh. Good,’ said Polly. ‘But only because we are serving a Higher Purpose,’ said Wazzer. And, just as Blouse could invert commas, Wazzer could drop capital letters into a spoken sentence. ‘That’s good, then,’ said Polly. ‘You know, Polly,’ said Wazzer, ‘I think the world would be a lot better if it was run by women. There wouldn’t be any wars. Of course, the Book would consider such an idea a Dire Abomination unto Nuggan. It may be in error. I shall consult the Duchess. Bless this cup that I may drink of it,’ she added. ‘Er, yes,’ said Polly, and wondered what she should dread more: Maladict suddenly turning into a ravening monster, or Wazzer reaching the end of whatever mental journey she was taking. She’d been a kitchen maid and now she was subjecting the Book to critical analysis and talking to a religious icon. That sort of thing led to friction. The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to those who think they’ve found it. Besides, she thought as she watched Wazzer drink, you only thought the world would be better if it was run by women if you didn’t actually know many women. Or old women, at least. Take the whole thing about the dimity scarves. Women had to cover their hair on Fridays, but there was nothing about this in the Book, which was pretty dar— pretty damn rigorous about most things. It was just a custom. It was done because it was always done. And if you forgot, or didn’t want to, the old women got You. They had eyes like hawks. They could practically see through walls. And the men took notice, because no man wanted to cross the crones in case they started watching him, so half-hearted punishment would be dealt out. Whenever there was an execution, and especially when there was a whipping, you always found the grannies in the front row, sucking peppermints. Polly had forgotten her dimity scarf. She did wear it at home on Fridays, for no other reason than that it was easier than not doing so. She vowed that, if ever she got back, she’d never do it again . . . ‘Er . . . Wazz?’ she said. ‘Yes, Polly?’ ‘You’ve got a direct line to the Duchess, have you?’ ‘We talk about things,’ said Wazzer dreamily. ‘You, er, couldn’t raise the question of coffee, could you?’ said Polly wretchedly. ‘The Duchess can only move very, very small things,’ said Wazzer. ‘A few beans, perhaps? Wazz, we really need some coffee! I don’t think the acorns are that much of a substitute.’ ‘I will pray,’ said Wazzer. ‘Good. You do that,’ said Polly. And, strangely enough, she felt a little more hopeful. Maladict had hallucinations, but Wazzer had a certainty you could bend steel round. It was the opposite of a hallucination, somehow. It was as if she could see what was real and you couldn’t. ‘Polly?’ said Wazzer. ‘Yes?’ ‘You don’t believe in the Duchess, do you? I mean the real Duchess, not your inn.’ Polly looked into the small, pinched, intense face. ‘Well, I mean, they say she’s dead, and I prayed to her when I was small, but since you ask I don’t exactly, um, believe as—’ she gabbled. ‘She is standing just behind you. Just behind your right shoulder.’ In the silence of the wood, Polly turned. ‘I can’t see her,’ she said. ‘I am happy for you,’ said Wazzer, handing her the empty mug. ‘But I didn’t see anything,’ said Polly. ‘No,’ said Wazzer. ‘But you turned round . . .’ Polly had never asked too many questions about the Girls’ Working School. She was, by definition, a Good Girl. Her father was an influential man in the community, and she worked hard, she didn’t have much to do with men and, most importantly, she was . . . well, smart. She was bright enough to do what a lot of other people did in the chronic, reason-free insanity that was everyday life in Munz. She knew what to see and what to ignore, when to obey and when to merely present the face of obedience, when to speak and when to keep her thoughts to herself. She learned the ways of the survivor. Most people did. But if you rebelled, or were merely dangerously honest, or had the wrong kind of illness, or were not wanted, or were a girl who liked boys more than the old women thought you should and, worse, were not good at counting . . . then the school was your destination. She didn’t know much about what went on in there, but imagination rushed to fill the gap. And she wondered what happened to you in that hellish pressure cooker. If you were tough, like Tonker, it boiled you hard and gave you a shell. Lofty . . . it was hard to know. She was quiet and shy until you saw firelight reflected in her eyes, and sometimes the flames were there in the absence of any fire to reflect. But if you were Wazzer, dealt a poor hand to start with, and locked up, and starved, and beaten, and mistreated Nuggan knew how (and yes, Polly thought, Nuggan probably did know how) and pushed deeper and deeper into yourself, what would you find down there? And then you’d look up from those depths into the only smile you ever saw. The last man on guard duty was Jackrum, because Shufti was cooking. He was sitting on a mossy rock, crossbow in one hand, staring at something in his hand. He spun round as she approached, and Polly caught the gleam of gold as something was shoved back in his jacket. The sergeant lowered the bow. ‘You make enough noise for an elephant, Perks,’ he said. ‘Sorry, sarge,’ said Polly, who knew she hadn’t. He took the tea mug, and turned to point downhill. ‘See that bush down there, Perks?’ he said. ‘Just to the right of that fallen log?’ Polly squinted. ‘Yes, sarge,’ she said. ‘Notice anything about it?’ Polly stared again. There must be something wrong about it, she decided, otherwise he wouldn’t have asked her. She concentrated. ‘The shadow’s wrong,’ she decided at last. ‘Good lad. The reason bein’, our chum is behind the bush. He’s been a-watching of me, and I’ve been a-watching of him. Nothing else for it. He’ll have it away on his toes as soon as he sees anyone move, and he’s too far away to drop an arrow on him.’ ‘An enemy?’ ‘I don’t think so.’ ‘A friend? ’ ‘Cocky devil, at any rate. He doesn’t care that I know he’s there. You go on back up the hill, lad, and bring down that big bow we got off of the— There he goes!’ The shadow had vanished. Polly stared into the wood, but the long light was getting crimson and dusk was unfolding between the trees. ‘It’s a wolf,’ said Jackrum. ‘A werewolf?’ said Polly. ‘Now, what makes you think that?’ ‘Because Sergeant Towering said we’d got a werewolf in the squad. I’m sure we haven’t. I mean, we’d have found out by now, wouldn’t we? But I wondered if they’d seen one.’ ‘Can’t do anything about it, anyway,’ said Jackrum. ‘A silver arrow would do the job, but we’ve got none.’ ‘What about our shilling, sarge?’ ‘Oh, you think you can kill a werewolf with an IOU?’ ‘Oh, yeah.’ Then Polly added: ‘You’ve got a real shilling, sarge. Around your neck with that gold medallion.’ If you could have twisted steel round Wazzer’s conviction, you could have heated it with Jackrum’s glare. ‘What’s round my neck is no business of yours, Perks, and the only thing worse than a werewolf is me if anyone tries to take my shilling off me, understand?’ He softened as he saw Polly’s terrified expression. ‘We’ll move on after we’ve eaten,’ he said. ‘Find a better place for a rest. Somewhere easier to defend.’ ‘We’re all pretty tired, sarge.’ ‘So I want us all to be upright and armed if our friend comes back with his chums,’ said Jackrum. He followed her gaze. The gold locket had slipped out of his jacket, and dangled guiltily on its chain. He deftly tucked it away. ‘She was just a . . . girl I knew,’ he said. ‘That’s all, right? It was a long time ago.’ ‘I didn’t ask you, sarge,’ said Polly, backing away. Jackrum’s shoulders settled. ‘That’s right, lad, you didn’t. And I ain’t asking you about anything, neither. But I reckon we’d better find the corporal some coffee, eh?’ ‘Amen to that, sarge!’ ‘And our rupert’s dreaming of laurel wreaths all round his head, Perks. We’ve got ourselves a goddamn hero here. Can’t think, can’t fight, no bloody use at all except for a famous last stand and a medal sent to his ol’ mum. And I’ve been in a few famous last stands, lad, and they’re butcher shops. That’s what Blouse’s leading you into, mark my words. What’ll you lot do then, eh? We’ve had a few scuffles, but that’s not war. Think you’ll be man enough to stand, when the metal meets the meat?’ ‘You did, sarge,’ said Polly. ‘You said you were in a few last stands.’ ‘Yeah, lad. But I was holding the metal.’ Polly walked back up the slope. All this, she thought, and we haven’t even got there. Sarge is thinking about the girl he left behind . . . well, that’s normal. And Tonker and Lofty only think about one another, but I suppose after you’ve been in that school . . . and as for Wazzer . . . She wondered how she’d have survived the school. Would she have grown hard, like Tonker? Would she have just folded up inside, like the maids who came and went and worked hard and never had a name? Or perhaps she would have become like Wazzer, and found some door in her own head . . . I may be lowly, but I talk to gods. . . . Wazzer had said ‘not your inn’. Had she ever told Wazzer about The Duchess? Surely not. Surely she . . . but, no, she had told Tonker, hadn’t she? That was it, then. All explained. Tonker must have mentioned it to Wazzer at some point. Nothing weird about it at all, even if practically no one ever had a conversation with Wazz. It was so hard. She was so intense, so coiled up. But that had to be the only explanation. Yes. She wasn’t going to let there be any other. Polly shivered, and was aware that someone was walking beside her. She looked up and groaned. ‘You’re a hallucination, right?’ OH, YES. YOU ARE ALL IN A STATE OF HEIGHTENED SENSIBILITY CAUSED BY MENTAL CONTAGION AND LACK OF SLEEP. ‘If you’re a hallucination, how do you know that?’ I KNOW IT BECAUSE YOU KNOW IT. I AM SIMPLY BETTER AT ARTICULATING IT. ‘I’m not going to die, am I? I mean, right now?’ No. BUT YOU WERE TOLD THAT YOU WOULD WALK WITH DEATH EVERY DAY. ‘Oh . . . yes. Corporal Scallot said that.’ HE IS AN OLD FRIEND.YOU MIGHT SAY HE IS ON THE INSTALMENT PLAN. ‘Do you mind walking a bit more . . . invisibly?’ OF COURSE. HOW’S THIS? ‘And quietly, too?’ There was silence, which was presumably the answer. ‘And polish yourself up a bit,’ said Polly to the empty air. ‘And that robe needs a wash.’ There was no reply, but she felt better for saying it. Shufti had cooked beef stew with dumplings and herbs. It was magnificent. It was also a mystery. ‘I don’t recall us passing a cow, private,’ said Blouse, as he handed his tin plate along for a second helping. ‘Er . . . no, sir.’ ‘And yet you have acquired beef?’ ‘Er . . . yes, sir. Er . . . when that writer man came up in his cart, well, when you were talking, er, I crept round and took a look inside . . .’ ‘There’s a name for someone who does that sort of thing, private,’ said Blouse severely. ‘Yeah, it’s quartermaster, Shufti. Well done,’ said Jackrum. ‘If that writer man gets hungry, he can always eat his words, eh, lieutenant?’ ‘Er . . . yes,’ said Blouse carefully. ‘Yes. Of course. Good initiative, private.’ ‘Oh, I didn’t think it up, sir,’ said Shufti brightly. ‘Sarge told me to.’ Polly stopped, spoon halfway to her mouth, and swivelled her eyes from sergeant to lieutenant. ‘You teach looting, sergeant?’ said Blouse. There was a joint gasp from the squad. If this was the bar back at The Duchess, the regulars would have been hurrying out of the doors and Polly would have been helping her father get the bottles off the shelf. ‘Not looting, sir, not looting,’ said Jackrum, calmly licking his spoon. ‘Under Duchess’s Regulations, Rule 611, Section 1 [c], Paragraph i, sir, it would be plundering, said cart being the property of bloody Ankh-Morpork, sir, which is aiding and abetting the enemy. Plundering is allowed, sir.’ The two men held eye contact for a moment, and then Blouse reached behind him and into his pack. Polly saw him draw out a small yet thick book. ‘Rule 611,’ he murmured. Blouse glanced up at the sergeant, and thumbed through the thin, shiny pages. ‘611. Pillaging, Plundering and Looting. Ah, yes. And . . . let me see . . . you are with us, Sergeant Jackrum, owing to Rule 796, I think you reminded me at the time . . .’ There was another silence broken only by the riffle of the pages. There’s no Rule 796, Polly remembered. Are they going to fight over this? ‘796, 796,’ said Blouse softly. ‘Ah . . .’ He stared at the page, and Jackrum stared at him. Blouse closed the book with a leathery flwap. ‘Absolutely correct, sergeant!’ he said brightly. ‘I commend you on your encyclopaedic knowledge of the regulations!’ Jackrum looked thunderous. ‘What?’ ‘You were practically word perfect, sergeant!’ said Blouse. And there was a gleam in his eye. Polly remembered Blouse looking at the captured cavalry captain. This was that same look, the look which said: now I have the upper hand. Jackrum’s chins wobbled. ‘You had something to add, sergeant?’ said Blouse. ‘Er, no . . . sir,’ said Jackrum, his face an open declaration of war. ‘We’ll leave at moonrise,’ said Blouse. ‘I suggest we all get some rest until then. And then . . . may we prevail.’ He nodded to the group, and walked over to where Polly had spread his blanket in the lee of the bushes. After a few moments there were some snores, which Polly refused to believe. Jackrum certainly didn’t. He got up and strode out of the firelight. Polly hurried after him. ‘Did you hear that?’ snarled the sergeant, staring out at the darkening hills. ‘The little yoyo! What right has he got, checking up in the book o’ words?’ ‘Well, you did quote chapter and verse, sarge,’ said Polly. ‘So? Officers are s’posed to believe what they’re told. And then he smiled! Did you see? Caught me out and smiled at me! Thinks he’s got one over on me, just because he caught me out!’ ‘You did lie, sarge.’ ‘I did not Perks! It’s not lying when you do it to officers! It’s presentin’ them with the world the way they think it ought to be! You can’t let ‘em start checkin’ up for themselves. They get the wrong ideas. I told you, he’ll be the death of all of us. Invading the bloody keep? The man’s wrong in the head!’ ‘Sarge!’ said Polly urgently. ‘Yes, what?’ ‘We’re being signalled, sarge!’ On a distant hilltop, twinkling like an early evening star, a white light was flashing. Blouse lowered his telescope. ‘They’re repeating “CQ”,’ he said. ‘And I believe those longer pauses are when they’re aiming their tube in different directions. They’re looking for their spies. “Seek You”, see? Private Igor?’ ‘Thur?’ ‘You know how that tube works, don’t you?’ ‘Oh, yeth, thur. You jutht light a flare in the box, and then it’th just point and click.’ ‘You’re not going to answer it, are you, sir?’ said Jackrum, horrified. ‘I am indeed, sergeant,’ said Blouse briskly. ‘Private Carborundum, please assemble the tube. Manickle, please bring the lantern. I shall need to read the code book.’ ‘But that’ll give away our position!’ said Jackrum. ‘No, sergeant, because although this term may be unfamiliar to you I intend to what we call “lie”,’ said Blouse. ‘Igor, I’m sure you have some scissors, although I’d rather you didn’t attempt to repeat the word.’ ‘I have thome of the appliantheth you mention, thur,’ said Igorina stiffly. ‘Good.’ Blouse looked round. ‘It’s almost pitch dark now. Ideal. Take my blanket and cut, oh, a three-inch circle out of it, then tie the blanket over the front of the tube.’ ‘That will cut off motht of the light, thur!’ ‘Indeed it will. My plan depends upon it,’ said Blouse proudly. ‘Sir, they will see the light, they’ll know we’re here,’ said Jackrum, as though repeating things to a child. ‘I explained, sergeant. I will lie,’ said Blouse. ‘You can’t lie when—’ ‘Thank you for your input, sergeant, that will be all for now,’ said Blouse. ‘Are we ready, Igor?’ ‘Jutht about, thur,’ said Igorina, tying the blanket across the end of the tube. ‘Okay, thur. I’ll light the flare when you thay.’ Blouse unfolded the little book. ‘Ready, private?’ he said. ‘Yup,’ said Jade. ‘On the word “long” you will hold the trigger for the count of two, and then let go. On the word “short” you will hold it down for the count of one, and likewise let go. Got that?’ ‘Yup, el-tee. Could hold it down for lots, if you like,’ said Jade. ‘One, two, many, lots. I’m good at countin’. High as you like. Jus’ say der word.’ ‘Two will suffice,’ said Blouse. ‘And you, Private Goom, I want you to take my telescope and look for long and short flashes from that light over there, understand?’ Polly saw Wazzer’s face and said quickly: ‘I’ll do that, sir!’ A small white hand was laid on her arm. In the miserly glimmer of the dark lantern, Wazzer’s eyes glowed with the light of certainty. ‘The Duchess guides our footsteps now,’ she said, and took the telescope from the lieutenant. ‘What we are doing is her work, sir.’ ‘Is it? Oh. Well . . . that’s good,’ said Blouse. \ ‘She will bless this instrument of far seeing that I may use it,’ said Wazzer. ‘Indeed?’ said Blouse nervously. ‘Well done. Now . . . are we ready? Send as follows . . . long . . . long . . . short . . .’ The shutter in the tube clicked and rattled as the message flashed out across the sky. When the troll lowered the tube, there was half a minute of darkness. And then: ‘Short . . . long . • •’ Wazzer began. Blouse held the code book up to his face, his lips moving as he read by the pinpoints of light escaping from the loins of the box. ‘W . . . R . . . U,’ he said. ‘And M. . .S. . .G. . .P. . .R. . .’ ‘That’s not a message!’ said Jackrum. ‘On the contrary, they want to know where we are, because they’re having trouble seeing our light,’ said Blouse. ‘Send as follows . . . short. . .’ ‘I protest, sir!’ Blouse lowered the book. ‘Sergeant, I am about to tell our spy that we are seven miles further away than we really are, do you understand? And I am certain they will believe us because I have artificially reduced the light output from our device, do you understand? And I will tell them that their spies have encountered a very large party of recruits and deserters heading for the mountains and are in pursuit, do you understand? I am making us invisible, do you understand? Do you understand, Sergeant Jackrum?’ The squad held their breath. Jackrum drew himself stiffly to attention. ‘Fully understood, sir!’ he said. ‘Very well!’ Jackrum continued at attention as the messages were exchanged, like a naughty pupil forced to stand by the teacher’s desk. Messages flashed across the sky, from hilltop to hilltop. Lights flickered. The clacks tube rattled. Wazzer called out the longs and shorts. Blouse scribbled in the book. ‘S . . . P . . . P . . . 2,’ he said aloud. ‘Hah. That’s an order to remain where we are.’ ‘More flashes, sir,’ said Wazzer. ‘T . . . Y . . . E . . . 3 . . .’ said Blouse, still making notes. ‘That’s “be ready to give aid”. N. . .V. . .A. . .S. . .N. . . That’s . . .’ ‘That’s not a code, sir!’ said Polly. ‘Private, send as follows right now!’ Blouse croaked. ‘Long . . . long . . .’ The message went. They watched, while the dew fell and, overhead, the stars came out and twinkled messages no one ever tried to read. The clacks went silent. ‘Now we leave as soon as possible,’ said Blouse. He gave a little cough. ‘I believe the phrase is “Let us get the heck out of here”.’ ‘Close, sir,’ said Polly. ‘Quite . . . close.’ There was an old, very old Borogravian song with more Zs and Vs in it than any lowlander could pronounce. It was called ‘Plogviehze!’ It meant ‘The Sun Has Risen! Let’s Make War!’ You needed a special kind of history to get all that in one word. Sam Vimes sighed. The little countries here fought because of the river, because of idiot treaties, because of royal rows, but mostly they fought because they had always fought. They made war, in fact, because the sun came up. This war had tied itself in a knot. Downriver, the valley narrowed to a canyon before the Kneck plunged over a waterfall a quarter of a mile high. Anyone trying to get up through the jagged mountains there would find themselves in a world of gorges, knife-edged ridges, permanent ice and even more permanent death. Anyone trying to cross the Kneck into Zlobenia now would be butchered on the shore. The only way out of the valley was back along the Kneck, which would put an army under the shadow of the keep. That had been fine when the keep was in Borogravian hands. Now that it had been captured, they’d be passing in range of their own weapons. . . . And such weapons! Vimes had seen catapults that would throw a stone ball three miles. When it landed it would crack into needle-sharp shards. Or there was the other machine that sent six-foot steel discs skimming through the air. Once they’d hit the ground and leapt up again they were unreliable as hell, but that only made them more terrifying. Vimes had been told that the edged disc would probably keep going for several hundred yards, no matter how many men or horses it encountered on the way. And they were only the latest ideas. There were plenty of conventional weapons, if by that you meant giant bows, catapults and mangonels that hurled balls of Ephebian fire, which clung while it burned. From up here, in his draughty tower, he could see the fires of the dug-in army all across the plain. They couldn’t retreat, and the alliance, if that’s what you could call the petulant hubbub, didn’t dare head up the valley into the heart of the country with that army at their back, yet didn’t have enough men to hold the keep and corral the enemy. And in a few weeks it would start to snow. The passes would fill up. Nothing would be able to get through. And every day, thousands of men and horses would need feeding. Of course, the men could, eventually, eat the horses, thus settling two feeding problems at a stroke. After that there would have to be the good ol’ leg rota, which Vimes understood from one of the friendlier Zlobenians was a common feature of winter warfare up here. Since he was Captain ‘Hopalong’ Splatzer, Vimes believed him. And then it would rain, and then the rain and the snowmelt together would turn the damn river into a flood. But before that the alliance would have bickered itself apart and gone home. All the Borogravians had to do, in fact, was hold their ground to score a draw. He swore under his breath. Prince Heinrich had inherited the throne in a country where the chief export was a kind of hand-painted wooden clog, but in ten years, he vowed, his capital city of Rigour would be ‘the Ankh-Morpork of the mountains’! For some reason, he thought Ankh-Morpork would be pleased about this. He was anxious, he said, to learn the Ankh-Morpork way of doing things, the kind of innocent ambition that could well lead an aspiring ruler to . . . well, find out the Ankh-Morpork way of doing things. Heinrich had a reputation locally for cunning, but Ankh-Morpork had overtaken cunning a thousand years ago, had sped past devious, had left artful far behind and had now, by a roundabout route, arrived at straightforward. Vimes leafed through the papers on his desk, and looked up when he heard a shrill, harsh cry outside. A buzzard came in a long, shallow swoop through the open window and alighted on a makeshift perch at the far end of the room. Vimes strolled over as the little figure on the bird’s back raised his flying goggles. ‘How’s it going, Buggy?’ he said. ‘They’re getting suspicious, Mister Vimes. And Sergeant Angua says it’s getting a bit risky now they’re so close.’ ‘Tell her to come on in, then.’ ‘Right, sir. And they still need coffee.’ ‘Oh, damn! Haven’t they found any?’ ‘No, sir, and it’s getting tricky with the vampire.’ ‘Well, if they’re suspicious now then they’ll be certain if we drop a flask of coffee on them!’ ‘Sergeant Angua says we’ll probably get away with it, sir. She didn’t say why.’ The gnome looked expectantly at Vimes. So did his buzzard. ‘They’ve come a long way, sir. For a bunch of girls. Well . . . mostly girls.’ Vimes reached out absent-mindedly to pet the bird. ‘Don’t, sir! She’ll have your thumb off!’ Buggy yelled. There was a knock on the door, and Reg came in with a tray of raw meat. ‘Saw Buggy overhead, so I thought I’d nip down to the kitchens, sir.’ ‘Well done, Reg. Don’t they ask why you want raw meat?’ ‘Yes, sir. I tell them you eat it, sir.’ Vimes paused before answering. Reg meant well, after all. ‘Well, it probably can’t do my reputation any harm,’ he said. ‘By the way, what was going down in the crypt?’ ‘Oh, they’re not what I’d call proper zombies, sir,’ said Reg, selecting a piece of meat and dangling it in front of Morag. ‘More like dead men walking.’ ‘Er . . . yes?’ said Vimes. ‘I mean there’s no real thinking going on,’ the zombie continued, picking up another lump of raw rabbit. ‘No embracing the opportunities of a life beyond the grave, sir. They’re just a lot of old memories on legs. That sort of thing gives zombies a bad name, Mister Vimes. It makes me so angryV Morag tried to snap at another lump of bloody rabbit fur that Reg, oblivious for the moment, was waving aimlessly. ‘Er . . . Reg?’ said Buggy. ‘How hard can it be, sir, to move with the times? Now take me, for example. One day I woke up dead. Did I—’ ‘Reg!’ Vimes warned, as Morag’s head bobbed back and forth. ‘—take it lying down? No! And I didn’t—’ ‘Reg, be careful! She’s just had two of your fingers off!’ ‘What? Oh.’ Reg held up a denuded hand and stared at it. ‘Oh, now, will you look at that?’ He peered down at the floor, with a hope that was quickly dashed. ‘Blast. Any chance we can make her throw up?’ ‘Only by sticking your fingers down her throat, Reg. Sorry. Buggy, do the best you can, please. And you, Reg, go back downstairs and see if they’ve got any coffee, will you?’ ‘Oh dear,’ murmured Shufti. ‘It’s big,’ said Tonker. Blouse said nothing. ‘Not seen it before, sir?’ said Jackrum cheerfully, as they stared at the distant keep from where they lay in some bushes half a mile away. If there is a fairy-tale scale for castles, where the top end is occupied by those white, spire-encrusted castles with the blue pointy roofs, then Kneck Keep was low, black and clung to its outcrop like a storm cloud. A bed of the Kneck ran round it; along the peninsula on which it was built the approach road was wide and bereft of cover and an ideal stroll for those who were tired of life. Blouse took all this in. ‘Er, no, sergeant,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen pictures, of course, but. . . they don’t do it justice.’ ‘Any of them books you read tell you what to do, sir ?’ said Jackrum. They were lying in some bushes half a mile away. ‘Possibly, sergeant. In The Craft of War, Song Sung Lo said: to win without fighting is the greatest victory. The enemy wishes us to attack where he is strongest. Therefore, we will disappoint him. A way will present itself, sergeant.’ ‘Well, it’s never presented itself to me, and I’ve been here dozens of times,’ said Jackrum, still grinning. ‘Hah, even the rats’d have to disguise themselves as washerwomen to get in that place! Even if you get up that road, you’ve got narrow entrances, holes in the ceiling to pour hot oil through, gates everywhere that a troll couldn’t smash through, coupla mazes, a hundred little ways you can be shot at. Oh, it’s a wonderful place to attack.’ ‘I wonder how the alliance got in?’ said Blouse. ‘Treachery, probably, sir. The world’s full of traitors. Or perhaps they discovered the secret entrance, sir. You know, sir? The one you’re sure is there. Or p’raps you’ve forgotten? It’s the sort of thing that can slip your mind when you’re busy, I expect.’ ‘We shall reconnoitre, sergeant,’ said Blouse coldly, as they crawled out of the bushes. He brushed leaves off his uniform. Thalacephalos or, as Blouse referred to her, ‘the faithful steed’ had been turned loose miles back. You couldn’t sneak on horseback and, as Jackrum had pointed out, the creature was too skinny for anyone to want to eat and too vicious for anyone to want to ride. ‘Right, sir, yes, we might as well do that, sir,’ said Jackrum now, all gloating helpfulness. ‘Where would you like us to reconnoitre, sir?’ ‘There must be a secret entrance, sergeant. No one would build a place like that with only one entrance. Agreed?’ ‘Yessir. Only, perhaps they kept it a secret, sir. Only trying to help, sir.’ They turned at the sound of urgent praying. Wazzer had fallen to her knees, hands clasped together. The rest of the squad edged away slowly. Piety is a wonderful thing. N ‘What is he doing, sergeant?’ said Blouse. ‘Praying, sir,’ said Jackrum. ‘I’ve noticed he does it a lot. Is that, er, within regulations, sergeant?’ the lieutenant whispered. ‘Always a difficult one, sir, that one,’ said Jackrum. ‘I have, myself, prayed many times on the field of battle. Many times have I said the Soldier’s Prayer, sir, and I don’t mind admitting it.’ ‘Er . . . I don’t think I know that one,’ said Blouse. ‘Oh, I reckon the words’ll come to you soon enough, sir, once you’re up against the foe. Gen’rally, though, they’re on the lines of “O god, let me kill this bastard before he kills me”.’ Jackrum grinned at Blouse’s expression. ‘That’s what I call the Authorized Version, sir.’ ‘Yes, sergeant, but where would we be if we all prayed all the time?’ said the lieutenant. ‘In heaven, sir, sitting at Nuggan’s right hand,’ said Jackrum promptly. ‘That’s what I was taught as a little nipper, sir. Of course, it’d be a bit crowded, so it’s just as well we don’t.’ At which point, Wazzer stopped praying and stood up, brushing dust off her knees. She gave the squad her bright, worrying smile. ‘The Duchess will guide our steps,’ she said. ‘Oh. Good,’ said Blouse weakly. ‘She will show us the way.’ ‘Wonderful. Er . . . did she mention a map reference at all?’ said the lieutenant. ‘She will give us eyes that we might see.’ ‘Ah? Good. Well, jolly good,’ said Blouse. ‘I definitely feel a lot better for knowing that. Don’t you, sergeant?’ ‘Yessir,’ said Jackrum. ‘ ‘cos before this, sir, we didn’t have a prayer.’ They scouted in threes, while the rest of the squad lay up in a deep hollow among the bushes. There were enemy patrols, but it’s not hard to avoid half a dozen men who stick to the tracks and aren’t being careful not to make a noise. The troops were Zlobenian, and acted as though they owned the place. For some reason Polly ended up patrolling with Maladict and Wazzer or, to put it another way, a vampire on the edge and a girl who was possibly so far over it that she’d found a new edge out beyond the horizon. She was changing every day, that was a fact. On the day they’d all joined up, a lifetime ago, she’d been this shivering little waif who flinched at shadows. Now, sometimes, she seemed taller, full of some ethereal certainty, and shadows fled before her. Well, not in actual fact, Polly would admit. But she walked as if they should. And then there had been the Miracle of the Turkey. That was hard to explain. The three of them had been moving along the cliffs. They’d circled a couple of Zlobenian lookout posts, forewarned by the smell of cooking-fires but, alas, not by the smell of any coffee. Maladict seemed to be mostly in control, except for a tendency to mutter to himself in letters and numbers, but Polly had stopped that by threatening to hit him with a stick the very next time he did it. They’d reached a cliff edge that gave yet another view of the keep, and once again Polly raised the telescope and scanned the sheer walls and jumbled rocks for any sign of another entrance. ‘Look down at the river,’ said Wazzer. The circle of view blurred upwards as Polly shifted the scope; when it stopped moving she saw whiteness. She had to lower the instrument to see what she’d been looking at. ‘Oh my,’ she said. ‘Makes sense, though,’ said Maladict. ‘And there’s a path all along the river, see? There’s a couple more women on it.’ ‘Tiny gateway, though,’ said Polly. ‘And it’d be so easy to search people for weapons.’ ‘Soldiers couldn’t get through, them,’ said the vampire. ‘We could,’ said Polly. ‘And we’re soldiers. Aren’t we?’ There was a pause before Maladict said: ‘Soldiers need weapons. Swords and crossbows get noticed.’ \ ‘There will be weapons inside,’ said Wazzer. “the Duchess has told me. The castle is full of weapons.’ ‘Did she tell you how to make the enemy let go of them?’ said Maladict. ‘All right, all right,’ said Polly quickly. ‘We ought to tell the rupert as soon as possible, okay? Let’s get back.’ ‘Hold on, I’m the corporal,’ said Maladict. ‘Well?’ said Polly. ‘And?’ ‘Let’s get back?’ said Maladict. ‘Good idea.’ She should have listened to the birdsong, she realized later. The shrill calls in the distance would have told her the news, if only she’d been calm enough to listen. They hadn’t gone more than thirty yards before they saw the soldier. Someone in the Zlobenian army was dangerously clever. He’d realized that the way to spot interlopers was not to march noisily along the beaten paths, but to sneak quietly between the trees. The soldier had a crossbow; it was sheer luck . . . probably sheer luck that he was looking the other way when Polly came round a holly bush. She flung herself behind a tree and gestured madly at Maladict further down the path, who had the sense to take cover. Polly drew her sword and held it clutched to her chest in both hands. She could hear the man. He was some way away, but he was moving towards her. Probably the little lookout they had just found was a regular point on the patrol route. After all, she thought bitterly, it was just the sort of thing some untrained idiots might come across; maybe a quiet patrol could even surprise them there . . . She shut her eyes and tried to breathe normally. This was it this was it this was it! This was where she found out. What to remember what to remember what to remember . . . when the metal meets the meat . . . be holding the metal. She could taste metal in her mouth. The man would walk right past her. He’d be alert, but not that alert. A slash would be better than a stab. Yes, a good swipe at head height would kill . . . . . . some mother’s son, some sister’s brother, some lad who’d followed the drum for a shilling and his first new suit. If only she’d been trained, if only she’d had a few weeks stabbing straw men until she could believe that all men were made of straw . . . She froze. Down the angle of the path, still as a tree, head bowed, stood Wazzer. As soon as the scout reached Polly’s tree, she’d be seen. She’d have to do it now. Perhaps that’s why men did it. You didn’t do it to save duchesses, or countries. You killed the enemy to stop him killing your mates, that they in turn might save you . . . She could hear the cautious tread close to the tree. She raised the sabre, saw the light flash along its edge— A wild turkey rose from the scrub on the other side of the path in one rocketing tower of wings and feathers and echoing noise. Half flying, half running, it bounded off into the woods. There was the thud of a bow and a last squawk. ‘Oh, good shot, Woody,’ said a voice near by. ‘Looks like a big ‘un!’ ‘Did you see that? ’ said another voice. ‘Another step and I’d have tripped over it!’ Behind her tree, Polly breathed out. A third voice, some way off, called out: ‘Let’s head back, eh, corp? The way that went off, the Tiger’s probably run a mile!’ ‘Yeah, and I’m so scared,’ said the closest voice. ‘The Tiger’s behind every tree, right?’ ‘Okay, let’s call it a day. My wife’ll cook him a treat—’ Gradually, the voices of the soldiers got lost amongst the trees. Polly lowered the sword. She saw Maladict peer out of his bush and stare at her. She raised a finger to her lips. He nodded. She waited until the birdsong had settled down a little before stepping out. Wazzer seemed to be lost in thought; Polly took her very carefully by the hand. Quietly, dodging from tree to tree, they headed back to the hollow. Most particularly, Polly and Maladict didn’t talk. But they looked one another in the eye once or twice. Of course a turkey would lie low until a hunter almbst trod on it. Of course that one must’ve been there all the time, and only lost its bird nerve when the scout crept up. It had been an unusually large bird, one that no hungry soldier could resist, but . . . well? Because the brain treacherously does not stop thinking just because you want it to, Polly’s added: she said the Duchess could move small things. How small is a thought in the mind of a bird? Only Jade and Igorina were waiting for them in the hollow. The others had found a better base a mile away, they said. ‘We found the secret entrance,’ said Polly quietly, as they headed away. ‘Can we get in?’ said Igorina. ‘It’s the washerwomen’s entrance,’ said Maladict. ‘It’s right down by the river. But there’s a path.’ ‘Washerwomen?’ said Igorina. ‘But this is a war!’ ‘Clothes still get dirty, I suppose,’ said Polly. ‘Dirtier, I should think,’ said Maladict. ‘But . . . our countrywomen? Washing clothes for the enemy?’ said Igorina, looking shocked. ‘If it’s that or starve, yes,’ said Polly. ‘I saw a woman come out carrying a basket of loaves. They say the keep is full of granaries. Anyway, you sewed up an enemy officer, didn’t you?’ ‘That’s different,’ said Igorina. ‘We are duty bound to thave our fellow ma— person. Nothing has ever been said about his— their underwear.’ ‘We could get in,’ said Polly, ‘if we disguised ourselves as women.’ Silence greeted this. Then: ‘Disguised?’ said Igorina. ‘You know what I mean!’ said Polly. ‘As washerwomen?’ said Igorina. ‘These are thurgeon’s hands!’ ‘Really? Where did you get them?’ said Maladict. Igorina stuck out her tongue at him. ‘Anyway, I don’t intend that we should do any washing,’ said Polly. ‘Then what do you intend?’ said Igorina. Polly hesitated. ‘I want to get my brother out if he’s in there,’ she said. ‘And if we could stop the invasion that would be a good idea.’ ‘That might take extra starch,’ said Maladict. ‘I don’t want to, you know, spoil the spirit of the moment, but that is a really awful idea. The el-tee won’t agree to something as wild as that.’ ‘No, he won’t,’ said Polly. ‘But he’ll suggest it.’ ‘Hmm,’ said Blouse, a little later. ‘Washerwomen? Is that usual, Sergeant Jackrum?’ ‘Oh, yes, sir. I expect the women in the villages round here do it, just like they did when we held the keep,’ said Jackrum. ‘You mean they give aid and comfort to the enemy? Why?’ ‘Better than starving, sir. Fact of life. It doesn’t always stop at washing, neither.’ ‘Sergeant, there are young men here!’ snapped Blouse, blushing. ‘They’ll have to find out about ironing and darning sooner or later, sir,’ said Jackrum, grinning. Blouse opened his mouth. Blouse shut his mouth. ‘Tea’s up, sir,’ said Polly. Tea was an amazingly useful thing. It gave you an excuse to talk to anyone. They were in what remained of a half-ruined farmhouse. By the look of it, not even patrols bothered to come here - there were no signs of former fires or even the most temporary occupation. It stank of decay and half the roof was gone. ‘Do the women just come and go, Perks?’ said the lieutenant. ‘Yes, sir,’ said Polly. ‘And I had an idea, sir. Permission to tell you my idea, sir?’ She saw Jackrum raise an eyebrow. She was laying it on thick, she had to admit, but time was pressing. ‘Please do. Perks,’ said Blouse. ‘Else I fear you may explode.’ ‘They could be spies for us, sir! We could even get them to open the gates for us!’ ‘Well done, private!’ said Blouse. ‘I do like a soldier to think.’ ‘Yeah, right,’ growled Jackrum. ‘Any sharper an{ he’ll cut hisself. Sir, they’re washerwomen, sir, basically. No offence to young Perks, keen lad that he is, but your average guard pays attention when Old Mother Riley tries to open the gates. There’s not just a pair of gates, neither. There’s six pairs, and nice little courtyards between ‘em for the guards to have a squint at you to see if you’s a wrong ‘un, and drawbridges, and spiky ceilings that drop down if someone doesn’t like the look of you. Try opening that lot with soapy hands!’ ‘I’m afraid the sergeant has a point, Perks,’ said Blouse sadly. ‘Well, supposing a couple of women managed to knock out a few guards, sir, they could let us in through their little door,’ said Polly. ‘We might even be able to capture the commander of the fort, sir! I bet there’s plenty of women in the keep, sir. In the kitchens and so on. They could . . . open doors for us!’ ‘Oh, come on, Perks—’ Jackrum began. ‘No, sergeant. Wait,’ said Blouse. ‘Astonishingly enough, Perks, in your boyish enthusiasm you have, although you haven’t realized it, given me a very interesting idea . . .’ ‘Have I, sir?’ said Polly, who in her boyish enthusiasm had considered trying to tattoo the idea on Blouse’s head. For someone so clever, he really was slow. ‘Indeed you have, Perks,’ said Blouse. ‘Because, of course, we only need one “washerwoman” to get us inside, do we not?’ The inverted commas sounded promising. ‘Well, yes, sir,’ said Polly. ‘And, if one as it were thinks “outside the box”, the “woman” does not in fact need to be a woman!’ Blouse beamed. Polly allowed her brow to wrinkle in honest puzzlement. ‘Doesn’t she, sir?’ she said. ‘I don’t think I quite understand, sir. I am perplexed, sir.’ ‘“She” could be a man, Perks!’ said Blouse, almost exploding with delight. ‘One of us! In disguise!’ Polly breathed a sigh of relief. Sergeant Jackrum laughed. ‘Lord bless you, sir, dressing up as washerwomen is for gettin’ out of places! Milit’ry rules!’ ‘If a man gets inside, he could disable any guards near the door, spy out the situation from a military perspective, and let the rest of the troops in!’ said Blouse. ‘If this was done at night, men, we could be holding key positions by the morning!’ ‘But these aren’t men, sir,’ said Jackrum. Polly turned. The sergeant was looking right at her, right through her. Oh darn, I mean damn . . . he knows . . . ‘I beg your pardon?’ ‘They are . . . my little lads, sir,’ Jackrum went on, winking at Polly. ‘Keen lads, full of mustard, but they ain’t ones for cuttin’ throats and stabbin’ hearts. They signed up to be pikemen in the press, sir, in a proper army. You are my little lads, I says to ‘em when I signed ‘em up, and I will look after you. I can’t stand by and let you take ‘em to certain death!’ ‘It’s my decision to make, sergeant,’ said Blouse. ‘We are at “the hinge of destiny”. Who, in the pinch, is not ready to lay down his life for his country?’ ‘In a proper stand-up fight, sir, not getting beaten over the head by a bunch of nasty men for creeping around their fort. You know I’ve never been one for spies an’ hidin’ your colours, sir, never.’ ‘Sergeant, we have no choice. We must take advantage of the “tide of fortune”.’ ‘I know about tides, sir. They leave little fish gaspin’.’ The sergeant stood up, fists clenching. ‘Your concern for your men does you credit, sergeant, but it falls to us—’ ‘A famous last stand, sir?’ said Jackrum. He spat expertly into the fire in the tumbledown hearth. ‘To hell with them, sir. That’s just a way of dyin’ famous!’ ‘Sergeant, your insubordination is getting—’ ‘I’ll go,’ said Polly quietly. Both men stopped, turned and stared. ‘I’ll go,’ Polly repeated, louder. ‘Someone ought to.’ ‘Don’t be daft, Perks!’ snapped Jackrum. ‘You don’t know what’s in there, you don’t know what guards are waitin’ just inside the door, you don’t know—’ ‘I’ll find out, then, sarge, won’t I,’ said Polly, smiling desperately. ‘Maybe I can get to somewhere where you can see and send signals, or . . .’ ‘On this issue, at least, the sergeant and I are of one mind, Perks,’ said Blouse. ‘Really, private, it would simply not work. Oh, you’re brave, certainly, but what makes you think you stand a chance of passing yourself off as a woman?’ ‘Well, sir . . . what?’ ‘Your keenness will not go unrecorded, Perks,’ said Blouse, smiling. ‘But, y’know, a good officer keeps an eye on his men and I have to say that I’ve noticed in you, in all of you, little . . . habits, perfectly normal, nothing to worry about, like the occasional deep exploration of a nostril maybe, and a tendency to grin after passing wind, a natural boyish inclination to, ahem, scratch your . . . selves in public . . . that sort of thing. These are the kind of little details that’d give you away in a trice and tell any observer that you were a man in women’s clothing, believe me.’ ‘I’m sure I could pull it off, sir,’ said Polly weakly. She could sense Jackrum’s eyes on her. You bloomi— you bloody well know, don’t you. How long have you known? Blouse shook his head. ‘No, they would see through you in a flash. You are a fine bunch of lads, but there is only one man here who’d stand a chance of getting away with it. Manickle?’ ‘Yessir?’ said Shufti, rigid with instant panic. ‘Can you find me a dress, do you think?’ Maladict was the first to break the silence. ‘Sir, are you telling us . . . you ‘re going to try to get in dressed as a woman?’ ‘Well, I’m clearly the only one who’s had any practice,’ said Blouse, rubbing his hands together. ‘At my old school, we were in and out of skirts all the time.’ He looked around at the circle of absolutely expressionless faces. ‘Theatricals, you see?’ he said brightly. ‘No gels at our boarding school, of course. But we didn’t let that stop us. Why, my Lady Spritely in A Comedy of Cuckolds is still talked about, I understand, and as for my Yumyum— Is Sergeant Jackrum all right?’ The sergeant had folded up, but with his face level with his knees he managed to croak: ‘Old war wound, sir. Come upon me sudden, like.’ ‘Please help him, Private Igor. Where was I . . . I can see you all look puzzled, but there’s nothing strange about this. Fine old tradition, men dressing up as gels. In the sixth form, the chaps used to do it for a jape all the time.’ He paused for a moment, and added thoughtfully, ‘Especially Wrigglesworth, for some reason . . .‘ He shook his head as if dislodging a thought and went on: ‘Anyway, I have some experience in this field, d’ye see?’ ‘And . . . what would you do if— I mean when you got in, sir?’ said Polly. ‘You won’t just have to fool the guards. There’ll be other women in there.’ ‘That will not present a problem, Perks,’ said Blouse. ‘I shall act in a feminine way and I have this stage trick, d’ye see, where I make my voice sound quite high-pitched, like this. ’ The falsetto could have scratched glass. ‘See?’ he said. ‘No, if we need a woman, I’m your man.’ ‘Amazing, sir,’ said Maladict. ‘For a moment I could have sworn there was a woman in the room.’ ‘And I could certainly find out if there are any other badly guarded entrances,’ Blouse went on. ‘Who knows, I might even be able to procure a key off one of the guards by means of feminine wiles! In any case, if things are all clear I shall send a signal. A towel hanging from a window, perhaps. Something clearly unusual, anyway.’ There was some more silence. Several of the squad were staring at the ceiling. ‘Ye-es,’ said Polly. ‘I can see you’ve thought this out carefully, sir.’ Blouse sighed. ‘If only Wriggles worth were here,’ he said. ‘Why, sir?’ ‘Amazingly clever chap at layin’ his hands on a dress, young Wrigglesworth,’ said the lieutenant. Polly caught Maladict’s eye. The vampire made \ face and shrugged. ‘Um . . .’ said Shufti. ‘Yes, Manickle?’ ‘I do have a petticoat in my pack, sir.’ ‘Good heavens! Why?’ Shufti went red. She hadn’t worked out an answer. ‘Bandageth, thur,’ Igorina cut in smoothly. ‘Yes! Yes! That’s right!’ said Shufti. ‘I . . . found it in the inn, back in Plün . . .’ ‘I athked the lads to acquire any thuitable linen they might find, thur. Jutht in cathe.’ ‘Very sound thinking, that man!’ said Blouse. ‘Anyone else got anything?’ ‘I wouldn’t be at all thurprithed, thur,’ said Igorina, staring round the room. Glances were exchanged. Packs were unslung. Everyone except Polly and Maladict had something, produced with downcast eyes. A shift, a petticoat and, in most cases, a dimity scarf, carried out of some sort of residual, unexplainable need. ‘You obviously must’ve thought we’d take serious damage,’ said Blouse. ‘Can’t be too careful, thur,’ said Igorina. She grinned at Polly. ‘Of course, I have rather short hair at present . . .’ Blouse mused. Polly thought of her ringlets, now lost and probably stroked by Strappi. But desperation spooled through her memory. ‘They looked like older women, mostly,’ she said quickly. ‘They wore headscarves and wimples. I’m sure Igori— sure Igor can make up something, sir.’ ‘We Igorth are very rethortheful, thur,’ Igorina agreed. She pulled a black leather wallet out of her jacket. ‘Ten minuteth with a needle, thur, that’th all I need.’ ‘Oh, I can do old women wonderfully well,’ said Blouse. With a speed that made Lofty jump, he suddenly thrust out both hands twisted like claws, contorted his face into an expression of mad imbecility and screeched, ‘Oh deary me! My poor old feet! Things today aren’t what they used to be! Lawks!’ Behind him, Sergeant Jackrum put his head in his hands. ‘Amazing, sir,’ said Maladict. ‘I’ve never seen a transformation like it!’ ‘Perhaps just a wee bit less old, sir?’ Polly suggested, although in truth Blouse had reminded her of her Auntie Hattie two-thirds of the way through a glass of sherry. ‘You think so?’ said Blouse. ‘Oh, well, if you’re really sure.’ ‘And, er, if you do meet a guard, er, old women don’t usually try to, try to—’ ‘—canoodle—’ whispered Maladict, whose mind had clearly been hurtling down the same horrible slope. ‘—canoodle with them,’ Polly finished, blushing, and then after a second’s thought added, ‘Unless she’s had a glass of sherry, anyway.’ ‘And I do thuggetht you go and have a thhave, thur . . .’ ‘Thhave?’ said Blouse. ‘Shave, sir,’ said Polly. ‘I’ll lay out the kit, sir.’ ‘Ooh, yes. Of course. Don’t see many old women with beards, eh? Except my Auntie Parthenope, as I recall. And . . . er . . . no one’s got a couple of balloons, have they?’ ‘Er, why, sir?’ said Tonker. ‘A big bosom always gets a laugh,’ said Blouse. He looked round the row of faces. ‘Not a good idea, perhaps? I got a huge round of applause as the Widow Trembler in ‘Tis Pity She’s A Tree. No? ’ ‘I think Igor could sew something a bit more, er, realistic, sir,’ said Polly. ‘Really? Oh, well, if you really think so . . .’ said Blouse dejectedly. ‘I’ll just go and get myself into character.’ He disappeared into the building’s only other room. After a few seconds, the rest of them heard him reciting ‘Lawks, my poor feet!’ in varying tones of fingernail screech. The squad went into a huddle. ‘What was all that about?’ said Tonker. ‘He was talking about the theatre,’ said Maladict. ‘What’s that?’ ‘An Abomination unto Nuggan, of course,’ said the vampire. ‘It’d take too long to explain, dear child. People pretending to be other people to tell a story in a huge room where the world is a different place. Other people sitting and watching them and eating chocolate. Very, very abominable.’ ‘I saw a Punch and Judy show in the town once,’ said Shufti. ‘Then they dragged the man away and it became an Abomination.’ ‘I remember that,’ said Polly. Crocodiles should not be seen to eat figures of authority, apparently, although until the puppet show no one in the town knew what a crocodile was. The bit where the clown had beaten his wife had also constituted an Abomination, because he’d used a stick thicker than the regulation one inch. The lieutenant won’t last a minute, you know,’ she said. ‘Yes, but he won’t lithten, will he?’ said Igorina. ‘I’ll do my betht with my scissorth and needle to make a woman of him, but—’ ‘Igorina, when it’s you talking about this sort of thing some very strange pictures turn up in my head,’ said Maladict. ‘Sorry,’ said Igorina ‘Can you pray for him, Wazzer?’ said Polly. ‘I think we’re going to need a miracle here.’ Wazzer obediently closed her eyes and folded her hands for a moment and then said shyly: ‘I’m afraid she says it will take more than a turkey.’ ‘Wazz?’ said Polly. ‘Do you really—’ Then she stopped, with the bright little face watching her. ‘Yes, I do,’ said Wazzer. ‘I really talk to the Duchess.’ ‘Yeah, well, I used to, too,’ snapped Tonker. ‘I used to beg her, once. That stupid face just stared and did nothing. She never stopped anything. All that stuff, all that stupid—’ The girl stopped, too many words blocking her brain. ‘Anyway, why should she talk to you?’ ‘Because I listen,’ said Wazzer quietly. ‘And what does she say?’ ‘Sometimes she just cries.’ ‘ She cries?’ ‘Because there are so many things that people want, and she can’t give them anything.’ Wazzer gave them all one of her smiles that lit up the room. ‘But everything will be fine when I am in the right place,’ she said. ‘Well, that’s all right, then—’ Polly began, in that cloud of deep embarrassment that Wazzer called up within her. ‘Yeah, right,’ said Tonker. ‘But I’m not praying to anyone, okay? Ever again. I don’t like this, Wazz. You’re a decent kid, but I don’t like the way you smile—’ She stopped. ‘Oh, no . . .’ Polly stared at Wazzer. Her face was thin and all angles, and the Duchess in the painting had looked, well, like an overfed turbot, but now the smile, the actual smile . . . ‘I’m not putting up with that!’ Tonker snarled. ‘You stop that right now! I mean it! You’re giving me the creeps! Ozz, you stop her— him smiling like that!’ ‘Just calm down, all of you—’ Polly began. ‘Bleedin’ well shut up!’ said Jackrum. ‘A man can’t hear himself chew. Look, you’re all edgy. That happens. And Wazzer here’s just got a bit of religion before the fight. That happens, too. And what you do is, you save it all up for the enemy. Quieten down. That is what we in the milit’ry call an order, okay?’ ‘Perks?’ It was Blouse. ‘You’d better hurry,’ said Maladict. ‘His corset probably wants lacing . . .’ In fact Blouse was sitting on what remained of a chair. ‘Ah, Perks. A shave, please,’ he said. ‘Oh, I thought your hand was better, sir . . .’ ‘Er . . . yes.’ Blouse looked awkward. ‘The problem, Perks, is . . . I have never actually shaved myself at all, to be honest. I had a man to do it for me at school, and then of course in the army I shared a batman with Blitherskite and, er, those attempts I made on my own behalf have been somewhat bloody. I never really thought about it until I got to Plotz and, er . . . suddenly it was embarrassing . . .’ ‘Sorry about that, sir,’ said Polly. It was a strange old world. ‘Later on perhaps you could give me a few tips,’ Blouse went on. ‘You keep yourself beautifully shaven, I can’t help noticing. General Froc would be pleased. He’s very anti-whiskers, they say.’ ‘If you like, sir,’ said Polly. There was no getting out of it. She made a show of sharpening the razor. Perhaps she could manage it with only a few small cuts . . . ‘Do you think I should have a reddened nose?’ said Blouse. ‘Probably, sir,’ said Polly. Sarge knows about me, I’m sure, she thought . I know he does. Why’s he keeping quiet? ‘Probably, Perks?’ ‘What? Oh. No . . . why a red nose, sir?’ said Polly, applying the lather with vigour. ‘It would look more pff amusing, perhaps.’ ‘Not sure that’s the purpose of the exercise, sir. Now, if you’d just, er, lie back, sir—’ ‘There’s something you should know about young Perks, sir.’ Polly actually yelped. Walking as silently as only a sergeant can, Jackrum had stolen into the room. ‘ pff Sergeant?’ said Blouse. ‘Perks doesn’t know how to shave a man, sir,’ said Jackrum. ‘Give me the razor, Perks.’ ‘Doesn’t know how to shave?’ said Blouse. ‘Nosir. Perks lied to us, right, Perks?’ ‘All right, sarge, no need to drag it out,’ sighed Polly. ‘Lieutenant, I’m—’ ‘—under age,’ said Jackrum. ‘Right, Perks? Only fourteen, aren’t you?’ He looked at Polly over the top of the lieutenant’s head, and winked. ‘Er . . . I told a lie to get enlisted, sir, yes,’ said Polly. ‘I don’t think a lad like that ought to be dragged into the keep, however game he is,’ said Jackrum. ‘And I don’t think he’s the only one. Right, Perks?’ Oh, so that’s the game. Blackmail, Polly thought. ‘Yes, sarge,’ she said wearily. ‘Can’t have a massacre of little lads, sir, now can we?’ said Jackrum. ‘I see your pff point, sergeant,’ said the lieutenant, as Jackrum gently drove the blade down his cheek. ‘That is a tricky one.’ ‘Best to call it a day, then?’ said Jackrum. ‘On the other hand, sergeant, I do know that you pff yourself joined up as a child,’ said Blouse. The blade stopped moving. ‘Well, it was all different in those—’ Jackrum began. ‘You were five years old, apparently,’ the lieutenant went on. ‘You see, when I heard that I would be meeting you, a legend in the army, of course I had a look at our files so that I could, perhaps, make a few timely jokes in presenting you with your honourable discharge. You know, humorous little reminiscences about times gone by? Imagine how puzzled I was, therefore, to find that you appear to have been drawing actual wages for, well, it was a little hard to be certain, but possibly as much as sixty years.’ Polly had put a keen edge on the razor. It rested against the lieutenant’s cheek. Polly thought about the murder - oh, all right, the killing of an escaping prisoner - in the wood. It won’t be the first officer I’ve killed . . . ‘Probably one of them clerical errors, sir,’ said Jackrum coldly. In the gloomy room, with moss now colonizing the walls, the sergeant loomed large. An owl, perched on the chimney, gave a screech. It echoed down into the room. ‘In fact no, sergeant,’ said Blouse, apparently oblivious of the razor. ‘Your package, sergeant, had been tampered with. On numerous occasions. Once, even by General Froc. He deducted ten years from your age and signed the change. And he wasn’t the only one. Frankly, sergeant, I’m forced to only one conclusion.’ ‘And what’s that, sir?’ The razor halted again, still pressed against Blouse’s neck. The silence seemed to last for some time, sharp and drawn out. ‘That there was some other man called Jackrum,’ said Blouse slowly, ‘whose records have . . . got mixed up with yours and . . . every attempt to sort it out by officers who were, er, not entirely at home with figures only made it more confusing.’ The razor started to move again, with silky smoothness. ‘I think you’ve put your finger right on it, sir,’ said Jackrum. ‘I am going to write an explanatory note and add it to the packet,’ Blouse went on. ‘It seems to me the sensible thing to do would be to ask you here and now how old you are. How old are you, sergeant?’ ‘Forty-three, sir,’ said Jackrum instantly. Polly looked up, expecting the generic thunderclap that ought to accompany such a universe-sized untruth. ‘Are you sure?’ said Blouse. ‘Forty-five, sir. The hardships of a soldier’s life show up onna face, sir.’ ‘Even so—’ ‘Ah, I recall a couple of extra birthdays what had slipped my memory, sir. I’m forty-seven, sir.’ Still no rumble of celestial disapproval, Polly noticed. ‘Er . . . yes. Very well. After all, you should know, eh, sergeant? I shall amend it.’ ‘Thank you, sir.’ ‘Just like General Froc did. And Major Galosh. And Colonel Legin, sergeant.’ ‘Yessir. Clerical error has followed me around all the days of my life, sir. I’ve been a martyr to it.’ Jackrum stood back. ‘There we are, sir. Face as smooth as a baby’s bum. Smooth is how things should be, eh, sir? I’ve always liked things smooth.’ They watched Lieutenant Blouse walk down through the trees to the path. They watched him join the erratic, straggling line of women on their way to the door. They listened for screams, and heard none. ‘D-does any woman sway that much?’ said Wazzer, peering through the bushes. ‘Not legally, I think,’ said Polly, scanning the keep with the lieutenant’s telescope. ‘Well, we’ll just have to wait for some sort of signal that he’s okay.’ Somewhere overhead, a buzzard screamed. ‘No, they’ll have got him the moment he walked through the door,’ said Maladict. ‘Bet on it.’ They left Jade on watch. With her paint scraped off, a troll could settle into rocky scenery so well that no one was likely to notice her before they walked into her, and by the time they’d walked into her it was too late. They made their way back through the woods, and had almost reached the ruined farmhouse when it happened. ‘You are holding up well, Mal,’ said Polly. ‘Maybe those acorns did the trick? You haven’t mentioned coffee at all—’ Maladict stopped, and turned slowly. To Polly’s horror, his face was suddenly shiny with sweat. ‘You had to bring it up, didn’t you?’ he said hoarsely. ‘Oh, please, no! I was holding on so tight! I was doing so well!’ He fell forward, but managed to get on to his hands and knees. Then he raised his head, and his eyes were glowing red. ‘Fetch . . . Igorina,’ he muttered, gasping. ‘I know she’s ready for this . . .’ . . . whopwhopwhop . . . Wazzer was praying furiously. Maladict tried to stand up again, fell back on to his knees, and raised his arms imploringly to the sky. ‘Get out of here while you can,’ he mumbled, as his teeth visibly lengthened. ‘I’ll—’ There was a shadow, a sense of movement, and the vampire slumped forward, stunned by an eight-ounce sack of coffee beans that had dropped out of a clear sky. Polly arrived at the farmhouse carrying Maladict on her shoulder. She made him as comfortable as possible on some ancient straw, and the squad consulted. ‘Do you think we ought to try to take the sack out of his mouth?’ said Shufti nervously. ‘I tried, but he fights,’ said Polly. ‘But he’s unconscious!’ ‘He still won’t let go of it! He’s sucking it. I’d swear he was out cold, but he just sort of reached out and grabbed it and bit! It dropped out of a clear sky!’ Tonker stared at Wazzer. ‘The Duchess does room service?’ she said. ‘No! She says she d-didn’t!’ ‘You get freak rainth of fish,’ said Igorina, kneeling down by Maladict. ‘I suppose it’s possible that a whirlwind tore through a coffee plantation, and then possibly a lightning discharge in the upper ether—’ ‘At what point did it blow through a factory making small coffee sacks?’ said Tonker. ‘Ones with a jolly turbaned man printed on them apparently saying “Klatchian Rare Roasted! When a Pickaxe is Not Enough!”‘ ‘Well, if you’re going to put it like that, it does theem a little far-fetched . . .’ Igorina stood up, adding, ‘I think he’ll be fine when he wakes up. Possibly a little talkative, though.’ ‘Okay, lads, get some rest,’ said Jackrum, coming in. ‘Let’s give the rupert a couple of hours to muck things up, and then we can nip around the valley and slip down and join the rest of the army. Good grub and proper blankets to sleep on, hey? That’s the ticket!’ ‘We don’t know he’s going to mess up, sarge,’ said Polly. ‘Oh, yeah, right, maybe he’ll have married the commander of the garrison by now, eh? Stranger things have happened, although I can’t remember when. Perks and Manickle, you’re on watch. The rest of you, get some shut-eye.’ A Zlobenian patrol went past in the distance. Polly watched it out of sight. It was turning into a fine day, warm with a bit of wind. Good drying weather. A good day to be a washerwoman. And maybe Blouse would succeed. Maybe all the guards were blind. ‘Pol?’ Shufti whispered. ‘Yes, Shuf . . . Look, what was your name back in the world?’ ‘Betty. It’s Betty. Er . . . most of the Ins-and-Outs are in the keep, right?’ ‘Apparently.’ ‘So that’s where I’m most likely to find my fiance, yes?’ We’ve talked about that, Polly thought. ‘Could be.’ ‘Might be quite hard if there’s a lot of men . . .’ said Betty, a woman with something on her mind. ‘Well, if we get as far as the prisoners and ask around they’ll be bound to know his name. What is it?’ ‘Johnny,’ whispered Betty. ‘Just Johnny?’ said Polly. ‘Er . . . yes . . .’ Ah, Polly thought. I think I know how this goes . . . ‘He’s got fair hair and blue eyes, and I think he had one gold earring, and . . . and a funny-shaped . . . what d’you call it? Oh, yes . . . sort of carbuncle on his, his . . . bottom.’ ‘Right. Right.’ ‘Um . . . now I come to tell someone, it doesn’t sound very helpful, I suppose.’ Not unless we’re in a position to have a very unusual identity parade, Polly thought, and I can’t imagine what position that would be. ‘Not as such,’ she said. ‘He said everyone in the regiment knows him,’ Betty went on. ‘Right? Oh, good,’ said Polly. ‘All we need to do is ask.’ ‘And, er, we were going to break a sixpence in half, you know, like they do, so that if he had to be away for years we’d be sure we’d got the right person ‘cos the two halves would match . . .’ ‘Oh, that would be a bit of a help, I expect.’ ‘Well, yes, except, well, I gave him the sixpence, and he said he’d get the blacksmith to break it in his vice, and he went off and, er, I think he got called away . . .’ Betty’s voice! trailed off. Well, that was about what I expected, Polly thought. ‘I expect you think I’m a silly girl,’ mumbled Betty after a while. ‘A foolish woman, perhaps,’ said Polly, turning to watch the landscape intently. ‘It was, you know a whirlwind romance . . .’ ‘Sounds more like a hurricane to me,’ said Polly, and Betty grinned. ‘Yes, it was a bit like that,’ she said. Polly matched smile for smile. ‘Betty, it’s daft to talk about silly and foolish at a time like this,’ she said. ‘Where are we going to look for wisdom? To a god who hates jigsaws and the colour blue? A fossil government led by a picture? An army that thinks stubbornness is the same as courage? Compared to all that, all you’ve got wrong is timing!’ ‘I don’t want to end up in the school, though,’ said Betty. ‘They took away a girl from our village and she was kicking and screaming—’ ‘Then fight them!’ said Polly. ‘You’ve got a sword now, haven’t you? Fight back!’ She saw the look of horror on Betty’s face, and remembered that this wasn’t Tonker she was talking to. ‘Look, if we get out of this alive we’ll talk to the colonel. He might be able to help.’ After all, perhaps your boy really was called Johnny, she thought, perhaps he really was called away suddenly. Hope is a wonderful thing. She went on: ‘If we get out of this there’s going to be no school and no beatings. Not for you or any of us. Not if we’ve got brains. Not if we’re smart.’ Betty was almost in tears, but she managed another smile. ‘And Wazzer’s talking to the Duchess, too. She’ll fix things!’ Polly stared out at the bright, unchanging landscape, empty except for a buzzard making wide circles in the forbidden blue. I’m not sure about that,’ she said. ‘But someone up there likes us.’ . Twilight was brief at this time of year. There had been no sign from Blouse. ‘I watched until I couldn’t see,’ said Jade, as they sat and watched Shufti make stew. ‘Some of der women dat came out was ones I saw goin’ in dis mornin’, too.’ ‘Are you sure?’ said Jackrum. ‘We might be fick, sarge,’ said Jade, looking hurt, ‘but trolls have great . . . er . . . vis-you-all ack-you-it-tee. More women was going in dis evenin’, too.’ ‘Night shift,’ said Tonker. ‘Oh well, he tried,’ said Jackrum. ‘With any luck he’s in a nice warm cell and they’ve found him a pair of long pants. Get your kit together, lads. We’ll creep around and into our lines and you’ll be snug in bed by midnight.’ Polly remembered what she’d said, hours ago, about fighting. You had to start somewhere. ‘I want to try the keep again,’ she said. ‘You do, Perks, do you?’ said Jackrum, with mock interest. ‘My brother’s in there.’ ‘Nice safe place for him, then.’ ‘He might be injured. I vote for the keep.’ ‘Vote?’ said Jackrum. ‘My word, that’s a new one. Voting in the army? Who wants to get killed, lads, let’s have a show of hands? Knock it off, Perks.’ ‘I’m going to try it, sarge!’ ‘You are not!’ ‘Try and stop me!’ The words came out before she could stop them. And that’s it, she thought, the shout heard round the world. No going back after this. I’ve run off the edge of the cliff and it’s all downhill from here. Jackrum’s expression stayed blank for a second or two, and then he said, ‘Anyone else voting for the keep?’ Polly looked at Shufti, who blushed. But: ‘We are,’ said Tonker. Beside her, Lofty struck a match, and held it so that it flared. That was pretty much a speech from Lofty. ‘Why, pray?’ said Jackrum. ‘We don’t want to sit around in a swamp,’ said Tonker. ‘And we don’t like being ordered around.’ ‘Should have thought of that before you joined an army, lad!’ ‘We aren’t lads, sarge.’ ‘You are if I says you are!’ Well, it’s not as though I wasn’t expecting it, Polly thought. I’ve played this out enough times in my head. Here goes . • • ‘All right, sarge,’ she said. ‘It’s time to have it out, here and now.’ ‘Ooo, er,’ said Jackrum theatrically, fishing his screwed-up paper of tobacco out of his pocket. ‘What?’ Jackrum sat down on the remains of a wall. ‘Just injecting a little sauciness into the conversation,’ he said. ‘Carry on, Perks. Have your say. I thought it’d come to this.’ ‘You know I’m a woman, sarge,’ said Polly. ‘Yup. I wouldn’t trust you to shave cheese.’ The squad stared. Jackrum opened his big knife and examined the chewing tobacco as though it was the most interesting thing present. ‘So . . . er . . . what are you going to do about it?’ said Polly, feeling derailed. ‘Dunno. Can’t do anything, can I? You were born like it.’ ‘You didn’t tell Blouse!’ said Polly. ‘Nope.’ Polly wanted to knock the wretched tobacco out of the sergeant’s hand. Now that she had got over the surprise, there was something offensive about this lack of reaction. It was like someone opening a door just before your battering ram hit it; suddenly you were running through the building and not certain how to stop. ‘Well, we’re all women, sarge,’ said Tonker. ‘How about that?’ Jackrum sawed at the tobacco. ‘So?’ he said, still paying attention to the job in hand. ‘What?’ said Polly. ‘Think no one else ever tried it? Think you’re the only ones? Think your ol’ sarge is deaf, blind and stupid? You could fool one another and anyone can fool a rupert, but you can’t fool Jackrum. Weren’t sure about Maladict and still ain’t, because with a vampire, who knows? And not sure about you, Carborundum, because with a troll, who cares? No offence.’ ‘None taken,’ rumbled Jade. She caught Polly’s eye and shrugged. ‘Not so good at reading the signs, not knowing many trolls,’ said the sergeant. ‘I had you down pat in the first minute, Ozz. Something in the eyes, I reckon. Like . . . you were watching to see how good you were.’ Oh hell, Polly thought. ‘Er . . . do I have a pair of socks belonging to you?’ ‘Yep. Well washed, I might add.’ ‘You’ll have them back right now!’ said Polly, grabbing for her belt. ‘In your own time, Perks, in your own time, no rush,’ said Jackrum, raising a hand. ‘Well washed, please.’ ‘ Why, sarge?’ said Tonker. ‘Why didn’t you give us away? You could’ve given us away any time!’ Jackrum slewed his wad from cheek to cheek and sat chewing for a while, staring at nothing. ‘No, you ain’t the first,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen a few. Mostly by themselves, always frightened . . . and mostly they didn’t last long. But one or two of them were bonny soldiers, very bonny soldiers indeed. So I looked at you lot and I thought to myself, well now, I thought, I wonder how they’ll do when they find out they’re not alone? You know about lions?’ They nodded. ‘Well, the lion is a big ol’ coward, mostly. If you want trouble, you want to tangle with the lioness. They’re killers, and they hunt together. It’s the same everywhere. If you want big grief, look to the ladies. Even with insects, right? There’s a kind of beetle where she bites his head off right while he’s exercisin’ his conjugals, and that’s what I call serious grief. On the other hand, from what I heard he carries on regardless, so maybe it’s not the same for beetles.’ He looked around at their blank expressions. ‘No?’ he said. ‘Well, maybe I thought, a whole bunch of girls all at once, that’s . . . strange. Maybe there’s a reason.’ Polly saw him glance briefly at Wazzer. ‘Anyway, I wasn’t goin’ to shame you all in front of a little toad like Strappi, and then there was all that business in Plotz, and then, well, we was gallopin’, as it were, caught up in things with no time to get off. You did well, lads. Very well. Shaped up like good ‘uns.’ ‘I’m going into the keep,’ said Polly. ‘Oh, don’t worry about the rupert,’ said Jackrum. ‘Probably he’s enjoying a nice bowl of scubbo right now. He went to a school for young gentlemen, so prison will be just like old times.’ ‘We’re still going, sarge. Sorry,’ said Polly. ‘Oh, don’t say sorry, Perks, you were doing well up ‘til then,’ said Jackrum bitterly. Shufti stood up. ‘I’m going too,’ she said. ‘I think my . . . fiance is in there.’ ‘I have to go,’ said Wazzer. ‘The Duchess guides my steps.’ ‘I’ll go, then,’ said Igorina. ‘I’m probably going to be needed.’ ‘I shouldn’t fink I could get by as a washerwoman,’ rumbled Jade. ‘I’ll stay here and watch over Mal. Hah, if he’s still after blood when he wakes up he’s gonna have blunt teeth!’ They looked at one another in silence, embarrassed but defiant. Then there was the sound of someone clapping, slowly. ‘Oh, very nice,’ said Jackrum. ‘A band of brothers, eh? Sorry . . . sisters. Oh dear, oh dear. Look, Blouse was a fool. It was prob’ly all them books. He read all that stuff about it being a noble thing to die for your country, I expect. I was never that keen on readin’, but I know the job is making some other poor devil die for his.’ He slewed his black tobacco from side to side. ‘I wanted you to be safe, lads. Down in the press of men, I reckoned I could get you through this, no matter how many friends the Prince has sent after you. I look at you lads, and I think: you poor boys, you don’t know nothin’ about war. What you goin’ to do? Tonker, you are a crack shot, but after one shot who’s backing you up while you reload? Perks, you know a trick or two, but the blokes in the castle will maybe know a trick or five. You’re a good cook, Shufti; too bad it’s going to be too hot in there. Will the Duchess turn aside arrows, Wazzer?’ ‘Yes. She will’ ‘I hope you are right, my lad,’ said Jackrum, giving the girl a long slow look. ‘Pers’nally, I’ve found religion in battle is as much use as a chocolate helmet. You’ll need more than a prayer if Prince Heinrich catches you, I might add.’ ‘We’re going to try it, sarge,’ said Polly. ‘There’s nothing for us in the army.’ ‘Will you come with us, sarge?’ said Shufti. ‘No, lad. Me as a washerwoman? I doubt it. Don’t seem to have a skirt anywhere about me, for a start. Er . . . just one thing, lads. How are you going to get in?’ ‘In the morning. When we see the women going in again,’ said Polly. ‘Got it all planned, general? And you’ll be dressed as women?’ ‘Er . . . we are women, sarge,’ said Polly. ‘Yes, lad. Technical detail. But you kitted out the rupert with all your little knick-knacks, didn’t you? What’re you going to do, tell the guards you opened the wrong cupboard in the dark?’ Another embarrassed silence descended. Jackrum sighed. ‘This ain’t proper war,’ he said. ‘Still, I said I’d look after you. You are my little lads, I said.’ His eyes gleamed. ‘And you still are, even if the world’s turned upside down. I’ll just have to hope, Miss Perks, that you picked up a few tricks from ol’ sarge, although I reckon you can think of a few of your own. And now I’d better get you kitted up, right?’ ‘Perhaps we could sneak in and steal something from the villages where the servants come from?’ said Tonker. ‘From a bunch of poor women?’ said Polly, her heart sinking. ‘Anyway, there’d be soldiers everywhere.’ ‘Well, how do we get women’s clothes on a battlefield?’ said Lofty. Jackrum laughed, stood up, stuck his thumbs in his belt and grinned. ‘I told you, lads, you don’t know nuffin’ about war!’ he said. . . and one of the things they hadn’t known was that it has edges. Polly wasn’t certain what she’d expected. Men and horses, obviously. In her mind’s eye they were engaged in mortal combat, but you couldn’t go on doing that all day. So there would be tents. And that was about as far as the mind’s eye had seen. It hadn’t seen that an army on campaign is a sort of large, portable city. It has only one employer, and it manufactures dead people, but like all cities it attracts . . . citizens. What was unnerving was the sound of babies crying, off in the rows of tents. She hadn’t expected that. Or the mud. Or the crowds. Everywhere there were fires, and the smell of cooking. This was a siege, after all. People had settled in. Getting down on to the plain in the dark had been easy. There was only Polly and Shufti trailing after the sergeant, who’d said that more would be too many and in any case would show up. There were patrols, but their edge had been dulled by sheer repetitiveness. Besides, the allies weren’t expecting anyone to make much effort to get into the valley, at least in small groups. And men in the dark make a noise, far more noise than a woman. They’d located a Borogravian sentry in the gloom by the noise of him trying to suck a morsel of dinner out of his teeth. But another one had located them when they were a stone’s throw from the tents. He was young, so he was still keen. ‘Halt! Who goes there? Friend or foe!’ The light from a cooking-fire glinted off a crossbow. ‘See?’ whispered Jackrum. ‘This is where your uniform is your friend. Aren’t you glad you kept it?’ He swaggered forward, and spat tobacco between the young sentry’s boots. ‘My name’s Jackrum,’ he said. ‘That’s Sergeant Jackrum. As for the other bit . . . you choose.’ ‘Sergeant Jackrum?’ said the boy, his mouth staying open. ‘Yes, lad.’ ‘What, the one who killed sixteen men at the Battle of Zop?’ ‘There was only ten of ‘em, but good lad for knowin’ it.’ ‘The Jackrum who carried General Froc through fourteen miles of enemy territory?’ ‘That’s right.’ Polly saw teeth in the gloom as the sentry grinned. ‘My dad told me he fought with you at Blunderberg!’ ‘Ah, that was a hot battle, that was!’ said Jackrum. ‘No, he meant in the pub afterwards. He pinched your drink and you smacked him in the mouth and he kicked you in the nadgers and you hit him in the guts and he blacked your eye and then you hit him with a table and when he came round his mates stood him beer for the evening for managing to lay nearly three punches on Sergeant Jackrum. He tells the story every year, when it’s the anniversary and he’s pis— reminiscing.’ Jackrum thought for a moment, and then jabbed a finger at the young man. ‘Joe Hubukurk, right?’ he said. The smile broadened to the point where the top of the young man’s head was in danger of falling off. ‘He’ll be smirking all day when I tell him you remember him, sarge! He says that where you piss grass don’t grow!’ ‘Well, what can a modest man say to that, eh?’ said Jackrum. Then the young man frowned. ‘Funny, though, he thought you were dead, sarge,’ he said. ‘Tell him I bet him a shilling I’m not,’ said Jackrum. ‘And your name, lad?’ ‘Lart, sarge. Lart Hubukurk.’ ‘Glad you joined, are you?’ ‘Yes, sarge,’ said Lart loyally. ‘We’re just having a stroll, lad. Tell your dad I asked after him.’ ‘I will, sarge!’ The boy stood to attention like a one-man guard of honour. ‘This is a proud moment for me, sarge!’ ‘Does everyone know you, sarge?’ whispered Polly, as they walked away. ‘Aye, pretty much. On our side, anyway. I’ll make so bold as to declare that most of the enemy that meets me don’t know any hing much afterwards.’ ‘I never thought it was going to be like this!’ hissed Shufti. ‘Like what?’ said Jackrum. ‘There’s women and children! Shops! I can smell bread baking! It’s like a . . . a city.’ ‘Yeah, but what we’re after isn’t going to be in the main streets. Follow me, lads.’ Sergeant Jackrum, suddenly furtive, ducked between two big heaps of boxes and emerged beside a smithy, its forge glowing in the dusk. Here the tents were open-sided. Armourers and saddlers worked by lantern-light, shadows flickering across the mud. Polly and Shufti had to step out of the way of a mule train, each animal carrying two casks on its back; the mules moved aside for Jackrum. Maybe he’s met them before, too, ’thought Polly, maybe he really does know everyone. The sergeant walked like a man with the deeds to the world. He acknowledged other sergeants with a nod, lazily saluted the few officers there were around here, and ignored everybody else. ‘You been here before, sarge?’ said Shufti. ‘No, lad.’ ‘But you know where you’re going?’ ‘Correct. I ain’t been here, but I know battlefields, especially when everyone’s had a chance to dig in.’ Jackrum sniffed the air. ‘Ah, right. That’s the stuff. Just you two wait here.’ He disappeared between two stacks of lumber. They heard a distant muttering and, after a moment or two, he reappeared holding a small bottle. Polly grinned. ‘Is that rum, sarge?’ ‘Well done, my little bar steward. And wouldn’t it be nice if it was rum, upon my word. Or whisky or gin or brandy. But this don’t have none of those fancy names. This is the genuine stingo, this is. Pure hangman.’ ‘Hangman?’ said Shufti. ‘One drop and you’re dead,’ said Polly. Jackrum beamed, as a master to a keen pupil. ‘That’s right, Shufti. It’s rotgut. Wheresoever men are gathered together, someone will find something to ferment in a rubber boot, distil in an old kettle and flog to his mates. Made from rats, by the smell of it. Ferments well, does your average rat. Fancy a taste?’ Shufti shied away from the proffered bottle. The sergeant laughed. ‘Good lad. Stick to beer,’ he said. ‘Don’t the officers stop it?’ said Polly. ‘Officers? What do they know about anything?’ said Jackrum. ‘An’ I bought this off of a sergeant, too. Anyone watching us?’ Polly peered into the gloom. ‘No, sarge.’ Jackrum poured some of the liquid into one pudgy hand and splashed it on to his face. ‘Ye-ouch,’ he hissed. ‘Stings like the blazes. And now to kill the tooth worms. Got to do the job properly.’ He took a quick sip from the bottle, spat it out, and shoved the cork back in. ‘Muck,’ he said. ‘Okay, let’s go.’ ‘Where are we going, sarge?’ said Shufti. ‘You can tell us now, can’t you?’ ‘A quiet little place where our needs will be met,’ said Jackrum. ‘It’ll be around here somewhere.’ ‘You don’t half smell of drink, sarge,’ said Shufti. ‘Will they let you in if you smell drunk?’ ‘Yes, Shufti, lad, they will,’ said Jackrum, setting off again. ‘The reason being, my pockets jingle and I smell of booze. Everyone likes a rich drunk. Ah . . . down this little valley here, that’ll be our . . . yeah, I was right. This is the place. Tucked away, delicate like. See any clothes hanging out to dry, boys?’ There were a few washing lines strung behind the half-dozen or so drab tents in this side valley, which was little more than a wash gouged out by winter rains. If there had been anything on them it had been taken in against the heavy dew. ‘Shame,’ said Jackrum. ‘Okay, so we’ll have to do it the hard way. Remember: just act natural and listen to what I say.’ ‘I’m sh-shaking, sarge.’Shufti muttered. ‘Good, good, very natural,’ said Jackrum. ‘This is our place, I think. Nice and quiet, no one watching us, nice little path up there to the top of the wash . . .’ He stopped at a, very large tent and tapped on the board outside with his swagger stick. ‘The SoLid DoVes,’ Polly read. ‘Yeah, well, these ladies weren’t hired for their spelling,’ said Jackrum, pushing open the flap of the tent of ill repute. Inside was a stuffy little area, a sort of canvas antechamber. A lady, lumpy and crowlike in a black bombazine dress, rose from a chair and gave the trio the most calculating look Polly had ever met. It finished off by putting a price on her boots. The sergeant doffed his cap and in a jovial, rotund voice that peed brandy and crapped plum pudding said, ‘Good evening, madarml Sergeant Smith’s the name, yes indeed! An’ me and my bold lads here have been so fortunate as to acquire the spoils of war, if you catch my drift, and nothing would do for it but they were clamouring, clamouring to go to the nearest house of good repute for to have a man made of ‘em!’ Little beady eyes skewered Polly again. Shufti, ears glowing like signal beacons, was staring fixedly at the ground. ‘Looks like that’d be a job and a half,’ said the woman shortly. ‘You never spoke a truer word, madarm!’ beamed Jackrum. ‘Two of your fair flowers apiece should do it, I reckon.’ There was a clink as, staggering slightly, Jackrum put several gold coins on the rickety little table. Something about the gleam of them thawed things no end. The woman’s face cracked into a smile as glutinous as slug gravy. ‘Well now, we are always honoured to entertain the Ins-and-Outs, sergeant,’ she said. ‘If you . . . gentlemen would like to step through to the, er, inner sanctum?’ Polly heard a very faint sound behind her, and turned. She hadn’t noticed the man sitting on a chair just inside the door. He had to be a man, because trolls weren’t pink; he made Eyebrow back in Plün look like some kind of weed. He wore leather, which was what she’d heard creaking, and he had his eyes just slightly open. When he saw her looking at him, he winked. It wasn’t a friendly wink. There are times when a plan suddenly isn’t going to work. When you’re in the middle of it is not the time to find this out. ‘Er, sarge,’ she said. The sergeant turned, saw her frantic grimace, and appeared to spot the guard for the first time. ‘Oh dear, where’s my manners?’ he said, lurching back and fumbling in his pocket. He came up with a gold coin which he folded in the astonished man’s hand. Then he turned round, tapping the side of his nose with an expression of idiol knowingness. ‘A word of advice, lads,’ he said. ‘Always give the guard a tip. He keeps the riff-riff-raff out, very important. Very important man.’ He stumbled back to the lady in black, and belched hugely. ‘And now, madarm, if we can meet these visions of loveliness you are hiding under this here bushel?’ he said. It depended, Polly thought a few seconds later, on how and when and after drinking how much of what whether you had those visions. She knew about these places. Serving behind a bar can really broaden your education. There were a number of ladies back home who were, as her mother put it, ‘no better than they should be’, and at twelve years old Polly had got a slap for asking how good they should have been, then. They were an Abomination unto Nuggan, but men have always found space in their religion for a little sinning here and there. The word to describe the four ladies seated in the room beyond, if you wanted to be kind, was ‘tired’. If you didn’t want to be kind a whole range of words were just hanging in the air. They looked up without much interest. ‘This is Faith, Prudence, Grace and Comfort,’ said the lady of the house. ‘The night shift has not yet come on, I’m afraid.’ ‘I’m sure these beauties will be a great education for my roaring boys,’ said the sergeant. ‘But . . . may I be so bold as to enquire about your name, mad arm?’ ‘I’m Mrs Smother, sergeant.’ ‘And do you have a first name, may I ask?’ ‘Dolores,’ said Mrs Smother, ‘to my . . . special friends.’ ‘Well now, Dolores,’ said Jackrum, and there was another jingle of coins in his pocket, ‘I will come right out with it and be frank, because I can see you are a woman of the world. These frail blossoms are all very well in their way, for I know the fashion these days is for ladies with less meat on ‘em than a butcher’s pencil, but a gentleman such as me, who has been around the world and seen a thing or two, well, he learns the value of . . . maturity.’ He sighed. ‘Not to mention Hope and Patience.’ The coins jingled again. ‘Perhaps you and I might retire to some suitable boodwah, mad arm, and discuss the matter over a cordial or two?’ Mrs Smother looked from the sergeant to the ‘lads’, glanced back in the anteroom, and looked back at Jackrum with her head on one side and a thin, calculating smile on her lips. ‘Ye-es,’ she said. ‘You’re a fine figure of a man, Sergeant Smith. Let us take a load off your . . . pockets, shall we?’ She joined arm-in-arm with the sergeant, who winked roguishly at Polly and Shufti. ‘We’re well set, then, lads!’ he chuckled. ‘Now, just so’s you don’t get carried away, when it’s time to go I’ll blow my whistle and you better finish what you’re doin’, haha, and meet me sharpish. Duty calls! Remember the fine tradition of the Ins-and Outs!’ Giggling and almost tripping up, he left the room on the arm of the proprietress. Shufti sidled hurriedly up to Polly and whispered: ‘Is sarge all right, Ozzer?’ ‘He’s just had a bit too much to drink,’ said Polly loudly, as all four of the girls stood up. ‘But he—’ Shufti got a nudge in the ribs before she could say any more. One of the girls carefully laid down her knitting, took Polly’s arm, flashed her finely crafted expression of interest and said, ‘You’re a well-set-up young man, aren’t you . . . what’s your namer dear? I’m Grade.’ ‘Oliver,’ said Polly. And what the hell is the fine tradition of the Ins-and-Outs? ‘Ever seen a woman with no clothes on before, Oliver?’ The girls giggled. Polly’s brow wrinkled as, just for a moment, she was caught unawares. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course.’ ‘Ooo, it looks like we’ve got ourselves a regular Don Joo-ann, girls,’ said Gracie, stepping back. ‘We may have to send out for reinforcements! Why don’t you an’ me and Prudence go off to a little nook I know, and your little friend will be the guest of Faith and Comfort. Comfort’s very good with young men, ain’t you, Comfort?’ Sergeant Jackrum had been wrong in his description of the girls. Three of them were indeed several meals short of a healthy weight, but when Comfort got up out of her large armchair you realized that it had, in fact, been quite a small armchair and had mostly been Comfort. For a large woman she had a small face, locked in a piggy-eyed scowl. There was a death’s head tattoo on one arm. ‘He’s young,’ said Gracie. ‘He’ll heal. Come along, Don Joo-ann . . .’ In a way, Polly was relieved. She didn’t take to the girls. Oh, the profession could bring anyone down, but she’d got to know some of her town’s ladies of uneasy virtue and they had an edge she couldn’t find here. ‘Why do you work here?’ she said, as they entered a smaller, canvas-walled room. There was a rickety bed taking up most of the space. ‘You know, you look a bit too young to be that sort of customer,’ said Gracie. ‘What sort?’ said Polly. ‘Oh, a holy joe,’ said Gracie. ‘ “What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?” and all that stuff. Feel sorry for us, do you? At least if someone cuts up rough we’ve got Garry outside and after he’s finished with the bloke the colonel gets told and the bastard gets bunged in clink.’ ‘Yeah,’ said Prudence. ‘From what we hear we’re the safest ladies within twenty-five miles. Old Smother’s not too bad. We get money to keep and we get fed and she don’t beat us, which is more than can be said for husbands, and you can’t wander around loose, now, can you?’ Jackrum put up with Blouse because you’ve got to have an officer, Polly thought. If you don’t have an officer, some other officer’ll take you over. And a woman by herself as missing a man, while a man by himself is his own master. Trousers. That’s the secret. Trousers and a pair of socks. I never dreamed it was like this. Put on trousers and the world changes. We walk different. We act different. I see these girls and I think: idiots! Get yourself some trousers! ‘Can you please get your clothes off?’ she said. ‘I think we’d better hurry.’ ‘One of the Ins-and-Outs, this one,’ said Gracie, slipping her dress off her shoulders. ‘Keep an eye on your cheeses, Pru!’ ‘Er . . . why does that mean we’re in the Ins-and-Outs?’ said Polly. She made a show of unbuttoning her jacket, wishing that she believed in anyone there to pray to so that she could pray for the whistle. ‘That’s ‘cos you lads always have your eye on business,’ said Gracie. And maybe there was someone listening, at that. The whistle blew. Polly grabbed the dresses and ran out, oblivious of the yells behind her. She collided with Shufti outside, tripped over the groaning form of Garry, saw Sergeant Jackrum holding the tent flap open, and bulleted into the night. ‘This way!’ the sergeant hissed, grabbing her by the collar before she’d gone a few feet and swinging her round. ‘You too, Shufti! Move!’ He ran up the side of the wash like a child’s balloon being blown by the wind, leaving them to scramble after him. His arms were full of clothing, which snagged and danced behind him. Up above was knee-deep scrub, treacherous in the gloom. They tripped and staggered across it until they reached heavier growth, whereupon the sergeant got hold of both of them and pushed them into the bushes. The shouts and screams were fainter now. ‘Now we’ll just keep quiet, like,’ he whispered. ‘There’s patrols about.’ ‘They’ll be bound to find us,’ Polly hissed, while Shufti wheezed. ‘No, they won’t,’ said Jackrum. ‘First, they’ll all be running towards the shoutin’, because that’s natur— there they go . . .’ Polly heard more shouts in the distance. ‘And bloody fools they are, too. They’re supposed to be guarding the perimeter, and they’re running towards trouble in the camp. And they’re running straight towards lamplight, so there goes their night eyes! If I was their sergeant they’d be due a fizzer! C’mon.’ He stood up, and hauled Shufti to her feet. ‘Feeling all right, lad?’ ‘It w-was horrible, sarge! One of them put her hand . . . on . . . on my socks!’ ‘Something that doesn’t often happen, I’ll bet any man,’ said Jackrum. ‘But you did a good job. Now, we’ll walk nice and quiet, and no more talking ‘til I say, okay?’ They plodded on for ten minutes, skirting the camp. They heard several patrols, and saw a couple of others on the hilltops as the moon rose, but it dawned on Polly that, loud though the shouting had been, it was only part of the huge patchwork of sound that rose from the camp. The patrols this far away probably hadn’t heard it, or at least were commanded by the kinds of soldiers who didn’t want to get put on a fizzer. In the dark, she heard Jackrum take a deep breath. ‘Okay, that’s far enough. Not a bad job of work, lads. You’re real Ins-and-Outs now!’ ‘That guard was out cold,’ said Polly. ‘Did you hit him?’ ‘Y’see, I’m fat,’ said Jackrum. ‘People don’t think fat men can fight. They think fat men are funny. They think wrong. Gave ‘im a chop to the windpipe.’ ‘Sarge!’ said Shufti, horrified. ‘What? What? He was coming at me with his club!’ said Jackrum. ‘Why was he doing that, sarge?’ said Polly. ‘Ooh, you cunning soldier, you,’ said Jackrum. ‘All right, I grant you that I’d just given madarm the ol’ quietus, but to be fair I know when someone’s just handed me a bleedin’ drink full o’ sleepy drops.’ ‘You hit a woman, sarge?’ said Polly. ‘Yeah, and maybe when she wakes up in her corsets she’ll decide that next time a poor ol’ drunk fat man wanders in it mightn’t be such a good idea to try to roll him for his wad,’ growled Jackrum. ‘I’d be in a ditch wi’out my drawers on and a damned great headache if she’d had her way, and if you two was daft enough to complain to an officer she’d swear black was blue that I didn’t have a penny on me when I came in and was drunk and disorderly. And the colonel wouldn’t care a fig, ‘cos he’d reckon a sergeant daft enough to get caught like that had it coming to him. I know, you see. I look after my lads.’ There was a clink in the dark. ‘Plus a few extra dollars won’t go amiss.’ ‘Sarge, you didn’t steal the cashbox, did you?’ said Polly. ‘Yeah. Got a good armful of her wardrobe, too.’ ‘Good!’ said Shufti fervently. ‘It wasn’t a nice place!’ ‘It was mostly my money in any case,’ said Jackrum. ‘Business has been a bit slow today, by the feel of it.’ ‘But it’s immoral earnings!’ said Polly, and then felt a complete fool for saying it. ‘No,’ said Jackrum. ‘It was immoral earnings, now it’s the proceeds of common theft. Life’s a lot easier when you learns to think straight.’ Polly was glad there was no mirror. The best that could be said for the squad’s new clothing was that it covered them up. But this was a war. You seldom saw new clothes on anybody. Yet they felt awkward. And there was no sense in that at all. But they looked at one another in the chilly light of dawn and giggled in embarrassment. Wow, Polly thought, look at us: dressed as women. Oddly enough, it was Igorina who really looked the part. She’d disappeared into the other tumbledown room carrying her pack. For ten minutes the squad had heard the occasional grunt or ‘ouch’, and then she’d returned with a full head of fair, shoulder-length hair. Her face was the right shape, missing the lumps and bumps they’d come to know. And the stitches on her forehead shrank and disappeared as Polly watched in astonishment. ‘Doesn’t that hurt?’ she said. ‘It smarts a bit for a few minutes,’ said Igorina. ‘You just have to have the knack. And the special ointment, of course.’ ‘But why’s there a curved scar on your cheek now?’ said Tonker. ‘And those stitches are staying.’ Igorina looked down demurely. She’d even restyled one of the dresses into a dirndl, and looked like a fresh young maid from the beer cellar. Just to look at her was to mentally order a large pretzel. ‘You’ve got to have something to show,’ she said. ‘Otherwise you’re letting down the clan. And actually I think the stitches are rather fetching . . .’ ‘Well, okay,’ Tonker conceded. ‘But lisp a bit, will you? I know this is completely wrong, but now you look, oh, I don’t know . . . weird, I suppose.’ ‘Okay, line up,’ said Jackrum. He stood back, and gave them a look of theatrical disdain. ‘Well, I’ve never seen such a lot of scrubb— washerwomen in all my life,’ he said. ‘I wish you all the luck you’re bleeding well gonna need. There’ll be someone watching the door for you to come out, and that’s all I can promise. Private Perks, you’re acting, unpaid corporal on this one. I hope you’ve picked up one or two little lessons on our stroll. In and out, that’s what you should do. No famous last stands, please. When in doubt, kick ‘em in the nadgers and scarper. Mind you, if you frighten them like you frighten me, you should have no trouble.’ ‘Are you sure you won’t join us, sarge?’ said Tonker, still trying not to laugh. ‘No, lad. You won’t get me in skirts. Everyone has their place, right? The place where they draw the line? Well, that’s mine. I’m pretty steeped in sin, one way and another, but Jackrum always shows his colours. I’m an old soldier. I’ll fight like a soldier does, in the ranks, on the battlefield. Besides, if Ixwent in there simpering in petticoats I’d never hear the end of it. ‘The Duchess says there is a d-different path for Sergeant Jackrum,’ said Wazzer. ‘And I don’t know if you don’t frighten me worst of all, Private Goom,’ said Jackrum. He hitched up his equatorial belt. ‘You’re right, though. When you’re inside I shall nip down, nice and quiet, and slip into our lines. If I can’t raise a little diversionary attack, my name’s not Sergeant Jackrum. And since it is Sergeant Jackrum, that proves it. Hah, there’s plenty of men in this man’s army that owe me a favour’ - he gave a little sniff - ‘or wouldn’t say no to my face. And plenty of likely lads who’ll want to tell their grandchildren they fought alongside Jackrum, too. Well, I’ll give ‘em their chance at real soldierin’.’ ‘Sarge, it’ll be suicide to attack the main gates!’ said Polly. Jackrum slapped his belly. ‘See this lot?’ he said. ‘It’s like having yer own armour. Bloke once stuck a blade in this up to the hilt and was as surprised as hell when I nutted him. Anyway, you lads’ll be making so much fuss the guards will be distracted, right? You’re relying on me, I’m relying on you. That’s milit’ry, that is. You give me a signal, any signal. That’s all I’ll need.’ ‘The Duchess says your path takes you further,’ said Wazzer. ‘Oh yeah?’ said Jackrum jovially. ‘And where’s that, then? Somewhere with a good pub, I hope!’ ‘The Duchess says, um, it should lead to the town of Scritz,’ said Wazzer. She said it quietly while the rest of the squad were laughing, less at the comment than as a way of losing some of the tension. But Polly heard it. Jackrum really, really was good, she thought. The fleeting expression of terror was gone in an instant. ‘Scritz? Nothing there,’ he said. ‘Dull town.’ ‘There was a sword,’ said Wazzer. Jackrum was ready this time. There was not a flicker of expression, just the blank face that he was so good at. And that was odd, Polly thought, because there should have been something, even if it was only puzzlement. ‘Handled lots of swords in my time,’ he said dismissively. ‘Yes, Private Halter?’ ‘There’s one thing you didn’t tell us, sarge,’ said Tonker, lowering her hand. ‘Why is the regiment called the Ins-and-Outs?’ ‘First into battle, last out of the fray,’ said Jackrum automatically. ‘So why are we nicknamed the Cheesemongers?’ ‘Yes,’ said Shufti. ‘Why, sarge? Because the way those girls were talking, it sounded like it’s something we ought to know.’ Jackrum made a clicking noise of exasperation. ‘Oh, Tonker, why the hell did you wait ‘til you’d got your trousers off before asking me that? I’ll feel embarrassed telling yer now!’ And Polly thought: that’s bait, right? You want to tell us. You want to get any conversation away from Scritz . . . ‘Ah,’ said Tonker. ‘It’s about sex, then, is it?’ ‘Not as such, no . . .’ ‘Well, tell me, then,’ said Tonker. ‘I’d like to know before I die. If it makes you feel any better I’ll nudge people and go gnher, gnher, gnher. ’ Jackrum sighed. ‘There’s a song,’ he said. ‘It starts “Twas on a Monday morning, all in the month of May—’ ‘Then it is about sex,’ said Polly flatly. ‘It’s a folk song, it starts with ‘twas, it takes place in May, QED it’s about sex. Is a milkmaid involved? I bet there is.’ ‘There could be,’ Jackrum conceded. ‘Going for to market? For to sell her wares?’ said Polly. ‘Very likely.’ ‘O-kay. That gives us the cheese. And she meets, let’s see, a soldier, a sailor, a jolly ploughboy or just possibly a man clothed all in leather, I expect? No, since it’s about us, it’ll be a soldier, right? And since it’s one of the Ins-and-Outs . . . oh dear, I feel a humorous double-entendre coming on. Just one question: what item of her clothing fell down or came untied?’ ‘Her garter,’ said Jackrum. ‘You’ve heard it before, Perks.’ ‘No, but I just know how folk songs go. We had folk singers in the lower bar for six months back horn— where Iworked. In the end we had to get a man in with a ferret. But you remember stuff . . . oh, no . . .’ ‘Was there canoodling, sarge?’ said Tonker, grinning. ‘Kayaking, I expect,’ said Igorina, to general sniggering. ‘No, he stole the cheese, didn’t he?’ sighed Polly. ‘As the poor girl was lying there waiting for her garter to be tied, hem hem, he damn well made off with her cheese, right?’ ‘Er . . . not damn. Not with the skirt on, Ozz,’ Tonker warned. ‘Then it’s not Ozz, either,’ said Polly. ‘Fill yer hat with bread, fill yer boots with soup! And steal the cheese, eh, sarge?’ ‘That’s right. We’ve always been a very practical regiment,’ said Jackrum. ‘An army marches on its stomach, lads. On mine, o’ course, it could troop the colour!’ ‘It was her own fault. She should have been able to tie up her own garters,’ said Lofty. ‘Yeah. Probably wanted her cheese stolen,’ said Tonker. ‘Wise words,’ said Jackrum. ‘Off you go, then . . . cheesemongers!’ The mist was still thick as they made their way down through the woods to the path by the river. Polly’s skirt kept catching in brambles. It must have done so before she’d joined up, but she’d never noticed it so much. Now it was seriously hindering her. She reached up and absent-mindedly adjusted the socks, which she’d separated to use as padding elsewhere. She was too skinny, that was the trouble. The ringlets had been useful there. They said ‘girl’. In their absence, she had to rely on a scarf and a socks change. ‘All right,’ she whispered, as the ground levelled out. ‘Remember, no swearing. Giggle, don’t snigger. No belching. No weapons, either. They can’t be that stupid in there. Anyone brought a weapon?’ There was a shaking of heads. ‘Did you bring a weapon, Tonk— Magda?’ ‘No, Polly.’ ‘No item of any sort with a certain weapon-like quality?’ Polly insisted. ‘No, Polly,’ said Tonker demurely. ‘Anything, perhaps, with an edge?’ ‘Oh, you mean this?’ ‘Yes, Magda.’ ‘Well, a woman can carry a knife, can’t she?’ ‘It’s a sabre, Magda. You’re trying to hide it, but it’s a sabre.’ ‘But I’m only using it like a knife, Polly.’ ‘It’s three feet long, Magda.’ ‘Size isn’t important, Polly.’ ‘No one believes that. Leave it behind a tree, please. That is an order.’ ‘Oh, all right!’ After a while, Shufti, who had appeared to be thinking deeply, said: ‘I can’t understand why she didn’t just tie up her own garter . . .’ ‘Shuft, what the hell—’ Tonker began. ‘—heck,’ Polly corrected her, ‘and you’re talking to Betty, remember.’ ‘What the heck are you talking about, Betty?’ said Tonker, rolling her eyes. ‘Well, the song, of course. And you don’t have to lie down to tie a garter in any case. It’d be more difficult,’ said Shufti. ‘It’s all a bit silly.’ No one said anything for a while. It was, perhaps, easy to see why Shufti was on her quest. ‘You’re right,’ said Polly eventually. ‘It’s a silly song.’ ‘A very silly song,’ Tonker agreed. They all agreed. It was a silly song. They stepped out on to the river path. Ahead of them a small group of women were hurrying round the bend in the track. Automatically, the squad looked up. The keep grew out of the sheer cliff; it was hard to see where the unhewn rock ended and the ancient masonry began. They could see no windows. From here, it was just a wall extending to the sky. No way in, it said. No way out. In this wall are few doors, and triey close with finality. This close to the deep, slow river, the air was bone-chillingly cold, and grew colder the higher they looked. Around the curve they could see the little rock shelf where the back door was, and the women ahead of them talking to a guard. ‘This is not going to work,’ said Shufti under her breath. ‘They’re showing him some papers. Anyone brought theirs? No?’ The soldier had looked up and was watching the girls, with that blank official expression of someone who was not looking for excitement or adventure in his life. ‘Keep moving,’ murmured Polly. ‘If it all gets really bad, burst into tears.’ ‘That’s disgusting,’ said Tonker. Their treacherous feet were taking them closer all the time. Polly kept her eyes downwards, as was proper in an unmarried woman. There would be others watching, she knew it. They’d probably be bored, they might not be expecting any trouble, but up on those walls there were eyes fixed on her. They reached the guard. Just inside the narrow stone doorway there was another one, lounging in the shadow. ‘Papers,’ said the guard. ‘Oh, sir, I have none,’ said Polly. She’d been working out the speech on the way down through the wood. War, fears of invasion, people fleeing, no food . . . you didn’t have to make things up, you just had to reassemble reality. ‘I had to leave—’ ‘Oh, right,’ the guard interrupted. ‘No papers? No problem! If you’d just step in and see my colleague? Nice of you to join us!’ He stood aside and waved a hand towards the dark entrance. Mystified, Polly stepped inside, with the others following. Behind them, the door swung shut. Inside, she saw that they were in a long passage with many slits in the walls to rooms on either side. Lamplight shone from the slits. She could see shadows beyond them. Bowmen concealed there could turn anyone trapped in here into mince. At the end of the corridor another door swung open. It led into a small room in which there sat, at a desk, a young man in a uniform Polly didn’t recognize, although it had a captain’s insignia. Standing to one side was a much, much larger man in the same uniform, or possibly two uniforms stitched together. He had a sword. There was that about him: when this man held a sword, it was clearly being held, and held by him. The eye was drawn to it. Even Jade would have been impressed. ‘Good morning, ladies,’ said the captain. ‘No papers, eh? Take off your scarves, please.’ And that’s it, thought Polly, as the bottom of her stomach dropped away. And we thought we were being clever. There was nothing for it but to obey. ‘Ah. You’ll tell me your hair was shaved off as a punishment for fraternizing with the enemy, eh?’ said the man, barely looking up. ‘Except for you,’ he added to Igorina. ‘Didn’t feel like fraternizing with any enemies? Something wrong with decent Zlobenian boys?’ ‘Er . . . no,’ said Igorina. Now the captain gave them a bright little smile. ‘Gentlemen, let’s not mess about, shall we? You walk wrong. We do watch, you know. You walk wrong and you stand wrong. You,’ he pointed to Tonker, ‘have got a bit of shaving soap under one ear. And you, sir, are either deformed or you’ve tried the old trick of sticking a pair of socks down your vest.’ Crimson with embarrassment and humiliation, Polly hung her head. ‘Getting in or out disguised as washerwomen,’ said the captain, shaking his head. ‘Everyone outside this stupid country knows that one, lads, but most of them make more effort than you boys. Well, for you the war is over. This place has got big, big dungeons and I don’t mind telling you you’re probably going to be better off in here than outside— Yeah, what do you want?’ Shufti had raised a hand. ‘Can I show you something?’ she said. Polly didn’t turn, but watched the captain’s face as, beside Polly, cloth rustled. She couldn’t believe it. Shufti was raising her skirt. . . ‘Oh,’ said the captain, sitting back in his chair. His face went red. There was an explosion from Tonker, but it was an explosion of tears. They came out accompanied by a long, mournful wail, as she threw herself on to the floor. ‘We walked so-oo far! We lay in ditches to hide from soldiers! There’s no food! We want to work! You called us boys! Why are you so-oo cruel?’ Polly knelt down and half picked her up, patting her on the back as Tonker’s shoulders heaved with the force of her sobs. ‘It’s been very hard for all of us,’ she said to the red-faced captain. ‘If you can take him down I can garrotte the other one with my apron string,’ whispered Tonker in her ear, between howls. ‘Have you seen everything you wish to see?’ said Polly to the blushing captain, every syllable tinkling with ice. ‘Yes! No! Yes! Please!’ said the captain, giving the guard the agonized glance of a man who knows that he’s going to be the laughing stock of the whole fort inside the hour. ‘Once was quite— I mean, I’ve seen . . . look, I’m completely satisfied. Private, go and fetch one of the women from the laundry. I am so sorry, ladies, I . . . I have a job to do . . .’ ‘Do you enjoy it?’ said Polly, still freezing. ‘Yes!’ said the captain hurriedly. ‘I mean, no! No, yes! We have to be careful . . . ah . . .’ The big soldier had returned, trailing a woman. Polly stared. ‘Some, er, new volunteers,’ said the captain, waving vaguely towards the squad. ‘I’m sure Mrs Enid will have some use for them . . . er . . .’ ‘Certainly, captain,’ said the woman, curtsying demurely. Polly still stared. ‘Off you go . . . ladies,’ said the captain. ‘And if you’re hard workers Mrs Enid will I am sure give you a pass so’s we don’t have this trouble again . . . er . . .’ Shufti put both hands on his desk, leaned towards him and said ‘Boo’. His chair hit the wall. ‘I may not be clever,’ she said to Polly. ‘But I’m not stupid.’ But Polly was still staring at Lieutenant Blouse. He’d curtsied surprisingly well. The soldier escorted them along a tunnel which opened on to a ledge overlooking what was either a cave or a room; it was at that level in the keep where there was not much difference. This wasn’t a laundry, but clearly some hot, damp afterlife for those who required punishment with extra scrubbing. Steam rolled across the ceiling, condensed, and dripped on to a floor that was already running with water. And it went on for ever, washtub after washtub. Women moved like ghosts through the drifting, tumbling clouds of fog. ‘There you go, ladies,’ he said, and slapped Blouse on the rump. ‘See you tonight, then, Daphne?’ ‘Oh, yes!’ trilled Blouse. ‘Five o’clock, then,’ said the soldier, and ambled off down the corridor. ‘Daphne?’ said Polly, when the man had gone. ‘My “nom de guerre”,’ said Blouse. ‘I still haven’t found a way out of the lower areas but the guards all have keys and I shall have his key in my hand by half past five. Pardon?’ ‘I think Tonker - sorry, Magda - just bit her tongue,’ said Polly. ‘Her? Oh, yes. Well done for staying in character, er . . .’ ‘Polly,’ said Polly. ‘Good choice of name,’ said Blouse, leading the way down some steps. ‘It’s a good common, maidservanty sort of name.’ ‘Yes, that’s what I thought,’ said Polly gravely. ‘Er . . . Sergeant Jackrum not with you, then?’ said the lieutenant, with a trace of nervousness. ‘No, sir. He said he was going to lead a charge on the main gates, sir, if we sent him a signal. I hope he doesn’t try without one.’ ‘Good heavens, the man’s mad,’ said Blouse. ‘Splendid effort from the lads, though. Well done. You’d definitely pass for women to the casual observer.’ ‘Coming from you, Daphne, that is a big compliment,’ said Polly, thinking: gosh, I’m really good at keeping a straight face. ‘But you didn’t need to come after me,’ said Blouse. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t get a signal to you, but Mrs Enid allowed me to stay overnight, you see. The guards don’t do so many checks at night so I made use of my time to look for ways into the upper keep. All gated or really heavily guarded, I’m afraid. However, Private Hauptfidel has taken rather a shine to me . . .’ ‘Well done, sir!’ said Polly. ‘Sorry, I want to be clear, sir,’ said Tonker. ‘You have a date with a guard.’ ‘Yes, and I’ll suggest we go somewhere dark and then when I’ve got what I want I shall break his neck,’ said Blouse. ‘Isn’t that going a bit far on a first date?’ said Tonker. ‘Sir, did you have any trouble getting in?’ said Polly. This had been nagging at her. It seemed so unfair. ‘No, not at all. I just smiled and wiggled my hips and they waved me through. What about you?’ ‘Oh, we had a little bit,’ said Polly. ‘It was a bit hair— it was a bit awkward for a moment or two.’ ‘What did I tell you?’ said Blouse triumphantly. ‘It’s all down to thespian ability! But you were plucky lads to try it. Come and meet Mrs Enid. A very loyal lady. The brave womenfolk of Borogravia are on our side!’ And, indeed, there was a picture of the Duchess in the alcove that served the laundry mistress for an office. Mrs Enid wasn’t a particularly large woman but she had forearms like Jade, a soaking wet apron, and the most mobile mouth Polly had ever seen. Her lips and tongue drew out every word like a big shape in the air; the laundresses, in a cavern full of hissing steam, echoes, falling water and the thud of wet clothes on stone, watched lips when ears were overwhelmed. When she was listening her mouth moved all the time, too, like someone trying to dislodge a piece of nut from a tooth. She wore her sleeves rolled up above her elbows. She listened impassively as Blouse introduced the squad. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘Right. You leave your lads here with me, sir. You ought to get back to the pressing room.’ When Blouse had bounced and wobbled back through the steam, Mrs Enid looked them all up and down, and then straight through. ‘Lads,’ she grunted. ‘Hah! That’s all he knows, eh? For a woman to wear the clothes of a man is an Abomination in the Eyes of Nuggan!’ ‘But we’re dressed as women, Mrs Enid,’ said Polly meekly. Mrs Enid’s mouth moved ferociously. Then she folded her arms. It was like a barricade going up against all that was ungodly. ‘It’s not right,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a son and a husband prisoner in this place and I’m working meself to the bone for the enemy just so’s I can keep an eye on ‘em. They’re gonna invade, y’know. It’s amazing what we hear down here. So what good’s rescuing your men going to do ‘em when we’re all under the heel of the Zlobenian hand-painted clog, eh?’ ‘Zlobenia will not invade,’ said Wazzer confidently. ‘The Duchess will see to it. Be not afraid.’ Wazzer got given the sort of look she always got when someone heard her for the first time. ‘Been praying, ‘ave yer?’ said Mrs Enid kindly. ‘No, just listening,’ said Wazzer. ‘Nuggan talks to you, does he?’ ‘No. Nuggan is dead, Mrs Enid,’ said Wazzer. Polly took Wazzer’s matchstick-thin arm and said: ‘Excuse us a moment, Mrs Enid.’ She hustled the girl behind a huge, water-driven clothes mangle. It heaved and clanked as a background to their conversation. ‘Wazzer, this is getting . . .’ Polly’s native tongue had no word for ‘freaky’, but if she had known about the word she would have welcomed its inclusion ‘. . . strange. You’re worrying people. You can’t just go around saying that a god is dead.’ ‘Gone, then. Dwindled . . . I think,’ said Wazzer, her brow furrowing. ‘No longer with us . . .’ ‘We still get the Abominations.’ Wazzer tried to concentrate. ‘No, they’re not real. They’re like . . . echoes. Dead voices in an ancient cave, bouncing back and forth, the words changing, making nonsense . . . like flags that were used for signals but now just flap in the wind . . I Wazzer’s eyes went unfocused and her voice altered, became more adult, more certain ‘. . . and they come from no god. There is no god here now.’ ‘So where do they come from?’ ‘From your fear . . . They come from the part that hates the Other, that will not change. They come from the sum of all your pettiness and stupidity and dullness. You fear tomorrow, and you’ve made your fear your god. The Duchess knows this.’ The water-mangle creaked onwards. Around Polly the boilers hissed, water gushed in the runnels. The air was loaded with the smells of soap and damp cloth. ‘I don’t believe in the Duchess, either,’ said Polly. ‘That was just trickery in the woods. Anyone’d look round. It doesn’t mean I believe in her.’ ‘That doesn’t matter, Polly. She believes in you.’ ‘Really?’ Polly glanced around the steaming, dripping cave. ‘Is she here, then? Has she graced us with her presence?’ Wazzer had no concept of sarcasm. She nodded. ‘Yes.’ Yes. Polly looked behind her. ‘Did you just say yes?’ she demanded. ‘Yes,’ said Wazzer. Yes. Polly relaxed. ‘Oh, it’s an echo. This is a cave, after all. Uh . . .’ . . . which doesn’t explain why my voice doesn’t come bouncing back . . . ‘Wazz . . . I mean, Alice?’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Yes, Polly?’ said Wazzer. ‘I think it would be a really good idea if you don’t talk too much about this to the others,’ she said. ‘People don’t mind believing in, you know, gods and so on, but they get very nervous if you tell them they’re showing up. Er . . . she’s not going to show up, is she?’ ‘The person you don’t believe in?’ said Wazzer, showing a flash of spirit. ‘I’m . . . not saying she doesn’t exist,’ said Polly weakly. ‘I just don’t believe in her, that’s all.’ ‘She’s very weak,’ said Wazzer. ‘I hear her crying in the night.’ Polly sought for further information in the pinched-up face, hoping that in some way Wazzer was making fun of her. But nothing but puzzled innocence looked back. ‘Why does she cry?’ she said. ‘The prayers. They hurt her.’ Polly spun round when something touched her shoulder. It was Tonker. ‘Mrs Enid says we’re to get to work,’ she said. ‘She says the guards come round and check . . .’ It was women’s work, and therefore monotonous, backbreaking and social. It had been a long time since Polly had got her hands in a washtub, and the ones here were long wooden troughs, where twenty women could work at once. Arms on either side of her squeezed and pummelled, wrung out garments and slapped them into the rinsing trough behind them. Polly joined in, and listened to the buzz of conversation around her. It was gossip, but bits of information floated in it like bubbles in the washtub. A couple of guards had ‘taken liberties’ - that is, more than had already been taken - and had apparently been flogged for it. This caused much comment along the tub. Apparently some big milord from Ankh-Morpork was in charge of things and had ordered it. He was some kind of wizard, said the woman opposite. They said he could see things happening everywhere, and lived on raw meat. They said he had secret eyes. Of course, everyone knew that that city was the home of Abominations. Polly, industriously rubbing a shirt on a washboard, thought about this. And thought ^bout a lowland buzzard in this upland country, and some creature so fast and stealthy that it was only a suggestion of shadow . . . She took a spell on the copper boilers, ramming the stewing garments under the bubbling surface, and noted that in this place without weapons of any sort she was using a heavy stick about three feet long. She enjoyed the work, in a dumb kind of way. Her muscles did all the necessary thinking, leaving her brain free. No one knew for sure that the Duchess was dead. It more or less didn’t matter. But Polly was sure of one thing. The Duchess had been a woman. Just a woman, not a goddess. Oh, people prayed to her in the hope that their pleas would be gift-wrapped and sent on to Nuggan, but that gave her no right to mess with the heads of people like Wazzer, who had enough trouble as it was. Gods could do miracles, Duchesses posed for pictures. Out of the corner of her eye Polly saw a line of women taking large baskets from a platform at the end of the room and stepping out through another doorway. She dragged Igorina away from the wash trough and told her to join them. ‘And notice everything!’ she added. ‘Yes, corp,’ said Igorina. ‘Because I know one thing,’ said Polly, waving at the piles of damp linen, ‘and it’s that this lot will need the breeze . . .’ She went back to work, occasionally joining in the chatter for the look of the thing. It wasn’t hard. The washerwomen kept away from some subjects, particularly ones like ‘husbands’ and ‘sons’. But Polly picked up clues here and there. Some were in the keep. Some were probably dead. Some were out there, somewhere. Some of the older women wore the Motherhood Medal, awarded to women whose sons had died for Borogravia. The bastard metal was corroding in the damp atmosphere, and Polly wondered if the medals had arrived in a letter from the Duchess, with her signature printed on the bottom and the son’s name squeezed up tight to fit the space: We honour and congratulate you , Mrs L. Lapchic of Well Lane, Manx, on the death of your son Otto PwtrHanLapcbic on June 25 at ██ The place was always censored in case it brought aid and comfort to the enemy. It astonished Polly to find that the cheap medals and thoughtless words did, in a way, bring aid and comfort to the mothers. Those in Munz who had received them wore them with a sort of fierce, indignant pride. She wasn’t sure she trusted Mrs Enid very much. She had a son and a husband up in the cells, and she’d had a chance to weigh up Blouse. She’d be asking herself: what’s more likely, that he gets them all out and keeps them safe, or that there’s going to be an almighty mess which might well harm us all? And Polly couldn’t blame her if she went with the evidence . . . She was aware of someone talking to her. ‘Hmm?’ she said. ‘Look at this, will you?’ said Shufti, waving a sodden pair of men’s long pants at her. ‘They keep putting the colours in with the whites!’ ‘Well? So what? These are enemy longjohns,’ said Polly. ‘Yes, but there’s such a thing as doing it properly! Look, they put in this red pair and all the others are going pink!’ ‘And? I used to love pink when I was about seven.’* * It is an established fact that, despite everything society can do, girls of seven are magnetically attracted to the colour pink. ‘But pale pink? On a man?’ Polly looked at the next tub for a moment, and patted Shufti on the shoulder. ‘Yes. It is very pale, isn’t it? You’d better find a couple more red items,’ she said. ‘But that’d make it even worse—’ Shufti began. ‘That was an order, soldier,’ Polly whispered in her ear. ‘And add some starch.’ ‘How much?’ ‘All you can find.’ Igorina returned. Igorina had good eyes. Polly wondered if they’d ever belonged to someone else. She gave Polly a wink and held up a thumb. It was, to Polly’s relief, one of her own. In the huge ironing room, only one person was working at the long boards when Polly, taking advantage of the temporary absence of Mrs Enid, hurried in. It was ‘Daphne’. All the rest of the women were gathered round, as if they were watching a demonstration. And they were. ‘—the collar, d’you see,’ said Lieutenant Blouse, flourishing the big, steaming, charcoal-filled iron. ‘ Then the sleeve cuffs and finally the sleeves. Do one front half at a time. You should hang them immediately but, and here’s a useful tip, don’t iron them completely dry. It’s really a matter of practice, but—’ Polly stared in fascinated wonder. She’d hated ironing. ‘Daphne, could I have a word?’ she said, during a pause. Blouse looked up. ‘Oh, P . . . Polly,’ he said. ‘Um, yes, of course.’ ‘It’s amazing what Daphne knows about pleat lines,’ said a girl, in awe. ‘ And press cloths!’ ‘I am amazed,’ said Polly. Blouse handed the iron to the girl. ‘There you are, Dympha,’ he said generously. ‘Remember: always iron the wrong side first, and only ever do the wrong side on dark linens. Common mistake. Coming, Polly.’ Polly kicked her heels for a while outside, and one of the girls came up with a big pile of fresh-smelling ironing. She saw Polly, and leaned close as she went past. ‘We all know he’s a man,’ she said. ‘But he’s having such fun and he irons like a demon!’ ‘Sir, how do you know about ironing?’ said Polly, when they were back in the washing room. ‘Had to do my own laundry back at HQ,’ said Blouse. ‘Couldn’t afford a gel and the batman was a strict Nugganite and said it was girls’ work. So I thought, well, it can’t be hard, otherwise we wouldn’t leave it to women. They really aren’t very good here. You know they put the colours and the whites together?’ ‘Sir, you know you said you were going to steal a gate key off a guard and break his neck?’ said Polly. ‘Indeed.’ ‘Do you know how to break a man’s neck, sir?’ ‘I read a book on martial arts, Perks,’ said Blouse, a little severely. ‘But you haven’t actually done it, sir?’ ‘Well, no! I was at HQ, and you are not allowed to practise on real people, Perks.’ ‘You see, the person whose neck you want to break will have a weapon at that moment and you, sir, won’t,’ said Polly. ‘I have tried out the basic principle on a rolled-up blanket,’ said Blouse reproachfully. ‘It seemed to work very well.’ ‘Was the blanket struggling and making loud gurgling noises and kicking you in the socks, sir?’ ‘The socks?’ said Blouse, puzzled. ‘In fact I think your other idea would be better, sir,’ said Polly hurriedly. ‘Yes . . . my, er . . . other idea . . . which one was that, exactly?’ ‘The one where we escape from the washhouse via the clothes-drying area, sir, after silently disabling three guards, sir. There’s a kind of moving room down the corridor over there, sir, which gets winched all the way to the roof. Two guards go up there with the women, sir, and there’s another guard up on the roof. Acting together, we’d take out each unsuspecting guard, which would be more certain than you against an armed man, with all due respect, sir, and that would leave us very well positioned to go anywhere in the keep via the rooftops, sir. Well done, sir!’ There was a pause. ‘Did I, er, go into all that detail?’ said Blouse. ‘Oh, no, sir. You shouldn’t have to, sir. Sergeants and corporals deal with the fine detail. Officers are there to see the big picture.’ ‘Oh, absolutely. And, er . . . how big was this particular picture?’ said Blouse, blinking. ‘Oh, very big, sir. A very big picture indeed, sir.’ ‘Ah,’ said Blouse, and straightened up and assumed what he considered to be the expression of one with panoramic vision. ‘Some of the ladies here used to work in the upper keep, sir, when it was ours,’ Polly went on quickly. ‘Anticipating your order, sir, I had the squad engage them in light conversation about the layout of the place, sir. Being aware of the general thrust of your strategy, sir, I think I have found a route to the dungeons.’ She paused. It had been good flannelling, she knew. It was almost worthy of Jackrum. She’d larded it with as many ‘sirs’ as she dared. And she was very proud of ‘anticipating your order’. She hadn’t heard Jackrum use it, but with a certain amount of care it was an excuse to do almost anything. ‘General thrust’ was pretty good, too. ‘Dungeons,’ said Blouse thoughtfully, momentarily losing sight of the big picture. ‘In fact I thought I said—’ ‘Yessir. Because, sir, if we can get a lot of the lads out of the dungeons, sir, you’ll be in command inside the enemy’s citadel, sir!’ Blouse grew another inch, and then sagged again. ‘Of course, there are some very senior officers here. All of them senior to me—’ ‘Yessir!’ said Polly, well on the way to graduating from the Sergeant Jackrum School of Outright Rupert Management. ‘Perhaps we’d better try to let the enlisted men out first, sir? We don’t want to expose the officers to enemy fire.’ It was shameless and stupid, but now the light of battle was in Blouse’s eyes. Polly decided to fan it, just in case. ‘Your leadership has really been a great example to us, sir,’ she said. ‘Has it?’ ‘Oh, yes, sir.’ ‘No officer could have led a finer bunch of men, Perks,’ said Blouse. ‘Probably they have, sir,’ said Polly. ‘And what man could dare hope for such an opportunity, eh?’ said Blouse. ‘Our names will go down in the history books! Well, mine will, obviously, and I shall jolly well see to it that you chaps get a mention too. And who knows? Perhaps I may win the highest accolade that a gallant officer may obtain!’ ‘What’s that, sir?’ said Polly dutifully. ‘Having either a foodstuff or an item of clothing named after one,’ said Blouse, his face radiant. ‘General Froc got both, of course. The frock coat and Beef Froc. Of course, I could never aspire that high.’ He looked down bashfully. ‘But I have to say, Perks, that I have devised several recipes, just in case!’ ‘So we’ll be eating a Blouse one day, sir?’ said Polly. She was watching the baskets being stacked. ‘Possibly, possibly, if I may dare hope,’ said Blouse. ‘Er . . . my favourite is a sort of pastry ring, d’you see, filled with cream and soaked in rum—’ ‘That’s a Rum Baba, sir,’ said Polly absently. Tonker and the others were watching the stacked baskets, too. ‘It’s been done?’ ‘ ‘fraid so, sir.’ ‘How about . . . er . . . a dish of liver and onions?’ ‘It’s called liver-and-onions, sir. Sorry,’ said Polly, trying not to lose concentration. ‘Er, er, well, it has struck me that some dishes are named after people when really they just made a little change to a basic recipe—’ ‘We must go now, sir! Now or never, sir!’ ‘What? Oh. Right. Yes. We must go!’ It was a military manoeuvre hitherto unrecorded. The squad, coming from different directions on Polly’s signal, arrived at the baskets just ahead of the women who’d proposed to take them up, grabbed the handles and advanced. Only then did she realize that probably no one else wanted the job, and the women were only too happy to let idiot newcomers take the strain. The baskets were big and the wet washing was heavy. Wazzer and Igorina could barely lift one basket between them. A couple of soldiers were waiting by the door. They looked bored, and paid little attention. It was a long walk to the ‘elevator’. Polly hadn’t been able to picture it when it had been described. You had to see it. It really was just a big open box of heavy timbers, attached to a thick rope, which ran up and down in a sort of chimney in the rock. When they were aboard, one of the soldiers hauled on a much thinner rope that disappeared up into the darkness. The other one lit a couple of candles, whose only apparent role was to make the darkness more gloomy. ‘No fainting now, girls!’ he said. His mate chuckled. Two of them and seven of us, Polly thought. The copper stick banged against her leg as she moved, and she knew for a fact that Tonker was limping because she had strapped a washing dolly under her dress. That was for serious washerwomen; it was a long stick with what looked like a three-legged milking stool on the end of it, the better for agitating clothes in a big cauldron of boiling water. You could probably smash a skull with it. The stone walls dropped past as the platform rose. ‘How thrilling!’ trilled ‘Daphne’. ‘And this goes all the way up through your big castle, does it?’ ‘Oh, no, miss. Gotta go up through the rock first, miss. Lots of old workings and everything before we get that high.’ ‘Oh, I thought we were in the castle already.’ Blouse gave Polly a worried look. ‘No, miss. There’s just the washhouse down there, ‘cos of the water. Hah, it’s a climb and a half even to the lower cellars. Lucky for you there’s this elevator, eh?’ ‘Wonderful, sergeant,’ said Blouse, and allowed Daphne back. ‘How does it work?’ ‘It’s corporal, miss,’ said the string-puller, touching his forelock. ‘It’s pulled up and down by pris’ners in a treadmill, miss.’ ‘Oh, how horrid!’ ‘Oh no, miss, it’s quite humane. Er . . . if you’re free after work, er, I could take you up and show you the mechanism . . .’ ‘That would be lovely, sergeant!’ Polly put her hand over her eyes. Daphne was a disgrace to womanhood. The elevator rumbled upwards, quite slowly. Mostly they passed raw rock but sometimes there were ancient gratings or areas of masonry, suggestive of tunnels long ago blocked— There was a jerk, and the platform stopped moving. One of the soldiers swore under his breath, but the corporal said, ‘Don’t be afraid, ladies. This often happens.’ ‘Why should we be afraid?’ said Polly. ‘Well, because we’re hanging by a rope a hundred feet up the shaft and the lifting machinery’s thrown a cog.’ ‘Again,’ said the other soldier. ‘Nothing works properly here.’ ‘Sounds like a good reason to me,’ said Igorina. ‘How long will it take to repair?’ said Tonker. ‘Hah! Last time it happened we were stuck for an hour!’ Too long, Polly thought. Too many things could happen. She looked up through the beams in the roof. The square of daylight was a long way up. ‘We can’t wait,’ she said. ‘Oh dear, who will save us?’ Daphne quavered. ‘We’ll have to find a way to pass the time, eh?’ said one of the guards. Polly sighed. That was one of those phrases, like ‘Well, lookee what we have here’, that meant things were only going to get a lot worse. ‘We know how it is, ladies,’ the guard went on. ‘Your menfolk away, and all. It’s as bad for us, too. I can’t remember when I last kissed my wife.’ ‘And I can’t remember when I last kissed his wife, either,’ said the corporal. Tonker jumped up, caught a beam, and chinned herself to the top of the box. The elevator shook and, somewhere, a piece of rock dislodged and crashed down the shaft. ‘Hey, you can’t do that!’ said the corporal. ‘Where does it say?’ said Tonker. ‘Polly, there’s one of those filled-in tunnels here, only most of the stones have been knocked out. We could get in easily.’ ‘You can’t get out! We’ll get into trouble!’ said the corporal. Polly pulled his sword out of his scabbard. The space was too crowded to do much with it except threaten, but she had it, not him. It made a huge difference. ‘You’re already in trouble,’ she said. ‘Please don’t force me to make it worse. Let’s get out of here. Is that okay, Daphne?’ ‘Dm . . . yes, of course,’ said Blouse. The other guard laid a hand on his own sword. ‘Okay, girls, this has gone—’ he began, and then slumped. Shufti lowered her copper stick. ‘I hope I didn’t hit him too hard,’ she said. ‘Who cares? Come on, I can give you all a hand up,’ said Tonker. ‘Igorina, could you have a look at him, and—’ Shufti began nervously. ‘He’s a man, and he’s groaning,’ said Tonker from above. ‘That’s good enough for me. Come on.’ The lone guard watched as the others were womanhandled on to the beams. ‘Er, excuse me,’he said to Polly, as she helped Blouse up. ‘Yes? What?’ ‘Would you mind giving me a wallop on the back of the head?’ he said, looking wretched. ‘Only it looks like I didn’t put up a fight against a bunch of women.’ ‘Why don’t you put up a fight?’ said Polly, narrowing her eyes. ‘We’re only a bunch of women.’ ‘I’m not crazy!’ said the guard. ‘Here, let me,’ said Igorina, producing her stick. ‘Blows to the head are potentially harmful and should not be undertaken lightly. Turn round, sir. Remove your helmet, please. Would twenty minutes’ unconsciousness be okay?’ ‘Yes, thanks very mu—’ The guard folded up. ‘I really hope I didn’t hurt the other one,’ moaned Shufti, from above. ‘He’s swearing,’ said Polly, removing his sword. ‘That sounds like he’s okay.’ She handed up the candles, and then was hauled on to the trembling roof of the elevator. When she had a firm footing in the mouth of the tunnel she found a sliver of stone and stamped it hard into the space between the shaft wall and the wooden frame, which shook. It wasn’t going anywhere for a while. Tonker and Lofty were already investigating the tunnel. By candlelight, it looked like good masonry beyond the clumsy attempt at walling it up. ‘It must be cellars,’ said Tonker. ‘I reckon they must’ve made the shaft not long ago and just walled up where it cut through. Could have done a better job, too.’ ‘Cellars are close to dungeons,’ said Polly. ‘Now, pinch out one candle, because that way we’ll have light for twice as long, and then—’ ‘Perks, a word please?’ said Blouse. ‘Over here?’ ‘Yessir.’ When they were standing a little apart from the rest of the squad, Blouse lowered his voice and said: ‘I don’t wish to discourage initiative, Perks, but what are you doing?’ ‘Er . . . anticipating your orders, sir.’ ‘Anticipating them?’ ‘Yessir.’ ‘Ah. Right. This is still small-picture stuff, is it?’ ‘Exactly, sir.’ ‘Then ray orders, Perks, are to proceed with speed and caution to release the prisoners.’ ‘Well done, sir. We’ll go through this . . . this—’ ‘Crypt,’ said Igorina, looking round. The candle blew out. Somewhere ahead of them, in darkness absolute and velvet thick, stone moved on stone. ‘I wonder why this passage was sealed up?’ said the voice of Blouse. ‘I think I’ve stopped wondering why it was sealed up in such a hurry,’ said Tonker. ‘I wonder who tried to open it?’ said Polly. There was a crash of, as it might be, a heavy slab falling off an ornate tomb. It could have been half a dozen other things but, somehow, that was the image that sprang to rnind. The dead air moved a little. ‘I don’t want to worry anyone,’ said Shufti, ‘but I can hear the sound of sort of feet, sort of dragging.’ Polly remembered the man lighting the candles. He’d dropped the bundle of matches into the brass saucer of the candlestick, hadn’t he? Moving her hand slowly, she groped for them. ‘If you didn’t want to worry anyone,’ came the voice of Tonker from the dry, thick darkness, ‘why the hell did you just tell us that?’ Polly’s fingers found a sliver of wood. She raised it to her nose, and sniffed the sulphurous smell. ‘I’ve got one match,’ she said. ‘I’m going to try to light the candle again. Everyone look for a way out. Ready?’ She sidled to the invisible wall. Then she scratched the match down the stone, and yellow light filled the crypt. Someone whimpered. Polly stared, candle forgotten. The match went out. ‘O-kay,’ said the subdued voice of Tonker. ‘Walking dead people. So?’ ‘The one near the archway was the late General Puhloaver!’ said Blouse. ‘I have his book on The Art ofDefence.’ ‘Best not to ask him to autograph it, sir,’ said Polly, as the squad bunched together. There was the whimpering again. It seemed to come from where Polly remembered Wazzer standing. She heard her praying. There were no words that she could make out, just a fierce and urgent whispering. ‘Maybe these washing sticks can slow them down a bit?’ Shufti quavered. ‘More than being dead already?’ said Igorina. No, a voice whispered, and light filled the crypt. It was barely brighter than a glow-worm, but single photon can do a lot of work in chthonic darkness. It rose above the kneeling Wazzer until it was woman height, because it was a woman. Or, at least, it was the shadow of a woman. No, Polly saw, it was the light of a woman, a moving web of lines and highlights in which there came and went, like pictures in a fire, a female shape. ‘Soldiers of Borogravia . . . attention!’ said Wazzer. And underneath her reedy little tone was a shadow voice, a whisper that filled and refilled the long room. Soldiers of Borogravia . . . attention! Soldiers . . . Soldiers, attention! Soldiers of Borogravia . . . The lurching figures stopped. They hesitated. They shuffled backwards. With a certain amount of clattering and tongueless bickering, they formed two lines. Wazzer stood up. ‘Follow me,’ she said. Follow me . . . . . . me . . . ‘Sir?’ said Polly to Blouse. ‘I think we go, don’t you?’ said the lieutenant, who seemed oblivious of Wazzer’s activities now he was in the presence of the military might of the centuries. ‘Oh, god . . . there’s Brigadier Galosh! And Major-general the Lord Kanapay! General Annorac! I’ve read everything he wrote! I never thought I’d see him in the flesh!’ ‘ Partly flesh, sir,’ said Polly, dragging him forward. ‘Every great commander of the last five hundred years was buried here, Perks!’ ‘I’m very pleased for you, sir. If we could just move a little faster . . .’ ‘It is my fondest hope that I’ll spend the rest of eternity here, you know.’ ‘Wonderful, sir, but not starting today. Can we catch up with the rest of them, sir?’ As they passed, hand after ragged hand was raised in jerky salute. Staring eyes gleamed in hollow faces. The strange light glistened on dusty braid and stained, faded cloth. And there was a noise, harsher than the whispering, deep and guttural. It sounded like the creaking of distant doors, but individual voices rose and fell as the squad passed the dead figures . . . Death to Zlobenia . . . get them . . . remember . . . give them hell . . . vengeance . . . remember . . . they’re not human . . . avenge us . . . revenge . . . Up ahead, Wazzer had reached some high wooden doors. They swung open at her touch. The light travelled with her, and the squad were on her heels. To be too far behind was to be in the dark. ‘Couldn’t I just ask Major-general—’ Blouse began, dragging on Polly’s hand. ‘No! You can’t! Don’t dawdle! Come on!’ Polly commanded. They reached the doors, which Tonker and Igorina slammed behind them. Polly leaned against the wall. ‘I think that was the most . . . most amazing moment of my life,’ said Blouse, as the boom died away. ‘I think this is mine,’ said Polly, fighting for breath. Light still glowed around Wazzer, who turned to face the squad with an expression of beatific pleasure. ‘You must speak to the High Command,’ she said. You must speak to the High Command, whispered the walls. ‘Be kind to this child.’ Be kind to this child . . . . . . this child . . . Polly caught Wazzer before she hit the ground. ‘What is happening with her?’ said Tonker. ‘I think the Duchess really is speaking through her,’ said Polly. Wazzer was unconscious, only the whites of her eyes showing. Polly laid her down gently. ‘Oh, come on! The Duchess is just a painting! She’s dead!’ Sometimes you give in. For Polly, that time had been the length of time it took to walk through the crypt. If you don’t believe, or don’t want to believe, or if you don’t simply hope that there’s something worth believing in, why turn round? And if you don’t believe, who are you trusting to lead you out of the grip of dead men? ‘Dead?’ she said. ‘So what? What about the old soldiers back there;, who haven’t faded away? What about the light? And you heard how Wazzer’s voice sounded.’ ‘Yeah, but . . . well, that sort of thing doesn’t happen to people you know,’ said Tonker. It happens to . . . well, strange religious people. I mean, a few days ago she was learning how to fart loudly!’ ‘She?’ whispered Blouse to Polly. ‘She? Why is—’ Once again a part of Polly’s mind overtook the sudden panic. ‘Sorry, Daphne?’ she said. ‘Oh . . . yes . . . of course . . . can’t be too . . . yes . . .’ the lieutenant murmured. Igorina knelt down by the girl and put a hand on her forehead. ‘She’s on fire,’ she said. ‘She used to pray all the time back at the Grey House,’ said Lofty, kneeling down. ‘Yeah, well, there was a lot to pray about, if you weren’t strong,’ growled Tonker. ‘And every bloody day we had to pray to the Duchess to thank Nuggan for slops you wouldn’t give to a pig! And that damn picture everywhere, that fishy stare . . . I hate it! It could drive you mad. That’s what happened to Wazz, right? And now you want me to believe the fat old biddy is alive and treating our friend there like some . . . puppet or something? I don’t believe that. And if it’s true, it shouldn’t be!’ ‘She’s burning up, Magda,’ said Lofty quietly. ‘D’you know why we joined up?’ said Tonker, red in the face. ‘To get away! Anything was better than what we had! I’ve got Lofty and Lofty’s got me, and we’re sticking with you because there’s nothing else for us. Everyone says the Zlobenians are terrible, right? But they’ve never done anything to us, they’ve never hurt us. If they want to come over here and hang a few bastards, I could give ‘em a list! Everywhere there’s something bad happening, everywhere the small-minded bullies are inventing new cruelties, new ways of keeping us down, that bloody face is watching! And you say it’s here?’ ‘ We’re here,’ said Polly. ‘And you are here. And we’re going to do what we came to do and get out, understand? You kissed the picture, you took the shilling!’ ‘I damn well didn’t kiss her face! And a shilling’s the least they owe me!’ ‘Then go!’ shouted Polly. ‘Desert! We won’t stop you, because I’m sick of your . . . your bullshit! But you make up your mind right now, right now, understand? Because when we meet the enemy I don’t want to think you’re there to stab me in the back!’ The words flew out before she could stop them, and there was no power in the world that could snatch them back. Tonker went pale, and a certain life drained out of her face like water from a funnel. ‘ What was that you said?’ The words ‘You heard me!’ lined up to spring from Polly’s tongue, but she hesitated. She told herself: it doesn’t have to go this way. You don’t have to let a pair of socks do the talking. ‘Words that were stupid,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.’ Tonker settled slightly. ‘Well . . . all right, then,’ she said grudgingly. ‘Just so long as you know we’re in this for the squad, okay? Not for the army and not for the bloody Duchess.’ ‘That was a treasonable speech, Private Halter!’ said Lieutenant Blouse. Everyone but Polly had forgotten about him, and he stood there like an easy man to forget. ‘However,’ he went on, ‘I realize we’re all somewhat . . .’ he looked down at his dress ‘. . . confused and, er, bewildered by the pace of events . . .’ Tonker tried to avoid Polly’s eye. ‘Sorry, sir,’ she muttered, glowering. ‘I must make it clear that I will not stand to hear such things repeated,’ said Blouse. ‘No, sir.’ ‘Good,’ said Polly quickly. ‘So let’s—’ ‘But I will overlook it this time,’ Blouse went on. Polly could see Tonker snap. The head was raised slowly. ‘You’ll overlook it?’ said Tonker. ‘You will overlook it?’ ‘ Careful,’ said Polly, just loud enough for Tonker to hear. ‘Let me tell you something about us, lieutenant,’ said Tonker, grinning horribly. ‘We are here, private, whoever we are,’ snapped Polly. ‘Now let’s find the cells!’ ‘Um . . .’ said Igorina, ‘we’re quite close, I think. I can see a sign. Um. It’s at the end of this passage. Um . . . just behind those three rather puzzled armed men with the, um . . . efficient-looking crossbows. Um. I think what you’ve just been saying was important and needed to be said. Only, um . . . not just now, perhaps? And not so loudly?’ Only two guards were watching them now, raising their bows cautiously. The other was running away down the passage, shouting. The squad, as one man, or woman, shared the thoughts. They’ve got bows. We haven’t. They’ve got reinforcements behind them. We haven’t. All we’ve got is a darkness full of the restless dead. We haven’t even got a prayer any more. Blouse made an effort, nevertheless. In the tones of Daphne he shrilled: ‘Oh, officers . . . we seem to have got lost on the way to the ladies’ room . . .’ They were not put into a dungeon, although they were marched past plenty. There were lots of bleak stone corridors, lots of heavy doors with bars and lots and lots of bolts, and lots of armed men whose job, presumably, only became interesting if all the bolts disappeared. They were put into a kitchen. It was huge, and clearly not the kind of place where people chopped herbs and stuffed mushrooms. In a gloomy, grimy, soot-encrusted hall like this, cooks had probably catered for hundreds of hungry men. Occasionally the door was opened and shadowy figures stared in at them. No one had said anything, at any time. ‘They were expecting us,’ muttered Shufti. The squad were sitting on the floor with their backs to a huge, ancient chopping block, except for Igorina, who was tending to the still-unconscious Wazzer. ‘They couldn’t have got that elevator up by now,’ said Polly. ‘I wedged that stone in good and hard.’ ‘Then maybe the washerwomen gave us away,’ said Tonker. ‘I didn’t like the look of Mrs Enid.’ ‘It doesn’t matter now, does it?’ said Polly, “is that the only door?’ ‘There’s a storeroom at the other end,’ said Tonker. ‘No exit, except a grille in the floor.’ ‘Could we get out that way?’ ‘Only diced.’ They stared glumly at the distant door. It had opened again, and there was some muffled conversation amongst the silhouettes beyond. Tonker had tried advancing on the open doorway, and found men with swords suddenly occupying it. Polly turned to look at Blouse, who was slumped against the wall, staring blankly upwards. ‘I’d better go and tell him,’ she said. Tonker shrugged. Blouse opened his eyes and smiled wanly when Polly approached. ‘Ah, Perks,’ he said. ‘We almost made it, eh?’ ‘Sorry we let you down, sir,’ said Polly. ‘Permission to sit, sir?’ ‘Treat the rather chilly flagstones as if they were your own,’ said Blouse. ‘And it was I that let you down, I’m afraid.’ ‘Oh, no, sir—’ Polly protested. ‘You were my first command,’ said Blouse. ‘Well, apart from Corporal Drebb and he was seventy and only had one arm, poor chap.’ He pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘All I had to do was get you to the valley. That was all. But, no, I foolishly dreamed of a world where everyone would one day wear a Blouse. Or eat one, possibly. I should have listened to Sergeant Jackrum! Oh, will I ever look my dear Emmeline in the face again?’ ‘I don’t know, sir,’ said Polly. ‘That was meant to be more of a rhetorical cry of despair than an actual question, Perks,’ said Blouse. ‘Sorry, sir,’ said Polly. She took a deep breath, ready for the plunge into the icy depths of the truth. ‘Sir, you ought to know that—’ ‘And I’m afraid once they realize we aren’t women we’ll be put in the big dungeons,’ the lieutenant went on. ‘Very big, and very dirty, I’m told. And very crowded.’ ‘Sir, we are women, sir,’ said Polly. ‘Yes, well done, Perks, but we don’t have to pretend any more.’ ‘You don’t understand, sir. We really are women. All of us.’ Blouse grinned nervously. ‘I think you’ve got a little . . . confused, Perks. I seem to recall that the same thing happened to Wrigglesworth—’ ‘Sir—’ ‘—although I have to say he was very good at choosing curtains—’ ‘ No, sir. I was a— I am a girl, and I cut my hair and pretended I was a boy and took the Duchess’s shilling, sir. Take my word for it, sir, because I really don’t want to have to draw you a picture. We played a trick on you, sir. Well, not a trick, really, but we, all of us, had reasons for being somewhere else, sir, or at least not being where we were. We lied.’ Blouse stared at her. ‘You’re sure?’ ‘Yes, sir. I am of the female persuasion. I check every day, sir.’ ‘And Private Halter?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘ And Lofty?’ ‘Oh, yes, sir. Both of them, sir. Don’t go there, sir.’ ‘What about Shufti?’ ‘Expecting a baby, sir.’ Suddenly, Blouse looked terrified. ‘Oh, no. Here? ’ ‘Not for several months, sir, I believe.’ ‘And poor little Private Goom?’ ‘A girl, sir. And Igor is really an Igorina. And wherever she is, Carborundum is really Jade. We’re not sure about Corporal Maladict. But the rest of us definitely have pink blankets, sir.’ ‘But you didn’t act like women!’ ‘No, sir. We acted like men, sir. Sorry, sir. We just wanted to find our men or get away or prove a point or something. Sorry it had to happen to you, sir.’ ‘You’re sure about all this, are you?’ What are you expecting me to say? Polly thought. ‘Whoops, now I come to think about it, yes, we’re really^men after all’? She settled for saying: ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘So . . . you’re not called Oliver, then?’ It seemed to Polly that the lieutenant was having a lot of difficulty with all this; he kept asking the same basic question in different ways, in the hope of getting something other than the answer he didn’t want to hear. ‘No, sir. I’m Polly, sir—’ ‘Oh? Do you know there is a song about—’ ‘Yes, sir,’ said Polly firmly. ‘Believe me, I’d rather you didn’t even hum it.’ Blouse stared at the far wall, eyes slightly unfocused. Oh dear, Polly thought. ‘You took a terrible risk,’ he said distantly. ‘A battlefield is no place for women.’ ‘This war isn’t staying on battlefields. At a time like this, a pair of trousers is a girl’s best friend, sir.’ Blouse fell silent again. Suddenly, Polly felt very sorry for him. He was a bit of a fool, in that special way very clever people have of being foolish, but he wasn’t a bad man. He’d been decent to the squad and he’d cared about them. He didn’t deserve this. ‘Sorry you had to be involved, sir,’ she said. Blouse looked up. ‘Sorry?’ he said, and to her amazement he was looking more cheerful than he had all day. ‘Good heavens, you don’t have to be sorry. Do you know anything about history, Polly?’ ‘Can we stick with Perks, sir? I’m still a soldier. No, I don’t know much history, sir. At least, much that I trust.’ ‘Then you’ve never heard of the Amazon warriors of Samothrip? The most fearsome fighting force for hundreds of years. All women! Absolutely merciless in battle! They were deadly with the longbow, although in order to get maximum draw they had to cut off one of their, um . . . er . . . I say, you ladies haven’t been cutting off your, um, er . . .’ ‘No, we haven’t cut off any um ers, sir. Only hair.’ Blouse looked incredibly relieved. ‘Well, and then there’s the female bodyguards of King Samuel in Howandaland. All seven feet tall, I understand, and deadly with the spear. Throughout Klatch, of course, there are many stories of female warriors, often fighting alongside their men. Fearsome and fearless, I believe. Men would desert rather than face females, Perks. Couldn’t deal with ‘em.’ Once again, Polly felt the slightly unbalanced feeling of having tried to jump a hurdle that turned out not to be there. She took refuge in: ‘What do you think’s going to happen now, sir?’ ‘I haven’t a clue, Perks. Um . . . what’s wrong with young Goom? Some kind of religious mania?’ ‘Could be, sir,’ said Polly guardedly. ‘The Duchess talks to her.’ ‘Oh dear,’ said Blouse. ‘She—’ The door opened. A dozen soldiers filed in and spread out on either side. They had a variety of uniforms - mostly Zlobenian, but several Polly recognized now as Ankh-Morporkic or whatever they called it. They were all armed, and held their weapons like men who expected to use them. When they had lined up and were glaring at the squad, a smaller group of men stepped in. Again, there was a variety of uniforms, but they were a lot more expensive. These were worn by officers - high-ranking ones, to judge by the expressions of disdain. The tallest of them, made taller by his high, plumed cavalry helmet, stared along his nose at the women. He had pale blue eyes, and his face suggested that he did not really want to see anything at all in this room unless it had been thoroughly cleaned first. ‘Who is the officer here?’ he said. He sounded like a lawyer. Blouse stood up and saluted. ‘Lieutenant Blouse, sir, Tenth Infantry.’ ‘I see.’ The man looked at his fellow officers. ‘I believe we can dispense with the guard now, don’t you? This matter should be handled quietly. And for heaven’s sake can’t we find this man a pair of trousers?’ There were a few murmurs. The man nodded to the sergeant of the guard. The armed men filed out, and the door shut behind them. ‘My name is Lord Rust,’ said the man. <I head the Ankh-Morpork detachment here. At least,’ and he sniffed, “the military detachment. You have been treated well? You have not been manhandled? I see there is a . . . young lady on the floor.’ ‘She’s in a swoon, sir,’ said Polly. The blue eyes lighted upon her. ‘You would be—?’ he said. ‘Corporal Perks, sir,’ said Polly. There were some baiely suppressed smiles from the officers. ‘Ah. I believe you are the one seeking her brother?’ said Lord Rust. ‘How do you know my name?’ said Polly. ‘We are an, mm, efficient army,’ said Rust, and treated himself to a little smile of his own. ‘Your brother’s name is Paul?’ ‘Yes!’ ‘We shall locate him, eventually. And I understand another lady was seeking her young man?’ Shufti curtsied nervously. ‘Me, sir.’ ‘Again, we shall locate him, if you give us his name. Now, please listen to me carefully. You, Miss Perks, and the rest of you, will be taken from here, tonight, entirely unharmed, and escorted back into your country as far as our patrols can take you, which, I suspect, will be quite a long way. Is that understood? You will have what you came for. Won’t that be nice? And you will not return here. The troll and the vampire have been captured. The same offer applies to them.’ Polly was watching the officers. They looked nervous . . . . . . except for one at the back. She’d thought all the guards had gone and, while this man was dressed like a guard - dressed, that is, like a badly dressed guard - he wasn’t acting like one. He was leaning against the wall by the door, smoking half a cigar, and grinning. He looked like a man enjoying a show. ‘Very generously,’ Rust went on, ‘this offer applies to you too, Lieutenant . . . Blouse, wasn’t it? But in your case you would be on parole in a house in Zlobenia, very pleasant I understand, healthy walks in the countryside and all that sort of thing. This offer has not been extended to your superior officers here, I may add.’ So why make it to us? Polly thought. Are you frightened? Of a bunch of girls? That makes no sense . . . Behind the officers, the man with the cigar winked at Polly. His uniform was very old-fashioned - an ancient helmet, a breastplate, some slightly rusted chain mail, and big boots. He wore it like a workman wears his overalls. Unlike the braid and brilliance in front of her, the only statement his clothes made was that he didn’t intend to get hurt. They had no insignia that Polly could see, apart from a small shield hooked on to the breastplate. ‘If you will excuse me a moment,’ said Blouse, ‘I will consult with my men.’ ‘Men?’ said Rust. ‘They’re a bunch of women, man!’ ‘But at this moment, sir,’ said Blouse coolly, ‘I would not exchange them for any six men you offered me. If you gentlemen would care to wait outside?’ Behind the group, the badly dressed man burst into silent laughter. His sense of humour was not shared by the rest of the group, however. ‘You cannot possibly consider refusing this offer!’ said Lord Rust. ‘Nevertheless, sir,’ said Blouse. ‘We will take a few minutes. I think the ladies would prefer some privacy. One of them is expecting a child.’ ‘What, here?’ As one man, the group drew back. ‘Not yet, I believe. But if you would just step outside—’ When the officers had retreated to the masculine safety of the corridor the lieutenant turned to his squad. ‘Well, men? For you, it is a very attractive offer, I have to say.’ ‘Not for us,’ said Tonker. Lofty nodded. ‘Nor me,’ said Shufti. ‘Why not?’ said Blouse. ‘You would get your husband.’ ‘That might be a bit difficult,’ mumbled Shufti. ‘Anyway, what about the invasion?’ ‘I’m not going to be sent home like a package,’ said Igorina. ‘Anyway, that man has an objectionable bone structure.’ ‘Well, Private Goom can’t join us right now,’ sighed Blouse. ‘So that leaves you, Polly.’ ‘Why are they doing this?’ said Polly. ‘Why do they want us out of the way? Why aren’t they just leaving us locked up? This place must be full of cells.’ ‘Ah, perhaps they are sensible of the frailties of your sex,’ said Blouse, and then fried in their stares. ‘I didn’t say I was,’ he added quickly. ‘They could just kill us,’ said Tonker. ‘Well, they could,’ she added. ‘Why not? Who’d care? I don’t think we count as prisoners of war.’ ‘But they haven’t,’ said Polly. ‘And they’re not even threatening us. They’re being very careful. I think they’re frightened of us.’ ‘Oh, yeah, right,’ said Tonker. ‘Maybe they think we’re going to chase them and give them a big wet sloppy kiss?’ ‘Good, then we’re agreed that we’re not going to accept,’ said Blouse. ‘Damn right . . . oh, I do apologize . . .’ ‘We all know the words, sir,’ said Polly. ‘I suggest we see how much we frighten them, sir.’ The officers were waiting with unconcealed impatience, but Rust managed a brief smile when he stepped back into the kitchen. ‘Well, lieutenant?’ he said. ‘We have given your offer due consideration, sir,’ said Blouse, ‘and our reply is: stick it up your . . .’ He leaned down to Polly, who whispered urgently. ‘Who? Oh, yes, right. Your jumper, sir. Stick it, in fact, up your jumper. Named after Colonel Henri Jumper, I believe. A useful woollen garment akin to a lightweight sweater, sir, which if I recall correctly was named after Regimental Sergeant-Major Sweat. That, sir, is where you may stick it.’ Rust received this calmly, and Polly wondered whether it was because he hadn’t understood it. The scruffy man once more leaning against the wall had understood it, though, since he was grinning. ‘I see,’ said Rust. ‘And that is the answer from all of you? Then you leave us no choice. Good evening to you.’ His attempt to stride out was hindered by the other officers, who had less sense of the dramatic moment. The door slammed behind them, but not before the last man out turned very briefly and made a hand gesture. You would have missed it if you weren’t watching him - but Polly was watching. ‘That seemed to go well,’ said Blouse, turning away. ‘I hope we’re not going to get into trouble for that,’ said Shufti. ‘Compared to what?’ said Tonker. ‘The last man out stuck his thumb up and winked,’ said Polly. ‘Did you notice him? He wasn’t even wearing an officer’s uniform.’ ‘Probably wanted a date,’ said Tonker. ‘In Ankh-Morpork that means “jolly good”,’ said Blouse. ‘In Klatch, I think, it means “I hope your donkey explodes”. I spotted the man. Looked like a guard sergeant to me.’ ‘Didn’t have stripes,’ said Polly. ‘Why’d he want to say jolly good to us?’ ‘Or hate our donkey so much?’ said Shufti. ‘How’s Wazzer?’ ‘Sleeping,’ said Igorina. yI think.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Well, I don’t think she’s dead.’ ‘You don’t think she is?’ said Polly. ‘Yes,’ said Igorina. ‘It’s like that. I wish I could keep her warmer.’ ‘I thought you said she was burning up?’ ‘She was. Now she’s freezing cold.’ Lieutenant Blouse strode over to the door, grabbed its handle and, to the surprise of all, pulled it open. Four swords were levelled at him. ‘We have a sick man here!’ he snapped to the astonished guards. ‘We need blankets and firewood! Get them now! ’ He slammed the door. ‘It might work,’ he said. ‘That door doesn’t have a lock,’ said Tonker. ‘Useful fact, Polly.’ Polly sighed. ‘Right now, I just want something to eat. This is a kitchen, after all. There could be food here.’ ‘This is a kitchen,’ said Tonker. ‘There could be cleavers!’ But it is always upsetting to find that the enemy is as bright as you. There was a well, but a web of bars across the top allowed for the passage of nothing bigger than a bucket. And someone with no sense of the narrative of adventure had removed from the room anything with an edge and, for some reason, anything that could be eaten. ‘Unless we want to dine on candles,’ said Shufti, pulling a bundle of them out of a creaking cupboard. ‘ ‘s tallow, after all. i bet old Scallot’d make candle scubbo.’ Polly checked the chimney, which smelled as though there had not been a fire in it for a long time. It was big and wide, but six feet up a heavy grille was hung with sooty cobwebs. It looked rusted and ancient, and could probably be shifted by twenty minutes’ work with a crowbar, but there’s never a crowbar when you want one. There were some couple of sacks of ancient, dry and dusty flour in the storeroom. It smelled bad. There was a thing with a funnel and a handle and some mysterious screws.* There were a couple of rolling pins, a lettuce strainer, some ladles . . . and there were forks. Lots of toasting forks. Polly felt let down. It was ridiculous to expect that someone imprisoning people in some ad hoc cell would leave in all the ingredients to effect an escape but, nevertheless, she felt that some universal rule had been broken. They had nothing better than a club, really. The toasting forks might prick, the lettuce strainer might pack a punch, and the rolling pins were at least a traditional female weapon, but all you could do with the thing with a funnel and a handle and mysterious screws was baffle people. * Every long-established kitchen has one of these, and no one ever remembers why. It is generally for something that no one does any more and, even when it was done, it wasn’t done with any real enthusiasm, such as celery basting, walnut shredding or, in the worst case, edible dormouse stuffing. The door opened. Armed men came in to act as protection for a couple of women, carrying blankets and firewood. They scurried in with their eyes cast down, deposited their burdens, and almost ran out. Polly strode over to the guard who seemed to be in charge, and he backed away. A huge key ring jingled on his belt. ‘You knock next time, all right?’ she said. He grinned nervously. ‘Yeah, right,’ he said. ‘They said we weren’t to talk to you . . .’ ‘Really?’ The jailer glanced around. ‘But we reckon you’re doing bloody well, for girls,’ he said conspiratorially. ‘So that means you won’t shoot at us when we break out?’ said Polly sweetly. The grin faded. ‘Don’t try it,’ said the jailer. ‘What a big bunch of keys you have there, sir,’ said Tonker, and the man’s hand flew to his belt. ‘You just stay in here,’ he said. ‘Things are bad enough already. You stay here!’ He slammed the door. A moment later they heard something heavy being pushed up against it. ‘Well, now we have a fire, at least,’ said Blouse. ‘Er . . .’ This was from Lofty. She volunteered a word so seldom that the rest turned to look at her, and she stopped in embarrassment. ‘Yes, Lofty?’ said Polly. ‘Er . . . I know how to get the door open,’ muttered Lofty. ‘So it stays open, I mean.’ Had it been anyone else, someone would have laughed. But words from Lofty had obviously been turned over for some time before utterance. ‘Er . . . good,’ said Blouse. ‘Well done.’ ‘I’ve been thinking about it,’ said Lofty. ‘Good.’ ‘It will work.’ ‘Just what we need, then!’ said Blouse, lik^e a man trying against all the odds to keep cheerful. Lofty looked up at the big sooty beams that ran across the room. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But there’ll still be guards outside,’ said Polly. ‘No,’ said Lofty. ‘There won’t.’ ‘There won’t?’ ‘They’ll have gone away.’ Lofty stopped, with the air of one who’d said everything that needed to be said. Tonker walked over and took her arm. ‘We’ll just have a little chat, shall we?’ she said, and led the girl to the other side of the room. There was some whispered conversation. Lofty spent most of it staring at the floor, and then Tonker came back. ‘We will need the bags of flour from the storeroom, and the rope from the well,’ she said. ‘And one of those . . . what are those big round things that cover dishes? With a knob on?’ ‘Dish covers?’ said Shufti. ‘And a candle,’ Tonker went on. ‘And a lot of barrels. And a lot of water.’ ‘And what will all this do?’ said Blouse. ‘Make a big bang,’ said Tonker. ‘Tilda knows a lot about fire, believe me.’ ‘When you say she knows a lot. . .’ Polly began uncertainly. ‘I mean every place she worked at burned down,’ said Tonker. They rolled the empty barrels to the middle of the room and filled them with water from the pump. Under Lofty’s monosyllabic direction and the rope from the well, they hauled three leaking, dusty flour sacks up as high as possible, so that they twisted gently over the space between the barrels and the door. ‘Ah,’ said Polly, standing back. ‘I think I understand. A flour mill on the other side of town blew up two years ago.’ ‘Yes,’ said Tonker. ‘That was Tilda.’ ‘What?’ ‘They’d been beating her. And worse. And the thing about Tilda is, she just watches and thinks and somewhere in there it all comes together. Then it explodes.’ ‘But two people died!’ ‘The man and his wife. Yes. But I heard that other girls sent there never came back at all. Shall I tell you that Tilda was pregnant when they brought her back to the Grey House after the fire? She had it, and they took it away, and we don’t know what happened to it. And then she got beaten again because she was an Abomination unto Nuggan. Does that make you feel better?’ said Tonker, tying the rope to a table leg. ‘There’s just us, Polly. Just her and me. No inheritance, no nice home to go back to, no relatives that we know of. The Grey House breaks us all, somehow. Wazzer talks to the Duchess, I don’t have . . . middle gears, and Tilda frightens me when she gets her hands on a box of matches. You should see her face then, though. It lights up. Of course,’ Tonker smiled in her dangerous way, ‘so do other things. Better get everyone into the storeroom while we light the candle.’ ‘Shouldn’t Tilda do that?’ v ‘She will. But we’ll have to drag her away, otherwise she’ll stay and watch.’ This had started like a game. She hadn’t thought of it like a game, but it was a game called Let Polly keep The Duchess. And now . . . it didn’t matter. She’d made all kinds of plans, but she was beyond plans now. They’d done bloody well, for girls . . . A final barrel of water had been placed, after some discussion, in front of the storeroom’s door. Polly looked over the top of it at Blouse and the rest of the squad. ‘Okay, everybody, we’re . . . er . . . about to do it,’ she said. ‘Are we sure about this, Tonker?’ ‘Yep.’ ‘And we won’t get hurt?’ Tonker sighed. ‘The dusty flour will explode. That’s simple. The blast coming this way will hit the barrels full of water which’ll probably last just long enough to see it rebound. The worst that should happen to us is that we get wet. That’s what Tilda thinks. Would you argue? And in the other direction, there’s only the door.’ ‘How does she work this out?’ ‘She doesn’t. She just sees how it should go.’ Tonker handed Polly the end of a rope. ‘This goes over the beam and down to the dish lid. Can you hold it, lieutenant? But don’t pull it until we say. I really mean that. C’mon, Polly.’ In the space between the barrels and the door, Lofty was lighting a candle. She did it slowly, as if it was a sacrament or some ancient ceremony every part of which held enormous and complex meaning. She lit a match, and held it carefully until the flame caught. She waved it back and forth on the base of the candle, which she thrust firmly on to the flagstones so that the hot wax stuck it into position. Then she applied the match to the candle wick and knelt there, watching the flame. ‘Okay,’ said Tonker. ‘I’m just going to pick her up, and you just carefully lower the lid over the candle, right? C’mon, Tilda.’ She raised the girl carefully to her feet, whispering to her all the time, and then nodded to Polly, who lowered the lid with a carefulness that amounted to reverence. Lofty walked as though asleep. Tonker stopped by the leg of the heavy kitchen table, to which she’d attached the other end of the rope holding the flour bags. ‘Okay so far,’ she said. ‘Now, when I pull the knot we each grab an arm and we run, Polly, understand? We run. Ready? Got her?’ She hauled on the rope. ‘Run! ’ The flour sacks dropped, streaming white dust as they fell, and exploded in front of the door. Flour rose like a fog. They raced for the storeroom and fell in a heap past the barrel as Tonker screamed, ‘Okay, lieutenant!’ Blouse pulled the rope that raised the lid and let the candle flame reach— The word was not whoomph. The experience was whoomph. It had a quality that overwhelmed every sense. It shook the world like a sheet, painted it white and then, surprisingly, filled it with the smell of toast. And then it was over, in a second, leaving nothing but distant screams and the rumble of collapsing masonry. Polly uncurled, and looked up into Blouse’s face. ‘I think we grab things and run now, sir,’ she said. ‘And screaming would help.’ ‘I think I can manage the screaming,’ muttered Shufti. ‘This is not a very nurturing experience.’ Blouse gripped his ladle. ‘I hope this isn’t going to be our famous last stand,’ he said. ‘In fact, sir,’ said Polly, ‘I think it’s going to be our first. Permission to yell in a bloodcurdling way, sir?’ ‘Permission granted, Perks!’ * The floor was awash with water and bits - quite small bits - of barrel. Half the chimney had collapsed into the fireplace and the soot was blazing fiercely. Polly wondered if, down in the valley, it’d look like a signal. The door had gone. So had a lot of wall around it. Beyond— Smoke and dust filled the air. In it, men lay groaning, or picked their way aimlessly across the rubble. When the squad arrived they did not simply fail to put up a fight, they failed to understand. Or hear. The women lowered their weapons. Polly spotted the sergeant, who was sitting and hitting the side of his head with the flat of his hand. ‘Give me the keys!’ she demanded. He tried to focus. ‘What?’ ‘The keys!’ ‘I’ll have a brown one, please.’ ‘Are you okay?’ ‘What?’ Polly reached down and snatched the key ring from the unresisting man’s belt, fighting down an instinct to apologize. She threw it to Blouse. ‘Will you do the honours, sir? I think we’ll be having a lot of visitors really soon.’ She turned to the squad. ‘The rest of you, get their weapons off them!’ ‘Some of these men are badly hurt, Polly,’ said Igorina, kneeling down. ‘There’s one here with multiple.’ ‘Multiple what?’ said Polly, watching the steps. ‘Just. . . multiple. Multiple everything. But I know I can save his arm, because I’ve just found it over there. I think he must’ve been holding his sword and—’ ‘Just do what you can, okay?’ said Polly. ‘Hey, they’re enemies,’ said Tonker, picking up a sword. ‘Thith ith an Igor thing,’ said Igorina, taking off her pack. ‘I’m thorry, you wouldn’t underthtand.’ ‘I’m beginning not to.’ Tonker joined Polly in her watch on the stairs. Around them, men groaned and stone creaked. ‘I wonder how much damage we did? There’s a lot of dust up there . . .’ ‘There’ll be a lot of people here soon,’ said Polly, more calmly than she felt. Because this is going to be it, she thought. This time there’s going to be no turkey to save us. This is where I find out if I’m the meat or the metal . . . She could hear Blouse unlocking doors, and the shouts from those within. ‘Lieutenant Blouse, Tenth Infantry!’ he was saying. ‘This is a rescue, broadly speaking. Sorry about the mess.’ Probably his inner Daphne had added that last bit, Polly thought. And then the corridor was full of released men, and someone said, ‘What are these women doing here! For god’s sake, give me that sword, girl!’ And, right now, she wasn’t inclined to argue. Men take over. It is probably because of socks. The squad retired to the kitchen, where Igorina was at work. She worked fast, efficiently and, on the whole, with very little blood. Her large pack was open beside her. The jars inside were blue, green and red; some of them smoked when she opened them, or gave off strange lights. Her fingers moved in a blur. It was fascinating to watch her working. At least, it was if you hadn’t just eaten. ‘Squad, this is Major Erick von Moldvitz! He asked to meet you.’ They turned at the sound of Blouse’s voice. He’d brought a newcomer. The major was young, but much more heavily built than the lieutenant. He had a scar across his face. ‘Stand easy, lads,’ he said. ‘Blouse here has been telling me what crackin’ work you’ve been doing. Well done! Dressin’ up as women, eh? Lucky you weren’t found out!’ ‘Yessir,’ said Polly. From outside, there came the sound of cries and fighting. ‘Didn’t bring your uniforms with you?’ said the major. ‘Could’ve been tricky if they were found on us,’ said Polly, staring at Blouse. ‘Could’ve been tricky anyway, eh, if you were searched?’ said the major, winking. ‘Yessir,’ said Polly obediently. ‘Lieutenant Blouse told you all about us, did he, sir?’ Just behind the major, Blouse was making a universal gesture. It consisted of both hands held palm up and outwards and waggled furiously with all fingers extended. ‘Hah, yes. Stole some clothes from a knockin’ shop, eh? Young lads like you shouldn’t have gone in a place like that, eh? Those v places are an Abomination, if they’re run right!’ said the major, wagging a finger theatrically. ‘Anyway, we’re doing well. Hardly any guards this deep in the keep, y’see. The whole place was built on the basis that the enemy would be on the outsidel I say, what’s that man doin’ to the man on the slab?’ ‘Patching him up, thur,’ said Igorina. ‘Thewing hith arm back on.’ ‘He’s an enemy, ain’t he?’ ‘Code of the Igorth, thur,’ said Igorina reproachfully. ‘A thpare hand where needed, thur.’ The major sniffed. ‘Oh well, can’t argue with you fellows, eh? But when you’ve finished, we’ve got plenty of chaps out there who could do with your help.’ ‘Thertainly, thur,’ said Igorina. ‘Any news of my brother, sir?’ said Polly. ‘Paul Perks?’ ‘Yes, Blouse here mentioned him, Perks, but there’s men locked up everywhere and it’s a little tricky right now, eh?’ said the major brusquely. ‘As for the rest of you, we’ll get you into a pair of trousers as soon as possible and you can join in the fun, eh?’ ‘The fun,’ said Tonker, in a hollow voice. ‘The fun being . . . ?’ said Polly. ‘We’ve got as far as the fourth floor already,’ said von Moldvitz. ‘We might not have the whole keep back, but we hold the outer courtyards and some of the towers. By morning, we’ll control who comes in and goes out. We’re back in the war! They won’t invade now. Most of their top brass are in the inner keep.’ ‘Back in the war,’ murmured Polly. ‘And we will win!’ said the major. ‘Oh, sugar,’ said Shufti. Something was going to give, Polly knew. Tonker had that look she got before she exploded, and even Shufti was fidgeting. It would only be a matter of time before Lofty found her box of matches, which Polly had hidden in a cupboard. Igorina packed up her bag and smiled brightly at the major. ‘Ready to go, thur,’ she said. ‘At least remove the wig, eh?’ ‘It’th my own hair, thur,’ said Igorina. ‘Looks a bit. . . cissy, then,’ said the major. ‘It would be better if—’ ‘I am, in fact, female, sir,’ said Igorina, dropping most of the lisp. ‘Trust me, I’m an Igor. We know about this sort of thing. And my needlework ith second to none.’ ‘A woman?’ said the major. Polly sighed. ‘We all are, sir. Really women. Not just dressed up as women. And right now I don’t want to put any trousers on because then I’d be a woman dressed up as a man dressed up as a woman dressed up as a man, and then I’d be so confused I wouldn’t know how to swear. And I want to swear right now, sir, very much.’ The major turned stiffly to Blouse. ‘Did you know about this, lieutenant?’ he barked. ‘Well . . . yes, sir. Eventually. But even so, sir, I would—’ This cell was an old guardroom. It was damp, and had two creaking bunks. ‘On the whole,’ said Tonker, ‘I think it was better when we were locked up by the enemy.’ ‘There’s a grille in the ceiling,’ said Shufti. ‘Not big enough to climb through,’ said Polly. ‘No, but we can hang ourselves before they do it.’ ‘I’m told it’s a very painful way to die,’ said Polly. ‘Who by?’ said Tonker. Occasionally the sounds of battle filtered through the narrow window. Mostly it was yells; often it was screams. Fun was being had. Igorina sat staring at her hands. ‘What’s wrong with these?’ she said. ‘Didn’t I do a good job on that arm? But no, they’re afraid I might touch their privates.’ ‘Perhaps you could have promised to operate only on officers,’ said Tonker. No one laughed, and probably no one would have bothered to run for it if the door had swung open. It was a proud and noble thing to escape from the enemy, but if you were escaping from your own side, where would you escape to? On one of the bunks, Wazzer slept like a hibernating bear. You v had to watch her for some time to see her breathe. ‘What can they do to us?’ said Shufti nervously. ‘You know . . . really do to us?’ ‘We were wearing men’s clothes,’ said Polly. ‘But that’s only a beating.’ ‘Oh, they’ll find some other stuff, believe you me,’ said Tonker. ‘Besides, who knows we’re here?’ ‘But we got them out of prison! Our side!’ Polly sighed. ‘That’s why, Shufti. No one wants to know that a bunch of girls dressed up as soldiers and broke into a big fort and let out half an army. Everyone knows females can’t do that. Neither side wants us here, understand?’ ‘On a battlefield like this, who’ll worry about a few more bodies?’ said Tonker. ‘Don’t say that! Lieutenant Blouse spoke up for us,’ said Shufti. ‘What, Daphne?’ said Tonker. ‘Hah! Just another body. They’ve probably locked him up somewhere, just like us.’ There was a distant cheering, which went on for some time. ‘Sounds like they’ve got the building,’ said Polly. ‘Hooray for us,’ said Tonker, and spat. After a while, a small hatch was opened in the door and a silent man handed through a big can of scubbo and a tray of horse-bread. It wasn’t bad scubbo or, at least, not bad scubbo by the standards of bad scubbo. There was some discussion about whether being fed meant you weren’t going to be executed, until someone pointed out the tradition of the Last Hearty Meal. Igorina gave it as her cultural opinion that the stew was not only hearty but lungy and livery too. But at least it was hot. A couple of hours later a can of saloop was handed through, with some mugs. This time, the guard winked. An hour after that, the door was unlocked. A young man in a major’s uniform stepped inside. Oh well, let’s go on as we started, Polly thought. She leapt to her feet. ‘Squaddd . . . tennn . . . hut! ’ With reasonable speed, the squad at least managed to stand up straight and in a line. The major acknowledged her by tapping the peak of his cap with a stick. It was definitely thinner than an inch. ‘Stand easy . . . corporal, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Yessir.’ That sounded promising. ‘I am Major Clogston, of the Provost’s office,’ said the major. ‘And I’d like you to tell me all about it. About everything. I will make notes, if you don’t mind.’ ‘What’s this about?’ said Tonker. ‘Ah, you’d be . . . Private Halter,’ said Clogston. ‘I’ve already spoken at length to Lieutenant Blouse.’ He turned, nodded at the guard hovering in the doorway, and shut the door. He also closed the hatch. ‘You are going to be tried,’ he said, sitting down on the spare bunk. ‘The politicos want you to be tried by a full Nugganatic court, but that would be tricky here, and no one wants this to go on for any longer than it has to. Besides, there has been an . . . unusual event. Someone has sent a communique to General Froc asking about you all by name. At least,’ he added, ‘by your surnames.’ ‘Was that Lord Rust, sir?’ ‘No, it was someone called William de Worde. I don’t know if you’ve run across his newspaper thing? We’re wondering how he knew you were captured.’ ‘Well, we didn’t tell him!’ said Polly. ‘It makes things a little . . . tricky,’ said Clogston. ‘Although, from your point of view, a lot more hopeful. There are those members of the army who are, let us say, considering the future of Borogravia. That is, they would like there to be one. My job is to present your case to the tribunal.’ ‘Is that a court martial?’ said Polly. ‘No, they’re not that stupid. Calling it a court martial would indicate that they accept that you are soldiers.’ ‘You did,’ said Shufti. ‘ De facto is not dejure,’ said Clogston. ‘Now, as I said . . . tell me your story, Miss Perks.’ ‘That’s Corporal, thank you!’ ‘I apologize for the lapse. Now . . . go on . . .’ Clogston opened his bag and produced a pair of half-moon spectacles, which he put on, and took out a pencil and something white and square. ‘Whenever you’re ready?’ he added. ‘Sir, are you really going to write on a jam sandwich?’ said Polly. ‘What?’ The major looked down, and laughed. ‘Oh. No. Excuse me. I really mustn’t miss meals. Blood sugar, you know . . .’ ‘Only it’s oozing, sir. Don’t mind us. We’ve eaten.’ It took an hour, with many interruptions and corrections, and two more sandwiches. The major used up quite a lot of notebook, and occasionally had to stop and stare at the ceiling. ‘. . . and then we were thrown in here,’ said Polly, sitting back. ‘Pushed, really,’ said Igorina. ‘Nudged.’ ] ‘Mmm,’ said Clogston. ‘You say Corporal Strappi, as you knew him, was . . . suddenly very ill at the thought of going into battle?’ ‘Yessir.’ ‘And in the tavern in Pliin you really kneed Prince Heinrich in the fracas?’ ‘In or about the fracas, sir. And I didn’t know it was him at the time, sir.’ ‘I see you haven’t mentioned the attack on the hilltop where, according to Lieutenant Blouse, your prompt action got the enemy code book . . .’ ‘Not really worth mentioning, sir. We didn’t do much with it.’ ‘Oh, I don’t know. Because of you and that nice man from the newspaper the alliance has had two regiments trotting around in the mountains after some guerrilla leader called “Tiger”. Prince Heinrich insisted, and is in fact in command. He is, you could say, a sore loser. Very sore, according to rumour.’ ‘The newspaper writer believed all that stuff?’ said Polly, amazed. ‘I don’t know, but he certainly wrote it down. You say Lord Rust offered to let you all go home quietly?’ ‘Yessir.’ ‘And the consensus was that he could . . .’ ‘Stick it up his jumper, sir.’ ‘Oh, yes. I couldn’t read my own writing. J . . . U . . . M . . .’ Clogston carefully wrote the word in capital letters, and then said: ‘I am not saying this, I am not here, but some . . . senior . . . people on our side are wondering if you would just quietly go . . . ?’ The question hung in the air like a corpse from a beam. ‘I’ll put that down as “jumper” too, then, shall I?’ said Clogston. ‘Some of us have got nowhere to go to,’ said Tonker. ‘Or no one to go with,’ said Shufti. ‘We haven’t done anything wrong,’ said Polly. ‘Jumper it is, then,’ said the major. He folded up his little spectacles and sighed. ‘They won’t even tell me what charges are going to be made.’ ‘Being Bad Girls,’ said Tonker. ‘Who are we fooling, sir? The enemy wanted just to be quietly rid of us, and the general wants the same thing. That’s the trouble about the good guys and the bad guys. They’re all guys!’ ‘Would we have got a medal, sir, if we’d been men?’ Shufti demanded. ‘Yep. Certainly. And Blouse would have been promoted on the spot, I imagine. But right now we’re at war, and this might not be the time—’ ‘—to thank a bunch of Abominable women?’ Polly suggested. Clogston smiled. ‘I was going to say “to lose concentration”. It’s the political branch who are pushing for this, of course. They want to stop word getting around. And high command want this over quickly for the same reason.’ ‘When is all this going to start?’ said Polly. ‘In about half an hour.’ ‘This is stupid!’ said Tonker. ‘They’re in the middle of a war and they’re going to take the time to hold a trial for a few women who haven’t even done anything wrong?’ ‘The general has insisted,’ said Clogston. ‘He wants this cleared out of the way.’ ‘And what authority has this tribunal got?’ said Polly coldly. ‘Thousands of men under arms,’ said Clogston. ‘Sorry. The trouble is, when you say to a general “You and whose army?” he just has to point out of the window. But I intend to prove that the meeting should be a court martial. You all kissed the Duchess? You took the shilling? I say that makes it military business.’ ‘And that’s good, is it?’ ‘Well, it means there are procedures. The last Abomination from Nuggan was against jigsaw puzzles. They break the world into pieces, he says. That’s making people think, at last. The army may be crazy, but at least it’s crazy by numbers. It’s reliably insane. Er, your sleeping friend . . . will you leave her here?’ ‘No,’ said the squad, as one woman. ‘She needs my constant attention,’ said Igorina. ‘If we leave her she might have a sudden attack of vanishing without a trace,’ said Tonker. ‘We stick together,’ said Polly. ‘We don’t leave a man behind.’ The room chosen for the tribunal was a ballroom. More than half the keep had been taken back, Polly learned, but the distribution of ground was erratic. The alliance still held the central buildings, and the armoury, but were entirely surrounded by Borogravian forces. The current prize to fight for was the main gate complex, which hadn’t been built to withstand attack from inside. What was happening out there now was a brawl, a midnight bar fight but on a huge scale. And, since there were various war engines atop the towers now occupied by either side, the keep was shooting at itself, in the finest traditions of the circular firing squad. The floor in here smelled of polish and chalk. Tables had been pushed together to make a rough semicircle. There must have been more than thirty officers, Polly thought. Then she saw the other tables behind the semicircles, and the maps, and the people scurrying in and out, and realized that this was not just about them. This was a war-room. The squad were marched in, and stood at attention. Igorina had browbeaten a couple of guards to carry Wazzer on a stretcher. That circle of stitches under her eye was worth more than a colonel’s pips. No soldier wanted to be on the wrong side of the Igors. They waited. Occasionally an officer would glance at them, and go back to looking at a map, or talking. Then Polly saw some whispering going on, heads turned again, and there was a drift towards the semicircle of seats. There was a definite sense that here was a tiresome chore that, regrettably, had to be done. General Froc did not look directly at the squad until he had taken his seat in the centre of the group and adjusted his papers neatly. Even then, his eye passed over them quickly, as if it was afraid to stop. Polly had never seen him before. He was a handsome man, and still had a fine head of white hair. A scar down one side of his face had just missed an eye, and showed up against the wrinkles. ‘Things are moving well,’ he said, to the room at large. ‘We have just heard that a flying column led by the remnant of the Tenth are closing on the keep and attacking the main gates from outside. Someone must have seen what is happening. The army is on the move!’ There was a certain amount of refined cheering at this, none of it from the squad. The general glanced at them again. ‘Is this all of them, Clogston?’ he said. The major, who at least had a small table to himself, stood up and saluted. ‘No, sir,’ he said. ‘We are awaiting—’ The doors opened again. Jade was brought in, chained between two much larger trolls. Maladict and Blouse trailed behind her. It seemed that in all the rush and confusion no one Had found any trousers for Blouse, and Maladict looked slightly blurred. His chains jingled constantly. ‘I object to the chains, sir,’ said Clogston. The general held a whispered consultation with a few of the other officers. ‘Yes, we do not want undue formality,’ he said, nodding at the guards. ‘Remove them. You trolls can go. I just want the guards to remain on the door. Now, let us proceed. This really shouldn’t take too long. Now then, you people,’ he settled himself in his chair, ‘this really is very simple. With the exception of Lieutenant Blouse, you will agree to be returned to your homes and placed in the charge of a responsible male, understood? And no more will be said about this matter. You have showed considerable spirit, there is no doubt about that, but it was misplaced. We are not ungrateful, however. We understand that none of you is married and so we will present you all with suitable, indeed, with handsome dowries—’ Polly saluted. ‘Permission to speak, sir?’ Froc stared at her, and then looked pointedly at Clogston. ‘You’ll have a chance to speak later, corporal,’ said the major. ‘But what exactly have we done wrong, sir?’ said Polly. ‘They should tell us.’ Froc looked at the far end of the row of chairs. ‘Captain?’ he said. A short officer got to his feet. In Polly’s face, the tide of recognition raced across the mudflats of hatred. ‘Captain Strappi, political division, sir—’ he began, and stopped at the groan from the squad. When it had died away he cleared his throat, and went on: ‘Twenty-seven Abominations have been committed under Nugganatic law, sir. I suspect there have been many more. Under military law, sir, we have the simple fact that they posed as men in order to join up. I was there, sir, and saw it all.’ ‘Captain Strappi, may I congratulate you on your rapid promotion?’ said Lieutenant Blouse. ‘Yes, indeed, captain,’ said Clogston. ‘Apparently you were a humble corporal only a few days ago?’ Plaster dust drifted down again as something heavy struck the wall outside. Froc brushed it off his paperwork. ‘Not one of ours, I hope,’ he said, to a certain amount of laughter. ‘Do go ahead, captain.’ Strappi turned to the general. ‘As you know, sir, it is occasionally necessary for us in the political division to assume a lower rank in order to gain intelligence. Covered under the Regulations, sir,’ he added. The look that General Froc gave him stirred a little teacup of hope in Polly’s breast. No one could like something like Strappi, not even a mother. Then the general turned back to Clogston. ‘Is this germane, major?’ he said testily. ‘We know they disguised themselves as— ’ ‘—women, sir,’ said Clogston smoothly. ‘That’s all we know, sir. Apart from Captain Strappi’s assertion, and I intend to suggest later that this is tainted, I haven’t yet heard any evidence that they have dressed in any other way.’ ‘We have the evidence of our own eyes, man!’ ‘Yes, sir. They’re wearing dresses, sir.’ ‘And they’re practically bald!’ ‘Yes, sir,’ said Clogston. He picked up a thick book, dripping with bookmarks. ‘Book of Nuggan, sir: “It is a Beatitude unto Nuggan that An Woman shall wear her hair short, that the amorous propensities of men be not therefore inflamed.”‘ ‘I don’t see a lot of bald women around!’ snapped Froc. ‘Yes, sir. It is one of those utterances that people find somewhat tricky, like the one about not sneezing. I should say at this point, sir, that I intend to show that Abominations are routinely committed by all of us. We have got into the habit of ignoring them, in fact, which opens up an interesting debate. In any case, short hair is Nugganatically correct. In short, sir, and in short hair, the ladies appear to have been involved in nothing more than a little laundry, a kitchen accident and the release of your good self from the cells.’ ‘I saw them!’ snarled Strappi. ‘They looked like men and they acted like men!’ ‘Why were you in the recruiting party, captain?’ said Major Clogston. ‘I would not have thought one of those would have been a hotbed of seditious activity?’ ‘Is that a relevant question, major?’ said the general. ‘I don’t know, sir,’ said Clogston. ‘That’s why I asked. I don’t think we would wish it to be said that these ladies had not been given a fair hearing?’ ‘Said by whom?’ said Froc. ‘My officers can be relied upon to be discreet.’ ‘Said by the ladies themselves, sir?’ ‘Then we must require that they do not speak to anyone!’ ‘Oh, I say!’ said Blouse. ‘And how will you enforce this, sir?’ said Clogston. ‘Against these women who, we are agreed, stole you out of the jaws of the enemy?’ There was some muttering amongst the officers. ‘Major Clogston, did you have lunch?’ said the general. ‘No, sir.’ ‘Colonel Vester said you become a little . . . erratic when you miss meals . . .’ ‘No, sir. I become tetchy, sir. But I think a little tetchiness is called for right now. I put a question to Captain Strappi, sir.’ ‘Very well, captain, perhaps you will tell us why you were with that recruiting party?’ said the general wearily. ‘I was . . . investigating a soldier, sir. A non-commissioned officer. Our attention had been drawn to irregularities in his files, sir, and where there are irregularities we generally find sedition. I hesitate to talk about this, sir, because this sergeant has been of some service to yourself—’ ‘Hrumph!’ said the general loudly. ‘This is not a matter for discussion here, I think.’ ‘It was just that according to the files, several officers had helped—’ Strappi went on. ‘Hrumph! Not matters for this court, captain! Are we agreed, gentlemen?’ ‘Yes, sir, it was just that the major asked me and I—’ Strappi began, bewildered. ‘Captain, I suggest you learn what a hrumph means!’ roared Froc. ‘So what were you looking for when you rummaged through our stuff?’ said Polly, as Strappi shrank. ‘Mmmmmy cccccoffee!’ said Maladict. ‘Yyyyyou ssssstole mmmmmy cccccoffee!’ ‘And you ran away when you were told you were going into combat, you little dog’s pizzle!’ said Tonker. ‘Polly said you pissed your drawers!’ General Froc slammed his fist on the table, but Polly noticed that one or two officers were trying to conceal a smile. ‘These are not matters for this inquiry!’ he said. ‘Although, sir, one or two of them seem to me to be subjects for investigation later on,’ said a colonel, further along the table. ‘The personal belongings of enlisted men may only be searched in their presence, general. This may seem a trivial point, but men have mutinied over it in the past. Did you, in fact, believe the . . . men to be women when you did this, captain?’ Oh, say yes, please say yes, Polly thought, as Strappi hesitated. Because when we talk about how those cavalrymen found us so quickly, it’ll mean you set them on a bunch of Borogravian girls. Let’s see how that one plays in Plün! And if you didn’t know, then why were you rummaging? Strappi preferred the rock to the hard place. Stone clattered down in the courtyard outside, and he had to raise his voice to make himself heard. ‘I was, er, generally suspicious of them, sir, because they were so keen—’ ‘Sir, I protest!’ said Clogston. ‘Keenness is not a military vice!’ ‘In moderation, certainly,’ said Froc. ‘And you found evidence of some sort, did you?’ ‘I did find a petticoat, sir,’ said Strappi, feeling his way with care. ‘Then why didn’t you—’ Froc began, but Strappi interrupted. ‘I did serve for a while with Captain Wrigglesworth, sir,’ he said. ‘And?’ said Froc, but the officer on his left leaned over and whispered something to him. ‘Oh, Wrigglesworth. Ha, yes,’ said Froc. ‘Of course. Fine officer, Wrigglesworth. Keen on, er—’ ‘Amateur dramatics,’ a colonel supplied, in a noncommittal voice. ‘Right! Right! Ver’ good for morale, that sort of thing. Hrumph.’ ‘With respect, general, I think I can offer a way through?’ said another man with a general’s rank. ‘Really, Bob?’ said Froc. ‘Oh, well. . . feel free. The record will show that I am yielding the floor to General Kzupi.’ ‘I’m sorry, sir, I thought these proceedings were not being recorded?’ said Clogston. ‘Yes, yes, of course, thank you so much for jogging my memory,’ said Froc. ‘However, if we were to have a record, that is what it would show. Bob?’ ‘Ladies,’ said General Kzupi, flashing the squad a glossy smile. ‘And you too, of course, Lieutenant Blouse, and you too, er . . .’ he looked quizzically at Maladict, who stared straight back ‘. . . sir?’ General Kzupi, though, was not to be derailed by an eyeballing vampire, even one that couldn’t stand still. ‘Firstly, may I offer on behalf of all of us, I think, our thanks for the incredible job you have done? A splendid effort. But, sadly, the world we live in has certain . . . rules, you understand? To be frank, the problem here is not that you are women. As such, that is. But you persist in maintaining that you are. You see? We can’t have that.’ ‘You mean if we put on uniforms again, and swaggered around belching and saying “har har, fooled you all” that would be all right?’ said Polly. ‘Perhaps I could help?’ said yet another voice. Froc looked along the table. ‘Ah, Brigadier Stoffer. Yes?’ ‘This is all rather damn silly, general—’ ‘Hrumph!’ said Froc. ‘What say?’ said Stoffer, looking puzzled. ‘There are ladies present, brigadier. That is, ahah, the problem.’ ‘Damn right!’ said Tonker. ‘Understood, general. But the party was led by a man, am I right?’ ‘Lieutenant Blouse tells me he is a man, sir,’ said Clogston. ‘Since he is an officer and a gentleman, I will take his word for it.’ ‘Well, then, problem solved. These young ladies helped him. Smuggled him in, and so forth. Assisted him. Fine traditions of Borogravian womanhood and all that. Not soldiers at all. Give the man a big medal and make him a captain, and all this’ll be forgotten.’ ‘Excuse me one moment, general,’ said Clogston. ‘I will consult with what we would call the accused if anyone would enlighten me as to the precise nature of the charges.’ He walked over to the squad and lowered his voice. ‘I think this is the best offer you’re going to get,’ he said. ‘I can probably get the money, too. How about it?’ ‘It’s completely ridiculous!’ said Blouse. ‘They showed tremendous courage and determination. All this would not have been possible without them.’ ‘Yes, Blouse, and you would be allowed to say that,’ said Clogston. ‘Stoffer has come up with quite a clever idea. Everyone gets what they want, but you just have to avoid any suggestion that you were in fact acting as soldiers. Brave Borogravian women going to the aid of a gallant hero, that works. You could take the view that these are changing times, and you are helping them change faster. Well?’ The squad exchanged glances. ‘Er . . . I’d be happy about that,’ Shufti ventured. ‘If everyone else is.’ ‘So you’d have your baby without a husband?’ said Polly. ‘He’s probably dead anyway, whoever he was,’ sighed Shufti. ‘The general has influence,’ said Clogston. ‘He might be able to—’ ‘No, I’m not buying into this,’ said Tonker. ‘It’s a gooey little lie. To hell with them.’ ‘Lofty?’ said Polly. Lofty struck a match, and stared at it. She could find matches anywhere. There was another crump, high above. ‘Maladict?’ said Polly. ‘Llet tthe bball rroll. II ssay nno.’ ‘And you, lieutenant?’ Clogston asked. ‘It’s dishonourable,’ said Blouse. ‘Could be problems for you if you don’t accept, though. With your career.’ ‘I suspect I haven’t got one, major, whatever happens. No, I will not live a lie. I know, now, that I’m not a hero. I’m just someone who wanted to be one.’ ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Polly. ‘Er . . . Jade?’ ‘One of der trolls what arrested me-hit me with his club an’ I frew a table at him,’ said Jade, looking at the floor. ‘That was mistreatment of a pris—’ Blouse began, but Clogston said: ‘No, lieutenant, I know something about trolls. They are very . . . physical. So . . . he’s a rather attractive lad, is he, private?’ ‘I got a good feelin’ about him,’ said Jade, blushing. ‘So I don’t want to be sent home. Nothin’ for me there, anyway.’ ‘Private Igor . . . ina?’ said Blouse. ‘I think we ought to give in,’ said Igorina. ‘Why?’ said Polly. ‘Because Wazzer’s dying.’ She raised a hand. ‘No, please don’t cluster round. Give her air, at least. She hasn’t eaten. I can’t get any water down her at all.’ She looked up with red-rimmed eyes. ‘I don’t know what to do! ’ ‘The Duchess talked to her,’ said Polly. ‘You all heard. And you know what we saw down in the crypt.’ ‘And I said I don’t believe any of that!’ said Tonker. ‘It’s her . . . mind. They made her crazy enough. And we were all so tired, we’d see anything. All that stuff about wanting to get to the High Command? Well, here they are, and I don’t see any miracles. Do you?’ ‘I don’t think she would have wanted us to give in,’ said Polly. No. ‘Did you hear that?’ said Polly, although she wasn’t certain that the word had turned up in her head via her ears. ‘No, I didn’t!’ said Tonker. ‘I didn’t hear it!’ ‘I don’t think we can accept this compromise, sir,’ said Polly to the major. ‘Then I won’t,’ said Shufti promptly. ‘I don’t . . . this wasn’t . . . I only came because . . . but . . . look, I’m staying with you. Erm . . . what can they do to us, sir?’ ‘Put you in a cell for a long time, probably,’ said the major. ‘They’re being kind to you—’ ‘Kind?’ said Polly. ‘Well, they think they’re being kind,’ said Clogston. ‘And they could be a lot worse. And there’s a war on. They don’t want to look bad, but Froc didn’t get to be a general by being nice. I have to warn you about that. You’re still turning this down?’ Blouse looked round at his men. ‘I believe we are, major.’ ‘Good,’ said Clogston, winking. Good. Clogston went back to his table and shuffled his papers. ‘The allegedly accused, sir, regretfully turn down the offer.’ ‘Yes, I thought they might,’ said Froc. ‘In that case, they are to be returned to the cells. They will be dealt with later.’ Plaster showered down as something hit the outer wall again. ‘This has gone quite far enough!’ ‘We won’t be sent to the cells!’ Tonker shouted. ‘Then that is mutiny, sir!’ said Froc. ‘And we know how to deal with that!’ ‘Excuse me, general, does that then mean the tribunal does agree that these ladies are soldiers?’ said Clogston. General Froc glared at him. ‘Don’t you try to tie me up with procedural nonsense, major!’ ‘It’s hardly nonsense, sir, it’s the very basis—’ Duck. The word was the faintest, merest suggestion in Polly’s head, but it also seemed to be wired to her central nervous system. And not only hers. The squad ducked, Igorina throwing herself across her patient’s body. Half the ceiling collapsed. The chandelier fell down and exploded in a kaleidoscope of splintering prisms. Mirrors shattered. And then there was, by comparison at least, silence, broken only by the thud of a few late bits of plaster and the tinkle of a tardy shard. Now. . . Footsteps approached the big doors at the end of the room, where the guards were just struggling to their feet. The doors swung open. Jackrum stood there, shining like the sunset. The light glinted off his shako badge, polished to the point where it would blind the incautious with its terrible gleam. His face was red, but his jacket was redder, and his sergeant’s sash was the pure quill of redness, its very essence, the red of dying stars and dying soldiers. Blood dripped off the cutlasses thrust into his belt. The guards, still shaking, tried to lower their pikes to bar his way. ‘Do not try it, lads, I beg you,’ said Jackrum. ‘Upon my oath I am not a violent man, but do you think Sergeant Jackrum is going to be stopped by a set of bleedin’ cutlery?’ The men looked at Jackrum, steaming with barely controlled rage, and then at the astonished generals, and took an immediate decision on their own desperate initiative. ‘Good lads,’ said Jackrum. ‘With your permission, General Froc?’ He did not wait for a reply but marched forward with parade-ground precision. He came to boot-crashing attention in front of the senior generals, still brushing plaster dust from their uniforms, and saluted with the precision of a semaphore. ‘I beg to report, sir, that we now hold the main gates, sir! Took the liberty of putting together a force of the Ins-and-Outs, the Side-to-Sides and the Backwards-and-Forwards, sir, just in case, saw a big cloud o’ flame and smoke over the place, and arrived at the gates just as your lads did. Got ‘em coming and going, sir!’ There was a general cheer, and General Kzupi leaned towards Froc. ‘In view of this pleasing development, sir, perhaps we should hurry up and close this—’ Froc waved him into silence. ‘Jackrum, you old rogue,’ he said, leaning back in his chair. ‘I heard you were dead. How the devil are you?’ ‘Fightin’ fit, sir!’ barked Jackrum. ‘Not dead at all, despite the hopes of many!’ ‘Glad to hear it, man. But, while your rosy face is a welcome sight at any time, we are here to—’ ‘Fourteen miles I carried you, sir!’ Jackrum roared, sweat pouring down his face. ‘Pulled that arrow out of your leg, sir. Sliced that devil of a captain who pushed an axe in your face, sir, and I’m glad to see the scar’s looking well. Killed that poor sentry lad just to steal his water bottle for you, sir. Looked into his dyin’ face, sir, for you. Never asked for nothing in return, sir. Right, sir?’ Froc rubbed his chin and smiled. ‘Well, I seem to remember there was that little matter of fudging some details, changing a few dates—’ he murmured. ‘Don’t give me that bleedin’ slop, sir, with respect. That wasn’t for me, that was for the army. For the Duchess, sir. And, yeah, I see a few other gentlemen round this table who had reason to do the same little service for me. For the Duchess, sir. And if you was to leave me one sword I’d stand and fight any man in your army, sir, be he never so young and full of mustard!’ In one movement he pulled a cutlass from his belt and brought it down on the paperwork between Froc’s hands. It bit through into the wood of the table, and stayed there. Froc didn’t flinch. Instead he looked up and said calmly, ‘Hero though you may be, sergeant, I fear that you have gone too far.’ ‘Have I gone the full fourteen miles yet, sir?’ said Jackrum. For a moment there was no sound but that of the cutlass, vibrating to a halt. Froc breathed out. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘What is your request, sergeant?’ ‘I notes you have my little lads before you, sir! I’m hearing that they are in a spot of bother, sir!’ ‘The girls, Jackrum, are to be restrained in a place of safety. This is no place for them. And that is my order, sergeant.’ ‘I said to ‘em when they signed up, sir, I said: if anyone drags you away they’ll have to drag me away, too, sir!’ Froc nodded. ‘Very loyal of you, sergeant, and very much in your character. Nevertheless—’ ‘And I have information vital to these here deliberations, sir! There is something I must tell you, sir!’ ‘Well, by all means tell us, man!’ said Froc. ‘You don’t have to take all—’ ‘It requires that some of you gentlemen quit this room, sir,’ said Jackrum, desperately. He was still-at attention, still holding the salute. ‘Now you do ask too much, Jackrum,’ said Froc. ‘These are loyal officers of her grace!’ ‘No doubt of it, sir! Upon my oath I am not a gossiping man, sir, but I will speak my piece to those I choose, sir, or speak it to the world. There’s ways to do that, sir, nasty new-fangled ways. Your choice, sir!’ At last, Froc coloured. He stood up abruptly. ‘Are you seriously telling me that you’d—’ ‘This is my famous last stand, sir!’ said Jackrum, saluting again. ‘Do or die, sir!’ All eyes turned to Froc. He relaxed. ‘Oh, very well. It can’t do any harm to listen to you, sergeant. God knows you’ve earned it. But make it quick.’ ‘Thank you, sir.’ ‘But try this again and you’ll be on the biggest fizzer you can imagine.’ ‘No worry there, sir. Never been one for fizzers. I will by your leave point to certain men . . .’ They were about half of the officers. They rose with greater or lesser protest, but rise they did, under Froc’s sapphire glare, and filed out into the corridor. ‘General, I protest!’ said a departing colonel. ‘We are being sent out of the room like naughty children while these . . . females are—’ ‘Yes, yes, Rodney, and if our friend the sergeant doesn’t have a damn good explanation I’ll personally turn him over to you for punishment detail,’ said Froc. ‘But he’s entitled to his last wild charge if any man is. Go quietly, there’s a good chap, and keep the war going until we get there. And have you finished this strange charade, sergeant?’ he added, as the last of the officers left. ‘All but one last thing, sir,’ said Jackrum, and stamped over to the guards. They were at attention already, but nevertheless contrived to become more attentive. ‘You lads go outside this door,’ said the sergeant. ‘No one is to come close, understand. And I know you boys won’t try to eavesdrop, because of what’d happen to you if I ever found that you had done so. Off you go, hup, hup, hup!’ He shut the doors behind them and the atmosphere changed. Polly couldn’t quite detect how, but perhaps it was that the click of the doors had said ‘This is our secret’ and everyone present was in on it. Jackrum removed his shako and laid it gently on the table in front of the general. Then he took off his coat and handed it to Polly, saying, ‘Hold this, Perks. It’s the property of her grace.’ He rolled up his sleeves. He relaxed his enormous red braces. And then, to Polly’s horror if not to her surprise, he brought out his paper screw of foul chewing tobacco and his blackened penknife. ‘Oh, I say—’ a major began, before a colleague nudged him into silence. Never had a man cutting a wad of black tobacco been the subject of such rapt, horrified attention. ‘Things are going well outside,’ he said. ‘Shame you aren’t all out there, eh? Still, the truth’s important too, right? And that’s what this tribunal is for, no doubt about it. It must be important, the truth, else you wouldn’t be here, am I right? ‘course I am.’ Jackrum finished the cut, palmed the stuff into his mouth and got it comfortable in a cheek, while the sounds of battle filtered through from outside. Then he turned and walked towards the major who had just spoken. The man cringed a little in his chair. ‘What’ve you got to say about the truth. Major Derbi?’ said Jackrum conversationally. ‘Nothing? Well, then, what shall I say? What shall I say about a captain who turned and ran sobbing when we came across a column of Zlobenians, deserting his own men? Shall I say that ol’ Jackrum tripped him up and pummelled him a bit and put the fear of . . . Jackrum into him, and he went back and ‘twas a famous victory he had that day, over two enemies, one of them being in his own head. And he came to ol’ Jackrum again, drunk with battle, and said more’n he ought . . .’ ‘You bastard,’ said the major softly. ‘Shall I tell the truth today . . . Janet?’ said Jackrum. The sounds of battle were suddenly much louder. They poured into the room like the water rushing to fill a hole in the ocean floor, but all the sound in the world could not have filled that sudden, tremendous silence. Jackrum strolled on towards another man. ‘Good to see you here, Colonel Cumabund!’ he said cheerfully. ‘O’ course, you were only Lieutenant Cumabund when I was under your command. Plucky lad you were, when you led us against that detachment of Kopelies. And then you took a nasty sword wound in the fracas, or just above, and I got you through with rum and cold water, and found that plucky you might be, but lad you weren’t. Oh, how you gabbled away in your feverish delirium . . . Yes, you did. That’s the truth . . . Olga.’ He stepped round the table and started to stroll along behind the officers; those he passed stared woodenly ahead, not daring to turn, not daring to make any movement that would attract attention. ‘You could say I know something about all of yez,’ he said. ‘Quite a lot about some of you, just enough about most of you. A few of you, well, I could write a book.’ He paused just behind Froc, who stiffened. ‘Jackrum, I—’ he began. Jackrum put a hand on each of Froc’s shoulders. ‘Fourteen miles, sir. Two nights, ‘cos we lay up by day, the patrols were that thick. Cut about pretty dreadful, you were, but you got better nursing from me than any sawbones, I’d bet.’ He leaned forward until his mouth was level with the general’s ear, and continued in a stage whisper: ‘What is there left about you that I don’t know? So . . . are you really looking for the truth . . . Mildred? ’ The room was a museum of waxworks. Jackrum spat on the floor. ‘You cannot prove anything, sergeant,’ said Froc eventually, with the calm of an icefield. ‘Well now, not as such. But they keep telling me this is the modern world, sir. I don’t need proof, exactly. I know a man who’d have such a tale to tell, and it’d be in Ankh-Morpork in a couple of hours.’ ‘If you leave this room alive,’ said a voice. Jackrum smiled his evillest smile, and bore down on the source of the threat like an avalanche. ‘Ah! I thought one of yez would try that, Chloe, but I note you never made it beyond major, and no wonder since you try to bluff with no bleedin’ cards in your hand. Nice try, though. But, first, I could take you to the bleedin’ cleaners before those guards were back in here, upon my oath, and, second, you don’t know what I’ve writ down and who else knows. I trained all you girls at one time or another, and some of the cunning you got, some of the mustard, some of the sense . . . well, you got it from me. Didn’t you? So don’t any of you go thinking you can be artful about this, because when it comes to cunning I am Mister Fox.’ ‘Sergeant, sergeant, sergeant,’ said Froc wearily, ‘what is it you want?’ Jackrum completed his circuit of the table and finished in front of it, once again like a man before his judges. ‘Well, blow me down,’ he said quietly, looking along the row of faces. ‘You didn’t know, did you . . . you didn’t know. Is there a . . . a man among you that knew? You thought, every one of you, that you were all alone. All alone. You poor devils. And look at you. More’n a third of the country’s High Command. You made it on your own, ladies. What could you have done if you’d acted tog—’ He stopped, and took a step towards Froc, who looked down at her cloven paperwork. ‘How many did you spot, Mildred?’ ‘That will be “general”, sergeant. I’m still a general, sergeant. Or “sir” will do. And your answer is: one or two. One or two.’ ‘And you promoted them, did you, if they was as good as men?’ ‘Indeed not, sergeant. What do you take me for? I promoted them if they were better than men.’ Jackrum opened his arms wide, like a ringmaster introducing a new act. ‘Then what about the lads I bought with me, sir? As cracking a bunch of lads as I’ve ever seen.’ He cast a bloodshot eye around the table. ‘And I’m good at weighing up a lad, as you all know. They’d be a credit to your army, sir!’ Froc looked at her colleagues on either side. An unspoken question harvested unsaid answers. ‘Yes, well,’ she said. ‘All seems clear to us, in the light of new developments. When beardless lads dress up as gels, there’s no doubt that people will get confused. And that’s what we’ve got here, sergeant. Mere confusion. Mistaken identities. Much ado, in fact, about nothing. Clearly they are boys, and may return home right now with an honourable discharge.’ Jackrum chuckled and stuck out a palm, flexing the fingers upwards like a man bargaining. Once again, there was the communion of spirits. ‘Very well. They can, if they wish, continue in the army,’ said Froc. ‘With discretion, of course.’ ‘No, sir!’ Polly stared at Jackrum, and then realized the words had, in fact, come from her own mouth. Froc raised her eyebrows. ‘What is your name again?’ she said. ‘Corporal Perks, sir!’ said Polly, saluting. She watched Froc’s face settle into an expression of condescending benevolence. If she uses the words ‘my dear’ I shall swear, she thought. ‘Well, my dear—’ ‘Not your dear, sir or madam,’ said Polly. In the theatre of her mind The Duchess Inn burned to a cinder and her old life peeled away, black as charcoal, and she was flying, ballistic, too fast and too high and unable to stop. ‘I am a soldier, general. I signed up. I kissed the Duchess. I don’t think generals call their soldiers “my dear”, do they?’ Froc coughed. The smile remained, but had the decency to be a bit more restrained. ‘And private soldiers don’t talk like that to generals, young lady, so we’ll let that pass, shall we?’ ‘Just here, in this room, I don’t know what passes and what stays, sir,’ said Polly. ‘But it seems to me that if you are still a general then I’m still a corporal, sir. I can’t speak for the others, but the reason I’m holding out, general, is that I kissed the Duchess and she knew what I was and she . . . didn’t turn away, if you understand me.’ ‘Well said, Perks,’ said Jackrum. Polly plunged on. ‘Sir, a day or two ago I’d have rescued my brother and gone off home and I’d have thought it a job well done. I just wanted to be safe. But now I see there’s no safety while there’s all this . . . this stupidity. So I think I’ve got to stay and be a part of it. Er . . . try to make it less stupid, I mean. And I want to be me, not Oliver. I kissed the Duchess. We all did. You can’t tell us we didn’t and you can’t tell us it doesn’t count, because it’s between us and her—’ ‘You all kissed the Duchess,’ said a voice. It had an . . . echo. You all kissed the Duchess . . . ‘Did you think that it meant nothing? That it was just a kiss?’ Did you think it meant nothing . . . . . . just a kiss . . . The whispered words washed against the walls like surf, and came back stronger, in harmonies. Did you kiss meant nothing meant a kiss just think a kiss meant a kiss. . .» Wazzer was standing up. The squad stood petrified as she walked unsteadily past them. Her eyes focused on Polly. ‘How good to wear a body again,’ she said. ‘And to breathe. Breathing is wonderful . . .’ How good . . . To breathe wonderful a body again to breathe. . . Something was in Wazzer’s face. Her features were all there, all correct, her nose was as pointed and as red, her cheekbones as hollow . . . but there were subtle changes. She held up a hand and flexed her fingers. ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘So . . .’ There was no echo this time, but the voice was stronger and deep. No one would ever have said that Wazzer’s voice had been attractive but this one was. She turned to Jackrum, who dropped on to his fat knees and whipped off his shako. ‘Sergeant Jackrum, I know that you know who I am. You have waded through seas of blood for me. Perhaps we should have done better things with your life, but at least your sins were soldier’s sins, and not the worst of them, at that. You are hereby promoted to sergeant major, and a better candidate for the job I have never met. You are steeped in deviousness, cunning and casual criminality, Sergeant Jackrum. You should do well.’ Jackrum, eyes cast down, raised a knuckle to his forehead. ‘. . . not worthy, your grace,’ he muttered. ‘Of course you aren’t.’ The Duchess looked around. ‘Now, where is my army . . . ah.’ There was no echo at all in the voice now, and none of Wazzer’s cowering and downcast eyes. She positioned herself directly in front of Froc, who was staring with his mouth open. ‘General Froc, you must do one final service for me.’ The general glared. ‘Who the hell are you?’ ‘You need to ask? As always, Jackrum thinks faster than you. You know me. I am the Duchess Annagovia.’ ‘But you are—’ one of the other officers began, but Froc held up a hand again. ‘The voice . . . is familiar,’ she said, in a faraway whisper. ‘Yes. You remember the ball. I remember it, too. Forty years ago. You were the youngest captain ever. We danced, stiffly in my case. I asked you how long you had been a captain, and you said—’ ‘Three days,’ breathed Froc, with her eyes shut. ‘And we ate Brandy Pillows, and a cocktail that I believe was called—’ ‘Angel’s Tears,’ said Froc. ‘I kept the menu, your grace. And the dance card.’ ‘Yes,’ said the Duchess. ‘You did. And when old General Scaffer led you away, he said, “That’ll be something to tell your grandchildren, my boy.” But you were . . . so dedicated that you never had children . . . my boy . . .’ . . . my boy . . . my boy . . . ‘I see heroes!’ said the Duchess, staring at the tableau of officers. ‘All of you gave up . . . much. But I demand more. Much more. Is there any amongst you who for the sake of my memory will not die in battle?’ Wazzer’s head turned and looked along the row. ‘No. I see there is not. And now I demand that you do what the ignorant might feel is the easier thing. You must refrain from dying in battle. Revenge is not redress. Revenge is a wheel, and it turns backwards. The dead are not your masters.’ ‘What is it you want of me, ma’am?’ Froc managed. ‘Call in your other officers. Make what truces are necessary, for now. This body, this poor child, will lead you. I am weak, but I can move small things. Thoughts, perhaps. I will leave her . . . something, a light in the eye, a tone in the voice. Follow her. You must invade.’ ‘Certainly! But how—’ ‘You must invade Borogravia! In the name of sanity, you must go home. The winter is coming, the trusting animals are not fed, old men die of cold, women mourn, the country corrodes. Fight Nuggan, because he is nothing now, nothing but the poisonous echo of all your ignorance and pettiness and malicious stupidity. Find yourself a worthier god. And let . . . me . . . go! All those prayers, all those entreaties . . . to me! Too many hands clasped, that could more gainfully answer your prayers by effort and resolve! And what was I? Just a rather stupid woman when I was alive. But you believed I watched over you, and listened to you . . . and so I had to, I had to listen, knowing that there was no help . . . I wish people would not be so careless about what they believe. Go. Invade the one place you’ve never conquered. And these women will help. Be proud of them. And, lest you think to twist my meaning, lest you doubt. . . let me, as I leave, return to you this gift. Remember. A kiss.’ . . . a kiss . . . . . . a kiss a kiss return to you kiss . . . . . . remember . . . As one woman, as one man, the crowd in the room reached up hesitantly to their left cheek. And Wazzer folded up, very gently, collapsing like a sigh. Froc was the first to speak. ‘This is . . . I think we need to . . .’ She faltered into silence. Jackrum got to his feet, brushed the dust off his shako, placed it on his head and saluted. ‘Permission to speak, sir?’ he said. ‘Oh, good heaven, Jackrum!’ said Froc distractedly. ‘At a time like this? Yes, yes . . .’ ‘What are your orders, sir?’ ‘Orders?’ Froc blinked, and looked around. ‘Orders, orders . . . yes. Well, I am the commander, I can request a . . . yes, I can request a truce, sergeant—’ ‘That’s sergeant major, sir,’ said Jackrum. ‘Right you are, sir, I’ll organize a runner to go to the alliance.’ ‘I suppose a . . . white flag would be—’ ‘Good as done, sir. Leave it to me,’ said Jackrum, radiating efficiency. ‘Yes, of course . . . Er, before, before we go any further . . . ladies and gentlemen, I . . . er . . . some of the things said here . . . the whole issue of women joining as . . . women . . . obviously . . .’ She raised her hand to her cheek again, in a kind of wonderment. ‘They are welcome. I . . . salute them. But for those of us that went before, perhaps it is not . . . not yet the time. You understand?’ ‘What?’ said Polly. ‘Lips sealed, sir!’ said Jackrum. ‘You can leave it all to me, sir! Captain Blouse’s squad, attention! You will obtain uniforms! You can’t go around still dressed as washerwomen, oh dear me!’ ‘We are soldiers?’ said Polly. ‘O’ course you are, otherwise I wouldn’t be shouting at you, you ‘orrible little woman! The world’s turned upside down! It’s a bit more important than you right now, eh? You’ve got what you’re after, right? Now get hold of a uniform, find yourself a shako and wipe your face, at least. You are taking the official truce to the enemy.’ ‘Me, sarge?’ said Polly. ‘Right! Just as soon as the officers have done the official letter. Tonker, Lofty . . . see what you can find for Perks to wear. Perks, don’t be cowed, and bull yourself up. The rest of you, hurry up and wait!’ ‘Sergeant Jac— er, sergeant major?’ said Blouse. ‘Yessir?’ ‘I’m not a captain, you know.’ ‘Are you not?’ said Jackrum, grinning. ‘Well, leave it to Jackrum, sir. We shall see what the day brings, eh? Minor point, sir. I should lose the dress if I was you!’ Jackrum marched off, his inflated chest as red as a robin’s and twice as threatening. He shouted at orderlies, harried guards, saluted officers and, despite everything, hammered the blade of purpose out of the red-hot steel of panic. He was a sergeant major in a roomful of confused ruperts, and he was happier than a terrier in a barrel of rats. Stopping a battle is much harder than starting it. Starting it only requires you to shout ‘Attack!’ but when you want to stop it, everyone is busy. Polly could feel the news spreading. They’re girls! The orderlies scuttling in and out once more kept staring at them, as if they were some kind of strange insects. I wonder how many Jackrum missed, Polly thought. I wonder . . . Bits of uniform turned up. Jade found some trousers that fitted by locating a clerk who was Polly’s height, lifting him up and pulling them off him. A jacket was acquired. Lofty even stole a shako of the right size and polished the badge with her sleeve until it gleamed. Polly was just doing up her belt when she spotted a figure on the far side of the room. She’d completely forgotten about him. She pulled the belt tight and thrust the leather through the buckle as she walked and then strode through the crowds of figures. Strappi saw her coming, but it was too late. There was no escape short of running, and captains didn’t run from corporals. He stood his ground, like a rabbit hypnotized by the approaching vixen, and raised his hands as she approached. ‘Now then, Perks, I’m a captain and I had a job to—’ he began. ‘And how long do you think you’ll hold that rank, now, sir? ’ hissed Polly. ‘When I tell the general about our little fight? And how you sicked the Prince on to us? And how you bullied Wazzer? And about my hair, you sticky little miserable apology for a man! Shufti’s a better man than you and she’s pregnant!’ ‘Oh, we knew there were women getting in,’ said Strappi. ‘We just didn’t know how far the rot went—’ ‘You took my hair because you thought it meant something to me,’ hissed Polly. ‘Well, you can keep it! I’ll grow some more, and no one is going to stop me, understand? Oh, and one other thing. This is how far the rot goes!’ It was a blow rather than a slap, and it knocked him down so hard that he rolled. But he was Strappi, and staggered upright with a finger pointed for vengeance. ‘She struck a superior officer!’ he screamed. A few heads turned. They looked at Strappi. They looked at Polly. Then they looked back grinning to what they had been doing. ‘I should run away again, if I was you,’ said Polly. She turned on her heel, feeling the heat of his impotent fury. As she was about to rejoin Jade and Maladict, someone touched her arm. She spun round. ‘What? Oh . . . sorry, Major Clogston,’ she said. She felt she wouldn’t be able to deal with Strappi again, not without committing murder. That would probably get her into trouble, even now. ‘I should like to thank you for a most enjoyable day,’ said the major. ‘I did my best, but I think we were all . . . outclassed.’ ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Polly. ‘This was a pleasure, Corporal Perks,’ said Clogston. ‘I shall watch your future career with interest and envy. Congratulations. And since in here protocol seems to be flapping loose, I will shake you by the hand.’ They shook. ‘And now, we have duties,’ said Major Clogston, as Jade arrived with a white sheet on a pole. ‘Oh, and by the way . . . my name is Christine. And, you know, I really don’t think I could get used to wearing a dress again . . .’ Maladict and Jade were chosen to see Polly through the castle, a troll because a troll commands respect and a vampire because a vampire demands it. There were groans and cheers as they elbowed their way along the passages, because news had already got around. That was another reason for taking Jade. Trolls could push. ‘Okay,’ said Jackrum, bringing up the rear. ‘At the bottom of these steps there’s a door, and beyond that door is enemy territory. Put the white flag out first. Important safety tip.’ ‘Can’t you come with us, sarge?’ ‘Hah, me? I dare say there’s a few people out there who’d take a pot shot at me white flag or no. Don’t you worry. The word’s gone out.’ ‘What word’s that, sarge?’ Jackrum leaned closer. ‘They ain’t gonna shoot a girl, Perks!’ ‘You told them?’ ‘Let’s just say that news gets around fast,’ said Jackrum. ‘Grab the advantage. And I’ll find your brother while you’re gone, upon my oath. Oh, one other thing . . . look at me, Perks.’ Polly turned, in the crowded, jostling corridor. Jackrum’s eyes twinkled. ‘I know I can trust you, Perks. I’d trust you like I’d trust myself. Best of luck. And make the most of it, lad. Kissin’ don’t last!’ Well, that couldn’t be plainer, Polly thought, as the armed men by the door beckoned them forward. ‘Stick to the walls, okay, ladies? And be quick with that rag!’ The heavy door swung open. Half a dozen arrows bounced and pinwheeled along the corridor. Another one tore through the flag. Polly waved it desperately. She heard distant shouting, and then cheers. ‘Okay, go!’ said a guard, pushing her forward. She stepped out into the sudden daylight and, to make sure, waved the flag overhead a few more times. There were men in the courtyard and lining the battlements around it. There were bodies, too. A captain, with blood soaking through his jacket, stepped across the fallen and held out his hand. ‘You may give that to me, soldier,’ he said. ‘No, sir. I must deliver it to your commander, and wait for his reply, sir.’ ‘Then you give it to me, soldier, and I will bring you back the reply. You have surrendered, after all.’ ‘No. This is a truce. That’s not the same thing. I have to hand this over personally and you aren’t big enough.’ A thought hit her. ‘I demand to take this to Commander Vimes!’ The captain stared at her, and then looked closer. ‘Aren’t you one of those—’ ‘Yes,’ said Polly. ‘And you locked them in chains and threw the key away?’ ‘Yes,’ said Polly, seeing her life start to flash past her eyes. ‘And they had to hop miles with shackles on and no clothes?’ ‘Yes!’ ‘And you’re just . . . women? ’ ‘Yes!’ said Polly, letting the ‘just’ go for now. The captain leaned closer and spoke while trying not to move his lips. ‘Dan gug show. Ell done. Agout time soes arragunk arsetards ere aken own a eg!’ He leaned back. ‘Commander Vimes it is, then. Follow me, miss.’ Polly felt hundreds of eyes on her as the squad was let into the inner keep. There were one or two wolf whistles, because there were more soldiers in there, including quite a few trolls. Jade bent down, snatched up a rock and hurled it at one of them, hitting him between the eyes. ‘No one move!’ shouted Maladict, waving his hands urgently as a hundred men raised their weapons. ‘That was the troll version of blowing a kiss!’ And, indeed, the troll who had been hit was waving at Jade, a little unsteadily. ‘Can we knock it off with the lovey-dovey, please?’ said Polly to Jade. ‘The soft people are likely to get the wrong idea.’ ‘It’s stopped the whistling, though,’ Maladict observed. More people watched them as they climbed flight after flight of stone steps. No one could take this place, Polly could see that. Every flight was seen by another one higher up, every visitor would be sighted on before she’d even glimpsed a face. A figure stepped out of the shadows as they reached the next floor. It was a young woman, in old-fashioned leather and mail armour, with a breastplate. She had long, very fair hair; for the first time in weeks, Polly felt a twinge of envy. ‘Thank you, captain, I’ll take over from here,’ she said, and nodded to Polly. ‘Good evening, Corporal Perks . . . if you would follow me, please?’ ‘She’s a woman! And a sergeant!’ Maladict whispered. ‘Yes, I know,’ said Polly. ‘But she gave an order to that captain!’ ‘Maybe she’s a political . . .’ ‘And she’s obviously female!’ ‘I’m not blind, Mal,’ said Polly. ‘I’m not deaf, either,’ said the woman, turning and smiling. ‘My name is Angua. If you will wait here, I’ll have some coffee sent in. There’s a bit of an argument going on in there at the moment.’ They were in a sort of anteroom, not much more than a widened area of corridor with a few benches. There were big double doors at the far end, behind which voices were being raised. Angua left. ‘Just like that?’ said Maladict. ‘What’s to stop us taking over the place?’ ‘All those men with crossbows we passed on the way up?’ said Polly. Why us? she thought, looking blankly at the wall. ‘Oh, yes. Those. Yes. Er . . . Poll?’ -v ‘Yes?’ ‘I’m actually Maladicta.’ She sat back. ‘There! I’ve told someone!’ ‘Dat’s nice,’ said Jade. ‘Oh, good,’ said Polly. I’d be going out to give the latrines their afternoon swill about now, she thought. This has got to be better than that, right? ‘I thought I did pretty well,’ Maladicta went on. ‘Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: vampires have a pretty good time of it whatever sex they are, right? But it’s the same everywhere. Velvet dresses, underwired nightgowns, acting crazy all the time, and don’t let’s even go near the whole “bathing in virgin’s blood” thing. You get taken a lot more seriously if they think you’re male.’ ‘Right,’ said Polly. All in all, it’s been a long day. A bath would be nice. ‘I thought I did pretty well right up until the whole coffee thing. A necklace of the roast beans, that’d be the thing. I’ll be better prepared another time.’ ‘Yeah,’ said Polly. ‘Good idea. With real soap.’ ‘Soap? How would soap work?’ ‘What? Oh . . . sorry,’ said Polly. ‘Did you hear anything I said?’ ‘Oh, that. Yes. Thank you for telling me.’ ‘Is that it?’ ‘Yes,’ said Polly. ‘You’re you. That’s good. I’m me, whoever I am. Tonker’s Tonker. It’s all just. . . people. Look, a week ago the high spot of my day was reading the new graffiti in the men’s latrines. I think you’d agree that a lot has happened since then. I don’t think I’m going to be surprised at anything any more. The coffee-bean necklace sounds good, by the way.’ She drummed her feet on the floor impatiently. ‘Right now, I just wish they’d hurry up in there.’ They sat and listened, and then Polly became aware of a little column of smoke coming from behind a bench on the other side of the space. She walked over and peered over the back. A man was lying there, head on one arm, smoking a cigar. He nodded when he saw Polly’s face. ‘They’re going to be ages yet,’ he said. ‘Aren’t you that sergeant I saw in the old kitchen? Making faces behind Lord Rust from Ankh-Morpork?’ ‘I was not making faces, miss. That’s how I always look when Lord Rust is talking. And I was a sergeant once, it’s true, but, look, no stripes.’ ‘Make der faces once too often?’ said Jade. The man laughed. He hadn’t shaved today, by the look of it. ‘Something like that, yes. Come along to my office, it’s warmer. I only came out here because people complain about the smoke. Don’t worry about that lot in there, they can wait. I’m only down the passage.’ They followed him. The door was, indeed, only a few steps away. The man pushed it open, walked across the little room beyond, and sat down in a chair. The table in front of it overflowed with papers. ‘I think we can get enough food up here to see you through the winter,’ he said, picking up a sheet of paper apparently at random. ‘Grain’s a bit short but we’ve got a handy surplus of white drumhead cabbage, keeps wonderfully, full of vitamins and minerals . . . but you might want to keep your windows open, if you follow me. Don’t stare. I know the country’s a month away from starvation.’ ‘But I haven’t even shown this letter to anyone!’ Polly protested. ‘You don’t know what we—’ ‘I don’t have to,’ said the man. ‘This is about food and mouths. Good grief, we don’t have to fight you. Your country is going to fall over anyway. Your fields are overgrown, most of your farmers are old men, the bulk of the grub goes to the army. And armies don’t do much for agriculture except marginally raise the fertility of the battlefield. The honour, the pride, the glory . . . none of that matters. This war stops, or Borogravia dies. Do you understand?’ Polly remembered the gale-swept fields, the old people salvaging what they could . . . ‘We’re just messengers,’ she said. ‘I can’t negotiate—’ ‘You know your god’s dead?’ said the man. ‘Nothing left but a voice, according to some of our priests. The last three Abominations were against rocks, ears and accordion players. Okay, I might be with him on the last one, but . . . rocks? Hah! We can advise you if you’re going to look for a new one, by the way. Om’s very popular at the moment. Very few abominations, no special clothing, and hymns you can sing in the bath. You won’t get Offler the Crocodile God up here with your winters, and the Unorthodox Potato Church is probably a bit too uncomplicated for—’ Polly started to laugh. ‘Look, sir, I’m just a . . . what is your name, please?’ ‘Sam Vimes. Special envoy, which is kind of like an ambassador but without the little gold chocolates.’ ‘Vimes the Butcher?’ said Maladicta. ‘Oh, yes. I’ve heard that one,’ said Vimes, grinning. ‘Your people haven’t really mastered the fine art of propaganda. And I’m telling you because— well, have you heard of Om?’ They shook their heads. ‘No? Well, in the Old Book of Om there’s a story about some city full of wickedness, and Om decided to destroy it with holy fire, this being back in the old smiting days before he’d got religion. But Bishop Horn protested about this plan, and Om said he’d spare the city if the bishop could find one good man. Well, the bishop knocked on every door, and turned up empty-handed. It turned out, after the place had been reduced to a glass plain, that there were probably plenty of good people there and, being good, they weren’t the sort to admit it. Death by modesty, a terrible thing. And you, ladies, are the only Borogravians I know much about, apart from the military who, frankly, aren’t chatty. You don’t appear to be as insane as your country’s foreign policy. You’re the one piece of international goodwill it has. A bunch of young boys outwitting crack cavalrymen? Kicking the Prince in the fork? People at home liked that. And now it turns out that you’re girls? They’ll love that. Mr de Worde is going to have fun with that when he finds out.’ ‘But we don’t have any power! We can’t negotiate a—’ ‘What does Borogravia want? Not the country. I mean the people.’ Polly opened her mouth to reply, and then shut it again and thought about the answer. ‘To be left alone,’ she said. ‘By everybody. For a while, anyway. We can change things.’ ‘You’ll accept the food?’ ‘We are a proud country.’ ‘What are you proud of?’ It came swiftly, like a blow, and Polly realized how wars happened. You took that shock that had run through her, and let it boil. . . . it may be corrupt, benighted and stupid, but it’s ours . . . Vimes was watching her face. ‘From this desk here,’ he said, ‘the only thing your country has to be proud of right now is you women.’ Polly stayed silent. She was still trying to cope with the anger. It made it worse to know that he was right. We have our pride. And that’s what we’re proud of. We’re proud of being proud . . . ‘Very well, then, will you buy some food?’ said Vimes, watching her carefully. ‘On credit? I suppose you still have someone in your country who knows about the kind of international affairs that don’t involve edged weapons?’ ‘People would accept that, yes,’ said Polly hoarsely. ‘Good. I’ll send a clacks back tonight.’ ‘And why would you be so generous, Mr Ankh-Morpork?’ ‘Because I’m from a wonderfully warm-hearted city, corporal . . . hah, no, I can’t say that and keep a straight face,’ said Vimes. ‘Do you want to know the truth? Most people in Ankh-Morpork hadn’t even heard of your country until the clacks went down. There’s dozens of little countries round here selling one another hand-painted clogs or beer made from turnips. Then they knew you as the bloody mad idiots who fight everyone. Now they know you as . . . well, people who do just what^hey’d do. And tomorrow they’ll laugh. And there’re other people, people who sit and think about the future every day, who believe it’s worth a little to be friends with a country like that.’ ‘Why?’ said Maladicta suspiciously. ‘Because Ankh-Morpork is a friend to all freedom-loving people everywhere!’ said Vimes. ‘Gods, it must be the way I tell ‘em. Ze chzy Brogocia proztfik!’ He saw their blank expressions. ‘Sorry, I’ve been away from home too long. And frankly, I’d rather be back there.’ ‘But why did you say you were a cherry pancake?’ said Polly. ‘Didn’t I say I am a citizen of Borogravia?’ ‘No. Brogocia is the cherry pancake, Borogvia is the country.’ ‘Well, I made the effort, at least. Look, we’d rather Prince Heinrich wasn’t ruler of two countries. That’d make one quite big country, much bigger than the other ones round here. So it’d probably get bigger still. He wants to be like Ankh-Morpork, you see. But what he means is he wants power, and influence. He doesn’t want to earn them, he doesn’t want to grow into them or learn the hard way how to use them. He just wants them.’ ‘That’s playing politics!’ said Maladicta. ‘No. It’s just telling the truth. Make peace with him, by all means. Just leave the road and the towers alone. You’ll get the food anyway, at whatever price. Mr de Worde’s article will see to that.’ ‘You sent the coffee,’ said Polly. ‘Oh, yes. That was Corporal Buggy Swires, my eye in the sky. He’s a gnome.’ ‘And you set a werewolf on us?’ ‘Well, set is a bit strong. Angua followed you, just to be on the safe side. She’s a werewolf, yes.’ ‘The girl we met? She didn’t look like one!’ ‘Well, they don’t, usually,’ said Vimes. ‘Right up until the moment when they do, if you see what I mean. And she was following you because I was looking for anything that’d stop thousands of people dying. And that’s not politics either,’ said Vimes. He stood up. ‘And now, ladies, I have to go and present your document to the alliance leaders.’ ‘You came out for a smoke at the right time, didn’t you?’ said Polly, slowly and carefully. ‘You knew we were on our way, and you made sure you’d get to us first.’ ‘Of course. Can’t leave this to a bunch of . . . oh, yes . . . ruperts.’ ‘Where is my brother, Mister Vimes?’ said Polly stiffly. ‘You seem very sure I know . . .’ said Vimes, not looking her in the face. ‘I’m certain you do,’ said Polly. ‘Why?’ ‘Because no one else does!’ Vimes stubbed out his cigar. ‘Angua was right about you,’ he said. ‘Yes, I, er, arranged for him to be put in what I like to call “protective custody”. He’s fine. Angua will take you to him now, if you like. Your brother, possibility of revenge, blackmail, who knows what . . . I thought he might be safer if I knew exactly who held the keys.’ The end of the journey, Polly thought. But it wasn’t, not any more. She got the distinct impression that the man opposite was reading her thoughts. ‘That’s what all this was about, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘No, sir. It’s just how it started,’ said Polly. ‘Well, it continues like this,’ said Vimes. ‘This is going to be a busy day. Right now I shall take this offer of a truce into the room down the passage and present it to the very important men’ - his voice went flat to say those words - ‘who are discussing what to do about Borogravia. You’ll get a truce, the food, and probably some other help.’ ‘How do you know that?’ said Polly. ‘They haven’t discussed it!’ ‘Not yet. But, as I said . . . I used to be a sergeant. Angua!’ The door opened. Angua came in. As Vimes had said, you couldn’t tell who was a werewolf until you found out . . . ‘And now I’d better have a shave before I go to see the very important men,’ said Vimes. ‘People set a lot of store by shaving.’ Polly felt embarrassed walking down the steps with Sergeant Angua. How did you start a conversation? ‘So you’re a werewolf, then?’ would be sort of idiotic. She was glad that Jade and Maladicta had been left in the waiting room. ‘Yes, I am,’ said Angua. ‘But I didn’t say it!’ Polly burst out. ‘No, but I’m used to situations like this. I’ve learned to recognize the way people don’t say things. Don’t worry.’ ‘You followed us,’ said Polly. ‘Yes.’ ‘So you must’ve known we weren’t men.’ ‘Oh, yes,’ said Angua. ‘My sense of smell is much better than my eyesight, and I’ve got sharp eyes. Humans are smelly creatures. For what it’s worth, though, I wouldn’t have told Mister Vimes if I hadn’t heard you talking to one another. Anyone could have heard you, you don’t need to be a werewolf for that. Everyone’s got secrets they don’t want known. Werewolves are a bit like vampires in that way. We’re tolerated . . . if we’re careful.’ ‘ That I can understand,’ said Polly. So are we, she thought. Angua stopped by a heavy, studded door. ‘He’s in here,’ she said, producing a key and turning it in the lock. ‘I’ll go back and chat to the others. Come and find me when you’re ready . . .’ Polly stepped inside, heart pounding, and there was Paul. And there was a buzzard, on a perch by the open window. And on the wall, where Paul was working so intensely that his tongue was sticking out of the corner of his mouth and he hadn’t even noticed the door opening, was another buzzard, flying in the heart of the sunrise. Right now, Polly could forgive Ankh-Morpork anything. Someone had found Paul a box of coloured chalks. The long day got longer. She had a kind of power. They all did. People gave them space, watched them. The fighting had stopped and they were the cause and no one knew exactly why. There were lighter moments. They might have power, but General Froc gave the orders. And General Froc might give the orders, but it was permissible to suppose that it was Sergeant-major Jackrum who anticipated them. And perhaps that was why Shufti asked Polly and Tonker to go with her, and they were ushered into a room where a couple of guards stood on either side of a sheepish young man called Johnny who had fair hair and blue eyes and a gold earring and his trousers round his knees in case Shufti wanted to check his other distinguishing feature. He also had a black eye. ‘This the one?’ said Major Clogston, who was leaning against the wall eating an apple. ‘The general has asked me to tell you that there will be a dowry of five hundred crowns, with the army’s compliments.’ Johnny brightened up slightly when he heard that. Shufti gave him a long and careful look. ‘No,’ she said at last, turning away. That’s not him.’ Johnny opened his mouth, and Polly snapped: ‘No one asked you to speak, private!’ And, such was the nature of the day, he shut up. ‘I’m afraid he’s the only candidate,’ said Clogston. ‘We’ve got any amount of earrings, heads of fair hair, blue eyes and Johnnies - and, surprisingly, a fair number of carbuncles. But he’s the only one with everything. Are you sure?’ ‘Positive,’ said Shufti, still staring at the boy. ‘My Johnny must have been killed.’ Clogston walked over and lowered her voice. ‘In that case, uh, the general did say, informally, that a marriage certificate, a ring and a widow’s pension could be arranged,’ she said. ‘Can she do that?’ whispered Polly. ‘For one of you? Today? You’ll be amazed what can be done,’ said Clogston. ‘Don’t think too badly of her. She means well. She’s a very practical man.’ ‘No,’ said Shufti. ‘I . . . it’s . . . well, no. Thank you, but no.’ ‘Are you sure?’ said Polly. ‘Positive,’ said Shufti, looking defiant. Since she was not naturally a defying kind of person it was not quite the look that she thought it was and it ought to have been, having overtones of haemorrhoid sufferer, but the effort was there. Clogston stepped back. ‘Well, if you’re certain, private? Fair enough, then. Take that man away, sergeant.’ ‘Just a moment,’ said Shufti. She walked over to the bewildered Johnny, stood in front of him, held out her hand and said: ‘Before they take you away again I want my sixpence back, you son of a bitch!’ Polly held out her hand to Clogston, who shook it and smiled. There had been another little victory, of sorts. If the landslide is big enough, even square pebbles will roll. * Polly headed back to the rather larger cell that had been made available as the women’s barracks, or at least the barracks for the official women. Men, grown men, had fallen over themselves to put cushions in there, and bring in wood for the fire. It was all very strange. Polly felt they were being treated as something dangerous and fragile, like, say, a huge and wonderful jar full of poison. She turned the corner into the big courtyard and there was de Worde with Mr Chriek. There was no escaping them. They were definitely people looking for someone. The man gave her a look in which reproach was mingled with hope. ‘Er . . . so you’re women, then?’ he said. ‘Er, yes,’ said Polly. De Worde took out his notebook. ‘This is an amazing story,’ he said. ‘You really fought your way here and got in disguised as washerwomen?’ ‘Well, we were women, and we did some washing,’ said Polly. ‘I suppose it was quite a cunning disguise, really. We got in by not being disguised, you could say.’ ‘General Froc and Captain Blouse say they’re very proud of you,’ de Worde went on. ‘Oh, he has got promoted, then?’ said Polly. ‘Yes, and Froc said you did wonderfully well, for women.’ ‘Yes, I suppose we did,’ said Polly. ‘Yes. Very well, for women.’ ‘The general went on to say . . .’ de Worde consulted his notebook, ‘that you are a credit to the women of your country. I wonder if you’d care to comment?’ He looked innocent, so possibly he didn’t understand the raging argument that had just broken out in Polly’s head. A credit to the women of your country. We’re proud of you. Somehow those words locked you away, put you in your place, patted you on the head and dismissed you with a sweetie. On the other hand, you had to start somewhere . . . ‘That’s very nice of him,’ said Polly. ‘But we just want to get the job done and go home. That’s what soldiers want.’ She thought for a moment, and then added: ‘And hot sweet tea.’ To her amazement, he wrote this down. ‘Just one last question, miss: do you think the world would be a different place if more women were soldiers?’ de Worde asked. He was smiling again, she noted, so this was probably a joky kind of question. ‘Oh, I think you’d have to ask General Froc that,’ said Polly. And I’d like to watch her expression if you do . . . ‘Yes, but what do you think, miss?’ ‘That’s corporal, please.’ ‘Sorry, corporal . . . and?’ The pencil was hovering. Around it, the world turned. It wrote things down, and then they got everywhere. The pen might not be mightier than the sword, but maybe the printing press was heavier than the siege weapon. Just a few words can change everything . . . ‘Well,’ said Polly, ‘I—’ There was a sudden bustling around the gates at the other end of the courtyard, and some cavalry officers arrived. They must have been expected, because Zlobenian officers were converging in a great hurry. ‘Ah, I see the Prince is back,’ said de Worde. ‘He^s probably not going to be happy about the truce. They sent some gallopers out to meet him.’ ‘Can he do anything about it?’ De Worde shrugged. ‘He left some very senior officers here. It would be rather shocking if he did.’ The tall figure had dismounted, and was striding towards Polly, or rather, she realized, the big doorway next to her. Frantic clerks and officers trailed after him, and were brushed off. But when a white oblong was waved in front of his face by one man he grabbed it and stopped so quickly that several other officers bumped into him. ‘Um,’ said de Worde. ‘The edition with the cartoon, I expect. Um.’ The paper was thrown down. ‘Yes, probably that was it,’ said de Worde. Heinrich advanced. Now Polly could make out his expression. It was thunderous. Beside her, de Worde turned over to a fresh page in his notebook and cleared his throat. ‘You’re going to talk to him?’ said Polly. ‘In that mood? He’ll cut you down!’ ‘I have to,’ said de Worde. And, as the Prince and his retinue reached the doorway he took a step forward and said, in a voice that cracked slightly, ‘Your highness? I wonder if I could have a word?’ Heinrich turned to scowl at him, and saw Polly. For a moment, their gazes locked. The Prince’s adjutants knew their master. As the man’s hand flew to his sword they closed on him in a mob, completely surrounding him, and there was some frantic whispering, in which some rather louder injections from Heinrich on the broad theme of ‘What?’ could be heard, followed by a toccata on ‘The hell you say!’ The crowd parted again. The Prince slowly and carefully brushed some dust off his spotless jacket, glanced only briefly at Otto and de Worde and, to Polly’s horror, strolled towards her . . . . . . with one white-gloved hand extended. Oh no, she thought. But he’s cleverer than Vimes thinks he is, and he can control his temper. And, suddenly, I’m everyone’s mascot. ‘For the good of our great countries,’ said Heinrich, ‘it is suggested that we publicly shake the hand of friendship.’ He smiled again, or at least allowed the corners of his mouth to turn up. Because she could think of no other way out, Polly took the huge hand and obediently shook it. ‘Oh, ver’ good,’ said Otto, grasping his picture box. ‘I can only take zer vun, of course, because unfortunately I shall have to use flash. Just vun moment . . .’ Polly was learning that an art form which happens in a fraction of a second nevertheless needs a long time to take place, allowing a smile to freeze into a mad grimace or, in the worst cases, a death rictus. Otto muttered to himself as he adjusted the equipment. Heinrich and Polly maintained the grip and stared at the picture box. ‘So,’ muttered the Prince, ‘the soldier boy isn’t a soldier boy. That is your good luck!’ Polly kept her fixed grin. ‘Do you often menace frightened women?’ she said. ‘Oh, that was nothing! You are only a peasant girl, after all! What do you know of life? And you showed spirit!’ ‘Everyone say chiz!’ Otto commanded. ‘Vun, two, three . . . oh, bug—’ By the time the after-images had died away, Otto was back on his feet again. ‘Vun day I hope to find a filter zat vorks,’ he muttered. ‘Thank you, everyvun.’ ‘That was for peace and goodwill between nations,’ said Polly, smiling sweetly and letting go of the Prince’s hand. She took a step back. ‘And this, your highness, is for me . . .’ Actually, she didn’t kick. Life was a process of finding out how far you could go, and you could probably go too far in finding out how far you could go. But a mere twitch of a leg was enough, just to see the idiot collapse in the ridiculous, knock-kneed, protective crouch. She marched away, singing inside. This was not a fairy-tale castle and there was no such thing as a fairy-tale ending, but sometimes you could threaten to kick the handsome prince in the ham-and-eggs. And now, there was one other little thing. The sun was setting before Polly found Jackrum again, and blood-red light shone through the high windows of the keep’s biggest kitchen. He was sitting alone at a long table by the fire, in full uniform, and he was eating a slab of thick bread plastered with pork dripping. A mug of beer was not far from his other hand. He looked up as she approached, and nodded companionably towards another chair. Around them, women ran to and fro. ‘Pork drippin’ with salt and pepper, and a mug of beer,’ he said. That’s the ticket. You can keep your cuisine. Want a slice?’ He waved a hand at one of the kitchen girls who was dancing attendance on him. ‘Not right now, sarge.’ ‘Sure?’ said Jackrum. ‘There’s an old sayin’: kissing don’t last, cooking do. I hope that it’s one you don’t have cause to reflect upon.’ Polly sat down. ‘Kissing is lasting so far,’ she said. ‘Shufti get sorted out?’ said Jackrum. He finished the beer, snapped his fingers at the serving girl, and pointed to the empty mug. ‘To her own satisfaction, sarge.’ ‘Fair enough. You can’t get fairer. So what next, Perks?’ ‘Dunno, sarge. I’ll go with Wa— with Alice and the army and see what happens.’ ‘Best of luck. Look after ‘em, Perks, ‘cos I ain’t coming,’ said Jackrum. ‘Sarge?’ said Polly, shocked. ‘Well, looks like we’re going to be short by one war at present, eh? Anyway, this is it. The end of the road. I’ve done my bit. Can’t go on now. Shot me quiver with the general, and I dare say he will be glad to see the back of me. Besides, old age is creepin’ on. I killed five poor devils when we attacked today, and afterwards I found meself wonderin’ why. Not good, that. Time to get out before I blunt me own edge.’ ‘You’re sure, sarge?’ ‘Yeah. Seems to me the ol’ “my country right or wrong” thing has had its day. Time to put my feet up and find out what it is we’ve been fighting for. Sure you won’t have any dripping? It’s got crunchy bits. That’s what I call style, in dripping.’ Polly waved away the proffered slab of grease-smeared bread, and sat in silence while Jackrum engulfed it. ‘Funny thing, really,’ she said, at last. ‘What’s that, Perks?’ ‘Finding out that it’s not about you. You think you’re the hero, and it turns out you’re really part of someone else’s story. Wazz— Alice will be the one they remember. We just had to get her here.’ Jackrum said nothing but, as Polly would have predicted, pulled his crumpled bag of chewing tobacco out of his pocket. She slipped a hand in her own pocket and pulled out a small packet. Pockets, she thought. We’ve got to hang on to pockets. A soldier needs pockets. ‘Try this, sarge,’ she said. ‘Go on, open it.’ It was a small, soft leather pouch, with a drawstring. Jackrum held it up so that it twisted this way and that. ‘Well, Perks, upon my oath I am not a swearing man—’ he began. ‘No, you’re not. I’ve noticed,’ said Polly. ‘But that grubby old paper was getting on my nerves. Why didn’t you ever get a proper pouch made for yourself? One of the saddlers here sewed that up for me in half an hour.’ ‘Well, that’s life, isn’t it?’ said Jackrum. ‘Every day you think “ye gods, it’s about time I had a new bag”, but then it all gets so busy you end up using the old one. Thank you, Perks.’ ‘Oh, I thought, “What can I give the man who has^verything?” and that was all I could afford,’ said Polly. ‘But you don’t have everything, sarge. Sarge? You don’t, do you?’ She sensed him freeze over. ‘You stop right there, Perks,’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘I just thought you might like to show someone that locket of yours, sarge,’ said Polly cheerfully. ‘The one round your neck. And don’t glare at me, sarge. Oh, yeah, I could walk away and I’d never be sure, really sure, and maybe you’d never show it to anyone else, ever, or tell them the story, and one day we’ll both be dead and . . . well, what a waste, eh?’ Jackrum glared. ‘Upon your oath, you are not a dishonest man,’ said Polly. ‘Good one, sarge. You told people every day.’ Around them, beyond the dome, the kitchen buzzed with the busyness of women. Women always seemed to be doing things with their hands - holding babies, or pans, or plates, or wool, or a brush, or a needle. Even when they were talking, busyness was happening. ‘No one would believe yer,’ said Jackrum, at last. ‘Who would I want to tell?’ said Polly. ‘And you’re right. No one would believe me. I’d believe you, though.’ Jackrum stared into his fresh mug of beer, as if trying to see the future in the foam. He seemed to reach a decision, pulled the gold chain out of his noisome vest, unfastened the locket, and gently snapped it open. ‘There you go,’ he said, passing it across. ‘Much good may it do you.’ There was a miniature painting in each side of the locket: a dark-haired girl, and a blond young man in the uniform of the Ins-and-Outs. ‘Good one of you,’ said Polly. ‘Pull the other one, it’s got bells on,’ said Jackrum. ‘No, honestly,’ said Polly. ‘I look at the picture, and look at you . . . I can see that face in her face. Paler, of course. Not so . . . full. And who was the boy?’ ‘William, his name was,’ said Jackrum. ‘Your sweetheart?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And you followed him into the army . . .’ ‘Oh, yeah. Same old story. I was a big strong girl, and . . . well, you can see the picture. The artist did his best, but I was never an oil painting. Barely a watercolour, really. Where I came from, what a man looked for in a future wife was someone who could lift a pig under each arm. And a couple of days later I was lifting a pig under each arm, helping my dad, and one of my clogs came off in the muck and the ol’ man was yelling at me and I thought: the hell with this, Willie never yelled. Got hold of some men’s clothes, never you mind how, cut my hair right off, kissed the Duchess, and was a Chosen Man within three months.’ ‘What’s that?’ ‘It’s what we used to call a corporal,’ said Jackrum. ‘Chosen Man. Yeah, I smiled about that, too. And I was on my way. The army’s a piece of piss compared to running a pig farm and looking after three lazy brothers.’ ‘How long ago was that, sarge?’ ‘Couldn’t say, really. I swear I don’t know how old I am, and that’s the truth,’ said Jackrum. ‘Lied about my age so often I ended up believing me.’ She began, very carefully, to transfer the chewing tobacco into the new bag. ‘And your young man?’ said Polly quietly. ‘Oh, we had great times, great times,’ said Jackrum, stopping for a moment to stare at nothing. ‘He never got promoted on account of his stutter, but I had a good shouty voice and officers like that. But Willie never minded, not even when I made it to sergeant. And then he got killed at Sepple, right next to me.’ ‘I’m sorry.’ ‘You don’t have to be, you didn’t kill him,’ said Jackrum evenly. ‘But I stepped over his body and skewered the bugger that did. Wasn’t his fault. Wasn’t my fault. We were soldiers. And then a few months later I had a bit of a surprise, and he was called William, too, just like his father. Good job iMiad a bit of leave, eh? Me gran raised him for me, put him to a trade as an armourer over in Scritz. Good trade, that. No one kills a good armourer. They tell me he looks just like his dad. A captain I met once had bought a bloody good sword off him. Showed it to me, not knowin’ the hist’ry, o’ course. Damn good sword. It had scrollwork on the hilt and everything, very classy. He’s married with four kids now, I heard. Got a carriage and pair, servants, big house . . . yeah, I see you’re paying attention . . .’ ‘Wazzer - well, Wazzer and the Duchess said—’ ‘Yeah, yeah, they talked about Scritz, and a sword,’ said Jackrum. ‘That’s when I knew it wasn’t just me watchin’ over you lads. I knew you’d survive. The old girl needed you.’ ‘So you’ve got to go there, sarge.’ ‘Got to? Who says? I’ve served the old girl the whole of my life, and she’s got no call on me now. I’m my own man, always have been.’ ‘Are you, sarge?’ said Polly. ‘Are you crying, Perks?’ ‘Well . . . it’s a bit sad, sarge.’ ‘Oh, I dare say I sobbed a bit too, once in a while,’ said Jackrum, still tucking the tobacco into the new pouch. ‘But when all’s said and done, I’ve had a good life. Saw the cavalry break at the Battle of Slomp. I was part of the Thin Red Line that turned aside the Heavy Brigade at Sheep’s Drift, I saved the Imperial flag from four real bastards at Raladan, and I’ve been to a lot of foreign countries and met some very interesting people, who I mostly subsequently killed before they could do me over good and proper. Lost a lover, still got a son . . . there’s many a woman who’s faced worse, believe me.’ ‘And . . . you spotted other girls . . .’ ‘Hah! Became a kind of hobby, really. Most of ‘em were frightened little things, running away from god knows what. They got found out soon enough. And there were plenty like Shufti, chasin’ their lad. But there were a few who had what I call the twinkle. A bit of fire, maybe. They just needed pointing in the right direction. I gave them a leg up, you might say. A sergeant’s a powerful man, sometimes. A word here, a nod there, sometimes even doctorin’ some paperwork, a whisper in the dark—’ ‘—a pair of socks,’ said Polly. ‘Yeah, that sort of thing,’ said Jackrum, grinning. ‘Always a big concern to them, the whole latrine business. Least of your worries, I used to say. In peace no one cares, in battle everyone takes a piss the same way, and damn quickly, too. Oh, I helped ‘em. I was their whatsit, their eminence grease, and grease it was, too, slidin’ them to the top. Jackrum’s Little Lads, I called ‘em.’ ‘And they never suspected?’ ‘What, suspect Jolly Jack Jackrum, so full of rum and vinegar?’ said Jackrum, the old evil grin coming back. ‘Jack Jackrum, who could stop a bar fight by belchin’? No, sir! I dare say some of ‘em suspected something, maybe, I dare say they worked out that there was something going on somewhere, but I was just the big fat sergeant who knew everyone and everything and drank everything, too.’ Polly dabbed at her eyes. ‘What are you going to do now, then, if you don’t go to Scritz?’ ‘Oh, I’ve got a bit put by,’ said Jackrum. ‘More than a bit, in point of actual fact. Pillage, plunder, loot. . . it all adds up, what ever you call it. I didn’t piss it all up against a wall like the other lads, right? I expect I can remember most of the bleedin’ places I buried it. Always thought I might open an inn, or maybe a knocking shop . . . oh, a proper high class place, you don’t have to look at me like that, nothin’ like that stinking tent. No, I’m talkin’ about one with a chef and chandeliers and a lot of red velvet, very exclusive. I’d get some nobby lady to front it and I’d be the bouncer and run the bar. Here’s a tip, lad, for your future career, and it’s one some of the other Little Lads learned for ‘emselves: sometimes it’ll help if you visits one of them naughty places, otherwise the men’ll wonder about you. I always used to take a book to read and advise the young lady to get some sleep, ‘cos they does a tough job.’ Polly let that pass, but said: ‘You don’t want to go back and see your grandchildren?’ ‘Wouldn’t wish meself on him, lad,’ said Jackrum firmly. ‘Wouldn’t dare. My boy’s a well-respected man in the town! What’ve I got to offer? He’ll not want some fat ol’ biddy banging on his back door and gobbing baccy juice all over the place and telling him she’s his mother!’ Polly looked at the fire for a moment, and felt the idea creep into her mind. ‘What about a distinguished sergeant major, shiny with braid, loaded with medals, arriving at the front door in a grand coach and telling him he’s his father?’ she said. Jackrum stared. ‘Tides of war, and all that,’ Polly went on, mind suddenly racing. ‘Young love. Duty calls. Families scattered. Hopeless searching. Decades pass. Fond memories. Then . . . oh, an overheard conversation in a bar, yeah, that’d work. Hope springs. A new search. Greasing palms. The recollections of old women. At last, an address—’ ‘What’re you saying, Perks?’ ‘You’re a liar, sarge,’ said Polly. ‘Best I’ve ever heard. One last lie pays for all! Why not? You could show him the locket. You could tell him about the girl you left behind you . . .’ Jackrum looked away, but said: ‘You’re a shining bastard of a thinker, Perks. And where would I get a grand coach, anyway?’ ‘Oh, sarge! Today? There are . . . men in high places who’ll give you anything you ask for, right now. You know that. Especially if it means they’d see the back of you. You never put the bite on them for anything much. If I was you, sarge, I’d cash in a few favours while you can. That’s the Ins-and-Outs, sarge. Take the cheese while it’s there, ‘cos kissin’ don’t last.’ Jackrum took a deep, long breath. ‘I’ll think about it, Perks. Now you push off, all right?’ Polly stood up. ‘Think hard, sarge, eh? Like you said, anyone who’s got anyone left is ahead of the game right now. Four grandchildren? I’d be a proud kid if I had a grandad who could spit tobacco juice far enough to hit a fly on the opposite wall.’ ‘I’m warning you, Perks.’ ‘It was just a thought, sarge.’ ‘Yeah . . . right,’ Jackrum growled. ‘Thanks for getting us through it, sarge.’ Jackrum didn’t turn round. ‘I’ll be going, then, sarge.’ ‘Perks!’ said Jackrum, as she reached the door. Polly stepped back into the room. ‘Yes, sarge?’ ‘I . . . expected better of ‘em, really. I thought they’d be better at it than men. Trouble was, they were better than men at being like men. They do say the army can make a man of you, eh? So . . . whatever it is you are going to do next, do it as you. Good or bad, do it as you. Too many lies and there’s no truth to go back to.’ ‘Will do, sarge.’ ‘That’s an order, Perks. Oh . . . and Perks?’ ‘Yes, sarge?’ ‘Thanks, Perks.’ Polly paused when she got to the door. Jackrum had turned her chair to the fire, and had settled back. Around him, the kitchen worked. Six months passed. The world wasn’t perfect, but it was still turning. Polly had kept the newspaper articles. They weren’t accurate, not in the detail, because the writer told . . . stories, not what was actually happening. They were like paintings, when you had been there and had seen the real thing. But it was true about the march on the castle, with Wazzer on a white horse in front, carrying the flag. And it was true about people coming out of their houses and joining the march, so that what arrived at the gates was not an army but a sort of disciplined mob, shouting and cheering. And it was true that the guards had taken one look at it and had seriously reconsidered their future, and that the gates had swung open even before the horse had clattered on to the drawbridge. There was no fighting, no fighting at all. The shoe had dropped. The country had breathed out. Polly didn’t think it was true that the painting of the Duchess, alone on its easel in the big, empty throne room, had smiled when Wazzer walked towards it. Polly had been there and didn’t see it happen, but lots of people swore it had, and you might end up wondering what the truth really was, or whether there were lots of different kinds of truth. Anyway, it had worked. And then . . . . . . they went home. A lot of soldiers did, under the fragile truce. The first snows were already falling and, if people had wanted a war, then the winter had given them one. It came with lances of ice and arrows of hunger, it filled the passes with snow, it made the world as distant as the moon . . . That was when the old dwarf mines had opened up, and pony after pony emerged. It had always been said there were dwarf tunnels everywhere, and not just tunnels; secret canals under the mountains, docks, flights of locks that could lift a barge a mile high in busy darkness, far below the gales on the mountain tops. They brought, indeed, cabbage and potatoes and roots and apples and barrels of fat, things that kept. And winter was defeated, and the snowmelt roared down the valleys, and the Kneck scrawled its random wiggles across the flat silt of the valley. They’d gone home, and Polly wondered if they’d ever really been away. Were we soldiers? she wondered. They’d been cheered on the road to PrinceMarmadukePiotreAlbertHans-JosephBernhardtWilhelmsberg, and had been much better treated than their rank deserved, and even had a special uniform designed for them. But the vision of Gummy Abbens kept rising in her mind . . . We weren’t soldiers, she decided. We were girls in uniform. We were like a lucky charm. We were mascots. We weren’t real, we were always a symbol of something. We’d done very well, for women. And we were temporary. Tonker and Lofty were never going to be dragged back to the school now, and they’d gone their own way. Wazzer had joined the general’s household, and had a room of her own, and quietness, and made herself useful and was never beaten. She’d written Polly a letter, in tiny spiky handwriting. She seemed happy; a world without beatings was heaven. Jade and her beau had wandered off to do something more interesting, as trolls very sensibly did. Shufti. . . had been on a timetable of her own. Maladicta had disappeared. And Igorina had set up by herself in the capital, dealing with women’s problems, or at least those women’s problems that weren’t men. And senior officers had given them medals, and watched them go with fixed, faint smiles. Kisses don’t last. And, now, it wasn’t that good things were happening, it was just that bad things had stopped. The old women still grumbled, but they were left to grumble. No one had any directions, no one had a map, no one was quite certain who was in charge. There were arguments and debates on every street corner. It was frightening and exhilarating. Every day was an exploration. Polly had worn a pair of Paul’s old trousers to clean the floor of the big bar, and had got barely a ‘hurrumph’ from anyone. Oh, and the Girls’ Working School had burned down, and on the same day two slim masked figures had robbed a bank. Polly had grinned when she heard that. Shufti had moved into The Duchess. Her baby was called Jack. Paul doted on it. And now . . . Someone had been drawing in the gents’ privy again. Polly couldn’t wash it off, so she contented herself with correcting the anatomy. Then she swooshed the place clean - at least, clean by pub urinal standards - with a couple of buckets and ticked off the chore, just as she did every morning. When she arrived back in the bar there were a group of worried men there, talking to her father. They looked mildly frightened when she strode in. ‘What’s happening?’ she said. Her father nodded to Gummy Abbens, and everyone stepped back a little. What with the spittle and the bad breach, you never wanted a conversation with Gummy to be particularly intimate. ‘The swede-eatersh is at it again!’ he said. ‘They’re gonna invade ‘cos the Prince saysh we belong to him now!’ ‘It’s all down to him being the Duchess’s distant cousin,’ said Polly’s father. ‘But I heard it still wasn’t settled!’ said Polly. ‘Anyway, there’s still a truce!’ ‘Sheems like he’s shettling it,’ said Gummy. The rest of the day passed at an accelerated pace. There were groups of people talking urgently in the streets, and a crowd around the gates to the town hall. Every so often a clerk would come out and nail another communique on the gates; the crowd would close over it like a hand, open again like a flower. Polly elbowed her way to the front, ignoring the mutterings around her, and scanned the sheets. The same old stuff. They were recruiting again. The same old words. The same old croakings of long dead soldiers, inviting the living to join them. General Froc might be female, but he was also, as Blouse would have said, ‘a bit of an old woman’. Either that or the heaviness of those epaulettes had weighed her down. Kissing don’t last. Oh, the Duchess had come alive before them and turned the world upside down for a space and maybe they had all decided to be better people, and out of certain oblivion had come a space to breathe. But then . . . had it really happened? Even Polly sometimes wondered, and she had been there. Was it just a voice in their heads, some kind of hallucination? Weren’t soldiers in desperate straits famous for seeing visions of gods and angels? And somewhere in the course of the long winter the miracle had faded, and people had said ‘yes, but we’ve got to be practical’. All we were given was a chance, thought Polly. No miracle, no rescue, no magic. Just a chance. She walked back to the inn, her mind buzzing. When she got there, a package was waiting. It was quite long, and heavy. ‘It came all the way from Scritz on the cart,’ said Shufti excitedly. She’d been working in the kitchen. It had become, now, her kitchen. ‘I wonder what it can be?’ she said pointedly. Polly levered the lid off the rough wooden crate, and found that it was full of straw with an envelope lying on top of it. She opened it. Inside was an iconograph. It looked expensively done, a stiff family group with curtains and a potted palm in the background to give everything a bit of style. On the left was a middle-aged man looking proud; on the right was a woman of about the same age, looking rather puzzled but nevertheless pleased because her husband was happy; and here and there, staring at the viewer with variations of smile and squint, and expressions extending from interest to a sudden recollection that they should have gone to the toilet before posing, were children ranging from tall and gangly to small and smugly sweet. And sitting on a chair in the middle, the focus of it all, was Sergeant-major Jackrum, shining like the sun. Polly stared, and then turned the picture over. On the back was written, in big black letters: ‘SM Jackrum’s Last Stand!’ and, underneath, ‘Don’t need these.’ She smiled, and pulled aside the straw. In the middle of the box, wrapped in cloth, were a couple of cutlasses. ‘Is that old Jackrum?’ said Shufti, picking up the picture. ‘Yes. He’s found his son,’ said Polly, unwinding a blade. Shufti shuddered when she saw it. ‘Evil things,’ she said. ‘Things, anyway,’ said Polly. She laid both the cutlasses on the table, and was about to lift the box out of the way when she saw something small in the straw at the bottom. It was oblong, and wrapped in thin leather. It was a notebook, with a cheap binding and musty yellowing pages. ‘What’s that?’ said Shufti. ‘I think . . . yes, it’s his address book,’ said Polly, flicking through the pages. This is it, she thought. It’s all here. Generals and majors and captains, oh my. There must be . . . hundreds. Maybe a^ thousand! Names, real names, promotions, dates . . . everything . . . She pulled out a white pasteboard oblong that had been inserted like a bookmark. It showed a rather florid coat of arms and bore the printed legend: William De Worde EDITOR, THE TIMES OF ANKH-MORPORK ‘The Truth Shall Make Ye Frep’ Gleam Street, Ankh-Morpork e-mail: WDW@Times.AM Someone had crossed out the ‘p’ in ‘frep’ and pencilled in an ‘e’ above it. It was a sudden strange fancy . . . How many ways can you fight a war? Polly wondered. We have the clacks now. I know a man who writes things down. The world turns. Plucky little countries seeking self-determination . . . could be useful to big countries with plans of their own. Time to grab the cheese. Polly’s expression as she stared at the wall would have frightened a number of important people. They would have been even more concerned at the fact that she spent the next several hours writing things down, because it occurred to Polly that General Froc had not got where she was today by being stupid and therefore she could profit from following her example. She copied out the entire notebook, and sealed it in an old jam jar which she hid in the roof of the stables. She wrote a few letters. And she got her uniform out of the wardrobe and inspected it critically. The uniforms that had been made for them had a special, additional quality that could only be called . . . girlie. They had more braid, they were better tailored, and they had a long skirt with a bum roll rather than trousers. The shakos had plumes, too. Her tunic had a sergeant’s stripes. It had been a joke. A sergeant of women. The world had been turned upside down, after all. They’d been mascots, good-luck charms . . . And, perhaps, on the march to PrinceMarmadukePiotreAlbertHansJoseph-BernhardtWilhelmsberg a joke was what everyone needed. But, maybe, when the world turns upside down, you can turn a joke upside down too. Thank you, Gummy, even though you didn’t know what it was you were teaching me. When they’re laughing at you, their guard is down. When their guard is down, you can kick them in the fracas. She examined herself in the mirror. Her hair, now, was just long enough to be a nuisance without being long enough to be attractive, so she brushed it and left it at that. She put the uniform on, but with the skirt over her trousers, and tried to put aside the nagging feeling that she was dressing up as a woman. There. She looked completely harmless. She looked slightly less harmless with both cutlasses and one of the horsebows on her back, especially if you knew that the inn’s dartboards now had deep holes in the bullseyes from all the practising. She crept along the hall to the window that overlooked the inn yard. Paul was up a ladder, repainting the sign. Her father was steadying the ladder and calling out instructions in his normal way, which was to call out the instruction just a second or two after you’d already started doing it. And Shufti, although Polly was the only one in The Duchess who still called her that and knew why, was watching them, holding Jack. It made a lovely picture. For a moment, she wished she had a locket. The Duchess was smaller than she’d thought. But if you had to protect it by standing in the doorway with a sword, you were too late. Caring for small things had to start with caring for big things, and maybe the world wasn’t big enough. The note she left on her dressing table read: ‘Shufti, I hope you and Jack are happy here. Paul, you look after her. Dad, I’ve never taken any wages, but I need a horse. I’ll try to have it sent back. I love you all. If I don’t come back, burn this letter and look in the roof of the stables.’ She dropped out of the window, saddled up a horse in the stables, and let herself out of the back gate. She didn’t mount up until she was out of earshot, and then rode down to the river. Spring was pouring through the country. Sap was rising. In the woods, a ton of timber was growing every minute. Everywhere, birds were singing. There was a guard on the ferry. He eyed her nervously as she led the horse aboard, and then grinned.’ ‘Morning, miss!’ he said cheerfully. Oh, well . . . time to start. Polly marched in front of the puzzled man. ‘Are you trying to be smart?’ she demanded, inches from his face. ‘No, miss—’ ‘That’s sergeant, mister!’ said Polly. ‘Let’s try again, shall we? I said, are you trying to be smart?’ ‘No, sergeant!’ Polly leaned until her nose was an inch from his. ‘Why not?’ The grin faded. This was not a soldier on the fast track to promotion. ‘Huh?’ he managed. ‘If you are not trying to be smart, mister, you’re happy to be stupid!’ shouted Polly. ‘And I’m up to here with stupid, understand?’ ‘Yeah, but—’ ‘But what, soldier?’ ‘Yeah, but . . . well . . . but . . . nothing, sergeant,’ said the soldier. ‘That’s good.’ Polly nodded at the ferrymen. ‘Time to go?’ she suggested, but in the tones of an order. ‘Couple of people just coming down the road, sergeant,’ said one of them, a faster man with an uptake. They waited. There were, in fact, three people. One of them was Maladicta, in full uniform. Polly said nothing until the ferry was out in mid-stream. The vampire gave her the kind of smile only a vampire can give. It would have been sheepish, if sheep had different teeth. ‘Thought I’d try again,’ she said. ‘We’ll find Blouse,’ said Polly. ‘He’s a major now,’ said Maladicta. ‘And happy as a flea because they’ve named a kind of fingerless glove after him, I heard. What do we want him for?’ ‘He knows about the clacks. He knows about other ways war can be fought. And I know . . . people,’ said Polly. ‘Ah. Do you mean the “Upon my oath, I am not a lying man, but I know people” kind of people?’ ‘Those were the kind of people I had in mind, yes.’ The river slapped against the side of the ferry. ‘Good,’ said Maladicta. ‘I don’t know where it’s going to lead, though,’ said Polly. ‘Ah. Even better.’ At which point, Polly decided that she knew enough of the truth to be going on with. The enemy wasn’t men, or women, or the old, or even the dead. It was just bleedin’ stupid people, who came in all varieties. And no one had the right to be stupid. She looked at the other two passengers who’d sidled aboard. They were country lads in ragged, ill-fitting clothes, keeping away from her and staring intently at the deck. But one glance was enough. The world turned upside down, and history repeated. For some reason, that suddenly made her feel very happy. ‘Going to join up, lads?’ she said, cheerily. There was some mumbling on the theme of ‘yes’. ‘Good. Then stand up straight,’ said Polly. ‘Let’s have a look at you. Chins up. Ah. Well done. Shame you didn’t practise walking in trousers, and I notice you didn’t bring an extra pair of socks.’ They stared, mouths open. ‘What are your names?’ said Polly. ‘Your real names, please?’ ‘Er . . . Rosemary,’ one of them began. ‘I’m Mary,’ said the other. ‘I heard girls were joining, but everyone laughed, so I thought I’d better pretend to—’ ‘Oh, you can join as men if you want,’ said Polly. ‘We need a few good men.’ The girls looked at one another. ‘You get better swear words,’ said Polly. ‘And the trousers are useful. But it’s your choice.’ ‘A choice?’ said Rosemary. ‘Certainly,’ said Polly. She put a hand on a shoulder of each girl, winked at Maladicta and added: ‘You are my little lads - or not, as the case may be - and I will look after . . . you.’ And the new day was a great big fish. 
Moving Pictures - Terry Pratchett	----	Moving Pictures Moving PicturesTerry Pratchett - Moving Pictures I would like to thank all the wonderful people who made this book possible. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you . . . This is space. It’s sometimes called the final frontier. (Except that of course you can’t have a final frontier, because there’d be nothing for it to be a frontier to, but as frontiers go, it’s pretty penultimate . . .) And against the wash of stars a nebula hangs, vast and black, one red giant gleaming like the madness of gods . . . And then the gleam is seen as the glint in a giant eye and it is eclipsed by the blink of an eyelid and the darkness moves a flipper and Great A’Tuin, star turtle, swims onward through the void. On its back, four giant elephants. On their shoulders, rimmed with water, glittering under its tiny orbiting sunlet, spinning majestically around the mountains at its frozen Hub, lies the Discworld, world and mirror of worlds. Nearly unreal. Reality is not digital, an on-off state, but analog. Something gradual. In other words, reality is a quality that things possess in the same way that they possess, say, weight. Some people are more real than others, for example. It has been estimated that there are only about five hundred real people on any given planet, which is why they keep unexpectedly running into one another all the time. The Discworld is as unreal as it is possible to be while still being just real enough to exist. And just real enough to be in real trouble. About thirty miles Turnwise of Ankh-Morpork the surf boomed on the wind-blown, seagrass-waving, sand-dunecovered spit of land where the Circle Sea met the Rim Ocean. The hill itself was visible for miles. It wasn’t very high, but lay amongst the dunes like an upturned boat or a very unlucky whale, and was covered in scrub trees. No rain fell here, if it could possibly avoid it. Although the wind sculpted the dunes around it, the low summit of the hill remained in an everlasting, ringing calm. Nothing but the sand had changed here in hundreds of years. Until now. A crude but of driftwood had been built on the long curve of the beach, although describing it as “built” was a slander on skilled crude but builders throughout the ages; if the sea had simply been left to pile the wood up it might have done a better job. And, inside, an old man had just died. “Oh,” he said. He opened his eyes and looked around the interior of the hut. He hadn’t seen it very clearly for the past ten years. Then he swung, if not his legs, then at least the memory of his legs off the pallet of sea-heather and stood up. Then he went outside, into the diamond-bright morning. He was interested to see that he was still wearing a ghostly image of his ceremonial robe - stained and frayed, but still recognizable as having originally been a dark red plush with gold frogging - even though he was dead. Either your clothes died when you did, he thought, or maybe you just mentally dressed yourself from force of habit. Habit also led him to the pile of driftwood beside the hut. When. he tried to gather a few sticks, though, his hands passed through them. He swore. It was then that he noticed a figure standing by the water’s edge, looking out to sea. It was leaning on a scythe. The wind whipped at its black robes. He started to hobble towards it, remembered he was dead, and began to stride. He hadn’t stridden for decades, but it was amazing how it all came back to you. Before he was halfway to the dark figure, it spoke to him. DECCAN RIBOBE, it said. “That’s me.” LAST KEEPER OF THE DOOR. “Well, I suppose so.” Death hesitated. YOU ARE OR YOU AREN’T, he said. Deccan scratched his nose. Of course, he thought, you have to be able to touch yourself. Otherwise you’d fall to bits. “Technic’ly, a Keeper has to be invested by the High Priestess,” he said. “And there ain’t been a High Priestess for thousands o’ years. See, I just learned it all from old Tento, who lived here before me. He jus’ said to me one day, “Deccan, it looks as though I’m dyin’, so it’s up to you now, ‘cos if there’s no-one left that remembers properly it’ll all start happening again and you know what that means.” Well, fair enough. But that’s not what you’d call a proper investmenting, I’d say.” He looked up at the sandy hill. “There was jus’ me and him,” he said. “And then jus’ me, remembering Holy Wood. And now. . . “ He raised his hand to his mouth. “Oo-er,” he said. YES, said Death. It would be wrong to say a look of panic passed across Deccan Ribobe’s face, because at that moment it was several yards away and wearing a sort of fixed grin, as if it had seen the joke at last. But his spirit was definitely worried. “See, the thing is,” it said hastily, “no-one ever comes here, see, apart from the fishermen from the next bay, and they just leaves the fish and runs off on account of superstition and I couldn’t sort of go off to find an apprentice or somethin’ because of keepin’ the fires alight and doin’ the chantin’ . . . “ YES. “ . . . It’s a terrible responsibility, bein’ the only one able to do your job . . . “ YES, said Death. “Well, of course, I’m not telling you anything . . . “ NO. “ . . . I mean, I was hopin’ someone’d get shipwrecked or somethin”, or come treasure huntin’, and I could explain it like old Tento explained it to me, teach ‘em the chants, get it all sorted out before I died . . . “ YES? “I s’pose there’s no chance that I could sort of . . . “ NO. “Thought not,” said Deccan despondently. He looked at the waves crashing down on the shore. “Used to be a big city down there, thousands of years ago,” he said. “I mean, where the sea is. When it’s stormy you can hear the ole temple bells ringin’ under the sea.” I KNOW. “I used to sit out here on windy nights, listenin’. Used to imagine all them dead people down there, ringin’ the bells.” AND NOW WE MUST GO. “Ole Tento said there was somethin’ under the hill there that could make people do things. Put strange fancies in their ‘eads,” said Deccan, reluctantly following the stalking figure. “I never had any strange fancies.” BUT YOU WERE CHANTING, said Death. He snapped his fingers. A horse ceased trying to graze the sparse dune grass and trotted up to Death. Deccan was surprised to see that it left hoofprints in the sand. He’d have expected sparks, or at least fused rock. “Er,” he said, “can you tell me, er . . . what happens now?” Death told him. “Thought so,” said Deccan glumly. Up on the low hill the fire that had been burning all night collapsed in a shower of ash. A few embers still glowed, though. Soon they would go out. . . . . . . . . . . They went out. . . . . . . . . . . Nothing happened for a whole day. Then, in a little hollow on the edge of the brooding hill, a few grains of sand shifted and left a tiny hole. Something emerged. Something invisible. Something joyful and selfish and marvellous. Something as intangible as an idea, which is exactly what it was. A wild idea. It was old in a way not measurable by any calendar known to Man and what it had, right now, was memories and needs. It remembered life, in other times and other universes. It needed people. It rose against the stars, changing shape, coiling like smoke. There were lights on the horizon. It liked lights. It regarded them for a few seconds and then, like an invisible arrow, extended itself towards the city and sped away. It liked action, too . . . And several weeks went past. There’s a saying that all roads lead to Ankh-Morpork, greatest of Discworld cities. At least, there’s a saying that there’s a saying that all roads lead to Ankh-Morpork. And it’s wrong. All roads lead away from Ankh-Morpork, but sometimes people just walk along them the wrong way. Poets long ago gave up trying to describe the city. Now the more cunning ones try to excuse it. They say, well, maybe it is smelly, maybe it is overcrowded, maybe it is a bit like Hell would be if they shut the fires off and stabled a herd of incontinent cows there for a year, but you must admit that it is full of sheer, vibrant, dynamic life. And this is true, even though it is poets that are saying it. But people who aren’t poets say, so what? Mattresses tend to be full of life too, and no-one writes odes to them. Citizens hate living there and, if they have to move away on business or adventure or, more usually, until some statute of limitations runs out, can’t wait to get back so they can enjoy hating living there some more. They put stickers on the backs of their carts saying “Ankh-Morpork - Loathe It or Leave It”. They call it The Big Wahooni, after the fruit.[1] Every so often a ruler of the city builds a wall around Ankh-Morpork, ostensibly to keep enemies out. But Ankh-Morpork doesn’t fear enemies. In fact it welcomes enemies, provided they are enemies with money to spend.[2] It has survived flood, fire, hordes, revolutions and dragons. Sometimes by accident, admittedly, but it has survived them. The cheerful and irrecoverably venal spirit of the city has been proof against anything . . . Until now. Boom. The explosion removed the windows, the door and most of the chimney. It was the sort of thing you expected in the Street of Alchemists. The neighbours preferred explosions, which were at least identifiable and soon over. They were better than the smells, which crept up on you. Explosions were part of the scenery, such as was left. And this one was pretty good, even by the standards of local connoisseurs. There was a deep red heart to the billowing black smoke which you didn’t often see. The bits of semi-molten brickwork were more molten than usual. It was, they considered, quite impressive. Boom. A minute or two after the explosion a figure lurched out of the ragged hole where the door had been. It had no hair, and what clothes it still had were on fire. It staggered up to the small crowd that was admiring the devastation and by chance laid a sooty hand on a hot-meat-pie-and-sausage-in-a-bun salesman called Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler, who had an almost magical ability to turn up wherever a sale might be made. “Looking,” it said, in a dreamy, stunned voice, “f’r a word. Tip of my tongue.” “Blister?” volunteered Throat. He recovered his commercial senses. “After an experience like that,” he added, proffering a pastry case full of so much reclaimed organic debris that it was very nearly sapient, “what you need is to get a hot meat pie inside you-” “Nonono. ‘S not blister. ‘S what you say when you’ve discovered something. You goes running out into the street shoutin’,” said the smouldering figure urgently. “S’pecial word,” it added, its brow creasing under the soot. The crowd, reluctantly satisfied that there were going to be no more explosions, gathered around. This might be nearly as good. “Yeah, that’s right,” said an elderly man, filling his pipe. “You runs out shouting “Fire! Fire!”“ He looked triumphant. “‘S not that . . . “ “Or “Help!” or-” “No, he’s right,” said a woman with a basket of fish on her head. “There’s a special word. It’s foreign.” “Right, right,” said her neighbour. “Special foreign word for people who’ve discovered something. It was invented by some foreign bugger in his bath–” “Well,” said the pipe man, lighting it off the alchemist’s smouldering hat, “I for one don’t see why people in this city need to go round shouting heathen lingo just ‘cos they’ve had a bath. Anyway, look at him. He ain’t had a bath. He needs a bath, yes, but he ain’t had one. What’s he want to go round shouting foreign lingo for? We’ve got perfectly satisfactory words for shoutin’.” “Like what?” said Cut-me-own-Throat. The pipe-smoker hesitated. “Well,” he said, “like . . . “I’ve discovered something” . . . or . . . “Hooray” . . . “ “No, I’m thinking about the bugger over Tsort way, or somewhere. He was in his bath and he had this idea for something, and he ran out down the street yelling.” “Yelling what?” “Dunno. P’raps “Give me a towel!”“ “Bet he’d be yellin’ all right if he tried that sort of thing round here,” said Throat cheerfully. “Now, ladies and gents, I have here some sausage in a bun that’d make your-” “Eureka,” said the soot-coloured one, swaying back and forth. “What about it?” said Throat. “No, that’s the word. Eureka.” A worried grin spread across the black features. “It means “I have it”.” “Have what?” said Throat. “It. At least, I had it. Octo-cellulose. Amazing stuff. Had it in my hand. But I held it too close to the fire,” said the figure, in the perplexed tones of the nearly concussed. “V’ry important fact. Mus’ make a note of it. Don’t let it get hot. V’ry important. Mus’ write down v’ry important fact.” He tottered back into the smoking ruins. Dibbler watched him go. “Wonder what that was all about?” he said. Then he shrugged and raised his voice to a shout. “Meat pies! Hot sausages! Inna bun! So fresh the pig h’an’t noticed they’re gone!” The glittering, swirling idea from the hill had watched all this. The alchemist didn’t even know it was there. All he knew was that he was being unusually inventive today. Now it had spotted the pie merchant’s mind. It knew that kind of mind. It loved minds like that. A mind that could sell nightmare pies could sell dreams. It leaped. On a hill far away the breeze stirred the cold, grey ash. Further down the hill, in a crack in a hollow between two rocks where a dwarf juniper bush struggled for a Ping, a little trickle of sand began to move. Boom. A fine film of plaster dust drifted down on to the desk of Mustrum Ridcully, the new Archchancellor of Unseen University; just as he was trying to tie a particularly difficult fly. He glanced out of the stained-glass window. A smoke cloud was rising over uptown Morpork. “Bursaar!” The Bursar arrived within a few seconds, out of breath. Loud noises always upset him. “It’s the alchemists, Master,” he panted. “That’s the third time this week. Blasted firework merchants,” muttered the Archchancellor. “I’m afraid so, Master,” said the Bursar. “What do they think they’re doing?” “I really couldn’t say, Master,” said the Bursar, getting his breath back. “Alchemy has never interested me. It’s altogether too . . . too . . . “ “Dangerous,” said the Archchancellor firmly. “Lot of damn mixin’ things up and saying, hey, what’ll happen if we add a drop of the yellow stuff, and then goin’ around without yer eyebrows for a fortnight.” “I was going to say impractical,” said the Bursar. “Trying to do things the hard way when we have perfectly simple everyday magic available.” “I thought they were trying to cure the philosopher’s stones, or somethin’,” said the Archchancellor. “Lot of damn nonsense, if you ask me. Anyway, I’m off.” As the Archchancellor began to sidle out of the room the Bursar hastily waved a handful of papers at him. “Before you go, Archchancellor,” he said desperately, “I wonder if you would just care to sign a few-” “Not now, man,” snapped the Archchancellor. “Got to see a man about a horse, what?” “What?” “Right.” The door closed. The Bursar stared at it, and sighed. Unseen University had had many different kinds of Archchancellor over the years. Big ones, small ones, cunning ones, slightly insane ones, extremely insane ones - they’d come, they’d served, in some cases not long enough for anyone to be able to complete the official painting to be hung in the Great Hall, and they’d died. The senior wizard in a world of magic had the same prospects of longterm employment as a pogo stick tester in a minefield. However, from the Bursar’s point of view this didn’t really have to matter. The name might change occasionally, but what did matter was that there always was an Archchancellor and the Archchancellor’s most important job, as the Bursar saw it, was to sign things, preferably, from the Bursar’s point of view, without reading them first. This one was different. For one thing, he was hardly ever in, except to change out of his muddy clothes. And he shouted at people. Usually at the Bursar. And yet, at the time, it had seemed a really good idea to elect an Archchancellor who hadn’t set foot in the University in forty years. There had been so much in-fighting between the various orders of wizardry in recent years that, just for once, the senior wizards had agreed that what the University needed was a period of stability, so that they could get on with their scheming and intriguing in peace and quiet for a few months. A search of the records turned up Ridcully the Brown who, after becoming a Seventh Level mage at the incredibly young age of twenty-seven, had quit the University in order to look after his family’s estates deep in the country. He looked ideal. “Just the chap,” they all said. “Clean sweep. New broom. A country wizard. Back to the thingumajigs, the roots of wizardry. Jolly old boy with a pipe and twinkly eyes. Sort of chap who can tell one herb from another, roams-the-high-forest-with-every-beast-his-brother kind of thing. Sleeps under the stars, like as not. Knows what the wind is saying, we shouldn’t wonder. Got a name for all the trees, you can bank on it. Speaks to the birds, too.” A messenger had been sent. Ridcully the Brown had sighed, cursed a bit, found his staff in the kitchen garden where it had been supporting a scarecrow, and had set out. “And if he’s any problem,” the wizards had added, in the privacy of their own heads, “anyone who talks to trees should be no trouble to get rid of.” And then he’d arrived, and it turned out that Ridcully the Brown did speak to the birds. In fact he shouted at birds, and what he normally shouted was, “Winged you, yer bastard!” The beasts of the field and fowls of the air did know Ridcully the Brown. They’d got so good at pattern recognition that, for a radius of about twenty miles around the Ridcully estates, they’d run, hide or in desperate cases attack violently at the mere sight of a pointy hat. Within twelve hours of arriving, Ridcully had installed a pack of hunting dragons in the butler’s pantry, fired his dreadful crossbow at the ravens on the ancient Tower of Art, drunk a dozen bottles of red wine, and rolled off to bed at two in the morning singing a song with words in it that some of the older and more forgetful wizards had to look up. And then he got up at five o’clock to go duck hunting down in the marshes on the estuary. And came back complaining that there wasn’t a good trout fishin’ river for miles. (You couldn’t fish in the river Ankh; you had to jump up and down on the hooks even to make them sink.) And he ordered beer with his breakfast. And told jokes. On the other hand, thought the Bursar, at least he didn’t interfere with the actual running of the University. Ridcully the Brown wasn’t the least interested in running anything except maybe a string of hounds. If you couldn’t shoot arrows at it, hunt it or hook it, he couldn’t see much point in it. Beer at breakfast! The Bursar shuddered. Wizards weren’t at their best before noon, and breakfast in the Great Hall was a quiet, fragile occasion, broken only by coughs, the quiet shuffling of the servants, and the occasional groan. People shouting for kidneys and black pudding and beer were a new phenomenon. The only person not terrified of the ghastly man was old Windle Poons, who was one hundred and thirty years old and deaf and, while an expert on ancient magical writings, needed adequate notice and a good run-up to deal with the present day. He’d managed to absorb the fact that the new Archchancellor was going to be one of those hedgerow-and-dickie-bird chappies, it would take a week or two for him to grasp the change of events, and in the meantime he made polite and civilized conversation based on what little he could remember about Nature and things. On the lines of: “I expect it must be a, mm, a change for you, mm, sleeping in a real bed, instead of under the, mm, stars?” And: “These things, mm, here, are called knives and forks, mm.” And: “This, mm, green stuff on the scrambled egg, mm, would it be parsley, do you think?” But since the new Archchancellor never paid much attention to anything anyone said while he was eating, and Poons never noticed that he wasn’t getting any answers, they got along quite well. Anyway, the Bursar had other problems. The Alchemists, for one thing. You couldn’t trust alchemists. They were too serious-minded. Boom. And that was the last one. Whole days went by without being punctuated by small explosions. The city settled down again, which was a foolish thing to do. What the Bursar failed to consider was that no more bangs doesn’t mean they’ve stopped doing it, whatever it is. It just means they’re doing it right. It was midnight. The surf boomed on the beach, and made a phosphorescent glow in the night. Around the ancient hill, though, the sound seemed as dead as if it was arriving through several layers of velvet. The hole in the sand was quite big now. If you could put your ear to it, you might think you could hear applause. It was still midnight. A full moon glided above the smoke and fumes of Ankh-Morpork, thankful that several thousand miles of sky lay between it and them. The Alchemists’ Guildhall was new. It was always new. It had been explosively demolished and rebuilt four times in the last two years, on the last occasion without a lecture and demonstration room in the hope that this might be a helpful move. On this night a number of muffled figures entered the building in a surreptitious fashion. After a few minutes the lights in a window on the top floor dimmed and went out. Well, nearly out. Something was happening up there. A strange flickering filled the window, very briefly. It was followed by a ragged cheering. And there was a noise. Not a bang this time, but a strange mechanical purring, like a happy cat at the bottom of a tin drum. It went clickaclickaclickaclicka . . . click. It went on for several minutes, to a background of cheers. And then a voice said: “That’s all, folks.” “That’s all what?” said the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, next morning. The man in front of him shivered with fear. “Don’t know, lordship,” he said. “They wouldn’t let me in. They made me wait outside the door, lordship.” He twisted his forgers together nervously. The Patrician’s stare had him pinned. It was a good stare, and one of the things it was good at was making people go on talking when they thought they had finished. Only the Patrician knew how many spies he had in the city. This particular one was a servant in the Alchemists’ Guild. He had once had the misfortune to come up before the Patrician accused of malicious lingering, and had then chosen of his own free will to become a spy.[3] “That’s all, lordship,” he whined. “There was just this clicking noise and this sort of flickery glow under the door. And, er, they said the daylight here was wrong.” “Wrong? How?” “Er. Dunno, sir. Just wrong, they said. They ought to go somewhere where it was better, they said. Uh. And they told me to go and get them some food.” The Patrician yawned. There was something infinitely boring about the antics of alchemists. “Indeed,” he said. “But they’d had their supper only fifteen minutes before,” the servant blurted out. “Perhaps whatever they were doing makes people hungry,” said the Patrician. “Yes, and the kitchen was all shut up for the night and I had to go and buy a tray of hot sausages in buns from Throat Dibbler.” “Indeed.” The Patrician looked down at the paperwork on his desk. “Thank you. You may go.” “You know what, lordship? They liked them. They actually liked them!” That the Alchemists had a Guild at all was remarkable. Wizards were just as unco-operative, but they also were by nature hierarchical and competitive. They needed organization. What was the good of being a wizard of the Seventh Level if you didn’t have six other levels to look down on and the Eighth Level to aspire to? You needed other wizards to hate and despise. Whereas every alchemist was an alchemist alone, working in darkened rooms or hidden cellars and endlessly searching for the big casino – the Philosopher’s Stone, the Elixir of Life. They tended to be thin, pink-eyed men, with beards that weren’t really beards but more like groups of individual hairs clustering together for mutual protection, and many of them had that vague, unworldly expression that you get from spending too much time in the presence of boiling mercury. It wasn’t that alchemists hated other alchemists. They often didn’t notice them, or thought they were walruses. And so their tiny, despised Guild had never aspired to the powerful status of the Guilds of, say, the Thieves or the Beggars or the Assassins, but devoted itself instead to the aid of widows and families of those alchemists who had taken an overly relaxed attitude to potassium cyanide, for example, or had distilled some interesting fungi, drunk the result, and then stepped off the roof to play with the fairies. There weren’t actually very many widows and orphans, of course, because alchemists found it difficult to relate to other people long enough, and generally if they ever managed to marry it was only to have someone to hold their crucibles. By and large, the only skill the alchemists of Ankh-Morpork had discovered so far was the ability to turn gold into less gold. Until now . . . Now they were full of the nervous excitement of those who have found an unexpected fortune in their bank account and don’t know whether to draw people’s attention to it or simply take the lot and run. “The wizards aren’t going to like it,” said one of them, a thin, hesitant man called Lully. “They’re going to call it magic. You know they get really pissed if they think you’re doing magic and you’re not a wizard.” “There isn’t any magic involved,” said Thomas Silverfish, the president of the Guild. “There’s the imps.” “That’s not magic. That’s just ordinary occult.” “Well, there’s the salamanders.” “Perfectly normal natural history. Nothing wrong with that.” “Well, all right. But they’ll call it magic. You know what they’re like.” The alchemists nodded gloomily. “They’re reactionaries,” said Sendivoge, the Guild secretary. “Bloated thaumocrats. And the other Guilds, too. What do they know about the march of progress? What do they care? They could have been doing something like this for years, but did they? Not them! Just think how we can make people’s lives so much . . . well, better. The possibilities are immense.” “Educational,” said Silverfish. “Historical,” said Lully. “And of course there’s entertainment,” said Peavie, the Guild treasurer. He was a small, nervous man. Most alchemists were nervous, in any case; it came from not knowing what the crucible of bubbling stuff they were experimenting with was going to do next. “Well, yes. Obviously some entertainment,” said Silverfish. “Some of the great historical dramas,” said Peavie. “Just picture the scene! You get some actors together, they act it just once, and people all over the Disc will be able to see it as many times as they like! A great saving in wages, by the way,” he added. “But tastefully done,” said Silverfish. “We have a great responsibility to see that nothing is done which is in any way . . . “ his voice trailed off, “ . . . you know . . . coarse.” “They’ll stop us,” said Lully darkly. “I know those wizards.” “I’ve been giving that some thought,” said Silverfish. “The light’s too bad here anyway. We agreed. We need clear skies. And we need to be a long way away. I think I know just the place.” “You know, I can’t believe we’re doing this,” said Peavie. “A month ago it was just a mad idea. And now it’s all worked! It’s just like magic! Only not magical, if you see what I mean,” he added quickly. “Not just illusion, but real illusion,” said Lully. “I don’t know if anyone’s thought about this,” said Peavie, “but this could make us a bit of money. Um?” “But that isn’t important,” said Silverfish. “No. No, of course not,” muttered Peavie. He glanced at the others. “Shall we watch it again?” he said, shyly. “I don’t mind turning the handle. And, and . . . well, I know I haven’t contributed very much to this project, but I did come up with this, er, this stuff.” He pulled a very large bag from the pocket of his robe and dropped it on the table. It fell over, and a few fluffy, white mis-shapen balls rolled out. The alchemists stared at it. “What is it?” said Lully. “Well,” said Peavie, uncomfortably, “what you do is, you take some corn, and you put it in, say, a Number 3 crucible, with some cooking oil, you see, and then you put a plate or something on top of it, and when you heat it up it goes bang, I mean, not seriously bang, and when it’s stopped banging you take the plate off and it’s metamorphosed into these, er, things . . . “ He looked at their uncomprehending faces. “You can eat it,” he mumbled apologetically. “If you put butter and salt on it, it tastes like salty butter.” Silverfish reached out a chemical-stained hand and cautiously selected a fluffy morsel. He chewed it thoughtfully. “Don’t really know why I did it,” said Peavie, blushing. “Just sort of had an idea that it was right.” Silverfish went on chewing. “Tastes like cardboard,” he said, after a while. “Sorry,” said Peavie, trying to scoop the rest of the heap back into the sack. Silverfish laid a gentle hand on his arm. “Mind you,” he said, selecting another puffed morsel, “it does have a certain something, doesn’t it? They do seem right. What did you say it’s called?” “Hasn’t really got a name,” said Peavie. “I just call it banged grains.” Silverfish took another one. “Funny how you want to go on eating them,” he said. “Sort of more-ish. Banged grains? Right. Anyway . . . gentlemen, let us turn the handle one more time.” Lully started to wind the film back into the unmagical lantern. “You were saying you knew a place where we could really build up the project and where the wizards wouldn’t bother us?” he said. Silverfish grabbed a handful of banged grains. “It’s along the coast a way,” he said. “Nice and sunny and no-one ever goes there these days. Nothing there but some wind-blown old forest and a temple and sand dunes.” “A temple? Gods can get really pissed if you–” Peavie began. “Look,” said Silverfish, “the whole area’s been deserted for centuries. There’s nothing there. No people, no gods, no nothing. Just lots of sunlight and land, waiting for us. It’s our chance, lads. We’re not allowed to make magic, we can’t make gold, we can’t even make a living - so let’s make moving pictures. Let’s make history!” The alchemists sat back and looked more cheerful. “Yeah,” said Lully. “Oh. Right,” said Peavie. “Here’s to moving pictures,” said Sendivoge, holding up a handful of banged grains. “How’d you hear about this place?” “Oh, I–” Silverfish stopped. He looked puzzled. “Don’t know,” he said, eventually. “Can’t . . . quite remember. Must have heard about it once and forgot it, and then it just popped into my head. You know how these things happen.” “Yeah,” said Lully. “Like with me and the film. It was like I was remembering how to do it. Funny old tricks the mind can play.” “Yeah.” “Yeah.” “S’n idea whose time has come, see.” “Yeah.” “Yeah.” “That must be it.” A slightly worried silence settled over the table. It was the sound of minds trying to put their mental fingers on something that was bothering them. The air seemed to glitter. “What’s this place called?” said Lully, eventually. “Don’t know what it was called in the old days,” said Silverfish, leaning back and pulling the banged grains towards him. “These days they call it the Holy Wood.” “Holy Wood,” said Lully. “Sounds . . . familiar.” There was another silence while they thought about it. It was broken by Sendivoge. “Oh, well,” he said cheerfully, “Holy Wood, here we come.” “Yeah,” said Silverfish, shaking his head as if to dislodge a disquieting thought. “Funny thing, really. I’ve got this feeling . . . that we’ve been going there . . . all this time.” Several thousand miles under Silverfish, Great A’Tuin the world turtle sculled dreamily on through the starry night. Reality is a curve. That’s not the problem. The problem is that there isn’t as much as there should be. According to some of the more mystical texts in the stacks of the library of Unseen University – the Discworld’s premier college of wizardry and big dinners, whose collection of books is so massive that it distorts Space and Time – at least nine-tenths of all the original reality ever created lies outside the multiverse, and since the multiverse by definition includes absolutely everything that is anything, this puts a bit of a strain on things. Outside the boundaries of the universes lie the raw realities, the couldhave-beens, the might-bes, the neverweres, the wild ideas, all being created and uncreated chaotically like elements in fermenting supernovas. Just occasionally where the walls of the worlds have worn a bit thin, they can leak in. And reality leaks out. The effect is like one of those deep-sea geysers of hot water, around which strange submarine creatures find enough warmth and food to make a brief, tiny oasis of existence in an environment where there shouldn’t be any existence at all. The idea of Holy Wood leaked innocently and joyfully into the Discworld. And reality leaked out. And was found. For there are Things outside, whose ability to sniff out tiny frail conglomerations of reality made the thing with the sharks and the trace of blood seem very boring indeed. They began to gather. A storm slid in across the sand dunes but, where it reached the low hill, the clouds seemed to curve away. Only a few drops of rain hit the parched soil, and the gale became nothing more than a faint breeze. It blew sand over the long-dead remains of afire. Further down the slope, near a hole that was now big enough for, say, a badger, a small rock dislodged itself and rolled away. A month went by quickly. It didn’t want to hang around. The Bursar knocked respectfully at the Archchancellor’s door and then opened it. A crossbow bolt nailed his hat to the woodwork. The Archchancellor lowered the bow and glared at him. “Bloody dangerous thing to do, wasn’t it?” he said. “You could have caused a nasty accident.” The Bursar hadn’t got where he was today, or rather where he had been ten seconds ago, which was where a calm and self-assured personality was, rather than where he was now, which was on the verge of a mild heart attack, without a tremendous ability to recover from unexpected upsets. He unpinned his hat from the target chalked on the ancient woodwork. “No harm done,” he said. No voice could be as calm as that without tremendous effort. “You can barely see the hole. Why, er, are you shooting at the door, Master?” “Use your common sense, man! It’s dark outside and the damn walls are made of stone. You don’t expect me to shoot at the damn walls?” “Ah,” said the Bursar. “The door is, er, five hundred years old, you know,” he added, with finely-tuned reproach. “Looks it,” said the Archchancellor, bluntly. “Damn great black thing. What we need around here, man, is a lot less stone and wood and a bit more jolliness. A few sportin’ prints, yer know. An ornament or two.” “I shall see to it directly,” lied the Bursar smoothly. He remembered the sheaf of papers under his arm. “In the meantime, Master, perhaps you would care to-” “Right,” said the Archchancellor, ramming his pointed hat on his head. “Good man. Now, got a sick dragon to see to. Little devil hasn’t touched his tar oil for days.” “Your signature on one or two of–” the Bursar burbled hurriedly. “Can’t be havin’ with all that stuff,” said the Archchancellor, waving him away. “Too much damn paper around here as it is. And–” He stared through the Bursar, as if he had just remembered something. “Saw a funny thing this mornin’,” he said. “Saw a monkey in the quad. Bold as brass.” “Oh, yes,” said the Bursar, cheerfully. “That would be the Librarian.” “Got a pet, has he?” “No, you misunderstand me, Archchancellor,” said the Bursar cheerfully. “That was the Librarian.” The Archchancellor stared at him. The Bursar’s smile began to glaze. “The Librarian’s a monkey?” It took some time for the Bursar to explain matters clearly, and then the Archchancellor said: “What yer tellin’ me, then, is that this chap got himself turned into a monkey by magic?” “An accident in the Library, yes. Magical explosion. One minute a human, next minute an orangutan. And you mustn’t call him a monkey, Master. He’s an ape.” “Same damn difference, surely?” “Apparently not. He gets very, er, aggressive if you call him a monkey.” “He doesn’t stick his bottom at people, does he?” The Bursar closed his eyes and shuddered. “No, Master. You’re thinking of baboons.” “Ah.” The Archchancellor considered this. “Haven’t got any of them workin’ here, then?” “No, Master. Just the Librarian, Master.” “Can’t have it. Can’t have it, yer know. Can’t have damn great hairy things shambling around the place,” said the Archchancellor firmly. “Get rid of him.” “Good grief, no! He’s the best Librarian we’ve ever had. And tremendous value for money.” “Why? What d’we pay him?” “Peanuts,” said the Bursar promptly. “Besides, he’s the only one who knows how the Library actually works.” “Turn him back, then. No life for a man, bein’ a monkey.” “Ape, Archchancellor. And he seems to prefer it, I’m afraid.” “How d’yer know?” said the Archchancellor suspiciously. “Speaks, does he?” The Bursar hesitated. There was always this trouble with the Librarian. Everyone had got so accustomed to him it was hard to remember a time when the Library was not run by a yellow-fanged ape with the strength of three men. If the abnormal goes on long enough it becomes the normal. It was just that, when you came to explain it to a third party, it sounded odd. He coughed nervously. “He says “oook”, Archchancellor,” he said. “And what’s that mean?” “Means “no”, Archchancellor.” “And how does he say “yes”, then?” The Bursar had been dreading this. ““Oook”, Archchancellor,” he said. “That was the same oook as the other oook!” “Oh, no. No. I assure you. There’s a different inflection . . . I mean, when you get used to . . . ,” the Bursar shrugged. “I suppose we’ve just got into the way of understanding him, Archchancellor.” “Well, at least he keeps himself fit,” said the Archchancellor nastily. “Not like the rest of you fellows. I went into the Uncommon Room this morning, and it was full of chaps snoring!” “That would be the senior masters, Master,” said the Bursar. “I would say they are supremely fit, myself.” “Fit? The Dean looks like a man who’s swallered a bed!” “Ah, but Master,” said the Bursar, smiling indulgently, “the word “fit”, as I understand it, means “appropriate to a purpose”, and I would say the body of the Dean is supremely appropriate to the purpose of sitting around all day and eating big heavy meals.” The Bursar permitted himself a little smile. The Archchancellor gave him a look so old-fashioned it might have belonged to an ammonite. “That a joke?” he said, in the suspicious tones of someone who wouldn’t really understand the term “sense of humour” even if you sat down for an hour and explained it to him with diagrams. “I was just making an observation, Master,” said the Bursar cautiously. The Archchancellor shook his head. “Can’t stand jokes. Can’t stand chaps goin’ around tryin’ to be funny the whole time. Comes of spendin’ too much time sitting indoors. A few twenty-mile runs and the Dean’d be a different man.” “Well, yes,” said the Bursar. “He’d be dead.” “He’d be healthy.” “Yes, but still dead.” The Archchancellor irritably shuffled the papers on his desk. “Slackness,” he muttered. “Far too much of it going on. Whole place gone to pot. People goin’ round sleepin’ all day and turnin’ into monkeys the whole time. We never even thought of turnin’ into a monkey when I was a student.” He looked up irritably. “What was it you wanted?” he snapped. “What?” said the Bursar, unnerved. “You wanted me to do somethin’, didn’t you? You came in to ask me to do somethin’. Probably because I’m the only feller here not fast asleep or sittin’ in a tree whoopin’ every mornin’,” the Archchancellor added. “Er. I think that’s gibbons, Archchancellor.” “What? What? Do try and make some sense, man!” The Bursar pulled himself together. He didn’t see why he had to be treated like this. “In fact, I wanted to see you about one of the students, Master,” he said coldly. “Students?” barked the Archchancellor. “Yes, Master. You know? They’re the thinner ones with the pale faces? Because we’re a university? They come with the whole thing, like rats–” “I thought we paid people to deal with ‘em.” “The teaching staff. Yes. But sometimes . . . well, I wonder, Archchancellor, if you would care to look at these examination results . . . “ It was midnight - not the same midnight as before, but a very similar midnight. Old Tom, the tongueless bell in the University bell tower, had just tolled its twelve sonorous silences. Rainclouds squeezed their last few drops over the city. Ankh-Morpork sprawled under a few damp stars, as real as a brick. Ponder Stibbons, student wizard, put down his book and rubbed his face. “All right,” he said. “Ask me anything. Go on. Anything at all.” Victor Tugelbend, student wizard, picked up his battered copy of Necrotelicomnicon Discussed for Students, with Practical Experiments and turned the pages at random. He was lying on Ponder’s bed. At least, his shoulder blades were. His body extended up the wall. This is a perfectly normal position for a student taking his ease. “OK,” he said. “Right. OK? What, right, what is the name of the outer-dimensional monster whose distinctive cry is “Yerwhatyerwhatyerwhat”?” “Yob Soddoth,” said Ponder promptly. “Yeah. How does the monster Tshup Aklathep, Infernal Star Toad with A Million Young, torture its victims to death?” “It . . . don’t tell me . . . it holds them down and shows them pictures of its children until their brains implode.” “Yep. Always wondered how that happens, myself,” said Victor, flicking through the pages. “I suppose after you’ve said “Yes, he’s got your eyes” for the thousandth time you’re about ready to commit suicide in any case.” “You know an awful lot, Victor,” said Ponder admiringly. “I’m amazed you’re still a student.” “Er, yes,” said Victor. “Er. Just unlucky at exams, I guess.” “Go on,” said Ponder, “Ask me one more.” Victor opened the book again. There was a moment’s silence. Then he said, “Where’s Holy Wood?” Ponder shut his eyes and pounded his forehead. “Hang on, hang on . . . don’t tell me . . . “ He opened his eyes. “What do you mean, where’s Holy Wood?” he added sharply. “I don’t remember anything about any Holy Wood.” Victor stared down at the page. There was nothing about any Holy Wood there. “I could have sworn I heard . . . I think my mind must be wandering,” he finished lamely. “It must be all this revision.” “Yes. It really gets to you, doesn’t it? But it’ll be worth it, to be a wizard.” “Yes,” said Victor. “Can’t wait.” Ponder shut the book. “Rain’s stopped. Let’s go over the wall,” he said. “We deserve a drink.” Victor waggled a finger. “Just one drink, then. Got to keep sober,” he said. “It’s Finals tomorrow. Got to keep a clear head!” “Huh!” said Ponder. Of course, it is very important to be sober when you take an exam. Many worthwhile careers in the street-cleansing, fruit-picking and subway-guitar-playing industries have been founded on a lack of understanding of this simple fact. But Victor had a special reason for keeping alert. He might make a mistake, and pass. His dead uncle had left him a small fortune not to be a wizard. He hadn’t realized it when he’d drawn up the will, but that’s what the old man had done. He thought he was helping his nephew through college, but Victor Tugelbend was a very bright young lad in an oblique sort of way and had reasoned thusly: What are the advantages and disadvantages of being a wizard? Well, you got a certain amount of prestige, but you were often in dangerous situations and certainly always at risk of being killed by a fellow mage. He saw no future in being a well-respected corpse. On the other hand . . . What are the advantages and disadvantages of being a student wizard? You got quite a lot of free time, a certain amount of licence in matters like drinking a lot of ale and singing bawdy songs, no-one tried to kill you much except in the ordinary, everyday Ankh-Morpork way of things and, thanks to the legacy, you also got a modest but comfortable style of living. Of course, you didn’t get much in the way of prestige but at least you were alive to know this. So Victor had devoted a considerable amount of energy in studying firstly the terms of the will, the byzantine examination regulations of Unseen University, and every examination paper of the last fifty years. The pass mark in Finals was 88. Failing would be easy. Any idiot can fail. Victor’s uncle had been no fool. One of the conditions of the legacy was that, should Victor ever achieve a mark of less than 80, the money supply would dry up like thin spit on a hot stove. He’d won, in a way. Few students had ever studied as hard as Victor. It was said that his knowledge of magic rivalled that of some of the top wizards. He spent hours in a comfy chair in the Library, reading grimoires. He researched answer formats and exam techniques. He listened to lectures until he could quote them by heart. He was generally considered by the staff to be the brightest and certainly the busiest student for decades and, at every Finals, he carefully and competently got a mark of 84. It was uncanny. The Archchancellor reached the last page. Eventually he said: “Ah. I see. Feel sorry for the lad, do you?” “I don’t think you quite see what I mean,” said the Bursar. “Fairly obvious to me,” said the Archchancellor. “Lad keeps coming within an ace of passin’.” He pulled out one of the papers. “Anyway, it says here he passed three years ago. Got 91.” “Yes, Archchancellor. But he appealed.” “Appealed? Against passin’?” “He said he didn’t think the examiners had noticed that he got the allotropes of octiron wrong in question six. He said he couldn’t live with his conscience. He said it would haunt him for the rest of his days if he succeeded unfairly over better and more worthy students. You’ll notice he got only 82 and 83 in the next two exams.” “Why’s that?” “We think he was playing safe, Master.” The Archchancellor drummed his fingers on the desk. “Can’t have this,” he said. “Can’t have someone goin’ around almost bein’ a wizard and laughin’ at us up his, his – what’s it that people laugh up?” “My feelings exactly,” purred the Bursar. “We should send him up,” said the Archchancellor firmly. “Down, Master,” said the Bursar. “Sending him up would mean making spiteful and satirical comments about him.” “Yes. Good thinkin’. Let’s do that,” said the Archchancellor. “No, Master,” said the Bursar patiently. “He’s sending us up, so we send him down.” “Right. Balance things up,” said the Archchancellor. The Bursar rolled his eyes. “Or down,” the Archchancellor added. “So you want me to give him his marchin’ orders, eh? Just send him along in the morning and–” “No, Archchancellor. We can’t do it just like that.” “We can’t? I thought we were in charge here!” “Yes, but you have to be extremely careful when dealing with Master Tugelbend. He’s an expert on procedures. So what I thought we could do is give him this paper in the finals tomorrow.” The Archchancellor took the proferred document. His lips moved silently as he read it. “Just one question.” “Yes. And he’ll either pass or fail. I’d like to see him manage 84 per cent on that.” In a sense which his tutors couldn’t quite define, much to their annoyance, Victor Tugelbend was also the laziest person in the history of the world. Not simply, ordinarily lazy. Ordinary laziness was merely the absence of effort. Victor had passed through there a long time ago, had gone straight through commonplace idleness and out on the far side. He put more effort into avoiding work than most people put into hard labour. He had never wanted to be a wizard. He’d never wanted much, except perhaps to be left alone and not woken up until midday. When he’d been small, people had said things like, “And what do you want to be, little man?” and he’d said, “I don’t know. What have you got?” They didn’t let you get away with that sort of thing for very long. It wasn’t enough to be what you were, you had to be working to be something else. He’d tried. For quite a long while he’d tried wanting to be a blacksmith, because that looked interesting and romantic. But it also involved hard work and intractable bits of metal. Then he’d tried wanting to be an assassin, which looked dashing and romantic. But it also involved hard work and, when you got right down to it, occasionally having to kill someone. Then he’d tried wanting to be an actor, which looked dramatic and romantic, but it had involved dusty tights, cramped lodgings and, to his amazement, hard work. He’d allowed himself to be sent to the University because it was easier than not going. He tended to smile a lot, in a faintly puzzled way. This gave people the impression that he was slightly more intelligent than they were. In fact, he was usually trying to work out what they had just said. And he had a thin moustache, which in a certain light made him look debonair and, in another, made him look as though he had been drinking a thick chocolate milk shake. He was quite proud of it. When you became a wizard you were expected to stop shaving and grow a beard like a gorse bush. Very senior wizards looked capable of straining nourishment out of the air via their moustaches, like whales. It was now half-past one. He was ambling back from the Mended Drum, the most determinedly disreputable of the city’s taverns. Victor Tugelbend always gave the impression of ambling, even when he was running. He was also quite sober and a bit surprised, therefore, to find himself in the Plaza of Broken Moons. He’d been heading for the little alley behind the University and the piece of wall with the conveniently spaced removable bricks where, for hundreds and hundreds of years, student wizards had quietly got around, or more precisely climbed over, Unseen University’s curfew restrictions. The plaza wasn’t on the route. He turned to amble back the way he had come, and then stopped. There was something unusual going on. Usually there’d be a storyteller there, or some musicians, or an entrepreneur looking for prospective buyers of such surplus Ankh-Morpork landmarks as the Tower of Art or the Brass Bridge. Now there were just some people putting up a big screen, like a bedsheet stretched between poles. He sauntered over to them. “What’re you doing?” he said amiably. “There’s going to be a performance.” “Oh. Acting,” said Victor, without much interest. He mooched back through the damp darkness, but stopped when he heard a voice coming from the gloom between two buildings. The voice said “Help”, quite quietly. Another voice said, “Just hand it over, right?” Victor wandered closer, and squinted into the shadows. “Hallo?” he said. “Is everything all right?” There was a pause, and then a low voice said, “You don’t know what’s good for you, kid.” He’s got a knife, Victor thought. He’s coming at me with a knife. That means I’m either going to get stabbed or I’m going to have to run away, which is a real waste of energy. People who didn’t apply themselves to the facts in hand might have thought that Victor Tugelbend would be fat and unhealthy. In fact, he was undoubtedly the most athletically-inclined student in the University. Having to haul around extra poundage was far too much effort, so he saw to it that he never put it on and he kept himself in trim because doing things with decent muscles was far less effort than trying to achieve things with bags of flab. So he brought one hand round in a backhanded swipe. It didn’t just connect, it lifted the mugger off his feet. Then he looked for the prospective victim, who was still cowering against the wall. “I hope you’re not hurt,” he said. “Don’t move!” “I wasn’t going to,” said Victor. The figure advanced from the shadows. It had a package under one arm, and its hands were held in front of its face in an odd gesture, each forefinger and thumb extended at right angles and then fitted together, so that the man’s little weaselly eyes appeared to be looking out through a frame. He’s probably warding off the Evil Eye, Victor thought. He looks like a wizard, with all those symbols on his dress. “Amazing!” said the man, squinting through his fingers. “Just turn your head slightly, will you? Great! Pity about the nose, but I expect we can do something about that.” He stepped forward and tried to put his arm round Victor’s shoulders. “It’s lucky for you”, he said, “that you met me.” “It is?” said Victor, who had been thinking it was the other way around. “You’re just the type I’m looking for,” said the man. “Sorry,” said Victor. “I thought you were being robbed.” “He was after this,” said the man, patting the package under his arm. It rang like a gong. “Wouldn’t have done him any good, though.” “Not worth anything?” said Victor. “Priceless.” “That’s all right, then,” said Victor. The man gave up trying to reach across both of Victor’s shoulders, which were quite broad, and settled for just one of them. “But a lot of people would be disappointed,” he said. “Now, look. You stand well. Good profile. Listen, lad, how would you like to be in moving pictures?” “Er,” said Victor. “No. I don’t think so.” The man gaped at him. “You did hear what I said, didn’t you?” he said. “Moving pictures?” “Yes.” “Everyone wants to be in moving pictures!” “No, thanks,” said Victor, politely. “I’m sure it’s a worthwhile job, but moving pictures doesn’t sound very interesting to me.” “I’m talking about moving pictures!” “Yes,” said Victor mildly. “I heard you.” The man shook his head. “Well,”- he said, “you’ve made my day. First time in weeks I’ve met someone who isn’t desperate to get into moving pictures. I thought everyone wanted to get into moving pictures. I thought as soon as I saw you: he’ll be expecting a job in moving pictures for this night’s work.” “Thanks all the same,” said Victor. “But I don’t think I’d take to it.” “Well, I owe you something.” The little man fumbled in a pocket and produced a card. Victor took it. It read: Thomas Silverfish Interesting and Instructive Kinematography One and Two Reelers Nearly non-explosive Stock 1, Holy Wood “That’s if ever you change your mind,” he said. “Everyone in Holy Wood knows me.” Victor stared at the card. “Thank you,” he said vaguely. “Er. Are you a wizard?” Silverfish glared at him. “Whatever made you think that?” he snapped. “You’re wearing a dress with magic symbols-” “Magic symbols? Look closely, boy! These are certainly not the credulous symbols of a ridiculous and outmoded belief system! These are the badges of an enlightened craft whose clear, new dawn is just . . . er, dawning! Magic symbols!” he finished, in tones of withering scorn. “And it’s a robe, not a dress,” he added. Victor peered at the collection of stars and crescent moons and things. The badges of an enlightened craft whose new dawn was just dawning looked just like the credulous symbols of a ridiculous and outmoded belief system to him, but this was probably not the time to say so. “Sorry,” he said again. “Couldn’t see them clearly.” “I’m an alchemist,” said Silverfish, only slightly mollified. “Oh, lead into gold, that sort of thing,” said Victor. “Not lead, lad. Light. It doesn’t work with lead. Light into gold . . . “ “Really?” said Victor politely, as Silverfish started to set up a tripod in the middle of the plaza. A small crowd was collecting. A small crowd collected very easily in Ankh-Morpork. As a city, it had some of the most accomplished spectators in the universe. They’d watch anything, especially if there was any possibility of anyone getting hurt in an amusing way. “Why don’t you stay for the show?” said Silverfish, and hurried off. An alchemist. Well, everyone knew that alchemists were a little bit mad, thought Victor. It was perfectly normal. Who’d want to spend their time moving pictures? Most of them looked all right where they were. “Sausages inna bun! Get them while they’re hot!” bellowed a voice by his ear. He turned. “Oh, hallo, Mr. Dibbler,” he said. “Evening, lad. Want to get a nice hot sausage down you?” Victor eyed the glistening tubes in the tray around Dibbler’s neck. They smelled appetizing. They always did. And then you bit into them, and learned once again that Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler could find a use for bits of an animal that the animal didn’t know it had got. Dibbler had worked out that with enough fried onions and mustard people would eat anything. “Special rate for students,” Dibbler whispered conspiratorially. “Fifteen pence, and that’s cutting my own throat.” He flapped the frying pan lid strategically, raising a cloud of steam. The piquant scent of fried onions did its wicked work. “Just one, then,” Victor said warily. Dibbler flicked a sausage out of the pan and snatched it into a bun with the expertise of a frog snapping a mayfly. “You won’t live to regret it,” he said cheerfully, Victor nibbled a bit of onion. That was safe enough. “What’s all this?” he said, jerking a thumb in the direction of the flapping screen. “Some kind of entertainment,” said Dibbler. “Hot sausages! They’re lovely!” He lowered his voice again to its normal conspiratorial hiss. “All the rage in the other cities, I hear,” he added. “Some sort of moving pictures. They’ve been trying to get it right before coming to Ankh-Morpork.” They watched Silverfish and a couple of associates fumble technically with the box on the tripod. White light suddenly appeared at a circular orifice on the front of it, and illuminated the screen. There was a halfhearted cheer from the crowd. “Oh,” said Victor. “I see. Is that all? It’s just plain old shadow play. That’s all it is. My uncle used to do it to amuse me. You know? You kind of move your hands in front of the light and the shadows make a kind of silhouettey picture.” “Oh, yeah,” said Dibbler uncertainly. “Like “Big Elephant”, or “Bald Eagle”. My grandad used to do that sort of stuff.” “Mainly my uncle did “Deformed Rabbit”,” said Victor. “He wasn’t very good at it, you see. It used to get pretty embarrassing. We’d all sit round desperately guessing things like “Surprised Hedgehog” or “Rabid Stoat” and he’d go off to bed in a sulk because we hadn’t guessed he was really doing “Lord Henry Skipps and His Men beating the Trolls at the Battle of Pseudopolis”. I can’t see what’s so special about shadows on a screen.” “From what I hear it’s not like that,” said Dibbler. “I sold one of the men a Jumbo Sausage Special earlier on, and he said it’s all down to showing pictures very fast. Sticking lots of pictures together and showing them one after another. Very, very fast, he said.” “Not too fast,” said Victor severely. “You wouldn’t be able to see them go past if they were too fast.” “He said that’s the whole secret, not seeing ‘em go past,” said Dibbler. “You have to see ‘em all at once, or something.” “They’d all be blurred,” said Victor. “Didn’t you ask him about that?” “Er, no,” said Dibbler. “Point of fact, he had to rush off just then. Said he felt a bit odd.” Victor looked thoughtfully at the remnant of his sausage in a bun and, as he did so, he was aware of being stared at in his turn. He looked down. There was a dog sitting by his feet. It was small, bow-legged and wiry, and basically grey but with patches of brown, white and black in outlying areas, and it was staring. It was certainly the most penetrating stare Victor had ever seen. It wasn’t menacing or fawning. It was just very slow and very thorough, as though the dog was memorizing details so that it could give a full description to the authorities later on. When it was sure it had his full attention, it transferred its gaze to the sausage: Feeling wretched at being so cruel to a poor dumb animal, Victor flicked the sausage downwards. The dog caught and swallowed it in one economical movement. More people were drifting into the plaza now. Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler had wandered off and was doing a busy trade with those latenight revellers who were too drunk to prevent optimism triumphing over experience; anyone who bought a meal at one a.m. after a night’s revelling was probably going to be riotously ill anyway, so they might as well have something to show for it. Victor was gradually surrounded by a large crowd. It didn’t consist solely of humans. He recognized, a few feet away, the big rangy shape of Detritus, an ancient troll well known to all the students as someone who found employment anywhere people needed to be thrown very hard out of places for money. The troll noticed him, and tried to wink. This involved closing both eyes, because Detritus wasn’t good at complicated things. It was widely believed that, if Detritus could be taught to read and write sufficiently to sit down and do an intelligence test, he’d prove to be slightly less intelligent than the chair. Silverfish picked up a megaphone. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “you are privileged tonight to witness a turning point in the history of the Century of–” he lowered the megaphone and Victor heard him whisper urgently to one of his assistants, “What century is this? Is it?” and then raised the megaphone again and continued in the original plummily optimistic tones “–Century of the Fruitbat! No less than the birth of Moving Pictures! Pictures that move without magic!” He waited for the applause. There wasn’t any. The crowd just watched him. You needed to do more than end your sentences with exclamation marks to get a round of applause from an Ankh-Morpork crowd. Slightly dispirited, he went on, “Seeing is Believing, they say! But, ladies and gentlemen, you will not believe the Evidence of Your Own Eyes! What you are about to witness is a Triumph of Natural Science! A Marvel of the Age! A Discovery of World, nay, dare I say, Universe-Shaking Proportions!–” “‘S got to be better than that bloody sausage, anyway,” said a quiet voice by Victor’s knee. “–Harnessing Natural Mechanisms to create Illusion! Illusion, Ladies and Gentlemen, without recourse to Magic! “ Victor let his gaze slide downwards. There was nothing down there but the little dog, industriously scratching itself. It looked up slowly, and said “Woof?” “–Potential for Learning! The Arts! History! I thank you, Ladies and Gentlemen! Ladies and Gentlemen, You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet!” There was another hopeful break for applause. Someone at the front of the crowd said, “That’s right. We ain’t.” “Yeah,” said the woman next to him. “When’re you goin’ to stop goin’ on like that and get on with the shadow play?” “That’s right,” snapped a second woman. “Do “Deformed Rabbit”. My kids always love that one.” Victor looked away for a while, to lull the dog’s suspicions, and then turned and glared hard at it. It was amiably watching the crowd, and apparently taking no notice of him. Victor poked an exploratory finger in his ear. It must have been a trick of an echo, or something. It wasn’t that the dog had gone “woof!”, although that was practically unique in itself; most dogs in the universe never went “woof!”, they had complicated barks like “whuuugh!” and “hwhoouf!”. No, it was that it hadn’t in fact barked at all. It had said “woof”. He shook his head, and looked back as Silverfish climbed down from the screen and motioned to one of his assistants to start turning a handle at the side of the box. There was a grinding noise that rose to a steady clicking. Vague shadows danced across the screen, and then . . . One of the last things Victor remembered was a voice beside his knee saying, “Could have bin worse, mister. I could have said “miaow”.” Holy Wood dreams . . . And now it was now eight hours later. A horribly overhung Ponder Stibbons looked guiltily at the empty desk beside him. It was unlike Victor to miss exams. He always said he enjoyed the challenge. “Get ready to turn over your papers,” said the invigilator at the end of the hall. The sixty chests of sixty prospective wizards tightened with dark, unbearable tension. Ponder fumbled anxiously with his lucky pen. The wizard on the dais turned over the hourglass. “You may begin,” he said. Several of the more smug students turned over their papers by snapping their fingers. Ponder hated them instantly. He reached for his lucky inkwell, missed completely in his nervousness, and then knocked it over. A small black flood rolled over his question paper. Panic and shame washed over him nearly as thoroughly. He mopped the ink up with the hem of his robe, spreading it smoothly over the desk. His lucky dried frog had been washed away. Hot with embarrassment, dripping black ink, he looked up in supplication at the presiding wizard and then cast his eyes imploringly at the empty desk beside him. The wizard nodded. Ponder gratefully sidled across the aisle, waited until his heart had stopped thumping and then, very carefully, turned over the paper on the desk. After ten seconds, and against all reason, he turned it over again just in case there had been a mistake and the rest of the questions had somehow been on the top side after all. Around him there was the intense silence of fifty-nine minds creaking with sustained effort. Ponder turned the paper over again. Perhaps it- was some mistake. No . . . there was the University seal and the signature of the Archchancellor and everything. So perhaps it was some sort of special test. Perhaps they were watching him now to see what he’d do . . . He peered around furtively. The other students seemed to be working hard. Perhaps it was a mistake after all. Yes. The more he came to think about it, the more logical it seemed. The Archchancellor had probably signed the papers and then, when the clerks had been copying them out, one of them had got as far as the all-important first question and then maybe had been called away or something, and no-one had noticed, and it’d got put on Victor’s desk, but now he wasn’t here and Ponder had got it which meant, he decided, in a sudden rush of piety, that the gods must have wanted him to get it. After all, it wasn’t his fault if some sort of error gave him a paper like this. It was probably sacrilegious or something to ignore the opportunity. They had to accept what you put down. Ponder hadn’t shared the room with the world’s greatest authority on examination procedures without learning a thing or two. He looked again at the question: “What is your name?” He answered it. After a while he underlined it, several times, with his lucky ruler. After a little while longer, to show willing, he wrote above it: “The anser to questione One is:”. After a further ten minutes he ventured “Which is what my name is” on the line below, and underlined it. Poor old Victor will be really sorry he missed this, he thought. I wonder where he is? There was no road to Holy Wood yet. Anyone trying to get there would take the highway to Quirm and, at some unmarked point out in the scrubby landscape, would turn off and strike out towards the sand dunes. Wild lavender and rosemary lined the banks: There was no sound but the buzzing of bees and the distant song of a skylark, which only made the silence more obvious. Victor Tugelbend left the road at the point where the bank had been broken down and flattened by the passage of many carts and, by the look of it, an increasing number of feet. There were still many miles to go. He trudged on. Somewhere at the back of his mind a tiny voice was saying things like “Where am I? Why am I doing this?” and another part of him knew that he didn’t really have to do it at all. Like the hypnotist’s victim who knows they’re not really hypnotized and can snap out of it any time they like, but just happened not to feel like it right now, he let his feet be guided. He wasn’t certain why. He just knew that there was something that he had to be part of. Something that might never happen again. Some way behind, but catching up fast, was Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler, trying to ride a horse. He was not a natural horseman, and fell off occasionally, which was one reason why he hadn’t overtaken Victor yet. The other was that he had paused, before leaving the city, to sell his sausage-in-a-bun business cheaply to a dwarf who could not believe his luck (after actually trying some of the sausages, would still not be able to believe his luck). Something was calling Dibbler, and it had a golden voice. A long way behind Throat, knuckles dragging in the sand, was Detritus the troll. It’s hard to be certain of what he was thinking, any more than it’s possible to tell what a homing pigeon is thinking. He just knew that where he ought to be was not where he was. And finally, even further down the road, was an eight-horse wagon taking a load of lumber to Holy Wood. Its driver wasn’t thinking about anything very much, although he was slightly puzzled by an incident that occurred just as he was leaving Ankh-Morpork in the darkness before dawn. A voice from the gloom by the road had shouted “Stop in the name of the city guard!” and he had stopped, and when nothing further had transpired he had looked around, and there was no-one there. The wagon rumbled past, revealing to the eye of the imaginative beholder the small figure of Gaspode the Wonder Dog, trying to make himself comfortable amongst the balks of timber at the rear. He was going to Holy Wood too. And he also didn’t know why. But he was determined to find out. None would have believed, in the final years of the Century of the Fruitbat, that Discworld affairs were being watched keenly and impatiently by intelligences greater than Man’s, or at least much nastier; that their affairs were being scrutinized and studied as a man with a three-day appetite might study the All-You-Can-Gobble-For-A-Dollar menu outside Harga’s House of Ribs . . . Well, actually . . . most wizards would have believed it, if anyone had told them. And the Librarian would certainly have believed it. And Mrs. Marietta Cosmopilite of 3 Quirm Street, Ankh-Morpork, would have believed it, too. But she believed the world was round, that a sprig of garlic in her underwear drawer kept away vampires, that it did you good to get out and have a laugh occasionally, that there was niceness in everyone if you only knew where to look, and that three horrible little dwarfs peered in at her undressing every night.[4] Holy Wood! . . . . . . was nothing very much, yet. Just a hill by the sea, and on the other side of the hill, a lot of sand dunes. It was that special sort of beautiful area which is only beautiful if you can leave after briefly admiring its beauty and go somewhere else where there are hot tubs and cold drinks. Actually staying there for any length of time is a penance. Nevertheless, there was a town there . . . just. Wooden shacks had been built wherever someone had dropped a load of timber, and they were crude, as if the builders had resented the time taken from something more important that they’d much rather be doing. They were square plank boxes. Except for the front. If you wanted to understand Holy Wood, Victor said years afterwards, you had to understand its buildings. You’d see a box on the sand. It’d have a roughly peaked roof, but that wasn’t important, because it never rained in Holy Wood. There’d be cracks in the walls, stuffed with old rags. The windows would be holes-glass was too fragile to cart all the way from Ankh-Morpork. And, from behind, the front was just like a huge wooden billboard, held up by a network of struts. From the front, it was a fretted, carved, painted, ornate, baroque architectural extravaganza. In Ankh-Morpork, sensible men built their houses plain, so as not to attract attention, and kept the decoration for inside. But Holy Wood wore its houses inside out. Victor walked up what passed for the main street in a daze. He had woken up in the early hours out in the dunes. Why? He’d decided to come to Holy Wood, but why? He couldn’t remember. All he could remember was that, at the time, it was the obvious thing to do. There had been hundreds of good reasons. If only he could remember one of them. Not that his mind had any room to review memories. It was too busy being aware that he was very hungry and acutely thirsty. His pockets had yielded a total of seven pence. That wouldn’t buy a bowl of soup, let alone a good meal. He needed a good meal. Things would look a lot clearer after a good meal. He pushed through the crowds. Most of them seemed to be carpenters, but there were others, carrying carboys or mysterious boxes. And everyone was moving very quickly and resolutely, bent on some powerful purpose of their own. Except him. He trailed up the impromptu street, gawping at the houses, feeling like a stray grasshopper in an ant hill. Arid there didn’t seem to– “Why don’t you look where you’re going!” He rebounded off a wall. When he got his balance the other party in the collision had already whirred off into the crowd. He stared for a moment and then ran desperately after her. “Hey!” he said, “Sorry! Excuse me? Miss?” She stopped, and waited impatiently as he caught up. “Well?” she said. She was a foot shorter than him and her shape was doubtful since most of her was covered in a ridiculously frilly dress, although the dress wasn’t as ludicrous as the big blond wig full of ringlets. And her face was white with make-up apart from her eyes, which were heavily ringed in black. The general effect was of a lampshade that hadn’t been getting much sleep lately. “Well?” she repeated, “Hurry up! They’re shooting again in five minutes!” “Er–” She unbent slightly. “No, don’t tell me,” she said. “You’ve just got here. It’s all new to you. You don’t know what to do. You’re hungry. You haven’t got any money. Right?” “Yes! How did you know?” “Everyone starts like that. And now you want to break into the clicks, right?” “The clicks?” She rolled her eyes, deep within their black circles. “Moving pictures!” “Oh–” I do, he thought. I didn’t know it but I do. Yes. That’s why I came here. Why didn’t I think of that? “Yes,” he said. “Yes, that’s what I want to do. I want to, er, break in. And how does one do that?” “One waits for ever and ever. Until one is noticed.” The girl looked him up and down with unconcealed contempt. “Take up carpentry, why don’t you? Holy Wood always needs good wood butchers.” And then she spun around and was gone, lost in a crowd of busy people. “Er, thank you,” Victor called after her. “Thank you.” He raised his voice and added, “I hope your eyes get better!” He jingled the coins in his pocket. Well, carpentry was out. It sounded too much like hard work. He’d tried it once, and wood and him had soon reached an agreement – he wouldn’t touch it, and it wouldn’t split. Waiting forever and ever had its attractions, but you needed money to do it with. His fingers closed around a small, unexpected rectangle. He pulled it out and looked at it. Silverfish’s card. No. 1 Holy Wood turned out to be a couple of shacks inside a high fence. There was a queue at the gate. It was made up of trolls, dwarfs and humans. They looked as though they had been there for some time; in fact, some of them had such a naturally dispirited way of sagging while remaining upright that they might have been specially-evolved descendants of the original prehistoric queuers. At the gate was a large, heavy-set man, who was eyeing the queue with the smug look of minor power-wielders everywhere. “Excuse me–” Victor began. “Mister Silverfish ain’t hiring any more people this morning,” said the man out of the corner of his mouth. “So scram.” . “But he said that if ever I was in– “ “Did I just say scram, friend?” “Yes, but–” The door in the fence opened a fraction. A small pale face poked out. “We need a troll and a coupla humans,” it said. “One day, usual rates.” The gate shut again. The man straightened up and cupped his scarred hands around his mouth. “Right, you horrible lot!” he shouted. “You heard the man!” He ran his eyes over the line with the practised gaze of a stock breeder. “You, you and you,” he said, pointing. “Excuse me,” said Victor helpfully, “but I think that man over there was actually first in the–” He was shoved out of the way. The lucky three shuffled in. He thought he saw the glint of coins changing hands. Then the gatekeeper turned an angry red face towards him. “You,” he said, “get to the end of the queue. And stay there!” Victor stared at him. He stared at the gate. He looked at the long line of dispirited people. “Um, no,” he said. “I don’t think so. Thanks all the same.” “Then beat it!” Victor gave him a friendly smile. He walked to the end of the fence, and followed it. It turned, at the far end, into a narrow alley. Victor searched among the usual alley debris for a while until he found a piece of scrap paper. Then he rolled up his sleeves. And only then did he inspect the fence carefully until he found a couple of loose boards that, with a bit of effort, let him through. This brought him into an area stacked with lumber and piles of cloth. There was no-one around. Walking purposefully, in the knowledge that no-one with their sleeves rolled up who walks purposefully with a piece of paper held conspicuously in their hand is ever challenged, he set out across the wood and canvas wonderland of Interesting and Instructive Kinematography. There were buildings painted on the back of other buildings. There were trees that were trees, at the front, and just a mass of struts at the back. There was a flurry of activity although, as far as Victor could see; no-one was actually producing anything. He watched a man in a long black cloak, a black hat and a moustache like a yard brush tie a girl to one of the trees. No-one seemed interested in stopping him, even though she was struggling. A couple of people were in fact watching disinterestedly, and there was a man standing behind a large box on a tripod, turning a handle. She flung out an imploring arm and opened and shut her mouth soundlessly. One of the watchers stood up, sorted through a stack of boards beside him, and held one up in front of the box. It was black. On it, in white, were the words “Noe! Noe!” He walked away. The villain twirled his moustache. The man walked back with a board. This time it said “Ahar! My proude beauty!” Another of the seated watchers picked up a megaphone. “Fine, fine,” he said. “OK, take a five minutes break and then everyone back here for the big fight scene.” The villain untied the girl. They wandered off. The man stopped turning the handle, lit a cigarette, and then opened the top of the box. “Everyone get that?” he said. There was a chorus of squeaks. Victor walked over and tapped the megaphone man on his shoulder. “Urgent message for Mr. Silverfish?” he said. “He’s in the offices over there,” said the man, jerking his thumb over his shoulder without looking around. “Thank you.” The first shed he poked his head into contained nothing but rows of small cages stretching away into the gloom. Indistinct things hurled themselves against the bars and chittered at him. He slammed the door hurriedly. The next door revealed Silverfish, standing in front of a desk covered with bits of glassware and drifts of paper. He didn’t turn around. “Just put it over there,” he said absently. “It’s me, Mr. Silverfish,” said Victor. Silverfish turned around and peered vaguely at him, as if it was Victor’s fault that his name meant nothing. “Yes?” “I’ve come because of that job,” said Victor. “You know?” “What job? What should I know?” said Silverfish. “How the hell did you get in here?” “I broke into moving pictures,” said Victor. “But it’s nothing that a hammer and a few nails won’t put right.” Panic bloomed on Silverfish’s face. Victor pulled out the card and waved it in what he hoped was a reassuring way. “In Ankh-Morpork?” he said. “A couple of nights ago? You were being menaced?” Realization dawned. “Oh, yes,” said Silverfish faintly. “And you were the lad who was of some help.” “And you said to come and see you if I wanted to move pictures,” said Victor. “I didn’t, then, but I do now.” He gave Silverfish a bright smile. But he thought: he’s going to try and wriggle out of it. He’s regretting the offer. He’s going to send me back to the queue. “Well, of course,” said Silverfish, “a lot of very talented people want to be in moving pictures. We’re going to have sound any day now. I mean, are you a carpenter? Any alchemical experience? Have you ever trained imps? Any good with your hands at all?” “No,” Victor admitted. “Can you sing?” “A bit. In the bath. But not very well,” Victor conceded. “Can you dance?” “No.” “Swords? Do you know how to handle a sword?” “A little,” said Victor. He’d used one sometimes in the gym. He’d never in fact fought an opponent, since wizards generally abhor exercise and the only other University resident who ever entered the place was the Librarian, and then only to use the ropes and rings. But Victor had practised an energetic and idiosyncratic technique in front of the mirror, and the mirror had never beaten him yet. “I see,” said Silverfish gloomily. “Can’t sing. Can’t dance. Can handle a sword a little.” “But I have saved your life twice,” said Victor. “Twice?” snapped Silverfish. “Yes,” said Victor. He took a deep breath. This was going to be risky. “Then,” he said, “and now.” There was a long pause. Then Silverfish said, “I really don’t think there’s any call for that.” “I’m sorry, Mr. Silverfish,” Victor pleaded. “I’m really not that kind of person but you did say and I’ve walked all this way and I haven’t got any money and I’m hungry and I’ll do anything you’ve got. Anything at all. Please.” Silverfish looked at him doubtfully. “Even acting?” he said. “Pardon?” “Moving about and pretending to do things,” said Silverfish helpfully. “Yes!” “Seems a shame, a bright, well-educated lad like you,” said Silverfish. “What do you do?” “I’m studying to be a w–,” Victor began. He remembered Silverfish’s antipathy towards wizardry, and corrected himself, “a clerk.” “A waclerk?” said Silverfish. “I don’t know if I’d be any good at acting, though,” Victor confessed. Silverfish looked surprised. “Oh, you’ll be OK,” he said. “It’s very hard to be bad at acting in moving pictures.” He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a dollar coin. “Here,” he said, “go and get something to eat.” He looked Victor up and down. “Are you waiting for something?” he said. “Well,” said Victor, “I was hoping you could tell me what’s going on.” “How do you mean?” “A couple of nights ago I watched your, your click,” he felt slightly proud of remembering the term, “back in the city and suddenly I wanted to be here more than anything else. I’ve never really wanted anything in my life before!” Silverfish’s face broke into a relieved grin. “Oh, that,” he said. “That’s just the magic of Holy Wood. Not wizard’s magic,” he added hastily, “which is all superstition and mumbo-jumbo. No. This is magic for ordinary people. Your mind is fizzing with all the possibilities. I know mine was,” he added. “Yes,” said Victor uncertainly. “But how does it work?” Silverfish’s face lit up. “You want to know?” he said. “You want to know how things work?” “You see, most people are so disappointing,” Silverfish said. “You show them something really wonderful like the picture box, and they just go “oh”. They never ask how it works. Mr. Bird!” The last word was a shout. After a while a door opened on the far side of the shack and a man appeared. He had a picture box on a strap round his neck. Assorted tools hung from his belt. His hands were stained with chemicals and he had no eyebrows, which Victor was later to learn was a sure sign of someone who had been around octo-cellulose for any length of time. He also had his cap on back to front. “This is Gaffer Bird,” beamed Silverfish. “Our head handleman. Gaffer, this is Victor. He’s going to act for us.” “Oh,” said Gaffer, looking at Victor in the same way that a butcher might look at a carcass. “Is he?” “And he wants to know how things work!” said Silverfish. Gaffer gave Victor another jaundiced look. “String,” he said gloomily. “It all works by string. You’d be amazed how things’d fall to bits around here,” he said, “if it weren’t for me and my ball of string.” There was a sudden commotion from the box round his neck. He thumped it with the flat of his hand. “You lot can cut that out,” he said. He nodded at Victor. “They gets fractious if their routine is upset,” he said. “What’s in the box?” said Victor. Gaffer winked at Silverfish. “I bet you’d like to know,” he said. Victor remembered the caged things he’d seen in the shed. “They sound like common demons,” he said cautiously. Gaffer gave him an approving look, such as might be given to a stupid dog who had just done a rather clever trick. “Yeah, that’s right,” he conceded. “But how do you stop them escaping?” said Victor. Gaffer leered. “Amazin’ stuff, string,” he said. Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler was one of those rare people with the ability to think in straight lines. Most people think in curves and zig-zags. For example, they start from a thought like: I wonder how I can become very rich, and then proceed along an uncertain course which includes thoughts like: I wonder what’s for supper, and: I wonder who I know who can lend me five dollars? Whereas Throat was one of those people who could identify the thought at the other end of the process, in this case I am now very rich, draw a line between the two, and then think his way along it, slowly and patiently, until he got to the other end. Not that it worked. There was always, he found, some small but vital flaw in the process. It generally involved a strange reluctance on the part of people to buy what he had to sell. But his life savings were now resting in a leather bag inside his jerkin. He’d been in Holy Wood for a day. He’d looked at its ramshackle organization, such as it was, with the eye of a lifelong salesman. There seemed nowhere in it for him, but this wasn’t a problem. There was always room at the top. A day’s enquiries and careful observation had led him to Interesting and Instructive Kinematography. Now he stood on the far side of the street, watching carefully. He watched the queue. He watched the man on the gate. He reached a decision. He strolled along the queue. He had brains. He knew he had brains. What he needed now was muscle. Somewhere here there was bound to– “Aft’noon, Mister Dibbler.” That flat head, those rangy arms, that curling lower lip, that croaking voice that bespoke an IQ the size of a walnut. It added up to– “It’s me. Detritus,” said Detritus. “Fancy seein’ you here, eh?” He gave Dibbler a grin like a crack appearing in a vital bridge support. “Hallo, Detritus. You working in films?” said Dibbler. “Not exactly working,” said Detritus, bashfully. Dibbler looked quietly at the troll, whose chipped fists were generally the final word in any street fight. “I call that disgusting,” he said. He pulled out his money bag and counted out five dollars. “How would you like to work for me, Detritus?” Detritus touched his jutting brow respectfully. “Right you are, Mr. Dibbler,” he said. “Just step this way.” Dibbler strolled back up to the head of the queue. The man at the door thrust out an arm to bar his way. “Where d’you think you’re going, pal?” he said. “I have an appointment with Mr. Silverfish,” said Dibbler. “And he knows about this, does he?” said the guard, in tones that suggested that he personally would not believe it even if he saw it written on the sky. “Not yet,” said Dibbler. “Well, my friend, in that case you can just get yourself to–” “Detritus?” “Yes, Mr. Dibbler?” “Hit this man.” “Right you are, Mr. Dibbler.” Detritus’s arm whirled round in a 180 degree arc with oblivion on the end of it. The guard was lifted off his feet and smashed through the door, coming to a stop in its wreckage twenty feet away. There was a cheer from the queue. Dibbler looked approvingly at the troll. Detritus was wearing nothing except a ragged loincloth which covered whatever it was that trolls felt it necessary to conceal. “Very good, Detritus.” “Right you are, Mr. Dibbler.” “But we shall have to see about getting you a suit,” said Dibbler. “Now, please guard the gate. Don’t let anyone in.” “Right you are, Mr. Dibbler.” Two minutes later a small grey dog trotted through the troll’s short and bandy legs and hopped over the remains of the gate, but Detritus didn’t do anything about this because everyone knew dogs weren’t anyone. “Mr. Silverfish?” said Dibbler. Silverfish, who had been cautiously crossing the studio with a box of fresh film stock, hesitated at the sight of a skinny figure bearing down on him like a long-lost weasel. Dibbler’s expression was the expression worn by something long and sleek and white as it swims over the reef and into the warm shallow waters of the kiddies’ paddling area. “Yes?” said Silverfish. “Who’re you? How did you get–” “Dibbler’s the name,” said Dibbler. “But I’d like you to call me Throat.” He clasped Silverfish’s unresisting hand and then placed his other hand on the man’s shoulder and stepped forward, pumping the first hand vigorously. The effect was of acute affability, and it meant that if Silverfish backed away he would dislocate his own elbow. “And I’d just like you to know”, Dibbler went on, “that we’re all incredibly impressed at what you boys are doing here.” Silverfish watched his own hand being strenuously made friends with, and grinned uncertainly. “You are?” he ventured. “All this–”, Dibbler released Silverfish’s shoulder just long enough to expansively indicate the energetic chaos around them. “Fantastic!” he said. “Marvellous! And that last thing of yours, what was it called now–?” “High Jinks at the Store,” said Silverfish. “That’s the one where the thief steals the sausages and the shop-keeper chases him?” “Yeah,” said Dibbler, his fixed smile glazing for only a second . or two before becoming truly sincere again. “Yeah. That was it. Amazing! True genius! A beautifully sustained metaphor!” “That cost us nearly twenty dollars, you know,” said Silverfish, with shy pride. “And another forty pence for the sausages, of course.” “Amazing!” said Dibbler. “And it must have been seen by hundreds of people, yes?” “Thousands,” said Silverfish. There was no analogy for Dibbler’s grin now. If it had managed to be any wider, the top of his head would have fallen off. “Thousands?” he said. “Really? That many? And of course they all pay you, oh, how much–?” “Oh, we just take up a collection at the moment,” said Silverfish. “Just to cover costs while we’re still in the experimental stage, you understand.” He looked down. “I wonder,” he added, “could you stop shaking my hand now?” Dibbler followed his gaze. “Of course!” he said, and let go. Silverfish’s hand carried on going up and down for a while of its own accord, out of sheer muscular spasm. Dibbler was silent for a moment, his expression that of a man in deep communion with some inner god. Then he said, “You know, Thomas - may I call you Thomas? when I saw that masterpiece I thought, Dibbler, behind all this is a creative artist–” “–how did you know my name was–” “–a creative artist, I thought, who should be free to pursue his muse instead of being- burdened with all the fussy details of management, am I right?” “Well . . . it’s true that all this paperwork is a bit–” “My thoughts exactly,” said Dibbler, “and I said, Dibbler, you should go there right now and offer him your services. You know. Administrate. Take the load off his shoulders. Let him get on with what he does best, am I right? Tom?” “I, I, I, yes, of course, it’s true that my forte is really more in–” “Right! Right!” said Dibbler. “Tom, I accept!” Silverfish’s eyes were glassy. “Er,” he said. Dibbler punched him playfully on the shoulder. “Just you show me the paperwork,” he said, “and then you can get right out there and do whatever it is you do so well.” “Er. Yes,” said Silverfish. Dibbler grasped him by both arms and gave him a thousand watts of integrity. “This is a proud moment for me,” he said hoarsely. “I can’t tell you how much this means to me. I can honestly say this is the happiest day of my life. I want you to know that. Tommy. Sincerely.” The reverential silence was broken by a faint sniggering. Dibbler looked around slowly. There was no-one behind them apart from a small grey mongrel dog sitting in the shade of a heap of lumber. It noticed his expression and put its head on one side. “Woof?” it said. Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler looked around momentarily for something to throw, realized that this would be out of character, and turned back to the imprisoned Silverfish. “You know,” he said sincerely, “it’s really lucky for me that I met you.” Lunch in a tavern had cost Victor the dollar plus a couple of pence. It was a bowl of soup. Everything cost a lot, said the soup-seller, because it all had to be brought a long way. There weren’t any farms around Holy Wood. Anyway, who’d grow things when they could be making movies? Then he reported to Gaffer for his screen test. This consisted of standing still for a minute while the handleman watched him owlishly over the top of a picture box. After the minute had passed Gaffer said, “Right. You’re a natural, kid.” “But I didn’t do anything,” said Victor. “You just told me not to move.” “Yeah. Quite right. That’s what we need. People who know how to stand still,” said Gaffer. “None of this fancy acting like in the theatre.” “But you haven’t told me what the demons do in the box,” said Victor. “They do this,” said Gaffer, unclicking a couple of latches. A row of tiny malevolent eyes glared out at Victor. “These six demons here”, he said, pointing cautiously to avoid the claws, “look out through the little hole in the front of the box and paint pictures of what they see. There has to be six of them, OK? Two to paint and four to blow on it to get it dry. On account of the next picture coming down, see. That’s because every time this handle here is turned, the strip of transparent membrane is wound down one notch for the next picture.” He turned the handle. It went clickaclicka, and the imps gibbered. “What did they do that for?” said Victor. “Ah,” said Gaffer, “that’s because the handle also drives this little wheel with whips on. It’s the only way to get them to work fast enough. He’s a lazy little devil, your average imp. It’s all feedback, anyway. The faster you turn the handle, the faster the film goes by, the faster they have to paint. You got to get the speed just right. Very important job, handle-manning.” “But isn’t it all rather, well, cruel?” Gaffer looked surprised. “Oh, no. Not really. I gets a rest every half an hour. Guild of Handlemen regulations.” He walked further along the bench, where another box stood with its back panel open. This time a cageful of sluggish-looking lizards blinked mournfully at Victor. “We ain’t very happy with this,” said Gaffer, “but it’s the best we can do. Your basic salamander, see, will lie in the desert all day, absorbing light, and when it’s frightened it excretes the light again. Self-defence mechanism, it’s called. So as the film goes past and the shutter here clicks backwards and forwards, their light goes out through the film and these lenses here and on to the screen. Basically very simple.” “How do you make them frightened?” said Victor. “You see this handle?” “Oh.” Victor prodded the picture box thoughtfully. “Well, all right,” he said. “So you get lots of little pictures. And you wind them fast. So we ought to see a blur, but we don’t.” “Ah,” said Gaffer, tapping the side of his nose. “Handlemen’s Guild secret, that is. Handed down from initiate to initiate,” he added importantly. Victor gave him a sharp look. “I thought people’d only been making movies for a few months,” he said. Gaffer had the decency to look shifty. “Well, OK, at the moment we’re more sort of handing it round,” he admitted. “But give us a few years and we’ll soon be handing it down don’t touch that!” Victor jerked his hand back guiltily from the pile of cans on the bench. “That’s actual film in there,” said Gaffer, pushing them gently to one side. “You got to be very careful with it. You mustn’t get it too hot because it’s made of octo-cellulose, and it don’t like sharp knocks either.” “What happens to it, then?” said Victor, staring at the cans. “Who knows? No-one’s ever lived long enough to tell us.” Gaffer looked at Victor’s expression and grinned. “Don’t worry about that,” he said. “You’ll be in front of the moving-picture box.” “Except that I don’t know how to act,” said Victor. “Do you know how to do what you’re told?” said Gaffer. “What? Well. Yes. I suppose so.” “That’s all you need, lad. That’s all you need. That and big muscles.” They stepped out into the searing sunlight and headed for Silverfish’s shed. Which was occupied. Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler was meeting the movies. “What I thought”, said Dibbler, “is that, well, look. Something like this.” He held up a card. On it was written, in shaky handwriting: After thys perfromans, Why Notte Visit Harp’s Hous of Ribs, For the Best inne Hawt Cuisyne “What’s hawt cuisyne?” said Victor. “It’s foreign,” said Dibbler. He scowled at Victor. Someone like Victor under the same roof wasn’t part of the plan. He’d been hoping to get Silverfish alone. “Means food,” he added. Silverfish stared at the card. “What about it?” he said. “Why don’t you”, said Dibbler, speaking very carefully, “hold this card up at the end of the performance?” “Why should we do that?” “Because someone like Sham Harp will pay you a lo– quite a lot of money,” said Dibbler. They stared at the card. “I’ve eaten at Harga’s House of Ribs,” said Victor. “I wouldn’t say it’s the best. Not the best. A long way from being the best.” He thought for a bit. “About as far away from being the best as you can get, in fact.” “That doesn’t matter,” said Dibbler sharply. “That’s not important.” “But,” Silverfish said, “if we went around saying Harga’s House of Ribs was the best place in the city, what would all the other restaurants think?” Dibbler leaned across the table. “They’d think,” he said, ““Why didn’t we think of it first?”“ He sat back. Silverfish flashed him a look of bright incomprehension. “Just run that past me one more time, will you?” he said. “They’ll want to do exactly the same thing!” said Dibbler. “I know,” said Victor. “They’ll want us to hold up cards with things on like “Harga’s Isn’t the Best Place in Town, Actually, Ours Is”.” “Something like that, something like that,” snapped Dibbler, glaring at him. “Maybe we can work on the words, but something like that.” “But, but,” Silverfish fought to keep ahead of the conversation, “Harga won’t like it, will he? If he pays us money to say his place is best, and then we take money from other people to say that their place is best, then he’s bound to–” “Pay us more money,” said Dibbler, “to say it again, only in larger letters.” They stared at him. “You really think that will work?” said Silverfish. “Yes,” said Dibbler flatly. “You listen to the street traders any morning. They don’t shout, “Nearly-fresh oranges, only slightly squashy, reasonable value”, do they? No, they shout, “Git chore orinjes, they’re luvverly”. Good business sense.” He leaned across the desk again. “Seems to me”, he said, “that you could do with some of that around here.” “So it appears,” said Silverfish weakly. “And with the money,” said Dibbler, his voice a crowbar inserted in the cracks in reality, “you could really get on with perfecting your art.” Silverfish brightened a bit. “That’s true,” he said. “For example, some way of getting sound on–” Dibbler wasn’t listening. He pointed to a stack of boards leaning against the wall. “What are those?” he said. “Ah,” said Silverfish. “That was my idea. We thought it would be, er, good business sense”, he savoured the words as if they were some rare new sweet, “to tell people about the other moving pictures we were making.” Dibbler picked up one of the boards and held it critically at arm’s length. It said: Nexte weke wee will be Shewing Pelias and Melisande, A Romantick Tragedie in Two Reels. Thank you. “Oh,” he said, flatly. “Isn’t that all right?” said Silverfish, now thoroughly beaten. “I mean, it tells them everything they should know, doesn’t it?” “May I?” said Dibbler, taking a piece of chalk from Silverfish’s desk. He scribbled intently on the back of the card for a while, and then turned it around. Now it read: Goddes and Men Saide It Was Notte To Bee, But They Would Notte Listen! Pelias and Melisande, A Storie of Forbiden Love! A searing Sarger of Passion that Bridged Spaes and Tyme! Thys wille shok you! With a 1,000 elephants! Victor and Silverfish read it carefully, as one reads a dinner menu in an alien language. This was an alien language, and to make it worse it was also their own. “Well, well,” said Silverfish. “My word . . . I don’t know if there was anything actually forbidden. Er. It was just very historical. I thought it would help, you know, children and so on. Learn about history. They never actually met, you know, which was what was so tragic. It was all very, er, sad.” He stared at the card. “Though I must say, you’ve certainly got something there. Er.” He looked uncomfortable about something. “I don’t actually remember any elephants,” he said, as if it was his own fault. “I was there the whole afternoon we made it, and I don’t recall a thousand elephants at any point. I’m sure I would have noticed.” Dibbler stared. He didn’t know where they were coming from, but now he was putting his mind to it he was getting some very clear ideas about what you needed to put in movies. A thousand elephants was a good start. “No elephants?” he said. “I don’t think so.” “Well, are there any dancing girls?” “Um, no.” “Well, are there any wild chases and people hanging by their fingertips from the edge of a cliff?” Silverfish brightened up slightly. “I think there’s a balcony at one point,” he said. “Yes? Does anyone hang on it by their fingertips?” “I don’t think so,” said Silverfish. “I believe Melisande leans over it.” “Yes, but will the audience hold their breath in case she falls off?” “I hope they’d be watching Pelias’ speech,” said Silverfish testily. “We had to put it on five cards. In small writing.” Dibbler sighed. “I think I know what people want,” he said, “and they don’t want to read lots of small writing. They want spectacles!” “Because of the small writing?” said Victor, sarcastically. “They want dancing girls! They want thrills! They want elephants! They want people falling off roofs! They want dreams! The world is full of little people with big dreams!” “What, you mean like dwarfs and gnomes and so on?” said Victor. “No!” “Tell me, Mr. Dibbler,” said Silverfish, “what exactly is your profession?” “I sell merchandise,” said Dibbler. “Mostly sausages,” Victor volunteered. “And merchandise,” said Dibbler, sharply. “I only sells sausages when the merchandising trade is a bit slow.” “And the sale of sausages leads you to believe you can make better moving pictures?” said Silverfish. “Anyone can sell sausages! Isn’t that so, Victor?” “Well . . . “ said Victor, reluctantly. No-one except Dibbler could possibly sell Dibbler’s sausages. “There you are, then,” said Silverfish. “The thing is”, said Victor, “that Mr. Dibbler can even sell sausages to people that have bought them off him before.” “That’s right!” said Dibbler. He beamed at Victor. “And a man who could sell Mr. Dibbler’s sausages twice could sell anything,” said Victor. The next morning was bright and clear, like all Holy Wood days, and they made a start on The Interestinge and Curious Adventures of Cohen the Barbarian. Dibbler had worked on it all evening, he said. The title, however, was Silverfish’s. Although Dibbler had assured him that Cohen the Barbarian was practically historical and certainly educational, Silverfish had held out against Valley of Blud! Victor was handed what looked like a leather purse but which turned out to be his costume. He changed behind a couple of rocks. He was also given a large, blunt sword. “Now,” said Dibbler, who was sitting in a canvas chair, “what you do is, you fight the trolls, rush up and untie the girl from the stake, fight the other trolls, and then run off behind that other rock over there. That’s the way I see it. What do you say, Tommy?” “Well, I–” Silverfish began. “That’s great,” said Dibbler. “OK. Yes, Victor?” “You mentioned trolls. What trolls?” said Victor. The two rocks unfolded themselves. “Don’t you worry about a fing, mister,” said the nearest one. “Me and ole Galena over there have got this down pat.” “Trolls!” said Victor, backing away. “That’s right,” said Galena. He flourished a club with a nail in it. “But, but,” Victor began. “Yeah?” said the other troll. What Victor would like to have said was: but you’re trolls, fierce animated rocks that live in the mountains and bash travellers with huge clubs very similar to the ones you’re holding now, and I thought when they said trolls they meant ordinary men dressed up in, oh, I don’t know, sacking painted grey or something. “Oh, good,” he said weakly. “Er.” “And don’t you go listening to them stories about us eatin’ people,” said Galena. “That’s a slander, that is. I mean, we’re made of rock, what’d we want to eat people–” “Swaller,” said the other troll. “You mean swaller.” “Yeah. What’s we want to swaller people for? We always spit out the bits. And anyway we’re retired from all that now,” he added quickly. “Not that we ever did it.” He nudged Victor in a friendly fashion, nearly breaking one of his ribs. “It’s good here,” he said conspiratorially. “We get three dollars a day plus a dollar barrier cream allowance for daylight working.” “On account of turning to stone until nightfall otherwise, what is a pain,” said his companion. “Yeah, an’ it holds up shooting and people strike matches on you.” “Plus our contract says we get five pence extra for use of own club,” said the other troll. “If we could just get started–” Silverfish began. “Why’s there only two trolls?” complained Dibbler. “What’s heroic about fighting two trolls? I asked for twenty, didn’t I?” “Two’s fine by me,” Victor called out. “Listen, Mr. Dibbler,” said Silverfish, “I know you’re trying to help, but the basic economics–” Silverfish and Dibbler started to argue. Gaffer the handleman sighed and took the back off the moving-picture-box to feed and water the demons, who were complaining. Victor leaned on his sword. “Do a lot of this sort of thing, do you?” he said to the trolls. “Yeah,” said Galena. “All the time. Like, in A King’s Ransom, I play a troll who rushed out an’ hit people. An’ in The Dark Forest, I play a troll who rushed out an’ hit people. An’, an’, in Mystery Mountain I play a troll who rushed out, an’ jumped up an’ down on people. It doesn’t pay to get type-cast.” “And do you do the same thing?” said Victor, to the other troll. “Oh, Morraine’s a character actor, ain’t you?” said Galena. “Best in the business.” “What does he play?” “Rocks.” Victor stared. “On account of his craggy features,” Galena went on. “Not just rocks. You should see him do an ancient monolith. You’d be amazed. Go on, Morry, show ‘im yer inscription.” “Nah,” said Morraine, grinning sheepishly. “I’m thinking of changing my name for movin’ pictures,” Galena went on. “Somethin’ with a bit o’ class. I thought “Flint”.” He gave Victor a worried look, insofar as Victor was any judge of the range of expressions available to a face that looked as though it had been kicked out of granite with a pair of steel-toed boots. “What you fink?” he said. “Er. Very nice.” “More dynamic, I fought,” said the prospective Flint. Victor heard himself say: “Or Rock. Rock’s a nice name.” The troll stared at him, its lips moving soundlessly as it tried out the alias. “Cor,” he said. “Never fought of that. Rock. I like that. I reckon I’d be due more’n three dollars a day, with a name like Rock.” “Can we make a start?” said Dibbler sternly. “Maybe we’ll be able to afford more trolls if this is a successful click, but it won’t be if we go over budget, which means we ought to wrap it up by lunchtime. Now, Morry and Galena–” “Rock,” corrected Rock. “Really? Anyway, you two rush out and attack Victor, OK. Right . . . turn it . . . “ The handleman turned the handle of the picture box. There was a faint clicking noise and a chorus of small yelps from the demons. Victor stood looking helpful and alert. “That means you start,” said Silverfish patiently. “The trolls rush out from behind the rocks, and you valiantly defend yourself.” “But I don’t know how to fight trolls!” Victor wailed. “Tell you what,” said the newly-christened Rock. “You parry first, and we’ll sort of arrange not to hit you.” Light dawned. “You mean it’s all pretending?” said Victor. The trolls exchanged a brief glance, which nevertheless contrived to say: amazing, isn’t it, that things like this apparently rule the world? “Yeah,” said Rock. “That’s it. Nuffin’s real.” “We ain’t allowed to kill you,” said Morraine reassuringly. “That’s right,” said Rock. “We wouldn’t go round killin’ you.” “They stops our money if we does things like that,” said Morraine, morosely. Outside the fault in reality They clustered, peering in with something approaching eyes at the light and warmth. There was a crowd of them by now. There had been a way through, once. To say that they remembered it would be wrong, because they had nothing as sophisticated as memory. They barely had anything as sophisticated as heads. But they did have instincts and emotions. They needed a way in. They found it. It worked quite well, the sixth time. The main problem was the trolls’ enthusiasm for hitting each other, the ground, the air and, quite often, themselves. In the end, Victor just concentrated on trying to hit the clubs as they whirred past him. Dibbler seemed quite happy with this. Gaffer wasn’t. “They moved around too much,” he said. “They were out of the picture half the time.” “It was a battle,” said Silverfish. “Yeah, but I can’t move the picture box around,” said the handleman. “The imps fall over.” “Couldn’t you strap them in or something?” said Dibbler. Gaffer scratched his chin. “I suppose I could nail their feet to the floor,” he said. “Anyway, it’ll do for now,” said Silverfish. “We’ll do the scene where you rescue the girl. Where’s the girl? I distinctly instructed her to be here. Why isn’t she here? Why doesn’t anyone ever do what I tell them?” The handleman took his cigarette stub out of his mouth. “She’s filmin’ A Bolde Adventurer over the other side of the hill,” he volunteered. “But that ought to have been finished yesterday!” wailed Silverfish. “Film exploded,” said the handleman. “Blast! Well, I suppose we can do the next fight. She doesn’t have to be in it,” said Silverfish grumpily. “All right, everybody. We’ll do the bit where Victor fights the dreaded Balgrog.” “What’s a Balgrog?” said Victor. A friendly but heavy hand tapped him on the shoulder. “It’s a traditional evil monster what is basically Morry painted green with wings stuck on,” said Rock. “I’ll jus’ go an’ help him with the paintin’.” He lumbered off. No-one seemed to want Victor at the moment. He stuck the ridiculous sword into the sand, wandered away and found a bit of shade under some scrubby olive trees. There were rocks here. He tapped them gently. They didn’t appear to be anyone. The ground formed a cool little hollow that was almost pleasant by the seared standards of Holy Wood hill. There was even a draught blowing from somewhere. As he leaned back against the stones he felt a cool breeze coming from them. Must be full of caves under here, he thought. – far away in Unseen University, in a draughty, many pillar’d corridor, a little device that no-one had paid much attention to for years started to make a noise – So this was Holy Wood. It hadn’t looked like this on the silver screen. It seemed that moving pictures involved a lot of waiting around and, if he was hearing things right, a mixing-up of time. Things happened before the things they happened after. The monsters were just Morry painted green with wings stuck on. Nothing was really real. Funnily enough, that was exciting. “I’ve just about had enough of this,” said a voice beside him. He looked up. A girl had come down the other path. Her face was red with exertion under the pale make-up, her hair hung over her eyes in ridiculous ringlets, and she wore a dress which, while clearly made for her size, was designed for someone who was ten years younger and keen on lace edging. She was quite attractive, although this fact was not immediately apparent. “And you know what they say when you complain?” she demanded. This was not really addressed to Victor. He was just a convenient pair of ears. “I can’t imagine,” said Victor politely. “They say, “There’s plenty of other people out there just waiting for a chance to get into moving pictures”. That’s what they say.” She leaned against a gnarled tree and fanned herself with her straw hat. “And it’s too hot,” she complained. “And now I’ve got to do a ridiculous one-reeler for Silverfish, who hasn’t got the faintest idea. And some kid probably with bad breath and hay in his hair and a forehead you could lay a table on.” “And trolls,” said Victor mildly. “Oh gods. Not Morry and Galena?” “Yes. Only Galena’s calling himself Rock now.” “I thought it was going to be Flint.” “He likes Rock.” From behind the rocks came the plaintive bleat of Silverfish wondering where everyone had got to just when he needed them. The girl rolled her eyes. “Oh gods. For this I’m missing lunch?” “You could always eat it off my forehead,” said Victor, standing up. He had the satisfaction of feeling her thoughtful gaze on the back of his neck as he retrieved his sword and gave it a few experimental swishes, with rather more force than was necessary. “You’re the boy in the street, aren’t you?” she said. “That’s right. You’re the girl who was going to be shot,” said Victor. “I see they missed.” She looked at him curiously. “How did you get a job so quickly? Most people have to wait weeks for a chance.” “Chances are where you find them, I’ve always said,” said Victor. “But how–” Victor had already strolled away with gleeful nonchalance. She trailed after him, her face locked in a petulant pout. “Ah,” said Silverfish sarcastically, looking up. “My word. Everyone where they should be. Very well. We’ll go from the bit where he finds her tied to the stake. What you do,” he said to Victor, “is untie her, then drag her off and fight the Balgrog, and you,” he pointed to the girl, “you, you, you just follow him and look as, as rescued as you possibly can, OK?” “I’m good at that,” she said, resignedly. “No, no, no,” said Dibbler, putting his head in his hands. “Not that again!” “Isn’t that what you wanted?” said Silverfish. “Fights and rescues?” “There’s got to be more to it than that!” said Dibbler. “Like what?” Silverfish demanded. “Oh, I don’t know. Razzmatazz. Oomph. The old zonkaroonie.” “Funny noises? We haven’t got sound.” “Everyone makes clicks about people running around and fighting and falling over,” said Dibbler. “There should be something more. I’ve been looking at the things you make here, and they all look the same to me.” “Well, all sausages look the same to me,” snapped Silverfish. “They’re meant to! That’s what people expect!” “And I’m giving them what they expect, too,” said Silverfish. “People like to see more of what they expect. Fights and chases, that sort of thing–” “’Scuse me, Mister Silverfish,” said the handleman, above the angry chattering of the demons. “Yes?” snapped Dibbler. “’Scuse me, Mister Dibbler, but I got to feed ‘em ina quarter of a hour.” Dibbler groaned. In retrospect, Victor was always a little unclear about those next few minutes. That’s the way it goes. The moments that change your life are the ones that happen suddenly, like the one where you die. There had been another stylized battle, he knew that much, with Morry and what would have been a fearsome whip if the troll hadn’t kept tangling it round his own legs. And, when the dreadful Balgrog had been beaten and had slid out of shot mugging terribly and trying to hold its wings on with one hand, he’d turned and cut the ropes holding the girl to the stake and should have dragged her sharply to the right when– –the whispering started. There were no words but there was something that was the heart of words, that went straight through his ears and down his spinal column without bothering to make a stopover in his brain. He stared into the girl’s eyes and wondered if she was hearing it too. A long way off, there were words. There was Silverfish saying, “Come on, get on with it, what are you looking at her like that for?” and the handleman saying, “They gets really fractious if they misses a meal,” and Dibbler saying, in a voice hissing like a thrown knife, “Don’t stop turning the handle.” The edges of his vision went cloudy, and there were shapes in the cloud that changed and faded before he had a chance to examine them. Helpless as a fly in an amber flow, as much in control of his destiny as a soap bubble in a hurricane, he leaned down and kissed her. There were more words beyond the ringing in his ears. “Why’s he doing that? Did I tell him to do that? No-one told him to do that!” “–and then I have to muck ‘em out afterwards, and let me tell you, it’s no–” “Turn that handle! Turn that handle!” screamed Dibbler. “Now why’s he looking like that?” “Cor!” “If you stop turning that handle you’ll never work in this town again!” “Listen, mister, I happen to belong to the Handlemen’s Guild–” “Don’t stop! Don’t stop!” Victor surfaced. The whispering faded, to be replaced by the distant boom of the breakers. The real world was back, hot and sharp, the sun pinned to the sky like a medal awarded for being a great day. The girl took a deep breath. “I’m, gosh, I’m terribly sorry,” babbled Victor, backing away. “I really don’t know what happened–” Dibbler jumped up and down. “That’s it, that’s it!” he yelled. “How soon can you have it ready?” “Well, like I said, I got to feed the imps and muck ‘em out–” “Right, right – it’ll give me time to get some posters drawn,” said Dibbler. “I’ve already had some done,” said Silverfish coldly. “I bet you have, I bet you have,” said Dibbler, excitedly. “I bet you have. I bet they say things like “You mighte like to see a Quite Interestinge Moving Picture”!” “What’s wrong with it?” Silverfish demanded. “It’s a bloody sight better than hot sausage!” “I told you, when you sell sausages you don’t just hang around waiting for people to want sausage, you go out there and make them hungry. And you put mustard on ‘em. And that’s what your lad there has done.” He clapped one hand on Silverfish’s shoulder, and waved the other expansively. “Can’t you see it?” he said. He hesitated. Strange ideas were pouring into his head faster than he could think them. He felt dizzy with excitement and possibilities. “Sword of Passione,” he said. “That’s what we’ll call it. Not name it after some daft old bugger who’s probably not even alive any more. Sword of Passione. Yeah. A Tumultuous Saga of - of Desire an’ Raw, Raw, Raw wossname in the Primal Heat of a Tortured Continent! Romance! Glamour! In three Searing Reels! Thrill to the Death Fight with Ravening Monsters! Scream as a thousand elephants–” “It’s only one reel,” muttered Silverfish testily. “Shoot some more this afternoon!” crowed Dibbler, his eyes revolving. “You just need more fights and monsters!” “And there’s certainly no elephants,” snapped Silverfish. Rock put up a craggy arm. “Yes?” demanded Silverfish. “If you’ve got some grey paint an’ stuff to make the ears out of, I’m sure me an’ Morry could–” “No-one’s ever done a three-reeler,” said Gaffer reflectively. “Could be really tricky. I mean, it’d be nearly ten minutes long.” He looked thoughtful. “I suppose if I was to make the spools bigger-” Silverfish knew he was cornered. “Now look here,” he began. Victor stared down at the girl. Everyone else was ignoring them. “Er,” he said, “I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced?” “You didn’t seem to let that stop you,” she said. “I wouldn’t normally do something like that. I must have been . . . ill. Or something.” “Oh, good. And that makes me feel a lot better, does it?” “Shall we sit in the shade? It’s very hot out here.” “Your eyes went all . . . smouldery.” “Did they?” “They looked really odd.” “I felt really odd.” “I know. It’s this place. It gets to you. D’you know,” she said, sitting down on the sand, “there’s all kind of rules for the imps and things, they mustn’t be worn out, what kind of food they get, stuff like that: No-one cares about us, though. Even the trolls get better treatment.” “It’s the way they go around being seven foot tall and weighing 1,000 lbs all the time, I expect,” said Victor. “My name’s Theda Withel, but my friends call me Ginger,” she said. “My name’s Victor Tugelbend. Er. But my friends call me Victor,” said Victor. “This is your first click, is it?” “How can you tell?” “You looked as though you were enjoying it.” “Well, it’s better than working, isn’t it?” “You wait until you’ve been in it as long as I have,” she said bitterly. “How long’s that?” “Nearly since the start. Five weeks.” “Gosh. It’s all happened so fast.” “It’s the best thing that’s ever happened,” said Ginger flatly. “I suppose so . . . er, are we allowed to go and eat?” said Victor. “No. They’ll be shouting for us again any minute,” said Ginger. Victor nodded. He had, on the whole, got through life quite happily by doing what he pleased in a firm yet easy-going sort of way, and he didn’t see why he should stop that even in Holy Wood. “Then they’ll have to shout,” he said. “I want something to eat and a cool drink. Maybe I’ve just caught a bit too much sun.” Ginger looked uncertain. “Well, there’s the commissary, but–” “Good. You can show me the way.” “They fire people just like that–” “What, before the third reel?” “They say “There’s plenty more people who’re dying to break into moving pictures”, you see–” “Good. That means they’ll have all afternoon to find two of them who look just like us.” He strolled past Morry, who was also trying to keep in the shade of a rock. “If anyone wants us,” he said, “we’ll be having some lunch.” “What, right now?” said the troll. “Yes,” said Victor firmly, and strode on. Behind him he could see Dibbler and Silverfish locked in heated discussion, with occasional interruptions from the handleman, who spoke in the leisurely tones of one who knows he’s going to get paid six dollars today regardless. “–we’ll call it an epic. People will talk about it for ages.” “Yes, they’ll say we went bankrupt!” “Look, I know where I can get some coloured woodcuts done at practically cost–” “–I was finking, maybe if I got some string and tied the moving picture box on to wheels, so it can be moved around–” “People’ll say, that Silverfish, there’s a moving-picture-smith with the guts to give the people what they want, they’ll say. A man to roll back the wossname of the medium–” “–maybe if I was to make a sort of pole and swivel arrangement, we could bring the picture box right up close to–” “What? You think they’ll say that?” “Trust me, Tommy.” “Well . . . all right. All right. But no elephants. I want to make that absolutely clear. No elephants.” “Looks weird to me,” said the Archchancellor. “Looks like a bunch of pottery elephants. Thought you said it was a machine?” “More . . . more of a device,” said the Bursar uncertainly. He gave it a prod. Several of the pottery elephants wobbled. “Riktor the Tinkerer built it, I think. It was before my time.” It looked like a large, ornate pot, almost as high as a man of large pot height. Around its rim eight pottery elephants hung from little bronze chains; one of them swung backwards and forwards at the Bursar’s touch. The Archchancellor peered down inside. “It’s all levers and bellows,” he said, distastefully. The Bursar turned to the University housekeeper. “Well, now, Mrs. Whitlow,” he said, “what exactly happened?” Mrs. Whitlow, huge, pink and becorseted, patted her ginger wig and nudged the tiny maid who was hovering beside her like a tugboat. “Tell his lordship, Ksandra,” she ordered. Ksandra looked as though she was regretting the whole thing. “Well, sir, please, sir, I was dusting, you see-” “She hwas dusting,” said Mrs. Whitlow, helpfully. When Mrs. Whitlow was in the grip of acute class consciousness she could create aitches where nature never intended them to be. “–and then it started me’king a noise–” “Hit made hay hnoise,” said Mrs. Whitlow. “So she come and told me, your lordship, h’as hper my instructions.” “What kind of noise, Ksandra? said the Bursar, as kindly as he could. “Please, sir, sort of-” she screwed up her eyes, “ “whumm . . . whumm . . . whumm . . . whumm . . . whummwhummwhumm WHUMMWHUMM - plib”, sir.” “Plib,” said the Bursar, solemnly. “Yes, sir.” “Hplib,” echoed Mrs. Whitlow. “That was when it spat at me, sir,” said Ksandra. “Hexpectorated,” corrected Mrs. Whitlow. “Apparently one of the elephants spat out a little lead pellet, Master,” said the Bursar. “That was the, er, the “plib”,” “Did it, bigods,” said the Archchancellor. “Can’t have pots going around gobbin’ all over people.” Mrs. Whitlow twitched. “What’d it go and do that for?” Ridcully added. “I really couldn’t say, Master. I thought perhaps you’d know. I believe Riktor was a lecturer here when you were a student. Mrs. Whitlow is very concerned”, he added, in tones that made it clear that when Mrs. Whitlow was concerned about something it would be an unwise Archchancellor who ignored her, “about staff being magically interfered with.” The Archchancellor tapped the pot with his knuckles. “What, old “Numbers” Riktor? Same fella?” “Apparently, Archchancellor.” “Total madman. Thought you could measure everythin’. Not just lengths and weights and that kind of stuff, but everythin’. “If it exists,” he said, “you ought to be able to measure it.”“ Ridcully’s eyes misted with memory. “Made all kinds of weird widgets. Reckoned you could measure truth and beauty and dreams and stuff. So this is one of old Riktor’s toys, is it? Wonder what it measured?” “Ay think”, said Mrs. Whitlow, “that it should be put haway somewhere out of ‘arm’s way, if it’s hall the hsame to you.” “Yes, yes, yes, of course,” said the Bursar hurriedly. Staff were hard to keep at Unseen University. “Get rid of it,” said the Archchancellor. The Bursar was horrified. “Oh, no, sir,” he said. “We never throw things out. Besides, it is probably quite valuable.” “Hmm,” said Ridcully. “Valuable?” “Possibly an important historical artifact, Master.” “Shove it in my study, then. I said the place needs bright’nin’ up. It’ll be one of them conversation pieces, right? Got to go now. Got to see a man about trainin’ a gryphon. Good day, ladies-” “Er, Archchancellor, I wonder if you could just sign-” the Bursar began, but to a closing door. No-one asked Ksandra which of the pottery elephants had spat the ball, and the direction wouldn’t have meant anything to them anyway. That afternoon a couple of porters moved the universe’s only working resograph[5] into the Archchancellor’s study. No-one had found a way to add sound to moving pictures, but there was a sound that was particularly associated with Holy Wood. It was the sound of nails being hammered. Holy Wood had gone critical. New houses, new streets, new neighbourhoods, appeared overnight. And, in those areas where the hastily-educated alchemical apprentices were not yet fully alongside the trickier stages of making octo-cellulose, disappeared even faster. Not that it made a lot of difference. Barely would the smoke have cleared before someone was hammering again. And Holy Wood grew by fission. All you needed was a steadyhanded, non-smoking lad who could read alchemical signs, a handleman, a sackful of demons and lots of sunshine. Oh, and some people. But there were plenty of those. If you couldn’t breed demons or mix chemicals or turn a handle rhythmically, you could always hold horses or wait on tables and look interesting while you hoped. Or, if all else failed, hammer nails. Building after rickety building skirted the ancient hill, their thin planks already curling and bleaching in the pitiless sun, but there was already a pressing need for more. Because Holy Wood was calling. More people arrived every day. They didn’t come to be ostlers, or tavern wenches, or short-order carpenters. They came to make movies. And they didn’t know why. As Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler knew in his heart, wherever two or more people are gathered together, someone will be trying to sell them a suspicious sausage in a bun. Now that Dibbler was in fact engaged elsewhere, others had arisen to fulfil that function. One such was Nodar Borgle the Klatchian, whose huge echoing shed wasn’t so much a restaurant as a feeding factory. Great steaming tureens occupied one end. The rest of it was tables, and around the tables were – Victor was astonished. – there were trolls, humans and dwarfs. And a few gnomes. And perhaps even a few elves, the most elusive of Discworld races. And lots of other things, which Victor had to hope were trolls dressed up, because if they weren’t, everyone was going to be in a lot of trouble. And they were all eating, and the amazing thing was that they were not eating one another. “You take a plate and you queue up and then you pay for it,” said Ginger. “It’s called self-serf.” “You pay for it before you eat it? What happens if it’s dreadful?” Ginger nodded grimly. “That’s why.” Victor shrugged, and leaned down to the dwarf behind the lunch counter. “I’d like–” “It’s stoo,” said the dwarf. “What kind of stew?” “There ain’t more’n one kind. That’s why it’s stoo,” the dwarf snapped. “Stop’s stoo.” “What I meant was, what’s in it?” said Victor. “If you need to ask, you’re not hungry enough,” said Ginger. “Two stews, Fruntkin.” Victor stared at the grey-brown stuff that was dribbled on to his plate. Strange lumps, carried to the surface by mysterious convection currents, bobbed for a moment, and then sank back down, hopefully forever. Borgle belonged to the Dibbler school of cuisine. “It’s stoo or puffin, boy.” The cook leered. “Half a dollar. Cheap at half the price.” Victor handed over the money with reluctance, and looked around for Ginger. “Over here,” said Ginger, sitting down at one of the long tables. “Hi, Thunderfoot. Hi, Breccia, how’s it goin’? This is Vic. New boy. Hi, Sniddin, didn’t see you there.” Victor found himself wedged between Ginger and a mountain troll in what looked like chain mail, but it turned out to be just Holy Wood chain mail, which was inexpertly knitted string painted silver. Ginger started talking animatedly to a four-inch-high gnome and a dwarf in one half of a bear outfit, leaving Victor feeling a little isolated. The troll nodded at him, and then grimaced at its plate. “Dey call dis pumice,” he said. “Dey never even bother to cut der lava off. And you can’t even taste der sand.” Victor stared at the troll’s plate. “I didn’t know trolls ate rock,” he said, before he could stop himself. “Why not?” “Aren’t you made of it?” “Yeah. But you’re made a meat, an’ what do you eat?” Victor looked at his own plate. “Good question,” he said. “Vies doing a click for Silverfish,” said Ginger, turning around. “It looks like they’re going to make it a three-reeler.” There was a general murmur of interest. Victor carefully laid something yellow and wobbly on the side of his plate. “Tell me,” he said thoughtfully, “while you’ve been filming, have any of you had a . . . heard a sort of . . . felt that you were . . . “ He hesitated. They were all looking at him. “I mean, did you ever feel something was acting through you? I can’t think of any other way to put it.” His fellow diners relaxed. “Days just Holy Wood,” said the troll. “It gets to you. It’s all dis creativity sloshin’ about.” “That was a pretty bad attack you had, though,” said Ginger. “Happens all the time,” said the dwarf reflectively. “It’s just Holy Wood. Last week, me and the lads were working on Tales of the Dwarfes and suddenly we all started singing. Just like that. Just like this song came into our heads, all at once. What d’you think of that?” “What song?” said Ginger. “Search me. We just call it the “Hiho” song. That’s all it was. Hihohiho. Hihohiho.” “Sound like every other dwarf song I ever did hear,” rumbled the troll. It was past two o’clock when they got back to the moving-picture-making place. The handleman had the back off the picture box and was scraping at its floor with a small shovel. Dibbler was asleep in his canvas chair with a handkerchief over his face. But Silverfish was wide awake. “Where have you two been?” he shouted. “I was hungry,” said Victor. “And you’ll jolly well stay hungry, my lad, because–” Dibbler lifted the corner of his handkerchief. “Let’s get started,” he muttered. “But we can’t have performers telling us-” “Finish the click, and then sack him,” said Dibbler. “Right!” Silverfish waved a threatening finger at Victor and Ginger. “You’ll never work in this town again!” They got through the afternoon somehow. Dibbler made them bring a horse in, and cursed the handleman because the picture box still couldn’t be moved around. The demons complained. So they put the horse head-on in front of the box and Victor bounced up and down in the saddle. As Dibbler said, it was good enough for moving pictures. Afterwards, Silverfish very grudgingly paid them two dollars each and dismissed them. “He’ll tell all the other alchemists,” said Ginger dispiritedly. “They stick together like glue.” “I notice we only get two dollars a day but the trolls get three,” said Victor. “Why’s that?” “Because there aren’t so many trolls wanting to make moving pictures,” said Ginger. “And a good handleman can get six or seven dollars a day. Performers aren’t important.” She turned and glared at him. “I was doing OK,” she said. “Nothing special, but OK. I was getting quite a lot of work. People thought I was reliable. I was building a career–” “You can’t build a career on Holy Wood,” said Victor. “That’s like building a house on a swamp. Nothing’s real.” “I liked it! And now you’ve spoilt it all! And I’ll probably have to go back to a horrible little village you’ve probably never even heard of! Back to bloody milk-maiding! Thanks very much! Every time I see a cow’s arse, I’ll think of you!” She stormed off in the direction of the town leaving Victor with the trolls. After a while Rock cleared his throat. “You got anywhere to stay?” he said. “I don’t think so,” said Victor, weakly. “There’s never enough places to stay,” said Morry. “I thought I might sleep on the beach,” said Victor. “It’s warm enough, after all. I think I really could do with a good rest. Good night.” He tottered off in that direction. The sun was setting, and a wind off the sea had cooled things a little. Around the darkening bulk of the hill the lights of Holy Wood were being lit. Holy Wood only relaxed in the darkness. When your raw material is daylight, you don’t waste it. It was pleasant enough on the beach. No-one much went there. The driftwood, cracked and salt-crusted, was no good for building. It was stacked in a long white row on the tide line. Victor pulled together enough to make a fire, and lay back and watched the surf. From the top of the next dune, hidden behind a dry clump of grass, Gaspode the Wonder Dog watched him thoughtfully. It was two hours after midnight. It had them now, and poured joyfully out of the hill, poured its glitter into the world. Holy Wood dreams . . . It dreams for everyone. In the hot breathless darkness of a clapboard shack, Ginger Withel dreamed of red carpets and cheering crowds. And a grating. She kept coming back to a grating, in the dream, where a rush of warm air blew up her skirts . . . In the not much cooler darkness of a marginally more expensive shack, Silverfish the moving picturesmith dreamed of cheering crowds, and someone giving him a prize for the best moving picture ever made. It was a great big statue. Out in the sand dunes Rock and Morry dozed fitfully, because trolls are night creatures by nature and sleeping in darkness bruised the instincts of eons. They dreamed of mountains. Down on the beach, under the stars, Victor dreamed of pounding hooves, flowing robes, pirate ships, sword fights, chandeliers . . . On the next dune, Gaspode the Wonder Dog slept with one eye open and dreamed of wolves. But Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler was not dreaming, because he was not asleep. It had been a long ride to Ankh-Morpork and he preferred selling horses to riding them, but he was there now. The storms that so carefully avoided Holy Wood didn’t worry about Ankh-Morpork, and it was pouring with rain. That didn’t stop the city’s night life, though - it just made it damper. There was nothing you couldn’t buy in Ankh-Morpork, even in the middle of the night. Dibbler had a lot of things to buy. He needed posters painted. He needed all sorts of things. Many of them involved ideas he’d had to invent in his head on the long ride, and now had to explain very carefully to other people. And he had to explain it fast. The rain was a solid curtain when he finally staggered out into the grey light of dawn. The gutters overflowed. Along the rooftops, repulsive gargoyles threw up expertly over passers-by although, since it was now five a.m., the crowds had thinned out a bit. Throat took a deep breath of the thick city air. Real air. You would have to go a long way to find air that was realer than Ankh-Morpork air. You could tell just by breathing it that other people had been doing the same thing for thousands of years. For the first time in days he felt that he was thinking clearly. That was the strange thing about Holy Wood. When you were there it all seemed natural, it all seemed just what life was all about, but when you got away from it and looked back, it was like looking at a brilliant soap bubble. It was as though, when you were in Holy Wood, you weren’t quite the same person. Well, Holy Wood was Holy Wood, and Ankh was Ankh, and Ankh was solid and proof, in Throat’s opinion, against any Holy Wood weirdness. He splashed through the puddles, listening to the rain. After a while he noticed, for the first time in his life, that it had a rhythm. Funny. You could live in a city all your life, and you had to go away and come back again before you noticed the way the rain dripping off the gutters had a rhythm all its own: DUMdi-dim-dim, dumdi-dumdiDUM-DUM . . . A few minutes later Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobbs of the Night Watch were sharing a friendly roll-up in the shelter of a doorway and doing what the Night Watch was best at, which was keeping warm and dry and staying out of trouble. They were the only witnesses to the manic figure which splashed down the dripping street, pirouetted through the puddles, grabbed a drainpipe to swing around the corner and, clicking its heels together merrily, disappeared from view. Sgt Colon handed the soggy dog-end back to his companion. “Was that old Throat Dibbler?” he said after a while. “Yeah,” said Nobby. “He looked happy, didn’t he?” “Must be off ‘is nut, if you ask me,” said Nobby. “Singing in the rain like that.” Whumm . . . whumm . . . The Archchancellor, who had been updating his dragon stud book and enjoying a late night drink in front of the fire, looked up. . . . whumm . . . whumm . . . whumm . . . “Bigods!” he muttered, and wandered over to the big pot. It was actually wobbling from side to side, as if the building was shaking. The Archchancellor watched, fascinated. . . . whumm . . . whummwhummwhummWHUMM. It wobbled to a standstill, and went silent. “Odd,” said the Archchancellor. “Damned odd.” Plib. On the other side of the room, his brandy decanter shattered. Ridcully the Brown took a deep breath. “Bursaar!” Victor was woken up by sandflies. The air was already warm. It was going to be another fine day. He waded out into the shallows to wash and clear his head. Let’s see . . . he still had his two dollars from yesterday, plus a handful of pennies. He could afford to stay a while, especially if he slept on the beach. And Borgle’s stoo, while only food in the technical sense, was cheap enough – although, come to think of it, eating there might involve embarrassing encounters with Ginger. He took another step, and sank. Victor hadn’t swum in the sea before. He surfaced, half-drowned, treading water furiously. The beach was only a few yards away. He relaxed, gave himself time to get his breath back, and swam a leisurely crawl out beyond the breakers. The water was crystal clear. He could see the bottom shelving away sharply to - he surfaced for a quick breath - a dim blueness in which it was just possible, through the teeming shoals of fish, to see the outline of pale, rectangular rocks scattered on the sand. He tried a dive, fighting his way down until his ears clanged. The largest lobster he had ever seen waved its feelers at him from a rocky spire and snapped away into the depths. Victor bobbed up again, gasping, and struck out for the shore. Well, if you couldn’t make it in moving pictures there was an opening here for a fisherman, that was certain. A beachcomber would do all right, as well. There was enough wind-dried firewood piled up on the edge of the dunes to keep Ankh-Morpork’s fires supplied for years. No-one in Holy Wood would dream of lighting a fire except for cooking or company. And someone had been doing just that. As he waded ashore Victor realized that the wood further along the beach had been stacked not haphazardly but apparently by design, in neat piles. Further along, stones had been stacked into a crude fireplace. It was clogged with sand. Maybe someone else had been living on the beach, waiting for their big chance in moving pictures. Come to think of it, the timber behind the half-buried stones had a dragged-together look. You could imagine, looking at it from the sea, that several balks of timber had been set up to form an arched doorway. Perhaps they were still there. Perhaps they might have something to drink. They were, indeed, still there. But they hadn’t needed a drink for months. It was eight in the morning. A thunderous knocking awoke Bezam Planter, owner of the Odium, one of Ankh-Morpork’s mushrooming crop of moving-picture pits. He’d had a bad night. The people of Ankh-Morpork liked novelty. The trouble was that they didn’t like novelty for long. The Odium had done great business for a week, had broken even for the next week, and was now dying. The late showing last night had been patronized by one deaf dwarf and an orang-utan, who’d brought along its own peanuts. Bezam relied on the sale of peanuts and banged grains for his profit, and wasn’t in a good mood. He opened the door and stared out blearily. “We’re shut ‘til two o”clock,” he said. “Mat’nee. Come back then. Seats in all parts.” He slammed the door. It rebounded off Throat Dibbler’s boot and hit Bezam on the nose. “I’ve come about the special showing of Sword of Passione,” said Throat. “Special showing? What special showing?” “The special showing I’m about to tell you about,” said Throat. “We ain’t showing nothin’ about any special passionate swords. We’re showin’ The Exciting–” “Mister Dibbler says yore showing Sword of Passione,” rumbled a voice. Throat leaned against the doorway. Behind him was a slab of rock. It looked as though someone had been throwing steel balls at it for thirty years. It creased in the middle and leaned down towards Bezam. He recognized Detritus. Everyone recognized Detritus. He wasn’t a troll you forgot. “But I haven’t even heard of–” Bezam began. Throat pulled a large tin from under his coat, and grinned. “And here are some posters,” he added, producing a fat white roll. “Mister Dibbler let me stick some up on walls,” said Detritus proudly. Bezam unrolled the poster. It was in eye-watering colours. It showed a picture of what might just possibly be Ginger pouting in a blouse too small for her, and Victor in the act of throwing her over one shoulder while fighting an assortment of monsters with the other hand. In the background, volcanoes were erupting, dragons were zooming through the sky, and cities were burning down. ““The Motione-Picture They Coud Not Banne!”“, read Bezam hesitantly. “ “A Scorching Adventure In the White-Hotte Dawne of A New Continont! A Mann and a Womann Throne Together in the Wherlpool of a World Gone Madde!! STARING **Delores De Syn** as The Woman and **Victor Maraschino** as Cohen the Barbarian!!! THRILS! ADVENTURE!! ELEPHANTS!!! Cominge Soone to A Pit nr. You!!!!”“ He read it again. “Who’s Staring Delores De Syn?” he said, suspiciously. “That’s starring,” said Throat. “That’s why we’ve put stars against their names, see.” He leaned closer and lowered his voice to a piercing whisper. “They do say”, he said, “that she’s the daughter of a Klatchian pirate and his wild, headstrong captive, and he’s the son of . . . the son of . . . a rogue wizard and a reckless gypsy flamenco dancer.” “’Cor!” said Bezam, impressed despite himself. Dibbler permitted himself a mental slap on the back. He’d been quite taken with it himself. “I reckon you should start showing it in about an hour,” he said. “At this time in the morning?” said Bezam. The click he had obtained for the day was An Exciting Study of Pottery Making, which had been worrying him. This seemed a much better proposition. “Yes,” said Dibbler. “Because a lot of people are going to want to watch it.” “I dunno about that,” said Bezam. “Houses have been falling off lately.” “They’ll want to watch this one,” said Throat. “Trust me. Have I ever lied to you?” Bezam scratched his head. “Well, one night last month you sold me a sausage in a bun and you said–” “I was speaking rhetorically,” snapped Throat. “Yeah,” said Detritus. Bezam sagged. “Oh. Well. I dunno about rhetorically,” he said. “Right,” said Throat, grinning like a predatory pumpkin. “Just you open up, and you can sit back and rake in the money.” “Oh. Good,” said Bezam weakly. Throat put a friendly arm around the man’s shoulders. “And now,” he said, “let’s talk about percentages.” “What’re percentages?” “Have a cigar,” said Throat. Victor walked slowly up Holy Wood’s nameless main street. There was packed sand under his fingernails. He wasn’t sure that he had done the right thing. Probably the man had just been some old beachcomber who’d just gone to sleep one day and hadn’t woken up, although the stained red and gold coat was unusual beachcombing wear. It was hard to tell how long he’d been dead. The dryness and salt air had been a preservative; they’d preserved him just the way he must have looked when he was alive, which was like someone who was dead. By the look of his hut, he’d beachcombed some odd stuff. It had occurred to Victor that someone ought to be told, but there was probably no-one in Holy Wood who would be interested. Probably only one person in the world had been interested in whether the old man lived or died, and he’d been the first to know. Victor buried the body in the sand, landward of the driftwood hut. He saw Borgle’s ahead of him. He’d risk breakfast there, he decided. Besides, he needed somewhere to sit down and read the book. It wasn’t the sort of thing you expected to find on a beach, in a driftwood hut, clutched in the hand of a dead man. On the cover were the words The Boke of the Film. On the first page, in the neat round hand of someone to whom writing doesn’t come easily, were the further words: This is the Chroncal of the Keeprs of the ParaMountain coppied out by me Deccan Beacuase Of the old onne it being fallin Apart. He turned the stiff pages carefully. They seemed to be crammed with almost identical entries. They were all undated, but that wasn’t very important, since one day had been pretty much like the other. Gott up. Went to lavatry. Made up fire, announused the Matinee Performanse. Broke fast. Colected woode. Made up fire. Foraged on the hille. Chanted the Evening Performansee. Supper. Sed the Late-Nite Performanse chant. Wnet to lavatry. Bed. Gott up. Went to lavatry. Made up fire, sed the Matinee Performanse. Broke fast. Crullet the fisheman from Jowser Cove have left 2 fyne see bass. Clected woode. Heralded the Evewning Performanse, made up fire. Howskeepeing. Supper. Chanted the Late Night performanse. Bed. Gott up at Midnigte, went to lavaotry, checked fire, but it was not Needful of Woode. He saw the waitress out of the tail of his eye. “I’d like a boiled egg,” he said. “It’s stew. Fish stew.” He looked up into Ginger’s blazing eyes. “I didn’t know you were a waitress,” he said. She made a show of dusting the salt bowl. “Nor did I until yesterday,” she said. “Lucky for me Borgle’s regular morning girl got a chance in the new moving picture that Untied Alchemists are making, isn’t it?” She shrugged. “If I’m really lucky, who knows? I might get to do the afternoon shift too.” “Look, I didn’t mean–” “It’s stew. Take it or leave it. Three customers this morning have done both.” “I’ll take it. Look, you won’t believe it, but I found this book in the hands of–” “I’m not allowed to dally with customers. This isn’t the best job in town, but you’re not losing it for me,” snapped Ginger. “Fish stew, right?” “Oh. Right. Sorry.” He flicked backwards through the pages. Before Deccan there was Tento, who also chanted three times a day and also sometimes received gifts of fish and also went to the lavatory, although either he wasn’t so assiduous about it as Deccan or hadn’t thought it always worth writing down. Before that, someone called Meggelin had been the chanter. A whole string of people had lived on the beach, and then if you went back further there was a group of them, and further still the entries had a more official feel. It was hard to tell. They seemed to be written in code, line after line of little complex pictures . . . A bowl of primal soup was plonked down in front of him. “Look,” he said. “What time do you get off-” “Never,” said Ginger. “I just wondered if you might know where-” “No.” Victor stared at the murky surface of the broth. Borgle worked on the principle that if you find it in water, it’s a fish. There was something purple in there and it had at least ten legs. He ate it anyway. It was costing him thirty pence. Then, with Ginger resolutely busying herself at the counter with her back to him lighthouse-fashion, so that however he tried to attract her attention her back was still facing him without her apparently moving, he went to look for another job. Victor had never worked for anything in his life. In his experience, jobs were things that happened to other people. Bezam Planter adjusted the tray around his wife’s neck. “All right,” he said. “Got everything?” “The banged grains have gone soft,” she said. “And there’s no way to keep the sausages hot.” “It’ll be dark, love. No-one’ll notice.” He tweaked the strap and stood back. “There,” he said. “Now, you know what to do. Halfway through I’ll stop showing the film and put up the card that says “Wy not Try a Cool Refreshinge Drinke and Some Banged Grains?” and then you come out of the door over there and walk up the aisle.” “You might as well mention cool refreshing sausages as well,” said Mrs. Planter. “And I reckon you should stop using a torch to show people to their seats,” said Bezam. “You’re starting too many fires.” “It’s the only way I can see in the dark,” she said. “Yes, but I had to let that dwarf have his money back last night. You know how sensitive they are about their beards. Tell you what, love, I’ll give you a salamander in a cage. They’ve been on the roof since dawn - they should be nice and ready.” They were. The creatures lay dozing in the bottom of their cages, their bodies vibrating gently as they absorbed the light. Bezam selected six of the ripest, climbed heavily back down to the projection room, and tipped them into the showing-box. He wound Throat Dibbler’s film on to a spool, and then peered out into the darkness. Oh, well. Might as well see if there was anyone outside. He shuffled to the front door, yawning. He reached up, and slid the bolt. He reached down, and slid the other bolt. He pulled open the doors. “All right, all right,” he grumbled. “Let’s be having you . . .” He woke up in the projection room, with Mrs. Planter fanning him desperately with her apron. “What happened?” he whispered, trying to put out of his mind the memories of trampling feet. “It’s a full house!” she said. “And they’re still queueing up outside! They’re all down the street! It’s them disgusting posters!” Bezam got up unsteadily but with determination. “Woman, shut up and get down to the kitchen and bang some more grains!” he shouted. “And then come and help me repaint the signs! If they’re queueing for the fivepenny seats, they’ll queue for tenpence!” He rolled up his sleeves and grasped the handle. In the front row the Librarian sat with a bag of peanuts in his lap. After a few minutes he stopped chewing and sat with his mouth open, staring and staring and staring at the flickering images. “Hold your horse, sir? Ma’am?” “No!” By mid-day Victor had earned tuppence. It wasn’t that people didn’t have horses that needed holding, it was just that they didn’t seem to want him to hold them. Eventually a gnarled little man from further along the street sidled up to him, dragging four horses. Victor had been watching him for hours, in frank astonishment that anyone should give the wizened homunculus a kindly smile, let alone a horse. But he’d been doing a brisk trade, while Victor’s broad shoulders, handsome profile and honest, open smile were definitely a drawback in the horse-holding business. “You’re new to this, right?” said the little man. “Yes,” said Victor. “Ah. I could tell. Waitin’ for yer big break in the clicks, right?” He grinned encouragingly. “No. I’ve had my big break, in fact,” said Victor. “Why you here then?” Victor shrugged. “I broke it.” “Ah, is that so? Yessir, thank’ee sir, godsblessyousir, rightchewaresir,” said the man, accepting another set of reins. “I suppose you don’t need an assistant?” said Victor wistfully. Bezam Planter stared at the pile of coins in front of him. Throat Dibbler moved his hands and it was a smaller pile of coins, but it was still a bigger pile of coins than Bezam had ever seen while in a waking state. “And we’re still showing it every quarter of an hour!” breathed Bezam. “I’ve had to hire a boy to turn the handle! I don’t know, what should I do with all this money?” Throat patted him on the shoulder. “Buy bigger premises,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about that,” said Bezam. “Yeah. Something with fancy pillars out in front. And my daughter Calliope plays the organ really nice, it’d make a good accompaniment. And there should be lots of gold paint and curly bits–” His eyes glazed. It had found another mind. Holy Wood dreams. – and make it a palace, like the fabulous Rhoxie in Klatch, or the richest temple there ever was, with slave girls to sell the banged grains and peanuts, and Bezam Planter walking about proprietorially in a red velvet jacket with gold string on it “Hmm?” he whispered, as the sweat beaded on his forehead. “I said, I’m off,” said Throat. “Got to keep moving in the moving-picture business, you know.” “Mrs. Planter says you’ve got to make more pictures with that young man,” said Bezam. “The whole city’s talking about him. She said several ladies swooned when he gave them that smouldery look. She watched it five times,” he added, his voice rimed with sudden suspicion. “And that girl! Wow!” “Don’t you worry about a thing,” said Throat loftily. “I’ve got them under contr–” Sudden doubt drifted across his face. “See you,” he said shortly, and scurried out of the building. Bezam stood alone and looked around at the cobwebbed interior of the Odium, his overheated imagination peopling its dark corners with potted palms, gold leaf and fat cherubs. Peanut shells and banged grain bags crunched under his feet. Have to get it cleaned up for the next house, he thought. I expect that monkey’ll be first in the queue again. Then his eye fell on the poster for Sword of Passione. Amazing, really. There hadn’t been much in the way of elephants and volcanoes, and the monsters had been trolls with bits stuck on them, but in that close up . . . well . . . all the men had sighed, and then all the women had sighed . . . It was like magic. He grinned at the images of Victor and Ginger. Wonder what those two’re doing now? he thought. Prob’ly eating caviar off of gold plates and lounging around up to their knees in velvet cushions, you bet. “You look up to your knees in it, lad,” said the horseholder. “I’m afraid I’m not getting the hang of this horseholding,” said Victor. “Ah, “tis a hard trade, horse-holding,” said the man. “It’s learning the proper grovellin’ and the irreverent-but-not-too-impudent cheery ‘oss’older’s banter. People don’t just want you to look after the’oss, see. They want a’oss-‘olding hexperience.” “They do?” “They want an amusin” encounter and a soup-son of repartee,” said the little man. “It’s not just a matter of ‘oldin’ reins.” Realization began to dawn on Victor. “It’s a performance,” he said. The ‘oss-‘older tapped the side of his strawberry-shaped nose. “That’s right!” he said. Torches flared in Holy Wood. Victor struggled through the crowds in the main street. Every bar, every tavern, every shop had its doors thrown open. A sea of people ebbed and flowed between them. Victor tried jumping up and down to search the mob of faces. He was lonely and lost and hungry. He needed someone to talk to, and she wasn’t there. “Victor!” He spun around. Rock bore down on him like an avalanche. “Victor! My friend!” A fist the size and hardness of a foundation stone pounded him playfully on the shoulder. “Oh, hi,” said Victor weakly. “Er. How’s it going, Rock?” “Great! Great! Tomorrow we shoot Bad Menace of Troll Valley!” “I’m very happy for you,” said Victor. “You my lucky human!” Rock boomed. “Rock! What a name! Come and have a drink!” Victor accepted. He really didn’t have much of a choice, because Rock gripped his arm and, ploughing through the crowds like an icebreaker, half-led, half-dragged him towards the nearest door. A blue light illuminated a sign. Most Morporkians could read Troll, it was hardly a difficult language. The sharp runes spelled out The Blue Lias. It was a troll bar. The smoky glow from the furnaces beyond the slab counter was the only light. It illuminated three trolls playing - well, something percussive, but Victor couldn’t quite make out what because the decibel level was in realms where the sound was a solid force, and it made his eyeballs vibrate. The furnace smoke hid the ceiling. “What you havin’?” roared Rock. “I don’t have to drink molten metal, do I?” Victor quavered. He had to quaver at the top of his voice in order to be heard. “We got all typer human drink!” shouted the female troll behind the bar. It had to be a female. There was no doubt about it. She looked slightly like the statues cavemen used to carve of fertility goddesses thousands of years ago, but mostly like a foothill. “We very cosmopolitan.” “I’ll have a beer, then!” “Ana flowers-of-sulphur onna rocks, Ruby!” added Rock. Victor took the opportunity to look around the bar, now that he was getting accustomed to the gloom and his eardrums had mercifully gone numb. He was aware of masses of trolls seated at long tables, with here and there a dwarf, which was astonishing. Dwarfs and trolls normally fought like, well, dwarfs and trolls. In their native mountains there was a state of unremitting vendetta. Holy Wood certainly changed things. “Can I have a quiet word?” Victor shouted in Rock’s pointed ear. “Sure!” Rock put down his drink. It contained a purple paper umbrella, which was charring in the heat. “Have you seen Ginger? You know? Ginger?” “She working at Borgle’s!” “Only in the mornings! I’ve just been there! Where does she go when she’s not working?” “Who know where anyone . . .” There was a sudden silence from the combo in the smoke. One of the trolls picked up a small rock and started to pound it gently, producing a slow, sticky rhythm that clung to the walls like smoke. And from the smoke, Ruby emerged like a galleon out of the fog, with a ridiculous feather boa around her neck. It was continental drift with curves. She began to sing. The trolls stood in respectful silence. After a while Victor heard a sob. Tears were rolling down Rock’s face. “What’s the song about?” he whispered. Rock leaned down. “Is ancient folklorique troll song,” he said. “Is about Amber and Jasper. They were-” he hesitated, and waved his hands about vaguely. “Friends. Good friends?” “I think I know what you mean,” said Victor. “And one day Amber takes her troll’s dinner down to the cave and finds him–” Rock waved his hands in vague yet thoroughly descriptive motions “–with another lady troll. So she go home and get her club and come back and beat him to death, thump, thump, thump. ‘Cos he was her troll and he done her wrong. Is very romantic song.” Victor stared. Ruby undulated down from the tiny stage and glided among the customers, a small mountain in a four-wheel skid. She must weigh two tons, he thought. If she sits on my knee they’ll have to roll me off the floor like a carpet. “What did she just say to that troll?” he said, as a deep wave of laughter rolled across the room. Rock scratched his nose. “Is play on words,” he said. “Very hard to translate. But basically, she say “Is that the legendary Sceptre of Magma who was King of the Mountain, Smiter of Thousands, Yea, Even Tens of Thousands, Ruler of the Golden River, Master of the Bridges, Delver in Dark Places, Crusher of Many Enemies”,” he took a deep breath, ““in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?”“ Victor’s forehead creased. “I don’t get it,” he said. “Perhaps I not translate properly,” said Rock. He took a pull of molten sulphur. “I hear Untied Alchemists is casting for–” “Rock, there’s something very odd about this place,” said Victor urgently. “Can’t you feel it?” “What odd?” “Everything seems to, well, fizz. No-one acts like they should. Did you know there was a great city here once? Where the sea is. A great city. And it’s just gone!” Rock rubbed his nose thoughtfully. It looked like a Neanderthal Man’s first attempt at an axe. “And there’s the way everyone acts!” said Victor. “As if who they are and what they want are the most important things in the world!” “I’m wondering–” Rock began. “Yes?” said Victor. “I’m wondering, would it be worth takin’ half a inch off my nose? My cousin Breccia knows this stonemason, fixed his ears a treat. What do you fink?” Victor stared dully at him. “I mean, on the one hand, it’s too big, but on the other hand, it’s definit’ly your stereotyped troll nose, right? I mean, maybe I’ll look better, but in this business maybe it best to look just as troll as you can. Like, Morry’s had his touched up with cement, now he got a face you wouldn’t want to meet on a dark night. What you fink? I value your opinion, because you a human with ideas.” He gave Victor a bright silicon smile. Eventually Victor said: “It’s a great nose, Rock. With you behind it, it could go a long way.” Rock gave a big grin, and took another pull of sulphur. He extracted a small steel swizzle stick and sucked the amethyst off it. “You really fink–” he began, and was then aware of the small area of empty space. Victor had gone. “I don’t know nuffin about no-one,” said the horse-holder, looking shiftily at the looming presence of Detritus. Dibbler chewed on his cigar. It had been a bumpy journey from Ankh, even in his new coach, and he’d missed lunch. “Tall lad, bit dopey, thin moustache,” he said. “He was working for you, right?” The horse-holder gave in. “He’ll never make a good ‘oss-‘older, anyway,” he said. “Lets his work get on top of him. I think he went to get something to eat.” Victor sat in the dark alley, his-back pressed against the wall, and tried to think. He remembered staying out in the sun too long, once, when he was a boy. The feeling he’d got afterwards was something like this. There was a soft flopping noise in the packed sand by his feet. Someone had dropped a hat in front of him. He stared at it. Then someone started playing the harmonica. They weren’t very good at it. Most of the notes were wrong, and those that were right were cracked. There was a tune in there somewhere, in the same way that there’s a bit of beef in a hamburger grinder. Victor sighed and fumbled in his pocket for a couple of pennies. He tossed them into the hat. “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “Very good. Now go away.” He was aware of a strange smell. It was hard to place, but could perhaps have been a very old and slightly damp nursery rug. He looked up. “Woof bloody woof,” said Gaspode the Wonder Dog. Borgle’s commissary had decided to experiment with salads tonight. The nearest salad growing district was thirty slow miles away. “What dis?” demanded a troll, holding up something limp and brown. Fruntkin the short-order chef hazarded a guess. “Celery?” he said. He peered closer. “Yeah, celery.” “It brown.” “Wright. Wright! Ripe celery ort to be brown,” said Fruntkin, quickly. “Shows it’s ripe,” he added. “It should be green.” “Nah. Yore finking about the tomatoes,” said Fruntkin. “Yeah, and what’s this runny stuff?” said a man in the queue. Fruntkin drew himself up to his full height. “That”, he said, “is the mayonnaisey. Made it myself. Out of a book,” he added proudly. “Yeah, I expect you did,” said the man, prodding it. “Clearly oil, eggs and vinegar were not involved, right?” “Specialitay de lar mayson,” said Fruntkin. “Right, right,” said the man. “Only it’s attacking my lettuce.” Fruntkin grasped his ladle angrily. “Look–” he began. “No, it’s all right,” said the prospective diner. “The slugs have formed a defensive ring.” There was a commotion by the door. Detritus the troll waded through the diners, with Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler strutting along behind him. The troll shouldered the queue aside and glared at Fruntkin. “Mr. Dibbler want a word,” he said, and reached across the counter, lifted the dwarf up by his food-encrusted shirt, and dangled him in front of Throat. “Anyone seen Victor Tugelbend?” said Throat. “Or that girl Ginger?” Fruntkin opened his mouth to swear, and thought better of it. “The boy was in here half an hour ago,” he squeaked. “Ginger works here mornings. Don’t know where she goes.” “Where’d Victor go?” said Throat. He pulled a bag out of his pocket. It jingled. Fruntkin’s eyes swivelled towards it as though they were ball bearings and it was a powerful magnet. “Dunno, Mr. Throat,” he said. “He just went out again when she wasn’t here.” “Right,” said Throat. “Well, if you see him again, tell him I’m looking for him and I’m going to make him a star, right?” “Star. Right,” said the dwarf. Throat reached into his moneybag and produced a tendollar piece. “And I want to order dinner for later on,” he added. “Dinner. Right,” quavered Fruntkin. “Steak and prawns, I think,” said Throat. “With a choice of sunkissed vegetables in season, and then strawberries and cream.” Fruntkin stared at him. “Er–,” he began. Detritus poked the dwarf so that he swung backwards and forwards. “An’ I”, he said, “will ‘ave . . . er . . . a well-weathered basalt with a aggregate of fresh-hewn sandstone conglomerates. Right?” “Er. Yes,” said Fruntkin. “Put him down, Detritus. He doesn’t want to be hanging around,” said Throat. “And gently.” He looked around at the fascinated faces. “Remember,” he said, “I’m looking for Victor Tugelbend and I’m going to make him a star. If anyone sees him, you must tell him. Oh, and I’ll have the steak rare, Fruntkin.” He strode back to the door. After he had gone the chattering flowed back like a tide. “Make him a star? What’d he want a star for?” “I didn’t know you could make stars . . . I thought they were like, you know, stuck to the sky . . . “ “I think he meant make him a star. You know, him himself. Turn him into a star.” “How can you make anyone into a star?” “I dunno. I suppose you compress them right up small and they burst into this mass of flaming hydrogen?” “Good grief!” “Yeah! Is that troll mean, or what?” Victor looked at the dog carefully. It couldn’t have spoken to him. It must have been his imagination. But he’d said that last time, hadn’t he? “I wonder what your name is?” said Victor, patting it on the head. “Gaspode,” said Gaspode. Victor’s hand froze in mid-tousle. “Tuppence,” said the dog, wearily. “World’s only bloody harmonica-playing dog. Tuppence.” It is the sun, Victor thought. I haven’t been wearing a hat. In a minute I’ll wake up and there’ll be cool sheets. “Well, you didn’t play very well. I couldn’t recognize the tune,” he said, stretching his mouth into a terrible grin. “You’re not supposed to recognize the bloody tune,” said Gaspode, sitting down heavily and industriously scratching one ear with his hind leg. “I’m a dog. You’re supposed to be bloody amazed I can bloody well get a squeak out of the bloody thing.” How shall I put it? Victor thought. Do I just say: excuse me, you appear to be tad . . . No, probably not. “Er,” he said. Hey, you’re quire chatty for . . . no. “Fleas,” said Gaspode, changing ears and legs. “Giving me gyp.” “Oh dear.” “And all these trolls. Can’t stand ‘em. They smell all wrong. Bloody walking stones. You try and bite ‘em, next minute you’re spittin’ teef. It’s not natural.” Talking of natural, I can’t help noticing that– “Bloody desert, this place,” said Gaspode. You’re a talking dog. “I expect you’re wondering,” said Gaspode, turning his penetrating stare on Victor once again, “how come I’m talking.” “Hadn’t given it a thought,” said Victor. “Me neither,” said Gaspode. “Until a couple of weeks ago. All my life, never said a bloody word. Worked for a bloke back in the big city. Tricks and that. Balancing a ball on my nose. Walkin’ on me ‘rod legs. Jumpin’ through a ‘oop. Carried the hat round in my mouf afterwards. You know. Show business. Then this woman pats me on me ‘ead, says “Eow, wot a dear little doggy, he looks like he understands every word we say,” and I thinks, “Ho, ho, I don’t even bother to make the effort any more, missus,” and then I realizes I can hear the words, and they’re coming out of me own mouf. So I grabbed the ‘at and had it away on my paws pretty damn quick, while they were still starin’.” “Why?” said Victor. Gaspode rolled his eyes. “Exactly wot life do you fink a genuine talking dog is going to have?” he said. “Shouldn’t have opened my stupid mouth.” “But you’re talking to me,” said Victor. Gaspode gave him a sly look. “Yeah, but jus’ you try tellin’ anyone,” he said. “Anyway, you’re all right. You’ve got the look. I could tell it a mile orf.” “What on earth do you mean?” said Victor. “You don’t fink you really belong to yourself, right?” said the dog. “You’ve ‘ad the feeling that something else is doin’ your thinking for you?” “Good grief.” “Give you a kind of hunted look,” said Gaspode. He picked up the cap in his mouth. “Tuppence,” he said indistinctly. “I mean, it’s not as if I’ve got any way of spending it, but . . . tuppence.” He gave a canine shrug. “What do you mean by a hunted look?” said Victor. “You’ve all got the look. Many are called and few are chosen, style of fing.” “What look?” “Like you’ve been called here and you don’t know why.” Gaspode tried to scratch his ear again. “Saw you acting Cohen the Barbarian,” he said. “Er . . . what did you think of it?” said Victor. “I reckon, so long as ode Cohen never gets to hear about it, you should be OK.” “I said, how long ago was he in here?” shouted Dibbler. On the tiny stage, Ruby was crooning something in a voice like a ship in thick fog and bad trouble. “GrooOOowwonnogghrhhooOOo-”[6] “He only just went out!” bellowed Rock. “I’m trying to listen to this song, all right?” “–OowoowgrhhffrghooOOo–”[7] Cut-me-own-Throat nudged Detritus, who was taking the weight off his knuckles and watching the floor show with his mouth open. The old troll’s life had, up to now, been very straightforward; people paid you money, and you hit other people. Now it was beginning to get complicated. Ruby had winked at him. Strange and unfamiliar emotions were rampaging through Detritus’ battered heart. “–groooOWooohoofooOOoo–”[8] “Come on,” snapped Throat. Detritus lumbered to his feet and took one last longing look at the stage. “–ooOOOgooOOmoo. OOhhhooo.”[9] Ruby blew him a kiss. Detritus blushed the colour of fresh-cut garnet. Gaspode led the way out of the alley and through the dark hinterland of scrubby bushes and sandgrass behind the town. “There’s definitely something wrong with this place,” he muttered. “It’s different,” said Victor. “What do you mean, wrong?” Gaspode looked as though he was going to spit. “Now, take me,” he said, ignoring the interruption. “A dog. Never dreamed in my life except about chasing fings. And sex, of course. Suddenly I’m dreaming these dreams. In colour. Frightened the bloody life out of me. Never seen colour before, right? Dogs see in black-an’white, as I expect you knows, you bein’ a great reader. Red comes as a nasty shock, I can tell you. You fink your dinner is just this white bone with shades of grey on it, suddenly it turns out for years you bin eatin’ this gharsteley red and purple stuff.” “What kind of dreams?” said Victor. “It’s bloody embarrassing,” said Gaspode. “Like, in one there’s this bridge that’s been washed away and I have to run and bark a warning, right? And there’s another where this house is on fire and I drag these kids out. And there’s one where some kids are lost in these caves and I find ‘em and go and lead the search party to them . . . and I hates kids. Seems I can’t get me ‘ead down these days without rescuin’ people or savin’ people or foilin’ robbers or sunnink. I mean, I’m seven years old, I got hardpad, I got scurf, I got fleas somethin’ dreadful, I don’t need to be a ‘ero every time I go to sleep.” “Gosh. Isn’t life interesting,” said Victor, “when you see it from someone else’s perspective . . . ?” Gaspode rolled a crusted yellow eye skyward. “Er. Where are we going?” said Victor. “We’re goin” to see a few Holy Wood folk,” said Gaspode. “’Cos there’s something weird goin’ on.” “Up on the hill? I didn’t know there were any people on the hill.” “They ain’t people,” said Gaspode. A little twig fire burned on the slope of Holy Wood Hill. Victor had lit it because - well, because it was reassuring. Because it was the sort of thing humans did. He found it necessary to remember he was human, and probably not crazy. It wasn’t that he’d been talking to a dog. People often talked to dogs. The same applied to the cat. And maybe even the rabbit. It was the conversation with the mouse and the duck that might be considered odd. “You think we wanted to talk?” snapped the rabbit. “One minute I’m just another rabbit and happy about it, next minute whazaam, I’m thinking. That’s a major drawback if you’re looking for happiness as a rabbit, let me tell you. You want grass and sex, not thoughts like “What’s it all about, when you get right down to it?” “Yeah, but at least you eats grass,” Gaspode pointed out. “At least grass don’t talk back at you. The last thing you needs when you’re hungry is a bloody ethical conundrum on your plate.” “You think you’ve got problems,” said the cat, apparently reading his mind. “I’m reduched to eating fish. You put a paw on your dinner, it shoutsh “Help!”, you got a major predicament.” There was silence. They looked at Victor. So did the mouse. And the duck. The duck was looking particularly belligerent. It had probably heard about orange sauce. “Yeah. Take us,” said the mouse. “There’s me, being chased by this,” it indicated the cat looming over it, “around the kitchen. Scrabble, scrabble, squeak, panic. Then there’s this sizzling noise in my head, I see a frying pan - you understand? A second ago I never knew what frying was, now I’m holding the handle, he comes around the corner, clang. Now he’s staggering around saying “What hit me?” I say “Me.” That’s when we both realize. We’re talking.” “Concheptualishing,” said the cat. It was a black cat, with white paws, ears like shotgun targets, and the scarred face of a cat that has already lived eight lives to the full. “You tell him, kid,” said the mouse. “Tell him what you did next,” said Gaspode. “We came here,” said the cat. “From Ankh-Morpork?” said Victor. “Yeah.” “That’s nearly thirty miles!” “Yeah, and take it from me,” said the cat, “it’s hard to hitch-hike when you’s a cat.” “See?” said Gaspode. “It’s happening all the time. All sorts are turnin’ up in Holy Wood. They don’t know why they’ve come, only that it’s important to be here. An’ they don’t act like they do anywhere else in the world. I bin watchin’. Somethin’ weird’s goin’ on.” The duck quacked. There were words in there somewhere, but so mangled by the incompatibility of beak and larynx that Victor couldn’t understand a word. The animals, gave it a sympathetic audience. “What’s up, Duck?” said the rabbit. “The duck says”, translated Gaspode, “that it’s like a migratory thing. Just the same feelin’ as a migration, he says.” “Yeah? I didn’t have far to come,” the rabbit volunteered. “We lived on the dunes anyway.” It sighed. “For three happy years and four miserable days,” it added. A thought struck Victor. “So you’d know about the old man on the beach?” he said. “Oh, him. Yeah. Him. He was always coming up here.” “What sort of person was he?” said Victor. “Listen, buster, up to four days ago I had a vocabulary consisting of two verbs and one noun. What do you think I thought he was? All I know is, he didn’t bother us. We probably thought he was a rock on legs, or something.” Victor thought about the book in his pocket. Chanting and lighting fires. What sort of person did that? “I don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “I’d like to find out. Look, haven’t you got names? I feel awkward, talking to people without names.” “Only me,” said Gaspode. “Bein’ a dog. I’m named after the famous Gaspode, you know.” “A kid called me Puss once,” said the cat doubtfully. “I thought you had names in your own language,” said Victor. “You know, like “Mighty Paws” or - or “Speedy Hunter”. Or something.” He smiled encouragingly. The others gave him a long blank stare. “He reads books,” explained Gaspode. “See, the thing is,” he added, scratching himself vigorously, “animals don’t normally bother with names. I mean, we know who we are.” “Mind you, I like “Speedy Hunter”,” said the mouse. “I was thinking that’s more a cat’s name,” said Victor, starting to sweat. “Mice have friendly little names, like – like Squeak.” “Squeak?” said the mouse, coldly. The rabbit grinned. “And, and I always thought rabbits were called Flopsy. Or Mr. Thumpy,” Victor gabbled. The rabbit stopped grinning and twitched its ears. “Now look, pal–” it began. “Y’know,” said Gaspode cheerfully, in an attempt to revive the conversation, “I heard there’s this legend where the first two people in the world named all the animals. Makes you fink, don’t it.” Victor pulled out the book to cover his embarrassment. Chanting and lighting fires. Three times a day. “This old man–” he began. “What’s so important about him?” said the rabbit. “He just used to come up on to the hill and make noises a couple of times every day. You could set your . . . your,” it hesitated. “It was always the same times. Many times a day.” “Three times. Three performances. Like a sort of theatre?” said Victor, running his finger down the page. “We can’t count up to three,” said the rabbit sourly. “It goes one . . . many. Many times.” He glared at Victor. “Mr. Thumpy,” it said, in withering tones. “And people from other places brought him fish,” said Victor. “There’s no-one else living near here. They must have come from miles away. People sailed miles just to bring him fish. It’s as though he didn’t want to eat fish out of the bay here. And it’s teeming with them. When I went swimming I saw lobsters you wouldn’t believe.” “What did you name them?” said Mr. Thumpy, who wasn’t the kind of rabbit that forgot a grudge. “Mr. Snappy?” “Yeah, I want this cleared up right now,” squeaked the mouse. “Back home I was top mouse. I could lick any other mouse in the house. I want a proper name, kid. Anyone calls me Squeaky Boots”, he looked up at Victor, “is asking for a head shaped like a frying pan, do I make myself clear?” The duck quacked at length. “Hold it,” said Gaspode. “The thing is, the duck says,” said Gaspode, “that all this is part of the same thing. Humans and trolls and everything coming here. Animals suddenly talking. The duck says he thinks it’s caused by something here.” “How does a duck know that?” said Victor. “Look, friend,” said the rabbit, “when you can fly all the way across the sea and even end up finding the same bloody continent, you can start badmouthing ducks.” “Oh,” said Victor. “You mean mysterious animal senses, yes?” They glared at him. “Anyway, it’s got to stop,” said Gaspode. “All this cogitatin’ and talkin’ is all right for you humans. You’re used to it. Fing is, see, someone’s got to find out what’s causin’ all this . . . “ They carried on glaring at him. “Well,” he said, vaguely, “maybe the book can help? The early bits are in some sort of ancient language. I can’t-,” he paused. Wizards weren’t welcomed in Holy Wood. It probably wasn’t a good idea to mention the University, or his small part in it. “That is,” he continued, choosing his words with care, “I think I know someone in AnkhMorpork who might be able to read it. He’s an animal, too. An ape.” “How’s he in the mysterious senses department?” said Gaspode. “He’s red hot on mysterious senses,” said Victor. “In that case–” said the rabbit. “Hold it,” said Gaspode. “Someone’s coming.” A moving torch was visible coming up the hill. The duck rocketed clumsily into the sir and glided away. The others disappeared into the shadows. Only the dog didn’t move. “Aren’t you going to make yourself scarce?” Victor hissed. Gaspode raised an eyebrow. “Woof?” he said. The torch zig-zagged erratically among the scrub, like a firefly. Sometimes it would stop for a moment, and then wander away in some totally new direction. It was very bright. “What is it?” said Victor. Gaspode sniffed. “Human,” he said. “Female. Wearin’ cheap scent.” His nose twitched again. “It’s called Passion’s Plaything.” He sniffed again. “Fresh laundry, no starch. Old shoes. Lot of studio make-up. She’s been in Borgle’s and had–” his nose twitched “–stoo. Not a big plate.” “I suppose you can tell how tall she is, can you?” said Victor. “She smells about five foot two, two and a half,” hazarded Gaspode. “Oh, come on!” “Walk a mile on these paws and call me a liar.” Victor kicked sand over his little fire and strolled down the slope. The light stopped moving as he approached it. For a moment he got a glimpse of a female figure clasping a shawl around her with one hand holding the torch high above her head. Then the light vanished so quickly it left blue and purple after-images dancing across his vision. Behind them, a small figure made a blacker shadow against the dusk. It said, “What are you doing in my . . . what am I . . . why are you in . . . where . . . ,” and then, as if it had finally got to grips with the situation, changed gear and in a much more familiar voice demanded, “What are you doing here?” “Ginger?” said Victor. “Yes?” Victor paused. What were you supposed to say in circumstances like this? “Er . . . “ he said. “It’s nice up here in the evenings, don’t you think?” She glared at Gaspode. “That’s that horrible dog who’s been hanging round the studio, isn’t it?” she said. “I can’t stand small dogs.” “Bark, bark,” said Gaspode. Ginger stared at him. Victor could almost read her thoughts: he said Bark, bark. And he’s a dog, and that’s the kind of noise dogs make, isn’t it? “I’m a cat person, myself,” she said, vaguely. A low-level voice said: “Yeah? Yeah? Wash in your own spit, do you?” “What was that?” Victor backed away, waving his hands frantically. “Don’t look at me!” he said. “I didn’t say it!” “Oh? I suppose it was the dog, was it?” she demanded. “Who, me?” said Gaspode. Ginger froze. Her eyes swivelled around and down, to where Gaspode was icily scratching an ear. “Woof?” he said. “That dog spoke–” Ginger began, pointing a shaking finger at him. “I know,” said Victor. “That means he likes you.” He looked past her. Another light was coming up the hill. “Did you bring someone with you?” he said. “Me?” Ginger turned round. Now the light was accompanied by the cracking of dry twigs, and Dibbler stepped out of the dusk with Detritus trailing behind like a particularly scary shadow. “Ah-ha!” he said. “The lovebirds surprised, eh?” Victor gaped at him. “The what?” he said. “The what?” said Ginger. “Been looking all over for you two,” said Dibbler. “Someone said he’d seen you come up here. Very romantic. Could do something with that. Look good on the posters. Right.” He draped his arms around them. “Come on,” he said. “What for?” said Victor. “We’re shooting first thing in the morning,” said Dibbler. “But Mr. Silverfish said I wasn’t going to work in this town again-” Victor began. Dibbler opened his mouth, and hesitated just for a moment. “Ah. Yes. But I’m going to give you another chance,” he said, speaking quite slowly for once. “Yeah. A chance. Like, you’re young people. Headstrong. Young once myself. Dibbler, I thought, even if it means cutting your own throat, give ‘em a chance. Lower wages, of course. A dollar a day, how about that?” Victor saw the look of sudden hope on Ginger’s face. He opened his mouth. “Fifteen dollars,” said a voice. It wasn’t his. He shut his mouth. “What?” said Dibbler. Victor opened his mouth. “Fifteen dollars. Renegot’ble after a week. Fifteen dollars or nuffin’.” Victor shut his mouth, his eyes rolling. Dibbler waved a finger under his nose, and then hesitated. “I like it!” he said eventually. “Tough bargainer! OK. Three dollars.” “Fifteen.” “Five’s my last offer, kid. There’s thousands of people down there who’d jump at it, right?” “Name two, Mr. Dibbler.” Dibbler glanced at Detritus, who was lost in a reverie concerning Ruby, and then stared at Ginger. “OK,” he said. “Ten. Because I like you. But it’s cutting my own throat.” “Done.” Throat held out a hand. Victor stared at his own as if he was seeing it for the first time, and then shook. “And now let’s get back down,” said Dibbler. “Lot to organize.” He strode off through the trees. Victor and Ginger followed meekly behind him, in a state of shock. “Are you crazy?” Ginger hissed. “Holding out like that! We could have lost our chance!” “I didn’t say anything! I thought it was you!” said Victor. “It was you!” said Ginger. Their eyes met. They looked down. “Bark, bark,” said Gaspode the Wonder Dog. Dibbler turned round. “What’s that noise?” he said. “Oh, it’s - it’s just this dog we found,” said Victor hurriedly. “He’s called Gaspode. After the famous Gaspode, you know.” “He does tricks,” said Ginger, malevolently. “A performing dog?” Dibbler reached down and patted Gaspode’s bullet head. “Growl, growl.” “You’d be amazed, the things he can do,” said Victor. “Amazed,” echoed Ginger. “Ugly devil, though,” said Dibbler. He gave Gaspode a long, slow stare, which was like challenging a centipede to an arse-kicking contest. Gaspode could outstare a mirror. Dibbler seemed to be turning an idea over in his mind. “Mind you . . . bring him along in the morning. People like a good laugh,” said Dibbler. “Oh, he’s a laugh all right,” said Victor. “A scream.” As they walked off Victor heard a quiet voice behind him say, “I’ll get you for that. Anyway, you owe me a dollar.” “What for?” “Agent’s fee,” said Gaspode the Wonder Dog. Over Holy Wood, the stars were out. They were huge balls of hydrogen heated to millions of degrees, so hot they could not even burn. Many of them would swell enormously before they died, and then shrink to tiny, resentful dwarfs remembered only by sentimental astronomers. In the meantime, they glowed because of metamorphoses beyond the reach of alchemists, and turned mere boring elements into pure light. Over Ankh-Morpork, it just rained. The senior wizards crowded around the elephant vase. It had been put back in the corridor on Ridcully’s strict orders. “I remember Riktor,” said the Dean. “Skinny man. Bit of a one-track mind. But clever.” “Heh, heh. I remember his mouse counter,” said Windle Poons, from his ancient wheelchair. “Used to count mice.” “The pot itself is quite–” the Bursar began, and then said, “What d’you mean, count mice? They were fed into it on a little belt or something?” “Oh, no. You just wound it up, y’see, and it sat there whirring away, counting all the mice in the building, mm, and these little wheels with numbers on them came up.” “Why?” “Mm? I s’pose he just wanted to count mice.” The Bursar shrugged. “This pot”, he said, peering closely, “is actually quite an old Ming vase.” He waited expectantly. “Why’s it called Ming?” said the Archchancellor, on cue. The Bursar tapped the pot. It went ‘ming’. “And they spit lead balls at people, do they?” said Ridcully. “No, Master. He just used it to put the . . . the machinery in. Whatever it is. Whatever it’s doing.” . . .whumm . . . “Hold on. It wobbled,” said the Dean . . . .whumm . . . whumm . . . The wizards stared at one another in sudden panic . . . “What’s happening? What’s happening?” said Windle Poons. “Why won’t anyone, mm, tell me what’s happening?” . . . whumm . . . whumm . . . “Run!” suggested the Dean. “Which way?” quavered the Bursar. . . . whummWHUMM . . . “I’m an old man and I demand someone tell me what”s–” Silence. “Duck!” shouted the Archchancellor. Plib. A splinter of stone was knocked off the pillar behind him. He raised his head. “Bigods, that was a damn lucky es–” Plib. The second pellet knocked the tip off his hat. The wizards lay trembling on the flagstones for several minutes. After a while the Dean’s muffled voice, “Was that all, do you think?” The Archchancellor raised his head. His face, always red, was now incandescent. “Bursaar!” “Master?” “That’s what I call shootin’!” Victor turned over. “Wzstf,” he said. “It’s six aye-emm, rise and shine, Mr. Dibbler says,” said Detritus, grasping the bedclothes in one hand and dragging them on to the floor. “Six o’clock? That’s night-time!” groaned Victor. “It’s going to be a long day, Mr. Dibbler says,” said the troll. “Mr. Dibbler says you got to be on set by half past six. This is goin’ to happen.” Victor pulled on his trousers. “I suppose I get to eat breakfast?” he said sarcastically. “Mr. Dibbler is havin’ food laid on, Mr. Dibbler says,” said Detritus. There was a wheezing noise from under the bed. Gaspode emerged, in a cloud of old-rugness, and had an early morning scratch. “Wha–” he began, and then saw the troll. “Bark, bark,” he corrected himself. “Oh. A little dog. I like little dogs,” said Detritus. “Woof.” “Raw,” the troll added. But he couldn’t get the right amount of statutory nastiness into his voice. Visions of Ruby in her feather boa and three acres of red velvet kept undulating across his mind. Gaspode scratched his ear vigorously. “Woof,” he said quietly. “In tones of low menace,” he added, after Detritus had gone. The slope of the hill was already alive with people when Victor arrived. A couple of tents had been erected. Someone was holding a camel. Several cages of demons gibbered in the shade of a thorn tree. In the middle of all this were Dibbler and Silverfish, arguing. Dibbler had his arm around Silverfish’s shoulder. “A dead giveaway, is that,” said a voice from the level of Victor’s knees. “It means some poor bugger is about to be taken to the cleaners.” “It’ll be a step up for you, Tom!” Dibbler was saying. “I mean, how many people in Holy Wood can call themselves Vice-President in Charge of Executive Affairs?” “Yes, but it’s my company!” Silverfish wailed. “Right! Right!” said Dibbler. “That’s what a name like Vice-President of Executive Affairs means.” “It does?” “Have I ever lied to you?” Silverfish’s brow furrowed. “Well,” he said, “yesterday you said-” “I mean metaphorically,” said Dibbler quickly. “Oh. Well. Metaphorically? I suppose not-” “There you are, then. Now, where’s that artist?” Dibbler spun around, giving the impression that Silverfish had just been switched off. A man scurried up with a folder under his arm. “Yessir, Mr. Dibbler?” Throat pulled a scrap of paper out of his pocket. “I want the posters ready by tonight, understand?” he warned. “Here. This is the name of the click.” “Shadowe of the Dessert,” the artist read. His brow furrowed. He had been educated beyond the needs of Holy Wood. “It’s about food?” he said. But Dibbler wasn’t listening. He was advancing on Victor. “Victor!” he said. “Baby!” “It’s got him,” said Gaspode quietly. “Got him worse than anyone, I reckon.” “What has? How can you tell?” Victor hissed. “Partly a’cos of subtle signs what you don’t seem to be abler recognize,” said Gaspode, “and partly because he’s actin’ like a complete twerp, really.” “Great to see you!” Dibbler enthused, his eyes glowing manically. He put his arm round Victor’s shoulder and half walked, half dragged him towards the tents. “This is going to be a great picture!” he said. “Oh, good,” said Victor weakly. “You play this bandit chieftain,” said Dibbler, “only a nice guy, too, kind to women and so forth, and you raid this village and you carry off this slave girl only when you look into her eyes, see, you fall for her, and then there’s this raid and hundreds of men on elephants come charging-” “Camels,” said a skinny youth behind Dibbler. “It’s camels.” “I ordered elephants!” “You got camels.” “Camels, elephants,” said Dibbler dismissively. “We’re talking exotic here, OK? And-” “And we’ve only got one,” said the youth. “One what?” “Camel. We could only find one camel,” said the youth. “But I’ve got dozens of guys with bedsheets on their heads waiting for camels!” shouted Dibbler, waving his hands in the air. “Lots of camels, right?” “We only got one camel ‘cos there’s only one camel in Holy Wood and that’s only ‘cos a guy from Klatch rode all the way here on it,” said the youth. “You should have sent away for more!” snapped Dibbler. “Mr. Silverfish said I wasn’t to.” Dibbler growled. “Maybe if it moves around a lot it’ll look like more than one camel,” said the youth optimistically. “Why not ride the camel past the picture box, and then get the handleman to stop the demons, and lead it back and put a different rider on it, then start up the box again and ride it past again?” said Victor. “Would that work?” Dibbler looked at him open-mouthed. “What did I tell you?” he said, to the sky in general. “The lad is a genius! That way we can get a hundred camels for the price of one, right?” “It means the desert bandits ride in single file, though,” said the youth. “It’s not like, you know, a massed attack.” “Sure, sure,” said Dibbler dismissively. “Makes sense. We just put a card up where the leader says, he says-” He thought for a second. “He says, “Follow me in single file, bwanas, to fool the hated enemy,” OK?” He nodded at Victor. “Have you met my nephew Soll?” he said. “Keen lad. Been nearly to school and everything. Brought him out here yesterday. He’s Vice-President in Charge of Making Pictures.” Soll and Victor exchanged nods. “I don’t think “bwanas” is the right word, Uncle,” said Soll. “It’s Klatchian, isn’t it?” said Dibbler. “Well, technically, but I think it’s the wrong part of Klatch and maybe “effendies” or something-” “Just so long as it’s foreign,” said Dibbler with an air that suggested the matter was settled. He patted Victor on the back again. “OK, kid, get into costume.” He chuckled. “A hundred camels! What a mind!” “Excuse me, Mr. Dibbler,” said the poster artist, who had been hovering uneasily, “I don’t understand this bit here . . . “ Dibbler snatched the paper from him. “Which bit?” he snapped. “Where you’re describing Miss De Syn-” “It’s obvious,” said Dibbler. “What we want here is to conjure up the exotic, alluring yet distant romance of pyramid-studded Klatch, right, so nat’r’ly we gotta use the symbol of a mysterious and unscrutable continent, see? Do I have to explain everything to everyone all the time?” “It’s just that I thought-” the artist began. “Just do it!” The artist looked down at the paper. ““She has the face”,” he read, ““of a Spink.”“ “Right,” said Dibbler. “Right!” “I thought maybe Sphinx–” “Will you listen to the man?” said Dibbler, talking to the sky again. He glared at the artist. “She doesn’t look like two of them, does she? One Spink, two Spinks. Now get on with it. I want those posters all round the city first thing tomorrow.” The artist gave Victor an agonized look he was coming to recognize. Everyone around Dibbler wore them after a while. “Right you are, Mr. Dibbler,” he said. “Right.” Dibbler turned to Victor. “Why aren’t you changed?” he said. Victor ducked quickly into a tent. A little old lady[10] shaped like a cottage loaf helped him into a costume apparently made of sheets inexpertly dyed black, although given the current state of accommodation in Holy Wood they were probably just sheets taken off a bed at random. Then she handed him a curved sword. “Why’s it bent?” he asked. “I think it’s meant to be, dear,” she said doubtfully. “I thought swords had to be straight,” said Victor. Outside, he could hear Dibbler asking the sky why everyone was so stupid. “Perhaps they start out straight and go bendy with use,” said the old lady, patting him on the hand. “A lot of things do.” She gave him a bright smile. “If you’re all right, dear, I’d better go and help the young lady, in case any little dwarfs is peering in at her.” She waddled out of the tent. From the tent next door came a metallic chinking noise and the sound of Ginger’s voice raised in complaint. Victor made a few experimental slashes with the sword. Gaspode watched him with his head on one side. “What’re you supposed to be?” he said at last. “A leader of a pack of desert bandits, apparently,” said Victor. “Romantic and dashing.” “Dashing where?” “Just dashing generally, I guess. Gaspode, what did you mean when you said it’s got Dibbler?” The dog gnawed at a paw. “Look at his eyes,” he said. “They’re even worse than yours.” “Mine? What’s wrong with mine?” Detritus the troll stuck his head through the tent flaps. “Mr. Dibbler says he wants you now,” he said. “Eyes?” said Victor. “Something about my eyes?” “Woof.” “Mr. Dibbler says–” Detritus began. “All right, all right! I’m coming!” Victor stepped out of his tent at the same time as Ginger stepped out of hers. He shut his eyes. “Gosh, I’m sorry,” he babbled. “I’ll go back and wait for you to get dressed . . . “ “I am dressed.” “Mr. Dibbler says-” said Detritus, behind them. “Come on,” said Ginger, grabbing his arm. “We mustn’t keep everyone waiting.” “But you’re . . . your . . . “ Victor looked down, which wasn’t a help. “You’ve got a navel in your diamond,” he hazarded. “I’ve come to terms with that,” said Ginger, flexing her shoulders in an effort to make everything settle. “It’s these two saucepan lids that are giving me problems. Makes you realize what those poor girls in the harems must suffer.” “And you don’t mind people seeing you like that?” said Victor, amazed. “Why should I? This is moving pictures. It’s not as if it’s real. Anyway, you’d be amazed at what girls have to do for a lot less than ten dollars a day.” “Nine,” said Gaspode, who was still trailing at Victor’s heels. “Right, gather round, people,” shouted Dibbler through a megaphone. “Sons of the Desert over there, please. The slave girls - where are the slave girls? Right. Handlemen?–” “I’ve never seen so many people in a click,” Ginger whispered. “It must be costing more than a hundred dollars!” Victor eyed the Sons of the Desert. It looked as though Dibbler had dropped in at Borgle’s and hired the twenty people nearest the door, irrespective of their appropriateness, and had given them each Dibbler’s idea of a desert bandit headdress. There were trollish Sons of the Desert - Rock recognized him, and gave him a little wave - dwarf Sons of the Desert and, shuffling into the end of the line, a small, hairy and furiously-scratching Son in a headdress that reached down to his paws. “ . . . grab her, become entranced by her beauty, and then throw her over your pommel.” Dibbler’s voice intruded into his consciousness. Victor desperately re-ran the half-heard instructions past his mind. “My what?” he said. “It’s part of your saddle,” Ginger hissed. “Oh.” “And then you ride into the night, with all the Sons following you and singing rousing desert bandit songs-” “No-one’ll hear them,” said Soll helpfully. “But if they open and shut their mouths it’ll help create a, you know, amby-ance.” “But it isn’t night,” said Ginger. “It’s broad daylight.” Dibbler stared at her. His mouth opened once or twice. “Soll!” he shouted. “We can’t film at night, Uncle,” said the nephew hurriedly. “The demons wouldn’t be able to see. I don’t see why we can’t put up a card saying “Night-time” at the start of the scene, so that-” “That’s not the magic of moving pictures!” snapped Dibbler. “That’s just messing about!” “Excuse me,” said Victor. “Excuse me, but surely it doesn’t matter, because surely the demons can paint the sky black with stars on it?” There was a moment’s silence. Then Dibbler looked at Gaffer. “Can they?” he said. “Nah,” said the handleman. “It’s bloody hard enough to make sure they paint what they do see, never mind what they don’t.” Dibbler rubbed his nose. “I might be prepared to negotiate,” he said. The handleman shrugged. “You don’t understand, Mr. Dibbler. What’d they want money for? They’d only eat it. We start telling them to paint what isn’t there, we’re into all sorts of-” “Perhaps it’s just a very bright full moon?” said Ginger. “That’s good thinking,” said Dibbler. “We’ll do a card where Victor says to Ginger something like: “How bright the moon is tonight, bwana”.” “Something like that,” said Soll diplomatically. It was noon. Holy Wood Hill glistened under the sun, like a champagne-flavoured wine gum that had been half-sucked. The handlemen turned their handles, the extras charged enthusiastically backwards and forwards, Dibbler raged at everyone, and cinematographic history was made with a shot of three dwarfs, four men, two trolls and a dog all riding one camel and screaming in terror for it to stop. Victor was introduced to the camel. It blinked its long eyelashes at him and appeared to chew soap. It was kneeling down and it looked like a camel that had had a long morning and wasn’t about to take any shit from anyone. So far it had kicked three people. “What’s it called?” he said cautiously. “We call it Evil-Minded Son of a Bitch,” said the newly-appointed Vice-President in Charge of Camels. “That doesn’t sound like a name.” “‘S a good name for this camel,” said the handler fervently. “There’s nothin’ wrong with bein’ a son of a bitch,” said a voice behind him. “I’m a son of a bitch. My father was a son of a bitch, you greasy nightshirt-wearin’ bastard.” The handler grinned nervously at Victor and turned around. There was no-one behind him. He looked down. “Woof,” said Gaspode, and wagged what was almost a tail. “Did you just hear someone say something?” said the handler carefully. “No,” said Victor. He leaned close to one of the camel’s ears and whispered, in case it was a special Holy Wood camel: “Look, I’m a friend, OK?” Evil-Minded Son of a Bitch flicked a carpet-thick ear.[11] “How do you ride it?” he said. “When you want to go forward you swear at it and hit it with a stick, and when you want to stop you swear at it and really hit it with a stick.” “What happens if you want it to turn?” “Ah, well, you’re on to the Advanced Manual there. Best thing to do is get off and do it round by hand.” “When you’re ready!” Dibbler bellowed through his megaphone. “Now, you ride up to the tent, leap off the camel, fight the huge eunuchs, burst into the tent, drag the girl out, get back on the camel and away. Got it? Think you ran do that?” “What huge eunuchs?” said Victor, as the camel unfolded itself upwards. One of the huge eunuchs shyly raised a hand. “It’s me. Morry,” it said. “Oh. Hi, Morry.” “Hi, Vic., “And me, Rock,” said a second huge eunuch. “Hi, Rock.” “Hi, Vic.” “Places, everyone,” said Dibbler. “We’ll - what is it, Rock?” “Er, I was just wondering, Mr. Dibbler . . . what is my motivation for this scene?” “Motivation?” “Yes. Er. I got to know, see,” said Rock. “How about: I’ll fire you if you don’t do it properly?” Rock grinned. “Right you are, Mr. Dibbler,” he said. “OK,” said Dibbler. “Everyone ready . . . turn ‘em!” Evil-minded Son of a Bitch turned awkwardly, legs flailing at odd camel angles, and then lumbered into a complicated trot. The handle turned . . . The air glittered. And Victor awoke. It was like rising slowly out of a pink cloud, or a magnificent dream which, try as you might, drains out of your mind as the daylight shuffles in, leaving a terrible sense of loss; nothing, you know instinctively, nothing you’re going to experience for the rest of the day is going to be one half as good as that dream. He blinked. The images faded away. He was aware of an ache in his muscles, as if he’d recently been really exerting himself. “What happened?” he mumbled. He looked down. “Wow,” he said. An expanse of barely-clad buttock occupied a view recently occupied by the camel’s neck. It was an improvement. “Why”, said Ginger icily, “am I lying on a camel?” “Search me. Didn’t you want to?” She slid down on to the sand and tried to adjust her costume. At this point they both became aware of the audience. There was Dibbler. There was Dibbler’s nephew. There was the handleman. There were the extras. There were the assorted vicepresidents and other people who are apparently called into existence by the mere presence of moving-picture creation.[12] There was Gaspode the Wonder Dog. And every one, except for the dog, who was sniggering, had his mouth open. The handleman’s hand was still turning the handle. He looked down at it as if its presence was new to him, and stopped. Dibbler seemed to come out of whatever trance he was in. “Whoo-hoo,” he said: “Blimey.” “Magic,” breathed Soll. “Real magic.” Dibbler nudged the handleman. “Did you get all that?” he said. “Get what?” said Ginger and Victor together. Then Victor noticed Morry sitting on the sand. There was a sizeable chip out of his arm; Rock was trowelling something into it. The troll noticed Victor’s expression and gave him a sickly grin. “Fink you’re Cohen the Barbarian, do you?” he said. “Yeah,” said Rock. “There was no call to go callin’ him wot you called him. An’ if you’re going to go doin’ fancy swordwork, we’re applyin’ for an extra dollar a day Havin’-Bits-Chopped-Off allowance.” Victor’s sword had several nicks on the blade. For the life of him, he couldn’t imagine how they had got there. “Look,” he said desperately. “I don’t understand. I didn’t call anyone anything. Have we started filming yet?” “One minute I’m sitting in a tent, next minute I’m breathing camel,” said Ginger petulantly. “Is it too much to ask what is going on?” But no-one seemed to be listening to them. “Why can’t we find a way of getting sound?” said Dibbler. “That was damn good dialogue there. Didn’t understand a word of it, but I know good dialogue when I hear it.” “Parrots,” said the handleman flatly. “Your common Howondaland Green. Amazing bird. Memory like an elephant. Get a couple of dozen in different sizes and you’ve got a full vocal-” That launched a detailed technical discussion. Victor let himself slide off the camel’s back and ducked under its neck to reach Ginger. “Listen,” he said urgently. “It was just like last time. Only stronger. Like a sort of dream. The handleman started to take pictures and it was just like a dream.” “Yes, but what did we actually do?” she said. “What you did,” said Rock, “was gallop the camel up to the tent, leap off, come at us like a windmill-” “–leapin’ on rocks and laughin’–” said Morry. “Yeah, you said to Morry, “Have at you, you Foul Black Guard,”“ said Rock. “And then you caught him a right ding on the arm, cut a hole in the tent–” “Good sword work, though,” said Morry appraisingly. “A bit showy, but pretty good.” “But I don’t know how to-” Victor began. “–and she was lying there all longgrass,” said Rock. “An’ you swept her up, and she said-” “Long grass?” said Ginger weakly. “Languorous,” said Victor. “I think he means languorous.” “–she said, “Why, it is the Thief of . . the Thief of . . . ““ Rock hesitated. “Dad’s Bag, I think you said.” “Bagged Dad,” said Morry, rubbing his arm. “Yeah, an’ then she said, “You are in great danger, for my father has sworn to kill you”, and Victor said “But now, o fairest rose, I can reveal that I am really the Shadow of the Dessert-”“ “What’s languorous mean?” said Ginger suspiciously. “An’ he said, “Fly with me now to the casbah”, or something like that, an’ then he gave her this, this, thing humans do with their lips–” “Whistle?” said Victor, with hopeless hope. “Nah, the other thing. Sounds like a cork coming out of a bottle,” said Rock. “Kiss,” said Ginger, coldly. “Yeah. Not that I’m any judge,” said Rock, “but it seemed to go on for a while. Definitely very, you know, kissy.” “I thought it was going to be bucket-of-water time myself,” said a quiet canine voice behind Victor. He kicked out backwards, but failed to connect. “And then he was back on the camel and dragged her up and Mr. Dibbler shouted “Stop, stop, what the hell’s going on, why won’t anyone tell me what the hell’s going on,”“ said Rock. “And then you said “What happened?”“ “Don’t know when I last saw swordplay like that,” said Morry. “Oh,” said Victor. “Well. Thank you.” “All that shouting “Ha!” and “Have at you, you dog”. Very professional,” said Morry. “I see,” said Victor. He reached sideways and grabbed Ginger’s arm. “We’ve got to talk,” he hissed. “Somewhere quiet. Behind the tent.” “If you think I’m going anywhere alone with you-”she began. “Listen, this is no time to start acting like-” A heavy hand settled on Victor’s shoulder. He turned, and saw the shape of Detritus eclipsing the world. “Mr. Dibbler doesn’t want anyone running off,” he said. “Everyone has to stay until Mr. Dibbler says.” “You’re a real pain, you know,” said Victor. Detritus gave him a big, gem-studded grin. [13] “Mr. Dibbler says I can be a vice-president,” he said proudly. “In charge of what?” said Victor. “Vice-presidents,” said Detritus. Gaspode the Wonder Dog made a little growling sound at the back of his throat. The camel, which had been idly staring at the sky, sidled around a bit and suddenly lashed out with a kick that caught the troll in the small of the back. Detritus yelped. Gaspode gave the world a look of satisfied innocence. “Come on,” said Victor grimly. “While he’s trying to find something to hit the camel with.” They sat down in the shade behind the tent. “I just want you to know”, said Ginger coldly, “that I have never attempted to look languorous in my life.” “Could be worth a try,” said Victor, absently. “What?” “Sorry. Look, something made us act like that. I don’t know how to use a sword. I’ve always just waved it around. What did you feel like?” “You know how you feel when you hear someone say something and you realize you’ve been daydreaming?” “It was like your own life fading away and something else filling up the space.” They considered this in silence. “Do you think it’s something to do with Holy Wood?” she said. Victor nodded. Then he threw himself sideways and landed on Gaspode, who had been watching them intently. “Yelp,” said Gaspode. “Now listen,” Victor hissed into his ear, “No more of these hints. What is it that you noticed about us? Otherwise it’s Detritus for you. With mustard.” The dog squirmed in his grip. “Or we could make you wear a muzzle,” said Ginger. “I ain’t dangerous!” wailed Gaspode, scrabbling with his paws in the sand. “A talking dog sounds pretty dangerous to me,” said Victor. “Dreadfully,” said Ginger. “You never know what it might say.” “See? See?” said Gaspode mournfully. “I knew it’d be nothing but trouble, showin’ I can talk. It shouldn’t happen to a dog.” “But it’s going to,” said Victor. “Oh, all right. All right. For what good it’ll do,” muttered Gaspode. Victor relaxed. The dog sat up and shook sand off himself. “You won’t understand it, anyway,” he grumbled. “Another dog would understand, but you won’t. It’s down to species experience, see. Like kissing. You know what it’s like, but I don’t. It’s not a canine experience.” He noticed the warning look in Victor’s eyes, and plunged on, “It’s the way you look as if you belong here.” He watched them for a moment. “See? See?” he said. “I tole you you wouldn’t understand. It’s - it’s territory, see? You got all the signs of bein’ right where you should be. Nearly everyone else here is a stranger, but you aren’t. Er. Like, you mus’ have noticed where some dogs bark at you when you’re new to a place? It’s not jus’ smell, we got this amazin’ sense of displacement. Like, some humans get uncomfortable when they see a picture hung crooked? It’s like that, only worse. It’s kind of like the only place you ought to be now is here.” He looked at them again, and then industriously scratched an ear. “What the hell,” he said. “The trouble is, I can explain it in Dog but you only listen in Human.” “It sounds a bit mystical to me,” said Ginger. “You said something about my eyes,” said Victor. “Yeah, well. Have you looked at your own eyes?” Gaspode nodded at Ginger. “You too, miss.” “Don’t be daft,” said Victor. “How can we look at our own eyes?” Gaspode shrugged. “You could look at each other’s,” he suggested. They automatically turned to face each other. There was a long drawn-out moment. Gaspode employed it to urinate noisily against a tent peg. Eventually Victor said, “Wow.” Ginger said, “Mine, too?” “Yes. Doesn’t it hurt?” “You should know.” “There you are, then,” said Gaspode. “And you look at Dibbler next time you see him. Really look, I mean.” Victor rubbed his eyes, which were beginning to water. “It’s as though Holy Wood has called us here, is doing something to us and has, has-” “-branded us,” said Ginger bitterly. “That’s what it’s done.” “It, er, it does look quite attractive, actually,” said Victor gallantly. “Gives them a sort of sparkle.” A shadow fell across the sand. “Ah, there you are,” said Dibbler. He put his arms around their shoulders as they stood up, and gave them a sort of hug. “You young people, always going off alone together,” he said archly. “Great business. Great business. Very romantic. But we’ve got a click to make, and I’ve got lots of people standing around waiting for you, so let’s do it.” “See what I mean?” muttered Gaspode, very quietly. When you knew what you were looking for, you couldn’t miss it. In the centre of both of Dibbler’s eyes was a tiny golden star. In the heartlands of the great dark continent of Klatch the air was heavy and pregnant with the promise of the coming monsoon. Bullfrogs croaked in the rushes[14] by the slow brown river. Crocodiles dozed on the mudflats. Nature was holding its breath. A cooing broke out in the pigeon loft of Azhural N’choate, stock dealer. He stopped dozing on the veranda, and went over to see what had caused the excitement. In the vast pens behind the shack a few threadbare bewilderbeests, marked down for a quick sale, yawning and cudding in the heat, looked up in alarm as N’choate leapt the veranda steps in one bound and tore towards them. He rounded the zebra pens and homed in on his assistant M’Bu, who was peacefully mucking out the ostriches. “How many-” he stopped, and began to wheeze. M’Bu, who was twelve years old, dropped his shovel and patted him heavily on the back. “How many-” he tried again. “You been overdoing it again, boss?” said M’Bu in a concerned voice. “How many elephants we got?” “I just done them,” said M’Bu. “We got three.” “Are you sure?” “Yes, boss,” said M’Bu, evenly. “It’s easy to be sure, with elephants.” Azhural crouched in the red dust and hurriedly began to scrawl figures with a stick. “Old Muluccai’s bound to have half a dozen,” he muttered. “And Tazikel’s usually got twenty or so, and then the people on the delta generally have-” “Someone want elephants, boss?” “-got fifteen head, he was telling me, plus also there’s a load at the logging camp probably going cheap, call it two dozen-” “Someone want a lot of elephants, boss?” “-was saying there’s a herd over T’etse way, shouldn’t be a problem, then there’s all the valleys over towards-” M’Bu leaned on the fence and waited. “Maybe two hundred, give or take ten,” said Azhural, throwing down the stick. “Nowhere near enough.” “You can’t give or take ten elephants, boss,” said M’Bu firmly. He knew that counting elephants was a precision job. A man might be uncertain about how many wives he had, but never about elephants. Either you had one, or you didn’t. “Our agent in Klatch has an order for”, Azhural swallowed, “a thousand elephants. A thousand! Immediately! Cash on delivery!” Azhural let the paper drop to the ground. “To a place called Ankh-Morpork,” he said despondently. He sighed. “It would have been nice,” he said. M’Bu scratched his head and stared at the hammerhead clouds massing over Mt F’twangi. Soon the dry veldt would boom to the thunder of the rains. Then he reached down and picked up the stick. “What’re you doing?” said Azhural. “Drawing a map, boss,” said M’Bu. Azhural shook his head. “Not worth it, boy. Three thousand miles to Ankh, I reckon, I let myself get carried away. Too many miles, not enough elephants.” “We could go across the plains, boss,” said M’Bu. “Lot of elephants on the plains. Send messengers ahead. We could pick up plenty more elephants on the way, no problem. That whole plain just about covered in damn elephants.” “No, we’d have to go around on the coast,” said the dealer, drawing a long curving line in the sand. “The reason being, there’s the jungle just here,” he tapped on the parched ground, “and here,” he tapped again, slightly concussing an emerging locust that had optimistically mistaken the first tap for the onset of the rains. “No roads in the jungle.” M’Bu took the stick and drew a straight line through the jungle. “Where a thousand elephants want to go, boss, they don’t need no roads.” Azhural considered this. Then he took the stick and drew a jagged line by the jungle. “But here’s the Mountains of the Sun,” he said. “Very high. Lots of deep ravines. And no bridges.” M’Bu took the stick, indicated the jungle, and grinned. “I know where there’s a lot of prime timber just been uprooted, boss,” he said. “Yeah? OK, boy, but we’ve still got to get it into the mountains.” “It just so happen that a t’ousand real strong elephants’ll be goin’ that way, boss.” M’Bu grinned again. His tribe went in for sharpening their teeth to points.[15] He handed back the stick. Azhural’s mouth opened slowly. “By the seven moons of Nasreem,” he breathed. “We could do it, you know. It’s only, oh, thirteen or fourteen hundred miles that way. Maybe less, even. Yeah. We could really do it.” “Yes, boss.” “Y’know, I’ve always wanted to do something big with my life. Something real,” said Azhural. “I mean, an ostrich here, a giraffe there . . . it’s not the sort of thing you get remembered for . . . “ He stared at the purple-grey horizon. “We could do it, couldn’t we?” he said. “Sure, boss.” “Right over the mountains!” “Sure, boss.” If you looked really hard, you could just see that the purple-grey was topped with white. “They’re pretty high mountains,” said Azhural, his voice now edged with doubt. “Slope go up, slope go down,” said M’Bu gnomically. “That’s true,” said Azhural. “Like, on average, it’s flat all the way.” He gazed at the mountains again. “A thousand elephants,” he muttered. “D’you know, boy, when they built the Tomb of King Leonid of Ephebe they used a hundred elephants to cart the stone? And two hundred elephants, history tells us, were employed in the building of the palace of the Rhoxie in Klatch city.” Thunder rumbled in the distance. “A thousand elephants,” Azhural repeated. “A thousand elephants. I wonder what they want them for?” The rest of the day passed in a trance for Victor. There was more galloping and fighting, and more rearranging of time. Victor still found that hard to understand. Apparently the film could be cut up and then stuck together again later, so that things happened in the right order. And some things didn’t have to happen at all. He saw the artist draw one card which said “In thee Kinges” Palace, One Houre Latre.” One hour of Time had been vanished, just like that. Of course, he knew that it hadn’t really been surgically removed from his life. It was the sort of thing that happened all the time in books. And on the stage, too. He’d seen a group of strolling players once, and the performance had leapt magically from “A Battlefield in Tsort” to “The Ephebian Fortresse, That Nighte” with no more than a brief descent of the sackcloth curtain and a lot of muffled bumping and cursing as the scenery was changed. But this was different. Ten minutes after doing a scene, you’d do another scene that was taking place the day before, somewhere else, because Dibbler had rented the tents for both scenes and didn’t want to have to pay any more rent than necessary. You just had to try and forget about everything but Now, and that was hard when you were also waiting every moment for that fading sensation . . . It didn’t come. Just after another half-hearted fight scene Dibbler announced that it was all finished. “Aren’t we going to do the ending?” said Ginger. “You did that this morning,” said Soll. “Oh.” There was a chattering noise as the demons were let out of their box and sat swinging their little legs on the edge of the lid and passing a tiny cigarette from hand to hand. The extras queued up for their wages. The camel kicked the Vice-President in Charge of Camels. The handlemen wound the great reels of film out of the boxes and went away to whatever arcane cutting and gluing the handlemen got up to in the hours of darkness. Mrs. Cosmopilite, Vice-President in Charge of Wardrobe, gathered up the costumes and toddled off, possibly to put them back on the beds. A few acres of scrubby backlot stopped being the rolling dunes of the Great Nef and went back to being scrubby backlot again. Victor felt that much the same thing was happening to him. In ones and twos, the makers of moving-picture magic departed, laughing and joking and arranging to meet at Borgle’s later on. Ginger and Victor were left alone in a widening circle of emptiness. “I felt like this the first time the circus went away,” said Ginger. “Mr. Dibbler said we were going to do another one tomorrow,” said Victor. “I’m sure he just makes them up as he goes along. Still, we got ten dollars each. Minus what we owe Gaspode,” he added conscientiously. He grinned foolishly at her. “Cheer up,” he said. “You’re doing what you’ve always wanted to do.” “Don’t be stupid. I didn’t even know about moving pictures a couple of months ago. There weren’t any.” They strolled aimlessly towards the town. “What did you want to be?” he ventured. She shrugged. “I didn’t know. I just knew I didn’t want to be a milkmaid.” There had been milkmaids at home. Victor tried to recollect anything about them. “It always looked quite an interesting job to me, milkmaiding,” he said vaguely. “Buttercups, you know. And fresh air.” “It’s cold and wet and just as you’ve finished the bloody cow kicks the bucket over. Don’t tell me about milking. Or being a shepherdess. Or a goosegirl. I really hated our farm.” “Oh.” “And they expected me to marry my cousin when I was fifteen.” “Is that allowed?” “Oh, yes. Everyone marries their cousins where I come from.” “Why?” said Victor. “I suppose it saves having to worry about what to do on Saturday nights.” “Oh.” “Didn’t you want to be anything?” said Ginger, putting a whole sentence worth of disdain in a mere three letters. “Not really,” said Victor. “Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job. I bet even people like Cohen the Barbarian get up in the morning thinking, “Oh, no, not another day of crushing the jewelled thrones of the world beneath my sandalled feet.”“ “Is that what he does?” said Ginger, interested despite herself. “According to the stories, yes.” “Why?” “Search me. It’s just a job, I guess.” Ginger picked up a handful of sand. There were tiny white shells in it, which stayed behind as it trickled away between her fingers. “I remember when the circus came to our village,” she said. “I was ten. There was this girl with spangled tights. She walked a tightrope. She could even do somersaults on it. Everybody cheered and clapped. They wouldn’t let me climb a tree, but they cheered her. That’s when I decided.” “Ah,” said Victor, trying to keep up with the psychology of this. “You decided you wanted to be someone?” “Don’t be silly. That’s when I decided I was going to be a lot more than just someone.” She threw the shells towards the sunset and laughed. “I’m going to be the most famous person in the world, everyone will fall in love with me, and I shall live forever.” “It’s always best to know your own mind,” said Victor diplomatically. “You know what the greatest tragedy is in the whole world?” said Ginger, not paying him the least attention. “It’s all the people who never find out what it is they really want to do or what it is they’re really good at. It’s all the sons who become blacksmiths because their fathers were blacksmiths. It’s all the people who could be really fantastic flute players who grow old and die without ever seeing a musical instrument, so they become bad ploughmen instead. It’s all the people with talents who never even find out. Maybe they are never even born in a time when it’s even possible to find out.” She took a deep breath. “It’s all the people who never get to know what it is they can really be. It’s all the wasted chances. Well, Holy Wood is my chance, do you understand? This is my time for getting!” Victor nodded. “Yes,” he said. Magic for ordinary people, Silverfish had called it. A man turned a handle, and your life got changed. “And not just for me,” Ginger went on. “It’s a chance for all of us. The people who aren’t wizards and kings and heroes. Holy Wood’s like a big bubbling stew but this time different ingredients float to the top. Suddenly there’s all these new things for people to do. Do you know the theatres don’t allow women to act? But Holy Wood does. And in Holy Wood there’s jobs for trolls that don’t just involve hitting people. And what did the handlemen do before they had handles to turn?” She waved a hand vaguely in the direction of Ankh-Morpork’s distant glow. “Now they’re trying to find ways of adding sound to moving pictures,” she said, “and out there are people who’ll turn out to be amazingly good at making, making . . . making soundies. They don’t even know it yet - but they’re out there. I can feel them. They’re out there.” Her eyes were glowing gold. It might just be the sunset, Victor thought, but . . . “Because of Holy Wood, hundreds of people are finding out what it is they really want to be,” said Ginger. “And thousands and thousands are getting a chance to forget themselves for an hour or so. This whole damn world is being given a shake!” “That’s it,” said Victor. “That’s what worries me. It’s as though we’re being slotted in. You think we’re using Holy Wood, but Holy Wood is using us. All of us.” “How? Why?” “I don’t know, but-” “Look at wizards,” Ginger went on, vibrating with indignation. “What good has their magic ever done anyone?” “I think it sort of holds the world together-” Victor began. “They’re pretty good at magic flames and things, but can they make a loaf of bread?” Ginger wasn’t in the mood for listening to anyone. “Not for very long,” said Victor helplessly. “What does that mean?” “Something real like a loaf of bread contains a lot of . . . well . . . I suppose you’d call it energy,” said Victor. “It takes a massive amount of power to create that amount of energy. You’d have to be a pretty good wizard to make a loaf that’d last in this world for more than a tiny part of a second. But that’s not what magic is really about, you see,” he added quickly, “because this world is-” “Who cares?” said Ginger. “Holy Wood’s really doing things for ordinary people. Silver screen magic.” “What’s come over you? Last night–” “That was then,” said Ginger impatiently. “Don’t you see? We could be going somewhere. We could be becoming someone. Because of Holy Wood. The world is our-” “Lobster,” said Victor. She waved a hand irritably. “Any shellfish you like,” she said. “I was thinking of oysters, actually.” “Were you? I was thinking of lobsters.” “Bursaar!” I shouldn’t have to run around like this at my age, thought the Bursar, scurrying down the corridor in answer to the Archchancellor’s bellow. Why’s he so interested in the damn thing, anyway? Wretched pot! “Coming, Master,” he trilled. The Archchancellor’s desk was covered with ancient documents. When a wizard died, all his papers were stored in one of the outlying reaches of the Library. Shelf after shelf of quietly mouldering documents, the haunt of mysterious beetles and dry rot, stretched away into an unguessable distance. Eyeryone kept telling everyone that there was a wealth of material here for researchers, if only someone could find the time to do it. The Bursar was annoyed. He couldn’t find the Librarian anywhere. The ape never seemed to be around these days. He’d had to scrabble among the stuff himself. “I think this is the last, Archchancellor,” he said, tipping an avalanche of dusty paperwork on to the desk. Ridcully flailed at a cloud of moths. “Paper, paper, paper,” he muttered. “How many damn bits of paper in his stuff, eh?” “Er . . . 23,813, Archchancellor,” said the Bursar. “He kept a record.” “Look at this,” said the Archchancellor. “ “Star Enumerator” . . . “Rev Counter for Use in Ecclesiastical Areas” . . . “Swamp Meter” . . . Swamp meter! The man was mad!” “He had a very tidy mind,” said the Bursar. “Same thing.” “Is it, er, really important, Archchancellor?” the Bursar ventured. “Damn thing shot pellets at me,” said Ridcully. “Twice!” “I’m sure it wasn’t, er, intended-” “I want to see how it was made, man! Just think of the sportin’ possibilities!” The Bursar tried to think of the possibilities. “I’m sure Riktor didn’t intend to make any kind of offensive device,” he ventured, hopelessly. “Who gives a damn what he intended? Where is the thing now?” “I had a couple of servants put sandbags around it.” “Good idea. It”s-” . . . whumm . . . whumm . . . It was a muffled sound from the corridor. The two wizards exchanged a meaningful glance . . . . whumm . . . whummWHUMM. The Bursar held his breath. Plib. Plib.. Plib. The Archchancellor peered at the hourglass on the mantelpiece. “It’s doin’ it every five minutes now,” he said. “And it’s up to three shots,” said the Bursar. “I’ll have to order some more sandbags.” He flicked through a heap of paper. A word caught his eye. Reality. He glanced at the handwriting that flowed across the page. It had a very small, cramped, deliberate look. Someone had told him that this was because Numbers Riktor had been an anal retentive. The Bursar didn’t know what that meant, and hoped never to find out. Another word was: Measurement. His gaze drifted upwards, and took in the underlined title: Some Notes on the Objective Measurement of Reality. Over the page was a diagram. The Bursar stared at it. “Found anything?” said the Archchancellor, without looking up. The Bursar shoved the paper up the sleeve of his robe. “Nothing important,” he said. Down below, the surf boomed on the beach. ( . . . and below the surface, the lobsters walked backwards along the deep, drowned streets . . . ) Victor threw another piece of driftwood on to the fire. It burned blue with salt. “I don’t understand her,” he said. “Yesterday she was quite normal, today it’s all gone to her head.” “Bitches!” said Gaspode, sympathetically. “Oh, I wouldn’t go that far,” said Victor. “She’s just aloof.” “Loofs!” said Gaspode. “That’s what intelligence does for your sex life,” said Don’t-call-me-Mr-Thumpy. “Rabbits never have that sort of trouble. Go, Sow, Thank You Doe.” “You could try offering her a moushe,” said the cat. “Preshent company exchepted, of course,” it added guiltily, trying to avoid Definitely-Not-Squeak’s glare. “Being intelligent hasn’t done my social life any favours, either,” said Mr. Thumpy bitterly. “A week ago, no problems. Now suddenly I want to make conversation, and all they do is sit there wrinklin’ their noses at you. You feel a right idiot.” There was a strangulated quacking. “The duck says, have you done anything about the book?” said Gaspode. “I had a look at it when we broke for lunch,” said Victor. There was another irritable quack. “The duck says, yes, but what have you done about it?” said Gaspode. “Look, I can’t go all the way to Ankh-Morpork just like that,” snapped Victor. “It takes hours! We film all day as it is!” “Ask for a day off,” said Mr. Thumpy. “No-one asks for a day off in Holy Wood!” said Victor. “I’ve been fired once, thank you.” “And he took you on again at more money,” said Gaspode. “Funny, that.” He scratched an ear. “Tell him your contract says you can have a day off.” “I haven’t got a contract. You know that. You work, you get paid. It’s simple.” “Yeah,” said Gaspode. “Yeah. Yeah? A verbal contract. It’s simple. I like it.” Towards the end of the night Detritus the troll lurked awkwardly in the shadows by the back door of the Blue Lias. Strange passions had wracked his body all day. Every time he’d shut his eyes he kept seeing a figure shaped like a small hillock. He had to face up to it. Detritus was in love. Yes, he’d spent many years in Ankh-Morpork hitting people for money. Yes, it had been a friendless, brutalizing life. And a lonely one, too. He’d been resigned to an old-age of bitter bachelorhood and suddenly, now, Holy Wood was handing him a chance he’d never dreamed of. He’d been strictly brought up and he could dimly remember the lecture he’d been given by his father when he was a young troll. If you saw a girl you liked, you didn’t just rush at her. There were proper ways to go about things. He’d gone down to the beach and found a rock. But not any old rock. He’d searched carefully, and found a large sea-smoothed one with veins of pink and white quartz. Girls liked that sort of thing. Now he waited, shyly, for her to finish work. He tried to think of what he would say. No-one had ever told him what to say. It wasn’t as if he was a smart troll like Rock or Morry, who had a way with words. Basically, he’d never needed much of what you might call a vocabulary. He kicked despondently at the sand. What chance did he have with a smart lady like her? There was a thump of heavy feet, and the door opened. The object of desire stepped out into the night and took a deep breath, which had the same effect on Detritus as an ice cube down the neck. He gave his rock a panicky look. It didn’t seem anything like big enough now, when you saw the size of her. But maybe it was what you did with it that mattered. Well, this was it. They said you never forgot your first time . . . He wound up his arm with the rock in it and hit her squarely between the eyes. That’s when it all started to go wrong. Tradition said that the girl, when she was able to focus again, and if the rock was of an acceptable standard, should immediately be amenable to whatever the troll suggested, i.e., a candle-lit human for two, although of course that sort of thing wasn’t done any more now, at least if there was any chance of being caught. She shouldn’t narrow her eyes and catch him a ding across the ear that made his eyeballs rattle. “You stupid troll!” she shouted, as Detritus staggered around in a circle. “What you do that for? You think I unsophisticated girl just off mountain? Why you not do it right?” “But, but,” Detritus began, in terror at her rage, “I not able to ask father permission to hit you, not know where he living-” Ruby drew herself up haughtily. “All that old-fashioned stuff very uncultured now,” she sniffed. “It’s not the modern way. I not interested in any troll”, she added, “that not up-to-date. A rock on the head may be quite sentimental,” she went on, the certainty draining out of her voice as she surveyed the sentence ahead of her, “but diamonds are a girl’s best friend.” She hesitated. That didn’t sound right, even to her. It certainly puzzled Detritus. “What? You want I should knock my teeth out?” he said. “Well, all right, not diamonds,” Ruby conceded. “But there proper modern ways now. You got to court a girl.” Detritus brightened. “Ah, but I-” he began. “That’s court, not caught,” said Ruby wearily. “You got to, to, to-” She paused. She wasn’t all that sure what you had to do. But Ruby had spent some weeks in Holy Wood, and if Holy Wood did anything, it changed things; in Holy Wood she’d plugged into a vast cross-species female freemasonry she hadn’t suspected existed, and she was learning fast. She’d talked at length to sympathetic human girls. And dwarfs. Even dwarfs had better courtship rituals, for gods’ sake.[16] And what humans got up to was amazing. Whereas all a female troll had to look forward to was a quick thump on the head and the rest of her life subduing and cooking anything the male dragged back to the cave. Well, there were going to be changes. Next time Ruby went home the troll mountains were going to receive their biggest shake-up since the last continental collision. In the meantime, she was going to start with her own life. She waved a massive hand in a vague way. “You got to, to sing outside a girl’s window,” she said, “and, and you got to give her oograah.” “Oograah?” “Yeah. Pretty oograah.”[17] Detritus scratched his head. “Why?” he said. Ruby looked panicky for a moment. She also couldn’t for the life of her imagine why the handing over of inedible vegetation was so important, but she wasn’t about to admit it. “Fancy you not knowing that,” she said scathingly. The sarcasm was lost on Detritus. Most things were. “Right,” he said. “I not so uncultured as you think,” he added. “I bang up to date. You wait and see.” Hammering filled the air. Buildings were spreading backwards from the nameless main street into the dunes. No-one owned any land in Holy Wood; if it was empty, you built on it. Dibbler had two offices now. There was one where he shouted at people, and a bigger one just outside it where people shouted at each other. Soll shouted at handlemen. Handlemen shouted at alchemists. Demons wandered over every flat surface and drowned in the coffee cups and shouted at one another. A couple of experimental green parrots shouted at themselves. People wearing odd bits of costume wandered in and just shouted. Silverfish shouted because he couldn’t quite work out why he now had a desk in the outer office even though he owned the studio. Gaspode sat stolidly by the door to the inner office. In the past five minutes he had attracted one half-hearted kick, a soggy biscuit and a pat on the head. He reckoned he was ahead of the game, dogwise. He was trying to listen to all the conversations at once. It was extremely instructive. For one thing, some of the people coming in and shouting were carrying bags of money . . . “You what?” The shout had come from the inner office. Gaspode cocked the other ear. “I, er, want a day off, Mr. Dibbler,” said Victor. “A day off? You don’t want to work?” “Just for the day, Mr. Dibbler.” “But you don’t think I’m going to go around paying people to have days off, do you? I’m not trade of money, you know. It’s not as if we make a profit, even. Hold a crossbow to my head, why don’t you.” Gaspode looked at the bags in front of Soll, who was furiously adding up piles of coins. He raised a cynical eyebrow. There was a pause. Oh, no, thought Gaspode. The young idiot’s forgetting his lines. “I don’t want paying, Mr. Dibbler.” Gaspode relaxed. “You don’t want paying?” “No, Mr. Dibbler.” “But you want a job when you get back, I suppose?” said Dibbler sarcastically. Gaspode tensed. Victor had taken a lot of coaching. “Well, I hope so, Mr. Dibbler. But I was thinking of going to see what Untied Alchemists had to offer.” There was a sound exactly like the sound of a chairback striking the wall. Gaspode grinned evilly. Another bag of money was dropped in front of Soll. “Untied Alchemists!” “They really look as if they’re making progress with soundies, Mr. Dibbler,” said Victor meekly. “But they’re amateurs! And crooks!” Gaspode frowned. He hadn’t been able to coach Victor past this stage. “Well, that’s a relief, Mr. Dibbler.” “Why’s that?” “Well, it’d be dreadful if they were crooks and professional.” Gaspode nodded. Nice one. Nice one. There was the sound of footsteps hurrying around a desk. When Dibbler spoke next, you could have sunk a well in his voice and sold it at ten dollars a barrel. “Victor! Vic! Haven’t I been like an uncle to you?” Well, yes, thought Gaspode. He’s like an uncle to most people here. That’s because they’re his nephews. He stopped listening, partly because Victor was going to get his day off and was very likely going to get paid for it as well, but mainly because another dog had been led into the room. It was huge and glossy. Its coat shone like honey. Gaspode recognized it as pure-bred Ramtop hunting dog. When it sat down beside him, it was as if a beautifully sleek racing yacht had slipped into a berth alongside a coal barge. He heard Soll say, “So that is Uncle’s latest idea, is it? What’s it called?” “Laddie,” said the handler. “How much was it?” “Sixty dollars.” “For a dog? We’re in the wrong business.” “It can do all kinds of tricks, the breeder said. Bright as a button, he said. Just what Mr. Dibbler is looking for.” “Well, tie it up there. And if that other mutt starts a fight, kick it out.” Gaspode gave Soll a long, thoughtful scrutiny. Then, when the attention was no longer on them, he sidled closer to the newcomer, looked it up and down, and spoke quietly out of the corner of his mouth. “What you here for?” he said. The dog gave him a look of handsome incomprehension. “I mean, do you b’long to someone or what?” said Gaspode. The dog whined softly. Gaspode tried Basic Canine, which is a combination of whines and sniffs. “Hallo?” he ventured. “Anyone in there?” The dog’s tail thumped uncertainly. “The grub here’s ruddy awful,” said Gaspode. The dog raised its highly-bred muzzle. “What dis place?” it said. “This is Holy Wood,” said Gaspode conversationally. “I’m Gaspode. Named after the famous Gaspode, you know. Anythin’ you want to know, you just-” “All dese two-legs here. Dur . . . What dis place?” Gaspode stared. At that moment Dibbler’s door opened. Victor emerged, coughing, at one end of a cigar. “Great, great,” said Dibbler, following him out. “Knew we could sort it out. Don’t waste it, boy, don’t waste it. They cost a dollar a box. Oh, I see you brought your little doggie.” “Woof,” said Gaspode, irritably. The other dog gave a short sharp bark and sat up with obedient alertness radiating from every hair. “Ah,” said Dibbler, “and I see we’ve got our wonder dog.” Gaspode’s apology for a tail twitched once or twice. Then the truth dawned. He glared at the larger dog, opened his mouth to speak, caught himself just in time, and managed to turn it into a “Bark?” “I got the idea the other night, when I saw your dog,” said Dibbler. “I thought, people like animals. Me, I like dogs. Good image, the dog. Saving lives, Man’s best friend, that kind of stuff.” Victor looked at Gaspode’s furious expression. “Gaspode’s quite bright,” he said. “Oh, I expect you think he is,” said Dibbler. “But you’ve just got to look at the two of them. On the one hand there’s this bright, alert, handsome animal, and on the other there’s this dust ball with a hangover. I mean, no contest, am I right?” The wonder dog gave a brisk yap. “What dis place? Good boy Laddie!” Gaspode rolled his eyes. “See what I mean?” said Dibbler. “Give him the right name, a bit, a training, and a star is born.” He slapped Victor on the back again. “Nice to see you, nice to see you, drop in again any time, only not too frequently, let’s have lunch sometime, now get out, Soll!” “Coming, Uncle.” Victor was suddenly alone, apart from the dogs and the room full of people. He took the cigar out of his mouth, spat on the glowing end, and carefully hid it behind a potted plant. “A star is whelped,” said a small, withering voice from below. “What he say? Where dis place?” “Don’t look at me,” said Victor. “Nothing to do with me.” “Will you just look at it? I mean, are we talking Thicko City here or what?” sneered Gaspode. “Good boy Laddie!” “Come on,” said Victor. “I’m supposed to be on set in five minutes.” Gaspode trailed after him, muttering under his horrible breath. Victor caught the occasional “old rug” and “Man’s best friend” and “bloody wonder bloody dog”. Finally, he couldn’t stand it any longer. “You’re just jealous,” he said. “What, of an overgrown puppy with a single-figure IQ?” sneered Gaspode. “And a glossy coat, cold nose and probably a pedigree as long as your ar - as my arm,” said Victor. “Pedigree? Pedigree? What’s a pedigree? It’s just breedin’. I had a father too, you know. And two grandads. And four great grandads. And many of ‘em were the same dog, even. So don’t you tell me from no pedigree,” said Gaspode. He paused to cock a leg against one of the supports of the new “Home of Century of the Fruitbat Moving Pictures” sign. That was something else that had puzzled Thomas Silverfish. He’d come in this morning, and the handpainted sign saying “Interesting and Instructive Films” had gone and had been replaced by this huge billboard. He was sitting back in the office with his head in his hands, trying to convince himself that it had been his idea. “I’m the one Holy Wood called,” Gaspode muttered, in a self-pitying voice. “I came all the way here, and then they chose that great hairy thing. Probably it’ll work for a plate of meat a day, too.” “Well, look, maybe you weren’t called to Holy Wood to be a wonder dog,” said Victor. “Maybe it’s got something else in mind for you.” This is ridiculous, he thought. Why are we talking about it like this? A place hasn’t got a mind. It can’t call people to it . . . well, unless you count things like homesickness. But you can’t be homesick for a place you’ve never been to before, it stands to reason. The last time people were here must have been thousands of years ago. Gaspode sniffed at a wall. “Did you tell Dibbler everything I told you?” he said. “Yes. He was very upset when I mentioned about going to Untied Alchemists.” Gaspode sniggered. “An’ you told him what I said about a verbal contract not being worth the paper it’s printed on?” “Yes. He said he didn’t understand what I meant. But he gave me a cigar. And he said he’d pay for me and Ginger to go to AnkhMorpork soon. He said he’s got a really big picture planned.” “What is it?” said Gaspode suspiciously. “He didn’t say.” “Listen, lad,” said Gaspode, “Dibbler’s making a fortune. I counted it. There were five thousand, two hundred and seventy-three dollars and fifty-two pence on Son’s desk. And you earned it. Well, you and Ginger did.” “Gosh!” “Now, there’s some new words I want you to learn,” said Gaspode. “Think you can?” “I hope so.” ““Per-cent-age of the gross”“, said Gaspode. “There. Think you can remember it?” ““Per-cent-age of the gross”,” said Victor. “Good lad.” “What does it mean?” “Don’t you worry about that,” said Gaspode. “You just have to say it’s what you want, OK. When the time’s right.” “When will the time be right, then?” said Victor. Gaspode grinned nastily. “Oh, I reckon when Dibbler’s just got a mouthful of food’d be favourite.” Holy Wood Hill bustled like an ant heap. On the seaward side Fir Wood Studios were making The Third Gnome. Microlithic Pictures, which was run almost entirely by the dwarfs, was hard at work on Golde Diggers of 1457, which was going to be followed by The Golde Rushe. Floating Bladder Pictures was hard at work with Turkey Legs. And Borgle’s was packed out. “I don’t know what it’s called, but we’re doing one about going to see a wizard. Something about following a yellow sick toad,” a man in one half of a lion suit explained to a companion in the queue. “No wizards in Holy Wood, I thought.” “Oh, this one’s all right. He’s not very good at the wizarding.” “So what’s new?” Sound! That was the problem. Alchemists toiled in sheds all over Holy Wood, screaming at parrots, pleading with mynah birds, constructing intricate bottles to trap sound and bounce it around harmlessly until it was time for it to be let out. To the sporadic boom of octo-cellulose exploding was added the occasional sob of exhaustion or scream of agony as an enraged parrot mistook a careless thumb for a nut. The parrots weren’t the success they’d hoped for. It was true that they could remember what they heard and repeat it after a fashion, but there was no way to turn them off and they were in the habit of ad-libbing other sounds they’d heard or, Dibbler suspected, had been taught by mischievous handlemen. Thus, brief snatches of romantic dialogue would be punctuated with cries of “Waaaarrrk! Showusyerknickers!” and Dibbler said he had no intention of making that kind of picture, at least at the moment. Sound! Whoever got sound first would rule Holy Wood, they said. People were flocking to the clicks now, but people were fickle. Colour was different. Colour was just a matter of breeding demons who could paint fast enough. It was sound that meant something new. In the meantime, there were stop-gap measures. The dwarfs’ studio had shunned the general practice of putting the dialogue on cards between scenes and had invented sub-titles, which worked fine provided the performers remembered not to step too far forward and knock over the letters. But if sound was missing, then the screen had to be filled from side to side with a feast for the eyes. The sound of hammering was always Holy Wood’s background noise, but it redoubled now . . . The cities of the world were being built in Holy Wood. Untied Alchemists started it, with a one-tenth-size wood and canvas replica of the Great Pyramid of Tsort. Soon the backlots sprouted whole streets in Ankh-Morpork, palaces from Pseudopolis, castles from the Hublands. In some cases, the streets were painted on the back of the palaces, so that princes and peasants were separated by one thickness of painted sacking. Victor spent the rest of the morning working on a one-reeler. Ginger hardly said a word to him, even after the obligatory kiss when he rescued her from whatever it was Morry was supposed to be today. Whatever magic Holy Wood worked on them it wasn’t doing it today. He was glad to get away. Afterwards he wandered across the backlot to watch them putting Laddie the Wonder Dog through his paces. There was no doubt, as the graceful shape streaked like an arrow over obstacles and grabbed a trainer by a well-padded arm, that here was a dog almost designed by Nature for moving pictures. He even barked photogenically. “An’ do you know what he’s sayin’?” said a disgruntled voice beside Victor. It was Gaspode, a picture of bowlegged misery. “No. What?” said Victor. ““Me Laddie. Me good boy. Good boy Laddie,”“ said Gaspode. “Makes you want to throw up, doesn’t it?” “Yes, but could you leap a six-foot hurdle?” said Victor. “That’s intelligent, is it?” said Gaspode. “I always walk around – what’s that they’re doing now?” “Giving him his lunch, I think.” “They call that lunch, do they?” Victor watched Gaspode stroll over and peer into the dog’s bowl. Laddie gave him a sideways look. Gaspode barked quietly. Laddie whined. Gaspode barked again. There was a lengthy exchange of yaps. Then Gaspode strolled back, and sat down beside Victor. “Watch this,” he said. Laddie took the food bowl in his mouth, and turned it upside down. “Disgustin’ stuff,” said Gaspode. “All tubes and innards. I wouldn’t give it to a dog, and I am one.” “You made him tip out his own dinner?” said Victor, horrified. “Very obedient lad, I thought,” said Gaspode smugly. “What a nasty thing to do!” “Oh, no. I give “im some advice, too.” Laddie barked peremptorily at the people clustering around him. Victor heard them muttering. “Dog don’t eat his dinner,” came Detritus’ voice, “dog go hungry.” “Don’t be daft. Mr. Dibbler says he’s worth more than we are!” “Perhaps it’s not what he’s used to. I mean, a posh dog like him an’ all. It’s a bit yukky, isn’t it?” “It dog food! That what dogs are supposed to eat!” “Yeah, but is it wonder dog food? What’re wonder dogs fed on?” “Mr. Dibbler’ll feed you to him if there’s any trouble.” “All right, all right. Detritus, go around to Borgle’s. See what he’s got. Not the stuff he gives to the usual customers, mind.” “That IS the stuff he give to usual customers.” “That’s what I mean.” Five minutes later Detritus trailed back carrying about nine pounds of raw steak. It was dumped in the dog bowl. The trainers looked at Laddie. Laddie cocked an eye towards Gaspode, who nodded almost imperceptibly. The big dog put one foot on one end of the steak, took the other end in his mouth, and tore off a lump. Then he padded over the compound and dropped it respectfully in front of Gaspode, who gave it a long, calculating stare. “Well, I dunno,” he said at last. “Does that look like ten per cent to you, Victor?” “You negotiated his dinner?” Gaspode’s voice was muffled by meat. “I reckon ten per cent is ver’ fair. Very fair, in the circumstances.” “You know, you really are a son of a bitch,” said Victor. “Proud of it,” said Gaspode, indistinctly. He bolted the last of the steak. “What shall we do now?” “I’m supposed to get an early night. We’re starting for Ankh very early tomorrow,” said Victor doubtfully. “Still not made any progress with the book?” “No.” “Let me have a look, then.” “Can you read?” “Dunno. Never tried.” Victor looked around them. No-one was paying him any attention. They never did. Once the handles stopped turning, no-one bothered about performers; it was like being temporarily invisible. He sat down on a pile of lumber, opened the book randomly at an early page, and held it out in front of Gaspode’s critical stare. Eventually the dog said, “It’s got all marks on it.” Victor sighed. “That’s writing,” he said. Gaspode squinted. “What, all them little pictures?” “Early writing was like that. People drew little pictures to represent ideas.” “So . . . if there’s a lot of one picture, it means it’s an important idea?” “What? Well, yes. I suppose so.” “Like the dead man.” Victor was lost. “The dead man on the beach?” “No. The dead man on the pages. See? Everywhere, there’s the dead man.” Victor gave him an odd look, and then turned the book around and peered at it. “Where? I don’t see any dead men.” Gaspode snorted. “Look, all over the page,” he said. “He looks just like those tombs you get in old temples and stuff. You know? Where they do this statchoo of the stiff lyin’ on top of the tomb, with his arms crossed an’ holdin’ his sword. Dead noble.” “Good grief! You’re right! It does look sort of . . . dead . . . “ “Prob’ly all the writing’s goin’ on about what a great guy he was when he was alive,” said Gaspode knowledgeably. “You know, “Slayer of thousands” stuff. Prob’ly he left a lot of money for priests to say prayers and light candles and sacrifice goats and stuff. There used to be a lot of that sort of thing. You know, you’d get dese guys whorin’ and drinkin’ and carryin’ on regardless their whole life, and then when the old Grim Reaper starts sharpenin’ his scythe they suddenly becomes all pious and pays a lot of priests to give their soul a quick wash-and-brush-up and gen’rally keep on tellin’ the gods what a decent chap they was.” “Gaspode?” said Victor levelly. “What?” “You were a performing dog. How come you know all this stuff?” “I ain’t just a pretty face.” “You aren’t even a pretty face, Gaspode.” The little dog shrugged. “I’ve always had eyes and ears,” he said. “You’d be amazed, the stuff you see and hear when you’re a dog. I dint know what any of it meant at the time, of course. Now I do.” Victor stared at the pages again. There certainly was a figure which, if you half-closed your eyes, looked very much like a statue of a knight with his hands resting on his sword. “It might not mean a man,” he said. “Pictographic writing doesn’t work like that. It’s all down to context, you see.” He racked his brains to think of some of the books he’d seen. “For example, in the Agatean language the signs for “woman’ and “slave” written down together actually mean “wife”.” He looked closely at the page. The dead man - or the sleeping man, or the standing man resting his hands on his sword, the figure was so stylized it was hard to be sure seemed to appear beside another common picture. He ran his finger along the line of pictograms. “See,” he said, “it could be the man figure is only part of a word. See? It’s always to the right of this other picture, which looks a bit like - a bit like a doorway, or something. So it might really mean-” he hesitated.”“Doorway/man”,” he hazarded. He turned the book slightly. “Could be some old king,” said Gaspode. “Could mean something like The Man with the Sword is Imprisoned, or something. Or maybe it means Watch Out, There’s a Man with a Sword behind the Door. Could mean anything, really.” Victor squinted at the book again. “It’s funny,” he said. “It doesn’t look dead. Just . . . not alive. Waiting to be alive? A waiting man with a sword?” Victor peered at the little man-figure. It had hardly any features, but still managed to look vaguely familiar. “You know,” he said, “it looks just like my Uncle Osric . . .” Clickaclickaclicka. Click. The film spun to a standstill. There was a thunder of applause, a stamping of feet and a barrage of empty banged grain bags. In the very front row of the Odium the Librarian stared up at the now-empty screen. It was the fourth time that afternoon he’d watched Shadow of the Dessert, because there’s something about a 300lb orangutan that doesn’t encourage people to order it out of the pit between houses. A drift of peanut shells and screwed up paper bags lay around his feet. The Librarian loved the clicks. They spoke to something in his soul. He’d even started writing a story which he thought would make a very good moving picture.[18] Everyone he showed it to said it was jolly good, often even before they’d read it. But something about this click was worrying him. He’d sat through it four times, and he was still worried. He eased himself out of the three seats he was occupying and knuckled his way up the aisle and into the little room where Bezam was rewinding the film. Bezam looked up as the door opened. “Get out-” he began, and then grinned desperately and said, “Hallo, sir. Pretty good click, eh? We’ll be showing it again any minute now and - what the hell are you doing? You can’t do that!” The Librarian ripped the huge roll of film off the projector and pulled it through his leathery fingers, holding it up to the light. Bezam tried to snatch it back and got a palm in his chest that sat him firmly on the floor, where great coils of film piled up on top of him. He watched in horror as the great ape grunted, grasped a piece of the film in both hands and, with two bites, edited it. Then the Librarian picked him up, dusted him off, patted him on the head, thrust the great pile of unwound click into his helpless arms, and ambled swiftly out of the room with a few frames of film dangling from one paw. Bezam stared helplessly after him. “You’re banned!” he shouted, when he judged the ape to be safely out of earshot. Then he looked down at the two severed ends. Breaks in films weren’t unusual. Bezam had spent many a flustered few minutes feverishly cutting and pasting while the audience cheerfully stamped its feet and high-spiritedly threw peanuts, knives and double-headed axes at the screen. He let the coils fall around him and reached for the scissors and glue. At least - he found, after holding the two ends up to the lantern - the Librarian hadn’t taken a very interesting bit. Odd, that. Bezam wouldn’t have put it past the ape to have taken a bit where the girl was definitely showing too much chest, or one of the fight scenes. But all he’d wanted was a piece that showed the Sons galloping down from their mountain fastness, in single file, on identical camels. “Dunno what he wanted that for,” he muttered, taking the lid off the glue pot. “It just shows a lot of rocks.” Victor and Gaspode stood among the sand dunes near the beach. “That’s where the driftwood but is,” said Victor, pointing, “and then if you look hard you can see there’s a sort of road pointing straight towards the hill. But there’s nothing on the hill but the old trees.” Gaspode looked back at Holy Wood Bay. “Funny it bein’ circular,” he said. “I thought so,” said Victor. “I heard once where there was this city that was so wicked that the gods turned it into a puddle of molten glass,” said Gaspode, apropos of nothing. “And the only person who saw it happen was turned into a pillar of salt by day and a cheese shaker by night.” “Gosh. What had the people been doing?” “Dunno. Prob’ly not much. It doesn’t take much to annoy gods.” “Me good boy! Good boy Laddie!” The dog came streaking over the dunes, a comet of gold and orange hair. It skidded to a halt in front of Gaspode, and then began to dance around excitedly, yapping. “He’s escaped and he wants me to play with him,” said Gaspode despondently. “Ridiculous, ain’t it? Laddie drop dead.” Laddie rolled over obediently, all four legs in the air. “See? He understands every word I say,” muttered Gaspode. “He likes you,” said Victor. “Huh,” sniffed Gaspode. “How’re dogs ever goin’ to amount to anything if they bounce around worshipping people just ‘cos they’ve been given a meal? What’s he want me to do with this??” Laddie had dropped a stick in front of Gaspode and was looking at him expectantly. “He wants you to throw it,” said Victor. “What for?” “So he can bring it back.” “What I don’t understand,” said Gaspode, as Victor picked up the stick and hurled it away, Laddie racing along underneath it, “is how come we’re descended from wolves. I mean, your average wolf, he’s a bright bugger, know what I mean? Chock full of cunnin’ an’ like that. We’re talking grey paws racing over the trackless tundra, is what I’m getting at.” Gaspode looked wistfully at the distant mountains. “And suddenly a handful of generations later we’ve got Percy the Pup here with a cold nose, bright eyes, glossy coat and the brains of a stunned herring.” “And you,” said Victor. Laddie whirled back in a storm of sand and dropped the damp stick in front of him. Victor picked it up and threw it again. Laddie bounded off, yapping himself sick with excitement. “Well, yeah,” said Gaspode, ambling along in a bowlegged swagger. “Only I can look after myself. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there. You think Dopey the Mutt there would last five minutes in Ankh-Morpork? He set one paw in some o’ the streets, he’s three sets of fur gloves an’ Crispy Fried No. 27 at the nearest Klatchian all-night carryout.” Victor threw the stick again. “Tell me,” he said, “who was the famous Gaspode you’re named after?” “You never heard of him?” “No.” “He was dead famous.” “He was a dog?” “Yeah. It was years and years ago. There was this ole bloke in Ankh who snuffed it, and he belonged to one of them religions where they bury you after you’re dead, an’, they did, and he had this ole dog-” “–called Gaspode–?” “Yeah, and this ole dog had been his only companion and after they buried the man he lay down on his grave and howled and howled for a couple of weeks. Growled at everybody who came near. An’ then died.” Victor paused in the act of throwing the stick again. “That’s very sad,” he said. He threw. Laddie tore along underneath it, and disappeared into a stand of scrubby trees on the hillside. “Yeah. Everyone says it demonstrates a dog’s innocent and undyin’ love for ‘is master,” said Gaspode, spitting the words out as if they were ashes. “You don’t believe that, then?” “Not really. I b’lieve any bloody dog will stay still an’ howl when you’ve just lowered the gravestone on his tail,” said Gaspode. There was a ferocious barking. “Don’t worry about it. He’s probably found a threatening rock or something,” said Gaspode. He’d found Ginger. The Librarian knuckled purposefully through the maze of Unseen University’s library and descended the steps towards the maximum security shelves. Nearly all the books in the Library were, being magical, considerably more dangerous than ordinary books; most of them were chained to the bookcases to stop them flapping around. But the lower levels . . . . . . there they kept the rogue books, the books whose behaviour or mere contents demanded a whole shelf, a whole room to themselves. Cannibal books, books which, if left on a shelf with their weaker brethren, would be found looking considerably fatter and more smug in the smoking ashes next morning. Books whose mere contents pages could reduce the unprotected mind to grey cheese. Books that were not just books of magic, but magical books. There’s a lot of loose thinking about magic. People go around talking about mystic harmonies and cosmic balances and unicorns, all of which is to real magic what a glove puppet is to the Royal Shakespeare Company. Real magic is the hand around the bandsaw, the thrown spark in the powder keg, the dimension-warp linking you straight into the heart of a star, the flaming sword that burns all the way down to the pommel. Sooner juggle torches in a tar pit than mess with real magic. Sooner lie down in front of a thousand elephants. At least, that’s what wizards say, which is why they charge such swingeingly huge fees for getting involved with the bloody stuff. But down here, in the dark tunnels, there was no hiding behind amulets and starry robes and pointy hats. Down here, you either had it or you didn’t. And if you hadn’t got it, you’d had it. There were sounds from behind the heavily barred doors as the Librarian shuffled along. Once or twice something heavy threw itself against a door, making the hinges rattle. There were noises. The orang-utan stopped in front of an arched doorway that was blocked with a door made not of wood but of stone, balanced so that it could easily be opened from outside but could withstand massive pressure from within. He paused for a moment, and then reached into a little alcove and removed a mask of iron and smoked glass, which he put on, and a pair of heavy leather gloves reinforced with steel mesh. There was also a torch made of oil-soaked rags; he lit this from one of the flickering braziers in the tunnel. At the back of the alcove was a brass key. He took the key, and then he took a deep breath. All the Books of Power had their own particular natures. The Octavo was harsh and imperious. The Bumper Fun Grimoire went in for deadly practical jokes. The Joy of Tantric Sex had to be kept under iced water. The Librarian knew them all, and how to deal with them. This one was different. Usually people saw only tenth- or twelfthhand copies, as like the real thing as a painting of an explosion was to, well, to an explosion. This was a book that had absorbed the sheer, graphite-grey evil of its subject matter. Its name was hacked in letters over the arch, lest men and apes forget. NECROTELICOMNICON. He put the key in the lock, and offered up a prayer to the gods. “Oook,” he said fervently. “Gook.” The door swung open. In the darkness within, a chain gave a fait clink. “She’s still breathing,” said Victor. Laddie leapt around them, barking furiously. “Maybe you should loosen her clothing or something,” said Gaspode. “It’s just a thought,” he added. “You don’t have to glare at me like that. I’m a dog, what do I know?” “She seems all right, but . . . look at her hands,” said Victor. “What the hell has she been trying to do?” “Tryin’ to open that door,” said Gaspode. “What door?” “That door there.” Part of the hill had slipped away. Huge blocks of masonry protruded from the sand. There were the stubs of ancient pillars, sticking up like fluoridated teeth. Between two of them was an arched doorway, three times as high as Victor. It was sealed with a pair of pale grey doors, either of stone or of wood that had become as hard as stone over the years. One of them was slightly open, but had been prevented from opening further by the drifts of sand in front of it. Frantically scrabbled furrows had been dug deep into the sand. Ginger had been trying to shift it with her bare hands. “Stupid thing to do in this heat,” said Victor, vaguely. He looked from the door to the sea, and then down at Gaspode. Laddie scrambled up the sand and barked excitedly at the crack between the doors. “What’s he doing that for?” said Victor, suddenly feeling spooked. “All his hair is standing up. You don’t think he’s got one of those mysterious animal premonitions of evil, do you?” “I think he’s a pillock,” said Gaspode. “Laddie shut up!” There was a yelp. Laddie recoiled from the door, lost his balance on the shifting sand, and rolled down the slope. He leapt to his feet and started barking again; not ordinary stupid-dog barking this time, but the genuine treed-cat variety. Victor leaned forward and touched the door. It felt very cold, despite the perpetual heat of Holy Wood, and there was just the faint suspicion of vibration. He ran his fingers over the surface. There was a roughness there, as though there had been a carving that had been worn into obscurity over the years. “A door like that,” said Gaspode, behind him, “a door like that, if you want my opinion, a door like that, a door like that,” he took a deep breath, “bodes.” “Hmm? What? Bodes what?” “It don’t have to bode anything,” said Gaspode. “Just basic bodingness is bad enough, take it from me.” “It must have been important. Looks a bit temple-ish,” said Victor. “Why’d she want to open it?” “Bits of cliff sliding down an’ mysterious doors appearin’,” said Gaspode, shaking his head. “That’s a lot of boding. Let’s go somewhere far away and really think about it, eh?” Ginger gave a groan. Victor crouched down. “What’d she say?” “Dunno,” said Gaspode. “It sounded like “I want to be a lawn”, I thought?” “Daft. Touch of the sun there, I reckon,” said Gaspode knowledgeably. “Maybe you’re right. Her head certainly feels very hot.” He picked her up, staggering a little under the weight. “Come on,” he managed. “Let’s get down into the town. It’ll be getting dark soon.” He looked around at the stunted trees. The door lay in a sort of hollow, which presumably caught enough dew to make the growth there slightly less desiccated than elsewhere. “You know, this place looks familiar,” he said. “We did our first click here. It’s where I first met her.” “Very romantic,” said Gaspode distantly, hurrying away with Laddie bounding happily around him. “If something ‘orrible comes out of that door, you can fink of it as Our Monster.” “Hey! Wait!” “Hurry up, then.” “What would she want to be a lawn for, do you think?” “Beats me . . . “ After they had gone silence poured back into the hollow. A little later, the sun set. Its long light hit the door, turning the merest scratches into deep relief. With the help of imagination, they might just have formed the image of a man. With a sword. There was the faintest of noises as, grain by grain, sand trickled away from the door. By midnight it had opened by at least a sixteenth of an inch. Holy Wood dreamed. It dreamed of waking up. Ruby damped down the fires under the vats, put the benches on the tables, and prepared to shut the Blue Lias. But just before blowing out the last lamp she hesitated in front of the mirror. He’d be waiting out there again tonight. Just like every night. He’d been in during the evening, grinning to himself. He was planning something. Ruby had been taking advice from some of the girls who worked in the clicks, and in addition to her feather boa she’d now invested in a broad-rimmed hat with some sort of oograah, cherries she thought they were called, in it. She’d been assured that the effect was stunning. The trouble, she had to admit, was that he was, well, a very hunky troll. For millions of years troll women had been naturally attracted to trolls built like a monolith with an apple on top. Ruby’s treacherous instincts were firing messages up her spine, insidiously insisting that in those long fangs and bandy legs was everything a troll girl could wish for in a mate. Trolls like Rock or Morry, of course, were far more modern and could do things like use a knife and fork, but there was something, well, reassuring about Detritus. Perhaps it was the way his knuckles touched the ground so dynamically. And apart from anything else, she was sure she was brighter than he was. There was a sort of gormless unstoppability about him that she found rather fascinating. That was the instincts at work again - intelligence has never been a particularly valuable survival trait in a troll. And she had to admit that, whatever she might attempt in the way of feather boas and fancy hats, she was pushing 140 and was 400 lbs above the fashionable weight. If only he’d buck his ideas up. Or at least, buck one idea up. Maybe this make-up the girls had been talking about could be worth a try. She sighed, blew out the lamp, opened the door and stepped out into a maze of roots. A gigantic tree stretched the whole length of the alley. He must have dragged it for miles. The few surviving branches poked through windows or waved forlornly in the air. In the middle of it all was Detritus, perched proudly on the trunk, his face split in a watermelon grin, his arms spread wide. “Tra-laa!” he said. Ruby heaved a gigantic sigh. Romance wasn’t easy, when you were a troll. The Librarian forced the page open and chained it down. The book tried to snap at him. Its contents had made it what it was. Evil and treacherous. It contained forbidden knowledge. Well, not actually forbidden. No-one had ever gone so far as forbidding it. Apart from anything else, in order to forbid it you’d have to know what it was, which was forbidden. But it definitely contained the sort of information which, once you knew it, you wished you hadn’t.[19] Legend said that any mortal man who read more than a few lines of the original copy would die insane. This was certainly true. Legend also said that the book contained illustrations that would make a strong man’s brain dribble out of his ears. This was probably true, too. Legend went on to say that merely opening the Necrotelicomnicon would cause a man’s flesh to crawl off his hand and up his arm. No-one actually knew if this was true, but it sounded horrible enough to be true and no-one was about to try any experiments. Legend had a lot to say about the Necrotelicomnicon, in fact, but absolutely nothing to say about orang-utans, who could tear the book into little bits and chew it for all legend cared. The worst that had ever happened to the Librarian after looking at it was a mild migraine and a touch of eczema, but that was no reason to take chances. He adjusted the smoked glass of the visor and ran one black-leather finger down the Index; the words bridled as the digit slid past, and tried to bite it. Occasionally he’d hold the strip of film up to the light of the flickering torch. The wind and sand had blurred them, but there was no doubt that there were carvings on the rock. And the Librarian had seen designs like that before. He found the reference he was looking for and, after a brief struggle during which he had to threaten the Necrotelicomnicon with the torch, forced the book to turn to the page. He peered closer. Good old Achmed the I Just Get These Headaches . . . “ . . . and in that hill, it is said, a Door out of the World was found, and people of the city watched What was Seen therein, knowing not that Dread waited between the universes . . . “ The Librarian’s fingertip dragged from right to left across the pictures, and skipped to the next paragraph. “ . . . for Others found the Gate of Holy Wood and fell upon the World, and in one nighte All Manner of Madnesse befell, and Chaos prevailed, and the City sank beneath the Sea, and all became one withe the fishes and the lobsters save for the few who fled . . . “ He curled a lip, and looked further down the page. “ . . . a Golden Warrior, who drove the Fiends back and saved the World, and said, Where the Gate is, There Am I Also; I Am He that was Born of Holy Wood, to guard the Wild Idea. And they said, What must we do to Destroy the Gate Forever, and he said unto them, This you Cannot Do, for it is Not a Thing, but I will Guard the Gate for you. And they, not having been Born yesterday, and fearing the Cure more than the Malady, said to him, What will you Take from Us, that you will Guard the Door. And he grew until he was the height of a tree and said, Only your Remembrance, that I do Not Sleep. Three times a day will you remember Holy Wood. Else The Cities of the World Will Tremble and Fall, and you will See the Greatest of them All in Flames. And with that the Golden Man took up his golden sword and went into the Hill and stood at the Gate, forever. “And the People said to one another, Funny, he lookes just like my Uncle Osbert . . . “ The Librarian turned the page. “ . . . But there were among them, humans and animals alike, those touched by the magic of Holy Wood. It goeth through the generations like an ancient curse, until the priests cease in their Remembrance and the Golden Man sleepeth. Then let the world Beware . . . “ The Librarian let the book snap shut. It wasn’t an uncommon legend. He’d read it before at least, had read most of it - in books considerably less dangerous than this. You came across variants in all the cities of the Sto Plain. There had been a city once, in the mists of pre-history - bigger than Ankh-Morpork, if that were possible. And the inhabitants had done something, some sort of unspeakable crime not just against Mankind or the gods but against the very nature of the universe itself, which had been so dreadful that it had sunk beneath the sea one stormy night. Only a few people had survived to carry to the barbarian peoples in the less-advanced parts of the Disc all the arts and crafts of civilization, such as usury and macrame. No-one had ever really taken it seriously. It was just one of those usual “If you don’t stop it you’ll go blind” myths that civilizations tended to hand on to their descendants. After all, Ankh-Morpork itself was generally considered as wicked a city as you could hope to find in a year of shore leaves, and seemed to have avoided any kind of supernatural vengeance, although it was always possible that it had taken place and no-one had noticed. Legend had always put the nameless city far away and long ago. No-one knew where it was, or even if it had existed. The Librarian glanced at the symbols again. They were very familiar. They were on the old ruins all over Holy Wood. Azhural stood on a low hill, watching the sea of elephants move below him. Here and there a supply wagon bobbed between the dusty grey bodies like a rudderless boat. A mile of veldt was being churned into a soggy mud wallow, bare of grass - although, by the smell of it, it’d be the greenest patch on the Disc after the rains came. He dabbed at his eyes with a corner of his robe. Three hundred and sixty-three! Who’d have thought it? The air was solid with the piqued trumpeting of three hundred and sixty-three elephants. And with the hunting and trapping parties already going on ahead, there should be plenty more. According to M’Bu, anyway. And he wasn’t going to argue. Funny, that. For years he’d thought of M’Bu as a sort of mobile smile. A handy lad with a brush and shovel, but not what you might call a major achiever. And then suddenly someone somewhere wanted a thousand elephants, and the lad had raised his head and a gleam had come into his eye and you could see that under that grin was a skilled kilopachydermatolist ready to answer the call. Funny. You could know someone for their whole life and not realize that the gods had put them in this world to move a thousand elephants around the place. Azhural had no sons. He’d already made up his mind to leave everything to his assistant. Everything he had at this point amounted to three hundred and sixty-three elephants and, ahaha, a mammoth overdraft, but it was the thought that counted. M’Bu trotted up the path towards him, his clipboard held firmly under one arm. “Everything ready, boss,” he said. “You just got to say the word.” Azhural drew himself up. He looked around at the heaving plain, the distant baobab trees, the purple mountains. Oh, yes. The mountains. He’d had misgivings about the mountains. He’d mentioned them to M’Bu, who said, “We’ll cross them bridges when we get to ‘em, boss,” and when Azhural had pointed out that there weren’t any bridges, had looked him squarely in the eye and said firmly, “First we build them bridge, then we cross ‘em.” Far beyond the mountains was the Circle Sea and Ankh-Morpork and this Holy Wood place. Far-away places with strange sounding names. A wind blew across the veldt, carrying faint whispers, even here. Azhural raised his staff. “It’s fifteen hundred miles to Ankh-Morpork,” he said. “We’ve got three hundred and sixty-three elephants, fifty carts of forage, the monsoon’s about to break and we’re wearing . . . we’re wearing . . . sort of things, like glass, only dark . . . dark glass things on our eyes . . . “ His voice trailed off. His brow furrowed, as if he’d just been listening to his own voice and hadn’t understood it. “ The air seemed to glitter. He saw M’Bu staring at him. He shrugged. “Let’s go,” he said. M’Bu cupped his hands. He’d spent all night working out the order of the march. “Blue Section bilong Uncle N’gru – forward!” he shouted. “Yellow Section bilong Aunti Googool – forward! Green Section bilong Second-cousin! Kck! - forward . . . “ An hour later the veldt in front of the low hill was deserted except for a billion flies and one dung beetle who couldn’t believe his luck. Something went “plop” on the red dust, throwing up a little crater. And again, and again. Lightning split the trunk of a nearby baobab. The rains began. Victor’s back was beginning to ache. Carrying young women to safety looked a good idea on paper, but had major drawbacks after the first hundred yards. “Have you any idea where she lives?” he said. “And is it somewhere close?” “No idea,” said Gaspode. “She once said something about it being over a clothes shop,” said Victor. “That’ll be in the alley alongside Borgle’s then,” said Gaspode. Gaspode and Laddie led the way through the alleys and up a rickety outside staircase. Maybe they smelled out Ginger’s room. Victor wasn’t going to argue with mysterious animal senses. Victor went up the back stairs as quietly as possible. He was dimly aware that where people stayed was often infested by the Common or Greatly Suspicious Landlady, and he felt that he had enough problems as it was. He used Ginger’s feet to push open the door. It was a small room, low-ceilinged and furnished with the sad, washed-out furniture found in rented rooms across the multiverse. At least, that’s how it had started out. What it was furnished with now was Ginger. She had saved every poster. Even those from early clicks, when she was just in very small print as A Girl. They were thumb-tacked to the walls. Ginger’s face - and his own stared at him from every angle. There was a large mirror at one end of the poky room, and a couple of half-burned candles in front of him. Victor deposited the girl carefully on the narrow bed and then stared around him, very carefully. His sixth, seventh and eighth senses were screaming at him. He was in a place of magic. “It’s like a sort of temple,” he said. “A temple to . . . herself.” “It gives me the willies,” said Gaspode. Victor stared. Maybe he’d always successfully avoided being awarded the pointy hat and big staff, but he had acquired wizard instincts. He had a sudden vision of a city under the sea, with octopuses curling stealthily through the drowned doorways and lobsters watching the streets. “Fate don’t like it when people take up more space than they ought to. Everyone knows that.” I’m going to be the most famous person in the whole world, thought Victor. That’s what she sail. He shook his head. “No,” he said aloud. “She just likes posters. It’s just ordinary vanity.” It didn’t sound believable, even to him. The room fairly hummed with . . . . . . what? He hadn’t felt anything like it before. Power of some sort, certainly. Something that was brushing tantalizingly against his senses. Not exactly magic. At least, not the kind he was used to. But something that seemed similar while not being the same, like sugar compared with salt; the same shape and the same colour, but . . . Ambition wasn’t magical. Powerful, yes, but not magical . . . surely? Magic wasn’t difficult. That was the big secret that the whole baroque edifice of wizardry had been set up to conceal. Anyone with a bit of intelligence and enough perseverance could do magic, which was why the wizards cloaked it with rituals and the whole pointyhat business. The trick was to do magic and get away with it. Because it was as if the human race was a field of corn and magic helped the users grow just that bit taller, so that they stood out. That attracted the attention of the gods and - Victor hesitated - other Things outside this world. People who used magic without knowing what they were doing usually came to a sticky end. All over the entire room, sometimes. He pictured Ginger, back on the beach. I want to be the most famous person in the whole world. Perhaps that was something new, come to think of it. Not ambition for gold, or power, or land or all the things that were familiar parts of the human world. Just ambition to be yourself, as big as possible. Not ambition for, but to be. He shook his head. He was just in some room in some cheap building in some town that was about as real as, as, as, well, as the thickness of a click. It wasn’t the place to have thoughts like this. The important thing was to remember that Holy Wood wasn’t a real place at all. He stared at the posters again. You just get one chance, she said. You live for maybe seventy years, and if you’re lucky you get one chance. Think of all the natural skiers who are born in deserts. Think of all the genius blacksmiths who were born hundreds of years before anyone invented the horse. All the skills that are never used. All the wasted chances. How lucky for me, he thought gloomily, that I happen to be alive at this time. Ginger turned over in her sleep. At least her breathing was more regular now. “Come on,” said Gaspode. “It’s not right, you being alone in a lady’s boodwah.” “I’m not alone,” Victor said. “She’s with me.” “That’s the point,” said Gaspode. “Woof,” Laddie added, loyally. “You know,” said Victor, following the dogs down the stairs, “I’m beginning to feel there’s something wrong here. There’s something going on and I don’t know what it is. Why was she trying to get into the hill?” “Prob’ly in league with dread Powers,” said Gaspode. “The city and the hill and the old book and everything,” said Victor, ignoring this. “It all makes sense if only I knew what was connecting it.” He stepped out into the early evening, into the lights and noise of Holy Wood. “Tomorrow we’ll go up there in the daylight and sort this out once and for all,” he said. “No, we won’t,” said Gaspode. “The reason being, tomorrow we’re goin’ to Ankh-Morpork, remember?” “We?” said Victor. “Ginger and I are going. I didn’t know about you.” “Laddie goin”, too,” said Gaspode. “I-” “Good boy Laddie!” “Yeah, yeah. I heard the trainers say. So I’ve got to go with him to see he don’t get into any trouble, style of fing.” Victor yawned. “Well, I’m going to go to bed. We’ll probably have to start early.” Gaspode looked innocently up and down the alley. Somewhere a door opened and there was the sound of drunken laughter. “I fought I might have a bit of a stroll before turnin’ in,” he said. “Show Laddie-” “Laddie good boy!” “-the sights and that.” Victor looked doubtful. “Don’t keep him out too late,” he said. “People will worry.” “Yeah, right,” said Gaspode. “G”night.” He sat and watched Victor wander off. “Huh,” he said, under his dreadful breath. “Catch anyone worryin’ about me.” He glared up at Laddie, who sprang to obedient attention. “Right, young fells-me-pup,” he said. “‘S time you got educated. Lesson One, Glomming Free Drinks in Bars. It’s lucky for you”, he added, “that you met me.” Two canine shapes staggered uncertainly up the midnight street. “We’re poor li’l lambs”, Gaspode howled, “wot have loorst our way . . . “ “Woof! Woof! Woof!” “We’re li’l loorst sheeps wot have - wot have . . . “ Gaspode sagged down, and scratched an ear, or at least where he vaguely thought an ear might be. His leg waved uncertainly in the air. Laddie gave him a sympathetic look. It had been an amazingly successful evening. Gaspode had always got his free drinks by simply sitting and staring intently at people until they got uncomfortable and poured him some beer in a saucer in the hope that he would drink it and go away. It was slow and tedious, but as a technique it had served him well. Whereas Laddie . . . Laddie did tricks. Laddie could drink out of bottles. Laddie could bark the number of fingers people held up; so could Gaspode, of course, but it had never occurred to him that such an activity could be rewarded. Laddie could home in on young women who were being taken out for the evening by a hopeful swain and lay his head on their lap and give them such a soulful look that the swain would buy him a saucer of beer and a bag of goldfish-shaped biscuits just in order to impress the prospective loved-one. Gaspode had never been able to do that, because he was too short for laps and, anyway, got nothing but disgusted screams if he tried it. He’d sat under the table in perplexed disapproval to begin with, and then in alcoholic perplexed disapproval, because Laddie was generosity itself when it came to sharing saucers of beer. Now, after they’d both been thrown out, Gaspode decided it was time for a lecture in true dogness. “You don’t want to go himblong. Umlong. Humbling yourself to ‘umans,” he said. “It’s letting everyone down. We’ll never frow off the shackles of dependency on mankind if dogs like you go aroun’ bein’ glad to see people the whole time. I was person’ly disgusted when you did that Lyin’-on-your-back-and-playin’-dead routine, let me tell you.” “Woof.” “You’re just a running dog of the human imperialists,” said Gaspode severely. Laddie put his paws over his nose. Gaspode tried to stand up, tripped over his legs, and sat down heavily. After a while a couple of huge tears coursed down his fur. “Concourse,” he said, “I never had a chance, you know.” He managed to get back on all four feet. “I mean, look at the start I had in life. Frone inna river inna sack. An actual sack, Dear little puppy dog opens his eyes, look out in wonder at the world, style offing, he’s in this sack.” The tears dripped off his nose. “For two weeks I thought the brick was my mother.” “Woof,” said Laddie, with uncomprehending sympathy. “Just my luck they threw me in the Ankh,” Gaspode went on. “Any other river, I’d have drowned and gone to doggy heaven. I heard where this big black ghostly dog comes up to you when you die an’ says, your time has gome. Cone. Come.” Gaspode stared at nothing much. “Can’t sink in the Ankh, though,” he said thoughtfully. “Ver’ tough river, the Ankh.” “Woof.” “It shouldn’t happen to a dog,” said Gaspode. “Metaphorically.” “Woof.” Gaspode peered blearily at Laddie’s bright, alert and irrevocably stupid face. “You don’t understand a bloody word I’ve been saying, do you?” he muttered. “Woof.” said Laddie, begging. “Lucky bugger,” sighed Gaspode. There was a commotion at the other end of the alley. He heard a voice say, “There he is! Here, Laddie! Here, boy!” The words dripped relief. “It’s the Man,” growled Gaspode. “You don’t have to go.” “Good boy Laddie! Laddie good boy!” barked Laddie, trotting forward obediently, if a little unsteadily. “We’ve been looking for you everywhere!” muttered one of the trainers, raising a stick. “Don’t hit it!” said the other trainer. “You’ll ruin everything.” He peered into the alley, and met Gaspode’s stare coming the other way. “That’s the fleabag that’s been hanging around,” he said. “It gives me the creeps.” “Heave something at it,” suggested the other man. The trainer reached down and picked up a stone. When he stood up again the alley was empty. Drunk or sober, Gaspode had perfect reflexes in certain circumstances. “See?” the trainer said, glaring at the shadows. “It’s like it’s some kind of mind reader.” “It’s just a mutt,” said his companion. “Don’t worry about it. Come on, get the leash on this one and let’s get him back before Mr. Dibbler finds out.” Laddie followed them obediently back to Century of the Fruitbat, and allowed himself to be chained up to his kennel. Possibly he didn’t like the idea, but it was hard to be sure in the network of duties, obligations and vague emotional shadows that made up what, for want of a better word, had to be called his mind. He pulled experimentally on the chain once or twice, and then lay down, awaiting developments. After a while a small hoarse voice on the other side of the fence said, “I could send you a bone with a file in it, only you’d eat it.” Laddie perked up. “Good boy Laddie! Good boy Gaspode!” “Ssh! Ssh! At least they ort to let you speak to a lawyer,” said Gaspode. “Chaining someone up’s against human rights.” “Woof.” “Anyway, I paid ‘em back. I followed the ‘orrible one back to his house an’ piddled all down his front door.” “Woof.” Gaspode sighed, and waddled away. Sometimes, in his heart of hearts, he wondered whether it wouldn’t after all be nice to belong to someone. Not just be owned by them or chained up by them, but actually belong, so that you were glad to see them and carried their slippers in your mouth and pined away when they died, etc. Laddie actually liked that kind of stuff, if you could call it “liked”; it was more like something built into his bones. Gaspode wondered darkly if this was true dogness, and growled deep in his throat. It wasn’t, if he had anything to do with it. Because true dogness wasn’t about slippers and walkies and pining for people, Gaspode was sure. Dogness was about being tough and independent and mean. Yeah. Gaspode had heard that all canines could interbreed, even back to the original wolves, so that must mean that, deep down inside, every dog was a wolf. You could make a dog out of a wolf, but you couldn’t take the wolf out of a dog. When the hardpad was acting up and the fleas were feisty and acting full of plumptiousness, it was a comforting thought. Gaspode wondered how you went about mating with a wolf, and what happened to you when you stopped. Well, that didn’t matter. What mattered was that true dogs didn’t go around going mad with pleasure just because a human said something to them. Yeah. He growled at a pile of trash and dared it to disagree. Part of the pile moved, and a feline face with a defunct fish in its mouth peered out at him. He was just about to bark half-heartedly at it, for tradition’s sake, when it spat the fish out and spoke to him. “Hallo, Gathpode.” Gaspode relaxed. “Oh. Hallo, cat. No offence meant. Didn’t know it was you.” “I hateth fisth,” said the cat, “but at leasth they don’t talk back.” Another part of the trash moved and Squeak the mouse emerged. “What’re you two doin’ down here?” said Gaspode. “I thought you said it was safer on the hill.” “Not any more,” said the cat. “It”sh getting too shpooky.” Gaspode frowned. “You’re a cat,” he said disapprovingly. “You ort to be right alongside the idea of spooky.” “Yeah, but that doesh’nt exhtend to having golden sparks crackling off your fur and the ground shaking the whole time. And weird voices that you think must be happening in your own head,” said cat. “It’s becoming eldritch up there.” “So we all came down,” said Squeak. “Mr. Thumpy and the duck are hiding out in the dunes-” Another cat dropped off the fence beside them. It was large and ginger and not blessed with Holy Wood intelligence. It stared at the sight of a mouse looking relaxed in the presence of a cat. Squeak nudged cat on the paw. “Get rid of it,” he said. Cat glared at the newcomer. “Sod off,” he said. “Go on, beat it. Gods; thish ish so humiliating.” “Not just for you,” said Gaspode, as the new cat trotted away shaking its head. “If some of the dogs in this town see me chatting to a cat, my street cred is going to go way down.” “We were reckoning”, said the cat, with the occasional nervous glance towards Squeak, “that maybe we ought to give in and see if, see if, see if-” “He’s trying to say there might be a place for us in moving pictures,” said Squeak. “What do you think?” “As a double act?” said Gaspode. They nodded. “Not a chance,” he said. “Who’s going to pay good money to see cats and mice chasing one another? They’re only interested even in dogs if they jus’ pander to humans the whole time, so they certainly ain’t going to watch a cat chase a mouse. Take it from me. I know about movin’ pictures.” “Then it’s about time your humans got it sorted out so we can go home,” snapped the mouse. “The boy isn’t doing anything.” “He’s useless,” said the mouse. “He’s in love,” said Gaspode. “It’s very tricky.” “Yeah, I know how it ish,” said the cat sympathetically. “People throwing old boots and things at you.” “Old boots?” said the mouse. “That’sh what’s always happened to me when I’ve been in love,” said cat wistfully. “It’s different for humans,” said Gaspode uncertainly. “You don’t get so many boots and buckets of water thrown at you. It’s more, er, flowers and arguing and stuff.” The animals looked glumly at one another. “I’ve watched ‘em,” said Squeak. “She thinks he’s a idiot.” “That’s all part of it,” added Gaspode. “They call it romance.” Cat shrugged. “Give me a boot every time. You know where you stand, with a boot.” The glittering spirit of Holy Wood streamed out into the world, no longer a trickle but a flood. It bubbled in the veins of people, even of animals. When the handlemen turned their handles, it was there. When the carpenters hammered their nails, they hammered for Holy Wood. Holy Wood was in Borgle’s stew, in the sand, in the air. It was growing. And it was going to flower . . . Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler, or C.M.O.T. as he liked to be called, sat up in bed and stared at the darkness. In his head a city was on fire. He fumbled hurriedly beside his bed for the matches, managed to light the candle, and eventually located a pen. There was no paper. He specifically told everyone there ought to be some paper by his bed, in case he woke up with an idea. That’s when you got the best ideas, when you were asleep. At least there was a pen and ink . . . Images sleeted past his eyes. Catch them now, or let them go forever . . . He snatched up the pen and started to scribble on the bedsheets. A Man and A Woman Aflame With Passione in A Citie Riven by Sivil War! The pen scritched and spluttered its way across the coarse linen. Yes! Yes! This was it! He’d show ‘em, with their silly plaster pyramids and penny-and-dime palaces. This was the one they’d have to look up to! When the history of Holy Wood was written this was the one they’d point to and say: That was the Moving Picture to End all Moving Pictures! Trolls! Battles! Romance! People with thin moustaches! Soldiers of fortune! And one woman’s fight to keep the - Dibbler hesitated - something-or-other she loves, we’ll think about this later, in a world gone mad! The pen jerked and tore and raced onwards. Brother against brother! Women in crinoline dresses slapping people’s faces! A mighty dynasty brought low! A great city aflame! Not with passione, he made a note in the margin, but with flame. Possibly even He bit his lip. Yeah. He’d been waiting for this! Yeah! A thousand elephants! (Later Soll Dibbler said, “Look, Uncle, the Ankh-Morpork civil war - great idea. No problem with that. Famous historical occurrence, no problem. It’s just that none of the historians mentioned seeing any elephants.” “It was a big war,” said Dibbler defensively. “You’re bound to miss things.” “Not a thousand elephants, I think.” “Who’s running this studio?” “It’s just that-” “Listen,” said Dibbler. “Maybe they didn’t have a thousand elephants, but we’re going to have a thousand elephants, ‘cos a thousand elephants is more real, OK?”) The sheet gradually filled up with Dibbler’s excited scrawl. He reached the bottom and continued over the woodwork of the bed. By the gods, this was the real stuff! No fiddly little battles here. They’d need just about every handleman in Holy Wood! He sat back, panting with exhilarated exhaustion. He could see it now. It was as good as made. All it needed was a title. Something with a ring to it. Something that people would remember. Something - he scratched his chin with the pen - that said that the affairs of ordinary people were so much chaff in the great storms of history. Storms, that was it. Good imagery, a storm. You got thunder. Lightning. Rain. Wind. Wind. That was it! He crawled up to the top of the sheet and, with great care, wrote: BLOWN AWAY. Victor tossed and turned in his narrow bed, trying to get to sleep. Images marched through his half-dozing mind. There were chariot races and pirate ships and things he couldn’t identify, and in the middle of it all this thing, climbing a tower. Something huge and terrible, grinning defiance at the world. And someone screaming . . . He sat up, drenched in sweat. After a few minutes he swung his legs out of bed and went to the window. Above the lights of the town Holy Wood Hill brooded in the first dim light of dawn. It was going to be another fine day. Holy Wood dreams surged through the streets, in great invisible golden waves. And Something came with it. Something that never, never dreamed at all. Something that never went to sleep. Ginger got out of bed and also looked towards the hill, although it is doubtful if she saw it. Moving like a sightless person in a familiar room, she padded across to the door, down the steps, and out into the tail of the night. A small dog, a cat and a mouse watched from the shadows as she moved silently down the alley and headed for the hill. “Did you see her eyes?” said Gaspode. “Glowing,” said the cat. “Yukth!” “She’s going to the hill,” said Gaspode. “I don’t like that.” “So what?” said Squeak. “She’s always around the hill somewhere. Goes up there every night and moons around looking dramatic.” “What?” “Every night. We thought it was all this romance stuff.” “But you can see by the way she’s movin’ that somethin’s not right,” said Gaspode desperately. “That’s not walkin’, that’s lurchin’. Like she’s bein’ pulled along by a inner voice, style of fing.” “Don’t look like that to me,” said Squeak. “Walking on two legs is lurching, in my book.” “You’ve only got to look at her face to see there’s somethin” wrong!” “Of course there’s something wrong. She’s a human,” said Squeak. Gaspode considered the options. There weren’t many. The obvious one was to find Victor and get him to come back here. He rejected it. It sounded too much like the silly, bouncy sort of thing that Laddie would do. It suggested that the best a dog could think of when confronted with a puzzle was to find a human to solve it. He trotted forward and gripped the trailing hem of the sleepwalker’s nightdress firmly in his jaws. She walked on, pulling him off his feet. The cat laughed, far too sarcastically for Gaspode’s liking. “Time to wake up, miss,” he growled, letting the nightdress go. Ginger strode onwards. “See?” said the cat. “Give them an opposed thumb and they think they’re something shpecial.” “I’m going to follow her,” said Gaspode. “A girl could come to harm out by herself at night.” “That’s dogs for you,” said the cat to Squeak. “Alwaysh fawning on people. It’ll be diamante collars and a bowl with his name on it nexsht, I’m telling you.” “If you’re lookin’ to lose a mouthful of fur you’ve come to the right place, kitty,” snarled Gaspode, barring his rotting teeth again. “I don’t have to tolerate that short of thing,” said the cat, lifting its nose haughtily. “Come, Squeak. Let us hie us to a garbage heap where there ain’t sho much rubbish.” Gaspode scowled at their departing backs. “Pussy!” he yelled after them. Then he trotted after Ginger, hating himself. If I was a wolf, which technic’ly I am, he thought, there’d definitely be a rending of jaws and similar. Any girl wandering around by herself would be in dead trouble. I could attack, I could attack any time I liked, I’m jus’ choosing not to. One thing I’m not doin’, I’m not sort of keepin’ an eye on her. I know Victor told me to keep an eye on her, but catch me goin’ around doin’ what humans tell me. I’d like to see humans that could give me orders. Tear his froat out, jus’ like that. Hah. An’ if anything happened to her he’d go around moonin’ for days and prob’ly forget to feed me. Not that dogs like me needs humans to feed ‘em, I could be out bringing down reindeers just by leaping on their backs and bitin’ their jugulars off, but it’s damn convenient getting it all on a plate. She was moving quite fast. Gaspode’s tongue hung out as he strove to keep up. His head was aching. He risked a few sideways squints to see if any other dogs were watching. If they were, he thought, he could pretend he was chasin’ her. Which was what he was doing, anyway. Yeah. The trouble was, he never had much breath at the best of times, and it was getting hard to keep pace. She ought to have the decency to slow down a bit. Ginger began to climb the lower slopes of the hill. Gaspode considered barking loudly, and then if anyone drew attention to this afterwards he could always say it was to frighten her. Trouble was, he had about enough wind left for a threatening wheeze. Ginger topped a rise and went down into the little dell among the trees. Gaspode staggered after her, righted himself, opened his mouth to whimper a warning, and almost swallowed his tongue. The door had opened several inches. More sand rolled down the heap even as Gaspode watched. And he could hear voices. They didn’t seem to be speaking words but the bones of words, meaning without disguise. They hummed around his bullet head like mendicant mosquitoes, begging and cajoling and – - he was the most famous dog in the world. The knots unravelled from his coat, the frayed patches sprouted glossy curls, his fur grew on his suddenly-supple frame and withdrew from his teeth. Plates appeared in front of him not laden with the multi-coloured and mysterious organs that he was normally expected to eat but with dark red steak. There was sweet water, no, there was beer in a bowl with his name on it. Tantalizing odours on the air suggested that a number of lady dogs would be happy to make his acquaintance after he had drunk and dined. Thousands of people thought he was marvellous. He had a collar with his name on it, and – No, that couldn’t be right. Not a collar. It’d be a squeaky toy next, if you dint draw the line at collars. The image collapsed in confusion, and now – - the pack bounded through the dark, snow-covered trees, falling in behind him, red mouths agape, long legs eating up the road. The fleeing humans on the sledge didn’t have a chance; one was thrown aside when a runner bounced off a branch, and lay screaming in the road as Gaspode and the wolves fell upon – No, that wasn’t right, he thought wretchedly. You dint actually eat humans. They got up your nose all right, the gods knew, but you couldn’t acktually eat ‘em. A confusion of instincts threatened to short-circuit his schizophrenically doggy mind. The voices gave up their assault in disgust and turned their attention to Ginger, who was methodically trying to shift more sand. One of Gaspode’s fleas bit him sharply. It was probably dreaming of being the biggest flea in the world. His leg came up automatically to scratch it, and the spell faded. He blinked. “Bloody hell,” he whined. This is what’s happening to the humans! Wonder what they’re making her dream? The hairs rose along Gaspode’s back. You didn’t need any special mysterious animal instincts here. Perfectly generalized everyday instincts were enough to horrify him. There was something dreadful on the other side of the door. She was trying to let it out. He had to wake her up. Biting wasn’t really a good idea. His teeth weren’t that good these days. He doubted very much if barking would be any better. That left one alternative . . . The sand moved eerily under his paws; maybe it was dreaming of being rocks. The scrawny trees around the hollow were wrapped in sequoia fantasies. Even the air that curled around Gaspode’s bullet head moved sluggishly, although it’s anyone’s guess what the air dreams about. Gaspode trotted up to Ginger and pushed his nose against her leg. The universe contains any amount of horrible ways to be woken up, such as the noise of the mob breaking down the front door, the scream of fire engines, or the realization that today is the Monday which on Friday night was a comfortably long way off. A dog’s wet nose is not strictly speaking the worst of the bunch, but it has its own peculiar dreadfulness which connoisseurs of the ghastly and dog owners everywhere have come to know and dread. It’s like having a small piece of defrosting liver pressed lovingly against you. Ginger blinked. The glow faded from her eyes. She looked down, her expression of horror turning to astonishment and then, when she saw Gaspode leering up at her, back to a more mundane horror. “’Allo,” Gaspode said, ingratiatingly. She backed away, bringing her hands up protectively. Sand dribbled between her fingers. Her eyes flickered towards it in bewilderment, and then back to Gaspode. “Gods, that’s horrible,” she said. “What’s going on? Why am I here?” Her hands flew to her mouth. “Oh no,” she whispered, “not again!” She stared at him for a moment, glared up at the doorway, then turned, hitched up her nightdress, and hurried back to town through the morning mists. Gaspode struggled after her, aware of anger in the air, desperately trying to put as much space as possible between the door and himself. Sunnink dreadful in there, he thought. Prob’ly tentacled fings that rips your face off. I mean, when you finds mysterious doors in old hills, stands to reason wot comes out ain’t going to be pleased to see you. Evil creatures wot Man shouldn’t wot of, and here’s one dog wot don’t want to wot of them either. Why couldn’t she . . . He grumbled on towards the town. Behind him the door moved the tiniest fraction of an inch. Holy Wood was awake long before Victor, and the hammering from Century of the Fruitbat echoed around the sky. Waggonloads of timber were queuing up to enter the archway. He was buffeted and pushed aside by a hurrying stream of plasterers and carpenters. Inside, crowds of workmen scurried around the arguing figures of Silverfish and C.M.O.T. Dibbler. Victor reached them just as Silverfish said, in astonished, tones, “The whole city?” “You can leave out the bits round the edge,” said Dibbler. “But I want the whole of the centre. The palace, the University, the Guilds - everything that makes it a real city, understand? It’s got to be right!” He was red in the face. Behind him loomed Detritus the troll, patiently holding what appeared to be a bed over his head on one massive hand, like a waiter with a tray. Dibbler had the sheets in one hand. Then Victor realized that the whole bed, not just the sheets, was covered in writing. “But the cost –” Silverfish protested. “We’ll find the money somehow,” said Dibbler calmly. Silverfish couldn’t have looked more horrified if Dibbler had worn a dress. He tried to rally. “Well, if you’re determined, Throat-” “Right!” “-I suppose, come to think of it, maybe we could amortize the cost over several clicks, maybe even hire it out afterwards-” “What are you talking about?” demanded Dibbler. “We’re building it for Blown Away!” “Yes, yes, of course,” said Silverfish soothingly. “And then afterwards, we can-” “Afterwards? There won’t be any afterwards! Haven’t you read the script? Detritus, show him the script!” Detritus obligingly dropped the bed between them. “It’s your bed, Throat.” “Script, bed, what’s the difference? Look . . . here . . . just above the carving . . . “ There was a pause while Silverfish read. It was quite a long one. Silverfish wasn’t used to reading matter that didn’t come in columns with totals at the bottom. Eventually he said, “You’re going . . . to . . . set it on . . .” “It’s historical. You can’t argue with history,” said Dibbler smugly. “The city was burned down in the civil war, everyone knows that.” Silverfish drew himself up. “The city might have been,” he said stiffly, “but I didn’t have to find the budget for it! It’s recklessly extravagant!” “I’ll pay for it somehow,” said Dibbler, calmly. “In a word – im-possible!” “That’s two words,” said Dibbler. “There’s no way I can work on something like this,” said Silverfish, ignoring the interruption. “I’ve tried to see your point of view, haven’t I? But you’ve taken moving pictures and you’re trying to turn them into, into, into dreams. I never wanted them to be like this! Include me out!” “OK.” Dibbler looked up at the troll. “Mr. Silverfish was just leaving,” he said. Detritus nodded, and then slowly and firmly picked up Silverfish by his collar. Silverfish went white. “You can’t get rid of me like that,” he said. “You want to bet?” “There won’t be an alchemist in Holy Wood who’ll work for you! We’ll take the handlemen with us! You’ll be finished!” “Listen! After this click the whole of Holy Wood will be coming to me for a job! Detritus, throw this bum out!” “Right you are, Mr. Dibbler,” rumbled the troll, gripping Silverfish’s collar. “You haven’t heard the last of this, you - you scheming, devious megalomaniac!” Dibbler removed his cigar. “That’s Mister Megalomaniac to you,” he said. He replaced the cigar, and nodded significantly to the troll, who gently but firmly grasped Silverfish by a leg as well. “You lay a finger on me and you’ll never work in this town again!” shouted Silverfish. “I got a job anyway, Mr. Silverfish,” said Detritus calmly, carrying Silverfish towards the gate. “I’m VicePresident of Throwing Out People Mr. Dibbler Doesn’t like the Face Of.” “Then you’ll have to take on an assistant!” snarled Silverfish. “I got a nephew looking for a career,” said the troll. “Have a nice day.” “Right,” said Dibbler, rubbing his hands briskly. “Soll!” Soll appeared from behind a trestle table loaded with rolled-up plans, and took a pencil out of his mouth. “Yes, Uncle?” “How long will it take?” “About four days, Uncle.” “That’s too long. Hire more people. I want it done by tomorrow, right?” “But, Uncle-” “Or you’re sacked,” said Dibbler. Soll looked frightened. “I’m your nephew, Uncle,” he protested. “You can’t sack nephews.” Dibbler looked around and appeared to notice Victor for the first time. “Ah, Victor. You’re good at words,” he said. “Can I sack a nephew?” “Er. I don’t think so. I think you have to disown them, or something,” said Victor lamely. “But-” “Right! Right!” said Dibbler. “Good man. I knew it was some kind of a word like that. Disown. Hear that, Soll?” “Yes, Uncle,” said Soll dispiritedly. “I’ll go and see if I can find some more carpenters, then, shall I?” “Right.” Soll flashed Victor a look of terrified astonishment as he scurried away. Dibbler started haranguing a group of handlemen. Instructions spouted out of the man like water from a fountain. “I reckon no-one’s goin’ to Ankh-Morpork this morning, then,” said a voice by Victor’s knee. “He’s certainly very, er, ambitious today;” said Victor. “Not like himself at all.” Gaspode scratched an ear. “There was sunnink I got to tell you. What was it, now? Oh, yeah. I remember. Your girlfriend is an agent of demonic powers. That night we saw her on the hill she was prob’ly on her way to commune with evil. What d’you fink of that, eh?” He grinned. He was rather proud of the way he’d introduced the subject. “That’s nice,” said Victor abstractedly. Dibbler was certainly acting even stranger than usual. Even stranger than usual for Holy Wood, even . . . “Yeah,” said Gaspode, slightly annoyed at this reception. “A-cavortin’ at night with eldritchly occult Intelligences from the Other Side, I shouldn’t wonder.” “Good,” said Victor. You didn’t normally burn things in Holy Wood. You saved them and painted on the other side. Despite himself, he began to get interested. “-a cast of thousands,” Dibbler was saying. “I don’t care where you get them from, we’ll hire everyone in Holy Wood if we have to, right? And I want-” “A-helpin’ them in their evil attempts to take over the whole world, if I’m any judge,” said Gaspode. “Does she?” said Victor. Dibbler was talking to a couple of apprentice alchemists now. What was that. A twentyreeler? But no-one had ever dreamed of going above five! “Yeah, a-diggin’ away to rouse them from their ancient slumber to reek havoc, style offing,” said Gaspode. “Prob’ly aided by cats, you mark my-” “Look, just shut up a minute, will you?” said Victor, irritably. “I’m trying to hear what they’re saying.” “Well, ‘scuse me. I was jus’ tryin’ to save the world,” muttered Gaspode. “If gharstely creatures from Before the Dawna Time starts wavin’ at you from under your bed, jus’ you don’t come complainin’ to me.” “What are you going on about?” said Victor. “Oh, nothin’. Nothin’.” Dibbler looked up, caught sight of Victor’s craning face, and waved at it. “You, lad! Come here! Have I got a part for you!” “Have you?” said Victor, pushing his way through the crowd. “That’s what I said!” “No, you asked if-” Victor began, and gave up. “And where’s Miss Ginger, may I ask?” said Dibbler. “Late again?” “ . . . prob’ly sleepin’ in . . . “ grumbled a sullen and totally ignored voice from down below in the sea of legs, “. . . prob’ly takes it out of you, messin’ with the occult . . . “ “Soll, send someone to fetch her here-” “Yes, Uncle.” “. . . wot can you expect, huh, people who like cats’re capable of anythin’, you can’t trust ‘em. . . “ “And find someone to transcribe the bed.” “Yes, Uncle.” “ . . . but do they listen! Not them. Bet if I had a glossy coat an’ ran aroun’ yappin’ they’d listen all right . . . “ Dibbler opened his mouth to speak, and then frowned and raised a hand. “Where’s that muttering coming from?” he said. “ . . . prob’ly saved the whole world for ‘em, by rights I’d get a statchoo put up to me nose but no, oh no, not for you Mr. Gaspode, on account of you not bein’ the right kinda person, so . . . “ The whine stopped. The crowd shuffled aside, revealing a small bowlegged grey dog, which looked up impassively at Dibbler. “Bark?” it said, innocently. Events always moved fast in Holy Wood, but the work on Blown Away sped forward like a comet. The other Fruitbat clicks were halted. So were most of the others in the town, because Dibbler was hiring actors and handlemen at twice what anyone else would pay. And a sort of Ankh-Morpork rose among the dunes. It would have been cheaper, Soll complained, to have risked the wrath of the wizards, sneaked some filming in Ankh-Morpork itself, and then slipped someone a fistful of dollars to put a match to the place. Dibbler disagreed. “Apart from anything else,” he declared, “it wouldn’t look right.” “But it’s the real Ankh-Morpork, Uncle,” said Soll. “It’s got to look exactly right. How can it not look right?” “Ankh-Morpork doesn’t look all that genuine, you know,” said Dibbler thoughtfully. “Of course it’s bloody genuine!” snapped Soll, the bonds of kinship stretching to snapping point. “It’s really there! It’s really itself! You can’t make it any more genuine! It’s as genuine as it can get!” Dibbler took his cigar out of his mouth. “No, it isn’t,” he said. “You’ll see.” Ginger turned up around lunchtime, looking so pale that even Dibbler didn’t shout at her. She kept glaring at Gaspode, who tried to stay out of her way. Dibbler was preoccupied, anyway. He was in his office, explaining The Plot. It was basically quite simple, running on the familiar lines of Boy Meets Girl, Girl Meets Another Boy, Boy Loses Girl, except that on this occasion there was a civil war in the middle of it . . . The origins of the Ankh-Morpork Civil War (8.32 p.m., Grune 3, 432 -10.45 a. m., Grune 4, 432) have always been a subject of heated debate among historians. There are two main theories: 1. The common people, having been heavily taxed by a particularly stupid and unpleasant king, decided that enough was enough and that it was time to do away with the outmoded concept of monarchy and replace it with, as it turned out, a series of despotic overlords who still taxed heavily but at least had the decency not to pretend the gods had given them the right to do it, which made everyone feel a bit better OR 2. One of the players in a game of Cripple Mr. Onion in a tavern had accused another of palming more than the usual number of aces, and knives had been drawn, and then someone had hit someone with a bench, and then someone else had stabbed someone, and arrows started to fly, and someone had swung on the chandelier, and a carelessly hurled axe had hit someone in the street, and then the Watch had been called in, and someone had set fire to the place, and someone had hit a lot of people with a table, and then everyone lost their tempers and commenced to start fighting. Anyway, it all caused a civil war, which is something every mature civilization needs to have had . . . [20] “The way I see it,” said Dibbler, “there’s this high-born girl living all by herself in this big house, right, and her young man goes off to fight for the rebels, you see, and she meets this other guy, and there’s the chemistry between them-” “They blow up?” said Victor. “He means they fall in love,” said Ginger coldly. “That sort of thing,” nodded Dibbler. “Eyes meeting across a crowded room. And she’s all alone in the world except for the servants and, let’s see, yeah, perhaps her pet dog-” “This’ll be Laddie?” said Ginger. “Right. And of course she’s going to do everything she can to preserve the family mine, so she’s kind of flirting with ‘em both, the men, not the dog, and then one of them gets killed in the war and the other one throws her over but it’s all OK because she’s tough at heart.” He sat back. “What d’you think?” he said. The people sitting around the room looked uneasily at one another. There was a fidgety silence. “It sounds great, Uncle,” said Soll, who wasn’t looking for any more problems today. “Technically very challenging,” said Gaffer. There was a chorus of relieved assent from the rest of the team. “I don’t know,” said Victor slowly. Everyone else’s eyes turned on him in the same way that spectators at the lion pit watch the first condemned criminal to be pushed out through the iron gate. He went on: “I mean, is that all? It doesn’t sound, well, very complicated for such a long click. People sort of falling in love while a civil war is going on in the background . . . I don’t see how you can make much of a picture out of that.” There was another troubled silence. A couple of people near Victor moved away. Dibbler was staring at him. Victor could hear, coming from under his chair, an almost inaudible little voice. “ . . . oh, of course, there’s always a part for Laddie . . . woes he got that I haven’t got, that’s wot I’d like to . . . “ Dibbler was still staring fixedly at Victor. Then he said, “You’re right. You’re right. Victor’s right. Why didn’t anyone else spot it?” “That’s just what I was thinking, Uncle,” said Soll hurriedly. “We need to flesh it out a bit.” Dibbler waved his cigar vaguely. “We can think up some more stuff as we go, no problem. Like . . . like . . . how about a chariot race? People always like a chariot race. It’s gripping. Will he fall out, will the wheels come off? Yeah. A chariot race.” “I’ve, er, been reading a bit about the Civil War,” said Soll cautiously, “and I don’t think there’s any mention of–” “Of there not being chariot races, am I right?” said Dibbler, in soapy tones containing the razor blade of menace. Soll sagged. “Since you put it like that, Uncle,” he said, “you’re right.” “And . . . “ Dibbler stared reflectively, “ . . . we could try . . . a great big shark?” Even Dibbler sounded slightly surprised at his own suggestion. Soll looked hopefully at Victor. “I’m almost certain sharks didn’t fight in the Civil War,” said Victor. “You sure?” “I’m sure people would have noticed,” said Victor. “They’d have got trampled by the elephants,” muttered Soll. “Yeah,” said Dibbler, sadly. “It was just a thought. Don’t know why I said it, really.” He stared at nothing for a while, and then shook his head briskly. A shark, Victor thought. All the little golden fishes of your own thoughts are swimming away happily, and then the water moves and this great shark of a thought comes in from outside. As if someone’s doing our thinking for us. “You just don’t know how to behave,” Victor told Gaspode, when they were alone. “I could hear you grumbling under the chair the whole time.” “I might not know how to behave, but at least I don’t go mooning around over some girl who’s letting dretful Creatures of the Night into the world,” said Gaspode. “I should hope not,” said Victor, and then, “What do you mean?” “Aha! Now he listens! Your girlfriend-” “She’s not my girlfriend!” “Would-be girlfriend,” said Gaspode, “is goin’ out every night and tryin’ to open that door in the hill. She tried it again last night, after you’d gone. I saw her. I stopped her,” he added, defiantly. “Not that I expect any credit, of course. There’s some dretful in there, an’ she’s lettin’ it out. No wonder she’s always late and tired in the mornings, what with spendin’ the whole night diggin’.” “How do you know they’re dreadful?” said Victor weakly. “Put it like this,” said Gaspode. “If something’s shoved in a cave under a hill behind great big doors, it’s not ‘cos people want it to come out every night to wash the dishes, is it? ‘Corse,” he added charitably, “I’m not sayin” she knows she’s doing it. Prob’ly they’ve got a grip of her weak an’ feeble cat-lovin’ female mind and are twisting it to their evil will.” “You do talk a lot of crap sometimes,” said Victor, but he didn’t sound very convincing even to himself. “Ask her, then,” said the dog, smugly. “I will!” “Right!” Exactly how, though? thought Victor, as they trudged out into the sunshine. Excuse me, miss, my dog says that you . . . no. I say, Ginger, I understand that you’re going out and . . . no. Hey, Ginj, how come my dog saw . . . no. Perhaps he should just start up a conversation and wait until it got around naturally to monstrosities from Beyond the Void. But it would have to wait, because of the row that was going on. It was over the third major part in Blown Away. Victor was of course the dashing but dangerous hero, Ginger was the only possible choice for the female lead, but the second male role - the dull but dutiful one - was causing trouble. Victor had never seen anyone stamp their foot in anger before. He’d always thought it was something they did only in books. But Ginger was doing it. “Because I’d look an idiot, that’s why!” she was saying. Soll, who was by now feeling like a lightning rod on a stormy day, waved his hand frantically. “But he’s ideal for the role!” he said. “It calls for a solid character -” “Solid? Of course he’s solid! He’s made of stone!” shouted Ginger. “He might have a suit of chain mail and a false moustache but he’s still a troll!” Rock, looming monolithically over the pair of them, cleared his throat noisily. “Excuse me,” he said, “I hope we’re not going to get elementalist about this?” Now it was Ginger’s turn to wave her hands. “I like trolls,” she said. “As trolls, that is. But you can’t seriously mean me to do a romantic scene with a, a, a cliff face.” “Now look here,” said Rock, his voice winding up like a pitcher’s arm. “What you’re saying is, is OK for trolls to be shown bashing people with clubs, is not OK to show trolls have finer feelings like squashy humans?” “She’s not saying that at all,” said Soll desperately. “She’s not -” “If you cut me, do I not bleed?” said Rock. “No, you don’t,” said Soll, “but -” “Ah, yes, but I would. If I had blood, I’d bleed all over the place.” “And another thing,” said a dwarf, prodding Soll in the knee. “It says in the script that she owns a mine full of happy, laughing, singing dwarfs, right?” “Oh, yes,” said Soll, putting the troll problem on one side. “What about it?” “It’s a bit stereotypical, isn’t it?” said the dwarf. “I mean, it’s a bit dwarfs = miners. I don’t see why we have to be type-cast like this all the time.” “But most dwarfs are miners,” said Soll desperately. “Well, OK, but they’re not happy about it,” said another dwarf. “And they don’t sing the whole time.” “That’s right,” said a third dwarf. “’Cos of safety, see? You can bring the whole roof down on you, singing.” “And there’s no mines anywhere near Ankh-Morpork,” said possibly the first dwarf, although they all looked identical to Soll. “Everyone knows that. It’s on loam. We’d be a laughing stock, if our people saw us mining for jewels anywhere near Ankh-Morpork.” “I wouldn’t say I’ve got a cliff face,” rumbled Rock, who sometimes took a little time to digest things. “Craggy, maybe. But not cliffy.” “The fact is,” said one of the dwarfs, “we don’t see why humans get all the good roles and we get all the titchy bit parts.” Soll gave the jolly little laugh of someone in a corner who hopes that a joke will lighten the atmosphere a bit. “Ah,” he said, “that’s because you-” “Yes?” said the dwarfs in unison. “Um,” said Soll, and struck out quickly for a change of subject. “You see, the whole point, as I understand it, is that Ginger will do absolutely anything to keep the mansion and the mine and-“ “I hopes we can get on,” said Gaffer, “only I’ve got to muck the imps out in an hour.” “Oh, I see,” said Rock. “I’m absolutely anything, am I?” “You don’t keep mines,” said one of the dwarfs. “Mines keep you. You take the treasure out. You don’t put it in. That’s fundamental to the whole mine business.” “Well, perhaps this mine is worked out,” said Soll quickly. “Anyway, she-” “Well, in that case, you don’t keep it,” said another dwarf, in the expansive manner of one about to settle down to a good long explanation. “You abandon it, propping and shoring where necessary, and sink another shaft on a line with the major seam-” “Allowing for fault escarpments and uniclinal structures,” said another dwarf. “Of course, allowing for fault escarpments and uniclinal structures, and then-” “And general crustal shifting.” “All right, and then-” “Unless you’re just cutting and filling, of course.” “Granted, but-” “I don’t see”, Rock began, “that my face could be called-” “SHUT UP!” screamed Soll. “Everyone shut up! SHUT UP! The next person who doesn’t shut up will never work in this town again! Understand? Do I make myself CLEAR? Right.” He coughed, and continued in a more normal voice: “Very well. Now, I want it understood that this is a Breathtaking, Block-busting Romantic film about a woman’s fight to save the-” he consulted his clipboard, and went on valiantly, “-everything she loves against the background of a World Gone Mad, and I don’t want any more trouble from anyone.” A dwarf tentatively raised his hand. “’Cuse me?” “Yes?” said Soll. “Why is it all Mr. Dibbler’s films are set against the background of a world gone mad?” said the dwarf. Soll’s eyes narrowed. “Because Mr. Dibbler”, he growled, “is a very observant man.” Dibbler had been right. The new city was the old city distilled. Narrow alleys were narrower, tall buildings taller. Gargoyles were more fearsome, roofs more pointed. The towering Tower of Art in Unseen University was, here, even taller and more precariously towering even though it was at the same time only one quarter the size; the Unseen University was more baroque and buttressed; the Patrician’s Palace more pillar’d. Carpenters swarmed over a construction that, when it was finished, would make Ankh-Morpork look like a very indifferent copy of itself, except that the buildings in the original city were not, by and large, painted on canvas stretched over timber and didn’t have the dirt carefully sprayed on. Ankh-Morpork’s buildings had to get dirty all by themselves. It looked far more like Ankh-Morpork than Ankh-Morpork ever had. Ginger had been ushered off to the changing tents before Victor had a chance to speak to her, and then shooting started and it was too late. Century of the Fruitbat (and now it said on the sign, in slightly smaller type: More Stars than There Are in the Heavens[21]) believed that a click should be made in less than ten times the time it took to watch. Blown Away was going to be different. There were battles. There were night scenes, the imps painting away furiously by torchlight. Dwarfs worked merrily in a mine never seen before or since, where fake gold nuggets the size of chickens had been stuck in the plaster walls. Since Soll demanded that their lips should be seen to move they sang a risque version of the “Hihohiho” song, which had rather caught on among holy Wood’s dwarf population. It was just possible that Soll knew how it all fitted together. Victor didn’t. It was always best, he had learned, never to try to follow the plot of any click you were in, and in any case Soll wasn’t just shooting back to front but sides to middle as well. It was totally confusing, just like real life. When he did get a chance to talk to Ginger, two handlemen and everyone else in the cast who currently had nothing to do were watching them. “OK, people,” said Soll. “This is the scene near the end where Victor meets Ginger after all they’ve been through together, and on the card he’ll be saying-” He stared at the big black oblong handed to him. “Yes, he’ll be saying “Frankly, my dear, I’d give anything for one of . . . Harga’s . . . prime . . . pork . . . ribs . . . in . . . special . . . curry . . . sauce. . . ““ Soll’s voice slowed and stopped. When he breathed in, it was like a whale surfacing. “Who wrote THIS?” One of the artists cautiously raised a hand. “Mr. Dibbler told me to,” he said quickly. Soll leafed through the big heap of cards that represented the dialogue for a large part of the click. His lips tightened. He nodded to one of the people with clipboards and said, “Could you just run ever to the office and ask my uncle to stroll over here, if he’s got a moment?” Soll pulled a card out of the stack and read, “ “I sure miss the old mine but for a taste of real country cooking I always . . . go . . . to . . .Harp’s . . .House . . . Of . . .” I see.” He selected another at random. “Ah. I see here a wounded Royalist soldier’s last words are “What I wouldn’t give right now for a $1 Eat-Till-It-Hurts special at . . . Harga’s . . . House . . . of . . . Ribs . . . Mother!” ““I think it’s very moving,” said Dibbler, behind him. “There won’t be a dry eye in the house, you’ll see.” “Uncle-” Soll began. Dibbler raised his hands. “I said I’d raise the money somehow,” he said, “and Sham Harga’s even helping us with the food for the barbecue scene.” “You said you weren’t going to interfere with the script!” “That’s not interfering,” said Dibbler stolidly. “I don’t see how that could be considered interfering. I just polished it up here and there. I think it’s rather an improvement. Besides, Harp’s All-You-Can-Gobble-For-A-Dollar is amazing value these days.” “But the click is set hundreds of years ago!” shouted Soll. “We-ell,” said Dibbler. “I suppose someone could say, “I wonder if the food at Harga’s House of Ribs will still be as good in hundreds of years’ time-” “That isn’t moving pictures. That is crass commerce!” “I hope so,” said Dibbler. “We’re in real trouble if it isn’t.” “Now look-” Soll began, threateningly. Ginger turned to Victor. “Can we go somewhere and talk?” she said, quietly. “Without your dog,” she added, in her normal voice. “Definitely without your dog.” “You want to talk to me?” said Victor. “There hasn’t been much of a chance, has there?” “Right. Certainly. Gaspode, stay. There’s a good dog.” Victor derived a quiet satisfaction from the brief look of pure disgust that flashed across Gaspode’s face. Behind them the eternal Holy Wood argument had wound up to cruising speed, with Soll and C.M.O.T. standing nose to nose and arguing in a circle of amused and interested staff. “I don’t have to take this, you know! I can resign!” “No, you can’t! You’re my nephew! You can’t resign from being a nephew-!” Ginger and Victor sat down on the steps of a canvas and wood mansion. They had absolute privacy. No-one was going to bother to watch them with a rip-snorter of a row going on a few yards away. “Er,” said Ginger. Her fingers twisted among themselves. Victor couldn’t help noticing that the nails were worn down. “Er,” she said again. Her face was a picture of anguish, and pale under the make-up. She isn’t beautiful, Victor felt himself think, but you could have real trouble believing it. “I, er, don’t know how to say this,” she said, “but, er, has anyone noticed me walking in my sleep?” “To the hill?” said Victor. Her head whipped around like a snake. “You know? How do you know? Have you been spying on me?” she snapped. It was the old Ginger again, all fire and venom and the aggressiveness of paranoia. “Laddie found you . . . asleep yesterday afternoon,” said Victor, leaning back. “During the day?” “Yes.” She put her hands to her mouth. “It’s worse than I thought,” she whispered. “It’s getting worse! You know when you met me up the hill? Just before Dibbler found us, and thought we were . . . spooning . . . “ she blushed. “Well, I didn’t even know how I’d got there!” “And you went back last night,” said Victor. “The dog told you, did he?” she said, dully. “Yes. Sorry.” “It’s every night now,” moaned Ginger. “I know, because even if I go back to bed there’s sand all over the floor and my nails are all broken! I go there every night and I don’t know why!” “You’re trying to open the door,” said Victor. “There’s this big ancient door now, where part of the hill has slid away, and-” “Yes, I’ve seen it, but why?” Well, I’ve got a couple of ideas,” said Victor cautiously. “Tell me!” “Um. Well, have you heard of something called a genius loci?” “No.” Her brow wrinkled. “It’s clever, is it?” “It’s the sort of soul of a place. It can be quite strong. It can be made strong, by worship or love or hate, if it goes on long enough. And I’m wondering if the spirit of a place can call to people. And animals, too. I mean, Holy Wood is a different sort of place, isn’t it? People act differently here. Everywhere else, the most important things are gods or money or cattle. Here, the most important thing is to be important.” He had her full attention. “Yes?” she said encouragingly, and, “It doesn’t sound too bad so far.” “I’m getting to the bad bit.” “Oh.” Victor swallowed. His brain was bubbling like a bouillon. Half-remembered facts surfaced tantalizingly and sank again. Dry old tutors in high old rooms had been telling him dull old things which were suddenly as urgent as a knife, and he dredged desperately for them. “I’m not-” he croaked. He cleared his throat. “I’m not sure it’s right, though,” he managed. “It’s come from somewhere else. It can happen. You’ve heard of ideas whose time has come?” “Yes.” “Well, they’re the tame ones. There’s other ones. Ideas so full of vigour they don’t even wait for their time. Wild ideas. Escaped ideas. And the trouble is, when you get something like that, you get a hole-” He looked at her polite, blank expression. Analogies bubbled to the surface like soggy croutons. Imagine all the worlds that have ever been are in one sense pressed together like a sandwich . . . a pack of cards . . . a book . . . a folded sheet . . . if conditions are right, things can go through rather than along . . . but if you open a gate between worlds, there are terrible dangers, as for instance . . . As for instance . . . As for instance . . . As for instance what? It rose up in his memory like the suddenly-discovered bit of suspicious tentacle just when you thought it was safe to eat the paella. “It could be that something else is trying to come through the same way,” he ventured. “In the, uh, in the nowhere between the somewhere there are creatures which on the whole I’d rather not describe to you.” “You already have,” said Ginger, in a tense voice. “And, uh, they’re generally quite keen to get into the real worlds and perhaps they’re somehow making contact with you when you’re asleep and . . . “ He gave up. He couldn’t bear her expression any more. “I could be entirely wrong,” he said quickly. “You’ve got to stop me opening the door,” she whispered. “I could be one of Them.” “Oh, I don’t think so,” said Victor loftily. “They’ve generally got too many arms, I think.” “I tried putting tacks on the floor to wake myself up,” said Ginger. “Sounds awful. Did it work?” “No. They were all back in their bag in the morning. I must have picked them up again.” Victor pursed his lips. “That could be a good sign,” he said. “Why?” “If you were being summoned by, uh, unpleasant things,I think they wouldn’t bother what you walked over.” “Urgh.” “You haven’t got any idea why it’s all happening, have you?” Victor said. “No! But I always get the same dream.” Her eyes narrowed. “Hey, how come you know all this stuff?” “I - a wizard told me, once,” said Victor. “You’re not a wizard yourself?” “Absolutely not. No wizards in Holy Wood. And this dream?” “Oh, it’s too strange to mean anything. Anyway, I used to dream it even when I was small. It starts off with this mountain, only it’s not a normal mountain, because-” Detritus the troll loomed over them. “Young Mr. Dibbler says it’s time to start shooting again,”he rumbled. “Will you come to my room tonight?” hissed Ginger.“Please? You can wake me up if I start sleepwalking again.” “Well, er, yes, but your landlady might not like it-” Victor began. “Oh, Mrs. Cosmopilite is very broadminded,” said Ginger. “She is?” “She’ll just think we’re having sex,” said Ginger. “Ah,” said Victor hollowly. “That’s all right, then.” “Young Mr. Dibbler don’t like being kept waiting,” said Detritus. “Oh, shut up,” said Ginger. She stood up and brushed the dust off her dress. Detritus blinked. People didn’t usually tell him to shut up. A few worried fault-lines appeared on his brow. He turned and tried another loom, this time aimed at Victor. “Young Mr. Dibbler don’t like-” “Oh, go away,” snapped Victor, and wandered off after her. Detritus stood alone and screwed up his eyes in the effort of thought. Of course, people did occasionally say things like “Go away” and “Shut up” to him, but always with the tremor of terrified bravado in their voice, and so naturally he always riposted “Hur hur” and hit them. But no-one had ever spoken to him as if his existence was the last thing in the world they could possibly be persuaded to worry about. His massive shoulders sagged. Perhaps all this hanging around Ruby was bad for him. Soll was standing over the artist who lettered the cards. He looked up as Victor and Ginger approached. “Right,” he said, “places, everyone. We’ll go straight on to the ballroom scene.” He looked pleased with himself. “Are the words all sorted out?” said Victor. “No problem,” said Soll proudly. He glanced at the sun. “We’ve lost a lot of time,” he added, “so let’s not waste any more.” “Fancy you being able to get C.M.O.T. to give in like that,” said Victor. “He had no argument at all. He’s gone back to his office to sulk, I expect,” said Soll loftily. “OK, everyone, let’s all get-” The lettering artist tugged at his sleeve. “I was just wondering, Mr. Soll, what you wanted me to put in the big scene now Victor doesn’t mention ribs-” “Don’t worry me now, man!” “But if you could just give me an idea-” Soll firmly unhooked the man’s hand from his sleeve. “Frankly,” he said, “I don’t give a damn,” and he strode off towards the set. The artist was left alone. He picked up his paintbrush. His lips moved silently, shaping themselves around the words. Then he said, “Hmm. Nice one.” Banana N’Vectif, cunningest hunter in the great yellow plains of Klatch, held his breath as he tweezered the last piece into place. Rain drummed on the roof of his hut. There. That was it. He’d never done anything like this before, but he knew he was doing it right. He’d trapped everything from zebras to thargas in his time, and what had he got to show for it? But yesterday, when he’d taken a load of skins into N’kouf, he’d heard a trader say that if any man ever built a better mousetrap, then the world would beat a path to his door. He’d lain awake all night thinking about this. Then, in the first light of dawn, he scratched a few designs on the but wall with a stick, and got to work. He had taken the opportunity to look at a few mousetraps while he was in the town, and they were definitely less than perfect. They hadn’t been built by hunters. Now he picked up the twig and pushed it gently into the mechanism. Snap. Perfect. Now, all he had to do was take it into N’kouf and see if the merchant. The rain was very loud indeed. In fact, it sounded more like . . . When Banana woke up he was lying in the ruins of his but and they were in a half-mile wide swathe of trodden mud. He looked muzzily at what remained of his home. He looked at the brown scar that stretched from horizon to horizon. He looked at the dark, muddy cloud just visible at one end of it. Then he looked down. The better mousetrap was now a rather nice two-dimensional design, squashed into the middle of an enormous footprint. He said, “I didn’t know it was that good.” According to the history books, the decisive battle that ended the Ankh-Morpork Civil War was fought between two handfuls of bone-weary men in a swamp early one misty morning and, although one side claimed victory, ended with a practical score of Humans 0, ravens 1,000, which is the case with most battles. Something that both Dibblers were agreed on was that, if they’d been in charge, no-one would have been able to get away with such a low-grade war. It was a crime that people should have been allowed to stage a major turning-point in the history of the city without using thousands of people and camels and ditches and earthworks and siege-engines and trebuckets and horses and banners. “And in a bloody fog, too,” said Gaffer. “No thought about light levels.” He surveyed the proposed field of battle, shading his eyes from the sun with one hand. There would be eleven handlemen working on this one, from every conceivable angle. One by one they held up their thumbs. Gaffer rapped on the picture box in front of him. “Ready, lads?” he said. There was a chorus of squeaks. “Good lads,” he said. “Get this one right and thee can have an extra lizard for thy tea.” He grasped the handle with one hand and picked up a megaphone with the other. “Ready when you are, Mr. Dibbler!” he yelled. C.M.O.T. nodded and was about to raise his hand when Soll’s arm shot out and grabbed it. The nephew was staring intently at the ranged ranks of horsemen. “Just one moment,” he said levelly, and then cupped his hands and raised his voice to a shout. “Hey, you there! Fifteenth knight along! Yes, you! Would you mind unfurling your banner, please? Thank you. Could you please report to Mrs. Cosmopilite for a new one. Thank you.” Soll turned to his uncle, his eyebrows raised. “It’s . . . it’s a heraldic device,” said Dibbler quickly. “Crossed spare ribs on a bed of lettuce?” said Soll. “Very keen on their food, those old knights-” “And I liked the motto,” said Soll. “ “Every (k)night is Gormay Night At Harga’s House of Ribs.” If we had sound, I wonder what his battle cry would have been?” “You’re my own flesh and blood,” said Dibbler, shaking his head. “How can you do this to me?” “Because I’m your own flesh and blood,” said Soll. Dibbler brightened. Of course, when you looked at it like that, it didn’t seem so bad. This is Holy Wood. To pass the time quickly, you just film the clock hands moving fast . . . In Unseen University, the resograph is already recording seven pubs a minute. And, towards the end of the afternoon, they burned Ankh--Morpork. The real city had been burned down many times in its long history - out of revenge, or carelessness, or spite, or even just for the insurance. Most of the big stone buildings that actually made it a city, as opposed simply to a load of hovels all in one place, survived them intact and many people[22] considered that a good fire every hundred years or so was essential to the health of the city since it helped to keep down the rats, roaches, fleas and, of course, people not rich enough to live in stone houses. The famous Fire during the Civil War had been noteworthy simply because it was started by both sides at the same rime in order to stop the city falling into enemy hands. It had not otherwise, according to the history books, been very impressive. The Ankh had been particularly high that summer, and most of the city had been too damp to burn. This time it was a lot better. Flames poured into the sky. Because this was Holy Wood, everything burned, because the only difference between the stone buildings and the wooden buildings was what was painted on the canvas. The two-dimensional Unseen University burned. The Patrician’s backless palace burned. Even the scale-model Tower of Art gushed flames like a roman candle. Dibbler watched it with concern. After a while Soll , behind him, said, “Waiting for something, Uncle?” “Hmm? Oh, no. I hope Gaffer’s concentrating on the tower, that’s all,” said Dibbler. “Very important symbolic landmark.” “It certainly is,” said Soll. “Very important. So important, in fact, that I sent some lads up it at lunchtime just to make sure it was all OK.” “You did?” said Dibbler, guiltily. “Yes. And do you know what they found? They found someone had nailed some fireworks to the outside. Lots and lots of fireworks, on fuses. It’s a good thing they found them because if the things had gone off it would have ruined the shot and we’d never be able to do it again. And, do you know, they said it looked as though the fireworks would spell out words?” Soll added. “What words?” “Never crossed my mind to ask them,” said Soll. “Never crossed my mind.” He stuck his hands in his pockets and began to whistle under his breath. After a while he glanced sidelong at his uncle. ““Hottest ribs in town”,” he muttered. “Really!” Dibbler looked sulky. “It would have got a laugh, anyway,” he said. “Look, Uncle, this can’t go on,” said Soll. “No more of this commercial messing about, right?” “Oh, all right.” “Sure?” Dibbler nodded. “I’ve said all right, haven’t I?” “I want a bit more than that, Uncle.” “I solemnly promise not to do any more meddling in the click,” said Dibbler gravely. “I’m your uncle. I’m family. Is that good enough for you?” “Well. All right.” When the fire had died down they raked some of the ashes together for a barbecue at the end-of-shooting party, under the stars. The velvet sheet of the night drapes itself over the parrot cage that is Holy Wood, and on warm nights like this there are many people with private business to pursue. A young couple, strolling hand in hand across the dunes, were frightened to near insensibility when an enormous troll jumped out at them from behind a rock waving its arms and shouting “Aaaargh!” “Scared you, did I?” said Detritus, hopefully. They nodded, white-faced. “Well, that’s a relief,” said the troll. He patted them on the heads, forcing their feet a little way into the sand. “Thanks very much. Much obliged. Have a nice night,” he added mournfully. He watched them walk off hand in hand, and then burst into tears. In the handlemen’s shed, C.M.O.T. Dibbler stood watching thoughtfully as Gaffer pasted together the day’s footage. The handleman was feeling very gratified; Mr. Dibbler had never shown the slightest interest in the actual techniques of film handling before now. This may have explained why he was a little freer than usual with Guild secrets that had been handed down sideways from one generation to the same generation. “Why are all the little pictures alike?” said Dibbler, as the handleman wound the film on to its spool. “Seems to me that’s wasting money.” “They’re not really alike,” said Gaffer. “Each one’s a bit different, see? And so people’s eyes see a lot of little slightly different pictures very fast and their eyes think they’re watching something move.” Dibbler took his cigar out of his mouth. “You mean it’s all a trick?” he said, astonished. “Yeah, that’s right.” The handleman chuckled and reached for the paste pot. Dibbler watched in fascination. “I thought it was all a special kind of magic,” he said, a shade disappointed. “Now you tell me it’s just a big Find-the--Lady game?” “Sort of. You see, people don’t actually see any one picture. They see a lot of them at once, see what I mean?” “Hey, I got lost at see there.” “Every picture adds to the general effect. People don’t see, sorry, any one picture, they just see the effect caused by a lot of them moving past very quickly.” “Do they? That’s very interesting,” said Dibbler. “Very interesting indeed.” He flicked the ash from his cigar towards the demons. One of them caught it and ate it. “So what would happen”, he said slowly, “if, say, just one picture in the whole click was different.” “Funny you should ask,” said Gaffer. “It happened the other day when we were patching up Beyond the Valley of the Trolls. One of the apprentices had stuck in just one picture from The Golde Rush and we all went around all morning thinking about gold and not knowing why. It was as if it’d gone straight into our heads without our eyes seeing it. Of course, I took my belt to the lad when we spotted it, but we’d never have found out if I hadn’t happened to look at the click slowly.” He picked up the paste brush again, squared up a couple of strips of film, and fixed them together. After a while he became aware that it had gone very quiet behind him. “You all right, Mr. Dibbler?” he said. “Hmm? Oh.” Dibbler was deep in thought. “Just one picture had all that effect?” “Oh, yes. Are you all right, Mr. Dibbler?” “Never felt better, lad,” Dibbler said. “Never felt better.” He rubbed his hands together. “Let’s you and me have a little chat, man to man,” he added. “Because, you know . . . “ he laid a friendly hand on Gaffer’s shoulder, “ . . . I’ve a feeling that this could be your lucky day.” And in another alleyway Gaspode sat muttering to himself. “Huh. Stay, he says. Givin’ me orders. Jus’ so’s his girlfriend doesn’t have to have a horrid smelly dog in her room. So here’s me, man’s best friend, sittin’ out in the rain. If it was rainin’, anyway. Maybe it ain’t rainin’, but if it was rainin’, I’d be soaked by now. Serve him right if I just upped and walked away. I could do it, too. Any time I wanted. I don’t have to sit here. I hope no-one’s thinkin’ I’m sittin’ here because I’ve been told to sit here. I’d like to see the human who could give me orders. I’m sittin’ here “cos I want to. Yeah.” Then he whined for a bit and shuffled into the shadows, where there was less chance of being seen. In the room above, Victor was standing facing the wall. This was humiliating. It had been bad enough bumping into a grinning Mrs. Cosmopilite on the stairs. She had given him a big smile and a complicated, elbow-intensive gesture that, he felt certain, sweet little old ladies shouldn’t know. There were clinks and the occasional rustle behind him as Ginger got ready for bed. “She’s really very nice. She told me yesterday that she had had four husbands,” said Ginger. “What did she do with the bones?” said Victor. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” said Ginger, sniffing. “All right, you can turn around now. I’m in bed.” Victor relaxed, and turned round. Ginger had drawn the covers up to her neck and was holding them there like a besieged garrison manning the barricades. “You’ve got to promise me,” she said, “that if anything happens, you won’t try to take advantage of the situation.” Victor sighed. “I promise.” “It’s just that I’ve got a career to think about, you see.” “Yes, I see.” Victor sat by the lamp and took the book out of his pocket. “I’m not trying to be ungrateful or anything like that,” Ginger went on. Victor ruffled through the yellowing pages, looking for the place he’d got to. Scores of people had spent their lives by Holy Wood Hill, apparently just to keep a fire alight and chant three times a day. Why? “What are you reading?” said Ginger, after a while. “It’s an old book I found,” said Victor, shortly. “It’s about Holy Wood.” “Oh.” “I should get some sleep if I were you,” he said, twisting so that he could make out the crabby script in the lamp light. He heard her yawn. “Did I finish telling you about the dream?” she said. “I don’t think so,” said Victor, in what he hoped was a politely discouraging voice. “It always starts off with this mountain-” “Look, you really shouldn’t be talking-” “-and there are stars around it, you know, in the sky, but one of them comes down and it’s not a star at all, it’s a woman holding a torch over her head-” Victor slowly turned back to the front of the book. “Yes?” he said, carefully. “And she keeps on trying to tell me something, something I can’t make out, about waking something, and then there are a lot of lights and this roar, like a lion or a tiger or something, you know? And then I wake up.” Victor’s finger idly traced the outline of the mountain under the stars. “It’s probably just a dream,” he said. “It probably doesn’t mean anything.” Of course, Holy Wood Hill wasn’t pointed. But perhaps it was once, in the days when there had been a city where now there was a bay. Good grief. Something must have really hated this place. “You don’t remember anything else about the dream, by any chance?” he asked, with feigned casualness. There was no answer. He crept to the bed. She was asleep. He went back to the chair, which was promising to become annoyingly uncomfortable within half an hour, and turned down the lamp. Something in the hill. That was the danger. The more immediate danger was that he was going to fall asleep, too. He sat in the dark and worried. How did you wake up a sleepwalker, anyway? He recalled vaguely that it was said to be a very dangerous thing to do. There were stories about people dreaming about being executed and then, when someone had touched them on the shoulder to wake them up, their heads had fallen off. How anyone ever knew what a dead person had been dreaming wasn’t disclosed. Perhaps the ghost came back afterwards and stood at the end of the bed, complaining. The chair creaked alarmingly as he shifted position. Perhaps if he stuck one leg out like this he could rest it on the end of the bed, so that even if he did fall asleep she wouldn’t be able to get past without waking him. Funny, really. For weeks he’d spent the days sweeping her up in his arms, defending her bravely from whatever it was Morry was dressed up as today, kissing her, and generally riding off into the sunset to live happily, and possibly even ecstatically, ever after. There was probably no-one who’d ever watched one of the clicks who would possibly believe that he’d spend the night sitting in her room on a chair made out of splinters. Even he found it hard to believe, and here he was. You didn’t get this sort of thing in clicks. Clicks were all Passione in a Worlde Gone Madde. If this was a click, he certainly wouldn’t be sitting around in the dark on a hard chair. He’d be . . . well, he wouldn’t be sitting around in the dark on a hard chair, that was for sure. The Bursar locked his study door behind him. You had to do that. The Archchancellor thought that knocking on doors was something that happened to other people. At least the horrible man seemed to have lost interest in the resograph, or whatever Riktor had called it. The Bursar had had a dreadful day, trying to conduct University business while knowing that the document was hidden in his room. He pulled it out from under the carpet, turned up the lamp, and began to read. He’d be the first to admit that he wasn’t any good at mechanical things. He gave up quickly on the bits about pivots, octiron pendulums, and air being compressed in bellows. He homed in again on the paragraph that said: “If, then, disturbances in the fabric of reality cause ripples to spread out from the epicentre, then the pendulum will tilt, compress the air in the relevant bellows, and cause the ornamental elephant closest to the epicentre to release a small lead ball into a cup. And thus the direction of the disturbance-” . . . whumm . . . whumm . . . He could hear it even up here. They’d just heaped more sandbags around it. No-one dared move it now. The Bursar tried to concentrate on his reading. “-can be estimated by the number and force-” . . .whumm . . . whummWHUMMWHUMM. The Bursar found himself holding his breath. “-of the expelled pellets, which I estimate in serious disturbances-” Plib. “-may well exceed two pellets-” Plib. “–expelled several inches-” Plib. “-during the-” Plib. “–course-” Plib. “-of-” Plib. “–one-” Plib. “-month.” Plib. Gaspode woke up and quickly hauled himself into what he hoped looked like an alert position. Someone was shouting, but politely, as if they wanted to be helped but only if it wouldn’t be too much trouble. He trotted up the steps. The door was ajar. He pushed it open with his head. Victor was lying on his back, tied to a chair. Gaspode sat down and watched him intently, in case he was about to do something interesting. “All right, are we?” he said, after a while. “Don’t just sit there, idiot! Untie these knots,” said Victor. “Idiot I may be, but tied up I ain’t,” said Gaspode evenly. “Got the jump on you, did she?” “I must have nodded off for a moment,.” said Victor. “Long enough for her to get up, rip up a sheet, and tie you to the chair,” said Gaspode. “Yes, all right, all right. Can’t you gnaw through it, or something?” “With these teeth? I could fetch someone, though,” said Gaspode, and grinned. “Er, I’m not sure that’s a very good-” “Don’t worry. I’ll be right back,” said Gaspode, and padded out. “It might be a bit difficult to explain-” Victor called after him, but the dog was down the stairs and ambling along through the maze of backlots and alleys to the rear of Century of the Fruitbat. He shuffled up to the high fence. There was the gentle clink of a chain. “Laddie?” he whispered hoarsely. There was a delighted bark. “Good boy Laddie!” “Yeah,” said Gaspode. “Yeah.” He sighed. Had he ever been like that? If he had, thank goodness he hadn’t known about it. “Me good boy!” “Sure, sure. Laddie be quiet,” muttered Gaspode, and squeezed his arthritic body under the fence. Laddie licked his face as he emerged. “I’m too old for this sort of stuff,” he muttered, and peered at the kennel. “A choke chain,” he said. “A bloody choke chain. Stop pulling on it, you daft idiot. Back up. Back up. Right.” Gaspode shoved a paw into the loop and eased it over Laddie’s head. “There,” he said. “If we all knew how to do that, we’d be runnin’ the world. Now stop kiddin’ around. We need you.” Laddie sprang to tongue-lolling attention. If dogs could salute, he would have done. Gaspode wriggled under the fence again, and waited. He could hear Laddie’s footsteps the other side, but the big dog seemed to be padding away from the fence. “No!” hissed Gaspode. “Follow me!” There was a scurry of paws, a swishing noise, and Laddie cleared the high fence and did a four-point landing in front of him. Gaspode unpeeled his tongue from the back of his throat. “Good boy,” he muttered. “Good boy.” Victor sat up, rubbing his head. “I caught myself aright crack when the chair fell backwards,” he said. Laddie sat looking expectantly, with the remains of the sheet in his mouth. “What’s he waiting for?” said Victor. “You’ve got to tell him he’s a good boy,” sighed Gaspode. “Doesn’t he expect some meat or a sweet or something?” Gaspode shook his head. “Jus’ tell him what a good boy he is. It’s better’n hard currency, for dogs.” “Oh? Well, then: good boy, Laddie.” Laddie bounced up and down excitedly. Gaspode swore under his breath. “Sorry about this,” he said. “Pathetic, isn’t it?” “Good boy, find Ginger,” said Victor. “Look, I can do that,” said Gaspode desperately, as Laddie started snuffling at the floor. “We all know where she’s headed. You don’t have to go and-” Laddie dashed out of the door, but gracefully. He paused at the bottom of the stairs and gave an eager, follow-me bark. “Pathetic,” said Gaspode, miserably. The stars always seemed to shine more brightly over Holy Wood. Of course, the air was clearer than Ankh, and there wasn’t much smoke, but even so . . . they were somehow bigger, too, and closer, as if the sky was a vast lens. Laddie streaked over the dunes; pausing occasionally for Victor to catch up. Gaspode followed on some way behind, rolling from side to side and wheezing. The trail led to the hollow, which was empty. The door was open about a foot. Scuffed sand around it indicated that, whatever may or may not have come out, Ginger had gone in. Victor stared at it. Laddie sat by the door, staring hopefully at Victor. “He’s waitin’,” said Gaspode. “What for?” said Victor apprehensively. Gaspode groaned. “What do you think?” he said. “Oh. Yes. There’s a good boy, Laddie.” Laddie yapped and tried to turn a somersault. “What do we do next?” said Victor. “I suppose we go in, do we?” “Could be,” said Gaspode. “Er. Or we could wait till she comes out. The fact is, I’ve never been very happy about darkness,” said Victor.“I mean, night-time is OK, but pitch darkness-” “I bet Cohen the Barbarian isn’t afraid of the dark,” said Gaspode. “Well, yes-” “And the Black Shadow of the Desert, he’s not afraid of the dark either.” “OK, but-” “And Howondaland Smith, Balgrog Hunter, practic’ly eats the dark for his tea,” said Gaspode. “Yes, but I’m not those people!” wailed Victor. “Try tellin’ that to all those people who handed over their pennies to watch you bein’ ‘em,” said Gaspode. He scratched at an insomniac flea. “Cor, it’d be a laugh to have a handleman here now, wouldn’t it?” he said, cheerfully. “Wot a comedy feature it’d make. Mr. Hero Not Goin’ Into the Dark, we could call it. It’d be better’n Turkey Legs. It’d be funnier’n A Night At The Arena. I reckon people’d queue fo-” “All right, all right,” said Victor. “I’ll go a little way in, perhaps.” He looked around desperately at the dried-up trees around the hollow. “And I’ll make a torch,” he added. He’d expected spiders and dampness and possibly snakes, if nothing worse . . . Instead, there was just a dry, roughly square passageway, leading slightly downwards. The air had a slightly salty smell, suggesting that somewhere the tunnel was connected to the sea. Victor took a few paces along it, and stopped. “Hang on,” he said. “If the torch goes out, we could get horribly lost.” “No, we can’t,” said Gaspode. “Sense of smell, see?” “Gosh, that’s clever.” Victor went on a little further. The walls were covered with big versions of the square ideograms that featured in the book. “You know,” he said, pausing to run his fingers over one, “these aren’t really like a written language. It’s more as if-” “Keep movin’ and stop makin’ excuses,” said Gaspode behind him. Victor’s foot kicked against something which bounced away into the darkness. “What was it?” he quavered. Gaspode snuffled off into the darkness, and returned. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Oh?” “It’s just a skull.” “Whose?” “He dint say,” said Gaspode. “Shut up!” Something crunched under Victor’s sandal. “An’ that–” Gaspode began. “I don’t want to know!” “It was a seashell, in fact,” said Gaspode. Victor peered into the moving square of darkness ahead of them. The makeshift torch flared in the draught and, if he strained his ears, he could hear a rhythmic sound; it was either a beast roaring in the distance, or the sound of the sea moving in some underground tunnel. He opted for the second suggestion. “Something’s been calling her,” he said. “In dreams. Someone that wants to be let out. I’m afraid she’s going to get hurt.” “She’s not worth it,” said Gaspode. “Messin” around with girls who’re in thrall to Creatures from the Void never works out, take my word for it. You’d never know what you were going to wake up next to.” “Gaspode!” “You’ll see I’m right.” The torch went out. Victor waved it desperately and blew on it in a last attempt to rekindle it. A few sparks flared and faded. There simply wasn’t enough torch left. The darkness flowed back. Victor had never known darkness like it. No matter how long you looked into it, your eyes wouldn’t grow accustomed to it. There was nothing to become accustomed to. It was darkness and mother of darkness, darkness absolute, the darkness under the earth, darkness so dense as to be almost tangible, like cold velvet. “It’s bloody dark,” volunteered Gaspode. I’ve broken out into what they call a cold sweat, thought Victor. So that’s what it feels like. I’d always wondered. He eased himself sideways until he reached the wall. “We’d better go back,” he said, in what he hoped was a matter-of-fact voice. “There could be anything ahead of us. Ravines or anything. We could get more torches and more people and come back.” There was a flat sound from far down the passage. Whoomph. It was followed by a light so harsh that it projected the image of Victor’s eyeballs on the back of his skull. It faded after a few seconds, but was still almost painfully bright. Laddie whimpered. “There you are,” said Gaspode hoarsely. “You’ve got some light now, so everything’s all right.” “Yes, but what’s making it?” “I’m supposed to know, am I?” Victor inched forward, his shadow dancing behind him. After a hundred yards or so the passageway opened out in what had perhaps once been a natural cave. The light was coming from an arch high up at one end, but it was bright enough to reveal every detail. It was bigger even than the Great Hall at the University, and must once have been even more impressive. The light gleamed off baroque gold ornamentation, and on the stalactites that ribbed the roof. Stairs wide enough for a regiment rose from a wide shadowy hole in the floor; a regular thud and boom and a smell of salt said that the sea had found an entrance somewhere below. The air was clammy. “Some kind of a temple?” muttered Victor. Gaspode sniffed at a dark red drapery hung on one side of the entrance. At his touch it collapsed into a mess of slime. “Yuk,” he said. “The whole place is mouldy!” Something many--legged scuttled hastily across the floor and dropped into the stairwell. Victor reached out gingerly and prodded a thick red rope, slung between gold-encrusted posts. It disintegrated. The cracked stairway carried on up to the distant lighted arch. They climbed it, scrambling over heaps of crumbling seaweed and driftwood flung up by some past high tide. The arch opened out into another vast cavern, like an amphitheatre. Rows of seats stretched down towards a - a wall? It shimmered like mercury. If you could fill an oblong pool of mercury the size of a house, and then tip it on its side without any of it spilling, then it would look something like this. Only not so malevolent. It was flat and blank but Victor suddenly felt he was being stared at, like something under a lens. Laddie whined. Then Victor realized what it was that was making him uneasy. It wasn’t a wall. A wall was attached to something. That thing was attached to nothing. It just hung in the air, billowing and rippling like an image in a mirror, but without the mirror. The light was coming from somewhere on the other side of it. Victor could see it now, a bright pinpoint moving around in the shadow at the far end of the chamber. He set off down the sloping aisle between the rows of stone seats, the dogs plodding along beside him with their ears flat and their tails between their legs. They waded through something that might once have been carpet; it tore wetly and disintegrated under their feet. After they’d gone a few yards Gaspode said, “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but some of-” “I know,” said Victor, grimly. “-the seats, they’re still-” “I know.” “-occupied.” “I know.” All these people - these things who had been people - sitting in rows. It’s as though they were watching a click. He’d almost reached it now. It shimmied above him, a rectangle with length and height but no thickness. Just in front of it, almost underneath the silver screen, a smaller flight of steps led him down into a circular pit half filled with debris. By climbing on to it he could see behind the screen, to where the light was. It was Ginger. She was standing with one hand held above her head. The torch in it burned like phosphorus. She was staring up at a body on a slab. It was a giant. Or, at least, something like a giant. It might just have been a suit of armour with a sword laid on top of it, half buried in dust and sand. “It’s the thing from the book!” he hissed. “Ye gods, what does she think she’s doing?” “I don’t think she’s thinkin’ anythin’,” said Gaspode. Ginger half turned and Victor saw her face. She was smiling. Behind the slab Victor could make out some kind of big, corroded disc. At least it was hanging from the ceiling by proper chains, and not defying gravity in such a disconcerting way. “Right,” he said, “I’m going to put a stop to this right now. Ginger!” His voice boomed back at him from the distant walls. He could hear it bouncing away along caverns and corridors er, er, er. There was a thud of falling rock somewhere far behind him. “Keep it quiet!” said Gaspode. “You’ll have the whole place down on us!” “Ginger!” Victor hissed. “It’s me!” She turned and looked at him, or through him, or into him. “Victor,” she said sweetly. “Go away. Far away. Go away now or great harm will befall.” “Great harm will befall,” muttered Gaspode. “That’s boding talk, that is.” “You don’t know what you’re doing,” said Victor. “You asked me to stop you! Come back. Come back with me now.” He tried to climb up . . . . . . and something sank under his foot. There was a faraway gurgling noise, a metallic clonk, and then one watery musical note billowed up around him and echoed around the cavern. He moved his foot hurriedly, but only on to another part of the ledge which sank like the first, producing a different note. Now there was a scraping sound as well. Victor had been standing in a small sunken pit. Now to his horror he realized that it was rising slowly, to the accompaniment of blaring notes and the whirr and wheeze of ancient machinery. He thrust out his hands and hit a corroded lever, which produced a different chord and then snapped off. Laddie was howling. Victor saw Ginger drop her torch and clap her hands over her ears. A block of masonry leaned slowly out of the wall and smashed on the seats. Fragments of rock pattered down, and a rumbling counterpoint to the blare suggested that the noise was rearranging the shape of the whole cavern. And then it died, with a long strangulated gurgle and a final gasp. A series of jerks and creaks indicated that whatever prehistoric machinery had been activated by Victor had given of its all before collapsing. Silence returned. Victor eased himself carefully out of the music pit, which was now several feet in the air, and ran over to Ginger. She was on her knees, and sobbing. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.” “Where am I? What’s happening?” “I couldn’t even begin to explain.” The torch was spluttering on the floor. It wasn’t an actinic fire now, it was just a piece of charred and nearly extinguished driftwood. Victor grabbed it and waved it around until a dull yellow flame appeared. “Gaspode?” he snapped. “Yeah?” “You two dogs lead the way.” “Oh, thank you very much.” Ginger clung to him as they lurched back up the aisle. Despite the incipient terror, Victor had to admit that it was a very pleasant sensation. He looked around at the occasional occupants of the seats and shuddered. “It looks as though they died watching a click,” he said. “Yeah. A comedy,” said Gaspode, trotting ahead of him. “Why do you say that?” “They’re all grinnin’.” “Gaspode!” “Well, you’ve got to look on the bright side, haven’t you?” sneered the dog. “Can’t go around bein’ miserable jus’ because you’re in some lost underground tomb with a mad cat lover an’ a torch that’s goin’ to go out any minute-” “Keep going! Keep going!” They half-fell, half ran down the steps, skidded unpleasantly on the seaweed at the bottom, and headed for the little archway that led to the wonderful prospect of living air and bright daylight. The torch was beginning to scorch Victor’s hand. He let it go. At least there had been no problems in the passage; if they kept to one wall and didn’t do anything stupid they couldn’t help but reach the door. And it must be dawn by now, which meant that it shouldn’t be long before they could see the light. Victor straightened up. This was pretty heroic, really. There hadn’t been any monsters to fight, but probably even monsters would have rotted away centuries ago. Of course it had been creepy, but really it was only, well, archaeology. Now it was all behind him it didn’t seem so bad at all . . . Laddie, who had been running ahead of them, barked sharply. “What’s he saying?” said Victor. “He’s saying”, said Gaspode, “that the tunnel’s blocked.” “Oh, no!” “It was prob’ly your organ recital that did it.” “Really blocked?” Really blocked. Victor crawled over the heap. Several large roof slabs had come down, bringing tons of broken rock with them. He pulled and pushed at one or two pieces, but this produced only further falls. “Perhaps there’s another way out?” he said. “Perhaps you dogs could go and-” “Forget it, pal,” said Gaspode. “Anyway, the only other way must be down those steps. They connect with the sea, right? All you have to do is swim down there and hope your lungs hold out.” Laddie barked. “Not you,” said Gaspode. “I wasn’t talking to you. Never volunteer for anything.” Victor continued his burrowing among the rocks. “I don’t know,” he said, after a while, “but it seems to me I can see a bit of light here. What do you think?” He heard Gaspode scramble over the stones. “Could be, could be,” said the dog grudgingly. “Looks like a couple of blocks have wedged up and left a space.” “Big enough for someone small to crawl through?” said Victor encouragingly. “I knew you were going to say that,” said Gaspode. Victor heard the scrabble of paws on loose rock. Eventually a muffled voice said, “It opens up a bit . . . tight squeeze here . . . blimey . . . “ There was silence. “Gaspode?” said Victor apprehensively. “It’s OK. I’m through. An’ I can see the door.” “Great!” Victor felt the air move and there was a scratching noise. He reached out carefully and his hand met a ferociously hairy body. “Laddie’s trying to follow you!” “He’s too big. He’ll get stuck!” There was a canine grunt, a frantic kicking which showered Victor with gravel, and a small bark of triumph. “O’corse, he’s a bit skinnier’n me,” said Gaspode, after a while. “Now you two run and fetch help,” said Victor. “Er. We’ll wait here.” He heard them disappear into the distance. Laddie’s faraway barking indicated that they had reached the outside air. Victor sat back. “Now all we have to do is wait,” he said. “We’re in the hill, aren’t we?” said Ginger’s voice in the darkness. “Yes.” “How did we get here?” “I followed you.” “I told you to stop me.” “Yes, but then you tied me up.” “I did no such thing!” “You tied me up,” repeated Victor. “And then you came here and opened the door and made a torch of some sort and went all the way into that - that place. I dread to think of what you’d have done if I hadn’t woken you up.” There was a pause. “I really did all that?” said Ginger uncertainly. “You really did.” “But I don’t remember any of it!” “I believe you. But you still did it.” “What - what was that place, anyway?” Victor shifted in the darkness, trying to make himself comfortable. “I don’t know,” he confessed. “At first I thought it was a temple. And it looked as though people used it for watching moving pictures.” “But it looked hundreds of years old!” “Thousands, I expect.” “But look, that can’t be right,” said Ginger, in the small voice of one trying to be reasonable while madness is breaking down the door with a cleaver. “The alchemists only got the idea a few months ago.” “Yes. It’s something to think about.” He reached out and found her. Her body was ramrod stiff and flinched at his touch. “We’re safe enough here,” he added. “Gaspode will soon bring back some help. Don’t you worry about that.” He tried not to think about the sea slapping at the stairs, and the many-legged things that scuttled over the midnight floor. He tried to put out of his mind the thought of octopi slithering silently over the seats in front of that living, shifting screen. He tried to forget the patrons who had been sitting in the darkness while, above them, centuries passed. Perhaps they were waiting for the lady to come around with the banged grains and hot sausages. The whole of life is just like watching a click, he thought. Only it’s as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it all out yourself from the clues. And you never, never get a chance to stay in your seat for the second house. Candlelight flickered in the University corridor. The Bursar did not think of himself as a brave man. The most he felt happy about tackling was a column of numbers, and being good at numbers had taken him further up the hierarchy of Unseen University than magic had ever done. But he couldn’t let this pass . . . . whumm . . . whumm . . . whummwhummwhummWHUMM WHUMM. He crouched behind a pillar and counted eleven pellets. Little jets of sand puffed out of the bags. They were coming at two-minute intervals now. He ran to the heap of sandbags and tugged at them. Reality wasn’t the same everywhere. Well, of course, every wizard knew that. Reality wasn’t very thick anywhere on the Discworld. In some places it was very thin indeed. That was why magic worked. What Riktor thought he could measure was changes in reality, places where the real was rapidly becoming unreal. And every wizard knew what could happen if things became unreal enough to form a hole. But, he thought, as he clawed at the bags, you’d need massive amounts of magic. We’d be bound to spot that amount of magic. It’d stand out like . . . well, like a lot of magic. I must have taken at least fifty seconds so far. He peered at the vase in its bunker. Oh. He’d been hoping he might be wrong. All the pellets had been expelled in one direction. Half a dozen sandbags had been shot full of holes. And Numbers had thought that a couple of pellets in a month indicated a dangerous build-up of unreality . . . The Bursar mentally drew a line from the vase, through the damaged sandbags, to the far end of the corridor . . . . whumm . . . whumm . . . He jerked back, and then realized that there was no need to worry. All the pellets were being shot out of the ornamental elephant’s head opposite him. He relaxed. . . . whumm . . . whumm . . . The vase rocked violently as mysterious machinery swung around inside it. The Bursar put his head closer to it. Yes, there was definitely a hissing sound, like air being squeezed Eleven pellets slammed at high speed into the sandbags. The vase recoiled back, in accordance with the famous principle of reaction. Instead of hitting a sandbag, it hit the Bursar. Ming-ng-ng. He blinked. He took a step backwards. He fell over. Because Holy Wood’s disturbances in reality were extending weak but opportunist tendrils even as far as Ankh--Morpork, a couple of little bluebirds flew around his head for a moment and went “tweet-tweet-tweet” before vanishing. Gaspode lay on the sand and wheezed. Laddie danced around him, barking urgently. “We’re well out of that,” he managed, and stood up and shook himself. Laddie barked and looked incredibly photogenic. “All right, all right,” sighed Gaspode. “How about if we go and find some breakfast and maybe catch up on our sleep and then we’ll-” Laddie barked again. Gaspode sighed. “Oh, all right,” he said. “Have it your way. But you won’t get any thanks, you know.” The dog whizzed away across the sand. Gaspode followed at a more leisurely, ambling pace, and was very surprised when Laddie doubled back, picked him up gently by the scruff of the neck, and bounded off again. “You’re only doin’ this to me ‘cos I’m small,” Gaspode complained, as he swung from side to side, and “No, not that way! Humans’ll be no good at this time o’ the morning. We want trolls. They’ll still be up and about and they’re dab hands at the underground stuff. Take the next right. We want the Blue Lias and - oh, bugger.” It had suddenly dawned on him that he was going to be required to talk. And in public. You could spend ages carefully concealing your vocal abilities from people and then, bingo, you were on the spot and you had to talk. Otherwise young Victor and Cat Woman would be moulderin’ down there forever. Young Laddie was going to drop him in front of someone and look expectant and he’d have to explain. And afterwards spend his whole life as some sort of freak. Laddie trotted up the street and into the smoky portals of the Blue Lias, which was crowded. He threaded his way through a maze of treetrunk legs to the bar, barked sharply, and dropped Gaspode on the floor. He looked expectant. The buzz of conversation stopped. “Is that Laddie?” said a troll. “What he want?” Gaspode wandered groggily to the nearest troll and tugged politely at a trailing strip of rusty chain mail. “’Scuse me,” he said. “He bloody intelligent dog,” said another troll, idly kicking Gaspode aside. “I see him in click yesterday. He can play dead and count up to five.” “That two more than you can, then.” This got a round of laughter.[23] “No, shut up. I reckon”, said the first troll, “he trying to tell us something.” “-‘scuse me-” “You only got to look at the way he leaping about and barking.” “That right. I saw him in this click, he showing people where to find lost children in caves.” “-‘scuse me-” A troll brow wrinkled. “To eat ‘em, you mean?” “No, to bring ‘em outside.” “What, like for a barbecue sort of thing?” “-‘scuse me-” Another foot caught Gaspode on the side of his bullet head. “Could be he found some more. Look at the way he running back and forwards to the door. He one clever dog.” “We could go look,” said the first troll. “Good idea. It seem like ages since I had my tea.” “Listen, you not allowed to eat people in Holy Wood. It get us bad name! Also Silicon Anti-Defamation League be down on you like a ton of rectangular building things.” “Yeah, but could be a reward or something.” “-‘SCUSE ME-” “Right! Also, big improvement for troll image viz-ah-viz public relations if we find lost children.” “And even if we don’t, we can eat the dog, right?” The bar emptied, leaving only the usual clouds of smoke, cauldrons of molten troll drinks, Ruby idly scraping the congealed lava off the mugs, and a small, weary, moth-eaten dog. The small, weary, moth-eaten dog thought hard about the difference between looking and acting like a wonder dog and merely being one. It said “Bugger.” Victor remembered being frightened of tigers when he was young. In vain did people point out that the nearest tiger was three thousand miles away. He’d say, “Is there any sea between where they live and here?” and people would say, “Well, no, but-” and he’d say, “Then it’s just a matter of distance.” Darkness was the same thing. All dreadful dark places were connected by the nature of darkness itself. Darkness was everywhere, all the time, just waiting for the lights to go out. Just like the Dungeon Dimensions, really. Just waiting for reality to snap. He held on tight to Ginger. “You needn’t,” she said. “I’ve got a grip on myself now.” “Oh, good,” he said weakly. “The trouble is, so have you.” He relaxed. “Are you cold?” she said. “A bit. It’s very clammy down here.” “Is it your teeth I can hear chattering?” “Who else’s? No,” he added hurriedly, “don’t even think about it.” “You know,” she said, after a while, “I don’t remember anything about tying you up. I’m not even very good at knots.” “These were pretty good,” said Victor. “I just remember the dream. There was this voice telling me that I must wake the - the sleeping man?” Victor thought of the armoured figure on the slab. “Did you get a good look at it?” he said. “What was it like?” “I don’t know about tonight,” said Ginger cautiously. “But in my dreams it’s always looked a bit like my Uncle Oswald.” Victor thought of a sword taller than he was. You couldn’t parry a slash from something like that, it’d cut through anything. Somehow it was hard to think of anything looking like an Oswald with a sword like that. “Why’s he remind you of your Uncle Oswald?” he said. “Because my Uncle Oswald lay quite still like that. Mind you, I only ever saw him once. And that was at his funeral.” Victor opened his mouth - and there were distant, blurred voices. A few stones moved. A voice, a little closer now, trilled, “Hallo, little children. This way, little children.” “That’s Rock!” said Ginger. “I’d know that voice anywhere,” said Victor. “Hey! Rock! It’s me! Victor!” There was a worried pause. Then Rock’s voice bellowed: “It’s my friend Victor!” “That mean we can’t eat him?” “No-one is to eat my friend Victor! We dig him out with speed!” There was the sound of crunching. Then another troll’s voice complained, “They call this limestone? I call it tasteless.” There was some more scrabbling. A third voice said, “Don’t see why we can’t eat him. Who’d know?” “You uncivilized troll,” scolded Rock. “What you thinking of? You eat people, everyone laugh at you, say, “He very defective troll, do not know how to behave in polite society” and stop paying you three dollar a day and send you back to mountains.” Victor gave what he hoped would sound like a light chuckle. “They’re a lot of laughs, aren’t they?” he said. “Heaps,” said Ginger. “Of course, all that stuff about eating people is just bravado. They hardly ever do it. You shouldn’t worry about it.” “I’m not. I’m worried because I walk around all the time when I’m asleep and I don’t know why. You make it sound as if I was going to wake up that sleeping creature. It’s a horrible thought. Something’s inside my head.” There was a crash as more rocks were pulled aside. “That’s the odd thing,” said Victor. “When people are, er, possessed, the, er, possessing thing doesn’t usually care much about them or anyone else. I mean, it wouldn’t have just tied me up. It would have hit me over the head with something.” He reached for her hand in the dark. “That thing on the slab,” he said. “What about it?” “I’ve seen it before. It’s in the book I found. There’s dozens of pictures of it, and they must have thought it was very important to keep it behind the gate. That’s what the pictograms say, I think. Gate . . . man. The man behind the gate. The prisoner. You see, I’m sure the reason why all the priests or whoever they were had to go and chant there every day was-” A slab by his head was pulled aside and weak daylight poured through. It was very closely followed by Laddie, who tried to lick Victor’s face and bark at the same time. “Yes, yes! Well done, Laddie,” said Victor, trying to fight him off. “Good dog. Good boy, Laddie.” “Good boy Laddie! Good boy Laddie!” The bark brought several small shards of stone down from the ceiling. “Aha!” said Rock. Several other troll heads appeared behind him as Victor and Ginger stared out of the hole. “They not little children,” muttered the one who had been complaining about the eating ban. “They look stringy.” “I tell you before,” said Rock menacingly, “no eating people. It cause no end of trouble.” “Why not just one leg? Then everyone’ll be-” Rock picked up a half-ton slab in one hand, weighed it thoughtfully, and then hit the other troll so hard with it that it broke. “I tell you before,” he told the recumbent figure, “it trolls like you getting us a bad name. How can we take rightful place in brotherhood of sapient species with defective trolls like you letting side down alter time?” He reached through the hole and pulled Victor out bodily. “Thanks, Rock. Er. There’s Ginger in there, too.” Rock gave him a crafty nudge that bruised a couple of ribs. “So I see,” he said. “And she wearing very pretty silk neggleliggle. You find nice place to indulge in bit of “What is the health of your parent?” and the Disc move for you, yeah?” The other trolls grinned. “Uh, yes, I suppose–” Victor began. “That’s not true at all!” snapped Ginger, as she was helped through the hole. “We weren’t-” “Yes, it is!” said Victor, making furious signals with his hands and eyebrows. “It’s absolutely true! You’re absolutely right, Rock!” “Yeah,” said one of the trolls behind Rock. “I seen them on the clicks. He kissing her and carrying her off the whole time.” “Now listen,” Ginger began. “And now we get out of here fast,” said Rock. “This whole ceiling looking very defective to me. Could go at any time.” Victor glanced up. Several of the blocks were dipping ominously. “You’re right,” he said. He grabbed the arm of the protesting Ginger and hustled her along the passage. The trolls gathered up the fallen compatriot who did not know how to behave in polite company and plodded after them. “That was disgusting, giving them the impression that-” Ginger hissed. “Shut up!” snapped Victor. “What did you want me to say, hmm? I mean, what sort of explanation do you think would fit? What would you like people to know?” She hesitated. “Well, all right,” she conceded. “But you could have thought of something else. You could have said we were exploring, or looking for, for fossils-” her voice trailed off. “Yes, in the middle of the night with you in a silk neggleliggle,” said Victor. “What is a neggleliggle, anyway?” “He meant negligee,” said Ginger. “Come on, let’s get back to town. Afterwards I might just have time to have a couple of hours’ sleep.” “What do you mean, afterwards?” “We’re going to have to buy these lads a big drink-” There was a low rumble from the hill. A cloud of dust billowed out of the doorway and covered the trolls. The rest of the roof had gone. “And that’s it,” said Victor. “It’s over. Can you make the sleepwalking part of you understand that? It’s no good trying to get in any more, there isn’t any way. It’s buried. It’s over. Thank goodness.” There’s a bar like it in every town. It’s dimly-lit and the drinkers, although they talk, don’t address their words to one another and they don’t listen, either. They just talk the hurt inside. It’s a bar for the derelict and the unlucky and all of those people who have been temporarily flagged off the racetrack of life and into the pits. It always does a brisk trade. On this dawn the mourners sat ranged along the counter, each in his cloud of gloom, each certain that he was the most unfortunate individual in the Whole world. “I created it,” said Silverfish, morosely. “I thought it would be educational. It could broaden people’s horizons. I didn’t intend for it to be a, a, a show. With a thousand elephants!” he added nastily. “Yeah,” said Detritus. “She don’t know what she wants. I do what she want, then she say, that not right, you a troll with no finer feelin’, you do not understand what a girl wants. She say, Girl want sticky things to eat in box with bow around, I make box with bow around, she open box, she scream, she say flayed horse not what she mean. She don’t know what she wants.” “Yeah,” said a voice from under Silverfish’s stool. “It’d serve ‘em all right if I went off an’ joined the wolves.” “I mean, take this Blown Away thing,” said Silverfish. “It’s not even real. It’s not like things really were. It’s just lies. Anyone can tell lies.” “Yeah,” said Detritus. “Like, she say, Girl want music under window, I play music under window, everyone in street wake up and shouting out of house, You bad troll, what you hitting rocks this time of night? And she never even wake up.” “Yeah,” said Silverfish. “Yeah,” said Detritus. “Yeah,” said the voice under the stool. The man who ran the bar was naturally cheerful. It wasn’t hard to be cheerful, really, when your customers acted like lightning rods for any misery that happened to be floating around. He’d found that it wasn’t a good idea to say things like, “Never mind, look on the bright side,” because there never was one, or “Cheer up, it may never happen,” because often it already had. All that was expected of him was to keep the drink coming. He was a little puzzled this morning, though. There seemed to be an extra person in the bar, quite apart from whoever it was speaking up from the floor. He kept getting the feeling that he was serving an extra drink, and even getting paid for it, and even talking to the mysterious purchaser. But he couldn’t see him. In fact he wasn’t quite sure what he was seeing, or who he was talking to. He wandered down to the far end of the bar. A glass slid towards him. SAME AGAIN, said a voice out of the shadows. “Er,” said the barman. “Yeah. Sure. What was it?” ANYTHING. The barman filled it with rum. It was pulled away. The barman sought for something to say. For some reason, he was feeling terrified. “Don’t see you in here, much,” he managed. I COME FOR THE ATMOSPHERE. SAME AGAIN. “Work in Holy Wood, do you?”said the barman, topping up the glass quickly. It vanished again. NOT FOR SOME TIME. SAME AGAIN. The barman hesitated. He was, at heart, a kindly soul. “You don’t think you’ve had enough, do you?” he said. I KNOW EXACTLY WHEN I’VE HAD ENOUGH. “Everyone says that, though.” I KNOW WHEN EVERYONE’S HAD ENOUGH. There was something very odd about that voice. The barman wasn’t quite sure that he was hearing it with his ears. “Oh. Well, er,” he said. “Same again?” NO. BUSY DAY TOMORROW. KEEP THE CHANGE. A handful of coins slid across the counter. They felt icy cold, and most of them were heavily corroded. “Oh, er-” the barman began. The door opened and shut, letting in a cold blast of air despite the warmth of the night. The barman wiped the top of the bar in a distracted way, carefully avoiding the coins. “You see some funny types, running a bar,” he muttered. A voice by his ear said, I FORGOT. A PACKET OF NUTS, PLEASE. Snow glittered on the rimward outriders of the Ramtop mountains, that great world-spanning range which, where it curves around the Circle Sea, forms a natural wall between Klatch and the great flat Sto plains. It was the home of rogue glaciers and prowling avalanches and high, silent fields of snow. And yetis. Yetis are a high-altitude species of troll, and quite unaware that eating people is out of fashion. Their view is: if it moves, eat it. If it doesn’t, then wait for it to move. And then eat it. They’d been listening all day to the sounds. Echoes had bounced from peak to peak along the frozen ranges until, now, it was a steady dull rumble. “My cousin”, said one of them, idly probing a hollow tooth with a claw, “said they was enormous grey animals. Elephants.” “Bigger’n us?” said the other yeti. “Nearly as bigger’n us,” said the first yeti. “Loads of them, he said. More than he could count.” The second yeti sniffed the wind and appeared to consider this. “Yeah, well,” he said, gloomily. “Your cousin can’t count above one.” “He said there was lots of big ones. Big fat grey elephants, all climbing, all roped together. Big and slow. All carrying lots of oograah.” Ah. The first yeti indicated the vast sloping snowfield. “Good and deep today,” he said. “Nothing’s gonna move fast in this, right? We lie down in the snow, they won’t see us till they’re right on top of us, we panic ‘em, it’s Big Eats time.” He waved his enormous paws in the air. “Very heavy, my cousin said. They’ll not move fast, you mark my words.” The other yeti shrugged. “Let’s do it,” he said, against the sound of distant, terrified trumpeting. They lay down in the snow, their white hides turning them into two unsuspicious mounds. It was a technique that had worked time and again, and had been handed down from yeti to yeti for thousands of years, although it wasn’t going to be handed much further. They waited. There was a distant bellowing as the herd approached. Eventually the first troll said, very slowly, because it had been working this out for a long time. “What do you get, right, what do you get if, you cross . . . a mountain with a elephant?” It never got an answer. The yetis had been right. When five hundred crude two-elephant bobsleighs crested the ridge ten feet away at sixty miles an hour, their strapped-on occupants trumpeting in panic, they never saw the yetis until they were right on top of them. Victor got only two hours’ sleep but got up feeling remarkably refreshed and optimistic. It was all over. Things were going to be a whole lot better now. Ginger had been quite nice to him last night - well, a few hours ago -and whatever it was in the hill had been well and truly buried. You got that sort of thing sometimes, he thought, as he poured some water into the cracked basin and had a quick wash. Some wicked old king or wizard gets buried and their spirit creeps about, trying to put things right or something. Well-known effect. But now there must be a million tons of rock blocking the tunnel, and I can’t see anyone doing any creeping through that. The unpleasantly alive screen surfaced briefly in his memory, but even that didn’t seem so bad now. It had been dark in there, there had been lots of moving shadows, he had been wound up like a spring in any case, no wonder his eyes had played tricks on him. There had been the skeletons, too, but even they now lacked the power to terrify. Victor had heard of tribal leaders up on the cold plains who’d be buried with whole armies of mounted horsemen, so that their souls would live on in the next world. Maybe there was something like that here, once. Yes, it all seemed much less horrifying in the cold light of day. And that’s just what it was. Cold light. The room was full of the kind of light you got when you woke up on a winter’s morning and knew, by the light, that it had snowed. It was a light without shadows. He went to the window and looked out on a pale silver glow. Holy Wood had vanished. The visions of the night fountained up in his mind again, as the darkness returns when the light goes out. Hang on, hang on, he thought, fighting the panic. It’s only fog. You’re bound to get fog sometimes, this close to the sea. And it’s glowing like that because the sun’s out. There’s nothing occult about fog. It’s just fine drops of water floating in the air. That’s all it is. He dragged his clothes on and threw open the door to the passage and almost tripped over Gaspode, who had been lying full length in front of the door like the world’s most unwashed draught excluder. The little dog raised himself unsteadily on his front paws, fixed Victor with a yellow eye and said, “I jus’ want you to know, right, that I ain’t lyin’ in front of your door ‘cos of any of this loyal-dog-protectin’-his-master nonsense, OK, it’s jus’ that when I got back here–” “Shut up, Gaspode.” Victor opened the outer door. Fog drifted in. It seemed to have an exploratory feel to it; it came in as if it had been waiting for just this opportunity. “Fog’s just fog,” he said aloud. “Come on. We’re going to Ankh-Morpork today, remember?” “My head,” said Gaspode, “my head feels like the bottom of a cat’s basket.” “You can sleep on the coach. I can sleep on the coach, if it comes to that.” He took a few steps into the silvery glow, and was almost immediately lost. Buildings loomed vaguely at him in the thick clammy air. “Gaspode?” he said hesitantly. Fog’s just fog, he repeated. But it feels crowded. It feels like that, if it suddenly went away, I’d see lots of people watching me. From outside. And that’s ridiculous, because I am outside, so there’s nothing outside of outside. And it’s flickering. “I expect you’ll be wantin’ me to lead the way,” said a smug voice by his knee. “It’s very quiet, isn’t it?” said Victor, trying to sound nonchalant. “I expect it’s the fog muffling everything.” “O’corse, maybe gharstely creatures have come up out o’ the sea and murthered every mortal soul except us,” said Gaspode conversationally. “Shut up!” Something loomed up out of the brightness. As it got closer it got smaller, and the tentacles and antennae that Victor’s imagination had been furnishing became the more-or-less ordinary arms and legs of Soll Dibbler. “Victor?” he said uncertainly. Soll’s relief was visible. “Can’t see a thing in this stuff,” he said. “We thought you’d got lost. Come on, it’s nearly noon. We’re more or less ready to go.” “I’m ready.” “Good.” Fog droplets had condensed on Soll’s hair and clothing. “Er,” he said. “Where are we, exactly?” Victor turned around. His lodgings had been behind him. “The fog changes everything, doesn’t it?” said Soll unhappily. “Er, do you think your little dog can find his way to the studio? He seems quite bright.” “Growl, growl,” said Gaspode, and sat up and begged in what Victor at least recognized as a sarcastic way. “My word,” said Soll. “It’s as if he understands, isn’t it?” Gaspode barked sharply. After a second or two there was a barrage of excited answering barks. “Of course, that’ll be Laddie,” said Soll. “What a clever dog!” Gaspode looked smug. “Mind you, that’s Laddie in a nutshell,” said Soll, as they set off towards the barking. “I expect he could teach your dog a few tricks, eh?” Victor didn’t dare look down. After a few false turns the archway of Century of the Fruitbat passed overhead like a ghost. There were more people here; the site seemed to be filling up with lost wanderers who didn’t know where else to go. There was a coach waiting outside Dibbler’s office and Dibbler himself stood beside it, stamping his feet. “Come on, come on,” he said, “I’ve sent Gaffer ahead with the film. Get in, the pair of you.” “Can we travel in this?” said Victor. “What’s to go wrong?” said Dibbler. “There’s one road to Ankh-Morpork. Anyway, we’ll probably be well out of this stuff when we leave the coast. I don’t see why everyone’s so nervy. Fog’s fog.” “That’s what I say,” said Victor, climbing into the coach. “It’s just a mercy we finished Blown Away yesterday,” said Dibbler. “All this is probably just something seasonal. Nothing to worry about at all.” “You said that before,” said Soll. “You said it at least five times so far this morning.” Ginger was hunched on one seat, with Laddie lying underneath it. Victor slid along until he was next to her. “Did you get any sleep?” he whispered. “Just an hour or two, I think,” she said. “Nothing happened. No dream or anything.” Victor relaxed. “Then it really is over,” he said. “I wasn’t sure.” “And the fog?” she demanded. “Sorry?” said Victor guiltily. “What’s causing the fog?” “Well,” said Victor, “as I understand it, when cool air passes over warm ground, water is precipitated out of-” “You know what I mean! It’s not like normal fog at all! It – sort of drifts oddly,” she finished lamely. “And you can nearly hear voices,” she added. “You can’t nearly hear voices,” said Victor, in the hope that his own rational mind would believe him. “You either hear them or you don’t. Listen, we’re both just tired. That’s all it is. We’ve been working hard and, er, not getting much sleep, so it’s understandable that we think we’re nearly hearing and seeing things.” “Oh, so you’re nearly seeing things, are you?” said Ginger triumphantly. “And don’t you go around using that calm and reasonable tone of voice on me,” she added. “I hate it when people go around being calm and reasonable at me.” “I hope you two lovebirds aren’t having a tiff?” Victor and Ginger stiffened. Dibbler clambered up into the opposite seat, and leered encouragingly at them. Soll followed. There was a slam as the driver shut the carriage door. “We’ll stop for a meal when we’re halfway,” said Dibbler,. as they lurched forward. He hesitated, and then sniffed suspiciously. “What’s that smell?” he said. “I’m afraid my dog is under your seat,” said Victor. “Is it ill?” said Dibbler. “I’m afraid it always smells like that.” “Don’t you think it would be a good idea to give it a bath?” A mutter on the edge of hearing said: “Do you think it would be a good idea to have your feet bitten right orf?” Meanwhile, over Holy Wood, the fog thickened . . . The posters for Blown Away had been circulating in Ankh-Morpork for several days, and interest was running at fever pitch. They’d even got as far as the University this time. The Librarian had one pinned up in the fetid, book-lined nest he called home,[24] and various others were surreptitiously circulating among the wizards themselves. The artist had produced a masterpiece. Held in Victor’s arms, against the background of the flaming city, Ginger was portrayed as not only showing nearly all she had but quite a lot of what she had not, strictly speaking, got. The effect on the wizards was everything that Dibbler could possibly have hoped for. In the Uncommon Room, the poster was passed from hand to shaking hand as if it might explode. “There’s a girl who’s got It,” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. He was one of the fattest wizards, and so overstuffed that he seemed to be living up to his title. He looked as though horsehair should be leaking from frayed patches. People felt an overpowering urge to rummage down the side of him for loose change. “What’s “It”, Chair?” said another wizard. “Oh, you know. It. Oomph. The old way-hey-hey.” They watched him politely and expectantly, like people awaiting the punch line. “Good grief, do I have to spell it out?” he said. “He means sexual magnetism,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, happily. “The lure of wanton soft bosoms and huge pulsating thighs, and the forbidden fruits of desire which-” A couple of wizards carefully moved their chairs away from him. “Ah, sex,” said the Dean of Pentacles, interrupting the Lecturer in Recent Runes in mid-sigh. “Far too much of it these days, in my opinion.” “Oh, I don’t know,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. He looked wistful. The noise woke up Windle Poons, who had been dozing in his wheelchair by the fire. There was always a roaring fire in the Uncommon Room, summer or winter. “Wassat?” he said. The Dean leaned towards an ear. “I was saying”, he said loudly, “that we didn’t know the meaning of the word “sex” when we were young.” “That’s true. That’s very true,” said Poons. He stared reflectively at the flames. “Did we ever, mm, find out, do you remember?” There was a moment’s silence. “Say what you like, she’s a fine figure of a young woman,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes defiantly. “Several young women,” said the Dean. Windle Poons focused unsteadily on the poster. “Who’s the young feller?” he said. “What young feller?” said several wizards. “He’s in the middle of the picture,” said Poons. “He’s holding her in his arms.” They looked again. “Oh, him,” said the Chair, dismissively. “Seems to me I’ve, mm, seen him before,” said Poons. “My dear Poons, I hope you haven’t been sneaking off to the moving pictures,” said the Dean, grinning at the others. “You know it’s demeaning for a wizard to patronize the common entertainments. The Archchancellor would be very angry with us.” “Wassat?” said Poons, cupping a hand to his ear. “He does look a bit familiar, now that you mention it,” said the Dean, peering at the poster. The Lecturer in Recent Runes put his head on one side. “It’s young Victor, isn’t it?” he said. “Eh?” said Poons. “You know, you could be right,” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. “He had the same type of weedy moustache.” “Who’s this?” said Poons. “But he was a student. He could have been a wizard,” said the Dean. “Why would he want to go off and fondle young women?” “It’s a Victor all right, but not our Victor. Says here he’s “Victor Maraschino”,” said the Chair. “Oh, that’s just a click name,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes airily. “They all have funny names like that. Delores De Syn and Blanche Languish and Rock Cliffe and so on . . . “ He realized that they were looking at him accusingly. “Or so I’m told,” he added lamely. “By the porter. He goes to see a click nearly every night.” “What’re you on about?” said Poons, waving his walking stick in the air. “The cook goes every night, too,” said the Chair. “So do most of the kitchen staff. You just try getting so much as a ham sandwich after nine o’clock.” “Just about everyone goes,” said the Lecturer. “Except us.” One of the other wizards peered intently at the bottom of the poster. “It says here,” he said, ““A Sarger of Passione and Broad Staircases in Ankh-Morpork’s Turbelent Histry!”“ “Ah. It’s historical, then, is it?” said the Lecturer. “And it says “A Epic Love Story that Astoundede Goddes and Menne!!”“ “Oh? Religious, as well.” “And it says, “Withe a 1,000 elephants!!!”“ “Ah. Wildlife. Always very educational, wildlife,” said the Chair, looking speculatively at the Dean. The other wizards were doing so, too. “It seems to me”, said the Lecturer, slowly, “that no-one could possibly object to senior wizards viewing a work of historical, religious and, er, wildliforific interest.” “University rules are very specific,” said the Dean, but not very enthusiastically. “But surely only meant for the students,” said the Lecturer. “I can quite understand that students shouldn’t be allowed to watch something like this. They’d probably whistle and throw things at the screen. But it couldn’t be seriously suggested, could it, that senior wizards such as ourselves shouldn’t examine this popular phenomenon?” Poons’ flailing walking stick caught the Dean sharply across the back of his legs. “I demand to know what everyone’s talking about!” he snapped. “We don’t see why senior wizards shouldn’t be allowed to watch moving pictures!” bellowed the Chair. “Jolly good thing, too!” snapped Poons. “Everyone likes to look at a pretty woman.” “No-one mentioned anything about any pretty women. We were far more interested in examining popular phenomenons,” said the Chair. “Call it what you like, mm?” cackled Windle Poons. “If people see wizards strolling out of the gate and going into a common moving-picture pit they’ll lose all respect for the profession,” said the Dean. “It’s not even as if it’s proper magic. It’s just trickery.” “Y’know,” said one of the lesser wizards, thoughtfully, “I’ve always wondered exactly what these wretched clicks are. Some kind of puppet show, are they? Are these people acting on a stage? Or a shadow play?” “See?” said the Chair. “We’re supposed to be wise, and we don’t even know.” They all looked at the Dean. “Yes, but who wants to see a lot of young women dancing around in tights?” he said, hopelessly. Ponder Stibbons, luckiest post-graduate wizard in the history of the University, sauntered happily towards the secret entrance over the wall. His otherwise uncrowded mind was pleasantly awash with thoughts of beer and maybe a visit to the clicks and maybe a Klatchian extra-hot curry to round off the evening, and then– It was the second worst moment in his life. They were all there. All the senior staff. Even the Dean. Even old Poons in his wheelchair. All standing there in the shadows, looking at him very sternly. Paranoia exploded its dark fireworks in the dustbin of his mind. They were all waiting just for him. He froze. The Dean spoke. “Oh. Oh. Oh. Er. Ah. Um. Um,” he began, and then seemed to catch up with his tongue. “Oh. What’s this? Forward this minute, that man!” Ponder hesitated. Then he ran for it. After a while the Lecturer in Recent Runes said, “That was young Stibbons, wasn’t it? Has he gone?” “I think so.” “He’s bound to say something to someone.” “No he won’t,” said the Dean. “Do you think he saw where we’d taken out the bricks?” “No, I was standing in front of the holes,” said the Chair. “Come on, then. Where were we?” “Look, I really think this is most unwise,” said the Dean. “Just shut up, old chap, and hold this brick.” “Very well, but tell me this; how do you propose to get the wheelchair over?” They looked at Poons’ wheelchair. There are wheelchairs which are lightweight and built to let their owners function fully and independently in modern society. To the thing inhabited by Poons, they were as gazelles to a hippopotamus. Poona was well aware of his function in modern society, and as far as he was concerned it was to be pushed everywhere and generally pandered to. It was wide and long and steered by means of a little front wheel and a long cast-iron handle. Cast iron, in fact, featured largely in its construction. Bits of baroque ironwork adorned its frame, which seemed to have been made of iron drainpipes welded together. The rear wheels did not in fact have blades affixed to them, but looked as though these were optional extras. There were various dread levers which only Poons knew the purpose of. There was a huge oilskin hood that could be erected in a matter of hours to protect its occupant from showers, storms and, probably, meteor strikes and falling buildings. By way of fight relief, the front handle was adorned with a selection of trumpets, hooters and whistles, with which Poons was wont to announce his progress around the passages and quadrangles of the University. For the fact was that although the wheelchair needed all the efforts of one strong man to get it moving it had, once actually locomotive, a sort of ponderous unstoppability; it may have had brakes, but Windle Poons had never bothered to find out. Staff and students alike knew that the only hope of survival, if they heard a honk or a blast at close range, was to flatten themselves against the nearest wall while the dreaded conveyance rattled by. “We’ll never get that over,” said the Dean firmly. “It must weigh at least a ton. We ought to leave him behind, anyway. He’s too old for this sort of thing.” “When I was a lad I was over this wall, nun, every night,” said Poons, resentfully. He chuckled. “We had some scrapes in those days, I can tell you. If I had a penny, mm, for every time the Watch chased me home,” his ancient lips moved in a sudden frenzy of calculation, “I’d have fivepence-ha’penny.” “Maybe if we-” the Chair began, and then said “What do you mean, fivepence-ha’penny?” “I recall once they gave up halfway,” said Poons, happily. “Oh, those were great times. I remember me and old “Numbers” Riktor and “Tudgy” Spold climbed up on the Temple of Small Gods, you see, in the middle of a service, and Tudgy had got this piglet in a sack, and he-” “See what you’ve done?” complained the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “You’ve set him off now.” “We could try lifting it by magic,” said the Chair. “Gindle’s Effortless Elevator should do the trick.” “–and then the high priest turned around and, heh, the look on his face! And then old Numbers said, let’s-” “It’s hardly a very dignified use of magic,” sniffed the Dean. “Considerably more dignified than heaving the bloody thing over the wall ourselves, wouldn’t you say?” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, rolling up his sleeves. “Come on, lads.” “-and next thing, Pimple was hammering on the door of the Assassins” Guild, and then old Scummidge, who was the porter there, heehee, he was a right terror, anyway, he came out, mm, and then the guards come around the corner-” “All ready? Right!” “-which puts me in mind of the time me and “Cucumber” Framer got some glue and went round to-” “Up your end, Dean!” The wizards grunted with effort. “-and, mm, I can remember it as if it was only yesterday, the look on his face when-” “Now lower away!” The iron-shod wheels clanged gently on the cobbles of the alley. Poons nodded amiably. “Great times. Great times,” he muttered, and fell asleep. The wizards climbed slowly and unsteadily over the wall, ample backsides gleaming in the moonlight, and stood wheezing gently on the far side. “Tell me, Dean,” said the Lecturer, leaning on the wall to stop the shaking in his legs, “have we made . . . the wall . . . higher in the last fifty years?” “I . . . don’t . . . think . . . so.” “Odd. Used to go up it like a gazelle. Not many years ago. Not many at all, really.” The wizards wiped their foreheads and looked sheepishly at one another. “Used to nip over for a pint or three most nights,” said the Chair. “I used to study in the evenings,” said the Dean, primly. The Chair narrowed his eyes. “Yes, you always did,” he said. “I recall.” It was dawning on the wizards that they were outside the University, at night and without permission, for the first time in decades. A certain suppressed excitement crackled from man to man. Any watcher trained in reading body language would have been prepared to bet that, after the click, someone was going to suggest that they might as well go somewhere and have a few drinks, and then someone else would fancy a meal, and then there was always room for a few more drinks, and then it would be 5 a.m. and the city guards would be respectfully knocking on the University gates and asking if the Archchancellor would care to step down to the cells to identify some alleged wizards who were singing an obscene song in six-part harmony, and perhaps he would also care to bring some money to pay for all the damage. Because inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened. The Chair reached up and grasped the brim of his tall, wide and floppy wizarding hat. “Right, boys,” he said. “Hats off.” They de-hatted, but with reluctance. A wizard gets very attached to his pointy hat. It gives him a sense of identity. But, as the Chair had pointed out earlier, if people knew you were a wizard because you were wearing a pointy hat, then if you took the pointy hat off, they’d think you were just some rich merchant or something. The Dean shuddered. “It feels like I’ve taken all my clothes off,” he said. “We can tuck them in under Poons’ blanket,” said the Chair. “No-one’ll know it’s us.” “Yes,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, “but will we?” “They’ll just think we’re, well, solid burghers.” “That’s just what I feel like,” said the Dean. “A solid burgher.” j “Or merchants,” said the Chair. He smoothed back his white hair. “Remember,” he said, “if anyone says anything, we’re not wizards. Just honest merchants out for an enjoyable evening, right?” “What does an honest merchant look like?” said a wizard. “How should I know?” said the Chair. “So no-one is to do any magic,” he went on. “I don’t have to tell you what’ll happen if the Archchancellor hears that his staff has been seen at the common entertainments.” “I’m more worried about our students finding out,” shuddered the Dean. “False beards,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, triumphantly. “We should wear false beards.” The Chair rolled his eyes. “We’ve all GOT beards,” he said. “What kind of disguise would false beards be?” “Ah! That’s the clever bit,” said the Lecturer. “No-one would suspect that anyone wearing a false beard would have a real beard underneath, would they?” The Chair opened his mouth to refute this, and then hesitated. “Well-” he said. “But where’d we get false beards at this time of night?” said a wizard doubtfully. The Lecturer beamed, and reached into his pocket. “We don’t have to,” he said. “That’s the really clever bit: I brought some wire with me, you see, and all you need do is break two bits off, twiddle them into your sideburns, then loop them over your ears rather clumsily like this,” he demonstrated, “and there you are.” The Chair stared. “Uncanny,” he said, at last. “It’s true! You look just like someone wearing a very badly-made false beard.” “Amazing, isn’t it?” said the Lecturer happily, passing out the wire. “It’s headology, you know.” There were a few minutes of busy twanging and the occasional whimper as a wizard punctured himself with wire, but eventually they were ready. They looked shyly at one another. “If we got a pillow case without a pillow in it and shoved it down inside the Chair’s robe so the top was showing, he’d look just like a thin man making himself tremendously fat with a huge pillow,” said one of them enthusiastically. He caught the Chair’s eye, and went quiet. A couple of wizards grasped the handles of Poons’ terrible wheelchair and started it rumbling over the damp cobbles. “Wassat? What’s everyone doing?” said Poons, suddenly waking up. “We’re going to play solid burghers,” said the Dean. “That’s a good game,” said Poons. “Can you hear me, old chap?” The Bursar opened his eyes. The University sanitarium wasn’t very big, and was seldom used. Wizards tended to be either in rude health, or dead. The only medicine they generally required was an antacid formula and a dark room until lunch. “Brought you something to read,” said the voice, diffidently. The Bursar managed to focus on the spine of Adventures with Crossbow and Rod. “Nasty knock you had there, Bursar. Been asleep all day.” The Bursar looked blearily at the pink and orange haze, which gradually refined itself into the Archchancellor’s pink and orange face. Let’s see, he thought, exactly how did I . . . He sat bolt upright and grabbed the Archchancellor’s robe and screamed into the big pink and orange face: “Something dreadful’s going to happen!” The wizards strolled through the twilight streets. So far the disguise was working perfectly. People were even jostling them. No-one ever knowingly jostled a wizard. It was a whole new experience. There was a huge crowd of people outside the entrance to the Odium, and a queue that stretched down the street. The Dean ignored it, and led the party straight up to the doors, whereupon someone said “Oi!” He looked up at a red-faced troll in an ill-fitting military-looking outfit that included epaulettes the size of kettle-drums and no trousers. “Yes?” he said. “There are a queue, you know,” said the troll. The Dean nodded politely. In Ankh-Morpork a queue was, almost by definition, something with a wizard at the head of it. “So I see,” he said. “And a very good thing, too. And if you will be so good as to stand aside, we’d like to take our seats.” The troll prodded him in the stomach. “What you fink you are?” he said. “A wizard or something?” This got a laugh from the nearest queuers. The Dean leaned closer. “As a matter of fact, we are wizards,” he hissed. The troll grinned at him. “Don’t come the raw trilobite with me,” he said. “I can see your false beard!” “Now listen–” the Dean began, but his voice became an incoherent squeak as the troll picked him up by the collar of his robe and propelled him out into the road. “You get in queue like everyone else,” he said. There was a chorus of jeers from the queue. The Dean growled and raised his right hand, fingers spread-The Chair grabbed his arm. “Oh, yes,” he hissed., “That’d do a lot of good, wouldn’t it? Come on.” “Where to?” “To the back of the queue!” “But we’re wizards! Wizards never stand in line for anything!” “We’re honest merchants, remember?” said the Chair. He glanced at the nearest click-goers, who were giving them odd looks. “We’re honest merchants,” he repeated loudly. He nudged the Dean. “Go on,” he hissed. “Go on what?” “Go on and say something merchanty.” “What sort of thing is that?” said the Dean, mystified. “Say something! Everyone’s looking at us!” “Oh.” The Dean’s face creased in panic, and then sal-vation dawned. “Lovely apples,” he said. “Get them while they’re hot. They’re luvverly . . . Will this do?” “I suppose so. Now let’s go to the end–” There was a commotion at the other end of the street. People surged forward. The queue broke ranks and charged. The honest merchants were suddenly surrounded by a desperately-pushing crowd. “I say, there is a queue, you know,” said the Hon-est Merchant in Recent Runes diffidently, as he was shoved aside. The Dean grabbed the shoulder of a boy who was ferociously elbowing him aside. “What is going on, young man?” he demanded. “They’re a-coming!” shouted the boy. “Who are?” “The stars!” The wizards, as one man, looked upwards. “No, they’re not,” said the Dean, but the boy had shaken himself free and disappeared in the press of people. “Strange primitive superstition,” said the Dean, and the wizards, with the exception of Poons, who was complain-ing and flailing around with his stick, craned forward to see. The Bursar met the Archchancellor in a corridor. “There’s no-one in the Uncommon Room!” screamed the Bursar. “The Library’s empty!” bellowed the Archchancellor. “I’ve heard about that sort of thing,” the Bursar whim-pered. “Spontaneous something-or-other. They’ve all gone spontaneous!” “Calm down, man. Just because-” “I can’t even find any of the servants! You know what happens when reality gives way! Even now giant tentacles are probably-” There was a distant whumm . . . whumm noise, and the sound of pellets bouncing off the wall. “Always the same direction,” the Bursar muttered. “What direction is that, then?” “The direction They’ll be coming from! I think I’m going mad!” “Now, now,” said the Archchancellor, patting him on the shoulder. “You don’t want to go around talking like that. That’s crazy talk.” Ginger stared, panic-stricken, out of the carriage window. “Who are all these people?” she said. “They’re fans,” said Dibbler. “But I’m not hot!” “Uncle means that they’re people who like seeing you in the clicks,” said Soll. “Er. Like you a lot.” “There’s women out there too,” said Victor. He gave a cautious wave. In the crowd, a woman swooned. “You’re famous,” he said. “You said you always wanted to be famous.” Ginger looked out at the crowd again. “I never thought it would be like this, though. They’re all shouting our names!” “We’ve put a lot of effort into telling people about Blown Away,” said Soll. “Yes,” said Dibbler. “We said it was the greatest click in the entire history of Holy Wood.” “But we’ve been making clicks for only a couple of months,” Ginger pointed out. “So what? That’s still a history,” said Dibbler. Victor saw the look in Ginger’s face. Exactly how long was Holy Wood’s real history? Perhaps there was some ancient stone calendar, down there on the sea bed, among the lobsters. Perhaps there was no way it could be measured. How did you measure the age of an idea? “A lot of civic dignitaries are going to be there, too,” said Dibbler. “The Patrician and the nobles and the Guild heads and some of the high priests. Not the wizards, of course, the stuck-up old idiots. But it’ll be a night to remember right enough.” “Will we have to be introduced to them all?” said Victor. “No. They’ll be introduced to you,” said Dibbler. “It’ll be the biggest thrill of their lives.” Victor stared out at the crowds again. “Is it my imagination,” he said, “or is it getting foggy?” Poons hit the Chair across the back of the legs with his stick. “What’s going on?” he said. “Why’s everyone cheering?” “The Patrician’s just got out of his carriage,” said the Chair. “Don’t see what’s so wonderful about that,” said Poons. “I’ve got out of carriages hundreds of times. There’s no trick to it at all.” “It’s a bit odd,” the Chairman admitted. “And they cheered the head of the Assassins’ Guild and the High Priest of Blind Io, too. And now someone’s rolled out a red carpet.” “What, in the street? In Ankh-Morpork?” “Yes.” “Wouldn’t like to have their cleaning bill,” said Poons. The Lecturer in Recent Runes nudged the Chair heavily in the ribs, or at least at the point where the ribs were overlaid by the strata of fifty years of very good dinners. “Quiet!” he hissed. “They’re coming!” “Who?” “Someone important, by the look of it.” The Chair’s face creased in panic behind his false real beard. “You don’t think they’ve invited the Archchancellor, do you?” The wizards tried to shrink inside their robes, like upright turtles. In fact it was a far more impressive coach than any of the crumbling items in the University’s mews. The crowd surged forward against the line of trolls and city guards and stared expectantly at the carriage door; the very air hummed with anticipation. Mr. Bezam, his chest so inflated with self-importance that he appeared to be floating across the ground, bobbed towards the carriage door and opened it. The crowd held its collective breath, except for a small part of it that hit surrounding people with its stick and muttered, “What’s happening? What’s going on? Why won’t anyone tell me what’s happening? I demand someone tell me, mm, what’s happening?” The door stayed shut. Ginger was gripping the handle as if it was a lifeline. “There’s thousands of them out there!” said Ginger. “I can’t go out there!” “But they all watch your clicks,” pleaded Soll. “They’re your public.” “No!” Soll threw up his hands. “Can’t you persuade her?” he said to Victor. “I’m not even sure I can persuade myself,” said Victor. “But you’ve spent days in front of these people,” said Dibbler. “No I haven’t,” said Ginger. “It was just you and the handlemen and the trolls and everyone. That was different. Anyway, that wasn’t really me,” she added. “That was Delores De Syn.” Victor bit his lip thoughtfully. “Maybe you ought to send Delores de Syn out there, then,” he said. “How can I do that?” she demanded. “Well . . . why not pretend it’s a click.” The Dibblers, uncle and nephew, exchanged glances. Then Soll cupped his hands around his face like the eye of a picture box and Dibbler, after a prompting nudge, placed one hand on his nephew’s head and turned an invisible handle in his ear. “Action!” he directed. The carriage door swung open. The crowd gasped, like a mountain breathing in. Victor stepped out, reached up, took Ginger’s hand . . . The crowd cheered, madly. The Lecturer in Recent Runes bit his fingers in sheer excitement. The Chair made a strange hoarse noise in the back of his throat. “You know you said what could a boy find to do that was better than being a wizard?” he said. “A true wizard should only be interested in one thing,” muttered the Dean. “You know that.” “Oh, I know it.” “I was referring to magic.” The Chair peered at the advancing figures. “You know, that is young Victor. I’ll swear it,” he said. “That’s disgusting,” said the Dean. “Fancy choosing to hang around young women when he could have been a wizard.” “Yeah. What a fool,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, who was having trouble with his breathing. There was a sort of communal sigh. “You got to admit she’s a bit of a corker, though,” said the Chair. “I’m an old man and if someone doesn’t let me see very soon,” said a cracked voice behind them, “someone’s going to be feeling the wrong end of, mm, my stick, all right?” Two of the wizards edged aside and eased the wheelchair through. Once moving, it coasted right up to the edge of the carpet, bruising any knees or ankles that stood in its way. Poons’ mouth fell open. Ginger gripped Victor’s hand. “There’s a group of fat old men in false beards waving at you over there,” she said through clenched and grinning teeth. “Yes, I think they’re wizards,” Victor grinned back. “One of them keeps bouncing up and down in his wheelchair and shouting things like “Way-hey!” and “Whoopwhoop!” and “Hubba-hubba!” “That’s the oldest wizard in the world,” said Victor. He waved at a fat lady in the crowd, who fainted. “Good grief! What was he like fifty years ago?” “Well, for one thing he was eighty.[25] Don’t blow him a kiss!” The crowd roared its approval. “He looks sweet.” “Just keep smiling and waving.” “Oh, gods, look at all those people waiting to be introduced to us!” “I can see ‘em,” said Victor. “But they’re important!” “Well, so are we. I guess.” “Why?” “Because we’re us. It’s like you said, that time on the beach. We’re us, just as big as we can be. It’s just what you wanted. We’re–” He stopped. The troll at the door of the Odium gave him a hesitant salute. The thump as its hand smacked into its ear was quite audible above the roar of the crowd . . . Gaspode waddled at high speed down an alleyway, with Laddie trotting obediently at his heels. No-one had paid them any attention when they jumped, or in Gaspode’s case plopped, down from the carriage. “All evening in some stuffy pit ain’t my idea of a good night out,” muttered Gaspode. “This is the big city. This ain’t Holy Wood. You stick by me, pup, and you’ll be all right. First stop, the back door of Harga’s House of Ribs. They know me there. OK?” “Good boy Laddie!” “Yeah,” said Gaspode. “Look at what it’s wearing!” said Victor. “Red velvet jacket with gold frogging,” said Ginger out of the corner of her mouth. “So what? A pair of trousers would have been a good idea.” “Oh, gods,” breathed Victor. They stepped into the brightly-lit foyer of the Odium. Bezam had done his best. Trolls and dwarfs had worked overnight to finish it. There were red plush drapes, and pillars, and mirrors. Plump cherubs and miscellaneous fruit, all painted gold, seemed to cover every surface. It was like stepping into a box of very expensive chocolates. Or a nightmare. Victor half expected to hear the roar of the sea, to see drapes fall away with a smear of black slime. “Oh, gods,” he repeated. “What’s the matter with you?” said Ginger, grinning fixedly at the line of civic dignitaries waiting to be introduced to them. “Wait and see,” said Victor hoarsely. “It’s Holy Wood! Holy Wood’s been brought to Ankh-Morpork!” “Yes, but-” “Don’t you remember anything? That night in the hill? Before you woke up?” “No. I told you.” “Wait and see,” Victor repeated. He glanced at a decorated easel against one wall. It said: “Three showings a day!” And he thought of sand dunes, and ancient myths, and lobsters. Map-making had never been a precise art on the Discworld. People tended to start off with good intentions and then get so carried away with the spouting whales, monsters, waves and other twiddly bits of cartographic furniture that they often forgot to put the boring mountains and rivers in at all. The Archchancellor put an overflowing ashtray on a corner that threatened to roll up. He dragged a finger across the grubby surface. “Says here “Here be Dragons”,” he said. “Right inside the city, too. Odd, that.” “That’s just Lady Ramkin’s Sunshine Sanctuary for Sick Dragons,” said the Bursar, distractedly. “And here there’s “Terra Incognita”,” said the Archchancellor. “Why’s that?” The Bursar craned to see. “Well, it’s probably more interesting than putting in lots of cabbage farms.” “And there’s “Here be Dragons” again.” “I think that’s just a lie, in fact.” The Archchancellor’s horny thumb continued in the direction they’d worked out. He brushed aside a couple of fly specks. “Nothing here at all,” he said, peering closer. “Just the sea. And-” he squinted - “The Holy Wood. Mean anything?” “Isn’t that where the alchemists all went?” said the Bursar: “Oh, them.” “I suppose”, said the Bursar slowly, “they wouldn’t be doing some kind of magic out there?” “Alchemists. Doing magic?” “Sorry. Ridiculous idea, I know. The porter told me they do some sort of, oh, shadow play or something. Or puppets. Or something similar. Pictures. Or something. I wasn’t really paying attention. I mean . . . alchemists. Really! I mean, assassins . . . yes. Thieves . . . yes. Even merchants . . . merchants can be really devious, sometimes. But alchemists -show me a more unworldly, bumbling, well-meaning . . . “ His voice trailed off as his ears caught up with his mouth. “They wouldn’t dare, would they?” he said. “Would they?” The Bursar gave a hollow laugh. “No-o-o. They wouldn’t dare! They know we’d be down on them like a ton of bricks if they tried any magic round here . . . “ His voice trailed off again. “I’m sure they wouldn’t,” he said. “I mean, even that far away,” he said. “They wouldn’t dare,” he said. “Not magic. Surely not?” he said. “I’ve never trusted those grubby-handed bastards!” he said. “They’re not like us, you know. They’ve got no idea of proper dignity!” The crowd surging around the box office was getting deeper and more angry by the minute. “Well, have you gone through all your pockets?” demanded the Chair. “Yes!” muttered the Dean. “Have another look, then.” As far as wizards were concerned, paying to get into anything was something that happened to other people. A pointy hat usually did nicely. While the Dean struggled, the Chair beamed madly at the young woman who was selling tickets. “But I assure you, dear lady,” he said desperately, “we are wizards.” “I can see your false beards,” said the girl, and sniffed. “We get all sorts in here. How do I know you aren’t three little boys in your dad’s coat?” “Madam!” “I’ve got two dollars and fifteen pence,” said the Dean, picking the coins out of a handful of fluff and mysterious occult objects. “That’s two in the stalls, then,” said the girl, grudgingly unreeling two tickets. The Chair scooped them up. “Then I’ll take Windle in,” he said quickly, turning to the others. “I’m afraid the rest of you had better get back to your honest trading.” He moved his eyebrows up and down suggestively. “I don’t see why we should-” the Dean began. “Otherwise we’ll be in arrears,” the Chair went on, mugging furiously. “If you don’t get back.” “See here, that was my money, and-” the Dean said, but the Lecturer in Recent Runes grabbed his arm. “Just come along,” he said, winked slowly and deliberately at the Chair. “Time we were getting back.” “I don’t see why–”the Dean gurgled, as they dragged him off. Grey clouds swirled in the Archchancellor’s magic mirror. Many wizards had them, but not many ever bothered to use them. They were quirky and unreliable. They weren’t even much good for shaving in. Ridcully was surprisingly adept at using one. “Stalkin’,” he offered as a brief explanation. “Couldn’t be having with all that crawlin’ around in damp bracken for hours, bigods. Help yourself to a drink, man. And one for me.” The clouds flickered. “Can’t seem to see anything else,” he said. “Odd, that. Just fog, flashing away.” The Archchancellor coughed. It was beginning to dawn on the Bursar that, against all expectation, the Archchancellor was quite bright. “Ever seen one of these shadow moving puppet play picture things?” Ridcully asked. “The servants go,” said the Bursar. This, Ridcully decided, meant “no”. “I think we should have a look,” he said. “Very well, Archchancellor,” said the Bursar, meekly. An inviolable rule about buildings for the showing of moving pictures, applicable throughout the multiverse, is that the ghastliness of the architecture around the back is inversely proportional to the gloriousness of the architecture in the front. At the front: pillars, arches, gold leaf, lights. At the back: weird ducts, mysterious prolapses of pipework, blank walls, fetid alleys. And the window to the lavatories. “There’s no reason at all why we should have to do this,” moaned the Dean, as the wizards struggled in the darkness. “Shut up and keep pushing,” muttered the Lecturer in Recent Runes, from the other side of the window. “We should have changed something into money,” said the Dean. “Just a quick illusion. Where’s the harm in that?” “It’s called watering the currency,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “You can get thrown into the scorpion pit for stuff like that. Where am I putting my feet? Where am I putting my feet?” “You’re fine,” said a wizard. “Right, Dean. Up you come.” “Oh, dear,” moaned the Dean, as he was dragged through the narrow window into the unmentionable gloom beyond. “No good will come of this.” “Just watch where you’re putting your feet. Now see what you’ve done? Didn’t I tell you to watch where you were putting your feet? Anyway, come on.” The wizards skulked, or in the Dean’s case, squelched furtively through the backstage area and into the darkened, bustling auditorium, where Windle Poons was keeping some seats free by the simple expedient of waving his stick at anyone who came near them. They sidled in, tripping over one another’s legs, and sat down. They stared at the shadowy grey rectangle at the other end of the hall. After a while the Chair said, “Can’t see what people see in it, myself.” “Has anyone done “Deformed Rabbit”?” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “It hasn’t started yet,” hissed the Dean. “I’m hungry,” complained Poons. “I’m an old man, mm, and I’m hungry.” “Do you know what he did?” said the Chair. “Do you know what the old fool did? When a young lady with a torch was showing us to our seats he pinched her on the . . . the fundament!” Poons sniggered. “Hubba-hubba! Does your mother know you’re out?” he cackled. “It’s all too much for him,” the Chair complained. “We never should have brought him.” “Do you realize we’re missing our dinner?” said the Dean. The wizards fell silent at this. A stout woman edging past Poons’ wheelchair suddenly started and looked around suspiciously and saw nothing except a dear old man, obviously fast asleep. “And it’s goose on Tuesdays,” said the Dean. Poons opened one eye and honked the horn on his wheelchair. “Tantarabobs! How’s your granny off for soap!” he muttered triumphantly. “See what I mean?” said the Chair. “He doesn’t know what century it is.” Poons turned a beady black eye on him. “Old I am, mm, and daft I may be,” he said, “but I ain’t goin’ to be hungry.” He rummaged around in the unspeakable depths of the wheelchair and produced a greasy black bag. It jingled. “I saw a young lady up the front a-selling of special moving-picture food,” he said. “You mean you had money all the time?” said the Dean. “And you never told us?” “You never asked,” said Poons. The wizards stared hungrily at the bag. “They be having buttered banged grains and sausages in buns and chocolate things with things on and things,” said Poons. He gave them a toothless and crafty look. “You can have some too, if you like,” he added graciously. The Dean ticked off his purchases. “Now,” he said, “that’s six Patrician-sized tubs of banged grains with extra butter, eight sausages in a bun, a jumbo cup of fizzy drink, and a bag of chocolate-covered raisins.” He handed over the money. “Right,” said the Chair, gathering up the containers. “Er. Do you think we should get something for the others?” In the picture-throwing room Bezam cursed as he threaded the huge reel of Blown Away into the picture-throwing box. A few feet away, in a roped-off section of the balcony, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, Lord Vetinari, was also ill at ease. They were, he had to admit, a pleasant enough young couple. He just wasn’t sure why he was sitting next to them, and why they were so important. He was used to important people, or at least to people who thought they were important. Wizards became important through high deeds of magic. Thieves became important for daring robberies and so, in a slightly different way, did merchants. Warriors became important through winning battles and staying alive. Assassins became important through skilful inhumations. There were many roads to prominence, but you could see them, you could work them out. They made some sort of sense. Whereas these two people had merely moved interestingly in front of this new-fangled moving-picture machinery. The rankest actor in the city’s theatre was a mufti-skilled master of thespianism by comparison to them, but it wouldn’t occur to anyone to line the streets and shout out his name. The Patrician had never visited the clicks before. As far as he could ascertain, Victor Maraschino was famous for a sort of smouldering look that had middle-aged ladies who should know better swooning in the aisles, and Miss De Syn’s forte was acting languidly, slapping faces, and looking fantastic while lying among silken cushions. While he, Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, ruled the city, preserved the city, loved the city, hated the city and had spent a lifetime in the service of the city . . . And, as the common people had been filing into the stalls, his razor-keen hearing had picked up the conversation of two of them: “Who’s that up there?” “That’s Victor Maraschino and Delores De Syn! Do you know nothing?” “I mean the tall guy in black.” “Oh, dunno who he is. Just some bigwig, I expect.” Yes, it was fascinating. You could become famous just for being, well, famous. It occurred to him that this was an extremely dangerous thing and he might probably have to have someone killed one day, although it would be with reluctance.[26] In the meantime, there was a kind of secondary glory that came from being in the company of the truly celebrated, and to his astonishment he was enjoying it. Besides he was also sitting next to Miss del Syn, and the envy of the rest of the audience was so palpable he could taste it, which was more than he could do with the bagful of fluffy white starchy things he’d been given to eat. On his other side, the horrible Dibbler man was explaining the mechanics of moving pictures in the utterly mistaken belief that the Patrician was listening to a word of it. There was a sudden roar of applause. The Patrician leaned sideways to Dibbler. “Why are all the lamps being turned down?” he said. “Ah, sir,” said Dibbler, “that is so you can see the pictures better.” “Is it? One would imagine it would make the pictures harder to see,” said the Patrician. “It’s not like that with the moving pictures, sir,” said Dibbler. “How very fascinating.” The Patrician leaned the other way, to Ginger and Victor. To his mild surprise they were looking extremely tense. He’d noticed that as soon as they had walked into the Odium. The boy looked at all the ridiculous ornamentation as if it was something dreadful, and when the girl had stepped into the pit proper he’d heard her gasp. They looked as though they were in shock. “I expect this is all perfectly commonplace to you,” he said. “No,” said Victor. “Not really. We’ve never been in a proper picture pit before.” “Except once,” said Ginger grimly. “Yes. Except once.” “But, ah, you make moving pictures,” said the Patrician kindly. “Yes, but we never see them. We just see bits of them, when the handlemen are gluing it all together. The only clicks I’ve ever seen were on an old sheet outdoors,” said Victor. “So this is all new to you?” said the Patrician. “Not exactly,” said Victor, grey-faced. “Fascinating,” said the Patrician, and went back to not listening to Dibbler. He had not got where he was today by bothering how things worked. It was how people worked that intrigued him. Further along the row Soll leaned across to his uncle and dropped a small coil of film in his lap. “This belongs to you,” he said sweetly. “What is it?” said Dibbler. “Well I thought I’d have a quick look at the click before it got shown-” “You did?” said Dibbler. “And what did I find, in the middle of the burning city scene, but five minutes showing nothing but a plate of spare ribs in Harga’s Special Peanut Sauce. I know why, of course. I just want to know why this.” Dibbler grinned guiltily. “The way I see it,” he said, “if one little quick picture can make people want to go and buy things, just think what five minutes’ worth could do.” Soll stared at him. . “I’m really hurt by this,” said Dibbler. “You didn’t trust me. Your own uncle. After I gave you my solemn promise not to try anything again, you didn’t trust me? That wounds me, Soll. I’m really wounded. Whatever happened to integrity round here?” “I think you probably sold it to someone, Uncle.” “I’m really hurt,” said Dibbler. “But you didn’t keep your promise, Uncle.” “That’s got nothing to do with it. That’s just business. We’re talking family here. You got to learn to trust family, Soll. Especially me.” Soll shrugged. “OK. OK.” “Right?” “Yes, Uncle.” Soll grinned. “You’ve got my solemn promise on that.” “That’s my boy.” At the other end of the row, Victor and Ginger were staring at the blank screen in sullen horror. “You know what’s going to happen now, don’t you,” said Ginger. “Yes. Someone’s going to start playing music out of a hole in the floor.” “Was that cave really a picture pit?” “Sort of, I think,” said Victor, carefully. “But the screen here is just a screen. It’s not . . . well, it’s just a screen. Just a better class of sheet. It’s not –” There was a blast of sound from the front of the hall. With a clanking and the hiss of desperately escaping air, Bezam’s daughter Calliope rose slowly out of the floor, attacking the keys on a small organ with all the verve of several hours’ practice and the combined efforts of two strong trolls working the bellows behind the scenes. She was a beefy young woman and, whatever piece of music she was playing, it was definitely losing. Down in the stalls, the Dean passed a bag along to the Chair. “Have a chocolate-covered raisin,” he said. “They look like rat droppings,” said the Chair. The Dean peered at them in the gloom. “So that’s it,” he said. “The bag fell on the floor a minute ago, and I thought there seemed rather a lot.” “Shsss!” said a woman in the row behind. Windle Poons’ scrawny head turned like a magnet. “Hoochie koochie!” he cackled. “Twopence more and up goes the donkey!” The lights went down further. The screen flickered. Numbers appeared and blinked briefly, counting down. Calliope peered intently at the score in front of her, rolled up her sleeves, pushed her hair out of her eyes, and launched a spirited attack on what was just discernible as the old Ankh-Morporkian civic anthem.[27] The lights went out. The sky flickered. It wasn’t like proper fog at all. It shed a silvery, slatey light, flickering internally like a cross between the Aurora Coriolis and summer lightning. In the direction of Holy Wood the sky blazed with light. It was visible even in the alley behind Sham Harga’s House of Ribs, where two dogs were enjoying the All-You-Can-Drag-Out-Of-The--Midden-For-Free Special. Laddie looked up and growled. “I don’t blame you,” said Gaspode. “I said it boded. Didn’t I say there was boding happening?” Sparks crackled off his fur. “Come on,” he said. “We’d better warn people. You’re good at that.” Clickaclickaclicka . . . It was the only noise inside the Odium. Calliope had stopped playing and was staring up at the screen. Mouths hung open, and closed only to bite on handfuls of banged grains. Victor was dimly aware that he’d fought it. He’d tried to look away. Even now, a little voice in his own head was telling him that things were wrong, but he ignored it. Things were clearly right. He’d shared in the sighs as the heroine tried to preserve the old family mine in a Worlde Gonne Madde . . . He’d shuddered at the fighting in the war. He’d watched the ballroom scene in a romantic haze. He . . . . . . was aware of a cold sensation against his leg. It was as though a half-melted ice cube was soaking through his trousers. He tried to ignore it, but it had a definite unignorable quality. He looked down. “’Scuse me,” said Gaspode. Victor’s eyes focused. Then his eyes found themselves being dragged back to the screen, where a huge version of himself was kissing a huge version of Ginger. There was another feeling of sticky coldness. He surfaced again. “I can bite your leg if you like,” said Gaspode. “I, er, I-” Victor began. “I can bite it quite hard,” Gaspode added. “Just say the word.” “No, er-” “Something’s boding, just like I said. Bode, bode, bode. Laddie’s tried barkin’ until he’s hoarse and no-one’s listenin’. So I fort I’d try the old cold nose technique. Never fails.” Victor looked around him. The rest of the audience were staring at the screen as if they were prepared to remain in their seats for . . . for . . . . . . forever. When he lifted up his arms from his seat, sparks crackled from his fingers, and there was a greasy feel to the air that even student wizards soon learned to associate with a vast accumulation of magical potential. And there was fog in the pit. It was ridiculous, but there it was, covering the floor like a pale silver tide. He shook Ginger’s shoulder. He waved a hand in front of her eyes. He shouted in her ear. Then he tried the Patrician, and Dibbler. They yielded to pressure but swayed gently back into position again. “The film’s doing something to them,” he said. “It must be the film. But I can’t see how. It’s a perfectly ordinary film. We don’t use magic in Holy Wood. At least . . . not normal magic . . . “ He struggled over unyielding knees until he reached the aisle, and ran up it through the tendrils of fog. He hammered on the door of the picture-throwing room. When that got no answer he kicked it down. Bezam was staring intently at the screen through a small square hole cut in the wall. The picture-thrower was click-ing away happily by itself. No-one was turning the handle. At least, Victor corrected himself, no-one he could see. There was a distant rumble, and the ground shook. He stared at the screen. He recognized this bit. It was just before the Burning of Ankh-Morpork scene. His mind raced. What was it they said about the gods? They wouldn’t exist if there weren’t people to believe in them? And that applied to everything. Reality was what went on inside people’s heads. And in front of him were hundreds of people really believing what they were seeing . . . Victor scrabbled among the rubbish on Bezam’s bench for some scissors or a knife, and found neither. The machine whirred on, winding reality from the future to the past. In the background, he could hear Gaspode saying, “I expect I’ve saved the day, right?” The brain normally echoes with the shouts of various inconsequential thoughts seeking attention. It takes a real emergency to get them to shut up. It was happening now. One clear thought that had been trying to make itself heard for a long time rang out in the silence. Supposing there was somewhere where reality was a little thinner than usual? And supposing you did something there that weakened reality even more. Books wouldn’t do it. Even ordinary theatre wouldn’t do it, because in your heart you knew it was just people in funny clothes on a stage. But Holy Wood went straight from the eye into the brain. In your heart you thought it was real. The clicks would do it. That was what was under Holy Wood Hill. The people of the old city had used the hole in reality for entertainment. And then the Things had found them. And now people were doing it again. It was like learning to juggle lighted torches in a firework factory. And the Things had been waiting . . . But why was it still happening? He’d stopped Ginger. The film clicked on. There seemed to be a fog around the picture throwing box, blurring its outline. He snatched at the spinning handle. It resisted for a moment, and then broke. He gently pushed Bezam off his chair, picked it up and hit the throwing box with it. The chair exploded into splinters. He opened the cage at the back and took out the salamanders, and still the film danced on the distant screen. The building shook again. You only get one chance, he thought, and then you die. He pulled off his shirt and wrapped it around his hand. Then he reached out for the flashing line of the film itself, and gripped it. It snapped. The box jerked backwards. Film went on unreeling in glittering coils which lunged at him briefly and then slithered down to the floor. Clickaclick . . . a . . . click. The reels spun to a halt. Victor cautiously stirred the heap of film with his foot. He’d been half expecting it to attack him like a snake. “Have we saved the day?” prompted Gaspode. “I’d ap-preciate knowing.” Victor looked at the screen. “No,” he said. There were still images there. They weren’t very clear, but he could still make out the vague shapes of himself and Ginger, hanging on to existence. And the screen itself was moving. It bulged here and there, like ripples of a pool of dull mercury. It looked unpleasantly familiar. “They’ve found us,” he said. “Who have?” said Gaspode. “You know those ghastly creatures you were talking about?” Gaspode’s brow furrowed. “The ones from before the dawnatime?” “Where they come from, there is no time,” said Victor. The audience was stirring. “We must get everyone out of here,” he said. “But without panicking-” There was a chorus of screams. The audience was waking up. The screen Ginger was climbing out. She was three times normal size and flickered visibly. She was also vaguely transparent, but she had weight, because the floor buckled and splintered under her feet. The audience was climbing over itself to get away. Victor fought his way down the aisle just as Poons’ wheelchair went past backwards in the flow of people, its occupant flailing desperately and shouting, “Hey! Hey! It’s just getting good!” The Chair grabbed Victor’s arm urgently. “Is it meant to do this?” he demanded. “No!” “It’s not some sort of special kinematographic effect, then?” said the Chair hopefully. “Not unless they’ve got really good in the last twenty-four hours,” said Victor. “I think it’s the Dungeon Dimensions.” The Chair stared intently at him. “You are young Victor, aren’t you,” he said. “Yes. Excuse me,” said Victor. He pushed past the astonished wizard and climbed over the seats to where Ginger was still sitting, staring at her own image. The monster Ginger was looking around and blinking very slowly, like a lizard. “That’s me?” “No!” said Victor. “That is, yes. Maybe. Not really. Sort of. Come on.” “But it looks just like me!” said Ginger, her voice modulated with hysteria. “That’s because they’re having to use Holy Wood! It . . . it defines how they can appear, I think,” said Victor hurriedly. He tugged her out of the seat and into the air, his feet kicking up mist and scattering banged grains. She stumbled along after him, looking over her shoulder. “There’s another one trying to come out of the screen,” she said. “Come on!” “It’s you!” “I’m me! It’s . . . something else! It’s just having to use my shape!” “What shape does it normally use?” “You don’t want to know!” “Yes I do! Why do you think I asked?” she yelled, as they stumbled through the broken seats. “It looks worse than you can imagine!” “I can imagine some pretty bad things!” “That’s why I said worse!” “Oh.” The giant spectral Ginger passed them, flickering like a strobe light, and smashed its way out through the wall. There were screams from the outside. “It looks like it’s getting bigger,” whispered Ginger. “Go outside,” said Victor. “Get the wizards to stop it.” “What’re you going to do?” Victor drew himself up to his full height. “There are some Things”, he said, “that a man has to do by himself.” She gave him a look of irritated incomprehension. “What? What? Do you want to go to the lavatory or something?” “Just get out!” He shoved her towards the doors, then turned and saw the two dogs looking at him expectantly. “And you two, too,” he said. Laddie barked. “Dog’s gotta stay by ‘is master, style of fing,” said Gaspode, shame-facedly. Victor looked around in desperation, picked up a fragment of seat, opened the door, threw the wood as far as possible and shouted “Fetch!” Both dogs bounded away after it, propelled by instinct. On his way past, though, Gaspode had just enough selfcontrol to say, “You bastard!” Victor pulled open the door of the picture-throwing room and came out with handfuls of Blown Away. The giant Victor was having trouble leaving the screen. The head and one arm had pulled free and were three-dimensional. The arm flailed vaguely at Victor as he methodically threw coils of octo-cellulose over it. He ran back to the booth and pulled out the stacks of clicks that Bezam, in defiance of common sense, had stored under the bench. Working with the methodical calmness of bowel-twisting terror, he carried the cans by the armload to the screen and heaped them there. The Thing managed to wrench another arm free of two-dimensionality and tried to scrabble at them, but whatever was controlling it was having trouble controlling this new shape. It was probably unused to having only two arms, Victor told himself. He threw the last can on to the heap. “In our world you have to obey our rules,” he said. “And I bet you burn just as well as anything else, hey?” The Thing struggled to pull a leg free. Victor patted his pockets. He ran back to the booth and scrabbled around madly. Matches. There weren’t any matches! He pushed open the doors to the, foyer and dashed out into the street, where the crowds were milling around in horrified fascination and watching a fifty-foot Ginger disentangling Itself from the wreckage of a building. Victor heard a clicking beside him. Gaffer the handleman was intently capturing the scene on film. The Chair was shouting at Dibbler. “Of course we can’t use magic against it! They need magic! Magic only makes them stronger.” “You must be able to do something!” screamed Dibbler. “My dear sir, we didn’t start meddling with things best left –” the Chair hesitated in mid-snarl, “unmeddled-with with,” he finished lamely. “Matches!” Victor shouted. “Matches! Hurry!” They all stared at him. Then the Chair nodded. “Ordinary fire,” he said. “You’re right. That should do it. Good thinking, boy.” He fumbled in a pocket and produced the bundle of matches that chain-smoking wizards always carried. “You can’t burn the Odium,” snapped Dibbler. “There’s heaps of film in there!” Victor ripped a poster off the wall, wrapped it in a crude torch, and lit one end. “That’s what I’m going to burn,” he said. “’Scuse me-” “Stupid! Stupid!” shouted Dibbler. “That stuff burns really fast!” “’Scuse me-” “So what? I wasn’t intending to hang around in there,” said Victor. “I mean really fast!” “’Scuse me,” said Gaspode patiently. They looked down at him. “Me an’ Laddie could do it,” he said. “Four legs’re better “n two and so forth, y’know? When it comes to savin’ the day.” Victor looked at Dibbler and raised his eyebrows. “I suppose they might be able to,” Dibbler conceded. Victor nodded. Laddie leaped gracefully, snatched the torch out of his hand and ran back into the building with Gaspode lurching after him. “Did I hear things, or can that little dog speak?” said Dibbler. “He says he can’t,” said Victor. Dibbler hesitated. The excitement was unhinging him a little. “Well,” he said, “I suppose he should know.” The dogs bounded towards the screen. The Victor-Thing was nearly through, half-sprawled among the cans. “Can I light the fire?” said Gaspode. “’Smy job, really.” Laddie barked obediently and dropped the blazing paper. Gaspode snapped it up and advanced cautiously towards the Thing. “Savin’ the day,” he said, indistinctly, and dropped the torch on a coil of film. It flared instantly and burned with a sticky white fire, like slow magnesium. “OK,” he said. “Now, let’s get the hell out of-” The Thing screamed. What semblance there still was of Victor left it, and something like an explosion in an aquarium twisted among the flames. A tentacle whipped out and grabbed Gaspode by the leg. He turned and tried to bite it. Laddie ricocheted back down the stricken hall and launched himself at the flailing arm. It recoiled, knocking him over and spinning Gaspode across the floor. The little dog sat up, took a few wobbling steps, and fell over. “Bloody leg’s been and gone,” he muttered. Laddie gave him a sorrowful look. Flames crackled around the film cans. . “Go on, get out of here, you stupid mutt,” said Gaspode. “The whole thing’s goin” to go up in a minute. No! Don’t pick me up! Put me down! You haven’t got time–” The walls of the Odium expanded with apparent slowness, every plank and stone maintaining its position relative to all the others but floating out by itself. Then Time caught up with events. Victor threw himself flat on his face. Boom. An orange fireball lifted the roof and billowed up into the foggy sky. Wreckage smashed against the walls of other houses. A red-hot film can scythed over the heads of the recumbent wizards, making a menacing wipwipwip noise, and exploded against a distant wall. There was a high, thin keening that stopped abruptly. The Ginger-Thing rocked in the heat. The gust of hot air lifted its huge skirts in billows around its waist and it stood, flickering and uncertain, as debris rained down around it. Then it turned awkwardly and lurched onward. Victor looked at Ginger, who was staring at the thinning clouds of smoke over the pile of rubble that had been the Odium. “That’s wrong,” she was muttering. “It doesn’t happen like that. It never happens like that. Just when you think it’s too late, they come galloping out of the smoke.” She turned dull eyes upon him. “Don’t they?” she pleaded. “That’s in the clicks,” said Victor. “This is reality., “What’s the difference?” The Chair grabbed Victor’s shoulder and spun him around. “It’s heading for the Library!” he repeated. “You’ve got to stop it! If it gets there the magic’ll make it invincible! We’ll never beat it! It’ll be able to bring others!” “You’re wizards,” said Ginger. “Why don’t you stop it?” Victor shook his head. “The Things like our magic,” he said. “If you use it anywhere around them, it only makes them stronger. But I don’t see what I can do . . . “ His voice trailed off. The crowd was watching him expectantly. They weren’t looking at him as if he was their only hope. They were looking at him is if he was their certainty. He heard a small child say, “What happens now, Mum?” The fat woman holding it said, authoritatively, “It’s easy. He rushes up and stops it just at the last minute. Happens every time. Seen him do it before.” “I’ve never done it before!” said Victor. “Saw you do it,” said the woman smugly. “In Sons of the Dessert. When this lady here”, she gave a brief curtsey in the direction of Ginger, “was on that horse what threw her over the cliff, and you galloped up and grabbed her at the last minute. Very impressive, I thought.” “That wasn’t Sons of the Dessert,” said an elderly man pedantically, while he filled his pipe, “that was Valley of the Trolls.” “It was Sons,” said a thin woman behind him. “I should know, I watched it twenty-seven times.” “Yes, it was very good, wasn’t it,” said the first woman. “Every time I see a scene where she leaves him and he turns to her and gives her that look, I burst into tears-” “Excuse me, but that wasn’t Sons of the Dessert,” said the man, speaking slowly and deliberately. “You’re thinking of the famous plaza scene in Burninge Passiones.” The fat woman took Ginger’s unresisting hand and patted it. “You’ve got a good man there,” she said. “The way he always rescues you every time. If I was being dragged off by mad trolls my ole man wouldn’t say a word except to ask where I wanted my clothes sent.” “My husband wouldn’t get out of his chair if I was being et by dragons,” said the thin woman. She gave Ginger a gentle prod. “But you want to wear more clothes, miss. Next time you’re taken off to be rescued, you insist they let you take a warm coat. I never see you on the screen without thinking to myself, she’s temptin’ a dose of flu, going around like that.” “Where’s ‘is sword?” said the child, kicking its mother on the shin. “I expect he’ll be off to fetch it directly,” she said, giving Victor an encouraging smile. “Er. Yes,” he said. “Come on, Ginger.” He grabbed her hand. “Give the lad room,” shouted the pipe smoker authoritatively. A space cleared around them. Ginger and Victor saw a thousand expectant faces watching them. “They think we’re real,” moaned Ginger. “No-one’s doing anything because they think you’re a hero, for gods’ sake! And we can’t do anything! This Thing is bigger than both of us!” Victor stared down at the damp cobblestones. I can probably remember some magic, he thought, but ordinary magic’s no good against the Dungeon Dimensions. And I’m pretty sure real heroes don’t hang around in the middle of cheering crowds. They get on with the job. Real heroes are like poor old Gaspode. No-one ever notices them until afterwards. That’s the reality. He raised his head slowly. Or is this the reality? The air crackled. There was another kind of magic. It was snapping wildly in the world now, like a broken film. If only he could grab it . . . Reality didn’t have to be real. Maybe if conditions were right, it just had to be what people believed . . . “Stand back,” he whispered. “What’re you going to do?” said Ginger. “Try some Holy Wood kind of magic.” “There’s nothing magic about Holy Wood!” “I . . . think there is. A different sort. We’ve felt it. Magic’s where you find it.” He took a few deep breaths, and let his mind unravel slowly. That was the secret. You did it, you just didn’t think about it. You just let the instructions come from outside. It was just a job. You just felt the eye of the picture-box on you, and it was a different world, a world that was just a flickering silver square. That was the secret. The flicker. Ordinary magic just moved things around. It couldn’t create a real thing that’d last for more than a second, because that took a lot of power. But Holy Wood easily created things over and over again, dozens of times a second. They didn’t have to last for long. They just had to last for long enough. But you had to work Holy Wood magic by Holy Wood’s rules . . . He extended a rock-steady hand towards the dark sky. “Lights!” There was a sheet of lightning that illuminated the whole city . . . “Picture box!” Gaffer spun the handle furiously. “Action!” No-one saw where the horse came from. It was just there, leaping over the heads of the crowd. It was white, with lots of impressive silver work on the bridle. Victor swung up into the saddle as it cantered past, then made it rear impressively so that it pawed the air. He drew a sword which hadn’t been there a moment before. The sword and the horse flickered almost imperceptibly. Victor smiled. Light glinted off a tooth. Ting. A glint, but no sound; they hadn’t invented sound, yet. Believe it. That was the way. Never stop believing. Fool the eye, fool the brain. Then he galloped between the cheering lines of spectators towards the University and the big scene. The handleman relaxed. Ginger tapped him on the shoulder. “If you stop turning that handle,” she said sweetly, “I’ll break your bloody neck.” “But he’s nearly out of shot-” Ginger propelled him towards Windle Poons’ ancient wheelchair and gave Windle a smile that made little clouds of wax boil out of his ears. “Excuse me,” she said, in a sultry voice that caused all the wizards to curl their toes up in their pointy shoes, “but could we borrow you for a minute?” “Way-hey! Draw it mild!” . . . whumm . . . whumm . . . Ponder Stibbons knew about the vase, of course. All the students had wandered along to have a look at it. He didn’t pay it much attention as he sneaked along the corridor, attempting once again to make a bid for an evening’s freedom . . . . whummwhummWHUMMWHUMMWHUMMMMwhumm. All he had to do was cut across through the cloisters and . . . PLIB. All eight pottery elephants shot pellets at once. The resograph exploded, turning the roof into something like a pepper shaker. After a minute or two Ponder got up, very carefully. His hat was simply a collection of holes held together by thread. A piece had been taken out of one of his ears. “I only wanted a drink,” he said, muzzily. “What’s wrong with that?” The Librarian crouched on the dome of the Library, watching the crowds scurrying through the streets as the monstrous figure lurched nearer. He was slightly surprised to see it followed by some sort of spectral horse whose hooves made no sound on the cobbles. And that was followed by a three-wheeled bathchair that took the corner on only two of them, sparks streaming away behind it. It was loaded down with wizards, all shouting at the tops of their voices. Occasionally one of them would lose his grip and have to run behind until he could get up enough speed to leap on again. Three of them hadn’t made it. That is, one of them had made it sufficiently to get a grip on the trailing leather cover, and the other two had made it just enough to grab the robe of the one in front, so that now, every time it took a bend, a tail of three wizards going “whaaaaa” snapped wildly across the road behind it. There were also a number of civilians, but if anything they were shouting louder than the wizards. The Librarian had seen many weird things in his time, but that was undoubtedly the 57thstrangest.[28] Up here the could very clearly hear the voices. “-got to keep it turning! He can only make it work if you keep it turning! It’s Holy Wood magic! He’s making it work in the real world!” That was a girl’s voice. “All right, but the imps get very fractious if-” That was a man’s voice under extreme pressure. “Bugger the imps!” “How can he make a horse?” That was the Dean. The Librarian recognized the whine. “That’s high-grade magic!” “It’s not a real horse, it’s a moving-picture horse.” The girl again. “You! You’re slowing down!” “I’m not! I’m not! Look, I’m turning the handle, I’m turning the handle!” “He can’t ride on a horse that isn’t real!” “You’re a magician and you really believe that?” “Wizard, actually.” “Well, whatever. This isn’t your kind of magic.” The Librarian nodded, and then stopped listening. He had other things to do. The Thing was almost level with the Tower of Art, and would soon turn to head for the Library. Things always homed in on the nearest source of magic. They needed it. The Librarian had found a long iron pike in one of the University’s mouldering storerooms. He held it carefully in one foot while he unfastened the rope he’d tied to the weathercock. It stretched all the way up to the top of the Tower; it had taken him all night to fix it up. He surveyed the city below, and then pounded his chest and roared: “AaaaAAAaaaAAA - hngh, hngh.” Maybe the pounding wasn’t entirely necessary, he thought, while he waited for the buzzing noises and little flashing lights to go away. He gripped the pike in one hand, the rope in the other, and leapt. The most graphic way of describing the Librarian’s swing across the buildings of Unseen University is to simply transcribe the noises made during the flight. First: “AaaAAAaaaAAAaaa.” This is self-explanatory, and refers to the early part of the swing, when everything looked as if it was going well. . Then: “Aaarghhhh.” This was the noise made as he missed the lurching Thing by several metres and was realizing that, if you have tied a rope to the top of a very high and extremely solid stone tower and are now swinging towards it, failing to hit something on the way is an error which you will regret for the rest of your truncated life. The rope completed its swing. There was a noise exactly like a rubber sack full of butter hitting a stone slab and this was followed, after a moment or two, by a very quiet “oook”. The pike clanged away in the darkness. The Librarian spread-eagled himself starfish-like against the wall, ramming fingers and toes into every available crevice. He might have been able to climb his way down but the option never became available, because the Thing reached out a flickering hand and plucked him off the wall with a noise like a sink-plunger clearing a difficult blockage. It held him up to what was currently its face. The crowds flowed into the square in front of Unseen University, with the Dibblers to the fore. “Look at them,” Cut-me-own-Throat sighed. “There must be thousands of them, and no-one’s selling ‘em anything.” The wheelchair slid to a halt in another spray of sparks. Victor was waiting for it, the spectral horse flickering under him. Not one horse, but a succession of horses. Not moving, but changing from frame to frame. Lightning flashed again. “What’s he doing?” said the Chair. “Trying to keep It from getting to the Library,” said the Dean, peering through the rain that was beginning to thud on the cobbles. “To stay alive in reality, Things need magic to hold themselves together. They’ve got no natural morphogenic field, you see, and–” “Do something! Blow it up with magic!” shouted Ginger. “Oh, that poor monkey!” “We can’t use magic! That’s like pouring oil on a fire!” snapped the Dean. “Besides . . . I don’t know how you go about blowing up a fifty-foot woman. It’s not the sort of thing I’ve ever been called upon to do.” “It’s not a woman! It’s . . . it’s a film creature, you idiot! Do you think I’m really that big?” shouted Ginger. “It’s using Holy Wood! It’s a Holy Wood monster! From film land!” “Steer, godsdamnit! Steer!” “I don’t know how to!” “You just have to throw your weight about!” The Bursar gripped the broomstick nervously. It’s all very well for you to say, he thought. You’re used to it. They had been stepping out of the Great Hall when a giant woman had lurched past the gate with a gibbering ape in one hand. Now the Bursar was trying to control an antique broom out of the University museum while a madman behind him feverishly tried to load a crossbow. Airborne, the Archchancellor had said. It was absolutely essential that they were airborne. “Can’t you keep it steady?” the Archchancellor demanded. “It’s not made for two, Archchancellor!” “Can’t damn well aim with you weavin’ around the sky like this, man!” The contagious spirit of Holy Wood, whipping across the city like a steel hawser with one end suddenly cut free, sliced once again through the Archchancellor’s mind. “We don’t leave our people in there,” he muttered. “Apes, Archchancellor,” said the Bursar automatically. The Thing lurched towards Victor. It moved uneasily, fighting against the forces of reality that tugged at it. It flickered as it tried to maintain the shape it had climbed into the world with, so that images of Ginger alternated with glimpses of something that writhed and coiled. It needed magic. It eyed Victor and the sword, and if it was capable of something so sophisticated as knowledge, it knew that it was vulnerable. It turned, ant bore down on Ginger and the wizards. Who burst into flame. The Dean burned with a particularly pretty blue colour. “Don’t worry, young lady,” said the Chair from the heart of his fire. “It’s illusion. It’s not real.” “You’re telling me?” said Ginger. “Get on with it!” The wizards moved forward. Ginger heard footsteps behind her. It was the Dibblers. “Why’s it frightened of the flame?” said Soll, and the Thing backed away from the advancing wizards. “It’s just illusion. It must be able to feel there’s no heat.” Ginger shook her head. She looked like someone surfing on a curling wave of hysteria, perhaps because it is not every day you see giant images of yourself trampling down a city. “It’s used Holy Wood magic,” she said. “So it can’t disobey Holy Wood rules. It can’t feel, it can’t hear. It can only see. What it sees is what is real. And what film fears is fire.” Now the giant Ginger was pressed against the tower. “Well, it’s trapped,” said Dibbler. “They’ve got it now.” The Thing blinked at the advancing flames. It turned. It reached up with its free hand. It began to climb the tower. Victor slid off his horse and stopped concentrating. It vanished. Despite his panic, he found room for a tiny gloat. If only wizards had gone to the clicks, they’d have known exactly how to do it. It was the critical fusion frequency. Even reality had one. If you could only make something exist for a tiny part of a second, that didn’t mean you’d failed. It meant you had to keep on doing it. He scurried crabwise along the base of the tower, staring up at the climbing Thing, and tripped over something metallic. It turned out to be the Librarian’s dropped pike. A little further off, the end of the rope trailed in a puddle. He stared at them for a moment, then used the pike to chop a few feet off the rope to make a crude shoulder strap for the weapon. He grabbed the rope and gave it an experimental tug, and then . . . There was an unpleasant lack of resistance to the pull. He threw himself backwards just before hundreds of feet of sodden rope smacked damply on to the paving. He looked around desperately for another route to the top. The Dibblers watched open mouthed as the Thing climbed. It wasn’t moving very fast, and occasionally had to wedge the gibbering Librarian into a handy buttress while it found the next handhold, but it was moving up. “Oh, yes. Yes. Yes,” breathed Soll. “What a picture! Pure kinema!” “A giant woman carrying a screaming ape up a tall building,” sighed Dibbler. “And we’re not even having to pay wages!” “Yeah,” said Soll. “Yeah . . . “ said Dibbler. There was a tiny note of uncertainty in his voice. Soll looked wistful. “Yeah,” he repeated. “Er.” “I know what you mean,” said Dibbler slowly. “It’s . . . I mean, it’s really great, but . . . well, I can’t help feeling . . . “ “Yeah. There’s something wrong,” said Dibbler flatly. “Not wrong,” said Soll desperately. “Not exactly wrong. Not wrong as such. Just missing . . . “ He stopped, at a loss for words. He sighed. And Dibbler sighed. Overhead, the thunder rolled. And out of the sky came a broomstick with two screaming wizards on it. Victor pushed open the door at the base of the Tower of Art. It was dark inside, and he could hear water dripping down from the distant roof. The tower was said to be the oldest building in the world. It certainly felt like it. It wasn’t used for anything now, and the internal floors had long ago rotted away, so that all that was left inside was the staircase. It was a spiral, made of huge slabs set into the wall itself. Some of them were missing. It’d be a dangerous climb, even in daylight. In the dark . . . not a chance. The door slammed open behind him and Ginger strode in, dragging the handleman behind her. “Well?” she said. “Hurry up. You’ve got to save that poor monkey.” “Ape,” said Victor absently. “Whatever.” “It’s too dark,” Victor muttered. “It’s never too dark in the clicks,” said Ginger flatly. “Think about it.” She nudged the handleman, who said, very quickly, “She’s right. ‘S never dark in the clicks. Stands to reason. You’ve got to have enough light to see the dark by.” Victor glanced up at the gloom, and then back at Ginger. “Listen!” he said urgently. “If I . . . if something goes wrong, tell the wizards about the . . . you know. The pit. The Things will be trying to break through there, too.” “I’m not going back there!” There was a roll of thunder. “Get going!” shouted Ginger, white-faced. “Lights! Picture box! Action! And stuff like that!” Victor gritted his teeth and ran for it. There was enough light to give the darkness a shape, and he leapt from stair to stair with the magic of Holy Wood reciting its litany in his head. “There has to be enough light”, he panted, “to see the darkness.” He staggered onwards. “And in Holy Wood I never run out of strength,” he added, hoping his legs would believe him. That took care of the next turn. “And in Holy Wood I have to be in the nick of time,” he shouted. He leaned against the wall for a moment and fought for breath. “Always in the nick of time,” he muttered. He started to run upwards again. The slabs passed under his feet like a dream, like squares of movie clicking through the picture box. And he’d arrive in the nick of time. Thousands of people knew he would. If heroes didn’t arrive in the nick of time, where was the sense in anything? And- There was no slab in front of his falling foot. His other foot was already arching to leave the step. He focused every ounce of energy into one tendon-twanging push, felt his toes hit the edge of the next slab up, flung himself forward and then jumped again because it was that or snap a leg. “This is nuts.” He ran onward, straining to look for more missing slabs. “Always in the nick of time,” he muttered. So maybe he could stop and have a rest? He could still make it in the nick of time. That’s what the nick of time meant . . . No. You had to play fair. There was another missing slab ahead. He stared blankly at the space. There was going to be a whole tower of this. He concentrated briefly and jumped on to nothing. The nothing became a slab for the fraction of a second he needed to jump off on to the next one. He grinned in the dark, and a sparkle of light twinkled on a tooth. Nothing created by Holy Wood magic was real for long. But you could make it real for long enough. Hooray for Holy Wood. The Thing was flickering more slowly now, spending less time looking like a giant version of Ginger and more looking like the contents of a taxidermist’s sink trap. It pulled its dripping bulk over the top of the tower and lay there. Air whistled through its breathing tubes. Under its tentacles the rock crumbled, as the magic drained away and was replaced by the hungry appetite of Time. It was bewildered. Where were the others? It was alone and besieged in a strange place . . . . . . and now it was angry. It extended an eye and glared at the ape struggling in what had been a hand. Thunder rocked the tower. Rain cascaded off the stones. The Thing extended a pseudopod and wrapped it around the Librarian’s waist . . . . . . and became aware of another figure, ridiculously small, erupting from the stairwell. Victor unslung the pike from his back. What did you do now? When you were dealing with humans you had options. You could say “Hey, put down that ape and come on out with your feelers up.” You could . . . A claw-tipped tentacle as thick as his arm slammed down on the stones, cracking them. He leapt backwards and brought the pike around in a backhanded swipe that drew a deep yellow slash in the Thing’s hide. It howled and shuffled around with unpleasant speed to flail more tentacles at him. Shape, thought Victor. They’ve got no real shape in this world. It has to spend too much time holding itself together. The more it has to concentrate on me, the less it can concentrate on not falling to bits. An assortment of mismatched eyes extended from various bits of the Thing. As they focused on Victor they crinkled with angry bloodshot veins. OK, he thought. I’ve got its attention. Now what? He stabbed at a snapping claw and jumped with his knees up under his chin when a mercifully unidentifiable pseudopod tried to chop his legs from under him. Another tentacle snaked out. An arrow passed through it with the same effect as a steel pellet shooting through a sock filled with custard. The Thing screeched. The broomstick barrelled over the top of the tower, with the Archchancellor feverishly reloading. Victor heard a distant, “If it bleeds, we can kill it!” followed by “What do you mean, we?” Victor pressed forward, hacking at anything that looked vulnerable. The creature changed form, trying to thicken its hide or grow a carapace wherever the pike fell, but it wasn’t fast enough. They’re right. It can be killed, Victor thought. It may take all day, but it’s not invincible -. . . And then there was Ginger in front of him, her expression filled with pain and shock. He hesitated. An arrow thudded into what might have been its body. “Tally ho! Take us round again, Bursar!” The image dissolved. The Thing screeched, threw the Librarian aside like a doll, and lurched at Victor with all tentacles at full stretch. One of them knocked him over, three others dragged the pike from his hands, and then the Thing was rearing up, like a leech, raising the iron pike to knock its tormentors out of the sky. Victor raised himself up on his elbows and concentrated. Just real for long enough. The lightning bolt outlined the Thing in blue-and-white light. After the thunderclap the creature swayed drunkenly, with little tendrils of electricity coruscating across it and making whizzing noises. A few limbs were smoking. It was trying to hold itself together against the forces roaring around inside its body. It skewed wildly across the stone, making odd little mewling noises, and then, with one good eye glaring balefully at Victor, stepped off into space. Victor pushed himself up on his hands and knees and dragged himself to the edge. Even on the way down the Thing wasn’t giving up. It was trying frantic evolutions of feather and hide and membranes in an attempt to find something that would survive the fall - Time slowed. The air took on a purple haze. Death swung his scythe. YOU BELONG DEAD, he said. - and then there was a sound like wet laundry hitting a wall and, it turned out, the only thing that could survive the fall was a corpse. The crowd moved closer in the pouring rain. Now that all the control was gone the Thing was dissolving into its component molecules, that were washing into the gutters and down to the river and out into the cold depths of the sea. “It’s deliquescing,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “Is it?” said the Chair. “I thought that it was some kind of shop.” He prodded it with his foot. “Careful,” said the Dean. “That is not dead which can eternal lie.” The Chair studied it. “It looks bloody dead to me,” he said. “Hang on - there’s something moving-” One of the outflung tentacles slumped aside. “Did it land on someone?” said the Dean. It did. They pulled out the twitching body of Ponder Stibbons, and prodded and patted him in a well-meant way until he opened his eyes. “What happened?” he said. “A fifty-foot monster fell on you,” said the Dean, simply. “Are you, er, all right?” “I only wanted one drink,” Ponder muttered. “I’d have come straight back, honest.” “What are you talking about, lad?” Ponder ignored him. He got up, swaying a bit, and staggered off towards the Great Hall, and never, ever, went out again. “Funny chap,” said the Chair. They looked back down at the Thing, which had nearly dissolved. “’Twas beauty killed the beast,” said the Dean, who liked to say things like that. “No it wasn’t,” said the Chair. “It was it splatting into the ground like that.” The Librarian sat up and rubbed his head. The book was thrust in front of his eyes. “Read it!” said Victor. “Oook.” “Please!” The ape opened it at a page of pictograms. He blinked at them for a moment. Then his finger went to the bottom right--hand comer of the page and began to trace the signs from right to left. Right to left. That was how you were supposed to read them, Victor thought. Which meant that he’d been exactly wrong all the time. Gaffer the handleman panned his picture box along the row of wizards and then down to the rapidly-dissolving monster. The handle stopped turning. He raised his head and gave everyone a bright smile. “If you could just bunch up tighter, gentlemen?” he said. The wizards obediently shuffled even closer. “The light’s not very good.” Soll wrote down, “Wizards Joking at the Corepse, take 3,” on a piece of card. “Shame you didn’t get the fall,” he said, the edges of his voice deckled with hysteria. “Maybe we can stunt it up or something?” Ginger sat in the shadows by the tower, hugging her knees and trying to stop trembling. Among the shapes the Thing had tried just before the end had been her own. She pulled herself upright and, holding on to the rough stonework to steady herself, walked uncertainly away. She wasn’t certain what the future held, but coffee would be involved if she had any say in the matter. As she passed the tower door there was a clattering of feet and Victor staggered out, with the Librarian swinging along behind him. He opened his mouth to speak, and started to gasp for air. The orang-utan pushed him aside and grabbed Ginger firmly by the arm. It was a warm, soft grip, but with just a hint that, if he really ever needed to, the Librarian could easily turn any arm into a tube of jelly with bits in it. “Gook!” “Look, it’s over,” said Ginger. “The monster’s dead. That’s how things end, OK? And now I’m going to get something to drink.” “Oook!” “Oook yourself.” Victor raised his head. “It’s . . . not over,” he said. “It is for me. I just saw myself turn into a . . . a THING with tentacles. A Thing like that has a bit of an effect on a girl, you know.” “It’s not important!” Victor managed. “We got it wrong! Look, they’ll keep on coming now! You’ve got to come back to Holy Wood! They’ll be coming through there, too!” “Gook!” the Librarian agreed, jabbing the book with a purple fingernail. “Well, they can do it without me,” said Ginger. “No, they can’t! I mean, they will anyway! But you can stop them! Oh, stop looking at me like that!” He nudged the Librarian. “Go on, tell her,” he said. “Gook,” said the Librarian, patiently. “Oook.” “I can’t understand him!” wailed Ginger. Victor’s brow wrinkled. “You can’t?” “It’s all just monkey noises to me!” Victor’s eyes swivelled sideways. “Er-” The Librarian stood like a small prehistoric statue for a moment. Then he took Ginger’s hand, very gently, and patted it. “Oook,” he said, graciously. “Sorry,” said Ginger. “Listen!” said Victor. “I got it wrong! You weren’t trying to help Them, you were trying to stop them! I read it the wrong way round! It’s not a man behind a gate, it’s a man in front of a gate! And a man in front of a gate”, he took a deep breath, “is a guard!” “Yes, but we can’t get to Holy Wood! It’s miles away!” Victor shrugged. “Go and get the handleman,” he said. The land around Ankh-Morpork is fertile and largely given over to the cabbage fields that help to give the city its distinctive odour. The grey light of pre-dawn unrolled over the blue-green expanse, and around a couple of farmers who were making an early start on the spinach harvest. They looked up, not at a sound, but at a travelling point of silence where sound ought to have been. It was a man and a woman and something like a size five man in a size twelve fur coat, all in a chariot that flickered as it moved. It bowled along the road towards Holy Wood and was soon out of sight. A minute or two later it was followed by a wheelchair. Its axle glowed red-hot. It was full of people screaming at one another. One of them was turning a handle on a box. It was so overburdened that wizards occasionally fell off and ran along after it, shouting, until they had a chance to jump on again and start screaming. Whoever was attempting to steer was not succeeding, and it weaved back and forth across the road and eventually hurtled off it completely and through the side of a barn. One of the farmers nudged the other. “Oi’ve seen this on the clicks,” he said. “It’s always the same. They crash into a barn and they allus comes out the other side covered in squawking chickens.” His companion leaned reflectively on his hoe. “It’d be a sight worth seeing that,” he said. “Sure would.” “’Cos all there is in there, boy, is twenty ton of cabbage.” There was a crash, and the chair erupted from the barn in a shower of chickens and headed madly towards the road. The farmers looked at one another. “Well, dang me,” said one of them. Holy Wood was a glow on the horizon. The earth tremors were stronger now. The flickering chariot came out of a stand of trees and paused at the top of the incline that led down to the town. Mist wreathed Holy Wood. From out of it spears of light criss-crossed the sky. “We’re too late?” said Ginger hopefully. “Almost too late,” said Victor. “Oook,” said the Librarian. His fingernail raced back and forth as he read the ancient pictograms - right to left, right to left. “I knew there was something not right,” Victor had said. “That sleeping statue . . . the guard. The old priests sang songs and did ceremonies to keep him awake. They remembered Holy Wood as best they could.” “But I don’t know anything about a guard!” “Yes, you do. Like, deep down inside.” “Gook,” said the Librarian, tapping a page. “Oook!” “He says you’re probably descended from the original High Priestess. He thinks everyone in Holy Wood is descended from . . . you see . . . I mean, the first time the Things broke through the entire city was destroyed and the survivors fled everywhere, you see, but everyone has this way of remembering even things that happened to their ancestors, I mean, it’s like there’s this great big pool of memory and we’re linked, up to it and when it all started happening again we were all called to the place, and you tried to put it right, only it was weak so it couldn’t get through to you unless you were asleep-” He trailed off helplessly. ““Oook”?” said Ginger suspiciously. “You got all this from “oook”?” “Well, not just one,” Victor admitted. “I’ve never heard such a lot of-” Ginger began, and stopped. A hand softer than the softest leather was pushed into hers. She looked around into a fare that compared badly to a deflated football. “Oook,” said the Librarian. Ginger locked eyes with him for a moment. Then she said, “But I’ve never felt the least bit like a high priestess . . . “ “That dream you told me about,” said Victor. “It sounded pretty high priestessy to me. Very . . . very–” “Gook.” “Sacerdotal. Yeah,” Victor translated. “It’s just a dream,” said Ginger nervously. “I’ve, dreamed it occasionally as far back as I can remember.” “Oook oook.” “What’d he say?” said Ginger. “He says that’s probably a lot further back than you think.” Ahead of them Holy Wood glittered like frost, like a city made of congealed starlight. “Victor?” said Ginger. “Yes?” “Where is everybody?” Victor looked down the road. Where there should have been people, refugees, desperately fleeing . . . was nothing. Just silence, and the light. “Where are they?” she repeated. He looked at her expression. “But the tunnel fell down!” he said, saying it loudly in the hope that this would make it true. “It was all sealed off!” “It wouldn’t take trolls long to clear a way through, though,” said Ginger. Victor thought about the - the Cthinema. And the first house, which had been going on for thousands of years. And all the people he knew, sitting there, for another thousand years. While overhead the stars changed. “Of course, they might just be . . . well . . . somewhere else,” he lied. “But they’re not,” said Ginger. “We both know that.” Victor stared helplessly at the city of lights. “Why us?” he said. “Why is it happening to us?” “Everything has to happen to someone,” said Ginger. Victor shrugged. “And you only get one chance,” he said. “Right?” “Just when you need to save the world, there’s a world for you to save,” said Ginger. “Yeah,” said Victor. “Lucky old us.” The two farmers peered in through the barn doors. Stacks of cabbage waited stolidly in the gloom. “Told you it were cabbage,” said one of them. “Knew it weren’t chickens. Oi knows a cabbage when I sees one, and of believes what I sees.” From far above came voices, getting closer: “For gods’ sake, man, can’t you steer?” “Not with you throwing your weight about, Archchancellor!” “Where the hell are we? Can’t see a thing in this fog!” “I’ll just see if I can point it - don’t lean over like that! Don’t lean over like that! I said don’t lean-!” The farmers dived sideways as the broomstick corkscrewed through the open doorway and disappeared among the ranks of cabbage. There was a distant, brassica’d squelch. Eventually a muffled voice said: “You leaned.” “Nonsense. A fine mess you got me into. What is it?” “Cabbages, Archchancellor.” “Some kind of vegetable?” “Yes.” “Can’t stand vegetables. Thins the blood.” There was a pause. Then the farmers heard the other voice say: “Well, I’m very sorry about that, you bloodthirsty overbearing tub of lard.” There was another pause. Then: “Can I sack you, Bursar?” “No, Archchancellor. I’ve got tenure.” “In that case, help me out and let’s go and find a drink.” The farmers crept away. “Dang me,” said the believer in cabbages. “They’re wizards. Best not to meddle in the affairs of danged wizards.” “Yeah,” said the other farmer. “Er . . . what does dang mean? Exactly?” It was the time of the silence. Nothing moved in Holy Wood except the light. It flickered slowly. Holy Wood light, Victor thought. There was a feeling of dreadful expectation. If a movie set was a dream waiting to be made real, then the town was one step further up the scale - a real place waiting for something new, something that ordinary language couldn’t define. “ ,” he said, and stopped. “ ?” said Ginger. “ ?” “ !” They stared at one another for a moment. Then Victor grabbed her hand and dragged her into the nearest building, which turned out to be the commissary. The scene inside was indescribable and remained so until Victor found the blackboard that was used for what was laughingly referred to as the menu. He picked up the chalk. “I’M TALKING BUT I CANT HERE ME,” he wrote, and solemnly handed her the chalk. “ME TO. Y?” Victor tossed the chalk up and down thoughtfully, and then wrote: “I THINK BCOS WE NEVER INVENTED SOUND MOVIES. IF WE DIDNT HAVE IMPS THAT COULD PAINT IN COLOR MAYBE THERE WOULD JUST BE BLAK AND WHITE HERE TOO.” . They stared at the scene around them. There were untouched or half-eaten meals on almost every table. This wasn’t particularly unusual at Borgle’s, but normally they were accompanied by people complaining bitterly. Ginger delicately dipped a finger in the nearest plate. “Still warm,” she mouthed. “Let’s go,” said Victor quietly, pointing at the door. She tried to say something complicated, scowled at his blank expression, and wrote: “WE SHUOD WAIT FOR THE WIZARDS.” Victor stood frozen for a moment. Then his lips shaped a phrase that Ginger would not admit to knowing and he made a dash for the outside. The overloaded chair was already bowling along the street with smoke billowing from its axles. He jumped up and down in front of it, waving his arms. A long silent conversation went on. There was a lot of chalking on the nearest wall. Finally Ginger couldn’t contain her impatience any longer and hurried over. “YOUVE GOT TO STAY AWAY. IF THEY BRAKE THRU YOU WIL BE A MEAL.” “SO WILL YOU.” This was neater handwriting; it was the Dean’s. Victor wrote: “XCEPT I THINK I KNOW WHAT’s HAPNEN. ANYWAY, YOU WILL BE NEEDED IF IT GOES WRONG.” He nodded at the Dean and hurried back to Ginger and the Librarian. He gave the ape a worried look. Technically the Librarian was a wizard - at least, when he’d been human he was a wizard, so presumably he still was. On the other hand, he was also an ape, and a handy man to have around in an emergency. He decided to ask it. “Come on,” he mouthed. It was easy enough to find the way to the hill. Where there had been a path there was now a broad trail, poignantly scattered with the debris of hurried passage. A sandal. A discarded picture box. A trailing red feather boa. The door into the hill had been torn off its hinges. A dull glow came from the tunnel. Victor shrugged and marched inside. The debris hadn’t been cleared right away, but it had been pushed aside and flattened down to allow the crowd to go through. The ceiling hadn’t fallen in. This wasn’t because of the debris. It was because of Detritus. He was holding it up. Nearly up. He was already down on one knee. Victor and the Librarian stacked boulders around the troll until he could let the weight off his shoulders. He groaned, or at least looked as if he’d groaned, and toppled forward. Ginger helped him up. “What happened?” she mouthed at him. “ ? ?” Detritus looked puzzled at the absence of his voice and tried to squint at his mouth. Victor sighed. He had a vision of the Holy Wood people stampeding blindly along the passage, the trolls scrabbling at the blockage. Since Detritus was the toughest, naturally he’d play a major part. And since the only function he normally used his brain for was to stop the top of his head falling in, equally naturally he’d be the one left holding up the weight on the hill. Victor imagined him calling out, unheard, as the rest of them hurried by. He wondered whether to write him a cheery message, but in Detritus” case this was almost certainly a waste of time. Anyway, the troll wasn’t about to hang around. He loped off along the tunnel with a grim look on his face, concentrating fiercely on some private errand of his own. His trailing knuckles left two furrows in the dust. The passage opened out into the cavern which was, Victor now realized, a sort of ante-chamber to the pit itself. Maybe thousands of years ago supplicants had flocked out here to buy . . . what? Consecrated sausages, maybe, and the holy banged grains. Spectral light filled it now. It was still full of damp and ancient mould wherever Victor looked. Yet wherever he didn’t look, at the edges of his vision, he kept getting the feeling that the place was decorated like a palace with red plush draperies and baroque gold decorations. He kept turning his head sharply, trying to trap the ghostly, glittering image. He met the Librarian’s worried frown, and chalked on the cave wall: “REALITIES MERGING?” The Librarian nodded. Victor winced, and led his little group of Holy Wood guerrillas -at least, two guerrillas and one orang-utan up the worn steps into the pit. Victor realized later that it was Detritus who saved them all. They took one look at the swirling images on the obscene screen and . . . Dream. Reality. Believe. Await . . . . . . and Detritus tried to walk through them. Images designed to trap and throw a glamour over any sapient mind bounced off the back of his rocky skull and came right out again. He paid them no attention at all. He had other fish to fry.[29] Being trampled almost to death by a preoccupied troll is almost the ideal cure for a person confused about what is real and what isn’t. Reality is something walking heavily up your spine. Victor hauled himself back on to his feet, pulled the others towards him, pointed to the flickering, bulging oblong at the other end of the hall, and mouthed “Don’t look!” They nodded. Ginger gripped his arm tightly as they inched their way down from the aisle. All of Holy Wood was there. They saw faces they knew ranged along the seats, immobile in the shivering light, every expression nailed in place. He felt her nails dig into his skin. There was Rock, and Morry, and Fruntkin from the commissary, and Mrs. Cosmopilite the wardrobe lady. There was Silverfish, and a row of other alchemists. There were the carpenters, and the handlemen, and all the stars that never were, all the people who had held horses or cleaned tables or stood in queues and waited and waited for their big chance . . . Lobsters, thought Victor. There was a great city and lots of people died and now it’s the home of lobsters. The Librarian pointed. Detritus had found Ruby in the very front row, and was trying to pull her out of her seat. Whichever way he moved her, her eyes swivelled towards the dancing images. When he stood in front of her she blinked for a moment, scowled, and knocked him aside. Then her expression slid back to vacuity and she settled into her seat. Victor laid a hand on his shoulder and made what he hoped would be soothing, beckoning motions. Detritus’ face was a fresco of misery. The suit of armour was still on the slab behind the screen, in front of the tarnished disc. They stared at it, hopelessly. Victor tentatively drew his finger through the dust. It left a streak of shiny yellow metal. He looked at Ginger. “What now?” he mouthed. She shrugged. It meant - how should I know? I was asleep, before. The screen above them was bulging very fatly now. How long before the Things came through? Victor tried shaking the - well, call it a man. A very tall man. In seamless golden armour. Might as well try to shake awake a mountain. He reached over and tried to free the sword, although it was longer than he was and, even if he could lift it, would be as manoeuvrable as a barge. It was gripped fast. The Librarian was trying to read the book by the light of the screen, feverishly thumbing through the pages. Victor chalked on the side of the slab: “CAN’T YOU THINK OF ANYTHIN AT AL?” Ginger took the chalk: “NO! YOU WOKE ME UP!! I DON’T NO HOW TO DO IT!!! WHATEVR IT IS!!!.” The fourth exclamation mark only failed to be completed because the chalk snapped. There was a distant “ping” as part of it hit something. Victor took the other half out of her hand. “MAYBE YOU SHOUD HAV A LOOK AT THE BOOK,” he suggested. The Librarian nodded and tried to put the book in her hands. She waved him off for a moment, and stood staring into the shadows. She took the book. She looked from the ape to the troll to the man. Then she pulled her arm back and hurled the book away from her. This time it wasn’t a ping. It was a definite, low and very resonant “booong”. Something could make a noise in the place with no sound. Victor skidded around the slab. The big disc was a gong. He tapped it. Bits of corrosion fell off, but the metal shivered under the light blow and gave out another tinny rumble under his touch. Below it, now that his eyes were instinctively seeing it out, was a six-foot metal pole with a padded ball at one end. He grabbed it and heaved it off its supports. Or tried to, at least. It was rusted solidly in place. The Librarian positioned himself at the other end, caught Victor’s eye, and this time they hauled on it together. Flakes of rust dug into Victor’s hands. It was immovable. The gong hammer and its supports had been turned by time and salt air into one single metallic whole. Then time seemed to slow and became a series of frozen events in the flickering light, like moving pictures sliding through the box. Click. Detritus reached down over Victor’s head, grasped the hammer by its middle, and lifted it up, tearing the rusted supports out of the very rock. Click. They threw themselves flat as he gripped it in both hands, flexed his muscles, and took a swing at the gong. Click. Click. Click. Click. Caught in a series of tableaux, Detritus appeared to move instantly into . . . click . . . different but connected positions as he pivoted on one horny foot, the hammer head . . . click . . . making a bright arc in the darkness. Click. The impact knocked the gong so far backwards that the chains broke, and it slammed against the wall of the pit. Sound came back quickly and in vast quantities, as though it had been dammed up somewhere and had then suddenly been released, to slosh joyfully back into the world and drown every eardrum. Booong. Click. The giant figure on the slab sat upright slowly, dust cascading off it in slow streams. Underneath it was gold, untarnished by the years. It moved slowly but deliberately, as though propelled by clockwork. One hand grasped the giant sword. The other gripped the edge of the slab to steady the figure as its long, tapering legs swung down to the ground. It stood upright, ten feet tall, rested its hands on the hilt of the sword, and halted. It didn’t look very much different from its posture on the slab, but this time there was an air of alertness about it, a sense of huge energies idly ticking over. It paid no attention at all to the four who had awoken it. The screen stopped its wild pulsating. Something had sensed the presence of the golden man and was focusing its attention on him. Which meant that it was temporarily removing it from elsewhere. There was a stirring from the audience. They were waking up. Victor grabbed the Librarian and Detritus. “You two,” he said. “Get everyone out of here. Get them out of here fast.” “Gook!” The Holy Wood people didn’t need much encouragement. Seeing the shapes on the screen clearly, without the cushion of hypnosis, was enough to make anything brainier than Detritus have a sudden urge to be a long way away. Victor could see them struggling over the seats, fighting to escape from the pit. Ginger started to follow them. Victor stopped her. “Not yet,” he said, quietly. “Not us.” “What do you mean?” she demanded. He shook his head. “We have to be the last ones out,” he said. “It’s all part of Holy Wood. You can use the magic, but it uses you, too. Besides, don’t you want to see how it all ends?” “I had rather hoped to see how it all ends from a long way off.” “OK, look at it another way . . . it’s going to take a couple of minutes for them to get out. We might as well have a clear run at it, eh?” They could hear shouts in the ante-chamber as the former audience piled into the tunnel. Victor walked up the suddenly-deserted aisle to the back row and sat down in a vacated seat. “I hope old Detritus is bright enough not to be left holding up the ceiling again,” he said. Ginger sighed, and sat down next to him. Victor put his feet up on the seat in front of him and fumbled in his pockets. “Would you like”, he said, “some banged grains?” The golden man was just visible under the screen. His head was bowed. “You know, he does look like my Uncle Oswald,” said Ginger. The screen went dark with such suddenness the inrushing blackness almost made a noise. This must have happened many times before, Victor thought. In dozens of universes. The wild idea arrives, and somehow the golden man, the Oswald or whatever, arises. To control it. Or something. Maybe wherever Holy Wood goes, Osric follows. A point of purple light appeared, and grew faster very quickly. Victor felt that he was dropping down a tunnel. The golden figure raised its head. The light twisted, and took on random features. The screen wasn’t there any more. This was something entering the world. It wasn’t an image at the other end of the hall, but something frantically trying to exist. The golden man drew back his sword. Victor shook Ginger’s shoulder. “I think this is where we leave,” he said. The sword connected. Golden light filled the cave. Victor and Ginger were already racing down the steps of the ante-chamber when the first shock hit. They stared at the tunnel’s empty mouth. “Not on your life,” said Ginger. “I’m not going to be trapped in there again.” The flooded stairs lay in front of them. Of course, they must connect to the sea, and really it was only a few yards away, but the water was inky black and, in Gaspode’s word, boding. “Can you swim?” said Victor. One of the cavern’s rotting pillars crashed down behind them. From the pit itself came a terrible wailing. “Not very well,” said Ginger. “Me neither,” he said. The commotion behind them was getting worse. “Still,” he said, taking her hand. “We could look on this as a great opportunity to improve really quickly.” They jumped. Victor surfaced fifty yards offshore, lungs bursting. Ginger erupted a few feet away. They trod water, and watched. The earth trembled. Holy Wood Town, built of unseasoned wood and short nails, was shaking apart. Houses folded down on themselves slowly, like packs of cards. Here and there small explosions indicated that stores of octo-cellulose were involved. Canvas cities and plaster mountains slid into ruin. And between it all, dodging the falling timber but letting nothing else stand in their way, the people of Holy Wood ran for their lives. Handlemen, actors, alchemists, imps, trolls, dwarfs - they ran like ants whose heap is ablaze, heads down, legs pumping, eyes fixed furiously on the horizon. A whole section of hill caved in. For a moment Victor thought he saw the huge golden figure of Osbert, as insubstantial as dust motes in a shaft of light, rise over Holy Wood and bring its sword around in one all-embracing sweep. Then it was gone. Victor helped Ginger ashore. They reached the main street, silent now except for the occasional creak and thud as another plank dropped off the half--collapsed buildings. They picked their way over fallen scenery and broken picture boxes. There was a crash behind them as the “Century of the Fruitbat” sign slipped off its moorings and thudded on the sand. They passed the remains of Borgle’s commissary, whose destruction had increased the average food quality of the entire world by a small but significant amount. They waded through unreeled clicks, flapping in the wind. They climbed over broken dreams. At the edge of what had been Holy Wood, Victor turned and looked back once. “Well, they were right at last,” he said. “You’ll never work in this town again.” There was a sob. To his surprise, Ginger was crying. He put his arm around her. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll walk you home.” Holy Wood’s own magic, now rootless and fading, crackled across the landscape, looking for pathways to earth itself. Click . . . It was early evening. The reddened light of the setting sun filled the windows of Harga’s House of Ribs, which was nearly deserted at this time of day. Detritus and Ruby sat awkwardly on human-size chairs. The only other person around was Sham Harp himself, smearing the dirt more evenly around the vacant tables with a cloth and whistling vaguely. “Ur,” Detritus ventured. “Yes?” said Ruby, expectantly. “Ur. Nuffin,” said Detritus. He felt out of place here, but Ruby had insisted. He kept feeling she wanted him to say something, but all he could think of was hitting her with a brick. Harga stopped whistling. Detritus felt his head twist around. His mouth opened. “Play it again, Sham,” said Holy Wood. There was a crashing chord. The back wall of the House of Ribs moved aside into whatever dimension these things go, and an indistinct but unmistakable orchestra occupied the space normally filled by Harp’s kitchen and the noisome alley behind it. Ruby’s dress became a waterfall of sequins. The other tables whirled away. Detritus adjusted an unexpected tuxedo, and cleared his throat. “Dere may being trouble ahead-” he began, the words flowing straight from somewhere else into his vocal chords. He took Ruby’s hand. A gold-tipped cane hit his left ear. A black silk hat materialized at high speed and bounced off his elbow. He ignored them. “But while dere moonlight, an’ music-” He faltered. The golden words were fading. The walls came back. The tables reappeared. The sequins flared and died. “Um,” said Detritus, suddenly. She was watching him intently. “Ur. Sorry,” he said. “Dunno what come over me, there.” Harga strode up to the table. “What was all that-” he began. Without shifting her gaze, Ruby shot out a treetrunk arm, spun him around, and pushed him through the wall. “Kiss me, you mad fool,” she said. Detritus’ brow wrinkled. “What?” he said. Ruby sighed. Well, so much for the human way. She picked up a chair and hit him scientifically over the head with it. A smile spread across his face, and he slumped forwards. She picked him up easily and slung him over her shoulder. If Ruby had learned anything in Holy Wood, it was that there was no use in waiting around for Mr. Right to hit you with a brick. You had to make your own bricks. Click . . . In a dwarf mine miles and miles from the loam of Ankh--Morpork, a very angry overseer banged on his shovel for silence and spoke thusly: “I want to make this absolutely clear, right? One more, and I really mean it, one more, right? Just one more Hihohiho out of you bloody lawn ornaments and it’s double-headed axe time, OK? We’re dwarfs, godsdammit. So act like them. And that includes you, Dozy!” Click . . . Make-my-day, Call-me-Mr-Thumpy hopped to the top of the dune and peered over. Then he slid back down again. “All clear,” he reported. ,”No humans. Just ruins.” “A playshe of our own,” said the cat, happily. “A playshe where all animals, regardlesh of shape or speciesh, can live together in perfect-” The duck quacked. “The duck says”, said Call-me-Mr-Thumpy-and-die, “it’s got to be worth a try. If we’re going to be sapient, we might as well get good at it. Come on.” Then he shivered. There had been something like a faint tang of static electricity. For a moment the little area in the sand dunes wavered as in a heat haze. The duck quacked again. Not-Mr-Thumpy wrinkled his nose. It was suddenly hard to concentrate. “The duck says,” he wavered, “the duck says . . . says . . . the duck . . . says . . . says . . . quack . . . ?” The cat looked at the mouse. “Miaow?” it said. The mouse shrugged. “Squeak,” it commented. The rabbit wrinkled its nose uncertainly. The duck squinted at the cat. The cat stared at the rabbit. The mouse peered at the duck. The duck rocketed upwards. The rabbit became a fast-disappearing cloud of sand. The mouse tore over the dunes. And, feeling a lot happier than it had done for weeks, the cat ran after it. Click . . . Ginger and Victor sat at a table in the corner of the Mended Drum. Eventually Ginger said: “They were good dogs.” “Yes,” said Victor, distantly. “Morry and Rock have been digging through the rubble for ages. They said there’s all kind of cellars and things down there. I’m sorry.” “Yes.” “Maybe we ought to put up a statue to them, or something.” “I’m not sure about that,” said Victor. “I mean, considering what dogs do to statues. Maybe dogs dying is all part of Holy Wood. I don’t know.” Ginger traced the outline of a knothole on the tabletop. “It’s all over now,” she said. “You do know that, don’t you? No more Holy Wood. It’s all over.” “Yes.” “The Patrician and the wizards won’t let anyone make any more clicks. The Patrician was very definite about it.” “I don’t think anyone wants to make any,” said Victor. “Who’s going to remember Holy Wood now?” “What do you mean?” “Those old priests built a kind of half-baked religion around it. They forgot all about what it really was. That didn’t matter, though. I don’t think you need chants and fires. You just need to remember Holy Wood. We need someone to remember Holy Wood really well.” “Yeah,” said Ginger, grinning. “You’d need a thousand elephants.” ! “Yeah.” Victor laughed. “Poor old Dibbler,” he said. “He never got them, either . . . “ Ginger moved a fragment of potato round and round on her plate. There was something on her mind, and it wasn’t food. “But it was great, wasn’t it?” she burst out. “We had something really amazing, didn’t we?” “Yes.” “People really thought it was good, didn’t they?” “Oh, yes,” said Victor sombrely. “I mean, didn’t we bring something really great into the world?” “No kidding.” “I didn’t mean that. Being a screen goddess isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, you know,” said Ginger. “Right.” Ginger sighed. “No more Holy Wood magic,” she said. “I think there may be some left,” said Victor. “Where?” “Just drifting around. Finding ways to use itself up, I expect.” Ginger stared at her glass. “What are you going to do now?” she said. “Don’t know. How about you?” “Go back to the farm, maybe.” “Why?” “Holy Wood was my chance, you see? There aren’t many jobs for women in Ankh-Morpork. At least,” she added, “none that I’d care to do. I’ve had three offers of marriage. From quite important men.” “Have you? Why?” She frowned. “Hey, I’m not that unattractive-” “I didn’t mean it like that,” said Victor hurriedly. “Oh, I suppose if you’re a powerful merchant it’s nice to have a famous wife. It’s like owning jewellery.” She looked down. “Mrs. Cosmopilite says can she have one of the ones I don’t want. I said she could have all three.” “I’ve always been that way about choices myself,” said Victor, cheering up. “Have you? If that’s all the choice there is, I’m not choosing. What can you be, after you’ve been yourself, as big as possible?” “Nothing,” said Victor. “No-one knows what it feels like.” “Except us.” “Yes.” “Yes.” Ginger grinned. It was the first time Victor had ever seen her face shorn of petulance, anger, worry or Holy Wood make-up. “Cheer up,” she said. “Tomorrow is another day.” Click . . . Sergeant Colon, Ankh-Morpork city watch, was awakened from his peaceful doze in the guardhouse over the main gate by a distant rumbling. A cloud of dust stretched from horizon to horizon. He watched it thoughtfully for some time. It grew bigger and, eventually, disgorged a dark-skinned young man riding an elephant. It trotted up the road to the gates and lumbered to a halt at the city wall. The dust cloud, Colon couldn’t help noticing, was still on the horizon and still getting bigger. The boy cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted: “Can you tell me the way to Holy Wood?” “There ain’t no Holy Wood any more, from what I hear,” said Colon. The boy appeared to consider this. He looked down at a piece of paper in his hand. Then he said: “Do you know where I can find Mr. C.M.O.T. Dibbler?” Sgt Colon repeated the initials under his breath. “You mean Throat?” he said. “Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler?” “Is he in?” Sgt Colon glanced at the city behind him. “I’ll just go and see,” he said. “Who shall I say wants him?” “We’ve got a delivery for him. COD.” “Cod?” hazarded Colon, glancing at the lowering cloud. “You’re herding fish?” “Not fish.” Huge grey foreheads were becoming visible in the dust. There was also the very distinctive smell you get when a thousand elephants have been foraging for days in cabbage fields: “Just hang on,” he said. “I’ll go and fetch him.” Colon pulled his head back into the guardroom and nudged the sleeping form of Corporal Nobbs, currently the other half of the keen-eyed fighting force that was ceaselessly guarding the city. “Wassat?” “You seen ‘ole Throat this morning, Nobby?” “Yeah, he was in Easy Street. Bought a Jumbo Sausage Surprise off him.” “He’s back selling sausages?” “Got to. Lost all his money. What’s up?” “Just take a look outside, will you?” said Colon, in a level voice. Nobby took a look. “Looks like - would you say it was a thousand elephants, Sarge?” “Yeah. About a thousand, I’d say.” “Thought it looked about a thousand.” “Man down there says Throat ordered ‘em,” said Sergeant Colon. “Get away? He’s going into this Jumbo Sausage thing in a big way, then?” Their eyes met. Nobby’s grin was evil. “Oh, go on,” he said. “Let me go and tell him. Please?” Click . . . Thomas Silverfish, alchemist and failed click producer, stirred the contents of a crucible and sighed wistfully. A lot of gold had been left behind in Holy Wood, for anyone who had the nerve to go and dig for it. For those who hadn’t, and Silverfish wouldn’t hesitate to put himself first among that number, there were the old tried-and-tested or, to put it another way, tried-and-repeatedly-failed methods of wealth production. So now he was back home, picking up where he had left off. “Any good?” said Peavie, who had dropped in to commiserate. “Well, it’s silvery,” said Silverfish doubtfully. “And it’s sort of metallic. And it’s heavier than lead. You have to cook up a ton of ore, too. Funny thing is, I thought I was on to something this time. I really thought that this time we were on the way to a new, clear future . . . “ “What are you going to call it?” said Peavie. “Oh, I don’t know. It’s probably not worth naming,” said Silverfish. “Ankhmorporkery? Silverfishium? Notleadium?” said Peavie. “Uselessium, more like,” said Silverfish. “I’m giving up on it and going back to something more sensible.” Peavie peered into the furnace. “It doesn’t go boom, does it?” he said. Silverfish gave him a withering look. “This stuff?” he said. “Whatever gave you that idea?” Click . . . It was pitch dark under the rubble. It had been pitch dark for a long time. Gaspode could feel the tons of stone above this little space. You didn’t need any special doggy senses for that. He dragged himself over to where a pillar had smashed down into the cellar. Laddie raised his head with difficulty, licked Gaspode’s face, and managed the faintest of barks. “Good boy Laddie . . . Good boy Gaspode . . . “ “Good boy Laddie,” Gaspode whispered. Laddie’s tail thumped once or twice on the stones. Then he whimpered for a while, with longer and longer pauses between the sounds. Then there was a faint noise. Just like bone on stone. Gaspode’s ears twitched. He looked up at the advancing figure, visible even in utter darkness because it would forever be darker than mere blackness alone could manage. He pulled himself upright, the hairs rising along his back, and growled. “Another step and I’ll have your leg off and bury it,” he said. A skeletal hand reached out and tickled him behind the ears. There was a faint barking from the darkness. “Good boy Laddie!” 
Night Watch - Terry Pratchett	----	Microsoft Word Viewer - Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 29 - Night Watch.doc Terry Pratchett Discworld #28 Night Watch The Duke of Ankh Sir Samuel Vimes knows that in his role, as Commander of the Watch, there is never a dull day on Discworld. Usually Sam stays off the street and works behind a desk, but when a particularly vicious psychopath kills one of the men under his command, Vimes is determined to find Carcer and bring him down. He corners him near the university but just as he is about to apprehend him a freak occurrence sends them back in time. Carcer kills John Keel, the man who taught Vines how to be a good copper, and it is up to Sir Samuel to find a way to teach the young Samuel Ivens how to bring honor to a job. Before he can think of returning to his present, he must also take care of Carcer, show the Watch that it needn't be corrupt, and find a way to put history back on track. The Discworld novels are always interesting and humorous and Night Watch is no exception. The hero is thrust back in time and into an organization that is corrupt, inept and inefficient. ISBN #0060013117 HarperCollins November 1, 2002 Sam Vimes sighed when he heard the scream, but he finished shaving before he did anything about it. Then he put his jacket on and strolled out into the wonderful late spring morning. Birds sang in the trees, bees buzzed in the blossom. The sky was hazy, though, and thunderheads on the horizon threatened rain later. But, for now, the air was hot and heavy. And, in the old cesspit behind the gardener's shed, a young man was treading water. Well... treading, anyway. Vimes stood back a little way and lit a cigar. It probably wouldn't be a good idea to employ a naked flame any nearer to the pit. The fall from the shed roof had broken the crust. 'Good morning!' he said cheerfully. 'Good morning, your grace,' said the industrious treadler. The voice was higher pitched than Vimes expected and he realized that, most unusually, the young man in the pit was in fact a young woman. It wasn't entirely unexpected - the Assassins' Guild was aware that women were at least equal to their brothers when it came to inventive killing - but it nevertheless changed the situation somewhat. 'I don't believe we've met?' said Vimes. 'Although I see you know who I am. You are...?' 'Wiggs, sir,' said the swimmer. 'Jocasta Wiggs. Honoured to meet you, your grace.' 'Wiggs, eh?' said Vimes. 'Famous family in the Guild. "Sir" will do, by the way. I think I once broke your father's leg?' 'Yes, sir. He asked to be remembered to you,' said Jocasta. 'You're a bit young to be sent on this contract, aren't you?' said Vimes. 'Not a contract, sir,’ said Jocasta, still paddling. 'Come now, Miss Wiggs. The price on my head is at least-' ‘The Guild council put it in abeyance, sir,' said the dogged swimmer. 'You're off the register. They're not accepting contracts on you at present.' 'Good grief, why not?' 'Couldn't say, sir,' said Miss Wiggs. Her patient struggles had brought her to the edge of the pit, and now she was finding that the brickwork was in very good repair, quite slippery and offered no handholds. Vimes knew this, because he'd spent several hours one afternoon carefully arranging that this should be so. 'So why were you sent, then?' 'Miss Band sent me as an exercise,' said Jocasta. 'I say, these bricks really are jolly tricky, aren't they?' 'Yes,' said Vimes, 'they are. Have you been rude to Miss Band lately? Upset her in any way?' 'Oh, no, your grace. But she did say I was getting overconfident, and would benefit from some advanced field work.' 'Ah. I see.' Vimes tried to recall Miss Alice Band, one of the Assassins' Guild's stricter teachers. She was, he'd heard, very hot on practical lessons. 'So... she sent you to kill me, then?' he said. 'No, sir! It's an exercise! I don't even have any crossbow bolts! I just had to find a spot where I could get you in my sights and then report back!' 'She'd believe you?' 'Of course, sir,' said Jocasta, looking rather hurt. 'Guild honour, sir.' Vimes took a deep breath. 'You see, Miss Wiggs, quite a few of your chums have tried to kill me at home in recent years. As you might expect, I take a dim view of this.' 'Easy to see why, sir,' said Jocasta, in the voice of one who knows that their only hope of escaping from their present predicament is reliant on the goodwill of another person who has no pressing reason to have any. 'And so you'd be amazed at the booby traps there are around the place,’ Vimes went on. 'Some of them are pretty cunning, even if I say it myself.' 'I certainly never expected the tiles on the shed to shift like that, sir.' ‘They're on greased rails,’ said Vimes. 'Well done, sir!' 'And quite a few of the traps drop you into something deadly,’ said Vimes. 'Lucky for me that I fell into this one, eh, sir?' 'Oh, that one's deadly too,' said Vimes. 'Eventually deadly.' He sighed. He really wanted to discourage this sort of thing but... they'd put him off the register? It wasn't that he'd liked being shot at by hooded figures in the temporary employ of his many and varied enemies, but he'd always looked at it as some kind of vote of confidence. It showed that he was annoying the rich and arrogant people who ought to be annoyed. Besides, the Assassins' Guild was easy to outwit. They had strict rules, which they followed quite honourably, and this was fine by Vimes, who, in certain practical areas, had no rules whatsoever. Off the register, eh? The only other person not on it any more, it was rumoured, was Lord Vetinari, the Patrician. The Assassins understood the political game in the city better than anyone, and if they took you off the register it was because they felt your departure would not only spoil the game but also smash the board... 'I'd be jolly grateful if you could pull me out, sir,’ said Jocasta. 'What? Oh, yes. Sorry, got clean clothes on,’ said Vimes. 'But when I get back to the house I'll tell the butler to come down here with a ladder. How about that?' 'Thank you very much, sir. Nice to have met you, sir.' Vimes strolled back to the house. Off the register? Was he allowed to appeal? Perhaps they thought-The scent rolled over him. He looked up. Overhead, a lilac tree was in bloom. He stared. Damn! Damn! Damn! Every year he forgot. Well, no. He never forgot. He just put the memories away, like old silverware that you didn't want to tarnish. And every year they came back, sharp and sparkling, and stabbed him in the heart. And today, of all days... He reached up, and his hand trembled as he grasped a bloom and gently broke the stem. He sniffed at it. He stood for a moment, staring at nothing. And then he carried the sprig of lilac carefully back up to his dressing room. Willikins had prepared the official uniform for today. Sam Vimes stared at it blankly, and then remembered. Watch Committee. Right. The battered old breastplate wouldn't do, would it... Not for His Grace the Duke of Ankh, Commander of the City Watch, Sir Samuel Vimes. Lord Vetinari had been very definite about that, blast it. Blast it all the more because, unfortunately, Sam Vimes could see the point. He hated the official uniform, but he represented a bit more than just himself these days. Sam Vimes had been able to turn up for meetings with grubby armour, and even Sir Samuel Vimes could generally contrive to find a way to stay in street uniform at all times, but a Duke... well, a Duke needed a bit of polish. A Duke couldn't have the arse hanging out of his trousers when meeting foreign diplomats. Actually, even plain old Sam Vimes never had the arse hanging out of his trousers, either, but no one would have actually started a war if he had. The plain old Sam Vimes had fought back. He got rid of most of the plumes and the stupid tights, and ended up with a dress uniform that at least looked as though its owner was male. But the helmet had gold decoration, and the bespoke armourers had made a new, gleaming breastplate with useless gold ornamentation on it. Sam Vimes felt like a class traitor every time he wore it. He hated being thought of as one of those people that wore stupid ornamental armour. It was gilt by association. He twirled the sprig of lilac in his fingers, and smelled again the heady smell. Yes... it hadn't always been like this... Someone had just spoken to him. He looked up. 'What?' he barked. 'I enquired if her ladyship is well, your grace?' said the butler, looking startled. 'Are you feeling all right, your grace?' 'What? Oh, yes. No. I'in fine. So is her ladyship, yes, thank you. I popped in before I went outside. Mrs Content is with her. She says it won't be for a while.' 'I have advised the kitchen to have plenty of hot water ready, your grace, nevertheless,' said Willikins, helping Vimes on with the gilty breastplate. 'Yes. Why do they need all that water, do you think?' 'I couldn't say, your grace,’ said Willikins. 'Probably best not to enquire.' Vimes nodded. Sybil had already made it quite clear, with gentle tact, that he was not required on this particular case. It had been, he had to admit, a bit of a relief. He handed Willikins the sprig of lilac. The butler took it without comment, inserted it into a little silver tube of water that would keep it fresh for hours, and fixed it on to one of the breastplate straps. ‘Time moves on, doesn't it, your grace,' he said, dusting him down with a small brush. Vimes took out his watch. 'It certainly does. Look, I'll drop in at the Yard on my way to the palace, sign what needs signing, and I'll be back as soon as possible, all right?' Willikins gave him a look of almost unbutlery concern. 'I'in sure her ladyship will be fine, your grace,' he said. 'Of course she is not, not-' 'young,' said Vimes. 'I would say she is richer in years than many other primigravidae,’ said Willikins smoothly. 'But she is a wellbuilt lady, if you don't mind me saying so, and her family have traditionally had very little trouble in the childbirth department-' ‘Trimi what?' 'New mothers, your grace. I'in sure her ladyship would much rather know that you were running after miscreants than wearing a hole in the library carpet.' 'I expect you're right, Willikins. Er... oh, yes, there's a young lady dogpaddling in the old cesspit, Willikins.' 'Very good, your grace. I shall send the kitchen boy down there with a ladder directly. And a message to the Assassins' Guild?' 'Good idea. She'll need clean clothes and a bath.' 'I think, perhaps, the hose in the old scullery might be more appropriate, your grace? To start with, at least?' 'Good point. See to it. And now I must be off.' In the crowded main office of the Pseudopolis Yard Watch House, Sergeant Colon absentmindedly adjusted the sprig of lilac that he'd stuck into his helmet like a plume. ‘They go very strange, Nobby,' he said, leafing listlessly through the morning's paperwork. 'It's a copper thing. Happened to me when I had kids. You get tough.' 'What do you mean, tough?' said Corporal Nobbs, possibly the best living demonstration that there was some smooth evolution between humans and animals. 'Weell,' said Colon, leaning back in his chair. 'It's like... well, when you're our age...' He looked at Nobby, and hesitated. Nobby had been giving his age as 'probably 34' for years; the Nobbs family were not good at keeping count. 'I mean, when a man reaches... a certain age,' he tried again, 'he knows the world is never going to be perfect. He's got used to it being a bit, a bit...' 'Manky?' Nobby suggested. Tucked behind his ear, in the place usually reserved for his cigarette, was another wilting lilac flower. 'Exactly,’ said Colon. 'Like, it's never going to be perfect, so you just do the best you can, right? But when there's a kid on the way, well, suddenly a man sees it different. He thinks: my kid's going to have to grow up in this mess. Time to clean it up. Time to make it a Better World. He gets a bit... keen. Full of ginger. When he hears about Stronginthearm it's going to be very hot around here for- 'morning, Mister Vimes!' 'Talking about me, eh?' said Vimes, striding past them as they jerked to attention. He had not in fact heard any of the conversation, but Sergeant Colon's face could be read like a book and Vimes had learned it by heart years ago. 'Just wondering if the happy event-' Colon began, trailing after Vimes as he took the stairs two at a time. 'It hasn't,' said Vimes shortly. He pushed open the door to his office, "morning, Carrot!' Captain Carrot sprang to his feet and saluted. ' 'morning, sir! Has Lady-' 'No, Carrot. She has not. What's been happening overnight?' Carrot's gaze went to the sprig of lilac, and back to Vimes's face. 'Nothing good, sir,’ he said. 'Another officer killed.' Vimes stopped dead. 'Who?' he demanded. 'Sergeant Stronginthearm, sir. Killed in Treacle Mine Road. Carcer again.' Vimes glanced at his watch. They had ten minutes to get to the palace. But time suddenly wasn't important any more. He sat down at his desk. 'Witnesses?' 'Three this time, sir.’ ‘That many?' 'All dwarfs. Stronginthearm wasn't even on duty, sir. He'd signed off and was picking up a rat pie and chips from a shop and walked out straight into Carcer. The devil stabbed him in the neck and ran for it. He must've thought we'd found him.’ 'We've been looking for the man for weeksl And he bumped into poor old Stronginthearm when all the dwarf was thinking of was his breakfast? Is Angua on the trail?' 'Up to a point, sir,’ said Carrot awkwardly. 'Why only up to a point?' 'He - well, we assume it was Carcer - dropped an aniseed bomb in Sator Square. Almost pure oil.' Vimes sighed. It was amazing how people adapted. The Watch had a werewolf. That news had got around, in an underground kind of way. And so the criminals had evolved to survive in a society where the law had a very sensitive nose. Scent bombs were the solution. They didn't have to be that dramatic. You just dropped a little flask of pure peppermint or aniseed in the street where a lot of people would walk over it, and suddenly Sergeant Angua was facing a hundred, a thousand crisscrossing trails, and went to bed with a terrible headache. He listened glumly as Carrot reported on men brought off leave or put on double shift, on informers pumped, pigeons stooled, grasses rustled, fingers held to the wind, ears put on the street. And he knew how little it all added up to. They still had fewer than a hundred men in the Watch, and that was including the canteen lady. There were a million people in the city, and a billion places to hide. Ankh-Morpork was built of boltholes. Besides, Carcer was a nightmare. Vimes was used to the other kinds of nut jobs, the ones that acted quite normally right up to the point where they hauled off and smashed someone with a poker for blowing their nose noisily. But Carcer was different. He was in two minds, but instead of them being in conflict, they were in competition. He had a demon on both shoulders, urging one another on. And yet... he smiled all the time, in a cheerful chirpy sort of way, and he acted like the kind of rascal who made a dodgy living selling gold watches that go green after a week. And he appeared to be convinced, utterly convinced, that he never did anything really wrong. He'd stand there amid the carnage, blood on his hands and stolen jewellery in his pocket, and with an expression of injured innocence declare, 'Me? What did I do?' And it was believable right up until you looked hard into those cheeky, smiling eyes, and saw, deep down, the demons looking back. ... but you mustn't spend too much time looking at those eyes, because that'd mean you'd taken your eyes off his hands, and by now one of them held a knife. It was hard for the average copper to deal with people like that. They expected people, when heavily outnumbered, to give in or try to deal or at least just stop moving. They didn't expect people to kill for a fivedollar watch. (A hundred dollar watch, now, that'd be different. This was Ankh-Morpork, after all.) 'Was Stronginthearm married?' he said. 'No, sir. Lived in New Cobblers with his parents.' Parents, thought Vimes. That made it worse. 'Anyone been to tell them?' he asked. 'And don't say it was Nobby. We don't want any repeat of that "bet you a dollar you're the widow Jackson" nonsense.' 'I went, sir. As soon as we got the news.' ‘Thank you. They took it badly?' ‘They took it... solemnly, sir.' Vimes groaned. He could imagine the expressions. ‘I’ll write them the official letter,' he said, pulling open his desk. 'Get someone to take it round, will you? And say I'll be over later. Perhaps this isn't the time to-' No, hold on, they were dwarfs, dwarfs weren't bashful about money. 'Forget that - say we'll have all the details of his pension and so on. Died on duty, too. Well, near enough. That's extra. It all adds up.' He rummaged in his cupboards. 'Where's his file?' 'Here, sir,' said Carrot, handing it over smoothly. 'We are due at the palace at ten, sir. Watch Committee. But I'in sure they'll understand,' he added, seeing Vimes's face. ‘I’ll go and clean out Stronginthearm's locker, sir, and I expect the lads'll have a whipround for flowers and everything...' Vimes pondered over a sheet of headed paper after the captain had gone. A file, he had to refer to a damn file. But there were so many coppers these days... A whipround for flowers. And a coffin. You look after your own. Sergeant Dickins had said that, a long time ago... He wasn't good with words, least of all ones written down, but after a few glances at the file to refresh his memory he wrote down the best he could think of. And they were all good words and, more or less, they were the right ones. But in truth Stronginthearm was just a decent dwarf who'd been paid to be a copper. He'd joined up because, these days, joining the Watch was quite a good choice of career. The pay wasn't bad, there was a worthwhile pension, there was a wonderful medical scheme if you had the nerve to submit to Igor's ministrations in the cellar and, after a year or so, an Ankh-Morpork trained copper could leave the city and get a job in the Watches of the other cities on the plain with instant promotion. That was happening all the time. Sammies, they were called, even in towns that had never heard of Sam Vimes. He was just a little proud of that. 'Sammies' meant watchmen who could think without their lips moving, who didn't take bribes - much, and then only at the level of beer and doughnuts, which even Vimes recognized as the grease that helps the wheels run smoothly - and were, on the whole, trustworthy. For a given value of 'trust', at least. The sound of running feet indicated that Sergeant Detritus was bringing some of the latest trainees back from their morning run. He could hear the jody Detritus had taught them. Somehow, you could tell it was made up by a troll: 'Now we sing dis stupid song! Sing it as we run along! Why we sing dis we don't know! We can't make der words rhyme prop'ly!' 'Sound off!' 'One! Two!' 'Sound off!' 'Many! Lots!' 'Sound off.' 'Er... what?' It still irked Vimes that the little training school in the old lemonade factory was turning out so many coppers who quit the city the moment their probation was up. But it had its advantages. There were Sammies almost as far as Uberwald now, all speeding up the local promotion ladder. It helped, knowing names, and knowing that those names had been taught to salute him. The ebb and flow of politics often meant that the local rulers weren't talking to one another, but via the semaphore towers, the Sammies talked all the time. He realized he was humming a different song under his breath. It was a tune he'd forgotten for years. It went with the lilac, scent and song together. He stopped, feeling guilty. He was finishing the letter when there was a knock at the door. 'Nearly done!' he shouted. 'It'th me, thur,' said Constable Igor, pushing his head round the door, and then he added, 'Igor, sir.' 'Yes, Igor?' said Vimes, wondering not for the first time why anyone with stitches all round his head needed to tell anyone who he was.* * The Igor employed by the Watch as forensic specialist and medical aide was quite young (in so far as you could tell with an Igor, since useful limbs and other organs were passed on among Igors as others might hand on a pocket watch) and very modern in his thinking. He had a DA haircut with extended quiff, wore crepe soles and sometimes forgot to lisp. 'I would just like to thay, sir, that I could have got young Thtronginthearm back on his feet, thur,' said Igor, a shade reproachfully. Vimes sighed. Igor's face was full of concern, tinged with disappointment. He had been prevented from plying his... craft. He was naturally disappointed. 'We've been through this, Igor. It's not like sewing a leg back on. And dwarfs are dead set against that sort of thing.' ‘There's nothing thupernatural about it, thur. I am a man of Natural Philothophy! And he was still warm when they brought him in-' ‘Those are the rules, Igor. Thanks all the same. We know your heart is in the right place-' 'They are in the right places, sir,' said Igor reproachfully. ‘That's what I meant,' Vimes said, without missing a beat, just as Igor never did. 'Oh, very well, sir,’ said Igor, giving up. He paused, and then said: 'How is her ladyship, sir?' Vimes had been expecting this. It was a terrible thing for a mind to do, but his had already presented him with the idea of Igor and Sybil in the same sentence. Not that he disliked Igor. Quite the reverse. There were watchmen walking around the streets right now who wouldn't have legs if it wasn't for Igor's genius with a needle. But- ‘Fine. She's fine,' he said abruptly. 'Only I heard that Mrs Content was a bit worr-' 'Igor, there are some areas where... Look, do you know anything about... women and babies?' 'Not in so many wordth, sir, but I find that once I've got someone on the slab and had a good, you know, rummage around, I can thort out most thingth-' Vimes's imagination actually shut down at this point. ‘Thank you, Igor,' he managed, without his voice trembling, 'but Mrs Content is a very experienced midwife.' 'Jutht as you say, sir,' said Igor, but doubt rode on the words. 'And now I've got to go,’ said Vimes. 'It's going to be a long day.' He ran down the stairs, tossed the letter to Sergeant Colon, nodded to Carrot and they set off at a fast walk for the palace. After the door had shut one of the watchmen looked up from the desk where he'd been wrestling with a report and the effort of writing down, as policemen do, what ought to have happened. 'Sarge?' 'Yes, Corporal Ping?' 'Why're some of you wearing purple flowers, sarge?' There was a subtle change in the atmosphere, a suction of sound caused by many pairs of ears listening intently. All the officers in the room had stopped writing. 'I mean, I saw you and Reg and Nobby wearing 'em this time last year, and I wondered if we were all supposed to...' Ping faltered. Sergeant Colon's normally amiable eyes had narrowed and the message they were sending was: you're on thin ice, lad, and it's starting to creak... 'I mean, my landlady's got a garden and I could easily go and cut a-' Ping went on, in an uncharacteristic attempt at suicide. 'You'd wear the lilac today, would you?' said Colon quietly. 'I just meant that if you wanted me to I could go and-' 'Were you there?' said Colon, getting to his feet so fast that his chair fell over. 'Steady, Fred,' murmured Nobby. 'I didn't mean-' Ping began. 'I mean... was I where, sarge?' Colon leaned on the desk, bringing his round red face an inch away from Ping's nose. 'If you don't know where there was, you weren't there,' he said, in the same quiet voice. He stood up straight again. 'Now me an' Nobby has got a job to do,’ he said. 'At ease, Ping. We are going out.' 'Er...' This was not being a good day for Corporal Ping. 'Yes?' said Colon. 'Er... standing orders, sarge... you're the ranking officer, you see, and I'in orderly officer for the day, I wouldn't ask otherwise but... if you're going out, sarge, you've got to tell me where you're going. Just in case anyone has to contact you, see? I got to write it down in the book. In pen and everything,’ he added. 'You know what day it is, Ping?' said Colon. 'Er... twentyfifth of May, sarge.' 'And you know what that means, Ping?' 'Er...' 'It means,' said Nobby, 'that anyone important enough to ask where we're going-' 'knows where we've gone,' said Fred Colon. The door slammed behind them. The cemetery of Small Gods was for the people who didn't know what happened next. They didn't know what they believed in or if there was life after death and, often, they didn't know what hit them. They'd gone through life being amiably uncertain, until the ultimate certainty had claimed them at the last. Among the city's bone orchards the cemetery was the equivalent of the drawer marked Misc, where people were interred in the glorious expectation of nothing very much. Most of the Watch got buried there. Policemen, after a few years, found it hard enough to believe in people, let alone anyone they couldn't see. For once, it wasn't raining. The breeze shook the sooty poplars around the wall, making them rustle. 'We ought to have brought some flowers,' said Colon, as they made their way through the long grass. 'I could nick a few off some of the fresh graves, sarge,’ Nobby volunteered. 'Not the kind of thing I want to hear you saying at this time, Nobby,’ said Colon severely. 'Sorry, sarge.' 'At a time like this a man ought to be thinking of his immortal soul viz ah viz the endless mighty river that is History. I should do that, if I was you. Nobby.' 'Right, sarge. Will do. I see someone's doing it already, sarge.' Up against one wall, lilac trees were growing. That is, at some point in the past a lilac had been planted there, and had given rise, as lilac will, to hundreds of whippy suckers, so that what had once been one stem was now a thicket. Every branch was covered in pale mauve blooms. The graves were still just visible in the tangled vegetation. In front of them stood Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, Ankh-Morpork's least successful businessman, with a sprig of lilac in his hat. He caught sight of the watchmen and nodded to them. They nodded back. All three stood looking down at the seven graves. Only one had been maintained. The marble headstone on that one was shiny and mossfree, the turf was clipped, the stone border was sparkling. Moss had grown over the wooden markers of the other six, but it had been scraped off the central one, revealing the name: JOHN KEEL And carved underneath, by someone who had taken some pains, was: How Do They Rise Up A huge wreath of lilac flowers, bound with purple ribbon, had been placed on the grave. On top of it, tied round with another piece of purple ribbon, was an egg. 'Mrs Palm and Mrs Battye and some of the girls were up here earlier,' said Dibbler. 'And of course Madam always makes sure there's the egg.' 'It's nice, the way they always remember,’ said Sergeant Colon. The three stood in silence. They were not, on the whole, men with a vocabulary designed for times like this. After a while, though, Nobby felt moved to speak. 'He gave me a spoon once,' he said, to the air in general. 'Yeah, I know,' said Colon. 'My dad pinched it off me when he come out of prison, but it was my spoon,’ said Nobby persistently. That means a lot to a kid, your own spoon.’ 'Come to that, he was the first person to make me a sergeant,’ said Colon. 'Got busted again, of course, but I knew I could do it again then. He was a good copper.’ 'He bought a pie off me, first week I was starting out,’ said Dibbler. 'Ate it all. Didn't spit out anything.' There was more silence. After a while Sergeant Colon cleared his throat, a general signal to indicate that some sort of appropriate moment was now over. There was a general relaxation of muscles. 'Y'know, we ought to come up here one day with a billhook and clear this lot up a bit,’ said the sergeant. 'You always say that, sarge, every year,’ said Nobby as they walked away. 'And we never do.’ 'If I had a dollar for every copper's funeral I've attended up here,’ said Colon, 'I'd have... nineteen dollars and fifty pence.’ 'Fifty pence?' said Nobby. 'That was when Corporal Hildebiddle woke up just in time and banged on the lid,’ said Colon. 'Before your time, o'course. Everyone said it was an amazin' recovery.’ 'Mr Sergeant?' The three men turned. Coming towards them in a highspeed sidle was the blackclad, skinny figure of Legitimate First, the cemetery's resident gravedigger. Colon sighed. 'Yes, Leggie?' he said. 'Good morrow, sweet-' the gravedigger began, but Sergeant Colon waved a finger at him. 'Stop that right now,’ he said. 'You know you've been warned before. None of that "comic gravedigger" stuff. It's not funny and it's not clever. Just say what you've got to say. No silly bits.’ Leggie looked crestfallen. 'Well, good sirs-' 'Leggie, I've known you for years,’ said Colon wearily. 'Just try, will you?' ‘The deacon wants them graves dug up, Fred,' said Leggie in a sulky voice. 'It's been more'n thirty years. Long past time they was in the crypts-' 'No,’ said Fred Colon. 'But I've got a nice shelf for 'em down there, Fred,’ Leggie pleaded. 'Right up near the front. We need the space, Fred! It's standing room only in here, and that's the truth! Even the worms have to go in single file! Right up near the front, Fred, where I can chat to 'em when I'in having my tea. How about that?' The watchmen and Dibbler shared a glance. Most people in the city had been into Leggie's crypts, if only for a dare. And it had come as a shock to most of them to realize that solemn burial was not for eternity but only for a handful of years so that, in Leggie's words, 'my little wriggly helpers' could do their work. After that, the last last resting place was the crypts, and an entry in the huge ledgers. Leggie lived down there in the crypts. As he said, he was the only one who did, and he liked the company. Leggie was generally considered weird, but conscientiously so. ‘This isn't your idea, right?' said Fred Colon. Leggie looked down at his feet. The new deacon's a bit, well, new,’ he said. 'You know... keen. Making changes.' 'You told him why they're not being dug up?' said Nobby. 'He said that's just ancient history,’ said Leggie. 'He says we all have to put the past behind us.' 'An' did you tell him he should take it up with Vetinari?' said Nobby. 'Yes, and he said he was sure his lordship was a forwardthinking man who wouldn't cling to relics of the past,’ said Leggie. 'Sounds like he is new,’ said Dibbler. 'Yeah,’ said Nobby. 'An' not likely to get old. It's okay, Leggie, you can say you've asked us.' The gravedigger looked relieved. Thanks, Nobby,’ he said. 'And I'd just like to say that when your time comes, gents, you'll be on a good shelf with a view. I've put your names down in my ledger for them as comes after me.' 'Well, that's, er, very kind of you, Leggie,' said Colon, wondering if it was. Because of pressure of space, bones in the crypt were stored by size, not by owner. There were rooms of ribs. There were avenues of femurs. And shelf after shelf of skulls up near the entrance, of course, because a crypt without a lot of skulls wasn't a proper crypt at all. If some of the religions were right and there really was bodily resurrection one day, Fred mused, there was going to be an awful lot of confusion and general milling about. 'I've got just the spot-' Leggie began, and then stopped. He pointed angrily towards the entrance. 'You know what I said about him coming up here!' They turned. Corporal Reg Shoe, a whole bouquet of lilac tied to his helmet, was walking solemnly up the gravel path. He had a longhandled shovel over his shoulder. 'It's only Reg,’ said Fred. 'He's got a right to be here, Leggie. You know that.' 'He's a dead man! I'in not havin' a dead man in my cemetery!' 'It's full of 'em, Leggie,’ said Dibbler, trying to calm the man down. 'Yeah, but the rest of 'em don't walk in and out!' 'Come on, Leggie, you act like this every year,’ said Fred Colon. 'He can't help the way he was killed. Just because you're a zombie doesn't mean you're a bad person. He's a useful lad, Reg. Plus it'd be a lot neater up here if everyone looked after their plots like he does, 'morning, Reg.' Reg Shoe, greyfaced but smiling, nodded at the four of them and strolled on. 'And bringing his own shovel, too,’ muttered Leggie. 'It's disgusting!' 'I've always thought it was rather, you know, nice of him to do what he does,’ said Fred. 'You let him alone, Leggie. If you start throwing stones at him like you did the year before last Commander Vimes'll get to hear about it and there'll be trouble. Be told. You're a good man with a, a-' 'cadaver,’ said Nobby. 'but... well, Leggie, you weren't there,’ said Colon. That's the start and finish of it. Reg was. That's all there is to it, Leggie. If you weren't there, you don't understand. Now you just run along and count the skulls again, I know you like that. Cheerio, Leggie.' Legitimate First watched them go as they walked away. Sergeant Colon felt he was being measured up. 'I've always wondered about his name,’ said Nobby, turning and waving. 'I mean... Legitimate?' 'Can't blame a mother for being proud, Nobby,’ said Colon. 'What else should I know today?' said Vimes, as he and Carrot shouldered their way through the streets. 'We've had a letter from the Black Ribboners*, sir, suggesting that it would be a great step forward for species harmony in the city if you'd see your way clear to-' * The Uberwald League of Temperance, made up of former vampires who now wore black ribbons to show that they had completely sworn off the sticky stuff, my vord yes, and much preferred a good singsong and a healthy game of tabletennis. 'They want a vampire in the Watch?' 'Yes, sir. I believe many members of the Watch Committee think that despite your stated reservations it would be a good-' 'Does it look to you as if my body is dead?' 'No, sir.’ ‘Then the answer's no. What else?' Carrot riffled through a stuffed clipboard as he half ran to keep up. The Times says Borogravia has invaded Mouldavia,’ he announced. 'Is that good? I can't remember where it is.’ 'Both formerly part of the Dark Empire, sir. Right next door to Uberwald.’ 'Whose side are we on?' 'The Times said we should be supporting little Mouldavia against the aggressor, sir.' 'I like Borogravia already,’ snapped Vimes. The Times had printed, in his opinion, a particularly unflattering cartoon of him the previous week, and to make matters worse Sybil had requested the original and had had it framed. 'And what does this all mean to us?' 'Probably more refugees, sir.' 'Ye gods, we've got no more room! Why do they keep coming here?' 'In search of a better life, sir, I think.' 'A better life?' said Vimes. 'Here?' 'I think things are worse where they come from, sir,' said Carrot. 'What kind of refugees are we talking about here?' 'Mostly human, sir.' 'Do you mean that most of them will be human, or that each individual will be mostly human?' said Vimes. After a while in Ankh-Morpork, you learned how to phrase that kind of question. 'Er, apart from humans the only species I've heard of there in any numbers are the kvetch, sir. They live in the deep woods and are covered in hair.' 'Really? Well, we'll probably find out more about them when we're asked to employ one in the Watch,' said Vimes sourly. 'What else?' 'Rather hopeful news, sir,' said Carrot, smiling. 'You know the Hooms? The street gang?' 'What about them?' ‘They've initiated their first troll member.' 'What? I thought they went around beating up trolls! I thought that was the whole point!’ 'Well, apparently young Calcite likes beating up trolls, too.' 'And that's good?' 'In a way, sir, I suppose it's a step forward.' 'United in hatred, you mean?' 'I suppose so, sir,' said Carrot. He flicked papers back and forth on his clipboard. 'Now, what else have I got? Oh, yes, the river patrol boat has sunk again-' Where did I go wrong? thought Vimes as the litany went on. I was a copper once. A real copper. I chased people. I was a hunter. It was what I did best. I knew where I was anywhere in the city by the feel of the street under my boots. And now look at me! A Duke! Commander of the Watch! A political animal! I have to know about who's fighting who a thousand miles away, just in case that's going to mean riots here! When did I last go on patrol? Last week? Last month? And it's never a proper point patrol, 'cos the sergeants make damn sure everyone knows I've left the building and every damn constable reeks of armour polish and has had a shave by the time I get there, even if I nip down the back streets (and that thought, at least, was freighted with a little pride, because it showed he didn't employ stupid sergeants). I never stand all night in the rain, or fight for my life rolling in the gutter with some thug, and I never move above a walk. That's all been taken away. And for what? Comfort, power, money and a wonderful wife... ...er... ... which was a good thing, of course, but... even so... Damn. But I'in not a copper any more, I'in a, a manager. I have to talk to the damn committee as if they're children. I go to receptions and wear damn stupid toy armour. It's all politics and paperwork. It's all got too big. What has happened to the days when it was all so simple? Faded like the lilac, he thought. They entered the palace and went up the main stairs to the Oblong Office. The Patrician of Ankh-Morpork was standing looking out of the window when they entered. The room was otherwise deserted. 'Ah, Vimes,' he said, without turning round. 'I thought you might be late. In the circumstances, I dismissed the committee. They were sorry, as indeed was I, to hear about Stronginthearm. No doubt you have been writing the official letter.' Vimes flashed a questioning expression at Carrot, who rolled his eyes and shrugged. Vetinari found things out very quickly. 'Yes, that's right,' said Vimes. 'And on such a beautiful day as this, too,’ said Vetinari. 'Although there's a storm heading our way, I see.' He turned. He had a sprig of lilac pinned to his robe. 'Lady Sybil is doing well?' he said, sitting down. 'You tell me,' said Vimes. 'Some things can't be hurried, no doubt,’ said Vetinari smoothly, shuffling the papers. 'Let me see now, let me see, there were just a few points that I should deal with... ah, the regular letter from our religious friends at the Temple of Small Gods.' He carefully removed it from the pile and set it to one side. 'I think I shall invite the new deacon to tea and explain matters to him. Now, where was I... ah, the political situation in- Yes?' The door opened. Drumknott, the chief clerk, came in. 'Message for his grace,’ he said, although he handed it to Lord Vetinari. The Patrician passed it, very politely, across the desk. Vimes unfolded it. 'It's off the clacks!' he yelled. 'We've got Carcer cornered in New Hall! I've got to get down there now!’ 'How exciting,’ said Lord Vetinari, standing up suddenly. The call to the chase. But is it necessary for you to attend personally, your grace?' Vimes gave him a grey look. 'Yes,' he said. 'Because if I don't, y'see, some poor sod who's been trained by me to do the right thing is going to try to arrest the bugger.' He turned to Carrot. 'Captain, get on it right now! Clacks, pigeons, runners, whatever. I want everyone answering this shout, okay? But no one, I repeat, no one is to try to tackle him without a lot of backup! Understood? And get Swires airborne! Oh, damn 'What's wrong, sir?' said Carrot. 'This message is from Littlebottom. She sent it straight here. What's she doing there? She's Forensic. She's not street! She'll do it by the book!' 'Shouldn't she?' said Vetinari. 'No. Carcer needs an arrow in his leg just to get his attention. You shoot first-' 'and ask questions later?' said Vetinari. Vimes paused at the door and said, There's nothing I want to ask him.' Vimes had to slow down for breath in Sator Square, and that was disgusting. A few years ago he'd've only really been getting into his stride by now! But the storm rolling over the plains was driving the heat before it, and it wouldn't do for the commander to turn up wheezing. As it was, even after pausing behind a street market stall for a few gulps of air, he doubted if he had enough wind left for a lengthy sentence. To his tremendous relief, an entirely unwounded Corporal Cheery Littlebottom was waiting by the University walls. She saluted. 'Reporting, sir,' she said. 'Mm,' murmured Vimes. 'I spotted a couple of trolls on traffic duty, sir,' said Cheery, 'so I've sent them round to the Water Bridge. Then Sergeant Detritus turned up and I told- I advised him to go into the University via main gate and get up high. Sergeant Colon and Nobby arrived and I sent them along to the Bridge of Size-' 'Why?' said Vimes. 'Because I doubt if he's really going to try going that way,' said Cheery, her face a very careful picture of innocence. Vimes had to stop himself from nodding. 'And then as more people come along I'in putting them around the perimeter. But I think he's gone up and he's staying high.' 'Why?' 'Because how's he going to fight his way out through a lot of wizards, sir? His best chance is to sneak around on the roofs and drop down somewhere quiet. There's a lot of hiding places and he can get all the way to Peach Pie Street without coming down.' Forensic, thought Vimes. Hah. And with any luck he doesn't know about Buggy. 'Well thought out,’ he said. ‘Thank you, sir. Would you mind standing a bit closer to this wall, sir?' 'What for?' Something shattered on the cobbles. Vimes was suddenly flat against the wall. 'He's got a crossbow, sir,’ said Cheery. 'We think he stole it from Stronginthearm. But he's not very good with it.’ 'Well done, corporal,’ said Vimes weakly. 'Good job,’ he glanced around the square behind him. The wind was whipping at the awnings of the market stalls and the traders, with occasional looks at the sky, were covering their wares. 'But we can't just let him hang around up there,’ he went on. 'He'll start taking pot shots and he's bound to hit someone.' 'Why would he do that, sir?' 'Carcer doesn't need a reason,’ said Vimes. 'He just needs an excuse.' A movement far above caught his eye, and he grinned. A large bird was gaining height over the city. The heron, mumbling complaints, fought for altitude in big, sweeping circles. The city whirled around Corporal Buggy Swires as he gripped even harder with his knees, and then he swung the bird downwind and it landed with a staggering run on the top of the Tower of Art, the highest building in the city. With a practised movement the gnome sliced through the string holding the portable semaphore in place, and leapt down after it into the compost of ivy leaves and old ravens' nests that carpeted the top of the tower. The heron watched him with roundeyed stupidity. Buggy had tamed it in the usual gnome way; you painted yourself green like a frog and hung out in the marshes, croaking, and then when a heron tried to eat you, you ran up its beak and nutted it. By the time it came round you'd blown the special oil - that had taken all day to make, and the stink of it had emptied the Watch House -up its nostrils and it took one look at you and thought you were its mum. A heron was useful. It could carry equipment. But Buggy preferred a sparrowhawk for traffic patrol. It was better for hovering. He slotted the portable semaphore arms on to the post he'd secretly installed weeks ago. Then he unshipped a tiny telescope from the heron's saddlebags and strapped it on to the edge of the stone, looking almost straight down. Buggy liked moments like this. It was the only time that everyone else was smaller than him. 'Now... let's see what we can see,' he muttered. There were the University buildings. There was the clock tower of Old Tom, and the unmistakable bulk of Sergeant Detritus climbing among the nearby chimneys. The yellow light of the gathering storm glinted off the helmets of watchmen who were hurrying through the streets. And there, creeping along behind the parapet... 'Gotcha,' he said quietly, and reached for the handles of the semaphore. 'D... T... R... T... S space H...D...N...G space O... L space T... M,' said Cheery. Vimes nodded. Detritus was on the roof near the tower of Old Tom. And Detritus carried a siege crossbow that three men couldn't lift, and had converted it to fire a thick sheaf of arrows all at once. Mostly they shattered in the air because of the forces involved and the target was hit by an expanding cloud of burning splinters. Vimes had banned him from using it on people, but it was a damn good way of getting into buildings. It could open the front door and the back door at the same time. ‘Tell him to fire a warning shot,' he said. If he hits Carcer with that thing we won't even find a corpse.' Though I'd quite like to find a corpse, he added to himself. 'Yes, sir.' Cheery pulled a couple of whitepainted paddles out of her belt, sighted on the top of the tower, and sent a brief signal. There was an answering signal from the distant Buggy. 'D... T... R... T... S space W...R...N...G space S... H... T.’ Cheery muttered to herself, as she waved the rest of the message. There was another answering dip from above. A moment later a red flare shot up from the top of the tower and exploded. It was an efficient way of getting everyone to pay attention. Then Vimes saw the message relayed. Around the University buildings, watchmen who'd also seen the order ducked into doorways. They knew about the bow. There were a few seconds for the troll to work out the spelling, a distant heavy thud, a sound like a swarm of hellish bees, and then a crash of tiles and masonry. Pieces of tile rained down into the square. An entire chimney, still with a wisp of smoke coming from it, smashed down a few yards from where Vimes was standing. Then there was the patter of dust and small bits of wood, and a gentle shower of pigeon feathers. Vimes shook some flakes of mortar off his helmet.'Yes, well, I think he's been warned,' he said. Half a weathercock landed next to the chimney. Cheery blew some feathers off her telescope and sighted on the top of the tower again. 'Buggy says he's stopped moving, sir,’ she reported. 'Really? You surprise me.' Vimes adjusted his belt. 'And now you can give me your crossbow. I'in going up.' 'Sir, you said no one was to try to arrest him! That's why I sent the signal to you!' 'That's right. I'in going to arrest him. Right now. While he's counting all his bits to check that he's still got 'em. Tell Detritus what I'in doing, 'cos I don't want to end up as 160lbs of cocktail delicacies. No, don't keep opening your mouth like that. By the time we've sorted out backup and armour and got everyone lined up he'll have dug in somewhere else.' The last words were delivered at a run. Vimes reached a door and darted inside. New Hall was student accommodation, but it was still only half past ten so most of them would be in bed. A few faces looked around doors as Vimes trotted along the corridor and reached the stairwell at the far end. That took him - walking now, and rather less sure of his future - to the top floor. Let's see, he'd been here before... yes, there was a door ajar, and a glimpse of mops and buckets suggested that this was a janitor's cupboard. With, at the far end, a ladder leading up to the roof. Vimes carefully cocked the crossbow. So Carcer had a Watch crossbow, too. They were good classic singleshot models, but they took a while to reload. If he fired at Vimes and missed, then that was the only shot he'd get. After that... you couldn't plan. Vimes climbed the ladder, and the song came back. ‘They rise feet up, feet up, feet up...' he hissed under his breath. He stopped just below the edge of the open trapdoor on to the leads. Carcer wouldn't fall for the old 'helmet on stick' trick, not with only one shot available. He'd just have to risk it. Vimes thrust his head up, turned it quickly, ducked out of sight for a moment and then came through the opening in a rush. He rolled clumsily when he hit the leads, and rose into a crouch. There was no one else there. He was still alive. He breathed out. A sloping, gabled roof rose up beside him. Vimes crept along, wedged himself against a chimneystack peppered with splinters of wood, and glanced up at the tower. The sky above it was livid blueblack. Storms picked up a lot of personality as they rolled across the plains, and this one looked like a record breaker. But brilliant sunlight picked out the Tower of Art and, at the top, the tiny dots of Buggy's frantic signal... O... O... O Officer In Trouble. A brother is hurtin'. Vimes spun around. There was no one creeping up on him. He eased himself around the chimneys and there, tucked between another couple of stacks and out of sight of everyone except Vimes and the celestial Buggy, was Carcer. He was taking aim. Vimes turned his head to spot the target. Fifty yards away, Carrot was picking his way across the top of the University's High Energy Magic building. The bloody fool was never any good at concealment. Oh, he ducked and crept, and against all logic that made him more noticeable. He didn't understand the art of thinking himself invisible. And there he was, furtively shlepping through the debris on the roof and looking as visible as a big duck in a small bathtub. And he'd come up without backup. The fool... Carcer was aiming carefully. The roof of the HEM was a maze of abandoned equipment and Carrot was moving along behind the raised platform that held the huge bronze spheres known throughout the city as The Wizards' Balls, which discharged surplus magic if - or more usually when experiments in the hall below fouled up. Carrot, screened by all that, was not making such a good target. Vimes raised his crossbow. Thunder... rolled. It was the roll of a giant iron cube down the stairways of the gods, a crackling, thudding crash that tore the sky in half and shook the building. Carcer glanced up, and saw Vimes. 'Wotcha doin', mifter?' Buggy didn't budge from the telescope. A crowbar wouldn't have separated him at this point. 'Shut up, ye daft corbies!' he muttered. Both men below had fired, and both men had missed because they were trying to fire and dodge at the same time. Something hard prodded Buggy's shoulder. 'Wot's happ'nin', mifter?' said the insistent voice. He turned. There were a dozen bedraggled ravens behind him, looking like old men in illfitting black cloaks. They were Tower of Art birds. Hundreds of generations of living in a highly charged magical environment had raised the intelligence level of what had been bright creatures to begin with. But, although the ravens were intelligent, these ones weren't hugely clever. They just had a more persistent kind of stupidity, as befitted birds for whom the exciting panorama of the city below was a kind of daytime TV. ‘Push off!’ shouted Buggy, and turned back to the telescope. There was Carcer, running, and Vimes running after him, and here came the hail... It turned the world white. It thudded around him and made his helmet ring. Hailstones as big as his head bounced on the stone and hit Buggy from underneath. Cursing, and shielding his face with his arms, and hammered all the time by shattering crystal balls, each one predicting a future of pain, he skidded and slid across the rolling ice. He reached an ivyhung arch between two lesser turrets, where the heron had already taken refuge, and fell inside. Frozen shrapnel still ricocheted in and stung him, but at least he could see and breathe. A beak prodded him sharply in the back. 'Wot's happ'nin' now, mifter?' Carcer landed heavily on the arch between the student hall and the main buildings, almost lost his footing on the tiles, and hesitated. An arrow from a watchman below grazed his leg. Vimes dropped down behind him, just as the hail hit. Cursing and slipping, one man followed the other across the arch. Carcer reached a mass of ivy that led up on to the roof of the Library and scrambled up it, scattering ice below. Vimes grabbed the ivy just as Carcer disappeared on to the flat roof. He looked round at a crash behind him, and saw Carrot trying to make his way along the wall from the High Energy Magic building. The hail was forming a halo of ice fragments around him. 'Stay there!' Vimes bellowed. Carrot's reply was lost in the noise. Vimes waved his arms and then grabbed at the ivy as a foot slipped. 'Bloody stay there!’ he yelled. 'That is an order! You'll go over!' He turned and started up the wet, cold vines. The wind dropped, and the last few hailstones bounced off the roof. Vimes stopped a few feet from the top of the ivy, worked his feet firmly into footholds in the ancient, knotted stems, and reached up for a decent hold. Then he thrust himself up, left hand ready, caught the boot that swung towards him and carried on rising, pushing Carcer off balance. The man sprawled backwards onthe slippery hail, tried to get to his feet, and slipped again. Vimes tugged himself on to the roof, stepped forward, and found his legs skidding away beneath him. Both he and Carcer got up, tried to move, and fell over again. From a prone position the man landed a kick on Vimes's shoulder, sending both of them sliding away in opposite directions, and then turned over and scuttled on all fours around the Library's big glass and metal dome. He grabbed the rusty frame, hauled himself upright, and pulled out a knife. 'Come and get me, then,’ he said. There was another roll of thunder. 'I don't have to,' said Vimes. 'I just have to wait.' At least until I get my breath back, he thought. 'Why're you picking on me? What'in I supposed to have done?' 'Couple of murders ring a bell?' said Vimes. If injured innocence was money, Carcer's face was his fortune. 'I don't know anything about-' 'I'in not up here to play games, Carcer. Knock it off.' 'You going to take me alive, your grace?' 'You know, I don't want to. But people think it's neater all round if I do.' There was a clattering of tiles away on the left, and a thud as a huge siege bow was rested on the ridge of a nearby roof. The head of Detritus rose behind it. 'Sorry about dat, Mister Vimes, hard to climb up in dat hail. Jus' stand back.' 'You're going to let it shoot me?' said Carcer. He tossed the knife away. 'An unarmed man?' "Trying to escape,' said Vimes. But this was starting to go bad. He could feel it. 'Me? I'in just standing here, haha.' And there it was. That bloody laugh, on top of that damn grin. It was never far away. 'Haha' didn't come close to doing it the injustice it deserved. It was more a sort of modulation to the voice, an irritatingly patronizing chortle that suggested that all this was somehow funny and you hadn't got the joke. Trouble was, you couldn't shoot someone for having an annoying laugh. And he was just standing there. If he ran, you could shoot him. Admittedly, it would be Detritus doing the shooting, and while with that bow it was technically possible to shoot to wound, the people you were wounding would probably be in the building next door. But Carcer was just waiting there, insulting the world by his existence. In fact he wasn't merely standing there now. In one movement he'd swung himself on to the lower slopes of the Library's dome. The glass panes - at least, the glass panes that had survived the freak hail - creaked in the iron framework. 'Stop right there!' Vimes bellowed. 'And come down!' 'Now where could I go?' said Carcer, grinning at him. 'I'in just waiting for you to arrest me, right? Hey, I can see your house from up here!' What's under the dome? thought Vimes. How high are the bookcases? There's other floors in the Library, aren't there? Like galleries? But you can definitely look up at the dome from the ground floor, right? If you were careful, could you swing on to a gallery from the edge of the dome? It'd be risky, but if a man knew he was going to swing anyway... Picking his way with care, he reached the edge of the dome. Carcer climbed up a little further. 'I warn you, Carcer-' 'Only high spirits, Mister Grace, haha! Can't blame a man for trying to enjoy his last few minutes of freedom, can you?' ‘I can see your house from up here... Vimes hauled himself on to the dome. Carcer cheered. 'Well done, your Vimes!' he said, easing himself towards the top. 'Don't mess me about, Carcer. It'll go badly for you!' 'Badder than it's going to go anyway?' Carcer glanced down through a smashed pane. 'Long way down, Mister Vimes. I reckon a man'd die instantly falling all that way, wouldn't he?' Vimes glanced down, and Carcer leapt. It didn't go the way he'd planned. Vimes had been tensed for something like this. After a complicated moment, Carcer was lying on the iron latticework, one arm under him, the other outflung and being banged heavily on the metal by Vimes. The knife it had held skidded away down the dome. 'Gods, you must think I'in stupid,' Vimes growled. 'You wouldn't throw away a knife. Carcer, if you didn't have another one!' Vimes's face was close to the man's now, close enough to look into the eyes above that chirpy grin and watch the demons waving. 'You're hurting me, and that's not allowed!' 'Oh, I wouldn't want anything to happen to you, Carcer,’ said Vimes. 'I want to see you in front of his lordship. I just want to hear you admit something for once. I just want to see that bloody cheeky grin wiped off your face. Sergeant Detritus!' 'Sah!' shouted the troll, from his distant ridge. 'Make a signal. I want people up here now. Me and Carcer are just going to stay nice and quiet here, so's he doesn't try any tricks.' 'Right, sir.' With another distant clatter of doomed tiles, the troll disappeared from view. 'You shouldn't have sent Captain Carrot away,’ muttered Carcer. 'He doesn't like watchmen bullying innocent civilians-' 'It is true that he has yet to master some of the finer details of de facto street policing,’ said Vimes, maintaining his grip. 'Anyway, I'in not hurting you, I'in protecting you. Wouldn't like you to fall all that way.’ Thunder rumbled again. The sky wasn't just stormblack now. There were pinks and purples in the clouds, as though they were bruised. Vimes could see the clouds moving like snakes in a sack, to an endless sullen rumbling. He wondered if the wizards had been messing about with the weather. Something was happening to the air. It tasted of burned metal and flints. A weathercock on top of the dome began to spin round and round. 'I didn't think you was stupid, Mister Vimes 'What?' said Vimes, looking down suddenly. Carcer was smiling cheerfully. 'I said I didn't think you was stupid, Mister Vimes. I know a clever copper like you'd think I'd got two knives.' 'Yeah, right,' said Vimes. He could feel his hair trying to stand on end. Little blue caterpillars of light were crackling over the ironwork of the dome, and even over his armour. 'Mister Vimes?' 'What?' Vimes snapped. Smoke was rising from the weathercock's bearings. 'I got three knives, Mister Vimes,’ said Carcer, bringing his arm up. The lightning struck. Windows blew out and iron gutters melted. Roofs lifted into the air and settled again. Buildings shook. But this storm had been blowing in from far across the plains, pushing the natural background magic ahead of it. It dumped it now, all in one go. They said afterwards that the bolt of lightning hit a clockmaker's shop in the Street of Cunning Artificers, stopping all the clocks at that instant. But that was nothing. In Baker Street a couple who had never met before became electrically attracted to one another and were forced to get married after two days for the sake of public decency. In the Assassins' Guild, the chief armourer became hugely, and since he was in the armoury at the time, tragically attractive to metal. Eggs fried in their baskets, apples roasted on the greengrocers' shelves. Candles lit themselves. Cartwheels exploded. And the ornate tin bath of the Archchancellor of Unseen University was lifted neatly off the floor, sizzled across his study and then flew off the balcony and on to the lawn in the octangle several storeys below, without spilling more than a cupful of suds. Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully paused with his longhandled scrubbing brush hovering halfway down his back, and stared around. Tiles smashed to the ground. Water boiled in the ornamental fountain near by. Ridcully ducked as a stuffed badger, the origin of which was never ascertained, flew across the lawn and smashed through a window. He winced as he was hit by a brief and inexplicable shower of small cogwheels, which pattered down all around him. He stared as half a dozen watchmen dashed into the octangle and headed up the steps to the Library. Then, gripping the sides of the bath, the Archchancellor stood up. Foaming water cascaded off him, as it would off some ancient leviathan erupting from the abyssal sea. 'Mister Stibbons!' he bellowed, his voice bouncing off the imposing walls, 'Where the is my hat?' He sat down again and waited. There were a few minutes of silence and then Ponder Stibbons, Head of Inadvisably Applied Magic and Praelector of Unseen University, came running out of the main door carrying Ridcully's pointy hat. The Archchancellor snatched at it and rammed it on his head. 'Very well,' he said, standing up again. 'Now, will care to tell in at the is going on? And why Old Tom ing repeatedly?' ‘ been a of magic, sir! I someone up the mechanism!' Ponder shouted, above the sound- destroying silences.* * Old Tom, the University's venerable clock, tolled not sounds but silences. They were not simply ordinary silences, but intervals of noiseabsorbing nonsound that filled the world with loud soundlessness. There was a dying metallic noise from the big clock tower. Ponder and Ridcully waited a few moments, but the city stayed full of normal noise, like the collapse of masonry and distant screams. 'Right,' said Ridcully, as if grudgingly awarding the world a mark for trying. 'What was that all about, Stibbons? And why are there policemen in the Library?' 'Big magical storm, sir. Several thousand gigathaums. I believe the Watch is chasing a criminal.' 'Well, they can't just run in here without askin',’ said Ridcully, stepping out of the bath and striding forward. 'What do we pay our taxes for, after all?' 'Er, we don't actually pay taxes, sir,’ said Ponder, running after him. 'The system is that we promise to pay taxes if the city ever asks us to, provided the city promises never to ask us, sir. We make a voluntary-' 'Well, at least we have an arrangement, Stibbons.' 'Yes, sir. May I point out that you-' 'And that means they have to ask permission. The essential decencies must be maintained,' said Ridcully firmly. 'And I am the Master of this college!' 'On the subject of, er, decencies, sir, you are not in fact wearing-' Ridcully strode through the open doors of the Library. 'What is going on here?' he demanded. The watchmen turned, and stared. A large blob of foam, which up until that point had been performing sterling service in the cause of the essential decencies, slipped slowly to the floor. 'Well?' he snapped. 'Haven't you lot seen a wizard before?' A watchman snapped to attention and saluted. 'Captain Carrot, sir. We've, er, never seen so much of a wizard, sir.' Ridcully gave him the slow blank stare used by those with acute uptakegrasping deficiency. 'What's he talkin' about, Stibbons?' he said out of the corner of his mouth. 'You're, er, insufficiently dressed, sir.' 'What? I've got my hat on, haven't I?' 'Yes, sir-' 'Hat = wizard, wizard = hat. Everything else is frippery. Anyway, I'in sure we're all men of the world,' Ridcully added, looking around. For the first time he took in other details about the watchmen. 'And dwarfs of the world... ah... trolls of the world too, I see... and... women of the world too, I note... er...' The Archchancellor lapsed into a moment's silence, and then said, 'Mr Stibbons?' 'Yes, sir?' 'Would you be so kind as to run up to my rooms and fetch my robe?' 'Of course, sir.' 'And, in the meantime, please be so good as to lend me your hat...' 'But you do actually have your hat on, sir,' said Ponder. 'Quite so, quite so,' said Ridcully, slowly and carefully through his fixed grin. 'And now, Mister Stibbons, in addition, right now, I wish you, in fact, to lend, to me, your hat, please.' 'Oh,' said Ponder. 'Er... yes...' A few minutes later a thoroughly clean and decent and clothed Archchancellor was standing in the very centre of the Library, staring up at the damaged dome, while beside him Ponder Stibbons - who for some reason had elected to continue to remain hatless, even though his hat had been handed back to him - stared glumly at some magical instruments. 'Nothing at all?' said Ridcully. 'Ook,' said the Librarian.* * Who was an orangutan, changed from his former human shape as a result of a longforgotten magical accident. It was so forgotten, in fact, that now people were forgetting he was an orangutan. This might seem quite hard to do, given that even a small orangutan is quite capable of filling all immediately available space, but to the wizards and most of the citizens he was now just the Librarian, and that was that. In fact, if someone ever reported that there was an orangutan in the Library, the wizards would probably go and ask the Librarian if he'd seen it. 'You've searched everywhere?' 'He can't search everywhere in this library, sir,' said Ponder. That would take more time than actually could possibly exist. But all the mundane shelves, certainly. Urn.' Carrot turned to Ponder. 'What was the "urn" for, please, sir?' 'You understand that this is a magical library? And that means that even in normal circumstances there is an area of high magical potential above the bookshelves?' 'I have been in here before,' said Carrot. 'Then you know that time with libraries is... somewhat more flexible?' said Ponder. 'Given the additional power of the storm, it might just be possible that-' 'Are you going to tell me he's been moved in time?' said the watchman. Ponder was impressed. He hadn't been brought up to believe that watchmen were clever. However, he took care not to show it. 'Would that it were that simple,' he said. 'However, um, the lightning appears to have added a random lateral component 'A what?' said Ridcully. 'You mean in time and space?' said Carrot. Ponder felt himself getting rattled. Nonwizards shouldn't be that quick. 'Not... exactly,' he said, and gave up. 'I'in really going to have to work on this, Archchancellor. Some of the readings I'in getting can't possibly be real.' Vimes knew that he had woken up. There had been darkness and rain and a terrible pain in his face. Then there had been another flowering of pain on the back of his neck, and a feeling of being pulled this way and that. And now there was light. He could see it through his eyelids. His left eyelid, anyway. Nothing but pain was happening on the other side of his face. He kept the eye shut, and strained his hearing instead. Someone was moving about. There was a clink of metal. A woman's voice said, 'He's awake.' 'Are you sure?' said a man's voice. 'How can you tell?' 'Because I'in good at telling if a man is asleep,' said the woman. Vimes opened his eye. He was lying on a bench or table of some sort. A young woman was leaning against the wall next to him, and her dress and bearing and the way she leaned filed her immediately in Vimes's policeman brain as: seamstress, but one of the bright ones. The man had a long black robe and silly floppy hat that got filed under: help, I'in in the hands of a doctor.’ He sat bolt upright. 'You lay one hand on me and I'll thump you!' he yelled, trying to swing his legs off the table. Half his head burst into flame. 'I should take it easy, if I was you,’ said the doctor, gently pushing him back. That was a very nasty cut. And don't touch the eyepatch!' 'Cut?' said Vimes, his hand brushing the stiff cloth of an eyepatch. Memories interlocked. 'Carcer! Did anyone get him?' 'Whoever attacked you got away,' said the doctor. 'After that fall?' said Vimes. 'He must've been limping, at least! Look, I've got to get-' And then he noticed all the other things. He'd been picking them up all the time, but only now did his subconscious present the list. He wasn't wearing his own clothes... 'What happened to my uniform?' he said, and he noticed the I told you so expression the woman gave the doctor. 'Whoever attacked you stripped you down to your drawers and left you lying in the street,' she said. 'I found you some spare clothes at my place. It's amazing what people leave behind.' 'Who took my armour?' 'I never know names,' said the woman. 'I saw a bunch of men running off carrying stuff, though.' 'Ordinary thieves? Didn't they leave a receipt?' 'No!' she said, laughing. 'Why should they?' 'And are we allowed to ask questions?' said the doctor, tidying his tools. None of this was right... 'Well, I mean... thank you, yes,' said Vimes. 'What's your name?' Vimes's hand stopped halfway to his face again. 'You mean you don't know me?' he said. 'Should we?' said the doctor. None of this was right... 'This is Ankh-Morpork, isn't it?' said Vimes. 'Er, yes,’ said the doctor, and turned to the woman. 'There was a blow to the head,’ he said, 'but I wouldn't have thought it was that bad 'Look, I'in wasting time,’ said the woman. 'Who are you, mister?' Everyone in the city knew Vimes, surely? The Guild of Seamstresses certainly did. And the doctor didn't look stupid. Perhaps this was not the right time to be totally truthful. He might just be somewhere where being a copper wasn't a good thing to be. It might be dangerous to be Vimes and, right now, he wasn't well enough to deal with it. 'Keel,’ he said. The name just dropped into his mind; it had been bubbling under the surface of his thoughts all day, ever since the lilac. 'Yeah, right,’ said the woman, smiling. 'Want to make up a first name?' 'John,’ said Vimes. 'Appropriate. Well... John, it's like this. Men lying flat out and naked around here aren't that uncommon. And, it's a funny thing, but they don't usually want anyone to know their real name, or where they live. You won't be the first one Doctor Lawn here has patched up. My name's Rosie. And now there's a little fee, you understand? For both of us.' 'All right, all right, I know how this goes,’ said Vimes, holding up his hands. 'This is the Shades, right?' They both nodded. 'Okay, then. Thank you. I haven't got any money, obviously, but once I've got home-' 'I'll escort you, shall I?' said the woman, handing him a badly styled coat and a pair of antique boots. 'I wouldn't like you to be attacked by anything. A sudden loss of memory, for example.' Vimes snapped, but very gently. His face hurt and there were plenty of other bruises everywhere, and he was dressed in a suit that smelled like a privy. He'd go up the Watch House, get cleaned and changed and make a quick report, and head on home. And this young lady could spend a night in the cells and then be handed over to the Seamstresses' Guild. They came down heavily on extortion like this. It was bad for trade. 'All right,’ he said. And pulled the boots on. The soles were made of thin, damp cardboard, and they were too tight. Dr Lawn waved his hands in a general gesture of dismissal. 'He's all yours, Rosie. You leave that patch on for a few days, Mr Keel, and with any luck you'll have a working eye. Someone took a slash at you with a sharp knife. I've done the best I can and the stitching is good, but you're going to have a nasty scar.' Vimes raised his hand to his cheek yet again. 'And don't pick at it!' Lawn snapped. 'Come on... John,' said Rosie. 'Let's get you home where you belong.' They stepped out. Water was dripping from the eaves, but the rain had eased. 'I live up past Pseudopolis Yard,' said Vimes. 'Lead on,' said Rosie. They hadn't reached the end of the street before Vimes was aware that a couple of dark figures had fallen in behind them. He was about to turn, but Rosie clamped a hand on his arm. 'Don't bother them, and they won't bother you,' she said. They're just coming with us for protection.' 'Whose? Yours or mine?' Rosie laughed. 'Both,' she said. 'Yes, you just keep on walking, kind sir, and we'll be as quiet as little mice,' said a shrill voice behind him. A slightly deeper one said, That's right, dearie. Just be a good boy and Aunty Dotsie won't have to open her handbag.' ‘That's Dotsie and Sadie!' said Vimes. The Agony Aunts! Well, they bloody well know who I am!' He turned. The dark figures, both wearing oldfashioned black straw hoods, stepped back. In the gloom there were a number of metallic noises, and Vimes forced himself to relax a little. Even though they were, more or less, on the same side as the Watch, you never quite knew where you were with the Agony Aunts. Of course, that's what made them so useful. Any customer disturbing the peace in one of the local houses of good repute feared the threat of the Aunts far more than he did the Watch. The Watch had rules. And the Watch didn't have Dotsie's handbag. And Sadie could do terrible things with a parrotheaded umbrella. 'Come on,' he said. 'Dotsie? Sadie? Let's not mess about, eh?' Something prodded him in the chest. He looked down. The thing had a carved parrot head on it. 'You must keep walking, kind sir,' said a voice. 'While you've still got toes, dearie,' said another voice. 'Probably a good idea,' said Rosie, tugging Vimes's arm. 'But I can tell you've impressed them.' 'How?' 'You're not bent double and making bubbling noises. Come along, mystery man.' Vimes stared ahead, looking out for the blue light of Pseudopolis Yard. Somehow, it'd all make sense there. But, when he got there, there was no blue light over the archway. There were just a few lights upstairs. Vimes hammered on the door until it opened a crack. 'What the hell's going on here?' he demanded, to the nose and one eye that was the visible totality of the occupant. 'And get out of the way!' He pushed the door back and strode in. It wasn't the Watch House, not inside. There were the familiar stairs, right enough, but there was a wall right across the charge room, and carpets on the floor, and tapestries on the wall... and a housemaid holding a tray, and staring, and dropping the tray, and screaming. 'Where are all my officers?' Vimes yelled. 'You leave this minute, d'you hear? You can't just come in like that! You get out of here!' Vimes turned, and confronted the old man who'd opened the door. He looked like a butler, and had picked up a cudgel. Perhaps because of nerves, or maybe just because of general elderly tremors, the tip of the cudgel waved and weaved under his nose. Vimes snatched it and threw it on the floor. 'What is going on?' he demanded. The old man looked as bewildered as he was. Vimes felt an odd, hollow terror welling up inside him. He darted back through the open door and into the wet night. Rosie and the Aunts had melted away in the darkness, as night people do when trouble looms, but Vimes ran on and into Kings Way, pushing aside other pedestrians and dodging the occasional carriage. He was getting a second wind when he reached Scoone Avenue and turned into the driveway of his house. He wasn't sure what he'd find, but the place looked normal and there were torches burning on either side of the door. Familiar gravel crunched under his feet. He went to hammer on the door, but steeled himself not to, and rang the bell instead. After a moment the door was opened by a butler. ‘Thank goodness!' said Vimes. 'It's me, man. Been in a fight. Nothing to worry about. How is-' 'What do you want?' said the butler coldly. He took a step back, bringing him more fully in the light of the hall lamps. Vimes had never seen him before. 'What's happened to Willikins?' said Vimes. 'The scullery boy?' Now the butler's tone was icy. 'If you are a relative, I suggest you enquire round at the tradesmen's entrance. You ought to know better than to come to the front door.' Vimes tried to think how to deal with this, but his fist didn't bother to wait. It laid the man out quite cleanly. 'No time for this,' said Vimes, stepping over him. He stood in the middle of the big hall and cupped his hands. 'Mrs Content? Sybil?' he yelled, feeling the terror twist and knot inside him. 'Yes?' said a voice from what Vimes had always called The Ghastly Pink drawing room, and Sybil stepped out. It was Sybil. The voice was right, and the eyes were right, and the way she stood was right. But the age wasn't right. This was a girl, far too young to be Sybil... She looked from him to the prone butler. 'Did you do that to Forsythe?' she said. 'I... er... I... it's... there's been a mistake...' Vimes murmured, backing away. But Sybil was already pulling a sword off the wall. It wasn't there for show. Vimes couldn't remember if his wife had ever learned to fence, but several feet of edged weapon is quite threatening enough when wielded by an angry amateur. Amateurs sometimes get lucky. He backed away hurriedly. 'It's been a mistake... wrong house... mistaken identity...' He almost tripped over the fallen butler but managed to turn this into a staggering run through the doorway and down the steps. Wet leaves brushed against him as he blundered through the shrubbery to the gateway, where he leaned against the wall and gulped for air. That bloody Library! Hadn't he heard something, once, about how you could walk through time or something there? All those magical books pressed together did something strange. Sybil had been so young. She'd looked sixteen! No wonder there wasn't a Watch House in Pseudopolis Yard! They'd only moved in there a few years ago! The water was soaking through the cheap clothes. Back home... somewhere... was his huge leather greatcoat, heavy with oil, warm as toast... Think, think, don't let the terror take control... Perhaps he could go and explain things to Sybil. After all, she was still Sybil, wasn't she? Kind to bedraggled creatures? But even the softest heart would be inclined to harden when a , rough, desperate man with a fresh scar and bad clothes barged into the house and said he was going to be your husband. A young woman could get quite the wrong idea, and he wouldn't want that, not while she was holding a sword. Besides, Lord I Ramkin was probably still alive and he'd been a bloodthirsty old ; devil, as far as Vimes could recall. He slumped against the wall and reached for a cigar and the I terror twisted him again. There was nothing in his pocket. Nothing at all. No 1 Pantweed's Slim Panatellas but, more importantly, no cigar case... It had been specially made. It had a slight curve. It had always nestled in his pocket since the day Sybil had given it to him. It was as near part of him as any thing could be. 'We are here, and this is now.' Constable Visit, a strict believer in the Omnian religion, occasionally quoted that from their holy book. Vimes understood it to mean, in less exalted copper speak, that you have to do the job that is in front of you. I am here, Vimes thought, and this is then. And less conscious parts of his brain added: you have no friends here. No home here. No purpose here. You are alone here. No... not alone, said a part that was much, much deeper even than the terror, and was always on watch. Someone was watching him. A figure detached itself from the damp shadows of the street, and walked towards him. Vimes couldn't make out the face, but that didn't matter. He knew it would be smiling that special smile of the predator who knows he has the prey under his paw, and knows that the prey knows this too, and also knows that the prey is desperately going to act as if they're having a perfectly friendly conversation, because the prey wants, so much, for this to be the case... You don't want to die here, said the deep dark part of Vimes's soul. 'Got a light, mister?' said the predator. He didn't even bother to wave an unlit cigarette. 'Why, yes, of course,' said Vimes. He went as if to pat his pocket but swung around, arm outstretched, and caught a man creeping up behind him right across the ear. Then he leapt for the lightseeker in front of him and bore him to the ground with an arm across his throat. It would have worked. He knew, afterwards, that it really would have worked. If there hadn't been two more men in the shadows, it would have worked. As it was, he managed to kick one of them on the kneecap before he felt the garrotte go round his neck. He was pulled upright, the scar screaming pain as he tried to clutch at the rope. 'You hold him right there,’ said a voice. 'Look what he did to Jez. Damn! I'in gonna kick him in-' The shadows moved. Vimes, struggling for breath, his one good eye watering, was only vaguely aware of what was happening. But there were some grunts, and some soft, strange noises, and the pressure on his neck was abruptly released. He fell forward, and then, reeling a little, struggled to his feet. A couple of men were lying on the ground. One was bent double, making little bubbling noises. And, far off and getting further, there were running footsteps. 'Lucky we found you in time, kind sir,' said a voice right behind him. 'Not lucky for some, dearie,' said one right next to it. Rosie stepped forward, out of the gloom. 'I think you ought to come back with us,' she said. 'You're going to get hurt, running around like this. Come on. Obviously I'in not taking you back to my place-' 'obviously,’ murmured Vimes. 'but Mossy'll find you somewhere to lay your head, I expect.' 'Mossy Lawn!' said Vimes, suddenly lightheaded. That's him! The pox doctor! I remember!' He tried to focus one tired eye on the young woman. Yes, the bone structure was right. That chin. That was a nononsense chin. It was a chin that took people somewhere. 'Rosie... you're Mrs Palm!' 'Mrs?' she said, coldly, while the Agony Aunts giggled their highpitched giggle. 'I think not.' 'Well, I mean-' Vimes floundered. Of course, only the senior members of the profession adopted 'Mrs' as an honorific. She wasn't senior yet. There wasn't even a guild. 'And I've never seen you before,' said Rosie. 'And neither have Dotsie and Sadie, and they have an amazing memory for faces. But you know us and you act as if you own the place, John Keel.' 'Do I?' 'You do. It's the way you stand. Officers stand like that. You eat well. Maybe a bit too well. You could lose a few pounds. And then there's the scars all over you. I saw 'em in Mossy's place. Your legs are tanned from the knees down, and that says "watchman" to me, because they go barelegged. But I know every watchman in the city and you're not one of them, so maybe you're a military man. You fight by instinct, and dirty, too. That means you're used to fighting for your life in a melee, and that's odd, because that says to me "foot soldier", not officer. The word is that the lads took some fine armour off you. That's officer. But you don't wear rings. That's foot soldier - rings catch in things, can pull your finger off if you're not careful. And you're married.' 'How can you tell that?' 'Any woman could tell that,' said Rosie Palm smoothly. 'Now, step sharp. We're out after curfew as it is. The Watch won't bother much about us, but they will about you.' Curfew, thought Vimes. That was a long time ago. Vetinari never ordered curfews. They interfered with business. 'I think perhaps I lost my memory when I was attacked,' he said. That sounded good, he thought. What he really needed now was somewhere quiet, to think. 'Really? I think perhaps I'in the Queen of Hersheba,' said Rosie. 'Just remember, kind sir. I'in not doing this because I'in interested in you, although I'd admit to a macabre fascination about how long you're going to survive. If it hadn't been a cold wet night I'd have left you in the road. I'in a working girl, and I don't need trouble. But you look like a man who can lay his hands on a few dollars, and there will be a bill.' ‘I’ll leave the money on the dressing table,' said Vimes. The slap in the face knocked him against the wall. 'Consider that a sign of my complete lack of a sense of humour, will you?' said Rosie, shaking some life back into her hand. 'I'in... sorry,’ said Vimes. 'I didn't mean to... I mean... look, thank you for everything. I mean it. But this is not being a good night.' 'Yes, I can see that.' 'It's worse than you think. Believe me.' 'We all have our troubles. Believe me,' said Rosie. Vimes was glad of the Agony Aunts behind them as they walked back to the Shades. This was the old Shades, and Lawn lived a street's width away from it. The Watch never set foot here. In truth, the new Shades wasn't a lot better, but people had at least learned what happened if anyone attacked a watchman. The Aunts were a different matter. No one attacked the Aunts. A night's sleep, thought Vimes. Maybe, in the morning, this won't have happened. 'She wasn't there, was she?' said Rosie, after a while. 'Your wife? That was Lord Ramkin's house. Are you in trouble with him?' 'Never met the man,’ said Vimes absently. 'You were lucky someone told us where you'd gone. Those men were probably in the pay of someone up there. They're a law unto themselves, over in Ankh. Some rough man walking around with no tradesman's tools... well, he's to be turned off the patch, and if they rob you blind while they're doing it who's going to care?' Yes, thought Vimes. That's the way it was. Privilege, which just means private law. Two types of people laugh at the law: those that break it and those that make it. Well, it's not like that now-but I'in not in 'now' now. Damn those wizards... The wizards. Right! In the morning I'll go and explain! Easy! They'll understand! I'll bet they can send me right back to when I left! There's a whole university full of people to deal with this! It's not my problem any more! Relief filled his body like warm pink mist. All he had to do was get through the night... But why wait? They were open all night, weren't they? Magic didn't shut. Vimes remembered latenight patrols when he could practically see by the glows coming from some of the windows. He could simply-Hold on, hold on. A policeman's thought had been stirring in his mind. The Aunts didn't run. They famously didn't run. They caught up with you slowly. Anyone who'd been, as they called it, 'a very naughty boy' would sleep extremely badly knowing that the Aunts on his tail were slowly getting nearer, pausing only for a cream tea somewhere or to visit an interesting jumble sale. But Vimes had run, run all the way up to Scoone Avenue, in the dark, through coach traffic and crowds of people swarming home before curfew. No one had paid him any attention, would surely not have seen his face if they did. And he certainly didn't know anyone here. He amended the thought: no one knew him. 'So,’ he said casually, 'who told you where I'd gone?' 'Oh, one of those old monks,' said Rosie. 'Which old monks?' 'Who knows? A little bald man with a robe and a broom. There's always monks begging and chanting somewhere. He was in Phedre Road.' 'And you asked him where I'd gone?' 'What? No. He just looked around and said, "Mr Keel ran up to Scoone Avenue," and then he went on sweeping.' 'Sweeping?' 'Oh, it's the kind of holy thing they do. So they don't tread on ants, I think. Or they sweep sins away. Or maybe they just like the place clean. Who cares what monks do?' 'And nothing about that struck you as odd?' 'Why? I thought perhaps you were naturally kind to beggars!' snapped Rosie. 'It doesn't bother me. Dotsie said she put something in his begging bowl, though.' 'What?' 'Would you ask?' The majority of Vimes thought: who does care about what monks do? They're monks. That's why they're weird. Maybe one had a moment of revelation or something, they like that kind of thing. So what? Find the wizards, explain what's happened and leave it to them. But the policeman part thought: how do little monks know I'in called Keel? I smell a rat. The majority said: it's a thirtyyearold rat, then. And the policeman said: yes, that's why it smells. 'Look, I'in going to have to go and check something,' he said. 'I'll... probably be back.' 'Well, I can't chain you up,' said Rosie. She smiled a grim little smile, and went on: That costs extra. But if you don't come back, yet have any intention of staying in this city, then the Aunts-' 'I promise you, the last thing I want to do is leave Ankh-Morpork,’ said Vimes. 'That actually sounded convincing,’ said Rosie. 'Off you go, then. We're past curfew now. But why don't I think you'll be bothered by that?' As he disappeared in the gloom Dotsie sidled up to Rosie. 'You want we should follow him, dearie?' 'Don't bother.' 'You should have let Sadie give him a little prod, dear. That slows them down.' 'I think it takes quite a lot to slow that man down. And we don't want trouble. Not at a time like this. We're too close.' 'You don't want to be out at a time like this, mister.' Vimes turned. He'd been hammering on the closed gates of the University. There were three watchmen behind him. One of them was holding a torch. Another was holding a bow. The third had clearly decided that activities for tonight would not include heavy lifting. Vimes raised his hands slowly. 'I expect he wants to be in a nice cold cell for the night,' said the one with the torch. Oh dear, thought Vimes. It's the Comedian of the Year contest. Coppers really oughtn't to try this, but they still did. 'I was just visiting the University,' he said. 'Oh, yes?' said the one without either torch or bow. He was portly, and Vimes could make out the tarnished gleam of a sergeant's stripes. 'Where d'you live?' 'Nowhere,' said Vimes. I've just arrived. And shall we move right along? I don't have a job and I don't have any money. And neither of those is a crime.' 'Out after curfew? No visible means of support?' said the sergeant. 'I got my legs,’ said Vimes. 'At the moment, hur, hur,' said one of the men. He stopped when Vimes looked at him. 'I want to make a complaint, sergeant,' said Vimes. 'What about?' 'You,’ said Vimes. 'And the Brothers Grin here. You're not doing it right. If you're going to arrest someone, you take charge right away. You've got a badge and a weapon, yes? And he's got his hands up, and a guilty conscience. Everyone's got a guilty conscience. So he's wondering what you know and what you're going to do, and what you do is fire off the questions, sharply. You don't make silly jokes 'cos that makes you too human and you keep him off balance so he can't quite think a clear sentence and above all you don't let him move like this and grab your arm and pull it up so it almost breaks like this and grab your sword and hold it to your throat like this. Tell your men to lower those swords, will you? The way they're waving them around, they could hurt someone.' The sergeant gurgled. 'Right,’ said Vimes. 'Oh, sergeant... this is a sword? Ever sharpen it? What do you use it for, bludgeoning people to death? Now, what you're going to do is, you're all going to put your weapons on the ground over there, and then I'in going to let the sarge go and I'll leg it up that alley, okay? And by the time you've got your weapons back in your hands, and believe me I'd advise you to get hold of weapons before coming after me, I'll be well away. End of problem all round. Any questions?' All three watchmen were silent. Then Vimes heard a very faint, very close noise. It was the sound of the hairs in his ears rustling as, with great care, the tip of a crossbow bolt gently entered his ear. 'Yes, sir, I have a question,’ said a voice behind him. 'Do you ever listen to your own advice?' Vimes felt the pressure of the crossbow against his skull, and wondered how far the arrow would go if the trigger was pulled. An inch would be too much. Sometimes you just had to take the lumps. He dropped the sword with great and exaggerated care, released his grip on the sergeant, and stepped away meekly while the fourth watchman maintained his aim. ‘I’ll just stand with my legs apart, shall I?' he said. 'Yeah,’ growled the sergeant, turning round. 'Yeah, that'll save us a bit of time. Although for you, mister, we've got all night. Well done, lanceconstable. We'll make a watchman of you yet.' 'Yeah, well done,' said Vimes, staring at the young man with the bow. But the sergeant was already taking his runup. It was later. Pain had happened. Vimes lay on the hard cell bed and tried to make it go away. It hadn't been as bad as it might be. That mob hadn't even been able to organize a good seeingto. They didn't understand how a man could roll with the punches and half the time they were getting in their own way. Was he enjoying this? Not the pain. He'd pass on the pain. In fact he'd passed out on the pain. But there was that small part of him he'd heard sometimes during strenuous arrests after long chases, the part that wanted to punch and punch long after punching had already achieved its effect. There was a joy to it. He called it the beast. It stayed hidden until you needed it and then, when you needed it, out it came. Pain brought it out, and fear. He'd killed werewolves with his bare hands, mad with anger and terror and tasting, deep inside, the blood of the beast... and it was sniffing the air. ' 'ullo, Mister Vimes, haha. I was wondering when you'd wake up.' He sat up sharply. The cells were barred on the corridor side, but also between cells as well, on the basis that those caged ought to know they were in a cage. And in the next cell, lying with his hands behind his head, was Carcer. 'Go on,’ said Carcer cheerfully. 'Make a grab for me through the bars, eh? Want to see how long it takes before the guards arrive?' 'At least they got you too,' said Vimes. 'Not for long, not for long. I smell of roses, me, haha. Visitor to the city, got lost, very helpful to the Watch, so sorry to have bothered them, here's a little something for their trouble... You shouldn't of stopped the Watch taking bribes, Mister Vimes. It means an easier life all round, haha.' 'Then I'll nail you some other way, Carcer.' Carcer inserted a finger in his nose, wiggled it around, withdrew it, inspected its contents critically and flicked them towards the ceiling. 'Well, that's where it all goes runny, Mister Vimes. You see, I wasn't dragged in by four coppers. I didn't go around assaulting watchmen, or trying to break into the University 'I was knocking on the door!' 'I believe you, Mister Vimes. But you know what coppers are like. You look at 'em in a funny way, and the buggers'll fit you up for every crime in the book. Terrible, what they can pin on an honest man, haha.' Vimes knew it. 'So you got some money,' he said. 'O'course, Mister Vimes. I'in a crook. And the best part is, it's even easier to be a crook when no one knows you're a crook, haha. But coppering depends on people believing you're a copper. A turnup for the books, eh? You know we're back in the good old days, haha?' 'It seems that way,’ Vimes admitted. He didn't like talking to Carcer, but right now he seemed to be the only real person around. 'Where did you land, if I may ask?' 'In the Shades.' 'Me too. Couple of blokes tried to mug me where I lay. Me! I ask you, Mister Vimes! Still, they had some money on them, so that worked out all right. Yes, I think I'in going to be very happy here. Ah, here comes one of our brave lads...' A watchman walked along the passage, swinging his keys. He was elderly, the kind of copper who gets given the jobs where swinging keys is more likely than swinging a truncheon, and his most distinguishing feature was a nose twice the width and half the length of the average nose. He stared at Vimes for a moment, and then passed on to Carcer's cell. He unlocked the door. 'You. Hop it,' he said. 'Yessir. Thank you, sir,' said Carcer, hurrying out. He pointed to Vimes. 'You wanna watch that one, sir. He's an animal. Decent people shouldn't be locked up in the same cells, sir.' 'Hop it, I said.' 'Hopping it, sir. Thank you, sir.' And Carcer, with a leery wink at Vimes, hopped it. The jailer turned to Vimes. 'And what's your name, hnah, mister?' 'John Keel,’ said Vimes. 'Yeah?' 'Yeah, and I've had my kicking. Fair's fair. I'd like to go now.' 'Oh, you'd like to go, would you? Hnah! You'd like me to hand over these keys, hnah, and give you five pence from the poor box for your, hnah, trouble, eh?' The man was standing very close to the bars, with the grin of one who mistakenly thinks he's a wit when he's only half a one. And if Vimes's reflexes were quicker, and he'd bet they were even now, it'd be the work of a second to pull the old fool forcibly into the bars and spread his nose even further across his face. No doubt about it, the psychopaths had it the easy way. 'Just freedom would do,' he said, resisting temptation. 'You ain't going anywhere, hnah, 'cept to see the captain,' said the jailer. ‘That'd be Captain Tilden?' said Vimes. 'Have I got that right? Smokes like a bonfire? Got a brass ear and a wooden leg?' 'Yeah, an' he can have you shot, hnah, how d'you like them bananas?' The cluttered desk of Vimes's memory finally unearthed the inadvertent coffee mat of recollection from under the teacup of forgetfulness. 'You're Snouty,' he said. 'Right? Some bloke broke your nose and it never got set properly! And your eyes water all the time which is why they gave you permanent jail duty-' 'Do I know you, mister?' said Snouty, peering at Vimes through suspicious, running eyes. 'Me? No. No!' said Vimes hastily. 'But I've heard people talk about you. Practically runs the Watch House, they said. Very fair man, they said. Firm but fair. Never spits in the gruel, never widdles in the tea. And never confuses his fruit, either.' The visible parts of Snouty's face contorted into the resentful scowl of someone who can't quite keep up with the script. 'Oh yeah?' he managed. 'Well, hnah, I've always kept a clean cell, that's very true.' He looked a little nonplussed at the development, but managed another scowl. 'You stay there, mister, and I'll go an' tell the captain you woke up.' Vimes went back and lay on the bunk, staring at the badly spelled and anatomically incorrect graffiti on the ceiling. For a while there was a raised voice from upstairs, with an occasional intrusive 'hnah!' from Snouty. Then he heard the jailer's footsteps on the stairs again. 'Well, well, well,' he said, with the tone of someone looking forward to seeing a third party get what was coming to them. "Turns out the captain wants to see you right away. Now, are you gonna let me shackle you, hnah, or do I call the lads down?' Gods protect you, Vimes thought. Maybe it was true that the blow that had spread Snouty's nose across his face had scrambled his brain. You had to be a special kind of idiot to try to handcuff a dangerous prisoner all by yourself. If he'd tried it with Carcer, for example, he'd have been a dead idiot five minutes ago. The jailer opened the door. Vimes stood up and presented his wrists. After a second's hesitation, Snouty handcuffed him. It always paid to be nice to a jailer; you might not get handcuffed behind your back. A man with both hands in front of him had quite a lot of freedom. 'You go up the stairs first,’ said Snouty, and reached down and picked up an efficient looking crossbow. 'And if you even try to walk fast, mister, I'll shoot you, hnah, where you die slow.' 'Very fair,' said Vimes. 'Very fair.' He walked up the steps very carefully, hearing Snouty's heavy breathing right behind him. Like many people of limited intellectual scope, Snouty took what he could do very seriously. He'd show a refreshing lack of compunction about pulling that trigger, for one thing. Vimes reached the top of the stairs and remembered to hesitate. 'Hnah, turn left, you,’ said Snouty behind him. Vimes nodded to himself. And then first on the right. It was all coming back to him, in a great wave. This was Treacle Mine Road. This was his first Watch House. This was where it all began. The captain's door was open. The tiredlooking old man behind the desk glanced up. 'Be seated,’ said Tilden coldly. Thank you, Snouty.' Vimes had mixed memories of Captain Tilden. He had been a military man before being given this job as a kind of pension, and that was a bad thing in a senior copper. It meant he looked to Authority for orders and obeyed them, whereas Vimes found it better to look to Authority for orders and then filter those orders through a fine mesh of common sense, adding a generous scoop of creative misunderstanding and maybe even incipient deafness if circumstances demanded, because Authority rarely descended to street level. Tilden set too great a store by shiny breastplates and smartness on parade. You had to have some of that stuff, that was true enough. You couldn't let people slob around. But although he'd never voice the view in public, Vimes liked to see a bit of battered armour around the place. It showed that someone had been battering it. Besides, when you were lurking in the shadows you didn't want to gleam... There was an Ankh-Morpork flag pinned to one wall, the red faded to threadbare orange. Rumour had it that Tilden saluted it every day. There was also a very large silver inkstand, with a gilt regimental crest on it, occupying quite a lot of the desk; Snouty polished it every morning and it shone. Tilden had never quite left the army behind. Still, Vimes retained a soft spot for the old man. He'd been a successful soldier, as these things went; he'd generally been on the winning side, and had killed more of the enemy by good if dull tactics than his own men by bad but exciting ones. He'd been, in his own way, kind and reasonably fair; the men of the Watch had run rings around him, without his ever noticing. Now Tilden was giving him the Long Stare With Associated Paperwork. It was supposed to mean: we know all about you, so why don't you tell us all about yourself? But he really wasn't any good at it. Vimes returned it blankly. 'What is your name again?' said Tilden, aware that Vimes was the better starer. 'Keel,' said Vimes. 'John Keel.' And... what the hell... 'Look,' he said, 'you've only got one piece of paper there that means anything, and that's the report from that sergeant, assuming he can write.' 'As a matter of fact I have two pieces of paper,' said the captain. The other one concerns the death of John Keel, what?' 'What? For a scrap with the Watch?' In the current emergency, that would be quite sufficient for the death penalty,' said Tilden, leaning forward. 'But, ha, perhaps it won't be necessary in this case, because John Keel died yesterday. You beat him up and robbed him, what? You took his money but you didn't bother with the letters, because your sort can't read, what? So you wouldn't have known that John Keel was a policeman, what?' 'What?' Vimes stared at the skinny face with its triumphantly bristling moustache and the little faded blue eyes. And then there was the sound of someone industriously sweeping the floor in the corridor outside. The captain looked past him, growled, and hurled a pen. 'Get him out of here!' he barked. 'What's the little devil doing here at this time of night, anyway?' Vimes turned his head. There was a skinny, wizenedlooking man standing in the doorway, bald as a baby. He was grinning stupidly, and holding a broom. 'He's cheap, sir, hnah, and it's best if he comes in when it's, hnah, quiet,' Snouty murmured, grabbing the little man by a stickthin elbow. 'C'mon, out you get, Mister Lousy-' So now the crossbow wasn't pointing at Vimes. And he had several pounds of metal on his wrists or, to put it another way, his arms were a hammer. He went to stand up... Vimes woke up and stared at the ceiling. There was a deep rumbling somewhere near by. Treadmill? Watermill? It was going to be a corny line, but some things you had to know. 'Where am I?' he said. And then he added: 'This time?' 'Well done,' said a voice somewhere behind him. 'Consciousness to sarcasm in five seconds!' The room was large, by the feel of the air, and the play of light on the walls suggested there were candles alight behind Vimes. The voice said: 'I'd like you to think of me as a friend.' 'A friend? Why?' said Vimes. There was a smell of cigarette smoke in the air. 'Everyone ought to have a friend,' said the voice. 'Ah, I see you've noticed you're still handcuffed-' The voice said this because in one movement Vimes had swung himself off the table and plunged forward- Vimes woke up and stared at the ceiling. There was a deep rumbling somewhere near by. Treadmill? Watermill? Then his thoughts knotted themselves most unpleasantly. 'What,’ he said, 'just happened?' 'I thought you might like to try that again, lad,' said the invisible friend. 'We have little tricks here, as you will learn. Just sit up. I know you've been through a lot, but we don't have time for messing about. This is sooner than I'd like, but I thought I'd better get you out of there before it went really runny... Mister Vimes.' Vimes froze. 'Who are you?' he said. 'It's Lu-Tze officially, Mister Vimes. But you can call me Sweeper, since we're friends.' Vimes sat up carefully and looked around. The shadowy walls were covered with... writing, it must be writing, he thought, but the Hubland type of writing which is only one step away from being little pictures. The candle was standing on a saucer. Some way behind it, just visible in the shadows, were two cylinders, each as wide as a man and twice as long, set in massive horizontal bearings, one above the other. Both were turning slowly, and both gave the impression of being a lot bigger than their mere dimensions suggested. Their rumble filled the room. There was a strange violet haze around them. Two yellowrobed figures tended the cylinders, but Vimes's eye was drawn to the skinny little bald man sitting on an upturned crate by the candle. He was smoking a foul rollup of the sort favoured by Nobby, and looked like a foreign monk. In fact, he looked exactly the kind Vimes occasionally saw with begging bowls in the street. 'You're looking fit, Mister Vimes,' said Sweeper. 'You were in the Watch House, right?' said Vimes. 'Snouty called you Lousy!' 'Yes, Mister Vimes. Lu-Tze. I've been sweeping up there every night for the past ten days. All for two pence and all the kicks I can't dodge. Just waiting for you.' 'And you told Rosie Palm where I'd gone, too? You were the monk on the bridge?' 'Right again. Couldn't be sure she'd catch up.' 'How do you know who I am?' 'Don't get excited, Mister Vimes,' said Sweeper calmly. 'I'in here to help you... your grace. And I'in your friend because right now I'in the only person in the world who will probably believe anything you tell me about, oh, thunderstorms and falls, that sort of thing. At least,' he added, 'the only sane person.' He watched Vimes as the man sat quite still for half a minute. 'Good, Mister Vimes,' said Sweeper. Thinking. I like that in a man.' ‘This is magic, right?' said Vimes, at last. 'Something like that, yes,' said Sweeper. 'F'rinstance, just now we moved you back in time. Just a few seconds. Just so you wouldn't do anything you'd regret. Can't say I blame you for wanting to have a go at someone after all you've been through, but we don't want any harm to come to you, do we...' 'Hah? I almost had my hands round your throat!' Sweeper smiled. It was a disarming little smile. 'Smoke?' he said. He fumbled in his robe and produced a ragged handrolled cigarette. ‘Thanks, but I've got my own-' Vimes began automatically. His hand stopped halfway to his pocket. 'Oh, yes,' said Sweeper. The silver cigar case. Sybil gave it to you as a wedding present, right? Shame about that.' 'I want to go home,' said Vimes. It came out as a whisper. He hadn't been sleeping in the past twelve hours, merely recovering. This time it was Sweeper who sat in silence, apart from the rumble of the cylinders. 'You're a policeman, Mister Vimes,' he said eventually. 'Well, I'd like you to believe, for a while, that I'in a sort of policeman too, all right? Me and my colleagues, we see that... things happen. Or don't happen. Don't ask questions right now. Just nod.' Vimes shrugged instead. 'Good. And let's say on our patrol we've found you, as it might be, in a metaphorical kind of way, lying in the gutter on a Saturday night singing a rude song about wheelbarrows-' 'I don't know a rude song about wheelbarrows!' Sweeper sighed. 'Hedgehogs? Custard? Onestring fiddles? It really doesn't matter. Now, we've found you a long way from where you should be and we'd like to get you home, but it's not as easy as you might think.' 'I've gone back in time, haven't I? It was that bloody Library! Everyone knows the magic in there makes strange things happen!' 'Well, yes. It was mainly that, yes. It's more true to say that you, er, got caught up in a major event.' 'Can anyone get me back? Can you get me back?' 'Weell...' said Sweeper, looking awkward. 'Wizards can if you can't,' said Vimes. 'I'll go back and see them in the morning!' 'Oh, you will, will you? I'd like to be there when you do. These ain't the wizards under decent old Ridcully, you know. You'll be lucky if they only laugh at you. Anyway, even if they wanted to be helpful they'd hit the same problem.' 'And what's that?' 'It can't be done. Not yet.' For the first time in the conversation Sweeper looked ill at ease. 'The big problem I'in facing, Mister Vimes, is that I ought to tell you a few things that I'in not, in any circumstances, allowed to tell you. But you're a man who isn't happy until he knows the facts. I respect that. So... if I tell you everything, can you spare me, oh, twenty minutes of your time? It could save your life.' 'All right,' said Vimes. 'But what-' 'You've got a bargain,' said Sweeper. 'Roll 'em, boys.' The noise of the big cylinders changed for a moment and Vimes felt a very slight shock, a suggestion that his whole body had just gone plib. 'Twenty minutes,’ said Sweeper. ‘I’ll answer every question. And then, Mister Vimes, we'll send you back from twenty minutes in the future to now and you'll tell yourself what you and me agree you ought to know. Which will be most of it, really. You're a man who can keep secrets. Okay?' 'Yes, but-' Vimes began. The tone of the spinning cylinders changed slightly. Sam Vimes saw himself standing in the middle of the room. 'That's me!' 'Yeah, right,’ said Sweeper. 'Now listen to the man.' 'Hello, Sam,’ said the other Vimes, staring not quite at him. ‘I can't see you, but they say you can see me. Remember the smell of lilac? You thought about those who died. And then you told Willikins to hose down that kid. And, eh... you've got a pain in your chest you're a bit worried about but you haven't told anyone... That's about enough, I think. You know I'in you. Now, there's some things I can't tell you. I can know 'em because I'in in a-' The speaker stopped and looked away, as if he was taking instruction from someone offstage 'a closed loop. Er, you could say I'in twenty minutes of your life you don't recall. Remember when you had ... a sensation that his whole body had just gone plib. Sweeper stood up. 'I hate to do this,’ he said, 'but we're in the temple and we can pretty much dampen out the paradoxes. On your feet, Mister Vimes. I'in going to tell you everything.' 'You just said you couldn't!' Sweeper smiled. 'Need any help with those handcuffs?' 'What, these old Capstick Mark Ones? No, just give me a nail and a couple of minutes. How come I'in in a temple?' 'I brought you here.’ 'You carried me?' 'No. You walked with me. Blindfolded, of course. And then when you were here, I gave you a little drink...’ 1 don't remember that!' 'Of course not. That was the purpose of the drink. Not very mystical, but it does the job. We don't want you coming back here, now, do we? This place is supposed to be a secret-' 'You messed up my memory? Now you see here-' Vimes half stood, but Sweeper held up his hands placatingly. 'Don't worry, don't worry, it just... made you forget a few minutes,' he said. 'How many minutes?' 'Just a few, just a few. And it had herbs in it. Good for you, herbs. And then we let you sleep. Don't worry, no one is after us. They'll never know you've gone. See this thing here?' Sweeper picked up an openwork box that lay beside his chair. It had straps like a knapsack, and Vimes could just see a cylinder inside the box. 'This is called a Procrastinator,' said the monk, 'and it's a tiny version of the ones over there, the ones that look like your granny's mangle. I'in not going to get technical, but when it's spinning it moves time around you. Did you understand what I just said?' 'No!' 'All right, it's a magic box. Happier?' 'Go on,' said Vimes grimly. 'You wore one of these when I led you here from the Watch House. Because you were wearing it, you were, shall we say, outside time. And after we've had this little talk I'll take you back to the Watch House and the old captain won't know any different. No.time is passing in the outside world while we're in the temple. The Procrastinators take care of that. Like I said, they move time around. Actually, what's really happening is that they are moving us back in time at the same time that time moves us forward. We've got others around the place. Good for keeping food fresh. What else can I tell you... oh, yeah. It helps keep track if you just think of things happening one after another. Believe me.' ‘This is like a dream;' said Vimes. There was a clink as the handcuffs sprang open. 'Yes, it is, isn't it,' said Sweeper calmly. 'And can your magic box take me home? Move me in time all the way to where I ought to be?' ‘This? Hah. No, this is strictly for smallscale stuff-' 'Look, Mr Sweeper, I've spent the last day fighting a right bastard on a roof and getting beaten up twice and sewn up once and, hah, stitched up, too. I've got the impression I should be thanking you for something but I'in damned if I know what it is. What I want is straight answers, mister. I'in the Commander of the Watch in this city!' 'Don't you mean will be,’ said Sweeper. 'No! You told me it helps if I think of things happening one after another! Well, yesterday, my yesterday, I was Commander of the Watch and I bloody well still am the Commander of the Watch. I don't care what anyone else thinks. They are not in possession of all the facts!' 'Hold on to that thought,’ said Sweeper, standing up. 'All right, commander. You want some facts. Let's take a walk in the garden, shall we?' 'Can you get me home?' 'Not yet. It's my professional opinion that you're here for a reason.' 'A reason? I fell through the bloody dome!' ‘That helped, yes. Calm down, Mister Vimes. It's all been a great strain, I can see.' Sweeper led the way out of the hall. There was a big office outside, a hubbub of quiet but purposeful activity. Here and there, among the worn and scratched desks, there were more cylinders like the ones Vimes had seen in the other chamber. Some of them were turning slowly. 'Very busy, our Ankh-Morpork section,' said Sweeper. 'We had to buy the shops on either side.' He picked up a scroll from a basket by one desk, glanced at the contents, and tossed it back with a sigh. 'And everyone's overworked,’ he added. 'We're here at all hours. And when we say "all hours", we know what we're talking about.' 'But what is it you do?' said Vimes. 'We see that things happen.' 'Don't things happen anyway?' 'Depends what things you want. We're the Monks of History, Mister Vimes. We see that it happens.' 'I've never heard of you, and I know this city like the back of my hand,’ said Vimes. 'Right. And how often do you really look at the back of your hand, Mister Vimes? We're in Clay Lane, to stop you wondering.’ 'What? Those loony monks in the funny foreign building between the pawnbrokers and the shonky shop? The ones who go dancing round the street banging drums and shouting?' 'Well done. Mister Vimes. It's funny how secretly you can move when you're a loony monk dancing through the streets banging a drum.’ 'When I was a kid most of my clothes came from the shonky shop in Clay Lane,’ said Vimes. 'Everyone we knew got their clothes from the shonky shop. Used to be run by a foreign guy with a funny name.’ 'Brother Soon Shine Sun,’ said Sweeper. 'Not a hugely enlightened operative, but a genius when it comes to pricing fourthhand schmutter.’ 'Shirts so worn you could see daylight through 'em and trousers as shiny as glass,’ said Vimes. 'And by the end of the week half the stuff was in the pawn shop.’ 'That's right,’ said Sweeper. 'You'd pawn your clothes in the pawn shop, but you'd never buy clothes from the pawn shop, 'cos there were Standards, right?' Vimes nodded. When you got right down to the bottom of the ladder the rungs were very close together and, oh my, weren't the women careful about them. In their own way, they were as haughty as any duchess. You might not have much, but you could have Standards. Clothes might be cheap and old but at least they could be scrubbed. There might be nothing behind the front door worth stealing but at least the doorstep could be clean enough to eat your dinner off, if you could've afforded dinner. And no one ever bought their clothes from the pawn shop. You'd hit bottom when you did that. No, you bought them from Mr Sun at the shonky shop, and you never asked where he got them from. 'I went off to my first proper job in a suit from the shonky shop,’ he said. 'Seems like centuries ago now.' 'No,’ said Sweeper. 'It was only last week.' Silence ballooned. The only sound was the purr of the cylinders dotted around the room. Then Sweeper added: 'It must have occurred to you.' 'Why? I've spent most of the time here being beaten up or unconscious or trying to get home! You mean I'in out there somewhere?' 'Oh, yes. In fact last night you saved the day for your squad by aiming a crossbow at a dangerous miscreant who was attacking your sergeant.’ The silence ballooned larger this time. It seemed to fill the universe. Eventually, Vimes said: 'No. That's not right. That never happened. I would have remembered that. And I can remember a lot about my first weeks in the job.’ 'Interesting, isn't it?' said Sweeper. 'But is it not written: "There's a lot goes on we don't get told"? Mister Vimes, you need a short spell in the Garden of Inner City Tranquillity.’ It was indeed a garden, like a lot of other gardens you got in areas such as Clay Lane. The grey soil was nothing more than old brick dust, elderly cat mess and generalized, semirotted dross. At the far end was a threehole privy. It was built handily by the gate to the back lane so the nightsoil men didn't have far to go, but this one had a small stone cylinder turning gently beside it and the gate was barred shut. The garden didn't get much proper light. Gardens like this never did. You got secondhand light once the richer folk in the taller buildings had finished with it. Some people kept pigeons or rabbits or pigs on their plots, or planted against all experience a few vegetables. But it'd take magic beans to reach the real sunlight in gardens like this. Nevertheless, someone had made an effort. Most of the spare ground had been covered with gravel of different sizes, and this had been carefully raked into swirls and curves. Here and there, apparently with great thought, some individual larger stones had been positioned. Vimes stared at the garden of rocks, desperate for anything to occupy his attention. He could see what the designer had in mind, he thought, but the effect had been spoiled. This was the big city, after all. Garbage got everywhere. The main disposal method was throwing it over a wall. Sooner or later someone would sell it on or, possibly, eat it. A young monk was carefully raking the gravel. He gave a respectful bow as Sweeper approached. The old man sat down on a stone bench. 'Push off and get us two cups of tea, lad, will you?' he said. 'One green with yak butter, and Mister Vimes will have it boiled orange in a builder's boot with two sugars and yesterday's milk, right?' ‘That's how I like it,' said Vimes weakly, sitting down. Sweeper took a deep, long breath. 'And I like building gardens,' he said. 'Life should be a garden.' Vimes stared blankly at what was in front of them. 'Okay,' he said. 'The gravel and rocks, yes, I can see that. Shame about all the rubbish. It always turns up, doesn't it...' 'Yes,' said Lu-Tze. 'It's part of the pattern.' 'What? The old cigarette packet?' 'Certainly. That invokes the element of air,’ said Sweeper. 'And the cat doings?' ‘To remind us that disharmony, like a cat, gets everywhere.' 'The cabbage stalks? The used sonky?'* * Named after Wallace Sonky, a man without whose experiments with thin rubber the pressure on housing in Ankh-Morpork would have been a good deal more pressing. 'At our peril we forget the role of the organic in the total harmony. What arrives seemingly by chance in the pattern is part of a higher organization that we can only dimly comprehend. This is a very important fact, and has a bearing on your case.' 'And the beer bottle?' For the first time since Vimes had met him, the monk frowned. 'Y'know, some bugger always tosses one over the wall on his way back from the pub on Friday nights. If it wasn't forbidden to do that kind of thing, he'd feel the flat of my hand and no mistake.' 'It's not part of the higher organization?' 'Possibly. Who cares? That sort of thing gets on my thungas, it really does,’ said Sweeper. He sat back with his hands on his knees. Serenity flowed once more. 'Well now, Mister Vimes... you know the universe is made up of very small items?' 'Huh?' 'We've got to work up to things gradually, Mister Vimes. You're a bright man. I can't keep telling you everything is done by magic.’ 'Am I really here too? In the city? I mean, a younger me?' 'Of course. Why not? Where was I? Oh, yes. Made up of very small items, and-' 'This is not a good time to be in the Watch. I remember! There's the curfew. And that was only the start!' 'Small items, Mister Vimes,' said Sweeper sharply. 'You need to know this.' 'Oh, all right. How small?' 'Very, very small. So tiny that they have some very strange ways indeed.' Vimes sighed. 'And I ask you: what ways are these, yeah?' ‘I’in glad you asked that question. For one thing, they can be in many places at once. Try to think, Mister Vimes.' Vimes tried to concentrate on what was probably the discarded fishandchip wrapper of Infinity. Oddly enough, with so many horrible thoughts crowding his head, it was almost a relief to put them on one side in order to consider this. The brain did things like that. He remembered once when he'd been stabbed and would've bled to death if Sergeant Angua hadn't caught up with him, and how, as he lay there, he'd found himself taking a very intense interest in the pattern of the carpet. The senses say: we've only got a few minutes, let's record everything, in every detail... ‘That can't be right,’ he said. 'If this seat is made up of lots of tiny things that can be in lots of places at once, why is it standing still?' 'Give the man a small cigar!' said Sweeper jubilantly. That's the big problem, Mister Vimes. And the answer, our Abbot tells us, is that it is in lots of places at once. Ah, here's the tea. And in order for it to be in lots of places at once, the multiverse is made up of a vast number of alternative universes. An oodleplex of oodleplexes. That's like the biggest number anyone can think of, ever. Just so's it can accommodate all the quantum. Am I going too fast for you?' 'Oh, that,' said Vimes. 'I know about that. Like, you make a decision in this universe and you made a different decision in another one. I heard the wizards talking about that at a posh reception once. They were... arguing about the Glorious Twentyfifth of May.' 'And what were they saying?' 'Oh, all the old stuff... that it would have turned out different if the rebels had properly guarded the gates and the bridges, that you can't break a siege by a frontal attack. But they were saying that, in a way, everything happens somewhere 'And you believed them?' 'It sounds like complete thungas. But sometimes you can't help wondering: what would have happened if I'd done something different-' 'Like when you killed your wife?' Sweeper was impressed at Vimes's lack of reaction. 'This is a test, right?' 'You're a quick study, Mister Vimes.' 'But in some other universe, believe me, I hauled off and punched you one.' Again, Sweeper smiled the annoying little smile that suggested he didn't believe him. 'You haven't killed your wife,' he said. 'Anywhere. There is nowhere, however huge the multiverse is, where Sam Vimes as he is now has murdered Lady Sybil. But the theory is quite clear. It says that if anything could happen without breaking any physical laws, it must happen. But it hasn't. And yet the "many universes" theory works. Without it, no one would ever be able to make a decision at all.' 'So?' 'So what people do matters!' said Sweeper. 'People invent other laws. What they do is important. The Abbot's very excited about this. He nearly swallowed his rusk. It means the multiverse isn't infinite and people's choices are far more vital than they think. They can, by what they do, change the universe.' Sweeper gave Vimes a long look. 'Mister Vimes, you're thinking: I'in back in time, and damn me, I'in probably going to end up being the sergeant that teaches me all I know, right?' 'I've been wondering. The Watch would offer any gutter trash a job in those days, because of the curfew and all the spying. But look, I remember Keel and, yes, he did have a scar and an eyepatch but I'in sure as hell that he wasn't me.' 'Right. The universe doesn't work like that. You were indeed taken under the wing of one John Keel, a watchman from Pseudopolis who came to Ankh-Morpork because the pay was better. He was a real person. He was not you. But do you remember if he ever mentioned to you that he was attacked by two men not long after he got off the coach?' 'Hell, yes,' said Vimes. 'The muggers. He got this- he got his scar that way. A good old Ankh-Morpork welcome. But he was a tough man. Took 'em both down, no problem.' 'This time, there were three,' said Sweeper. 'Well, three's trickier, of course, but-' 'You're the policeman. You guess the name of the third man, Mister Vimes.' Vimes hardly had to think. The answer erupted from the depths of darkest suspicion. 'Carcer?' 'He soon settled in, yes.' ‘The bastard was in the next cell! He even told me he'd grabbed some money.' 'And you're both stuck here, Mister Vimes. This isn't your past, any more. Not exactly. It's a past. And up there is a future. It might be your future. But it might not be. You want to go home now, leaving Carcer here and the real John Keel dead? But there'll be no home to go to, if you could do that. Because young Sam Vimes wouldn't get a swift course in basic policing from a decent man if you did. He'll learn it from people like Sergeant Knock and Corporal Quirke and Lance-Corporal Colon. And that might not be the worst of it, by a long way.' Vimes shut his eyes. He remembered how wet behind the ears he'd been. And Fred... well, Fred Colon hadn't been too bad, under the halfhearted timorousness and lack of imagination, but Quirke had been an evil little sod in his way and as for Knock, well. Knock had been Fred's teacher and the pupil wasn't a patch on the master. What had Sam Vimes learned from Keel? To stay alert, to think for himself, to keep a place in his head free from the Quirkes and Knocks of the world, and not to hesitate about fighting dirty today if that was what it took to fight again tomorrow. He'd often thought he'd have been dead long ago if it wasn't for-He looked up sharply at the monk. 'Can't tell you that, Mister Vim.es,’ said Lu-Tze. 'Nothing's certain, 'cos of quantum.' 'But, look, I know my future happened, because I was there!' 'No. What we've got here, friend, is quantum interference. Mean anything? No. Well... let me put it this way. There's one past, and one future. But there are two presents. One where you and your evil friend turned up, and one where you didn't. We can keep these two presents going side by side for a few days. It takes a lot of run time, but we can do it. And then they'll snap back together. The future that happens depends on you. We want the future where Vimes is a good copper. Not the other one.' 'But it must've happened!' snapped Vimes. 'I told you, I can remember it! I was there yesterday!' 'Nice try, but that doesn't mean anything any more,' said the monk. Trust me. Yes, it's happened to you, but even though it has, it might not, 'cos of quantum. Right now, there isn't a Commander Vimesshaped hole in the future to drop you into. It's officially Uncertain. But might not be, if you do it right. You owe it to yourself, commander. Right now, out there, Sam Vimes is learning to be a very bad copper indeed. And he learns fast.' The little monk stood up. 'I'll let you think about that,' he said. Vimes nodded, staring at the gravel garden. Sweeper crept away quietly and went back into the temple. He walked to the other side of the office. He removed a strangeshaped key from around his neck and inserted it into a small door. The door opened. Brilliant sunlight burst ahead of him. He walked on, his sandals leaving the cold flagstones and walking on to welltrodden earth in broad, hot daylight. The river had a different course this far back in the past, and presentday residents of Ankh-Morpork would have been surprised at how pleasant it looked, seven hundred thousand years ago. Hippos sunbathed on a sandbank out in midstream and, according to Qu, were getting troublesome lately - he'd had to set up a little temporal fence around the camp at nights, so that any hippo trying to wander in among the tents found themselves back in the water with a headache. Qu himself, his straw hat protecting his head from the hot sun, was supervising his assistants in a vinedoff area. Lu-Tze sighed as he walked towards it. There were going to be explosions, he knew it. It wasn't that he disliked Qu, the order's Master of Devices. The man was a sort of engineering equivalent of the Abbot. The Abbot had taken thousandyearold ideas and put them through his mind in a new way, and as a result the multiverse had opened for him like a flower. Qu, on the other hand, had taken the ancient technology of the Procrastinators, that could save and restore time, and had harnessed it to practical, everyday purposes, such as, yes, blowing people's heads off. It was something that Lu-Tze tried to avoid. There were better things to do with people's heads. As Lu-Tze approached, a line of joyful, dancing monks wove their way along a bamboo replica of a street, letting off firecrackers and banging gongs. As they reached a corner the last monk turned and lightly tossed a little drum into the outstretched arms of a straw dummy. The air shimmered, and the figure disappeared with a small thunderclap. 'Nice to see something not blowing anyone's head off,' said Lu-Tze, leaning on the vine rope. 'Oh, hello, Sweeper,' said Qu. 'Yes. I wonder what went wrong. You see, the body should have moved forward by a microsecond and left the head where it was.' He picked up a megaphone. Thank you, everyone! Places for another run! Soto, take over, please!' He turned to Lu-Tze. 'Well?' 'He's thinking about it,’ said Sweeper. 'Oh, for heavens' sake, Lu-Tze! This is completely unauthorized, you know! We're supposed to prune out rogue history loops, not expend vast amounts of time keeping them going!' ‘This one's important. We owe it to the man. It wasn't his fault we had the major temporal shattering just as he fell through the dome.' 'Two timelines running side by side,' moaned Qu. That's quite unacceptable, you know. I'in having to use techniques that are completely untried.' 'Yes, but it's only a few days.' 'What about Vimes? Is he strong enough? He's got no training for this!' 'He defaults to being a copper. A copper's a copper, wherever he is.' 'I really don't know why I listen to you, Lu-Tze, I really don't,' said Qu. He glanced at the arena and hurriedly raised his megaphone to his lips. 'Don't hold it that way up! I said don't hold-' There was a thunderclap. Lu-Tze didn't bother to look round. Qu lifted the megaphone again and said, wearily, 'All right, someone please go and fetch Brother Kai, will you? Start looking around, oh, two centuries ago. You don't even use these very useful devices I, er, devise,' he added to Lu-Tze. 'Don't need to,' said Lu-Tze. 'Got a brain. Anyway, I use the temporal toilet, don't I?' 'A privy which discharges ten million years into the past was not a good idea, Sweeper. I'in sorry I let you persuade me.' 'It's saving us fourpence a week to Harry King's bucket boys, Qu, and that's not to be sneezed at. Is it not written: "a penny saved is a penny earned"? Besides, it all lands in a volcano anyway. Perfectly hygienic.' There was another explosion. Qu turned and raised his megaphone. 'Do not bang the tambourine more than twice!' he bellowed. 'It's taptapthrowduck! Please pay attention!' He turned back to Sweeper. 'Four more days at most, Lu-Tze,' he said. 'I'in sorry, but after that I can't hide it in the paperwork. And I'll be amazed if your man can stand it. It'll affect his mind sooner or later, however tough you think he is. He's not in his right time.' 'We're learning a lot, though,' Lu-Tze insisted. Tor a perfectly logical chain of reasons Vimes ended up back in time even looking rather like Keel! Eyepatch and scar! Is that Narrative Causality or Historical Imperative or just plain weird? Are we back to the old theory of the selfcorrecting history? Is there no such thing as an accident, as the Abbot says? Is every accident just a higherorder design? I'd love to find out!' 'Four days,' Qu insisted. 'Any longer than that and this little exercise will show up and the Abbot will be very, very annoyed with us.' 'Right you are, Qu,' said Sweeper meekly. He'll be annoyed if he has to find out, certainly, he thought as he walked back to the door in the air. He'd been very specific. The Abbot of the History Monks (the Men In Saffron, No Such Monastery... they had many names) couldn't allow this sort of thing, and he'd taken pains to forbid Lu-Tze from this course of action. He had added, 'but when you do, I expect Historical Imperative will win.' Sweeper went back to the garden and found Vimes still staring at the empty bakedbean tin of Universal Oneness. 'Well, commander?' he said. 'Are you really like... policemen, for time?' said Vimes. 'Well, in a way,' said Sweeper. 'So... you make sure the good stuff happens?' 'No, not the good stuff. The right stuff,' said Sweeper. 'But frankly, these days, we have our work cut out making sure anything happens. We used to think time was like a river, you could row up and down and come back to the same place. Then we found it acted like a sea, so you could go from side to side as well. Then it turned out to be like a ball of water; you could go up and down too. Currently we think it's like... oh, lots of spaces, all rolled up. And then there are time jumps and time slips and humans mess it up too, wasting it and gaining it. And then there's quantum, of course.' The monk sighed. There's always bloody quantum. So what with one thing and another, we think we're doing well if yesterday happens before tomorrow, quite frankly. You, Mister Vimes, got caught up in a bit of... an event. We can't put it right, not properly. You can.' Vimes sat back. 'I've got no choice, have I?' he said. 'As my old sergeant used to say... you do the job that's in front of you.' He hesitated. 'And that's going to be me, isn't it? I taught me all I know...' 'No. I explained.' 'I didn't understand it. But perhaps I don't have to.' Sweeper sat down. 'Good. And now, Mister Vimes, I'll take you back inside and I'll give you some background on the sergeant and we'll work out what you need to know from all this, and we can set up a little loop so that you can tell yourself what you need to know. No addresses, though!' 'And what'll happen to me?' said Vimes. 'The me sitting here now? The... er... other me walks away and me, this me, you understand... Well, what happens?' Sweeper gave him a long, thoughtful look. 'Y'know,' he said, 'it's very hard to talk quantum using a language originally designed to tell other monkeys where the ripe fruit is. Afterwards? Well, there will be a you. As much you as you are now, so who can say it's not you? This meeting will be... a sort of loop in time. In one sense, it will never end. In a way, it'll be-' 'Like a dream,’ said Vimes wearily. Sweeper brightened. 'Very good! Yes! Not true, but a very, very good lie!' 'You know, you could've just told me everything,' said Vimes. 'No. I wouldn't be able to tell you everything and you, Mister Vimes, aren't in the mood for games like that. This way, a man you trust - that's you - will tell you all the truth you need to know. Then we'll do a little of what the younger acolytes call "slicing and glueing", and Mister Vimes will go back to Treacle Mine Lane a little wiser.' 'How are you going to get hi- me back to the Watch House? Don't even think about giving me some kind of potion.' 'No. We'll blindfold you, twirl you round, take you the long way, and walk you back. I promise.' 'Any other advice?' said Vimes gloomily. 'Just be yourself,' said Sweeper. 'See it through. There'll come a time when you'll look back and see how it all made sense.' 'Really?' 'I wouldn't lie. It'll be a perfect moment. Believe me.' 'But...' Vimes hesitated. 'Yes?' 'You must know there's another little problem if I'in going to be Sergeant Keel. I've remembered what day this is. And I know what's going to happen.' 'Yes,' said Sweeper. 'I know, too. Shall we talk about that?' Captain Tilden blinked. 'What happened there?' he said. 'Where?' said Vimes, trying to fight down nausea. Time coming back had left him with a horrible sensation that he was really two people and neither of them was feeling at all well. 'You blurred, man.' 'Perhaps I'in a bit tired of this,' said Vimes, pulling himselves together. 'Listen, captain, I am John Keel. I can prove it, okay? Ask me some questions. You've got my papers there, haven't you? They were stolen!' Tilden hesitated for a moment. He was a man whose mind was ponderous enough to have momentum; it was quite hard for his thoughts to change direction. 'Who is Commander of the Pseudopolis Watch, then?' he said. 'Sheriff Macklewheel,' said Vimes. 'Aha! Wrong! Fallen at the very first fence, what? In fact, you fool, it's Sheriff Pearlie-' 'Hnah, excuse me, sir...' said Snouty nervously. 'Yes? What?' 'Hnah, it is Macklewheet, sir. Pearlie died last week. Heard it in the, hnah, pub.' 'Fell into the river when drunk,’ said Vimes helpfully. 'That's what I heard, hnah, sir,' said Snouty. Tilden looked furious. 'You could've known that, what?' he said. 'It doesn't prove anything!' 'Ask me something else, then,' said Vimes. 'Ask me what Macklewheet said about me.' And I just hope I've got the answers right. 'Well?' 'Said I was the best officer on his force and he was sorry to see me go,' said Vimes. 'Said I was of good character. Said he wished he could pay me the twentyfive dollars a month I was going to get here-' 'I never offered you-' 'No, you offered me twenty dollars and now that I've seen the mess here I'in not taking it!' Vimes rejoiced. Tilden hadn't even learned how to control a conversation. 'If you pay Knock twenty dollars he owes you nineteen dollars change! The man couldn't talk and chew gum at the same time. And look at this, will you?' Vimes dumped his handcuffs on the desk. The gaze of Snouty and Tilden swung to them as if magnetic. Oh dear, thought Vimes, and stood up and lifted the crossbow out of Snouty's hands. It was all in the movement. If you moved with authority, you got a second or two extra. Authority was everything. He fired the bow at the floor, then handed it back. 'A kid could open those cuffs and while Snouty here keeps a very clean jail he's completely drawers at being a guard,’ said Vimes. This place needs shaking up.' He leaned forward, knuckles on the captain's desk, with his face a few inches from the trembling moustache and the milky eyes. 'Twentyfive dollars or I walk out that door,’ he said. It was probably a phrase never ever said before by any prisoner anywhere on any world. 'Twentyfive dollars,’ murmured Tilden, hypnotized. 'And the rank will be sergeantatarms,’ said Vimes. 'Not sergeant. I'in not going to be given orders by the likes of Knock.' 'Sergeantatarms,’ said Tilden distantly, but Vimes saw the hint of approval. It was a good militarysounding title, and it was still on the books. In fact it was a pretty ancient precoppering term, back in the days when a court employed a big man with a stick to drag miscreants in front of it. Vimes had always admired the simplicity of that arrangement. 'Well, er, Sheriff Macklewheet, er, certainly gave you a most glowing reference,’ said the captain, shuffling the papers. 'Very glowing. Things have been a little difficult since we lost Sergeant Wi-' 'And I'll be paid my first month in advance, please. I need clothes and a decent meal and somewhere to sleep.' Tilden cleared his throat. 'Many of the unmarried men stay in the barracks in Cheapside-' 'Not me,’ said Vimes. ‘I’ll be lodging with Doctor Lawn in Twinkle Street.' Well, Rosie Palm did suggest he had a spare room... 'The pox hnah doctor?' said Snouty. 'Yeah, I'in particular about the company I keep,’ said Vimes. 'It's also just around the corner.' He took his hands off the desk, stood back and whipped off a salute of almost parodic efficiency, the sort that Tilden had always loved. ‘I’ll report for duty at three o'clock tomo- this afternoon, sir,’ he said. Thank you, sir.' Tilden sat mesmerized. 'It was twentyfive dollars, sir, I believe,' said Vimes, still maintaining the salute. He watched the captain get up and go to the old green safe in the corner. The man was careful not to let Vimes see him turn the dial, but Vimes was pretty certain he didn't need to. The safe had still been there when he made captain, and by then everyone knew the combination was 4-4-7-8 and that no one seemed to know how to change it. The only things worth keeping in it had been the tea and sugar and anything you particularly wanted Nobby to read. Tilden came back with a small leather bag and slowly counted out the money, and was so cowed that he didn't ask Vimes to sign anything. Vimes took it, saluted again, and held out his other hand.ƒ 'Badge, sir,’ he said. 'Ah? Oh, yes, of course...' The captain, entirely unnerved, fumbled in the top drawer of the desk and pulled out a dull copper shield. If he'd been that observant, he'd have noticed how hungrily Vimes's eyes watched it. The new sergeantatarms picked up his badge with care and saluted yet again. 'Oath, sir,’ he said. 'Oh, er, that thing? Er, I believe I've got it written down somewh-' Vimes took a deep breath. This probably wasn't a good idea, but he was flying now. 'I comma square bracket recruit's name square bracket comma do solemnly swear by square bracket recruit's deity of choice square bracket to uphold the Laws and Ordinances of the city of Ankh-Morpork comma serve the public truƒt comma and defend the ƒubjects of His ƒtroke Her bracket delete whichever is inappropriate bracket Majeƒty bracket name of reigning monarch bracket without fear comma favour comma or thought of perƒonal ƒafety semicolon to purƒue evildoers and protect the innocent comma laying down my life if neceƒsary in the cauƒe of said duty comma so help me bracket aforeƒaid deity bracket full stop Gods Save the King stroke Queen bracket delete whichever is inappropriate bracket full stop.' 'My word, well done,’ said Tilden. 'You have come well prepared, sergeant.' 'And now it's the King's Shilling, sir,’ said Vimes insistently, soaring on wings of audacity. 'What?' 'I have to take the King's Shilling, sir.’ 'Er... do we have a-' 'It's, hnah, in the bottom drawer, sir,’ said Snouty helpfully. 'On the bit of string.’ 'Oh yes,’ said Tilden, beaming. 'It's a long time since we used that, what?' 'Is it?' said Vimes. After some rummaging, Tilden produced the coin. It was a genuine old shilling, probably worth half a dollar now just for its silver and thus, coppers being coppers, it had always been dropped into the new copper's hand and then tugged away before it was pinched. Vimes had taken the oath once. He wondered if taking it twice cancelled it out. But it needed to be done and you had at least to touch the Shilling. He felt the weight in his palm and took a small shameful pleasure in closing his fingers on it before the captain had time to drag it back. Then, point made, he released the grip. With a final salute he turned, and tapped Snouty on the shoulder. 'With the captain's permission, I'd like a chat with you outside, please.’ And Vimes strode out. Snouty looked at Tilden, who was still sitting as though hypnotized, the Shilling dangling from his fist. The captain managed to say, 'Good man, that. Ver' good... got backbone 'Hnah, I'll just go an' see what he wants, sir,’ said Snouty, and scuttled out. He had reached the end of the corridor when a hand came out of the shadows and pulled him close. 'You're a useful man to know, Snouty,’ hissed Vimes. 'I can tell.' 'Yessir,’ said Snouty, held half on tiptoe. 'You've got your ear to the ground, eh?' 'Yessir!' 'There's someone in every nick who knows all that's going on and can lay his hands on just about anything, Snouty, and I think you are that man.' 'Hnah, yessir!' 'Then listen here,’ said Vimes. 'Size eight boots, size seven andaquarter helmet, a good leather cape. The boots should be a good make but secondhand. Got that?' 'Secondhand?' 'Yes. Soles pretty nearly worn through.' 'Soles pretty nearly worn through, hnah, check,' said Snouty. 'Breastplate not to have any rust on it but a few dents will be okay. A good sword, Snouty, and believe me I know a good sword when I hold one. As for all the rest of the stuff, well, I know a man like you can get hold of the very best and have it delivered to Dr Lawn's place in Twinkle Street by ten this morning. And there'll be something in it for you, Snouty.' 'What'll that be, sir?' said Snouty, who was finding the grip uncomfortable. 'My undying friendship, Snouty,' said Vimes. 'Which is going to be an extremely rare coin in these parts, let me tell you.' 'Right you are, sarge,' said Snouty. 'And will you be wanting a bell, sir?' 'A bell?' 'For ringing and shouting, hnah, "all's well!" with, sarge.' Vimes considered this. A bell. Well, every copper still got a bell, it was down there in the regulations, but Vimes had banned its use on anything but ceremonial occasions. 'No bell for me, Snouty,' said Vimes. 'Do you think things are well?' Snouty swallowed. 'Could go either way, sarge,' he managed. 'Good man. See you this afternoon.' There was a glow of dawn in the sky when Vimes strode out, but the city was still a pattern of shadows. In his pocket was the reassuring heaviness of the badge. And in his mind the huge, huge freedom of the oath. Ruler after ruler had failed to notice what a devious oath it was... He walked as steadily as he could down to Twinkle Street. A couple of watchmen tried to waylay him, but he showed them the badge and more importantly he had the voice now, it had come back to him. It was night and he was walking the streets and he owned the damn streets and somehow that came out in the way he spoke. They'd hurried off. He wasn't sure they'd believed him, but at least they'd pretended to; the voice had told them he could be the kind of trouble they weren't paid enough to deal with. At one point he had to step aside as a very thin horse dragged a huge and familiar fourwheeled wagon over the cobbles. Frightened faces looked out at him from between the wide metal strips that covered most of it, and then it disappeared into the gloom. Curfew was claiming its nightly harvest. These were not good times. Everyone knew Lord Winder was insane. And then some kid who was equally mad had tried to knock him off and would have done, too, if the man hadn't moved at the wrong moment. His lordship had taken the arrow in the arm, and they said - they being the nameless people of the kind that everyone met in the pub - that the wound had poisoned him and made him worse. He suspected everyone and everything, he saw dark assassins in every corner. The rumour was that he woke up sweating every night because they even got into his dreams. And he saw plots and spies everywhere throughout his waking hours, and had men root them out, and the thing about rooting out plots and spies everywhere is that, even if there are no real plots to begin with, there are plots and spies galore very soon. At least the Night Watch didn't have to do much of the actual rooting. They just arrested the pieces. It was the special office in Cable Street that was the long hand of his lordship's paranoia. The Particulars, they were officially, but as far as Vimes could remember they'd revelled in their nickname of the 'Unmentionables'. They were the ones that listened in every shadow and watched at every window. That was how it seemed, anyway. They certainly were the ones who knocked on doors in the middle of the night. Vimes stopped, in the dark. The cheap clothes were soaked through, the boots were flooded, rain was trickling off his chin and he was a long, long way from home. Yet, in a treacherous kind of way, this was home. He'd spent most of his days working nights. Walking through the wet streets of a sleeping city was his life. The nature of the night changed, but the nature of the beast remained the same. He reached into the ragged pocket and touched the badge again. In the darkness where lamps were few and far between, Vimes knocked on a door. A light was burning in one of the lower windows, so Lawn was presumably still awake. After a while a very small panel slid back and he heard a voice say, 'Oh... it's you.' There was a pause, followed by the sound of bolts being released. The doctor opened the door. In one hand he held a very long syringe. Vimes found his gaze inexorably drawn to it. A bead of something purple dripped off the end and splashed on to the floor. 'What would you have done, injected me to death?' he said. 'This?' Lawn looked at the instrument as if unaware that he'd been holding it. 'Oh... just sorting out a little problem for someone. Patients turn up at all hours.' ‘I’ll bet they do. Er... Rosie said you had a spare room,' said Vimes. 'I can pay,' he added quickly. 'I've got a job. Five dollars a month? I won't be needing it for long.' 'Upstairs on the left,’ said Lawn, nodding. 'We can talk about it in the morning.' 'I'in not a criminal madman,' said Vimes. He wondered why he said it, and then wondered who he was trying to reassure. 'Never mind, you'll soon fit in,’ said Lawn. There was a whimper from the door leading to the surgery. 'The bed's not aired but I doubt that you'll care,' he said. 'And now, if you'll excuse me...' It wasn't aired, and Vimes didn't care. He didn't even remember getting into it. He woke up once, in panic, and heard the sound of the big black wagon rattling down the street. And then it just, quite seamlessly, became part of the nightmare. At ten o'clock in the morning Vimes found a cold cup of tea by his bed and a pile of clothes and armour on the floor outside the door. He drank the tea while he inspected the pile. He'd read Snouty right. The man survived because he was a weathercock and kept an eye on which way the wind was blowing, and right now the wind was blowing due Vimes. He'd even included fresh socks and drawers, which hadn't been in the specification. It was a thoughtful touch. They probably hadn't been paid for, of course. They had been 'obtained'. This was the old Night Watch. But, glory be, the breathy little crawler had scrounged something else, too. The three stripes for a sergeant had a little gold crown above them. Vimes instinctively disliked crowns, but this was one he was prepared to treasure. He went downstairs, doing up his belt, and bumped into Lawn coming out of his surgery, wiping his hands on a cloth. The doctor smiled absently, then focused on the uniform. The smile did not so much fade as drain. 'Shocked?' said Vimes. 'Surprised,' said the doctor. 'Rosie won't be, I expect. I don't do anything illegal, you know.' 'Then you've got nothing to fear,’ said Vimes. 'Really? That proves you're not from round here,’ said Lawn. 'Want some breakfast? There's kidneys.' This time it was Vimes's smile that drained. 'Lamb,’ the doctor added. In the tiny kitchen he prised the lid off a tall stone jar and pulled out a can. Vapour poured off it. 'Ice,’ he said. 'Get it from over the road. Keeps food fresh.' Vimes's brow wrinkled. 'Over the road? You mean the mortuary?' 'Don't worry, it's not been used,’ said Lawn, putting a pan on the stove. 'Mr Garnish drops off a lump a few times a week, in payment for being cured of a rather similar medical condition.' 'But mostly you work for the ladies of, shall we say, negotiable affection?' said Vimes. Lawn gave him a sharp look to see if he was joking, but Vimes's expression hadn't changed. 'Not just them,’ he said. 'There are others.' 'People who come in by the back door,’ said Vimes, looking around the little room. 'People who for one reason or another don't want to go to the... better known doctors?' 'Or can't afford them,’ said Lawn. 'People who turn up with no identity. And you had a point... John?' 'No, no, just asking,’ said Vimes, cursing himself for walking right into it. 'I just wondered where you trained.' 'Why?' 'The kind of people who come in by the back door are the kind of people who want results, I imagine.' 'Hah. Well, I trained in Klatch. They have some novel ideas about medicine over there. They think it's a good idea to get patients better, for one thing,’ he turned over the kidneys with a fork. 'Frankly, sergeant, I'in pretty much like you. We do what needs doing, we work in, er, unpopular areas and I suspect we both draw the line somewhere. I'in no butcher. Rosie says you aren't. But you do the job that's in front of you, or people die.' ‘I’ll remember that,’ said Vimes. 'And when all's said and done,’ said Lawn, 'there are worse things to do in the world than take the pulse of women.' After breakfast Sergeantat-Arms John Keel stepped out into the first day of the rest of his life. He stood still for a moment, shut his eyes, and swivelled both feet like a man trying to stub out two cigarettes at once. A slow, broad smile spread across his face. Snouty had found just the right kind of boots. Willikins and Sybil between them conspired to prevent him wearing old, wellworn boots these da- those days, and stole them away in the night to have the soles repaired. It was good to feel the streets with dry feet again. And after a lifetime of walking them, he did feel the streets. There were the cobblestones: catheads, trollheads, loaves, short and long setts, rounders, Morpork Sixes, and the eightyseven types of paving brick, and the fourteen types of stone slab, and the twelve types of stone never intended for street slabs which had got used anyway, and had their own patterns of wear, and the rubbles and the gravels, and the repairs, and the thirteen different types of cellar cover and twenty types of drain lid- He bounced a little, like a man testing the hardness of something. 'Elm Street,' he said. He bounced again. 'Junction with Twinkle. Yeah.' He was back. It wasn't many steps to Treacle Mine Road, and as he turned towards the Watch House a flash of colour caught his eye. And there it was, overhanging a garden wall. Lilac was common in the city. It was vigorous and hard to kill and had to be. The flower buds were noticeably swelling. He stood and stared, as a man might stare at an old battlefield. ... they rise hands up, hands up, hands up... How did it go, now? Think of things happening one after the other. Don't assume that you know what's going to happen, because it might not. Be yourself. And, because he was himself, he made a few little purchases in little shops in dark alleys, and went to work. The Treacle Mine Road Night Watch House was generally deserted around midday, but Vimes knew that Snouty, at least, would be there. He was a Persistent Floater, just like Nobby and Colon and Carrot and, when you got down to it, Vimes as well. Being on duty was their default state of being. They hung around the Watch House even when off duty, because that's where their lives took place. Being a copper wasn't something you left hanging by the door when you went home. But I promise I'll learn how, thought Vimes. When I get back, it'll all be different. He went around the back and let himself in by the stable entrance. It wasn't even locked. Black mark right there, lads. The iron bulk of the hurryup wagon stood empty on the cobbles. Behind it was what they called, now, the stables. In fact, the stables were only the bottom floor of what would have been part of Ankh-Morpork's industrial heritage, if anyone had ever thought of it like that. In practice they thought of it as junk that was too heavy to cart away. It was part of the winding gear from a treacle mine, long since abandoned. One of the original lifting buckets was still up there, glued to the floor by its last load of the heavy, sticky, unrefined treacle which, once set, was tougher than cement and more waterproof than tar. Vimes remembered, as a kid, begging chippings of pig treacle off the miners; one lump of that, oozing the sweetness of prehistoric sugar cane, could keep a boy's mouth happily shut for a week.* * In the same way that ancient forests become coal, ancient swaths of natural sugar cane can become, under the pressure of millennia, what in various parts of the Disc is known as hokeypokey, pig treacle or rock molasses. But much boiling and purification was necessary to create the thick golden syrup that was the city dweller's honey, and these days Ankh-Morpork's supplies come from the more accessible toffee beds near Quirm. Inside the treacleroofed stable level, chewing a bit of bad hay, was the horse. Vimes knew it was a horse because it checked out as one: four hooves, tail, head with mane, seedy brown coat. Considered from another angle, it was half a ton of bones held together with horsehair. He patted it gingerly; as one of nature's pedestrians, he'd never been at home around horses. He unhooked a greasy clipboard from a nail near by and flicked through its pages. Then he had another look around the yard. Tilden never did that. He looked at the pigsty in the corner where Knock kept his pig, and then at the chicken run, and the pigeon loft, and the badly made rabbit hutches, and he did a few calculations. The old Watch House! It was all there, just like the day he first arrived. It had been two houses once, and one of them had been the treacle mine office. Everywhere in the city had been something else once. And so the place was a maze of blockedin doorways and ancient windows and poky rooms. He wandered around like a man in a museum. See the old helmet on a stick for archery practice! See Sergeant Knock's brokenspringed armchair, where he used to sit out on sunny afternoons! And, inside, the smell: floor wax, stale sweat, armour polish, unwashed clothes, ink, a hint of fried fish and always, here, a taint of treacle. The Night Watch. He was back. When the first members of the Night Watch came in they found a man perfectly at ease, leaning back in a chair with his feet on a desk and leafing through paperwork. The man had sergeant's stripes and an air of an unsprung trap. He was also giving absolutely no attention to the newcomers. He particularly paid no heed to one gangly lanceconstable who was still new enough to have tried to put a shine on his breastplate... They fanned out among the desks, with muttered conversations. Vimes knew them in his soul. They were in the Night Watch because they were too scruffy, ugly, incompetent, awkwardly shaped or bloodyminded for the Day Watch. They were honest, in that special policeman sense of the word. That is, they didn't steal things too heavy to carry. And they had the morale of damp gingerbread. He'd wondered last night about giving them some kind of pep talk by way of introduction, and decided against it. They might be very bad at it but they were coppers, and coppers did not respond well to the Happy Families approach: 'Hello, chaps, call me Christopher, my door is always open, I'in sure if we all pull together we shall get along splendidly like one big happy family.' They'd seen too many families to fall for that rubbish. Someone cleared their throat with malice aforethought. Vimes glanced up and into the face of Sergeant 'Knocker' Knock and, for a fraction of a second, had to suppress the urge to salute. Then he remembered what Knock was. 'Well?' he said. 'That's my desk you're sitting at, sergeant,’ said Knock. Vimes sighed, and pointed to the little crown on his sleeve. 'See this, sergeant?' he said. 'It's what they used to call the hat of authority.' Knock's little weaselly eyes focused on the crown. And then they went back to Vimes's face, and widened in the shock of recognition. 'Bloody hell,' breathed Knock. ‘That's "bloody hell, sir,"' said Vimes. 'But "sarge" will do. Most of the time. And this is your mob, is it? Oh dear. Well, let's make a start.' He swung his feet off the desk and stood up. 'I've been looking at the feed bills for Marilyn,’ he said. 'Interesting reading, lads. According to my rough calculations a horse eating that much ought to be approximately spherical. Instead, she's so thin that with two sticks and some sheet music I could give you a tune.’ Vimes put the papers down. 'Don't think I don't know where the corn goes. I bet I know who's got the chickens and rabbits and pigeons,’ he said. 'And the pig. I bet the captain thinks they get fat on leftovers.’ 'Yeah, but-' a voice began. Vimes's hand slammed on the desk. 'You lot even starve the damn horse!' he said. That stops right now! So will a lot of other things. I know how it works, see? Mumping free beer and a doughnut, well, that's part of being a copper. And who knows, there might even be a few greasy spoons in this town so happy to see a copper that they will spontaneously offer him a free nosh. Stranger things have happened. But nicking the oats from Marilyn, that stops now. And another thing. Says here that last night the hurryup wagon had eight passengers,' he said. 'Two of them I know about,.'cos one of them must've been me and I met the other man. The cells are empty this morning. What happened to the other six? Sergeant Knock?' The sergeant licked his lips nervously. 'Dropped 'em off in Cable Street for questioning, o'course,' he said. 'As per instructions.' 'Did you get a receipt?' 'A what?' 'Your men hauled in six people who were staying out late and you handed them over to the Unmentionables,' said Vimes, with the calm that comes before a storm. 'Did they sign for them? Do you even know their names?' 'Orders is just to hand 'em over,' said Knock, trying a little defiance. 'Hand 'em over and come away.' Vimes filed that for future reference and said: 'Now, I didn't get taken there 'cos we had a bit of a... misunderstanding. And as you can see it was a bigger misunderstanding than you thought, because I'in not down in the Tanty counting cockroaches, Knock. No, indeed.' He took a few steps forward. 'I am standing in front of you, Knock. Isn't that what I'in doing?' 'Yes, sarge,’ Knock muttered, pale with fear and fury. 'Yes, sarge,' said Vimes. 'But there was another man in the cells, and he's gone too. All I want to know is: how much, and who to? I don't want any looks of cherubic innocence, I don't want any "don't know what you're talking about, sir", I just want to know: how much, and who to?' A cloud of red, resentful solidarity settled over the faces in front of him. But he didn't need telling. He could remember. Corporal Quirke always had a private income from bribes; he'd been like Nobby Nobbs without the latter's amiable incompetence. An efficient Nobby, in fact, and you could throw into the mix bullying and brownnosing and a delight in small evils. Vimes's gaze fell on Quirke, and stayed there. 'I know you were on the wagon last night, corporal,’ he said. 'You and LanceConstable, er, Vimes, it says here.' 'Not worth worrying anyone if they look a decent sort,' Quirke said. And he 'd said: 'How can we tell they're a decent sort, corp?' 'Well, see how much they can afford.' 'You mean we let 'em go if they're rich?' 'Way of the world, lad, way of the world. No reason why we shouldn 't get our share, eh? Did you see his moneybag? Five dollars should do it. Four for me and one for you, 'cos you're learning. That's nearly three days' pay, it 'II cheer up your ol' mum no end, and where's the loser?' 'But suppose he's nicked the money, corp?' 'Suppose the moon was made of cheese? Would you like a slice?' 'I think it was five dollars, corporal,' said Vimes, and watched the man's lizard eyes flash towards the young lanceconstable. 'No, the man in the cell talked,' lied Vimes. 'Told me I was an idiot not to buy my way out. So, Mister Quirke, it's like this. They're crying out for good men in the Day Watch, but if you don't stand too close to the light you might pass. Get along there right now!' 'Everybody does it!' Quirke burst out. 'It's perksl' 'Everybody?' said Vimes. He looked around at the squad. 'Anyone else here take bribes?' His glare ran from face to face, causing most of the squad to do an immediate impression of the Floorboard and Ceiling Inspectors Synchronized Observation Team. Only three members met his gaze. There was Lance-Corporal Colon, who could be a little slow. There was a certain lanceconstable, whose face was a mask of terror. And there was a darkhaired, roundfaced constable who seemed to be puzzled, as if he was trying to remember something, but who nevertheless stared back with the firm steady gaze of the true liar. 'Apparently not,’ said Vimes. Quirke's finger shot out and vibrated in the direction of the young Sam Vimes. 'He shared it! He shared it!' he said. 'You ask him!' Vimes felt the shock run round the squad. Quirke had just committed suicide. You hung together against officers, fair enough, but when the jig was up you did not Drop Someone In The Cacky. They'd laugh at the idea of a watchman's honour, but it did exist in a blackened, twisty way. You Did Not Drop Your Mates In The Cacky. And especially you did not do it to a wetbehindtheears rookie who wouldn't know any better. Vimes turned, for the first time, to the young man he'd been avoiding. Gods, was I ever that skinny? he thought. Did I ever have that much Adam's apple? Did I really try to polish rust? The young man's eyes were almost back in his head, only the whites showing. 'Lance-Constable Vimes, isn't it?' he said quietly. 'Yessir!' said Sam hoarsely. 'At ease, lanceconstable. Did you in fact take a share of the bribe?' 'Yessir! A dollar, sir!' 'At the instigation of Corporal Quirke?' 'Er... sir?' 'Did he offer it to you?' Vimes translated. Vimes watched his own agony. You Did Not Drop Someone In The Cacky. 'All right,’ he said at last. 'I'll talk to you later on. Oh, you still here, Quirke? If you want to complain to the captain, that's fine by me. But if you don't get your stuff out of your locker in ten minutes I'll damn well charge you rent!' Quirke looked around for immoral support, and found none. He'd gone too far. Besides, the Watch could see a storm of cacky when it was right overhead and were in no mood to stick their necks out for something like Quirke. 'I will,’ he said. 'I will complain to the captain. You'll see. You'll see. I've got four years' good conduct, I have-' 'No, that was tour years' Not Found Out,' said Vimes. 'Clear off.' When Quirke's footsteps had died away Vimes glared at the squad. 'Good afternoon, lads, my name's John Keel,’ he said. 'We bloody well better get along fine. Now shine up, captain's inspection in two minutes, off you go... Sergeant Knock, a word, please.’ The men dispersed hurriedly. Knock stepped forward, not quite managing to conceal his nervousness. After all, his immediate superior now was a man who, last night, he had kicked in the nadgers. People could hold a grudge about a thing like that. And he'd had time to think. 'I'd just like to say, sir, about last night-' he began. 'I'in not bothered about last night,’ said Vimes. 'You're not?' 'Would you recommend Fred Colon for corporal? I'd value your judgement.’ 'You would?' 'Certainly. He looks a solid lad.’ 'He is? I mean, yes, he is. Very thorough,’ said Knock, relief rising off him like steam. 'Doesn't rush into things. Wants to join one of the regiments.’ 'Well, we'll give him a try while we've still got him. That means we'll need another lancecorporal. Who was that lad next to Colon?' 'Coates, sir. Ned Coates. Bright lad, sometimes thinks he knows better, but we were all like that, eh?' Vimes nodded. His expression completely failed to give away the fact that, as far as he was concerned, there were things clinging to the underside of high branches that knew better than Sergeant Knock. 'A taste of responsibility might do him some good, then,’ he said. Knock nodded, because at that point he would have agreed to absolutely anything. And his body language was saying: we're all sergeants together, right? We're talking about sergeanty things, like sergeants do. We're not bothered about anyone being kicked in the nadgers, eh? Not us! 'cos we're sergeants. His eyes widened, and he saluted as Tilden entered the office. There was some halfhearted saluting among the squad, too. The captain acknowledged them stiffly, and looked nervously at Vimes. 'Ah, sergeant;' he said. 'Settling in?' 'Yessir. No problems.' 'Well done. Carry on.' When the man had disappeared up the creaking stairs Vimes turned back to Knock. 'Sergeant, we don't hand over prisoners without a receipt, understand? Never! What happens to them afterwards? Do you know?' 'They get questioned,' said Knock. 'We takes 'em up there for questioning.' 'What kind of questions? How long it takes two men to dig half a hole?' 'What?' Knock's brow knitted. 'From now on, someone at Cable Street signs for prisoners or we bring them right back here,' said Vimes. 'It's bloody elementary, sergeant. You hand 'em over, you get a docket. Don't you do that down at the Tanty?' 'Well, yeah, obviously, but... well, Cable Street... I mean, you don't know what it's like here, I can see that, but with the Unmentionables round at Cable Street it's best not to-' 'Listen, I'in not telling you to kick the door down and shout "put down those thumbscrews!"' said Vimes. I'in telling you we keep track of prisoners. When you arrest a man, you sign him over to Snouty, don't you? When he leaves, Snouty or the orderly man signs him out, doesn't he? It's basic custody discipline, man! So if you hand a prisoner over to Cable Street, someone there gives you a signature. Understand? No one just disappears.' Knock's face showed a man contemplating an immediate future that contained fewer opportunities for personal gain and a greatly raised risk of being shouted at. 'And just to make sure everyone understands, I'll ride the wagon tonight,’ said Vimes. 'But first I'll take that lad Vimes out for a stroll and shake him up a bit.' 'He could do with it,’ said Knock. 'Can't get his mind right. Good with his hands but you have to tell him everything twice.’ 'Maybe I'll shout, then,’ said Vimes. 'Vimes!' Lance-Constable Vimes shivered to attention. 'We're going to take a stroll, lad,’ said Vimes. 'Time you knew what's what,’ he nodded to Knock, took his younger self by the shoulder, and marched out. 'What d'you think, sarge?' said Coates, coming up behind Knock as the sergeant glared at the departing back. 'He likes you,' said Knock bitterly. 'Oh, yes. Apple of his eye, you are. You're his ol' pal. You're being bumped up to lancecorporal.’ 'Think he'll last?' ‘I’ll give him a couple of weeks,’ said Knock. 'I've seen 'em like that before. Big men in little towns, coming here, thinking they're the bee's nose. We soon cut 'em down to size. What d'you think?' 'Dunno, sarge,’ said Coates. 'Still thinking.’ 'Knows his coppering, mind you,’ said Knock. 'Bit too cocky though. He'll learn. He'll learn. There's ways. We'll show him. Take him down a peg. Teach him how we do things around here Vimes always preferred to walk by himself. And now there were two of him, walking by himself. It was a strange sensation, and gave him the impression that he was looking through a mask. 'No, not like that,' he said. 'I always have to teach people to walk. You swing the foot, like this. Get it right and you can keep going all day. You're not in a hurry. You don't want to miss things.' 'Yes, sarge,' said young Sam. It was called proceeding. Vimes proceeded along Treacle Mine Road, and felt - magnificent. Of course there were lots of things to worry about, but right here and now all he had to do was patrol, and it felt fine. Not much paperwork in the old Watch; in fact, come to think of it he'd probably doubled it. All he had to do right now was his duty, as he'd been taught it. He had nothing to do but be himself. Young Sam wasn't saying much. That was good sense. 'I see you've got a bell there, lad,' said Vimes, after a while. 'Yes, sarge.' 'Regulation bell?' 'Yes, sarge. Sergeant Knock gave it to me.' I'll bet he did, thought Vimes. 'When we get back, just you swap it for someone else's. Doesn't matter whose. No one'll say anything.' 'Yes, sarge.' Vimes waited. 'Why, sarge? A bell's a bell.' 'Not that one,' said Vimes. That's three times the weight of the normal bell. They give it to rookies to see what they do. Did you complain?' 'No, sarge.' ‘That's the way. Keep quiet, and pass it on to some other sucker when we get back. That's the coppers' way. Why did you come into the job, lad?' 'My mate Iffy joined last year. He said you got free food and a uniform and you could pick up the extra dollar here and there.' ‘That'd be Iffy Scurrick stationed over in the Dolly Sisters house, then,' said Vimes. 'And you've been picking up the odd dollar, have you?' They walked in silence for a moment. Then Sam said: 'Have I got to give that dollar back, sarge?' 'Are you worth a dollar?' said Vimes. 'I gave it our mum, sarge.' 'Did you tell her how you got it?' 'I didn't want it!' Sam blurted out. 'But Corporal Quirke said-' 'Was he worth listening to?' 'Dunno, sarge.' 'You don't know? I bet your mum didn't bring you up to think like that,’ said Vimes. No, she bloody well didn't, he thought. She'd tan your hide, copper or not, if she knew it was a dodgy dollar. 'No, sarge. But they're all at it, sarge. I don't mean the lads, sarge, but you only have to look round the city. Our rent's going up, taxes go up, there's these new taxes all the time, and it's all just cruel, sarge, it's cruel. Winder sold us all to his mates, and that's a fact, sir.' 'Hmm,' said Vimes. Oh, yes. Tax farming. What a clever invention. Good old Winder. He'd flogged the right to collect taxes to the highest bidders. What a great idea, nearly as good as banning people from carrying weapons after dark. Because a) you saved the cost of tax collectors and the whole revenue system b) you got a wagonload of cash up front. And c) the business of tax gathering then became the business of groups of powerful yet curiously reticent people who kept out of the light. However, they employed people who not only went out in the light but positively blocked it, and it was amazing what those people found to tax, up to and including Looking At Me, Pal. What was it Vetinari had said once? Taxation is just a sophisticated way of demanding money with menaces'? Well, the tax farmers were very unsophisticated in the way they went about recouping their investment. He remembered those da- these days. The city had never seemed poorer, but by the gods there was a lot of tax being paid. Hard to explain to a kid like Sam why poncing a dollar when you got the chance was a bad thing to do. ‘Put it like this, lanceconstable,’ as they turned the corner. 'Would you let a murderer off for a thousand dollars?' 'No, sir!' 'A thousand dollars'd set your mum up in a nice place in a good part of town, though.' 'Knock it off, sarge, I'in not like that.' 'You were when you took that dollar. Everything else is just a haggling over the price.' They walked in sullen silence. Then: 'Am I going to get the sack, sarge?' said the lanceconstable. 'For a dollar? No.' 'I'd just as soon be sacked, sarge, thanks all the same,' said young Sam defiantly. 'Last Friday we had to go and break up some meeting over near the University. They were just talking! And we had to take orders from some civilian, and the Cable Street lads were a bit rough and... it's not like the people had weapons or anything. You can't tell me that's right, sarge. And then we loaded some of 'em into the hurryup, just for talking. Mrs Owlesly's boy Elson never came home the other night, too, and they say he was dragged off to the palace just for saying his lordship's a loony. Now people down our street are looking at me in a funny way.' Ye gods, I remember, thought Vimes. I thought it was all going to be chasing men who gave up after the length of a street and said 'It's a fair cop, guv'nor'. I thought I'd have a medal by the end of the week. 'You want to be careful what you say, lad,’ he said. 'Yeah, but our mum says it's fair enough if they take away the troublemakers and the weirdies but it's not right them taking away ordinary people.' Is this really me? Vimes thought. Did I really have the political awareness of a head louse? 'Anyway, he is a loony. Snapcase is the man we ought to have.' ... and the selfpreservation instincts of a lemming? 'Kid, here's some advice. In this town, right now, if you don't know who you're talking to - don't talk.' 'Yes, but Snapcase says-' 'Listen. A copper doesn't keep flapping his lip. He doesn't let on what he knows. He doesn't say what he's thinking. No. He watches and listens and he learns and he bides his time. His mind works like mad but his face is a blank. Until he's ready. Understand?' 'All right, sarge.' 'Good. Can you use that sword you have there, lad?' 'I did the training, yes.' ‘Fine. Fine. The training. Fine. So if we're attacked by a lot of sacks of straw hanging from a beam, I can rely on you. And until then shut up, keep your ears open and your eyes peeled and learn something.' Snapcase is the man to save us, he thought glumly. Yeah, I used to believe that. A lot of people did. Just because he rode around in an open carriage occasionally and called people over and talked to them, the level of the conversation being on the lines of: 'So you're a carpenter, are you? Wonderful! What does that job entail?' Just because he said publicly that perhaps taxes were a bit on the high side. Just because he waved. 'You been here before, sarge?' said Sam, as they turned a corner. 'Oh, everyone's visited Ankh-Morpork, lad,’ said Vimes jovially. 'Only we're doing the Elm Street beat perfectly, sarge, and I've been letting you lead the way.' Damn. That was the kind of trouble your feet could get you into. A wizard once told Vimes that there were monsters up near the Hub that were so big they had to have extra brains in their legs, 'cos they were too far away for one brain to think fast enough. And a beat copper grew brains in his feet, he really did. Elm Street, left into The Pitts, left again into The Scours... it was the first beat he'd ever walked, and he could do it without thinking. He had done it without thinking. 'I do my homework,’ he said. 'Did you recognize Ned?' said Sam. Perhaps it was a good thing that he was leaving his feet to their own devices, because Vimes's brain suddenly filled with warning bells. 'Ned?' he said. 'Only before you came he said he thought he remembered you from Pseudopolis,' said Sam, oblivious of the clamour. 'He was in the Day Watch there before he came here 'cos of better promotion prospects. Big man, he said.' 'Can't say I recall him,' said Vimes, with care. 'You're not all that big, sarge.' 'Well, Ned was probably shorter in those days,’ said Vimes, while his thoughts shouted: shut up, kid! But the kid was... well, him. Niggling at little details. Tugging at things that didn't seem to fit right. Being a copper, in fact. Probably he ought to feel proud of his younger self, but he didn't. You're not me, he thought. I don't think I was ever as young as you. If you're going to be me, it's going to take a lot of work. Thirty damn years of being hammered on the anvil of life, you poor bastard. You've got it all to come. Back at the Watch House, Vimes wandered idly over to the Evidence and Lost Property cupboard. It had a big lock on it which was not, however, ever locked. He soon found what he was looking for. An unpopular copper needed to think ahead, and he intended to be unpopular. Then he had a bite of supper and a mug of the thick brown cocoa on which the Night Watch ran and took Sam out on the hurryup wagon. He'd wondered how the Watch was going to play it and wasn't surprised to find they were using the old dodge of obeying orders to the letter with gleeful malignancy. At the first point he made, Lance-Corporal Coates and Constable Waddy were waiting with four sullen or protesting insomniacs. 'Four, sah,' said Coates, ripping off a textbook salute. 'All we've apprehended sah. All written down on this chitty what I am giving to you at this moment in time sah!' 'Well done, lancecorporal,' said Vimes, drily, taking the paperwork, signing one copy and handing it back. 'You may have a halfholiday at Hogswatch, and give my regards to your granny. Help 'em in with 'em, Sam.' 'We usually only get four or five on a round, sir!' Sam whispered, as they pulled away. 'What'll we do?' 'Make several journeys,' said Vimes. 'But the lads were taking the pi- the michael, sir! They were laughing!' 'It's past curfew,' said Vimes. That's the law.' Corporal Colon and Constable Wiglet were waiting at their post with three miscreants. One of them was Miss Palm. Vimes gave Sam the reins and jumped down to open the back of the wagon and fold down the steps. 'Sorry to see you here, miss,' he said. 'Apparently some new sergeant's been throwing his weight around,' said Rosie Palm, in a voice of solid ice. She refused his hand haughtily, and climbed up into the wagon. Vimes realized that one of the other detainees was a woman, too. She was shorter than Rosie, and was giving him a look of pure bantam defiance. She was also holding a huge quilted workbasket. Out of reflex Vimes took it, to help her up the steps. 'Sorry about this, miss-' he began. 'Get your hands off that!' She snatched the basket back and scrambled into the darkness. 'Pardon me,' said Vimes. ‘This is Miss Battye,’ said Rosie, from the bench inside the wagon. 'She's a seamstress.' 'Well, I assumed she-' 'A seamstress, I said,’ said Miss Palm. 'With needles and thread. Also specializes in crochet.' 'Er, is that a kind of extra-' Vimes began. 'It's a type of knitting,’ said Miss Battye, from the darkness of the wagon. 'Fancy you not knowing that.' 'You mean she's a real-' said Vimes, but Rosie slammed the iron door. 'You just drive us on,’ she said, 'and when I see you again, John Keel, we are going to have words!’ There was some sniggering from the shadows inside the wagon, and then a yelp. It had been immediately preceded by the noise of a spiky heel being driven into an instep. Vimes signed the grubby form presented to him by Fred Colon and handed it back with a solid, fixed expression that made the man feel rather worried. 'Where to now, sarge?' said Sam, as they pulled away. 'Cable Street,’ said Vimes. There was a murmur of dismay from the crated people behind them. ‘That's not right,’ muttered Sam. 'We're playing this by the rules,’ said Vimes. 'You're going to have to learn why we have rules, lanceconstable. And don't you eyeball me. I've been eyeballed by experts, and you look as if you're desperate for the privy.' 'Yeah, all right, but everyone knows they torture people,’ mumbled Sam. 'Do they?' said Vimes. Then why doesn't anyone do anything about it?' ' 'cos they torture people.' Ah, at least I was getting a grasp of basic social dynamics, thought Vimes. Sullen silence reigned in the seat beside him as the wagon rumbled through the streets, but he was aware of whispering behind him. Slightly louder than the background, he heard Rosie Palm's voice hiss: 'He won't. I'll bet anything.’ A few seconds later a male voice, slightly the worse for drink and very much the worse for bladdertwisting dread, managed: 'Er, sergeant, we... er... believe the fine is five, er, dollars?' 'I don't think it is, sir,' said Vimes, keeping his eyes on the damp streets. There was some more frantic whispering, and then the voice said: 'Er... I have a very nice gold ring.’ 'Glad to hear it, sir,’ said Vimes. 'Everyone should have something nice,' He patted his pocket for his silver cigar case, and for a moment felt more anger than despair, and more sorrow than anger. There was a future. There had to be. He remembered it. But it only existed as that memory, and that was fragile as the reflection on a soap bubble and, maybe, just as easily popped. 'Er... I could perhaps include-' 'If you try to offer me a bribe one more time, sir,' said Vimes, as the wagon turned into Cable Street, 'I shall personally give you a thumping. Be told.' 'Perhaps there is some other-' Rosie Palm began, as the lights of the Cable Street House came into view. 'We're not at home to a tuppenny upright, either,' said Vimes, and heard the gasp. 'Shut up, the lot of you.' He reined Marilyn to a halt, jumped down and pulled his clipboard from under the seat. 'Seven for you,' he said, to the guard lounging against the door. 'Well?' said the guard. 'Open it up and let's be having them, then.' 'Right,' said Vimes, flicking through the paperwork. 'No problem.' He thrust the clipboard forward. 'Just sign here.' The man recoiled as though Vimes had tried to offer him a snake. 'What d'ya mean, sign?' he said. 'Hand 'em over!' 'You sign,' said Vimes woodenly. 'That's the rules. Prisoners moved from one custody to another, you have to sign. More'n my job's worth, not to get a signature.' 'Your job's not worth spit,' snarled the man, grabbing the board. He looked at it blankly, and Vimes handed him a pencil. 'If you need any help with the difficult letters, let me know,’ he said helpfully. Growling, the guard scrawled something on the paper and thrust it back. 'Now open up, please,' he said. 'Certainly,' said Vimes, glancing at the paper. 'But now I'd like to see some form of ID, thank you.' 'What?' 'It's not me, you understand,' said Vimes, 'but if I went back and showed my captain this piece of paper and he said to me, Vi- Keel, how d'you know he's Henry the Hamster, well, I'd be a bit... flummoxed. Maybe even perplexed.' 'Listen, we don't sign for prisoners!' 'We do, Henry,' said Vimes. 'No signature, no prisoners.' 'And you'll stop us taking 'em, will you?' said Henry the Hamster, taking a few steps forward. 'You lay a hand on that door,' said Vimes, 'and I'll-' 'Chop it off, will you?' '-I'll arrest you,' said Vimes. 'Obstruction would be a good start, but we can probably think of some more charges back at the station.’ 'Arrest me? But I'in a copper, same as you!' 'Wrong again,’ said Vimes. 'What is thetrouble... here?' said a voice. A small, thin figure appeared in the torchlight. Henry the Hamster took a step back, and adopted a certain deferential pose. 'Officer won't hand over the curfew breakers, sir,’ he said. 'And this is the officer?' said the figure, lurching towards Vimes with a curiously erratic gait. 'Yessir.' Vimes found himself under cool and not openly hostile inspection from a pale man with the screwedup eyes of a pet rat. 'Ah,’ said the man, opening a little tin and taking out a green throat pastille. 'Would you be Keel, by anychance? I have been... hearing about you.' The man's voice was as uncertain as his walk. Pauses turned up in the wrong places. 'You hear about things quickly, sir.' 'A salute is generally in order, sergeant.' 'I don't see anything to salute, sir,' said Vimes. 'Goodpoint. Goodpoint. You are new, of course. But, you see, we in theParticulars... often find it necessary to wearplain... clothes.' Like rubber aprons, if I recall correctly, thought Vimes. Aloud, he said: 'Yes, sir.' It was a good phrase. It could mean any of a dozen things, or nothing at all. It was just punctuation until the man said something else. 'I'in Captain Swing,’ said the man. Tindthee Swing. If you think the name is amusing, pleasesmirk... and get it over with. You may now salute.' Vimes saluted. Swing's mouth turned up at the corners very briefly. 'Good. Your first night on our hurryup wagon, sergeant?' 'Sir.' 'And you're here so early. With a full load, too. Shall we take alook... at your passengers?' He glanced in between the ironwork. 'Ah. Yes. Good evening, Miss Palm. And an associate, I see-' 'I do crochet!' 'and what appear to be some partygoers. Well, well.' Swing stood back. 'What little scamps your street officers are, to be sure. They really have scoured the streets. How they love their... littlejokes, sergeant.' Swing put his hand on the wagon door's handle and there was a little noise which was nevertheless a thunderclap in the silence, and it was the sound of a sword moving very slightly in its scabbard. Swing stood stock still for a moment and then delicately popped the pastille into his mouth. 'Aha. I think that perhaps this little catch can be... thrownback, don't you, sergeant? We don't want to make a mockery of... thelaw. Take them away, take them away.' 'Yes, sir.' 'But just onemoment, please, sergeant. Indulge me... just a little hobby of mine 'Sir?' Swing had reached into a pocket of his overlong coat and pulled out a very large pair of steel calipers. Vimes flinched as they were opened up to measure the width of his head, the width of his nose and the length of his eyebrows. Then a metal ruler was pressed against one ear. While doing this, Swing was mumbling under his breath. Then he closed the calipers with a snap, and slipped them back. 'I must congratulateyou, sergeant,' he said, 'in overcoming your considerable natural disadvantages. Do you know you have the eye of a mass murderer? I am neverwrong... in these matters.' 'Nosir. Didn't know that, sir. Will try to keep it closed, sir,' said Vimes. Swing didn't crack a smile. 'However, I'in sure that when you have settled in you and Corporal, aha, Hamster here will get along like a... houseonfire.' 'A house on fire. Yes, sir.' 'Don'tlet... me detain you, Sergeant Keel.' Vimes saluted. Swing nodded, turned in one movement, as though he was on a swivel, and strode back into the Watch House. Or jerked, Vimes considered. The man moved in the same way he talked, in a curious mixture of speeds. It was as if he was powered by springs; when he moved a hand, the first few inches of movement were a blur, and then it gently coasted until it was brought into conjunction with whatever was the intended target. Sentences came out in spurts and pauses. There was no rhythm to the man. Vimes ignored the fuming corporal and climbed back on to the wagon. "Turn us round, lanceconstable,' he said. 'G'night, Henry.' Sam waited until the wheels were rumbling over the cobbles before he turned, wideeyed, to Vimes. 'You were going to draw on him, weren't you?' he said. 'You were, sarge, weren't you?' 'You just keep your eyes on the road, lanceconstable.' 'But that was Captain Swing, that was! And when you told that man to prove he was Henry the Hamster, I thought I'd widd- choke! You knew they weren't going to sign, right, sarge? 'cos if there's a bit of paper saying they've got someone, then if anyone wants to find out-' 'Just drive, lanceconstable.' But the boy was right. For some reason, the Unmentionables both loved and feared paperwork. They certainly generated a lot of it. They wrote everything down. They didn't like appearing on other people's paperwork, though. That worried them. 'I can't believe we got away with it, sarge!' We probably haven't, Vimes thought. But Swing has enough to worry him at the moment. He doesn't care very much about a big stupid sergeant. He turned and banged on the ironwork. 'Sorry for the inconvenience, ladies and gentlemen, but it appears the Unmentionables are not doing business tonight. Looks like we'll have to do the interrogation ourselves. We're not very experienced at this, so I hope we don't get it wrong. Now, listen carefully. Are any of you serious conspirators bent on the overthrow of the government?' There was a stunned silence from within the wagon. 'Come on, come on,' said Vimes. 'I haven't got all night. Does anyone want to overthrow Lord Winder by force?' 'Well... no?' said the voice of Miss Palm. 'Or by crochet?' 'I heard that!' said another female voice sharply. 'No one? Shame,' said Vimes. 'Well, that's good enough for me. Lanceconstable, is it good enough for you?' 'Er, yes, sarge.' 'In that case we'll drop you all off on our way home, and my charming assistant LanceConstable Vimes will take, oh, half a dollar off each of you for travelling expenses for which you will get a receipt. Thank you for travelling with us, and we hope you will consider the hurryup wagon in all your future curfewbreaking arrangements.' Vimes could hear shocked whispering behind him. This was not how things were supposed to go these days. 'Sarge,' said Lance-Constable Vimes. 'Yep?' 'Have you really got the eye of a mass murderer?' 'In the pocket of my other suit, yes.' 'Hah.' Sam was quiet for a while, and when he spoke again he seemed to have something new on his mind. 'Er, sarge?' 'Yes, lad?' 'What's a tuppenny upright, sarge?' 'It's a kind of jam doughnut, lad. Did your mum ever make 'em?' 'Yes, sarge. Sarge?' 'Yes, lad?' 'I think it probably means something else as well, sarge,' said Sam, sniggering. 'Something a bit... rude The whole of life is a learning process, lanceconstable.' They got the wagon back to the yard ten minutes later, and by that time Vimes knew that a new rumour was fanning out across the city. Young Sam had already whispered things to the other officers as the curfewbreakers were dropped off, and nobody gossips like a copper. They didn't like the Unmentionables. Like petty criminals everywhere, the watchmen prided themselves that there were some depths to which they would not sink. There had to be some things below you, even if it was only mudworms. Rosie Palm bolted the door of her flat, leaned on it and stared at Sandra. 'What is he?' said Sandra, dumping her workbasket on the table. It clanked within. 'Is he on our side?' 'You heard the lads!' snapped Rosie. 'No bribes now! And then he drags us off to Swing's bastards and then he won't hand us over! I could kill him! I rescued him from the gutter, got Mossy to patch him up and suddenly he's playing big silly games!' 'Yes, what is a tuppenny upright?' said Sandra brightly. Miss Palm paused. She quite enjoyed Sandra's company and the extra rent certainly came in handy, but there were times she wondered whether a) she should have a talk with the girl or b) she was being very gently wound up. She suspected the latter, since Sandra was taking more money than her most of the time. It was getting embarrassing. 'It's a kind of jam doughnut,' she said. 'Now, you'd better go and hide the-' Someone knocked on the door behind her. She motioned Sandra through the bead curtain, took a moment to pull herself together, and opened the door a fraction. There was a very small old man standing in the hall. Everything about him sloped hopelessly downwards. His grey moustache could have been stolen from a walrus, or a bloodhound that had just been given some very bad news. His shoulders sagged listlessly. Even parts of his face seemed to be losing the battle with gravity. He held his cap in his hands and was twisting it nervously. 'Yes?' said Rosie. 'Er, it said "seamstress" on the sign,' the old man mumbled. 'An', well, since my ol' woman died, you know, what with one thing an' another, never bin any good at doing it for meself He gave Rosie a look of sheer, helpless embarrassment. She glanced down at the sack by his feet, and picked it up. It was full of very clean, but very worn, socks. Every single one had holes in the heel and toe. 'Sandra,' she said, 'I think this one's for you...' It was so very early in the morning that 'late at night' wasn't quite over. White mist hung everywhere in the streets, and deposited droplets like tiny pearls on Vimes's shirt as he prepared to break the law. If you stood on the roof of the privy behind the Watch House and steadied yourself on the drainpipe, one of the upstairs windows would bounce open if you hit it with the palm of your hand in exactly the right place. It was a useful bit of information, and Vimes wondered if he should pass it on to young Sam. Every honest copper ought to know how to break into his own nick. Tilden had limped home long ago, but Vimes did a quick sweep of his office and it was with great satisfaction that he did not see what he hadn't expected to be there. Down below, a few of the more conscientious officers were signing off before heading home. He waited in the shadows until the door had banged shut for the last time and there were no footsteps for several minutes. Then he made his way down the stairs and into the locker room. He had been issued with a key to his own locker, but still oiled the hinge from a small bottle before he opened it. He had not in fact put anything in there yet but, behold, there was a rumpled sack on the floor. He lifted it up... Well done, lads. Inside was Captain Tilden's silver inkwell. Vimes stood up, and looked around at the lockers, with their ancient carved initials and occasional knife marks on the doors. He pulled from his pocket the little black cloth roll he'd taken from the evidence locker earlier. A selection of lock picks glinted in the grey light. Vimes wasn't a genius with the hooks and rakes, but the cheap and worn door locks were hardly a major challenge. Really, it was just a matter of choosing. And afterwards he walked back through the mists. He was horrified to find he was feeling good again. It was a betrayal of Sybil and the future Watch and even of His Grace Sir Samuel Vimes, who had to think about the politics of distant countries and manpower requirements and how to raise that damn boat that River Division kept sinking. And, yes, he wanted to go back, or forwards or across or whatever. He really did. He wanted to go home so much he could taste it. Of course he did. But he couldn't, not yet, and here he was and as Dr Lawn said, you did the job. And currently the job involved survival on the street in the great game of Silly Buggers, and Vimes knew all about that game, oh yes. And there was a thrill in it. It was the nature of the beast. And thus he was walking along, lost in thought, when the men jumped him from the mouth of a shadowy alley. The first one got a foot in the stomach, because the beast does not fight fair. Vimes stepped aside and grabbed the other one. He felt the knife skitter along his breastplate as he lowered his head and tugged the man hard into the helmet. The man folded up quite neatly on the cobbles. Vimes spun around to the first man, who was bent almost double, and wheezing, but had nevertheless kept hold of his knife, which he waved around in front of him like some kind of talisman. The point made erratic figuresofeight in the air. 'Drop it,' said Vimes. 'I won't ask again.' He sighed, and pulled an object out of his back pocket. It was black and tapered and made of leather filled with lead shot. He'd banned them in the modern Watch but he knew some officers had acquired them, and if he judged the man to be sensible then he didn 't know they'd got them. Sometimes an argument had to be ended quickly, and there were worse alternatives. He brought the blackjack down on the man's arm, with a certain amount of care. There was a whimper and the knife bounced off the cobbles. 'We'll leave your chum to sleep it off,' he said. 'But you are coming to see the doctor, Henry. Are you coming quietly?' A few minutes later Dr Lawn opened his back door and Vimes brushed past, the body over his shoulders. 'You minister to all sorts, right?' said Vimes. 'Within reason, but-' ‘This one's an Unmentionable,’ said Vimes. 'Tried to kill me. Needs some medicine.' 'Why's he unconscious?' said the doctor. He was wearing a huge rubber apron, and rubber boots. 'Didn't want to take his medicine.' Lawn sighed, and with a hand that held a mop he waved Vimes towards an inner door. 'Bring him right into the surgery,’ he said. 'I'in afraid I'in cleaning up after Mr Salciferous in the waiting room.' 'Why, what did he do?' 'He burst.' Vimes, his natural inquisitiveness suddenly curbed, carried the body into Lawn's inner sanctum. It looked little different from when Vimes had last seen it, but then he'd barely been capable of taking in details. There was the table, and a workbench, and all along one wall were racks of bottles. No two bottles were the same size. In one or two of them, things floated. On another wall were the instruments. 'When I die,’ said Lawn, inspecting the patient, 'I'in going to instruct them to put a bell on my tombstone, just so's I can have the pleasure of not getting up when people ring. Put him down, please. Looks like concussion.' ‘That was me hitting him,’ said Vimes helpfully. 'You broke his arm too?' ‘That's right.' 'You made a very neat job of it. Easy to set it and plaster him up. Is there something wrong?' Vimes was still staring at the instruments. 'You use all these?' he said. 'Yes. Some of them are experimental, though,’ said Lawn, busying himself at his work table. 'Well, I'd hate you to use this on me,' said Vimes, picking a strange instrument like a couple of paddles tied with string. Lawn sighed. 'Sergeant, there are no circumstances where the things you're holding could possibly be used on you,' he said, his hands working busily. 'They are... of a feminine nature.' 'For the seamstresses?' said Vimes, putting the pliers down in a hurry. 'Those things? No, the ladies of the night take pride these days in never requiring that sort of thing. My work with them is more of, shall we say, a preventative nature.' 'Teaching them to use thimbles, that sort of thing?' said Vimes. 'Yes, it's amazing how far you can push a metaphor, isn't it...' Vimes prodded the paddles again. They were quite alarming. 'You're married, sergeant?' said Lawn. 'Was Rosie right?' 'Er... yes. My wife is, er, elsewhere, though.' He picked the things up and dropped them hastily again, with a clatter. 'Well, it's just as well to be aware that giving birth isn't like shelling peas,' said the doctor. 'I should bloody well hope not!' 'Although I have to say the midwives seldom refer anything to me. They say men shouldn't fish around where they don't belong. We might as well be living in caves.' Lawn looked down at his patient. 'In the words of the philosopher Sceptum, the founder of my profession: am I going to get paid for this?' Vimes investigated the moneybag on the man's belt. 'Will six dollars do it?' he said. 'Why would the Unmentionables attack you, sergeant? You're a policeman.' 'I am, but they aren't. Don't you know about them?' 'I've patched up a few of their guests, yes,' said Lawn, and Vimes noted the caution. It didn't pay to know too much in this town. 'People with curious dislocations, hot wax burns... that sort of thing 'Well, I had a little brush with Captain Swing last night,’ Vimes said, 'and he was as polite as hell to me about it, but I'd bet my boots he knows that this lad and his friend came after me. That's his style. He probably wanted to see what I'd do.' 'He's not the only one interested in you,' said Lawn. 'I got a message that Rosie Palm wants to see you. Well, I assume she meant you. "That ungrateful bastard" was the actual term she used.' 'I think I owe her some money,’ said Vimes, 'but I've no idea how much.' 'Don't ask me,’ said Lawfi, smoothing the plaster with his hand. 'She generally names her price up front.' 'I mean the finder's fee, or whatever it was!' 'Yes, I know. Can't help you there, I'in afraid,’ said Lawn. Vimes watched him working for a while, and said, 'Know anything about Miss Battye?' 'The seamstress? She hasn't been here long.' 'And she's really a seamstress?' 'For the sake of precision,’ said Dr Lawn, 'let us say she's a needlewoman. Apparently she heard there was a lot of work for seamstresses in the big city and had one or two amusing misunderstandings before someone told her exactly what was meant. One of them involved me removing a crochet hook from a man's ear last week. Now she just hangs out with the rest of the girls.' 'Why?' 'Because she's making a fortune, that's why,’ said the doctor. 'Hasn't it ever occurred to you, sergeant, that sometimes people go to a massage parlour for a real massage, for example? There's ladies all over this city with discreet signs up that say things like "Trousers repaired while you wait" and a small but significant number of men make the same mistake as Sandra. There's lots of men work here in the city and leave their wives back home and sometimes, you know, a man feels these... urges. Like, for a sock without holes and a shirt with more than one button. The ladies pass on the work. Apparently it's quite hard to find a really good needlewoman in this city. They don't like being confused with, er, seamstresses.' 'I just wondered why she hangs around street corners after curfew with a big sewing basket...' said Vimes. Lawn shrugged. 'Can't help you there. Right, I've finished with this gentleman. It'd be helpful if he lies still for a while.' He indicated the racks of bottles behind him. 'About how long will you want him to lie still for?' 'You can do that?' 'Oh, yes. It's not accepted Ankh-Morpork medical practice, but since Anhk-Morpork medical practice would consist of hitting him on the head with a mallet he's probably getting the best of the deal.' 'No, I meant that you doctors aren't supposed to hurt people, are you?' 'Only in the course of normal incompetence. But I don't mind sending him to sleepy land for another twenty minutes. Of course, if you want to wham him with the mallet I can't stop you. The last guest of Swing I treated had several fingers pointing entirely the wrong way. So if you'd like to give him a few wallops for good luck I could point out some quite sensitive areas-' 'No thanks. I'll just haul him out the back way and drop him in an alley.' 'Is that all?' 'No. Then... I'll sign my name on his damn plaster cast. So he sees it when he wakes up. In bloody big letters so it won't rub off.' 'Now that's what I call a sensitive area,' said Lawn. 'You're an interesting man, sergeant. You make enemies like a craftsman.' 'I've never been interested in needlework,' said Vimes, hoisting the man on his shoulder. 'But what sort of things would a needlewoman have in her workbasket, do you think?' 'Oh, I don't know. Needles, thread, scissors, wool... that kind of thing,' said Mossy Lawn. 'Not very heavy things, then?' said Vimes. 'Not really. Why d'you ask?' 'Oh, no reason,' said Vimes, making a small mental note. 'Just a thought. I'll go and drop off our friend here while I've still got some mist to lurk in.' ‘Fine. I'll have breakfast on when you get back. It's liver. Calves'.' The beast remembers. This time, Vimes slept soundly. He had always found it easier to sleep during the day. Twentyfive years on nights had ground their nocturnal groove in his brain. Darkness was easier, somehow. He knew how to stand still, a talent that few possess, and how to merge into the shadows. How to guard, in fact, and see without being seen. He remembered Findthee Swing. A lot of it was history. The revolt would have happened with Swing or without him but he was, as it were, the tip of the boil. He'd been trained at the Assassins' School and should never have been allowed to join the Watch. He had too much brain to be a copper. At least, too much of the wrong kind of brain. But Swing had impressed Winder with his theories, had been let in as a sergeant and then was promoted to captain immediately. Vimes had never known why; it was probably because the officers were offended at seeing such a fine genn'lman pounding the streets with the rest of the oiks. Besides, he had a weak chest, or something. Vimes wasn't against intellect. Anyone with enough savvy to let go of a doorknob could be a street monster in the old days, but to make it above sergeant you needed a grabbag of guile, cunning and street wisdom that could pass for 'intelligence' in a poor light. Swing, though, started in the wrong place. He didn't look around, and watch and learn, and then say, 'This is how people are, how do we deal with it?' No, he sat and thought: This is how the people ought to be, how do we change them?' And that was a good enough thought for a priest but not for a copper, because Swing's patient, pedantic way of operating had turned policing on its head. There had been that Weapons Law, for a start. Weapons were involved in so many crimes that, Swing reasoned, reducing the number of weapons had to reduce the crime rate. Vimes wondered if he'd sat up in bed in the middle of the night and hugged himself when he'd dreamed that one up. Confiscate all weapons, and crime would go down. It made sense. It would have worked, too, if only there had been enough coppers - say, three per citizen. Amazingly, quite a few weapons were handed in. The flaw, though, was one that had somehow managed to escape Swing, and it was this: criminals don't obey the law. It's more or less a requirement for the job. They had no particular interest in making the streets safer for anyone except themselves. And they couldn't believe what was happening. It was like Hogswatch every day. Some citizens took the not unreasonable view that something had gone a bit askew if only naughty people were carrying arms. And they got arrested in large numbers. The average copper, when he's been kicked in the nadgers once too often and has reason to believe that his bosses don't much care, has an understandable tendency to prefer to arrest those people who won't instantly try to stab him, especially if they act a bit snotty and wear more expensive clothes than he personally can afford. The rate of arrests shot right up, and Swing had been very pleased about that. Admittedly some of the arrests had been for possessing weaponry after dark, but quite a few had been for assaults on the Watch by irate citizens. That was Assault on a City Official, a very heinous and despicable crime and, as such, far more important than all these thefts that were going on everywhere. It wasn't that the city was lawless. It had plenty of laws. It just didn't offer many opportunities not to break them. Swing didn't seem to have grasped the idea that the system was supposed to take criminals and, in some rough and ready fashion, force them into becoming honest men. Instead, he'd taken honest men and turned them into criminals. And the Watch, by and large, into just another gang. And then, just when the whole wretched stew was thickening, he'd invented craniometries. Bad coppers had always had their ways of finding out if someone was guilty. Back in the old days - hah, now - these included thumbscrews, hammers, small pointed bits of wood and, of course, the common desk drawer, always a boon to the copper in a hurry. Swing didn't need any of this. He could tell if you were guilty by looking at your eyebrows. He measured people. He used calipers and a steel ruler. And he quietly wrote down the measurements, and did some sums, such as dividing the length of the nose by the circumference of the head and multiplying it by the width of the space between the eyes. And on such figures he could, infallibly, tell that you were devious, untrustworthy and congenially criminal. After you had spent the next twenty minutes in the company of his staff and their less sophisticated tools of inquiry he would, amazingly, be proved right. Everyone was guilty of something. Vimes knew that. Every copper knew it. That was how you maintained your authority everyone, talking to a copper, was secretly afraid you could see their guilty secret written on their forehead. You couldn't, of course. But neither were you supposed to drag someone off the street and smash their fingers with a hammer until they told you what it was. Swing would probably have ended up face down in some alley somewhere if it wasn't for the fact that Winder had found in him a useful tool. No one could sniff out conspiracies like Swing. And so he'd ended up running the Unmentionables, most of whom made Sergeant Knock look like Good Copper Of The Month. Vimes had always wondered how the man had kept control, but maybe it was because the thugs recognized, in some animal way, a mind which had arrived at thuggery by the long route and was capable of devising in the name of reason the kind of atrocities that unreason could only dream of. It wasn't easy, living in the past. You couldn't whack someone for what they were going to do, or what the world was going to find out later. You couldn't warn people, either. You didn't know what could change the future, but if he understood things right, history tended to spring back into shape. All you could change was the bits around the edges, the fine details. There was nothing he could do about the big stuff. The lilac was going to bloom. The revolution was going to happen. Well... a kind of revolution. That wasn't really the word for what it was. There was the People's Republic of Treacle Mine Road (Truth! Justice! Freedom! Reasonably priced Love! And a Hard-Boiled Egg!) that would live for all of a few hours, a strange candle that burned too briefly and died like a firework. And there was the scouring of the house of pain, and the-Anyway... you did the job that was in front of you, like unimaginative coppers always did. He got up around one in the afternoon. Lawn was closeted in his surgery, doing something that involved some serious whimpering on the part of something else. Vimes knocked on the door. After a moment it was opened a fraction. Dr Lawn was wearing a face mask and holding a very long pair of tweezers in his hand. 'Yes?' 'I'in going out,' said Vimes. 'Trouble?' 'Not too bad. Slidey Harris was unlucky at cards last night, that's all. Played an ace.' ‘That's an unlucky card?' 'It is if Big Tony knows he didn't deal it to you. But I'll soon have it removed. If you're going to injure anyone tonight, can you do it before I go to bed? Thank you.' Lawn shut the door. Vimes nodded at the woodwork, and went out to stretch his legs and get some lunch. It was waiting for him, on a tray, around the neck of a man. Quite a young man, now, but there was something about the expression, as of a rat who was expecting cheese right around the next corner, and had been expecting cheese around the last corner too, and the corner before that, and, although the world had turned out so far to be full of corners yet completely innocent of any cheese at all, was nevertheless quite certain that, just around the corner, cheese awaited. Vimes stared. But why should he be surprised? As long ago as he could remember, there was always someone selling highly suspicious chemically reclaimed pork products in this town. The seller was very familiar. Just... younger. His expression lit up at the sight of an unfamiliar face. The seller liked to meet people who hadn't yet bought one of his pies. 'Ah, sergeant... Hey, what's the little crown mean?' 'Sergeantatarms,' said Vimes. 'That's like "sergeant with all the trimmings".' 'Well, sergeant, could I interest you in a very special sausage inna bun? Guaranteed no rat? One hundred per cent organic? All pork shaved before mixing?' Why not? thought Vimes. And his stomach, liver, kidneys and lengths of intestine all supplied reasons, but he fumbled in his pocket for some change anyway. 'How much, Mr... er,' Vimes remembered in time, and made a show of looking at the name on the front of the tray, Dibbler?' 'Four pence, sergeant.' 'And that's cutting your own throat, eh?' said Vimes jovially. 'Pardon?' said Dibbler, looking puzzled. 'I said, a price like that's cutting your own throat, eh?' 'Cutting my own...?' ‘Throat,' said Vimes desperately. 'Oh.' Dibbler thought about this. 'Right. Yeah. It is. You never said a truer word. So you'll have one, then?' 'I notice it says on your tray "Dibbler Enterprises, Est",’ said Vimes. 'Shouldn't it say when you were established?' 'Should it?' Dibbler looked down at his tray. 'How long have you been going?' said Vimes, selecting a pie. 'Let's see... what year is this?' 'Er... Dancing Dog, I think.' 'Since Tuesday, then,' said Dibbler. His face brightened. 'But this is only the start, mister. This is just to get a stake together. In a year or two I'in going to be a big man in this town.' 'I believe you,' said Vimes. 'I really do.' Dibbler looked down at his tray again as Vimes strolled off. 'Cutting my own throat, cutting my own throat,’ he mumbled to himself, and seemed to like the sound of it. But then he focused more clearly on the tray and his face went pale. 'Sergeant!' he shouted. 'Don't eat the pie!' Vimes, a few yards away, stopped with the pie halfway to his mouth. 'What's wrong with it?' he said. 'Silly me. I mean, what's uniquely wrong with it?' 'Nothing! I mean... these are better!' Vimes risked another look at the tray. They all looked the same to him. Dibbler's pies quite often looked appetizing. Therein lay their one and only charm. 'I can't see any difference,' he said. 'Yeah, yeah, there is,' said Dibbler, sweat beading on his forehead. 'See? The one you got has that little pattern of pastry pigs on it? And all the others have pastry sausages? I'd hate you to think that, you know, I thought you were a pig or anything, so if you'll hand it over I'll happily give you, er, another one, that one's not the right one, er, not that it's a wrong one, but, er, with the pig and everything Vimes looked into the man's eyes. Dibbler had yet to learn that friendly blankness that thirty years of selling truly organic pies would call into being. While the man stared in horror, he took a large bite out of the pie. It was everything that he had expected and nothing that he could identify. 'Yum,' he said and, with some concentration, eyes fixed on the luckless pieman, finished it all. 'I think it's quite possible no one else makes pies like you do, Mr Dibbler,' he said, licking his fingers in case he might want to shake hands with someone later on. 'You ate it all?' said Dibbler. 'Was that wrong?' said Vimes. And now relief rose off the man like smoke off a greenwood fire. 'What? No! That's fine! Jolly good! Want another one to help it down? Halfprice?' 'No, no, one is more than enough,’ said Vimes, backing away. 'You finished every bit?' said Dibbler. 'That was right, wasn't it?' said Vimes. 'Oh, yeah. Sure. Obviously!' 'Got to be going,' said Vimes, moving on down the lane. ‘I’ll look forward to seeing you again when I've got less appetite.' He waited until he was well out of sight before taking a few random turns in the network of alleys. Then he stepped into the shadow of a deep doorway and felt in his mouth for the piece of pie that had seemed curiously unchewable even by pie standards. Usually, if you found something more than usually hard or crunchy in one of Dibbler's Famous Pork Pies, the trick was either to swallow it and hope for the best or spit it out with your eyes closed. But Vimes felt around between gum and cheek and fished out a folded piece of paper, stained with unknowable juices. He unfolded it. In smudged pencil, but still decipherable, it read: Morphic Street, 9 o'clock tonight. Password: swordfish. Swordfish? Every password was swordfish! Whenever anyone tried to think of a word that no one would ever guess, they always chose swordfish. It was just one of those strange quirks of the human mind. That explained the guilt, anyway. A plot. Another damn plot, in a city full of plots. Did he need to know about plots? Anyway, he knew about this one. Morphic Street. The famous Morphic Street Conspiracy. Ha. He pushed the greasy scrap into a pocket and then hesitated. Someone was being quiet. Overlaid on the distant street noises was a sort of hollow in the sounds, filled by careful breathing. And the hairs on the back of his neck were standing up. Quietly, he pulled the blackjack out of his rear pocket. Now, what were the options? He was a copper, and someone was creeping up on him. If they weren't a copper, then they were in the wrong (because he was a copper). If they were a copper, too, then they were one of Swing's crew and therefore in the wrong (because he was a better copper than them, and so were things floating in gutters) and therefore delivering a swift bucketful of darkness had no obvious downside. On the other hand, thieves, assassins and Swing's men, by all accounts, did a lot of creeping up on people and were probably pretty good at it, whereas the person tracking him was keeping their back so close to the wall he could hear the scraping. That meant they were probably just a member of the public with something on their mind and he was not inclined to add several ounces of lead shot simply for that reason (because he'd like to believe he wasn't that sort of copper). He settled for stepping out into the alley and saying 'Yeah?' A boy stared up at him. It had to be a boy. Nature would not have been so cruel as to do that to a girl. No single feature in itself was more than passably ugly, but the combination was greater than the sum of the parts. There was also the smell. It wasn't bad, as such. It just wasn't entirely human. There was something feral about it. 'Er...' said its pinchedup face. 'Look, tell you what, mister, you tell me where you're going and I'll stop following you, have we got a deal? Cost you no more'n a penny and that's a special price. Some people pay me a lot more'n that to stop following 'em.' Vimes continued to stare. The creature was wearing an oversize evening dress jacket, shiny with grease and greenish with age, and a top hat that must once have been trodden on by a horse. But the bits that were visible between the two were regrettably familiar. 'Oh, no...' he moaned. 'No, no, no...' 'You all right, mister?' 'No, no, no... oh, ye gods, it had to happen, didn't it...' 'You want I should go'n' fetch Mossy, mister?' Vimes pointed an accusing finger. 'You're Nobby Nobbs, right?' The urchin backed away. 'Could be. So what? Is that a crime?' He turned to run but Vimes's hand fell heavily on his shoulder. 'Some people might say so. You're Nobby Nobbs, son of Maisie Nobbs and Sconner Nobbs?' ‘Prob'ly, prob'ly! But I ain't done nothin', mister!' Vimes bent down to look into eyes that peered out at the world through a mask of grime. 'How about whizzing wipers, snitching tinklers, pulling wobblers, flogging tumblers and running rumbles?' Nobby's brow creased in genuine puzzlement. 'What's pulling wobblers mean?' he said. Vimes gave him a similar look. Street parly had changed a lot in thirty years. 'That's stealing trifles... small items. Isn't it?' 'Nah, nah, mister. That's "tottering nevils",’ said Nobby, relaxing. 'But you ain't doin' badly, for someone who's new. What's oil of angels?' Memory flicked a card. 'A bribe,’ said Vimes. 'And a dimber?' said Nobby, grinning. 'Easy. Could be a head beggar, could be just a handsome man.' 'Well done. Bet you don't know how to fleague a jade, though.' Once again, from a dusty recess, a memory unrolled. This one stuck in your mind. 'Dear me, do you know that? What a shame in one so young,’ said Vimes. That's when you want to sell a brokendown horse and have to make it a bit frisky in front of the punters, and so you take some fresh raw hot ginger, lift up its tail, and push the ginger-' 'Cor,’ said Nobby, suddenly impressed. 'Everyone says you're a real quick learner, and that's true enough. You could've been born here.’ 'Why're you following me, Nobby Nobbs?' said Vimes. The urchin held out a grubby hand. Some street language never changes. Vimes pulled out sixpence. It shone in Nobby's palm like a diamond in a chimneysweep's ear. 'One of 'em's a lady,’ he said, and grinned. The hand stayed out. ‘That was a bloody sixpence I just gave you, kid,’ Vimes growled. 'Yeah, but I got to think of-' Vimes grabbed the lapels of Nobby's greasy coat and lifted him up, and was mildly shocked to realize that there was practically no weight there. Street urchin, he thought. Urchin sounds about right - spiky, slimy and smelling slightly of rotting seaweed. But there's hundreds of them round here, clawing a living off the very margins, and as I recall Nobby was one of the sharpest. And as trustworthy as a chocolate hammer. But that's okay. There's ways to deal with that. 'How much,’ he said, 'for you to work for me, all the time?' 'I got customers to think of-' he began. 'Yeah, but I'in the one holding you up in one hand, right?' said Vimes. With his oversized boots dangling a foot above the ground, Nobby considered his position. 'All the time?' 'Right!' 'Er... for something like that I've got to be looking at a lordship every day.’ 'A dollar? Guess again!' 'Er... half a dollar?' 'Not a chance. A dollar a week, and I won't make your life the utter misery which, Nobby, I assure you I can do in so many little ways.' Still dangling, Nobby tried to work all this out. 'So... I'll be kind of like a copper, right?' he said, grinning artfully. 'Kind of.' 'Number One Suspect says it's a good life being a copper, 'cos you can pinch stuff without getting nicked.' 'He's got that right,' said Vimes. 'An' he says if anyone gives you lip, you can bop 'em one and chuck them in the Tanty,' Nobby went on. 'I'd like to be a copper one day.' 'Who's Number One Suspect?' 'That's what our mam calls Sconner, our dad. Er... payment up front, yeah?' Nobby added, hopefully. 'What do you think?' 'Ah. Right. No, eh?' 'Correct. But I'll tell you what...' He lowered Nobby to the ground. Light as a feather, he thought. 'You come with me, kid.' Ankh-Morpork was full of men living in lodgings. Anyone with a spare room rented it out. And, in addition to the darning and stitching that was turning Miss Battye into one of the highest earning seamstresses in the city, they needed something else that women were best able to supply. They needed feeding. There were plenty of hotchair eating places like the one Vimes headed for now. It sold plain food for plain men. There wasn't a menu. You ate what was put in front of you, you ate it quick, and you were glad to get it. If you didn't like it, there were plenty who did. The dishes had names like Slumgullet, Boiled Eels, Lob Scouse, Wet Nellies, Slumpie and Treacle Billy - good, solid stuff that stuck to the ribs and made it hard to get up out of the seat. They generally had a lot of turnip in, even if they weren't supposed to. Vimes elbowed his way to the counter, dragging Nobby behind him. A chalked sign said 'All You Can Eat In Ten Minutes For 10p'. Beneath it, a large woman was standing barearmed by a cauldron in which uncertain things bubbled in grey scum. She gave him an appraising look and then glanced at his sleeve. 'What can I do for you, sergeant?' she said. 'What happened to Sergeant Knock?' 'Comes in here a lot, does he?' said Vimes. 'Dinner and supper.' Her look said it all: second helpings, too, and never pays. Vimes held up Nobby. 'See this?' he said. 'Is it a monkey?' said the woman. 'Har har, very funny,' moaned Nobby, as Vimes lowered him again. 'He's going to come in here for one square meal every day,' said Vimes. 'All he can eat for ten pence.' 'Yes? And who's paying, may I ask?' 'Me.' Vimes plonked a halfdollar on the table. That's five days in advance. What's the special today? Slumgullet? It'll put hairs on his chest, when he gets a chest. Give him a big bowl. You might make a loss on this deal.' He shoved Nobby on to a bench, placed the greasy bowl in front of him, and sat down opposite. 'You said a lady,’ he said. 'Don't mess me about, Nobby.' 'Have I got to share this, sarge?' said Nobby, picking up a wooden spoon. 'It's all yours. Make sure you eat up every bit. There may be a test later,' said Vimes. 'A woman, you said.' 'Lady Meserole, sarge,' said Nobby indistinctly, through a mouthful of mixed vegetables and grease. Tosh lady. Everyone calls her Madam. Come from Genua a few months ago.' 'When did she ask you?' ‘This morning, sarge.' 'What? She just stopped you in the street?' 'Er... I've got a kind of gen'ral contract with her, sarge.' Vimes glared. It was better than speaking. Nobby wriggled uneasily. 'Fact is, sarge, she... er, caught me snickering her nolly last month. Hell's bells, sarge, she's got a punch on her like a mule! When I come round, we got to talking, and she said a keen young lad like me could be useful as, like, an ear on the street.' Vimes continued to glare, but he was impressed. Young Nobby had been a gifted pickpocket. Anyone who caught him in the act was quick indeed. He turned up the ferocity of the glare. 'All right, sarge, she said she'd turn me over to the Day Watch if I didn't,' Nobby confessed, 'and you go straight to the Tanty if a nob lays a complaint against you.' That's bloody true, thought Vimes. Private law again. 'I don't want to go to the Tanty, sarge. Sconner's in there.' And he used to break your arms, Vimes remembered. 'So why's a fine lady interested in me, Nobby?' he said aloud. 'Didn't ask. I told 'er about you an' the hurryup wagon and the Unmentionables and everything. She said you sounded fascinatin'. An' Rosie Palm's paying me a measly penny a day to keep an eye on you, too. Oh, an' Corporal Snubbs at Cable Street, he's payin' me one halfpenny to watch you, but what is a halfpenny these days, say I, so I don't watch you much on his account. Oh, and Lance-Corporal Coates, I'in getting a penny from him, too.' 'Why?' 'Dunno. He asked me this morning, too. A penny job.' Nobby belched hugely. 'Better out than in, eh? Who d'you want me to watch for you, sarge?' 'Me,' said Vimes. 'If you can fit me into your busy schedule.' 'You want me to follow you?' 'No, just tell me what people are saying about me. Keep an eye on who else is following me. Watch my back, sort of thing.' 'Right!' 'Good. Just one more thing, Nobby...' 'Yes, sarge?' said Nobby, still spooning. 'Give me back my notebook, my handkerchief and the four pennies you whizzed from my pockets, will you?' Nobby opened his mouth to protest, dribbling slumgullet, but closed it when he saw the glint in Vimes's eye. Silently, he produced the items from various horrible pockets. 'Well done,' said Vimes, getting up. 'I'in sure I don't have to tell you what'll happen to you if you try the old dippitydoodah on me again, do I, Nobby?' 'No, sarge,' said Nobby, looking down. 'Want another bowl? Have fun. I've got to go to work.' 'You can rely on me, sarge!' Oddly enough, thought Vimes as he walked back to the Watch House, I probably can. Nobby would nick anything and dodge anything but he wasn't bad. You could trust him with your life, although you'd be daft to trust him with a dollar. He purchased a packet of Pantweed's Slim Panatellas from another street trader. Carrying them around in their cardboard packet didn't feel right at all. There was a buzz in the main office as he strolled in. Watchmen were standing around in little groups. Sergeant Knock spotted Vimes and trotted over. 'Bit of a do, sir. Had a breakin last night,' he reported, with just a hint of smirk. 'Really?' said Vimes. 'What did they steal?' 'Did I say they stole anything, sir?' said the sergeant innocently. 'Well, no, you didn't,' said Vimes. 'That was me jumping to what we call a conclusion. Did they steal anything, then, or did they break in to deliver a box of chocolates and a small complimentary basket of fruit?' They stole the captain's silver inkstand,' said Knock, impervious to sarcasm. 'And it was an inside job, if you want my opinion. The door upstairs was forced but the main doors weren't. Must've been a copper what done it!' Vimes was amazed at the forensic expertise shown here. 'My word, a copper stealing?' he said. 'Yes, a terrible thing,' said Knock earnestly. 'Especially since you showed us the way yesterday, about being honest and everything.' He glanced past Vimes, and shouted. 'Attention! Officer present!' Tilden was coming down the stairs. The room fell silent, except for his hesitant steps. 'No luck, sergeant?' he said. 'Not so far, sir,' said Knock. 'I was just telling Sergeant Keel here what a terrible thing has happened.' 'It was engraved, you know,' said Tilden mournfully. 'Everyone in the regiment chipped in what they could afford. This really is very... upsetting.' 'A man'd have to be a right bastard to steal something like that, eh, sergeant?' said Knock. 'Absolutely,' said Vimes. 'I see you're pretty well organized on this one, sergeant. Have you looked everywhere?' 'Everywhere except the lockers,' said Knock. 'That's not something we'd do lightly, rummaging through a man's locker. But we're all here now, and Captain Tilden's here to see fair play, so although it's very distasteful I'll ask you, captain, for permission to rummage.' 'Yes, yes, if you must,’ said Tilden. 'I don't like the idea. It is really quite dishonourable, you know.' 'Then I think, sir, to show that we're doing this fairly,' said Knock, 'us sergeants ought to be searched first. That way no one can say we don't take it seriously.' 'Come now, sergeant,' said Tilden, with a little smile, 'I hardly think you are suspected.' 'No, sir, fair's fair,’ said Knock. 'We'll set a good example, eh, Sergeant Keel?' Vimes shrugged. Knock grinned at him, pulled out a bundle of keys and beckoned to Lance-Corporal Coates. 'You do the honours, Ned,’ he said, beaming. 'Me first, o'course.' The door was unlocked. The contents of Knock's locker were the usual unsavoury mess of lockers everywhere, but there was certainly no silver inkstand. If there were, it would have turned black after a single day. 'Well done. Now Sergeant Keel's, please, Ned.’ Knock's friendly beam fixed on Vimes as the policeman fumbled with the lock. Vimes stared back, face blank as a slate, as the door creaked open. 'Oh dear, what have we here?' said Knock, without even bothering to look. 'It's a sack, sarge,’ said Coates. 'Something heavy in it, too.’ 'Oh dear me,’ said Knock, still staring at Vimes. 'Open it up, lad. Gently. We don't want anything to get damaged, eh?' There was a rustle of hessian, and then: 'Er... it's half a brick,’ Ned reported. 'What?' 'A half brick, sir.’ 'I'in saving up for a house,’ said Vimes. There were one or two sniggers from the assembled men, but some of the faster thinkers were suddenly looking worried. They know, thought Vimes. Well, lads, welcome to Vimes's Roulette. You spun the wheel and now you've got to guess where the ball is going to go...’ 'Are you sure?' said Knock, turning to the open locker. 'It's just a sack, sarge,' said Ned. 'And half a brick.' 'Is there a loose panel or something?' said Knock desperately. 'What, in a sack, sarge?' 'Well, that seems to be our lockers,' said Vimes, rubbing his hands together. 'Who's next, Sergeant Knock?' Round and round the little ball goes, and where it stops, nobody knows... 'Y'know, person'ly, I think the captain's right, I don't think any of the men would-' Knock began, and faltered. Vimes's stare could have hammered rivets. 'I believe, sergeant, that since we have begun this, it should be concluded,' said Tilden. That is only fair.' Vimes took a couple of steps towards Coates and held out his hand. 'Keys,' he said. Coates glared at him. ‘The keys, lancecorporal,' said Vimes. He snatched them from Coates's hand, and turned to the line of lockers. 'Right,' he said. 'Let's start with the wellknown archcriminal, Lance-Constable Vimes...' Door after door was opened. The lockers, while possibly of interest to anyone studying the smells of unwashed clothing and the things that could grow on neglected socks, failed to produce a single silver inkstand. It did turn up The Amorous Adventurs of Molly Clapper in Corporal Colon's locker, however. Vimes stared at the crude and grubby engravings like a longlost friend. He remembered that book; it had gone around the Watch House for years, and as a young man he had learned a lot from some of the illustrations, although a good deal of what he'd learned had turned out to be wrong. Fortunately, Captain Tilden's view was blocked and Vimes shoved the greasy book back on the shelf and said to the redeared Colon: 'Studying theory, eh, Fred? Good man. Practice makes perfect.' Then he turned, at last, to Coates's locker. The man was watching him like a hawk. The scratched door creaked open. Every neck craned to see. There was a stack of old notebooks, some civilian clothing and a small sack of what, when it was tipped out on to the floor, turned out to be laundry. 'Surprised?' said the lancecorporal. Not half as much as you, Vimes thought. He winked at Coates, and turned away. 'Can I have a word with you in your office, captain?' 'Yes, sergeant, I suppose so,' said Tilden, looking around. 'Oh, dear...’ Vimes gave the man some time to climb the stairs, then followed him into his office and tactfully closed the door. 'Well, sergeant?' said Tilden, collapsing into his chair. 'Have you looked everywhere, sir?' said Vimes. 'Of course, man!' 'I mean, sir, perhaps you put it in a desk drawer? Or the safe, perhaps?' 'Certainly not! I sometimes put it in the safe at weekends, but I'in... sure I didn't do that last night.' Vimes noted the subtle uncertainty. He was doing a bad thing, he knew. Tilden was nearly seventy. At a time like that, a man learned to treat his memory as only a rough guide to events. 'I find, sir, that when a busy man has a lot on his plate he can do things that subsequently slip his mind,’ he said. I know I do, he added to himself. I could put my house keys down in a bare room and not find them thirty seconds later. 'We've all been under a lot of pressure lately,' he added, knowing that Tilden frequently fell asleep during the afternoon until Snouty coughed very loudly outside the door before taking him his cocoa. 'Well, that's true,' said Tilden, turning desperate eyes to him. 'All this curfew business. Very... unsettling. Forget my own head if it wasn't nailed on, what?' He turned and looked at the green safe. 'Only had it a couple of months,’ he muttered. 'I suppose I... look the other way, will you, sergeant? May as well sort this out.’ Vimes obligingly turned his back. There was some clicking, and a creak, and then an intake of breath. Tilden got to his feet, holding the silver inkstand. 'I believe I've made a fool of myself, sergeant,’ he said. No, I've made a fool of you, thought Vimes, fervently wishing' he hadn't. I'd intended to drop it into Coates's locker, but I couldn't... ... not after what I found in there. ‘Tell you what, sir,’ he volunteered, 'we could say it was a kind of test.’ 'I don't tell lies as a rule, Keel!' said the captain, but added, 'I appreciate the suggestion, nevertheless. Anyway, I know I'in not as young as I was. Perhaps it's time to retire,’ he sighed. 'I have to say I've been considering it for some time.’ 'Oh, don't talk like that, sir,’ said Vimes, far more jovially than he felt. 'I can't see you retiring.’ 'Yes, I suppose I should see things through,’ Tilden mumbled, walking back to his desk. 'Do you know, sergeant, that some of the men think you are a spy?' 'Who for?' said Vimes, reflecting that Snouty delivered more than cocoa. 'Lord Winder, I assume,’ said Tilden. 'Well, we all work for him, sir. But I don't report to anyone but you, if that's any help.’ Tilden looked up at him and shook his head sadly. 'Spy or not, Keel, I don't mind telling you that some of the orders we've been getting lately have... not been thought out properly, in my opinion, what?' He gave Vimes a glare as if defying him to produce the redhot thumbscrews there and then. Vimes could see how much the admission that abduction and torture and conspiracy to criminalize honest citizens might not be acceptable government policy was costing the old man. Tilden hadn't been brought up to think like that. He'd ridden off under the flag of Ankh-Morpork to fight the Cheese-Eaters of Quirm or Johnny Klatchian or whatever enemies had been selected by those higher up the chain of command with never a second thought about the Tightness of the cause, because that sort of thinking could slow a soldier down. Tilden had grown up knowing that the people at the top were right. That was why they were at the top. He didn't have the mental vocabulary to think like a traitor, because only traitors thought like that. 'Haven't been here long enough to comment, sir,' said Vimes. 'Don't know how you do things here.' 'Not like we used to,' mumbled Tilden. 'Just as you say, sir.' 'Snouty says you know your way around remarkably well, sergeant. For someone new to the city.' That was a sentence with a hook on the end, but Tilden was an inexperienced angler. 'One nick is pretty much like any other, sir,' said Vimes. 'And, of course, I've visited the city before.' 'Of course. Of course,’ said Tilden hurriedly. 'Well... thank you, sergeant. If you could, er, explain things to the men? I'd be grateful 'Yes, sir. Of course.' Vimes shut the door carefully behind him and went down the steps two at a time. The squad below had barely moved. He clapped his hands like a schoolteacher. 'C'mon, c'mon, you've got patrols to go to! Get moving! Not you, Sergeant Knock - a word in the yard, please!' Vimes didn't bother to wait to see if the man would follow him. He went out into the late afternoon sunshine, leaned against the wall, and waited. Ten years ago, he'd have- correction, ten years ago, if he was sober, he'd have taught Knock a few lessons about who's boss with several wellaimed punches. And that was certainly the custom these days. Scraps between watchmen hadn't been uncommon when Vimes was a constable. But that wouldn't do for Sergeant Keel. Knock stepped out, inflated with mad, terrified bravado. When Vimes raised his hand, the man actually flinched. 'Cigar?' said Vimes. 'Er...' 'I don't drink,’ said Vimes. 'But you can't beat a good cigar.' 'I... er... don't smoke,' mumbled Knock. 'Look, about that inkstand-' 'D'you know, he'd gone and put it in that safe of his?' said Vimes, smiling. 'He had?' 'And then forgotten about it,' said Vimes. 'Happens to us all, Winsborough. A man's mind starts to wander, he's never quite certain of what he's done.' Vimes maintained the friendly grin. It was as good as raining blows. Besides, he'd given Knock his correct name. The man never used it in public, for fear of the panic it might cause. 'Just thought I'd put your mind at rest about it,’ said Vimes. Sergeant Winsborough Knock shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. He wasn't certain whether he'd got away with something, or had just ended up getting deeper into something else. ‘Tell me more about Lance-Corporal Coates,’ said Vimes. Knock's face was, for a moment, an agony of calculation. And then he adopted his usual policy: when you think there's wolves on your trail, throw someone off the sleigh. 'Ned, sir?' he said. 'Hard worker, of course, does his job - but a bit tricky, between you and me.' 'How? And you don't have to call me "sir", Winsborough. Not out here.' 'He reckons Jack's as good as his master, if you know what I mean. Reckons he's as good as anyone. Bit of a troublemaker in that respect.' 'Barrackroom lawyer?' ‘That sort of thing, yes.' 'Rebel sympathies?' Knock turned his eyes up innocently. 'Could be, sir. Wouldn't like to see the lad in trouble, o'course.' You think I'in a spy for the Unmentionables, thought Vimes. And you're throwing Coates to me. The other day you were pushing him for promotion. You little worm. 'Worth keeping an eye on, then?' he said aloud. 'Yessir.' 'Interesting,' said Vimes, always a worrying word to the uncertain. It certainly worried Knock, and Vimes thought: my gods, perhaps Vetinari feels like this all the time... 'Some of us, er, go round to the Broken Drum after the shift's over,’ said Knock. 'It's open round the clock. I don't know if you-' 'I don't drink,' said Vimes. 'Oh. Yes. You said,' said Knock. 'And now I'd better pick up young Sam and get out on patrol,' said Vimes. 'Nice to have this little talk with you, Winsborough.' He strode past, taking care not to look back. Sam was still waiting in the main office, but was sucked into his wake as he swept past. 'I say, who's the skirt up there with old Folly?' The prefects looked up. On the raised platform at the end of the noisy hall Doctor Follett, Master of Assassins and ex officio headmaster of the Guild School, was in animated conversation with, indeed, a lady. The vivid purple of her dress made a splash of colour in the vast room, where black predominated, and the elegant whiteness of his hair shone like a beacon in the darkness. It was a Guild of Assassins, after all. Black was what you wore. The night was black and so were you. And black had such style, and an Assassin without style, everyone agreed, was just a highly paid arrogant thug. The prefects were all over eighteen and, therefore, allowed to visit parts of the city that the younger boys weren't even supposed to know about. Their pimples no longer erupted at the sight of a woman. Now, their eyes narrowed. Most of them had already learned that the world was an oyster that could be opened with gold if a blade did not suffice. 'Probably a parent,' said one of them. 'I wonder who's the lucky boy?' 'I know who she is,' said 'Ludo' Ludorum, head of Viper House. 'I heard some of the masters talking earlier. She's Madam Roberta Meserole. Bought the old house in Easy Street. They say she made a pile of money in Genua and wants to settle down here. Looking for investment opportunities, apparently.' 'Madam?' said Downey. 'An honorific or a job description?' 'In Genua? Could be both,' said someone, to general laughter. 'Folly's certainly plying her with champagne,' said Downey. They're on their third bottle. What have they got to talk about?' 'Politics,’ said Ludo. 'Everyone knows Winder isn't going to do the decent thing, so it'll be down to us. And Folly's annoyed because we've lost three chaps up there already. Winder's pretty cunning. There's guards and soldiers everywhere you look.' 'Winder's a scag,' said Downey. 'Yes, Downey. You call everyone a scag,' said Ludo calmly. 'Well, everyone is.' Downey turned back to the table and a movement - or, rather, a lack of movement - caught his eye. Towards the far end one young Assassin was sitting reading, with a book stand positioned in front of his plate. He was intent on it, an empty fork halfway to his mouth. With a wink at the others, Downey selected an apple from the bowl in front of him, stealthily drew his arm back, and let fly with malicious accuracy. The fork moved like a snake's tongue, and skewered the apple out of the air. The reader turned a page. Then, eyes never leaving the print, he delicately brought the fork up to his mouth and took a bite out of the apple. The rest of the table looked back at Downey, and there were one or two chuckles. The young man's brow furrowed. Assault having failed, he was forced to try scathing wit, which he did not have. 'You really are a scag, Dogbotherer,' he said. 'Yes, Downey,' said the reader levelly, his eyes still intent on the page. 'When are you going to pass some decent exams, Dogbotherer?' 'I really couldn't say, Downey.’ 'Never killed anyone, right, Dogbotherer?' 'Probably not, Downey.' The reader turned another page. That little sound infuriated Downey even more. 'What's that you're reading?' he snapped. 'Robertson, show me what the Dogbotherer is reading, will you? Come on, pass it up.' The boy next to the one currently known as Dogbotherer snatched the book off the stand and threw it along the length of the table. The reader sighed and sat back as Downey gave the pages a cursory flick. 'Well, look here, you fellows,' he said. 'Dogbotherer is reading a picture book.' He held it open. 'Colour it in yourself with your paints or crayons, did you, Dogbotherer?' The former reader stared up at the ceiling. 'No, Downey. It was handcoloured to his instructions by Miss Emelia Jane, the sister of Lord Winstanleigh Greville-Pipe, the author. It says so on the frontispiece, you will note.' 'And here's a lovely picture of a tiger,' Downey ploughed on. 'Why're you looking at pictures, Dogbotherer?' 'Because Lord Winstanleigh has some interesting theories on the art of concealment, Downey,' said the reader. 'Huh? Black and orange tiger in green trees?' said Downey, turning the pages roughly. 'Big red ape in green forest? Black and white zebra in yellow grass? What's this, a manual on how not to do it?' Again there was a round of chuckles, but they were forced. Downey had friends because he was big and rich, but sometimes he was embarrassing to have around. 'As a matter of fact Lord Winstanleigh also has an interesting point to make on the dangers of intuitive-' ‘This a Guild book, Dogbotherer?' Downey demanded. 'No, Downey. It was privately engraved some years ago and I succeeded in tracing a copy in-' Downey's hand shot out. The book whirled away, causing a table full of younger boys to scatter, and landed at the back of the fireplace. The diners on the top tables looked round, and then turned back in disinterest. Flames licked up. For a moment, the tiger burned brightly. 'Rare book, was it?' said Downey, grinning. 'I think it may now be said to be nonexistent,’ said the one known as Dogbotherer. 'That was the only extant copy. Even the engraved plates have been melted down.' 'Don't you ever get upset, Dogbotherer?' 'Oh yes, Downey,' said the reader. He pushed his chair back and stood up. 'And now, I believe, I will have an early night.' He nodded at the table. 'Good evening, Downey, gentlemen...' 'You're a scag, Vetinari.' 'Just as you say, Downey.' Vimes thought better when his feet were moving. The mere activity calmed him down and shook his thoughts into order. Apart from the curfew and manning the gates, the Night Watch didn't do a lot. This was partly because they were incompetent, and partly because no one expected them to be anything else. They walked the streets, slowly, giving anyone dangerous enough time to saunter away or melt into the shadows, and then rang the bell to announce to a sleeping world, or at any rate a world that had been asleep, the fact that all was, despite appearances, well. They also rounded up the quieter sort of drunk and the more docile kinds of stray cattle. They think I'in a spy for Winder? thought Vimes. Spying on the Treacle Mine Road Watch? It's like spying on dough. Vimes had flatly refused to carry a bell. Young Sam had acquired a lighter one, but out of deference to Vimes's crisply expressed wishes, kept the clapper muffled with a duster. Is the wagon going out tonight, sarge?' said young Sam, as the twilight faded towards night. 'Yes. Colon and Waddy are on it.' 'Taking people to Cable Street?' 'No,' said Vimes. 'I told them to take everyone to the Watch House and Snouty'll fine 'em half a dollar and take their name and address. Perhaps we'll have a raffle.' 'We'll get into trouble, sarge.' ‘The curfew's just to frighten people. It doesn't mean much.' 'Our mum says there's going to be trouble soon,' said Sam. 'She heard it in the fish shop. Everyone says it's going to be Snapcase at the palace. He listens to the people.' 'Yeah, right,' said Vimes. And I listen to the thunder. But I don't do anything about it. 'Our mum says everyone'll have a voice in the city when Snapcase is the Patrician,’ Sam went on. 'Keep the voice down, kid.' ‘The day'll come when the angry masses will rise up and throw off their shekels, the fishmonger says,' said Sam. If I was a spy for Swing, that fishmonger would be gutted, Vimes thought. Quite the revolutionary, our mum. He wondered if it was at all possible to give this idiot some lessons in basic politics. That was always the dream, wasn't it? 'I wish I'd known then what I know now'? But when you got older you found out that you now wasn't you then. You then was a twerp. You then was what you had to be to start out on the rocky road of becoming you now, and one of the rocky patches on that road was being a twerp. A much better dream, one that'd ensure sounder sleep, was not to know now what you didn't know then. 'What's your dad do?' he said, as if he didn't know. 'He passed away a long time ago, sarge,' said Sam. 'When I was little. Run down by a cart when he was crossing the street, our mum said.' What a champion liar she was, too. 'Sorry to hear that,' said Vimes. 'Er, our mum says you'd be welcome round to tea one night, what with you being all by yourself in a strange city, sarge.' 'Would you like me to give you another tip, lad?' said Vimes. 'Yes, sarge, I'in learning a lot.' 'Lanceconstables do not invite their sergeants round to tea. Don't ask me why. It's one of those things that does not happen.' 'You don't know our mum, sarge.' Vimes coughed. 'Mums are mums, lanceconstable. They don't like to see men managing by themselves, in case that sort of thing catches on.' Besides, I know she's been up in Small Gods these past ten years. I'd rather put one hand flat on the table and give Swing the hammer than walk down Cockbill Street today. 'Well,' said Sam, 'she says she's going to make you some Distressed Pudding, sarge. She makes great Distressed Pudding, our mum.' The best, thought Vimes, staring into the middle distance. Oh, gods. The very best. No one has ever done it better. 'That'd be... very kind of her,' he managed. 'Sarge,’ said Sam after a while, 'why are we patrolling Morphic Street? It's not our beat.' 'I switched beats. I ought to see as much of the city as possible,’ said Vimes. 'Not a lot to see in Morphic Street, sarge.' Vimes looked at the shadows. 'Oh, I don't know,’ he said. 'It's amazing what you see if you concentrate.' He pulled Sam into a doorway. 'Just whisper, lad,’ he said. 'Now, look down there at the house opposite. See that doorway with the deeper shadow?' 'Yes, sarge,’ whispered Sam. 'Why's it such a deep shadow, d'you think?' 'Dunno, sarge.' ' 'cos someone in black is standing in it, that's why. So we're going to walk a little further and then we'll just turn around and go back round the corner. We're heading back to the station like good boys because our cocoa's getting cold, see?' 'Right, sarge.' They ambled back around the corner, and Vimes let them walk sufficiently far up the street that the footsteps died away naturally. 'Okay, this is far enough,’ he said. Give Sam his due, Vimes thought, he knew how to stand still. He'd have to teach him how to unfocus himself, too, so that you could very nearly fade out of sight on a cloudy day. Had Keel taught him that? After a certain age, memory was indeed an untrustworthy thing... The city's clocks chimed the threequarterhour. 'What time's curfew?' Vimes whispered. 'Nine o'clock, sarge.' 'Must be nearly that now,’ said Vimes. 'No, it's only just gone a quarter to nine, sarge.' 'Well, it's going to take me a few minutes to get back. I want you to sneak back after me and wait at the corner. When it starts, you come running and banging that bell of yours.' 'When what starts, sarge? Sarge?' But Vimes was walking noiselessly down the road. He made a note to tip Snouty a dollar. These boots were like foot gloves. Torches spluttered on the junction, destroying the night vision of anyone who looked in that direction. Vimes padded around its dark penumbra and sidled along the buildings on the far wall until he was level with the door. Then he swung around the frame and shouted. 'You're nicked, chum!' '--!' said the shadow. 'And that's offensive language, sir, such as I would not wish my young lanceconstable to hear!' Behind him he heard Lance-Constable Vimes advancing at a run, ringing his bell madly and shouting, 'Nine o'clock and all's not well at all!' And there were other sounds, too, the ones Vimes had been halflistening for, of doors slamming and distant footsteps hurrying away. . 'You bloody fool!' said the struggling figure in black. 'What the hell are you playing at!' He pushed at Vimes, who nevertheless tightened his grip. 'That, sir, is assault upon a Watch officer,’ said Vimes. 'I'in a Watch officer too, you damn flatfoot! From Cable Street!' 'Where's your uniform?' 'We don't wear uniforms!' 'Where's your badge!' 'And we don't carry badges!' 'Hard to see why I shouldn't think you is a common thief then, sir. You was casing that house over there,’ said Vimes, happy in the role of big, thick, but horribly unshakeable copper. 'We seen you.' ‘There was going to be a meeting of dangerous anarchists!' 'What kind of a religion is that, sir?' Vimes patted the man's belt. 'Oh, dear, what have we here? A very nasty dagger. See this, Lance-Constable Vimes? A weapon, no doubt about it! That's against the law. Carried after dark, which is even more against the law! And it's a concealed weapon!' 'What do you mean, concealed?' screamed the twisting prisoner. 'It was in a bloody sheath!' 'Bloody, eh? Used it already, have you, sir?' said Vimes. He thrust a hand into a pocket of the man's black coat. 'And... what's this? A little black velvet roll with, I do believe, a complete set of lock picks? That's Going Equipped for Burglary, that is.' 'They're not mine and you know it!' the man snarled. 'Are you sure, sir?' said Vimes. 'Yes! Because I keep mine in my inside pocket, you bastard.' 'That's Using Language liable to cause a Breach of the Peace,' said Vimes. 'Huh? You idiots have scared everyone away! Who's going to be offended?' 'Well, I might be. I'in sure you don't want that, sir.' 'You're that stupid sergeant we've been told about, aren't you,’ growled the man. 'Too thick to see what's going on, right? Well, this is where you find out, mister...' He twisted out of Vimes's grip, and there were a couple of sliding, metallic noises in the gloom. Wrist knives, thought Vimes. Even Assassins think they're an idiot's weapon. He took a couple of steps back as the man danced towards him, both knives waving. 'Can't think of a dumb answer to this one, eh, brownjob?' To his horror Vimes saw, behind the man, the shape of Sam raising his bell very slowly. 'Don't hit him!' he shouted, and then lashed out with his boot as the man's head turned. 'If you're going to fight, fight,’ he said, as the man toppled forward. 'If you're going to talk, talk. Don't try to talk and fight. And right now, I caution you to do neither.' 'I could have got him easily, sarge,’ Sam complained, as Vimes fished out his handcuffs and knelt down. 'I could have blown him out like a light.' 'Head injuries can be fatal, lanceconstable. We serve the public trust.' 'But you kicked him in the privates, sarge!' Because I don't want you to be a target, thought Vimes, as he tightened the cuffs. That means you don't belt one of them over the head. You stay as the dim sidekick, in the background. That way you survive, and that way, maybe I do too. 'You don't have to fight the way the other bloke wants you to fight,’ he said, hefting the man on to his shoulders. 'Give me a hand here... up weee go. Okay, I've got him. You lead the way.' 'Back to the Watch House?' said Sam. 'You're arresting an Unmentionable?' 'Yes. I just hope we'll meet some of our lads on the way. Let this be a lesson, lad. There aren't any rules. Not when there's knives out. You take him down, quietly if possible, without hurting him much if possible, but you take him down. He comes at you with a knife, you bring your stick down on his arm. He comes at you with his hands, you use your knee or your boot or your helmet. Your job is to keep the peace. You make it peaceful as quickly as you can.' 'Yes, sir. But there's going to be trouble, sarge.' 'Straightforward arrest. Even coppers have to obey the law, what there is of it...' 'Yes, sarge, but I mean there's going to be trouble right now, sarge.' They'd neared the end of the street, and there was a group of figures there. They looked like men with a purpose; there was something about the stance, the way they were standing in the road, and, of course, the occasional glint of light on a weapon also gave a hint. There was a snapping of little doors as dark lanterns were opened. Of course he wouldn't have been alone, Vimes scolded himself. His job was just to watch until they'd all gone in. And then he'd just shlep away to call in the heavy gang. There must be a dozen of 'em. We're going to get cheesed!’ * * Like creamed, but it goes on for a lot longer. 'What'll we do, sarge?' whispered Sam. 'Ring your bell.' 'But they've spotted us!' 'Ring the damn bell, will you? And keep walking! And don't stop ringing!' The Unmentionables spread out now, and as Vimes trudged towards them he saw several figures at each end of the line slip around behind him. That's how it'd go. They'd be like the muggers up in Scoone Avenue, talking nice and friendly while their eyes said, hey, you know our mates are right behind you and we know you know and it's fun watching you trying to pretend that this is just a civilized conversation when you know that any minute you're going to get it right in the kidneys. We feel your pain. And we like it... He stopped walking. It was that or walk into someone. And all along the street doors and windows were opening as the clanging of the bell roused the neighbourhood. "evenin',' he said. ' 'evenin', your grace,' said a voice out of history. 'Nice to see an old friend, eh?' Vimes groaned. The worst that could happen had happened. 'Carcer?' 'That's Sergeant Carcer, thank you. Funny how things work out, eh? Turns out I'in prime copper material, haha. They gave me a new suit and a sword and twentyfive dollars a month, just like that. Lads, this is the man I told you about.' 'Why d'you call him your grace, sarge?' said one of the shadowy men. Carcer's eyes never left Vimes's face. 'It's a joke. Where we come from, everyone used to call him Duke,’ he said. Vimes saw him slip a hand into a pocket. It came out holding something that had a brassy glint. 'It was a sort of nickname, eh... Duke? Stop the kid ringing the damn bell, will you?' 'Knock it off, lanceconstable,’ Vimes muttered. The noise had worked, anyway. This little tableau had a silent audience now. Not that an audience would make any difference to Carcer. He'd cheerfully stab you to death in the centre of a crowded arena and then look around and say, 'Who, me?' But the men behind him were edgy, like cockroaches wondering when the light was going to go on. 'Don't you worry, Duke,' Carcer said, sliding his fingers into the brass knuckles, 'I've told the boys about you and me. How we, hah, go back a long way and all that, haha.' 'Yeah?' said Vimes. It wasn't prizewinning repartee, but Carcer obviously wanted to talk. 'And how did you get made a sergeant, Carcer?' 'I heard where they were looking for coppers with fresh ideas,’ said Carcer. 'And that nice Captain Swing hisself talked to me and said he was in no doubt I was an honest man who had been unlucky. Measured me up, he did, with his calipers and his rules and jommetry and he said it proved I was not a criminal type. It was all the fault of my environment, he said.' 'What, you mean all those dead bodies everywhere you went?' said Vimes. 'Nice one, Duke, haha.' 'And you had fresh ideas, did you?' 'Well, he liked one of 'em,' said Carcer, narrowing his eyes. "Turned out he didn't know the ginger beer trick.' The ginger beer trick. Well, that just about put the tin lid on it. Torturers down the ages hadn't found the ginger beer trick, and Carcer had handed it over to a patent maniac like Captain Swing. ‘The ginger beer trick,' said Vimes. 'Well done. Carcer. You're just what Swing's been looking for. The complete bastard.' Carcer grinned as if he'd been awarded a small prize. 'Yeah, I already told 'em how you got a down on me for stealing a loaf of bread.' 'Come on, Carcer,’ said Vimes. That's not you. You never pinched a loaf of bread in your life. Murdering the baker and stealing the bakery, that'd be your style.' 'He's a card, eh?' said Carcer, winking at his men and nodding towards Vimes. Then, in one movement, he spun around and punched the man beside him in the stomach. 'You don't call me sarge,' he hissed. It's sergeant, understand?' On the floor, the man groaned. I'll take that as a yes, then, haha,' said Carcer, slipping the brass knuckles back into his pocket. 'Now the thing is... Duke... what you have there is one of my men, so how about you hand him over and we'll say no more about it?' 'What's happening, sarge?' The voice was coming from some way behind Vimes. He turned. It was Wiglet and Scutts. They looked like men who'd been running but were now trying to affect a nonchalant swagger. It was getting less nonchalant and considerably less swaggery as they eyed up the Unmentionables. The frantically ringing bell. That's what they'd always used. All the coppers who heard it would converge on it, because an Officer was in Trouble. Of course, they wouldn't necessarily help him get out of trouble, not if the odds weren 't right. This was the old Night Watch, after all. But at least they could fish him out of the river or cut him down and see he got a decent burial. There was a rumble from further up the street and the rattling bulk of the hurryup turned the corner, with Fred Colon at the reins and Constable Waddy hanging on behind. Vimes heard the shouts. 'What's up, Bill?' 'It's Keel and Vimesy,' Wiglet called back. 'Hurry up!' Vimes tried to avoid Carcer's eyes, tried to appear as if nothing had happened, tried to pretend that the world had not suddenly cracked open and let in the cold winds of infinity. But Carcer was smart. He glanced at Vimes, looked at Sam. 'Vimesy?' he said. 'Your name Sam Vimes, mister?' 'I ain't saying anything,' said Lance-Constable Vimes stoutly. 'Well well, well, well, well,' said Carcer happily. 'Now here's a nice howd'yerdo, eh? Something for a chap to think about, and no mistake, haha.' There was a creak as the hurryup wagon rolled to a stop. Carcer glanced up at the round, pale face of Corporal Colon. 'You just go about your business, corporal,' said Carcer. 'You just leave now.' Colon swallowed. Vimes could see his Adam's apple bob as it tried to hide. 'Er... we heard the ringing,' he said. 'Just a bit of high spirits,' said Carcer. 'Nothing that need worry you. We're all coppers here, right? I wouldn't like there to be any trouble. There's just been a bit of a misunderstanding, that's all. Sergeant Keel here was just going to hand over my friend there, right, sergeant? No hard feelings, eh? You just happened to blunder into a little operation of ours. Best not to talk about it. Just you hand him over and we'll call it quits.' Every head turned to Vimes. The sensible thing would be to hand the man over. He knew it. And then - probably - Carcer would go away, and he didn't want that man any closer to young Sam than he could help. But Carcer would come back. Oh, yes. Things like Carcer always came back, especially when they thought they'd found a weakness. That wasn't the worst part. The worst part was that Vimes had changed things. There had been the Morphic Street Conspiracy. The Unmentionables had raided it. Several people had died but some had got away, and then there had been a few days of horrible confusion and then it ended when-But young Sam Vimes hadn't been anywhere near Morphic Street that night. Keel had been teaching him to shake hands with doorknobs over on the other side of the Shades. But you wanted to be clever, Duke. You wanted to put a spoke in the wheel and smack a few heads, didn't you? And now Carcer's in it as well and you're out of the history books and travelling without a map... Carcer was still grinning his cheerful grin. Here and now, more than anything else, Vimes wanted to see the end of that grin. 'Well, I'd like to oblige, surge,' he said. 'I really would. But I've pinched him now, so I've got to take him back to my nick and do the paperwork. He might well be able to help us with our inquiries into a number of unsolved crimes.' 'Such as?' said Carcer. 'Dunno,' said Vimes. 'Depends on what we've got. We'll take him down the cells, give him a cup of tea, chat to him about this and that... you know how it is. A man can get quite chatty after a cup of tea. Or carbonated beverage of his choice, of course.' There was a snigger from among the members of the Night Watch, although Vimes hoped none of them knew what the last sentence meant. Carcer's smile dissolved. 'I said he's one of my men, on official business, and I am a sergeant,' he said. 'And I am Sergeantat-Arms and ,’ said we'll hand him over to you at the nick, Sergeant Carcer. Officially.' Carcer nodded towards the lanceconstable, so imperceptibly that only Vimes saw it. And he lowered his voice. 'But suddenly I've got all the aces, Duke,’ he said. 'But suddenly I'in not playing cards, Carcer. Now, we could have a barney right here and now and, y'know, I'in not sure which way it'd go. But I'in sure as hell that you wouldn't be a sergeant tomorrow. And if you think you've got all the aces, you can afford to raise the stakes.' Carcer stared at him for a moment. Then he winked, and half turned away. 'I told you he's a caution, eh?' he said to the multitude. He gave Vimes a conspiratorial dig in the ribs. 'Always trying it on! Okay, sergeant... atarms, we'll do it your way. Got to give you brownjobs something to do, haha, eh? I'll send a couple of the lads down for him in an hour or so.' That's right, give me time to sweat on whether I'll pop into nonexistence if you cut the lad's throat, Vimes thought. Trouble is, I am sweating. He straightened up, and beckoned to the hurryup wagon. 'Me and my lads will all take him back,' he said. Time for our cocoa break, see? Give me a hand up with him, Waddy. Got any other passengers, Fred?' 'Just a drunk, sarge. Been spewing everywhere.' 'Okay. We'll put the prisoner in the back and we'll all hang on to the outside.' Vimes nodded at Carcer. 'I'in sure we'll meet again soon, sergeant.' 'Yeah,' said Carcer, and there was that impish grin again. 'And you be sure to look after yourself, d'you hear?' Vimes leapt on to the side of the wagon as it rattled past, and didn't even look back. That was one thing about Carcer, at least - he wouldn't shoot you in the back if he thought there was a reasonable chance, pretty soon, of cutting your throat. After a while, Constable Wiglet, hanging on beside him as the wagon rocked, said: 'What happened back there, sarge? You know that bloke?' 'Yes. He's killed two coppers. One that tried to arrest him and one who was off duty and eating a pie. Killed other people, too.' 'But he's a copper!' 'Swing gave him a job, Wiglet.' Suddenly, the rattle of the wheels sounded much louder. All the other watchmen were listening very intently. 'You been in the Watch long, constable?' said Vimes. 'Two years, sarge,' said Wiglet. 'Used to be a fruit porter down the market but I got a bad back and a bad chest what with all the cold mornings.' 'I never heard about coppers being killed,’ said Lance- Constable Vimes. 'It wasn't here, kid. It was a long way away.' 'You were there?' ‘They were coppers I knew, yes.’ Again, the mood on the cart changed. There was no obvious sound from the watchmen but over the wagon hung the word: 'Ahhah...' 'So you came here to track him down...?' said Wiglet. 'Something like that.’ 'We heard you came from Pseudopolis, sarge,’ said Sam. ~ 'I've come from a lot of places.’ 'Wow!' said Sam. 'He killed a copper who was eating a pie?' said Fred Colon, from the box. 'Yep.’ 'What a bastard! What kind of pie was it?' 'Witnesses didn't say,’ Vimes lied. This was old Ankh-Morpork. The dwarfs here right now were a tiny minority who kept their heads down... well, further down than usual. There certainly were no allnight rat pie shops. Wiglet had something on his mind. 'They're going to come for that bloke you picked up,’ he said. 'Want the rest of the night off, constable?' said Vimes. There was some nervous laughter from the rest of the crew. Poor devils, thought Vimes. You joined up 'cos the wages were good and there was no heavy lifting, and suddenly it's going to be difficult. 'What're you going to charge our man with, sarge?' said Sam. 'Attempted assault on a copper. You saw the knives.’ 'You did kick him, though.’ 'Right, I forgot. We'll do him for resisting arrest, too.’ There was some more laughter. We who think we are about to die will laugh at anything. What a bunch. I know you well, gentlemen. You're in it for the quiet life and the pension, you don't hurry too much in case the danger is still around when you get there, and the most you ever expected to face was an obstreperous drunk or a particularly difficult cow. Most of you aren't even coppers, not in your head. In the sea of adventure, you're bottomfeeders. And now, it's war... and you're in the middle. Not on either side. You're the stupid little band of brownjobs. You're beneath contempt. But believe me, boys - you'll rise. For a minute or two after Morphic Street went quiet nothing moved and nothing happened. Then a coach came around the corner. It was a particularly fine one, drawn by two horses. Its lamps were torches, and as the coach bounced on the cobbles the zigzagging flames seemed to trail for a moment in the air, and appeared to have a smoky quality. In so far as they revealed anything, these suggested that the coach had been done up in purple livery. It also seemed to be rather heavy on its wheels. It pulled to a halt at the next doorway down from the one where Vimes had performed his arrest. Vimes, who thought he knew a lot about being a shadow, would have been surprised to see two dark figures step out of the doorway's darkness into the light of the torch. The coach door swung open. 'Strange news, kind lady,' said one of the shadows. 'Very strange news, dearie,' said the other shadow. They climbed up into the coach, which sped off. Vimes was impressed at the way the men reacted back at the Watch House, despite the lack of any command from him. Wiglet and Scutts jumped down as soon as the wagon was in the yard and dragged the gates across. Inside, Colon and Waddy pulled the shutters across the windows. Waddy went into the armoury and came out with an armful of crossbows. It was all done with speed and, for the men concerned, precision. Vimes nudged his younger self. 'Make the cocoa, will you, kid?' he said. 'I don't want to miss the show.' He sat down at his desk and put his feet up as Colon locked the door and Waddy pulled the bar across. This is happening, he thought, but it didn't happen before. Not exactly like this. This time, the Morphic Street mob did a runner. They weren't ambushed in their meeting. There wasn't a fight. The sight of all those coppers must've scared them rigid. They weren't much anyway, just sloganeers and skivers and metooists, the people who crowd behind the poor slob who's the spokesman shouting 'yeah, right' and leg it up an alley when the law gets rough. But some had died in the ambush, and some fought back, and one thing led, as always, to another. Except, this time, there was no ambush, because some thick sergeant made too much noise... Two different presents. One past, one future... ‘I don't know what's going to happen next. However, I've got a damn good idea. 'Well done, lads,' he said, standing up. 'You finish trapping us inside and I'll go and tell the old man what's happening.' He heard the puzzled muttering behind him as he climbed the stairs. Captain Tilden was sitting at his desk, staring at the wall. Vimes coughed loudly, and saluted. 'Had a bit of-' he began, and Tilden turned his ashen face to him. He looked as though he had seen a ghost, and it had been in the mirror. 'You've heard the news too?' 'Sir?' 'The riot up at Dolly Sisters,' said Tilden. 'It was only a couple of hours ago.' I'in too close, Vimes thought, as the words sank in. All those things were just names, it all seemed to happen at once. Dolly Sisters, yeah. They were a right mob of hotheads up there... 'The lieutenant of the Day Watch called in one of the regiments,' said Tilden. 'Which he was duly authorized to do. Of course.' 'Which one?' said Vimes, for the look of the thing. The name was in the history books, after all. 'Lord Venturi's Medium Dragoons, sergeant. My old regiment.' That's right, thought Vimes. And cavalry are highly trained at civilian crowd control. Everyone knows that. 'And, er, there were some, er, accidental deaths...' Vimes felt sorry for the man. In truth, it was never proved that anyone was given an order to ride people down, but did it matter? Horses pushing, and people unable to get away because of the press of people behind them... it was too easy for small children to lose grip of a hand... 'But, in fairness, missiles were thrown at the officers and one soldier was badly injured,' said Tilden, as if reading the words off a card. That's all right, then? Vimes thought. 'What kind of missiles, sir?' 'Fruit, I gather. Although there may have been some stones as well.' Vimes realized that Tilden's hand was shaking. The riot was over the price of bread, I understand.' No. The protest was over the price of bread, said Vimes's inner voice. The riot was what happens when you have panicking people trapped between idiots on horseback and other idiots shouting 'yeah, right!' and trying to push forward, and the whole thing in the charge of a fool advised by a maniac with a steel rule. 'The feeling of the palace,' said Tilden slowly, 'is that revolutionary elements may attack the Watch Houses.' 'Really, sir? Why?' 'It's the sort of thing they do,' said Tilden. 'As a matter of fact, sir, the men are putting up shutters and-' 'Do whatever you feel necessary, sergeant,’ said Tilden, waving a hand with a scrawled letter in it. 'We are told we must be mindful of the curfew regulations. That has been underlined.' Vimes paused before answering. He'd bitten back the first answer. He contented himself with 'Very well, sir,' and left. The man wasn't a bad man, he knew; he must have been badly affected by the news to give such a stupid, dangerous order. 'Do what you feel necessary.' Give an order like that to a man who's liable to panic when he sees a bunch of people waving their fists and you got the Dolly Sisters Massacre. He walked back down the stairs. The squad were standing around looking nervous. 'Prisoner in the cells?' said Vimes. Corporal Colon nodded. 'Yessir. Sarge, Snouty says that up at Dolly Sisters-' ‘I know. Now here's what I feel is necessary. Take the shutters down, unbar the door, leave it open and light all the lamps. Why isn't the blue lamp over the door lit?' 'Dunno, sarge. But what if-' 'Get it lit, corporal. And then you and Waddy go and stand guard outside, where you can be seen. You're friendlylooking local lads. Take your bells but, and I want to make this very clear, no swords, right?' 'No swords?' Colon burst out. 'But what if a bloody great mob comes round the corner and I'in not armed?' Vimes reached him in two swift strides and stood nose to nose. 'And if you have got a sword, what will you do, eh? Against a bloody great mob? What do you want 'em to see? Now what I want 'em to see is Fatty Colon, decent lad, not too bright, I knew 'is dad, an' there's ol' Waddy, he drinks in my pub. 'cos if they just see a couple of men in uniform with swords you'll be in trouble, and if you draw those swords you'll be in real trouble, and if by any chance, corporal, you draw swords tonight without my order and survive then you'll wish you hadn't done either because you'll have to face me, see? And then you'll know what trouble is, 'cos everything up until then will look like a bleedin' day at the soddin' seaside. Understand?' Fred Colon goggled at him. There was no other word for it. 'Don't let my sugary sweet tones lead you to believe that I'in not damn well giving you orders,' said Vimes, turning away. 'Vimes?' 'Yes, sarge?' said young Sam. 'Have we got a saw in this place?' Snouty stepped forward. 'I've got a toolbox, sarge.' 'Nails, too?' 'Yessir!' 'Right. Rip the door off my locker and hammer a lot of nails right through it, will you? Then lay it down on the upstairs landing, points up. I'll take the saw, 'cos I'in going to the privy.' After the silence that followed, Corporal Colon obviously felt he had to make a contribution. He cleared his throat and said, 'If you've got a problem in that area, sarge, Mrs Colon's got a wonderful medicine she-' 'I won't be long,' said Vimes. In fact, he was four minutes. 'All done,' he said, returning to the sound of hammering from the locker room. 'Come with me, lanceconstable. Time for a lesson in interrogation. Oh... and bring the toolbox.' 'Fred and Waddy don't like being outside,' said Sam, as they went down the stone steps. 'They say what if that bunch of Unmentionables turn up?' ‘They needn't worry. Our friends at Cable Street are not frontdoor kind of people.' He pushed open the door to the cells. The prisoner stood up and grabbed the bars. 'Okay, they've come, now you let me out,' he said. 'Come on, and I'll put in a good word for you.' 'No one's come for you, sir,’ said Vimes. He locked the main door behind him, and then unlocked the cell. 'It's probably a busy time for them,' he added. 'Been a bit of a riot over in Dolly Sisters. A few deaths. Might be a while before they get around to you.' The man eyed the toolbox that the lanceconstable was holding. It was only a flicker, but Vimes saw the moment of uncertainty. 'I get it,' said the prisoner. 'Good Cop, Bad Cop, eh?' 'If you like,’ said Vimes. 'But we're a bit short staffed, so if I give you a cigarette would you mind kicking yourself in the teeth?' 'Look, this is a game, right?' said the prisoner. 'You know I'in one of the Particulars. And you're new in town and want to impress us. Well, you have. Big laugh all round, haha. Anyway, I was only on stakeout.' 'Yes, but that's not how it works, is it,’ said Vimes. 'Now we've got you, we can decide what you're guilty of. You know how it's done. Fancy a ginger beer?' The man's face froze. 'Y'know,’ said Vimes, 'it turns out that after the riot this evening we've been warned to expect revolutionary attacks on the Watch Houses. Now personally I wouldn't expect that. What I'd expect is a bunch of ordinary people turning up, you know, because they've heard what happened. But - and you can call me Mr Suspicious if you like - I've got a feeling that there will be something a bit worse. You see, apparently we've got to be mindful of the curfew regulations. What that means, I suppose, is that if we get people coming to complain about unarmed citizens being attacked by soldiers, which personally I would consider to be Assault With A Deadly Weapon, we've got to arrest them. I find that rather-' There was a commotion from above. Vimes nodded to young Sam, who disappeared up the stairs. 'Now that my impressionable assistant has gone,’ said Vimes quietly, ‘I’ll add if any of my men get hurt tonight then I'll see to it that for the rest of your life you scream at the sight of a bottle.' 'I haven't done anything to you! You don't even know me!' 'Yes. Like I said, we're doing it your way,’ said Vimes. Sam reappeared, in a hurry. 'Someone's fallen in the privy!' he announced. 'They were climbing on the roof and it had been sawn through and gave way!' 'It must be one of those revolutionary elements,’ said Vimes, watching the prisoner's face. 'We've been warned about them.’ 'He says he's from Cable Street, sarge!' ‘That's just the kind of thing I'd say, if I was a revolutionary element,’ said Vimes. 'All right, let's take a look at him.’ Upstairs, the front door was still open. There were a few people outside, just visible in the lamplight. There was also Sergeant Knock inside, and he was not happy. 'Who said we open up like this?' he was saying. 'It looks nasty out on those streets! Very dangerous-' 'I said we stay open,’ said Vimes, coming up the stairs. 'Is there a problem, sergeant?' 'Well... look, sarge, I heard on the way over, they're throwing stones at the Dimwell Street House,’ said Knock, deflating. There's people in the streets! Mobs! I hate to think what's happening downtown.’ 'So?' 'We're coppers! We should be getting prepared!' 'What? To bar the doors and listen to the stones rattle off the roof?' said Vimes. 'Or maybe we should go out and arrest everyone? Any volunteers? No? I'll tell you what, sergeant, if you want to do some coppering you can go and arrest the man in the privy. Do him for Breaking and Entering-' There was a scream from upstairs. Vimes glanced up. 'And I reckon if you go up on to the attic landing you'll find there's a man who dropped through the skylight right on to a doorful of nails that was accidentally left there,’ he went on. He looked at Knock's puzzled face. 'It's the Cable Street boys, sergeant,’ he said. They thought they could come across the roofs and scare the dumb brownjobs. Chuck 'em both in the cells.' 'You're arresting Unmentionables?' 'No uniform. No badge. Carrying weapons. Let's have a bit of law around here, shall we?' said Vimes. 'Snouty, where's that cocoa?' 'We'll get into trouble!' Knock shouted. Vimes let Knock wait until he'd lit a cigar. 'We're in trouble anyway, Winsborough,’ he said, shaking out the match. 'It's just a case of deciding what kind we want. Thanks, Snouty.' He took the mug of cocoa from the jailer and nodded at Sam. 'Let's take a stroll outside,’ he said. He was aware of the sudden silence in the room, except for the whimpering coming from upstairs and the distant yelling from the privy. 'What're you all standing around for, gentlemen?' he said. 'Want to ring your bells? Anyone fancy shouting out that all's well?' With those words hanging in the room all big and pink, Vimes stepped out into the evening air. There were people hanging around out there, in little groups of three or four, talking among themselves and occasionally turning to look at the Watch House. Vimes sat down on the steps, and took a sip of his cocoa. He might as well have dropped his breeches. The groups opened up, became an audience. No man drinking a nonalcoholic chocolate beverage had ever been the centre of so much attention. He'd been right. A closed door is an incitement to bravery. A man drinking from a mug, under a light, and apparently enjoying the cool night air, is an incitement to pause. 'We're breaking curfew, you know,' said a young man, with a quick dart forward, dart back movement. 'Is that right?' said Vimes. 'Are you going to arrest us, then?' 'Not me,' said Vimes cheerfully. 'I'in on my break.' 'Yeah?' said the man. He pointed to Colon and Waddy. 'They on their break too?' 'They are now.' Vimes half turned. 'Brew's up, lads. Off you go. No, no need to run, there's enough for everyone. And come back out when you've got it...' When the sound of pounding boots had died away, Vimes turned back and smiled at the group again. 'So when do you come off your break?' said the man. Vimes paid him some extra attention. The stance was a giveaway. He was ready to fight, even though he didn't look like a fighter. If this were a bar room, the bartender would be taking the more expensive bottles off the shelf, because amateurs like that tended to spread the glass around. Ah, yes... and now he could see why the words 'bar room' had occurred to him. There was a bottle sticking out of the man's pocket. He'd been drinking his defiance. 'Oh, around Thursday, I reckon,' said Vimes, eyeing the bottle. There was laughter from somewhere in the growing crowd. 'Why Thursday?' said the drinker. 'Got my day off on Thursday.' There were a few more laughs this time. When the tension is drawing out, it doesn't take much to snap it. 'I demand you arrest me!' said the drinker. 'Come on, try it!' 'You're not drunk enough,' said Vimes. 'I should go home and sleep it off, if I was you.' The man's hand grasped the neck of the bottle. Here it comes, thought Vimes. By the look of him, the man had one chance in five... Fortunately, the crowd wasn't too big yet. What you didn't need at a time like this was people at the back, craning to see and asking what was going on. And the litup Watch House was fully illuminating the litup man. 'Friend, if you take my advice you'll not consider that,’ said Vimes. He took another sip of his cocoa. It was only lukewarm now, but along with the cigar it meant that both his hands were occupied. That was important. He wasn't holding a weapon. No one could say afterwards that he had a weapon. I'in no friend to you people!' snapped the man, and smashed the bottle on the wall by the steps. The glass tinkled to the ground. Vimes watched the man's face, watched the expression change from drinkfuelled anger to agonizing pain, watched the mouth open... The man swayed. Blood began to ooze from between his fingers and a low, thin animal sound escaped from between his teeth. That was the tableau, under the light - Vimes sitting down with his hands full, the bleeding man several feet away. No fight, no one had touched anyone... he knew the way rumour worked, and he wanted this picture to fix itself in people's minds. There was even ash still on the cigar. He stayed very still for a few seconds, and then stood up, all concern. 'Come on, one of you help me, will you?' he said, tugging off his breastplate and the chainmail shirt underneath it. He grabbed his shirt sleeve and tore off a long strip. A couple of men, jerked into action by the voice of command, steadied the man who was dripping blood. One of them reached for the hand. 'Leave it,’ Vimes commanded, tightening the strip of sleeve around the man's unresisting wrist. 'He's got a handful of broken glass. Lay him down as gently as you can before he falls over but don't touch nothing until I've got this tourniquet on. Sam, go into the stable and pinch Marilyn's blanket for the boy. Anyone here know Doctor Lawn? Speak up!' Someone among the awed bystanders volunteered that they did, and was sent running for him. Vimes was aware of the circle watching him; a lot of the watchmen were peering around the doorway now. 'Saw this happen once,’ he said aloud, and added mentally 'in ten years' time'. 'It was in a bar fight. Man grabbed a bottle, didn't know how to smash it, ended up with a hand full of shards and the other guy reached down and squeezed.' There was a satisfying groan from the crowd. 'Anyone know who this man is?' he added. 'Come on, someone must...' A voice in the crowd volunteered that the man could well be Joss Gappy, an apprentice shoemaker from New Cobblers. 'Let's hope we can save his hand, then,’ said Vimes. 'I need a new pair of boots.’ It wasn't funny at all but it got another of those laughs, the ones people laugh out of sheer frightened nervousness. Then the crowd parted as Lawn came through. 'Ah,’ he said, kneeling down by Gappy. 'You know, I don't know why I own a bed. Trainee bottle fighter?' 'Yes.’ 'Looks like you've done the right things but I need light and a table,’ said Lawn. 'Can your men take him into the Watch House?' Vimes had hoped it wouldn't come to that. Oh well, you had to make the best of it... He pointed randomly at figures in the crowd. 'You and you and you and you and you too, lady,’ he said. 'You can help Fred and Waddy take this young man inside, okay? And you're to stop with him, and we'll leave the doors open, right? All you lot out here'll know what's going on. We've got no secrets here. Everyone understand?' 'Yeah, but you're a copper-' a voice began. Vimes darted forward and hauled a frightened young man out of the crowd by his shirt. 'Yeah, I am,’ he said. 'And see that lad over there? He's a copper, too. His name's Sam Vimes. He lives in Cockbill Street with his mum. And that's Fred Colon, just got married, got a couple of rooms in Old Cobblers. And Exhibit C there is Waddy, everyone round here knows Waddy. Billy Wiglet there, he was born in this street. Have I asked you your name?' 'Nno...' the man mumbled. 'That's 'cos I don't care who you are,’ said Vimes, letting the man go and looking round at the crowd. 'Listen to me, all of you! My name's John Keel! No one gets taken into this Watch House without me knowing why! You're all here as witnesses! Those of you I pointed out, you come on inside to see fair play all round. Do the rest of you want to hang around to see what happens to Gappy? Fine, I'll get Snouty to bring you out some cocoa. Or you can go home. It's a cold night. You ought to be in your beds. I know I'd like to be in mine. And, yes, we know about Dolly Sisters and we don't like it any more than you do. And we've heard about Dimwell Street and we don't like that, either. And that's all I've got to say tonight. Now... anyone who still wants to take a swing at a copper can step right up, if they want to. I've got my uniform off. We'll have a go, here and now, fair and square, in front of everyone. Anyone?' Something brushed his shoulder and clattered on the Watch House steps. Then there was the sound of slipping tiles from a roof on the other side, and a man fell off the roof and into the pool of light. There were gasps from the crowd, and one or two short screams. 'Looks like you got a volunteer,' said someone. There was the horrible nervous sniggering again. The crowd parted to let Vimes view the sudden arrival. The man was dead. If he hadn't been when he fell off the roof he was after he'd hit the ground, because no neck normally looked like that. A crossbow had fallen down with him. Vimes remembered the draught across his shoulder, and went back to the Watch House steps. It didn't take long to find the arrow, which had broken into several pieces. 'Anyone know this man?' he said. The crowd, even those members of it who hadn't been able to get a good look at the fallen bowman, indicated definite ignorance. Vimes went through the man's pockets. Every single one was empty, which was all the evidence of identification he needed. 'Looks like it's going to be a long night,’ he said, signalling Colon to take this body inside, too. 'I've got to get on with my work, ladies and gentlemen. If anyone wants to stay, and frankly I'll be obliged if you do, I'll send some lads out to build a fire. Thank you for your patience.' He picked up his mail and breastplate and went back inside. 'What're they doing?' he said to Sam, without turning round. 'Some of them are wandering off but most of 'em are standing around, sarge,' said Sam, peering around the door. 'Sarge, one of them shot at you!' 'Really? Who says the man on the roof was one of them? That's an expensive bow. And he didn't have anything in his pockets. Nothing. Not so much as a used hanky.' 'Very odd, sarge,' said Sam loyally. 'Especially since I was expecting a piece of paper saying something like "I am definitely a member of a revolutionary cadre, ,, trust me on this",' said Vimes, looking carefully at the corpse. BB 'Yes, that'd tell us he was a revolutionary all right,' said Sam. Vimes sighed and stared at the wall a moment. Then he said: 'Anyone notice anything about his bow?' 'It's the new Bolsover A7,' said Fred Colon. 'Not a bad bow, sarge. Not an Assassin's weapon, though.' ‘That's true,' said Vimes, and twisted the dead man's head so they could see the tip of the little metal dart behind the ear. 'But this is. Fred, you know everyone. Where can I get some ginger beer at this time of night?' 'Ginger beer, sarge?' 'Yes, Fred.' 'Why do-' Colon began. 'Don't ask, Fred. Just get half a dozen bottles, all right?' Vimes turned to the desk on which, surrounded by a fascinated crowd, Dr Lawn was at work on the stricken Gappy. 'How's it going?' said Vimes, pushing through. 'Slower than it'd go if people got out of the damn light,' said Lawn, carefully moving his tweezers to a mug by Gappy's hand and dropping a bloody fragment of glass therein. 'I've seen worse on a Friday night. He'll keep the use of his fingers, if that's what you want to know. He just won't be making any shoes for a while. Well done.' There was general crowd approval. Vimes looked around at the people and the coppers. There were one or two muted conversations going on; he heard phrases like 'bad business' and 'they say that-' above the general noise. He'd played the cards well enough. Most of the lads here lived within a street or two. It was one thing to have a go at faceless bastards in uniform, but quite another to throw stones at old Fred Colon or old Waddy or old Billy Wiglet, who you'd known since you were two years old and played Dead Rat Conkers with in the gutter. Lawn put the tweezers down and pinched the bridge of his nose. 'That's it,’ he said wearily. 'A bit of stitching and he'll be fine.' 'And there's some others I need you to take a look at,' said Vimes. 'You know, that comes as no surprise,' said the doctor. 'One's got a lot of holes in his feet, one dropped through the privy roof and has got a twisted leg, and one's dead.' 'I don't think I can do much about the dead one,' said the doctor. 'How do you know he's dead? I realize that I may regret asking that question.' 'He's got a broken neck from falling off a roof and I reckon he fell off because he got a steel crossbow bolt in his brain.' 'Ah. That sounds like dead, if you want my medical opinion. Did you do it?' 'No!' 'Well, you're a busy man, sergeant. You can't be everywhere.' The doctor's face cracked into a grin when he saw Vimes go red, and he walked over to the corpse. 'Yes, I'd say that life is definitely extinct,' he said. 'And?' 'I want you to write that down, please. On paper. With officialsounding words like "contusion" and "abrasions". I want you to write that down, and I want you to write down what time you found he was dead. And then if you don't mind two lads'll take you down to look at the other two, and after you've treated them, thank you, I'd like you to sign another piece of paper saying you did and I called you in. Two copies of everything, please.' 'All right. Dare I ask why?' 'I don't want anyone to say I did it.' 'Why should anyone say that? You told me he fell off a roof!' 'These are suspicious times, doctor. Ah, here's Fred. Any luck?' Corporal Colon was carrying a box. He put it down on his desk with a grunt. 'Old Mrs Arbiter didn't like being knocked up in the middle of the night,' he announced. 'I had to give her a dollar!' Vimes didn't dare look at Lawn's face. 'Really?' he said, as innocently as possible. 'And you got the ginger beer?' 'Six pints of her best stuff,' said Colon. There's three pence back on the bottles, by the way. And... er...' He shuffled uneasily. 'Er... I heard they set fire to the Watch House at Dolly Sisters, sarge. It's very bad up at Nap Hill, too. And, er... the Chittling Street House got all its windows broke, and up at the Leastgate House some of the lads went out to stop kids throwing stones and, er, one of them drew his sword, sarge...' 'And?' 'He'll probably live, sarge.' Dr Lawn looked about him at the crowded office, where people were still talking. Snouty was going round with a tray of cocoa. Out in the street, some of the watchmen were standing around a makeshift fire with the remnant of the crowd. 'Well, I must say I'in impressed,' he said. 'Sounds like you're the only Watch House not under siege tonight. I don't want to know how you did it.' 'Luck played a part,' said Vimes. 'And I've got three men who carry no personal identification whatsoever in the cells, and another anonymous wouldbe assassin who has been assassinated.' 'Quite a problem,' said Lawn. 'Now me, I just have to deal with simple mysteries like what the rash means.' 'I intend to solve mine quite quickly,' said Vimes. The Assassin moved quietly from roof to roof until he was well away from the excitement around the Watch House. His movements could be called catlike, except that he did not stop to spray urine up against things. Eventually he reached one of the upper world's many hidden places, where several thickets of chimneys made a little sheltered space, invisible from the ground and from most of the surrounding roofscape. He didn't enter it immediately, but circled it for a while, moving with absolute silence from one vantage point to another. What would have intrigued a watcher who knew the ways of Ankh-Morpork's Guild of Assassins was how invisible this one was. When he moved, you saw movement; when he stopped, he wasn't there. Magic would have been suspected and, in an oblique way, the watcher would have been right. Ninety per cent of most magic merely consists of knowing one extra fact. At last the figure appeared satisfied, and dropped into the space. He picked up a bag from its nesting place between the smoking pots, and there was some faint swishing and heavier breathing that suggested clothes were being changed. After a minute or so he emerged from the hidden niche and now, somehow, he was visible. Hard to see, yes, one shadow among others, but nevertheless there in a way that he had not been before, when he'd been as visible as the breeze. He dropped lightly on to a leanto roof and thence to the ground, where he stepped into a handy shadow. Then there was a further transformation. It was done quite easily. The evil little crossbow was disassembled and slipped into the pockets of a clinkfree velvet bag, the soft leather slippers were exchanged for a pair of heavier boots that had been stashed in the shadow, and the black hood was pushed back. He walked lightly around the corner and waited a few minutes. A coach came along, its torches trailing flame. It slowed briefly, and its door opened and shut. The Assassin settled back in his seat as the coach picked up speed again. There was a very faint lamp in the carriage. Its glow revealed a female figure relaxing in the shadows opposite. As the coach passed a torch there was a suggestion of lilac silk. 'You've missed a bit,' said the figure. It produced a lilaccoloured handkerchief and held it in front of the young man's face. 'Spit,’ came the command. Reluctantly, he did so. A hand wiped his cheek, and then held the cloth up to the light. 'Dark green,' said the woman. 'How strange. I understand, Havelock, that you scored zero in your examination for stealthy movement.' 'May I ask how you found that out, Madam?' 'Oh, one hears things,' Madam said lightly. 'One just has to hold money up to one's ear.' 'Well, it was true,' said the Assassin. 'And why was this?' 'The examiner thought I'd used trickery. Madam.' 'And did you?' 'Of course. I thought that was the idea.' 'And you never attended his lessons, he said.' 'Oh, I did. Religiously.' 'He says he never saw you at any of them.' Havelock smiled. 'And your point, Madam, is...?' Madam laughed. 'Will you take some champagne?' There was the sound of a bottle moving in an ice bucket. ‘Thank you, Madam, but no.' 'As you wish. I shall. And now... report, please.' 'I can't believe what I saw. I thought he was a thug. And he is a thug. You can see his muscles thinking for him. But he overrules them moment by moment! I think I saw a genius at work, but...’ 'What?' 'He's just a sergeant, Madam.' 'Don't underestimate him on that account. It is a very useful rank for the right man. The optimum balance of power and responsibility. Incidentally, they say he can read the street through the soles of his boots and keeps them very thin for that purpose.' 'Hmm. There are plenty of different surfaces, that's true, but...' 'You're always so solemn about these things, Havelock. Not at all like your late father. Think... mythologically. He can read the street. He can hear its voice, take its temperature, read its mind; it talks to him through his boots. Policemen are just as superstitious as other people. Every other Watch House was attacked tonight. Oh, Swing's people egged it on, but it was malice and stupidity that did the most damage. But not in Treacle Mine Road. No. Keel opened the doors and let the street inside. I wish I knew more about him. I'in told that in Pseudopolis he was considered to be slow, thoughtful, sensible. He certainly seems to have bloomed here.' 'I inhumed a man who attempted to nip him in the bud.' 'Really? That doesn't sound like Swing. How much do I owe you?' The young man called Havelock gave a shrug. 'Call it a dollar,' he said. ‘That's very cheap.' 'He wasn't worth more. I should warn you, though. Soon you may want me to deal with Keel.' 'Surely someone like him wouldn't side with people like Winder and Swing?' 'He's a side all by himself. He is a complication. You may think it best if he... ceased to complicate.' The rattling of the coach underlined the silence this remark caused. It was moving through a richer part of the city now, where there was more light and the curfew, being for poorer people, was less rigorously observed. The figure opposite the Assassin stroked the cat on her lap. 'No. He'll serve some purpose,' said Madam. 'Everyone is ' telling me about Keel. In a world where we all move in curves he proceeds in a straight line. And going straight in a world of curves makes things happen.' She stroked the cat. It yowled softly. It was ginger and had an expression of astonishing smugness, although periodically it scratched at its collar. 'On a different subject,’ she said, 'what was that business with the book? I did not like to take too much notice.' 'Oh, it was an extremely rare volume I was able to track down. On the nature of concealment.’ 'That stupid hulk of a boy burned it!' 'Yes. That was a piece of luck. I was afraid he might try to read it, although,’ Havelock smiled wanly, 'someone would have had to help him with the longer words.' 'Was it valuable?' 'Priceless. Especially now it has been destroyed.’ 'Ah. It contained information of value. Possibly involving the colour dark green. Will you tell me?' 'I could tell you,’ Havelock smiled again. 'But then I would have to find someone to pay me to kill you.’ ‘Then don't tell me. But I do think Dogbotherer is an unpleasant nickname.' 'When your name is Vetinari, Madam, you're happy enough if it's merely Dogbotherer. Can you drop me off a little way from the Guild, please? I'll go in via the roof. I have a tiger to attend to before I go up to... you know.' 'A tiger. How exciting.' She stroked the cat again. 'You've found your way in yet?' Vetinari shrugged. 'I've known my way for years, Madam. But now he has half a regiment around the palace. Four or five guards on each door, with irregular patrols and spot checks. I can't get through them. Only let me get inside, please, and the men there are no problem.' The cat pawed at its collar. 'Is it possible that he is allergic to diamonds?' said Madam. She held up the cat. 'Is oo allergic to diamonds, den?' Havelock sighed, but inwardly, because he respected his aunt. He just wished she was a bit more sensible about cats. He felt instinctively that if you were going to fondle a cat while discussing matters of intrigue, then it should be a longhaired white one. It shouldn't be an elderly street torn with irregular bouts of flatulence. 'What about the sergeant?' he said, shifting along the seat as politely as possible. The lady all in lilac lowered the cat gently on to the seat. There was a distressing smell. 'I think I should meet Mr Keel as soon as possible,' she said. 'Perhaps he can be harnessed. The party is tomorrow night. Uh... do you mind opening the window?' A little later that night, Downey was walking unsteadily back to his study after a convivial time in the Prefects' Common Room when he noticed that a torch had gone out. With a swiftness that might have surprised someone who saw no further than his flushed face and unsteady walk, he pulled out a dagger and scanned the corridor. He glanced up at the ceiling, too. There were grey shadows everywhere, but nothing more than that. Sometimes, torches did go out all by themselves. He stepped forward. When he woke up in his bed next morning he put the headache down to some bad brandy. And some scag had painted orange and black stripes on his face. It started to rain again. Vimes liked the rain. Street crime went down when it rained. People stayed indoors. Some of the best nights of his career had been rainy, when he'd stood in the shadows in the lee of some building, head tucked in so that there was barely anything showing between his helmet and his collar, and listened to the silvery rustle of the rain. Once he'd been standing so quietly, so withdrawn, so not there that a fleeing robber, who'd evaded his pursuers, had leaned against him to catch his breath. And, when Vimes put his arms around him and whispered 'Gotcha!' into his ear, the man had apparently done in his trousers what his dear mother, some forty years before, had very patiently taught him not to do. The people had gone home. The sewnup Gappy had been escorted to New Cobblers, where Fred Colon had patiently explained events to the man's parents with his round red face radiating honesty. Lawn was possibly getting some use out of his bed. And the rain gurgled in the downpipes and gushed from the gargoyles and swirled in the gutters and deadened all sound. Useful stuff, rain. Vimes picked up the bottle of Mrs Arbiter's best ginger beer. He remembered it. It was as gassy as hell and therefore hugely popular. A young boy could, with encouragement and training, eventually manage to belch the whole first verse of the national anthem after just one swig. This is an important social attribute when you're eight years old. He'd chosen Colon and Waddy for this task. He wasn't going to involve young Sam. It wasn't that what he was planning was illegal, as such, it was just that it had the same colour and smell as something illegal and Vimes didn't want to have to explain. The cells were old, much older than the building above them. The iron cages were fairly new, and didn't take up all the space. There were other cellars beyond an arch, containing nothing more than rats and rubbish but, importantly, they couldn't be seen from the cages. Vimes got the men to carry the dead bowman through. Nothing wrong with that. It was the middle of the night, filthy weather, no sense in waking up the people at the mortuary when there was a nice cold cellar. He watched through the spy hole in the door as the body was taken past the cells. It caused a certain stir, especially in the first man he'd brought in. The other two had the look of men who'd seen a lot of bad stuff in the name of making money; if they were hired to steal or murder or be a copper it was all the same to them, and they'd learned not to react too readily to deaths that were not their own. The first man, though, was getting nervous. Vimes had nicknamed him Ferret. He was the bestdressed of the three, all in black; the dagger had been expensive and, Vimes had noticed, he had a silver Death's Head ring on one finger. The other two had dressed nondescript and their weapons had been workmanlike, nothing much to look at but well used. No real Assassin would wear jewellery at work. It was dangerous and it shone. But Ferret wanted to be a big man. He probably checked himself in the mirror before he went out, to make sure he looked cool. He was the sort of little twerp that got a kick out of showing his dagger to women in bars. Ferret, in short, had big dreams. Ferret had an imagination. Well, that was fine. The watchmen returned, and picked up the packages Vimes had prepared. 'Remember, we do it fast,’ he said. They're worried, they're tired, no one's come for them and they've just seen a very dead colleague. We don't want to give the first two time to think. Understand?' They nodded. 'And we leave the little one until last. I want him to have lots of time...' Ferret was considering his prospects. Regrettably, this didn't take long. He'd already had a row with the other two. Some rescue team they'd been. They weren't even dressed right. But the brownjobs hadn't done things as per spec. Everyone knew they backed away. They weren't supposed to fight back or show any kind of intelligence. They-The main cell door was flung back. 'It's ginger beer time!' roared someone. And a watchman ran through with a box of bottles, and disappeared into the rooms beyond. There wasn't much light in here. Ferret cowered against the wall and saw two watchmen unlock the cell next door, drag the shackled occupant upright and out into the cellar and then hustle him around the corner. The voices had a slight echo. 'Hold him down. Mind his legs!' 'Right! Let's have the bottle! Give it a proper shake, otherwise it won't work!' 'Okay, friend. Anything you want to tell us? Your name? No? Well, it's like this. Right now, we don't care a whole lot if you talk or not There was a loud pop, a hiss and then... a scream, an explosion of agony. After it had died away the trembling Ferret heard someone say, 'Quick, get the next one, before the captain catches us.' He cringed back as two watchmen rushed into the next cell, dragged out the struggling prisoner and hustled him into the darkness. 'All right. One chance. Are you going to talk? Yes? No? Too late!' Once again the pop, once again the hiss, once again the scream. It was louder and longer this time, and ended in a kind of bubbling sound. Ferret crouched against the wall, fingers in his mouth. Around the corner, sitting in the light of one lantern, Colon nudged Vimes, wrinkled his nose and pointed down. There was a gully that ran between all the cells, as a primitive sop to hygiene. Now a thin trickle was inching its way along it. Ferret was nervous. Gotcha, thought Vimes. But a good imagination needs a little more time. He leaned forward, and the other two moved closer expectantly. 'So,' he said in a low whisper, 'have you boys had your holidays yet?' After a few minutes of very small talk he stood up, strode round to the last occupied cell, unlocked the door, and grabbed Ferret, who was trying to squeeze into a corner. 'No! Please! I'll tell you whatever you want to know!' the man yelled. 'Really?' said Vimes. 'What's the orbital velocity of the moon?' 'What?' 'Oh, you'd like something simpler?' said Vimes, dragging the man out of the cell. 'Fred! Waddy! He wants to talk! Bring a notebook!' It took half an hour. Fred Colon wasn't a fast writer. And when the painful sound of his efforts concluded with the stab of his last full stop, Vimes said: 'Okay, sir. And now you write down at the end: I, Gerald Leastways, currently staying at the Young Men's Pagan Association, am making this statement of my own free will and not under duress. And then you sign it. Or else. Got it?' 'Yes, sir.' The initials GL had been inscribed on the dagger. Vimes believed them. He'd met plenty of Leastwayses in his career, and they tended to spill their guts at the mere thought of spilling their guts. And when they did, you got everything. Anyone who had seen the ginger beer trick used on someone else would confess to anything. 'Well, now,' he said cheerfully, standing up. Thank you for your cooperation. Want a lift to Cable Street?' Ferret's expression, if not his mouth, said 'huh?' 'We've got to drop off your friends,' Vimes went on, raising his voice slightly. Todzy and Muffer. We'll drop the dead one off at the mortuary. Just a bit of paperwork for you.' He nodded at Colon. 'One copy of your helpful statement. One certificate of death from the pox doctor for the late mystery man, and rest assured we'll try to track down his murderer. A chitty from Mossy about the ointment he put on Muffer's feet. Oh... and a receipt for six bottles of ginger beer.' He put a hand on Ferret's shoulder and gently walked him round into the next cellar, where Todzy and Muffer were sitting gagged, bound and livid with rage. On a table near by was a box containing six flagons of ginger beer. The corks were heavily wired down. Ferret stared at Vimes, who inserted a finger in his mouth, blew up his cheeks and flicked out the finger with a loud pop. Waddy hissed between his teeth. Fred Colon opened his mouth but Vimes clamped his hand over it. 'No, don't,' he said. 'Funny thing, Gerald, but Fred here just screams out loud at times for no reason at all.' 'You tricked me!' Ferret wailed. Vimes patted him on the shoulder. 'Tricked?' he growled. 'How so, Gerald?' 'You made me think you were doing the ginger beer trick!' 'Ginger beer trick?' said Vimes, his brow wrinkling. 'What's that?' 'You know! You brought the stuff down here!' 'We don't drink alcohol on duty, Gerald,' said Vimes severely. 'What's wrong with a little ginger beer? We don't know any tricks with the stuff, Gerald. What tricks do you know? Seen any good tricks lately, Gerald? Do tell!' At last it dawned on Ferret that he should stop talking. It was about half an hour too late. The expressions on what could be seen of the faces of Todzy and Muffer suggested that they wanted a very personal word with him. 'I demand protective custody,' he managed. 'Just when I'in letting you go, Gerald?' said Vimes. 'As you said in your statement... what was it, Fred? Something about just obeying orders? All that stuff about mixing with the mobs and throwing things at coppers and soldiers, you didn't want to do that, I know. You didn't like being round in Cable Street watching people being beaten up and being told what to confess to, 'cos it's plain to me that you're not that sort. You're small fry, I understand that. I say we call it quits, how about you?' 'Please! I'll tell you all I know!' Ferret squeaked. 'You mean you haven't?' Vimes roared. He spun round and grabbed a bottle. 'Yes! No! I mean, if I sit quiet I'in sure I'll remember some more!' Vimes held his gaze for a moment, and then dropped the bottle back in the crate. 'All right,' he said. 'It'll be a dollar a day, meals extra.' 'Right you are, sir!' Vimes watched Ferret scuttle back into his cell and shut the door behind him, then he turned to Fred and Waddy. 'Go and wake up Marilyn,' he said. 'Let's deliver the other three.' The rain was falling steadily and a thin mist filled Cable Street. The wagon came out of nowhere. Fred had urged Marilyn into something approaching a canter down the street, and when the horse came around the corner she was trying to keep ahead of the heavy, rumbling cart behind. As the hurryup wagon passed the station the rear door was flung open and two bodies were tumbled out on to the wet cobbles. The guards rushed forward. One or two of them fired after the retreating cart but the arrows clattered harmlessly off the black iron strips. The other men approached the tiedup bodies with some care. There were groans, punctuated by swearwords. And, pinned to one man, some paperwork. They read the note. They did not laugh. Vimes unharnessed the old horse, rubbed her down and checked on her feed. Perhaps it was his imagination, but the feed bins seemed fuller than they had been. Guilty consciences were at work, maybe. Then he walked out into the cool night air. The lights were on in the Watch House. It was a beacon, now that the street lamps had been doused. Beyond the walls of the yard the real night had closed in, the old night with its tendrils of fog and crawling shadows. He relaxed, and wore it like an overcoat. A shadow near the gate was deeper than it ought to be. He felt for his cigar case again, cursed, and pulled a cigar out of his shirt sleeve. He cupped his hands when he lit it, but kept his eyes tight shut to hold the night vision. Then he looked up, and blew a smoke ring. Yes. Everyone thought black didn 't show up at night. They were wrong. He walked over to shut the gate and then pulled out his sword in one fluid movement. Sadie raised her head, revealing a pale oval of a face in the depths of her bonnet. 'Good morning, kind sir,' she said. 'Good morning, Sadie,' said Vimes wearily. To what do I owe this pleasure?' 'Madam wants to see you, kind sir.' 'If you mean Rosie, I've been a bit busy-' Dotsie's handbag hit him on the back of the head. 'Madam doesn't like waiting, dearie,' were the last words he heard before night closed in all the way. The Aunts were experts. Probably not even Mossy Lawn could turn someone off with such precision. Vimes drifted awake. He was in an armchair. It was extremely comfortable. And someone was shaking him. It was Sandra the Real Seamstress. She stared at him and said, 'He looks okay...' Then she stepped back, sat down in another chair, and aimed a crossbow at him. 'You know,' said Vimes - it really was a comfortable chair, and reminded him of the softness that had gone from his life in the past few days; it hadn't been all bad - 'if someone wants to talk to me, they only have to bloody well ask.' 'Sadie said you'd only be out for ten minutes, but then you started to snore so we thought we'd let you sleep for a while,' said Rosie Palm, stepping into view. She was wearing a red offtheshoulder evening dress, an impressively large wig and quite a lot of jewellery. 'Yes, it costs a lot of money to look as cheap as this, sergeant,' she said, catching his expression. 'I can't stop, I must go and talk to people. Now, if you-' 'Snapcase has promised you ladies that you'll be allowed to form a Guild, right?' said Vimes. It was another cheating move, but he was fed up with waking up in odd places. 'Yes, I thought so. And you believe him? It's not going to happen. When he's the Patrician he'll look right through you.' He'll end up looking through everything, he added to himself. Mad Lord Snapcase. Just another Winder, but with fancier waistcoats and more chins. Same cronyism, same piggy ways, same stupid arrogance, one more leech in a line of leeches that'd make Vetinari seem like a breath of clean air. Ha... Vetinari. Yes, he'd be around here somewhere too, no doubt, learning that little expression he had which never, ever gave you a clue what he was thinking... But he'll be the one to give you the Guild you want so much. He's here somewhere. I know it. 'Don't expect anything from Snapcase,' he said aloud. 'Remember, there were people who thought Winder was the future, too.' He derived some minor pleasure from seeing the look on Rosie Palm's face. At last she said: 'Give him a drink, Sandra. If he moves, shoot an eye out. I'll let Madam know.' 'Do you expect me to believe that she'll fire that?' said Vimes. 'Sandra has a very useful streak of belligerence,' said Rosie. 'A gentleman was being... impolite yesterday and she came running in and... you'll be surprised at what she did with her mushroom.' Vimes eyed the crossbow. The girl had a very steady hand. 'I don't think I quite under-' he began. 'It's a wooden thing to make it easier to darn socks,' said Sandra. 'I hit him behind the ear with it.' Vimes gave her a blank look for a while and then said: 'Fine. Fine. I'in sitting very still, believe me.' 'Good,' said Rosie. She swept out and it was a real sweep, the dress brushing the ground. There were big, expensive double doors. When she opened them, the noise of a meeting filled the room. There was conversation, the smell of cigar smoke and alcohol, and a voice said 'to change the dominant episteme-' before the doors breathed shut. Vimes stayed seated. He was getting attached to the chair and on current showing someone was likely to hit him again soon. Sandra, still holding the bow, placed a very large glass of whiskey beside him. 'You know,’ he said, 'in times to come people will wonder how all those weapons got smuggled around the city.' 'I'in sure I don't know what you're talking about.' 'And it's because the lads in the Watch never bother about the seamstresses, curfew or no curfew,' said Vimes, staring at the whiskey. 'Or posh coaches,' he added. 'A watchman can get into real trouble if he tries that.' He could smell the stuff from here. It was the good stuff from the mountains, not the local rubbish. 'You didn't tell anyone about the basket,’ said Sandra. 'Or hand us over to the Unmentionables. Are you one of us?' 'I doubt it.' 'But you don't know who we are!' 'I still doubt it.' And then he was aware of the doors opening and shutting, and the rustle of a long dress. 'Sergeant Keel? I've heard so much about you! Please leave us, Sandra. I'in sure the good sergeant can be trusted with a lady.' Madam was only a little shorter than Vimes. Could be from Genua, he thought, or spent a lot of time there. Trace of it in the accent. Brown eyes, brown hair - but a woman's hair could be any colour tomorrow - and a purple dress that looked more expensive than most. And an expression that said quite clearly that the owner knew what was going to happen and was going along with things just to make sure- 'Don't forget the intricately painted fingernails,’ she said. 'But if you're trying to guess my weight, don't expect to get any help from me. You can call me Madam.' She sat down in a chair opposite him, put her hands together and stared at him over the top of them. 'Who are you working for?' she said. 'I'in an officer of the City Watch,’ said Vimes. 'Brought here under duress... madam.’ The woman waved a hand. 'You're free to go whenever you wish.’ 'It's a comfy chair,’ said Vimes. He was damned if he'd be dismissed. 'Are you really from Genua?' 'Are you really from Pseudopolis?' Madam smiled at him. 'I find, personally, that it pays never to be from somewhere close at hand. It makes life so much easier. But I have spent a lot of time in Genua, where I have... business interests.' She smiled at him. 'And now you're thinking "old seamstress", no doubt?' 'Actually I was thinking bespoke tailoring,' said Vimes, and she burst out laughing. 'But mostly,’ he added, 'I was thinking "revolutionary".' 'Continue, sergeant.' Madam stood up. 'Do you mind if I have some champagne? I'd offer you some, but I understand that you don't drink.' Vimes glanced at the brimming whiskey glass beside him. 'We were just checking,’ said Madam, hauling a large bottle out of an industrialcapacity ice bucket. 'You're not a sergeant. Rosie was right. You've been an officer. More than just any old officer, too. You're so composed, Sergeant Keel. Here you are, in a big house, in a lady's boudoir, with a woman of uneasy virtue,’ Madam upended the bottle into what appeared to be a blue mug with a teddy bear on it, 'and you appear unfussed. Where are you from? You may smoke, by the way.’ 'Somewhere a long way off,’ said Vimes. 'Uberwald?' 'No.’ 'I have... business interests in Uberwald,’ said Madam. 'Alas, the situation there is becoming quite unstable.’ 'Right. I see,’ said Vimes. 'And you'd like to have the significant pause type of business interests in Ankh-Morpork, I expect. If it can be stabilized.’ 'Very good. Let us say that I think this city has a wonderful future and that I would like to be part of it, and that you are remarkably perspicacious.' 'No,’ said Vimes. 'I'in very simple. I just know how things work. I just follow the money. Winder is a madman, and that's not good for business. His cronies are criminals, and that's not good for business. A new Patrician will need new friends, farsighted people who want to be part of a wonderful future. One that's good for business. That's how it goes. Meetings in rooms. A little diplomacy, a little give and take, a promise here, an understanding there. That's how real revolutions happen. All that stuff in the streets is just froth...' Vimes nodded to the doors. 'Guests for a late supper? That was Doctor Follett's voice. A clever man, they used to- they call him. He'll pick the right side. If you've got the big Guilds with you, Winder is a dead man walking. But Snapcase won't do you much good.' 'Many people have great hopes of him.' 'What do you think?' 'I think he's a scheming, selfserving fool. But he's the best there is, at the moment. And where do you come in, sergeant?' 'Me? I'in staying outside. You've got nothing that I want.' 'You don't want anything?' 'I want lots of things, my lady. But you can't give them to me.' 'How would you like to be back in command?' The question hit him like a hammer. This was history. She couldn't know! How could she know? 'Ah,' said Madam, who had watched his expression. 'Rosemary did say thieves took some very expensive armour off you. Fit for a general, I hear.' She opened another bottle. Properly, too, Vimes noticed, through the shock. None of that amateur business with rocketing corks and wasted bubbles. 'Wouldn't that be strange if it was true?' Madam mused. 'A streetfighting man with the manner of a commander and the breastplate of a leader.' Vimes stared straight ahead. 'And who needs to know how he got here?' said Madam, to the air in general. 'We could take the view that here at last is a man who could truly take command of the City Watch.' The first thought that fizzed in Vimes's head like champagne was: bloody hell, I could do it! Chuck Swing out on his arse, promote some decent sergeants-The second thought was: in this city? Under Snapcase? Now? We'd just be another gang. The third thought was: this is insane. It can't happen. It never did happen. You want to go home to Sybil. Thoughts one and two shuffled out of the way, feeling ashamed of themselves and mumbling yeah, right... Sybil... yeah, obviously... right... sorry... until they faded into silence. 'I've always had a talent for seeing promise,' said Madam, while he still stared at nothing. The fourth thought rose in the darkness like some ugly creature from the depths. You didn 't think about Sybil until thought three, it whispered. He blinked. 'You know the city needs-' Madam began. 'I want to go home,' said Vimes. 'I'in going to finish the job that's in front of me, and then I'in going home. That's what I'in going to do.' 'There are those who would say that if you are not for us, you're against us,' said Madam. 'For you? For what? For anything! No! But I'in not for Winder, either. I'in not supposed to be "for" people. And I don't take bribes. Not even if Sandra threatens me with a toadstool!' 'I believe it was a mushroom. Oh dear.' The lady gave him a smile. 'You are incorruptible?' Oh dear, here we go again, thought Vimes. Why did I wait until I was married to become strangely attractive to powerful women? Why didn't it happen to me when I was sixteen? I could have done with it then. He tried to glare, but that probably only made it worse. 'I've met a few incorruptible men,’ said Madam Meserole. They tend to die horrible deaths. The world balances out, you see. A corrupt man in a good world, or a good man in a corrupt one... the equation comes out the same way. The world does not deal well with those who don't pick a side.' 'I like the middle,' said Vimes. 'That gives you two enemies. I'in amazed that you can afford so many, on a sergeant's pay. Please think of what you could be giving up.' 'I am. And I'in not going to help people to die just to replace one fool with another.' 'Then there is your door behind you, sergeant. I am very sorry we could not-' 'do business?' said Vimes. 'I was going to say "reach a mutually beneficial agreement". We are not very far from your Watch House. I wish you... luck.' She nodded towards the door. 'Such a shame,' she said, and sighed. Vimes stepped out into the rainy night, and shifted his weight from foot to foot, and then took a few experimental steps. Corner of Easy and Treacle Mine. A mix of flattop cobbles and old bricks. Yeah. He went home. Madam stared at the closed door for a while, and then turned as the candles flickered slightly. 'You really are very good,’ she said. 'How long have you been here?' Havelock Vetinari stepped out of the shadow in the corner. He wasn't wearing official Assassin's black, but loose clothes that were... no real colour at all, just nondescript shades of grey. 'I've been here quite long enough,' he said, sprawling into the chair that Vimes had vacated. 'Not even the Aunts noticed you?' 'People look but don't see. The trick is to help them see nothing. But I think Keel would have seen me, if I hadn't been over here. He stares into shadows. Interesting.' 'He is a very angry man,' said Madam. 'You just made him angrier.' 'I believe you'll get your diversion,' said Madam. 'Yes. I believe so, too.' Madam leaned over and patted him on the knee. ‘There,' she said, 'your aunty thinks of everything...' She stood up. 'I'd better go and entertain my guests. I am a very entertaining person. By tomorrow night, Lord Winder will not have many friends.' She drained her mug of champagne. 'Doctor Follett is such a charming man, don't you think? Is that his own hair, do you know?' 'I have not sought the opportunity to find out,' said Havelock. 'Is he trying to get you drunk?' 'Yes,' said Madam. 'You have to admire him.' 'They say he can play a mean lute,’ said Havelock. 'Fascinating,' said Madam. She set her face into a genuine smile of pleasure and opened the big double doors at the other end of the room. 'Ah, doctor,' she said, stepping into the haze of smoke. 'A little more champagne?' Vimes slept in a corner, standing up. It was an old trick, shared by night watchmen and horses. It wasn't exactly sleep, you'd die if you tried to keep it up for more than a few nights, but it took some of the tiredness away. A few of the other men had already mastered the trick. Others made use of tables or benches. No one seemed inclined to go home, even when a sort of dawn suffused the rain and Snouty came in with a cauldron of fearsome porridge. Vimes opened his eyes. 'Mug of tea, sarge?' said Snouty. 'Stewed for an hour and two sugars.' 'You're a lifesaver, Snouty,' said Vimes, clasping it like the elixir of life. 'An' there's some kid outside says he's got to speak to you, hnah, specially,' Snouty went on. 'Shall I give him a clip alongside the head?' 'What does he smell like?' said Vimes, sipping the scalding, corrosive tea. 'Bottom of a baboon's cage, sarge.' 'Ah, Nobby Nobbs. I'll go out and see him. Bring him a big bowl of porridge, will you?' Snouty looked uncomfortable about this. 'If you'll, hnah, take my advice, sarge, it don't pay to encourage kids like-' 'See these stripes, Snouty? Well done. A big bowl.' Vimes took his tea out into the damp yard, where Nobby was lurking against a wall. There were hints that it was going to be a sunny day. That should bring things on, after the overnight rain. The lilacs, for example... 'What's happening, Nobby?' Nobby waited a moment to see if a coin was forthcoming. 'Pretty bad everywhere, sarge,' he said, giving up for now but remaining hopeful. 'A constable got killed in Lobbin Clout. Hit by a stone, people say. Someone got their ear cut off 'cos of the fighting in Nap Hill. Cavalry charge, sarge. Running fights everywhere. All the Watch Houses got hit bad-' Vimes listened gloomily to the list. It was the usual bloody business. Angry,, frightened people on both sides, all crushed up together. It could only get worse. Nap Hill and Dolly Sisters sounded like war zones already. ... see the little angels rise up high... 'Anything happen in Cable Street?' he said. 'Just a few people,' said Nobby. 'A bit of shouting and running away, that sort of thing.' 'Right,' said Vimes. Even a mob wasn't that stupid. It was still only the kids and the hotheads and the drunks now. It'd get worse. You'd have to be really mad to attack the Unmentionables. 'There's bad stuff happening everywhere,’ said Nobby. 'Except here, o'course. We're well out of it.' No, thought Vimes. It'll pivot on us in the end. Snouty emerged from the Watch House's rear door, carrying a big bowl of porridge with a spoon stuck in it. Vimes nodded towards Nobby, and the bowl was handed over with extreme reluctance. 'Sarge?' said Snouty, keeping his eye on the spoon as the boy ate or, more correctly, gobbled the stuff. 'Yes, Snouty?' 'Have we got any orders?' 'I don't know. Is the captain here?' 'That's it, sarge,' said Snouty. 'A runner come last night with an envelope for the captain, and I took it up and there was the captain waiting, so I thought, this is funny, haha, I thought, he's not normally in this early-' 'Faster please, Snouty,' said Vimes, as the man started to watch the oscillating spoon again. 'Well, when I took him up his cocoa later on he was jus' sittin' there, hnah, starin' right at nothing. He said "thank you, Snouty" when I give him the cocoa, hnah, though. Always very polite in that, hnah, respect. But when I went up just now he was gone.' 'He's an old man, Snouty, you can't expect him to be here all-' 'So's his inkwell, sarge. He never took it home before.' And Vimes saw that Snouty's eyes were more redrimmed than usual. He sighed. 'Any sign of the envelope?' 'No, sarge,' said Snouty, glancing again at the spoon in Nobby's hand. It was a very cheap one, Vimes noted, made of some pot metal. 'In that case we just keep the peace, Snouty,' he said. 'Not a lot of that about, sarge.' 'We'll have to see what we can find. Come with me.' Snouty looked reluctant. 'Just want to keep an eye on the spoon, sarge; we've only got five left and kids like that one'll pinch the-' 'He can keep the damn spoon!' said Vimes. 'Spoons are not important at this point!' Nobby downed the last scalding mouthful, stuck the spoon in his pocket, stuck out a porridgeladen tongue at Snouty, dropped the bowl on the ground and took to his heels. Vimes strode back into the office, picked up the porridge ladle and rattled it on the sides of the empty cauldron. Heads looked up. 'All right, my sons! This is what we're going to do! All married men've got permission to nip home for an hour to stop your wives fretting! The rest of you, you're on unpaid overtime! Anyone surprised?' Wiglet raised a hand. 'We've all got family, sarge,' he said. 'And the best thing you can do for them is make sure there's a bit of law around the place,' said Vimes. 'We don't know what's been happening in the other divisions, except that it sounds bad. So this House is staying open, understand? Day and night! Yes, lanceconstable?' 'But our mum will be worrying, sarge,’ said young Sam. Vimes hesitated, but only for a moment. 'Snouty'll nip out with any messages you have, lad. The same goes for everyone else,' he said. 'We're going to go out on patrol soon. Yeah, I know we're Night Watch. So what? It's looking pretty black to me at the moment! Lanceconstable, come on out in the yard, will you?' Vimes walked back out into the morning. In theory, one of the purposes of the yard was for training. It was seldom used for that. The Night Watch eschewed violence, as a rule. When threats or superior numbers had no effect, they preferred to run. There were some mouldering targets in a shed, along with some straw men for stabbing practice. Vimes tugged them out on to the cobbles as the lanceconstable appeared behind him. 'I thought you said these things were useless, sarge.' 'They are,' said Vimes. 'I've put them here for you to land on. You're walking around, Sam, with a weapon you don't know how to use. That's worse than walking around knowing how to use a weapon and not having one. A man with a weapon he doesn't know how to use is likely to have it shoved where the sun does not shine.' He took off his breastplate and helmet, and tossed his sword belt into a corner. 'All right, attack me,’ he said. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that some of the men had wandered into the yard and were watching. 'I can't just stab you, sarge!' Sam wailed. 'No, but I'd like you to try.' Sam hesitated again. I wasn't entirely stupid, Vimes thought. 'You're grinning, sarge,' said Sam. 'Well?' 'You're just grinning and standing there, sarge,' said Sam. 'I know I'in going to get a hiding, 'cos you haven't got a sword and you're grinning.' 'Worried about getting blood on your nice sword, lad? All right, throw it away. Feel better? You were in a gang, right? Of course you were. Everyone was. You're still alive. So you must've learned how to fight.' 'Yeah, sarge, but that was, you know, dirty fighting...' 'We're dirty people. Do your worst,' said Vimes. 'I don't want to hurt you, sarge!' 'That's your first mistake-' Sam span and lashed out. Vimes stepped back, caught the foot and helped it on its journey upwards. I was quick too, he thought, as Sam landed flat on his back. And not too bad at cunning. But I've learned artful since then. 'It showed in your eyes,' he said to the sprawling Sam. 'But you've got hold of the basic idea. There's no rules.' He sensed the change behind him. It included the very muffled sound of a chuckle. He glanced back at Sam, who was looking past him. The blow was a neat one, to the back of where the head would have been if Vimes hadn't stepped smartly sideways. As it was, he turned and grabbed the arm and looked into the face of Ned Coates. 'Nice day off, Ned?' he said. 'Yes, sarge, thank you. Just wanted to see how good you were.' He elbowed Vimes in the stomach and twisted away. There was some murmuring from the watchers but Vimes, bent double and with tears running from his eyes, raised a hand. 'No, it was fair enough, fair enough,' he panted. 'We've all got something to learn.' He put his hands on his knees, wheezing a little more theatrically than he needed to. He was impressed that Ned wasn't falling for it. The man kept his distance, circling slowly. He was holding his truncheon. A less experienced fighter would have come to check that ol' sarge was all right, and would have suffered for it. 'That's right, sarge,’ said Ned. 'I want to see what you can teach me. Sam's too trusting.' Vimes's mind riffled desperately through options. 'So, sarge,' said Ned, still moving, 'what would you do, sarge, if you were unarmed and a man came at you with a truncheon?' Get armed quick, thought Vimes, if I thought he was as good as you. He ducked and rolled. Ned missed that. When Vimes started to move right he'd concentrated on the left, on the basis that from someone like Vimes the first move had to be a feint. By the time he caught himself and turned, Vimes had grabbed his scabbard and was rising, sword sliding out. 'Ah, raising the stakes. Good lesson, sarge,' said Ned. He drew his own sword. It gleamed; most of the Watch swords would have had difficulty cutting butter. 'Now we're level again. What next, sarge?' They circled. Blimey, thought Vimes, who taught him? And he's grinning, and no wonder. This isn't a contest. He knows I can't cut him, not like this, not in front of everyone. He can accidentally hit me and get away with it, but a sergeant's supposed to know better. And we can't raise the stakes any higher. Hold on... He hurled the sword at the wall. It stuck in, by sheer luck. That impressed the watchers. 'Got to give you a chance, Ned,' he said, moving away. You can always learn, Vimes thought. He remembered Gussie Two Grins. Sam wouldn't run into him for five years or so. It would be a real education. Two Grins was the dirtiest fighter Vimes had ever met. Anything was a weapon, anywhere was a target. Two Grins was a kind of genius in that limited area. He could see the weapon in anything - a wall, a cloth, a piece of fruit... He wasn't even a big man. He was small and wiry. But he liked fighting big men, on the basis that there was more of them to bite. After a few drinks, though, it was hard to know what Two Grins was fighting. He'd fight the man next to him simply as a substitute for kneeing the whole universe in the groin. He'd been called Two Grins ever since someone glassed him in the face; Gussie had been so marinated in adrenalin at that point that he regarded this as a mere detail. The scar had left a happy smiley face. Sam had learned a lot from Gussie Two Grins. 'What's this about?' he murmured, just loud enough for Ned to hear. 'Just want to find out what you know, sarge,' said Ned, still circling. 'Seems to me you know too much.' He lunged. Vimes darted back, flailed with the scabbard like a man with no hope and, as Ned laughed and leaned out of his way, shifted his grip on the stiff leather. 'I've got the helmet on, as per regulations,' said Ned. 'And the armour. Hard to punch me out, sarge.' Even with Detritus yelling at them, not one watchman in seven really used a sword properly. Ned did. There weren't many openings. Oh, well... time for artful. He took a step back, stopped, and saw what was happening behind Coates. He tried to hide it, but he couldn't stop the momentary flash of relief in his eyes. Coates couldn't stop the momentary flicker of attention. Vimes punched up, the scabbard an extension of his arm. The stiff leather caught the man under the chin, thrusting his head back. Then the leather was brought down on the sword hand and, as an afterthought, Vimes kicked Ned on the shin just enough to make him collapse. He'd always had an allergy to edged weapons too near his face. 'Well done, nice try,' he said, and turned his back and faced the crowd. To the sound of gurgling behind him, he said, 'Anything's a weapon, used right. Your bell is a club. Anything that pokes the other man hard enough to give you more time is a good thing. Never, ever threaten anyone with your sword unless you really mean it, because if he calls your bluff you suddenly don't have many choices and they're all the wrong ones. Don't be frightened to use what you learned when you were kids. We don't get marks for playing fair. And for closeup fighting, as your senior sergeant I explicitly forbid you to investigate the range of coshes, blackjacks and brass knuckles sold by Mrs Goodbody at No. 8 Easy Street, at a range of prices and sizes to suit all pockets, and should any of you approach me privately I absolutely will not demonstrate a variety of specialist blows suitable for these useful yet tricky instruments. Right, let's limber up. I want you all out here with your truncheons in two minutes. You think it's just a silly club. I will show you otherwise. Jump to it!' He turned to the stricken Ned, who'd raised himself to a sitting position. 'Nice moves, Mr Coates. You didn't learn them in the Watch, I know that. Anything we need to discuss? Care to tell me where you were last night? Morphic Street, maybe?' 'Day off,' muttered Ned, rubbing his jaw. 'Right, right. None of my business. Seems to me we've failed to hit it off, Ned.' ' 'sright.' 'You think I'in some kind of spy.' 'I know you're not John Keel.' Vimes kept his face perfectly impassive - which was, he realized, a complete giveaway in itself. 'Why d'you say that?' he said. 'I don't have to tell you. You ain't a Watch sergeant, either. And you were lucky just now, and that's all I'in saying.' Ned got to his feet as the other watchmen filed out into the yard again. Vimes let him go, and turned his attention to the men. None of them had ever been taught anything. They'd learned, to a greater or usually a lesser extent, from one another. And Vimes knew where that road went. On that road coppers rolled drunks for their small change and assured one another that bribes were just perks, and it got worse. He was all for getting recruits out on the street, but you had to train them first. You needed someone like Detritus bellowing at them for six weeks, and lectures about duty and prisoners' rights and the 'service to the public'. And then you could hand them over to the street monsters who told them all the other stuff, like how to hit someone where it wouldn't leave a mark and when it was a good idea to stick a metal soupplate down the front of your trousers before attending to a bar brawl. And if you were lucky and they were sensible, they found somewhere between impossible perfection and the Pit where they could be real coppers - slightly tarnished, because the job did that to you, but not rotten. He formed them into twos and set them attacking and defending. It was dreadful to watch. He let it go on for five minutes. 'All right, all right,’ he said, clapping his hands. 'Very good indeed. When the circus comes to town I'll definitely recommend you.' The men sagged, and grinned sheepishly as he went on: 'Don't you know any of the moves? The Throat Slam, the Red Hot Poker, the Ribrattler? Say I'in coming at you with a big, big club... what do you do?' 'Run away, sarge,' said Wiglet. There was laughter. 'How far can you run?' said Vimes. 'Got to fight sometime. Lance-Corporal Coates?' Ned Coates had not been taking part. He'd been leaning against the wall in a sort of stationary swagger, watching the sad show with disdain. 'Sarge?' he said, propelling himself upright with the minimum of effort. 'Show Wiglet how it's done.' Coates pulled out his truncheon. It was, Vimes saw, custommade, slightly longer than the general issue. He took up station in front of the constable, with his back very expressively towards Vimes. 'What do you want me to do, sarge?' he said, over his shoulder. 'Show him a few decent moves. Take him by surprise.' 'Right you are, sarge.' Vimes watched the desultory clatter of sticks. One, two, three... and around Ned came, truncheon whistling through the air. But Vimes ducked under the blow and caught the man's arm in both hands, twisting it up behind his back and bringing his ear into immediate conjunction with Vimes's mouth. 'Not quite unexpected, sunshine,' he whispered. 'Now, we'll both keep grinning because the lads are laughing at our Ned, isn't he a card, who keeps having another go at the ol' sarge, and we don't want to spoil their fun. I'in letting you go now, but you try it on one more time and you'll have to use both hands to pick up a spoon and you'll need to pick up a spoon, Ned, 'cos of living off soup by reason of having no damn teethV He relaxed his grip. 'Who taught you all this stuff, anyway?' 'Sergeant Keel, sarge,' said Ned. 'You 're doing a good job. Sergeant Keel!' Vimes turned to see Captain Swing advancing across the yard. He was smaller and slimmer in daylight and he looked like a clerk, and a clerk who was only erratically careful about his appearance; his hair was lank, and the thick black strands plastered across a central bald spot suggested that the man either had no mirror or completely lacked a sense of humour. His coat, in the light, was oldfashioned but well cared for, but his buckled shoes were scuffed and generally downtrodden. Vimes's mother would have had something to say about that. A man ought to look after his boots, she always said. You could tell a man by the shine of his shoes. Swing also carried a walking stick or, rather, an opera cane. It was just possible that he thought it made him look sophisticated rather than, say, like a man carrying an unnecessary length of wood. It was certainly a swordstick, because it rattled when it hit the pavement, and it did so now as he primly picked his way through the old targets and straw debris. 'Keeping the men up to scratch, I see,’ he said. 'Very well done. Is your captain here?' 'I believe not,' said Vimes, letting Coates go, 'sir.' 'Ah? Well, perhaps you will give him this, Sergeant Keel.' Swing gave him a faint smile. 'You had a successfulnight... I am given to understand.' 'We had a few visitors,' said Vimes, 'sir.' 'Ah, yes. Misplaced zeal. It does not payto... underestimate you, sergeant. You are a man of resource. Alas, the other Houses were not so-' 'resourceful?' 'Ah. Yes. I am afraid, sergeant, that some of my keener men feel you are anobstacle... to our very needful work. I, onthecontrary... believe that you are a man of iron adherence to the law and, while this hasledto... elements of friction because of your lack of full understanding of the exigencies of the situation, I know that you are a man after my own heart.' Vimes considered the anatomical choices. ‘That would be broadly correct, sir,’ he said, 'although I would not aspire that high.' 'Capital. I lookforwardto... our future cooperation, sergeant. Your new captain willundoubtedly... inform you of other matters, as he sees fit. Good day.' Swing swivelled, and walked his jerky walk back to the gate. His men turned to follow him but one of them, who was wearing a plaster cast on one arm, made a gesture. 'Morning, Henry,' said Vimes. He examined the letter. It was quite thick, and had a big embossed seal. But Vimes had spent too much time in the company of bad men, and knew exactly what to do with a sealed envelope. He also knew how to listen. New captain. So... it was starting. The men were watching him. ‘They calling in more, hnah, soldiers, sarge?' said Snouty. 'I expect so,' said Vimes. ‘They gave Captain Tilden the push, didn't they...' 'Yes.' 'He was a good captainV Snouty protested. 'Yes,’ Vimes said. No, he thought. He wasn't. He was a decent man and he did his best, that's all. He's well out of it now. 'What're we gonna do now, sarge?' said LanceConstable Vimes. 'We'll patrol,’ said Vimes. 'Close in. Just these few streets.' 'What good'll that do?' 'More good than if we didn't, lad. Didn't you take the oath when you joined up?' 'What oath, sarge?' He didn't, Vimes remembered. A lot of them hadn't. You just got your uniform and your bell and you were a member of the Night Watch. A few years ago Vimes wouldn't have bothered about the oath either. The words were out of date and the shilling on a string was a joke. But you needed something more than the wages, even in the Night Watch. You needed something else to tell you that it wasn't just a job. 'Snouty, nip up to the captain's office and get the Shilling, will you?' said Vimes. 'Let's get this lot sworn in. And where's Sergeant Knock?' 'Pushed off, sarge,' said Wiglet. 'Dunno if it helps, but he said "to hell with him" when he went out the door.' Vimes counted heads. It'd be said, later on, that all the Watch House stayed on. They hadn't, of course. Some had slipped away, some hadn't come back on duty at all. But it was true about Keel and the Line. 'Okay, lads,' he said, 'it's like this. We know what's been going on. I don't know about you, but I don't like it. Once you get troops on the streets, it's only a matter of time before it goes bad. Some kid throws a stone, next minute there's houses on fire and people getting killed. What we're going to do is keep the peace. That's our job. We're not going to be heroes, we're just going to be... normal. Now,' he shifted position, 'it might just be that someone will say we're doing something wrong. So I'in not going to order you.' He drew his sword and scratched a line across the mud and stones. 'If you step over the line, then you're in,' he said. 'If you don't, then that's fine. You didn't sign up for this and I doubt that there'll be any medals, whatever happens. I'll just ask you to go, and the best of luck to you.' It was almost depressing how quickly Lance-Constable Vimes crossed the line. Fred Colon came next, and Waddy, and Billy Wiglet. And Spatchcock, Culweather and Moist and Leggy Gaskin and Horace Nancyball and... Curry, wasn't it?... and Evans and Pounce... A dozen crossed the line, the last few with the reluctance caused by a battle between peer pressure and a healthy regard for their skin. A few others, more than Vimes had hoped, evaporated at the back. That left Ned Coates. He crossed his arms. 'You're all bloody mad,’ he said. 'We could use you, Ned,' said Vimes. 'I don't want to die,’ said Ned, 'and I don't intend to. This is stupid. There's barely a dozen of you. What can you do? All that stuff about "keeping the peace" - it's rubbish, lads. Coppers do what they're told by the men in charge. It's always like that. What'll you do when the new captain comes in, eh? And who're you doing this for? The people? They attacked the other Houses, and what's the Night Watch ever done to hurt them?' 'Nothing,’ said Vimes. ‘There you are, then.' 'I mean the Watch did nothing, and that's what hurt them,’ said Vimes. 'What could you do, then? Arrest Winder?' Vimes felt he was building a bridge of matchsticks over a yawning abyss, and now he could feel the chilly winds below him. He'd arrested Vetinari, back in the future. Admittedly the man had walked free, after what passed for the due process of law, but the City Watch had bee- was going to be big enough and strong enough and wellconnected enough to actually arrest the ruler of the city. How had they ever got to that stage? How had he even dreamed that a bunch of coppers could slam the cell door on the boss? Well, perhaps it had started here. Lance-Constable Vimes was watching him intently. 'Of course we can't,’ he said, 'but we ought to be able to. Maybe one day we will. If we can't then the law isn't the law, it's just a way of keeping people down.' 'Looks like you've woken up and smelled the cacky,’ said Coates, 'because that's exactly what you're in. Sorry, lads, but you're going to die. That's what'll happen if you tangle with real soldiers. Hear about Dolly Sisters last night? Three dead and they weren't even trying.' 'Come on, Ned, no one's going to have a go at us if we're just patrolling,' mumbled Colon. 'Patrolling for what?' said Coates. 'To keep the peace? What'll you do when there's no peace left to keep? Well, I'in not going to stand around and see you get killed. I'in off.' He turned and strode out of the yard and into the Watch House. You bloody fool, you're right, Vimes thought. I just wish you weren't so right. 'Still with us, lads?' he said, to the group caught behind the line. ‘That's right, sarge!' said Lance-Constable Vimes. The rest of the volunteers seemed slightly less certain. 'Are we gonna get killed?' said Wiglet. 'Who said it's going to come to a fight?' said Vimes, watching Coates's retreating back. 'Wait a moment, I want a word with Ned-' 'Got the Shilling, sarge,' Snouty announced, advancing across the yard. 'And the captain wants a word with you.' 'Tell him I'll be up in just a few-' 'It's the new captain,' said Snouty quickly. 'He's here already, hnah. Keen. Milit'ry. Not the patient type, sarge.' I used to have Carrot and Detritus and Angua and Cheery for this, Vimes thought bitterly. I'd say you do this, and you do that, and all I had to do was fret and deal with the soddin' politics... 'Get Fred to swear the men in,' he said. 'And tell the officer I'll be with him shortly.' He ran through the Watch House and out of the front door. There were a lot of people in the street, more than usual. It wasn't a mob as such, but it was Ankh-Morpork's famous urmob, the state you got just before a real mob happened. It spread across the city like web and spider and, when some triggering event happened, twanged its urgent message through the streets and thickened and tightened around the spot. The Dolly Sisters Massacre had got around and the numbers had grown in the telling. Vimes could sense the tension in the web. It was just waiting for some idiot to do the wrong thing, and Nature is bountiful where idiots are concerned. 'Coates!' he yelled. To his surprise, the man stopped and turned. 'Yeah?' 'I know you're with the revolutionaries.' 'You're just guessing.' 'No, you had the password in your notebook,' said Vimes. The same one Dibbler was passing out in pies. You must know I was able to get into the lockers. Look, do you think you and Dibbler'd still be walking around if I was a spy for Swing?' 'Sure. You're not after us, we can be mopped up later. Swing wants the leaders.' Vimes stood back. 'Okay. Why haven't you told the lads?' 'Things are moving, that's why. It's all starting,' said Ned. 'Who you are doesn't matter any more. But you're going to get the lads killed. They'd have been on our side, if it wasn't for you. I was working on 'em. You know Spatchcock always drops his sword on his foot and Nancyball wets himself when he's threatened and Vimesy is simple, and now you're going to stick 'em all right in the middle and they're gonna die. And all for no reason!' 'Why haven't you told them?' Vimes repeated. 'Maybe you've got friends in high places,' Ned snarled. Vimes glanced up at the rooftops. 'Have we finished?' said Ned. 'Give me your badge,' said Vimes. 'You what?' 'You're quitting. Fair enough. Give me your badge.' Coates recoiled as if he'd been stung. 'Blow that!' 'Then leave the city,’ said Vimes. 'It'd be for your own good.' 'Is that a threat?' 'Not from me. But here's some advice, boy. Don't put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That's why they're called revolutions. People die, and nothing changes. I'll see you later.' He turned his back and hurried away, so that the man wouldn't see his face. Okay. Now it was time. It had to be now, or he'd burst like Mr Salciferous. He had wanted to do this, hadn't dared try it, because those monks could probably do a man a lot of no good if he crossed them, but it had all gone too far now... A sense of duty told him there was an officer waiting to see him. He overruled it. It was not in possession of all the facts. Vimes reached the entrance to the Watch House, and stopped. He shut his eyes. If anyone had bothered to look at him, they'd have seen a man apparently trying to grind two cigarette stubs into the road, one with each foot. Thank you, Rosie, for those cardboard soles. He smiled. He thought with the brains in his feet. And as young Sam had noticed, the feet had a memory of their own... Rounded cathead cobbles, the usual kind. They hadn't been well set in this part of the city and moved very slightly underfoot... then twice before getting to the Watch House his feet had felt larger cobbles, narrow bands of them, where the road surface had been replaced after drains had been laid. And before that, there'd been a similar band but of soft brick rubble, so crushed by cartwheels that it was practically a gully. A few dozen steps earlier they'd twirled him round a couple of times, but the last surface before that had been... mud. Vimes, who had been walking with his eyes shut, bumped into a cart. Mud, he thought, getting up and ignoring the strange looks of passersby. That meant an alley. Let's see... ah, yes, over there... It took twenty minutes. People turned as he walked through the streets, closing his eyes when he dared so that his feet could see better. Sometimes he did look around, though, and there it was again, the thunderstorm sensation of tensions building up, waiting for the first little thing. People were uneasy - the herd was restless - and they didn't quite know why. Everyone he looked at returned his gaze blankly. He stepped onwards. Rough flagstones between two stretches of the ancient cobbles they called trollheads... the only place where you got that in this part of the city was here, where Pewter Street crossed Elm, and before that it had been... yeah, big stones, some of the most ancient in the city, rutted by hundreds and hundreds of years of ironbound cartwheels, that was a road that had been right behind a city wall... yes; he crossed the Pitts, still on Elm, and then lost his thread. A metal grating on the pavement gave it back to him. Cellar grating. Cool cellar. Coat of arms on it, worn down. Buttermarket. Yeah. Go, feet! The monks had turned him again here but... long bricks, hardfired in the kiln, and a stretch of quite modern flagstones, well dressed and fitted. It could trick you if you didn't know you were in... yeah, Masons Road, and there were masons here and they looked after the surface. Now find an alley, mud but with a lot of gravel in it, because the stonemasons dumped their waste here but this one has occasional hummocks across it, where pipes have been laid. Yeah. Now find squarehead cobbles... He opened his eyes. Yeah. Away on his left, on Clay Lane, was a block of three buildings. A temple sandwiched between two cheapjack corner shops. It was... just a temple, slightly foreignlooking, but weren't they all? It looked High Hublandish, where everyone lived on yaks or something. The temple doors were locked. He rattled the handle impotently, and then hammered on the woodwork with his sword. It had no effect. He didn't even leave a mark on the wood. But the door of the shonky shop next door was open. It was a familiar place. Once upon a time, it was his tailor and bootmaker. And, like a pawn shop, a shonky shop was always open. Vimes stepped inside, and was immediately enveloped in dusty darkness. It was a cave of cloth. Racks of old suits hung from the ceiling. Ancient shelves bent under piles of shirts and vests and socks. Here and there old boxes loomed in the gloom and caught his knees. Piles of derelict boots slipped and slid under his feet. And there was the smell. If poverty had a smell, this was it. If humbled pride had a smell, this was it. And there was a touch of disinfectant as well. Within a few feet of the door, Vimes was already lost. He turned and shoved his way through grey aisle after grey aisle of suffocating cloth and wondered if anyone had ever died in here and how anyone could ever find out. He pulled aside a hanger containing a greasy, threadbare suit- 'You want?' He turned. There was no one there, until his gaze fell slightly and met that of a small, glossy little man, totally bald, very small and thin, and wearing some vague clothing that presumably even a shonky shop hadn't been able to unload on a customer. Who was he? who was he?... surprisingly, the name seemed quite fresh in the memory... 'Ah, er, yeah... Mr Shine-' 'Soon Shine Sun,’ said Mr Soon. He grabbed the suit Vimes was still holding. 'Good eye, good eye, lovely cloth, lovely cloth, owned by priest, very good, fifty pence to you, shame to sell it, times are hard.' Vimes hastily put the suit back on the rack and pulled out his badge. Soon glared at it. 'I pay already other copper,' he said. 'One dollar, one month, no trouble. Already I pay other copper.' 'Pay?' said Vimes. "Twostripe copper already I pay. One dollar, one month, no trouble!' 'Corporal Quirke,' muttered Vimes. 'You don't have to pay coppers, Mr Soon. We're here for your protection.' Despite his barely basic grasp of the language, Mr Soon's expression suggested very clearly that the threestripe, onecrown copper in front of him had dropped in from the planet Idiot. 'Look, I haven't got time for this,’ said Vimes. 'Where's the back door? This is Watch business!' 'I pay! I pay protection! One month, no trouble!' Vimes grunted and set off along another narrow, clothlined tunnel. A glint of glass caught his eye, and he sidled crabwise up a choked aisle until he found a counter. It was piled with more hopeless merchandise, but there was a beadcurtained doorway behind it. He half clambered, half swam over the piles and scrambled into the tiny room beyond. Mr Soon pushed his way to an ancient tailor's dummy; it was so scratched, chipped and battered it looked like something dug up from the volcanic ash of an ancient city. He pulled on an arm, and the eyes lit up. 'Number Three here,' he said, into its ear. 'He's just gone through. And, boy, is he angry The back door was locked but yielded under the weight of Vimes's body. He staggered into the yard, looked up at the wall separating this greasy space from the temple's garden, jumped, scrabbled his boots on the brickwork and dragged himself on to the top, feeling a couple of bricks crumble away underneath him. He landed on his back, and looked up at a thin, robed figure sitting on a stone seat. 'Cup of tea, commander?' said Sweeper cheerfully. 'I don't want any damn tea!' shouted Vimes, struggling to his feet. Sweeper dropped a lump of rancid yak butter in the tea bowl beside him. 'What do you want, then, Mister Vimes with the very helpful feet?' 'I can't deal with this! You know what I mean!' 'You know, some tea really would calm you down,’ said Sweeper. 'Don't tell me to be calm! When are you going to get me home?' A figure stepped out of the temple. He was a taller, heavier man than Sweeper, whitehaired and with the look of a goodnatured bank manager about him. He held out a cup. Vimes hesitated a moment, and then took the cup and poured the tea out on to the ground. 'I don't trust you,' he said. There could be anything in this.' 'I can't imagine what we could put in tea that would make it any worse than the way you normally drink it,' said Sweeper calmly. 'Sit down, your grace. Please?' Vimes sagged on to the seat. The rage that had been driving him sank a little, too, but he could feel it bubbling. Automatically, he pulled out a halfsmoked cigar and put it in his mouth. 'Sweeper said you'd find us, some way or other,’ said the other monk, and sighed. 'So much for secrecy.' 'Why should you worry?' said Vimes, lighting the stub. 'You can just play around with time and it won't have happened, right?' 'We don't intend to do that,’ said the other monk. 'What could I do, anyway? Go around telling everyone that those loony monks you see in the streets are some kind of time shifters? I'd get locked up! Who are you, anyway?' 'This is Qu,’ said Sweeper, nodding at the other monk. 'When the time comes, he'll get you back. But not yet.' Vimes sighed. The anger had drained, leaving only a hopeless, empty feeling. He stared blankly at the strange rockery that occupied most of the garden. It looked oddly familiar. He blinked. 'I've been talking to people today who are going to die,' he said. 'How do you think that makes me feel? Do you know what that feels like?' The monks gave him a puzzled look. 'Er... yes,’ said Qu. 'We do,’ said Sweeper. 'Everyone we talk to is going to die. Everyone you talk to is going to die. Everyone dies.' 'I've been changing things,’ said Vimes, and added defensively: 'Well, why shouldn't I? Carcer is! I have no idea how things are going to turn out! I mean, doesn't it change history even if you just tread on an ant?' 'For the ant, certainly,’ said Qu. Sweeper waved a hand. 'I told you, Mister Vimes. History finds a way. It's like a shipwreck. You're swimming to the shore. The waves will break whatever you do. Is it not written: "The big sea does not care which way the little fishes swim"? People die in their due time-' 'Keel didn't! Carcer mugged the poor devil!' 'His due time in this present, commander,’ said Qu. 'But he will play his part in the other one, Mister Vimes. Eventually. You'll reach the shore. You must. Otherwise-' 'there's no shore,’ said Sweeper. 'No,’ said Vimes. 'There's got to be more. I'in not swimming, I'in drowning. It was fun, d'you know? At first? Like a boys' night out? Feeling the street under my boots again? But now... what about Sybil? Are my memories real? What I know is she's a girl living with her dad. Is there somewhere where she's my wife, having my child? I mean, really? Is it all in my mind? Can you prove it? Is it happening? Will it happen? What is real?' The monks were silent. Sweeper glanced at Qu, who shrugged. He glanced rather more meaningfully and, this time, Qu made that dismissive little wave of the hand which is someone signifying 'all right, all right, against my better judgement..." Then Sweeper said: 'Yees,' very slowly. 'Yes, 1 think we can help, commander. You want to know there's a future waiting. You want to hold it in your hand. You want to feel the weight of it. You want one point to navigate by, one point to steer for. Yes. I think we can help you there... but...' 'Yes?' 'But you climb back over that wall and Sergeant Keel plays his part. He sees it through to the end. He gives the orders he feels are right and they will be the right orders. He holds the line. He does the job.' 'He's not the only one,' said Vimes. 'Yes, Commander Vimes has a job in hand, too.' 'Don't worry, I'in not leaving Carcer behind,' growled Vimes. 'Good. We'll be in touch.' Vimes tossed the stump of his cigar aside, and looked up at the wall. 'All right,' he said. 'I'll see it through. But when the time comes-' 'We will be ready,' said Sweeper. 'Just so long as you-' He stopped. There was another subtle sound, scaly in its way, a sort of silicon slither. 'My goodness,' said Qu. Vimes looked down. The cigar butt still smouldered. But around it the Garden of Inner City Tranquillity was moving, pebble sliding over tiny pebble. A large, waterrounded rock floated gently around, spinning. And then Vimes became aware that the whole garden was spinning, turning on the little wisp of smoke. A spent match sailed past, rolling from stone to stone like a scrap of food passed from ant to ant. 'Is it meant to do that?' he said. 'In theory, yes,' said Sweeper. 'I should leave right now, Mister Vimes.' Vimes took one last look at the moving garden, shrugged, and then heaved himself over the wall. The two monks stared. The tide of little stones was gently pushing the stub into the centre. 'Astonishing,' said Qu. 'He's part of the pattern now. I don't know how you manage it.' 'I'in not doing it,' said Sweeper. 'Qu, can we-' 'No more time shifting,' said Qu. 'It's caused enough trouble.' 'Fair enough,' said Sweeper. Then I'll need to send out search parties. The fences, the bent jewellers, the pawnshops... we'll find it. I understand our friend. The job's not enough. He needs one real thing. And I know what it is.' They looked again at the turning, shifting garden, and felt the fingers of history spreading out and into the world. Vimes tried not to run back to the Watch House, because too many people were standing around in nervous groups and even a running uniform could be risky. Besides, you didn't run for officers. He was a sergeant. Sergeants walked with a measured tread. To his mild surprise, the men were still out in the yard. Someone had even hung up the swordsmanship targets, which would certainly be helpful if the watchmen were faced with an enemy who was armless and tied to a pole. He climbed the stairs. The captain's door was open, and he saw that the new man had repositioned his desk so that he could see out on to the landing and down the stairs. Not a good sign, not a good sign at all. An officer shouldn't see what was going on, he should rely on his sergeants to tell him what was going on. That way things ran smoothly. This man was keen. Oh, dear... The new captain looked up. Oh, good grief, Vimes thought. It's bloody Rust this time round! And it was indeed the Hon. Ronald Rust, the gods' gift to the enemy, any enemy, and a walking encouragement to desertion. The Rust family had produced great soldiers, by the undemanding standards of 'Deduct your own casualties from those of the enemy, and if the answer is a positive number, it was a glorious victory' school of applied warfare. But Rust's lack of any kind of military grasp was matched only by his high opinion of the talent he in fact possessed only in negative amounts. It hadn't been Rust last time. He vaguely remembered some other dim captain. All these little changes... what would they add up to? I bet he's only just been made a captain, thought Vimes. Just think of the lives I could save by accidentally cutting his head off now. Look at those blue eyes, look at that stupid curly moustache. And he's only going to get worse. 'Are you Keel?' The voice was a bark. 'Yessir.' 'I sent an order for you to come up here an hour ago, man.' 'Yessir. But I've been on duty all night and morning and there's been rather a lot to attend to-' 'I expect an order to be obeyed promptly, sergeant.' 'Yessir. So do I, sir. That's why-' 'Discipline starts at the top, sergeant. The men obey you, you obey me, I obey my superiors.' 'Glad to hear it, sir.' Rust had the same firm grip of common politeness, too. 'What is all that going on in the yard?' Vimes steered according to the prevailing wind... 'A bit of morale building, sir. Instilling a bit of esprit de corps.' ... and hit a reef. Rust raised his eyebrows. 'Why?' he said. 'The men's job is to do what they are told, as is yours. A group hug is not part of the arrangement, is it?' 'A bit of camaraderie helps the job along, sir. In my experience.' 'Are you eyeballing me. Keel?' 'No, sir. I am wearing an expression of honest doubt, sir. "Eyeballing" is four steps up, right after "looking at you in a funny way", sir. By standard military custom and practice, sir, sergeants are allowed to go all the way up to an expression of acute-' 'What's that pip over your stripes, man?' 'Means sergeantatarms, sir. They were a special kind of copper.' The captain grunted, and glanced at the papers in front of him. 'Lord Winder has received an extraordinary request that you be promoted to lieutenant, sergeant. It has come from Captain Swing of the Particulars. And his lordship listens to Captain Swing. Oh, and he wants you to be transferred to the Particulars. Personally, I think the man is mad.' 'I'in one hundred per cent behind you there, sir.' 'You do not wish to be a lieutenant?' 'No, sir. Too long for Dick and too short for Richard, sir,' said Vimes, focusing on a point a few inches above Rust's head. 'What?' 'Neither one thing nor t'other, sir.' 'Oh, so you'd like to be a captain, eh?' said Rust, grinning evilly. 'Nosir. Don't want to be an officer, sir. Get confused when I see more'n one knife and fork on the table, sir.' 'You certainly don't look like officer material to me, sergeant.' 'Nosir. Thank you, sir.' Good old Rust. Good young Rust. The same unthinking rudeness masquerading as blunt speaking, the same stiffneckedness, the same petty malice. Any sergeant worth his salt would see how to make use of that. 'Wouldn't mind transferring to the Particulars though, sir,' he volunteered. It was a bit of a gamble, but not much. Rust's mind was reliable. 'I expect you would like that, Keel,' said Rust. 'No doubt you ran rings round that old fool Tilden and don't fancy the idea of a captain with his finger on the pulse, eh? No, you can damn well stay here, understand?' Wonderful, thought Vimes. Sometimes it's like watching a wasp land on a stinging nettle: someone's going to get stung and you don't care. 'Yessir,' he said, eye still staring straight ahead. 'Have you shaved today, man?' 'Excused shaving, sir,' Vimes lied. 'Doctor's orders. Been sewn up onna face, sir. Could shave one half, sir.' He remained at eye front while Rust grudgingly stared at him. The cut was still pretty livid, and Vimes hadn't dared look under the patch yet. 'Hit yourself in the face with your own bell, did you?' grunted the captain. Vimes's fingers twitched. 'Very funny, sir,’ he said. 'Now go and get the men fell in, Keel. Look sharp. I shall inspect them in a moment. And tell that idiot with the flat nose to clear the stable.' 'Sir?' 'My horse will be arriving shortly. I don't want to see that disgusting screw in there.' 'What, turn out Marilyn, sir?' said Vimes, genuinely shocked. ‘That was an order. Tell him to jump to it.' 'What do you want us to do with her, sir?' 'I don't care! You are a sergeant, you've had an order. Presumably there are knackermen? People around here must eat something, no doubt?' Vimes hesitated for a moment. Then he saluted. 'Right you are, sir,' he said. 'Do you know what I saw on the way here, sergeant?' 'Couldn't say, sir,' said Vimes, staring straight ahead. 'People were building barricades, sergeant.' 'Sir?' 'I know you heard me, man!' 'Well, it's to be expected, sir. It's happened before. People get jumpy. They hear rumours of mobs and outofcontrol soldiers. They try to protect their street-' 'It is a flagrant challenge to government authority! People can't take the law into their own hands!' 'Well, yes. But these things generally run their course-' 'My gods, man, how did you manage to get promoted?' Vimes knew he should leave it at that. Rust was a fool. But at the moment he was a young fool, which is more easily excused. Maybe it was just possible, if caught early enough, that he could be upgraded to idiot. 'Sometimes it pays to-' he began. 'Last night every Watch House in the city was mobbed,' said Rust, ignoring him. 'Except this one. How do you account for that?' His moustache bristled. Not being attacked was definite proof of Vimes's lack of moral fibre. 'It was just a case of-' 'Apparently a man attempted an assault on you. Where is he now?' 'I don't know, sir. We bandaged him up and took him home.' 'You let him go?' 'Yessir. He was-' But Rust was always a man to interrupt an answer with a demand for the answer he was in fact interrupting. 'Why?' 'Sir, because at that time I thought it prudent to-' Three watchmen were killed last night, did you know that? There were gangs roaming the streets! Well, martial law has been declared! Today we're going to show them a firm hand! Get your men together! Now!' Vimes saluted, turned about, and walked slowly down the stairs. He wouldn't have run for a big clock. A firm hand. Right. Gangs roaming the streets. Well, we sure as hell never did anything when they were criminal gangs. And when you've got madmen and idiots on either side, and everything hangs in the balance... well, trouble is always easy to find, when you have enough people looking for it. One of the hardest lessons of young Sam's life had been finding out that the people in charge weren't in charge. It had been finding out that governments were not, on the whole, staffed by people who had a grip, and that plans were what people made instead of thinking. Most of the watchmen were clustered around the stairs. Snouty was quite good at internal communications of the worrying kind. ‘Tidy yourselves, lads,' said Vimes. 'Captain'll be down in a few minutes. Apparently it's time for a show of strength.' 'What strength?' said Billy Wiglet. 'Ah, Billy, what happens is, the vicious revolutionaries take one look at us and scuttle off back to their holes,' said Vimes. He was immediately sorry he'd said that. Billy hadn't learned irony. 'I mean we just give the uniforms an airing,’ he translated. 'We'll get cheesed,’ said Fred Colon. 'Not if we stick together,’ said Sam. 'Right,’ said Vimes. 'After all we're heavily armed men going on patrol among civilians who are, by law, unarmed. If we're careful, we shouldn't get too badly hurt.' Another bad move. Dark sarcasm ought to be taught in schools, he thought. Besides, armed men could get into trouble if the unarmed civilians were angry enough, especially if there were cobblestones on the streets. He heard the distant clocks strike three. Tonight, the streets would explode. According to the history books it would be one shot that did it, round about sunset. One of the foot regiments would be assembled in Hen and Chickens Field, awaiting orders. And there would be people watching them. Troops always drew an audience: impressionable kids, the inevitable Ankh-Morpork floating street crowd and, of course, the ladies whose affection was extremely negotiable. The crowd shouldn't have been there, people said afterwards. But where should they have been? The field was a popular spot. It was the only vaguely green space in that part of the city. People played games there and, of course, there was always the progress of the corpse on the gibbet to inspect. And the men were troops, ordinary foot soldiers, people's sons and husbands, taking a bit of a rest and having a drink. Oh, that was right - afterwards, it was said that the troops were drunk. And that they shouldn't have been there. Yep, that was the reason, Vimes reflected. No one should have been there. But they were, and when that captain got an arrow in his stomach and was groaning on the ground, some of the crossbowmen fired in the direction of the shot. That's what the history books said. They fired at the house windows, where people had been watching. Perhaps the shot had come from one of them. Some arrows fell short, some did not. And there were people who fired back. And then, one after another, horrible things would happen. By then it was too late for them not to. The tension would unwind like a huge spring, scything through the city. There were plotters, there was no doubt about it. Some had been ordinary people who'd had enough. Some were young people with no money who objected to the fact that the world was run by old people who were rich. Some were in it to get girls. And some had been idiots as mad as Swing, with a view of the world just as rigid and unreal, who were on the side of what they called 'the people'. Vimes had spent his life on the streets, and had met decent men and fools and people who'd steal a penny from a blind beggar and people who performed silent miracles or desperate crimes every day behind the grubby windows of little houses, but he'd never met The People. People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forwardthinking or obedient. The People tended to be smallminded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so the children of the revolution were faced with the ageold problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people. As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn't measure up. What would run through the streets soon enough wouldn't be a revolution or a riot. It'd be people who were frightened and panicking. It was what happened when the machinery of city life faltered, the wheels stopped turning and all the little rules broke down. And when that happened, humans were worse than sheep. Sheep just ran; they didn't try to bite the sheep next to them. By sunset a uniform would automatically be a target. Then it wouldn't matter where a watchman's sympathies lay. He'd be just another man in armour- 'What?' he said, snapping back to the present. 'You all right, sarge?' said Corporal Colon. 'Hmm?' said Vimes, as the real world returned. 'You were well away,' said Fred. 'Staring at nothing. You ought to have had a proper sleep last night, sarge.' 'There's plenty of time to sleep in the grave,’ said Vimes, looking at the ranks of the Watch. 'Yeah, I heard that, sarge, but no one wakes you up with a cup of tea. I got 'em lined up, sarge.' Fred had made an effort, Vimes could see. So had the men themselves. He'd never seen them looking quite so... formal. Usually they had a helmet and breastplate apiece. Beyond that, equipment was varied and optional. But today, at least, they looked neat. Shame about the heights. No man could easily inspect a row that included Wiglet at one end and Nancyball at the other. Wiglet was so short that he'd once been accused of navelling a sergeant, being far too short to eyeball anyone, while Nancyball was always the first man on duty to know when it was raining. You had to stand well back to get both of them into vision without eyestrain. 'Well done, lads,' he managed, and heard Rust coming down the stairs. It must have been the first time the man had seen his new command in full. In the circumstances, he bore up quite well. He merely sighed. He turned to Vimes and said: 'I require something to stand on.' Vimes looked blank. 'Sir?' 'I wish to address the men in order to inspire them and stiffen their resolve. They must understand the political background to the current crisis.' 'Oh, we know all about Lord Winder being a loony, sir,’ said Wiglet cheerfully. Frost nearly formed on Rust's forehead. Vimes drew himself up. 'Squad diiiiismiss!' he shouted, and then leaned towards Rust as the men scuttled away. 'A quiet word, sir?' 'Did that man really say-' Rust began. 'Yes, sir. These are simple men, sir,’ said Vimes, thinking quickly. 'Best not to disturb them, if you take my meaning.’ Rust inserted this into his range of options. Vimes could see him thinking. It was a way out, and it suited his opinion of the Watch in general. It meant that he hadn't been cheeked by a constable, he'd merely dealt with a simpleton. ‘They know their duty, sir,’ Vimes added, for reinforcement. 'Their duty, sergeant, is to do what they are told.’ 'Exactly, sir.’ Rust stroked his moustache. There is something in what you say, sergeant. And you trust them?' 'As a matter of fact, sir, yes.’ 'Hmm. We will make a circuit of the surrounding streets in ten minutes. This is a time for action. Reports are disturbing. We must hold the line, sergeant.’ And he believes it, thought Vimes. He really does. The watchmen marched out into the afternoon sunshine, and did so badly. They were not used to marching. Their normal method of progress was the stroll, which is not a recognized military manoeuvre, or the frantic withdrawal, which is. In addition, the convection currents of prudent cowardice were operating in the ranks. There was a definite sideways component to each man's progress as he sought to be in the middle. The watchmen had shields, but they were light wickerwork things intended to turn blows and deflect stones; they wouldn't stand up to anything with an edge. The advance, therefore, was by means of a slowly elongating huddle. Rust didn't notice. He had a gift for not seeing things he did not want to see and not hearing things he did not want to hear. But he could not ignore a barricade. Ankh-Morpork wasn't really a city, not when the chips were down. Places like Dolly Sisters and Nap Hill and Seven Sleepers had been villages once, before they were absorbed by the urban sprawl. On some level, they still held themselves separate. As for the rest... well, once you got off the main streets it was all down to neighbourhoods. People didn't move around much. When tension was high, you relied on your mates and your family. Whatever was going down, you tried to make sure wasn't going down your street. It wasn't revolution. It was quite the reverse. It was defending your doorstep. They were building a barricade in Whalebone Lane. It wasn't a particularly good one, being made up mostly of overturned market stalls, a small cart and quite a lot of household furniture, but it was a Symbol. Rust's moustache bristled. 'Right in our faces,' he snapped. 'Absolute defiance of constituted authority, sergeant. Do your duty!' 'And what would that be at this point, sir?' said Vimes. 'Arrest the ringleaders! And your men will pull the barricade down!' Vimes sighed. 'Very well, sir. If you will stand back, I shall seek them out.' He walked up to the domestic clutter, aware of eyes watching him before and behind. When he was a few feet away he cupped his hands. 'All right, all right, what's going on here?' he shouted. He was aware of whispering. And he was ready for what happened next. When the stone flew over the top of the furniture he caught it in both hands. 'I asked a civil question,’ he said. 'Come on!' There was more whispering. He distinctly heard 'that's the sergeant from last night-' and some sort of sotto voce argument. Then a voice shouted, 'Death to the Fascist Oppressors!' This time the argument was more frantic. He heard someone say 'oh, all right', and then 'Death to the Fascist Oppressors, Present Company Excepted! There, is everyone happy now?' He knew that voice. 'Mr Reginald Shoe, is it?' he said. 'I regret that I have only one life to lay down for Whalebone Lane!' the voice shouted, from somewhere behind a wardrobe. If only you knew, Vimes thought. 'I don't think that will be necessary,' he said. 'Come on, ladies and gentlemen. Is this any way to behave? You can't take... the law... into your own... hands...' His voice faltered. Sometimes it takes the brain a little while to catch up with the mouth. Vimes turned and looked at the squad, who'd needed no prompting at all to hang back. And then he turned to look at the barricade. Where, exactly, was the law? Right now? What did he think he was doing? The Job, of course. The one that's in front of you. He'd always done it. And the law had always been... out there, but somewhere close. He'd always been pretty sure where it was, and it definitely had something to do with the badge. The badge was important. Yes. It was shieldshaped. For protection. He'd thought about that, in the long nights in the darkness. It protected him from the beast, because the beast was waiting in the darkness of his head. He'd killed werewolves with his bare hands. He'd been mad with terror at the time, but the beast had been there inside, giving him strength... Who knew what evil lurked in the hearts of men? A copper, that's who. After ten years you thought you'd seen it all, but the shadows always dished up more. You saw how close men lived to the beast. You realized that people like Carcer were not mad. They were incredibly sane. They were simply men without a shield. They'd looked at the world and realized that all the rules didn't have to apply to them, not if they didn't want them to. They weren't fooled by all the little stories. They shook hands with the beast. But he, Sam Vimes, had stuck by the badge, except for that time when even that hadn't been enough and he'd stuck by the bottle instead... He felt as if he'd stuck by the bottle now. The world was spinning. Where was the law? There was the barricade. Who was it protecting from what? The city was run by a madman and his shadowy chums so where was the law? Coppers liked to say that people shouldn't take the law into their own hands, and they thought they knew what they meant. They were thinking about the normal times, and men who went round to sort out a neighbour with a club because his dog had crapped once too often on their doorstep. But at times like this, who did the law belong to? If it shouldn't be in the hands of people, where the hell should it be? People who knew better? Then you got Winder and his pals, and how good was that? What was supposed to happen next? Oh yes, he had a badge, but it wasn't his, not really... and he'd got orders, and they were the wrong ones... and he'd got enemies, for all the wrong reasons... and maybe there was no future. It didn't exist any more. There was nothing real, no solid point on which to stand, just Sam Vimes where he had no right to be... It was as if his body, trying to devote as many resources as possible to untangling the spinning thoughts, was drawing those resources from the rest of Vimes. His vision darkened. His knees were weak. There was nothing but bewildered despair. And a lot of explosions. Havelock Vetinari knocked politely on the window of the little office just inside the Assassins' Guild main gate. The duty porter raised the hatch. 'Signing out, Mr Maroon,' said the Assassin. 'Yessir,’ said Maroon, pushing a big ledger towards him. 'And where are we off to today, sir?' 'General reconnoitring, Mr Maroon. Just generally looking around.' 'Ah, I said to Mrs Maroon last night, sir, that you are a great one for looking around,' said Maroon. 'We look and learn, Mr Maroon, we look and learn,’ said Vetinari, signing his name in the book and putting the pen back in its holder. 'And how is your little boy?' ‘Thank you for asking, sir, he's a lot better,’ said the porter. 'Glad to hear it. Oh, I see the Hon. John Bleedwell is out on a commission. To the palace?' 'Now, now, sir,’ said Maroon, grinning and waving a finger. 'You know I couldn't tell you that, sir, even if I knew.’ 'Of course not.’ Vetinari glanced at the back wall of the office where, in an old brass rack, were a number of envelopes. The word 'Active' was inscribed at the top of the rack. 'Good afternoon, Mr Maroon.’ ' 'afternoon, sir. Good, er, looking around.’ He watched the young man walk out into the street. Then Maroon went into the cubbyhole next to the office to put the kettle on. He rather liked young Vetinari, who was quiet and studious and, it had to be said, a generous young man on appropriate occasions. But a bit weird, all the same. Once Maroon had watched him in the foyer, standing still. That was all he was doing. He wasn't making any attempt at concealing himself. After half an hour Maroon had wandered over and said, 'Can I help you, sir?' And Vetinari had said, Thank you, no, Mr Maroon. I'in just teaching myself to stand still.' To which there wasn't really any sensible comment that could be made. And the young man must have left after a while, because Maroon didn't remember seeing him again that day. He heard a creak from the office, and poked his head around the door. There was no one there. As he made the tea he thought he heard a rustle from next door, and went to check. It was completely empty. Remarkably so, he thought later on. It was almost as if it was even more empty than it would be if there was just, well, no one in it. He went back to his comfy armchair in the cubbyhole, and relaxed. In the brass rack, the envelope marked 'Bleedwell, J.' slid back slightly. There were a lot of explosions. The firecrackers bounced all over the street. Tambourines thudded, a horn blared a chord unknown in nature, and a line of monks danced and twirled around the corner, all chanting at the tops of their voices. Vimes, sagging to his knees, was aware of dozens of sandalled feet gyrating past and grubby robes flying. Rust was yelling something at the dancers, who grinned and waved their hands in the air. Something square and silvery landed in the dirt. And the monks were gone, dancing into an alleyway, yelling and spinning and banging their gongs... 'Wretched heathens!' said Rust, striding forward. 'Have you been hit, sergeant?' Vimes reached down and picked up the silver rectangle. A stone clanged off Rust's breastplate. As he raised his megaphone, a cabbage hit him on the knee. Vimes stared at the thing in his hand. It was a cigar case, slim and slightly curved. He fumbled it open and read: To Sam With Love From Your Sybil. The world moved. But now Vimes no longer felt like a drifting ship. Now he felt the tug of the anchor, pulling him round to face the rising tide. A barrage of missiles was coming over the barricade. Throwing things was an old Ankh-Morpork custom, and there was something about Rust that made him a target. With what dignity he could muster, he raised the megaphone again and got as far as 'I hereby warn you-' before a stone spun it out of his hand. 'Very well, then,' he said, and marched stiffly back to the squad. 'Sergeant Keel, order the men to fire. One round of arrows, over the top of the barricade.' 'No,’ said Vimes, standing up. 'I can only assume you've been stunned, sergeant,' said Rust. 'Men, prepare to execute that order.' 'First man that fires, I will personally cut that man down,’ said Vimes. He didn't shout. It was a simple, confident statement of precisely what the future would hold. Rust's expression did not change. He looked Vimes up and down. 'Is this mutiny, then, sergeant?' said the captain. 'No. I'in not a soldier, sir. I can't mutiny.' 'Martial law, sergeant!' snapped Rust. 'It is official.’ 'Really?' said Vimes, as another rain of rocks and old vegetables came down. 'Shields up, lads.' Rust turned to Fred Colon. 'Corporal, you will put this man under arrest!' Colon swallowed. 'Me?' 'You, corporal. Now.' Colon's pink face mottled with white as the blood drained from it. 'But he-' he began. 'You won't? Then it seems I must,’ said the captain. He drew his sword. At that Vimes heard the click of a crossbow's safety catch going off, and groaned. He didn't remember this happening. 'You just put that sword away, sir, please,' said the voice of Lance-Constable Vimes. 'You will not shoot me, you young idiot. That would be murder,' said the captain calmly. 'Not where I'in aiming, sir.' Bloody hell, thought Vimes. Maybe the lad was simple. Because one thing Rust wasn't, was a coward. He thought idiot stubbornness was bravery. He wouldn't back down in the face of a dozen armed men. 'Ah, I think I can see the problem, captain,' Vimes said brightly. 'As you were, lanceconstable. There's been a slight misunderstanding, sir, but this should sort it out-' It was a blow he'd remember for a long time. It was sweet. It was textbook. Rust went down like a log. In the light of all his burning bridges, Vimes slipped his hand back into his hip pocket. Thank you, Mrs Goodbody and your range of little equalizers. He turned to the watchmen, who were a tableau of silent horror. 'Let the record show Sergeantat-Arms John Keel did that,' he said. 'Vimes, what did I tell you about waving weapons around when you're not going to use them?' 'You laid him out, sarge!' Sam squeaked, still staring at the sleeping captain. Vimes shook some life back into his hand. 'Let the record show that I took command after the captain's sudden attack of insanity,' he said. 'Waddy, Wiglet... drag him back to the House and lock him up, will you?' 'What we gonna do, sarge?' wailed Colon. Ah... Keep the peace. That was the thing. People often failed to understand what that meant. You'd go to some lifethreatening disturbance like a couple of neighbours scrapping in the street over who owned the hedge between their properties, and they'd both be bursting with aggrieved selfrighteousness, both yelling, their wives would either be having a private scrap on the side or would have adjourned to a kitchen for a shared pot of tea and a chat, and they all expected you to sort it out. And they could never understand that it wasn't your job. Sorting it out was a job for a good surveyor and a couple of lawyers, maybe. Your job was to quell the impulse to bang their stupid fat heads together, to ignore the affronted speeches of dodgy selfjustification, to get them to stop shouting and to get them off the street. Once that had been achieved, your job was over. You weren't some walking god, dispensing finely tuned natural justice. Your job was simply to bring back peace. Of course, if your few strict words didn't work and Mr Smith subsequently clambered over the disputed hedge and stabbed Mr Jones to death with a pair of gardening shears, then you had a different job, sorting out the notorious Hedge Argument Murder. But at least it was one you were trained to do. People expected all kinds of things from coppers, but there was one thing that sooner or later they all wanted: make this not be happening. Make this not be happening... 'What?' he said, suddenly noticing a voice that had, in fact, been on the edge of awareness for some time. 'I said, was he insane, sarge?' But when you're falling off the cliff it's too late to wonder if there might have been a better way up the mountain... 'He asked you to shoot at people who weren't shooting back,’ growled Vimes, striding forward. That makes him insane, wouldn't you say?' 'They are throwing stones, sarge,' said Colon. 'So? Stay out of range. They'll get tired before we do.' In fact the barrage of missiles from the barricade had ceased; even in a time of crisis, the people of Ankh-Morpork would stop for a decent piece of street theatre. Vimes walked back towards them, stopping on the way to retrieve Rust's bent megaphone. As he approached he cast his eye over faces just visible through the chair legs and junk. There would be Unmentionables somewhere, he knew, helping matters along. With luck they wouldn't have bothered with Whalebone Lane. There was muttering from the defenders. Most of them had a look Vimes recognized, because it was the one he was trying to keep off his own face. It was the look of people whose world had suddenly been swept from under them, and now they were trying to tapdance on quicksand. He tossed away the stupid pompous megaphone. He cupped his hands. 'Some of you know me!' he shouted. 'I'in Sergeant Keel, currently in command of the Treacle Mine Road Watch House! And I order you to dismantle this barricade-' There was a chorus of jeers and one or two badly thrown missiles. Vimes waited, stock still, until they'd died away. Then he raised his hands again. 'I repeat, I order you to dismantle this barricade.' He took a breath, and went on: 'And rebuild it on the other side on the corner with Cable Street! And put up another one at the top of Sheer Street! Properly built! Good grief, you don't just pile stuff up, for gods' sake! A barricade is something you construct! Who's in charge here?' There were sounds of consternation behind the overturned furniture, but a voice called out, 'You?' There was nervous laughter. 'Very funny! Now laugh this one off! No one's interested in us yet! This is a quiet part of town! But when things really go bad you're going to have cavalry on your backs! With sabres! How long would you last? But if you shut off this end of Treacle Mine and the end of Sheer then they're left with alleyways, and they don't like that! It's up to you, of course! We'd like to protect you, but me and my men'll be behind the barricades over here He turned on his heel and marched back to the waiting watchmen. 'Right, lads,' he said. 'You heard. Pounce and Gaskin, you take the hurryup wagon up to the bridge and turn it over. Waddy and Nancyball and you too, Fred... go and nick some carts. You grew up round here, so don't tell me you've never done that before. I want a couple blocking the streets down here, and the rest, I want you to run them into the alley mouths until they wedge. You men know the area. Block up all the little back ways.' Colon rubbed his nose. 'We could do that on the river side, sarge, but it's all alleys on the Shades side. Can't block 'em all.' 'I wouldn't worry about those,' said Vimes. 'Cavalry can't come through there. You know what they call a horse in the Shades?' Colon grinned. 'Yeah, sarge. Lunch.' 'Right. The rest of you, get all the benches and tables out of the Watch House-' It dawned on him that none of the men had moved. There was a certain... problem in the air. 'Well?' Billy Wiglet removed his helmet and wiped his forehead. 'Er... how far is this going to go, sarge?' 'All the way, Billy.' 'But we took the oath, sarge, and now we're disobeying orders and helping rebels. Doesn't seem right, sarge,’ said Wiglet, wretchedly. 'You took an oath to uphold the law and defend the citizens without fear or favour,’ said Vimes. 'And to protect the innocent. That's all they put in. Maybe they thought those were the important things. Nothing in there about orders, even from me. You're an officer of the law, not a soldier of the government.' One or two of the men looked longingly at the other end of the street, empty and inviting. 'But I won't stop anyone who wants to walk,' said Vimes. They stopped looking. ' 'ullo, Mister Keel,’ said a sticky voice behind him. 'Yes, Nobby?' he said, without turning round. ' 'ere, how did you detect it was me, sergeant?' 'It's an amazing talent, kid,’ said Vimes, turning, against all wisdom, to look at the urchin. 'What's been happening?' 'Big riot in Sator Square, sarge. And they say people've broke into the Dolly Sisters Watch House and thrown the lieutenant out the window. An' there's lootin' all over the place, they say, an' the Day Watch are out chasin' people only most of 'em are hidin' now 'cos-' 'Yeah, I get the picture,’ sighed Vimes. Carcer had been right. Coppers were always outnumbered, so being a copper only worked when people let it work. If they refocused and realized you were just another standard idiot with a pennyworth of metal for a badge, you could end up a smear on the pavement. He could hear shouting now, a long way off. He looked around at the hesitant watchmen. 'On the other hand, gentlemen,’ he said, 'if you are going to leave, where are you going to go to?' The same thought had clearly occurred to Colon and the others. 'We'll get the carts,’ he said, hurrying off. 'And I wants a penny,’ said Nobby, holding out a grubby hand. To the boy's amazement, Vimes gave him a dollar, saying, 'And just keep telling me everything, will you?' Tables and benches were already being dragged out of the Watch House and after only a couple of minutes Waddy arrived with a cartload of empty barrels. Barricades were easy in these streets; it was keeping them clear that had always been the problem. The watchmen set to work. This was something they understood. They'd done it when they were kids. And perhaps they thought, hey, this time we're wearing uniforms. We can't be in the wrong. While Vimes was struggling to wedge a bench into the growing wall he was aware of people behind him. He worked steadily, however, until someone gave a delicate cough. Then he turned. 'Yes? Can I help you?' There was a small group of people, and it was clear to Vimes that it was a group pushed together out of shared terror because, by the look of them, they'd have nothing to do with one another if they could possibly avoid it. The spokesman, or at least the one in front, looked almost exactly like the kind of person Vimes had pictured when thinking about the Hedge Argument Murder. 'Erm, officer 'Yes, sir?' 'What, er, are you doing, exactly?' 'Keeping the peace, sir. This piece, to be exact.' 'You said that there's, er, rioting and soldiers on the way...' 'Very likely, sir.' 'You don't have to ask him, Rutherford, it's his duty to protect us,' snapped the woman who was standing beside the man with an air of proprietorship. Vimes changed his mind about the man. Yes, he had that furtive look of a timid domestic poisoner about him, the kind of man who'd be appalled at the idea of divorce but would plot womanslaughter every day. And you could see why. He gave the lady a nice warm smile. She was holding a blue vase. 'Can I help you, ma'am?' he said. 'What are you intending to do about us being murdered in our beds?' she demanded. 'Well, it's not four o'clock yet, ma'am, but if you'll let me know when you want to retire-' Vimes was impressed at the way the woman drew herself up. Even Sybil, in full Duchess mode, with the blood of twenty generations of arrogant ancestors behind her, could not have matched her. 'Rutherford, are you going to do something about this man?' she said. Rutherford looked up at Vimes. Vimes was aware that he was villainously unshaven, dishevelled, dirty and probably starting to smell. He decided not to load more troubles on the man's back. 'Would you and your lady care to assist with our barricade?' he said. 'Oh, yes, thank you very-' Rutherford began, but was outgunned again. 'Some of that furniture looks very dirty,' said Mrs Rutherford. 'And aren't those beer barrels?' 'Yes, ma'am, but they're empty ones,' said Vimes. 'Are you sure? I refuse to cower behind alcohol! I have never approved of alcohol, and neither has Rutherford!' 'I can assure you, ma'am, that any beer barrel in the presence of my men for any length of time will be empty,' said Vimes. 'You may rest assured on that score.' 'And are your men sober and cleanliving?' the woman demanded. 'Whenever no alternative presents itself, ma'am,' said Vimes. This seemed acceptable. Mrs Rutherford was like Rust in that respect. She listened to the tone of voice, not the words. 'I think perhaps it would be a good idea, dear, if we made haste to-' Rutherford began. 'Not without Father!' said his wife. 'No problem, ma'am,' said Vimes. 'Where is he?' 'On our barricade, of course! Which was, let me tell you, a rather better barricade altogether.' 'Jolly good, ma'am,' said Vimes. 'If he'd like to come over here we'll-' 'Erm, you don't quite understand, sir,' murmured Rutherford. 'He is, erm, on the barricade...' Vimes looked at the other barricade, and then looked harder. It was just possible to see, near the top of the piledup furniture, an overstuffed armchair. Further examination suggested that it was occupied by a sleeping figure in carpet slippers. 'He's very attached to his armchair,' sighed Rutherford. 'It's going to be an heirloom,' said his wife. 'Be so kind as to send your young men to collect our furniture, will you? And be careful with it. Put it at the back somewhere where it won't get shot at.' Vimes nodded at Sam and a couple of the other men as Mrs Rutherford picked her way over the debris and headed for the Watch House. 'Is there going to be any fighting?' said Mr Rutherford anxiously. 'Possibly, sir.' 'I'in not very good at that sort of thing, I'in afraid.' 'Don't worry about that, sir.' Vimes propelled the man over the barricade, and turned to the rest of the little group. He'd been aware of eyes boring into him, and now he traced the rays back to source, a young man with black trousers, a frilly shirt and long curly hair. 'This is a ruse, isn't it,' said the man. 'You'll get us in your power and we'll never be seen again, eh?' 'Stay out then, Reg,' said Vimes. He cupped his hands and turned back to the Whalebone Lane barricade. 'Anyone else wants to join us had better get a move on!' he shouted. 'You don't know that's my name!' said Reg Shoe. Vimes stared into the big protruding eyes. The only difference between Reg now and the Reg he'd left back in the future was that Constable Shoe was rather greyer and was held together in places by stitches. Zombiehood would come naturally to Reg. He was born to be dead. He believed so strongly in things that some kind of inner spring kept him going. He'd make a good copper. He didn't make a very good revolutionary. People as meticulously fervent as Reg got real revolutionaries worried. It was the way he stared. 'You're Reg Shoe,’ he said. 'You live in Whalebone Lane.' 'Aha, you've got secret files on me, eh?' said Reg, with terrifying happiness. 'Not really, no. Now if you'd be so good-' 'I bet you've got a big file on me a mile long,’ said Reg. 'Not a whole mile, Reg, no,’ said Vimes. 'Listen, Reg, we-' 'I demand to see it!' Vimes sighed. 'Mr Shoe, we don't have a file on you. We don't have a file on anyone, understand? Half of us can't read without using a finger. Reg, we are not interested in you.’ Reg Shoe's slightly worrying eyes remained fixed on Vimes's face for a moment, and then his brain rejected the information as contrary to whatever total fantasy was going on inside. 'Well, it's no good you torturing me because I won't reveal any details about my comrades in the other revolutionary cells!' said Reg. 'Okay. I won't, then. Now perhaps-' ‘That's how we work, see? None of the cadres knows about the other ones!' 'Really. Do they know about you?' said Vimes. For a moment, Reg's face clouded. 'Pardon?' 'Well, you said you don't know about them,’ said Vimes. 'So... do they know about you?' He wanted to add: you're a cell of one, Reg. The real revolutionaries are silent men with pokerplayer eyes and probably don't know or care if you exist. You've got the shirt and the haircut and the sash and you know all the songs, but you're no urban guerrilla. You're an urban dreamer. You turn over rubbish bins and scrawl on walls in the name of The People, who'd clip you round the ear if they found you doing it. But you believe. 'Ah, so you're a secret operative,' he said, to get the poor man off the hook. Reg brightened. That's right!' he said. The people are the sea in which the revolutionary swims!' 'Like swordfishes?' Vimes tried. 'Pardon?' And you're a flounder, thought Vimes. Ned's a revolutionary. He knows how to fight and he can think, even if he is on the skew. But Reg, you really ought to be indoors... 'Well, I can see you're a dangerous individual,' he said. 'We'd better have you where we can keep an eye on you. Hey, that's right. You can undermine the enemy from within.' The relieved Reg raised a fist in salute and carried a table to the new barricade with revolutionary speed. There was some hurried conversation behind the old makeshift barricade, already being denuded of Mrs Rutherford's furniture. This was interrupted by the clatter of hoofbeats from the far end of Treacle Mine Road and a sudden burst of instant decisiveness on the part of the remainder of the crowd. They poured towards the new official barricade, with Lance-Constable Vimes bringing up the rear, fairly well hampered by a diningroom chair. 'Mind out for that!' shouted a female voice from somewhere behind him. 'It's one of a set!' Vimes put his hand on the young man's shoulder. 'Just give me your crossbow, will you?' he said. The horsemen came closer. Vimes was not good at horsemen. Something in him resented being addressed by anyone eight feet above the ground. He didn't like the sensation of being looked at by nostrils. He didn't like being talked down to. By the time they'd reached the barricade he'd clambered around to the front of it and was standing in the middle of the street. They slowed down. It was probably the way he didn't move, and held the crossbow in the nonchalant manner of someone who knows how to use it but has decided not to, for the moment. 'You, there!' said a trooper. 'Yes?' said Vimes. 'Are you in charge?' 'Yes. Can I help you?' 'Where are your men?' Vimes jerked a thumb towards the growing barricade. On the top of the heap, Mrs Rutherford's father was snoring peacefully. 'But that's a barricade!' said the trooper. 'Well done.' ‘There's a man waving aflagl' Vimes turned. Surprisingly, it was Reg. Some of the men had brought out the old flag from Tilden's office and stuck it on the barricade, and Reg was the sort to wave any flag going. 'Probably high spirits, sir,’ said Vimes. 'Don't worry. We're all fine.' 'It's a damn barricade, man. A rebel barricade!' said the second trooper. Oh boy, thought Vimes. They have shiny, shiny breastplates. And wonderfully fresh pink faces. 'Not exactly. In fact it's-' 'Are you stupid, fellow? Don't you know that all barricades are to be torn down by order of the Patrician?' The third horseman, who had been staring at Vimes, urged his horse a little closer. 'What's that pip on your shoulder, officer?' he said. 'Means I'in Sergeantat-Arms. Special rank. And who're you?' 'He doesn't have to tell you that!' said the first trooper. 'Really?' said Vimes. The man was getting on his nerves. 'Well, you're just a trooper and I'in a bleedin' sergeant and if you dare speak to me like that again I'll have you down off that horse and thump you across the ear, understand?' Even the horse took a step backwards. The trooper opened his mouth to speak, but the third horseman raised a whitegloved hand. Oh dear, thought Vimes, focusing on the sleeve of the red jacket. The man was a captain. Not only that, he was an intelligent one, by the look of him. He hadn't mouthed off until he'd had a chance to assess the situation. You got them sometimes. They could be dangerously bright. 'I note, sergeantatarms,' said the captain, enunciating the rank with care and without apparent sarcasm, 'that the flag over the barricade is the flag of Ankh-Morpork.' 'It's the one out of our Watch House,' said Vimes, and added, 'sir.' 'You know that the Patrician has declared that the building of barricades is an act of rebellion?' 'Yessir.' 'And?' said the captain patiently. 'Well, he would say that, sir, wouldn't he...' The faintest hint of a smile skimmed across the captain's face. 'We can't allow lawlessness, sergeantatarms. If we all disobeyed the law, where would we be?' ‘There's more coppers per person behind that barricade than anywhere else in the city, sir,' said Vimes. 'You could say it's the most lawabiding place around.' Now there was the sound of raised voices from behind the barricade. 'we own all your helmets, we own all your shoes, we own all your generals, Touch us and you'll loooose... Morporkia, Morporkia, Morpooroorooorooooorrroorrr-' 'Rebel songs, sir!' said trooper number one. The captain sighed. 'If you listen, Hepplewhite, you might note that it is the national anthem sung very badly,' he said. 'We can't allow rebels to sing that, sir!' Vimes saw the captain's expression. It had a lot to say about idiots. 'Raising the flag and singing the anthem, Hepplewhite, are, while somewhat suspicious, not in themselves acts of treason,' said the captain. 'And we are urgently required elsewhere.' He saluted Vimes, who found himself returning the salute. 'We shall leave you, sergeantatarms. I trust your day will be full of interest. I fact, I know it.' 'But it's a barricade, sir,’ the trooper insisted, glaring at Vimes. 'It's just a pile of furniture, man. People have been spring cleaning, I expect. You'll never be an officer if you can't see straight. Follow me, if you please.’ With a last nod to Vimes, the captain led his men away at a trot. Vimes leaned against the barricade, put the crossbow on the ground, and fished out the cigar case. He fumbled in his pocket, pulled out the battered carton of little cigars and, with some delicacy, slotted them into place. Hmm. To the left was Cable Street. In front, Treacle Mine Road stretched all the way to Easy Street. Now, if a man could get barricades all the way up to Easy Street, there'd be quite a slice of the Lower Rimside behind it, which'd be a lot easier to protect... We 'II do it. After all, we did it. Of course, that'd mean having the Unmentionables' headquarters in here with us. That's like pitching your tent over a nest of vipers. We 'II handle that. We handled it. A couple of elderly people pushing a cart full of miscellaneous belongings approached the barricade. They gave Vimes a look of mute pleading. He nodded towards it and they scuttled through. All we need now is- 'Sarge?' Fred Colon was leaning over the top of the heap. He looked more out of breath than usual. 'Yes, Fred?' 'There's lots of people coming across the Ron's bridge. There's things happening everywhere, they say. Shall we let 'em in?' 'Any soldiers?' 'I don't reckon so, sarge. It's mostly old people and kids. And my granny.' 'Trustworthy?' 'Not when she's had a few pints.' 'Let them in, then.' 'Er...' said Colon. 'Yes, Fred?' 'Some of 'em is watchmen. A few of the lads from Dimwell and a lot from Kings Way. I know most of 'em, and those I don't are known to the ones I do, if you catch my meanin'.' 'How many?' 'About twenty. One of 'em's Dai Dickins, sergeant at Dimwell. He says they were told they'd got to shoot people and most of 'em deserted on the spot.' 'Quit, Fred,’ said Vimes. 'We don't desert. We're civilians. Now, I want young Vimes and you and Waddy and maybe half a dozen others out here fully kitted up in two minutes, understand? And tell Wiglet to organize squads ready to move the barricades forward at my signal.' 'Move them, sarge? I thought barricades stood still!' 'And tell Snouty he's got two minutes to find me a bottle of brandy,' said Vimes, ignoring this. 'A big one.' 'Are we taking the law into our own hands again, sarge?' said Colon. Vimes stared at the entrance to Cable Street, and was aware of the weight of the cigar case in his pocket. 'Yes, Fred,’ he said. 'Only this time we're going to squeeze.' The two guards on the Unmentionables' headquarters watched with interest as the small contingent of watchmen marched up the street and came to a halt in front of them. 'Oo, look, it's the army,' said one of them. 'What do you want?' 'Nothing, sir,’ said Corporal Colon. ‘Then you can push off!' 'Can't do that, sir. I'in under orders.' The guards stepped forward. Fred Colon was sweating, and they liked to see things like that. It was a dull job, and most of the Unmentionables were out on more interesting assignments. They entirely failed to hear the soft tread behind them. 'Orders to do what, mister,’ said one of them, looming over Colon. There was a sigh and a soft thud behind him. 'Be a decoy?' quavered Colon. The remaining guard turned, and met a Mrs Goodbody No. 5 'Negotiator' coming the other way. As the man slipped to the ground Vimes winced and massaged his knuckles. 'Important lesson, lads,’ he said. 'It hurts, no matter what you do. You two, drag these into the shadows to sleep it off. Vimes and Nancyball, you come with me.' The key to winning, as always, was looking as if you had every right, nay, duty to be where you were. It helped if you could also suggest in every line of your body that no one else had any rights to be doing anything, anywhere, whatsoever. It came easily to an old copper. Vimes led the way into the building. There were a couple of guards inside, heavily armed, behind a stone barrier that made them ideally placed to ambush any unwise intruders. They put their hands on the hilts of their swords when they saw Vimes. 'What's happening out there?' said one. 'Oh, people are getting restless,’ said Vimes. 'Getting very bad across the river, they say. That's why we've come for the prisoners in the cells.’ 'Yeah? On whose authority?' Vimes swung his crossbow up. 'Mr Burleigh and Mr Stronginthearm,' he said, and grinned. The two guards exchanged glances. 'Who the hell are they?' said one. There was a moment of silence followed by Vimes saying, out of the corner of his mouth: 'Lance-Constable Vimes?' 'Yessir?' 'What make are these crossbows?' 'Er... Hines Brothers, sir. They're Mark Threes.' 'Not Burleigh and Stronginthearm?' 'Never heard of them, sir.' Damn. Five years too early, thought Vimes. And it was such a good line, too. 'Let me put it another way,' he said to the guards. 'Give me any trouble and I will shoot you in the head.' That wasn't a good line, but it did have a certain urgency, and the bonus that it was simple enough even for an Unmentionable to understand. 'You've only got one arrow,' said a guard. There was a click from beside Vimes. Sam had raised his bow, too. 'There's two now, and since my lad here is in training he might hit you anywhere,’ said Vimes. 'Drop your swords on the floor! Get out of the door! Run away! Do it now! Don't come back!' There was a moment of hesitation, just a moment, and then the men ran for it. 'Fred will watch our backs,' said Vimes. 'Come on...' All the Watch Houses were pretty much the same. Stone steps led down to the cellars. Vimes hurried down them, swung open a heavy door-And stopped. Cells never smelled that good at the best of times. At the best of times, even at Treacle Mine Road, hygiene consisted of a bucket per cell and as much sloppingout as Snouty felt inclined to do. But, at the worst of times, the cells below Treacle Mine Road never smelled of blood. The beast stirred. In this room there was a big wooden chair. In this room there was, by the chair, a rack. The chair was bolted to the floor. It had wide leather straps. The rack held clubs and hammers. In this room, that was all the furnishings. The floor was dark and sticky. Down the length of it, a gully ran to a drain. Boards had been nailed over the tiny window at street level. This wasn't a place where light was welcomed. And all the walls, and even the ceiling, were padded heavily with sacks stuffed with straw. Sacks had even been nailed to the door. This was a very thorough cell. Not even sound was meant to escape. A couple of torches did nothing at all for the darkness except make it dirty. Behind him, Vimes heard Nancyball throw up. In a strange kind of dream, he walked across the floor and bent down to pick up something that gleamed in the torchlight. It was a tooth. He stood up again. A closed wooden door led off on one side of the cellar; on the other, a wider tunnel almost certainly led to the cells. Vimes took a torch out of its holder, handed it to Sam and pointed along the tunnel-There were footsteps accompanied by a jingle of keys heading towards the door, and a light growing brighter underneath it. The beast tensed... Vimes dragged the largest club out of the rack and stepped swiftly to the wall beside the door. Someone was coming, someone who knew about this room, someone who called themselves a copper... Getting a firm twohanded grip, Vimes raised the club- And looked across the stinking room, and saw young Sam watching him, young Sam with his bright shiny badge and face full of... strangeness. Vimes lowered the club, leaned it delicately against the wall, and pulled the leather cosh from his pocket. Shackled, not quite understanding, the beast was dragged back into the night... A man stepped through the door, whistling under his breath, took a few steps into the room, saw young Sam, opened his mouth and then fell fast asleep. He was a big man, and hit the cobbles heavily. He had a leather hood over his head, and was naked to the waist. A big ring of keys hung from his belt. Vimes darted into the corridor behind the door, ran around a corner, burst into a small, brightly lit room, and grabbed a man he found in there. This one was a lot smaller, and suppressed a scream as Vimes dragged him up out of his chair. 'And what does daddy do at work all day, mister?' Vimes roared. The little man was suddenly clairvoyant. One look at Vimes's eyes told him how short his future might be. I'in just a clerk! A clerk! I just write things down!' he protested. He held up a pen by way of desperate demonstration. Vimes looked at the desk. There were compasses there, and other geometer's tools, symbols of Swing's insane sanity. There were books, and folders stuffed with paperwork. And there was a yardlong steel ruler. He grabbed it in his spare hand and slammed it on the desktop. The heavy steel made a satisfying noise. 'And?' he said, his face a few inches from the struggling man. 'And I measure people! It's all in the captain's book! I just measure people! I don't do anything wrong! I'in not a bad man!' Again the ruler slammed into the desk. But this time Vimes had twisted it, and the steel edge chopped into the wood. 'Want me to cut you down to size, mister?' The little man's eyes rolled. 'Please!' 'Is there another way out of here?' Vimes slapped the rule down on the desk. The flicker of eyes was enough. Vimes saw a doorway in the wall, almost lost in the wooden panelling. 'Good. Where does it come out?' 'Er-' Now Vimes was nose to nose with the man who, in police parlance, was helping him with his inquiries. 'You're all alone here,' he said. 'You have no friends here. You sat and took notes for a torturer, a bloody torturer! And I see a desk, and it's got a desk drawer, and if you ever, ever want to hold a pen again you'll tell me everything I want to know-' 'Warehouse!' the man gasped. 'Next door!' 'Right, sir. Thank you, sir. You've been very helpful,' said Vimes, lowering the limp body to the floor. 'Now, sir, I'in just handcuffing you to this desk for a moment, sir, for your protection.' 'Who... who from?' 'Me. I'll kill you if you try to run away, sir.' Vimes hurried back to the main chamber. The torturer was still out cold. Vimes hauled him up into the chair, with great effort, and pulled off his hood, and recognized the face. The face, yes, but not the person. That is, it was the kind of face you saw a lot of in Ankh-Morpork: big, bruised, and belonging to someone who'd never quite learned that hitting people long after they'd lost consciousness was a wicked thing to do. He wondered if the man actually liked beating people to death. They often didn't think about it. It was just a job. Well, he wasn't about to ask him. He buckled him in, with every strap, even the one that went across the forehead, pulling the last one tight just as the man came round. The mouth opened, and Vimes stuffed the hood into it. Then he took the key ring and locked the main door. That should ensure a little extra privacy. He met young Sam coming the other way as he headed for the cells. The boy's face was white in the gloom. 'Found anyone?' said Vimes. 'Oh, sarge...' 'Yes?' 'Oh, sarge... sarge...' Tears were running down the lanceconstable's face. Vimes reached out and steadied himself. Sam felt as though there were no bones left in his body. He was trembling. ‘There's a woman in the last cell, and she... sarge... oh, sarge "Try taking deep breaths,’ said Vimes. 'Not that this air is fit to breathe.' 'And there's a room right at the end, sarge... oh, sarge... Nancyball fainted again, sarge 'You didn't,' said Vimes, patting him gently on the back. 'But there's-' 'Let's rescue what we can, shall we, lad?' 'But we were on the hurryup wagon, sarge!' 'What?' said Vimes, and then it dawned. Oh, yes... 'But we didn't hand anyone over, lad,' he said. 'Remember?' 'But I've been on it before, sarge! All the lads have! We just handed people over and went back to the Watch House for cocoa, sarge!' 'Well, you'd had orders...' said Vimes, for what good that did. 'We didn't know!’ Not exactly, thought Vimes. We didn't ask. We just shut our minds to it. People went in through that front door and some of the poor devils came out through the secret door, not always in one box. They hadn't measured up. Nor did we. He heard a low, visceral sound from the boy. Sam had spotted the torturer in the chair. He shook himself away from Vimes, ran over to the rack, and snatched up a club. Vimes was ready. He grabbed the boy, swung him round, and twisted the thing out of his hand before murder was done. 'No! That's not the way! This is not the time! Hold it back! Tame it! Don't waste it! Send it back! It'll come when you call!' 'You know he did those things!' shouted Sam, kicking at his legs. 'You said we had to take the law into our own hands!' Ah, thought Vimes. This is just the time for a long debate about the theory and practice of justice. Here comes the shortened version. 'You don't bash a man's brains out when he's tied to a chair!' 'He did!' 'And you don't. That's because you're not him!' 'But they-' 'Stand to attention, lanceconstable!' shouted Vimes, and the strawcovered ceiling drank and deadened the sound. Sam blinked through reddened eyes. 'Okay, sarge, but-' 'Are you going to snivel all day? Forget about this one. Let's get the living out, right?' 'Hard to tell with-' Sam began, wiping his nose. 'Do it! Follow me!' He knew what was going to be in the dark arches of the cell tunnels, but that didn't make it any better. Some people could walk, or maybe hop. One or two had just been beaten up, but not so badly that they couldn't hear what was going on just out of sight, and dwell on it. They cringed when the gates were opened, and whimpered as he touched them. No wonder Swing got his confessions. And some were dead. Others were... well, if they weren't dead, if they'd just gone somewhere in their heads, it was as sure as hell that there was nothing for them to come back to. The chair had broken them again and again. They were beyond the help of any man. Just in case, and without any feeling of guilt, Vimes removed his knife, and... gave what help he could. There was not a twitch, not a sigh. He stood up, black and red stormclouds in his head. You could almost understand a thug, simple as a fist, being paid decent money for doing something he didn't mind doing. But Swing had brains... Who really knew what evil lurked in the heart of men? ME. Who knew what sane men were capable of? STILL ME, I'M AFRAID. Vimes glanced at the door of the last room. No, he wasn't going in there again. No wonder it stank here. YOU CAN’T HEAR ME, CAN YOU? OH I THOUGHT YOU MIGHT, said Death, and waited. Vimes went to help young Sam bring Nancyball round. Then they half carried, half walked the prisoners out along the passage up into the warehouse. They laid them down, and went back and dragged out the clerk, whose name was Trebilcock. Vimes explained to him the advantages of turning King's Evidence. They were not major advantages, except when they were compared with the huge disadvantages that would follow swiftly if he refused to do so. And Vimes stepped out into the early evening. Colon and the squad were still waiting; the whole business had taken only twenty minutes or so. The corporal saluted, and then his nose wrinkled. 'Yes, we stink,’ said Vimes. He unbuckled his belt and pulled off his breastplate and chainmail undershirt. The filth of the place had crawled everywhere. 'Okay,' he said, when he no longer felt that he was standing in a sewer, 'I want a couple of men at the entrance over there in the warehouse, a couple round the back with truncheons, and the rest ready out here. Just like we talked about, okay? Wallop them first, arrest them later.' 'Right, sir.' Colon nodded. Men set off. 'And now give me that brandy,’ Vimes added. He unwrapped his neckerchief, soaked it in spirit, and tied it around the neck of the bottle. He heard the angry murmur from the squad. They'd just seen Sam and Nancyball bringing out some of the prisoners. 'There was worse,' said Vimes, 'believe me. Top middle window, Fred.' 'Right, sarge,' said Fred Colon, dragging his eyes away from the walking wounded. He raised his crossbow, and neatly took out two window panes and a glazing bar. Vimes located his silver cigar case, removed a cigar, lit it, applied the match to the brandysoaked rag, waited for it to catch, and hurled the bottle through the window. There was a tinkle, a whoomph of exploding spirit, and a flame that rapidly grew. 'Nice one, sarge,' said Fred. 'Er, I don't know if this is the right time, sarge, but we brought an extra bottle while we were about it...' 'Really, Fred? And what d'you say?' Fred Colon glanced at the prisoners again. 'I say we use it,' he said. It went through one of the groundfloor windows. Smoke was already curling out from under the eaves. 'We haven't seen anyone go in or out apart from those guards,' said Fred, as they watched it. 'I don't reckon there's many left in there.' 'Just so long as we destroy the nest,' said Vimes. The front door opened slightly, increasing the draught to the fires. Someone was checking. 'They'll wait until the last minute and come out fighting, Fred,' Vimes warned. 'Good, sarge. It's getting darker,' said Colon grimly. He pulled out his truncheon. Vimes walked around to the back of the building, nodded at the watchmen waiting there, and locked the door with his stolen key ring. It was a narrow door, anyway. Anyone inside would surely go for the big doors at the front, where they could spread out quickly and an ambush wasn't so easy. He checked on the warehouse. But that was an unlikely exit for the same reason. Besides, he'd locked the door to the cellar, hadn't he?' Young Sam grinned at him. 'That's why you left the torturer tied up, eh, sarge?' he said. Damn! That hadn't occurred to him. He'd been so angry with the clerk he'd forgotten all about the brute in the chair. Vimes hesitated. But burning was a horrible death. He reached for his knife, and remembered it was back in its sheath on his sword belt. Smoke was already drifting up the passage into the warehouse. 'Give me your knife, Sam,' he said. 'I'll just go and... check on him.' The lanceconstable handed over the knife with some reluctance. 'What're you going to do, sarge?' 'You just get on with your job, lanceconstable, and I'll do mine...' Vimes slipped down into the passage. I'll cut one strap, he thought. They're fiddly to undo. And then... well, he'll have a chance, even in the smoke. That's more than anyone else got. He crept through the office and into the chamber. One torch was still alight, but the flame was just a nimbus in the yellow haze. The man was trying to rock the heavy chair, but it had been secured firmly to the floor. Some thought had gone into that chair. The straps on the buckles were hard to reach. Even if a prisoner got one hand free, and that hand had not yet felt the professionalism of the torturer, they'd have a job to get out of the chair in a hurry. He reached down to cut a strap, and heard a key in the lock. Vimes stepped swiftly into the darker shadows. The door opened, letting in the noise of distant shouting and the crackle of burning timber. It sounded as though the Unmentionables were making a run for the clear air of the street. Findthee Swing stepped delicately into the room, and locked the door behind him. He stopped when he saw the seated figure, and examined it carefully. He walked to the office doorway and looked inside. He peered into the cells, but by then Vimes had moved soundlessly around a wall. He heard Findthee sigh. There was the familiar sound of moving steel, followed by a small, organic sort of noise, and a cough. Vimes reached down for his sword. But it was up on the road, too, wasn't it... Down here, the song in his head came back louder, with the background clink of metal that was always part of it... see how they rise up, rise up, rise up... He shook his head, as if that'd dislodge the memory. He had to concentrate. Vimes ran into the room and made a leap. It seemed to him that he stayed in the air a long time. There was the torturer, blood on his shirt. There was Swing, just sliding the blade back into the stick. And Vimes, airborne, armed with just a knife. I'in going to get out of this, he thought. I know, because I remember this. I remember Keel coming out and saying it was all over. But that was the real Keel. This is me. It doesn 't have to happen the same way. Swing jerked aside with surprising speed, trying to tug his blade out again. Vimes hit the sacks on the wall, and had the sense to roll away immediately. The blade slashed down beside him, spilling straw on to the floor. He'd expected Swing to be a bad swordsman. That ridiculous stick suggested it. But he was a street swordsman - no finesse, no fancy tricks, just some talent at moving the blade quickly and sticking it where you hoped it wasn't going to go. Fire crackled in the corner of the ceiling. Dripping spirit or sheer heat had worked itself through the heavy floorboards. A couple of the sacks began to blossom thick white smoke, which rolled above the men in a spreading cloud. He circled the chair, watching Swing intently. 'I believe you are making a gravemistake,' said Swing. Vimes concentrated on avoiding the sword. 'Hard times demand hard measures. Every leader knows that...' said Swing. Vimes dodged, but continued circling, knife at the ready. 'History needs its butchers as well as its shepherds, sergeant.' Swing jabbed, but Vimes had been watching his eyes, and swayed away in time. The man wasn't pleading. He didn't understand what had been done to require it. But he could see Vimes's face. There was no emotion in it at all. 'You must understand that in times of nationalemergency we cannot be too concerned with the socalled rights of-' Vimes darted sideways and along the hazefilled corridor to the office. Swing lurched after him. The blade sliced Vimes on the back of the leg. He sprawled on to the clerk's desk, knife skittering from his fingers. Swing circled to find a stabbing point. He drew back the sword... Vimes's hand came up holding the steel ruler. The smack of its flat steel knocked the sword right out of the captain's grasp. Vimes pulled himself upright as though in a dream, following on the curve of the stroke. Send it back into the dark until you need it... He turned the ruler as the backstroke began and it whispered through the air edgefirst, leaving the hazy smoke rolling and coiling behind it. The tip caught Swing across the neck. Behind Vimes the white smoke tumbled out of the corridor. The ceiling of the bloody chamber was falling in. But he stayed, watching Swing with the same blank, intent expression. The man had raised his hands to his throat, blood spurting from between his fingers. He rocked, gasping for a breath that couldn't come, and fell backwards. Vimes tossed the ruler on top of him and limped away. Outside, there was the thunder of moving barricades. Swing opened his eyes. The world around him was grey, except for the blackclad figure in front of him. He sought, as he always did, to learn more about the new person by carefully examining their features. 'Um, your eyes are... er... your nose is... your chin He gave up. YES, said Death, I’M A BIT OF A TRICKY ONE. THIS WAY MR. SWING. Lord Winder was, thought Vetinari, impressively paranoid. He'd even put a guard on the top of the whisky distillery that overlooked the palace grounds. Two guards, in fact. One of them was clearly visible as you rose over the parapet, but the other was lurking in the shadows by the chimneys. The late Hon. John Bleedwell had spotted only the first one. Vetinari watched impassively as the young man was dragged away. If you were an Assassin, being killed in the pursuit of your craft was all part of the job, albeit the last part. You couldn't complain. And it meant there was only one guard now, the other one taking Bleedwell, who had lived up to his name, downstairs. Bleedwell had worn black. Assassins always did. Black was cool and, besides, it was the rules. But only in a dark cellar at midnight was black a sensible colour. Elsewhere, Vetinari preferred dark green, or shades of dark grey. With the right colouring, and the right stance, you vanished. People's eyes would help you vanish. They erased you from their vision, they fitted you into the background. Of course, he'd be expelled from the Guild if caught wearing such clothing. He'd reasoned that this was much better than being expelled from the land of the upright and breathing. He'd rather not be cool than be cold. The guard, three feet away, lit a cigarette with no consideration for other people. What a genius Lord Winstanleigh Greville-Pipe had been. What an observer. Havelock would love to have met him, or even to have visited his grave, but apparently that was inside a tiger somewhere which, to Greville-Pipe's gratified astonishment, he hadn't spotted until it was too late. Vetinari had done him a private honour, though. He had hunted down and melted the engraver's plates of Some Observations on the Art of Invisibility. He tracked down the other four extant copies, too, but had felt unable to burn them. Instead he'd had the slim volumes bound together inside the cover of Anecdotes of the Great Accountants, Vol. 3. He felt that Lord Winstanleigh Greville-Pipe would rather appreciate that. Vetinari lay comfortably on the lead of the roof, patient as a cat, and watched the palace grounds below. Vimes lay face down on a table in the Watch House, wincing occasionally. 'Please hold still,' said Dr Lawn. 'I've nearly finished. I suppose you'd laugh if I told you to take it easy?' 'Ha. Ha. Uh!' 'It's only a flesh wound, but you ought to get some rest.' 'Ha. Ha.' 'You've got a busy night ahead of you. So have I, I suspect.' 'We should be okay if we've got the barricades all the way to Easy Street,' said Vimes, and was aware of a telling silence. He sat up on the table that Lawn was using as a bench. 'We have got them to Easy Street, haven't we?' he demanded. ‘The last I heard, yes,’ said the doctor. ‘The last you heard?' 'Well, technically no,’ said Lawn. 'It's all getting... bigger, John. The actual last I heard was someone saying "why stop at Easy Street?"' 'Oh, good grief. 'Yes. I thought so, too.' Vimes dragged his breeches up, fastened his belt and limpec out into the road and also into an argument. There was Rosie Palm, and Sandra, and Reg Shoe and half al dozen others sitting around another table, in the middle of the street. As Vimes stepped out into the evening, a plaintive voice said, 'You cannot fight for "reasonably priced love".' 'You can if you want me and the rest of the girls on board,' said Rosie. ' "Free" is not a word we wish to see used in these circumstances.' 'Oh, very well,' said Reg, making a note on a clipboard. 'We're all happy with Truth, Justice and Freedom, are we?' 'And better sewers.' This was the voice of Mrs Rutherford. 'And something done about the rats.' 'I think we should be thinking about higher things, comrade Mrs Rutherford,’ said Reg. 'I am not a comrade, Mr Shoe, and nor is Mr Rutherford,’ said Mrs Rutherford. 'We've always kept ourselves to ourselves, haven't we, Sidney?' 'I've got a question,’ said someone in the crowd of onlookers. 'Harry Supple's my name. Got a shoe shop in New Cobblers...’ Reg seized on this as an opportunity to avoid talking to Mrs Rutherford. Revolutionaries should not have to meet someone like Mrs Rutherford on their first day. 'Yes, comrade Supple?' he said. 'Nor are we boyjoys,’ said Mrs Rutherford, not willing to let things go. 'Er, bourgeoisie,’ said Reg. 'Our manifesto refers to bourgeoisie. That's like bore, er, shwah, er, zee.’ 'Bourgeoisie, bourgeoisie,’ said Mrs Rutherford, turning the word over on her tongue. That... doesn't sound too bad. What, er, sort of thing do they do?' 'Anyway, it says here in article seven of this here list-' Mr Supple ploughed on. '-People's Declaration of the Glorious Twentyfourth of May,' said Reg. 'Yeah, yeah, right... well, it says we'll seize hold of the means of production, sort of thing, so what I want to know is, how does that work out regarding my shoe shop? I mean, I'in in it anyway, right? It's not like there's room for more'n me and my lad Garbut and maybe one customer.' In the dark, Vimes smiled. Reg could never see stuff coming. 'Ah, but after the revolution all property will be held in common by the people... er... that is, it'll belong to you but also to everyone else, you see?' Comrade Supple looked puzzled. 'But I'll be the one making the shoes?' 'Of course. But everything will belong to the people.' 'So... who's going to pay for the shoes?' said Mr Supple. 'Everyone will pay a reasonable price for their shoes and you won't be guilty of living off the sweat of the common worker,' said Reg, shortly. 'Now, if we-' 'You mean the cows?' said Supple. 'What?' 'Well, there's only the cows, and the lads at the tannery, and frankly all they do is stand in a field all day, well, not the tannery boys, obviously, but-' 'Look,' said Reg. 'Everything will belong to the people and everyone will be better off. Do you understand?' The shoemaker's frown grew deeper. He wasn't certain if he was part of the people. 'I thought we just didn't want soldiers down our street and mobs and all that lot,' he said. Reg had a hunted look. He made a dive for safety. 'Well, at least we can agree on Truth, Freedom and Justice, yes?' There was a chorus of nods. Everyone wanted those. They didn't cost anything. A match flared in the dark, and they turned to see Vimes light a cigar. 'You'd like Freedom, Truth and Justice, wouldn't you, comrade sergeant?' said Reg encouragingly. 'I'd like a hardboiled egg,' said Vimes, shaking the match out. There was some nervous laughter, but Reg looked offended. 'In the circumstances, sergeant, I think we should set our sights a little higher-' 'Well, yes, we could,' said Vimes, coming down the steps. He glanced at the sheets of paper in front of Reg. The man cared. He really did. And he was serious. He really was. 'But... well, Reg, tomorrow the sun will come up again, and I'in pretty sure that whatever happens we won't have found Freedom, and there won't be a whole lot of Justice, and I'in damn sure we won't have found Truth. But it's just possible that I might get a hardboiled egg. What's this all about, Reg?' ‘The People's Republic of Treacle Mine Road!' said Reg proudly. 'We are forming a government!' 'Oh, good,' said Vimes. 'Another one. Just what we need. Now, does any one of you know where my damn barricades have gone?' ' 'ullo, Mr Keel,' said a glutinous voice. He looked down beside him. There, still wearing his hugely oversize coat but now with the addition of a helmet much too large for him, was Nobby Nobbs. 'How did you get there, Nobby?' 'My mum says I'in insidious,' said Nobby, grinning. A concertina sleeve rose to the vicinity of Nobby's head, and Vimes realized that somewhere in there was a salute. 'She's right,' said Vimes. 'So, where-' ' 'in a acting constable now, sarge,’ said Nobby. 'Mr Colon said so. Gave me a spare helmet, 'in carvin' meself a badge out of, of- what's that, like, waxy, kind of like candles but you can't eat it?' 'Soap, Nobby. Remember the word.' 'Right, sarge. Then I'in gonna carve a-' 'Where have the barricades gone. Nobby?' ‘That'll cost-' 'I am your sergeant, Nobby. We are not in a financial relationship. Tell me where the bloody barricades are!' 'Urn... prob'ly nearly to Short Street, sarge. It's all got a bit... metaphysical, sarge.' Major Clive Mountjoy-Standfast stared blankly at the map in front of him, trying to find some comfort. He was, tonight, the senior officer in the field. The commanders had gone to the palace for some party or other. And he was in charge. Vimes had conceded that the city's regiments had quite a few officers who weren't fools. Admittedly they got fewer the higher you went, but by accident or design every army needs, in key if unglamorous posts, men who can reason and make lists and arrange for provisions and baggage wagons and, in general, have an attention span greater than a duck. It's their job to actually run things, leaving the commanding officer free to concentrate on higher matters. And the major was, indeed, not a fool, even though he looked like one. He was idealistic, and thought of his men as 'jolly good chaps' despite the occasional evidence to the contrary, and on the whole did the best he could with the moderate intelligence at his disposal. When he was a boy he'd read books about great military campaigns, and visited the museums and looked with patriotic pride at the paintings of famous cavalry charges, last stands and glorious victories. It had come as rather a shock, when he later began to participate in some of these, to find that the painters had unaccountably left out the intestines. Perhaps they just weren't very good at them. The major hated the map. It was the map of a city. A city wasn't a place for cavalry, for heavens' sake! Of course there had been casualties among the men. Three of them had been deaths. Even a cavalry helmet is not a lot of use against a ballistic cobblestone. And a trooper had been pulled off his horse in Dolly Sisters and, bluntly, mobbed to death. And that was tragic and terrible and, unfortunately, inevitable, once fools had decided to use cavalry in a city with as many alleys as Ankh-Morpork. The major didn't think of his superiors as fools, of course, since it would follow that everyone who obeyed them was a fool. He used the term 'unwise', and felt worried when he used it. As for the rest of the casualties, three of them had been men knocked senseless by riding into hanging shop signs while pursuing... well, people, when it came down to it, because with the smoke and darkness who could tell who the real enemy was? The idiots had apparently assumed that anyone running away was the enemy. And they'd been the luckier idiots, because men who rode their horses into dark alleys which twisted this way and that and got narrower and narrower, and then realized that it had all gone quiet and their horse couldn't turn round, well, they were men who learned how fast a man could run in cavalry boots. He totted up the reports. Broken bones, bruises, one man suffering from 'friendly stab' by a comrade's sabre... He looked across the makeshift table at Captain Tom Wrangle of Lord Selachii's Light Infantry, who glanced up from his own paperwork and gave him a weak smile. They'd been at school together and Wrangle, the major knew, was a lot brighter than him. 'What's it look like to you, Tom?' said the major. 'We've lost nearly eighty men,' said the captain. 'What? That's terrible!' 'Oh, about sixty of them are deserters, as far as I can see. You tend to get that in this sort of mess. Some have probably just popped home to see dear ol' mum.' 'Oh, deserters. We've had some of those, too. In the cavalry! What would you call a man who leaves his horse behind?' 'An infantryman? As for the rest, well, as far as I can see only six or seven of them went down to definite enemy action. Three men got stabbed in alleyways, for example.' 'Sounds like enemy action to me.' 'Yes, Clive. But you were born in Quirm.' 'Only because my mother was visiting her aunt and the coach was late!' said the major, going red. 'If you cut me in half you'd find Ankh-Morpork written on my heart!' 'Really? Well, let's hope it doesn't come to that,’ said Tom. 'Anyway, getting murdered in alleyways is just part of life in the big city.' 'But they were armed men! Swords, helmets-' 'Valuable loot, Clive.' 'But I thought the City Watch took care of the gangs-' Tom looked at his friend over the top of his paperwork. 'Are you suggesting that we ask for police protection? Anyway, there isn't any, not any more. Some of the watchmen are with us, for what good they are, and the rest either got beaten up or ran away-' 'More deserters?' 'Frankly, Clive, everyone's drifting away so fast that by tomorrow we'll be feeling pretty lonely.' The men paused as a corporal brought in some more messages. They thumbed through them gloomily. 'Well, it's gone quiet, anyway,' said the major. 'Suppertime,' said the captain. The major threw up his hands. 'This isn't war! A man throws a rock, walks around the corner and he's an upstanding citizen again! There's no rules!’ The captain nodded. Their training hadn't covered this sort of thing. They'd studied maps of campaigns, with broad sweeping plains and the occasional patch of high ground that had to be taken. Cities were to be laid siege to, or defended. They weren't for fighting in. You couldn't see, you couldn't group, you couldn't manoeuvre and you were always going to be up against people who knew the place like their own kitchen. And you definitely didn't want to fight an enemy that had no uniform. 'Where's your lordship?' said the captain. 'Gone to the ball, the same as yours.' 'And what were your orders, may I ask?' 'He told me to do whatever I considered necessary to carry out our original objectives.' 'Did he write that down?' 'No.' 'Pity. Neither did mine.' They looked at one another. And then Wrangle said, 'Well... there's no actual unrest at the moment. As such. My father said all this happened in his time. He said it's best just to keep the lid on it. There's only a limited number of cobblestones, he said.' 'It's almost ten,' said the major. 'People will be going to bed soon, surely?' Their joint expression radiated the fervent hope that it had all calmed down. No one in their right mind wanted to be in a position where he was expected to do what he thought best. 'Well, Clive, provided there's no-' the captain began. There was a commotion outside the tent, and then a man stepped inside. He was bloodstained and smokeblackened, his face lined with pink where sweat had trickled through the dreadful grime. A crossbow was slung across his back, and he'd acquired a bandolier of knives. And he was mad. The major recognized the look. The eyes were too bright, the grin too fixed. 'Ah, right,' he said, and removed a large brass knuckleduster from his right hand. 'Sorry about your sentry, gen'lemen, but he didn't want to let me in even though I gave him the password. Are you in charge?' 'Who the hell are you?' said the major, standing up. The man seemed unimpressed. 'Carcer. Sergeant Carcer,' he said. 'A sergeant? In that case you can-' 'From Cable Street,' Carcer added. Now the major hesitated. Both the soldiers knew about the Unmentionables, although if asked they probably wouldn't have been able to articulate exactly what it was that they knew. Unmentionables worked in secret, behind the scenes. They were a lot more than just watchmen. They reported directly to the Patrician; they had a lot of pull. You didn't mess with them. They were not people to cross. It didn't matter that this man was only a sergeant. He was an Unmentionable. And, what was worse, the major realized that the creature could see what he was thinking and was enjoying the view. 'Yeah,’ said Carcer. 'That's right. And it's lucky for you that I'in here, soldier boy.' Soldier boy, thought the major. And there were men listening, who'd remember that. Soldier boy. 'How so?' he said. 'While you and your shiny soldiers have been prancing around chasing washerwomen,' said Carcer, pulling up the tent's only vacant chair and sitting down, 'the real trouble's been happening down in Treacle Mine Road. You know it?' 'What are you talking about? We haven't had any reports about any disturbances down there, man!' 'Yeah, right. Don't you think that's strange?' The major hesitated. A vague memory bobbed at the back of his mind... and there was a grunt from the captain, who pushed a piece of paper across to him. He glanced at it, and recalled. 'One of my captains was down there this afternoon and said everything was under control,' he said. 'Really? Whose control?' said Carcer. He leaned back in his chair and put his boots on the desk. The major stared at them, but the boots showed no sign of embarrassment. 'Remove your feet from my desk,' he said coldly. Carcer's eyes narrowed. 'You an' whose army?' he said. 'Mine, as a matter of fact...' The major looked into Carcer's eyes, and wished he hadn't. Mad. He'd seen eyes like that on the battlefield. Very slowly, with exaggerated care, Carcer swung his feet off the table. Then he pulled out a handkerchief made grimy with unguessable humours, huffed theatrically on the wood, and polished it industriously. 'I do beg your pardon so very much,' he said. 'However, while you gentlemen have been keeping your desk nice and clean, a canker, as they say, haha, is eating at the very heart of the city. Has anyone told you that the Cable Street Watch House has been burned to the ground? With, we believe, the loss of the lives of poor Captain Swing and at least one of our... technical people.' 'Swing, bigods,' said Captain Wrangle. ‘That is what I said. All the scum your lads have been driving out of Dolly Sisters and all the other nests, well, they've ended up down there.' The major looked at the report. 'But our patrol said that everything seemed to be in hand, the Watch were very visible on the streets, and people were showing the flag and singing the national anthem,' he said. ‘There you are, then,' said Carcer. 'Do you ever sing the national anthem in the street, major?' 'Well, no-' 'Who did his lordship send down there?' said Wrangle. Major Mountjoy-Standfast thumbed through his papers. His face fell. 'Rust,' he said. 'Oh dear. That's a blow.' 'I daresay the man is dead,' said Carcer, and the major tried not to look slightly more cheerful. The person in charge down there now calls himself Sergeant Keel. But he is a impostor. The real Keel is in the mortuary.' 'How do you know all this?' said the major. 'We in the Particulars have ways of finding things out,’ said Carcer. 'I've heard,’ murmured the captain. 'Martial law, gentlemen, means that the military comes to the aid of the civil power,’ said Carcer. 'And that's me, right now. O'course, you could send a couple of runners up to the ball, but I don't reckon that would be a good career move. So what I'in asking is for your men to assist us with a little... surgical strike.’ The major stared at him. There was now no limit to the distaste he had for Carcer. But he hadn't been a major for very long, and when you've just been promoted you hope to stay that way long enough for the braid to get a tarnish. He forced himself to smile. 'You and your men have had a long day, sergeant,’ he said. 'Why don't you go along to the mess tent while I consult with my fellow officers?' Carcer stood up with a suddenness that made the major flinch, then leaned forward with his knuckles on the desk. 'You do that, sonny Jim,’ he said, with a grin like the edge of a rusty saw. Then he turned and strode out into the night. In the silence that followed Wrangle said, 'His name is on the list of officers that Swing sent us yesterday, I'in afraid. And, er, he's technically correct about the law.’ 'You mean we have to take orders from him?' 'No. But he's entitled to request assistance from you.’ 'Am I entitled to refuse?' 'Oh, yes. Of course. But...’ '... I'd have to tell his lordship why?' 'Exactly.’ 'But that man's an evil bastard! You know the sort. The kind that joins up for the pillaging? The kind you have to end up hanging as an example to the men?' 'Urn...’ 'What now?' 'Well, he's right about one thing. I've been looking at the reports and, well, it's odd. It's all been very quiet down towards Treacle Mine Road.' 'That's good, isn't it?' 'It's unbelievable, Clive, when you put it all together. Even the Watch House didn't get attacked, it says here. Er... and your Captain Burns says he met this Keel chap, or someone who said he was Keel, and he says that if the man's a Watch sergeant then he, Burns, is a monkey's uncle. He says the man is used to serious command. I think he rather took to him, to tell you the truth.’ 'Ye gods, Tom, I need some help here!' said the major. 'Then send out some gallopers right away. A little informal patrolling, perhaps. Get some proper intelligence. You can afford to wait half an hour.' 'Right! Right! Good idea!' said the major, steaming with relief. 'See to it, could you?' After the flurry of orders, he sat back and stared at the map. Some things at least made sense. All these barricades looked inward. People were barricading themselves against the palace and the centre of the city. No one would be bothered much about the outside world. If you had to take an outlying part of the city in those circumstances, then the thing to do would be to go in via a gatehouse in the city wall. They might not be quite so guarded as they ought to be. ‘Tom?' 'Yes, Clive?' 'Have you ever sung the national anthem?' 'Oh, lots of times, sir.' 'I don't mean officially.' 'You mean just to show I'in patriotic? Good gods, no. That would be a rather odd thing to do,’ said the captain. 'And how about the flag?' 'Well, obviously I salute it every day, sir.’ 'But you don't wave it, at all?' the major enquired. 'I think I waved a paper one a few times when I was a little boy. Patrician's birthday or something. We stood in the streets as he rode by and we shouted "Hurrah!"' 'Never since then?' 'Well, no, Clive,' said the captain, looking embarrassed. 'I'd be very worried if I saw a man singing the national anthem and waving the flag, sir. It's really a thing foreigners do.' 'Really? Why?' 'We don't need to show we're patriotic, sir. I mean, this is Ankh-Morpork. We don't have to make a big fuss about being the best, sir. We just know.' It was a beguiling theory that might have arisen in the minds of Wiglet and Waddy and, yes, even in the not overly exercised mind of Fred Colon, and as far as Vimes could understand it, it went like this. 1 Supposing the area behind the barricades was bigger than the area in front of the barricades, right? 2 Like, sort of, it had more people in it and more of the city, if you follow me. 3 Then, correct me if I'in wrong, sarge, but that'd mean in a manner of speaking we are now in front of the barricades, am I right? 4 Then, as it were, it's not like we're rebellin', is it? 'cos there's more of us, so the majority can't rebel, it stands to reason. 5 So that makes us the good guys. Obviously we've been the good guys all along, but now it'd be kind of official, right? Like, mathematical? 6 So we thought we'd push on to Short Street and then we could nip down into Dimwell and up the other side of the river... 7 Are we going to get into trouble for this, sarge? 8 You're looking at me in a funny way, sarge. 9 Sorry, sarge. Vimes, with an increasingly worried Fred Colon in front of him, and some of the other barricadeers standing around as if caught in an illicit game of Knocking On Doors And Running Away, thought about this. The men watched him carefully, in case of explosion. And it actually made a weird kind of logic, if you didn't factor in considerations like 'real life' and 'common sense'. They'd worked hard. It was easy enough to block a city street, heavens knew. You just nailed planks around a couple of wagons and piled it high with furniture and junk. That took care of the main streets, and with enough pushing you could move it forwards. As for the rest, it really hadn't been that hard. There had been lots of small barricades in any case. The lads had simply joined them up. Without anyone really noticing, The People's Republic of Treacle Mine Road now occupied almost a quarter of the city. Vimes took a few deep breaths. 'Fred?' he said. 'Yes, sarge?' 'Did I tell you to do this?' 'No, sarge.' ‘There's too many alleys. There's too many people, Fred.' Colon brightened. 'Ah, well, there's more coppers too, sarge. A lot of the lads found their way here. Good lads, too. And Sergeant Dickins, he knows about this stuff, he remembers the last time this happened, sarge, so he asked every ablebodied man who knew how to use a weapon to muster up, sarge. There's a lot of 'em, sarge! We got an army, sarge!' This is how the world collapses, thought Vimes. I was just a young fool, I didn't see it like this. I thought Keel was leading the revolution. I wonder if that's what he thought, too? But I just wanted to keep a few streets safe. I just wanted to keep a handful of decent, silly people away from the dumb mobs and the mindless rebels and the idiot soldiery. I really, really hoped we could get away with it. Maybe the monks were right. Changing history is like damming a river. It'll find its way round. He saw Sam beaming among the men. Hero worship, he thought. That son of thing can turn you blind. 'Any trouble?' he said to Colon. 'Don't think anyone's worked out what's happening here, sarge. There's been a lot happening around Dolly Sisters and over that way. Cavalry charges and what have you-hold on, here come some more.' A watchman had signalled from the top of the barricade. Vimes heard the commotion on the other side of the pile. 'More people runnin' away from Dolly Sisters, by the look of it,' said Colon. 'What d'you want us to do, sarge?' Keep them out, thought Vimes. We don't know who they are. We can't let everyone in. Some of them will be trouble. The trouble is, I know what's going on out there. The city is a little slice of Hell, and there's no real safety anywhere. And I know what I'in going to decide, because I watch me decide it. I don't believe this. I'in standing over there now, a kid who's still clean and pink and full of ideals, looking at me as if I'in some kind of hero. I don't dare not be. I'in going to make the stupid decision because I don't want to look bad in front of myself. Try explaining that to anyone who hasn't had a couple of drinks. 'All right, let them through,’ he said. 'But no weapons. Pass the word around.' 'Take weapons off people?' said Colon. 'Think about it, Fred. We don't want Unmentionables in here, do we, or soldiers in disguise? A man's got to be vouched for before he can carry arms. I ain't going to be stabbed in the back and the front at the same time. Oh, and Fred... I don't know if I can do this, and probably it won't last, but as far as I'in concerned you're promoted to sergeant. Anyone who wants to argue about the extra stripe, tell 'em to argue with me.' Fred Colon's chest, already running to fat, swelled visibly. 'Right, sarge. Er... does that mean I still take orders from you? Right. Right. Right. I still take orders from you. Right.’ 'Don't move any more barricades. Fill up the alleys. Hold this line. Vimes, you come with me, I'll need a runner.' 'I'in pretty runny, sarge,' Nobby volunteered, from somewhere behind him. ‘Then what I want you to do, Nobby, is get out there and find out what's happening now.' Sergeant Dickins turned out to be younger than Vimes remembered. But he was still close to retirement. He'd maintained a flourishing sergeant's moustache, waxed to points and clearly dyed, and the proper sergeant shape, occasioned by means of undisclosed corsetry. He'd spent a lot of time in the regiments, Vimes recalled, although he came from Llamedos originally. The men found that out because he belonged to some druid religion so strict that they didn't even use standing stones. And they were strongly against swearing, which is a real handicap in a sergeant. Or would be, if sergeants weren't so good at improvising. He was currently in Welcome Soap, a continuation of Cable Street. And he had the army. It wasn't much of one. No two weapons were exactly alike and most of them were not, strictly speaking, weapons. Vimes shuddered when he saw the crowd and had a flashback, which was probably a flash forward, to all the domestic disputes he'd attended over the years. You knew where you were with strictlyspeaking weapons when they came at you. It was the notstrictlyspeaking ones that scared the cacky out of a new recruit. It was the meat cleavers tied to poles. It was the long spikes, and the meathooks. This was, after all, the area of small traders, porters, butchers and longshoremen. And so standing in raggedy lines in front of Vimes were men who, every day, peacefully and legally, handled things with blades and spikes that made a mere sword look like a girl's hatpin. There were classic weapons, too. Men had come back from wars with their sword or their halberd. Weapons? Gods bless you, sir, no! Them's mementoes. And the sword had probably been used to poke the fire, and the halberd had done duty as a support for one end of the washing line, and their original use had been forgotten... ... until now. Vimes stared at the metalwork. All this lot would have to do to win a battle would be to stand still. If the enemy charged them hard enough, he'd come out the other side as mince. 'Some of 'em are retired watchmen, sah,' Dickins whispered. 'A lot of them have been in the regiments at one time or another, see. There's a few kids wanting to see some action, you know how it is. What d'you think?' 'I'd certainly hate to fight them,' said Vimes. At least a quarter of the men had white hair, and more than a few were using their weapons as a means of support. 'Come to that, I'd hate to be responsible for giving them an order. If I said "about turn!" to this lot, it'd be raining limbs.' ‘They're resolute, sah.' 'Fair enough. But I don't want a war.' 'Oh, it won't come to that, sah,' said Dickins. 'I've seen a few barricades in my time. It generally ends peaceful. The new man takes over, people get bored, everyone goes home, see.' 'But Winder is a nutter,' said Vimes. ‘Tell me one that wasn't, sah,' said Dickins. Sir, thought Vimes. Or 'sah', at least. And he's older than me. Oh well, I might as well be good at it. 'Sergeant,' he said, 'I want you to pick twenty of the best, men that have seen action. Men you can trust. And I want them down at the Shambling Gate, and alert.' Dickins looked puzzled. 'But that's barred, sah. And it's right down behind us, it is. I thought maybe-' 'Down at the gate, sergeant,' Vimes insisted. They're to watch for anyone sneaking up to unbar it. And I want the guard on the bridges to be strengthened. Put down caltrops on the bridge, string wires... I want anyone who tries to come at us over the bridge to have a really bad time, understand?' 'Do you know something, sah?' said Dickins, with his head on one side. 'Let's just say I'in thinking like the enemy, shall we?' said Vimes. He took a step closer and lowered his voice. 'You know some history, Dai. No one with an ounce of sense goes up against a barricade. You find the weakness.' 'There's other gates down there, sah,' said Dickins doubtfully. 'Yes, but if they take Shambling they get into Elm Street and have a nice long gallop, right into where we're not expecting them,' said Vimes. 'But... you are expecting them, sah.' Vimes just gave him a blank look, which sergeants are quite good at deciphering. 'As good as done, sah!' said Dickins happily. 'But I want a decent presence at all the barricades,' said Vimes. 'And a couple of patrols that can go wherever there's trouble. Sergeant, you know how to do it.' 'Right, sah.' Dickins saluted smartly, and grinned. He turned to the assembled citizenry. 'All right, you shower!' he yelled. 'Some of you has been in a regiment, I know it! How many of you knows "All The Little Angels"?' A few of the more serious class of mementoes rose in the air. 'Very good! Already we has a choir! Now, this is a soldiers' song, see? You don't look like soldiers but by the gods I'll see you sounds like 'em! You'll pick it up as we goes along! Right turn! March! "All the little angels rise up, rise up, All the little angels rise up high!" Sing it, you sons of mothers!' The marchers picked up the response from those who knew it. 'How do they rise up, rise up, rise up, how do they rise up, rise up high?' 'They rise heads up, heads up, heads up-' sang out Dickins, as they turned the corner. Vimes listened as the refrain died away. 'That's a nice song,' said young Sam, and Vimes remembered that he was hearing it for the first time. 'It's an old soldiers' song,' he said. 'Really, sarge? But it's about angels.' Yes, thought Vimes, and it's amazing what bits those angels cause to rise up as the song progresses. It's a real soldiers' song: sentimental, with dirty bits. 'As I recall, they used to sing it after battles,’ he said. I've seen old men cry when they sing it,’ he added. 'Why? It sounds cheerful.' They were remembering who they were not singing it with, thought Vimes. You'll learn. I know you will. After a while, the patrols came back. Major Mountjoy-Standfast was bright enough not to ask for written reports. They took too long and weren't very well spelled. One by one, the men told the story. Sometimes Captain Wrangle, who was plotting things on the map, would whistle under his breath. 'It's huge, sir. It really is! Nearly a quarter of the city's behind barricades down there!' The major rubbed his forehead and turned to Trooper Gabitass, the last man in and the one who seemed to have taken pains to get the most information. 'They're all on a sort of line, sir. So I rode up to the one in Heroes Street, with me helmet off and looking offduty, sort of thing, and I asked what it was all about. A man shouted down that everything was all right, thank you very much, and they'd finished all the barricades for now. I said what about law and order, and they said we've got plenty, thank you.' 'No one fired at you?' 'No, sir. Wish I could say the same about round here. People were throwing stones at me and an old lady emptied a pissp- a utensil all over me from her window. Er... there's something else, sir. Er...’ 'Out with it, man.' 'I, er, think I recognized a few people. Up on the barricades. Er... they were some of ours, sir...' Vimes shut his eyes, in the hope that the world would be a better place. But when he opened them, it was still full of the pink face of onlyjust Sergeant Colon. 'Fred,' he said, 'I wonder if you fully understand the basic idea here? The soldiers - that's the other people, Fred - they stay on the outside of the barricade. If they are on the inside, Fred, we don't, in any real sense, have a bloody barricade. Do you understand?' 'Yes, sir. But-' 'You want to do a spell in a regiment, Fred, and one of the things I think you'll find they're very hot on indeed is knowing who's on your side and who is not, Fred.' 'But, sir, they are-' 'I mean, how long have I known you, Fred?' 'Two or three days, sir.' 'Er... right. Yeah. Of course. Seems longer. So why, Fred, do I arrive here and find you've let in what seems like a platoon? You haven't been thinking metaphysically again, have you?' 'It started with Billy Wiglet's brother, sir,' said Colon nervously. 'A few of his mates came with him. All local lads. And there's a lad Nancyball grew up with and a bloke who's the son of Waddy's nextdoor neighbour who he used to go out drinking with, and then there's-' 'How many, Fred?' said Vimes wearily. 'Sixty, sir. Might be a few more by now.' 'And it doesn't occur to you that they might be part of some clever plan?' 'No, sarge, it never did. 'cos I can't see Wally Wiglet being part of a clever plan, sarge, on account of him not being much of a thinker, sir. They only allowed him to be in the regiment after he got someone to paint L and R on his boots. See, we know 'em all sarge. Most of the lads join up for a bit, just to get out of the city and maybe show Johnny Foreigner who's boss. They never expected to have old grannies spitting on them in their own city, sarge. That can get a lad down, that sort of thing. And getting cobblestones chucked at them too, of course.' Vimes gave in. It was all true. 'All right,’ he said. 'But if this goes on, everyone is going to be inside the barricade, Fred.' And there could be worse ways of ending it, he thought. People had lit fires in the streets. Some cooking pots had been brought out. But most of the people were engaging in Ankh-Morpork's traditional pastime, which was hanging around to see what'd happen next. 'What's going to happen next, sarge?' said Sam. 'I think they'll attack in two places,' said Vimes. The cavalry will go right outside the city and try to come in through the Shambling Gate because that'll look easy. And the soldiers and... the rest of the Watch who aren't on our side will probably creep across Misbegot Bridge under cover.' 'Are you sure, sir?' 'Positive,' said Vimes. After all, it had already happened... or something... He pinched the bridge of his nose. He couldn't quite remember when he'd slept last. Slept, not dozed or been unconscious. He knew his thinking was a little fuzzy around the edges. But he did know how the Treacle Mine Road barricade had been broken. It had been only one sentence in the history book, but he remembered it. Sieges that weren't broken via treachery were breached via some small door around the back. It was a fact of history. 'But it won't be for an hour or two,' he said aloud. 'We're not important enough. It's all been quiet down here. It's when they start to wonder why that the midden will hit the windmill.' 'Lots of people are getting through, sarge. Some of the men said they could hear screaming in the distance. People are just piling in. There's robberies and everything going on out there...' 'Lanceconstable?' 'Yes, sarge?' 'You know when you wanted to swing a club at that torturing bastard and I stopped you?' 'Yes, sarge?' 'That's why, lad. Once we break down, it all breaks down.' 'Yes, sarge, but you do bop people over the head.' 'Interesting point, lanceconstable. Logical and well made, too, in a clear tone of voice bordering on the bloody cheeky. But there's a big difference.' 'And what's that, sarge?' 'You'll find out,' said Vimes. And privately thought: the answer is, It's Me Doing It. I'll grant that it is not a good answer, because people like Carcer use it too, but that's what it boils down to. Of course, it's also to stop me knifing them and, let's be frank, them knifing me. That's quite important, too. Their walk had brought them to a big fire in the centre of the street. A cauldron was bubbling on it, and people were queuing up, holding bowls. 'Smells good,' he said, to the figure gently stirring the cauldron's contents with a ladle. 'Oh, it's you, er, Mr Dibbler...' 'It's called Victory Stew, sergeant,' said Dibbler. 'Tuppence a bowl or I'll cut my throat, eh?' 'Close enough,' said Vimes, and looked at the strange (and, what was worse, occasionally hauntingly familiar) lumps seething in the scum. 'What's in it?' 'It's stew,’ explained Dibbler. 'Strong enough to put hairs on your chest.' 'Yes, I can see that some of those bits of meat have got bristles on them already,' said Vimes. 'Right! That's how good it is!' 'It looks... very nice,' said Sam weakly. 'You'll have to excuse the lanceconstable, Mr Dibbler,’ said Vimes. The poor lad was brought up not to eat stew that winks at him.' He sat down with his bowl and his back against the wall and looked up at the barricade. People had been busy. In truth, there wasn't much else to do. The one here, from side to side of Heroes Street, was fourteen feet high and even had a crude walkway. It looked businesslike. He leaned back and shut his eyes. There was a hesitant slurping sound beside him as young Sam tried the stew, and then: 'Is it going to come down to fighting, sarge?' 'Yes,' said Vimes, without opening his eyes. 'Like, really fighting?' 'Yep.' 'But won't there be some talking first?' 'Nope,' said Vimes, trying to make himself comfortable. 'Maybe some talking afterwards.' 'Seems the wrong way round!' 'Yes, lad, but it's a tried and tested method.' There was no further comment. Slowly, with the sounds of the street in his ears, Vimes slid into sleep. Major Mountjoy-Standfast knew what would happen if he sent a message to the palace. 'What do I do now, sir?' was not something his lordship wanted to hear. It was not the sort of question a major was supposed to ask, given that the original orders had been very clear. Barricades were to be torn down, rebels were to be repelled. Grasp the nettle firmly and all that. He had, as a child, grasped nettles firmly, and had sometimes had a hand the size of a small pig. There were deserters behind the barricade. Deserters! How did that happen? It was a huge barricade, it was lined with armed men, there were deserters on it, and he had his orders. It was all clear. If only they'd, well, rebel. He'd sent Trooper Gabitass down there again, and by his account it seemed very peaceful. Normal city life appeared to be going on behind the barricade, which was more than you could say for the chaos outside it. If they'd fired on Gabitass, or thrown things, that would have made it so much easier. Instead they were acting... well... decently. That was no way for enemies of the state to behave! An enemy of the state was in front of the major now. Gabitass had not come back emptyhanded. 'Caught it sneakin' after me,' he said. To the captive he said, 'Been behind the barricade, haven't we, my lad!' 'Can it speak?' said the major, staring at the thing. ‘There's no need to be like that,’ said Nobby Nobbs. 'It's a street urchin, sir,’ said the trooper. The major stared at all he could see of the prisoner, which was an oversized helmet and a nose. 'Get it something to stand on, will you, captain?' he said, and waited while a stool was found. It did not, all things considered, improve matters. It just gave rise to questions. 'It's got a Watch badge, trooper. Is it some kind of mascot?' 'Carved it meself out of soap,’ said Nobby. 'So I can be a copper.' 'Why?' said the major. There was something about the apparition that, despite the urgency, called for a kind of horrified yet fascinated study. 'But I'in thinking of going for a soldier if I grow up,’ Nobby went on, giving the major a happy grin. 'Much better pickin's, the way things are going.' 'I'in afraid you're not tall enough,’ said the major quickly. 'Don't see why not, the enemy reaches all the way to the ground,’ said Nobby. 'Anyway, people're lyin' down when you get their boots off. Ol' Sconner, he says the money's in teeth and earrings but I say every man's bound to have a pair of boots, right? Whereas there's a lot of bad teeth around these days and the falseteeth makers always demand a decent set-' 'Do you mean to tell me that you want to join the army just to loot the battlefields?' said the major, completely shocked. 'A little... lad like you?' 'Once when ol' Sconner was sober for two days together he made me a little set of soldiers,’ said Nobby. 'An' they had these little boots that you could-' 'Shut up,’ said the major. 'take off, and tiny tiny little wooden teeth that you could-' 'Will you shut up!' said the major. 'Have you no interest in honour? Glory? Love of city?' 'Dunno. Can you get much for 'em?' said Nobby. 'They are priceless!’ 'Oh, well, in that case I'll stick with the boots, if it's all the same to you,’ said Nobby. 'You can sell them for ten pence a pair if you know the right shop-' 'Look at Trooper Gabitass there!' said the major, now quite upset. 'Twenty years' service, a fine figure of a soldier! He wouldn't stoop to stealing the boots of a fallen enemy, would you, trooper?' 'No, sir! Mug's game, sir!' said Trooper Gabitass.* * And this was true. Don't bother with the boots, would have been Trooper Gabitass's advice, had he been inclined to part with it. You need to bribe someone on the baggage carts to build up stock and when all's said and done you'll only make a few dollars. Stick to jewellery. It's portable. Trooper Gabitass had seen too many battlefields up close to use the word 'glory' without wincing. 'Er... yes. Right!' said the major. 'You could learn a lot from men like Trooper Gabitass, young man. By the sound of it, your time with the rebels has filled your head with very wrong ideas indeed.' 'I ain't a rebel!' Nobby shouted. 'Don't you go calling me a rebel, I ain't a rebel, I'in an Ankh-Morpork lad, I am, and proud of it! Hah, you are wrong, I've never been a rebel and you're cruel to say so! I'in an honest lad, I am!' Big tears began to run down his cheeks, washing aside the grime to reveal the lower strata of grime beneath. The major had no experience of this sort of thing. Every available orifice on the little lad's face seemed to be gushing. He looked for help to Gabitass. 'You're a married man, aren't you, trooper? What are we supposed to do now?' 'I could give him a clout alongside the ear, sir,' said Trooper Gabitass. 'That's very unfeeling, trooper! Look here, I had a handkerchief on me somewhere...' 'Huh, I have my own wiper, thank you very much, I don't have to be condescended at,' sniffed Nobby, and pulled one out of his pocket. In fact, he pulled several dozen, including one with the initials C. M.-S. on it. They were tangled together like a conjuror's flagsofallnations, and dragged with them several purses and half a dozen spoons. Nobby wiped his face with the first one, and thrust the entire collection back into his pocket. At this point he realized that all the men were staring at him. 'What? What?' he said defiantly. ‘Tell us about this man Keel,' said the major. 'I don't know nuffin',' said Nobby automatically. 'Aha, that means you do know something,' said the major, who was indeed the sort of person who liked this kind of little triumph. Nobby looked blank. The captain leaned forward to whisper to his superior officer. 'Er, only under the rules of mathematics, sir,' he said. 'Under the rules of common grammar, he is merely being emphat-' 'Tell us about Keel!' the major shouted. ‘Tell you what, major, why not leave that sort of thing to the experts?' said a voice. The major looked up. Carcer and his men had entered the tent. The sergeant was grinning again. 'Got yourself a little prisoner, have you?' he said, stepping forward to examine Nobby. 'Reckon you've got a ringleader here, yeah. Told you anything, has he? I shouldn't think so. You need special training to get the best out of lads like this, haha.' He slipped his hand into his pocket. When it came out, the knuckles were ringed with brass. 'Now then, lad,' he said, as the soldiers watched in horror, 'you know who I am, do you? I'in in the Particulars, me. And I can see two of you. One of them's a lively lad who's going to help the proper authorities with their business and the other is a lippy little bugger who's going to try to be clever. One of these lads has a future, and all his teeth. Now the funny thing about me, it's a little habit of mine, is that I never ask a question twice. So... you're not a criminal, are you?' Nobby, his eyes huge and fixed on the brass knuckles, shook his head. 'You just do what you have to to survive, right?' Nobby nodded. 'In fact you were probably a decent lad before you fell in with the rebels, I expect. Sang hymns and that.' Nobby nodded. 'This man who.calls himself Sergeant Keel is the ringleader of the rebels, yes?' There was a moment of hesitation, and then Nobby raised a hand. 'Um... everyone does what he tells them, is that the same thing?' he said. 'Yep. Is he charismatic?' Nobby kept staring at the brass knuckles. 'Um, um, um, I don't know. I haven't heard him cough much.' 'And what do they talk about beyond the barricade, my little lad?' 'Um... well, Justice an' Truth an' Freedom and stuff,' said Nobby. 'Aha. Rebel talk!' said Carcer, straightening up. 'Is it?' said the major. 'Take it from me, major,' said Carcer. 'When you get a bunch of people using words like that, they're up to no good.' He looked down at Nobby. 'Now, I wonder what I've got in my pocket for a good boy, eh? Oh, yes... someone's ear. Still warm. Here you go, kid!' 'Cor, thanks, mister!' 'Now run a long way away or I'll gut yer.' Nobby fled. Carcer glanced at the map spread on the desk. 'Oh, you're planning a little sortie. That's nice. Don't want to upset the rebels, do we? Why aren't you bloody well attacking, major?' 'Well, they're not-' 'You're losing your troops to 'em! They hold a quarter of the city! And you're gonna sneak round the back. Across the bridge, I see, and up Elm Street. Quiet, like. Like you are frightenedV Carcer's hand smashed down on to the table, making the major jump. 'I'in frightened of no man!' he lied. 'You're the city right now!' said Carcer, a little speck of white foam appearing at the corner of his mouth. 'They sneak. You don't. You ride right up to them and damn them to hell, that's what you do. They're stealing the streets from you! You take 'em back! They've put 'emselves beyond the Law! You take the Law to 'em!' He stepped back, and the manic rage subsided as quickly as it had arrived. ‘That's my advice,' he said. 'Of course, you know your own business best. Me and what's left of my poor lads, we're going to go out and fight. I'in sure their lordships will appreciate anything you feel you can do.' He strode out, the Particulars falling in behind him. 'Er... you all right, Clive?' said the captain. Only the whites of the major's eyes were showing. 'What a horrible man,' said the major quietly. 'Er... yes, of course. On the other hand-' 'Yes, yes, yes. I know. We have no choice. We have orders. That... weasel is right. If the damn thing is there in the morning, I've got no career and nor have you. Show of strength, bold front, take no prisoners... that's what our orders are. Stupid, stupid orders.' He sighed. 'I suppose we could disobey...' said the captain. 'Are you mad? And then what would we do? Don't be a fool, Tom. Muster the men, get the ox teams hitched up, let's make a bit of a show for the sake of it. Let's just get it over with!' Vimes was shaken awake. He looked up into his own face, younger, less lined, more terrified. 'Wha'?' 'They're bringing up siege weapons, sarge! They're coming down the street, sarge!' 'What? That's stupid! The barricade is highest here! A couple of men could defend it!' Vimes leapt to his feet. It must be a feint. A stupid feint, too. Just here Waddy and his mates had wedged two big carts across the road, and they'd become the nucleus of a solid wall of wood and rubble. But there was a narrow, low entrance for people to come through, which let them into the Republic with their head at just the right height for a gentle tap if they turned out to be a soldier. People were scrambling through now like rats. Vimes climbed up the barricade and looked over the top. At the far end of the street a big metal wall was advancing, surrounded by flaming torches. That was all there was to see, in a city without lights. But he knew what it was. It was called Big Mary and it was mounted on a heavy cart. Vimes had seen it before. There would be a couple of oxen behind the cart, pushing it. The walls weren't solid metal, but merely a skin to stop defenders throwing fire at the wooden planks underneath. And the whole thing was simply to defend the men who, behind that cosy shelter, had the big, big hooks on the end of the long chains... They'd fix them in the barricade, and the oxen would be turned around in the traces, and maybe another four beasts would be added and then there was nothing you could build of wood that wouldn't be pulled apart. Between the cart and the barricade, struggling to escape from the crush, was a mass of frightened people. 'You got any orders, sarge?' said Fred Colon, pulling himself up alongside Vimes. He looked up the street. 'Oh dear,' he said. 'Yeah, this is when you need a couple of trolls on the force,’ said Vimes. 'I reckon Detr- ' ‘Trolls? Huh, wouldn't work with any trolls,' said Colon. Too fick to take orders.' You'll find out one day, thought Vimes, and said aloud: 'Okay. Anyone that can't or shouldn't have a weapon, they get back as far as possible, right? Get a message to Dickins, tell him we'll need anyone he can spare, but- blast it!' What'd happened before? There'd been a lot of activity against the barricades, but it had been a feint while the cavalry were sneaking around outside. He didn't remember this. He glanced at the oncoming wagon.' At the top of the wobbling wall, on the other side, there was generally a narrow ledge for bowmen to stand and fire down at anyone trying to interfere with the demolition men. In the treacherous light of the torches, Vimes thought he saw the features of Carcer. Even at this distance, there was something horribly recognizable about that expression. Swing was dead. And when everyone's running around in confusion a man who is firm of purpose can push his way up by sheer nerve. After all, Vimes thought, I did. He clambered down the barricade and looked at the men. 'I want a volunteer no, not you, Sam. Wiglet, you'll do. Your dad's a carpenter, right? Well, there's a carpenter's shop round the corner. Run and get me a couple of mallets and some wooden wedges, or long nails... something spiky. Go, go, go!' Wiglet nodded and ran off. 'And... let's see, yeah, I need twopennyworth of fresh ginger. Nancyball, nip around the corner to the apothecary, will you?' 'What's that any good for, sarge?' said Sam. 'Gingering things up.' Vimes removed his helmet and armour, and nodded to the gap through which people were streaming. 'Fred, we'll be going out that way. Think you can push us a path?' 'I'll give it a go, sarge.' Fred squared his shoulders. 'We're going to stop that thing. They can't move it fast and with all this noise and confusion no one will notice a thing- that was quick, Billy 'I just grabbed everything, sarge,' panted Wiglet, running up with a small sack. 'I know what you want to do, sarge, I did it sometimes out of mischief when I was a kid-' 'Me too,' said Vimes. 'And here's my ginger. Ah, lovely. It brings tears to my eyes. Okay, Billy? Ready, Fred.' It took all of Colon's bulk, with Vimes pushing behind him, to thrust a way through the desperate mob into the world beyond the barricade. In the darkness Vimes forced his way between the bodies, up to the side of the siege engine. It was like a huge slow ram pushing its way down the street, but jerking forward more slowly than a walking pace because of the press of people. Vimes fancied that Carcer probably enjoyed this ride. He ducked under the cart, unseen in the mob, and grabbed a mallet and a wedge from Wiglet's bag. 'You do the left rear wheel and then make a run for it, Billy,’ he said. 'But sarge-' 'That was an order. Get out, get back, get people off the street as fast as possible. Do it!' Vimes crawled up to one of the front wheels and held the wedge ready between wheel and axle. The cart stopped for a moment, and he thrust the wedge into the gap and thumped it with the hammer. He had time for another blow before the cart gave a creak that suggested the oxen were pushing again. Then he crawled back quickly and took the sack from Billy before the little man, with a reluctant glance, scuttled out into the forest of legs. Vimes got a third wedge in before loud voices somewhere behind him indicated that the lack of progress had been noticed. The wheels rocked, and bound even further on the wedges. The wheels would have to come off before they could be got out. Even so, oxen were powerful beasts. Enough of them would have no problem at all in dragging the cart as well as the barricade. But the nice thing, the nice thing, was that people thought of a barricade as something people tried to get into, not out of... Vimes slipped out into the noisy, confusing night. There were soldiers, and watchmen, and refugees, all cursing at cross purposes. In the flickering shadows, Vimes was just another shape. He pushed his way confidently around to the straining oxen and their driver, who was prodding them with a stick. He was heartened by the fact that the man looked the kind of man who'd get six out of ten when answering the question: 'What is your name?' Vimes didn't even stop. The important thing was not to let the other person have a chance to say 'But-', let alone 'Who the hell do you think you are?' He pushed the man aside and glared at the sweating beasts. 'Ah, right, I can see your problem right here,' he said, in the voice of one who knows everything there is to know about oxen. 'They've got the glaggies. But we can fix that. Hold up that one's tail. Hurry up, man!' The ox poker responded to the voice of authority. Vimes palmed a lump of ginger. Here goes, he thought. At least it's somewhere warm on a cold night... 'Okay. Now the other one... right. Okay. Now, I'll just go around and, er... just go round...' said Vimes, hurrying back into the shadows. He shouldered his way through the throng and dived through the tiny hole. 'It's all right, sarge, I spied you coming through Mrs Rutherford's diningroom chairs,' said Fred Colon, hauling him upright. 'Well, you stopped it, sarge, and no mistake. You really... urrrhg...' 'Yes, don't shake hands with me until I've had a wash,’ said Vimes, heading for the pump. He kept an ear cocked for any strange noises on the other side of the barricade. There were none for several seconds. And then he heard it... Nothing much had happened for some while after his visit to the oxen except that, very slowly, their eyes had begun to cross and then, also quite slowly, turn red. It takes a long time for anything to happen inside the head of an ox, but, when it does, it happens extensively. The moo started off low and rose slowly. It was a visceral sound that had rolled across the ancient tundra and told early man that here came dinner or death, and either way it was pissed off. It was the sound of a big beast that was still too small to restrain all the emotions that were welling up inside it. And it was a duet. Vimes, hauling himself up the barricade, saw people running. Then the whole of Big Mary shuddered. That didn't look too impressive unless you knew that a couple of tons of wood had just jumped sideways. Then there was the sound of splintering, two of Big Mary's locked wheels collapsed, and she toppled sideways in a mass of flame, splinters, smoke and dust. Vimes counted under his breath, and had only reached two when a cartwheel rolled out of the smoke and away down the road. This always happens. It wasn't over, though. The oxen, tangled in the remains of the shafts and harness, and now an enraged joint creature that could get only six legs out of eight on the ground, headed erratically but with surprising speed in the opposite direction. The other oxen, which had been waiting for the big pull, watched it approach. They were already spooked by the crash, and now they caught the stink of terror and fury and began a slow stampede away from it and towards, as it turned out, the waiting bowmen behind them who, in turn, tried to run into the cavalry. The horses were not inclined to be well behaved towards armed men in any case and were also in a state of some apprehension. They relieved this by kicking the hell out of anyone close. It was hard for the watchers along the barricade to see much of what happened after that, but the noises were very interesting for quite some time. Sergeant Colon's mouth shut. 'Bloody hell, sarge,' he said, admiringly. In the distance, glass shattered. 'They'll be back,' said Vimes. 'Yeah, but not all of 'em,’ said Wiglet. 'Well done, sarge.' Vimes turned, and saw Sam staring at him in wideeyed hero worship. 'I was lucky, lad,' he said. 'But it helps to remember little details and not mind getting your hands dirty.' 'But we could win now, sarge,' said Sam. 'No, we can't. But we can put off losing until it doesn't hurt too much.' Vimes turned to the others. 'Right, lads, back to work. We've had some fun, but dawn's a long way off.' The news had got around even before he'd climbed down from the barricade. There was a cheer from the crowd, and a general struttiness about the armed men. We'd shown them, eh? They don't like the taste of cold steel, those... er... other people from Ankh-Morpork! We'll show 'em, eh? And it had taken a few wedges, some raw ginger and a lot of luck. That wouldn't happen twice. Maybe it wouldn't need to. He remembered hearing about the assassination. It was all very mysterious. Winder had been killed in a room full of people, and no one saw a thing. Magic had been suggested, and hotly denied by the wizards. Some historians had said that it happened because troops around the palace had been sent to attack the barricades, but that didn't answer the question. Anyone who could stab a man to death in a brightly lit room full of people surely wouldn't find some guards in the darkness any kind of obstacle... Of course, with Snapcase as new Patrician, no one had tried very hard to establish the facts in any case. People said things like 'quite possibly we shall never know the truth' which meant, in Vimes's personal lexicon, 'I know, or think I know what the truth is, and hope like hell it doesn't come out, because things are all smoothed over now.' Supposing we don't lose? Keel hadn't killed Big Mary. She hadn't been used in the other present. The soldiers hadn't been stupid enough to try it. That sort of thing was okay to deal with little local affairs manned by civilians, but it was a joke if you put it up against stout defences manned by professionals. Now she was a wreck, the attackers would have to think up a new plan in a hurry, and time was moving on... Supposing we don't lose? All they had to do was hold out. The people at the top had very short memories. Winder is mysteriously dead, long live Lord Snapcase! And suddenly all the rebels become glorious freedom fighters. And there's seven unfilled graves in the cemetery... Would he be able to go back, then? Supposing Madam was right and he got offered the post of Commander, not as a bribe, but because he'd earned it? That'd change history! He took out the cigar case and stared hard at the inscription. Let's see, he thought... if I never met Sybil, we wouldn't get married and she wouldn't buy me this, and so I couldn't be looking at it... He stared hard at the curly engraving, almost willing it to disappear. It didn't. On the other hand, that old monk had said that whatever happens, stays happened. And now Vimes had a mental picture of Sybil and Carrot and Detritus and all the rest of them, frozen in a moment that'd never have a next moment. He wanted to go home. He wanted it so much that he trembled at the thought. But if the price of that was selling good men to the night, if the price was filling those graves, if the price was not fighting with every trick he knew... then it was too high. It wasn't a decision that he was making, he knew. It was happening far below the areas of the brain that made decisions. It was something built in. There was no universe, anywhere, where a Sam Vimes would give in on this, because if he did then he wouldn't be Sam Vimes any more. The writing stayed on the silver but it was blurred now because of the tears welling up. They were tears of anger, mostly at himself. There was not a thing that he could do. He hadn't bought a ticket and he hadn't wanted to come, but now he was on the ride and couldn't get off until the end. What else had the old monk said? History finds a way? Well, it was going to have to come up with something good, because it was up against Sam Vimes now. He glanced up, and saw young Sam watching him. 'You okay, sarge?' ‘Fine, fine.' 'Only you've been sitting there for twenty minutes looking at your cigars.' Vimes coughed, and tucked the case away, and pulled himself together. 'Half the pleasure's in the anticipation,' he said. The night wore on. News came through, from barricades at bridges and gates. There were forays, more to test the defenders' strength of will than make a serious dent in the defences. And there were even more deserters. One reason for the desertion rate was that those people of a practical turn of mind were working out the subtle economics. The Republic of Treacle Mine Road lacked all the big, important buildings in the city, the ones that traditional rebels were supposed to take. It had no government offices, no banks and very few temples. It was almost completely bereft of important civic architecture. All it had was the unimportant stuff. It had the entire slaughterhouse district, and the butter market, and the cheese market. It had the tobacco factors and the candlemakers and most of the fruit and vegetable warehouses and the grain and flour stores. This meant that while the Republicans were being starved of important things like government, banking services and salvation, they were selfsufficient in terms of humdrum, everyday things like food and drink. People are content to wait a long time for salvation, but prefer dinner to turn up inside an hour. 'A present from the lads down at the Shambles, sarge,’ said Dickins, arriving with a wagon. They said it'd only spoil otherwise. Is it okay for me to dish 'em out to the field kitchens?' 'What've you got?' said Vimes. 'Steaks, mostly,' said the old sergeant, grinning. 'But I liberated a sack of onions in the name of the revolution!' He saw Vimes's expression change. 'No, sarge, the man gave them to me, see. They need eating, he said.' 'What did I tell you? Every meal will be a feast in the People's Republic!' said Reg Shoe, striding up. He still hung on to his clipboard; people like Reg tend to. 'If you could just take it along to the official warehouse, sergeant?' 'What warehouse?' Reg sighed. 'All food must go into the common warehouse and be distributed by my officials according to-' 'Mr Shoe,' said Dickins, 'there's a cart with five hundred chickens coming up behind me, and there's another full of eggs. There's nowhere to send 'em, see? The butchers have filled up the icehouses and smokerooms and the only place we can store this grub is in our guts. I ain't particularly bothered about officials.' 'On behalf of the Republic I order you-' Reg began, and Vimes put his hand on his shoulder. 'Off you go, sergeant,' he said, nodding to Dickins. 'A word in your ear, Reg?' 'Is this a military coop?' said Reg uncertainly, holding his clipboard. 'No, it's just that we're under siege here, Reg. This is not the time. Let Sergeant Dickins sort it out. He's a fair man, he just doesn't like clipboards.' 'But supposing people get left out?' said Reg. 'There's enough for everyone to eat themselves sick, Reg.' Reg Shoe looked uncertain and disappointed, as though this prospect was less pleasing than carefully rationed scarcity. 'But I'll tell you what,' said Vimes. 'If this goes on, the city will see to it the deliveries come in by other gates. We'll be hungry then. That's when we'll need your organizational skills.' 'You mean we'll be in a famine situation?' said Reg, the light of hope in his eyes. 'If we aren't, Reg, I'in sure you could organize one,' said Vimes, and realized he'd gone just a bit too far. Reg was only stupid in certain areas, and now he looked as though he was going to cry. 'I just think it's important to be fair-' the man began. 'Yeah, Reg. I understand. But there's a time and a place, you know? Maybe the best way to build a bright new world is to peel some spuds in this one? Now, off you go. And you, Lance-Constable Vimes, you go and help him.’ Vimes climbed back up the barricade. The city beyond was dark again, with only the occasional chink of light from a shuttered window. By comparison the streets of the Republic were ablaze. In a few hours the shops out there were expecting deliveries, and they weren't going to arrive. The government couldn't sit this one out. A city like Ankh-Morpork was only two meals away from chaos at the best of times. Every day, maybe a hundred cows died for Ankh-Morpork. So did a flock of sheep and a herd of pigs and the gods alone knew how many ducks, chickens and geese. Flour? He'd heard it was eighty tons, and about the same amount of potatoes and maybe twenty tons of herring. He didn't particularly want to know this kind of thing, but once you started having to sort out the everlasting traffic problem these were facts that got handed to you. Every day, forty thousand eggs were laid for the city. Every day, hundreds, thousands of carts and boats and barges converged on the city with fish and honey and oysters and olives and eels and lobsters. And then think of the horses dragging this stuff, and the windmills... and the wool coming in, too, every day, the cloth, the tobacco, the spices, the ore, the timber, the cheese, the coal, the fat, the tallow, the hay EVERY DAMN DAY... And that was now. Back home, the city was twice as big... Against the dark screen of night, Vimes had a vision of Ankh-Morpork. It wasn't a city, it was a process, a weight on the world that distorted the land for hundreds of miles around. People who'd never see it in their whole life nevertheless spent their life working for it. Thousands and thousands of green acres were part of it, forests were part of it. It drew in and consumed... ... and gave back the dung from its pens and the soot from its chimneys, and steel, and saucepans, and all the tools by which its food was made. And also clothes, and fashions and ideas and interesting vices, songs and knowledge and something which, if looked at in the right light, was called civilization. That's what civilization meant. It meant the city. Was anyone else out there thinking about this? A lot of the stuff came in through the Onion Gate and the Shambling Gate, both now Republican and solidly locked. There'd be a military picket on them, surely. Right now, there were carts on the way that'd find those gates closed to them. Yet no matter what the politics, eggs hatch and milk sours and herds of driven animals need penning and watering and where was that going to happen? Would the military sort it out? Well, would they? While the carts rumbled up, and then were hemmed in by the carts behind, and the pigs escaped and the cattle herds wandered off? Was anyone important thinking about this? Suddenly the machine was wobbling, but Winder and his cronies didn't think about the machine, they thought about money. Meat and drink came from servants. They happened. Vetinari, Vimes realized, thought about this sort of thing all the time. The Ankh-Morpork back home was twice as big and four times as vulnerable. He wouldn't have let something like this happen. Little wheels must spin so that the machine can turn, he'd say. But now, in the dark, it all spun on Vimes. If the man breaks down, it all breaks down, he thought. The whole machine breaks down. And it goes on breaking down. And it breaks down the people. Behind him, he heard a relief squad marching down Heroes Street. 'how do they rise? They rise knees up! knees up! knees up! They rise knees up, knees up high. All the little angels-' For a moment Vimes wondered, looking out through a gap in the furniture, if there wasn't something in Fred's idea about moving the barricades on and on, like a sort of sieve, street by street. You could let through the decent people, and push the bastards, the rich bullies, the wheelers and dealers in people's fates, the leeches, the hangerson, the brownnosers and courtiers and smarmy plump devils in expensive clothes, all those people who didn't know or care about the machine but stole its grease, push them into a smaller and smaller compass and then leave them in there. Maybe you could toss some food in every couple of days, or maybe you could leave 'em to do what they'd always done, which was live off other people... There wasn't much noise from the dark streets. Vimes wondered what was going on. He wondered if anyone out there was taking care of business. Major Mountjoy-Standfast stared emptyeyed at the damn, damn map. 'How many, then?' he said. ‘Thirtytwo men injured, sir. And another twenty probable desertions,’ said Captain Wrangle. 'And Big Mary is firewood, of course.' 'Oh gods...' 'Do you want to hear the rest, sir?' ‘There's more?' 'I'in afraid there is, sir. Before the remains of Big Mary left Heroes Street, sir, she smashed twenty shop windows and various carts, doing damage estimated at-' 'Fortunes of war, captain. We can't help that!' 'No, sir.' The captain coughed. 'Do you want to know what happened next, sir?' 'Next? There was a next?' said the major, beginning to panic. 'Um... yes, sir. Quite a lot of next, actually, sir. Um. The three gates through which most of the agricultural produce comes into the city are picketed, sir, on your orders, so the carters and drovers are trying to bring their stuff along Short Street, sir. Fortunately not too many animals at this time of night, sir, but there were six millers' wagons, one wagon of, er, dried fruits and spices, four dairymen's wagons and three hegglers' carts. All wrecked, sir. Those oxen really were very feisty, sir.' 'Hegglers? What the hell are hegglers?' said the major, bewildered. 'Egg marketers, sir. They travel around the farms, pick up the eggs-' 'Yes, all right! And what are we supposed to do?' 'We could make an enormous cake, sir.' ‘Tom!' 'Sorry, sir. But the city doesn't stop, you see. It's not like a battlefield. The best place for urban fighting is right out in the countryside, sir, where there's nothing else in the way.' 'It's a bloody big barricade, Tom. Too well defended. We can't even set fire to the damn thing, it'll take the city up with it!' 'Yes, sir. And the point is, sir, that they're not actually doing anything, sir. Except being there.' 'What do you mean?' 'They're even putting old grannies up on the barricades, shouting down to the lads. Poor Sergeant Franklin, sir, his granny saw him and said that if he didn't turn it up she'd tell everyone what he did when he was eleven, sir.' ‘The men are armed, aren't they?' said the major, wiping his forehead. 'Oh, yes. But we've kind of advised them not to shoot unarmed old ladies, sir. We don't want another Dolly Sisters, do we, sir?' The major stared at the map. There was a solution, he felt. 'Well, what did Sergeant Franklin do when he was-' he said absentmindedly. 'She didn't say, sir.' A sudden feeling of relief stole over the major. 'Captain, you know what this is now?' 'I'in sure you'll tell me, sir.' 'I will, Tom, I will. This is political, Tom. We're soldiers. Political goes higher up.' 'You're right, sir. Well done, sir!' 'Dig out a lieutenant who has been a bit slack lately and send him up to tell their lordships,' said the major. 'Isn't that a bit cruel, sir?' 'Of course it is. This is politics now.' Lord Albert Selachii didn't much like parties. There was too much politics. And he particularly didn't like this one because it meant he was in the same room as Lord Winder, a man who, deep down, he believed to be A Bad Sort. In his personal vocabulary, there was no greater condemnation. What made it worse was that, while seeking to avoid him, he also had to try at the same time to avoid Lord Venturi. Their families cordially detested one another. Lord Albert wasn't sure, now, what event in history had caused the rift, but it must have been important, obviously, otherwise it would be silly to go on like this. Had the Selachii and the Venturi been hill clans, they would have been afeudin' and afightin'; since they were two of the city's leading families they were chillingly, viciously, icily polite to each other whenever social fate forced them together. And right now his careful orbit of the less dangerously political areas of the damn party had brought him face to face with Lord Charles Venturi. It was bad enough having to campaign with the feller, he thought, without being forced to talk to him over some rather inferior wine, but currently the party's tides offered no way of escape without being impolite. And, curiously, upperclass etiquette in Ankh-Morpork held that, while you could snub your friends any time you felt like it, it was the height of bad form to be impolite to your worst enemy. 'Venturi,' he said, raising his glass a carefully calculated fraction of an inch. 'Selachii,' said Lord Venturi, doing the same thing. ‘This is a party,' said Albert. 'Indeed. I see you are standing upright.' 'Indeed. So are you, I see.' 'Indeed. Indeed. On that subject, I notice many others are doing the same thing.' 'Which is not to say that the horizontal position does not have its merits when it comes to, for example, sleeping,' said Albert. 'Quite so. Obviously that would not be done here.' 'Oh, indeed. Indeed.'* * The Selachii and the Venturi made a point, on occasions like this, to talk only about things on which there was no possibility of disagreement. Given the history of the two families, this had become a very small number of things. A brisk lady in a magnificent purple dress advanced across the ballroom floor, her smile travelling in front of her. 'Lord Selachii?' she said, proffering a hand. 'I hear you have been doing sterling work defending us from the mob!' His lordship, on social automatic pilot, bowed stiffly. He wasn't used to forward women, and this one was all forward. However, all safe topics of conversation with a Venturi had been exhausted. 'I fear you have the advantage of me, madam...' he murmured. 'I certainly expect so!' said Madam, giving him such a radiant smile that he didn't analyse her actual words. 'And who is this imposing military gentleman? A comrade in arms?' Lord Selachii floundered. He'd been brought up knowing that you always introduced men to women, and this smiling lady hadn't told him her- 'Lady Roberta Meserole,' she said. 'Most people who know me call me Madam. But my friends call me Bobbi.' Lord Venturi clicked his heels. He was quicker on the uptake than his 'comrade in arms' and his wife told him more of the current gossip. 'Ah, you must be the lady from Genua,' he said, taking her hand. 'I have heard so much about you.' 'Anything good?' said Madam. His lordship glanced across the room. His wife appeared to be deep in conversation. He knew to his cost that her wifely radar could fry an egg half a mile away. But the champagne had been good. 'Mostly expensive,' he said, which didn't sound quite as witty as he intended. She laughed anyway. Perhaps I was witty, he thought. I say, this champagne really is excellent... 'A woman has to make her way in the world as best she can,' she said. 'May I make so bold as to ask if there is a Lord Meserole?' he said. 'So early in the evening?' said Madam, and laughed again. Lord Venturi found himself laughing with her. My word, he told himself, this wit is a lot easier than I thought! 'No, of course I meant-' he began. 'I'in sure you did,' said Madam, tapping him lightly with her fan. 'Now, I mustn't monopolize you, but I really must drag both of you away to talk to some of my friends She took Lord Venturi by the unresisting arm and piloted him across the floor. Selachii followed morosely, being of the opinion that when respectable women called themselves Bobbi the world was about to end, and ought to. 'Mr Carter has extensive interests in copper and Mr Jones is very interested in rubber,' she whispered. There were about six men in the group, talking in low voices. As their lordships approached they caught'and at a time like this one really must ask oneself where one's true loyalties lie... oh, good evening, Madam.’ On her apparently random walk to the buffet table Madam happened to meet several other gentlemen and, like a good hostess, piloted them in the direction of other small groups. Probably only someone lying on the huge beams that spanned the hall high above would spot any pattern, and even then they'd have to know the code. If they had been in a position to put a red spot on the heads of those people who were not friends of the Patrician, and a white spot on those who were his cronies, and a pink spot on those who were perennial waverers, then they would have seen something like a dance taking place. There were not many whites. They would have seen that there were several groups of reds, and white spots were being introduced into them in ones, or twos if the number of reds in the group was large enough. If a white left a group, he or she was effortlessly scooped up and shunted into another conversation which might contain one or two pinks but was largely red. Any conversation entirely between white spots was gently broken up with a smile and an 'oh, but now you must meet-', or was joined by several red spots. Pinks, meanwhile, were delicately passed from red group to red group until they were deeply pink, and then they were allowed to mix with other pinks of the same hue, under the supervision of a red. In short, the pinks met so many reds, and so few whites, that they probably forgot about whites at all, while the whites, constantly alone or hugely outnumbered by reds or deep pinks, appeared to be going red out of embarrassment or a desire to blend in. Lord Winder was entirely surrounded by reds, leaving the few remaining whites out in the cold. He looked like all the Patricians tended to look after a certain time in office - unpleasantly plump, with the pink jowliness of a man of normal build who had too much rich food. He was sweating slightly in this quite cool room, and his eyes swivelled this way and that, looking for the flaws, the clues, the angles. At last Madam reached the buffet, where Dr Follett was helping himself to the devilled eggs and Miss Rosemary Palm was debating with herself as to whether the future should contain strange pastry things with a green filling that hinted mysteriously of prawn. 'And how are we doing, do we think?' said Dr Follett, apparently to a swan carved out of ice. 'We are doing well,' Madam told a basket of fruit. There's four, however, that are still proving awkward.' 'I know them,’ said the doctor. 'They'll fall into place, trust me. What else can they do? We're used to this game here. We know that if you complain too loudly when you lose, you might not be asked to play again. But I shall station some stout friends near them, just in case their resolve needs a little... bolstering.' 'He is suspicious,' said Miss Palm. 'When isn't he?' said Dr Follett. 'Go and talk to him.' 'Where is our new best friend, doctor?' said Madam. 'Mr Snapcase is dining quietly but visibly, in impeccable company, some way away.' They turned when the double doors opened. So did several of the other guests, who then turned back hastily. But it was only a servant, who hurried over to Madam and whispered something. She indicated the two military commanders, and the man went to hover anxiously beside them. There was a brief exchange and then, without even a bow towards Lord Winder, all three men went out. ‘I shall just go and see to the arrangements,' said Madam, and, without in any sense following the men, headed towards the doors. When she stepped into the hall the two servants waiting by the cake stopped lounging and snapped to attention, and a guard who was patrolling the corridor gave her a quick glance of interrogation. 'Now, madam?' said one of the servants. 'What? Oh. No! Just wait.' She glided over to where the commanders were in animated conversation with a couple of junior officers, and took Lord Venturi's arm. 'Oh dear, Charles, are you leaving us so soon?' Lord Venturi didn't think of wondering how she knew his first name. The champagne had been plentiful, and he saw no reason at the moment why any attractive woman of a certain age shouldn't know his name. 'Oh, there are one or two pockets of resistance left,' he said. 'Nothing to concern you, Madam.' 'Bloody big pocket,' murmured Lord Selachii, into his moustache. ‘They destroyed Big Mary, sir,' said the luckless messenger. 'And they-' 'Major Mountjoy-Standfast can't outthink a bunch of gormless watchmen and civilians and some veterans with garden forks?' said Lord Venturi, who had no idea of how much damage a garden fork could do if hurled straight down from an elevation of twenty feet. ‘That's just it, sir, they are veterans and they know all-' 'And the civilians? Unarmed civilians?' said Venturi. The messenger, who was a sublieutenant and very nervous, couldn't find the right words to explain that 'unarmed civilian' was stretching a point when it was a 2001b slaughterhouse man with a long hook in one hand and a flensing knife in the other. Young men who'd joined up for the uniform and a bed all to themselves did not expect that kind of treatment. 'Permission to speak freely, sir?' he tried. 'Very well!' ‘The men haven't got the heart for it, sir. They'd kill a Klatchian in a wink, sir, but... well, some of the old soldiers are from the regiment, sir, and they're shouting down all kinds of stuff. A lot of the men come from down there, and it's not good for them. And what some of the old ladies shout, sir, well, I've never heard such language. Dolly Sisters was bad enough, sir, but this is a bit too much. Sorry, sir.’ Their lordships looked out of the window. There was half a regiment in the palace grounds, men who'd had nothing to do for several days but stand guard. 'Some backbone and a quick thrust,' said Selachii. That's what's needed, by lo! Lance the boil! This is not a cavalry action, Venturi. And I'll take those men. Fresh blood.' 'Selachii, we do have orders-' 'We have all kinds of orders,' said Selachii. 'But we know where the enemy is, don't we? Aren't there enough guards here? How many guards does one fool need?' 'We can't just-' Lord Venturi began, but Madam said, 'I'in sure Charles will see that no harm comes to his lordship,' and took his arm. 'He does have his sword, after all...' A few minutes later, Madam glanced out of the window and saw that the troops were quietly moving out. She also noticed, after watching for some time, that the guard patrolling in the hall seemed to have vanished. There were rules. When you had a Guild of Assassins, there had to be rules which everyone knew and which were never, ever broken.* * Sometimes, admittedly, for a given value of 'never'. An Assassin, a real Assassin, had to look like one - black clothes, hood, boots and all. If they could wear any clothes, any disguise, then what could anyone do but spend all day sitting in a small room with a loaded crossbow pointed at the door? And they couldn't kill a man incapable of defending himself (although a man worth more than AM$ 10,000 a year was considered automatically capable of defending himself or at least of employing people to do it for him). And they had to give the target a chance. But there was no helping some people. It was regrettable how many rulers of the city had been inhumed by the men in black because they didn't recognize a chance when they saw it, didn't know when they'd gone too far, didn't care that they'd made too many enemies, didn't read the signs, didn't know when to walk away after embezzling a moderate and acceptable amount of cash. They didn't realize it when the machine had stopped, when the world was ripe for change, when it was time, in fact, to spend more time with their family in case they ended up spending it with their ancestors. Of course, the Guild didn't inhume their rulers on their own behalf. There was a rule about that, too. They were simply there when needed. There was a tradition, once, far back in the past, called the King of the Bean. A special dish was served to all the men of the clan on a certain day of the year. It contained one small hardbaked bean, and whoever got the bean was, possibly after some dental attention, hailed as King. It was quite an inexpensive system and it worked well, probably because the clever little bald men who actually ran things and paid some attention to possible candidates were experts at palming a bean into the right bowl. And while the crops ripened and the tribe thrived and the land was fertile the King thrived too. But when, in the fullness of time, crops failed and the ice came back and animals were inexplicably barren, the clever little bald men sharpened their long knives, which were mostly used for cutting mistletoe. And on the due night, one of them went into his cave and carefully baked one small bean. Of course, that was before people were civilized. These days, no one had to eat beans. People were still working on the barricade. It had become a sort of general hobby, a kind of group home improvement. Fire buckets, some full of water, some of sand, had turned up. In places the barricade was more impregnable than the city walls, considering how often the latter had been pillaged for stone. There were occasional drumbeats down in the city, and the sound of troop movements. 'Sergeant?' Vimes looked down. A face had appeared at the top of the ladder leading down to the street. 'Ah, Miss Battye? I didn't know you were with us.' 'I didn't intend to be, but suddenly there was this big wall...' She climbed all the way up. She was holding a small bucket. 'Doctor Lawn presents his compliments and says how come you haven't beaten up anyone yet?' she said, putting it down. 'He says he's got three tables scrubbed, two buckets of tar on the boil, six ladies rolling bandages and all he's had to deal with so far is a nosebleed. You've let him down, he says.' 'Tell him ha, ha, ha,' said Vimes. 'I've brought you up some breakfast,' said Sandra, and Vimes realized that down below, doing their notverybest to remain unseen, were some of the lads. They were sniggering. 'Mushrooms?' he said. 'No,' said the girl. 'I was told to tell you that since it's tomorrow, you're going to get everything you wished for...' For a moment Vimes tensed, not certain where the world was taking him. 'A hardboiled egg,’ said Sandra. 'But Sam Vimes said you probably like the yolk runny and some toast cut up into soldiers.' 'Just like he does,' said Vimes weakly. 'Good guess, that man.' Vimes tossed the egg up into the air, expecting to catch it when it came down. Instead, there was a noise like scissors closing and the air rained runny yolk and bits of shell. And then it rained arrows. The noise level of the conversation had gone up. Madam moved in on the group around Lord Winder. Magically, within ten seconds they were left alone as all the other people in the group saw people across the room that they really had to talk to. 'Who are yer?' said Winder, his eyes surveying her with that care a man takes when he fears that a woman is carrying concealed weaponry. 'Madam Roberta Meserole, my lord.' 'The one from Genua?' Winder snorted, which was his attempt at a snigger. 'I've heard stories about Genua!' 'I could probably tell you a few more, my lord,' said Madam. 'But, right now, it's time for the cake.' 'Yeah,' said Winder. 'Did you know we got another assassin tonight? They keep trying, you know. Eleven years, and still they try. But I get 'em, every time, sneak about though they may.' 'Well done, my lord,' said Madam. It did help that he was an unpleasant person, ugly clear to the bone. In some ways, it made things easier. She turned, and clapped her hands. Surprisingly, this small noise caused a sudden cessation in the chatter. The double doors at the end of the hall opened, and two trumpeters appeared. They took up positions on either side of the door- 'Stop 'em!' Winder yelled, and ducked. His two guards ran down the hall and grabbed the trumpets from the frightened men. They handled them with extreme care, as if expecting them to explode or issue a strange gas. ‘Poison darts,' said Winder in a satisfied voice. 'Can't be too careful, madam. In this job you learn to watch every shadow. All right, let 'em play. But no trumpets. I 'ate tubes pointed at me.' There was some bewildered conversation at the other end of the hall, and then the bereft trumpeters stood back and whistled as best they could. Lord Winder laughed as the cake was pushed in. It was in tiers, about manheight, and heavily iced. 'Lovely,' he said, as the crowd clapped. 'I do like some entertainment at a party. And I cut it, do I?' He took a few steps back and nodded at the bodyguards. 'Off you go, boys,' he said. Swords stabbed into the top tier several times. The guards looked at Winder and shook their heads. ‘There's such a thing as dwarfs, you know,' he said. They stabbed at the second layer, again meeting no more resistance than can be offered by dried fruit and suet and a crust of marzipan with sugar frosting. 'He could be kneeling down,' said Winder. The audience watched, their smiles frozen. When it became clear that the cake was solid and unoccupied, the food taster was sent for. Most of the guests recognized him. His name was Spymould. He was said to have eaten so much poison in his time that he was proof against anything, and that he ate a toad every day to keep in condition. It was also rumoured that he could turn silver black by breathing on it. He selected a piece of cake and chewed it thoughtfully, staring intently upwards while he did so. 'Hmm,' he said, after a while. 'Well?' said Winder. 'Sorry, milord,' said Spymould. 'Nuffin'. I thought there was a touch of cyanide there but, no luck, it's just the almonds.' 'No poison at all?' said the Patrician. 'You mean it's edible?' 'Well, yes. It'd be all the better for some toad, o'course, but that's just one man's opinion.' 'Perhaps the servants can serve it now, my lord?' said Madam. 'Don't trust servants serving food,' said Winder. 'Sneakin' about. Could slip somethin' in.' 'Do you mind if I do it, then, my lord?' 'Yeah, all right,' said Lord Winder, watching the cake carefully. I'll have the ninth piece you cut.' But in fact he snatched the fifth piece, triumphantly, as if saving something precious from the wreckage. The cake was disassembled. Lord Winder's objection to servants handling food withered once the food was headed for other people, and so the party spread out a little as the guests pondered the ancient question of how to hold a plate and a glass and eat at the same time without using one of those little glassholding things that clip on the side of the plate and make the user look as though they're four years old. This takes a lot of concentration, and that might have been why everyone was so curiously selfabsorbed. The door opened. A figure walked into the room. Winder looked up, over the top of his plate. It was a slim figure, hooded and masked, all in black. Winder stared. Around him, the conversation rose, and a watcher above might have noticed that the drift of the party tides was such that they were leaving a wide empty path, stretching from the door all the way to Winder, whose legs didn't want to move. As it strolled towards him the figure reached both hands behind it and they came back each holding a small pistol bow. There were a couple of small tic noises and the bodyguards collapsed gently towards the floor. Then it tossed the bows behind it, and kept coming. Its footfalls made no sound. 'Brw?' said Winder, staring. His mouth was open, and stuffed with cake. People chattered on. Somewhere, someone had told a joke. There was laughter, perhaps a shade shriller than might normally be the case. The noise level rose again. Winder blinked. Assassins didn't do this. They snuck around. They used the shadows. This didn't happen in real life. This was how it happened in dreams. And now the creature was in front of him. He dropped his spoon, and there was a sudden silence after it clanged on the ground. There was another rule. Wherever possible, the inhumed should be told who the Assassin was, and who had sent him. It was felt by the Guild that this was only fair. Winder did not know this, and it was not widely advertised, but nevertheless, in the midst of terror, eyes wide, he asked the right questions. 'Who sent yer?' 'I come from the city,’ said the figure, drawing a thin, silvery sword. 'Who are yer?' ‘Think of me as... your future.' The figure drew the sword back, but it was too late. Terror's own more subtle knife had done its work. Winder's face was crimson, his eyes were staring at nothing, and coming up from the throat, through the crumbs of cake, was a sound that merged a creak with a sigh. The dark figure lowered its sword, watched for a moment in the echoing silence, and then said: 'Boo.' It reached out one gloved hand and gave the Patrician a push. Winder went over backwards, his plate dropping from his hand and shattering on the tiles. The Assassin held his bloodless sword at arm's length and let it drop on the floor beside the corpse. Then he turned and walked slowly back across the marble floor. He shut the double doors behind him, and the echoes died away. Madam counted slowly to ten before she screamed. That seemed long enough. Lord Winder got to his feet, and looked up at the blackclad figure. 'Another one? Where did you creep in from?' I DO NOT CREEP. Winder's mind felt even fuzzier than it had done over the past few years, but he was certain about cake. He'd been eating cake, and now there wasn't any. Through the mists he saw it, apparently close but, when he tried to reach it, a long way away. A certain realization dawned on him. 'Oh,' he said. yes, said Death. 'Not even time to finish my cake?' No. there is no more time, even for cake. for you, the cake IS OVER. YOU HAVE REACHED THE END OF CAKE. A grapnel thudded into the wall beside Vimes. There were shouts along the barricade. More hooks snaked up and bit into the wood. Another rain of arrows clattered on the roofs of the houses. The attackers weren't ready to risk hitting their own side, but arrows were snapping and bouncing in the street below. Vimes heard shouts, and the clang of arrows on armour. A sound made him turn. A helmeted head rose level with his and the face beneath it blanched in terror when it saw Vimes. 'That was my egg, you bastard!' he screamed, punching the nose. 'With soldiers!' The man fell back, by the sound of it, on to other climbers. Men were yelling all along the parapet. Vimes pulled out his truncheon. 'At 'em, lads,' he yelled. "Truncheons! Nothing fancy! Bop 'em on the fingers and let gravity do the work! They're goin' down!’ He ducked, pressing close to the wood, and tried to find a spyhole- ‘They're using big catapults,' said Sandra, who'd found a gap a few feet away. There's a-' Vimes pulled her away. 'What are you doing still up here?' he roared. 'It's safer than the street!' she yelled back, nose to nose with him. 'Not if one of those grapnels hits you it isn't!' He grabbed his knife. 'Here, take this... you see a rope anywhere, cut it!' He scurried along behind the shelter of the wobbling parapet, but the defenders were doing very well. It wasn't exactly rocket magic, in any case. The people at ground level were firing out through any crack they could find and, while aiming was not easy, it didn't need to be. There is nothing like the zip and zing of arrows around them to make people nervous at their work. And the climbers were too bunched up. They had to be. If they tried attacking on a broad front there'd be three defenders to greet each man. So they were in one another's way, and every falling man would take a couple more down with him, and the barricade was full of little gaps and holes where a defender with a spear could seriously prod those trying to climb up the outside. This is stupid, Vimes thought. It'd take a thousand men to break through, and that'd only be when the last fifty ran up the slope made of the bodies of all the rest of them. Someone out there is doing the old 'hit them at their strongest point to show 'em we mean business' thinking. Ye gods, is this how we won our wars? So how would I have dealt with this? Well, I'd have said 'Detritus, remove the barricade' and made sure that the defenders heard me, that's what I'd have done. End of problem. There was a scream from further along the parapet. A grapnel had caught one of the watchmen and pulled him hard against the wood. Vimes reached him in time to see a hook dragged into the man's body, through breastplate and mail, as an attacker hauled himself up-Vimes caught the man's sword arm in one hand and punched him with the other, letting him tumble into the melee below. The stricken watchman was Nancyball. His face was bluewhite, his mouth opened and shut soundlessly, and blood pooled around his feet. It dripped through the planks. 'Let's get the bloody thing out-' Wiglet said, grabbing the hook. Vimes pushed him away, as a couple of arrows hummed overhead. 'That could do more damage. Call up some lads, take him down really carefully and get him to Lawn.' Vimes snatched up Nancyball's truncheon and brought it down on the helmet of another struggling climber. 'He's still breathing, sarge!' said Wiglet. 'Right, right,' said Vimes. It was amazing how willing people were to see life in the corpse of a friend. 'So make yourself useful and get him down to the doctor.' And, speaking as one who'd seen some stricken men in his time, he mentally added: and if Lawn can sort him out, he can start his own religion. A lucky attacker, who'd achieved the top of the barricade and then found himself horribly alone, slashed desperately at Vimes with his sword. Vimes turned back to business. Ankh-Morpork was good at this, and had become good at it without anyone ever discussing it. Things flowed rather than happened; that is, you'd sometimes have to look quite hard to find the point of change between 'hasn't been done yet' and 'already taken care of, old boy'. And that was how it was done. Things were taken care of. It was twenty minutes before Mr Snapcase arrived and twentyfive minutes before he was duly sworn in as Patrician, had magically become Lord Snapcase and was sitting in the Oblong Office; this included the one minute's silence for the late Lord Winder, whose body had been taken care of. A number of servants were shown the door without any great unpleasantness, and even Spymould was allowed to remove his toad farm in peace. But those who filled the grates and dusted the furniture and swept the floors stayed on, as they had stayed on before, because they seldom paid any attention to, or possibly didn't even know, who their lord was, and in any case were too useful and knew where the brooms were kept. Lords come and go, but dust accumulates. And it was the morning of a new day which looked, seen from below, quite like the old ones. After a while, someone raised the question of the fighting, which clearly needed to be taken care of. There were scuffles all along the barricade now, but they were going only one way. Siege ladders had been brought up and at several places along the parapet men had managed to climb in. But they could never get enough in one place. There were far more defenders than attackers, and they weren't all men under arms. One thing Vimes was learning fast was the natural vindictiveness of old ladies, who had no sense of fair play when it came to fighting soldiers; give a granny a spear and a hole to jab it through, and young men on the other side were in big trouble. And then there was Reg Shoe's inspired idea of the use of steak dinners as a weapon. The attackers did not come from homes where steak was ever on the table. Meat tended to be the flavouring, not the meal. But here and there men who'd achieved the top of the ladders, in darkness, with the groans and yells of their unsuccessful comrades below them, had their weapons dragged from their hands by wellfed former colleagues who were not unkind and who directed them down the ladder inside for steak and eggs and roast chicken and a promise that every day would be like this, come the revolution. Vimes didn't want that news to get out, in case there was a rush to invade. But the grannies, oh, the grannies... The neighbourhoods of the Republic were a natural recruiting ground for the regiments. It was also an area of big families and matriarchs whose word was family law. It had almost been cheating, putting them on the parapet with a megaphone during the lulls. 'I knows you're out there, our Ron! This is your Nan! You climb up one more time and you'll feel the back of my hand! Our Rita sends her love and wants you to hurry home. Grandpa is feeling a lot better with the new ointment! Now stop being a silly boy!' It was a dirty trick, and he was proud of it. Messages like that sapped a fighting spirit better than arrows. And then Vimes realized there were no more men on the ropes and ladders. He could hear yells and groans below, but those soldiers who could stand were withdrawing to a safe distance. Now me, thought Vimes, I'd have gone down to the cellars of the houses near the street. Ankh-Morpork is all cellars. And I'd have chipped my way through the rotten walls, and half the cellars on this side of the barricades would have men in them now, nice and snug. Admittedly last night I had the men nail up and bar every cellar door they could find but, after all, I wouldn't be fighting me, now, would I? He peered through a gap between planks, and was amazed to see a man walking gingerly forward among the wreckage and the groaning men. He was carrying a white flag, and stopped occasionally to wave it but not to shout 'Hurrah!' When he was as close as possible to the barricade, he called up: 'I say?' Behind his planking, Vimes shut his eyes. Oh gods, he thought. He called down: 'Yes? Can we help you?' 'Who are you?' 'Sergeant Keel, Night Watch. And you?' 'Sublieutenant Harrap. Er... we ask for a brief truce.' 'Why?' 'Er... so that we can recover our wounded.' The rules of war, Vimes thought. The field of honour. Good grief... 'And then?' he said. 'Sorry?' 'What happens after that? We start fighting again?' 'Um... hasn't anyone told you?' said the sublieutenant. 'Told us what?' 'We've just heard. Lord Winder is dead. Um. Lord Snapcase is Patrician.' A cheer began among the nearby defenders, and was taken up below. Vimes felt the relief rise. But he wouldn't be Vimes if he just let things lie. He called out: 'So would you like to change ends?' 'Er... sorry?' 'I mean, would your chaps like to have a go at defending the barricade and we can try attacking it?' Vimes heard laughter from the defenders. There was a pause. Then the young man said: 'Um... why?' 'Because, correct me if I am wrong, we are now the loyal supporters of the official government and you are the rebellious rump of a discredited administration. Am I right?' 'Um... I think we did have, um, legitimate orders-' 'Heard of a man called Captain Swing?' 'Um... yes...' 'He thought he had legitimate orders, too,' said Vimes. 'Um... yes?' 'Boy, was he surprised. All right, all right. A truce. We agree. Would you like my lads to give you a hand? We've got a doctor here. Very good. I've yet to hear screaming.' 'Um... thank you, sir.' The young man saluted. Vimes saluted back. Then he relaxed, and turned to the defenders. 'Okay, lads,’ he said. 'Stand down. Steal 'em if you haven't got 'em.' He shinned down the ladder. Well, then, that was it. It was over. Ring out bells, dance in streets... 'Sarge, did you mean that about helping them others with their wounded?' said Sam, who was standing at the bottom of the ladder. 'Well, it makes as much sense as anything else that's been happening,' said Vimes. 'They're city lads just like us, not their fault they were given the wrong orders.' And it messes with their heads, he thought, makes 'em wonder why all this is happening... 'Only... Nancyball's dead, sarge.' Vimes took a deep breath. He'd known it anyway, up there on the wobbling ramparts, but hearing it said aloud was still a shock. 'I daresay there's a few of theirs who won't make it through to morning,’ he said. 'Yes, but they were the enemy, sarge.’ 'It's always worth thinking about who your enemy really is,’ said Vimes, tugging at the barricade. 'How about the man who's trying to stick a sword into you?' said Sam. 'That's a good start,’ said Vimes. 'But there are times when it pays to be a little less tightly focused.' In the Oblong Office, Snapcase put his hands together and tapped his front teeth with his forefingers. Quite a lot of paperwork was spread in front of him. 'What to do, what to do,’ he said thoughtfully. 'A general amnesty is usual, my lord,’ said Mr Slant. Mr Slant, as Head of the Guild of Lawyers, had advised many leaders of the city. He was also a zombie, although this had if anything benefited his career. He was precedent. He knew how things should go. 'Yes, yes, of course,' said Snapcase. 'A clean start. Of course. No doubt there is a traditional form of words?' In fact, my lord, I happen to have a copy right here-' 'Yes, yes. Tell me about this barricade, though, will you? The one that was still standing?' He looked up at the crowd assembled in the office. 'You know about that, sir?' said Follett. 'I do have my own informants, you know,' said Snapcase. 'It has caused rather a stir, has it not? Some fellow put together a rather smart defence force, cut us off from the vital organs of the city, broke up Captain Swing's organization and has withstood the best attacks that could be made against him. And he is a sergeant, I hear.' 'May I suggest that a promotion is in order?' said Madam. 'I was thinking exactly the same thing,' said Snapcase, his little eyes gleaming. 'And then there is the question of his men. Loyal, are they?' 'Apparently, sir,' said Madam. She exchanged a puzzled glance with Dr Follett. Snapcase sighed. 'On the other hand, a soldier can hardly be punished for loyalty to a senior officer, especially in these difficult times. There is no reason to take formal action against them.' Eyes met again. They all felt it, the sense of the world slipping. 'But not Keel, however,' said Snapcase, standing up and removing a snuffbox from his waistcoat pocket. 'Think about it, I pray you. What ruler could tolerate the existence of such a man? He did all that in just a few days? I dread to think what he might take it into his head to do tomorrow. These are delicate times. Are we to be hostage to every whim of a mere sergeant? We do not need someone like Keel doing things his way. Besides, you know, the Particulars could have been useful to us. Suitably reeducated, obviously.' 'I thought you said you wanted to promote him?' said Dr Follett bluntly. Lord Snapcase took a pinch of snuff, and blinked once or twice. 'Yes,’ he said. 'Promote him, as they say, to glory.' The crowd in the room were silent. One or two of its members were horrified. Some were impressed. You didn't stay at the top in Ankh-Morpork without developing a certain pragmatic approach to life, and Snapcase seemed to have got a grip on that with commendable speed. ‘The barricade is coming down?' said the Patrician, shutting the snuffbox with a click. 'Yes, my lord,' said Dr Follett. 'Because of the general amnesty,' he added, just to make sure the word was repeated. The Guild of Assassins had a code of honour as well as rules; it was an odd code, carefully constructed to fit their needs, but it was a code none the less. You didn't kill the unprotected, or servants, you did it up close, and you kept your word. This was appalling. 'Capital,' said Snapcase. 'Ideal time. Streets full. Much confusion. Unreconstructed elements, vital message not passed on, left hand not knowing what right hand doing, difficulties of the situation, regrettable. No, my dear doctor, I do not intend to make any demands of your guild. Fortunately, there are those whose loyalty to the city is a little less... conditional. Yes. And now, please, there is much to be done. I shall look forward to meeting you again later.' The crowd were ushered politely but firmly out of the room, and the doors shut behind them. 'It seems we're back at school,' muttered Dr Follett, as they were swept along the corridor. 'Ave! Duci novo, similis duci seneci,’ murmured Mr Slant, drily as only a zombie can manage. 'Or, as we used to say at school, "Ave! Bossa nova, similis bossa seneca!"' He gave a little schoolmasterly laugh. He felt at home with dead languages. 'Of course, grammatically that is completely-' 'And that means...?' said Madam. 'Here comes the new boss, same as the old boss,' muttered Dr Follett. 'I counsel patience,’ said Slant. 'He's new in the job. He may settle into it. The city is good at working around problems. Give him time.' 'And we want someone who is decisive,’ said someone in the hurrying crowd. 'We wanted someone who decides the right things,’ said Madam. She elbowed her way to the front of the crowd, hurried down the main staircase and darted into an anteroom. Miss Palm stood up as she came in. 'Have they-' she began. 'Where's Havelock?' Madam demanded. 'Here,’ said Vetinari, detaching himself from a shadow by the curtains. 'Take my coach. Find Keel. Warn him. Snapcase wants him dead!' 'But where is-' Madam pointed a threatening, trembling finger. 'Do it now or receive an aunt's curse!' When the doors were shut Lord Snapcase stared at them for some moments, and then pressed the bell for his chief secretary. The man insinuated himself into the room via the private door. 'Everyone is settling in?' said Snapcase. 'Yes, my lord. There are a number of matters for your attention.' 'I am sure people would like to believe there are,’ said Snapcase, leaning back in the chair. He shifted his weight from side to side. 'Does this thing swivel?' 'I believe not, sir, but I shall have a skilled swiveller here within the hour.' 'Good. Now, what was the other thing... oh, yes. Tell me, are there any up and coming men in the Guild of Assassins?' 'I am sure there are, my lord. Would you like me to prepare dossiers on, say, three of them?' 'Do it.' 'Yes, my lord. My lord, various people are urgently seeking an audience with-' 'Let them wait. Now that we have the Patricianship, we mean to enjoy it.' Snapcase drummed his fingers on the edge of the desk for a moment, still staring at the doors. Then he said: 'My inaugural speech is prepared? Very sorry hear unexpected death Winder, overwork, new direction, et cetera, keep best of old while embracing best of new, beware dangerous elements, sacrifices must be made, et cetera, pull together, good of city?' 'Exactly, sir.' 'Add that I was particularly sad to hear tragic death Sergeant Keel, hope that fitting memorial to him would be the uniting of citizens of all shades of opinion in an effort to, et cetera, et cetera.' The secretary made a few notes. 'Quite, sir,’ he said. Snapcase smiled at him. 'I expect you're wondering why I've taken you on even though you worked for my predecessor, eh?' he said. 'No, sir,’ said the secretary, without looking up. He wasn't wondering firstly because he had a pretty good idea and secondly because there were in any case things he found it safest not to wonder about. 'It is because I recognize talent whenever it presents itself,’ said Snapcase. 'It is good of you to say so, sir,’ said the secretary smoothly. 'Many a rough stone can be polished into a gem.' 'Exactly, my lord,’ said the secretary, and he was thinking Exactly, my lord too, because he'd also found there were things he found it safest not to think, either, and these included phrases like what a little tit. 'Where is my new Captain of the Guard?' 'I believe Captain Carcer is in the rear courtyard, my lord, exhorting the men in no uncertain terms.’ 'Tell him I want to see him here now,' said Snapcase. 'Certainly, sir.' The barricade was taking some while to dismantle. Chair legs and planks and bedsteads and doors and baulks of timber had settled into a tangled mass. Since every piece belonged to someone, and Ankh-Morpork people care about that sort of thing, it was being dismantled by collective argument. This was not least because people who had donated a threelegged stool to the common good were trying to take away a set of dining chairs, and similar problems. And then there was the traffic. Carts that had been held up outside the city were trying to make their way to their destinations before eggs hatched or milk got so rotten it could get out and walk the rest of the way. If Ankh-Morpork had a grid, there would have been gridlock. Since it did not it was, in the words of Sergeant Colon, 'a case of no one being able to move because of everyone else'. Admittedly, this phrase, while accurate, did not have the same snap. Some of the watchmen had joined in the dismantling work, mostly to stop the fights that were breaking out among irate householders. But a group of them had congregated at the end of Heroes Street, where Snouty had set up a mess and a cocoa urn. There wasn't, in fact, much to do. A few hours ago they'd been fighting. Now the streets were so crowded that even patrols were impossible. Every good copper knows that there are times when the wise man keeps out of the way, and the conversation had turned to the kind of questions that follow victory, such as 1) is there going to be any extra money? and 2) are there going to be any medals? With an option on 3) which was never far from the watchmen's thoughts: are we going to get into trouble about this? 'An amnesty means we ain't,' said Dickins. 'It means everyone pretends nothing really happened.' 'All right, then,' said Wiglet. 'Are we going to get medals? What I mean is, if we've been.. ,’ he concentrated '... valiant defenders of freedom, that sounds like medal time to me.' 'I reckon we should simply have barricaded the whole city,’ said Colon. 'Yeah, Fred,' said Snouty, 'but then that'd mean the bad people, hnah, would be in here with us.’ 'Right, but we'd be in charge,’ said Fred. Sergeant Dickins puffed on his pipe, and said: 'Lads, you're just flapping your mouths. There's been fighting, and here you are with all your arms and legs and walking around in the gods' good sunlight. That's winning, that is. You've won, see. The rest is just gravy.’ No one spoke for a while until young Sam said: 'But Nancyball didn't win.’ 'We lost five men in all,’ said Dickins. 'Two got hit by arrows, one fell off the barricade and one cut his own throat by accident. It happens.' They stared at him. 'Oh, you thought it didn't?' said Dickins. 'You get a lot of worried people and edged weapons and a lot of scurrying, all in one place. You'd be amazed at the casualties you can get even when you're fifty miles from an enemy. People die.' 'Did Nancyball have a mum?' said Sam. 'He was brought up by his gran, but she's dead,’ said Wiglet. 'No one else?' 'Dunno. He never talked about them. He never talked about anything much,’ said Wiglet. 'What you do is, you have a whipround,’ said Dickins firmly. 'Wreath, coffin, the lot. You don't let anyone else do it. And another thing...’ Vimes sat a little way from the men, watching the street. There were groups of former defenders and veterans and watchmen everywhere. He watched a man buy a pie from Dibbler, and shook his head, and grinned. On a day when you couldn't give steak away, some people would still buy a pie from Dibbler. It was a triumph of salesmanship and the city's famously atrophied taste buds. The song began. Whether it was a requiem or a victory chant he didn't know, but Dickins started it and the rest joined in, each man singing as though he was all by himself and unaware of the rest. 'see the little angels rise up high...' Others were picking up the tune. Reg Shoe was also sitting all alone, on a piece of barricade currently not in dispute, still clutching the flag and looking so miserable that Vimes felt moved to go and speak to him. 'do they rise up, rise up, rise up, how do they rise up, rise up high?' 'It could have been good, sergeant,' said Reg, looking up. 'It really could. A city where a man can breathe free.' 'they rise ARSE up, arse up, arse up, see the little angels rise up high.. : 'Wheeze free, Reg,' said Vimes, sitting down next to him. This is Ankh-Morpork.' And they all hit that line together, thought the part of him that was listening with the other ear. Strange that they should do that, or maybe not. 'Yeah, make a joke of it. Everyone thinks it's funny,' said Reg, looking at his feet. 'I don't know if this'll help, Reg, but I didn't even get my hardboiled egg,' said Vimes. 'And what's going to happen next?' said Reg, far too sunk in misery to sympathize or, for that matter, notice. 'All the little angels rise up, rise up-' 'I really don't know. Things'11 get better for a while, I expect. But I don't know what I'in-' Vimes stopped. On the far side of the street, oblivious of the traffic, a little wizened old man was sweeping dust out of a doorway. Vimes stood up and stared. The little man saw him, and gave him a wave. And at that moment yet another cart rumbled down the road, piled high with former barricade. Vimes flung himself flat and stared between the legs and wheels. Yes, the slightly bandy legs and the battered sandals were still there, and still there too when the cart had passed, and still there when Vimes started to run across the street, and may have been there when the unregarded following cart almost knocked him over, and were completely not there when he straightened up. He stood where they had been, in the busy street, on the sunny morning, and felt the night sweep over him. He felt the hairs stand up on his neck. The conversations around him grew louder, became a clamour in his ears. And the light was too bright. There were no shadows, and he was looking for shadows now. He dodged and jinked across the street to the singing men, and waved them into silence. 'Get ready,’ he growled. 'Something's going to happen...' 'What, sarge?' said Sam. 'Something not good, I think. An attack, maybe.' Vimes scanned the street for... what? Little old men with brooms? If anything, the scene was less menacing than before the troubles, because now the other shoe had dropped. People weren't standing around waiting for it any more. There was a general bustle. 'No offence, sarge,’ said Dickins, 'but it all looks peaceful enough to me. There's an amnesty, sarge. No one's fighting anyone.' 'Sarge! Sarge!' They all turned. Nobby Nobbs was sidling and skipping down the street. They saw his lips shape a message, completely drowned out by the squeals from a wagonload of pigs. Lance-Constable Sam Vimes looked at the face of his sergeant. 'Something is wrong,’ he said. 'Look at sarge!' 'Well, what?' said Fred Colon. 'A giant bird's going to drop out of the sky or something?' There was a thud, and a gasp from Wiglet. An arrow had hit him in the chest and had gone right through. Another one smacked into the wall above Vimes's head, showering dust. 'In here!' he yelled. The door to the shop behind them was open, and he plunged through. People piled in behind him. He heard the noise of arrows outside, and one or two screams. 'Amnesty, sergeant?' he said. Outside, the rumbling carts had stopped, blocking out the light to the bullseye panes of the shop windows and temporarily shielding it. ‘Then it's got to be some idiots,' said Dickins. 'Rebels, maybe.' 'Why? There were never that many rebels, we know that! Anyway, they won!' Now there was shouting outside, beyond the carts. Nothing like a cart for blocking the road... 'Counterrevolutionaries, then?' Dickins suggested. 'What, people who want to put Winder back in charge?' said Vimes. 'Well, I don't know about you, but I'd join.' He looked around the shop. It was packed wall to wall. 'Who are all these people?' 'You said "in here", sergeant,' said a soldier. 'Yeah, and we didn't need telling 'cos it was raining arrows,' said another soldier. 'I didn't mean to come but I couldn't swim against the tide,' said Dibbler. 'I want to show solidarity,' said Reg. 'Sarge, sarge, it's me, sarge!' said Nobby, waving his hands. A firm, authoritative voice, thought Vimes. It's amazing the trouble it can get you into. There were about thirty people crowded into the shop, and he didn't recognize half of them. 'Can I help any of you gentlemen?' said a thin, querulous little voice behind him. He turned and saw a very small, almost dolllike old lady, all in black, cowering behind her counter. He looked desperately at the shelves behind her. They were piled with skeins of wool. 'Er, I don't think so,' he said. ‘Then do you mind if I finish serving Mrs Soupson? Four ounces of grey twoply was it, Mrs Soupson?' 'Yes please, Ethel!' quavered a tiny, frightened voice somewhere in the middle of the crowd of armed men. 'We'd better get out of here,' muttered Vimes. He turned to the men and waved his hands frantically to suggest that, as far as possible, no one should upset any old ladies. 'Do you have a back way, please?' The shopkeeper's innocent old eyes looked up at him. 'It helps if people buy something, sergeant,’ she said meaningfully. 'Er, we, um...' Vimes looked around desperately, and inspiration struck. 'Ah, right, yes... I'd like a mushroom,' he said. 'You know, one of those wooden things for-' 'Yes, sergeant, I know. That will be sixpence, thank you, sergeant. I always like to see a gentleman ready to do it for himself, I must say. Could I interest you in a-' 'I'in in a big hurry, please!' said Vimes. 'I've got to darn all my socks.' He nodded at the men, who responded heroically. 'Me, too-' 'Full of holes, it's disgusting!' 'Got to patch them up right now!' 'It's me, sarge, Nobby, sarge!' 'You could use mine for fishing nets!' The lady unhooked a big key ring. 'I think it's this one, no, I tell a lie, I think it's, no... wait a moment... ah, yes, this is the one...' 'Here, sarge, there's a bunch of men with crossbows in the street,' said Fred Colon, from the window. 'About fifty of 'em!' '... no, that's the one, dear me, that's for the lock we used to have... does this one look right to you? Let's try this one...' Very carefully, and very slowly, she unlocked and unbolted the door. Vimes poked his head out. They were in an alley, filled with trash and old boxes and the horrible smell of alleys everywhere. No one seemed to be around. 'Okay, everybody out,' he said. 'We need a bit of space. Who's got a bow?' 'Just me, sarge,' said Dickins. 'It's not like we were expecting trouble, see.' 'One bow against fifty men, that's bad odds,’ said Vimes. 'Let's get out of here!' 'Are they after us, sarge?' ‘They shot Wiglet, didn't they? Let's move!' They scuttled along the alleyway. As they crossed a wider one, there was the distant sound of the shop door being kicked open again, and a gleeful shout. 'I got you now, Duke!' Carcer... An arrow clattered off a wall and pinwheeled end over end along the alley. Vimes had run before. Every watchman knew about running. They called it the Backyard Handicap. Vimes had taken that route many times, ducking through alleys, leaping on wings of terror over the walls from one doginfested yard to the next, falling into the chicken runs and slipping down privy roofs, looking for safety or his mates or, failing that, somewhere to stand with his back to the wall. Sometimes you had to run. And, like the herd, you stayed together by instinct. In a crowd of thirty or so, you were harder to hit. Fortunately, Dickins had taken the lead. The old coppers were best at running, having run so much during their lives. As on the battlefield, only the cunning and the fast survived. And so he didn't bother to stop as the cart appeared at the end of the alley. It was a heggler's wagon, probably trying to take a short cut and escape the 'no one being able to move because of everyone else' chaos in the main streets. The man, the back of his wagon piled ten feet high with boxes, his vehicle scraping the walls, looked in horror at the stampede heading for him. No one had any brakes and absolutely no one was going to go backwards. Vimes, in the rear, watched the group flow over and under the wagon, to the splintering of boxes and the pop of exploding eggs. The horse danced in the shafts and men dived through its legs or clear over its back. When Vimes reached it he clambered on to the box just as an arrow hit the woodwork. He grinned desperately at the driver. 'Jump,' he suggested, and smacked the horse on the flank with the flat of his sword. Both men were thrown back as it reared and sent the remains of the stricken load sliding off the wagon. Vimes hauled the driver upright as soon as the debris stopped falling. He was covered in egg. 'Sorry about that, sir. Watch business. Ask for Sergeant Keel. Got to rush!' Behind them the wagon rattled up the alley, wheel rims knocking sparks off the walls. There were doorways and side alleys to escape into, but Carcer's crew would certainly be slowed down. The rest of his crew had stopped when they heard the noise, but Vimes piled into them and forced them on until they reached a road, blocked with carts and thronged with people. 'Well, you got your soldiers covered in egg, sarge,' said Sam, with a worried grin. 'What's all that about?' 'It's some of the Unmentionables,’ said Vimes. 'Probably want to settle the score.' Well, that was close enough. 'But I saw watchmen and soldiers with 'em,' said Fred Colon. 'Sarge, it's me, sarge! Please, sarge!' Nobby elbowed his way through the men. 'Is this a good time, Nobby?' said Vimes. 'There's men after you, sarge!' 'Well done, Nobby!' 'Carcer, sarge! He's got a job with Snapcase! Captain of the Palace Guard, sarge! And they gonna get you! Snapcase told 'em to, sarge! My mate Scratch'n'Sniff is the underbootboy at the palace and he was in the yard and heard 'em talking, sarge!' I should have known, Vimes thought. Snapcase was a devious devil. And now Carcer's got his feet under another bastard's table. Captain of the Guard... 'I haven't been making a lot of friends lately,' said Vimes. 'Okay, gentlemen, I'in going to run. If you lot melt away into the crowd you'll be fine, I expect.' 'No fear, sarge,' said Sam, and there was a general murmur of agreement. 'We had an amnesty,' said Dickins. They can't do this!' 'Anyway, they were shooting at everyone,’ said one of the soldiers. 'Bastards! They need a good goingover!' ‘They've got bows,’ said Vimes. 'So we ambush 'em, sarge,’ said Dickins. 'Choose your ground and fight up close and a crossbow's just a piece of wood.' 'Did any of you hear me?' said Vimes. They're after me. Not you. You do not want to mix it with Carcer. You, Snouty, you shouldn't be doing this at your time of life.' The old jailer glared at him through runny eyes. That's a hell of a thing for you, hnah, to say to me, sarge,’ he said. 'How do we know he won't decide to come after us anyway?' said Dickins. 'An amnesty's an amnesty, right? They can't do this!' There was a general chorus on the lines of 'Yeah, that's right!' It's happening, Vimes thought. They are talking themselves right into it. But what can I do? We've got to face 'em. I've got to face 'em. I've got to face Carcer. The thought of leaving him here, with all he knows... 'How about if we head down Cable Street?' said Dickins. 'Lots of little alleyways off there. They'll go rushing along, thinking we've bolted for the Watch House, and we'll 'ave 'em! We ain't standing for this, sarge.' Vimes sighed. 'Okay,’ he said. Thank you. You're of one mind?' There was a cheer. ‘Then I won't make a speech,’ said Vimes. There isn't time. I'll just say this. If we don't win this, if we don't see them off... well, we've got to, that's all. Otherwise it'll be... very bad for this city. Very bad.’ ‘That's right,’ Dickins cut in, insistently. There was an amnesty.' 'But, look,' said one of the soldiers. 'I don't know half the men here. If we're going to close in, we want to know who's on our side...' ‘That's right, hnah,’ said Snouty. 'I mean, some of them chasing us was watchmen!’ Vimes raised his eyes. The wide alley in front of them, known as Lobsneaks, stretched all the way to Cable Street. It was lined with gardens, and there were purple flowers on the bushes. The morning air smelled of lilac. 'I recall a battle once,' said Dickins, looking up at a tree. 'In history, it was. And there was this company, see, and they was a ragtag of different squads and all covered in mud in any case, and they found themselves hiding in a field of carrots. So as a badge they all pulled up carrots and stuck them on their helmets, so's they'd know who their friends were and incidentally have a nourishing snack for later, which is never to be sneezed at on a battlefield.' 'Well? So what?' said Dibbler. 'So what's wrong with a lilac flower?' said Dickins, reaching up and pulling down a laden branch. 'Makes a spanking plume, even if you can't eat it...' And now, Vimes thought, it ends. 'I think they are very bad men!' said a high, rather elderly but nevertheless determined voice from somewhere in the crowd, and there was a glimpse of a skinny hand waving a knitting needle. 'And I shall need a volunteer to escort Mrs Soupson home,' he said. Carcer surveyed the length of Lobsneaks. 'Looks like we just follow the trail of egg,' he said. 'Looks like Keel has a yellow streak.' It didn't get quite the laugh he'd expected. A lot of the men he'd been able to collect had a more physical sense of humour. But Carcer had, in his own way, some of Vimes's qualities, only they were inverted. A certain kind of man looks up to someone who's brave enough to be really bad. 'Are we going to get into trouble for this, captain?' And of course, you got those who were just along for the ride. He turned to Sergeant Knock, with Corporal Quirke lurking behind him. He fully shared Vimes's view of them although he approached it, as it were, from the other direction. You couldn't trust either of them. But they hated Keel with that gnawing, nervesapping hatred that only the mediocre can really bring to bear, and that was useful. 'How do you think we're going to get into trouble, sergeant?' he said. 'We're working for the government.' 'He's a devious devil, sir!' said Knock, as if this was a character flaw in a copper. 'Now you lot listen to me, right?' said Carcer. 'No messups this time! I want Keel alive, okay? And that kid Vimes. You can do what the hell you like to the rest of them.' 'Why d'you want him taken alive?' said a quiet voice behind Carcer. 'I thought Snapcase wanted him dead. And what's the kid done that's so wrong?' Carcer turned. To his mild surprise, the watchman behind him didn't flinch. 'What's your name, mister?' he said. 'Coates.' 'Ned's the one I told you about, sir,' said Knock urgently, leaning over Carcer's shoulder. 'Keel gave him the push, sir, after-' 'Shut up,’ said Carcer, without taking his eyes off Coates. There wasn't a hint of fear there, not even a glimmer of bravado. Coates just stared back. 'Did you just come along for the ride, Coates?' he said. 'No, captain. I don't like Keel. But Vimesy is just a kid that got dragged along. What're you going to do to him?' Carcer leaned forward; Coates did not lean back. 'You were a rebel, weren't you?' he said. 'Don't like to do what you're told, eh?' ‘They're going to get a big bottle of ginger beer!' said a voice drunk with evil delight. Carcer turned and looked down at the skinny, blackclad Ferret. He was somewhat battered, partly because he'd put up a fight when the watchmen had tried to pry him out of his cell, and mostly because Todzy and Muffer had been waiting outside. But he'd been allowed to live; beating something like Ferret to death was, to the other two, an embarrassing and demeaning waste of fist. He certainly flinched under Carcer's gaze. His whole body was a flinch. 'Did I ask you to speak, you little dog's tonker?' Carcer enquired. 'Nosir!' 'Right. Remember that. It could save your life one day.' Carcer turned his attention back to Ned. 'Okay, sunshine, this is the bright new dawn you wanted. You asked for it, you got it. We've just got to sweep away a few of yesterday's leftovers. By order of Lord Snapcase, your mate. And it ain't your job to ask why and who, but young Vimesy? Why, I think he's a game lad who'll be a credit to the city if he's kept out of the way of bad company. Now, Knock says you're good at thinking. So now you tell me what you think Keel's gonna do.' Ned gave him a look that went on for slightly longer than Carcer felt comfortable with. 'He's a defender,' he said, eventually. 'He'll be back at the Watch House. He'll set a few traps, get the men tooled up and wait for you.' 'Hah?' said Carcer. 'He doesn't like to see his men hurt,’ said Ned. 'This is not going to be his day, then,' said Carcer. Halfway down Cable Street was a barricade. It wasn't much. A few doors, a table or two... by the standards of the big one that was even now being turned back into unbelligerent diningroom furniture, it barely existed at all. Carcer's informal crew walked slowly, staring up at buildings and into the mouths of alleys. People in the street fled at their approach. Some men walk in a way that projects bad news ahead of them. Vimes crouched behind the makeshift wall and peered through a crack. They'd snatched a few crossbows from aimless soldiers on the way here, but by the look of it Carcer's men had at least fifteen between them. And they outnumbered the lilac lads two to one. If push came to shove, he'd take Carcer out right now. It wasn't the way it ought to go. He wanted people to see the man hang, he wanted the city to execute him. Going back emptyhanded would leave a loose end flapping. He heard the sound of sobbing from further along the barricade. It wasn't young Sam, he knew, and Nobby Nobbs had probably cried all the tears a body was capable of some time ago. It was Reg. He sat with his back to the makeshift defence, the threadbare flag across his knees, and tears dripping off his chin. 'Reg, you ought to go,' Vimes hissed. 'You don't even have a weapon.' 'What's the good of it, eh?' said Reg. 'You were bloody right, sarge! Things just go round and round! You got rid of the bloody Unmentionables and here they are again! What's the point, eh? This city could be such a great place but no, oh no, the bastards always end up on top! Nothing ever bloody changes! They just take their money and mess us around!' Carcer had stopped twenty yards from the barricade, and was watching it carefully. 'Way of the world, Reg,' murmured Vimes, counting enemies under his breath. And a big covered cart came around the corner, rocking under its load. It rolled to a halt a little way from Carcer's crew, partly because the way was blocked but mostly, perhaps, because one of the men had walked up to the driver and aimed a crossbow at his head. 'And now the bloody bastards have won,' moaned Reg. 'Every day of the week, Reg,' said Vimes absently, trying to follow the movements of too many people at once. The other men were spreading out. After all, they had the firepower. The man holding up Mr Dibbler, the cart driver, wasn't paying too much attention. Now Vimes wished he'd put himself in the wagon. Oh, well, someone had to start the rumble- 'Yeah? You want to shoot something? Bastards!' They all stared, Carcer too. Reg had stood up, was waving the flag back and forth, was clambering over the barricade... He held the flag like a banner of defiance. 'You can take our lives but you'll never take our freedom!' he screamed. Carcer's men looked at one another, puzzled by what sounded like the most badly thoughtout war cry in the history of the universe. Vimes could see their lips moving as they tried to work it out. Carcer raised his crossbow, gestured to his men, and said: 'Wrong!' Reg was hit by five heavy bolts so that he did a little dance before falling to his knees. It happened in seconds. Vimes opened his mouth to give the order to charge, and shut it when he saw Reg raise his head. In silence, using the flag pole as an aid, Reg got back to his feet. Three more arrows hit him. He looked down at his skinny chest, bristling with feathers, and took a step forward. And another. One of the crossbowmen drew his sword and ran at the stricken man, and was knocked into the air by a blow from Reg that must have felt like it had come from a sledgehammer. And in the ranks of the crew there was a fight. Someone in a copper's uniform had drawn his own sword and taken out two bowmen. And the man at the cart was running back to the action... 'Get them!' Vimes yelled, and leapt the barricade. There was no plan any more. Dickins and his men poured out of the cart. There were still loaded crossbows out there, but a bow is suddenly not the weapon you want to be holding when angry swords are approaching from both directions. It'll come when you call... All plans, all futures, all politics... were elsewhere. Vimes scooped up a fallen sword and with a weapon in either hand screamed wordless defiance and launched himself at the nearest enemy. The man went down headless. He saw Snouty go down in the melee, and sprang over him to catch his attacker in a windmill of blades. And then he spun around to confront Knock, who dropped his sword and fled. And Vimes ran on, not fighting but hacking, ducking strokes without seeing them, blocking attacks without turning his head, letting the ancient senses do their work. Someone was slicing towards young Sam; Vimes brought a sword down on the arm in true selfdefence. He moved on, in the centre of a widening circle. He wasn't an enemy, he was a nemesis. And as suddenly as it had come the beast withdrew, leaving an angry man with two swords. Carcer had retreated to the side of the street, with his men far fewer men now. Colon was on his knees, throwing up. Dickins was down, and Vimes knew he was dead. Nobby was down too, but that was just because someone had kicked him hard and he'd probably decided that staying down was best. There were a lot of Carcer's men down, more than half. Some more had fled a maniac with two swords. Some had even fled Reg Shoe, who was sitting on the barricade, staring at the sheer weight of arrows in him. As he watched, his brain seemingly decided that he must be dead on this evidence, and he fell backwards. But in a few hours, his brain would be in for a surprise. • No one knew why some people became natural zombies, substituting sheer stubborn will power for blind life force. But attitude played a part. For Reg Shoe, life was only just beginning... Young Sam was upright. He looked as though he'd thrown up, but he'd done well to survive his first real melee. He gave Vimes a weak smile. 'What's happening now, sarge?' he managed, taking off his helmet and wiping his forehead. Vimes sheathed a sword and quietly slipped one of Mrs Goodbody's little friends out of his pocket. ‘That depends on what happens over there,’ he said, nodding towards the other end of the street. Sam obediently turned to look, and fell asleep. Vimes pocketed the cosh, and saw Coates looking at him. 'Whose side are you on, Ned?' he said. 'What did you hit the kid for?' said Ned. 'So he's out of it. You got anything to say?' 'Not much, sarge.' Ned grinned. 'We're all learning a lot today, ain't we?' "True enough,' said Vimes. ‘There's even bigger bastards than you, for a start.' This time Vimes grinned. 'But I try harder, Ned.' 'You know Carcer?' 'He's a murderer. And just about everything else, too. A stonecold killer. With brains, said Vimes.' ‘This is going to go the distance?' 'Yep. It's got to. We've got to stop this, Ned. This is the only chance. It stops here or not at all. Can you imagine him loose now he's pally with Snapcase?' 'Yes. I can,' said Ned. 'Just as well I wasn't planning anything this evening, eh? But you can tell me one thing, sarge. How do you know all this?' Vimes hesitated. But at a time like this, what difference did it make? 'I'in from this city,' said Vimes. 'But, oh, there was a hole in time, something like that. You want to know? I travelled here in time, Ned, and that's the truth.' Ned Coates looked him up and down. Blood covered Vimes's armour, and his hands, and half his face, and he was holding a bloody sword in his hand. 'From how far back?' he said. Time stopped. Coates froze and faded in colour, into a world made up of shades of grey. 'Nearly there, your grace,’ said Sweeper, behind Vimes. 'Ye gods!' yelled Vimes, flinging his sword to the ground. 'You are not making any friends here, you know?' The sword hadn't hit the ground. It hung a few inches from his hands, and had faded to greyness. ‘There's just a few things we need to tell you,' said Sweeper, as if a sword in midair was a minor consideration. 'What's happened to the bloody sword?' said Vimes, to whom it wasn't. ‘Time has stopped for everyone but you,' said Sweeper patiently. 'Actually that sentence is wrong in every particular, but it's quite a useful lie. It'll just take us a moment to set things up...' Now Vimes had time, of some kind, to look around. The whole street was darker, as if the fight had been taking place in the halflight just before dawn. The only colour was in the robes and faces of Sweeper and Qu as they manoeuvred a handcart out of an alley. It held a couple of small stone columns, and the body of John Keel, wrapped in a shroud. 'We have some good news,' said Sweeper. 'You have?' said Vimes weakly. He walked over to the body. 'Indeed,' said Qu, unshipping the stone cylinders. 'We thought we might have to persuade you to remove all your armour but you will not, I think, need to do this.' ‘That's because it will stay here,' said Lu-Tze. 'Belongs here, see?' 'No,' said Vimes, 'I don't know what the hell you're talking about.' He touched the body. 'So cold,' he said. That's what I remember. He was so cold.' 'A morgue does that to people,' said Sweeper, in a matteroffact voice. 'Now please pay attention, commander,’ said Qu. 'When we operate the-' Vimes looked up, violence in his eyes. Sweeper laid a hand on Qu's arm. 'We've got things to do for a minute or two,’ he said. 'Yes, but it's vital that he knows how-' 'We've got things to do for a minute or two,' Sweeper repeated, making a face. 'Oh? What? Oh. Yes. Er... we've got, er... things. To do. Things to do... er... things.' They wandered away. Out of the corner of his eye Vimes saw them walking back and forth across the street, as if taking measurements. He looked back at John Keel. But what could you say? Sorry you're dead? Keel had originally died on the barricades, not in a street fight. But he was just as dead, all the same. Vimes was hazy on religion. He attended Watch funerals and went to such religious events as the proper fulfilling of the office of Commander entailed, but as for the rest... well, you saw things sometimes that made it impossible to believe not only in gods, but also in common humanity and your own eyes. From what he could remember, Keel had felt the same way. You got on with things. If there were any gods, you expected them to get on with things, too, and didn't interrupt them while they were working. What could you say to a dead copper? What would he want said? Ah... He leaned closer. 'Carcer's going to bloody swing for this,’ he said, and stood back. Behind him, Sweeper coughed theatrically. 'Ready, your grace?' he said. 'Ready enough,' said Vimes. 'We were telling you about the armour,' said Sweeper. 'It'll-' ‘The thing is, commander,' Qu interrupted, 'that you and this fellow Carcer and all the clothes and possessions you arrived with form an elongated transtime anomaly, which is under considerable tension.' Vimes turned and looked at Sweeper. 'It's very, very hard to move things out of the time where they belong but it takes much less effort to move them back to where they were,' Sweeper translated. Vimes carried on staring. 'Everything really, really wants to stay where it should be,' Sweeper tried. 'You're right there,' said Vimes. 'All we do is... grease the way,’ said Sweeper. 'We give a little push, and it'll all snap back. And away you go. Have you had anything to eat this morning?' 'No!' 'Shouldn't be too messy, then,’ said Sweeper. When Vimes looked puzzled he went on: 'Undigested food. It'll stay here, you see.' 'You mean it'll come tearing out of-' 'No, no, no,’ said Qu, quickly. 'You won't notice. But a nourishing meal when you get back would be a good idea.' 'And the armour stays here?' Qu beamed. 'Yes, your grace. Everything. Eyepatch, socks, everything.' 'Boots, too?' 'Yes. Everything.' 'What about my drawers?' 'Yes, those too. Everything.’ 'So I'll arrive in the nuddy?' 'The one costume that's in fashion anywhere,’ said Sweeper, grinning. 'Then why did all my armour arrive with me when I came?' said Vimes. 'And damn Carcer had his knives, that's for sure!' Qu opened his mouth, but Sweeper answered faster. 'It takes a thousand steps to get to the top of a mountain but one little hop'll take you all the way back to the bottom,’ he said. 'Okay?' 'Well, I suppose it makes sen-' Vimes began. 'That isn't how it works at all, Lu-Tze!' wailed Qu. 'No,’ said Sweeper, 'but it's another good lie. Look, commander, we don't have a damn great thunderstorm and we don't have enough stored time. This is a field operation. It's the best we can do. We'll get you back, and your prisoner, although you almost certainly won't arrive in the same place, 'cos of quantum. It's hard enough making sure you don't arrive two hundred feet in the air, believe me. Pushing all your clothes as well, when they belong here, that just takes too much power. Now, are you ready? You need to go back to where you were standing. Get to Carcer as soon as you can. You must grab him, otherwise he'll stay behind.' 'Okay, but I've changed lots of things!' said Vimes. 'Leave that to us,’ said Sweeper. 'What about Keel?' said Vimes, walking away with reluctance. 'Don't worry. We told you at the temple. We'll put him in your armour. He'll have died in battle.' 'Make sure nothing happens to young Sam!' said Vimes, as Qu carefully prodded him into position. The little stone columns began to spin. 'We will!' 'Make sure Reg Shoe gets a decent burial!' 'We will!' 'Not too deep, he'll be wanting to come out again in a few hours!' Qu gave him a last prod. 'Goodbye, commander!' Time came back. Ned was looking at him. 'What happened just then, sarge? You blurred.' 'You only get one question, Ned,’ said Vimes, fighting the moment of nausea. 'Now, let's show Snapcase where the line's drawn, shall we? Let's finish it-' They charged, the men falling in behind them. Vimes remembered in slow motion. Some of Carcer's men ran at the sight of them, some raised their hastily reclaimed weapons, and Carcer stood there and grinned. Vimes headed for him, ducking and weaving through the fight. The man's expression changed as Vimes approached. Vimes was speeding up, shouldercharging and thrusting other bodies away. Carcer raised his sword and took a stance, but there was no room for finesse in the melee and Vimes closed like a bull, knocking the sword up and grabbing Carcer by the throat. 'You're nicked, my ol' chum,' he said. And then it all went black. He felt, later on, that there should have been more to it. There should have been rushing blue tunnels, or flashes, or the sun should have shot round and round the sky. Even pages tearing off a calendar and fluttering away would have been something. But it was just the blackness of the deepest sleep, followed by pain as he hit the floor. Vimes felt arms reach down and haul him to his feet. He shook them off as soon as he was upright, and focused, through the bleary mist, on the face of Captain Carrot. 'Good to see you, sir. Oh, dear-' 'I'in fine,' croaked Vimes, through a throat that felt stuffed with sand. 'Where's Carcer?' 'You've got a nasty cut on-' 'Really? I'in amazed,' growled Vimes. 'Now, where the hell is Carcer?' 'We don't know, sir. You just appeared in midair and landed on the floor. In a lot of blue light, sir!' 'Ah,' muttered Vimes. 'Well, he's come back somewhere. Somewhere close, probably.' 'Right, sir, I'll tell the men to-' 'No, don't,' said Vimes. 'He'll keep. After all, where's he going to go?' He wasn't too sure of his legs. They felt as though they belonged to someone with a very poor sense of balance. 'How long was I... away?' he said. Ponder Stibbons stepped forward. 'About half an hour, your grace. Er, we have, er, hypothesized that there was some temporal disturbance, which, coupled with the lightning stroke and a resonance in the standing wave of the Library, caused a spacetime rupture-' 'Yeah, it felt something like that,’ said Vimes hurriedly. 'Half an hour, did you say?' 'Did it feel longer?' said Ponder, taking out a notebook. 'A bit,' Vimes conceded. 'Now, has anyone here got a pair of drawers I-' I can see your house from up here... That was Carcer. He liked you to stew, to use your imagination. And Vimes had said: where's he going to go? 'Captain, I want you and every man you can spare, every damn man, to get up to my house right now, understand,' he said. 'Just do it. Just do it now.' He turned to Ridcully. 'Archchancellor, can you get me there faster?' 'The Watch wants magical assistance?' said the Archchancellor, taken aback. 'Please,' said Vimes. 'Of course, but you realize that you have no clothes on-' Vimes gave up. People always wanted explanations. He set off, overruling the jelly in his legs, running out of the octangle and across the lawns until he reached the University's Bridge of Size, where he sped past Nobby and Colon who were drawn into the wake of watchmen running to keep up. On the other side of the bridge was the garden known as the Wizard's Pleasaunce. Vimes ploughed through it, twigs whipping at his bare legs, and then he was out and on to the old towpath, mud splashing up over the blood. Then right and a left, past amazed bystanders, and then there were the catshead cobbles of Scoone Avenue under his feet and he found the wind to accelerate a little. He didn't slow until he reached the gravel drive, and almost collapsed at the front door, hanging on to the bell pull. There were hurrying feet, and the door was wrenched open. 'If you're not Willikins,' growled Vimes, focusing, 'there's going to be trouble!' 'Your grace! Whatever has happened to you?' said the butler, pulling him into the hall. 'Nothing!' said Vimes. 'Just get me a fresh uniform, nice and quietly, and don't let Sybil know-' He read everything in the way the butler's face changed. 'What's happened to Sybil?' Willikins backed away. A bear would have backed away. 'Don't go up there, sir! Mrs Content says it's... all rather difficult, sir. Things aren't, um, happening quite right...' 'Is the child born?' 'No sir, aapparently not, sir. It's rather... Mrs Content says she's trying everything but maybe we... ought to send for the doctors, sir.' 'For a childbirth?' Willikins looked down. After twenty unflappable years as butler, he was shaking now. No one deserved a confrontation with Sam Vimes at a time like this. 'Sorry, sir...' 'No!' snapped Vimes. 'Don't send for a doctor. I know a doctor! And he knows all about... this sort of thing! He'd better!' He ran back outside in time to see a broomstick touch down on the lawn, piloted by the Archchancellor himself. 'I thought I'd better come along anyway,' said Ridcully. 'Is there anything-' Vimes swung himself on to it before the wizard could get off. 'Take me to Twinkle Street. Can you do that?' he said. 'It's... important!' 'Hang on, your grace,’ said Ridcully, and Vimes's stomach dropped into his legs as the stick climbed vertically. He made a small mental note to promote Buggy Swires and buy him the buzzard he'd always wanted. Anyone prepared to do this every day for the good of the city couldn't be paid too much. "Try my left pocket,’ said Ridcully, when they were well aloft. There's something that belongs to you, I believe.’ Nervously, well aware of what a wizard's pocket might hold, Vimes pulled out a bunch of paper flowers, a string of flags of all nations... and a silver cigar case. 'Landed on the Bursar's head,’ said the Archchancellor, steering around a seagull. 'I hope it's not damaged.' 'It's... fine,’ said Vimes. Thank you. Er... I'll put it back for now, shall I? Don't seem to have any pockets on me at the moment.' It found its way back, Vimes thought. We're home. 'And a suit of ornamental armour landed in the High Energy Magic building,’ Ridcully went on, 'and, I am happy to report, it is-' 'Very badly bent out of shape?' said Vimes. Ridcully hesitated. He was aware of Vimes's feelings of gilt. 'Excessively, your grace. Completely bent out of shape because of quantum thingummies, I suspect,’ he said. Vimes shivered. He was still naked. Even the hated formal uniform would have helped up here. But it didn't matter either way, now. Gilt and feathers and badges and feeling chilly... there were other things that mattered more, and always would. He jumped off the stick before it had stopped, stumbled in a circle and fell against Dr Lawn's door, hammering on it with his fists. After a while it opened a crack and a familiar voice, changed only a little with age, said 'Yes?' Vimes thrust the door fully open. 'Look at me, Doctor Lawn,’ he said. Lawn stared. 'Keel?' he said. In his other hand he was holding the world's biggest syringe. 'Can't be. They buried John Keel. You know they did,' said Vimes. He saw the huge instrument in the man's hand. 'What the hell were you going to do with that?' 'Baste a turkey, as a matter of fact. Look, who are you, then, because you look like-' 'Grab all your midwifing stuff and come with me now,’ said Vimes. 'All those funny tools you said worked so well. Bring 'em all. Right now. And I'll make you the richest doctor that ever lived,’ said Vimes, a man wearing nothing but mud and blood. Lawn gestured weakly towards the kitchen. ‘I’ll just have to take the turkey out-' 'Stuff the turkey!' 'I already-' 'Come on!' The broomstick did not fly well with three on board, but it was faster than walking and Vimes at this point knew he'd be incapable of anything else. He was out of breath and strength by the time he got home the first time. Now merely standing upright was a test of endurance. It was the broomstick or crawling. It lumbered down out of the sky and landed unsteadily on the lawn. 'Lady upstairs, big bedroom on left,’ said Vimes, pushing vaguely at the doctor. 'Midwife there, not got a clue. All the money you want. Go on.’ Lawn hurried off. Vimes, helped by Ridcully, followed rather more stiffly, but as they reached the door the doctor came out walking backwards very slowly. It became apparent, as he emerged, that this was because Detritus's huge crossbow was pressed against his nose. When Vimes spoke his voice was slightly muffled, because he was lying flat on the ground. ‘Put the bow down, sergeant,' he managed. 'He come rushin' in, Mister Vimes,’ rumbled Detritus. ‘That's because he's the doctor, sergeant. Let him go upstairs. That is an order, thank you.' 'Right, Mister Vimes,' said Detritus, stepping aside with reluctance and shouldering the bow. At which point, the bow discharged. When the thunder had died away Vimes got up and looked around. He hadn't actually liked the shrubbery very much. That was just as well. Nothing remained but some tree trunks, and they were all stripped of bark down one side. There were a few small fires. 'Er, sorry about that, Mister Vimes,' said the troll. 'What did I tell you about Mister Safety Catch?' said Vimes weakly. 'When Mister Safety Catch Is Not On, Mister Crossbow Is Not Your Friend,' recited Detritus, saluting. 'Sorry, sir, but we all a bit tense at dis time.' 'I certainly am,' said Ridcully, picking himself off the lawn and pulling twigs out of his beard. 'I may not walk properly for the rest of the day. I suggest, sergeant, that we pick the doctor up, bring him round under the pump, and take him upstairs The things that happened next were a waking dream for Vimes. He moved like a ghost through his own house, which was full of watchmen. No one wanted to be anywhere else. He shaved himself very slowly, concentrating on every stroke. He was aware of noises off, which arrived via the pink clouds in his head. 'he says he wants them boiled, the nasty horrid things! What's that for, to make them softer?' '-trolls and dwarfs on tonight, every door and window covered and I mean covered-' '- stood over me and said damn well boil them for twenty minutes! Like they were cabbage-' 'now he's asked for a small brandy-' '-Mrs Content stormed out and he said not to let her in again-' '-Igor came and offered to help and Lawn took one look and said only if he's been boiled for twenty minutes-' '- pox doctor, when all's said and done-' '- old Stoneface'll cover him with gold if it all turns out right-' 'yeah, and if it turns out wrong?' Vimes got dressed in his street uniform, moving slowly and willing every limb into position. He brushed his hair. He went out into the hall. He sat down on an uncomfortable chair with his helmet on his knees, while ghosts both living and dead hurried around him. Usually - always - there was a part of Vimes that watched the other parts, because he was at heart a policeman. This time it wasn't there. It was in here with the rest of him, staring at nothing, and waiting 'someone take up more towels-' 'now he's asked for a large brandy!' 'he wants to see Mister Vimes!' Vimes's brain lit up from whatever little pilot light of thought had been operating at the most basic level. He walked up the stairs, helmet under his arm, like a man going to take a statement. He knocked at the door. Lawn opened it. He was holding a brandy glass in his other hand, and moved aside with a smile. Sybil was sitting up. He saw, through the mist of exhaustion, that she was holding something wrapped in a shawl. 'He's called Sam, Sam,' she said. 'And no argument.' The sun came out. 'I'll teach him to walk!' beamed Vimes. 'I'in good at teaching people to walk!' And he fell asleep before he hit the carpet. It was a pleasant stroll in the early evening air. Vimes trailed cigar smoke behind him as he walked down to Pseudopolis Yard, where he acknowledged the cheers and congratulations and thanked people for the lovely flowers. His next stop was at Dr Lawn's house where he sat and spoke for a while, about such things as memory and how tricky it can be, and forgetfulness, and how profitable it could prove. Then, with the doctor, he went to his bank. This institution was, not surprisingly, willing to open outside normal hours for a man who was a Duke, and the richest man in the city, and the Commander of the City Watch and, not least, quite prepared to kick the door down. There he signed over one hundred thousand dollars and the freehold of a large corner site in Goose Gate to one Dr J. Lawn. And then, alone, he went up to Small Gods. Legitimate First, whatever his private feelings, knew enough not to shut the gates on this night, and he'd filled the lamps. Vimes strolled over the mossgrown gravel. In the twilight, the lilac blooms seemed to shine. Their scent hung in the air like fog. He waded through the grass and reached the grave of John Keel, where he sat on the headstone, taking care not to disturb the wreaths; he had a feeling that the sergeant would understand that a copper sometimes needed to take the weight off his feet. And he finished his cigar, and stared into the sunset. After a while he was aware of a scraping noise to his left and could just make out the turf starting to sag on one of the graves. A grey hand was thrust out of the ground, clutching a shovel. A few pieces of turf were pushed aside and, with some effort, Reg Shoe rose from the grave. He was halfway out before he noticed Vimes, and nearly fell back. 'Oh, you frightened the life out of me, Mister Vimes!' 'Sorry, Reg,’ said Vimes. 'Of course, when I say you frightened the life out of me-' the zombie began, gloomily. 'Yes, Reg, I understood you. Quiet down there, was it?' 'Very peaceful, sir, very peaceful. I think I'll have to get myself a new coffin before next year, though. They don't last any time at all these days.' 'I suppose not that many people look for durability, Reg,' said Vimes. Reg slowly shovelled the soil back into place. 'I know everyone thinks it's a bit odd, but I think I owe it to them really,’ he said. 'It's only one day a year, but it's like... solidarity.' 'With the downtrodden masses, eh?' said Vimes. 'What, sir?' 'No argument from me, Reg,’ said Vimes happily. This was a perfect moment. Not even Reg, fussing around smoothing down earth and patting turf into place, could detract from it. There'll come a time when it'll all be clear, Sweeper had said. A perfect moment. The occupants of these graves had died for something. In the sunset glow, in the rising of the moon, in the taste of the cigar, in the warmth that comes from sheer exhaustion, Vimes saw it. History finds a way. The nature of events changed, but the nature of the dead had not. It had been a mean, shameful little fight that ended them, a flyspecked footnote of history, but they hadn't been mean or shameful men. They hadn't run, and they could have run with honour. They'd stayed, and he wondered if the path had seemed as clear to them then as it did to him now. They'd stayed not because they wanted to be heroes, but because they chose to think of it as their job, and it was in front of them- 'I'll be off, then, sir,’ said Reg, shouldering his shovel. He seemed a long way away. 'Sir?' 'Yeah, right. Right, Reg. Thank you,’ mumbled Vimes, and in the pink glow of the moment watched the corporal march down the darkening path and out into the city. John Keel, Billy Wiglet, Horace Nancyball, Dai Dickins, Cecil 'Snouty' Clapman, Ned Coates and, technically, Reg Shoe. Probably there were no more than twenty people in the city now who knew all the names, because there were no statues, no monuments, nothing written down anywhere. You had to have been there. He felt privileged to have been there twice. The night was welling up as the sun set. It unfolded from the shadows where it had hidden from the day, and flowed and joined together. He felt his senses flow with it, spreading out like the whiskers of a dark, giant cat. Beyond the gates of the cemetery the city noise died down a little, although Ankh-Morpork never truly slept. It probably didn't dare. Vimes felt now, in this strange calm mood, that he could hear everything, everything, just as he had done back in that terrible moment in Heroes Street when history came to claim its own. He heard the tiny sounds in the stone wall as it cooled, the slither of dirt underground as Reg's vacated plot settled, the faint movement of the long grass around the graves... a thousand subtle sounds added up to a richly textured, localized silence. It was the song of the dark and in it, on the edge of detection, was a discord. Let's see... he'd put a guard on his house and they were core people, ones he could trust not to stand around and get bored but to remain watchful, all night long. He hadn't had to explain how important that was. So the house was safe. And the Watch Houses had double guard, too-There was something wrong with Keel's grave. There was always the egg, every year, a little joke out of history. But now, it looked as though there was nothing down there but bits of eggshell- As he leaned forward to look, the blade went over his head. But the beast had been ready. The beast didn't think about guards and defences. The beast didn't think at all. But it forever sniffed the air and eyed the shadows and sampled the night and almost before the swish of the sword it had sent Vimes's hand thrusting into his pocket. Crouched, he swivelled and punched Carcer on the kneecap with one of Mrs Goodbody's finest items. He heard things crackle, he launched himself up and forward, he bore Carcer to the ground. There was no science to this. The beast was off the chain and looking to kill. It was not often that Vimes was sure that he could make the world a better place, but he was sure now. It was all very clear now. And also very hard. The sword had gone, tumbling into the grass as Carcer went down. But Carcer fought, and was as tough as teak. And it is very hard, with your hands, to kill a man who does not want to be killed. Vimes shook off the brass knuckles because what he needed to do now was throttle. There was no room, though. Carcer was trying to stick a thumb in his eye. They rolled across the graves, scrabbling and struggling for advantage. Blood filled Vimes's left eye. His rage needed just one second, and that second was being denied. He rolled again, and flung out a hand. And there was the sword. He rolled again, and again, and staggered up with the blade in his hand. Carcer had rolled too, and was pulling himself up with remarkable speed for a man with only one good knee. Vimes saw that he was dragging himself upright by one of the lilac trees; blossoms and scent floated down in the darkness. Metal slid. There was the momentary gleam of a knife. And a little chuckle, Carcer's little laugh that said, hey, this is all good fun, eh? 'So who's gonna arrest me?' he said, as they both gulped air. 'Sergeant Keel or Commander Vimes?' 'Who said you were going to be arrested?' said Vimes, trying to fill his lungs. 'I'in fighting an attacker. Carcer.' 'Oh, you was. Mister Vimes,' said the shadow. 'Only now I'in in front of you.' Metal clinked on the gravel path. 'And I ain't armed no more, haha. Thrown down my last weapon. Can't kill an unarmed man, Mister Vimes. You got to arrest me now. Drag me in front of Vetinari. Let me have my little say, haha. You can't kill me, just standin' here.' 'No one wants to hear anything you've got to say, Carcer.' ‘Then you'd better kill me, Mister Vimes. I got no weapon. I can't run.' 'You've always got an extra knife, Carcer,' said Vimes, above the roar of the beast. 'Not this time, Mister Vimes. Come on, Mister Vimes. Can't blame a man for tryin', eh? A man's got to give it his best shot, right? No hard feelings?' And that was Carcer. No hard feelings. His best shot. Can't blame a man for trying. Innocent words got dirty in his mouth. Vimes took a step closer. 'You got a nice home to go to, Mister Vimes. I mean, what've I got?' And the man was convincing. He fooled everybody. You could almost forget the corpses. Vimes glanced down. 'Whoops, sorry,' said Carcer, 'I walked over your grave there. No offence meant, eh?' Vimes said nothing. The beast was howling. It wanted to shut that mouth up. 'You're not going to kill me, Mister Vimes. Not you. Not you with a badge. That ain't your way, Mister Vimes.' Without looking, Vimes reached up and tore his badge off. 'Ah, well, I know you want to give me a fright, Mister Vimes, and many would say you've got a right. Look, here's what I'll do, I'll throw away my other knife, haha, you knew I'd got another one, right?' It was the voice. It could make you think that what you knew was wrong. 'Okay, okay, I can see you're upset, haha, fair enough, and you know I've always got a third knife, well, I'in dropping it now, see, there it goes.’ Vimes was only a step or two away now. 'That's it, Mister Vimes. No more knives. I can't run. I surrender. No messing about this time. I give in, okay? Just arrest me? For old times' sake?' The beast screamed inside Vimes. It screamed that no one would blame him for doing the hangman out of ten dollars and a free breakfast. Yeah, and you could say a swift stab now was the merciful solution, because every hangman knew you could go the easy way or the hard way and there wasn't one in the country that'd let something like Carcer go the easy way. The gods knew the man deserved it... ... but young Sam was watching him, across thirty years. When we break down, it all breaks down. That's just how it works. You can bend it, and if you make it hot enough you can bend it in a circle, but you can't break it. When you break it, it all breaks down until there's nothing unbroken. It starts here and now. He lowered the sword. Carcer looked up, grinning, and said, 'Never tastes right, does it, haha, an egg without salt...' Vimes felt his hand begin to move of its own accord-And stopped. Red rage froze. There was the beast, all around him. And that's what it was. A beast. Useful, but still a beast. You could hold it on a chain, and make it dance, and juggle balls. It didn't think. It was dumb. What you were, what you were, was not the beast. You didn't have to do what it wanted. If you did, Carcer won. He dropped the sword. Carcer stared at him, the gleam of Vimes's sudden smile more worrying than the rictus of his rage. Then metal gleamed in his hand. But Vimes was already on him, grabbing the hand, slamming it again and again on John Keel's headstone until the fourth knife dropped from bleeding fingers. He dragged the man upright with both hands forced up behind his back and rammed him hard against the stone. 'See that up in the sky, Carcer?' he said, his mouth by the man's ear. That's the sunset, that is. That's the stars. And they'll shine all the better on my lad Sam tomorrow night 'cos they won't be shining down on you. Carcer, by reason of the fact that before the dew's off the leaves in the morning I'll drag you in front of Vetinari, and we'll have the witnesses there, lots of 'em, and maybe even a lawyer for you if there's any of 'em who could plead for you with a straight face and then, Carcer, we'll take you to the Tanty, one gallows, no waiting, and you can dance the hemp fandango. And then I'll bleedin' well go home and maybe I'll even have a hardboiled egg.' 'You're hurting!' 'You know, you're right there, Carcer!' Vimes managed to get both the man's wrists in a steel grip, and ripped the sleeve off his own shirt. 'I'in hurting and I'in still doing it all by the book.' He wrapped the linen around the wrists a couple of times and knotted it firmly. ‘I’ll make sure there's water in your cell, Carcer. I'll make sure you get breakfast, anything you like. I'll make sure the hangman doesn't get sloppy and let you choke to death. I'll even make sure the trapdoor is greased.' He released the pressure. Carcer stumbled, and Vimes kicked his legs from under him. ‘The machine ain't broken, Carcer. The machine is waiting for you,' he said, tearing a sleeve off the man's own shirt and fashioning it into a crude binding for his ankles. The city will kill you dead. The proper wheels'll turn. It'll be fair, I'll make sure of that. Afterwards you won't be able to say you didn't have a fair trial. Won't be able to say a thing, haha. I'll see to that, too...' He stood back. 'Good evening, your grace,’ said Lord Vetinari. Vimes spun around. There was a change of texture in the darkness, which could have been manshaped. Vimes snatched up his sword and peered into the night. The shape came forward, became recognizable. 'How long were you there?' he demanded. 'Oh... some little while,' said the Patrician. 'Like you, I prefer to come alone and... contemplate.' 'You were very quiet!' said Vimes accusingly. 'Is that a crime, your grace?' 'And you heard-?' 'A very neat arrest,' said Vetinari. 'Congratulations, your grace.' Vimes looked at the unbloodied sword. 'I suppose so,' he said, temporarily derailed. 'On the birth of your son, I meant.' 'Oh... yes. Oh. Of course. Yes. Well... thank you.' 'A healthy lad, I am given to understand.' 'We'd have been just as happy with a daughter,' said Vimes, quickly. 'Quite so. These are modern times, after all. Oh, I see you have dropped your badge.’ Vimes glanced at the long grass. ‘I’ll come and find it in the morning,' he said. 'But this,' he picked up the moaning Carcer and slung him over his shoulder with a grunt, 'is going back to Pseudopolis Yard right now.' They walked slowly down the gravel path, leaving the scent of lilac behind. Ahead was the everyday stink of the world. 'You know,’ said Lord Vetinari, after a few moments, 'it has often crossed my mind that those men deserve a proper memorial of some sort.' 'Oh yes?' said Vimes, in a noncommittal voice. His heart was still pounding. 'In one of the main squares, perhaps?' 'Yes, that would be a good idea.' 'Perhaps a tableau in bronze?' said Vimes sarcastically. 'All seven of them raising the flag, perhaps?' 'Bronze, yes,' said Vetinari. 'Really? And some son of inspiring slogan?' said Vimes. 'Yes, indeed. Something like, perhaps, "They Did The Job They Had To Do"?' 'No,' said Vimes, coming to a halt under a lamp by the crypt entrance. 'How dare you? How dare you! At this time! In this place! They did the job they didn't have to do, and they died doing it, and you can't give them anything. Do you understand? They fought for those who'd been abandoned, they fought for one another, and they were betrayed. Men like them always are. What good would a statue be? It'd just inspire new fools to believe they're going to be heroes. They wouldn't want that. Just let them be. For ever.' They walked in heavy silence, and then Vetinari said, as if there had been no outburst: 'Happily, it appears that the new deacon at the temple here has suddenly heard the call.' 'What call?' said Vimes, his heart still racing. 'I'in never very good at religious matters, but apparently he was filled with a burning desire to spread the good word to the benighted heathen,’ said Vetinari. 'Where?' 'I suggested Ting Ling.' 'That's right on the other side of the world!' 'Well, a good word can't be spread too far, sergeant.' 'Well, at least it puts-' Vimes stopped at the entrance gates. Overhead, another lamp flickered. He dropped Carcer to the ground. 'You knew? You bloody well knew, didn't you?' 'Not until, oh, one second ago,' said Vetinari. 'As one man to another, commander, I must ask you: did you ever wonder why I wore the lilac?' 'Yeah. I wondered,' said Vimes. 'But you never asked.' 'No. I never asked,’ said Vimes shortly. 'It's a flower. Anyone can wear a flower.' 'At this time? In this place?' ‘Tell me, then.' ‘Then I'll recall the day I was sent on an urgent errand,' said Vetinari. 'I had to save the life of a man. Not a usual errand for an Assassin although, in fact, I had already saved it once before.' He gave Vimes a quizzical look. 'You'd shot a man who was aiming a crossbow?' said Vimes. 'An inspired guess, commander! Yes. I have an eye for the... unique. But now I was fighting time. The streets were blocked. Chaos and confusion were everywhere, and it wasn't as if I even knew where he could be found. In the end I took to the rooftops. And thus I came at last to Cable Street, where there was a different sort of confusion.' ‘Tell me what you saw,' said Vimes. 'I saw a man called Carcer... vanish. And I saw a man called John Keel die. At least, I saw him dead.' 'Really,’ said Vimes. 'I joined the fight. I snatched up a lilac bloom from a fallen man and, I have to say, held it in my mouth. I'd like to think I made some difference; I certainly killed four men, although I take no particular pride in that. They were thugs, bullies. No real skill. Besides, their leader had apparently fled, and what morale they had had gone with him. The men with the lilac, I have to say, fought like tigers. Not skilfully, I'll admit, but when they saw that their leader was down they took the other side to pieces. Astonishing. 'And then, afterwards, I took a look at John Keel. It was John Keel. How could there be any question about that? Blood on him of course. There was blood everywhere. His wounds looked somewhat old, I thought. And death, as we know, changes people. Yet I remember wondering: this much? So I put it down as half a mystery and today... sergeant... we find the other half of a mystery. It's wonderful, isn't it, how alike men can be? I can imagine that even your Sergeant Colon would not realise anything. After all, he saw Keel die and he watched you grow up-' 'Where is this leading?' Vimes demanded. 'Nowhere, commander. What could I prove? And to what end would I prove it?' 'Then I'in saying nothing.' 'I cannot imagine what you could say,’ said Vetinari. 'No. I agree. Let us leave the dead alone. But for you, commander, as a little gift on the occasion of the birth of-' 'There's nothing I want,' said Vimes quickly. 'You can't promote me any further. There's nothing left to bribe me with. I've got more than I deserve. The Watch is working well. We don't even need a new bloody dartboard-' 'In memory of the late John Keel-' Vetinari began. 'I warned you-' '-I can give you back Treacle Mine Road.' Only the highpitched squeak of bats, hunting around the poplars, broke the silence that followed. Then Vimes muttered: 'A dragon burned it years ago. Some dwarfs live in the cellars now.’ 'Yes, commander. But dwarfs... well, dwarfs are so refreshingly open about money. The more money the city offers, the less dwarf there is. The stable's still there, and the old mining tower. Stout stone walls all around. It could all be put back, commander. In memory of John Keel, a man who in a few short days changed the lives of many and, perhaps, saved some sanity in a mad world. Why, in a few months you could light the lamp over the door.’ Again, all that could be heard was the bats. Perhaps they could even bring back the smell, Vimes thought. Perhaps there could be a window above the privy that'd spring open if you thumped it just right. Perhaps they could teach new coppers to learn old tricks- 'We could do with the space, it's true,’ he conceded, with some effort. 'I can see you like the sound of it already,’ said Vetinari. 'And if you care to come along to my office tomorrow we can settle the-' ‘There's a trial tomorrow,’ said Vimes sharply. 'Ah, yes. Of course. And it will be a fair one,’ said the Patrician. 'It'd better be,’ said Vimes. 'I want this bastard to hang, after all.’ 'Well, then,’ said Vetinari, 'afterwards we could-' 'Afterwards I'in going home to my family for a while,’ said Vimes. 'Good! Well said,’ said Vetinari, not missing a beat. 'You have a gift, I have noticed, for impressive oratory.' And Vimes heard the gentle note of warning as he added, 'At this time, commander, and in this place.' 'That's sergeantatarms, thank you,’ said Vimes. 'For now.’ He grabbed Carcer's shirt collar, and dragged him to justice. On the way back to Scoone Avenue, in the dark of night, Vimes walked along the alley behind Clay Lane and stopped when he reckoned he was at a point halfway between the backs of the pawn shop and the shonky shop, and therefore behind the temple. He threw his cigar stub over the fence. He heard it land on gravel, which moved a little. And then he went home. And the world turned towards morning. 
Pyramids - Terry Pratchett (1)	----	Pyramids   TERRY PRATCHETT - PYRAMIDS (A Discworld Novel) [ISBN 0-552-13461-9]   BOOK I The Book of Going Forth Nothing but stars, scattered across the blackness as though the Creator had smashed the windscreen of his car and hadn’t bothered to stop to sweep up the pieces. This is the gulf between universes, the chill deeps of space that contain nothing but the occasional random molecule, a few lost comets and . . . . . . but a circle of blackness shifts slightly, the eye reconsiders perspective, and what was apparently the awesome distance of interstellar wossname becomes a world under darkness, its stars the lights of what will charitably be called civilisation. For, as the world tumbles lazily, it is revealed as the Discworld - flat, circular, and carried through space on the back of four elephants who stand on the back of Great A”tuin, the only turtle ever to feature on the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram, a turtle ten thousand miles long, dusted with the frost of dead comets, meteor-pocked, albedo-eyed. No-one knows the reason for all this, but it is probably quantum. Much that is weird could happen on a world on the back of a turtle like that. It’s happening already. The stars below are campfires, out in the desert, and the lights of remote villages high in the forested mountains. Towns are smeared nebulae, cities are vast constellations; the great sprawling city of Ankh-Morpork, for example, glows like a couple of colliding galaxies. But here, away from the great centres of population, where the Circle Sea meets the desert, there is a line of cold blue fire. Flames as chilly as the slopes of Hell roar towards the sky. Ghostly light flickers across the desert. The pyramids in the ancient valley of the Djel are flaring their power into the night. The energy streaming up from their paracosmic peaks may, in chapters to come, illuminate many mysteries: why tortoises hate philosophy, why too much religion is bad for goats, and what it is that handmaidens actually do. It will certainly show what our ancestors would be thinking if they were alive today. People have often speculated about this. Would they approve of modern society, they ask, would they marvel at present-day achievements? And of course this misses a fundamental point. What our ancestors would really be thinking, if they were alive today, is: “Why is it so dark in here?” In the cool of the river valley dawn the high priest Dios opened his eyes. He didn’t sleep these days. He couldn’t remember when he last slept. Sleep was too close to the other thing and, anyway, he didn’t seem to need it. Just lying down was enough - at least, just lying down here. The fatigue poisons dwindled away, like everything else. For a while. Long enough, anyway. He swung his legs off the slab in the little chamber. With barely a conscious prompting from his brain his right hand grasped the snake-entwined staff of office. He paused to make another mark on the wall, pulled his robe around him and stepped smartly down the sloping passage and out into the sunlight, the words of the Invocation of the New Sun already lining up in his mind. The night was forgotten, the day was ahead. There was much careful advice and guidance to be given, and Dios existed only to serve. Dios didn’t have the oddest bedroom in the world. It was just the oddest bedroom anyone has ever walked out of. And the sun toiled across the sky. Many people have wondered why. Some people think a giant dung beetle pushes it. As explanations go it lacks a certain technical edge, and has the added drawback that, as certain circumstances may reveal, it is possibly correct. It reached sundown without anything particularly unpleasant happening to it* (* Such as being buried in the sand and having eggs laid in it.), and its dying rays chanced to shine in through a window in the city of Ankh-Morpork and gleam off a mirror. It was a full-length mirror. All assassins had a full-length mirror in their rooms, because it would be a terrible insult to anyone to kill them when you were badly dressed. Teppic examined himself critically. The outfit had cost him his last penny, and was heavy on the black silk. It whispered as he moved. It was pretty good. At least the headache was going. It had nearly crippled him all day; he’d been in dread of having to start the run with purple spots in front of his eyes. He sighed and opened the black box and took out his rings and slipped them on. Another box held a set of knives of Klatchian steel, their blades darkened with lamp black. Various cunning and intricate devices were taken from velvet bags and dropped into pockets. A couple of long-bladed throwing tlingo’s were slipped into their sheaths inside his boots. A thin silk line and folding grapnel were wound around his waist, over the chain-mail shirt. A blowpipe was attached to its leather thong and dropped down his back under his cloak; Teppic pocketed a slim tin container with an assortment of darts, their tips corked and their stems braille-coded for ease of selection in the dark. He winced, checked the blade of his rapier and slung the baldric over his right shoulder, to balance the bag of lead slingshot ammunition. As an afterthought he opened his sock drawer and took a pistol crossbow, a flask of oil, a roll of lockpicks and, after some consideration, a punch dagger, a bag of assorted caltraps and a set of brass knuckles. Teppic picked up his hat and checked its lining for the coil of cheesewire. He placed it on his head at a jaunty angle, took a last satisfied look at himself in the mirror, turned on his heel and, very slowly, fell over. It was high summer in Ankh-Morpork. In fact it was more than high. It was stinking. The great river was reduced to a lava-like ooze between Ankh, the city with the better address, and Morpork on the opposite bank. Morpork was not a good address. Morpork was twinned with a tar pit. There was not a lot that could be done to make Morpork a worse place. A direct hit by a meteorite, for example, would count as gentrification. Most of the river bed was a honeycomb crust of cracked mud. Currently the sun appeared to be a big copper gong nailed to the sky. The heat that had dried up the river fried the city by day and baked it by night, curling ancient timbers, turning the traditional slurry of the streets into a drifting, choking ochre dust. It wasn’t Ankh-Morpork’s proper weather. It was by inclination a city of mists and drips, of slithers and chills. It sat panting on the crisping plains like a toad on a firebrick. And even now, around midnight, the heat was stifling, wrapping the streets like scorched velvet, searing the air and squeezing all the breath out of it. High in the north face of the Assassins” Guildhouse there was a click as a window was pushed open. Teppic, who had with considerable reluctance divested himself of some of the heavier of his weapons, took a deep draught of the hot, dead air. This was it. This was the night. They said you had one chance in two unless you drew old Mericet as examiner, in which case you might as well cut your throat right at the start. Teppic had Mericet for Strategy and Poison Theory every Thursday afternoon, and didn’t get along with him. The dormitories buzzed with rumours about Mericet, the number of kills, the astonishing technique . . . He’d broken all the records in his time. They said he’d even killed the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork. Not the present one, that is. One of the dead ones. Maybe it would be Nivor, who was fat and jolly and liked his food and did Traps and Deadfalls on Tuesdays. Teppic was good at traps, and got on well with the master. Or it could be the Kompt de Yoyo, who did Modern Languages and Music. Teppic was gifted at neither, but the Kompt was a keen edificeer and liked boys who shared his love of dangling by one hand high above the city streets. He stuck one leg over the sill and unhitched his line and grapnel. He hooked the gutter two floors up and slipped out of the window. No assassin ever used the stairs. In order to establish continuity with later events, this may be the time to point out that the greatest mathematician in the history of the Discworld was lying down and peacefully eating his supper. It is interesting to note that, owing to this mathematician’s particular species, what he was eating for his supper was his lunch. Gongs around the Ankh-Morpork sprawl were announcing midnight when Teppic crept along the ornate parapet four storeys above Filigree Street, his heart pounding. There was a figure outlined against the afterglow of the sunset. Teppic paused alongside a particularly repulsive gargoyle to consider his options. Fairly solid classroom rumour said that if he inhumed his examiner before the test, that was an automatic pass. He slipped a Number Three throwing knife from its thigh sheath and hefted it thoughtfully. Of course, any attempt, any overt move which missed would attract immediate failure and loss of privileges*. (* Breathing, for a start.) The silhouette was absolutely still. Teppic’s eyes swivelled to the maze of chimneys, gargoyles, ventilator shafts, bridges and ladders that made up the rooftop scenery of the city. Right, he thought. That’s some sort of dummy. I’m supposed to attack it and that means he’s watching me from somewhere else. Will I be able to spot him? No. On the other hand, maybe I’m meant to think it’s a dummy. Unless he’s thought of that as well . . . He found himself drumming his fingers on the gargoyle, and hastily pulled himself together. What is the sensible course of action at this point? A party of revellers staggered through a pool of light in the street far below. Teppic sheathed the knife and stood up. “Sir,” he said, “I am here.” A dry voice by his ear said, rather indistinctly, “Very well.” Teppic stared straight ahead. Mericet appeared in front of him, wiping grey dust off his bony face. He took a length of pipe out of his mouth and tossed it aside, then pulled a clipboard out of his coat. He was bundled up even in this heat. Mericet was the kind of person who could freeze in a volcano. “Ah,” he said, his voice broadcasting disapproval, “Mr. Teppic. Well, well.” “A fine night, sir,” said Teppic. The examiner gave him a chilly look, suggesting that observations about the weather acquired an automatic black mark, and made a note on his clipboard. “We’ll take a few questions first,” he said. “As you wish, sir.” “What is the maximum permitted length of a throwing knife?” snapped Mericet. Teppic closed his eyes. He’d spent the last week reading nothing but The Cordat; he could see the page now, floating tantalisingly just inside his eyelids - they never ask you lengths and weights, students had said knowingly, they expect you to bone up on the weights and lengths and throwing distances but they never- Naked terror hotwired his brain and kicked his memory into gear. The page sprang into focus. “”Maximum length of a throwing knife may be ten finger widths, or twelve in wet weather”,” he recited. “”Throwing distance is-“ “Name three poisons acknowledged for administration by ear.” A breeze sprang up, but it did nothing to cool the air; it just shifted the heat about. “Sir, wasp agaric, Achorion purple and Mustick, sir,” said Teppic promptly. “Why not spime?” snapped Mericet, fast as a snake. Teppic’s jaw dropped open. He floundered for a while, trying to avoid the gimlet gaze a few feet away from him. “S-sir, spime isn’t a poison, sir,” he managed. “It is an extremely rare antidote to certain snake venoms, and is obtained-” He settled down a bit, more certain of himself: all those hours idly looking through the old dictionaries had paid off- “is obtained from the liver of the inflatable mongoose, which-” “What is the meaning of this sign?” said Mericet. “- is found only in the. . .” Teppic’s voice trailed off. He squinted down at the complex rune on the card in Mericet’s hand, and then stared straight past the examiner’s ear again. “I haven’t the faintest idea, sir,” he said. Out of the corner of his ear he thought he heard the faintest intake of breath, the tiniest seed of a satisfied grunt. “But if it were the other way up, sir,” he went on, “it would be thief sign for “Noisy dogs in this house”.” There was absolute silence for a moment. Then, right by his shoulder, the old assassin’s voice said, “Is the killing rope permitted to all categories?” “Sir, the rules call for three questions, sir,” Teppic protested. “Ah. And that is your answer, is it?” “Sir, no, sir. It was an observation, sir. Sir, the answer you are looking for is that all categories may bear the killing rope, but only assassins of the third grade may use it as one of the three options, sir.” “You are sure of that, are you?” “Sir.” “You wouldn’t like to reconsider?” You could have used the examiner’s voice to grease a wagon. “Sir, no, sir.” “Very well.” Teppic relaxed. The back of his tunic was sticking to him, chilly with sweat. “Now, I want you to proceed at your own pace towards the Street of Book-keepers,” said Mericet evenly, “obeying all signs and so forth. I will meet you in the room under the gong tower at the junction with Audit Alley. And - take this, if you please.” He handed Teppic a small envelope. Teppic handed over a receipt. Then Mericet stepped into the pool of shade beside a chimney pot, and disappeared. So much for the ceremony. Teppic took a few deep breaths and tipped the envelope’s contents into his hand. It was a Guild bond for ten thousand Ankh-Morpork dollars, made out to “Bearer”. It was an impressive document, surmounted with the Guild seal of the double-cross and the cloaked dagger. Well, no going back now. He’d taken the money. Either he’d survive, in which case of course he’d traditionally donate the money to the Guild’s widows and orphans fund, or it would be retrieved from his dead body. The bond looked a bit dog-eared, but he couldn’t see any bloodstains on it. He checked his knives, adjusted his swordbelt, glanced behind him, and set off at a gentle trot. At least this was a bit of luck. The student lore said there were only half a dozen routes used during the test, and on summer nights they were alive with students tackling the roofs, towers, eaves and colls of the city. Edificing was a keen inter-house sport in its own right; it was one of the few things Teppic was sure he was good at - he’d been captain of the team that beat Scorpion House in the Wallgame finals. And this was one of the easier courses. He dropped lightly over the edge of the roof, landed on a ridge, ran easily across the sleeping building, jumped a narrow gap on to the tiled roof of the Young Men’s Reformed-Cultists-of-the-Ichor-God-Bel-Shamharoth Association gym, jogged gently over the grey slope, swarmed up a twelve foot wall without slowing down, and vaulted on to the wide flat roof of the Temple of Blind Io. A full, orange moon hung on the horizon. There was a real breeze up here, not much, but as refreshing as a cold shower after the stifling heat of the streets. He speeded up, enjoying the coolness on his face, and leapt accurately off the end of the roof on to the narrow plank bridge that led across Tinlid Alley. And which someone, in defiance of all probability, had removed. At times like this one’s past life flashes before one’s eyes. . . His aunt had wept, rather theatrically, Teppic had thought, since the old lady was as tough as a hippo’s instep. His father had looked stern and dignified, whenever he could remember to, and tried to keep his mind free of beguiling images of cliffs and fish. The servants had been lined up along the hall from the foot of the main stairway, handmaidens on one side, eunuchs and butlers on the other. The women bobbed a curtsey as he walked by, creating a rather nice sine wave effect which the greatest mathematician on the Disc, had he not at this moment been occupied by being hit with a stick and shouted at by a small man wearing what appeared to be a nightshirt, might well have appreciated. “But,” Teppic’s aunt blew her nose, “it’s trade, after all.” His father patted her hand. “Nonsense, flower of the desert,” he said, “it is a profession, at the very least.” “What is the difference?” she sobbed. The old man sighed. “The money, I understand. It will do him good to go out into the world and make friends and have a few corners knocked off, and it will keep him occupied and prevent him from getting into mischief.” “But. . . assassination. . . he’s so young, and he’s never shown the least inclination . . .” She dabbed at her eyes. “It’s not from our side of the family,” she added accusingly. “That brother-in-law of yours- “Uncle Vyrt,” said his father. “Going all over the world killing people!” “I don’t believe they use that word,” said his father. “I think they prefer words like conclude, or annul. Or inhume, I understand.” “Inhume?” “I think it’s like exhume, O flooding of the waters, only it’s before they bury you.” “I think it’s terrible.” She sniffed. “But I heard from Lady Nooni that only one boy in fifteen actually passes the final exam. Perhaps we’d just better let him get it out of his system.” King Teppicymon XXVII nodded gloomily, and went by himself to wave goodbye to his son. He was less certain than his sister about the unpleasantness of assassination; he’d been reluctantly in politics for a long time, and felt that while assassination was probably worse than debate it was certainly better than war, which some people tended to think of as the same thing only louder. And there was no doubt that young Vyrt always had plenty of money, and used to turn up at the palace with expensive gifts, exotic suntans and thrilling tales of the interesting people he’d met in foreign parts, in most cases quite briefly. He wished Vyrt was around to advise. His majesty had also heard that only one student in fifteen actually became an assassin. He wasn’t entirely certain what happened to the other fourteen, but he was pretty sure that if you were a poor student in a school for assassins they did a bit more than throw the chalk at you, and that the school dinners had an extra dimension of uncertainty. But everyone agreed that the assassins” school offered the best all-round education in the world. A qualified assassin should be at home in any company, and able to play at least one musical instrument. Anyone inhumed by a graduate of the Guild school could go to his rest satisfied that he had been annulled by someone of taste and discretion. And, after all, what was there for him at home? A kingdom two miles wide and one hundred and fifty miles long, which was almost entirely under water during the flood season, and threatened on either side by stronger neighbours who tolerated its existence only because they’d be constantly at war if it wasn’t there. Oh, Djelibeybi* (* Lit. “Child of the Djel”.) had been great once, when upstarts like Tsort and Ephebe were just a bunch of nomads with their towels on their heads. All that remained of those great days was the ruinously-expensive palace, a few dusty ruins in the desert and - the pharaoh sighed - the pyramids. Always the pyramids. His ancestors had been keen on pyramids. The pharaoh wasn’t. Pyramids had bankrupted the country, drained it drier than ever the river did. The only curse they could afford to put on a tomb these days was “Bugger Off”. The only pyramids he felt comfortable about were the very small ones at the bottom of the garden, built every time one of the cats died. He’d promised the boy’s mother. He missed Artela. There’d been a terrible row about taking a wife from outside the Kingdom, and some of her foreign ways had puzzled and fascinated even him. Maybe it was from her he’d got the strange dislike of pyramids; in Djelibeybi that was like disliking breathing. But he’d promised that Pteppic could go to school outside the kingdom. She’d been insistent about that. “People never learn anything in this place,” she’d said. “They only remember things.” If only she’d remembered about not swimming in the river . He watched two of the servants load Teppic’s trunk on to the back of the coach, and for the first time either of them could remember laid a paternal hand on his son’s shoulder. In fact he was at a loss for something to say. We’ve never really had time to get to know one another, he thought. There’s so much I could have given him. A few bloody good hidings wouldn’t have come amiss. “Urn,” he said. “Well, my boy.” “Yes, father?” “This is, er, the first time you’ve been away from home by yourself” “No, father. I spent last summer with Lord Fhem-pta-hem, you remember.” “Oh, did you?” The pharaoh recalled the palace had seemed quieter at the time. He’d put it down to the new tapestries. “Anyway,” he said, “you’re a young man, nearly thirteen-” “Twelve, father,” said Teppic patiently. “Are you sure?” “It was my birthday last month, father. You bought me a warming pan.” “Did I? How singular. Did I say why?” “No, father.” Teppic looked up at his father’s mild, puzzled features. “It was a very good warming pan,” he added reassuringly. “I like it a lot.” “Oh. Good. Er.” His majesty patted his son’s shoulder again, in a vague way, like a man drumming his fingers on his desk while trying to think. An idea appeared to occur to him. The servants had finished strapping the trunk on to the roof of the coach and the driver was patiently holding open the door. “When a young man sets out in the world,” said his majesty uncertainly, “there are, well, it’s very important that he remembers . . . The point is, that it is a very big world after all, with all sorts. . . And of course, especially so in the city, where there are many additional . . . “ He paused, waving one hand vaguely in the air. Teppic took it gently. “It’s quite all right, father,” he said. “Dios the high priest explained to me about taking regular baths, and not going blind.” His father blinked at him. “You’re not going blind?” he said. “Apparently not, father.” “Oh. Well. Jolly good,” said the king. “Jolly, jolly good. That is good news.” “I think I had better be going, father. Otherwise I shall miss the tide.” His majesty nodded, and patted his pockets. “There was something. . . “ he muttered, and then tracked it down, and slipped a small leather bag into Teppic’s pocket. He tried the shoulder routine again. “A little something,” he murmured. “Don’t tell your aunt. Oh, you can’t, anyway. She’s gone for a lie-down. It’s all been rather too much for her.” All that remained then was for Teppic to go and sacrifice a chicken at the statue of Khuft, the founder of Djelibeybi, so that his ancestor’s guiding hand would steer his footsteps in the world. It was only a small chicken, though, and when Khuft had finished with it the king had it for lunch. Djelibeybi really was a small, self-centred kingdom. Even its plagues were half-hearted. All self-respecting river kingdoms have vast supernatural plagues, but the best the Old Kingdom had been able to achieve in the last hundred years was the Plague of Frog*. (*It was quite a big frog, however, and got into the air ducts and kept everyone awake for weeks.) That evening, when they were well outside the delta of the Djel and heading across the Circle Sea to Ankh-Morpork, Teppic remembered the bag and examined its contents. With love, but also with his normal approach to things, his father had presented him with a cork, half a tin of saddlesoap, a small bronze coin of uncertain denomination, and an extremely elderly sardine. It is a well-known fact that when one is about to die the senses immediately become excruciatingly sharp and it has always been believed that this is to enable their owner to detect any possible exit from his predicament other than the obvious one. This is not true. The phenomenon is a classical example of displacement activity. The senses are desperately concentrating on anything apart from the immediate problem - which in Teppic’s case consisted of a broad expanse of cobblestones some eighty feet away and closing - in the hope that it will go away. The trouble is that it soon will. Whatever the reason, Teppic was suddenly acutely aware of things around him. The way the moonlight glowed on the rooftops. The smell of fresh bread wafting from a nearby bakery. The whirring of a cockchafer as it barrelled past his ear, upwards. The sound of a baby crying, in the distance, and the bark of a dog. The gentle rush of the air, with particular reference to its thinness and lack of handholds. There had been more than seventy of them enrolling that year. The Assassins didn’t have a very strenuous entrance examination; the school was easy to get into, easy to get out of (the trick was to get out upright). The courtyard in the centre of the Guild buildings was thronged with boys who all had two things in common - overlarge trunks, which they were sitting on, and clothes that had been selected for them to grow into, and which they were more or less sitting in. Some optimists had brought weapons with them, which were confiscated and sent home over the next few weeks. Teppic watched them carefully. There were distinct advantages to being the only child of parents too preoccupied with their own affairs to worry much about him, or indeed register his existence for days at a time. His mother, as far as he could remember, had been a pleasant woman and as self-centred as a gyroscope. She’d liked cats. She didn’t just venerate them - everyone in the kingdom did that - but she actually liked them, too. Teppic knew that it was traditional in river kingdoms to approve of cats, but he suspected that usually the animals in question were graceful stately creatures; his mother’s cats were small, spitting, flat-headed, yellow-eyed maniacs. His father spent a lot of time worrying about the kingdom and occasionally declaring that he was a seagull, although this was probably from general forgetfulness. Teppic had occasionally speculated about his own conception, since his parents were rarely in the same frame of reference, let alone the same state of mind. But it had apparently happened and he was left to bring himself up on a trial and error basis, mildly hindered and occasionally enlivened by a succession of tutors. The ones hired by his father were best, especially on those days when he was flying as high as he could, and for one glorious winter Teppic had as his tutor an elderly ibis poacher who had in fact wandered into the royal gardens in search of a stray arrow. That had been a time of wild chases with soldiers, moonlight rambles in the dead streets of the necropolis and, best of all, the introduction to the puntbow, a fearsomely complicated invention which at considerable risk to its operators could turn a slough full of innocent waterfowl into so much floating pâté. He’d also had the run of the library, including the locked shelves - the poacher had several other skills to ensure gainful employment in inclement weather - which had given him many hours of quiet study; he was particularly attached to The Shuttered Palace, Translated from the Khalian by A Gentleman, with Hand-Coloured Plates for the Connoisseur in A Strictly Limited Edition. It was confusing but instructive and, when a rather fey young tutor engaged by the priests tried to introduce him to certain athletic techniques favoured by the classical Pseudopolitans, Teppic considered the suggestion for some time and then floored the youth with a hatstand. Teppic hadn’t been educated. Education had just settled on him, like dandruff. It started to rain, in the world outside his head. Another new experience. He’d heard about it, of course, how water came down out of the sky in small bits. He just hadn’t expected there to be so much of it. It never rained in Djelibeybi. Masters moved among the boys like damp and slightly scruffy blackbirds, but he was eyeing a group of older students lolling near the pillared entrance to the school. They also wore black - different colours of black. That was his first introduction to the tertiary colours, the colours on the far side of blackness, the colours that you get if you split blackness with an eight-sided prism. They are also almost impossible to describe in a non-magical environment, but if someone were to try they’d probably start by telling you to smoke something illegal and take a good look at a starling’s wing. The seniors were critically inspecting the new arrivals. Teppic stared at them. Apart from the colours, their clothes were cut off the edge of the latest fashion, which was currently inclining towards wide hats, padded shoulders, narrow waists and pointed shoes and gave its followers the appearance of being very well-dressed nails. I’m going to be like them, he told himself. Although probably better dressed, he added. He recalled Uncle Vyrt, sitting out on the steps overlooking the Djel on one of his brief, mysterious visits. “Satin and leather are no good. Or jewellery of any kind. You can’t have anything that will shine or squeak or clink. Stick to rough silk or velvet. The important thing is not how many people you inhume, it’s how many fail to inhume you.” He’d been moving at an unwise pace, which might assist now. As he arced over the emptiness of the alley he twisted in the air, thrust out his arms desperately, and felt his fingertips brush a ledge on the building opposite. It was enough to pivot him; he swung around, hit the crumbling brickwork with sufficient force to knock what remained of his breath out of him, and slid down the sheer wall. “Boy!” Teppic looked up. There was a senior assassin standing beside him, with a purple teaching sash over his robes. It was the first assassin he’d seen, apart from Vyrt. The man was pleasant enough. You could imagine him making sausages. “Are you talking to me?” he said. “You will stand up when you address a master,” said the rosy face. “I will?” Teppic was fascinated. He wondered how this could be achieved. Discipline had not hitherto been a major feature in his life. Most of his tutors had been sufficiently unnerved by the sight of the king occasionally perched on top of a door that they raced through such lessons as they had and then locked themselves in their rooms. “I will sir,” said the teacher. He consulted the list in his hand. “What is your name, boy?” he continued. “Prince Pteppic of the Old Kingdom, the Kingdom of the Sun,” said Teppic easily. “I appreciate you are ignorant of the etiquette, but you should not call me sir, and you should touch the ground with your forehead when you address me.” “Pateppic, is it?” said the master. “No. Pteppic.” “Ah. Teppic,” said the master, and ticked off a name on his list. He gave Teppic a generous smile. “Well, now, your majesty,” he said, “I am Grunworth Nivor, your housemaster. You are in Viper House. To my certain knowledge there are at least eleven Kingdoms of the Sun on the Disc and, before the end of the week, you will present me with a short essay detailing their geographical location, political complexion, capital city or principal seat of government, and a suggested route into the bed- chamber of the head of state of your choice. However, in all the world there is only one Viper House. Good morning to you, boy.” He turned away and homed in on another cowering pupil. “He’s not a bad sort,” said a voice behind Teppic. “Anyway, all the stuffs in the library. I’ll show you if you like. I’m Chidder. Teppic turned. He was being addressed by a boy of about his own age and height, whose black suit - plain black, for First Years - looked as though it had been nailed on to him in bits. The youth was holding out a hand. Teppic gave it a polite glance. “Yes?” he said. “What’s your name, kiddo?” Teppic drew himself up. He was getting fed up with this treatment. “Kiddo? I’ll have you know the blood of pharaohs runs in my veins!” The other boy looked at him unabashed, with his head on one side and a faint smile on his face. “Would you like it to stay there?” he said. The baker was just along the alley, and a handful of the staff had stepped out into the comparative cool of the pre-dawn air for a quick smoke and a break from the desert heat of the ovens. Their chattering spiralled up to Teppic, high in the shadows, gripping a fortuitous window sill while his feet scrabbled for a purchase among the bricks. It’s not that bad, he told himself. You’ve tackled worse. The hubward face of the Patrician’s palace last winter, for example, when all the gutters had overflowed and the walls were solid ice. This isn’t much more than a 3, maybe a 3.2. You and old Chiddy used to go up walls like this rather than stroll down the street, it’s just a matter of perspective. Perspective. He glanced down, at seventy feet of infinity. Splat City, man, get a grip on yourself. On the wall. His right foot found a worn section of mortar, into which his toes planted themselves with barely a conscious instruction from a brain now feeling too fragile to take more than a distant interest in the proceedings. He took a breath, tensed, and then dropped one hand to his belt, seized a dagger, and thrust it between the bricks beside him before gravity worked out what was happening. He paused, panting, waiting for gravity to lose interest in him again, and then swung his body sideways and tried the same thing a second time. Down below one of the bakers told a suggestive joke, and brushed a speck of mortar from his ear. As his colleagues laughed Teppic stood up in the moonlight, balancing on two slivers of Klatchian steel, and gently walked his palms up the wall to the window whose sill had been his brief salvation. It was wedged shut. A good blow would surely open it, but only at about the same moment as it sent him reeling back into empty air. Teppic sighed and, moving with the delicacy of a watchmaker, drew his diamond compasses from their pouch and dragged a slow, gentle circle on the dusty glass. . . “You carry it yourself,” said Chidder. “That’s the rule around here.” Teppic looked at the trunk. It was an intriguing notion. “At home we’ve people who do that,” he said. “Eunuchs and so on. “You should of brought one with you.” “They don’t travel well,” said Teppic. In fact he’d adamantly refused all suggestions that a small retinue should accompany him, and Dios had sulked for days. That was not how a member of the royal blood should go forth into the world, he said. Teppic had remained firm. He was pretty certain that assassins weren’t expected to go about their business accompanied by handmaidens and buglers. Now, however, the idea seemed to have some merit. He gave the trunk an experimental heave, and managed to get it across his shoulders. “Your people are pretty rich, then?” said Chidder, ambling along beside him. Teppic thought about this. “No, not really,” he said. “They mainly grow melons and garlic and that kind of thing. And stand in the streets and shout “hurrah”.” “This is your parents you’re talking about?” said Chidder, puzzled. “Oh, them? No, my father’s a pharaoh. My mother was a concubine. I think.” “I thought that was some sort of vegetable.” “I don’t think so. We’ve never really discussed it. Anyway, she died when I was young.” “How dreadful,” said Chidder cheerfully. “She went for a moonlight swim in what turned out to be a crocodile.” Teppic tried politely not to be hurt at the boy’s reaction. “My father’s in commerce,” said Chidder, as they passed through the archway. “That’s fascinating,” said Teppic dutifully. He felt quite broken by all these new experiences, and added, “I’ve never been to Commerce, but I understand they’re very fine people.” Over the next hour or two Chidder, who ambled gently through life as though he’d already worked it all out, introduced Teppic to the various mysteries of the dormitories, the classrooms and the plumbing. He left the plumbing until last, for all sorts of reasons. “Not any?” he said. “There’s buckets and things,” said Teppic vaguely, “and lots of servants.” “Bit old fashioned, this kingdom of yours?” Teppic nodded. “It’s the pyramids,” he said. “They take all the money.” “Expensive things, I should imagine.” “Not particularly. They’re just made of stone.” Teppic sighed. “We’ve got lots of stone,” he said, “and sand. Stone and sand. We’re really big on them. If you ever need any stone and sand, we’re the people for you. It’s fitting out the insides that is really expensive. We’re still avoiding paying for grandfather’s, and that wasn’t very big. Just three chambers.” Teppic turned and looked out of the window; they were back in the dormitory at this point. “The whole kingdom’s in debt,” he said, quietly. “I mean even our debts are in debt. That’s why I’m here, really. Someone in our house needs to earn some money. A royal prince can’t hang around looking ornamental any more. He’s got to get out and do something useful in the community.” Chidder leaned on the window sill. “Couldn’t you take some of the stuff out of the pyramids, then?” he said. “Don’t be silly.” “Sorry.” Teppic gloomily watched the figures below. “There’s a lot of people here,” he said, to change the subject. “I didn’t realise it would be so big.” He shivered. “Or so cold,” he added. “People drop out all the time,” said Chidder. “Can’t stand the course. The important thing is to know what’s what and who’s who. See that fellow over there?” Teppic followed his pointing finger to a group of older students, who were lounging against the pillars by the entrance. “The big one? Face like the end of your boot?” “That’s Fliemoe. Watch out for him. If he invites you for toast in his study, don’t go.” “And who’s the little kid with the curls?” said Teppic. He pointed to a small lad receiving the attentions of a washed-out looking lady. She was licking her handkerchief and dabbing apparent smudges off his face. When she stopped that, she straightened his tie. Chidder craned to see. “Oh, just some new kid,” he said. “Arthur someone. Still hanging on to his mummy, I see. He won’t last long.” “Oh, I don’t know,” said Teppic. “We do, too, and we’ve lasted for thousands of years.” A disc of glass dropped into the silent building and tinkled on the floor. There was no other sound for several minutes. Then there was the faint clonk-clonk of an oil can. A shadow that had been lying naturally on the window sill, a morgue for blue-bottles, turned out to be an arm which was moving with vegetable slowness towards the window’s catch. There was a scrape of metal, and then the whole window swung out in tribological silence. Teppic dropped over the sill and vanished into the shadow below it. For a minute or two the dusty space was filled with the intense absence of noise caused by someone moving with extreme care. Once again there was the squirting of oil, and then a metallic whisper as the bolt of a trapdoor leading on to the roof moved gently aside. Teppic waited for his breath to catch up with him, and in that moment heard the sound. It was down among the white noise at the edge of hearing, but there was no doubt about it. Someone was waiting just above the trapdoor, and they’d just put their hand on a piece of paper to stop it rattling in the breeze. His own hand dropped from the bolt. He eased his way with exquisite care back across the greasy floor and felt his way along a rough wooden wall until he came to the door. This time he took no chances, but uncorked his oil can and let a silent drop fall on to the hinges. A moment later he was through. A rat, idly patrolling the draughty passage beyond, had to stop itself from swallowing its own tongue as he floated past. There was another doorway at the end, and a maze of musty storerooms until he found a stairway. He judged himself to be about thirty yards from the trapdoor. There hadn’t been any flues that he could see. There ought to be a clear shot across the roof. He hunkered down and pulled out his knife roll, its velvet blackness making a darker oblong in the shadows. He selected a Number Five, not everyone’s throwing knife, but worthwhile if you had the trick of it. Shortly afterwards his head rose very carefully over the edge of the roof, one arm bent behind it but ready to uncurl in a complex interplay of forces that would combine to send a few ounces of steel gliding across the night. Mericet was sitting by the trapdoor, looking at his clipboard. Teppic’s eyes swivelled to the oblong of the plank bridge, stored meticulously against the parapet a few feet away. He was certain he had made no noise. He’d have to swear that the examiner heard the sound of his gaze falling on him. The old man raised his bald head. “Thank you, Mr Teppic,” he said, “you may proceed.” Teppic felt the sweat of his body grow cold. He stared at the plank, and then at the examiner, and then at his knife. “Yes, sir,” he said. This didn’t seem like enough, in the circumstances. He added, “Thank you, sir.” He’d always remember the first night in the dormitory. It was long enough to accommodate all eighteen boys in Viper House, and draughty enough to accommodate the great outdoors. Its designer may have had comfort in mind, but only so that he could avoid it wherever possible: he had contrived a room that could actually be colder than the weather outside. “I thought we got rooms to ourselves,” said Teppic. Chidder, who had laid claim to the least exposed bed in the whole refrigerator, nodded at him. “Later on,” he said. He lay back, and winced. “Do they sharpen these springs, do you reckon?” Teppic said nothing. The bed was in fact rather more comfortable than the one he’d slept in at home. His parents, being high born, naturally tolerated conditions for their children which would have been rejected out of hand by destitute sandflies. He stretched out on the thin mattress and analysed the day’s events. He’d been enrolled as an assassin, all right, a student assassin, for more than seven hours and they hadn’t even let him lay a hand on a knife yet. Of course, tomorrow was another day . . . Chidder leaned over. “Where’s Arthur?” he said. Teppic looked at the bed opposite him. There was a pathetically small sack of clothing positioned neatly in its centre, but no sign of its intended occupant. “Do you think he’s run away?” he said, staring around at the shadows. “Could be,” said Chidder. “It happens a lot, you know. Mummy’s boys, away from home for the first time-” The door at the end of the room swung open slowly and Arthur entered, backwards, tugging a large and very reluctant billy goat. It fought him every step of the way down the aisle between the bedsteads. The boys watched in silence for several minutes as he tethered the animal to the end of his bed, upended the sack on the blankets, and took out several black candles, a sprig of herbs, a rope of skulls, and a piece of chalk. Taking the chalk, and adopting the shiny, pink-faced expression of someone who is going to do what they know to be right no matter what, Arthur drew a double circle around his bed and then, getting down on his chubby knees, filled the space between them with as unpleasant a collection of occult symbols as Teppic had ever seen. When they were completed to his satisfaction he placed the candles at strategic points and lit them; they spluttered and gave off a smell that suggested that you really wouldn’t want to know what they were made of. He drew a short, red-handled knife from the jumble on the bed and advanced towards the goat- A pillow hit him on the back of the head. “Garn! Pious little bastard!” Arthur dropped the knife and burst into tears. Chidder sat up in bed. “That was you, Cheesewright!” he said. “I saw you!” Cheesewright, a skinny young man with red hair and a face that was one large freckle, glared at him. “Well, it’s too much,” he said. “A fellow can’t sleep with all this religion going on. I mean, only little kids say their prayers at bedtime these days, we’re supposed to be learning to be assassins-” “You can jolly well shut up, Cheesewright,” shouted Chidder. “It’d be a better world if more people said their prayers, you know. I know I don’t say mine as often as I should-” A pillow cut him off in mid-sentence. He bounded out of bed and vaulted at the red-haired boy, fists flailing. As the rest of the dormitory gathered around the scuffling pair Teppic slid out of bed and padded over to Arthur, who was sitting on the edge of his bed and sobbing. He patted him uncertainly on the shoulder, on the basis that this sort of thing was supposed to reassure people. “I shouldn’t cry about it, youngster,” he said, gruffly. “But - but all the runes have been scuffed,” said Arthur. “It’s all too late now! And that means the Great Om will come in the night and wind out my entrails on a stick!” “Does it?” “And suck out my eyes, my mother said!” “Gosh!” said Teppic, fascinated. “Really?” He was quite glad his bed was opposite Arthur’s, and would offer an unrivalled view. “What religion would this be?” “We’re Strict Authorised Ormits,” said Arthur. He blew his nose. “I noticed you don’t pray,” he said. “Don’t you have a god?” “Oh yes,” said Teppic hesitantly, “no doubt about that.” “You don’t seem to want to talk to him.” Teppic shook his head. “I can’t,” he said, “not here. He wouldn’t be able to hear, you see.” “My god can hear me anywhere,” said Arthur fervently. “Well, mine has difficulty if you’re on the other side of the room,” said Teppic. “It can be very embarrassing.” “You’re not an Offlian, are you?” said Arthur. Offler was a Crocodile God, and lacked ears. “No.” “What god do you worship, then?” “Not exactly worship,” said Teppic, discomforted. “I wouldn’t say worship. I mean, he’s all right. He’s my father, if you must know.” Arthur’s pink-rimmed eyes widened. “You’re the son of a god?” he whispered. “It’s all part of being a king, where I come from,” said Teppic hurriedly. “He doesn’t have to do very much. That is, the priests do the actual running of the country. He just makes sure that the river floods every year, d’you see, and services the Great Cow of the Arch of the Sky. Well, used to.” “The Great-” “My mother,” explained Teppic. “It’s all very embarrassing.” “Does he smite people?” “I don’t think so. He’s never said.” Arthur reached down to the end of the bed. The goat, in the confusion, had chewed through its rope and trotted out of the door, vowing to give up religion in future. “I’m going to get into awful trouble,” he said. “I suppose you couldn’t ask your father to explain things to the Great OM?” “He might be able to,” said Teppic doubtfully. “I was going to write home tomorrow anyway.” “The Great Orm is normally to be found in one of the Nether Hells,” said Arthur, “where he watches everything we do. Everything I do, anyway. There’s only me and mother left now, and she doesn’t do much that needs watching.” “I’ll be sure and tell him.” “Do you think the Great Orm will come tonight?” “I shouldn’t think so. I’ll ask my father to be sure and tell him not to.” At the other end of the dormitory Chidder was kneeling on Cheesewright’s back and knocking his head repeatedly against the wall. “Say it again,” he commanded. “Come on - “There’s nothing wrong-““ “”There’s nothing wrong with a chap being man enough-“ curse you, Chidder, you beastly-” “I can’t hear you, Cheesewright,” said Chidder. “”Man enough to say his prayers in front of other chaps”, you rotter.” “Right. And don’t you forget it.” After lights out Teppic lay in bed and thought about religion. It was certainly a very complicated subject. The valley of the Djel had its own private gods, gods which had nothing to do with the world outside. It had always been very proud of the fact. The gods were wise and just and regulated the lives of men with skill and foresight, there was no question about that, but there were some puzzles. For example, he knew his father made the sun come up and the river flood and so on. That was basic, it was what the pharaohs had done ever since the time of Khuft, you couldn’t go around questioning things like that. The point was, though, did he just make the sun come up in the Valley or everywhere in the world? Making the sun come up in the Valley seemed a more reasonable proposition, after all, his father wasn’t getting any younger, but it was rather difficult to imagine the sun coming up everywhere else and not the Valley, which led to the distressing thought that the sun would come up even if his father forgot about it, which was a very likely state of affairs. He’d never seen his father do anything much about making the sun rise, he had to admit. You’d expect at least a grunt of effort round about the dawn. His father never got up until after breakfast. The sun came up just the same. He took some time to get to sleep. The bed, whatever Chidder said, was too soft, the air was too cold and, worst of all, the sky outside the high windows was too dark. At home it would have been full of flarelight from the necropolis, its silent flames eerie but somehow familiar and comforting, as though the ancestors were watching over their valley. He didn’t like the darkness. The following night in the dormitory one of the boys from further along the coast shyly tried to put the boy in the next bed inside a wickerwork cage he made in Craft and set fire to him, and the night after that Snoxall, who had the bed by the door and came from a little country out in the forests somewhere, painted himself green and asked for volunteers to have their intestines wound around a tree. On Thursday a small war broke out between those who worshipped the Mother Goddess in her aspect of the Moon and those who worshipped her in her aspect of a huge fat woman with enormous buttocks. After that the masters intervened and explained that religion, while a fine thing, could be taken too far. Teppic had a suspicion that unpunctuality was unforgivable. But surely Mericet would have to be at the tower ahead of him? And he was going by the direct route. The old man couldn’t possibly get there before him. Mind you, he couldn’t possibly have got to the bridge in the alley first . . . He must have taken the bridge away before he met me and then he climbed up on the roof while I was climbing up the wall, Teppic told himself, without believing a word of it. He ran along a roof ridge, senses alert for dislodged tiles or tripwires. His imagination equipped every shadow with watching figures. The gong tower loomed ahead of him. He paused, and looked at it. He had seen it a thousand times before, and scaled it many times although it barely rated a 1.8, notwithstanding that the brass dome on top was an interesting climb. It was just a familiar landmark. That made it worse now; it bulked in front of him, a stubby menacing shape against the greyness of the sky. He advanced more slowly now, approaching the tower obliquely across the sloping roof. It came to him that his initials were there, on the dome, along with Chiddy’s and those of hundreds of other young assassins, and that they’d carry on being up there even if he died tonight. It was sort of comforting. Only not very. He unslung his rope and made an easy throw on to the wide parapet that ran around the tower, just under the dome. He tested it, and heard the gentle clink as it caught. Then he tugged it as hard as possible, bracing himself with one foot on a chimney stack. Abruptly, and with no sound, a section of parapet slid outwards and dropped. There was a crash as it hit the roof below and then slid down the tiles. Another pause was punctuated by a distant thump as it hit the silent street. A dog barked. Stillness ruled the rooftops. Where Teppic had been the breeze stirred the burning air. After several minutes he emerged from the deeper shadow of a chimney stack, smiling a strange and terrible smile. Nothing the examiner could do could possibly be unfair. An assassin’s clients were invariably rich enough to pay for extremely ingenious protection, up to and including hiring assassins of his own*. (* It was said that life was cheap in Ankh-Morpork. This was, of course, completely wrong. Life was often very expensive; you could get death for free) Mericet wasn’t trying to kill him; he was merely trying to make him kill himself. He sidled up to the base of the tower and found a drainpipe. It hadn’t been coated with slipall, rather to his surprise, but his gently questing fingers did find the poisoned needles painted black and glued to the inner face of the pipe. He removed one with his tweezers and sniffed it. Distilled bloat. Pretty expensive stuff, with an astonishing effect. He took a small glass phial from his belt and collected as many needles as he could find, and then put on his armoured gloves and, with the speed of a sloth, started to climb. “Now it may well be that, as you travel across the city on your lawful occasions, you will find yourselves in opposition to fellow members, even one of the gentlemen with whom you are currently sharing a bench. And this is quite right and /what are you doing Mr Chidder no don’t tell me I’m sure I wouldn’t want to know see me afterwards/ proper. It is open to everyone to defend themselves as best they may. There are, however, other enemies who will dog your steps and against whom you are all ill-prepared /who are they Mr Cheesewright?”/ Mericet spun round from his blackboard like a vulture who has just heard a death-rattle and pointed the chalk at Cheesewright, who gulped. “Thieves’ Guild, sir?” he managed. “Step out here, boy.” There were whispered rumours in the dormitories about what Mericet had done to slovenly pupils in the past, which were always vague but horrifying. The class relaxed. Mericet usually concentrated on one victim at a time, so all they had to do now was look keen and enjoy the show. Crimson to his ears, Cheesewright got to his feet and trooped down the aisle between the desks. The master inspected him thoughtfully. “Well, now,” he said, “and here we have Cheesewright, G., skulking across the quaking rooftops. See the determined ears. See the firm set of those knees.” The class tittered dutifully. Cheesewright gave them an idiotic grin and rolled his eyes. “But what are these sinister figures that march in step with him, hey? /Since you find this so funny, Mr Teppic, perhaps you would be so good as to tell Mr Cheesewright?”/ Teppic froze in mid-laugh. Mericet’s gaze bored into him. He’s just like Dios the high priest, Teppic thought. Even father’s frightened of Dios. He knew what he ought to do, and he was damned if he was going to do it. He ought to be scared. “Ill-preparedness,” he said. “Carelessness. Lack of concentration. Poor maintenance of tools. Oh, and over-confidence, sir.” Mericet held his gaze for some time, but Teppic had practised on the palace cats. Finally the teacher gave a brief smile that had absolutely nothing to do with humour, tossed the chalk in the air, caught it again, and said: “Mr Teppic is exactly right. Especially about the over-confidence.” There was a ledge leading to an invitingly open window. There was oil on the ledge, and Teppic invested several minutes in screwing small crampons into cracks in the stonework before advancing. He hung easily by the window and proceeded to take a number of small metal rods from his belt. They were threaded at the ends, and after a few seconds’ brisk work he had a rod about three feet long on the end of which he affixed a small mirror. That revealed nothing in the gloom beyond the opening. He pulled it back and tried again, this time attaching his hood into which he’d stuffed his gloves, to give the impression of a head cautiously revealing itself against the light. He was confident that it would pick up a bolt or a dart, but it remained resolutely unattacked. He was chilly now, despite the heat of the night. Black velvet looked good, but that was about all you could say for it. The excitement and the exertion meant he was now wearing several pints of clammy water. He advanced. There was a thin black wire on the window sill, and a serrated blade screwed to the sash window above it. It was the work of a moment to wedge the sash with more rods and then cut the wire; the window dropped a fraction of an inch. He grinned in the darkness. A sweep with a long rod inside the room revealed that there was a floor, apparently free of obstructions. There was also a wire at about chest height. He drew the rod back, affixed a small hook on the end, sent it back, caught the wire, and tugged. There came the dull smack of a crossbow bolt hitting old plaster. A lump of clay on the end of the same rod, pushed gently across the floor, revealed several caltraps. Teppic hauled them back and inspected them with interest. They were copper. If he’d tried the magnet technique, which was the usual method, he wouldn’t have found them. He thought for a while. He had slip-on priests in his pouch. They were devilish things to prowl around a room in, but he shuffled into them anyway. (Priests were metal-reinforced overshoes. They saved your soles. This is an Assassin joke.) Mericet was a poisons man, after all. Bloat! If he tipped them with that Teppic would plate himself all over the walls. They wouldn’t need to bury him, they’d just redecorate over the top.* (* Bloat is extracted from the deep sea blowfish, Singularis minutia gigantica, which protects itself from enemies by inflating itself to many times its normal size. If taken by humans the effect is to make every cell in the body instantaneously try to swell some 2,000 times. This is invariably fatal, and very loud.) The rules. Mericet would have to obey the rules. He couldn’t simply kill him, with no warning. He’d have to let him, by carelessness or over-confidence, kill himself. He dropped lightly on to the floor inside the room and let his eyes adjust to the darkness. A few exploratory swings with the rods detected no more wires; there was a faint crunch underfoot as a priest crushed a caltrap. “In your own time, Mr Teppic.” Mericet was standing in a corner. Teppic heard the faint scratching of his pencil as he made a note. He tried to put the man out of his mind. He tried to think. There was a figure lying on a bed. It was entirely covered by a blanket. This was the last bit. This was the room where everything was decided. This was the bit the successful students never told you about. The unsuccessful ones weren’t around to ask. Teppic’s mind filled up with options. At a time like this, he thought, some divine guidance would be necessary. Where are you, dad? He envied his fellow students who believed in gods that were intangible and lived a long way away on top of some mountain. A fellow could really believe in gods like that. But it was extremely hard to believe in a god when you saw him at breakfast every day. He unslung his crossbow and screwed its greased sections together. It wasn’t a proper weapon, but he’d run out of knives and his lips were too dry for the blowpipe. There was a clicking from the corner. Mericet was idly tapping his teeth with his pencil. It could be a dummy under there. How would he know? No, it had to be a real person. You heard tales. Perhaps he could try the rods- He shook his head, raised the crossbow, and took careful aim. “Whenever you like Mr Teppic.” This was it. This was where they found out if you could kill. This was what he had been trying to put out of his mind. He knew he couldn’t.   Octeday afternoons was Political Expediency with Lady T’malia, one of the few women to achieve high office in the Guild. In the lands around the Circle Sea it was generally agreed that one way to achieve a long life was not to have a meal with her Ladyship. The jewellery of one hand alone carried enough poison to inhume a small town. She was stunningly beautiful, but with the kind of calculated beauty that is achieved by a team of skilled artists, manicurists, plasterers, corsetiers and dressmakers and three hours’ solid work every morning. When she walked there was a faint squeak of whalebone under incredible stress. The boys were learning. As she talked they didn’t watch her figure. They watched her fingers. “And thus,” she said, “let us consider the position before the founding of the Guild. In this city, and indeed in many places elsewhere, civilisation is nurtured and progresses by the dynamic interplay of interests among many large and powerful advantage cartels. “In the days before the founding of the Guild the seeking of advancement among these consortia invariably resulted in regrettable disagreements which were terminated with extreme prejudice. These were extremely deleterious to the common interest of the city. Please understand that where disharmony rules, commerce flags. “And yet, and yet.” She clasped her hands to her bosom. There was a creak like a galleon beating against a gale. “Clearly there was a need for an extreme yet responsible means of settling irreconcilable differences,” she went on, “and thus was laid the groundwork for the Guild. What bliss - “ the sudden peak in her voice guiltily jerked several dozen young men out of their private reveries - “it must have been to have been present in those early days, when men of stout moral purpose set out to forge the ultimate political tool short of warfare. How fortunate you are now, in training for a guild which demands so much in terms of manners, deportment, bearing and esoteric skills, and yet offers a power once the preserve only of the gods. Truly, the world is the mollusc of your choice . . .” Chidder translated much of this behind the stables during the dinner break. “I know what Terminate with Extreme Prejudice means,” said Cheesewright loftily. “It means to inhume with an axe.” “It bloody well doesn’t,” said Chidder. “How do you know, then?” “My family have been in commerce for years,” said Chidder. “Huh,” said Cheesewright. “Commerce.” Chidder never went into details about what kind of commerce it was. It had something to do with moving items around and supplying needs, but exactly what items and which needs was never made clear. After hitting Cheesewright he explained carefully that Terminate with Extreme Prejudice did not simply require that the victim was inhumed, preferably in an extremely thorough way, but that his associates and employees were also intimately involved, along with the business premises, the building, and a large part of the surrounding neighbourhood, so that everyone involved would know that the man had been unwise enough to make the kind of enemies who could get very angry and indiscriminate. “Gosh,” said Arthur. “Oh, that’s nothing,” said Chidder, “one Hogswatchnight my grandad and his accounts department went and had a high-level business conference with the Hubside people and fifteen bodies were never found. Very bad, that sort of thing. Upsets the business community.” “All the business community, or just that part of it floating face down in the river?” said Teppic. “That’s the point. Better it should be like this,” said Chidder, shaking his head. “You know. Clean. That’s why my father said I should join the Guild. I mean, you’ve got to get on with the business these days, you can’t spend your whole time on public relations.” The end of the crossbow trembled. He liked everything else about the school, the climbing, the music studies, the broad education. It was the fact that you ended up killing people that had been preying on his mind. He’d never killed anyone. That’s the whole point, he told himself. This is where everyone finds out if you can, including you. If I get it wrong now, I’m dead. In his corner, Mericet began to hum a discouraging little tune. There was a price the Guild paid for its licence. It saw to it that there were no careless, half-hearted or, in a manner of speaking, murderously inefficient assassins. You never met anyone who’d failed the test. People did fail. You just never met them. Maybe there was one under there, maybe it was Chidder, even, or Snoxall or any one of the lads. They were all doing the run this evening. Maybe if he failed he’d be bundled under there. Teppic tried to sight on the recumbent figure. “Ahem,” coughed the examiner. His throat was dry. Panic rose like a drunkard’s supper. His teeth wanted to chatter. His spine was freezing, his clothes a collection of damp rags. The world slowed down. No. He wasn’t going to. The sudden decision hit him like a brick in a dark alley, and was nearly as surprising. It wasn’t that he hated the Guild, or even particularly disliked Mericet, but this wasn’t the way to test anyone. It was just wrong. He decided to fail. Exactly what could the old man do about it, here? And he’d fail with flair. He turned to face Mericet, looked peacefully into the examiner’s eyes, extended his crossbow hand in some vague direction to his right, and pulled the trigger. There was a metallic twang. There was a click as the bolt ricocheted off a nail in the window sill. Mericet ducked as it whirred over his head. It hit a torch bracket on the wall, and went past Teppic’s white face purring like a maddened cat. There was a thud as it hit the blanket, and then silence. “Thank you, Mr Teppic. If you could bear with me just one moment.” The old assassin pored over his clipboard, his lips moving. He took the pencil, which dangled from it by a bit of frayed string, and made a few marks on a piece of pink paper. “I will not ask you to take it from my hands,” he said, “what with one thing and another. I shall leave it on the table by the door.” It wasn’t a particularly pleasant smile: it was thin and dried-up, a smile with all the warmth long ago boiled out of it; people normally smiled like that when they had been dead for about two years under the broiling desert sun. But at least you felt he was making the effort. Teppic hadn’t moved. “I’ve passed?” he said. “That would appear to be the case.” “But-” “I am sure you know that we are not allowed to discuss the test with pupils. However, I can tell you that I personally do not approve of these modern flashy techniques. Good morning to you.” And Mericet stalked out. Teppic tottered over to the dusty table by the door and looked down, horrified, at the paper. Sheer habit made him extract a pair of tweezers from his pouch in order to pick it up. It was genuine enough. There was the seal of the Guild on it, and the crabbed squiggle that was undoubtedly Mericet’s signature; he’d seen it often enough, generally at the bottom of test papers alongside comments like 3/10. See me. He padded over to the figure on the bed and pulled back the blanket. It was nearly one in the morning. Ankh-Morpork was just beginning to make a night of it. It had been dark up above the rooftops, in the aerial world of thieves and assassins. But down below the life of the city flowed through the streets like a tide. Teppic walked through the throng in a daze. Anyone else who tried that in the city was asking for a guided tour of the bottom of the river, but he was wearing assassin’s black and the crowd just automatically opened in front of him and closed behind. Even the pickpockets kept away. You never knew what you might find. He wandered aimlessly through the gates of the Guild House and sat down on a black marble seat, with his chin on his knuckles. The fact was that his life had come to an end. He hadn’t thought about what was going to happen next. He hadn’t dared to think that there was going to be a next. Someone tapped him on the shoulder. As he turned, Chidder sat down beside him and wordlessly produced a slip of pink paper. “Snap,” he said. “You passed too?” said Teppic. Chidder grinned. “No problem,” he said. “It was Nivor. No problem. He gave me a bit of trouble on the Emergency Drop, though. How about you?” “Hmm? Oh. No.” Teppic tried to get a grip on himself. “No trouble,” he said. “Heard from any of the others?” “No.” Chidder leaned back. “Cheesewright will make it,” he said loftily, “and young Arthur. I don’t think some of the others will. We could give them twenty minutes, what do you say?” Teppic turned an agonised face towards him. “Chiddy, I- “What?” “When it came to it, I- “What about it?” Teppic looked at the cobbles. “Nothing,” he said. “You’re lucky - you just had a good airy run over the rooftops. I had the sewers and then up the garderobe in the Haberdashers’ Tower. I had to go in and change when I got here.” “You had a dummy, did you?” said Teppic. “Good grief, didn’t you?” “But they let us think it was going to be real!” Teppic wailed. “It felt real, didn’t it?” “Yes!” “Well, then. And you passed. So no problem.” “But didn’t you wonder who might be under the blanket, who it was, and why- “I was worried that I might not do it properly,” Chidder admitted. “But then I thought, well, it’s not up to me.” “But I- “ Teppic stopped. What could he do? Go and explain? Somehow that didn’t seem a terribly good idea. His friend slapped him on the back. “Don’t worry about it!” he said. “We’ve done it!” And Chidder held up his thumb pressed against the first two fingers of his right hand, in the ancient salute of the assassins. A thumb pressed against two fingers, and the lean figure of Dr Cruces, head tutor, looming over the startled boys. “We do not murder,” he said. It was a soft voice; the doctor never raised his voice, but he had a way of giving it the pitch and spin that could make it be heard through a hurricane. “We do not execute. We do not massacre. We never, you may be very certain, we never torture. We have no truck with crimes of passion or hatred or pointless gain. We do not do it for a delight in inhumation, or to feed some secret inner need, or for petty advantage or for some cause or belief; I tell you, gentlemen, that all these reasons are in the highest degree suspect. Look into the face of a man who will kill you for a belief and your nostrils will snuff up the scent of abomination. Hear a speech declaring a holy war and, I assure you, your ears should catch the click of evil’s scales and the dragging of its monstrous tail over the purity of the language. “No, we do it for the money. “And, because we above all must know the value of a human life, we do it for the a great deal of money. “There can be few cleaner motives, so shorn of all pretence. “Nil mortifi, sine lucre. Remember. No killing without payment.” He paused for a moment. “And always give a receipt,” he added.   “So it’s all okay,” said Chidder. Teppic nodded gloomily. That was what was so likeable about Chidder. He had this enviable ability to avoid thinking seriously about anything he did. A figure approached cautiously through the open gates.* (* The gates of the Assassins’ Guild were never shut. This was said to be because Death was open for business all the time, but it was really because the hinges had rusted centuries before and no-one had got around to doing anything about it.) The light from the torch in the porters’ lodge glinted off blond curly hair. “You two made it, then,” said Arthur, nonchalantly flourishing the slip. Arthur had changed quite a lot in seven years. The continuing failure of the Great Orm to wreak organic revenge for lack of piety had cured him of his tendency to run everywhere with his coat over his head. His small size gave him a natural advantage in those areas of the craft involving narrow spaces. His innate aptitude for channelled violence had been revealed on the day when Fliemoe and some cronies had decided it would be fun to toss the new boys in a blanket, and picked Arthur first; ten seconds later it had taken the combined efforts of every boy in the dormitory to hold Arthur back and prise the remains of the chair from his fingers. It had transpired that he was the son of the late Johan Ludorum, one of the greatest assassins in the history of the Guild. Sons of dead assassins always got a free scholarship. Yes, it could be a caring profession at times. There hadn’t been any doubt about Arthur passing. He’d been given extra tuition and was allowed to use really complicated poisons. He was probably going to stay on for post-graduate work. They waited until the gongs of the city struck two. Clock work was not a precise technology in Ankh-Morpork, and many of the city’s variuos communities had their own ideas of what constituted an hour in any case, so the chimes went on bouncing around the rooftops for five minutes. When it was obvious that the city’s consensus was in favour of it being well past two the three of them stopped looking silently at their shoes. “Well, that’s it,” said Chidder. “Poor old Cheesewright,” said Arthur. “It’s tragic, when you think about it.” “Yes, he owed me fourpence,” agreed Chidder. “Come on. I’ve arranged something for us.”   King Teppicymon XXVII got out of bed and clapped his hands over his ears to shut out the roar of the sea. It was strong tonight. It was always louder when he was feeling out of sorts. He needed something to distract himself. He could send for Ptraci, his favourite handmaiden. She was special. Her singing always cheered him up. Life seemed so much brighter when she stopped. Or there was the sunrise. That was always comforting. It was pleasant to sit wrapped in a blanket on the topmost roof of the palace, watching the mists lift from the river as the golden flood poured over the land. You got that warm, contented feeling of another job well done. Even if you didn’t actually know how you’d done it . . . He got up, shuffled on his slippers, and padded out of his bedroom and down the wide corridor that led to the huge spiral stairs and the roof. A few rushlights illuminated the statues of the other local gods, painting the walls with shifting shadow pictures of things dog-headed, fish-bodied, spider-armed. He’d known them since childhood. His juvenile nightmares would have been quite formless without them. The sea. He’d only seen it once, when he was a boy. He couldn’t recall a lot about it, except the size. And the noise. And the seagulls. They’d preyed on his mind. They seemed to have it far better worked out, seagulls. He wished he could come back as one, one day, but of course that wasn’t an option if you were a pharaoh. You never came back. You didn’t exactly go away, in fact.   “Well, what is it?” said Teppic. “Try it,” said Chidder, “just try it. You’ll never have the chance again.” “Seems a shame to spoil it,” said Arthur gallantly looking down at the delicate pattern on his plate. “What are all the little red things?” “They’re just radishes,” said Chidder dismissively. “They’re not the important part. Go on.” Teppic reached over with the little wooden fork and skewered a paper-thin sliver of white fish. The squishi chef was scrutinising him with the air of one watching a toddler on his first birthday. So, he realised, was the rest of the restaurant. He chewed it carefully. It was salty and faintly rubbery, with a hint of sewage outfall. “Nice?” said Chidder anxiously. Several nearby diners started to clap. “Different,” Teppic conceded, chewing. “What is it?” “Deep sea blowfish,” said Chidder. “It’s all right,” he said hastily as Teppic laid down his fork meaningfully, “it’s perfectly safe provided every bit of stomach, liver and digestive tract is removed, that’s why it cost so much, there’s no such thing as a second-best blowfish chef, it’s the most expensive food in the world, people write poems about it-” “Could be a taste explosion,” muttered Teppic, getting a grip on himself. Still, it must have been done properly, otherwise the place would now be wearing him as wallpaper. He poked carefully at the sliced roots which occupied the rest of the plate. “What do these do to you?” he said. “Well, unless they’re prepared in exactly the right way over a six-week period they react catastrophically with your stomach acids,” said Chidder. “Sorry. I thought we should celebrate with the most expensive meal we could afford.” “I see. Fish and chips for Men,” said Teppic. “Do they have any vinegar in this place?” said Arthur, his mouth full. “And some mushy peas would go down a treat.” But the wine was good. Not incredibly good, though. Not one of the great vintages. But it did explain why Teppic had gone through the whole of the day with a headache. It had been the hangunder. His friend had bought four bottles of otherwise quite ordinary white wine. The reason it was so expensive was that the grapes it was made from hadn’t actually been planted yet.* (* Counterwise wine is made from grapes belonging to that class of flora - reannuals - that grow only in excessively high magic fields. Normal plants grow after the seeds have been planted, with reannuals it’s the other way round. Although reannual wine causes inebriation in the normal way, the action of the digestive system on its molecules causes an unusual reaction whose net effect is to thrust the ensuing hangover backwards in time, to a point some hours before the wine is drunk. Hence the saying: have a hair of the dog that’s going to bite you.   Light moves slowly, lazily on the Disc. It’s in no hurry to get anywhere. Why bother? At lightspeed, everywhere is the same place. King Teppicymon XXVII watched the golden disc float over the edge of the world. A flight of cranes took off from the mist-covered river. He’d been conscientious, he told himself. No-one had ever explained to him how one made the sun come up and the river flood and the corn grow. How could they? He was the god, after all. He should know. But he didn’t, so he’d just gone through life hoping like hell that it would all work properly, and that seemed to have done the trick. The trouble was, though, that if it didn’t work, he wouldn’t know why not. A recurrent nightmare was of Dios the high priest shaking him awake one morning, only it wouldn’t be a morning, of course, and of every light in the palace burning and an angry crowd muttering in the star-lit darkness outside and everyone looking expectantly at him. . . And all he’d be able to say was, “Sorry”. It terrified him. How easy to imagine the ice forming on the river, the eternal frost riming the palm trees and snapping off the leaves (which would smash when they hit the frozen ground) and the birds dropping lifeless from the sky Shadow swept over him. He looked up through eyes misted with tears at a grey and empty horizon, his mouth dropping open in horror. He stood up, flinging aside the blanket, and raised both hands in supplication. But the sun had gone. He was the god, this was his job, it was the only thing he was here to do, and he had failed the people. Now he could hear in his mind’s ear the anger of the crowd, a booming roar that began to fill his ears until the rhythm became insistent and familiar, until it reached the point where it pressed in no longer but drew him out, into that salty blue desert where the sun always shone and sleek shapes wheeled across the sky. The pharaoh raised himself on his toes, threw back his head, spread his wings. And leapt. As he soared into the sky he was surprised to hear a thump behind him. And the sun came out from behind the clouds. Later on, the pharaoh felt awfully embarrassed about it.   The three new assassins staggered slowly along the street, constantly on the point of falling over but never quite reaching it, trying to sing “A Wizard’s Staff Has A Knob On The End” in harmony or at least in the same key. “Tis big an” i”ss round an” weighs three to the-” sang Chidder. “Blast, what’ve I stepped in?” “Anyone know where we are?” said Arthur. “We - we were headed for the Guildhouse,” said Teppic, “only must of took the wrong way, that’s the river up ahead. Can smell it.” Caution penetrated Arthur’s armour of alcohol. “Could be dangerous pep - plep - people around, this time o’ night,” he hazarded. “Yep,” said Chidder, with satisfaction, “us. Got ticket to prove it. Got test and everything. Like to see anyone try anything with us.” “Right,” agreed Teppic, leaning against him for support of a sort. “We’ll slit them from wossname to thingy.” “Right!” They lurched uncertainly out on to the Brass Bridge. In fact there were dangerous people around in the pre-dawn shadows, and currently these were some twenty paces behind them. The complex system of criminal Guilds had not actually made Ankh-Morpork a safer place, it just rationalised its dangers and put them on a regular and reliable footing. The major Guilds policed the city with more thoroughness and certainly more success than the old Watch had ever managed, and it was true that any freelance and unlicensed thief caught by the Thieves’ Guild would soon find himself remanded in custody by social inquiry reports plus having his knees nailed together*. (* When the Thieves’ Guild declared a General Strike in the Year of the Engaging Sloth, the actual level of crime doubled.) However, there were always a few spirits who would venture a precarious living outside the lawless, and the five men of this description were closing cautiously on the trio to introduce them to this week’s special offer, a cut throat plus theft and burial in the river mud of your choice. People normally keep out of the way of assassins because of an instinctive feeling that killing people for very large sums of money is disapproved of by the gods (who generally prefer people to be killed for very small sums of money or for free) and could result in hubris, which is the judgement of the gods. The gods are great believers in justice, at least as far as it extends to humans, and have been known to dispense it so enthusiastically that people miles away are turned into cruet. However, assassin’s black doesn’t frighten everyone, and in certain sections of society there is a distinct cachet in killing an assassin. It’s rather like smashing a sixer in conkers. Broadly, therefore, the three even now lurching across the deserted planks of the Brass Bridge were dead drunk assassins and the men behind them were bent on inserting the significant comma. Chidder wandered into one of the heraldic wooden hippopotami* (*One of the two** legends about the founding of Ankh-Morpork relates that the two orphaned brothers who built the city were in fact found and suckled by a hippopotamus (lit. orijeple, although some historians hold that this is a mistranslation of orejaple, a type of glass-fronted drinks cabinet). Eight heraldic hippos line the bridge facing out to sea,. It is said that if danger ever threatens the city, they will run away. (**The other legend, not normally recounted by the citizens, is that at an even earlier time a group of wise men survived a flood sent by the gods by building a huge boat, and on this boat they took two of every type of animal then existing on the Disc. After some weeks the combined manure was beginning to weigh the boat low in the water so - the story runs - they tipped it over the side, and called it Ankh-Morpork.) -that lined the seaward edge of the bridge, bounced off and flopped over the parapet. “Feel sick,” he announced. “Feel free,” said Arthur, “that’s what the river’s for.” Teppic sighed. He was attached to rivers, which he felt were designed to have water lilies on top and crocodiles underneath, and the Ankh always depressed him because if you put a water lily in it, it would dissolve. It drained the huge silty plains all the way to the Ramtop mountains, and by the time it had passed through Ankh-Morpork, pop. One million, it could only be called a liquid because it moved faster than the land around it; actually being sick in it would probably make it, on average, marginally cleaner. He stared down at the thin trickle that oozed between the central pillars, and then raised his gaze to the grey horizon. “Sun’s coming up,” he announced. “Don’t remember eating that,” muttered Chidder. Teppic stepped back, and a knife ripped past his nose and buried itself in the buttocks of the hippo next to him. Five figures stepped out of the mists. The three assassins instinctively drew together. “You come near me, you’ll really regret it,” moaned Chidder, clutching his stomach. “The cleaning bill will be horrible.” “Well now, what have we here?” said the leading thief. This is the sort of thing that gets said in these circumstances. “Thieves’ Guild, are you?” said Arthur. “No,” said the leader, “we’re the small and unrepresentative minority that gets the rest a bad name. Give us your valuables and weapons, please. This won’t make any difference to the outcome, you understand. It’s just that corpse robbing is unpleasant and degrading.” “We could rush them,” said Teppic, uncertainly. “Don’t look at me,” said Arthur, “I couldn’t find my arse with an atlas.” “You’ll really be sorry when I’m sick,” said Chidder. Teppic was aware of the throwing knives stuffed up either sleeve, and that the chances of him being able to get hold of one in time still to be alive to throw it were likely to be very small. At times like this religious solace is very important. He turned and looked towards the sun, just as it withdrew from the cloudbanks of the dawn. There was a tiny dot in the centre of it.   The late King Teppicymon XXVII opened his eyes. “I was flying,” he whispered, “I remember the feeling of wings. What am I doing here?” He tried to stand up. There was a temporary feeling of heaviness, which suddenly dropped away so that he rose to his feet almost without any effort. He looked down to see what had caused it. “Oh dear,” he said. The culture of the river kingdom had a lot to say about death and what happened afterwards. In fact it had very little to say about life, regarding it as a sort of inconvenient prelude to the main event and something to be hurried through as politely as possible, and therefore the pharaoh reached the conclusion that he was dead very quickly. The sight of his mangled body on the sand below him played a major part in this. There was a greyness about everything. The landscape had a ghostly look, as though he could walk straight through it. Of course, he thought, I probably can. He rubbed the analogue of his hands. Well, this is it. This is where it gets interesting; this is where I start to really live. Behind him a voice said, GOOD MORNING. The king turned. “Hallo,” he said. “You’d be-” DEATH, said Death. The king looked surprised. “I understood that Death came as a three-headed giant scarab beetle,” he said. Death shrugged. WELL. NOW YOU KNOW. “What’s that thing in your hand?” THIS? IT’S A SCYTHE. “Strange-looking object, isn’t it?” said the pharaoh. “I thought Death carried the Flail of Mercy and the Reaping Hook of Justice.” Death appeared to think about this. WHAT IN? he said. “Pardon?” ARE WE STILL TALKING ABOUT A GIANT BEETLE? “Ah. In his mandibles, I suppose. But I think he’s got arms in one of the frescoes in the palace.” The king hesitated. “Seems a bit silly, really, now I come to tell someone. I mean, a giant beetle with arms. And the head of an ibis, I seem to recall.” Death sighed. He was not a creature of Time, and therefore past and future were all one to him, but there had been a period when he’d made an effort to appear in whatever form the client expected. This foundered because it was usually impossible to know what the client was expecting until after they were dead. And then he’d decided that, since no-one ever really expected to die anyway, he might as well please himself and he’d henceforth stuck to the familiar black-cowled robe, which was neat and very familiar and acceptable everywhere, like the best credit cards. “Anyway,” said the pharaoh, “I expect we’d better be going.” WHERE TO? “Don’t you know?” I AM HERE ONLY TO SEE THAT YOU DIE AT THE APPOINTED TIME. WHAT HAPPENS NEXT IS UP TO YOU. “Well . . .” The king automatically scratched his chin. “I suppose I have to wait until they’ve done all the preparations and so forth. Mummified me. And built a bloody pyramid. Um. Do I have to hang around here to wait for all that?” I ASSUME SO. Death clicked his fingers and a magnificent white horse ceased its grazing on some of the garden greenery and trotted towards him. “Oh. Well, I think I shall look away. They take all the squishy inside bits out first, you know.” A look of faint worry crossed his face. Things that had seemed perfectly sensible when he was alive seemed a little suspect now that he was dead. “It’s to preserve the body so that it may begin life anew in the Netherworld,” he added, in a slightly perplexed voice. “And then they wrap you in bandages. At least that seems logical.” He rubbed his nose. “But then they put all this food and drink in the pyramid with you. Bit weird, really.” WHERE ARE ONE’S INTERNAL ORGANS AT THIS POINT? “That’s the funny thing, isn’t it? They’re in a jar in the next room,” said the king, his voice edged with doubt. “We even put a damn great model cart in dad’s pyramid.” His frown deepened. “Solid wood, it was,” he said, half to himself, “with gold leaf all over it. And four wooden bullocks to pull it. Then we whacked a damn great stone over the door . . .” He tried to think, and found that it was surprisingly easy. New ideas were pouring into his mind in a cold, clear stream. They had to do with the play of light on the rocks, the deep blue of the sky, the manifold possibilities of the world that stretched away on every side of him. Now that he didn’t have a body to importune him with its insistent demands the world seemed full of astonishments, but unfortunately among the first of them was the fact that much of what you thought was true now seemed as solid and reliable as marsh gas. And also that, just as he was fully equipped to enjoy the world, he was going to be buried inside a pyramid. When you die, the first thing you lose is your life. The next thing is your illusions. I CAN SEE YOU HAVE GOT A LOT TO THINK ABOUT, said Death, mounting up. AND NOW, IF YOU’LL EXCUSE ME- “Hang on a moment-” YES? “When I . . . fell, I could have sworn that I was flying.” THAT PART OF YOU THAT WAS DIVINE DID FLY, NATURALLY. YOU ARE NOW FULLY MORTAL. “Mortal?” TAKE IT FROM ME. I KNOW ABOUT THESE THINGS. “Oh. Look, there’s quite a few questions I’d like to ask-” THERE ALWAYS ARE. I’M SORRY. Death clapped his heels to his horse’s flanks, and vanished. The king stood there as several servants came hurrying along the palace wall, slowed down as they approached his corpse, and advanced with caution. “Are you all right, O jewelled master of the sun?” one of them ventured. “No, I’m not,” snapped the king, who was having some of his basic assumptions about the universe severely raffled, and that never puts anyone in a good mood. “I’m by way of being dead just at the moment. Amazing, isn’t it,” he added bitterly. “Can you hear us, O divine bringer of the morning?” inquired the other servant, tiptoeing closer. “I’ve just fallen off a hundred foot wall on to my head, what do you think?” shouted the king. “I don’t think he can hear us, Jahmet,” said the other servant. “Listen,” said the king, whose urgency was equalled only by the servants’ total inability to hear anything he was saying, “you must find my son and tell him to forget about the pyramid business, at least until I’ve thought about it a bit, there are one or two points which seem a little self-contradictory about the whole afterlife arrangements, and-” “Shall I shout?” said Jahmet. “I don’t think you can shout loud enough. I think he’s dead.” Jahmet looked down at the stiffening corpse. “Bloody hell,” he said eventually. “Well, that’s tomorrow up the spout for a start.” The sun, unaware that it was making its farewell performance, continued to drift smoothly above the rim of the world. And out of it, moving faster than any bird should be able to fly, a seagull bore down on Ankh-Morpork, on the Brass Bridge and eight still figures, on one staring face . Seagulls were common enough in Ankh. But as this one flew over the group it uttered one long, guttural scream that caused three of the thieves to drop their knives. Nothing with feathers ought to have been able to make a noise like that. It had claws in it. The bird wheeled in a tight circle and fluttered to a perch on a convenient wooden hippo, where it glared at the group with mad red eyes. The leading thief tore his fascinated gaze away from it just as he heard Arthur say, quite pleasantly, “This is a number two throwing knife. I got ninety-six per cent for throwing knives. Which eyeball don’t you need?” The leader stared at him. As far as the other young assassins were concerned, he noticed, one was still staring fixedly at the seagull while the other was busy being noisily sick over the parapet. “There’s only one of you,” he said. “There’s five of us. “But soon there will only be four of you,” said Arthur. Moving slowly, like someone in a daze, Teppic reached out his hand to the seagull. With any normal seagull this would have resulted in the loss of a thumb, but the creature hopped on to it with the smug air of the master returning to the old plantation. It seemed to make the thieves increasingly uneasy. Arthur’s smile wasn’t helping either. “That’s a nice bird,” said the leader, in the inanely cheerful tones of the extremely worried. Teppic was dreamily stroking its bullet head. “I think it would be a good idea if you went away,” said Arthur, as the bird shuffled sideways on to Teppic’s wrist. Gripping with webbed feet, thrusting out its wings to maintain its balance, it should have looked clownish but instead looked full of hidden power, as though it was an eagle’s secret identity. When it opened its mouth, revealing a ridiculous purple bird tongue, there was a suggestion that this seagull could do a lot more than menace a seaside tomato sandwich. “Is it magic?” said one of the thieves, and was quickly hushed. “We’ll be going, then,” said the leader, “sorry about the misunderstanding-” Teppic gave him a warm, unseeing smile. Then they all heard the insistent little noise. Six pairs of eyes swivelled around and down; Chidder’s were already in position. Below them, pouring darkly across the dehydrated mud, the Ankh was rising. Dios, First Minister and high priest among high priests, wasn’t a naturally religious man. It wasn’t a desirable quality in a high priest, it affected your judgement, made you unsound. Start believing in things and the whole business became a farce. Not that he had anything against belief. People needed to believe in gods, if only because it was so hard to believe in people. The gods were necessary. He just required that they stayed out of the way and let him get on with things. Mind you, it was a blessing that he had the looks for it. If your genes saw fit to give you a tall frame, a bald head and a nose you could plough rocks with, they probably had a definite aim in mind. He instinctively distrusted people to whom religion came easily. The naturally religious, he felt, were unstable and given to wandering in the desert and having revelations - as if the gods would lower themselves to that sort of thing. And they never got anything done. They started thinking that rituals weren’t important. They started thinking that you could talk to the gods direct. Dios knew, with the kind of rigid and unbending certainty you could pivot the world on, that the gods of Djelibeybi liked ritual as much as anyone else. After all, a god who was against ritual would be like a fish who was against water. He sat on the steps of the throne with his staff across his knees, and passed on the king’s orders. The fact that they were not currently being issued by any king was not a problem. Dios had been high priest now for, well, more years than he cared to remember, he knew quite clearly what orders a sensible king would be giving, and he gave them. Anyway, the Face of the Sun was on the throne, and that was what mattered. It was a solid gold, head-enveloping mask, to be worn by the current ruler on all public occasions; its expression, to the sacrilegious, was one of good-natured constipation. For thousands of years it had symbolised kingship in Djelibeybi. It had also made it very difficult to tell kings apart. This was extremely symbolic as well, although no-one could remember what of. There was a lot of that sort of thing in the Old Kingdom. The staff across his knees, for example, with its very symbolic snakes entwined symbolically around an allegorical camel prod. The people believed this gave the high priests power over the gods and the dead, but this was probably a metaphor, i.e., a lie. Dios shifted position. “Has the king been ushered to the Room of Going Forth?” he said. The circle of lesser high priests nodded. “Dil the embalmer is attending upon him at this instant, O Dios.” “Very well. And the builder of pyramids has been instructed?” Hoot Koomi, high priest of Khefin, the Two-Faced God of Gateways, stepped forward. “I took the liberty of attending to that myself, O Dios,” he purred. Dios tapped his fingers on his staff. “Yes,” he said, “I have no doubt that you did.” It was widely expected by the priesthood that Koomi would be the one to succeed Dios in the event of Dios ever actually dying, although hanging around waiting for Dios to die had never seemed to be a rewarding occupation. The only dissenting opinion was that of Dios himself, who, if he had any friends, would probably have confided in them certain conditions that would need to apply first, viz., blue moons, aerial pigs and he, Dios, being seen in Hell. He would probably have added that the only difference between Koomi and a sacred crocodile was the crocodile’s basic honesty of purpose. “Very well,” he said. “If I may remind your lordship?” said Koomi. The faces of the other priests went a nice safe blank as Dios glared. “Yes, Koomi?” “The prince, O Dios. Has he been summoned?” “No,” said Dios. “Then how will he know?” said Koomi. “He will know,” said Dios firmly. “How will this be?” “He will know. And now you are all dismissed. Go away. See to your gods!” They scurried out, leaving Dios alone on the steps. It had been his accustomed position for so long that he’d polished a groove in the stonework, into which he fitted exactly. Of course the prince would know. It was part of the neatness of things. But in the grooves of his mind, ground deep by the years of ritual and due observance, Dios detected a certain uneasiness. It was not at home in there. Uneasiness was something that happened to other people. He hadn’t got where he was today by allowing room for doubt. Yet there was a tiny thought back there, a tiny certainty, that there was going to be trouble with this new king. Well. The boy would soon learn. They all learned. He shifted position, and winced. The aches and pains were back, and he couldn’t allow that. They got in the way of his duty, and his duty was a sacred trust. He’d have to visit the necropolis again. Tonight. “He’s not himself, you can see that.” “Who is he, then?” said Chidder. They splashed unsteadily down the street, not drunkenly this time, but with the awkward gait of two people trying to do the steering for three. Teppic was walking, but not in a way that gave them any confidence that his mind was having any part of it. Around them doors were being thrown open, curses were being cursed, there was the sound of furniture being dragged up to first-floor rooms. “Must have been a hell of a storm up in the mountains,” said Arthur. “It doesn’t usually flood like this even in the spring.” “Maybe we should burn some feathers under his nose,” suggested Chidder. “That bloody seagull would be favourite,” Arthur growled. “What seagull?” “You saw it.” “Well, what about it?” “You did see it, didn’t you?” Uncertainty flickered its dark flame in Arthur’s eyes. The seagull had disappeared in all the excitement. “My attention was a bit occupied,” said Chidder diffidently. “It must have been those mint wafers they served with the coffee. I thought they were a bit off.” “Definitely a touch eldritch, that bird,” said Arthur. “Look, let’s put him down somewhere while I empty the water out of my boots, can we?” There was a bakery nearby, its doors thrown open so that the trays of new loaves could cool in the early morning. They propped Teppic against the wall. “He looks as though someone hit him on the head,” said Chidder. “No-one did, did they?” Arthur shook his head. Teppic’s face was locked in a gentle grin. Whatever his eyes were focused on wasn’t occupying the usual set of dimensions. “We ought to get him back to the Guild and into the san-” He stopped. There was a peculiar rustling sound behind him. The loaves of bread were bouncing gently on their trays. One or two of them vibrated on to the floor, where they spun around like overturned beetles. Then, their crusts cracking open like eggshells, they sprouted hundreds of green shoots. Within a few seconds the trays were waving stands of young corn, their heads already beginning to fill out and bend over. Through them marched Chidder and Arthur, poker-faced, doing the 100-metre nonchalant walk with Teppic held rigidly between them. “Is it him doing all this?” “I’ve got a feeling that-” Arthur looked behind them, just in case any angry bakers had come out and spotted such aggressively wholemeal produce, and stopped so suddenly that the other two swung around him, like a rudder. They looked thoughtfully at the street. “Not something you see every day, that,” said Chidder at last. “You mean the way there’s grass and stuff growing up everywhere he puts his feet?” “Yes.” Their eyes met. As one, they looked down at Teppic’s shoes. He was already ankle-deep in greenery, which was cracking the centuries-old cobbles in its urgency. Without speaking a word, they gripped his elbows and lifted him into the air. “The san,” said Arthur. “The san,” agreed Chidder. But they both knew, even then, that this was going to involve more than a hot poultice.   The doctor sat back. “Fairly straightforward,” he said, thinking quickly. “A case of mortis portalis tackulatum with complications.” “What’s that mean?” said Chidder. “In layman’s terms,” the doctor sniffed, “he’s as dead as a doornail.” “What are the complications?” The doctor looked shifty. “He’s still breathing,” he said. “Look, his pulse is nearly humming and he’s got a temperature you could fry eggs on.” He hesitated, aware that this was probably too straightforward and easily understood; medicine was a new art on the Disc, and wasn’t going to get anywhere if people could understand it. “Pyrocerebrum ouerf culinaire,” he said, after working it out in his head. “Well, what can you do about it?” said Arthur. “Nothing. He’s dead. All the medical tests prove it. So, er . . . bury him, keep him nice and cool, and tell him to come and see me next week. In daylight, for preference.” “But he’s still breathing!” “These are just reflex actions that might easily confuse the layman,” said the doctor airily. Chidder sighed. He suspected that the Guild, who after all had an unrivalled experience of sharp knives and complex organic compounds, was much better at elementary diagnostics than were the doctors. The Guild might kill people, but at least it didn’t expect them to be grateful for it. Teppic opened his eyes. “I must go home,” he said. “Dead, is he?” said Chidder. The doctor was a credit to his profession. “It’s not unusual for a corpse to make distressing noises after death,” he said valiantly, “which can upset relatives and-” Teppic sat bolt upright. “Also, muscular spasms in the stiffening body can in certain circumstances-” the doctor began, but his heart wasn’t in it any more. Then an idea occurred to him. “It’s a rare and mysterious ailment,” he said, “which is going around a lot at the moment. It’s caused by a - a - by some- thing so small it can’t be detected in any way whatsoever,” he finished, with a self-congratulatory smile on his face. It was a good one, he had to admit. He’d have to remember it. “Thank you very much,” said Chidder, opening the door and ushering him through. “Next time we’re feeling really well, we’ll definitely call you in.” “It’s probably a walrus,” said the doctor, as he was gently but firmly propelled out of the room. “He’s caught a walrus, there’s a lot of it going-” The door slammed shut. Teppic swung his legs off the bed and clutched at his head. “I’ve got to go home,” he repeated. “Why?” said Arthur. “Don’t know. The kingdom wants me.” “You seemed to be taken pretty bad there-” Arthur began. Teppic waved his hands dismissively. “Look,” he said, “please, I don’t want anyone sensibly pointing out things. I don’t want anyone telling me I should rest. None of it matters. I will be back in the kingdom as soon as possible. It’s not a case of must, you understand. I will. And you can help me, Chiddy.” “How?” “Your father has an extremely fast vessel he uses for smuggling,” said Teppic flatly. “He will lend it to me, in exchange for favourable consideration of future trading opportunities. If we leave inside the hour, it will do the journey in plenty of time.” “My father is an honest trader!” “On the contrary. Seventy per cent of his income last year was from undeclared trading in the following commodities-” Teppic’s eyes stared into nothingness - “From illegal transport of gullanes and leuchars, nine per cent. From night-running of untaxed-” “Well, thirty per cent honest,” Chidder admitted, “which is a lot more honest than most. You’d better tell me how you know. Extremely quickly.” “I - don’t know,” said Teppic. “When I was . . . asleep, it seemed I knew everything. Everything about everything. I think my father is dead.” “Oh,” said Chidder. “Gosh, I’m sorry.” “Oh, no. It’s not like that. It’s what he would have wanted. I think he was rather looking forward to it. In our family, death is when you really start to, you know, enjoy life. I expect he’s rather enjoying it.” In fact the pharaoh was sitting on a spare slab in the ceremonial preparation room watching his own soft bits being carefully removed from his body and put into the special Canopic jars. This is not a sight often seen by people - at least, not by people in a position to take a thoughtful interest. He was rather upset. Although he was no longer officially inhabiting his body he was still attached to it by some sort of occult bond, and it is hard to be very happy at seeing two artisans up to the elbows in bits of you. The jokes aren’t funny, either. Not when you are, as it were, the butt. “Look, master Dil,” said Gern, a plump, red-faced young man who the king had learned was the new apprentice. “uk. . . hght. . . watch this, watch this.. . hgk.. your name in lights. Get it? Your name in lights, see?” “Just put them in the jar, boy,” said Dil wearily. “And while we’re on the subject I didn’t think much of the Gottle of Geer routine, either.” “Sorry, master.” “And pass me over a number three brain hook while you’re up that end, will you?” “Coming right up, master,” said Gern. “And don’t jog me. This is a fiddly bit.” “Sure thing.” The king craned nearer. Gern rummaged around at his end of the job and then gave a long, low whistle. “Will you look at the colour of this!” he said. “You wouldn’t think so, would you? Is it something they eat, master?” Dil sighed. “Just put it in the pot, Gern.” “Right you are, master. Master?” “Yes, lad?” “Which bit’s got the god in it, master?” Dil squinted up the king’s nostril, trying to concentrate. “That gets sorted out before he comes down here,” he said patiently. “I wondered,” said Gern, “because there’s not a jar for it, see.” “No. There wouldn’t be. It’d have to be a rather strange jar, Gern.” Gern looked a bit disappointed. “Oh,” he said, “so he’s just ordinary, then, is he?” “In a strictly organic sense,” said Dil, his voice slightly muffled. “Our mum said he was all right as a king,” said Gern. “What do you think?” Dil paused with a jar in his hand, and seemed to give the conversation some thought for the first time. “Never think about it until they come down here,” he said. “I suppose he was better than most. Nice pair of lungs. Clean kidneys. Good big sinuses, which is what I always look for in a king.” He looked down, and delivered his professional judgement. “Pleasure to work with, really.” “Our mum said his heart was in the right place,” said Gern. The king, hovering dismally in the corner, gave a gloomy nod. Yes, he thought. Jar three, top shelf. Dil wiped his hands on a rag, and sighed. Possibly thirty-five years in the funeral business, which had given him a steady hand, a philosophic manner and a keen interest in vegetarianism, had also granted him powers of hearing beyond the ordinary. Because he was almost persuaded that, right beside his ear, someone else sighed too. The king wandered sadly over to the other side of the room, and stared at the dull liquid of the preparation vat. Funny, that. When he was alive it had all seemed so sensible, so obvious. Now he was dead it looked a huge waste of effort. It was beginning to annoy him. He watched Dil and his apprentice tidy up, burn some ceremonial resins, lift him - it - up, carry it respectfully across the room and slide it gently into the oily embrace of the preservative. Teppicymon XXVII gazed into the murky depths at his own body lying sadly on the bottom, like the last pickled gherkin in the jar. He raised his eyes to the sacks in the corner. They were full of straw. He didn’t need telling what was going to be done with it. The boat didn’t glide. It insinuated itself through the water, dancing across the waves on the tips of the twelve oars, spreading like an oil slick, gliding like a bird. It was man black and shaped like a shark. There was no drummer to beat the rhythm. The boat didn’t want the weight. Anyway, he’d have needed the full kit, including snares. Teppic sat between the lines of silent rowers, in the narrow gully that was the cargo hold. Better not to speculate what cargoes. The boat looked designed to move very small quantities of things very quickly and without anyone noticing, and he doubted whether even the Smugglers’ Guild was aware of its existence. Commerce was more interesting than he thought. They found the delta with suspicious ease - how many times had this whispering shadow slipped up the river, he wondered - and above the exotic smells from the mysterious former cargo he could detect the scents of home. Crocodile dung. Reed pollen. Waterlily blossoms. Lack of plumbing. The rank of lions and reek of hippos. The leading oarsman tapped him gently on the shoulder and motioned him up, steadied him as he stepped overboard into a few feet of water. By the time he’d waded ashore the boat had turned and was a mere suspicion of a shadow downstream. Because he was naturally curious, Teppic wondered where it would lie up during the day, since it had the look about it of a boat designed to travel only under cover of darkness, and decided that it’d probably lurk somewhere in the high reed marshes on the delta. And because he was now a king, he made a mental note to have the marshes patrolled periodically from now on. A king should know things. He stopped, ankle deep in river ooze. He had known everything. Arthur had rambled on vaguely about seagulls and rivers and loaves of bread sprouting, which suggested he’d drunk too much. All Teppic could remember was waking up with a terrible sense of loss, as his memory failed to hold and leaked away its new treasures. It was like the tremendous insights that come in dreams and vanish on waking. He’d known everything, but as soon as he tried to remember what it was it poured out of his head, as from a leaky bucket. But it had left him with a new sensation. Before, his life had been ambling along, bent by circumstance. Now it was clicking along on bright rails. Perhaps he hadn’t got it in him to be an assassin, but he knew he could be a king. His feet found solid ground. The boat had dropped him off a little way downstream of the palace and, blue in the moonlight, the pyramid flares on the far bank were filling the night with their familiar glow. The abodes of the happy dead came in all sizes although not, of course, in all shapes. They clustered thickly nearer the city, as though the dead like company. And even the oldest ones were all complete. No-one had borrowed any of the stones to build houses or make roads. Teppic felt obscurely proud of that. No-one had unsealed the doors and wandered around inside to see if the dead had any old treasures they weren’t using any more. And every day, without fail, food was left in the little antechambers; the commissaries of the dead occupied a large part of the palace. Sometimes the food went, sometimes it didn’t. The priests, however, were very clear on this point. Regardless of whether the food was consumed or not, it had been eaten by the dead. Presumably they enjoyed it; they never complained, or came back for seconds. Look after the dead, said the priests, and the dead would look after you. After all, they were in the majority. Teppic pushed aside the reeds. He straightened his clothing, brushed some mud off his sleeve and set off for the palace. Ahead of him, dark against the flarelight, stood the great statue of Khuft. Seven thousand years ago Khuft had led his people out of - Teppic couldn’t remember, but somewhere where they hadn’t liked being, probably, and for thoroughly good reasons; it was at times like this he wished he knew more history - and had prayed in the desert and the gods of the place had shown him the Old Kingdom. And he had entered, yea, and taken possession thereof, that it should ever be the dwelling place of his seed. Something like that, anyway. There were probably more yeas and a few verilys, with added milk and honey. But the sight of that great patriarchal face, that outstretched arm, that chin you could crack stones on, bold in the flarelight, told him what he already knew. He was home, and he was never going to leave again. The sun began to rise.   The greatest mathematician alive on the Disc, and in fact the last one in the Old Kingdom, stretched out in his stall and counted the pieces of straw in his bedding. Then he estimated the number of nails in the wall. Then he spent a few minutes proving that an automorphic resonance field has a semi-infinite number of irresolute prime ideals. After that, in order to pass the time, he ate his breakfast again.     BOOK II The Book of the Dead Two weeks went past. Ritual and ceremony in their due times kept the world under the sky and the stars in their courses. It was astonishing what ritual and ceremony could do. The new king examined himself in the mirror, and frowned. “What’s it made of?” he said. “It’s rather foggy.” “Bronze, sire. Polished bronze,” said Dios, handing him the Flail of Mercy. “In Ankh-Morpork we had glass mirrors with silver on the back. They were very good.” “Yes, sire. Here we have bronze, sire.” “Do I really have to wear this gold mask?” “The Face of the Sun, sire. Handed down through all the ages. Yes, sire. On all public occasions, sire.” Teppic peered out through the eye slots. It was certainly a handsome face. It smiled faintly. He remembered his father visiting the nursery one day and forgetting to take it off; Teppic had screamed the place down. “It’s rather heavy.” “It is weighted with the centuries,” said Dios, and passed over the obsidian Reaping Hook of Justice. “Have you been a priest long, Dios?” “Many years, sire, man and eunuch. Now-” “Father said you were high priest even in grandad’s time. You must be very old.” “Well-preserved, sire. The gods have been kind to me,” said Dios, in the face of the evidence. “And now, sire, if we could just hold this as well . . . “What is it?” “The Honeycomb of Increase, sire. Very important.” Teppic juggled it into position. “I expect you’ve seen a lot of changes,” he said politely. A look of pain passed over the old priest’s face, but quickly, as if it was in a hurry to get away. “No, sire,” he said smoothly, “I have been very fortunate.” “Oh. What’s this?” “The Sheaf of Plenty, sire. Extremely significant, very symbolic.” “If you could just tuck it under my arm, then. . . Have you ever heard of plumbing, Dios?” The priest snapped his fingers at one of the attendants. “No, sire,” he said, and leaned forward. “This is the Asp of Wisdom. I’ll just tuck it in here, shall I?” “It’s like buckets, but not as, um, smelly.” “Sounds dreadful, sire. The smell keeps bad influences away, I have always understood. This, sire, is the Gourd of the Waters of the Heavens. If we could just raise our chin . . .” “This is all necessary, is it?” said Teppic indistinctly. “It is traditional, sire. If we could just rearrange things a little, sire. . . here is the Three-Pronged Spear of the Waters of the Earth; I think we will be able to get this finger around it. We shall have to see about our marriage, sire.” “I’m not sure we would be compatible, Dios.” The high priest smiled with his mouth. “Sire is pleased to jest, sire,” he said urbanely. “However, it is essential that you marry.” “I am afraid all the girls I know are in Ankh-Morpork,” said Teppic airily, knowing in his heart that this broad statement referred to Mrs Collar, who had been his bedder in the sixth form, and one of the serving wenches who’d taken a shine to him and always gave him extra gravy. (But . . . and his blood pounded at the memory.. . there had been the annual Assassins’ Ball and, because the young assassins were trained to move freely in society and were expected to dance well, and because well-cut black silk and long legs attracted a certain type of older woman, they’d whirled the night away through baubons, galliards and slow-stepping pavonines, until the air thickened with musk and hunger. Chidder, whose simple open face and easygoing manner were a winner every time, came back to bed very late for days afterwards and tended to fall asleep during lessons . . “Quite unsuitable, sire. We would require a consort well-versed in the observances. Of course, our aunt is available, sire.” There was a clatter. Dios sighed, and motioned the attendants to pick things up. “If we could just begin again, sire? This is the Cabbage of Vegetative Increase-” “Sorry,” said Teppic, “I didn’t hear you say I should marry my aunt, did I?” “You did, sire. Interfamilial marriage is a proud tradition of our lineage,” said Dios. “But my aunt is my aunt!” Dios rolled his eyes. He’d advised the late king repeatedly about the education of his son, but the man was stubborn, stubborn. Now he’d have to do it on the fly. The gods were testing him, he decided. It took decades to make a monarch, and he had weeks to do it in. “Yes, sire,” he said patiently. “Of course. And she is also your uncle, your cousin and your father.” “Hold on. My father-” The priest raised his hand soothingly. “A technicality,” he said. “Your great-great-grandmother once declared she is king as a matter of political expediency and I don’t believe the edict is ever rescinded.” “But she was a woman, though?” Dios looked shocked. “Oh no, sire. She is a man. She herself declared this.” “But look, a chap’s aunt-” “Quite so, sire. I quite understand.” “Well, thank you,” said Teppic. “It is a great shame that we have no sisters.” “Sisters!” “It does not do to water the divine blood, sire. The sun might not like it. Now this, sire, is the Scapula of Hygiene. Where would you like it put?”   King Teppicymon XXVII was watching himself being stuffed. It was just as well he didn’t feel hunger these days. Certainly he would never want to eat chicken again. “Very nice stitching there, master.” “Just keep your finger still, Gern.” “My mother does stitching like that. She’s got a pinny with stitching like that, has our mum,” said Gern conversationally. “Keep it still, I said.” “It’s got all ducks and hens on it,” Gern supplied helpfully. Dil concentrated on the job in hand. It was good workmanship, he was prepared to admit. The Guild of Embalmers and Allied Trades had awarded him medals for it. “It must make you feel really proud,” said Gern. “What?” “Well, our mam says the king goes on living, sort of thing, after all this stuffing and stitching. Sort of in the Netherworld. With your stitching in him.” And several sacks of straw and a couple of buckets of pitch, thought the shade of the king sadly. And the wrapping off Gern’s lunch, although he didn’t blame the lad, who’d just forgotten where he’d put it. All eternity with someone’s lunch wrapping as part of your vital organs. There had been half a sausage left, too. He’d become quite attached to Dil, and even to Gern. He seemed still to be attached to his body, too - at least, he felt uncomfortable if he wandered more than a few hundred yards away from it - and so in the course of the last couple of days he’d learned quite a lot about them. Funny, really. He’d spent the whole of his life in the kingdom talking to a few priests and so forth. He knew objectively there had been other people around - servants and gardeners and so forth - but they figured in his life as blobs. He was at the top, and then his family, and then the priests and the nobles of course, and then there were the blobs. Damn fine blobs, of course, some of the finest blobs in the world, as loyal a collection of blobs as a king might hope to rule. But blobs, none the less. But now he was absolutely engrossed in the daily details of Dil’s shy hopes for advancement within the Guild, and the unfolding story of Gern’s clumsy overtures to Glwenda, the garlic farmer’s daughter who lived nearby. He listened in fascinated astonishment to the elaboration of a world as full of subtle distinctions of grade and station as the one he had so recently left; it was terrible to think that he might never know if Gern overcame her father’s objections and won his intended, or if Dil’s work on this job - on him - would allow him to aspire to the rank of Exalted Grand Ninety-Degree Variance of the Matron Lodge of the Guild of Embalmers and Allied Trades. It was as if death was some astonishing optical device which turned even a drop of water into a complex hive of life. He found an overpowering urge to counsel Dil on elementary politics, or apprise Gern of the benefits of washing and looking respectable. He tried it several times. They could sense him, there was no doubt about that. But they just put it down to draughts. Now he watched Dil pad over to the big table of bandages, and come back with a thick swatch which he held reflectively against what even the king was now prepared to think of as his corpse. “I think the linen,” he said at last. “It’s definitely his colour.” Gern put his head on one side. “He’d look good in the hessian,” he said. “Or maybe the calico.” “Not the calico. Definitely not the calico. On him it’s too big.” “He could moulder into it. With wear, you know.” Dil snorted. “Wear? Wear? You shouldn’t talk to me about calico and wear. What happens if someone robs the tomb in a thousand years’ time and him in calico, I’d like to know.  He’d lurch halfway down the corridor, maybe throttle one of them, I’ll grant you, but then he’s coming undone, right? The elbows’ll be out in no time, I’ll never live it down.” “But you’ll be dead, master!” “Dead? What’s that got to do with it?” Dil riffled through the samples. “No, it’ll be the hessian. Got plenty of give in it, hessian. Good traction, too. He’ll really be able to lurch up speed in the passages, if he ever needs to.” The king sighed. He’d have preferred something lightweight in taffeta. “And go and shut the door,” Dil added. “It’s getting breezy in here.”   “And now it’s time,” said the high priest, “for us to see our late father.” He allowed himself a quiet smile. “I am sure he is looking forward to it,” he added. Teppic considered this. It wasn’t something he was looking forward to, but at least it would get everyone’s mind off him marrying relatives. He reached down in what he hoped was a kingly fashion to stroke one of the palace cats. This also was not a good move. The creature sniffed it, went cross-eyed with the effort of thought, and then bit his fingers. “Cats are sacred,” said Dios, shocked at the words Teppic uttered. “Long-legged cats with silver fur and disdainful expressions are, maybe,” said Teppic, nursing his hand, “I don’t know about this sort. I’m sure sacred cats don’t leave dead ibises under the bed. And I’m certain that sacred cats that live surrounded by endless sand don’t come indoors and do it in the king’s sandals, Dios.” “All cats are cats,” said Dios, vaguely, and added, “If we would be so gracious as to follow us.” He motioned Teppic towards a distant arch. Teppic followed slowly. He’d been back home for what seemed like ages, and it still didn’t feel right. The air was too dry. The clothes felt wrong. It was too hot. Even the buildings seemed wrong. The pillars, for one thing. Back home, back at the Guild, pillars were gracefull fluted things with little bunches of stone grapes and things around the top. Here they were massive pear-shaped lumps, where all the stone had run to the bottom. Half a dozen servants trailed behind him, carrying the various items of regalia. He tried to imitate Dios’s walk, and found the movements coming back to him. You turned your torso this way, then you turned your head this way, and extended your arms at forty-five degrees to your body with the palms down, and then you attempted to move. The high priest’s staff raised echoes as it touched the flagstones. A blind man could have walked barefoot through the palace by tracing the time-worn dimples it had created over the years. “I am afraid that we will find that our father has changed somewhat since we last saw him,” said Dios conversationally, as they undulated by the fresco of Queen Khaphut accepting Tribute from the Kingdoms of the World. “Well, yes,” said Teppic, bewildered by the tone. “He’s dead, isn’t he?” “There’s that, too,” said Dios, and Teppic realised that he hadn’t been referring to something as trivial as the king’s current physical condition. He was lost in a horrified admiration. It wasn’t that Dios was particularly cruel or uncaring, it was simply that death was a mere irritating transition in the eternal business of existence. The fact that people died was just an inconvenience, like them being out when you called. It’s a strange world, he thought. It’s all busy shadows, and it never changes. And I’m part of it. “Who’s he?” he said, pointing to a particularly big fresco showing a tall man with a hat like a chimney and a beard like a rope riding a chariot over a lot of other, much smaller, people. “His name is in the cartouche below,” said Dios primly. “What?” “The small oval, sire,” said Dios. Teppic peered closely at the dense hieroglyphics. “”Thin eagle, eye, wiggly line, man with a stick, bird sitting down, wiggly line”,” he read. Dios winced. “I believe we must apply ourselves more to the study of modem languages,” he said, recovering a bit. “His name is Pta-ka-ba. He is king when the Djel Empire extends from the Circle Sea to the Rim Ocean, when almost half the continent pays tribute to us.” Teppic realised what it was about the man’s speech that was strange. Dios would bend any sentence to breaking point if it meant avoiding a past tense. He pointed to another fresco. “And her?” he said. “She is Queen Khat-leon-ra-pta,” said Dios. “She wins the kingdom of Howandaland by stealth. This is the time of the Second Empire.” “But she is dead?” said Teppic. “I understand so,” said the high priest, after the slightest of pauses. Yes. The past tense definitely bothered Dios. “I have learned seven languages,” said Teppic, secure in the knowledge that the actual marks he had achieved in three of them would remain concealed in the ledgers of the Guild. “Indeed, sire?” “Oh, yes. Morporkian, Vanglemesht, Ephebe, Laotation and several others . . .” said Teppic. “Ah.” Dios nodded, smiled, and continued to proceed down the corridor, limping slightly but still measuring his pace like the ticking of centuries. “The barbarian lands.” Teppic looked at his father. The embalmers had done a good job. They were waiting for him to tell them so. Part of him, which still lived in Ankh-Morpork, said: this is a dead body, wrapped up in bandages, surely they can’t think that this will help him get better? In Ankh, you die and they bury you or burn you or throw you to the ravens. Here, it just means you slow down a bit and get given all the best food. It’s ridiculous, how can you run a kingdom like this? They seem to think that being dead is like being deaf, you just have to speak up a bit. But a second, older voice said: We’ve run a kingdom like this for seven thousand years. The humblest melon farmer has a lineage that makes kings elsewhere look like mayflies. We used to own the continent, before we sold it again to pay for pyramids. We don’t even think about other countries less than three thousand years old. It all seems to work. “Hallo, father,” he said. The shade of Teppicymon XXVII, which had been watching him closely, hurried across the room. “You’re looking well!” he said. “Good to see you! Look, this is urgent. Please pay attention, it’s about death-” “He says he is pleased to see you,” said Dios. “You can hear him?” said Teppic. “I didn’t hear anything.” “The dead, naturally, speak through the priests,” said the priest. “That is the custom, sire.” “But he can hear me, can he?” “Of course.” “I’ve been thinking about this whole pyramid business and, look, I’m not certain about it.” Teppic leaned closer. “Auntie sends her love,” he said loudly. He thought about this. “That’s my aunt, not yours.” I hope, he added. “I say? I say? Can you hear me?” “He bids you greetings from the world beyond the veil,” said Dios. “Well, yes, I suppose I do, but LOOK, I don’t want you to go to a lot of trouble and build-” “We’re going to build you a marvellous pyramid, father. You’ll really like it there. There’ll be people to look after you and everything.” Teppic glanced at Dios for reassurance. “He’ll like that, won’t he?” “I don’t WANT one!” screamed the king. “There’s a whole interesting eternity I haven’t seen yet. I forbid you to put me in a pyramid!” “He says that is very proper, and you are a dutiful son,” said Dios. “Can you see me? How many fingers am I holding up? Think it’s fun, do you, spending the rest of your death under a million tons of rock, watching yourself crumble to bits? Is that your idea of a good epoch?” “It’s rather draughty in here, sire,” said Dios. “Perhaps we should get on.” “Anyway, you can’t possibly afford it!” “And we’ll put your favourite frescoes and statues in with you. You’ll like that, won’t you,” said Teppic desperately. “All your bits and pieces around you.” “He will like it, won’t be?” he asked Dios, as they walked back to the throne room. “Only, I don’t know, I somehow got a feeling he isn’t too happy about it.” “I assure you, sire,” said Dios, “he can have no other desire.” Back in the embalming room King Teppicymon XXVII tried to tap Gern on the shoulder, which had no effect. He gave up and sat down beside himself. “Don’t do it, lad,” he said bitterly. “Never have descendants.”   And then there was the Great Pyramid itself. Teppic’s footsteps echoed on the marble tiles as he walked around the model. He wasn’t sure what one was supposed to do here. But kings, he suspected, were often put in that position; there was always the good old fallback, which was known as taking an interest. “Well, well,” he said. “How long have you been designing pyramids?” Ptaclusp, architect and jobbing pyramid builder to the nobility, bowed deeply. “All my life, O light of noonday.” “It must be fascinating,” said Teppic. Ptaclusp looked sidelong at the high priest, who nodded. “It has its points, O fount of waters,” he ventured. He wasn’t used to kings talking to him as though he was a human being. He felt obscurely that it wasn’t right. Teppic waved a hand at the model on its podium. “Yes,” he said uncertainly. “Well. Good. Four walls and a pointy tip. Jolly good. First class. Says it all, really.” There still seemed to be too much silence around. He plunged on. “Good show,” he said. “I mean; there’s no doubt about it. This is.. . a. . . pyramid. And what a pyramid it is! Indeed.” This still didn’t seem enough. He sought for something else. “People will look at it in centuries to come and they’ll say, they’ll say . . . that is a pyramid. Um.” He coughed. “The walls slope nicely,” he croaked. “But,” he said. Two pairs of eyes swivelled towards his. “Um,” he said. Dios raised an eyebrow. “Sire?” “I seem to remember once, my father said that, you know, when he died, he’d quite like to, sort of thing, be buried at sea.” There wasn’t the choke of outrage he had expected. “He meant the delta. It’s very soft ground by the delta,” said Ptaclusp. “It’d take months to get decent footings in. Then there’s your risk of sinking. And the damp. Not good, damp, inside a pyramid.” “No,” said Teppic, sweating under Dios’s gaze, “I think what he meant was, you know, in the sea.” Ptaclusp’s brow furrowed. “Tricky, that,” he said thoughtfully. “Interesting idea. I suppose one could build a small one, a million tonner, and float it out on pontoons or something. . .” “No,” said Teppic, trying not to laugh, “I think what he meant was, buried without-” “Teppicymon XXVII means that he would want to be buried without delay,” said Dios, his voice like greased silk. “And there is no doubt that he would require to honour the very best you can build, architect.” “No, I’m sure you’ve got it wrong,” said Teppic. Dios’s face froze. Ptaclusp’s slid into the waxen expression of someone with whom it is, suddenly, nothing to do. He started to stare at the floor as if his very survival depended on his memorising it in extreme detail. “Wrong?” said Dios. “No offence. I’m sure you mean well,” said Teppic. “It’s just that, well, he seemed very clear about it at the time and-” “I mean well?” said Dios, tasting each word as though it was a sour grape. Ptaclusp coughed. He had finished with the floor. Now he started on the ceiling. Dios took a deep breath. “Sire,” he said, “we have always been pyramid builders. All our kings are buried in pyramids. It is how we do things, sire. It is how things are done.” “Yes, but-” “It does not admit of dispute,” said Dios. “Who could wish for anything else? Sealed with all artifice against the desecrations of Time-” now the oiled silk of his voice became armour, hard as steel, scornful as spears - “Shielded for all Time against the insults of Change.” Teppic glanced down at the high priest’s knuckles. They were white, the bone pressing through the flesh as though in a rage to escape. His gaze slid up the grey-clad arm to Dios’s face. Ye gods, he thought, it’s really true, he does look like they got tired of waiting for him to die and pickled him anyway. Then his eyes met those of the priest, more or less with a clang. He felt as though his flesh was being very slowly blown off his bones. He felt that he was no more significant than a mayfly. A necessary mayfly, certainly, a mayfly that would be accorded all due respect, but still an insect with all the rights thereof. And as much free will, in the fury of that gaze, as a scrap of papyrus in a hurricane. “The king’s will is that he be interred in a pyramid,” said Dios, in the tone of voice the Creator must have used to sketch out the moon and stars. “Er,” said Teppic. “The finest of pyramids for the king,” said Dios. Teppic gave up. “Oh,” he said. “Good. Fine. Yes. The very best, of course.” Ptaclusp beamed with relief, produced his wax tablet with a flourish, and took a stylus from the recesses of his wig. The important thing, he knew, was to clinch the deal as soon as possible. Let things slip in a situation like this” and a man could find himself with 1,500,000 tons of bespoke limestone on his hands. “Then that will be the standard model, shall we say, O water in the desert?” Teppic looked at Dios, who was standing and glaring at nothing now, staring the bulldogs of Entropy into submission by willpower alone. “I think something larger,” he ventured hopelessly. “That’s the Executive,” said Ptaclusp. “Very exclusive, O base of the eternal column. Last you a perpetuality. Also our special offer this aeon is various measurements of paracosmic significance built into the very fabric at no extra cost.” He gave Teppic an expectant look. “Yes. Yes. That will be fine,” said Teppic. Dios took a deep breath. “The king requires far more than that,” be said. “I do?” said Teppic, doubtfully. “Indeed, sire. It is your express wish that the greatest of monuments is erected for your father,” said Dios smoothly. This was a contest, Teppic knew, and he didn’t know the rules or how to play and he was going to lose. “It is? Oh. Yes. Yes. I suppose it is, really. Yes.” “A pyramid unequalled along the Djel,” said Dios. “That is the command of the king. It is only right and proper.” “Yes, yes, something like that. Er. Twice the normal size,” said Teppic desperately, and had the brief satisfaction of seeing Dios look momentarily disconcerted. “Sire?” he said. “It is only right and proper,” said Teppic. Dios opened his mouth to protest, saw Teppic’s expression, and shut it again. Ptaclusp scribbled busily, his adam’s apple bobbing. Something like this only happened once in a business career. “Can do you a very nice black marble facing on the outside,” he said, without looking up. “We may have just enough in the quarry. O king of the celestial orbs,” he added hurriedly. “Very good,” said Teppic. Ptaclusp picked up a fresh tablet. “Shall we say the capstone picked out in electrum? It’s cheaper to have built in right from the start, you don’t want to use just silver and then say later, I wish I’d had a-” “Electrum, yes.” “And the usual offices?” “What?” “The burial chamber, that is, and the outer chamber. I’d recommend the Memphis, very select, that comes with a matching extra large treasure room, so handy for all those little things one cannot bear to leave behind.” Ptaclusp turned the tablet over and started on the other side. “And of course a similar suite for the Queen, I take it? O King who shall live forever.” “Eh? Oh, yes. Yes. I suppose so,” said Teppic, glancing at Dios. “Everything. You know.” “Then there’s mazes,” said Ptaclusp, trying to keep his voice steady. “Very popular this era. Very important, your maze, it’s no good deciding you ought to have put a maze in after the robbers have been. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I’d go for the Labrys every time. Like we say, they may get in all right, but they’ll never get out. It costs that little bit extra, but what’s money at a time like this? O master of the waters.” Something we don’t have, said a warning voice in the back of Teppic’s head. He ignored it. He was in the grip of destiny. “Yes,” he said, straightening up. “The Labrys. Two of them.” Ptaclusp’s stylus went through his tablet. “His ‘n’ hers, O stone of stones,” he croaked. “Very handy, very convenient. With selection of traps from stock? We can offer deadfalls, pitfalls, sliders, rolling balls, dropping spears, arrows-” “Yes, yes,” said Teppic. “We’ll have them. We’ll have them all. All of them.” The architect took a deep breath. “And of course you’ll require all the usual steles, avenues, ceremonial sphinxes-” he began. “Lots,” said Teppic. “We leave it entirely up to you.” Ptaclusp mopped his brow. “Fine,” he said. “Marvellous.” He blew his nose. “Your father, if I may make so bold, O sower of the seed, is extremely fortunate in having such a dutiful son. I may add-” “You may go,” said Dios. “And we will expect work to start imminently.” “Without delay, I assure you,” said Ptaclusp. “Er.” He seemed to be wrestling with some huge philosophical problem. “Yes?” said Dios coldly. “It’s uh. There’s the matter of uh. Which is not to say uh. Of course, oldest client, valued customer, but the fact is that uh. Absolutely no doubt about credit worthiness uh. Would not wish to suggest in any way whatsoever that uh.” Dios gave him a stare that would have caused a sphinx to blink and look away. “You wish to say something?” he said. “His majesty’s time is extremely limited.” Ptaclusp worked his jaw silently, but the result was a foregone conclusion. Even gods had been reduced to sheepish mumbling in the face of Dios’s face. And the carved snakes on his staff seemed to be watching him too. “Uh. No, no. Sorry. I was just, uh, thinking aloud. I’ll depart, then, shall I? Such a lot of work to be done. Uh.” He bowed low. He was halfway to the archway before Dios added: “Completion in three months. In time for Inundation.”* (* Like many river valley cultures the Kingdom has no truck with such trivia as summer, springtime and winter, and bases its calendar squarely on the great heartbeat of the Djel; hence the three seasons. Seedtime, Inundation and Sog. This is logical, straightforward and practical, and only disapproved of by barbershop quartets.**) (** Because you feel an idiot singing “In the Good Old Inundation”, that’s why.) “What?” “You are talking to the 1,398th monarch,” said Dios icily. Ptaclusp swallowed. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, “I mean, what?, O great king. I mean, block haulage alone will take. Uh.” The architect’s lips trembled as he tried out various comments and, in his imagination, ran them full tilt into Dios’s stare. “Tsort wasn’t built in a day,” he mumbled. “We do not believe we laid the specifications for that job,” said Dios. He gave Ptaclusp a smile. In some ways it was worse than everything else. “We will, of course,” he said, “pay extra.” “But you never pa-” Ptaclusp began, and then sagged. “The penalties for not completing on time will, of course, be terrible,” said Dios. “The usual clause.” Ptaclusp hadn’t the nerve left to argue. “Of course,” he said, utterly defeated. “It is an honour. Will your eminences excuse me? There are still some hours of daylight left.” Teppic nodded. “Thank you,” said the architect. “May your loins be truly fruitful. Saving your presence, Lord Dios.” They heard him running down the steps outside. “It will be magnificent. Too big, but - magnificent,” said Dios. He looked out between the pillars at the necropolic panorama on the far bank of the Djel. “Magnificent,” he repeated. He winced once more at the stab of pain in his leg. Ah. He’d have to cross the river again tonight, no doubt of it. He’d been foolish, putting it off for days. But it would be unthinkable not to be in a position to serve the kingdom properly. “Something wrong, Dios?” said Teppic. “Sire?” “You looked a bit pale, I thought.” A look of panic flickered over Dios’s wrinkled features. He pulled himself upright. “I assure you, sire, I am in the best of health. The best of health, sire!” “You don’t think you’ve been overdoing it, do you?” This time there was no mistaking the expression of terror. “Overdoing what, sire?” “You’re always bustling, Dios. First one up, last one to bed. You should take it easy.” “I exist only to serve, sire,” said Dios, firmly. “I exist only to serve.” Teppic joined him on the balcony. The early evening sun glowed on a man-made mountain range. This was only the central massif; the pyramids stretched from the delta all the way up to the second cataract, where the Djel disappeared into the mountains. And the pyramids occupied the best land, near the river. Even the farmers would have considered it sacrilegious to suggest anything different. Some of the pyramids were small, and made of rough-hewn blocks that contrived to look far older than the mountains that fenced the valley from the high desert. After all, mountains had always been there. Words like “young” and “old” didn’t apply to them. But those first pyramids had been built by human beings, little bags of thinking water held up briefly by fragile accumulations of calcium, who had cut rocks into pieces and then painfully put them back together again in a better shape. They were old. Over the millennia the fashions had fluctuated. Later pyramids were smooth and sharp, or flattened and tiled with mica. Even the steepest of them, Teppic mused, wouldn’t rate more than 1.O on any edificeer’s scale, although some of the stelae and temples, which flocked around the base of the pyramids like tugboats around the dreadnoughts of eternity, could be worthy of attention. Dreadnoughts of eternity, he thought, sailing ponderously through the mists of Time with every passenger travelling first class . . . A few stars had been let out early. Teppic looked up at them. Perhaps, he thought, there is life somewhere else. On the stars, maybe. If it’s true that there are billions of universes stacked alongside one another, the thickness of a thought apart, then there must be people elsewhere. But wherever they are, no matter how mightily they try, no matter how magnificent the effort, they surely can’t manage to be as godawfully stupid as us. I mean, we work at it. We were given a spark of it to start with, but over hundreds of thousands of years we’ve really improved on it. He turned to Dios, feeling that he ought to repair a little bit of the damage. “You can feel the age radiating off them, can’t you,” he said conversationally. “Pardon, sire?” “The pyramids, Dios. They’re so old.” Dios glanced vaguely across the river. “Are they?” he said. “Yes, I suppose they are.” “Will you get one?” said Teppic. “A pyramid?” said Dios. “Sire, I have one already. It pleased one of your forebears to make provision for me.” “That must have been a great honour,” said Teppic. Dios nodded graciously. The staterooms of forever were usually reserved for royalty. “It is, of course, very small. Very plain. But it will suffice for my simple needs.” “Will it?” said Teppic, yawning. “That’s nice. And now, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll turn in. It’s been a long day.” Dios bowed as though he was hinged in the middle. Teppic had noticed that Dios had at least fifty finely-tuned ways of bowing, each one conveying subtle shades of meaning. This one looked like No.3, I Am Your Humble Servant. “And a very good day it was too, if I may say so, sire.” Teppic was lost for words. “You thought so?” he said. “The cloud effects at dawn were particularly effective.” “They were? Oh. Do I have to do anything about the sunset?” “Your majesty is pleased to joke,” said Dios. “Sunsets happen by themselves, sire. Haha.” “Haha,” echoed Teppic. Dios cracked his knuckles. “The trick is in the sunrise,” he said. The crumbling scrolls of Knot said that the great orange sun was eaten every evening by the sky goddess, What, who saved one pip in time to grow a fresh sun for next morning. And Dios knew that this was so. The Book of Staying in The Pit said that the sun was the Eye of Yay, toiling across the sky each day in His endless search for his toenails.* (* Lit. “Dhar-ret-kar-mon”, or “clipping of the foot”. But some scholars say that it should be “Dar-rhet-kare-mhun”. lit. “hot-air paint stripper”.) And Dios knew that this was so. The secret rituals of the Smoking Mirror held that the sun was in fact a round hole in the spinning blue soap bubble of the goddess Nesh, opening into the fiery real world beyond, and the stars were the holes that the rain comes through. And Dios knew that this, also, was so. Folk myth said the sun was a ball of fire which circled the world every day, and that the world itself was carried through the everlasting void on the back of an enormous turtle. And Dios also knew that this was so, although it gave him a bit of trouble. And Dios knew that Net was the Supreme God, and that Fon was the Supreme God, and so were Hast, Set, Bin, Sot, Ic, Dhek, and Ptooie; that Herpetine Triskeles alone ruled the world of the dead, and so did Syncope, and Silur the Catfish-Headed God, and Orexis-Nupt. Dios was maximum high priest to a national religion that had fermented and accreted and bubbled for more than seven thousand years and never threw a god away in case it turned out to be useful. He knew that a great many mutually-contradictory things were all true. If they were not, then ritual and belief were as nothing, and if they were nothing, then the world did not exist. As a result of this sort of thinking, the priests of the Djel could give mind room to a collection of ideas that would make even a quantum mechanic give in and hand back his toolbox. Dios’s staff knocked echoes from the stones as he limped along in the darkness down little-frequented passages until he emerged on a small jetty. Untying the boat there, the high priest climbed in with difficulty, unshipped the oars and pushed himself out into the turbid waters of the dark Djel. His hands and feet felt too cold. Foolish, foolish. He should have done this before. The boat jerked slowly into midstream as full night rolled over the valley. On the far bank, in response to the ancient laws, the pyramids started to light the sky. Lights also burned late in the house of Ptaclusp Associates, Necropolitan Builders to the Dynasties. The father and his twin Sons were hunched over the huge wax designing tray, arguing. “It’s not as if they ever pay,” said Ptaclusp IIa. “I mean it’s not just a case of not being able to, they don’t seem to have grasped the idea. At least dynasties like Tsort pay up within a hundred years or so. Why didn’t you-” “We’ve built pyramids along the Djel for the last three thousand years,” said his father stiffly, “and we haven’t lost by it, have we? No, we haven’t. Because the other kingdoms look to the Djel, they say there’s a family that really knows its pyramids, connysewers, they say we’ll have what they’re having, if you please, with knobs on. Anyway, they’re real royalty,” he added, “not like some of the ones you get these days - here today, gone next millennium. They’re half gods, too. You don’t expect real royalty to pay its way. That’s one of the signs of real royalty, not having any money.” “You don’t get more royal than them, then. You’d need a new word,” said IIa. “We’re nearly royal in that case.” “You don’t understand business, my son. You think it’s all book-keeping. Well, it isn’t.” “It’s a question of mass. And the power to weight ratio.” They both glared at Ptaclusp IIb, who was sitting staring at the sketches. He was turning his stylus over and over in his hands, which were trembling with barely-suppressed excitement. “We’ll have to use granite for the lower slopes,” he said, talking to himself, “the limestone wouldn’t take it. Not with all the power flows. Which will be, whooeee, they’ll be big. I mean we’re not talking razor blades here. This thing could put an edge on a rolling pin.” Ptaclusp rolled his eyes. He was only one generation into a dynasty and already it was trouble. One son a born accountant, the other in love with this new-fangled cosmic engineering. There hadn’t been any such thing when he was a lad, there was just architecture. You drew the plans, and then got in ten thousand lads on time-and-a-half and double bubble at weekends. They just had to pile the stuff up. You didn’t have to be cosmic about it. Descendants! The gods had seen fit to give him one son who charged you for the amount of breath expended in saying “Good morning”, and another one who worshipped geometry and stayed up all night designing aqueducts. You scrimped and saved to send them to the best schools, and then they went and paid you back by getting educated. “What are you talking about?” he snapped. “The discharge alone . . .” He pulled his abacus towards him and rattled the pottery beads along the wires. “Let’s say we’re talking twice the height of the Executive model, which gives us a mass of. . . plus additional coded dimensions of occult significance as per spec. . . we couldn’t do this sort of thing even a hundred years ago, you realise, not with the primitive techniques we had then. . .” His finger became a blur. IIa gave a snort and grabbed his own abacus. “Limestone at two talents the ton. . .” he said. “Wear and tear on tools . . . masonry charges . . . demurrage . . . breakages . . . oh dear, oh dear . . . on-cost . . . black marble at replacement prices . . .” Ptaclusp sighed. Two abaci rattling in tandem the whole day long, one changing the shape of the world and the other one deploring the cost. Whatever happened to the two bits of wood and a plumbline? The last beads clicked against the stops. “It’d be a whole quantum leap in pyramidology,” said IIb, sitting back with a messianic grin on his face. “It’d be a whole kwa-” IIa began. “Quantum,” said IIb, savouring the word. “It’d be a whole quantum leap in bankruptcy,” said IIa. “They’d have to invent a new word for that too.” “It’d be worth it as a loss leader,” said IIb. “Sure enough. When it comes to making a loss, we’ll be in the lead,” said IIa sourly. “It’d practically glow! In millennia to come people will look at it and say “That Ptaclusp, he knew his pyramids all right”.” “They’ll call it Ptaclusp’s Folly, you mean!” By now the brothers were both standing up, their noses a few inches apart. “The trouble with you, sibling, is that you know the cost of everything and the value of nothing!” “The trouble with you is - is - is that you don’t!” “Mankind must strive ever upwards!” “Yes, on a sound financial footing, by Khuft!” “The search for knowledge-” “The search for probity-” Ptaclusp left them to it and stood staring out at the yard, where, under the glow of torches, the staff were doing a feverish stocktaking. It’d been a small business when father passed it on to him - just a yard full of blocks and various sphinxes, needles, steles and other stock items, and a thick stack of unpaid bills, most of them addressed to the palace and respectfully pointing out that our esteemed account presented nine hundred years ago appeared to have been overlooked and prompt settlement would oblige. But it had been fun in those days. There was just him, five thousand labourers, and Mrs Ptaclusp doing the books. You had to do pyramids, dad said. All the profit was in mastabas, small family tombs, memorial needles and general jobbing necropoli, but if you didn’t do pyramids, you didn’t do anything. The meanest garlic farmer, looking for something neat and long lasting with maybe some green marble chippings but within a budget, wouldn’t go to a man without a pyramid to his name. So he’d done pyramids, and they’d been good ones, not like some you saw these days, with the wrong number of sides and walls you could put your foot through. And yes, somehow they’d gone from strength to strength. To build the biggest pyramid ever.. In three months. With terrible penalties if it wasn’t done on time. Dios hadn’t specified how terrible, but Ptaclusp knew his man and they probably involved crocodiles. They’d be pretty terrible, all right. . . He stared at the flickering light on the long avenues of statues, including the one of bloody Hat the Vulture-Headed God of Unexpected Guests, bought on the offchance years ago and turned down by the client owing to not being up to snuff in the beak department and unshiftable ever since even at a discount. The biggest pyramid ever . . . And after you’d knocked your pipes out seeing to it that the nobility had their tickets to eternity, were you allowed to turn your expertise homeward, i.e., a bijou pyramidette for self and Mrs Ptaclusp, to ensure safe delivery into the Netherworld? Of course not. Even dad had only been allowed to have a mastaba, although it was one of the best on the river, he had to admit, that red-veined marble had been ordered all the way from Howonderland, a lot of people had asked for the same, it had been good for business, that’s how dad would have liked it. . . The biggest pyramid ever . . . And they’d never remember who was under it. It didn’t matter if they called it Ptaclusp’s Folly or Ptaclusp’s Glory. They’d call it Ptaclusp’s. He surfaced from this pool of thought to hear his sons still arguing. If this was his posterity, he’d take his chances with 600-ton limestone blocks. At least they were quiet. “Shut up, the pair of you,” he said. They stopped, and sat down, grumbling. “I’ve made up my mind,” he said. IIb doodled fitfully with his stylus. IIa strummed his abacus. “We’re going to do it,” said Ptaclusp, and strode out of the room. “And any son who doesn’t like it will be cast into the outer darkness where there is a wailing and a crashing of teeth,” he called over his shoulder. The two brothers, left to themselves, glowered at each other. At last IIa said, “What does “quantum” mean, anyway?” IIb shrugged. “It means add another nought,” he said. “Oh,” said IIa, “is that all?”   All along the river valley of the Djel the pyramids were flaring silently into the night, discharging the accumulated power of the day. Great soundless flames erupted from their capstones and danced upwards, jagged as lightning, cold as ice. For hundreds of miles the desert glittered with the constellations of the dead, the aurora of antiquity. But along the valley of the Djel the lights ran together in one solid ribbon of fire. It was on the floor and it had a pillow at one end. It had to be a bed. Teppic found he was doubting it as he tossed and turned, trying to find some part of the mattress that was prepared to meet him halfway. This is stupid, he thought, I grew up on beds like this. And pillows carved out of rock. I was born in this palace, this is my heritage, I must be prepared to accept it . . . I must order a proper bed and a feather pillow from Ankh, first thing in the morning. I, the king, have said this shall be done. He turned over, his head hitting the pillow with a thud. And plumbing. What a great idea that was. It was amazing what you could do with a hole in the ground. Yes, plumbing. And bloody doors. Teppic definitely wasn’t used to having several attendants waiting on his will all the time, so performing his ablutions before bed had been extremely embarrassing. And the people, too. He was definitely going to get to know the people. It was wrong, all this skulking in palaces. And how was a fellow supposed to sleep with the sky over the river glowing like a firework? Eventually sheer exhaustion wrestled his body into some zone between sleeping and waking, and mad images stalked across his eyeballs. There was the shame of his ancestors when future archaeologists translated the as-yet unpainted frescoes of his reign: “”Squiggle, constipated eagle, wiggly line, hippo’s bottom, squiggle”: And in the year of the Cycle of Cephnet the Sun God Teppic had Plumbing Installed and Scorned the Pillows of his Forebears.” He dreamed of Khuft - huge, bearded, speaking in thunder and lightning, calling down the wrath of the heavens on this descendant who was betraying the noble past. Dios floated past his vision, explaining that as a result of an edict passed several thousand years ago it was essential that he marry a cat. Various-headed gods vied for his attention, explaining details of godhood, while in the background a distant voice tried to attract his attention and screamed something about not wanting to be buried under a load of stone. But he had no time to concentrate on this, because he saw seven fat cows and seven thin cows, one of them playing a trombone. But that was an old dream, he dreamt that one nearly every night. And then there was a man firing arrows at a tortoise . . . And then he was walking over the desert and found a tiny pyramid, only a few inches high. A wind sprang up and blew away the sand, only now it wasn’t a wind, it was the pyramid rising, sand tumbling down its gleaming sides . And it grew bigger and bigger, bigger than the world, so that at last the pyramid was so big that the whole world was a speck in the centre. And in the centre of the pyramid, something very strange happened. And the pyramid grew smaller, taking the world with it. And vanished . . . Of course, when you’re a pharaoh, you get a very high class of obscure dream. Another day dawned, courtesy of the king, who was curled up on the bed and using his rolled-up clothes as a pillow. Around the stone maze of the palace the servants of the kingdom began to wake up. Dios’s boat slid gently through the water and bumped into the jetty. Dios climbed out and hurried into the palace, bounding up the steps three at a time and rubbing his hands together at the thought of a fresh day laid out before him, every hour and ritual ticking neatly into place. So much to organise, so much to be needed for . . .   The chief sculptor and maker of mummy cases folded up his measure. “You done a good job there, Master Dil,” he said. Dil nodded. There was no false modesty between craftsmen. The sculptor gave him a nudge. “What a team, eh?” he said. “You pickle ‘em, I crate ‘em.” Dil nodded, but rather more slowly. The sculptor looked down at the wax oval in his hands. “Can’t say I think much of the death mask, mind,” he said. Gern, who was working hard on the corner slab on one of the Queen’s late cats, which he had been allowed to do all by himself, looked up in horror. “I done it very careful,” he said sulkily. “That’s the whole point,” said the sculptor. “I know,” said Dil sadly, “it’s the nose, isn’t it.” “It was more the chin.” “And the chin.” “Yes.” “Yes.” They looked in gloomy silence at the waxen visage of the pharaoh. So did the pharaoh. “Nothing wrong with my chin.” “You could put a beard on it,” said Dil eventually. “It’d cover a lot of it, would a beard.” “There’s still the nose.” “You could take half an inch off that. And do something with the cheekbones.” “Yes.” “Yes.” Gern was horrified. “That’s the face of our late king you’re talking about,” he said. “You can’t do that sort of thing! Anyway, people would notice.” He hesitated. “Wouldn’t they?” The two craftsmen eyed one another. “Gern,” said Dil patiently, “certainly they’ll notice. But they won’t say anything. They expect us to, er, improve matters.” “After all,” said the chief sculptor cheerfully, “you don’t think they’re going to step up and say “It’s all wrong, he really had a face like a short-sighted chicken”, do you?” “Thank you very much. Thank you very much indeed, I must say.” The pharaoh went and sat by the cat. It seemed that people only had respect for the dead when they thought the dead were listening. “I suppose,” said the apprentice, with some uncertainty, “he did look a bit ugly compared to the frescoes.” “That’s the point, isn’t it,” said Dil meaningfully. Gern’s big honest spotty face changed slowly, like a cratered landscape with clouds passing across it. It was dawning on him that this came under the heading of initiation into ancient craft secrets. “You mean even the painters change the-” he began. Dil frowned at him. “We don’t talk about it,” he said. Gern tried to force his features into an expression of worthy seriousness. “Oh,” he said. “Yes. I see, master.” The sculptor clapped him on the back. “You’re a bright lad, Gern,” he said. “You catch on. After all, it’s bad enough being ugly when you’re alive. Think how terrible it would be to be ugly in the netherworld.” King Teppicymon XXVII shook his head. We all have to look alike when we’re alive, he thought, and now they make sure we’re identical when we’re dead. What a kingdom. He looked down and saw the soul of the late cat, which was washing itself. When he was alive he’d hated the things, but just now it seemed positively companionable. He patted it gingerly on its flat head. It purred for a moment, and then attempted to strip the flesh from his hand. It was on a definite hiding to nothing there. He was aware with growing horror that the trio was now discussing a pyramid. His pyramid. It was going to be the biggest one ever. It was going to go on a highly fertile piece of sloping ground on a prime site in the necropolis. It was going to make even the biggest existing pyramid look like something a child might construct in a sand tray. It was going to be surrounded by marble gardens and granite obelisks. It was going to be the greatest memorial ever built by a son for his father. The king groaned. Ptaclusp groaned. It had been better in his father’s day. You just needed a bloody great heap of log rollers and twenty years, which was useful because it kept everyone out of trouble during Inundation, when all the fields were flooded. Now you just needed a bright lad with a piece of chalk and the right incantations. Mind you, it was impressive, if you liked that kind of thing. Ptaclusp IIb walked around the great stone block, tidying an equation here, highlighting a hermetic inscription there. He glanced up and gave his father a brief nod. Ptaclusp hurried back to the king, who was standing with his retinue on the cliff overlooking the quarry, the sun gleaming off the mask. A royal visit, on top of everything else “We’re ready, if it please you, O arc of the sky,” he said, breaking into a sweat, hoping against hope that Oh gods. The king was going to Put Him at his Ease again. He looked imploringly at the high priest, who with the merest twitch of his features indicated that there was nothing he proposed to do about it. This was too much, he wasn’t the only one to object to this, Dil the master embalmer had been subjected to half an hour of having to Talk about his Family only yesterday, it was wrong, people expected the king to stay in the palace, it was too . . . The king ambled towards him in a nonchalant way designed to make the master builder feel he was among friends. Oh no, Ptaclusp thought, he’s going to Remember my Name. “I must say you’ve done a tremendous amount in nine weeks, it’s a very good start. Er. It’s Ptaclusp, isn’t it?” said the king. Ptaclusp swallowed. There was no help for it now. “Yes, O hand upon the waters,” he said, “O fount of-” “I think “your majesty” or “sire” will do,” said Teppic. Ptaclusp panicked and glanced fearfully at Dios, who winced but nodded again. “The king wishes you to address him-” a look of pain crossed his face - “informally. In the fashion of the barba - of foreign lands.” “You must consider yourself a very fortunate man to have such talented and hard-working sons,” said Teppic, staring down at the busy panorama of the quarry. “I . . . will, O . . . sire,” mumbled Ptaclusp, interpreting this as an order. Why couldn’t kings order people around like in the old days? You knew where you were then, they didn’t go round being charming and treating you as some sort of equal, as if you could make the sun rise too. “It must be a fascinating trade,” Teppic went on. “As your sire wishes, sire,” said Ptaclusp. “If your majesty would just give the word-” “And how exactly does all this work?” “Your sire?” said Ptaclusp, horrified. “You make the blocks fly, do you?” “Yes, O sire.” “That is very interesting. How do you do it?” Ptaclusp nearly bit through his lip. Betray Craft secrets? He was horrified. Against all expectation, Dios came to his aid. “By means of certain secret signs and sigils, sire,” he said, “into the origin of which it is not wise to inquire. It is the wisdom of-” he paused “-the modems.” “So much quicker than all that heaving stuff around, I expect,” said Teppic. “It had a certain glory, sire,” said Dios. “Now, if I may suggest . . . “Oh. Yes. Press on, by all means.” Ptaclusp wiped his forehead, and ran to the edge of the quarry. He waved a cloth. All things are defined by names. Change the name, and you change the thing. Of course there is a lot more to it than that, but paracosmically that is what it boils down to. Ptaclusp IIb tapped the stone lightly with his staff. The air above it wavered in the heat and then, shedding a little dust, the block rose gently until it bobbed a few feet off the ground, held in check by mooring ropes. That was all there was to it. Teppic had expected some thunder, or at least a gout of flame. But already the workers were clustering around another block, and a couple of men were towing the first block down towards the site. “Very impressive,” he said sadly. “Indeed, sire,” said Dios. “And now, we must go back to the palace. It will soon be time for the Ceremony of the Third Hour. “Yes, yes, all right,” snapped Teppic. “Very well done, Ptaclusp. Keep up the good work.” Ptaclusp bowed like a seesaw in flustered excitement and confusion. “Very good, your sire,” he said, and decided to go for the big one. “May I show your sire the latest plans?” “The king has approved the plans already,” said Dios. “And, excuse me if I am mistaken, but it seems that the pyramid is well under construction.” “Yes, yes, but,” said Ptaclusp, “it occurred to us, this avenue here, you see, overlooking the entrance, what a place, we thought, for a statue of for instance Hat the Vulture-Headed God of Unexpected Guests at practically cost-” Dios glanced at the sketches. “Are those supposed to be wings?” he said. “Not even cost, not even cost, tell you what I’ll do-” said Ptaclusp desperately. “Is that a nose?” said Dios. “More a beak, more a beak,” said Ptaclusp. “Look, O priest, how about-” “I think not,” said Dios. “No. I really think not.” He scanned the quarry for Teppic, groaned, thrust the sketches into the builder’s hands and started to run. Teppic had strolled down the path to the waiting chariots, looking wistfully at the bustle around him, and paused to watch a group of workers who were dressing a corner piece. They froze when they felt his gaze on them, and stood sheepishly watching him. “Well well,” said Teppic, inspecting the stone, although all he knew about stonemasonry could have been chiselled on a sand grain. “What a splendid piece of rock.” He turned to the nearest man, whose mouth fell open. “You’re a stonemason, are you?” he said. “That must be a very interesting job.” The man’s eyes bulged. He dropped his chisel. “Erk,” he said. A hundred yards away Dios’s robes flapped around his legs as he pounded down the path. He grasped the hem and galloped along, sandals flapping. “What’s your name?” said Teppic. “Aaaargle,” said the man, terrified. “Well, jolly good,” said Teppic, and took his unresisting hand and shook it. “Sire!” Dios bellowed. “No!” And the mason spun away, holding his right hand by the wrist, fighting it, screaming . . .   Teppic gripped the arms of the throne and glared at the high priest. “But it’s a gesture of fellowship, nothing more. Where I come from-” “Where you come from, sire, is here!” thundered Dios. “But, good grief, cutting it off? It’s too cruel!” Dios stepped forward. Now his voice was back to its normal oil-smooth tones. “Cruel, sire? But it will be done with precision and care, with drugs to take away the pain. He will certainly live. “But why?” “I did explain, sire. He cannot use the hand again without defiling it. He is a devout man and knows this very well. You see, sire, you are a god, sire.” “But you can touch me. So can the servants!” “I am a priest, sire,” said Dios gently. “And the servants have special dispensation.” Teppic bit his lip. “This is barbaric,” he said. Dios’s features did not move. “It will not be done,” Teppic said. “I am the king. I forbid it to be done, do you understand?” Dios bowed. Teppic recognised No.49, Horrified Disdain. “Your wish will certainly be done, O fountain of all wisdom. Although, of course, the man himself may take matters into, if you will excuse me, his own hands.” “What do you mean?” snapped Teppic. “Sire, if his colleagues had not stopped him he would have done it himself. With a chisel, I understand.” Teppic stared at him and thought, I am a stranger in a familiar land. “I see,” he said eventually. He thought a little further. “Then the - operation is to be done with all care, and the man is to be given a pension afterwards, d’you see?” “As you wish, sire.” “A proper one, too.” “Indeed, sire. A golden handshake, sire,” said Dios impassively. “And perhaps we can find him some light job around the palace?” “As a one-handed stonemason, sire?” Dios’s left eyebrow arched a fraction. “As whatever, Dios.” “Certainly, sire. As you wish. I will undertake to see if we are currently short-handed in any department.” Teppic glared at him. “I am the king, you know,” he said sharply. “The fact attends me with every waking hour, sire.” “Dios?” said Teppic, as the high priest was leaving. “Sire?” “I ordered a feather bed from Ankh-Morpork some weeks ago. I suppose you would not know what became of it?” Dios waved his hands in an expressive gesture. “I gather, sire, that there is considerable pirate activity off the Khalian coast,” he said. “Doubtless the pirates are also responsible for the non-appearance of the expert from the Guild of Plumbers and Dunnikindivers?” Teppic said sourly.* (* Dunnikindiver: a builder and cleaner of cesspits. A particularly busy profession in Ankh-Morpork, where the water table is generally at ground level, and one which attracts considerable respect. At least, everyone passes by on the other side of the street when a dunnikindiver walks by.) “Yes, sire. Or possibly bandits, sire.” “Or perhaps a giant two-headed bird swooped down and carried him off,” said Teppic. “All things are possible, sire,” said the high priest, his face radiating politeness. “You may go, Dios.” “Sire. May I remind you, sire, that the emissaries from Tsort and Ephebe will be attending you at the fifth hour.” “Yes. You may go.” Teppic was left alone, or at least as alone as he ever was, which meant that he was all by himself except for two fan wavers, a butler, two enormous Howonder guards by the door, and a couple of handmaidens. Oh, yes. Handmaidens. He hadn’t quite come to terms with the handmaidens yet. Presumably Dios chose them, as he seemed to oversee everything in the palace, and he had shown surprisingly good taste in the matter of, for example, olive skins, bosoms and legs. The clothing these two wore would between them have covered a small saucer. And this was odd, because the net effect was to turn them into two attractive and mobile pieces of furniture, as sexless as pillars. Teppic sighed with the recollection of women in Ankh-Morpork who could be clothed from neck to ankle in brocade and still cause a classroom full of boys to blush to the roots of their hair. He reached down for the fruit bowl. One of the girls immediately grasped his hand, moved it gently aside, and took a grape. “Please don’t peel it,” said Teppic. “The peel’s the best part. Full of nourishing vitamins and minerals. Only I don’t suppose you’ve heard about them, have you, they’ve only been invented recently,” he added, mainly to himself. “I mean, within the last seven thousand years,” he finished sourly. So much for time flowing past, he thought glumly. It might do that everywhere else, but not here. Here it just piles up, like snow. It’s as though the pyramids slow us down, like those things they used on the boat, whatd’youcallem, sea anchors. Tomorrow here is just like yesterday, warmed over. She peeled the grape anyway, while the snowflake seconds drifted down. At the site of the Great Pyramid the huge blocks of stone floated into place like an explosion in reverse. They were flowing between the quarry and the site, drifting silently across the landscape above deep rectangular shadows. “I’ve got to hand it to you,” said Ptaclusp to his son, as they stood side by side in the observation tower. “It’s astonishing. One day people will wonder how we did it.” “All that business with the log rollers and the whips is old hat,” said IIb. “You-can throw them away.” The young architect smiled, but there was a manic hint to the rictus. It was astonishing. It was more astonishing than it ought to be. He kept getting the feeling that the pyramid was . . . He shook himself mentally. He should be ashamed of that sort of thinking. You could get superstitious if you weren’t careful, in this job. It was natural for things to form a pyramid - well, a cone, anyway. He’d experimented this morning. Grain, salt, . . . not water, though, that’d been a mistake. But a pyramid was only a neat cone, wasn’t it, a cone which had decided to be a bit tidier. Perhaps he’d overdone it just a gnat on the paracosmic measurements? His father slapped him on the back. “Very well done,” he repeated. “You know, it almost looks as though it’s building itself.” IIb yelped and bit his wrist, a childish trait that he always resorted to when he was nervous. Ptaclusp didn’t notice, because at that moment one of the foremen was running to the foot of the tower, waving his ceremonial measuring rod. Ptaclusp leaned over. “What?” he demanded. “I said, please to come at once, O master!” On the pyramid itself, on the working surface about halfway up, where some of the detailed work on the inner chambers was in progress, the word “impressive” was no longer appropriate. The word “terrifying” seemed to fit the bill. Blocks were stacking up in the sky overhead in a giant, slow dance, passing and re-passing, their mahouts yelling at one another and at the luckless controllers down on the pyramid top, who were trying to shout instructions above the noise. Ptaclusp waded into the cluster of workers around the centre. Here, at least, there was silence. Dead silence. “All right, all right,” he said. “What’s going . . . oh.” Ptaclusp IIb peered over his father’s shoulder, and stuck his wrist in his mouth. The thing was wrinkled. It was ancient. It clearly had once been a living thing. It lay on the slab like a very obscene prune. “It was my lunch,” said the chief plasterer. “It was my bloody lunch. I was really looking forward to that apple.” “But it can’t start yet,” whispered IIb. “It can’t form temporal nodes yet, I mean, how does it know it’s going to be a pyramid?” “I put my hand down for it, and it felt just like . . . it felt pretty unpleasant,” the plasterer complained. “And it’s a negative node, too,” added IIb. “We shouldn’t be getting them at all.” “Is it still there?” said Ptaclusp, and added, “Tell me yes.”     “If more blocks have been set into position it won’t be,” said his son, looking around wildly. “As the centre of mass changes, you see, the nodes will be pulled around.” Ptaclusp pulled the young man to one side. “What are you telling me now?” he demanded, in a camel whisper.* (* Hoarse whispers are not suitable for a desert environment.) “We ought to put a cap on it,” mumbled IIb. “Flare off the trapped time. Wouldn’t be any problems then . . .” “How can we cap it? It isn’t damn well finished,” said Ptaclusp. “What have you been and gone and done? Pyramids don’t start accumulating until they’re finished. Until they’re pyramids, see? Pyramid energy, see? Named after pyramids. That’s why it’s called pyramid energy.” “It must be something to do with the mass, or something,” the architect hazarded, “and the speed of construction. The time is getting trapped in the fabric. I mean, in theory you could get small nodes during construction, but they’d be so weak you wouldn’t notice; if you went and stood in one maybe you’d become a few hours older or younger or-” he began to gabble. “I recall when we did Kheneth XIV’s tomb the fresco painter said it took him two hours to do the painting in the Queen’s Room, and we said it was three days and fined him,” said Ptaclusp, slowly. “There was a lot of Guild fuss, I remember.” “You just said that,” said IIb. “Said what?” “About the fresco painter. Just a moment ago. “No, I didn’t. You couldn’t have been listening,” said Placlusp. “Could have sworn you did. Anyway, this is worse than that business,” said his son. “And it’s probably going to happen again.” “We can expect more like it?” “Yes,” said IIb. “We shouldn’t get negative nodes, but it looks as though we will. We can expect fast flows and reverse flows and probably even short loops. I’m afraid we can expect all kinds of temporal anomalies. We’d better get the men off.” “I suppose you couldn’t work out a way we could get them to work in fast time and pay them for slow time?” said Ptaclusp. “It’s just a thought. Your brother’s bound to suggest it.” “No! Keep everyone off! We’ll get the blocks in and cap it first!” “All right, all right. I was just thinking out loud. As if we didn’t have enough problems . . .” Ptaclusp waded into the cluster of workers around the centre. Here, at least, there was silence. Dead silence. “All right, all right,” he said. “What’s going . . . oh.” Ptaclusp IIb peered over his father’s shoulder, and stuck his wrist in his mouth. The thing was wrinkled. It was ancient. It clearly had once been a living thing. It lay on the slab like a very obscene prune. “It was my lunch,” said the chief plasterer. “It was my bloody lunch. I was really looking forward to that apple.” Ptaclusp hesitated. This all seemed very familiar. He’d had this feeling before. An overwhelming sensation of reja vu*. (* Lit: “I am going to be here again.”) He met the horrified gaze of his son. Together, dreading what they might see, they turned around slowly. They saw themselves standing behind themselves, bickering over something IIb was swearing that he had already heard. He has, too, Ptaclusp realised in dread. That’s me over there. I look a lot different from the outside. And it’s me over here, too. As well. Also. It’s a loop. Just like in the river, a tiny whirlpool, only it’s in the flow of time. And I’ve just gone round it twice. The other Ptaclusp looked up at him. There was a long, agonising moment of temporal strain, a noise like a mouse blowing bubblegum, and the loop broke, and the figure faded. “I know what’s causing it,” muttered IIb indistinctly, because of his wrist. “I know the pyramid isn’t complete, but it will be, so the effects are sort of echoing backwards, dad, we ought to stop right now, it’s too big, I was wrong- “Shut up. Can you work out where the nodes will form?” said Ptaclusp. “And come away over here, all the lads are staring. Pull yourself together, son.” IIb instinctively put his hand to his belt abacus. “Well, yes, probably,” he said. “It’s just a function of mass distribution and-” “Right,” said the builder firmly. “Start doing it. And then get all the foremen to come and see me.” There was a glint like mica in Ptaclusp’s eye. His jaw was squared like a block of granite. Maybe it’s the pyramid that’s got me thinking like this, he said, I’m thinking fast, I know it. “And get your brother up here, too,” he added. It is the pyramid effect. I’m remembering an idea I’m going to have. Best not to think too hard about that. Be practical. He stared around at the half-completed site. The gods knew we couldn’t do it in time, he said. Now we don’t have to. We can take as long as we like! “Are you all right?” said IIb. “Dad, are you all right?” “Was that one of your time loops?” said Ptaclusp dreamily. What an idea! No-one would ever beat them on a contract ever again, they’d win bonuses for completion and it didn’t matter how long it took! “No! Dad, we ought-” “But you’re sure you can work out where these loops will occur, are you?” “Yes, I expect so, but-” “Good.” Ptaclusp was trembling with excitement. Maybe they’d have to pay the men more, but it would be worth it, and IIa would be bound to think up some sort of scheme, finance was nearly as good as magic. The lads would have to accept it. After all, they’d complained about working with free men, they’d complained about working with Howondanians, they’d complained about working with everyone except proper paid-up Guild members. So they could hardly complain about working with themselves. IIb stepped back, and gripped the abacus for reassurance. “Dad,” he said cautiously, “what are you thinking about?” Ptaclusp beamed at him. “Doppelgangs,” he said.   Politics was more interesting. Teppic felt that here, at least, he could make a contribution. Djelibeybi was old. It was respected. But it was also small and in the sword-edged sense, which was what seemed to matter these days, had no power. It wasn’t always thus, as Dios told it. Once it had ruled the world by sheer force of nobility, hardly needing the standing army of twenty-five thousand men it had in those high days. Now it wielded a more subtle power as a narrow state between the huge and thrusting empires of Tsort and Ephebe, each one both a threat and a shield. For more than a thousand years the kings along the Djel had, with extreme diplomacy, exquisite manners and the footwork of a centipede on adrenaline, kept the peace along the whole widdershins side of the continent. Merely having existed for seven thousand years can be a formidable weapon, if you use it properly. “You mean we’re neutral ground?” said Teppic. “Tsort is a desert culture like us,” said Dios, steepling his hands. “We have helped to shape it over the years. As for Ephebe-” He sniffed. “They have some very strange beliefs.” “How do you mean?” “They believe the world is run by geometry, sire. All lines and angles and numbers. That sort of thing, sire-” Dios frowned - “can lead to some very unsound ideas.” “Ah,” said Teppic, resolving to learn more about unsound ideas as soon as possible. “So we’re secretly on the side of Tsort, yes?” “No. It is important that Ephebe remains strong.” “But we’ve more in common with Tsort?” “So we allow them to believe, sire.” “But they are a desert culture?” Dios smiled. “I am afraid they don’t take pyramids seriously, sire.” Teppic considered all this. “So whose side are we really on?” “Our own, sire. There is always a way. Always remember, sire, that your family was on its third dynasty before our neighbours had worked out, sire, how babies are made.” The Tsort delegation did indeed appear to have studied Djeli culture assiduously, almost frantically. It was also clear that they hadn’t begun to understand it; they’d merely borrowed as many bits as seemed useful and then put them together in subtly wrong ways. For example, to a man they employed the Three-Turning-Walk, as portrayed on friezes, and only used by the Djeli court on certain occasions. Occasional grimaces crossed their faces as their vertebrae protested. They were also wearing the Khruspids of Morning and the bangles of Going Forth, as well as the kilt of Yet with, and no wonder even the maidens on fan duty were hiding their smiles, matching greaves!* (* Some translation is needed here. If a foreign ambassador to the Court of St James wore (out of a genuine desire to flatter) a bowler hat, a claymore, a Civil War breastplate, Saxon trousers and a Jacobean haircut, he’d create pretty much the same impression.) Even Teppic had to cough hurriedly. But then, he thought, they don’t know any better. They’re like children. And this thought was followed by another one which added, These children could wipe us off the map in one hour. Hot on the synapses of the other two came a third thought, which said: It’s only clothes, for goodness sake, you’re beginning to take it all seriously. The group from Ephebe were more sensibly dressed in white togas. They had a certain sameness about them, as if somewhere in the country there was a little press that stamped out small bald men with curly white beards. The two parties halted before the throne, and bowed. “Halo,” said Teppic. “His Greatness the King Teppicymon XXVIII, Lord of the Heavens, Charioteer of the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque of the Sun, Guardian of the Secret Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the Way, the Flail of Mercy, the High-Born One, the Never-Dying King, bids you welcome and commands you to take wine with him,” said Dios, clapping his hands for a butler. “Oh yes,” said Teppic. “Do sit down, won’t you?” “His Greatness the King Teppicymon XXVIII, Lord of the Heavens, Charioteer of the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque of the Sun, Guardian of the Secret Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the Way, the Flail of Mercy, the High-Born One, the Never-Dying King, commands you to be seated,” said Dios. Teppic racked his brains for a suitable speech. He’d heard plenty in Ankh-Morpork. They were probably the same the whole world over. “I’m sure we shall get on-” “His Greatness the King Teppicymon XXVIII, Lord of the Heavens, Charioteer of the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque of the Sun, Guardian of the Secret Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the Way, the Flail of Mercy, the High-Born One, the Never-Dying King, bids you harken!” Dios boomed. “-long history of friendship-” “Harken to the wisdom of His Greatness the King Teppicymon XXVIII, Lord of the Heavens, Charioteer of the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque of the Sun, Guardian of the Secret Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the Way, the Flail of Mercy, the High-Born One, the Never-Dying King!” The echoes died away. “Could I have a word with you a moment, Dios?” The high priest leaned down. “Is all this necessary?” hissed Teppic. Dios’s aquiline features took on the wooden expression of one who is wrestling with an unfamiliar concept. “Of course, sire. It is traditional,” he said, at last. “I thought I was supposed to talk to these people. You know, about boundaries and trade and so on. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about it and I’ve got several ideas. I mean, it’s going to be a little difficult if you’re going to keep shouting.” Dios gave him a polite smile. “Oh no, sire. That has all been sorted out, sire. I met with them this morning.” “What am I supposed to do, then?” Dios made a slight circling motion with his hand. “Just as you wish, sire. It is normal to smile a little, and put them at their ease.” “Is that all” “Sire could ask them whether they enjoy being diplomats, sire,” said Dios. He met Teppic’s glare with eyes as expressionless as mirrors. “I am the king,” Teppic hissed. “Certainly, sire. It would not do to sully the office with mere matters of leaden state, sire. Tomorrow, sire, you will be holding supreme court. A very fit office for a monarch, sire.” “Ah. Yes.” It was quite complicated. Teppic listened carefully to the case, which was alleged cattle theft compounded by Djeli’s onion-layered land laws. This is what it should be all about, he thought. No-one else can work out who owns the bloody ox, this is the sort of thing kings have to do. Now, let’s see, five years ago, he sold the ox to him, but as it turned out- He looked from the face of one worried farmer to the other. They were both clutching their ragged straw hats close to their chests, and both of them wore the paralysed wooden expressions of simple men who, in pursuit of their parochial disagreement, now found themselves on a marble floor in a great room with their god enthroned before their very eyes. Teppic didn’t doubt that either one would cheerfully give up all rights to the wretched creature in exchange for being ten miles away. It’s a fairly mature ox, he thought, time it was slaughtered, even if it’s his it’s been fattening on his neighbour’s land all these years, half each would be about right, they’re really going to remember this judgement . He raised the Sickle of Justice. “His Greatness the King Teppicymon XXVIII, Lord of the Heavens, Charioteer of the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque of the Sun, Guardian of the Secret Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the Way, the Flail of Mercy, the High-Born One, the Never-Dying King, will give judgement! Cower to the justice of His Greatness the King Tep-” Teppic cut Dios off in mid-intone. “Having listened to both sides of the case,” he said firmly, the mask giving it a slight boom, “and, being impressed by the argument and counter-argument, it seems to us only just that the beast in question should be slaughtered without delay and shared with all fairness between both plaintiff and defendant.” He sat back. They’ll call me Teppic the Wise, he thought. The common people go for this sort of thing. The farmers gave him a long blank stare. Then, as if they were both mounted on turntables, they turned and looked to where Dios was sitting in his place on the steps in a group of lesser priests. Dios stood up, smoothed his plain robe, and extended the staff. “Harken to the interpreted wisdom of His Greatness the King Teppicymon XXVIII, Lord of the Heavens, Charioteer of the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque of the Sun, Guardian of the Secret Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the Way, the Flail of Mercy, the High-Born One, the Never-Dying King,” he said. “It is our divine judgement that the beast in dispute is the property of Rhumusphut. It is our divine judgement that the beast be sacrificed upon the altar of the Concourse of Gods in thanks for the attention of Our Divine Self. It is our further judgement that both Rhumusphut and Ktoffle work a further three days in the fields of the King in payment for this judgement.” Dios raised his head until he was looking along his fearsome nose right into Teppic’s mask. He raised both hands. “Mighty is the wisdom of His Greatness the King Teppicymon XXVIII, Lord of the Heavens, Charioteer of the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque of the Sun, Guardian of the Secret Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the Way, the Flail of Mercy, the High-Born One, the Never-Dying King!” The farmers bobbed in terrified gratitude and backed out of the presence, framed between the guards. “Dios,” said Teppic, levelly. “Sire?” “Just attend upon me a moment, please?” “Sire?” repeated Dios, materialising by the throne. “I could not help noticing, Dios, excuse me if I am wrong, a certain flourish in the translation there.” The priest looked surprised. “Indeed no, sire. I was most precise in relaying your decision, saving only to refine the detail in accordance with precedent and tradition.” “How was that? The damn creature really belonged to both of them!” “But Rhumusphut is known to be punctilious in his devotions, sire, seeking every opportunity to laud and magnify the gods, whereas Ktoffle has been known to harbour foolish thoughts.” “What’s that got to do with justice?” “Everything, sire,” said Dios smoothly. “But now neither of them has the ox!” “Quite so, sire. But Ktoffle does not have it because he does not deserve it, while Rhumusphut, by his sacrifice, has ensured himself greater stature in the netherworld.” “And you’ll eat beef tonight, I suppose,” said Teppic. It was like a blow; Teppic might as well have picked up the throne and hit the priest with it. Dios took a step backward, aghast, his eyes two brief pools of pain. When he spoke, there was a raw edge to his voice. “I do not eat meat, sire,” he said. “It dilutes and tarnishes the soul. May I summon the next case, sire?” Teppic nodded. “Very well.” The next case was a dispute over the rent of a hundred square yards of riverside land. Teppic listened carefully. Good growing land was at a premium in Djeli, since the pyramids took up so much of it. It was a serious matter. It was especially serious because the land’s tenant was by all accounts hard-working and conscientious, while its actual owner was clearly rich and objectionable*. (* Younger assassins, who are usually very poor, have very clear ideas about the morality of wealth until they become older assassins, who are usually very rich, when they begin to take the view that injustice has its good points.) Unfortunately, however one chose to stack the facts, he was also in the right. Teppic thought deeply, and then squinted at Dios. The priest nodded at him. “It seems to me-” said Teppic, as fast as possible but not fast enough. “Harken to the judgement of His Greatness the King Teppicymon XXVIII, Lord of the Heavens, Charioteer of the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque of the Sun, Guardian of the Secret Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the Way, the Flail of Mercy, the High-Born One, the Never-Dying King!” “It seems to me - to us,” Teppic repeated, “that, taking all matters in consideration beyond those of mere mortal artifice, the true and just outcome in this matter-” He paused. This, he thought, isn’t how a good king speaks. “The landlord has been weighed in the balance and found wanting,” he boomed through the mask’s mouth slit. “We find for the tenant.” As one man the court turned to Dios, who held a whispered consultation with the other priests and then stood up. “Hear now the interpreted word of His Greatness the King Teppicymon XXVIII, Lord of the Heavens, Charioteer of the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque of the Sun, Guardian of the Secret Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the Way, the Flail of Mercy, the High-Born One, the Never-Dying King! Ptorne the farmer will at once pay 18 toons in back rent to Prince Imtebos! Prince Imbetos will at once pay 12 toons into the temple offerings of the gods of the river! Long live the king! Bring on the next case!” Teppic beckoned to Dios again. “Is there any point in me being here?” he demanded in an overheated whisper. “Please be calm, sire. If you were not here, how would the people know that justice had been done?” “But you twist everything I say!” “No, sire. Sire, you give the judgement of the man. I interpret the judgement of the king.” “I see,” said Teppic grimly. “Well, from now on-” There was a commotion outside the hall. Clearly there was a prisoner outside who was less than confident in the king’s justice, and the king didn’t blame him. He wasn’t at all happy about it, either. It turned out to be a dark-haired girl, struggling in the arms of two guards and giving them the kind of blows with fist and heel that a man would blush to give. She wasn’t wearing the right kind of costume for the job, either. It would be barely adequate for lying around peeling grapes in. She saw Teppic and, to his secret delight, flashed him a glance of pure hatred. After an afternoon of being treated like a mentally-deficient statue it was a pleasure to find someone prepared to take an interest in him. He didn’t know what she had done, but judging by the thumps she was landing on the guards it was a pretty good bet that she had done it to the very limits of her ability. Dios bent down to the level of the mask’s ear holes. “Her name is Ptraci,” he said. “A handmaiden of your father. She has refused to take the potion.” “What potion?” said Teppic. “It is customary for a dead king to take servants with him into the netherworld, sire.” Teppic nodded gloomily. It was a jealously-guarded privilege, the only way a penniless servant could ensure immortality. He remembered grandfather’s funeral, and the discreet clamour of the old man’s personal servants. It had made father depressed for days. “Yes, but it’s not compulsory,” he said. “Yes, sire. It is not compulsory.” “Father had plenty of servants.” “I gather she was his favourite, sire.” “What exactly has she done wrong, then?” Dios sighed, as one might if one were explaining things to an extremely backward child. “She has refused to take the potion, sire.” “Sorry. I thought you said it wasn’t compulsory, Dios.” “Yes, sire. It is not, sire. It is entirely voluntary. It is an act of free will. And she has refused it, sire.” “Ah. One of those situations,” said Teppic. Djelibeybi was built on those sort of situations. Trying to understand them could drive you mad. If one of his ancestors had decreed that night was day, people would go around groping in the light. He leaned forward. “Step forward, young lady,” he said. She looked at Dios. “His Greatness the King Teppicymon XXVIII-” “Do we have to go all through that every time?” “Yes, sire - Lord of the Heavens, Charioteer of the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque of the Sun, Guardian of the Secret Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the Way, the Flail of Mercy, the High-Born One, the Never-Dying King, bids you declare your guilt!” The girl shook herself out of the guards’ grip and faced Teppic, trembling with terror. “He told me he didn’t want to be buried in a pyramid,” she said. “He said the idea of those millions of tons of rock on top of him gave him nightmares. I don’t want to die yet!” “You refuse to gladly take the poison?” said Dios. “Yes!” “But, child,” said Dios, “then the king will have you put to death anyway. Surely it is better to go honourably, to a worthy life in the netherworld?” “I don’t want to be a servant in the netherworld!” There was a groan of horror from the assembled priests. Dios nodded. “Then the Eater of Souls will take you,” he said. “Sire, we look to your judgement.” Teppic realised he was staring at the girl. There was something hauntingly familiar about her which he couldn’t quite put his finger on. “Let her go,” he said. “His Greatness the King Teppicymon XXVIII, Lord of the Heavens, Charioteer of the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque of the Sun, Guardian of the Secret Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the Way, the Flail of Mercy, the High-Born One, the Never-Dying King, has spoken! Tomorrow at dawn you will be cast to the crocodiles of the river. Great is the wisdom of the king!” Ptraci turned and glared at Teppic. He said nothing. He did not dare, for fear of what it might become. She went away quietly, which was worse than sobbing or shouting. “That is the last case, sire,” said Dios. “I will retire to my quarters,” said Teppic coldly. “I have much to think about.” “Therefore I will have dinner sent in,” said the priest. “It will be roast chicken.” “I hate chicken.” Dios smiled. “No, sire. On Wednesdays the king always enjoys chicken, sire.” The pyramids flared. The light they cast on the landscape was curiously subdued, grainy, almost grey, but over the capstone of each tomb a zigzag flame crackled towards the sky. A faint click of metal and stone sprang Ptraci from a fitful doze into extreme wakefulness. She stood up very carefully and crept towards the window. Unlike proper cell windows, which should be large and airy and requiring only the removal of a few inconvenient iron bars to ensure the escape of any captives, this window was a slit six inches wide. Seven thousand years had taught the kings along the Djel that cells should be designed to keep prisoners in. The only way they could get out through this slit was in bits. But there was a shadow against the pyramid light, and a voice said, “Psst.” She flattened herself against the wall and tried to reach up to the slit. “Who are you?” “I’m here to help you. Oh damn. Do they call this a window? Look, I’m lowering a rope.” A thick silken cord, knotted at intervals, dropped past her shoulder. She stared at it for a second or two, and then kicked off her curly-toed shoes and climbed up it. The face on the other side of the slit was half-concealed by a black hood, but she could just make out a worried expression. “Don’t despair,” it said. “I wasn’t despairing. I was trying to get some sleep.” “Oh. Pardon me, I’m sure. I’ll just go away and leave you, shall I?” “But in the morning I shall wake up and then I’ll despair. What are you standing on, demon?” “Do you know what a crampon is?” “No.” “Well, it’s two of them.” They stared at each other in silence. “Okay,” said the face at last. “I’ll have to go around and come in through the door. Don’t go away.” And with that it vanished upwards. Ptraci let herself slide back down to the chilly stones of the floor. Come in through the door! She wondered how it could manage that. Humans would need to open it first. She crouched in the furthest corner of the cell, staring at the small rectangle of wood. Long minutes went past. At one point she thought she heard a tiny noise, like a gasp. A little later there was subtle clink of metal, so slight as to be almost beyond the range of hearing. More time wound on to the spool of eternity and then the silence beyond the cell, which had been the silence caused by absence of sound, very slowly became the silence caused by someone making no noise. She thought: It’s right outside the door. There was a pause in which Teppic oiled all the bolts and hinges so that, when he made the final assault, the door swished open in heart-gripping noiselessness. “I say?” said a voice in the darkness. Ptraci pressed herself still further into the corner. “Look, I’ve come to rescue you.” Now she could make out a blacker shadow in the flarelight. It stepped forward with rather more uncertainty than she would have expected from a demon. “Are you coming or not?” it said. “I’ve only knocked out the guards, it’s not their fault, but we haven’t got a lot of time.” “I’m to be thrown to the crocodiles in the morning,” whispered Ptraci. “The king himself decreed it.” “He probably made a mistake.” Ptraci’s eyes widened in horrified disbelief. “The Soul Eater will take me!” she said. “Do you want it to?” Ptraci hesitated. “Well, then,” said the figure, and took her unresisting hand. He led her out of the cell, where she nearly tripped over the prone body of a guard. “Who is in the other cells?” he said, pointing to the line of doors along the passage. “I don’t know,” said Ptraci. “Let’s find out, shall we?” The figure touched a can to the bolts and hinges of the next door and pushed it open. The flare from the narrow window illuminated a middle-aged man, seated cross-legged on the floor. “I’m here to rescue you,” said the demon. The man peered up at him. “Rescue?” he said. “Yes. Why are you here?” The man hung his head. “I spoke blasphemy against the king.” “How did you do that?” “I dropped a rock on my foot. Now my tongue is to be torn out.” The dark figure nodded sympathetically. “A priest heard you, did he?” he said. “No. I told a priest. Such words should not go unpunished,” said the man virtuously. We’re really good at it, Teppic thought. Mere animals couldn’t possibly manage to act like this. You need to be a human being to be really stupid. “I think we ought to talk about this outside,” he said. “Why not come with me?” The man pulled back and glared at him. “You want me to run away?” he said. “Seems a good idea, wouldn’t you say?” The man stared into his eyes, his lips moving silently. Then he appeared to reach a decision. “Guards!” he screamed. The shout echoed through the sleeping palace. His would-be rescuer stared at him in disbelief. “Mad,” Teppic said. “You’re all mad.” He stepped out of the room, grabbed Ptraci’s hand, and hurried along the shadowy passages. Behind them the prisoner made the most of his tongue while he still had it and used it to scream a stream of imprecations. “Where are you taking me?” said Ptraci, as they marched smartly around a corner and into a pillar-barred courtyard. Teppic hesitated. He hadn’t thought much beyond this point. “Why do they bother to bolt the doors?” he demanded, eyeing the pillars. “That’s what I want to know. I’m surprised you didn’t wander back to your cell while I was in there.” “I - I don’t want to die,” she said quietly. “Don’t blame you.” “You mustn’t say that! It’s wrong not to want to die!” Teppic glanced up at the roof around the courtyard and unslung his grapnel. “I think I ought to go back to my cell,” said Ptraci, without actually making any move in that direction. “It’s wrong even to think of disobeying the king.” “Oh? What happens to you, then?” “Something bad,” she said vaguely. “You mean, worse than being thrown to the crocodiles or having your soul taken by the Soul Eater?” said Teppic, and caught the grapnel firmly on some hidden ledge on the flat roof. “That’s an interesting point,” said Ptraci, winning the Teppic Award for clear thinking. “Worth considering, isn’t it?” Teppic tested his weight on the cord. “What you’re saying is, if the worst is going to happen to you anyway, you might as well not bother any more,” said Ptraci. “If the Soul Eater is going to get you whatever you do, you might as well avoid the crocodiles, is that it?” “You go up first,” said Teppic, “I think someone’s coming.” “Who are you?” Teppic fished in his pouch. He’d come back to Djeli an aeon ago with just the clothes he stood up in, but they were the clothes he’d stood up in throughout his exam. He balanced a Number Two throwing knife in his hand, the steel glinting in the flarelight. It was possibly the only steel in the country; it wasn’t that Djelibeybi hadn’t heard about iron, it was just that if copper was good enough for your great-great-great-great-grandfather, it was good enough for you. No, the guards didn’t deserve knives. They hadn’t done anything wrong. His hand closed over the little mesh bag of caltraps. These were a small model, a mere one inch per spike. Caltraps didn’t kill anyone, they just slowed them down a bit. One or two of them in the sole of the foot induced extreme slowness and caution in all except the terminally enthusiastic. He scattered a few across the mouth of the passage and ran back to the rope, hauling himself up in a few quick swings. He reached the roof just as the leading guards ran under the lintel. He waited until he heard the first curse, and then coiled up the rope and hurried after the girl. “They’ll catch us,” she said. “I don’t think so.” “And then the king will have us thrown to the crocodiles.” “Oh no, I don’t think-” Teppic paused. It was an intriguing idea. “He might,” he ventured. “It’s very hard to be sure about anything.” “So what shall we do now?” Teppic stared across the river, where the pyramids were ablaze. The Great Pyramid was still under construction, by flarelight; a swarm of blocks, dwarfed by distance, hovered near its tip. The amount of labour Ptaclusp was putting on the job was amazing. What a flare that will give, he thought. It’ll be seen all the way to Ankh. “Horrible things, aren’t they,” said Ptraci, behind him. “Do you think so?” “They’re creepy. The old king hated them, you know. He said they nailed the Kingdom to the past.” “Did he say why?” “No. He just hated them. He was a nice old boy. Very kind. Not like this new one.” She blew her nose and replaced her handkerchief in its scarcely adequate space in her sequinned bra. “Er, what exactly did you have to do? As a handmaiden, I mean?” said Teppic, scanning the rooftop panorama to hide his embarrassment. She giggled. “You’re not from around here, are you?” “No. Not really.” “Talk to him, mainly. Or just listen. He could really talk, but he always said no-one ever really listened to what he said.” “Yes,” said Teppic, with feeling. “And that was all, was it?” She stared at him, and then giggled again. “Oh, that? No, he was very kind. I wouldn’t of minded, you understand, I had all the proper training. Bit of a disappointment, really. The women of my family have served under the kings for centuries, you know.” “Oh yes?” he managed. “I don’t know whether you’ve ever seen a book, it’s called The Shuttered-” “-Palace,” said Teppic automatically. “I thought a gentleman like you’d know about it,” said Ptraci, nudging him. “It’s a sort of textbook. Well, my great-great-grandmother posed for a lot of the pictures. Not recently,” she added, in case he hadn’t fully understood, “I mean, that would be a bit off-putting, she’s been dead for twenty-five years. When she was younger. I look a lot like her, everyone says.” “Urk,” agreed Teppic. “She was famous. She could put her feet behind her head, you know. So can I. I’ve got my Grade Three.” “Urk?” “The old king told me once that the gods gave people a sense of humour to make up for giving them sex. I think he was a bit upset at the time.” “Urk.” Only the whites of Teppic’s eyes were showing. “You don’t say much, do you?” The breeze of the night was blowing her perfume towards him. Ptraci used scent like a battering ram. “We’ve got to find somewhere to hide you,” he said, concentrating on each word. “Haven’t you got any parents or anything?” He tried to ignore the fact that in the shadowless flarelight she appeared to glow, and didn’t have much success. “Well, my mother still works in the palace somewhere,” said Ptraci. “But I don’t think she’d be very sympathetic.” “We’ve got to get you away from here,” said Teppic fervently. “If you can hide somewhere today, I can steal some horses or a boat or something. Then you could go to Tsort or Ephebe or somewhere.” “Foreign, you mean? I don’t think I’d like that,” said Ptraci. “Compared to the netherworld?” “Well. Put like that, of course . . .” She took his arm. “Why did you rescue me?” “Er? Because being alive is better than being dead, I think.” “I’ve read up to number 46, Congress of the Five Auspicious Ants,” said Ptraci. “If you’ve got some yoghurt, we could-” “No! I mean, no. Not here. Not now. There must be people looking for us, it’s nearly dawn.” “There’s no need to yelp like that! I was just trying to be kind.” “Yes. Good. Thank you.” Teppic broke away and peered desperately over a parapet into one of the palace’s numerous light wells. “This leads to the embalmers’ workshops,” he said. “There must be plenty of places to hide down here.” He unwound the cord again. Various rooms led off the well. Teppic found one lined with benches and floored with wood shavings; a doorway led through to another room stacked with mummy cases, each one surmounted by the same golden dolly face he’d come to know and loathe. He tapped on a few, and raised the lid of the nearest. “No-one at home,” he said. “You can have a nice rest in here. I can leave the lid open a bit so you can get some air.” “You can’t think I’d risk that? Supposing you didn’t come back!” “I’ll be back tonight,” said Teppic. “And - and I’ll see if I can drop some food and water in some time today.” She stood on tiptoe, her ankle bangles jingling all the way down Teppic’s libido. He glanced down involuntarily and saw that every toenail was painted. He remembered Cheesewright telling them behind the stables one lunch-hour that girls who painted their toenails were . . . well, he couldn’t quite remember now, but it had seemed pretty unbelievable at the time. “It looks very hard,” she said. “What?” “If I’ve got to lie in it, it’ll need some cushions.” “I’ll put some wood shavings in, look!” said Teppic. “But hurry up! Please!” “All right. But you will be back, won’t you? Promise?” “Yes, yes! I promise!” He wedged a splinter of wood on the case to allow an airhole, heaved the lid back on and ran for it. The ghost of the king watched him go. The sun rose. As the golden light spilled down the fertile valley of the Djel the pyramid flares paled and became ghost dancers against the lightening sky. They were now accompanied by a noise. It had been there all the time, far too high-pitched for mortal ears, a sound now dropping down from the far ultrasonic KKKkkkkkkhhheeee. . . It screamed out of the sky, a thin rind of sound like a violin bow dragged across the raw surface of the brain. kkkkheeeeeee. . . Or a wet fingernail dragged over an exposed nerve, some said. You could set your watch by it, they would have said, if anyone knew what one was. . . .keeee. . . It went deeper and deeper as the sunlight washed over the stones, passing through cat scream to dog growl. . . .ee. . . ee. . . ee. The flares collapsed. . . .ops.   “A fine morning, sire. I trust you slept well?” Teppic waved a hand at Dios, but said nothing. The barber was working through the Ceremony of Going Forth Shaven. The barber was trembling. Until recently he had been a one-handed, unemployed stonemason. Then the terrible high priest had summoned him and ordered him to be the king’s barber, but it meant you had to touch the king but it was all right because it was all sorted out by the priests and nothing more had to be chopped off. On the whole, it was better than he had thought, and a great honour to be singlehandedly responsible for the king’s beard, such as it was. “You were not disturbed in any way?” said the high priest. His eyes scanned the room on a raster of suspicion; it was surprising that little lines of molten rock didn’t drip off the walls. “Verrr-” “If you would but hold still, O never-dying one,” said the barber, in the pleading tone of voice employed by one who is assured of a guided tour of a crocodile’s alimentary tract if he nicks an ear. “You heard no strange noises, sire?” said Dios. He stepped back suddenly so that he could see behind the gilded peacock screen at the other end of the room. “Norr.” “Your majesty looks a little peaky this morning, sire,” said Dios. He sat down on the bench with the carved cheetahs on either end. Sitting down in the presence of the king, except on ceremonial occasions, was not something that was allowed. It did, however, mean that he could squint under Teppic’s low bed. Dios was rattled. Despite the aches and the lack of sleep, Teppic felt oddly elated. He wiped his chin. “It’s the bed,” he said. “I think I have mentioned it. Mattresses, you know. They have feathers in them. If the concept is unfamiliar, ask the pirates of Khali. Half of them must be sleeping on goosefeather mattresses by now.” “His majesty is pleased to joke,” said Dios. Teppic knew he shouldn’t push it any further, but he did so anyway. “Something wrong, Dios?” he said. “A miscreant broke into the palace last night. The girl Ptraci is missing.” “That is very disturbing.” “Yes, sire.” “Probably a suitor or a swain or something.” Dios’s face was like stone. “Possibly, sire.” “The sacred crocodiles will be going hungry, then.” But not for long, Teppic thought. Walk to the end of any of the little jetties down by the bank, let your shadow fall on the river, and the mud-yellow water would become, by magic, mud-yellow bodies. They looked like large, sodden logs, the main difference being that logs don’t open at one end and bite your legs off. The sacred crocodiles of the Djel were the kingdom’s garbage disposal, river patrol and occasional morgue. They couldn’t simply be called big. If one of the huge bulls ever drifted sideways on to the current, he’d dam the river. The barber tiptoed out. A couple of body servants tiptoed in. “I anticipated your majesty’s natural reaction, sire,” Dios continued, like the drip of water in deep limestone caverns. “Jolly good,” said Teppic, inspecting the clothes for the day. “What was it, exactly?” “A detailed search of the palace, room by room.” “Absolutely. Carry on, Dios.” My face is perfectly open, he told himself. I haven’t twitched a muscle out of place. I know I haven’t. He can read me like a stele. I can outstare him. “Thank you, sire.” “I imagine they’ll be miles away by now,” said Teppic. “Whoever they were. She was only a handmaiden, wasn’t she?” “It is unthinkable that anyone could disobey your judgements! There is no-one in the kingdom that would dare to! Their souls would be forfeit! They will be hunted down, sire! Hunted down and destroyed!” The servants cowered behind Teppic. This wasn’t mere anger. This was wrath. Real, old-time, vintage wrath. And waxing? It waxed like a hatful of moons. “Are you feeling all right, Dios?” Dios had turned to look out across the river. The Great Pyramid was almost complete. The sight of it seemed to calm him down or, at least, stabilise him on some new mental plateau. “Yes, sire,” he said. “Thank you.” He breathed deeply. “Tomorrow, sire, you are pleased to witness the capping of the pyramid. A momentous occasion. Of course, it will be some time before the interior chambers are completed.” “Fine. Fine. And this morning, I think, I should like to visit my father.” “I am sure the late king will be pleased to see you, sire. It is your wish that I should accompany you.” “Oh.” It’s a fact as immutable as the Third Law of Sod that there is no such thing as a good Grand Vizier. A predilection to cackle and plot is apparently part of the job spec. High priests tend to get put in the same category. They have to face the implied assumption that no sooner do they get the funny hat than they’re issuing strange orders, e.g., princesses tied to rocks for itinerant sea monsters and throwing little babies in the sea. This is a gross slander. Throughout the history of the Disc most high priests have been serious, pious and conscientious men who have done their best to interpret the wishes of the gods, sometimes disembowelling or flaying alive hundreds of people in a day in order to make sure they’re getting it absolutely right. King Teppicymon XXVII’s casket lay in state. Crafted it was of foryphy, smaradgine, skelsa and delphinet, inlaid it was with pink jade and shode, perfumed and fumed it was with many rare resins and perfumes It looked very impressive but, the king considered, it wasn’t worth dying for. He gave up and wandered across the courtyard. A new player had entered the drama of his death. Grinjer, the maker of models. He’d always wondered about the models. Even a humble farmer expected to be buried with a selection of crafted livestock, which would somehow become real in the netherworld. Many a man made do with one cow like a toast rack in this world in order to afford a pedigree herd in the next. Nobles and kings got the complete set, including model carts, houses, boats and anything else too big or inconvenient to fit in the tomb. Once on the other side, they’d somehow become the genuine article. The king frowned. When he was alive he’d known that it was true. Not doubted it for a moment Grinjer stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth as, with great care, he tweezered a tiny oar to a perfect 1/80th scale river trireme. Every flat surface in his corner of the workshop was stacked with midget animals and artifacts; some of his more impressive ones hung from wires on the ceiling. The king had already ascertained from overheard conversation that Grinjer was twenty-six, couldn’t find anything to stop the inexorable advance of his acne, and lived at home with his mother. Where, in the evenings, he made models. Deep in the duffel coat of his mind he hoped one day to find a nice girl who would understand the absolute importance of getting every detail right on a ceremonial six-wheeled ox cart, and who would hold his glue-pot, and always be ready with a willing thumb whenever anything needed firm pressure until the paste dried. He was aware of trumpets and general excitement behind him. He ignored it. There always seemed to be a lot of fuss these days. In his experience it was always about trivial things. People just didn’t have their priorities right. He’d been waiting two months for a few ounces of gum varneti, and it didn’t seem to bother anyone. He screwed his eyeglass into a more comfortable position and slotted a minute steering oar into place. Someone was standing next to him. Well, they could make themselves useful . “Could you just put your finger here,” he said, without glancing around. “Just for a minute, until the glue sets.” There seemed to be a sudden drop in temperature. He looked up into a smiling golden mask. Over its shoulder Dios’s face was shading, in Grinjer’s expert opinion, from No.13 (Pale Flesh) to No.37 (Sunset Purple, Gloss). “Oh,” he said. “It’s very good,” said Teppic. “What is it?” Grinjer blinked at him. Then he blinked at the boat. “It’s an eighty-foot Khali-fashion river trireme with fishtail spear deck and ramming prow,” he said automatically. He got the impression that more was expected of him. He cast around for something suitable. “It’s got more than five hundred bits,” he added. “Every plank on the deck is individually cut, look.” “Fascinating,” said Teppic. “Well, I won’t hold you up. Carry on the good work.” “The sail really unfurls,” said Grinjer. “See, if you pull this thread, the-” The mask had moved. Dios was there instead. He gave Grinjer a short glare which indicated that more would be heard about this later on, and hurried after the king. So did the ghost of Teppicymon XXVII. Teppic’s eyes swivelled behind the mask. There was the open doorway into the room of caskets. He could just make out the one containing Ptraci; the wedge of wood was still under the lid. “Our father, however, is over here. Sire,” said Dios. He could move as silently as a ghost. “Oh. Yes.” Teppic hesitated and then crossed to the big case on its trestles. He stared down at it for some time. The gilded face on the lid looked like every other mask. “A very good likeness, sire,” prompted Dios. “Ye-ess,” said Teppic. “I suppose so. He definitely looks happier. I suppose.” “Hallo, my boy,” said the king. He knew that no-one could hear him, but he felt happier talking to them all the same. It was better than talking to himself. He was going to have more than enough time for that. “I think it brings out the best in him, O commander of the heavens,” said the head sculptor. “Makes me look like a constipated wax dolly.” Teppic cocked his head on one side. “Yes,” he said, uncertainly. “Yes. Er. Well done.” He half-turned to look through the doorway again. Dios nodded to the guards on either side of the passageway. “If you will excuse me, sire,” he said urbanely. “Hmm?” “The guards will continue their search.” “Right. Oh-” Dios bore down on Ptraci’s casket, flanked by guards. He gripped the lid, thrust it backwards, and said, “Behold! What do we find?” Dil and Gern joined him. They looked inside. “Wood shavings,” said Dil. Gern sniffed. “They smell nice, though,” he said. Dios’s fingers drummed on the lid. Teppic had never seen him at a loss before. The man actually started tapping the sides of the case, apparently seeking any hidden panels. He closed the lid carefully and looked blankly at Teppic, who for the first time was very glad that the mask didn’t reveal his expression. “She’s not in there,” said the old king. “She got out for a call of nature when the men went to have their breakfast.” She must have climbed out, Teppic told himself. So where is she now? Dios scanned the room carefully and then, after swinging slowly backwards and forwards like a compass needle, his eyes fixed on the king’s mummy case. It was big. It was roomy. There was a certain inevitability about it. He crossed the room in a couple of strides and heaved it open. “Don’t bother to knock,” the king grumbled. “It’s not as if I’m going anywhere.” Teppic risked a look. The mummy of the king was quite alone. “Are you sure you’re feeling all right, Dios?” he said. “Yes, sire. We cannot be too careful, sire. Clearly they are not here, sire.” “You look as if you could do with a breath of fresh air,” said Teppic, upbraiding himself for doing this but doing it, nevertheless. Dios at a loss was an awe-inspiring sight, and slightly disconcerting; it made one instinctively fear for the stability of things. “Yes, sire. Thank you, sire.” “Have a sit down and someone will bring you a glass of water. And then we will go and inspect the pyramid.” Dios sat down. There was a terrible little splintering noise. “He’s sat on the boat,” said the king. “First humorous thing I’ve ever seen him do.”   The pyramid gave a new meaning to the word “massive”. It bent the landscape around it. It seemed to Teppic that its very weight was deforming the shape of things, stretching the kingdom like a lead ball on a rubber sheet. He knew that was a ridiculous idea. Big though the pyramid was, it was tiny compared to, say, a mountain. But big, very big, compared to anything else. Anyway, mountains were meant to be big, the fabric of the universe was used to the idea. The pyramid was a made thing, and much bigger than a made thing ought to be. It was also very cold. The black marble of its sides was shining white with frost in the roasting afternoon sun. He was foolish enough to touch it and left a layer of skin on the surface. “It’s freezing!” “It’s storing already, O breath of the river,” said Ptaclusp, who was sweating. “It’s the wossname, the boundary effect.” “I note that you have ceased work on the burial chambers,” said Dios. “The men . . . the temperature . . . boundary effects a bit too much to risk . . .” muttered Ptaclusp. “Er.” Teppic looked from one to the other. “What’s the matter?” he said. “Are there problems?” “Er,” said Ptaclusp. “You’re way ahead of schedule. Marvellous work,” said Teppic. “You’ve put a tremendous amount of labour on the job.” “Er. Yes. Only.” There was silence except for the distant sounds of men at work, and the faint noise of the air sizzling where it touched the pyramid. “It’s bound to be all right when we get the capstone on, the pyramid builder managed eventually. “Once it’s flaring properly, no problem. Er.” He indicated the electrum capstone. It was surprisingly small, only a foot or so across, and rested on a couple of trestles. “We should be able to put it on tomorrow,” said Ptaclusp. “Would your sire still be honouring us with the capping-out ceremony?” In his nervousness he gripped the hem of his robe and began to twist it. “There’s drinks,” he stuttered. “And a silver trowel that you can take away with you. Everyone shouts hurrah and throws their hats in the air.” “Certainly,” said Dios. “It will be an honour.” “And for us too, your sire,” said Ptaclusp loyally. “I meant for you,” said the high priest. He turned to the wide courtyard between the base of the pyramid and the river, which was lined with statues and stelae commemorating King Teppicymon’s mighty deeds,* (* The carvers had to use quite a lot of imagination. The late king had had many fine attributes, but doing mighty deeds wasn’t among them. The score was: Number of enemies ground as dust under his chariot wheels = 0. Number of thrones crushed beneath his sandalled feet = 0. Number of times world bestrode like colossus = 0. On the other hand: Reigns of terror = 0 Number of times own throne crushed beneath enemy sandals = 0. Faces of poor ground = 0. Expensive crusades embarked upon = 0. His life had, basically, been a no-score win.) and pointed. “And you can get rid of that,” he added. Ptaclusp gave him a look of unhappy innocence. “That statue,” said Dios, “is what I am referring to., “Oh. Ah. Well, we thought once you saw it in place, you see, in the right light, and what with Hat the Vulture-Headed God being very-” “It goes,” said Dios. “Right you are, your reverence,” said Ptaclusp miserably. It was, right now, the least of his problems, but on top of everything else he was beginning to think that the statue was following him around. Dios leaned closer. “You haven’t seen a young woman anywhere on the site, have you?” he demanded. “No women on the site, my lord,” said Ptaclusp. “Very bad luck.” “This one was provocatively dressed,” the high priest said. “No, no women.” “The palace is not far, you see. There must be many places to hide over here,” Dios continued, insistently. Ptaclusp swallowed. He knew that, all right. Whatever had possessed him. “I assure you, your reverence,” he said. Dios gave him a scowl, and then turned to where Teppic, as it turned out, had been. “Please ask him not to shake hands with anybody,” said the builder, as Dios hurried after the distant glint of sunlight on gold. The king still didn’t seem to be able to get alongside the idea that the last thing the people wanted was a man of the people. Those workers who couldn’t get out of the way in time were thrusting their hands behind their back. Alone now, Ptaclusp fanned himself and staggered into the shade of his tent. Where, waiting to see him, were Ptaclusp IIa, Ptaclusp IIa, Ptaclusp IIa and Ptaclusp IIa. Ptaclusp always felt uneasy in the presence of accountants, and four of them together was very bad, especially when they were all the same person. Three Ptaclusp IIbs were there as well; the other two, unless it was three by now, were out on the site. He waved his hands in a conciliatory way. “All right, all right,” he said. “What are today’s problems?” One of the IIas pulled a stack of wax tablets towards him “Have you any idea, father,” he began, employing that thin; razor-edged voice that accountants use to preface something unexpected and very expensive, “what calculus is?” “You tell me,” said Ptaclusp, sagging on to a stool. “It’s what I’ve had to invent to deal with the wages bill, father,” said another IIa. “I thought that was algebra?” said Ptaclusp. “We passed algebra last week,” said a third IIa. “It’s calculus now. I’ve had to loop myself another four times to work on it, and there’s three of me working on-” he glanced at his brothers - “quantum accountancy.” “What’s that for?” said his father wearily. “Next week.” The leading accountant glared at the top slab. “For example,” he said. “You know Rthur the fresco painter?” “What about him?” “He - that is, they - have put in a bill for two years’ work.” “Oh.” “They said they did it on Tuesday. On account of how time is fractal in nature, they said.” “They said that?” said Ptaclusp. “It’s amazing what they pick up,” said one of the accountants, glaring at the paracosmic architects. Ptaclusp hesitated. “How many of them are there?” “How should we know? We know there were fifty-three. Then he went critical. We’ve certainly seen him around a lot.” Two of the IIas sat back and steepled their fingers, always a bad sign in anyone having anything to do with money. “The problem is,” one of them continued, “that after the initial enthusiasm a lot of the workers looped themselves unofficially so that they could stay at home and send themselves out to work.” “But that’s ridiculous,” Ptaclusp protested weakly. “They’re not different people, they’re just doing it to themselves.” “That’s never stopped anyone, father,” said IIa. “How many men have stopped drinking themselves stupid at the age of twenty to save a stranger dying of liver failure at forty?” There was silence while they tried to work this one out. “A stranger-?” said Ptaclusp uncertainly. “I mean himself, when older,” snapped IIa. “That was philosophy,” he added. “One of the masons beat himself up yesterday,” said one of the IIbs gloomily. “He was fighting with himself over his wife. Now he’s going mad because he doesn’t know whether it’s an earlier version of him or someone he hasn’t been yet. He’s afraid he’s going to creep up on him. There’s worse than that, too. Dad, we’re paying forty thousand people, and we’re only employing two thousand.” “It’s going to bankrupt us, that’s what you’re going to say,” said Ptaclusp. “I know. It’s all my fault. I just wanted something to hand on to you, you know. I didn’t expect all this. It seemed too easy to start with.” One of the IIas cleared his throat. “It’s . . . uh . . . not quite as bad as all that,” he said quietly. “What do you mean?” The accountant laid a dozen copper coins on the table. “Well, er,” he said. “You see, eh, it occurred to me, since there’s all this movement in time, that it’s not just people who can be looped, and, er, look, you see these coins?” One coin vanished. “They’re all the same coin, aren’t they,” said one of his brothers. “Well, yes,” said the IIa, very embarrassed, because interfering with the divine flow of money was alien to his personal religion. “The same coin at five minute intervals.” “And you’re using this trick to pay the men?” said Ptaclusp dully. “It’s not a trick! I give them the money,” said IIa primly. “What happens to it afterwards isn’t my responsibility, is it?” “I don’t like any of this,” said his father. “Don’t worry. It all evens out in the end,” said one of the IIas. “Everyone gets what’s coming to them.” “Yes. That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Ptaclusp. “It’s just a way of letting your money work for you,” said another son. “It’s probably quantum.” “Oh, good,” said Ptaclusp weakly. “We’ll get the block on tonight, don’t worry,” said one of the IIbs. “After it’s flared the power off we can all settle down.” “I told the king we’d do it tomorrow.” The Ptaclusp IIbs went pale in unison. Despite the heat, it suddenly seemed a lot colder in the tent. “Tonight, father,” said one of them. “Surely you mean tonight? “Tomorrow,” said Ptaclusp, firmly. “I’ve arranged an awning and people throwing lotus blossom. There’s going to be a band. Tocsins and trumpets and tinkling cymbals. And speeches and a meat tea afterwards. That’s the way we’ve always done it. Attracts new customers. They like to have a look round.” “Father, you’ve seen the way it soaks up. . . you’ve seen the frost . . “Let it soak. We Ptaclusps don’t go around capping off pyramids as though we were finishing off a garden wall. We don’t knock off like a wossname in the night. People expect a ceremony. “But-” “I’m not listening. I’ve listened to too much of this new-fangled stuff. Tomorrow. I’ve had the bronze plaque made, and the velvet curtains and everything.” One of the IIas shrugged. “It’s no good arguing with him,” he said. “I’m from three hours ahead. I remember this meeting. We couldn’t change his mind.” “I’m from two hours ahead,” said one of his clones. “I remember you saying that, too.” Beyond the walls of the tent, the pyramid sizzled with accumulated time. There is nothing mystical about the power of pyramids. Pyramids are dams in the stream of time. Correctly shaped and orientated, with the proper paracosmic measurements correctly plumbed in, the temporal potential of the great mass of stone can be diverted to accelerate or reverse time over a very small area, in the same way that a hydraulic ram can be induced to pump water against the flow. The original builders, who were of course ancients and therefore wise, knew this very well and the whole point of a correctly-built pyramid was to achieve absolute null time in the central chamber so that a dying king, tucked up there, would indeed live forever - or at least, never actually die. The time that should have passed in the chamber was stored in the bulk of the pyramid and allowed to flare off once every twenty-four hours. After a few aeons people forgot this and thought you could achieve the same effect by a) ritual b) pickling people and c) storing their soft inner bits in jars. This seldom works. And so the art of pyramid tuning was lost, and all the knowledge became a handful of misunderstood rules and hazy recollections. The ancients were far too wise to build very big pyramids. They could cause very strange things, things that would make mere fluctuations in time look tiny by comparison. By the way, contrary to popular opinion pyramids don’t sharpen razor blades. They just take them back to when they weren’t blunt. It’s probably because of quantum. Teppic lay on the strata of his bed, listening intently. There were two guards outside the door, and another two on the balcony outside, and - he was impressed at Dios’s forethought - one on the roof. He could hear them trying to make no noise. He’d hardly been able to protest. If black-clad miscreants were getting into the palace, then the person of the king had to be protected. It was undeniable. He slipped off the solid mattress and glided through the twilight to the statue of Bast the Cat-Headed God in the corner, twisted off the head, and pulled out his assassin’s costume. He dressed quickly, cursing the lack of mirrors, and then padded across and lurked behind a pillar. The only problem, as far as he could see, was not laughing. Being a soldier in Djelibeybi was not a high risk job. There was never a hint of internal rebellion and, since either neighbour could crush the kingdom instantly by force of arms, there was no real point in selecting keen and belligerent warriors. In fact, the last thing the priesthood wanted was enthusiastic soldiers. Enthusiastic soldiers with no fighting to do soon get bored and start thinking dangerous thoughts, like how much better they could run the country. Instead the job attracted big, solid men, the kind of men who could stand stock still for hours at a time without getting bored, men with the build of an ox and the mental processes to match. Excellent bladder control was also desirable. He stepped out on to the balcony. Teppic had learned how not to move stealthily. Millions of years of being eaten by creatures that know how to move stealthily has made humanity very good at spotting stealthy movement. Nor was it enough to make no noise, because little moving patches of silence always aroused suspicion. The trick was to glide through the night with a quiet reassurance, just like the air did. There was a guard standing just outside the room. Teppic drifted past him and climbed carefully up the wall. It had been decorated with a complex bas relief of the triumphs of past monarchs, so Teppic used his family to give him a leg up. The breeze was blowing off the desert as he swung his legs over the parapet and walked silently across the roof, which was still hot underfoot. The air had a recently-cooked smell, tinted with spice. It was a strange feeling, to be creeping across the roof of your own palace, trying to avoid your own guards, engaged on a mission in direct contravention of your own decree and knowing that if you were caught you would have yourself thrown to the sacred crocodiles. After all, he’d apparently already instructed that he was to be shown no mercy if he was captured. Somehow it added an extra thrill. There was freedom of a sort up here on the rooftops, the only kind of freedom available to a king of the valley. It occurred to Teppic that the landless peasants down on the delta had more freedom than he did, although the seditious and non-kingly side of him said, yes, freedom to catch any diseases of their choice, starve as much as they wanted, and die of whatever dreadful ague took their fancy. But freedom, of a sort. A faint noise in the huge silence of the night drew him to the riverward edge of the roof. The Djel sprawled in the moonlight, broad and oily. There was a boat in midstream, heading back from the far bank and the necropolis. There was no mistaking the figure at the oars. The flarelight gleamed off his bald head. One day, Teppic thought, I’ll follow him. I’ll find out what it is he does over there. If he goes over in daylight, of course. In daylight the necropolis was merely gloomy, as though the whole universe had shut down for early-closing. He’d even explored it, wandering through streets and alleys that contrived to be still and dusty no matter what the weather was on the other, the living side of the water. There was always a breathless feel about it, which was probably not to be wondered at. Assassins liked the night on general principles, but the night of the necropolis was something else. Or rather, it was the same thing, but a lot more of it. Besides, it was the only city anywhere on the Disc where an assassin couldn’t find employment. He reached the light well that opened on the embalmers” courtyard and peered down. A moment later he landed lightly on the floor and slipped into the room of cases. “Hallo, lad.” Teppic opened the lid of the case. It was still empty. “She’s in one of the ones at the back,” said the king. “Never had much of a sense of direction.” It was a great big palace. Teppic could barely find his way around it by daylight. He considered his chances of carrying out a search in pitch darkness. “It’s a family trait, you know. Your grandad had to have Left and Right painted on his sandals, it was that bad. It’s lucky for you that you take after your mother in that respect.” It was strange. She didn’t talk, she chattered. She didn’t seem to be able to hold a simple thought in her head for more than about ten seconds. Her brain appeared to be wired directly to her mouth, so that as soon as a thought entered her head she spoke it out loud. Compared to the ladies he had met at soirees in Ankh, who delighted in entertaining young assassins and fed them expensive delicacies and talked to them of high and delicate matters while their eyes sparkled like carborundum drills and their lips began to glisten compared to them, she was as empty as a, as a, well, as an empty thing. Nevertheless, he found he desperately wanted to find her. The sheer undemandingness of her was like a drug. The memory of her bosom was quite beside the point. “I’m glad you’ve come back for her,” said the king vaguely. “She’s your sister, you know. Half sister, that is. Sometimes I wish I’d married her mother, but you see she wasn’t royal. Very bright woman, her mother.” Teppic listened hard. There it was again: a faint breathing noise, only heard at all because of the deep silence of the night. He worked his way to the back of the room, listened again, and lifted the lid of a case. Ptraci was curled up on the bottom, fast asleep with her head on her arm. He leaned the lid carefully against the wall and touched her hair. She muttered something in her sleep, and settled into a more comfortable position. “Er, I think you’d better wake up,” he whispered. She changed position again and muttered something like: “Wstflgl.” Teppic hesitated. Neither his tutors nor Dios had prepared him for this. He knew at least seventy different ways of killing a sleeping person, but none to wake them up first. He prodded her in what looked like the least embarrassing area of her skin. She opened her eyes. “Oh,” she said. “It’s you.” And she yawned. “I’ve come to take you away,” said Teppic. “You’ve been asleep all day.” “I heard someone talking,” she said, stretching in a fashion that made Teppic look away hurriedly. “It was that priest, the one with the face like a bald eagle. He’s really horrible.” “He is, isn’t he?” agreed Teppic, intensely relieved to hear it said. “So I just kept quiet. And there was the king. The new king.” “Oh. He was down here, was he?” said Teppic weakly. The bitterness in her voice was like a Number Four stabbing knife in his heart. “All the girls say he’s really weird,” she added, as he helped her out of the case. “You can touch me, you know. I’m not made of china.” He steadied her arm, feeling in sore need of a cold bath and a quick run around the rooftops. “You’re an assassin, aren’t you,” she went on. “I remembered that after you’d gone. An assassin from foreign parts. All that black. Have you come to kill the king?” “I wish I could,” said Teppic. “He’s really beginning to get on my nerves. Look, could you take your bangles off?” “Why?” “They make such a noise when you walk.” Even Ptraci’s earrings appeared to chime the hours when she moved her head. “I don’t want to,” she said. “I’d feel naked without them.” “You’re nearly naked with them,” hissed Teppic. “Please!” “She can play the dulcimer,” said the ghost of Teppicymon XXVII, apropos of nothing much. “Not very well, mind you. She’s up to page five of “Little Pieces for Tiny Fingers”.” Teppic crept to the passage leading out of the embalming room and listened hard. Silence ruled in the palace, broken only by heavy breathing and the occasional clink behind him as Ptraci stripped herself of her jewellery. He crept back. “Please hurry up,” he said, “we haven’t got a lot of-” Ptraci was crying. “Er,” said Teppic. “Er.” “Some of these were presents from my granny,” sniffed Ptraci. “The old king gave me some, too. These earrings have been in my family for ever such a long time. How would you like it if you had to do it?” “You see, jewellery isn’t just something she wears,” said the ghost of Teppicymon XXVII. “It’s part of who she is.” My word, he added to himself, that’s probably an Insight. Why is it so much easier to think when you’re dead? “I don’t wear any,” said Teppic. “You’ve got all those daggers and things.” “Well, I need them to do my job.” “Well then.” “Look, you don’t have to leave them here, you can put them in my pouch,” he said. “But we must be going. Please!” “Goodbye,” said the ghost sadly, watching them sneak out to the courtyard. He floated back to his corpse, who wasn’t the best of company. The breeze was stronger when they reached the roof. It was hotter, too, and dry. Across the river one or two of the older pyramids were already sending up their flares, but they were weak and looked wrong. “I feel itchy,” said Ptraci. “What’s wrong?” “It feels like we’re in for a thunderstorm,” said Teppic, staring across the river at the Great Pyramid. Its blackness had intensified, so that it was a triangle of deeper darkness in the night. Figures were running around its base like lunatics watching their asylum burn. “What’s a thunderstorm?” “Very hard to describe,” he said, in a preoccupied voice. “Can you see what they’re doing over there?” Ptraci squinted across the river. “They’re very busy,” she said. “Looks more like panic to me.” A few more pyramids flared, but instead of roaring straight up the flames flickered and lashed backwards and forwards, driven by intangible winds. Teppic shook himself. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you away from here.”   “I said we should have capped it this evening,” shouted Ptaclusp IIb above the screaming of the pyramid. “I can’t float it up now, the turbulence up there must be terrific!” The ice of day was boiling off the black marble, which was already warm to the touch. He stared distractedly at the capstone on its cradle and then at his brother, who was still in his nightshirt. “Where’s father?” he said. “I sent one of us to go and wake him up,” said IIa. “Who?” “One of you, actually.” “Oh.” IIb stared again at the capstone. “It’s not that heavy,” he said. “Two of us could manhandle it up there.” He gave his brother an enquiring look. “You must be mad. Send some of the men to do it.” “They’ve all run away-” Down river another pyramid tried to flare, spluttered, and then ejected a screaming, ragged flame that arched across the sky and grounded near the top of the Great Pyramid itself. “It’s interfering with the others now!” shouted IIb. “Come on. We’ve got to flare it off, it’s the only way!” About a third of the way up the pyramid’s flanks a crackling blue zigzag arced out and struck itself on a stone sphinx. The air above it boiled. The two brothers slung the stone between them and staggered to the scaffolding, while the dust around them whirled into strange shapes. “Can you hear something?” said IIb, as they stumbled on to the first platform. “What, you mean the fabric of time and space being put through the wringer?” said IIa. The architect gave his brother a look of faint admiration. It was an unusual remark for an accountant. Then his face returned to its previous look of faint terror. “No, not that,” he said. “Well, the sound of the very air itself being subjected to horrible tortures?” “Not that, either,” said IIb, vaguely annoyed. “I mean the creaking noise.” Three more pyramids struck their discharges, which fizzled through the roiling clouds overhead and poured into the black marble above them. “Can’t hear anything like that,” said IIa. “I think it’s coming from the pyramid.” “Well, you can put your ear against it if you like, but I’m not going to.” The scaffolding swayed in the storm as they eased their way up another ladder, the heavy capstone rocking between them. “I said we shouldn’t do it,” muttered the accountant, as the stone slid gently on to his toes. “We shouldn’t have built this.” “Just shut up and lift your end, will you?” And so, one rocking ladder after another, the brothers Ptaclusp eased their bickering way up the flanks of the Great Pyramid, while the lesser tombs along the Djel fired one after another, and the sky streamed with lines of sizzling time. It was around about this point that the greatest mathematician in the world, lying in cosy flatulence in his stall below the palace, stopped chewing the cud and realised that something very wrong was happening to numbers. All the numbers. The camel looked along its nose at Teppic. Its expression made it clear that of all the riders in all the world it would least like to ride it, he was right at the top of the list. However, camels look like that at everyone. Camels have a very democratic approach to the human race. They hate every member of it, without making any distinctions for rank or creed. This one appeared to be chewing soap. Teppic looked distractedly down the shadowy length of the royal stables, which had once contained a hundred camels. He’d have given the world for a horse, and a moderately-sized continent for a pony. But the stables now held only a handful of rotting war chariots, relics of past glories, an elderly elephant whose presence was a bit of a mystery, and this camel. It looked an extremely inefficient animal. It was going threadbare at the knees. “Well, this is it,” he said to Ptraci. “I don’t dare try the river during the night. I could try and get you over the border.” “Is that saddle on right?” said Ptraci. “It looks awfully funny.” “It’s on an awfully odd creature,” said Teppic. “How do we climb on to it?” “I’ve seen the camel drivers at work,” she replied. “I think they just hit them very hard with a big stick.” The camel knelt down and gave her a smug look. Teppic shrugged, pulled open the doors to the outside world, and stared into the faces of five guards. He backed away. They advanced. Three of them were holding the heavy Djel bows, which could propel an arrow through a door or turn a charging hippo into three tons of mobile kebab. The guards had never had to fire them at a fellow human, but looked as though they were prepared to entertain the idea. The guard captain tapped one of the men on the shoulder, and said, “Go and inform the high priest.” He glared at Teppic. “Throw down all your weapons,” he said. “What, all of them?” “Yes. All of them.” “It might take some time,” said Teppic cautiously. “And keep your hands where I can see them,” the captain added. “We could be up against a real impasse here,” Teppic ventured. He looked from one guard to another. He knew a variety of methods of unarmed combat, but they all rather relied on the opponent not being about to fire an arrow straight through you as soon as you moved. But he could probably dive sideways, and once he had the cover of the camel stalls he could bide his time And that would leave Ptraci exposed. Besides, he could hardly go around fighting his own guards. That wasn’t acceptable behaviour, even for a king. There was a movement behind the guards and Dios drifted into view, as silent and inevitable as an eclipse of the moon. He was holding a lighted torch, which reflected wild highlights on his bald head. “Ah,” he said. “The miscreants are captured. Well done.” He nodded to the captain. “Throw them to the crocodiles.” “Dios?” said Teppic, as two of the guards lowered their bows and bore down on him. “Did you speak?” “You know who I am, man. Don’t be silly.” The high priest raised the torch. “You have the advantage of me, boy,” he said. “Metaphorically speaking.” “This is not funny,” said Teppic. “I order you to tell them who I am.” “As you wish. This assassin,” said Dios, and the voice had the cut and sear of a thermic lance, “has killed the king.” “I am the king, damn it,” said Teppic. “How could I kill myself?” “We are not stupid,” said Dios. “These men know the king does not skulk the palace at night, or consort with condemned criminals. All that remains for us to find out is how you disposed of the body.” His eyes fixed on Teppic’s face, and Teppic realised that the high priest was, indeed, truly mad. It was the rare kind of madness caused by being yourself for so long that habits of sanity have etched themselves into the brain. I wonder how old he really is? he thought. “These assassins are cunning creatures,” said Dios. “Have a care of him.” There was a crash beside the priest. Ptraci had tried to throw a camel prod, and missed. When everyone looked back Teppic had vanished. The guards beside him were busy collapsing slowly to the floor, groaning. Dios smiled. “Take the woman,” he snapped, and the captain darted forward and grabbed Ptraci, who hadn’t made any attempt to run away. Dios bent down and picked up the prod. “There are more guards outside,” he said. “I’m sure you will realise that. It will be in your interests to step forward.” “Why?” said Teppic, from the shadows. He fumbled in his boot for his blowpipe. “You will then be thrown to the sacred crocodiles, by order of the king,” said Dios. “Something to look forward to, eh?” said Teppic, feverishly screwing bits together. “It would certainly be preferable to many alternatives,” said Dios. In the darkness Teppic ran his fingers over the little coded knobs on the darts. Most of the really spectacular poisons would have evaporated or dissolved into harmlessness by now, but there were a number of lesser potions designed to give their clients nothing more than a good night’s sleep. An assassin might have to work his way to an inhume past a number of alert bodyguards. It was considered impolite to inhume them as well. “You could let us go,” said Teppic. “I suspect that’s what you want, isn’t it? For me to go away and never come back? That suits me fine.” Dios hesitated. “You’re supposed to say “And let the girl go”,” he said. “Oh, yes. And that, too,” said Teppic. “No. I would be failing in my duty to the king,” said Dios. “For goodness sake, Dios, you know I am the king!” “No. I have a very clear picture of the king. You are not the king,” said the priest. Teppic peered over the edge of the camel stall. The camel peered over his shoulder. And then the world went mad. All right, madder.   All the pyramids were blazing now, filling the sky with their sooty light as the brothers Ptaclusp struggled to the main working platform. IIa collapsed on the planking, wheezing like an elderly bellows. A few feet away the sloping side was hot to the touch, and there was no doubt in his mind now that the pyramid was creaking, like a sailing ship in a gale. He had never paid much attention to the actual mechanics as opposed to the cost of pyramid construction, but he was pretty certain that the noise was as wrong as II and II making V. His brother reached out to touch the stone, but drew his hand back as small sparks flashed around his fingers. “You can feel the warmth,” he said. “It’s astonishing!” “Why?” “Heating up a mass like this. I mean, the sheer tonnage. . .” “I don’t like it, Two-bee,” IIa quavered. “Let’s just leave the stone here, shall we? I’m sure it’ll be all right, and in the morning we can send a gang up here, they’ll know exactly what-” His words were drowned out as another flare crackled across the sky and hit the column of dancing air fifty feet above them. He grabbed part of the scaffolding. “Sod take this,” he said. “I’m off.” “Hang on a minute,” said IIb. “I mean, what is creaking? Stone can’t creak.” “The whole bloody scaffolding is moving, don’t be daft!” He stared goggle-eyed at his brother. “Tell me it’s the scaffolding,” he pleaded. “No, I’m certain this time. It’s coming from inside.” They stared at one another, and then at the rickety ladder leading up to the tip, or to where the tip should be. “Come on!” said IIb. “It can’t flare off, it’s trying to find ways of discharging-” There was a sound as loud as the groaning of continents. Teppic felt it. He felt that his skin was several sizes too small. He felt that someone was holding his ears and trying to twist his head off. He saw the guard captain sag to his knees, fighting to get his helmet off, and he leapt the stall. Tried to leap the stall. Everything was wrong, and he landed heavily on a floor that seemed undecided about becoming a wall. He managed to get to his feet and was pulled sideways, dancing awkwardly across the stable to keep his balance. The stables stretched and shrank like a picture in a distorting mirror. He’d gone to see some once in Ankh, the three of them hazarding a half-coin each to visit the transient marvels of Dr Mooner’s Travelling Take Your Breath Away Emporium. But you knew then that it was only twisted glass that was giving you a head like a sausage and legs like footballs. Teppic wished he could be so certain that what was happening around him would allow of such a harmless explanation. You’d probably need a wobbly glass mirror to make it look normal. He ran on taffy legs towards Ptraci and the high priest as the world was expanded and squeezed around him, and was momentarily gratified to see the girl squirm in Dios’s grip and fetch him a tidy thump on the ear. He moved as though in a dream, with the distances changing as though reality was an elastic thing. Another step sent him cannoning into the pair of them. He grabbed Ptraci’s arm and staggered back to the camel stall, where the creature was still cudding and watching the scene with the nearest thing a camel will ever get to mild interest, and snatched its halter. No-one seemed to be interested in stopping them as they helped each other through the doorway and out into the mad night. “It helps if you shut your eyes,” said Ptraci. Teppic tried it. It worked. A stretch of courtyard that his eyes told him was a quivering rectangle whose sides twanged like bowstrings became, well, just a courtyard under his feet. “Gosh, that was clever,” he said. “How did you think of that?” “I always shut my eyes when I’m frightened,” said Ptraci. “Good plan.” “What’s happening?” “I don’t know. I don’t want to find out. I think going away from here could be an amazingly sensible idea. How do you make a camel kneel, did you say? I’ve got any amount of sharp things.” The camel, who had a very adequate grasp of human language as it applied to threats, knelt down graciously. They scrambled aboard and the landscape lurched again as the beast jacked itself back on to its feet. The camel knew perfectly well what was happening. Three stomachs and a digestive system like an industrial distillation plant gave you a lot of time for sitting and thinking. It’s not for nothing that advanced mathematics tends to be invented in hot countries. It’s because of the morphic resonance of all the camels, who have that disdainful expression and famous curled lip as a natural result of an ability to do quadratic equations. It’s not generally realised that camels have a natural aptitude for advanced mathematics, particularly where they involve ballistics. This evolved as a survival trait, in the same way as a human’s hand and eye co-ordination, a chameleon’s camouflage and a dolphin’s renowned ability to save drowning swimmers if there’s any chance that biting them in half might be observed and commented upon adversely by other humans. The fact is that camels are far more intelligent than dolphins.* (* Never trust a species that grins all the time. It’s up to something.) They are so much brighter that they soon realised that the most prudent thing any intelligent animal can do, if it would prefer its descendants not to spend a lot of time on a slab with electrodes clamped to their brains or sticking mines on the bottom of ships or being patronised rigid by zoologists, is to make bloody certain humans don’t find out about it. So they long ago plumped for a lifestyle that, in return for a certain amount of porterage and being prodded with sticks, allowed them adequate food and grooming and the chance to spit in a human’s eye and get away with it. And this particular camel, the result of millions of years of selective evolution to produce a creature that could count the grains of sand it was walking over, and close its nostrils at will, and survive under the broiling sun for many days without water, was called You Bastard. And he was, in fact, the greatest mathematician in the world. You Bastard was thinking: there seems to be some growing dimensional instability here, swinging from zero to nearly forty-five degrees by the look of it. How interesting. I wonder what’s causing it? Let V equal 3. Let Tau equal Chi/4. cudcudcud Let Kappa/y be an Evil-Smelling-Bugger* (* Renowned as the greatest camel mathematician of all time, who invented a math of eight-dimensional space while lying down with his nostrils closed in a violent sandstorm.) differential tensor domain with four imaginary spin co-efficients. . . Ptraci hit him across the head with her sandal. “Come on, get a move on!” she yelled. You Bastard thought: Therefore H to the enabling power equals V/s. cudcudcud Thus in hypersyllogic notation . . . Teppic looked behind him. The strange distortions in the landscape seemed to be settling down, and Dios was . . . Dios was striding out of the palace, and had actually managed to find several guards whose fear of disobedience overcame the terror of the mysteriously distorted world. You Bastard stood stoically chewing. . . cudcudcud which gives us an interesting shortening oscillation. What would be the period of this? Let period = x. cudcudcud Let t = time. Let initial period . . . Ptraci bounced up and down on his neck and kicked hard with her heels, an action which would have caused any anthropoid male to howl and bang his head against the wall. “It won’t move! Can’t you hit it?” Teppic brought his hand down as hard as he could on You Bastard’s hide, raising a cloud of dust and deadening every nerve in his fingers. It was like hitting a large sack full of coathangers. “Come on,” he muttered. Dios raised a hand. “Halt, in the name of the king!” he shouted. An arrow thudded into You Bastard’s hump. . . . equals 6.3 recurring. Reduce. That gives us ouch . . . 314 seconds . . . You Bastard turned his long neck around. His great hairy eyebrows made accusing curves as his yellow eyes narrowed and took a fix on the high priest, and he put aside the interesting problem for a moment and dredged up the familiar ancient maths that his race had perfected long ago: Let range equal forty-one feet. Let windspeed equal 2. Vector one-eight. cud Let glutinosity equal 7 . Teppic drew a throwing knife. Dios took a deep breath. He’s going to order them to fire on us, Teppic thought. In my own name, in my own kingdom, I’m going to be shot. Angle two-five, cud Fire. It was a magnificent volley. The gob of cud had commendable lift and spin and hit with a sound like, a sound like half a pound of semi-digested grass hitting someone in the face. There was nothing else it could sound like. The silence that followed was by way of being a standing ovation. The landscape began to distort again. This was clearly not a place to linger. You Bastard looked down at his front legs. Let legs equal four. He lumbered into a run. Camels apparently have more knees than any other creature and You Bastard ran like a steam engine, with lots of extraneous movement at right angles to the direction of motion accompanied by a thunderous barrage of digestive noises. “Bloody stupid animal,” muttered Ptraci, as they jolted away from the palace, “but it looks like it finally got the idea.” . . . gauge-invariant repetition rate of 3.5/z. What’s she talking about, Bloody Stupid lives over in Tsort . . . Though they swung through the air as though jointed with bad elastic You Bastard’s legs covered a lot of ground, and already they were bouncing through the sleeping packed-earth streets of the city. “It’s starting again, isn’t it?” said Ptraci. “I’m going to shut my eyes.” Teppic nodded. The firebrick-hot houses around them were doing their slow motion mirror dance again, and the road was rising and falling in a way that solid land had no right to adopt. “It’s like the sea,” he said. “I can’t see anything,” said Ptraci firmly. “I mean the sea. The ocean. You know. Waves.” “I’ve heard about it. Is anyone chasing us?” Teppic turned in the saddle. “Not that I can make out,” he said. “It looks as-” From here he could see past the long, low bulk of the palace and across the river to the Great Pyramid itself. It was almost hidden in dark clouds, but what he could see of it was definitely wrong. He knew it had four sides, and he could see all eight of them. It seemed to be moving in and out of focus, which he felt instinctively was a dangerous thing for several million tons of rock to do. He felt a pressing urge to be a long way away from it. Even a dumb creature like the camel seemed to have the same idea. You Bastard was thinking: . . Delta squared. Thus, dimensional pressure k will result in a ninety-degree transformation in Chi(16/x/pu)t for a K-bundle of any three invariables. Or four minutes, plus or minus ten seconds The camel looked down at the great pads of his feet. Let speed equal gallop. “How did you make it do that?” said Teppic. “I didn’t! It’s doing it by itself! Hang on!” This wasn’t easy. Teppic had saddled the camel but neglected the harness. Ptraci had handfuls of camel hair to hang on to. All he had was handfuls of Ptraci. No matter where he tried to put his hands, they encountered warm, yielding flesh. Nothing in his long education had prepared him for this, whereas everything in Ptraci’s obviously had. Her long hair whipped his face and smelled beguilingly of rare perfume. * (* An effect achieved by distilling the testicles of a small tree-dwelling species of bear with the vomit of a whale, and adding a handful of rose petals. Teppic probably would have felt no better for knowing this.) “Are you all right?” he shouted above the wind. “I’m hanging on with my knees!” “That must be very hard!” “You get special training!” Camels gallop by throwing their feet as far away from them as possible and then running to keep up. Knee joints clicking like chilly castanets, You Bastard thrashed up the sloping road out of the valley and windmilled along the narrow gorge that led, under towering limestone cliffs, to the high desert beyond. And behind them, tormented beyond measure by the inexorable tide of geometry, unable to discharge its burden of Time, the Great Pyramid screamed, lifted itself off its base and, its bulk swishing through the air as unstoppably as something completely unstoppable, ground around precisely ninety degrees and did something perverted to the fabric of time and space. You Bastard sped along the gorge, his neck stretched out to its full extent, his mighty nostrils flaring like jet intakes. “It’s terrified!” Ptraci yelled. “Animals always know about this sort of thing!” “What sort of thing!” “Forest fires and things!” “We haven’t got any trees!” “Well, floods and - and things! They’ve got some strange natural instinct!” . . . Phi* 1700[u/v]. Lateral e/v. Equals a tranche of seven to twelve . . . The sound hit them. It was as silent as a dandelion clock striking midnight, but it had pressure. It rolled over them, suffocating as velvet, nauseating as a battered saveloy. And was gone. You Bastard slowed to a walk, a complicated procedure that involved precise instructions to each leg in turn. There was a feeling of release, a sense of stress withdrawn. You Bastard stopped. In the pre-dawn glow he’d spotted a clump of thorned syphacia bushes growing in the rocks by the track. . . angle left. x equals 37. y equals 19. z equals 43. Bite . . . Peace descended. There was no sound except for the eructations of the camel’s digestive tract and the distant warbling of a desert owl. Ptraci slid off her perch and landed awkwardly. “My bottom,” she announced, to the desert in general, “is one huge blister.” Teppic jumped down and half-ran, half-staggered up the scree by the roadside, then jogged across the cracked limestone plateau until he could get a good look at the valley. It wasn’t there any more. It was still dark when Dil the master embalmer woke up, his body twanging with the sensation that something was wrong. He slipped out of bed, dressed hurriedly, and pulled aside the curtain that did duty as a door. The night was soft and velvety. Behind the chirrup of the insects there was another sound, a frying noise, a faint sizzling on the edge of hearing. Perhaps that was what had woken him up. The air was warm and damp. Curls of mist rose from the river, and- The pyramids weren’t flaring. He’d grown up in this house: it had been in the family of the master embalmers for thousands of years, and he’d seen the pyramids flare so often that he didn’t notice them, any more than he noticed his own breathing. But now they were dark and silent, and the silence cried out and the darkness glared. But that wasn’t the worst part. As his horrified eyes stared up at the empty sky over the necropolis they saw the stars, and what the stars were stuck to. Dil was terrified. And then, when he had time to think about it, he was ashamed of himself. After all, he thought, it’s what I’ve always been told is there. It stands to reason. I’m just seeing it properly for the first time. There. Does that make me feel any better? No. He turned and ran down the street, sandals flapping, until he reached the house that held Gern and his numerous family. He dragged the protesting apprentice from the communal sleeping mat and pulled him into the street, turned his face to the sky and hissed. “Tell me what you can see!” Gern squinted. “I can see the stars, master,” he said. “What are they on, boy?” Gern relaxed slightly. “That’s easy, master. Everyone knows the stars are on the body of the goddess Nept who arches herself from . . . oh, bloody hell.” “You can see her, too?” “Oh, mummy,” whispered Gern, and slid to his knees. Dil nodded. He was a religious man. It was a great comfort knowing that the gods were there. It was knowing they were here that was the terrible part. Because the body of a woman arched over the heavens, faintly blue, faintly shadowy in the light of the watery stars. She was enormous, her statistics interstellar. The shadow between her galactic breasts was a dark nebula, the curve of her stomach a vast wash of glowing gas, her navel the seething, dark incandescence in which new stars were being born. She wasn’t supporting the sky. She was the sky. Her huge sad face, upside down on the turnwise horizon, stared directly at Dil. And Dil was realising that there are few things that so shake belief as seeing, clearly and precisely, the object of that belief. Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn’t believing. It’s where belief stops, because it isn’t needed any more. “Oh, Sod,” moaned Gern. Dil struck him across the arm. “Stop that,” he said. “And come with me.” “Oh, master, whatever shall we do?” Dil looked around at the sleeping city. He hadn’t the faintest idea. “We’ll go to the palace,” he said firmly. “It’s probably a trick of the, of the, of the dark. Anyway, the sun will be up presently.” He strode off, wishing he could change places with Gern and show just a hint of gibbering terror. The apprentice followed him at a sort of galloping creep. “I can see shadows against the stars, master! Can you see them, master? Around the edge of the world, master!” “Just mists, boy,” said Dil, resolutely keeping his eyes fixed in front of him and maintaining a dignified posture as appropriate to the Keeper of the Left Hand Door of the Matron Lodge and holder of several medals for needlework. “There,” he said. “See, Gern, the sun is coming up!” They stood and watched it. Then Gern whimpered, very quietly. Rising up the sky, very slowly, was a great flaming ball. And it was being pushed by a dung beetle bigger than worlds.   BOOK III The Book of the New Son The sun rose and, because this wasn’t the Old Kingdom out here, it was a mere ball of flaming gas. The purple night of the high desert evaporated under its blowlamp glare. Lizards scuffled into cracks in the rocks. You Bastard settled himself down in the sparse shadow of what was left of the syphacia bushes, peered haughtily at the landscape, and began to chew cud and calculate square roots in base seven. Teppic and Ptraci eventually found the shade of a limestone overhang, and sat glumly staring out at the waves of heat wobbling off the rocks. “I don’t understand,” said Ptraci. “Have you looked everywhere?” “It’s a country! It can’t just bloody well fall through a hole in the ground!” “Where is it, then?” said Ptraci evenly. Teppic growled. The heat struck like a hammer, but he strode out over the rocks as though three hundred square miles could perhaps have been hiding under a pebble or behind a bush. The fact was that the track dipped between the cliffs, but almost immediately rose again and continued across the dunes into what was quite clearly Tsort. He’d recognised a wind-eroded sphinx that had been set up as a boundary marker; legend said it prowled the borders in times of dire national need, although legend wasn’t sure why. He knew they had galloped into Ephebe. He should be looking across the fertile, pyramid-speckled valley of the Djel that lay between the two countries. He’d spent an hour looking for it. It was inexplicable. It was uncanny. It was also extremely embarrassing. He shaded his eyes and stared around for the thousandth time at the silent, baking landscape. And moved his head. And saw Djelibeybi. It flashed across his vision in an instant. He jerked his eyes back and saw it again, a brief flash of misty colour that vanished as soon as he concentrated on it. Some minutes later Ptraci peered out of the shade and saw him get down on his hands and knees. When he started turning over rocks she decided it was time he should come back in out of the sun. He shook her hand off his shoulder, and gestured impatiently. “I’ve found it!” He pulled a knife from his boot and started poking at the stones. “Where?” “Here!” She laid a ringed hand on his forehead. “Oh yes,” she said. “I see. Yes. Good. Now I think you’d better come into the shade.” “No, I mean it! Here! Look!” She hunkered down and stared at the rock, to humour him. “There’s a crack,” she said, doubtfully. “Look at it, will you? You have to turn your head and sort of look out of the corner of your eye.” Teppic’s dagger smacked into the crack, which was no more than a faint line on the rock. “Well, it goes on a long way,” said Ptraci, staring along the burning pavement. “All the way from the Second Cataract to the Delta,” said Teppic. “Covering your eye with one hand helps. Please give it a try. Please!” She put one hesitant hand over her eye and squinted obediently at the rock. Eventually she said. “It’s no good, I can’t - seeee-” She stayed motionless for a moment and then flung herself sideways on to the rocks. Teppic stopped trying to hammer the knife into the crack and crawled over to her. “I was right on the edge!” she wailed. “You saw it?” he said hopefully. She nodded and, with great care, got to her feet and backed away. “Did your eyes feel as though they were being turned inside out?” said Teppic. “Yes,” said Ptraci coldly. “Can I have my bangles, please?” “What?” “My bangles. You put them in your pocket. I want them, please.” Teppic shrugged, and fished in his pouch. The bangles were mostly copper, with a few bits of chipped enamel. Here and there the craftsman had tried, without much success, to do something interesting with twisted bits of wire and lumps of coloured glass. She took them and slipped them on. “Do they have some occult significance?” he said. “What’s occult mean?” she said vaguely. “Oh. What do you need them for, then?” “I told you. I don’t feel properly dressed without them on.” Teppic shrugged, and went back to rocking his knife in the crack. “Why are you doing that?” she said. He stopped and thought about it. “I don’t know,” he said. “But you did see the valley, didn’t you?” “Yes.” “Well, then?” “Well what?” Teppic rolled his eyes. “Didn’t you think it was a bit, well, odd? A whole country just more or less vanishing? It’s something you don’t bloody well see every day, for gods’ sake!” “How should I know? I’ve never been out of the valley before. I don’t know what it’s supposed to look like from outside. And don’t swear.” Teppic shook his head. “I think I will go and lie down in the shade,” he said. “What’s left of it,” he added, for the brass light of the sun was burning away the shadows. He staggered over to the rocks and stared at her. “The whole valley has just closed up,” he managed at last. “All those people . . “I saw cooking fires,” said Ptraci, slumping down beside him. “It’s something to do with the pyramid,” he said. “It looked very strange just before we left. It’s magic, or geometry, or one of those things. How do you think we can get back?” “I don’t want to go back. Why should I want to go back? It’s the crocodiles for me. I’m not going back, not just for crocodiles.” “Um. Perhaps I could pardon you, or something,” said Teppic. “Oh yes,” said Ptraci, looking at her nails. “You said you were the king, didn’t you.” “I am the king! That’s my kingdom over-” Teppic hesitated, not knowing in which direction to point his finger - “somewhere. I’m king of it.” “You don’t look like the king,” said Ptraci. “Why not?” “He had a golden mask on.” “That was me!” “So you ordered me thrown to the crocodiles?” “Yes! I mean, no.” Teppic hesitated. “I mean, the king did. I didn’t. In a way. Anyway, I was the one who rescued you,” he added gallantly. “There you are, then. Anyway, if you were the king, you’d be a god, too. You aren’t acting very god-like at the moment.” “Yes? Well. Er.” Teppic hesitated again. Ptraci’s literal mindedness meant that innocent sentences had to be carefully examined before being sent out into the world. “I’m basically good at making the sun rise,” he said. “I don’t know how, though. And rivers. You want any rivers flooding, I’m your man. God, I mean.” He lapsed into silence as a thought struck him. “I wonder what’s happening in there without me?” he said. Ptraci stood up and set off down to the gorge. “Where are you going?” She turned. “Well, Mr King or God or assassin, or whatever, can you make water?” “What, here?” “I mean to drink. There may be a river hidden in that crack or there may not, but we can’t get at it, can we? So we have to go somewhere where we can. It’s so simple I should think even kings could understand it.” He hurried after her, down the scree to where You Bastard was lying with his head and neck flat on the ground, flicking his ears in the heat and idly applying You Vicious Brute’s Theory of Transient Integrals to a succession of promising cissoid numbers. Ptraci kicked him irritably. “Do you know where there is water, then?” said Teppic. . . . e/27. Eleven miles . . . Ptraci glared at him from kohl-ringed eyes. “You mean you don’t know? You were going to take me into the desert and you don’t know where the water is?” “Well, I rather expected I was going to be able to take some with me!” “You didn’t even think about it!” “Listen, you can’t talk to me like that! I’m a king!” Teppic stopped. “You’re absolutely right,” he said. “I never thought about it. Where I come from it rains nearly every day. I’m sorry.” Ptraci’s brows furrowed. “Who reigns nearly every day?” she said. “No, I mean rain. You know. Very thin water coming out of the sky?” “What a silly idea. Where do you come from?” Teppic looked miserable. “Where I come from is Ankh-Morpork. Where I started from is here.” He stared down the track. From here, if you knew what you were looking for, you could just see a faint crack running across the rocks. It climbed the cliffs on either side, a new vertical fault the thickness of a line that just happened to contain a complete river kingdom and 7,000 years of history. He’d hated every minute of his time there. And now it had shut him out. And now, because he couldn’t, he wanted to go back. He wandered down to it and put his hand over one eye. If you jerked your head just right . . . It flashed past his vision briefly, and was gone. He tried a few times more, and couldn’t see it again. If I hacked the rocks away? No, he thought, that’s silly. It’s a line. You can’t get into a line. A line has no thickness. Well known fact of geometry. He heard Ptraci come up behind him, and the next moment her hands were on his neck. For a second he wondered how she knew the Catharti Death Grip, and then her fingers were gently massaging his muscles, stresses melting under their expert caress like fat under a hot knife. He shivered as the tension relaxed. “That’s nice,” he said. “We’re trained for it. Your tendons are knotted up like ping-pong balls on a string,” said Ptraci. Teppic gratefully subsided on to one of the boulders that littered the base of the cliff and let the rhythm of her fingers unwind the problems of the night. “I don’t know what to do,” he murmured. “That feels good.” “It’s not all peeling grapes, being a handmaiden,” said Ptraci. “The first lesson we learn is, when the master has had a long hard day it is not the best time to suggest the Congress of the Fox and the Persimmon. Who says you have to do anything?” “I feel responsible.” Teppic shifted position like a cat. “If you know where there is a dulcimer I could play you something soothing,” said Ptraci. “I’ve got as far as “Goblins Picnic” in Book I.” “I mean, a king shouldn’t let his kingdom just vanish like that.” “All the other girls can do chords and everything,” said Ptraci wistfully, massaging his shoulders. “But the old king always said he’d rather hear me. He said it used to cheer him up.” “I mean, it’ll be called the Lost Kingdom,” said Teppic drowsily. “How will I feel then, I ask you?” “He said he liked my singing, too. Everyone else said it sounded like a flock of vultures who’ve just found a dead donkey.” “I mean, king of a Lost Kingdom. It’d be dreadful. I’ve got to get it back.” You Bastard slowly turned his massive head to follow the flight of an errant blowfly; deep in his brain little columns of red numbers flickered, detailing vectors and speed and elevation. The conversation of human beings seldom interested him, but it crossed his mind that the males and females always got along best when neither actually listened fully to what the other one was saying. It was much simpler with camels. Teppic stared at the line in the rock. Geometry. That was it. “We’ll go to Ephebe,” he said. “They know all about geometry and they have some very unsound ideas. Unsound ideas are what I could do with right now.” “Why do you carry all these knives and things? I mean, really?” “Hmm? Sorry?” “All these knives. Why?” Teppic thought about it. “I suppose I don’t feel properly dressed without them,” he said. “Oh.” Ptraci dutifully cast around for a new topic of conversation. Introducing Topics of Amusing Discourse was also part of a handmaiden’s duties. She’d never been particularly good at it. The other girls had come up with an astonishing assortment: everything from the mating habits of crocodiles to speculation about life in the netherworld. She’d found it heavy going after talking about the weather. “So,” she said. “You’ve killed a lot of people, I expect?” “Mm?” “As an assassin, I mean. You get paid to kill people. Have you killed lots? Do you know you tense your back muscles a lot?” “I don’t think I ought to talk about it,” he said. “I ought to know. If we’ve got to cross the desert together and everything. More than a hundred?” “Good heavens, no., “Well, less than fifty?” Teppic rolled over. “Look, even the most famous assassins never killed more than thirty people in all their lives,” he said. “Less than twenty, then?” “Yes.” “Less than ten?” “I think,” said Teppic, “it would be best to say a number between zero and ten.” “Just so long as I know. These things are important.” They strolled back to You Bastard. But now it was Teppic who seemed to have something on his mind. “All this senate . . .” he said. “Congress,” corrected Ptraci. “You . . . er . . . more than fifty people?” “There’s a different name for that sort of woman,” said Ptraci, but without much rancour. “Sorry. Less than ten?” “Let’s say,” said Ptraci, “a number between zero and ten.” You Bastard spat. Twenty feet away the blowfly was picked cleanly out of the air and glued to the rock behind it. “Amazing how they do it, isn’t it,” said Teppic. “Animal instinct, I suppose.” You Bastard gave him a haughty glare from under his sweep-the-desert eyelashes and thought: . . . Let z=ei0. cudcudcud Then dz=ie[i0]d0=izd0 or d0=dz/iz . . .   Ptaclusp, still in his nightshirt, wandered aimlessly among the wreckage at the foot of the pyramid. It was humming like a turbine. Ptaclusp didn’t know why, knew nothing about the vast expenditure of power that had twisted the dimensions by ninety degrees and was holding them there against terrible pressures, but at least the disturbing temporal changes seemed to have stopped. There were fewer sons around than there used to be; in truth, he could have done with finding one or two. First he found the capstone, which had shattered, its electrum sheathing peeling away. In its descent from the pyramid it had hit the statue of Hat the Vulture-Headed God, bending it double and giving it an expression of mild surprise. A faint groan sent him tugging at the wreckage of a tent. He tore at the heavy canvas and unearthed IIb, who blinked at him in the grey light. “It didn’t work, dad!” he moaned. “We’d almost got it up there, and then the whole thing just sort of twisted!” The builder lifted a spar off his son’s legs. “Anything broken?” he said quietly. “Just bruised, I think.” The young architect sat up, wincing, and craned to see around. “Where’s Two-ay?” he said. “He was higher up than me, nearly on the top-” “I’ve found him,” said Ptaclusp. Architects are not known for their attention to subtle shades of meaning, but IIb heard the lead in his father’s voice. “He’s not dead, is he?” he whispered. “I don’t think so. I’m not sure. He’s alive. But. He’s moving - he’s moving . . . well, you better come and see. I think something quantum has happened to him.”   You Bastard plodded onwards at about 1.247 metres per second, working out complex conjugate co-ordinates to stave off boredom while his huge, plate-like feet crunched on the sand. Lack of fingers was another big spur to the development of camel intellect. Human mathematical development had always been held back by everyone’s instinctive tendency, when faced with something really complex in the way of triform polynomials or parametric differentials, to count fingers. Camels started from the word go by counting numbers. Deserts were a great help, too. There aren’t many distractions. As far as camels were concerned, the way to mighty intellectual development was to have nothing much to do and nothing to do it with. He reached the crest of the dune, gazed with approval over the rolling sands ahead of him, and began to think in logarithms. “What’s Ephebe like?” said Ptraci. “I’ve never been there. Apparently it’s ruled by a Tyrant.” “I hope we don’t meet him, then.” Teppic shook his head. “It’s not like that,” he said. “They have a new Tyrant every five years and they do something to him first.” He hesitated. “I think they ee-lect him.” “Is that something like they do to tomcats and bulls and things?” “Er.” “You know. To make them stop fighting and be more peaceful.” Teppic winced. “To be honest, I’m not sure,” he said. “But I don’t think so. They’ve got something they do it with, I think it’s called a mocracy, and it means everyone in the whole country can say who the new Tyrant is. One man, one-” He paused. The political history lesson seemed a very long while ago, and had introduced concepts never heard of in Djelibeybi or in Ankh-Morpork, for that matter. He had a stab at it, anyway. “One man, one vet.” “That’s for the eelecting, then?” He shrugged. It might be, for all he knew. “The point is, though, that everyone can do it. They’re very proud of it. Everyone has-” he hesitated again, certain now that things were amiss - “the vet. Except for women, of course. And children. And criminals. And slaves. And stupid people. And people of foreign extraction. And people disapproved of for, er, various reasons. And lots of other people. But everyone apart from them. It’s a very enlightened civilisation.” Ptraci gave this some consideration. “And that’s a mocracy, is it?” “They invented it in Ephebe, you know,” said Teppic, feeling obscurely that he ought to defend it. “I bet they had trouble exporting it,” said Ptraci firmly. The sun wasn’t just a ball of flaming dung pushed across the sky by a giant beetle. It was also a boat. It depended on how you looked at it. The light was wrong. It had a flat quality, like water left in a glass for weeks. There was no joy to it. It illuminated, but without life; like bright moonlight rather than the light of day. But Ptaclusp was more worried about his son. “Do you know what’s wrong with him?” he said. His other son bit his stylus miserably. His hand was hurting. He’d tried to touch his brother, and the crackling shock had taken the skin off his fingers. “I might,” he ventured. “Can you cure it?” “I don’t think so.” “What is it, then?” “Well, dad. When we were up on the pyramid . . . well, when it couldn’t flare . . . you see, I’m sure it twisted around . . . time, you see, is just another dimension . . . um.” Ptaclusp rolled his eyes. “None of that architect’s talk, boy,” he said. “What’s wrong with him?” “I think he’s dimensionally maladjusted, dad. Time and space has got a bit mixed up for him. That’s why he’s moving sideways all the time.” Ptaclusp IIb gave his father a brave little smile. “He always used to move sideways,” said Ptaclusp. His son sighed. “Yes, dad,” he said. “But that was just normal. All accountants move like that. Now he’s moving sideways because that’s like, well, it’s like Time to him.” Ptaclusp frowned. Drifting gently sideways wasn’t IIa’s only problem. He was also flat. Not flat like a card, with a front, back and edge - but flat from any direction. “Puts me exactly in mind of them people in the frescoes,” he said. “Where’s his depth, or whatever you call it?” “I think that’s in Time,” said IIb, helplessly. “Ours, not his.” Ptaclusp walked around his son, noting how the flatness followed him. He scratched his chin. “So he can walk in Time, can he?” he said slowly. “That may be possible, yes.” “Do you think we could persuade him to stroll back a few months and tell us not to build that bloody pyramid?” “He can’t communicate, dad.” “Not much change there, then.” Ptaclusp sat down on the rubble, his head in his hands. It had come to this. One son normal and stupid, one flat as a shadow. And what sort of life could the poor flat kid have? He’d go through life being used to open locks, clean the ice off windscreens, and sleeping cheaply in trouser-presses in hotel bedrooms*. (* This is of course a loose translation, since Ptaclusp did not know the words for “ice”, “windscreens” or “hotel bedrooms”; interestingly, however, Squiggle Eagle Eagle Vase Wavyline Duck translates directly as “a press for barbarian leg coverings”.) Being able to get under doors and read books without opening them would not be much of a compensation. IIa drifted sideways, a flat cut-out on the landscape. “Can’t we do anything?” he said. “Roll him up neatly, or something?” IIb shrugged. “We could put something in the way. That might be a good idea. It would stop anything worse happening to him because it, er, wouldn’t have time to happen in. I think.” They pushed the bent statue of Hat the Vulture-Headed God into the flat one’s path. After a minute or two his gentle sideways drift brought him up against it. There was a fat blue spark that melted part of the statue, but the movement stopped. “Why the sparks?” said Ptaclusp. “It’s a bit like flarelight, I think.” Ptaclusp hadn’t got where he was today - no, he’d have to correct himself - hadn’t got to where he had been last night without eventually seeing the advantages in the Unlikeliest situations. “He’ll save on clothing,” he said slowly. “I mean, he can just paint it on.” “I don’t think you’ve quite got the idea, dad,” said IIb wearily. He sat down beside his father and stared across the river to the palace. “Something going on over there,” said Ptaclusp. “Do you think they’ve noticed the pyramid?” “I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s moved around ninety degrees, after all.” Ptaclusp looked over his shoulder, and nodded slowly. “Funny, that,” he said. “Bit of structural instability there.” “Dad, it’s a pyramid! We should have flared it! I told you! The forces involved, well, it’s just too-” A shadow fell across them. They looked around. They looked up. They looked up a bit more. “Oh, my,” said Ptaclusp. “It’s Hat, the Vulture-Headed God . . .”   Ephebe lay beyond them, a classical poem of white marble lazing around its rock on a bay of brilliant blue- “What’s that?” said Ptraci, after studying it critically for some time. “It’s the sea,” said Teppic. “I told you, remember. Waves and things.” “You said it was all green and rough.” “Sometimes it is.” “Hmm.” The tone of voice suggested that she disapproved of the sea but, before she could explain why, they heard the sound of voices raised in anger. They were coming from behind a nearby sand dune. There was a notice on the dune. It said, in several languages: AXIOM TESTING STATION. Below it, in slightly smaller writing, it added: CAUTION - UNRESOLVED POSTULATES. As they read it, or at least as Teppic read it and Ptraci didn’t, there was a twang from behind the dune, followed by a click, followed by an arrow zipping overhead. You Bastard glanced up at it briefly and then turned his head and stared fixedly at a very small area of sand. A second later the arrow thudded into it. Then he tested the weight on his feet and did a small calculation which revealed that two people had been subtracted from his back. Further summation indicated that they had been added to the dune. “What did you do that for?” said Ptraci, spitting out sand. “Someone fired at us!” “I shouldn’t think so. I mean, they didn’t know we were here, did they? You needn’t have pulled me off like that.” Teppic conceded this, rather reluctantly, and eased himself cautiously up the sliding surface of the dune. The voices were arguing again “Give in?” “We simply haven’t got all the parameters right.” “I know what we haven’t got all right.” “What is that, pray?” “We haven’t got any more bloody tortoises. That’s what we haven’t got.” Teppic carefully poked his head over the top of the dune. He saw a large cleared area, surrounded by complicated ranks of markers and flags. There were one or two buildings in it, mostly consisting of cages, and several other intricate constructions he could not recognise. In the middle of it all were two men - one small, fat and florid, the other tall and willowy and with an indefinable air of authority. They were wearing sheets. Clustered around them, and not wearing very much at all, was a group of slaves. One of them was holding a bow. Several of them were holding tortoises on sticks. They looked a bit pathetic, like tortoise lollies. “Anyway, it’s cruel,” said the tall man. “Poor little things. They look so sad with their little legs waggling.” “It’s logically impossible for the arrow to hit them!” The fat man threw up his hands. “It shouldn’t do it! You must be giving me the wrong type of tortoise,” he added accusingly. “We ough to try again with faster tortoises.” “Or slower arrows?” “Possibly, possibly.” Teppic was aware of a faint scuffling by his chin. There was a small tortoise scurrying past him. It had several ricochet marks on its shell. “We’ll have one last try,” said the fat man. He turned to the slaves. “You lot - go and find that tortoise.” The little reptile gave Teppic a look of mingled pleading and hope. He stared at it, and then lifted it up carefully and tucked it behind a rock. He slid back down the dune to Ptraci. “There’s something really weird going on over there,” he said. “They’re shooting tortoises.” “Why?” “Search me. They seem to think the tortoise ought to be able to run away. “What, from an arrow?” “Like I said. Really weird. You stay here. I’ll whistle if it’s safe to follow me.” “What will you do if it isn’t safe?” “Scream.” He climbed the dune again and, after brushing as much sand as possible off his clothing, stood up and waved his cap at the little crowd. An arrow took it out of his hands. “Oops!” said the fat man. “Sorry!” He scurried across the trampled sand to where Teppic was standing and staring at his stinging fingers. “Just had it in my hand,” he panted. “Many apologies, didn’t realise it was loaded. Whatever will you think of me?” Teppic took a deep breath. “Xeno’s the name,” gasped the fat man, before he could speak. “Are you hurt? We did put up warning signs, I’m sure. Did you come in over the desert? You must be thirsty. Would you like a drink? Who are you? You haven’t seen a tortoise up there, have you? Damned fast things, go like greased thunderbolts, there’s no stopping the little buggers.” Teppic deflated again. “Tortoises?” he said. “Are we talking about those, you know, stones on legs?” “That’s right, that’s right,” said Xeno. “Take your eyes off them for a second, and vazoom!” “Vazoom?” said Teppic. He knew about tortoises. There were tortoises in the Old Kingdom. They could be called a lot of things - vegetarians, patient, thoughtful, even extremely diligent and persistent sex-maniacs - but never, up until now, fast. Fast was a word particularly associated with tortoises because they were not it. “Are you sure?” he said. “Fastest animal on the face of the Disc, your common tortoise,” said Xeno, but he had the grace to look shifty. “Logically, that is,” he added*. (* To everyone without such a logical frame of reference the fastest animal** (** The fastest insect is the .303 bookworm. It evolved in magical libraries, where it is necessary to eat extremely quickly to avoid being affected by the thaumic radiations. An adult .303 bookworm can eat through a shelf of books so fast that it ricochets off the wall.) on the Disc is the extremely neurotic Ambiguous Puzuma, which moves so fast that it can actually achieve near light-speed in the Disc’s magical field. This means that if you can see a puzuma, it isn’t there. Most male puzumas die young of acute ankle failure caused by running very fast after females which aren’t there and, of course, achieving suicidal mass in accordance with relativistic theory. The rest of them die of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, since it is impossible for them to know who they are and where they are at the same time, and the see-sawing loss of concentration this engenders means that the puzuma only achieves a sense of identity when it is at rest - usually about fifty feet into the rubble of what remains of the mountain it just ran into at near light-speed. The puzuma is rumoured to be about the size of a leopard with a rather unique black and white check coat, although those specimens discovered by the Disc’s sages and philosophers have inclined them to declare that in its natural state the puzuma is flat, very thin, and dead.) The tall man gave Teppic a nod. “Take no notice of him, boy,” he said. “He’s just covering himself because of the accident last week.” “The tortoise did beat the hare,” said Xeno sulkily. “The hare was dead, Xeno,” said the tall man patiently. “Because you shot it.” “I was aiming at the tortoise. You know, trying to combine two experiments, cut down on expensive research time, make full use of available-” Xeno gestured with the bow, which now had another arrow in it. “Excuse me,” said Teppic. “Could you put it down a minute? Me and my friend have come a long way and it would be nice not to be shot at again.” These two seem harmless, he thought, and almost believed it. He whistled. On cue, Ptraci came around the dune, leading You Bastard. Teppic doubted the capability of her costume to hold any pockets whatsoever, but she seemed to have been able to repair her make-up, re-kohl her eyes and put up her hair. She undulated towards the group like a snake in a skid, determined to hit the strangers with the full force of her personality. She was also holding something in her other hand. “She’s found the tortoise!” said Xeno. “Well done!” The reptile shot back into its shell. Ptraci glared. She didn’t have much in the world except herself, and didn’t like to be hailed as a mere holder of testudinoids. The tall man sighed. “You know, Xeno,” he said, “I can’t help thinking you’ve got the wrong end of the stick with this whole tortoise-and-arrow business.” The little man glared at him. “The trouble with you, Ibid,” he said, “is that you think you’re the biggest bloody authority on everything.”   The Gods of the Old Kingdom were awakening. Belief is a force. It’s a weak force, by comparison with gravity; when it comes to moving mountains, gravity wins every time. But it still exists, and now that the Old Kingdom was enclosed upon itself, floating free of the rest of the universe, drifting away from the general consensus that is dignified by the name of reality, the power of belief was making itself felt. For seven thousand years the people of Djelibeybi had believed in their gods. Now their gods existed. They had, as it were, the complete Set. And the people of the Old Kingdom were learning that, for example, Vut the Dog-Headed God of the Evening looks a lot better painted on a pot than he does when all seventy feet of him, growling and stinking, is lurching down the Street outside. Dios sat in the throne room, the gold mask of the king on his knees, staring out across the sombre air. The cluster of lesser priests around the door finally plucked up the courage to approach him, in the same general frame of mind as you would approach a growling lion. No-one is more worried by the actual physical manifestation of a god than his priests; it’s like having the auditors in unexpectedly. Only Koomi stood a little aside from the others. He was thinking hard. Strange and original thoughts were crowding along rarely-trodden neural pathways, heading in unthinkable directions. He wanted to see where they led. “O Dios,” murmured the high priest of Ket, the This-Headed God of Justice. “What is the king’s command? The gods are striding the land, and they are fighting and breaking houses, O Dios. Where is the king? What would he have us do?” “Yea,” said the high priest of Scrab, the Pusher of the Ball of the Sun. He felt something more was expected of him. “And verily,” he added. “Your lordship will have noticed that the sun is wobbling, because all the Gods of the Sun are fighting for it and-” he shuffled his feet - “the blessed Scrab made a strategic withdrawal and has, er, made an unscheduled landing on the town of Hort. A number of buildings broke his fall.” “And rightly so,” said the high priest of Thrrp, the Charioteer of the Sun. “For, as all know, my master is the true god of the-” His words tailed off. Dios was trembling, his body rocking slowly back and forth. His eyes stared at nothing. His hands gripped the mask almost hard enough to leave fingerprints in the gold, and his lips soundlessly shaped the words of the Ritual of the Second Hour, which had been said at this time for thousands of years. “I think it’s the shock,” said one of the priests. “You know, he’s always been so set in his ways.” The others hastened to show that there was at least something they could advise on. “Fetch him a glass of water.” “Put a paper bag over his head.” “Sacrifice a chicken under his nose.” There was a high-pitched whistling noise, the distant crump of an explosion, and a long hissing. A few tendrils of steam curled into the room. The priests rushed to the balcony, leaving Dios in his unnerving pool of trauma, and found that the crowds around the palace were staring at the sky. “It would appear,” said the high priest of Cephut, God of Cutlery, who felt that he could take a more relaxed view of the immediate situation, “that Thrrp has fumbled it and has fallen to a surprise tackle from Jeht, Boatman of the Solar Orb.” There was a distant buzzing, as of several billion bluebottles taking off in a panic, and a huge dark shape passed over the palace. “But,” said the high priest of Cephut, “here comes Scrab again . . . yes, he’s gaining height . . . Jeht hasn’t seen him yet, he’s progressing confidently towards the meridian, and here comes Sessifet, Goddess of the Afternoon! This is a surprise! What a surprise this is! A young goddess, yet to make her mark, but my word, what a lot of promise there, this is an astonishing bid, eunuchs and gentlemen, and . . yes . . . Scrab has fumbled it! He’s fumbled it! . . .” The shadows danced and spun on the stones of the balcony. “. . . and . . . what’s this? The elder gods are, there’s no other word for it, they’re co-operating against these brash newcomers! But plucky young Sessifet is hanging in there, she’s exploiting the weakness. . . she’s in! . . . and pulling away now, pulling away, Gil and Scrab appear to be fighting, she’s got a clear sky and, yes, yes . . . yes! . . . it’s noon! It’s noon! It’s noon!” Silence. The priest was aware that everyone was staring at him. Then someone said, “Why are you shouting into that bulrush?” “Sorry. Don’t know what came over me there.” The priestess of Sarduk, Goddess of Caves, snorted at him. “Suppose one of them had dropped it?” she snapped. “But . . . but . . .” He swallowed. “It’s not possible, is it? Not really? We all must have eaten something, or been out in the sun too long, or something. Because, I mean, everyone knows that the gods aren’t . . . I mean, the sun is a big flaming ball of gas, isn’t it, that goes around the whole world every day, and, and, and the gods. . . well, you know, there’s a very real need in people to believe, don’t get me wrong here-” Koomi, even with his head buzzing with thoughts of perfidy, was quicker on the uptake than his colleagues. “Get him, lads!” he shouted. Four priests grabbed the luckless cutlery worshipper by his arms and legs and gave him a high-speed run across the stones to the edge of the balcony, over the parapet and into the mud-coloured waters of the Djel. He surfaced, spluttering. “What did you go and do that for?” he demanded. “You all know I’m right. None of you really-” The waters of the Djel opened a lazy jaw, and he vanished, just as the huge winged shape of Scrab buzzed threateningly over the palace and whirred off towards the mountains. Koomi mopped his forehead. “Bit of a close shave there,” he said. His colleagues nodded, staring at the fading ripples. Suddenly, Djeibeybi was no place for honest doubt. Honest doubt could get you seriously picked up and your arms and legs torn off. “Er,.” said one of them. “Cephut’s going to be a bit upset, though, isn’t he?” “All hail Cephut,” they chorused. Just in case. “Don’t see why,” grumbled an elderly priest at the back of the crowd. “Bloody knife and fork artist.” They grabbed him, still protesting, and hurled him into the river. “All hail-” They paused. “Who was he high priest of, anyway?” “Bunu, the Goat-headed God of Goats? Wasn’t he?” “All hail Bunu, probably,” they chorused, as the sacred crocodiles homed in like submarines. Koomi raised his hands, imploring. It is said that the hour brings forth the man. He was the kind of man that is brought forth by devious and unpleasant hours, and underneath his bald head certain conclusions were beginning to unfold, like things imprisoned for years inside stones. He wasn’t yet sure what they were, but they were broadly on the subject of gods, the new age, the need for a firm hand on the helm, and possibly the inserting of Dios into the nearest crocodile. The mere thought filled him with forbidden delight. “Brethren!” he cried. “Excuse me,” said the priestess of Sarduk. “And sistren-” “Thank you.” “-let us rejoice!” The assembled priests stood in total silence. This was a radical approach which had not hitherto occurred to them. And Koomi looked at their upturned faces and felt a thrill the like of which he had never experienced before. They were frightened out of their wits, and they were expecting him - him - to tell them what to do. “Yea!” he said. “And, indeed, verily, the hour of the gods-” “-and goddesses-” “-yes, and goddesses, is at hand. Er.” What next? What, when you got right down to it, was he going to tell them to do? And then he thought: it doesn’t matter. Provided I sound confident enough. Old Dios always drove them, he never tried to lead them. Without him they’re wandering around like sheep. “And, brethren - and sistren, of course - we must ask ourselves, we must ask ourselves, we, er, yes.” His voice waxed again with new confidence. “Yes, we must ask ourselves why the gods are at hand. And without doubt it is because we have not been assiduous enough in our worship, we have, er, we have lusted after graven idols.” The priests exchanged glances. Had they? How did you do it, actually? “And, yes, and what about sacrifices? Time was when a sacrifice was a sacrifice, not some messing around with a chicken and flowers.” This caused some coughing in the audience. “Are we talking maidens here?” said one of the priests uncertainly. “Ahem.” “And inexperienced young men too, certainly,” he said quickly. Sarduk was one of the older goddesses, whose female worshippers got up to no good in sacred groves; the thought of her wandering around the landscape somewhere, bloody to the elbows, made the eyes water. Koomi’s heart thumped. “Well, why not?” he said. “Things were better then, weren’t they?” “But, er, I thought we stopped all that sort of thing. Population decline and so forth.” There was a monstrous splash out in the river. Tzut, the Snake-Headed God of the Upper Djel, surfaced and regarded the assembled priesthood solemnly. Then Fhez, the Crocodile-Headed God of the Lower Djel, erupted beside him and made a spirited attempt at biting his head off. The two submerged in a column of spray and a minor tidal wave which slopped over the balcony. “Ah, but maybe the population declined because we stopped sacrificing virgins - of both sexes, of course,” said Koomi, hurriedly. “Have you ever thought of it like that?” They thought of it. Then they thought of it again. “I don’t think the king would approve-” said one of the priests cautiously. “The king?” shouted Koomi. “Where is the king? Show me the king! Ask Dios where the king is!” There was a thud by his feet. He looked down in horror as the gold mask bounced, and rolled towards the priests. They scattered hurriedly, like skittles. Dios strode out into the light of the disputed sun, his face grey with fury. “The king is dead,” he said. Koomi swayed under the sheer pressure of anger, but rallied magnificently. “Then his successor-” he began. “There is no successor,” said Dios. He stared up at the sky. Few people can look directly at the sun, but under the venom of Dios’s gaze the sun itself might have flinched and looked away. Dios’s eyes sighted down that fearsome nose like twin range finders. To the air in general he said: “Coming here as if they own the place. How dare they?” Koomi’s mouth dropped open. He started to protest, and a kilowatt stare silenced him. Koomi sought support from the crowd of priests, who were busily inspecting their nails or staring intently into the middle distance. The message was clear. He was on his own. Although, if by some chance he won the battle of wills, he’d be surrounded by people assuring him that they had been behind him all along. “Anyway, they do own the place,” he mumbled. “What?” “They, er, they do own the place, Dios,” Koomi repeated. His temper gave out. “They’re the sodding gods, Dios!” “They’re our gods,” Dios hissed. “We’re not their people. They’re my gods and they will learn to do as they are instructed!” Koomi gave up the frontal assault. You couldn’t outstare that sapphire stare, you couldn’t stand the war-axe nose and, most of all, no man could be expected to dent the surface of Dios’s terrifying righteousness. “But-” he managed. Dios waved him into silence with a trembling hand. “They’ve no right! “ he said. “I did not give any orders! They have no right!” “Then what are you going to do?” said Koomi. Dios’s hands opened and closed fitfully. He felt like a royalist might feel - a good royalist, a royalist who cut out pictures of all the Royals and stuck them in a scrapbook, a royalist who wouldn’t hear a word said about them, they did such a good job and they can’t answer back - if suddenly all the Royals turned up in his living room and started rearranging the furniture. He longed for the necropolis, and the cool silence among his old friends, and a quick sleep after which he’d be able to think so much more clearly . . . Koomi’s heart leapt. Dios’s discomfort was a crack which, with due care and attention, could take a wedge. But you couldn’t use a hammer. Head on, Dios could outfight the world. The old man was shaking again. “I do not presume to tell them how to run affairs in the Hereunder,” he said. “They shall not presume to instruct me in how to run my kingdom.” Koomi salted this treasonable statement away for further study and patted him gently on the back. “You’re right, of course,” he said. Dios’s eyes swivelled. “I am?” he said, suspiciously. “I’m sure that, as the king’s minister, you will find a way. You have our full support, O Dios.” Koomi waved an uplifted hand at the priests, who chorused wholehearted agreement. If you couldn’t depend on kings and gods, you could always rely on old Dios. There wasn’t one of them that wouldn’t prefer the uncertain wrath of the gods to a rebuke from Dios. Dios terrified them in a very positive, human way that no supernatural entity ever could. Dios would sort it out. “And we take no heed to these mad rumours about the king’s disappearance. They are undoubtedly wild exaggerations, with no foundation,” said Koomi. The priests nodded while, in each mind, a tiny rumour uncurled the length of its tail. “What rumours?” said Dios out of the corner of his mouth. “So enlighten us, master, as to the path we must now take,” said Koomi. Dios wavered. He did not know what to do. For him, this was a new experience. This was Change. All he could think of, all that was pressing forward in his mind, were the words of the Ritual of the Third Hour, which he had said at this time for - how long? Too long, too long! - And he should have gone to his rest long before, but the time had never been right, there was never anyone capable, they would have been lost without him, the kingdom would founder, he would be letting everyone down, and so he’d crossed the river. . . he swore every time that it was the last, but it never was, not when the chill fetched his limbs, and the decades had become - longer. And now, when his kingdom needed him, the words of a Ritual had scored themselves into the pathways of his brain and bewildered all attempts at thought. “Er,” he said.   You Bastard chewed happily. Teppic had tethered him too near an olive tree, which was getting a terminal pruning. Sometimes the camel would stop, gaze up briefly at the seagulls that circled everywhere above Ephebe city, and subject them to a short, deadly burst of olive stones. He was turning over in his mind an interesting new concept in Thau-dimensional physics which unified time, space, magnetism, gravity and, for some reason, broccoli. Periodically he would make noises like distant quarry blasting, but which merely indicated that all stomachs were functioning perfectly. Ptraci sat under the tree, feeding the tortoise on vine leaves. Heat crackled off the white walls of the tavern but, Teppic thought, how different it was from the Old Kingdom. There even the heat was old; the air was musty and lifeless, it pressed like a vice, you felt it was made of boiled centuries. Here it was leavened by the breeze from the sea. It was edged with salt crystals. It carried exciting hints of wine; more than a hint in fact, because Xeno was already on his second amphora. This was the kind of place where things rolled up their sleeves and started. “But I still don’t understand about the tortoise,” he said, with some difficulty. He’d just taken his first mouthful of Ephebian wine, and it had apparently varnished the back of his throat. “S quite simple,” said Xeno. “Look, let’s say this olive stone is the arrow and this, and this-” he cast around aimlessly - “and this stunned seagull is the tortoise, right? Now, when you fire the arrow it goes from here to the seag - the tortoise, am I right?” “I suppose so, but-” “But, by this time, the seagu - the tortoise has moved on a bit, hasn’t he? Am I right?” “I suppose so,” said Teppic, helplessly. Xeno gave him a look of triumph. “So the arrow has to go a bit further, doesn’t it, to where the tortoise is now. Meanwhile the tortoise has flow - moved on, not much, I’ll grant you, but it doesn’t have to be much. Am I right? So the arrow has a bit further to go, but the point is that by the time it gets to where the tortoise is now the tortoise isn’t there. So, if the tortoise keeps moving, the arrow will never hit it. It’ll keep getting closer and closer but never hit it. QED.” “Are you right?” said Teppic automatically. “No,” said Ibid coldly. “There’s a dozen tortoise kebabs to prove him wrong. The trouble with my friend here is that he doesn’t know the difference between a postulate and a metaphor of human existence. Or a hole in the ground.” “It didn’t hit it yesterday,” snapped Xeno. “Yes, I was watching. You hardly pulled the string back. I saw you,” said Ibid. They started to argue again. Teppic stared into his wine mug. These men are philosophers, he thought. They had told him so. So their brains must be so big that they have room for ideas that no-one else would consider for five seconds. On the way to the tavern Xeno had explained to him, for example, why it was logically impossible to fall out of a tree. Teppic had described the vanishing of the kingdom, but he hadn’t revealed his position in it. He hadn’t a lot of experience of these matters, but he had a very clear feeling that kings who hadn’t got a kingdom any more were not likely to be very popular in neighbouring countries. There had been one or two like that in Ankh-Morpork - deposed royalty, who had fled their suddenly-dangerous kingdoms for Ankh’s hospitable bosom carrying nothing but the clothes they stood up in and a few wagonloads of jewels. The city, of course, welcomed anyone - regardless of race, colour, class or creed - who had spending money in incredible amounts, but nevertheless the inhumation of surplus monarchs was a regular source of work for the Assassins” Guild. There was always someone back home who wanted to be certain that deposed monarchs stayed that way. It was usually a case of heir today, gone tomorrow. “I think it got caught up in geometry,” he said, hopefully. “I heard you were very good at geometry here,” he added, “and perhaps you could tell me how to get back.” “Geometry is not my forte,” said Ibid. “As you probably know.” “Sorry?” “Haven’t you read my Principles of Ideal Government?” “I’m afraid not.” “Or my Discourse on Historical Inevitability?” “No.” Ibid looked crestfallen. “Oh,” he said. “Ibid is a well-known authority on everything,” said Xeno. “Except for geometry. And interior decorating. And elementary logic.” Ibid glared at him. “What about you, then?” said Teppic. Xeno drained his mug. “I’m more into the destruct testing of axioms,” he said. “The chap you need is Pthagonal. A very acute man with an angle.” He was interrupted by the clatter of hooves. Several horsemen galloped with reckless speed past the tavern and on up the winding, cobbled streets of the city. They seemed very excited about something. Ibid picked a stunned seagull out of his wine cup and laid it on the table. He was looking thoughtful. “If the Old Kingdom has really disappeared-” he said. “It has,” said Teppic firmly. “It’s not something you can be mistaken about, really.” “Then that means our border is concurrent with that of Tsort,” said Ibid ponderously. “Pardon?” said Teppic. “There’s nothing between us,” explained the philosopher. “Oh, dear. That means we shall be forced to make war.” “Why?” Ibid opened his mouth, stopped, and turned to Xeno. “Why does it mean we’ll be forced to make war?” he said. “Historical imperative,” said Xeno. “Ah, yes. I knew it was something like that. I am afraid it is inevitable. It’s a shame, but there you are.” There was another clatter as another party of horsemen rounded the corner, heading downhill this time. They wore the high plumed helmets of Ephebian soldiery, and were shouting enthusiastically. Ibid settled himself more comfortably on the bench and folded his bands. “That’ll be the Tyrant’s men,” he said, as the troop galloped through the city gates and out on to the desert. “He’s sending them to check, you may depend upon it.” Teppic knew about the enmity between Ephebe and Tsort, of course. The Old Kingdom had profited mightily by it, by seeing that the merchants of both sides had somewhere discreet in which to trade with one another. He drummed his fingers on the table. “You haven’t fought each other for thousands of years,” he said. “You were tiny countries in those days. It was just a scrap. Now you’re huge. People could get hurt. Doesn’t that worry you?” “It’s a matter of pride,” said Ibid, but his voice was tinged with uncertainty. “I don’t think there’s much choice.” “It was that bloody wooden cow or whatever,” said Xeno. “They’ve never forgiven us for it.” “If we don’t attack them, they’ll attack us first,” said Ibid. “S’right,” said Xeno. “So we’d better retaliate before they have a chance to strike.” The two philosophers stared uncomfortably at one another. “On the other hand,” said Thid, “war makes it very difficult to think straight.” “There is that,” Xeno agreed. “Especially for dead people.” There was an embarrassed silence, broken only by Ptraci’s voice singing to the tortoise and the occasional squeak of stricken seagulls. “What day is it?” said Ibid. “Tuesday,” said Teppic. “I think,” said Thid, “that it might be a good idea if you came to the symposium. We have one every Tuesday,” he added. “All the greatest minds in Ephebe will be there. All this needs thinking about.” He glanced at Ptraci. “However,” he said, “your young woman cannot attend, naturally. Females are absolutely forbidden. Their brains overheat.”   King Teppicymon XXVII opened his eyes. It’s bloody dark in here, he thought. And he realised that he could hear his own heart beating, but muffled, and some way off. And then he remembered. He was alive. He was alive again. And, this time, he was in bits. Somehow, he’d assumed that you got assembled again once you got to the netherworld, like one of Grinjer’s kits. Get a grip on yourself, man, he thought. It’s up to you to pull yourself together. Right, he thought. There were at least six jars. So my eyes are in one of them. Getting the lid off would be favourite, so we can see what we’re at. That’s going to involve arms and legs and fingers. This is going to be really tricky. He reached out, tentatively, with stiff joints, and located something heavy. It felt as though it might give, so he moved his other arm into position, with a great deal of awkwardness, and pushed. There was a distant thump, and a definite feeling of openness above him. He sat up, creaking all the way. The sides of the ceremonial casket still hemmed him in, but to his surprise he found that one slow arm movement brushed them out of the way like paper. Must be all the pickle and stuffing, he thought. Gives you a bit of weight. He felt his way to the edge of the slab, lowered his heavy legs to the ground and, after a pause out of habit to wheeze a bit, took the first tottering lurch of the newly undead. It is astonishingly difficult to walk with legs full of straw when the brain doing the directing is in a pot ten feet away, but he made it as far as the wall and felt his way along it until a crash indicated that he’d reached the shelf of jars. He fumbled the lids of the first one and dipped his hand gently inside. It must be brains, he thought maniacally, because semolina doesn’t squidge like that. I’ve collected my own thoughts, haha. He tried one or two more jars until an explosion of daylight told him he’d found the one with his eyes in. He watched his own bandaged hand reach down, growing gigantic, and scoop them up carefully. That seems to be the important bits, he thought. The rest can wait until later. Maybe when I need to eat something, and so forth. He turned around, and realised that he was not alone. Dil and Gern were watching him. To squeeze any further into the far corner of the room, they would have needed triangular backbones. “Ah. Ho there, good people,” said the king, aware that his voice was a little hollow. “I know so much about you, I’d like to shake you by the hand.” He looked down. “Only they’re rather full at the moment,” he added. “Gkkk,” said Gern. “You couldn’t do a bit of reassembly, could you?” said the king, turning to Dil. “Your stitches seem to be holding up nicely, by the way. Well done, that man.” Professional pride broke through the barrier of Dil’s terror. “You’re alive?” he said. “That was the general idea, wasn’t it?” said the king. Dil nodded. Certainly it was. He’d always believed it to be true. He’d just never expected it ever actually to happen. But it had, and the first words, well, nearly the first words that had been said were in praise of his needlework. His chest swelled. No-one else in the Guild had ever been congratulated on their work by a recipient. “There,” he said to Gern, whose shoulderblades were making a spirited attempt to dig their way through the wall. “Hear what has been said to your master. The king paused. It was beginning to dawn on him that things weren’t quite right here. Of course the netherworld was like this world, only better, and no doubt there were plenty of servants and so forth. But it seemed altogether far too much like this world. He was pretty sure that Dil and Gern shouldn’t be in it yet. Anyway, he’d always understood that the common people had their own netherworld, where they would be more at ease and could mingle with their own kind and wouldn’t feel awkward and socially out of place. “I say,” he said. “I may have missed a bit here. You’re not dead, are you?” Dil didn’t answer immediately. Some of the things he’d seen so far today had made him a bit uncertain on the subject. In the end, though, he was forced to admit that he probably was alive. “Then what’s happening?” said the king. “We don’t know, O king,” said Dil. “Really we don’t. It’s all come true, O fount of waters!” “What has?” “Everything!” “Everything?” “The sun, O lord. And the gods! Oh, the gods! They’re everywhere, O master of heaven!” “We come in through the back way,” said Gern, who had dropped to his knees. “Forgive us, O lord of justice, who has come back to deliver his mighty wisdom and that. I am sorry about me and Glwenda, it was a moment of wossname, mad passion, we couldn’t control ourselves. Also, it was me-” Dil waved him into a devout silence. “Excuse me,” he said to the king’s mummy. “But could we have a word away from the lad? Man to-” “Corpse?” said the king, trying to make it easy for him. “Certainly.” They wandered over to the other side of the room. “The fact is, O gracious king of-” Dil began, in a conspiratorial whisper. “I think we can dispense with all that,” said the king briskly. “The dead don’t stand on ceremony. “King” will be quite sufficient.” “The fact is, then - king,” said Dil, experiencing a slight thrill at this equitable treatment, “young Gern thinks it’s all his fault. I’ve told him over and over again that the gods wouldn’t go to all this trouble just because of one growing lad with urges, if you catch my drift.” He paused, and added carefully, “They wouldn’t, would they?” “Shouldn’t think so for one minute,” said the king briskly. “We’d never see the back of them, otherwise.” “That’s what I told him,” said Dil, immensely relieved. “He’s a good boy, sir, it’s just that his mum is a bit funny about religion. We’d never see the back of them, those were my very words. I’d be very grateful if you could have a word with him, sir, you know, set his mind at rest-” “Be happy to,” said the king graciously. Dil sidled closer. “The fact is, sir, these gods, sir, they aren’t right. We’ve been watching, sir. At least, I have. I climbed on the roof. Gern didn’t, he hid under the bench. They’re not right, sir!” “What’s wrong with them?” “Well, they’re here, sir! That’s not right, is it? I mean, not to be really here. And they’re just striding around and fighting amongst themselves and shouting at people.” He looked both ways before continuing. “Between you and me, sir,” he said, “they don’t seem too bright.” The king nodded. “What are the priests doing about this?” he said. “I saw them throwing one another in the river, sir.” The king nodded again. “That sounds about right,” he said. “They’ve come to their senses at last.” “You know what I think, sir?” said Dil earnestly. “Everything we believe is coming true. And I heard something else, sir. This morning, if it was this morning, you understand, because the sun’s all over the place, sir, and it’s not the right sort of sun, but this morning some of the soldiers tried to get out along the Ephebe road, sir, and do you know what they found?” “What did they find?” “The road out, sir, leads in!” Dil took a step backwards the better to illustrate the seriousness of the revelations. “They got up into the rocks and then suddenly they were walking down the Tsort road. It all sort of curves back on itself. We’re shut in, sir. Shut in with our gods.” And I’m shut in my body, thought the king. Everything we believe is true? And what we believe isn’t what we think we believe. I mean, we think we believe that the gods are wise and just and powerful, but what we really believe is that they are like our father after a long day. And we think we believe the netherworld is a sort of paradise, but we really believe it’s right here and you go to it in your body and I’m in it and I’m never going to get away. Never, ever. “What’s my son got to say about all this?” he said. Dil coughed. It was the ominous cough. The Spanish use an upside-down question mark to tell you what you’re about to hear is a question; this was the kind of cough that tells you what you’re about to hear is a dirge. “Don’t know how to tell you this, sir,” he said. “Out with it, man.” “Sir, they say he’s dead, sir. They say he killed himself and ran away. “Killed himself?” “Sorry, sir.” “And ran away afterwards?” “On a camel, they say.” “We lead an active afterlife in our family, don’t we?” observed the king dryly. “Beg pardon, sir?” “I mean, the two statements could be held to be mutually exclusive.” Dil’s face became a well-meaning blank. “That is to say, they can’t both be true,” supplied the king, helpfully. “Ahem,” said Dil. “Yes, but I’m a special case,” said the king testily. “In this kingdom we believe you live after death only if you’ve been mumm-” He stopped. It was too horrible to think about. He thought about it, nevertheless, for some time. Then he said, “We must do something about it.” Dil said, “Your son, sir?” “Never mind about my son, he’s not dead, I’d know about it,” snapped the king. “He can look after himself, he’s my son. It’s my ancestors I’m worried about.” “But they’re dead-” Dil began. It has already been remarked that Dil had a very poor imagination. In a job like his a poor imagination was essential. But his mind’s eye opened on a panorama of pyramids, stretching along the river, and his mind’s ear swooped and curved through solid doors that no thief could penetrate. And it heard the scrabbling. And it heard the hammering. And it heard the muffled shouting. The king put a bandaged arm over his trembling shoulders. “I know you’re a good man with a needle, Dil,” he said. “Tell me - how are you with a sledgehammer?”   Copolymer, the greatest storyteller in the history of the world, sat back and beamed at the greatest minds in the world, assembled at the dining table. Teppic had added another iota to his store of new knowledge. “Symposium” meant a knife-and-fork tea. “Well,” said Copolymer, and launched into the story of the Tsortean Wars. “You see, what happened was, he’d taken her back home, and her father - this wasn’t the old king, this was the one before, the one with the wossname, he married some girl from over Elharib way, she had a squint, what was her name now, began with a P. Or an L. One of them letters, anyway. Her father owned an island out on the bay there, Papylos I think it was. No, I tell a lie, it was Crinix. Anyway, the king, the other king, he raised an army and they . . . Elenor, that was her name. She had a squint, you know. But quite attractive, they say. When I say married, I trust I do not have to spell it out for you. I mean, it was a bit unofficial. Er. Anyway, there was this wooden horse and after they’d got in . . . Did I tell you about this horse? It was a horse. I’m pretty sure it was a horse. Or maybe it was a chicken. Forget my own name next! It was wossname’s idea, the one with the limp. Yes. The limp in his leg, I mean. Did I mention him? There’d been this fight. No, that was the other one, I think. Yes. Anyway, this wooden pig, damn clever idea, they made it out of thing. Tip of my tongue. Wood. But that was later, you know. The fight! Nearly forgot the fight. Yes. Damn good fight. Everyone banging on their shields and yelling. Wossname’s armour shone like shining armour. Fight and a half, that fight. Between thingy, not the one with the limp, the other one, wossname, had red hair. You know. Tall fellow, talked with a lisp. Hold on, just remembered, he was from some other island. Not him. The other one, with the limp. Didn’t want to go, he said he was mad. Of course, he was bloody mad, definitely. I mean, a wooden cow! Like wossname said, the king, no, not that king, the other one, he saw the goat, he said, “I fear the Ephebians, especially when they’re mad enough to leave bloody great wooden livestock on the doorstep, talk about nerve, they must think we was born yesterday, set fire to it,” and, of course, wossname had nipped in round the back and put everyone to the sword, talk about laugh. Did I say she had a squint? They said she was pretty, but it takes all sorts. Yes. Anyway, that’s how it happened. Now, of course, wossname - I think he was called Melycanus, had a limp - he wanted to go home, well, you would, they’d been there for years, he wasn’t getting any younger. That’s why he dreamt up the thing about the wooden wossname. Yes. I tell a lie, Lavaelous was the one with the knee. Pretty good fight, that fight, take it from me.” He lapsed into self-satisfied silence. “Pretty good fight,” he mumbled and, smiling faintly, dropped off to sleep. Teppic was aware that his own mouth was hanging open. He shut it. Along the table several of the diners were wiping their eyes. “Magic,” said Xeno. “Sheer magic. Every word a tassel on the canopy of Time.” “It’s the way he remembers every tiny detail. Pin-sharp,” murmured Ibid. Teppic looked down the length of the table, and then nudged Xeno beside him. “Who is everyone?” he said. “Well, Ibid you already know. And Copolymer. Over there, that’s Iesope, the greatest teller of fables in the world. And that’s Antiphon, the greatest writer of comic plays in the world.” “Where is Pthagonal?” said Teppic. Xeno pointed to the far end of the table, where a glum-looking, heavy-drinking man was trying to determine the angle between two bread rolls. “I’ll introduce you to him afterwards,” he said. Teppic looked around at the bald heads and long white beards, which seemed to be a badge of office. If you had a bald head and a long white beard, they seemed to indicate, whatever lay between them must be bursting with wisdom. The only exception was Antiphon, who looked as though he was built of pork. They are great minds, he told himself. These are men who are trying to work out how the world fits together, not by magic, not by religion, but just by inserting their brains in whatever crack they can find and trying to lever it apart. Ibid rapped on the table for silence. “The Tyrant has called for war on Tsort,” he said. “Now, let us consider the place of war in the ideal republic,” he said. “We would require-” “Excuse me, could you just pass me the celery?” said Iesope. “Thank you.” “-the ideal republic, as I was saying, based on the fundamental laws that govern-” “And the salt. It’s just by your elbow.” “-the fundamental laws, that is, which govern all men. Now, it is without doubt true that war. . . could you stop that, please?” “It’s celery,” said Iesope, crunching cheerfully. “You can’t help it with celery.” Xeno peered suspiciously at what was on his fork. “Here, this is squid,” he said. “I didn’t ask for squid. Who ordered squid?” “-without doubt,” repeated Thid, raising his voice, “without doubt, I put it to you- “I think this is the lamb couscous,” said Antiphon. “Was yours the squid?” “I asked for marida and dolmades.” “I ordered the lamb. Just pass it along, will you?” “I don’t remember anyone asking for all this garlic bread,” said Xeno. “Look, some of us are trying to float a philosophical concept here,” said Ibid sarcastically. “Don’t let us interrupt you, will you?” Someone threw a breadstick at him. Teppic looked at what was on his fork. Seafood was unknown in the kingdom, and what was on his fork had too many valves and suckers to be reassuring. He lifted a boiled vine leaf with extreme care, and was sure he saw something scuttle behind an olive. Ah. Something else to remember, then. The Ephebians made wine out of anything they could put in a bucket, and ate anything that couldn’t climb out of one. He pushed the food around on his plate. Some of it pushed back. And philosophers didn’t listen to one another. And they don’t stick to the point. This probably is mocracy at work. A bread roll bounced past him. Oh, and they get over-excited. He noticed a skinny little man sitting opposite him, chewing primly on some anonymous tentacle. Apart from Pthagonal the geometrician, who was now gloomily calculating the radius of his plate, he was the only person not speaking his mind at the top of his voice. Sometimes he’d make little notes on a piece of parchment and slip it into his toga. Teppic leaned across. Further down the table Iesope, encouraged by occasional olive stones and bread rolls, started a long fable about a fox, a turkey, a goose and a wolf, who had a wager to see who could stay longest underwater with heavy weights tied to their feet. “Excuse me,” said Teppic, raising his voice above the din. “Who are you?” The little man gave him a shy look. He had extremely large ears. In a certain light, he could have been mistaken for a very thin jug. “I’m Endos,” he said. “Why aren’t you philosophising?” Endos sliced a strange mollusc. “I’m not a philosopher, actually,” he said. “Or a humorous playwright or something?” said Teppic. “I’m afraid not. I’m a Listener. Endos the Listener, I’m known as.” “That’s fascinating,” said Teppic automatically. “What does that involve?” “Listening.” “Just listening?” “That’s what they pay me for,” said Endos. “Sometimes I nod. Or smile. Or nod and smile at the same time. Encouragingly, you know. They like that.” Teppic felt he was called upon to comment at this point. “Gosh,” he said. Endos gave him an encouraging nod, and a smile that suggested that of all the things Endos could be doing in the world right at this minute there was nothing so basically riveting as listening to Teppic. It was something about his ears. They appeared to be a vast aural black hole, begging to be filled up with words. Teppic felt an overpowering urge to tell him all about his life and hopes and dreams. . . “I bet,” he said, “that they pay you an awful lot of money.” Endos gave him a heartening smile. “Have you listened to Copolymer tell his story lots of times?” Endos nodded and smiled, although there was a faint trace of pain right behind his eyes. “I expect,” said Teppic, “that your ears develop protective rough surfaces after a while?” Endos nodded. “Do go on,” he urged. Teppic glanced across at Pthagonal, who was moodily drawing right angles in his taramasalata. “I’d love to stay and listen to you listening to me all day,” he said. “But there’s a man over there I’d like to see.” “That’s amazing,” said Endos, making a short note and turning his attention to a conversation further along the table. A philosopher had averred that although truth was beauty, beauty was not necessarily truth, and a fight was breaking out. Endos listened carefully*. (* The role of listeners has never been fully appreciated. However, it is well known that most people don’t listen. They use the time when someone else is speaking to think of what they’re going to say next. True Listeners have always been revered among oral cultures, and prized for their rarity value; bards and poets are ten a cow, but a good Listener is hard to find, or at least hard to find twice.) Teppic wandered along the table to where Pthagonal was sitting in unrelieved misery, and currently peering suspiciously over the crust of a pie. Teppic looked over his shoulder. “I think I saw something moving in there,” he said. “Ah,” said the geometrician, taking the cork out of an amphora with his teeth. “The mysterious young man in black from the lost kingdom.” “I was hoping you could help me find it again?” said Teppic. “I heard that you have some very unusual ideas in Ephebe.” “It had to happen,” said Pthagonal. He pulled a pair of dividers from the folds of his robe and measured the pie thoughtfully. “Is it a constant, do you think? It’s a depressing concept.” “Sorry?” said Teppic. “The diameter divides into the circumference, you know. It ought to be three times. You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But does it? No. Three point one four one and lots of other figures. There’s no end to the buggers. Do you know how pissed off that makes me?” “I expect it makes you extremely pissed off,” said Teppic politely. “Right. It tells me that the Creator used the wrong kind of circles. It’s not even a proper number! I mean, three point five, you could respect. Or three point three. That’d look right.” He stared morosely at the pie. “Excuse me, you said something about it had to happen?” “What?” said Pthagonal, from the depths of his gloom. “Pie!” he added. “What had to happen?” Teppic prompted. “You can’t mess with geometry, friend. Pyramids? Dangerous things. Asking for trouble. I mean,” Pthagonal reached unsteadily for his wine cup, “how long did they think they could go on building bigger and bigger pyramids for? I mean, where did they think power comes from? I mean,” he hiccuped, “you’ve been in that place, haven’t you? Ever noticed how slow it all seems to be?” “Oh, yes,” said Teppic flatly. “That’s because the time is sucked up, see? Pyramids. So they have to flare it off. Flarelight, they call it. They think it looks pretty! It’s their time they’re burning off!” “All I know is the air feels as though it’s been boiled in a sock,” said Teppic. “And nothing actually changes, even if it doesn’t stay the same. “Right,” said Pthagonal. “The reason being, it’s past time. They use up past time, over and over again. The pyramids take all the new time. And if you don’t let the pyramids flare, the power build up”ll-“ he paused. “I suppose,” he went on, “that it’d escape along a wossname, a fracture. In space.” “I was there before the kingdom, er, went,” said Teppic. “I thought I saw the big pyramid move.” “There you are then. It’s probably moved the dimensions around by ninety degrees,” said Pthagonal, with the assurance of the truly drunk. “You mean, so length is height and height is width?” Pthagonal shook an unsteady finger. “Nonono,” he said. “So that length is height and height is breadth and breadth is width and width is a”, he burped “A “time. S”nother dimessnon, see? Four of the bastards. Time’s one of them. Ninety thingys to the other three. Degrees is what I mean. Only, only, it can’t exist in this world like that, so the place had to sort of pop outside for a bit, see? Otherwise you’d have people getting older by walking sideways. He looked sadly into the depths of his cup. “And every birthday you’d age another mile,” he added. Teppic looked at him aghast. “That’s time and space for you,” Pthagonal went on. “You can twist them all over the place if you’re not careful. Three point one four one. What sort of a number d’you call that?” “It sounds horrible,” said Teppic. “Damn right. Somewhere,” Pthagonal was beginning to sway on his bench, “somewhere someone built a universe with a decent, respectable value of, of,” he peered blankly at the table, “of pie. Not some damn number that never comes to an end, what kind of a” “I meant, people getting older just by walking along!” “I dunno, though. You could have a stroll back to where you were eighteen. Or wander up and see what you are going to look like when you’re seventy. Travelling in width, though, that’d be the real trick.” Pthagonal smiled vacantly and then, very slowly, keeled over into his dinner, some of which moved out of the way*. (* He was wrong. Nature abhors dimensional abnormalities, and seals them neatly away so that they don’t upset people. Nature, in fact, abhors a lot of things, including vacuums, ships called the Marie Celeste, and the chuck keys for electric drills.) Teppic became aware that the philosophic din around him had subsided a bit. He stared along the line until he spotted Ibid. “It won’t work,” said Ibid. “The Tyrant won’t listen to us. Nor will the people. Anyway” he glanced at Antiphon - “we’re not all of one mind on the subject.” “Damn Tsorteans need teaching a lesson,” said Antiphon sternly. “Not room for two major powers on this continent. Damn bad sports, anyway, just because we stole their queen. Youthful high spirits, love will have its way” Copolymer woke up. “You’ve got it wrong,” he said mildly. “The great war, that was because they stole our queen. What was her name now, face that launched a thousand camels, began with an A or a T or-” “Did they?” shouted Antiphon. “The bastards!” “I’m reasonably certain,” said Copolymer. Teppic sagged, and turned to Endos the Listener. He was still eating his dinner, with the air of one who is determined to preserve his digestion. “Endos?” The Listener laid his knife and fork carefully on either side of his plate. “Yes?” “They’re really all mad, aren’t they?” said Teppic wearily. “That’s extremely interesting,” said Endos. “Do go on.” He reached shyly into his toga and brought forth a scrap of parchment, which he pushed gently towards Teppic. “What’s this?” “My bill,” said Endos. “Five minutes Attentive Listening. Most of my gentlemen have monthly accounts, but I understand you’ll be leaving in the morning?” Teppic gave up. He wandered away from the table and into the cold garden surrounding the citadel of Ephebe. White marble statues of ancient Ephebians doing heroic things with no clothes on protruded through the greenery and, here and there, there were statues of Ephebian gods. It was hard to tell the difference. Teppic knew that Dios had hard words to say about the Ephebians for having gods that looked just like people. If the gods looked just like everyone else, he used to say, how would people know how to treat them? Teppic had rather liked the idea. According to legend the Ephebians” gods were just like humans, except that they used their godhood to get up to things humans didn’t have the nerve to do. A favourite trick of Ephebian gods, he recalled, was turning into some animal in order to gain the favours of highly-placed Ephebian women. And one of them had reputedly turned himself into a golden shower in pursuit of his intended. All this raised interesting questions about everyday night life in sophisticated Ephebe. He found Ptraci sitting on the grass under a poplar tree, feeding the tortoise. He gave it a suspicious look, in case it was a god trying it on. It did not look like a god. If it was a god, it was putting on an incredibly good act. She was feeding it a lettuce leaf. “Dear little ptortoise,” she said, and then looked up. “Oh, it’s you,” she said flatly. “You didn’t miss much,” said Teppic, sagging on to the grass. “They’re a bunch of maniacs. When I left they were smashing the plates.” “That’s ptraditional at the end of an Ephebian meal,” said Ptraci. Teppic thought about this. “Why not before?” he said. “And then they probably dance to the sound of the bourzuki,” Ptraci added. “I think it’s a sort of dog.” Teppic sat with his head in his hands. “I must say you speak Ephebian well,” he said. “Pthank you.” “Just a trace of an accent, though.” “Languages is part of the ptraining,” she said. “And my grandmother told me that a ptrace of foreign accent is more fascinating.” “We learned the same thing,” said Teppic. “An assassin should always be slightly foreign, no matter where he is. I’m good at that part,” he added bitterly. She began to massage his neck. “I went down to the harbour,” she said. “There’s those things like big rafts, you know, camels of the sea” “Ships,” said Teppic. “And they go everywhere. We could go anywhere we want. The world is our pthing with pearls in it, if we like.” Teppic told her about Pthagonal’s theory. She didn’t seem surprised. “Like an old pond where no new water comes in,” she observed. “So everyone goes round and round in the same old puddle. All the ptime you live has been lived already. It must be like other people’s bathwater.” “I’m going to go back.” Her fingers stopped their skilled kneading of his muscles. “We could go anywhere,” she repeated. “We’ve got ptrades, we could sell that camel. You could show me that Ankh-Morpork place. It sounds interesting.” Teppic wondered what effect Ankh-Morpork would have on the girl. Then he wondered what effect she would have on the city. She was definitely flowering. Back in the Old Kingdom she’d never apparently had any original thoughts beyond the choice of the next grape to peel, but since she was outside she seemed to have changed. Her jaw hadn’t changed, it was still quite small and, he had to admit, very pretty. But somehow it was more noticeable. She used to look at the ground when she spoke to him. She still didn’t always look at him when she spoke to him, but now it was because she was thinking about something else. He found he kept wanting to say, politely, without stressing it in any way, just as a very gentle reminder, that he was king. But he had a feeling that she’d say she hadn’t heard, and would he please repeat it, and if she looked at him he’d never be able to say it twice. “You could go,” he said. “You’d get on well. I could give you a few names and addresses.” “And what would you do?” “I dread to think what’s going on back home,” said Teppic. “I ought to do something.” “You can’t. Why ptry? Even if you didn’t want to be an assassin there’s lots of pthings you could do. And you said the man said it’s not a place people could get into any more. I hate pyramids.” “Surely there’s people there you care about?” Ptraci shrugged. “If they’re dead there’s nothing I can do about it,” she said. “And if they’re alive, there’s nothing I can do about it. So I shan’t.” Teppic stared at her in a species of horrified admiration. It was a beautiful summary of things as they were. He just couldn’t bring himself to think that way. His body had been away for seven years but his blood had been in the kingdom for a thousand times longer. Certainly he’d wanted to leave it behind, but that was the whole point. It would have been there. Even if he’d avoided it for the rest of his life, it would have still been a sort of anchor. “I feel so wretched about it,” he repeated. “I’m sorry. That’s all there is to it. Even to go back for five minutes, just to say, well, that I’m not coming back. That’d be enough. It’s probably all my fault.” “But there isn’t a way back! You’ll just hang around sadly, like those deposed kings you ptold me about. You know, with pthreadbare cloaks and always begging for their food in a high-class way. There’s nothing more useless than a king without a kingdom, you said. Just think about it.” They wandered through the sunset streets of the city, and towards the harbour. All streets in the city led towards the harbour. Someone was just putting a torch to the lighthouse, which was one of the More Than Seven Wonders of the World and had been built to a design by Pthagonal using the Golden Rule and the Five Aesthetic Principles. Unfortunately it had then been built in the wrong place because putting it in the right place would have spoiled the look of the harbour, but it was generally agreed by mariners to be a very beautiful lighthouse and something to look at while they were waiting to be towed off the rocks. The harbour below it was thronged with ships. Teppic and Ptraci picked their way past crates and bundles until they reached the long curved guard wall, harbour calm on one side, choppy with waves on the other. Above them the lighthouse flared and sparked. Those boats would be going to places he’d only ever heard of, he knew. The Ephebians were great traders. He could go back to Ankh and get his diploma, and then the world would indeed be the mollusc of his choice and he had any amount of knives to open it with. Ptraci put her hand in his. And there’d be none of this marrying relatives business. The months in Djelibeybi already seemed like a dream, one of those circular dreams that you never quite seem able to shake off and which make insomnia an attractive prospect. Whereas here was a future, unrolling in front of him like a carpet. What a chap needed at a time like this was a sign, some sort of book of instructions. The trouble with life was that you didn’t get a chance to practise before doing it for real. You only- “Good grief? It’s Teppic, isn’t it?” The voice was addressing him from ankle height. A head appeared over the stone of the jetty, quickly followed by its body. An extremely richly dressed body, one on which no expense had been spared in the way of gems, furs, silks and laces, provided that all of them, every single one, was black. It was Chidder.   “What’s it doing now?” said Ptaclusp. His son poked his head cautiously over the ruins of a pillar and watched Hat, the Vulture-Headed God. “It’s sniffing around,” he said. “I think it likes the statue. Honestly, dad, why did you have to go and buy a thing like that?” “It was in a job lot,” said Ptaclusp. “Anyway, I thought it would be a popular line.” “With who?” “Well, he likes it.” Ptaclusp IIb risked another squint at the angular monstrosity that was still hopping around the ruins. “Tell him he can have it if he goes away,” he suggested. “Tell him he can have it at cost.” Ptaclusp winced. “At a discount,” he said. “A special cut rate for our supernatural customers.” He stared up at the sky. From their hiding place in the ruins of the construction camp, with the Great Pyramid still humming like a powerhouse behind them, they’d had an excellent view of the arrival of the gods. At first he’d viewed them with a certain amount of equanimity. Gods would be good customers, they always wanted temples and statues, he could deal directly, cut out the middle man. And then it had occurred to him that a god, when he was unhappy about the product, as it might be, maybe the plasterwork wasn’t exactly as per spec, or perhaps a corner of the temple was a bit low on account of unexpected quicksand, a god didn’t just come around demanding in a loud voice to see the manager. No. A god knew exactly where you were, and got to the point. Also, gods were notoriously bad payers. So were humans, of course, but they didn’t actually expect you to die before they settled the account. His gaze turned to his other son, a painted silhouette against the statue, his mouth a frozen O of astonishment, and Ptaclusp reached a decision. “I’ve just about had it with pyramids,” he said. “Remind me, lad. If we ever get out of here, no more pyramids. We’ve got set in our ways. Time to branch out, I reckon.” “That’s what I’ve been telling you for ages, dad!” said IIb. “I’ve told you, a couple of decent aqueducts will make a tremendous-” “Yes, yes, I remember,” said Ptaclusp. “Yes. Aqueducts. All those arches and things. Fine. Only I can’t remember where you said you have to put the coffin in.” “Dad!” “Don’t mind me, lad. I think I’m going mad.” I couldn’t have seen a mummy and two men over there, carrying sledgehammers.   It was, indeed, Chidder. And Chidder had a boat. Teppic knew that further along the coast the Seriph of Al-Khali lived in the fabulous palace of the Rhoxie, which was said to have been built in one night by a genie and was famed in myth and legend for its splendour*. (* It was, therefore, colloquially known as the Djinn palace.) The Unnamed was the Rhoxie afloat, but more so. Its designer had a gilt complex, and had tried every trick with gold paint, curly pillars and expensive drapes to make it look less like a ship and more like a boudoir that had collided with a highly suspicious type of theatre. In fact, you needed an assassin’s eyes for hidden detail to notice how innocently the gaudiness concealed the sleekness of the hull and the fact, even when you added the cabin space and the holds together, that there still seemed to be a lot of capacity unaccounted for. The water around what Ptraci called the pointed end was strangely rippled, but it would be totally ridiculous to suspect such an obvious merchantman of having a concealed ramming spike underwater, or that a mere five minutes” work with an axe would turn this wallowing Alcdzar into something that could run away from nearly everything else afloat and make the few that could catch up seriously regret it. “Very impressive,” said Teppic. “It’s all show, really,” said Chidder. “Yes. I can see that.” “I mean, we’re poor traders.” Teppic nodded. “The usual phrase is “poor but honest traders”,” he said. Chidder smiled a merchant’s smile. “Oh, I think we’ll stick on “poor” at the moment. How the hell are you, anyway? Last we heard you were going off to be king of some place no-one’s ever heard of. And who is this lovely young lady?” “Her name” Teppic began. “Ptraci,” said Ptraci. “She’s a hand-” Teppic began. “She must surely be a royal princess,” said Chidder smoothly. “And it would give me the greatest pleasure if she, if indeed both of you, would dine with me tonight. Humble sailor’s fare, I’m afraid, but we muddle along, we muddle along.” “Not Ephebian, is it?” said Teppic. “Ship’s biscuit, salt beef, that sort of thing,” said Chidder, without taking his eyes off Ptraci. They hadn’t left her since she came on board. Then he laughed. It was the old familiar Chidder laugh, not exactly without humour, but clearly well under the control of its owner’s higher brain centres. “What an astonishing coincidence,” he said. “And us due to sail at dawn, too. Can I offer you a change of clothing? You both look somewhat, er, travel-stained.” “Rough sailor clothing, I expect,” said Teppic. “As befits a humble merchant, correct me if I’m wrong?” In fact Teppic was shown to a small cabin as exquisitely and carefully furnished as a jewelled egg, where there was laid upon the bed as fine an assortment of clothing as could be found anywhere on the Circle Sea. True, it all appeared second-hand, but carefully laundered and expertly stitched so that the sword cuts hardly showed at all. He gazed thoughtfully at the hooks on the wall, and the faint patching on the wood which hinted that various things had once been hung there and hastily removed. He stepped out into the narrow corridor, and met Ptraci. She’d chosen a red court dress such as had been the fashion in Ankh-Morpork ten years previously, with puffed sleeves and vast concealed underpinnings and ruffs the size of millstones. Teppic learned something new, which was that attractive women dressed in a few strips of gauze and a few yards of silk can actually look far more desirable when fully clad from neck to ankle. She gave an experimental twirl. “There are any amount of things like this in there,” she said. “Is this how women dress in Ankh-Morpork? It’s like wearing a house. It doesn’t half make you sweaty.” “Look, about Chidder,” said Teppic urgently. “I mean, he’s a good fellow and everything, but-” “He’s very kind, isn’t he,” she agreed. “Well. Yes. He is,” Teppic admitted, hopelessly. “He’s an old friend.” “That’s nice.” One of the crew materialised at the end of the corridor and bowed them into the state cabin, his air of old retainership marred only by the criss-cross pattern of scars on his head and some tattoos that made the pictures in The Shuttered Palace look like illustrations in a DIY shelving manual. The things he could make them do by flexing his biceps could keep entire dockside taverns fascinated for hours, and he was not aware that the worst moment of his entire life was only a few minutes away. “This is all very pleasant,” said Chidder, pouring some wine. He nodded at the tattooed man. “You may serve the soup, Alfonz,” he added. “Look, Chiddy, you’re not a pirate, are you?” said Teppic, desperately. “Is that what’s been worrying you?” Chidder grinned his lazy grin. It wasn’t everything that Teppic had been worrying about, but it had been jockeying for top position. He nodded. “No, we’re not. We just prefer to, er, avoid paperwork wherever possible. You know? We don’t like people to have all the worry of having to know everything we do.” “Only there’s all the clothes-” “Ah. We get attacked by pirates a fair amount. That’s why father had the Unnamed built. It always surprises them. And the whole thing is morally sound. We get their ship, their booty, and any prisoners they may have get rescued and given a ride home at competitive rates.” “What do you do with the pirates?” Chidder glanced at Alfonz. “That depends on future employment prospects,” he said. “Father always says that a man down on his luck should be offered a helping hand. On terms, that is. How’s the king business?” Teppic told him. Chidder listened intently, swilling the wine around in his glass. “So that’s it,” he said at last. “We heard there was going to be a war. That’s why we’re sailing tonight.” “I don’t blame you,” said Teppic. “No, I mean to get the trade organised. With both sides, naturally, because we’re strictly impartial. The weapons produced on this continent are really quite shocking. Down-right dangerous. You should come with us, too. You’re a very valuable person.” “Never felt more valueless than right now,” said Teppic despondently. Chidder looked at him in amazement. “But you’re a king!” he said. “Well, yes, but-” “Of a country which technically still exists, but isn’t actually reachable by mortal man?” “Sadly so.” “And you can pass laws about, well, currency and taxation, yes?” “I suppose so, but-” “And you don’t think you’re valuable? Good grief, Tep, our accountants can probably think up fifty different ways to . . . well, my hands go damp just to think about it. Father will probably ask to move our head office there, for a start.” “Chidder, I explained. You know it. No-one can get in,” said Teppic. “That doesn’t matter.” “Doesn’t matter?” “No, because we’ll just make Ankh our main branch office and pay our taxes in wherever the place is. All we need is an official address in, I don’t know, the Avenue of the Pyramids or something. Take my tip and don’t give in on anything until father gives you a seat on the board. You’re royal, anyway, that’s always impressive . . Chidder chattered on. Teppic felt his clothes growing hotter. So this was it. You lost your kingdom, and then it was worth more because it was a tax haven, and you took a seat on the board, whatever that was, and that made it all right. Ptraci defused the situation by grabbing Alfonz’s arm as he was serving the pheasant. “The Congress of The Friendly Dog and the Two Small Biscuits!” she exclaimed, examining the intricate tattoo. “You hardly ever see that these days. Isn’t it well done? You can even make out the yoghurt.” Alfonz froze, and then blushed. Watching the glow spread across the great scarred head was like watching sunrise over a mountain range. “What’s the one on your other arm?” Alfonz, who looked as though his past jobs had included being a battering ram, murmured something and, very shyly, showed her his forearm. “S’not really suitable for ladies,” he whispered. Ptraci brushed aside the wiry hair like a keen explorer, while Chidder stared at her with his mouth hanging open. “Oh, I know that one,” she said dismissively. “That’s out of 130 Days of Pseudopolis. It’s physically impossible.” She let go of the arm, and turned back to her meal. After a moment she looked up at Teppic and Chidder. “Don’t mind me,” she said brightly. “Do go on. “Alfonz, please go and put a proper shirt on,” said Chidder, hoarsely. Alfonz backed away, staring at his arm. “Er. What was I, er, saying?” said Chidder. “Sorry. Lost the thread. Er. Have some more wine, Tep?” Ptraci didn’t just derail the train of thought, she ripped up the rails, burned the stations and melted the bridges for scrap. And so the dinner trailed off into beef pie, fresh peaches, crystallised sea urchins and desultory small talk about the good old days at the Guild. They had been three months ago. It seemed like a lifetime. Three months in the Old Kingdom was a lifetime. After some time Ptraci yawned and went to her cabin, leaving the two of them alone with a fresh bottle of wine. Chidder watched her go in awed silence. “Are there many like her back at your place?” he said. “I don’t know,” Teppic admitted. “There could be. Usually they lie around the place peeling grapes or waving fans.” “She’s amazing. She’ll take them by storm in Ankh, you know. With a figure like that and a mind like . . .” He hesitated. “Is she . . . ? I mean, are you two . . . “No,” said Teppic. “She’s very attractive.” “Yes,” said Teppic. “A sort of cross between a temple dancer and a bandsaw.” They took their glasses and went up on deck, where a few lights from the city paled against the brilliance of the stars. The water was flat calm, almost oily. Teppic’s head was beginning to spin slowly. The desert, the sun, two gloss coats of Ephebian retsina on his stomach lining and a bottle of wine were getting together to beat up his synapses. “I mus’ say,” he managed, leaning on the rail, “you’re doing all right for yourself.” “It’s okay,” said Chidder. “Commerce is quite interesting. Building up markets, you know. The cut and thrust of competition in the privateering sector. You ought to come in with us, boy. It’s where the future lies, my father says. Not with wizards and kings, but with enterprising people who can afford to hire them. No offence intended, you understand.” “We’re all that’s left,” said Teppic to his wine glass. “Out of the whole kingdom. Me, her, and a camel that smells like an old carpet. An ancient kingdom, lost.” “Good job it wasn’t a new one,” said Chidder. “At least people got some wear out of it.” “You don’t know what it’s like,” said Teppic. “It’s like a whole great pyramid. But upside down, you understand? All that history, all those ancestors, all the people, all funnelling down to me. Right at the bottom.” He slumped on to a coil of rope as Chidder passed the bottle back and said, “It makes you think, doesn’t it? There’s all these lost cities and kingdoms around. Like Ee, in the Great Nef. Whole countries, just gone. Just out there somewhere. Maybe people started mucking about with geometry, what do you say?” Teppic snored. After some moments Chidder swayed forward, dropped the empty bottle over the side, it went plunk - and for a few seconds a stream of bubbles disturbed the flat calm - and staggered off to bed. Teppic dreamed. And in his dream he was standing on a high place, but unsteadily, because he was balancing on the shoulders of his father and mother, and below them he could make out his grandparents, and below them his ancestors stretching away and out in a vast, all right, a vast pyramid of humanity whose base was lost in clouds. He could hear the murmur of shouted orders and instructions floating up to him. If you do nothing, we shall never have been. “This is just a dream,” he said, and stepped out of it into a palace where a small, dark man in a loincloth was sitting on a stone bench, eating figs. “Of course it’s a dream,” he said. “The world is the dream of the Creator. It’s all dreams, different kinds of dreams. They’re supposed to tell you things. Like: don’t eat lobster last thing at night. Stuff like that. Have you had the one about the seven cows?” “Yes,” said Teppic, looking around. He’d dreamed quite good architecture. “One of them was playing a trombone.” “It was smoking a cigar in my day. Well-known ancestral dream, that dream.” “What does it mean?” The little man picked a seed from between his teeth. “Search me,” he said. “I’d give my right arm to find out. I don’t think we’ve met, by the way. I’m Khuft. I founded this kingdom. You dream a good fig.” “I’m dreaming you, too?” “Damn right. I had a vocabulary of eight hundred words, do you think I’d really be talking like this? If you’re expecting a bit of helpful ancestral advice, forget it. This is a dream. I can’t tell you anything you don’t know yourself.” “You’re the founder?” “That’s me.” “I . . . thought you’d be different,” said Teppic. “How d’you mean?” “Well . . . on the statue . . Khuft waved a hand impatiently. “That’s just public relations,” he said. “I mean, look at me. Do I look patriarchal?” Teppic gave him a critical appraisal. “Not in that loincloth,” he admitted. “It’s a bit, well, ragged.” “It’s got years of wear left in it,” said Khuft. “Still, I expect it’s all you could grab when you were fleeing from persecution,” said Teppic, anxious to show an understanding nature. Khuft took another fig and give him a lopsided look. “How’s that again?” “You were being persecuted,” said Teppic. “That’s why you fled into the desert.” “Oh, yes. You’re right. Damn right. I was being persecuted for my beliefs.” “That’s terrible,” said Teppic. Khuft spat. “Damn right. I believed people wouldn’t notice I’d sold them camels with plaster teeth until I was well out of town.” It took a little while for this to sink in, but it managed it with all the aplomb of a concrete block in a quicksand. “You’re a criminal?” said Teppic. “Well, criminal’s a dirty word, know what I mean?” said the little ancestor. “I’d prefer entrepreneur. I was ahead of my time, that’s my trouble.” “And you were running away?” said Teppic weakly. “It wouldn’t,” said Khuft, “have been a good idea to hang about.” “”And Khuft the camel herder became lost in the Desert, and there opened before him, as a Gift from the Gods, a Valley flowing with Milk and Honey”,” quoted Teppic, in a hollow voice. He added, “I used to think it must have been awfully sticky.” “There I was, dying of thirst, all the camels kicking up a din, yelling for water, next minute - whoosh - a bloody great river valley, reed beds, hippos, the whole thing. Out of nowhere. I nearly got knocked down in the stampede.” “No!” said Teppic. “It wasn’t like that! The gods of the valley took pity on you and showed you the way in, didn’t they?” He shut up, surprised at the tones of pleading in his own voice. Khuft sneered. “Oh, yes? And I just happened to stumble across a hundred miles of river in the middle of the desert that everyone else had missed. Easy thing to miss, a hundred miles of river valley in the middle of a desert, isn’t it? Not that I was going to look a gift camel in the mouth, you understand, I went and brought my family and the rest of the lads in soon enough. Never looked back.” “One minute it wasn’t there, the next minute it was?” said Teppic. “Right enough. Hard to believe, isn’t it?” “No,” said Teppic. “No. Not really.” Khuft poked him with a wrinkled finger. “I always reckoned it was the camels that did it,” he said. “I always thought they sort of called it into place, like it was sort of potentially there but not quite, and it needed just that little bit of effort to make it real. Funny things, camels.” “I know.” “Odder than gods. Something the matter?” “Sorry,” said Teppic, “it’s just that this is all a bit of a shock. I mean, I thought we were really royal. I mean, we’re more royal than anyone. Khuft picked a fig seed from between two blackened stumps which, because they were in his mouth, probably had to be called his teeth. Then he spat. “That’s up to you,” he said, and vanished. Teppic walked through the necropolis, the pyramids a saw-edged skyline against the night. The sky was the arched body of a woman, and the gods stood around the horizon. They didn’t look like the gods that had been painted on the walls for thousands of years. They looked worse. They looked older than Time. After all, the gods hardly ever meddled in the affairs of men. But other things were proverbial for it. “What can I do? I’m only human,” he said aloud. Someone said, Not all of you.   Teppic awoke, to the screaming of seagulls. Alfonz, who was wearing a long-sleeved shirt and the expression of one who never means to take it off again, ever, was helping several other men unfurl one of Unnamed’s sails. He looked down at Teppic in his bed of rope and gave him a nod. They were moving. Teppic sat up, and saw the dock-side of Ephebe slipping silently away in the grey morning light. He stood up unsteadily, groaned, clutched at his head, took a run and dived over the rail. Heme Krona, owner of the Camels-R-Us livery stable, walked slowly around You Bastard, humming. He examined the camel’s knees. He gave one of its feet an experimental kick. In a swift movement that took You Bastard completely by surprise he jerked open the beast’s mouth and examined his great yellow teeth, and then jumped away. He took a plank of wood from a heap in the corner, dipped a brush in a pot of black paint, and after a moment’s thought carefully wrote, ONE OWNER. After some further consideration he added, LO MILEAGE. He was just brushing in GOOD RUNER when Teppic staggered in and leaned, panting, against the doorframe. Pools of water formed around his feet. “I’ve come for my camel,” he said. Krona sighed. “Last night you said you’d be back in an hour,” he said. “I’m going to have to charge you for a whole day’s livery, right? Plus I gave him a rub down and did his feet, the full service. That’ll be five cercs, okay emir?” “Ah.” Teppic patted his pocket. “Look,” he said. “I left home in a bit of a hurry, you see. I don’t seem to have any cash on me.” “Fair enough, emir.” Krona turned back to his board. “How do you spell YEARS WARENTY?” “I will definitely have the money sent to you,” said Teppic. Krona gave him the withering smile of one who has seen it all - asses with bodywork re-haired, elephants with plaster tusks, camels with false humps glued on - and knows the festering depths of the human soul when it gets down to business. “Pull the other one, rajah,” he said. “It has got bells on.” Teppic fumbled in his tunic. “I could give you this valuable knife,” he said. Krona gave it a passing glance, and sniffed. “Sorry, emir. No can do. No pay, no camel.” “I could give it to you point first,” said Teppic desperately, knowing that the mere threat would get him expelled from the Guild. He was also aware that as a threat it wasn’t very good. Threats weren’t on the syllabus at the Guild school. Whereas Krona had, sitting on straw bales at the back of the stables, a couple of large men who were just beginning to take an interest in the proceedings. They looked like Alfonz’s older brothers. Every vehicle depot of any description anywhere in the multiverse has them. They’re never exactly grooms or mechanics or customers or staff. Their function is always unclear. They chew straws or smoke cigarettes in a surreptitious fashion. If there are such things as newspapers around, they read them, or at least look at the pictures. They started to watch Teppic closely. One of them picked up a couple of bricks and began to toss them up and down. “You’re a young lad, I can see that,” said Krona, kindly. “You’re just starting out in life, emir. You don’t want trouble.” He stepped forward. You Bastard’s huge shaggy head turned to look at him. In the depths of his brain columns of little numbers whirred upwards again. “Look, I’m sorry, but I’ve got to have my camel back,” said Teppic. “It’s life and death!” Krona waved a hand at the two extraneous men. You Bastard kicked him. You Bastard had very concise ideas about people putting their hands in his mouth. Besides, he’d seen the bricks, and every camel knew what two bricks added up to. It was a good kick, toes well spread, powerful and deceptively slow. It picked Krona up and delivered him neatly into a steaming heap of Augean stable sweepings. Teppic ran, kicked away from the wall, grabbed You Bastard’s dusty coat and landed heavily on his neck. “I’m very sorry,” he said, to such of Krona as was visible. “I really will have some money sent to you.” You Bastard, at this point, was waltzing round and round in a circle. Krona’s companions stayed well back as feet like plates whirred through the air. Teppic leaned forward and hissed into one madly-waving ear. “We’re going home,” he said.   They had chosen the first pyramid at random. The king peered at the cartouche on the door. “”Blessed is Queen Far-re-ptah”,” read Dil dutifully, “Ruler of the Skies, Lord of the Djel, Master of-“ “Grandma Pooney,” said the king. “She’ll do.” He looked at their startled faces. “That’s what I used to call her when I was a little boy. I couldn’t pronounce Far-re-ptah, you see. Well, go on then. Stop gawking. Break the door down.” Gern hefted the hammer uncertainly. “It’s a pyramid, master,” he said, appealing to Dil. “You’re not supposed to open them.” “What do you suggest, lad? We stick a tableknife in the slot and wiggle it about?” said the king. “Do it, Gern,” said Dil. “It will be all right.” Gern shrugged, spat on his hands which were, in fact, quite damp enough with the sweat of terror, and swung. “Again,” said the king. The great slab boomed as the hammer hit it, but it was granite, and held. A few flakes of mortar floated down, and then the echoes came back, shunting back and forth along the dead avenues of the necropolis. “Again.” Gern’s biceps moved like turtles in grease. This time there was an answering boom, such as might be caused by a heavy lid crashing to the ground, far away. They stood in silence, listening to a slow shuffling noise from inside the pyramid. “Shall I hit it again, sire?” said Gern. They both waved him into silence. The shuffling grew closer. Then the stone moved. It stuck once or twice, but never the less it moved, slowly, pivoting on one side so that a crack of dark shadow appeared. Dil could just make out a darker shape in the blackness. “Yes?” it said. “It’s me, Grandma,” said the king. The shadow stood motionless. “What, young Pootle?” it said, suspiciously. The king avoided Dil’s face. “That’s right, Grandma. We’ve come to let you out.” “Who’re these men?” said the shadow petulantly. “I’ve got nothing, young man,” she said to Gern. “I don’t keep any money in the pyramid and you can put that weapon away, it doesn’t frighten me.” “They’re servants, Grandma,” said the king. “Have they got any identification?” muttered the old lady. “I’m identifying them, Grandma. We’ve come to let you out.” “I was hammering hours,” said the late queen, emerging into the sunlight. She looked exactly like the king, except that the mummy wrappings were greyer and dusty. “I had to go and have a lie down, come the finish. No-one cares about you when you’re dead. Where’re we going?” “To let the others out,” said the king. “Damn good idea.” The old queen lurched into step behind him. “So this is the netherworld, is it?” she said. “Not much of an improvement.” She elbowed Gern sharply. “You dead too, young man?” “No, ma’am,” said Gern, in the shaky brave tones of someone on a tightrope over the chasms of madness. “It’s not worth it. Be told.” “Yes, ma’am.” The king shuffled across the ancient pavings to the next pyramid. “I know this one,” said the queen. “It was here in my day. King Ashk-ur-men-tep. Third Empire. What’s the hammer for, young man?” “Please, ma’am, I have to hammer on the door, ma’am,” said Gern. “You don’t have to knock. He’s always in.” “My assistant means to smash the seals, ma’am,” said Dil, anxious to please. “Who’re you?” the queen demanded. “My name is Dil, O queen. Master embalmer.” “Oh, you are, are you? I’ve got some stitching wants seeing to.” “It will be an honour and a privilege, O queen,” said Dil. “Yes. It will,” she said, and turned creakily to Gern. “Hammer away, young man!” she said. Spurred by this, Gern brought the hammer round in a long, fast arc. It passed in front of Dil’s nose making a noise like a partridge and smashed the seal into pieces. What emerged, when the dust had settled, was not dressed in the height of fashion. The bandages were brown and mouldering and, Dil noticed with professional concern, already beginning to go at the elbows. When it spoke, it was like the opening of ancient caskets. “I woket up,” it said. “And theyre was noe light. Is thys the netherworld?” “It would appear not,” said the queen. “Thys is all?” “Hardly worth the trouble of dying, was it?” said the queen. The ancient king nodded, but gently, as though he was afraid his head would fall off. “Somethyng,” he said, “must be done.” He turned to look at the Great Pyramid, and pointed with what had once been an arm. “Who slepes there?” he said. “It’s mine, actually,” said Teppicymon, lurching forward. “I don’t think we’ve met, I haven’t been interred as yet, my son built it for me. It was against my better judgement, believe me.” “It ys a dretful thyng,” said the ancient king. “I felt its building. Even in the sleep of deathe I felt it. It is big enough to interr the worlde.” “I wanted to be buried at sea,” said Teppicymon. “I hate pyramids.” “You do not,” said Ashk-ur-men-tep. “Excuse me, but I do,” said the king, politely. “But you do not. What you feel nowe is myld dislike. When you have lain in one for a thousand yeares,” said the ancient one, “then you will begin to know the meaning of hate.” Teppicymon shuddered. “The sea,” he said. “That’s the place. You just dissolve away.” They set off towards the next pyramid. Gern led the way, his face a picture, possibly one painted late at night by an artist who got his inspiration on prescription. Dil followed. He held his chest high. He’d always hoped to make his way in the world and here he was now, walking with kings. Well. Lurching with kings.   It was another nice day in the high desert. It was always a nice day, if by nice you meant an air temperature like an oven and sand you could roast chestnuts on. You Bastard ran fast, mainly to keep his feet off the ground for as long as possible. For a moment as they staggered up the hills outside the olive-tree’d, field-patchworked oasis around Ephebe, Teppic thought he saw the Unnamed as a tiny speck on the azure sea. But it might have been just a gleam on a wave. Then he was over the crest, into a world of yellow and umber. For a while scrubby trees held on against the sand, but the sand won and marched triumphantly onwards, dune after dune. The desert was not only hot, it was quiet. There were no birds, none of the susurration of organic creatures busily being alive. At night there might have been the whine of insects, but they were deep under the sand against the scorch of day, and the yellow sky and yellow sand became an anechoic chamber in which You Bastard’s breath sounded like a steam-engine. Teppic had learned many things since he first went forth from the Old Kingdom, and he was about to learn one more. All authorities agree that when crossing the scorching desert it is a good idea to wear a hat. You Bastard settled into the shambling trot that a prime racing camel can keep up for hours. After a couple of miles Teppic saw a column of dust behind the next dune. Eventually they came up behind the main body of the Ephebian army, swinging along around half-a-dozen battle elephants, their helmet plumes waving in the oven breeze. They cheered on general principles as Teppic went past. Battle elephants! Teppic groaned. Tsort went in for battle elephants, too. Battle elephants were the fashion lately. They weren’t much good for anything except trampling on their own troops when they inevitably panicked, so the military minds on both sides had responded by breeding bigger elephants. Elephants were impressive. For some reason, many of these elephants were towing great carts full of timber. He jogged onwards as the sun wound higher and, and this was unusual, blue and purple dots began to pinwheel gently across the horizon. Another strange thing was happening. The camel seemed to be trotting across the sky. Perhaps this had something to do with the ringing noise in his ears. Should he stop? But then the camel might fall off. It was long past noon when You Bastard staggered into the baking shade of the limestone outcrop which had once marked the edge of the valley, and collapsed very slowly into the sand. Teppic rolled off. A detachment of Ephebians were staring across the narrow space towards a very similar number of Tsorteans on the other side. Occasionally, for the look of the thing, one of them waved a spear. When Teppic opened his eyes it was to see the fearsome bronze masks of several Ephebian soldiers peering down at him. Their metal mouths were locked in sneers of terrible disdain. Their shining eyebrows were twisted in mortal anger. One of them said, “He’s coming round, sarge.” A metal face like the anger of the elements came closer, filling Teppic’s vision. “We’ve been out without our hat, haven’t we, sonny boy,” it said, in a cheery voice that echoed oddly inside the metal. “In a hurry to get to grips with the enemy, were we?” The sky wheeled around Teppic, but a thought bobbed into the frying pan of his mind, seized control of his vocal chords and croaked: “The camel!” “You ought to be put away, treating it like that,” said the sergeant, waggling a finger at him. “Never seen one in such a state.” “Don’t let it have a drink!” Teppic sat bolt upright, great gongs clanging and hot, heavy fireworks going off inside his skull. The helmeted heads turned towards one another. “Gods, he must have something really terrible against camels,” said one of them. Teppic staggered upright and lurched across the sand to You Bastard, who was trying to work out the complex equation which would allow him to get to his feet. His tongue was hanging out, and he was not feeling well. A camel in distress isn’t a shy creature. It doesn’t hang around in bars, nursing a solitary drink. It doesn’t phone up old friends and sob at them. It doesn’t mope, or write long soulful poems about Life and how dreadful it is when seen from a bedsitter. It doesn’t know what angst is. All a camel has got is a pair of industrial-strength lungs and a voice like a herd of donkeys being chainsawed. Teppic advanced through the blaring. You Bastard reared his head and turned it this way and that, triangulating. His eyes rolled madly as he did the camel trick of apparently looking at Teppic with his nostrils. He spat. He tried to spit. Teppic grabbed his halter and pulled on it. “Come on, you bastard,” he said. “There’s water. You can smell it. All you have to do is work out how to get there!” He turned to the assembled soldiers. They were staring at him with expressions of amazement, apart from those who hadn’t removed their helmets and who were staring at him with expressions of metallic ferocity. Teppic snatched a water skin from one of them, pulled out the stopper and tipped it on to the ground in front of the camel’s twitching nose. “There’s a river here,” he hissed. “You know where it is, all you’ve got to do is go there!” The soldiers looked around nervously. So did several Tsorteans, who had wandered up to see what was going on. You Bastard got to his feet, knees trembling, and started to spin around in a circle. Teppic clung on. . . . let d equal 4, thought You Bastard desperately. Let a.d equal 90. Let not-d equal 45 . . . “I need a stick!” shouted Teppic, as he was whirled past the sergeant. “They never understand anything unless you hit them with a stick, it’s like punctuation to a camel!” “Is a sword any good?” “No!” The sergeant hesitated, and then passed Teppic his spear. He grabbed it point-end first, fought for balance, and then brought it smartly across the camel’s flank, raising a cloud of dust and hair. You Bastard stopped. His ears turned like radar aerials. He stared at the rock wall, rolling his eyes. Then, as Teppic grabbed a handful of hair and pulled himself up, the camel started to trot. . . . Think fractals . . . “Ere, you’re going to run straight-” the sergeant began. There was silence. It went on for a long time. The sergeant shifted uneasily. Then he looked across the rocks to the Tsorteans, and caught the eye of their leader. With the unspoken understanding that is shared by centurions and sergeant-majors everywhere, they walked towards one another along the length of the rocks and stopped by the barely visible crack in the cliff. The Tsortean sergeant ran his hand over it. “You’d think there’d be some, you know, camel hairs or something,” he said. “Or blood,” said the Ephebian. “I reckon it’s one of them unexplainable phenomena.” “Oh. That’s all right, then.” The two men stared at the stone for a while. “Like a mirage,” said the Tsortean, helpfully. “One of them things, yes.” “I thought I heard a seagull, too.” “Daft, isn’t it. You don’t get them out here.” The Tsortean coughed politely, and stared back at his men. Then he leaned closer. “The rest of your people will be along directly, I expect,” he said. The Ephebian stepped a bit closer and when he spoke, it was out of the corner of his mouth while his eyes apparently remained fully occupied by looking at the rocks. “That’s right,” he said. “And yours too, may I ask?” “Yes. I expect we’ll have to massacre you if ours get here first.” “Likewise, I shouldn’t wonder. Still, can’t be helped.” “One of those things, really,” agreed the Tsortean. The other man nodded. “Funny old world, when you come to think about it.” “You’ve put your finger on it, all right.” The sergeant loosened his breastplate a bit, glad to be out of the sun. “Rations okay on your side?” he said. “Oh, you know. Mustn’t grumble.” “Like us, really.” “Cos if you do grumble, they get even worse.” “Just like ours. Here, you haven’t got any figs on your side, have you? I could just do with a fig.” “Sorry.” “Just thought I’d ask.” “Got plenty of dates, if they’re any good to you.” “We’re okay on dates, thanks.” “Sorry.” The two men stood awhile, lost in their own thoughts. Then the Ephebian put on his helmet again, and the Tsortean adjusted his belt. “Right, then.” “Right, then.” They squared their shoulders, stuck out their chins, and marched away. A moment later they turned about smartly and, exchanging the merest flicker of an embarrassed grin, headed back to their own sides.   BOOK IV The Book of 101 Things A Boy Can Do Teppic had expected- -what? Possibly the splat of flesh hitting rock. Possibly, although this was on the very edge of expectation, the sight of the Old Kingdom spread out below him. He hadn’t expected chilly, damp mists. It is now known to science that there are many more dimensions than the classical four. Scientists say that these don’t normally impinge on the world because the extra dimensions are very small and curve in on themselves, and that since reality is fractal most of it is tucked inside itself. This means either that the universe is more full of wonders than we can hope to understand or, more probably, that scientists make things up as they go along. But the multiverse is full of little dimensionettes, playstreets of creation where creatures of the imagination can romp without being knocked down by serious actuality. Sometimes, as they drift through the holes in reality, they impinge back on this universe, when they give rise to myths, legends and charges of being Drunk and Disorderly. And it was into one of these that You Bastard, by a trivial miscalculation, had trotted. Legend had got it nearly right. The Sphinx did lurk on the borders of the kingdom. The legend just hadn’t been precise about what kind of borders it was talking about. The Sphinx is an unreal creature. It exists solely because it has been imagined. It is well-known that in an infinite universe everything that can be imagined must exist somewhere, and since many of them are not things that ought to exist in a well-ordered space-time frame they get shoved into a side dimension. This may go some way to explaining the Sphinx’s chronic bad temper, although any creature created with the body of a lion, bosom of a woman and wings of an eagle has a serious identity crisis and doesn’t need much to make it angry. So it had devised the Riddle. Across various dimensions it had provided the Sphinx with considerable entertainment and innumerable meals. This was not known to Teppic as he led You Bastard through the swirling mists, but the bones he crunched underfoot gave him enough essential detail. A lot of people had died here. And it was reasonable to assume that the more recent ones had seen the remains of the earlier ones, and would therefore have proceeded stealthily. And that hadn’t worked. No sense in creeping along, then. Besides, some of the rocks that loomed out of the mists had a very distressing shape. This one here, for example, looked exactly like- “Halt,” said the Sphinx. There was no sound but the drip of the mist and the occasional sucking noise of You Bastard trying to extract moisture from the air. “You’re a sphinx,” said Teppic. “The Sphinx,” corrected the Sphinx. “Gosh. We’ve got any amount of statues to you at home.” Teppic looked up, and then further up. “I thought you’d be smaller,” he added. “Cower, mortal,” said the Sphinx. “For thou art in the presence of the wise and the terrible.” It blinked. “Any good, these statues?” “They don’t do you justice,” said Teppic, truthfully. “Do you really think so? People often get the nose wrong,” said the Sphinx. “My right profile is best, I’m told, and-” It dawned on the Sphinx that it was sidetracking itself. It coughed sternly. “Before you can pass me, O mortal,” it said, “you must answer my riddle.” “Why?” said Teppic. “What?” The Sphinx blinked at him. It hadn’t been designed for this sort of thing. “Why? Why? Because. Er. Because, hang on, yes, because I will bite your head off if you don’t. Yes, I think that’s it.” “Right,” said Teppic. “Let’s hear it, then.” The Sphinx cleared its throat with a noise like an empty lorry reversing in a quarry. “What goes on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening?” said the Sphinx smugly. Teppic considered this. “That’s a tough one,” he said, eventually. “The toughest,” said the Sphinx. “Um.” “You’ll never get it.” “Ah,” said Teppic. “Could you take your clothes off while you’re thinking? The threads play merry hell with my teeth.” “There isn’t some kind of animal that regrows legs that have been-” “Entirely the wrong track,” said the Sphinx, stretching its claws. “Oh.” “You haven’t got the faintest idea, have you?” “I’m still thinking,” said Teppic. “You’ll never get it.” “You’re right.” Teppic stared at the claws. This isn’t really a fighting animal, he told himself reassuringly, it’s definitely over-endowed. Besides, its bosom will get in the way, even if its brain doesn’t. “The answer is: “A Man”,” said the Sphinx. “Now, don’t put up a fight, please, it releases unpleasant chemicals into the bloodstream.” Teppic backed away from a slashing paw. “Hold on, hold on,” he said. “What do you mean, a man?” “It’s easy,” said the Sphinx. “A baby crawls in the morning, stands on both legs at noon, and at evening an old man walks with a stick. Good, isn’t it?” Teppic bit his lip. “We’re talking about one day here?” he said doubtfully. There was a long, embarrassing silence. “It’s a wossname, a figure of speech,” said the Sphinx irritably, making another lunge. “No, no, look, wait a minute,” said Teppic. “I’d like us to be very clear about this, right? I mean, it’s only fair, right?” “Nothing wrong with the riddle,” said the Sphinx. “Damn good riddle. Had that riddle for fifty years, sphinx and cub.” It thought about this. “Chick,” it corrected. “It’s a good riddle,” Teppic said soothingly. “Very deep. Very moving. The whole human condition in a nutshell. But you’ve got to admit, this doesn’t all happen to one individual in one day, does it?” “Well. No,” the Sphinx admitted. “But that is self-evident from the context. An element of dramatic analogy is present in all riddles,” it added, with the air of one who had heard the phrase a long time ago and rather liked it, although not to the extent of failing to eat the originator. “Yes, but,” said Teppic crouching down and brushing a clear space on the damp sand, “is there internal consistency within the metaphor? Let’s say for example that the average life expectancy is seventy years, okay?” “Okay,” said the Sphinx, in the uncertain tones of someone who has let the salesman in and is now regretfully contemplating a future in which they are undoubtedly going to buy life insurance. “Right. Good. So noon would be age 35, am I right? Now considering that most children can toddle at a year or so, the four legs reference is really unsuitable, wouldn’t you agree? I mean, most of the morning is spent on two legs. According to your analogy” he paused and did a few calculations with a convenient thighbone- “only about twenty minutes immediately after 00.00 hours, half an hour tops, is spent on four legs. Am I right? Be fair.” “Well-” said the Sphinx. “By the same token you wouldn’t be using a stick by six p.m. because you’d be only, er, 52,” said Teppic, scribbling furiously. “In fact you wouldn’t really be looking at any kind of walking aid until at least half past nine, I think. That’s on the assumption that the entire lifespan takes place over one day which is, I believe I have already pointed out, ridiculous. I’m sorry, it’s basically okay, but it doesn’t work.” “Well,” said the Sphinx, but irritably this time, “I don’t see what I can do about it. I haven’t got any more. It’s the only one I’ve ever needed.” “You just need to alter it a bit, that’s all.” “How do you mean?” “Just make it a bit more realistic.” “Hmm.” The Sphinx scratched its mane with a claw. “Okay,” it said doubtfully. “I suppose I could ask: What is it that walks on four legs” “Metaphorically speaking,” said Teppic. “Four legs, metaphorically speaking,” the Sphinx agreed, “for about-” “Twenty minutes, I think we agreed.” “Okay, fine, twenty minutes in the morning, on two legs***” “But I think calling it in “the morning” is stretching it a bit,” said Teppic. “It’s just after midnight. I mean, technically it’s the morning, but in a very real sense it’s still last night, what do you think?” A look of glazed panic crossed the Sphinx’s face. “What do you think?” it managed. “Let’s just see where we’ve got to, shall we? What, metaphorically speaking, walks on four legs just after midnight, on two legs for most of the day-” “Barring accidents,” said the Sphinx, pathetically eager to show that it was making a contribution. “Fine, on two legs barring accidents, until at least suppertime, when it walks with three legs-” “I’ve known people use two walking sticks,” said the Sphinx helpfully. “Okay. How about: when it continues to walk on two legs or with any prosthetic aids of its choice?” The Sphinx gave this some consideration. “Ye-ess,” it said gravely. “That seems to fit all eventualities.” “Well?” said Teppic. “Well what?” said the Sphinx. “Well, what’s the answer?” The Sphinx gave him a stony look, and then showed its fangs. “Oh no,” it said. “You don’t catch me out like that. You think I’m stupid? You’ve got to tell me the answer.” “Oh, blow,” said Teppic. “Thought you had me there, didn’t you?” said the Sphinx. “Sorry.” “You thought you could get me all confused, did you?” The Sphinx grinned. “It was worth a try,” said Teppic. “Can’t blame you. So what’s the answer, then?” Teppic scratched his nose. “Haven’t a clue,” he said. “Unless, and this is a shot in the dark, you understand, it’s: A Man.” The Sphinx glared at him. “You’ve been here before, haven’t you?” it said accusingly. “No.” “Then someone’s been talking, right?” “Who could have talked? Has anyone ever guessed the riddle?” said Teppic. “No!” “Well, then. They couldn’t have talked, could they?” The Sphinx’s claws scrabbled irritably on its rock. “I suppose you’d better move along, then,” it grumbled. “Thank you,” said Teppic. “I’d be grateful if you didn’t tell anyone, please,” added the Sphinx, coldly. “I wouldn’t like to spoil it for other people.” Teppic scrambled up a rock and on to You Bastard. “Don’t you worry about that,” he said, spurring the camel onwards. He couldn’t help noticing the way the Sphinx was moving its lips silently, as though trying to work something out. You Bastard had gone only twenty yards or so before an enraged bellow erupted behind him. For once he forgot the etiquette that says a camel must be hit with a stick before it does anything. All four feet hit the sand and pushed. This time he got it right.   The priests were going irrational. It wasn’t that the gods were disobeying them. The gods were ignoring them. The gods always had. It took great skill to persuade a Djelibeybi god to obey you, and the priests had to be fast on their toes. For example, if you pushed a rock off a cliff, then a quick request to the gods that it should fall down was certain to be answered. In the same way, the gods ensured that the sun set and the stars came out. Any petition to the gods to see to it that palm trees grew with their roots in the ground and their leaves on top was certain to be graciously accepted. On the whole, any priest who cared about such things could ensure a high rate of success. However, it was one thing for the gods to ignore you when they were far off and invisible, and quite another when they were strolling across the landscape. It made you feel such a fool. “Why don’t they listen?” said the high priest of Teg, the Horse-Headed god of agriculture. He was in tears. Teg had last been seen sitting in a field, pulling up corn and giggling. The other high priests were faring no better. Rituals hallowed by time had filled the air in the palace with sweet blue smoke and cooked enough assorted livestock to feed a famine, but the gods were settling in the Old Kingdom as if they owned it, and the people therein were no more than insects. And the crowds were still outside. Religion had ruled in the Old Kingdom for the best part of seven thousand years. Behind the eyes of every priest present was a graphic image of what would happen if the people ever thought, for one moment, that it ruled no more. “And so, Dios,” said Koomi, “we turn to you. What would you have us do now?” Dios sat on the steps of the throne and stared gloomily at the floor. The gods didn’t listen. He knew that. He knew that, of all people. But it had never mattered before. You just went through the motions and came up with an answer. It was the ritual that was important, not the gods. The gods were there to do the duties of a megaphone, because who else would people listen to? While he fought to think clearly his hands went through the motions of the Ritual of the Seventh Hour, guided by neural instructions as rigid and unchangeable as crystals. “You have tried everything?” he said. “Everything that you advised, O Dios,” said Koomi. He waited until most of the priests were watching them and then, in a rather louder voice, continued: “If the king was here, he would intercede for us.” He caught the eye of the priestess of Sarduk. He hadn’t discussed things with her; indeed, what was there to discuss? But he had an inkling that there was some fellow, sorry, feeling there. She didn’t like Dios very much, but was less in awe of him than were the others. “I told you that the king is dead,” said Dios. “Yes, we heard you. Yet there seems to be no body, O Dios. Nevertheless, we believe what you tell us, for it is the great Dios that speaks, and we pay no heed to malicious gossip.” The priests were silent. Malicious gossip, too? And somebody had already mentioned rumours, hadn’t they? Definitely something amiss here. “It happened many times in the past,” said the priestess, on - cue. “When a kingdom was threatened or the river did not rise, the king went to intercede with the gods. Was sent to intercede with the gods.” The edge of satisfaction in her voice made it clear that it was a one-way trip. Koomi shivered with delight and horror. Oh, yes. Those were the days. Some countries had experimented with the idea of the sacrificial king, long ago. A few years of feasting and ruling, then chop - and make way for a new administration. “In a time of crisis, possibly any high-born minister of state would suffice,” she went on. Dios looked up, his face mirroring the agony of his tendons. “I see,” he said. “And who would be high priest then?” “The gods would choose,” said Koomi. “I daresay they would,” said Dios sourly. “I am in some doubt as to the wisdom of their choice.” “The dead can speak to the gods in the netherworld,” said the priestess. “But the gods are all here,” said Dios, fighting against the throbbing in his legs, which were insisting that, at this time, they should be walking along the central corridor en route to supervise the Rite of the Under Sky. His body cried out for the solace over the river. And once over the river, never to return . . . but he’d always said that. “In the absence of the king the high priest performs his duties. Isn’t that right, Dios?” said Koomi. It was. It was written. You couldn’t rewrite it, once it was written. He’d written it. Long ago. Dios hung his head. This was worse than plumbing, this was worse than anything. And yet, and yet. . . to go across the river . . . “Very well, then,” he said. “I have one final request.” “Yes?” Koomi’s voice had timbre now, it was already a high priest’s voice. “I wish to be interred in the-” Dios began, and was cut off by a murmur from those priests who could look out across the river. All eyes turned to the distant, inky shore. The legions of the kings of Djelibeybi were on the march. They lurched, but they covered the ground quickly. There were platoons, battalions of them. They didn’t need Gern’s hammer any more. “It’s the pickle,” said the king, as they watched half-a-dozen ancestors mummyhandle a seal out of its socket. “It toughens you up.” Some of the more ancient were getting over enthusiastic and attacking the pyramids themselves, actually managing to shift blocks higher than they were. The king didn’t blame them. How terrible to be dead, and know you were dead, and locked away in the darkness. They’re never going to get me in one of those things, he vowed. At last they came, like a tide, to yet another pyramid. - It was small, low, dark, half-concealed in drifted sands, and the blocks were hardly even masonry; they were no more than roughly squared boulders. It had clearly been built long before the Kingdom got the hang of pyramids. It was barely more than a pile. Hacked into the doorseal, angular and deep, were the hieroglyphs of the Kingdom: KHUFT HAD ME MADE. THE FIRST. Several ancestors clustered around it. “Oh dear,” said the king. “This might be going too far.” “The First,” whispered Dil. “The First into the Kingdom: No-one here before but hippos and crocodiles. From inside that pyramid seventy centuries look out at us. Older than anything-” “Yes, yes, all right,” said Teppicymon. “No need to get carried away. He was a man, just like all of us.” “”AndKhuftthecamelherderlookeduponthevalley. . .”“ Dil began. “After seven thousand yeares, he wyll be wantyng to look upon yt again,” said Ashk-ur-men-tep bluntly. “Even so,” said the king. “It does seem a bit . . “The dead are equal,” said Ashk-ur-men-tep. “You, younge manne. Calle hym forth.” “Who, me?” said Gern. “But he was the Fir-” “Yes, we’ve been through all that,” said Teppicymon. “Do it. Everyone’s getting impatient. So is he, I expect.” Gern rolled his eyes, and hefted the hammer. Just as it was about to hiss down on the seal Dil darted forward, causing Gern to dance wildly across the ground in a groin-straining effort to avoid interring the hammer in his master’s head. “It’s open!” said Dil. “Look! The seal just swings aside!” “Youe meane he iss oute?” Teppicymon tottered forward and grabbed the door of the pyramid. It moved quite easily. Then he examined the stone beneath it. Derelict and half-covered though it was, someone had taken care to keep a pathway clear to the pyramid. And the stone was quite worn away, as by the passage of many feet. This was not, by the nature of things, the normal state of affairs for a pyramid. The whole point was that once you were in, you were in. The mummies examined the worn entrance and creaked at one another in surprise. One of the very ancient ones, who was barely holding himself together, made a noise like deathwatch beetle finally conquering a rotten tree. “What’d he say?” said Teppicymon. The mummy of Ashk-ur-men-tep translated. “He saide yt ys Spooky,” he croaked. The late king nodded. “I’m going in to have a look. You two live ones, you come with me.” Dil’s face fell. “Oh, come on, man,” snapped Teppicymon, forcing the door back. “Look, I’m not frightened. Show a bit of backbone. Everyone else is.” “But we’ll need some light,” protested Dil. The nearest mummies lurched back sharply as Gern timidly took a tinderbox out of his pocket. “We’ll need something to burn,” said Dil. The mummies shuffled further back, muttering. “There’s torches in here,” said Teppicymon, his voice slightly muffled. “And you can keep them away from me, lad.” It was a small pyramid, mazeless, without traps, just a stone passage leading upwards. Tremulously, expecting at any moment to see unnamed terrors leap out at them, the embalmers followed the king into a small, square chamber that smelled of sand. The roof was black with soot. There was no sarcophagus within, no mummy case, no terror named or nameless. The centre of the floor was occupied by a raised block, with a blanket and a pillow on it. Neither of them looked particularly old. It was almost disappointing. Gern craned to look around. “Quite nice, really,” he said. “Comfy.” “No,” said Dil. “Hey, master king, look here,” said Gern, trotting over to one of the walls. “Look. Someone’s been scratching things. Look, all little lines all over the wall.” “And this wall,” said the king, “and the floor. Someone’s been counting. Every ten have been crossed through, you see. Someone’s been counting things. Lots of things.” He stood back. “What things?” said Dil, looking behind him. “Very strange,” said the king. He leaned forward. “You can barely make out the inscriptions underneath.” “Can you read it, king?” said Gern, showing what Dil considered to be unnecessary enthusiasm. “No. It’s one of the really ancient dialects. Can’t make out a blessed hieroglyph,” said Teppicymon. “I shouldn’t think there’s a single person alive today who can read it.” “That’s a shame,” said Gern. “True enough,” said the king, and sighed. They stood in gloomy silence. “So perhaps we could ask one of the dead ones?” said Gern. “Er. Gern,” said Dil, backing away. The king slapped the apprentice on the back, pitching him forward. “Damn clever idea!” he said. “We’ll just go and get one of the real early ancestors. Oh.” He sagged. “That’s no good. No-one will be able to understand them-” “Gern!” said Dil, his eyes growing wider. “No, it’s all right, king,” said Gern, enjoying the new-found freedom of thought, “because, the reason being, everyone understands someone, all we have to do is sort them out.” “Bright lad. Bright lad,” said the king. “Gern!” They both looked at him in astonishment. “You all right, master?” said Gern. “You’ve gone all white.” “The t-” stuttered Dil, rigid with terror. “The what, master?” “The t- look at the t-” “He ought to have a lie down,” said the king. “I know his sort. The artistic type. Highly strung.” Dil took a deep breath. “Look at the sodding torch, Gern!” he shouted. They looked. Without any fuss, turning its black ashes into dry straw, the torch was burning backwards.   The Old Kingdom lay stretched out before Teppic, and it was unreal. He looked at You Bastard, who had stuck his muzzle in a wayside spring and was making a noise like the last drop in the milkshake glass.* (* You know. The bit you can’t reach with the straw.) You Bastard looked real enough. There’s nothing like a camel for looking really solid. But the landscape had an uncertain quality, as if it hadn’t quite made up its mind to be there or not. Except for the Great Pyramid. It squatted in the middle distance as real as the pin that nails a butterfly to a board. It was contriving to look extremely solid, as though it was sucking all the solidity out of the landscape into itself. Well, he was here. Wherever here was. How did you kill a pyramid? And what would happen if you did? He was working on the hypothesis that everything would snap back into place. Into the Old Kingdom’s pool of recirculated time. He watched the gods for a while, wondering what the hell they were, and how it didn’t seem to matter. They looked no more real than the land over which they strode, about incomprehensible errands of their own. The world was no more than a dream. Teppic felt incapable of surprise. If seven fat cows had wandered by, he wouldn’t have given them a second glance. He remounted You Bastard and rode him, sloshing gently, down the road. The fields on either side had a devastated look. The sun was finally sinking; the gods of night and evening were prevailing over the daylight gods, but it had been a long struggle and, when you thought about all the things that would happen to it now - eaten by goddesses, carried on boats under the world, and so on - it was an odds-on chance that it wouldn’t be seen again. No-one was visible as he rode into the stable yard. You Bastard padded sedately to his stall and pulled delicately at a wisp of hay. He’d thought of something interesting about bivariant distributions. Teppic patted him on the flank, raising another cloud, and walked up the wide steps that led to the palace proper. Still there were no guards, no servants. No living soul. He slipped into his own palace like a thief in the day, and found his way to Dil’s workshop. It was empty, and looked as though a robber with very peculiar tastes had recently been at work in there. The throne room smelled like a kitchen, and by the looks of it the cooks had fled in a hurry. The gold mask of the kings of Djelibeybi, slightly buckled out of shape, had rolled into a corner. He picked it up and, on a suspicion, scratched it with one of his knives. The gold peeled away, exposing a silver-grey gleam. He’d suspected that. There simply wasn’t that much gold around. The mask felt as heavy as lead because, well, it was lead. He wondered if it had ever been all gold, and which ancestor had done it, and how many pyramids it had paid for. It was probably very symbolic of something or other. Perhaps not even symbolic of anything. Just symbolic, all by itself. One of the sacred cats was hiding under the throne. It flattened its ears and spat at Teppic as he reached down to pat it. That much hadn’t changed, at least. Still no people. He padded across to the balcony. And there the people were, a great silent mass, staring across the river in the fading, leaden light. As Teppic watched a flotilla of boats and ferries set out from the near bank. We ought to have been building bridges, he thought. But we said that would be shackling the river. He dropped lightly over the balustrade on to the packed earth and walked down to the crowd. And the full force of its belief scythed into him. The people of Djelibeybi might have had conflicting ideas about their gods, but their belief in their kings had been unswerving for thousands of years. To Teppic it was like walking into a vat of alcohol. He felt it pouring into him until his fingertips crackled, rising up through his body until it gushed into his brain, bringing not omnipotence but the feeling of omnipotence, the very strong sensation that while he didn’t actually know everything, he would do soon and had done once. It had been like this back in Ankh, when the divinity had hooked him. But that had been just a flicker. Now it had the solid power of real belief behind it. He looked down at a rustling below him, and saw green shoots springing out of the dry sand around his feet. Bloody hell, he thought. I really am a god. This could be very embarrassing. He shouldered his way through the press of people until he reached the riverbank and stood there in a thickening clump of corn. As the crowd caught on, those nearest fell to their knees, and a circle of reverentially collapsing people spread out from Teppic like ripples. But I never wanted this! I just wanted to help people live more happily, with plumbing. I wanted something done about rundown inner-city areas. I just wanted to put them at their ease, and ask them how they enjoyed their lives. I thought schools might be a good idea, so they wouldn’t fall down and worship someone just because he’s got green feet. And I wanted to do something about the architecture. . . As the light drained from the sky like steel going cold the pyramid was somehow even bigger than before. If you had to design something to give the very distinct impression of mass, the pyramid was It. There was a crowd of figures around it, unidentifiable in the grey light. Teppic looked around the prostrate crowd until he saw someone in the uniform of the palace guard. “You, man, on your feet,” he commanded. The man gave him a look of dread, but did stagger sheepishly upright. “What’s going on here?” “O king, who is the lord of-” “I don’t think we have time,” said Teppic. “I know who I am, I want to know what’s happening.” “O king, we saw the dead walking! The priests have gone to talk to them.” “The dead walking?” “Yes, O king.” “We’re talking about not-alive people here, are we?” “Yes, O king.” “Oh. Well, thank you. That was very succinct. Not informative, but succinct. Are there any boats around?” “The priests took them all, O king.” Teppic could see that this was true. The jetties near the palace were usually thronged with boats, and now they were all empty. As he stared at the water it grew two eyes and a long snout, to remind him that swimming the Djel was as feasible as nailing fog to the wall. He stared at the crowd. Every person was watching him expectantly, convinced that he would know what to do next. He turned back to the river, extended his hands in front of him, pressed them together and then opened them gently. There was a damp sucking noise, and the waters of the Djel parted in front of him. There was a sigh from the crowd, but their astonishment was nothing to the surprise of a dozen or so crocodiles, who were left trying to swim in ten feet of air. Teppic ran down the bank and over the heavy mud, dodging to avoid the tails that slashed wildly at him as the reptiles dropped heavily on to the riverbed. The Djel loomed up as two khaki walls, so that he was running along a damp and shadowy alley. Here and there were fragments of bones, old shields, bits of spear, the ribs of boats. He leapt and jinked around the debris of centuries. Ahead of him a big bull crocodile propelled itself dreamily out of the wall of water, flailed madly in mid-air, and flopped into the ooze. Teppic trod heavily on its snout and plunged on. Behind him a few of the quicker citizens, seeing the dazed creatures below them, began to look for stones. The crocodiles had been undisputed masters of the river since primordial times, but if it was possible to do a little catching-up in the space of a few minutes, it was certainly worth a try. The sound of the monsters of the river beginning the long journey to handbaghood broke out behind Teppic as he sloshed up the far bank.   A line of ancestors stretched across the chamber, down the dark passageway, and out into the sand. It was filled with whispers going in both directions, a dry sound, like the wind blowing through old paper. Dil lay on the sand, with Gern flapping a cloth in his face. “Wha’ they doing?” he murmured. “Reading the inscription,” said Gern. “You ought to see it, master! The one doing the reading, he’s practically a-” “Yes, yes, all right,” said Dil, struggling up. “He’s more than six thousand years old! And his grandson’s listening to him, and telling his grandson, and he’s telling his gra-” “Yes, yes, all-” “”And Khuft-too-said-Unto-the-First, What-may-We-Give-Unto-You, Who-Has-Taught-Us-the-Right-Ways”,” said Teppicymon*, (* But not immediately, of course, because messages change in the telling and some ancestors were not capable of perfect enunciation and others were trying to be helpful and supplying what they thought were lost words. The message received by Teppicymon originally began, “Handcuffed to the bed, the aunt thirsted.”) who was at the end of the line. “”And-the-First-Spake, and-This-He-Spake, Build-for-Me-a-Pyramid, That-I-May-Rest, and-Build-it-of-These-Dimensions, That-it-Be-Proper. And-Thus-It-Was-Done, and-The-Name-of-the-First-was . . .”“ But there was no name. It was just a babble of raised voices, arguments, ancient cursewords, spreading along the line of desiccated ancestors like a spark along a powder trail. Until it reached Teppicymon, who exploded.   The Ephebian sergeant, quietly perspiring in the shade, saw what he had been half expecting and wholly dreading. There was a column of dust on the opposite horizon. The Tsorteans’ main force was getting there first. He stood up, nodded professionally to his counterpart across the way, and looked at the double handful of men under his command. “I need a messenger to take, er, a message back to the city,” he said. A forest of hands shot up. The sergeant sighed, and selected young Autocue, who he knew was missing his mum. “Run like the wind,” he said. “Although I expect you won’t need telling, will you? And then . . . and then . . He stood with his lips moving silently, while the sun scoured the rocks of the hot, narrow pass and a few insects buzzed in the scrub bushes. His education hadn’t included a course in Famous Last Words. He raised his eyes in the direction of home. “Go, tell the Ephebians-” he began. The soldiers waited. “What?” said Autocue after a while. “Go and tell them what?” The sergeant relaxed, like air being let out of a balloon. “Go and tell them, what kept you?” he said. On the near horizon another column of dust was advancing. This was more like it. If there was going to be a massacre, then it ought to be shared by both sides. The city of the dead lay before Teppic. After Ankh-Morpork, which was almost its direct opposite (in Ankh, even the bedding was alive) it was probably the biggest city on the Disc; its streets were the finest, its architecture the most majestic and awe-inspiring. In population terms the necropolis outstripped the other cities of the Old Kingdom, but its people didn’t get out much and there was nothing to do on Saturday nights. Until now. Now it thronged: Teppic watched from the top of a wind-etched obelisk as the grey and brown, and here and there somewhat greenish, armies of the departed passed beneath him. The kings had been democratic. After the pyramids had been emptied gangs of them had turned their attention to the lesser tombs, and now the necropolis really did have its tradesmen, its nobles and even its artisans. Not that there was, by and large, any way of telling the difference. They were, to a corpse, heading for the Great Pyramid. It loomed like a carbuncle over the lesser, older buildings. And they all seemed very angry about something. Teppic dropped lightly on to the wide flat roof of a mastaba, jogged to its far end, cleared the gap on to an ornamental sphinx - not without a moment’s worry, but this one seemed inert enough - and from there it was but the throw of a grapnel to one of the lower storeys of a step pyramid. The long light of the contentious sun lanced across the spent landscape as he leapt from monument to monument, zig-zagging high above the shuffling army. Behind him shoots appeared briefly in the ancient stone, cracking it a little, and then withered and died. This, said his blood as it tingled around his body, is what you trained for. Even Mericet couldn’t mark you down for this. Speeding in the shadows above a silent city, running like a cat, finding handholds that would have perplexed a gecko - and, at the destination, a victim. True, it was a billion tons of pyramid, and hitherto the largest client of an inhumation had been Patricio, the 23-stone Despot of Quirm. A monumental needle recording in bas-relief the achievements of a king four thousand years ago, and which would have been more pertinent if the wind-driven sand hadn’t long ago eroded his name, provided a handy ladder which needed only an expertly thrown grapnel from its top, lodging in the outstretched fingers of a forgotten monarch, to allow him a long, gentle arc on to the roof of a tomb. Running, climbing and swinging, hastily hammering crampons in the memorials of the dead, Teppic went forth. Pinpoints of firelight among the limestone pricked out the lines of the opposing armies. Deep and stylised though the enmity was between the two empires, they both abided by the ancient tradition that warfare wasn’t undertaken at night, during harvest or when wet. It was important enough to save up for special occasions. Going at it hammer and tongs just reduced the whole thing to a farce. In the twilight on both sides of the line came the busy sound of advanced woodwork in progress. It’s said that generals are always ready to fight the last War over again. It had been thousands of years since the last war between Tsort and Ephebe, but generals have long memories and this time they were ready for it. On both sides of the line, wooden horses were taking shape. “It’s gone,” said Ptaclusp IIb, slithering back down the pile of rubble. “About time, too,” said his father. “Help me fold up your brother. You’re sure it won’t hurt him?” “Well, if we do it carefully he can’t move in Time, that is, width to us. So if no time can pass for him, nothing can hurt him.” Ptaclusp thought of the old days, when pyramid building had simply consisted of piling one block on another and all you needed to remember was that you put less on top as you went up. And now it meant trying to put a crease in one of your sons. “Right,” he said doubtfully. “Let’s be off, then.” He inched his way up the debris and poked his head over the top just as the vanguard of the dead came round the corner of the nearest minor pyramid. His first thought was: this is it, they’re coming to complain. He’d done his best. It wasn’t always easy to build to a budget. Maybe not every lintel was exactly as per drawings, perhaps the quality of the internal plasterwork wasn’t always up to snuff, but . . . They can’t all be complaining. Not this many of them. Ptaclusp IIb climbed up alongside him. His mouth dropped open. “Where are they all coming from?” he said. “You’re the expert. You tell me. “Are they dead?” Ptaclusp scrutinised some of the approaching marchers. “If they’re not, some of them are awfully ill,” he said. “Let’s make a run for it!” “Where to? Up the pyramid?” The Great Pyramid loomed up behind them, its throbbing filling the air. Ptaclusp stared at it. “What’s going to happen tonight?” he said. “What?” “Well, is it going to - do whatever it did - again?” IIb stared at him. “Dunno.” “Can you find out?” “Only by waiting. I’m not even sure what it’s done now. “Are we going to like it?” “I shouldn’t think so, dad. Oh, dear.” “What’s up now?” “Look over there.” Heading towards the marching dead, trailing behind Koomi like a tail behind a comet, were the priests.   It was hot and dark inside the horse. It was also very crowded. They waited, sweating. Young Autocue stuttered: “What’ll happen now, sergeant?” The sergeant moved a foot tentatively. The atmosphere would have induced claustrophobia in a sardine. “Well, lad. They’ll find us, see, and be so impressed they’ll drag us all the way back to their city, and then when it’s dark we’ll leap out and put them to the sword. Or put the sword to them. One or the other. And then we’ll sack the city, bum the walls and sow the ground with salt. You remember, lad, I showed you on Friday.” “Oh.” Moisture dripped from a score of brows. Several of the men were trying to compose a letter home, dragging styli across wax that was close to melting. “And then what will happen, sergeant?” “Why, lad, then we’ll go home heroes.” “Oh.” The older soldiers sat stolidly looking at the wooden walls. Autocue shifted uneasily, still worried about something. “My mum said to come back with my shield or on it, sergeant,” he said. “Jolly good, lad. That’s the spirit.” “We will be all right, though. Won’t we, sergeant?” The sergeant stared into the fetid darkness. After a while, someone started to play the harmonica.   Ptaclusp half-turned his head from the scene and a voice by his ear said, “You’re the pyramid builder, aren’t you?” Another figure had joined them in their bolthole, one who was black-clad and moved in a way that made a cat’s tread sound like a one-man band. Ptaclusp nodded, unable to speak. He had had enough shocks for one day. “Well, switch it off. Switch it off now.” IIb leaned over. “Who’re you?” he said. “My name is Teppic.” “What, like the king?” “Yes. Just like the king. Now turn it off.” “It’s a pyramid! You can’t turn off pyramids!” said IIb. “Well, then, make it flare.” “We tried that last night.” IIb pointed to the shattered capstone. “Unroll Two-Ay, dad.” Teppic regarded the flat brother. “It’s some sort of wall poster, is it?” he said eventually. IIb looked down. Teppic saw the movement, and looked down also; he was ankle-deep in green sprouts. “Sorry,” he said. “I can’t seem to shake it off.” “It can be dreadful,” said IIb frantically. “I know how it is, I had this verruca once, nothing would shift it.” Teppic hunkered down by the cracked stone. “This thing,” he said. “What’s the significance? I mean, it’s coated with metal. Why?” “There’s got to be a sharp point for the flare,” said IIb. “Is that all? This is gold, isn’t it?” “It’s electrum. Gold and silver alloy. The capstone has got to be made of electrum.” Teppic peeled back the foil. “This isn’t all metal,” he said mildly. “Yes. Well,” said Ptaclusp. “We found, er, that foil works just as well.” “Couldn’t you use something cheaper? Like steel?” Ptaclusp sneered. It hadn’t been a good day, sanity was a distant memory, but there were certain facts he knew for a fact. “Wouldn’t last for more than a year or two,” he said. “What with the dew and so forth. You’d lose the point. Wouldn’t last more than two or three hundred times.” Teppic leaned his head against the pyramid. It was cold, and it hummed. He thought he could hear, under the throbbing, a faint rising tone. The pyramid towered over him. (IIb could have told him that this was because the walls sloped in at precisely 56 degrees, and an effect known as battering made the pyramid loom even higher than it really was. He probably would have used words like perspective and virtual height as well. The black marble was glassy smooth. The masons had done well. The cracks between each silky panel were hardly wide enough to insert a knife. But wide enough, all the same. “How about once?” he said.   Koomi chewed his fingernails distractedly. “Fire,” he said. “That’d stop them. They’re very inflammable. Or water. They’d probably dissolve.” “Some of them were destroying pyramids,” said the high priest of Juf, the Cobra-Headed God of Papyrus. “People always come back from the dead in such a bad temper,” said another priest. Koomi watched the approaching army in mounting bewilderment. “Where’s Dios?” he said. The old high priest was pushed to the front of the crowd. “What shall I say to them?” Koomi demanded. It would be wrong to say that Dios smiled. It wasn’t an action he often felt called upon to perform. But his mouth creased at the edges and his eyes went half-hooded. “You could tell them,” he said, “that new times demand new men. You could tell them that it is time to make way for younger people with fresh ideas. You could tell them that they are outmoded. You could tell them all that.” “They’ll kill me!” “Would they be that anxious for your eternal company, I wonder?” “You’re still high priest!” “Why don’t you talk to them?” said Dios. “Don’t forget to tell them that they are to be dragged kicking and screaming into the Century of the Cobra.” He handed Koomi the staff. “Or whatever this century is called,” he added. Koomi felt the eyes of the assembled brethren and sistren upon him. He cleared his throat, adjusted his robe, and turned to face the mummies. They were chanting something, one word, over and over again. He couldn’t quite make it out, but it seemed to have worked them up into a rage. He raised the staff, and the carved wooden snakes looked unusually alive in the flat light. The gods of the Disc - and here is meant the great consensus gods, who really do exist in Dunmanifestin, their semi-detached Valhalla on the world’s impossibly high central mountain, where they pass the time observing the petty antics of mortal men and organising petitions about how the influx of the Ice Giants has lowered property values in the celestial regions - the gods of Disc have always been fascinated by humanity’s incredible ability to say exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time. They’re not talking here of such easy errors as “It’s perfectly safe”, or “The ones that growl a lot don’t bite”, but of simple little sentences which are injected into difficult situations with the same general effect as a steel bar dropped into the bearings of a 3,000 rpm, 660 megawatt steam turbine. And connoisseurs of mankind’s tendency to put his pedal extremity where his tongue should be are agreed that when the judges” envelopes are opened then Hoot Koomi’s fine performance in “Begone from this place, foul shades” will be a contender for all-time bloody stupid greeting. The front row of ancestors halted, and were pushed forward a little by the press of those behind. King Teppicymon XXVII, who by common consent among the other twenty-six Teppicymons was spokesman, lurched on alone and picked up the trembling Koomi by his arms. “What did you say?” he said. Koomi’s eyes rolled. His mouth opened and shut, but his voice wisely decided not to come out. Teppicymon pushed his bandaged face close to the priest’s pointed nose. “I remember you,” he growled. “I’ve seen you oiling around the place. A bad hat, if ever I saw one. I remember thinking that.” He glared around at the others. “You’re all priests, aren’t you? Come to say sorry, have you? Where’s Dios?” The ancestors pressed forward, muttering. When you’ve been dead for hundreds of years, you’re not inclined to feel generous to those people who assured you that you were going to have a lovely time. There was a scuffle in the middle of the crowd as King Psam-nut-kha, who had spent five thousand years with nothing to look at but the inside of a lid, was restrained by younger colleagues. Teppicymon switched his attention back to Koomi, who hadn’t gone anywhere. “Foul shades, was it?” he said. “Er,” said Koomi. “Put him down.” Dios gently took the staff from Koomi’s unresisting fingers and said, “I am Dios, the high priest. Why are you here?” It was a perfectly calm and reasonable voice, with overtones of concerned but indubitable authority. It was a tone of voice the pharaohs of Djelibeybi had heard for thousands of years, a voice which had regulated the days, prescribed the rituals, cut the time into carefully-turned segments, interpreted the ways of gods to men. It was the sound of authority, which stirred antique memories among the ancestors and caused them to look embarrassed and shuffle their feet. One of the younger pharaohs lurched forward. “You bastard,” he croaked. “You laid us out and shut us away, one by one, and you went on. People thought the name was passed on but it was always you. How old are you, Dios?” There was no sound. No-one moved. A breeze stirred the dust a little. Dios sighed. “I did not mean to,” he said. “There was so much to do. There were never enough hours in the day. Truly, I did not realise what was happening. I thought it was refreshing, nothing more, I suspected nothing. I noted the passing of the rituals, not the years.” “Come from a long-lived family, do you?” said Teppicymon sarcastically. Dios stared at him, his lips moving. “Family,” he said at last, his voice softened from its normal bark. “Family. Yes. I must have had a family, mustn’t I. But, you know, I can’t remember. Memory is the first thing that goes. The pyramids don’t seem to preserve it, strangely.” “This is Dios, the footnote-keeper of history?” said Teppicymon. “Ah.” The high priest smiled. “Memory goes from the head. But it is all around me. Every scroll and book.” “That’s the history of the kingdom, man!” “Yes. My memory.” The king relaxed a little. Sheer horrified fascination was unravelling the knot of fury. “How old are you?” he said. “I think. . . seven thousand years. But sometimes it seems much longer.” “Really seven thousand years?” “Yes,” said Dios. “How could any man stand it?” said the king. Dios shrugged. “Seven thousand years is just one day at a time,” he said. Slowly, with the occasional wince, he got down on one knee and held up his staff in shaking hands. “O kings,” he said, “I have always existed only to serve.” There was a long, extremely embarrassed pause. “We will destroy the pyramids,” said Far-re-ptah, pushing forward. “You will destroy the kingdom,” said Dios. “I cannot allow it.” “You cannot allow it?” “Yes. What will we be without the pyramids?” said Dios. “Speaking for the dead,” said Far-re-ptah, “we will be free.” “But the kingdom will be just another small country,” said Dios, and to their horror the ancestors saw tears in his eyes. “All that we hold dear, you will cast adrift in time. Uncertain. Without guidance. Changeable.” “Then it can take its chances,” said Teppicymon. “Stand aside, Dios.” Dios held up his staff. The snake around it uncoiled and hissed at the king. “Be still,” said Dios. Dark lightning crackled between the ancestors. Dios stared at the staff in astonishment; it had never done this before. But seven thousand years of his priests had believed, in their hearts, that the staff of Dios could rule this world and the next. In the sudden silence there was the faint chink, high up, of a knife being wedged between two black marble slabs. The pyramid pulsed under Teppic, and the marble was as slippery as ice. The inward slope wasn’t the help he had expected. The thing, he told himself, is not to look up or down, but straight ahead, into the marble, parcelling the impossible height into manageable sections. Just like time. That’s how we survive infinity - we kill it by breaking it up into small bits. He was aware of shouts below him, and glanced briefly over his shoulder. He was barely a third of the way up, but he could see the crowds across the river, a grey mass speckled with the pale blobs of upturned faces. Closer to, the pale army of the dead, facing the small grey group of priests, with Dios in front of them. There was some sort of argument going on. The sun was on the horizon. He reached up, located the next crack, found a handhold. Dios spotted Ptaclusp’s head peering over the debris, and sent a couple of priests to bring him back. IIb followed, his carefully folded brother under his arm. “What is the boy doing?” Dios demanded. “O Dios, he said he was going to flare off the pyramid,” said Ptaclusp. “How can he do that?” “O lord, he says he is going to cap it off before the sun sets.” “Is it possible?” Dios demanded, turning to the architect. IIb hesitated. “It may be,” he said. “And what will happen? Will we return to the world outside?” “Well, it depends on whether the dimensional effect ratchets, as it were, and is stable in each state, or if, on the contrary, the pyramid is acting as a piece of rubber under tension-” His voice stuttered to a halt under the intensity of Dios’s stare. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Back to the world outside,” said Dios. “Not our world. Our world is the Valley. Ours is a world of order. Men need order.” He raised his staff. “That’s my son!” shouted Teppicymon. “Don’t you dare try anything! That’s the king!” The ranks of ancestors swayed, but couldn’t break the spell. “Er, Dios,” said Koomi. Dios turned, his eyebrows raised. “You spoke?” he said. “Er, if it is the king, er I - that is, we - think perhaps you should let him get on with it. Er, don’t you think that would be a really good idea?” Dios’s staff kicked, and the priests felt the cold bands of restraint freeze their limbs. “I gave my life for the kingdom,” said the high priest. “I gave it over and over again. Everything it is, I created. I cannot fail it now.” And then he saw the gods. Teppic eased himself up another couple of feet and then gently reached down to pull a knife out of the marble. It wasn’t going to work, though. Knife climbing was for those short and awkward passages, and frowned on anyway because it suggested you’d chosen a wrong route. It wasn’t for this sort of thing, unless you had unlimited knives. He glanced over his shoulder again as strange barred shadows flickered across the face of the pyramid. From out of the sunset, where they had been engaged in their eternal squabbling, the gods were returning. They staggered and lurched across the fields and reed beds, heading for the pyramid. Near-brainless though they were, they understood what it was. Perhaps they even understood what Teppic was trying to do. Their assorted animal faces made it hard to be certain, but it looked as though they were very angry. “Are you going to control them, Dios?” said the king. “Are you going to tell them that the world should be changeless?” Dios stared up at the creatures jostling one another as they waded the river. There were too many teeth, too many lolling tongues. The bits of them that were human were sloughing away. A lion-headed god of justice - Put, Dios recalled the name - was using its scales as a flail to beat one of the river gods. Chefet, the Dog-Headed God of metalwork, was growling and attacking his fellows at random with his hammer; this was Chefet, Dios thought, the god that he had created to be an example to men in the art of wire and filigree and small beauty. Yet it had worked. He’d taken a desert rabble and shown them all he could remember of the arts of civilisation and the secrets of the pyramids. He’d needed gods then. The trouble with gods is that after enough people start believing in them, they begin to exist. And what begins to exist isn’t what was originally intended. Chefet, Chefet, thought Dios. Maker of rings, weaver of metal. Now he’s out of our heads, and see how his nails grow into claws . . . This is not how I imagined him. “Stop,” he instructed. “I order you to stop! You will obey me. I made you!” They also lack gratitude. King Teppicymon felt the power around him weaken as Dios turned all his attention to ecclesiastical matters. He saw the tiny shape halfway up the wall of the pyramid, saw it falter. The rest of the ancestors saw it, too, and as one corpse they knew what to do. Dios could wait. This was family. Teppic heard the snap of the handle under his foot, slid a little, and hung by one hand. He’d got another knife in above him but . . . no, no good. He hadn’t got the reach. For practical purposes his arms felt like short lengths of wet rope. Now, if he spreadeagled himself as he slid, he might be able to slow enough . He looked down and saw the climbers coming towards him, in a tide that was tumbling upwards. The ancestors rose up the face of the pyramid silently, like creepers, each new row settling into position on the shoulders of the generation beneath, while the younger ones climbed on over them. Bony hands grabbed Teppic as the wave of edificeers broke around him, and he was half-pushed, half-pulled up the sloping wall. Voices like the creak of sarcophagi filled his ears, moaning encouragement. “Well done, boy,” groaned a crumbling mummy, hauling him bodily on to its shoulder. “You remind me of me when I was alive. To you, son.” “Got him,” said the corpse above, lifting Teppic easily on one outstretched arm. “That’s a fine family spirit, lad. Best wishes from your great-great-great-great uncle, although I don’t suppose you remember me. Coming up. Other ancestors were climbing on past Teppic as he rose from hand to hand. Ancient fingers with a grip like steel clutched at him, hoisting him onwards. The pyramid grew narrower. Down below, Ptaclusp watched thoughtfully. “What a workforce,” he said. “I mean, the ones at the bottom are supporting the whole weight!” “Dad,” said IIb. “I think we’d better run. Those gods are getting closer.” “Do you think we could employ them?” said Ptaclusp, ignoring him. “They’re dead, they probably won’t want high wages, and-” “Dad!” “Sort of self-build-” “You said no more pyramids, dad. Never again, you said. Now come on!” Teppic scrambled to the top of the pyramid, supported by the last two ancestors. One of them was his father. “I don’t think you’ve met your great-grandma,” he said, indicating the shorter bandaged figure, who nodded gently at Teppic. He opened his mouth. “There’s no time,” she said. “You’re doing fine.” He glanced at the sun which, old professional that it was, chose that moment to drop below the horizon. The gods had crossed the river, their progress slowed only by their tendency to push and shove among themselves, and were lurching through the buildings of the necropolis. Several were clustered around the spot where Dios had been. The ancestors dropped away, sliding back down the pyramid as fast as they had climbed it, leaving Teppic alone on a few square feet of rock. A couple of stars came out. He saw white shapes below as the ancestors hurried away on some private errand of their own, lurching at a surprising speed towards the broad band of the river. The gods abandoned their interest in Dios, this strange little human with the stick and the cracked voice. The nearest god, a crocodile-headed thing, jerked on to the plaza before the pyramid, squinted up at Teppic, and reached out towards him. Teppic fumbled for a knife, wondering what sort was appropriate for gods . And, along the Djel, the pyramids began to flare their meagre store of hoarded time. Priests and ancestors fled as the ground began to shake. Even the gods looked bewildered. IIb snatched his father’s arm and dragged him away. “Come on!” he yelled into his ear. “We can’t be around here when it goes off! Otherwise you’ll be put to bed on a coathanger!” Around them several other pyramids struck their flares, thin and reedy affairs that were barely visible in the afterglow. “Dad! I said we’ve got to go!” Ptaclusp was dragged backwards across the flagstones, still staring at the hulking outline of the Great Pyramid. “There’s someone still there, look,” he said, and pointed to a figure alone on the plaza. IIb peered into the gloom. “It’s only Dios, the high priest,” he said. “I expect he’s got some plan in mind, best not to meddle in the affairs of priests, now will you come on.” The crocodile-headed god turned its snout back and forth, trying to focus on Teppic without the advantage of binocular vision. This close, its body was slightly transparent, as though someone had sketched in all the lines and got bored before it was time to do the shading. It trod on a small tomb, crushing it to powder. A hand like a cluster of canoes with claws on hovered over Teppic. The pyramid trembled and the stone under his feet felt warm, but it resolutely forbore from any signs of wanting to flare. The hand descended. Teppic sank on one knee and, out of desperation, raised the knife over his head in both hands. The light glinted for a moment off the tip of the blade and then the Great Pyramid flared. It did it in absolute silence to begin with, sending up a spire of eye-torturing flame that turned the whole kingdom into a criss-cross of black shadow and white light, a flame that might have turned any watchers not just into a pillar of salt but into a complete condiment set of their choice. It exploded like an unwound dandelion, silent as starlight, searing as a supernova. Only after it had been bathing the necropolis in its impossible brilliance for several seconds did the sound come, and it was sound that winds itself up through the bones, creeps into every cell of the body, and tries with some success to turn them inside out. It was too loud to be called noise. There is sound so loud that it prevents itself from being heard, and this was that kind of sound. Eventually it condescended to drop out of the cosmic scale and became, simply, the loudest noise anyone hearing it had ever experienced. The noise stopped, filling the air with the dark metallic clang of sudden silence. The light went out, lancing the night with blue and purple afterimages. It was not the silence and darkness of conclusion but of pause, like the moment of equilibrium when a thrown ball runs out of acceleration but has yet to have gravity drawn to its attention and, for a brief moment, thinks that the worst is over. This time it was heralded by a shrill whistling out of the clear sky and a swirl in the air that became a glow, became a flame, became a flare that sizzled downwards into the pyramid, punching into the mass of black marble. Fingers of lightning crackled out and grounded on the lesser tombs around it, so that serpents of white fire burned their way from pyramid to pyramid across the necropolis and the air filled with the stink of burning stone. In the middle of the firestorm the Great Pyramid appeared to lift up a few inches, on a beam of incandescence, and turn through ninety degrees. This was almost certainly the special type of optical illusion which can take place even though noone is actually looking at it. And then, with deceptive slowness and considerable dignity, it exploded. It was almost too crass a word. What it did was this: it came apart ponderously into building-sized chunks which drifted gently away from one another, flying serenely out and over the necropolis. Several of them struck other pyramids, badly damaging them in a lazy, unselfconscious way, and then bounded on in silence until they ploughed to a halt behind a small mountain of rubble. Only then did the boom come. It went on for quite along time. Grey dust rolled over the kingdom. Ptaclusp dragged himself upright and groped ahead, gingerly, until he walked into someone. He shuddered when he thought about the kind of people he’d seen walking around lately, but thought didn’t come easily because something appeared to have hit him on the head recently . “Is that you, lad?” he ventured. “Is that you, dad?” “Yes,” said Ptaclusp. “It’s me, dad.” “I’m glad it’s you, son.” “Can you see anything?” “No. It’s all mist and fog.” “Thank the gods for that, I thought it was me.” “It is you, isn’t it? You said.” “Yes, dad.” “Is your brother all right?” “I’ve got him safe in my pocket, dad.” “Good. So long as nothing’s happened to him.” They inched forward, clambering over lumps of masonry they could barely see. “Something exploded, dad,” said IIb, slowly. “I think it was the pyramid.” Ptaclusp rubbed the top of his head, where two tons of flying rock had come within a sixteenth of an inch of fitting him for one of his own pyramids. “It was that dodgy cement we bought from Merco the Ephebian, I expect-” “I think this was a bit worse than a moody lintel, dad,” said IIb. “In fact, I think it was a lot worse.” “It looked a bit wossname, a bit on the sandy side-” “I think you should find somewhere to sit down, dad,” said IIb, as kindly as possible. “Here’s Two-Ay. Hang on to him.” He crept on alone, climbing over a slab of what felt very suspiciously like black marble. What he wanted, he decided, was a priest. They had to be useful for something, and this seemed the sort of time one might need one. For solace, or possibly, he felt obscurely, to beat their head in with a rock. What he found instead was someone on their hands and knees, coughing. IIb helped him - it was definitely a him, he’d been briefly afraid it might be an it - and sat him on another lump of, yes, almost certainly marble. “Are you a priest?” he said, fumbling in the rubble. “I’m Dil. Chief embalmer,” the figure muttered. “Ptaclusp IIb, paracosmic archi-” IIb began and then, suspecting that architects were not going to be too popular around here for a while, quickly corrected himself. “I’m an engineer,” he said. “Are you all right?” “Don’t know. What happened?” “I think the pyramid exploded,” IIb volunteered. “Are we dead?” “I shouldn’t think so. You’re walking and talking, after all.” Dil shivered. “That’s no guideline, take it from me. What’s an engineer?” “Oh, a builder of aqueducts,” said IIb quickly. “They’re the coming thing, you know.” Dil stood up, a little shakily. “I,” he said, “need a drink. Let’s find the river.” They found Teppic first. He was clinging to a small, truncated pyramid section that had made a moderate-sized crater when it landed. “I know him,” said IIb. “He’s the lad who was on top of the pyramid. That’s ridiculous, how could he survive that?” “Why’s there all corn sprouting out of it, too?” wondered Dil. “I mean, perhaps there’s some kind of effect if you’re right in the centre of the flare, or something,” said IIb, thinking aloud. “A sort of calm area or something, like in the middle of a whirlpool-” He reached instinctively for his wax tablet, and then stopped himself. Man was never intended to understand things he meddled with. “Is he dead?” he said. “Don’t look at me,” said Dil, stepping back. He’d been running through his mind the alternative occupations now open to him. Upholstery sounded attractive. At least chairs didn’t get up and walk after you’d stuffed them. IIb bent over the body. “Look what he’s got in his hand,” he said, gently bending back the fingers. “It’s a piece of melted metal. What’s he got that for?” Teppic dreamed. He saw seven fat cows and seven thin cows, and one of them was riding a bicycle. He saw some camels, singing, and the song straightened out the wrinkles in reality. He saw a finger Write on the wall of a pyramid: Going forth is easy. Going back requires (cont. on next wall) . . . He walked around the pyramid, where the finger continued: An effort of will, because it is much harder. Thank you. Teppic considered this, and it occurred to him that there was one thing left to do which he had not done. He’d never known how to before, but now he could see that it was just numbers, arranged in a special way. Everything that was magical was just a way of describing the world in words it couldn’t ignore. He gave a grunt of effort. There was a brief moment of speed. Dil and IIb looked around as long shafts of light sparkled through the mists and dust, turning the landscape into old gold. And the sun came up. The sergeant cautiously opened the hatch in the horse’s belly. When the expected flurry of spears did not materialise he ordered Autocue to let out the rope ladder, climbed down it, and looked across the chill morning desert. The new recruit followed him down and stood, hopping from one sandal to another, on sand that was nearly freezing now and would be frying by lunchtime. “There,” said the sergeant, pointing, “see the Tsortean lines, lad?” “Looks like a row of wooden horses to me, sergeant,” said Autocue. “The one on the end’s on rockers.” “That’ll be the officers. Huh. Those Tsorteans must think we’re simple.” The sergeant stamped some life into his legs, took a few breaths of fresh air, and walked back to the ladder. “Come on, lad,” he said. “Why’ve we got to go back up there?” The sergeant paused, his foot on a rope rung. “Use some common, laddie. They’re not going to come and take our horses if they see us hanging around outside, are they? Stands to reason.” “You sure they’re going to come, then?” said Autocue. The sergeant frowned at him. “Look, soldier,” he said, “anyone bloody stupid enough to think we’re going to drag a lot of horses full of soldiers back to our city is certainly daft enough to drag ours all the way back to theirs. QED.” “QED, sarge?” “It means get back up the bloody ladder, lad.” Autocue saluted. “Permission to be excused first, sarge?” “Excused what?” “Excused, sarge,” said Autocue, a shade desperately. “I mean, it’s a bit cramped in the horse, sarge, if you know what I mean.” “You’re going to have to learn a bit of will power if you want to stay in the horse soldiers, boy. You know that?” “Yes, sarge,” said Autocue miserably. “You’ve got one minute.” “Thanks, sarge.” When the hatch closed above him Autocue sidled over to one of the horse’s massive legs and put it to a use for which it wasn’t originally intended. And it was while he was staring vaguely ahead, lost in that Zen-like contemplation which occurs at moments like this, that there was a faint pop in the air and an entire river valley opened up in front of him. It’s not the sort of thing that ought to happen to a thoughtful lad. Especially one who has to wash his own uniform. A breeze from the sea blew into the kingdom, hinting at, no, positively roaring suggestions of salt, shellfish and sun-soaked tidelines. A few rather puzzled seabirds wheeled over the necropolis, where the wind scurried among the fallen masonry and covered with sand the memorials to ancient kings, and the birds said more with a simple bowel movement than Ozymandias ever managed to say. The wind had a cool, not unpleasant edge to it. The people out repairing the damage caused by the gods felt an urge to turn their faces towards it, as fish in a pond turn towards an influx of clear, fresh water. No-one worked in the necropolis. Most of the pyramids had blown their upper levels clean off, and stood smoking gently like recently-extinct volcanoes. Here and there slabs of black marble littered the landscape. One of them had nearly decapitated a fine statue of Hat, the Vulture-Headed God. The ancestors had vanished. No-one was volunteering to go and look for them. Around midday a ship came up the Djel under full sail. It was a deceptive ship. It seemed to wallow like a fat and unprotected hippo, and it was only after watching it for some time that anyone would realise that it was also making remarkably fast progress. It dropped anchor outside the palace. After a while, it let down a dinghy. Teppic sat on the throne and watched the life of the kingdom reassemble itself, like a smashed mirror that is put together again and reflects the same old light in new and unexpected ways. No-one was quite sure on what basis he was on the throne, but no-one else was at all keen on occupying it and it was a relief to hear instructions issued in a clear, confident voice. It is amazing what people will obey, if a clear and confident voice is used, and the kingdom was well used to a clear, confident voice. Besides, giving orders stopped him thinking about things. Like, for example, what would happen next. But at least the gods had gone back to not existing again, which made it a whole lot easier to believe in them, and the grass didn’t seem to be growing under his feet any more. Maybe I can put the kingdom together again, he thought. But then what can I do with it? If only we could find Dios. He always knew what to do, that was the main thing about him. A guard pushed his way through the milling throng of priests and nobles. “Excuse me, your sire,” he said. “There’s a merchant to see you. He says it’s urgent.” “Not now, man. There’s representatives of the Tsortean and Ephebian armies coming to see me in an hour, and there’s a great deal that’s got to be done first. I can’t go around seeing any salesmen who happen to be passing. What’s he selling, anyway?” “Carpets, your sire.” “Carpets?” It was Chidder, grinning like half a watermelon, followed by several of the crew. He walked up the hall staring around at the frescoes and hangings. Because it was Chidder, he was probably costing them out. By the time he reached the throne he was drawing a double line under the total. “Nice place,” he said, wrapping up thousands of years of architectural accumulation in a mere two syllables. “You’ll never guess what happened, we just happened to be sailing along the coast and suddenly there was this river. One minute cliffs, next minute river. There’s a funny thing, I thought. I bet old Teppic’s up there somewhere.” “Where’s Ptraci?” “I knew you were complaining about the lack of the old home comforts, so we brought you this carpet.” “I said, where’s Ptraci?” The crew moved aside, leaving a grinning Alfonz to cut the strings around the carpet and shake it out. It uncurled swiftly across the floor in a flurry of dust balls and moths and, eventually, Ptraci, who continued rolling until her head hit Teppic’s boot. He helped her to her feet and tried to pick bits of fluff out of her hair as she swayed backwards and forwards. She ignored him and turned to Chidder, red with breathlessness and fury. “I could have died in there!” she shouted. “Lots of other things have, by the smell! And the heat!” “You said it worked for Queen wossname, Ram-Jam-Hurrah, or whoever,” said Chidder. “Don’t blame me, at home a necklace or something is usually the thing.” “I bet she had a decent carpet,” snapped Ptraci. “Not something stuck in a bloody hold for six months.” “You’re lucky we had one at all,” said Chidder mildly. “It was your idea.” “Huh,” said Ptraci. She turned to Teppic. “Hallo,” she said. “This was meant to be a startling original surprise.” “It worked,” said Teppic fervently. “It really worked.” Chidder lay on a daybed on the palace’s veranda, while three handmaidens took turns to peel grapes for him. A pitcher of beer stood cooling in the shade. He was grinning amiably. On a blanket nearby Alfonz lay on his stomach, feeling extremely awkward. The Mistress of the Women had found out that, in addition to the tattoos on his forearms, his back was a veritable illustrated history of exotic practices, and had brought the girls out to be educated. He winced occasionally as her pointer stabbed at items of particular interest, and stuffed his fingers firmly in his great, scarred ears to shut out the giggles. At the far end of the veranda, given privacy by unspoken agreement, Teppic sat with Ptraci. Things were not going well. “Everything changed,” he said. “I’m not going to be king.” “You are the king,” she said. “You can’t change things.” “I can. I can abdicate. It’s very simple. If I’m not really the king, then I can go whenever I please. If I am the king, then the king’s word is final and I can abdicate. If we can change sex by decree, we can certainly change station. They can find a relative to do the job. I must have dozens.” “The job? Anyway, you said there was only your auntie.” Teppic frowned. Aunt Cleph-ptah-re was not, on reflection, the kind of monarch a kingdom needed if it was going to make a fresh start. She had a number of stoutly-held views on a variety of subjects, but most of them involved the flaying alive of people she disapproved of. This meant most people under the age of thirty-five, to start with. “Well, someone else, then,” he said. “It shouldn’t be difficult, we’ve always seemed to have more nobles than really necessary. We’ll just have to find one who has the dream about the cows.” “Oh, the one where there’s fat cows and thin cows?” said Ptraci. “Yes. It’s sort of ancestral.” “It’s a nuisance, I know that much. One of them’s always grinning and playing a wimblehorn.” “It looks like a trombone to me,” said Teppic. “It’s a ceremonial wimblehorn, if you look closely,” she said. “Well, I expect everyone sees it a bit differently. I don’t think it matters.” He sighed, and watched the Unnamed unloading. It seemed to have more than the expected number of feather mattresses, and several of the people wandering bemusedly down the gangplank were holding toolboxes and lengths of pipe. “I think you’re going to find it difficult,” said Ptraci. “You can’t say “All those who dream about cows please step forward”. It’d give the game away.” “I can’t just hang around until someone happens to mention it, can I? Be reasonable,” he snapped. “How many people are likely to say, hey, I had this funny dream about cows last night? Apart from you, I mean.” They stared at one another. “And she’s my sister?” said Teppic. The priests nodded. It was left to Koomi to put it into words. He’d just spent ten minutes going through the files with the Mistress of the Women. “Her mother was, er, your late father’s favourite,” he said. “He took a great deal of interest in her upbringing, as you know, and, er, it would appear that . . . yes. She may be your aunt, of course. The concubines are never very good at paperwork. But most likely your sister.” She looked at him with tear-filled eyes. “That doesn’t make any difference, does it?” she whispered. Teppic stared at his feet. “Yes,” he said. “I think it does, really.” He looked up at her. “But you can be queen,” he added. He glared at the priests. “Can’t she,” he stated firmly. The high priests looked at one another. Then they looked at Ptraci, who stood alone, her shoulders shaking. Small, palace trained, used to taking orders . . . They looked at Koomi. “She would be ideal,” he said. There was a murmur of suddenly-confident agreement. “There you are then,” said Teppic, consolingly. She glared at him. He backed away. “So I’ll be off,” he said, “I don’t need to pack anything, it’s all right.” “Just like that?” she said. “Is that all? Isn’t there anything you’re going to say?” He hesitated, halfway to the door. You could stay, he told himself. It wouldn’t work, though. It’d end up a terrible mess; you’d probably end up splitting the kingdom between you. Just because fate throws you together doesn’t mean fate’s got it right. Anyway, you’ve been forth. “Camels are more important than pyramids,” he said slowly. “It’s something we should always remember.” He ran for it while she was looking for something to throw. The sun reached the peak of noon without beetles, and Koomi hovered by the throne like Hat, the Vulture-Headed God. “It will please your majesty to confirm my succession as high priest,” he said. “What?” Ptraci was sitting with her chin cupped in one hand. She waved the other hand at him. “Oh. Yes. All right. Fine.” “No trace has, alas, been found of Dios. We believe he was very close to the Great Pyramid when it . . . flared.” Ptraci stared into space. “You carry on,” she said. Koomi preened. “The formal coronation will take some time to arrange,” he said, taking the golden mask. “However, your graciousness will be pleased to wear the mask of authority now, for there is much formal business to be concluded.” She looked at the mask. “I’m not wearing that,” she said flatly. Koomi smiled. “Your majesty will be pleased to wear the mask of authority,” he said. “No,” said Ptraci. Koomi’s smile crazed a little around the edges as he attempted to get to grips with this new concept. He was sure Dios had never had this trouble. He got over the problem by sidling round it. Sidling had stood him in good stead all his life; he wasn’t going to desert it now. He put the mask down very carefully on a stool. “It is the First Hour,” he said. “Your majesty will wish to conduct the Ritual of the Ibis, and then graciously grant an audience to the military commanders of the Tsortean and Ephebian armies. Both are seeking permission to cross the kingdom. Your majesty will forbid this. At the Second Hour, there will-” Ptraci sat drumming her fingers on the arms of the throne. Then she took a deep breath. “I’m going to have a bath,” she said. Koomi rocked back and forth a bit. “It is the First Hour,” he repeated, unable to think of anything else. “Your majesty will wish to conduct-” “Koomi?” “Yes, O noble queen?” “Shut up.” “The Ritual of the Ibis-” Koomi moaned. “I’m sure you’re capable of doing it yourself. You look like a man who does things himself, if ever I saw one,” she added sourly. “The commanders of the Tsortean-” “Tell them,” Ptraci began, and then paused. “Tell them,” she repeated, “that they may both cross. Not one or the other, you understand? Both.” “But-” Koomi ‘s understanding managed at last to catch up with his ears - “that means they’ll end up on opposite sides.” “Good. And after that you can order some camels. There’s a merchant in Ephebe with a good stock. Check their teeth first. Oh, and then you can ask the captain of the Unnamed to come and see me. He was explaining to me what a “free port” is.” “In your bath, O queen?” said Koomi weakly. He couldn’t help noticing, now, how her voice was changing with each sentence as the veneer of upbringing burned away under the blowlamp of heredity. “Nothing wrong with that,” she snapped. “And see about plumbing. Apparently pipes are the thing.” “For the asses’ milk?” said Koomi, who was now totally lost in the desert*. (* A less desiccated culture would have used the phrase “at sea”.) “Shut up, Koomi.” “Yes, O queen,” said Koomi, miserably. He’d wanted changes. It was just that he’d wanted things to stay the same, as well.   The sun dropped to the horizon, entirely unaided. For some people, it was turning out to be quite a good day. The reddened light lit up the three male members of the Ptaclusp dynasty, as they pored over plans for- “It’s called a bridge,” said IIb. “Is that like an aqueduct?” said Ptaclusp. “In reverse, sort of thing,” said IIb. “The water goes underneath, we go over the top.” “Oh. The k- the queen won’t like that,” said Ptaclusp. “The royal family’s always been against chaining the holy river with dams and weirs and suchlike.” IIb gave a triumphant grin. “She suggested it,” he said. “And she graciously went on to say, could we see to it there’s places for people to stand and drop rocks on the crocodiles.” “She said that?” “Large pointy rocks, she said.” “My word,” said Ptaclusp. He turned to his other son. “You sure you’re all right?” he said. “Feeling fine, dad,” said IIa. “No-” Ptaclusp groped “headaches or anything?” “Never felt better,” said IIa. “Only you haven’t asked about the cost,” said Ptaclusp. “I thought perhaps you were still feeling fl- ill.” “The queen has been pleased to ask me to have a look at the royal finances,” said IIa. “She said priests can’t add up.” His recent experiences had left him with no ill effects other than a profitable tendency to think at right angles to everyone else, and he sat wreathed in smiles while his mind constructed tariff rates, docking fees and a complex system of value added tax which would shortly give the merchant venturers of Ankh-Morpork a nasty shock. Ptaclusp thought about all the miles of the virgin Djel, totally unbridged. And there was plenty of dressed stone around now, millions of tons of the stuff. And you never knew, perhaps on some of those bridges there’d be room for a statue or two. He had the very thing. He put his arms around his sons’ shoulders. “Lads,” he said proudly. “It’s looking really quantum.” The setting sun also shone on Dil and Gern, although in this case it was by a roundabout route through the lightwell of the palace kitchens. They’d ended up there for no very obvious reason. It was just that it was so depressing in the embalming room, all alone. The kitchen staff worked around them, recognising the air of impenetrable gloom that surrounded the two embalmers. It was never a very sociable job at the best of times and embalmers didn’t make friends easily. Anyway, there was a coronation feast to prepare. They sat amid the bustle, observing the future over a jug of beer. “I expect,” said Gern, “that Gwlenda can have a word with her dad.” “That’s it, boy,” said Dil wearily. “There’s a future there. People will always want garlic.” “Bloody boring stuff, garlic,” said Gern, with unusual ferocity. “And you don’t get to meet people. That’s what I liked about our job. Always new faces.” “No more pyramids,” said Dil, without rancour. “That’s what she said. You’ve done a good job, Master Dil, she said, but I’m going to drag this country kicking and screaming into the Century of the Fruitbat.” “Cobra,” said Gern. “What?” “It’s the Century of the Cobra. Not the Fruitbat.” “Whatever,” said Dil irritably. He stared miserably into his mug. That was the trouble now, he reflected. You had to start remembering what century it was. He glared at a tray of canapes. That was the thing these days. Everyone fiddling about. He picked up an olive and turned it over and over in his fingers. “Can’t say I’d feel the same about the old job, mind,” said Gern, draining the jug, “but I bet you were proud, master - Dil, I mean. You know, when all your stitching held up like that.” Dil, his eyes not leaving the olive, reached dreamily down to his belt and grasped one of his smaller knives for intricate jobs. “I said, you must have felt very sorry it was all over,” said Gern. Dil swivelled around to get more light, and breathed heavily as he concentrated. “Still, you’ll get over it,” said Gern. “The important thing is not to let it prey on your mind-” “Put this stone somewhere,” said Dil. “Sorry?” “Put this stone somewhere,” said Dil. Gern shrugged, and took it out of his fingers. “Right,” said Dil, his voice suddenly vibrant with purpose. “Now pass me a piece of red pepper.”   And the sun shone on the delta, that little infinity of reed beds and mud banks where the Djel was laying down the silt of the continent. Wading birds bobbed for food in the green maze of stems, and billions of zig-zag midges danced over the brackish water. Here at least time had always passed, as the delta breathed twice daily the cold, fresh water of the tide. It was coming in now, the foam-crested cusp of it trickling between the reeds. Here and there soaked and ancient bandages unwound, wriggled for a while like incredibly old snakes and then, with the mininum of fuss, dissolved. THIS IS MOST IRREGULAR. We‘re sorry. It’s not our fault. HOW MANY OF YOU ARE THERE? More than 1,300, I’m afraid. VERY WELL, THEN. PLEASE FORM AN ORDERLY QUEUE.   You Bastard was regarding his empty hay rack. It represented a sub-array in the general cluster “hay”, containing arbitrary values between zero and K. It didn’t have any hay in it. It might in fact have a negative value of hay in it, but to the hungry stomach the difference between no hay and minus-hay was not of particular interest. It didn’t matter how he worked it out, the answer was always the same. It was an equation of classical simplicity. It had a certain clean elegance which he was not, currently, in a position to admire. You Bastard felt ill-used and hard done by. There was nothing particularly unusual about this, however, since that is the normal state of mind for a camel. He knelt patiently while Teppic packed the saddlebags. “We’ll avoid Ephebe,” Teppic said, ostensibly to the camel. “We’ll go up the end of the Circle Sea, perhaps to Quirm or over the Ramtops. There’s all sorts of places. Maybe we’ll even look for a few of those cities, eh? I expect you’d like that.” It’s a mistake trying to cheer up camels. You may as well drop meringues into a black hole. The door at the far end of the stable swung open. It was a priest. He looked rather flustered. The priests had been doing a lot of unaccustomed running around today. “Er,” he began. “Her majesty commands you not to leave the kingdom.” He coughed. He said, “Is there a reply?” Teppic considered. “No,” he said, “I don’t think so.” “So I shall tell her that you will be attending on her presently, shall I?” said the priest hopefully. “No.” “It’s all very well for you to say,” said the priest sourly, and slunk off. He was replaced a few minutes later by Koomi, very red in the face. “Her majesty requests that you do not leave the kingdom,” he said. Teppic climbed on to You Bastard’s back, and tapped the camel lightly, with a prod. “She really means it,” said Koomi. “I’m sure she does.” “She could have you thrown to the sacred crocodiles, you know.” “I haven’t seen many of them around today. How are they?” said Teppic, and gave the camel another thump. He rode out into the knife-edged daylight and along the packed-earth streets, which time had turned into a surface harder than stone. They were thronged with people. And every single person ignored him. It was a marvellous feeling. He rode gently along the road to the border and did not stop until he was up in the escarpment, the valley spreading out behind him. A hot wind off the desert rattled the syphacia bushes as he tethered You Bastard in the shade, climbed a little further up the rocks, and looked back. The valley was old, so old that you could believe it had existed first and had watched the rest of the world form around it. Teppic lay with his head on his arms. Of course, it had made itself old. It had been gently stripping itself of futures for thousands of years. Now change was hitting it like the ground hitting an egg. Dimensions were probably more complicated than people thought. Probably so was time. Probably so were people, although people could be more predictable. He watched the column of dust rise outside the palace and work its way through the city, across the narrow patchwork of fields, disappear for a minute in a group of palm trees near the escarpment, and reappear at the foot of the slope. Long before he could see it he knew there’d be a chariot somewhere in the cloud of sand. He slid back down the rocks and squatted patiently by the roadside. The chariot rattled by eventually, halted some way on, turned awkwardly in the narrow space, and trundled back. “What will you do?” shouted Ptraci, leaning over the rail. Teppic bowed. “And none of that,” she snapped. “Don’t you like being king?” She hesitated. “Yes,” she said. “I do-” “Of course you do,” said Teppic. “It’s in the blood. In the old days people would fight like tigers. Brothers against sisters, cousins against uncles. Dreadful.” “But you don’t have to go! I need you!” “You’ve got advisers,” said Teppic mildly. “I didn’t mean that,” she snapped. “Anyway, there’s only Koomi, and he’s no good.” “You’re lucky. I had Dios, and he was good. Koomi will be much better, you can learn a lot by not listening to what he has to say. You can go a long way with incompetent advisers. Besides, Chidder will help, I’m sure. He’s full of ideas.” She coloured. “He advanced a few when we were on the ship.” “There you are, then. I knew the two of you would get along like a house on fire.” Screams, flames, people running for safety. “And you’re going back to be an Assassin, are you?” she sneered. “I don’t think so. I’ve inhumed a pyramid, a pantheon and the entire old kingdom. It may be worth trying something else. By the way, you haven’t been finding little green shoots springing up wherever you walk, have you?” “No. What a stupid idea.” Teppic relaxed. It really was all over, then. “Don’t let the grass grow under your feet, that’s the important thing,” he said. “And you haven’t seen any seagulls around?” “There’s lots of them today, or didn’t you notice?” “Yes. That’s good, I think.” You Bastard watched them talk a little more, that peculiar trailing-off, desultory kind of conversation that two people of opposite sexes engage in when they have something else on their minds. It was much easier with camels, when the female merely had to check the male’s methodology. Then they kissed in a fairly chaste fashion, insofar as camels are any judge. A decision was reached. You Bastard lost interest at this point, and decided to eat his lunch again.   IN THE BEGINNING. . . It was peaceful in the valley. The river, its banks as yet untamed, wandered languidly through thickets of rush and papyrus. Ibises waded in the shallows; in the deeps, hippos rose and sank slowly, like pickled eggs. The only sound in the damp silence was the occasional plop of a fish or hiss of a crocodile. Dios lay in the mud for some time. He wasn’t sure how he’d got there, or why half his robes were torn off and the other half scorched black. He dimly recalled a loud noise and a sensation of extreme speed while, at the same time, he’d been standing still. Right at this moment, he didn’t want any answers. Answers implied questions, and questions never got anyone anywhere. Questions only spoiled things. The mud was cool and soothing, and he didn’t need to know anything else for a while. The sun went down. Various nocturnal prowlers wandered near to Dios, and by some animal instinct decided that he certainly wasn’t going to be worth all the trouble that would accrue from biting his leg off. The sun rose again. Herons honked. Mist unspooled between the pools, was burned up as the sky turned from blue to new bronze. And time unrolled in glorious uneventfulness for Dios until an alien noise took the silence and did the equivalent of cutting it into small pieces with a rusty breadknife. It was a noise, in fact, like a donkey being chainsawed. As sounds went, it was to melody what a boxful of dates is to high-performance motocross. Nevertheless, as other voices joined it, similar but different, in a variety of fractured keys and broken tones, the overall effect was curiously attractive. It had lure. It had pull. It had a strange suction. The noise reached a plateau, one pure note made of a succession of discordances, and then, for just the fraction of a second, the voices split away, each along a vector . There was a stirring of the air, a flickering of the sun. And a dozen camels appeared over the distant hills, skinny and dusty, running towards the water. Birds erupted from the reeds. Leftover saurians slid smoothly off the sandbanks. Within a minute the shore was a mass of churned mud as the knobbly-kneed creatures jostled, nose deep in the water. Dios sat up, and saw his staff lying in the mud. It was a little scorched, but still intact, and he noticed what somehow had never been apparent before. Before? Had there been a before? There had certainly been a dream, something like a dream. Each snake had its tail in its mouth. Down the slope after the camels, his ragged family trailing behind him, was a small brown figure waving a camel prod. He looked hot and very bewildered. He looked, in fact, like someone in need of good advice and careful guidance. Dios’s eyes turned back to the staff. It meant something very important, he knew. He couldn’t remember what, though. All he could remember was that it was very heavy, yet at the same time hard to put down. Very hard to put down. Better not to pick it up, he thought. Perhaps just pick it up for a while, and go and explain about gods and why pyramids were so important. And then he could put it down afterwards, certainly. Sighing, pulling the remnants of his robes around him to give himself dignity, using the staff to steady himself, Dios went forth.     THE END 
Pyramids - Terry Pratchett	----	Pyramids   TERRY PRATCHETT - PYRAMIDS (A Discworld Novel) [ISBN 0-552-13461-9]   BOOK I The Book of Going Forth Nothing but stars, scattered across the blackness as though the Creator had smashed the windscreen of his car and hadn’t bothered to stop to sweep up the pieces. This is the gulf between universes, the chill deeps of space that contain nothing but the occasional random molecule, a few lost comets and . . . . . . but a circle of blackness shifts slightly, the eye reconsiders perspective, and what was apparently the awesome distance of interstellar wossname becomes a world under darkness, its stars the lights of what will charitably be called civilisation. For, as the world tumbles lazily, it is revealed as the Discworld - flat, circular, and carried through space on the back of four elephants who stand on the back of Great A”tuin, the only turtle ever to feature on the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram, a turtle ten thousand miles long, dusted with the frost of dead comets, meteor-pocked, albedo-eyed. No-one knows the reason for all this, but it is probably quantum. Much that is weird could happen on a world on the back of a turtle like that. It’s happening already. The stars below are campfires, out in the desert, and the lights of remote villages high in the forested mountains. Towns are smeared nebulae, cities are vast constellations; the great sprawling city of Ankh-Morpork, for example, glows like a couple of colliding galaxies. But here, away from the great centres of population, where the Circle Sea meets the desert, there is a line of cold blue fire. Flames as chilly as the slopes of Hell roar towards the sky. Ghostly light flickers across the desert. The pyramids in the ancient valley of the Djel are flaring their power into the night. The energy streaming up from their paracosmic peaks may, in chapters to come, illuminate many mysteries: why tortoises hate philosophy, why too much religion is bad for goats, and what it is that handmaidens actually do. It will certainly show what our ancestors would be thinking if they were alive today. People have often speculated about this. Would they approve of modern society, they ask, would they marvel at present-day achievements? And of course this misses a fundamental point. What our ancestors would really be thinking, if they were alive today, is: “Why is it so dark in here?” In the cool of the river valley dawn the high priest Dios opened his eyes. He didn’t sleep these days. He couldn’t remember when he last slept. Sleep was too close to the other thing and, anyway, he didn’t seem to need it. Just lying down was enough - at least, just lying down here. The fatigue poisons dwindled away, like everything else. For a while. Long enough, anyway. He swung his legs off the slab in the little chamber. With barely a conscious prompting from his brain his right hand grasped the snake-entwined staff of office. He paused to make another mark on the wall, pulled his robe around him and stepped smartly down the sloping passage and out into the sunlight, the words of the Invocation of the New Sun already lining up in his mind. The night was forgotten, the day was ahead. There was much careful advice and guidance to be given, and Dios existed only to serve. Dios didn’t have the oddest bedroom in the world. It was just the oddest bedroom anyone has ever walked out of. And the sun toiled across the sky. Many people have wondered why. Some people think a giant dung beetle pushes it. As explanations go it lacks a certain technical edge, and has the added drawback that, as certain circumstances may reveal, it is possibly correct. It reached sundown without anything particularly unpleasant happening to it* (* Such as being buried in the sand and having eggs laid in it.), and its dying rays chanced to shine in through a window in the city of Ankh-Morpork and gleam off a mirror. It was a full-length mirror. All assassins had a full-length mirror in their rooms, because it would be a terrible insult to anyone to kill them when you were badly dressed. Teppic examined himself critically. The outfit had cost him his last penny, and was heavy on the black silk. It whispered as he moved. It was pretty good. At least the headache was going. It had nearly crippled him all day; he’d been in dread of having to start the run with purple spots in front of his eyes. He sighed and opened the black box and took out his rings and slipped them on. Another box held a set of knives of Klatchian steel, their blades darkened with lamp black. Various cunning and intricate devices were taken from velvet bags and dropped into pockets. A couple of long-bladed throwing tlingo’s were slipped into their sheaths inside his boots. A thin silk line and folding grapnel were wound around his waist, over the chain-mail shirt. A blowpipe was attached to its leather thong and dropped down his back under his cloak; Teppic pocketed a slim tin container with an assortment of darts, their tips corked and their stems braille-coded for ease of selection in the dark. He winced, checked the blade of his rapier and slung the baldric over his right shoulder, to balance the bag of lead slingshot ammunition. As an afterthought he opened his sock drawer and took a pistol crossbow, a flask of oil, a roll of lockpicks and, after some consideration, a punch dagger, a bag of assorted caltraps and a set of brass knuckles. Teppic picked up his hat and checked its lining for the coil of cheesewire. He placed it on his head at a jaunty angle, took a last satisfied look at himself in the mirror, turned on his heel and, very slowly, fell over. It was high summer in Ankh-Morpork. In fact it was more than high. It was stinking. The great river was reduced to a lava-like ooze between Ankh, the city with the better address, and Morpork on the opposite bank. Morpork was not a good address. Morpork was twinned with a tar pit. There was not a lot that could be done to make Morpork a worse place. A direct hit by a meteorite, for example, would count as gentrification. Most of the river bed was a honeycomb crust of cracked mud. Currently the sun appeared to be a big copper gong nailed to the sky. The heat that had dried up the river fried the city by day and baked it by night, curling ancient timbers, turning the traditional slurry of the streets into a drifting, choking ochre dust. It wasn’t Ankh-Morpork’s proper weather. It was by inclination a city of mists and drips, of slithers and chills. It sat panting on the crisping plains like a toad on a firebrick. And even now, around midnight, the heat was stifling, wrapping the streets like scorched velvet, searing the air and squeezing all the breath out of it. High in the north face of the Assassins” Guildhouse there was a click as a window was pushed open. Teppic, who had with considerable reluctance divested himself of some of the heavier of his weapons, took a deep draught of the hot, dead air. This was it. This was the night. They said you had one chance in two unless you drew old Mericet as examiner, in which case you might as well cut your throat right at the start. Teppic had Mericet for Strategy and Poison Theory every Thursday afternoon, and didn’t get along with him. The dormitories buzzed with rumours about Mericet, the number of kills, the astonishing technique . . . He’d broken all the records in his time. They said he’d even killed the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork. Not the present one, that is. One of the dead ones. Maybe it would be Nivor, who was fat and jolly and liked his food and did Traps and Deadfalls on Tuesdays. Teppic was good at traps, and got on well with the master. Or it could be the Kompt de Yoyo, who did Modern Languages and Music. Teppic was gifted at neither, but the Kompt was a keen edificeer and liked boys who shared his love of dangling by one hand high above the city streets. He stuck one leg over the sill and unhitched his line and grapnel. He hooked the gutter two floors up and slipped out of the window. No assassin ever used the stairs. In order to establish continuity with later events, this may be the time to point out that the greatest mathematician in the history of the Discworld was lying down and peacefully eating his supper. It is interesting to note that, owing to this mathematician’s particular species, what he was eating for his supper was his lunch. Gongs around the Ankh-Morpork sprawl were announcing midnight when Teppic crept along the ornate parapet four storeys above Filigree Street, his heart pounding. There was a figure outlined against the afterglow of the sunset. Teppic paused alongside a particularly repulsive gargoyle to consider his options. Fairly solid classroom rumour said that if he inhumed his examiner before the test, that was an automatic pass. He slipped a Number Three throwing knife from its thigh sheath and hefted it thoughtfully. Of course, any attempt, any overt move which missed would attract immediate failure and loss of privileges*. (* Breathing, for a start.) The silhouette was absolutely still. Teppic’s eyes swivelled to the maze of chimneys, gargoyles, ventilator shafts, bridges and ladders that made up the rooftop scenery of the city. Right, he thought. That’s some sort of dummy. I’m supposed to attack it and that means he’s watching me from somewhere else. Will I be able to spot him? No. On the other hand, maybe I’m meant to think it’s a dummy. Unless he’s thought of that as well . . . He found himself drumming his fingers on the gargoyle, and hastily pulled himself together. What is the sensible course of action at this point? A party of revellers staggered through a pool of light in the street far below. Teppic sheathed the knife and stood up. “Sir,” he said, “I am here.” A dry voice by his ear said, rather indistinctly, “Very well.” Teppic stared straight ahead. Mericet appeared in front of him, wiping grey dust off his bony face. He took a length of pipe out of his mouth and tossed it aside, then pulled a clipboard out of his coat. He was bundled up even in this heat. Mericet was the kind of person who could freeze in a volcano. “Ah,” he said, his voice broadcasting disapproval, “Mr. Teppic. Well, well.” “A fine night, sir,” said Teppic. The examiner gave him a chilly look, suggesting that observations about the weather acquired an automatic black mark, and made a note on his clipboard. “We’ll take a few questions first,” he said. “As you wish, sir.” “What is the maximum permitted length of a throwing knife?” snapped Mericet. Teppic closed his eyes. He’d spent the last week reading nothing but The Cordat; he could see the page now, floating tantalisingly just inside his eyelids - they never ask you lengths and weights, students had said knowingly, they expect you to bone up on the weights and lengths and throwing distances but they never- Naked terror hotwired his brain and kicked his memory into gear. The page sprang into focus. “”Maximum length of a throwing knife may be ten finger widths, or twelve in wet weather”,” he recited. “”Throwing distance is-“ “Name three poisons acknowledged for administration by ear.” A breeze sprang up, but it did nothing to cool the air; it just shifted the heat about. “Sir, wasp agaric, Achorion purple and Mustick, sir,” said Teppic promptly. “Why not spime?” snapped Mericet, fast as a snake. Teppic’s jaw dropped open. He floundered for a while, trying to avoid the gimlet gaze a few feet away from him. “S-sir, spime isn’t a poison, sir,” he managed. “It is an extremely rare antidote to certain snake venoms, and is obtained-” He settled down a bit, more certain of himself: all those hours idly looking through the old dictionaries had paid off- “is obtained from the liver of the inflatable mongoose, which-” “What is the meaning of this sign?” said Mericet. “- is found only in the. . .” Teppic’s voice trailed off. He squinted down at the complex rune on the card in Mericet’s hand, and then stared straight past the examiner’s ear again. “I haven’t the faintest idea, sir,” he said. Out of the corner of his ear he thought he heard the faintest intake of breath, the tiniest seed of a satisfied grunt. “But if it were the other way up, sir,” he went on, “it would be thief sign for “Noisy dogs in this house”.” There was absolute silence for a moment. Then, right by his shoulder, the old assassin’s voice said, “Is the killing rope permitted to all categories?” “Sir, the rules call for three questions, sir,” Teppic protested. “Ah. And that is your answer, is it?” “Sir, no, sir. It was an observation, sir. Sir, the answer you are looking for is that all categories may bear the killing rope, but only assassins of the third grade may use it as one of the three options, sir.” “You are sure of that, are you?” “Sir.” “You wouldn’t like to reconsider?” You could have used the examiner’s voice to grease a wagon. “Sir, no, sir.” “Very well.” Teppic relaxed. The back of his tunic was sticking to him, chilly with sweat. “Now, I want you to proceed at your own pace towards the Street of Book-keepers,” said Mericet evenly, “obeying all signs and so forth. I will meet you in the room under the gong tower at the junction with Audit Alley. And - take this, if you please.” He handed Teppic a small envelope. Teppic handed over a receipt. Then Mericet stepped into the pool of shade beside a chimney pot, and disappeared. So much for the ceremony. Teppic took a few deep breaths and tipped the envelope’s contents into his hand. It was a Guild bond for ten thousand Ankh-Morpork dollars, made out to “Bearer”. It was an impressive document, surmounted with the Guild seal of the double-cross and the cloaked dagger. Well, no going back now. He’d taken the money. Either he’d survive, in which case of course he’d traditionally donate the money to the Guild’s widows and orphans fund, or it would be retrieved from his dead body. The bond looked a bit dog-eared, but he couldn’t see any bloodstains on it. He checked his knives, adjusted his swordbelt, glanced behind him, and set off at a gentle trot. At least this was a bit of luck. The student lore said there were only half a dozen routes used during the test, and on summer nights they were alive with students tackling the roofs, towers, eaves and colls of the city. Edificing was a keen inter-house sport in its own right; it was one of the few things Teppic was sure he was good at - he’d been captain of the team that beat Scorpion House in the Wallgame finals. And this was one of the easier courses. He dropped lightly over the edge of the roof, landed on a ridge, ran easily across the sleeping building, jumped a narrow gap on to the tiled roof of the Young Men’s Reformed-Cultists-of-the-Ichor-God-Bel-Shamharoth Association gym, jogged gently over the grey slope, swarmed up a twelve foot wall without slowing down, and vaulted on to the wide flat roof of the Temple of Blind Io. A full, orange moon hung on the horizon. There was a real breeze up here, not much, but as refreshing as a cold shower after the stifling heat of the streets. He speeded up, enjoying the coolness on his face, and leapt accurately off the end of the roof on to the narrow plank bridge that led across Tinlid Alley. And which someone, in defiance of all probability, had removed. At times like this one’s past life flashes before one’s eyes. . . His aunt had wept, rather theatrically, Teppic had thought, since the old lady was as tough as a hippo’s instep. His father had looked stern and dignified, whenever he could remember to, and tried to keep his mind free of beguiling images of cliffs and fish. The servants had been lined up along the hall from the foot of the main stairway, handmaidens on one side, eunuchs and butlers on the other. The women bobbed a curtsey as he walked by, creating a rather nice sine wave effect which the greatest mathematician on the Disc, had he not at this moment been occupied by being hit with a stick and shouted at by a small man wearing what appeared to be a nightshirt, might well have appreciated. “But,” Teppic’s aunt blew her nose, “it’s trade, after all.” His father patted her hand. “Nonsense, flower of the desert,” he said, “it is a profession, at the very least.” “What is the difference?” she sobbed. The old man sighed. “The money, I understand. It will do him good to go out into the world and make friends and have a few corners knocked off, and it will keep him occupied and prevent him from getting into mischief.” “But. . . assassination. . . he’s so young, and he’s never shown the least inclination . . .” She dabbed at her eyes. “It’s not from our side of the family,” she added accusingly. “That brother-in-law of yours- “Uncle Vyrt,” said his father. “Going all over the world killing people!” “I don’t believe they use that word,” said his father. “I think they prefer words like conclude, or annul. Or inhume, I understand.” “Inhume?” “I think it’s like exhume, O flooding of the waters, only it’s before they bury you.” “I think it’s terrible.” She sniffed. “But I heard from Lady Nooni that only one boy in fifteen actually passes the final exam. Perhaps we’d just better let him get it out of his system.” King Teppicymon XXVII nodded gloomily, and went by himself to wave goodbye to his son. He was less certain than his sister about the unpleasantness of assassination; he’d been reluctantly in politics for a long time, and felt that while assassination was probably worse than debate it was certainly better than war, which some people tended to think of as the same thing only louder. And there was no doubt that young Vyrt always had plenty of money, and used to turn up at the palace with expensive gifts, exotic suntans and thrilling tales of the interesting people he’d met in foreign parts, in most cases quite briefly. He wished Vyrt was around to advise. His majesty had also heard that only one student in fifteen actually became an assassin. He wasn’t entirely certain what happened to the other fourteen, but he was pretty sure that if you were a poor student in a school for assassins they did a bit more than throw the chalk at you, and that the school dinners had an extra dimension of uncertainty. But everyone agreed that the assassins” school offered the best all-round education in the world. A qualified assassin should be at home in any company, and able to play at least one musical instrument. Anyone inhumed by a graduate of the Guild school could go to his rest satisfied that he had been annulled by someone of taste and discretion. And, after all, what was there for him at home? A kingdom two miles wide and one hundred and fifty miles long, which was almost entirely under water during the flood season, and threatened on either side by stronger neighbours who tolerated its existence only because they’d be constantly at war if it wasn’t there. Oh, Djelibeybi* (* Lit. “Child of the Djel”.) had been great once, when upstarts like Tsort and Ephebe were just a bunch of nomads with their towels on their heads. All that remained of those great days was the ruinously-expensive palace, a few dusty ruins in the desert and - the pharaoh sighed - the pyramids. Always the pyramids. His ancestors had been keen on pyramids. The pharaoh wasn’t. Pyramids had bankrupted the country, drained it drier than ever the river did. The only curse they could afford to put on a tomb these days was “Bugger Off”. The only pyramids he felt comfortable about were the very small ones at the bottom of the garden, built every time one of the cats died. He’d promised the boy’s mother. He missed Artela. There’d been a terrible row about taking a wife from outside the Kingdom, and some of her foreign ways had puzzled and fascinated even him. Maybe it was from her he’d got the strange dislike of pyramids; in Djelibeybi that was like disliking breathing. But he’d promised that Pteppic could go to school outside the kingdom. She’d been insistent about that. “People never learn anything in this place,” she’d said. “They only remember things.” If only she’d remembered about not swimming in the river . He watched two of the servants load Teppic’s trunk on to the back of the coach, and for the first time either of them could remember laid a paternal hand on his son’s shoulder. In fact he was at a loss for something to say. We’ve never really had time to get to know one another, he thought. There’s so much I could have given him. A few bloody good hidings wouldn’t have come amiss. “Urn,” he said. “Well, my boy.” “Yes, father?” “This is, er, the first time you’ve been away from home by yourself” “No, father. I spent last summer with Lord Fhem-pta-hem, you remember.” “Oh, did you?” The pharaoh recalled the palace had seemed quieter at the time. He’d put it down to the new tapestries. “Anyway,” he said, “you’re a young man, nearly thirteen-” “Twelve, father,” said Teppic patiently. “Are you sure?” “It was my birthday last month, father. You bought me a warming pan.” “Did I? How singular. Did I say why?” “No, father.” Teppic looked up at his father’s mild, puzzled features. “It was a very good warming pan,” he added reassuringly. “I like it a lot.” “Oh. Good. Er.” His majesty patted his son’s shoulder again, in a vague way, like a man drumming his fingers on his desk while trying to think. An idea appeared to occur to him. The servants had finished strapping the trunk on to the roof of the coach and the driver was patiently holding open the door. “When a young man sets out in the world,” said his majesty uncertainly, “there are, well, it’s very important that he remembers . . . The point is, that it is a very big world after all, with all sorts. . . And of course, especially so in the city, where there are many additional . . . “ He paused, waving one hand vaguely in the air. Teppic took it gently. “It’s quite all right, father,” he said. “Dios the high priest explained to me about taking regular baths, and not going blind.” His father blinked at him. “You’re not going blind?” he said. “Apparently not, father.” “Oh. Well. Jolly good,” said the king. “Jolly, jolly good. That is good news.” “I think I had better be going, father. Otherwise I shall miss the tide.” His majesty nodded, and patted his pockets. “There was something. . . “ he muttered, and then tracked it down, and slipped a small leather bag into Teppic’s pocket. He tried the shoulder routine again. “A little something,” he murmured. “Don’t tell your aunt. Oh, you can’t, anyway. She’s gone for a lie-down. It’s all been rather too much for her.” All that remained then was for Teppic to go and sacrifice a chicken at the statue of Khuft, the founder of Djelibeybi, so that his ancestor’s guiding hand would steer his footsteps in the world. It was only a small chicken, though, and when Khuft had finished with it the king had it for lunch. Djelibeybi really was a small, self-centred kingdom. Even its plagues were half-hearted. All self-respecting river kingdoms have vast supernatural plagues, but the best the Old Kingdom had been able to achieve in the last hundred years was the Plague of Frog*. (*It was quite a big frog, however, and got into the air ducts and kept everyone awake for weeks.) That evening, when they were well outside the delta of the Djel and heading across the Circle Sea to Ankh-Morpork, Teppic remembered the bag and examined its contents. With love, but also with his normal approach to things, his father had presented him with a cork, half a tin of saddlesoap, a small bronze coin of uncertain denomination, and an extremely elderly sardine. It is a well-known fact that when one is about to die the senses immediately become excruciatingly sharp and it has always been believed that this is to enable their owner to detect any possible exit from his predicament other than the obvious one. This is not true. The phenomenon is a classical example of displacement activity. The senses are desperately concentrating on anything apart from the immediate problem - which in Teppic’s case consisted of a broad expanse of cobblestones some eighty feet away and closing - in the hope that it will go away. The trouble is that it soon will. Whatever the reason, Teppic was suddenly acutely aware of things around him. The way the moonlight glowed on the rooftops. The smell of fresh bread wafting from a nearby bakery. The whirring of a cockchafer as it barrelled past his ear, upwards. The sound of a baby crying, in the distance, and the bark of a dog. The gentle rush of the air, with particular reference to its thinness and lack of handholds. There had been more than seventy of them enrolling that year. The Assassins didn’t have a very strenuous entrance examination; the school was easy to get into, easy to get out of (the trick was to get out upright). The courtyard in the centre of the Guild buildings was thronged with boys who all had two things in common - overlarge trunks, which they were sitting on, and clothes that had been selected for them to grow into, and which they were more or less sitting in. Some optimists had brought weapons with them, which were confiscated and sent home over the next few weeks. Teppic watched them carefully. There were distinct advantages to being the only child of parents too preoccupied with their own affairs to worry much about him, or indeed register his existence for days at a time. His mother, as far as he could remember, had been a pleasant woman and as self-centred as a gyroscope. She’d liked cats. She didn’t just venerate them - everyone in the kingdom did that - but she actually liked them, too. Teppic knew that it was traditional in river kingdoms to approve of cats, but he suspected that usually the animals in question were graceful stately creatures; his mother’s cats were small, spitting, flat-headed, yellow-eyed maniacs. His father spent a lot of time worrying about the kingdom and occasionally declaring that he was a seagull, although this was probably from general forgetfulness. Teppic had occasionally speculated about his own conception, since his parents were rarely in the same frame of reference, let alone the same state of mind. But it had apparently happened and he was left to bring himself up on a trial and error basis, mildly hindered and occasionally enlivened by a succession of tutors. The ones hired by his father were best, especially on those days when he was flying as high as he could, and for one glorious winter Teppic had as his tutor an elderly ibis poacher who had in fact wandered into the royal gardens in search of a stray arrow. That had been a time of wild chases with soldiers, moonlight rambles in the dead streets of the necropolis and, best of all, the introduction to the puntbow, a fearsomely complicated invention which at considerable risk to its operators could turn a slough full of innocent waterfowl into so much floating pâté. He’d also had the run of the library, including the locked shelves - the poacher had several other skills to ensure gainful employment in inclement weather - which had given him many hours of quiet study; he was particularly attached to The Shuttered Palace, Translated from the Khalian by A Gentleman, with Hand-Coloured Plates for the Connoisseur in A Strictly Limited Edition. It was confusing but instructive and, when a rather fey young tutor engaged by the priests tried to introduce him to certain athletic techniques favoured by the classical Pseudopolitans, Teppic considered the suggestion for some time and then floored the youth with a hatstand. Teppic hadn’t been educated. Education had just settled on him, like dandruff. It started to rain, in the world outside his head. Another new experience. He’d heard about it, of course, how water came down out of the sky in small bits. He just hadn’t expected there to be so much of it. It never rained in Djelibeybi. Masters moved among the boys like damp and slightly scruffy blackbirds, but he was eyeing a group of older students lolling near the pillared entrance to the school. They also wore black - different colours of black. That was his first introduction to the tertiary colours, the colours on the far side of blackness, the colours that you get if you split blackness with an eight-sided prism. They are also almost impossible to describe in a non-magical environment, but if someone were to try they’d probably start by telling you to smoke something illegal and take a good look at a starling’s wing. The seniors were critically inspecting the new arrivals. Teppic stared at them. Apart from the colours, their clothes were cut off the edge of the latest fashion, which was currently inclining towards wide hats, padded shoulders, narrow waists and pointed shoes and gave its followers the appearance of being very well-dressed nails. I’m going to be like them, he told himself. Although probably better dressed, he added. He recalled Uncle Vyrt, sitting out on the steps overlooking the Djel on one of his brief, mysterious visits. “Satin and leather are no good. Or jewellery of any kind. You can’t have anything that will shine or squeak or clink. Stick to rough silk or velvet. The important thing is not how many people you inhume, it’s how many fail to inhume you.” He’d been moving at an unwise pace, which might assist now. As he arced over the emptiness of the alley he twisted in the air, thrust out his arms desperately, and felt his fingertips brush a ledge on the building opposite. It was enough to pivot him; he swung around, hit the crumbling brickwork with sufficient force to knock what remained of his breath out of him, and slid down the sheer wall. “Boy!” Teppic looked up. There was a senior assassin standing beside him, with a purple teaching sash over his robes. It was the first assassin he’d seen, apart from Vyrt. The man was pleasant enough. You could imagine him making sausages. “Are you talking to me?” he said. “You will stand up when you address a master,” said the rosy face. “I will?” Teppic was fascinated. He wondered how this could be achieved. Discipline had not hitherto been a major feature in his life. Most of his tutors had been sufficiently unnerved by the sight of the king occasionally perched on top of a door that they raced through such lessons as they had and then locked themselves in their rooms. “I will sir,” said the teacher. He consulted the list in his hand. “What is your name, boy?” he continued. “Prince Pteppic of the Old Kingdom, the Kingdom of the Sun,” said Teppic easily. “I appreciate you are ignorant of the etiquette, but you should not call me sir, and you should touch the ground with your forehead when you address me.” “Pateppic, is it?” said the master. “No. Pteppic.” “Ah. Teppic,” said the master, and ticked off a name on his list. He gave Teppic a generous smile. “Well, now, your majesty,” he said, “I am Grunworth Nivor, your housemaster. You are in Viper House. To my certain knowledge there are at least eleven Kingdoms of the Sun on the Disc and, before the end of the week, you will present me with a short essay detailing their geographical location, political complexion, capital city or principal seat of government, and a suggested route into the bed- chamber of the head of state of your choice. However, in all the world there is only one Viper House. Good morning to you, boy.” He turned away and homed in on another cowering pupil. “He’s not a bad sort,” said a voice behind Teppic. “Anyway, all the stuffs in the library. I’ll show you if you like. I’m Chidder. Teppic turned. He was being addressed by a boy of about his own age and height, whose black suit - plain black, for First Years - looked as though it had been nailed on to him in bits. The youth was holding out a hand. Teppic gave it a polite glance. “Yes?” he said. “What’s your name, kiddo?” Teppic drew himself up. He was getting fed up with this treatment. “Kiddo? I’ll have you know the blood of pharaohs runs in my veins!” The other boy looked at him unabashed, with his head on one side and a faint smile on his face. “Would you like it to stay there?” he said. The baker was just along the alley, and a handful of the staff had stepped out into the comparative cool of the pre-dawn air for a quick smoke and a break from the desert heat of the ovens. Their chattering spiralled up to Teppic, high in the shadows, gripping a fortuitous window sill while his feet scrabbled for a purchase among the bricks. It’s not that bad, he told himself. You’ve tackled worse. The hubward face of the Patrician’s palace last winter, for example, when all the gutters had overflowed and the walls were solid ice. This isn’t much more than a 3, maybe a 3.2. You and old Chiddy used to go up walls like this rather than stroll down the street, it’s just a matter of perspective. Perspective. He glanced down, at seventy feet of infinity. Splat City, man, get a grip on yourself. On the wall. His right foot found a worn section of mortar, into which his toes planted themselves with barely a conscious instruction from a brain now feeling too fragile to take more than a distant interest in the proceedings. He took a breath, tensed, and then dropped one hand to his belt, seized a dagger, and thrust it between the bricks beside him before gravity worked out what was happening. He paused, panting, waiting for gravity to lose interest in him again, and then swung his body sideways and tried the same thing a second time. Down below one of the bakers told a suggestive joke, and brushed a speck of mortar from his ear. As his colleagues laughed Teppic stood up in the moonlight, balancing on two slivers of Klatchian steel, and gently walked his palms up the wall to the window whose sill had been his brief salvation. It was wedged shut. A good blow would surely open it, but only at about the same moment as it sent him reeling back into empty air. Teppic sighed and, moving with the delicacy of a watchmaker, drew his diamond compasses from their pouch and dragged a slow, gentle circle on the dusty glass. . . “You carry it yourself,” said Chidder. “That’s the rule around here.” Teppic looked at the trunk. It was an intriguing notion. “At home we’ve people who do that,” he said. “Eunuchs and so on. “You should of brought one with you.” “They don’t travel well,” said Teppic. In fact he’d adamantly refused all suggestions that a small retinue should accompany him, and Dios had sulked for days. That was not how a member of the royal blood should go forth into the world, he said. Teppic had remained firm. He was pretty certain that assassins weren’t expected to go about their business accompanied by handmaidens and buglers. Now, however, the idea seemed to have some merit. He gave the trunk an experimental heave, and managed to get it across his shoulders. “Your people are pretty rich, then?” said Chidder, ambling along beside him. Teppic thought about this. “No, not really,” he said. “They mainly grow melons and garlic and that kind of thing. And stand in the streets and shout “hurrah”.” “This is your parents you’re talking about?” said Chidder, puzzled. “Oh, them? No, my father’s a pharaoh. My mother was a concubine. I think.” “I thought that was some sort of vegetable.” “I don’t think so. We’ve never really discussed it. Anyway, she died when I was young.” “How dreadful,” said Chidder cheerfully. “She went for a moonlight swim in what turned out to be a crocodile.” Teppic tried politely not to be hurt at the boy’s reaction. “My father’s in commerce,” said Chidder, as they passed through the archway. “That’s fascinating,” said Teppic dutifully. He felt quite broken by all these new experiences, and added, “I’ve never been to Commerce, but I understand they’re very fine people.” Over the next hour or two Chidder, who ambled gently through life as though he’d already worked it all out, introduced Teppic to the various mysteries of the dormitories, the classrooms and the plumbing. He left the plumbing until last, for all sorts of reasons. “Not any?” he said. “There’s buckets and things,” said Teppic vaguely, “and lots of servants.” “Bit old fashioned, this kingdom of yours?” Teppic nodded. “It’s the pyramids,” he said. “They take all the money.” “Expensive things, I should imagine.” “Not particularly. They’re just made of stone.” Teppic sighed. “We’ve got lots of stone,” he said, “and sand. Stone and sand. We’re really big on them. If you ever need any stone and sand, we’re the people for you. It’s fitting out the insides that is really expensive. We’re still avoiding paying for grandfather’s, and that wasn’t very big. Just three chambers.” Teppic turned and looked out of the window; they were back in the dormitory at this point. “The whole kingdom’s in debt,” he said, quietly. “I mean even our debts are in debt. That’s why I’m here, really. Someone in our house needs to earn some money. A royal prince can’t hang around looking ornamental any more. He’s got to get out and do something useful in the community.” Chidder leaned on the window sill. “Couldn’t you take some of the stuff out of the pyramids, then?” he said. “Don’t be silly.” “Sorry.” Teppic gloomily watched the figures below. “There’s a lot of people here,” he said, to change the subject. “I didn’t realise it would be so big.” He shivered. “Or so cold,” he added. “People drop out all the time,” said Chidder. “Can’t stand the course. The important thing is to know what’s what and who’s who. See that fellow over there?” Teppic followed his pointing finger to a group of older students, who were lounging against the pillars by the entrance. “The big one? Face like the end of your boot?” “That’s Fliemoe. Watch out for him. If he invites you for toast in his study, don’t go.” “And who’s the little kid with the curls?” said Teppic. He pointed to a small lad receiving the attentions of a washed-out looking lady. She was licking her handkerchief and dabbing apparent smudges off his face. When she stopped that, she straightened his tie. Chidder craned to see. “Oh, just some new kid,” he said. “Arthur someone. Still hanging on to his mummy, I see. He won’t last long.” “Oh, I don’t know,” said Teppic. “We do, too, and we’ve lasted for thousands of years.” A disc of glass dropped into the silent building and tinkled on the floor. There was no other sound for several minutes. Then there was the faint clonk-clonk of an oil can. A shadow that had been lying naturally on the window sill, a morgue for blue-bottles, turned out to be an arm which was moving with vegetable slowness towards the window’s catch. There was a scrape of metal, and then the whole window swung out in tribological silence. Teppic dropped over the sill and vanished into the shadow below it. For a minute or two the dusty space was filled with the intense absence of noise caused by someone moving with extreme care. Once again there was the squirting of oil, and then a metallic whisper as the bolt of a trapdoor leading on to the roof moved gently aside. Teppic waited for his breath to catch up with him, and in that moment heard the sound. It was down among the white noise at the edge of hearing, but there was no doubt about it. Someone was waiting just above the trapdoor, and they’d just put their hand on a piece of paper to stop it rattling in the breeze. His own hand dropped from the bolt. He eased his way with exquisite care back across the greasy floor and felt his way along a rough wooden wall until he came to the door. This time he took no chances, but uncorked his oil can and let a silent drop fall on to the hinges. A moment later he was through. A rat, idly patrolling the draughty passage beyond, had to stop itself from swallowing its own tongue as he floated past. There was another doorway at the end, and a maze of musty storerooms until he found a stairway. He judged himself to be about thirty yards from the trapdoor. There hadn’t been any flues that he could see. There ought to be a clear shot across the roof. He hunkered down and pulled out his knife roll, its velvet blackness making a darker oblong in the shadows. He selected a Number Five, not everyone’s throwing knife, but worthwhile if you had the trick of it. Shortly afterwards his head rose very carefully over the edge of the roof, one arm bent behind it but ready to uncurl in a complex interplay of forces that would combine to send a few ounces of steel gliding across the night. Mericet was sitting by the trapdoor, looking at his clipboard. Teppic’s eyes swivelled to the oblong of the plank bridge, stored meticulously against the parapet a few feet away. He was certain he had made no noise. He’d have to swear that the examiner heard the sound of his gaze falling on him. The old man raised his bald head. “Thank you, Mr Teppic,” he said, “you may proceed.” Teppic felt the sweat of his body grow cold. He stared at the plank, and then at the examiner, and then at his knife. “Yes, sir,” he said. This didn’t seem like enough, in the circumstances. He added, “Thank you, sir.” He’d always remember the first night in the dormitory. It was long enough to accommodate all eighteen boys in Viper House, and draughty enough to accommodate the great outdoors. Its designer may have had comfort in mind, but only so that he could avoid it wherever possible: he had contrived a room that could actually be colder than the weather outside. “I thought we got rooms to ourselves,” said Teppic. Chidder, who had laid claim to the least exposed bed in the whole refrigerator, nodded at him. “Later on,” he said. He lay back, and winced. “Do they sharpen these springs, do you reckon?” Teppic said nothing. The bed was in fact rather more comfortable than the one he’d slept in at home. His parents, being high born, naturally tolerated conditions for their children which would have been rejected out of hand by destitute sandflies. He stretched out on the thin mattress and analysed the day’s events. He’d been enrolled as an assassin, all right, a student assassin, for more than seven hours and they hadn’t even let him lay a hand on a knife yet. Of course, tomorrow was another day . . . Chidder leaned over. “Where’s Arthur?” he said. Teppic looked at the bed opposite him. There was a pathetically small sack of clothing positioned neatly in its centre, but no sign of its intended occupant. “Do you think he’s run away?” he said, staring around at the shadows. “Could be,” said Chidder. “It happens a lot, you know. Mummy’s boys, away from home for the first time-” The door at the end of the room swung open slowly and Arthur entered, backwards, tugging a large and very reluctant billy goat. It fought him every step of the way down the aisle between the bedsteads. The boys watched in silence for several minutes as he tethered the animal to the end of his bed, upended the sack on the blankets, and took out several black candles, a sprig of herbs, a rope of skulls, and a piece of chalk. Taking the chalk, and adopting the shiny, pink-faced expression of someone who is going to do what they know to be right no matter what, Arthur drew a double circle around his bed and then, getting down on his chubby knees, filled the space between them with as unpleasant a collection of occult symbols as Teppic had ever seen. When they were completed to his satisfaction he placed the candles at strategic points and lit them; they spluttered and gave off a smell that suggested that you really wouldn’t want to know what they were made of. He drew a short, red-handled knife from the jumble on the bed and advanced towards the goat- A pillow hit him on the back of the head. “Garn! Pious little bastard!” Arthur dropped the knife and burst into tears. Chidder sat up in bed. “That was you, Cheesewright!” he said. “I saw you!” Cheesewright, a skinny young man with red hair and a face that was one large freckle, glared at him. “Well, it’s too much,” he said. “A fellow can’t sleep with all this religion going on. I mean, only little kids say their prayers at bedtime these days, we’re supposed to be learning to be assassins-” “You can jolly well shut up, Cheesewright,” shouted Chidder. “It’d be a better world if more people said their prayers, you know. I know I don’t say mine as often as I should-” A pillow cut him off in mid-sentence. He bounded out of bed and vaulted at the red-haired boy, fists flailing. As the rest of the dormitory gathered around the scuffling pair Teppic slid out of bed and padded over to Arthur, who was sitting on the edge of his bed and sobbing. He patted him uncertainly on the shoulder, on the basis that this sort of thing was supposed to reassure people. “I shouldn’t cry about it, youngster,” he said, gruffly. “But - but all the runes have been scuffed,” said Arthur. “It’s all too late now! And that means the Great Om will come in the night and wind out my entrails on a stick!” “Does it?” “And suck out my eyes, my mother said!” “Gosh!” said Teppic, fascinated. “Really?” He was quite glad his bed was opposite Arthur’s, and would offer an unrivalled view. “What religion would this be?” “We’re Strict Authorised Ormits,” said Arthur. He blew his nose. “I noticed you don’t pray,” he said. “Don’t you have a god?” “Oh yes,” said Teppic hesitantly, “no doubt about that.” “You don’t seem to want to talk to him.” Teppic shook his head. “I can’t,” he said, “not here. He wouldn’t be able to hear, you see.” “My god can hear me anywhere,” said Arthur fervently. “Well, mine has difficulty if you’re on the other side of the room,” said Teppic. “It can be very embarrassing.” “You’re not an Offlian, are you?” said Arthur. Offler was a Crocodile God, and lacked ears. “No.” “What god do you worship, then?” “Not exactly worship,” said Teppic, discomforted. “I wouldn’t say worship. I mean, he’s all right. He’s my father, if you must know.” Arthur’s pink-rimmed eyes widened. “You’re the son of a god?” he whispered. “It’s all part of being a king, where I come from,” said Teppic hurriedly. “He doesn’t have to do very much. That is, the priests do the actual running of the country. He just makes sure that the river floods every year, d’you see, and services the Great Cow of the Arch of the Sky. Well, used to.” “The Great-” “My mother,” explained Teppic. “It’s all very embarrassing.” “Does he smite people?” “I don’t think so. He’s never said.” Arthur reached down to the end of the bed. The goat, in the confusion, had chewed through its rope and trotted out of the door, vowing to give up religion in future. “I’m going to get into awful trouble,” he said. “I suppose you couldn’t ask your father to explain things to the Great OM?” “He might be able to,” said Teppic doubtfully. “I was going to write home tomorrow anyway.” “The Great Orm is normally to be found in one of the Nether Hells,” said Arthur, “where he watches everything we do. Everything I do, anyway. There’s only me and mother left now, and she doesn’t do much that needs watching.” “I’ll be sure and tell him.” “Do you think the Great Orm will come tonight?” “I shouldn’t think so. I’ll ask my father to be sure and tell him not to.” At the other end of the dormitory Chidder was kneeling on Cheesewright’s back and knocking his head repeatedly against the wall. “Say it again,” he commanded. “Come on - “There’s nothing wrong-““ “”There’s nothing wrong with a chap being man enough-“ curse you, Chidder, you beastly-” “I can’t hear you, Cheesewright,” said Chidder. “”Man enough to say his prayers in front of other chaps”, you rotter.” “Right. And don’t you forget it.” After lights out Teppic lay in bed and thought about religion. It was certainly a very complicated subject. The valley of the Djel had its own private gods, gods which had nothing to do with the world outside. It had always been very proud of the fact. The gods were wise and just and regulated the lives of men with skill and foresight, there was no question about that, but there were some puzzles. For example, he knew his father made the sun come up and the river flood and so on. That was basic, it was what the pharaohs had done ever since the time of Khuft, you couldn’t go around questioning things like that. The point was, though, did he just make the sun come up in the Valley or everywhere in the world? Making the sun come up in the Valley seemed a more reasonable proposition, after all, his father wasn’t getting any younger, but it was rather difficult to imagine the sun coming up everywhere else and not the Valley, which led to the distressing thought that the sun would come up even if his father forgot about it, which was a very likely state of affairs. He’d never seen his father do anything much about making the sun rise, he had to admit. You’d expect at least a grunt of effort round about the dawn. His father never got up until after breakfast. The sun came up just the same. He took some time to get to sleep. The bed, whatever Chidder said, was too soft, the air was too cold and, worst of all, the sky outside the high windows was too dark. At home it would have been full of flarelight from the necropolis, its silent flames eerie but somehow familiar and comforting, as though the ancestors were watching over their valley. He didn’t like the darkness. The following night in the dormitory one of the boys from further along the coast shyly tried to put the boy in the next bed inside a wickerwork cage he made in Craft and set fire to him, and the night after that Snoxall, who had the bed by the door and came from a little country out in the forests somewhere, painted himself green and asked for volunteers to have their intestines wound around a tree. On Thursday a small war broke out between those who worshipped the Mother Goddess in her aspect of the Moon and those who worshipped her in her aspect of a huge fat woman with enormous buttocks. After that the masters intervened and explained that religion, while a fine thing, could be taken too far. Teppic had a suspicion that unpunctuality was unforgivable. But surely Mericet would have to be at the tower ahead of him? And he was going by the direct route. The old man couldn’t possibly get there before him. Mind you, he couldn’t possibly have got to the bridge in the alley first . . . He must have taken the bridge away before he met me and then he climbed up on the roof while I was climbing up the wall, Teppic told himself, without believing a word of it. He ran along a roof ridge, senses alert for dislodged tiles or tripwires. His imagination equipped every shadow with watching figures. The gong tower loomed ahead of him. He paused, and looked at it. He had seen it a thousand times before, and scaled it many times although it barely rated a 1.8, notwithstanding that the brass dome on top was an interesting climb. It was just a familiar landmark. That made it worse now; it bulked in front of him, a stubby menacing shape against the greyness of the sky. He advanced more slowly now, approaching the tower obliquely across the sloping roof. It came to him that his initials were there, on the dome, along with Chiddy’s and those of hundreds of other young assassins, and that they’d carry on being up there even if he died tonight. It was sort of comforting. Only not very. He unslung his rope and made an easy throw on to the wide parapet that ran around the tower, just under the dome. He tested it, and heard the gentle clink as it caught. Then he tugged it as hard as possible, bracing himself with one foot on a chimney stack. Abruptly, and with no sound, a section of parapet slid outwards and dropped. There was a crash as it hit the roof below and then slid down the tiles. Another pause was punctuated by a distant thump as it hit the silent street. A dog barked. Stillness ruled the rooftops. Where Teppic had been the breeze stirred the burning air. After several minutes he emerged from the deeper shadow of a chimney stack, smiling a strange and terrible smile. Nothing the examiner could do could possibly be unfair. An assassin’s clients were invariably rich enough to pay for extremely ingenious protection, up to and including hiring assassins of his own*. (* It was said that life was cheap in Ankh-Morpork. This was, of course, completely wrong. Life was often very expensive; you could get death for free) Mericet wasn’t trying to kill him; he was merely trying to make him kill himself. He sidled up to the base of the tower and found a drainpipe. It hadn’t been coated with slipall, rather to his surprise, but his gently questing fingers did find the poisoned needles painted black and glued to the inner face of the pipe. He removed one with his tweezers and sniffed it. Distilled bloat. Pretty expensive stuff, with an astonishing effect. He took a small glass phial from his belt and collected as many needles as he could find, and then put on his armoured gloves and, with the speed of a sloth, started to climb. “Now it may well be that, as you travel across the city on your lawful occasions, you will find yourselves in opposition to fellow members, even one of the gentlemen with whom you are currently sharing a bench. And this is quite right and /what are you doing Mr Chidder no don’t tell me I’m sure I wouldn’t want to know see me afterwards/ proper. It is open to everyone to defend themselves as best they may. There are, however, other enemies who will dog your steps and against whom you are all ill-prepared /who are they Mr Cheesewright?”/ Mericet spun round from his blackboard like a vulture who has just heard a death-rattle and pointed the chalk at Cheesewright, who gulped. “Thieves’ Guild, sir?” he managed. “Step out here, boy.” There were whispered rumours in the dormitories about what Mericet had done to slovenly pupils in the past, which were always vague but horrifying. The class relaxed. Mericet usually concentrated on one victim at a time, so all they had to do now was look keen and enjoy the show. Crimson to his ears, Cheesewright got to his feet and trooped down the aisle between the desks. The master inspected him thoughtfully. “Well, now,” he said, “and here we have Cheesewright, G., skulking across the quaking rooftops. See the determined ears. See the firm set of those knees.” The class tittered dutifully. Cheesewright gave them an idiotic grin and rolled his eyes. “But what are these sinister figures that march in step with him, hey? /Since you find this so funny, Mr Teppic, perhaps you would be so good as to tell Mr Cheesewright?”/ Teppic froze in mid-laugh. Mericet’s gaze bored into him. He’s just like Dios the high priest, Teppic thought. Even father’s frightened of Dios. He knew what he ought to do, and he was damned if he was going to do it. He ought to be scared. “Ill-preparedness,” he said. “Carelessness. Lack of concentration. Poor maintenance of tools. Oh, and over-confidence, sir.” Mericet held his gaze for some time, but Teppic had practised on the palace cats. Finally the teacher gave a brief smile that had absolutely nothing to do with humour, tossed the chalk in the air, caught it again, and said: “Mr Teppic is exactly right. Especially about the over-confidence.” There was a ledge leading to an invitingly open window. There was oil on the ledge, and Teppic invested several minutes in screwing small crampons into cracks in the stonework before advancing. He hung easily by the window and proceeded to take a number of small metal rods from his belt. They were threaded at the ends, and after a few seconds’ brisk work he had a rod about three feet long on the end of which he affixed a small mirror. That revealed nothing in the gloom beyond the opening. He pulled it back and tried again, this time attaching his hood into which he’d stuffed his gloves, to give the impression of a head cautiously revealing itself against the light. He was confident that it would pick up a bolt or a dart, but it remained resolutely unattacked. He was chilly now, despite the heat of the night. Black velvet looked good, but that was about all you could say for it. The excitement and the exertion meant he was now wearing several pints of clammy water. He advanced. There was a thin black wire on the window sill, and a serrated blade screwed to the sash window above it. It was the work of a moment to wedge the sash with more rods and then cut the wire; the window dropped a fraction of an inch. He grinned in the darkness. A sweep with a long rod inside the room revealed that there was a floor, apparently free of obstructions. There was also a wire at about chest height. He drew the rod back, affixed a small hook on the end, sent it back, caught the wire, and tugged. There came the dull smack of a crossbow bolt hitting old plaster. A lump of clay on the end of the same rod, pushed gently across the floor, revealed several caltraps. Teppic hauled them back and inspected them with interest. They were copper. If he’d tried the magnet technique, which was the usual method, he wouldn’t have found them. He thought for a while. He had slip-on priests in his pouch. They were devilish things to prowl around a room in, but he shuffled into them anyway. (Priests were metal-reinforced overshoes. They saved your soles. This is an Assassin joke.) Mericet was a poisons man, after all. Bloat! If he tipped them with that Teppic would plate himself all over the walls. They wouldn’t need to bury him, they’d just redecorate over the top.* (* Bloat is extracted from the deep sea blowfish, Singularis minutia gigantica, which protects itself from enemies by inflating itself to many times its normal size. If taken by humans the effect is to make every cell in the body instantaneously try to swell some 2,000 times. This is invariably fatal, and very loud.) The rules. Mericet would have to obey the rules. He couldn’t simply kill him, with no warning. He’d have to let him, by carelessness or over-confidence, kill himself. He dropped lightly on to the floor inside the room and let his eyes adjust to the darkness. A few exploratory swings with the rods detected no more wires; there was a faint crunch underfoot as a priest crushed a caltrap. “In your own time, Mr Teppic.” Mericet was standing in a corner. Teppic heard the faint scratching of his pencil as he made a note. He tried to put the man out of his mind. He tried to think. There was a figure lying on a bed. It was entirely covered by a blanket. This was the last bit. This was the room where everything was decided. This was the bit the successful students never told you about. The unsuccessful ones weren’t around to ask. Teppic’s mind filled up with options. At a time like this, he thought, some divine guidance would be necessary. Where are you, dad? He envied his fellow students who believed in gods that were intangible and lived a long way away on top of some mountain. A fellow could really believe in gods like that. But it was extremely hard to believe in a god when you saw him at breakfast every day. He unslung his crossbow and screwed its greased sections together. It wasn’t a proper weapon, but he’d run out of knives and his lips were too dry for the blowpipe. There was a clicking from the corner. Mericet was idly tapping his teeth with his pencil. It could be a dummy under there. How would he know? No, it had to be a real person. You heard tales. Perhaps he could try the rods- He shook his head, raised the crossbow, and took careful aim. “Whenever you like Mr Teppic.” This was it. This was where they found out if you could kill. This was what he had been trying to put out of his mind. He knew he couldn’t.   Octeday afternoons was Political Expediency with Lady T’malia, one of the few women to achieve high office in the Guild. In the lands around the Circle Sea it was generally agreed that one way to achieve a long life was not to have a meal with her Ladyship. The jewellery of one hand alone carried enough poison to inhume a small town. She was stunningly beautiful, but with the kind of calculated beauty that is achieved by a team of skilled artists, manicurists, plasterers, corsetiers and dressmakers and three hours’ solid work every morning. When she walked there was a faint squeak of whalebone under incredible stress. The boys were learning. As she talked they didn’t watch her figure. They watched her fingers. “And thus,” she said, “let us consider the position before the founding of the Guild. In this city, and indeed in many places elsewhere, civilisation is nurtured and progresses by the dynamic interplay of interests among many large and powerful advantage cartels. “In the days before the founding of the Guild the seeking of advancement among these consortia invariably resulted in regrettable disagreements which were terminated with extreme prejudice. These were extremely deleterious to the common interest of the city. Please understand that where disharmony rules, commerce flags. “And yet, and yet.” She clasped her hands to her bosom. There was a creak like a galleon beating against a gale. “Clearly there was a need for an extreme yet responsible means of settling irreconcilable differences,” she went on, “and thus was laid the groundwork for the Guild. What bliss - “ the sudden peak in her voice guiltily jerked several dozen young men out of their private reveries - “it must have been to have been present in those early days, when men of stout moral purpose set out to forge the ultimate political tool short of warfare. How fortunate you are now, in training for a guild which demands so much in terms of manners, deportment, bearing and esoteric skills, and yet offers a power once the preserve only of the gods. Truly, the world is the mollusc of your choice . . .” Chidder translated much of this behind the stables during the dinner break. “I know what Terminate with Extreme Prejudice means,” said Cheesewright loftily. “It means to inhume with an axe.” “It bloody well doesn’t,” said Chidder. “How do you know, then?” “My family have been in commerce for years,” said Chidder. “Huh,” said Cheesewright. “Commerce.” Chidder never went into details about what kind of commerce it was. It had something to do with moving items around and supplying needs, but exactly what items and which needs was never made clear. After hitting Cheesewright he explained carefully that Terminate with Extreme Prejudice did not simply require that the victim was inhumed, preferably in an extremely thorough way, but that his associates and employees were also intimately involved, along with the business premises, the building, and a large part of the surrounding neighbourhood, so that everyone involved would know that the man had been unwise enough to make the kind of enemies who could get very angry and indiscriminate. “Gosh,” said Arthur. “Oh, that’s nothing,” said Chidder, “one Hogswatchnight my grandad and his accounts department went and had a high-level business conference with the Hubside people and fifteen bodies were never found. Very bad, that sort of thing. Upsets the business community.” “All the business community, or just that part of it floating face down in the river?” said Teppic. “That’s the point. Better it should be like this,” said Chidder, shaking his head. “You know. Clean. That’s why my father said I should join the Guild. I mean, you’ve got to get on with the business these days, you can’t spend your whole time on public relations.” The end of the crossbow trembled. He liked everything else about the school, the climbing, the music studies, the broad education. It was the fact that you ended up killing people that had been preying on his mind. He’d never killed anyone. That’s the whole point, he told himself. This is where everyone finds out if you can, including you. If I get it wrong now, I’m dead. In his corner, Mericet began to hum a discouraging little tune. There was a price the Guild paid for its licence. It saw to it that there were no careless, half-hearted or, in a manner of speaking, murderously inefficient assassins. You never met anyone who’d failed the test. People did fail. You just never met them. Maybe there was one under there, maybe it was Chidder, even, or Snoxall or any one of the lads. They were all doing the run this evening. Maybe if he failed he’d be bundled under there. Teppic tried to sight on the recumbent figure. “Ahem,” coughed the examiner. His throat was dry. Panic rose like a drunkard’s supper. His teeth wanted to chatter. His spine was freezing, his clothes a collection of damp rags. The world slowed down. No. He wasn’t going to. The sudden decision hit him like a brick in a dark alley, and was nearly as surprising. It wasn’t that he hated the Guild, or even particularly disliked Mericet, but this wasn’t the way to test anyone. It was just wrong. He decided to fail. Exactly what could the old man do about it, here? And he’d fail with flair. He turned to face Mericet, looked peacefully into the examiner’s eyes, extended his crossbow hand in some vague direction to his right, and pulled the trigger. There was a metallic twang. There was a click as the bolt ricocheted off a nail in the window sill. Mericet ducked as it whirred over his head. It hit a torch bracket on the wall, and went past Teppic’s white face purring like a maddened cat. There was a thud as it hit the blanket, and then silence. “Thank you, Mr Teppic. If you could bear with me just one moment.” The old assassin pored over his clipboard, his lips moving. He took the pencil, which dangled from it by a bit of frayed string, and made a few marks on a piece of pink paper. “I will not ask you to take it from my hands,” he said, “what with one thing and another. I shall leave it on the table by the door.” It wasn’t a particularly pleasant smile: it was thin and dried-up, a smile with all the warmth long ago boiled out of it; people normally smiled like that when they had been dead for about two years under the broiling desert sun. But at least you felt he was making the effort. Teppic hadn’t moved. “I’ve passed?” he said. “That would appear to be the case.” “But-” “I am sure you know that we are not allowed to discuss the test with pupils. However, I can tell you that I personally do not approve of these modern flashy techniques. Good morning to you.” And Mericet stalked out. Teppic tottered over to the dusty table by the door and looked down, horrified, at the paper. Sheer habit made him extract a pair of tweezers from his pouch in order to pick it up. It was genuine enough. There was the seal of the Guild on it, and the crabbed squiggle that was undoubtedly Mericet’s signature; he’d seen it often enough, generally at the bottom of test papers alongside comments like 3/10. See me. He padded over to the figure on the bed and pulled back the blanket. It was nearly one in the morning. Ankh-Morpork was just beginning to make a night of it. It had been dark up above the rooftops, in the aerial world of thieves and assassins. But down below the life of the city flowed through the streets like a tide. Teppic walked through the throng in a daze. Anyone else who tried that in the city was asking for a guided tour of the bottom of the river, but he was wearing assassin’s black and the crowd just automatically opened in front of him and closed behind. Even the pickpockets kept away. You never knew what you might find. He wandered aimlessly through the gates of the Guild House and sat down on a black marble seat, with his chin on his knuckles. The fact was that his life had come to an end. He hadn’t thought about what was going to happen next. He hadn’t dared to think that there was going to be a next. Someone tapped him on the shoulder. As he turned, Chidder sat down beside him and wordlessly produced a slip of pink paper. “Snap,” he said. “You passed too?” said Teppic. Chidder grinned. “No problem,” he said. “It was Nivor. No problem. He gave me a bit of trouble on the Emergency Drop, though. How about you?” “Hmm? Oh. No.” Teppic tried to get a grip on himself. “No trouble,” he said. “Heard from any of the others?” “No.” Chidder leaned back. “Cheesewright will make it,” he said loftily, “and young Arthur. I don’t think some of the others will. We could give them twenty minutes, what do you say?” Teppic turned an agonised face towards him. “Chiddy, I- “What?” “When it came to it, I- “What about it?” Teppic looked at the cobbles. “Nothing,” he said. “You’re lucky - you just had a good airy run over the rooftops. I had the sewers and then up the garderobe in the Haberdashers’ Tower. I had to go in and change when I got here.” “You had a dummy, did you?” said Teppic. “Good grief, didn’t you?” “But they let us think it was going to be real!” Teppic wailed. “It felt real, didn’t it?” “Yes!” “Well, then. And you passed. So no problem.” “But didn’t you wonder who might be under the blanket, who it was, and why- “I was worried that I might not do it properly,” Chidder admitted. “But then I thought, well, it’s not up to me.” “But I- “ Teppic stopped. What could he do? Go and explain? Somehow that didn’t seem a terribly good idea. His friend slapped him on the back. “Don’t worry about it!” he said. “We’ve done it!” And Chidder held up his thumb pressed against the first two fingers of his right hand, in the ancient salute of the assassins. A thumb pressed against two fingers, and the lean figure of Dr Cruces, head tutor, looming over the startled boys. “We do not murder,” he said. It was a soft voice; the doctor never raised his voice, but he had a way of giving it the pitch and spin that could make it be heard through a hurricane. “We do not execute. We do not massacre. We never, you may be very certain, we never torture. We have no truck with crimes of passion or hatred or pointless gain. We do not do it for a delight in inhumation, or to feed some secret inner need, or for petty advantage or for some cause or belief; I tell you, gentlemen, that all these reasons are in the highest degree suspect. Look into the face of a man who will kill you for a belief and your nostrils will snuff up the scent of abomination. Hear a speech declaring a holy war and, I assure you, your ears should catch the click of evil’s scales and the dragging of its monstrous tail over the purity of the language. “No, we do it for the money. “And, because we above all must know the value of a human life, we do it for the a great deal of money. “There can be few cleaner motives, so shorn of all pretence. “Nil mortifi, sine lucre. Remember. No killing without payment.” He paused for a moment. “And always give a receipt,” he added.   “So it’s all okay,” said Chidder. Teppic nodded gloomily. That was what was so likeable about Chidder. He had this enviable ability to avoid thinking seriously about anything he did. A figure approached cautiously through the open gates.* (* The gates of the Assassins’ Guild were never shut. This was said to be because Death was open for business all the time, but it was really because the hinges had rusted centuries before and no-one had got around to doing anything about it.) The light from the torch in the porters’ lodge glinted off blond curly hair. “You two made it, then,” said Arthur, nonchalantly flourishing the slip. Arthur had changed quite a lot in seven years. The continuing failure of the Great Orm to wreak organic revenge for lack of piety had cured him of his tendency to run everywhere with his coat over his head. His small size gave him a natural advantage in those areas of the craft involving narrow spaces. His innate aptitude for channelled violence had been revealed on the day when Fliemoe and some cronies had decided it would be fun to toss the new boys in a blanket, and picked Arthur first; ten seconds later it had taken the combined efforts of every boy in the dormitory to hold Arthur back and prise the remains of the chair from his fingers. It had transpired that he was the son of the late Johan Ludorum, one of the greatest assassins in the history of the Guild. Sons of dead assassins always got a free scholarship. Yes, it could be a caring profession at times. There hadn’t been any doubt about Arthur passing. He’d been given extra tuition and was allowed to use really complicated poisons. He was probably going to stay on for post-graduate work. They waited until the gongs of the city struck two. Clock work was not a precise technology in Ankh-Morpork, and many of the city’s variuos communities had their own ideas of what constituted an hour in any case, so the chimes went on bouncing around the rooftops for five minutes. When it was obvious that the city’s consensus was in favour of it being well past two the three of them stopped looking silently at their shoes. “Well, that’s it,” said Chidder. “Poor old Cheesewright,” said Arthur. “It’s tragic, when you think about it.” “Yes, he owed me fourpence,” agreed Chidder. “Come on. I’ve arranged something for us.”   King Teppicymon XXVII got out of bed and clapped his hands over his ears to shut out the roar of the sea. It was strong tonight. It was always louder when he was feeling out of sorts. He needed something to distract himself. He could send for Ptraci, his favourite handmaiden. She was special. Her singing always cheered him up. Life seemed so much brighter when she stopped. Or there was the sunrise. That was always comforting. It was pleasant to sit wrapped in a blanket on the topmost roof of the palace, watching the mists lift from the river as the golden flood poured over the land. You got that warm, contented feeling of another job well done. Even if you didn’t actually know how you’d done it . . . He got up, shuffled on his slippers, and padded out of his bedroom and down the wide corridor that led to the huge spiral stairs and the roof. A few rushlights illuminated the statues of the other local gods, painting the walls with shifting shadow pictures of things dog-headed, fish-bodied, spider-armed. He’d known them since childhood. His juvenile nightmares would have been quite formless without them. The sea. He’d only seen it once, when he was a boy. He couldn’t recall a lot about it, except the size. And the noise. And the seagulls. They’d preyed on his mind. They seemed to have it far better worked out, seagulls. He wished he could come back as one, one day, but of course that wasn’t an option if you were a pharaoh. You never came back. You didn’t exactly go away, in fact.   “Well, what is it?” said Teppic. “Try it,” said Chidder, “just try it. You’ll never have the chance again.” “Seems a shame to spoil it,” said Arthur gallantly looking down at the delicate pattern on his plate. “What are all the little red things?” “They’re just radishes,” said Chidder dismissively. “They’re not the important part. Go on.” Teppic reached over with the little wooden fork and skewered a paper-thin sliver of white fish. The squishi chef was scrutinising him with the air of one watching a toddler on his first birthday. So, he realised, was the rest of the restaurant. He chewed it carefully. It was salty and faintly rubbery, with a hint of sewage outfall. “Nice?” said Chidder anxiously. Several nearby diners started to clap. “Different,” Teppic conceded, chewing. “What is it?” “Deep sea blowfish,” said Chidder. “It’s all right,” he said hastily as Teppic laid down his fork meaningfully, “it’s perfectly safe provided every bit of stomach, liver and digestive tract is removed, that’s why it cost so much, there’s no such thing as a second-best blowfish chef, it’s the most expensive food in the world, people write poems about it-” “Could be a taste explosion,” muttered Teppic, getting a grip on himself. Still, it must have been done properly, otherwise the place would now be wearing him as wallpaper. He poked carefully at the sliced roots which occupied the rest of the plate. “What do these do to you?” he said. “Well, unless they’re prepared in exactly the right way over a six-week period they react catastrophically with your stomach acids,” said Chidder. “Sorry. I thought we should celebrate with the most expensive meal we could afford.” “I see. Fish and chips for Men,” said Teppic. “Do they have any vinegar in this place?” said Arthur, his mouth full. “And some mushy peas would go down a treat.” But the wine was good. Not incredibly good, though. Not one of the great vintages. But it did explain why Teppic had gone through the whole of the day with a headache. It had been the hangunder. His friend had bought four bottles of otherwise quite ordinary white wine. The reason it was so expensive was that the grapes it was made from hadn’t actually been planted yet.* (* Counterwise wine is made from grapes belonging to that class of flora - reannuals - that grow only in excessively high magic fields. Normal plants grow after the seeds have been planted, with reannuals it’s the other way round. Although reannual wine causes inebriation in the normal way, the action of the digestive system on its molecules causes an unusual reaction whose net effect is to thrust the ensuing hangover backwards in time, to a point some hours before the wine is drunk. Hence the saying: have a hair of the dog that’s going to bite you.   Light moves slowly, lazily on the Disc. It’s in no hurry to get anywhere. Why bother? At lightspeed, everywhere is the same place. King Teppicymon XXVII watched the golden disc float over the edge of the world. A flight of cranes took off from the mist-covered river. He’d been conscientious, he told himself. No-one had ever explained to him how one made the sun come up and the river flood and the corn grow. How could they? He was the god, after all. He should know. But he didn’t, so he’d just gone through life hoping like hell that it would all work properly, and that seemed to have done the trick. The trouble was, though, that if it didn’t work, he wouldn’t know why not. A recurrent nightmare was of Dios the high priest shaking him awake one morning, only it wouldn’t be a morning, of course, and of every light in the palace burning and an angry crowd muttering in the star-lit darkness outside and everyone looking expectantly at him. . . And all he’d be able to say was, “Sorry”. It terrified him. How easy to imagine the ice forming on the river, the eternal frost riming the palm trees and snapping off the leaves (which would smash when they hit the frozen ground) and the birds dropping lifeless from the sky Shadow swept over him. He looked up through eyes misted with tears at a grey and empty horizon, his mouth dropping open in horror. He stood up, flinging aside the blanket, and raised both hands in supplication. But the sun had gone. He was the god, this was his job, it was the only thing he was here to do, and he had failed the people. Now he could hear in his mind’s ear the anger of the crowd, a booming roar that began to fill his ears until the rhythm became insistent and familiar, until it reached the point where it pressed in no longer but drew him out, into that salty blue desert where the sun always shone and sleek shapes wheeled across the sky. The pharaoh raised himself on his toes, threw back his head, spread his wings. And leapt. As he soared into the sky he was surprised to hear a thump behind him. And the sun came out from behind the clouds. Later on, the pharaoh felt awfully embarrassed about it.   The three new assassins staggered slowly along the street, constantly on the point of falling over but never quite reaching it, trying to sing “A Wizard’s Staff Has A Knob On The End” in harmony or at least in the same key. “Tis big an” i”ss round an” weighs three to the-” sang Chidder. “Blast, what’ve I stepped in?” “Anyone know where we are?” said Arthur. “We - we were headed for the Guildhouse,” said Teppic, “only must of took the wrong way, that’s the river up ahead. Can smell it.” Caution penetrated Arthur’s armour of alcohol. “Could be dangerous pep - plep - people around, this time o’ night,” he hazarded. “Yep,” said Chidder, with satisfaction, “us. Got ticket to prove it. Got test and everything. Like to see anyone try anything with us.” “Right,” agreed Teppic, leaning against him for support of a sort. “We’ll slit them from wossname to thingy.” “Right!” They lurched uncertainly out on to the Brass Bridge. In fact there were dangerous people around in the pre-dawn shadows, and currently these were some twenty paces behind them. The complex system of criminal Guilds had not actually made Ankh-Morpork a safer place, it just rationalised its dangers and put them on a regular and reliable footing. The major Guilds policed the city with more thoroughness and certainly more success than the old Watch had ever managed, and it was true that any freelance and unlicensed thief caught by the Thieves’ Guild would soon find himself remanded in custody by social inquiry reports plus having his knees nailed together*. (* When the Thieves’ Guild declared a General Strike in the Year of the Engaging Sloth, the actual level of crime doubled.) However, there were always a few spirits who would venture a precarious living outside the lawless, and the five men of this description were closing cautiously on the trio to introduce them to this week’s special offer, a cut throat plus theft and burial in the river mud of your choice. People normally keep out of the way of assassins because of an instinctive feeling that killing people for very large sums of money is disapproved of by the gods (who generally prefer people to be killed for very small sums of money or for free) and could result in hubris, which is the judgement of the gods. The gods are great believers in justice, at least as far as it extends to humans, and have been known to dispense it so enthusiastically that people miles away are turned into cruet. However, assassin’s black doesn’t frighten everyone, and in certain sections of society there is a distinct cachet in killing an assassin. It’s rather like smashing a sixer in conkers. Broadly, therefore, the three even now lurching across the deserted planks of the Brass Bridge were dead drunk assassins and the men behind them were bent on inserting the significant comma. Chidder wandered into one of the heraldic wooden hippopotami* (*One of the two** legends about the founding of Ankh-Morpork relates that the two orphaned brothers who built the city were in fact found and suckled by a hippopotamus (lit. orijeple, although some historians hold that this is a mistranslation of orejaple, a type of glass-fronted drinks cabinet). Eight heraldic hippos line the bridge facing out to sea,. It is said that if danger ever threatens the city, they will run away. (**The other legend, not normally recounted by the citizens, is that at an even earlier time a group of wise men survived a flood sent by the gods by building a huge boat, and on this boat they took two of every type of animal then existing on the Disc. After some weeks the combined manure was beginning to weigh the boat low in the water so - the story runs - they tipped it over the side, and called it Ankh-Morpork.) -that lined the seaward edge of the bridge, bounced off and flopped over the parapet. “Feel sick,” he announced. “Feel free,” said Arthur, “that’s what the river’s for.” Teppic sighed. He was attached to rivers, which he felt were designed to have water lilies on top and crocodiles underneath, and the Ankh always depressed him because if you put a water lily in it, it would dissolve. It drained the huge silty plains all the way to the Ramtop mountains, and by the time it had passed through Ankh-Morpork, pop. One million, it could only be called a liquid because it moved faster than the land around it; actually being sick in it would probably make it, on average, marginally cleaner. He stared down at the thin trickle that oozed between the central pillars, and then raised his gaze to the grey horizon. “Sun’s coming up,” he announced. “Don’t remember eating that,” muttered Chidder. Teppic stepped back, and a knife ripped past his nose and buried itself in the buttocks of the hippo next to him. Five figures stepped out of the mists. The three assassins instinctively drew together. “You come near me, you’ll really regret it,” moaned Chidder, clutching his stomach. “The cleaning bill will be horrible.” “Well now, what have we here?” said the leading thief. This is the sort of thing that gets said in these circumstances. “Thieves’ Guild, are you?” said Arthur. “No,” said the leader, “we’re the small and unrepresentative minority that gets the rest a bad name. Give us your valuables and weapons, please. This won’t make any difference to the outcome, you understand. It’s just that corpse robbing is unpleasant and degrading.” “We could rush them,” said Teppic, uncertainly. “Don’t look at me,” said Arthur, “I couldn’t find my arse with an atlas.” “You’ll really be sorry when I’m sick,” said Chidder. Teppic was aware of the throwing knives stuffed up either sleeve, and that the chances of him being able to get hold of one in time still to be alive to throw it were likely to be very small. At times like this religious solace is very important. He turned and looked towards the sun, just as it withdrew from the cloudbanks of the dawn. There was a tiny dot in the centre of it.   The late King Teppicymon XXVII opened his eyes. “I was flying,” he whispered, “I remember the feeling of wings. What am I doing here?” He tried to stand up. There was a temporary feeling of heaviness, which suddenly dropped away so that he rose to his feet almost without any effort. He looked down to see what had caused it. “Oh dear,” he said. The culture of the river kingdom had a lot to say about death and what happened afterwards. In fact it had very little to say about life, regarding it as a sort of inconvenient prelude to the main event and something to be hurried through as politely as possible, and therefore the pharaoh reached the conclusion that he was dead very quickly. The sight of his mangled body on the sand below him played a major part in this. There was a greyness about everything. The landscape had a ghostly look, as though he could walk straight through it. Of course, he thought, I probably can. He rubbed the analogue of his hands. Well, this is it. This is where it gets interesting; this is where I start to really live. Behind him a voice said, GOOD MORNING. The king turned. “Hallo,” he said. “You’d be-” DEATH, said Death. The king looked surprised. “I understood that Death came as a three-headed giant scarab beetle,” he said. Death shrugged. WELL. NOW YOU KNOW. “What’s that thing in your hand?” THIS? IT’S A SCYTHE. “Strange-looking object, isn’t it?” said the pharaoh. “I thought Death carried the Flail of Mercy and the Reaping Hook of Justice.” Death appeared to think about this. WHAT IN? he said. “Pardon?” ARE WE STILL TALKING ABOUT A GIANT BEETLE? “Ah. In his mandibles, I suppose. But I think he’s got arms in one of the frescoes in the palace.” The king hesitated. “Seems a bit silly, really, now I come to tell someone. I mean, a giant beetle with arms. And the head of an ibis, I seem to recall.” Death sighed. He was not a creature of Time, and therefore past and future were all one to him, but there had been a period when he’d made an effort to appear in whatever form the client expected. This foundered because it was usually impossible to know what the client was expecting until after they were dead. And then he’d decided that, since no-one ever really expected to die anyway, he might as well please himself and he’d henceforth stuck to the familiar black-cowled robe, which was neat and very familiar and acceptable everywhere, like the best credit cards. “Anyway,” said the pharaoh, “I expect we’d better be going.” WHERE TO? “Don’t you know?” I AM HERE ONLY TO SEE THAT YOU DIE AT THE APPOINTED TIME. WHAT HAPPENS NEXT IS UP TO YOU. “Well . . .” The king automatically scratched his chin. “I suppose I have to wait until they’ve done all the preparations and so forth. Mummified me. And built a bloody pyramid. Um. Do I have to hang around here to wait for all that?” I ASSUME SO. Death clicked his fingers and a magnificent white horse ceased its grazing on some of the garden greenery and trotted towards him. “Oh. Well, I think I shall look away. They take all the squishy inside bits out first, you know.” A look of faint worry crossed his face. Things that had seemed perfectly sensible when he was alive seemed a little suspect now that he was dead. “It’s to preserve the body so that it may begin life anew in the Netherworld,” he added, in a slightly perplexed voice. “And then they wrap you in bandages. At least that seems logical.” He rubbed his nose. “But then they put all this food and drink in the pyramid with you. Bit weird, really.” WHERE ARE ONE’S INTERNAL ORGANS AT THIS POINT? “That’s the funny thing, isn’t it? They’re in a jar in the next room,” said the king, his voice edged with doubt. “We even put a damn great model cart in dad’s pyramid.” His frown deepened. “Solid wood, it was,” he said, half to himself, “with gold leaf all over it. And four wooden bullocks to pull it. Then we whacked a damn great stone over the door . . .” He tried to think, and found that it was surprisingly easy. New ideas were pouring into his mind in a cold, clear stream. They had to do with the play of light on the rocks, the deep blue of the sky, the manifold possibilities of the world that stretched away on every side of him. Now that he didn’t have a body to importune him with its insistent demands the world seemed full of astonishments, but unfortunately among the first of them was the fact that much of what you thought was true now seemed as solid and reliable as marsh gas. And also that, just as he was fully equipped to enjoy the world, he was going to be buried inside a pyramid. When you die, the first thing you lose is your life. The next thing is your illusions. I CAN SEE YOU HAVE GOT A LOT TO THINK ABOUT, said Death, mounting up. AND NOW, IF YOU’LL EXCUSE ME- “Hang on a moment-” YES? “When I . . . fell, I could have sworn that I was flying.” THAT PART OF YOU THAT WAS DIVINE DID FLY, NATURALLY. YOU ARE NOW FULLY MORTAL. “Mortal?” TAKE IT FROM ME. I KNOW ABOUT THESE THINGS. “Oh. Look, there’s quite a few questions I’d like to ask-” THERE ALWAYS ARE. I’M SORRY. Death clapped his heels to his horse’s flanks, and vanished. The king stood there as several servants came hurrying along the palace wall, slowed down as they approached his corpse, and advanced with caution. “Are you all right, O jewelled master of the sun?” one of them ventured. “No, I’m not,” snapped the king, who was having some of his basic assumptions about the universe severely raffled, and that never puts anyone in a good mood. “I’m by way of being dead just at the moment. Amazing, isn’t it,” he added bitterly. “Can you hear us, O divine bringer of the morning?” inquired the other servant, tiptoeing closer. “I’ve just fallen off a hundred foot wall on to my head, what do you think?” shouted the king. “I don’t think he can hear us, Jahmet,” said the other servant. “Listen,” said the king, whose urgency was equalled only by the servants’ total inability to hear anything he was saying, “you must find my son and tell him to forget about the pyramid business, at least until I’ve thought about it a bit, there are one or two points which seem a little self-contradictory about the whole afterlife arrangements, and-” “Shall I shout?” said Jahmet. “I don’t think you can shout loud enough. I think he’s dead.” Jahmet looked down at the stiffening corpse. “Bloody hell,” he said eventually. “Well, that’s tomorrow up the spout for a start.” The sun, unaware that it was making its farewell performance, continued to drift smoothly above the rim of the world. And out of it, moving faster than any bird should be able to fly, a seagull bore down on Ankh-Morpork, on the Brass Bridge and eight still figures, on one staring face . Seagulls were common enough in Ankh. But as this one flew over the group it uttered one long, guttural scream that caused three of the thieves to drop their knives. Nothing with feathers ought to have been able to make a noise like that. It had claws in it. The bird wheeled in a tight circle and fluttered to a perch on a convenient wooden hippo, where it glared at the group with mad red eyes. The leading thief tore his fascinated gaze away from it just as he heard Arthur say, quite pleasantly, “This is a number two throwing knife. I got ninety-six per cent for throwing knives. Which eyeball don’t you need?” The leader stared at him. As far as the other young assassins were concerned, he noticed, one was still staring fixedly at the seagull while the other was busy being noisily sick over the parapet. “There’s only one of you,” he said. “There’s five of us. “But soon there will only be four of you,” said Arthur. Moving slowly, like someone in a daze, Teppic reached out his hand to the seagull. With any normal seagull this would have resulted in the loss of a thumb, but the creature hopped on to it with the smug air of the master returning to the old plantation. It seemed to make the thieves increasingly uneasy. Arthur’s smile wasn’t helping either. “That’s a nice bird,” said the leader, in the inanely cheerful tones of the extremely worried. Teppic was dreamily stroking its bullet head. “I think it would be a good idea if you went away,” said Arthur, as the bird shuffled sideways on to Teppic’s wrist. Gripping with webbed feet, thrusting out its wings to maintain its balance, it should have looked clownish but instead looked full of hidden power, as though it was an eagle’s secret identity. When it opened its mouth, revealing a ridiculous purple bird tongue, there was a suggestion that this seagull could do a lot more than menace a seaside tomato sandwich. “Is it magic?” said one of the thieves, and was quickly hushed. “We’ll be going, then,” said the leader, “sorry about the misunderstanding-” Teppic gave him a warm, unseeing smile. Then they all heard the insistent little noise. Six pairs of eyes swivelled around and down; Chidder’s were already in position. Below them, pouring darkly across the dehydrated mud, the Ankh was rising. Dios, First Minister and high priest among high priests, wasn’t a naturally religious man. It wasn’t a desirable quality in a high priest, it affected your judgement, made you unsound. Start believing in things and the whole business became a farce. Not that he had anything against belief. People needed to believe in gods, if only because it was so hard to believe in people. The gods were necessary. He just required that they stayed out of the way and let him get on with things. Mind you, it was a blessing that he had the looks for it. If your genes saw fit to give you a tall frame, a bald head and a nose you could plough rocks with, they probably had a definite aim in mind. He instinctively distrusted people to whom religion came easily. The naturally religious, he felt, were unstable and given to wandering in the desert and having revelations - as if the gods would lower themselves to that sort of thing. And they never got anything done. They started thinking that rituals weren’t important. They started thinking that you could talk to the gods direct. Dios knew, with the kind of rigid and unbending certainty you could pivot the world on, that the gods of Djelibeybi liked ritual as much as anyone else. After all, a god who was against ritual would be like a fish who was against water. He sat on the steps of the throne with his staff across his knees, and passed on the king’s orders. The fact that they were not currently being issued by any king was not a problem. Dios had been high priest now for, well, more years than he cared to remember, he knew quite clearly what orders a sensible king would be giving, and he gave them. Anyway, the Face of the Sun was on the throne, and that was what mattered. It was a solid gold, head-enveloping mask, to be worn by the current ruler on all public occasions; its expression, to the sacrilegious, was one of good-natured constipation. For thousands of years it had symbolised kingship in Djelibeybi. It had also made it very difficult to tell kings apart. This was extremely symbolic as well, although no-one could remember what of. There was a lot of that sort of thing in the Old Kingdom. The staff across his knees, for example, with its very symbolic snakes entwined symbolically around an allegorical camel prod. The people believed this gave the high priests power over the gods and the dead, but this was probably a metaphor, i.e., a lie. Dios shifted position. “Has the king been ushered to the Room of Going Forth?” he said. The circle of lesser high priests nodded. “Dil the embalmer is attending upon him at this instant, O Dios.” “Very well. And the builder of pyramids has been instructed?” Hoot Koomi, high priest of Khefin, the Two-Faced God of Gateways, stepped forward. “I took the liberty of attending to that myself, O Dios,” he purred. Dios tapped his fingers on his staff. “Yes,” he said, “I have no doubt that you did.” It was widely expected by the priesthood that Koomi would be the one to succeed Dios in the event of Dios ever actually dying, although hanging around waiting for Dios to die had never seemed to be a rewarding occupation. The only dissenting opinion was that of Dios himself, who, if he had any friends, would probably have confided in them certain conditions that would need to apply first, viz., blue moons, aerial pigs and he, Dios, being seen in Hell. He would probably have added that the only difference between Koomi and a sacred crocodile was the crocodile’s basic honesty of purpose. “Very well,” he said. “If I may remind your lordship?” said Koomi. The faces of the other priests went a nice safe blank as Dios glared. “Yes, Koomi?” “The prince, O Dios. Has he been summoned?” “No,” said Dios. “Then how will he know?” said Koomi. “He will know,” said Dios firmly. “How will this be?” “He will know. And now you are all dismissed. Go away. See to your gods!” They scurried out, leaving Dios alone on the steps. It had been his accustomed position for so long that he’d polished a groove in the stonework, into which he fitted exactly. Of course the prince would know. It was part of the neatness of things. But in the grooves of his mind, ground deep by the years of ritual and due observance, Dios detected a certain uneasiness. It was not at home in there. Uneasiness was something that happened to other people. He hadn’t got where he was today by allowing room for doubt. Yet there was a tiny thought back there, a tiny certainty, that there was going to be trouble with this new king. Well. The boy would soon learn. They all learned. He shifted position, and winced. The aches and pains were back, and he couldn’t allow that. They got in the way of his duty, and his duty was a sacred trust. He’d have to visit the necropolis again. Tonight. “He’s not himself, you can see that.” “Who is he, then?” said Chidder. They splashed unsteadily down the street, not drunkenly this time, but with the awkward gait of two people trying to do the steering for three. Teppic was walking, but not in a way that gave them any confidence that his mind was having any part of it. Around them doors were being thrown open, curses were being cursed, there was the sound of furniture being dragged up to first-floor rooms. “Must have been a hell of a storm up in the mountains,” said Arthur. “It doesn’t usually flood like this even in the spring.” “Maybe we should burn some feathers under his nose,” suggested Chidder. “That bloody seagull would be favourite,” Arthur growled. “What seagull?” “You saw it.” “Well, what about it?” “You did see it, didn’t you?” Uncertainty flickered its dark flame in Arthur’s eyes. The seagull had disappeared in all the excitement. “My attention was a bit occupied,” said Chidder diffidently. “It must have been those mint wafers they served with the coffee. I thought they were a bit off.” “Definitely a touch eldritch, that bird,” said Arthur. “Look, let’s put him down somewhere while I empty the water out of my boots, can we?” There was a bakery nearby, its doors thrown open so that the trays of new loaves could cool in the early morning. They propped Teppic against the wall. “He looks as though someone hit him on the head,” said Chidder. “No-one did, did they?” Arthur shook his head. Teppic’s face was locked in a gentle grin. Whatever his eyes were focused on wasn’t occupying the usual set of dimensions. “We ought to get him back to the Guild and into the san-” He stopped. There was a peculiar rustling sound behind him. The loaves of bread were bouncing gently on their trays. One or two of them vibrated on to the floor, where they spun around like overturned beetles. Then, their crusts cracking open like eggshells, they sprouted hundreds of green shoots. Within a few seconds the trays were waving stands of young corn, their heads already beginning to fill out and bend over. Through them marched Chidder and Arthur, poker-faced, doing the 100-metre nonchalant walk with Teppic held rigidly between them. “Is it him doing all this?” “I’ve got a feeling that-” Arthur looked behind them, just in case any angry bakers had come out and spotted such aggressively wholemeal produce, and stopped so suddenly that the other two swung around him, like a rudder. They looked thoughtfully at the street. “Not something you see every day, that,” said Chidder at last. “You mean the way there’s grass and stuff growing up everywhere he puts his feet?” “Yes.” Their eyes met. As one, they looked down at Teppic’s shoes. He was already ankle-deep in greenery, which was cracking the centuries-old cobbles in its urgency. Without speaking a word, they gripped his elbows and lifted him into the air. “The san,” said Arthur. “The san,” agreed Chidder. But they both knew, even then, that this was going to involve more than a hot poultice.   The doctor sat back. “Fairly straightforward,” he said, thinking quickly. “A case of mortis portalis tackulatum with complications.” “What’s that mean?” said Chidder. “In layman’s terms,” the doctor sniffed, “he’s as dead as a doornail.” “What are the complications?” The doctor looked shifty. “He’s still breathing,” he said. “Look, his pulse is nearly humming and he’s got a temperature you could fry eggs on.” He hesitated, aware that this was probably too straightforward and easily understood; medicine was a new art on the Disc, and wasn’t going to get anywhere if people could understand it. “Pyrocerebrum ouerf culinaire,” he said, after working it out in his head. “Well, what can you do about it?” said Arthur. “Nothing. He’s dead. All the medical tests prove it. So, er . . . bury him, keep him nice and cool, and tell him to come and see me next week. In daylight, for preference.” “But he’s still breathing!” “These are just reflex actions that might easily confuse the layman,” said the doctor airily. Chidder sighed. He suspected that the Guild, who after all had an unrivalled experience of sharp knives and complex organic compounds, was much better at elementary diagnostics than were the doctors. The Guild might kill people, but at least it didn’t expect them to be grateful for it. Teppic opened his eyes. “I must go home,” he said. “Dead, is he?” said Chidder. The doctor was a credit to his profession. “It’s not unusual for a corpse to make distressing noises after death,” he said valiantly, “which can upset relatives and-” Teppic sat bolt upright. “Also, muscular spasms in the stiffening body can in certain circumstances-” the doctor began, but his heart wasn’t in it any more. Then an idea occurred to him. “It’s a rare and mysterious ailment,” he said, “which is going around a lot at the moment. It’s caused by a - a - by some- thing so small it can’t be detected in any way whatsoever,” he finished, with a self-congratulatory smile on his face. It was a good one, he had to admit. He’d have to remember it. “Thank you very much,” said Chidder, opening the door and ushering him through. “Next time we’re feeling really well, we’ll definitely call you in.” “It’s probably a walrus,” said the doctor, as he was gently but firmly propelled out of the room. “He’s caught a walrus, there’s a lot of it going-” The door slammed shut. Teppic swung his legs off the bed and clutched at his head. “I’ve got to go home,” he repeated. “Why?” said Arthur. “Don’t know. The kingdom wants me.” “You seemed to be taken pretty bad there-” Arthur began. Teppic waved his hands dismissively. “Look,” he said, “please, I don’t want anyone sensibly pointing out things. I don’t want anyone telling me I should rest. None of it matters. I will be back in the kingdom as soon as possible. It’s not a case of must, you understand. I will. And you can help me, Chiddy.” “How?” “Your father has an extremely fast vessel he uses for smuggling,” said Teppic flatly. “He will lend it to me, in exchange for favourable consideration of future trading opportunities. If we leave inside the hour, it will do the journey in plenty of time.” “My father is an honest trader!” “On the contrary. Seventy per cent of his income last year was from undeclared trading in the following commodities-” Teppic’s eyes stared into nothingness - “From illegal transport of gullanes and leuchars, nine per cent. From night-running of untaxed-” “Well, thirty per cent honest,” Chidder admitted, “which is a lot more honest than most. You’d better tell me how you know. Extremely quickly.” “I - don’t know,” said Teppic. “When I was . . . asleep, it seemed I knew everything. Everything about everything. I think my father is dead.” “Oh,” said Chidder. “Gosh, I’m sorry.” “Oh, no. It’s not like that. It’s what he would have wanted. I think he was rather looking forward to it. In our family, death is when you really start to, you know, enjoy life. I expect he’s rather enjoying it.” In fact the pharaoh was sitting on a spare slab in the ceremonial preparation room watching his own soft bits being carefully removed from his body and put into the special Canopic jars. This is not a sight often seen by people - at least, not by people in a position to take a thoughtful interest. He was rather upset. Although he was no longer officially inhabiting his body he was still attached to it by some sort of occult bond, and it is hard to be very happy at seeing two artisans up to the elbows in bits of you. The jokes aren’t funny, either. Not when you are, as it were, the butt. “Look, master Dil,” said Gern, a plump, red-faced young man who the king had learned was the new apprentice. “uk. . . hght. . . watch this, watch this.. . hgk.. your name in lights. Get it? Your name in lights, see?” “Just put them in the jar, boy,” said Dil wearily. “And while we’re on the subject I didn’t think much of the Gottle of Geer routine, either.” “Sorry, master.” “And pass me over a number three brain hook while you’re up that end, will you?” “Coming right up, master,” said Gern. “And don’t jog me. This is a fiddly bit.” “Sure thing.” The king craned nearer. Gern rummaged around at his end of the job and then gave a long, low whistle. “Will you look at the colour of this!” he said. “You wouldn’t think so, would you? Is it something they eat, master?” Dil sighed. “Just put it in the pot, Gern.” “Right you are, master. Master?” “Yes, lad?” “Which bit’s got the god in it, master?” Dil squinted up the king’s nostril, trying to concentrate. “That gets sorted out before he comes down here,” he said patiently. “I wondered,” said Gern, “because there’s not a jar for it, see.” “No. There wouldn’t be. It’d have to be a rather strange jar, Gern.” Gern looked a bit disappointed. “Oh,” he said, “so he’s just ordinary, then, is he?” “In a strictly organic sense,” said Dil, his voice slightly muffled. “Our mum said he was all right as a king,” said Gern. “What do you think?” Dil paused with a jar in his hand, and seemed to give the conversation some thought for the first time. “Never think about it until they come down here,” he said. “I suppose he was better than most. Nice pair of lungs. Clean kidneys. Good big sinuses, which is what I always look for in a king.” He looked down, and delivered his professional judgement. “Pleasure to work with, really.” “Our mum said his heart was in the right place,” said Gern. The king, hovering dismally in the corner, gave a gloomy nod. Yes, he thought. Jar three, top shelf. Dil wiped his hands on a rag, and sighed. Possibly thirty-five years in the funeral business, which had given him a steady hand, a philosophic manner and a keen interest in vegetarianism, had also granted him powers of hearing beyond the ordinary. Because he was almost persuaded that, right beside his ear, someone else sighed too. The king wandered sadly over to the other side of the room, and stared at the dull liquid of the preparation vat. Funny, that. When he was alive it had all seemed so sensible, so obvious. Now he was dead it looked a huge waste of effort. It was beginning to annoy him. He watched Dil and his apprentice tidy up, burn some ceremonial resins, lift him - it - up, carry it respectfully across the room and slide it gently into the oily embrace of the preservative. Teppicymon XXVII gazed into the murky depths at his own body lying sadly on the bottom, like the last pickled gherkin in the jar. He raised his eyes to the sacks in the corner. They were full of straw. He didn’t need telling what was going to be done with it. The boat didn’t glide. It insinuated itself through the water, dancing across the waves on the tips of the twelve oars, spreading like an oil slick, gliding like a bird. It was man black and shaped like a shark. There was no drummer to beat the rhythm. The boat didn’t want the weight. Anyway, he’d have needed the full kit, including snares. Teppic sat between the lines of silent rowers, in the narrow gully that was the cargo hold. Better not to speculate what cargoes. The boat looked designed to move very small quantities of things very quickly and without anyone noticing, and he doubted whether even the Smugglers’ Guild was aware of its existence. Commerce was more interesting than he thought. They found the delta with suspicious ease - how many times had this whispering shadow slipped up the river, he wondered - and above the exotic smells from the mysterious former cargo he could detect the scents of home. Crocodile dung. Reed pollen. Waterlily blossoms. Lack of plumbing. The rank of lions and reek of hippos. The leading oarsman tapped him gently on the shoulder and motioned him up, steadied him as he stepped overboard into a few feet of water. By the time he’d waded ashore the boat had turned and was a mere suspicion of a shadow downstream. Because he was naturally curious, Teppic wondered where it would lie up during the day, since it had the look about it of a boat designed to travel only under cover of darkness, and decided that it’d probably lurk somewhere in the high reed marshes on the delta. And because he was now a king, he made a mental note to have the marshes patrolled periodically from now on. A king should know things. He stopped, ankle deep in river ooze. He had known everything. Arthur had rambled on vaguely about seagulls and rivers and loaves of bread sprouting, which suggested he’d drunk too much. All Teppic could remember was waking up with a terrible sense of loss, as his memory failed to hold and leaked away its new treasures. It was like the tremendous insights that come in dreams and vanish on waking. He’d known everything, but as soon as he tried to remember what it was it poured out of his head, as from a leaky bucket. But it had left him with a new sensation. Before, his life had been ambling along, bent by circumstance. Now it was clicking along on bright rails. Perhaps he hadn’t got it in him to be an assassin, but he knew he could be a king. His feet found solid ground. The boat had dropped him off a little way downstream of the palace and, blue in the moonlight, the pyramid flares on the far bank were filling the night with their familiar glow. The abodes of the happy dead came in all sizes although not, of course, in all shapes. They clustered thickly nearer the city, as though the dead like company. And even the oldest ones were all complete. No-one had borrowed any of the stones to build houses or make roads. Teppic felt obscurely proud of that. No-one had unsealed the doors and wandered around inside to see if the dead had any old treasures they weren’t using any more. And every day, without fail, food was left in the little antechambers; the commissaries of the dead occupied a large part of the palace. Sometimes the food went, sometimes it didn’t. The priests, however, were very clear on this point. Regardless of whether the food was consumed or not, it had been eaten by the dead. Presumably they enjoyed it; they never complained, or came back for seconds. Look after the dead, said the priests, and the dead would look after you. After all, they were in the majority. Teppic pushed aside the reeds. He straightened his clothing, brushed some mud off his sleeve and set off for the palace. Ahead of him, dark against the flarelight, stood the great statue of Khuft. Seven thousand years ago Khuft had led his people out of - Teppic couldn’t remember, but somewhere where they hadn’t liked being, probably, and for thoroughly good reasons; it was at times like this he wished he knew more history - and had prayed in the desert and the gods of the place had shown him the Old Kingdom. And he had entered, yea, and taken possession thereof, that it should ever be the dwelling place of his seed. Something like that, anyway. There were probably more yeas and a few verilys, with added milk and honey. But the sight of that great patriarchal face, that outstretched arm, that chin you could crack stones on, bold in the flarelight, told him what he already knew. He was home, and he was never going to leave again. The sun began to rise.   The greatest mathematician alive on the Disc, and in fact the last one in the Old Kingdom, stretched out in his stall and counted the pieces of straw in his bedding. Then he estimated the number of nails in the wall. Then he spent a few minutes proving that an automorphic resonance field has a semi-infinite number of irresolute prime ideals. After that, in order to pass the time, he ate his breakfast again.     BOOK II The Book of the Dead Two weeks went past. Ritual and ceremony in their due times kept the world under the sky and the stars in their courses. It was astonishing what ritual and ceremony could do. The new king examined himself in the mirror, and frowned. “What’s it made of?” he said. “It’s rather foggy.” “Bronze, sire. Polished bronze,” said Dios, handing him the Flail of Mercy. “In Ankh-Morpork we had glass mirrors with silver on the back. They were very good.” “Yes, sire. Here we have bronze, sire.” “Do I really have to wear this gold mask?” “The Face of the Sun, sire. Handed down through all the ages. Yes, sire. On all public occasions, sire.” Teppic peered out through the eye slots. It was certainly a handsome face. It smiled faintly. He remembered his father visiting the nursery one day and forgetting to take it off; Teppic had screamed the place down. “It’s rather heavy.” “It is weighted with the centuries,” said Dios, and passed over the obsidian Reaping Hook of Justice. “Have you been a priest long, Dios?” “Many years, sire, man and eunuch. Now-” “Father said you were high priest even in grandad’s time. You must be very old.” “Well-preserved, sire. The gods have been kind to me,” said Dios, in the face of the evidence. “And now, sire, if we could just hold this as well . . . “What is it?” “The Honeycomb of Increase, sire. Very important.” Teppic juggled it into position. “I expect you’ve seen a lot of changes,” he said politely. A look of pain passed over the old priest’s face, but quickly, as if it was in a hurry to get away. “No, sire,” he said smoothly, “I have been very fortunate.” “Oh. What’s this?” “The Sheaf of Plenty, sire. Extremely significant, very symbolic.” “If you could just tuck it under my arm, then. . . Have you ever heard of plumbing, Dios?” The priest snapped his fingers at one of the attendants. “No, sire,” he said, and leaned forward. “This is the Asp of Wisdom. I’ll just tuck it in here, shall I?” “It’s like buckets, but not as, um, smelly.” “Sounds dreadful, sire. The smell keeps bad influences away, I have always understood. This, sire, is the Gourd of the Waters of the Heavens. If we could just raise our chin . . .” “This is all necessary, is it?” said Teppic indistinctly. “It is traditional, sire. If we could just rearrange things a little, sire. . . here is the Three-Pronged Spear of the Waters of the Earth; I think we will be able to get this finger around it. We shall have to see about our marriage, sire.” “I’m not sure we would be compatible, Dios.” The high priest smiled with his mouth. “Sire is pleased to jest, sire,” he said urbanely. “However, it is essential that you marry.” “I am afraid all the girls I know are in Ankh-Morpork,” said Teppic airily, knowing in his heart that this broad statement referred to Mrs Collar, who had been his bedder in the sixth form, and one of the serving wenches who’d taken a shine to him and always gave him extra gravy. (But . . . and his blood pounded at the memory.. . there had been the annual Assassins’ Ball and, because the young assassins were trained to move freely in society and were expected to dance well, and because well-cut black silk and long legs attracted a certain type of older woman, they’d whirled the night away through baubons, galliards and slow-stepping pavonines, until the air thickened with musk and hunger. Chidder, whose simple open face and easygoing manner were a winner every time, came back to bed very late for days afterwards and tended to fall asleep during lessons . . “Quite unsuitable, sire. We would require a consort well-versed in the observances. Of course, our aunt is available, sire.” There was a clatter. Dios sighed, and motioned the attendants to pick things up. “If we could just begin again, sire? This is the Cabbage of Vegetative Increase-” “Sorry,” said Teppic, “I didn’t hear you say I should marry my aunt, did I?” “You did, sire. Interfamilial marriage is a proud tradition of our lineage,” said Dios. “But my aunt is my aunt!” Dios rolled his eyes. He’d advised the late king repeatedly about the education of his son, but the man was stubborn, stubborn. Now he’d have to do it on the fly. The gods were testing him, he decided. It took decades to make a monarch, and he had weeks to do it in. “Yes, sire,” he said patiently. “Of course. And she is also your uncle, your cousin and your father.” “Hold on. My father-” The priest raised his hand soothingly. “A technicality,” he said. “Your great-great-grandmother once declared she is king as a matter of political expediency and I don’t believe the edict is ever rescinded.” “But she was a woman, though?” Dios looked shocked. “Oh no, sire. She is a man. She herself declared this.” “But look, a chap’s aunt-” “Quite so, sire. I quite understand.” “Well, thank you,” said Teppic. “It is a great shame that we have no sisters.” “Sisters!” “It does not do to water the divine blood, sire. The sun might not like it. Now this, sire, is the Scapula of Hygiene. Where would you like it put?”   King Teppicymon XXVII was watching himself being stuffed. It was just as well he didn’t feel hunger these days. Certainly he would never want to eat chicken again. “Very nice stitching there, master.” “Just keep your finger still, Gern.” “My mother does stitching like that. She’s got a pinny with stitching like that, has our mum,” said Gern conversationally. “Keep it still, I said.” “It’s got all ducks and hens on it,” Gern supplied helpfully. Dil concentrated on the job in hand. It was good workmanship, he was prepared to admit. The Guild of Embalmers and Allied Trades had awarded him medals for it. “It must make you feel really proud,” said Gern. “What?” “Well, our mam says the king goes on living, sort of thing, after all this stuffing and stitching. Sort of in the Netherworld. With your stitching in him.” And several sacks of straw and a couple of buckets of pitch, thought the shade of the king sadly. And the wrapping off Gern’s lunch, although he didn’t blame the lad, who’d just forgotten where he’d put it. All eternity with someone’s lunch wrapping as part of your vital organs. There had been half a sausage left, too. He’d become quite attached to Dil, and even to Gern. He seemed still to be attached to his body, too - at least, he felt uncomfortable if he wandered more than a few hundred yards away from it - and so in the course of the last couple of days he’d learned quite a lot about them. Funny, really. He’d spent the whole of his life in the kingdom talking to a few priests and so forth. He knew objectively there had been other people around - servants and gardeners and so forth - but they figured in his life as blobs. He was at the top, and then his family, and then the priests and the nobles of course, and then there were the blobs. Damn fine blobs, of course, some of the finest blobs in the world, as loyal a collection of blobs as a king might hope to rule. But blobs, none the less. But now he was absolutely engrossed in the daily details of Dil’s shy hopes for advancement within the Guild, and the unfolding story of Gern’s clumsy overtures to Glwenda, the garlic farmer’s daughter who lived nearby. He listened in fascinated astonishment to the elaboration of a world as full of subtle distinctions of grade and station as the one he had so recently left; it was terrible to think that he might never know if Gern overcame her father’s objections and won his intended, or if Dil’s work on this job - on him - would allow him to aspire to the rank of Exalted Grand Ninety-Degree Variance of the Matron Lodge of the Guild of Embalmers and Allied Trades. It was as if death was some astonishing optical device which turned even a drop of water into a complex hive of life. He found an overpowering urge to counsel Dil on elementary politics, or apprise Gern of the benefits of washing and looking respectable. He tried it several times. They could sense him, there was no doubt about that. But they just put it down to draughts. Now he watched Dil pad over to the big table of bandages, and come back with a thick swatch which he held reflectively against what even the king was now prepared to think of as his corpse. “I think the linen,” he said at last. “It’s definitely his colour.” Gern put his head on one side. “He’d look good in the hessian,” he said. “Or maybe the calico.” “Not the calico. Definitely not the calico. On him it’s too big.” “He could moulder into it. With wear, you know.” Dil snorted. “Wear? Wear? You shouldn’t talk to me about calico and wear. What happens if someone robs the tomb in a thousand years’ time and him in calico, I’d like to know.  He’d lurch halfway down the corridor, maybe throttle one of them, I’ll grant you, but then he’s coming undone, right? The elbows’ll be out in no time, I’ll never live it down.” “But you’ll be dead, master!” “Dead? What’s that got to do with it?” Dil riffled through the samples. “No, it’ll be the hessian. Got plenty of give in it, hessian. Good traction, too. He’ll really be able to lurch up speed in the passages, if he ever needs to.” The king sighed. He’d have preferred something lightweight in taffeta. “And go and shut the door,” Dil added. “It’s getting breezy in here.”   “And now it’s time,” said the high priest, “for us to see our late father.” He allowed himself a quiet smile. “I am sure he is looking forward to it,” he added. Teppic considered this. It wasn’t something he was looking forward to, but at least it would get everyone’s mind off him marrying relatives. He reached down in what he hoped was a kingly fashion to stroke one of the palace cats. This also was not a good move. The creature sniffed it, went cross-eyed with the effort of thought, and then bit his fingers. “Cats are sacred,” said Dios, shocked at the words Teppic uttered. “Long-legged cats with silver fur and disdainful expressions are, maybe,” said Teppic, nursing his hand, “I don’t know about this sort. I’m sure sacred cats don’t leave dead ibises under the bed. And I’m certain that sacred cats that live surrounded by endless sand don’t come indoors and do it in the king’s sandals, Dios.” “All cats are cats,” said Dios, vaguely, and added, “If we would be so gracious as to follow us.” He motioned Teppic towards a distant arch. Teppic followed slowly. He’d been back home for what seemed like ages, and it still didn’t feel right. The air was too dry. The clothes felt wrong. It was too hot. Even the buildings seemed wrong. The pillars, for one thing. Back home, back at the Guild, pillars were gracefull fluted things with little bunches of stone grapes and things around the top. Here they were massive pear-shaped lumps, where all the stone had run to the bottom. Half a dozen servants trailed behind him, carrying the various items of regalia. He tried to imitate Dios’s walk, and found the movements coming back to him. You turned your torso this way, then you turned your head this way, and extended your arms at forty-five degrees to your body with the palms down, and then you attempted to move. The high priest’s staff raised echoes as it touched the flagstones. A blind man could have walked barefoot through the palace by tracing the time-worn dimples it had created over the years. “I am afraid that we will find that our father has changed somewhat since we last saw him,” said Dios conversationally, as they undulated by the fresco of Queen Khaphut accepting Tribute from the Kingdoms of the World. “Well, yes,” said Teppic, bewildered by the tone. “He’s dead, isn’t he?” “There’s that, too,” said Dios, and Teppic realised that he hadn’t been referring to something as trivial as the king’s current physical condition. He was lost in a horrified admiration. It wasn’t that Dios was particularly cruel or uncaring, it was simply that death was a mere irritating transition in the eternal business of existence. The fact that people died was just an inconvenience, like them being out when you called. It’s a strange world, he thought. It’s all busy shadows, and it never changes. And I’m part of it. “Who’s he?” he said, pointing to a particularly big fresco showing a tall man with a hat like a chimney and a beard like a rope riding a chariot over a lot of other, much smaller, people. “His name is in the cartouche below,” said Dios primly. “What?” “The small oval, sire,” said Dios. Teppic peered closely at the dense hieroglyphics. “”Thin eagle, eye, wiggly line, man with a stick, bird sitting down, wiggly line”,” he read. Dios winced. “I believe we must apply ourselves more to the study of modem languages,” he said, recovering a bit. “His name is Pta-ka-ba. He is king when the Djel Empire extends from the Circle Sea to the Rim Ocean, when almost half the continent pays tribute to us.” Teppic realised what it was about the man’s speech that was strange. Dios would bend any sentence to breaking point if it meant avoiding a past tense. He pointed to another fresco. “And her?” he said. “She is Queen Khat-leon-ra-pta,” said Dios. “She wins the kingdom of Howandaland by stealth. This is the time of the Second Empire.” “But she is dead?” said Teppic. “I understand so,” said the high priest, after the slightest of pauses. Yes. The past tense definitely bothered Dios. “I have learned seven languages,” said Teppic, secure in the knowledge that the actual marks he had achieved in three of them would remain concealed in the ledgers of the Guild. “Indeed, sire?” “Oh, yes. Morporkian, Vanglemesht, Ephebe, Laotation and several others . . .” said Teppic. “Ah.” Dios nodded, smiled, and continued to proceed down the corridor, limping slightly but still measuring his pace like the ticking of centuries. “The barbarian lands.” Teppic looked at his father. The embalmers had done a good job. They were waiting for him to tell them so. Part of him, which still lived in Ankh-Morpork, said: this is a dead body, wrapped up in bandages, surely they can’t think that this will help him get better? In Ankh, you die and they bury you or burn you or throw you to the ravens. Here, it just means you slow down a bit and get given all the best food. It’s ridiculous, how can you run a kingdom like this? They seem to think that being dead is like being deaf, you just have to speak up a bit. But a second, older voice said: We’ve run a kingdom like this for seven thousand years. The humblest melon farmer has a lineage that makes kings elsewhere look like mayflies. We used to own the continent, before we sold it again to pay for pyramids. We don’t even think about other countries less than three thousand years old. It all seems to work. “Hallo, father,” he said. The shade of Teppicymon XXVII, which had been watching him closely, hurried across the room. “You’re looking well!” he said. “Good to see you! Look, this is urgent. Please pay attention, it’s about death-” “He says he is pleased to see you,” said Dios. “You can hear him?” said Teppic. “I didn’t hear anything.” “The dead, naturally, speak through the priests,” said the priest. “That is the custom, sire.” “But he can hear me, can he?” “Of course.” “I’ve been thinking about this whole pyramid business and, look, I’m not certain about it.” Teppic leaned closer. “Auntie sends her love,” he said loudly. He thought about this. “That’s my aunt, not yours.” I hope, he added. “I say? I say? Can you hear me?” “He bids you greetings from the world beyond the veil,” said Dios. “Well, yes, I suppose I do, but LOOK, I don’t want you to go to a lot of trouble and build-” “We’re going to build you a marvellous pyramid, father. You’ll really like it there. There’ll be people to look after you and everything.” Teppic glanced at Dios for reassurance. “He’ll like that, won’t he?” “I don’t WANT one!” screamed the king. “There’s a whole interesting eternity I haven’t seen yet. I forbid you to put me in a pyramid!” “He says that is very proper, and you are a dutiful son,” said Dios. “Can you see me? How many fingers am I holding up? Think it’s fun, do you, spending the rest of your death under a million tons of rock, watching yourself crumble to bits? Is that your idea of a good epoch?” “It’s rather draughty in here, sire,” said Dios. “Perhaps we should get on.” “Anyway, you can’t possibly afford it!” “And we’ll put your favourite frescoes and statues in with you. You’ll like that, won’t you,” said Teppic desperately. “All your bits and pieces around you.” “He will like it, won’t be?” he asked Dios, as they walked back to the throne room. “Only, I don’t know, I somehow got a feeling he isn’t too happy about it.” “I assure you, sire,” said Dios, “he can have no other desire.” Back in the embalming room King Teppicymon XXVII tried to tap Gern on the shoulder, which had no effect. He gave up and sat down beside himself. “Don’t do it, lad,” he said bitterly. “Never have descendants.”   And then there was the Great Pyramid itself. Teppic’s footsteps echoed on the marble tiles as he walked around the model. He wasn’t sure what one was supposed to do here. But kings, he suspected, were often put in that position; there was always the good old fallback, which was known as taking an interest. “Well, well,” he said. “How long have you been designing pyramids?” Ptaclusp, architect and jobbing pyramid builder to the nobility, bowed deeply. “All my life, O light of noonday.” “It must be fascinating,” said Teppic. Ptaclusp looked sidelong at the high priest, who nodded. “It has its points, O fount of waters,” he ventured. He wasn’t used to kings talking to him as though he was a human being. He felt obscurely that it wasn’t right. Teppic waved a hand at the model on its podium. “Yes,” he said uncertainly. “Well. Good. Four walls and a pointy tip. Jolly good. First class. Says it all, really.” There still seemed to be too much silence around. He plunged on. “Good show,” he said. “I mean; there’s no doubt about it. This is.. . a. . . pyramid. And what a pyramid it is! Indeed.” This still didn’t seem enough. He sought for something else. “People will look at it in centuries to come and they’ll say, they’ll say . . . that is a pyramid. Um.” He coughed. “The walls slope nicely,” he croaked. “But,” he said. Two pairs of eyes swivelled towards his. “Um,” he said. Dios raised an eyebrow. “Sire?” “I seem to remember once, my father said that, you know, when he died, he’d quite like to, sort of thing, be buried at sea.” There wasn’t the choke of outrage he had expected. “He meant the delta. It’s very soft ground by the delta,” said Ptaclusp. “It’d take months to get decent footings in. Then there’s your risk of sinking. And the damp. Not good, damp, inside a pyramid.” “No,” said Teppic, sweating under Dios’s gaze, “I think what he meant was, you know, in the sea.” Ptaclusp’s brow furrowed. “Tricky, that,” he said thoughtfully. “Interesting idea. I suppose one could build a small one, a million tonner, and float it out on pontoons or something. . .” “No,” said Teppic, trying not to laugh, “I think what he meant was, buried without-” “Teppicymon XXVII means that he would want to be buried without delay,” said Dios, his voice like greased silk. “And there is no doubt that he would require to honour the very best you can build, architect.” “No, I’m sure you’ve got it wrong,” said Teppic. Dios’s face froze. Ptaclusp’s slid into the waxen expression of someone with whom it is, suddenly, nothing to do. He started to stare at the floor as if his very survival depended on his memorising it in extreme detail. “Wrong?” said Dios. “No offence. I’m sure you mean well,” said Teppic. “It’s just that, well, he seemed very clear about it at the time and-” “I mean well?” said Dios, tasting each word as though it was a sour grape. Ptaclusp coughed. He had finished with the floor. Now he started on the ceiling. Dios took a deep breath. “Sire,” he said, “we have always been pyramid builders. All our kings are buried in pyramids. It is how we do things, sire. It is how things are done.” “Yes, but-” “It does not admit of dispute,” said Dios. “Who could wish for anything else? Sealed with all artifice against the desecrations of Time-” now the oiled silk of his voice became armour, hard as steel, scornful as spears - “Shielded for all Time against the insults of Change.” Teppic glanced down at the high priest’s knuckles. They were white, the bone pressing through the flesh as though in a rage to escape. His gaze slid up the grey-clad arm to Dios’s face. Ye gods, he thought, it’s really true, he does look like they got tired of waiting for him to die and pickled him anyway. Then his eyes met those of the priest, more or less with a clang. He felt as though his flesh was being very slowly blown off his bones. He felt that he was no more significant than a mayfly. A necessary mayfly, certainly, a mayfly that would be accorded all due respect, but still an insect with all the rights thereof. And as much free will, in the fury of that gaze, as a scrap of papyrus in a hurricane. “The king’s will is that he be interred in a pyramid,” said Dios, in the tone of voice the Creator must have used to sketch out the moon and stars. “Er,” said Teppic. “The finest of pyramids for the king,” said Dios. Teppic gave up. “Oh,” he said. “Good. Fine. Yes. The very best, of course.” Ptaclusp beamed with relief, produced his wax tablet with a flourish, and took a stylus from the recesses of his wig. The important thing, he knew, was to clinch the deal as soon as possible. Let things slip in a situation like this” and a man could find himself with 1,500,000 tons of bespoke limestone on his hands. “Then that will be the standard model, shall we say, O water in the desert?” Teppic looked at Dios, who was standing and glaring at nothing now, staring the bulldogs of Entropy into submission by willpower alone. “I think something larger,” he ventured hopelessly. “That’s the Executive,” said Ptaclusp. “Very exclusive, O base of the eternal column. Last you a perpetuality. Also our special offer this aeon is various measurements of paracosmic significance built into the very fabric at no extra cost.” He gave Teppic an expectant look. “Yes. Yes. That will be fine,” said Teppic. Dios took a deep breath. “The king requires far more than that,” be said. “I do?” said Teppic, doubtfully. “Indeed, sire. It is your express wish that the greatest of monuments is erected for your father,” said Dios smoothly. This was a contest, Teppic knew, and he didn’t know the rules or how to play and he was going to lose. “It is? Oh. Yes. Yes. I suppose it is, really. Yes.” “A pyramid unequalled along the Djel,” said Dios. “That is the command of the king. It is only right and proper.” “Yes, yes, something like that. Er. Twice the normal size,” said Teppic desperately, and had the brief satisfaction of seeing Dios look momentarily disconcerted. “Sire?” he said. “It is only right and proper,” said Teppic. Dios opened his mouth to protest, saw Teppic’s expression, and shut it again. Ptaclusp scribbled busily, his adam’s apple bobbing. Something like this only happened once in a business career. “Can do you a very nice black marble facing on the outside,” he said, without looking up. “We may have just enough in the quarry. O king of the celestial orbs,” he added hurriedly. “Very good,” said Teppic. Ptaclusp picked up a fresh tablet. “Shall we say the capstone picked out in electrum? It’s cheaper to have built in right from the start, you don’t want to use just silver and then say later, I wish I’d had a-” “Electrum, yes.” “And the usual offices?” “What?” “The burial chamber, that is, and the outer chamber. I’d recommend the Memphis, very select, that comes with a matching extra large treasure room, so handy for all those little things one cannot bear to leave behind.” Ptaclusp turned the tablet over and started on the other side. “And of course a similar suite for the Queen, I take it? O King who shall live forever.” “Eh? Oh, yes. Yes. I suppose so,” said Teppic, glancing at Dios. “Everything. You know.” “Then there’s mazes,” said Ptaclusp, trying to keep his voice steady. “Very popular this era. Very important, your maze, it’s no good deciding you ought to have put a maze in after the robbers have been. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I’d go for the Labrys every time. Like we say, they may get in all right, but they’ll never get out. It costs that little bit extra, but what’s money at a time like this? O master of the waters.” Something we don’t have, said a warning voice in the back of Teppic’s head. He ignored it. He was in the grip of destiny. “Yes,” he said, straightening up. “The Labrys. Two of them.” Ptaclusp’s stylus went through his tablet. “His ‘n’ hers, O stone of stones,” he croaked. “Very handy, very convenient. With selection of traps from stock? We can offer deadfalls, pitfalls, sliders, rolling balls, dropping spears, arrows-” “Yes, yes,” said Teppic. “We’ll have them. We’ll have them all. All of them.” The architect took a deep breath. “And of course you’ll require all the usual steles, avenues, ceremonial sphinxes-” he began. “Lots,” said Teppic. “We leave it entirely up to you.” Ptaclusp mopped his brow. “Fine,” he said. “Marvellous.” He blew his nose. “Your father, if I may make so bold, O sower of the seed, is extremely fortunate in having such a dutiful son. I may add-” “You may go,” said Dios. “And we will expect work to start imminently.” “Without delay, I assure you,” said Ptaclusp. “Er.” He seemed to be wrestling with some huge philosophical problem. “Yes?” said Dios coldly. “It’s uh. There’s the matter of uh. Which is not to say uh. Of course, oldest client, valued customer, but the fact is that uh. Absolutely no doubt about credit worthiness uh. Would not wish to suggest in any way whatsoever that uh.” Dios gave him a stare that would have caused a sphinx to blink and look away. “You wish to say something?” he said. “His majesty’s time is extremely limited.” Ptaclusp worked his jaw silently, but the result was a foregone conclusion. Even gods had been reduced to sheepish mumbling in the face of Dios’s face. And the carved snakes on his staff seemed to be watching him too. “Uh. No, no. Sorry. I was just, uh, thinking aloud. I’ll depart, then, shall I? Such a lot of work to be done. Uh.” He bowed low. He was halfway to the archway before Dios added: “Completion in three months. In time for Inundation.”* (* Like many river valley cultures the Kingdom has no truck with such trivia as summer, springtime and winter, and bases its calendar squarely on the great heartbeat of the Djel; hence the three seasons. Seedtime, Inundation and Sog. This is logical, straightforward and practical, and only disapproved of by barbershop quartets.**) (** Because you feel an idiot singing “In the Good Old Inundation”, that’s why.) “What?” “You are talking to the 1,398th monarch,” said Dios icily. Ptaclusp swallowed. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, “I mean, what?, O great king. I mean, block haulage alone will take. Uh.” The architect’s lips trembled as he tried out various comments and, in his imagination, ran them full tilt into Dios’s stare. “Tsort wasn’t built in a day,” he mumbled. “We do not believe we laid the specifications for that job,” said Dios. He gave Ptaclusp a smile. In some ways it was worse than everything else. “We will, of course,” he said, “pay extra.” “But you never pa-” Ptaclusp began, and then sagged. “The penalties for not completing on time will, of course, be terrible,” said Dios. “The usual clause.” Ptaclusp hadn’t the nerve left to argue. “Of course,” he said, utterly defeated. “It is an honour. Will your eminences excuse me? There are still some hours of daylight left.” Teppic nodded. “Thank you,” said the architect. “May your loins be truly fruitful. Saving your presence, Lord Dios.” They heard him running down the steps outside. “It will be magnificent. Too big, but - magnificent,” said Dios. He looked out between the pillars at the necropolic panorama on the far bank of the Djel. “Magnificent,” he repeated. He winced once more at the stab of pain in his leg. Ah. He’d have to cross the river again tonight, no doubt of it. He’d been foolish, putting it off for days. But it would be unthinkable not to be in a position to serve the kingdom properly. “Something wrong, Dios?” said Teppic. “Sire?” “You looked a bit pale, I thought.” A look of panic flickered over Dios’s wrinkled features. He pulled himself upright. “I assure you, sire, I am in the best of health. The best of health, sire!” “You don’t think you’ve been overdoing it, do you?” This time there was no mistaking the expression of terror. “Overdoing what, sire?” “You’re always bustling, Dios. First one up, last one to bed. You should take it easy.” “I exist only to serve, sire,” said Dios, firmly. “I exist only to serve.” Teppic joined him on the balcony. The early evening sun glowed on a man-made mountain range. This was only the central massif; the pyramids stretched from the delta all the way up to the second cataract, where the Djel disappeared into the mountains. And the pyramids occupied the best land, near the river. Even the farmers would have considered it sacrilegious to suggest anything different. Some of the pyramids were small, and made of rough-hewn blocks that contrived to look far older than the mountains that fenced the valley from the high desert. After all, mountains had always been there. Words like “young” and “old” didn’t apply to them. But those first pyramids had been built by human beings, little bags of thinking water held up briefly by fragile accumulations of calcium, who had cut rocks into pieces and then painfully put them back together again in a better shape. They were old. Over the millennia the fashions had fluctuated. Later pyramids were smooth and sharp, or flattened and tiled with mica. Even the steepest of them, Teppic mused, wouldn’t rate more than 1.O on any edificeer’s scale, although some of the stelae and temples, which flocked around the base of the pyramids like tugboats around the dreadnoughts of eternity, could be worthy of attention. Dreadnoughts of eternity, he thought, sailing ponderously through the mists of Time with every passenger travelling first class . . . A few stars had been let out early. Teppic looked up at them. Perhaps, he thought, there is life somewhere else. On the stars, maybe. If it’s true that there are billions of universes stacked alongside one another, the thickness of a thought apart, then there must be people elsewhere. But wherever they are, no matter how mightily they try, no matter how magnificent the effort, they surely can’t manage to be as godawfully stupid as us. I mean, we work at it. We were given a spark of it to start with, but over hundreds of thousands of years we’ve really improved on it. He turned to Dios, feeling that he ought to repair a little bit of the damage. “You can feel the age radiating off them, can’t you,” he said conversationally. “Pardon, sire?” “The pyramids, Dios. They’re so old.” Dios glanced vaguely across the river. “Are they?” he said. “Yes, I suppose they are.” “Will you get one?” said Teppic. “A pyramid?” said Dios. “Sire, I have one already. It pleased one of your forebears to make provision for me.” “That must have been a great honour,” said Teppic. Dios nodded graciously. The staterooms of forever were usually reserved for royalty. “It is, of course, very small. Very plain. But it will suffice for my simple needs.” “Will it?” said Teppic, yawning. “That’s nice. And now, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll turn in. It’s been a long day.” Dios bowed as though he was hinged in the middle. Teppic had noticed that Dios had at least fifty finely-tuned ways of bowing, each one conveying subtle shades of meaning. This one looked like No.3, I Am Your Humble Servant. “And a very good day it was too, if I may say so, sire.” Teppic was lost for words. “You thought so?” he said. “The cloud effects at dawn were particularly effective.” “They were? Oh. Do I have to do anything about the sunset?” “Your majesty is pleased to joke,” said Dios. “Sunsets happen by themselves, sire. Haha.” “Haha,” echoed Teppic. Dios cracked his knuckles. “The trick is in the sunrise,” he said. The crumbling scrolls of Knot said that the great orange sun was eaten every evening by the sky goddess, What, who saved one pip in time to grow a fresh sun for next morning. And Dios knew that this was so. The Book of Staying in The Pit said that the sun was the Eye of Yay, toiling across the sky each day in His endless search for his toenails.* (* Lit. “Dhar-ret-kar-mon”, or “clipping of the foot”. But some scholars say that it should be “Dar-rhet-kare-mhun”. lit. “hot-air paint stripper”.) And Dios knew that this was so. The secret rituals of the Smoking Mirror held that the sun was in fact a round hole in the spinning blue soap bubble of the goddess Nesh, opening into the fiery real world beyond, and the stars were the holes that the rain comes through. And Dios knew that this, also, was so. Folk myth said the sun was a ball of fire which circled the world every day, and that the world itself was carried through the everlasting void on the back of an enormous turtle. And Dios also knew that this was so, although it gave him a bit of trouble. And Dios knew that Net was the Supreme God, and that Fon was the Supreme God, and so were Hast, Set, Bin, Sot, Ic, Dhek, and Ptooie; that Herpetine Triskeles alone ruled the world of the dead, and so did Syncope, and Silur the Catfish-Headed God, and Orexis-Nupt. Dios was maximum high priest to a national religion that had fermented and accreted and bubbled for more than seven thousand years and never threw a god away in case it turned out to be useful. He knew that a great many mutually-contradictory things were all true. If they were not, then ritual and belief were as nothing, and if they were nothing, then the world did not exist. As a result of this sort of thinking, the priests of the Djel could give mind room to a collection of ideas that would make even a quantum mechanic give in and hand back his toolbox. Dios’s staff knocked echoes from the stones as he limped along in the darkness down little-frequented passages until he emerged on a small jetty. Untying the boat there, the high priest climbed in with difficulty, unshipped the oars and pushed himself out into the turbid waters of the dark Djel. His hands and feet felt too cold. Foolish, foolish. He should have done this before. The boat jerked slowly into midstream as full night rolled over the valley. On the far bank, in response to the ancient laws, the pyramids started to light the sky. Lights also burned late in the house of Ptaclusp Associates, Necropolitan Builders to the Dynasties. The father and his twin Sons were hunched over the huge wax designing tray, arguing. “It’s not as if they ever pay,” said Ptaclusp IIa. “I mean it’s not just a case of not being able to, they don’t seem to have grasped the idea. At least dynasties like Tsort pay up within a hundred years or so. Why didn’t you-” “We’ve built pyramids along the Djel for the last three thousand years,” said his father stiffly, “and we haven’t lost by it, have we? No, we haven’t. Because the other kingdoms look to the Djel, they say there’s a family that really knows its pyramids, connysewers, they say we’ll have what they’re having, if you please, with knobs on. Anyway, they’re real royalty,” he added, “not like some of the ones you get these days - here today, gone next millennium. They’re half gods, too. You don’t expect real royalty to pay its way. That’s one of the signs of real royalty, not having any money.” “You don’t get more royal than them, then. You’d need a new word,” said IIa. “We’re nearly royal in that case.” “You don’t understand business, my son. You think it’s all book-keeping. Well, it isn’t.” “It’s a question of mass. And the power to weight ratio.” They both glared at Ptaclusp IIb, who was sitting staring at the sketches. He was turning his stylus over and over in his hands, which were trembling with barely-suppressed excitement. “We’ll have to use granite for the lower slopes,” he said, talking to himself, “the limestone wouldn’t take it. Not with all the power flows. Which will be, whooeee, they’ll be big. I mean we’re not talking razor blades here. This thing could put an edge on a rolling pin.” Ptaclusp rolled his eyes. He was only one generation into a dynasty and already it was trouble. One son a born accountant, the other in love with this new-fangled cosmic engineering. There hadn’t been any such thing when he was a lad, there was just architecture. You drew the plans, and then got in ten thousand lads on time-and-a-half and double bubble at weekends. They just had to pile the stuff up. You didn’t have to be cosmic about it. Descendants! The gods had seen fit to give him one son who charged you for the amount of breath expended in saying “Good morning”, and another one who worshipped geometry and stayed up all night designing aqueducts. You scrimped and saved to send them to the best schools, and then they went and paid you back by getting educated. “What are you talking about?” he snapped. “The discharge alone . . .” He pulled his abacus towards him and rattled the pottery beads along the wires. “Let’s say we’re talking twice the height of the Executive model, which gives us a mass of. . . plus additional coded dimensions of occult significance as per spec. . . we couldn’t do this sort of thing even a hundred years ago, you realise, not with the primitive techniques we had then. . .” His finger became a blur. IIa gave a snort and grabbed his own abacus. “Limestone at two talents the ton. . .” he said. “Wear and tear on tools . . . masonry charges . . . demurrage . . . breakages . . . oh dear, oh dear . . . on-cost . . . black marble at replacement prices . . .” Ptaclusp sighed. Two abaci rattling in tandem the whole day long, one changing the shape of the world and the other one deploring the cost. Whatever happened to the two bits of wood and a plumbline? The last beads clicked against the stops. “It’d be a whole quantum leap in pyramidology,” said IIb, sitting back with a messianic grin on his face. “It’d be a whole kwa-” IIa began. “Quantum,” said IIb, savouring the word. “It’d be a whole quantum leap in bankruptcy,” said IIa. “They’d have to invent a new word for that too.” “It’d be worth it as a loss leader,” said IIb. “Sure enough. When it comes to making a loss, we’ll be in the lead,” said IIa sourly. “It’d practically glow! In millennia to come people will look at it and say “That Ptaclusp, he knew his pyramids all right”.” “They’ll call it Ptaclusp’s Folly, you mean!” By now the brothers were both standing up, their noses a few inches apart. “The trouble with you, sibling, is that you know the cost of everything and the value of nothing!” “The trouble with you is - is - is that you don’t!” “Mankind must strive ever upwards!” “Yes, on a sound financial footing, by Khuft!” “The search for knowledge-” “The search for probity-” Ptaclusp left them to it and stood staring out at the yard, where, under the glow of torches, the staff were doing a feverish stocktaking. It’d been a small business when father passed it on to him - just a yard full of blocks and various sphinxes, needles, steles and other stock items, and a thick stack of unpaid bills, most of them addressed to the palace and respectfully pointing out that our esteemed account presented nine hundred years ago appeared to have been overlooked and prompt settlement would oblige. But it had been fun in those days. There was just him, five thousand labourers, and Mrs Ptaclusp doing the books. You had to do pyramids, dad said. All the profit was in mastabas, small family tombs, memorial needles and general jobbing necropoli, but if you didn’t do pyramids, you didn’t do anything. The meanest garlic farmer, looking for something neat and long lasting with maybe some green marble chippings but within a budget, wouldn’t go to a man without a pyramid to his name. So he’d done pyramids, and they’d been good ones, not like some you saw these days, with the wrong number of sides and walls you could put your foot through. And yes, somehow they’d gone from strength to strength. To build the biggest pyramid ever.. In three months. With terrible penalties if it wasn’t done on time. Dios hadn’t specified how terrible, but Ptaclusp knew his man and they probably involved crocodiles. They’d be pretty terrible, all right. . . He stared at the flickering light on the long avenues of statues, including the one of bloody Hat the Vulture-Headed God of Unexpected Guests, bought on the offchance years ago and turned down by the client owing to not being up to snuff in the beak department and unshiftable ever since even at a discount. The biggest pyramid ever . . . And after you’d knocked your pipes out seeing to it that the nobility had their tickets to eternity, were you allowed to turn your expertise homeward, i.e., a bijou pyramidette for self and Mrs Ptaclusp, to ensure safe delivery into the Netherworld? Of course not. Even dad had only been allowed to have a mastaba, although it was one of the best on the river, he had to admit, that red-veined marble had been ordered all the way from Howonderland, a lot of people had asked for the same, it had been good for business, that’s how dad would have liked it. . . The biggest pyramid ever . . . And they’d never remember who was under it. It didn’t matter if they called it Ptaclusp’s Folly or Ptaclusp’s Glory. They’d call it Ptaclusp’s. He surfaced from this pool of thought to hear his sons still arguing. If this was his posterity, he’d take his chances with 600-ton limestone blocks. At least they were quiet. “Shut up, the pair of you,” he said. They stopped, and sat down, grumbling. “I’ve made up my mind,” he said. IIb doodled fitfully with his stylus. IIa strummed his abacus. “We’re going to do it,” said Ptaclusp, and strode out of the room. “And any son who doesn’t like it will be cast into the outer darkness where there is a wailing and a crashing of teeth,” he called over his shoulder. The two brothers, left to themselves, glowered at each other. At last IIa said, “What does “quantum” mean, anyway?” IIb shrugged. “It means add another nought,” he said. “Oh,” said IIa, “is that all?”   All along the river valley of the Djel the pyramids were flaring silently into the night, discharging the accumulated power of the day. Great soundless flames erupted from their capstones and danced upwards, jagged as lightning, cold as ice. For hundreds of miles the desert glittered with the constellations of the dead, the aurora of antiquity. But along the valley of the Djel the lights ran together in one solid ribbon of fire. It was on the floor and it had a pillow at one end. It had to be a bed. Teppic found he was doubting it as he tossed and turned, trying to find some part of the mattress that was prepared to meet him halfway. This is stupid, he thought, I grew up on beds like this. And pillows carved out of rock. I was born in this palace, this is my heritage, I must be prepared to accept it . . . I must order a proper bed and a feather pillow from Ankh, first thing in the morning. I, the king, have said this shall be done. He turned over, his head hitting the pillow with a thud. And plumbing. What a great idea that was. It was amazing what you could do with a hole in the ground. Yes, plumbing. And bloody doors. Teppic definitely wasn’t used to having several attendants waiting on his will all the time, so performing his ablutions before bed had been extremely embarrassing. And the people, too. He was definitely going to get to know the people. It was wrong, all this skulking in palaces. And how was a fellow supposed to sleep with the sky over the river glowing like a firework? Eventually sheer exhaustion wrestled his body into some zone between sleeping and waking, and mad images stalked across his eyeballs. There was the shame of his ancestors when future archaeologists translated the as-yet unpainted frescoes of his reign: “”Squiggle, constipated eagle, wiggly line, hippo’s bottom, squiggle”: And in the year of the Cycle of Cephnet the Sun God Teppic had Plumbing Installed and Scorned the Pillows of his Forebears.” He dreamed of Khuft - huge, bearded, speaking in thunder and lightning, calling down the wrath of the heavens on this descendant who was betraying the noble past. Dios floated past his vision, explaining that as a result of an edict passed several thousand years ago it was essential that he marry a cat. Various-headed gods vied for his attention, explaining details of godhood, while in the background a distant voice tried to attract his attention and screamed something about not wanting to be buried under a load of stone. But he had no time to concentrate on this, because he saw seven fat cows and seven thin cows, one of them playing a trombone. But that was an old dream, he dreamt that one nearly every night. And then there was a man firing arrows at a tortoise . . . And then he was walking over the desert and found a tiny pyramid, only a few inches high. A wind sprang up and blew away the sand, only now it wasn’t a wind, it was the pyramid rising, sand tumbling down its gleaming sides . And it grew bigger and bigger, bigger than the world, so that at last the pyramid was so big that the whole world was a speck in the centre. And in the centre of the pyramid, something very strange happened. And the pyramid grew smaller, taking the world with it. And vanished . . . Of course, when you’re a pharaoh, you get a very high class of obscure dream. Another day dawned, courtesy of the king, who was curled up on the bed and using his rolled-up clothes as a pillow. Around the stone maze of the palace the servants of the kingdom began to wake up. Dios’s boat slid gently through the water and bumped into the jetty. Dios climbed out and hurried into the palace, bounding up the steps three at a time and rubbing his hands together at the thought of a fresh day laid out before him, every hour and ritual ticking neatly into place. So much to organise, so much to be needed for . . .   The chief sculptor and maker of mummy cases folded up his measure. “You done a good job there, Master Dil,” he said. Dil nodded. There was no false modesty between craftsmen. The sculptor gave him a nudge. “What a team, eh?” he said. “You pickle ‘em, I crate ‘em.” Dil nodded, but rather more slowly. The sculptor looked down at the wax oval in his hands. “Can’t say I think much of the death mask, mind,” he said. Gern, who was working hard on the corner slab on one of the Queen’s late cats, which he had been allowed to do all by himself, looked up in horror. “I done it very careful,” he said sulkily. “That’s the whole point,” said the sculptor. “I know,” said Dil sadly, “it’s the nose, isn’t it.” “It was more the chin.” “And the chin.” “Yes.” “Yes.” They looked in gloomy silence at the waxen visage of the pharaoh. So did the pharaoh. “Nothing wrong with my chin.” “You could put a beard on it,” said Dil eventually. “It’d cover a lot of it, would a beard.” “There’s still the nose.” “You could take half an inch off that. And do something with the cheekbones.” “Yes.” “Yes.” Gern was horrified. “That’s the face of our late king you’re talking about,” he said. “You can’t do that sort of thing! Anyway, people would notice.” He hesitated. “Wouldn’t they?” The two craftsmen eyed one another. “Gern,” said Dil patiently, “certainly they’ll notice. But they won’t say anything. They expect us to, er, improve matters.” “After all,” said the chief sculptor cheerfully, “you don’t think they’re going to step up and say “It’s all wrong, he really had a face like a short-sighted chicken”, do you?” “Thank you very much. Thank you very much indeed, I must say.” The pharaoh went and sat by the cat. It seemed that people only had respect for the dead when they thought the dead were listening. “I suppose,” said the apprentice, with some uncertainty, “he did look a bit ugly compared to the frescoes.” “That’s the point, isn’t it,” said Dil meaningfully. Gern’s big honest spotty face changed slowly, like a cratered landscape with clouds passing across it. It was dawning on him that this came under the heading of initiation into ancient craft secrets. “You mean even the painters change the-” he began. Dil frowned at him. “We don’t talk about it,” he said. Gern tried to force his features into an expression of worthy seriousness. “Oh,” he said. “Yes. I see, master.” The sculptor clapped him on the back. “You’re a bright lad, Gern,” he said. “You catch on. After all, it’s bad enough being ugly when you’re alive. Think how terrible it would be to be ugly in the netherworld.” King Teppicymon XXVII shook his head. We all have to look alike when we’re alive, he thought, and now they make sure we’re identical when we’re dead. What a kingdom. He looked down and saw the soul of the late cat, which was washing itself. When he was alive he’d hated the things, but just now it seemed positively companionable. He patted it gingerly on its flat head. It purred for a moment, and then attempted to strip the flesh from his hand. It was on a definite hiding to nothing there. He was aware with growing horror that the trio was now discussing a pyramid. His pyramid. It was going to be the biggest one ever. It was going to go on a highly fertile piece of sloping ground on a prime site in the necropolis. It was going to make even the biggest existing pyramid look like something a child might construct in a sand tray. It was going to be surrounded by marble gardens and granite obelisks. It was going to be the greatest memorial ever built by a son for his father. The king groaned. Ptaclusp groaned. It had been better in his father’s day. You just needed a bloody great heap of log rollers and twenty years, which was useful because it kept everyone out of trouble during Inundation, when all the fields were flooded. Now you just needed a bright lad with a piece of chalk and the right incantations. Mind you, it was impressive, if you liked that kind of thing. Ptaclusp IIb walked around the great stone block, tidying an equation here, highlighting a hermetic inscription there. He glanced up and gave his father a brief nod. Ptaclusp hurried back to the king, who was standing with his retinue on the cliff overlooking the quarry, the sun gleaming off the mask. A royal visit, on top of everything else “We’re ready, if it please you, O arc of the sky,” he said, breaking into a sweat, hoping against hope that Oh gods. The king was going to Put Him at his Ease again. He looked imploringly at the high priest, who with the merest twitch of his features indicated that there was nothing he proposed to do about it. This was too much, he wasn’t the only one to object to this, Dil the master embalmer had been subjected to half an hour of having to Talk about his Family only yesterday, it was wrong, people expected the king to stay in the palace, it was too . . . The king ambled towards him in a nonchalant way designed to make the master builder feel he was among friends. Oh no, Ptaclusp thought, he’s going to Remember my Name. “I must say you’ve done a tremendous amount in nine weeks, it’s a very good start. Er. It’s Ptaclusp, isn’t it?” said the king. Ptaclusp swallowed. There was no help for it now. “Yes, O hand upon the waters,” he said, “O fount of-” “I think “your majesty” or “sire” will do,” said Teppic. Ptaclusp panicked and glanced fearfully at Dios, who winced but nodded again. “The king wishes you to address him-” a look of pain crossed his face - “informally. In the fashion of the barba - of foreign lands.” “You must consider yourself a very fortunate man to have such talented and hard-working sons,” said Teppic, staring down at the busy panorama of the quarry. “I . . . will, O . . . sire,” mumbled Ptaclusp, interpreting this as an order. Why couldn’t kings order people around like in the old days? You knew where you were then, they didn’t go round being charming and treating you as some sort of equal, as if you could make the sun rise too. “It must be a fascinating trade,” Teppic went on. “As your sire wishes, sire,” said Ptaclusp. “If your majesty would just give the word-” “And how exactly does all this work?” “Your sire?” said Ptaclusp, horrified. “You make the blocks fly, do you?” “Yes, O sire.” “That is very interesting. How do you do it?” Ptaclusp nearly bit through his lip. Betray Craft secrets? He was horrified. Against all expectation, Dios came to his aid. “By means of certain secret signs and sigils, sire,” he said, “into the origin of which it is not wise to inquire. It is the wisdom of-” he paused “-the modems.” “So much quicker than all that heaving stuff around, I expect,” said Teppic. “It had a certain glory, sire,” said Dios. “Now, if I may suggest . . . “Oh. Yes. Press on, by all means.” Ptaclusp wiped his forehead, and ran to the edge of the quarry. He waved a cloth. All things are defined by names. Change the name, and you change the thing. Of course there is a lot more to it than that, but paracosmically that is what it boils down to. Ptaclusp IIb tapped the stone lightly with his staff. The air above it wavered in the heat and then, shedding a little dust, the block rose gently until it bobbed a few feet off the ground, held in check by mooring ropes. That was all there was to it. Teppic had expected some thunder, or at least a gout of flame. But already the workers were clustering around another block, and a couple of men were towing the first block down towards the site. “Very impressive,” he said sadly. “Indeed, sire,” said Dios. “And now, we must go back to the palace. It will soon be time for the Ceremony of the Third Hour. “Yes, yes, all right,” snapped Teppic. “Very well done, Ptaclusp. Keep up the good work.” Ptaclusp bowed like a seesaw in flustered excitement and confusion. “Very good, your sire,” he said, and decided to go for the big one. “May I show your sire the latest plans?” “The king has approved the plans already,” said Dios. “And, excuse me if I am mistaken, but it seems that the pyramid is well under construction.” “Yes, yes, but,” said Ptaclusp, “it occurred to us, this avenue here, you see, overlooking the entrance, what a place, we thought, for a statue of for instance Hat the Vulture-Headed God of Unexpected Guests at practically cost-” Dios glanced at the sketches. “Are those supposed to be wings?” he said. “Not even cost, not even cost, tell you what I’ll do-” said Ptaclusp desperately. “Is that a nose?” said Dios. “More a beak, more a beak,” said Ptaclusp. “Look, O priest, how about-” “I think not,” said Dios. “No. I really think not.” He scanned the quarry for Teppic, groaned, thrust the sketches into the builder’s hands and started to run. Teppic had strolled down the path to the waiting chariots, looking wistfully at the bustle around him, and paused to watch a group of workers who were dressing a corner piece. They froze when they felt his gaze on them, and stood sheepishly watching him. “Well well,” said Teppic, inspecting the stone, although all he knew about stonemasonry could have been chiselled on a sand grain. “What a splendid piece of rock.” He turned to the nearest man, whose mouth fell open. “You’re a stonemason, are you?” he said. “That must be a very interesting job.” The man’s eyes bulged. He dropped his chisel. “Erk,” he said. A hundred yards away Dios’s robes flapped around his legs as he pounded down the path. He grasped the hem and galloped along, sandals flapping. “What’s your name?” said Teppic. “Aaaargle,” said the man, terrified. “Well, jolly good,” said Teppic, and took his unresisting hand and shook it. “Sire!” Dios bellowed. “No!” And the mason spun away, holding his right hand by the wrist, fighting it, screaming . . .   Teppic gripped the arms of the throne and glared at the high priest. “But it’s a gesture of fellowship, nothing more. Where I come from-” “Where you come from, sire, is here!” thundered Dios. “But, good grief, cutting it off? It’s too cruel!” Dios stepped forward. Now his voice was back to its normal oil-smooth tones. “Cruel, sire? But it will be done with precision and care, with drugs to take away the pain. He will certainly live. “But why?” “I did explain, sire. He cannot use the hand again without defiling it. He is a devout man and knows this very well. You see, sire, you are a god, sire.” “But you can touch me. So can the servants!” “I am a priest, sire,” said Dios gently. “And the servants have special dispensation.” Teppic bit his lip. “This is barbaric,” he said. Dios’s features did not move. “It will not be done,” Teppic said. “I am the king. I forbid it to be done, do you understand?” Dios bowed. Teppic recognised No.49, Horrified Disdain. “Your wish will certainly be done, O fountain of all wisdom. Although, of course, the man himself may take matters into, if you will excuse me, his own hands.” “What do you mean?” snapped Teppic. “Sire, if his colleagues had not stopped him he would have done it himself. With a chisel, I understand.” Teppic stared at him and thought, I am a stranger in a familiar land. “I see,” he said eventually. He thought a little further. “Then the - operation is to be done with all care, and the man is to be given a pension afterwards, d’you see?” “As you wish, sire.” “A proper one, too.” “Indeed, sire. A golden handshake, sire,” said Dios impassively. “And perhaps we can find him some light job around the palace?” “As a one-handed stonemason, sire?” Dios’s left eyebrow arched a fraction. “As whatever, Dios.” “Certainly, sire. As you wish. I will undertake to see if we are currently short-handed in any department.” Teppic glared at him. “I am the king, you know,” he said sharply. “The fact attends me with every waking hour, sire.” “Dios?” said Teppic, as the high priest was leaving. “Sire?” “I ordered a feather bed from Ankh-Morpork some weeks ago. I suppose you would not know what became of it?” Dios waved his hands in an expressive gesture. “I gather, sire, that there is considerable pirate activity off the Khalian coast,” he said. “Doubtless the pirates are also responsible for the non-appearance of the expert from the Guild of Plumbers and Dunnikindivers?” Teppic said sourly.* (* Dunnikindiver: a builder and cleaner of cesspits. A particularly busy profession in Ankh-Morpork, where the water table is generally at ground level, and one which attracts considerable respect. At least, everyone passes by on the other side of the street when a dunnikindiver walks by.) “Yes, sire. Or possibly bandits, sire.” “Or perhaps a giant two-headed bird swooped down and carried him off,” said Teppic. “All things are possible, sire,” said the high priest, his face radiating politeness. “You may go, Dios.” “Sire. May I remind you, sire, that the emissaries from Tsort and Ephebe will be attending you at the fifth hour.” “Yes. You may go.” Teppic was left alone, or at least as alone as he ever was, which meant that he was all by himself except for two fan wavers, a butler, two enormous Howonder guards by the door, and a couple of handmaidens. Oh, yes. Handmaidens. He hadn’t quite come to terms with the handmaidens yet. Presumably Dios chose them, as he seemed to oversee everything in the palace, and he had shown surprisingly good taste in the matter of, for example, olive skins, bosoms and legs. The clothing these two wore would between them have covered a small saucer. And this was odd, because the net effect was to turn them into two attractive and mobile pieces of furniture, as sexless as pillars. Teppic sighed with the recollection of women in Ankh-Morpork who could be clothed from neck to ankle in brocade and still cause a classroom full of boys to blush to the roots of their hair. He reached down for the fruit bowl. One of the girls immediately grasped his hand, moved it gently aside, and took a grape. “Please don’t peel it,” said Teppic. “The peel’s the best part. Full of nourishing vitamins and minerals. Only I don’t suppose you’ve heard about them, have you, they’ve only been invented recently,” he added, mainly to himself. “I mean, within the last seven thousand years,” he finished sourly. So much for time flowing past, he thought glumly. It might do that everywhere else, but not here. Here it just piles up, like snow. It’s as though the pyramids slow us down, like those things they used on the boat, whatd’youcallem, sea anchors. Tomorrow here is just like yesterday, warmed over. She peeled the grape anyway, while the snowflake seconds drifted down. At the site of the Great Pyramid the huge blocks of stone floated into place like an explosion in reverse. They were flowing between the quarry and the site, drifting silently across the landscape above deep rectangular shadows. “I’ve got to hand it to you,” said Ptaclusp to his son, as they stood side by side in the observation tower. “It’s astonishing. One day people will wonder how we did it.” “All that business with the log rollers and the whips is old hat,” said IIb. “You-can throw them away.” The young architect smiled, but there was a manic hint to the rictus. It was astonishing. It was more astonishing than it ought to be. He kept getting the feeling that the pyramid was . . . He shook himself mentally. He should be ashamed of that sort of thinking. You could get superstitious if you weren’t careful, in this job. It was natural for things to form a pyramid - well, a cone, anyway. He’d experimented this morning. Grain, salt, . . . not water, though, that’d been a mistake. But a pyramid was only a neat cone, wasn’t it, a cone which had decided to be a bit tidier. Perhaps he’d overdone it just a gnat on the paracosmic measurements? His father slapped him on the back. “Very well done,” he repeated. “You know, it almost looks as though it’s building itself.” IIb yelped and bit his wrist, a childish trait that he always resorted to when he was nervous. Ptaclusp didn’t notice, because at that moment one of the foremen was running to the foot of the tower, waving his ceremonial measuring rod. Ptaclusp leaned over. “What?” he demanded. “I said, please to come at once, O master!” On the pyramid itself, on the working surface about halfway up, where some of the detailed work on the inner chambers was in progress, the word “impressive” was no longer appropriate. The word “terrifying” seemed to fit the bill. Blocks were stacking up in the sky overhead in a giant, slow dance, passing and re-passing, their mahouts yelling at one another and at the luckless controllers down on the pyramid top, who were trying to shout instructions above the noise. Ptaclusp waded into the cluster of workers around the centre. Here, at least, there was silence. Dead silence. “All right, all right,” he said. “What’s going . . . oh.” Ptaclusp IIb peered over his father’s shoulder, and stuck his wrist in his mouth. The thing was wrinkled. It was ancient. It clearly had once been a living thing. It lay on the slab like a very obscene prune. “It was my lunch,” said the chief plasterer. “It was my bloody lunch. I was really looking forward to that apple.” “But it can’t start yet,” whispered IIb. “It can’t form temporal nodes yet, I mean, how does it know it’s going to be a pyramid?” “I put my hand down for it, and it felt just like . . . it felt pretty unpleasant,” the plasterer complained. “And it’s a negative node, too,” added IIb. “We shouldn’t be getting them at all.” “Is it still there?” said Ptaclusp, and added, “Tell me yes.”     “If more blocks have been set into position it won’t be,” said his son, looking around wildly. “As the centre of mass changes, you see, the nodes will be pulled around.” Ptaclusp pulled the young man to one side. “What are you telling me now?” he demanded, in a camel whisper.* (* Hoarse whispers are not suitable for a desert environment.) “We ought to put a cap on it,” mumbled IIb. “Flare off the trapped time. Wouldn’t be any problems then . . .” “How can we cap it? It isn’t damn well finished,” said Ptaclusp. “What have you been and gone and done? Pyramids don’t start accumulating until they’re finished. Until they’re pyramids, see? Pyramid energy, see? Named after pyramids. That’s why it’s called pyramid energy.” “It must be something to do with the mass, or something,” the architect hazarded, “and the speed of construction. The time is getting trapped in the fabric. I mean, in theory you could get small nodes during construction, but they’d be so weak you wouldn’t notice; if you went and stood in one maybe you’d become a few hours older or younger or-” he began to gabble. “I recall when we did Kheneth XIV’s tomb the fresco painter said it took him two hours to do the painting in the Queen’s Room, and we said it was three days and fined him,” said Ptaclusp, slowly. “There was a lot of Guild fuss, I remember.” “You just said that,” said IIb. “Said what?” “About the fresco painter. Just a moment ago. “No, I didn’t. You couldn’t have been listening,” said Placlusp. “Could have sworn you did. Anyway, this is worse than that business,” said his son. “And it’s probably going to happen again.” “We can expect more like it?” “Yes,” said IIb. “We shouldn’t get negative nodes, but it looks as though we will. We can expect fast flows and reverse flows and probably even short loops. I’m afraid we can expect all kinds of temporal anomalies. We’d better get the men off.” “I suppose you couldn’t work out a way we could get them to work in fast time and pay them for slow time?” said Ptaclusp. “It’s just a thought. Your brother’s bound to suggest it.” “No! Keep everyone off! We’ll get the blocks in and cap it first!” “All right, all right. I was just thinking out loud. As if we didn’t have enough problems . . .” Ptaclusp waded into the cluster of workers around the centre. Here, at least, there was silence. Dead silence. “All right, all right,” he said. “What’s going . . . oh.” Ptaclusp IIb peered over his father’s shoulder, and stuck his wrist in his mouth. The thing was wrinkled. It was ancient. It clearly had once been a living thing. It lay on the slab like a very obscene prune. “It was my lunch,” said the chief plasterer. “It was my bloody lunch. I was really looking forward to that apple.” Ptaclusp hesitated. This all seemed very familiar. He’d had this feeling before. An overwhelming sensation of reja vu*. (* Lit: “I am going to be here again.”) He met the horrified gaze of his son. Together, dreading what they might see, they turned around slowly. They saw themselves standing behind themselves, bickering over something IIb was swearing that he had already heard. He has, too, Ptaclusp realised in dread. That’s me over there. I look a lot different from the outside. And it’s me over here, too. As well. Also. It’s a loop. Just like in the river, a tiny whirlpool, only it’s in the flow of time. And I’ve just gone round it twice. The other Ptaclusp looked up at him. There was a long, agonising moment of temporal strain, a noise like a mouse blowing bubblegum, and the loop broke, and the figure faded. “I know what’s causing it,” muttered IIb indistinctly, because of his wrist. “I know the pyramid isn’t complete, but it will be, so the effects are sort of echoing backwards, dad, we ought to stop right now, it’s too big, I was wrong- “Shut up. Can you work out where the nodes will form?” said Ptaclusp. “And come away over here, all the lads are staring. Pull yourself together, son.” IIb instinctively put his hand to his belt abacus. “Well, yes, probably,” he said. “It’s just a function of mass distribution and-” “Right,” said the builder firmly. “Start doing it. And then get all the foremen to come and see me.” There was a glint like mica in Ptaclusp’s eye. His jaw was squared like a block of granite. Maybe it’s the pyramid that’s got me thinking like this, he said, I’m thinking fast, I know it. “And get your brother up here, too,” he added. It is the pyramid effect. I’m remembering an idea I’m going to have. Best not to think too hard about that. Be practical. He stared around at the half-completed site. The gods knew we couldn’t do it in time, he said. Now we don’t have to. We can take as long as we like! “Are you all right?” said IIb. “Dad, are you all right?” “Was that one of your time loops?” said Ptaclusp dreamily. What an idea! No-one would ever beat them on a contract ever again, they’d win bonuses for completion and it didn’t matter how long it took! “No! Dad, we ought-” “But you’re sure you can work out where these loops will occur, are you?” “Yes, I expect so, but-” “Good.” Ptaclusp was trembling with excitement. Maybe they’d have to pay the men more, but it would be worth it, and IIa would be bound to think up some sort of scheme, finance was nearly as good as magic. The lads would have to accept it. After all, they’d complained about working with free men, they’d complained about working with Howondanians, they’d complained about working with everyone except proper paid-up Guild members. So they could hardly complain about working with themselves. IIb stepped back, and gripped the abacus for reassurance. “Dad,” he said cautiously, “what are you thinking about?” Ptaclusp beamed at him. “Doppelgangs,” he said.   Politics was more interesting. Teppic felt that here, at least, he could make a contribution. Djelibeybi was old. It was respected. But it was also small and in the sword-edged sense, which was what seemed to matter these days, had no power. It wasn’t always thus, as Dios told it. Once it had ruled the world by sheer force of nobility, hardly needing the standing army of twenty-five thousand men it had in those high days. Now it wielded a more subtle power as a narrow state between the huge and thrusting empires of Tsort and Ephebe, each one both a threat and a shield. For more than a thousand years the kings along the Djel had, with extreme diplomacy, exquisite manners and the footwork of a centipede on adrenaline, kept the peace along the whole widdershins side of the continent. Merely having existed for seven thousand years can be a formidable weapon, if you use it properly. “You mean we’re neutral ground?” said Teppic. “Tsort is a desert culture like us,” said Dios, steepling his hands. “We have helped to shape it over the years. As for Ephebe-” He sniffed. “They have some very strange beliefs.” “How do you mean?” “They believe the world is run by geometry, sire. All lines and angles and numbers. That sort of thing, sire-” Dios frowned - “can lead to some very unsound ideas.” “Ah,” said Teppic, resolving to learn more about unsound ideas as soon as possible. “So we’re secretly on the side of Tsort, yes?” “No. It is important that Ephebe remains strong.” “But we’ve more in common with Tsort?” “So we allow them to believe, sire.” “But they are a desert culture?” Dios smiled. “I am afraid they don’t take pyramids seriously, sire.” Teppic considered all this. “So whose side are we really on?” “Our own, sire. There is always a way. Always remember, sire, that your family was on its third dynasty before our neighbours had worked out, sire, how babies are made.” The Tsort delegation did indeed appear to have studied Djeli culture assiduously, almost frantically. It was also clear that they hadn’t begun to understand it; they’d merely borrowed as many bits as seemed useful and then put them together in subtly wrong ways. For example, to a man they employed the Three-Turning-Walk, as portrayed on friezes, and only used by the Djeli court on certain occasions. Occasional grimaces crossed their faces as their vertebrae protested. They were also wearing the Khruspids of Morning and the bangles of Going Forth, as well as the kilt of Yet with, and no wonder even the maidens on fan duty were hiding their smiles, matching greaves!* (* Some translation is needed here. If a foreign ambassador to the Court of St James wore (out of a genuine desire to flatter) a bowler hat, a claymore, a Civil War breastplate, Saxon trousers and a Jacobean haircut, he’d create pretty much the same impression.) Even Teppic had to cough hurriedly. But then, he thought, they don’t know any better. They’re like children. And this thought was followed by another one which added, These children could wipe us off the map in one hour. Hot on the synapses of the other two came a third thought, which said: It’s only clothes, for goodness sake, you’re beginning to take it all seriously. The group from Ephebe were more sensibly dressed in white togas. They had a certain sameness about them, as if somewhere in the country there was a little press that stamped out small bald men with curly white beards. The two parties halted before the throne, and bowed. “Halo,” said Teppic. “His Greatness the King Teppicymon XXVIII, Lord of the Heavens, Charioteer of the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque of the Sun, Guardian of the Secret Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the Way, the Flail of Mercy, the High-Born One, the Never-Dying King, bids you welcome and commands you to take wine with him,” said Dios, clapping his hands for a butler. “Oh yes,” said Teppic. “Do sit down, won’t you?” “His Greatness the King Teppicymon XXVIII, Lord of the Heavens, Charioteer of the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque of the Sun, Guardian of the Secret Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the Way, the Flail of Mercy, the High-Born One, the Never-Dying King, commands you to be seated,” said Dios. Teppic racked his brains for a suitable speech. He’d heard plenty in Ankh-Morpork. They were probably the same the whole world over. “I’m sure we shall get on-” “His Greatness the King Teppicymon XXVIII, Lord of the Heavens, Charioteer of the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque of the Sun, Guardian of the Secret Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the Way, the Flail of Mercy, the High-Born One, the Never-Dying King, bids you harken!” Dios boomed. “-long history of friendship-” “Harken to the wisdom of His Greatness the King Teppicymon XXVIII, Lord of the Heavens, Charioteer of the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque of the Sun, Guardian of the Secret Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the Way, the Flail of Mercy, the High-Born One, the Never-Dying King!” The echoes died away. “Could I have a word with you a moment, Dios?” The high priest leaned down. “Is all this necessary?” hissed Teppic. Dios’s aquiline features took on the wooden expression of one who is wrestling with an unfamiliar concept. “Of course, sire. It is traditional,” he said, at last. “I thought I was supposed to talk to these people. You know, about boundaries and trade and so on. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about it and I’ve got several ideas. I mean, it’s going to be a little difficult if you’re going to keep shouting.” Dios gave him a polite smile. “Oh no, sire. That has all been sorted out, sire. I met with them this morning.” “What am I supposed to do, then?” Dios made a slight circling motion with his hand. “Just as you wish, sire. It is normal to smile a little, and put them at their ease.” “Is that all” “Sire could ask them whether they enjoy being diplomats, sire,” said Dios. He met Teppic’s glare with eyes as expressionless as mirrors. “I am the king,” Teppic hissed. “Certainly, sire. It would not do to sully the office with mere matters of leaden state, sire. Tomorrow, sire, you will be holding supreme court. A very fit office for a monarch, sire.” “Ah. Yes.” It was quite complicated. Teppic listened carefully to the case, which was alleged cattle theft compounded by Djeli’s onion-layered land laws. This is what it should be all about, he thought. No-one else can work out who owns the bloody ox, this is the sort of thing kings have to do. Now, let’s see, five years ago, he sold the ox to him, but as it turned out- He looked from the face of one worried farmer to the other. They were both clutching their ragged straw hats close to their chests, and both of them wore the paralysed wooden expressions of simple men who, in pursuit of their parochial disagreement, now found themselves on a marble floor in a great room with their god enthroned before their very eyes. Teppic didn’t doubt that either one would cheerfully give up all rights to the wretched creature in exchange for being ten miles away. It’s a fairly mature ox, he thought, time it was slaughtered, even if it’s his it’s been fattening on his neighbour’s land all these years, half each would be about right, they’re really going to remember this judgement . He raised the Sickle of Justice. “His Greatness the King Teppicymon XXVIII, Lord of the Heavens, Charioteer of the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque of the Sun, Guardian of the Secret Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the Way, the Flail of Mercy, the High-Born One, the Never-Dying King, will give judgement! Cower to the justice of His Greatness the King Tep-” Teppic cut Dios off in mid-intone. “Having listened to both sides of the case,” he said firmly, the mask giving it a slight boom, “and, being impressed by the argument and counter-argument, it seems to us only just that the beast in question should be slaughtered without delay and shared with all fairness between both plaintiff and defendant.” He sat back. They’ll call me Teppic the Wise, he thought. The common people go for this sort of thing. The farmers gave him a long blank stare. Then, as if they were both mounted on turntables, they turned and looked to where Dios was sitting in his place on the steps in a group of lesser priests. Dios stood up, smoothed his plain robe, and extended the staff. “Harken to the interpreted wisdom of His Greatness the King Teppicymon XXVIII, Lord of the Heavens, Charioteer of the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque of the Sun, Guardian of the Secret Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the Way, the Flail of Mercy, the High-Born One, the Never-Dying King,” he said. “It is our divine judgement that the beast in dispute is the property of Rhumusphut. It is our divine judgement that the beast be sacrificed upon the altar of the Concourse of Gods in thanks for the attention of Our Divine Self. It is our further judgement that both Rhumusphut and Ktoffle work a further three days in the fields of the King in payment for this judgement.” Dios raised his head until he was looking along his fearsome nose right into Teppic’s mask. He raised both hands. “Mighty is the wisdom of His Greatness the King Teppicymon XXVIII, Lord of the Heavens, Charioteer of the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque of the Sun, Guardian of the Secret Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the Way, the Flail of Mercy, the High-Born One, the Never-Dying King!” The farmers bobbed in terrified gratitude and backed out of the presence, framed between the guards. “Dios,” said Teppic, levelly. “Sire?” “Just attend upon me a moment, please?” “Sire?” repeated Dios, materialising by the throne. “I could not help noticing, Dios, excuse me if I am wrong, a certain flourish in the translation there.” The priest looked surprised. “Indeed no, sire. I was most precise in relaying your decision, saving only to refine the detail in accordance with precedent and tradition.” “How was that? The damn creature really belonged to both of them!” “But Rhumusphut is known to be punctilious in his devotions, sire, seeking every opportunity to laud and magnify the gods, whereas Ktoffle has been known to harbour foolish thoughts.” “What’s that got to do with justice?” “Everything, sire,” said Dios smoothly. “But now neither of them has the ox!” “Quite so, sire. But Ktoffle does not have it because he does not deserve it, while Rhumusphut, by his sacrifice, has ensured himself greater stature in the netherworld.” “And you’ll eat beef tonight, I suppose,” said Teppic. It was like a blow; Teppic might as well have picked up the throne and hit the priest with it. Dios took a step backward, aghast, his eyes two brief pools of pain. When he spoke, there was a raw edge to his voice. “I do not eat meat, sire,” he said. “It dilutes and tarnishes the soul. May I summon the next case, sire?” Teppic nodded. “Very well.” The next case was a dispute over the rent of a hundred square yards of riverside land. Teppic listened carefully. Good growing land was at a premium in Djeli, since the pyramids took up so much of it. It was a serious matter. It was especially serious because the land’s tenant was by all accounts hard-working and conscientious, while its actual owner was clearly rich and objectionable*. (* Younger assassins, who are usually very poor, have very clear ideas about the morality of wealth until they become older assassins, who are usually very rich, when they begin to take the view that injustice has its good points.) Unfortunately, however one chose to stack the facts, he was also in the right. Teppic thought deeply, and then squinted at Dios. The priest nodded at him. “It seems to me-” said Teppic, as fast as possible but not fast enough. “Harken to the judgement of His Greatness the King Teppicymon XXVIII, Lord of the Heavens, Charioteer of the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque of the Sun, Guardian of the Secret Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the Way, the Flail of Mercy, the High-Born One, the Never-Dying King!” “It seems to me - to us,” Teppic repeated, “that, taking all matters in consideration beyond those of mere mortal artifice, the true and just outcome in this matter-” He paused. This, he thought, isn’t how a good king speaks. “The landlord has been weighed in the balance and found wanting,” he boomed through the mask’s mouth slit. “We find for the tenant.” As one man the court turned to Dios, who held a whispered consultation with the other priests and then stood up. “Hear now the interpreted word of His Greatness the King Teppicymon XXVIII, Lord of the Heavens, Charioteer of the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque of the Sun, Guardian of the Secret Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the Way, the Flail of Mercy, the High-Born One, the Never-Dying King! Ptorne the farmer will at once pay 18 toons in back rent to Prince Imtebos! Prince Imbetos will at once pay 12 toons into the temple offerings of the gods of the river! Long live the king! Bring on the next case!” Teppic beckoned to Dios again. “Is there any point in me being here?” he demanded in an overheated whisper. “Please be calm, sire. If you were not here, how would the people know that justice had been done?” “But you twist everything I say!” “No, sire. Sire, you give the judgement of the man. I interpret the judgement of the king.” “I see,” said Teppic grimly. “Well, from now on-” There was a commotion outside the hall. Clearly there was a prisoner outside who was less than confident in the king’s justice, and the king didn’t blame him. He wasn’t at all happy about it, either. It turned out to be a dark-haired girl, struggling in the arms of two guards and giving them the kind of blows with fist and heel that a man would blush to give. She wasn’t wearing the right kind of costume for the job, either. It would be barely adequate for lying around peeling grapes in. She saw Teppic and, to his secret delight, flashed him a glance of pure hatred. After an afternoon of being treated like a mentally-deficient statue it was a pleasure to find someone prepared to take an interest in him. He didn’t know what she had done, but judging by the thumps she was landing on the guards it was a pretty good bet that she had done it to the very limits of her ability. Dios bent down to the level of the mask’s ear holes. “Her name is Ptraci,” he said. “A handmaiden of your father. She has refused to take the potion.” “What potion?” said Teppic. “It is customary for a dead king to take servants with him into the netherworld, sire.” Teppic nodded gloomily. It was a jealously-guarded privilege, the only way a penniless servant could ensure immortality. He remembered grandfather’s funeral, and the discreet clamour of the old man’s personal servants. It had made father depressed for days. “Yes, but it’s not compulsory,” he said. “Yes, sire. It is not compulsory.” “Father had plenty of servants.” “I gather she was his favourite, sire.” “What exactly has she done wrong, then?” Dios sighed, as one might if one were explaining things to an extremely backward child. “She has refused to take the potion, sire.” “Sorry. I thought you said it wasn’t compulsory, Dios.” “Yes, sire. It is not, sire. It is entirely voluntary. It is an act of free will. And she has refused it, sire.” “Ah. One of those situations,” said Teppic. Djelibeybi was built on those sort of situations. Trying to understand them could drive you mad. If one of his ancestors had decreed that night was day, people would go around groping in the light. He leaned forward. “Step forward, young lady,” he said. She looked at Dios. “His Greatness the King Teppicymon XXVIII-” “Do we have to go all through that every time?” “Yes, sire - Lord of the Heavens, Charioteer of the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque of the Sun, Guardian of the Secret Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the Way, the Flail of Mercy, the High-Born One, the Never-Dying King, bids you declare your guilt!” The girl shook herself out of the guards’ grip and faced Teppic, trembling with terror. “He told me he didn’t want to be buried in a pyramid,” she said. “He said the idea of those millions of tons of rock on top of him gave him nightmares. I don’t want to die yet!” “You refuse to gladly take the poison?” said Dios. “Yes!” “But, child,” said Dios, “then the king will have you put to death anyway. Surely it is better to go honourably, to a worthy life in the netherworld?” “I don’t want to be a servant in the netherworld!” There was a groan of horror from the assembled priests. Dios nodded. “Then the Eater of Souls will take you,” he said. “Sire, we look to your judgement.” Teppic realised he was staring at the girl. There was something hauntingly familiar about her which he couldn’t quite put his finger on. “Let her go,” he said. “His Greatness the King Teppicymon XXVIII, Lord of the Heavens, Charioteer of the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque of the Sun, Guardian of the Secret Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the Way, the Flail of Mercy, the High-Born One, the Never-Dying King, has spoken! Tomorrow at dawn you will be cast to the crocodiles of the river. Great is the wisdom of the king!” Ptraci turned and glared at Teppic. He said nothing. He did not dare, for fear of what it might become. She went away quietly, which was worse than sobbing or shouting. “That is the last case, sire,” said Dios. “I will retire to my quarters,” said Teppic coldly. “I have much to think about.” “Therefore I will have dinner sent in,” said the priest. “It will be roast chicken.” “I hate chicken.” Dios smiled. “No, sire. On Wednesdays the king always enjoys chicken, sire.” The pyramids flared. The light they cast on the landscape was curiously subdued, grainy, almost grey, but over the capstone of each tomb a zigzag flame crackled towards the sky. A faint click of metal and stone sprang Ptraci from a fitful doze into extreme wakefulness. She stood up very carefully and crept towards the window. Unlike proper cell windows, which should be large and airy and requiring only the removal of a few inconvenient iron bars to ensure the escape of any captives, this window was a slit six inches wide. Seven thousand years had taught the kings along the Djel that cells should be designed to keep prisoners in. The only way they could get out through this slit was in bits. But there was a shadow against the pyramid light, and a voice said, “Psst.” She flattened herself against the wall and tried to reach up to the slit. “Who are you?” “I’m here to help you. Oh damn. Do they call this a window? Look, I’m lowering a rope.” A thick silken cord, knotted at intervals, dropped past her shoulder. She stared at it for a second or two, and then kicked off her curly-toed shoes and climbed up it. The face on the other side of the slit was half-concealed by a black hood, but she could just make out a worried expression. “Don’t despair,” it said. “I wasn’t despairing. I was trying to get some sleep.” “Oh. Pardon me, I’m sure. I’ll just go away and leave you, shall I?” “But in the morning I shall wake up and then I’ll despair. What are you standing on, demon?” “Do you know what a crampon is?” “No.” “Well, it’s two of them.” They stared at each other in silence. “Okay,” said the face at last. “I’ll have to go around and come in through the door. Don’t go away.” And with that it vanished upwards. Ptraci let herself slide back down to the chilly stones of the floor. Come in through the door! She wondered how it could manage that. Humans would need to open it first. She crouched in the furthest corner of the cell, staring at the small rectangle of wood. Long minutes went past. At one point she thought she heard a tiny noise, like a gasp. A little later there was subtle clink of metal, so slight as to be almost beyond the range of hearing. More time wound on to the spool of eternity and then the silence beyond the cell, which had been the silence caused by absence of sound, very slowly became the silence caused by someone making no noise. She thought: It’s right outside the door. There was a pause in which Teppic oiled all the bolts and hinges so that, when he made the final assault, the door swished open in heart-gripping noiselessness. “I say?” said a voice in the darkness. Ptraci pressed herself still further into the corner. “Look, I’ve come to rescue you.” Now she could make out a blacker shadow in the flarelight. It stepped forward with rather more uncertainty than she would have expected from a demon. “Are you coming or not?” it said. “I’ve only knocked out the guards, it’s not their fault, but we haven’t got a lot of time.” “I’m to be thrown to the crocodiles in the morning,” whispered Ptraci. “The king himself decreed it.” “He probably made a mistake.” Ptraci’s eyes widened in horrified disbelief. “The Soul Eater will take me!” she said. “Do you want it to?” Ptraci hesitated. “Well, then,” said the figure, and took her unresisting hand. He led her out of the cell, where she nearly tripped over the prone body of a guard. “Who is in the other cells?” he said, pointing to the line of doors along the passage. “I don’t know,” said Ptraci. “Let’s find out, shall we?” The figure touched a can to the bolts and hinges of the next door and pushed it open. The flare from the narrow window illuminated a middle-aged man, seated cross-legged on the floor. “I’m here to rescue you,” said the demon. The man peered up at him. “Rescue?” he said. “Yes. Why are you here?” The man hung his head. “I spoke blasphemy against the king.” “How did you do that?” “I dropped a rock on my foot. Now my tongue is to be torn out.” The dark figure nodded sympathetically. “A priest heard you, did he?” he said. “No. I told a priest. Such words should not go unpunished,” said the man virtuously. We’re really good at it, Teppic thought. Mere animals couldn’t possibly manage to act like this. You need to be a human being to be really stupid. “I think we ought to talk about this outside,” he said. “Why not come with me?” The man pulled back and glared at him. “You want me to run away?” he said. “Seems a good idea, wouldn’t you say?” The man stared into his eyes, his lips moving silently. Then he appeared to reach a decision. “Guards!” he screamed. The shout echoed through the sleeping palace. His would-be rescuer stared at him in disbelief. “Mad,” Teppic said. “You’re all mad.” He stepped out of the room, grabbed Ptraci’s hand, and hurried along the shadowy passages. Behind them the prisoner made the most of his tongue while he still had it and used it to scream a stream of imprecations. “Where are you taking me?” said Ptraci, as they marched smartly around a corner and into a pillar-barred courtyard. Teppic hesitated. He hadn’t thought much beyond this point. “Why do they bother to bolt the doors?” he demanded, eyeing the pillars. “That’s what I want to know. I’m surprised you didn’t wander back to your cell while I was in there.” “I - I don’t want to die,” she said quietly. “Don’t blame you.” “You mustn’t say that! It’s wrong not to want to die!” Teppic glanced up at the roof around the courtyard and unslung his grapnel. “I think I ought to go back to my cell,” said Ptraci, without actually making any move in that direction. “It’s wrong even to think of disobeying the king.” “Oh? What happens to you, then?” “Something bad,” she said vaguely. “You mean, worse than being thrown to the crocodiles or having your soul taken by the Soul Eater?” said Teppic, and caught the grapnel firmly on some hidden ledge on the flat roof. “That’s an interesting point,” said Ptraci, winning the Teppic Award for clear thinking. “Worth considering, isn’t it?” Teppic tested his weight on the cord. “What you’re saying is, if the worst is going to happen to you anyway, you might as well not bother any more,” said Ptraci. “If the Soul Eater is going to get you whatever you do, you might as well avoid the crocodiles, is that it?” “You go up first,” said Teppic, “I think someone’s coming.” “Who are you?” Teppic fished in his pouch. He’d come back to Djeli an aeon ago with just the clothes he stood up in, but they were the clothes he’d stood up in throughout his exam. He balanced a Number Two throwing knife in his hand, the steel glinting in the flarelight. It was possibly the only steel in the country; it wasn’t that Djelibeybi hadn’t heard about iron, it was just that if copper was good enough for your great-great-great-great-grandfather, it was good enough for you. No, the guards didn’t deserve knives. They hadn’t done anything wrong. His hand closed over the little mesh bag of caltraps. These were a small model, a mere one inch per spike. Caltraps didn’t kill anyone, they just slowed them down a bit. One or two of them in the sole of the foot induced extreme slowness and caution in all except the terminally enthusiastic. He scattered a few across the mouth of the passage and ran back to the rope, hauling himself up in a few quick swings. He reached the roof just as the leading guards ran under the lintel. He waited until he heard the first curse, and then coiled up the rope and hurried after the girl. “They’ll catch us,” she said. “I don’t think so.” “And then the king will have us thrown to the crocodiles.” “Oh no, I don’t think-” Teppic paused. It was an intriguing idea. “He might,” he ventured. “It’s very hard to be sure about anything.” “So what shall we do now?” Teppic stared across the river, where the pyramids were ablaze. The Great Pyramid was still under construction, by flarelight; a swarm of blocks, dwarfed by distance, hovered near its tip. The amount of labour Ptaclusp was putting on the job was amazing. What a flare that will give, he thought. It’ll be seen all the way to Ankh. “Horrible things, aren’t they,” said Ptraci, behind him. “Do you think so?” “They’re creepy. The old king hated them, you know. He said they nailed the Kingdom to the past.” “Did he say why?” “No. He just hated them. He was a nice old boy. Very kind. Not like this new one.” She blew her nose and replaced her handkerchief in its scarcely adequate space in her sequinned bra. “Er, what exactly did you have to do? As a handmaiden, I mean?” said Teppic, scanning the rooftop panorama to hide his embarrassment. She giggled. “You’re not from around here, are you?” “No. Not really.” “Talk to him, mainly. Or just listen. He could really talk, but he always said no-one ever really listened to what he said.” “Yes,” said Teppic, with feeling. “And that was all, was it?” She stared at him, and then giggled again. “Oh, that? No, he was very kind. I wouldn’t of minded, you understand, I had all the proper training. Bit of a disappointment, really. The women of my family have served under the kings for centuries, you know.” “Oh yes?” he managed. “I don’t know whether you’ve ever seen a book, it’s called The Shuttered-” “-Palace,” said Teppic automatically. “I thought a gentleman like you’d know about it,” said Ptraci, nudging him. “It’s a sort of textbook. Well, my great-great-grandmother posed for a lot of the pictures. Not recently,” she added, in case he hadn’t fully understood, “I mean, that would be a bit off-putting, she’s been dead for twenty-five years. When she was younger. I look a lot like her, everyone says.” “Urk,” agreed Teppic. “She was famous. She could put her feet behind her head, you know. So can I. I’ve got my Grade Three.” “Urk?” “The old king told me once that the gods gave people a sense of humour to make up for giving them sex. I think he was a bit upset at the time.” “Urk.” Only the whites of Teppic’s eyes were showing. “You don’t say much, do you?” The breeze of the night was blowing her perfume towards him. Ptraci used scent like a battering ram. “We’ve got to find somewhere to hide you,” he said, concentrating on each word. “Haven’t you got any parents or anything?” He tried to ignore the fact that in the shadowless flarelight she appeared to glow, and didn’t have much success. “Well, my mother still works in the palace somewhere,” said Ptraci. “But I don’t think she’d be very sympathetic.” “We’ve got to get you away from here,” said Teppic fervently. “If you can hide somewhere today, I can steal some horses or a boat or something. Then you could go to Tsort or Ephebe or somewhere.” “Foreign, you mean? I don’t think I’d like that,” said Ptraci. “Compared to the netherworld?” “Well. Put like that, of course . . .” She took his arm. “Why did you rescue me?” “Er? Because being alive is better than being dead, I think.” “I’ve read up to number 46, Congress of the Five Auspicious Ants,” said Ptraci. “If you’ve got some yoghurt, we could-” “No! I mean, no. Not here. Not now. There must be people looking for us, it’s nearly dawn.” “There’s no need to yelp like that! I was just trying to be kind.” “Yes. Good. Thank you.” Teppic broke away and peered desperately over a parapet into one of the palace’s numerous light wells. “This leads to the embalmers’ workshops,” he said. “There must be plenty of places to hide down here.” He unwound the cord again. Various rooms led off the well. Teppic found one lined with benches and floored with wood shavings; a doorway led through to another room stacked with mummy cases, each one surmounted by the same golden dolly face he’d come to know and loathe. He tapped on a few, and raised the lid of the nearest. “No-one at home,” he said. “You can have a nice rest in here. I can leave the lid open a bit so you can get some air.” “You can’t think I’d risk that? Supposing you didn’t come back!” “I’ll be back tonight,” said Teppic. “And - and I’ll see if I can drop some food and water in some time today.” She stood on tiptoe, her ankle bangles jingling all the way down Teppic’s libido. He glanced down involuntarily and saw that every toenail was painted. He remembered Cheesewright telling them behind the stables one lunch-hour that girls who painted their toenails were . . . well, he couldn’t quite remember now, but it had seemed pretty unbelievable at the time. “It looks very hard,” she said. “What?” “If I’ve got to lie in it, it’ll need some cushions.” “I’ll put some wood shavings in, look!” said Teppic. “But hurry up! Please!” “All right. But you will be back, won’t you? Promise?” “Yes, yes! I promise!” He wedged a splinter of wood on the case to allow an airhole, heaved the lid back on and ran for it. The ghost of the king watched him go. The sun rose. As the golden light spilled down the fertile valley of the Djel the pyramid flares paled and became ghost dancers against the lightening sky. They were now accompanied by a noise. It had been there all the time, far too high-pitched for mortal ears, a sound now dropping down from the far ultrasonic KKKkkkkkkhhheeee. . . It screamed out of the sky, a thin rind of sound like a violin bow dragged across the raw surface of the brain. kkkkheeeeeee. . . Or a wet fingernail dragged over an exposed nerve, some said. You could set your watch by it, they would have said, if anyone knew what one was. . . .keeee. . . It went deeper and deeper as the sunlight washed over the stones, passing through cat scream to dog growl. . . .ee. . . ee. . . ee. The flares collapsed. . . .ops.   “A fine morning, sire. I trust you slept well?” Teppic waved a hand at Dios, but said nothing. The barber was working through the Ceremony of Going Forth Shaven. The barber was trembling. Until recently he had been a one-handed, unemployed stonemason. Then the terrible high priest had summoned him and ordered him to be the king’s barber, but it meant you had to touch the king but it was all right because it was all sorted out by the priests and nothing more had to be chopped off. On the whole, it was better than he had thought, and a great honour to be singlehandedly responsible for the king’s beard, such as it was. “You were not disturbed in any way?” said the high priest. His eyes scanned the room on a raster of suspicion; it was surprising that little lines of molten rock didn’t drip off the walls. “Verrr-” “If you would but hold still, O never-dying one,” said the barber, in the pleading tone of voice employed by one who is assured of a guided tour of a crocodile’s alimentary tract if he nicks an ear. “You heard no strange noises, sire?” said Dios. He stepped back suddenly so that he could see behind the gilded peacock screen at the other end of the room. “Norr.” “Your majesty looks a little peaky this morning, sire,” said Dios. He sat down on the bench with the carved cheetahs on either end. Sitting down in the presence of the king, except on ceremonial occasions, was not something that was allowed. It did, however, mean that he could squint under Teppic’s low bed. Dios was rattled. Despite the aches and the lack of sleep, Teppic felt oddly elated. He wiped his chin. “It’s the bed,” he said. “I think I have mentioned it. Mattresses, you know. They have feathers in them. If the concept is unfamiliar, ask the pirates of Khali. Half of them must be sleeping on goosefeather mattresses by now.” “His majesty is pleased to joke,” said Dios. Teppic knew he shouldn’t push it any further, but he did so anyway. “Something wrong, Dios?” he said. “A miscreant broke into the palace last night. The girl Ptraci is missing.” “That is very disturbing.” “Yes, sire.” “Probably a suitor or a swain or something.” Dios’s face was like stone. “Possibly, sire.” “The sacred crocodiles will be going hungry, then.” But not for long, Teppic thought. Walk to the end of any of the little jetties down by the bank, let your shadow fall on the river, and the mud-yellow water would become, by magic, mud-yellow bodies. They looked like large, sodden logs, the main difference being that logs don’t open at one end and bite your legs off. The sacred crocodiles of the Djel were the kingdom’s garbage disposal, river patrol and occasional morgue. They couldn’t simply be called big. If one of the huge bulls ever drifted sideways on to the current, he’d dam the river. The barber tiptoed out. A couple of body servants tiptoed in. “I anticipated your majesty’s natural reaction, sire,” Dios continued, like the drip of water in deep limestone caverns. “Jolly good,” said Teppic, inspecting the clothes for the day. “What was it, exactly?” “A detailed search of the palace, room by room.” “Absolutely. Carry on, Dios.” My face is perfectly open, he told himself. I haven’t twitched a muscle out of place. I know I haven’t. He can read me like a stele. I can outstare him. “Thank you, sire.” “I imagine they’ll be miles away by now,” said Teppic. “Whoever they were. She was only a handmaiden, wasn’t she?” “It is unthinkable that anyone could disobey your judgements! There is no-one in the kingdom that would dare to! Their souls would be forfeit! They will be hunted down, sire! Hunted down and destroyed!” The servants cowered behind Teppic. This wasn’t mere anger. This was wrath. Real, old-time, vintage wrath. And waxing? It waxed like a hatful of moons. “Are you feeling all right, Dios?” Dios had turned to look out across the river. The Great Pyramid was almost complete. The sight of it seemed to calm him down or, at least, stabilise him on some new mental plateau. “Yes, sire,” he said. “Thank you.” He breathed deeply. “Tomorrow, sire, you are pleased to witness the capping of the pyramid. A momentous occasion. Of course, it will be some time before the interior chambers are completed.” “Fine. Fine. And this morning, I think, I should like to visit my father.” “I am sure the late king will be pleased to see you, sire. It is your wish that I should accompany you.” “Oh.” It’s a fact as immutable as the Third Law of Sod that there is no such thing as a good Grand Vizier. A predilection to cackle and plot is apparently part of the job spec. High priests tend to get put in the same category. They have to face the implied assumption that no sooner do they get the funny hat than they’re issuing strange orders, e.g., princesses tied to rocks for itinerant sea monsters and throwing little babies in the sea. This is a gross slander. Throughout the history of the Disc most high priests have been serious, pious and conscientious men who have done their best to interpret the wishes of the gods, sometimes disembowelling or flaying alive hundreds of people in a day in order to make sure they’re getting it absolutely right. King Teppicymon XXVII’s casket lay in state. Crafted it was of foryphy, smaradgine, skelsa and delphinet, inlaid it was with pink jade and shode, perfumed and fumed it was with many rare resins and perfumes It looked very impressive but, the king considered, it wasn’t worth dying for. He gave up and wandered across the courtyard. A new player had entered the drama of his death. Grinjer, the maker of models. He’d always wondered about the models. Even a humble farmer expected to be buried with a selection of crafted livestock, which would somehow become real in the netherworld. Many a man made do with one cow like a toast rack in this world in order to afford a pedigree herd in the next. Nobles and kings got the complete set, including model carts, houses, boats and anything else too big or inconvenient to fit in the tomb. Once on the other side, they’d somehow become the genuine article. The king frowned. When he was alive he’d known that it was true. Not doubted it for a moment Grinjer stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth as, with great care, he tweezered a tiny oar to a perfect 1/80th scale river trireme. Every flat surface in his corner of the workshop was stacked with midget animals and artifacts; some of his more impressive ones hung from wires on the ceiling. The king had already ascertained from overheard conversation that Grinjer was twenty-six, couldn’t find anything to stop the inexorable advance of his acne, and lived at home with his mother. Where, in the evenings, he made models. Deep in the duffel coat of his mind he hoped one day to find a nice girl who would understand the absolute importance of getting every detail right on a ceremonial six-wheeled ox cart, and who would hold his glue-pot, and always be ready with a willing thumb whenever anything needed firm pressure until the paste dried. He was aware of trumpets and general excitement behind him. He ignored it. There always seemed to be a lot of fuss these days. In his experience it was always about trivial things. People just didn’t have their priorities right. He’d been waiting two months for a few ounces of gum varneti, and it didn’t seem to bother anyone. He screwed his eyeglass into a more comfortable position and slotted a minute steering oar into place. Someone was standing next to him. Well, they could make themselves useful . “Could you just put your finger here,” he said, without glancing around. “Just for a minute, until the glue sets.” There seemed to be a sudden drop in temperature. He looked up into a smiling golden mask. Over its shoulder Dios’s face was shading, in Grinjer’s expert opinion, from No.13 (Pale Flesh) to No.37 (Sunset Purple, Gloss). “Oh,” he said. “It’s very good,” said Teppic. “What is it?” Grinjer blinked at him. Then he blinked at the boat. “It’s an eighty-foot Khali-fashion river trireme with fishtail spear deck and ramming prow,” he said automatically. He got the impression that more was expected of him. He cast around for something suitable. “It’s got more than five hundred bits,” he added. “Every plank on the deck is individually cut, look.” “Fascinating,” said Teppic. “Well, I won’t hold you up. Carry on the good work.” “The sail really unfurls,” said Grinjer. “See, if you pull this thread, the-” The mask had moved. Dios was there instead. He gave Grinjer a short glare which indicated that more would be heard about this later on, and hurried after the king. So did the ghost of Teppicymon XXVII. Teppic’s eyes swivelled behind the mask. There was the open doorway into the room of caskets. He could just make out the one containing Ptraci; the wedge of wood was still under the lid. “Our father, however, is over here. Sire,” said Dios. He could move as silently as a ghost. “Oh. Yes.” Teppic hesitated and then crossed to the big case on its trestles. He stared down at it for some time. The gilded face on the lid looked like every other mask. “A very good likeness, sire,” prompted Dios. “Ye-ess,” said Teppic. “I suppose so. He definitely looks happier. I suppose.” “Hallo, my boy,” said the king. He knew that no-one could hear him, but he felt happier talking to them all the same. It was better than talking to himself. He was going to have more than enough time for that. “I think it brings out the best in him, O commander of the heavens,” said the head sculptor. “Makes me look like a constipated wax dolly.” Teppic cocked his head on one side. “Yes,” he said, uncertainly. “Yes. Er. Well done.” He half-turned to look through the doorway again. Dios nodded to the guards on either side of the passageway. “If you will excuse me, sire,” he said urbanely. “Hmm?” “The guards will continue their search.” “Right. Oh-” Dios bore down on Ptraci’s casket, flanked by guards. He gripped the lid, thrust it backwards, and said, “Behold! What do we find?” Dil and Gern joined him. They looked inside. “Wood shavings,” said Dil. Gern sniffed. “They smell nice, though,” he said. Dios’s fingers drummed on the lid. Teppic had never seen him at a loss before. The man actually started tapping the sides of the case, apparently seeking any hidden panels. He closed the lid carefully and looked blankly at Teppic, who for the first time was very glad that the mask didn’t reveal his expression. “She’s not in there,” said the old king. “She got out for a call of nature when the men went to have their breakfast.” She must have climbed out, Teppic told himself. So where is she now? Dios scanned the room carefully and then, after swinging slowly backwards and forwards like a compass needle, his eyes fixed on the king’s mummy case. It was big. It was roomy. There was a certain inevitability about it. He crossed the room in a couple of strides and heaved it open. “Don’t bother to knock,” the king grumbled. “It’s not as if I’m going anywhere.” Teppic risked a look. The mummy of the king was quite alone. “Are you sure you’re feeling all right, Dios?” he said. “Yes, sire. We cannot be too careful, sire. Clearly they are not here, sire.” “You look as if you could do with a breath of fresh air,” said Teppic, upbraiding himself for doing this but doing it, nevertheless. Dios at a loss was an awe-inspiring sight, and slightly disconcerting; it made one instinctively fear for the stability of things. “Yes, sire. Thank you, sire.” “Have a sit down and someone will bring you a glass of water. And then we will go and inspect the pyramid.” Dios sat down. There was a terrible little splintering noise. “He’s sat on the boat,” said the king. “First humorous thing I’ve ever seen him do.”   The pyramid gave a new meaning to the word “massive”. It bent the landscape around it. It seemed to Teppic that its very weight was deforming the shape of things, stretching the kingdom like a lead ball on a rubber sheet. He knew that was a ridiculous idea. Big though the pyramid was, it was tiny compared to, say, a mountain. But big, very big, compared to anything else. Anyway, mountains were meant to be big, the fabric of the universe was used to the idea. The pyramid was a made thing, and much bigger than a made thing ought to be. It was also very cold. The black marble of its sides was shining white with frost in the roasting afternoon sun. He was foolish enough to touch it and left a layer of skin on the surface. “It’s freezing!” “It’s storing already, O breath of the river,” said Ptaclusp, who was sweating. “It’s the wossname, the boundary effect.” “I note that you have ceased work on the burial chambers,” said Dios. “The men . . . the temperature . . . boundary effects a bit too much to risk . . .” muttered Ptaclusp. “Er.” Teppic looked from one to the other. “What’s the matter?” he said. “Are there problems?” “Er,” said Ptaclusp. “You’re way ahead of schedule. Marvellous work,” said Teppic. “You’ve put a tremendous amount of labour on the job.” “Er. Yes. Only.” There was silence except for the distant sounds of men at work, and the faint noise of the air sizzling where it touched the pyramid. “It’s bound to be all right when we get the capstone on, the pyramid builder managed eventually. “Once it’s flaring properly, no problem. Er.” He indicated the electrum capstone. It was surprisingly small, only a foot or so across, and rested on a couple of trestles. “We should be able to put it on tomorrow,” said Ptaclusp. “Would your sire still be honouring us with the capping-out ceremony?” In his nervousness he gripped the hem of his robe and began to twist it. “There’s drinks,” he stuttered. “And a silver trowel that you can take away with you. Everyone shouts hurrah and throws their hats in the air.” “Certainly,” said Dios. “It will be an honour.” “And for us too, your sire,” said Ptaclusp loyally. “I meant for you,” said the high priest. He turned to the wide courtyard between the base of the pyramid and the river, which was lined with statues and stelae commemorating King Teppicymon’s mighty deeds,* (* The carvers had to use quite a lot of imagination. The late king had had many fine attributes, but doing mighty deeds wasn’t among them. The score was: Number of enemies ground as dust under his chariot wheels = 0. Number of thrones crushed beneath his sandalled feet = 0. Number of times world bestrode like colossus = 0. On the other hand: Reigns of terror = 0 Number of times own throne crushed beneath enemy sandals = 0. Faces of poor ground = 0. Expensive crusades embarked upon = 0. His life had, basically, been a no-score win.) and pointed. “And you can get rid of that,” he added. Ptaclusp gave him a look of unhappy innocence. “That statue,” said Dios, “is what I am referring to., “Oh. Ah. Well, we thought once you saw it in place, you see, in the right light, and what with Hat the Vulture-Headed God being very-” “It goes,” said Dios. “Right you are, your reverence,” said Ptaclusp miserably. It was, right now, the least of his problems, but on top of everything else he was beginning to think that the statue was following him around. Dios leaned closer. “You haven’t seen a young woman anywhere on the site, have you?” he demanded. “No women on the site, my lord,” said Ptaclusp. “Very bad luck.” “This one was provocatively dressed,” the high priest said. “No, no women.” “The palace is not far, you see. There must be many places to hide over here,” Dios continued, insistently. Ptaclusp swallowed. He knew that, all right. Whatever had possessed him. “I assure you, your reverence,” he said. Dios gave him a scowl, and then turned to where Teppic, as it turned out, had been. “Please ask him not to shake hands with anybody,” said the builder, as Dios hurried after the distant glint of sunlight on gold. The king still didn’t seem to be able to get alongside the idea that the last thing the people wanted was a man of the people. Those workers who couldn’t get out of the way in time were thrusting their hands behind their back. Alone now, Ptaclusp fanned himself and staggered into the shade of his tent. Where, waiting to see him, were Ptaclusp IIa, Ptaclusp IIa, Ptaclusp IIa and Ptaclusp IIa. Ptaclusp always felt uneasy in the presence of accountants, and four of them together was very bad, especially when they were all the same person. Three Ptaclusp IIbs were there as well; the other two, unless it was three by now, were out on the site. He waved his hands in a conciliatory way. “All right, all right,” he said. “What are today’s problems?” One of the IIas pulled a stack of wax tablets towards him “Have you any idea, father,” he began, employing that thin; razor-edged voice that accountants use to preface something unexpected and very expensive, “what calculus is?” “You tell me,” said Ptaclusp, sagging on to a stool. “It’s what I’ve had to invent to deal with the wages bill, father,” said another IIa. “I thought that was algebra?” said Ptaclusp. “We passed algebra last week,” said a third IIa. “It’s calculus now. I’ve had to loop myself another four times to work on it, and there’s three of me working on-” he glanced at his brothers - “quantum accountancy.” “What’s that for?” said his father wearily. “Next week.” The leading accountant glared at the top slab. “For example,” he said. “You know Rthur the fresco painter?” “What about him?” “He - that is, they - have put in a bill for two years’ work.” “Oh.” “They said they did it on Tuesday. On account of how time is fractal in nature, they said.” “They said that?” said Ptaclusp. “It’s amazing what they pick up,” said one of the accountants, glaring at the paracosmic architects. Ptaclusp hesitated. “How many of them are there?” “How should we know? We know there were fifty-three. Then he went critical. We’ve certainly seen him around a lot.” Two of the IIas sat back and steepled their fingers, always a bad sign in anyone having anything to do with money. “The problem is,” one of them continued, “that after the initial enthusiasm a lot of the workers looped themselves unofficially so that they could stay at home and send themselves out to work.” “But that’s ridiculous,” Ptaclusp protested weakly. “They’re not different people, they’re just doing it to themselves.” “That’s never stopped anyone, father,” said IIa. “How many men have stopped drinking themselves stupid at the age of twenty to save a stranger dying of liver failure at forty?” There was silence while they tried to work this one out. “A stranger-?” said Ptaclusp uncertainly. “I mean himself, when older,” snapped IIa. “That was philosophy,” he added. “One of the masons beat himself up yesterday,” said one of the IIbs gloomily. “He was fighting with himself over his wife. Now he’s going mad because he doesn’t know whether it’s an earlier version of him or someone he hasn’t been yet. He’s afraid he’s going to creep up on him. There’s worse than that, too. Dad, we’re paying forty thousand people, and we’re only employing two thousand.” “It’s going to bankrupt us, that’s what you’re going to say,” said Ptaclusp. “I know. It’s all my fault. I just wanted something to hand on to you, you know. I didn’t expect all this. It seemed too easy to start with.” One of the IIas cleared his throat. “It’s . . . uh . . . not quite as bad as all that,” he said quietly. “What do you mean?” The accountant laid a dozen copper coins on the table. “Well, er,” he said. “You see, eh, it occurred to me, since there’s all this movement in time, that it’s not just people who can be looped, and, er, look, you see these coins?” One coin vanished. “They’re all the same coin, aren’t they,” said one of his brothers. “Well, yes,” said the IIa, very embarrassed, because interfering with the divine flow of money was alien to his personal religion. “The same coin at five minute intervals.” “And you’re using this trick to pay the men?” said Ptaclusp dully. “It’s not a trick! I give them the money,” said IIa primly. “What happens to it afterwards isn’t my responsibility, is it?” “I don’t like any of this,” said his father. “Don’t worry. It all evens out in the end,” said one of the IIas. “Everyone gets what’s coming to them.” “Yes. That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Ptaclusp. “It’s just a way of letting your money work for you,” said another son. “It’s probably quantum.” “Oh, good,” said Ptaclusp weakly. “We’ll get the block on tonight, don’t worry,” said one of the IIbs. “After it’s flared the power off we can all settle down.” “I told the king we’d do it tomorrow.” The Ptaclusp IIbs went pale in unison. Despite the heat, it suddenly seemed a lot colder in the tent. “Tonight, father,” said one of them. “Surely you mean tonight? “Tomorrow,” said Ptaclusp, firmly. “I’ve arranged an awning and people throwing lotus blossom. There’s going to be a band. Tocsins and trumpets and tinkling cymbals. And speeches and a meat tea afterwards. That’s the way we’ve always done it. Attracts new customers. They like to have a look round.” “Father, you’ve seen the way it soaks up. . . you’ve seen the frost . . “Let it soak. We Ptaclusps don’t go around capping off pyramids as though we were finishing off a garden wall. We don’t knock off like a wossname in the night. People expect a ceremony. “But-” “I’m not listening. I’ve listened to too much of this new-fangled stuff. Tomorrow. I’ve had the bronze plaque made, and the velvet curtains and everything.” One of the IIas shrugged. “It’s no good arguing with him,” he said. “I’m from three hours ahead. I remember this meeting. We couldn’t change his mind.” “I’m from two hours ahead,” said one of his clones. “I remember you saying that, too.” Beyond the walls of the tent, the pyramid sizzled with accumulated time. There is nothing mystical about the power of pyramids. Pyramids are dams in the stream of time. Correctly shaped and orientated, with the proper paracosmic measurements correctly plumbed in, the temporal potential of the great mass of stone can be diverted to accelerate or reverse time over a very small area, in the same way that a hydraulic ram can be induced to pump water against the flow. The original builders, who were of course ancients and therefore wise, knew this very well and the whole point of a correctly-built pyramid was to achieve absolute null time in the central chamber so that a dying king, tucked up there, would indeed live forever - or at least, never actually die. The time that should have passed in the chamber was stored in the bulk of the pyramid and allowed to flare off once every twenty-four hours. After a few aeons people forgot this and thought you could achieve the same effect by a) ritual b) pickling people and c) storing their soft inner bits in jars. This seldom works. And so the art of pyramid tuning was lost, and all the knowledge became a handful of misunderstood rules and hazy recollections. The ancients were far too wise to build very big pyramids. They could cause very strange things, things that would make mere fluctuations in time look tiny by comparison. By the way, contrary to popular opinion pyramids don’t sharpen razor blades. They just take them back to when they weren’t blunt. It’s probably because of quantum. Teppic lay on the strata of his bed, listening intently. There were two guards outside the door, and another two on the balcony outside, and - he was impressed at Dios’s forethought - one on the roof. He could hear them trying to make no noise. He’d hardly been able to protest. If black-clad miscreants were getting into the palace, then the person of the king had to be protected. It was undeniable. He slipped off the solid mattress and glided through the twilight to the statue of Bast the Cat-Headed God in the corner, twisted off the head, and pulled out his assassin’s costume. He dressed quickly, cursing the lack of mirrors, and then padded across and lurked behind a pillar. The only problem, as far as he could see, was not laughing. Being a soldier in Djelibeybi was not a high risk job. There was never a hint of internal rebellion and, since either neighbour could crush the kingdom instantly by force of arms, there was no real point in selecting keen and belligerent warriors. In fact, the last thing the priesthood wanted was enthusiastic soldiers. Enthusiastic soldiers with no fighting to do soon get bored and start thinking dangerous thoughts, like how much better they could run the country. Instead the job attracted big, solid men, the kind of men who could stand stock still for hours at a time without getting bored, men with the build of an ox and the mental processes to match. Excellent bladder control was also desirable. He stepped out on to the balcony. Teppic had learned how not to move stealthily. Millions of years of being eaten by creatures that know how to move stealthily has made humanity very good at spotting stealthy movement. Nor was it enough to make no noise, because little moving patches of silence always aroused suspicion. The trick was to glide through the night with a quiet reassurance, just like the air did. There was a guard standing just outside the room. Teppic drifted past him and climbed carefully up the wall. It had been decorated with a complex bas relief of the triumphs of past monarchs, so Teppic used his family to give him a leg up. The breeze was blowing off the desert as he swung his legs over the parapet and walked silently across the roof, which was still hot underfoot. The air had a recently-cooked smell, tinted with spice. It was a strange feeling, to be creeping across the roof of your own palace, trying to avoid your own guards, engaged on a mission in direct contravention of your own decree and knowing that if you were caught you would have yourself thrown to the sacred crocodiles. After all, he’d apparently already instructed that he was to be shown no mercy if he was captured. Somehow it added an extra thrill. There was freedom of a sort up here on the rooftops, the only kind of freedom available to a king of the valley. It occurred to Teppic that the landless peasants down on the delta had more freedom than he did, although the seditious and non-kingly side of him said, yes, freedom to catch any diseases of their choice, starve as much as they wanted, and die of whatever dreadful ague took their fancy. But freedom, of a sort. A faint noise in the huge silence of the night drew him to the riverward edge of the roof. The Djel sprawled in the moonlight, broad and oily. There was a boat in midstream, heading back from the far bank and the necropolis. There was no mistaking the figure at the oars. The flarelight gleamed off his bald head. One day, Teppic thought, I’ll follow him. I’ll find out what it is he does over there. If he goes over in daylight, of course. In daylight the necropolis was merely gloomy, as though the whole universe had shut down for early-closing. He’d even explored it, wandering through streets and alleys that contrived to be still and dusty no matter what the weather was on the other, the living side of the water. There was always a breathless feel about it, which was probably not to be wondered at. Assassins liked the night on general principles, but the night of the necropolis was something else. Or rather, it was the same thing, but a lot more of it. Besides, it was the only city anywhere on the Disc where an assassin couldn’t find employment. He reached the light well that opened on the embalmers” courtyard and peered down. A moment later he landed lightly on the floor and slipped into the room of cases. “Hallo, lad.” Teppic opened the lid of the case. It was still empty. “She’s in one of the ones at the back,” said the king. “Never had much of a sense of direction.” It was a great big palace. Teppic could barely find his way around it by daylight. He considered his chances of carrying out a search in pitch darkness. “It’s a family trait, you know. Your grandad had to have Left and Right painted on his sandals, it was that bad. It’s lucky for you that you take after your mother in that respect.” It was strange. She didn’t talk, she chattered. She didn’t seem to be able to hold a simple thought in her head for more than about ten seconds. Her brain appeared to be wired directly to her mouth, so that as soon as a thought entered her head she spoke it out loud. Compared to the ladies he had met at soirees in Ankh, who delighted in entertaining young assassins and fed them expensive delicacies and talked to them of high and delicate matters while their eyes sparkled like carborundum drills and their lips began to glisten compared to them, she was as empty as a, as a, well, as an empty thing. Nevertheless, he found he desperately wanted to find her. The sheer undemandingness of her was like a drug. The memory of her bosom was quite beside the point. “I’m glad you’ve come back for her,” said the king vaguely. “She’s your sister, you know. Half sister, that is. Sometimes I wish I’d married her mother, but you see she wasn’t royal. Very bright woman, her mother.” Teppic listened hard. There it was again: a faint breathing noise, only heard at all because of the deep silence of the night. He worked his way to the back of the room, listened again, and lifted the lid of a case. Ptraci was curled up on the bottom, fast asleep with her head on her arm. He leaned the lid carefully against the wall and touched her hair. She muttered something in her sleep, and settled into a more comfortable position. “Er, I think you’d better wake up,” he whispered. She changed position again and muttered something like: “Wstflgl.” Teppic hesitated. Neither his tutors nor Dios had prepared him for this. He knew at least seventy different ways of killing a sleeping person, but none to wake them up first. He prodded her in what looked like the least embarrassing area of her skin. She opened her eyes. “Oh,” she said. “It’s you.” And she yawned. “I’ve come to take you away,” said Teppic. “You’ve been asleep all day.” “I heard someone talking,” she said, stretching in a fashion that made Teppic look away hurriedly. “It was that priest, the one with the face like a bald eagle. He’s really horrible.” “He is, isn’t he?” agreed Teppic, intensely relieved to hear it said. “So I just kept quiet. And there was the king. The new king.” “Oh. He was down here, was he?” said Teppic weakly. The bitterness in her voice was like a Number Four stabbing knife in his heart. “All the girls say he’s really weird,” she added, as he helped her out of the case. “You can touch me, you know. I’m not made of china.” He steadied her arm, feeling in sore need of a cold bath and a quick run around the rooftops. “You’re an assassin, aren’t you,” she went on. “I remembered that after you’d gone. An assassin from foreign parts. All that black. Have you come to kill the king?” “I wish I could,” said Teppic. “He’s really beginning to get on my nerves. Look, could you take your bangles off?” “Why?” “They make such a noise when you walk.” Even Ptraci’s earrings appeared to chime the hours when she moved her head. “I don’t want to,” she said. “I’d feel naked without them.” “You’re nearly naked with them,” hissed Teppic. “Please!” “She can play the dulcimer,” said the ghost of Teppicymon XXVII, apropos of nothing much. “Not very well, mind you. She’s up to page five of “Little Pieces for Tiny Fingers”.” Teppic crept to the passage leading out of the embalming room and listened hard. Silence ruled in the palace, broken only by heavy breathing and the occasional clink behind him as Ptraci stripped herself of her jewellery. He crept back. “Please hurry up,” he said, “we haven’t got a lot of-” Ptraci was crying. “Er,” said Teppic. “Er.” “Some of these were presents from my granny,” sniffed Ptraci. “The old king gave me some, too. These earrings have been in my family for ever such a long time. How would you like it if you had to do it?” “You see, jewellery isn’t just something she wears,” said the ghost of Teppicymon XXVII. “It’s part of who she is.” My word, he added to himself, that’s probably an Insight. Why is it so much easier to think when you’re dead? “I don’t wear any,” said Teppic. “You’ve got all those daggers and things.” “Well, I need them to do my job.” “Well then.” “Look, you don’t have to leave them here, you can put them in my pouch,” he said. “But we must be going. Please!” “Goodbye,” said the ghost sadly, watching them sneak out to the courtyard. He floated back to his corpse, who wasn’t the best of company. The breeze was stronger when they reached the roof. It was hotter, too, and dry. Across the river one or two of the older pyramids were already sending up their flares, but they were weak and looked wrong. “I feel itchy,” said Ptraci. “What’s wrong?” “It feels like we’re in for a thunderstorm,” said Teppic, staring across the river at the Great Pyramid. Its blackness had intensified, so that it was a triangle of deeper darkness in the night. Figures were running around its base like lunatics watching their asylum burn. “What’s a thunderstorm?” “Very hard to describe,” he said, in a preoccupied voice. “Can you see what they’re doing over there?” Ptraci squinted across the river. “They’re very busy,” she said. “Looks more like panic to me.” A few more pyramids flared, but instead of roaring straight up the flames flickered and lashed backwards and forwards, driven by intangible winds. Teppic shook himself. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you away from here.”   “I said we should have capped it this evening,” shouted Ptaclusp IIb above the screaming of the pyramid. “I can’t float it up now, the turbulence up there must be terrific!” The ice of day was boiling off the black marble, which was already warm to the touch. He stared distractedly at the capstone on its cradle and then at his brother, who was still in his nightshirt. “Where’s father?” he said. “I sent one of us to go and wake him up,” said IIa. “Who?” “One of you, actually.” “Oh.” IIb stared again at the capstone. “It’s not that heavy,” he said. “Two of us could manhandle it up there.” He gave his brother an enquiring look. “You must be mad. Send some of the men to do it.” “They’ve all run away-” Down river another pyramid tried to flare, spluttered, and then ejected a screaming, ragged flame that arched across the sky and grounded near the top of the Great Pyramid itself. “It’s interfering with the others now!” shouted IIb. “Come on. We’ve got to flare it off, it’s the only way!” About a third of the way up the pyramid’s flanks a crackling blue zigzag arced out and struck itself on a stone sphinx. The air above it boiled. The two brothers slung the stone between them and staggered to the scaffolding, while the dust around them whirled into strange shapes. “Can you hear something?” said IIb, as they stumbled on to the first platform. “What, you mean the fabric of time and space being put through the wringer?” said IIa. The architect gave his brother a look of faint admiration. It was an unusual remark for an accountant. Then his face returned to its previous look of faint terror. “No, not that,” he said. “Well, the sound of the very air itself being subjected to horrible tortures?” “Not that, either,” said IIb, vaguely annoyed. “I mean the creaking noise.” Three more pyramids struck their discharges, which fizzled through the roiling clouds overhead and poured into the black marble above them. “Can’t hear anything like that,” said IIa. “I think it’s coming from the pyramid.” “Well, you can put your ear against it if you like, but I’m not going to.” The scaffolding swayed in the storm as they eased their way up another ladder, the heavy capstone rocking between them. “I said we shouldn’t do it,” muttered the accountant, as the stone slid gently on to his toes. “We shouldn’t have built this.” “Just shut up and lift your end, will you?” And so, one rocking ladder after another, the brothers Ptaclusp eased their bickering way up the flanks of the Great Pyramid, while the lesser tombs along the Djel fired one after another, and the sky streamed with lines of sizzling time. It was around about this point that the greatest mathematician in the world, lying in cosy flatulence in his stall below the palace, stopped chewing the cud and realised that something very wrong was happening to numbers. All the numbers. The camel looked along its nose at Teppic. Its expression made it clear that of all the riders in all the world it would least like to ride it, he was right at the top of the list. However, camels look like that at everyone. Camels have a very democratic approach to the human race. They hate every member of it, without making any distinctions for rank or creed. This one appeared to be chewing soap. Teppic looked distractedly down the shadowy length of the royal stables, which had once contained a hundred camels. He’d have given the world for a horse, and a moderately-sized continent for a pony. But the stables now held only a handful of rotting war chariots, relics of past glories, an elderly elephant whose presence was a bit of a mystery, and this camel. It looked an extremely inefficient animal. It was going threadbare at the knees. “Well, this is it,” he said to Ptraci. “I don’t dare try the river during the night. I could try and get you over the border.” “Is that saddle on right?” said Ptraci. “It looks awfully funny.” “It’s on an awfully odd creature,” said Teppic. “How do we climb on to it?” “I’ve seen the camel drivers at work,” she replied. “I think they just hit them very hard with a big stick.” The camel knelt down and gave her a smug look. Teppic shrugged, pulled open the doors to the outside world, and stared into the faces of five guards. He backed away. They advanced. Three of them were holding the heavy Djel bows, which could propel an arrow through a door or turn a charging hippo into three tons of mobile kebab. The guards had never had to fire them at a fellow human, but looked as though they were prepared to entertain the idea. The guard captain tapped one of the men on the shoulder, and said, “Go and inform the high priest.” He glared at Teppic. “Throw down all your weapons,” he said. “What, all of them?” “Yes. All of them.” “It might take some time,” said Teppic cautiously. “And keep your hands where I can see them,” the captain added. “We could be up against a real impasse here,” Teppic ventured. He looked from one guard to another. He knew a variety of methods of unarmed combat, but they all rather relied on the opponent not being about to fire an arrow straight through you as soon as you moved. But he could probably dive sideways, and once he had the cover of the camel stalls he could bide his time And that would leave Ptraci exposed. Besides, he could hardly go around fighting his own guards. That wasn’t acceptable behaviour, even for a king. There was a movement behind the guards and Dios drifted into view, as silent and inevitable as an eclipse of the moon. He was holding a lighted torch, which reflected wild highlights on his bald head. “Ah,” he said. “The miscreants are captured. Well done.” He nodded to the captain. “Throw them to the crocodiles.” “Dios?” said Teppic, as two of the guards lowered their bows and bore down on him. “Did you speak?” “You know who I am, man. Don’t be silly.” The high priest raised the torch. “You have the advantage of me, boy,” he said. “Metaphorically speaking.” “This is not funny,” said Teppic. “I order you to tell them who I am.” “As you wish. This assassin,” said Dios, and the voice had the cut and sear of a thermic lance, “has killed the king.” “I am the king, damn it,” said Teppic. “How could I kill myself?” “We are not stupid,” said Dios. “These men know the king does not skulk the palace at night, or consort with condemned criminals. All that remains for us to find out is how you disposed of the body.” His eyes fixed on Teppic’s face, and Teppic realised that the high priest was, indeed, truly mad. It was the rare kind of madness caused by being yourself for so long that habits of sanity have etched themselves into the brain. I wonder how old he really is? he thought. “These assassins are cunning creatures,” said Dios. “Have a care of him.” There was a crash beside the priest. Ptraci had tried to throw a camel prod, and missed. When everyone looked back Teppic had vanished. The guards beside him were busy collapsing slowly to the floor, groaning. Dios smiled. “Take the woman,” he snapped, and the captain darted forward and grabbed Ptraci, who hadn’t made any attempt to run away. Dios bent down and picked up the prod. “There are more guards outside,” he said. “I’m sure you will realise that. It will be in your interests to step forward.” “Why?” said Teppic, from the shadows. He fumbled in his boot for his blowpipe. “You will then be thrown to the sacred crocodiles, by order of the king,” said Dios. “Something to look forward to, eh?” said Teppic, feverishly screwing bits together. “It would certainly be preferable to many alternatives,” said Dios. In the darkness Teppic ran his fingers over the little coded knobs on the darts. Most of the really spectacular poisons would have evaporated or dissolved into harmlessness by now, but there were a number of lesser potions designed to give their clients nothing more than a good night’s sleep. An assassin might have to work his way to an inhume past a number of alert bodyguards. It was considered impolite to inhume them as well. “You could let us go,” said Teppic. “I suspect that’s what you want, isn’t it? For me to go away and never come back? That suits me fine.” Dios hesitated. “You’re supposed to say “And let the girl go”,” he said. “Oh, yes. And that, too,” said Teppic. “No. I would be failing in my duty to the king,” said Dios. “For goodness sake, Dios, you know I am the king!” “No. I have a very clear picture of the king. You are not the king,” said the priest. Teppic peered over the edge of the camel stall. The camel peered over his shoulder. And then the world went mad. All right, madder.   All the pyramids were blazing now, filling the sky with their sooty light as the brothers Ptaclusp struggled to the main working platform. IIa collapsed on the planking, wheezing like an elderly bellows. A few feet away the sloping side was hot to the touch, and there was no doubt in his mind now that the pyramid was creaking, like a sailing ship in a gale. He had never paid much attention to the actual mechanics as opposed to the cost of pyramid construction, but he was pretty certain that the noise was as wrong as II and II making V. His brother reached out to touch the stone, but drew his hand back as small sparks flashed around his fingers. “You can feel the warmth,” he said. “It’s astonishing!” “Why?” “Heating up a mass like this. I mean, the sheer tonnage. . .” “I don’t like it, Two-bee,” IIa quavered. “Let’s just leave the stone here, shall we? I’m sure it’ll be all right, and in the morning we can send a gang up here, they’ll know exactly what-” His words were drowned out as another flare crackled across the sky and hit the column of dancing air fifty feet above them. He grabbed part of the scaffolding. “Sod take this,” he said. “I’m off.” “Hang on a minute,” said IIb. “I mean, what is creaking? Stone can’t creak.” “The whole bloody scaffolding is moving, don’t be daft!” He stared goggle-eyed at his brother. “Tell me it’s the scaffolding,” he pleaded. “No, I’m certain this time. It’s coming from inside.” They stared at one another, and then at the rickety ladder leading up to the tip, or to where the tip should be. “Come on!” said IIb. “It can’t flare off, it’s trying to find ways of discharging-” There was a sound as loud as the groaning of continents. Teppic felt it. He felt that his skin was several sizes too small. He felt that someone was holding his ears and trying to twist his head off. He saw the guard captain sag to his knees, fighting to get his helmet off, and he leapt the stall. Tried to leap the stall. Everything was wrong, and he landed heavily on a floor that seemed undecided about becoming a wall. He managed to get to his feet and was pulled sideways, dancing awkwardly across the stable to keep his balance. The stables stretched and shrank like a picture in a distorting mirror. He’d gone to see some once in Ankh, the three of them hazarding a half-coin each to visit the transient marvels of Dr Mooner’s Travelling Take Your Breath Away Emporium. But you knew then that it was only twisted glass that was giving you a head like a sausage and legs like footballs. Teppic wished he could be so certain that what was happening around him would allow of such a harmless explanation. You’d probably need a wobbly glass mirror to make it look normal. He ran on taffy legs towards Ptraci and the high priest as the world was expanded and squeezed around him, and was momentarily gratified to see the girl squirm in Dios’s grip and fetch him a tidy thump on the ear. He moved as though in a dream, with the distances changing as though reality was an elastic thing. Another step sent him cannoning into the pair of them. He grabbed Ptraci’s arm and staggered back to the camel stall, where the creature was still cudding and watching the scene with the nearest thing a camel will ever get to mild interest, and snatched its halter. No-one seemed to be interested in stopping them as they helped each other through the doorway and out into the mad night. “It helps if you shut your eyes,” said Ptraci. Teppic tried it. It worked. A stretch of courtyard that his eyes told him was a quivering rectangle whose sides twanged like bowstrings became, well, just a courtyard under his feet. “Gosh, that was clever,” he said. “How did you think of that?” “I always shut my eyes when I’m frightened,” said Ptraci. “Good plan.” “What’s happening?” “I don’t know. I don’t want to find out. I think going away from here could be an amazingly sensible idea. How do you make a camel kneel, did you say? I’ve got any amount of sharp things.” The camel, who had a very adequate grasp of human language as it applied to threats, knelt down graciously. They scrambled aboard and the landscape lurched again as the beast jacked itself back on to its feet. The camel knew perfectly well what was happening. Three stomachs and a digestive system like an industrial distillation plant gave you a lot of time for sitting and thinking. It’s not for nothing that advanced mathematics tends to be invented in hot countries. It’s because of the morphic resonance of all the camels, who have that disdainful expression and famous curled lip as a natural result of an ability to do quadratic equations. It’s not generally realised that camels have a natural aptitude for advanced mathematics, particularly where they involve ballistics. This evolved as a survival trait, in the same way as a human’s hand and eye co-ordination, a chameleon’s camouflage and a dolphin’s renowned ability to save drowning swimmers if there’s any chance that biting them in half might be observed and commented upon adversely by other humans. The fact is that camels are far more intelligent than dolphins.* (* Never trust a species that grins all the time. It’s up to something.) They are so much brighter that they soon realised that the most prudent thing any intelligent animal can do, if it would prefer its descendants not to spend a lot of time on a slab with electrodes clamped to their brains or sticking mines on the bottom of ships or being patronised rigid by zoologists, is to make bloody certain humans don’t find out about it. So they long ago plumped for a lifestyle that, in return for a certain amount of porterage and being prodded with sticks, allowed them adequate food and grooming and the chance to spit in a human’s eye and get away with it. And this particular camel, the result of millions of years of selective evolution to produce a creature that could count the grains of sand it was walking over, and close its nostrils at will, and survive under the broiling sun for many days without water, was called You Bastard. And he was, in fact, the greatest mathematician in the world. You Bastard was thinking: there seems to be some growing dimensional instability here, swinging from zero to nearly forty-five degrees by the look of it. How interesting. I wonder what’s causing it? Let V equal 3. Let Tau equal Chi/4. cudcudcud Let Kappa/y be an Evil-Smelling-Bugger* (* Renowned as the greatest camel mathematician of all time, who invented a math of eight-dimensional space while lying down with his nostrils closed in a violent sandstorm.) differential tensor domain with four imaginary spin co-efficients. . . Ptraci hit him across the head with her sandal. “Come on, get a move on!” she yelled. You Bastard thought: Therefore H to the enabling power equals V/s. cudcudcud Thus in hypersyllogic notation . . . Teppic looked behind him. The strange distortions in the landscape seemed to be settling down, and Dios was . . . Dios was striding out of the palace, and had actually managed to find several guards whose fear of disobedience overcame the terror of the mysteriously distorted world. You Bastard stood stoically chewing. . . cudcudcud which gives us an interesting shortening oscillation. What would be the period of this? Let period = x. cudcudcud Let t = time. Let initial period . . . Ptraci bounced up and down on his neck and kicked hard with her heels, an action which would have caused any anthropoid male to howl and bang his head against the wall. “It won’t move! Can’t you hit it?” Teppic brought his hand down as hard as he could on You Bastard’s hide, raising a cloud of dust and deadening every nerve in his fingers. It was like hitting a large sack full of coathangers. “Come on,” he muttered. Dios raised a hand. “Halt, in the name of the king!” he shouted. An arrow thudded into You Bastard’s hump. . . . equals 6.3 recurring. Reduce. That gives us ouch . . . 314 seconds . . . You Bastard turned his long neck around. His great hairy eyebrows made accusing curves as his yellow eyes narrowed and took a fix on the high priest, and he put aside the interesting problem for a moment and dredged up the familiar ancient maths that his race had perfected long ago: Let range equal forty-one feet. Let windspeed equal 2. Vector one-eight. cud Let glutinosity equal 7 . Teppic drew a throwing knife. Dios took a deep breath. He’s going to order them to fire on us, Teppic thought. In my own name, in my own kingdom, I’m going to be shot. Angle two-five, cud Fire. It was a magnificent volley. The gob of cud had commendable lift and spin and hit with a sound like, a sound like half a pound of semi-digested grass hitting someone in the face. There was nothing else it could sound like. The silence that followed was by way of being a standing ovation. The landscape began to distort again. This was clearly not a place to linger. You Bastard looked down at his front legs. Let legs equal four. He lumbered into a run. Camels apparently have more knees than any other creature and You Bastard ran like a steam engine, with lots of extraneous movement at right angles to the direction of motion accompanied by a thunderous barrage of digestive noises. “Bloody stupid animal,” muttered Ptraci, as they jolted away from the palace, “but it looks like it finally got the idea.” . . . gauge-invariant repetition rate of 3.5/z. What’s she talking about, Bloody Stupid lives over in Tsort . . . Though they swung through the air as though jointed with bad elastic You Bastard’s legs covered a lot of ground, and already they were bouncing through the sleeping packed-earth streets of the city. “It’s starting again, isn’t it?” said Ptraci. “I’m going to shut my eyes.” Teppic nodded. The firebrick-hot houses around them were doing their slow motion mirror dance again, and the road was rising and falling in a way that solid land had no right to adopt. “It’s like the sea,” he said. “I can’t see anything,” said Ptraci firmly. “I mean the sea. The ocean. You know. Waves.” “I’ve heard about it. Is anyone chasing us?” Teppic turned in the saddle. “Not that I can make out,” he said. “It looks as-” From here he could see past the long, low bulk of the palace and across the river to the Great Pyramid itself. It was almost hidden in dark clouds, but what he could see of it was definitely wrong. He knew it had four sides, and he could see all eight of them. It seemed to be moving in and out of focus, which he felt instinctively was a dangerous thing for several million tons of rock to do. He felt a pressing urge to be a long way away from it. Even a dumb creature like the camel seemed to have the same idea. You Bastard was thinking: . . Delta squared. Thus, dimensional pressure k will result in a ninety-degree transformation in Chi(16/x/pu)t for a K-bundle of any three invariables. Or four minutes, plus or minus ten seconds The camel looked down at the great pads of his feet. Let speed equal gallop. “How did you make it do that?” said Teppic. “I didn’t! It’s doing it by itself! Hang on!” This wasn’t easy. Teppic had saddled the camel but neglected the harness. Ptraci had handfuls of camel hair to hang on to. All he had was handfuls of Ptraci. No matter where he tried to put his hands, they encountered warm, yielding flesh. Nothing in his long education had prepared him for this, whereas everything in Ptraci’s obviously had. Her long hair whipped his face and smelled beguilingly of rare perfume. * (* An effect achieved by distilling the testicles of a small tree-dwelling species of bear with the vomit of a whale, and adding a handful of rose petals. Teppic probably would have felt no better for knowing this.) “Are you all right?” he shouted above the wind. “I’m hanging on with my knees!” “That must be very hard!” “You get special training!” Camels gallop by throwing their feet as far away from them as possible and then running to keep up. Knee joints clicking like chilly castanets, You Bastard thrashed up the sloping road out of the valley and windmilled along the narrow gorge that led, under towering limestone cliffs, to the high desert beyond. And behind them, tormented beyond measure by the inexorable tide of geometry, unable to discharge its burden of Time, the Great Pyramid screamed, lifted itself off its base and, its bulk swishing through the air as unstoppably as something completely unstoppable, ground around precisely ninety degrees and did something perverted to the fabric of time and space. You Bastard sped along the gorge, his neck stretched out to its full extent, his mighty nostrils flaring like jet intakes. “It’s terrified!” Ptraci yelled. “Animals always know about this sort of thing!” “What sort of thing!” “Forest fires and things!” “We haven’t got any trees!” “Well, floods and - and things! They’ve got some strange natural instinct!” . . . Phi* 1700[u/v]. Lateral e/v. Equals a tranche of seven to twelve . . . The sound hit them. It was as silent as a dandelion clock striking midnight, but it had pressure. It rolled over them, suffocating as velvet, nauseating as a battered saveloy. And was gone. You Bastard slowed to a walk, a complicated procedure that involved precise instructions to each leg in turn. There was a feeling of release, a sense of stress withdrawn. You Bastard stopped. In the pre-dawn glow he’d spotted a clump of thorned syphacia bushes growing in the rocks by the track. . . angle left. x equals 37. y equals 19. z equals 43. Bite . . . Peace descended. There was no sound except for the eructations of the camel’s digestive tract and the distant warbling of a desert owl. Ptraci slid off her perch and landed awkwardly. “My bottom,” she announced, to the desert in general, “is one huge blister.” Teppic jumped down and half-ran, half-staggered up the scree by the roadside, then jogged across the cracked limestone plateau until he could get a good look at the valley. It wasn’t there any more. It was still dark when Dil the master embalmer woke up, his body twanging with the sensation that something was wrong. He slipped out of bed, dressed hurriedly, and pulled aside the curtain that did duty as a door. The night was soft and velvety. Behind the chirrup of the insects there was another sound, a frying noise, a faint sizzling on the edge of hearing. Perhaps that was what had woken him up. The air was warm and damp. Curls of mist rose from the river, and- The pyramids weren’t flaring. He’d grown up in this house: it had been in the family of the master embalmers for thousands of years, and he’d seen the pyramids flare so often that he didn’t notice them, any more than he noticed his own breathing. But now they were dark and silent, and the silence cried out and the darkness glared. But that wasn’t the worst part. As his horrified eyes stared up at the empty sky over the necropolis they saw the stars, and what the stars were stuck to. Dil was terrified. And then, when he had time to think about it, he was ashamed of himself. After all, he thought, it’s what I’ve always been told is there. It stands to reason. I’m just seeing it properly for the first time. There. Does that make me feel any better? No. He turned and ran down the street, sandals flapping, until he reached the house that held Gern and his numerous family. He dragged the protesting apprentice from the communal sleeping mat and pulled him into the street, turned his face to the sky and hissed. “Tell me what you can see!” Gern squinted. “I can see the stars, master,” he said. “What are they on, boy?” Gern relaxed slightly. “That’s easy, master. Everyone knows the stars are on the body of the goddess Nept who arches herself from . . . oh, bloody hell.” “You can see her, too?” “Oh, mummy,” whispered Gern, and slid to his knees. Dil nodded. He was a religious man. It was a great comfort knowing that the gods were there. It was knowing they were here that was the terrible part. Because the body of a woman arched over the heavens, faintly blue, faintly shadowy in the light of the watery stars. She was enormous, her statistics interstellar. The shadow between her galactic breasts was a dark nebula, the curve of her stomach a vast wash of glowing gas, her navel the seething, dark incandescence in which new stars were being born. She wasn’t supporting the sky. She was the sky. Her huge sad face, upside down on the turnwise horizon, stared directly at Dil. And Dil was realising that there are few things that so shake belief as seeing, clearly and precisely, the object of that belief. Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn’t believing. It’s where belief stops, because it isn’t needed any more. “Oh, Sod,” moaned Gern. Dil struck him across the arm. “Stop that,” he said. “And come with me.” “Oh, master, whatever shall we do?” Dil looked around at the sleeping city. He hadn’t the faintest idea. “We’ll go to the palace,” he said firmly. “It’s probably a trick of the, of the, of the dark. Anyway, the sun will be up presently.” He strode off, wishing he could change places with Gern and show just a hint of gibbering terror. The apprentice followed him at a sort of galloping creep. “I can see shadows against the stars, master! Can you see them, master? Around the edge of the world, master!” “Just mists, boy,” said Dil, resolutely keeping his eyes fixed in front of him and maintaining a dignified posture as appropriate to the Keeper of the Left Hand Door of the Matron Lodge and holder of several medals for needlework. “There,” he said. “See, Gern, the sun is coming up!” They stood and watched it. Then Gern whimpered, very quietly. Rising up the sky, very slowly, was a great flaming ball. And it was being pushed by a dung beetle bigger than worlds.   BOOK III The Book of the New Son The sun rose and, because this wasn’t the Old Kingdom out here, it was a mere ball of flaming gas. The purple night of the high desert evaporated under its blowlamp glare. Lizards scuffled into cracks in the rocks. You Bastard settled himself down in the sparse shadow of what was left of the syphacia bushes, peered haughtily at the landscape, and began to chew cud and calculate square roots in base seven. Teppic and Ptraci eventually found the shade of a limestone overhang, and sat glumly staring out at the waves of heat wobbling off the rocks. “I don’t understand,” said Ptraci. “Have you looked everywhere?” “It’s a country! It can’t just bloody well fall through a hole in the ground!” “Where is it, then?” said Ptraci evenly. Teppic growled. The heat struck like a hammer, but he strode out over the rocks as though three hundred square miles could perhaps have been hiding under a pebble or behind a bush. The fact was that the track dipped between the cliffs, but almost immediately rose again and continued across the dunes into what was quite clearly Tsort. He’d recognised a wind-eroded sphinx that had been set up as a boundary marker; legend said it prowled the borders in times of dire national need, although legend wasn’t sure why. He knew they had galloped into Ephebe. He should be looking across the fertile, pyramid-speckled valley of the Djel that lay between the two countries. He’d spent an hour looking for it. It was inexplicable. It was uncanny. It was also extremely embarrassing. He shaded his eyes and stared around for the thousandth time at the silent, baking landscape. And moved his head. And saw Djelibeybi. It flashed across his vision in an instant. He jerked his eyes back and saw it again, a brief flash of misty colour that vanished as soon as he concentrated on it. Some minutes later Ptraci peered out of the shade and saw him get down on his hands and knees. When he started turning over rocks she decided it was time he should come back in out of the sun. He shook her hand off his shoulder, and gestured impatiently. “I’ve found it!” He pulled a knife from his boot and started poking at the stones. “Where?” “Here!” She laid a ringed hand on his forehead. “Oh yes,” she said. “I see. Yes. Good. Now I think you’d better come into the shade.” “No, I mean it! Here! Look!” She hunkered down and stared at the rock, to humour him. “There’s a crack,” she said, doubtfully. “Look at it, will you? You have to turn your head and sort of look out of the corner of your eye.” Teppic’s dagger smacked into the crack, which was no more than a faint line on the rock. “Well, it goes on a long way,” said Ptraci, staring along the burning pavement. “All the way from the Second Cataract to the Delta,” said Teppic. “Covering your eye with one hand helps. Please give it a try. Please!” She put one hesitant hand over her eye and squinted obediently at the rock. Eventually she said. “It’s no good, I can’t - seeee-” She stayed motionless for a moment and then flung herself sideways on to the rocks. Teppic stopped trying to hammer the knife into the crack and crawled over to her. “I was right on the edge!” she wailed. “You saw it?” he said hopefully. She nodded and, with great care, got to her feet and backed away. “Did your eyes feel as though they were being turned inside out?” said Teppic. “Yes,” said Ptraci coldly. “Can I have my bangles, please?” “What?” “My bangles. You put them in your pocket. I want them, please.” Teppic shrugged, and fished in his pouch. The bangles were mostly copper, with a few bits of chipped enamel. Here and there the craftsman had tried, without much success, to do something interesting with twisted bits of wire and lumps of coloured glass. She took them and slipped them on. “Do they have some occult significance?” he said. “What’s occult mean?” she said vaguely. “Oh. What do you need them for, then?” “I told you. I don’t feel properly dressed without them on.” Teppic shrugged, and went back to rocking his knife in the crack. “Why are you doing that?” she said. He stopped and thought about it. “I don’t know,” he said. “But you did see the valley, didn’t you?” “Yes.” “Well, then?” “Well what?” Teppic rolled his eyes. “Didn’t you think it was a bit, well, odd? A whole country just more or less vanishing? It’s something you don’t bloody well see every day, for gods’ sake!” “How should I know? I’ve never been out of the valley before. I don’t know what it’s supposed to look like from outside. And don’t swear.” Teppic shook his head. “I think I will go and lie down in the shade,” he said. “What’s left of it,” he added, for the brass light of the sun was burning away the shadows. He staggered over to the rocks and stared at her. “The whole valley has just closed up,” he managed at last. “All those people . . “I saw cooking fires,” said Ptraci, slumping down beside him. “It’s something to do with the pyramid,” he said. “It looked very strange just before we left. It’s magic, or geometry, or one of those things. How do you think we can get back?” “I don’t want to go back. Why should I want to go back? It’s the crocodiles for me. I’m not going back, not just for crocodiles.” “Um. Perhaps I could pardon you, or something,” said Teppic. “Oh yes,” said Ptraci, looking at her nails. “You said you were the king, didn’t you.” “I am the king! That’s my kingdom over-” Teppic hesitated, not knowing in which direction to point his finger - “somewhere. I’m king of it.” “You don’t look like the king,” said Ptraci. “Why not?” “He had a golden mask on.” “That was me!” “So you ordered me thrown to the crocodiles?” “Yes! I mean, no.” Teppic hesitated. “I mean, the king did. I didn’t. In a way. Anyway, I was the one who rescued you,” he added gallantly. “There you are, then. Anyway, if you were the king, you’d be a god, too. You aren’t acting very god-like at the moment.” “Yes? Well. Er.” Teppic hesitated again. Ptraci’s literal mindedness meant that innocent sentences had to be carefully examined before being sent out into the world. “I’m basically good at making the sun rise,” he said. “I don’t know how, though. And rivers. You want any rivers flooding, I’m your man. God, I mean.” He lapsed into silence as a thought struck him. “I wonder what’s happening in there without me?” he said. Ptraci stood up and set off down to the gorge. “Where are you going?” She turned. “Well, Mr King or God or assassin, or whatever, can you make water?” “What, here?” “I mean to drink. There may be a river hidden in that crack or there may not, but we can’t get at it, can we? So we have to go somewhere where we can. It’s so simple I should think even kings could understand it.” He hurried after her, down the scree to where You Bastard was lying with his head and neck flat on the ground, flicking his ears in the heat and idly applying You Vicious Brute’s Theory of Transient Integrals to a succession of promising cissoid numbers. Ptraci kicked him irritably. “Do you know where there is water, then?” said Teppic. . . . e/27. Eleven miles . . . Ptraci glared at him from kohl-ringed eyes. “You mean you don’t know? You were going to take me into the desert and you don’t know where the water is?” “Well, I rather expected I was going to be able to take some with me!” “You didn’t even think about it!” “Listen, you can’t talk to me like that! I’m a king!” Teppic stopped. “You’re absolutely right,” he said. “I never thought about it. Where I come from it rains nearly every day. I’m sorry.” Ptraci’s brows furrowed. “Who reigns nearly every day?” she said. “No, I mean rain. You know. Very thin water coming out of the sky?” “What a silly idea. Where do you come from?” Teppic looked miserable. “Where I come from is Ankh-Morpork. Where I started from is here.” He stared down the track. From here, if you knew what you were looking for, you could just see a faint crack running across the rocks. It climbed the cliffs on either side, a new vertical fault the thickness of a line that just happened to contain a complete river kingdom and 7,000 years of history. He’d hated every minute of his time there. And now it had shut him out. And now, because he couldn’t, he wanted to go back. He wandered down to it and put his hand over one eye. If you jerked your head just right . . . It flashed past his vision briefly, and was gone. He tried a few times more, and couldn’t see it again. If I hacked the rocks away? No, he thought, that’s silly. It’s a line. You can’t get into a line. A line has no thickness. Well known fact of geometry. He heard Ptraci come up behind him, and the next moment her hands were on his neck. For a second he wondered how she knew the Catharti Death Grip, and then her fingers were gently massaging his muscles, stresses melting under their expert caress like fat under a hot knife. He shivered as the tension relaxed. “That’s nice,” he said. “We’re trained for it. Your tendons are knotted up like ping-pong balls on a string,” said Ptraci. Teppic gratefully subsided on to one of the boulders that littered the base of the cliff and let the rhythm of her fingers unwind the problems of the night. “I don’t know what to do,” he murmured. “That feels good.” “It’s not all peeling grapes, being a handmaiden,” said Ptraci. “The first lesson we learn is, when the master has had a long hard day it is not the best time to suggest the Congress of the Fox and the Persimmon. Who says you have to do anything?” “I feel responsible.” Teppic shifted position like a cat. “If you know where there is a dulcimer I could play you something soothing,” said Ptraci. “I’ve got as far as “Goblins Picnic” in Book I.” “I mean, a king shouldn’t let his kingdom just vanish like that.” “All the other girls can do chords and everything,” said Ptraci wistfully, massaging his shoulders. “But the old king always said he’d rather hear me. He said it used to cheer him up.” “I mean, it’ll be called the Lost Kingdom,” said Teppic drowsily. “How will I feel then, I ask you?” “He said he liked my singing, too. Everyone else said it sounded like a flock of vultures who’ve just found a dead donkey.” “I mean, king of a Lost Kingdom. It’d be dreadful. I’ve got to get it back.” You Bastard slowly turned his massive head to follow the flight of an errant blowfly; deep in his brain little columns of red numbers flickered, detailing vectors and speed and elevation. The conversation of human beings seldom interested him, but it crossed his mind that the males and females always got along best when neither actually listened fully to what the other one was saying. It was much simpler with camels. Teppic stared at the line in the rock. Geometry. That was it. “We’ll go to Ephebe,” he said. “They know all about geometry and they have some very unsound ideas. Unsound ideas are what I could do with right now.” “Why do you carry all these knives and things? I mean, really?” “Hmm? Sorry?” “All these knives. Why?” Teppic thought about it. “I suppose I don’t feel properly dressed without them,” he said. “Oh.” Ptraci dutifully cast around for a new topic of conversation. Introducing Topics of Amusing Discourse was also part of a handmaiden’s duties. She’d never been particularly good at it. The other girls had come up with an astonishing assortment: everything from the mating habits of crocodiles to speculation about life in the netherworld. She’d found it heavy going after talking about the weather. “So,” she said. “You’ve killed a lot of people, I expect?” “Mm?” “As an assassin, I mean. You get paid to kill people. Have you killed lots? Do you know you tense your back muscles a lot?” “I don’t think I ought to talk about it,” he said. “I ought to know. If we’ve got to cross the desert together and everything. More than a hundred?” “Good heavens, no., “Well, less than fifty?” Teppic rolled over. “Look, even the most famous assassins never killed more than thirty people in all their lives,” he said. “Less than twenty, then?” “Yes.” “Less than ten?” “I think,” said Teppic, “it would be best to say a number between zero and ten.” “Just so long as I know. These things are important.” They strolled back to You Bastard. But now it was Teppic who seemed to have something on his mind. “All this senate . . .” he said. “Congress,” corrected Ptraci. “You . . . er . . . more than fifty people?” “There’s a different name for that sort of woman,” said Ptraci, but without much rancour. “Sorry. Less than ten?” “Let’s say,” said Ptraci, “a number between zero and ten.” You Bastard spat. Twenty feet away the blowfly was picked cleanly out of the air and glued to the rock behind it. “Amazing how they do it, isn’t it,” said Teppic. “Animal instinct, I suppose.” You Bastard gave him a haughty glare from under his sweep-the-desert eyelashes and thought: . . . Let z=ei0. cudcudcud Then dz=ie[i0]d0=izd0 or d0=dz/iz . . .   Ptaclusp, still in his nightshirt, wandered aimlessly among the wreckage at the foot of the pyramid. It was humming like a turbine. Ptaclusp didn’t know why, knew nothing about the vast expenditure of power that had twisted the dimensions by ninety degrees and was holding them there against terrible pressures, but at least the disturbing temporal changes seemed to have stopped. There were fewer sons around than there used to be; in truth, he could have done with finding one or two. First he found the capstone, which had shattered, its electrum sheathing peeling away. In its descent from the pyramid it had hit the statue of Hat the Vulture-Headed God, bending it double and giving it an expression of mild surprise. A faint groan sent him tugging at the wreckage of a tent. He tore at the heavy canvas and unearthed IIb, who blinked at him in the grey light. “It didn’t work, dad!” he moaned. “We’d almost got it up there, and then the whole thing just sort of twisted!” The builder lifted a spar off his son’s legs. “Anything broken?” he said quietly. “Just bruised, I think.” The young architect sat up, wincing, and craned to see around. “Where’s Two-ay?” he said. “He was higher up than me, nearly on the top-” “I’ve found him,” said Ptaclusp. Architects are not known for their attention to subtle shades of meaning, but IIb heard the lead in his father’s voice. “He’s not dead, is he?” he whispered. “I don’t think so. I’m not sure. He’s alive. But. He’s moving - he’s moving . . . well, you better come and see. I think something quantum has happened to him.”   You Bastard plodded onwards at about 1.247 metres per second, working out complex conjugate co-ordinates to stave off boredom while his huge, plate-like feet crunched on the sand. Lack of fingers was another big spur to the development of camel intellect. Human mathematical development had always been held back by everyone’s instinctive tendency, when faced with something really complex in the way of triform polynomials or parametric differentials, to count fingers. Camels started from the word go by counting numbers. Deserts were a great help, too. There aren’t many distractions. As far as camels were concerned, the way to mighty intellectual development was to have nothing much to do and nothing to do it with. He reached the crest of the dune, gazed with approval over the rolling sands ahead of him, and began to think in logarithms. “What’s Ephebe like?” said Ptraci. “I’ve never been there. Apparently it’s ruled by a Tyrant.” “I hope we don’t meet him, then.” Teppic shook his head. “It’s not like that,” he said. “They have a new Tyrant every five years and they do something to him first.” He hesitated. “I think they ee-lect him.” “Is that something like they do to tomcats and bulls and things?” “Er.” “You know. To make them stop fighting and be more peaceful.” Teppic winced. “To be honest, I’m not sure,” he said. “But I don’t think so. They’ve got something they do it with, I think it’s called a mocracy, and it means everyone in the whole country can say who the new Tyrant is. One man, one-” He paused. The political history lesson seemed a very long while ago, and had introduced concepts never heard of in Djelibeybi or in Ankh-Morpork, for that matter. He had a stab at it, anyway. “One man, one vet.” “That’s for the eelecting, then?” He shrugged. It might be, for all he knew. “The point is, though, that everyone can do it. They’re very proud of it. Everyone has-” he hesitated again, certain now that things were amiss - “the vet. Except for women, of course. And children. And criminals. And slaves. And stupid people. And people of foreign extraction. And people disapproved of for, er, various reasons. And lots of other people. But everyone apart from them. It’s a very enlightened civilisation.” Ptraci gave this some consideration. “And that’s a mocracy, is it?” “They invented it in Ephebe, you know,” said Teppic, feeling obscurely that he ought to defend it. “I bet they had trouble exporting it,” said Ptraci firmly. The sun wasn’t just a ball of flaming dung pushed across the sky by a giant beetle. It was also a boat. It depended on how you looked at it. The light was wrong. It had a flat quality, like water left in a glass for weeks. There was no joy to it. It illuminated, but without life; like bright moonlight rather than the light of day. But Ptaclusp was more worried about his son. “Do you know what’s wrong with him?” he said. His other son bit his stylus miserably. His hand was hurting. He’d tried to touch his brother, and the crackling shock had taken the skin off his fingers. “I might,” he ventured. “Can you cure it?” “I don’t think so.” “What is it, then?” “Well, dad. When we were up on the pyramid . . . well, when it couldn’t flare . . . you see, I’m sure it twisted around . . . time, you see, is just another dimension . . . um.” Ptaclusp rolled his eyes. “None of that architect’s talk, boy,” he said. “What’s wrong with him?” “I think he’s dimensionally maladjusted, dad. Time and space has got a bit mixed up for him. That’s why he’s moving sideways all the time.” Ptaclusp IIb gave his father a brave little smile. “He always used to move sideways,” said Ptaclusp. His son sighed. “Yes, dad,” he said. “But that was just normal. All accountants move like that. Now he’s moving sideways because that’s like, well, it’s like Time to him.” Ptaclusp frowned. Drifting gently sideways wasn’t IIa’s only problem. He was also flat. Not flat like a card, with a front, back and edge - but flat from any direction. “Puts me exactly in mind of them people in the frescoes,” he said. “Where’s his depth, or whatever you call it?” “I think that’s in Time,” said IIb, helplessly. “Ours, not his.” Ptaclusp walked around his son, noting how the flatness followed him. He scratched his chin. “So he can walk in Time, can he?” he said slowly. “That may be possible, yes.” “Do you think we could persuade him to stroll back a few months and tell us not to build that bloody pyramid?” “He can’t communicate, dad.” “Not much change there, then.” Ptaclusp sat down on the rubble, his head in his hands. It had come to this. One son normal and stupid, one flat as a shadow. And what sort of life could the poor flat kid have? He’d go through life being used to open locks, clean the ice off windscreens, and sleeping cheaply in trouser-presses in hotel bedrooms*. (* This is of course a loose translation, since Ptaclusp did not know the words for “ice”, “windscreens” or “hotel bedrooms”; interestingly, however, Squiggle Eagle Eagle Vase Wavyline Duck translates directly as “a press for barbarian leg coverings”.) Being able to get under doors and read books without opening them would not be much of a compensation. IIa drifted sideways, a flat cut-out on the landscape. “Can’t we do anything?” he said. “Roll him up neatly, or something?” IIb shrugged. “We could put something in the way. That might be a good idea. It would stop anything worse happening to him because it, er, wouldn’t have time to happen in. I think.” They pushed the bent statue of Hat the Vulture-Headed God into the flat one’s path. After a minute or two his gentle sideways drift brought him up against it. There was a fat blue spark that melted part of the statue, but the movement stopped. “Why the sparks?” said Ptaclusp. “It’s a bit like flarelight, I think.” Ptaclusp hadn’t got where he was today - no, he’d have to correct himself - hadn’t got to where he had been last night without eventually seeing the advantages in the Unlikeliest situations. “He’ll save on clothing,” he said slowly. “I mean, he can just paint it on.” “I don’t think you’ve quite got the idea, dad,” said IIb wearily. He sat down beside his father and stared across the river to the palace. “Something going on over there,” said Ptaclusp. “Do you think they’ve noticed the pyramid?” “I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s moved around ninety degrees, after all.” Ptaclusp looked over his shoulder, and nodded slowly. “Funny, that,” he said. “Bit of structural instability there.” “Dad, it’s a pyramid! We should have flared it! I told you! The forces involved, well, it’s just too-” A shadow fell across them. They looked around. They looked up. They looked up a bit more. “Oh, my,” said Ptaclusp. “It’s Hat, the Vulture-Headed God . . .”   Ephebe lay beyond them, a classical poem of white marble lazing around its rock on a bay of brilliant blue- “What’s that?” said Ptraci, after studying it critically for some time. “It’s the sea,” said Teppic. “I told you, remember. Waves and things.” “You said it was all green and rough.” “Sometimes it is.” “Hmm.” The tone of voice suggested that she disapproved of the sea but, before she could explain why, they heard the sound of voices raised in anger. They were coming from behind a nearby sand dune. There was a notice on the dune. It said, in several languages: AXIOM TESTING STATION. Below it, in slightly smaller writing, it added: CAUTION - UNRESOLVED POSTULATES. As they read it, or at least as Teppic read it and Ptraci didn’t, there was a twang from behind the dune, followed by a click, followed by an arrow zipping overhead. You Bastard glanced up at it briefly and then turned his head and stared fixedly at a very small area of sand. A second later the arrow thudded into it. Then he tested the weight on his feet and did a small calculation which revealed that two people had been subtracted from his back. Further summation indicated that they had been added to the dune. “What did you do that for?” said Ptraci, spitting out sand. “Someone fired at us!” “I shouldn’t think so. I mean, they didn’t know we were here, did they? You needn’t have pulled me off like that.” Teppic conceded this, rather reluctantly, and eased himself cautiously up the sliding surface of the dune. The voices were arguing again “Give in?” “We simply haven’t got all the parameters right.” “I know what we haven’t got all right.” “What is that, pray?” “We haven’t got any more bloody tortoises. That’s what we haven’t got.” Teppic carefully poked his head over the top of the dune. He saw a large cleared area, surrounded by complicated ranks of markers and flags. There were one or two buildings in it, mostly consisting of cages, and several other intricate constructions he could not recognise. In the middle of it all were two men - one small, fat and florid, the other tall and willowy and with an indefinable air of authority. They were wearing sheets. Clustered around them, and not wearing very much at all, was a group of slaves. One of them was holding a bow. Several of them were holding tortoises on sticks. They looked a bit pathetic, like tortoise lollies. “Anyway, it’s cruel,” said the tall man. “Poor little things. They look so sad with their little legs waggling.” “It’s logically impossible for the arrow to hit them!” The fat man threw up his hands. “It shouldn’t do it! You must be giving me the wrong type of tortoise,” he added accusingly. “We ough to try again with faster tortoises.” “Or slower arrows?” “Possibly, possibly.” Teppic was aware of a faint scuffling by his chin. There was a small tortoise scurrying past him. It had several ricochet marks on its shell. “We’ll have one last try,” said the fat man. He turned to the slaves. “You lot - go and find that tortoise.” The little reptile gave Teppic a look of mingled pleading and hope. He stared at it, and then lifted it up carefully and tucked it behind a rock. He slid back down the dune to Ptraci. “There’s something really weird going on over there,” he said. “They’re shooting tortoises.” “Why?” “Search me. They seem to think the tortoise ought to be able to run away. “What, from an arrow?” “Like I said. Really weird. You stay here. I’ll whistle if it’s safe to follow me.” “What will you do if it isn’t safe?” “Scream.” He climbed the dune again and, after brushing as much sand as possible off his clothing, stood up and waved his cap at the little crowd. An arrow took it out of his hands. “Oops!” said the fat man. “Sorry!” He scurried across the trampled sand to where Teppic was standing and staring at his stinging fingers. “Just had it in my hand,” he panted. “Many apologies, didn’t realise it was loaded. Whatever will you think of me?” Teppic took a deep breath. “Xeno’s the name,” gasped the fat man, before he could speak. “Are you hurt? We did put up warning signs, I’m sure. Did you come in over the desert? You must be thirsty. Would you like a drink? Who are you? You haven’t seen a tortoise up there, have you? Damned fast things, go like greased thunderbolts, there’s no stopping the little buggers.” Teppic deflated again. “Tortoises?” he said. “Are we talking about those, you know, stones on legs?” “That’s right, that’s right,” said Xeno. “Take your eyes off them for a second, and vazoom!” “Vazoom?” said Teppic. He knew about tortoises. There were tortoises in the Old Kingdom. They could be called a lot of things - vegetarians, patient, thoughtful, even extremely diligent and persistent sex-maniacs - but never, up until now, fast. Fast was a word particularly associated with tortoises because they were not it. “Are you sure?” he said. “Fastest animal on the face of the Disc, your common tortoise,” said Xeno, but he had the grace to look shifty. “Logically, that is,” he added*. (* To everyone without such a logical frame of reference the fastest animal** (** The fastest insect is the .303 bookworm. It evolved in magical libraries, where it is necessary to eat extremely quickly to avoid being affected by the thaumic radiations. An adult .303 bookworm can eat through a shelf of books so fast that it ricochets off the wall.) on the Disc is the extremely neurotic Ambiguous Puzuma, which moves so fast that it can actually achieve near light-speed in the Disc’s magical field. This means that if you can see a puzuma, it isn’t there. Most male puzumas die young of acute ankle failure caused by running very fast after females which aren’t there and, of course, achieving suicidal mass in accordance with relativistic theory. The rest of them die of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, since it is impossible for them to know who they are and where they are at the same time, and the see-sawing loss of concentration this engenders means that the puzuma only achieves a sense of identity when it is at rest - usually about fifty feet into the rubble of what remains of the mountain it just ran into at near light-speed. The puzuma is rumoured to be about the size of a leopard with a rather unique black and white check coat, although those specimens discovered by the Disc’s sages and philosophers have inclined them to declare that in its natural state the puzuma is flat, very thin, and dead.) The tall man gave Teppic a nod. “Take no notice of him, boy,” he said. “He’s just covering himself because of the accident last week.” “The tortoise did beat the hare,” said Xeno sulkily. “The hare was dead, Xeno,” said the tall man patiently. “Because you shot it.” “I was aiming at the tortoise. You know, trying to combine two experiments, cut down on expensive research time, make full use of available-” Xeno gestured with the bow, which now had another arrow in it. “Excuse me,” said Teppic. “Could you put it down a minute? Me and my friend have come a long way and it would be nice not to be shot at again.” These two seem harmless, he thought, and almost believed it. He whistled. On cue, Ptraci came around the dune, leading You Bastard. Teppic doubted the capability of her costume to hold any pockets whatsoever, but she seemed to have been able to repair her make-up, re-kohl her eyes and put up her hair. She undulated towards the group like a snake in a skid, determined to hit the strangers with the full force of her personality. She was also holding something in her other hand. “She’s found the tortoise!” said Xeno. “Well done!” The reptile shot back into its shell. Ptraci glared. She didn’t have much in the world except herself, and didn’t like to be hailed as a mere holder of testudinoids. The tall man sighed. “You know, Xeno,” he said, “I can’t help thinking you’ve got the wrong end of the stick with this whole tortoise-and-arrow business.” The little man glared at him. “The trouble with you, Ibid,” he said, “is that you think you’re the biggest bloody authority on everything.”   The Gods of the Old Kingdom were awakening. Belief is a force. It’s a weak force, by comparison with gravity; when it comes to moving mountains, gravity wins every time. But it still exists, and now that the Old Kingdom was enclosed upon itself, floating free of the rest of the universe, drifting away from the general consensus that is dignified by the name of reality, the power of belief was making itself felt. For seven thousand years the people of Djelibeybi had believed in their gods. Now their gods existed. They had, as it were, the complete Set. And the people of the Old Kingdom were learning that, for example, Vut the Dog-Headed God of the Evening looks a lot better painted on a pot than he does when all seventy feet of him, growling and stinking, is lurching down the Street outside. Dios sat in the throne room, the gold mask of the king on his knees, staring out across the sombre air. The cluster of lesser priests around the door finally plucked up the courage to approach him, in the same general frame of mind as you would approach a growling lion. No-one is more worried by the actual physical manifestation of a god than his priests; it’s like having the auditors in unexpectedly. Only Koomi stood a little aside from the others. He was thinking hard. Strange and original thoughts were crowding along rarely-trodden neural pathways, heading in unthinkable directions. He wanted to see where they led. “O Dios,” murmured the high priest of Ket, the This-Headed God of Justice. “What is the king’s command? The gods are striding the land, and they are fighting and breaking houses, O Dios. Where is the king? What would he have us do?” “Yea,” said the high priest of Scrab, the Pusher of the Ball of the Sun. He felt something more was expected of him. “And verily,” he added. “Your lordship will have noticed that the sun is wobbling, because all the Gods of the Sun are fighting for it and-” he shuffled his feet - “the blessed Scrab made a strategic withdrawal and has, er, made an unscheduled landing on the town of Hort. A number of buildings broke his fall.” “And rightly so,” said the high priest of Thrrp, the Charioteer of the Sun. “For, as all know, my master is the true god of the-” His words tailed off. Dios was trembling, his body rocking slowly back and forth. His eyes stared at nothing. His hands gripped the mask almost hard enough to leave fingerprints in the gold, and his lips soundlessly shaped the words of the Ritual of the Second Hour, which had been said at this time for thousands of years. “I think it’s the shock,” said one of the priests. “You know, he’s always been so set in his ways.” The others hastened to show that there was at least something they could advise on. “Fetch him a glass of water.” “Put a paper bag over his head.” “Sacrifice a chicken under his nose.” There was a high-pitched whistling noise, the distant crump of an explosion, and a long hissing. A few tendrils of steam curled into the room. The priests rushed to the balcony, leaving Dios in his unnerving pool of trauma, and found that the crowds around the palace were staring at the sky. “It would appear,” said the high priest of Cephut, God of Cutlery, who felt that he could take a more relaxed view of the immediate situation, “that Thrrp has fumbled it and has fallen to a surprise tackle from Jeht, Boatman of the Solar Orb.” There was a distant buzzing, as of several billion bluebottles taking off in a panic, and a huge dark shape passed over the palace. “But,” said the high priest of Cephut, “here comes Scrab again . . . yes, he’s gaining height . . . Jeht hasn’t seen him yet, he’s progressing confidently towards the meridian, and here comes Sessifet, Goddess of the Afternoon! This is a surprise! What a surprise this is! A young goddess, yet to make her mark, but my word, what a lot of promise there, this is an astonishing bid, eunuchs and gentlemen, and . . yes . . . Scrab has fumbled it! He’s fumbled it! . . .” The shadows danced and spun on the stones of the balcony. “. . . and . . . what’s this? The elder gods are, there’s no other word for it, they’re co-operating against these brash newcomers! But plucky young Sessifet is hanging in there, she’s exploiting the weakness. . . she’s in! . . . and pulling away now, pulling away, Gil and Scrab appear to be fighting, she’s got a clear sky and, yes, yes . . . yes! . . . it’s noon! It’s noon! It’s noon!” Silence. The priest was aware that everyone was staring at him. Then someone said, “Why are you shouting into that bulrush?” “Sorry. Don’t know what came over me there.” The priestess of Sarduk, Goddess of Caves, snorted at him. “Suppose one of them had dropped it?” she snapped. “But . . . but . . .” He swallowed. “It’s not possible, is it? Not really? We all must have eaten something, or been out in the sun too long, or something. Because, I mean, everyone knows that the gods aren’t . . . I mean, the sun is a big flaming ball of gas, isn’t it, that goes around the whole world every day, and, and, and the gods. . . well, you know, there’s a very real need in people to believe, don’t get me wrong here-” Koomi, even with his head buzzing with thoughts of perfidy, was quicker on the uptake than his colleagues. “Get him, lads!” he shouted. Four priests grabbed the luckless cutlery worshipper by his arms and legs and gave him a high-speed run across the stones to the edge of the balcony, over the parapet and into the mud-coloured waters of the Djel. He surfaced, spluttering. “What did you go and do that for?” he demanded. “You all know I’m right. None of you really-” The waters of the Djel opened a lazy jaw, and he vanished, just as the huge winged shape of Scrab buzzed threateningly over the palace and whirred off towards the mountains. Koomi mopped his forehead. “Bit of a close shave there,” he said. His colleagues nodded, staring at the fading ripples. Suddenly, Djeibeybi was no place for honest doubt. Honest doubt could get you seriously picked up and your arms and legs torn off. “Er,.” said one of them. “Cephut’s going to be a bit upset, though, isn’t he?” “All hail Cephut,” they chorused. Just in case. “Don’t see why,” grumbled an elderly priest at the back of the crowd. “Bloody knife and fork artist.” They grabbed him, still protesting, and hurled him into the river. “All hail-” They paused. “Who was he high priest of, anyway?” “Bunu, the Goat-headed God of Goats? Wasn’t he?” “All hail Bunu, probably,” they chorused, as the sacred crocodiles homed in like submarines. Koomi raised his hands, imploring. It is said that the hour brings forth the man. He was the kind of man that is brought forth by devious and unpleasant hours, and underneath his bald head certain conclusions were beginning to unfold, like things imprisoned for years inside stones. He wasn’t yet sure what they were, but they were broadly on the subject of gods, the new age, the need for a firm hand on the helm, and possibly the inserting of Dios into the nearest crocodile. The mere thought filled him with forbidden delight. “Brethren!” he cried. “Excuse me,” said the priestess of Sarduk. “And sistren-” “Thank you.” “-let us rejoice!” The assembled priests stood in total silence. This was a radical approach which had not hitherto occurred to them. And Koomi looked at their upturned faces and felt a thrill the like of which he had never experienced before. They were frightened out of their wits, and they were expecting him - him - to tell them what to do. “Yea!” he said. “And, indeed, verily, the hour of the gods-” “-and goddesses-” “-yes, and goddesses, is at hand. Er.” What next? What, when you got right down to it, was he going to tell them to do? And then he thought: it doesn’t matter. Provided I sound confident enough. Old Dios always drove them, he never tried to lead them. Without him they’re wandering around like sheep. “And, brethren - and sistren, of course - we must ask ourselves, we must ask ourselves, we, er, yes.” His voice waxed again with new confidence. “Yes, we must ask ourselves why the gods are at hand. And without doubt it is because we have not been assiduous enough in our worship, we have, er, we have lusted after graven idols.” The priests exchanged glances. Had they? How did you do it, actually? “And, yes, and what about sacrifices? Time was when a sacrifice was a sacrifice, not some messing around with a chicken and flowers.” This caused some coughing in the audience. “Are we talking maidens here?” said one of the priests uncertainly. “Ahem.” “And inexperienced young men too, certainly,” he said quickly. Sarduk was one of the older goddesses, whose female worshippers got up to no good in sacred groves; the thought of her wandering around the landscape somewhere, bloody to the elbows, made the eyes water. Koomi’s heart thumped. “Well, why not?” he said. “Things were better then, weren’t they?” “But, er, I thought we stopped all that sort of thing. Population decline and so forth.” There was a monstrous splash out in the river. Tzut, the Snake-Headed God of the Upper Djel, surfaced and regarded the assembled priesthood solemnly. Then Fhez, the Crocodile-Headed God of the Lower Djel, erupted beside him and made a spirited attempt at biting his head off. The two submerged in a column of spray and a minor tidal wave which slopped over the balcony. “Ah, but maybe the population declined because we stopped sacrificing virgins - of both sexes, of course,” said Koomi, hurriedly. “Have you ever thought of it like that?” They thought of it. Then they thought of it again. “I don’t think the king would approve-” said one of the priests cautiously. “The king?” shouted Koomi. “Where is the king? Show me the king! Ask Dios where the king is!” There was a thud by his feet. He looked down in horror as the gold mask bounced, and rolled towards the priests. They scattered hurriedly, like skittles. Dios strode out into the light of the disputed sun, his face grey with fury. “The king is dead,” he said. Koomi swayed under the sheer pressure of anger, but rallied magnificently. “Then his successor-” he began. “There is no successor,” said Dios. He stared up at the sky. Few people can look directly at the sun, but under the venom of Dios’s gaze the sun itself might have flinched and looked away. Dios’s eyes sighted down that fearsome nose like twin range finders. To the air in general he said: “Coming here as if they own the place. How dare they?” Koomi’s mouth dropped open. He started to protest, and a kilowatt stare silenced him. Koomi sought support from the crowd of priests, who were busily inspecting their nails or staring intently into the middle distance. The message was clear. He was on his own. Although, if by some chance he won the battle of wills, he’d be surrounded by people assuring him that they had been behind him all along. “Anyway, they do own the place,” he mumbled. “What?” “They, er, they do own the place, Dios,” Koomi repeated. His temper gave out. “They’re the sodding gods, Dios!” “They’re our gods,” Dios hissed. “We’re not their people. They’re my gods and they will learn to do as they are instructed!” Koomi gave up the frontal assault. You couldn’t outstare that sapphire stare, you couldn’t stand the war-axe nose and, most of all, no man could be expected to dent the surface of Dios’s terrifying righteousness. “But-” he managed. Dios waved him into silence with a trembling hand. “They’ve no right! “ he said. “I did not give any orders! They have no right!” “Then what are you going to do?” said Koomi. Dios’s hands opened and closed fitfully. He felt like a royalist might feel - a good royalist, a royalist who cut out pictures of all the Royals and stuck them in a scrapbook, a royalist who wouldn’t hear a word said about them, they did such a good job and they can’t answer back - if suddenly all the Royals turned up in his living room and started rearranging the furniture. He longed for the necropolis, and the cool silence among his old friends, and a quick sleep after which he’d be able to think so much more clearly . . . Koomi’s heart leapt. Dios’s discomfort was a crack which, with due care and attention, could take a wedge. But you couldn’t use a hammer. Head on, Dios could outfight the world. The old man was shaking again. “I do not presume to tell them how to run affairs in the Hereunder,” he said. “They shall not presume to instruct me in how to run my kingdom.” Koomi salted this treasonable statement away for further study and patted him gently on the back. “You’re right, of course,” he said. Dios’s eyes swivelled. “I am?” he said, suspiciously. “I’m sure that, as the king’s minister, you will find a way. You have our full support, O Dios.” Koomi waved an uplifted hand at the priests, who chorused wholehearted agreement. If you couldn’t depend on kings and gods, you could always rely on old Dios. There wasn’t one of them that wouldn’t prefer the uncertain wrath of the gods to a rebuke from Dios. Dios terrified them in a very positive, human way that no supernatural entity ever could. Dios would sort it out. “And we take no heed to these mad rumours about the king’s disappearance. They are undoubtedly wild exaggerations, with no foundation,” said Koomi. The priests nodded while, in each mind, a tiny rumour uncurled the length of its tail. “What rumours?” said Dios out of the corner of his mouth. “So enlighten us, master, as to the path we must now take,” said Koomi. Dios wavered. He did not know what to do. For him, this was a new experience. This was Change. All he could think of, all that was pressing forward in his mind, were the words of the Ritual of the Third Hour, which he had said at this time for - how long? Too long, too long! - And he should have gone to his rest long before, but the time had never been right, there was never anyone capable, they would have been lost without him, the kingdom would founder, he would be letting everyone down, and so he’d crossed the river. . . he swore every time that it was the last, but it never was, not when the chill fetched his limbs, and the decades had become - longer. And now, when his kingdom needed him, the words of a Ritual had scored themselves into the pathways of his brain and bewildered all attempts at thought. “Er,” he said.   You Bastard chewed happily. Teppic had tethered him too near an olive tree, which was getting a terminal pruning. Sometimes the camel would stop, gaze up briefly at the seagulls that circled everywhere above Ephebe city, and subject them to a short, deadly burst of olive stones. He was turning over in his mind an interesting new concept in Thau-dimensional physics which unified time, space, magnetism, gravity and, for some reason, broccoli. Periodically he would make noises like distant quarry blasting, but which merely indicated that all stomachs were functioning perfectly. Ptraci sat under the tree, feeding the tortoise on vine leaves. Heat crackled off the white walls of the tavern but, Teppic thought, how different it was from the Old Kingdom. There even the heat was old; the air was musty and lifeless, it pressed like a vice, you felt it was made of boiled centuries. Here it was leavened by the breeze from the sea. It was edged with salt crystals. It carried exciting hints of wine; more than a hint in fact, because Xeno was already on his second amphora. This was the kind of place where things rolled up their sleeves and started. “But I still don’t understand about the tortoise,” he said, with some difficulty. He’d just taken his first mouthful of Ephebian wine, and it had apparently varnished the back of his throat. “S quite simple,” said Xeno. “Look, let’s say this olive stone is the arrow and this, and this-” he cast around aimlessly - “and this stunned seagull is the tortoise, right? Now, when you fire the arrow it goes from here to the seag - the tortoise, am I right?” “I suppose so, but-” “But, by this time, the seagu - the tortoise has moved on a bit, hasn’t he? Am I right?” “I suppose so,” said Teppic, helplessly. Xeno gave him a look of triumph. “So the arrow has to go a bit further, doesn’t it, to where the tortoise is now. Meanwhile the tortoise has flow - moved on, not much, I’ll grant you, but it doesn’t have to be much. Am I right? So the arrow has a bit further to go, but the point is that by the time it gets to where the tortoise is now the tortoise isn’t there. So, if the tortoise keeps moving, the arrow will never hit it. It’ll keep getting closer and closer but never hit it. QED.” “Are you right?” said Teppic automatically. “No,” said Ibid coldly. “There’s a dozen tortoise kebabs to prove him wrong. The trouble with my friend here is that he doesn’t know the difference between a postulate and a metaphor of human existence. Or a hole in the ground.” “It didn’t hit it yesterday,” snapped Xeno. “Yes, I was watching. You hardly pulled the string back. I saw you,” said Ibid. They started to argue again. Teppic stared into his wine mug. These men are philosophers, he thought. They had told him so. So their brains must be so big that they have room for ideas that no-one else would consider for five seconds. On the way to the tavern Xeno had explained to him, for example, why it was logically impossible to fall out of a tree. Teppic had described the vanishing of the kingdom, but he hadn’t revealed his position in it. He hadn’t a lot of experience of these matters, but he had a very clear feeling that kings who hadn’t got a kingdom any more were not likely to be very popular in neighbouring countries. There had been one or two like that in Ankh-Morpork - deposed royalty, who had fled their suddenly-dangerous kingdoms for Ankh’s hospitable bosom carrying nothing but the clothes they stood up in and a few wagonloads of jewels. The city, of course, welcomed anyone - regardless of race, colour, class or creed - who had spending money in incredible amounts, but nevertheless the inhumation of surplus monarchs was a regular source of work for the Assassins” Guild. There was always someone back home who wanted to be certain that deposed monarchs stayed that way. It was usually a case of heir today, gone tomorrow. “I think it got caught up in geometry,” he said, hopefully. “I heard you were very good at geometry here,” he added, “and perhaps you could tell me how to get back.” “Geometry is not my forte,” said Ibid. “As you probably know.” “Sorry?” “Haven’t you read my Principles of Ideal Government?” “I’m afraid not.” “Or my Discourse on Historical Inevitability?” “No.” Ibid looked crestfallen. “Oh,” he said. “Ibid is a well-known authority on everything,” said Xeno. “Except for geometry. And interior decorating. And elementary logic.” Ibid glared at him. “What about you, then?” said Teppic. Xeno drained his mug. “I’m more into the destruct testing of axioms,” he said. “The chap you need is Pthagonal. A very acute man with an angle.” He was interrupted by the clatter of hooves. Several horsemen galloped with reckless speed past the tavern and on up the winding, cobbled streets of the city. They seemed very excited about something. Ibid picked a stunned seagull out of his wine cup and laid it on the table. He was looking thoughtful. “If the Old Kingdom has really disappeared-” he said. “It has,” said Teppic firmly. “It’s not something you can be mistaken about, really.” “Then that means our border is concurrent with that of Tsort,” said Ibid ponderously. “Pardon?” said Teppic. “There’s nothing between us,” explained the philosopher. “Oh, dear. That means we shall be forced to make war.” “Why?” Ibid opened his mouth, stopped, and turned to Xeno. “Why does it mean we’ll be forced to make war?” he said. “Historical imperative,” said Xeno. “Ah, yes. I knew it was something like that. I am afraid it is inevitable. It’s a shame, but there you are.” There was another clatter as another party of horsemen rounded the corner, heading downhill this time. They wore the high plumed helmets of Ephebian soldiery, and were shouting enthusiastically. Ibid settled himself more comfortably on the bench and folded his bands. “That’ll be the Tyrant’s men,” he said, as the troop galloped through the city gates and out on to the desert. “He’s sending them to check, you may depend upon it.” Teppic knew about the enmity between Ephebe and Tsort, of course. The Old Kingdom had profited mightily by it, by seeing that the merchants of both sides had somewhere discreet in which to trade with one another. He drummed his fingers on the table. “You haven’t fought each other for thousands of years,” he said. “You were tiny countries in those days. It was just a scrap. Now you’re huge. People could get hurt. Doesn’t that worry you?” “It’s a matter of pride,” said Ibid, but his voice was tinged with uncertainty. “I don’t think there’s much choice.” “It was that bloody wooden cow or whatever,” said Xeno. “They’ve never forgiven us for it.” “If we don’t attack them, they’ll attack us first,” said Ibid. “S’right,” said Xeno. “So we’d better retaliate before they have a chance to strike.” The two philosophers stared uncomfortably at one another. “On the other hand,” said Thid, “war makes it very difficult to think straight.” “There is that,” Xeno agreed. “Especially for dead people.” There was an embarrassed silence, broken only by Ptraci’s voice singing to the tortoise and the occasional squeak of stricken seagulls. “What day is it?” said Ibid. “Tuesday,” said Teppic. “I think,” said Thid, “that it might be a good idea if you came to the symposium. We have one every Tuesday,” he added. “All the greatest minds in Ephebe will be there. All this needs thinking about.” He glanced at Ptraci. “However,” he said, “your young woman cannot attend, naturally. Females are absolutely forbidden. Their brains overheat.”   King Teppicymon XXVII opened his eyes. It’s bloody dark in here, he thought. And he realised that he could hear his own heart beating, but muffled, and some way off. And then he remembered. He was alive. He was alive again. And, this time, he was in bits. Somehow, he’d assumed that you got assembled again once you got to the netherworld, like one of Grinjer’s kits. Get a grip on yourself, man, he thought. It’s up to you to pull yourself together. Right, he thought. There were at least six jars. So my eyes are in one of them. Getting the lid off would be favourite, so we can see what we’re at. That’s going to involve arms and legs and fingers. This is going to be really tricky. He reached out, tentatively, with stiff joints, and located something heavy. It felt as though it might give, so he moved his other arm into position, with a great deal of awkwardness, and pushed. There was a distant thump, and a definite feeling of openness above him. He sat up, creaking all the way. The sides of the ceremonial casket still hemmed him in, but to his surprise he found that one slow arm movement brushed them out of the way like paper. Must be all the pickle and stuffing, he thought. Gives you a bit of weight. He felt his way to the edge of the slab, lowered his heavy legs to the ground and, after a pause out of habit to wheeze a bit, took the first tottering lurch of the newly undead. It is astonishingly difficult to walk with legs full of straw when the brain doing the directing is in a pot ten feet away, but he made it as far as the wall and felt his way along it until a crash indicated that he’d reached the shelf of jars. He fumbled the lids of the first one and dipped his hand gently inside. It must be brains, he thought maniacally, because semolina doesn’t squidge like that. I’ve collected my own thoughts, haha. He tried one or two more jars until an explosion of daylight told him he’d found the one with his eyes in. He watched his own bandaged hand reach down, growing gigantic, and scoop them up carefully. That seems to be the important bits, he thought. The rest can wait until later. Maybe when I need to eat something, and so forth. He turned around, and realised that he was not alone. Dil and Gern were watching him. To squeeze any further into the far corner of the room, they would have needed triangular backbones. “Ah. Ho there, good people,” said the king, aware that his voice was a little hollow. “I know so much about you, I’d like to shake you by the hand.” He looked down. “Only they’re rather full at the moment,” he added. “Gkkk,” said Gern. “You couldn’t do a bit of reassembly, could you?” said the king, turning to Dil. “Your stitches seem to be holding up nicely, by the way. Well done, that man.” Professional pride broke through the barrier of Dil’s terror. “You’re alive?” he said. “That was the general idea, wasn’t it?” said the king. Dil nodded. Certainly it was. He’d always believed it to be true. He’d just never expected it ever actually to happen. But it had, and the first words, well, nearly the first words that had been said were in praise of his needlework. His chest swelled. No-one else in the Guild had ever been congratulated on their work by a recipient. “There,” he said to Gern, whose shoulderblades were making a spirited attempt to dig their way through the wall. “Hear what has been said to your master. The king paused. It was beginning to dawn on him that things weren’t quite right here. Of course the netherworld was like this world, only better, and no doubt there were plenty of servants and so forth. But it seemed altogether far too much like this world. He was pretty sure that Dil and Gern shouldn’t be in it yet. Anyway, he’d always understood that the common people had their own netherworld, where they would be more at ease and could mingle with their own kind and wouldn’t feel awkward and socially out of place. “I say,” he said. “I may have missed a bit here. You’re not dead, are you?” Dil didn’t answer immediately. Some of the things he’d seen so far today had made him a bit uncertain on the subject. In the end, though, he was forced to admit that he probably was alive. “Then what’s happening?” said the king. “We don’t know, O king,” said Dil. “Really we don’t. It’s all come true, O fount of waters!” “What has?” “Everything!” “Everything?” “The sun, O lord. And the gods! Oh, the gods! They’re everywhere, O master of heaven!” “We come in through the back way,” said Gern, who had dropped to his knees. “Forgive us, O lord of justice, who has come back to deliver his mighty wisdom and that. I am sorry about me and Glwenda, it was a moment of wossname, mad passion, we couldn’t control ourselves. Also, it was me-” Dil waved him into a devout silence. “Excuse me,” he said to the king’s mummy. “But could we have a word away from the lad? Man to-” “Corpse?” said the king, trying to make it easy for him. “Certainly.” They wandered over to the other side of the room. “The fact is, O gracious king of-” Dil began, in a conspiratorial whisper. “I think we can dispense with all that,” said the king briskly. “The dead don’t stand on ceremony. “King” will be quite sufficient.” “The fact is, then - king,” said Dil, experiencing a slight thrill at this equitable treatment, “young Gern thinks it’s all his fault. I’ve told him over and over again that the gods wouldn’t go to all this trouble just because of one growing lad with urges, if you catch my drift.” He paused, and added carefully, “They wouldn’t, would they?” “Shouldn’t think so for one minute,” said the king briskly. “We’d never see the back of them, otherwise.” “That’s what I told him,” said Dil, immensely relieved. “He’s a good boy, sir, it’s just that his mum is a bit funny about religion. We’d never see the back of them, those were my very words. I’d be very grateful if you could have a word with him, sir, you know, set his mind at rest-” “Be happy to,” said the king graciously. Dil sidled closer. “The fact is, sir, these gods, sir, they aren’t right. We’ve been watching, sir. At least, I have. I climbed on the roof. Gern didn’t, he hid under the bench. They’re not right, sir!” “What’s wrong with them?” “Well, they’re here, sir! That’s not right, is it? I mean, not to be really here. And they’re just striding around and fighting amongst themselves and shouting at people.” He looked both ways before continuing. “Between you and me, sir,” he said, “they don’t seem too bright.” The king nodded. “What are the priests doing about this?” he said. “I saw them throwing one another in the river, sir.” The king nodded again. “That sounds about right,” he said. “They’ve come to their senses at last.” “You know what I think, sir?” said Dil earnestly. “Everything we believe is coming true. And I heard something else, sir. This morning, if it was this morning, you understand, because the sun’s all over the place, sir, and it’s not the right sort of sun, but this morning some of the soldiers tried to get out along the Ephebe road, sir, and do you know what they found?” “What did they find?” “The road out, sir, leads in!” Dil took a step backwards the better to illustrate the seriousness of the revelations. “They got up into the rocks and then suddenly they were walking down the Tsort road. It all sort of curves back on itself. We’re shut in, sir. Shut in with our gods.” And I’m shut in my body, thought the king. Everything we believe is true? And what we believe isn’t what we think we believe. I mean, we think we believe that the gods are wise and just and powerful, but what we really believe is that they are like our father after a long day. And we think we believe the netherworld is a sort of paradise, but we really believe it’s right here and you go to it in your body and I’m in it and I’m never going to get away. Never, ever. “What’s my son got to say about all this?” he said. Dil coughed. It was the ominous cough. The Spanish use an upside-down question mark to tell you what you’re about to hear is a question; this was the kind of cough that tells you what you’re about to hear is a dirge. “Don’t know how to tell you this, sir,” he said. “Out with it, man.” “Sir, they say he’s dead, sir. They say he killed himself and ran away. “Killed himself?” “Sorry, sir.” “And ran away afterwards?” “On a camel, they say.” “We lead an active afterlife in our family, don’t we?” observed the king dryly. “Beg pardon, sir?” “I mean, the two statements could be held to be mutually exclusive.” Dil’s face became a well-meaning blank. “That is to say, they can’t both be true,” supplied the king, helpfully. “Ahem,” said Dil. “Yes, but I’m a special case,” said the king testily. “In this kingdom we believe you live after death only if you’ve been mumm-” He stopped. It was too horrible to think about. He thought about it, nevertheless, for some time. Then he said, “We must do something about it.” Dil said, “Your son, sir?” “Never mind about my son, he’s not dead, I’d know about it,” snapped the king. “He can look after himself, he’s my son. It’s my ancestors I’m worried about.” “But they’re dead-” Dil began. It has already been remarked that Dil had a very poor imagination. In a job like his a poor imagination was essential. But his mind’s eye opened on a panorama of pyramids, stretching along the river, and his mind’s ear swooped and curved through solid doors that no thief could penetrate. And it heard the scrabbling. And it heard the hammering. And it heard the muffled shouting. The king put a bandaged arm over his trembling shoulders. “I know you’re a good man with a needle, Dil,” he said. “Tell me - how are you with a sledgehammer?”   Copolymer, the greatest storyteller in the history of the world, sat back and beamed at the greatest minds in the world, assembled at the dining table. Teppic had added another iota to his store of new knowledge. “Symposium” meant a knife-and-fork tea. “Well,” said Copolymer, and launched into the story of the Tsortean Wars. “You see, what happened was, he’d taken her back home, and her father - this wasn’t the old king, this was the one before, the one with the wossname, he married some girl from over Elharib way, she had a squint, what was her name now, began with a P. Or an L. One of them letters, anyway. Her father owned an island out on the bay there, Papylos I think it was. No, I tell a lie, it was Crinix. Anyway, the king, the other king, he raised an army and they . . . Elenor, that was her name. She had a squint, you know. But quite attractive, they say. When I say married, I trust I do not have to spell it out for you. I mean, it was a bit unofficial. Er. Anyway, there was this wooden horse and after they’d got in . . . Did I tell you about this horse? It was a horse. I’m pretty sure it was a horse. Or maybe it was a chicken. Forget my own name next! It was wossname’s idea, the one with the limp. Yes. The limp in his leg, I mean. Did I mention him? There’d been this fight. No, that was the other one, I think. Yes. Anyway, this wooden pig, damn clever idea, they made it out of thing. Tip of my tongue. Wood. But that was later, you know. The fight! Nearly forgot the fight. Yes. Damn good fight. Everyone banging on their shields and yelling. Wossname’s armour shone like shining armour. Fight and a half, that fight. Between thingy, not the one with the limp, the other one, wossname, had red hair. You know. Tall fellow, talked with a lisp. Hold on, just remembered, he was from some other island. Not him. The other one, with the limp. Didn’t want to go, he said he was mad. Of course, he was bloody mad, definitely. I mean, a wooden cow! Like wossname said, the king, no, not that king, the other one, he saw the goat, he said, “I fear the Ephebians, especially when they’re mad enough to leave bloody great wooden livestock on the doorstep, talk about nerve, they must think we was born yesterday, set fire to it,” and, of course, wossname had nipped in round the back and put everyone to the sword, talk about laugh. Did I say she had a squint? They said she was pretty, but it takes all sorts. Yes. Anyway, that’s how it happened. Now, of course, wossname - I think he was called Melycanus, had a limp - he wanted to go home, well, you would, they’d been there for years, he wasn’t getting any younger. That’s why he dreamt up the thing about the wooden wossname. Yes. I tell a lie, Lavaelous was the one with the knee. Pretty good fight, that fight, take it from me.” He lapsed into self-satisfied silence. “Pretty good fight,” he mumbled and, smiling faintly, dropped off to sleep. Teppic was aware that his own mouth was hanging open. He shut it. Along the table several of the diners were wiping their eyes. “Magic,” said Xeno. “Sheer magic. Every word a tassel on the canopy of Time.” “It’s the way he remembers every tiny detail. Pin-sharp,” murmured Ibid. Teppic looked down the length of the table, and then nudged Xeno beside him. “Who is everyone?” he said. “Well, Ibid you already know. And Copolymer. Over there, that’s Iesope, the greatest teller of fables in the world. And that’s Antiphon, the greatest writer of comic plays in the world.” “Where is Pthagonal?” said Teppic. Xeno pointed to the far end of the table, where a glum-looking, heavy-drinking man was trying to determine the angle between two bread rolls. “I’ll introduce you to him afterwards,” he said. Teppic looked around at the bald heads and long white beards, which seemed to be a badge of office. If you had a bald head and a long white beard, they seemed to indicate, whatever lay between them must be bursting with wisdom. The only exception was Antiphon, who looked as though he was built of pork. They are great minds, he told himself. These are men who are trying to work out how the world fits together, not by magic, not by religion, but just by inserting their brains in whatever crack they can find and trying to lever it apart. Ibid rapped on the table for silence. “The Tyrant has called for war on Tsort,” he said. “Now, let us consider the place of war in the ideal republic,” he said. “We would require-” “Excuse me, could you just pass me the celery?” said Iesope. “Thank you.” “-the ideal republic, as I was saying, based on the fundamental laws that govern-” “And the salt. It’s just by your elbow.” “-the fundamental laws, that is, which govern all men. Now, it is without doubt true that war. . . could you stop that, please?” “It’s celery,” said Iesope, crunching cheerfully. “You can’t help it with celery.” Xeno peered suspiciously at what was on his fork. “Here, this is squid,” he said. “I didn’t ask for squid. Who ordered squid?” “-without doubt,” repeated Thid, raising his voice, “without doubt, I put it to you- “I think this is the lamb couscous,” said Antiphon. “Was yours the squid?” “I asked for marida and dolmades.” “I ordered the lamb. Just pass it along, will you?” “I don’t remember anyone asking for all this garlic bread,” said Xeno. “Look, some of us are trying to float a philosophical concept here,” said Ibid sarcastically. “Don’t let us interrupt you, will you?” Someone threw a breadstick at him. Teppic looked at what was on his fork. Seafood was unknown in the kingdom, and what was on his fork had too many valves and suckers to be reassuring. He lifted a boiled vine leaf with extreme care, and was sure he saw something scuttle behind an olive. Ah. Something else to remember, then. The Ephebians made wine out of anything they could put in a bucket, and ate anything that couldn’t climb out of one. He pushed the food around on his plate. Some of it pushed back. And philosophers didn’t listen to one another. And they don’t stick to the point. This probably is mocracy at work. A bread roll bounced past him. Oh, and they get over-excited. He noticed a skinny little man sitting opposite him, chewing primly on some anonymous tentacle. Apart from Pthagonal the geometrician, who was now gloomily calculating the radius of his plate, he was the only person not speaking his mind at the top of his voice. Sometimes he’d make little notes on a piece of parchment and slip it into his toga. Teppic leaned across. Further down the table Iesope, encouraged by occasional olive stones and bread rolls, started a long fable about a fox, a turkey, a goose and a wolf, who had a wager to see who could stay longest underwater with heavy weights tied to their feet. “Excuse me,” said Teppic, raising his voice above the din. “Who are you?” The little man gave him a shy look. He had extremely large ears. In a certain light, he could have been mistaken for a very thin jug. “I’m Endos,” he said. “Why aren’t you philosophising?” Endos sliced a strange mollusc. “I’m not a philosopher, actually,” he said. “Or a humorous playwright or something?” said Teppic. “I’m afraid not. I’m a Listener. Endos the Listener, I’m known as.” “That’s fascinating,” said Teppic automatically. “What does that involve?” “Listening.” “Just listening?” “That’s what they pay me for,” said Endos. “Sometimes I nod. Or smile. Or nod and smile at the same time. Encouragingly, you know. They like that.” Teppic felt he was called upon to comment at this point. “Gosh,” he said. Endos gave him an encouraging nod, and a smile that suggested that of all the things Endos could be doing in the world right at this minute there was nothing so basically riveting as listening to Teppic. It was something about his ears. They appeared to be a vast aural black hole, begging to be filled up with words. Teppic felt an overpowering urge to tell him all about his life and hopes and dreams. . . “I bet,” he said, “that they pay you an awful lot of money.” Endos gave him a heartening smile. “Have you listened to Copolymer tell his story lots of times?” Endos nodded and smiled, although there was a faint trace of pain right behind his eyes. “I expect,” said Teppic, “that your ears develop protective rough surfaces after a while?” Endos nodded. “Do go on,” he urged. Teppic glanced across at Pthagonal, who was moodily drawing right angles in his taramasalata. “I’d love to stay and listen to you listening to me all day,” he said. “But there’s a man over there I’d like to see.” “That’s amazing,” said Endos, making a short note and turning his attention to a conversation further along the table. A philosopher had averred that although truth was beauty, beauty was not necessarily truth, and a fight was breaking out. Endos listened carefully*. (* The role of listeners has never been fully appreciated. However, it is well known that most people don’t listen. They use the time when someone else is speaking to think of what they’re going to say next. True Listeners have always been revered among oral cultures, and prized for their rarity value; bards and poets are ten a cow, but a good Listener is hard to find, or at least hard to find twice.) Teppic wandered along the table to where Pthagonal was sitting in unrelieved misery, and currently peering suspiciously over the crust of a pie. Teppic looked over his shoulder. “I think I saw something moving in there,” he said. “Ah,” said the geometrician, taking the cork out of an amphora with his teeth. “The mysterious young man in black from the lost kingdom.” “I was hoping you could help me find it again?” said Teppic. “I heard that you have some very unusual ideas in Ephebe.” “It had to happen,” said Pthagonal. He pulled a pair of dividers from the folds of his robe and measured the pie thoughtfully. “Is it a constant, do you think? It’s a depressing concept.” “Sorry?” said Teppic. “The diameter divides into the circumference, you know. It ought to be three times. You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But does it? No. Three point one four one and lots of other figures. There’s no end to the buggers. Do you know how pissed off that makes me?” “I expect it makes you extremely pissed off,” said Teppic politely. “Right. It tells me that the Creator used the wrong kind of circles. It’s not even a proper number! I mean, three point five, you could respect. Or three point three. That’d look right.” He stared morosely at the pie. “Excuse me, you said something about it had to happen?” “What?” said Pthagonal, from the depths of his gloom. “Pie!” he added. “What had to happen?” Teppic prompted. “You can’t mess with geometry, friend. Pyramids? Dangerous things. Asking for trouble. I mean,” Pthagonal reached unsteadily for his wine cup, “how long did they think they could go on building bigger and bigger pyramids for? I mean, where did they think power comes from? I mean,” he hiccuped, “you’ve been in that place, haven’t you? Ever noticed how slow it all seems to be?” “Oh, yes,” said Teppic flatly. “That’s because the time is sucked up, see? Pyramids. So they have to flare it off. Flarelight, they call it. They think it looks pretty! It’s their time they’re burning off!” “All I know is the air feels as though it’s been boiled in a sock,” said Teppic. “And nothing actually changes, even if it doesn’t stay the same. “Right,” said Pthagonal. “The reason being, it’s past time. They use up past time, over and over again. The pyramids take all the new time. And if you don’t let the pyramids flare, the power build up”ll-“ he paused. “I suppose,” he went on, “that it’d escape along a wossname, a fracture. In space.” “I was there before the kingdom, er, went,” said Teppic. “I thought I saw the big pyramid move.” “There you are then. It’s probably moved the dimensions around by ninety degrees,” said Pthagonal, with the assurance of the truly drunk. “You mean, so length is height and height is width?” Pthagonal shook an unsteady finger. “Nonono,” he said. “So that length is height and height is breadth and breadth is width and width is a”, he burped “A “time. S”nother dimessnon, see? Four of the bastards. Time’s one of them. Ninety thingys to the other three. Degrees is what I mean. Only, only, it can’t exist in this world like that, so the place had to sort of pop outside for a bit, see? Otherwise you’d have people getting older by walking sideways. He looked sadly into the depths of his cup. “And every birthday you’d age another mile,” he added. Teppic looked at him aghast. “That’s time and space for you,” Pthagonal went on. “You can twist them all over the place if you’re not careful. Three point one four one. What sort of a number d’you call that?” “It sounds horrible,” said Teppic. “Damn right. Somewhere,” Pthagonal was beginning to sway on his bench, “somewhere someone built a universe with a decent, respectable value of, of,” he peered blankly at the table, “of pie. Not some damn number that never comes to an end, what kind of a” “I meant, people getting older just by walking along!” “I dunno, though. You could have a stroll back to where you were eighteen. Or wander up and see what you are going to look like when you’re seventy. Travelling in width, though, that’d be the real trick.” Pthagonal smiled vacantly and then, very slowly, keeled over into his dinner, some of which moved out of the way*. (* He was wrong. Nature abhors dimensional abnormalities, and seals them neatly away so that they don’t upset people. Nature, in fact, abhors a lot of things, including vacuums, ships called the Marie Celeste, and the chuck keys for electric drills.) Teppic became aware that the philosophic din around him had subsided a bit. He stared along the line until he spotted Ibid. “It won’t work,” said Ibid. “The Tyrant won’t listen to us. Nor will the people. Anyway” he glanced at Antiphon - “we’re not all of one mind on the subject.” “Damn Tsorteans need teaching a lesson,” said Antiphon sternly. “Not room for two major powers on this continent. Damn bad sports, anyway, just because we stole their queen. Youthful high spirits, love will have its way” Copolymer woke up. “You’ve got it wrong,” he said mildly. “The great war, that was because they stole our queen. What was her name now, face that launched a thousand camels, began with an A or a T or-” “Did they?” shouted Antiphon. “The bastards!” “I’m reasonably certain,” said Copolymer. Teppic sagged, and turned to Endos the Listener. He was still eating his dinner, with the air of one who is determined to preserve his digestion. “Endos?” The Listener laid his knife and fork carefully on either side of his plate. “Yes?” “They’re really all mad, aren’t they?” said Teppic wearily. “That’s extremely interesting,” said Endos. “Do go on.” He reached shyly into his toga and brought forth a scrap of parchment, which he pushed gently towards Teppic. “What’s this?” “My bill,” said Endos. “Five minutes Attentive Listening. Most of my gentlemen have monthly accounts, but I understand you’ll be leaving in the morning?” Teppic gave up. He wandered away from the table and into the cold garden surrounding the citadel of Ephebe. White marble statues of ancient Ephebians doing heroic things with no clothes on protruded through the greenery and, here and there, there were statues of Ephebian gods. It was hard to tell the difference. Teppic knew that Dios had hard words to say about the Ephebians for having gods that looked just like people. If the gods looked just like everyone else, he used to say, how would people know how to treat them? Teppic had rather liked the idea. According to legend the Ephebians” gods were just like humans, except that they used their godhood to get up to things humans didn’t have the nerve to do. A favourite trick of Ephebian gods, he recalled, was turning into some animal in order to gain the favours of highly-placed Ephebian women. And one of them had reputedly turned himself into a golden shower in pursuit of his intended. All this raised interesting questions about everyday night life in sophisticated Ephebe. He found Ptraci sitting on the grass under a poplar tree, feeding the tortoise. He gave it a suspicious look, in case it was a god trying it on. It did not look like a god. If it was a god, it was putting on an incredibly good act. She was feeding it a lettuce leaf. “Dear little ptortoise,” she said, and then looked up. “Oh, it’s you,” she said flatly. “You didn’t miss much,” said Teppic, sagging on to the grass. “They’re a bunch of maniacs. When I left they were smashing the plates.” “That’s ptraditional at the end of an Ephebian meal,” said Ptraci. Teppic thought about this. “Why not before?” he said. “And then they probably dance to the sound of the bourzuki,” Ptraci added. “I think it’s a sort of dog.” Teppic sat with his head in his hands. “I must say you speak Ephebian well,” he said. “Pthank you.” “Just a trace of an accent, though.” “Languages is part of the ptraining,” she said. “And my grandmother told me that a ptrace of foreign accent is more fascinating.” “We learned the same thing,” said Teppic. “An assassin should always be slightly foreign, no matter where he is. I’m good at that part,” he added bitterly. She began to massage his neck. “I went down to the harbour,” she said. “There’s those things like big rafts, you know, camels of the sea” “Ships,” said Teppic. “And they go everywhere. We could go anywhere we want. The world is our pthing with pearls in it, if we like.” Teppic told her about Pthagonal’s theory. She didn’t seem surprised. “Like an old pond where no new water comes in,” she observed. “So everyone goes round and round in the same old puddle. All the ptime you live has been lived already. It must be like other people’s bathwater.” “I’m going to go back.” Her fingers stopped their skilled kneading of his muscles. “We could go anywhere,” she repeated. “We’ve got ptrades, we could sell that camel. You could show me that Ankh-Morpork place. It sounds interesting.” Teppic wondered what effect Ankh-Morpork would have on the girl. Then he wondered what effect she would have on the city. She was definitely flowering. Back in the Old Kingdom she’d never apparently had any original thoughts beyond the choice of the next grape to peel, but since she was outside she seemed to have changed. Her jaw hadn’t changed, it was still quite small and, he had to admit, very pretty. But somehow it was more noticeable. She used to look at the ground when she spoke to him. She still didn’t always look at him when she spoke to him, but now it was because she was thinking about something else. He found he kept wanting to say, politely, without stressing it in any way, just as a very gentle reminder, that he was king. But he had a feeling that she’d say she hadn’t heard, and would he please repeat it, and if she looked at him he’d never be able to say it twice. “You could go,” he said. “You’d get on well. I could give you a few names and addresses.” “And what would you do?” “I dread to think what’s going on back home,” said Teppic. “I ought to do something.” “You can’t. Why ptry? Even if you didn’t want to be an assassin there’s lots of pthings you could do. And you said the man said it’s not a place people could get into any more. I hate pyramids.” “Surely there’s people there you care about?” Ptraci shrugged. “If they’re dead there’s nothing I can do about it,” she said. “And if they’re alive, there’s nothing I can do about it. So I shan’t.” Teppic stared at her in a species of horrified admiration. It was a beautiful summary of things as they were. He just couldn’t bring himself to think that way. His body had been away for seven years but his blood had been in the kingdom for a thousand times longer. Certainly he’d wanted to leave it behind, but that was the whole point. It would have been there. Even if he’d avoided it for the rest of his life, it would have still been a sort of anchor. “I feel so wretched about it,” he repeated. “I’m sorry. That’s all there is to it. Even to go back for five minutes, just to say, well, that I’m not coming back. That’d be enough. It’s probably all my fault.” “But there isn’t a way back! You’ll just hang around sadly, like those deposed kings you ptold me about. You know, with pthreadbare cloaks and always begging for their food in a high-class way. There’s nothing more useless than a king without a kingdom, you said. Just think about it.” They wandered through the sunset streets of the city, and towards the harbour. All streets in the city led towards the harbour. Someone was just putting a torch to the lighthouse, which was one of the More Than Seven Wonders of the World and had been built to a design by Pthagonal using the Golden Rule and the Five Aesthetic Principles. Unfortunately it had then been built in the wrong place because putting it in the right place would have spoiled the look of the harbour, but it was generally agreed by mariners to be a very beautiful lighthouse and something to look at while they were waiting to be towed off the rocks. The harbour below it was thronged with ships. Teppic and Ptraci picked their way past crates and bundles until they reached the long curved guard wall, harbour calm on one side, choppy with waves on the other. Above them the lighthouse flared and sparked. Those boats would be going to places he’d only ever heard of, he knew. The Ephebians were great traders. He could go back to Ankh and get his diploma, and then the world would indeed be the mollusc of his choice and he had any amount of knives to open it with. Ptraci put her hand in his. And there’d be none of this marrying relatives business. The months in Djelibeybi already seemed like a dream, one of those circular dreams that you never quite seem able to shake off and which make insomnia an attractive prospect. Whereas here was a future, unrolling in front of him like a carpet. What a chap needed at a time like this was a sign, some sort of book of instructions. The trouble with life was that you didn’t get a chance to practise before doing it for real. You only- “Good grief? It’s Teppic, isn’t it?” The voice was addressing him from ankle height. A head appeared over the stone of the jetty, quickly followed by its body. An extremely richly dressed body, one on which no expense had been spared in the way of gems, furs, silks and laces, provided that all of them, every single one, was black. It was Chidder.   “What’s it doing now?” said Ptaclusp. His son poked his head cautiously over the ruins of a pillar and watched Hat, the Vulture-Headed God. “It’s sniffing around,” he said. “I think it likes the statue. Honestly, dad, why did you have to go and buy a thing like that?” “It was in a job lot,” said Ptaclusp. “Anyway, I thought it would be a popular line.” “With who?” “Well, he likes it.” Ptaclusp IIb risked another squint at the angular monstrosity that was still hopping around the ruins. “Tell him he can have it if he goes away,” he suggested. “Tell him he can have it at cost.” Ptaclusp winced. “At a discount,” he said. “A special cut rate for our supernatural customers.” He stared up at the sky. From their hiding place in the ruins of the construction camp, with the Great Pyramid still humming like a powerhouse behind them, they’d had an excellent view of the arrival of the gods. At first he’d viewed them with a certain amount of equanimity. Gods would be good customers, they always wanted temples and statues, he could deal directly, cut out the middle man. And then it had occurred to him that a god, when he was unhappy about the product, as it might be, maybe the plasterwork wasn’t exactly as per spec, or perhaps a corner of the temple was a bit low on account of unexpected quicksand, a god didn’t just come around demanding in a loud voice to see the manager. No. A god knew exactly where you were, and got to the point. Also, gods were notoriously bad payers. So were humans, of course, but they didn’t actually expect you to die before they settled the account. His gaze turned to his other son, a painted silhouette against the statue, his mouth a frozen O of astonishment, and Ptaclusp reached a decision. “I’ve just about had it with pyramids,” he said. “Remind me, lad. If we ever get out of here, no more pyramids. We’ve got set in our ways. Time to branch out, I reckon.” “That’s what I’ve been telling you for ages, dad!” said IIb. “I’ve told you, a couple of decent aqueducts will make a tremendous-” “Yes, yes, I remember,” said Ptaclusp. “Yes. Aqueducts. All those arches and things. Fine. Only I can’t remember where you said you have to put the coffin in.” “Dad!” “Don’t mind me, lad. I think I’m going mad.” I couldn’t have seen a mummy and two men over there, carrying sledgehammers.   It was, indeed, Chidder. And Chidder had a boat. Teppic knew that further along the coast the Seriph of Al-Khali lived in the fabulous palace of the Rhoxie, which was said to have been built in one night by a genie and was famed in myth and legend for its splendour*. (* It was, therefore, colloquially known as the Djinn palace.) The Unnamed was the Rhoxie afloat, but more so. Its designer had a gilt complex, and had tried every trick with gold paint, curly pillars and expensive drapes to make it look less like a ship and more like a boudoir that had collided with a highly suspicious type of theatre. In fact, you needed an assassin’s eyes for hidden detail to notice how innocently the gaudiness concealed the sleekness of the hull and the fact, even when you added the cabin space and the holds together, that there still seemed to be a lot of capacity unaccounted for. The water around what Ptraci called the pointed end was strangely rippled, but it would be totally ridiculous to suspect such an obvious merchantman of having a concealed ramming spike underwater, or that a mere five minutes” work with an axe would turn this wallowing Alcdzar into something that could run away from nearly everything else afloat and make the few that could catch up seriously regret it. “Very impressive,” said Teppic. “It’s all show, really,” said Chidder. “Yes. I can see that.” “I mean, we’re poor traders.” Teppic nodded. “The usual phrase is “poor but honest traders”,” he said. Chidder smiled a merchant’s smile. “Oh, I think we’ll stick on “poor” at the moment. How the hell are you, anyway? Last we heard you were going off to be king of some place no-one’s ever heard of. And who is this lovely young lady?” “Her name” Teppic began. “Ptraci,” said Ptraci. “She’s a hand-” Teppic began. “She must surely be a royal princess,” said Chidder smoothly. “And it would give me the greatest pleasure if she, if indeed both of you, would dine with me tonight. Humble sailor’s fare, I’m afraid, but we muddle along, we muddle along.” “Not Ephebian, is it?” said Teppic. “Ship’s biscuit, salt beef, that sort of thing,” said Chidder, without taking his eyes off Ptraci. They hadn’t left her since she came on board. Then he laughed. It was the old familiar Chidder laugh, not exactly without humour, but clearly well under the control of its owner’s higher brain centres. “What an astonishing coincidence,” he said. “And us due to sail at dawn, too. Can I offer you a change of clothing? You both look somewhat, er, travel-stained.” “Rough sailor clothing, I expect,” said Teppic. “As befits a humble merchant, correct me if I’m wrong?” In fact Teppic was shown to a small cabin as exquisitely and carefully furnished as a jewelled egg, where there was laid upon the bed as fine an assortment of clothing as could be found anywhere on the Circle Sea. True, it all appeared second-hand, but carefully laundered and expertly stitched so that the sword cuts hardly showed at all. He gazed thoughtfully at the hooks on the wall, and the faint patching on the wood which hinted that various things had once been hung there and hastily removed. He stepped out into the narrow corridor, and met Ptraci. She’d chosen a red court dress such as had been the fashion in Ankh-Morpork ten years previously, with puffed sleeves and vast concealed underpinnings and ruffs the size of millstones. Teppic learned something new, which was that attractive women dressed in a few strips of gauze and a few yards of silk can actually look far more desirable when fully clad from neck to ankle. She gave an experimental twirl. “There are any amount of things like this in there,” she said. “Is this how women dress in Ankh-Morpork? It’s like wearing a house. It doesn’t half make you sweaty.” “Look, about Chidder,” said Teppic urgently. “I mean, he’s a good fellow and everything, but-” “He’s very kind, isn’t he,” she agreed. “Well. Yes. He is,” Teppic admitted, hopelessly. “He’s an old friend.” “That’s nice.” One of the crew materialised at the end of the corridor and bowed them into the state cabin, his air of old retainership marred only by the criss-cross pattern of scars on his head and some tattoos that made the pictures in The Shuttered Palace look like illustrations in a DIY shelving manual. The things he could make them do by flexing his biceps could keep entire dockside taverns fascinated for hours, and he was not aware that the worst moment of his entire life was only a few minutes away. “This is all very pleasant,” said Chidder, pouring some wine. He nodded at the tattooed man. “You may serve the soup, Alfonz,” he added. “Look, Chiddy, you’re not a pirate, are you?” said Teppic, desperately. “Is that what’s been worrying you?” Chidder grinned his lazy grin. It wasn’t everything that Teppic had been worrying about, but it had been jockeying for top position. He nodded. “No, we’re not. We just prefer to, er, avoid paperwork wherever possible. You know? We don’t like people to have all the worry of having to know everything we do.” “Only there’s all the clothes-” “Ah. We get attacked by pirates a fair amount. That’s why father had the Unnamed built. It always surprises them. And the whole thing is morally sound. We get their ship, their booty, and any prisoners they may have get rescued and given a ride home at competitive rates.” “What do you do with the pirates?” Chidder glanced at Alfonz. “That depends on future employment prospects,” he said. “Father always says that a man down on his luck should be offered a helping hand. On terms, that is. How’s the king business?” Teppic told him. Chidder listened intently, swilling the wine around in his glass. “So that’s it,” he said at last. “We heard there was going to be a war. That’s why we’re sailing tonight.” “I don’t blame you,” said Teppic. “No, I mean to get the trade organised. With both sides, naturally, because we’re strictly impartial. The weapons produced on this continent are really quite shocking. Down-right dangerous. You should come with us, too. You’re a very valuable person.” “Never felt more valueless than right now,” said Teppic despondently. Chidder looked at him in amazement. “But you’re a king!” he said. “Well, yes, but-” “Of a country which technically still exists, but isn’t actually reachable by mortal man?” “Sadly so.” “And you can pass laws about, well, currency and taxation, yes?” “I suppose so, but-” “And you don’t think you’re valuable? Good grief, Tep, our accountants can probably think up fifty different ways to . . . well, my hands go damp just to think about it. Father will probably ask to move our head office there, for a start.” “Chidder, I explained. You know it. No-one can get in,” said Teppic. “That doesn’t matter.” “Doesn’t matter?” “No, because we’ll just make Ankh our main branch office and pay our taxes in wherever the place is. All we need is an official address in, I don’t know, the Avenue of the Pyramids or something. Take my tip and don’t give in on anything until father gives you a seat on the board. You’re royal, anyway, that’s always impressive . . Chidder chattered on. Teppic felt his clothes growing hotter. So this was it. You lost your kingdom, and then it was worth more because it was a tax haven, and you took a seat on the board, whatever that was, and that made it all right. Ptraci defused the situation by grabbing Alfonz’s arm as he was serving the pheasant. “The Congress of The Friendly Dog and the Two Small Biscuits!” she exclaimed, examining the intricate tattoo. “You hardly ever see that these days. Isn’t it well done? You can even make out the yoghurt.” Alfonz froze, and then blushed. Watching the glow spread across the great scarred head was like watching sunrise over a mountain range. “What’s the one on your other arm?” Alfonz, who looked as though his past jobs had included being a battering ram, murmured something and, very shyly, showed her his forearm. “S’not really suitable for ladies,” he whispered. Ptraci brushed aside the wiry hair like a keen explorer, while Chidder stared at her with his mouth hanging open. “Oh, I know that one,” she said dismissively. “That’s out of 130 Days of Pseudopolis. It’s physically impossible.” She let go of the arm, and turned back to her meal. After a moment she looked up at Teppic and Chidder. “Don’t mind me,” she said brightly. “Do go on. “Alfonz, please go and put a proper shirt on,” said Chidder, hoarsely. Alfonz backed away, staring at his arm. “Er. What was I, er, saying?” said Chidder. “Sorry. Lost the thread. Er. Have some more wine, Tep?” Ptraci didn’t just derail the train of thought, she ripped up the rails, burned the stations and melted the bridges for scrap. And so the dinner trailed off into beef pie, fresh peaches, crystallised sea urchins and desultory small talk about the good old days at the Guild. They had been three months ago. It seemed like a lifetime. Three months in the Old Kingdom was a lifetime. After some time Ptraci yawned and went to her cabin, leaving the two of them alone with a fresh bottle of wine. Chidder watched her go in awed silence. “Are there many like her back at your place?” he said. “I don’t know,” Teppic admitted. “There could be. Usually they lie around the place peeling grapes or waving fans.” “She’s amazing. She’ll take them by storm in Ankh, you know. With a figure like that and a mind like . . .” He hesitated. “Is she . . . ? I mean, are you two . . . “No,” said Teppic. “She’s very attractive.” “Yes,” said Teppic. “A sort of cross between a temple dancer and a bandsaw.” They took their glasses and went up on deck, where a few lights from the city paled against the brilliance of the stars. The water was flat calm, almost oily. Teppic’s head was beginning to spin slowly. The desert, the sun, two gloss coats of Ephebian retsina on his stomach lining and a bottle of wine were getting together to beat up his synapses. “I mus’ say,” he managed, leaning on the rail, “you’re doing all right for yourself.” “It’s okay,” said Chidder. “Commerce is quite interesting. Building up markets, you know. The cut and thrust of competition in the privateering sector. You ought to come in with us, boy. It’s where the future lies, my father says. Not with wizards and kings, but with enterprising people who can afford to hire them. No offence intended, you understand.” “We’re all that’s left,” said Teppic to his wine glass. “Out of the whole kingdom. Me, her, and a camel that smells like an old carpet. An ancient kingdom, lost.” “Good job it wasn’t a new one,” said Chidder. “At least people got some wear out of it.” “You don’t know what it’s like,” said Teppic. “It’s like a whole great pyramid. But upside down, you understand? All that history, all those ancestors, all the people, all funnelling down to me. Right at the bottom.” He slumped on to a coil of rope as Chidder passed the bottle back and said, “It makes you think, doesn’t it? There’s all these lost cities and kingdoms around. Like Ee, in the Great Nef. Whole countries, just gone. Just out there somewhere. Maybe people started mucking about with geometry, what do you say?” Teppic snored. After some moments Chidder swayed forward, dropped the empty bottle over the side, it went plunk - and for a few seconds a stream of bubbles disturbed the flat calm - and staggered off to bed. Teppic dreamed. And in his dream he was standing on a high place, but unsteadily, because he was balancing on the shoulders of his father and mother, and below them he could make out his grandparents, and below them his ancestors stretching away and out in a vast, all right, a vast pyramid of humanity whose base was lost in clouds. He could hear the murmur of shouted orders and instructions floating up to him. If you do nothing, we shall never have been. “This is just a dream,” he said, and stepped out of it into a palace where a small, dark man in a loincloth was sitting on a stone bench, eating figs. “Of course it’s a dream,” he said. “The world is the dream of the Creator. It’s all dreams, different kinds of dreams. They’re supposed to tell you things. Like: don’t eat lobster last thing at night. Stuff like that. Have you had the one about the seven cows?” “Yes,” said Teppic, looking around. He’d dreamed quite good architecture. “One of them was playing a trombone.” “It was smoking a cigar in my day. Well-known ancestral dream, that dream.” “What does it mean?” The little man picked a seed from between his teeth. “Search me,” he said. “I’d give my right arm to find out. I don’t think we’ve met, by the way. I’m Khuft. I founded this kingdom. You dream a good fig.” “I’m dreaming you, too?” “Damn right. I had a vocabulary of eight hundred words, do you think I’d really be talking like this? If you’re expecting a bit of helpful ancestral advice, forget it. This is a dream. I can’t tell you anything you don’t know yourself.” “You’re the founder?” “That’s me.” “I . . . thought you’d be different,” said Teppic. “How d’you mean?” “Well . . . on the statue . . Khuft waved a hand impatiently. “That’s just public relations,” he said. “I mean, look at me. Do I look patriarchal?” Teppic gave him a critical appraisal. “Not in that loincloth,” he admitted. “It’s a bit, well, ragged.” “It’s got years of wear left in it,” said Khuft. “Still, I expect it’s all you could grab when you were fleeing from persecution,” said Teppic, anxious to show an understanding nature. Khuft took another fig and give him a lopsided look. “How’s that again?” “You were being persecuted,” said Teppic. “That’s why you fled into the desert.” “Oh, yes. You’re right. Damn right. I was being persecuted for my beliefs.” “That’s terrible,” said Teppic. Khuft spat. “Damn right. I believed people wouldn’t notice I’d sold them camels with plaster teeth until I was well out of town.” It took a little while for this to sink in, but it managed it with all the aplomb of a concrete block in a quicksand. “You’re a criminal?” said Teppic. “Well, criminal’s a dirty word, know what I mean?” said the little ancestor. “I’d prefer entrepreneur. I was ahead of my time, that’s my trouble.” “And you were running away?” said Teppic weakly. “It wouldn’t,” said Khuft, “have been a good idea to hang about.” “”And Khuft the camel herder became lost in the Desert, and there opened before him, as a Gift from the Gods, a Valley flowing with Milk and Honey”,” quoted Teppic, in a hollow voice. He added, “I used to think it must have been awfully sticky.” “There I was, dying of thirst, all the camels kicking up a din, yelling for water, next minute - whoosh - a bloody great river valley, reed beds, hippos, the whole thing. Out of nowhere. I nearly got knocked down in the stampede.” “No!” said Teppic. “It wasn’t like that! The gods of the valley took pity on you and showed you the way in, didn’t they?” He shut up, surprised at the tones of pleading in his own voice. Khuft sneered. “Oh, yes? And I just happened to stumble across a hundred miles of river in the middle of the desert that everyone else had missed. Easy thing to miss, a hundred miles of river valley in the middle of a desert, isn’t it? Not that I was going to look a gift camel in the mouth, you understand, I went and brought my family and the rest of the lads in soon enough. Never looked back.” “One minute it wasn’t there, the next minute it was?” said Teppic. “Right enough. Hard to believe, isn’t it?” “No,” said Teppic. “No. Not really.” Khuft poked him with a wrinkled finger. “I always reckoned it was the camels that did it,” he said. “I always thought they sort of called it into place, like it was sort of potentially there but not quite, and it needed just that little bit of effort to make it real. Funny things, camels.” “I know.” “Odder than gods. Something the matter?” “Sorry,” said Teppic, “it’s just that this is all a bit of a shock. I mean, I thought we were really royal. I mean, we’re more royal than anyone. Khuft picked a fig seed from between two blackened stumps which, because they were in his mouth, probably had to be called his teeth. Then he spat. “That’s up to you,” he said, and vanished. Teppic walked through the necropolis, the pyramids a saw-edged skyline against the night. The sky was the arched body of a woman, and the gods stood around the horizon. They didn’t look like the gods that had been painted on the walls for thousands of years. They looked worse. They looked older than Time. After all, the gods hardly ever meddled in the affairs of men. But other things were proverbial for it. “What can I do? I’m only human,” he said aloud. Someone said, Not all of you.   Teppic awoke, to the screaming of seagulls. Alfonz, who was wearing a long-sleeved shirt and the expression of one who never means to take it off again, ever, was helping several other men unfurl one of Unnamed’s sails. He looked down at Teppic in his bed of rope and gave him a nod. They were moving. Teppic sat up, and saw the dock-side of Ephebe slipping silently away in the grey morning light. He stood up unsteadily, groaned, clutched at his head, took a run and dived over the rail. Heme Krona, owner of the Camels-R-Us livery stable, walked slowly around You Bastard, humming. He examined the camel’s knees. He gave one of its feet an experimental kick. In a swift movement that took You Bastard completely by surprise he jerked open the beast’s mouth and examined his great yellow teeth, and then jumped away. He took a plank of wood from a heap in the corner, dipped a brush in a pot of black paint, and after a moment’s thought carefully wrote, ONE OWNER. After some further consideration he added, LO MILEAGE. He was just brushing in GOOD RUNER when Teppic staggered in and leaned, panting, against the doorframe. Pools of water formed around his feet. “I’ve come for my camel,” he said. Krona sighed. “Last night you said you’d be back in an hour,” he said. “I’m going to have to charge you for a whole day’s livery, right? Plus I gave him a rub down and did his feet, the full service. That’ll be five cercs, okay emir?” “Ah.” Teppic patted his pocket. “Look,” he said. “I left home in a bit of a hurry, you see. I don’t seem to have any cash on me.” “Fair enough, emir.” Krona turned back to his board. “How do you spell YEARS WARENTY?” “I will definitely have the money sent to you,” said Teppic. Krona gave him the withering smile of one who has seen it all - asses with bodywork re-haired, elephants with plaster tusks, camels with false humps glued on - and knows the festering depths of the human soul when it gets down to business. “Pull the other one, rajah,” he said. “It has got bells on.” Teppic fumbled in his tunic. “I could give you this valuable knife,” he said. Krona gave it a passing glance, and sniffed. “Sorry, emir. No can do. No pay, no camel.” “I could give it to you point first,” said Teppic desperately, knowing that the mere threat would get him expelled from the Guild. He was also aware that as a threat it wasn’t very good. Threats weren’t on the syllabus at the Guild school. Whereas Krona had, sitting on straw bales at the back of the stables, a couple of large men who were just beginning to take an interest in the proceedings. They looked like Alfonz’s older brothers. Every vehicle depot of any description anywhere in the multiverse has them. They’re never exactly grooms or mechanics or customers or staff. Their function is always unclear. They chew straws or smoke cigarettes in a surreptitious fashion. If there are such things as newspapers around, they read them, or at least look at the pictures. They started to watch Teppic closely. One of them picked up a couple of bricks and began to toss them up and down. “You’re a young lad, I can see that,” said Krona, kindly. “You’re just starting out in life, emir. You don’t want trouble.” He stepped forward. You Bastard’s huge shaggy head turned to look at him. In the depths of his brain columns of little numbers whirred upwards again. “Look, I’m sorry, but I’ve got to have my camel back,” said Teppic. “It’s life and death!” Krona waved a hand at the two extraneous men. You Bastard kicked him. You Bastard had very concise ideas about people putting their hands in his mouth. Besides, he’d seen the bricks, and every camel knew what two bricks added up to. It was a good kick, toes well spread, powerful and deceptively slow. It picked Krona up and delivered him neatly into a steaming heap of Augean stable sweepings. Teppic ran, kicked away from the wall, grabbed You Bastard’s dusty coat and landed heavily on his neck. “I’m very sorry,” he said, to such of Krona as was visible. “I really will have some money sent to you.” You Bastard, at this point, was waltzing round and round in a circle. Krona’s companions stayed well back as feet like plates whirred through the air. Teppic leaned forward and hissed into one madly-waving ear. “We’re going home,” he said.   They had chosen the first pyramid at random. The king peered at the cartouche on the door. “”Blessed is Queen Far-re-ptah”,” read Dil dutifully, “Ruler of the Skies, Lord of the Djel, Master of-“ “Grandma Pooney,” said the king. “She’ll do.” He looked at their startled faces. “That’s what I used to call her when I was a little boy. I couldn’t pronounce Far-re-ptah, you see. Well, go on then. Stop gawking. Break the door down.” Gern hefted the hammer uncertainly. “It’s a pyramid, master,” he said, appealing to Dil. “You’re not supposed to open them.” “What do you suggest, lad? We stick a tableknife in the slot and wiggle it about?” said the king. “Do it, Gern,” said Dil. “It will be all right.” Gern shrugged, spat on his hands which were, in fact, quite damp enough with the sweat of terror, and swung. “Again,” said the king. The great slab boomed as the hammer hit it, but it was granite, and held. A few flakes of mortar floated down, and then the echoes came back, shunting back and forth along the dead avenues of the necropolis. “Again.” Gern’s biceps moved like turtles in grease. This time there was an answering boom, such as might be caused by a heavy lid crashing to the ground, far away. They stood in silence, listening to a slow shuffling noise from inside the pyramid. “Shall I hit it again, sire?” said Gern. They both waved him into silence. The shuffling grew closer. Then the stone moved. It stuck once or twice, but never the less it moved, slowly, pivoting on one side so that a crack of dark shadow appeared. Dil could just make out a darker shape in the blackness. “Yes?” it said. “It’s me, Grandma,” said the king. The shadow stood motionless. “What, young Pootle?” it said, suspiciously. The king avoided Dil’s face. “That’s right, Grandma. We’ve come to let you out.” “Who’re these men?” said the shadow petulantly. “I’ve got nothing, young man,” she said to Gern. “I don’t keep any money in the pyramid and you can put that weapon away, it doesn’t frighten me.” “They’re servants, Grandma,” said the king. “Have they got any identification?” muttered the old lady. “I’m identifying them, Grandma. We’ve come to let you out.” “I was hammering hours,” said the late queen, emerging into the sunlight. She looked exactly like the king, except that the mummy wrappings were greyer and dusty. “I had to go and have a lie down, come the finish. No-one cares about you when you’re dead. Where’re we going?” “To let the others out,” said the king. “Damn good idea.” The old queen lurched into step behind him. “So this is the netherworld, is it?” she said. “Not much of an improvement.” She elbowed Gern sharply. “You dead too, young man?” “No, ma’am,” said Gern, in the shaky brave tones of someone on a tightrope over the chasms of madness. “It’s not worth it. Be told.” “Yes, ma’am.” The king shuffled across the ancient pavings to the next pyramid. “I know this one,” said the queen. “It was here in my day. King Ashk-ur-men-tep. Third Empire. What’s the hammer for, young man?” “Please, ma’am, I have to hammer on the door, ma’am,” said Gern. “You don’t have to knock. He’s always in.” “My assistant means to smash the seals, ma’am,” said Dil, anxious to please. “Who’re you?” the queen demanded. “My name is Dil, O queen. Master embalmer.” “Oh, you are, are you? I’ve got some stitching wants seeing to.” “It will be an honour and a privilege, O queen,” said Dil. “Yes. It will,” she said, and turned creakily to Gern. “Hammer away, young man!” she said. Spurred by this, Gern brought the hammer round in a long, fast arc. It passed in front of Dil’s nose making a noise like a partridge and smashed the seal into pieces. What emerged, when the dust had settled, was not dressed in the height of fashion. The bandages were brown and mouldering and, Dil noticed with professional concern, already beginning to go at the elbows. When it spoke, it was like the opening of ancient caskets. “I woket up,” it said. “And theyre was noe light. Is thys the netherworld?” “It would appear not,” said the queen. “Thys is all?” “Hardly worth the trouble of dying, was it?” said the queen. The ancient king nodded, but gently, as though he was afraid his head would fall off. “Somethyng,” he said, “must be done.” He turned to look at the Great Pyramid, and pointed with what had once been an arm. “Who slepes there?” he said. “It’s mine, actually,” said Teppicymon, lurching forward. “I don’t think we’ve met, I haven’t been interred as yet, my son built it for me. It was against my better judgement, believe me.” “It ys a dretful thyng,” said the ancient king. “I felt its building. Even in the sleep of deathe I felt it. It is big enough to interr the worlde.” “I wanted to be buried at sea,” said Teppicymon. “I hate pyramids.” “You do not,” said Ashk-ur-men-tep. “Excuse me, but I do,” said the king, politely. “But you do not. What you feel nowe is myld dislike. When you have lain in one for a thousand yeares,” said the ancient one, “then you will begin to know the meaning of hate.” Teppicymon shuddered. “The sea,” he said. “That’s the place. You just dissolve away.” They set off towards the next pyramid. Gern led the way, his face a picture, possibly one painted late at night by an artist who got his inspiration on prescription. Dil followed. He held his chest high. He’d always hoped to make his way in the world and here he was now, walking with kings. Well. Lurching with kings.   It was another nice day in the high desert. It was always a nice day, if by nice you meant an air temperature like an oven and sand you could roast chestnuts on. You Bastard ran fast, mainly to keep his feet off the ground for as long as possible. For a moment as they staggered up the hills outside the olive-tree’d, field-patchworked oasis around Ephebe, Teppic thought he saw the Unnamed as a tiny speck on the azure sea. But it might have been just a gleam on a wave. Then he was over the crest, into a world of yellow and umber. For a while scrubby trees held on against the sand, but the sand won and marched triumphantly onwards, dune after dune. The desert was not only hot, it was quiet. There were no birds, none of the susurration of organic creatures busily being alive. At night there might have been the whine of insects, but they were deep under the sand against the scorch of day, and the yellow sky and yellow sand became an anechoic chamber in which You Bastard’s breath sounded like a steam-engine. Teppic had learned many things since he first went forth from the Old Kingdom, and he was about to learn one more. All authorities agree that when crossing the scorching desert it is a good idea to wear a hat. You Bastard settled into the shambling trot that a prime racing camel can keep up for hours. After a couple of miles Teppic saw a column of dust behind the next dune. Eventually they came up behind the main body of the Ephebian army, swinging along around half-a-dozen battle elephants, their helmet plumes waving in the oven breeze. They cheered on general principles as Teppic went past. Battle elephants! Teppic groaned. Tsort went in for battle elephants, too. Battle elephants were the fashion lately. They weren’t much good for anything except trampling on their own troops when they inevitably panicked, so the military minds on both sides had responded by breeding bigger elephants. Elephants were impressive. For some reason, many of these elephants were towing great carts full of timber. He jogged onwards as the sun wound higher and, and this was unusual, blue and purple dots began to pinwheel gently across the horizon. Another strange thing was happening. The camel seemed to be trotting across the sky. Perhaps this had something to do with the ringing noise in his ears. Should he stop? But then the camel might fall off. It was long past noon when You Bastard staggered into the baking shade of the limestone outcrop which had once marked the edge of the valley, and collapsed very slowly into the sand. Teppic rolled off. A detachment of Ephebians were staring across the narrow space towards a very similar number of Tsorteans on the other side. Occasionally, for the look of the thing, one of them waved a spear. When Teppic opened his eyes it was to see the fearsome bronze masks of several Ephebian soldiers peering down at him. Their metal mouths were locked in sneers of terrible disdain. Their shining eyebrows were twisted in mortal anger. One of them said, “He’s coming round, sarge.” A metal face like the anger of the elements came closer, filling Teppic’s vision. “We’ve been out without our hat, haven’t we, sonny boy,” it said, in a cheery voice that echoed oddly inside the metal. “In a hurry to get to grips with the enemy, were we?” The sky wheeled around Teppic, but a thought bobbed into the frying pan of his mind, seized control of his vocal chords and croaked: “The camel!” “You ought to be put away, treating it like that,” said the sergeant, waggling a finger at him. “Never seen one in such a state.” “Don’t let it have a drink!” Teppic sat bolt upright, great gongs clanging and hot, heavy fireworks going off inside his skull. The helmeted heads turned towards one another. “Gods, he must have something really terrible against camels,” said one of them. Teppic staggered upright and lurched across the sand to You Bastard, who was trying to work out the complex equation which would allow him to get to his feet. His tongue was hanging out, and he was not feeling well. A camel in distress isn’t a shy creature. It doesn’t hang around in bars, nursing a solitary drink. It doesn’t phone up old friends and sob at them. It doesn’t mope, or write long soulful poems about Life and how dreadful it is when seen from a bedsitter. It doesn’t know what angst is. All a camel has got is a pair of industrial-strength lungs and a voice like a herd of donkeys being chainsawed. Teppic advanced through the blaring. You Bastard reared his head and turned it this way and that, triangulating. His eyes rolled madly as he did the camel trick of apparently looking at Teppic with his nostrils. He spat. He tried to spit. Teppic grabbed his halter and pulled on it. “Come on, you bastard,” he said. “There’s water. You can smell it. All you have to do is work out how to get there!” He turned to the assembled soldiers. They were staring at him with expressions of amazement, apart from those who hadn’t removed their helmets and who were staring at him with expressions of metallic ferocity. Teppic snatched a water skin from one of them, pulled out the stopper and tipped it on to the ground in front of the camel’s twitching nose. “There’s a river here,” he hissed. “You know where it is, all you’ve got to do is go there!” The soldiers looked around nervously. So did several Tsorteans, who had wandered up to see what was going on. You Bastard got to his feet, knees trembling, and started to spin around in a circle. Teppic clung on. . . . let d equal 4, thought You Bastard desperately. Let a.d equal 90. Let not-d equal 45 . . . “I need a stick!” shouted Teppic, as he was whirled past the sergeant. “They never understand anything unless you hit them with a stick, it’s like punctuation to a camel!” “Is a sword any good?” “No!” The sergeant hesitated, and then passed Teppic his spear. He grabbed it point-end first, fought for balance, and then brought it smartly across the camel’s flank, raising a cloud of dust and hair. You Bastard stopped. His ears turned like radar aerials. He stared at the rock wall, rolling his eyes. Then, as Teppic grabbed a handful of hair and pulled himself up, the camel started to trot. . . . Think fractals . . . “Ere, you’re going to run straight-” the sergeant began. There was silence. It went on for a long time. The sergeant shifted uneasily. Then he looked across the rocks to the Tsorteans, and caught the eye of their leader. With the unspoken understanding that is shared by centurions and sergeant-majors everywhere, they walked towards one another along the length of the rocks and stopped by the barely visible crack in the cliff. The Tsortean sergeant ran his hand over it. “You’d think there’d be some, you know, camel hairs or something,” he said. “Or blood,” said the Ephebian. “I reckon it’s one of them unexplainable phenomena.” “Oh. That’s all right, then.” The two men stared at the stone for a while. “Like a mirage,” said the Tsortean, helpfully. “One of them things, yes.” “I thought I heard a seagull, too.” “Daft, isn’t it. You don’t get them out here.” The Tsortean coughed politely, and stared back at his men. Then he leaned closer. “The rest of your people will be along directly, I expect,” he said. The Ephebian stepped a bit closer and when he spoke, it was out of the corner of his mouth while his eyes apparently remained fully occupied by looking at the rocks. “That’s right,” he said. “And yours too, may I ask?” “Yes. I expect we’ll have to massacre you if ours get here first.” “Likewise, I shouldn’t wonder. Still, can’t be helped.” “One of those things, really,” agreed the Tsortean. The other man nodded. “Funny old world, when you come to think about it.” “You’ve put your finger on it, all right.” The sergeant loosened his breastplate a bit, glad to be out of the sun. “Rations okay on your side?” he said. “Oh, you know. Mustn’t grumble.” “Like us, really.” “Cos if you do grumble, they get even worse.” “Just like ours. Here, you haven’t got any figs on your side, have you? I could just do with a fig.” “Sorry.” “Just thought I’d ask.” “Got plenty of dates, if they’re any good to you.” “We’re okay on dates, thanks.” “Sorry.” The two men stood awhile, lost in their own thoughts. Then the Ephebian put on his helmet again, and the Tsortean adjusted his belt. “Right, then.” “Right, then.” They squared their shoulders, stuck out their chins, and marched away. A moment later they turned about smartly and, exchanging the merest flicker of an embarrassed grin, headed back to their own sides.   BOOK IV The Book of 101 Things A Boy Can Do Teppic had expected- -what? Possibly the splat of flesh hitting rock. Possibly, although this was on the very edge of expectation, the sight of the Old Kingdom spread out below him. He hadn’t expected chilly, damp mists. It is now known to science that there are many more dimensions than the classical four. Scientists say that these don’t normally impinge on the world because the extra dimensions are very small and curve in on themselves, and that since reality is fractal most of it is tucked inside itself. This means either that the universe is more full of wonders than we can hope to understand or, more probably, that scientists make things up as they go along. But the multiverse is full of little dimensionettes, playstreets of creation where creatures of the imagination can romp without being knocked down by serious actuality. Sometimes, as they drift through the holes in reality, they impinge back on this universe, when they give rise to myths, legends and charges of being Drunk and Disorderly. And it was into one of these that You Bastard, by a trivial miscalculation, had trotted. Legend had got it nearly right. The Sphinx did lurk on the borders of the kingdom. The legend just hadn’t been precise about what kind of borders it was talking about. The Sphinx is an unreal creature. It exists solely because it has been imagined. It is well-known that in an infinite universe everything that can be imagined must exist somewhere, and since many of them are not things that ought to exist in a well-ordered space-time frame they get shoved into a side dimension. This may go some way to explaining the Sphinx’s chronic bad temper, although any creature created with the body of a lion, bosom of a woman and wings of an eagle has a serious identity crisis and doesn’t need much to make it angry. So it had devised the Riddle. Across various dimensions it had provided the Sphinx with considerable entertainment and innumerable meals. This was not known to Teppic as he led You Bastard through the swirling mists, but the bones he crunched underfoot gave him enough essential detail. A lot of people had died here. And it was reasonable to assume that the more recent ones had seen the remains of the earlier ones, and would therefore have proceeded stealthily. And that hadn’t worked. No sense in creeping along, then. Besides, some of the rocks that loomed out of the mists had a very distressing shape. This one here, for example, looked exactly like- “Halt,” said the Sphinx. There was no sound but the drip of the mist and the occasional sucking noise of You Bastard trying to extract moisture from the air. “You’re a sphinx,” said Teppic. “The Sphinx,” corrected the Sphinx. “Gosh. We’ve got any amount of statues to you at home.” Teppic looked up, and then further up. “I thought you’d be smaller,” he added. “Cower, mortal,” said the Sphinx. “For thou art in the presence of the wise and the terrible.” It blinked. “Any good, these statues?” “They don’t do you justice,” said Teppic, truthfully. “Do you really think so? People often get the nose wrong,” said the Sphinx. “My right profile is best, I’m told, and-” It dawned on the Sphinx that it was sidetracking itself. It coughed sternly. “Before you can pass me, O mortal,” it said, “you must answer my riddle.” “Why?” said Teppic. “What?” The Sphinx blinked at him. It hadn’t been designed for this sort of thing. “Why? Why? Because. Er. Because, hang on, yes, because I will bite your head off if you don’t. Yes, I think that’s it.” “Right,” said Teppic. “Let’s hear it, then.” The Sphinx cleared its throat with a noise like an empty lorry reversing in a quarry. “What goes on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening?” said the Sphinx smugly. Teppic considered this. “That’s a tough one,” he said, eventually. “The toughest,” said the Sphinx. “Um.” “You’ll never get it.” “Ah,” said Teppic. “Could you take your clothes off while you’re thinking? The threads play merry hell with my teeth.” “There isn’t some kind of animal that regrows legs that have been-” “Entirely the wrong track,” said the Sphinx, stretching its claws. “Oh.” “You haven’t got the faintest idea, have you?” “I’m still thinking,” said Teppic. “You’ll never get it.” “You’re right.” Teppic stared at the claws. This isn’t really a fighting animal, he told himself reassuringly, it’s definitely over-endowed. Besides, its bosom will get in the way, even if its brain doesn’t. “The answer is: “A Man”,” said the Sphinx. “Now, don’t put up a fight, please, it releases unpleasant chemicals into the bloodstream.” Teppic backed away from a slashing paw. “Hold on, hold on,” he said. “What do you mean, a man?” “It’s easy,” said the Sphinx. “A baby crawls in the morning, stands on both legs at noon, and at evening an old man walks with a stick. Good, isn’t it?” Teppic bit his lip. “We’re talking about one day here?” he said doubtfully. There was a long, embarrassing silence. “It’s a wossname, a figure of speech,” said the Sphinx irritably, making another lunge. “No, no, look, wait a minute,” said Teppic. “I’d like us to be very clear about this, right? I mean, it’s only fair, right?” “Nothing wrong with the riddle,” said the Sphinx. “Damn good riddle. Had that riddle for fifty years, sphinx and cub.” It thought about this. “Chick,” it corrected. “It’s a good riddle,” Teppic said soothingly. “Very deep. Very moving. The whole human condition in a nutshell. But you’ve got to admit, this doesn’t all happen to one individual in one day, does it?” “Well. No,” the Sphinx admitted. “But that is self-evident from the context. An element of dramatic analogy is present in all riddles,” it added, with the air of one who had heard the phrase a long time ago and rather liked it, although not to the extent of failing to eat the originator. “Yes, but,” said Teppic crouching down and brushing a clear space on the damp sand, “is there internal consistency within the metaphor? Let’s say for example that the average life expectancy is seventy years, okay?” “Okay,” said the Sphinx, in the uncertain tones of someone who has let the salesman in and is now regretfully contemplating a future in which they are undoubtedly going to buy life insurance. “Right. Good. So noon would be age 35, am I right? Now considering that most children can toddle at a year or so, the four legs reference is really unsuitable, wouldn’t you agree? I mean, most of the morning is spent on two legs. According to your analogy” he paused and did a few calculations with a convenient thighbone- “only about twenty minutes immediately after 00.00 hours, half an hour tops, is spent on four legs. Am I right? Be fair.” “Well-” said the Sphinx. “By the same token you wouldn’t be using a stick by six p.m. because you’d be only, er, 52,” said Teppic, scribbling furiously. “In fact you wouldn’t really be looking at any kind of walking aid until at least half past nine, I think. That’s on the assumption that the entire lifespan takes place over one day which is, I believe I have already pointed out, ridiculous. I’m sorry, it’s basically okay, but it doesn’t work.” “Well,” said the Sphinx, but irritably this time, “I don’t see what I can do about it. I haven’t got any more. It’s the only one I’ve ever needed.” “You just need to alter it a bit, that’s all.” “How do you mean?” “Just make it a bit more realistic.” “Hmm.” The Sphinx scratched its mane with a claw. “Okay,” it said doubtfully. “I suppose I could ask: What is it that walks on four legs” “Metaphorically speaking,” said Teppic. “Four legs, metaphorically speaking,” the Sphinx agreed, “for about-” “Twenty minutes, I think we agreed.” “Okay, fine, twenty minutes in the morning, on two legs***” “But I think calling it in “the morning” is stretching it a bit,” said Teppic. “It’s just after midnight. I mean, technically it’s the morning, but in a very real sense it’s still last night, what do you think?” A look of glazed panic crossed the Sphinx’s face. “What do you think?” it managed. “Let’s just see where we’ve got to, shall we? What, metaphorically speaking, walks on four legs just after midnight, on two legs for most of the day-” “Barring accidents,” said the Sphinx, pathetically eager to show that it was making a contribution. “Fine, on two legs barring accidents, until at least suppertime, when it walks with three legs-” “I’ve known people use two walking sticks,” said the Sphinx helpfully. “Okay. How about: when it continues to walk on two legs or with any prosthetic aids of its choice?” The Sphinx gave this some consideration. “Ye-ess,” it said gravely. “That seems to fit all eventualities.” “Well?” said Teppic. “Well what?” said the Sphinx. “Well, what’s the answer?” The Sphinx gave him a stony look, and then showed its fangs. “Oh no,” it said. “You don’t catch me out like that. You think I’m stupid? You’ve got to tell me the answer.” “Oh, blow,” said Teppic. “Thought you had me there, didn’t you?” said the Sphinx. “Sorry.” “You thought you could get me all confused, did you?” The Sphinx grinned. “It was worth a try,” said Teppic. “Can’t blame you. So what’s the answer, then?” Teppic scratched his nose. “Haven’t a clue,” he said. “Unless, and this is a shot in the dark, you understand, it’s: A Man.” The Sphinx glared at him. “You’ve been here before, haven’t you?” it said accusingly. “No.” “Then someone’s been talking, right?” “Who could have talked? Has anyone ever guessed the riddle?” said Teppic. “No!” “Well, then. They couldn’t have talked, could they?” The Sphinx’s claws scrabbled irritably on its rock. “I suppose you’d better move along, then,” it grumbled. “Thank you,” said Teppic. “I’d be grateful if you didn’t tell anyone, please,” added the Sphinx, coldly. “I wouldn’t like to spoil it for other people.” Teppic scrambled up a rock and on to You Bastard. “Don’t you worry about that,” he said, spurring the camel onwards. He couldn’t help noticing the way the Sphinx was moving its lips silently, as though trying to work something out. You Bastard had gone only twenty yards or so before an enraged bellow erupted behind him. For once he forgot the etiquette that says a camel must be hit with a stick before it does anything. All four feet hit the sand and pushed. This time he got it right.   The priests were going irrational. It wasn’t that the gods were disobeying them. The gods were ignoring them. The gods always had. It took great skill to persuade a Djelibeybi god to obey you, and the priests had to be fast on their toes. For example, if you pushed a rock off a cliff, then a quick request to the gods that it should fall down was certain to be answered. In the same way, the gods ensured that the sun set and the stars came out. Any petition to the gods to see to it that palm trees grew with their roots in the ground and their leaves on top was certain to be graciously accepted. On the whole, any priest who cared about such things could ensure a high rate of success. However, it was one thing for the gods to ignore you when they were far off and invisible, and quite another when they were strolling across the landscape. It made you feel such a fool. “Why don’t they listen?” said the high priest of Teg, the Horse-Headed god of agriculture. He was in tears. Teg had last been seen sitting in a field, pulling up corn and giggling. The other high priests were faring no better. Rituals hallowed by time had filled the air in the palace with sweet blue smoke and cooked enough assorted livestock to feed a famine, but the gods were settling in the Old Kingdom as if they owned it, and the people therein were no more than insects. And the crowds were still outside. Religion had ruled in the Old Kingdom for the best part of seven thousand years. Behind the eyes of every priest present was a graphic image of what would happen if the people ever thought, for one moment, that it ruled no more. “And so, Dios,” said Koomi, “we turn to you. What would you have us do now?” Dios sat on the steps of the throne and stared gloomily at the floor. The gods didn’t listen. He knew that. He knew that, of all people. But it had never mattered before. You just went through the motions and came up with an answer. It was the ritual that was important, not the gods. The gods were there to do the duties of a megaphone, because who else would people listen to? While he fought to think clearly his hands went through the motions of the Ritual of the Seventh Hour, guided by neural instructions as rigid and unchangeable as crystals. “You have tried everything?” he said. “Everything that you advised, O Dios,” said Koomi. He waited until most of the priests were watching them and then, in a rather louder voice, continued: “If the king was here, he would intercede for us.” He caught the eye of the priestess of Sarduk. He hadn’t discussed things with her; indeed, what was there to discuss? But he had an inkling that there was some fellow, sorry, feeling there. She didn’t like Dios very much, but was less in awe of him than were the others. “I told you that the king is dead,” said Dios. “Yes, we heard you. Yet there seems to be no body, O Dios. Nevertheless, we believe what you tell us, for it is the great Dios that speaks, and we pay no heed to malicious gossip.” The priests were silent. Malicious gossip, too? And somebody had already mentioned rumours, hadn’t they? Definitely something amiss here. “It happened many times in the past,” said the priestess, on - cue. “When a kingdom was threatened or the river did not rise, the king went to intercede with the gods. Was sent to intercede with the gods.” The edge of satisfaction in her voice made it clear that it was a one-way trip. Koomi shivered with delight and horror. Oh, yes. Those were the days. Some countries had experimented with the idea of the sacrificial king, long ago. A few years of feasting and ruling, then chop - and make way for a new administration. “In a time of crisis, possibly any high-born minister of state would suffice,” she went on. Dios looked up, his face mirroring the agony of his tendons. “I see,” he said. “And who would be high priest then?” “The gods would choose,” said Koomi. “I daresay they would,” said Dios sourly. “I am in some doubt as to the wisdom of their choice.” “The dead can speak to the gods in the netherworld,” said the priestess. “But the gods are all here,” said Dios, fighting against the throbbing in his legs, which were insisting that, at this time, they should be walking along the central corridor en route to supervise the Rite of the Under Sky. His body cried out for the solace over the river. And once over the river, never to return . . . but he’d always said that. “In the absence of the king the high priest performs his duties. Isn’t that right, Dios?” said Koomi. It was. It was written. You couldn’t rewrite it, once it was written. He’d written it. Long ago. Dios hung his head. This was worse than plumbing, this was worse than anything. And yet, and yet. . . to go across the river . . . “Very well, then,” he said. “I have one final request.” “Yes?” Koomi’s voice had timbre now, it was already a high priest’s voice. “I wish to be interred in the-” Dios began, and was cut off by a murmur from those priests who could look out across the river. All eyes turned to the distant, inky shore. The legions of the kings of Djelibeybi were on the march. They lurched, but they covered the ground quickly. There were platoons, battalions of them. They didn’t need Gern’s hammer any more. “It’s the pickle,” said the king, as they watched half-a-dozen ancestors mummyhandle a seal out of its socket. “It toughens you up.” Some of the more ancient were getting over enthusiastic and attacking the pyramids themselves, actually managing to shift blocks higher than they were. The king didn’t blame them. How terrible to be dead, and know you were dead, and locked away in the darkness. They’re never going to get me in one of those things, he vowed. At last they came, like a tide, to yet another pyramid. - It was small, low, dark, half-concealed in drifted sands, and the blocks were hardly even masonry; they were no more than roughly squared boulders. It had clearly been built long before the Kingdom got the hang of pyramids. It was barely more than a pile. Hacked into the doorseal, angular and deep, were the hieroglyphs of the Kingdom: KHUFT HAD ME MADE. THE FIRST. Several ancestors clustered around it. “Oh dear,” said the king. “This might be going too far.” “The First,” whispered Dil. “The First into the Kingdom: No-one here before but hippos and crocodiles. From inside that pyramid seventy centuries look out at us. Older than anything-” “Yes, yes, all right,” said Teppicymon. “No need to get carried away. He was a man, just like all of us.” “”AndKhuftthecamelherderlookeduponthevalley. . .”“ Dil began. “After seven thousand yeares, he wyll be wantyng to look upon yt again,” said Ashk-ur-men-tep bluntly. “Even so,” said the king. “It does seem a bit . . “The dead are equal,” said Ashk-ur-men-tep. “You, younge manne. Calle hym forth.” “Who, me?” said Gern. “But he was the Fir-” “Yes, we’ve been through all that,” said Teppicymon. “Do it. Everyone’s getting impatient. So is he, I expect.” Gern rolled his eyes, and hefted the hammer. Just as it was about to hiss down on the seal Dil darted forward, causing Gern to dance wildly across the ground in a groin-straining effort to avoid interring the hammer in his master’s head. “It’s open!” said Dil. “Look! The seal just swings aside!” “Youe meane he iss oute?” Teppicymon tottered forward and grabbed the door of the pyramid. It moved quite easily. Then he examined the stone beneath it. Derelict and half-covered though it was, someone had taken care to keep a pathway clear to the pyramid. And the stone was quite worn away, as by the passage of many feet. This was not, by the nature of things, the normal state of affairs for a pyramid. The whole point was that once you were in, you were in. The mummies examined the worn entrance and creaked at one another in surprise. One of the very ancient ones, who was barely holding himself together, made a noise like deathwatch beetle finally conquering a rotten tree. “What’d he say?” said Teppicymon. The mummy of Ashk-ur-men-tep translated. “He saide yt ys Spooky,” he croaked. The late king nodded. “I’m going in to have a look. You two live ones, you come with me.” Dil’s face fell. “Oh, come on, man,” snapped Teppicymon, forcing the door back. “Look, I’m not frightened. Show a bit of backbone. Everyone else is.” “But we’ll need some light,” protested Dil. The nearest mummies lurched back sharply as Gern timidly took a tinderbox out of his pocket. “We’ll need something to burn,” said Dil. The mummies shuffled further back, muttering. “There’s torches in here,” said Teppicymon, his voice slightly muffled. “And you can keep them away from me, lad.” It was a small pyramid, mazeless, without traps, just a stone passage leading upwards. Tremulously, expecting at any moment to see unnamed terrors leap out at them, the embalmers followed the king into a small, square chamber that smelled of sand. The roof was black with soot. There was no sarcophagus within, no mummy case, no terror named or nameless. The centre of the floor was occupied by a raised block, with a blanket and a pillow on it. Neither of them looked particularly old. It was almost disappointing. Gern craned to look around. “Quite nice, really,” he said. “Comfy.” “No,” said Dil. “Hey, master king, look here,” said Gern, trotting over to one of the walls. “Look. Someone’s been scratching things. Look, all little lines all over the wall.” “And this wall,” said the king, “and the floor. Someone’s been counting. Every ten have been crossed through, you see. Someone’s been counting things. Lots of things.” He stood back. “What things?” said Dil, looking behind him. “Very strange,” said the king. He leaned forward. “You can barely make out the inscriptions underneath.” “Can you read it, king?” said Gern, showing what Dil considered to be unnecessary enthusiasm. “No. It’s one of the really ancient dialects. Can’t make out a blessed hieroglyph,” said Teppicymon. “I shouldn’t think there’s a single person alive today who can read it.” “That’s a shame,” said Gern. “True enough,” said the king, and sighed. They stood in gloomy silence. “So perhaps we could ask one of the dead ones?” said Gern. “Er. Gern,” said Dil, backing away. The king slapped the apprentice on the back, pitching him forward. “Damn clever idea!” he said. “We’ll just go and get one of the real early ancestors. Oh.” He sagged. “That’s no good. No-one will be able to understand them-” “Gern!” said Dil, his eyes growing wider. “No, it’s all right, king,” said Gern, enjoying the new-found freedom of thought, “because, the reason being, everyone understands someone, all we have to do is sort them out.” “Bright lad. Bright lad,” said the king. “Gern!” They both looked at him in astonishment. “You all right, master?” said Gern. “You’ve gone all white.” “The t-” stuttered Dil, rigid with terror. “The what, master?” “The t- look at the t-” “He ought to have a lie down,” said the king. “I know his sort. The artistic type. Highly strung.” Dil took a deep breath. “Look at the sodding torch, Gern!” he shouted. They looked. Without any fuss, turning its black ashes into dry straw, the torch was burning backwards.   The Old Kingdom lay stretched out before Teppic, and it was unreal. He looked at You Bastard, who had stuck his muzzle in a wayside spring and was making a noise like the last drop in the milkshake glass.* (* You know. The bit you can’t reach with the straw.) You Bastard looked real enough. There’s nothing like a camel for looking really solid. But the landscape had an uncertain quality, as if it hadn’t quite made up its mind to be there or not. Except for the Great Pyramid. It squatted in the middle distance as real as the pin that nails a butterfly to a board. It was contriving to look extremely solid, as though it was sucking all the solidity out of the landscape into itself. Well, he was here. Wherever here was. How did you kill a pyramid? And what would happen if you did? He was working on the hypothesis that everything would snap back into place. Into the Old Kingdom’s pool of recirculated time. He watched the gods for a while, wondering what the hell they were, and how it didn’t seem to matter. They looked no more real than the land over which they strode, about incomprehensible errands of their own. The world was no more than a dream. Teppic felt incapable of surprise. If seven fat cows had wandered by, he wouldn’t have given them a second glance. He remounted You Bastard and rode him, sloshing gently, down the road. The fields on either side had a devastated look. The sun was finally sinking; the gods of night and evening were prevailing over the daylight gods, but it had been a long struggle and, when you thought about all the things that would happen to it now - eaten by goddesses, carried on boats under the world, and so on - it was an odds-on chance that it wouldn’t be seen again. No-one was visible as he rode into the stable yard. You Bastard padded sedately to his stall and pulled delicately at a wisp of hay. He’d thought of something interesting about bivariant distributions. Teppic patted him on the flank, raising another cloud, and walked up the wide steps that led to the palace proper. Still there were no guards, no servants. No living soul. He slipped into his own palace like a thief in the day, and found his way to Dil’s workshop. It was empty, and looked as though a robber with very peculiar tastes had recently been at work in there. The throne room smelled like a kitchen, and by the looks of it the cooks had fled in a hurry. The gold mask of the kings of Djelibeybi, slightly buckled out of shape, had rolled into a corner. He picked it up and, on a suspicion, scratched it with one of his knives. The gold peeled away, exposing a silver-grey gleam. He’d suspected that. There simply wasn’t that much gold around. The mask felt as heavy as lead because, well, it was lead. He wondered if it had ever been all gold, and which ancestor had done it, and how many pyramids it had paid for. It was probably very symbolic of something or other. Perhaps not even symbolic of anything. Just symbolic, all by itself. One of the sacred cats was hiding under the throne. It flattened its ears and spat at Teppic as he reached down to pat it. That much hadn’t changed, at least. Still no people. He padded across to the balcony. And there the people were, a great silent mass, staring across the river in the fading, leaden light. As Teppic watched a flotilla of boats and ferries set out from the near bank. We ought to have been building bridges, he thought. But we said that would be shackling the river. He dropped lightly over the balustrade on to the packed earth and walked down to the crowd. And the full force of its belief scythed into him. The people of Djelibeybi might have had conflicting ideas about their gods, but their belief in their kings had been unswerving for thousands of years. To Teppic it was like walking into a vat of alcohol. He felt it pouring into him until his fingertips crackled, rising up through his body until it gushed into his brain, bringing not omnipotence but the feeling of omnipotence, the very strong sensation that while he didn’t actually know everything, he would do soon and had done once. It had been like this back in Ankh, when the divinity had hooked him. But that had been just a flicker. Now it had the solid power of real belief behind it. He looked down at a rustling below him, and saw green shoots springing out of the dry sand around his feet. Bloody hell, he thought. I really am a god. This could be very embarrassing. He shouldered his way through the press of people until he reached the riverbank and stood there in a thickening clump of corn. As the crowd caught on, those nearest fell to their knees, and a circle of reverentially collapsing people spread out from Teppic like ripples. But I never wanted this! I just wanted to help people live more happily, with plumbing. I wanted something done about rundown inner-city areas. I just wanted to put them at their ease, and ask them how they enjoyed their lives. I thought schools might be a good idea, so they wouldn’t fall down and worship someone just because he’s got green feet. And I wanted to do something about the architecture. . . As the light drained from the sky like steel going cold the pyramid was somehow even bigger than before. If you had to design something to give the very distinct impression of mass, the pyramid was It. There was a crowd of figures around it, unidentifiable in the grey light. Teppic looked around the prostrate crowd until he saw someone in the uniform of the palace guard. “You, man, on your feet,” he commanded. The man gave him a look of dread, but did stagger sheepishly upright. “What’s going on here?” “O king, who is the lord of-” “I don’t think we have time,” said Teppic. “I know who I am, I want to know what’s happening.” “O king, we saw the dead walking! The priests have gone to talk to them.” “The dead walking?” “Yes, O king.” “We’re talking about not-alive people here, are we?” “Yes, O king.” “Oh. Well, thank you. That was very succinct. Not informative, but succinct. Are there any boats around?” “The priests took them all, O king.” Teppic could see that this was true. The jetties near the palace were usually thronged with boats, and now they were all empty. As he stared at the water it grew two eyes and a long snout, to remind him that swimming the Djel was as feasible as nailing fog to the wall. He stared at the crowd. Every person was watching him expectantly, convinced that he would know what to do next. He turned back to the river, extended his hands in front of him, pressed them together and then opened them gently. There was a damp sucking noise, and the waters of the Djel parted in front of him. There was a sigh from the crowd, but their astonishment was nothing to the surprise of a dozen or so crocodiles, who were left trying to swim in ten feet of air. Teppic ran down the bank and over the heavy mud, dodging to avoid the tails that slashed wildly at him as the reptiles dropped heavily on to the riverbed. The Djel loomed up as two khaki walls, so that he was running along a damp and shadowy alley. Here and there were fragments of bones, old shields, bits of spear, the ribs of boats. He leapt and jinked around the debris of centuries. Ahead of him a big bull crocodile propelled itself dreamily out of the wall of water, flailed madly in mid-air, and flopped into the ooze. Teppic trod heavily on its snout and plunged on. Behind him a few of the quicker citizens, seeing the dazed creatures below them, began to look for stones. The crocodiles had been undisputed masters of the river since primordial times, but if it was possible to do a little catching-up in the space of a few minutes, it was certainly worth a try. The sound of the monsters of the river beginning the long journey to handbaghood broke out behind Teppic as he sloshed up the far bank.   A line of ancestors stretched across the chamber, down the dark passageway, and out into the sand. It was filled with whispers going in both directions, a dry sound, like the wind blowing through old paper. Dil lay on the sand, with Gern flapping a cloth in his face. “Wha’ they doing?” he murmured. “Reading the inscription,” said Gern. “You ought to see it, master! The one doing the reading, he’s practically a-” “Yes, yes, all right,” said Dil, struggling up. “He’s more than six thousand years old! And his grandson’s listening to him, and telling his grandson, and he’s telling his gra-” “Yes, yes, all-” “”And Khuft-too-said-Unto-the-First, What-may-We-Give-Unto-You, Who-Has-Taught-Us-the-Right-Ways”,” said Teppicymon*, (* But not immediately, of course, because messages change in the telling and some ancestors were not capable of perfect enunciation and others were trying to be helpful and supplying what they thought were lost words. The message received by Teppicymon originally began, “Handcuffed to the bed, the aunt thirsted.”) who was at the end of the line. “”And-the-First-Spake, and-This-He-Spake, Build-for-Me-a-Pyramid, That-I-May-Rest, and-Build-it-of-These-Dimensions, That-it-Be-Proper. And-Thus-It-Was-Done, and-The-Name-of-the-First-was . . .”“ But there was no name. It was just a babble of raised voices, arguments, ancient cursewords, spreading along the line of desiccated ancestors like a spark along a powder trail. Until it reached Teppicymon, who exploded.   The Ephebian sergeant, quietly perspiring in the shade, saw what he had been half expecting and wholly dreading. There was a column of dust on the opposite horizon. The Tsorteans’ main force was getting there first. He stood up, nodded professionally to his counterpart across the way, and looked at the double handful of men under his command. “I need a messenger to take, er, a message back to the city,” he said. A forest of hands shot up. The sergeant sighed, and selected young Autocue, who he knew was missing his mum. “Run like the wind,” he said. “Although I expect you won’t need telling, will you? And then . . . and then . . He stood with his lips moving silently, while the sun scoured the rocks of the hot, narrow pass and a few insects buzzed in the scrub bushes. His education hadn’t included a course in Famous Last Words. He raised his eyes in the direction of home. “Go, tell the Ephebians-” he began. The soldiers waited. “What?” said Autocue after a while. “Go and tell them what?” The sergeant relaxed, like air being let out of a balloon. “Go and tell them, what kept you?” he said. On the near horizon another column of dust was advancing. This was more like it. If there was going to be a massacre, then it ought to be shared by both sides. The city of the dead lay before Teppic. After Ankh-Morpork, which was almost its direct opposite (in Ankh, even the bedding was alive) it was probably the biggest city on the Disc; its streets were the finest, its architecture the most majestic and awe-inspiring. In population terms the necropolis outstripped the other cities of the Old Kingdom, but its people didn’t get out much and there was nothing to do on Saturday nights. Until now. Now it thronged: Teppic watched from the top of a wind-etched obelisk as the grey and brown, and here and there somewhat greenish, armies of the departed passed beneath him. The kings had been democratic. After the pyramids had been emptied gangs of them had turned their attention to the lesser tombs, and now the necropolis really did have its tradesmen, its nobles and even its artisans. Not that there was, by and large, any way of telling the difference. They were, to a corpse, heading for the Great Pyramid. It loomed like a carbuncle over the lesser, older buildings. And they all seemed very angry about something. Teppic dropped lightly on to the wide flat roof of a mastaba, jogged to its far end, cleared the gap on to an ornamental sphinx - not without a moment’s worry, but this one seemed inert enough - and from there it was but the throw of a grapnel to one of the lower storeys of a step pyramid. The long light of the contentious sun lanced across the spent landscape as he leapt from monument to monument, zig-zagging high above the shuffling army. Behind him shoots appeared briefly in the ancient stone, cracking it a little, and then withered and died. This, said his blood as it tingled around his body, is what you trained for. Even Mericet couldn’t mark you down for this. Speeding in the shadows above a silent city, running like a cat, finding handholds that would have perplexed a gecko - and, at the destination, a victim. True, it was a billion tons of pyramid, and hitherto the largest client of an inhumation had been Patricio, the 23-stone Despot of Quirm. A monumental needle recording in bas-relief the achievements of a king four thousand years ago, and which would have been more pertinent if the wind-driven sand hadn’t long ago eroded his name, provided a handy ladder which needed only an expertly thrown grapnel from its top, lodging in the outstretched fingers of a forgotten monarch, to allow him a long, gentle arc on to the roof of a tomb. Running, climbing and swinging, hastily hammering crampons in the memorials of the dead, Teppic went forth. Pinpoints of firelight among the limestone pricked out the lines of the opposing armies. Deep and stylised though the enmity was between the two empires, they both abided by the ancient tradition that warfare wasn’t undertaken at night, during harvest or when wet. It was important enough to save up for special occasions. Going at it hammer and tongs just reduced the whole thing to a farce. In the twilight on both sides of the line came the busy sound of advanced woodwork in progress. It’s said that generals are always ready to fight the last War over again. It had been thousands of years since the last war between Tsort and Ephebe, but generals have long memories and this time they were ready for it. On both sides of the line, wooden horses were taking shape. “It’s gone,” said Ptaclusp IIb, slithering back down the pile of rubble. “About time, too,” said his father. “Help me fold up your brother. You’re sure it won’t hurt him?” “Well, if we do it carefully he can’t move in Time, that is, width to us. So if no time can pass for him, nothing can hurt him.” Ptaclusp thought of the old days, when pyramid building had simply consisted of piling one block on another and all you needed to remember was that you put less on top as you went up. And now it meant trying to put a crease in one of your sons. “Right,” he said doubtfully. “Let’s be off, then.” He inched his way up the debris and poked his head over the top just as the vanguard of the dead came round the corner of the nearest minor pyramid. His first thought was: this is it, they’re coming to complain. He’d done his best. It wasn’t always easy to build to a budget. Maybe not every lintel was exactly as per drawings, perhaps the quality of the internal plasterwork wasn’t always up to snuff, but . . . They can’t all be complaining. Not this many of them. Ptaclusp IIb climbed up alongside him. His mouth dropped open. “Where are they all coming from?” he said. “You’re the expert. You tell me. “Are they dead?” Ptaclusp scrutinised some of the approaching marchers. “If they’re not, some of them are awfully ill,” he said. “Let’s make a run for it!” “Where to? Up the pyramid?” The Great Pyramid loomed up behind them, its throbbing filling the air. Ptaclusp stared at it. “What’s going to happen tonight?” he said. “What?” “Well, is it going to - do whatever it did - again?” IIb stared at him. “Dunno.” “Can you find out?” “Only by waiting. I’m not even sure what it’s done now. “Are we going to like it?” “I shouldn’t think so, dad. Oh, dear.” “What’s up now?” “Look over there.” Heading towards the marching dead, trailing behind Koomi like a tail behind a comet, were the priests.   It was hot and dark inside the horse. It was also very crowded. They waited, sweating. Young Autocue stuttered: “What’ll happen now, sergeant?” The sergeant moved a foot tentatively. The atmosphere would have induced claustrophobia in a sardine. “Well, lad. They’ll find us, see, and be so impressed they’ll drag us all the way back to their city, and then when it’s dark we’ll leap out and put them to the sword. Or put the sword to them. One or the other. And then we’ll sack the city, bum the walls and sow the ground with salt. You remember, lad, I showed you on Friday.” “Oh.” Moisture dripped from a score of brows. Several of the men were trying to compose a letter home, dragging styli across wax that was close to melting. “And then what will happen, sergeant?” “Why, lad, then we’ll go home heroes.” “Oh.” The older soldiers sat stolidly looking at the wooden walls. Autocue shifted uneasily, still worried about something. “My mum said to come back with my shield or on it, sergeant,” he said. “Jolly good, lad. That’s the spirit.” “We will be all right, though. Won’t we, sergeant?” The sergeant stared into the fetid darkness. After a while, someone started to play the harmonica.   Ptaclusp half-turned his head from the scene and a voice by his ear said, “You’re the pyramid builder, aren’t you?” Another figure had joined them in their bolthole, one who was black-clad and moved in a way that made a cat’s tread sound like a one-man band. Ptaclusp nodded, unable to speak. He had had enough shocks for one day. “Well, switch it off. Switch it off now.” IIb leaned over. “Who’re you?” he said. “My name is Teppic.” “What, like the king?” “Yes. Just like the king. Now turn it off.” “It’s a pyramid! You can’t turn off pyramids!” said IIb. “Well, then, make it flare.” “We tried that last night.” IIb pointed to the shattered capstone. “Unroll Two-Ay, dad.” Teppic regarded the flat brother. “It’s some sort of wall poster, is it?” he said eventually. IIb looked down. Teppic saw the movement, and looked down also; he was ankle-deep in green sprouts. “Sorry,” he said. “I can’t seem to shake it off.” “It can be dreadful,” said IIb frantically. “I know how it is, I had this verruca once, nothing would shift it.” Teppic hunkered down by the cracked stone. “This thing,” he said. “What’s the significance? I mean, it’s coated with metal. Why?” “There’s got to be a sharp point for the flare,” said IIb. “Is that all? This is gold, isn’t it?” “It’s electrum. Gold and silver alloy. The capstone has got to be made of electrum.” Teppic peeled back the foil. “This isn’t all metal,” he said mildly. “Yes. Well,” said Ptaclusp. “We found, er, that foil works just as well.” “Couldn’t you use something cheaper? Like steel?” Ptaclusp sneered. It hadn’t been a good day, sanity was a distant memory, but there were certain facts he knew for a fact. “Wouldn’t last for more than a year or two,” he said. “What with the dew and so forth. You’d lose the point. Wouldn’t last more than two or three hundred times.” Teppic leaned his head against the pyramid. It was cold, and it hummed. He thought he could hear, under the throbbing, a faint rising tone. The pyramid towered over him. (IIb could have told him that this was because the walls sloped in at precisely 56 degrees, and an effect known as battering made the pyramid loom even higher than it really was. He probably would have used words like perspective and virtual height as well. The black marble was glassy smooth. The masons had done well. The cracks between each silky panel were hardly wide enough to insert a knife. But wide enough, all the same. “How about once?” he said.   Koomi chewed his fingernails distractedly. “Fire,” he said. “That’d stop them. They’re very inflammable. Or water. They’d probably dissolve.” “Some of them were destroying pyramids,” said the high priest of Juf, the Cobra-Headed God of Papyrus. “People always come back from the dead in such a bad temper,” said another priest. Koomi watched the approaching army in mounting bewilderment. “Where’s Dios?” he said. The old high priest was pushed to the front of the crowd. “What shall I say to them?” Koomi demanded. It would be wrong to say that Dios smiled. It wasn’t an action he often felt called upon to perform. But his mouth creased at the edges and his eyes went half-hooded. “You could tell them,” he said, “that new times demand new men. You could tell them that it is time to make way for younger people with fresh ideas. You could tell them that they are outmoded. You could tell them all that.” “They’ll kill me!” “Would they be that anxious for your eternal company, I wonder?” “You’re still high priest!” “Why don’t you talk to them?” said Dios. “Don’t forget to tell them that they are to be dragged kicking and screaming into the Century of the Cobra.” He handed Koomi the staff. “Or whatever this century is called,” he added. Koomi felt the eyes of the assembled brethren and sistren upon him. He cleared his throat, adjusted his robe, and turned to face the mummies. They were chanting something, one word, over and over again. He couldn’t quite make it out, but it seemed to have worked them up into a rage. He raised the staff, and the carved wooden snakes looked unusually alive in the flat light. The gods of the Disc - and here is meant the great consensus gods, who really do exist in Dunmanifestin, their semi-detached Valhalla on the world’s impossibly high central mountain, where they pass the time observing the petty antics of mortal men and organising petitions about how the influx of the Ice Giants has lowered property values in the celestial regions - the gods of Disc have always been fascinated by humanity’s incredible ability to say exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time. They’re not talking here of such easy errors as “It’s perfectly safe”, or “The ones that growl a lot don’t bite”, but of simple little sentences which are injected into difficult situations with the same general effect as a steel bar dropped into the bearings of a 3,000 rpm, 660 megawatt steam turbine. And connoisseurs of mankind’s tendency to put his pedal extremity where his tongue should be are agreed that when the judges” envelopes are opened then Hoot Koomi’s fine performance in “Begone from this place, foul shades” will be a contender for all-time bloody stupid greeting. The front row of ancestors halted, and were pushed forward a little by the press of those behind. King Teppicymon XXVII, who by common consent among the other twenty-six Teppicymons was spokesman, lurched on alone and picked up the trembling Koomi by his arms. “What did you say?” he said. Koomi’s eyes rolled. His mouth opened and shut, but his voice wisely decided not to come out. Teppicymon pushed his bandaged face close to the priest’s pointed nose. “I remember you,” he growled. “I’ve seen you oiling around the place. A bad hat, if ever I saw one. I remember thinking that.” He glared around at the others. “You’re all priests, aren’t you? Come to say sorry, have you? Where’s Dios?” The ancestors pressed forward, muttering. When you’ve been dead for hundreds of years, you’re not inclined to feel generous to those people who assured you that you were going to have a lovely time. There was a scuffle in the middle of the crowd as King Psam-nut-kha, who had spent five thousand years with nothing to look at but the inside of a lid, was restrained by younger colleagues. Teppicymon switched his attention back to Koomi, who hadn’t gone anywhere. “Foul shades, was it?” he said. “Er,” said Koomi. “Put him down.” Dios gently took the staff from Koomi’s unresisting fingers and said, “I am Dios, the high priest. Why are you here?” It was a perfectly calm and reasonable voice, with overtones of concerned but indubitable authority. It was a tone of voice the pharaohs of Djelibeybi had heard for thousands of years, a voice which had regulated the days, prescribed the rituals, cut the time into carefully-turned segments, interpreted the ways of gods to men. It was the sound of authority, which stirred antique memories among the ancestors and caused them to look embarrassed and shuffle their feet. One of the younger pharaohs lurched forward. “You bastard,” he croaked. “You laid us out and shut us away, one by one, and you went on. People thought the name was passed on but it was always you. How old are you, Dios?” There was no sound. No-one moved. A breeze stirred the dust a little. Dios sighed. “I did not mean to,” he said. “There was so much to do. There were never enough hours in the day. Truly, I did not realise what was happening. I thought it was refreshing, nothing more, I suspected nothing. I noted the passing of the rituals, not the years.” “Come from a long-lived family, do you?” said Teppicymon sarcastically. Dios stared at him, his lips moving. “Family,” he said at last, his voice softened from its normal bark. “Family. Yes. I must have had a family, mustn’t I. But, you know, I can’t remember. Memory is the first thing that goes. The pyramids don’t seem to preserve it, strangely.” “This is Dios, the footnote-keeper of history?” said Teppicymon. “Ah.” The high priest smiled. “Memory goes from the head. But it is all around me. Every scroll and book.” “That’s the history of the kingdom, man!” “Yes. My memory.” The king relaxed a little. Sheer horrified fascination was unravelling the knot of fury. “How old are you?” he said. “I think. . . seven thousand years. But sometimes it seems much longer.” “Really seven thousand years?” “Yes,” said Dios. “How could any man stand it?” said the king. Dios shrugged. “Seven thousand years is just one day at a time,” he said. Slowly, with the occasional wince, he got down on one knee and held up his staff in shaking hands. “O kings,” he said, “I have always existed only to serve.” There was a long, extremely embarrassed pause. “We will destroy the pyramids,” said Far-re-ptah, pushing forward. “You will destroy the kingdom,” said Dios. “I cannot allow it.” “You cannot allow it?” “Yes. What will we be without the pyramids?” said Dios. “Speaking for the dead,” said Far-re-ptah, “we will be free.” “But the kingdom will be just another small country,” said Dios, and to their horror the ancestors saw tears in his eyes. “All that we hold dear, you will cast adrift in time. Uncertain. Without guidance. Changeable.” “Then it can take its chances,” said Teppicymon. “Stand aside, Dios.” Dios held up his staff. The snake around it uncoiled and hissed at the king. “Be still,” said Dios. Dark lightning crackled between the ancestors. Dios stared at the staff in astonishment; it had never done this before. But seven thousand years of his priests had believed, in their hearts, that the staff of Dios could rule this world and the next. In the sudden silence there was the faint chink, high up, of a knife being wedged between two black marble slabs. The pyramid pulsed under Teppic, and the marble was as slippery as ice. The inward slope wasn’t the help he had expected. The thing, he told himself, is not to look up or down, but straight ahead, into the marble, parcelling the impossible height into manageable sections. Just like time. That’s how we survive infinity - we kill it by breaking it up into small bits. He was aware of shouts below him, and glanced briefly over his shoulder. He was barely a third of the way up, but he could see the crowds across the river, a grey mass speckled with the pale blobs of upturned faces. Closer to, the pale army of the dead, facing the small grey group of priests, with Dios in front of them. There was some sort of argument going on. The sun was on the horizon. He reached up, located the next crack, found a handhold. Dios spotted Ptaclusp’s head peering over the debris, and sent a couple of priests to bring him back. IIb followed, his carefully folded brother under his arm. “What is the boy doing?” Dios demanded. “O Dios, he said he was going to flare off the pyramid,” said Ptaclusp. “How can he do that?” “O lord, he says he is going to cap it off before the sun sets.” “Is it possible?” Dios demanded, turning to the architect. IIb hesitated. “It may be,” he said. “And what will happen? Will we return to the world outside?” “Well, it depends on whether the dimensional effect ratchets, as it were, and is stable in each state, or if, on the contrary, the pyramid is acting as a piece of rubber under tension-” His voice stuttered to a halt under the intensity of Dios’s stare. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Back to the world outside,” said Dios. “Not our world. Our world is the Valley. Ours is a world of order. Men need order.” He raised his staff. “That’s my son!” shouted Teppicymon. “Don’t you dare try anything! That’s the king!” The ranks of ancestors swayed, but couldn’t break the spell. “Er, Dios,” said Koomi. Dios turned, his eyebrows raised. “You spoke?” he said. “Er, if it is the king, er I - that is, we - think perhaps you should let him get on with it. Er, don’t you think that would be a really good idea?” Dios’s staff kicked, and the priests felt the cold bands of restraint freeze their limbs. “I gave my life for the kingdom,” said the high priest. “I gave it over and over again. Everything it is, I created. I cannot fail it now.” And then he saw the gods. Teppic eased himself up another couple of feet and then gently reached down to pull a knife out of the marble. It wasn’t going to work, though. Knife climbing was for those short and awkward passages, and frowned on anyway because it suggested you’d chosen a wrong route. It wasn’t for this sort of thing, unless you had unlimited knives. He glanced over his shoulder again as strange barred shadows flickered across the face of the pyramid. From out of the sunset, where they had been engaged in their eternal squabbling, the gods were returning. They staggered and lurched across the fields and reed beds, heading for the pyramid. Near-brainless though they were, they understood what it was. Perhaps they even understood what Teppic was trying to do. Their assorted animal faces made it hard to be certain, but it looked as though they were very angry. “Are you going to control them, Dios?” said the king. “Are you going to tell them that the world should be changeless?” Dios stared up at the creatures jostling one another as they waded the river. There were too many teeth, too many lolling tongues. The bits of them that were human were sloughing away. A lion-headed god of justice - Put, Dios recalled the name - was using its scales as a flail to beat one of the river gods. Chefet, the Dog-Headed God of metalwork, was growling and attacking his fellows at random with his hammer; this was Chefet, Dios thought, the god that he had created to be an example to men in the art of wire and filigree and small beauty. Yet it had worked. He’d taken a desert rabble and shown them all he could remember of the arts of civilisation and the secrets of the pyramids. He’d needed gods then. The trouble with gods is that after enough people start believing in them, they begin to exist. And what begins to exist isn’t what was originally intended. Chefet, Chefet, thought Dios. Maker of rings, weaver of metal. Now he’s out of our heads, and see how his nails grow into claws . . . This is not how I imagined him. “Stop,” he instructed. “I order you to stop! You will obey me. I made you!” They also lack gratitude. King Teppicymon felt the power around him weaken as Dios turned all his attention to ecclesiastical matters. He saw the tiny shape halfway up the wall of the pyramid, saw it falter. The rest of the ancestors saw it, too, and as one corpse they knew what to do. Dios could wait. This was family. Teppic heard the snap of the handle under his foot, slid a little, and hung by one hand. He’d got another knife in above him but . . . no, no good. He hadn’t got the reach. For practical purposes his arms felt like short lengths of wet rope. Now, if he spreadeagled himself as he slid, he might be able to slow enough . He looked down and saw the climbers coming towards him, in a tide that was tumbling upwards. The ancestors rose up the face of the pyramid silently, like creepers, each new row settling into position on the shoulders of the generation beneath, while the younger ones climbed on over them. Bony hands grabbed Teppic as the wave of edificeers broke around him, and he was half-pushed, half-pulled up the sloping wall. Voices like the creak of sarcophagi filled his ears, moaning encouragement. “Well done, boy,” groaned a crumbling mummy, hauling him bodily on to its shoulder. “You remind me of me when I was alive. To you, son.” “Got him,” said the corpse above, lifting Teppic easily on one outstretched arm. “That’s a fine family spirit, lad. Best wishes from your great-great-great-great uncle, although I don’t suppose you remember me. Coming up. Other ancestors were climbing on past Teppic as he rose from hand to hand. Ancient fingers with a grip like steel clutched at him, hoisting him onwards. The pyramid grew narrower. Down below, Ptaclusp watched thoughtfully. “What a workforce,” he said. “I mean, the ones at the bottom are supporting the whole weight!” “Dad,” said IIb. “I think we’d better run. Those gods are getting closer.” “Do you think we could employ them?” said Ptaclusp, ignoring him. “They’re dead, they probably won’t want high wages, and-” “Dad!” “Sort of self-build-” “You said no more pyramids, dad. Never again, you said. Now come on!” Teppic scrambled to the top of the pyramid, supported by the last two ancestors. One of them was his father. “I don’t think you’ve met your great-grandma,” he said, indicating the shorter bandaged figure, who nodded gently at Teppic. He opened his mouth. “There’s no time,” she said. “You’re doing fine.” He glanced at the sun which, old professional that it was, chose that moment to drop below the horizon. The gods had crossed the river, their progress slowed only by their tendency to push and shove among themselves, and were lurching through the buildings of the necropolis. Several were clustered around the spot where Dios had been. The ancestors dropped away, sliding back down the pyramid as fast as they had climbed it, leaving Teppic alone on a few square feet of rock. A couple of stars came out. He saw white shapes below as the ancestors hurried away on some private errand of their own, lurching at a surprising speed towards the broad band of the river. The gods abandoned their interest in Dios, this strange little human with the stick and the cracked voice. The nearest god, a crocodile-headed thing, jerked on to the plaza before the pyramid, squinted up at Teppic, and reached out towards him. Teppic fumbled for a knife, wondering what sort was appropriate for gods . And, along the Djel, the pyramids began to flare their meagre store of hoarded time. Priests and ancestors fled as the ground began to shake. Even the gods looked bewildered. IIb snatched his father’s arm and dragged him away. “Come on!” he yelled into his ear. “We can’t be around here when it goes off! Otherwise you’ll be put to bed on a coathanger!” Around them several other pyramids struck their flares, thin and reedy affairs that were barely visible in the afterglow. “Dad! I said we’ve got to go!” Ptaclusp was dragged backwards across the flagstones, still staring at the hulking outline of the Great Pyramid. “There’s someone still there, look,” he said, and pointed to a figure alone on the plaza. IIb peered into the gloom. “It’s only Dios, the high priest,” he said. “I expect he’s got some plan in mind, best not to meddle in the affairs of priests, now will you come on.” The crocodile-headed god turned its snout back and forth, trying to focus on Teppic without the advantage of binocular vision. This close, its body was slightly transparent, as though someone had sketched in all the lines and got bored before it was time to do the shading. It trod on a small tomb, crushing it to powder. A hand like a cluster of canoes with claws on hovered over Teppic. The pyramid trembled and the stone under his feet felt warm, but it resolutely forbore from any signs of wanting to flare. The hand descended. Teppic sank on one knee and, out of desperation, raised the knife over his head in both hands. The light glinted for a moment off the tip of the blade and then the Great Pyramid flared. It did it in absolute silence to begin with, sending up a spire of eye-torturing flame that turned the whole kingdom into a criss-cross of black shadow and white light, a flame that might have turned any watchers not just into a pillar of salt but into a complete condiment set of their choice. It exploded like an unwound dandelion, silent as starlight, searing as a supernova. Only after it had been bathing the necropolis in its impossible brilliance for several seconds did the sound come, and it was sound that winds itself up through the bones, creeps into every cell of the body, and tries with some success to turn them inside out. It was too loud to be called noise. There is sound so loud that it prevents itself from being heard, and this was that kind of sound. Eventually it condescended to drop out of the cosmic scale and became, simply, the loudest noise anyone hearing it had ever experienced. The noise stopped, filling the air with the dark metallic clang of sudden silence. The light went out, lancing the night with blue and purple afterimages. It was not the silence and darkness of conclusion but of pause, like the moment of equilibrium when a thrown ball runs out of acceleration but has yet to have gravity drawn to its attention and, for a brief moment, thinks that the worst is over. This time it was heralded by a shrill whistling out of the clear sky and a swirl in the air that became a glow, became a flame, became a flare that sizzled downwards into the pyramid, punching into the mass of black marble. Fingers of lightning crackled out and grounded on the lesser tombs around it, so that serpents of white fire burned their way from pyramid to pyramid across the necropolis and the air filled with the stink of burning stone. In the middle of the firestorm the Great Pyramid appeared to lift up a few inches, on a beam of incandescence, and turn through ninety degrees. This was almost certainly the special type of optical illusion which can take place even though noone is actually looking at it. And then, with deceptive slowness and considerable dignity, it exploded. It was almost too crass a word. What it did was this: it came apart ponderously into building-sized chunks which drifted gently away from one another, flying serenely out and over the necropolis. Several of them struck other pyramids, badly damaging them in a lazy, unselfconscious way, and then bounded on in silence until they ploughed to a halt behind a small mountain of rubble. Only then did the boom come. It went on for quite along time. Grey dust rolled over the kingdom. Ptaclusp dragged himself upright and groped ahead, gingerly, until he walked into someone. He shuddered when he thought about the kind of people he’d seen walking around lately, but thought didn’t come easily because something appeared to have hit him on the head recently . “Is that you, lad?” he ventured. “Is that you, dad?” “Yes,” said Ptaclusp. “It’s me, dad.” “I’m glad it’s you, son.” “Can you see anything?” “No. It’s all mist and fog.” “Thank the gods for that, I thought it was me.” “It is you, isn’t it? You said.” “Yes, dad.” “Is your brother all right?” “I’ve got him safe in my pocket, dad.” “Good. So long as nothing’s happened to him.” They inched forward, clambering over lumps of masonry they could barely see. “Something exploded, dad,” said IIb, slowly. “I think it was the pyramid.” Ptaclusp rubbed the top of his head, where two tons of flying rock had come within a sixteenth of an inch of fitting him for one of his own pyramids. “It was that dodgy cement we bought from Merco the Ephebian, I expect-” “I think this was a bit worse than a moody lintel, dad,” said IIb. “In fact, I think it was a lot worse.” “It looked a bit wossname, a bit on the sandy side-” “I think you should find somewhere to sit down, dad,” said IIb, as kindly as possible. “Here’s Two-Ay. Hang on to him.” He crept on alone, climbing over a slab of what felt very suspiciously like black marble. What he wanted, he decided, was a priest. They had to be useful for something, and this seemed the sort of time one might need one. For solace, or possibly, he felt obscurely, to beat their head in with a rock. What he found instead was someone on their hands and knees, coughing. IIb helped him - it was definitely a him, he’d been briefly afraid it might be an it - and sat him on another lump of, yes, almost certainly marble. “Are you a priest?” he said, fumbling in the rubble. “I’m Dil. Chief embalmer,” the figure muttered. “Ptaclusp IIb, paracosmic archi-” IIb began and then, suspecting that architects were not going to be too popular around here for a while, quickly corrected himself. “I’m an engineer,” he said. “Are you all right?” “Don’t know. What happened?” “I think the pyramid exploded,” IIb volunteered. “Are we dead?” “I shouldn’t think so. You’re walking and talking, after all.” Dil shivered. “That’s no guideline, take it from me. What’s an engineer?” “Oh, a builder of aqueducts,” said IIb quickly. “They’re the coming thing, you know.” Dil stood up, a little shakily. “I,” he said, “need a drink. Let’s find the river.” They found Teppic first. He was clinging to a small, truncated pyramid section that had made a moderate-sized crater when it landed. “I know him,” said IIb. “He’s the lad who was on top of the pyramid. That’s ridiculous, how could he survive that?” “Why’s there all corn sprouting out of it, too?” wondered Dil. “I mean, perhaps there’s some kind of effect if you’re right in the centre of the flare, or something,” said IIb, thinking aloud. “A sort of calm area or something, like in the middle of a whirlpool-” He reached instinctively for his wax tablet, and then stopped himself. Man was never intended to understand things he meddled with. “Is he dead?” he said. “Don’t look at me,” said Dil, stepping back. He’d been running through his mind the alternative occupations now open to him. Upholstery sounded attractive. At least chairs didn’t get up and walk after you’d stuffed them. IIb bent over the body. “Look what he’s got in his hand,” he said, gently bending back the fingers. “It’s a piece of melted metal. What’s he got that for?” Teppic dreamed. He saw seven fat cows and seven thin cows, and one of them was riding a bicycle. He saw some camels, singing, and the song straightened out the wrinkles in reality. He saw a finger Write on the wall of a pyramid: Going forth is easy. Going back requires (cont. on next wall) . . . He walked around the pyramid, where the finger continued: An effort of will, because it is much harder. Thank you. Teppic considered this, and it occurred to him that there was one thing left to do which he had not done. He’d never known how to before, but now he could see that it was just numbers, arranged in a special way. Everything that was magical was just a way of describing the world in words it couldn’t ignore. He gave a grunt of effort. There was a brief moment of speed. Dil and IIb looked around as long shafts of light sparkled through the mists and dust, turning the landscape into old gold. And the sun came up. The sergeant cautiously opened the hatch in the horse’s belly. When the expected flurry of spears did not materialise he ordered Autocue to let out the rope ladder, climbed down it, and looked across the chill morning desert. The new recruit followed him down and stood, hopping from one sandal to another, on sand that was nearly freezing now and would be frying by lunchtime. “There,” said the sergeant, pointing, “see the Tsortean lines, lad?” “Looks like a row of wooden horses to me, sergeant,” said Autocue. “The one on the end’s on rockers.” “That’ll be the officers. Huh. Those Tsorteans must think we’re simple.” The sergeant stamped some life into his legs, took a few breaths of fresh air, and walked back to the ladder. “Come on, lad,” he said. “Why’ve we got to go back up there?” The sergeant paused, his foot on a rope rung. “Use some common, laddie. They’re not going to come and take our horses if they see us hanging around outside, are they? Stands to reason.” “You sure they’re going to come, then?” said Autocue. The sergeant frowned at him. “Look, soldier,” he said, “anyone bloody stupid enough to think we’re going to drag a lot of horses full of soldiers back to our city is certainly daft enough to drag ours all the way back to theirs. QED.” “QED, sarge?” “It means get back up the bloody ladder, lad.” Autocue saluted. “Permission to be excused first, sarge?” “Excused what?” “Excused, sarge,” said Autocue, a shade desperately. “I mean, it’s a bit cramped in the horse, sarge, if you know what I mean.” “You’re going to have to learn a bit of will power if you want to stay in the horse soldiers, boy. You know that?” “Yes, sarge,” said Autocue miserably. “You’ve got one minute.” “Thanks, sarge.” When the hatch closed above him Autocue sidled over to one of the horse’s massive legs and put it to a use for which it wasn’t originally intended. And it was while he was staring vaguely ahead, lost in that Zen-like contemplation which occurs at moments like this, that there was a faint pop in the air and an entire river valley opened up in front of him. It’s not the sort of thing that ought to happen to a thoughtful lad. Especially one who has to wash his own uniform. A breeze from the sea blew into the kingdom, hinting at, no, positively roaring suggestions of salt, shellfish and sun-soaked tidelines. A few rather puzzled seabirds wheeled over the necropolis, where the wind scurried among the fallen masonry and covered with sand the memorials to ancient kings, and the birds said more with a simple bowel movement than Ozymandias ever managed to say. The wind had a cool, not unpleasant edge to it. The people out repairing the damage caused by the gods felt an urge to turn their faces towards it, as fish in a pond turn towards an influx of clear, fresh water. No-one worked in the necropolis. Most of the pyramids had blown their upper levels clean off, and stood smoking gently like recently-extinct volcanoes. Here and there slabs of black marble littered the landscape. One of them had nearly decapitated a fine statue of Hat, the Vulture-Headed God. The ancestors had vanished. No-one was volunteering to go and look for them. Around midday a ship came up the Djel under full sail. It was a deceptive ship. It seemed to wallow like a fat and unprotected hippo, and it was only after watching it for some time that anyone would realise that it was also making remarkably fast progress. It dropped anchor outside the palace. After a while, it let down a dinghy. Teppic sat on the throne and watched the life of the kingdom reassemble itself, like a smashed mirror that is put together again and reflects the same old light in new and unexpected ways. No-one was quite sure on what basis he was on the throne, but no-one else was at all keen on occupying it and it was a relief to hear instructions issued in a clear, confident voice. It is amazing what people will obey, if a clear and confident voice is used, and the kingdom was well used to a clear, confident voice. Besides, giving orders stopped him thinking about things. Like, for example, what would happen next. But at least the gods had gone back to not existing again, which made it a whole lot easier to believe in them, and the grass didn’t seem to be growing under his feet any more. Maybe I can put the kingdom together again, he thought. But then what can I do with it? If only we could find Dios. He always knew what to do, that was the main thing about him. A guard pushed his way through the milling throng of priests and nobles. “Excuse me, your sire,” he said. “There’s a merchant to see you. He says it’s urgent.” “Not now, man. There’s representatives of the Tsortean and Ephebian armies coming to see me in an hour, and there’s a great deal that’s got to be done first. I can’t go around seeing any salesmen who happen to be passing. What’s he selling, anyway?” “Carpets, your sire.” “Carpets?” It was Chidder, grinning like half a watermelon, followed by several of the crew. He walked up the hall staring around at the frescoes and hangings. Because it was Chidder, he was probably costing them out. By the time he reached the throne he was drawing a double line under the total. “Nice place,” he said, wrapping up thousands of years of architectural accumulation in a mere two syllables. “You’ll never guess what happened, we just happened to be sailing along the coast and suddenly there was this river. One minute cliffs, next minute river. There’s a funny thing, I thought. I bet old Teppic’s up there somewhere.” “Where’s Ptraci?” “I knew you were complaining about the lack of the old home comforts, so we brought you this carpet.” “I said, where’s Ptraci?” The crew moved aside, leaving a grinning Alfonz to cut the strings around the carpet and shake it out. It uncurled swiftly across the floor in a flurry of dust balls and moths and, eventually, Ptraci, who continued rolling until her head hit Teppic’s boot. He helped her to her feet and tried to pick bits of fluff out of her hair as she swayed backwards and forwards. She ignored him and turned to Chidder, red with breathlessness and fury. “I could have died in there!” she shouted. “Lots of other things have, by the smell! And the heat!” “You said it worked for Queen wossname, Ram-Jam-Hurrah, or whoever,” said Chidder. “Don’t blame me, at home a necklace or something is usually the thing.” “I bet she had a decent carpet,” snapped Ptraci. “Not something stuck in a bloody hold for six months.” “You’re lucky we had one at all,” said Chidder mildly. “It was your idea.” “Huh,” said Ptraci. She turned to Teppic. “Hallo,” she said. “This was meant to be a startling original surprise.” “It worked,” said Teppic fervently. “It really worked.” Chidder lay on a daybed on the palace’s veranda, while three handmaidens took turns to peel grapes for him. A pitcher of beer stood cooling in the shade. He was grinning amiably. On a blanket nearby Alfonz lay on his stomach, feeling extremely awkward. The Mistress of the Women had found out that, in addition to the tattoos on his forearms, his back was a veritable illustrated history of exotic practices, and had brought the girls out to be educated. He winced occasionally as her pointer stabbed at items of particular interest, and stuffed his fingers firmly in his great, scarred ears to shut out the giggles. At the far end of the veranda, given privacy by unspoken agreement, Teppic sat with Ptraci. Things were not going well. “Everything changed,” he said. “I’m not going to be king.” “You are the king,” she said. “You can’t change things.” “I can. I can abdicate. It’s very simple. If I’m not really the king, then I can go whenever I please. If I am the king, then the king’s word is final and I can abdicate. If we can change sex by decree, we can certainly change station. They can find a relative to do the job. I must have dozens.” “The job? Anyway, you said there was only your auntie.” Teppic frowned. Aunt Cleph-ptah-re was not, on reflection, the kind of monarch a kingdom needed if it was going to make a fresh start. She had a number of stoutly-held views on a variety of subjects, but most of them involved the flaying alive of people she disapproved of. This meant most people under the age of thirty-five, to start with. “Well, someone else, then,” he said. “It shouldn’t be difficult, we’ve always seemed to have more nobles than really necessary. We’ll just have to find one who has the dream about the cows.” “Oh, the one where there’s fat cows and thin cows?” said Ptraci. “Yes. It’s sort of ancestral.” “It’s a nuisance, I know that much. One of them’s always grinning and playing a wimblehorn.” “It looks like a trombone to me,” said Teppic. “It’s a ceremonial wimblehorn, if you look closely,” she said. “Well, I expect everyone sees it a bit differently. I don’t think it matters.” He sighed, and watched the Unnamed unloading. It seemed to have more than the expected number of feather mattresses, and several of the people wandering bemusedly down the gangplank were holding toolboxes and lengths of pipe. “I think you’re going to find it difficult,” said Ptraci. “You can’t say “All those who dream about cows please step forward”. It’d give the game away.” “I can’t just hang around until someone happens to mention it, can I? Be reasonable,” he snapped. “How many people are likely to say, hey, I had this funny dream about cows last night? Apart from you, I mean.” They stared at one another. “And she’s my sister?” said Teppic. The priests nodded. It was left to Koomi to put it into words. He’d just spent ten minutes going through the files with the Mistress of the Women. “Her mother was, er, your late father’s favourite,” he said. “He took a great deal of interest in her upbringing, as you know, and, er, it would appear that . . . yes. She may be your aunt, of course. The concubines are never very good at paperwork. But most likely your sister.” She looked at him with tear-filled eyes. “That doesn’t make any difference, does it?” she whispered. Teppic stared at his feet. “Yes,” he said. “I think it does, really.” He looked up at her. “But you can be queen,” he added. He glared at the priests. “Can’t she,” he stated firmly. The high priests looked at one another. Then they looked at Ptraci, who stood alone, her shoulders shaking. Small, palace trained, used to taking orders . . . They looked at Koomi. “She would be ideal,” he said. There was a murmur of suddenly-confident agreement. “There you are then,” said Teppic, consolingly. She glared at him. He backed away. “So I’ll be off,” he said, “I don’t need to pack anything, it’s all right.” “Just like that?” she said. “Is that all? Isn’t there anything you’re going to say?” He hesitated, halfway to the door. You could stay, he told himself. It wouldn’t work, though. It’d end up a terrible mess; you’d probably end up splitting the kingdom between you. Just because fate throws you together doesn’t mean fate’s got it right. Anyway, you’ve been forth. “Camels are more important than pyramids,” he said slowly. “It’s something we should always remember.” He ran for it while she was looking for something to throw. The sun reached the peak of noon without beetles, and Koomi hovered by the throne like Hat, the Vulture-Headed God. “It will please your majesty to confirm my succession as high priest,” he said. “What?” Ptraci was sitting with her chin cupped in one hand. She waved the other hand at him. “Oh. Yes. All right. Fine.” “No trace has, alas, been found of Dios. We believe he was very close to the Great Pyramid when it . . . flared.” Ptraci stared into space. “You carry on,” she said. Koomi preened. “The formal coronation will take some time to arrange,” he said, taking the golden mask. “However, your graciousness will be pleased to wear the mask of authority now, for there is much formal business to be concluded.” She looked at the mask. “I’m not wearing that,” she said flatly. Koomi smiled. “Your majesty will be pleased to wear the mask of authority,” he said. “No,” said Ptraci. Koomi’s smile crazed a little around the edges as he attempted to get to grips with this new concept. He was sure Dios had never had this trouble. He got over the problem by sidling round it. Sidling had stood him in good stead all his life; he wasn’t going to desert it now. He put the mask down very carefully on a stool. “It is the First Hour,” he said. “Your majesty will wish to conduct the Ritual of the Ibis, and then graciously grant an audience to the military commanders of the Tsortean and Ephebian armies. Both are seeking permission to cross the kingdom. Your majesty will forbid this. At the Second Hour, there will-” Ptraci sat drumming her fingers on the arms of the throne. Then she took a deep breath. “I’m going to have a bath,” she said. Koomi rocked back and forth a bit. “It is the First Hour,” he repeated, unable to think of anything else. “Your majesty will wish to conduct-” “Koomi?” “Yes, O noble queen?” “Shut up.” “The Ritual of the Ibis-” Koomi moaned. “I’m sure you’re capable of doing it yourself. You look like a man who does things himself, if ever I saw one,” she added sourly. “The commanders of the Tsortean-” “Tell them,” Ptraci began, and then paused. “Tell them,” she repeated, “that they may both cross. Not one or the other, you understand? Both.” “But-” Koomi ‘s understanding managed at last to catch up with his ears - “that means they’ll end up on opposite sides.” “Good. And after that you can order some camels. There’s a merchant in Ephebe with a good stock. Check their teeth first. Oh, and then you can ask the captain of the Unnamed to come and see me. He was explaining to me what a “free port” is.” “In your bath, O queen?” said Koomi weakly. He couldn’t help noticing, now, how her voice was changing with each sentence as the veneer of upbringing burned away under the blowlamp of heredity. “Nothing wrong with that,” she snapped. “And see about plumbing. Apparently pipes are the thing.” “For the asses’ milk?” said Koomi, who was now totally lost in the desert*. (* A less desiccated culture would have used the phrase “at sea”.) “Shut up, Koomi.” “Yes, O queen,” said Koomi, miserably. He’d wanted changes. It was just that he’d wanted things to stay the same, as well.   The sun dropped to the horizon, entirely unaided. For some people, it was turning out to be quite a good day. The reddened light lit up the three male members of the Ptaclusp dynasty, as they pored over plans for- “It’s called a bridge,” said IIb. “Is that like an aqueduct?” said Ptaclusp. “In reverse, sort of thing,” said IIb. “The water goes underneath, we go over the top.” “Oh. The k- the queen won’t like that,” said Ptaclusp. “The royal family’s always been against chaining the holy river with dams and weirs and suchlike.” IIb gave a triumphant grin. “She suggested it,” he said. “And she graciously went on to say, could we see to it there’s places for people to stand and drop rocks on the crocodiles.” “She said that?” “Large pointy rocks, she said.” “My word,” said Ptaclusp. He turned to his other son. “You sure you’re all right?” he said. “Feeling fine, dad,” said IIa. “No-” Ptaclusp groped “headaches or anything?” “Never felt better,” said IIa. “Only you haven’t asked about the cost,” said Ptaclusp. “I thought perhaps you were still feeling fl- ill.” “The queen has been pleased to ask me to have a look at the royal finances,” said IIa. “She said priests can’t add up.” His recent experiences had left him with no ill effects other than a profitable tendency to think at right angles to everyone else, and he sat wreathed in smiles while his mind constructed tariff rates, docking fees and a complex system of value added tax which would shortly give the merchant venturers of Ankh-Morpork a nasty shock. Ptaclusp thought about all the miles of the virgin Djel, totally unbridged. And there was plenty of dressed stone around now, millions of tons of the stuff. And you never knew, perhaps on some of those bridges there’d be room for a statue or two. He had the very thing. He put his arms around his sons’ shoulders. “Lads,” he said proudly. “It’s looking really quantum.” The setting sun also shone on Dil and Gern, although in this case it was by a roundabout route through the lightwell of the palace kitchens. They’d ended up there for no very obvious reason. It was just that it was so depressing in the embalming room, all alone. The kitchen staff worked around them, recognising the air of impenetrable gloom that surrounded the two embalmers. It was never a very sociable job at the best of times and embalmers didn’t make friends easily. Anyway, there was a coronation feast to prepare. They sat amid the bustle, observing the future over a jug of beer. “I expect,” said Gern, “that Gwlenda can have a word with her dad.” “That’s it, boy,” said Dil wearily. “There’s a future there. People will always want garlic.” “Bloody boring stuff, garlic,” said Gern, with unusual ferocity. “And you don’t get to meet people. That’s what I liked about our job. Always new faces.” “No more pyramids,” said Dil, without rancour. “That’s what she said. You’ve done a good job, Master Dil, she said, but I’m going to drag this country kicking and screaming into the Century of the Fruitbat.” “Cobra,” said Gern. “What?” “It’s the Century of the Cobra. Not the Fruitbat.” “Whatever,” said Dil irritably. He stared miserably into his mug. That was the trouble now, he reflected. You had to start remembering what century it was. He glared at a tray of canapes. That was the thing these days. Everyone fiddling about. He picked up an olive and turned it over and over in his fingers. “Can’t say I’d feel the same about the old job, mind,” said Gern, draining the jug, “but I bet you were proud, master - Dil, I mean. You know, when all your stitching held up like that.” Dil, his eyes not leaving the olive, reached dreamily down to his belt and grasped one of his smaller knives for intricate jobs. “I said, you must have felt very sorry it was all over,” said Gern. Dil swivelled around to get more light, and breathed heavily as he concentrated. “Still, you’ll get over it,” said Gern. “The important thing is not to let it prey on your mind-” “Put this stone somewhere,” said Dil. “Sorry?” “Put this stone somewhere,” said Dil. Gern shrugged, and took it out of his fingers. “Right,” said Dil, his voice suddenly vibrant with purpose. “Now pass me a piece of red pepper.”   And the sun shone on the delta, that little infinity of reed beds and mud banks where the Djel was laying down the silt of the continent. Wading birds bobbed for food in the green maze of stems, and billions of zig-zag midges danced over the brackish water. Here at least time had always passed, as the delta breathed twice daily the cold, fresh water of the tide. It was coming in now, the foam-crested cusp of it trickling between the reeds. Here and there soaked and ancient bandages unwound, wriggled for a while like incredibly old snakes and then, with the mininum of fuss, dissolved. THIS IS MOST IRREGULAR. We‘re sorry. It’s not our fault. HOW MANY OF YOU ARE THERE? More than 1,300, I’m afraid. VERY WELL, THEN. PLEASE FORM AN ORDERLY QUEUE.   You Bastard was regarding his empty hay rack. It represented a sub-array in the general cluster “hay”, containing arbitrary values between zero and K. It didn’t have any hay in it. It might in fact have a negative value of hay in it, but to the hungry stomach the difference between no hay and minus-hay was not of particular interest. It didn’t matter how he worked it out, the answer was always the same. It was an equation of classical simplicity. It had a certain clean elegance which he was not, currently, in a position to admire. You Bastard felt ill-used and hard done by. There was nothing particularly unusual about this, however, since that is the normal state of mind for a camel. He knelt patiently while Teppic packed the saddlebags. “We’ll avoid Ephebe,” Teppic said, ostensibly to the camel. “We’ll go up the end of the Circle Sea, perhaps to Quirm or over the Ramtops. There’s all sorts of places. Maybe we’ll even look for a few of those cities, eh? I expect you’d like that.” It’s a mistake trying to cheer up camels. You may as well drop meringues into a black hole. The door at the far end of the stable swung open. It was a priest. He looked rather flustered. The priests had been doing a lot of unaccustomed running around today. “Er,” he began. “Her majesty commands you not to leave the kingdom.” He coughed. He said, “Is there a reply?” Teppic considered. “No,” he said, “I don’t think so.” “So I shall tell her that you will be attending on her presently, shall I?” said the priest hopefully. “No.” “It’s all very well for you to say,” said the priest sourly, and slunk off. He was replaced a few minutes later by Koomi, very red in the face. “Her majesty requests that you do not leave the kingdom,” he said. Teppic climbed on to You Bastard’s back, and tapped the camel lightly, with a prod. “She really means it,” said Koomi. “I’m sure she does.” “She could have you thrown to the sacred crocodiles, you know.” “I haven’t seen many of them around today. How are they?” said Teppic, and gave the camel another thump. He rode out into the knife-edged daylight and along the packed-earth streets, which time had turned into a surface harder than stone. They were thronged with people. And every single person ignored him. It was a marvellous feeling. He rode gently along the road to the border and did not stop until he was up in the escarpment, the valley spreading out behind him. A hot wind off the desert rattled the syphacia bushes as he tethered You Bastard in the shade, climbed a little further up the rocks, and looked back. The valley was old, so old that you could believe it had existed first and had watched the rest of the world form around it. Teppic lay with his head on his arms. Of course, it had made itself old. It had been gently stripping itself of futures for thousands of years. Now change was hitting it like the ground hitting an egg. Dimensions were probably more complicated than people thought. Probably so was time. Probably so were people, although people could be more predictable. He watched the column of dust rise outside the palace and work its way through the city, across the narrow patchwork of fields, disappear for a minute in a group of palm trees near the escarpment, and reappear at the foot of the slope. Long before he could see it he knew there’d be a chariot somewhere in the cloud of sand. He slid back down the rocks and squatted patiently by the roadside. The chariot rattled by eventually, halted some way on, turned awkwardly in the narrow space, and trundled back. “What will you do?” shouted Ptraci, leaning over the rail. Teppic bowed. “And none of that,” she snapped. “Don’t you like being king?” She hesitated. “Yes,” she said. “I do-” “Of course you do,” said Teppic. “It’s in the blood. In the old days people would fight like tigers. Brothers against sisters, cousins against uncles. Dreadful.” “But you don’t have to go! I need you!” “You’ve got advisers,” said Teppic mildly. “I didn’t mean that,” she snapped. “Anyway, there’s only Koomi, and he’s no good.” “You’re lucky. I had Dios, and he was good. Koomi will be much better, you can learn a lot by not listening to what he has to say. You can go a long way with incompetent advisers. Besides, Chidder will help, I’m sure. He’s full of ideas.” She coloured. “He advanced a few when we were on the ship.” “There you are, then. I knew the two of you would get along like a house on fire.” Screams, flames, people running for safety. “And you’re going back to be an Assassin, are you?” she sneered. “I don’t think so. I’ve inhumed a pyramid, a pantheon and the entire old kingdom. It may be worth trying something else. By the way, you haven’t been finding little green shoots springing up wherever you walk, have you?” “No. What a stupid idea.” Teppic relaxed. It really was all over, then. “Don’t let the grass grow under your feet, that’s the important thing,” he said. “And you haven’t seen any seagulls around?” “There’s lots of them today, or didn’t you notice?” “Yes. That’s good, I think.” You Bastard watched them talk a little more, that peculiar trailing-off, desultory kind of conversation that two people of opposite sexes engage in when they have something else on their minds. It was much easier with camels, when the female merely had to check the male’s methodology. Then they kissed in a fairly chaste fashion, insofar as camels are any judge. A decision was reached. You Bastard lost interest at this point, and decided to eat his lunch again.   IN THE BEGINNING. . . It was peaceful in the valley. The river, its banks as yet untamed, wandered languidly through thickets of rush and papyrus. Ibises waded in the shallows; in the deeps, hippos rose and sank slowly, like pickled eggs. The only sound in the damp silence was the occasional plop of a fish or hiss of a crocodile. Dios lay in the mud for some time. He wasn’t sure how he’d got there, or why half his robes were torn off and the other half scorched black. He dimly recalled a loud noise and a sensation of extreme speed while, at the same time, he’d been standing still. Right at this moment, he didn’t want any answers. Answers implied questions, and questions never got anyone anywhere. Questions only spoiled things. The mud was cool and soothing, and he didn’t need to know anything else for a while. The sun went down. Various nocturnal prowlers wandered near to Dios, and by some animal instinct decided that he certainly wasn’t going to be worth all the trouble that would accrue from biting his leg off. The sun rose again. Herons honked. Mist unspooled between the pools, was burned up as the sky turned from blue to new bronze. And time unrolled in glorious uneventfulness for Dios until an alien noise took the silence and did the equivalent of cutting it into small pieces with a rusty breadknife. It was a noise, in fact, like a donkey being chainsawed. As sounds went, it was to melody what a boxful of dates is to high-performance motocross. Nevertheless, as other voices joined it, similar but different, in a variety of fractured keys and broken tones, the overall effect was curiously attractive. It had lure. It had pull. It had a strange suction. The noise reached a plateau, one pure note made of a succession of discordances, and then, for just the fraction of a second, the voices split away, each along a vector . There was a stirring of the air, a flickering of the sun. And a dozen camels appeared over the distant hills, skinny and dusty, running towards the water. Birds erupted from the reeds. Leftover saurians slid smoothly off the sandbanks. Within a minute the shore was a mass of churned mud as the knobbly-kneed creatures jostled, nose deep in the water. Dios sat up, and saw his staff lying in the mud. It was a little scorched, but still intact, and he noticed what somehow had never been apparent before. Before? Had there been a before? There had certainly been a dream, something like a dream. Each snake had its tail in its mouth. Down the slope after the camels, his ragged family trailing behind him, was a small brown figure waving a camel prod. He looked hot and very bewildered. He looked, in fact, like someone in need of good advice and careful guidance. Dios’s eyes turned back to the staff. It meant something very important, he knew. He couldn’t remember what, though. All he could remember was that it was very heavy, yet at the same time hard to put down. Very hard to put down. Better not to pick it up, he thought. Perhaps just pick it up for a while, and go and explain about gods and why pyramids were so important. And then he could put it down afterwards, certainly. Sighing, pulling the remnants of his robes around him to give himself dignity, using the staff to steady himself, Dios went forth.     THE END 
Raising Steam_ (Discworld Novel - Terry Pratchett	----	Raising Steam: (Discworld novel 40) (Discworld Novels) About the Book To the consternation of the Patrician, Lord Vetinari, a new invention has arrived in Ankh-Morpork – a great clanging monster of a machine that harnesses the power of all of the elements: earth, air, fire and water. This being Ankh-Morpork, it’s soon drawing astonished crowds, some of whom caught the zeitgeist early and arrive armed with notepads and very sensible rainwear. Moist von Lipwig is not a man who enjoys hard work. As master of the Post Office, the Mint and the Royal Bank his input is, of course, vital . . . but largely dependent on words, which are fortunately not very heavy and don’t always need greasing. However, he does enjoy being alive, which makes a new job offer from Vetinari hard to refuse. Steam is rising over Discworld, driven by Mr Simnel, the man wi’ t’flat cap and sliding rule who has an interesting arrangement with the sine and cosine. Moist will have to grapple with gallons of grease, goblins, a fat controller with a history of throwing employees down the stairs and some very angry dwarfs if he’s going to stop it all going off the rails . . . Contents Cover About the Book Title Page Dedication Map Raising Steam Acknowledgements About the Author Also by Terry Pratchett Copyright RAISING STEAM Terry Pratchett To David Pratchett and Jim Wilkins, both fine engineers who taught their sons to be curious. It is hard to understand nothing, but the multiverse is full of it. Nothing travels everywhere, always ahead of something, and in the great cloud of unknowing nothing yearns to become something, to break out, to move, to feel, to change, to dance and to experience – in short, to be something. And now it found its chance as it drifted in the ether. Nothing, of course, knew about something, but this something was different, oh yes, and so nothing slid silently into something and floated down with everything in mind and, fortunately, landed on the back of a turtle, a very large one, and hurried to become something even faster. It was elemental and nothing was better than that and suddenly the elemental was captured! The bait had worked. Anyone who has ever seen the River Ankh sliding along its bed of miscellaneous nastiness would understand why so much of the piscine food for the people of Ankh-Morpork has to be supplied by the fishing fleets of Quirm. In order to prevent terrible gastric trouble for the citizenry, Ankh-Morpork fishmongers have to ensure that their suppliers make their catches a long, long way from the city. For Bowden Jeffries, purveyor of the very best in seafood, the two hundred miles or more which lay between the fish docks at Quirm and the customers in Ankh-Morpork was a regrettably long distance throughout the winter, autumn and spring and a sheer penance in the summertime, because the highway, such as it was, became a linear furnace all the way to the Big City. Once you had had to deal with a ton of overheated octopus, you never forgot it; the smell lasted for days, and followed you around and almost into your bedroom. You could never get it out of your clothes. People were so demanding, but the elite of Ankh-Morpork and, indeed, everyone else wanted their fish, even in the hottest part of the season. Even with an icehouse built by his own two hands and, by arrangement, a second icehouse halfway along the journey, it made you want to cry, it really did. And he said as much to his cousin, Relief Jeffries, a market gardener, who looked at his beer and said, ‘It’s always the same. Nobody wants to help the small entrepreneur. Can you imagine how quickly strawberries turn into little balls of mush in the heat? Well, I’ll tell you: no time at all. Blink and you miss ’em, just when everybody wants their strawberries. And you ask the watercress people how difficult it is to get the damn stuff to the city before it’s as limp as a second-day sermon. We should petition the government!’ ‘No,’ said his cousin. ‘I’ve had enough of this. Let’s write to the newspapers! That’s the way to get things done. Everyone’s complaining about the fruit and vegetables and the seafood. Vetinari should be made to understand the plight of the small-time entrepreneur. After all, what do we occasionally pay our taxes for?’ Dick Simnel was ten years old when, back at the family smithy in Sheepridge, his father simply disappeared in a cloud of furnace parts and flying metal, all enveloped in a pink steam. He was never found in the terrible haze of scorching dampness, but on that very day young Dick Simnel vowed to whatever was left of his father in that boiling steam that he would make steam his servant. His mother had other ideas. She was a midwife, and as she said to her neighbours, ‘Babbies are born everywhere. I’ll never be without a customer.’ So, against her son’s wishes, Elsie Simnel decided to take him away from what she now considered to be a haunted place. She packed up their belongings and together they returned to her family home near Sto Lat, where people didn’t inexplicably disappear in a hot pink cloud. Soon after they arrived something important happened to her boy. One day while waiting for his mother to return from a difficult delivery, Dick walked into a building that looked interesting, and which turned out to be a library. At first he thought it was full of poncy stuff, all kings and poets and lovers and battles, but in one crucial book he found something called mathematics and the world of numbers. And that was why, one day some ten years later, he pulled together every fibre of his being and said, ‘Mother, you know last year when I said I were going ’iking in the mountains of Uberwald with me mates, well, it were kind of … sort of … a kind of lie, only very small, mind you.’ Dick blushed. ‘You see, I found t’keys to Dad’s old shed and, well, I went back to Sheepridge and did some experimenting and …’ he looked at his mother anxiously, ‘I think I know what ’e were doing wrong.’ Dick was braced for stiff objections, but he hadn’t reckoned on tears – so many tears – and as he tried to console her he added, ‘You, Mother, and Uncle Flavius got me an education, you got me the knowing of the numbers, including the arithmetic and weird stuff dreamed up by the philosophers in Ephebe where even camels can do logarithms on their toes. Dad didn’t know this stuff. He had the right ideas but he didn’t have the … tech-nol-ogy right.’ At this point, Dick allowed his mother to talk, and she said, ‘I know there’s no stopping you, our Dick, you’re just like your stubborn father were, pigheaded. Is that what you’ve been doin’ in the barn? Teck-ology?’ She looked at him accusingly, then sighed. ‘I can see I can’t tell you what to do, but you tell me: how can your “logger-reasons” stop you goin’ the way of your poor old dad?’ She started sobbing again. Dick pulled out of his jacket something that looked like a small wand, which might have been made for a miniature wizard, and said, ‘This’ll keep me safe, Mother! I’ve the knowing of the sliding rule! I can tell the sine what to do, and the cosine likewise and work out the tangent of t’quaderatics! Come on, Mother, stop fretting and come wi’ me now to t’barn. You must see ’er!’ Mrs Simnel, reluctant, was dragged by her son to the great open barn he had kitted out like the workshop back at Sheepridge, hoping against hope that her son had accidentally found himself a girl. Inside the barn she looked helplessly at a large circle of metal which covered most of the floor. Something metallic whizzed round and round on the metal, sounding like a squirrel in a cage, giving off a smell much like camphor. ‘Here she is, Mother. Ain’t she champion?’ Dick said happily. ‘I call her Iron Girder!’ ‘But what is it, son?’ He grinned hugely and said, ‘It’s what they call a pro-to-type, Mother. You’ve got to ’ave a pro-to-type if you’re going to be an engineer.’ His mother smiled wanly but there was no stopping Dick. The words just tumbled out. ‘The thing is, Mother, before you attempt owt you’ve got to ’ave some idea of what it is you want to do. One of the books I found in the library was about being an architect. And in that book, the man who wrote it said before he built his next big ’ouse he always made quite tiny models to get an idea of how it would all work out. He said it sounds fiddly and stuff, but going slowly and being thorough is the only way forward. And so I’m testing ’er out slowly, seeing what works and what doesn’t. And actually, I’m quite proud of me’sen. In the beginning I made t’track wooden, but I reckoned that the engine I wanted would be very ’eavy, so I chopped up t’wooden circle for firewood and went back to t’forge.’ Mrs Simnel looked at the little mechanism running round and round on the barn floor and said, in the voice of someone really trying to understand, ‘Eee, lad, but what does it do?’ ‘Well, I remembered what Dad said about t’time he were watching t’kettle boiling and noticed t’lid going up and down with the pressure, and he told me that one day someone would build a bigger kettle that would lift more than a kettle lid. And I believe I have the knowing of the way to build a proper kettle, Mother.’ ‘And what good would that do, my boy?’ said his mother sternly. And she watched the glow in her son’s eyes as he said, ‘Everything, Mother. Everything.’ Still in a haze of slight misunderstanding, Mrs Simnel watched him unroll a large and rather grubby piece of paper. ‘It’s called a blueprint, Mother. You’ve got to have a blueprint. It shows you how everything fits together.’ ‘Is this part of the pro-to-type?’ The boy looked at his doting mother’s face and realized that a little more exposition should be forthcoming. He took her by the hand and said, ‘Mother, I know they’re all lines and circles to you, but once you have the knowing of the circles and the lines and all, you know that this is a picture of an engine.’ Mrs Simnel gripped his hand and said, ‘What do you think you’re going to do with it, our Dick?’ And young Simnel grinned and said happily, ‘Change things as needs changing, Mother.’ Mrs Simnel gave her son a curious look for a moment or two, then appeared to reach a grudging conclusion and said, ‘Just you come with me, my lad.’ She led him back into the house, where they climbed up the ladder into the attic. She pointed out to her son a sturdy seaman’s chest covered in dust. ‘Your granddad gave me this to give to you, when I thought you needed it. Here’s the key.’ She was gratified that he didn’t grab it and indeed looked carefully at the trunk before opening it. As he pushed up the lid, suddenly the air was filled with the glimmer of gold. ‘Your granddad were slightly a bit of a pirate and then he got religion and were a bit afeared, and the last words he said to me on his deathbed were, “That young lad’ll do something one day, you mark my words, our Elsie, but I’m damned if I know what it’s going to be.”’ The people of the town were quite accustomed to the clangings and bangings emanating every day from the various blacksmith forges for which the area was famous. It seemed that, even though he had set up a forge of his own, young Simnel had decided not to enter the blacksmithing trade, possibly due to the dreadful business of Mr Simnel Senior’s leaving the world so abruptly. The local blacksmiths soon got used to making mysterious items that young Mr Simnel had sketched out meticulously. He never told them what he was constructing, but since they were earning a lot of money they didn’t mind. The news of his legacy got around, of course – gold always finds its way out somehow – and there was a scratching of heads among the population exemplified by the oldest inhabitant, who, sitting on the bench outside the tavern, said, ‘Well, bugger me! Lad were blessed wi’ an inherited fortune in gold and turned it into a load of old iron!’ He laughed, and so did everybody else, but nevertheless they continued to watch young Dick Simnel slip in and out of the wicket gate of his old and almost derelict barn, double-padlocked at all times. Simnel had found a couple of local likely lads who helped him make things and move things around. Over time, the barn was augmented by a host of other sheds. More lads were taken on and the hammers were heard all day every day and, a bit at a time, information trickled into what might be called the local consciousness. Apparently the lad had made a pump, an interesting pump that pumped water very high. And then he’d thrown everything away and said things like, ‘We need more steel than iron.’ There were tales of great reams of paper laid out on desks as young Simnel worked out a wonderful ‘undertaking’, as he called it. Admittedly there had been the occasional explosion, and then people heard about what the lads called ‘The Bunker’, which had been useful to jump into on several occasions when there had been a little … incident. And then there was the unfamiliar but somehow homely and rhythmic ‘chuffing’ noise. Really quite a pleasant noise, almost hypnotic, which was strange because the mechanical creature that was making the noise sounded more alive than you would have expected. It was noticed in the locality that the two main co-workers of Mr Simnel, or ‘Mad Iron’ Simnel as some were now calling him, seemed somewhat changed, more grown-up and aware of themselves; young men, acolytes of the mysterious thing behind the doors. And no amount of bribery by beer or by women in the pub would make them give up the precious secrets of the barn.fn1 They conducted themselves now as befitted the masters of the fiery furnace. And then, of course, there were the sunny days when young Simnel and his cohorts dug long lines in the field next to the barn and filled them with metal while the furnace glowed day and night and everyone shook their heads and said, ‘Madness.’ And this went on, it seemed for ever, until ever was finished and the banging and clanging and smelting had stopped. Then Mr Simnel’s lieutenants pulled aside the double doors of the big barn and filled the world with smoke. Very little happened in this part of Sto Lat and this was enough to bring people running. Most of them arrived in time to see something heading out towards them, panting and steaming, with fast-spinning wheels and oscillating rods eerily appearing and disappearing in the smoke and the haze, and on top of it all, like a sort of king of smoke and fire, Dick Simnel, his face contorted with the effort of concentration. It was faintly reassuring that this something was apparently under the control of somebody human – although the more thoughtful of the onlookers might have added ‘So what? So’s a spoon,’ and got ready to run away as the steaming, dancing, spinning, reciprocating engine cleared the barn and plunged on down the tracks laid in the field. And the bystanders, most of whom were now byrunners, and in certain instances bystampeders, fled and complained, except, of course, for every little boy of any age who followed it with eyes open wide, vowing there and then that one day he would be the captain of the terrible noxious engine, oh yes indeed. A prince of the steam! A master of the sparks! A coachman of the Thunderbolts! And outside, freed at last, the smoke drifted purposefully away from the shed in the direction of the largest city in the world. It drifted slowly at first, but gathered speed. Later that day, and after several triumphant turns around the short track in the field, Simnel sat down with his helpers. ‘Wally, Dave, I’m running out of brass, lads,’ he said. ‘Get your mothers to get your stuff together, make us some butties, bring out the ’orses. We’re taking Iron Girder to Ankh-Morpork. I ’ear it’s the place where things ’appen.’ Of course Lord Vetinari, Tyrant of Ankh-Morpork, would occasionally meet Lady Margolotta, Governess of Uberwald. Why shouldn’t he? After all, he also occasionally had meetings with Diamond King of Trolls up near Koom Valley, and indeed with the Low King of the Dwarfs, Rhys Rhysson, in his caverns under Uberwald. This, as everybody knew, was politics. Yes, politics. The secret glue that stopped the world falling into warfare. In the past there had been so much war, far too much, but as every schoolboy knew, or at least knew in those days when schoolboys actually read anything more demanding than a crisp packet, not so long ago a truly terrible war, the last war of Koom Valley, had almost happened, out of which the dwarfs and trolls had managed to achieve not exactly peace, but an understanding from which, hopefully, peace might evolve. There had been the shaking of hands, important hands, shaken fervently, and so there was hope, hope as fragile as a thought. Indeed, thought Lord Vetinari as his coach rattled along towards Uberwald, in the rosy afterglow that had followed the famous Koom Valley Accord even goblins had finally been recognized as sapient creatures, to be metaphorically treated as brothers, although not necessarily as brothers-in-law. He reflected that, from a distance, the world might conceivably look to be at peace, a state of affairs that always ends in war, eventually. He winced as his coach hit another most egregious bump on the road. He’d had the seats supplemented with extra mattress padding but simply nothing could turn the journey to Uberwald into anything other than a penance at every pothole, leading to fundamental discomfort. Progress had been very slow, although stops at clacks towers along the route had allowed his secretary, Drumknott, to collect the daily crossword puzzle without which Lord Vetinari considered the day incomplete. There was a bang from outside. ‘Good grief! Must we hit every pothole on the road, Drumknott?’ ‘I’m sorry, sir, but it appears that her ladyship cannot even now control the bandits around the Wilinus Pass. She has a culling every so often, but I’m afraid this is the least dangerous route.’ There was a shout outside, followed by more banging. Vetinari blew out his reading lamp moments before a ferocious-looking individual pushed the point of a crossbow bolt to the glass of the carriage, which was now in darkness, and said, ‘Just you come out here with all your valuables or it’ll be the worse for you, okay! No tricks now! We’re assassins!’ Lord Vetinari calmly put down the book he had been reading, sighed and said to Drumknott, ‘It appears, Drumknott, that we have been hijacked by assassins. Isn’t that … nice.’ And now Drumknott had a little smile. ‘Oh, yes, how nice, sir. You always like meeting assassins. I won’t get in your way, sir.’ Vetinari pulled his cloak around him as he stepped out of the coach and said, ‘There is no reason for violence, gentlemen. I will give you everything I have …’ And it was no more than two minutes later that his lordship climbed back up into the coach and signalled for the driver to carry on as if nothing had happened. After a while, and out of sheer curiosity, Drumknott said, ‘What happened this time, my lord? I didn’t hear anything.’ Beside him, Lord Vetinari said, ‘Neither did they, Drumknott. Dear me, it’s such a waste. One wonders why they don’t learn to read. Then they’d recognize the crest on my coach, which would have enlightened them!’ As the coach got up to what might be considered an erratic kind of speed, and after some thought, Drumknott said, ‘But your crest, sir, is black on a black background and it’s a very dark night.’ ‘Ah, yes, Drumknott,’ Lord Vetinari replied, with what passed as a smile. ‘Do you know, I hadn’t thought of that.’ There was something inevitable about Lady Margolotta’s castle. As the great wooden doors slowly opened, every door hinge creaked. After all, there was such a thing as socially acceptable ambience. Indeed, what kind of vampire would live in a castle that didn’t creak and groan on cue? The Igors wouldn’t have it any other way, and now the resident Igor welcomed Lord Vetinari and his secretary into a cavernous hall with spiders’ webs hanging pendulously from the ceiling. And there was a sense, only a sense, that down in the basement somewhere, something was screaming. But of course, Vetinari reflected, here was a wonderful lady, who had made vampires understand that returning from the grave so often that you got dizzy was rather stupid and who somehow had persuaded them to at least tone down their nocturnal activities. Besides which, she had introduced coffee to Uberwald, apparently exchanging one terrifying craving for another. Lady Margolotta was always short and to the point, as was the nature of the conversation that followed a splendid dinner a few days later. ‘It is the grags. The grags again, yes, Havelock? After all this time! My vord, even vorse, just as you, my dear, prophesied. How could you have foreseen it?’ ‘Well, madam, Diamond King of Trolls asked me the very same thing, but all I can say is that it lies in the indefatigable nature of sapient creatures. In short, they can’t all be satisfied at the same time. You thought the bunting and fireworks and handshakes and pledges after Koom Valley was signed and sealed was the end of it, yes? Personally, I have always considered this a mere interlude. In short, Margolotta, peace is what you have while incubating the next war. It is impossible to accommodate everyone and twice as impossible to please all the dwarfs. You see, when I’m talking to Diamond King of Trolls he is the mouthpiece of the trolls, he speaks for all the trolls. Sensible as they are, they leave it all to him when it comes to the politics. ‘And then, on the other hand, we have yourself, dear lady: you speak for all your … folk in Bonkfn2 and most agreements made with you are, well, quite agreeable … But the dwarfs, what a calamity. Just when you think you’re talking to the leader of the dwarfs, some wild-eyed grag will pop out on the landscape and suddenly all bets are off, all treaties instantly become null and void, and there is no possibility of trust! As you know, there is a “king” – a dezka-knikfn3, as they call him – in every mine on the Disc. How does one do business with people like this? Every dwarf his own inner tyrant.’ ‘Vell,’ said Lady Margolotta, ‘Rhys Rhysson is managing quite vell in the circumstances and ve in higher Uberwald …’ now her ladyship almost whispered, ‘are very much on the side of progress. But, yes, how can vun vin vunce and for all, that is vhat I vould like to know.’ His lordship set down his glass carefully and said, ‘That, alas, is never totally possible. The stars change, people change, and all we can do is assist the future with care and thoughtful determination to see the world at peace, even if it means ushering some of its worst threats to an early grave. ‘Although I’m bound to say that subtlety and careful interrogation of the things the world puts in front of us suggest to me that the Low King – whom, as protocol dictates, I called upon before coming here to meet you – is forming a plan right now; and when he makes his play we will throw everything in to support him. He is taking a very big gamble on the future. He believes that the time is right, especially since Ankh-Morpork is now well known to have the largest dwarf community in the world.’ ‘But I believe his people don’t like too much modernity. I must admit, I can see vhy. Progress is such a vorrisome thing when one is trying to maintain peace in the vorld. So … unpredictable. Can I remind you, Havelock, that many, many years ago, an Ephebian philosopher built an engine that vas very powerful, scarily so. If those people had persevered with the engine powered by steam the nature of life now might have been very much different. Don’t you find that vorryink? How can ve guide the future when von idiot can make a mechanism that might change everything?’ Lord Vetinari dribbled a last drop of brandy into his glass and said cheerfully, ‘Madam, only a fool would try to stop the progress of the multitude. Vox populi, vox deorum, carefully shepherded by a thoughtful prince, of course. And so I take the view that when it’s steam engine time steam engines will come.’ ‘And what do you think you’re doing, dwarf?’ Young Magnus Magnusson didn’t pay much attention at first to the senior dwarf whose face, in so far as it could be seen, was definitely grumpy, the kind of dwarf that had apparently never himself been young, and so he shrugged and said, ‘No offence, O venerable one, but what I think I’m doing is walking along minding my own business in the hope that others would be minding their own. I hope you have no rat with that?’fn4 It is said that a soft answer turneth away wrath, but this assertion has a lot to do with hope and was now turning out to be patently inaccurate, since even a well-spoken and thoughtful soft answer could actually drive the wrong kind of person into a state of fury if wrath was what they had in mind, and that was the state the elderly dwarf was now enjoying. ‘Why are you wearing your helmet backwards, young dwarf?’ Magnus was an easy-going dwarf and did the wrong thing, which was to be logical. ‘Well, O venerable one, it’s got my Scouting badge on it, you know. Scouting? Out in the fresh air? Not getting up to mischief and serving my community well?’ This litany of good intentions didn’t seem to get Magnus any friends and his sense of peril began belatedly to function much faster. The old dwarf was really, really unhappy about him, and during this short exchange a few other dwarfs had sauntered over to them, looking at Magnus as if weighing him up for the fight. It was Magnus’s first time alone in the twin cities of Bonk and Schmaltzberg and he hadn’t expected to be greeted like this. These dwarfs didn’t look like the ones he had grown up with in Treacle Mine Road and he began to back away, saying hurriedly, ‘I’m here to see my granny, right, if you don’t mind, she’s not very well and I’ve come all the way from Ankh-Morpork, hitching rides on carts and sleeping out every night in haystacks and barns. It’s a long, long way—’ And then it all happened. Magnus was a speedy runner, as befitted the Ankh-Morpork Rat Pack,fn5 and as he ran he tried to figure out what it was that he had done wrong. After all, it had taken him for ever by various means to get to Uberwald, and he was a dwarf, and they were dwarfs and … It dawned on him that there had been something in the newspapers back home saying that there were still a few dwarf societies that would have nothing to do with any organization that included trolls, the traditional and visceral enemy. Well, there were certainly trolls in the pack back home and they were good sports, all of them, a bit slow mind you, but he had occasionally gone to tea with some of them and vice versa. Only now he remembered how occasionally old trolls and older dwarfs were upset for no other reason than that after hundreds of years of trying to kill one another they, by means of one handshake, were supposed to have become friends. Magnus had always understood that the Low City of the Low King was a dark place, and that was okay for dwarfs as dwarfs and darkness always got on well together, but here he sensed a deeper darkness. In this trying moment it seemed that here he had no friends apart from his grandmother, and it looked as though there was going to be a lot of trouble between him and the other side of town where she lived. He was panting now but he could still hear the sounds of pursuit, even though he was leaving the deeper corridors and tunnels behind him and heading out of the underground city of Schmaltzberg, realizing he would have to come back another day … or another way. As he stopped briefly to get his breath back, a guard on the city gate stepped into his path with a certain greedy expression. ‘And where do you think you’re going in a hurry, Mister Ankh-Morpork? Back to the light with your troll friends, eh?’ The guard’s spontoon knocked Magnus’s feet from under him and then the kicking started in earnest. Magnus rolled to get out of the way and as a kind of reflex shouted, ‘Tak does not want us to think of him, but he does want us to think!’ He groaned and spat out a tooth as he saw another dwarf coming towards him. To his dismay the newcomer looked middle-aged and well-to-do, which certainly meant that there would be no friendship here. But instead of administering a kicking, the older dwarf shouted in a voice like hammers, ‘Listen to me, young dwarf, you must never let your guard down like this …’ The newcomer smacked his original assailant to the ground with commendable ferocity and a gloriously unnecessary display of violence and as the guard lay groaning he pulled Magnus upright. ‘Well, you can run, kid, much better than most dwarfs I know, but a boy like you should know that Ankh-Morpork dwarfs are not in favour at the moment, at least not around these parts. To tell you the truth, I’m not that happy about them myself, but if there’s a fight it must be a fair one.’ At that he kicked the stricken guard very hard and said, ‘My name is Bashfull Bashfullsson. You, lad, better get yourself some micromail if you’re going to come calling on your granny looking all Ankh-Morpork. And it is ashamed I am that my fellow dwarfs treat a young dwarf so badly just because of what he wears.’ And the full stop to that rant was yet another blow to the recumbent guard. ‘I’ll hand it to you, lad, I really have never seen a dwarf that can run as fast as you were doing! My word, you can run, but it might now be time to learn how to hide.’ Magnus brushed himself down and stared at his saviour, saying, ‘Bashfull Bashfullsson! But you’re a legend!’ And he took a step backwards saying, ‘I’ve read all about you! You became a grag because you don’t like Ankh-Morpork!’ ‘I may not, young dwarf, but I don’t hold with killing in the darkness like those bastard deep-downers and delvers. I like a stand-up fight, me.’ Saying this, Bashfull Bashfullsson kicked the fallen guard heavily yet one more time with his enormous iron-clad boot. And one of the most well-known and well-respected dwarfs in the world held out his hand to young Magnus, and said, ‘Now let your talent take you to safety. As you said, Tak does not require us to think of him, but remember that he does require us to think and you might want a thought or two about adjusting your attire when you come back to visit your granny again. Besides, she might not appreciate Ankh-Morpork fashions. Nice to have met you, Mister Speedy, and now get your sorry arse out of here – I might not be around next time.’ Far away and turnwise of Uberwald, Sir Harry King was pondering on the business of the day. He was widely known as the King of the Golden River because of the fortune he had made minding other people’s business. Harry was normally a cheerful man with a good digestion, but not today. He was also a loving husband, doting on Euphemia, his wife of many years, but alas, not today. And Harry was a good employer, but also not today, because today his stomach was giving him gyp by means of the halibut to which the phrase long time no see could not happily be applied. He hadn’t liked the look of it when it was on his plate, halibut being a fish which tends to look back at you reproachfully, and for the last few hours he had envisaged the damn thing looking at the insides of his stomach. The problem was, he thought, that Euphemia still remembered the good old days when they were poor as church mice and therefore necessarily frugal with their money, and such habits bite to the bone, very much like the inadvisably digested fish which had been swimming somewhere in the vicinity of Harry’s bowels and threatening to swim a lot further. Regrettably, Harry was a man brought up to eat everything that was put in front of him and that meant everything eaten up. When he had finally exited from the privy, where he fancied the damn fish had been watching him from the bowl, he had pulled the chain with such vehemence that it broke, causing the woman whom he sometimes called the Duchess to have words with him. And since words tend to lead to more words, nasty, spiteful little words flew on both sides, words that if Harry could help it would be flung back to the wretched fish which had started it all. But instead he and his wife had had what they had known all of their lives as an up-and-downer. And, of course, Effie, born in the next-door gutter to Harry, could give at least as good as she got in such situations, especially when armed with a quite valuable and decorative jug. Effie had a voice on her that at times could make a barrow boy blush, and she had called Harry the ‘King of Shit’, causing him to do what he never, ever wanted to do, which was to raise his hand in anger, especially since the jug with which his wife was now armed was also quite a heavy one.fn6 Of course it would blow over, it always did, and genuine marital harmony would drift into its accustomed place in the household. But nevertheless, all afternoon Sir Harry prowled around his compound like an old lion. King of Shit, well, yes, and because of him the streets were clean, or at least considerably cleaner than they had been before what might be called the Harry King dynasty. He mused, as he wandered, that his work was all about those unimaginable things that people wanted to leave behind them. And therefore there wasn’t much for him on the top table of society. Oh, yes, he was Sir Harry, but he knew that Effie really wished they could leave behind the whole stinking business. ‘After all,’ she said, ‘you’re as rich as Creosote as it is. Can’t you find something else to do – something that people actually want rather than need?’ Generally speaking, Harry was not very good at philosophy. He was proud of what he had achieved, but a tiny part of him was agreeing with Effie that surely there was something better for him than chasing the purefn7 and making certain the unreliable septic tanks of the city didn’t overflow. Somebody had to do it, of course – and it wasn’t as if it was actually Harry himself, not for many years, since he paid the gongfermors, dunnykin divers and now a whole army of goblins as well to do the dirty work. Still, what he needed now, he thought, was an occupation that was manly without being despicable. Absent-mindedly, he sacked his latest lawyer, a dwarf who had been caught with his nasty little fingers in the till, and managed to do it without actually throwing the little bugger all the way down the stairs. Unusually despondent, Harry prowled on, seeking to calm his nerves. At the edge of his compound he sniffed the air, so far as he dared. There was a wind blowing from the hub and he turned to face it and caught a tantalizing smell: a manly smell, a smell with a purpose, a smell that wanted to take him places, and it said promise. The relationship between Moist von Lipwig and Adora Belle Dearheart was firm and happy, quite possibly because they didn’t see each other for substantial periods of time, since she was immersed in the running of the Grand Trunk and he was dealing with the Bank, the Post Office and the Mint. Despite what Lord Vetinari thought, Moist did have proper work to do at these institutions and that was, in his own mind, called holding it all together. Things worked, in fact they worked very well, but they worked, Moist thought, because he was always seen in the Bank or the Mint or the Post Office being Mister Bank, Mister Post Office and Mister Mint. He chatted to people, talked to them about their work, asked how their wives and husbands were, having memorized the names of all the family members of the person he was talking to. It was a knack, a wonderful knack, and it worked a treat. You took an interest in everybody and they took an interest in their work and it was vitally important that he was always around to keep the magic flowing. As for Adora Belle, the clacks were in her bones, it was her legacy and woe betide anyone who got between it and her,fn8 even if that anyone was her husband. Somehow the system worked as hard as they did and so they could afford Crossly, the butler, and Mrs Crossly too.fn9 Their house in Scoone Avenue had a gardener too, who appeared to come with the territory. Crispfn10 was also a decent handyman and quite talkative, although Moist never understood a word he said. He came from somewhere in the Shires and spoke using a vocabulary that was theoretically Morporkian, but in reality had lots of straw in it with the syllable ‘ahh’ working hard in every conversation. He made cider in his shed at the bottom of the garden, utilizing the apple trees that the previous owner had carefully cherished. He also, as a matter of course, cleaned the windows, and with the help of an enormous box full of every type of hammer, saw, drill, screwdriver and chisel, bags of nails and a number of other items that Moist could not recognize, and moreover did not wish to, made Moist’s life easy whilst making Crisp possibly the richest handyman in the neighbourhood. Moist von Lipwig had done some heavy work once and couldn’t see any future in it, but he could look at it for hours, provided other people were doing it, of course, and clearly some of them liked what they were doing, and so he shrugged and felt happy that Crisp was happy being a handyman whilst Moist was happy not picking up anything that was heavier than a glass. After all, his work was unseen and depended on words, which were fortunately not very heavy and didn’t need grease. In his career as a crook they had served him well and now he felt somewhat smug at using them to the benefit of the citizenry. There was a difference between a banker and a crook, there really was, and although it was very, very teeny Moist felt that he should point out that it did exist and, besides, Lord Vetinari always had his eye on him. So everybody was happy and Moist went to work in very clean clothes and with a very clean conscience. Having washed and dressed in said clothes in his private bathroom,fn11 Moist went to see his wife, practising his smile on the way and endeavouring to look cheerful. You never knew with Adora Belle.fn12 She could be quite acerbic. After all, she ran the whole clacks system these days. She also liked goblins, which was why there were some living behind the wainscoting of the house and others in the roof. They smelled, but the smell wasn’t, once you got over the shock, all that bad. The compensation was that the goblins had taken the clacks into their scrawny hearts, one and all. The wheels and levers fascinated them. Moist knew that generally goblins hid out in caves and insalubrious places that humans didn’t bother about, but now, when suddenly they were being treated as people, they had found their element which was generally the sky. They could scramble up a clacks tower faster than any man could run, and the rattling, back-and-forth clanking and relentlessly busy machinery of the clacks had them in its grip. Already, after only a few months in the city, the goblins had improved the efficiency of the clacks across the Sto Plains threefold. They were creatures of darkness, but their perception of light was remarkable. There was a whole malignityfn13 of goblins up on the roof, but if you wanted your clacks to fly fast, you didn’t use the term out loud. The villains of the storybooks had found their place in society, at last. All it needed was technology. When Dick Simnel walked into Sir Harry King’s compound he wasn’t at all certain how you spoke to grand folk. Nevertheless, he managed to talk his way through the people in the front office, who had a rather jaundiced look and appeared to consider it their duty to ensure that no one should ever get to see Sir Harry King, especially greasy-looking young men with wild eyes trying hard to look respectable despite their extremely old clothing which, these gatekeepers thought, needed something, possibly a bonfire. However, Dick had the persistence of a wasp and the sharpness of a razor blade, and so eventually he ended up deposited in front of the big man’s desk like a supplicant. Harry, red-faced and impatient, looked over his desk and said to him, ‘Lad, time is money and I’m a busy man. You told Nancy down on Reception that you’ve got something I might like. Now stop fidgeting and look me in the face square like. If you’re another chancer wanting to bamboozle me I’ll have you down the Effing stairsfn14 before you know it.’ Dick stared soundlessly at Harry for a moment, then said, ‘Mister Sir King, I’ve made a machine that can carry people and goods just about everywhere and it don’t need ’orses and it’s run on water ’n’ coal. It’s my machine, I built it and I can make it even better if you can see your way clear to advance me some investment.’ Harry King reached into his pocket and pulled out a heavy gold watch. Dick couldn’t help but notice the famous gold rings that he had been told Sir Harry always wore, possibly as an ensemble of socially acceptable and extremely valuable knuckledusters. ‘Did I hear you right? It’s Mister Simnel, isn’t it? I’ll give you five minutes to catch my fancy and if I think you’re just another thimblerigger on the slant you’ll go out of here rather more quickly than you came in.’ ‘My old mother always said seeing is believing, Mister King, and so I’ve come prepared. If you can give me some time to get t’lads and t’ ’orses …’ Dick coughed and continued, ‘I have to tell you, Mister Sir Harry, I took the liberty of parking them right outside your compound, ’cos I talked to people and they said that if Harry King wants something to start happening it ’as to ’appen fast.’ He hesitated. Was that a glint in Harry’s eye? ‘Well,’ the magnate grumbled rather theatrically. ‘Young man, even though time is money, talk is cheap. I’ll come out in five minutes and you’d better have something solid to show me.’ ‘Thank you, Sir King, that’s very kind of you, sir, but we’ll have to get t’boiler warmed up first, sir, and so we’ll have ’er throbbing in no more than two hours, sir.’ Harry King took his cigar out of his mouth and said, ‘What?! Throbbing?’ Dick smiled nervously. ‘You’ll see, sir, you’ll see.’ Very shortly afterwards, and just in time, smoke and steam enveloped the compound and Harry King saw and, indeed, was amazed. And Harry King really was amazed. There was something insect-like about the metallic contraption, bits of which were spinning incessantly while the whole thing was shrouded in a cloud of smoke and steam of its own making. Harry King saw purpose personified. Purpose, moreover, that would be unlikely ever to ask for a day off for its granny’s funeral. Over the noise he shouted, ‘What did you say this thing is called, my lad?’ ‘Iron Girder, sir. An engine that uses the expansion or rapid condensation of steam to generate power. Power for locomotion – that is to say, movement, sir. And if you’d allow us to lay down her rails, sir, we can really show you what she can do.’ ‘Rails?’ ‘Aye, sir. She runs on an iron road, you’ll see.’ Suddenly there was the sound of a banshee on heat as Wally moved a lever. ‘Sorry, sir, you ’ave to let t’steam out. It’s all about ’arnessing t’steam. You heard her singing, sir, she wants motion, power is going to waste while she’s just sitting here. Give me time and allow me to put a test track around your compound. We’ll have ’er running very soon, I promise you.’ Harry was uncharacteristically silent. The thrumming of the machine was like a kind of spell. Again, the metal voice of steam rang out over the compound like a lost soul and he found himself unable to leave. Harry wasn’t a man for introspection and all that rubbish, but he thought that this, well, this was something worth a closer look. And then he noticed the faces of the crowd around the compound, the goblins climbing up to gawp at this new raging devil which was nevertheless under the control of two lads in flat caps and very little to speak of in regard to teeth. Getting his thoughts lined up properly, Harry turned to Dick Simnel and said, ‘Mister Simnel, I’ll give you two days, no more. You have your chance, mister, don’t waste it. I am, as I say, a busy man. Two days to show me something that astounds me. Go on.’ Dwarfs and men sat and listened intently to the old boy sitting in the corner of the Treacle Minerfn15, human, possibly, but with a beard any respectable dwarf would have coveted, who had decided to share with them his knowledge of the treacle-mining world. ‘Gather round, lads, fill my pot and I’ll tell you a tale that’s dark and sticky.’ He looked meaningfully at his empty tankard and there was laughter as it was replaced by some well-wisher and, as he sipped his ale, he began his tale. Years back, unexpected deep treacle reserves had been discovered under Ankh-Morpork, fathoms down, and as every treacle miner knew, the lower the treacle, the better the texture and therefore the better the taste. In truth, and in Ankh-Morpork at least, there was very little friction between dwarf clans on this matter, and the question of who would be allowed to mine the discovery was amiably dealt with by the old boys, dwarf and human. Everyone conceded that when it came to working underground there was nothing like the dwarfs, but, to the dismay of the older miners, very few of the dwarf youngsters of Ankh-Morpork were at all interested in mining under any circumstances. And so the grizzled old boys welcomed any local miners of any species to work under the venerable streets of Ankh-Morpork, for the sheer pleasure of seeing treacle being properly produced again, and the miners, whoever they were, went about their sticky business in the search for the deep shimmering treacle. And something happened, somewhere up near the Shires, where the dwarf miners had been working a reasonable seam, part of which was under land which at that time belonged to the Low King of the Dwarfs. In those not too distant days political relationships between human and dwarf were somewhat nervy. On the day when things came to a head there had been a sudden fall of dark toffee, extremely precious and very unusual, but feared by every treacle miner because of its tendency to spontaneously collapse into the tunnels. According to the eyewitnesses, both humans and dwarfs were mining underground while politicians argued on both sides of the political divide. And this fall was mostly on the human side of the seam, with many men trapped in a deluge of unrelenting stickiness. He hesitated for a moment and said, ‘Or it might have been the dwarf side, now I come to think about it …’ He looked embarrassed, but continued. ‘Well, it doesn’t really matter now who they were, it was a long time ago anyway. The miners working the seam from the other side of the fall heard that there were many miners down there, trapped and drowning in refined sugar derivatives, and said, “Come on, lads, get the gear together and let’s get them out of there.”’ The old boy hesitated a further moment, possibly for effect, and said, ‘But of course that meant that they had to enter territory that required going through two bloody security barriers manned by armed guards. Guards, moreover, who were not that bothered about miners and were certainly not going to let any of the enemy down into their sovereign soil.’ Another significant pause, then the tale raced on. All the miners had piled up against the barriers. Someone said, ‘We can’t tackle them, they’ve got weapons!’ and they looked at one another in what is known as wild surmise, and then another voice yelled, ‘But so have we, when you look at it the right way, and ours are bigger!’ And the speaker waved his enormous fist and said, ‘And we’re mining every day, not standing around and looking smart.’ And so as one dwarf, or possibly human, they rushed the barricade and the guards, realizing they were failing to frighten people, ran for cover as the miners with the picks and shovels came down on them at speed and sixty miners were saved from a very sticky situation on both sides of the seam. Nothing official happened afterwards because officialdom didn’t want any part of the shame of it. The old boy looked around and glowed as if he himself had been one of those miners and, quite possibly, he might have been, and his tankard was topped up once again and he said wistfully, ‘Of course, that was the old days. I wish it still was.’ It was just short of the end of the second day when Simnel and his lads had Iron Girder chuffing slowly and purposefully along a short circular track in Harry’s compound. And Harry couldn’t help noticing that the look of the engine had changed and it now seemed somehow … smoother than before. In fact, he thought, he had been ready to say sleek, though it was hard to think of what looked like fifty tons of steel as sleek, but yes, he thought, why not? It shouldn’t be beautiful, but she was. Stuttering, stinking, growling, smoking, but so very beautiful. Dick said cheerfully, ‘We’re taking it slow, Mister Harry. We need to put down some real ballast before we can let ’er rip, but she grows on yer, don’t you think? And when we’ve built ’er up, and added on wagons and suchlike there’ll be no stoppin’ ’er.’ And there it was again. It really ought to be a he, Harry mused, but somehow the ‘she’ stuck relentlessly. And then Harry’s rather crumpled brow furrowed even further. This young lad clearly knows his stuff, he thought, and he said his machine could carry people and goods … but who’d want to ride on this clanking great monster? On the other hand, the compound smelled of steam and coal and hot grease – manly, healthy smells … Yes, he’d give them that little bit longer. Perhaps another week. After all, coal wasn’t expensive and he wasn’t paying them anything. Harry King realized he was feeling unusually happy. Yes, they could have a little more time. And the smell was good, unlike those he and Effie had put up with over the years. Oh, yes, they could definitely have their time, though he’d need to keep the lads on their toes. He looked up and the clacks towers blinked relentlessly and Harry King saw the future. The wind above the clacks towers was blowing from the hub, cool and purposeful, and Adora Belle Dearheart fancied she could see the edge of the world from here. She cherished moments like this. They reminded her of when she was young, really young, when her mother would hang her cradle from the top of a tower while she was coding, leaving her daughter cheerfully making baby noises several hundred feet above the ground. In fact, her mother said her very first word was ‘checksum’. And now she could see, clearly out of its mists, the mountain Cori Celesti glittering like a great green icicle. She sang as she tightened up the spinners on the upper gallery. She was out of the office, as far from it as was possible, and it felt good. After all, she could even see the office from up here. In fact, she could probably see everybody’s office from here, but right now she sorted out the delicate little mechanisms and savoured a world where she could reach out and touch the sun, well, metaphorically at least. This reverie was broken by one of the tower’s goblins. ‘I am bringing twenty spinners and a flask of coffee, very hygienic, I cleaned the mug myself with my own hand. Me. Of the Twilight the Darkness,’ he said proudly. Adora Belle looked down at a face that would take a frantic battalion of mothers to love, but nevertheless she smiled and said, ‘Thanks, mister. I must say you’ve really got acclimatized for somebody who has spent most of their life in a cave. I can’t believe you don’t even worry about heights, that never ceases to amaze me. And thanks again, it really is good coffee and still warm, too.’ Of the Twilight the Darkness shrugged as only a goblin could shrug. The effect was rather like a parcel of snakes dancing. ‘Missus Boss, goblins no stranger to acclimatize. Don’t acclimatize, don’t live! And anyway, things going well down there, no problems. Goblins got respeck! And how is Mister Slightly Damp?’ ‘Moist is fine, my friend, and surely you know my husband doesn’t like the name you goblins have given him. He thinks you’re doing it on purpose.’ ‘You want that we stop doing it?’ ‘Oh, no! It teaches him a lesson in humility. I think he needs to go to university on that score.’ The goblin grinned in the way of a conspirator, and he could see Adora Belle trying not to laugh, while overhead the clacks continued sending its messages to the world. Adora Belle could almost read the messages simply by watching the towers, but you had to be very, very fast; and the goblins were even faster than that. And who ever would have thought their eyesight was so discerning? Using the new augmented colour shutter boxes after dark, most human clacks spotters could separate about four or five or maybe even six colours on a very good clear night, but who could have imagined that goblins, fresh out of their caves, would be uncannily able even to identify puce as opposed to pink, while most humans didn’t have a clue what a damn puce was if they saw it? Adora Belle glanced at Of the Twilight the Darkness and once again acknowledged to herself that goblins were the reason why clacks traffic was so much faster, more accurate and streamlined than ever before. And yet how could she reward them for the increased efficiency? Sometimes the goblins never even bothered to take their pay. They liked rats, of which there was never a shortage, but because she was indeed the bossfn16 she felt it incumbent on her to persuade the little nerds that there were, indeed, many other things you could be doing apart from coding and deciphering clacks messages. She almost shivered. They actively, obsessively liked to work, all day and all night if possible. She knew if the name on the door said ‘Boss’ then in theory she had to think about their welfare, but they weren’t interested in their own welfare. What they wanted to do was code and decipher, pausing only when the lady troll with the rat trolley came round. Honestly! They liked their work and not just liked it, but lived it. How many bosses had had to go all around the workplace telling people they really had to stop working now and go home? But then they didn’t go home, they wanted to stay up in their clacks towers, and in the small hours of the night chat by clacks to goblins elsewhere. They would rather chatter than eat, it seemed, and even slept on the tower, dragging in little straw beds for when they were forced by nature to take a nap. Adora Belle had insisted to the trustees that there should be a foundation set up, against the day when goblins and their children might want to move further into society. So a scant while after the remarkable musical talents of Tears of the Mushroom had been so spectacularly unveiled to Ankh-Morpork high society, the goblins had become people, strange people, yes, but people nevertheless. Of course, there was the smell, but you couldn’t have everything. Novelty went around Ankh-Morpork just like an embarrassing disease, thought Sir Harry King the following afternoon as he looked down on to the compound where people were peering through the gates and fencing in a great susurration of speculation. Harry knew his fellow citizens from the bottom up, as it were, willing slaves to novelty and the exotic, rubberneckers all of them. The whole crowd were turning their heads as one to keep track of Iron Girder, like a flock of starlings, and all the time Iron Girder was chuffing away with Dick waving from the footplate, the air still full of the smuts and smells. And yet, he thought, it’s all approval. No one’s disagreeing, no one’s frightened. A beast from nowhere. A fiery dragon, all smoke and cinders, has appeared among them and they hold up their children to look at it, waving as it goes past. What strange magic—? He corrected himself; what strange mechanics could have achieved this? There was the beast and they were loving it. I’ll have to get familiar with these words, Harry thought as he left his office: ‘footplate’, ‘boiler’, ‘reciprocal’, ‘molybdenum disulphide’,fn17 and all the tiresome but fascinating language of steam. Having noticed that Harry was watching them, Dick Simnel allowed Iron Girder to slow down gently until, with an almost imperceptible bump, she came to a halt. Dick jumped off the footplate and strolled towards him, and Harry saw a triumphant look in his eye. Harry said, ‘Well done, lad, but be careful, be very, very careful. Be careful of everything right now. I’ve been watching the faces of them people with their noses pressed up against my fence, their little faces all corrugated, as it were. They’re fascinated, and fascinated people spend money. ‘The most important thing in business is to work out who gets that cash and it’s like this, my boy, it’s a jungle out there and I’m more than a multi-millionaire, much more. I know that while happy handshakes are very pleasing and friendly, when it comes to business you can’t do without bloody lawyers because in this jungle I’m a gorilla! It’s best you tell me the name of yours and I’ll get my lawyer to get in touch so they can talk all lawyer-to-lawyer while totting up their dollars. I don’t want no one to say that Harry King fleeced the lad who tamed the steam. ‘For what it’s worth I’ll fund you up to a certain point, no doubt about that, because I think this engine of yours has real possibilities, huge possibilities. So now you’ve got my interest and by the time the papers find out about this you’ll have everyone’s interest.’ Dick shrugged and said, ‘Well, Sir Harry, it’s great that you’re giving me a chance, so anything you suggest’ll be okay by me.’ Harry King almost screamed, ‘No, no, no! I like you, I like you a lot, but business is, well, business is business!’ Harry’s face was now puce with anger. ‘You don’t go and tell anyone that you’ll take whatever they want to give you! You bargain, lad. Don’t get starry-eyed! You bargain. You bargain hard.’ There was silence and then the lad said, ‘Mister King, before I decided to come to Ankh-Morpork I talked about things with me mother, a very shrewd lady – she ’ad to be, what with me dad being somewhere out there in the ether, if you catch my drift. And she said if someone wants to do business in the big city, Dick, make out that you’re simple and see ’ow they treat you. If they treats you properly, simple as you are, then it’s likely you can trust them. And then you can show them how smart you really are. And well, sir, it seems to me you’re as straight as lunchtime. I’ll go and find a lawyer right now.’ He hesitated. ‘Er, where can I find a lawyer I can trust? I might not be as clever as I think I am.’ Sir Harry laughed heartily. ‘It’s a tough call, lad, and a question I’ve lately needed to ask myself, as it happens. My friend Mustrum Ridcully over at the University told me about one only yesterday: a lawyer so straight he could be used as a crowbar. Why not let your lads go on showing Iron Girder to the crowd, and come with me in my carriage, although it’s not a patch on the one you brought here, eh? Eh! Come on, lad, let’s go, shall we?’ At his office in the Lawyers’ Guild building, Harry King and Dick Simnel met Mr Thunderbolt, surprisingly large and, surprisingly, a troll. A troll with a voice like gently flowing lava. ‘You will wish to know my credentials, gentlemen. I am a member of the Ankh-Morpork Guild of Lawyers and served my articles here under Mister Slant,’ said Mr Thunderbolt. ‘As well as my Ankh-Morpork practice I am the only troll to have, moreover, accreditation as a lawyer in the realm of the Low King. Apropos of nothing, Sir Harry, I am also the nephew of Diamond King of Trolls, although, of course, I must add that the nature of troll families is such that the mere word “nephew” does not do the situation justice.’ The voice was the voice of a professor, but one who had chosen to speak in an echoing cave. The features were more or less like those of all trolls, unless you looked for the giveaway signs and recognized the careful masonry work, the richness of the plant life in the visible cavities and, not least, that elusive shine, and possibly shimmer, which caught the light so delicately; not boldly in your face, but irresistibly there. ‘And yes, I am diamond through and through and therefore I cannot tell lies for fear of shattering. Furthermore, I have no intention of trying to do so. It appears to me, gentlemen, from what you tell me, that the two of you are in accord, neither wishing to play unfairly and both of you wishing to act decently with one another and so, on this occasion, much as my Guild colleagues might disapprove, I suggest I act as mediator and lawyer for both of you. Troll justice is remarkably straightforward – I only wish that this could be the case everywhere else. However, should you fall out then I would not undertake work from either of you subsequently.’ Thunderbolt smiled and little sparkles flashed around the room like a firework display. ‘I will put together a short document which might, in other places, be called an agreement to agree. And I am the judge not on the side of you individually but on the side of you both. I am diamond and I cannot allow injustice to happen. I suggest, gentlemen, that you continue with your project, which seems to me remarkable, and leave the paperwork to me. I look forward to seeing you at the compound tomorrow.’ Harry and Dick were silent in the coach until Dick said, ‘Weren’t he nice? For a lawyer.’ By the time they got back to the compound the goblin Billy Slick, who had worked for Harry for many years, was in a tizzy – although he didn’t know that, not knowing the word existed – and he was at the gate waiting for them when the carriage drew up. Frantically, he said, ‘I closed the gate, Sir Harry, but it looks like they’ll climb over anything to see this … this … this thing! I keep telling ’em we ain’t running no fun house here.’ The light was fading and yet still the eyes of the onlookers were following Iron Girder as she travelled around the track while Simnel’s team put her through her paces, throwing off sparks in the twilight like signals to the universe that steam was here to stay. And when most of the sightseers had reluctantly left to go home for their supper, some of Harry’s goblins slunk into the compound to see the marvel of the age. They did indeed slink, Harry thought, not exactly like a burglar, but simply because the average goblin carcass was born slinking, except that right now they were dancing around Iron Girder, and the lads had their work cut out to keep skinny little goblin fingers out of dangerous places. Iron Girder sat and occasionally gave out a puff of steam or smoke while all the time, in the twilight, Harry heard tiny staccato voices interrogating the engineers: ‘What does this one do, mister?’, ‘What happens if I push this, mister?’, ‘I see, mister, that this one connects to the blastpipey armature.’ Harry and Dick joined Dave and Wally as they stood by Iron Girder answering the barrage of questions. To Harry’s surprise, instead of the complaints he was expecting to be issuing from the lads’ mouths, he saw they were smiling happily. ‘They seem to get it, sir! Oh, aye!’ said Wally. ‘They’re into everything! We’re ’aving to keep an eye on them, but they seem to understand without being told, can you believe that?’ And Harry marvelled. He quite liked the little buggers, as any employer would quite like somebody who worked hard, but how does a goblin get the understanding of steam engines? It must be something in their nature. Their scruffy little faces were wreathed in smiles at the sight of something metallic and complicated. It was a sign of the times, he thought, and it looks like time for the goblins. Simnel was silent for a moment as if waking up the internal steam for the next thought, then said, in a careful kind of voice, ‘You really would think they were born to it!’ ‘I can’t say I’m surprised, Dick,’ said Harry. ‘The clacks people say the same thing. It’s uncanny but it seems that they automatically understand mechanisms, so be careful as they like to take things apart on the fly just to see what they do. But once they understand how whatever it is works they seem to put it all back together again. There’s no malice, they just like to tinker with the best and, you know what, sometimes they improve things. How can you explain that? But if I was you I’d have one of you three sleeping under Iron Girder of a night just so they don’t get creative.’ The following day Moist von Lipwig was gently awakened by Crossly, who as yet had failed to grasp his master’s attitude to sleep, a fact which was reinforced by Moist turning over in bed and saying, ‘Mumble mumble grunt mumble groan mumble off!’ The sequence was repeated three minutes later, with the same response, this time with the emphasis on the last syllable, uttered three times with increasing volume. Subsequently – in fact and to be precise, fifteen minutes later – Moist von Lipwig was pulled out of the arms of Morpheus by the none too gentle prodding of a blade belonging to one of the Ankh-Morpork palace guards, a species he didn’t like very much in any case because they were stolid and dumb. Admittedly, so were the majority of the City Watch, in Moist’s opinion, but at least they were by and large creatively and, at least, humorously dumb, which made them a lot more interesting. After all, you could talk to them and therefore confuse them, whereas with the palace guards, well, all they knew was how to prod, and they were quite good at it. It was wise not to put them to any trouble, and so Moist, fully conversant with how this sort of thing worked, dressed grumpily and followed them to the palace, and undoubtedly an audience with Lord Vetinari. The Patrician was, unusually, not at his desk, but paying attention to something on the large polished table that filled one half of the Oblong Office. He was, in fact, playing. It seemed ridiculous, but there was no denying it: he was watching a children’s toy quite intently, a little cart, or trolley of some sort, on a little metal rail, which allowed it to scuttle continuously in a circle for no readily apparent reason. He straightened up after Moist coughed loudly and said, ‘Ah, Mister Lipwig. It’s so kind of you to come … eventually. Tell me, what do you make of this?’ Somewhat perplexed, Moist said, ‘It looks like a children’s plaything, sir.’ ‘In fact it is a very well crafted model of something much bigger and far more dangerous.’ Lord Vetinari raised his voice and said, as if talking not only to Moist but to the world in general, ‘Some might say that it would have been easy for me to prevent this happening. A stiletto sliding quietly here, a potion dropped into a wine glass there, many problems solved at one stroke. Diplomacy, as it were, on the sharp end, regrettably unfortunate, of course, but not subject to argument. ‘People might say that I wasn’t paying attention and through neglect of my duties allowed the poison to seep into the imagination of the world and change it irrevocably. Perhaps I could have taken some action when I first saw Leonard of Quirm doodle something very much like this little toy in the margins of his drawing of the “Countess Quatro Fromaggio at her Toilette”, but of course I would rather shatter the most priceless antique vase than see any harm come to one hair on that most useful and venerable head. I thought it would go the way of his flying machines, nothing more than a toy. ‘And now it has come to this. One simply cannot trust the artificers; they design some terrible things for the sheer love of doing so, without wisdom, foresight or responsibility, and frankly, I would like to see them chained up where they can do no harm.’ And here Lord Vetinari paused and added, ‘And I could have made that happen in an instant were it not for the fact, Mr Lipwig, that the wretches are so damn useful.’ He sighed, causing Moist to worry. Moist had never seen his lordship so discomfited, staring intently at the little truck as it went round and round on its little rails and filled the room with a smell of methylated spirits. There was something hypnotic about it, for Lord Vetinari, at least. A silent hand dropped lightly, and eerily, on to Moist’s shoulder. He turned around quickly and behind him was Drumknott, smiling gently. ‘I suggest you pretend you didn’t hear anything, Mister Lipwig,’ he whispered. ‘It’s the best way, especially when he has one of his, er, sombre moments …’ Still whispering, Drumknott continued, ‘A lot of this is to do with the crossword, of course. You know how he is about that. I intend personally to write to the editor. His lordship considers elegant completion to be a test of his integrity. A crossword is meant to be an engaging and educational puzzle.’ And then, his normally pink face reddening, Drumknott added, ‘I’m sure it’s not intended to be a form of torture, and I’m certain that there is no such word as lagniappe. However, his lordship has terrific powers of recovery, and if you care to wait while I make you some coffee I’d wager he’ll be his old self again before you can say “death warrant”.’ In fact, Lord Vetinari stared at the wall for only eight minutes more before he appeared to shake himself down. He beamed at Drumknott and, less warmly, acknowledged the presence of Moist, who had been surreptitiously looking at the unfinished crossword lying prominently across the table. Moist said, brightly but with the best of intentions, ‘My lord, I’m sure you know that lagniappe is spelled differently than it sounds. Just a thought, of course, only trying to be helpful, sir.’ ‘Yes. I know,’ said Lord Vetinari, in dark tones. ‘Can I be of any other assistance, my lord?’ said Moist, reckoning that he hadn’t been prodded out of his bed for an undone crossword, or to admire a child’s toy. Lord Vetinari looked down his nose at Moist momentarily and said icily, ‘Since you have finally decided to join us at this difficult time, Mister Lipwig, I will tell you that there was once a man called Ned Simnel who made a mechanical device, propelled in some arcane way, for taking in the harvest. The present difficulties might have begun there, but fortuitously his device didn’t work, tending, apparently, to explode and burst into flames, and so the balance of the world was maintained. But, of course, the men who are drawn to tinkering continue to tinker in their little sheds! And not only that, they find ladies, good sensible ladies, who inexplicably agree to marry them, thus breeding a race of little tinkerers. ‘One of them, a scion of the aforesaid Simnel, has apparently been scratching about in his father’s shed and most certainly wondered if he, with his infinite curiosity, could achieve what his father, alas, had not. And now this young man has created a machine which devours wood and coal and spews out flames, polluting the sky, undoubtedly scaring every living creature for miles around, and making the gods’ own noise. Or so I am told. ‘Finally, young Mister Simnel has found his way to our good friend Sir Harry King. And apparently the two of them are now dreaming up an enterprise, which I believe is called … the rail way.’ Vetinari paused only briefly before continuing. ‘Mister Lipwig, I feel the pressure of the future and in this turning world must either kill it or become its master. I have a nose for these things, just as I had for you, Mister Lipwig. And so I intend to be like the people of Fourecks and surf the future. Giving it a little tweak here and there has always worked for me and my instincts are telling me that this wretched rail way, which appears to be a problem, might just prove to be a remarkable solution.’ Moist looked at the Patrician’s grey expression. He had articulated the term ‘rail way’ in something like the voice of an elderly duchess finding something unmentionable in her soup. It had total disdain floating in the air around it. But if you watched the weather of Lord Vetinari, and Moist was an expert in the Patrician’s meteorology, you would notice that sometimes a metaphysical cloudburst might very shortly turn into a lovely day in the park. He could almost smell his lordship coming to terms with the reality in front of him: tiny movements of the face, changes of posture and the whole litany of Havelock Vetinari thinking suddenly delivered one of those smiles which Moist knew suggested that the game was afoot, and the mind of Lord Vetinari was running and well oiled. Vetinari said, getting more cheerful at every word, ‘My coach is waiting downstairs, Mister Lipwig. Come.’ Moist knew that any kind of argument was useless, and he also knew that Lord Vetinari most definitely knew that too; but there was such a thing as pride, and so he said, ‘My lord, I must protest! I have a lot of work to be done. Surely you are aware?’ Lord Vetinari, his robe fluttering behind him like a banner, was already halfway to the door. He was a long-boned man and Moist had to run to keep up, occasionally hopping down the stairs two at a time, with Drumknott in pursuit. Ahead of him his lordship said, over his shoulder, ‘Mister Lipwig, you don’t in fact have a great deal of work to do. In fact, as Postmaster General, Deputy Chairman of the Royal Bank of Ankh-Morporkfn18 and, of course, Master of the Royal Mint, you employ on our behalf a great many extremely clever people, who work very hard, that is true. Your strange camaraderie, your skill at getting people to like you against all the evidence and amazingly continue to like you, makes you a very good boss, it must be said, with staff who are very loyal to you. But ultimately all you really need to do in the way of desk work is a little light auditing every so often.’ Lord Vetinari stepped up his pace and continued, ‘And what is it that we can take away from all this, I fail to hear you ask? Well, I shall tell you. What the wise man will take away is a certainty that any favour is worth doing for a good boss, and I, Mister Lipwig, am a most exemplary and forbearing employer. This is apparent from the circumstance that your head is still clearly resting on your shoulders despite the fact that it might possibly be in, oh, so many other places, as it were.’ The country of Llamedos prided itself on being sensibly dwarfish. In truth, there were as many humans as dwarfs who called Llamedos home but since most of them were miners, and, as a rule, were either small or almost permanently concussed, you really would have to look carefully to tell the species apart. Therefore, given that practically no one was bigger than anybody else, there was a general amiability in the area, especially since, although this wasn’t generally talked about, the Goddess of Love saw to it that her spell covered all alike. And because nobody talked about it, well, nobody talked about it, and so life moved on with the mining for gold – what little there was of it by now – iron ore, such zinc and arsenic as could be teased out of the unforgiving rock and, of course, coal. All this was supplemented with fishing on the coast. The outside world was involved only occasionally, when something of real importance happened. That was yesterday. Today, it happened. The ship arrived at the dock in Pantygirdl, the largest town in Llamedos, just after lunch. The arrival of the grags on board, who had come to preach the truth of pure dwarfishness to the people of the town, would have been welcomed had they not come with delvers, the shock troops of the grags, who had never before been seen above ground. Until then, the people of Llamedos were quite happy that the grags were doing whatever it was they did in the realm of the spirit and the observances thereof, keeping things done properly so that everybody else could get on with the unimportant things like the mining and the fishing and the stonework up in the hills. But today it all went horribly wrong, because Blodwen Footcracker was getting married to Davy Counter, an excellent miner and fisherman and, importantly, a human, although the importance of this fact did not seem to most people locally to be, well, important. Just about everybody in Pantygirdl knew them both and considered them a sensible match, especially as they had known one another since they were toddlers. And while they were growing up people wondered, as people did, about the chances of a dwarf and a human conceiving a child and considered it a long shot to say the least, but then they satisfied themselves by telling one another that, after all, love was certainly there in abundance and, besides, whose business was it anyway? He and she were compatible and loving and, as the mines and the boats took their toll of miner and fisherman alike, there were always plenty of orphans anxious for a new home in their own country. And everybody in Pantygirdl agreed that the situation, while not as it might have been, was nevertheless satisfactory to the kind of people who minded their own business, and they wished the happy couple, who were, it must be said, very nearly the same size, all the very best. Alas, the grags and the delvers must have thought otherwise, and they broke down the doors of the chapel, and since people in Llamedos didn’t go armed to their weddings the grags had it all their own way. And it might have been a complete massacre were it not for old Fflergant sitting hitherto unnoticed in the corner, who, as everyone ran for shelter, threw off his cloak and turned out to be exactly the kind of dwarf who would take heavy weaponry to a wedding. He swung a heavy sword and axe together in a wonderful destructive unison, a whirlwind of fighting, and in the end there were only two casualties among the wedding party. Unfortunately one of those was Blodwen, killed by a grag whilst clinging on to her husband’s arm. Covered in blood, Fflergant looked around at the shocked wedding guests and said, ‘You all know me. I don’t like mixed marriages, but like you I can’t abide those bloody grags, the bastards! May the Gap take them!’ Lord Vetinari’s coach spun through the streets of Ankh-Morpork, and Moist watched the traffic scatter around them until they reached the River Gate and were out of the city proper. The coach bowled quickly along the road as it followed the Ankh downstream, towards Harry King’s Industrial Estate, a world of smokes, steams and, most of all, undesirable odours. Ankh-Morpork was cleaning up its act. It had been a good act, full of spices, plagues, floods and other entertainments. But now the Ankh-Morpork dollar was rising high, and so was the price of property. Amazingly, a great many people wanted to live in Ankh-Morpork, as opposed to somewhere else (or quite possibly as opposed to being dead in Ankh-Morpork, which was always an optional extra). But, as everybody knew, the city was gripped in its ancient stone corsetry, and nobody wanted to be there, metaphorically speaking, when the stays burst. There was overspill, and my, how it was spilling. Farming land around the city state, always at a premium, was now full of speculative building.fn19 It was a wonderful game, and Moist, in a previous life, would undoubtedly have joined in and made a fortune, several fortunes in fact. And indeed, while Lord Vetinari was looking out of the window, Moist listened to the sirens and their beguiling songs of money to be made by the right man in this right place and the entrancing vision hung in the air for a tantalizing moment. Ankh-Morpork was surrounded by clay, easily dug up, so if the cow shit ran out there was the material for your bricks, right there in front of you, with timber easily available from the dwarfs, delivered to your site by water. Soon you’d have a terrace of bright new homes available to the rising and aspirational population anxious to buy, and then all you needed was a shiny billboard, and, most definitely, an exit strategy. The coach passed by many buildings of this sort, which would no doubt be little palaces to the occupants, who had escaped from Cockbill Street and Pigsty Hill and all the other neighbourhoods where people still dreamed that they could ‘better themselves’, an achievement that might be attained, oh happy day, when they had ‘a little place of their own’. It was an inspiring dream, if you didn’t look too deeply into words like mortgage and repayments and repossession and bankruptcy, and the lower middle classes of Ankh-Morpork, who saw themselves as being trodden on by the class above and illegally robbed by the one below, lined up with borrowed money to purchase, by instalments, their own little Oi Dongfn20. As the coach rumbled past the settlements, known together as New Ankh, Moist wondered whether this time Vetinari, in allowing all these lands to be colonized in such a way, had been very stupid or indeed very, very clever. He plumped for ‘clever’. It was a good bet. Eventually they arrived at the first outpost of the complicated, stinking, but ultimately most profitable, wire-netting-fenced compound of Sir Harry King, sometime tosher and rag-and-bone man, now believed to be the richest man in the city. Moist liked Sir Harry, he liked him a lot, and occasionally they shared the wink of men who had made it the hard way. Harry King had indeed come up the hard way and those who got in his way went down the hard way too. Most of the area before them was full of the products of Harry King’s noisome profession, conveyor belts coming and going from who knows where, being loaded and unloaded and sorted by goblins and free golems. Horses and carts went past loaded with even more grist for that particular mill. At the far end of the compound was a collection of large sheds, and in front of them a stretch of surprisingly clear space. Moist suddenly noticed the crowd outside the compound fence, pressing up against every inch of wire netting, and felt their expectancy. As the coach stopped, he smelled the acrid scent of coal smoke cutting through the general fetor, and heard what sounded like a dragon having difficulty sleeping, a kind of chuffing noise, very repetitive, and then suddenly there was a scream, as if the biggest kettle in the world had got very, very angry. Lord Vetinari tapped Moist on the shoulder and said, ‘Sir Harry tells me that the thing is quite docile if handled with care. Shall we go and have a look? You first, of course, Mister Lipwig.’ He pointed to the sheds, and as they got nearer the smell of coal smoke got thicker, and the almost liquid chuffing noise got louder. Moist thought, well it was a mechanism, that’s what it was, wasn’t it? Merely a thing like a clock, yes, just a mechanism, and so he straightened up and walked fearlessly, on the outside at least, towards the door where a young man with a greasy hat and an even more greasy overall was beckoning with a greasy grin like a fox looking speculatively at some chickens. It seemed they were expected. Harry came bustling out and said, ‘Greetings, my lord … Mister Lipwig. Please come and meet my new associate, Mister Dick Simnel.’ Behind them, inside the shed, was the shuddering metallic monster, and it was alive. It really was alive! The thought lodged instantly in Moist’s brain. He smelled its breath and heard its voice. Yes, life; strange life but nonetheless life of a sort. Every part of it was subtly shaking and moving, almost dancing by itself, a thing alive, and waiting. Behind the beast, in the shed, he saw wagons, presumably ready to be towed, and he thought, yes, it’s an iron horse. All around it were acolytes: men working on lathes, hammering on metal, running backwards and forwards with buckets of grease and cans of oil and occasionally pieces of wood which, right now, looked out of place amongst all the iron. And there was a strong sense of purpose that meant we want something done and we want it done fast. Dick Simnel smiled broadly from behind a mask of grease and said, ‘’ow do you do, sirs. Well, ’ere she is! Nowt to be afraid of! Her name, technically, is Number One, but I call ’er Iron Girder! She’s my machine. I made her, every little bit: nuts, bolts, flanges and not to forget each and every rivet. Thousands of ’em! And all the glasswork too. Very important, your sight glasses and gauges. Had to design everything meself because no one has ever done it before.’ ‘And when you give her rails she’ll move more freight than a battalion of trolls, and get there much faster to boot,’ said Sir Harry, standing behind Moist. And he added, ‘It’s true. I swear that young Simnel tinkers with Iron Girder all the time: tinker, tinker, tinker. An overhaul every day.’ He laughed and said, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he eventually got her to fly.’ Mr Simnel wiped his hands on his greasy rag, causing them to get even more greasy, and then proffered one to Lord Vetinari, who gently waved it away, saying, ‘I would prefer it if you dealt with Mister Lipwig, Mister Simnel. If I decide to allow you your fascinating … experiment, it will be to him that you answer, in the first part. Personally, I treasure my ignorance of how machinery works, although I am well aware that this is something of great interest to some people,’ he added, in a tone of voice that suggested he meant strange and secret people … busy people, excitable people, fiddling people, tinkering and volatile people. A kind, alas, who would say something as innocent as, let’s give it a try, it can’t hurt, surely? We can always hide under the coffee table. ‘My interest,’ continued Lord Vetinari, ‘lies in ways and means, opportunity, danger and consequences, do you see? I am given to believe that your remarkable engine is propelled by steam, heated until the boiler almost, but doesn’t quite burst. Is that not the case?’ Mr Simnel gave the Patrician a cheerful smile and said, ‘That’s about it, gaffer, and I’ve blown up one or three in testing, I don’t mind telling thee! But now, sir, we’ve got it right, sir. Safety valves! That’s the ticket! Safety valves made out of lead, bungs that melt if the fire box gets too hot so the water comes down and extinguishes the fire before the boiler blows.’ Simnel carried on, ‘Live steam is very dangerous, of course, to them that don’t have the knowing of it, but to me, well, gaffer, it’s as playful as a puppy. Sir Harry has allowed me to build a demonstration track, sir,’ and he gestured to the rails that led out of the shed and wound round the perimeter of the compound. ‘May I ask if you gentlemen would care to come for a little spin?’ Moist turned to Vetinari and said, with a flat face, ‘Yes, how about it … gaffer?’ And got a look like a stiletto. A look that said, we’ll have words about this later. Vetinari turned to Simnel and said, ‘Thank you, Mister Simnel. I think on this occasion I will give that honour to Mister Lipwig. And I dare say Drumknott will be eager to accompany him.’ This was said brightly, but Drumknott looked anything but delighted at the opportunity, and frankly neither was Moist overjoyed, remembering too late that he had put on an expensive new jacket. Moist asked, ‘Mister Simnel, why does your contraption need to run on rails, please?’ Dick Simnel smiled the expansive smile of a man who really, really wants to talk about his wonderful pet project and is now keen to illuminate every bystander to the point of boredom, and in the worst cases suicide. Moist recognized the type; they were invariably useful and in themselves amiable and quite without malice of any sort, but nevertheless they were implicitly dangerous. And right now, Mr Simnel, happy as a clam and greasy as a kebab, said, speaking earnestly, ‘Well, sir, steam likes it smooth, sir, and the countryside is full of ups and downs, and steam and iron are heavy, and so putting all this together back at Swine Town we found it much more sensible to lay down what we call t’permanent way, it’s a kind of road wi’ tracks, or rails, just for the engine to run on, as it were.’ ‘Railway’ll do fine for the punters, though,’ said Harry. ‘I keep telling the lad – short and snappy, that’s the kind of name people remember. Can’t expect them to ride on something they can’t spell.’ Simnel beamed, and suddenly his genial face seemed to fill the world. ‘Now then, Iron Girder is greased, in steam and all fired up for you, gentlemen. Who’s ready for a little ride?’ Drumknott had not uttered a word, and remained staring at the dribbling engine like a man looking at his doom. Moist, taking pity on the little clerk for once, half pulled him, half helped him up into the small open cabin of the metal beast, while Mr Simnel fussed around, tapping mysterious brass and glass items, and the fire in the belly of the beast burned hotly, and filled the place with yet more smoke. And suddenly there was a shovel in Moist’s hand, put there by Simnel so fast that Moist couldn’t avoid it. The engineer smiled and said, ‘You can be t’stoker, Mister Lipwig. If she needs stoking you’ll need to open up t’fire box when I tell you. Ee, we’ll ’ave some fun.’ Simnel looked down at the stunned Drumknott and said, ‘Er, as for you, sir, well, I’ll tell you what. You, sir, you can blow t’whistle, by means of this chain here. And as you see, gentlemen, this is by way of being a working prototype, with not very much of the comforts of home, but ’old on and you’ll be fine, so long as you don’t stick your head too far out. We’ll be pulling a fair few ton today. Sir Harry were interested to see what she were made of, and so, er, Mister Drumknott, blow the whistle, if you please!’ Speechlessly, Drumknott yanked on the chain, and shuddered as a banshee scream came from the engine. And then, well, thought Moist, there was not very much, just one chuff, a jerk, another couple of chuffs, and another jerk, another chuff, and suddenly they were moving, not only moving but accelerating as if the end of Iron Girder was trying to be out in front. Through roiling clouds of steam Moist looked behind at the loads they were towing in the creaking carts, and he could feel the weight, and yet still the engine with its train was gathering speed and momentum. Mr Simnel was placidly tapping his dials and shifting levers, and now here came a curve, and the train chuffed, and every truck followed the curve like ducklings following their dear old mum, rattling a little, certainly creaking, but nevertheless being one big moving thing. Moist had travelled fast before. Indeed, a golem horse, that rare creation, could have easily outpaced them. But this, well, this was machinery, handmade by men: wheels, bolts, brass knobs, dials, gauges, steam and the grunting sizzling fire box, beside which Drumknott was standing now, hypnotized and pulling the chain that blew the whistle as if performing a holy duty, and everything shook and continued to shake like a red-hot madhouse. Lord Vetinari and Harry came into view as the train raced towards them on its first lap. And they disappeared behind Moist into the cloud of smoke and steam left hanging in the air. Then, as Iron Girder plunged on, it broke through into Moist’s consciousness that this wasn’t magic, neither was it brute strength, it was, in fact, ingenuity. Coal and metal and water and steam and smoke, in one glorious harmony. He stood in the fierce heat of the cabin, shovel in hand, watching and wondering about the future, as the train of carriages bumped round once more, screeching slightly on the second curve. Then, with the sound of tortured metal, it slid to a stop a few feet away from the watchers in front of Iron Girder’s shed. Now Mr Simnel was all arms and business, shutting things down and turning things off as the wonderful engine died. Moist corrected himself: not died – she was sleeping but still dribbling water and hissing steam and, inexplicably, she was very much alive. Simnel dropped down from the cab on to a makeshift wooden platform and looked at his enormous stopwatch, glanced at the dial and said, ‘Not bad, but I couldn’t really open ’er up round here. On the test track over at Swine Town I got her going at almost seventeen miles an hour, and I can swear that she could go much faster if I could lay down a longer track! And she moved reet wonderfully, didn’t she, gentlemen? With all that load, tons of it.’ This was said to his fellow engineers. ‘Aye, what is it?’ And this, in fact, was directed to a small wide-eyed urchin, who seemed to have miraculously appeared by the side of the track. Simnel looked on gravely as the urchin took out a very small notebook from his jacket pocket and meticulously wrote down the numeral 1 as if it were a command. And Moist, for some reason, couldn’t help himself from saying, ‘Well spotted, young man, and you know what? I rather feel that you’re going to need a much bigger book before long.’ And the certainty hit him that, although Lord Vetinari’s face was as impassive as ever, those of Harry King and some of the other on lookers were gleaming in the smoky light of the future to come. Given the numbers already lining the fence, straining to watch the train on its circuits of the compound, the news was out and flying. Harry King said, ‘Well, gents, is this iron horse not amazing? She seems to be able to move anything, I assure you. Now, there’s a nice lunch awaiting us in my boardroom, gentlemen. Shall we go up there? … There’s some cracking good beef.’ Lord Vetinari broke his silence. ‘Certainly, Sir Harry, and perhaps in the meantime someone could locate my secretary?’ They turned to look at the engine, which had come to a stop in a kind of human way, not all at once, but settling down like an old lady making herself comfortable in a favourite armchair, except that at that moment Iron Girder blew out a hissing stream of shining water vapour, which does not normally happen with old ladies, at least not in public. Drumknott, up in the cabin, was still desperately pulling the chain for the next whistle, and he seemed to be weeping like a toddler bereft of a favourite toy as the sizzling got fainter. He caught their gaze, carefully relinquished the chain, climbed down from the footplate and almost tiptoed through the sizzling steam and the occasional unexpected mechanical creak, as the metal cooled. He walked gingerly over to Dick Simnel and said, hoarsely, ‘Could we do that again, please?’ Moist watched the Patrician’s face. Vetinari seemed to be deep in thought, then he said breezily, ‘Very well done, Mister Simnel, an excellent demonstration! Am I to believe that many passengers and tons of freight could be carried by means of this … thing?’ ‘Well, yes sir, I see no reason why not, sir, although of course there would have to be some additional work, decent suspension, and properly upholstered seats. I’m sure we could outdo the stage coaches, which are a right pain in the arse, sir, and no mistake … if you would excuse my Klatchian.’ ‘Indeed I will, Mister Simnel. The state of our roads and therefore of our horse-drawn carriages leaves much to be desired. A journey to Uberwald is a penance without a cause and no amount of cushions seem to help.’ ‘Yes, my lord, and riding on sleek steel rails in a well-sprung carriage would be the height of comfort. So smooth!’ said Moist. ‘Perhaps people could even sleep in a suitable carriage, if there was such a thing?’ he added. He was surprised that he’d said this out loud, but, after all, he was a man who saw possibilities, and now he was seeing them in spades. And he saw the face of Lord Vetinari brighten considerably. Iron Girder had ridden her tracks much better than the post horses managed with the flints and potholes of the high roads. No horses, thought Moist, nothing to get tired, nothing that needs feeding, just coal and water, and Iron Girder had pulled tons of weight without a groan. And as Harry led the Patrician towards his office, Moist ran his hand over the warm living metal of Iron Girder. This is going to be the wonder of the age, he thought. I can smell it! Earth, air, fire and water. All of the elements. Here is magic, without wizards! I must have done something good to be in this place, here today, at this time. Iron Girder gave a final hiss, and Moist hurried after the others heading for their lunch and the future of steam. In the plush comfort of Harry King’s boardroom, all mahogany and brass and extremely attentive waiters, Lord Vetinari said, ‘Tell me, Mister Simnel, could your engine go all the way to, let us say, somewhere like Uberwald?’ Simnel appeared to cogitate for a moment and then said, ‘I don’t see why not, your worship. It might get tricky round about Skund and, of course, it gets a bit steeper further on, but I’d say the dwarfs know how to knock damn great ’oles in t’scenery when they want to. So yes, sir, I’m certain it’s possible, in time, with a big enough engine.’ He beamed and said, ‘If we have t’coal and t’water, and t’tracks, a locomotive engine could take you anywhere you wanted.’ ‘And is it open to anyone to build an engine?’ said Vetinari suspiciously. Simnel brightened up and said, ‘Oh, aye sir, they can try, but they ain’t had none of my secrets, and we Simnels’ve been working on steam for years. We’ve learned by our mistakes. They can learn by theirs.’ The Patrician smiled faintly. ‘A man after my own heart, though laminating oneself to the roof of one’s workshop is such a finite lesson!’ ‘Yes, I know, but if I might be so bold, sir,’ Simnel continued, ‘I’d like to bid for t’Post Office work, right here and now. Strike while t’iron’s hot, that’s always been the Simnel motto. I know the clacks can send a message as fast as lightning, but it can’t do parcels and it can’t do people.’ Lord Vetinari’s face gave nothing away, and then he said, ‘Oh really? I strike when I like, but never mind, Mister Simnel. I will not stand in the way of your exploring possibilities with Mister Lipwig, but I suggest we must also consider the position of the coachmen and farriers in this time of change.’ Yes, Moist thought, there would be changes. You’d still find horses in town and Iron Girder couldn’t plough, although for a certainty Mr Simnel could make her do so. ‘Some people will lose out and others will benefit, but hasn’t that been happening since the dawn of time?’ he said out loud. ‘After all, at the beginning there was the man who could make stone tools, and then along came the man who made bronze and so the first man had to either learn to make bronze too, or get into a different line of work completely. And the man who could work bronze would be put out of work by the man who could work iron. And just as that man was congratulating himself for being a smarty-pants, along came the man who made steel. It’s like a sort of dance, where no one dares stop because if you did stop you’d be left behind. But isn’t that just the world in a nutshell?’ Vetinari turned to Simnel. ‘Young man, I must ask you, what do you intend to do next?’ ‘There’s that many people wanting to see Iron Girder up close like, I thought mebbe I’d hitch up t’wagons and put in some little seats, and offer them all the chance of a ride behind her. If Sir Harry’s agreeable, that is.’ ‘There is of course the question of public safety,’ said Vetinari. ‘Did I hear you say earlier you have blown up … “one or three” I think was the phrase?’ ‘I made those explode a-purpose, to see exactly how it ’appened. That’s the way to get the knowledge, you see, sir.’ ‘You take your work very seriously, Mister Simnel. And have any other engineers evaluated your findings? What I’m asking, Mister Simnel, is what is the judgement of your peers?’ Simnel brightened up. ‘Oh aye, sir, if you mean Lord Runcible, sir, he’s our landlord over at Sto Lat, but when I asked him, he laughed a lot and said it were amazing what people got up to and told me just not to run Iron Girder in the pheasant season while they were mating.’ ‘Indeed,’ said Vetinari. ‘If I might rephrase my question, what is the verdict of other engineers who have seen your wonderful machine working?’ ‘Oh, I don’t think anyone calling ’imself an engineer, except me and my lads, has ever seen Iron Girder, although I’ve heard that over in Nothingfjord a couple of lads’ve made a damn good steam pump for getting groundwater out of mines and suchlike. All very interesting, but not as interesting as Iron Girder herself. I’d like to go visit them for a pint and a chat one day, but as you can see I’m busy, busy, busy all the time.’ ‘Your lordship,’ said Harry, ‘I respect Mister Simnel because I’ve seen that he’s one of those men who tuck their shirt into their trousers and that says dependable to me. Now, there’s a line of people out there who really want to whizz about behind the lad’s … er … locomotive. I reckon they’ll pay top dollar for taking a ride on the very first one of its kind. And the people of Ankh-Morpork are so thirsty for novelty that the whole city is, you might say, hurrying the future along for the sheer joy of watching its progress. So I’m thinking that every man and boy and possibly even their ladies would like to have a ride on this wonderful machine.’ ‘And should we count the risk, when simply to live in Ankh-Morpork is to shake hands with risk every day of the week?’ murmured his lordship. ‘Mister Simnel, you have my goodwill, such as it is, and I can see a twinkle in the eye of Sir Harry, a man who, if I may say so, looks like someone who intends to be an investor, although, of course, that is entirely up to him and you. I am no tyrant …’ There was a moment of hushed silence around the table and Lord Vetinari continued, ‘That is to say I am not a tyrant stupid enough to take a stand against the zeitgeist, but, as you know, I am the man who can steer it with care and consideration. That is why I intend to speak to the editor of the Times this very evening to leave him, as he would say, in the loop. He always likes to be consulted, it makes him feel important.’ His lordship smiled and said, ‘Amazing, how do we think up these things? I wonder, indeed, what will come next.’ The atrocity of the attack on the clacks tower at Sto Kerrig, which had so recently been a lifeline to the world for the people in the town, shocked everyone. As Adora Belle Dearheart looked at the wreckage in the gathering dusk, she was not surprised to see a very large and handsome wolf approaching at speed and, unlike most wolves, carrying a package between its jaws. The wolf disappeared behind a haystack, and shortly afterwards out of the haystack came a handsome female, only marginally dishevelled, wearing the uniform of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. Captain Angua, the most notable werewolf in the Watch, said, ‘Oh my, they’ve certainly made a mess, haven’t they? And are you sure that only one of your people was hurt?’ ‘Two goblins, captain, but they bounce well. Quick-witted, too. Can you imagine, they managed to send out a final message saying that their tower was under fire from dwarfs before they legged it. Very conscientious, the goblins, when it comes to machinery. They are always better on the night shift. Can I say, captain, when you find out who did this I’ll press charges and press them very hard indeed, to a point when a police officer like yourself would have to look away for fear of seeing something they didn’t want to.’ ‘I wouldn’t worry about that, Miss Dearheart. His lordship takes the view that to interfere with the clacks is to interfere with the proper running of the world. Treason not only to one’s own state, but to all.’ ‘At the moment, my friend Shatter of the Icicle, the lead goblin on this tower, has a bit of a battered arm, but he’ll certainly assist in finding the dwarfs who did this. However, I don’t know where Shine on the Moon has got to.’ ‘I’ll prowl the area until my back-up gets here. I’m expecting the cart and Igorina for the forensics,’ said Angua. ‘If you hear something screaming it might be me, but don’t worry. Commander Vimes has no time for senseless saboteurs.’ There was a pause, and Adora Belle said gravely, ‘There’s something I think you ought to see. Look under this pile of timber: this dwarf looks very, very dead and horribly mutilated. I assume he probably tripped and fell when he was setting fire to the tower. What do you think, captain?’ Carefully, Captain Angua looked at the corpse and said, ‘He’s lost an ear.’ Adora Belle said, ‘Well, apropos of nothing at all, I understand that when goblins get truly riled up they go all frisky and look for souvenirs.’ ‘But I’m quite certain, of course, that none of your clacks goblins would be getting up to anything like that, right?’ Angua asked. Distantly, Adora Belle replied, ‘Yes, having been almost burned alive by dwarf extremists would be shrugged off as another day in the office and not something to get very excited about.’ She looked at the captain quizzically, who said, ‘Quite so. Undoubtedly any injuries were caused by the incompetence of the terrorists themselves.’ ‘Why, yes, indeed, yes,’ said Adora Belle. ‘Wasn’t it amazing how one of them managed to chew his own ear off?’ Angua observed. ‘So, can Shine on the Moon come out of hiding now?’ ‘I’m sorry,’ said Angua carefully, ‘I didn’t hear what you said over the cracking of the tower.’ The silence in Lord Vetinari’s study was absolute. Nevertheless, the tread of Drumknott’s approach contrived to make it even more silent as the secretary handed his lordship a little slip of paper and told him that a second clacks tower had been torched by people calling themselves, in translation, ‘The Only True Dwarfs’. Drumknott waited while not a muscle moved in Lord Vetinari’s face before he said, ‘Let it be known that enemy action on the clacks system will be followed by the death of not only those who did it but also those who ordered it to be done, whoever they are. Send this to every embassy, consulate and head of state. Action this night, please.’ Still speaking calmly, Lord Vetinari continued, ‘It is also time, I think, to let the dark clerks deal with the more unusual suspects. I’m sure your concludium has given you some clues, Drumknott, and of course we will assist in any way possible. The Low King must be … unhappy about this. Although the stricken clacks tower was ours, we know that the impact of this problem falls in the last event on the King himself. Therefore, send him a message on the black clacks and let him know that I myself and, undoubtedly, Lady Margolotta will support any new plan he chooses to make. The grags have once again broken a solemn accord and that, Drum knott, batters the pillars of the world and not inconsiderably. After all, if you can’t trust governments, whom can you trust?’ There was a subtle cough from Drumknott and his smile at that point was more like a grimace. Before the secretary was released to his private office and its other intrigues, Lord Vetinari continued fishing in his own stream of consciousness, and said, ‘I seldom get angry, Drumknott, as you know, but I am angry now. I should be grateful if you would send for Commander Vimes in his other incarnation as Blackboard Monitor Vimes. I require his assistance and I don’t think he will be a happy man – which, from my point of view, has no downside in these circumstances. Please put the message out to Mister Trooper that this is not the time to be a nice person.’ He went on, ‘This isn’t war. This is a crime. There will be a punishment.’ Rhys Rhysson, Low King of the dwarfs, was a dwarf of keen intelligence, but he sometimes wondered why someone with that intelligence would go into dwarfish politics, let alone be King of the Dwarfs. Lord Vetinari had it so easy he must hardly know he was born! The King thought humans were, well, reasonably sensible, whereas there was an old dwarf proverb which, translated, said, ‘Any three dwarfs having a sensible conversation will always end up having four points of view’. It wasn’t quite as bad as all that, but it was near enough these days, he told himself, as he looked over at the assembled members of his council in which, according to the rules, he was the first among equals. He had read somewhere in the scrolls that they owed him fealty, whatever that was. It sounded like a kind of porridge. When his secretary, Aeron, had returned from a recent visit to Ankh-Morpork, he had described a foot-the-ball game he witnessed, which had, at its centre, a referee. Right now, Rhys was feeling something of what the referee had to go through since all the balls were kicked right at him. How could you be the Low King in a realm where even the factions had factions and those factions had microscopic factions? He envied, oh how he envied, Diamond King of Trolls who, apparently, gave instruction and advice to his myriad subjects. After which they said thank you, something that the Low King didn’t hear very often. Diamond King spoke for all trolls everywhere. The dwarfish race, however, had fractured now almost to the point of disarray and all of this ended up as a problem the Low King had to deal with. There was today, obviously, an agenda or, rather, a regrettably large number of agendas, one for every faction. Glumly, Rhys wondered what the word was for a large number of agendas, and decided that the term should be a living death of agendaritis. It was the deep-down grags that gave him nightmares because, well, there was something offensive about those thick leather clothes and conical hats. After all, he thought, we’re all dwarfs together, are we not? Tak never mentioned that dwarfs should cover their faces in the society of their friends. It struck Rhys that this practice was deliberately provocative and, of course, disdainful. Now, on the everlasting agenda, dwarfs from every mine were grumbling about the exodus of the young to the big cities. And, of course, they all had reasons for why this might be the case, all of them wrong. Anyone who wasn’t a dwarf who preferred to live in darkness, in every meaning of the word, knew that the reason the younger generation was now overwhelming Ankh-Morpork, for example, was simply down to those very same grumblers and their activities. On the other hand, those he thought of as progressive dwarfs, the type who would quite happily have a troll as a friend, were bearing down on him, the King, about their race’s tendency to drive itself into a kind of purdah. There was a great cloud of misunderstanding in the Low King’s hall, which on every side appeared almost wilful, as if any dispute, however insignificant, had to be thrashed through to the bitter end. It was something in the dwarf psyche. We spend too much time indoors, Rhys thought. He sighed when he realized that Ardent, whose voice had become unbearably loud, now had the floor. Ardent was a dwarf that the King would have liked to see present at a mine disaster, preferably underneath it. However, Ardent had followers, stupid followers, and he also had powerful friends. And that was it. Politics. Politics was like those little wooden sliding-picture games for children: you had to move all of the pieces in the hope of finding a place where the whole picture slotted together. At the moment Ardent was insinuating that, in truth, the mining of fat in the Schmaltzberg fat mines was not truly dwarfish, a comment which led an elderly dwarf, whom the King recognized as Sulien Heddwyn, to get to his feet. Heddwyn put his hands on his axe and said, ‘My father was a fat miner. My grandfather was a fat miner. And so was my grandmother, she was a very fat miner and I was a miner when I was a minor. My mother gave me a tiny pick as soon as I was old enough to hold it. Every one of my relatives back to the dive of the Fifth Elephant was a fat miner and I’ll tell you, the export income from the Plains for our purest fats is what keeps this town running. So I won’t take an insult like this from a b’zugda-hiarafn21 too afraid to look at the sunshine.’ The sound of metal on metal echoed around the hall, followed by silence, with everyone waiting to see what was going to happen next. And that meant Rhys Rhysson had to break that silence. After all, he was, was he not, the Low King, the Low King of all the dwarfs? He smiled, well aware that one wrong word from him would send shock-waves around the cavern and the result, whatever it was, would be his fault. Such is the fate of those who work only for the propagation of peace over warfare, and the way of the conscientious facilitator is a path strewn with thorns. He looked at the angry councillors brandishing weapons around the huge table. It was as if being a dwarf meant that you lived in a permanent state that the term ‘grumpiness’ simply couldn’t convey. A conference of dwarfs was, in their language, a confusion of dwarfs. His voice low, Rhys spoke. ‘For what purpose am I King? I will tell you. In a world where we formally recognize trolls, humans and, these days, all manner of species, even goblins, unreconstructed elements of dwarfdom persist in their campaign to keep the grags auditing all that is dwarfish.’ He looked sternly at Ardent as he continued, ‘Dwarfs from every area where dwarfs live in sufficient numbers have tried to modernize, but to no avail apart from those in Ankh-Morpork, and the shame of it is that often those determined to keep dwarfkind in the darkness have somehow inculcated their flocks into believing that change of any sort is a blasphemy, no specific blasphemy, just a blasphemy all by itself, spinning through the cosmos as sour as an ocean of vinegar. This cannot be!’ His voice rose and his fist crashed down on the table. ‘I am here to tell you, my friends and, indeed, my smiling enemies, that if we do not band together against the forces that wish to keep us in darkness dwarfkind will be diminished. We need to work together, talk to one another, deal properly with one another and not spend all our time in one enormous grump that the world isn’t entirely ours any more and, at the finish, ruin it for everyone. After all, who would deal with such as us in a world of new choices? In truth, we should act as sapient creatures should! If we don’t move with the future, the future will twist and roll right over us.’ Rhys paused to accommodate the inevitable outburst of Shame! and Not so! and all the other detritus of rotted debate, and then spoke again. ‘Yes, I recognize you, Albrecht Albrechtson. The floor is yours.’ The elderly dwarf, who had once been favourite to win the last election for Low King, said courteously, ‘Your majesty, you know I have no particular liking for the way that the world is going, nor some of your more modern ideas, but I have been shocked to discover that some of the more headstrong grags are still orchestrating attacks on the clacks system.’ The King said, ‘Are they mad?! We made it clear to this council and all dwarfs, after the message we received from Ankh-Morpork about their clacks being attacked, that this stupidity must cease at once. It’s even worse than the Nugganites,fn22 who were, to be sensible about this, totally and absolutely bloody insane.’ Albrecht coughed and said, ‘Your majesty, in this instance I find myself standing shoulder to shoulder with you. I am appalled to see things go this far. What are we but creatures of communication and communication accurately communicated is a benison to be cherished by all species everywhere. I never thought I would say this, but the news I am hearing lately, and am expected to delight in, makes me ashamed to call myself a dwarf. We have our differences and it’s right and proper that we should have them, and discourse and compromise are cornerstones in the proper world of politics, but here and now, your majesty, you have my full and unequivocal support. And as for those who stand in our way, I call down a murrain on them. I say, a murrain!’ There are uproars and there are uproars and this uproar stayed up for a very long time. Eventually Albrecht Albrechtson brought his axe down on to the table, splitting the wood from top to bottom, bringing terrified silence across the gathered dwarfs, and said, ‘I support my King. That is what a King is for. A murrain, I said. A murrain. And a Ginnungagap for those that say different.’ Rhys Rhysson bowed in the direction of the old dwarf. ‘I thank you, my old friend, for your support. You have my undying gratitude and you leave me in your debt.’ Then, to some onlookers, the Low King might have looked a little taller. Over the hubbub, and there is no hubbub as bubbling as a dwarf hubbub, the King felt strangely buoyant, lifted, like the strange gases found around the crater of the Fifth Elephant. It seemed to the King that some of his councillors were suddenly thinking, actually thinking, and they had listened, actually listened. And now they were trying to think creatively. Rhys continued, ‘Not for nothing is Ankh-Morpork the residence of even more dwarfs than live here in Uberwald; and we now know that quite a large number of our dwarfs are emigrating to the lands of Diamond King of Trolls. So it is that our traditional enemy is now a friend to the many fleeing from the agents of the grags.’ As he expected, the hubbub bubbled even more: wilful bubbled hatred, bubbled misunderstanding, bubbled spitefulness. He said, ‘I tell you now that history will run straight over us squabbling dwarfs and I will not stand by and allow that history to end with our race brought down to the status of angry b’zugda-hiara! I am the King, by right, duly elected with all the proper observances. I was anointed on the Scone of Stone in accordance with traditions going back to the time of B’hrian Bloodaxe and I will serve the sacred duty by all means necessary. I declare these grags and their puppets are d’hrarak and I will not suffer their pernicious doctrines any more. I am the King, and I will be King!’ The uproar returned, as it always did, but Rhys thought he could see some comfort in the faces around the table and then his gaze ran into Ardent and triumph wobbled a little and he thought softly: sooner or later, my friend Mister Ardent, I will have to deal with you. Lord Vetinari’s expression did not alter as he read the headline in the Ankh-Morpork Times: ‘LOCOMOTIVE PROJECT DANGEROUS FOR HEALTH’ followed in a much smaller font by ‘SO IT IS CLAIMED’. And it wouldn’t alter until he had had a word with the editor. Of course, the Patrician knew that any change was an affront to somebody, and quite clearly the proposed locomotive undertaking couldn’t hope to be anything other than a target. ‘Apparently,’ Vetinari remarked to Drumknott, ‘the pounding rhythm of the railway wagons will lead to immorality. This from a Mister Reginald Stibbings of Dolly Sisters.’ He signalled to one of the dark clerks. ‘Geoffrey, what do we know about this Mister Stibbings? Does he have a particular expertise in immorality?’ ‘The one at Loose Chippings, my lord? I am informed that he has a very young mistress, sir. A young lady formerly employed at the Pink PussyCat, and very highly thought of there, I believe.’ ‘Does he? An expert indeed, then.’ Vetinari sighed and continued, ‘Though of course I do not imagine it is in my remit to monitor the private doings of my people.’ ‘My lord,’ interjected Drumknott. ‘As a tyrant that is, in fact, exactly what you do.’ Vetinari gave him a look that did not actually employ a raised eyebrow but which implied that one might be forthcoming if the recipient of the look pushed his luck. He shook the paper in front of him and continued. ‘A Mrs Baskerville from Peach Pie Street says that young ladies travelling on the train might find any kind of gentlemen sitting next to them.’ He thought for a moment and said, ‘In this city, expecting to encounter any kind of gentleman seems somewhat optimistic. But perhaps she has a point. It might be prudent to have compartments for ladies only. I rather think that Effie King would approve that.’ ‘Excellent idea as always, sir.’ ‘And what do we have here? A Captain Slope is very concerned about noxious gases around the lines of the railway.’ Lord Vetinari snapped his paper shut and exclaimed, ‘The people of Ankh-Morpork are already at home to noxious gases. It’s their birthright. Not only are they at home with them, they quietly persist in making more. It seems that Captain Slope is one of those people who won’t like the railway at any price. Suggesting that sheep will miscarry and horses will run until they die of exhaustion … Indeed, it seems that Captain Slope thinks the railway will be the end of the world. Well, Drumknott, you know my motto: vox populi, vox deorum.’ Curious, the Patrician thought, as Drumknott hurried away to dispatch a clacks to the editor of the Times, that people in Ankh-Morpork professed not to like change while at the same time fixating on every new entertainment and diversion that came their way. There was nothing the mob liked better than novelty. Lord Vetinari sighed again. Did they actually think? These days everybody used the clacks, even little old ladies who used it to send him clacks messages complaining about all these new-fangled ideas, totally missing the irony. And in this doleful mood he ventured to wonder if they ever thought back to when things were just old-fangled or not fangled at all as against the modern day when fangled had reached its apogee. Fangling was indeed, he thought, here to stay. Then he wondered: had anyone ever thought of themselves as a fangler? However, on the other hand, his lordship quite saw the point of the coach drivers and the others who even now, according to the Times, could see their business falling away if the railway were to be introduced, and he pondered, in such circumstances, what is the careful prince to do? He thought, how many lives had been saved by the clacks, and not just lives: marriages and reputations and possibly thrones? The clacks towers now spanned the continent this side of the Hub and Adora Belle Dearheart had provided evidence that the clacksmen had several times spotted nascent fires, and on one occasion, outside Quirm, a shipwreck a little way out to sea – when they had clacksed that information to the nearest harbour master, saving all hands. There was nothing for it but to follow the wave. New things, new ideas arrived and strutted their stuff and were vilified by some and then lo! that which had been a monster was suddenly totally important to the world. All the time the fanglers and artificers were coming up with even more useful things that hadn’t been foreseen and suddenly became essential. And the pillars of the world remained unshaken. As a responsible tyrant, Lord Vetinari regularly audited his actions fearsomely and without favour. Trolls in Ankh-Morpork were rarely talked about these days because, amazingly, people barely thought of them as trolls any more, just as, well, large people. Much the same, although different. And then there was the position of the dwarfs, the Ankh-Morpork dwarfs. Dwarfish? Yes, but now on their own terms. The Low King was certainly aware that in Ankh-Morpork there was a large population of dwarfs that had taken a look at the future and decided to grab a slice of it. Tradition? they had thought. Well, if it suits us then every so often we’ll have a parade of all things dwarfish. Sons and daughters of our parents but, as it were, augmented. We have seen the city. The city where almost anything is plausible, if not possible, including, for the ladies, a better class of lingerie. Far away in a small mine at Copperhead, Maelog Cheerysson the cobbler put down his hammer and tacks. ‘Look here, my boy,’ he said to his son, who was leaning on his work bench. ‘I’ve heard what you said about the grags being the salvation of dwarfs, and this morning I found this: it’s an iconograph of me in Koom Valley. The last time. Oh, yes, I was there, nearly everybody was there. We’d been told by the grags that the trolls were our enemies and I thought of them as nothing more than nasty big lumps of rock out to crush us! Well, we were all lined up facing the buggers, and then somebody shouted, “Trolls, put down your weapons! Dwarfs, put down your weapons! Humans, put down your weapons!” ‘And there we stood and we could all hear other voices in different languages and right in front of me there was this bloody big troll, oh my! He had his great big hammer ready to pulverize me. That was not to say that my axe wasn’t about to take his bloody knees off at the same time, but the voices were so loud that everybody stopped and looked around and he looked at me and I looked at him and he said, “What’s happening here, mister?” and I said, “I’m damned if I know!” ‘But I could see the other side of the valley and there was a great big kerfuffle between the top brass, all screaming about dropping our weapons, and I looked at the troll and he looked at me, and he said, “Are we going to have a war, or what?” and I said, “Oh, and I’m pleased to meet you, my name is Maelog Cheerysson,” and he sort of grinned and said, “They call me Smack, and I’m pleased to meet you.” ‘And all around us people were wandering around and asking one another what the hell was going on and were we fighting or were we not fighting and if we were fighting what were we fighting for? So some of the lads sat down and lit a fire for a brew-up, while at the other end of the valley the flags were fluttering and everybody was walking around like it was a holiday or something. ‘And then a dwarf came up to us and said, “Good fortune, lads, you’re going to see something that no one else has seen for millions of years,” and we did, I reckon. We were some way away from the front of the queue because trolls and humans and dwarfs were coming back out of the cavern, and every single one of them going past us looked as if he’d been hypnotized. ‘Now, I’ve told you about the miracle of Koom Valley before, my lad, but you haven’t seen this iconograph of me and Smack. It was took at the time just after we realized we weren’t going to be fighting that day and we all went in ones and twos into that cavern and saw the two kings: the king of the dwarfs and the king of the trolls, entombed in shining rock, playing Thud! And we saw it! And it was true! They’d been friends in death. And that gave us the signal that we needn’t be enemies in life. ‘And that was it until later Smack and me tried to find something both of us could drink. A lot of the people were doing the same thing, but the potion he gave me nearly blew my bloody head off. It certainly made my boots burn. Smack has got two kids now, you see, doing all right, working in Ankh-Morpork. Trolls ain’t all that good at writing, but I think of him and I think of Koom Valley every day.’ The old cobbler looked sideways at his son’s face and said, ‘You’re a smart boy. Smarter than your brother was … and I reckon you’ve got a question to ask me.’ The boy coughed and said, ‘If you saw them playing Thud, Dad, can you remember which one was about to win?’ The old dwarf laughed. ‘I asked that when I met Commander Vimes, and he wouldn’t tell me. We reckoned he probably broke a few pieces off so no one knew who the winner would be so some curious little fellow like you wouldn’t go off and try to start the whole damn war again.’ ‘Commander Vimes? The Blackboard Monitor?’ ‘Yes, it was him all right. Shook my hand. Shook both our hands.’ The boy’s tone was suddenly reverential. ‘You actually shook hands with the actual Commander Vimes!’ ‘Oh, yes,’ said his father nonchalantly, as if meeting the famed Blackboard Monitor was all in a day’s work. ‘I suspect you have another question, my lad.’ And the boy frowned. ‘So, Dad, what’s going to happen to my brother?’ ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know. I sent a petition to Lord Vetinari, saying that Llevelys is a good lad who got into bad company. And I received a reply, and his lordship said that a young dwarf set fire to a clacks tower while people were working on it. And his punishment will be at his lordship’s leisure. And so I sent him another letter, saying that I had fought at Koom Valley. And I received another reply, and his lordship said that he understood that I didn’t fight at Koom Valley because fortunately nobody did, but he understood that I must do what I can for my eldest son, and as his lordship said, he will cogitate.’ The old dwarf sighed. ‘I’m still waiting, but as your mother says, while we’re not hearing anything, then he’s still alive. Now don’t tell me, my lad, that the grag extremists are on our side, because they ain’t. They’re the ones that’ll tell you that the dead kings have been made up in Ankh-Morpork and were dummies and so were we if we thought they were real. And, my boy, the dumb believe it! But I was there. What I touched I felt, and so did everybody else on that day and that’s why I get angry when the grags start preaching about the horrible humans and the terrible trolls. ‘They want us to be frightened of one another, thinking there must be an enemy, but the only enemy now is the grags and those poor fools like your brother, who set fire to a clacks tower and got badly burned for his trouble. They are the victims of the sneaking bastards in the darkness.’ Far away in the Oblong Office Drumknott put the midday edition of the Times in front of Lord Vetinari and looked down at Mr Cheerysson’s latest frantic petition, saying, ‘They’ve torched two more clacks towers, my lord, but so far no one has died. Except on their side, of course. Young dwarfs, badly advised. They should have known better.’ The silence enveloped Lord Vetinari. ‘Indeed,’ said his lordship, ‘but it is easy to be an idiot when you are seventeen and I would warrant that the grags who put them up to it are much older. There is no sense in breaking the arrow if, by acting sensibly, you may capture the archer. I’ll leave the Cheerysson boy thinking about his fortune in the Tanty for a while and will make a note to have him brought over to talk to me in a month or two. If he’s clever, his parents won’t be grieving, and I’ll have a number of names and, above all, the goodwill of his parents. Always worth thinking about, don’t you agree, Drumknott?’ ‘Damage to property,’ said Drumknott speculatively. ‘Yes,’ said Lord Vetinari. ‘That’s it.’ A few days later, Crossly quietly entered the master bedroom of the house in Scoone Avenue, nudged Moist, and, when that had no effect, finally pinched his ear in order to get his attention. He whispered, ‘Excuse me, sir, but his lordship requires your presence at the palace immediately, and I am sure that neither of us would like to see the mistress troubled at this time, yes?’ At home and, for once, in bed at the same time as Moist, Adora Belle Dearheart was gently snoring, although she was certain that she did not. Moist groaned. It was the crack of seven and he was allergic to the concept of two seven o’clocks in one day. Nevertheless he dressed with a speed and silence trained by experience, walked noiselessly downstairs, left the house and got a trolley bus to the palace. He ran up the steps to the Oblong Office, reflecting that, day or night, he had never seen it empty. This time Lord Vetinari was at his desk, looking, if the word could be applied to Lord Vetinari, chipper. ‘Good morning, good morning, Mister Lipwig! Rather speedier than last time, yes? I imagine you haven’t had time to look at your newspaper today? Something rather droll has happened.’ ‘Is it something interesting to do with the railway, perhaps, my lord?’ Lord Vetinari looked puzzled for a moment and then said, ‘Well, there is something, yes, since you ask.’ He sniffed as if what he was dealing with was not in the great scheme of things all that important and continued, ‘I am being told that everybody is going to Harry King’s compound to see the marvel of the steaming train, which seems to have caught the public fancy. I understand that Sir Harry, with his usual business acumen, is already turning this into a commercial enterprise. ‘Of course, that is news, but when you do indeed get hold of a newspaper you might notice a small apology from the editor of the Times to the effect that the crossword has been removed, as the compiler is stepping down for a while owing to the pressures of keeping up the standard of achievable games that are nevertheless sufficiently taxing. Of course, as a rule I do not gloat, but I fear she has met her match. I shall ask Drumknott to arrange for a box of chocolates to be sent to her, from a secret admirer. After all, I am generous in victory!’ Lord Vetinari cleared his throat again and said solemnly, ‘Alas, Drumknott has taken the morning off to go and have another look at the engine. A morning off. Whoever heard of such a thing? I have to say that I’m somewhat surprised, as the only other time he has ever requested time away from my service was to attend the paperclip, stapler and desktop aids symposium three years ago. He got very excited about that one, too. One wonders what the attraction of this engine can be. Does it not seem rather strange to you?’ Moist was a little nervous of the use of ‘strange’ and ‘Drumknott’ in the same sentence, and instead volunteered to visit the site of the train to escort Drumknott back to the palace. ‘Since you will be there, Mister Lipwig, I shall be pleased to hear your … impressions on the economic opportunities for my city.’ Ah-ha, thought Moist, so that’s why he’s dragged me out of bed … again. Nothing to do with the crossword, nothing to do with Drumknott, but everything to do with his city getting an interest in the railway. His lordship gave Moist a brisk nod and waved the paper, suggesting that it was time for him to be on his way. It took Moist a long time to push his way through the throng anxious to see the modern miracle of the age. Harry King’s business compound was at the very end of the queue that seemed to straggle halfway back to the city. There was no sign of Drumknott but Moist wasn’t surprised. When Drumknott was standing in front of you, he was so retiring as not to be there. There were guards on the gates all round the compound, Harry’s own and City Watch, watching like hawks as one by one the citizens queueing up parted with a whole dollar a time to ride behind the locomotive. And a dollar was a dollar, possibly a day’s food for a family, and yet, as far as Moist could ascertain, flying over the rails on the wonderful train was worth tightening your belt for. It was better than the circus, better than everything, to be speeding along with the wind in your face and black smuts that made the eyes water, but were, well, the badge of the train riders, who nevertheless didn’t seem to notice it, given the amount of unpleasantness that could slap, splat, spit or fly into your face when you stepped into the street, or even when you walked into your own house, if you lived anywhere near the Shades. Moist was well versed in the people of Ankh-Morpork’s love of novelty, and, he had to admit it, Iron Girder, pulling her train like the queen she was, was novelty in the extreme. She came trundling around the corner with people in the carts behind screaming and waving to friends still waiting in the queue. And as a connoisseur of the madness of crowds he watched carefully, and noted that some passengers disembarked and scuttled away to the man who was handing out little tokens in exchange for another dollar, and then ran all the way to the back of the very, very long queue for another go. There was a click near by and then a flash, and he turned to see the perennially cheerful face of Otto Chriek, lead iconographer of the Ankh-Morpork Times, who gave him a friendly wave. ‘Vell now, Mister Lipvig, surely you’re behind zis in your cheeky little vay?’ Moist laughed and said, ‘No, not me, Otto, but it’s very popular, isn’t it!’ And I want to be at the very centre of it all, he said to himself. He noticed that periodically the man collecting the money hurried away carrying huge leather pouches, with a troll bodyguard fore and aft, and was instantly replaced with another showman ready for the moneys of the mob. And so Moist, as he told himself in his own cheeky vay, followed the money. He followed it in between the great noisome heaps and stinking lagoons of Harry’s empire until the man with the large pouches of coin walked into a large shed. He followed him inside and froze, because he was immediately surrounded by the kind of men who have their noses splashed against one side of their face, little in the way of conversation and, he noticed now, very bad halitosis. Fortunately, the shed also contained Sir Harry, who was bright enough to wave a hand in the air and say, ‘Okay, boys, loosen those sphincters. It’s only Mister von Lipwig, my old chum and bank manager. He’s practically one of us, ain’t you, Moist?’ Moist grinned, thankful that sphincters were, right now, not in play, and said, ‘Well now, Harry, you know, as your bank manager I of course make it my duty to look after your interests, and I gather that you’re looking after the interests of Mister Simnel too?’ That hung in the air like a sickle, a sharp one at that, and he watched Harry’s face, which hadn’t moved one single muscle. And then, abruptly, Harry burst out laughing and said, ‘Oh my, Mister Lipwig, I always said you was a sharp card and, if it comes to that, a card sharp!’ He nodded to his bodyguards and said, ‘Go and have a little break, lads. Me and my old friend here’ll be having a little chinwag, such as old friends do. Go on, bugger off, the lot of you.’ And indeed they did, all except one, the very largest, a troll who glittered strangely and was watching Moist most intently, but not as intently as Moist watched him. And, Moist thought, the troll was … a gentleman. He couldn’t think of him in any other way; he was well dressed, which was remarkable in itself as most trolls viewed clothes as optional. Somewhat embarrassed at this interest, Moist felt rude enough to say, ‘Okay, Harry, but there’s one bodyguard still here. D’you think I’m going to try anything?’ Harry King guffawed. ‘That, Mister Lipwig, is my lawyer. His name is Mister Thunderbolt, got the letters after his name and everything, ain’t you, Thunderbolt?’ Lawyer! Bingo! Harry was laughing all the way from his belly now and said, ‘Mister Lipwig, the look on your face! Don’t worry, though. Mister Thunderbolt takes everybody that way. That isn’t to say I ain’t glad to see you, but you could be of service to both me and our friend the engineer. Shall we go somewhere a bit more private? Coffee?’ Harry waved at a clerk, who bustled away swiftly, and then ushered Moist and Thunderbolt up to his office overlooking the compound. Harry sat down and beckoned to Thunderbolt and Moist to do the same. ‘Now then, you know me, Mister Lipwig, like I know you. We’re a pair, eh? Not exactly crooks, not exactly, well, not now anyway, ’cos we’ve grown up and know how to do business properly, don’t we?’ He concluded with a wink. ‘And we both know a once-in-a-lifetime deal when we see it, I’m sure. Tell me if I’m wrong, yes?’ There was somebody who was a lawyer in the room, moreover a lawyer who could presumably kill you with one punch, and it was always worth thinking about anything that you were going to say in front of a lawyer because you never knew if you really could trust the weasels, but Moist nodded at Mr Thunderbolt and said, with careful diction, ‘Sir Harry, Lord Vetinari has set me the task of assessing this wonderful new invention on behalf of the city.’ Harry King opened a box of big cigars, sniffed them and chose one before proffering the box to Moist and Thunderbolt. The troll declined, of course, but Moist was never one to turn down one of Harry King’s finest cigars. They came from far-off places and were truly excellent. Harry puffed out a big cloud of smoke, leaving him for a moment looking just like Iron Girder, and it occurred to Moist that Harry, who knew that symbols were important, was definitely hoping to be the first railway baron. ‘Mister Lipwig, Iron Girder is peacefully, for want of a better word, transporting eager citizens around the track regular as clockwork. Round and round they go, happy as you like, you must agree? Mister Simnel says he built her as a proof of concept and he needs a lot of money to build a full-size version that can pull even more people and, above all, freight, because he reckons that’s where the money is to be made, although looking out of the window at all those smiling faces I’m not so sure of that.’ Sir Harry sent another plume of smoke into the air and looked smug, which, Moist considered, was probably the case, before adding, ‘Since I know you, Mister Lipwig, and I know that you can read me, yes, I’m prepared to bankroll the lad in exchange for a slice of the profits, a big and fair slice. I understand that he’s now all but skint, totally boracic, with the arse nearly out of his trousers, and if he’s ever going to get his ambition to run bigger trains to here, there and bloody everywhere then he needs a partner with experience of the world, and I have that experience from the bottom up, as it were. ‘But, you know how it is, gents … when a man gets older and he’s made his pile he starts caring a bit more about what people think about him, so I ain’t no dwarf, I won’t steal an advantage on a young man with prospects. That’s why I’m happy to say that with the help of Mister Thunderbolt here I’ve struck a fair deal with the young lad. Ain’t that so, Mister Thunderbolt?’ The air seemed to glitter as the troll stood up, shimmering as he spoke. His voice appeared to come from twilight canyons far away. It wasn’t just sound, it had a presence in its own right. ‘Yes, that is so. Sir Harry, I suggest now that even though you have a handshake deal with Mister Simnel, there should be three shares in this enterprise, to avoid deadlock, with the third and very small share in the hands of the city, to wit, Lord Vetinari. The purpose of the arrangement is in case Mister Simnel and you, Sir Harry, are unable to agree on a matter connected with what we are all calling the “railway”. Lord Vetinari will have the casting vote to end that deadlock. But the city will not take any dividends; its income will come, as always, from straightforward taxation, which I am sure Lord Vetinari will consider an important part of this enterprise. ‘The small print will be a little more complicated, and of course if Mister Simnel’s locomotives catch on there will be opportunities to sell extra shares in the future. If you both agree, gentlemen, I will deal with that aspect and you may be certain that in compliance with Sir Harry’s instructions Mister Simnel and his family will have a significant share in the business.’ As slowly as he had stood up, Mr Thunderbolt sat down again, and Moist von Lipwig and Sir Harry King looked at one another. Harry, beaming, said, ‘I suppose I’d better get the lad in, then,’ and nodded to Thunderbolt to open the door. A few minutes later Dick Simnel sat uncomfortably in his seat, trying not to make anything greasy, without much hope and even less success. Harry appeared not to notice and said cheerfully, ‘Now then, lad, it’s like this. You reckon that with enough money you could make engines larger and more powerful than Iron Girder, right? And with long enough, er, rails, you could get to all the other cities? Well, lad, I’ll bankroll you in this enterprise until you’re in a position to prove that this is possible.’ He stopped talking for a moment, looked at the ceiling and said, ‘Tell me: how long d’you think that’ll be?’ The engineer looked thoughtful and somewhat baffled and said, ‘I couldn’t rightly say, sir, but the more the money jingles the faster the wheels’ll turn. I mean, if I can hire the best skilled workers and, well, sir, I’ve made my calculations, done a lot of testing and I reckon I could have a new engine ready for …’ Moist held his breath. ‘One thousand dollars.’ Moist glanced at the face of Harry King, who flicked the ash from his cigar and said, in a deadpan way, ‘A thousand dollars? And how soon can you have it on the rails, lad?’ Simnel took his small sliding device out of his pocket, played with it for a minute or so and said, ‘How about two months?’ He fiddled with the device again and added, ‘Around teatime.’ Moist was fidgeting at this point, and he chimed in with, ‘Excuse me, I know you said that Simnels have been working on steam for years and that other people might have been too, but do you know if anybody else has anything like this? Might they steal a march on you even if they don’t have your secrets?’ To his surprise Simnel said cheerfully, ‘Oh yes, sir, about four or five of them, but none of them have yet produced even a working concept like Iron Girder. They’re making all t’mistakes my dad did, and making a few others of their own an’ all, from what I hear. Superheated steam doesn’t give you a chance. Get it wrong and it’ll tek t’flesh off your bones. Now me, sir, well, I’m a stickler for measurements, tiny teeny weeny measurements. They ain’t very exciting but that’s the soul and centre of being an engineering artificer. ‘Unfortunately, my granddad and my dad were a bit slapdash about them, seeing as they didn’t have the proper knowing of them, but measurements is your saving grace if you want to raise steam. Me mum paid for me to get a better learning, being as ’er side of the family had money from …’ he paused, ‘fishing, and one of my uncles made theodolites and other delicate instruments, and I thought to meself, well, this is very helpful, especially when he taught me ’ow to blow glass, and what I need glass for is my own little secret …’ Simnel looked anxious for a moment and said, ‘I’ll need a shedload of iron, especially for t’tracks themselves. And, of course, then there’s the question of laying t’tracks through people’s land … someone’ll have to talk to the landowners. I’m an engineer, always will be, and I’m not sure I know how to ’aggle with the big nobs.’ ‘Ah, as it happens we have a born haggler with us right now,’ said Harry. ‘What do you say, Mister Lipwig? Do you want to be a part of it?’ Moist opened his mouth to speak. ‘There you are, then, young Dick. We’ll use Mister Lipwig for any negotiations. He’s the kind of man who’d follow you into a revolving door and still come out in front. And he speaks posh, when necessary. Of course, he’s a bit of a scoundrel, but aren’t we all in this business?’ ‘I don’t think I am, sir,’ said Simnel cautiously, ‘but I know what you mean. If you don’t mind, I’d like to suggest that my first track is laid all the way back to Sto Lat. Well, not exactly Sto Lat, it’s a place on the outskirts called Swine Town, there being so many pigs in the area. That’s where the rest of my gear and machinery is stored.’ Simnel looked nervously at Sir Harry, who was pursing his lips. ‘It’s a long way, lad, must be twenty-five miles or more, and you’d be right out in the sticks there.’ Moist couldn’t hold his tongue. ‘Yes! But they wouldn’t be the sticks for long, would they? Try and get fresh milk in the city … it’s always bad cheese by the time it gets to you, and then there are things like strawberries, watercress, lettuce, you know, everything with a limited shelf life! The areas that have the railways’ll be more prosperous than those that don’t! It was the same at first with the clacks. Everybody said they didn’t want the towers, and now anybody who’s anybody wants one at the bottom of their garden. The Post Office’ll be on your side too, moving the mails faster and all that, and I can assure you that the Royal Bank will be right behind you, and indeed, Mister Simnel, I’ll invite you to join me in my office as soon as possible to discuss our special banking facilities …’ Harry King slapped his thigh and said, ‘Mister Lipwig, didn’t I say it: you’re a man who sees an opportunity when it’s in front of him!’ Moist smiled. ‘Well, Harry, I think it’s in front of all of us now.’ In fact, in his mind’s eye Moist could see lots of opportunities and plenty of room for problems, and here right in the middle of it all was Moist von Lipwig. It couldn’t get better than this! His smile widened, inside and out. It wasn’t about the money. It had never been about the money. Even when it was about the money, it wasn’t entirely about the money. Well, it was slightly about the money, but most of all it was about what the dwarfs called the craic. The sheer pleasure about what you were doing and where you were doing it. He could feel the future catching him up. He could see it beckoning. But, of course, sooner or later someone would try to kill him. That usually happened, but you had to take the chance. It seemed to be a necessary part of the whole thing, whatever the whole thing actually was. You always had to take the chance. Any chance. Harry gave Moist a sideways glance and said, over his shoulder, ‘Mister Simnel, if you’ve got a lot of your valuable stuff in a shed up there in Pig City or wherever, would you mind me sending a couple of my …’ Harry paused, seeking for a genteel wording, ‘… my useful gentlemen to keep an eye on the place for you?’ Simnel looked puzzled and said, ‘It’s really a quiet old place, sir.’ Harry moved into what might be called his avuncular persona and said, ‘That might very well be so, my lad, but I think that you and me are going to a place where there’ll be a lot of money, and where there’s a lot of money there are a lot of people trying to take it off you. I’d like to think that if anyone broke into your big shed to fossick around for any interesting bits of machinery or clues as to how you build your engines, they might find themselves having to explain their interest to Snatcher, Stiletto Dave and Grinder Bob. They’re all good lads, kind to their old mums and wouldn’t hurt a fly. Call it, well, call it … insurance. And if you can be good enough to let them have a key, I’ll send them up there right now. Mind you, if you can’t find a key I’m sure they’ll find their way in. They’re very versatile in that respect.’ Young Simnel smiled and said, ‘That’s very thoughtful of you, Sir Harry. Perhaps I should give them a message to take to my mother. She’ll show them where everything is. My dad said always put a few nasty little booby traps around the place before you lock up and then after that owt they can steal from you they’re welcome to, if they’ve still got their arms to carry it away, that is.’ Harry laughed out loud and said, ‘Sounds to me like your old dad looked at things just the way I do. What’s mine is mine and what is mine is me own.’ When Moist and Mr Thunderbolt stepped out into the compound Moist saw that people were still queueing up for a ride on the train, which was waiting like a queen while Mr Simnel’s lads filled her bunker full of coal, and oiled and greased everything again, including themselves. They tapped her wheels and polished everything that could be polished, once again including themselves, while just about every little boy in the city, and, amazingly, most of the girls, stared at her in awe, worshipping at her shrine. And then it came back to him: earth, air, fire and water, the sum of everything! The goddess had found her worshippers. There was a sound like thunder, but it was only Mr Thunderbolt clearing his throat to say, ‘Remarkable, isn’t it, Mister Lipwig? There appears to be what one can only call a presence of sorts, a hint, as it were, that life turns up in many different guises, perhaps? Just a passing thought.’ Moist had never heard such clear diction from a troll, and it must have shown, because Thunderbolt laughed, saying, ‘A touch of diamond does the trick, Mister Lipwig, and I will endeavour to draw up contracts that suit all parties, you need not worry.’ Just then Moist beheld Drumknott, greasy and cheerful and covered with smuts, stepping off the engine and regretfully handing a hat and a very grubby jacket to one of Mr Simnel’s lads. Moist grabbed the little secretary by one arm. ‘Where did you get to, Mister Drumknott? I’ve been looking for you everywhere,’ he lied. ‘His lordship is expecting you back any time now.’ Moist wasn’t sure he liked Drumknott, but it wouldn’t do to have him as an enemy, being so close as he was to the engine that drove Ankh-Morpork, and so he cleaned up the little man as best he could and flagged a coach back into the city, noticing, as they travelled along the busy towpath, that the major traffic was still going the other way. Moist knew about the zeitgeist, he tasted it in the wind, and sometimes it allowed him to play with it. He understood it, and now it hinted at speed, escape, something wonderfully new, the very bones of the land awakening, and suddenly it seemed to cry out for motion, new horizons, faraway places, anywhere that is not here! No doubt about it, the railway was going to turn coal into gold. ‘Excuse me, young man.’ Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobby Nobbs, who had taken it upon themselves to patrol the line of expectant sightseers queueing for a ride on the train, looked around uncertainly. It had been a long time since Sergeant Colon had been a young man, and as for Nobby Nobbs, although it was generally agreed that he was the younger of the two, there was some doubt about whether the term Homo sapiens could be applied to him; the jury of Ankh-Morpork was out. Colon and Nobby were supposed to have been on the beat in the Shades, but Colon had delegated that task to a couple of new recruits. ‘Good experience for ’em, Nobby. And it’s likely to be a dangerous business, this streaming engine. Needs someone to have a look-see – a couple of experienced coppers, let’s say, prepared to put therselves in harm’s way for the public good.’ ‘Young man … excuse me,’ came the voice again. The speaker was a harassed-looking lady with two boys at heel, who weren’t at all at heel and were expressing their frustration at having to wait for the promised ride on the train in the supremely annoying ways that only small children can manage. In a desperate attempt to distract them from their contest to inconvenience as many people in the queue in front of them as possible, their mother had seized on the first official-looking people who might be able to entertain her offspring with some interesting facts. ‘We were just wondering if you could tell us how this locomotive goes?’ she asked. Fred Colon took a deep breath. ‘Well, missus, there’s the boiler, you see. It’s like a kettle.’ This was not enough for the smaller child, who said, ‘Mum’s got a kettle. That doesn’t go anywhere.’ His mother tried again. ‘And how does this “boiler” work?’ ‘Well, you see, it sends the hot water to the engine,’ said Nobby hurriedly. ‘Right,’ said the lady, ‘and then what happens?’ ‘And then all the hot water goes into the wheels.’ The elder boy looked sceptical. ‘Really? How’s that done?’ Nobby, cornered, said, ‘I think the sergeant can tell you that.’ A little bead of sweat appeared on Colon’s face and he was aware that the two children were looking at him as if he were some kind of exhibit. ‘Ah, well, the water is magnetic, right, because of all that spinning,’ he said. The elder boy said, ‘I don’t think it works like that.’ But Colon was on a roll and ignored him. ‘The spinning causes the magnetism and that’s what makes the water stick in there. Lots of iron in train wheels, stands to reason. And that’s what keeps the train on the iron road, magnetism.’ The smaller boy changed tack. ‘Why does the engine go chuff?’ ‘That’s because it’s chuffed,’ said Colon with a sudden flash of inspiration. ‘See, you’ve heard of “chuffed”. That’s where it comes from.’ Nobby looked at his friend in admiration. ‘Is that why, sarge? I never thought of that!’ ‘And when it’s had enough of a chuffing, there’s enough magnetism to hold the train on the iron road, see?’ The last phrase was delivered in a rush in the hope that no more questions would be forthcoming. But it doesn’t work like that with children. The elder boy had had enough and decided to show off the knowledge gleaned from friends who had been there earlier in the day. ‘Isn’t it to do with reciprocating motions?’ he said, with a glint in his eye. ‘Ah, well, yes,’ blustered Colon helplessly. ‘You’ve got to have your recip-roca-tory motions to get the right kind of chuff. And when everything is chuffing and reciprocatoring, away we go.’ The smaller child was still puzzled, as well he might be. ‘I still don’t understand, mister.’ ‘Well, perhaps you’re too young to know,’ said Colon, taking refuge in the excuse used by exasperated adults through the millennia. ‘Very technical stuff, your chuffing. Probably shouldn’t even be trying to explain it to children.’ ‘I don’t think I understand either,’ said the mother. ‘You know clockwork?’ said Nobby, coming to the rescue again. ‘It pretty much goes like clockwork, only bigger and faster.’ ‘How’s it wound up?’ asked the boy. ‘Ah yes,’ said Colon, ‘that chuffing noise, of course, is the winding up. And when it’s wound up, then off it chuffing goes.’ The smaller boy held up a clockwork engine and said, ‘He’s right, Mum, you wind them up and away they go.’ Bemused, the lady said, ‘Right … well, thank you, gentlemen, for a comprehensive little talk. I’m sure the boys were fascinated.’ And she handed Colon several coins. Colon and Nobby watched the happy family as they climbed on to the cart behind Iron Girder. And Nobby said, ‘It’s a nice feeling, isn’t it, sarge? Being helpful to people.’ Moist’s cab halted at the palace, and he helped an exhausted Drumknott up the stairs. Amazingly he was beginning to feel sorry for the little chap, who was looking like a lotus eater who had run out of lotuses.fn23 Moist very carefully knocked on the door of the Patrician’s office, which was opened by one of the dark clerks. The clerk stared at Drumknott and looked askance at Moist, as Lord Vetinari himself stood up in surprise, leaving Moist impaled between two askances. So he saluted smartly and said, ‘I beg to report, sir, that Mister Drumknott very gallantly and fearlessly and at some personal cost has helped me form an opinion as to the practical aspects of the new-fangled train, risking his life repeatedly in so doing, and for my part I have seen to it that your government has a suitable measure of control over the railways. Sir Harry King is funding further research and trials, but personally, my lord, I believe the new railway will be a winner. I’m convinced that this prototype can pull more stock than dozens of horses. Mister Simnel seems to be very thorough in his work, extremely meticulous and, above all, the people appear to have taken the train to their hearts.’ Moist waited. Lord Vetinari could outstare a statue and make even a statue start to feel nervous and confess. Moist’s counter was a fetching grin, which he knew annoyed Vetinari beyond measure, and there was absolute silence in the Oblong Office while blank stare and cheery grin battled it out for supremacy in some other dimension, which ended when his lordship, still staring fixedly at Moist, said to the nearest dark clerk, ‘Mister Ward, please take Mister Drumknott to his rooms and clean him up, if you would be so kind.’ When they had departed, Lord Vetinari sat down and drummed his fingers on his desk. ‘So, Mister Lipwig, you believe in the train, do you? It certainly appears that my secretary is impressed. I have never seen him so excited by something that wasn’t written on paper, and the afternoon edition of the Times seems to be in agreement with him.’ Vetinari walked over to the window and stared down at the city in silence for a moment and continued, ‘What can a mere jobbing tyrant achieve in the face of the even greater, multi-headed tyrant of public opinion and a regrettably free press?’ ‘Excuse me, sir, but if you wanted to you could shut down the papers, couldn’t you? And forbid the train and put anyone you like in prison, yes?’ Still staring down at the city, Lord Vetinari said, ‘My dear Mister Lipwig, you are clever and certainly smart but you have yet to find the virtue of wisdom, and wisdom tells a powerful prince that firstly he shouldn’t put just anyone he likes in prison, because that is where he puts the people he doesn’t like, and secondly that mere unthinking dislike of something, someone, or some situation is no mandate for drastic action. Therefore, while I have given you permission to continue, the train does not have my wholehearted approval. Neither does it have my curse.’ The Patrician seemed to consider for a moment and added, ‘Yet.’ He walked up and down again for a second or two and then, as if the thought had only just struck him, said, ‘Mister Lipwig, do you think it a possibility that a train could in fact get all the way to, say, Uberwald? That journey is not only extremely slow, tedious and uncomfortable by coach, but it is fraught with many … ah, perils … and traps for the unwary traveller.’ He paused and added, ‘And indeed the unlucky bandit.’ ‘Oh, yes, that’s where Lady Margolotta lives, isn’t it, sir?’ said Moist breezily. ‘But it would mean negotiating the Wilinus Pass, sir. Very dangerous up there! Bandits have been known to knock out coaches by throwing down rocks from the crags.’ ‘But there is no other way without a very lengthy detour, Mister Lipwig, as you probably know.’ ‘In that case, my lord … I think it might be possible to construct such a thing as an armoured train,’ said Moist, inventing furiously. He was gratified to see that Lord Vetinari brightened when he heard that, repeating the words ‘armoured train’ once or twice more. Then his lordship said, ‘Can it really be possible?’ And in the squirrel cage of Moist’s mind, he thought, Can it? Can it really? It must be more than twelve hundred miles! It takes well over two weeks by coach and that’s if you don’t get hijacked, but who was going to try to hijack an armoured train? The engine would be wanting water frequently and is it possible that it could carry enough coal for the whole journey? The numbers rolled in his head. Stopping places, troughs for water, mountains, gorges, bridges, marsh land … So many things, any one of which could scupper the project … But going to Uberwald would mean passing through so many other places on the way and all of them could be opportunities to make money. The demons of critical path analysis swarmed around his brain. There was always something that you had to do before you could do the thing you wanted to do and even then you might get it wrong. To Vetinari he said cheerily, ‘Well, sir, I don’t see why not. And, of course, for such a long journey it should be possible to sleep on the train and for heads of state to occupy a complete suite of carriages, if not the whole train. Surely that could be arranged?’ Moist held his breath. After a few seconds his lordship said, ‘That would be appropriate, but, Mister Lipwig, I am not entirely bribed. The train must prove itself both financially and mechanically. However, I look forward to its success. It seems, Mister Lipwig, that you are using your extra-cheery voice and so once again you find yourself in your own chosen environment, that being the centre of everything. But tell me: where do you think will be the destination of the first commercial train? Quirm?’ ‘Actually, sir, that has been discussed and it looks as if it’s going to be Sto Lat, because that’s where Mister Simnel has his machine tools and a large stock of materials that he would need to transport to Ankh-Morpork. Besides, that place is a nexus for the Sto Plains, and nexus means—’ Lord Vetinari raised a hand and said, ‘Thank you, Mister Lipwig. I do know what a nexus is.’ Moist smiled and headed for the door, showing his panic only on the inside, and as his hand reached the doorknob Vetinari’s voice behind him said, ‘Mister Lipwig, you surely realize that a thoughtful prince, a prince who wishes to keep his throne for some time and is shrewd in the ways of people, would not travel in a thrilling armoured train … He would put somebody else on that train, somebody expendable, having himself travelled the previous day in a suitable disguise. After all, there are such things as very, very large boulders, and most definitely there are a great many spies. But I shall consider your idea. It has a beguiling ring to it.’ Over the next few weeks more and more people heard about Iron Girder and even larger crowds passed through Ankh-Morpork to see the new marvel of the age, including delegates, ambassadors and representatives from most of the towns across the Sto Plains. And, of course, there were the other artificers and freelance tinkerers, inspecting everything they could see and trying to find out everything they could about what it was they weren’t being allowed to see. Every night Iron Girder was driven along a set of rails into a locked shed on the compound where she would be safe from interference due to the presence of Harry’s most fearsome attack dogs and also two golems, brought in by Harry because, unlike dogs, they couldn’t be killed by a meal laced with poison poked under the door. They patrolled the huge shed, sometimes with members of the City Watch just for the look of the thing. Moist spent a lot of time in and around the compound in his not very official but somehow understood role as the grease in the outfit’s management, as essential as the buckets of the stuff that seemed to be required in everything to do with the railway. He had, after all, a stake in the railway’s fortunes as head of the Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork, where money was starting to go in and out faster than a revolving door as Harry wrote cheques for iron shipments, timber and extra metalworkers, many of whom were from the company of Free Golems: every one of them his own man, albeit one made of clay. And grease was definitely needed here. There was a mountain of paperwork already being generated by the railway, which Moist skilfully passed along to Drumknott, whose passion for paperwork was not quite yet eclipsed by his new passion for the railway. The little pink man was in hog heaven. Surveyors had been called in to work on a route. They were everywhere with their little theodolites. They treated Dick Simnel as one of them, only different. Moist was pleased about that. Dick had friends now, and if they didn’t understand all of his language they did indeed recognize it as bona fide language somewhat similar to their own and therefore they gave him respect. After all, these other people, in a way, did what he did only in different shapes, stresses, curves, loads, tolerances and substances, and thus where it counted were brothers under the skin. And like Dick, they worked by numbers and knew the absolute necessity of getting them right, and especially they knew the absolute requirement for precision. In the compound the sound of metal on metal filled the air, and on every flat surface in Harry King’s offices maps were laid out, and they were good maps. ‘Lads,’ Dick Simnel had said to the theodolite men, ‘Harry King is a good gaffer who pays top dollar for a top-rate service. He’s chancing everything to get the locomotives running, so I want you to make it easier for him. Iron Girder can take some slopes, and by ’eck she’ll take more before I’m through, but for now, what I’m telling thee is to keep t’permanent way as level as possible. And I know that there are such things as tunnels and bridges, but they take a lot of time and are flippin’ expensive! Occasionally a little detour might save us a lot of money, which is to say your wages. But think on, and I know it’s obvious, but do not go anywhere near swamps and other shaky ground. A locomotive with its coal tenders, carriages and crew is reet, reet ’eavy and the last thing we want to be learning is ’ow to pull a bogged-down locomotive out of t’quicksand.’ And off they’d gone. The men with clean shirts every day. The men of the sliding rule. Moist liked them because they were everything he wasn’t. But maybe he should teach them about being a scoundrel. Oh, not about taking money from widows and orphans, but about being aware that many people weren’t as straight as a theodolite. The surveyors proved only too happy to agree that the area around Sto Lat was the gateway to the Sto Plains, so now all they needed to do was get the people with, as it were, the keys to the gate to understand this, a job that everybody was extremely happy to turn over to Mr Moist von Lipwig. As it turned out, there were a great many landowners between Ankh-Morpork and Sto Lat, and any number of tenants. Nobody minded a clacks tower near by. Indeed, often these days they demanded one, but, well, a mechanical thing chuffing through your cornfields and cabbage plantations spewing out smoke and cinders, well, that was a different matter, which would be the kind of problem that could be settled only by the application of that wonderful lubricant known to every negotiator as warm specie.fn24 The aristocrats, if such they could be called, generally hated the whole concept of the train on the basis that it would encourage the lower classes to move about and not always be available. On the other hand, some were of a type that Moist recognized: shrewd old buffers who’d lead you to believe they were harmless and possibly slightly gaga and then, with a little twinkle in their eye – BANG! – squeeze more money out of you than a snake, twinkling all the way. Lord Underdale, one such gentleman, had plied Moist with an indecent amount of gin and brandy while naming his terms: ‘Now see here, young man – twinkle, twinkle – you can take your tracks across my land if we can agree a route and it won’t cost you a penny if you will firstly carry my freight for nothing and secondly put a loading station just where I want it so that I can also travel anywhere I want merely by flagging down one of your locomotives. Do you see, young man – twinkle, twinkle – I go free and my freight goes free. Do we have an accord?’ Moist looked out of the wonderful mullioned windows at the smoke beyond the ancient trees and said, ‘What exactly is your freight, sir?’ The old man, all beautiful long white hair and ditto beard, said, ‘Well, now, since you ask, it’s iron ore with a certain amount of lead and zinc. Oh dear, I see your glass is empty again. I must insist you have another brandy – it’s such a cold day, is it not? Twinkle, twinkle.’ Moist smiled and said, ‘Well, your lordship, you are a tough bargainer and no mistaking – twinkle, twinkle, TWINKLE. Since our project is very heavy when it comes to metals, we could perhaps do business? That is to say if our surveyors don’t come up with any problems, such as swampy ground and suchlike.’ ‘Well, Mister Moist, since you have drunk every last drop of brandy I have pressed on you without appearing to be the least bit intoxicated, I must consider you a man after my own heart – twinkle, twinkle.’ And here Moist definitely detected the subtle signs of intoxication as the old man said, ‘I have to tell you that yesterday I was contacted by a man who said he represented the up-and-coming Big Cabbage Railway Company.’ Moist knew about them, yes, they were a company all right, but they didn’t yet have a single engine or anybody as skilful as Simnel to tame the raw steam. He rather suspected that a lot of money would go their way from the gullible and then, when there was enough, the bright office would be empty and the gentlemen concerned, with different moustaches, would be legging it somewhere else to start up another railway company. Part of him longed to be one of them and then he thought, I am one of them, only this one has to work. ‘Apparently,’ continued Lord Underdale, ‘they are going to build a far superior engine to the one being demonstrated in Ankh-Morpork.’ The old man laughed at Moist’s almost total lack of expression and said, ‘You told me that you represented a railway company, Mister Lipwig. Well, now your company has … company!’ Moist belched forensically, very carefully choosing his time. ‘This may be the case, sir, but we have – hic! – a working engine, which is … the toast of Ankh-Morpork!’ And here Moist allowed a certain slur to enter his voice and continued, ‘And now, why don’t we, as gentlemen, cut a deal and shake hands on it like gentlemen so we both know where we stand?’ He stood up and stumbled a little, saw the extra twinkle in the old man’s face, and rejoiced. Later, in the stables, as he saddled up to go home, Moist audited his afternoon’s work. This was a game he knew all too well. He had seen the trap and had been prepared, and thus the side deal for iron-ore shipments and railway access was a sensible one but slightly more beneficial for the railway, in recognition of the fact that elderly gentlemen shouldn’t try to get impressionable young men drunk, especially when they own more land than any reasonable person could ever need. Yes, Moist thought, moral compass? He smiled. Before he mounted up, Moist carefully removed from about his person two hot-water bottles and a rubber pipe. He very carefully stowed both bottles in a large padded saddlebag, smiling as he did so. The old boy really shouldn’t have tried to make him drunk. It was so … unethical. When Moist eventually got back to the city, he went straight to the centre of Harry King’s compound, ran up the stairs to Sir Harry’s great big office, and dropped yet another portfolio, prepared by Mr Drumknott, of all the contacts he had dealt with, the rents, the routes agreed. ‘These are for your lads, Harry, and this is for you.’ He set down very carefully a large crate containing a number of bottles. Harry stared at him and said, ‘What the hell are these for!’ Moist shrugged and tapped his nose. ‘Well, Harry, it’s like this. A lot of the people I have to deal with are elderly men who think they’re cunning and try to fill me with expensive alcohol in the belief that they can get the better of the deal and no mistake. Of course, I drink every drink put in front of me! No! Don’t look like that! I really can hold my drink. In fact I can hold a great deal of drink, and I’m pleased to report that rubber doesn’t detract from the taste of whisky, very fine brandy or Jimkin Bearhugger’s best gin.’ ‘Well done, Mister Lipwig. I’ve always known you’re a man to watch extremely carefully and I do so like to see a master at … work. Now follow me, Mister Lipwig, and try not to slosh, will you?’ In a few weeks the compound had changed beyond recognition: the big drop forges that used to thud behind Quarry Lane had been moved wholesale out of the centre of the city and enormously augmented their rate of hammering with the rhythms of the railway factory. Harry seemed very proud of it, considering that if muck was brass, a thump of the hammer was pennies from heaven. As they walked through the cacophony he shouted, ‘Great lads, the golems! They’re always punctual, and they don’t get ill. Most of all, they just like working! And I like anyone who likes to work: goblins, golems, I don’t care what you are if you’re a good worker.’ He thought for a moment and added, ‘As long as you don’t dribble too much. Just look at the way those lads hammer things with their fists. I wish I could get more of them, but you know how it is.’ Moist looked around the fiery hellhole that was the ironworks. In the satanic air he could just about tell the golems from the human workers in their leather overalls, because the golems were the ones walking around holding pieces of red-hot iron in their bare hands. The furnaces illuminated the grey sky, and always and forever the clanging went on. And the pile of fresh new rails got bigger and bigger. He nodded, since normal speech was clearly out of the question among the clanging and the banging. Indeed, he knew how it was. In short, the citizens of Ankh-Morpork who might be expected to fill the heavy-lifting trades, such as the golems and the trolls, were increasingly realizing that just because they were big and tough did not mean they had to do a big tough job if they didn’t want to. This was, after all, Ankh-Morpork, where a man walked free even if he was not, strictly speaking, a man. The problem, if you could call it that, had been building up for some time. Moist had first noticed what was happening when Adora Belle said that her new hair stylist was a troll, Mr Teasy-Weasy Fornacitefn25, and, as it turned out, a pretty good hairdresser, according to Adora Belle and her friends. And there it was: the new reality. If all sapient species were equal, that’s what you got: golem housekeepers and goblin maids and, he thought, troll lawyers. Harry King was rumbling on as they emerged back into the open: ‘It’s a bugger! Now they’re free, you can’t get the golems! Ask your missus! They’re all off doing landscape gardening and suchlike daisy rubbish, and I reckon I’m paying every human ironworker in the damn city double the odds, and only twenty-one of them heavy boys. It’s such a shame, such a shame.’ ‘I don’t know, Harry, you seem to be moving phenomenally fast.’ Harry nudged Moist and said, in a conspiratorial tone, ‘I’ll have you dumped in the river if you tell anybody this, but I’m loving it! I mean, most of my life has been, not to put too much of a fine point on it, shit, honest to goodness shit, not to mention of course piss, which has also been a very good friend to me, but you see all that is just moving stuff about, not actually making something. And it gets better because, you see, it’s something me and the Duchess can talk about in polite company. Oh, of course, I’ll still be maintaining the night-soil business and all of that … it is, after all, my bread and butter, so to speak, which, to tell you the truth, is more like steak and all the trimmings nowadays, but right now my heart is in the iron. And who can say that ain’t beautiful, Mister Lipwig? I mean, daffodils, well, I quite like them, but look at the sheen on the steel, the sweat on the men; the future being made one hammer blow at a time. Even the slag is beautiful in a way.’ Iron Girder passed by on her everlasting journey around the compound and Harry said, ‘What we need is the right class of poet.’ He flung out a hand towards the admirers with their notebooks and all the others who clung to the railings. ‘Look at them all! They’re looking for miracles. And you know what? They’ll get them.’ It started to rain, but the onlookers, especially the train spotters, with their very useful clothing, just stood there, watching Iron Girder kick up a mist into the air. It seemed to Moist that for a moment Harry King was somehow different, even more alive than usual, and Harry, it had to be said, was pretty vital in any case. And now Harry King, Cess Pit Man, was metamorphosing into a National Treasure. Bedwyr Beddsson tried to get his boots off. After a night in the mines it was amazing what you found in your boots, some of it alive. When the boots were off, not without a struggle, he took the harness off Daisy the pit pony and watched her sniff the clean air and canter into the little field near the entrance to the mine. It did your heart good to see her. There were times when Bedwyr would have liked to do the same thing. His mother had told him, you can’t change your stars, meaning, presumably, this is your life and you have to live it. Now, as he stepped inside his living quarters, he wondered if Tak might let him try again. He loved Bleddyn, his wife of many years, and his children were doing just fine in the school in Lancre, but today he was troubled. The grags had called and were quite polite this time, although neither he nor Bleddyn really cared for politics. How could they mean anything when you’ve spent your life sweating down in the mines? His pony was now free, but he was at the end of his tether. He just wanted to provide for his family as best he could. What was a dwarf to do? Bedwyr wanted his children to do better than him, and it looked as though they would. His father had been annoyed about this. Bedwyr was sorry that the old boy was dead, but the world kept turning and the Turtle moved. New things were being done in new ways. And it wasn’t that the grags were holding hard to yesterday; they hadn’t even got as far as this century. Bleddyn had cooked a good rat supper and was upset when she saw his face and said, ‘Those damn grags again! Why don’t you tell them to put their nonsense where the light shines too much!’fn26 Bleddyn didn’t usually swear, so that surprised him, and she continued, ‘They had a point once. They said that we were being swallowed up by the humans and the trolls, and you know it’s true, except that it’s the wrong kind of truth. The kids’ve got human friends and one or two trolls as well and nobody notices, nobody thinks about it. Everyone is just people.’ He looked at her face and said, ‘But we’re diminished, less important!’ But Bleddyn was emphatic and said, ‘You silly old dwarf. Don’t you think the trolls consider themselves diminished too? People mingle and mingling is good! You’re a dwarf, with big dwarf hobnail boots and everything else it takes to be a dwarf. And remember, it wasn’t so long ago that dwarfs were very scarce outside of Uberwald. You must know your history? Nobody can take that away, and who knows, maybe some trolls are saying right now, “Oh dear, my little pebbles is being influenced by the dwarfs! It’s a sin!” The Turtle moves for everybody all the time, and those grags schism so often that they consider everyone is a schism out there on their own. Look it up. I’ve cooked you a lovely rat – nice and tender – so why not eat it up and get out into the sunshine? I know it isn’t dwarfish, but it’s good for getting your clothes dried.’ When he laughed she smiled and said, ‘All that’s wrong in the world is that it’s spilling over us as if we’re stones in a stream, and it’ll leave us eventually. Remember your old granddad telling you about going to fight the trolls in Koom Valley, yes? And then you told your son how you went back to Koom Valley and found out the whole damn business was a misunderstanding. And because of all this, our Brynmor won’t even have to fight unless someone is extremely stupid. Say no to the grags. Really, they’re bogeymen. I’ve spoken to all the women round here and they say exactly the same thing. You’re a dwarf. You won’t stop being a dwarf until you die. And you could be a clever dwarf or you could be a stupid dwarf, like the ones who knock down clacks towers.’ Bedwyr very much enjoyed the rat, which had been nicely seasoned, and, as a wise husband does, he thought about things. Two days later, coming back from Blackglass, where he had gone to buy a load of candles, Bedwyr found two dark dwarfs setting fire to the base of a clacks tower. All he had on him were his tools and it was amazing how useful a simple miner’s tools could be. A number of clacksmen and goblins joined him hastily in putting out the fire, and they had to stop Bedwyr from using his heavy boots to show his disdain for those who resort to arson. He told them, ‘My brother’s daughter, our Berwyn, she works on the clacks down in Quirm … All this stuff you don’t notice until it’s on your doorstep, and now I think I’ve woken up.’ Bedwyr didn’t kill the delvers, he just, as it were, disabled them. But when he left hurriedly to go home, he noticed that the goblins were … busy. From the point of view of people working in an undefended clacks tower in the wilderness, the world was seen as black and white, and for these delvers it went black. Railway fever, already red-hot, was becoming incandescent, at least across the Sto Plains. Would-be investors clamoured for a stake in the Ankh-Morpork and Sto Plains Hygienic Railway.fn27 There were swamps to drain, bridges to reinforce and so theodolites twinkled in the sunshine. But even with Vetinari’s support and Harry’s millions, it was a slow business. Every piece of track had to be laid with care and tested before anything could be run along it – let alone a train. Moist had expected that Harry would want to get things done fast at any cost with little thought of safety all round. Oh yes, he shouted a bit when the surveyors took up too much time, but the grumble remained a grumble. The same picture kept coming back into Moist’s mind: Harry King already had the money, lots of it, but the railways were going to be his legacy. No more the King of the Midden. A Lord of the Smoke was better any day and so while he screamed that he was being sent to the poorhouse he nevertheless signed the paperwork promptly. To Effie, now definitely a Lady,fn28 her husband the railway entrepreneur at last had a job that his wife liked to talk about. And Effie didn’t just like to talk about it, she got involved with it and increasingly often was to be found in Harry’s office. As it happened, it was Effie who came up with the idea of the moving gangs. And so trail after trail of wagons were working their way through the countryside, in which working men and surveyors could sleep and take their meals anywhere the railway wanted them to go rather than wasting time going home at night. The track-laying was now pressing hard at Moist’s heels as he dealt with the multiplicity of landowners along the route. And that was a painfully slow business too, every one of them exercised by the internal conundrum: if you held out for too much then there might just be somebody reasonably close by who would welcome the train for a pittance, if he was stupid enough, but then of course he might be clever and he would get his perishable produce to market before you could, and there you would be: with all the dust and all the noise and all the smoke and none of the money. In the interests of keeping things moving as quickly as possible, the Patrician had allowed Moist to requisition one of the city’s few golem horses. The horses were notable for their indefatigable galloping and also for turning your pelvis into jelly if you didn’t pad up extremely well, but even with all the multiple layers Moist was just about rattling when he got back to the city after weeks of negotiations. Exhausted, and in defiance of custom and practice, health and safety – but, on the other hand, with all the glory of the gods of style – to the dismay of the palace guards he rode the golem horse all the way up the steps to the door of the Oblong Office. There he was pleased to see Drumknott, who deftly opened the door and stepped backwards so quickly that Moist, by ducking, managed to trot neatly to within a foot of Lord Vetinari’s desk. Unruffled, the Patrician lowered his coffee mug and said, ‘Mister Lipwig. It is customary to knock before entering my office. Even, and especially, when entering on horseback. You may thank the gods that Drumknott had the presence of mind to disable our … little alarm system. How many times must I tell you?’ ‘Every time, sir, I’m sorry to say, because you see, sir,’ said Moist, ‘if I’m to be of any use to you I have to be Moist von Lipwig, sir, and that means, I’m afraid, sir, that I have to find the edge of the envelope and put my stamp on it, sir, otherwise life wouldn’t be worth dying for.’ Moist could see Drumknott wincing at the concept of anyone stamping on any stationery whatsoever and continued, ‘It’s in my blood and frankly, sir, I’m fed up with dealing with old codgers who think they can get the better of Moist von Lipwig, and the cunning and the unpleasant and the stupid and the clever and the greedy … sometimes all wrapped up in one man. After all this, I think my soul needs a bit of a wash and brush-up, sir.’ ‘Ah, soul!’ said Lord Vetinari. ‘I didn’t think you had one, Mister Lipwig. Well, I live and learn.’ He steepled his fingers. ‘Mister Lipwig, Mister Simnel’s activities have drawn the eyes of the world. Of course one could not expect that every country, sizeable town and great city would not start thinking about the railway. It is a weapon, Mister Lipwig, a mercantile weapon. You may not know this because you don’t live in my world. Young Mister Simnel came to Ankh-Morpork because this dirty old town, for all its faults, is the very place upon which this world spins, the place where history is changed, where because of an enlightened and caring government – which is to say me – every man, child, dwarf, troll, werewolf, vampire and even zombie and yes, goblin, can call themselves free; free of any master, save the law, which applies to everybody equally whatever their species and status in life: Civis Ankhmorporkianus sum!’ There was a thump as Lord Vetinari banged his fist on the table. ‘Ankh-Morpork, Mister Lipwig, is not to be outdone! Now, I know you have been spending a lot of your time these days in making sure that the first fully commercial and grown-up train will indeed have a railway upon which it can run, and when it does it will be the wonder of the world. But all things move on, and it is for us to keep our city in the forefront of that movement. ‘No doubt you, Mister Lipwig, Sir Harry and Mister Simnel are already thinking ahead. May I suggest that a daily railway service to and from Quirm could only set the seal on the usefulness of the railways. While a more efficient way to get to Uberwald is eminently desirable, alas I fear it must wait. I am naturally being badgered by all the other governments to bring the railway to them, but Quirm is our neighbour and an important trading partner and’ – he lowered his voice – ‘perhaps we could get our fresh seafood before it walks to Ankh-Morpork on its own. Agreed? ‘You may leave the final details of the negotiations for the line to Sto Lat to Drumknott,’ Vetinari continued. ‘He has my permission to call upon the services of one of the dark clerks … The talents of Mister Smith would be eminently suitable for sorting out any … recalcitrant landowners, I think.’ Moist noticed that Drumknott’s eyes had an unusual gleam in them, although the little secretary said nothing. ‘You may go, Mister Lipwig, and may I counsel you that riding a golem horse in here again will be a very dangerous errand and may result in you having kittens.’ His lordship smiled nastily and continued, ‘Cedric is always waiting – twinkle, twinkle.’fn29 Leading the golem horse from the office, Moist thought, ‘Twinkle, twinkle? Oh, gods, it’s catching.’ Mustrum Ridcully, Archchancellor of Unseen University, was held up on his walk across the University’s Great Hall by Barnstable, one of the Bledlows. The man touched the brim of his bowler hat in traditional salute, coughed politely and said, ‘Mister Archchancellor, sir, there’s a … person who wants to see you, and he won’t take no for an answer. A very sorry-looking cove, sir, looks like he never had a decent meal in his life, sir. And personally, sir, I reckon he’s just after a handout. Bit of an undesirable, sir, and he’s wearing a kind of a dress. Shall I show him the door, sir?’ The Archchancellor thought for a moment and said, ‘This man, does he smell like a badger?’ ‘Oh yes, sir, you got it in one!’ Ridcully smiled. ‘Mister Barnstable, the old man to whom you refer is a master of every martial art ever conceived. In fact he conceived most of them himself and he is the only known master of déjà fufn30. He can throw a punch into the air and it’ll follow you home and smack you in the face when you open your own front door. He is known as Lu-Tze, a name that strikes fear in those who don’t know how to pronounce it, let alone spell it. My advice is to smile at him and, with great care, deliver him to my office.’ Lu-Tze looked carefully at the range of brandies on the Archchancellor’s heaving, creaking drinks trolley and sat back. Ridcully, his pipe smoking like the funnel of Iron Girder, said, ‘How nice to see you, my old friend. It’s all about the locomotion, yes?’ ‘Of course, Mustrum – is there anything else to talk about? The Procrastinators are grinding and everybody in Oi Dong is fearful of the Ginnungagap … the darkness at the end of the world before the new world takes its place, hmm? Although personally, I think it’s a jolly good idea, what with this one being all battered about and unkempt and uncared for. The only problem I have yet to solve is how to get from the dying world into the new world. That is a bit of a puzzle. But even the Abbot is disturbed about the arrival of steam engines when it isn’t steam-engine time.’ Ridcully poked at his pipe with a pipe cleaner and said, ‘Ye-es, that is a conundrum. Surely the steam engine cannot happen before it is steam-engine time? If you saw a pig, you would, I think, say to yourself, well, here’s a pig, so it must be time for pigs. You wouldn’t question its right to be there, would you?’ ‘Certainly not,’ said Lu-Tze. ‘In any case, pork gives me the wind something dreadful. What we know is that the universe is a never-ending story that, happily, writes itself continuously. The trouble with my brethren in Oi Dong is that they are fixated on the belief that the universe can be totally understood, in every particular jot and tittle.’ Ridcully burst out laughing. ‘Oh, my word! You know, my wonderful associate Mister Ponder Stibbons appears to have fallen into the same misapprehension. It seems that even the very wise have neglected to take notice of one rather important goddess … Pippina, the lady with the Apple of Discord. She knows that the universe, while it requires rules and stability, also needs just a tincture of chaos, the unexpected, the surprising. Otherwise it would be a mechanism – a wonderful mechanism, ticking away the centuries, but with nothing different happening. And so we may assume that the loss of balance will be allowed this time and the beneficent lady will decree that this mechanism might yield wonderful things, given a chance.’ ‘For my part, I would like to give it a chance,’ said Lu-Tze. ‘Serendipity is no stranger to me. I know the monks have been carefully shepherding the world, but I rather think they don’t realize that the sheep sometimes have better ideas. Uncertainty is always uncertain, but the difficulty with people who rely on systems is that they begin to believe that nearly everything is in some way a system and therefore, sooner or later, they become bureaucrats. ‘And so, my friend, I think we say hail Pippina and the occasional discord. I’m sure the rest of the circle will be of the same mind, to judge by their activities. After all, it’s as clear as the nose on your face: here is a steam engine. Ergo, it is steam-engine time.’ ‘Hurrah!’ said Ridcully. ‘I’ll drink to that.’ ‘Why, thank you. I’ll have a tincture of brandy with my tea, to keep out the cold, if you don’t mind,’ said Lu-Tze. Moist sat at his desk, his mind churning over how best to introduce the matter of Quirm to Sir Harry. He blankly registered a … substantial … gentleman in front of him saying, ‘Mister Lipwig? I have a proposition to—’ Moist laughed. ‘Sir, anybody who has a proposition for me these days will get a maximum of five minutes, one of which has already passed. What is it?’ ‘I’m not just anybody, Mister Lipwig,’ said the man, drawing himself up to his full height, which was in fact slightly less than his full girth. ‘I am a chef. Perhaps you’ve heard of me – All Jolson. I understand from certain sourcesfn31 that any day now your wonderful locomotives will be going to and from Sto Lat. I wonder, have you thought about what the people on board will eat? I’d like to bid for the franchise to sell food on the trains and possibly in the waiting rooms as well. Small snacks, and more substantial servings for the long-distance passenger. There’s nothing like a pot of my slumpie to lift the spirits of a weary traveller. Or Primal Soup – very warming, that. I’ve been experimenting with serving it in cups, with little lids on, ’cos there are things in that soup that, to be honest, you wouldn’t want to spill on yourself.’ Moist caught the essential words like a trout catching a newborn mayfly. Food on the trains! Waiting rooms, yes! Places where people would want to spend their money. Once again he remembered that the railway was not just about the rails or the steam. And as Jolson handed over a slightly lard-stained calling card Moist let his mind fill with ancillary possibilities. Yes, you would definitely need a place to stay while you were waiting for your train, somewhere dry and warm with something to drink and even, heaven forfend, a sausage inna bun that actually had seen a pig. And yes, since Dick had said he’d be quite happy for a locomotive to travel at night, then at the destination there might be railway hotels, as swish as the railway carriages and sprightly, because people would be coming and going at all times of the day or night. It would seem as if the whole world were on the move. Restless himself, he went out into the compound and crossed to the great shed. Having thought that young Simnel was happily living every dream he had ever had, he was surprised to come across the engineer sitting beside the throbbing Iron Girder, alone and, there was no other word for it, glum. Moist automatically stepped into his position as the oil that greased the wheels of progress and said, ‘Something wrong, Dick?’ As if beset by unseen demons, Simnel said sombrely, ‘Well, it’s like this, Mister Lipwig. I were invited along to t’Guild of Cunning Artificers last week, to see Mister Pony, and do you know what? He told me I should get apprenticed to somebody! Me! The lads are coming on fine and should be my apprentices, but it turns out that I’m not a master and so ’ave to be indentured for four years to a real master and then I might just about make a journeyman after a little while. But I told them, I never had indentures, never ’ad a master, because, d’you know for why? I haven’t been an apprentice because there were no one to teach me all the stuff I know. I ’ad to work it out for meself! ‘And then I read about those old guys in Ephebe who once built a little steam engine which worked … and then exploded all over them, although nobody got ’urt, and any road, they were saved because their steam engine were a kind of boat and they all ended up in the water wi’ soggy togas. And then I thought to meself, well, those old guys must’ve known a trick or two and so I got another book about them from t’library in Sto Lat, and you know what, Mister Lipwig? All those old boys wi’ their togas and sandals, they also invented the sine and cosine, not to mention your tangent! All that mathematics, which I love. And then there’s your quaderatics. Can’t get anywhere without quaderatics, can you? ‘And any road, they looked like a bunch of old guys who you’d think would do nowt more than lie about arguing about philosophy and then it turns out that all along they knew just about everything about, well, everything and just wrote it all down. Can you believe it? They ’ad it in their ’ands. They could’ve built a proper steam engine, and steam boats that didn’t explode. That’s academics for you. All that knowing and they went back to discussing t’beauty and truth of numbers and missed the fact that they’d discovered summat reet important. Me? If I want beauty and truth I look at Iron Girder.’ Dick slapped his fist down on the metal carapace and said, ‘There’s beauty. There’s truth, right there. And they had all that knowing ’iding away. Look at ’er! My machine! I built her! Me! And I’m not even good enough to be an apprentice.’ He paused for breath and continued, ‘Now don’t get me wrong, Mister Moist, I know it’s just words but, you see, it’s come home to me that, since I’ve never done me indentures, I can never be a master because there’s nobody who knows more about what I’m doing than, well, me. I’ve looked in all t’manuals and read all t’books and you can’t be a master until all the other masters say you are a master.’ Simnel looked even more haunted while Moist stood with his mouth metaphorically open and listened to the meticulous Mr Simnel blaming himself for being a genius. He continued, ‘The lads, as I call ’em, could never ’ope to be masters neither because they won’t have been taught engineering by a master! It’s flaming ridiculous!’ Moist burst out laughing and put his hands on Dick’s greasy forehead, carefully turning the lad’s head around to face the length of the compound and the huge ever-present queues for the train ride, and he said quietly, ‘They all know you’re a master and Iron Girder is your masterpiece. What boy would not wish to be you, Mister Simnel, a manmade masterpiece yourself. Do you understand?’ Simnel looked doubtful, possibly still hankering after letters after his name and a certificate for his old mother to hang on her wall. ‘Yes, but with all due respect, the people aren’t authorities on the taming of steam. I mean no offence, like, but what do they know?’ Moist snapped and said, ‘Dick, in some respects down there somewhere is the soul of the world, and they know everything. You’ll have heard of Leonard of Quirm. There are some masters who make themselves and you have, you’ve made yourself an engineer and everybody knows it.’ Simnel brightened and said, ‘I don’t intend on starting me own guild, if that’s what you’re thinking, but if some young lad comes to see me and wants to learn the way of the sliding rule then I’ll do him right. I’ll make ’im an apprentice the old-fashioned way and his hands’ll never be clean again. And I’ll give him indentures until they’re coming out of his flaming teeth, all writ down on vellum, if I can find any. That’s how it should go, and he’ll work for me until I reckon he’s done enough to be a journeyman. That’s how you do it. That’s how you make your trade. ‘When I saw you first, Mister Lipwig, I reckoned you were all mouth and no trousers. And I’ve watched you running around hither and yon and being the grease for the engine of the railway. You ain’t so bad, Mister Lipwig, ain’t so bad at all, but you’d look better with a flatter cap.’ Iron Girder let out a sudden hiss of steam, and the two men, laughing, turned to look at her. There was something new about the engine. Hang on, Moist thought, her shape has changed, hasn’t it? She looks … bigger. I know she’s the prototype and Simnel is forever tweaking things, but somehow I don’t think I ever see the same engine twice. She’s always bigger, better, sleeker. As Moist was pondering the question he became aware of Simnel beside him shifting from foot to foot. At last Dick said hesitantly, ‘Mister Lipwig, you know that girl with the long blonde hair and pretty smile who sometimes comes into the compound? Who is she? She acts as if she owns the place.’ ‘That,’ said Moist, ‘is Emily, Harry King’s favourite niece, not married yet.’ ‘Oh,’ said Simnel. ‘The other day she brought me out tea – and a bun!’ Moist looked at the worried face of Dick Simnel, who was suddenly in a place where the sliding rule couldn’t go. No, this was a different kind of rule, and so he said, ‘Would you care to take a walk with her, Dick?’ Simnel blushed, if a blush could actually be seen under all the grease. ‘Aye, I really would, but she’s all smart and dandy as a daisy and I’m—’ ‘Stop right there!’ said Moist. ‘If you’re going to say that you’re just a bloke in greasy dungarees I’d like to draw your attention to the fact that you own a very big slice of all the revenue the railway is ever going to make. So don’t go around saying “Oh dear me I’m too poor to even think about making advances to a nice young lady,” because you’re the best catch that any young lady in Ankh-Morpork could ever find, and I imagine that even Harry, in the circumstances, wouldn’t throw you down the stairs as he did with the swains who were the suitors of his daughters. If you’d like to go walking out with Emily I’d say go to it and I’m sure her uncle and parents will be overjoyed.’ To himself, Moist thought: in fact, Harry would love it because it’d keep the money in the family. I know Harry King, oh, yes. ‘What’s more,’ he added, ‘she’s a lawyer in the making: understands the legalities of running a business. You should get on like a house on fire.’ In the voice of a man encountering new territory, Dick said carefully, ‘Thank you for the information and advice, Mister Lipwig. Mebbe one day when I’ve got meself clean I might get meself the courage to knock on ’er door.’ ‘Well, don’t wait too long, Dick. There’s more to life than the sliding rule.’ The Grand Opening of the Ankh-Morpork and Sto Plains Hygienic Railway brought the international press out in droves. Dick Simnel had always intended that the first serious public railway journey would start from Sto Lat, putting the old town on the map as it were. Sir Harry was somewhat dismayed by this:fn32 a true denizen of Ankh-Morpork, he tended to get a little disorientated when outside the city. Still, as Moist had pointed out, after an outward journey by road the guests would find the return rail trip with refreshments all the more impressive. When their coaches eventually arrived at what the gold-edged invitation had described as the ‘Sto Lat terminus’, the journalists and other invited guests discovered that terminus apparently meant a work in progress: which is to say most of it wasn’t there yet (being full of workmen, human, troll and goblin, labouring at cross purposes just like on every big construction site anywhere) but nevertheless a sympathetic eye could arrive at the conclusion that something rather good was being built here. The guests were ushered on to a long raised platform, standing above gleaming steel rails that ran off into the distance, the tracksides crowded with onlookers. In the other direction the rails led to a very large barn, where Dick’s apprentices, recently scrubbed, were lined up on either side of the closed doors, along with a brass band that could hardly be heard above the noise of the workmen. Moist von Lipwig was, of course, master of ceremonies, there to welcome them with Harry King and Effie by his side. Lord Vetinari too was there, as holder of Ankh-Morpork’s guardian share in the railway, accompanied by Drumknott, who wouldn’t have missed the occasion for a big clock. And Queen Keli of Sto Latfn33 was present to give the occasion the royal seal of approval, with the Mayor by her side looking stunned by the circus that appeared to have taken over his town. As always in these matters, everything had to wait until everything else was ready. That seemed to have been anticipated, judging by the door with a neat label WAITING ROOM, alongside the entrance to the platform.fn34 And then the waiting was over. At Moist’s invitation Queen Keli stepped forward to drive in the golden spike, the last one on the line, signifying it was now open for business. The chuffing sound that was the signature tune of the railway got louder and more expansive, the crowd of bystanders thronging the sides of the track waved their colourful little flags and cheered with increased enthusiasm, and two apprentices opened the gates of the barn. To a metaphorical drumroll Moist announced: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Mister Dick Simnel and Iron Girder!’ Leading the dream of steam, Dick Simnel, in pride of place on the footplate, beamed an unmissable look of I told thee so. Behind the engine ten carriages bumped along and, glory be, some of them even had a roof! The iconographers’ flashes popped and, very gently, Iron Girder moved along the track and stopped beside the platform. Moist waited until the applause faded away and said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, you may safely climb aboard. There will be refreshments, but first may I invite you to inspect the carriages.’ Now Moist needed to be everywhere at once. Anything to do with steam and locomotives was news and news could be good news or news could be bad news, or occasionally news could be malicious news. Dick just loved talking about Iron Girder and everything else to do with locomotion, but he was a straightforward man and the press of the Sto Plains could eat up for lunch a straightforward man if he wasn’t careful. Moist, on the other hand, in the vicinity of the press, was as straightforward as a sackful of kaleidoscopes. While the chattering was going on, he did his best to hover around Dick Simnel like a wet-nurse. The Ankh-Morpork Times wasn’t bad, and the Tanty Bugle was mostly interested in ’orrible murder and the more salacious aspects of the human condition, but Moist’s heart sank as he realized that Dick, temporarily off the reins, was now talking to Hardwick of the Pseudopolis Daily Press, who was adept at getting the wrong end of the stick very much on purpose and then hitting people over the head with it. And Pseudopolis disliked Ankh-Morpork with a sullen and jealous vengeance. As Moist executed the world’s fastest nonchalant walk, he heard Hardwick saying, ‘What do you say, Mister Simnel, to people who are upset because the noise and the smoke will cause their horses to bolt and their cows and sheep to miscarry?’ ‘I don’t rightly know,’ said Simnel. ‘Never had a problem here on the Plains. When I were doing me tests the horses in the next field would try to outpace Iron Girder, racing her, as it were, and I reckoned they thought it was fun!’ But Hardwick wasn’t to be thrown off. ‘You must admit, Mister Simnel, that the train is inherently dangerous? Some people have said that your face melts if you reach speeds greater than thirty miles an hour!’ It seemed to Moist that everyone else who had been chattering away in the vicinity went silent to listen as one person, and he knew that if he intervened at this point things would get worse, and so all he could do was hold his breath, just like everybody else, to see what the solemn country boy would say. ‘Well now, Mister ’ardwick,’ said Simnel, sticking his thumbs into his belt as he always did when broaching long sentences. ‘I think many things are inherently dangerous: such as wizards, and trees. Dangerous things, trees, they could fall down and drop straight on your ’ead without you knowing it. And boats are dangerous an’ all, and other people might be dangerous and you, Mister ’ardwick, you’ve been talking to me for five minutes now, ’oping that a country lad like me might be tempted into saying summat I shouldn’t. ‘So I’ll tell you this: Iron Girder is my machine, I made her, every single bit of her. I tested her and every time I find a way to make her better and safer, I do it. But, oh aye, you, Mister ’ardwick, you might be dangerous! Power is dangerous, all power, yours included, Mister ’ardwick, and the difference is that the power of Iron Girder is controllable whereas you can write whatever you damn well like. Do you think I don’t read? I’ve read the rubbish you spout in your paper and, Mister ’ardwick, a lot of what you write is flamin’ gristle, Mister ’ardwick, total stinking made-up gristle, meant to frighten people who don’t know owt about steam and power and the cosines and the quaderatics and tangents and even the sliding rule … but I hope you enjoy your journey anyway, Mister ’ardwick. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got to get in t’cab. Oh, and I’ve had Iron Girder up to more than thirty mile an hour and all I got were sunburn. Good day to you, Mister ’ardwick. Enjoy your ride.’ And then, reddening as he registered the hush all around him, Simnel said, ‘Apologies to all the ladies here for my straight language. I do beg your pardon.’ ‘No apologies necessary, Mister Simnel,’ called out Sacharissa Cripslock, reporter for the Times. ‘I believe I speak for all the ladies present when I say that we appreciate your candour.’ And since Sacharissa was not only respectable in the same way that other people are religious, but was also invariably armed with highly sharpened pencils, the rest of the crowd suddenly found that they too had the greatest admiration for Mr Simnel and his plain talking. On board, there were many marvels to show off, including the lavish lavatories, apparently another brainchild of Effie, which came as a surprise even to Moist. He wondered what the press would make of Effie’s gift to railway travel. Sometimes the art editor of the Ankh-Morpork Times could be quite creative.fn35 ‘This is as good as those they have in the poshest hotels,’ Moist said privately to Sir Harry, who emerged from the cubicle flushed with pride. Harry beamed. ‘You should look in the ladies, Mister Lipwig! Scent, cushions and real cut flowers. It’s like a boudoir in there!’ ‘I suppose the, er, waste can be dropped straight down on to the tracks, eh, Harry?’ Harry looked shocked. ‘Oh, some people would do that, but not Harry King! Where there’s muck there’s money, lad, but don’t tell the Duchess. There’s a big cistern under one of the carriages. Waste not, want not …’ Questions were coming thick and fast from all sides. For those people who hadn’t already taken a ride behind Iron Girder in Harry King’s compound, the matter of railway etiquette loomed: could you stick your head out of the window? Could you bring your pet swamp dragon if it sat on your knee? Could you go and talk to the driver? On this occasion, Moist was pleased to say yes; the editor of the Ankh-Morpork Times being selected for this accolade. The smile Mr de Worde gave as he stepped from the platform on to the footplate cemented this moment on to the front page, assuming this journey was a success – although you had to be aware that it would also make the front page if the engine blew up. Journalism was, well, after all, journalism. The train pulled away with a whistle and a cloud of smoke and everything was moving along nicely, especially when the trolley with the refreshments rattled through the carriages. Harry and All Jolson were in complete agreement about what made a good meal – namely, calories – and had not stinted. There was enough butter on the slumpie to regrease Iron Girder from top to bottom. The scenery flew past, to the guests’ well-oiled admiration and gasps of awe, until the train approached the first bridge. Moist held his breath as the train slowed down almost to a halt. There was a troll and he waved a big red flag and cheerfully announcedfn36 that he and his gang had worked on this bridge and were so pleased to see it being used and thank you for coming ladies and gentlemen. There was laughter, assisted most certainly with alcohol, but nevertheless there was laughter and it was genuine. Moist let the breath go. He supposed few of the passengers could remember the days when to see a troll was to be frightened (or, if you were a dwarf, want to kick his ankles in). Now here they were, building the railway, quite at home. Moist looked across the First Class carriage to where Lord Vetinari was seated. He had openly commended Effie on her part in the planning and design, and given his usual urbane, anodyne answers to journalists looking for a quote, but Moist couldn’t help but notice that the Patrician was smiling, like a granddad at a newborn grandchild. Moist caught his eye and thought he saw his lordship wink with the speed of a cyclone. Moist nodded and that was that, but he hoped that it might be at least one sin forgiven. Three deaths in one lifetime would definitely be over-egging it. But it was a nice day, the sun was shining, and as Iron Girder raced along the track a couple of horses in the field alongside tried to catch up with her. So much for Mr Hardwick, and poo to him again because Iron Girder chugged her way down through gentle slopes to the township of Upunder where they stopped to allow the passengers to enjoy the very best of brassica hospitality. After that it was a short run down to Ankh-Morpork itself, which was beckoning with long smoky fingers. They crossed the new iron bridge over the Ankh and wheezed on to Harry King’s compound, where a brass band was playing the national anthem, ‘We Can Rule You Wholesale’, to the cheers of the waiting crowd. At the banquet that evening the rail travellers were joined by other Ankh-Morporkian and Sto Plains dignitaries. And in the peroration of his address Sir Harry announced that the next city to receive the magnificent railway would be Quirm, it was hoped very shortly. In the thunder of applause, Harry toasted the Quirmian ambassador, Monsieur Cravat, and this was followed by more toasts, including one to Iron Girder herself. Lord Vetinari opined that it had been a very helpful day; and the unknown quantity of sphincters that had been tightened once again relaxed somewhat. When the party broke up, some of the guests were walking sideways or hardly at all. Dick, seeing a familiar face swim into his happy world of coloured lights, said, ‘Ee, that were champion, Mister Lipwig! All those tiny places in the distance all along t’track … I were thinking that the railway could be like a tree: you know, one big trunk and then all branches … You’d make ’em cheap and small but I reckon people’d like ’em … Make folks’ lives easier if they could get a train from anywhere—’ Moist, resolutely ignoring the beckoning possibilities, cut him short. ‘Steady on, Dick. First we have to get to Quirm.’ And then drive that express train route to Uberwald, he added to himself … His lordship was so very keen on international relations. Later that night, Fred Colon and Nobby Nobbs proceeded in a policeman-like fashion around the railway compound. After all, they bore the Majesty of the Force and therefore had a right to be absolutely anywhere they liked, looking at anything they wanted to. And as their boots swung in unison, Fred Colon said, ‘I hear they’re taking the railway all the way to Quirm. My old woman’s always going on at me about us taking a holiday down there. You’ll know about that, Nobby, now you’re practically married and got responsibilities. But you know me, I’m allergic to all that avec, and I hear you can’t get a good pint there for love nor money.’ ‘Actually,’ said Nobby, ‘it ain’t all that bad. When I was working the rota last week on the goods yard there were a load of cheeses that got broken open by accident, as it were. Of course, they couldn’t be sent back and it’s amazing what Shine of the Rainbow can do with cheese. It’s good stuff, especially with snails.’ Nobby realized he was talking treason and so hurriedly added, ‘Their beer is still like piss, though.’ Fred Colon nodded. All was what it should be. He glanced back at his friend and said, ‘If the railway works properly, things are going to be quite different. I hear telling the train’ll be going very fast and that means if a bloke does a robbery and then goes and catches the train, he could be away on his toes long before we could ever catch up with him. Maybe the railway will need policemen. You never know! It’s like old Stoneface said, wherever you get people, you’ll get crime and then you’ll get policemen.’ Nobby Nobbs considered this information like a goat chewing the cud, and said, ‘Well, you go and tell old Vimesy that you want to be the first railway policeman, eh? I’d love to see his face!’ Billy Slick surveyed the very large person at the front of the queue and sighed. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘you can’t all be train drivers. We’ve got lots of train drivers right now and it takes time to work your way up to being a driver. Ain’t there anything else you can do?’ ‘Well,’ said the crestfallen lad in front of him, ‘my mum says I’ll make a very good cook one day.’ Billy smiled and said, ‘Might have something for you then, we need cooks.’ He pointed out another recruiting table a bit further along and said, ‘Get yourself over to Mabel. She’s looking for catering staff and that sorta thing.’ The young man’s face lit up with excitement and he hurried off to a future which almost certainly included unsociable hours and hard labour in cramped conditions but, most importantly, unlimited free rides on the wonder of the age. ‘I’m a painter, mister,’ said the next man in Billy’s line. ‘Excellent! Sure you don’t fancy being a train driver?’ ‘No, not really. I’ve always been a good painter and I expect the locomotives need painting.’ ‘Great!’ said Billy. ‘You’re hired. Next!’ When Billy looked up from his clipboard he found the craggy figure of a young troll looming over him. ‘Man said der’s a job wiv a shovel and tons of coal. Could do dat,’ the troll said, adding a hopeful ‘Please?’ ‘A stoker?’ Billy guessed. ‘Blimey, you’re a bit big for the footplate, but we could use you around the place and no mistake. Put your mark here.’ The table shook as the troll’s thumb hit the form and cracked his clipboard. ‘Good man – I mean, troll,’ Billy said. ‘Nuffin’ to worry about. Get dat all der time.’ The troll rumbled away in the direction of the coal store and his place in front of Billy was taken by a smartly dressed young lady with an air of authority. ‘Sir, I think the railway is going to need a translator. I know every language and dialect on the Disc.’ Her voice was firm but there was a glint of excitement in her eyes as she looked at Iron Girder and the other engines in the compound and Billy knew she was hooked. He also knew that ‘translator’ was not on his list of vacancies and sent her off to Sir Harry’s office, while he returned to his search for shunters, tappers and other workers. And so the line moved on again. It seemed everybody wanted to be part of the railway. It felt to Moist, bumping in the saddle as the golem horse bore him back towards Ankh-Morpork, that he had been talking for years with greedy landowners who were asking for enormous rents even if it was achingly obvious that the railway would benefit the whole area, and this time, to reach Quirm, there was going to be more than eight times the length of route to cover. And when he wasn’t talking to landowners, he was talking again to the surveyors, who were not greedy but were definitely horribly precise. They rejected proposed routes as too steep, too waterlogged, crumbling, or occasionally flooded and, in one case, full of zombies. Acceptable routes might just as well have been drawn by a snake snaking around the landscape from suitable ground to suitable ground. And everybody wanted the railway close, oh yes please, but not so close that they could hear it or smell it. And that was the Sto Plains in a nutshell, or, if you like, a cabbage bucket. Everybody everywhere wanted the benefits of steam but not the drawbacks. And no city on the Plains wanted the Big Wahoonie to get more than its fair share. It took the diplomatic genius of the Patrician to set the record straight, reminding them that although the railway was being built initially in Ankh-Morpork, if other cities and towns wanted to partake of its usefulness, well, yes, in a sense it would be theirs because what goes down on the up line must go up on the down line. Politics? Vetinari loved it. This was the ocean in which he swam. But assuredly you never crowed, just showed the world the tired visage of a conscientious civil servant, doing things cheaply and with the minimum of fuss. He had long ago perfected the art of giving way with a smile when engaged in complex negotiations, but Lord Vetinari’s smile was that of a man who knows that his opponents have yet to find, metaphorically speaking, and despite their cleverness, that their underpants are now down around their ankles and their backside on show for all to see. Ankh-Morpork to Sto Lat was becoming a regular journey, and it was working now. Moist had written the slogan, ‘You don’t have to live in Ankh-Morpork to work in Ankh-Morpork’ and properties in Sto Lat were becoming quite sought after. The idea of a little place in the country away from the big city, but with acceptable communications to Ankh-Morpork, suddenly looked very inviting. The hours of travel on the golem horse were proving altogether conducive to creative thought. His mind was filling up with the world of locomotive possibilities at the speed of a hamster really at odds with its treadmill. Another synapse in Moist’s head flashed; the trains were just the start! The railway now, he knew, was something in the ether, floating over the whole world. An idée fixe, if he would excuse his own Quirmian. Nevertheless, the engines remained important. Dick Simnel’s workshops at Swine Town had been turning out many marvels, carefully placed on wagons behind the never-tiring Iron Girder. She now shared the big shed with two newcomers that Simnel had called the Flyers, which made the regular run to Sto Lat and back, while Iron Girder herself had gone back to giving rides around the Ankh-Morpork compound, extended with a short loop along the river to show off the new bridge. The small but growing band of patient train spotters had written down a number two in their little books, then a number three. Within minutes of his arriving back in Ankh-Morpork, Moist was borne off by an ebullient Harry to see the latest development. Dodging sparks, they arrived at the doorway of the monstrous engine shed guarded by one of Harry’s heavies, who glared even at his employer. He looked human, or at least humanoid, and Harry introduced him merely as ‘Trouble’. Trouble, glaring at Moist, moved away from the door so that Moist and Sir Harry could go inside. Moist could feel Trouble’s glare on the back of his neck as he walked through, and asked, ‘Harry, does Trouble have an official Watch record?’ Harry King stared for a moment at Moist and said, ‘Of course he’s got a Watch record! He’s a security guard! And I need him. People have been hanging around, trying to break in, especially at night, and the official security – the Watch, the golems and guard dogs – generates a whole lot of paperwork whereas Trouble deals with trouble. Don’t trouble Trouble and Trouble won’t trouble you, as my granny always said.’ Harry chuckled and added, ‘Don’t you worry, Mister Lipwig, I’ve expressly told him not to kill you … today.’ Moist took this under advisement and turned for a last brief look at Trouble, who made up a new scowl just for him, a reminder that there were oh so many painful things you could do to a person without actually killing them. Harry nodded to the giant, who began to pull at a large tarpaulin in the middle of the floor – and clearly when Trouble pulled something it definitely remained pulled – to reveal an engine much larger than Iron Girder or any of Simnel’s creations Moist had so far seen. Harry slapped Moist on the back and said, ‘Well now, Mister Lipwig, while you’ve been wining and dining with the nobs and diddling them out of their fortunes, I, and of course Mister Simnel, have been very busy boys, oh yes indeedy! The lad is up finishing off in the drawing office right now, but this new engine is the bee’s knees, I don’t mind telling you.’ ‘It’s not exactly fun, what I’ve been doing—’ began Moist indignantly, but Harry cut in. ‘Yes, I know, we’re all doing our bit towards Vetinari’s dash for Quirm, although personally I don’t have much time for the lobsters; but I can see it’s showing the flag of Ankh-Morpork and all that, and of course, if we can get really fresh fish and seafood into the city, then we’ll be on the hog’s back or, as they’d say, “the snail’s shell”. And Dick says this new baby,’ he slapped the gleaming sides of the new engine as though it were a prize racehorse, ‘will haul more freight and get there more quickly than any of the others!’ Moist thought about this and said, ‘You know what, I bet you that as soon as our boy Simnel finishes this new Flyer he’ll make sure that Iron Girder goes just that little bit faster. Harry, he’s not going to let her be eclipsed even if it means constant tinkering until she’s up to scratch. There’s so many workers on the job these days, he spends most of his time on her in any case. She’s the prototype of all of them, and he keeps changing the prototype.’ ‘And he wants to walk out with our Emily! Well, he’s a smart lad and she’ll always know where he is.’ The thought flitted across Moist’s mind I wonder what Iron Girder thinks about that. And even as he dismissed the ridiculous notion he fancied he could hear a slight hiss. Harry was still admiring the latest locomotive. ‘I reckon the lobsters will be like chiens with deux tails to be the first real foreigners to have the famous railway. And our Emily tells me that the Quirmian for “railway” means “card game” so that would be right up your ruelle, yes? Make sure you keep an ace up your manche, Mister Lipwig, okay?’ ‘Manche?’ ‘Effie is learning me to talk lobster, she thinks it’s a lovely and romantic language.’ Moist was moved to point out that he had hardly seen his own wife in the last month and had completed over fifty complex negotiations just to get to the border with Quirm. ‘Capital, so you’ve really got your eye in now, yes? Anyway, Quirm ain’t so far away and you’ll enjoy the sunshine when you get there. And I tell you what! Before you go you can have a day off in lieu! And I don’t say that to many people.’ Moist cleared his throat. ‘Actually, er, Harry, you don’t in fact employ me. The city does.’ ‘Does that mean I can’t sack you?’ ‘I’m afraid so, Harry.’ Harry snorted with laughter. ‘I hate having people around I can’t sack. It’s unnatural.’ It had been a long day after some long weeks and even longer months and that evening Moist was grateful to step into his own house, looking forward to his big four-poster bed which had a mattress that wasn’t stuffed with straw, and pillows – actual pillows! Very few of the hostelries that Moist had stayed at during his travels considered pillows necessary or useful. Right now, metaphorically singing, he let himself in before Crossly could get there, and went not into the main part of the house but into the little corridor that led to Adora Belle’s study, where his beloved was talking to Of the Twilight the Darkness. The clacks was an equal opportunities employer, especially when it came to people who could swarm their way up the skeletal ribs of a clacks tower and once at the top sit down in a little chair and code like a demon, without actually being one, despite their appearance. Adora Belle was going through clacks reports with a suspicious eye while the goblin crouched like a nightmare on the end of her desk. She waved her fingers to indicate that she couldn’t afford to let go her concentration, then rolled up a script, handed it to the goblin and snapped, ‘Get that out now, please, to tower ninety-seven. Someone there isn’t coding accurately. Might be a trainee. I want to know, okay?’ The goblin snatched the scroll in a claw, sprang off the desk like a frog, headed for a little door near the floor and disappeared through it. Moist could hear rattling all the way up the wall as the goblin clambered up the panelling and scuttled to the private clacks tower on the roof. He shuddered, but before he could say anything Adora Belle looked up and said, ‘Look, he’s punctual, fast, reliable and codes more accurately even than me and all he wants from us is to be allowed to live with his family on the roof. Now don’t you give me all that again about being traumatized by seeing the picture of a grinning goblin in that children’s book when you were little, okay? Get over it, Moist. The goblins are the best thing that has happened to the clacks since, well, you know – us! They love running it and, what’s more, with them around the place we don’t have those nasty rat and mouse infestations that we used to have.’ Adora Belle stood up, walked around the desk to Moist and gave him a big kiss, and said, ‘How was your latest marathon, mister? I got reports of your progress throughout, of course, as you may imagine.’ Moist took a step back. ‘Reports? How?’ Adora Belle laughed. ‘What is a clacks tower but an enormous watchtower? And every clacksman has a very expensive pair of Herr Fleiss’s binoculars, made using the very best in Uberwald technology. There are lots of towers, so I made certain they kept a friendly eye on you – well, a lot of friendly eyes on you. After all, every clacksman knows your face and even the top of your head, and I thought it was my duty as a wife …’ ‘What, spying on your husband! Supposing I was messing about with other women?’ ‘That’s all right, I know you weren’t and if you had been I’d have had you killed – no offence meant – but you didn’t and so I didn’t and so everything is all right, yes? Mrs Crossly is doing a wonderful beef and oyster pie. See? Aren’t you glad I knew exactly when you were coming home?’ Moist smiled, and then the smile broadened as he realized what it was he had been told, and he added thoughtfully, ‘Are you telling me, my love, that you could spot and follow anybody?’ ‘Oh yes, probably, if they walk around a lot. The lads and lasses often peek when they have some down time. They just do it, there’s no harm in it. The other day when you were heading home I was at the Grand Trunk office and was privileged to get a report of you bobbing up and down on your golem horse … very fetching, they said.’ Adora Belle stared at her husband and added, ‘Do you know that when you’ve found out something amazingly interesting and useful your eyes light up like a Hogswatch decoration? So stop glittering right now and go and smarten yourself up before we sit down to a proper dinner.’ It was a rule of Moist and Adora Belle’s household that the evening meal, if at all possible, was sacrosanct. No eating at their desks, no rush, but candles, and silverware, as if it were always a special occasion. And a special occasion it was: the only time they could sit down face to face and just, well, be at least moderately married to each other. However, Adora Belle couldn’t conceal her dismay about losing her husband again for yet another prolonged absence in a foreign country. ‘Quirm isn’t that far away,’ Moist soothed. ‘And once I get the local lads on side it won’t be too bad.’ Adora Belle cleared her throat. ‘Garçons. If they’re lobsters, your lads will be known as garçons.’ ‘What?’ ‘Garçons. It’s Quirmian, but don’t worry, most of them speak Morporkian. And you know why? Because none of us can be bothered to learn Quirmian.’ ‘Well, no matter what they’re called. Once the railway line’s built I’ll probably be able to come home more often.’ He paused to take another mouthful of pie. ‘By the way, Harry’s just had a clacks from the King of Lancre asking if we could eventually run a line all the way to his kingdom so that, and I quote, “Lancre can take its rightful place on the world stage”.’ ‘Don’t underestimate that place,’ said Adora Belle. ‘They’ve got witches up there. They fly up to the clacks towers and scrounge coffee off the lads – well, at least one of them does, especially when the lads are young and the goblins aren’t on shift. And then there are all the dwarf mines up at Copperhead. I’m sure they could find a use for the railway.’ Moist made a face. ‘The lads say no way. It’s too steep, and anyway, the Lancre bridge wouldn’t take the weight of the engine. Sorry. But I suppose we could tell his majesty that we’ll send surveyors to take a look once the Quirm line’s complete.’ Moist put down his fork. ‘But here we are, and it looks like for the first time in ages we have an evening free. What shall we do? Perhaps it might be a good idea to give the staff the rest of the evening off …’ And Adora Belle replied with a smile, ‘Yes … What shall we do?’ ‘It’s simply mechanical,’ said Ponder Stibbons over tea in the Uncommon Room at Unseen University. ‘It just looks magical.’ ‘Shouldn’t be allowed, then,’ said the Senior Wrangler, spearing a whole pie with his fork. ‘Looking magical is our business.’ ‘Well,’ said Mustrum Ridcully, pointedly ignoring him, ‘you can’t stand in the way of progress, so why don’t you hitch a ride on it? Does anyone else want a train ride? It gets so stuffy in here and I’m sure we don’t want people thinking of us as being stick-in-the-muds.’ ‘But we are stick-in-the-muds,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. ‘I treasure the fact.’ ‘Nevertheless, it’s time we looked the railway in the face. Mister Stibbons will lead the way.’ The wizards left the University in a small fleet of coaches which caused quite a stir when they appeared at the Ankh-Morpork terminus. Stibbons, knowing his fellow wizards, had made arrangements beforehand and a special train had been laid on for the occasion, with particularly well cushioned seats. ‘You will of course travel First Class, gentlemen,’ said the station master, who had been well primed by Stibbons. ‘But if you wish, some of you might be able to ride on the footplate.’ He hesitated and said, ‘Although I’m not sure those robes would be safe.’ The Archchancellor burst out laughing. ‘Young man, a wizard’s robe is impervious to fire. Good grief, if they weren’t we’d be burned alive every day before elevenses!’ Stibbons, who had already had several rides with Iron Girder over the previous weeks followed by some intense conversations with Dick Simnel, had got the hang of the business and took some pleasure in seeing the best minds in the University coming to terms with their first railway ride. It was a short journey to Upunder and back, including a dinner at the halfway mark which lasted longer than the train ride itself. On the homeward stretch, the Chair of Indefinite Studies was allowed to operate the emergency brake to the envy of the rest of the wizards, and there was a certain amount of waving of flags, blowing of whistles, and slamming of doors at each stop for the wizards to try their hands at. Iron Girder was in full steam and the fireproof wizards taking their turn on the footplate stared into the fire box and approved.fn37 Replete and tired on their way back to Ankh-Morpork, they considered this new form of locomotion as a phenomenon. The Senior Wrangler thought about objecting again, but was too full. ‘Amazing, people waving at you as you go past,’ said Ridcully. ‘I’ve never seen that before. Who’d have thought it? Machinery making people smile. What are you writing down, Mister Stibbons?’ Blushing, Stibbons said, ‘I like to spot an occasional train, you know … I’m just interested in them … It’s like watching the future go past.’ The Archchancellor smiled and said, ‘Then perhaps we should be the ones who are minding the doors, not to mention the gap, because the future is coming down the track fast. And who knows what is going to arrive next.’ It was a wonderful sunny day. Skylarks sang in the deep blue sky. It was a great day to be alive. Moist, needing a change of air, walked away from the compound with a spring in his step, a little way along the railway track. And right there on this perfect day … yes, there out of sight of anyone excepting, of course, the ambling Moist himself, on the rail that Iron Girder would have to travel along as soon as she came around the bend on to the little incline leading to the station, were two small … creatures. Rabbits, his common sense tried to tell him, plenty of them around here … even the compound was riddled with them. And, for a moment, the whole world stopped right in his face, leaving him spinning slowly in a little world of his own, looking out on to the real one. There were the main engine sheds, over there was the crowd queueing for their rides, and there on the track was the future of the railway. It was one perfect moment where time stretched out, and Moist the only witness to this terrible tableau. It was like a strange game of high-speed chess unfolding before his eyes. And then, suddenly, his legs took off from under him and he ran and ran, too breathless to shout, towards the two children who had hunkered down with their ears pressed against the rails, giggling because the vibrations were at times funny and bouncy and loud and … RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW! And … gone … Moist woke up, which could be interpreted as a good thing. First time round, Iron Girder was over him and he was dead, but his next careful waking was in a white room that smelled of camphor wood and other disinfectants, sharp and reassuring smells: tangible proof that he had a nose at least, because he couldn’t really feel anything else. After a while subtle little noises grew into louder ones, coming closer and forming words, loudly reassuring and somewhat hearty words that crystallized into an individual in a white coat saying, ‘Well, madam, he keeps going up and down, but with fewer downs and a welcoming parade of ups. He’s getting more stable all the time and nothing’s broken, although he’s ruined a decent pair of boots – and, may I say, madam, that even here in the hospital there are already people organizing a whipround to replace them.’ Moist made a mighty heave, fought his way out of unconsciousness and arrived back in the here and now – a place where everything hurt. On the plus side, Adora Belle was looking at him, while looming behind her, in a white coat, was a large and expansive man of a sort that had played many rough competitive games when he was younger and wished he could do so now, if only the belly were smaller and the limbs willing. Moist’s wife was regarding her husband carefully, as if checking that all the bits were there in their rightful places, at which point the doctor grabbed his hand and boomed, ‘Somebody up there must be watching over you, Mister Lipwig. How do you feel? As your physician I must tell you that jumping in front of railway trains is not recommended by medical practitioners, but acts of mindlessly idiotic bravery most certainly are, and can be applauded!’ Dr Lawn looked carefully down at Moist and said, ‘You don’t know what you did, do you, Mister Lipwig? Just you come along and we’ll see if you can walk.’ Moist could walk and wished he couldn’t. The whole of him felt as if it had been smacked very hard, but the nurses helped him upright and led him carefully to the ward next door, which contained, as it turned out, among the noise, two families; and there were small children and parents weeping. Bits of the past slammed into place in Moist’s memory and got bigger and more horrible as once again he felt the breath of the engine as it sailed over the top of him, a toddler under each arm. No, it couldn’t have happened like that – could it? But clamouring voices were telling him otherwise, with women trying to kiss him and holding up their offspring to do likewise, their husbands at the same time trying to shake his hand. Bafflement filled him up like smoke and now in front of him Adora Belle was looking at him with a funny little smile, such as only husbands know of. When they were at last able to disembogue themselves of the crowd of happy parents and somewhat sticky children, Adora Belle still had her faint smile. ‘Well now, my dear, didn’t you once say that a life without danger is a life not worth living?’ Moist patted her hand and said, ‘Well, Spike, I married you, didn’t I?’ ‘You couldn’t resist it, could you? It’s like a drug. You’re not happy unless someone is trying to kill you, or you’re in the centre of some other kind of drama, out of which, of course, the famous Moist von Lipwig will jump to safety at the very last moment. Is it a disease? Some kind of syndrome?’ Moist put on his meek face as only husbands and puppies can do and said, ‘Would you like me to stop? I will if you say so.’ There was silence until Adora Belle said, ‘You bastard, you know I can’t do that. If you stopped all of that you wouldn’t be Moist von Lipwig!’ He opened his mouth to protest just as the door opened and in came the press: William de Worde, editor of the Ankh-Morpork Times, followed by a porter and the ubiquitous Otto Chriek, the iconographer. And, because Moist would never stop being Moist von Lipwig until he died, he smiled for the iconograph. He reminded himself that this was only the start. All the rest would be along soon … but no matter, he had danced this fandango many times before, and so he maintained his best boy scout face and smiled at Mr de Worde, who started off by saying, ‘It appears that you are a hero again, Mister Lipwig. The driver and the stoker say that you ran faster than they could brake the train, picked up the children and jumped to safety just in time. Safety, at that precise moment, being under your Iron Girder. It was a miracle that you were there, wasn’t it?’ And so the dance began. ‘Not at all. We make a point of keeping an eye on the visitors at all times, of course. The children were outside the compound and, strictly speaking, the responsibility of their parents, but we’ll be putting up barriers along that stretch of the line immediately. You have to understand, people are flocking here. They seem to be irresistibly drawn by the novelty of live steam and speed.’ ‘And a very dangerous novelty, would you not say, Mister Lipwig?’ ‘Well now, Mister de Worde, everything old was once new and until explored was unfamiliar and dangerous, and then, as sure as night follows day they become just part of the scenery. Believe me, sir, that’ll happen here with the railway, too.’ Moist watched the journalist painstakingly taking down his words and was ready when the man said, ‘I’ve heard from elderly people all across the Sto Plains who’re frightened of the noise and speed. And the trains leave smoke and cinders … Surely that’s dangerous for our fine city?’ Moist flashed his grin once more, thinking, here we go again. ‘This place you choose to call “our fine city” is almost all smoke and cinders, and a lot else besides. The trials of Iron Girder have impressed everybody with her ability to carry heavy loads safely and at speed. Let’s not forget that speed is essential when dealing with certain goods: your newspaper for one – no one wants to get their news late – and there’s my Post Office parcels for another. We can get your first printing on the breakfast tables at Sto Lat. And as for scaring the elderly, well, one old lady recently told me that we should have waited until all the old people were dead before starting up with the railway, and I think you’d agree that that might be a very long time!’ Moist saw the journalist’s face break into a smile, and knew he had a result. He continued, ‘People often use the excuse that old people won’t understand something when, in fact, they simply don’t want it or understand it themselves. Actually, old people can be quite gung-ho about risk, and very proud of it.’ And here, for dramatic effect, he looked serious. ‘Regrettably, prototype work cannot provide guaranteed safety; it’s hard to make things safe until you know they’re dangerous. Do you understand? I’m absolutely certain that one day the train will save many, many lives. In fact, I guarantee it.’ As soon as the excited press had got its quotes and pictures of the hero of the hour, and Moist had submitted to a final check by Dr Lawn, he said goodbye to Adora Belle and caught a cab to the compound. Once there, he barged into Harry King’s office without even knocking. ‘There should have been someone else on duty, Harry!’ he shouted, banging a fist on the desk. ‘If you have any sense, you’ll put proper guards around the track close to the compound to keep an eye on people when the trains are running! I pulled your chestnuts out of the fire this time!’ he screamed. ‘But I’ll tell you this, Harry. A couple of dead toddlers in a front-page story would’ve shut the railway down before we’ve hardly got started! Vetinari would do it, believe me. You know his distrust of mechanisms, and I doubt he’d lose much in the way of popularity if he told Mister Simnel to put his toys back in the box. It’d be a great shame, but people mustn’t die just because of a bloody engine!’ Moist stopped. He was panting and out of breath, and Sir Harry King, whose expression had hardly changed during the diatribe, now had a face of flaming red. In the silence Moist thought he heard a curious sizzle, like the sound made by Iron Girder when she was relaxing after a heavy day on the straight and curves. You could perhaps call it a kind of metal purring, but it had now gone, leaving doubts that it had ever been there. Harry looked Moist up and down and said gravely, ‘They said you flew under the train, holding two little kiddies in your arms. Did you?’ ‘You know, I have absolutely no idea. I did see the kids with their heads on the tracks, listening to the funny noises on the rails, and I distinctly remember myself saying Oh bugger! Then something whacked me on the side of the head and I don’t remember a thing until I woke up in the Lady Sybil, on a bed, and that’s the truth. I am a liar for the purposes of amusement, publicity, trivial one-upmanship, personal profit and the gaiety of nations, but I’m not lying to you now.’ There was silence, broken when Harry said hoarsely, ‘You know I’m a granddad, don’t you? A little boy and a little girl, courtesy of my eldest, and I don’t often shiver, my friend, but I’m shivering now.’ Harry stood up, with eyes running tears, and said, ‘You’re the man for this, Mister Lipwig, so you tell me what I should do, please.’ Moist hadn’t expected this, but he managed to catch the metaphorical ball. ‘Clean up your act, Harry,’ he said. ‘Engineers and suchlike know all about hot steel, high speeds and wheels spinning fast, right! For most people, exhilarating speed is a runaway horse. Many people get hurt in this city every year when dear old Dobbin the dray horse suddenly feels his oats and heads for pastures new down the middle of the road. ‘My advice is to shut down the Iron Girder rides for a week, for “maintenance”. Tidy up, keep all the sharp stuff out of the way, stick up some barriers and have a few lads wandering around in uniform looking like they mean business. You know the kind of thing. Make a show of being safe.’ And now Moist heard the little sizzle again, and it seemed to sizzle in his soul, filling him with ideas, and in the theatre of his head he sat up in the gods, watching the stage of his imagination, agog to see what he came up with next. ‘It’s not just around the compound that there could be incidents like this, Harry – we need to keep an eye on the whole line. Someone to spot if there are kids on the track, or cows, or a train going the wrong way.’ He saw Harry blanch at the thought of all the things that could go wrong, but he was in full flow now. ‘They’ll need a good view – some kind of watchtower would do the trick, with a clacks attached to signal to the drivers … Ask Dick – that brain of his is coming up with new designs faster than his hand can get them down on paper. ‘And here’s a tip: do something about those greasy old cattle wagons you’re running behind Iron Girder. They’re okay for a circus ride, maybe, but all of your rolling stock should be as good as the special ones we’re using on the Sto Lat line.’ Sizzle. ‘Yes! More posh carriages for the nobs, and …’ here Moist saw the money smile and continued, ‘here’s a thought, for those who aren’t quite nobs but aspire to be like them, well, why not give them carriages that are not quite so plush, but visibly better than the very cheapest coaches which are, perhaps, open to the weather. That would give them something else to yearn for, and you’ll have made yet another money pump.’ Moist now found himself caught in the glare of one of Harry King’s most dangerous expressions. ‘Mister Lipwig, damn me if you ain’t a most dangerous man, yes indeed! You’re inciting people to have ideas above their station, and that sort of thing makes people suspicious and anxious and, above all, very, very nervous.’ To Harry’s surprise, Moist almost sprang into the air, spinning. ‘Yes! Yes! That’s the way! Lord Vetinari’s way, too. He believes that people should strive to be better in every respect. I can see it now, Harry. Picture a young man taking his young lady on the train and hazarding an extra sixpence to go in the better-class seats. Well, he’s no end of a swell, and he’ll look around him and think, This suits me down to the ground and no mistake, I could do with more of this. ‘And when he goes back to work he’ll strive, yes, strive, to become a better, that’s to say, richer person to the benefit of both his employer and himself, and not, of course, neglecting to thank the owner of the railway, to wit, your good self, who allowed him to have ideas above his railway station. Everybody wins, nobody loses. Please, please, Harry, allow people to aspire. I mean who knows, they might have been in the wrong class all this time. Your railway, my friend, will allow them to dream, and once you have a dream you’ve got somewhere closer to a reality.’ Throughout all this Harry stared at Moist as if he’d just seen a giant tarantula, but he managed to say, ‘Mister Lipwig, a little while ago you were under a railway engine with fifty tons of rolling stock going past your ears and now you spring up like a jack-in-the-box, full of vim and vigour and schemes! What is it you’ve got? And how can I get some of it?’ ‘I don’t know, Harry, it’s just me being normal. You just keep going, whatever happens, and you never stop. It works for me. And remember: clean up your act – our act – to make sure that the public don’t get caught up in the mechanisms.’ The sister state of Quirm comprised, like Ankh-Morpork, a major city, several theoretically autonomous satellites each vying with all the others for advancement, any number of squabbling townships, all bloated with self-importance, and a vast number of homesteads, parishes, farms, vineries, mines, hamlets, bends in the road that someone had named after their dog, and so on, and indeed, so on again. Around the edges of the Ankh-Morpork hegemonyfn38 it was quite possible these days for a small farmer on the hypothetical outskirts of all that could be called Ankh-Morpork to lean over his own hedge and chat with a Quirmian farmer who was most definitely in Quirm at the time, without in any way considering that this was a political matter. The conversation would generally be about the weather, the abundance or otherwise of water and the uselessness of the government, never mind which kind, and then happily they would shake hands, or give a little nod, and one would go home to drink a pint of home-made beer after such a busy day, while the other would do likewise with a decent home-made wine. Occasionally the son of one farmer would go to the hedge and see the daughter of the other one, and vice versa and that was why, in a few – but very interesting – places along the boundary, there were people who spoke in both tongues. This sort of thing is something that governments really hate, which is a very good thing. Technically speaking, Quirm and Ankh-Morpork were bosom friends, after centuries of conflict mostly about things that turned out to be inessential, inconsequential, untrue or downright lies. Yes, you used to need a passport to travel in either direction, but since Lord Vetinari had taken office nobody really looked at them any more. Moist had been there many times in his younger days and in different guises and under different names and, on one very memorable occasion, a different sex.fn39 Moist mused for a moment as that triumph came back to him. It had been one of the all-time great scams, and, although there had been a large number of other fruitful escapades, he had never dared try it again. The nuns would have got him for sure. But now, as the coach to Quirm finally reached the border, the only obstacle was a gate, theoretically locked and manned by a couple of officers, one on each side. However, such was the nature of inter-state relations that they were quite often asleep or, if not sleeping, were happily cultivating their little gardens on either side of the border. Some might ask what was the point? Everybody smuggled and, after all, the smuggling went both ways, and so a pragmatic approach was floating in the zeitgeist. And today Moist had a list of people to see, oh yes, he always had a list. He knew that Quirm itself desperately needed the railway as it had lots of produce to sell or be left with heaps of stinking fish, and so Moist was expecting a happy week dealing with the lobsters,fn40 but right now he was dealing with people far from the coast who considered their tiny patches of ground to be sacred. Yes, they wanted the railway, but if it went across their land they wouldn’t have any land left that wasn’t railway. Moist was assisted in his negotiations in Quirm by Acting Captain Haddock of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, presently seconded to the Quirmian force, who had learned the lingo, in an Ankh-Morpork kind of way. Acting Captain Haddock explained the dilemma created by Quirmian traditions of landownership over a pint of very weak beer. ‘It’s all to do with something they call le patrimony. It means that all the kids have to get something when mum and dad pass over. A big farm might have to be split into two or even three or more so everyone can get their share. Even the government knows this is stupid, but no one in Quirm takes any notice of what the government says. So it’s up to you, Mister Lipwig, to get them to understand, but that’s it, I’m afraid.’ Well, Moist tried, he really did, and after a frustrating fortnight haggling over every handkerchief-sized plot, he was ready to give up and head back to Ankh-Morpork. Harry wasn’t going to like this, he thought, and, worse still, neither was Vetinari, but he could probably talk his way out of it, possibly. His gloomy mood was lightened when he reached a small but prosperous estate belonging to the Marquis des Aix en Pains, a well-known wine grower. The Marquis was one of the last landowners on Moist’s list. He had married a girl from Ankh-Morpork and was apparently extremely keen to have his very fine wines conveyed to customers as soon as possible with a minimum of jolting, which had a deleterious effect on the wine. Currently the coach journey, littered with potholes, required the wines to lie down in a dark cool cellar to settle for months afterwards. The Marquis had invited Moist for lunch, which turned out to be something he called fusion cuisine, with pâté devoid of avec, a main course of lobster and mash, followed by a most excellent spotted dick, a combination of dishes that you would expect to live long in the annals of gastronomic infamy but which wasn’t too bad, especially when consumed in conjunction with the remarkably good house wines. The Marquis was young and forward-looking and clearly taken with the idea of the railway, not only for the wine trade but also as a means of bringing people together. He winked at his wife as he said so, with the definite implication that getting people together was something very close to his heart; and he believed that the more people knew about one another, the better they got along. His views on Quirm’s curious and slightly bucolic attitude to the division of wealth after the death of the parents were of great interest to Moist. ‘Everyone wants to sell their wine and cheese and fish to Ankh-Morpork, zat is certain, but nobody wants to lose land. We all like our slice of Quirm: it’s real real estate, something you can pick up and crumble in your fingers, something zat you can fight for. It’s old-fashioned, I know, and of course its continued existence leaves the government exasperated, which, as a true son of Quirm, I consider perfectly acceptable. ‘However, for you, my friend, zis is difficult because we don’t sell our birthright unless, that is, the price is extremely ’igh. And, when the news gets out about the railway the price will be extremely ’igh: you will, as my wife says, ’ave to pay “dans le nez”. I think, my friend, you will ’ave to find another route from here to Quirm City if you want to get ze job done before les poules auront des dents.’ He hesitated for a moment and said, ‘Come with me to ze library. I want to show you some maps.’ In a large and ornate room, filled with the heads of many stuffed animals – or at least probably stuffed – and a stench of old formaldehyde, Moist pored over a large map which the Marquis had pulled out of an old chest. Pointing to what seemed to be a rather empty part of the map, the Marquis said, ‘Most country ’ere is worthless land, maquis all the way, nothing to mine except ochre, and precious little of zat too. It’s more or less a wasteland, covered in scrub zat would tear your boots off and with nothing to induce people to be zere. Badlands, you might say, ’ome to rogues on the run, highwaymen, bandits and occasionally smugglers, all of them extremely nasty and armed to ze teeth. Oh, the government makes a play of getting rid of them every so often, but that isn’t all. There are goblins and zey know nothing about land rights.’ ‘We’ve now come to terms with goblins in Ankh-Morpork,’ said Moist quickly. ‘It’s a matter of finding something for them to do that they really like doing and are good at and, of course, after that it’s just a case of remembering their names and refraining from kicking them. They can be extremely helpful if unkicked, although not necessarily likeable.’ ‘I wish we could get on decent terms with zem,’ said the Marquis wistfully, ‘but these, you must understand, are Quirm goblins, and therefore extremely argumentative and intractable and on top of it, often drunk. They brew their own wine for ’eavens’ sake.’ He thought for a moment and then corrected himself, ‘Or, rather, a wine-like substance.’ ‘That doesn’t sound so bad, does it?’ said Moist. ‘Really? They brew ze wine from snails. From the fruit of the wall, as you call it in Ankh-Morpork. It makes zem extremely rowdy, but zey would probably be okay if it wasn’t for the bandits, who ’unt them for fun.’ ‘So do the bandits own the maquis?’ said Moist. The Marquis hesitated. ‘No, it is indeed no man’s land. I suppose if we talk to lawyers, they will say it’s owned literally by ze state of Quirm in its entirety.’ ‘Well, sir, since it appears that the state of Quirm is gagging to have the railway, even if the landowners aren’t, and if you can assure me of the land rights issue, I’ll be very happy to do them a favour.’ The Marquis grimaced. ‘Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as zat. We are not difficult people, but the government drags its feet when it comes to cleaning out ze bandits, because, as you understand, bandits and governments ’ave so much in common that they might be interchangeable anywhere in the world … I see you smiling, Mister Lipwig. Is something amusing?’ ‘Many bandits?’ ‘A considerable amount. This whole area is rather spoiled by them – unpleasant bandits who would cheerfully commit murder if and when zey think zey can get away with it. I ’ave to tell you that if you are in a ’urry to clear the maquis of bandits, I’m afraid, Mister Ankh-Morpork, you might ’ave to do it yourself. And I see you are still smiling! Will you be so good as to share ze joke? The well-known so-called Ankh-Morpork sense of ’umour does not translate very well here, I’m afraid.’ ‘Don’t be,’ said Moist. ‘When the humours were handed out, Ankh-Morpork got the one for joking and Quirm had to make do with their expertise in fine dining and love-making.’ He held a beat and said, ‘Would you fancy a trade?’ The Marquise giggled into her wine, smiled at Moist and winked, while her husband grinned and said solemnly, ‘I think, monsieur, we prefer the status quo.’ And Moist, who had almost but not totally embarrassed himself, said, ‘Sir, apart from the goblins, do any decent people live in those badlands?’ The Marquis shook his head. ‘No, certainly not, they’re as dry as dust.’ Moist looked thoughtful for a while, then stood up, bowed to both of them, kissed the hand of the Marquise and said, ‘Thank you so much for your hospitality and your help and information. I should get away now if I’m to make the overnight coach back to Ankh-Morpork, but I have a funny feeling that happier circumstances will soon prevail. In fact, I can feel them just floating in the air.’ Ankh-Morpork was full of dwarf bars, big and small, accommodating all comers. The gloom of the Dirty Rat was particularly popular with those who preferred a traditional style of establishment and a definite lack of umbrellas in their drinks. ‘Knocking down clacks towers. What good does that do us? My old granny lives under a clacks tower and the lads let her send clackses for nothing.’ In the shadows somebody said, ‘You shouldn’t allow her to do that. The clacks is for humans.’ And then the quarrel began. ‘You’ve got to admit the clacks is useful sometimes. It’d save a ship at sea, I heard. And anyway it helps you keep in touch with your friends.’ The voice from the dark corner said again, ‘Don’t touch the clacks towers, then. There are other ways. I’ve seen the locomotives. It should be easy enough to turn one over on the rails.’ ‘Oh yeah? And why d’you want to do that?’ ‘It’ll show that us dwarfs are not to be trifled with and anyway, I’m hearing that dwarfs aren’t being allowed to work on the railway.’ ‘I hadn’t heard that. That’s discrimination.’ ‘No, that’s because silly buggers have been chopping up clacks towers, isn’t it? It’s what you get if you go around doing things like that. No wonder at all.’ ‘That’s as may be, but the railway employs lots of trolls and even goblins … I mean, goblins! Filth! We’re being pushed aside. The Low King has sold his soul to bloody Vetinari and the next thing you know they’ll have built a railway line to Uberwald and all our mines will be full of stinking goblins … unless we stand up for ourselves now!’ ‘Yeah! Bloody goblins. All over the place!’ The conversation was punctuated by the sound of much quaffing and the subsequent cleaning of the tables. ‘Not that a true dwarf would want to work on the railway, mind you,’ said the soft voice that hadn’t yet identified itself. ‘No! You’re right. I’d never work on the railway. It’s an abomination! It should be stopped!’ ‘They’re laying tracks to Quirm from Ankh-Morpork. It would make a statement if we got in the way,’ the voice from the shadows continued. Someone thumped a hand on the bar and said, ‘We must show them that dwarfs are not going to be pushed around any longer!’ ‘We could smash up those bloody water towers and steal the coal,’ another suggested. ‘That wouldn’t hurt anyone but it would mean they’d have to walk.’ ‘That’s not big enough. They’d just rebuild and carry on, like they’ve done with the clacks. We’d need to do something really big. Something that would make people pay attention.’ There was the sound of people thinking who didn’t think very much. Somebody said, ‘You mean killing people?’ ‘Well, you know, you have to make a stand. And later on, when people find out, we’ll be the heroes.’ And then the barman, who had been keeping an eye on the group, said pointedly, ‘It’s closing time, gentlemen, ain’t you got no holes to go to?’ And shooed them out on to the street. Ardent walked confidently away. After all, there was another dwarf bar a few streets away and the poison could drip so gently. Amazing how simple people could be manipulated by the right voice at the right time. And after that they did it for themselves with vocabulary like ‘stands to reason’ and ‘they’re up to something’, little caltrops on the road to interspecies misunderstanding. When Moist finally arrived back in Ankh-Morpork around breakfast time, he hurried to Harry King’s house. It was unusual to see Harry being, as it were, just Harry King, family man. He was even wearing carpet slippers. Effie fussed about with the servants for more coffee while Moist made his report to her husband. ‘Sir, we have a little problem down in Quirm. To put it bluntly, some unpleasant gentlemen are getting in the way of the success of our railway.’ Moist explained the land-rights situation to Harry and proposed that since the rolling acres of maquis didn’t belong to anybody it belonged to everybody and he could put the railway line straight through. There was just the little matter of the bandits to be dealt with. The look on Harry’s face would have warmed the cockles of any heart, especially if it was the heart of a shark, and really Moist didn’t need to say much more, but did so anyway. ‘It would be very helpful, Harry, if I could go back there one night soon with some of your golems and possibly some of your … security men, your specialist technicians, as it were. The kind of gentlemen who are adept at resolving conflict. Of course, I’ll need to commandeer a coach.’ The expression on Harry’s face changed like a kaleidoscope until at last he said, ‘Do you mind if I come too?’ And Effie shrieked, ‘Harry King! At your age you’re going to be doing nothing more than stopping home!’ ‘Oh, come on, my love, the man said these are bandits. It’s my duty as an honest citizen. After all, I’m Harry King, the man who does business, and this, well, this is my business and I’m going to take care of it.’ ‘Harry, please! Remember your position in life!’ ‘A man makes his own position in life, Duchess, and this is business and I’m going to sort it and it will be the last time, okay?’ ‘Oh, all right … but you mind and take notice, Mister Lipwig. And Harry, you do what Mister Lipwig tells you, he’s a very sensible young man,’ said Effie. ‘And there’s to be no alcohol and, Mister Lipwig, make certain he’s wrapped up nice and warm because of his bladder, er, thing, you know. He’s not as young as he thinks he is.’ And Harry roared. ‘Yes, Effie! But right now I reckon I’m ready for anything. I’ll get the word out to my lads and my golems, Mister Lipwig, and I’ll see you back here tomorrow morning. Seven o’clock sharp.’ At home, Adora Belle said, ‘It’s a harebrained idea, of course, otherwise you wouldn’t have had it, would you?’ ‘Actually, my sweetness, the raid was Harry’s idea,’ Moist lied. ‘I think he thinks of it as his last grand hurrah, but he really had to twist my arm, I promise you, or my name isn’t Moist Lipwig. You should have seen the look on his face!’ ‘Yes, you are Moist von Lipwig and you are really looking forward to this, aren’t you? You have that look about you.’ ‘Not exactly,’ said Moist. ‘But it’ll be a moonless night, and it might be instructive to see Harry and his chums having one of their little parties. Of course, you don’t know anything about this, okay?’ Adora Belle’s face went delightfully blank. ‘This what? But just you remember, Moist, if it’s going to be a mêlée do try to come back with all your bits in their rightful place.’ The following morning, two large coaches were waiting outside Harry King’s house with a crew of Harry’s chums on board. Moist wondered how Harry could gather them together so quickly and then thought about all the things Harry used to do back in the bad old days that he now fondly remembered as being so good. Actually, it was no surprise that the man could assemble an army to settle a little dispute about who owned the streets. They were all on their best behaviour now and almost all of them didn’t spit and there was no cursing, because the Duchess was looking out of the window, ready to wave them off. Before the coaches departed, Harry addressed his team. ‘It’s like this, lads: this isn’t exactly a killing job, unless they tries to kill you first. These ain’t our streets, but they’re bandits all the same. You could say we’re making the world better for decent people, like what we are, and we’re cleaning up the mess like we’ve always done.’ Moist looked at the faces of Harry’s associates. Some had gold teeth and some had no teeth, but all of them had the surreptitious look of gentlemen that mostly go abroad after dark. And if you looked with an experienced eye, bits of them bulged, indeed one of them was holding a toolbox and an eager expression, clearly a man who wasn’t for half measures. Harry had made it clear that there was to be no alcohol, at least until the homeward stage, and so it was a subdued journey through the day. By mid-afternoon they came to the edge of the maquis. The country that lay before them was clearly no place for coaches, with the road petering out into a vague track amid the scrub. Harry ordered the drivers to halt at a spot that offered some grazing and water for the horses, where the coaches would be screened from view, and sent his associates to scout the maquis ahead. Moist had never before travelled with such silent men; they seemed to absorb all noise and as they jumped down from the coaches with flannel feet they melted instantly into the landscape. Content to leave this part to the specialists, Harry and Moist settled back to wait. It was a black night, and the whole party had made its stealthy way to the edge of the bandits’ camp. They were now in the depths of the wretched wilderness of the Quirmian maquis, a nightmare of dense blackthorn that could strip the skin from your bone. It was a garden from hell, especially in the darkness. They could see the fitful flames of the cooking fires and hear the unmistakable sound of alcohol-assisted snoring. These outlaws ought to be ashamed, Moist thought, not one single lookout! With his associates strategically deployed around the perimeter, Harry made his way quietly into the centre of the camp. ‘Good morning, gentlemen! We are the Goblin Preservation Society and all of yous has got two minutes to get up and be out of here. Got it? Nice and smart, chums!’ A bandit stumbled out of his tent and sneered, ‘We don’t care who you are, and you can shove all of that right up your jacksie, monsieur.’ And Harry said, ‘Good! We like shoving it anywhere! Go on, lads, but no goblins get hurt, okay?’ Moist took a careful step backwards and watched. Harry had stipulated that murdering people wasn’t really on the cards tonight, but most of the bandits were either lying on the ground or running away within a couple of minutes of Harry’s chums being unleashed. It was gang warfare, but one gang had no sense of strategy. Harry’s men were surgical and methodical and very, very professional, even somewhat sombre. This was a job of work and they did it with care and precision. It was what you did, didn’t you, and they were flattering themselves that for once they were the good guys, an experience, Moist thought, that they seldom ever had. Harry took a look around the battleground to assure himself that nothing more than a little concussion and the occasional broken leg had been achieved and was satisfied on all points. ‘What do you plan to do with them?’ Moist asked. ‘Deliver them to the local justice, like the honest citizens we are. I suppose that’ll be your Marquis.’ ‘Very good, but can I suggest we leave one or two behind, to make sure the rest of the bandit population get to hear what happens if they make honest citizens upset?’ ‘Suppose so,’ Harry grunted. ‘But I’ll get the lads to do a few further … excursions in the area first, see if we can’t mop up some more of ’em. Actions speak louder than words, Mister Lipwig.’ At the chateau later that night the Marquis emerged in his dressing gown to receive them, accompanied by two servants. ‘Monsieur Lipwig, mon ami, what an unexpected pleasure to see you again so soon. And with companions.’ Harry stepped forward before Moist could speak and said, ‘We’ve a parcel of miscreants here we’ve brought to you, my lord, since I reckoned you were the closest figure of authority in these parts.’ The Marquis cast a bright eye over the prisoners. ‘I see at least two appear to ’ave “’ARRY KING” stamped across the temples. Can it be I ’ave the ’onour to address Sir ’arry King in person? Don’t be surprised. My wife has told me much about ze King of ze Golden River, including his famous rings. You are most welcome, monsieur, and I ’ope we will be doing much business together. May I offer you some refreshment?’ ‘’scuse me, sir, but what d’you want done with this lot?’ said the toolbox-holding associate. ‘Put them in the oubliette, if you would be so kind, we’ll fish them out sooner or later.’ ‘What’s an oubliette, sir? Is it like a privy?’ ‘Yes,’ the Marquis laughed, ‘I suppose it is in this instance! These garçons ’ave been a thorn in our side for quite a while, but I don’t think we’ll be getting any further trouble from them.’ When Moist, Harry and associates reboarded the coaches in the small hours and started on the long journey home, this time the crates of beer were brought out for the victors. ‘Well done, lads,’ Harry boomed as he cracked the top off a bottle. ‘You did all I expected and more, gentlemen. And you know Harry King is a generous man and so I look forward to working with you again soon. You can rely upon it.’ He lay back on the seat and starting smoking one of his cigars, every so often chatting to one or other of his chums about the escapades they had had long ago when the Watch was a laughing stock. Adora Belle eventually woke Moist with a cup of tea around about four o’clock in the afternoon. As he supped the tea his wife puffed up his pillows and said, ‘Come on, then, tell me, how did it go? I wasn’t woken by any big bangs last night, which I consider a result, don’t you?’ ‘Well, it wasn’t a massacre and it wasn’t a lot of smacked bottoms, as far as I could tell, but the good guys won, well, to a given value of good guy. Harry King’s cronies are very sprightly for old guys, and devious as well.’ Placing a tray of food on his knees she said, ‘I suppose breakfast in bed just can’t present the same frisson for Mister A Life Without Danger Is A Life Not Worth Living, yes?’ Puncturing a sausage, Moist said, ‘How well you know me, Spike. Now listen, it seems there are a lot of goblins in the maquis and the people of Quirm haven’t found out yet how useful they can be even though they apparently do a good line in wine made from snails.’ Moist grimaced and continued, ‘Do you mind if I take Of the Twilight the Darkness to Quirm with me?’ His wife looked astonished. ‘I didn’t think you liked him?’ ‘Well, he grows on you, you know, like a fungus, and there’s going to be a lot of puzzled goblins around now so they might like to see a friendly face.’ He hesitated. ‘If you can call it that.’ In darkness far from Moist in just about every sense that could be imagined, including the metaphysical, deliberations were taking place in a cavern that was paradoxically glittering and dark when tested by a different eye. It was illuminated, in so far as there was illumination, by one solitary candle, whose light was, as the saying goes, just there to show you the darkness. Nevertheless, its trembling little light was refracted in a veritable hoard of gems, the like of which, if you added up the sad little glimmerings, gave off entirely less light than could be delivered by a humble tallow candle. It was, in short, a light that hid from light, and it had a reason to hide. Just as the unfortunate dwarf now sitting uncomfortably in the centre of the cavern had reason to wish to be elsewhere. Elsewhere, he thought, was the operative word; anywhere would surely be a better place than here. On the other hand, he was under a religious obligation. He had first heard it on his father’s knee, or possibly his mother’s, because he had never seen or heard either of them clearly and their voices were always muffled, because silence was as much of a virtue as darkness among the grags, and as he recalled the undeniable fact, he almost tried to cut and run, stopping himself in a nanosecond because there was nowhere to hide. He was in it too high!fn41 Never a good place to be for a dwarf, and the grags had the measure of him. It was said that they had many ways of killing in the darkness and even had ways of moving from darkness to darkness without being apprehended by the intervening light. Oh, so much was said of them, although generally it was whispered. And he had done so many bad things, like eating beef and buying his wife colourful earrings and, worst of all, he had become friends with Rocky Debris who was, horror of horrors, a troll, and also quite a decent bloke, who he quite often sat next to when they were going to work and who, like him, was a supporter of Dolly Sisters United and generally went with him when there was a match on, and surely anyone who cheered for your side was a friend, wasn’t he? And yes, he was, but down in the base of his brain was the bogeyman of his childhood, and subtle whisperings, curdled fragments of old songs sung on special occasions, little observances made holy by repetition with the right people sitting at the same fireside, in those cosy days when you were not really old enough to understand and didn’t have your wretched brain stuffed full of ideas that part of you thought you shouldn’t ever obey, like not shaking hands with a troll and now he had been seen and now they had him and now they stood between him and his chances of a new life after death. They held the keys to the next world and, on a whim, could have him floating in the ultimate darkness of the Ginnungagap where there were … things, tormentors, creatures of indefinite invention and patience. He shifted because of the cramp in his legs, and said, ‘Please, I know I’ve got into bad ways and I’ve strayed from the path and indeed may be unworthy to call myself a dwarf, but if you allow me I can make recompense. Please, I’m begging you, remove my shackles and I promise to do whatever you ask.’ The silence in the room grew thicker, more dense, as if it was pulling itself together. How long had he been in here now? It might as well have been years, or merely seconds … That was the difficulty about darkness; it encompassed everything, turning it into an amorphous substance in which everything got twisted, and remembered and then lost. ‘Very well,’ said the voice. ‘We have looked into your wretched soul and are minded to give you one last chance. Be aware there will be no other.’ The voice softened a little and said, ‘Tak is watching you. Now you can eat your meal, which is right in front of you, and go from this place and be assured that Tak will be with you. Remember, for those who turn away there is no redemption. And when Tak needs you, you will be contacted again.’ After a rare, well-earned evening with his wife, Moist set off the next day on the golem horse with Of the Twilight the Darkness clinging on behind him. As they galloped along, there was something about the golem horse that was troubling Moist von Lipwig. A golem horse was incredibly useful if you needed to get somewhere fast, that is if you liked a ride where you spent a lot of the time finding that stirrups just didn’t do the job. You merely hung on until you got there, it was as simple as that. No need to steer, NagNav did the trick: if you told it where you wanted to go it took you there. The creature made no sound, required no water or oats and simply stood patiently when it wasn’t in use. And then it dawned on Moist what the problem was. It was all give and no take. Generally speaking, he didn’t have much to do with the concept of karma, but he had heard of it and felt that a ton of it was dropping on him right now. The horse was all give and he was all take … But that was nuts, he told himself. A spoon doesn’t want you to say please and thank you, does it? Ah yes, he thought, but a spoon is a piece of metal and the golem horse is a horse. He hesitated, pondering. And thought, I wonder … Shortly before the border crossing they reached the head of the finished railway track. He and the goblin thankfully slid off the horse and a sudden impulse prompted Moist to ask the creature a question. ‘Can you speak?’ he asked, feeling more than faintly ridiculous. And the answer came back out of the air rather than from the horse’s mouth, as it were. ‘Yes, if we want to.’ The goblin sniggered. Moist ignored him and pressed on with his line of inquiry. ‘Ah, we’re getting somewhere. Would you like to run around in meadows and generally cavort in pastures and so on?’ Out of nowhere came, ‘Yes, if you wish.’ Moist said, ‘But what do you wish?’ ‘I don’t understand the concept.’ Moist breathed in and said, ‘I saw a little stream not far back, and some green pastures and, for the sake of my soul, I would like you to go over there and gallop in the meadows and enjoy yourself.’ ‘Yes, enjoy myself, if you want me to.’ ‘For heavens’ sake, this is manumission we’re talking about here!’ ‘That would be horseumission, sir. And I must point out that I don’t need to enjoy myself.’ ‘Well, do so for my sake, will you, please? Roll around on the flowers and neigh a bit and gallop about and have some kind of fun. If not for your own pleasure, then for my sanity, please.’ He watched the horse disappear into the meadow. Behind him Of the Twilight the Darkness cackled. ‘What a piece of work you are, Mister Slightly Damp, freeing the slaves and all. What you think his lordship will say about that?’ Moist shrugged. ‘He might be acerbic, but a little acerbic isn’t all that bad. He’s quite a one for freedom is Vetinari, though not necessarily mine.’ Turning his attention to the railway, Moist was pleased to see that the work gangs, under the tutelage of Mr Simnel’s young men, were evidently making steady progress laying down the next stage of track towards Quirm. To travel onwards, Moist and Of the Twilight the Darkness hitched a ride on a handcar operated with gusto by two young railway workers, a curiously amusing contraption whose wheels ran along the newly laid rails still waiting to be fully bedded in. They passed the border with only a brief stop to deal with the formalities which were, in fact, nothing more than nodding at the guards and saying, ‘Is it okay if we cross, lads?’ Whereupon they briefly stopped digging their respective allotments and waved him through. Where the handcar ran out of track, they found an old man with a horse and cart waiting, as arranged, to take them the rest of the distance to the chateau. He was clearly very sniffy about having a goblin in his nice clean vehicle, even though it was only a cart. The Marquis was waiting for them at the chateau and beamed at Moist. His nose wrinkled at the sight of Moist’s companion. ‘Who is this?’ he asked in a tone a society lady might take upon finding half of something bristling in her soup. ‘This is Of the Twilight the Darkness.’ Of the Twilight the Darkness gave the Marquis a smart salute. ‘Of the Twilight the Darkness, Mister Mar-keee. Nice place you got here. Veeery nice. Don’t worry about smell. I’ll get used to it.’ After an awkward silence, the Marquis said, ‘Mon Dieu.’ ‘Not a god, Mister Mar-keee,’ said Of the Twilight the Darkness, ‘just goblin, best there is, oh yes. Very useful, you know.’ The goblin continued in ringing sarcasm, ‘And not only that, Mister Mar-keee, I’m real. If you cut me, do I not bleed? And if you do, I bleeding well cuts you too, no offence meant.’ The Marquis’s laughter bounced off the scenery. There was no doubt about it. The goblin knew how to break the ice. Even an iceberg. The Marquis held out a hand and said, ‘Enchanté, Monsieur Of the Twilight the Darkness. Do you drink wine?’ The goblin hesitated. ‘Are there snails in it?’ As they climbed the wide stone steps up to the terrace, the Marquis said, ‘Regrettably we don’t include snail. I know your people like snail wine but I’m afraid I ’ave none to offer you.’ ‘Never mind, squire, will have it as it comes, please. And for record, Mister Mar-keee, they ain’t my people, they your people. I’m an Ankh-Morpork lad. Have seen the big horsefn42 and all that stuff.’ The view in the late afternoon sun over the maquis from the terrace was wonderful. ‘You have many goblins in Ankh-Morpork, Mister Lipwig?’ the Marquis asked as he poured Moist a glass of chilled wine. ‘I’ve ’eard, of course, of Milord Vetinari’s famous melting pot. And yet I am informed zat many people in Ankh-Morpork still feel very unsure about them and think that getting involved with goblins shows that ze owner is dirty! So much for the prejudices of your countrymen who are, one ’as to say, a fairly dirty lot in any case. Whereas ’ere in Quirm notre logique points out that we are cleaner. After all, Quirm is the ’ome of Monsieur Bidet! Yet another apparatus for keeping clean and yet you in Ankh-Morpork sneer at us for being dirty.’ ‘Yes, I know, it’s deplorable,’ said Moist. ‘I did meet Monsieur Bidet, although regrettably I didn’t shake him by the hand. Excuse me? Is something wrong?’ The Marquis suddenly looked preoccupied. ‘Someone was watching us from the tree over zere. I must ’ave spoken too loudly because ’oever it is has made ’aste to get down to the cover of the ground. He’s small, but larger than a goblin; you ’ardly ever see zem in ze trees.’ There was a movement in the air as Of the Twilight the Darkness vaulted over the parapet and disappeared into the landscape below. He reappeared almost as quickly, saying, ‘Dwarf bugger. Have it away on toes. I spit me of him!’ The Marquis topped up Moist’s glass and said, ‘A dwarf? Something to do with you, Mister Lipwig? Industrial espionage? One would expect the dwarfs to be keen on something like a railway … they are, after all, metalworkers and traders in ore.’ ‘I don’t think so,’ said Moist. ‘The clacks saw a bit of trouble a few months ago with extremist factions knocking down some of their towers, but that seems to have died down now. And there don’t seem to be many dwarfs interested in working on the railway. Something to do with the grags, I expect. The grags don’t seem to like anybody of importance in Ankh-Morpork.’ ‘Oh, yes,’ said the Marquis. ‘The famous Koom Valley Accord and all zat business. I believed it to be sorted out.’ ‘So did everybody else. You must know how it is. Can’t please absolutely everybody. And you certainly can’t please the grags, however hard you try.’ Fully refreshed, Moist and Of the Twilight the Darkness set off into the maquis to find the goblin denizens, who even if they did not, strictly speaking, own the land through which the railway would go, needed to be informed and consulted. As squatters on unclaimed land, Moist thought, they surely must have some claim to it. As they made their way into the scrubby and thorny landscape, Moist pondered the significance of the dwarf who had been spying on him, right here in Quirm, where you didn’t normally see dwarfs. This meant he had been followed, and that almost surely meant more than one person. During his misspent youth and, not to put too fine a point on it, his largely misspent early middle age, he’d reckoned to be conversant with the methodology of spying, and one person alone couldn’t ensure reasonable tracking of the target. What was the dwarf doing there? Where had he come from? And, more important, where did he go? His reverie was interrupted when Of the Twilight the Darkness stopped suddenly by a rocky outcrop which, as far as Moist could tell, was indistinguishable from several other similar outcrops they had passed already. It was hot. Very hot. ‘Wait here,’ said the goblin. ‘Will be back in a shake.’ In fact it was another sweaty hour and the sun was beginning to dip below the horizon before the goblin came back along the track, trailed by a large crowd of Quirmian goblins, their numbers swelling all the time as even more of them emerged from the undergrowth. When it came to looks the Quirm goblins seemed exactly the same as the ones over the border in Ankh-Morpork. However, unlike the Ankh-Morpork goblins, the Quirmian goblins were dressed in a way that could only be called snazzy. They had a certain panache unavailable to their Ankh-Morpork brethren, and a whiff about them of what was probably eau de snail.fn43 Admittedly, the materials on show were effectively the same – bits of animal skin or indeed the animals themselves, birds, feathers – all embellished with sparkling stones. It was as if goblins had discovered taxidermy, but hadn’t quite got the important, nay, essential point of scooping out the messy bits first. But trust Quirm goblins to make their own haute couture. Moist smiled. He could see that somehow the goblin lads here in Quirm were trying to do it better, possibly because they had a better class of shaky swagger and a certain cheerful up yours look in their eyes. Nevertheless, they looked like a people who had been hammered hard on the anvil of fate and had been laminated with a natural bravado, which did not entirely hide their wounds. Moist was glad he had Of the Twilight the Darkness on his side, because the goblins of this part of the maquis clearly had no liking for humanity. Of the Twilight the Darkness now sidled up to him in his bandy-legged and sneery little way and said, ‘These people hurting oh-so bad it is. People gone. Little ones gone. Pots gone. Gone. But put big faces on it, yes. Can no more be truly goblin. Hurt. Hurt. Hurt. Now I give speech.’ Of the Twilight the Darkness turned out to be the goblin equivalent of Moist himself. Moist wasn’t fluent in goblin, but you didn’t need to know what was being said as you watched the faces and the way Of the Twilight the Darkness waved his hands. He was, in fact, doing a number. Moist couldn’t make out the words, but assumed it was something like, ‘New life in Ankh-Morpork with all the rats you want and wages.’ For there they were, ideas and promises curving through the air. And so certain was Moist that he had picked up what was going on that he leaned down and said, ‘Don’t forget to say that in Ankh-Morpork goblins are now citizens with rights.’ Moist was extremely pleased to see the goblin pause and look at him. ‘How you know I was talking of Ankh-Morpork, Mister Lipwig?’ ‘Takes one to know one.’ While Of the Twilight the Darkness delivered his speech, the goblins stared at Moist. As stares went, their eyes were not baleful or angry, they were just … hopeful, in the grudging way of people who had had to learn pessimism as a survival tactic. One of the goblins then stepped forward and beckoned, clearly wanting to show him something. Of the Twilight the Darkness was also nudging him to follow. As Moist gingerly threaded his way through the network of almost invisible paths in the wasteland of thorns, pools of poisonous water and occasional blockages caused by old rock falls, he noticed a crackling underfoot. Bones, he realized – mostly small bones – and in his ear were the words of Of the Twilight the Darkness: ‘Young goblins! Veeeeery tasty! A lot of good eating. Bandits thought so. But we hang, Mister Lipwig, we hang. We hang on.’ The horror tripped its way icily over Moist’s backbone. Of the Twilight the Darkness continued. ‘Those bandits was hungry. Small goblins. Easy to catch.’ ‘Are you saying they were eating the goblins?’ The vehemence of Moist’s cry was picked up by Of the Twilight the Darkness immediately. ‘Sure. Easy meat. The bandit men eat anything they can catch. Rats. Moles. Shrews. Birds. Even stinky bird like raven. Eat it up. Yum. Yum. Shit out nasty poisonous stuff. Goblin meat like chicken. Miracle of nature may be not, but no use to goblin when bandits around. They don’t want much, mister, and good job, ’cos they don’t get, but like me will do any job in free air. Place to live not being killed. Yes! Hunky-dory. And no need food in Ankh-Morpork. Big Wahoonie! Rats everywhere!’ ‘Okay, Mister Twilight, where do we go from here?’ The goblin gave Moist a cynical look, something which is very easy to do when you’re a goblin, because you learn cynicism early and you learn it fast. ‘You give me half name, Mister Damp. I forgive, have mercy. This time. I ask you. Don’t do again. Is very important. Half name is shame. Challenge to fight. Know you hasty. No understanding. Will forgive you. Will forgive once, Mister Lipwig! This by way of friendly information. No charge incurred.’ Whatever Moist von Lipwig was, he knew the use of the right word at the right time. ‘Mister Of the Twilight the Darkness, thank you for your forbearance.’ It was beginning to rain. Sticky, lazy rain but the goblins seemed to be oblivious to it. These people are the world’s most stoical of stoics, Moist thought, albeit with a sting in their tail. I wonder what they are like when they decide, and they will decide, not to take everything on their greasy chins. Of the Twilight the Darkness grinned at Moist again and declared, ‘Hey you, mister big hero, mighty warrior, except, hah, these dumb buggers really think you is bee’s bollocks, think sun percolate out your arse.’ Moist realized that Of the Twilight the Darkness’s presentation to the goblins of the delights of Ankh-Morpork and his status in the city might have been somewhat exaggerated. ‘What did you say to make them think that?’ ‘These goblins need hope, Mister Lipwig. You ain’t genuine good guy, but you can pretend like no bees’ nest. I have already explained to them that you are great citizen of Ankh-Morpork and dreadful fighter.’ ‘Well,’ said Moist, ‘at least you got one bit right. But the bandits have surely been scared off now. The goblins can stay here, can’t they? There’ll be jobs on the railway when it comes through here. They’d like that, wouldn’t they?’ ‘Bandit men come back in time. Always is bandits. These goblins can’t fly, Mister Soggy. Long way back to Ankh-Morpork line! Looks for you to get them out of here. Me? I ain’t just fallen off Hogswatch tree. You don’t carry knife, and now it night-time and you are still in maquis. Worse here than just bandits! Bad worse! Everything bad end up in the maquis and you still with no weapon. What are your orders, Mister Big Man?!’ Moist hesitated. He had a feel for this sort of thing, he was sure, and it hardly ever let him down. ‘Okay. We’ll take them with us. But first you must get us out of here.’ ‘No, Marvellous von Lipwig is going to take the people out. Plucky goblin sidekick just bring up the rear.’ ‘Really? Okay, then. Just point me in the right direction.’ There was a track of sorts, and myriad little pathways in every direction. Moist and his unhappy but hopeful band were shepherded surreptitiously from behind by Of the Twilight the Darkness, who was becoming a great lieutenant, despite the fact that he brazenly considered Moist to be a bit of a tit. But a useful tit all the same. As they struggled back to what, in a fair wind, might have been called a proper track, Moist told himself that while it was true that Commander Vimes was the man who had been most prominent in the manumission of the goblins, he, Moist, could at least give them a job; you couldn’t have a profession as goblin, now could you? It just made no sense. And yet if there were such a thing as a professional goblin, then it was definitely Of the Twilight the Darkness, who was so goblin that you could imagine that other goblins would tap one another on the shoulder and say, ‘Blimey! Look at that goblin! Doesn’t he look like a goblin to you?’ But jobs got things going, got people going, and raised their self-esteem. After all, goblins, quite apart from now being ubiquitous in the clacks industry, were also doing very well and picking up serious folding money in the ceramics business. Goblin pots were beautiful, extremely fine and as iridescent as a butterfly’s wing.fn44 Moist’s reverie was broken by Of the Twilight the Darkness. ‘These poor herberts behind us think you need to know that dwarfs been asking after you, like sneaky one up tree I saw off. My, can’t the greedy buggers shift when need. Don’t like good flint edge! But still are some around. Reckon they waiting until we get to railway. Right place for ambush.’ Moist had devoted considerable energies to being a non-combatant, words being his weapon of choice, but when words weren’t enough, in extremis he could deliver telling blows with his fists and feet. Right now he was wondering whether to surreptitiously drag said feet a little so that he would be surrounded by the band of goblins if there was an attack. After all, they all had stone weapons, didn’t they? And he didn’t, did he? Goblins acquired a fighting spirit with their mothers’ milk, if indeed their mothers had milk.fn45 They continued cautiously into the ever-deepening dusk, now moving as silently as they could manage. Even the goblin toddlers were quiet as they walked towards the promised land. They skirted the grounds of the chateau and moved on through the woods in the direction of the railhead. A while later there came a crushed-gravel whisper at Moist’s elbow from Of the Twilight the Darkness. ‘I sending out some of swifter lads to scout ahead. Something not right at railhead. Couldn’t get close enough to see but says at least dozen dwarfs in the woods up there, maybe more. Could hear the buggers clanging. They trying to be surreptitious, but dwarfs has not first idea of surreptition. It’s all been hammer and tongues to dwarfs. Could try go round ’em – but the buggers might try go round us same time. Best, I say, to deal with bogeys today, right? No worry, some these lobster lads know how to fight and they proud you leading them … ain’t you!’ It wasn’t a question, it was a demand. Moist was horribly aware of the whole refugee group clustered around him, their un prepossessing faces full of expectation and miscellaneous fragments of food. There were little ones, some no more than babes in arms. Moist could feel the pressure of their hope which, alas, he knew was unfounded and probably misplaced. He was no leader. Not like Commander Vimes. But what would Of the Twilight the Darkness do if he just ran away? He could outrun any dwarf, make it back to the chateau … but could he outrun a goblin …? He shivered and shoved that thought to the very back of his mind just as a small goblin woman came up to him. ‘Go into battle with nice cuppa tea!’ she said. ‘Special goblin tea! Very good for you! Boiled in sheep bladder! Excellent when always having to run! Got herbs! You drink! You drink now! Ain’t nothing like a nice cuppa tea. Medicinal it is!’ Of the Twilight the Darkness handed Moist a large goblin club. ‘Many, many ways to die today,’ he said, with devastating humour. ‘Trust elderly goblin, this one very much the best, hang! We hang together.’ Moist understood that last rather unfortunate suggestion. It was the traditional goblin-to-goblin greeting, as in, hang together or hang separately. He swigged the cold tea, which had a harmless accent of hazelnuts with a soupçon of wool, expecting at any moment either to be poisoned or to throw up. In fact, it was … pleasant and it also felt quite nourishing. If there were snails in it, like the wine, then, well, viva escargot! Although the secret ingredient, he was quite sure, was likely to be avec. The potion appeared to work because a few moments later he felt ready for anything, full of beans, or possibly full of avec. Why, in the face of all the gods, had he been so apprehensive when there was absolutely nothing to be frightened of, oh dear no! This cheerful state of mind continued right up until the moment they spotted the red lights of the railhead shining out like a beacon through the surrounding woodlands. Leaving the most elderly goblins with the twigsfn46 hiding in the undergrowth as only goblins could hide, Moist and the rest crept forward. The young men in the travelling work gang had crafted themselves cosy little shacks covered with oilskin. These were extremely portable and always a place where a friendly face could be certain of a hot drink, stirred with a spanner, of course. And if no gamekeepers were known to be about, a wild avec and rabbit stew might also be available for an al fresco meal. Indeed, the pot of stew still bubbling over the embers of the camp fire smelled as good as any Moist remembered. He had expected to see the young lads he had met only that morning, cheerfully tucking in after a hard day’s work. He had not expected to see corpses … but corpses were what he found. By the glow of the fire and the pale light of the lanterns, he could see that the workers had many things that could usefully have been employed as a weapon, but they had evidently been taken unawares. It had been a terrible encounter and most certainly they had lost. A quick assay of body parts indicated that there had been nine of them, cut down while having their meal outside their makeshift bothy. Of the Twilight the Darkness was instantly on the case, sniffing the corpses and the ground. ‘The damn dwarfs have been here, oh yes, can smell the naaaasty buggers! But some of them still here,’ he added quickly, pointing to a small piece of woodland in the distance and dropping his voice to a whisper. ‘Hiding in the wood’ – sniff – ‘over there’ – sniff – ‘several, one injured.’ His beady goblin eye was glittering and Moist … Moist had a sudden sensation of being on fire. ‘Please,’ he managed to say, ‘please, tell me, what is the goblin for “Charge!”?’ Much, much later, Moist remembered that he had heard the goblin say at least the beginning of the word and then the whole world was a crimson haze full of shouting and the dark fog of war. He felt his arms and legs going about their terrible business, especially his arms, and he was aware of noises, unpleasant noises, cracking noises, splatting noises, but they came as a kind of incoherent memory, as did the screams … Little parcels of recollection bobbing up and down like the bubbles in a bottle of home-made ginger beer, coming and going and never staying long enough to mean anything. But the bubbles were gradually drifting away now and, when he came to what was left of his senses, he was lying with his back up against a tree. The railhead camp fire had been relit and to Moist’s bemused amazement there were the signs of dawn on the horizon – but hadn’t they been in this place for only a couple of minutes? Of the Twilight the Darkness was sitting on a lump of wood near by, smoking a pipe and occasionally blowing smoke rings into the early blue sky. It was a sight that a painter would love to paint, were it not necessary to paint it in various shades of blood, and, to do justice to the scene, with several tubes of gore and a splash of whatever colour you needed for guts. Moist’s memory of the night before was now strewn with corpses. ‘Well now, ain’t you a dark horse, Mister Dripping!’ grinned the goblin. ‘Who ever would thought it? Tell you this: you ain’t half going to be sore later. You done a man’s job! Almost goblin job! Three! Count ’em! Well, count bits of ’em and work it out, but three dwarf crack fighters smash down like skittles. Two of ’em wearing first-class micromail armour, assassin grade, worth mint. Pillage. Here, take this as souvenir to show Miss Adora Belle. Good on mantelpiece!’ The goblin threw over what Moist had thought was a lump of wood and which he could now see was the head of a dwarf, still inside its helmet. ‘That’s right! Get it out of system! Throw it up, throw it up and throw it up again. Very good for tubes, does world of good. Better out than in.’ Moist staggered to his feet and said, through the winding mists, ‘I couldn’t have killed three dwarfs! I’m no fighter! Never! It plays havoc with your shoes.’ ‘Reckon dwarfs would disagree. Mind you, I show the one over there bit of goblin disapproval, as you may say! Especially when I got him on ground. Most time, everybody keep out of your way, just in case. You was getting a bit … indiscriminate, oh yeees. Still, no harms done.’ ‘No harm done?’ Moist wailed. ‘I just killed three dwarfs! Wouldn’t you say that counts as a little harm?’ ‘Was fair fight, Mister Slightly Damp. One against many, like in best anecdote. Tell you already, most us lads climbing trees to get away from you. And you not a fighter. You said this, we all hear.’ ‘It was that drink! That’s what it was! You’ve filled me full of goblin rot-gut! Who knows what it’s done to me!’ ‘Me?’ said Of the Twilight the Darkness, trying to look hurt. ‘I keep you alive so you will see your very nice lady, who is always kind to goblins. Take from me, Mister Sopping, that drink just open up what’s there already.’ ‘And what was here, may I ask?’ ‘Rage, Mister Dripping. You let something off leash. Now you can help us clean bloody mess and get us out of here.’ Moist looked at what remained of the railway workers who had just been doing their job, being no threat to anybody. Simple men who knew nothing whatsoever about politics and had wives and children and were now lying dead for a quarrel they had nothing to do with, and the rage swelled up again, almost lifting him off the ground. They hadn’t deserved it, nor had those goblins whose fallen corpses he now saw here and there across the battlefield. Of the Twilight the Darkness was staring at him and said, ‘Amazing, what things we learn, that goblins can be people and you, Mister Damp, has a heart and crying because of death of men you don’t know. World is full of miracle. Maybe I will see you singing in choir.’ In the misty light of morning Moist stared at the grinning goblin: as evil-looking as anything in a picture book that was designed to give the little kiddies all the nightmares they would ever need, and yet reading him a lecture on morality. ‘What are you?’ he asked. ‘I’ve been listening to you for days, and you look like a goblin, no doubt about that, but every so often you come out with something I wouldn’t expect to hear from a goblin. No offence meant, but you are a smart one.’ The goblin relit his pipe, which made him somehow more human, and said carefully, ‘Are you saying goblins not ever clever, Mister Lipwig? Goblins not ever brave? Goblins not ever learn? Me, finest learner. All things to all men and all goblins.’ Moist looked at the little pile of micromail armour. It was treasure and a half. Light and strong. And easy to carry. And worth a fortune, lying there on the damp grass. He looked into the goblin’s eyes. ‘All yours, Mister Lipwig. To the victor the spoils,’ Of the Twilight the Darkness said cheerfully. ‘No. They can have it,’ said Moist, indicating the Quirmian goblins. ‘Don’t need it,’ said the goblin. ‘Take your spoils, Mister Lipwig. You never know when useful.’ Moist looked at what remained of the dwarf fighters and thought, where’s Mr Chriek when you need him? And that thought prompted another: a reliable witness was essential. He asked Of the Twilight the Darkness to fetch the Marquis or any of his workers from the chateau, with an iconograph if they had one. ‘We need people to know about this.’ After the Marquis, trailed by goggling servants, had inspected the scene, exclaimed his horror, organized the taking of iconographs, and departed back to the chateau, promising to send the news by clacks at once, the decencies could be attended to. The corpses of the railway workers and goblins who had fallen in the battle were carefully, even reverentially, placed on to the handcar. A few of the goblins disappeared into the scenery and returned with wild flowers to put on the bodies. It was one of those little observations that subtly turned Moist’s universe around. Goblins believing that those who fell in battle had paid their dues. After the solemn ceremony was over, the goblins took turns at pumping the lever of the handcar as Moist, the goblin band and their sad cargo headed back slowly along the track to the border, where they stopped to send out their own clacks. Moist arranged with the border guard for the bodies to be shrouded and put in a cold place until someone was sent to pick them up. One of the guards took umbrage that the dead goblins were being left alongside the bodies of what he called ‘real people’. And so Moist had a rather pointed little chat with him, after which the man was much better informed, although bleeding slightly from his nose. The memory of oh so many little bones hadn’t had enough time to be forgotten. And perhaps some of the potion was still alive inside Moist. It was that kind of day. That done, Moist looked at the ribbon of goblins trailing behind him and then looked up at the sign beside the Quirm turnpike which told the world that it was the well-known ‘Fat Marie’s’. There could be no mistake about how the proprietor got her name and like so many roadside eateries she sold hot food quickly and served reasonable coffee to travellers and that was that. Her clientele hadn’t even heard of cuisine, they just needed surety of carbohydrate and grease. However, she proved somewhat dubious about feeding goblins, and said, ‘I might lose my regulars if I let them lot in.’ And once again Moist had to explain the facts of life, making it clear that refusing to serve goblins would very soon lead to her not feeding anyone else at all once Lord Vetinari had been informed. Fat Marie’s was on Ankh-Morpork land and Vetinari was strict. ‘After all,’ Moist said, ‘they’ll sit outside, they really don’t like rooms, and I’m paying, okay?’ Suitably chastened, Fat Marie shovelled out rather bad fish and chips and a fried slice to every goblin and was amazed at how fast they ate, especially the fried slice. That was one thing about the goblins, they weren’t fussy. After their meal, Moist arranged for the goblins to travel on to Harry’s compound in the freight trucks of the utility engine that serviced the railhead, went to find the golem horse, still obediently rolling and galloping in the meadow, and headed back towards the city. Harry King was close to incandescent at the best of times, but the state of mind he was in when he heard the news of the massacre could only be described as volcanic: one of those slumbering volcanoes that suddenly go off pop and the calm sea is instantly awash with dirty pumice and surprised people in togas. Moist tried to calm him down, but that was like trying to put a cap on a geyser, and you can’t do that, especially not to a geezer like Harry King. Then the explosion became tears, the bubbling and sticky tears of a hard man who would never want anybody to see him cry. Learning that Moist himself had got rid of a few of the dwarfs responsible helped, but even so Harry continued to dribble snot on to a very expensive tie while calling down the wrath of the gods on to the remains of the culprits, with a footnote that the gods had better get to them before Harry’s curses did. Moist offered to tell the workers’ next of kin, but Harry declared that he would do the job himself. He set off on this doleful task immediately, leaving Moist with nothing to do but collect Of the Twilight the Darkness and the band of Quirmian goblins who had meanwhile arrived at the compound and were being entertained by Billy Slick and his grandmother. When he arrived home in Scoone Avenue, Adora Belle opened the door herself. Moist, as ever, was impressed by her sang froid as she surveyed the motley group of Quirmian goblins he had in his wake. ‘So good to see you again, Spike,’ he said. ‘I’ve brought you some little presents. Say it with goblins, as you might say.’ ‘How many are there, do you think?’ she enquired. ‘Two hundred or more,’ said Moist. ‘I haven’t really been counting.’ ‘I suggest that Of the Twilight the Darkness takes them over to the Tump Tower where there’s enough room in the basement for them to sleep.’ ‘You don’t mind?’ ‘Of course not. Quite a lot of my best goblins are taking holidays to the Shires and elsewhere. We’re very short. Well done, you!’ As soon as Moist had seen the goblins on their way, the Ankh-Morpork Watch metaphorically felt his collar. As collars go, Moist’s was expensive, but a little the worse for wear after the fight with the dwarfs. In this case, the hand doing the feeling belonged to Captain Angua, who asked him to accompany her to the Yard in tones that did not allow for an argument. Once ensconced in an interview room, she took down his statement about the massacre in a deliberately methodical way, asking pointed questions, which was to say pointed at Moist. ‘So you, Mister von Lipwig, took down a bunch of dwarf terrorists with the help of a number of goblins, yes? You must like goblins, then?’ ‘Yes, and so does Commander Vimes, captain,’ Moist snapped. ‘Tell me, where is Chuckles today?’ It was worth it to see the captain grimace; if you looked carefully you could see the outline of the fangs. It was a risky move, but he had a reputation to live down and cheeking the Watch was a pastime he cherished and was very good at. They were altogether too stuffy and Captain Angua, try as she might, looked stunning in her uniform, especially when she was angry. ‘With the Patrician,’ she growled. ‘An attack on the railway is an attack on Ankh-Morpork. With delvers involved there is a possible connection with the attacks on the clacks. All of this needs to be investigated and it would have been helpful if one of the perpetrators had been left alive and available for interrogation.’ Moist almost choked, saying, ‘Captain, when a lot of unpleasant people are trying to kill you, it’s hard to remember that leaving one of them alive might be a spiffy idea. You have other things on your mind such as, maybe, not dying yourself. If it’s any help, I think you’ll find that the Marquis des Aix en Pains will by now have sent iconographs of the dwarfs who did this. The Marquis is a decent bloke and generally helpful and keen to have the railway, so I’m certain that you’ll get your evidence.’ And as he thought that, mischief rose in Moist’s mind and he said, ‘And I know that you yourself can travel very fast, captain. They might still be fresh if you hurry.’ This time it was not a black look that Moist got. It was a look that said patience was about to crack. Fortunately, the door opened just at the right time and Commander Vimes entered, his expression grim. ‘Ah, Mister Lipwig, please follow me to my office, if you’d be so good. I always know when you’re in the building.’ He nodded at the simmering Angua and said, ‘I’ll deal with Mister von Lipwig, captain.’ Moist was unsure about how much Commander Vimes actually disliked him. After all, the man was so straight that you could use him as a pencil, whilst Moist, on the other hand, despite the success of the Post Office and the Royal Bank and even the wonderful new Mint, was still seen by Vimes and many others as bent as an old spoon and most certainly up to no good. ‘Would you like some coffee?’ Commander Vimes asked as they entered his office. ‘The pot downstairs is always on and it doesn’t always taste of mud.’ He opened the door again and shouted down, ‘Two coffees up here, please, Cheery, one black, and you can empty the sugar bowl into mine.’ Moist was somewhat disorientated, because Vimes was acting in a way that, if looked at forensically, might even have been somewhere within the circumference of friendly, rather like, he supposed, an alligator yawning. The commander was now back in his chair, and, yes, smiling. The truth was that between Moist von Lipwig and Commander Vimes there was a certain … what they politely called a difference of opinion. Sam Vimes did not live in the same world as Moist von Lipwig. Did the man ever laugh, he wondered – the commander must have done something funny at some time. Probably he’d laughed at somebody falling over a cliff or suchlike. At which point, to his surprise, Commander Vimes cleared his throat and said slowly, like a man essaying something unfamiliar, ‘Mister von Lipwig, it may be the case in recent years that I’ve given you the opinion that I consider you a cheat and a fraud and no better than a worm. However, the fact that you threw yourself in front of that train to save two kiddies suggests to me that the leopard can change his shorts. ‘Theoretically, I’ll be dressing you down for sorting out the murderous dwarfs involved in this latest atrocity and telling you that you should leave that sort of thing to the damn Watch. But I’m not stupid and I’m prepared to give credit where credit is due. The delvers are a vicious lot, a type of vermin that I’d very much have liked to see dance to Mister Trooper’s tune just to show them how justice should be done. But knowing that at least some of the buggers are out of the way must suffice for now. So, on a personal note, which I’ll certainly deny if you repeat this to anyone: Well done.’ And at this Vimes waggled, yes, waggled a finger, and in tones of a funeral bell and much louder said, ‘Don’t do it again! That was an official reprimand, you understand, Mister Lipwig? And this is my hand.’ To Moist’s amazement Vimes walked around the table and gave him the hardest handshake he had ever had. It was like shaking hands with a boxing glove full of walnuts. Nothing actually broke and there was no blood and Vimes hadn’t even tried to squeeze, so it appeared to Moist that what had just been perpetrated must be Commander Vimes’s everyday handshake. He decided it was probably the commander being a man who didn’t believe in half measures. And now the commander looked sombre, saying, ‘If I were you, Mister von Lipwig, I’d make certain that my wife spent a lot of time out of the way in clacks towers for a while and I’d ask the Watch to keep an eye on my property. Those wretched delvers will stop at nothing, and I mean no offence when I say I’m surprised that you managed to take the bastards down.’ He lowered his voice, almost to a whisper, and said, ‘What did it feel like, son?’ There was an expression in Vimes’s eyes that told Moist that now, if ever, it was time for the truth and so he too lowered his voice and said, ‘To tell you the truth, commander, I had some unexpected back-up. You wouldn’t believe it.’ And amazingly, Vimes’s smile broadened and he said, ‘Actually, Mister Lipwig, I just might. I know a little something of fighting dirty in the dark, don’t I just. It was under Koom Valley a few years back and I had some back-up too, and I don’t think I want to know where it came from. Just be careful now. The grags clearly have your number. You’d better go and see Vetinari, but I’m very glad we’ve had this little chat.’ ‘Why d’you think I’m going to see Vetinari next?’ ‘I know, because I’ve just come from the palace. He was sending for you and I asked his lordship if I could get a crack at you first.’ Moist walked to the door, turned round and said simply, ‘Thank you, Commander.’ Outside on Lower Broadway, Moist hailed a one-troll trolley busfn47 and he was not pleased when a dwarf jumped into the pannier beside him. He braced himself for a blow, but the dwarf just smiled at him. ‘Mister Lipwig, how pleased I am to see you. I’d appreciate a moment of your time.’ ‘Look,’ said Moist, ‘I’m a very busy man with a great deal to do, and I’m expected at the palace.’ ‘The palace? Allow me.’ And the dwarf flipped the correct fare to said troll and gave him the destination in the troll’s own language, much to the amazement of the troll. Oh my, thought Moist. Ankh-Morpork, the melting pot of the world, which occasionally runs foul of lumps that don’t melt. Moist looked down at the dwarf which was, of course, inevitable. He seemed to be more, well, streamlined than your traditional dwarf, although smiling in a confrontational sort of way: not unpleasantly, but with a kind of inner dedication to the smile. He realized that the dwarf reminded him of something … oh dear, what was its name? Oh, yes, a gyroscope, which he’d seen demonstrated in Unseen University’s High Energy Magic building. In short, and of course this person was a dwarf, he did have the feel of a gyroscope about him, something spinning around an undeclared centre. The insight built itself in a matter of seconds, at the end of which, instead of insisting that his unwanted fellow passenger got out, Moist was paying a lot of attention to the smart little figure. ‘Who are you?’ he asked. ‘I am merely a messenger,’ replied the dwarf. ‘I am here to tell you something that you cannot ignore. In a sacred place near Koom Valley your name is on the list of people to be summarily executed, but do not fret unduly, because—’ ‘Er, you mean I should just simply fret in a duly kind of way, then? So what the hell is that supposed to mean?’ The annoyingly grave face of the dwarf, with its curious essence of smile, was irking Moist, and the dwarf said, ‘Well, Mister Lipwig, you are in a queue behind Lord Vetinari and Commander Vimes and, of course, so are a very large number of dwarfs considered to be un-dwarfish. It is a tiny war at the moment, it’s burning underground like an abandoned coal measure, waiting to break out in unexpected places and soon, I suspect, to a place containing yourself.’ ‘Look,’ said Moist, ‘it may have escaped your notice, but I am not and never have been a dwarf, okay? I don’t have a beard and I can’t walk under a table. Human, you see?’ The composure of the dwarf was unshakeable, just like his smile, which now broadened a little as he said, ‘You may not be a dwarf, my friend, but you are considered a vector, a symbol of all that is opposed to real dwarfishness, a carrier, if you like, and also a central figure in a city that some dwarfs would love to see burned to the ground. The clacks were just the start. Your railway will not succeed in tempting dwarfs from the true path of Tak. The commander and Lord Vetinari are surrounded by people who carry a large variety of useful weapons. You don’t, though, do you, Mister Lipwig? You are not a warrior, you are a target, admittedly a remarkable and ingenious one. I suggest you remember how Albert Spangler watched his back and, above all, do not go into dark places.’ The dwarf shook his head and added, ‘You have been warned, sir. I understand you have been known to say that a life without danger is a life not worth living, and frankly all I can say is, good luck with that. Tak does not require that you think of him, but he does require that you think, and I suspect that Tak will be requiring your services in the near future. There are things happening, political things, that you know nothing of, but Tak knows where to find you when Tak needs you.’ And with that the dwarf smiled, jumped out of the pannier and ran off at speed before Moist could react. Taken by surprise, Moist continued the journey to the palace with his head in a whirl. Until the massacre at the railhead, he hadn’t been doing anything wrong! Just trying to help everybody! And now he was apparently a target because he represented the wicked ways of Ankh-Morpork … which was not only unfair, but also untrue. Well, probably untrue, well, at least a bit. He assumed that the grags were hurt about the fact that he had just killed some of their number, even though it had been a fair fight. Well, probably fair and, anyway, they’d got what they deserved. Moist had hardly done anything actually truly wicked in his lifefn48 and now his new cleaned-up, hard-working, upstanding citizen persona was at risk. Moist was seething by the time he arrived at the Oblong Office. ‘It seems I’m a damn target,’ he began, ‘and you knew it, sir!’ In the following silence Lord Vetinari’s head did not move until he folded his newspaper. ‘I assume the grags found you, yes, Mister Lipwig? I thought you knew that, along with myself, Drumknott, Commander Vimes and many others, you are on what I believe is called a hit list drawn up by radical grags. But if I were you I wouldn’t worry. After all, a life without danger is a life not worth living, eh, Mister Lipwig?’ And Moist said, ‘Well, yes, but what about Adora Belle?’ ‘Oh yes, Mister Lipwig, I told her last week.’ ‘What! She didn’t tell me!’ ‘I believe she wanted to surprise you, Mister Lipwig. She knows how much you like surprises and you do enjoy a quantum of frisson, she told me.’ Moist almost squealed, ‘But you know I’m no fighter!’ ‘Really, Mister Lipwig? But I already have reports that say otherwise: thrilling tales of derring-do and, believe me, nothing was said about derring-don’t.’ Moist, a long-time student of Vetinari and his moods, knew that you could never be sure of what he was thinking. But now the Patrician seemed carved out of stone, like a statue. ‘Mister Lipwig, you know what they say about dwarfs?’ Moist looked blank. ‘Very small people?’ ‘“Two dwarfs is an argument, three dwarfs is a war”, Mister Lipwig. It’s squabble, squabble, squabble. It’s built into their culture. And in the squabbling, the grags hide and poison. ‘The Koom Valley Accord, which I helped to broker with the Low King and Diamond King of Trolls, was hailed around the world as a fresh hope for the future. But now some of the senior dwarfs appear to be in thrall to a faction of the grags who are bent on destruction. Differences of opinion are one thing, but this sort of atrocity cannot be borne. Diamond King of Trolls and I are putting pressure on the Low King and we have every expectation he will deal with the matter. ‘It has gone too far, Mister Lipwig. Once upon a time the grags were bold dwarfs who checked the mines for firedamp, hence the heavy clothing. Of course that gave them status but, in truth, they were just plucky miners … expert at mining, perhaps, but certainly not skilled in politics and thinking. After all, you don’t negotiate with a lump of rock. With people, you negotiate all the time. The Low King knows it. The grags know it but don’t like it. ‘I am a tyrant and, if I say so myself, good at it, but I understand the ways of people and the way of the world. Everything is mutable. Nothing is unchangeable. A little give and a little take and a little negotiation, and suddenly the balance of the world is back on track again; that is what politics is for. But the politics of the grags consists only of “Do what you are told, we know best.” And I find that rather tedious.’ ‘And I find it tedious when your men wake me up by prodding me,’ said Moist. ‘Really, is that all?’ said Vetinari. ‘I shall tell them not to prod too much in future.’ He smiled and said, ‘Mister Lipwig, Commander Vimes is a decent man and he spends much of his time telling people what to do and that is how the Watch works. It’s not an area where freelancing is allowed. Things have to be seen to be done, in the proper manner. There is indeed a difference between tyranny and running a police force. There must be rules that everyone understands. Do you understand, Mister Lipwig?’ The Patrician stared at Moist, who said, ‘Yes, I understand. The commander is Vetinari’s terrier and I—’ ‘You, Mister Lipwig, are useful and a conduit for serendipity. For example, I understand you have just blessed us with more goblins at a time when we need them. Apart from that, I am told by Sydney, the head ostler, that one of our golem horses arrived here declaring “Give me livery or give me death”. We had been given to understand that golem horses do not talk, but it would appear, Mister Lipwig, that you have introduced that one to the delights of speech. I am impressed.’ Lord Vetinari’s smile was widening. ‘What a little bundle of joy you are, Mister Lipwig.’ He sighed and continued, ‘To think I once fed you to Mister Trooper’s capable hands. He often asks after your wellbeing. You know he never forgets a neck. Now off you go, Mister Lipwig … your audience needs you.’ The Low King’s bellow of rage and betrayal when the news of the massacre at the railhead arrived echoed around the state quarters and into every corner of the great cavern. Bats dropped out of the ceiling, in the bakeries the dough refused to rise, and the silver on the decorative weaponry tarnished. Rhys Rhysson sat down heavily on the Scone of Stone and waved the clacks flimsy he had just received. ‘Dwarfs have killed railway workers!’ he shouted. ‘Ordinary men, going about their business in an enterprise that would be useful to dwarfs as well as humans.’ The King looked almost in tears and thumped a fist into the palm of his hand. ‘This after the clacks towers!’ he said, with a groan of loss. ‘This is a message from Diamond King of Trolls and he is trying not to upset me, but I think he feels sorry for me.’ He raised his voice and shouted, ‘And this is the king of the trolls, our one-time arch enemy, but now a personal friend of mine! What will he think about the trustworthiness of dwarfs now? Thanks to intelligence gathered by the Ankh-Morpork Watch, including our own Cheery Littlebottom, we have the names of the idiots who did the deed. And now I know exactly who is behind it all.’ He paused and glared at the growing crowd. ‘Where is Ardent? Bring him to me at once! I’ll show him what his idiotic ranting has caused! I want him brought here in chains if possible. Good heavens, Tak gave us the Koom Valley Accord and now the little blister is trying to break it.’ The crowd was bigger now and the voice of the King was even louder. ‘I repeat, I want him here. Now. Today. No excuses. No second chances. No redemption. Let it be known that the King will not let the benefits of the Koom Valley Accord be turned to dust by adventurers who believe that the past is still with us and belongs to them. All I see is its sterile echo. ‘And I notice these days talk against goblins who are working in the human industries, such as the new railway and the clacks. I hear a lot of complaints that it is taking work from us dwarfs, but why is that? Because goblins learn quickly, work hard and are glad to be in Ankh-Morpork! And the dwarfs? We have factions that bring us down with every flaming tower … Who would trust us after that? Remember, if Tak teaches us anything, he teaches us to be tolerant of all sapient shapes. Let me tell you, the world changes with every generation and if we don’t learn to surf on the tide then we will be smashed on the rocks.’ By the Low King’s side, Bashfull Bashfullsson picked up the theme. He looked around at the assembled dwarfs and spoke. ‘Tak did not expect the stone to have life, but when it did, he smiled upon it, saying “All Things Strive”.’ Glaring at the onlookers, Bashfullsson continued, ‘Time and again the last testament of Tak has been stolen in a pathetic attempt to kill the nascent future at birth and this is not only an untruth, it is a blasphemy! Tak even finds it in his heart to suffer the Nac Mac Feegles, possibly for their entertainment value, but I wonder if he will continue to tolerate us … He must look at us now with sorrow, which I hope will not turn into rage. Surely the patience of Tak must find some limitations somewhere.’ Bashfullsson bowed to the Low King and said, ‘I am your servant, your majesty. What would you have of me?’ The King, still red in the face, said, ‘I won’t have you bow to me, my friend, I rather think I should bow to you. Your words are wise as ever and will be proclaimed in every mine.’ At this point a dwarf arrived in the chamber at a run and whispered something to the Low King’s loyal secretary, Aeron, who looked sombre. ‘I regret to report, sire, that Ardent and his friends seem to have disappeared.’ ‘So, the stupid troublemaker has run away,’ hissed the Low King in barely suppressed fury. He raised his voice and announced to the crowd, ‘They are banished. All of them. No doubt the cowards will find a place to hide, but anyone who helps them will be treated as traitors, not to me but to the Scone.’ In the privacy of the robing room a little while later, the King was pacing up and down when Aeron arrived with the latest report. ‘They’ve caught some of the small fry, but the main players have indeed got away.’ As he mentioned a couple of names, Rhys Rhysson’s face went as cold as marble. Aeron placed a calming hand on his shoulder and continued, ‘Albrecht and the folk of his mines are on your side, though many of the others appear to be wavering.’ ‘Wavering? That’s not good enough. I need their full commitment,’ said the King. His secretary smiled. ‘You’ll get it, I’m sure. There may be some rogue elements still to be mopped up but we’ll get them soon. But do be careful, Rhys, I can see this is taking a lot out of you and that’s not good. And you do have another card to play.’ The King shook his head. ‘Not yet, but perhaps some time soon, at a point of my choosing. I just have to find the moment.’ Aeron smiled again. And then there was the sound of a kiss. The dwarf vandal had a stroke of luck. There was Engine One, right below him, the one they called Iron Girder, and there was no time to waste. He was an expert, and cunning, and the grags would pay handsomely if even one wretched locomotive was destroyed. He dropped down silently from the roof and landed just behind the prestigious engine. It was a good time to throw a monkey wrench in the gears … There were guards, he knew, but they were stupid and sluggish and tonight they were on secondment and patrolling a long way away. He had checked and double-checked. And so he soundlessly approached the loco motive, alone in her cavernous shed. There were so many things you could do to kill a railway engine and he had imagined them all. And so in the dark, ready to climb up again, out of the skylight, he unrolled his bag of implements, all carefully wrapped in hide so they didn’t clink or rattle, and stepped up purposefully on to the footplate of Iron Girder … … and in the gloom the locomotive spat live steam, instantly filling the air with a pink fog … The dwarf waited, unable to move, and a sombre voice said, PLEASE DO NOT PANIC. YOU ARE MERELY DEAD. The vandal stared at the skeletal figure, managed to get himself in order and said to Death, ‘Oh … I don’t regret it, you know. I was doing the work of Tak, who will now welcome me into paradise with open arms!’ For a person who didn’t have a larynx Death made a good try at clearing his throat. WELL, YOU CAN HOPE, BUT CONSIDERING WHAT YOU INTENDED, IF I WERE YOU I WOULD START HOPING HARDER RIGHT NOW AND, PERHAPS, VERY QUICKLY INDEED. Death continued, in tones as dry as granite, TAK MIGHT INDEED BE GENTLE. STRIVE AS YOU HAVE NEVER STRIVEN. YES, TAK MIGHT BE GENTLE, OR … The vandal listened to the sound of silence, the sound like a bell with, alas, no clapper, but finally the dreadful silence ended in … NOT. Iron Girder had screamed the shrill whistling scream of a lady in distress that had cut through the air like a knife, and by the time Corporal Nobby Nobbs and Sergeant Colon reached the shed, running extremely carefully and precisely,fn49 all they found besides Iron Girder was some warm dampness, vaguely pink, a tool roll and a few fragments of bone. ‘It looks like the locomotive fought back!’ said Nobby. ‘I know what this is, sarge. It’s eldritch – uncanny, you could say.’ Fred Colon stepped forward and said, ‘It don’t look oblong to me, Nobby. Look at this crowbar and tool roll … You can’t tell me that the engine lies awake at night like an old biddy keeping a poker beside her bed to fight off burglars. I reckon she was being coy. Live steam! It’s a good job me and you were able to scare away all the other assailants!’ ‘And they was very heavily armed,’ said Nobby, speaking very deliberately, to make things absolutely clear, ‘but they didn’t have the spunk to face us, that’s what it was.’ Water was dripping from the stout girders high up in the shed. Colon looked around and said, ‘Hey, Nobby, what’s that white thing up there embedded in the roof?’ Nobby squinted and said, ‘Er, it looks like half a skull if you want my opinion, sarge, and it’s still steaming.’ In the distance were sounds of thudding feet as the golem guards came at speed and quickly spread out. Nobby raised his voice and said, ‘We’d better tell them that the others’ll be ten mile away by now, sarge, at the speed they were going, and I think old Vimesy might give us a day off in lieu for this night’s work.’ ‘But look,’ said Colon. ‘We’ve been patrolling past that locomotive time and time again and nothing has happened to us.’ ‘We weren’t proposing to smash her up, now, were we, sarge?’ ‘What? Are you saying Iron Girder knows who her friends are? Do me a favour … she’s only a lump of old metal.’ And in the silence something made a little clinking noise. Colon and Nobby held their breath. ‘Wonderful machine, though, ain’t she, Nobby! Look at those beautiful smooth lines!’ There was another pause as breaths continued to be held and Nobby said, ‘Well, the golems are here now, sarge, and it’s the end of our shift. I’ll write a fulsome report as soon as we get back to the yard and that reminds me, you’ve got to give me my pencil back.’ The two of them perambulated away at impressive speed and for a while Iron Girder was alone; and then there was a very small sound that appeared to be half whistle and half giggle. Sooner or later everything to do with the railway passed across Moist’s desk and generally he hastened it all along its way. Today he was looking across the paperwork at a clearly embarrassed Dick Simnel. ‘Now come on, Dick, you tell me what you think happened last night. It seems as if the grags were setting about to put more than a dent in Iron Girder. This could be connected with the attack on the railhead, but there were some … significant differences. I expect there are a lot of ways of putting a locomotive out of commission, but the Watch was on the scene within minutes and according to them she fought back and got one of the murderous band. I know the two watchmen of old and every fight they have is always against much bigger forces, at least that’s what they say if no one else is around, but it does seem that she got her retribution in first, you might say, and boiled him. They’re still mopping the floor. How do you think that happened, Dick? Was it magic of some sort?’ Simnel blushed and said, ‘Mister Lipwig, I’m an engineer. I don’t believe in magic, but I’m wondering right now whether magic believes in Iron Girder. Every day when I come into work there’re the train spotters, always there, and now they’ve got little sheds of their own … Have you noticed? They almost know more about ’er than I do, I tell thee, and I look at t’people who’re still taking rides, I look at their faces and they’re not the faces of engineers, they’re more like the faces of people going to church, and so I wonder what’s ’appening. No, I can’t tell you how Iron Girder killed the dwarf who was trying to kill her and why she’s never done it while everyday folk are around. That looks like thinking to me and I don’t know how she thinks.’ Dick was glowing red now and Moist felt sorry for the engineer who lived in a world where things did what they were told, all the little numbers adding up, all the calculations dancing to the rattle of the sliding rule just as they should. But now he was in a conceptual world where the authority of that sliding rule held no sway. Dick looked desperately at Moist and said, ‘Do you think it possible that an engine like Iron Girder has a … soul?’ Oh, dear, thought Moist, he’s really having problems here. Out loud he said, ‘Well, I see you move your hands over her once she’s stopped and it seems to me that you’re petting her, and I notice that all the other drivers do that too, and although the Flyers have numbers I notice that the drivers give them names and even talk to them – in expletives, occasionally, but nevertheless they’re talking to a mechanical thing. I do wonder if life is catching somehow, because I also notice that every time people go for joyrides on Iron Girder they pat her too and they would swear they don’t know why. But what do you think?’ ‘Ee, I know what you mean. In the early days when I were just getting started I remember I spoke to Iron Girder all t’time and shouted often enough and occasionally swore as well, especially if she were truculent. Aye, you might have a point. There’s a lot of me in her; a lot of me blood and buckets of me sweat and many, many tears. I’ve lost the end of one thumb to her and most of my fingernails are blue and I suppose, when you think about it, there really is a lot of her in me.’ He looked ashamed when he said that and so Moist quickly jumped in with, ‘I think you’re right, Dick, it’s one of those times when you have to stop thinking about how and why and just remember that whatever’s happening is working and it just might not work if anyone gets smart and tries to find the soul of what’s happening. There are times when a sliding rule just doesn’t cut the mustard and if I was you this morning I’d get her all sleek and shiny and let her see her worshippers and feel their worship. They’re yearning for something and I don’t know what it is, so drink up the gravy and don’t spoil things with too much thinking or too much worrying either. And I promise you I won’t mention a word of this conversation to anyone.’ And then he brightened up and said, ‘Come on, Dick, life is good! Has your sliding rule allowed you to come to an arrangement with Miss Emily?’ Simnel blushed. ‘Aye, we’ve been doing some talking, mostly about Iron Girder, and her mam’s letting me come to tea wi’ ’er tomorrow.’ ‘In that case, I suggest you get yourself a new shirt … you know, one that isn’t greasy, and clean your boots and your nails and everything else, and now you’re getting loaded up with money you must get yourself a sharp new suit. I know a few places that’d give you a good deal.’ He sniffed and added, ‘And have a bath, why don’t you, for the sake of Miss Emily.’ Dick blushed further and grinned. ‘Right you are, Mister Lipwig. I wish I could be deb on air like you are.’ ‘It’s easy, Dick, you’ve just got to be yourself. They can’t ever take that away from you.’ And when Moist left his desk for another look at where last night’s excitement had taken place, he met Harry King, dressed to the nines and distressed to the maximum. Harry flourished a bow tie at Moist and said, ‘I hate these damn things, I mean, what’s the point?’ He growled. ‘Got another bloody civic thing on tonight, Effie just thrives on them. I told her I’m busy, what with dealing with the railway, but she’s determined to make a better man of me. And all this business about what knife and fork you eat from, it’s a deliberate puzzle set out to make a simple bloke like me feel like a stranger. Whatever you pick up isn’t going to change what the food tastes like, but Effie presses my knee hard if I gets it wrong. ‘She wants me to have electrocution lessons, gods be damned, and I’m putting my foot down about that one. Knobs or not, I’m still Harry King and I’m still going to sound like Harry King. And I told Effie that I don’t mind giving the money away to orphanages and suchlike – I like to see the faces of the little kiddies light up like daisies – it’s the swank I don’t like and all the incessant chattering when I could be doing good work in my office. Effie says it’s knoblyess obligay, but just because I’ve got a lot of knobs I don’t have to accept it, right? It’s a terrible thing when a man can’t be himself, knobs or no knobs.’ Fifty miles turnwise of Ankh-Morpork lies the Effing Forest, a source of laughter for some, but nevertheless, throughout the year, full of birdsong and, surprisingly, the occasional logger, as well as the family-run coal mines that are too small for the dwarfs to covet but just about big enough to scratch a living. On this fine morning in the Wesley family forge, Crucible Wesley was arguing with his brother. ‘Okay, you’re a blacksmith, granted, but that engine looked complicated to oi. Jed, you’re a good smith and a big lad, but I can’t see you hammering out a whole locomotive on your own. You need a bit more of the book learning, say oi. You saw those boys at that there compound in the smoke with their sliding rulers, although you couldn’t quite work out what them was for.’ The aforesaid Jed, dripping perspiration and stink, looked up from his anvil. ‘Look, it’s simple, you boils up the water, you boils it up really hot, and that drives the pistons and it’s them as turns the wheels. There ain’t really that much to it, apart from the oiling and the greasing. Oi reckon that stopping it once started’ll be the ’ardest thing to do.’ Crucible Wesley, considered by locals as the brains of the outfit, in so far as the outfit had any brains, was nervous about this and went on, ‘I know you were Blacksmith of the Year in Scrote three years running and got the silver cup that our mam’s so proud of, but oi dunno … Oi reckon there’s summat more to it’n that. Trade secrets and whatnot.’ Jed appeared to commune with the spirits for a while and then he announced, ‘Well, oi’ve got the boiler half done and that’s a fact. And oi reckon that if we takes it slowly there shouldn’t be nuffin’ to worry about. After all, oi seen steam coming out of Mam’s kettle, ’tis only wet air after all.’ He thumped the boiler standing on its makeshift pedestal next to his work bench with one enormous hand. ‘Come on, help me outside with this and us’ll give it a go … We can always shut her down if she looks like she’s turning on us and oi reckon oi can outsmart a bloody kettle.’ They carried the huge vessel outside, although, truth to tell, Jed proudly picked up most of the weight on his own. His brother watched in admiration and a certain amount of trepidation, or it would have been trepidation had he known the word existed. As it was he could feel sweat trickling down his back. He started edging away backwards and once again he tried to remonstrate with his elder brother. ‘Well, oi dunno, Jed, they was doing all those measurements and things like that with levers and suchlike and when it was hissing, it damn well hissed.’ ‘Yeah, and it cost we a dollar to see it! Don’t ’ee worry about a slipping stick … like I said, oi reckon oi got more brains than a boiler! And if it gives oi any problem then I’ll hammer it out into horseshoes. Come on, I’ll get the fire going and you can help oi pump the bellows.’ After Crucible had managed to help his brother set the boiler up in the clean open air amongst the trees, he had one last stab at trying to crowbar some sense into the dialogue. ‘Oi reckon it’s too difficult, otherwise us’d hear about other folk doing it as well.’ But to his dismay this suggestion only served to make his brother even more determined to tame the steam, because the man said, tapping the side of his nose, ‘That’s because oi reckon they weren’t as clever as oi!’ There is something vaguely worrying about the word ‘reckon’ that leaves the ear, for many hard to understand reasons, wishing it was something else a little more certain and a little less frightening. And as bad luck would have it, some twenty minutes later an ear was exactly what spiralled down out of the settling steaming fog and through mangled trees that looked as if they had been scythed by dragons, and the birds that were coming down cooked … Moist was, by inclination, a stranger to the concept of two in the morning, a time that happened to other people. He didn’t object to a certain amount of early alfresco when he was on the road, especially on the rail road, which was more like camping and therefore fun, but to be awakened in his own bed in the small hours was an abomination. That cried to the heavens for justice, although he did not cry at Sir Harry, who had just arrived in Scoone Avenue with all hell following him. Crossly the butler rushed to get in front of Sir Harry as etiquette required, but Sir Harry swarmed up the stairs waving a clacks flimsy at anyone he could see, and burst into Moist’s bedroom, booming, ‘Someone has been buggering around with a steam contraption and has managed to kill two people, including himself, down in the Effing Forest. And you know what? Clacksmen on the Scrote tower spotted the explosion then went out and found the carnage, and you know the clacksmen! The news is already all over the bloody place! And so, apparently, are bits of the poor buggers! Two people dead, Mister Lipwig. The press’ll have our guts for garters.’ By this time Moist had managed to get his pants on the right way up. He spluttered, ‘But Harry, we aren’t doing anything in the Effing Forest at the moment. There’s going to be a little branch line that goes to Scrote and that’ll be a very good earner, but this is nothing to do with us. Crossly, please get Sir Harry a stiff brandy and a soft chair.’ ‘Nothing to do with us or not, Moist, you know the press will be round us like flies on a midden.’ Moist said, to the annoyance of Harry, ‘Trust me, Harry. Trust me. It wasn’t us and I see no reason to worry. I’ll deal with the press. I imagine they’ll all be going to the Effing place as soon as it gets light, so if you don’t mind I’ll head there right now and be ahead of the game.’ ‘It’s no bloody game!’ Harry boomed. And over his shoulder, Moist said, ‘I’m sorry, but it helps to think of it like that, Harry.’ Just as Moist was heading down the stairs with Harry simmering behind him, Adora Belle arrived home. She sometimes worked nights on the Grand Trunk; she told Moist that it was to keep people on their toes, but he knew that she actually loved the quiet watches of a clear night when messages would twinkle from hill to hill like fireflies. That was the spell of the clacks, and it wasn’t only goblins who felt it. Adora Belle knew and didn’t mind that the clacksmen and clackswomen would fraternize along the wonderful scintillating lines of light. After all, quite a few marriages had been brokered through the unsuspecting ether in the small hours of the night and sooner or later little clacksmen and women would be born. Adora Belle had once told Moist, ‘You know that it takes a special kind of person to be a clacksman and especially a clackswoman, and it’s important that they marry and have children with the right kind of blood. They’re our future, and heaven help them if their spouse doesn’t also work on the clacks. Clacks people are a type and like attracts like.’ When Moist told her the news of the accident in the Effing Forest she disappeared into her office, and Moist could hear the goblins stampeding towards it and then a rattle of the clacks on the roof. Before long she sent down another goblin with a flimsy that said, ‘News from Scrote. Stop. It’s a boiler that burst. Stop. Not a train. Stop. Horrible deaths of two people, but no engine as such. Stop.’ That latest discovery made Moist doubly sure of himself and he clamped his hand on Harry’s shoulder and said, ‘Please, don’t worry, Harry. I know how this one is going to go. All I need is for you and Mister Simnel to meet me in the Effing Forest as quickly as you can. And, oh, I think we might need Thunderbolt.’ It was time to talk to the golem horse once more. Moist was rather concerned about taking it on another long journey so soon, but the horse said, ‘Sir, I am a horse. Being a horse is my passion in life, and getting to the Effing Forest will be a breeze. Saddle up, please, and let’s be off.’ Moist had found something like a sweet spot in the gait. No muscle and bone horse could possibly gallop at this speed without legs getting tangled, but even so he covered the fifty miles to the Effing Forest by sunrise without much in the way of groinal sprains. He immediately sought out the nearest pub to the accident, which was the premises of Edward Forefather, purveyor of fine beers, stouts and ales. At least that’s what it said on the rather large plaque behind the bar and Moist was not going to argue. The publican, already up and dressed, looked him up and down and said, ‘I’ve been expecting somebody like you. You’re from the city, aren’t you? It’s about the explosion, isn’t it? Are you one of them reporters? Only I wants money if you’re a reporter.’ Moist said, ‘No, I’m not, I’m with the railway. I heard about the explosion and came to see what had happened.’ Forefather looked him up and down again and said, ‘We know all about it. It was them Wesley brothers. How good is your stomach, young man? Of course, I’d leave the bar to help you, but that means I’d have to get my wife up to start on the early shift for the miners. They’ll be coming up for their breakfast soonish.’ Moist understood the unspoken request and handed the man a reasonable sum, then followed him outside where he was led along a path into the forest. This part of the forest was quite pleasant, not too dark, the kind of place where people would go for a picnic, but as they got in further, Moist could see that whatever they were going to find next, it wasn’t going to be a picnic. In a clearing just a short walk from the pub the trees were stripped of their leaves, tangled wood was everywhere and the remains of the forge were embedded in various trunks. And there were fragments of the stricken boiler, too, some of them driven so hard into mighty oaks that Moist couldn’t pull them out. The haze in the clearing sent a chill down his spine. He took a deep breath and said, ‘What happened to the bodies, Mister Forefather?’ ‘Oh, yes, sir. I’ve got them back in my cellar, it being quite cold down there. They’re in a bucket. It isn’t a big bucket, either. It was two brothers, strapping great lads. Crucible was the brains and Jed was the blacksmith. Although in the bucket I couldn’t tell you which bits were whose. Jed was boasting about building a railway engine one day, and to tell you the truth, sir, he was a very good blacksmith, but what he knew about locomotives I wouldn’t dare think of. But he thought he could do it and all his mates were egging him on.’ He hesitated for a moment and then said, ‘I was the first one to arrive here and mostly all there was was a mist, and I didn’t like that at all. It was clammy and hot and made you want to puke. And that’s it, sir. Not much more to be said, sir.’ Moist looked up and said, ‘Should there really be an anvil up in that tree?’ The publican looked at him and then at the tree and said, ‘You’re a man with his eye on the business, aren’t you? Generally speaking, the anvil has always been on the ground, by and large, but it was a most powerful bang.’ Moist brightened up as best he could and said, ‘Thank you, Mister Forefather. Pretty soon there’ll be a lot of journalists coming to see all this and I’m sorry about that, but they turn up like flies.’ ‘That’s all right, sir. Good for business. Journalists drink twice as much as anyone else and for twice as long. We had them around when the mine fell in and they really can take their liquor.’ Mr Forefather was rubbing his hands in anticipation. In fact, it was mid-morning before most of the journalists put in an appearance. But well ahead of the pack was Otto Chriek of the Ankh-Morpork Times, who was always first on the scene.fn50 As for the rest of the press gang, they arrived at cross purposes, all of them expecting the others to tell them what was going on. Mr Forefather was making hay by making bacon butties while his wife was frying eggs and the obligatory slice. Moist put the word out that, while of course the railway was in no way involved, the owners were coming to see the accident site for themselves and would be happy to answer questions. By the time Harry King, Simnel and Thunderbolt arrived, Moist could see Forefather carefully raising the prices on his beers as, gradually, the pub filled from across the Sto Plains. Moist had already gleaned from Mrs Forefather that the brothers’ old mum was being comforted by friends back in her own home, a short walk from the pub, and he was careful to see that no mention of this or the current whereabouts of the unfortunate Wesley brothers was made to the gang of journalists. And he surprised himself by realizing that this was a sensible and humanitarian thing to do, some of the press gang being the sort who would most definitely say things like, ‘Well now, Mrs Wesley, how did you feel when you found out that both of your sons had been melted?’ As the press seized on the new arrivals, Moist, like a chess grandmaster, tried to keep his king, that would be Sir Harry King, away from the worst questions and instead played his shining knight, Mr Dick Simnel. He was learning a lot from Mr Simnel. They faced him with questions like, ‘What do you say to people who think that live steam will kill everybody in the end?’ To which Dick’s answer was, ‘I don’t know, sir, I’ve never met anyone who thought that. Steam is very dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing and I feel sorry for them poor boys.’ Hardwick of the Pseudopolis Daily Press said, ‘I hear your own engine killed someone the night before last. What do you have to say about that, Mister Simnel?’ Before Dick could speak Thunderbolt came down like a judge and said, ‘The person in question was clearly trying to sabotage the locomotive and while we naturally regret the fatality he was in a place where he shouldn’t have been, doing something that he shouldn’t have done. It is evident that he entered the engine shed through a skylight, which seems to show lawful business was not on his mind. His death, alas, was self-inflicted.’ ‘And what about Mister Simnel senior?’ said Hardwick. ‘Was his death self-inflicted?’ Simnel took the floor once again. ‘It just goes to show you have to treat steam with respect, and yes, I learned t’hard way when me dad died and that’s why I measure and test and measure again. It’s all about t’little numbers. It’s all about taking care. It’s all about getting the knowledge. Steam has its rules. After all, we call it live steam for a reason. It’s dangerous in t’wrong hands, but my hands, sir, have spent a long time building boilers and static engines, just to see ’ow far I could go. That generally meant me hiding behind a stone wall while bits of engine whistled over me ’ead. You learn by your mistakes, if you’re lucky, and I tried to make mistakes just to see ’ow that could be done, and although this is not the time to say it, you ’ave to be clever and you ’ave to be smart and you ’ave to be ’umble in the face of such power. You have to think of every little detail. You have to make notes and educate yourself and then, only then, steam becomes your friend. Like Iron Girder, you’ve all seen her. Yes, miss?’ Moist recognized Sacharissa Cripslock. She said, ‘You speak so caringly of your locomotive, Mister Simnel, and so I have to ask, do you have a sweetheart?’ There was a certain amount of tittering from the hacks, but Simnel barely blinked. ‘Why, thank you for asking and yes, there is indeed a young lady who is looking at me kindly.’ Simnel turned towards another waving notebook and said, ‘Yes, sir?’ ‘Grievous, sir, Grievous Johnson from the Big Cabbage Gazette. Is it your intention to share your knowledge with others trying to build their own engines? That might save a lot of lives.’ Simnel glanced at Moist and Moist looked at Harry King, who dropped an eyebrow, which Moist knew he could take as a yes. Simnel knew it too and had spotted the signal. He said, ‘Oh, yes, sir, we will do. At least the basics, safety and so forth. But it’ll cost. Research and development has to cost. But I’ll tek apprentices, show them t’ropes, and generally make them safer workers. In fact we’re planning regular classes, a Railway Academy, you might call it.’ His smile dropped as he continued, ‘O’course I’m reet sorry about those lads, sir, but learning is hard and failure is sharp. I’d hate that kind of thing to happen again, but it’s got to be done proper like. No scrimping. No cutting corners.’ Mr Simnel had won again. The press couldn’t deal with a straightforward man. The certainty in his face simply disarmed them and possibly, thought Moist, made them wish they were better people. There wasn’t an inch of politics in him and that stunned them. Simnel was still beaming at them. ‘Aye, if any of you’d like to come back to t’works at Ankh-Morpork at any time I’ll gladly show you around. I’ll show you everything.’ Far away from Moist and certainly from common sense, the grags took counsel, if it could be called that. Things in the outside world were changing so fast. ‘We are losing, you do know that?’ said a voice in the darkness. ‘It can’t be helped. It’s the zeitgeist, it’s in the air,’ said another voice, sounding somewhat more cracked. ‘And what do we care about the air, or any kind of geist? We are the justified, the stalwarts, the kings and servants of the darkness. Our people will come back.’ ‘No, they’re leaving! Burning clacks towers was stupid! I say stupid! Everybody wants their news and it makes us look like criminals, which we are. And that’s not justified.’ A dwarf who had been silent during the conclave in the cavern was remembering the old Djelibeybi legend about the way to get an ass down from the minaret, and of course the answer was you first have to teach it not to be an ass. But in what world could that ever happen when you’re dealing with grags? It was, she thought, time to see for herself just how life was in the lands of the Troll King. She had been very careful, oh dear, so very careful and so she had survived, she hoped, to be the jackass that got out of the minaret, but alas, the idiots were still encouraging impressionable young dwarfs to attack the clacks towers. Whoever had had that idea had doomed them without dialogue. Rhys Rhysson was right, she thought. We’ve lost all balance. We have to get out of here, out of everything that is here, out into the light. Surely, she thought, they wouldn’t suspect her. She had been forensic in her search for unbelievers. Nevertheless, when at last she ran the knives got her before she stumbled. And then there were eight left in the cavern and those watching in the darkness watched more closely to see who would be next. The time would be coming when the purity of darkness could not be mocked! The terrible fact was that when dwarfs schism, they schism … every deviation from the norm was treated as an attack on all that was truly dwarfish. Others had already fled and died, and who could say they knew how many more were left, not only in this cavern but in other caverns all the way to Uberwald. And the trouble with madness was that the mad didn’t know they were mad. The grags came down heavily on those who did not conform and seemed not to realize that this was like stamping potatoes into the mud to stop them growing. Everywhere one looked there were committees nowadays, mostly because, by arrangement and with the blessing of Lord Vetinari, other principalities, large towns and city states saw no reason to wait for the completion of their slice of the magic of the train, and, seizing these opportunities, new companies were entering the railway business with rather more success than the Wesley brothers. Drumknott was in his element as the paperwork mounted and his files multiplied; he contrived to be everywhere and into everything, ably supported by Mr Thunderbolt. There were committees discussing industry standards, public safety, passenger welfare, whether one company’s freight truck could be hitched to another company’s train to complete its journey without need to offloadfn51 – and all the knotty financial and legal arrangements that would entail. The whole proposition of other businessmen launching their own railways had made Harry call for Thunderbolt. After hearing Harry’s complaints, the lawyer said, ‘It’s a matter of patents, Sir Harry. You know, all that fiddly stuff that you said you paid other people to get their heads around? Well, Mister Simnel and I have filed applications for every one of his innovations. But I am sure there is more than one way of building a machine to run on rails. You cannot patent the idea of a railway as such, and if you take a walk down the Street of Cunning Artificers you will find someone quite bright enough to discover how to make a train that will run on rails without infringing any of the patents I have been able to obtain for you. ‘The idea of steam locomotion as such has been there for all to see and we all know that a boiling kettle will try to lift its own lid. Being clever, some young man watching the fire will work out that if he builds a bigger kettle he will be able to lift a bigger kettle lid. Although, as we saw at Effing Forest, he soon learns that it’s not as simple as that. They’re not all as bright and clever as Dick Simnel.’ Harry snorted. ‘Stupid hayseeds. Not a patch on our Dick and his lads. All they’ve done is leave their old mum bound for the poorhouse.’ And Sir Harry harrumphed. A full-blown harrumph. Unaware that his client was temporarily distracted by the thought of a destitute lady living in the Effing Forest, bereft of her boys, her pride and joy, Thunderbolt continued. ‘Take Mister Simnel’s pressure gauge. Once the principle is proved and understood, the Cunning Artificers, extremely cunning as they are, might well find some way of achieving the same results without breaching patent. It’s what they do. Cunning by name and nature.’ Thunderbolt had got Harry’s attention now. ‘And before you explode, Sir Harry, it is all within the law.’ ‘What? After all I’ve done and the money I’ve put in!’ Harry’s face was as red as a beacon. He looked as though he needed one of Dick’s pressure gauges himself. Moist decided to intervene. ‘Harry, the whole point of trains is that they’re universal. Put them on the tracks and away they go.’ In his mellifluous tones, the lawyer continued. ‘If I were you, Sir Harry, I would simply leave it to me to keep an eye on such things as patents and licences and regulation whilst you and Mister Simnel fill the world with steam. And remember, Sir Harry, the important thing is that you were the first. Nobody can take that away. You, Sir Harry, are on what I believe is called the hog’s back, the top of the heap, the founder of the railway. The Ankh-Morpork and Sto Plains Hygienic Railway Company is as solid as the bank.’ The troll smiled and said, ‘Or, indeed, as me – and I am diamond.’ Business for the Hygienic Railway Company was indeed booming, and the workforce ever expanding. The goblins from the Quirmian maquis had passed news back to their friends about the opportunities in the Big Wahoonie, which they seized with alacrity. And once Dick’s announcement of his Railway Academy had been splashed across the papers, in the wake of the Effing Forest incident, there were queues of people every day wanting to be taken on as apprentices. Simnel was heavy on the lads he accepted, telling them they had got to let the iron into their soul. And it was not unknown for him to kick someone straight out again if he felt they weren’t up to scratch. Returning from another trip to review progress on the Quirm line, Moist paused to take in the latest changes to the compound. There were the apprentices … engrossed in their own little mechanical world with Wally and Dave tutoring them and making sure they had got their caps sufficiently flat. Moist watched them in their blissful mechanical dream and he could not help but notice that they were surrounded by goblins, most definitely paying attention, seriously so, as if their lives depended upon it, and gathering up any discarded greasy rags, which to goblins were like haute couture, and the mark of a real swell back in the burrows. And near by the train spotters were comparing numbers. And there was Mr Simnel, equally engrossed in his latest contraption. As Moist crossed the compound towards him, Mr Simnel, with his greasy hat and his grubby shirt, the sleeves of which were rolled up to his elbows, wiped his grinning face with a rag, leaving a greasy smear on the grease. ‘Mister Lipwig! Grand to see you! I have something to show you! We brought this beauty down from Sto Lat yesterday and built it last night!’ He was shouting even louder than normal. ‘Essential equipment! It’s my design! I built it and I call it t’turning table!’ Moist almost had to put his hands over his ears as the engineer stepped closer. It’s because he works with the trains all day, he thought, he has to be heard among all the hissing and clanking, but I wonder how he talks to his Emily? And as for the turning table, it was, well, it was a table and it turned: a huge metal table with a pair of rails running across the centre, which was turned around by means of a large handle attached to a ratchet mechanism being wound by a troll with a look of intense concentration. Moist watched while Dick gave his demonstration. ‘Great! That’s brilliant, Dick, but … for the sake of the hard of thinking, what in hell’s name is it for?’ Dick looked at Moist as if he was an infant and said, ‘Can’t you see it, Mister Lipwig? You drives your engine on to t’turning table and, here’s the clever bit, you turn the whole thing around and it’s now facing t’other way!’ And then Mr Simnel danced on the circular iron table in his clogs as it slowly revolved, and shouted, ‘Grand! Gradely! We’re nearly there!’ The triumph was emphasized with a hiss like Iron Girder at the end of a long run, which would have been a fitting end to the experiment, except that it took some time to get the troll to stop turning the handle so that Dick, who was starting to look a little green from the continued revolutions, could get off. Happy that the tussle of wills between the other companies operating on the Sto Plains was being ably managed by Thunderbolt and Drumknott, no doubt with assistance from the dark clerks, Moist was looking forward to a period of domestic harmony, when he was summoned to the palace. He was not surprised to see his lordship staring at the day’s crossword puzzle. Drumknott whispered from behind Moist, ‘There’s a new compiler, you know, and I’m sad to say that it looks like an improvement. However, his lordship is doing his best.’ Lord Vetinari looked up and said, ‘Mister Lipwig. Can it be that there is a word quaestuary?’ Actually, Moist knew exactly what it meant because of his misspent youth and so he girded his metaphorical loins and said, ‘I think you might find, sir, that it means someone doing business simply for profit. I remember coming across the word once upon a time and it puzzled me because I thought profit was what business is all about.’ His lordship’s face didn’t move a muscle until he said, ‘Quite so, Mister Lipwig.’ And he pushed the paper aside and stood up. ‘I hear that the line to Quirm is all but completed … If the Quirm Assembly is still dragging its feet I shall have to have a word with Monsieur Jean Némard … one of my special words. I have to say, Mister Lipwig, that your contribution to the development of the railway has been most gratifying to observe and I am sure we are all in your debt.’ ‘Oh,’ said Moist. ‘Does that mean I can get back to my day job and see my wife more than once every week or so?’ ‘Of course you may, Mister Lipwig! You have, after all, been acting in an entirely voluntary capacity. However, my business now concerns the railway to Uberwald. So I have to ask you, how soon can we have a locomotive run all the way there? Nonstop.’ Moist was taken aback. ‘You couldn’t do it, sir. Not non-stop. You have to take on water and coal and it must be more than a thousand miles up there!’ ‘Twelve hundred and twenty-five miles exactly from Ankh-Morpork to Bonk by coach, although I am aware that the train would have to take a different route.’ ‘Yes sir, but non-stop—’ ‘Mister Lipwig. If you’re going to tell me that it’s impossible you will be down with the kittens in short order. After all, you are the man who gets things done.’ ‘What’s the hurry, sir? The lads are doing a great job, but it would be a rare day if they could lay more than three miles of track, even with all the money Harry King is throwing at it. And then, of course, there’s all the unforeseen obstacles along the way and on top of that you know that every city along the Plains wants to be a part of the network. We’re spread wide, sir. Any further and we’d split down the middle.’ Vetinari walked around his desk at speed and said, ‘Good, then you could both work more efficiently! It appears, Mister Lipwig, that you do not understand the nature of our relationship. I ask, very politely, for you to achieve something, bearing in mind that there are other ways I could ask, and it is your job to get things done. You are, after all, a man who can apparently do anything, the great Mister Lipwig, yes? And my advice to you is to cease all the work that does not assist in getting from here to Uberwald in the quickest possible time. Everything else can, and will, wait.’ He held up his hand. ‘Do not tell me what the problems are, just tell me the solutions. Indeed, you do not need to tell me the solutions, you merely have to achieve them.’ Moist said, ‘Do you mind if I sit down, sir?’ ‘By all means, Mister Lipwig. Do get the man a drink, Drumknott. He looks a little hot.’ ‘I have to ask, sir … Why does it have to be done like this?’ Vetinari smiled. ‘Can you keep a secret, Mister Lipwig?’ ‘Oh, yes, sir. I’ve kept lots.’ ‘Capital. And the point is, so can I. You do not need to know.’ Moist tried. ‘Sir! Even now the trains are part of life to a lot of people, especially to those on the Plains who commute! We can’t just drop everything, sir!’ ‘Mister Lipwig. Is there something in the word “tyrant” you do not understand?’ In desperation Moist said, ‘We don’t have enough workers, sir! Not enough people to man the foundries! Not enough people to dig the ore! We’ve probably got enough stock now to get halfway, but it’s all about the workers.’ ‘Yes,’ said Lord Vetinari. ‘It is. Isn’t it. Think on that, Mister Lipwig.’ ‘What about the wizards? Can’t they get up off their fat backsides and help their city?’ ‘Yes, Mister Lipwig, and you know and I know it will rebound on us. Live steam is friendly compared with magic going wrong. No, Mister Lipwig, we will not look to the wizards. You just need to get the train to run to Uberwald on time.’ ‘And what time would that be, sir?’ ‘As I say, Mister Lipwig, any time soon.’ ‘Then I haven’t got a prayer. It’s going to take months, a year … or more …’ And suddenly the atmosphere turned to ice and his lordship said, ‘Then I suggest you get going.’ Vetinari resumed his seat. ‘Mister Lipwig, the world lives between those who say it cannot be done and those who say that it can. And in my experience, those who say that it can be done are usually telling the truth. It’s just a matter of thinking creatively. Some people say “Think the unthinkable”, but that’s nonsense – although in your case, sir, I think you have the nerves for it. Think about it. Now, don’t let me detain you.’ The door closed behind Moist and silence enveloped the Oblong Office as the Patrician returned his attention to the crossword. Eventually he frowned, filled in a line and laid down the paper. ‘Drumknott,’ he said, ‘how’s Charlie’s Punch and Judy business going these days? Is he doing well? I wonder whether he might consider a short holiday. Just a short one, that is.’ ‘Yes, sir,’ said Drumknott. ‘I’ll go and see him this afternoon.’ ‘That’s the way to do it,’ said Lord Vetinari. While he was still reeling from the Patrician’s latest demand, Moist found himself riding back to the Effing Forest on a mission for Harry. ‘Go and see the old girl and send her my sympathies,’ Harry had said. ‘Tell her I was impressed at how her boys tried to harness steam and I salute them as pioneers. Have a look around and see what she’s got and since it would seem as if I have got gold coming out of my ears then I reckon we can give her a little pension, though for heavens’ sake don’t let anyone else know. Oh, and tell her that I’ll make it certain that her lads will be up frontline when the history of the railway is written down, and say she can call on me at any time.’ The old homestead in the forest was all that Moist had expected, and Mrs Wesley burst into tears when he told her about Harry’s offer. She was determined to think of Sir Harry as a saint or angel and if Moist knew anything about the ways of the world Harry’s gesture would be all over the forest within hours; and because news spreads, it would get as far as Ankh-Morpork by the end of the day. Moist knew Harry the man as he was: extremely sharp with a heart of gold and tears of soppy. Harry’s gesture was entirely Harry, with no ulterior motive, but nevertheless once the news had got around, he would be in all the papers as a benefactor of the poor and therefore a celebrity. Not for the first time Moist deplored his own tendency to see the angles in whatever happened, good or bad. ‘How much?’ The simple question sounded like a declaration of war, which it almost was, as Harry was presented with the costings for the express line to Bonk. Moist stood his ground. ‘Dick says there’s iron everywhere, Harry, but it needs digging out and then it’s the making of the steel that uses up the money,’ he put in hastily, before Harry could throw anyone down the stairs. ‘You’ve got to put the gold in to get t’steel out, Harry,’ said Simnel calmly. ‘We’ve been getting a good deal from the lads down at the smelters, but it’s twelve hundred miles to Uberwald, and that’s a lot of steel.’ ‘Harry,’ Moist said patiently. ‘I know very well that when you and your lady first married you used to cut the matches in half to make them last longer. But you are not that man any more. You can afford this.’ They watched Harry’s face. In truth, Moist knew Harry had kicked his way up from the gutter and was proud of it, but he had made his money cheaply – since minions, on the whole, don’t incur much of an overhead – and looked at every suggestion that he should pay for anything as evidence that something was wrong in the world. Dick Simnel had got the measure of the man and said, ‘If I was you, sir, I’d look at my money box and buy as much steel as I possibly could while I can, not making a big fuss about it, otherwise it’ll suddenly get more expensive, if you know what I mean. Supply and demand.’ Harry still looked as if he thought people were trying to get something of a move on him, which was his ground state of being, and Moist thought, well, what does Harry spend his mountains of money on? And so he plunged on. ‘Go on, Harry, as a customer in good standing, the Royal Bank’ll definitely give you a loan, if indeed you ever need one. Though frankly, I know your balance is more than enough to get rails all the way to the moon and back and that’s including a fleet of locomotives as well.’ There was a rumble from Mr Thunderbolt. ‘Of course, Sir Harry, you could sell shares: that means you share some of the outlays but, alas, you also have to share some of the dividends. It’s up to you.’ Moist saw his cue right there and said, ‘You see, Harry, everybody who buys your railway shares would then be dead keen on their railway and on your side. It’s what the trolls call a no-brain. When the smoke is making you rich, it’s your smoke and you don’t complain about it. And,’ Moist took a deep breath, ‘if you share the risks you can afford to build houses for the railway workers, too. That way they’ll live close to the railway, right alongside it, so they’ll always be ready—’ ‘I don’t need any telling on that score, Mister Lipwig. The lads that work for me on the conveyor belts all live on the doorstep. Difference is they built their own.’ ‘The buildings don’t have to be little palaces,’ Moist said, ‘just comfortable, with a bit of a garden, which is nice for the kiddies, and then everyone is happy and you’ve got it made. After all, who doesn’t like to have a place close to their work? Nice and warm with all the coal you need thrown in.’ Harry King would probably punch anyone who called him a philanthropist, but beneath the grumbling there was an undercurrent of curious softness. Elderly employees, no matter their species, ended up with a pension, a rare beast in Ankh-Morpork as a whole, and Moist, as Harry’s bank manager, was aware that expensive hospital bills had a habit of disappearing when he got to hear about them. And most certainly at Hogswatch, Harry, grumbling like an elderly troll with a headache, nevertheless made sure all employees had actual named meat on their tables, and lots of it.fn52 Moist, who knew his man, continued, ‘Look at it like this: I know that as a self-made man, sharing would be anathema to your soul, and so you could take all the risk and become as rich as Creosote. However, it seems to me, Harry, that you’re already as rich as Creosote and so, as a scoundrel, I’d suggest that another fortune is not exactly what you need right now! As your bank manager I’d like to suggest that sharing both the risks and the profits would be the most prudent and socially acceptable way.’ For a moment Moist saw the psyche of Harry King putting together a retort that social acceptability could go and get its hands dirty by doing a proper day’s work rather than interfering with honest entrepreneurs who were working their guts out day and night. But Moist also saw the grin, and realized that Harry knew this was all part of the solution. After all, Lord Vetinari liked the people of Ankh-Morpork to feel they had a stake in their city. ‘Anyway,’ he said, to clinch it, ‘Vetinari wants the Uberwald route and he’s the ultimate boss. Who knows, the city might be very generous with its level of funding. The trains go round and round and so does the money.’ The main line to Quirm was completed with a ceremony at the Ankh-Morpork terminus in which, regrettably, alcohol played a major role. The new engine was launched and named Fierté d’Quirm with an especially good bottle of champagne smashed across its boiler by the Marquis des Aix en Pains and his wife who, Moist noticed, was now very cheerfully, as they say in Quirm, enceinte. And amid all the celebrations, it seemed that it was only Moist who noticed that Simnel had wandered away from the party to wipe the engine clean of sizzling champagne with his handkerchief, which immediately became a greasy rag. He gave Moist a severe look. ‘We can’t have this kind of thing going on, Mister Lipwig, interfering with the engine … not when I’m determined to get us up to forty miles per hour across the flat of the maquis, just to show those lobsters what we can do.’ On the maiden journey, Moist rode with Simnel and the stoker on the footplate as the maquis passed away behind them at terrible speed, with goblins waving from every rock and ancient tree. He thought at one point that he had spotted Of the Twilight the Darkness, waving, but to his surprise found the egregious goblin waiting when they pulled into the Quirm city terminus. It seemed to Moist that the little bastard had channels through the world that weren’t available to humans. In the carriages behind, a good time was had by all, with avec galore and lashings of the famous entente cordiale. The smart new passenger carriages were much admired. A highlight for many was the dapper gentleman looking after the First Class gentlemen’s facilities, who was adept at handling towels and explaining the workings of the glass cistern – which contained goldfish that appeared to revel in the rush of the flush but were, in fact, kept from going with the flow by a concealed sieve of some kind. There was a big parade to greet them at Quirm Central, heralding another round of civic and political razzmatazz, all punctuated with more alcohol and ending with a huge dinner in the engine shed. And there were yet more toasts before the locomotive was turned around on the new-fangled turning table to take the Ankh-Morpork contingent home, where they had to be decanted from the train. And so it was that one fine summer evening shortly afterwards, Moist and Adora Belle sat down to an excellent dinner of fresh lobsters from Quirm brought up on the new Fruits de Mer Express. They were good, and cheaper now than he ever remembered, and the dish went very well with the watercress, which burned all the way down as they ate it. And afterwards there were fresh strawberries and a soft bed with fluffy pillows and somehow it made all the running around worthwhile. It began in Higher Overhang in the Shires. People locally were saying they could hear noises in the night … metallic noises, clanking, and the occasional scream of metal straining in torment. Of course everybody said, Well, goblins, what can you expect? And all this came to the notice of Chief Constable Feeney Upshot, attached to the Ankh-Morpork constabulary. Feeney liked the attachment. It meant that anyone getting stroppy with him would sooner or later have to deal with Commander Vimes or even Sergeant Detritus, whose appearance in this sleepy hinterland had caused such a big stir a couple of years before. So Feeney got on his horse and headed to the Overhangs, so called because in the flaming distant past the landscape had been twisted all over the place with unfathomable caverns and a jagged unforgiving terrain. Feeney was a decent and sensible copper and such men made friends because they never knew when they would need one, especially when they were a copper all alone, although in theory Feeney had the support of Special Constable Of the Chimney the Bones. There had to be a law, and law applied to everyone, and now the law had decreed that goblins were people and therefore protected by the law in these parts, which, in fact, was made incarnate in Chief Constable Feeney and his constable. Amazingly, the constable allowed his superior officer to call him Boney on the sensible basis that if there was some mêlée or other and you needed help you’d want a simple word to scream.fn53 Feeney had been to Ankh-Morpork and was proud to have undertaken his basic training in Pseudopolis Yard under Sergeant Detritus. He recognized that Boney was slightly more intelligent than the notorious Corporal Nobby Nobbs and so he didn’t grumble. And now he was glad to see his constable waiting for him just outside the main goblin cave where he had an office, regarded by the local goblins as something of a shrine. These days there was a flourishing colony of goblins in Overhang Minor. The goblins were purveyors of fine pots, and Feeney knew that the production of pots was generally a quiet pastime and didn’t involve very much banging. The small cave that passed as an office was, and you have to be careful about this sort of thing, definitely not manned but goblined. And the sound coming from the great cavern beyond it was not about pots, that was certain. It was metallic, heavy metal. Well – and Feeney stumbled here slightly, mentally at least – goblins were free, and if people wanted to bang metal around in the privacy of their great caverns, then they could. He blinked. It was the new world. If you didn’t get your head around it, it could turn you upside down. Feeney was polite and had been smart enough to pick up some of the goblin lingo, which really helped. It was a sunny day and it was an easy trip to the Overhangs and, yes, on the hill above the cavern there was a clacks station, goblined by goblins. After delivering his papers and force orders, Feeney sat down for a quiet word with his fellow officer and broached, in a careful way, the subject of the goblins banging things around in a context of disturbing the peace. Since there were very few humans living anywhere near the goblins’ settlement, Chief Constable Feeney put the complaints down to the humans’ residual dislike of goblins doing anything whatsoever anywhere, but he did advise that maybe moving whatever it was they were doing further into their caves might be a very good idea. The crackling voice of Boney said, ‘No worries, boss, hang. We are copacetic on this one. No problems here.’ ‘Well, that’s good to know, but why all the banging and clanging, Boney?’ ‘Chief, you know plenty goblins go to Ankh-Morpork and work for Sir Harry King, the shit magnet, on the railway. Know how it is, yess? Comes back every month with wages. Never had wages before! Sometime they comes with diagrams … And ideas and scheming attics.’ Boney watched his superior officer with a certain level of concern, and heard Feeney say, ‘They are stealing … ideas?’ There was silence and Feeney knew he had made a faux pas, but Boney laughed and said, ‘Nosir, improving! We like Sir Harry, veeery good employer, but we plan to build own goblin railway. Quick to get around and easy-no-problem – has found best way to build railway is not build. Digging! Dig underground. Underground goblin-size railway, yess? Will bring all goblins together from every caverns. So many caverns in bowels of world. It’s no fuss. Goblins needed all over. How would nice Miss Adora Belle Dearheart do, if no goblins on clacks? We can be trusted – well, as muches as we trust you stinking humans. Wonderful railways underground, narrow gauge, of course. You see? We even have lingo! No rain and no snow, no bothering donkeys, no frightening old ladies underground. Hang! At last goblins’ own world in tunnels under big-man human world. We goblins up in the light now. No turning back.’ Feeney thought about this on the ride home as his horse trotted gently towards the sunset. He wasn’t a philosopher and couldn’t even spell the word, but the voice of the goblin officer rang in his head. He thought, what would happen if goblins learned everything about humans and did everything the human way because they thought it was better than the goblin way? How long would it be before they were no longer goblins and left behind everything that was goblin, even their pots? The pots were lovely, he’d bought several for his mum. Goblins took pots seriously now, they sparkled, even at night, but what happens next? Will goblins really stop taking an interest in their pots and will humans learn the serious, valuable and difficult and almost magical skill of pot-making? Or will goblins become, well, just another kind of human? And which would be better? And then he thought, maybe a policeman should stop thinking about all this because, after all, there was no crime, nothing was wrong … and yet in a subtle way, there was. Something was being stolen from the world without anybody noticing or caring. And then he gave up, because he was nearly home and his mum had promised him Man Dog Suck Po with mashed carrots, and it wasn’t even a Sunday. Building the longest railway the world had yet seen was a matter of daily grind, and nightly grind too, and each week took Moist further away from the city. Visits home to enjoy the fruits of his labourfn54 became even rarer. Scattered along the thousand-mile route new railway yards were springing up, each one a constant hive of activity with wagons coming and going all hours of the day and night. And while the company made sure the workforce was well provisioned, since, as Harry King had told the Ankh-Morpork Times, railway workers seriously needed a good meal and a good sleep in a comfortable bed after a day of heavy labour, in the end whether or not the bed was warm or comfortable didn’t in fact really matter because a lad would sleep the moment he fell into it, just as soon as the former occupant, waving his billy can, had hurried off for his shift. It was all about speed and occasionally pure machismo, or whatever it was called in the languages of trolls, goblins and golems and, of course, the real hard-core steel men from the mountains who fought amongst themselves over nothing. Where the new line followed the course of the River Ankh as it narrowed towards its source high in the Ramtops, barges came up or down the river with wood for sleepers, iron ore, coal and other supplies. The smelters worked through the night casting rails and if you were lucky enough to be in the right place and sufficiently protected you could see them open their guts and spill the glowing liquid steel: dancing and living like a creature from the underworld. If you were not lucky and stood too close then quite probably you would end up in that underworld facing the deity of your choice. And all was fuelled by money, money, money, eager investors turning gold into steel and coal in the hope that it would turn back into even more gold. The company was building bunkers everywhere along the tracks and it truly came home to Moist that when it came to the railways the engines and carriages and so forth were just the show up front, the iron horse, which needed to be fuelled and watered. And all of this was done by people almost the same colour as the coal, momentarily spotted as you went past, and then forgotten. He knew, because he had attended all the meetings and listened, that running a railway was a lot of small puzzles which, if you opened them, presented you with another sequence, full of constraints, and lists of things that definitely had to be done before anything else could happen. In short, the railway was complexity on wheels. It was amazing that Mr Simnel’s sliding rule didn’t glow as red-hot as the furnaces he worked. And in Swine Town the workshops were turning out more and more engines: little tank engines that trundled up and down the ever-growing compound, shunting trains and carriages together; night trains, slow and heavy, that picked up wagon after wagon from the watercress farmers and others who needed to get their produce to the cities by dawn; the new Flyer Mark II, which had a roof to the footplate and wonderful new green livery; all now with names such as Spirit of Scrote and King of Pseudopolisfn55. The scream of steam was no longer an intrusion, just one of the noises of Ankh-Morpork, like the explosions in the Alchemists’ Guild, and, as one old man said to his wife, ‘You don’t need a clock to tell you the time when you know the sound of the seven o’clock to Quirm.’ It seemed only weeks since Iron Girder had first puffed gently around Harry King’s compound, but now, inside a year, branch lines were springing up all across the Sto Plains, connecting little towns and villages in every direction. And near these little towns and villages spanking new houses for the new railway staff were beginning to appear. Houses with baths! And hot running water! Admittedly the privies were outside, but nevertheless the plumbing was well maintained.fn56 You could say that for Harry: if something was to be done then it was to be done properly, and doubly so if Effie was around.fn58 It was as if there had been a space waiting to be filled. It was steam-engine time, and the steam engine had arrived, like a raindrop, dripping precisely into its puddle, and Moist and Dick and Harry and Vetinari and the rest of them were simply splashes in the storm. Then one day at the Ankh-Morpork terminus, as Moist was setting out yet again to the Sto Plains, a lady got into his carriage, introduced herself as Mrs Georgina Bradshaw and sat down, gripping her expensive-looking bag with both hands. When Moist got up to offer her his forward-facing seat as railway etiquette apparently demanded, she said, ‘Oh, my dear sir, don’t worry about me, but thank you. I know a gentleman when I see one.’ ‘Moist von Lipwig at your service, ma’am.’ ‘Oh – are you the Mister Lipwig? Mister Lipwig the railwayman? I’ve heard all about you.’ ‘Yes, I am, I suppose,’ said Moist, ‘when no other contender is available.’ ‘Isn’t this fascinating?’ continued Mrs Bradshaw. ‘I’ve never been on a train before. I’ve taken the precaution of bringing some pills in case I feel nauseous. Has that ever happened to you?’ ‘No, madam, I quite like the rhythm of the railway,’ said Moist. ‘But tell me, where did you get those precious pills?’ ‘It was a gentleman called Professor Dibbler, a purveyor of nostrums against the railway illnesses. He was quite persuasive.’ Moist couldn’t help his smile and said, ‘I imagine he was. Madam, Mister Dibbler is at best nothing more than a charming scamp, I’m afraid. And I’m quite certain his nostrums will be nothing more than expensive sugar and miscellaneous substances. I fear he’s in the vanguard of the pedlars of patent medications which tax my patience.’ She laughed. ‘Well put, sir. I’ll consider that tuppence ha’penny down the drain.’ ‘So may I ask what is your business on the railway?’ ‘None, really. I thought, well, you only live once, and when I was a little girl my mother said I was always following carts to see where they were going and now that my husband Archibald has passed on I thought that this should be the time to go and see the world … you know, faraway places with strange-sounding names … like Twoshirts and Effing Forest and Scrote. One imagines all manner of exotic occurrences must take place somewhere with a name like Twoshirts. So many places I’ve never been to … I have a whole world to experience before it’s too late, and I’m keeping a journal of it all as I go, so I’ll be able to enjoy the world all over again when I get back.’ Something struck in Moist’s head, causing him to say, ‘May I ask, Mrs Bradshaw, if your handwriting is good?’ She looked down her nose at him and said, ‘Indeed yes, Mister Lipwig. I used to write a beautiful cursive script for my dear late husband. He was a lawyer and they expect excellence in the writing and use of the language. Mister Slant was always very … particular about that, and no one appreciates the judicious use of Latatian better than dear Archibald did. ‘And, may I add, I was schooled at the Quirm College for Young Ladies, where they are very solid on the teaching of foreign tongues, even though Morporkian rather seems to have become the lingua quirma of late.’ Mrs Bradshaw sniffed. ‘And in working for my husband I learned a lot about people and the human condition.’ ‘Mrs Bradshaw, if you were to go everywhere where the trains go and write about all those places, perhaps you could send me a copy of your notes? They could be useful to other intrepid passengers … People would know what to expect from the Effing Forest or Twoshirts before they’d even paid a penny for their ticket. Already so many people from Ankh are travelling to Quirm just for the sunshine. It’s become our heaviest service! And some of them go just for the day! I’m sure they’d think about going on other trips too if they saw all the little details of every place you visit, and perhaps you could include notes on accommodation as well as other places of interest en route?’ he added, on fire with his own imagination. ‘All the things that you would like to see and would be interested in. Wherever your travels take you, you can address your manuscript to Moist von Lipwig and give it to the nearest station master, and they’ll see to it that it gets passed on to me.’ Moist thought about the amount of gold accruing in the coffers of Harry King’s accounts and added, ‘And I’m sure we could arrange some remuneration …’ As Mrs Bradshaw settled into the journey and looked out of the window Moist took out his notebook and scribbled a memo to Harry King: ‘Please allow Mrs Georgina Bradshaw to travel anywhere she wants, even those little branch lines we haven’t fully opened yet. She went to one of the best girls’ schools I know of and understands language, and she is writing notes on all our destinations which may come in very useful. My instincts say that she will do us proud. I have an inkling that she will be either meticulous or humorous or, hopefully, both. And a widow who wears the kind of gold and diamond ring that she is wearing to travel through Ankh-Morpork and is still wearing it when she leaves is not going to be a fool. She speaks as well as Lady Sybil; that’s Quirm College for you. Up School! Isn’t this what we’re after? We want people to widen their horizons on the train, of course, but why not day trips? You know what, there are people in Ankh-Morpork who haven’t even got as far as Sto Lat yet. Travel broadens the mind, and also railway revenue.’ A sample of the great work arrived on scented paper one week later. High Mouldering, on the Sto Plains, boasts wonderful salt-water baths from a pleasantly warm spring, and the owner and his wife give hygienic massages to those who would like to enjoy the benefit. Ladies and gentlemen separately, of course; there is nothing here that could be considered insalubrious or that would shock the most delicate of sensibilities. Near by, the Hotel Continental offers accommodation for trolls, humans, dwarfs and goblins; fifty rooms are available at present. People wishing to tour the area may be interested in the Sacred Glade of Shock Knee, which deserves to be noticed for its amazing echoes. A short distance away is a shrine to Anoia, patron goddess for people who have difficulty with things stuck in their drawers. A welcome break for the tired at weekends, with excellent meals. Highly recommended. Moist made a note to see Mr Thomas Goatberger when he could next get back to Ankh-Morpork. If he was any judge, the publisher would be ready to bite his hand off to get a share of the railway magic. When Moist did next return to the city, the matter of the railway to Uberwald had to take priority. Pacing up and down in the big room where Harry and Dick Simnel presided over their charts and reports and blueprints, Harry was still clearly worried. ‘Now then, Moist, between ourselves and these four walls I’ve got the heebie-jeebies. We’ve taken gangs off the other lines, we’re putting in more and more work on the long haul to Uberwald. This is a hell of an undertaking. I’m more at home knee-deep in shit, which is what we’re going to be in here in this office if this doesn’t work, believe you me.’ ‘Yes,’ said Moist, ‘but what you have to remember is that getting to Uberwald will mean getting to a whole load of other places on the way, and all of them’ll want the railway and that will help cover costs right there. It’s the tunnels and bridges that are a problem, but the best of it is that they’re old technologies. There are plenty of masons who can build good bridges for us, and as for tunnels, the trolls are just begging to do them if they can dig out a home near by.’ Harry’s only response was a grunt. ‘And the nice thing about the trolls,’ Moist added, ‘is that they bring the whole family with them, even their kids. It’s their way. If you don’t know your rocks, you’re no good as a troll. They just love changing the landscape. One of them asked me the other day if he could be a surveyor and I was just opening my mouth to say no when I thought, why not? He seemed like a bright lad, slow, yes, but quite bright. So I’ve told the boys to give him a bit of tuition, on the job, as it were.’ ‘Are you going to give him one of Simnel’s special sliding slabs?’ said Harry, smiling. Moist laughed and said, ‘Why not, Harry? I might just do that! No reason why a surveyor shouldn’t be strong enough to lift up a mountain to see what’s underneath!’ He took advantage of the lightened atmosphere to steer Sir Harry towards happier subjects, asking to be brought up to date on all the latest developments. Every morning now the desk of Harry King was inundated by letters from people wanting no trains, some trains, or seriously wishing to have trains available right now. And then there were all the other helpful comments and suggestions: a Mr Snori Snorisson had written to say so many other people had arranged to meet under the station clock that his friend had taken four hours to find him … Shouldn’t the railway provide stepladders for the use of shorter citizens …? Help was requested for passengers with heavy luggage, and for the elderly or undead … With all the dangerous machinery involved, shouldn’t there be guards – not the City Watch, of course, but somebody with some sense – to act as guardian of the train and its passengers? And that meant uniforms, hats, flags, whistles and other exciting accoutrements. And this excitement was presumably why the editor of the Ankh-Morpork Times had decided to employ a railway correspondent, Mr Raymond Shuttle, who was an unashamed and self-confessed train spotter. The glint in his eyes was unmistakable. Alongside the main business of the railway, Harry confessed himself delighted to see the enthusiasts spending their dollars on railway souvenirs such as the little clockwork models that were even now being created under licence by those deviously cunning artificers who were making a small fortune from railway memorabilia.fn59 And the cannier artificers, always on the lookout for moneymaking opportunities, were constantly making additions to these playthings for children: a little shed and four tiny figures to wait for the train. A signal box with a waving goblin. And yes, a miniature turning table just like the one in the compound, and so it went on. A lad with a doting parent could get his own tiny Iron Girder and oval track with straights and curves; and even miniature railway workers including a miniature Harry King.fn60 And once again, Moist marvelled at the power of the dream. And then it was out into the grease-filled world of the compound to see the latest engines the lads were testing, and find out what the ingenious Mr Simnel had been up to since Moist had seen him last. One thing he was sure of: even though Dick Simnel was forever coming up with blueprints for the next locomotive, every day would have seen him still hard at work on Iron Girder, which was probably why on every visit she continued to look a little different: a different boiler here, different wheels there, different paintwork and quite probably a host of integral things that Moist couldn’t see. She was Dick’s pride and joy, his first locomotive love, thought Moist, taking care not to say it aloud, the first test bed for every new innovation. No locomotive shone as brightly as Iron Girder. No locomotive got the next big improvement before Iron Girder. She was, indeed, the iron stalking horse for the railway and Simnel her willing slave. Just as Moist was debating where first to look for Simnel, Emily King, in a very fine white cotton dress, came jauntily skipping through the compound towards the sacred engine shed as if completely unaware of the attendant muck and grease. But after all, he thought, she must have grown up with her uncle’s other business, against which the railway was a fragrant pleasure garden. And here she was, bouncing along cheerfully, and here was Iron Girder, and suddenly Moist’s spine went cold, every sinew twanging, and he was near to biting his nails as the girl continued towards the locomotive in her pristine white cotton dress. Moist moved like lightning across the compound as Emily skipped on and reached Iron Girder. He looked at Simnel, whose face had gone curiously grey even under the grease and grime, and he was ready for anything as Emily patted the engine and said, ‘Hello, Iron Girder, how are we today, you lovely girl?’ And while Moist was still gawping, Emily took out her handkerchief and buffed Iron Girder’s brass nameplate industriously until it sparkled to the heavens. And as Emily was talking to Iron Girder about how good she was looking today, Simnel turned to Moist and said, very quietly, ‘She wouldn’t have, you know, not Iron Girder.’ ‘Good,’ said Moist. ‘And now you have two ladies, you lucky man.’ But in his head a voice said to him, ‘But you more than half expected it, didn’t you, Mister Lipwig? Oh, ye of little faith.’ And then there was a sigh of steam. For the next two hours Moist sat at his desk in Harry’s compound, feeling as if he were a locomotive speeding along watching the scenery blur past. Every so often a boy came up with another pile of paperwork from some part of Harry King’s domain and towards the end of the afternoon he felt himself subtly drifting into a coma, quite a pleasant one at the start: he visualized himself in a pale pink mist and it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. And little by little Moist von Lipwig began to unravel, but just as he was sliding under Of the Twilight the Darkness dropped down in front of him out of the evening glow, though exactly where he had dropped from Moist couldn’t work out. ‘Must go to sleep, Mister Lipwig! Burning candle at both ends means man with egg on face and burning bum. When did Mister Lipwig last eat? Not snack! Serious munch! I have some dried mushrooms if you are feeling peckish. No? Acquired taste … more for me, but you must sleep if nothing else. Mister Lipwig can’t do everything. If he can’t eat, can’t do anything. Making money is good, but there is no pockets in a shroud. Give it a rest, Mister Railway! And this will help you big time no mistake.’ The goblin handed Moist a little bottle on which a grubby label proclaimed the contents as ‘RAT POISON’. ‘Label one big lie, Mister Lipwig, bottle cleaned out and rats eaten, yes indeed, and filled with special goblin potion for tired person. Guaranteed no worms and it will give you refreshing sleep and you feel a lot better if you wake up in the morning! Guaranteed! Pure quill. None finer!’ It had been a long day and the heat of the smelters had made him as dry as the smelters themselves and so, what the hell, Moist took a long swig. ‘Well done, Mister Lipwig!’ chuckled the goblin. ‘It will make your hairs curl … everywhere!’ Later, after Moist had finished talking to the dancing toadstools and Mr Whoopee, the man who could amusingly eat his own face, it must have been Moist’s feet alone that found his bed, plodding along like a couple of old donkeys via the good offices of Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobby Nobbs, who apparently found him just outside his house talking to his knees. And, according to Nobby, listening intently to what they had to say. He awoke lying on his bedroom floor. Somebody had put blankets over him and even tucked him up nicely. He grasped his head and thought Oh no! I drank another goblin concoction! His dismay dwindled when he realized that he felt absolutely fine and not just fine, either, but so full of beans that the world probably had no beans left. When he stepped outside on to the balcony for a breath of fresh air the birds were singing and the sky was a wonderful shade of blue. The door opened behind him and Adora Belle said, ‘I know we have what might be called an unconventional marriage, what with our jobs and the pressure of work and so on, but I wouldn’t be doing my wifely duty if I didn’t ask you whether you have been firkydoodling with fast and loose women? No pressure. Answer in your own time.’ More or less spinning with the ecstasy of being alive and, of course, all those beans, Moist said joyfully, ‘Now then, just a minute, bear with me now, tell me, is it loose women or is it fast women? Is there a spotter’s guide or does one, as it were, cancel out the other?’ ‘Moist von Lipwig, you are rascally drunk. Can you even walk?’ For an answer Moist jumped in the air, clicking his heels, and said, ‘Fast or loose, my girl, or why not both at once?’ Dragging him back into their bedroom and closing the door behind them, Adora Belle said, ‘Well now, husband of mine, in that case let’s find out.’ There was a thunderstorm over Schmaltzberg, but that was ever the case. Thunder rolled around the mountains, like the marbles of the gods. And in the privacy of his office, the Low King was discussing progress with Aeron who was looking more cheerful than usual. ‘Things appear to be calming down,’ Rhys said. ‘They argue and argue and then somebody remembers that he has business to deal with concerning his rat farms, or there’s some trouble over in his goldmine, water coming in, pit props buckling and so on and so forth, things they can’t leave to underlings, and then everything goes quiet.’ ‘I know you’re worried,’ said Aeron, ‘but I think … no, I believe, that you have more friends than you ever thought possible. Even the goblins know that you were one of the first who signed up for goblin emancipation. They, whether we like it or not, are becoming the future, Rhys. It was the business with the clacks towers that made even traditional dwarfs angry. The clacks is needed: everybody wants news. People are furious everywhere. After all, they say, goblins and trolls are minding their own business, so why not the dwarfs?’ ‘No more news of Ardent?’ asked the King. ‘It’s been months, hasn’t it? No more towers down or idiots trying to destroy the railway? Can I believe that his firebrand has burned out?’ Aeron handed the King his coffee and said, ‘I believe Lord Vetinari said never do anything until you hear the screams. However, Ardent is not one to come back, helmet in hand, to say “sorry”. There is too much pride there by half.’ After a quiet moment while Rhys Rhysson considered the possibilities, Aeron continued. ‘So you will accept the invitation to the summit in Quirm? In these circumstances, Rhys, it does seem to me that it is very important that you are there and seen to be there.’ ‘Of course. Diamond King will be chairing proceedings this year and I must mend fences. He’s helpful but I’m in no mood to try his patience. He has always been a most understanding ally.’ ‘And the other … thing?’ ‘The other thing is satisfactory,’ said the King. He paused. ‘Yes, we should go to Quirm, but I think it would be wise to leave Albrechtson in charge here, just to take care of any business.’ Without his quite knowing how it had come about, and regardless of how little he was actually at the compound, it appeared that Moist was now Mr Railway. If anyone wanted to know anything about it, they asked him. If they’d lost their little child in the queue for Iron Girder, the call went out for Mr Lipwig and if somebody had a new idea for the railway it was sent to Mr Lipwig and after a while it didn’t seem to Moist to matter what time it was or, worse, where he was: the claims on his attention were never-ending. He was pretty certain that he slept quite often, sometimes back at home, if at all possible, or saving that a mattress and blanket somewhere within the warm and ever enlarging foundries along the route to Uberwald, or, if all else failed, snuggled down under the tarpaulins of whatever railway gang was near by, having shared whatever was in the cooking pot. If you were lucky it was pheasant or possibly grouse, and if you weren’t so lucky, at least there would be pot luck, which generally meant cabbages and swedes and almost certainly something that was protein, but you wouldn’t want to see what it was in daylight. However, to give them their due, the railway gangs, including the vanguard now bearing down on Slake, were resourceful men, especially in the tradition of setting snares to fill their pots along the permanent way. Slake was one of those places, Moist thought, that you put on the map because it was embarrassing to have a map with holes in it. There was some mining, forestry and fishing and after a while you got the feeling that those people who chose to live in Slake and the surrounding area were people who didn’t want other people to know where they were. And when you walked around Slake you were always certain that you were being watched. He put it down as a place to avoid unless you liked bad cooking and banjos. Nevertheless, it had a mayor and was nailed to the map as a coaling and water stop. No longer did Moist wear the snazzy suits and handmade shoes that, along with his collection of official-looking hats, were his calling card back in the city. They didn’t stand up well to the regime of the railway worker and so now he wore the greasy shirt and waistcoat with rough trousers tied at the knee. He loved the huge boots and the flat cap that seemed to go with them, making you feel safe at both ends. But the boots, oh the boots … a troll could drop on your head and you’d be dead, but the boots would be still alive and kicking! They had hobnails and were more or less like tiny fortresses. Nothing could get past a railway worker’s boots. Messages found Moist wherever he might be, via train, goblin runner or clacks, since there were very few places these days where their towers hadn’t found a niche in the landscape. In the small hours of one morning in the Plains township of Little Swelling when it was pouring with rain that hammered on the makeshift lodgings, Moist pulled back the tarpaulin and wood door to see the face of Of the Twilight the Darkness, who couldn’t be called soaked, because there was really very little of him to soak.fn61 As soon as the goblin got inside the bothy, such water as was on him simply disappeared. Almost automatically Moist looked up to see the lights of the local clacks tower and as he did so it flashed a familiar code: it was from Adora Belle. He recognized her code as easily as he would recognize his own. ‘Quickly!’ he said. ‘Get up that tower and get that message back to me, now!’ He waited, and in the gloom the voice of Of the Twilight the Darkness said, ‘Did I hear the magic word, Mister Little Damp?’ Moist was surprised at himself because, even though the goblin had a smell you could almost see, that was no reason for not minding your manners, so he said, ‘Please, Mister Of the Twilight the Darkness. Thank you so very much.’ And thus chastened, Moist kept silent as the little goblin scuttled back out into the rain and scampered towards the tower. Moist finished his ablutions, gathered his things together – on the assumption that whatever the message it would require him to go somewhere else – and went out to where the golem horse was waiting unregarding of the weather, just in case it needed waking up, because however hard he tried he couldn’t think of it as anything other than alive. Admittedly, the horse was giving him incipient piles, no matter how much padding he put between himself and it. And although the creature could now speak, Moist still yearned for all those fussing little rituals that defined horsemanship. He was aware that there should be such things as nose bags and adjusting the straps and giving the beast some water. The lack of these rituals slightly unbalanced Moist. It was creepy. In the falling rain it was as if he was in two different worlds. And while he was wondering whether he should give the horse a name, which somehow would have made things feel better, Mister Of the Twilight the Darkness arrived, clutching a damp and smudged pink clacks flimsy. Vetinari wants to see you immediately. Stop. PS Any chance of bringing home some of that goblin potion with you. Stop. PPS If you pass a bakery we could do with a couple of sliced loaves. Stop. Your loving wife. Stop. And he thought, well, isn’t it nice to be wanted? No more than a few hours and a bumpy ride through pouring rain later, the door to the anteroom outside the Oblong Office was opened by Drumknott, replete in a very smart engine driver’s hat, wiping his greasy hands on an equally greasy piece of ever-present engine driver’s rag. ‘His lordship will be with you presently, Mister Lipwig. You’ve been a very busy man lately, haven’t you?’ Moist could now see that the little secretary was also looking tanned beneath the smuts and soot, and the hat was, gods forbid, jaunty, a term never before applied to Drumknott. ‘Have you spent much time on the railway, Mister Drumknott? It looks like it’s doing you some good.’ ‘Oh, yes, sir! His lordship allows me to take a few turns on the railway late mornings after he’s finished the crossword. After all, everything is about the train these days, isn’t it, and he was gracious enough to say that I’m keeping him in touch.’ At that moment, there was a shrill whistle from the other side of the door and Drumknott pulled it open to reveal Lord Vetinari, to Moist’s total surprise, catching one of the new little steam engines just as it was about to plunge off the highly polished desk. The familiar straights and curves were surrounded by little toy people: guards, engine drivers, passengers, the portly controller with a big cigar and various engineers with tiny crafted sliding rulers. And the tyrant caught the falling engine in a gauntlet, leaving water and oil dripping down on to the expensive polished ebony floor tiles. ‘Quite amazing, isn’t it, Mister Lipwig?’ he said cheerfully through the smoke. ‘Though isn’t it a pity that they can only run on rails? I can’t imagine what the world would be like if everyone had their own steam locomotive. Abominable.’ His lordship held out his hand for Drumknott to clean it with a not-so-greasy rag, and said, ‘Well, Mister Lipwig is here, Drumknott, and I know you can’t wait to get back to your wonderful railway.’ And Drumknott – the Drumknott who thought the finer things of life were stored in manila folders – headed off down the stairs two at a time to get into the cab, shovel the coal, start the engine, blow the whistle and breathe in smuts and soot and be that most wondrous of creatures, an engine driver. ‘Tell me, Mister Lipwig,’ said Vetinari, as the door closed. ‘It occurs to me that rocks on the line could easily derail a locomotive …’ ‘Well, my lord, away from Ankh-Morpork we give the engines cow-catchers, a kind of plough, if you will. And remember, sir, a locomotive running free has a considerable weight and the signallers and linesmen keep an eye on the track.’ ‘So, there has so far been no deliberate sabotage?’ Moist said, ‘Not since the attack on Iron Girder months ago, unless you mean the little boys who put their pennies on the track just to get them flattened? That seems to be more of a pastime, and copper bends easily. It’s gone quiet, hasn’t it, sir? I’m thinking about the grags knocking down clacks towers and generally being difficult. It looks like they’ve given up.’ Vetinari winced. ‘You could be right. Certainly the Low King appears to believe so, and Commander Vimes reports that his agents in Uberwald are not picking up any disturbances. Other sources indicate the same. But … I worry that extremists are like perennial weeds. They may disappear for a while but they don’t give up. I fear they’ve gone further underground, waiting for their moment.’ ‘Which moment would that be, sir?’ ‘Do you know, Mister Lipwig, I wonder about that every night. I take some pleasure in the fact that the era of the locomotive has begun with care and thought and a scientific outlook instead of a lot of tinkering. Encouraging free-for-all simply encourages more episodes such as we saw in the Effing Forest. So …’ Vetinari now stared directly at Moist. ‘Tell me, how is the railway to Uberwald coming along?’ ‘Making very good progress, sir, but there is a shortfall … as it were. We were expecting to drive the golden spike halfway through next month. There’s a lot of work still to do and we’re driving the train underground around the Gruffies. We’re tunnelling hard, but there are already a lot of cave formations up there.’ And there’s the bridges, he thought. You haven’t told him about the bridges. ‘And, of course, once we get to Uberwald we’ll eventually continue on to Genua.’ ‘Not good enough, Mister Lipwig, not good enough at all. You must speed up. The balance of the world could be at stake.’ ‘Er … with all due respect, my lord, why?’ Vetinari frowned. ‘Mister Lipwig. I have given you your orders; how you execute those orders is up to you, but they must be obeyed!’ Moist’s mood was not helped by finding the golem horse had been clamped, apparently by the Watch since he could see a watchman close by, laughing. The horse looked at him, embarrassed, and said, ‘I regret this inconvenience, sir, but I must obey the law.’ Seething, Moist said, ‘As a golem horse, are you as strong as any other golem?’ ‘Oh, yes, sir.’ ‘Very well,’ said Moist. ‘Then get yourself out of the clamp.’ The clamp cracked and split and the watchman ran towards Moist just as he leapt on to the back of the horse, yelling after him, ‘Oi! That’s public property, that is!’ And Moist shouted over his shoulder, ‘Send the bill to Sir Harry King, if you dare! Tell him it’s from Moist von Lipwig!’ Looking back as the horse galloped away down Lower Broadway, to his glee he saw the watchman picking up the pieces of the yellow clamp and he shouted, ‘No one interferes with the progress of the Hygienic Railway!’ Moist always preferred to move fast – after all, in his previous businesses a turn of speed was essential – and he arrived at Harry’s compound with the horse panting like a celestial runner.fn62 Stepping down and, for nothing more than effect, tying up the horse, he said, ‘Why were you panting? Golems don’t pant. You don’t breathe!’ ‘Sorry, sir. You wanted me to be a more horse-like horse, so I am doing my best, sir … neigh, whinny, whinny.’ Moist burst out laughing and said, ‘That’ll do, Dobbin … No, not Dobbin! How do you fancy Flash?’ Reflectively the horse said, ‘I’ve never had a name before. I’ve always been “horse”. But it’s a very nice feeling to know who you are. I wonder how I did without it for these past nine hundred and three years. Thank you, Mister Lipwig.’ Moist made his way to Harry’s office and made certain that he spoke directly and in private to Harry, who stared at Moist for an eternity before saying, ‘Surely you know that they’ve hardly started reinforcing the first of the bridges on the Uberwald line? No train can run on thin air!’ ‘Yes, Harry, I know. Gods bless me, I speak to the surveyors and inspectors all the time. But it’s only the beds of the bridges that need lots of work. The uprights have stood the test of time.’ And while Sir Harry was drawing breath to protest, Moist told him what he had in mind if Simnel’s engineers weren’t ready in time for whatever Vetinari was cooking up. It took some time for Harry to get to grips with Moist’s plan, but finally when he’d heard it all he said, ‘You’re breaking all the rules, my lad, and you can only do that once to Vetinari. I’m pretty sure about that.’ It took all of Moist’s guile and self-control in the face of an angry Harry King, but he held his ground and said, ‘Harry, in all my time working for Lord Vetinari I’ve learned to understand the words “plausible deniability”.’ ‘Eh? What does that mean, smart boy?’ said Harry. ‘It means his lordship chooses to have little idea of what I do and certainly doesn’t give me clear instructions, and it also means I have to guess a lot, but I’ve always been very good at that. Got a lot to do, Sir Harry, or shall I say my lord Harry or should I even dare to say Baron King of Ankh-Morpork … you can fill in that bit for yourself … and, if I remember correctly, when Vetinari makes you the first railway baron you’ll be entitled to six silver balls on your coronet. A knighthood? Pah! You could be a Baron overnight. I imagine Lady King would be most impressed by a man with six balls.’ Harry snorted. ‘That’d give the missus a surprise!’ He considered the picture Moist had painted of the future and said, ‘Actually, I reckon she’d be swanking like a … Duchess!’ He sobered up a little and continued, ‘Believe me, I thought I was the King of the Shit, but you are full of the stuff! Would you damn well tell me how much trouble it’s going to get us both into? Baron, my arse. All right, mister, how do we get this thing done, scoundrels that we are?’ Even with the added pressure from the Patrician and with every lad, troll and goblin that Harry could provide, it still took time to build a railway. ‘Tsort was not built in a day,’ was the mantra when anyone got impatient. Still, day by day the great new railway line to Uberwald got closer to its destination. If building the railway was one thing, maintaining it was quite another. The railway was out there in the wind and the weather, and, in many cases, far from civilization. Moist looked every week at the complaints, breakdowns and miscellaneous problems book, his instinct always being to start with the miscellaneous and sometimes humorous: intoxicated troll on line, harpies nesting in coal bunker, woman in labour.fn63 And then, of course, there were also the landslides, which played havoc with the schedules. People also didn’t appreciate that to leave a huge truck full of pigs on a level crossing was actively to prevent any movement on the railway, and as for the people who believed that if they held out their palm to the oncoming locomotive it would stop for them immediately! As, in fact, it might, but a skidding locomotive was a matter of filling up a large number of forms afterwards. As Moist was all too aware, ever since the maiden voyage the newspaper editors of the Sto Plains had been waiting for the first true railway disaster, which, for preference, would include at least one horrible death. And they got one, although not on the Hygienic Railway Company’s line. Instead, the first casualty happened in the back country of Quirm, where three entrepreneurs, Monsieur Lavasse the winemaker, Monsieur Croque the cheesemonger and Monsieur Lestripe, a purveyor of decorative onion-wreaths, had invested in their own small single-track line between their vineyards and farms. They had called on Simnel for expert advice, in particular how to avoid a head-on crash between their two locomotives on the single track, a conundrum that Dick had solved with classic Simnel simplicity by providing them with signals that could not be changed without a special brass token, carried by whichever driver had right of way on the line. Amid press headlines claiming SIMNEL SYSTEM FAILS and ARE PASSENGER LIVES AT RISK? Simnel and Moist were summoned to Quirm to investigate, where they discovered the terrible truth. A middle manager at Chateau Lavasse had looked to speed things up and had duplicated the safety token and explained to the drivers and the signalmen that they just needed to be sensible. Trusting them to get it right had worked well for a while and so everyone relaxed, and then one day Signalman Hugo was pre occupied and forgot a vital safety step, and there were two trains heading for each other at some speed along the single track, with each driver thinking he had the right of way. And they did indeed meet halfway. One driver died, the other was seriously scalded by runaway cheeses which flowed like lava when they reached the heat of the footplate, and there was a great disturbance of foie gras. And the clerk who had seen fit to order a second token said, ‘Well, I thought I would be saving time so I only—’ According to Raymond Shuttle’s report in the next day’s Times: ‘“I am very sorry about the gentleman who was killed, and the man who was injured,” Mr Lipwig told me. “I’m sure none of us will ever look at fondue the same way again. However, Mister Simnel has made it clear that while it’s easy to deal with stupid, bloody stupid is horribly difficult to erase. I wonder how many dreadful crimes have been perpetrated following a well-meaning person saying ‘I only …’?”’ Damage limitation achieved, Simnel and Moist headed back to Ankh-Morpork. As the slow train on the coastal branch line left the rocky ground which was so good for the famous Quirmian vines and started to skirt the steamy world of the Netherglades,fn64 Simnel slept and Moist pondered the many challenges ahead while staring out of the window at the passing landscape. Watching the swamps roll by, Moist felt faintly relieved that the train didn’t stop until back in drier terrain at the small town of Shankydoodle, a great exporter of champion racehorses. That was fine, he thought: there was a long winding footpath from there to the Netherglades and if you couldn’t find it you had no business being there. The rain poured down on the Sto Lat terminus, water gushing off the roof as people scurried to get out of the downpour, seeking a respite from the deluge. The little coffee shop of Marjorie Painsworth was dry and as an extra attraction on this dreadful night she had warm buns on sale. It was a beacon of solace for the young troll lady, who stirred her cup of molten sulphur uncertainly while waiting. She watched people coming in and out, and was surprised when a dwarf gentleman indicated the chair next to her and said, ‘Excuse me, is this place taken?’ Crackle had never had much to do with dwarfs, of course, but since the whole Koom Valley business had been sorted out, it was surely in order for her to talk to a dwarf, especially since this one was very well dressed and, well, looked human; an Ankh-Morpork dwarf as they called them. So she smiled and said, ‘By all means do take a seat, sir. Isn’t the weather inclement for this time of year?’ The dwarf bowed, sat down and said, ‘Forgive my intrusion, but I am so happy to hear you use a word like “inclement”. The very word itself paints a picture, don’t you think? A grey one, but nevertheless … Oh, where are my manners? Please let me introduce myself: Dopey Docson at your service, madam, and may I say you speak extremely good dwarfish?’ Crackle looked around. People were still coming in out of the rain and leaving as the trains came and went. Sto Lat was, after all, a hub of the railway and almost all traffic passed through there. She had one ear cocked for the porter announcing her own train, but she managed to say, ‘Your grasp of troll is likewise also remarkable, if I may say so. May I ask where your travels have taken you?’ The dwarf smiled again and said, ‘I’m a librarian in Klatch, but I’ve recently buried my father in Copperhead.’ And Crackle stifled a laugh and said, ‘Do excuse me, I’m very sorry to hear about your father, but that’s amazing! I’m also a librarian, in the service of Diamond King of Trolls!’ ‘Ah, the Diamond Library! Alas not available to us at the moment, even under the famous Accord. I’d give anything just to see it.’ And the two librarians ordered more drinks and talked about books while whistles blew and train after train left the station. Crackle told Dopey that her husband didn’t like books and considered that mumbling should be good enough for trolls like it was in the old days, and the dwarf told her about his wife who even after the Koom Valley Accord still thought of trolls as a kind of animal, and they talked and talked and talked about the meaning of words and, indeed, the love of words. And Marjorie recognized the syndrome and kept the hot coffee and sulphur flowing, with the occasional warm rock cake. Of course, it wasn’t her business, she thought, it wasn’t up to her how other people led their lives, and she definitely didn’t eavesdrop, well, not much, but she couldn’t help hearing the dwarf say, ‘I’ve been offered a post as librarian at Brazeneck University and they’ve already told me I can bring my own assistant.’ And Marjorie was not surprised to find two empty cups and an empty table when she next looked: this sort of thing was bound to happen with the railway. It expanded horizons, inside and out, people went looking to find themselves and what they found was somebody else. As coups went, the Schmaltzberg coup went slowly, dripping through the tunnels and mines like treacle, and just as sticky. A connoisseur of coups would recognize the form. Two would get up to impress on a third that this was what should be done because this was what everyone else was going to do, and there was no point in being on the losing side, was there? There were always the ones who had misgivings, but the pressure of the tide was strengthening. Underground Schmaltzberg was in many respects a beehive and the swarm was deciding that they needed a new Queen. Ardent and the banished grags were, of course, at the centre of all this, and now having triumphantlyfn65 returned were settling down as if the place was theirs by right … ‘Nobody has to be hurt,’ they said, and it may have been too that people would murmur, ‘After all, it’s in his own interests,’ and there were other little giveaways such as ‘It’s time for fresh blood,’ and such things as ‘We must preserve our most hallowed ordinances,’ and if you were susceptible to atmospheres, you could see that dwarfs, perfectly sensible dwarfs, dwarfs who would consider themselves dwarfs of repute and fair dealing, were nevertheless slowly betraying allegiances they had formerly undertaken with great solemnity, because the hive was buzzing and they didn’t want to be the ones that got stung. The watchwords were ‘restoring order’ and ‘going back to the basics of true dwarfishness’. Nevertheless, there is always somebody who will not buzz with the swarm and in this case it was Albrecht Albrechtson, around whom there coalesced the dwarfs who were totally against the takeover and who remained loyal to Rhys Rhysson come what may. The air in the corridors thickened, and the unspoken question was who would be the first to sting? Albrecht Albrechtson placed his hand on the Scone of Stone. ‘My fellow dwarfs, I made an oath, and so did you. And as we all learned on our mother’s knees, the Ginnungagap awaits all murderers and oath-breakers.’ His smile was a grimace. He went on. ‘Perhaps I misheard.’ ‘Circumstances have changed,’ said Ardent. ‘The King is far too friendly with the trolls and the damn humans and, for goodness’ sake, he also signed the declaration that the goblins – goblins, I ask you – should be treated as well as dwarfs! I don’t know about you, but I don’t see a goblin as being my equal.’ In the ringing silence, Albrechtson almost whispered, ‘And the Koom Valley Accord? The understanding that would maintain peace in our time? We were all party to it. How easily do we break our oaths these days?’ ‘I never signed,’ said Ardent. ‘No, you didn’t,’ said Albrechtson. ‘It was signed by Rhys Rhysson on behalf of all dwarfs.’ ‘Not on my behalf,’ Ardent countered. ‘And I didn’t believe that little tableau of the two kings in the cavern. You know how humans are? I wouldn’t put it past someone like Vetinari to have had it placed there.’ This time the silence banged. They had all walked past that strange shining tableau in Koom Valley where the air was so chilly in the cavern and the two dead kings rode into history in a state of intentional stalemate. And perhaps some of them might have wondered what the dead kings would do if their peace were disturbed. The moment was broken by Ardent. ‘What we need is stability,’ he said. ‘No one need come to blows, nobody will be hurt. I give you my oath on that.’ ‘Excuse me,’ said Albrecht. ‘Would that go the way of the oath you gave your King, you traitor?’ The clang of weaponry being deployed at speed echoed around the halls, to be followed by the resounding silence of not wanting to be the one to take the first slash. It was a stalemate, so stale as to be stinking. ‘I will not rise to idiotic taunts,’ said Ardent. ‘We must deal with the world as it is. We have to make certain that it becomes the world that we want, where the dwarfs take their rightful place at the table. Times have changed. We need someone ready to defend our interests. Everyone keeps talking about the world changing. I intend to see that it changes to the betterment of dwarfkind.’ He walked over to Albrecht and held out a hand. ‘You used to think like this, my friend. Won’t you join me?’ The multiple intake of breaths went around the cavern. Albrecht hesitated for a moment. ‘You can stick that right up your jumper.’ There was silence. Apart from some dwarfs saying to each other, ‘What does that mean?’ and other more travelled dwarfs, who had dealt with humans, coming to the rescue with, ‘It’s rather like saying “Put it where the sun does not shine”,’ causing those dwarfs who did not know the ways of humanity to say, ‘Isn’t that the little valley over near Slice, rather nice?’ until one of them said, ‘As I understand it, it means shove it up your arse.’ ‘Oh, really?’ ‘May I suggest a show of hands?’ said Ardent. ‘All those not for me and a proper resolution to dwarf affairs as they have been since time immemorial should raise their hand and make themselves known.’ Albrechtson promptly sat on the Scone of Stone. ‘Well,’ said Ardent. ‘Stay there long enough, my friend, and you will have piles.’ And there was laughter, but worried laughter. And unusually, for dwarfs, people were thinking first. Yes, the goblins were rising and so were the humans and the trolls, and on the playing board of the world the dwarfs surely had to keep some allegiances. So what if a king changes? When the King came back he would find a fait accompli and the world would be busy with its own occupations. Politics notoriously change all the time … The unseen, unheard point was that everybody knew that if a dwarf-against-dwarf fight happened now it would go the distance, and where would they all be then? In the highest room in her castle over the deepest canyon in Uberwald Lady Margolotta was awakened by the duty Igor and was not happy about it. She opened the lid of her casket and said, ‘Vhat’s this all about? It’s not even dusk yet.’ ‘Theriouth thingth happening, my lady. I heard there’th a coup in Schmaltzberg and Ardent ith in the athendant.’ Igor looked carefully at his mistress, who appeared to be suddenly lost in thought. He stepped back a little in case of an explosion. To his surprise, Lady Margolotta merely said, ‘That little veasel? Sometimes the black ribbon is sorely tested. How far has the news got around?’ ‘Hardly at all, my lady. The clackth ith down, on the orderth of Ardent.’ A sudden syrup in his mistress’s tone worried Igor. If silk could speak it would sound like that. ‘On his orders? Really? Ve’ll see about that. Oh, yes, ve vill.’ Lady Margolotta walked over to the balcony and dropped into the canyon, gathering speed until she glided towards the first clacks tower outside Uberwald and landed softly on the little deck, so close to the superintendent that he nearly lost a year’s growth. But he knew the ropes. Lady Margolotta was a black ribboner and generally quite a useful neighbour. ‘Oh, it’s you, Arthur,’ she said. ‘How’s your vife? Sorry to upset you.’ Rather nervously, the superintendent said, ‘Dolores is fine, m’lady, thank you for asking.’ ‘And the children?’ ‘Doing very well, thank you, m’lady, and thank you so much for helping with the tuition fees.’ ‘Not at all. Is your clacks still vorking?’ ‘Oh yes, m’lady, but something seems to have happened up the line. We’ve got one hell of a backlog and we don’t know what’s going on. Looks like the grag militants have been up to their old tricks again.’ ‘Yes, I know, Arthur. Could you please send a clacks to Lord Vetinari and a copy to Diamond King of Trolls? Also to the major clacks office in Quirm for delivery to Rhys Rhysson. My usual codes, of course, and priority vun.’ She waited while the man set things in motion, tapping her foot on the floor, and was relieved when Arthur had finished. ‘Thank you, Arthur. Vould you be so good as to have any messages brought over to me as soon as possible by vun of your goblin couriers, please? And oh, it’s your son’s birthday, isn’t it?’ ‘Yes, tomorrow!’ A heavy gold coin dropped into the man’s hand. ‘Tell him not to spend it all at vonce,’ said a voice in the distance and suddenly Lady Margolotta was no longer there. The man looked nervously at the shiny coin in his hand. But there, that was the gentry for you. It paid to be in with the gentry. She had been so helpful when his daughter was taken bad, as well. Yes, of course, she was a vampire. But she wasn’t a bad person. And he was oh so very glad he could be of use to her. It had been a long wait to get home, but a wait worth waiting for, and after a pleasant evening with Adora Belle, what could be better than being woken up at 3 a.m. by members of the palace guard? And of course, the answer was absolutely everything, thought Moist. Crossly was so furious that they were backing away from him across the threshold and Moist heard him say, ‘This is insufferable! What about habeas corpus?’ And the most senior of the guards said, ‘What about habeas corpus?’ Moist sighed and pulled on his trousers. Nowadays he kept a pair at hand, ready for occasions such as this. He had had enough. And so, stepping into his shoes and buttoning his shirt, he more or less slid down the stairs to where the grinning guards were shouldering aside the still protesting Crossly. He was aware of Adora Belle, at her spikiest, looking over the banister and he had one of those to hell with it moments … As the guards strode into the hallway, he walked up to them and said, ‘Where’s your warrant?’ ‘What? We don’t have to have a warrant.’ ‘Okay,’ said Moist. ‘Then you should seriously consider, for your own sake, apologizing to my wife for disturbing us at this time of the morning. She gets very … unhappy if her sleep is interrupted.’ At that instant Adora Belle leaned over the banister and said, ‘This is a most excellent crossbow, one of Burleigh and Stronginthearm’s finest, and I can only fire it once, gentlemen, so which intruder will I hit? Because right now intruders are what you appear to be, and rude intruders at that. After all, a simple “Do you mind coming with us, sir?” would have done the trick. ‘Moist?’ Raising the loaded crossbow, Adora Belle continued, ‘Is this the one with the dodgy hair trigger? I always get them confused.’ Moist held out his hands and said, ‘This is how it’s going to go. You may think that Vetinari will be on your side, the majesty of the Patrician and what have you. On the other hand, my wife could shoot any one of you if she wanted to and quite possibly might hit me instead. And I suspect Moist von Lipwig is more important to the Patrician than you bunch of herberts.’ ‘Off you go, gentlemen,’ Adora Belle chimed in from her vantage point. ‘I’m sure my husband will attend on his lordship around breakfast time. It’s always good to do business on a full stomach.’ Moist looked at the guards and said, ‘Gentlemen, I have no intention of getting you into trouble, or indeed of allowing my wife to skewer any one or two of you. And so I think I’d like to have an early-morning stroll to the palace. If it so happens that you are walking that way at the same time, well, so be it. Although you might want to make that a brisk walk, because I fear my wife will be watching us go from the upstairs window and that is the dodgy crossbow she’s holding in her hands.’ And as he sauntered after the suddenly very sprightly guards clanging against each other in their hurry to get away, Moist was surprised to see the impeccably ironed Crossly make a fist and whisper, ‘Well done, sir! They don’t even clean their boots when they step inside.’ And the sedate little man’s face was fierce and fiery. Within the palace, Moist found Lord Vetinari in conversation with a stone-faced Commander Vimes. The normal calm of the Oblong Office had been replaced by a low hum of determined-looking clerks arriving with messages to hand over to Drumknott. Vetinari looked up and said, ‘Ah, Mister Lipwig. I’m so glad you could spare us a little time from your early-morning exercise routine.’ ‘Your guards can’t run for toffee. You ought to do something about it, sir, and while we’re on the subject, it would be a good idea to teach them some manners.’ The Patrician lifted an eyebrow. ‘I understood it was the prodding you objected to, Mister Lipwig. Was there prodding?’ ‘No, sir, but—’ ‘I am glad to hear it,’ said his lordship. ‘So, if we may to business? As I suspected, the apologists for the grags and other dwarf malcontents have merely been lying low, and I believe that in the darkness scandalous undertakings are still sprouting like mushrooms. It appears that there has been a palace coup in Schmaltzberg, only the third one in the history of the dwarfs. Unfortunately, the Low King is, as they say, out of position in Quirm where he has been attending a summit with Diamond King of Trolls. Rhys Rhysson is a notable negotiator, as we all know well from the Koom Valley Accord, and he has held the fractious coalition of dwarf chief mining engineers together for many years. And he is no mean practitioner with the axe, I believe, but he needs to be back in Uberwald with his inner council if this … unfortunate turn of events is not to spread underground to other mines. ‘Having considered the options,’ continued the Patrician, ‘it would seem that the railway route to Uberwald, presently under construction, would provide the swiftest and safest and most comfortable method for transporting the Low King, his retinue and war councillors. Time is, as they say, of the essence. You, Mister Lipwig, will travel with all speed to Quirm and take charge of arrangements. Commander Vimes will provide watchmen as an escort and will join you himself as you pass back through Ankh-Morpork, with reinforcements as he sees fit. Be aware, Mister Lipwig, that this is your Koom Valley, on wheels.’ ‘And when you get to Quirm,’ said Vimes, ‘be sure to look for a dwarf called Bashfull Bashfullsson. Very useful and most definitely on the Low King’s side.’ ‘But the line is nowhere near finished, sir!’ Moist wailed. ‘Mister Lipwig, you know already that it is not your job to tell me what the problems are. It is your job to tell me about the solutions. Do we have an understanding? I am sure that Harry King will have a high-speed locomotive he can spare – one of his Flyers, perhaps?’ ‘But, my lord, Harry might have a dozen or so locomotives to spare, but it’s the laying of the tracks, that’s the rub.’ ‘Mister Lipwig, I want … No, I am ordering you to make miracles by all means necessary,’ said Vetinari. ‘Do I make my point? I am sure I could make it somewhat pointier.’ Moist saluted and with no hint of sarcasm said, ‘Exactly, sir! Action this day! Miracles are us, sir!’ And laconically Vetinari said, ‘Try to make it yesterday, Mister Lipwig.’ And that, Moist knew, was that, as far as that conversation was concerned. Drumknott had been busy. Even as Moist was being roused from his bed by the palace guard, messengers had been sent to Harry King and to Simnel’s home. By the time Moist arrived at the compound, he found it even busier than it was in the middle of the day. There to greet him in the grey light of early dawn were Harry and Dick. They appeared to be having an argument and Simnel was looking rather unhappy. ‘But it’s the look of the thing, Dick,’ Harry was saying. ‘I mean, Iron Girder is wonderful, of course, but I’m sure the Flyers are classier and more suitable for royalty.’ ‘Sorry, Harry,’ Simnel replied. ‘I think it might be risky if Iron Girder weren’t the engine. Don’t ask me why, because I can’t explain why, even with my sliding rule, but she is what we need. And to tell thee t’truth, sir, I’ve shined her up so much, polished her, greased this, checked that, she’s fit for any king, or queen, come to that. Oh, the Flyers are good, and reet smart, too, but I’ll say it again: my Iron Girder is the best locomotive in an emergency.’ The arguments chased each other through Moist’s brain. Vetinari says this has to be top secret, and it would be Iron Girder’s first trip beyond the compound in months. Everyone is bound to notice. But we’ll be running an unscheduled train, so they’re going to notice anyway. And if it’s one of the usual Flyers all the regular passengers will want to know why they can’t get on it. And there’ll be the armed escort from the Watch, that’ll really make us stick out a mile. And after all, if you’re going to run a special train the locomotive should be special … ‘You know what, Harry?’ said Moist. ‘I think Dick’s right about this. There’s something about that engine—’ Just then, from Iron Girder, a little way away, there came a perceptible hiss of steam. Even Harry noticed it. And Simnel said, ‘Steam’s up, gentlemen. All aboard, those who’re going to Quirm. I’m sorry, Mister Lipwig, but his lordship’s orders are to send freight trucks only, to distract attention, like. And to tell t’truth it may be the only way we’ll get some Watch officers to fit on board. I’ve to work on that before you get back. Don’t worry,’ he added hastily, seeing the others’ horror, ‘it’ll be regular carriages hitched up for the return journey.’ ‘I hope those trucks are full,’ said Harry. ‘Can’t afford to waste the journey when there’s goods waiting to go.’ ‘Well, the front one is presently a bit full of Sergeant Detritus,’ said Simnel, and indeed through its open hatch Moist could now make out the form of the troll watchman, patiently hunched against the far wall. ‘But yes, we’ve loaded up the rest right and tight.’ Moist snoozed his way to Quirm, rocked in the cradle of Iron Girder. He was certain she gave a smoother ride than any of the new-fangled Flyers. Everyone said that was silly, but nevertheless, the thought didn’t leave him. Somehow the Flyers looked like machinery, but Iron Girder always looked like … somebody. And the train spotters all seemed to think the same thing. It was as if she was the railway. The chateau that had been put at the disposal of the Low King while he was in Quirm for the all-important summit had ‘ridiculously grand’ written all over it. Moist was greeted at the main entrance by a dwarf who was neatly dressed but notably lacking in the usual weaponry. ‘Bashfull Bashfullsson, Mister von Lipwig. I know your face. It’s in the papers so often.’ As they hurried inside Bashfull said, ‘Please let me, as they say, mark your card, Mister Lipwig. The King is furious. Furious with the rebels and furious with himself for not doing enough at the right time and I dare say he’s also furious with me. But me, well, I look to the sky and I say to Tak, “Don’t get mad, but when you made us dwarfs you had a bad day and couldn’t find anything in the subtlety box.” It seems that we’d sooner fight and argue than live.’ Inside the chateau there was a squad of heavily armed dwarfs on guard, heavily armed, that is, being more heavily armed than the average dwarf who, nevertheless, could generally look like a squad all by himself. They scowled at Moist, with the regulation scowl of all guards everywhere, which intimated that you were less than the dust on the dust on their boots, so watch out. Bashfullsson ignored them and led Moist into the Great Hall, which was buzzing with activity. But then there was the question of seeing the Low King. It was a delicate matter, but Moist wasn’t going to let courtiers and guards push him around. He knew Rhys Rhysson was a sensible and powerful dwarf, moderate, the kind of person who looks facts in the face, knowing that it’s the only way to survive. Moist waited while Bashfullsson dealt with the protocols, and wondered how many of the glittering company in the hall were actually on the King’s side. Suspicion floated in the air like a fine dust, settling on every shoulder. After all, this was the beginning of a clandestine dwarf war. Much better to fight the trolls. You could recognize the trolls as possibly the enemy, but who knew where the traitors were in this chattering throng? One of the dwarf guards attempted to dispossess Moist of his treasured lockpicks and only let go when Moist had retrieved them using very non-diplomatic language and some clever misdirection. He hadn’t actually made use of the lockpicks in years, his tongue generally being more effective at getting into places than some bent pieces of metal ever could be. Nevertheless, he was still fuming and was about to say something non-political when Bashfullsson grabbed him by the arm and took him to see the King. The King’s suite was, surprisingly, at the top of the building. In normal dwarf dwellings, the lower a dwarf, the more important he was, and so, Moist surmised, putting the Low King into rooms on the top floor might just be a ruse to thwart any traditionally minded enemies. Kings don’t travel lightly or quietly. There were dwarfish flunkies everywhere alongside the chateau staff, folding things and indeed shovelling things into cases with a sense of panic, as if the bailiffs were coming. But at last Moist and Bashfullsson were ushered into a small antechamber where the Low King was planning his counter-coup with his inner council. Every so often a clacks arrived and was hurried to the King. Rhys Rhysson was smaller and slighter than Moist had expected and was surrounded in this cramped room by generals and some of the rest of the circus that has to follow a monarch. Moist noticed black looks from a few dwarfs, angry at the human trespasser. Bashfullsson bowed to the King as he introduced Moist. ‘Mister von Lipwig, your majesty. An envoy of Lord Vetinari.’ ‘And killer of a number of renegade delvers,’ said the King to Moist. ‘And not least a bank manager.’ Rhys laughed. ‘It must be tough in the banking business, Mister Lipwig?’ Moist joined in the little attempt at laughter and said, ‘You have no idea, sire; but the most important thing you need to know about me is that I was a crook and a scoundrel and a very clever one. What better man to run the Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork and the Mint than a crook? I had the tendencies of a crook and many of the skills of a crook and because I look at things with a crooked eye, metaphorically speaking, I see the opportunities and the problems. I’m very lucky and I have the knack of finding friends easily.’ ‘But probably not with those delvers, eh?’ said the King. ‘I was lucky and I survived. I survived and, if I may say so, I wish survival to the Low King and his court.’ All right, he thought, that was drawing the long bow and no mistake, but he couldn’t avoid it … all that armament getting in one another’s way, well, with all that milling about something would go wrong sooner or later. ‘Mister Lipwig, as you know, I have sudden important business that requires my presence in Uberwald as soon as possible, and at the highest speed. I understand from the clacks I received from Lord Vetinari this morning that you have a plan to get me there. I’m curious to know what that plan involves.’ There were the usual murmurs and glances, but Moist was not going to be intimidated by a bunch of small people who were giving themselves airs. He was never one for protocol – it got in the way and often concealed nasty and dangerous things. ‘I’m afraid, sire, that I’m not willing to divulge Lord Vetinari’s proposal here. There are too many people in this room, any one of whom could be a traitor!’ Uproar ensued. Moist kept his face blank and totally unmoving until all protestations had been protested. ‘I’m not here to be nice, and I have to tell you that, while on this mission, my allegiance is to you and only you, sire. Apart from Mister Bashfullsson here, I don’t know any of the rest of these dwarfs. The opposition must surely be intelligent enough to make certain they have a sleeper in the palace, funnelling everything back to them.’ He had gone too far, he knew it, but the dwarfs had not impressed him with their security. It was far too stiff … all front and pomposity. ‘Mister Lipwig, I am the King, surely, and I am still alive because of whom I know and whom I can trust, see. I appreciate your thoroughness in this matter.’ The King turned to the dwarf by his side. ‘Aeron, some privacy, if you please.’ And the dwarf called Aeron, who seemed to Moist to be a trusted assistant, a dwarf version of Drumknott, cleared the room of hangers-on, leaving only himself, Bashfullsson and a few other obviously senior dwarfs. ‘Thank you,’ said the King. ‘Now, Mister Lipwig, in this small room, I trust everybody. And, boyo, I might just trust you because you are Mister Lipwig and I know your reputation. You’re a survivor, quite possibly a plaything of the gods or, perhaps, the most handsome bag of wind that there has ever been. You get away with it, and thus I hope I will too, because more than our lives depend on us getting me to Uberwald and the Scone of Stone before those bastards wreck everything I stand for.’ He smiled and said, ‘I hope that doesn’t feel like pressure?’ ‘Your majesty, pressure is where I start,’ said Moist. There was a noisy party with lots of quaffing and dwarf songs in full swing as the Low King and his commanders left the chateau quietly from the servants’ entrance a short hour later. Several coaches had come and gone already that morning and the departure of a few more was unremarkable. ‘Tagwen Tagwensson is doing a grand job of playing King today,’ Rhys noted to Moist as their carriage swung down the long gravel driveway. ‘That song has over a hundred verses. They can keep that up for days!’ When they arrived at the Quirm terminus they were met by the extremely large form of Sergeant Detritus of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, who was standing guard by Iron Girder, hefting his piecemaker, which had what might be called a wholesale capability. The Low King’s eyes lit up when he recognized the sergeant and he exclaimed, ‘Detritus! If you’re on board, then perhaps I don’t need any other bodyguards.’ This was said laughing, but Moist couldn’t help thinking that it might just be true. ‘Good to see you, King!’ Detritus roared. He looked around sharply and said, ‘Dere any grags here? If yes, please line up.’ Behind the King, always present, Aeron was carefully busying himself getting people and weapons on board. He opened the door and quickly ushered Rhys into the gleaming carriage. Bashfullsson tapped Detritus on the knee. ‘I am indeed a grag, sergeant, and lining up as requested. What next?’ Detritus scratched his head. ‘But you is okay, Mister Bashfullsson. Der commander knows you, and his lady.’ ‘Ah, so I’m lining up to get on the train, then?’ said the dwarf. ‘It’s pleasant to meet you again, sergeant, but please remember there are grags and grags.’ And he turned to follow Aeron into the carriage. Once the whole retinue was safely aboard, Moist stood watch while Detritus heaved himself into the guard’s van, which gave a tremendous creak and groan; but everything seemed to hold, so with a signal to the footplate Moist scrambled up into the van and they were off. The train pulled away with the usual jerk of the couplings and as the long journey back to Ankh-Morpork began Moist suddenly realized that he was, as it were, not required on this voyage. In the coaches the Low King, his bodyguards and councillors huddled together and were speaking very quietly, their thoughts deep in planning. On the footplate, the driver was focused on getting his royal cargo to its destination and was in a world of concentration. You could see it dripping off him like snow; listening to the wheels, listening to the rails, watching the lights, checking the gauges and driving the train in such a positive way that possibly even without Iron Girder herself they might just get there on willpower alone. And the stoker made it clear he had no need of Moist’s assistance. So Moist now had nothing to do except sleep and … worry so much. If the King was a target, if the grags got to hear that he was on the train, then the train was bound to be a target although, as it happened, Moist hoped they had run some interference. For his part Moist thought attacks would surely come out in the wilderness, later, on the long lonely haul up to Uberwald. Despite everything he’d said to Lord Vetinari, he knew it was oh so easy to derail a locomotive. The ever diligent Mr Simnel had told Moist that he’d tried it at low speed at the back of the compound in a place where Iron Girder couldn’t see, with impressive effects. Once derailed, it required the combined efforts of several trolls and golems over many hours with a clever system of pulleys to get the engine back on the track. If it happened to an engine travelling at speed under full steam … And this, Moist thought, is a man who lives by the sliding rule and the sine and cosine, not forgetting the tangent. Moist never challenged Dick’s proclamations regarding his sliding rule; he could make the numbers dance and Moist was yet to see him get things wrong. It was like … like wizardry, but without the wizards and all their mess. And indeed, as Dick was finding out, you could even have a girlfriend … an intriguing thought that seemed to echo at the back of his mind. And it was common knowledge now that Dick and Harry’s niece were, as they say, walking out. He had apparently one night driven Emily around the compound by starlight and that had to mean something, didn’t it? And Dick had told Moist, in the voice of somebody having found a strange and attractive new world, that she was very good at handling the fire box, without ever getting her dress dirty. And he’d added, ‘I reckon Iron Girder likes her. You never see a smut on her. I come out every time looking like a dustman and when we’ve finished she looks like she’s one of them ballerinas or something.’ But right now there was so much else to think about. This most important of trains was moving its priceless cargo, and Moist knew that the whole business relied on fairly simple things being done properly, at the precise time and in exactly the right way. There were people who made certain there was coal in the coal bunkers along the route and by now he knew how much water would be needed and who would make certain that it would be there when and where it was required. But how did you make certain that the person who made certain actually did these things? It had to be someone’s responsibility! And these tasks seemed to Moist like a great big pyramid whose every stone had to be laid in place before one wheel turned. In some ways it frightened him. For most of his life he had been mostly alone and as for the Bank and the Mint, well, Vetinari had got it right. He did have a knack for finding and keeping people who liked their jobs and were good at them, and since everything was delegated, why, then he could be Moist von Lipwig, a catalyst in the world. And now he could see why people had anxiety attacks, the kind of people who would lock their door and halfway up the garden path would come back to see if they’d locked said door and unlock it to make sure and lock it again then set off up the path only to go through the whole terrible procedure once more. The fact of the matter was you had to hope and assume that a lot of capable people had done lots of capable things in a capable way, and double-checked them frequently to make sure everything was right. So worrying was stupid, wasn’t it? But worrying was never quite like that. It sat like a little goblin on your shoulder and whispered. And suddenly that kind of worried person, in the strange world of mistrust, was now entering the stuff of nightmares, and right now he, Moist von Lipwig, for heaven’s sake, was worried, yes, really very worried. What had been left in? What had been left out? I can hear the wheels just down there and I know the journey is going to take four days, at least, not counting breakdowns, dreadful weather and the storms up in the mountains, they can be ferocious, and all this without mentioning some lunatic dwarfs hell-bent on ruining the party for everybody. It has to be said that this was an inner monologue. Yes, it was an inner monologue’s own personal inner monologue, but outside Moist’s skin absolute stone-cold certainty reigned: nothing could possibly go wrong. After all, Dick would be dealing with the technicalities, and he was a genius. Not in the same way that Leonard of Quirm was a genius, but, Moist thought loyally, in a reassuring, solid, Simnel sort of way. Leonard would probably get distracted halfway through the journey by an idea for using cabbages as fuel, or using the waste from the fire box to grow better cabbages, or painting a masterpiece of a nymph clad in cabbage leaves and coal. But Dick had his flat cap on straight. Vimes would be coming too, and although part of Moist – the part that still thought of coppers as people to avoid even in your best disguise – got the willies when the commander looked him in the eye or any other part of his anatomy, the rest of him was very grateful that Blackboard Monitor Vimes would be on his side if the grags came calling … In fact, Moist was full of little monologues, chasing one another around, but afterwards, because they were his monologues, they decided that they would come together again as one whole Moist von Lipwig and would therefore maintain and get through no matter the circumstances. Everything is going to be mar … vell … ous, he assured himself. When has it ever not been – you’re the lucky Moist von Lipwig! Right in the centre the hypothetical goblin of uncertainty twisted itself into a tiny quivering mush. Moist wished it well, smiled and said goodbye. Harry King’s vast mansion was well protected and a perfect place for a private dinner where the Low King and Vetinari could meet while preparations were being made for the long haul to Uberwald. It was widely considered that Harry’s … undertakers had the jump on your average soldier or policeman when it came to a scrap, because those people had been taught to have rules while most of Harry’s boys couldn’t even spell the word. Any intruder foolish enough to be found lurking in the shrubbery of Harry’s extensive estate in the dark and the dripping rain would be pruned in no short order. Even though this was a private dinner, Effie King was not going to let the side down. She had begun her preparations for the meal with a headache and then moved on to a dither before segueing into an organization of military precision and dimensions, bullying the cooks on the way and frantically looking up such things as what spoon you used with what soup. Effie genuflected deeply to the Low King as he arrived in her oak-panelled dining room. And Effie was in a more expensive and acceptable version of hog heaven. ‘How was your journey, sire? Safe and comfortable?’ The Low King hesitated for a moment. ‘It’s Euphemia, isn’t it?’ he said. Effie was on fire. ‘Yes, your majesty, but just Effie to you.’ The King smiled again. ‘Very good, and I’m “your majesty” to you, Lady King.’ Effie looked somewhat challenged until the King of the Dwarfs held out his hand and said, ‘Actually, you can call me anything you like. I was just trying to make an old dwarf joke, just like myself right now: a fugitive trying to avoid even more dangerous fugitives and reliant on the help of others, such as your noble husband and his friends.’ Moist smiled as the noble penny dropped on Effie. The King now looked around the other guests. He smiled at Commander Vimes and Lady Sybil and shook hands with Adora Belle who was, Moist thought proudly, a real looker when she wasn’t in her work clothes. And from what he could see, she had bought a most attractive and therefore expensive gown for the evening. It was still grey, of course, but with a kind of lustre to it that made it seem almost festive. This was grey letting its hair down. He couldn’t possibly argue about it, she earned more than he did. The King’s eyes scouted the room and he continued, ‘And Lord Vetinari … will be joining us? And Mister Simnel, the technical genius behind your remarkable railway?’ Harry looked around, just as Lord Vetinari stepped forward from the shadows in the roomfn66 and got there first and rather more smoothly. ‘Your majesty, welcome to Ankh-Morpork. Mister Simnel is overseeing the final preparations for the locomotive that will get you back to your home and throne in time. Nothing is being left to chance, I can assure you.’ ‘Ah, Lord Vetinari – I didn’t see you, forgive me,’ replied Rhys, and Moist nearly choked on his drink when he continued, ‘But I understand there’s still some track to lay and bridges that need to be completed.’ He paused. ‘Rather close to our intended destination, I believe.’ Moist felt the air chill instantly. He quickly scanned the faces of Harry and Vetinari and jumped in – after all, it was what he was there for – ‘Excuse me, your majesty, but Mister Simnel has developed a concept called loggysticks, the nature of which is enshrined in the phrase “first things first”. Of course, the trick is to know exactly what needs to be first and, right now, since you are many days away from Uberwald, the gangs still have time to complete the last few sections. You will get to Uberwald for the appointed time. I’ll stake my life on that.’ There was a silence that froze the air in the room and Moist counted down to the inevitable comment from a smiling Lord Vetinari. ‘Most gratifying, Mister Lipwig, and you have made that promise in front of all of us. Good show! And all good people here with quite excellent memories.’ After that, the first person to speak was Adora Belle, who said, ‘Oh, that’s definitely my husband, but I’m sure he’ll manage it at the last possible minute … He always does. And if he can achieve it while riding a white charger he’ll be as happy as a clam.’ The King laughed in a rather strange way and said, ‘Well, then let’s hope that he is not unduly shucked.’ ‘Your majesty, Mister Lipwig always achieves his goals, I assure you,’ said Lord Vetinari, in his best oiled voice. ‘I find it amazing and, of course, annoying, but so far he has always succeeded, which is why, therefore, all of his extremities are in their rightful place.’ Everybody present laughed nervously, except Lord Vetinari, who just laughed. The King of the Dwarfs stared at Moist as if seeing him in a new light, and said, ‘Is that really true, Mister Lipwig?’ Moist forced his face to go so deadpan that it might have actually been dead. ‘Yes, your majesty, everything that ought to be attached still is, isn’t that right, Adora Belle?’ His wife didn’t say anything. She just looked the look of a wife who was putting up with her husband’s funny little ways for which he would suffer in the boudoir later. After that, Effie beamed anxiously and said, in a voice that she considered posh people would use, ‘Shall we take our seats for dinner, your majesty, ladies and gentlemen? All the spoons are in their rightful place, I do assure you.’ Conversation around the dinner table, in deference to Effie and the flapping ears of the staff, was … nice, and mostly about the new railway and the wonders of what might be achieved with it, and indeed the interesting fact that lots of rich people were buying seaside houses in Quirm now that it was so easy to get there. And there was also another careful conversation about how good the fish and the seafood was becoming now it didn’t have to bake in the sunshine, which might have had something to do with the mountainous platter of prawns, monkey clams and unidentified tentacular things sculpted to resemble the lost citadel of Leshp, which Effie had given pride of place in the centre of the table. And this went on in various different ways until dinner was almost over and the staff had left the room, whereupon Vimes gave Rhys a quizzical look, stood up and left the room. He returned a few minutes later, nodded to the Low King and resumed his seat at the table. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, preparations for our departures are in place. As I speak, the Low King is departing by fast coach for Uberwald.’ And there was something in the way he said that that made Moist think, because the Low King, at that moment, was clearly still in the room shovelling down expensive ice cream. Sure enough, there was the sound of a coach pulling up outside, stopping for a moment and then driving away, surrounded by well-armed bodyguards. Back at the table the King licked his spoon in a very regal way and chuckled. ‘That should keep those scoundrels busy for a while.’ He smiled at Vimes. ‘Thank you for your help in this, commander.’ ‘Think nothing of it,’ said Vimes gruffly. ‘It’s a good idea. And Harry and I have added some embellishments of our own.’ ‘So who was on that coach, commander?’ Moist asked. ‘The coach?’ Vimes replied. ‘This is a very dark night and the King is cloaked and it is almost impossible to see inside, but the dark-accustomed eye might see Sergeant Cheery Littlebottom accompanied by some of my most trusted dwarf officers. Anybody interfering with the coach and its contents will find their life difficult, nay extinct.’ The King coughed before saying to Vimes, ‘I remember Sergeant Littlebottom when we met by the Scone of Stone eight years ago. Oh, yes, I remember her.’ ‘She volunteered for the job, sire,’ said Vimes. ‘She did, did she?’ said the King. ‘Well, none of us know what the future holds, but if my backside is still on the Scone when all of this is over then Sergeant Littlebottom and her colleagues will have earned any favours they want from me. A king’s gratitude has to be worth something, wouldn’t you say, Blackboard Monitor Vimes?’ Vimes smiled as if remembering an old joke and said, ‘Well, I hope she does, because she’s one of the best officers I’ve got.’ ‘How many Cheery Littlebottoms can you afford?’ The King looked sombre. ‘I’d hate for someone to die, just to see that I don’t. Now, if I am to get to Uberwald with all due speed, we should be leaving very soon, yes?’ ‘Soon, your majesty,’ Vimes agreed. ‘The rail traffic between here and Sto Lat runs throughout the night. At present it’s mostly freight and perishables for the market and the Post Office parcel business, but people are always coming and going at the terminus. Nobody could keep track of everyone. We’ve set it up so that you’ll be just another anonymous traveller on the platform, looking like any one of the Third Class passengers, although, should the need arise, you and your travelling companions would be found to be carrying an inordinately large amount of deadly weaponry. And that, your majesty, includes fangs. ‘The Watch is not going to be outdone on this one, sire. If the sh— excrement hits the wossname, nearly every place you go we’ll have people watching you. Now, if you and Mister Lipwig will accompany me to the side room over there, we’ll make sure that neither of you looks like either of you by the time we’ve finished.’ Turning to Harry, the commander said, ‘Harry, are you sure you can vouch for the discretion of all your people, even those in the kitchens?’ Harry almost saluted. ‘Yes, commander. Some of them are scoundrels – well, you know – but they’re my kind of scoundrel.’ ‘Ah, yes,’ said the King. ‘I’m used to that sort of scoundrel. They are all so very … useful.’ Moist knew a lot about the tricks of disguise, although he never bothered with makeup as such. Becoming another person was a subtle matter that was probably only understood by those wrinkled old men up in the very high mountains around Oi Dong who knew the secrets of the known universe, one of them being how to kick your enemy’s spine all the way out of their body. They certainly knew that true camouflage came from within. And, oh yes, an occasional change of clothes was warranted, but mostly Moist just thought about the type of person he wanted to be seen as and it all came into focus. A false nose was definitely a no-no – inevitably, any nose designed to make you look like a stranger would be noticeably strange. And why risk it when his own features were so unmemorable that no one recalled their shape in any case? Of course, trying to look female had some built-in snags, but he’d managed it on a few occasions, back in the bad old days which were, in retrospect, so damn good. And he had lost track of all the clergymen he had been. If there was ever such a thing as redemption, they would have to open a magnum of the stuff for Moist. No, a brewery. The King’s party split up when they arrived at the station. Rhys, now disguised as a rather disorientated, elderly dwarf, was accompanied at a distance by three other disreputable-looking characters, while the rest of his party disposed themselves in small, innocuous-looking groups along the platform. Bashfull Bashfullsson had gallantly volunteered as another bodyguard, but both Moist and Commander Vimes had considered him too recognizable to other dwarfs, here in his native Ankh-Morpork, and suggested his special skills could be made better use of elsewhere. The dark clerks, however, had been trained by Vetinari who, as he had so recently proved, could stand in a room full of people without being seen: it was a technique. And there were others. Quite probably overhead. Whatever happened, Commander Vimes was not going to have the Low King of the Dwarfs killed on his watch. Moist sighed as he walked, dragging one leg pitifully, but not too pitifully, to the rear of the train. There he found a station guard berating a well-dressed man who had sat down firmly in the Third Class carriage among sleepy workers with greasy hands and bags of tools, and chimney sweeps with, of course, their sacks of soot, inevitably leaking. Moist was all for the common man, and most especially the common man who could have afforded at least one bar of soap over a lifetime, and possibly didn’t spit all the time, great hawking globs of spit, the ones with a personality of their own. And the toff, who reeked and dribbled best brandy, was holding up the train while the guard was dithering, derailed by a haughty voice. And so Moist put an arm around the wretched man and went straight into his infuriating-drunk routine, complete with explosive belches, a surefire winner guaranteed to work every time. First there was the spittle in the corner of the mouth, and a nasty smell, which Moist was king of, and the conversation in which every word was shredded and mistreated and misapplied unto death while Moist leaned inappropriately and spat and dribbled. The wretch hurried for the sole First Class compartment at the front of the train after less than a minute. A personal best for Moist, who, still in dribbling and stinking character, staggered and weaved his way to a seat just before the whistle was blown and the train moved in the half-hearted way trains always did as the engine got its act together. He was very proud of it and he’d only used up half of his Boffo’s best artificial vomit with lingering smell. It was a cold night for travelling. The King was on board somewhere, but this wasn’t the time to show any interest in him. Moist’s ragged clothes had been, well, adequate, and everybody in the compartment with the wind whistling underneath them had wrapped themselves up and tried not to exist until the train had reached its destination. Somewhere, he thought, there should be a statue erected to Effie, who had clearly tongue-lashed her husband into making the lower class coaches at least waterproof.fn67 The leader of the delvers watching one of the main routes out of Ankh-Morpork smiled as the large coach bearing the Low King’s insignia came into view. Rain splashed over the coach as the horses galloped hubwards and the leader of the delvers smiled at the raindrops. How easy it was going to be. He gave the signal to the waiting dwarfs and within minutes they were grabbing harnesses and bridles and bringing the coach to a shuddering halt. He kicked the coach door open. ‘Bring out the King and you will not be harmed,’ he commanded. There was silence inside the coach and then he heard a voice say, ‘We ain’t got no king apart from Harry King and we ain’t the ones that are going to get harmed. Consider us as the King Preservation Society, and Sir Harry King don’t like his friends being put to any trouble. And you, my son, you are a lot of trouble, but thankfully not as much as we are. Come on, lads!’ The fight was fast and methodical and the coach drove away with the victors singing and drinking in the storm and the water on the cobbles was tinged with red. Meanwhile, a few miles away, another group of delvers was having a remarkably similar experience with a remarkably similar coach, which had turned out to contain amongst other horrors a very fierce, very female dwarf in a watchman’s helmet … The train pulled in to the station at Sto Lat Junction, and Moist watched as the guard helped a grubby and pitiful old dwarf down from his carriage. The Low King clearly had some skill as an actor. Moist noticed one of the old dwarf’s equally decrepit companions in adversity take pity on him and give him a piece of dwarf bread, breaking it in half with his axe. To his horror, Moist saw the King dribbling his thanks to the bread giver. As he came up to the King, Moist whispered, ‘Excellent … Where did you get that stink? It’s got a life of its own.’ The King put a finger to his lips and said, ‘Not me, it leaked from the man in front. I don’t think he could have washed for years. But remember, a king has to cope with a lot worse than a little stink.’ There were a few hours to kill before the fast train left Sto Lat for Zemphis, as yet the furthest point hubwards to enjoy a Hygienic Railway service. Getting the Low King out of sight was a priority; even in disguise, there was a risk. Leaving Simnel and Vimes in charge at the station, Moist and the Low King limped their way outside. Moist looked around for people he knew had to be there because he couldn’t see them. Suddenly one of them was right in front of him, so close that they were almost touching. He hadn’t seen him until that moment. It was as if he had shot up from below. ‘Godfrey, Mister Lipwig – dark clerk. Lord Vetinari has arranged for a safe house to be available to your party. Mister Simnel suggested his mother’s house, which isn’t far away. We’ve met the lady and she is a royalist through and through. Any royalty, and sensible, too. Nothing to worry about there. Clerk Mavis says the old girl is quick on the uptake and understands the position. She is a good cook and there will be clean sheets.’ Moist looked at the dripping King, who smiled and said, ‘It sounds like a gift from Tak on a night like this.’ As they walked the short distance through the rain-drenched and deserted streets to Mrs Simnel’s house, Moist was always aware of their escorts because the little hairs on the back of his neck were telling him they were there, showing them the way. Before long, they reached a cheerful little house near the centre of town, the kind that was always referred to as a ‘little palace’, the kind a lad might buy for his widowed mother so she could be close for doing the shopping. A discreet knock at the door caused some shuffling within before a lady who could only be Mr Simnel’s mother stood in the doorway quietly ushering them inside. Once they were in her small but immaculate house, she paused and looked down at the Low King, then curtsied. ‘Thank you so much, my dear Mrs Simnel,’ said the King, who had clearly dealt with these things many times before. ‘No need for that from the mother of the genius engineer.’ And Mrs Simnel was suddenly awash with maternal pride. ‘Oh, yes, your majesty. He’s a good lad, our Dick. Did you know that when he were quite young he made me an iconograph, caught the imp himself, so ’e did, and trained it with butter. They really like butter, do imps. And it’s ever so useful, yes indeed.’ While Clerk Godfrey, on flannel feet, quickly checked the rest of the house, Mrs Simnel turned to Moist and said, ‘I know you, too. You’re Mister Lipwig. Dick speaks very highly of you. I saw your picture in the paper only yesterday and I’ve seen our Dick in there, too. Makes an old mum reet proud, so it does. Of course, I don’t buy it, the Reverend Amusable comes round and reads the paper to me, what with that tiny print an’ all. I don’t get around as much these days, but now my lad is in the money he has all kind of food delivered up fresh every day on the train and sees his old mum all right. The other day, ooh, it were a lobster in a bag of ice. I ’ad to go all the way up to t’posh restaurant to find out how to cook it, but it were gradely and toothsome and so much on it there was enough for Mrs Pankweather who’s bedbound and can’t digest most things, but you should’ve seen her tooth light up when she saw a plate full of lobster. Well, you ’ave to, after all. Not every elderly lady has a good strong lad to see she’s all right.’ Mrs Simnel suddenly looked sombre and said, ‘But he sends me money every week regular, so much I don’t rightly know what to do wi’ it, so I give some of it to the poor. You are a friend of his, aren’t you, Mister Lipwig?’ ‘Yes, Mrs Simnel,’ said Moist. ‘You can’t imagine how much.’ At this point Clerk Godfrey said, ‘We are now going back to the marshalling yard to assist Mister Vimes and other members of the Watch who will be travelling with us on the long haul to Uberwald. Clerks Columbine and Silkworm will remain outside and will escort you back to the station in time to catch the train to Zemphis.’ And then he was gone. Mrs Simnel looked again at the bedraggled King, and said with unconscious informality, ‘You look famished, pet. I know it’s late but I’ve got some pease pudding in t’pot … not much, but it keeps you going and it’ll build up your strength when you most need it.’ As it turned out, Mrs Simnel’s pease pudding was the queen of pease puddings and even though the dinner at Harry’s had only been a few hours earlier Moist noticed that the King almost sucked it up. When they’d eaten, Mrs Simnel put the lid back on the pot. ‘I’ve got to leave some for my lad,’ she said, ‘out in all this weather. Mind you, he likes his pease pudding cold.’ And then the King settled into a comfy chair for a snooze. While he slept and Mrs Simnel busied herself clearing the dishes, Moist looked around at the walls and noticed carefully arranged pictures of smiling babies, or was it just one baby taken over and over, because, he thought, at that age all babies look like, well, babies, and only mothers could fathom which one was which. It was amazing. ‘My word, Mrs Simnel, what wonderful children,’ Moist commented when she returned to wish him goodnight. ‘All yours?’ She laughed. ‘Oh, dear me, no! Our Dick’s my only one, but I were trained as a midwife before I met my late ’usband and you know ’ow it is, I were right good at midwifery and especially when events were going badly.’ And here she looked sternly at Moist and said, ‘I’m sure you know what I mean, Mister Lipwig? I only ever lost one because they couldn’t find my whereabouts until it were too late. Any road, ever since then people call me out and you know ’ow it is, my lad says I don’t have to do it any more, but once you’ve got a reputation for something it clings. Especially when the young lass is desperate.’ The look of Mrs Simnel was that of the put-upon, but in her eyes pride flashed a fin. Snoring heavily in the huge armchair, the King turned over. Mrs Simnel adjusted the deep cushions to make him more comfortable and then there was a fleeting stillness as her attention seemed to be caught by something. She sent a quick, surprisingly sharp glance in Moist’s direction and gave the cushions a final pat before straightening up and smiling sweetly. The moment, whatever it was, most definitely had passed. Moist’s brain was soggy with tiredness, and the natural ability to read tiny signals that had kept him alive on so many occasions had deserted him hours before. Even so, he had to ask. ‘Mrs Simnel … Is something wrong?’ She cut him short. ‘Nay, lad. I were just thinking how strange it is that someone so small and, well, hairy could be … a king. But ’appen that’s the disguise. I’m sure he’ll look reet fine in his crown and glitter when he’s back on his scone. Now, you need a bed, my lad.’ Tired though he was, Moist could recognize a deflection tactic, and carried on. ‘Mrs Simnel, is there something you’re not—’ ‘Nay, there’s nothing, nothing for you to worry about at any rate.’ Moist’s thoughts were in a whirl, but then further thoughts were blown away by the sound of the front door being blown open as Dick arrived with water streaming off his gabardine, and greeted his mother. He was carrying so many bundles and boxes that he had to deposit them all in the little hallway where a shiny clock told the time, the days of the week and quite possibly the phase of the moon for that night, but most of all it was there to show the world that Dick Simnel’s mother got the very best things he could buy for her. She was in his arms immediately, scattering parcels, but he managed to shake her off, laughing. Seated in the still warm kitchen of the little house, Dick scoffed the congealed pease pudding while she unpacked some of the parcels. ‘That’s gradely, our ma! It’s blowing up something cruel out there.’ Moist suddenly realized he was dog tired. Mrs Simnel said, ‘I’ve made up a bed for you, Mister Lipwig. I had made up one for t’King, but he looks comfortable where he is and I don’t want to disturb him now. Will you be stopping for the night, our Dick?’ ‘Sorry, Mother, no, too much to do. We’re all on double shifts.’ Mrs Simnel looked at Moist proudly. ‘That’s my lad. He’s a worker, my boy, what with his tiddling stick.’ ‘That’s a sliding ruler, Mother,’ Simnel said, grinning at Moist. ‘Aye, well,’ said the proud parent, ‘he’s making his way in the world, is my lad, working for that Harry King.’ And she went to kiss Dick, who picked her up and kissed her in mid air, and put her back down again, leaving her slightly more wet and greasy than before. ‘Oh, Mother,’ he said, ‘don’t make me out to be some kind of saint, I’m just another working man with filthy ’ands. Any road, I ’ave to get going, you know ’ow it is.’ On his way out, Dick looked in at the King and said, ‘Is he okay, Mother?’ Moist watched Mrs Simnel’s face very carefully. ‘He’s gradely, lad,’ she replied. ‘He just needs his sleep, such a shame to wake him up.’ Dick flashed a glance to Moist as his mother said that and seemed to be entertaining a thought and then shrugged like a man who had thought better about it. He handed Moist a parcel of clean clothes for himself and the King and then kissed his mother again. ‘You will see to it, won’t you, Mother, that they leave in time for the Zemphis express?’ And she did, after a bowl of porridge, hot and sugary, just the kind Adora Belle totally disliked. Moist could feel it sticking to his bones as he and the King, smiling and rejuvenated after their nap, left the haven of Mrs Simnel’s little house as the sun began to rise over Sto Lat. In a cavern somewhere near the gloomy, somewhat twisted metropolis of Slake the grags were discussing the railway menace, and ways of stopping it. They had found an artificer who liked working iron, and since he was a dwarf from Ankh-Morpork he was in a position to explain matters to them. Sitting nervously in the dimly lit cavern and trying to appear to be very much on the side of the grags while, of course, being on the side of the money, the artificer explained that locomotives are heavy, and derailing them might be best left to when a train was heading through gorges or near the mountains. And he suggested that an alternative would be to deprive the engines of the basic necessities – fuel and water – and then attack them when they were most vulnerable. He had fortuitously come across a map that showed the locations of all the coal bunkers and water cranes and towers, and this he now produced. ‘And just supposing we set our sights on stopping a particular train … how many people do we need to take down these … water cranes?’ croaked an anonymous grag in the darkness. ‘You’ll need plenty of you on this,’ said the helpful dwarf. ‘The opposition is probably bright enough to realize that you’ll be focusing your efforts on disabling the engines, and will have the cranes and bunkers well guarded. Of course,’ he added, ‘when you’re up high in the mountains you have the advantage on ’em.’ The artificer looked hopeful after this, in so far as he could be seen in the dark cavern, and said, ‘Well, that’s about it, sirs. It’s not very difficult, but you know where to contact me if you need me.’ In truth, the cavern was giving him the heebie-jeebies, and he wanted to be out of there as soon as possible. He heard the voice of the leader saying, ‘Well done, my friend. Please take this gold as a token of appreciation and, yes, we do know where to find you and every member of your family as well.’ The artificer looked into the heavy leather bag and was delighted. ‘Very kind of you, sirs. I hope to help you again at some time in the future.’ And he went away happy with such big wages for so little real work. The grags didn’t know anything! It was like taking money off children, but he kept smiling and said goodbye and had his throat cut in the darkness by a delver before he’d even left the dripping chamber. After all, what grag would hand over gold to an Ankh-Morpork dwarf? To a grag they were all unbelievers. Moist was aware, as he and the King made their way hurriedly from Mrs Simnel’s house back to the station, of the dark clerks keeping an eye on them, invisibly tracking them on either side. Yesterday’s clothing had gone, and after a quick wash and brush-up the King had the appearance of a dwarfish businessman while Moist was scruffier, looking like an engineer hurrying on his way to work. The cry from the porter announced, ‘Shortly to depart from platform one the Altiplano Express, stopping at Big Cabbage for Brassica World and Zemphis for Zemphis Falls. Sleeping compartments at the front of the train. All aboard, ladies and gentlemen!’ Moist whispered to the King, ‘You know what to do, sire.’ The King showed his ticket to the guard, who looked at it very carefully before saying gruffly, ‘Middle Class, middle of the train.’ Moist walked off as fast as he could and didn’t look around. Looking around pegged you as a nervous person. You had to rely on instinct alone. Everybody knew what to do. He had to manoeuvre to get out of the way of crates of chickens and he thought, why are there always crates of chickens? By the sound of it they didn’t really want to be there. And now it seemed that chickens were going everywhere. A mother with a child hurried past. A goblin waved to presumably his wife, although it was quite hard to tell with goblins, and Moist glanced at the guard and savoured, just for one moment, the silence before the train came alive. He embarked via the guard’s van and the first person he met was Detritus without his badge and therefore being, well, just another troll. He looked uncomfortable. Behind Detritus Moist found Commander Vimes dressed as a guard, apparently thoroughly enjoying himself, if Moist correctly interpreted his twisted grimace. Vimes waved a clacks flimsy and said cheerfully, ‘The idiots! They tried their tricks while they were still on Ankh-Morpork soil. Poor souls … I suppose they thought they were outthinking us, but Cheery and her lads had the measure of them in swift order – Sir Harry’s men too by the sound of it – and now both lots are heading for the Tanty where the dark clerks will be engaging them in important discussions. Let’s hope the news doesn’t get out to the grag command just yet.’ It was going to be a long haul to Zemphis. And after Zemphis they’d be launching on to the new track, which no passenger train had yet travelled. Time enough to worry about that when they got there, Moist told himself firmly. For now disguise was crucial; he must be the engineer, the lucky man who got to ride the latest Mark II Flyer every day and get paid for it. As Moist walked up and down the carriages he began to look at the passengers around him. Amongst the normal mix of Ankh-Morporkians and other folk from the Sto Plains and surrounding areas whom he would expect to see on the regular journey to Zemphis, there were some dwarfs, travelling both together and singly. A few he recognized as part of the Low King’s entourage; others were, if he was any judge, Ankh-Morpork dwarfs. Mind you, there was more than one kind of Ankh-Morpork dwarf: one sort were happy at being Ankh-Morpork citizens, and others seemed to feel grumpy and nervous about their status, not realizing that in Ankh-Morpork nobody paid much attention to what you were – unless you looked wealthy, in which case you would definitely be the centre of attention. And then there were the people trying a little too hard to present themselves as harmless members of the public. They always stood out and Moist wondered if they knew how obvious they were to the trained eye of the suspicious scoundrel. They were worried and trying desperately not to look worried and nonchalance, real nonchalance, is very difficult to fake. If you didn’t have the knack it cried out … amateur. One dwarf in particular had caught Moist’s eye as he passed, so he came back a short while later and took the seat opposite. As Moist sat rocking with the rhythm of the train, he sensed some discordance. Not fear, exactly, but the pulse of fear squashed down so heavily that it was almost singing, and in the privacy of Moist’s skull the tickertape of suspicion ticked away. Moist had been clever so far, not staring and, indeed, trying to look like a person who was not trying not to stare, a professional nonchalant, but the dwarf who was under his eyes was sweating. Sooner or later something was going to break. ‘Oh, I know who you are!’ Moist said suddenly, keeping his voice low. ‘You’re one of those train spotters, aren’t you? I never forget an anorak.’ ‘Oh, yes, I’m a very keen train spotter, sir,’ said the dwarf, keeping his voice level while his beard dripped sweat and his eyes screamed help. ‘Excellent. So you’d know the top speed of a Flyer, then, would you? No?’ Hardly anyone on the train had looked up as he subtly questioned the dwarf, as subtly as a sledgehammer; it had become an extraordinaryfn68 rule of railway etiquette that other passengers’ conduct and conversation remained their private business, however obtrusive it might be. The dwarf had visibly jumped in his seat when Moist first engaged him, but he was still grave-faced and, yes, still sweating, so Moist carried on like a friend who wants to borrow money. ‘As I said, I never forget an anorak. Taking the long haul to Zemphis, are we?’ The dwarf nodded and said simply, ‘Yes.’ ‘Did you see which engine we’ve got?’ said Moist. ‘I tell you what … I’m hearing some trunnion rattle. Can you feel it? Maybe she’s a new one just out of the yard?’ ‘Er … yes … I suppose so …’ spluttered the wretched dwarf. As he considered his next move, Moist looked around. Ah, there was another dwarf, further away, surreptitiously watching him watch the ersatz train spotter. Thinking furiously, he turned his attention back to the sweating dwarf in front of him. ‘Hang on, I’ve seen you before, haven’t I, at the gates of the compound, with your little notebook? We all have our little notebooks, buddy, and mine’s in my luggage over there and yours is the cleanest anorak I’ve ever seen. Real train spotters get covered in muck and smuts … it’s their badge of honour to have a greasy anorak. But you, mister, know nothing about trains or train spotting, do you?’ As he said this, he saw the other dwarf leave his seat and start to walk nonchalantly to the next carriage. ‘You! Wait here!’ Moist barked at the dwarf in front of him as he ran after and jumped on the perambulating dwarf. There were screams of consternation from the other passengers, finally jolted from their careful lack of interest, as Moist rolled off, scrambled to his feet and kicked the dwarf heavily with his plate-layer’s boots, the ones with the metal toecaps; an invitation to lie on the ground in agony, even if you were wearing chainmail. Moist reached up and pulled the communication cord,fn69 hardly visible overhead, and as the train slid to a screeching halt, he shouted to the passengers, ‘Nobody gets off this train unless they can fly. We’ll soon have company, ladies and gentlemen. This will be something to tell your grandchildren about.’ Reinforcements were already coming from both directions: dark clerks from one and City Watch from the other … this particular portion of the City Watch being Commander Vimes, who took one look and said to everyone present, ‘Nothing to worry about, ladies and gentlemen. This gentleman hadn’t bought a ticket for his journey, and that kind of behaviour makes our railway staff very upset …’ A little later, in the guard’s van, the nervous young dwarf and his saturnine minder were, amazingly, talking to old Stoneface, who was sitting at the guard’s desk and listening intently. ‘Now, gentlemen, something is going on here.’ He held up a large, four-sided knife. The weapon really meant business, not just business, but business with ignominy. The young dwarf was being held between two coppers as the commander spoke to him, smiling like a shark. ‘This, sir, is what assassins call a roundel, and I must tell you that even the professional killers don’t use them. I believe they think it’s cruel and has no finesse. Frankly, I think I’ll agree about that. And I’m wondering, sir, why you’re carrying it on this train?’ Vimes turned to the other dwarf, presently chained to Sergeant Detritus. ‘And you, sir. What was your part in all this? We’re on a moving vehicle, travelling through wilderness where anything could happen. And, you know, anything might happen very soon if I don’t get some answers.’ He turned to an officer and said, ‘Fred. You and Nobby shackle the young one and drag him somewhere where he can be alone with his thoughts and then I’ll continue my little chat with this old feller, who I suspect would very much like to talk to me in a clear, thoughtful, and expansive way, leaving nothing out. You, sir,’ and this was to Moist, ‘I suggest you go back to your seat. I’ll talk to you later.’ Dismissed, and with nothing better to do, Moist resumed his patrol of the carriages. There were long, long miles to Zemphis ahead of them and in some stretches the landscape was so monotonous that another term would have to be devised. To pass the time, he wandered along to the fabled First Class sleeping compartments. Effie had clearly had a hand in these. Whole families in Ankh-Morpork, including aunts and uncles, grannies and granddads and all the kids and possibly their donkey could have slept well in just one of the delightful part bedroom, part drawing rooms. And when Moist came back to the guard’s van after pacing the corridors and gave the not very secret knock, he found the door opened by Nobby Nobbs, a watchman who though technically human (with a certificate to prove it) was so much like a goblin that he had acquired a goblin girlfriend. Adora Belle had met her many times and she had told Moist that Shine of the Rainbow was throwing herself away on Nobby. ‘Wotcher, Mister Lipwig. You should have been ’ere when Mister Vimes was interrogating that old suspect. He rolled up his sleeve and the dwarf went mental, and I mean proper mental. He saw that mark, you know, the one on the commander’s wrist, and went, well, totally mental, promising absolutely everything. Never seen anyone so scared in all my life and Vimesy hadn’t even touched him. He broke, sir, that’s the only way I can put it. He broke. I mean, he’s had a go at me on occasions, you know, about such things as what I found on the street and was hurrying to give back to their owner and suchlike. Nothing important. But that dwarf … it was like he melted, sir. Melted! You wouldn’t know Done It Duncan, not being in the Watch, sir, well, the poor bugger owns up to anything just to get a drink and a place to sleep in the cells and maybe a chat and a ham sandwich. But this lawn ornament, he’s got it worse.’ Moist looked around. ‘Where are they now?’ ‘In there. And Mister Vimes took the young ’un off somewhere else with Fred.’ Nobby pointed towards the far end of the guard’s van. ‘Mister Lipwig, you know that great idea you had?’ Moist hesitated. ‘Help me, Nobby, I have a lot of great ideas.’ ‘Right, sir – the one about sorting the mail on the train, sir?’ And Moist thought, oh yes, and it would work. But Nobby carried on. ‘Well, there’s a special carriage on this train. It has shelves and pigeon holes and everything.’ Inside the mail carriage Moist saw the commander and his new little friend, with Fred Colon. Vimes was talking quite cheerfully to the young dwarf and when he saw Moist he gave a quick gesture indicating that he could listen but shouldn’t disturb the delicate process. There were no signs of fighting or nastiness of any kind and there were two cups of coffee nestling in the wire pigeon holes. The commander, as soothingly as a mother with a new baby, played a theme that put Moist von Lipwig, confidence trickster, liar, cheat, fraud, swindler and king of slyness, the sort that dripped like the venom of a striking cobra, to shame. ‘Oh dear, those grags. Tell me now, which one was it? Come on, help me now.’ ‘I can’t remember.’ ‘And they did what? Surely not? Oh, it was your chum that we have in the van next door, was it?’ ‘Well, it might have been, yes.’ Moist wanted to applaud, but the show – if that’s what it was – kept on going. And now, with the strange red snake glistening on his arm, the commander crooned oh so carefully that a grandmother’s tea party would appear to be a smash-and-grab raid in comparison. And it finished with a sigh, as the commander said with magnificently sincere anguish, ‘Of course, if it was up to me … but you see I have to deal with Lord Vetinari and the Low King. I could put in a good word for you, my lad, telling them how helpful you’ve been … Yes, I think I’ll do just that, and I thank you for helping me and I can assure you …’ and here the glowing snake moved as the commander did, ‘I can assure you, young man, that no matter what happens to you, nothing will happen to your family. But I don’t think I’ll be able to persuade people of your innocence if you’re caught like this at any future time or, indeed, if you turn out to be lying to me. And now, if you don’t mind, I need to talk to your colleague again.’ Moist loved that ‘If you don’t mind’. As if the fool had a choice. And dark clerks whisked the young dwarf away and came back with the older dwarf, when the careful, methodical interrogation continued, but in a louder voice, considering that this dwarf was much older. The words that Vimes used had more menace in them now; but nevertheless he half suggested that everything would get better if the dwarf in front of him told the commander absolutely everything he knew about the grags and delvers and his fellow conspirators who had been duped into being the ones who got caught and thrown to the Low King’s justice. ‘You, sir, you’ll be sent for trial before the Low King, but, as I said, I’ll put in a good word for you. At the next station I’ll send a clacks, if your one-time friends haven’t burned down the tower.’ And that made him flinch. Moist had to try hard not to applaud. ‘Fred,’ said the commander, ‘please ask them to bring in this gentleman’s accomplice, so that they can enjoy each other’s company for the rest of their journey,’ and when both dwarfs were in the mail coach under the watchful eye of the dark clerks, Vimes continued. ‘Okay,’ he said, in the same cheerful tone, ‘I’m sorry about the manacles, but we can’t have you running away now, can we? And the pair of you must remember – especially you, sir, at your age – it could have been so much worse. I’m afraid to say that it might still turn out that way anyway, but as I said, I’ll put in a good word. You’ll be looked after until I can arrange for you to be taken off under guard, and if anything jogs your memory don’t hesitate to tell them, and I’ll see what I can do. But I’m sure you’ll agree that it’ll be for the safety of all parties, especially your own, if in the meantime you are held in this sealed room where nobody can hurt you. I’ll see to it myself that you have regular meals and refreshments.’ He turned to Moist and said, ‘A word with you, please, outside.’ Back in the guard’s van the commander pulled a cigar from somewhere and lit it in flagrant defiance of every railway law, sat down on a bench and said, ‘Mister Lipwig, you look quizzical. Feel free to speak.’ ‘Well, commander, I’m impressed you did such a number on them. They think that you’re their friend, that you want to help them.’ This was met by another puff of smoke. ‘But of course I’m their friend,’ replied Vimes, straight-faced, ‘and I will continue to be their friend, for now. You are a rascal and I am not. Oh yes, I could make their lives impossible, or even worse. The older one you introduced to the railway boot so adroitly, well, he’s the brains of this particular outfit, and the little one is what they call a catspaw, an idiot, filled to the brim with lies, exciting lies, telling him that he is doing the work of Tak. I mean, he isn’t even a good train spotter.’ Vimes patted his pocket and said, ‘And now I have names, oh such names, such wonderful names, and when the facts of life are explained to their owners they’ll undoubtedly lead to other names and we shall see the bunny rabbits run. Police work isn’t all about kicking down doors, you know, it’s about getting to the bottom of things, and once you’re right on the bottom you see all the way to the top and the top is what I’m after here! We’ll be stopping for coal and water at a place called Cranbury very soon and there should be a clacks tower.’ He smiled. ‘I wonder what his lordship will say about my lovely list of names? I reckon he’ll go right past acerbic en route to ironic and end up slap bang in sardonic without even taking a breath.’ He slapped his pocket again. ‘I know some of these, don’t I just, all powerful dwarfs, such stalwart defenders of the Low King on the one hand and dealing happily with the grags on the other. Thank you very much, Mister Lipwig, you’re a loss to crime prevention, but you recognized the process because you recognize yourself – isn’t that right? How useful, so do I. The mark must always think of you as his friend and you yourself must be as a sorrowful yet loving father. The mark’s shield from the dreadful darkness outside.’ The commander turned and said, ‘Nobby, who’s on duty at Big Cabbage station?’ ‘Sergeant Willard, Mister Vimes.’ Vimes said to Moist, ‘That’ll do. He’s an old copper and he’ll have his hurry-up wagon and he’ll get them in front of his lordship in no short order. And with them still in shackles, he won’t have any problems. You know, I almost feel sorry for them. Grags, delvers, whatever they call themselves, the modus operandi is to find some innocent dwarf with the right connections and let it be known to him or her that if they do not toe the line and do what they are told, then perhaps all of their family will simply disappear into the Gap.’ He smiled and said, ‘Come to think of it, that’s exactly what I do, but I’m a teddy bear by comparison and on the right side.’ Vimes stood up and waved his arms a bit for the circulation and said, ‘And now I think I need to go and see the King about my interesting findings. And don’t worry, I’ll put in a good word too. You pay attention to people and that’s a skill in itself.’ The outside air was permeating the carriages now with the scent of the Sto Plains, which consisted of one scent and that was cabbage or cabbage-like and it was a sad smell, it drooped helplessness. Melancholy. Mind you, the cabbages themselves were excellent, especially the newer varieties. The town of Big Cabbage, theoretically the last place any sensible person would want to visit, was nevertheless popular throughout the summer because of the attractions of Brassica World and the Cabbage Research Institute, whose students were the first to get a cabbage to a height of five hundred yards propelled entirely by its own juices. Nobody asked why they felt it was necessary to do this, but that was science for you, and, of course, students. As soon as the train arrived at platform two at Big Cabbage several watchmen appeared alongside the guard’s van. Moist looked on as Commander Vimes passed out the captives he had been so awfully kind to, and watched them whisked away under guard in the hurry-up wagon. As it disappeared, Vimes said to Moist, ‘We have the names and addresses of their families and they’ll have bodyguards day and night until this damn thing is over. I know Vetinari will huff and puff about the bill but then whenever doesn’t he?’ Right on schedule, the train pulled away from Big Cabbage, leaving the great dirty distant smog of Ankh-Morpork on the horizon far behind them. Moist had a constant feeling that he was going slightly uphill, which was at least moderately the truth. Things were running as they should, people were settling down for the long haul, and that gave him more time to think. Theoretically, he knew the time to worry was when things were going wrong, but his instinct had a tendency to worry when things were just too good to be true and right now a cumulonimbus of worry was again building over his head; the anvil of the gods was just waiting to drop on him. What had he missed? What had he forgotten? No, everything was going to be all right. There was a bridge ahead, with the usual troll on guard. The troll railway families treated the bridges, shiny and new as they were, as their own. Oh yes, a tunnel to a troll was a delightful walk in the park, but a bridge, your own bridge … especially one with toilet facilities, courtesy of Harry King, and enough space to raise a family … Trolls, thought Moist … Who would have thought it, they keep their bridges sparkling. Indeed, Effie had announced a best-kept bridge contest for the troll bridges throughout the length of the Ankh-Morpork railway, with no fewer than twenty goats for the winner. To travel by the railway was to see the world changing, as trees, houses, farms, meadows, streams, townships that Moist had never heard of before the railway and barely recalled now – like that one there, Much Come Lately according to the sign – whizzed past at railway speed. But who lived there and what did they do, Moist wondered? The hamlets of the railway workers intrigued Moist. The wives, noticing that passengers got out of the train at the frequent stops for coal and water and showing a grasp of the mercantile world Lord Vetinari would have applauded, stood ready with clotted cream teas, home-made pies, hot and excellent coffee, and on one memorable occasion a small piglet. But even this was eclipsed by the wheeze he’d encountered a month back, in the hinterland in deepest Twoshirts, considered by Ankh-Morpork the place that was nowhere. A simple slogan had been put up by two industrious ladies that said, ‘We knit nighties for railway sleepers!’. The ladies, knitting away while their husbands were walking the tracks, were building up a small fortune from all those passengers who, like Moist, had laughed and dug deep into their pockets. He loved the fact that if you got your customer laughing then you had their money in your pocket. There was another sign coming up now and he squinted to see the name on the board and – whoosh – he saw they were at Monks Deveril, or had been, since alas the speed of the train had shunted it into the past and – whoosh – here came – whoosh – Upper Feltwhistle, apparently. But the ever-moving train had passed on and he hungered for sight of the Lower Feltwhistle sign but the train sped past, sending the unexplored townships into oblivion. Strange-sounding places with strange-sounding names living in the moment of the triumphant train. With a clatter another train passed them on the up line, but where from? And going where? Moist gave up. Too much travelling on the railway could turn you into a philosopher, although, he conceded, not a very good one. There was another coal and water stop at Seven Bangs. The name meant nothing to Moist and even Vimes shook his head. It was one of those places where people got off the train and disappeared into the hinterland and, presumably, only the tax inspectors and the Post Office knew who lived where. And by the look of Seven Bangs, the tax inspectors would probably take a day off sick rather than go there and possibly the postman, too, if he had bad news to convey, such as overdue tax demands. But nevertheless, the people of Seven Bangs had been joined by four linesmen, with their houses and their families, all cosily close to the line. Moist chatted with the man who operated the water crane and asked, ‘Do you have any trouble sleeping up here with trains going past all the time?’ ‘Well, bless you, sir, but no, sir, not at all. Oh, it took a little time for us to get acclimatized,’ and he giggled like a man using an unusual word for the first time and finding it funny. ‘My wife sleeps like a baby and the only time she woke up was last week when the Flyer couldn’t get through, and she swears that the silence in the wrong place unsettled her.’ Vimes never seemed to leave the guard’s van, except for occasional journeys down the train to talk to the King and his bodyguards, and it was into the guard’s van that the clacks flimsies were delivered. There were always goblins in the guard’s van, of course, but it didn’t stop at that. You found them everywhere, adjusting screws, oiling, greasing and, well, tinkering and tapping. Moist had asked Simnel about that early on and had been told they greased everything that needed greasing and tapped what needed tapping, and generally stopped things getting out of kilter. Of course, there was still the smell, but once you got used to it, as Adora Belle had long ago, you never even thought about it. And they ran errands when the train stopped at out-of-the-way places, and collected clacks flimsies for news of everything that might pertain to the journey. The good old clacks, people called it nowadays. They used to call it unsightly, but now, quite likely, you would ask the clacks what the weather was like ahead of your journey. A little comfort but not necessarily necessary. Nevertheless, once you were bereft of the clacks you thought of yourself as a second-class citizen. Spike was always telling him how enraged clients got about their clacks bills, which were, he considered, not bad in the circumstances; but a kind of ratchet formed in people’s minds: here is the new thing and here it is. And yesterday you never thought about it and after today you don’t know what you would do without it. That was what the technology was doing. It was your slave but, in a sense, it might be the other way round. After the excitement of the water crane, Moist was at a loose end and now, by habit, if he felt himself at a loose end he went to the guard’s van. Detritus lay asleep on a pile of packing cases near by, snoring, surrounded by all the necessary debris of the place. It seemed that all the travellers who were not passengers treated the guard’s van as their home. Possibly the coffee maker was the reason for that. And here was Of the Twilight the Darkness, who made very special coffee. Moist thought about that for a moment, as the grinning goblin handed him a bubbling mug. ‘I’ve got it. You’re a shaman, aren’t you?’ The goblin’s grin was wider. ‘Sorry, mister. You is not on the money here. You could call me a shamegog. Unfortunately, dissonance, but can’t have everything.’ Moist looked into his coffee and said, ‘It smells lovely, but what’ll it make me do?’ The shamegog thought for a moment and said, ‘It make you wide awake, busy man! Maybe puts hair on chest. Slight tendency to make you piss more often.’ Now he gave Moist a sideways look that really only a goblin can achieve and said, ‘Guaranteed not to make you killer of dwarfs.’ It was really very good coffee. Moist had to give the goblin that. He peered out of the window. Perhaps it was his imagination, but the Forest of Skund seemed to get blacker the closer they came to it. The forest was worse than the maquis. From what Moist remembered, the trees stood shoulder to shoulder. And if you thought that trees didn’t have shoulders, you hadn’t been to the Forest of Skund. It was one of those places where the magic hadn’t been cleaned out yet. And some of the old fears and fancies still hung around the place. Nobody went in there until they had to, the occasional woodcutter for a bet, perhaps. It was a dark place, staring out across the plain and biding its time. Not a place to go if you didn’t want a wizard dropping on your head. If a landscape could growl, that was the Forest of Skund. Moist took the opportunity to look at the instrumentation in the van. There were two guards on the rota for this journey, and though the train couldn’t be driven from here, the guard could at least stop it – a fact worth knowing. As dusk fell, the sound of Detritus’s snoring lessened from somewhere in the vicinity of badgers fighting to the death to a low rumble, which caused the rest of the van to resonate. There was a fascination in watching a chest made of stone move. Not for the first time Moist marvelled: They are stone and we are told that stone lives; and once again his thoughts harked back to Iron Girder, and, to his amazement, he stopped worrying: horses, trolls, golems, engines, well, where was the downside? He looked around him. Apart from the sleeping Detritus the guard’s van was for once totally empty. The rest of the train’s occupants were settling down for the evening elsewhere, busy with their own affairs; Commander Vimes was making his rounds of the carriages. Moist moved quickly, no longer able to fight the little devil inside him. After all, he reasoned, he’d waited long enough to do this, and he might not have another chance. It was still light enough. He opened the door of the guard’s van, and, gripping the side of the carriage, climbed out, kicked shut the door behind him and clambered on to the top of the train. Once there he scrambled to his feet, and then, throwing caution to the winds, Moist danced on the top of the train, leaping from carriage to carriage, listening to the train’s rhythm, moving his body to accommodate it and feeling the engine and the moods of the railway until it seemed that he could understand it. It was a benison, a gift. It was a thing that could be courted but, he expected, it wouldn’t allow too much familiarity. It enthralled him and he thought: steam is not to be taken lightly. Once, he heard a shout of ‘Oi!’ from below and Moist was no stranger to ‘Oi!’. He leaned down and said, ‘Moist von Lipwig. I’m doing a little test.’ He could hear the ‘Oi’ voice grumbling, and let it grumble because this was what he had wanted as soon as he had seen the new Flyers. Flushed with the thrill of the ride, Moist dropped back down into the guard’s van, still empty except for the sleeping form of Detritus. He smoothed down his hair and wiped the smuts from his face, and wandered out of the carriage, a smile on his face. Down the length of the train the lights were going out when Commander Vimes reappeared from his latest sortie and headed for the coffee. ‘The King and his council of war are making their plans,’ he said. ‘Your latest clacks reports and what I hear from let’s call them observers on the ground suggest that work on the rails is going ahead reasonably happily.’ He looked slyly at Moist. ‘Pretty soon, it seems, Mister Lipwig, you’ll have to put your money where your mouth is. Oh, and another thing. Here’s a flimsy from your good wife. Even with the news of the Schmaltzberg coup spreading, there appear to have been very few attacks on clacks towers outside Uberwald.’ Taken aback, Moist said, ‘Well, that is good news.’ But Vimes just frowned and said, ‘Don’t get excited. I’d wager that there are still some out there who’d knock over a clacks tower even if they saw Tak on the top of it. That’s the trouble, you see. When you’ve had hatred on your tongue for such a long time, you don’t know how to spit it out.’ Moist had made sure, oh bliss, right from the start that he would have a sleeping compartment of his own, but, unlike those in the First Class sleeper carriage, his was more utilitarian and using it was an exercise suited to people who like toying with twisty cubes and other notorious playthings. It had a folding bed, which folded down and hit him on the head, and a washbasin into which his toothbrush would just about fit. But there was a sponge provided, and since he was suitably athletic he made the best of it, ending up if not clean, not any dirtier either. And gods, he was tired, and whatever it was that drove him seriously needed a rest, but the mind was its own worst enemy and the more he tried to get himself lulled by the rhythms of the railway, the more his niggling thoughts seemed to burgeon like a cloud. They had been lucky so far – only the two grag spies to deal with, and pretty poor spies at that – but sooner or later the rat would surely be out of the bag and the grags would know that Rhys was on board. Simnel’s hope seemed to rest on the fact that they would be using Iron Girder by that time. But could she really make a difference, Simnel’s little experiment, more used to giving children rides around the yard? I’m sure that when that locomotive of Simnel’s first arrived, Moist thought, it was pretty small and I wondered how it could go the distance, even to Sto Lat. But now she seems so powerful. And the way Simnel keeps upgrading her and paying her attention, it’s as if something bad would happen if she wasn’t the queen of the yard. She never sleeps. There’s always that little hiss. That little tinkle of metal. Mechanical susurration, whether or not she is ostensibly running. Moist thought about whoever it was who had got into the compound to smash her up, who ended up dead, dead, dead. Wild steam from a train that wasn’t running. Earth, fire, wind and rain all in one element of speed. And slowly Moist shut down, although a part of him was always listening to the rhythm of the rails, listening in his sleep, like a sailor listening to the sounds of the sea. As Moist slept, the train barrelled like a very slow meteor through the night, climbing up through the Carrack Mountains. Almost the only light to be seen with the moon under a cloud came from the engine’s headlamp and the glow from the furnace when the door was opened to shovel in more coal. The engine stokers of the Hygienic Railway were a breed apart: taciturn, perennially grumpy, seemingly only willing to talk to the drivers. In the unwritten hierarchy of the footplate the drivers were at the top, of course, and then the stokers and after the stokers there would be the wheel-tappers and shunters: lesser beings but acknowledged as useful. At times it appeared that the stokers considered themselves the most important component of the railway, keepers of its soul, as it were. When off duty they all messed together, grumbling, puffing their wretched pipes, and talking to nobody else. But shovelling coal all day built muscles of iron, so the stokers were strong and fit, and sometimes between shifts there were sparring matches with shovels, with the combatants cheered on by their fellows. In fact, one of the stokers on the train was a bit of a legend, according to the others, although Moist had not come across him yet. Stoker Blake was said to be death on legs if he was aroused. The other stokers were fierce fighters, but it was claimed that none of them ever got to touch Stoker Blake. A stoker’s shovel, incorrectly used, was an illustration of Commander Vimes’s dictum that a workman’s tool used cunningly could give the average watchman a real headache. And so the stokers laughed and danced as they sparred with their shovels and got drunk – but not when they were going to be on the footplate. They didn’t need telling about that. Tonight, cocooned from the cool wind that flew around the cab, Stoker Jim said to the train driver, ‘Here’s your coffee, Mick. Fancy a fry-up?’ Mick nodded without taking his eyes off the track ahead and so Stoker Jim carefully reached out and fried a couple of eggs on the back of his shovel, courtesy of the fiery furnace. The houses hastily built for the railway workers were close to the water cranes and coal bunkers so that an eye could be kept on the precious coal and water supplies. They were quite small, which put some strain on the accommodation when there were children and grandparents as well, but everyone said that it was twice as good as what might be found in the big city and, after all, you were out in the fresh air, at least in between locomotives. On this night, Mrs Plumridge, mother of Jack Plumridge the linesman, realized that her chamber pot was overflowing and cussed herself for not emptying it before twilight. She didn’t trust the gleaming porcelain in the ablutions. All her life she had gone outside to a designated private spot in the garden, taking care to remember which of her little plots to empty it in this time, and therefore things got rather receptacle-shaped when a dwarf jumped out in front of her, screamed, ‘Death to the railway!’ and tried to throw something at her. In response, Mrs Plumridge hefted the chamber pot with a strength you might not have expected from such an old woman who, according to her son, was made out of teak. The pot was very large and remained regrettably very full and the scream woke up all the households near by … and when the miscreant delver came back to consciousness he was tied up and en route to Ankh-Morpork for judgement. The railwaymen and their grannies were no-nonsense people, earthy, you might say, and they didn’t even allow the delver to wash himself, and that was a terrible thing in the circumstances. When Moist awoke the following morning, he realized that he was hungry and was pleased to discover that there was breakfast (all-day breakfast it turned out) in the dining carriage. He found the dining car empty but for Bashfull Bashfullsson and the Low King, sitting chatting like businessmen with a deal to make, taking advantage of the cornucopia. Quietly, the King welcomed him and said, ‘Not seen much of the train so far, Mister Lipwig. Been in a planning session with Bashfullsson and the others since we boarded. Will you join us?’ As Moist sat down, Bashfullsson turned to him as if to an ally. ‘I’m trying to get Rhys here to tell us what he’s up to.’ The King merely smiled at this. ‘I intend to take Schmaltzberg with you, my friend Bashfullsson, and do it with as little bloodshed as possible. Believe me, although it’s vexing to remember it, I am the King of my enemies as well as my friends. There’s a certain noblesse oblige, see. It’s a bad king who kills his subjects. I would rather see them humiliated than dead.’ Bashfullsson said, ‘Really? After all the things they’ve done? And the things they’ve caused to be done? Finding young dwarfs and filling them with excitement and idiotic revelations …’ ‘I have names,’ said the King. ‘Names of leaders, names of hangers-on. Oh yes, there will be a reckoning. Not an auto-da-fé.’ ‘I fear you were too understanding with them last time, sire,’ Bashfullsson said, picking his words carefully. ‘Sad to say, but I’ve come to the conclusion that if you keep turning the other cheek they’ll go on slapping you in the face. I think there’s nothing for it but to go in, cut out and have done. No point in knocking politely this time, saying can I have the Scone of Stone back, please.’ To Moist’s surprise, the King said, ‘However much we disdain the word “politics”, one of its most useful aspects is the stopping of bloodshed. Oh yes, bloodshed there will be. But the generations stream away and people change and things thought of as totally impossible suddenly turn out to be everyday. Nay, essential. Just like the railway is becoming, see. Apropos of that, Mister Lipwig, how is the railway progressing? How are your loggysticks going?’ ‘Copacetic, sire. That’s an engineer term meaning all satisfactory.’ The King gave Moist a look. It wasn’t by the standard of looks a nasty one, but it was after all a King’s look, and the gaze of the King was subtly quizzical and testing. ‘We shall see, boyo, we shall see.’ And after breakfast, there was nothing for it but to watch the mountain scenery flow past as if on some endless winding belt: trees, rocks, more trees, bigger rocks, trees again, what was possibly a clearing where lumbermen were working, brief darkness as they reached a rock big enough to require a tunnel, and so on, and yet, Moist thought, behind all those trees and all those rocks and crags, there are homesteads and small villages that we don’t know about and so one day we will have to have a stop here … here … and here. And then one day, some kid from the settlement high up in that last lot of rocks will catch the train and end up in Ankh-Morpork, full of hope, and why not? Station by station we are changing the world. And he allowed himself a little glow of pride. Apart from the Falls,fn70 the only place that was of any significance in Zemphis was Downsized Abbey. It was a ruin now, the monks long gone; these days it was more of a souk, a medina, a heaving bazaar which reminded Moist of the Shades of Ankh-Morpork on their holidays. Nothing was still. Silence was a rare blessing. And everyone was a trader and it seemed that sooner or later everything and everyone could be bought and sold. And, if necessary, disappeared. Of the trading routes in Zemphis, the Aglet Road stood out, as caravans of camels arrived on their way to bring the people of the Plains the tiny little things on the ends of their shoelaces without which civilized life would be unbearable and quite dangerous. There were spices from Klatchfn71, materials from the Counterweight Continent which had arrived by slow barge, other mysterious delicacies, and unfortunately many ways to become very happy in a short space of time and stone dead shortly afterwards. Alongside the legitimate goods traded at the front of the stalls, without doubt there was some contraband, as many traders luxuriated in the semi-lawless landscape. Cages of undomesticated imps were available in the back rooms of some more unscrupulous shops, and after dark the occasional camel slipped in or out of the town carrying barrels of crude treacle. And even though most sensible people wishing to hang on to their personal possessions, or indeed their lives, would follow the advice of those who had been there and give it a wide berth, some possibly foolhardy tourists did come to Zemphis on their way to see the Paps of Scilla, a jagged mountain range which allowed the determined mountaineer an absolute smorgasbord of ways to be found upside down above a crevasse and hanging by one leg over white water that acted like the mother of all grinders. There were eight peaks in all, sharp and unforgiving, and if there were such a thing as the good ambushing guide it would be right up there with the winners. Contemplating the Paps from a seat conveniently placed by the burghers of Zemphis as a lookout point for those admiring the view, Moist reflected that shortly their train would have to travel through those peaks. They didn’t look so bad on the map, but up close and personal they were awesome. Scilla must have been very proud eight times over. A mist hung over the greenery clinging to the steep foothills of the Paps. The terrain looked impassable for a train, but Simnel’s sliding-rule boys had found a suitable way through. Track had been laid and Moist knew that they’d had trolls hanging around there all week, keeping guard. Just then, there was a shout from Commander Vimes. ‘Lipwig! Drop!’ Moist dropped, while whatever the commander had seen scythed overhead, and he was just picking himself up when Vimes tackled him back down to the ground as the missile whistled round for another slice before finally dropping somewhere near their feet. ‘And there you have it,’ said Vimes. ‘Really nasty fellows, delvers, but you’ve got to admire their workmanship.’ Moist, still at ground level, said, as if it mattered, ‘Was it really them?’ ‘Quite likely, but there are other nuisances in these hills. You must know that where there are tourists there are also people eager for their dollars. Don’t touch it!’ Moist’s hand flew back. ‘It’s a boomerang,’ said Vimes. ‘You find something like this all over the world. You have to wave it carefully and suddenly your opponent gets it in the back. I’ve heard that there’s a lad in Fourecks who can throw a boomerang with such precision that it can get the morning paper and come back with it.’ Moist gave the commander a look of disbelief. ‘Well, that’s what they say, and you know those boys from Fourecks, they love to draw a long bow,’ Vimes continued, picking up the boomerang gingerly with a handkerchief. He sniffed it, grimaced and said, ‘The stuff the grags have put on this one might not kill you but you’ll wish that it had for a day or two, if you’re lucky. I’m going to have to talk to Vetinari about this place. They’ve got something like a government here, but their policing might just be adequate in a kindergarten. They’re not exactly bent, just not organized in the right way. Good grief, I could even send Nobby up here and the quality of the policing would go comparatively sky high.’ ‘Surely Vetinari’s remit doesn’t stretch all the way out here? And you’re well out of your jurisdiction, aren’t you?’ To Moist’s amazement Vimes laughed, and said, ‘I couldn’t speak for Vetinari, but we all know he has his … ways and his means. I think he allows this place to exist so that it doesn’t exist in Ankh-Morpork. And as for my jurisdiction, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a number of people in this place who’d like to see some law in the streets. So if that were the case, well, it might be my duty to assist. But not today.’ He patted Moist on the shoulder and said, ‘Mister Lipwig, I’m sure there’ve been times in your life when you’ve seen a wonderful opportunity to steal something valuable and you’ve decided for various reasons not to? Well, I feel as you would then. This place is a sink. Who knows what dreadful things are happening behind closed doors.’ He shrugged and went on, ‘But you can’t kick down every door in the universe. And we have more pressing matters to attend to.’ Moist accepted this sad explanation and after a fruitless hunt around for their assailant they turned their backs on the Paps to head back to the station. As they left the lookout point, they heard a train whistle in the distance. Far away, climbing into Zemphis on the main line from the Plains, there was a streak of scintillating sunlight with a trail of steam. Vimes looked at Moist and said, ‘What the hell is that? There isn’t another train due today, is there?’ ‘Well, Dick said he was polishing up Iron Girder for the big event, and before we left he was talking as if his favourite locomotive had been getting a complete overhaul. That must be her.’ In fact, it wasn’t just an overhaul. When Moist had shown Simnel the micromail he had received as spoils of the battle with the dwarfs at the Quirm railhead, the young engineer had smiled and said, ‘Aye, I know what the secret is here. This is a metal stronger than iron, malleable and half its weight, and it never rusts. Its ore is rare but it’s the base of a new alloy I’ve made. I call it sorortanium, which Mister Thunderbolt says means the sister of iron. It’s stronger even than steel! What boilers I could make with it if only I could get ’old of enough of the stuff! Thank you. It’s amazing and I know just what to do with it.’ As they watched the astonishing locomotive dealing with the steep haul into Zemphis, Moist noticed that the engine appeared to shrug off the load behind her. The Flyer they had come in on earlier had been creaking as it chugged up the last steep haul into Zemphis. This new train didn’t even seem to notice the gradient. Vimes smacked his head and said, ‘Is that really Iron Girder? Last I saw of Iron Girder, she was providing a playground entertainment for grown-ups. If that’s Iron Girder,’ he said, pointing at the shimmering apparition, ‘surely she’s grown?’ ‘It is Iron Girder,’ said Moist. ‘Dick spends all his time tinkering with her, over and over again, improving her at every turn and opportunity. And at the end, well, she’s still Iron Girder. She’ll always be Iron Girder.’ ‘But she’s so easily spotted, all that shining … People are going to see her coming for miles! No chance of an inconspicuous departure, then!’ ‘I know,’ said Moist. ‘But since you can hear her coming for miles, Dick said it won’t make any difference. Everyone’ll know we’re coming.’ Though the silver carapace in fact could make a significant difference in other ways, he thought. ‘If you please, ah grag nunfn72, we have lost track of two agents on one of the trains,’ said the acolyte. ‘Alas, we are no longer in touch with them.’ The grag commander looked up. ‘Ah-ha!’ he said. ‘Where were they when we last heard from them?’ ‘On the regular service from Sto Lat to Zemphis. But they failed to report at Big Cabbage or earlier as the train passed through Cranbury.’ ‘Are you certain?’ The acolyte jumped. ‘Well, my lord, we are in the dark, but I think so …’ ‘In that case,’ said the grag, ‘make it known that we are no longer bothering with the other routes. Our … package must have been on that train to Zemphis. And from there … The Paps await, and they take no prisoners! They, my friend, are coming to us. And the creatures that live in the Paps will be our allies! It’s all about the railway now, and we know that it is in the compass of our agents to stop those blasted wheels turning. Be mindful of bridges, however. The enemy favours the dreadful stone people who love to guard them. And surely tunnels can also be made to fail … This wretched technology contains the seeds of fallibility.’ ‘Yes, grag nun, we know that the locomotive has to stop frequently for coal and water. Deprive it of either and there is no locomotive, just a lump of old iron. So, the coal bunkers and, yes, water cranes … There will be guards, of course, but they should be easy to overcome when stationary.’ The chief grag returned to his study of the words of Tak as annotated by Grag Hamcrusher. ‘Let me know when the deed is done.’ Down at the Zemphis terminus, Iron Girder looked even more spectacular up close. Dick Simnel was dressed smartly and grinning proudly as he showed off the glittering engine and all the dials and gauges on the footplate. Seeing Dick wearing clothes that had no grease on them was astonishing, like seeing a lion without a mane. Along with Cheery Littlebottom and other members of the City Watch who had been summoned by Commander Vimes, Moist was surprised to see the cheerful and homely face of Constable Bluejohn, the largest troll on the force. Bluejohn, whom even Detritus described as ‘a big boy’, was by nature as gentle as a breeze and wouldn’t hurt a fly – at least not on purpose, although he could quite possibly tear a lion in half with his bare hands if needed. Nevertheless the sight of him on the scene of any fracas was an invitation to run a marathon in the other direction rather than face the megalith. He lived in a reinforced house somewhere in Sunink, a little town inadvisably nestling in the outskirts of Ankh-Morpork. They said that the sound of Bluejohn walking to work was better than an alarm clock. Vimes marched off down the platform to greet the new arrivals. Cheery was looking very cheerful, as cheerful as any decoy could be who had been the winner of a battle and had come out more or less unscathed, except for a small scar which you had to have, didn’t you, or no one would believe you. The tour of the footplate finished, Simnel turned to Moist. ‘According to our schedule, we ought to be going.’ He blew his whistle and shouted down the platform, ‘All aboard!’ There was no way of avoiding considerable attention as the King’s party assembled to board the armoured carriages behind Iron Girder. The engine herself was spectacular and her passengers were unusual even for a city like Zemphis. There were the dwarfs: the Low King and his bodyguards, Aeron his secretary and Bashfull Bashfullsson; there were suspiciously deep shadows that suggested the continued presence of dark clerks; there were several specialist members of the Watch;fn73 there were the goblins, who scrambled into the guard’s van being coupled on at the rear; and just in front of the van was a flatbed carrying Constable Bluejohn along with equipment and baggage too bulky for the guard’s van. Iron Girder was fully in steam again now and the vapour surrounded everybody. Vimes went with the engineers as they walked right around the train for a final check. Then came the scream of the whistle and the little shunting dance that Iron Girder did before gaining speed. With someone staring from every carriage window, the special express train to Uberwald started to show what it could do. The story told locally about the Paps of Scilla was that they were formed when one huge mountain fell apart, leaving a treacherous network of broken caverns – some full of water, always overflowing – topped by the eight forbidding peaks, which seemed to hang in the moisture-laden air, surrounded by rainbows. After the boomerang incident in Zemphis, Moist wasn’t very keen on seeing the Paps up close and personal, but Simnel’s surveyors had excelled themselves. The railway track insinuated itself up through the craggy gaps so that the train climbed majestically higher and higher, leaving the city of Zemphis and the heat shimmer of the sierra far below. Halfway towards the gloom of the pass between the tallest peaks, the train emerged from a large natural tunnel into another kaleidoscope of rainbows, which were distracting even when people weren’t throwing things at your head. Without warning, a boulder smashed down in front of the train and rolled across the tracks, to shatter in the opposite gully. Then there was another crash from the rear. The train shuddered horribly, and carried on. Moist looked up and saw dwarfs perched on the craggy cliffs on each side of the canyon, levering boulders down on to the train. Commander Vimes could be heard cursing and shouting orders down the carriages, his words drowned out as yet larger boulders fell, raining down on the locomotive, which was moving slowly forward like an old lady testing the water. Surely, Moist thought, this is the end. Even if the tracks ahead remain undamaged, no normal engine could withstand this bombardment. But then he realized that Iron Girder, slowly and methodically, was actually steaming on despite the boulders continuing to pound the train. Moist couldn’t stop himself. He shouted to anyone who would listen, ‘They’re bouncing off! It’s the sorortanium, it takes the punishment and throws it right back!’ Meanwhile, at the rear of the train, Constable Bluejohn, standing on his flatbed gently rocking with the motion, thundered a troll threat, reached out and plucked a miscreant from his foothold unwisely close to the track. When he was joined by Detritus, the assailants soon discovered that aiming boulders at the trolls was a fool’s errand. The lads, who were quite literally in their element, just grabbed them and tossed them back with interest. Looking out of a broken window, Moist saw a small swarm of goblins leave the train and at first he thought, ha! Trust the buggers to run away, and then he mentally corrected himself: that was storybook thinking and with clearer eyesight and a bit of understanding he realized that the goblins were scrambling up to the delvers on the rocks and beating the shit out of them by diving into the multiple layers of dwarf clothing. The delvers discovered all too rapidly that trying to fight while a busy goblin was in your underwear was very bad for the concentration. Of the Twilight the Darkness suddenly appeared at Moist’s elbow. He was wearing a helmet that was far too big for him and spun around on his head. He pushed one arm into the greasy nest he called a jacket and struck a pose. ‘Marvellous, ain’t they? Always going for the gonads.’ There were screams, sometimes high-pitched, as the delvers lost their hold and fell down either under the train or into the water, still fighting the speedy goblins. As Iron Girder steadfastly steamed on round the next bend, she and her coal tender came into Moist’s field of vision and he was horrified to see that a couple of delvers had gained a foothold on the tender. They were being held at bay by a soot-blackened stoker who was valiantly protecting access to the footplate by wielding his shovel to deadly effect. Moist caught a glimpse between the chaos of fighting bodies of the stoker dispatching one of the delvers, kicking him over the side. A massive blow with the shovel dealt with the other dwarf, and the stoker dropped out of sight. His sheer efficiency had been vaguely disturbing. Perhaps that’s the legendary Stoker Blake, Moist thought, and then ducked back inside as another boulder crashed past. Finally the bombardment ceased and Moist made his way down the train. He found the Low King in one of the armoured carriages with Bashfullsson and the rest of his party. There was blood on the King’s beard. ‘The foe is either fleeing or dead,’ the King said. ‘The wounded will be taken aboard under lock and key and undoubtedly the good commander will have them talking to him as if they were the best of friends. He has a knack for that sort of thing.’ A while later Moist went into the guard’s van, where Commander Vimes was having little chats to grags and their fellow travellers. He was speaking in his very low, understanding voice. ‘I do understand your position. It’s such a shame, especially since the ones that started it all are likely to get away into the darkness.’ And yet again Moist was impressed. The grizzled commander was all honey as he continued, ‘Of course, as a friend, you might give me certain names. I like collecting names, they sing to me.’ And Moist thought, they have the honey, here comes the sting. Cheerfully, Vimes took names like a guardian uncle, while in various corners of the van people were being bandaged, cleaned and fed. And so, battered but triumphant, Iron Girder blew her whistle and gently got up to speed on the track out of the Paps towards Uberwald with goblins everywhere: panel-beating, tidying up, greasing, bending and cleaning and almost rebuilding her on the run, as it were, and Moist noticed that at no point did Iron Girder turn them into a pink haze with live steam. The queen of locomotion valued her courtiers. Moist had lost all track of time after the excitement of the ambush, but what he thought must be teatime refreshment was interrupted by the squealing of brakes followed by a jerk that caused crockery to scatter all over the floor as the driver leaned on his emergency brake lever, which did little more than pit screaming metal against metal. And then the train came to an abrupt stop, overturning anything that was left upright, followed by the voice of Bluejohn from the rear of the train saying, ‘I reckon it needed pullin’. Sorry if I was wrong.’ Moist hurried towards the troll’s flatbed. ‘You appear to have stopped the train all by yourself,’ he said, and waited. You waited a lot when you were talking to Bluejohn. And at last when Bluejohn had assembled his words to his satisfaction he said, ‘Oh, sorry, Mister Lipwig, if I broke anythin’ take it outta my wages if you like.’ Moist said, ‘That won’t be necessary.’ He leaned out to look down the track towards the front of the train. Simnel had jumped from the footplate to investigate. ‘It’s a load of kids!’ he shouted back. Moist jumped down on to the track and ran towards Simnel. ‘Leave it to me, Dick, I can handle this,’ he said as he reached the engine. In the fading light he could see some children on the track a short way ahead, who, it appeared, had flagged down the train with their pinafores. The eldest of the children was female and well dressed and almost in tears. She said, ‘There’s a landslide, mister.’ ‘Where?’ ‘Round the next bend, sir,’ gasped the girl. And sure enough, when Moist strode along the track and looked into the gloom beyond, he saw a load of old timbers and rocks surrounded by other debris. And then the situation dawned on him. He carefully set his face like thunder and said, ‘What’s your name, young lady?’ ‘Edith, sir,’ she simpered, but not properly, and he could tell that she wasn’t used to a life of crime. Moist beckoned the girl to come closer. ‘Edith, pardon me for being suspicious, but my instincts tell me that your charming little scheme was devised so that you brave young people could save the train from derailing and then be heroes, am I right?’ The girl and her smaller chums looked miserable, but the scound rel in Moist urged him to say, ‘Well, it’s an ingenious idea, but if Lord Vetinari were to hear about this you’d be having the kitten treatment.’ And the girl smiled and said, ‘Oh, that’s nice. I like kittens.’ ‘I dare say you do, but I don’t think you’d like Cedric who comes with them … Now, I admire the resourcefulness of your little plot, but people could have been hurt.’ He raised his voice. ‘Can you imagine a railway accident? The screaming of the rails and the people inside and the explosion that scythes the countryside around when the boiler bursts? And you, little girl, and your little friends, would have done all that. Killed a trainload of people.’ He had to stop there because the girl looked like death. And, if his instincts were right, somewhat damp around the legs, not weeping for effect this time but traumatized, her face white. Moist lowered his voice and said, ‘Yes, you’ve seen it in your head now, and probably, when you think about it again, you’ll remember that you very nearly killed lots of people.’ Edith said in a small voice, ‘I’m really very sorry, it won’t happen again.’ Moist said, ‘Actually, it hasn’t happened once. Still, I’d like you to see to it that it doesn’t happen around here or anywhere else. Have I made my message clear?’ Damp and scared, Edith managed a weak, ‘Yes, sir.’ And Moist recognized true contrition. He looked into her hopeful face and said, ‘I’ll square this with the engine driver, but if I was you I’d get my pencil and turn any clever ideas you have like this into a book or two. Those penny dreadfuls are all the rage in the railway bookshops. I hear there’s money in it, and you won’t meet Cedric that way. Oh, and don’t keep waving your pinafores at people. It could give quite the wrong idea in the dark. Now, where do you live, young lady? I haven’t seen any settlements round here, it’s all woodland.’ She curtsied. She actually curtsied. And still red-eyed, she said, ‘We live in the railway houses, just back by the water crane and coal bunker.’ ‘And is your father likely to be at home?’ The girl went white again but gamely managed, ‘Yes, sir, if you please, sir.’ ‘In that case, while the gentlemen back there are settling things down, I’d like to see him, please.’ And uncertainly Edith led him to, yes, the railway houses and introduced Moist to a burly but cheerful-looking man who was sitting at a table devouring bread and cheese with half a pint of beer in his hand. ‘This is my dad.’ The man put down a large slab of cheese and said, ‘Can’t shake hands, sir, I’m all over cheese, apart from what’s not all over grease. Nesmith is the name.’ ‘Well, Mister Nesmith, perhaps your children might go off and play while I have a little chat with you.’ When Edith and the others had made themselves scarce at the speed of sound, Moist said, ‘You must have heard the squealing?’ ‘Oh, yessir, I did, and our Jake and Humphrey were sent off to see what was going on, what with me just home after a long shift.’ ‘Well, Mister Nesmith, I congratulate you for your clean and well-spoken children, but I’m sorry to say they came very close to at least disabling the new express to Uberwald.’ Nesmith’s face went grey as he contemplated a future with no work and no pension and quite probably a criminal record. Greasy tears flowed out of his eyes and he said, ‘Anyone hurt, sir? If anyone’s hurt I’ll tan their hides.’ ‘Some broken crockery, and there’s work to be done to get the track cleared before we can leave.’ The big round face was contorted. ‘I can help there, sir, I can help, but I’ll tan their hides for them, you see if I don’t.’ ‘No, you will not, Mister Nesmith, I’ll see you pay for it if you do, indeed I will. Look, they could have caused a terrible accident, but the important thing is that they didn’t. They wanted to appear brave, as far as I can see, and you can’t blame kids for that. However, the railway isn’t a playground. Do you understand me, Mister Nesmith? Now, if I were you I’d get out my jim crow, off shift or not, and help clear the rails. Oh, and treasure your eldest daughter: you might be grateful for her imagination one day.’ Ohulan Cutash beckoned. Moist knew it as a likeable kind of place: a little market town with the usual hinterland of farmers and lumberjacks. Some mining too, dwarfs and humans quite often these days working on the same mine and even the same seams. It was big enough to have a mayor and sensible enough to have a very good tavern called the Fiddler’s Riddle. And apparently it was a place where the current unpleasantness had not yet reached. What Moist hadn’t expected to find, as they pulled up to the platform just past midnight, was the brass band and the flags and the Morris dancing and the fun-fair, which it appeared had been organized to welcome the first proper train to arrive at the newly constructed station and had been going on for hours. And as soon as Iron Girder came to a stop with her last hiss, Mr Skiller, the landlord of the Fiddler’s Riddle, who turned out also to be the town mayor, began an address offering the freedom of his little town to everyone on the train. Although of course it wasn’t a little town, oh indeed not, to its mayor. It was chasing Ankh-Morpork. A little part of Moist’s brain laid a bet with itself that very shortly the words ‘on the map’ were going to be uttered. And indeed, the mayor, large and florid as a proper mayor should be, said as Moist stepped down, minding the gap, ‘This will put Ohulan Cutash on the map and no mistake. We’re already breaking ground for a much bigger tavern with facilities.’ He looked at Moist solemnly and said, ‘You have to have facilities, these days, you know. We paid for our own clacks tower. We’re very modern here, that’s for sure.’ Moist looked around at the cobbled town square that lay a short distance from the platform. It would have been better if it hadn’t been the middle of the night, but the mayor saw no problem with this and cheerfully pointed out to the now clustering passengers the locations of the wonderful things they would be able to see when it was daylight. And it nearly broke Moist’s heart to say to the man, ‘I’m afraid we have to go very soon. Schedules, you know.’ And indeed, he could see the water crane pumping and could hear the rattle of the coal being delivered to the engine, but nothing could stop the mayor in his rampant hospitality. ‘But we’ve arranged for a mayoral banquet.’ ‘Ah … will you excuse me for a moment, mister mayor?’ Moist had a private word with Simnel about arrangements for the next leg of the journey and then with Vimes, who nodded and said quietly, ‘Sensible. I wouldn’t mind eating off a plate that wasn’t rattling. There’s no harm in pandering to a little civic pride. The mayor is a decent cove and they’ve got a Watch of sorts. Two watchmen, not too bad in the circumstances, and I know that because I trained them.’ Moist came back to the reception committee, put his arm around the ebullient red-faced mayor and said, ‘Well, sir, I’m sure we can spare the time for a modest banquet before the dreadful pressures of the timetable force us onwards.’ They left Simnel at the station with his fellow engineers to await the arrival of the back-up Flyer, which had left Zemphis a few hours after Iron Girder. The King and Aeron remained ensconced on the train, safely guarded in the armoured carriage, busy with paperwork and plans for their arrival in Uberwald. The rest of the party followed the mayor across the square to his hostelry. The town really had tried. Something about the mayor’s conviction that the world revolved around their town, or would do if it ever came there, had dribbled into the minds of his ratepayers, who now set to warming up marvellous dishes they had expected to be serving several hours before. And were very understanding, especially after Moist’s description of the fight along the Paps. Admittedly he had put a certain amount of shine on the episode; surely that was what shine was for? And it permeated, even into the consciousness of those who had travelled, and at one point Of the Twilight the Darkness actually stood up and made a bow. And Moist couldn’t help himself and pointed at the goblin, saying, ‘Of the Twilight the Darkness and his gallant fellows fought alongside Commander Vimes, with great courage.’ And then Moist glanced at the commander, who puffed his cigar and said, ‘Excellent fighters, to a goblin.’ ‘Oh, we like goblins,’ said the mayor. ‘They run our clacks tower. And do you know, the snail infestation in my Porraceous Sprouter patch has completely gone since they moved in.’ And there was another toast to the clacks at this point with a side order of goblins. By the time they had all processed back to Iron Girder, she had been covered with petals by the virgins of the town.fn74 The Flyer had been and gone some time before, with its crew of engineers supplemented by Cheery Littlebottom – once more playing decoy – and other good fighters. It was even now on the track to Slake, acting as a pathfinder for Iron Girder to confuse the enemy. As Iron Girder steamed out of Ohulan Cutash, most people headed off to sleep. Moist had loaned the sleeping compartment assigned to him to two of those wounded in the battle and was now bunking down in the guard’s van, comfortable enough when you were dog-tired and Detritus wasn’t snoring. All Moist’s life he’d managed to find a way of sleeping in just about every circumstance and, besides, the guard’s van was somehow the hub of the train; and although he didn’t know how he did it, he always managed to sleep with half of one ear open. And now he savoured the familiar sounds of the journey, the rocking soothing him right up until somewhere down the line when he was catapulted into the real world by the screech once more of the locomotive’s wheels in distress, and the squealing of brakes in torment. It was still dark outside. Moist drowsily stumbled across the flatbed as doors were being opened and feet were running in the carriage ahead and reached the armoured compartment of the King. It was empty. There was a dwarf guard, who said, ‘The King went to the footplate.’ The dwarf looked ashamed. ‘I tried to persuade him to let me go with him, but what can you do? He is the King.’ Moist said, ‘Don’t worry, just keep this station. I’ll go and see what’s happening.’ There was a drill for this, he knew, and where was the King? That was the trouble with royalty. However decent they were, and understanding, they were also likely to think that such things as security arrangements were for other people. Frantically searching, Moist finally dropped down on to the track and ran along to the engine, where he found the King talking to Dick Simnel on the footplate and getting covered in smuts. Pale flames were visible ahead on the track and Simnel’s expression was grave. ‘It were just as well the King were ’ere because the decoy Flyer has been derailed ahead of us and so would we ’ave been if it weren’t for ’im. He can see in t’dark!’ ‘Ah, Commander Vimes,’ said the King to Vimes, who had arrived at speed. ‘You should know about the dark-accustomed eye if any human does. There’s a long straight ahead and Dick hadn’t seen the derailment, but I did, just in time. Now, there may be injured people up there.’ And then the King was running towards the flames, adopting the traditional dwarf strategy of running at the enemy with as much weaponry as you could swing. But Vimes caught up with him and rolled him to the ground just as an explosion rattled the trees and bounced off the mountains. The Flyer’s boiler had blown up. Ahead of them now was just a warm mist and the occasional clink of stricken metal. Vimes got the King upright and said, ‘Apologies for the lèse-majesté – though you must know that we Vimeses have gone a lot further than that in the past. You should have listened. The whole deal for the crew of the decoy Flyer was to run away as fast as possible if attacked, but not before making sure that the emergency bung in the boiler was strapped right down.’ ‘Ah, yes, Blackboard Monitor, how easily we revert to type in an emergency. I’m sorry to have put you to extra trouble.’ ‘That’ll teach the buggers a lesson,’ said Dick, panting as he caught up with them. ‘They’ll think twice about messing with one of my engines again.’ The crew of the Flyer were up a little gully, into which they had dived for shelter. It had once been home to frogs. Regrettably, it still was, and several of the designated bodyguards rose from the little swamp with nothing more than torn clothing and a lot of mud, some of which was hopping, but Cheery Littlebottom was as cheery as her name suggested. There seemed to be no grags, but even as Moist looked around, an arm dropped out of a tree, still holding a club in an iron grip. And hereabouts, if you cared to look, and frankly nobody cared to do so but did nonetheless, there were several signs that grags and delvers and many others of the dark underworld had passed away in this spot, resting at peace and, thanks to the exploding boiler, in pieces. Detritus appeared out of the gloom, saying, ‘One or two of dem was still out dere. Not any more.’ He slammed down a breastplate with a resounding clang. ‘You all right, lads?’ said Simnel to the engineers. ‘Shame about the Flyer. It hurts, killing a locomotive, and it means we’ve not got either a pathfinder or a back-up engine no more. We need to clear the track now, then we’ll pick up the scrap when we come back, to go towards a new Flyer. After all, we’re getting reet good at building these things. But any bits of micromail you find, like this here’ – he pointed at the arm holding the axe – ‘I’ll have now, mind, call it tit for tat. It’ll be another trophy for Iron Girder.’ In the grey light of dawn the trolls made quick work of clearing the track ahead. As Moist watched, he suddenly saw creatures moving in the shadows, and then a sad little voice in the vicinity of his foot said, ‘Please don’t hurt us, please! We live here, we’re gnomes, we’re cobblers, it’s what we do in these woods. We make charcoal and other things for sale, turned wood, excellent wooden furniture, and we try not to be in anyone’s way, but the dwarfs have been marching and we think the bad times are coming again and we’re scared.’ There was a sigh, then the voice went on, ‘You must know it’s the little people who’re the last to be thought of when great tribes go to war. My name is Slam, I’m the speaker for all the rest who are in hiding in these hills because we know how to hide. It’s a skill we’ve perfected over the years. May we be of assistance?’ ‘Gnomes!’ said the King at Moist’s side. ‘I haven’t heard of them for ages. There used to be a lot of them once upon a time.’ And Moist thought, yes, these are the little people who get trodden on and left behind like the goblins! If they had a cheeky champion like Of the Twilight the Darkness, or Tears of the Mushroom and her wonderful harp, they’d become known gnomes. But the face of Slam suggested to him that the gnomes had been through the mill and come out as a very fine grist, and had been content to slip into obscurity and somehow were now drifting into a kind of sad oblivion. He realized that the King was staring at the spokesgnome. Rhys said, ‘I knew you were around here, in the forests. What can I do for you?’ ‘You could leave us alone, your majesty. Your absence. That’s what everybody needs. To be left alone. Left alone to get on with their lives and, indeed,’ said the little gnome more sharply, ‘to be allowed to live at all.’ The King stepped back along the track and put one hand on Iron Girder, still spluttering and steaming, and, like somebody taking an oath, which he possibly was, said, ‘I’ve known of you people since my childhood and right now, boyo, you may live as you like in these woodlands, and I’ll be the first to defend your right to do so.’ He looked around at the rest of the crew and said, ‘We must continue. There’re still a lot of miles between here and Uberwald.’ Dick, who had been in an urgent conversation with Wally by the water tender, grimaced. ‘I’m sorry, your majesty, but we’ve got a problem. There were a depot here for coal and water, but it’s been smashed, and the grags have smashed the water crane and emptied t’water. We’ve still got t’coal, but we’ve barely got enough water to get to t’next depot. The engine can’t run without water. We need to refill t’tank.’ He paused. ‘Come to think of it, where are t’railway folk? The way I reckoned the schedules, there should have been people ’ere all ready and waiting for us.’ Slam cleared his throat. ‘We heard noises … People fighting …’ Moist looked at Vimes meaningfully and the commander said, ‘Detritus? Think you could find them?’ The watchman saluted with a thud. ‘Me an’ Bluejohn will go lookin’. We are good at findin’ humans. ’s a troll fing. We’ll find dem. Dead or alive.’ The two trolls headed into the undergrowth and Moist was sensitive to the fact that a large amount of firepower had gone with them. The commander looked grim. The little gnome by Moist’s feet tugged at his trouser leg to get attention. ‘We can help with the water,’ he said. ‘There’s a good spring behind the rise, and there’s hundreds of us and it’s not far and we make excellent buckets and I reckon we can fill your tanks in an hour or so.’ And they did. Slam brought out a whistle from his jacket and blew it, and about a hundred replicas of the little gnome appeared. Not walked up, not came out of the sky, not came out of the earth. Simply appeared, each one carrying two buckets. It was evident that, small as they were, the gnomes were tough. Simnel watched them dashing away to the tender and back again, looking very carefully at their boots, massive things. ‘Ey up, mister gnome, do you make them boots? I’m not being funny … but they are the biggest boots I’ve ever seen on such little folk. And, you know, with all the walking on t’lines and cinders and all, our boots wear out too damn quickly. I mean, look at these. Worn in all weathers. You said you were cobblers. Can you work metal an’ all? Because if you can, what we really need are lads who can make heavy boots for t’railway workers. I’d be dead chuffed if you could. Boots for lads on t’permanent way’ve got to be permanent boots.’ Slam beamed. ‘If someone could send us the specifications as soon as possible we’ll send a sample. And, for your interest, mister engineer, we are not little folk. We are big on the inside.’ He was interrupted by Detritus coming through the undergrowth like a creature from the dawn of time, followed by Bluejohn in his role as heavy weapon. Bluejohn carefully put down two corpses and a mangled water crane. Rhys Rhysson swore when he saw the corpses and young Simnel wept, but it was now fully morning, and time was passing. After a quick consultation with Commander Vimes and the Low King, the decision was made to leave. As everyone reboarded the train, Moist and Simnel said farewell to the gnomes. ‘Please look after this place and give these gentlemen a decent burial, with a stone,’ said the red-eyed Simnel. ‘And if possible can you do owt wi’ t’water crane?’ Slam beamed again. ‘It’s only metal. Didn’t I mention that we’re tinkers as well? We can definitely fix it for you.’ ‘Well then,’ said Moist, ‘you and your people are now working for the railway and that means you are working for Harry King and Sir Harry doesn’t like anything bad to happen to his employees, oh my word yes. You’ll see trains a lot in the future and I think you’ll find your lives considerably more busy. I’ll send a clacks to Sir Harry about remuneration.’ ‘What’s remuneration?’ said the little tinker. Moist said, ‘You’ll find out.’ As Iron Girder struck out for Slake, the gnomes lined up and waved tiny little handkerchiefs until long after the train was out of sight. Fishing for carp in Lake Overshot that afternoon, Mr Geoffrey Indigo was quietly surprised when the water in the lake simply disappeared in a certain amount of bubbling, leaving some gasping fish, startled frogs and a rather attractive nymph, who was very angry and spat at him as if it was his fault. But the man who had written that well-known book Out with my Flies in All Weathers kept his calm and made a note to mention this phenomenon at the next meeting of the Overshot Fishing Society. As he meticulously cleaned his gear and generally tidied up, he heard a liquid noise and was surprised for a second time to see that the hole in the landscape was now refilling with water. He watched amazed as the nymph spat at him again, leaving him feeling somewhat wronged. And on the way home, squelching a little, he wondered if anyone would believe him. When he told his wife later about the strange day, she snorted. ‘Geoffrey, you really shouldn’t take your brandy flask with you!’ ‘I didn’t take it with me,’ he protested. ‘It’s still on the sideboard, where it always is!’ ‘Then just don’t tell anybody,’ his wife concluded. ‘People will think you’re strange and we can’t have that.’ Geoffrey, the least strange person in the world, except possibly when it came to talking about fish, decided not to say anything. After all, you didn’t want to become a laughing stock … Moist was starting to worry about Dick Simnel and his band of overworked engineers. What sleep they got was in sleeping bags, curled up on carriage seats, eating but not eating well, just driven by their watches and their desire to keep the train going. If you met them away from the cab, their conversation was about gears and wheels and timings, but it was clear to Moist that they were frazzled after days of living on the footplate and wrestling their locomotives through various little tantrums. And so he confronted Mr Simnel, saying, ‘Surely we can afford to slacken pace a little and let you and your lads get your heads down for a bit? As far as I can see, we’re well on schedule.’ And he detected in Dick’s eyes not madness but something else more subtle. He was sure it had no name. It seemed to be a sort of hunger for anything that was new and above all for proving that something could be refined to the point of perfection and kept there. In the goblins this was endemic, although it didn’t seem to do them much harm. Humans, apparently, were another matter. ‘People are going to die if we push them any further,’ he said to Dick. ‘You lot would rather work than sleep! I swear, sometimes you seem to be as mechanical as Iron Girder, and that’s not right, you have to … chill, get laid back before you are laid-back and laid down for ever.’ To Moist’s amazement, Dick suddenly ripped out at him like a lion. He could almost hear the growl. ‘Who are you to talk, Mister Moist? What have you made, built, fretted over? I see none of your fingernails are torn and you can talk well in a fancy way, but what is it you’ve made? What is it you are?’ ‘Me, Dick? Well, now I come to look at it I’m the grease that turns the wheels and changes minds and moves the world along. Or you might say that I’m a kind of a cook, but it is a special kind of cookery. It’s a bit like the sliding rule; you just move things about at the right time and you get the answer you need. In short, Dick, I make things happen, and that includes your railway.’ The young man swayed in front of him and Moist’s tone became gentle. ‘And I now see that part of my job is to tell you that you need some rest. You’ve run out of steam, Dick. Look, we’re well on the way to Uberwald now, and while it’s daylight and we’re out of the mountains it’s going to be the least risky time to run with minimum crew. We’re all going to need our wits about us when we get near the Pass. Surely you can take some rest?’ Simnel blinked as if he’d not seen Moist the first time, and said, ‘Yes, you’re right.’ And Moist could hear the slurring in the young man’s speech, caught him before he fell and dragged him into a sleeping compartment, put him to bed and noted that the engineer didn’t so much fall asleep as somehow flow into it. And that job done, he went to the guard’s van where Vimes was drinking coffee and carefully going through the paperwork relating to the captive delvers, who in the pinch sang like most canaries. ‘Commander Vimes, can you help me a moment?’ ‘Problem, Mister Lipwig?’ ‘The lads are working all the time and they seem to think it’s the badge of a man never to go to sleep.’ ‘I have to teach that to young coppers. Treasure a night’s rest, I always say. Take a nap whenever you can.’ ‘Very good,’ said Moist. ‘Now look at them here. Still working on the sliding rules and fretting themselves because they’ve spent too much time trying to put one over on the universe.’ ‘It seems like that,’ said Vimes, getting up. Together they wandered along the train forcing the engineers to at least lie down in their bunks or face the wrath of Sir Harry King. And in a few cases Moist suggested Of the Twilight the Darkness should dose them with one of his harmless little potions. Not all of them, of course, in case there was an emergency. You never knew when you might need an engineer. In his cell Albrecht Albrechtson had had plenty of time to consider Ardent’s tactics. Ardent was a mere stripling youth,fn75 but was already revealed as a manipulative chancer, seeking advancement come what may and by any means he deemed necessary. He wormed his way into everything and in that sentence Albrecht thought the important word was ‘worm’. Being Ardent’s prisoner was galling. The food was good and drink likewise, even if the small beer was smaller than than he’d have liked. He was allowed some of his books, too, apart from those Ardent considered un-dwarfish – a terminology that told you everything about the arrogant young upstart, still wet behind the helmet, who was no doubt keen to get his paws on the whole of Schmaltzberg, ‘un-dwarfish’ fat mines and all. And in his little dungeon Albrechtson had to endure Ardent’s self-serving philosophy about the role of the Low King. What in solence! Lecturing him, the foremost scholar on the subject. But it didn’t do to get angry, at least not yet. Anger was a weapon to be honed and treasured and used only at the moment yielding most premium. And that thought was followed by a noise on the stone stairs as the pompous fool came again to get him to change his mind. Of course, Ardent would begin as if he was just an old friend coming to chew the rat, but as he talked, Albrechtson would glimpse the coils of a decent mind unfolding. After all, he was opposing his sovereign, something not done lightly, if ever. Ardent had to be aware of the penalty for those who took up arms against the Low King. Despite everything, there must have been a good mind there, one which could have been useful to dwarfkind as a whole and might yet be useful, even if right now it couldn’t tell pyrites from gold. It was no secret that the most highly balanced minds sometimes, well, overbalanced. The key turned in the lock. There was Ardent, and his expression seriously frightened his erstwhile mentor. You needed to be mature to sense this sort of thing but you could tell in a person’s eyes if they were being driven by an idea. They had a clammy look about them, and so did Ardent. Nevertheless, Albrechtson laid down his pen and said in a calm voice, ‘So kind of you to come and see me. I understand the King will be here shortly, courtesy of the train. Won’t that be nice?’ There was a little bloom of spittle on one side of Ardent’s face and he snapped, ‘You can’t possibly know that!’ Albrechtson sat back convivially and said, ‘It’s probably true that I taught you all you know, young dwarf, but I did not teach you all I know. I have some skills that I didn’t impart.’ ‘Then they must include guesswork. I hold the key to information in Schmaltzberg. No clacks towers are standing.’ ‘Oh yes, so I hear.’ ‘Rhys Rhysson is betraying all that is dwarfish. And for the sake of our species you surely know that I must take the Scone of Stone. The majority of the dwarfs here are behind me.’ Albrechtson twiddled a pen in his fingers and said, ‘Possibly in order not to have to look at your face, Ardent. You’re shaken and the courage of your convictions will see you convicted, the moment the King steps into Schmaltzberg. From what I know of Rhys Rhysson, he may be merciful.’ ‘Yes, I thought you’d say something like that, but the deed is done.’ Albrechtson looked stunned. ‘You have actually taken the Scone?’ For a moment Ardent looked foxed. ‘Not as such … Everything is in place. It only needs me to take the final step and Rhys Rhysson can have a retirement somewhere out of the way, like back in Llamedos.’ ‘Then do it now. Go on. There’s nothing to stop you, is there? But the Low King is elected, isn’t he? How certain are you? How certain are you that all your fellow travellers are stalwart? Because I’m absolutely certain that many of them are not. Oh yes, they fawn on you and promise a lot, but as the train comes closer and we hear the whistle of change blowing, I think you’ll find that suddenly they have other engagements and recall never talking to you about the Scone of Stone. That’s happening now, and you don’t know it.’ It was unfair really. Ardent said, ‘I invite you to remember that you’re locked in here and I have the only key.’ ‘Yes. And of the two of us you are the only one sweating. You’ll be surprised at what I know. How many clacks towers have come back out of the ground like mushrooms? And I know what the Ankh-Morpork dwarfs are saying. You want to know? They say “Why don’t we have the Scone of Stone in Ankh-Morpork? After all, there are more dwarfs in Ankh-Morpork than there are in Schmaltzberg.”’ ‘You would countenance our Scone in that wretched place?’ ‘Of course not. But neither will I see you on the Scone of Stone. Your grags are losing their followers, not just because of the clacks towers and not because of Ankh-Morpork but because new generations arise and think what’s all this about – how could our parents be so stupid? And you can’t stop people any more than you could stop the train.’ Albrechtson was almost sorry for Ardent now. You could live in denial for a long time, but, like a snake, it doubles back and strikes. ‘You should face facts, Albrecht Albrechtson. You will be amazed at my support. Dwarfs must remain dwarfs, not simulacrums of humans. To follow Rhys Rhysson is to become d’rkza, a half-dwarf, less than that even.’ ‘No, it is your kind of thinking that makes dwarfs small, wrapped up in themselves: declaring that any tiny change in what is thought to be dwarf is somehow sacrilege. I can remember the days when even talking to a human was forbidden by idiots such as you. And now you have to understand it’s not about the dwarfs, or the humans, or the trolls, it’s about the people, and that’s where the troublesome Lord Vetinari wins the game. In Ankh-Morpork you can be whoever you want to be and sometimes people laugh and sometimes they clap, and mostly and beautifully, they don’t really care. Do you understand this? Dwarfs now have seen liberty. And that’s heady stuff.’ Ardent almost spat and said, ‘You say that when you’re known to be one of the biggest traditionalists in all the mines?’ ‘I still am. And most of our traditions were to keep us safe, just in the way that the grags in their great, heavy clothing exploded the firedamp so that we wouldn’t be burned alive. The rules of the mine. They learned the hard way and the traditions are there for a purpose; they work. But somehow, you and the others don’t realize that outside the caverns the world is different. Oh, I keep the special days and knock twice on every door and follow all the tenets of Tak. And why? Because they bring us together, as did the clacks towers until your blessed delvers started to burn them. Burning words dying in the sky! Is that to be the legacy of the dwarfs?’ He stopped. Ardent had gone pale and seemed to be shivering. But then his eyes blazed, and he snarled, ‘You won’t be driven, Albrecht, and nor will I. Train or no train. It’ll never get here anyway. The world is not ready for locomotion.’ He glared at Albrecht, who said, ‘Yes, of course it isn’t. But what you don’t understand is that the world wasn’t ready for the clacks but now it screams if they are burned down. And I believe that locomotion has not finished with us yet.’ The response was the slamming of the door and the turning of the key. And now the fool had locked him in for the night, just where he wanted to be. There were guards, Albrecht knew, but like guards everywhere they tended to slumber or go off somewhere to smoke a pipe during the long hours of the night, and in any case very few of them came near to this particular dungeon since sensible guards didn’t want to upset someone like Albrecht. Even if you thought you were on the right side, you never knew who the winner would be and in those circumstances smaller fry might be the ones to get fried … After a while, Albrecht picked up the little spoon with which he had eaten his meal and there was the subtle scratching of rock dust which led to the appearance of a goblin, who grinned at him in the gloom. ‘Here you are, squire, here’s clacks flimsies, fresh from Commander Vimes. And bottle of oil for lamp. Oh, and toothpaste you asks for. Have been told to tell you that train is moving like no one business. Sure to be here on schedule.’ It was a kind of therapy to hear of the inevitable approach of the famous Iron Girder, day after day. The aroma of a goblin, Albrecht thought, seemed to be a metaphysical one. After the initial shock, you had to wonder if the goblin smell was somehow arriving inside your head as much as through your nostrils. It wasn’t even all that bad. It had the savour of old sculleries and southernwood. He took the packages and scanned the flimsies with the speed of a dwarf who had learned to assimilate the written word quickly. And he spoke with interest to the young goblin, a caste he had hitherto dismissed as a waste of space at best and a nuisance otherwise, but they seemed to be more level-headed than most of his fellow dwarfs, especially that fool Ardent, and it was amazing how they could get about in the darkness of Schmaltzberg and make use of every rat hole before making use of the rat. And this one waited patiently while Albrecht sorted out some flimsies of his own to go back to the locomotive. And then the old dwarf did something else that surprised him. He said: ‘What’s your name, young goblin? And may I beg your pardon for not enquiring earlier? Please forgive an old dwarf who hasn’t kept up with the times.’ The goblin looked stunned and said, ‘Well, guv, if it don’t hurt anything, I am The Rattle of the Wheels. Railwaymen friends is calling me Rat for short name. That makes oldies very annoy.’ Albrecht held out a hand. The Rattle of the Wheels stepped back and then came forward sheepishly. ‘Nice to meet you, Rattle of the Wheels. Have you any family?’ ‘Yes, your worship. My mother is Of the Happiness the Heart, father is Of the Sky the Rim and small brother is Of the Water the Crane.’ And after a moment the goblin said, ‘Actually, sir, you can stop holding my hand.’ ‘Oh, yes. I suppose that my name should be Of the Moment the Stupefied. Good luck to you and your family. You know, in a way I’m jealous of you. And now I’ve finished my work for the day I’d like you to take my paperwork, such as it is, and hide it somewhere around here where no dwarf is going to look.’ ‘We cleans toilets, sir. Knows plenty-many places that not visited. Same time tomorrow?’ The handshake fulfilled, the goblin disappeared into a hole that even a rat might find difficult to get into. And as the sounds of the goblin scrabbling through the hole faded away, Albrecht thought, I would never have done that before. What a fool I was. Miss Gwendolyn Avery of Schmarm awoke in the middle of the night to the shaking and rattle of the multiple bottles of age-defying unguents on her dresser. And then she realized that the whole house was shaking to a rhythmic thudding. When she described this episode in dramatic tones to her friend Daphne the following morning, she said that it was like the sound of a lot of men marching past. She put it down to the cherry brandy she had had before going to bed whilst Daphne, knowing Gwendolyn’s regrettable spinster status, put it down to wishful thinking. The Slake ranges were half tundra, half desert, mostly windswept. In short, a fossil of a landscape where nothing generally grew but stumbleweed,fn76 and the occasional gregarious pine, the nuts of which were said to be an antidote to melancholy. There was water, oh yes, but mostly underground, and prospectors and rock hounds were said to send down buckets to dredge water from the depths of the caves. It was slightly easier to find water on the uplands hubwards of the tundra, where there were icy streams courtesy of the Everwind glacier, making it possible to raise goats there. And so goats were what young Knut’s family had bred and milked and minded down the centuries. And when the goats were eating what passed as grass on these highlands, he would sleep and dream of not chasing goats over a near-barren landscape. He had liked it at first but he was growing older and something was telling him that there was a better life than watching goats eat their lunch … once, twice and sometimes thrice. Sometimes the faces they made were an entertainment and sometimes he laughed. And yet a yearning in him told him that goats were not enough. And so it was, when the long sound echoed across the tundra, that he hurried to see what was making the wonderful noise and saw a shining streak snaking its way over the landscape in the early morning light; and it was heading his way. He wondered if it was anything to do with the strange bars of metal laid carefully on the tundra below by the gangs of men some weeks before. He had run errands for them and sold them his mother’s cheese, but he couldn’t really understand what it was they were doing and since the goats stepped carefully over the metal strips without harm he had given up wondering. But as far as he could make out from what the men had said, it was all for a wondrous thing that could go around the world on a flash of steam, and now he wanted to know more about this singing beast coming over the tundra, occasionally spitting fire. Knut scrambled down off the hillside to where the air was warmer, leaving the goats, and ultimately traced the noise to a kind of big shed. And just as he got to it, the creature, carrying people inside it, broke out of the shed and hurtled away along the metal rails. He watched it until it had entirely disappeared. And later some of the townspeople told him it was what they called a ‘locomotive’, and in his heart the yearning started and began by degrees to grow. Yes, there truly were other things than goats. Having spent a long afternoon and evening alert for anything un toward while Simnel and his lads lay dead to the world, Moist in his turn had slept soundly all night and now dozed right through the morning, rocked by the motion of the train as she steamed on from Slake across the valley of the Smarl, dreaming of the bridge over the gorge at the Wilinus Pass, never a picnic at any time, that was looming up fast like a tax demand. Anything could happen before they entered that dry-land maelstrom of sliding rocks, falling rocks and, well, rocks full of bandits of all disciplines. To coin a term that might fit the circumstances: it was like running a gauntlet with no shoes – a gauntlet full of rocks. And even pebbles had bad attitudes at that altitude. Moist winced at the thought of the place. The train hurtled on through the vast landscape. A huge amount of space, oh yes, but not many towns, just the occasional settlement. There was so much space everywhere and Iron Girder ate it up like a tiger, attacking the horizon as if it were an affront, stopping only if it was known that water and coal were available. You could never have too much of either. By the middle of the day, the mountain ranges of Uberwald were getting closer and the air was getting colder and Iron Girder’s pace had settled to a steady climb through the foothills towards their destination. Lonely goatherds could be seen on the trackside, and amongst the people staring at this new mechanism there was a definite outbreak of dirndls. In every township they passed people were ready for them with flags and, above all, with bands that wheezed and oompah’d as the crowds cheered Iron Girder on her way. And, yes, as the train came past slowly and carefully you had to watch out for the little boys running after her, following the dream. It was a sight to yodel for. And now Moist noticed that Simnel was looking increasingly worried and took the opportunity of one of the engineer’s rare breaks from the footplate to speak to him privately. ‘Dick, Iron Girder is the best locomotive you’ve ever built, right?’ Simnel wiped his hands on a rag that had already seen too many greasy hands and said, ‘She surely is, Mister Lipwig, we all know that, but it’s not Iron Girder I’m fretting about. It’s that bridge over t’gorge. We’ve done everything we can, but we need more time. There’s no way the bridge will hold with all the weight of the train an’ all.’ ‘Well now,’ said Moist, ‘you have the loggysticks and the knowledge of the weights and the stresses and all the other sliding rule business and that’s telling you one thing, but I’m telling you now that if the bridge is still not secure when we get there I propose that Iron Girder will fly across the gorge with you and me on the footplate. You might call it a sleight of hand, even a trick, but we will fly.’ The engineer looked like a man who has been challenged to guess under which thimble the pea is, and knows deep in his boots that it will never, ever be the one he selects. ‘Mister Lipwig, are you talking about magic here? I’m an engineer, I am. We don’t ’old wi’ magic.’ And suddenly Moist’s voice was as smooth as treacle. ‘Actually, Mister Simnel, I think you’re wrong in that. You believe in the sunshine, although you don’t know how it does it. And since we’re on or near the subject, have you ever wondered what the Turtle stands on?’ Dick was cornered and said, ‘Ee, well, that’s different. That’s just how things are meant to be.’ ‘Pardon me, my friend, but you don’t know that. Nevertheless you go to bed at night quite happy in the belief that the world will still be there when you get up in the morning.’ Once again, Dick tried to get a grip on the proceedings, still wearing the look of a man certain that whichever thimble was going to be picked up it wouldn’t be his. A given in the scheme of things. ‘So we’re talking about wizards, then, Mister Lipwig?’ ‘Well … magic,’ said Moist. ‘Everything is magic when you don’t know what it is. Your sliding rule is a magic wand to most people. And I know some kinds of magic. And so I’ll ask you, Dick, have I ever let you down in any way during our time on Harry King’s business?’ ‘Oh no, Mister Lipwig,’ said Simnel, almost affronted. ‘I see you as what my old granny called full of fizz.’ Moist caught the fizz in the air and juggled it. ‘There you are, Dick. I believe you when you say that the numbers on the sliding rule are telling you things. In return I’d like some trust from you. No, please don’t use your sliding rule for this. It’s the wrong tool for the job. I know something … Not exactly magic, but extremely solid … and with what I have in mind, by the time we get to the bridge you’ll think we’re riding through the air.’ Simnel once again looked as if he was about to cry. ‘But why won’t you tell me?’ ‘I could,’ said Moist, ‘but Lord Vetinari would have me dead.’ ‘Eee! We can’t ’ave that, Mister Lipwig,’ said Simnel, shocked. Moist put an arm round Simnel and said, ‘Dick, you can perform miracles, but I propose to give the world a spectacle that’ll be remembered for a very long time.’ ‘Eh up, Mister Lipwig. I’m just an engineer.’ ‘Not just an engineer, Dick: the engineer.’ And as Simnel cherished that thought he smiled nervously and said, ‘But ’ow? There just isn’t enough time and there aren’t enough men, neither. Harry King has brought out all his ’eavy-duty workers from the city and the plains and so I don’t know where you’ll get more support from.’ ‘Well,’ said Moist, ‘I’ll have to be like Iron Girder. I’ll just whistle.’ Simnel laughed nervously. ‘Ee, Mister Lipwig, you’re a sharp one!’ ‘Good,’ said Moist, with a confidence he wasn’t entirely feeling. ‘We should be ready by dusk.’ Just then Iron Girder let loose a little bit of steam and Moist wondered if it was a good omen, or possibly a bad one, but it seemed to him to be an omen anyway, and that was enough. That afternoon, in an attempt to distract his thoughts, Moist decided to tackle something that had been niggling at the back of his mind ever since they had left Sto Lat. And for that he needed to talk to Aeron. The King’s secretary was slim for a dwarf, almost nimble and quick, and decidedly ubiquitous, his long beard following him like a banner as he went about on the King’s business. He carried a sword, not traditionally a dwarf weapon, and had acquitted himself well during the attack on the train at the Paps of Scilla. Choosing his moment carefully, Moist waylaid Aeron in a place where they could talk privately. ‘Mister Secretary, I have to ask whether all is quite as it seems with the Low King.’ Aeron’s eyes narrowed and his hand went to the hilt of his sword. ‘Of course it is. What a ridiculous question. Treacherous, too!’ Moist put his hand out placatingly. ‘Look, you know I’m on your side! I have to ask because of something I saw at Mrs Simnel’s house.’ Aeron looked startled and said, ‘I believe the side you’re on is your own, sir, and whatever you think you saw it’s certainly no business of yours.’ ‘Indeed it is, my friend,’ Moist replied. ‘The gods, for my sins, gave me a nose for scenting when the metaphorical shit is about to hit the windmill, and I want to be prepared.’ Aeron stood frozen, and without looking directly at Moist he said, ‘Your perspicacity does you credit, Mister Lipwig. Your silence even more!’ ‘Oh, come on. There’s something going on here and I’m not in on it. Don’t force me to draw my own conclusions. I do have a very big pencil.’ But Aeron clearly had nothing further to say. The appearance of a couple of engineers at the end of the carriage provided the excuse he needed for bringing the conversation to an abrupt close. He turned on his heel and marched smartly off down the corridor, leaving Moist with every suspicious nerve in his body jangling. An hour or so later, a knock at the entrance to the guard’s van heralded the King’s secretary, who this time smiled strangely and said, ‘The King would like to grant you an audience, Mister Lipwig.’ And he smiled again and said, ‘And that, I’m sure you’re aware, means at once.’ The King was sitting at a little table doing paperwork when Moist arrived, and beckoned him towards another chair in the carriage, saying, ‘Mister Lipwig, I understand that following our visit to Mister Simnel’s mother, you appear to be under the impression that I may be … hiding something. Is that the case, boyo?’ The King looked at Moist with a stern glare, almost as if daring him to utter what he was thinking. ‘Well, she does have a lot of … feminine insight …’ Moist let the rest of the sentence tail away and watched carefully. The King sighed and looked at Aeron, who was standing on guard by the door. Rhys nodded and then turned back to Moist. ‘Mister Lipwig, I’m sure you are aware that the sex of dwarfs is often a well-kept secret and there have been times when even to enquire about the sex of another dwarf was considered a terrible thing. I am the Low King of the Dwarfs, but if I can get to what I might call the bottom line, I am also female.’ And there it was. This was the thing that had been niggling at the back of his mind ever since Mrs Simnel had started making the sleeping King – Queen now, he reminded himself – comfortable back in Sto Lat. He coughed and said, ‘Well, nobody’s perfect, your majesty. And to tell you the truth, I think I’ve known for some time. I’m good at putting rumours, suspicions and instinct together and getting the right result, because I’m a scoundrel. I expect Lord Vetinari has warned you about me. You could say that I’m Lord Vetinari’s scoundrel.’ ‘As if he needs one!’ ‘Scoundrels take a different look at people, just to get the measure of them: the way they walk, the way they talk, the way they sit. All the little details left unsaid in the wrong place.’ The Queen was silent for a moment and said, ‘A real scoundrel?’ ‘Yes, m’lady, I would say one of the best, possibly the best,’ said Moist. ‘But these days you might say that I’m tamed and at heel, which means I’m a very trustworthy scoundrel.’ ‘At Vetinari’s heel? You poor boy.’ And now the Queen looked as if something worrying had been chased away and she said, ‘You must know, Mister Lipwig, there are only very few people who are aware of my secret and they are trusted. One of them is Lady Margolotta and another, of course, is Lord Vetinari. ‘It has always seemed to me that the attitude of dwarfs when it comes to gender is curdling us. Dwarfs, we keep insisting, must be seen to be male – and what does it say about a species if they can’t look their own mothers in the face? We live a stupid lie and play a stupid game and I don’t want this state of affairs to continue. I am indeed the Low Queen, Mister Lipwig, and I thank you for your silence at this time.’ The Queen appeared as innocent as one of those mountains which year after year do nothing very much but smoke a little, and then one day end up causing a whole civilization to become an art installation. ‘Mrs Simnel is a nice lady,’ she continued, ‘although perhaps not as discreet as she thought … Of course, I know I can depend on you to treat my secret as if it were your own. I’m sure Lord Vetinari would be upset if you didn’t do so.’ Moist polished his best reassuring smile to sparkling. ‘As I told you, ma’am, I’m a born scoundrel, so I’ve learned to be very, very discreet for the sake of keeping my own neck safe from people who take a dim view of scoundrelhood. And as for Mrs Simnel, she knew all about the secret of steam and never told anyone about it.’ The Queen stroked her beard and said, ‘For a proud mother that must have been testing indeed … Very well, Mister Scoundrel, I will have faith in you both. And now I can see that Aeron is becoming restive, so I’d better return to my paperwork.’ She sent what Moist would swear was a teasing glance in her secretary’s direction. Moist, for whom it was second nature to watch and listen carefully – most particularly to what was not said – now felt he knew another secret, a secret as yet unacknowledged. The Queen and her secretary were, without doubt, lovers. Possibly you had to be married to notice this fact, but their body language shone through. A meaning cough from Aeron recalled his attention. The secretary was holding the door open for him, in a clear signal that the audience was over. As Moist stepped out past him Aeron said, ‘Thank you, Mister Lipwig … From both of us.’ Before he set off back to the guard’s van, Moist stood for a while letting the revelations settle. The King being a Queen was looming in his mind. Oh yes, everybody knew that dwarf women looked very much like the dwarf men, beards and all, even Cheery Littlebottom – an Ankh-Morpork dwarf if ever there was one and a strict feminist; although she was adamant that beyond the beards dwarf females were not the same as dwarf men. And since she was now very big, as it were, in the Watch, her insistence on chainmail skirts and subtly altered breastplates didn’t matter too much, but the Queen—? What would happen if the Queen declared it! It would be iacta alea est in spades! And there would be no going back from that. Aeron had now disappeared back into the Queen’s armoured coach, and Moist was left listening to the rattling of the train. The future, he thought, was going to be … incredibly interesting. The everlasting fog that filled the vertiginous gorge created deep swirling shadows in the fading light as they approached the final bridge before the Wilinus Pass. And the fog itself seemed to be alive as it moved and twisted, leaving the watchers with the feeling that they were teetering at the edge of the world. The far side of the bridge was barely visible as Simnel stood in earnest conversation with the head engineer in charge of the bridge works. A bit of darkness in the fog near Moist turned out to be Commander Vimes, grinning. ‘A rickety bridge, a heavy train, a terrifying drop to certain death below, with a pressing deadline and no back-up plan?’ said Vimes. ‘You must be in your element, Mister Lipwig. I’m told the engineers say it can’t be done. Are you really planning to risk the Low King and the future peace of this region on one throw of the dice?’ Behind them an engineer said, ‘I wouldn’t travel over that for a pension.’ As Rhys and Aeron joined them, the creaks and groans of the ancient bridge structure intensified, and seemed almost alive, like some demon daring them to chance their fate. The less fanciful of the engineers might talk of natural movement caused by the drop in temperature as night approached, but it was hard to ignore the ominous atmosphere of the place which was almost … eldritch. Then Iron Girder snorted steam, panting like a dog ready to be unleashed. Moist took a deep breath, stuck his fingers into his jacket and smiled with a confidence which had blossomed just a second before when he had finally heard the subtle sound he had been waiting for. ‘It’s a little-known fact, my friends, that these fogs have remarkable solidity. Allow me to demonstrate.’ He stepped off the edge of the cliff beside the track and stood there with the fog swirling around his ankles. He heard gasps from behind. He turned and faced his fellow travellers with a huge grin and a silent sigh of relief before stepping back on to what might be called solid ground. ‘You see. Would you like me to run to the other side and back again while this mystical phenomenon continues, as I believe it will, or shall we all go over now, while the time is ripe?’ ‘D’you mind if I try?’ said Vimes. There was a twinkle and Moist said, ‘By all means, commander.’ And Vimes disappeared into the swirling fog, lighting his cigar, saying, ‘Just like standing on a pavement. Amazing. I suggest you make steam, Mister Simnel! I’m in some doubt about how long such a, as you say, mystical phenomenon will last. So I think alacrity is our motto here, gentlemen.’ Simnel, resisting the natural temptation of a scientist to examine the phenomenon more closely, looked around and said, ‘Oh aye. All aboard, everybody!’ And after a moment, he added, ‘Quickly … please.’ Moist looked at Simnel and said, ‘Do you now believe, Dick?’ ‘Yes, Mister Lipwig.’ ‘But do you really believe?’ ‘I surely do, Mister Lipwig! I believe in the sliding rule, the cosine and the tangent and even when the quaderatics give me gyp, yes, I still believe. Iron Girder is my machine, I built ’er, every last rivet carefully forged by ’and. And I reckon if I could bolt rails on to the sky, Iron Girder would take us to t’moon.’ Moist whistled and heard a signal from below. He raised his voice and said, ‘Forward, please, Mister Simnel!’ And immediately there was the familiar chugging sound of a train anxious to be travelling and getting up steam. Moist loved the moment as the power built up slowly and by degrees until there was a rolling thunder, taking charge of the universe, and they were moving into the villainous fog and on to the bridge. It was difficult to see anything from the footplate, but Moist could just make out Simnel’s white face as the vibrations and swaying intensified. Despite Moist’s dramatic demonstration earlier, he could tell that Simnel and his crew were terrified and even he began to doubt whether the bridge would in fact hold under the pressure. And then the vibrations suddenly ceased and there was a strange sensation as Iron Girder left the rails and she flew. Down below, the fog curled into even stranger shapes, spiralling vortices, stirred up by the passage of the train, and after a strangled few minutes there was a thump of wheels on rails as Iron Girder consented to exchange flight for the sensible permanent way once more and then Dick blew the whistle and kept blowing, and she was bowling along again as if nothing uncanny, mystic or even eldritch had happened. It wasn’t until Moist found time to himself after all the backslapping he had received that the enormity of what he had done hit him like a jack-hammer: a whole train under steam, full of passengers! And a king apparently flying through thin air! And he sweated again as the next thought said, ‘So many things could have gone wrong.’ In fact so many things could have gone wrong and he began to feel certain that history might just slam backwards to ensure that they did. And the sweat ran down his whole body but he wouldn’t have been Moist if he couldn’t recover from this sort of thing. Just as long as Vetinari never got to hear about it. The thought of Vetinari was still proving hard to banish later that evening when Moist finally bunked down in the guard’s van. As the motion of the train lulled him into a tired and relieved doze, an image of the Patrician swam into Moist’s mind. He shuddered at the recollection of his recent encounter. Vetinari had been at his desk reading reports of what looked suspiciously to Moist like other people’s clacks messages.fn77 He had frowned when he saw Moist and said, ‘Well now, Mister Lipwig, is the train already cleared for Uberwald, by any chance?’ Moist had assumed an expression that would not have deceived a child, which was, of course, part of the game. ‘Not quite yet, my lord, but I think the prospects are getting rosier by the hour.’ ‘Long-winded. Very long-winded indeed. Come to the point, if such a thing exists, please? After all, I do have matters of state to deal with.’ ‘Well, sir, I’m sure you recall, we have buried within the city limits a number of very ancient golems, and you vowed that they would only be deployed in the event of a threat to national security, and right now I think I could use several dozen of them, sir, that is of course if you don’t mind?’ ‘Mister Lipwig, you surely try my patience. I’m quite well aware that both you and your wife have the tools that would allow you to enter said vault and, indeed, give said golems instructions, but nevertheless I strictly forbid you to try anything of the sort. This has to do with the railway, I am assuming.’ ‘Yes, my lord, a minor little problem on the train to success, as it were.’ ‘Let me make myself entirely clear. If I find any evidence that you have removed city golems from their proper place and moreover have taken them outside the city limits, you will be thrown to the kittens. Is that understood?’ Vetinari’s expression was as flat and impenetrable and as placid as a sea of pitch, and Moist had bowed and said, ‘I assure you, sir, no such evidence will ever be found.’ While overhead, the words ‘If I find’ floated like a sly invitation. Uncomfortably alert again, with Vetinari’s voice echoing in his head, Moist drew out the clacks flimsy he’d had from Adora Belle about the progress of the golems. He tore it up and threw the pieces out of the nearest window, from where he watched them disappear in the wake of the wonderful train. From the gloom of the guard’s van behind him someone coughed, pointedly. Vimes emerged with a little smile and said, ‘Plausible deniability, eh, Mister Lipwig? But well done, anyway. Just between ourselves: those golems that’ll never be used … What do you suppose they’re doing right now?’ Moist opened his mouth to deny all knowledge of the golems, then thought better of it. Something in Vimes’s eyes dared him to try. ‘Digging their way back home, I trust,’ he said. ‘Rather more easily since they tunnelled their way up here in the first place.’ And in the distance behind the train, the rickety bridge was falling bit by bit into the valley in a curious kind of mechanical ballet. It would be some time before it could be used again, thought Moist – but now we’ve got Rhys this far we can throw everything into getting this damn bridge built properly. And a few hours later, as the golems tunnelled under his tavern, the Grosszügig Stein, Herr Muckenfuss noticed the floor dancing and every glass and stein in the building shook rapidly. Plump though he was, he scooped up every falling stein and glass with great determination until there was a sudden settling in the air and the tavern was eerily silent. He looked at Herr Bummel, his solitary customer, who stared at the dregs in his stein of the new cask of Old Blonk they had been sampling before whispering in impressed tones, ‘I think I’ll have the same again.’ As Bonk came ever closer and the horizon was now eaten by the mountains – looming outlines visible against the night sky, steep slopes occasionally catching the moonlight – Commander Vimes called a council of war in the guard’s van, the centre of operations. With the experience of the attacks at the Paps and the destruction of the Flyer to draw upon, careful plans were laid for the defence of the train and the King. ‘Well now, look around, all of you. What you see is canyons and trees. If I was a grag I’d probably see this next stretch as my last available opportunity to derail Iron Girder.’ Vimes’s face was grim as he outlined his proposals and Rhys nodded his approval, interrupting now and then to add a refinement. ‘We must also take care of attacks from above,’ the commander continued. ‘As we’ve seen, Iron Girder is well protected. She has her corsets on now, thanks to Dick’s new alloy, but we might have to fight on top of the carriages. I see you grin, Mister Lipwig. So, smart boy, if that happens I invite you to join me and the others on the roof when the time comes. Are you game, sir? It’s likely to be very dangerous up there.’ The inner Moist patted himself on the back as he thought of his illicit adventure on top of the Flyer. He could dance on the train, jump and spin and twirl, because he had the measure of the moods of every part of the train. ‘I’ve wanted to do something like this ever since I saw my first locomotive, commander,’ he said to Commander Vimes. ‘Yes,’ said Vimes, ‘that’s what I’m afraid of. So I must tell you that we work as a team or we become separate corpses.’ He pointed at the trees towering overhead in the deep cutting they were travelling through. ‘There is very little space in this damn cutting. Trees? Nothing but stiff weeds – remember that!’ ‘I’m sure we could do it,’ said Moist. ‘Why not bring Detritus up top as well?’ ‘No, he’s good on the ground, but he isn’t limber. Anyway, with Detritus on top of it I’m afraid the roof would pretty soon become the floor.’ The commander looked around and said, ‘The rest of you know your stations. Remember, we’re on this train to get the King back again. Guard him! Don’t bother about us on top.’ When he could speak to Vimes with nobody else listening, Moist said, ‘I know the rhythm of the train, but I’m no fighter, commander. Why choose me?’ ‘Because, Mister Lipwig, you’d pay a king’s ransom in order to say that you fought on the roof of a train and I’ve seen you, you’re a bastard in close combat, worse than Nobby and he tends to bite their knees. I saw the corpses of the grags from that incident at the Quirm railhead. You can fight, if only in terror, but it’s true that the coward can often be the best fighter of all.’ As the sky grew pallid in the pre-dawn, the atmosphere on the train changed. The whole crew knew that they were now heading at top speed right into unfriendly territory. On every crag in the mountains of Uberwald you could see the lights of the Igors twinkling and wobbling in the darkness of the canyons, and green lightning flashed from gargoyle to gargoyle like spectres. Moist had generally always kept away from the place. You got the occasional werewolf or zombie in Ankh-Morpork, of course, but in Uberwald they were commonplace. This was their place, with their rules – and that included the black ribboners, the slightly weird types who had sworn to shun the temptation to drink people’s blood and similar … But they were still weird, possibly even more so, drinking only cocoa and marching with banners and drums on every possible occasion. Arguably that was better than being taken to the crossroads and staked … again. The hand of Lady Margolotta was visible everywhere, and Moist knew that where you found her hand you would also find the hand of Vetinari. But now there was menace in the air. Although Moist was, in fact, okay with menace, it was the thought of dying that was uppermost in his mind, and his little internal demon was shouting, ‘Hahaha! Remember that a life without danger is a life not worth living!’ And valiantly he stood by that assertion … though quite frankly he would rather have been standing on a beach in Quirm, if possible eating one of those really nice ice creams they made with a wafer-thin cone that crunched so beautifully as you bit into it. With strawberry sauce. And sprinkles. Moist stood in the middle of the guard’s van letting his body understand the motions of the train. He rocked when it rolled and concentrated on staying upright. After all, he reasoned, if there was going to be a fight then your legs had to know what was waiting for them. Vimes was puzzled about what he was doing, but when Moist tried to explain, the commander snorted in derision. ‘In general, Mister Lipwig, I try to disable those who’re trying to do the same to me as quickly as I can. It’s a simple little approach. Not very complicated, but it helps me stay alive … that and the understanding that almost everything has a groin and every foot has a boot.’ The sound of metal and stone bouncing off the carriages came as a relief. Like an expected shoe dropping. The train was travelling through a cutting that had once been used by wagons, and Iron Girder almost touched the rocky sides as she passed through at less than half speed. The guard’s van was in a state of siege and only later did Moist learn that grags had swung down from the sides of the cutting. An unfortunate few dwarfs had landed on Bluejohn’s flatbed and while the biggest officer of the City Watch was at heart a pussycat, two grags trying to hack lumps out of him was clearly causing him to become somewhat acerbic and so the pussycat was now fighting like a lion. He hurled curses in trollish which actually shone red in the air as they were cast. Quelling his nerves, Moist grabbed a jim crow and opened the trap door on to the roof of the guard’s van, to the initial amazement of the grag who had been trying to force his way in. But any sense of achievement the dwarf might have felt was knocked away by the vicious metal bar hitting his jaw with a satisfactory clang. Moist wasn’t surprised to hear Commander Vimes scrambling up after him. And now, surrounded by grags in a state of disarray, Vimes tore off his shirt and as other dwarfs approached him Moist saw them suddenly realize that their futures were in the hands of the legendary Blackboard Monitor. Once freed, the brilliant scar on the commander’s wrist was almost throbbing in the half-light. The grags stared at it and that was the first of their many mistakes, because the commander went, as they say in Ankh-Morpork, totally librarian on them. As Vimes charged towards the far end of the van he smacked away one distraught grag so that he landed on top of another, making it look almost balletic as they twisted and fell on to the rails below. And now the goblins joined in to make the grags’ day just a little bit more interesting: goblins in your armour was definitely not an aid to fighting. The trap door and an adjoining panel had been torn away from the top of the guard’s van and, while battling a particularly ferocious dwarf,fn78 Moist saw Detritus levelling his enormous crossbow through the hole and heard the troll shout, ‘Piece Maker!’, a signal to anyone of sense to take extreme cover immediately. The darts that the piecemaker fired were hardwood and therefore horribly dangerous. And if Detritus was really feeling fit, the weapon spat the wood so fast that the darts ignited as they flew. Not metal, only wood, but wood going so incredibly fast that it splintered into a thousand more darts all travelling at terrible speed. When the thunder had died away, Detritus yelled up to him, ‘Hey, Mister Lipwig! Dis van is goin’ backwards! Der gritsuckers knew jus’ where to take der engine off!’ Moist turned and saw, to his horror, Iron Girder pulling away at speed from the now stranded guard’s van. He looked down at Bluejohn who was holding a grag in each hand and there was screaming as he banged their heads together and tossed them into the darkness between the tracks. ‘We’re going backwards, Bluejohn!’ yelled Moist. ‘Take us forward, could you!’ There was a jerk as Bluejohn stopped the guard’s van dead, quite possibly with his feet, and Moist jumped down on to the shuddering flatbed. ‘Nice work, Mister Bluejohn. Now get out that thing Mister Simnel’s lads made for you, please.’ In his curiously childish voice, Bluejohn said, ‘Oh yes, Mister Lipwig, I can do dat and I can tow der guard’s van as well.’ Vimes dropped down from the roof where he had been making life difficult for the grags on top – who were now essentially on the bottom – shouting ‘What the hell’s going on! Why’ve we stopped and where’s the rest of the train?!’ ‘Those buggers have uncoupled us!’ yelled Moist. ‘But it’s no problem … there’s a handcar on Bluejohn’s flatbed … for emergencies!’ And, indeed, when the pedals of the handcar started to turn, the guard’s van accelerated and shot like an arrow towards the disappearing Iron Girder. Bluejohn’s big face was aglow as he pedalled like, well, Bluejohn, because nobody else could have made that flatbed fly along the rails. It rattled and screeched and complained, but the troll’s huge feet oscillated up and down in a blur and the inner demon of Moist von Lipwig whispered to himself, ‘A little treadle machine to help somebody travel fast? Might be an idea to remember that.’ The whistle of Iron Girder echoed around the canyons, and Vimes shouted, ‘Get me up close to that train, officer!’ Trolls don’t sweat as such. A kind of blooming takes place instead. Bluejohn grunted, ‘Gettin’ a bit outta puff now, commander … but I’ll do my best.’ Bluejohn’s handcar, still dragging the guard’s van, including the recumbent grags, slammed into the last carriage, and before it bounced away again he reached forward and grabbed a buffer in each hand. Immediately Vimes flew like a demon, running across Bluejohn’s ample back and into the besieged carriage. Moist followed as best he could. Grags and delvers were everywhere, still trying to get into the armoured carriage ahead, and then it was just a matter of who was friend and who was foe, and there were far fewer friends, making it very easy to spot the foes. ‘Come on, lads! No speeches, you sons of mothers!’ Vimes shouted back to the others in the guard’s van. ‘You know who the enemy is and you know what to do … Get them before they get you and don’t let them get anywhere near the King! I’m heading up on the roof!’ Up on the swaying roof of the armoured carriage, Vimes quickly started to take his toll on the enemy, who were swinging down from the canyon walls on to the moving train. Unhappily for the attacking dwarfs, the problem with swinging down was that the defender on the train could easily judge where you were going to land, which was precisely the place you then got hit mightily with a jim crow. While Moist and Vimes, well accustomed to the motion of the train, could keep their feet, the dwarfs, even with their low centre of gravity, simply couldn’t fight on the rocking and rolling carriages, and the two men were able to knock them down like skittles. Moist couldn’t help feeling sorry for them. Idiots with a cause and it had been such a stupid cause to begin with. And as he was watching Vimes fend off an attack from two of the buggers, there came a blow out of the darkness that knocked Moist on to his back, taking the wind out of him. He looked up into the face of madness. That special kind of madness warped by idealism. The madness that gloats – which, in these circumstances, was a bad idea. The grag swung his axe, but with reactions born out of terror Moist managed to roll as the mighty blade struck the roof beside him, splintering the wood where his head had just been. The grag lifted the axe once again and Moist thought, well, this is it, then … a life without danger is a life not worth living … Maybe the next one’ll be even better … And then he saw it and grinned: the entrance to the tunnel. And so he winked, as only Moist von Lipwig could wink, and said, ‘Goodbye.’ Sparks rained down and it took him a moment to realize what had happened. Or, indeed, what unfortunately had not happened. The tunnel was just too capacious – the grag had not been shortened as expected and his axe was scraping along the roof, making a rather impressive fountain of sparks in its wake, illuminating the scene just enough for Moist to kick up and find his target, hoping against hope that this dwarf wasn’t a female. And fortunately luck was with him and therefore regrettably not with the grag, who dropped his axe, clutched at his groin and unceremoniously fell from the carriage on to the tracks below. As the train emerged from the tunnel, it came to a grinding stop. Moist scrambled to his feet and clambered back down across the flatbed to find out what had happened to the rest of the gang. He was relieved to discover the crew of the guard’s van all more or less unharmed, including Of the Twilight the Darkness and his group of goblins, Fred Colon, Nobby Nobbs, Cheery Littlebottom, Detritus and Bluejohn, who was still hanging on to the last carriage, keeping the train together. There were also a few rather bewildered engineers and train drivers, some of whom had been trying to catch up with their sleep when the attack came but had apparently done their best. Moist hadn’t noticed Nobby and Colon in the mêlée but decided that he would not be surprised to hear that they had acquitted themselves with great derring-do and, of course, it was such a pity that it would turn out everyone else had been too busy to see them doing it. Even so, looking around the few groaning grags still on the train, Moist acknowledged that Nobby and Colon, if given no alternative, could fight like tigers, especially tigers with the nasty weaponry of the streets where anything went and wherever it went it could be very, very painful. Colon, in particular, was master of the underhand, and some of the groaning was familiar to Moist as the famous Ankh-Morpork lullaby. Moist never thought of himself as a leader of men, so he delegated in circumstances such as these. The chore of marshalling went to Fred Colon, known to all for his excellent shouty voice that turned his face an unusual shade of puce and was expelled at a volume that even Iron Girder would have envied. Such grags as were alive or weren’t definitely dead were trussed up before being taken to the guard’s van, where, Moist suspected, Commander Vimes would have a little talk with them about this and that and names and places and who and when and what dreadful manners they had. Lovely. And now a figure leaned out of the armoured carriage. It was Aeron. ‘The King is safe! Thank you all! Iron Girder came in for a hammering but the grags that managed to get on to the footplate were shown the furnace by Stoker Blake.’ Moist winced at that. He had been close to the furnace a great many times when it had been opened by the stoker and it was instant suntan time, but if you were standing in the wrong place at the critical moment it was instant fiery death. The journey onward, with the couplings once more in place, was altogether a sombre ride, for the victors as well as for the surviving dwarfs awaiting their dreaded conversation with the Blackboard Monitor who, it was believed, could cause you and your family never to have existed. Rubbed away, as it were, in the chalk dust of the blackboard. A little later Iron Girder gently kissed the buffers at the Bonk rail-head, and the first person to step down on to the hastily erected platform was Rhys Rhysson. He was greeted by a very large and extremely agitated rotund man, who had the word ‘burgomaster’ stamped firmly into his demeanour. He was sweating cobs and a fat man can sweat just as much as an engine. He genuflected to the King, an achievement considering his shape which was, not to put too fine a point on it, a globe. ‘Welcome back, sire,’ he said, panting. ‘The humans of Bonk have always had a good relationship with your countrymen and I sincerely hope that this amicable arrangement is going to continue.’ This invitation was uttered at a very high speed and Moist saw it for what it was: a plea saying, please don’t hurt us, we are fairly decent people and have always accepted your highness’s claim to the Scone of Stone. The unsaid codicil being, please don’t hurt us and above all, don’t interfere with the running of our mercantile activities. Please. Please? Rhys gripped the proffered and rather sweaty hand and said, ‘I’m so sorry if you have been inconvenienced by the recent unpleasantness, Humphrey.’ A gesture which left the burgomaster all smiles. ‘Oh, it wasn’t too bad, Your Majesty. It was a bit of a nuisance when you … I mean the others started knocking down the clacks and all that. But you know how it is, it’s like a family squabble in the house next door where you know it’s not your business so you’re ready with tea, sympathy and possibly bandages and medicaments. And next time you meet the couple next door you don’t look too hard and mind your business and are still friends on the morrow. ‘And anyway, her ladyship got involved, and once she’d made a couple of examples … Well, thank goodness, we had our clacks back. She’s firm but fair is Lady Margolotta, and remarkably swift.’ The sweating Humphrey knew full well he was talking about the most influential vampire in the world whilst at the same time giving her the appearance of an elderly lady who only had to bang her walking stick on the floor to get total respect. ‘Of course all families have their ups and downs,’ Humphrey continued, ‘those little spats so easily started and so quickly left behind with no real damage done.’ Behind the burgomaster the train was unloading its passengers while Iron Girder occasionally hissed or spat in the way a locomotive has of making it clear it is not entirely quiescent. Moist could hear Vimes debriefing Captain Sally von Humpeding, the Watch’s only vampire member, who had been seconded to the Bonk Watch. They came over to report. ‘Sally tells me that even though all communication from within Schmaltzberg has been cut off, reports have been reaching the Watch that all is not well with the conspirators,’ said Vimes. He looked to Sally for confirmation. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘our sources indicate that the grag known as Ardent—’ She was interrupted by a snort of rage from Rhys and a rattle of axes from his assembled compatriots. ‘Him again!’ snarled Rhys. ‘Yes,’ said Sally. ‘Him and a few others we’d been trying to locate after the massacre in Quirm. Well, it seems that Ardent and his followers are losing support; they’re not having it all their way. There is unrest—’ ‘Good,’ said Rhys. ‘We can use that.’ ‘And Albrechtson?’ asked Aeron. ‘Well,’ Sally smiled, showing a hint of fang, this being the most appropriate place in the world to let them get some air. ‘Well. And loyal to you, sire.’ A rather smart goblin messenger insinuated his way through the crowd and passed a message to Sally, who read it. ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘It’s a message from Albrechtson. It seems the opposition know you’ve arrived, sire. Albrechtson would like you to know that he’s being well treated and has been able to follow the progress of Iron Girder, thanks to the goblins.’ Rhys turned and looked at Simnel and Moist and said, ‘Thank you, and Sir Harry, for getting me here safely. And Iron Girder, too. At the appropriate time you will know my generosity and I’d like to talk to you further. But do excuse me. I have a kingdom to reclaim.’ Addressing the company of dwarfs now fully assembled on the platform and armed to the teeth, he proclaimed, ‘Let it be known that the Low King has arrived and will take his place on the Scone of Stone. Anyone wishing to deny him that trivial pleasure should be prepared to back up their coherent and well-founded objections with weaponry. It really is quite as simple as that. This message will be carried into Schmaltzberg by Bashfull Bashfullsson, a highly respected and knowledgeable dwarf known to all, accompanied by my trusted secretary, Aeron. We should also include Commander Vimes, the Blackboard Monitor, and one-time Ambassador, to see fair play. Remember that at all times tampering with the King’s Messengers is a matter of treason. Be aware, I’m not going to be a nanny about this. Insurgent dwarfs will get their just deserts.’ The sound of Vimes loudly lighting his cigar broke the silence. ‘Let the others go first, I’ll go along in a minute or two,’ he said. Moist, of course, hadn’t been at Koom Valley but right now he wondered if he was about to see the ghost of Koom Valley’s second incarnation – except it would be dwarf against dwarf. He wanted to shout out ‘This is nuts!’, and realized that in fact he had said it aloud. To his surprise, the King said, ‘Certainly so, Mister Lipwig. It beggars all reason, doesn’t it? But sooner or later there comes a time when you have to take names and crack skulls. I’m sorry, it’s at the other end of the spectrum from the little chat and it’s what happens when reason no longer holds sway.’ ‘But you’re all dwarfs. What can you possibly achieve?’ groaned Moist, who for the rest of his life would always remember the tone of the King’s voice … ‘Tomorrow. That, Mister Lipwig, is what we can achieve. Tomorrow.’ The arrival of the messengers sent an immediate buzz around the multiple caverns of Schmaltzberg, somehow the centre of the galaxy when it came to hubbub of all sizes and rumour mills that turned faster than the mills of the gods. Rumour flowed like quicksilver. The phenomenon might be called the dwarf clacks were it not for the fact that the clacks didn’t scramble the messages on a whim, thought Moist as he followed Rhys and the main band of dwarfs down into the honeycomb that was Schmaltzberg. The myriad noises flowing up from below through every tunnel and cavern were merging into a kind of audible mist or, he thought, fog. It simmered around the earlobe. The terrible sounds and confusions of war. But now individual sounds were getting through. Raised voices, screams and the clatter of weaponry, punctuated with the occasional yell and dwarfish curses, which are known to have a life all of their very own. Further down, they came across Aeron, who was waiting with blood dripping from his sword. He noticed Moist’s look and shrugged. ‘There was a grag. He fought hard but would not submit, preferring death to ignominy … and so I accommodated him.’ That last phrase contained more emphasis than Moist had heard for a very long time. Aeron turned to Rhys and reported. ‘There have been certain clashes of opinion, your majesty,’ he said, pointing to several dwarfs being treated in what would have been an impromptu field hospital had it been in a field. Swords, hammers and axes were being deployed below as the King carried on marching, until they came to what must be the great hall, the largest cavern of them all. As they passed through the portal, Moist came to a halt, trying to get a grip on this subterranean landscape, lit by the enormous chandeliers of dribbling candles along with cressets and great vats of squirming vurmsfn79 writhing in the corners; so there was light, he thought, but a strange light that was somehow negotiating with the eyes. You could see but what you saw was the darkness. ‘Well, it’s not a war any more,’ said Vimes, suddenly there beside him. ‘And not too many serious outcomes, except for the grags. That’s dwarf-on-dwarf war: a hell of a lot of shouting and accusing and spitting, a lot like cats really, but that’s dwarfs for you. They’re not that stupid. Bags of bravado and sabre-rattling, but no one really wants to get hurt. You fight hoping for a small wound that looks good afterwards. Something to show the grandchildren, but really, when it comes to it, dwarf against dwarf, it generally settles down.’ Vimes puffed his cigar and continued, ‘Mind you, if it were dwarf against troll this place would be running with blood. On the whole, it’s like the taverns in Ankh-Morpork on a Saturday night. Everyone is full of gumption and pissy bravery and beer. Much too much beer. And then afterwards it’s just a lot of groaning until they see the light.’ In fact, what Moist could see near by was dwarfs in small groups, some of them bandaged, in positions which suggested that war as such, if not over, had been set aside for a breather and maybe a decent quaff. And younger dwarfs were going between the hurt and wounded with flagons. And one by one the dwarfs got up, shook hands with the nearest dwarf and walked haphazardly to the next group, where perhaps they would sit and chat and make up stories of near misses and clever parries and similar boozy boastings. Little by little, dwarf normality was flowing through Schmaltzberg once again. ‘Pissed as farts,’ said Vimes. ‘But at the bottom, not bad, just susceptible to rabble rousers.’ He sighed again. ‘Maybe this time they’ll have learned. And on that day Nobby Nobbs will be a shining hero!’ And that was all it took? Moist found himself wondering. After all the adrenalin of the train journey, the ambushes, the attacks … the bridge … the sleepless nights … expecting at every turn to hear the swish of a scythe and to find that this time his luck really had run out … and then Rhys gave a fine speech and just walked in and took back the kingdom? ‘I was expecting them to put up more of a fight,’ he said. ‘You know, more of a glorious battle that would become the stuff of legends.’ ‘That’s a very foolish thing to say, Mister Lipwig,’ said Vimes. There’s nothing “glorious” about times like this … People have died, not necessarily good people and not too many, but nevertheless the face you wear on a battlefield should be a solemn one until the time when things are cleaned up and the real world drips its way in.’ Moist felt the shame welling up from his boots and said, ‘Commander, I stand abashed, quite sincerely.’ And instantly Vimes’s face was eyeballing his and the commander exclaimed, ‘Really? It seems it’s not just the railway breaking new ground here!’ For once short of a ready reply, Moist turned to see what had become of Rhys and his party. Rhys Rhysson had entered the cavern at a run. He headed straight for its centre, where stood the Scone of Stone. Now he looked around and demanded, ‘Where is Ardent? I want him brought here, and as many of his followers as still remain. Though doubtless most have run: this place is full of exits.’ Bashfull Bashfullsson shouted, ‘I have the scoundrel here, sire!’ The assembly of dwarfs went into the usual seemingly endless dwarfish hubbub, followed by a deep intake of breath from all concerned when Ardent was brought forward. His expression Moist couldn’t read. But Moist, the man for atmospheres, could tell that Ardent was already somewhere beyond sanity, whilst Rhys seemed as cool and calm as ever, however fearful he might have been on the inside. And Moist would have wagered the mint that the King wasn’t actually fearful at all. There was something in his demeanour that suggested an absolute assurance that this day was his (or indeed, hers, as he finally allowed the thought to creep back into his consciousness). Sitting on the hallowed Scone of Stone with Ardent in front of him, Rhys said, ‘You were dealt with mercifully after the Koom Valley Accord and still you thought it was right to try to take this kingdom from me. You encouraged those who tortured families to get their own way. What would people think of me if I had even a most minute inclination to treat you kindly? You are clever and many dwarfs speak highly of you, but your cleverness has been used to undermine my rule and make dwarfs appear to be vicious and stupid criminals in the eyes of all other species. What have you to say, in front of me and your kin?’ Ardent was silent. ‘Very well,’ said the King. ‘No answer. You leave me no alternative. In times gone by a dwarf king would execute someone like you as a matter of course.’ And then there was the sound of metal and the King stood up, axe in hand. At last the light of terror passed across Ardent’s face. The King said, ‘Oh, I see. Then perhaps as I am … you know … a modernizer, as you always say with a sneer, perhaps I’ll deal with you as a modernizer should. Therefore, you will go on trial. And I shall see to it that among the jury there will be the families of those the grags tortured and those surviving guests of the wedding in Llamedos and all the others whose lives have been unnecessarily troubled by your existence in this world. They may be merciful and I will accept their verdict.’ Ardent remained silent and the King said, ‘Take him away in chains but keep him alive, if only as a reminder for me that being a King is not an easy job.’ As Ardent was led away to much applause Rhys turned to the assembled dwarfs. ‘Now I suggest someone goes and brings me my friend Albrecht Albrechtson who, to our shame, has been shackled and stuffed into a dungeon. Then perhaps the people delegated to go and let him out might hand him a flagon of brandy and, if practicable, run away. He has a piquant sense of humour.’ Rhys sat down again on the Scone of Stone and said, in tones that echoed around the cavern, ‘It is usual at this time for me to say “my fellow dwarfs” …’ There was a sucking feeling in the air as the King went on, ‘but today I’ll say “ladies and gentlemen dwarfs” … I am here not only to reclaim my Scone of Stone, which over the years has seen many important and notable buttocks sitting on it. I wonder, how many of those buttocks down the years were female?’ The sharp intake of breath by the whole gathering now seemed to draw all the air out of the place as the Low King continued. ‘Hear me out! It is well known that the gender of a dwarf is entirely their secret unless they decide otherwise. And I recall that in Ankh-Morpork, a few years ago, there was a fashion show for dwarfs only. I was there, incognito, and I recognized a few of you, quite possibly purchasing for use in the privacy of your own home? Shatta made a lot of money that day and I understand that Madame Sharn wants to open a new shop here. Here in Schmaltzberg! Does this thought frighten anybody? In these days, I think not. And all I am doing now, my friends, is to introduce to you something important: it is the truth! You know … that thing which remains when all the lies have been burned away. And now I will tell you that I have decided to no longer be your King!’ There was an extra hubbub of indrawn breaths and sotto voce speculation from the populace at large, with all eyes focused on the King. The magic was broken or possibly enhanced by the tiny sound of a match being struck by Commander Vimes. And the fat cigar glowed like a beacon. Vimes smiled and nodded at the King, and in that moment Moist realized that Vimes had probably always known, or at least since the famous adventure several years before when he was Ambassador to Rhys’s election as Low King. There was a disturbance as the crowd parted to allow the venerable Albrecht Albrechtson to make his way to stand by the Low King, who greeted him warmly in the traditional dwarf manner of butting helmets.fn80 ‘Welcome, old friend. I’m sorry that you have been … inconvenienced by my absence. Those responsible will pay for that,’ he said in a loud voice, glaring at the crowd. Then more quietly to Albrecht, Rhys said, ‘You’ve arrived at a good moment. I’m in the middle of making an announcement.’ ‘So I heard,’ said Albrechtson. ‘What are you doing? You don’t have to stand down. You won.’ The Low King laughed. ‘Stand down? Oh, I don’t think so, boyo. You’ll see.’ Turning back to the crowd, Rhys took a deep breath and said, ‘This will be surprising news to many of my subjects, but I am female, just like your mothers were, and therefore am in truth your Queen!’ There it was again. The famous dwarf intake of breath. Even Albrechtson seemed startled. Moist looked at Aeron and noticed the dwarf’s mailed fist was resting, oh so lightly, on his sword. Bashfullsson was standing right behind Albrechtson, watching him closely. Next to Moist, Vimes carefully laid down his glowing cigar on a rock ledge and tensed. This could be very interesting, Moist thought. ‘And if you think your Queen is not as good a ruler as your King, do you really believe your mother was inferior to your father?’ The Queen laughed. ‘I see embarrassment among all of you. That’s good. The thing about being embarrassed is that sooner or later you aren’t, but you remember that you were.’ There was a noticeable shift in atmosphere as the Queen carried on, saying, ‘I have seen that in warm breasts there is a truth which is not to be denied, but we dwarfs seem to deny everything, building little worlds inside a big one. And one might ask what we are trying to escape from – unless it is ourselves. We are dwarfs, yes, but we could be better than our dwarf ancestors stuck in their holes.’ When she had finished the Queen looked around at the assembled dwarfs and said, ‘Well? No dwarf man enough to challenge me?’ Several eyes turned to Albrechtson, who looked thoughtful but did not move. Bashfullsson relaxed his stance. And suddenly the Queen’s finger was pointing and she said, ‘Shod Orebreaker, I always thought of you as a level-headed dwarf with your head screwed on, although possibly against the thread.’ And Moist felt the exultation of those who hadn’t been the one facing the finger and the misery of Shod Orebreaker, and he wondered: had the Low Queen’s voice changed, or had it always been like that? She hadn’t threatened, but a visible threat was in the air. She had them in her hand, and she was squeezing, and the dwarf stepped backwards as she pointed at him and she said, ‘Where are your grags now, Shod Orebreaker?’ The said Shod became a picture of panic. ‘Not my grags, my Queen!’ This was possibly because Aeron had passed the Queen a thick file. The Queen licked a finger and riffled through the pages, looked down and said, ‘Really? Then I must have been misinformed.’ She turned to the rest of the dwarfs and said, ‘I wonder if I have been misinformed about all of you?’ But the assembled company was watching the flicking pages, trying not to crane to see whether their name was on the list … It was laughable. She had them by the short and curlies, and she said, ‘Strange, isn’t it, that when the chips are down they take other chips with them. If anyone wants to test my claim then let them step forward now!’ There were murmurings, dwarfs turning round to other dwarfs and the traditional aforesaid hubbub of such occasions and then there was a hush as Albrechtson spoke. ‘My queen,’ he said, and the hubbub bubbled. It was the unexpected moment: the great defender of all that was dwarfish now having a stocktaking of his thoughts. ‘My queen, we, fortuitously, live and so we should learn. I have always considered myself knowledgeable, a true scholar of the ways of Tak, but the past days have shown me that even I have lessons to learn. In my little dungeon, I heard my ways changing and understood the meaning of humility. In fact, I am prepared to admit before you all that some of those lessons were taught me by a goblin a fraction of my age, whom I am proud to call my friend.’ Moist saw that the old dwarf was crying. Albrechtson hesitated, then shouted, ‘Tak save the Queen! And I will fight anyone who says otherwise.’ And Moist thought, Oh blast, it’s all going to start over again. But the assembled dwarfs made no move to take Albrechtson up on his challenge. The sea of faces in the hall looked universally stunned, as if someone had announced that gold was, to be honest, not that interesting after all. The Queen gracefully thanked Albrechtson, then pulled herself up and said, ‘I am well aware that many of you have financed the grags and their entourage and I know the names, yes, indeed I know the names of those who’d kill for a curdled thesis. In the fullness of time there will be no redemption for them. We were generous after the mess of Koom Valley and those were the stupid days, but if the grags and their friends think they can take my Scone from me they will know me for what I am. Your Queen. I believe all of you will have heard of Queen Ynci of Lancre, yes? Well, I consider her my role model, but right now I’m looking for peace for all the world and specifically for myself and my child.’ And in the thundering susurration that followed this there was one dwarf suddenly standing next to the Queen. It was Aeron, and he drew his sword, not against anyone in particular, but nevertheless very ready to defend his wife and his unborn child. Over the uproar the Queen said, ‘And is there anyone here now who doubts that I am the Queen by right? It seems to me our ancestors thought their mothers were inferior. Well, as I say, I am soon to be a mother, so which of you gentlemen would like to try and take my Scone from me?’ Moist looked around. There were no takers. The Queen looked dangerous to touch and she didn’t even have a weapon in her hands. It had to be game, set and whole boxful of matches. ‘Very well,’ the Low Queen of the dwarfs concluded. ‘There will be a feast for all who come with goodwill and there will, of course, be much quaffing.’ She smiled and added, ‘That includes cocktails, for those who like them. Believe me, the world is upside down, as it was meant to be. Praise Tak! And praise Iron Girder and all those who built her, fed her and polished her.’ ‘Ardent was on a hiding to nowhere,’ said Albrecht at the banquet later that day. ‘People broke away to avoid the inevitable. You’re right, your majesty. We forgot what it was to be true dwarfs, but then people were getting hurt! There were too many threats against decent dwarfs. The little bits of mercury flow together and in the end his support turned out to be built of sand.’ Vimes gazed around from his place as honoured guest at the low table and said, ‘Look at them there, the world has indeed turned upside down. There will be grumbling, but what are you dwarfs without grumbling?’ Albrecht snorted and said, ‘There should have been more of a reckoning.’ ‘Oh, really?’ said the Queen. ‘I don’t intend to start my new life with a bloodbath. Justice will be done. Everyone knows who the main players are, we always have done. We have names, depositions. It’s a small world for dwarfs, with nowhere else to hide, and, frankly, the work is almost completed. The deep-down grags behind this lost a lot of their best fighters attacking Iron Girder on her peregrination across the landscape. ‘What a voyage that was! And the wonderful discovery of loggy-sticks. The train is the future; bringing people closer together. Think about it. People run to see the train go past. Why? Because it’s heading to the future or coming from the past. Personally, I very much want the future and I want to see to it that dwarfs are part of that future, if it’s not too late.’ Vimes smiled and said, ‘Well, your majesty, you have the opportunity right now. I understand from young Simnel that the bridge at Wilinus will take several months to be repaired and strengthened sufficiently to be able to take the weight of a fully loaded train. That means that Iron Girder and her carriages will be stranded here until the line is rebuilt.’ He looked down the table to where Moist was in earnest conversation with Bashfullsson. ‘Mister von Lipwig will no doubt be happy to advise on the … commercial opportunities.’ Rhys smiled. ‘Ah yes, I’m familiar with Mister von Lipwig’s reputation, and have been impressed with his, ah, capabilities. However, I think it might be advisable to summon our lawyer, Mr Thunderbolt, to ensure that all is done fair and square, see.’ Vimes laughed. ‘Very wise.’ ‘And no doubt there will be a need for workers to help with construction?’ enquired the Queen. ‘The young ones, in particular, who may not be so interested in staying in the mines, but nevertheless want a good solid job with plenty of metal and hammering involved? We are still dwarfs, after all.’ Afterwards the Queen walked among her quite possibly loyal subjects and it was a grand perambulation, with little outbreaks of mail skirts and elaborately coiffed beards amongst certain of the dwarfs rushing shyly over to assure her of their fealty. As Vimes said afterwards, for that day at least she had won hands down, especially since a great many of the dwarfs she was talking to were already openly declaring themselves females who had been waiting for this moment for a very long time. The evening before they were to leave Bonk, Moist wandered down to the railhead, idly pondering recent events. Well, he thought, the world has seen the footplate of Iron Girder and the Queen has been given her crown back and according to Commander Vimes the worst of the grags are either dead or behind bars. At the makeshift station Iron Girder was being guarded by Nobby Nobbs and Fred Colon, who were both sound asleep. Iron Girder, however, wasn’t, although the kettle was barely simmering after a long day giving rides to the locals up and down the single track. Moist tiptoed to the empty footplate and whispered, ‘What are you, Iron Girder?’ There was a moment of silence, then a shimmer as the wisps of steam drifted up into the night air above the locomotive and a voice breathed into his brain, soft and warm and somehow damp. ‘My, oh my, Mister Lipwig, you are the smart one, just as they say. I am me. I am Iron Girder. But all it takes is for people to believe and I am no longer just an artefact put together by clever engineers. I am an idea, a something made of nothing, whose time has come to be. Some even call me “goddess”.’ Moist’s fleeting thought about traditional representations of goddesses in diaphanous nighties with maybe an urn or two was banished as the voice continued a little more sharply. ‘Am I not beautiful? And I tell you, my children will be even better! More sleek and more handsome and more powerful! Even now Mister Simnel is making my children for me. In time I will become ubiquitous, part of the landscape which is ennobled by my fleeting passage. I hear the worship every day that tells me that I am power personified and those who think to oppose me and put out my fire will find themselves thwarted, and swiftly. I, Mister Lipwig, I will rule on the up line and I will rule on the down line.’ In the twilight Moist saw a skinny figure walk up to Iron Girder. Dick Simnel shut down some hissing mechanism or other and the voice, the beautiful voice, was silenced. ‘Aye, she’s gradely all right! Come to see her for the last time before we head back to the city, have you? I can’t blame you. Everyone’s been wanting to see ’er, and I won’t lie, Mister Lipwig, it’s a wrench to leave her behind, for all she’s got good work to do ’ere. Iron Girder, she’s turned out to be a great lass. She was the power and she was ’arnessed, by gum. Oh, yes! ’arnessed by the sine and the cosine, and even the tangent had its little ’and in there somewhere! But not least she was tamed by my sliding rule.’ Dick grinned at Moist and continued. ‘People see Iron Girder and they’re gobsmacked by what can be done with mathematics! Don’t you go thinking she’ll burn you with living steam because she won’t. I’ve seen to it that she won’t. She’ll always be my favourite engine, Mister Lipwig, the queen of them all. She lives. How could anyone say she doesn’t?’ Moist looked around and saw that they were surrounded by goblins sitting quietly in a big circle like worshippers at the shrine, and once again Dick Simnel said, ‘Power, Mister Lipwig, power under control.’ Moist was seldom speechless, but this time all he could say was, ‘Good luck with that, Mister Simnel. Good luck.’ And the driver made his magic and the fire box opened and spilled dancing red shadows all around the footplate. And then came the rattle and jerk as Iron Girder took the strain and breathed steam for one more turn around the track as the goblins whooped and cackled and scrambled up her sides. And then came the first chuff and the second chuff and then the chuff bucket overflowed as Iron Girder escaped the pull of friction and gravity and flew along the rails. Dick Simnel lit his pipe from a hot coal and said to the night, ‘Aye, gradely.’ When Drumknott entered the Oblong Office a few days later there was a familiarity to the silence, interrupted only by the scratch of a pencil as the austere figure behind the desk filled in a word on that day’s crossword. Drumknott coughed. ‘Yes?’ The face of the Patrician was forbidding. An eyebrow shifted quizzically, a characteristic known and feared by many. Drumknott smiled. ‘Many congratulations! You have that expression down to a T and the accent never faltered. And, of course, the frown! You’ve always been very good at the frown. Quite frankly, if he was standing next to you I wouldn’t know whom from which.’ Suddenly the face of the Patrician disappeared, leaving only Charlie the Clown in Lord Vetinari’s clothes, looking embarrassed. ‘It wasn’t very difficult, Mister Drumknott, with you giving me those little signs and everything.’ ‘Oh no,’ said Drumknott. ‘Your performance was perfect. You’ve impersonated his lordship for two weeks and not put a foot wrong! But now to business. The sum we agreed will be deposited in your special account at the Royal Bank tomorrow.’ Drumknott smiled again and said, like a cheerful uncle, ‘How is your wife these days, Charlie?’ ‘Oh, Henrietta’s fine, Mister Drumknott, thank you for asking.’ ‘And your little boy – Rupert? He must be out of school now, yes?’ Charlie laughed uncertainly and said, ‘Not so little, sir, he’s growing up like a weed and wants to be an engine driver.’ And Drumknott said, ‘Well now, Charlie, you already have enough money to put him through a trade anywhere in the city and give your daughter a dowry fit for a queen. And, of course, you’re still in the same house? Excellent!’ ‘Oh, yessir, and thanks to you we’ve got much better bedrooms for the kids now and are saving up for a granny flat for when we can afford a granny. And Henrietta is overjoyed at the amount of money I’m bringing in these days and can even afford to get her hair cut at Mister Fornacite’s, just like the posh ladies do. She’s over the moon about it.’ He grunted and said, ‘I don’t earn that much from the puppet shows and clowning business.’ And now Drumknott beamed once again and said, ‘I’m sure his lordship will be glad to hear that your family is so happy and … alive. Long may it continue. I’ll be recommending to him that you could be promoted, as it were, to higher things. And now, since his lordship is expected back within the hour, if you don’t mind I’ll take you out through the back door. We really don’t want to see two Vetinaris in one place, do we?’ Charlie went almost white and said, ‘Oh, no sir, we don’t want that.’ ‘Well, we shan’t, shall we,’ said Drumknott. ‘Off you go and I’ll lock the door behind you.’ When Charlie had disappeared, happy but in haste, Drumknott, after a moment’s thought, said to Dark Clerk Ishmael, ‘I’m sure his lordship will want to know that we’ve checked the location of this Mister Fornacite’s salon and the school that our friend’s children go to. Is it the same as last year?’ And the clerk replied, ‘Yes, it is, sir, I checked again the other day.’ ‘Well done.’ As his lordship had pointed out: ‘If you take enough precautions, you never need to take precautions.’ It was just a matter of making sure that Charlie didn’t get … well, creative about his future. Never had Moist been more happy to see his front door than when he got home and his wife opened it before he did, saying, ‘Oh, it’s you. Not dead? Good. How did it go?’ ‘Pretty well. The golems were incredible. Sad that we’ve had to leave Iron Girder there until the bridge is repaired. Still, we’ve got so many of Harry’s golems and workers on it now it’s not going to be long before Vetinari can have a special train of his own, if he likes.’ ‘To make sure relationships between Uberwald and Ankh-Morpork proceed in a … cordial fashion, no doubt,’ said his wife with a smile. Behind him, Of the Twilight the Darkness said, ‘Already Uberwald goblins giving themselves railway name. Speaks funny, those ones, but quick clever, like all goblin.’ ‘Yes,’ said Adora Belle, ‘that reminds me. We got reports while you were away from clacksmen along the road from the Shires about some rather odd occurrences. Strange rumblings, steam coming out of molehills, that sort of thing. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?’ Of the Twilight the Darkness reassembled his features into the closest approximation of innocence that a goblin can muster. ‘No ideas, missus. Steaming molehill? Maybe cow eat bad grass. Course, maaany goblin interest in steaming things. Some even practises own little engine. Educational! Clever goblins.’ It was clearly a conversation for another day. Moist headed for the fluffy pillows with a grateful sigh. ‘I’ll have a rest and tomorrow I’ll dally with the Bank. There must be some paperwork for me to sign. It would be nice to have a simple job for a while.’ Adora Belle snorted. ‘How long would that be?’ Moist hesitated. ‘Maybe a fortnight? There might be a lot of paperwork.’ ‘Yes, and you won’t do it,’ said Adora Belle. ‘You know Mister Bent keeps everything shipshape. All you have to do is go around being friendly to everybody.’ ‘And nobody’s trying to kill me, Spike.’ And Adora Belle said, ‘We can but hope.’ At breakfast, Lady Sybil said to her husband, ‘It sounds quite an adventure, Sam. I hear the Queen has changed her name to Blodwen. It means “fair flower” in Llamedos. Isn’t that nice? I must write to her.’ ‘She’ll like that,’ said Vimes, whose wife’s capacity to remain in touch with everybody she had ever met was well known and sometimes quite useful. Especially in political circumstances. The commander looked down at his muesli and said, ‘You know, that Lipwig character isn’t quite as bad as I thought. Acts like a scoundrel, but reasonably helpful when the chips are down. Mind you, I’m not going to tell him so.’ He pushed the healthy fibre around his bowl, wistfully recalling the stoker’s fry-ups. ‘But he does like being the centre of attention, of course.’ ‘Yes, some men are like that, dear.’ Lady Sybil was silent for a moment, then said, ‘Sam, I know you’re going to be busy what with the backlog and everything, but can I ask a favour?’ ‘Anything, dear.’ ‘When they have the line to Uberwald running, I’d love to go to visit the Queen, and most of all I’d like a holiday by the train. And Young Sam’s mad about trains, you know. He’s nearly filled up his first notebook already.’ ‘Well,’ said Vimes, ‘you know if I have a holiday I walk into a crime.’ Lady Sybil finished her egg and said, ‘Jolly good, dear, you’ll like that.’ Harry King was not entirely surprised when Drumknott arrived at the compound the following day and said, ‘His lordship commands you and Lady King to present yourselves to him within the hour.’ And the secretary winked uncharacteristically at Harry, and his wife when he told her was, according to her, all of a tizzy at the news. ‘The palace in one hour! How can a girl look her best inside an hour?’ ‘Come on, Duchess,’ said Harry. ‘You look a treat as always and getting younger every day.’ ‘Oh, you teaser, Harry King!’ But Harry said, ‘The coach is here and clean as a whistle and his lordship believes that punctuality is the politeness of Princes and that applies to you, too, young Emily. I expect your boy wouldn’t want you to be late. That’s not the railway … way.’ Harry hadn’t told his wife what to expect, preferring to keep it as a surprise, and so as the coach arrived at the palace, his wife nearly had another tizzy to contend with because there were the great and good of Ankh-Morpork, and presumably some of the silly and nasty as well, just to see Harry King being turned into a Lord. Lord King of the Permanent Way. And in the wonderful ceremony that followed, Lord Harry’s old Dutch did indeed become a Duchess. Dick Simnel was made a knight, and a master engineer too, courtesy of the Chief Mining Engineer himself, and now stood hand in hand with the beaming Emily. Commander Vimes, resplendent in his ceremonial pantaloons and looking furious about them, was already burdened with every title it was his lordship’s pleasure to bestow, but was given another medal anyway, struck in sorortanium and featuring Iron Girder herself. In fact there was a medal for every watchman who had been on the train, and every crew member, goblins included. Later, there came the inevitable interview in the Oblong Office with Drumknott at a side table taking notes. ‘I understand, Mister Lipwig,’ said the Patrician, surveying the city below them from the window, ‘that there were some remarkable events along the journey.’ Moist kept a straight face but around his neck he felt the prickle of a phantom noose. The Patrician continued. ‘A fog which became conveniently solid, a train which apparently flew across a gorge, and I’m still getting reports of subterranean phenomena all the way from the city to Bonk. The Archchancellor has assured me that no magic was involved in any of these events. You will recall, I am sure, Mister von Lipwig, that I expressly forbade the use of the buried golems in the railway enterprise, and that any evidence of their use would send you to the kittens?’ He moved towards the fire, which was getting low in the grate, and gave it a prod with the poker – rather too pointedly, Moist thought. ‘Excuse me, my lord, but did you find any such evidence?’ Vetinari turned to his secretary. ‘Did we find any evidence, Drumknott?’ Drumknott looked at Moist. ‘No, sir, we did not.’ ‘Well then, there is nothing more to say,’ said the Patrician. ‘After all, strange and inexplicable things turn up around here almost every week.’ Drumknott cleared his throat. ‘Yes, sir. There was that fall of pianos in the Fish Market last week. It’s just a part of being Ankh-Morpork.’ ‘Indeed, we are no strangers to strangeness. And frankly some things can be written down as phenomena without cause or issue,’ said Vetinari, looking as benevolent as it was possible to do whilst holding a red-hot poker, and whilst being Vetinari. ‘Incidentally, Mister Lipwig, your prowess in that fight on the train was excellent! Of course you needed a little assistance.’ Moist looked up at the Patrician, silhouetted by the flames behind him, and inside his head there was the horrible tinkle of a penny dropping. He gulped. ‘You! You were Stoker Blake! That’s impossible!’ ‘Really?’ said the Patrician. ‘As impossible as a train travelling on free air? Do you not believe that I could throw coal into the fire box? After all, what is that compared to dealing with Ankh-Morpork with its myriad demanding problems every day? I assure you of this, Mister Lipwig, I am a man of many talents and you should hope never to encounter some of them. Compared with them, Stoker Blake was a mere babe in arms.’ ‘What,’ said Moist, ‘fighting with shovels?’ ‘Dear dear, Mister Lipwig, you are easily impressed. You surely remember that I was schooled in the Assassins’ Guild. After that experience, my predecessor on the footplate, Killer John Wagstaff, was, as they say, a pussycat in comparison. Indeed, I enjoyed my life as Mister Blake and all the new little skills it has taught me. Excellent implement, the shovel. And as for the other stokers, I think I made friends there, yes, there was a certain camaraderie among us. All said, a little holiday from the weighty business of the city, and I dare say I might be predisposed to travel on the footplate again when the mood takes me.’ ‘But why?’ ‘Why, Mister Lipwig? You of all people ask me why? The man who danced on the train roof, the man who actually looks for trouble if it appears to be the kind of trouble which is associated with the term derring-do? Though in your case a few more derring-don’ts might be a good idea. Sometimes, Mister Lipwig, the young you that you lost many years ago comes back and taps you on the shoulder and says, “This is the moment when civilization does not matter, when rules no longer hold sway. You have given the world all you can give and now it’s the time that is just for you, the chance to go for broke in the last hurrah. Hurrah!” Vetinari swung the poker against the fender, causing sparks to dance in the fireplace. He looked at the sparks and in whiplash fashion turned to Moist and said, ‘And if you, Mister Lipwig, ever tell anyone else about this, Mister Trooper will be very glad to see you again. Do we have an understanding? Excellent.’ As if anyone would believe him if he did breathe a word about it! Moist was finding it hard enough to credit from the man’s own lips. Then as he tried to process what he had been told, the Patrician’s words about his own prowess sparked a renewed sense of grievance. ‘You’ve given everyone else on that train a medal, even Nobby Nobbs. Is there nothing for me, then, my lord?’ There was a pause and Vetinari said, ‘Oh, there is, Mister Lipwig, there is, and it’s something wonderful: it’s the precious gift of staying alive.’ And later, when he came to think about it, Moist thought that was, well, on the whole a good deal and, after all, he had danced on the speeding locomotive. That was living, all right! A few weeks later, Drumknott persuaded Lord Vetinari to accompany him to the area behind the palace where a jungle of drain pipes emptied and several mismatched sheds, washhouses and lean-tos housed some of the necessary functions without which a modern palace could not operate.fn81 There was a young goblin waiting there, rather nervous, clasping what looked like two wheels held together by not very much. The wheels were spinning. Drumknott cleared his throat. ‘Show his lordship your new invention, Mister Of the Wheel the Spoke.’ Vetinari’s face was unmoving as he watched the goblin put a leg over his creation and pedal the little machine around the washerwomen, who threw up their arms saying things like ‘Oh my! Whatever next?’ And the oldest washerwoman said, ‘I reckon you could have a young lady on the pillion behind you.’ Lord Vetinari said, ‘You’re going to want one of these, aren’t you, Drumknott?’ ‘Well sir,’ said Drumknott, ‘this is not a mechanism, really. All it does is simply extend the parts of the body and look, no steam, no soot, just sweat.’ ‘Interesting,’ said the Patrician. ‘One man, his own motor.’ When the goblin eventually stopped in front of Lord Vetinari, he looked imploringly at Drumknott, who waited patiently for his master to decide. Vetinari finally did smile and said, ‘A remarkable velocipede, Mister Of the Wheel the Spoke. I do believe that Leonard of Quirm had a similar idea, but now we are in a world of motion, I see no problem here. It appears that every man could be his own horse. I commend you. May I suggest, young goblin, that you take your prototype along to Commander Vimes. An instrument that doubles one’s speed ought to be very useful to a hurrying watchman, or, indeed, an insufficiently hurrying one. Mister Drumknott, please write a note to the commander and I will sign it. After all, some of them could do with the exercise. And if I were you, sir,’ he added to the goblin, ‘I would make an appointment with a certain troll lawyer called Thunderbolt and do what he tells you. ‘The world is changing and it needs its shepherds and sometimes its butchers. And in this case, I’m its shepherd. Your enterprise has been noted. And all that anyone can say now is: What next? What little thing will change the world because the little tinkers carried on tinkering?’ fn1 There were some salacious comments about this, but it appeared, alas, to the local and as yet unmarried girls that Mad Iron Simnel and his men had found something more interesting than women and apparently it was made of steel. fn2 Correctly pronounced Beyonk. fn3 Literal translation: ‘chief mining engineer’. fn4 Humans might have said ‘beef’ at this point, but not many dwarfs have a taste for cow, whereas rat is perennially dependable. fn5 Scouting for trolls, dwarfs and humans was brought in shortly after the Koom Valley Accord had been signed, on the suggestion of Lord Vetinari, to allow the young of the three dominant species to meet and hopefully get along together. Naturally the young of all species, when thrown together, instead of turning against one another would join forces against the real enemy, that is to say their parents, teachers and miscellaneous authority which was so old-fashioned. And up to a point, and amazingly, it had worked and that was Ankh-Morpork, wasn’t it? Mostly, nobody cared what shape you were, although they might be very interested in how much money you had. fn6 Besides being from the McSweeney dynasty and therefore frighteningly expensive. Although, he thought, when he looked at the porcelain shards on the floor, they didn’t look that expensive. fn7 A term, technically speaking, for dog muck, much prized by the tanneries. fn8 Unless they were a golem. During the dark days when the family clacks company had been usurped by businessmen, Adora Belle had diverted her energies into golem emancipation. She was still involved with the Golem Trust, but the pace of change in Ankh-Morpork, she was pleased to notice, meant that the golems were quite happily trusting themselves. fn9 Adora Belle was, as even she knew, a creatively bad cook, mostly because she thought cookery a waste of time for a woman with even half a mind; and since Moist took pretty much the same stance when it came to manual labour, the arrangement seemed to suit all parties. fn10 Which was his only name. fn11 Separate bathrooms of course being the key to any happy marriage. fn12 ‘Spike’ to her fond husband. Her brother had called her Killer, but he meant it in a nice way. fn13 The official collective noun for a bunch of goblins. fn14 The wonderfully colourful oak wood of the Effing Forest was much in demand for high-class joinery. fn15 Known by habitués as the Sticky Head. fn16 If you could give that name to somebody who had to deal every day with forms to sign, go to far too many meetings about meetings and handle the most petty of correspondence. fn17 This black crystalline compound was widely used by troll women as an anti-ageing cream. Dick Simnel had been thorough in his research and it was, apparently, a very efficient lubricant. fn18 The actual chairman being, in point of fact, Mr Fusspot, chairdog. fn19 A term meaning that the builder speculates about how far away he can be, and with how much money, before the buyer finds that the footings have, in fact, no feet, the septic tank is one foot deep with a tendency to flow backwards, and the bricks owe a lot to that most organic and venerable of all building materials, cow shit. The whole business traditionally begins with a plot, in every sense of the word. Entire suburbs were being built with such beguiling names as Nightingale Valley and Sunflower Gardens which had never heard a nightingale or seen a sunflower in bloom, but nevertheless were on the market with CMOT Dibbler Practically Real Estate and Associates, currently doing a roaring trade. fn20 Oi Dong being not dissimilar to Shangri-La. fn21 ‘lawn ornament’ fn22 Not to be confused with the fabled Nougat Knights, famed in dwarfish mythology as the ancestors who, at the beginning of the world, created the treacle mines and other subterranean sweets. fn23 Moist wondered whether it should be loti, but thought, well, what the hell. fn24 The term ‘specie’ requires the person asking for it to rub their thumb and forefinger together in a knowing way, if you know what I mean, guvnor? fn25 The moment Moist heard the name he went for the dictionary and was relieved to find that fornacite was a rare lead, copper chromate arsenate hydroxide mineral. The troll was a lovely bluey green colour. fn26 Humans would have said, ‘Put it where the sun don’t shine.’ fn27 There had been some discussion about the word ‘hygienic’, and Moist had lost. Hygienic, everyone else thought, gave the project a certain tone, a sort of je ne sais quoi. Lady King said this herself and who was going to argue with the Duchess? fn28 Although in the eyes of her spouse she had always been the Duchess, a pet name he reserved for just her. fn29 The feared kitten torture was actually one dreamed up by Moist, and Vetinari had been impressed. In the dungeons of the palace there was a large iron maiden, seldom used. In these modern times the kitten torture regime was the punishment that would cause the miscreant to pause before doing anything that would place them in the dungeon again. The mechanism and the kittens were presided over by Cedric: not clever, but grateful for the pay packet every month, and he was very fond of kittens, with which the streets of Ankh-Morpork were overflowing. The kittens would be placed in the iron maiden in large numbers, along with the miscreant who could just about sit. At the bottom was a little hatch, large enough to push through a sizeable saucer of milk. Every time a kitten was in distress and made its distress noticeable, Cedric would open up the maiden and give the victim a whack with his cudgel, the amount of cudgelling being contingent on the state of upset of said kitten. There were some idiots who thought this laughable, but it worked, and after a certain amount of cudgelling visitors were said to be amazed at the general atmosphere of happiness inside the iron maiden, where the purring was so loud it resonated throughout the dungeon. fn30 A discipline where the hands move in time as well as in space, the exponent twisting space behind his own back whilst doing so. fn31 All’s mastery of artery-clogging cuisine had made him a number of friends in interesting places – trading sources for sauces had turned out to be very good business practice. fn32 A dismay shared by many of the journalists, who worried they would get mud on their new shoes and be attacked by pheasants. fn33 Proctector of the Eight Protectorates and Empress of the Long Thin Debated Piece Hubwards of Sto Kerrig. fn34 There were in fact two waiting rooms, one for men and families and the other for single ladies; as predicted, Effie was very firm that all aspects of the railway should be clean and wholesome, indeed hygienic, something she was very keen on. fn35 The caption as it turned out was ‘Let the train take the strain’. It appeared that Mr de Worde and his wife were very impressed with the toilet facilities. fn36 And when a troll announces, you really are announced at. fn37 Even Professor Rincewind, who spent most of the journey hiding under his seat in the firm belief that locomotion was exactly the kind of thing that usually led to certain death, conceded that trains could come in very handy when one wanted to get somewhere, or, more importantly, away from somewhere, quickly. fn38 Which, it has to be noted, included a certain amount of hinterland, as with most city states. fn39 The jailers couldn’t understand how he’d escaped until they realized they weren’t getting their washing back. fn40 He knew he couldn’t use that colloquial term around there, of course, but after all, the people of Quirm called the people of Ankh-Morpork sphincters, mostly in fun. Mostly. fn41 For humans he would have been in too deep. Way too deep. fn42 An Ankh-Morpork citizen will never yield to the idea that there are other cities at least as good as their own and treat the concept that there could be with humorous disdain. The phrase originated when an Ankh-Morpork citizen was shown an equestrian statue in Pseudopolis and when faced with the beast, said, ‘Maybe it’s a Big Horse I’m Morporkian’, an incident that gave rise to a popular bar room song. fn43 Which instead of masking the ubiquitous goblin smell merely lent it an extra piquancy. fn44 Unggue pots, as they were called, had a major and sacred part in goblin society. In Ankh-Morpork sensible goblins were making quasi unggue pots for sale, looking like the real thing, Adora Belle said, but with the magic taken out and the wonderful sparkle left in. However, it helped if you didn’t pay too much attention to what the pots traditionally held … fn45 There was no point in speculating on what else they could have. Just the thought turned Moist’s stomach. fn46 Any young goblin is thought of as being a twig. fn47 Which consists of a troll with a comfortable pannier on either side that can carry up to four people. fn48 Apart from occasionally going with a few clients down to the Pink PussyCat Club to appear to have a good time and stick money down the garters of the gyrating young ladies, which really was hardly evil at all in the light of early-onset middle age, just rather sad, although extremely enjoyable at the time and a death warrant if Adora Belle ever found out. fn49 Colon and Nobby had lived a long time in a dangerous occupation and they knew how not to be dead. To wit, by arriving when the bad guys had got away. fn50 It would be impolite to ask Otto how he got around so quickly. Of course, everybody knew that he was a vampire, but he was a fervent black ribboner and so whatever anybody thought they knew about him, they didn’t talk about it. fn51 A development that proved fatal to the Brassica Carriage Company, which had elected to construct its engines and tracks to a gauge based on the horse-drawn cabbage delivery carts. fn52 And yet Harry was still a Titan, a humorous term meaning deep trousers and short fingers, owing to his tendency to look on the disgorging of money in much the same light as root canal surgery delivered by a troll dentist. fn53 Feeney was privileged. To a goblin, the name is always the name, untouchable and part of the goblin itself. fn54 Or indeed, the fruits de mer of his labour. fn55 Moist suspected Vetinari had had some say in that coinage since Pseudopolis had never had a king and was beset by the curse of democracy, an affliction the Patrician couldn’t abide. fn56 Around the Sto Plains, as in other places, it took a while for country people to come to terms with indoor … facilities. A privy in the garden with fresh air all around was considered much more hygienic and, if you were careful, the tomatoes you grew would be most excellent.fn57 fn57 If you don’t know what this means, your grandparents will tell you. fn58 On the Quirm line Harry had had to stop her from giving them a bidet. fn59 This would have been an even bigger fortune had not Thunderbolt carefully made certain that the Hygienic Railway Company took its slice. fn60 Harry was thrilled; he’d tried to be nonchalant about it but when he heard the suggestion that he should be part of a toy railroad he grinned from ear to ear, although Effie complained that they had made him look too fat. fn61 With all goblins, the male ones especially, you got the impression of sinews but they mostly consisted of sinews tied together with other sinews. Surely, the mind protested, there must be muscles in there somewhere, but quite possibly they had to fight to find some room among all those damn sinews. fn62 It is well known that it is possible to climb Cori Celesti. Many athletes have attempted to climb to the summit and most of them have failed, although history does admit that a posse of elderly gentlemen with arthritis and bandy legs did manage this feat but subsequently died like heroes which was, after all, what it was all about. Other aspiring and indeed perspiring athletes have managed to get at least a little way up by using what is known as the Path of Lights, which it has to be said does not favour anyone who is not a true hero. Nevertheless many still attempt to run up Cori Celesti or at least break their femur in trying. fn63 Miss Daisy Snapes was officially the first person to be born on a moving train, thanks to a midwife who rushed the mother to the guard’s van. Young Daisy was born at thirty miles an hour and her doting parents named her Locomotion Snapes, until Moist got to hear about it and gave her and her parents a free season ticket on the railway, along with the suggestion that Locomotion might sound better as a middle name. fn64 The swamps in this part of the world are famous for their birdlife but also notorious, because they move constantly and quickly. Dry land is hard to find. The human inhabitants live on large rafts that serve as both shelters and gardens. The older generations have splayed feet, which they try to encourage in their offspring because the webs show that the owner is a great hunter of the swamps. They have no known enemies, probably because most people don’t want to step into a swamp. They are in fact helpful to travellers, and they distil extremely useful medications from the floating flora and fauna of the swamps, which include the twisting honeydew and the egregious flytrap, whose venom can be used in the making of delicate ironwork etchings, and which must be approached with extreme caution as the venom can be spat over several yards. There clearly has been magic at work in the Netherglades and its future as the pharmacopoeia of the world is being tested by Professor Rincewind of Unseen University. A dispatch from him reveals that the juice pressed from a certain little yellow flower induces certainty in the patient for up to fifteen minutes. About what they are certain they cannot specify, but the patient is, in that short time, completely certain about everything. And further research has found that a floating water hyacinth yields in its juices total uncertainty about anything for half an hour. Philosophers are excited about the uses of these potions, and the search continues for a plant that combines the qualities of both, thereby being of great use to theologians. fn65 In their minds, at least, although it has to be said that they had been too careful to attempt to overthrow the Low King until he was far away in Quirm. fn66 At least, that’s where Moist assumed he’d come from. Vetinari was one of the greatest students of concealment the Assassins had ever produced, so it could simply have been a shadowy state of mind. fn67 The only carriages that were open to the weather were the ones for those extra-large passengers (mostly trolls) who couldn’t fit inside anything else, and that was because they were in fact the coal cars. No one minded – trolls were impervious to rain, which helped them cultivate a better quality of lichen in any case, and the coal doubled as a welcome snack during the journey. fn68 In that it went against every instinct of a born-and-bred Ankh-Morporkian. fn69 Some months before, Mr Reg Shoe, travelling in an otherwise empty compartment, had got his fingers trapped when the carriage window shot up unexpectedly fast, and by the time the train reached the terminus he had lost the top joint of one digit. Mr Shoe, being a zombie, though indignant was merely inconvenienced by this accident, but at Effie’s insistence Simnel had devised the communication cord: a small rope that ran the length of the train, with a bell attached to either end. If there was a problem, a passenger could pull this rope and the driver or guard, alerted by the bell, would slam on the brakes. fn70 Moist had seen the Falls before and that’s just what they were … falls. Pretty good falls by the standard of falls, but once you’d looked at them for a few minutes undoubtedly someone would say: ‘Where can we get a coffee around here?’ fn71 And if you knew where to ask, the fabled Klatchian migratory bog truffle, which despite resembling the Klatchian bog toad in both taste and appearance was extremely rare and therefore a delicacy. fn72 Dwarfish, trans.: my lord. fn73 Which didn’t include Corporal Nobby Nobbs or Sergeant Colon, who were not precisely special but, as Moist knew, curiously useful, which was why Vimes put up with them. fn74 At least they said they were virgins. There certainly were petals. fn75 A dwarf is not thought of as a youth until he is in his fifties. fn76 Stumbleweed is like tumbleweed, but less athletic. This tells you everything you need to know about Slake. fn77 Although this accusation has never been levelled by anybody at his lordship, which is to say, none have been found. fn78 The way that Moist fought was erratic, since he took the view that if you didn’t know what you were going to do next, neither would the enemy. After all, it was a mêlée and nobody owns a mêlée. You might as well try to control a hurricane. fn79 Vurms are somewhat like glow worms, but with a stink that illumines. They can be found in deep dark places, where they subsist on the effluvia of any creatures that may arrive there. They are very useful to tomb raiders and others of that kidney – who in turn are often very useful to the vurms, especially their kidneys. fn80 A part of dwarf etiquette that outsiders find near impossible to master, the traditional helmet butt is a little less vigorous than the manoeuvre known on the tougher streets of Ankh-Morpork as the ‘Shamlegger Kiss’, but it must also not be so gentle as to imply that either the giver or the receiver is a sissy. fn81 Frankly most palaces are just like this. Their backsides do not bear looking at. Acknowledgements I was assisted in writing Raising Steam by the boiler-suited gentlemen of the Watercress Line in Hampshire, who showed me – well, they showed me everything, including their workshops, the footplate and the fire box of a travelling locomotive and, wonder of wonders, the signal box: a treasure in mahogany and brass. Champion! And, of course, my grateful thanks go to Rob for keeping the whole show on the rails, and to my editor, Philippa Dickinson, who supplied advice and flapjacks and, above all, patience. About the Author Terry Pratchett is the acclaimed creator of the global bestselling Discworld series, the first of which, The Colour of Magic, was published in 1983. Raising Steam is his fortieth Discworld novel. His books have been widely adapted for stage and screen, and he is the winner of multiple prizes, including the Carnegie Medal, as well as being awarded a knighthood for services to literature. After falling out with his keyboard he now talks to his computer. Occasionally, these days, it answers back. www.terrypratchett.co.uk @terryandrob #raisingsteam BOOKS BY TERRY PRATCHETT The Discworld® series 1. THE COLOUR OF MAGIC 2. THE LIGHT FANTASTIC 3. EQUAL RITES 4. MORT 5. SOURCERY 6. WYRD SISTERS 7. PYRAMIDS 8. GUARDS! GUARDS! 9. ERIC (illustrated by Josh Kirby) 10. MOVING PICTURES 11. REAPER MAN 12. WITCHES ABROAD 13. SMALL GODS 14. LORDS AND LADIES 15. MEN AT ARMS 16. SOUL MUSIC 17. INTERESTING TIMES 18. MASKERADE 19. FEET OF CLAY 20. HOGFATHER 21. JINGO 22. THE LAST CONTINENT 23. CARPE JUGULUM 24. THE FIFTH ELEPHANT 25. THE TRUTH 26. THIEF OF TIME 27. THE LAST HERO (illustrated by Paul Kidby) 28. THE AMAZING MAURICE & HIS EDUCATED RODENTS (for young adults) 29. NIGHT WATCH 30. THE WEE FREE MEN (for young adults) 31. MONSTROUS REGIMENT 32. A HAT FULL OF SKY (for young adults) 33. GOING POSTAL 34. THUD! 35. WINTERSMITH (for young adults) 36. MAKING MONEY 37. UNSEEN ACADEMICALS 38. I SHALL WEAR MIDNIGHT (for young adults) 39. SNUFF 40. RAISING STEAM Other books about Discworld THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD II: THE GLOBE THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD III: DARWIN’S WATCH THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD IV: JUDGEMENT DAY (with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen) TURTLE RECALL: THE DISCWORLD COMPANION … SO FAR (with Stephen Briggs) NANNY OGG’S COOKBOOK (with Stephen Briggs, Tina Hannan and Paul Kidby) THE PRATCHETT PORTFOLIO (with Paul Kidby) THE DISCWORLD ALMANAK (with Bernard Pearson) THE UNSEEN UNIVERSITY CUT-OUT BOOK (with Alan Batley and Bernard Pearson) WHERE’S MY COW? (illustrated by Melvyn Grant) THE ART OF DISCWORLD (with Paul Kidby) THE WIT AND WISDOM OF DISCWORLD (compiled by Stephen Briggs) THE FOLKLORE OF DISCWORLD (with Jacqueline Simpson) THE WORLD OF POO (with the Discworld Emporium) THE COMPLEAT ANKH-MORPORK (with the Discworld Emporium) THE STREETS OF ANKH-MORPORK (with Stephen Briggs, painted by Stephen Player) THE DISCWORLD MAPP (with Stephen Briggs, painted by Stephen Player) A TOURIST GUIDE TO LANCRE – A DISCWORLD MAPP (with Stephen Briggs, illustrated by Paul Kidby) DEATH’S DOMAIN (with Paul Kidby) A complete list of Terry Pratchett ebooks and audio books as well as other books based on the Discworld series – illustrated screenplays, graphic novels, comics and plays – can be found on www.terrypratchett.co.uk Shorter Writing A BLINK OF THE SCREEN Non-Discworld books THE DARK SIDE OF THE SUN STRATA THE UNADULTERATED CAT (illustrated by Gray Jolliffe) GOOD OMENS (with Neil Gaiman) THE LONG EARTH (with Stephen Baxter) THE LONG WAR (with Stephen Baxter) Non-Discworld novels for young adults THE CARPET PEOPLE TRUCKERS DIGGERS WINGS ONLY YOU CAN SAVE MANKIND JOHNNY AND THE DEAD JOHNNY AND THE BOMB NATION DODGER TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS 61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA A Random House Group Company www.transworldbooks.co.uk First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Doubleday an imprint of Transworld Publishers Copyright © Terry and Lyn Pratchett 2013 Terry Pratchett has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work. Discworld® and Unseen University® are trademarks registered by Terry Pratchett A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781448171194 ISBN 9780857522276 This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly. Addresses for Random House Group Ltd companies outside the UK can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk The Random House Group Ltd Reg. No. 954009 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1 
Reaper Man - Terry Pratchett	----	Reaper Man Terry Pratchett REAPER MAN The Morris dance is common to all inhabited worlds in the multiverse. It is danced under blue skies to celebrate the quickening of the soil and under bare stars because it’s springtime and with any luck the carbon dioxide will unfreeze again. The imperative is felt by deep-sea beings who have never seen the sun and urban humans whose only connection with the cycles of nature is that their Volvo once ran over a sheep. It is danced innocently by raggedy-bearded young mathematicians to an inexpert accordion rendering of “Mrs. Widgery’s Lodger” and ruthlessly by such as the Ninja Morris Men of New Ankh, who can do strange and terrible things with a simple handkerchief and a bell. And it is never danced properly. Except on the Discworld, which is flat and supported on the backs of four elephants which travel through space on the shell of Great A’Tuin, the world turtle. And even there, only in one place have they got it right. It’s a small village high in the Ramtop Mountains, where the big and simple secret is handed down across the generations. There, the men dance on the first day of spring, backwards and forwards, bells tied under their knees, white shirts flapping. People come and watch. There’s an ox roast afterwards, and it’s generally considered a nice day out for all the family. But that isn’t the secret. The secret is the other dance. And that won’t happen for a while yet. There is a ticking, such as might be made by a clock. And, indeed, in the sky there is a clock, and the ticking of freshly minted seconds flows out from it. At least, it looks a clock. But it is in fact exactly the opposite of a clock, and the biggest hand goes around just once. There is a plain under a dim sky. It is covered with gentle rolling curves that might remind you of something else if you saw it from a long way away, and if you did see it from a long way away you’d be very glad that you were, in fact, a long way away. Three grey figures floated just above it. Exactly what they were can’t be described in normal language. Some people might call them cherubs, although there was nothing rosycheeked about them. They might be numbered among those who see to it that gravity operates and that time stays separate from space. Call them auditors. Auditors of reality. They were in conversation without speaking. They didn’t need to speak. They just changed reality so that they had spoken. One said, It has never happened before. Can it be done? One said, It will have to be done. There is a personality. Personalities come to an end. Only forces endure. It said this with a certain satisfaction. One said, Besides. . . there have been irregularities. Where you get personality, you get irregularities. Well-known fact. One said, He has worked inefficiently? One said, No. We can’t get him there. One said, That is the point. The word is him. Becoming a personality is inefficient. We don’t want it to spread. Supposing gravity developed a personality? Supposing it decided to like people? One said, Got a crush on them, sort of thing? One said, in a voice that would have been even chillier if it was not already at absolute zero, No. One said, Sorry. Just my little joke. One said, Besides, sometimes he wonders about his job. Such speculation is dangerous. One said, No argument there. One said, Then we are agreed? One, who seemed to have been thinking about something, said, Just one moment. Did you not just use the singular pronoun, “my’? Not developing a personality, are you? One said, guiltily, Who? Us? One said. Where there is personality, there is discord. One said. Yes. Yes. Very true. One said, All right. But watch it in future. One said, Then we are agreed? They looked up at the face of Azrael, outlined against the sky. In fact, it was the sky. Azrael nodded, slowly. One said, Very well. Where is this place? One said, It is the Discworld. It rides through space on the back of a giant turtle. One said, Oh, one of that sort. I hate them. One said, You’re doing it again. You said ‘I’. One said, No! No! I didn’t! I never said ‘I’! . . . oh, bugger . . . It burst into flame. It burned in the same way that a small cloud of vapour burns, quickly and with no residual mess. Almost immediately, another one appeared. It was identical in appearance to its vanished sibling. One said, Let that be a lesson. To become a personality is to end. And now . . . let us go. Azrael watched them skim away. It is hard to fathom the thoughts of a creature so big that, in real space, his length would be measured only in terms of the speed of light. But he turned his enormous bulk and, with eyes that stars could be lost in, sought among the myriad worlds for a flat one. On the back of a turtle. The Discworld - world and mirror of worlds. It sounded interesting. And, in his prison of a billion years, Azrael was bored. And this is the room where the future pours into the past via the pinch of the now. Timers line the walls. Not hour-glasses, although they have the same shape. Not egg-timers, such as you might buy as a souvenir attached to a small board with the name of the holiday resort of your choice jauntily inscribed on it by someone with the same sense of style as a jelly doughnut. It’s not even sand in there. It’s seconds, endlessly turning the maybe into the was. And every lifetimer has a name on it. And the room is full of the soft hissing of people living. Picture the scene . . . And now add the sharp clicking of bone on stone, getting closer. A dark shape crosses the field of vision and moves up the endless shelves of sibilant glassware. Click, click. Here’s a glass with the top bulb nearly empty. Bone fingers rise and reach out. Select. And another. Select. And more. Many, many more. Select, Select. It’s all in a day’s work. Or it would be, if days existed here. Click, click, select, the dark shape moves patiently along the rows. And stops. And hesitates. Because here’s a small gold timer, not much bigger than a watch. It wasn’t there yesterday, or wouldn’t have been if yesterdays existed here. Bony fingers close around it and hold it up to the light. It’s got a name on it, in small capital letters. The name is DEATH. Death put down the timer, and then picked it up again. The sands of time were already pouring through. He turned it over experimentally, just in case. The sand went on pouring, only now it was going upwards. He hadn’t really expected anything else. It meant that, even if tomorrows could exist here, there weren’t going to be any. Not any more. There was a movement in the air behind him. Death turned slowly, and addressed the figure that wavered indistinctly in the gloom. WHY? It told him. BUT THAT IS . . . NOT RIGHT. It told him that No, it was right. Not a muscle moved on Death’s face, because he hadn’t got any. I SHALL APPEAL. It told him, he should know that there was no appeal. Never any appeal. Never any appeal. Death thought about this, and then he said: I HAVE ALWAYS DONE MY DUTY AS I SAW FIT. The figure floated closer. It looked vaguely like a grey-robed and hooded monk. It told him, We know. That is why we’re letting you keep the horse. The sun was near the horizon. The shortest-lived creatures on the Disc were mayflies, which barely make it through twenty-four hours. Two of the oldest zigzagged aimlessly over the waters of a trout stream, discussing history with some younger members of the evening hatching. “You don’t get the kind of sun now that you used to get, “ said one of them. “You’re right there. We had proper sun in the good old hours. It were all yellow. None of this red stuff.” “It were higher, too.” “It was. You’re right.” “And nymphs and larvae showed you a bit of respect.” “They did. They did,” said the other mayfly vehemently. “I reckon, if mayflies these hours behaved a bit better, we’d still be having proper sun.” The younger mayflies listened politely. “I remember, “ said one of the oldest mayflies, “when all this was fields, as far as you could see.” The younger mayflies looked around. “It’s still fields,” one of them ventured, after a polite interval. “I remember when it was better fields,” said the old mayfly sharply. “Yeah, “ said his colleague. “And there was a cow.” “That’s right! You’re right! I remember that cow! Stood right over there for, oh, forty, fifty minutes. It was brown, as I recall.” “You don’t get cows like that these hours.” “You don’t get cows at all.” “What’s a cow?” said one of the hatchlings. “See?” said the oldest mayfly triumphantly. “That’s modern Ephemeroptera for you. “ It paused. “What were we doing before we were talking about the sun?” “Zigzagging aimlessly over the water,” said one of the young flies. This was a fair bet in any case. “No, before that.” “Er . . . you were telling us about the Great Trout.” “Ah. Yes. Right. The Trout. Well, you see, if you’ve been a good mayfly, zigzagging up and down properly -” “- taking heed of your elders and betters -” “- yes, and taking heed of your elders and betters, then eventually the Great Trout -” Clop Clop “Yes?” said one of the younger mayflies. There was no reply. “The Great Trout what?” said another mayfly, nervously. They looked down at a series of expanding concentric rings on the water. “The holy sign!” said a mayfly. ”I remember being told about that! A Great Circle in the water! Thus shall be the sign of the Great Trout!” The oldest of the young mayflies watched the water thoughtfully. It was beginning to realise that, as the most senior fly present, it now had the privilege of hovering closest to the surface. “They say, “ said the mayfly at the top of the zigzagging crowd, “that when the Great Trout comes for you, you go to a land flowing with . . . flowing with . . .” Mayflies don’t eat. It was at a loss. ”Flowing with water, “ it finished lamely. “I wonder, “ said the oldest mayfly. “It must be really good there, “ said the youngest. “Oh? Why?” “ ‘Cos no-one ever wants to come back.” Whereas the oldest things on the Discworld were the famous Counting Pines, which grow right on the permanent snowline of the high Ramtop Mountains. The Counting Pine is one of the few known examples of borrowed evolution. Most species do their own evolving, making it up as they go along, which is the way Nature intended. And this is all very natural and organic and in tune with mysterious cycles of the cosmos, which believes that there’s nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error to give a species moral fibre and, in some cases, backbone. This is probably fine from the species’ point of view, but from the perspective of the actual individuals involved it can be a real pig, or at least a small pink root-eating reptile that might one day evolve into a real pig. So the Counting Pines avoided all this by letting other vegetables do their evolving for them. A pine seed, coming to rest anywhere on the Disc, immediately picks up the most effective local genetic code via morphic resonance and grows into whatever best suits the soil and climate, usually doing much better at it than the native trees themselves, which it usually usurps. What makes the Counting Pines particularly noteworthy, however, is the way they count. Being dimly aware that human beings had learned to tell the age of a tree by counting the rings, the original Counting Pines decided that this was why humans cut trees down. Overnight every Counting Pine readjusted its genetic code to produce, at about eye-level on its trunk, in pale letters, its precise age. Within a year they were felled almost into extinction by the ornamental house number plate industry, and only a very few survive in hard-to-reach areas. The six Counting Pines in this clump were listening to the oldest, whose gnarled trunk declared it to be thirty-one thousand, seven hundred and thirty-four years old. The conversation took seventeen years, but has been speeded up. “I remember when all this wasn’t fields.” The pines stared out over a thousand miles of landscape. The sky flickered like a bad special effect from a time travel movie. Snow appeared, stayed for an instant, and melted. “What was it, then?” said the nearest pine. “Ice. If you can call it ice. We had proper glaciers in those days. Not like the ice you get now, here one season and gone the next. It hung around for ages.” “What happened to it, then?” “It went.” “Went where?” “Where things go. Everything’s always rushing off.” “Wow. That was a sharp one.” “What was?” “That winter just then.” “Call that a winter? When I was a sapling we had winters -” Then the tree vanished. After a shocked pause for a couple of years, one of the clump said: “He just went! Just like that! One day he was here, next he was gone!” If the other trees had been humans, they would have shuffled their feet. “It happens, lad,” said one of them, carefully. ”He’s been taken to a Better Place, you can be sure of that. He was a good tree.” The young tree, which was a mere five thousand, one hundred and eleven years old, said: “What sort of Better Place?” “We’re not sure, “ said one of the clump. It trembled uneasily in a week-long gale. ”But we think it involves . . . sawdust.” Since the trees were unable even to sense any event that took place in less than a day, they never heard the sound of axes. Windle Poons, oldest wizard in the entire faculty of Unseen University - home of magic, wizardry and big dinners - was also going to die. He knew it, in a frail and shaky sort of way. Of course, he mused, as he wheeled his wheel-chair over the flagstones towards his ground-floor study, in a general sort of way everyone knew they were going to die, even the common people. No-one knew where you were before you were born, but when you were born, it wasn’t long before you found you’d arrived with your return ticket already punched. But wizards really knew. Not if death involved violence or murder, of course, but if the cause of death was simply a case of running out of life then . . . well, you knew. You generally got the premonition in time to return your library books and make sure your best suit was clean and borrow quite large sums of money from your friends. He was one hundred and thirty. It occurred to him that for most of his life he’d been an old man. Didn’t seem fair, really. And no-one had said anything. He’d mentioned it in the Uncommon Room last week, and no-one had taken the hint. And at lunch today they’d hardly spoken to him. Even his old so-called friends seemed to be avoiding him, and he wasn’t even trying to borrow money. It was like not having your birthday remembered, only worse. He was going to die all alone, and no-one cared. He bumped the door open with the wheel of the chair and fumbled on the table by the door for the tinder box. That was another thing. Hardly anyone used tinder boxes these days. They bought the big smelly yellow matches the alchemists made. Windle disapproved. Fire was important. You shouldn’t be able to switch it on just like that, it didn’t show any respect. That was people these days, always rushing around and . . . fires. Yes, it had been a lot warmer in the old days, too. The kind of fires they had these days didn’t warm you up unless you were nearly on top of them. It was something in the wood . . . it was the wrong sort of wood. Everything was wrong these days. More thin. More fuzzy. No real life in anything. And the days were shorter. Mmm. Something had gone wrong with the days. They were shorter days. Mmm. Every day took an age to go by, which was odd, because days plural went past like a stampede. There weren’t many things people wanted a 130-year-old wizard to do, and Windle had got into the habit of arriving at the dining-table up to two hours before each meal, simply to pass the time. Endless days, going by fast. Didn’t make sense. Mmm. Mind you, you didn’t get the sense now that you used to get in the old days. And they let the University be run by mere boys now. In the old days it had been run by proper wizards, great big men built like barges, the kind of wizards you could look up to. Then suddenly they’d all gone off somewhere and Windle was being patronised by these boys who still had some of their own teeth. Like that Ridcully lad. Windle remembered him clearly. Thin lad, sticking-out ears, never wiped his nose properly, cried for his mother in the dorm on the first night. Always up to mischief. Someone had tried to tell Windle that Ridcully was Archchancellor now. Mmm. They must think he was daft. Where was that damn tinder box? Fingers . . . you used to get proper fingers in the old days . . . Someone pulled the covers off a lantern. Someone else pushed a drink into his groping hand. “Surprise!” In the hall of the house of Death is a clock with a pendulum like a blade but with no hands, because in the house of Death there is no time but the present. (There was. of course. a present before the present now, but that was also the present. It was just an older one.) The pendulum is a blade that would have made Edgar Allan Poe give it all up and start again as a stand-up comedian on the scampi-in-a-casket circuit. It swings with a faint whum-whum noise, gently slicing thin rashers of interval from the bacon of eternity. Death stalked past the clock and into the sombre gloom of his study. Albert, his servant, was waiting for him with the towel and dusters. “Good morning, master.” Death sat down silently in his big chair. Albert draped the towel over the angular shoulders. “Another nice day,” he said, conversationally. Death said nothing. Albert flapped the polishing cloth and pulled back Death’s cowl. ALBERT. Death pulled out the tiny golden timer. DO YOU SEE THIS? “Yes, sir. Very nice. Never seen one like that before. Whose is it?” MINE. Albert’s eyes swivelled sideways. On one corner of Death’s desk was a large timer in a black frame. It contained no sand. “I thought that one was yours, sir?” he said. IT WAS. NOW THIS IS. A RETIREMENT PRESENT. FROM AZRAEL HIMSELF. Albert peered at the thing in Death’s hand. “But . . . the sand, sir. It’s pouring.” QUITE SO. “But that means . . . I mean . . . ?” IT MEANS THAT ONE DAY THE SAND WILL ALL BE POURED, ALBERT. “I know that, sir, but . . . you . . . I thought Time was something that happened to other people, sir. Doesn’t it? Not to you, sir. “ By the end of the sentence Albert’s voice was beseeching. Death pulled off the towel and stood up. COME WITH ME. “But you’re Death, master,” said Albert, running crab-legged after the tall figure as it led the way out into the hall and down the passage to the stable. “This isn’t some sort of joke, is it?” he added hopefully. I AM NOT KNOWN FOR MY SENSE OF FUN. “Well, of course not, no offense meant. But listen, you can’t die. because you’re Death, you’d have to happen to yourself, it’d be like that snake that eats its own tail -” NEVERTHELESS, I AM GOING TO DIE. THERE IS NO APPEAL. “But what will happen to me?” Albert said. Terror glittered on his words like flakes of metal on the edge of a knife. THERE WILL BE A NEW DEATH. Albert drew himself up. “I really don’t think I could serve a new master,” he said. THEN GO BACK INTO THE WORLD. I WILL GIVE YOU MONEY. YOU HAVE BEEN A GOOD SERVANT, ALBERT. “But if I go back -” YES, said Death. YOU WILL DIE. In the warm, horsey gloom of the stable, Death’s pale horse looked up from its oats and gave a little whinny of greeting. The horse’s name was Binky. He was a real horse. Death had tried fiery steeds and skeletal horses in the past, and found them impractical, especially the fiery ones, which tended to set light to their own bedding and stand in the middle of it looking embarrassed. Death took the saddle down from its hook and glanced at Albert, who was suffering a crisis of conscience. Thousands of years before, Albert had opted to serve Death rather than die. He wasn’t exactly immortal. Real time was forbidden in Death’s realm. There was only the ever-changing now, but it went on for a very long time. He had less than two months of real time left; he hoarded his days like bars of gold. “I, er . . . “ he began. “That is -” YOU FEAR TO DIE? “It’s not that I don’t want . . . I mean, I’ve always . . . it’s just that life is a habit that’s hard to break . . .” Death watched him curiously, as one might watch a beetle that had landed on its back and couldn’t turn over. Finally Albert lapsed into silence. I UNDERSTAND, said Death, unhooking Binky’s bridle. “But you don’t seem worried! You’re really going to die?” YES. IT WILL BE A GREAT ADVENTURE. “It will? You’re not afraid?” I DO NOT KNOW HOW TO BE AFRAID. “I could show you, if you like,” Albert ventured. NO. I SHOULD LIKE TO LEARN BY MYSELF. I SHALL HAVE EXPERIENCES. AT LAST. “Master . . . if you go, will there be -?” A NEW DEATH WILL ARISE FROM THE MINDS OF THE LIVING, ALBERT. “Oh. “ Albert looked relieved. “You don’t happen to know what he’ll be like, do you?” NO. “Perhaps I’d better, you know, clean the place up a bit, get an inventory prepared, that sort of thing?” GOOD IDEA, said Death, as kindly as possible. WHEN I SEE THE NEW DEATH, I SHALL HEARTILY RECOMMEND YOU. “Oh. You’ll see him, then?” OH. YES. AND I MUST LEAVE NOW. “What. so soon?” CERTAINLY. MUSTN’T WASTE TIME! Death adjusted the saddle, and then turned and held the tiny hour-glass proudly in front of Albert’s hooked nose. SEE! I HAVE TIME. AT LAST, I HAVE TIME Albert backed away nervously. “And now that you have it, what are you going to do with it?” he said. Death mounted his horse. I AM GOING TO SPEND IT. The party was in full swing. The banner with the legend ‘Goodebye Windle 130 Gloriouse Years’ was dripping a bit in the heat. Things were getting to the point where there was nothing to drink but the punch and nothing to eat but the strange yellow dip with the highly suspicious tortillas and nobody minded. The wizards chatted with the forced jolliness of people who see one another all day and are now seeing one another all evening. In the middle of it all Windle Poons sat with a huge glass of rum and a funny hat on his head. He was almost in tears. “A genuine Going-Away party!” he kept muttering. “Haven’t had one of them since old “Scratcher” He Went Away, “ the capital letters fell into place easily, “back in, mm, the Year of the Intimidating, mm, Porpoise. Thought everyone had forgotten about ‘em.” “The Librarian looked up the details for us, “ said the Bursar, indicating a large orangutan who was trying to blow into a party squeaker. “He also made the banana dip. I hope someone eats it soon.” He leaned down. “Can I help you to some more potato salad?” he said, in the loud deliberate voice used for talking to imbeciles and old people. Windle cupped a trembling hand to his ear. “What? What?” “More! Salad! Windle?” “No, thank you.” “Another sausage, then?” “What?” “Sausage!” “They give me terrible gas all night,” said Windle. He considered this for a moment, and then took five. “Er,” shouted the Bursar, “do you happen to know what time -?” “Eh?” “What! Time?” “Half past nine,” said Windle, promptly if indistinctly. “Well, that’s nice, “ said the Bursar. “It gives you the rest of the evening, er, free.” Windle rummaged in the dreadful recesses of his wheelchair, a graveyard for old cushions, dog-eared books and ancient, half-sucked sweets. He flourished a small green-covered book and pushed it into the Bursar’s hands. The Bursar turned it over. Scrawled on the cover were the words: Windle Poons Hys Dyary. A piece of bacon rind marked today’s date. Under Things to Do, a crabbed hand had written: Die. The Bursar couldn’t stop himself from turning the page. Yes. Under tomorrow’s date, Things to Do: Get Born. His gaze slid sideways to a small table at the side of the room. Despite the fact that the room was quite crowded, there was an area of clear floor around the table, as if it had some kind of personal space that no-one was about to invade. There had been special instructions in the Going Away ceremony concerning the table. It had to have a black cloth, with a few magic sigils embroidered on it. It had a plate, containing a selection of the better canaps. It had a glass of wine. After considerable discussion among the wizards, a funny paper hat had been added as well. They all had an expectant look. The Bursar took out his watch and flicked open the cover. It was one of the new-fangled pocket watches, with hands. They pointed to a quarter past nine. He shook it. A small hatch opened under the 12 and a very small demon poked its head out and said, “Knock it off, guv’nor, I’m pedalling as fast as I can.” He closed the watch again and looked around desperately. No-one else seemed anxious to come too near Windle Poons. The Bursar felt it was up to him to make polite conversation. He surveyed possible topics. They all presented problems. Windle Poons helped him out. “I’m thinking of coming back as a woman,” he said conversationally. The Bursar opened and shut his mouth a few times. “I’m looking forward to it,” Poons went on. “I think it might, mm, be jolly good fun.” The Bursar riffled desperately through his limited repertoire of small talk relating to women. He leaned down to Windle’s gnarled ear. “Isn’t there rather a lot of, “ he struck out aimlessly, “washing things? And making beds and cookery and all that sort of thing?” “Not in the kind of, mm, life I have in mind,” said Windle firmly. The Bursar shut his mouth. The Archchancellor banged on a table with a spoon. “Brothers -’ he began, when there was something approaching silence. This prompted a loud and ragged chorus of cheering. “- As you all know we are here tonight to mark the, ah, retirement” - nervous laughter – “‘of our old friend and colleague Windle Poons. You know, seeing old Windle sitting here tonight puts me in mind, as luck would have it, of the story of the cow with three wooden legs. It appears that there was this cow, and -” The Bursar let his mind wander. He knew the story. The Archchancellor always mucked up the punch line, and in any case he had other things on his mind. He kept looking back at the little table. The Bursar was a kindly if nervous soul, and quite enjoyed his job. Apart from anything else, no other wizard wanted it. Lots of wizards wanted to be Archchancellor, for example, or the head of one of the eight orders of magic, but practically no wizards wanted to spend lots of time in an office shuffling bits of paper and doing sums. All the paperwork of the University tended to accumulate in the Bursar’s office, which meant that he went to bed tired at nights but at least slept soundly and didn’t have to check very hard for unexpected scorpions in his night-shirt. Killing off a wizard of a higher grade was a recognised way of getting advancement in the orders. However, the only person likely to want to kill the Bursar was someone else who derived a quiet pleasure from columns of numbers, all neatly arranged, and people like that don’t often go in for murder. He recalled his childhood, long ago, in the Ramtop Mountains. He and his sister used to leave a glass of wine and a cake out every Hogswatchnight for the Hogfather. Things had been different, then. He’d been a lot younger and hadn’t known much and had probably been a lot happier. For example, he hadn’t known that he might one day be a wizard and join other wizards in leaving a glass of wine and a cake and a rather suspect chicken vol-au-vent and a paper party hat for . . . . . . someone else. There’d been Hogswatch parties, too, when he was a little boy. They’d always follow a certain pattern. Just when all the children were nearly sick with excitement, one of the grown-ups would say, archly, “I think we’re going to have a special visitor!” and, amazingly on cue, there’d be a suspicious ringing of hog bells outside the window and in would come . . . . . . in would come . . . The Bursar shook his head. Someone’s granddad in false whiskers, of course. Some jolly old boy with a sack of toys, stamping the snow off his boots. Someone who gave you something. Whereas tonight . . . Of course, old Windle probably felt different about it. After one hundred and thirty years, death probably had a certain attraction. You probably became quite interested in finding out what happened next. The Archchancellor’s convoluted anecdote wound jerkily to its close. The assembled wizards laughed dutifully, and then tried to work out the joke. The Bursar looked surreptitiously at his watch. It was now twenty minutes past nine. Windle Poons made a speech. It was long and rambling and disjointed and went on about the good old days and he seemed to think that most of the people around him were people who had been, in fact, dead for about fifty years, but that didn’t matter because you got into the habit of not listening to old Windle. The Bursar couldn’t tear his eyes away from his watch. From inside came the squeak of the treadle as the demon patiently pedalled his way towards infinity. Twenty-five minutes past the hour. The Bursar wondered how it was supposed to happen. Did you hear - I think we’re going to have a very special visitor - hoofbeats outside? Did the door actually open or did He come through it? Silly question. He was renowned for His ability to get into sealed places - especially into sealed places, if you thought about it logically. Seal yourself in anywhere and it was only a matter of time. The Bursar hoped He’d use the door properly. His nerves were twanging as it was. The conversational level was dropping. Quite a few other wizards, the Bursar noticed, were glancing at the door. Windle was at the centre of a very tactfully widening circle. No-one was actually avoiding him, it was just that an apparent random Brownian motion was gently moving everyone away. Wizards can see Death. And when a wizard dies, Death arrives in person to usher him into the Beyond. The Bursar wondered why this was considered a plus - “Don’t know what you’re all looking at,” said Windle, cheerfully. The Bursar opened his watch. The hatch under the 12 snapped up. “Can you knock it off with all this shaking around?” squeaked the demon. “I keeps on losing count.” “Sorry, “ the Bursar hissed. It was nine twenty-nine. The Archchancellor stepped forward. “Bye, then, Windle,” he said, shaking the old man’s parchment-like hand. “The old place won’t seem the same without you.” “Don’t know how we’ll manage,” said the Bursar, thankfully. “Good luck in the next life,” said the Dean. “Drop in if you’re ever passing and happen to, you know, remember who you’ve been.” “Don’t be a stranger, you hear?” said the Archchancellor. Windle Poons nodded amiably. He hadn’t heard what they were saying. He nodded on general principles. The wizards, as one man, faced the door. The hatch under the 12 snapped up again. “Bing bing bong bing,” said the demon. “Bingely-bingely bong bing bing.” “What?” said the Bursar, jolted. “Half past nine, “ said the demon. The wizards turned to Windle Poons. They looked faintly accusing. “What’re you all looking at?” he said. The seconds hand on the watch squeaked onwards. “How are you feeling?” said the Dean loudly. “Never felt better,” said Windle. “Is there any more of that, mm, rum left?” The assembled wizards watched him pour a generous measure into his beaker. “You want to go easy on that stuff,” said the Dean nervously. “Good health!” said Windle Poons. The Archchancellor drummed his fingers on the table. “Mr. Poons, “ he said, “are you quite sure?” Windle had gone off at a tangent. “Any more of these toturerillas? Not that I call it proper food,” he said, “dippin’ bits of hard bikky in sludge, what’s so special about that? What I could do with right now is one of Mr. Dibbler’s famous meat pies -” And then he died. The Archchancellor glanced at his fellow wizards, and then tiptoed across to the wheelchair and lifted a blueveined wrist to check the pulse. He shook his head. “That’s the way I want to go, “ said the Dean. “What, muttering about meat pies?” said the Bursar. “No. Late.” “Hold on. Hold on,” said the Archchancellor. “This isn’t right, you know. According to tradition, Death himself turns up for the death of a wiz - “ “Perhaps He was busy, “ said the Bursar hurriedly. “That’s right,” said the Dean. “Bit of a serious flu epidemic over Quirm way, I’m told.” “Quite a storm last night, too. Lots of shipwrecks, I daresay, “ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “And of course it’s springtime, when you get a great many avalanches in the mountains.” “And plagues.” The Archchancellor stroked his beard thoughtfully. “Hmm, “ he said. Alone of all the creatures in the world, trolls believe that all living things go through Time backwards. If the past is visible and the future is hidden, they say, then it means you must be facing the wrong way. Everything alive is going through life back to front. And this is a very interesting idea, considering it was invented by a race who spend most of their time hitting one another on the head with rocks. Whichever way around it is, Time is something that living creatures possess. Death galloped down through towering black clouds. And now he had Time, too. The time of his life. Windle Poons peered into the darkness. “Hallo?” he said. “Hallo. Anyone there? What ho?” There was a distant, forlorn soughing, as of wind at the end of a tunnel. “Come out. come out, wherever you are,” said Windle, his voice trembling with mad cheerfulness. “Don’t worry. I’m quite looking forward to it, to tell the truth.” He clapped his spiritual hands and rubbed them together with forced enthusiasm. “Get a move on. Some of us have got new lives to go to,” he said. The darkness remained inert. There was no shape, no sound. It was void, without form. The spirit of Windle Poons moved on the face of the darkness. It shook its head. “Blow this for a lark,” it muttered. “This isn’t right at all.” It hung around for a while and then, because there didn’t seem anything else for it, headed for the only home it had ever known. It was a home he’d occupied for one hundred and thirty years. It wasn’t expecting him back and put up a lot of resistance. You either had to be very determined or very powerful to overcome that sort of thing, but Windle Poons had been a wizard for more than a century. Besides, it was like breaking into your own house, the old familiar property that you’d lived in for years. You knew where the metaphorical window was that didn’t shut properly. In short, Windle Poons went back to Windle Poons. Wizards don’t believe in gods in the same way that most people don’t find it necessary to believe in, say, tables. They know they’re there, they know they’re there for a purpose, they’d probably agree that they have a place in a well-organised universe, but they wouldn’t see the point of believing, of going around saying, “O great table, without whom we are as naught”. Anyway, either the gods are there whether you believe or not, or exist only as a function of the belief, so either way you might as well ignore the whole business and, as it were, eat off your knees. Nevertheless, there is a small chapel off the University’s Great Hall, because while the wizards stand right behind the philosophy as outlined above, you don’t become a success~ wizard by getting up gods’ noses even if those noses only exist in an ethereal or metaphorical sense. Because while wizards don’t believe in gods they know for a fact that gods believe in gods. And in this chapel lay the body of Windle Poons. The University had instituted twenty-four hours sitting-in-state ever since the embarrassing affair thirty years previously with the late Prissal ‘Merry Rankster’ Teatar. The body of Windle Poons opened its eyes. Two coins jingled on to the stone floor. The hands, crossed over the chest, unclenched. Windle raised his head. Some idiot had stuck a lily in his stomach. His eyes swivelled sideways. There was a candle on either side of his head. He raised his head some more. There were two more candles down there, too. Thank goodness for old Teatar, he thought. Otherwise I’d already be looking at the underside of a rather cheap pine lid. Funny thing, he thought. I’m thinking. Clearly. Wow. Windle lay back, feeling his spirit refilling his body like gleaming molten metal filling through a mould. White-hot thoughts seared across the darkness of his brain, fired sluggish neurones into action. It was never like this when I was alive. But I’m not dead. Not alive and not dead. Sort of non-alive. Or un-dead. Oh dear . . . He swung himself upright. Muscles that hadn’t worked properly for seventy or eighty years jerked into overdrive. For the first time in his entire life, he corrected himself, better make that ‘period of existence’, Windle Poons’ body was entirely under Windle Poons’ control. And Windle Poons‘ spirit wasn’t about to take any lip from a bunch of muscles. Now the body stood up. The knee joints resisted for a while, but they were no more able to withstand the onslaught of will-power than a sick mosquito can withstand a blowtorch. The door to the chapel was locked. However, Windle found that the merest pressure was enough to pull the lock out of the woodwork and leave fingerprints in the metal of the door handle. “Oh, goodness, “ he said. He piloted himself out into the corridor. The distant clatter of cutlery and the buzz of voices suggested that one of the University’s four daily meals was in progress. He wondered whether you were allowed to eat when you were dead. Probably not, he thought. And could he eat, anyway? It wasn’t that he wasn’t hungry. It was just that . . . well, he knew how to think, and walking and moving were just a matter of twitching some fairly obvious nerves, but how exactly did your stomach work? It began to dawn on Windle that the human body is not run by the brain, despite the brain’s opinion on the matter. In fact it’s run by dozens of complex automatic systems, all whirring and clicking away with the kind of precision that isn’t noticed until it breaks down. He surveyed himself from the control room of his skull. He looked at the silent chemical factory of his liver with the same sinking feeling as a canoe builder might survey the controls of a computerised super-tanker. The mysteries of his kidneys awaited Windle’s mastery of renal control. What, when you got right down to it, was a spleen? And how did you make it go? His heart sank. Or, rather, it didn’t. “Oh, gods,” muttered Windle, and leaned against the wall. How did it work, now? He prodded a few, likely-looking nerves. Was it systolic . . . diastolic . . . systolic . . . diastolic . . .? And then there were the lungs, too . . . Like a conjurer keeping eighteen plates spinning at the same time - like a man trying to programme a video recorder from an instruction manual translated from Japanese into Dutch by a Korean rice-husker - like, in fact, a man finding out what total self-control really means, Windle Poons lurched onwards. The wizards of Unseen University set great store by big, solid meals. A man couldn’t be expected to get down to some serious wizarding, they held, without soup, fish, game, several huge plates of meat, a pie or two, something big and wobbly with cream on it, little savoury things on toast, fruit, nuts and a brick-thick mint with the coffee. It gave him a lining to his stomach. It was also important that the meals were served at regular times. It was what gave the day shape, they said. Except for the Bursar, of course. He didn’t eat much, but lived on his nerves. He was certain he was anorectic, because every time he looked in a mirror he saw a fat man. It was the Archchancellor, standing behind him and shouting at him. And it was the Bursar’s unfortunate fate to be sitting opposite the doors when Windle Poons smashed them in because it was easier than fiddling with the handles. He bit through his wooden spoon. The wizards revolved on their benches to stare. Windle Poons swayed for a moment, assembling control of vocal chords, lips and tongue, and then said: “I think I may be able to metabolise alcohol.” The Archchancellor was the first one to recover. “Windle!” he said. “We thought you were dead!” He had to admit that it wasn’t a very good line. You didn’t put people on a slab with candles and lilies all round them because you think they’ve got a bit of a headache and want a nice lie down for half an hour. Windle took a few steps forward. The nearest wizards fell over themselves in an effort to get away. “I am dead, you bloody young fool,” he muttered. “Think I go around looking like this all the time? Good grief. “ He glared at the assembled wizardry. “Anyone here know what a spleen is supposed to do?” He reached the table, and managed to sit down. “Probably something to do with the digestion,” he said. “Funny thing, you can go through your whole life with the bloody thing ticking away or whatever it does, gurgling or whatever, and you never know what the hell it’s actually for. It’s Like when you’re lying in bed of a night and you hear your stomach or something go pripple-ipple-goinnng. It’s just a gurgle to you, but who knows what marvellously complex chemical exchange processes are really going -” “You’re an undead?” said the Bursar, managing to get the words out at last. “I didn’t ask to be,” said the late Windle Poons irritably looking at the food and wondering how the blazes one went about turning it into Windle Poons. “I only came back because there was nowhere else to go. Think I want to be here?” “But surely,” said the Archchancellor, “didn’t . . . you know the fella, the one with the skull and the scythe -” “Never saw him,” said Windle, shortly, inspecting the nearest dishes. “Really takes it out of you, this un-dyin’.” The wizards made frantic signals to one another over his head. He looked up and glared at them. “And don’t think I can’t see all them frantic signals,” he said. And he was amazed to realise that this was true. Eyes that had viewed the past sixty years trough a pale, fuzzy veil had been bullied into operating like the finest optical machinery. In fact two main bodies of thought were occupying the minds of the wizards of Unseen University. What was being thought by most of the wizards was: this is terrible, is it really old Windle in there, he was such a sweet old buffer, how can we get rid of it? How can we get rid of it? What was being thought by Windle Poons, in the humming, flashing cockpit of his brain, was: well, it’s bye. There is life after death. And it’s the same one. Just my luck. “Well, “ he said, “ what’re you going to do about it?” It was five minutes later. Half a dozen of the most senior wizards scurried along the draughty corridor in the wake of the Archchancellor, whose robes billowed ?out? behind him. The conversation went like this: “It’s got to be Windle! It even talks like him!” “It’s not old Windle. Old Windle was a lot older!” “Older? Older than dead?” “He’s said he wants his old bedroom back, and I don’t see why I should have to move out -” “Did you see his eyes? Like gimlets!” “Eh? What? What d’you mean? You mean like that dwarf who runs the delicatessen on Cable Street?” “I mean like they bore into you!” “- it’s got a lovely view of the gardens and I’ve had all my stuff moved in and it’s not fair -” “Has this ever happened before?” “Well, there was old Teatar -” “Yes, but he never actually died, he just used to put green paint on his face and push the lid off the coffin and shout “Surprise, surprise -” “ “We’ve never had a zombie here.” “He’s a zombie?” “I think so -” “Does that mean he’ll be playing kettle drums and doing that bimbo dancing all night, then?” “Is that what they do?” “Old Windle? Doesn’t sound like his cup of tea. He never liked dancing much when he was alive -” “Anyway, you can’t trust those voodoo gods. Never trust a god who grins all the time and wears a top hat, that’s my motto.” “- I’m damned if I’m going to give up my bedroom to a zombie after waiting years for it -” “Is it? That’s a funny motto.” Windle Poons strolled around the inside of his own head again. Strange thing, this. Now he was dead, or not living any more, or whatever he was, his mind felt clearer than it had ever done. And control seemed to be getting easier, too. He hardly had to bother about the whole respiratory thing, the spleen seemed to be working after a fashion, the senses were operating at full speed. The digestive system was still a bit of a mystery, though. He looked at himself in a silver plate. He still looked dead. Pale face, red under the eyes. A dead body. Operating but still, basically, dead. Was that fair? Was that justice? Was that a proper reward for being a firm believer in reincarnation for almost 130 years? You come back as a corpse? No wonder the undead were traditionally considered to be very angry. Something wonderful, if you took the long view, was about to happen. If you took the short or medium view, something horrible was about to happen. It’s like the difference between seeing a beautiful new star in the winter sky and actually being close to the supernova. It’s the difference between the beauty of morning dew on a cobweb and actually being a fly. It was something that wouldn’t normally have happened for thousands of years. It was about to happen now. It was about to happen at the back of a disused cupboard in a tumble-down cellar in the Shades, the oldest and most disreputable part of Ankh-Morpork. Plop. It was a sound as soft as the first drop of rain on a century of dust. “Maybe we could get a black cat to walk across his coffin.” “He hasn’t got a coffin!” wailed the Bursar, whose grip on sanity was always slightly tentative. “OK, so we buy him a nice new coffin and then we get a black cat to walk across it?” “No, that’s stupid. We’ve got to make him pass water.” “What?” “Pass water. Undeads can’t do it.” The wizards, who had crowded into the Archchancellor’s study, gave this statement their full, fascinated attention. “You sure?” said the Dean. “Well-known fact,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes flatly. “He used to pass water all the time when he was alive, “ said the Dean doubtfully. “Not when he’s dead, though.” “Yeah? Makes sense.” “Running water, “ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes suddenly. “It’s running water. Sorry. They can’t cross over it.” “Well, I can’t cross running water, either,” said the Dean. “Undead! Undead!” The Bursar was becoming a little unglued. “Oh, stop teasing him, “ said the Lecturer, patting the trembling man on the back. “Well, I can’t, “ said the Dean. “I sink.” “Undead can’t cross running water even on a bridge.” “And is he the only one, eh? Are we going to have a plague of them, eh?” said the Lecturer. The Archchancellor drummed his fingers on his desk. “Dead people walking around is unhygienic, “ he said. This silenced them. No-one had ever looked at it that way, but Mustrum Ridcully was just the sort of man who would. Mustrum Ridcully was, depending on your point of view, either the worst or the best Archchancellor that Unseen University had had for a hundred years. There was too much of him, for one thing. It wasn’t that he was particularly big, it was just that he had the kind of huge personality that fits any available space. He’d get roaring drunk at supper and that was fine and acceptable wizardly behaviour. But then he’d go back to his room and play darts all night and leave at five in the morning to go duck hunting. He shouted at people. He tried to jolly them along. And he hardly ever wore proper robes. He’d persuaded Mrs. Whitlow, the University’s dreaded housekeeper, to make him a sort of baggy trouser suit in garish blue and red; twice a day the wizards stood in bemusement and watched him jog purposefully around the University buildings, his pointy wizarding hat tied firmly on his head with string. He’d shout cheerfully up at them, because fundamental to the make-up of people like Mustrum Ridcully is an iron belief that everyone else would like it, too, if only they tried it. “Maybe he’ll die, “ they told one another hopefully, as they watched him try to break the crust on the river Ankh for an early morning dip. “All this healthy exercise can’t be good for him.” Stories trickled back into the University. The Archchancellor had gone two rounds bare-fisted with Detritus, the huge odd-job troll at the Mended Drum. The Archchancellor had arm-wrestled with the Librarian for a bet and, although of course he hadn’t won, still had his arm afterwards. The Archchancellor wanted the University to form its own football team for the big city game on Hogswatchday. Intellectually, Ridcully maintained his position for two reasons. One was that he never, ever, changed his mind about anything. The other was that it took him several minutes to understand any new idea put to him, and this is a very valuable trait in a leader, because anything anyone is still trying to explain to you after two minutes is probably important and anything they give up after a mere minute or so is almost certainly something they shouldn’t have been bothering you with in the first place. There seemed to be more Mustrum Ridcully than one body could reasonably contain. Plop. Plop. In the dark cupboard in the cellar, a whole shelf was already full. There was exactly as much Windle Poons as one body could contain, and he steered it carefully along the corridors. I never expected this, he thought. I don’t deserve this. There’s been a mistake somewhere. He felt a cool breeze on his face and realised he’d tottered out into the open air. Ahead of him were the University’s gates, locked shut. Suddenly Windle Poons felt acutely claustrophobic. He’d waited years to die, and now he had, and here he was stuck in this - this mausoleum with a lot of daft old men, where he’d have to spend the rest of his life being dead. Well, the first thing to do was get out and make a proper end to himself - “Evening, Mr. Poons.” He turned around very slowly and saw the small figure of Modo, the University’s dwarf gardener, who was sitting in the twilight smoking his pipe. “Oh. Hallo, Modo.” “I ‘eard you was took dead, Mr. Poons.” “Er. Yes. I was. “ “See you got over it, then.” Poons nodded, and looked dismally around the walls. The University gates were always locked at sunset every evening, obliging students and staff to climb over the walls. He doubted very much that he’d be able to manage that. He clenched and unclenched his hands. Oh, well . . . “Is there any other gateway around here, Modo?” he said. “No, Mr. Poons.” “Well, where shall we have one?” “Sorry, Mr. Poons?” There was the sound of tortured masonry, followed by a vaguely Poons-shaped hole in the wall. Windle’s hand reached back in and picked up his hat. Modo relit his pipe. You see a lot of interesting things in this job, he thought. In an alley, temporarily out of sight of passers-by, someone called Reg Shoe, who was dead, looked both ways, took a brush and a paint tin out of his pocket, and painted on the wall the words: DEAD YES! GONE NO! . . . and ran away, or at least lurched off at high speed. The Archchancellor opened a window on to the night. “Listen,“ he said. The wizards listened. A dog barked. Somewhere a thief whistled, and was from a neighbouring rooftop. In the distance people were having the kind of quarrel that caused inhabitants of the surrounding streets to open their windows and listen in and make notes. But these were by major themes against the continuous hum and buzz of the city. Ankh-Morpork purred through the night, en route for the dawn, like a huge living creature although, of course, this was only a metaphor. “Well?” said the Senior Wrangler. “I can’t hear anything special.” “That’s what I mean. Dozens of people die in Ankh-Morpork every day. If they’d all started coming back like poor old Windle, don’t you think we’d know about it? The place’d be in uproar. More uproar than usual, I mean.” “There’s always a few undead around,” said the Dean, doubtfully. “Vampires and zombies and banshees and so on.” “Yes, but they’re more naturally undead,” said the Archchancellor. “They know how to carry it off. They’re born to it.” “You can’t be born to be undead,” the Senior Wrangler pointed out. “I mean it’s traditional,” the Archchancellor snapped. “There were some very respectable vampires where I grew up. They’d been in their family for centuries.” “Yes, but they drink blood,” said the Senior Wrangler. “That doesn’t sound very respectable to me.” “I read where they don’t actually need the actual blood,” said the Dean, anxious to assist. “They just need something that’s in blood. Hemogoblins, I think it’s called.” The other wizards looked at him. The Dean shrugged. “Search me,” he said. “Hemo-goblins. That’s what it said. It’s all to do with people having iron in their blood.” “I’m damn sure I’ve got no iron goblins in my blood,” said the Senior-Wrangler. “At least they’re better than zombies,” said the Dean. “A much better class of people. Vampires don’t go shuffling around the whole time.” “People can be turned into zombies, you know,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, in conversational tones. “You don’t even need magic. Just the liver of a certain rare fish and the extract of a particular kind of root. One spoonful, and when you wake up, you ‘re a zombie.” “What type of fish?” said the Senior Wrangler. “How should I know?” “How should anyone know, then?” said the Senior Wrangler nastily. “Did someone wake up one morning and say, hey, here’s an idea, I’ll just turn someone into a zombie, all I’ll need is some rare fish liver and a piece of root, it’s just a matter of finding the right one? You can see the queue outside the hut, can’t you? No. 94, Red Stripefish liver and Maniac root . . . didn’t work. No. 95, Spikefish liver and Dum-dum root . . . didn’t work. No. 96 -” “What are you talking about?” the Archchancellor demanded. “I was simply pointing out the intrinsic unlikelihood of -” “Shut up,” said the Archchancellor, matter-of-factly. “Seems to me . . . seems to me . . . look, death must be going on, right? Death has to happen. That’s what bein’ alive is all about. You’re alive, and then you’re dead. It can’t just stop happening.” “But he didn’t turn up for Windle, “ the Dean pointed out. “Death goes on all the time, “ said Ridcully, ignoring him. ”Most of things die all the time. Even vegetables.” “You won’t think Death ever came for a potato,” said Dean doubtfully. “Death comes for everything,” said the Archchancellor, firmly. The wizards nodded sagely. After a while the Senior Wrangler said, “Do you know, I read the other day that every atom in your body is changed every seven years? New ones keep getting attached and old ones keep on dropping off. It goes on all the time. Marvellous, really. “ The Senior Wrangler could do to a conversation that it takes quite thick treacle to do to the pedals of a precision watch. “Yes? What happens to the old ones?” said Ridcully, interested despite himself. “Dunno. They just float around in the air, I suppose, until they get attached to someone else.” The Archchancellor looked affronted. “What, even wizards?” “Oh, yes. Everyone. It’s part of the miracle of existence.” “Is it? Sounds like bad hygiene to me,” said the Archchancellor. “I suppose there’s no way of stopping ?it? “I shouldn’t think so,” said the Senior Wrangler, doubtfully. “I don’t think you’re supposed to stop miracles of existence. “ “But that means everythin’ is made up of everythin’ else, “ said Ridcully. “Yes. Isn’t it amazing?” “It’s disgusting, is what it is, “ said Ridcully, shortly. “Anyway, the point I’m making . . . the point I’m making . . . “ He paused, trying to remember. “You can’t just abolish death, that’s the point. Death can’t die. That’s like asking a scorpion to sting itself. “ “As a matter of fact,” said the Senior Wrangler, always ready with a handy fact. “you can get a scorpion to -” “Shut up, “ said the Archchancellor. “But we can’t have an undead wizard wandering around,” said the Dean. “There’s no telling what he might take it into his head to do. We’ve got to . . . put a stop to him. For his own good.” “That’s right,” said Ridcully. “For his own good. Shouldn’t be too hard. There must be dozens of ways to deal with an undead.” “Garlic,” said the Senior Wrangler flatly. “Undead don’t like garlic.” “Don’t blame them. Can’t stand the stuff,” said the Dean. “Undead! Undead!” said the Bursar, pointing an accusing finger. They ignored him. “Yes, and then there’s sacred items,” said the Senior Wrangler. “Your basic undead chunkles into dust as soon as look at ‘em. And they don’t like daylight. And if the worst comes to the worst, you bury them at a crossroads. That’s surefire, that is. And you stick a stake in them to make sure they don’t get up again.” “With garlic on it,” said the Bursar. “Well, yes. I suppose you could put garlic on it,” the Senior Wrangler conceded, reluctantly. “I don’t think you should put garlic on a good steak,” said the Dean. ‘Just a little oil and seasoning.” “Red pepper is nice,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, happily. “Shut up,” said the Archchancellor. Plop. The cupboard door’s hinges finally gave way, spilling its contents into the room. Sergeant Colon of the Ankh-Morpork City Guard was on duty. He was guarding the Brass Bridge, the main link between Ankh and Morpork. From theft. When came to crime prevention, Sergeant Colon ??? ~fest to think big.??? ras a school of thought that believed the best way to get recognised as a keen guardian of the law in Ankh-Morpork would be to patrol the streets and alleys, bribe informants, follow suspects and so on. Sergeant Colon played truant from this particular school. Not, he would, hasten to say, because trying to keeping down crime in Ankh-Morpork was like trying to keep down salt in the sea and the only recognition a keen guardian of the law was likely to get was the sort that goes, “Hey, that body in the gutter, isn’t that old Sergeant Colon?” but because the modern, go-ahead, intelligent law officer ought to be at least one jump ahead of the contemporary criminal. One day someone was bound to try to steal the Brass Bridge, and then they’d find Sergeant Colon right there waiting for them. In the meantime, it offered a quiet place out of the wind where he could have a relaxing smoke and probably not see anything that would upset him. He leaned with his elbows on the parapet, wondering vaguely about Life. A figure stumbled out of the mist. Sergeant Colon recognised the familiar pointy hat of a wizard. “Good evening, officer, “ its wearer croaked. “Morning, y’honour.” “Would you be kind enough to help me up on to the parapet, officer?” Sergeant Colon hesitated. But the chap was a wizard. A man could get into serious trouble not helping wizards. “Trying out some new magic, y’honour?” he said, brightly, helping the skinny but surprisingly heavy body up on to the crumbling stonework. “No.” Windle Poons stepped off the bridge. There was a squelch. Sergeant Colon looked down as the waters of the Ankh closed again, slowly. Those wizards. Always up to something. He watched for a while. After several minutes there was a disturbance in the scum and debris near the base of one of the pillars of the bridge, where a flight of greasy stairs led down to the water. A pointy hat appeared. Sergeant Colon heard the wizard slowly climb the stairs, swearing under his breath. Windle Poons reached the top of the bridge again. He was soaked. “You want to go and get changed,” Sergeant Colon volunteered. “You could catch your death, standing around like that.” “Hah!” “Get your feet in front of a roaring fire, that’s what I’d do.” “Hah!” Sergeant Colon looked at Windle Poons in his own private puddle. “You been trying some special kind of underwater magic, y’honour?” he ventured. “Not exactly, officer.” “I’ve always wondered about what it’s like under water,” said Sergeant Colon, encouragingly. “The myst’ries of the deep, strange and wonderful creatures . . . my mum told me a tale once, about this little boy what turned into a mermaid, well, not a mermaid, and he had all these adventures under the s -” The words drained away under Windle Poons’ dreadful stare. “Evening,” said Windle. He turned and started to lurch into the mist. “Very, very boring. Very boring being dead.” Colon was left alone. He lit a fresh cigarette with a trembling hand, and started to walk hurriedly towards the Watch headquarters. “That face, “ he told himself. “And those eyes . . . just whatsisname . . . who’s that bloody dwarf who runs the delicatessen on Cable Street . . .” “Sargeant!” Colon froze. Then he looked down. A face was starring up at him from ground level. When he’d got a grip on himself, he made out the sharp features of his old friend Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, the Discworld’s Ruling talking argument in favour of the theory that mankind had descended from a species of rodent. C.M.O.T. Dibbler liked to describe himself as a merchant adventurer; everyone else liked to describe him as an itinerant pedlar whose money-making shemes were always let down by some small but vital flaw, such as trying to sell things he didn’t own or which didn’t work or, sometimes, didn’t even exist. Fairy gold is well known to evaporate by morning, but it was a reinforced concrete slab by comparison to some of Throat’s merchandise. He was standing at the bottom of some steps that led down to one of Ankh-Morpork’s countless cellars. “Hallo, Throat.” “Would you step down here a minute, Fred? I could use a bit of legal aid.” “Got a problem, Throat?” Dibbler scratched his nose. “Well, Fred . . . Is it a crime to be given something? I mean, without you knowing it?” “Someone been giving you things, Throat?” Throat nodded. “Dunno. You know I keep merchandise down here?” he said. “Yeah.” “You see, I just come down to do a bit of stock-taking, and . . . “ He waved a hand helplessly. “Well . . . take a look . . .” He opened the cellar door. In the darkness something went plop. Windle Poons lurched aimlessly along a dark alley in the Shades, arms extended in front of him, hands hanging down at the wrists. He didn’t know why. It just seemed the right way to go about it. Jumping off a building? No, that wouldn’t work, either. It was hard enough to walk as it was, and two broken legs wouldn’t help. Poison? He imagined it would be like having a very bad stomach ache. Noose? Hanging around would probably be more boring than sitting on the bottom of the river. He reached a noisome courtyard where several alleys met. Rats scampered away from him. A cat screeched and scurried off over the rooftops. As he stood wondering where he was, why he was, and what ought to happen next, he felt the point of a knife against his backbone. “OK, grandad,” said a voice behind him, “it’s your money or your life.” In the darkness Windle Poons’ mouth formed a horrible grin. “I‘m not playing about, old man, “ said the voice. “Are you Thieves’ Guild?” said Windle, without turning around. “No, we’re . . . freelances. Come on, let’s see the colour of your money.” “Haven’t got any,” said Windle. He turned around. There were two more muggers behind him. “Ye gods, look at his eyes,” said one of them. Windle raised his arms above his head. “Ooooooooh,” he moaned. The muggers backed away. Unfortunately, there was a wall behind them. They flattened themselves against it. “OoooOOOOoooobuggeroffoooOOOooo, “ said Windle, who hadn’t realised that the only way of escape lay through him. He rolled his eyes for better effect. Maddened by terror, the would-be attackers dived under his arms, but not before one of them had sunk his knife up to the hilt in Windle’s pigeon chest. He looked down at it. “Hey! That was my best robe!” he said. “I wanted to be buried in - will you look at it? You know how difficult it is to darn silk? Come back here this - Look at it, right where it shows -” He listened. There was no sound but the distant and retreating scurry of footsteps. Windle Poons removed the knife. “Could have killed me,” he muttered, tossing it away. In the cellar, Sergeant Colon picked up one of the objects that lay in huge drifts on the floor. “There must be thousands of ‘em,” said Throat, behind him. “What I want to know is, who put them there?” Sergeant Colon turned the object round and round in his hands. “Never seen one of these before, “ he said. He gave a shake. His face lit up. “Pretty, ain’t they?” “The door was locked and everything,” said Throat ‘And I‘m paid up with the Thieves’ Guild.” Colon shook the thing again. “ Nice,” he said. “Fred?” Colon, fascinated, watched the little snowflakes far inside the tiny glass globe. “Hmm?” “What am I supposed to do?” “Dunno. I suppose they’re yours, Throat. Can imagine why anyone’d want to get rid of ‘em, though. He turned towards the door. Throat stepped into his path. “Then that’ll be twelve pence, “ he said smoothly. “What for? “For the one you just put in your pocket, Fred.” Colon fished the globe out of his pocket. “Come on!” he protested. “You just found them, heh. They didn’t cost you a penny!” “Yes, but there’s storage . . . packing . . . handling . . “Tuppence, “ said Colon desperately. “Tenpence.” “Threepence.” “Sevenpence - and that’s cutting my own throat, mark you.” “Done,” said the sergeant, reluctantly. He gave the globe another shake. “Nice, ain’t they?” he said. “Worth every penny,” said Dibbler. He rubbed his hands together hopefully. “Should sell like hot cake’s,” he said, picking up a handful and shoving them into box. He locked the door behind them when they left. In the darkness something went plop. Ankh-Morpork has always had a fine tradition of welcoming people of all races, colours and shapes, if they have money to spend and a return ticket. According to the Guild of Merchants‘ famous publication, Welkome to Ankh-Morporke, Citie of One Thousand Surprises, `you the visitor will be asurred of a Warm Wellcome in the countless Ins and hostelries of this Ancient Citie, where many specialise in catering for the taste of guest from distant part. So if you a Manne, Trolle, Dwarfe, Goblin or Gnomm, Ankh-Morpork will raise your Glass convivial and say: Cheer! Here looking, you Kid! Up, You Bottom!” Windle Poons didn’t know where undead went for a good time. All he knew, and he knew it for a certainty, was that if they could have a good time anywhere then they could probably have it in Ankh-Morpork. His laboured footsteps led him deeper into the Shades. Only they weren’t so laboured now. For more than a century Windle Poons had lived inside the walls of Unseen University. In terms of accumulated years, he may have lived a long time. In terms of experience, he was about thirteen. He was seeing, hearing and smelling things he’d never seen, heard or smelled before. The Shades was the oldest part of the city. If you could do a sort of relief map of sinfulness, wickedness and all-round immorality, rather like those representations of the gravitational field around a Black Hole, then even in Ankh-Morpork the Shades would be represented by a shaft. In fact the Shades was remarkably like the aforesaid well-known astronomical phenomenon: it had a certain strong attraction, no light escaped from it, and it could indeed become a gateway to another world. The next one. The Shades was a city within a city. The streets were thronged. Muffled figures slunk past on errands of their own. Strange music wound up from sunken stairwells. So did sharp and exciting smells. Poons passed goblin delicatessens and dwarf bars from which came the sounds of singing and fighting which dwarfs traditionally did at the same time. And there were trolls, moving through the crowds like . . . like big people moving among little people. They weren’t shambling, either. Windle had hitherto seen trolls only in the more select parts of the city, where they moved with exaggerated caution in case they accidentally clubbed someone to death and ate them. In the Shades they strode, unafraid, heads held so high they very nearly rose above their shoulder-blades. Windle Poons wandered through the crowds like random shot on a pinball table. Here a blast of smoky sound from a bar spun him back into the street, there a discreet doorway promising unusual and forbidden delights attracted him like a magnet. Windle Poons’ life hadn’t included even very many usual an approved delights. He wasn’t even certain what they were. Some sketches outside one pink-lit, inviting doorway left him even more mystified but incredible anxious to learn. He turned around and around in pleased astonishment. This place! Only ten minutes walk or fifteen minutes lurch from the University! And he’d never known it was there! All these people! All this noise. All this life! Several people of various shapes and species jostle him. One or two started to say something, shut their mouths quickly, and hurried off. They were thinking . . . his eyes! Like gimlets! And then a voice from the shadows said: “Hallo, bigboy. You want a nice time?” “Oh, yes!” said Windle Poons, lost in wonder. “Oh, yes! Yes!” He turned around. “Bloody hell!” There was the sound of someone hurrying away down an alley. Windle’s face fell. Life, obviously, was only for the living. Perhaps this back-to-your-body business had been a mistake after all. He’d been a fool to think otherwise. He turned and, hardly bothering to keep his own heart beating, went back to the University. Windle trudged across the quad to the Great Hall. The Archchancellor would know what to do. “There he is!” “It’s him!” “Get him!” Windle’s trained thought ran over a cliff. He looked around at five red, worried, and above all familiar faces. “Oh, hallo, Dean,” he said, unhappily. “And is that the Senior Wrangler? Oh, and the Archchancellor, this is -” “Grab his arm!” “Don’t look at his eyes!” “Grab his other arm!” “This is for your own good, Windle!” “It’s not Windle! It’s a creature of the Night!” “I assure you -” “Have you got his legs?” “Grab his leg!” “Grab his other leg!” “Have you grabbed everything?” roared the Archchancellor. The wizards nodded. Mustrum Ridcully reached into the massive recesses of his robe. “Right, fiend in human shape,” he growled, “what d’you think of this, then? Ah-ha!” Windle squinted at the small object that was thrust triumphantly under his nose. “Well, er . . . “ he said diffidently, “I’d say . . . yes . . . hmm . . . yes, the smell is very distinctive, isn’t it . . . yes, quite definitely. Allium sativum. The common domestic garlic. Yes?” The wizards stared at him. They stared at the little white clove. They stared at Windle again. “I am right, aren’t I?” he said, and made an attempt at a smile. “Er,” said the Archchancellor. “Yes. Yes, that’s right. “ Ridcully cast around for something to add. “Well done, “ he said. “Thank you for trying,” said Windle. “I really appreciate it. “ He stepped forward. The wizards might as well have tried to hold back a glacier. “And now I’m going to have a lie down,“ he said. “ It’s been a long day.” He lurched into the building and creaked along the corridors until he reached his room. Someone else seemed to have moved some of their stuff into it, but Windle dealt with that by simply picking it all up in one sweep of his arms and throwing it out into the corridor. Then he lay down on the bed. Sleep. Well, he was tired. That was a start. But sleeping meant letting go of control, and he wasn’t too certain that all the systems were fully functional yet. Anyway, when you got right down to it, did he have to sleep at all? After all, he was dead. That was supposed to be just like sleeping, only even more so. They said that dying was just like going to sleep, although of course if you weren’t careful bits of you could rot and drop off. What were you supposed to do when you slept, anyway? Dreaming . . . wasn’t that all to do with sorting out your memories, or something? How did you go about it? He stared at the ceiling. “I never thought being dead would be so much trouble, “ he said aloud. After a while a faint but insistent squeaking noise made him turn his head. Over the fireplace was an ornamental candlestick, fixed to a bracket on the wall. It was such a familiar piece of furniture that Windle hadn’t really seen it for fifty years. It was coming unscrewed. It spun around slowly, squeaking once a turn. After half a dozen turns it fell off and clattered to the floor. Inexplicable phenomena were not in themselves unusual on the Discworld. It was just that they normally had more point, or at least were a bit more interesting. Nothing else seemed to be about to move. Windle relaxed, and went back to organising his memories. There was stuff in there he’d completely forgotten about. There was a brief whispering outside, and then the door burst open - “Get his legs! Get his legs!” “Hold his arms!” Windle tried to sit up. “Oh, hallo, everyone, “ he said. ‘What’s the matter?” The Archchancellor, standing at the foot of the bed, fumbled in a sack and produced a large, heavy object. He held it aloft. “Ah-ha!” he said. Windle peered at it. “Yes?” he said, helpfully. “Ah-ha,” said the Archchancellor again, but with slightly less conviction. “It’s a symbolic double-handled axe from the cult of Blind Io,” said Windle. The Archchancellor gave him a blank look. “Er, yes,” he said, “that’s right.“ He threw it over his shoulder, almost removing the Dean’s left ear, and fished in the sack again. “Ah-ha!” “That’s a rather fine example of the Mystic Tooth of Offler the Crocodile God, “ said Windle. “Ah-ha!” “And that’s a . . . let me see now . . . yes, that’s the matched set of sacred Flying Ducks of Ordpor the Tasteless. I say, eh, this is fun!” “Ah-ha.” “That’s . . . don’t tell me, don’t tell me . . . that’s the holy linglon of the notorious Sootee cult, isn’t it?” “Ah-ha?” “I think that one’s the three-headed fish of the Howanda three-headed fish religion,” said Windle. “This is ridiculous,” said the Archchancellor, dropping the fish. The wizards sagged. Religious objects weren’t such a surefire undead cure after all. “I’m really sorry to be such a nuisance, “ said Windle. The Dean suddenly brightened up. “Daylight!” he said excitedly. “That’ll do the trick!” “Get the curtain!” “Get the other curtain!” “One, two, three . . . now!” Windle blinked in the invasive sunlight. The wizards held their breath. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It doesn’t seem to work.” They sagged again. “Don’t you feel anything?” said Ridcully. “No sensation of crumbling into dust and blowing away?” said the Senior Wrangler hopefully. “My nose tends to peel if I’m out in the sun too long,” said Windle. “I don’t know if that’s any help. “ He tried to smile. The wizards looked at one another and shrugged. “Get out,” said the Archchancellor. They trooped out. Ridcully followed them. He paused at the door and waved a finger at Windle. “This uncooperative attitude, Windle, is not doing you any good,” he said, and slammed the door behind him. After a few seconds the four screws holding the door handle very slowly unscrewed themselves. They rose up and orbited near the ceiling for a while, and then fell. Windle thought about this for a while. Memories. He had lots of them. One hundred and thirty years of memories. When he was alive he hadn’t been able to remember one-hundredth of the things he knew but now he was dead, his mind uncluttered with everything except the single silver thread of his thoughts, he could feel them all there. Everything he’d ever read, everything he’d ever seen, everything he’d ever heard. All there, ranged in ranks. Nothing forgotten. Everything in its place. Three inexplicable phenomena in one day. Four, if you included the fact of his continued existence. That was really inexplicable. It needed explicating. Well, that was someone else’s problem. Everything was someone else’s problem now. The wizards crouched outside the door of Windle’s room. “Got everything?” said Ridcully. “Why can’t we get some of the servants to do it?” muttered the Senior Wrangler. “It’s undignified.” “Because I want it done properly and with dignity,” snapped the Archchancellor. “If anyone’s going to bury a wizard at a crossroads with a stake hammered through him, then wizards ought to do it. After all, we’re his friends.” “What is this thing, anyway?” said the Dean, inspecting the implement in his hands. “It’s called a shovel, “ said the Senior Wrangler. “I’ve seen the gardeners use them. You stick the sharp end in the ground. Then it gets a bit technical.” Ridcully squinted through the keyhole. “He’s lying down again,” he said. He got up, brushing the dust off his knees, and grasped the door handle. “Right,” he said. “Take your time from me. One. . .two. . .” Modo the gardener was trundling a barrow load of hedge trimmings to a bonfire behind the new High Energy Magic research building when about half a dozen wizards went past at, for wizards, high speed. Windle Poons was being borne aloft between them. Modo heard him to say, “Really, Archchancellor, are you quite sure this one will work -?” “We’ve got your best interests at heart,” said Ridcully. “I’m sure, but -” “We’ll soon have you feeling your old self again,” said the Bursar. “No, we won’t,” hissed the Dean. “That’s the whole point!” “We’ll soon have you not feeling your old self again, that’s the whole point,” stuttered the Bursar, as they rounded the corner. Modo picked up the handles of the barrow again and pushed it thoughtfully towards the secluded area where he kept his bonfire, his compost heaps, his leaf-mould pile, and the little shed he sat in when it rained. He used to be assistant gardener at the palace, but this job was a lot more interesting. You really got to see life. Ankh-Morpork society is street society. There is always something interesting going on. At the moment, the driver of a two-horse fruit wagon was holding the Dean six inches in the air by the scruff of the Dean’s robe and was threatening to push the Dean’s face through the back of the Dean’s head. “It’s peaches, right?” he kept bellowing. “You know what happens to peaches what lies around too long? They get bruised. Lots of things round here are going to get bruised.” “I am a wizard, you know, “ said the Dean, his pointy shoes dangling. “If it wasn’t for the fact that it would be against the rules for me to use magic in anything except a purely defensive manner, you would definitely be in a lot of trouble.” “What you doing, anyway?” said the driver, lowering the Dean so he could look suspiciously over his shoulder. “Yeah,” said a man trying to control the team pulling a lumber wagon, “what’s going on? There’s people here being paid by the hour, you know!” “Move along at the front there!” The lumber driver turned in his seat and addressed the queue of carts behind him. “I’m trying to, “ he said. “It’s not my fault, is it? There’s a load of wizards digging up the godsdamn street!” The Archchancellor’s muddy face peered over the edge of the hole. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Dean, “ he said, “I told you to sort things out!” “Yes, I was just asking this gentleman to back up and go another way,” said the Dean, who was afraid he was beginning to choke. The fruiterer turned him around 90 that he could see along the crowded streets. “Ever tried to back up sixty carts all at once?” he demanded. “It’s not easy. Especially when everyone can’t move because you guys have got it so’s the carts are backed up all round the block and no-one can move because everyone’s in someone else’s way, right?” The Dean tried to nod. He had wondered himself about the wisdom of digging the hole at the junction of the Street of Small Gods and Broad Way, two of the busiest streets in Ankh-Morpork. It had seemed logical at the time. Even the most persistent undead ought to stay decently buried under that amount of traffic. The only problem was that no-one had thought seriously about the difficulty of digging up a couple of main streets during the busy time of day. “All right, all right, what’s going on here?” The crowd of spectators opened to admit the bulky figure of Sergeant Colon of the Watch. He moved through the people unstoppably, his stomach leading the way. When he saw the wizards, waist deep in a hole in the middle of the road, his huge red face brightened up. “What’s this, then?” he said. “A gang of international crossroads thieves?” He was overjoyed. His long-term policing strategy was paying off! The Archchancellor tipped a shovelful of Ankh-Morpork loam over his boots. “Don’t be stupid, man,” he snapped. “This is vitally important.” “Oh, yes. That’s what they all say,” said Sergeant Colon, not a man to be easily steered from a particular course of thought once he’d got up to mental speed. “‘I bet there’s hundreds of villages in heathen places like Klatch that’d pay good money for a nice prestigious crossroads like this, eh?” Ridcully looked up at him with his mouth open. “What are you gabbling about, officer?” he said. He pointed irritably to his pointy hat. “Didn’t you hear me? We’re wizards. This is wizard business. So if you could just sort of direct the traffic around us, there’s a good chance -” “- these peaches bruise as soon as you even look at ‘em –“ said a voice behind Sergeant Colon. “The old idiots have been holding us up for half an hour,” said a cattle drover who had long ago lost control of forty steers now wandering aimlessly around the nearby streets. “I wants ‘em arrested.” It dawned on the sergeant that he had inadvertently placed himself centre stage in a drama involving hundreds of people, some of them wizards and all of them angry. “What are you doing, then?” he said weakly. “We’re burying our colleague. What does it look like?” said Ridcully. Colon’s eyes swivelled to an open coffin by the side of the road. Windle Poons gave him a little wave. “But . . . he’s not dead . . . is he?” he said, his forehead wrinkling as he tried to get ahead of the situation. “Appearances can be deceptive,“ said the Archchancellor. “But he just waved to me,” said the sergeant, desperately. “So?” “Well, it’s not normal for -” “It’s all right, sergeant, “ said Windle. Sergeant Colon sidled closer to the coffin. “Didn’t I see you throw yourself into the river last night?” he said, out of the corner of his mouth. “Yes. You were very helpful,“ said Windle. “And then you threw yourself sort of out again,” said the sergeant. “I’m afraid so.” “But you were down there for ages.” “Well, it was very dark, you see. I couldn’t find the steps.” Sergeant Colon had to concede the logic of this. “Well, I suppose you must be dead, then,” he said. ‘No-one could stay down there who wasn’t dead.” “This is it,” Windle agreed. “Only why are you waving and talking?” said Colon. The Senior Wrangler poked his head out of the hole. “It’s not unknown for a dead body to move and make noises after death, Sergeant,” he volunteered. “It’s all down to involuntary muscular spasms.” “Actually, Senior Wrangler is right,” said Windle Poons. “I read that somewhere.” “Oh. “ Sergeant Colon looked around. “Right, “ he said, uncertainly. “Well . . . fair enough, I suppose . . .” “OK, we’re done,” said the Archchancellor, scrambling out of the hole, “it’s deep enough. Come on, Windle, down you go.” “I really am very touched, you know,” said Windle, lying back in the coffin. It was quite a good one, from the mortuary in Elm Street. The Archchancellor had let him choose it himself. Ridcully picked up a mallet. Windle sat up again. “Everyone’s going to so much trouble -” “Yes, right,” said Ridcully, looking around. “Now - who’s got the stake?” Everyone looked at the Bursar. The Bursar looked unhappy. He fumbled in a bag. “I couldn’t get any, “ he said. The Archchancellor put his hand over his eyes. “All right,” he said quietly. “You know, I’m not surprised? Not surprised at all. What did you get? Lamb chops? A nice piece of pork?” “Celery, “ said the Bursar. “It’s his nerves, “ said the Dean, quickly. “Celery,” said the Archchancellor, his self-control rigid enough to bend horseshoes around. “Right.” The Bursar handed him a soggy green bundle. Ridcully took it. “Now, Windle, “ he said, “I’d like you to imagine that what I have in my hand -” “It’s quite all right, “ said Windle. “I’m not actually sure I can hammer -” “I don’t mind, I assure you, “ said Windle. “You don’t?” “The principle is sound,” said Windle. “If you just hand me the celery but think hammering a stake, that’s probably sufficient.” “That’s very decent of you,” said Ridcully. “That shows a very proper spirit.” “Esprit de corpse,” said the Senior Wrangler. Ridcully glared at him, and thrust the celery dramatically towards Windle. “Take that!” he said. “Thank you,” said Windle. “And now let’s put the lid on and go and have some lunch,” said Ridcully. “Don’t worry, Windle. It’s bound to work. Today is the last day of the rest of your life.” Windle lay in the darkness, listening to the hammering. There was a thump and a muffled imprecation against the Dean for not holding the end properly. And then the patter of soil on the lid, getting fainter and more distant. After a while a distant rumbling suggested that the commerce of the city was being resumed. He could even hear muffled voices. He banged on the coffin lid. “Can you beep it down?” he demanded. “There’s people down here trying to be dead!” He heard the voices stop. There was the sound of feet hurrying away. Windle lay there for some time. He didn’t know how long. He tried stopping all functions, but that just made things uncomfortable. Why was dying so difficult? Other people seemed to manage it, even without practice. Also, his leg itched. He tried to reach down to scratch it, and his hand touched something small and irregularly shaped. He managed to get his fingers around it. It felt like a bundle of matches. In a coffin? Did anyone think he’d smoke a quiet cigar to pass the time? After a certain amount of effort he managed to push one boot off with the other boot and ease it up until he could just grasp it. This gave him a rough surface to strike the match on. Sulphurous light filled his tiny oblong world. There was a tiny scrap of cardboard pinned to the inside of the lid. He read it. He read it again. The match went out. He lit another one, just to check that what he had read really did exist. The message was still as strange, even third time round: Dead? Depressed? Feel like starting it all again? Then why not come along to the FRESH START CLUB Thursdays, 12 pm. 668 Elm Street EVERY BODY WELCOME The second match went out, taking the last of the oxygen with it. Windle lay in the dark for a while, considering his next move and finishing off the celery. Who’d have thought it? And it suddenly dawned on the late Windle Poons that there was no such thing as somebody else’s problem, and that just when you thought the world had pushed you aside it turned out to be full of strangeness. He knew from experience that the living never found out half of what was really happening, because they were too busy being the living. The onlooker sees most of the game, he told himself. It was the living who ignored the strange and wonderful, because life was too full of the boring and mundane. But it was strange. It had things in it like screws that unscrewed themselves, and little written messages to the dead. He resolved to find out what was going on. And then . . . if Death wasn’t going to come to him, he’d go to Death. He had his rights, after all. Yeah. He’d lead the biggest missing-person hunt of all time. Windle grinned in the darkness. Missing - believed Death. Today was the first day of the rest of his life. And Ankh-Morpork lay at his feet. Well, metaphorically. The only way was up. He reached up, felt for the card in the dark, and pulled it free. He stuck it between his teeth. Windle Poons braced his feet against the end of the box, pushed his hands past his head, and heaved. The soggy loam of Ankh-Morpork moved slightly. Windle paused out of habit to take a breath, and realised that there was no point. He pushed again. The end of the coffin splintered. Windle pulled it towards him and tore the solid pine like paper. He was left with a piece of plank which would have been a totally useless spade for anyone with un-zombie-like strength. Turning on to his stomach, tucking the earth around him with his impromptu spade and ramming it back with his feet, Windle Poons dug his way towards a fresh start. Picture a landscape, a plain with rolling curves. It’s late summer in the octarine grass country below the towering peaks of the high Ramtops, and the predominant colours are umber and gold. Heat sears the landscape. Grasshoppers sizzle, as in a frying pan. Even the air is too hot to move. It’s the hottest summer in living memory and, - in these parts, that’s a long, long time. Picture a figure on horseback, moving slowly along a road that’s an inch deep in dust between fields of corn that already promise an unusually rich harvest. Picture a fence of baked, dead wood. There’s a notice pinned to it. The sun has faded the letters, but they are still readable. Picture a shadow, falling across the notice. You can almost hear it reading both the words. There’s a track leading off the road, towards a small group of bleached buildings. Picture dragging footsteps. Picture a door, open. Picture a cool, dark room, glimpsed through the open doorway. This isn’t a room that people live in a lot. It’s a room for people who live outdoors but have to come inside sometimes, when it gets dark. It’s a room for harnesses and dogs, a room where oilskins are hung up to dry. There’s a beer barrel by the door. There are flagstones on the floor and, along the ceiling beams, hooks for bacon. There’s a scrubbed table that thirty hungry men could sit down at. There are no men. There are no dogs. There is no beer. There is no bacon. There was silence after the knocking, and then the flap flap of slippers on flagstones. Eventually a skinny old woman with a face the colour and texture of a walnut peered around the door. “Yes?” she said. THE NOTICE SAID ‘MAN WANTED’. “Did it? Did it? That’s been up there since before last winter!” I AM SORRY? YOU NEED NO HELP? The wrinkled face looked at him thoughtfully. “I can’t pay more’n sixpence a week, mind,” it said. The tall figure looming against the sunlight appeared to consider this. YES. it said, eventually. “I wouldn’t even know where to start you workin’, either. We haven’t had any proper help here for three years. I just hire the lazy goodfornothin’s from the village when I want ‘em.” YES? “You don’t mind, then?” I HAVE A HORSE. The old woman peered around the stranger. In the yard was the most impressive horse she’d ever seen. Her eyes narrowed. “And that’s your horse, is it?” YES. “With all that silver on the harness and everything?” YES. “And you want to work for sixpence a week?” YES. The old woman pursed her lips. She looked from the stranger to the horse to the dilapidation around the farm. She appeared to reach a decision, possibly on the lines that someone who owned no horses probably didn’t have much to fear from a horse thief. “You’re to sleep in the barn, understand?” she said. SLEEP? YES. OF COURSE. YES, I WILL HAVE TO SLEEP. “Couldn’t have you in the house anyway. It wouldn’t be right.” THE BARN WILL BE QUITE ADEQUATE, I ASSURE YOU. “But you can come into the house for your meals.” THANK YOU. “My name’s Miss Flitworth.” YES. She waited. “I expect you have a name, too,” she prompted. YES. THAT’S RIGHT. She waited again. I’M SORRY? “What is your name?” The stranger stared at her for a moment, and then looked around wildly. “Come on,” said Miss Flitworth. “l ain’t employing no-one without no name. Mr. . . . ?” The figure stared upwards. MR. SKY? “No-one’s called Mr. Sky.” MR. . . . DOOR? She nodded. “Could be. Could be Mr. Door. There was a chap called Doors I knew once. Yeah. Mr. Door. And your first name? Don’t tell me you haven’t got one of those, too. You’ve got to be a Bill or a Tom or a Bruce or one of those names.” YES. “What?” ONE OF THOSE. “Which one?” ER. THE FIRST ONE? “You’re a Bill?” YES? Miss Flitworth rolled her eyes. “All right, Bill Sky . . . “ she said. DOOR. “Yeah. Sorry. All right, Bill Door . . .” CALL ME BILL. “And you can call me Miss Flitworth. I expect you want some dinner?” I WOULD? AH. YES. THE MEAL OF THE EVENING. YES. “You look half starved, to tell the truth. More than half, really. “ She squinted at the figure. Somehow it was very hard to be certain what Bill Door looked like, or even remember the exact sound of his voice. Clearly he was there, and clearly he had spoken - otherwise why did you remember anything at all? “There’s a lot of people in these parts as don’t use the name they were born with,” she said. ‘l always say there’s nothing to be gained by going around asking pers’nal questions. I suppose you can work, Mr. Bill Door? I’m still getting the hay in off the high meadows and there’ll be a lot of work come harvest. Can you use a scythe?” Bill Door seemed to meditate on the question for some time. Then he said, I THINK THE ANSWER TO THAT IS A DEFINITE ‘YES’, MISS FLITWORTH. Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler also never saw the sense in asking personal questions, at least insofar as they applied to him and were on the lines of ‘Are these things yours to sell?” But no-one appeared to be coming forward to berate him for selling off their property, and that was good enough for him. He’d sold more than a thousand of the little globes this morning, and he’d had to employ a troll to keep up a flow from the mysterious source of supply in the cellar. People loved them. The principle of operation was laughably simple and easily graspable by the average Ankh-Morpork citizen after a few false starts. If you gave the globe a shake, a cloud of little white snowflakes swirled up in the liquid inside and settled, delicately, on a tiny model of a famous Ankh-Morpork landmark. In some globes it was the University, or the Tower of Art, or the Brass Bridge, or the Patrician’s Palace. The detail was amazing. And then there were no more left. Well, thought Throat, that’s a shame. Since they hadn’t technically belonged to him - although morally, of course, morally they were his - he couldn’t actually complain. Well, he could complain, of course, but only under his breath and not to anybody specific. Maybe it was all for the best, come to think of it. Stack ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap. Get ‘em off your hands - it made it much easier to spread them in a gesture of injured innocence when you said ‘Who, me?” They were really pretty, though. Except, strangely enough, for the writing. It was on the bottom of each globe, in shaky, amateurish letters, as if done by someone who had never seen writing before and was trying to copy some down. On the bottom of every globe, below the intricate little snowflake-covered building, were the words: ~fo r~3 4h~ MorPor” Mustrum Ridcully, Archchancellor of Unseen University, was a shameless autocondimentor. He had his own special cruet put in front of him at every meal. It consisted of salt, three types of pepper, four types of mustard, four types of vinegar, fifteen different kinds of chutney and his special favourite: Wow-Wow Sauce, a mixture of mature scumble, pickled cucumbers, capers, mustard, mangoes, figs, grated wahooni, anchovy essence, asafetida and, significantly, sulphur and saltpetre for added potency. Ridcully inherited the formula from his uncle who, after half a pint of sauce on a big meal one evening, had a charcoal biscuit to settle his stomach, lit his pipe and disappeared in mysterious circumstances, although his shoes were found on the roof the following summer. There was cold mutton for lunch. Mutton went well with Wow-Wow Sauce; on the night of Ridcully senior’s death, for example, it had gone at least three miles. Mustrum tied his napkin behind his neck, rubbed his hands together, and reached out. The cruet moved. He reached out again. It slid away. Ridcully sighed. “All right, you fellows,” he said. “No magic at Table, you know the rules. Who’s playing silly buggers?” The other senior wizards stared at him. “I, I, I don’t think we can play it any more, “ said the Bursar, who at the moment was only occasionally bouncing off the sides of sanity, “I, I, I think we lost some of the pieces . . .” He looked around, giggled, and went back to trying to cut his mutton with a spoon. The other wizards were keeping knives out of his way at present. The entire cruet floated up into the air and started to spin slowly. Then it exploded. The wizards, dripping vinegar and expensive spices, watched it owlishly. “It was probably the sauce,” the Dean ventured. “It was definitely going a bit critical last night.” Something dropped on his head and landed in his lunch. It was a black iron screw, several inches long. Another one mildly contused the Bursar. After a second or two, a third landed point down on the table by the Archchancellor’s hand and stuck there. The wizards turned their eyes upwards. The Great Hall was lit in the evenings by one massive chandelier, although the word so often associated with glittering prismatic glassware seemed inappropriate for the huge, heavy, black, tallow-encrusted thing that hung from the ceiling like a threatening overdraft. It could hold a thousand candles. It was directly over the senior wizards’ table. Another screw tinkled on to the floor by the fireplace. The Archchancellor cleared his throat. “Run?” he suggested. The chandelier dropped. Bits of table and crockery smashed into the walls. Lumps of lethal tallow the size of a man’s head whirred through the windows. A whole candle, propelled out of the wreckage at a freak velocity, was driven several inches into a door. The Archchancellor disentangled himself from the remains of his chair. “Bursar!” he yelled. The Bursar was exhumed from the fireplace. “Um, yes, Archchancellor?” he quavered. “What was the meanin’ of that?” Ridcully’s hat rose from his head. It was a basic floppy-brimmed, pointy wizarding hat, but adapted to the Archchancellor’s outgoing lifestyle. Fishing flies were stuck in it. A very small pistol crossbow was shoved in the hatband in case he saw something to shoot while out jogging, and Mustrum Ridcully had found that the pointy bit was just the right size for a small bottle of Bentinck’s Very Old Peculiar Brandy. He was quite attached to his hat. But it was no longer attached to him. It drifted gently across the room. There was a faint but distinct gurgling noise. The Archchancellor leapt to his feet. “Bugger that,” he roared. “That stuff’s nine dollars a fifth!” He made a leap for the hat, missed, and kept on going until he drifted to a halt several feet above the ground. The Bursar raised a hand, nervously. “Possibly woodworm?” he said. “If there is any more of this,” growled Ridcully, “anymore at all, d’you hear, I shall get very angry!” He was dropped to the floor at the same time as the big doors opened. One of the college porters bustled in, followed by a squad of the Patrician’s palace guard. The guard captain looked the Archchancellor up and down with the expression of one to whom the word ‘civilian’ is pronounced in the same general tones as ‘cockroach’. “You the head chap?” he said. The Archchancellor smoothed his robe and tried to straighten his beard. “I am the Archchancellor of this university, yes,” he said. The guard captain looked curiously around the hall. The students were all cowering down the far end. Splashed food covered most of the walls to ceiling height. Bits of furniture lay around the wreckage of the chandelier like trees around ground zero of a meteor strike. Then he spoke with all the distaste of someone whose own further education had stopped at age nine, but who’d heard stories . . . “Indulging in a bit of youthful high spirits, were we?” he said. “Throwin’ a few bread rolls around, that kind of thing?” “May I ask the meaning of this intrusion?” said Ridcully, coldly. The guard captain leaned on his spear. “Well,” he said, “it’s like this. The Patrician is barricaded in his bedroom on account of the furniture in the palace is zooming around the place like you wouldn’t believe, the cooks won’t even go back in the kitchen on account of what’s happening in there . . .” The wizards tried not to look at the spear’s head. It was starting to unscrew itself. “Anyway,” the captain went on, oblivious to the faint metallic noises, “the Patrician calls through the keyhole, see, and says to me, “Douglas, I wonder if you wouldn’t mind nipping down to the University and asking the head man if he would be so good as to step up here, if he’s not too busy?” But I can always go back and tell him you’re engagin’ in a bit of student humour, if you like.” The spearhead was almost off the shaft. “You listening to me?” said the captain suspiciously. “Hmm? What?” said the Archchancellor, tearing his eyes away from the spinning metal. “Oh. Yes. Well, I can assure you, my man, that we are not the cause of -” “Aargh!” “Pardon?” “The spearhead fell on my foot!” “Did it?” said Ridcully, innocently. The guard captain hopped up and down. “Listen, are you bloody hocus-pocus merchants coming or not?” he said, between bounces. “The boss is not very happy. Not very happy at all.” A great formless cloud of Life drifted across the Discworld, like water building up behind a dam when the sluice gates are shut. With no Death to take the life force away when it was finished with, it had nowhere else to go. Here and there it earthed itself in random poltergeist activity, like flickers of summer lightning before a big storm. Everything that exists, yearns to Live. That’s what the cycle of life is all about. That’s the engine that drives the great biological pumps of evolution. Everything tries to inch its way up the tree, clawing or tentacling or sliming its way up to the next niche until it gets to the very top - which, on the whole, never seems to have been worth all that effort. Everything that exists, yearns to live. Even things that are not alive. Things that have a kind of sub-life, a metaphorical life, an almost life. And now, in the same way that a sudden hot spell brings forth unnatural and exotic blooms . . . There was something about the little globes. You had to pick them up and give them a shake, watch the pretty snowflakes swirl and glitter. And then take them home and put them on the mantelpiece. And then forget about them. The relationship between the University and the Patrician, absolute ruler and nearly benevolent dictator of Ankh-Morpork, was a complex and subtle one. The wizards held that, as servants of a higher truth, they were not subject to the mundane laws of the city. The Patrician said that, indeed, this was the case, but they would bloody well pay their taxes like everyone else. The wizards said that, as followers of the light of wisdom, they owed allegiance to no mortal man. The Patrician said that this may well be true but they also owed a city tax of two hundred dollars per head per annum, payable quarterly. The wizards said that the University stood on magical ground and was therefore exempt from taxation and anyway you couldn’t put a tax on knowledge. The Patrician said you could. It was two hundred dollars per capita; if per capita was a problem, decapita could be arranged. The wizards said that the University had never paid taxes to the civil authority. The Patrician said he was not proposing to remain civil for long. The wizards said, what about easy terms? The Patrician said he was talking about easy terms. They wouldn’t want to know about the hard terms. The wizards said that there was a ruler back in, oh, it would be the Century of the Dragonfly, who had tried to tell the University what to do. The Patrician could come and have a look at him if he liked. The Patrician said that he would. He truly would. In the end it was agreed that while the wizards of course paid no taxes, they would nevertheless make an entirely voluntary donation of, oh, let’s say two hundred dollars per head, without prejudice, mutatis mutandis, no strings attached, to be used strictly for non-militaristic and environmentally-acceptable purposes. It was this dynamic interplay of power blocs that made Ankh-Morpork such an interesting, stimulating and above all bloody dangerous place in which to live. Senior wizards did not often get out and about on what Welkome to Ankh-Morporke probably called the thronged highways and intimate byways of the city, but it was instantly obvious that something was wrong. It wasn’t that cobblestones didn’t sometimes fly through the air, but usually someone had thrown them. They didn’t normally float by themselves. A door burst open and a suit of clothes came out, a pair of shoes dancing along behind it, a hat floating a few inches above the empty collar. Close behind them came a skinny man endeavouring to do with a hastily-snatched flannel what normally it took a whole pair of trousers to achieve. “You come back here!” he screamed, as they rounded the corner. “I still owe seven dollars for you!” A second pair of trousers scurried out into the street and hurried after them. The wizards clustered together like a frightened animal with five pointed heads and ten legs, wondering who was going to be the first to comment. “That’s bloody amazing!” said the Archchancellor. “Hmm?” said the Dean, trying to imply that he saw more amazing things than that all the time, and that in drawing attention to mere clothing running around by itself the Archchancellor was letting down the whole tone of wizardry. “Oh, come on. I don’t know many tailors round here who’d throw in a second pair of pants for a seven dollar suit,” said Ridcully. “Oh, “ said the Dean. “If it comes past again, try to trip it up so’s I can have a look at the label.” A bedsheet squeezed through an upper window and flapped away across the rooftops. “Y’know,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, trying to keep his voice calm and relaxed, “I don’t think this is magic. It doesn’t feel like magic.” The Senior Wrangler fished in one of the deep pockets of his robe. There was a muffled clanking and rustling and the occasional croak. Eventually he produced a dark blue glass cube. It had a dial on the front. “You carry one of them around in your pocket?” said the Dean. “A valuable instrument like that?” “What the hell is it?” said Ridcully. “Amazingly sensitive magical measuring device,” said the Dean. “Measures the density of a magical field. A thaumometer.” The Senior Wrangler proudly held the cube aloft and pressed a button on the side. A needle on the dial wobbled around a little bit and stopped. “See?” said the Senior Wrangler. “‘Just natural background, representing no hazard to the public.” “Speak up,” said the Archchancellor. “I can’t hear you above the noise.” Crashes and screams rose from the houses on either side of the street. Mrs. Evadne Cake was a medium, verging on small. It wasn’t a demanding job. Not many people who died in Ankh-Morpork showed much inclination to chat to their surviving relatives. Put as many mystic dimensions between you and them as possible, that was their motto. She filled in between engagements with dressmaking and church work - any church. Mrs. Cake was very keen on religion, at least on Mrs. Cake’s terms. Evadne Cake was not one of those bead-curtain-and-incense mediums, partly because she didn’t hold with incense but mainly because she was actually very good at her profession. A good conjurer can astound you with a simple box of matches and a perfectly ordinary deck of cards, if you would care to examine them, sir, you will see they are a perfectly ordinary deck of cards - he doesn’t need the finger-nipping folding tables and complicated collapsible top hats of lesser prestidigitators. And, in the same way, Mrs. Cake didn’t need much in the way of props. Even the industrial-grade crystal ball was only there as a sop to her customers. Mrs. Cake could actually read the future in a bowl of porridge. * She could have a revelation in a panful of frying bacon. She had spent a lifetime dabbling in the spirit world, except that in Evadne’s case dabbling wasn’t really apposite. She wasn’t the dabbling kind. It was more a case of stamping into the spirit world and demanding to see the manager. And, while making her breakfast and cutting up dogfood for Ludmilla, she started to hear voices. They were very faint. It wasn’t that they were on the verge of hearing, because they were the kind of voices that ordinary ears can’t hear. They were inside her head. . . . watch what you’re doing . . . where am I. . . quit shoving, there. . . And then they faded again. They were replaced by a squeaking noise from the next room. She pushed aside her boiled egg and waddled through the bead curtain. The sound was coming from under the severe, no-nonsense hessian cover of her crystal ball. Evadne went back into the kitchen and selected a heavy frying pan. She waved it through the air once or twice, getting the heft of it, and then crept towards the crystal under its hood. Raising the pan ready to swat anything unpleasant, she twitched aside the cover. The ball was turning slowly round and round on its stand. Evadne watched it for a while. Then she drew the curtains, eased her weight down on the chair, took a deep breath and said, “ Is there anybody there?” Most of the ceiling fell in. After several minutes and a certain amount of struggle Mrs. Cake managed to get her head free. “Ludmilla!” There were soft footsteps in the passageway and then something come in from the back yard. It was clearly, even attractively female, in general shape, and wore a perfectly ordinary dress. It was also apparently suffering from a case of superfluous hair that not all the delicate pink razors in the world could erase. Also, teeth and fingernails were being worn long this season. You expected the whole thing to growl, but it spoke in a pleasant and definitely human voice. “Mother?” “Oi’m under ‘ere.” The fearsome Ludmilla lifted up a huge joist and tossed it lightly aside. “What happened? Didn’t you have your premonition switched on?” “Oi turned it off to speak to the baker. Cor, that gave me a turn.” “I’ll make you a cup of tea, shall I?” “Now then, you know you always crushes teacups when it’s your Time. “ “I’m getting better at it, “ said Ludmilla. “There’s a good girl, but I’ll do it myself, thanks all the same.” Mrs. Cake stood up, brushed the plaster dust off her apron, and said: “They shouted! They shouted! All at once!” Modo the University gardener was weeding a rose bed when the ancient, velvet lawn beside him heaved and sprouted a hardy perennial Windle Poons, who blinked in the light. “Is that you, Modo?” “That’s right, Mr. Poons,” said the dwarf. ‘Shall I give you a hand up?” “I think I can manage, thank you.” “I’ve got a shovel in the shed, if you like.” “No, it’s perfectly all right. “ Windle pulled himself out of the grass and brushed the soil off the remains of his robe. “Sorry about your lawn,” he added, looking down at the hole. “Don’t mention it, Mr. Poons.” “Did it take long to get it looking like that?” “About five hundred years, I think.” “Gosh, I am sorry. I was aiming for the cellars, but I seem to have lost my bearings.” “Don’t you worry about that, Mr. Poons,” said the dwarf cheerfully. “Everything’s growing like crazy anyway. I’ll fill it in this afternoon and put some more seed down and five hundred years will just zoom past, you wait and see.” “The way things are going, I probably will,” said Windle moodily. He looked around. ‘Is the Archchancellor here?” he said. “I saw them all going up to the palace,” said the gardener. “Then I think I’ll just go and have a quick bath and a change of clothes. I wouldn’t want to disturb anyone.” “I heard you wasn’t just dead but buried too, “ said the gardener, as Windle lurched off. “That’s right.” “Can’t keep a good man down, eh?” Windle turned back. “By the way . . . where’s Elm Street?” Modo scratched an ear. “Isn’t it that one off Treacle Mine Road?” “Oh, yes. I remember.” Modo went back to his weeding. The circular nature of Windle Poons’ death didn’t bother him much. After all, trees looked dead in the winter, burst forth again every spring. Dried up old seeds went in the ground, fresh young plants sprang up. Practically nothing ever died for long. Take compost, for example. Modo believed in compost with the same passion that other people believed in gods. His compost heaps heaved and fermented and glowed faintly in the dark, perhaps because of the mysterious and possibly illegal ingredients Modo fed them, although nothing had ever been pried and, anyway, no-one was about to dig into one to see what was in it. All dead stuff, but somehow alive. And it certainly grew roses. The Senior Wrangler had explained to Modo that his roses grew so big because it was a miracle of existence, but Modo privately thought that they just wanted to get as far away from the compost as possible. The heaps were in for a treat tonight. The weeds were really doing well. He’d never known plants to grow so fast and luxuriantly. It must be all the compost, Modo thought. By the time the wizards reached the palace it was in uproar. Pieces of furniture were gliding across the ceiling. A shoal of cutlery, like silvery minnows in mid-air, flashed past the Archchancellor and dived away down a corridor. The place seemed to be in the grip of a selective and tidy-minded hurricane. Other people had already arrived. They included a group dressed very like the wizards in many ways, although there were important differences to the trained eye. “Priests?” said the Dean. “Here? Before us?” The two groups began very surreptitiously to adopt positions that left their hands free. “What good are they?” said the Senior Wrangler. There was a noticeable drop in metaphorical temperature. A carpet undulated past. The Archchancellor met the gaze of the enormous Chief Priest of Blind Io who, as senior priest of the senior god in the Discworld’s rambling pantheon, was the nearest thing Ankh-Morpork had to a spokesman on religious affairs. “Credulous fools,” muttered the Senior Wrangler. “Godless tinkerers,” said a small acolyte, peering out from behind the Chief Priest’s bully. “Gullible idiots!” “Atheistic scum!” “Servile morons!” “Childish conjurors!” “Bloodthirsty priests!” “Interfering wizards!” Ridcully raised an eyebrow. The Chief Priest nodded very slightly. They left the two groups hurling imprecations at each other from a safe distance and strolled nonchalantly towards a comparatively quiet part of the room where, beside a statue of one of the Patrician’s predecessors, they turned and faced one another again. “So . . . how are things in the god bothering business?” said Ridcully. “We do our humble best. How is the dangerous meddling with things man was not meant to understand?” “Pretty fair. Pretty fair. “ Ridcully removed his hat and fished inside the pointy bit. “Can I offer you a drop of something?” “Alcohol is a snare for the spirit. Would you care for a cigarette? I believe you people indulge.” “Not me. If I was to tell you what that stuff does to your lungs -” Ridcully unscrewed the very tip of his hat and poured a generous measure of brandy into it. “So, “ he said, “what’s happening?” “We had an altar float up into the air and drop on us.” “A chandelier unscrewed itself. Everything’s unscrewing itself. You know, I saw a suit of clothes run past on the way here? Two pairs of pants for seven dollars!” “Hmm. Did you see the label?” “Everything’s throbbing, too. Notice the way everything’s throbbing?” “We thought it was you people.” “It’s not magic. Suppose the gods aren’t more than usually unhappy?” “Apparently not.” Behind them, the priests and the wizards were screaming chin to chin. The Chief Priest moved a little closer. “I think I could be strong enough to master and defeat just a little snare,” he said. “I haven’t felt like this since Mrs. Cake was one of my flock.” “Mrs. Cake? What’s a Mrs. Cake?” “You have . . . ghastly Things from the Dungeon Dimensions and things, yes? Terrible hazards of your ungodly profession?” said the Chief Priest. “Yes.” “We have someone called Mrs. Cake.” Ridcully gave him an enquiring look. “Don’t ask,” said the priest, shuddering. “Just be grateful you’ll never have to find out.” Ridcully silently passed him the brandy. “Just between the two of us,” said the priest, “have you got any ideas about all this? The guards are trying to dig his lordship out. You know he’ll want answers. I’m not even certain I know the questions.” “Not magic and not gods,” said Ridcully. “Can I have the snare back? Thank you. Not magic and not gods. That doesn’t leave us much, does it?” “I suppose there’s not some kind of magic you don’t know about?” “If there is, we don’t know about it.” “Fair enough, “ the priest conceded. “I suppose it’s not the gods up to a bit of ungodliness on the side?” said Ridcully, clutching at one last straw. “A couple of ‘em had a bit of a tiff or something? Messing around with golden apples or something?” “It’s very quiet on the god front right now, “ said the Chief Priest. His eyes glazed as he spoke, apparently reading from a script inside his head. “Hyperopia, goddess of shoes, thinks that Sandelfon, god of corridors, is the long-lost twin brother of Grune, god of unseasonal fruit. Who put the goat in the bed of Offler, the Crocodile God? Is Offler forging an alliance with Seven-handed Sek? Meanwhile, Hoki the Jokester is up to his old tricks -” “Yes, yes, all right,” said Ridcully. “I’ve never been able to get interested in all that stuff, myself.” Behind them, the Dean was trying to prevent the Lecturer in Recent Runes from attempting to turn the priest of Offler the Crocodile God into a set of matching suitcases, and the Bursar had a bad nosebleed from a lucky blow with a thurible. “What we’ve got to present here, “ said Ridcully, “is a united front. Right?” “Agreed, “ said the Chief Priest. “Right. For now.” A small rug sinewaved past at eye level. The Chief Priest handed back the brandy bottle. “Incidentally, mother says you haven’t written lately, “ he said. “Yeah . . . “ The other wizards would have been surprised at their Archchancellor’s look of contrite embarrassment. “I’ve been busy. You know how it is.” “She said to be sure to remind you she’s expecting both of us over for lunch on Hogswatchday.” “I haven’t forgotten,” said Ridcully, glumly. ‘I’m looking forward to it. “ He turned to the melee behind them. “Cut it out, you fellows,” he said. “Brethren! Desist!” bellowed the Chief Priest. The Senior Wrangler released his grip on the head of the high priest of the Cult of Hinki. A couple of curates stopped kicking the Bursar. There was a general adjustment of clothing, a finding of hats and a bout of embarrassed coughing. “That’s better,” said Ridcully. “Now then, his Eminence the Chief Priest and myself have decided -” The Dean glowered at a very small bishop. “He kicked me! He kicked me!” “Ooo! I never did, my son.” “You bloody well did,” the Dean hissed. ‘Sideways, so they wouldn’t see!” “- have decided –“ repeated Ridcully, glaring at the Dean, “to pursue a solution to the current disturbances in a spirit of brotherhood and goodwill and that includes you, Senior Wrangler.” “I couldn’t help it! He pushed me.” “Well! May you be forgiven!” said the Archdeacon of Thrume, stoutly. There was a crash from above. A chaise-longue cantered down the stairs and smashed through the hall door. “I think perhaps the guards are still trying to free the Patrician,” said the High Priest. “Apparently even his secret passages locked themselves.” “All of them? I thought the sly devil had ‘em everywhere,” said Ridcully. “All locked,” said the High Priest. “All of them.” “Almost all of them,” said a voice behind him. Ridcully’s tones did not change as he turned around, except that a slight extra syrup was added. A figure had apparently stepped out of the wall. It was human, but only by default. Thin, pale, and clad all in dusty black, the Patrician always put Ridcully in mind of a predatory flamingo, if you could find a flamingo that was black and had the patience of a rock. “Ah, Lord Vetinari,” he said, “I am so glad you are unhurt.” “I will see you gentlemen in the Oblong Office, “ said the Patrician. Behind him, a panel in the wall slid back noiselessly. “I, um, I believe there are a number of guards upstairs trying to free –“ the Chief Priest began. The Patrician waved a thin hand at him. “I wouldn’t dream of stopping them,” he said. ‘It gives them something to do and makes them feel important. Otherwise they just have to stand around all day looking fierce and controlling their bladders. Come this way.” The leaders of the other Ankh-Morpork Guilds turned up in ones and twos, gradually filling the room. The Patrician sat gloomily staring at the paper-work on his desk as they argued. “Well, it’s not us,” said the head of the Alchemists. “Things are always flying through the air when you fellows are around,” said Ridcully. “Yes, but that’s only because of unforeseen exothermic reactions, “ said the alchemist. “Things keep blowing up,” translated the deputy-head alchemist, without looking up. “They may blow up, but they come down again. They don’t flutter around and, e.g., start unscrewing themselves,” said his chief, giving him a warning frown. ‘Anyway, why’d we do it to ourselves? I tell you, it’s hell in my workshop! There’s stuff whizzing everywhere! Just before I came out, a huge and very expensive piece of glassware broke into splinters!” “Marry, ‘twas a sharp retort, “ said a wretched voice. The press of bodies moved aside to reveal the General Secretary and Chief Butt of the Guild of Fools and Joculators. He flinched under the attention, but he generally flinched all the time anyway. He had the look of a man whose face has been Ground Zero for one custard pie too many, whose trousers have been too often awash with whitewash, whose nerves would disintegrate completely at the sound of just one more whoopee-cushion. The other Guild leaders tried to be nice to him, in the same way that people try to be kind to other people who are standing on the ledges of very high buildings. “What do you mean, Geoffrey?” said Ridcully, as kindly as he could. The Fool gulped. ‘Well, you see,” he mumbled, “we have sharp as in splinters, and retort as in large glass alchemical vessel, and thus we get a pun on “sharp retort” which also means, well, a scathing answer. Sharp retort. You see? It’s a play on words. Um. It’s not very good, is it.” The Archchancellor looked into eyes like two runny eggs. “Oh, a pun,” he said. “Of course. Hohoho. “ He waved a hand encouragingly at the others. “Hohoho, “ said the Chief Priest. “Hohoho,“ said the leader of the Assassins’ Guild. “Hohoho,” said the head Alchemist. “And, you know, what makes it even funnier is that it was actually an alembic.” “So what you’re telling me,” said the Patrician, as considerate hands led the Fool away, “is that none of you are responsible for these events?” He gave Ridcully a meaningful look as he spoke. The Archchancellor was about to answer when his eye was caught by a movement on the Patrician’s desk. There was a little model of the Palace in a glass globe. And next to it was a paperknife. The paperknife was slowly bending. “Well?” said the Patrician. “Not us,” said Ridcully, his voice hollow. The Patrician followed his gaze. The knife was already curved like a bow. The Patrician scanned the sheepish crowd until he found Captain Doxie of the City Guard Day Watch. “Can’t you do something?” he said. “Er. Like what, sir? The knife? Er. I suppose I could arrest it for being bent.” Lord Vetinari threw his hands up in the air. “So! It’s not magic! It’s not gods! It’s not people! What is it? And who’s going to stop it? Who am I going to call?” Half an hour later the little globe had vanished. No-one noticed. They never do. Mrs. Cake knew who she was going to call. “You there, One-Man-Bucket?” she said. Then she ducked, just in case. A reedy and petulant voice oozed out of the air. where have you been I can’t move in here! Mrs. Cake bit her lip. Such a direct reply meant her spirit guide was worried. When he didn’t have anything on his mind he spent five minutes talking about buffaloes and great white spirits, although if One-Man-Bucket had ever been near white spirit he’d drunk it and it was anyone’s guess what he’d do to a buffalo. And he kept putting ‘ums’ and ‘hows ‘ into the conversation. “What d’you mean?” - there been a catastrophe or something, some kind of ten-second plague? “No. Don’t think so.” - there’s real pressure here, you know. what’s hokeing everything up? “What do you mean?” - shutupshutupshutup I’m trying to talk to the lady! - you lot over there, keep the noise down! oh yeaha sez you - Mrs. Cake was aware of other voices trying to drown him out. “One-Man-Bucket!” - heathen savage, am I? so you know what this heathen savage says to youa yeah? listen, I’ve been over here for a hundred years, me! I don’t have to take talk like that from someone who’s still warm! Tight - that does it, you . . . His voice faded. Mrs. Cake set her jaw. His voice came back. - oh yeah? oh yeaha well, maybe you was big when you was alive, friend, but here and now you’re just a bedsheet with holes in it! Oh, so you don’t like that, eh - “He’s going to start fighting again, mum,” said Ludmilla, who was curled up by the kitchen stove. “He always calls people “friend” just before he hits them.” Mrs. Cake sighed. “And it sounds as if he’s going to fight a lot of people,” said Ludmilla. “Oh, all right. Go and fetch me a vase. A cheap one, mind.” It is widely suspected, but not generally known, that everything has an associated spirit form which, upon its demise, exists briefly in the draughty gap between the worlds of the living and the dead. This is important. “No, not that one. That belonged to your granny.” This ghostly survival does not last for long without a consciousness to hold it together, but depending on what you have in mind it can last for just long enough. “That one’ll do. I never liked the pattern.” Mrs. Cake took an orange vase with pink peonies on it from her daughter’s paws. “Are you still there, One-Man-Bucket?” she said. - I’ll make you regret the day you ever died, you whining - “Catch.” She dropped the vase on to the stove. It smashed. A moment later, there was a sound from the Other Side. If a discorporate spirit had hit another discorporate spirit with the ghost of a vase, it would have sounded just like that. - right, said the voice of One-Man-Bucket, and there’s more where that came from, OK? The Cakes, mother and hairy daughter, nodded at each other. When One-Man-Bucket spoke again, his voice dripped with smug satisfaction. - just a bit of an altercation about seniority here, he said. just sorting out a bit of personal space. got a lot of problems here, Mrs. Cake. it’s like a waiting room - There was a shrill clamour of other disembodied voices. - could you get a message, please, to Mr. - - tell her there’s a bag of coins on the ledge up the chimney - - Agnes is not to have the silverware after what she said about our Molly - - I didn’t have time to feed the cat, could someone go - shutupshutup! That was One-Man-Bucket again. you’ve got no idea have you? this is ghost talk, is it? feed the cat? whatever happened to ‘I am very happy here, and waiting for you to join me’? - listen, if anyone else joins us, we’ll be standing on one another’s heads - - that’s not the point. that’s not the point, that’s all I’m saying. when you’re a spirit, there’s things you gotta say. Mrs. Cake? “Yes?” - you got to tell someone about this. Mrs. Cake nodded. “Now you all go away,” she said. ‘I’m getting one of my headaches.” The crystal ball faded. “Well!” said Ludmilla. “I ain’t going to tell no priests,” said Mrs. Cake firmly. It wasn’t that Mrs. Cake wasn’t a religious woman. She was, as has already been hinted, a very religious woman indeed. There wasn’t a temple, church, mosque or small group of standing stones anywhere in the city that she hadn’t attended at one time or another, as a result of which she was more feared than an Age of Enlightenment; the mere sight of Mrs. Cake’s small fat body on the threshold was enough to stop most priests dead in the middle of their invocation. Dead. That was the point. All the religions had very strong views about talking to the dead. And so did Mrs. Cake. They held that it was sinful. Mrs. Cake held that it was only common courtesy. This usually led to a fierce ecclesiastical debate which resulted in Mrs. Cake giving the chief priest what she called ‘a piece of her mind’. There were so many pieces of Mrs. Cake’s mind left around the city now that it was quite surprising that there was enough left to power Mrs. Cake but, strangely enough, the more pieces of her mind she gave away the more there seemed to be left. There was also the question of Ludmilla. Ludmilla was a problem. The late Mr. Cake, gods rest his soul, had never so much as even whistled at the full moon his whole life, and Mrs. Cake had dark suspicions that Ludmilla was a throwback to the family’s distant past in the mountains, or maybe had contracted genetics as a child. She was pretty certain her mother had once alluded circumspectly to the fact that Great-uncle Erasmus sometimes had to eat his meals under the table. Either way, Ludmilla was a decent upright young woman for three weeks in every four and a perfectly well-behaved hairy wolf thing for the rest of the time. Priests often failed to see it that way. Since by the time Mrs. Cake fell out with whatever priests were currently moderating between her and the gods, she had usually already taken over the flower arrangements, altar dusting, temple cleaning, sacrificial stone scrubbing, honorary vestigial virgining, hassock repairing and every other vital religious support role by sheer force of personality, her departure resulted in total chaos. Mrs. Cake buttoned up her coat. “It won’t work,” said Ludmilla. “I’ll try the wizards. They ought to be tole,” said Mrs. Cake. She was quivering with self-importance, like a small enraged football. “Yes, but you said they never listen,” said Ludmilla. “Got to try. Byway, what are you doing out of your room?” “Oh, mother. You know I hate that room. There’s no need -” “You can’t be too careful. Supposin’ you was to take it into your head to go and chase people’s chickens? What would the neighbours say?” “I’ve never felt the least urge to chase a chicken, mother,” said Ludmilla wearily. “Or run after carts, barkin’.” “That’s dogs, mother.” “You just get back in your room and lock yourself in and get on with some sewing like a good girl.” “You know I can’t hold the needles properly, mother.” “Try for your mother.” “Yes, mother,” said Ludmilla. “And don’t go near the window. We don’t want people upset.” “Yes, mother. And you make sure you put your premonition on, mum. You know your eyesight isn’t what it was.” Mrs. Cake watched her daughter go upstairs. Then she locked the front door behind her and strode towards Unseen University where, she’d heard, there was too much nonsense of all sorts. Anyone watching Mrs. Cake’s progress along the street would have noticed one or two odd details. Despite her erratic gait, no-one bumped into her. They weren’t avoiding her, she just wasn’t where they were. At one point she hesitated, and stepped into an alleyway. A moment later a barrel rolled off a cart that was unloading outside a tavern and smashed on the cobbles where she would have been. She stepped out of the alley and over the wreckage, grumbling to herself. Mrs. Cake spent a lot of the time grumbling. Her mouth was constantly moving, as if she was trying to dislodge a troublesome pip from somewhere in the back of her teeth. She reached the high black gates of the University and hesitated again, as if listening to some inner voice. Then she stepped aside and waited. Bill Door lay in the darkness of the hayloft and waited. Below, he could hear the occasional horsey sounds of Binky - a soft movement, the champ of a jaw. Bill Door. So now he had a name. Of course, he’d always had a name, but he’d been named for what he embodied, not for who he was. Bill Door. It had a good solid ring to it. Mr. Bill Door. William Door, Esq. Billy D - no. Not Billy. Bill Door eased himself further into the hay. He reached into his robe and pulled out the golden timer. There was, quite perceptibly, less sand in the top bulb. He put it back. And then there was this “sleep”. He knew what it was. People did it for quite a lot of the time. They lay down and sleep happened. Presumably it served some purpose. He was watching out for it with interest. He would have to subject it to analysis. Night drifted across the world, coolly pursued by a new day. There was a stirring in the henhouse across the yard. “Cock-a-doo . . . er.” Bill Door stared at the roof of the barn. “Cock-a-doodle . . . er.” Grey light was filtering in between the cracks. Yet only moments ago there had been the red light of sunset! Six hours had vanished. Bill hauled out the timer. Yes. The level was definitely down. While he had been waiting to experience sleep, something had stolen part of his . . . of his life. He’d completely missed it, too - “Cock. . .cock-a. . .er. . .” He climbed down from the loft and stepped out into the thin mist of dawn. The elderly chickens watched him cautiously as he peered into their house. An ancient and rather embarrassed-looking cockerel glared at him and shrugged. There was a clanging noise from the direction of the house. An old iron barrel hoop was hanging by the door, and Miss Flitworth was hitting it vigorously with a ladle. He stalked over to investigate. WHAT FOR ARE YOU MAKING THE NOISE, MISS FLITWORTH? She spun around, ladle half-raised. “Good grief, you must walk like a cat!” she said. I MUST? “I meant I didn’t hear you. “ She stood back and looked him up and down. “There’s still something about you I can’t put my finger on, Bill Door,” she said. ‘Wish I knew what it was.” The seven-foot skeleton regarded her stoically. He felt there was nothing he could say. “What do you want for breakfast?” said the old woman. “Not that it’ll make any difference, ‘cos it’s porridge.” Later she thought: he must have eaten it, because the bowl is empty. Why can’t I remember? And then there was the matter of the scythe. He looked at it as if he’d never seen one before. She pointed out the grass nail and the handles. He looked at them politely. HOW DO YOU SHARPEN IT, MISS FLITWORTH? “It’s sharp enough, for goodness sake.” HOW DO YOU SHARPEN IT MORE? “You can’t. Sharp’s sharp. You can’t get sharper than that.” He’d swished it aimlessly, and made a disappointed hissing noise. And there was the grass, too. The hay meadow was high on the hill behind the farm, overlooking the cornfield. She watched him for a while. It was the most interesting technique she had ever witnessed. She wouldn’t even have thought that it was technically possible. Eventually she said: “It’s good. You’ve got the swing and everything.” THANK YOU, MISS FLITWORTH. “But why one blade of grass at a time?” Bill Door regarded the neat row of stalks for some while. THERE IS ANOTHER WAY? “You can do lots in one go, you know.” NO. NO. ONE BLADE AT A TIME. ONE TIME, ONE BLADE. “You won’t cut many that way,” said Miss Flitworth. EVERY LAST ONE, MISS FLITWORTH. “Yes?” TRUST ME ON THIS. Miss Flitworth left him to it and went back to the farm-house. She stood at the kitchen window and watched the distant dark figure for a while, as it moved over the hillside. I wonder what he did? she thought. He’s got a Past. He’s one of them Men of Mystery, I expect. Perhaps he did a robbery and is Lying Low. He’s cut a whole row already. One at a time, but somehow faster than a man cutting swathe by swathe . . . Miss Flitworth’s only reading matter was the Farmer’s Almanac and Seed Catalogue, which could last a whole year in the privy if no-one was ill. In addition to sober information about phases of the moon and seed sowings it took a certain grisly relish in recounting the various mass murders, vicious robberies and natural disasters that befell mankind, on the lines of ‘June 15, Year of the Impromptu Stoat: On this Day 150 yrs. since, a Man killed by Freak shower of Goulish in Quirm’ or ‘14 die at hands of Chume, the Notorious Herring Thrower.” The important thing about all these was that they happened a long way away, possibly by some kind of divine intervention. The only things that usually happened locally were the occasional theft of a chicken, and the occasional wandering troll. Of course, there were also robbers and bandits in the hills but they got on well with the actual residents and were essential to the local economy. Even so, she felt she’d certainly feel safer with someone else about the place. The dark figure on the hillside was well into the second row. Behind it, the cut grass withered in the sun. I HAVE FINISHED, MISS FLITWORTH. “Go and feed the pig, then. She’s called Nancy.” NANCY, said Bill, turning the word around in his mouth as though he was trying to see it from all sides. “After my mother.” I WILL GO AND FEED THE PIG NANCY, MISS FLITWORTH. It seemed to Miss Flitworth that mere seconds went by. I HAVE FINISHED, MISS FLITWORTH. She squinted at him. Then, slowly and deliberately, she wiped her hands on a cloth, stepped out into the yard and headed for the pigsty. Nancy was eyeball-deep in the swill trough. Miss Flitworth wondered exactly what comment she should make. Finally she said, “Very good. Very good. You, you, you certainly work . . . fast.” MISS FLITWORTH, WHY DOES NOT THE COCKEREL CROW PROPERLY? “Oh, that’s just Cyril. He hasn’t got a very good memory. Ridiculous, isn’t it? I wish he’d get it right.” Bill Door found a piece of chalk in the farm’s old smithy, located a piece of board among the debris, and wrote very carefully for some time. Then he wedged the board in front of the henhouse and pointed Cyril towards it. THIS YOU WILL READ he said. Cyril peered myopically at the ‘Cock-A-Doodle-Doo’ in heavy gothic script. Somewhere in his tiny mad chicken mind a very distinct and chilly understanding formed that he’d better learn to read very, very quickly. Bill Door sat back among the hay and thought about the day. It seemed to have been quite a full one. He’d cut hay and fed animals and mended a window. He’d found some old overalls hanging in the barn. They seemed far more appropriate for a Bill Door than a robe woven of absolute darkness, so he’d put them on. And Miss Flitworth had given him a broad-brimmed straw hat. And he’d ventured the half-mile walk into the town. It wasn’t even a one horse town. If anyone had a horse, they’d have eaten it. The residents appeared to make a living by stealing one another’s washing. There was a town square, which was ridiculous. It was really only an enlarged crossroads, with a clock tower. And there was a tavern. He’d gone inside. After the initial pause while everyone’s mind had refocused to allow him room, they’d been cautiously hospitable; news travels even faster on a vine with few grapes. “You’d be the new man up at Miss Flitworth’s,” said the barman. “A Mr. Door, I did hear.” CALL ME BILL. “Ah? Used to be a tidy old farm, once upon a time. We never thought the old girl’d stay on.” “Ah,” agreed a couple of old men by the fireplace. AH. “New to these parts, then?” said the barman. The sudden silence of the other men in the bar was like a black hole. NOT PRECISELY. “Been here before, have you?” JUST PASSING THROUGH. “They say old Miss Flitworth’s a loony,” said one of the figures on the benches around the smoke-blackened walls. “But sharp as a knife, mind,” said another hunched drinker. “Oh, yes. She’s sharp all right. But still a loony.” “And they say she’s got boxes full of treasure in that old parlour of hers.” “She’s tight with money, I know that.” “That proves it. Rich folk are always tight with money.” “All right. Sharp and rich. But still a loony.” “You can’t be loony and rich. You’ve got to be eccentric if you’re rich.” The silence returned and hovered. Bill Door sought desperately for something to say. He had never been very good at small talk. He’d never had much occasion to use it. What did people say at times like this? Ah. Yes. I WILL BUY EVERYONE A DRINK, he announced. Later on they taught him a game that consisted of a table with holes and nets around the edge, and balls carved expertly out of wood, and apparently balls had to bounce off one another and into the holes. It was called Pond. He played it well. In fact, he played it perfectly. At the start, he didn’t know how not to. But after he heard them gasp a few times he corrected himself and started making mistakes with painstaking precision; by the time they taught him darts he was getting really good at them. The more mistakes he made, the more people liked him. So he propelled the little feathery darts with cold skill, never letting one drop within a foot of the targets they urged on him. He even sent one ricocheting off a nail head and a lamp so that it landed in someone’s beer, which made one of the older men laugh so much he had to be taken outside into the fresh air. They’d called him Good Old Bill. No-one had ever called him that before. What a strange evening. There had been one bad moment, though. He’d heard a small voice say: “That man is a skelington,” and had turned to see a small child in a nightdress watching him over the top of the bar, without terror but with a sort of fascinated horror. The landlord, who by now Bill Door knew to be called Lifton, had laughed nervously and apologised. “That’s just her fancy,” he said. “The things children say, eh? Get on with you back to bed, Sal. And say you’re sorry to Mr. Door.” “He’s a skelington with clothes on,” said the child. “Why doesn’t all the drink fall through?” He’d almost panicked. His intrinsic powers were fading, then. People could not normally see him - he occupied a blind spot in their senses, which they filled in somewhere inside their heads with something they preferred to encounter. But the adults’ inability to see him clearly wasn’t proof against this sort of insistent declaration, and he could feel the puzzlement around him. Then, just in time, its mother had come in from the back room and had taken the child away. There’d been muffled complaints on the lines of ‘ - a skelington, with all bones on -’ disappearing around the bend in the stairs. And all the time the ancient clock over the fireplace had been ticking, ticking, chopping seconds off his life. There’d seemed so many of them, not long ago . . . There was a faint knocking at the barn door, below the hayloft. He heard it pushed open. “Are you decent, Bill Door?” said Miss Flitworth’s voice in the darkness. Bill Door analysed the sentence for meaning within context. YES? he ventured. “I’ve brought you a hot milk drink.” YES? “Come on, quick now. Otherwise it’ll go cold.” Bill Door cautiously climbed down the wooden ladder. Miss Flitworth was holding a lantern, and had a shawl around her shoulders. “It’s got cinnamon on it. My Ralph always liked cinnamon. “ She sighed. Bill Door was aware of undertones and overtones in the same way that an astronaut is aware of weather patterns below him; they’re all visible, all there, all laid out for study and all totally divorced from actual experience. THANK YOU, he said. Miss Flitworth looked around. “You’ve really made yourself at home here,” she said brightly. YES. She pulled the shawl around her shoulders. “I’ll be getting back to the house, then,” she said. “You can bring the mug back in the morning.” She sped away into the night. Bill Door took the drink up to the loft. He put it on a low beam and sat and watched it long after it grew cold and the candle had gone out. After a while he was aware of an insistent hissing. He took out the golden timer and put it right at the other end of the loft, under a pile of hay. It made no difference at all. Windle Poons peered at the house numbers - a hundred Counting Pines had died for this street alone - and then realised he didn’t have to. He was being short-sighted out of habit. He improved his eyesight. Number 668 took some while to find because it was in fact on the first floor above a tailor’s shop. Entrance was via an alleyway. There was a wooden door at the end of the alley. On its peeling paintwork someone had pinned a notice which read, in optimistic lettering: “Come in! Come in!! The Fresh Start Club. Being Dead is only the Beginning!!!” The door opened on to a flight of stairs that smelled of old paint and dead flies. They creaked even more than Windle’s knees. Someone had been drawing on the walls. The phraseology was exotic but the general tone was familiar enough: Spooks of the World Arise , You have Nothing to lose but your Chains and The Silent Majority want DeadRights and End vitalism now !?! At the top was a landing, with one door opening off it. Once upon a time someone had hung an oil lamp from the ceiling, but it looked as though it had never been lit for thousands of years. An ancient spider, possibly living on the remains of the oil, watched him warily from its eyrie. Windle looked at the card again, took a deep breath out of habit, and knocked. The Archchancellor strode back into College in a fury, with the others trailing desperately behind him. “Who is he going to call! We’re the wizards around here!” “Yes, but we don’t actually know what’s happening, do we?” said the Dean. “So we’re going to find out!” Ridcully growled. ‘I don’t know who he’s going to call, but I’m damn sure who I’m going to call.” He halted abruptly. The rest of the wizards piled into him. “Oh, no,” said the Senior Wrangler. “Please, not that!” “Nothing to it,” said Ridcully. “Nothing to worry about. Read up on it last night, “s’matterofact. You can do it with three bits of wood and -” “Four cc of mouse blood,” said the Senior Wrangler mournfully. “You don’t even need that. You can use two bits of wood and an egg. It has to be a fresh egg, though.” “Why?” “I suppose the mouse feels happier about it.” “No, I mean the egg.” “Oh, who knows how an egg feels?” “Anyway,” said the Dean, “it’s dangerous. I’ve always felt that he only stays in the octogram for the look of the thing. I hate it when he peers at you and seems to be counting.” “Yes,” said the Senior Wrangler. “We don’t need to do that. We get over most things. Dragons, monsters. Rats. Remember the rats last year? Seemed to be everywhere. Lord Vetinari wouldn’t listen to us, oh no. He paid that glib bugger in the red and yellow tights a thousand gold pieces to get rid of ‘em.” “It worked, though,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “Of course it bloody worked,” said the Dean. “It worked in Quirm and Sto Lat as well. He’d have got away with it in Pseudopolis as well if someone hadn’t recognised him. Mr. so-called Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents!” “It’s no good trying to change the subject,” said Ridcully. “We’re going to do the Rite of AshKente. Right?” “And summon Death, “ said the Dean. “Oh, dear.” “Nothing wrong with Death,” said Ridcully. “Professional fellow. Job to do. Fair and square. Play a straight bat, no problem. He’ll know what’s happening.” “Oh, dear, “ said the Dean again. They reached the gateway. Mrs. Cake stepped forward, blocking the Archchancellor’s path. Ridcully raised his eyebrows. The Archchancellor was not the kind of man who takes a special pleasure in being brusque and rude to women. Or, to put it another way, he was brusque and rude to absolutely everyone, regardless of sex, which was equality of a sort. And if the following conversation had not been taking place between someone who listened to what people said several seconds before they said it, and someone who didn’t listen to what people said at all, everything might have been a lot different. Or perhaps it wouldn’t. Mrs. Cake led with an answer. “I’m not your good woman!” she snapped. “And who are you, my good woman?” said the Archchancellor. “Well, that’s no way to talk to a respectable person,” said Mrs. Cake. “There’s no need to be offended,“ said Ridcully. “Oh blow, is that what I’m doin’?” said Mrs. Cake. “Madam, why are you answering me before I’ve even said something?” “What?” “What d’you mean?” “What do you mean?” “What?” They stared at one another, fixed in an unbreakable conversational deadlock. Then Mrs. Cake realised. “O I’m prematurely premoniting again,” she said. She stuck a finger in her ear and wiggled it around with a squelching noise. “It’s all alright now. Now, the reason -” But Ridcully had had enough. “Bursar,” he said, “give this woman a penny and send her about her business, will you?” “What?” said Mrs. Cake, suddenly enraged beyond belief. “There’s too much of this sort of thing these days,” said Ridcully to the Dean, as they strolled away. “It’s the pressures and stresses of living in a big city,” said the Senior Wrangler. “I read that somewhere. It takes people in a funny way.” They stepped through the wicket gate in one of the big doors and the Dean shut it in Mrs. Cake’s face. “He might not come,” said the Senior Wrangler, as they crossed the quadrangle. “He didn’t come for poor old Windle’s farewell party.” “He’ll come for the Rite,” said Ridcully. “It doesn’t just send him an invitation, it puts a bloody RSVP on.” “Oh, good. I like sherry,” said the Bursar. “Shut up, Bursar.” There was an alley, somewhere in the Shades, which was the most alley-ridden part of an alley-ridden city. Something small and shiny rolled into it, and vanished in the darkness. After a while, there were faint metallic noises. The atmosphere in the Archchancellor’s study was very cold. Eventually the Bursar quavered: “Maybe he’s busy?” “Shut up,” said the wizards, in unison. Something was happening. The floor inside the chalked magic octogram was going white with frost. “It’s never done that before,” said the Senior Wrangler. “This is all wrong, you know,” said the Dean. ‘We should have some candles and some cauldrons and some stuff bubbling in crucibles and some glitter dust and some coloured smoke -” “The Rite doesn’t need any of that stuff,” said Ridcully sharply. “It might not need them, but I do,” muttered the Dean. “Doing it without the right paraphernalia is like taking all your clothes off to have a bath.” “That’s what I do,” said Ridcully. “Humph. Well, each to his own, of course, but some of us like to think that we’re maintaining standards.” “Perhaps he’s on holiday?” said the Bursar. “Oh, yes,” sneered the Dean. “On a beach somewhere? A few iced drinks and a Kiss Me Quick hat?” “Hold on. Hold on. Someone’s coming,” hissed the Senior Wrangler. The faint outlines of a hooded figure appeared above the octogram. It wavered constantly, as if it was being seen through superheated air. “That’s him, “ said the Dean. “No it isn’t, “ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “It’s just a grey robe - there’s nothing in -” He stopped. It turned, slowly. It was filled out, suggesting a wearer, but at the same time had a feeling of hollowness, as if it was merely a shape for something with no shape of its own. The hood was empty. The emptiness watched the wizards for a few seconds and then focused on the Archchancellor. It said, Who are you? Ridcully swallowed. ‘Er. Mustrum Ridcully. Archchancellor.” The hood nodded. The Dean stuck a finger in his ear and waggled it around. The robe wasn’t talking. Nothing was being heard. It was just that, afterwards, you had a sudden memory of what had just failed to be said and no knowledge of how it had got there. The hood said, You are a superior being on this world? Ridcully looked at the other wizards. The Dean glared. “Well . . . you know . . . yes . . . first among equals and all that sort of thing . . . yes . . . “ Ridcully managed. He was told, We bring good news. “Good news? Good news?” Ridcully squirmed under the gazerless gaze. “Oh, good. That is good news.” He was told, Death has retired. “Pardon?” He was told, Death has retired. “Oh? That is . . . news . . . “ said Ridcully uncertainly. “Uh. How? Exactly . . . how?” He was told, We apologise for the recent lapse in standards. “Lapse?” said the Archchancellor, now totally mystified. “Well, uh. I’m not sure there’s been a . . . I mean, of course the fella was always knockin’ around, but most of the time we hardly . . .” He was told, It has all been most irregular. “It has? Has it? Oh, well, can’t have irregularity,” said the Archchancellor. He was told, It must have been terrible. “Well, I . . . that is . . . I suppose we . . . I’m not sure . . . must it?” He was told, But now the burden is removed. Rejoice. That is all. There will be a short transitional period before a suitable candidate presents itself, and then normal service will be resumed. In the meantime, we apologise for any unavoidable inconvenience caused by superfluous life effects. The figure wavered and began to fade. The Archchancellor waved his hands desperately. “Wait!” he said. “You can’t just go like that! I command you to stay! What service? What does it all mean? Who are you?” The hood turned back towards him and said, We are nothing. “That’s no help! What is your name?” We are oblivion. The figure vanished. The wizards fell silent. The frost in the octogram began to sublime back into air. “Oh-oh, “ said the Bursar. “Short transitional period? Is that what this is?” said the Dean. The floor shook. “Oh-oh, “ said the Bursar again. “That doesn’t explain why everything is Living a life of its own,” said the Senior Wrangler. “Hold on . . . hold on,” said Ridcully, “If people are coming to the end of their life and leaving their bodies and everything, but Death isn’t taking them away -” “Then that means they’re queuing up here,” said the Dean. “With nowhere to go.” “Not just people,” said the Senior Wrangler. “It must be everything. Every thing that dies.” “Filling up the world with life force,” said Ridcully. The wizards were speaking in a monotone, everyone’s mind running ahead of the conversation to the distant horror of the conclusion. “Hanging around with nothing to do,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “Ghosts.” “Poltergeist activity.” “Good grief.” “Hang on, though,” said the Bursar, who had managed to catch up with events. “Why should that worry us? We don’t have anything to fear from the dead, do we? After all, they’re just people who are dead. They’re just ordinary people. People like us.” The wizards thought about this. They looked at one another. They started to shout, all at once. No-one remembered the bit about suitable candidates. Belief is one of the most powerful organic forces in the multiverse. It may not be able to move mountains, exactly. But it can create someone who can. People get exactly the wrong idea about belief. They think it works back to front. They think the sequence is, first object, then belief. In fact, it works the other way. Belief sloshes around in the firmament like lumps of clay spiralling into a potter’s wheel. That’s how gods get created, for example. They clearly must be created by their own believers, because a brief resume of the lives of most gods suggests that their origins certainly couldn’t be divine. They tend to do exactly the things people would do if only they could, especially when it comes to nymphs, golden showers, and the smiting of your enemies. Belief creates other things. It created Death. Not death, which is merely a technical term for a state caused by prolonged absence of life, but Death as in the personality. He evolved, as it were, along with life. As soon as a living thing was even dimly aware of the concept of suddenly becoming a non-living thing, there was Death. He was Death long before humans ever considered him; they only added the shape and all the scythe and robe business to a personality that was already millions of years old. And now he had gone. But belief doesn’t stop. Belief goes right on believing. And since the focal point of belief had been lost, new points sprang up. Small as yet, not very powerful. The private deaths of every species, no longer united but specific. In the stream, black-scaled, swam the new Death of Mayflies. In the forests, invisible, a creature of sound only, drifted the chop-chop-chop of the Death of Trees. Over the desert a dark and empty shell moved purposefully, half an inch above the ground . . . the Death of Tortoises. The Death of Humanity hadn’t been finished yet. Humans can believe some very complex things. It’s like the difference between off-the-peg and bespoke. The metallic sounds stopped coming from the alley. Then there was a silence. It was the particularly wary silence of something making no noise. And, finally, there was a very faint jangling sound, disappearing into the distance. “Don’t stand in the doorway, friend. Don’t block up the hall. Come on in.” Windle Poons blinked in the gloom. When his eyes became accustomed to it, he realised that there was a semicircle of chairs in an otherwise rather bare and dusty room. They were all occupied. In the centre - at the focus, as it were, of the half circle - was a small table at which someone had been seated. They were now advancing towards him, with their hand out and a big smile on their face. “Don’t tell me, let me guess,” they said. “You’re a zombie, right?” “Er.“ Windle Poons had never seen anyone with such a pallid skin, such as there was of it, before. Or wearing clothes that looked as if they’d been washed in razor blades and smelled as though someone had not only died in them but was still in them. Or sporting a Glad To Be Grey badge. “I don’t know,” he said. ‘I suppose so. Only they buried me, you see, and there was this card –“ He held it out, Like a shield. “‘Course there was. ‘Course there was,” said the figure. He’s going to want me to shake hands, Windle thought. If I do, I just know I’m going to end up with more fingers than I started with. Oh, my goodness. Will I end up like that? “And I’m dead, “ he said, lamely. “And fed up with being pushed around, eh?” said the greenish-skinned one. Windle shook his hand very carefully. “Well, not exactly fed -” “Shoe’s the name. Reg Shoe.” “Poons. Windle Poons,” said Windle. “Er -” “Yeah, it’s always the same, “ said Reg Shoe bitterly. “Once you’re dead, people just don’t want to know, right? They act as if you’ve got some horrible disease. Dying can happen to anyone, right?” “Everyone, I should have thought,” said Windle. “Yeah, I know what it’s like. Tell someone you’re dead and they look at you as if they’ve seen a ghost,” Mr. Shoe went on. Windle realised that talking to Mr. Shoe was very much like talking to the Archchancellor. It didn’t actually matter what you said, because he wasn’t listening. Only, in Mustrum Ridcully’s case it was because he just wasn’t bothering, while Reg Shoe was in fact supplying your side of the conversation somewhere inside his own head. “Yeah, right, “ said Windle, giving in. “We were just finishing off, in fact,” said Mr. Shoe. “Let me introduce you. Everyone, this is –“ He hesitated. “Poons. Windle Poons.” “Brother Windle,” said Mr. Shoe. “Give him a big Fresh Start welcome!” There was an embarrassed chorus of ‘hallos’. A large and rather hairy young man at the end of the row caught Windle’s eye and rolled his own yellow eyes in a theatrical gesture of fellow feeling. “This is Brother Arthur Winkings -” “Count Notfaroutoe, “ said a female voice sharply. “And Sister Doreen - I mean Countess Notfaroutoe, of course -” “Charmed, I’m sure,” said the female voice, as the small dumpy woman sitting next to the small dumpyshape of the Count extended a beringed hand. The Count himself gave Windle a worried grin. He seemed to be wearing opera dress designed for a man several sizes larger. “And Brother Schleppel -” The chair was empty. But a deep voice from the darkness underneath it said, “Evenin’.” “And Brother Lupine. “ The muscular, hairy young man with the long canines and pointy ears gave Windle’s hand a hearty shake. “And Sister Drull. And Brother Gorper. And Brother Ixolite.” Windle shook a number of variations on the theme of hand. Brother Ixolite handed him a small piece of yellow paper. On it was written one word: OoooEeeeOoooEeeeOoooEEEee. “I’m sorry there aren’t more here tonight,” said Mr. Shoe. “I do my best, but I’m afraid some people just don’t seem prepared to make the effort.” “Er . . . dead people?” said Windle, still staring at the note. “Apathy, I call it,” said Mr. Shoe, bitterly. “How can the movement make progress if people are just going to lie around the whole time?” Lupine started making frantic ‘don’t get him started’ signals behind Mr. Shoe’s head, but Windle wasn’t able to stop himself in time. “What movement?” he said. “Dead Rights, “ said Mr. Shoe promptly. ‘I’ll give you one of my leaflets.” “But, surely, er, dead people don’t have rights?” said Windle. In the corner of his vision he saw Lupine put his hand over his eyes. “You’re dead right there, “ said Lupine, his face absolutely straight. Mr. Shoe glared at him. “Apathy,” he repeated. “It’s always the same. You do your best for people, and they just ignore you. Do you know people can say what they like about you and take away your property, just because you’re dead? And they -” “I thought that most people, when they died, just . . . you know . . . died, “ said Windle. “It’s just laziness,” said Mr. Shoe. “They just don’t want to make the effort.” Windle had never seen anyone look so dejected. Reg Shoe seemed to shrink several inches. “How long have you been undead, Vindle?” said Doreen, with brittle brightness. “Hardly any time at all, “ said Windle, relieved at the change of tone. “I must say it’s turning out to be different than I imagined.” “You get used to it,” said Arthur Winkings, alias Count Notfaroutoe, gloomily. “That’s the thing about being undead. It’s as easy as falling off a cliff. We’re all undead here” Lupine coughed. “Except Lupine, “ said Arthur. “I’m more what you might call honorary undead,” said Lupine. “Him being a werewolf, “ explained Arthur. “I thought he was a werewolf as soon as I saw him,“ said Windle, nodding. “Every full moon,” said Lupine. “Regular.” “You start howling and growing hair, “ said Windle. They all shook their heads. “Er, no,” said Lupine. “I more sort of stop howling and some of my hair temporarily falls out. It’s bloody embarrassing.” “But I thought at the full moon your basic werewolf always -” “Lupine’s problem,” said Doreen, “is that he approaches it from ze ozzer way, you see.” “I’m technically a wolf,” said Lupine. “Ridiculous, really. Every full moon I turn into a wolfman. The rest of the time I’m just a . . . wolf.” “Good grief,” said Windle. “That must be a terrible problem.” “The trousers are the worst part, “ said Lupine. “Er . . . they are?” “Oh, yeah. See, it’s all right for human werewolves. They just keep their own clothes on. I mean, they might get a bit ripped, but at least they’ve got them handy on, right? Whereas if I see the full moon, next minute I’m walking and talking and I’m definitely in big trouble on account of being very deficient in the trousery vicinity. So I have to keep a pair stashed somewhere. Mr. Shoe -” “- call me Reg -” “- lets me keep a pair where he works.” “I work at the mortuary on Elm Street,” said Mr. Shoe. “I’m not ashamed. It’s worth it to save a brother or sister.” “Sorry?” said Windle. “Save?” “It’s me that pins the card on the bottom of the lid,” said Mr. Shoe. ‘You never know. It has to be worth a try.” “Does it often work?” said Windle. He looked around the room. His tone must have suggested that it was a reasonably large room, and had only eight people in it; nine if you included the voice from under the chair, which presumably belonged to a person. Doreen and Arthur exchanged glances. “It vorked for Artore, “ said Doreen. “Excuse me,” said Windle, “I couldn’t help wondering . . . are you two . . . er . . . vampires, by any chance?” “‘S’right,” said Arthur. “More’s the pity.” “Hah! You should not valk like zat,” said Doreen haughtily. ‘You should be prout of your noble lineage.” “Prout?” said Arthur. “Did you get bitten by a bat or something?” said Windle quickly, anxious not to be the cause of any family friction. “No, “ said Arthur, “by a lawyer. I got this letter, see? With a posh blob of wax on it and everything. Blahblah-blah . . . great-great-uncle . . . blahblahblah . . . only surviving relative . . . blahblahblah . . . may we be the first to offer our heartiest . . . blahblahblah. One minute I’m Arthur Winkings, a coming man in the wholesale fruit and vegetable business, next minute I find I’m Arthur, Count Notfaroutoe, owner of fifty acres of cliff face a goat’d fall off of and a castle that even the cockroaches have abandoned and an invitation from the burgomaster to drop in down at the village one day and discuss three hundred years of back taxes.” “I hate lawyers, “ said the voice from under the chair. It had a sad, hollow sound. Windle tried to move his legs a little closer to his own chair. “It voss quite a good castle, “ said Doreen. “A bloody heap of mouldering stone is what it was,” said Arthur. “It had nice views.” “Yeah, through every wall, “ said Arthur, dropping a portcullis into that avenue of conversation. “I should have known even before we went to look at it. So I turned the carriage around, right? I thought, well, that’s four days wasted, right in the middle of our busy season. I don’t think any more about it. Next thing, I wake up in the dark, I’m in a box, I finally find these matches, I light one, there’s this card six inches from my nose. It said - “ “ “You Don’t Have to Take this Lying Down”,” said Mr. Shoe proudly. “That was one of my first ones.” “It vasn’t my fault,” said Doreen, stiffly. “You had been lyink rigid for tree dace.” “It gave the priest a shock, I can tell you,” said Arthur. “Huh! Priests!” said Mr. Shoe. “They’re all the same. Always telling you that you ‘re going to live again after you’re dead, but you just try it and see the look on their faces!” “Don’t like priests, either, “ said the voice from under the chair. Windle wondered if anyone else was hearing it. “I won’t forget the look on the Reverend Welegare’s face in a hurry, “ said Arthur gloomily. “I’ve been going to that temple for thirty years. I was respected in the community. Now if I even think of setting foot in a religious establishment I get a pain all down my leg.” “Yes, but there was no need for him to say what he said when you pushed the lid off,” said Doreen. “And him a priest, too. They shouldn’t know those kind of words.” “I enjoyed that temple,” said Arthur, wistfully. ‘It was something to do on a Wednesday.” It dawned on Windle Poons that Doreen had miraculously acquired the ability to use her double-yous. “And you’re a vampire too, Mrs. Win . . . I do beg your pardon . . . Countess Notfaroutoe?” he enquired politely. The Countess smiled. ‘My vord, yes, “ she said. “By marriage,” said Arthur. “Can you do that? I thought you had to be bitten,” said Windle. The voice under the chair sniggered. “I don’t see why I should have to go around biting my wife after thirty years of marriage, and that’s flat,” said the Count. “Every voman should share her husband’s hobbies,” said Doreen. “It iss vot keeps a marriage intervesting.” “Who wants an interesting marriage? I never said I wanted an interesting marriage. That’s what’s wrong with people today, expecting things like marriage to be interesting. And it’s not a hobby, anyway,” moaned Arthur. ‘This vampiring’s not all it’s cracked up to be, you know. Can’t go out in daylight, can’t eat garlic, can’t have a decent shave -” “Why can’t you have a -’ Windle began. “Can’t use a mirror,” said Arthur. “I thought the turning-into-a-bat bit would be interesting, but the owls round here are murder. And as for the . . . you know . . . with the blood . . . well . . . “ His voice trailed off. “Artore’s never been very good at meetink people,” said Doreen. “And the worst part is having to wear evening dress the whole time,” said Arthur. He gave Doreen a side-ways glance. “I’m sure it’s not really compulsory.” “It iss very important to maintain standerts,” said Doreen. Doreen, in addition to her here-one-minute-and-gone-the-next vampire accent, had decided to complement Arthur’s evening dress with what she considered appropriate for a female vampire: figure-hugging black dress, long dark hair cut into a widow’s peak, and very pallid makeup. Nature had designed her to be small and plump with frizzy hair and a hearty complexion. There were definite signs of conflict. “I should have stayed in that coffin,” said Arthur. “Oh, no, “ said Mr. Shoe. “That’s taking the easy way out. The movement needs people like you, Arthur. We had to set an example. Remember our motto.” “Which motto is that, Reg?” said Lupine wearily. “We have so many.” “Undead yes - unperson no!” Reg said. “You see, he means well,” said Lupine, after the meeting had broken up. He and Windle were walking back through the grey dawn. The Notfaroutoes had left earlier to be back home before daylight heaped even more troubles on Arthur, and Mr. Shoe had gone off, he said, to address a meeting. “He goes down to the cemetery behind the Temple of Small Gods and shouts,” Lupine explained. ‘He calls it consciousness raising but I don’t reckon he’s on to much of a certainty.” “Who was it under the chair?” said Windle. “That was Schleppel,” said Lupine. “We think he’s a bogeyman.” “Are bogeymen undead?” “He won’t say.” “You’ve never seen him? I thought bogeymen hid under things and, er, behind things and sort of leapt out at people.” “He’s all right on the hiding. I don’t think he likes the leaping out, “ said Lupine. Windle thought about this. An agoraphobic bogey-man seemed to complete the full set. “Fancy that, “ he said, vaguely. “We only go along to the club to keep Reg happy,” said Lupine. “Doreen said it’d break his heart if we stopped. You know the worst bit?” “Go on, “ said Windle. “Sometimes he brings a guitar along and makes us sing songs like “Streets of Ankh-Morpork” and “We Shall Overcome”. * It’s terrible.” “Can’t sing, eh?” said Windle. “Sing? Never mind sing. Have you ever seen a zombie try to play a guitar? It’s helping him find his fingers afterwards that’s so embarrassing. “ Lupine sighed. “By the way, Sister Drull is a ghoul. If she offers you any of her meat patties, don’t accept.” Windle remembered a vague, shy old lady in a shapeless grey dress. “Oh, dear,” he said. “You mean she makes them out of human flesh?” “What? Oh. No. She just can’t cook very well.” “Oh.” “And Brother Ixolite is probably the only banshee in the world with a speech impediment, so instead of sitting on roofs and screaming when people are about to die he just writes them a note and slips it under the door-” Windle recalled a long, sad face. “ He gave me one, too.” “We try to encourage him,” said Lupine. “He’s very self-conscious.” His arm shot out and flung Windle against a wall. “Quiet!” “What?” Lupine’s ears swivelled. His nostrils flared. Motioning Windle to remain where he was, the wereman slunk silently along the alley until he reached its junction with another, even smaller and nastier one. He paused for a moment, and then thrust a hairy hand around the corner. There was a yelp. Lupine’s hand came back holding a struggling mop. Huge hairy muscles moved under Lupine’s torn shirt as the man was hoisted up to fang level. “You were waiting to attack us, weren’t you,” said Lupine. “Who, me -?” “I could smell you, “ said Lupine, evenly. “I never -” Lupine sighed. “Wolves don’t do this sort of thing, you know, “ he said. The man dangled. “Hey, is that a fact, “ he said. “It’s all head-on combat, fang against fang, claw against claw,” said Lupine. “You don’t find wolves lurking behind rocks ready to mug a passing badger.” “Get away?” “Would you like me to tear your throat out?” The man stared eye to yellow eye. He estimated his chances against a seven-foot man with teeth like that. “Do I get a choice?” he said. “My friend here,” said Lupine, indicating Windle, “is a zombie -” “Well, I don’t know about actual zombie, I think you have to eat some sort of fish and root to be a zom -” “- and you know what zombies do to people, don’t you?” The man tried to nod, even though Lupine’s fist was right under his neck. “Yeggg, “ he managed. “Now, he’s going to take a very good look at you, and if he ever sees you again -” “I say, hang on,” murmured Windle. “- he’ll come after you. Won’t you, Windle?” “Eh? Oh, yes. That’s right. Like a shot, “ said Windle, unhappily. “Now run along, there’s a good chap. OK?” “OggAy,” said the prospective mugger. He was thinking: “Is eyes! Ike imlets!” Lupine let go. The man hit the cobbles, gave Windle one last terrified glance, and ran for it. “Er, what do zombies do to people?” said Windle. ‘I suppose I’d better know.” “They tear them apart like a sheet of dry paper, “ said Lupine. “Oh? Right,” said Windle. They strolled on in silence. Windle was thinking: why me? Hundreds of people must die in this city every day. I bet they don’t have this trouble. They just shut their eyes and wake up being born as someone else, or in some sort of heaven or, I suppose, possibly some sort of hell. Or they go and feast with the gods in their hall, which has never seemed a particularly great idea - gods are all right in their way, but not the kind of people a decent man would want to have a meal with. The Yen buddhists think you just become very rich. Some of the Klatchian religions say you go to a lovely garden full of young women, which doesn’t sound very religious to me . . . Windle found himself wondering how you applied for Klatchian nationality after death. And at that moment the cobblestones came up to meet him. This is usually a poetic way of saying that someone fell flat on their face. In this case, the cobblestones really came up to meet him. They fountained up, circled silently in the air above the alley for a moment, and then dropped like stones. Windle stared at them. So did Lupine. “That’s something you don’t often see,” said the wereman, after a while. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen stones flying before.” “Or dropping like stones,” said Windle. He nudged one with the toe of his boot. It seemed perfectly happy with the role gravity had chosen for it. “You’re a wizard -” “Were a wizard,” said Windle. “You were a wizard. What caused all that?” “I think it is probably an inexplicable phenomenon,” said Windle. ‘There’s a lot of them about, for some reason. I wish I knew why.” He prodded a stone again. It showed no inclination to move. “I’d better be getting along,” said Lupine. “What’s it like, being a wereman?” said Windle. Lupine shrugged. “Lonely,” he said. “Hmm?” “You don’t fit in, you see. When I’m a wolf I remember what it’s like to be a man, and vice versa. Like . . . I mean . . . sometimes . . . sometimes, right, when I’m wolf-shaped, I run up into the hills . . . in the winter, you know, when there’s a crescent moon in the sky and a crust on the snow and the hills go on for ever . . . and the other wolves, well, they feel what it’s like, of course, but they don’t know like I do. To feel and know at the same time. No-one else knows what that’s like. No-one else in the whole world could know what that’s like. That’s the bad part. Knowing there’s no-one else . . .” Windle became aware of teetering on the edge of a pit of sorrows. He never knew what to say in moments like this. Lupine brightened up. “Come to that . . . what’s it like, being a zombie?” “It’s OK. It’s not too bad.” Lupine nodded. “See you around,” he said, and strode off. The streets were beginning to fill up as the population of Ankh-Morpork began its informal shift change between the night people and the day people. All of them avoided Windle. People didn’t bump into a zombie if they could help it. He reached the University gates which were now open, and made his way to his bedroom. He’d need money, if he was moving out. He’d saved quite a lot over the years. Had he made a will? He’d been fairly confused the past ten years or so. He might have made one. Had he been confused enough to leave all his money to himself? He hoped so. There’d been practically no known cases of anyone successfully challenging their own will - He levered up the floorboard by the end of his bed, and lifted out a bag of coins. He remembered he’d been saving up for his old age. There was his diary. It was a five-year diary, he recalled, so in a technical sense Windle had wasted about - he did a quick calculation - yes, about three-fifths of his money. Or more, when you came to think about it. After all, there wasn’t much on the pages. Windle hadn’t done anything worth writing down for years, or at least anything he’d been able to remember by the evening. There were just phases of the moon, lists of religious festivals, and the occasional sweet stuck to a page. There was something else down there under the floor, too. He fumbled around in the dusty space and found a couple of smooth spheres. He pulled them out and stared at them, mystified. He shook them, and watched the tiny snowfalls. He read the writing, noting how it wasn’t so much writing as a drawing of writing. He reached down and picked up the third object; it was a little bent metal wheel. Just one little metal wheel. And, beside it, a broken sphere. Windle stared at them. Of course, he had been a bit non-compos mentis in his last thirty years or so, and maybe he’d worn his underwear outside his clothes and dribbled a bit, but . . . he’d collected souvenirs? And little wheels? There was a cough behind him. Windle dropped the mysterious objects back into the hole and looked around. The room was empty, but there seemed to be a shadow behind the open door. “Hallo?” he said. A deep, rumbling, but very diffident voice said, “S’only me, Mr. Poons.” Windle wrinkled his forehead with the effort of recollection. “Schleppel?” he said. “That’s right.” “The bogeyman?” “That’s right?” “Behind my door?” “That’s right.” “Why?” “It’s a friendly door.” Windle walked over to the door and gingerly shut it. There was nothing behind it but old plaster, although he did fancy that he felt an air movement. “I’m under the bed now, Mr. Poons,” said Schleppel’s voice from, yes, under the bed. “You don’t mind, do you?” “Well, no. I suppose not. But shouldn’t you be in a closet somewhere? That’s where bogeymen used to hide when I was a lad.” “A good closet is hard to find, Mr. Poons.” Windle sighed. “All right. The underside of the bed’s yours. Make yourself at home, or whatever.” “I’d prefer going back to lurking behind the door, Mr. Poons, if it’s all the same to you.” “Oh, all right.” “Do you mind shutting your eyes a moment?” Windle obediently shut his eyes. There was another movement of air. “You can look now, Mr. Poons.” Windle opened his eyes. “Gosh,” said Schleppel’s voice, “you’ve even got a coat hook and everything behind here.” Windle watched the brass knobs on the end of his bedstead unscrew themselves. A tremor shook the floor. “What’s going on, Schleppel?” he said. “Build up of life force, Mr. Poons.” “You mean you-now?” “Oh, yes. Hey, wow, there’s a lock and a handle and a brass finger plate and everything behind here -” “What do you mean, a build up of life force?” “- and the hinges, there’s a really good rising butts here, never had a door with -” “Schleppel!” “Just life force, Mr. Poons. You know. It’s a kind of force what you get in things that are alive? I thought you wizards knew about this sort of thing.” Windle Poons opened his mouth to say something like ‘Of course we do,” before proceeding diplomatically to find out what the hell the bogeyman was talking about, and then remembered that he didn’t have to act like that now. That’s what he would have done if he was alive, but despite what Reg Shoe proclaimed, it was quite hard to be proud when you were dead. A bit stiff, perhaps, but not proud. “Never heard of it,” he said. “What’s it building up for?” “Don’t know. Very unseasonal. It ought to be dying down around now,” said Schleppel. The floor shook again. Then the loose floorboard that had concealed Windle’s little fortune creaked, and started to put out shoots. “What do you mean, unseasonal?” he said. “You get a lot of it in the spring,” said the voice from behind the door. “Shoving the daffodils up out of the ground and that kind of stuff.” “Never heard of it, “ said Windle, fascinated. “I thought you wizards knew everything about everything.” Windle looked at his wizarding hat. Burial and tunnelling had not been kind to it, but after more than a century of wear it hadn’t been the height of haute couture to start with. “There’s always something new to learn, “ he said. It was another day. Cyril the cockerel stirred on his perch. The chalked words glowed in the half light. He concentrated. He took a deep breath. “Dock-a-loodle-fod!” Now that the memory problem was solved, there was only the dyslexia to worry about. Up in the high fields the wind was strong and the sun was close and strong. Bill Door strode back and forth through the stricken grass of the hillside like a shuttle across a green weave. He wondered if he’d ever felt wind and sunlight before. Yes, he’d felt them, he must have done. But he’d never experienced them like this; the way wind pushed at you, the way the sun made you hot. The way you could feel Time passing. Carrying you with it. There was a timid knocking at the barn door. YES? “Come on down here, Bill Door.” He climbed down in the darkness and opened the door cautiously. Miss FIitworth was shielding a candle with one hand. “Um. “ she said. I AM SORRY? “You can come into the house, if you like. For the evening. Not for the night, of course. I mean, I don’t like to think of you all alone out here of an evening, when I’ve got a fire and everything.” Bill Door was no good at reading faces. It was a skill he’d never needed. He stared at Miss Flitworth’s frozen, worried, pleading smile like a baboon looking for meaning in the Rosetta Stone. I THANK YOU, he said. She scuttled off. When he arrived at the house she wasn’t in the kitchen. He followed a rustling, scraping noise out into a narrow hallway and through a low doorway. Miss Flitworth was down on her hands and knees in the little room beyond, feverishly lighting the fire. She looked up, flustered, when he rapped politely on the open door. “Hardly worth putting a match to it for one,” she mumbled, by way of embarrassed explanation. “Sit down. I’ll make us some tea.” Bill Door folded himself into one of the narrow chairs by the fire, and looked around the room. It was an unusual room. Whatever its functions were, being lived in wasn’t apparently one of them. Whereas the kitchen was a sort of roofed over outside space and the hub of the farm’s activities, this room resembled nothing so much as a mausoleum. Contrary to general belief, Bill Door wasn’t very familiar with funereal decor. Deaths didn’t normally take place in tombs, except in rare and unfortunate cases. The open air, the bottoms of rivers, halfway down sharks, any amount of bedrooms, yes - tombs, no. His business was the separation of the wheatgerm of the soul from the chaff of the mortal body, and that was usually concluded long before any of the rites associated with, when you got right down to it, a reverential form of garbage disposal. But this room looked like the tombs of those kings who wanted to take it all with them. Bill Door sat with his hands on his knees, looking around. First, there were the ornaments. More teapots than one might think possible. China dogs with staring eyes. Strange cake stands. Miscellaneous statues and painted plates with cheery little messages on them: A Present from Quirm, Long Life and Happiness. They covered every flat surface in a state of total democracy, so that a rather valuable antique silver candlestick was next to a bright coloured china dog with a bone in its mouth and an expression of culpable idiocy. Pictures hid the walls. Most of them were painted in shades of mud and showed depressed cattle standing on wet moorland in a fog. In fact the ornaments almost concealed the furniture, but this was no loss. Apart from two chairs groaning under the weight of accumulated antimacassars, the rest of the furniture seemed to have no use whatsoever apart from supporting ornaments. There were spindly tables everywhere. The floor was layered in rag rugs. Someone had really liked making rag rugs. And, above all, and around all, and permeating all, was the smell. It smelled of long, dull afternoons. On a cloth-draped sideboard were two small wooden chests flanking a larger one. They must be the famous boxes full of treasure, he thought. He became aware of ticking. There was a clock on the wall. Someone had once had what they must have thought was the jolly idea of making a clock like an owl. When the pendulum swung, the owl’s eyes went backwards and forwards in what the seriously starved of entertainment probably imagined was a humorous way. After a while. your own eyes started to oscillate in sympathy. Miss Flitworth bustled in with a loaded tray. There was a blur of activity as she performed the alchemical ceremony of making tea, buttering scones, arranging biscuits, hooking sugar tongs on the basin . . . She sat back. Then, as if she had been in a state of repose for twenty minutes, she trilled slightly breathlessly: “Well . . . isn’t this nice.” YES, MISS FLITWORTH. “Don’t often have occasion to open up the parlour these days.” NO. “Not since I lost my dad.” For a moment Bill Door wondered if she’d lost the late Mr. Flitworth in the parlour. Perhaps he’d taken a wrong turning among the ornaments. Then he recalled the funny little ways humans put things. AH. “He used to sit in that very chair, reading the almanac.” Bill Door searched his memory. A TALL MAN, he ventured. WITH A MOUSTACHE? MISSING THE TIP OF THE LITTLE FINGER ON HIS LEFT HAND? Miss Flitworth stared at him over the top of her cup. “You knew him?” she said. I THINK I MET HIM ONCE. “He never mentioned you,” said Miss FIitworth archly. ‘”Not by name. Not as Bill Door.” I DON’T THINK HE WOULD HAVE MENTIONED ME, said Bill Door slowly. “It’s all right,” said Miss Flitworth. “I know all about it. Dad used to do a bit of smuggling, too. Well, this isn’t a big farm. It’s not what you’d call a living. He always said a body has to do what it can. I expect you were in his line of business. I’ve been watching you. That was your business, right enough.” Bill Door thought deeply. GENERAL TRANSPORTATION, he said. “That sounds like it, yes. Have you got any family, Bill?” A DAUGHTER. “That’s nice.” I’M AFRAID WE’VE LOST TOUCH. “That’s a shame,” said Miss Flitworth, and sounded as though she meant it. ‘We used to have some good times here in the old days. That was when my young man was alive, of course.” YOU HAVE A SON? said Bill, who was losing track. She gave him a sharp look. “I invite you to think hard about the word “Miss”,” she said. “We takes things like that seriously in these parts.” MY APOLOGIES. “No, Rufus was his name. He was a smuggler, like dad. Not as good, though. I got to admit that. He was more artistic. He used to give me all sorts of things from foreign parts, you know. Bits of jewelry and suchlike. And we used to go dancing. He had very good calves, I remember. I like to see good legs on a man.” She stared at the fire for a while. “See . . . he never come back one day. Just before we were going to be wed. Dad said he never should have tried to run the mountains that close to winter, but I know he wanted to do it so’s he could bring me a proper present. And he wanted to make some money and impress dad, because dad was against -” She picked up the poker and gave the fire a more ferocious jab than it deserved. “Anyway, some folk said he ran away to Farferee or Ankh-Morpork or somewhere, but I know he wouldn’t have done something like that.” The penetrating look she gave Bill Door nailed him to the chair. “What do you think, Bill Door?” she said sharply. He felt quite proud of himself for spotting the question within the question. MISS FLITWORTH, THE MOUNTAINS CAN BE VERY TREACHEROUS IN THE WINTER. She looked relieved. ‘That’s what I’ve always said,” she said. “And do you know what, Bill Door? Do you know what I thought?” NO, MISS FLITWORTH. “It was the day before we were going to be wed, like I said. And then one of his pack ponies came back by itself and then the men went and found the avalanche . . . and you know what I thought? I thought, that’s ridiculous. That’s stupid. Terrible, isn’t it? Oh, I thought other things afterwards, naturally, but the first thing was that the world shouldn’t act as if it was some kind of book. Isn’t that a terrible thing to have thought?” I MYSELF HAVE NEVER TRUSTED DRAMA, MISS FLITWORTH. She wasn’t really listening. “And I thought, what life expects me to do now is moon around the place in the wedding dress for years and go completely doodly. That’s what it wants me to do. Hah! Oh, yes! So I put the dress in the ragtag and we still invited everyone to the wedding breakfast, because it’s a crime to let good food go to waste.” She attacked the fire again, and then gave him another megawatt stare. “I think it’s always very important to see what’s really real and what isn’t, don’t you?” MISS FLITWORTH? “Yes?” DO YOU MIND IF I STOP THE CLOCK? She glanced up at the boggle-eyed owl. “What? Oh. Why?” I AM AFRAID IT GETS ON MY NERVES. “It’s not very loud, is it?” Bill Door wanted to say that every tick was like the hammering of iron clubs on bronze pillars. H’S JUST RATHER ANNOYING, MISS FLITWORTH. “Well, stop it if you want to, I’m sure. I only keep it wound up for the company.” Bill Door got up thankfully, stepped gingerly through the forest of ornaments, and grabbed the pinecone shaped pendulum. The wooden owl glared at him and the ticking stopped at least in the realm of common sound. He was aware that, elsewhere, the pounding of Time continued none the less. How could people endure it? They allowed Time in their houses, as though it was a fiend. He sat down again. Miss Flitworth had started to knit, ferociously. The fire rustled in the grate. Bill Door leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling. “Your horse enjoying himself?” PARDON? “Your horse. He seems to be enjoying himself in the meadow,” prompted Miss Flitworth. OH. YES. “Running around as if he’s never seen grass before.” HE LIKES GRASS. “And you like animals. I can tell.” Bill Door nodded. His reserves of small talk, never very liquid, had dried up. He sat silently for the next couple of hours, hands gripping the arms of the chair, until Miss Flitworth announced that she was going to bed. Then he went back to the barn, and slept. Bill Door hadn’t been aware of it coming. But there it was, a grey figure floating in the darkness of the barn. Somehow it had got hold of the golden timer. It told him, Bill Door, there has been a mistake. The glass shattered. Fine golden seconds glittered in the air, for a moment, and then settled. It told him, Return. You have work to do. There has been a mistake. The figure faded. Bill Door nodded. Of course there had been a mistake. Anyone could see there had been a mistake. He’d known all along it had been a mistake. He tossed the overalls in a corner and took up the robe of absolute blackness. Well, it had been an experience. And, he had to admit, one that he didn’t want to relive. He felt as though a huge weight had been removed. Was that what it was really like to be alive? The feeling of darkness dragging you forward? How could they live with it? And yet they did, and even seemed to find enjoyment in it, when surely the only sensible course would be to despair. Amazing. To feel you were a tiny living thing, sandwiched between two cliffs of darkness. How could they stand to be alive? Obviously it was something you had to be born to. Death saddled his horse and rode out and up over the fields. The corn rippled far below, like the sea. Miss Flitworth would have to find someone else to help her gather in the harvest. That was odd. There was a feeling there. Regret? Was that it? But it was Bill Door’s feeling, and Bill Door was . . . dead. Had never lived. He was his old self again, safe where there were no feelings and no regrets. Never any regrets. And now he was in his study, and that was odd, because he couldn’t quite remember how he’d got there. One minute on horseback, the next in the study, with its ledgers and timers and instruments. And it was bigger than he remembered. The walls lurked on the edge of sight. That was Bill Door’s doing. Of course it would seem big to Bill Door. and there was probably just a bit of him still hanging on. The thing to do was keep busy. Throw himself into his work. There were already some lifetimers on his desk. He didn’t remember putting them there, but that didn’t matter, the important thing was to get on with the job . . . He picked up the nearest one, and read the name. “Lod-a-foodle-wok!” Miss Flitworth sat up in bed. On the edge of dreams she’d heard another noise, which must have woken the cockerel. She fiddled with a match until she got a candle alight, and then felt under the bed and her fingers found the hilt of a cutlass that had been much employed by the late Mr. Flitworth during his business trips across the mountains. She hurried down the creaking stairs and out into the chill of the dawn. She hesitated at the barn door, and then pulled it open just enough to slip inside. “Mr. Door?” There was a rustle in the hay, and then an alert silence. MISS FLITWORTH? “Did you call out? I’m sure I heard someone shout my name.” There was another rustle, and Bill Door’s head appeared over the edge of the loft. MISS FLITWORTH. “Yes. Who did you expect? Are you all right?” ER. YES. YES, I BELIEVE SO. “You sure you’re all right? You woke up Cyril.” YES. YES. IT WAS JUST A - I THOUGHT THAT - YES. She blew out the candle. There was already enough pre-dawn light to see by. “Well, if you’re sure . . . Now I’m up I may as well put the porridge on.” Bill Door lay back on the hay until he felt he could trust his legs to carry him, and then climbed down and tottered across the yard to the farmhouse. He said nothing while she ladled porridge into a bowl in front of him. and drowned it with cream. Finally, he couldn’t contain himself any longer. He didn’t know how to ask the questions, but he really needed the answers. MISS FLITWORTH? “Yes?” WHAT IS IT . . . IN THE NIGHT . . . WHEN YOU SEE THINGS, BUT THEY ARE NOT THE REAL THINGS? She stood, porridge pot in one hand and ladle in the other. “You mean dreaming?” she said. IS THAT WHAT DREAMING IS? “Don’t you dream? I thought everyone dreamed.” ABOUT THINGS THAT ARE GOING TO HAPPEN? “That’s premonitions, that is. I’ve never believed in ‘em myself. You’re not telling me you don’t know what dreams are?” NO. NO. OF COURSE NOT. “What’s worrying you, Bill?” I SUDDENLY KNOW THAT WE ARE GOING TO DIE. She watched him thoughtfully. “Well, so does everyone,” she said. “And that’s what you’ve been dreaming about, is it? Everyone feels like this sometimes. I wouldn’t worry about it, if I was you. The best thing to do is keep busy and act cheerful, I always say.” BUT WE WILL COME TO AN END! “Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Miss Flitworth. “It all depends on what kind of life you’ve led. I suppose.” I’M SORRY? “Are you a religious man?” YOU MEAN THAT WHAT HAPPENS TO YOU WHEN YOU DIE IS WHAT YOU BELIEVE WILL HAPPEN? “It would be nice if that was the case, wouldn’t it?” she said brightly. BUT, YOU SEE, I KNOW WHAT I BELIEVE. I BELIEVE . . . NOTHING. “We are gloomy this morning, aren’t we?” said Miss Flitworth. “Best thing you could do right now is finish off that porridge. It’s good for you. They say it builds healthy bones.” Bill Door looked down at the bowl. CAN I HAVE SOME MORE? Bill Door spent the morning chopping wood. It was pleasantly monotonous. Get tired. That was important. He must have slept before last night, but he must have been so tired that he didn’t dream. And he was determined not to dream again. The axe rose and fell on the logs like clockwork. No! Not like clockwork! Miss Flitworth had several pots on the stove when he came in. IT SMELLS GOOD, Bill volunteered. He reached for a wobbling pot lid. Miss Flitworth spun around. “Don’t touch it! You don’t want that stuff! It’s for the rats.” DO RATS NOT FEED THEMSELVES? “You bet they do. That’s why we’re going to give them a little extra something before the harvest. A few dollops of this around the holes and - no more rats.” It took a little while for Bill Door to put two and two together, but when this took place it was like megaliths mating. THAT IS POISON? “Essence of spikkle, mixed with oatmeal. Never fails.” AND THEY DIE? “Instantly. Straight over and legs in the air. We’re having bread and cheese,” she added. “I ain’t doing big cooking twice in one day, and we’re having chicken tonight. Talking of chicken, in fact . . . come on . . .” She took a cleaver off the rack and went out into the yard. Cyril the cockerel eyed her suspiciously from the top of the midden. His harem of fat and rather elderly hens, who had been scratching up the dust, bounded unsteadily towards Miss Flitworth in the broken-knicker-elastic run of hens everywhere. She reached down quickly and picked one up. It regarded Bill Door with bright, stupid eyes. “Do you know how to pluck a chicken?” said Miss Flitworth. Bill looked from her to the hen. BUT WE FEED THEM, he said helplessly. “That’s right. And then they feed us. This one’s been off lay for months. That’s how it goes in the chicken world. Mr. Flitworth used to wring their necks but I never got the knack of that; the cleaver’s messy and they run around a bit afterwards, but they’re dead all right, and they know it.” Bill Door considered his options. The chicken had focused one beady eye on him. Chickens are a lot more stupid than humans, and don’t have the sophisticated mental filters that prevent them seeing what is truly there. It knew where it was and who was looking at it. He looked into its small and simple life and saw the last few seconds pouring away. He’d never killed. He’d taken life, but only when it was finished with. There was a difference between theft and stealing by finding. NOT THE CLEAVER, he said wearily. GIVE ME THE CHICKEN. He turned his back for a moment, then handed the limp body to Miss Flitworth. “Well done. “ she said, and went back to the kitchen. Bill Door felt Cyril’s accusing gaze on him. He opened his hand. A tiny spot of light hovered over his palm. He blew on it, gently, and it faded away. After lunch they put down the rat poison. He felt like a murderer. A lot of rats died. Down in the runs under the barn - in the deepest one, one tunnelled long ago by long-forgotten ancestral rodents - something appeared in the darkness. It seemed to have difficulty deciding what shape it was going to be. It began as a lump of highly-suspicious cheese. This didn’t seem to work. Then it tried something that looked very much like a small, hungry terrier. This was also rejected. For a moment it was a steel-jawed trap. This was clearly unsuitable. It cast around for fresh ideas and much to its surprise one arrived smoothly, as if travelling from no distance at all. Not so much a shape as a memory of a shape. It tried it and found that, while totally wrong for the job, in some deeply satisfying way it was the only shape it could possibly be. It went to work. That evening the men were practising archery on the green. Bill Door had carefully ensured a local reputation as the worst bowman in the entire history of toxophily; it had never occurred to anyone that putting arrows through the hats of bystanders behind him must logically take a lot more skill than merely sending them through a quite large target a mere fifty yards away. It was amazing how many friends you could make by being bad at things, provided you were bad enough to be funny. So he was allowed to sit on a bench outside the inn, with the old men. Next door, smoke poured from the chimney of the village smithy and spiralled up into the dusk. There was a ferocious hammering from behind its closed doors. Bill Door wondered why the smithy was always shut. Most smiths worked with their doors open, so that their forge became an unofficial village meeting room. This one was keen on his work - “Hallo, skelington.” He swivelled round. The small child of the house was watching him with the most penetrating gaze he had ever seen. “You are a skelington, aren’t you,” she said. ‘l can tell, because of the bones.” YOU ARE MISTAKEN, SMALL CHILD. “You are. People turn into skelingtons when they’re dead. They’re not supposed to walk around afterwards.” HA. HA. HA. WILL YOU HARK AT THE CHILD. “Why are you walking around, then?” Bill Door looked at the old men. They appeared engrossed in the sport. I’LL TELL YOU WHAT, he said desperately, IF YOU WILL GO AWAY, I WILL GIVE YOU A HALF-PENNY. “I’ve got a skelington mask for when we go trickle-treating on Soul Cake Night,” she said. “It’s made of paper. You get given sweets.” Bill Door made the mistake millions of people had tried before with small children in slightly similar circumstances. He resorted to reason. LOOK, he said, IF I WAS REALLY A SKELETON, LITTLE GIRL, I’M SURE THESE OLD GENTLEMEN HERE WOULD HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY ABOUT IT. She regarded the old men at the other end of the bench. “They’re nearly skelingtons anyway,” she said. “l shouldn’t think they’d want to see another one.” He gave in. I HAVE TO ADMIT THAT YOU ARE RIGHT ON THAT POINT. “Why don’t you fall to bits?” I DON’T KNOW. I NEVER HAVE. “I’ve seen skelingtons of birds and things and they all fall to bits.” PERHAPS IT IS BECAUSE THEY ARE WHAT SOMETHING WAS. WHEREAS THIS IS WHAT I AM. “The apothecary who does medicine over in Chambly’s got a skelington on a hook with all wire to hold the bones together,” said the child, with the air of one imparting information gained after diligent research. I DON’T HAVE WIRES. “There’s a difference between alive skelingtons and dead ones?” YES. “It’s a dead skelington he’s got then, is it?” YES. “What was inside someone?” YES. “Ur. Yuk.” The child stared distantly at the landscape for a while and then said, “I’ve got new socks.” YES? “You can look, if you like.” A grubby foot was extended for inspection. WELL, WELL. FANCY THAT. NEW SOCKS. “My mum knitted them out of sheep.” MY WORD. The horizon was given another inspection. “D’you know,” she said, “d’you know . . . it’s Friday.” YES. “I found a spoon.” Bill Door found he was waiting expectantly. He was not familiar with people who had an attention span of less than three seconds. “You work along of Miss Flitworth’s?” YES. “My dad says you’ve got your feet properly under the table there.” Bill Door couldn’t think of an answer to this because he didn’t know what it meant. It was one of those many flat statements humans made that were really just a disguise for something more subtle which was often conveyed merely by the tone of voice or a look in the eyes, neither of which was being done by the child. “My dad says she said she’s got boxes of treasure.” HAS SHE? “I’ve got tuppence.” MY GOODNESS. “Sal!” They both looked up as Mrs. Lifton appeared on the doorstep. “Bedtime for you. Stop worrying Mr. Door.” OH, I ASSURE YOU SHE IS NOT - “Say goodnight, now.” “How do skelingtons go to sleep? They can’t close their eyes because -” He heard their voices, muffled, inside the inn. “You mustn’t call Mr. Door that just because . . . he’s . . . very . . . he’s very thin . . .” “It’s all right. He’s not the dead sort.” Mrs. Lifton’s voice had the familiar worried tones of someone who can’t bring themselves to believe the evidence of their own eyes. “Perhaps he’s just been very ill.” “I should think he’s just about been as ill as he can be ever.” Bill Door walked back home thoughtfully. There was a light on in the farmhouse kitchen, but he went straight to the barn, climbed the ladder to the hay-loft, and lay down. He could put off dreaming, but he couldn’t escape remembering. He stared at the darkness. After a while he was aware of the pattering of feet. He turned. A stream of pale rat-shaped ghosts skipped along the roof beam above his head, fading as they ran so that soon there was nothing but the sound of the scampering. They were followed by a . . . shape. It was about six inches high. It wore a black robe. It held a small scythe in one skeletal paw. A bone-white nose with brittle grey whiskers protruded from the shadowy hood. Bill Door reached out and picked it up. It didn’t resist, but stood on the palm of his hand and eyed him as one professional to another. Bill Door said: AND YOU ARE -? The Death of Rats nodded. SQUEAK. I REMEMBER, said Bill Door, WHEN YOU WERE A PART OF ME. The Death of Rats squeaked again. Bill Door fumbled in the pockets of his overall. He’d put some of his lunch in there. Ah, yes. I EXPECT, he said, THAT YOU COULD MURDER A PIECE OF CHEESE? The Death of Rats took it graciously. Bill Door remembered visiting an old man once - only once - who had spent almost his entire life locked in a cell in a tower for some alleged crime or other, and had tamed little birds for company during his life sentence. They crapped on his bedding and ate his food, but he tolerated them and smiled at their flight in and out of the high barred windows. Death had wondered, at the time, why anyone would do something like that. I WON’T DELAY YOU, he said. I EXPECT YOU’VE GOT THINGS TO DO. RATS TO SEE. I KNOW HOW IT IS. And now he understood. He put the figure back on the beam, and lay down in the hay. DROP IN ANY TIME YOU’RE PASSING. Bill Door stared at the darkness again. Sleep. He could feel her prowling around. Sleep, with a pocketful of dreams. He lay in the darkness and fought back. Miss Flitworth’s shouting jolted him upright and, to his momentary relief still went on. The barn door slammed open. “Bill! Come down quick!” He swung his legs on to the ladder. WHAT IS HAPPENING. MISS FLITWORTH? “Something’s on fire!” They ran across the yard and out on to the road. The sky over the village was red. “Come on!” BUT IT IS NOT OUR FIRE. “It’s going to be everyone’s! It spreads like crazy on thatch!” They reached the apology for a town square. The inn was already well alight, the thatch roaring starwards in a million twisting sparks. “Look at everyone standing around,” snarled Miss Flitworth. “There’s the pump, buckets are everywhere, why don’t people think?” There was a scuffle a little way away as a couple of his customers tried to stop Lifton from running into the building. He was screaming at them. “The girl’s still in there,” said Miss Flitworth. “Is that what he said?” YES. Flames curtained every upper window. “There’s got to be some way,” said Miss Flitworth. ‘Maybe we could find a ladder -” WE SHOULD NOT. “What? We’ve got to try. We can’t leave people in there!” YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND, said Bill Door. TO TINKER WITH THE FATE OF ONE INDIVIDUAL COULD DESTROY THE WHOLE WORLD. Miss FIitworth looked at him as if he had gone mad. “What kind of garbage is that?” I MEAN THAT THERE IS A TIME FOR EVERYONE TO DIE. She stared. Then she drew her hand back, and gave him a ringing slap across the face. He was harder than she’d expected. She yelped and sucked at her knuckles. “You leave my farm tonight, Mr. Bill Door,” she growled. “Understand?” Then she turned on her heel and ran towards the pump. Some of the men had brought long hooks to drag the burning thatch off the roof. Miss Flitworth organised a team to get a ladder up to one of the bedroom windows but, by the time a man was persuaded to climb it behind the steaming protection of a damp blanket, the top of the ladder was already smouldering. Bill Door watched the flames. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the golden timer. The firelight glowed redly on the glass. He put it away again. Part of the roof fell in. SQUEAK. Bill Door looked down. A small robed figure marched between his legs and strutted into the flaming doorway. Someone was yelling something about barrels of brandy. Bill Door reached back into his pocket and took out the timer again. Its hissing drowned out the roar of the flames. The future flowed into the past, and there was a lot more past than there was future, but he was struck by the fact that what it flowed through all the time was now. He replaced it carefully. Death knew that to tinker with the fate of one individual could destroy the whole world. He knew this. The knowledge was built into him. To Bill Door, he realised, it was so much horse elbows. OH, DAMN, he said. And walked into the fire. “Um. It’s me, Librarian,” said Windle, trying to shout through the keyhole. “Windle Poons.” He tried hammering some more. “Why won’t he answer?” “Don’t know, “ said a voice behind him. “Schleppel?” “Yes, Mr. Poons.” “Why are you behind me?” “I’ve got to be behind something, Mr. Poons. That’s what being a bogeyman is all about.” “Librarian?” said Windle, hammering some more. “Oook.” “Why won’t you let me in?” “Oook.” “But I need to look something up.” “Oook oook!” “Well, yes. I am. What’s that got to do with it?” “Oook!” “That’s - that’s unfair!” “What’s he saying, Mr. Poons?” “He won’t let me in because I’m dead!” “That’s typical. That’s the sort of thing Reg Shoe is always going on about, you know.” “Is there anyone else that knows about life force?” “There’s always Mrs. Cake, I suppose. But she’s a bit weird.” “Who’s Mrs. Cake?” Then Windle realised what Schleppel had just said. “Anyway, you’re a bogeyman.” “You never heard of Mrs. Cake?” “No.” “I don’t suppose she’s interested in magic . . . Anyway, Mr. Shoe says we shouldn’t talk to her. She exploits dead people, he says.” “How?” “She’s a medium. Well, more a small.” “Really? All right, let’s go and see her. And . . . Schleppel?” “Yes?” “It’s creepy, feeling you standing behind me the whole time.” “I get very upset if I’m not behind something, Mr. Poons.” “Can’t you lurk behind something else?” “What do you suggest, Mr. Poons?” Windle thought about it. “Yes, it might work,” he said quietly, “if I can find a screwdriver.” Modo the gardener was on his knees mulching the dahlias when he heard a rhythmic scraping and thumping behind him, such as might be made by someone trying to move a heavy object. He turned his head. “‘Evening, Mr. Poons. Still dead, I see.” “Evening, Modo. You’ve got the place looking very nice.” “There’s someone moving a door along behind you,” Mr. Poons.” “Yes, I know.” The door edged cautiously along the path. As it passed Modo it pivoted awkwardly, as if whoever was carrying it was trying to keep as much behind it as possible. “It’s a kind of security door, “ said Windle. He paused. There was something wrong. He couldn’t quite be certain what it was, but there was suddenly a lot of wrongness about, like hearing one note out of tune in an orchestra. He audited the view in front of him. “What’s that you’re putting the weeds into?” he said. Modo glanced at the thing beside him. “Good, isn’t it?” he said. “I found it by the compost heaps. My wheelbarrow’d broke, and I looked up, and there -” “I’ve never seen anything like it before,” said Windle. “Who’d want to make a big basket out of wire? And those wheels don’t look big enough.” “But it pushes along well by the handle, “ said Modo. ‘I’m amazed that anyone would want to throw it away. Why would anyone want to throw away something like this, Mr. Poons?” Windle stared at the trolley. He couldn’t escape the feeling that it was watching him. He heard himself say, “Maybe it got there by itself.” “That’s right, Mr. Poons! It wanted a bit of peace, I expect!” said Modo. “You are a one!” “Yes,” said Windle, unhappily. “It rather looks that way.” He stepped out into the city, aware of the scraping and thumping of the door behind him. If someone had told me a month ago, he thought, that a few days after I died I’d be walking along the road followed by a bashful bogeyman hiding behind a door . . . why, I’d have laughed at them. No, I wouldn’t. I’d have said ‘eh?” and ‘what?” and ‘speak up!” and wouldn’t have understood anyway. Beside him, someone barked. A dog was watching him. It was a very large dog. In fact, the only reason it could be called a dog and not a wolf was that everyone knew you didn’t get wolves in cities. It winked. Windle thought: no full moon last night. “Lupine?” he ventured. The dog nodded. “Can you talk?” The dog shook its head. “So what do you do now?” Lupine shrugged. “Want to come with me?” There was another shrug that almost vocalised the thought: why not? What else have I got to do? If someone had told me a month ago, Windle thought, that a few days after I died I’d be walking along the road followed by a bashful bogeyman hiding behind a door and accompanied by a kind of negative version of a werewolf . . . why, I probably would have laughed at them. After they’d repeated themselves a few times, of course. In a loud voice. The Death of Rats rounded up the last of his clients, many of whom had been in the thatch, and led the way through the flames towards wherever it was that good rats went. He was surprised to pass a burning figure forcing its way through the incandescent mess of collapsed beams and crumbling floorboards. As it mounted the blazing stairs it removed something from the disintegrating remains of its clothing and held it carefully in its teeth. The Death of Rats did not wait to see what happened next. While it was, in some respects, as ancient as the first proto-rat, it was also less than a day old and still feeling its way as a Death, and it was possibly aware that a deep, thumping noise that was making the building shake was the sound of brandy starting to boil in its barrels. The thing about boiling brandy is that it doesn’t boil for long. The fireball dropped bits of the inn half a mile away. White-hot flames erupted from the holes where the doors and windows had been. The walls exploded. Burning rafters whirred overhead. Some buried themselves in neighbouring roofs, starting more fires. What was left was just an eye-watering glow. And then little pools of shadow within the glow. They moved and ran together and formed the shape of a tall figure striding forward, carrying something in front of it. It passed through the blistered crowd and trudged up the cool dark road towards the farm. The people picked themselves up and followed it, moving through the dusk like the tail of a dark comet. Bill Door climbed the stairs to Miss Flitworth’s bedroom and laid the child on the bed. SHE SAID THERE WAS AN APOTHECARY SOMEWHERE NEAR HERE. Miss FIitworth pushed her way through the crowd at the top of the stairs. “There’s one in Chambly,” she said. “But there’s a witch over Lancrew -” NO WITCHES. NO MAGIC. SEND FOR HIM. AND EVERYONE ELSE, GO AWAY. It wasn’t a suggestion. It wasn’t even a command. It was simply an irrefutable statement. Miss Flitworth waved her skinny arms at the people. “Come on, it’s all over! Shoo! You’re all in my bedroom! Go on, get out!” “How’d he do it?” said someone at the back of the crowd. “No-one could have got out of there alive! We saw it all blow up!” Bill Door turned around slowly. WE HID, he said, IN THE CELLAR. “There! See?” said Miss Flitworth. “In the cellar. Makes sense.” “But the inn hasn’t got –“ the doubter began, and stopped. Bill Door was glaring at him. “In the cellar,” he corrected himself. ‘Yeah. Right. Clever.” “Very clever,” said Miss Flitworth. ‘Now get along with the lot of you.” He heard her shoo them down the stairs and back into the night. The door slammed. He didn’t hear her come back up the stairs with a bowl of cold water and a flannel. Miss Flitworth could walk lightly, too, when she had a mind to. She came in and shut the door behind her. “Her parents’ll want to see her,” she said. “Her mum’s in a faint and Big Henry from the mill knocked her dad out when he tried to run into the flames, but they’ll be here directly.” She bent down and ran the flannel over the girl’s forehead. “Where was she?” SHE WAS HIDING IN A CUPBOARD. “From a fire?” Bill Door shrugged. “I’m amazed you could find anyone in all that heat and smoke,” she said. I SUPPOSE YOU WOULD CALL IT A KNACK. “And not a mark on her.” Bill Door ignored the question in her voice. DID YOU SEND SOMEONE FOR THE APOTHECARY? “Yes.” HE MUST NOT TAKE ANYTHING AWAY. “What do you mean?” STAY HERE WHEN HE COMES. YOU MUST NOT TAKE ANYTHING OUT OF THIS ROOM. “That’s silly. Why should he take anything? What would he want to take?” IT’S VERY IMPORTANT. AND NOW I MUST LEAVE YOU. “Where are you going?” TO THE BARN. THERE ARE THINGS I MUST DO. THERE MAY NOT BE MUCH TIME NOW. Miss Flitworth stared at the small figure on the bed. She felt far out of her depth, and all she could do was tread water. “She just looks as if she’s sleeping,” she said helplessly. ‘What’s wrong with her?” Bill Door paused at the top of the stairs. SHE IS LIVING ON BORROWED TIME, he said. There was an old forge behind the barn. It hadn’t been used for years. But now red and yellow light spilled out into the yard, pulsing like a heart. And like a heart, there was a regular thumping. With every crash the light flared blue. Miss Flitworth sidled through the open doorway. If she was the kind of person who would swear, she would have sworn that she made no noise that could possibly be heard above the crackle of the fire and the hammering, but Bill Door spun around in a halfcrouch, holding a curved blade in front of him. “It’s me!” He relaxed, or at least moved into a different level of tension. “What the hell’re you doing?” He looked at the blade in his hands as if he was seeing it for the first time. I THOUGHT I WOULD SHARPEN THIS SCYTHE, MISS FLITWORTH. “At one o’clock in the morning?” He looked at it blankly. IT’S JUST AS BLUNT AT NIGHT, MISS FLITWORTH. Then he slammed it down on the anvil. AND I CAN’T SHARPEN IT ENOUGH! “I think perhaps the heat has got to you,” she said, and reached out and took his arm. “Besides, it looks sharp enough to –“ she began, and paused. Her fingers moved on the bone of his arm. They pulled away for a moment, and then closed again. Bill Door shivered. Miss Flitworth didn’t hesitate for long. In seventy-five years she had dealt with wars, famine, innumerable sick animals, a couple of epidemics and thousands of tiny, everyday tragedies. A depressed skeleton wasn’t even in the top ten Worst Things she had seen. “So it is you,” she said. MISS FLITWORTH, I - “I always knew you would come one day.” I THINK PERHAPS THAT - “You know, I spent most of my life waiting for a knight on a white charger. “ Miss Flitworth grinned. “The joke’s on me, eh?” Bill Door sat down on the anvil. “The apothecary came. “ she said. “He said he couldn’t do anything. He said she was fine. We just couldn’t wake her up. And. you know, it took us ages to get her hand open. She had it closed so tightly.” I SAID NOTHING WAS TO BE TAKEN! “It’s all right. It’s all right. We left her holding it.” GOOD. “What was it?” MY TIME. “Sorry?” MY TIME. THE TIME OF MY LIFE. “It looks like an eggtimer for very expensive eggs.” Bill Door looked surprised. YES. IN A WAY. I HAVE GIVEN HER SOME OF MY TIME. “How come you need time?” EVERY LIVING THING NEEDS TIME. AND WHEN IT RUNS OUT, THEY DIE. WHEN IT RUNS OUT, SHE WILL DIE. AND I WILL DIE, TOO. IN A FEW HOURS. “But you can’t -” I CAN. IT’S HARD TO EXPLAIN. “Move up.” WHAT? “I said move up. I want to sit down.” Bill Door made space on the anvil. Miss Flitworth sat down. “So you’re going to die,” she said. YES. “And you don’t want to.” NO. “Why not?” He looked at her as if she was mad. BECAUSE THEN THERE WILL BE NOTHING. BECAUSE I WON’T EXIST. “Is that what happens for humans, too?” I DON’T THINK SO. IT’S DIFFERENT FOR YOU. YOU HAVE IT ALL BETTER ORGANISED. They both sat watching the fading glow of the coals in the forge. “So what were you working on the scythe blade for?” said Miss Flitworth. I THOUGHT PERHAPS I COULD . . . FIGHT BACK . . . “Has it ever worked? With you, I mean.” NOT USUALLY. SOMETIMES PEOPLE CHALLENGE ME TO A GAME. FOR THEIR LIVES, YOU KNOW. “Do they ever win?” NO. LAST YEAR SOMEONE GOT THREE STREETS AND ALL THE UTILITIES. “What? What sort of game is that?” I DON’T RECALL. ‘EXCLUSIVE POSSESSION’, I THINK. I WAS THE BOOT. “Just a moment. “ said Miss Flitworth. “If you’re you, who will be coming for you?” DEATH. LAST NIGHT THIS WAS PUSHED UNDER THE DOOR. Death opened his hand to reveal a small grubby piece of paper, on which Miss Flitworth could read. with some difficulty, the word: OOoooEEEeeOOOoooEEeeeOOOoooEEeee. I HAVE RECEIVED THE BADLY-WRITTEN NOTE OF THE BANSHEE. Miss Flitworth looked at him with her head on one side. “But . . . correct me if I’m wrong, but . . .” THE NEW DEATH. Bill Door picked up the blade. HE WILL BE TERRIBLE. The blade twisted in his hands. Blue light flickered along its edge. I WILL BE THE FIRST. Miss Flitworth stared at the light as if fascinated. “Exactly how terrible?” HOW TERRIBLE CAN YOU IMAGINE? “Oh.” EXACTLY AS TERRIBLE AS THAT. The blade tilted this way and that. “And for the child, too,” said Miss Flitworth. YES. “I don’t reckon I owe you any favours, Mr. Door. I don’t reckon anyone in the whole world owes you any favours.” YOU MAY BE RIGHT. “Mind you, life’s got one or two things to answer for too. Fair’s fair.” I CAN’T SAY. Miss FIitworth gave him another long, appraising look. “There’s a pretty good grindstone in the corner,” she said. I’VE USED IT. “And there’s an oilstone in the cupboard.” I’VE USED THAT, TOO. She thought she could hear a sound as the blade moved. A sort of faint whine of tensed air. “And it’s still not sharp enough?” Bill Door sighed. IT MAY NEVER BE SHARP ENOUGH. “Come on, man. No sense in giving in,” said Miss Flitworth. “Where there’s life, eh?” WHERE THERE’S LIFE EH WHAT? “There’s hope?” IS THERE? “Right enough.” Bill Door ran a bony finger along the edge. HOPE? “Got anything else left to try?” Bill shook his head. He’d tried a number of emotions, but this was a new one. COULD YOU FETCH ME A STEEL? It was an hour later. Miss Flitworth sorted through her rag-bag. “What next?” she said. WHAT HAVE WE HAD SO FAR? “Let’s see . . . hessian, calico, linen . . . how about satin? Here’s a piece.” Bill Door took the rag and wiped it gently along the blade. Miss Flitworth reached the bottom of the bag, and pulled out a swatch of white cloth. YES? “Silk,” she said softly. ‘Finest white silk. The real stuff. Never worn.” She sat back and stared at it. After a while he took it tactfully from her fingers. THANK YOU. “Well now,” she said, waking up. ‘That’s it, isn’t it?” When he turned the blade, it made a noise like whommmm. The fires of the forge were barely alive now, but the blade glowed with razor light. “Sharpened on silk,” said Miss Flitworth. ‘Who’d believe it?” AND STILL BLUNT. Bill Door looked around the dark forge, and then darted into a corner. “What have you found?” COBWEB. There was a long thin whine, like the torturing of ants. “Any good?” STILL TOO BLUNT. She watched Bill Door stride out of the forge, and scuttled after him. He went and stood in the middle of the yard, holding the scythe blade edge-on to the faint, dawn breeze. It hummed. “How sharp can a blade get, for goodness’ sake?” IT CAN GET SHARPER THAN THIS. Down in his henhouse, Cyril the cockerel awoke and stared blearily at the treacherous letters chalked on the board. He took a deep breath. “Floo-acockle-dod!” Bill Door glanced at the rimward horizon and then, speculatively, at the little hill behind the house. He jerked forward, legs clicking over the ground. The new daylight sloshed on to the world. Discworld light is old, slow and heavy; it roared across the landscape like a cavalry charge. The occasional valley slowed it for a moment and here and there, a mountain range banked it up until it poured over the top and down the far slope. It moved across a sea, surged up the beach and accelerated over the plains, driven by the lash of the sun. On the fabled hidden continent of Xxxx, somewhere near the rim, there is a lost colony of wizards who wear corks around their pointy hats and live on nothing but prawns. There, the light is still wild and fresh as it rolls in from space, and the surf on the boiling interface between night and day. If one of them had been carried thousands of miles inland on the dawn, he might have seen, as the light thundered over the high plains, a stick figure toiling up a low hill in the path of the morning. It reached the top a moment before the light arrived, took a breath, and then spun around in a crouch, grinning. It held a long blade upright between extended arms. Light struck . . . split . . . slid . . . Not that the wizard would have paid much attention, because he’d be too busy worrying about the five-thousand-mile walk back home. Miss Flitworth panted up as the new day streamed past. Bill Door was absolutely still, only the blade moving between his fingers as he angled it against the light. Finally he seemed satisfied. He turned around and swished it experimentally through the air. Miss Flitworth stuck her hands on her hips. “Oh, come on,” she said, “No-one can sharpen a blade on daylight! How can you sharpen something . . .” She paused. He waved the blade again. “Good grief.” Down in the yard. Cyril stretched his bald neck for another 90. Bill Door grinned, and swung the blade towards the sound. “Su-doodle-riod!” Then he lowered the blade. THAT’S SHARP. His grin faded, or at least faded as much as it was able to. Miss Flitworth turned, following the line of his gaze until it intersected a haze over the cornfields. It looked like a pale grey robe, empty but still somehow maintaining the shape of its wearer, as if a garment on a washing line was catching the breeze. It wavered for a moment, and then vanished. “I saw it,” said Miss Flitworth. THAT WASN’T IT. THAT WAS THEM. “Them who?” THEY’RE LIKE - Bill Door waved a hand vaguely - SERVANTS. WATCHERS. AUDITORS. INSPECTORS. Miss Flitworth’s eyes narrowed. “Inspectors? You mean like the Revenoo?” she said. I SUPPOSE SO- Miss Flitworth’s face lit up. “Why didn’t you say?” I’M SORRY? “My father always made me promise never to help the Revenoo. Even just thinking about the Revenoo, he said, made him want to go and have a lie down. He said that there was death and taxes, and taxes was worse, because at least death didn’t happen to you every year. We had to go out of the room when he really got started about the Revenoo. Nasty creatures. Always poking around asking what you’ve got hidden under the woodpile and behind the secret panels in the cellar and other stuff which is no concern whatsoever of anyone.” She sniffed. Bill Door was impressed. Miss Flitworth could actually give the word “revenue”, which had two vowels and one diphthong, all the peremptoriness of the word “scum”. “You should have said that they were after you right from the start. “ said Miss Flitworth. “The Revenoo aren’t popular in these parts, you know. In my father’s day, any Revenooer came around here prying around by himself, we used to tie weights to their feet and heave ‘em into the pond.” BUT THE POND IS ONLY A FEW INCHES DEEP, MISS FLITWORTH. “Yeah, but it was fun watching ‘em find out. You should have said. Everyone thought you were to do with taxes.” NO. NOT TAXES. “Well, well. I didn’t know there was a Revenoo Up There, too.” YES. IN A WAY. She sidled closer. “When will he come?” TONIGHT. I CANNOT BE EXACT. TWO PEOPLE ARE LIVING ON THE SAME TIMER. IT MAKES THINGS UNCERTAIN. “I didn’t know people could give people some of their life.” IT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME. “Are you’re sure about tonight?” YES. “And that blade will work, will it?” I DON’T KNOW. IT’S A MILLION TO ONE CHANCE. “Oh. “ She seemed to be considering something. “So you’ve got the rest of the day free, then?” YES? “Then you can start getting the harvest in.” WHAT? It’ll keep you busy. Keep your mind off things. Besides, I’m paying you sixpence a week. And sixpence is sixpence.” Mrs. Cake’s house was also in Elm Street. Windle knocked on the door. After a while a muffled voice called out, “Is there anybody there?” “Knock once for yes,” Schleppel volunteered. Windle levered open the letter-box. “Excuse me? Mrs. Cake?” The door opened. Mrs. Cake wasn’t what Windle had expected. She was big, but not in the sense of being fat. She was just built to a scale slightly larger than normal; the sort of person who goes through life crouching slightly and looking apologetic in case they inadvertently loom. And she had magnificent hair. It crowned her head and flowed out behind her like a cloak. She also had slightly pointed ears and teeth which, while white and quite beautiful, caught the light in a disturbing way. Windle was amazed at the speed at which his heightened zombie senses reached a conclusion. He looked down. Lupine was sitting bolt upright, too excited even to wag his tail. “I don’t think you could be Mrs. Cake,” said Windle. “You want mother,” said the tall girl. “Mother! There’s a gentleman!” A distant muttering became a closer muttering, and then Mrs. Cake appeared around the side of her daughter like a small moon emerging from planetary shadow. “What d’yew want?” said Mrs. Cake. Windle took a step backwards. Unlike her daughter, Mrs. Cake was quite short, and almost perfectly circular. And still unlike her daughter, whose whole stance was dedicated to making herself look small, she loomed tremendously. This was largely because of her hat, which he later learned she wore at all times with the dedication of a wizard. It was huge and black and had things on it, like bird wings and wax cherries and hatpins; Carmen Miranda could have worn that hat to the funeral of a continent. Mrs. Cake travelled underneath it as the basket travels under a balloon. People often found themselves talking to her hat. “Mrs. Cake?” said Windle, fascinated. “Oim down ‘ere,” said a reproachful voice. Windle lowered his gaze. “That’s ‘oo I am, “ said Mrs. Cake. “Am I addressing Mrs. Cake?” said Windle. “Yes, oi, know,” said Mrs. Cake. “My name’s Windle Poons.” “Oi knew that, too.” “I’m a wizard, yoysee -” “All right, but see you wipes your feet.” “May I come in?” Windle Poons paused. He replayed the last few lines of conversation in the clicking control room of his brain. And then he smiled. “That’s right, “ said Mrs. Cake. “Are you by any chance a natural clairvoyant?” “About ten seconds usually, Mr. Poons. “ Windle hesitated. “You gotta ask the question,” said Mrs. Cake quickly. “I gets a migraine if people goes and viciously not asks questions after I’ve already foreseen ‘em and answered ‘em.” “How far into the future can you see, Mrs. Cake?” She nodded. “Roight, then,” she said, apparently mollified, and led the way through the hall into a tiny sitting-room. “And the bogey can come in, only he’s got to leave ‘is door outside and go in the cellar. I don’t hold with bogeys wanderin’ around the house.” “Gosh, it’s ages since I’ve been in a proper cellar,” said Schleppel. “It’s got spiders in it,” said Mrs. Cake. “Wow!” “And you’d like a cup of tea,” said Mrs. Cake to Windle. Someone else might have said “I expect you’d like a cup of tea”, or “Do you want a cup of tea?” But this was a statement. “Yes, please, “ said Windle. “I’d love a cup of tea.” “You shouldn’t,” said Mrs. Cake. “That stuff rots your teeth.” Windle worked this one out. “Two sugars, please,” he said. “It’s all right.” “This is a nice place you have here, Mrs. Cake,” said Windle, his mind racing. Mrs. Cake’s habit of answering questions while they were still forming in your mind taxed the most active brain. “He’s been dead for ten years,” she said. “Er,” said Windle, but the question was already there in his larynx, “I trust Mr. Cake is in good health?” “It’s OK. Oi speaks to him occasional,” said Mrs. Cake. “I’m sorry to hear that,” said Windle. “All right, if it makes you feel any better.” “Um, Mrs. Cake? I’m finding it a little confusing. Could you . . . switch off . . . your precognition . . . ?” She nodded. “Sorry. Oi gets into the habit of leavin’ it on,” she said, “what with there only bein’ me an’ Ludmilla and One-Man-Bucket. He’s a ghost,” she added. “Oi knew you was goin’ to ask that.” “Yes, I had heard that mediums have native spirit guides,” said Windle. “ ‘Im ‘E ‘s not a guide, “e’s a sort of odd-job ghost,” said Mrs. Cake. “I don’t hold with all that stuff with cards and trumpets and Oo-jar boards, mind you. An’ I think ectoplasm’s disgustin’. Oi won’t have it in the ‘ouse. Oi won’t. You can’t get it out of the carpets, you know. Not even with vinegar.” “My word, “ said Windle Poons. “Or wailin’. I don’t hold with it. Or messin’ around with the supernatural. It’s unnatural, the supernatural. I won’t have it.” “Um,” said Windle cautiously. “There are those who might think that being a medium is a bit . . . you know . . . supernatural?” “What? What? Nothing supernatural about dead people. Load of nonsense. Everyone dies sooner or later.” “I do hope so, Mrs. Cake.” “So what is it you’d be wanting, Mr. Poons? I’m not precognitin’, so you have to tell me.” “I want to know what’s happening, Mrs. Cake.” There was a muted thump from under their feet and the faint, happy sound of Schleppel. “Oh, wow! Rats, too!” “I went up and tried to tell you wizards,” said Mrs. Cake, primly. “An’ no-one listened. I knew they weren’t going to, but I ‘ad to try, otherwise I wouldn’t ‘ave known.” “Who did you speak to?” “The big one with the red dress and a moustache like he’s trying to swallow a cat.” “Ah. The Archchancellor, “ said Windle, positively. “And there was a huge fat one. Walks like a duck.” “He does, doesn’t he? That was the Dean,” said Windle. “They called me their good woman, “ said Mrs. Cake. “They told me to be about my business. Don’t see why I should go around helpin’ wizards who call me a good woman when I was only trying to help.” “I’m afraid wizards don’t often listen,” said Windle. “I never listened for one hundred and thirty years.” “Why not?” “In case I heard what rubbish I was saying, I expect. What’s happening, Mrs. Cake? You can tell me. I may be a wizard, but I’m a dead one. Schleppel told me it was all due to life force.” “It’s buildin’ up, see?” “What does that mean?” “There’s more’f it than there should be. You get” - she waved her hands vaguely – “when things are like in a scales only not the same on both sides . . .” “Imbalance?” Mrs. Cake, who looked as though she was reading a distant script, nodded. “One of them things, yeah . . . see, sometimes it just happens a little bit, and you get ghosts, because the life is not in the body any more but it hasn’t gone . . . and you get less of it in the winter, because it sort of drains away, and it comes back in the spring . . . and some things concentrate it . . .” Modo the University gardener hummed a little tune as he wheeled the strange trolley into his private little area between the Library and the High Energy Magic building, with a load of weeds bound for composthood. There seemed to be a lot of excitement around at the moment. It was certainly interesting, working with all these wizards. Teamwork, that’s what it was. They looked after the cosmic balance, the universal harmonies and the dimensional equilibriums, and he saw to it that the aphids stayed off the roses. There was a metallic tinkle. He peered over the top of the heap of weeds. “Another one?” A gleaming metal wire basket on little wheels sat on the path. Maybe the wizards had bought it for him? The first one was quite useful, although it was a little bit hard to steer; the little wheels seemed to want to go in different directions. There was probably a knack. Well, this one would be handy for carrying seed trays in. He pushed the second trolley aside and heard, behind him, a sound which, if it had to be written down, and if he could write, he would probably have written down as: glop. He turned around, saw the biggest of the compost heaps pulsating in the dark, and said, “Look what I brought you for your tea!” And then he saw that it was moving. “Some places, too . . . “ said Mrs. Cake. “But why should it build up?” said Windle. “It’s like a thunderstorm, see? You know how you get that prickly feelin’ before a storm? That’s what’s happening now.” “Yes, but why, Mrs. Cake?” “Well . . . One-Man-Bucket says nothing’s dying.” “What?” “Daft, isn’t it? He says lots of lives are ending, but not going away. They’re just staying here.” “What, like ghosts?” “Not just ghosts. Just - it’s like puddles. When you get a lot of puddles, it’s like the sea. Anyway, you only get ghosts from things like people. You don’t get ghosts of cabbages.” Windle Poons sat back in his chair. He had a vision of a vast pool of life, a lake being fed by a million short-lived tributaries as living things came to the end of their span. And life force was leaking out as the pressure built up. Leaking out wherever it could. “Do you think I could have a word with One –“ he began, and then stopped. He got up and lurched over to Mrs. Cake’s mantel-piece. “How long have you had this, Mrs. Cake?” he demanded, picking up a familiar glassy object. “That? Bought it yesterday. Pretty, ain’t it?” Windle shook the globe. It was almost identical to the ones under his floorboards. Snowflakes whirled up and settled on an exquisite model of Unseen University. It reminded him strongly of something. Well, the building obviously reminded him of the University, but the shape of the whole thing, there was a hint of, it made him think of . . . . . . breakfast? “Why is it happening?” he said, half to himself. “These damn things are turning up everywhere.” The wizards ran down the corridor. “How can you kill ghosts?” “How should I know? The question doesn’t usually arise!” “You exorcise them, I think.” “What? Jumpin’ up and down, runnin’ on the spot, that kind of thing?” The Dean had been ready for this. “It’s spelled with an “O”, Archchancellor. I don’t think one is expected to subject them to, er, physical exertion.” “Should think not, man. We don’t want a lot of healthy ghosts buzzin’ around.” There was a blood-curdling scream. It echoed around the dark pillars and arches, and was suddenly cut off. The Archchancellor stopped abruptly. The wizards cannoned into him. “Sounded like a blood-curdlin’ scream,“ he said. “Follow me!” He ran around the corner. There was a metallic crash, and a lot of swearing. Something small and striped red and yellow, with tiny dripping fangs and three pairs of wings, flew around the corner and shot over the Dean’s head making a noise like a miniature buzzsaw. “Anyone know what that was?” said the Bursar, faintly. The thing orbited the wizards and then disappeared into the darkness of the roof. “And I wish he wouldn’t swear so.” “Come on,” said the Dean. ‘We’d better see what’s happened to him.” “Must we?” said the Senior Wrangler. They peered around the corner. The Archchancellor was sitting up, rubbing his ankle. “What idiot left this here?” he said. “Left what?” said the Dean. “This blasted wire baskety wheely thing,” said the Archchancellor. Beside him, a tiny purple spider-like creature materialised out of the air and scuttled towards a crevice. The wizards didn’t notice it. “What wire baskety wheely thing?” said the wizards, in unison. Ridcully looked around him. “I could have sworn –“ he began. There was another scream. Ridcully scrambled to his feet. “Come on, you fellows!” he said, limping heroically onwards. “Why does everyone run towards a blood-curdling scream?” mumbled the Senior Wrangler. “It’s contrary to all sense.” They trotted out through the cloisters and into the quadrangle. A rounded, dark shape was squatting in the middle of the ancient lawn. Steam was coming out of it in little, noisome wisps. “What is it?” “It can’t be a compost heap in the middle of the lawn, can it?” “Modo will be very upset.” The Dean peered closer. “Er . . . especially because, I do believe, that’s his feet poking out from under it . . .” The heap swivelled towards the wizards and made a glop, glop noise. Then it moved. “Right, then,” said Ridcully, rubbing his hands together hopefully, “which of you fellows has got a spell about them at the moment?” The wizards patted their pockets in an embarrassed fashion. “Then I shall attract its attention while the Bursar and the Dean try to pull Modo out,” said Ridcully. “Oh, good, “ said the Dean faintly. “How can you attract a compost heap’s attention?” said the Senior Wrangler. “I shouldn’t think it’s even got one.” Ridcully removed his hat and stepped gingerly forward. “Load of rubbish!” he roared. The Senior Wrangler groaned and put his hand over his eyes. Ridcully flapped his hat in front of the heap. “Biodegradable garbage!” “Poor green trash?” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes helpfully. “That’s the ticket,” said the Archchancellor. “Try to infuriate the bugger. “ (Behind him, a slightly different variety of mad waspy creature popped out of the air and buzzed away.) The heap lunged at the hat. “Midden!” said Ridcully. “Oh, I say,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, shocked. The Dean and the Bursar crept forward, grabbed a gardener’s foot each, and pulled. Modo slid out of the heap. “It‘s eaten through his clothes!” said the Dean. “But is he all right?” “He’s still breathing,” said the Bursar. “And if he’s lucky, he’s lost his sense of smell, “ said the Dean. The heap snapped at Ridcully’s hat. There was a glop. The point of the hat had vanished. “Hey, there was still almost half a bottle in there!” Ridcully roared. The Senior Wrangler grabbed his arm. “Come on, Archchancellor!” The heap swivelled and lunged towards the Bursar. The wizards backed away. “It can’t be intelligent, can it?” said the Bursar. “All it’s doing is moving around slowly and eating things, “ said the Dean. “Put a pointy hat on it and it’d be a faculty member,” said the Archchancellor. The heap came after them. “I wouldn’t call that moving slowly,” said the Dean. They looked expectantly at the Archchancellor. “Run!” Portly though most of the faculty were, they hit a fair turn of speed up the cloisters, fought one another through the door, slammed it behind them and leaned on it. Very soon afterwards, there was a damp, heavy thud on the far side. “We’re well out of that,” said the Bursar. The Dean looked down. “I think it’s coming through the door, Archchancellor,” he said, in a tiny voice. “Don’t be daft, man, we’re all leanin’ on it.” “I didn’t mean through, I mean . . . through . . .” The Archchancellor sniffed. “What’s burnin’?” “Your boots, Archchancellor,” said the Dean. Ridcully looked down. A greenish-yellow puddle was spreading under the door. The wood was charring, the flagstones were hissing, and the leather soles of his boots were definitely in trouble. He could feel himself getting lower. He fumbled with the laces, and then took a standing jump on to a dry flagstone. “Bursar!” “Yes, Archchancellor?” “Give me your boots!” “What?” “Dammit, man, I command you to give me your blasted boots!” This time, a long creature with four pairs of wings, two at each end, and three eyes, popped into existence over Ridcully’s head and dropped on to his hat. “But -” “I am your Archchancellor!” “Yes, but -” “I think the hinges are going,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. Ridcully looked around desperately. “We’ll regroup in the Great Hall,” he said. “We’ll . . . strategically withdraw to previously prepared positions.” “Who prepared them?” said the Dean. “We’ll prepare them when we get there,” said the Archchancellor through gritted teeth. “Bursar! Your boots! Now!” They reached the double doors of the Great Hall just as the door behind them half-collapsed, half-dissolved. The Great Hall’s doors were much sturdier. Bolts and bars were dragged into place. “Clear the tables and pile them up in front of the door,” snapped Ridcully “But it eats through wood, “ said the Dean. There was a moan from the small body of Modo, which had been propped against a chair. He opened his eyes. “Quick!” said Ridcully. ‘How can we kill a compost heap?” “Um. I don’t think you can, Mr. Ridcully, sir,” said the gardener. “How about fire? I could probably manage a small fireball, “ said the Dean. “It wouldn’t work. Too soggy,” said Ridcully. “It’s right outside! It’s eating away at the door! It’s eating away at the door,” sang the Lecturer in Recent Runes. The wizards backed further away down the length of the hall. “I hope it doesn’t eat too much wood,” said the dazed Modo, radiating genuine concern. “They’re a devil, excuse my Klatchian, if you get too much carbon in them. It’s far too heating.” “You know, this is exactly the right time for a lecture on the dynamics of compost making, Modo,“ said the Dean. Dwarfs do not know the meaning of the word “irony”. “Well, all right. Ahem. The correct balance of materials, correctly layered according to -” “There goes the door,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, lumbering towards the rest of them. The mound of furniture started to move forward. The Archchancellor stared desperately around the hall, at a loss. Then his eyes were drawn to a familiar, heavy bottle on one of the sideboards. “Carbon,” he said. ‘That’s like charcoal, isn’t it?” “How should I know? I’m not an alchemist,” sniffed the Dean. The compost heap emerged from the debris. Steam poured off it. The Archchancellor looked longingly at the bottle of Wow-Wow Sauce. He uncorked it. He took a deep sniff. “The cooks here just can’t make it properly, you know,” he said. “It’ll be weeks before I can get any more from home.” He tossed the bottle towards the advancing heap. It vanished into the seething mass. “Stinging nettles are always useful,” said Modo, behind him. ‘They add iron. And comfrey, well, you can never get enough comfrey. For the minerals, you know. Myself, I’ve always reckoned that a small quantity of wild yarrow -” The wizards peered over the top of an overturned table. The heap had stopped moving. “Is it just me, or is it getting bigger?” said the Senior Wrangler. “And looking happier,” said the Dean. “It smells awful,” said the Bursar. “Oh, well. And that was nearly a full bottle of sauce, too,” said the Archchancellor sadly. “I’d hardly opened it.” “Nature’s a wonderful thing, when you come to think about it,” said the Senior Wrangler. “You don’t all have to glare at me like that, you know. I was only passing a remark.” “There are times when -’ Ridcully began, and then the compost heap exploded. It wasn’t a bang or a boom. It was the dampest, most corpulent eruption in the history of terminal flatulence. Dark red flame, fringed with black, roared up to the ceiling. Pieces of heap rocketed across the hall and slapped wetly into the walls. The wizards peered out from their barricade, which was now thick with tea-leaves. A cabbage stalk dropped softly on to the Dean’s head. He looked at a small, bubbling patch on the flagstones. His face split slowly into a grin. “Wow,” he said. The other wizards unfolded themselves. Adrenaline backwash worked its seductive spell. They grinned, too, and started playfully punching one another on the shoulder. “Eat hot sauce!” roared the Archchancellor. ‘Up against the hedge, fermented rubbish!” “Can we kick ass, or can we kick ass?” burbled the Dean happily. “You mean can’t the second time, not can. And I’m not sure that a compost heap can be said to have an -’ the Senior Wrangler began, but the tide of excitement was flowing against him. “That’s one heap that won’t mess with wizards again,” said the Dean, who was getting carried away. “We’re keen and mean and -” “There’s three more of them out there, Modo says,” said the Bursar. They fell silent. “We could go and pick up our staffs, couldn’t we?” said the Dean. The Archchancellor prodded a piece of exploded heap with the toe of his boot. “Dead things coming alive,” he murmured. “I don’t like that. What’s next? Walking statues?” The wizards looked up at the statues of dead Archchancellors that lined the Great Hall and, indeed, most of the corridors of the University. The University had been in existence for thousands of years and the average Archchancellor remained in office for about eleven months, so there were plenty of statues. “You know, I really wish you hadn’t said that, “ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “It was just a thought,” said Ridcully. “Come on, let’s have a look at the rest of those heaps.” “Yeah!” said the Dean, now in the grip of a wild, unwizardly machismo. “We’re mean! Yeah! Are we mean?” The Archchancellor raised his eyebrows, and then turned to the rest of the wizards. “Are we mean?” he said. “Er. I’m feeling reasonably mean,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “I’m definitely very mean, I think,” said the Bursar. “It’s having no boots that does it,” he added. “I’ll be mean if everyone else is,” said the Senior Wrangler. The Archchancellor turned back to the Dean. “Yes,” he said, “it appears that we are all mean.” “Yo!” said the Dean. “Yo what?” said Ridcully. “It’s not a yo what, it’s just a yo,” said the Senior Wrangler, behind him. “It’s a general street greeting and affirmative with convivial military ingroup and masculine bonding-ritual overtones.” “What? What? Like “jolly good”?” said Ridcully. “I suppose so,” said the Senior Wrangler, reluctantly. Ridcully was pleased. Ankh-Morpork had never offered very good prospects for hunting. He’d never thought it was possible to have so much fun in his own university. “Right, “ he said. ‘Let’s get those heaps!” “Yo!” “Yo!” “Yo!” “Yo-yo.” Ridcully sighed. “Bursar?” “Yes, Archchancellor?” “Just try to understand, all right?” Clouds piled up over the mountains. Bill Door strode up and down the first field, using one of the ordinary farm scythes; the sharpest one had been temporarily stored at the back of the barn, in case it was blunted by air convection. Some of Miss Flitworth’s tenants followed behind him, binding the sheaves and stacking them. Miss Flitworth had never employed more than one man full time, Bill Door learned; she bought in other help as she needed it, to save pennies. “Never seen a man cut corn with a scythe before,” said one of them. “It’s a sickle job.” They stopped for lunch, and ate it under the hedge. Bill Door had never paid a great deal of attention to the names and faces of people, beyond that necessary for business. Corn stretched over the hillside; it was made up of individual stalks and to the eye of one stalk another stalk might be quite an impressive stalk, with a dozen amusing and distinctive little mannerisms that set it apart from all other stalks. But to the reaper man, all stalks start off as . . . just stalks. Now he was beginning to recognise the little differences. There was William Spigot and Gabby Wheels and Duke Bottomley. All old men, as far as Bill Door could judge, with skins like leather. There were young men and women in the village, but at a certain age they seemed to flip straight over to being old, without passing through any intermediate stage. And then they stayed old for a long time. Miss Flitworth had said that before they could start a graveyard in these parts they’d had to hit someone over the head with the shovel. William Spigot was the one that sang when he worked, breaking into that long nasal whine which meant that folk song was about to be perpetrated. Gabby Wheels never said anything; this, Spigot had said, was why he had been called Gabby. Bill Door had failed to understand the logic of this, although it seemed transparent to the others. And Duke Bottomley had been named by parents with upwardly-mobile if rather simplistic ideas about class structure; his brothers were Squire, Earl and King. Now they sat in a row under the hedge, putting off the moment when they’d need to start work again. A glugging noise came from the end of the row. “It’s not been a bad old summer, then,” said Spigot. “And good harvest weather for a change.” “Ah . . . many a slip ‘twixt dress and drawers,” said Duke. “Last night I saw a spider spinnin’ its web backwards. That’s a sure sign there’s going to be a dretful storm.” “Don’t see how spiders know things like that.” Gabby Wheels passed a big earthenware jug to Bill Door. Something sloshed. WHAT IS THIS? “Apple juice,” said Spigot. The others laughed. AH, said Bill Door. STRONG DISTILLED SPIRITS, GIVEN HUMOROUSLY TO THE UNSUSPECTING NEWCOMER, THUS TO AFFORD SIMPLE AMUSEMENT WHEN HE BECOMES INADVERTENTLY INEBRIATED. “Cor,” said Spigot. Bill Door took a long swig. “And I saw swallows flying low,” said Duke. “And partridges are heading for the woods. And there’s a lot of big snails about. And -” “I don’t reckon any of them buggers knows the first thing about meteorology,” said Spigot. “I reckon you goes around telling ‘em. Eh, lads? Big storm comin’, Mr. Spider, so get on and do somethin’ folklorish.” Bill Door took another drink. WHAT IS THE NAME OF THE BLACKSMITH IN THE VILLAGE? Spigot nodded. ‘That’s Ned Simnel, down by the green. O’course, he’s real busy about now, what with the harvest and all.” I HAVE SOME WORK FOR HIM. Bill Door got up and strode away towards the gate. He stopped. YES? “You can leave the brandy behind, then.” The village forge was dark and stifling in the heat. But Bill Door had very good eyesight. Something moved among a complicated heap of metal. It turned out to be the lower half of a man. His upper body was somewhere in the machinery, from which came the occasional grunt. A hand shot out as Bill Door approached. “Right. Give me three-eighths Gripley.” Bill looked around. A variety of tools were strewn around the forge. “Come on, come on,” said a voice from somewhere in the machine. Bill Door selected a piece of shaped metal at random, and placed it in the hand. It was drawn inside. There was metallic noise, and a grunt. “I said a Gripley. This isn’t a” - there was the scringeing noise of a piece of metal giving way – “my thumb, my thumb, you made me” - there was a clang – “aargh. That was my head. Now look what you’ve made me do. And the ratchet spring’s snapped off the trunnion armature again, do you realise?” NO. I AM SORRY. There was a pause. “Is that you, young Egbert?” NO. IT IS ME, OLD BILL DOOR. There was a series of thumps and twanging noises as the top half of the human extricated itself from the machinery, and turned out to belong to a young man with black curly hair, a black face, black shirt, and black apron. He wiped a cloth across his face, leaving a pink smear, and blinked the sweat out of his eyes. “Who’re you?” GOOD OLD BILL DOOR? WORKING FOR MISS FLITWORTH? “Oh, yes. The man in the fire? Hero of the hour, I heard. Put it there.” He extended a black hand. Bill Door looked at it blankly. I AM SORRY. I STILL DO NOT KNOW WHAT A THREE-EIGHTHS GRIPLEY IS. “I mean your hand, Mr. Door.” Bill Door hesitated, and then put his hand in the young man’s palm. The oil-rimmed eyes glazed for a moment as the brain overruled the sense of touch, and then the smith smiled. “The name’s Simnel. What do you think, eh?” IT’S A GOOD NAME. “No, I mean the machine. Pretty ingenious, eh?” Bill Door reguarded it with polite incomprehension. It looked, at first sight, like a portable windmill that had been attacked by an enormous insect, and at second sight like a touring torture chamber for an Inquisition that wanted to get out and about a bit and enjoy the fresh air. Mysterious jointed arms stuck out at various angles. There were belts, and long springs. The whole thing was mounted on spiked metal wheels. “Of course, you’re not seeing it at its best when it’s standing still,” said Simnel. “It needs a horse to pull it. At the moment, anyway. I’ve got one or two rather radical ideas in that direction,“ he added dreamily. IT’S A DEVICE OF SOME SORT? Simnel looked mildly affronted. “I prefer the term machine,” he said. “It will revolutionise farming methods, and drag them kicking and screaming into the Century of the Fruitbat. My folk have had this forge for three hundred years, but Ned Simnel doesn’t intend to spend the rest of his life nailing bits of bent metal on to horses, I call tell you.” Bill looked at him blankly. Then he bent down and glanced under the machine. A dozen sickles were bolted to a big horizontal wheel. Ingenious linkages took power from the wheels, via a selection of pulleys, to a whirligig arrangement of metal arms. He began to experience a horrible feeling about the thing in front of him, but he asked anyway. “Well, the heart of it all is this cam shaft,” said Simnel, gratified at the interest. ‘The power comes up via the pulley here, and the cams move the swaging arms - that’s these things - and the combing gate, which is operated by the reciprocating mechanism, comes down just as the gripping shutter drops in this slot here, and of course at the same time the two brass balls go round and round and the flatting sheets carry off the straw while the grain drops with the aid of gravity down the riffling screw and into the hopper. Simple.” AND THE THREE-EIGHTHS GRIPLEY? “Good job you reminded me. “ Simnel fished around among the debris on the floor, picked up a small knurled object, and screwed it on to a protruding piece of the mechanism. “Very important job. It stops the elliptical cam gradually sliding up the beam shaft and catching on the flange rebate, with disastrous results as you can no doubt imagine.” Simnel stood back and wiped his hands on a cloth, making them slightly more oily. “I’m calling it the Combination Harvester,” he said. Bill Door felt very old. In fact he was very old. But he’d never felt it as much as this. Somewhere in the shadow of his soul he felt he knew, without the blacksmith explaining, what it was that the Combination Harvester was supposed to do. OH. “We’re going to give it a trial run this afternoon up in old Peedbury’s big field. It looks very promising, I must say. What you’re looking at now, Mr. Door, is the future.” YES. Bill Door ran his hand over the framework. AND THE HARVEST ITSELF? “Hmm? What about it?” WHAT WILL IT THINK OF IT? WILL IT KNOW? Simnel wrinkled his nose. “Know? Know? It won’t know anything. Corn’s corn.” AND SIXPENCE IS SIXPENCE. “Exactly. “ Simnel hesitated. “What was it you were wanting?” The tall figure ran a disconsolate finger over the oily mechanism. “Mr. Door?” PARDON? OH. YES. I HAD SOMETHING FOR YOU TO DO - He strode out of the forge and returned almost immediately with something wrapped in silk. He unwrapped it carefully. He’d made a new handle for the blade - not a straight one, such as they used in the mountains, but the heavy doublecurved handle of the plains. “You want it beaten out? A new grass nail? Metalwork replacing?” Bill Door shook his head. I WANT IT KILLED. “Killed?” YES. TOTALLY. EVERY BIT DESTROYED. SO THAT IT IS ABSOLUTELY DEAD. “Nice scythe,” said Simnel. ‘Seems a shame. You’ve kept a good edge on it -” DON’T TOUCH IT! Simnel sucked his finger. “Funny,” he said, “I could have sworn I didn’t touch it. My hand was inches away. Well, it’s sharp, anyway.” He swished it through the air. “Yes. Pretty sharp He paused, stuck his little finger in his ear and swivelled it around a bit. “You sure you know what you want?” he said. Bill Door solemnly repeated his request. Simnel shrugged. “Well, I suppose I could melt it and burn the handle,” he said. YES. “Well, OK. It’s your scythe. And you’re basically right, of course. This is old technology now. Redundant.” I FEAR YOU MAY BE RIGHT. Simnel jerked a grimy thumb towards the Combination Harvester. Bill Door knew it was made only of metal and canvas, and therefore couldn’t possibly lurk. But it was lurking. Moreover, it was doing so with a chilling, metallic smugness. “You could get Miss Flitworth to buy you one of these, Mr. Door. It’d be just the job for a one-man farm like that. I can see you now, up there, up in the breeze, with the belts clacking away and the sparge arms oscillating -” NO. “Go on. She could afford it. They say she’s got boxes full of treasure from the old days. “ NO! “Er -’ Simnel hesitated. The last ‘No’ contained a threat more certain than the creak of thin ice on a deep river. It said that going any further could be the most foolhardy thing Simnel would ever do. “I’m sure you know your own mind best,” he mumbled. YES. “Then it’ll just be, oh, call it a farthing for the scythe,” Simnel gabbled. “Sorry about that, but it’ll use a lot of coals, you see, and those dwarfs keep winding up the price of -” HERE. IT MUST BE DONE BY TONIGHT. Simnel didn’t argue. Arguing would mean that Bill Door remained in the forge, and he was getting quite anxious that this should not be so. “Fine, fine.” YOU UNDERSTAND? “Right. Right.” FAREWELL, said Bill Door solemnly, and left. Simnel shut the doors after him, and leaned against them. Whew. Nice man, of course, everyone was talking about him, it was just that after a couple of minutes in his presence you got a pins-and-needles sensation that someone was walking over your grave and it hadn’t even been dug yet. He wandered across the oily floor, filled the tea kettle and wedged it on a corner of the forge. He picked up a spanner to do some final adjustments to the Combination Harvester, and spotted the scythe leaning against the wall. He tiptoed towards it, and realised that tiptoeing was an amazingly stupid thing to do. It wasn’t alive. It couldn’t hear. It just looked sharp. He raised the spanner, and felt guilty about it. By Mr. Door had said - well, Mr. Door had said something very odd, using the wrong sort of words to use in talking about a mere implement. But he could hardly object to this. Simnel brought the spanner down hard. There was no resistance. He would have sworn, again, that the spanner sheared in two, as though it was made of bread, several inches from the edge of the blade. He wondered if something could be so sharp that it began to possess, not just a sharp edge, but the very essence of sharpness itself, a field of absolute sharpness that actually extended beyond the last atoms of metal. “Bloody hell “ And then he remembered that this was sloppy and superstitious thinking for a man who knew how to bevel a three eighths Gripley. You knew where you were with a reciprocating linkage. It either worked or it didn’t. It certainly didn’t present you with mysteries. He looked proudly at the Combination Harvester. Of course, you needed a horse to pull it. That spoiled things a bit. Horses belonged to Yesterday; Tomorrow belonged to the Combination Harvester and its descendants, which would make the world a cleaner and better place. It was just a matter of taking the horse out of the equation. He’d tried clockwork, and that wasn’t powerful enough. Maybe if he tried winding a - Behind him, the kettle boiled over and put the fire out. Simnel fought his way through the steam. That was the bloody trouble, every time. Whenever someone was trying to do a bit of sensible thinking, there was always some pointless distraction. Mrs. Cake drew the curtains. “Who exactly is One-Man-Bucket?” said Windle. She lit a couple of candles and sat down. “ ‘e belonged to one of them heathen Howondaland tribes,” she said shortly. “Very strange name, One-Man-Bucket,” said Windle. “It’s not ‘is full name. “ said Mrs. Cake darkly. ‘Now, we’ve got to ‘old ‘ands. “ She looked at him speculatively. “We need someone else.” “I could call Schleppel,” said Windle. “I ain’t ‘aving no bogey under my table trying to look up me drawers,” said Mrs. Cake. ‘Ludmilla!” she shouted. After a moment or two the bead curtain leading into the kitchen was swept aside and the young woman who had originally opened the door to Windle came in. “Yes mother?” “Sit down, girl. We need another one for the seancing.” “Yes, mother.” The girl smiled at Windle. “This is Ludmilla,” said Mrs. Cake shortly. “Charmed, I’m sure,” said Windle. Ludmilla gave him the bright, crystalline smile perfected by people who had long ago learned not to let their feelings show. “We have already met,” said Windle. It must be at least a day since full moon, he thought. All the signs are nearly gone. Nearly. Well, well, well . . . “She’s my shame,” said Mrs. Cake. “Mother, you do go on,” said Ludmilla, without rancour. “Join hands, “ said Mrs. Cake. They sat in the semi-darkness. Then Windle felt Mrs. Cake’s hand being pulled away. “Oi forgot about the glass,” she said. “I thought, Mrs. Cake, that you didn’t hold with ouija boards and that sort of –“ Windle began. There was a glugging noise from the sideboard. Mrs. Cake put a full glass on the tablecloth and sat down again. “Oi don’t,” she said. Silence descended again. Windle cleared his throat nervously. Eventually Mrs. Cake said, “All right, One-Man-Bucket, oi knows you’re there.” The glass moved. The amber liquid inside sloshed gently. A bodiless voice quavered, greetings, pale face, from the happy hunting ground - “You stop that,” said Mrs. Cake. ‘Everyone knows you got run over by a cart in Treacle Street because you was drunk, One-Man-Bucket.” s’not my fault. not my fault. is it my fault my great-grandad moved here? by rights I should have been mauled to death by a mountain lion or a giant mammoth or something. I bin denied my deathright. “Mr. Poons here wants to ask you a question, One-Man-Bucket,” said Mrs. Cake. she is happy here and waiting for you to join her, said One-Man-Bucket. “Who is?” said Windle. This seemed to fox One-Man-Bucket. It was a line, that generally satisfied without further explanation. who would you like? he asked cautiously. can I have that ?cerink? now? “Not yet, One-Man-Bucket,” said Mrs. Cake. well, I need it. it’s bloody crowded in here. “What?” said Windle quickly. ‘With ghosts, you mean?” there’s hundreds of ‘em, said the voice of One-Man-Bucket. Windle was disappointed. “Only hundreds?” he said. “That doesn’t sound a lot.” “Not many people become ghosts,” said Mrs. Cake. ‘To be a ghost, you got to have, like, serious unfinished business, or a terrible revenge to take, or a cosmic purpose in which you are just a pawn.” or a cruel thirst, said One-Man-Bucket. “Will you hark at him,” said Mrs. Cake. I wanted to stay in the spirit world. or even wire and beer. hngh. hngh. hngh. “So what happens to the life force if things stop living?” said Windle. ‘Is that what’s causing all this trouble?” “You tell the man,” said Mrs. Cake, when One-Man-Bucket seemed reluctant to answer. what trouble you talking about? “Things unscrewing. Clothes running around by themselves. Everyone feeling more alive. That sort of thing.” that? that’s nothing. see, the life force leaks back where it can. you don’t need to worry about that. Windle put his hand over the glass. “But there’s something I should be worrying about, isn’t there,” he said flatly. “It’s to do with the little glass souvenirs.” don’t like to say. “Do tell him.” It was Ludmilla’s voice - deep but, somehow, attractive. Lupine was watching her intently. Windle smiled. That was one of the advantages about being dead. You spotted things the living ignored. One-Man-Bucket sounded shrill and petulant. what’s he going to do if I tell him, then? I could get into heap big trouble for that sort of thing. “Well, can you tell me if I guess right?” said Windle. ye-ess. maybe. “You don’t have to say anythin’,” said Mrs. Cake. “Just knock twice for yes and once for no, like in the old days.” oh, all right. “Go on, Mr. Poons,” said Ludmilla. She had the kind of voice Windle wanted to stroke. He cleared his throat. “I think,” he began, “that is, I think they’re some sort of eggs. I thought . . . why breakfast? and then I thought . . . eggs. . .” Knock. “Oh. Well, perhaps it was a rather silly idea . . .” sorry, was it once for yes or twice for yes ? “ ‘voice!” snapped the medium. KNOCK. KNOCK. “Ah,” breathed Windle. ‘And they hatch into something with wheels on?” twice for yes, was it? “Roight!” KNOCK. KNOCK. “I thought so. I thought so! I found one under my floor that tried to hatch where there wasn’t enough room!” crowed Windle. Then he frowned. “But hatch into what?” Mustrum Ridcully trotted into his study and took his wizard’s staff from its rack over the fireplace. He licked his finger and gingerly touched the top of the staff. There was a small octarine spark and a smell of greasy tin. He headed back for the door. Then he turned around slowly, because his brain had just had time to analyse the study’s cluttered contents and spot the oddity. “What the hell’s that doin’ there?” he said. He prodded it with the tip of the staff. It gave a jingling noise and rolled a little way. It looked vaguely, but not very much, like the sort of thing the maids trundled around loaded with mops and fresh linen and whatever it was maids pushed around. Ridcully made a mental note to take it up with the housekeeper. Then he forgot about it. “Damn wire wheely things are gettin’ everywhere,” he muttered. Upon the word “damn”, something like a large blue-bottle with cat-sized dentures flopped out of the air, fluttered madly as it took stock of its surroundings, and then flew after the unheeding Archchancellor. The words of wizards have power. And swearwords have power. And with life force practically crystallising out of the air, it had to find outlets wherever it could. cities. said One-Man-Bucket. I think they’re city eggs. The senior wizards gathered again in the Great Hall. Even the Senior Wrangler was feeling a certain excitement. It was considered bad form to use magic against fellow wizards, and using it against civilians was unsporting. It did you good to have a really righteous zap occasionally. The Archchancellor looked them over. “Dean, why have you got stripes all over your face?” he enquired. “Camouflage, Archchancellor.” “Camouflage, eh?” “Yo, Archchancellor.” “Oh, well. So long as you feel happy in yourself, that’s what matters.” They crept out towards the patch of ground that had been Modo’s little territory. At least, most of them crept. The Dean advanced in a series of spinning leaps, occasionally flattening himself against the wall, and saying ‘Hut! Hut! Hut!” under his breath. He was absolutely crestfallen when the other heaps turned out to be still where Modo had built them. The gardener, who had tagged along behind and had twice nearly been flattened by the Dean, fussed around them for a while. “They’re just lying low,” said the Dean. ‘I say we blow up the godsdamn -” “They’re not even warm yet,” said Modo. “That one must have been the oldest.” “You mean we haven’t got anything to fight?” said the Archchancellor. The ground shook underfoot. And then there was a faint jangling noise, from the direction of the cloisters. Ridcully frowned. “Someone ‘s pushing those damn wire baskety things around again,” he said. ‘There was one in my study tonight.” “Huh,” said the Senior Wrangler. “There was one in my bedroom. I opened the wardrobe and there it was.” “In your wardrobe? What’d you put it in there for?” said Ridcully. “I didn’t. I told you. It was probably the students. It’s their kind of humour. One of them put a hairbrush in my bed once.” “I fell over one earlier,” said the Archchancellor, “and then when I looked round for it, someone had taken it away.” The jingling noise got closer. “Right, Mr. So-called Clever Dick Young-fella-me-lad,” said Ridcully, tapping his staff once or twice on his palm in a meaningful way. The wizards backed up against the wall. The phantom trolley pusher was almost on them. Ridcully snarled, and leapt out of hiding. “Aha, my fine young - bloody hellfire!” “Don’t be pullin’ moi leg,” said Mrs. Cake. “Cities ain’t alive. I know people says they are, but they don’t mean really.” Windle Poons turned one of the snowballs around in his hand. “It must be laying thousands of them,” he said. “But they wouldn’t all survive, of course. Otherwise we’d be up to here in cities, yes?” “You telling us that these little balls hatch out into huge places?” said Ludmilla. not straight away. there’s the mobile stage first. “Something with wheels on,” said Windle. that’s right. i can see you know already. “I think I knew,” said Windle Poons, “but I didn’t understand. And what happens after the mobile stage?” “Don’t know.” Windle stood up. “Then it’s time to find out, “ he said. He glanced at Ludmilla and Lupine. Ah. Yes. And why not? If you can help somebody as you pass this way, Windle thought, then your living, or whatever, shall not be in vain. He let himself fall into a stoop and let a little crackle enter his voice. “But I’m rather unsteady on my legs these days,” he quavered. ‘It would really be a great favour if someone could help me along. Could you see me as far as the University, young lady?” “Ludmilla doesn’t go out much these days because her health –“ Mrs. Cake began briskly. “Is absolutely fine,” said Ludmilla. ‘Mother, you know it’s been a whole day since full moo -” “Ludmilla!” “Well, it has.” “It’s not safe for a young woman to walk the streets these days,” said Mrs. Cake. “But Mr. Poons’ wonderful dog would frighten away the most dangerous criminal,” said Ludmilla. On cue, Lupine barked helpfully and begged. Mrs. Cake regarded him critically. “He’s certainly a very obedient animal,” she said, reluctantly. “That’s settled, then,” said Ludmilla. ‘I’ll fetch my shawl.” Lupine rolled over. Windle nudged him with a foot. “Be good, “ he said. There was a meaningful cough from One-Man-Bucket. “All right, all right,” said Mrs. Cake. She took a bundle of matches from the dresser, lit one absent-mindedly with her fingernail, and dropped it into the whisky glass. It burned with a blue flame, and somewhere in the spirit world the spectre of a stiff double lasted just long enough. As Windle Poons left the house, he thought he could hear a ghostly voice raised in song. The trolley stopped. It swivelled from side to side, as if observing the wizards. Then it did a fast three-point turn and trundled off at high speed. “Get it!” bellowed the Archchancellor. He aimed his staff and got off a fireball which turned a small area of cobblestones into something yellow and bubbly. The speeding trolley rocked wildly but kept going, with one wheel rattling and squeaking. “It’s from the Dungeon Dimensions!” said the Dean. “Cream the basket!” The Archchancellor laid a steadying hand on his shoulder. “Don’t be daft. Dungeon Things have a lot more tentacles and things. They don’t look made.” They turned at the sound of another trolley. It rattled unconcernedly down a side passage, stopped when it saw or otherwise perceived the wizards, and did a creditable impression of a trolley that had just been left there by someone. The Bursar crept up to it. “It’s no use you looking like that,” he said. ‘We know you can move.” “We all seed you,” said the Dean. The trolley maintained a low profile. “It can’t be thinking,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “There’s no room for a brain.” “Who says it’s thinking?” said the Archchancellor. ‘All it does is move. Who needs brains for that? Prawns move.” He ran his fingers over the metalwork. “Actually, prawns are quite intell –“ the Senior Wrangler began. “Shut up,” said Ridcully. ‘Hmm. Is this made, though?” “It’s wire,” said the Senior Wrangler. ‘Wire’s something that you have to make. And there’s wheels. Hardly anything natural’s got wheels.” “It’s just that up close, it looks -” “- all one thing, “ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, who had knelt down painfully to inspect it the better. “Like one unit. Made all in one lump. Like a machine that’s been grown. But that’s ridiculous.” “Maybe. Isn’t there a sort of cuckoo in the Ramtops that builds clocks to nest in?” said the Bursar. “Yes, but that’s just courtship ritual,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes airily. “Besides, they keep lousy time.” The trolley leapt for a gap in the wizards and would have made it except that the gap was occupied by the Bursar, who gave a scream and pitched forward into the basket. The trolley didn’t stop but rattled onwards, towards the gates. The Dean raised his staff. The Archchancellor grabbed it. “You might hit the Bursar,” he said. “Just one small fireball?” “It’s tempting, but no. Come on. After it.” “Yo!” “If you like.” The wizards lumbered in pursuit. Behind them, as yet unnoticed, a whole flock of the Archchancellor’s swearwords fluttered and buzzed. And Windle Poons was leading a small deputation to the Library. The Librarian of Unseen University knuckled his way hurriedly across the floor as the door shook to a thunderous knocking. “I know you’re in there,” came the voice of Windle Poons. “You must let us in. It’s vitally important.” “Oook.” “You won’t open the doors?” “Oook!” “Then you leave me no choice . . .” Ancient blocks of masonry moved aside slowly. Mortar crumbled. Then part of the wall fell in, leaving Windle Poons standing in a Windle Poons-shaped hole. He coughed on the dust. “I hate having to do that,” he said. ‘I can’t help feeling it’s pandering to popular prejudice.” The Librarian landed on his shoulders. To the orangutan’s surprise, this made very little difference. A 300-pound orangutan usually had a noticeable effect on a person’s rate of progress, but Windle wore him like a collar. “I think we need Ancient History,” he said. “I wonder, could you stop trying to twist my head off?” The Librarian looked around wildly. It was a technique that normally never failed. Then his nostrils flared. The Librarian hadn’t always been an ape. A magical library is a dangerous place to work, and he’d been turned into an orangutan as a result of a magical explosion. He’d been a quite inoffensive human, although by now so many people had come to terms with his new shape that few people remembered it. But with the change had come the key to a whole bundle of senses and racial memories. And one of the deepest, most fundamental, most borne-in-the-bone of all of them was to do with shapes. It went back to the dawn of sapience. Shapes with muzzles, teeth and four legs were, in the evolving simian mind, definitely filed under Bad News. A very large wolf had padded through the hole in the wall, followed by an attractive young woman. The Librarian’s signal input was temporarily fused. “Also,” said Windle, “it is just possible that I could knot your arms behind you.” “Eeek!” “He’s not an ordinary wolf. You’d better believe it.” “Oook?” Windle lowered his voice. “And she might not technically be a woman,” he added. The Librarian looked at Ludmilla. His nostrils flared again. His brow wrinkled. “Oook ?” “All right, I may have put that rather clumsily. Do let go, there’s a good fellow.” The Librarian released his grip very cautiously and sank to the floor, keeping Windle between himself and Lupine. Windle brushed mortar fragments off the remains of his robe. “We need to find out,” he said, “about the lives of cities. Specifically, I need to know -” There was a faint jangling noise. A wire basket rolled nonchalantly around the massive stack of the nearest bookcase. It was full of books. It stopped as soon as it realised that it had been seen and contrived to look as though it had never moved at all. “The mobile stage,” breathed Windle Poons. The wire basket tried to inch backwards without appearing to move. Lupine growled. “Is that what One-Man-Bucket was talking about?” said Ludmilla. The trolley vanished. The Librarian grunted, and went after it. “Oh, yes. Something that would make itself useful,” said Windle, suddenly almost maniacally cheerful. ‘That’s how it’d work. First, something that you’d want to keep, and put away somewhere. Thousands wouldn’t get the right conditions, but that wouldn’t matter, because there would be thousands. And then the next stage would be something that would be handy, and get everywhere, and no-one would ever think it had got there by itself. But it’s all happening at the wrong time!” “But how can a city be alive? It’s only made up of dead parts!” said Ludmilla. “So’re people. Take it from me. I know. But you are right, I think. This shouldn’t be happening. It’s all this extra life force. It’s . . . it’s tipping the balance. It’s turning something that isn’t really real into a reality. And it’s happening too early, and it’s happening too quickly.” “Oh, the poor thing! Look at him!” Ludmilla rushed across the floor and knelt down by the stricken wolf. “It went right over his paws, look!” “And he’s probably lost a couple of teeth,” said Windle. He helped the Librarian up. There was a red glow in the ape’s eyes. It had tried to steal his books. This was probably the best proof any wizard could require that the trolleys were brainless. He reached down and wrenched the wheels off the trolley. “Ole,” said Windle. “Oook?” “No, Not “with milk”,” said Windle. Lupine was having his head cradled in Ludmilla’s lap. He had lost a tooth, and his fur was a mess. He opened one eye and fixed Windle with a conspiratorial yellow stare while his ears were stroked. There’s a lucky dog, thought Windle, who’s going to push his luck and hold up a paw and whine. “Right,” said Windle. ‘Now, Librarian . . . you were about to help us, I think.” “Poor brave dog,” said Ludmilla. Lupine raised a paw pathetically, and whined. Burdened by the screaming form of the Bursar, the other wire basket couldn’t get up to the speed of its departed comrade. One wheel also trailed uselessly. It canted recklessly from side to side and nearly fell over as it shot through the gates, moving sideways. “I can see it clear! I can see it clear!” screamed the Dean. “Don’t! You might hit the Bursar!” bellowed Ridcully. ‘You might damage University property!” But the Dean couldn’t hear for the roar of unaccustomed testosterone. A searing green fireball struck the skewing trolley. The air was filled with flying wheels. Ridcully took a deep breath. “You stupid!” he screamed. The word he uttered was unfamiliar to those wizards who had not had his robust country upbringing and knew nothing of the finer points of animal husbandry. But it plopped into existence a few inches from his face; it was fat, round, black and glossy, with horrible eyebrows. It blew him an insectile raspberry and flew up to join the little swarm of curses. “What the hell was that?” A smaller thing flashed into existence by his ear. Ridcully snatched at his hat. “Damn!” - the swarm increased by one – “Something just bit me!” A squadron of newly-hatched Blasteds made a valiant bid for freedom. He swatted at them ineffectually. “Get away, you b –“ he began. “Don’t say it!” said the Senior Wrangler. “Shut up!” People never told the Archchancellor to shut up. Shutting up was something that happened to other people. He shut up out of shock. “I mean, every time you swear it comes alive,” said the Senior Wrangler hurriedly. “Ghastly little winged things pop out of the air.” “Bloody hellfire!” said the Archchancellor. Pop. Pop. The Bursar crawled dazed out of the tangled wreckage of the wire trolley. He found his pointy hat, dusted it off, tried it on, frowned, and took a wheel out of it. His colleagues didn’t seem to be paying him much attention. He heard the Archchancellor say, “But I’ve always done it! Nothing wrong with a good swear, it keeps the blood flowing. Watch out, Dean, one of the bug -” “Can’t you say something else?” shouted the Senior Wrangler, above the buzz and whine of the swarm. “Like what?” “Like. . .oh. . .like. . .darn.” “Darn?” “Yes, or maybe poot.” “What? You want me to say poot?” The Bursar crept up to the group. Arguing over petty details at times of dimensional emergency was a familiar wizardly trait. “Mrs. Whitlow the housekeeper always says “Sugar!” when she drops something,” he volunteered. The Archchancellor turned on him. “She may say sugar,” he growled, “but what she means, is shi-” The wizards ducked. Ridcully managed to stop himself. “Oh, darn,” he said miserably. The swearwords settled amiably on his hat. “They like you,” said the Dean. “You’re their daddy,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. Ridcully scowled. “You b- boys can stop being silly at your Archchancellor’s expense and da-jolly well find out what’s going on,” he said. The wizards looked expectantly at the air. Nothing appeared. “You’re doing fine,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “Keep it up.” “Darn darn darn,” said the Archchancellor. “Sugar sugar sugar. Pooty pootity poot. “ He shook his head. “It’s no good, it doesn’t relieve my feelings one bit.” “It’s cleared the air, at any rate,” said the Bursar. They noticed his presence for the first time. They looked at the remains of the trolley. “Things zooming around,” said Ridcully. “Things coming alive.” They looked up at a suddenly familiar squeaking noise. Two more wheeled baskets rattled across the square outside the gates. One was full of fruit. The other was half full of fruit and half full of small screaming child. The wizards watched open-mouthed. A stream of people were galloping after the trolleys. Slightly in the lead, elbows scything through the air, a desperate and determined woman pounded past the University gates. The Archchancellor grabbed a heavy-set man who was lumbering along gamely at the back of the crowd. “What happened?” “I was just loading some peaches into that basket thing when it upped and ran away on me!” “What about the child?” “Search me. This woman had one of the baskets and she bought some peaches off of me an’ then -” They all turned. A basket rattled out of the mouth of an alleyway, saw them, turned smartly and shot off across the square. “But why?” said Ridcully. “They’re so handy to put things in, right?” said the man. “I got to get them peaches. You know how they bruise.” “And they’re all going in the same direction,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “Anyone else notice that?” “After them!” screamed the Dean. The other wizards, too bewildered to argue, lumbered after him. “No -’”Ridcully began, and realised that it was hopeless. And he was losing the initiative. He carefully formulated the most genteel battle cry in the history of bowdlerism. “Darn them to Heck!” he yelled, and ran after the Dean. Bill Door worked through the long heavy afternoon at the head of a trail of binders and stackers. Until there was a shout, and the men ran towards the hedge. Peedbury’s big field was right on the other side. His farmhands were wheeling the Combination Harvester through the gate. Bill joined the others leaning over the hedge. The distant figure of Simnel could be seen, giving instructions. A frightened horse was backed into the shafts. The blacksmith climbed into the little metal seat in the middle of the machinery and took up the reins. The horse walked forward. The sparge arms unfolded. The canvas sheets started to revolve, and probably the riffling screw was turning, but that didn’t matter because something somewhere went ‘clonk’ and everything stopped. From the crowd at the hedge there were shouts of ‘Get out and milk it!”, “We had one but the end fell off!”, “Tuppence more and up goes the donkey!” and other time-honoured witticisms. Simnel got down, held a whispered conversation with Peedbury and his men, and then disappeared into the machinery for a moment. “It’ll never fly!” “Veal will be cheap tomorrow!” This time the Combination Harvester got several feet before one of the rotating sheets split and folded up. By now some of the older men at the hedge were doubled up with laughter. “Any old iron, sixpence a load!” “Fetch the other one, this one’s broke!” Simnel got down again. Distant catcalls drifted towards him as he untied the sheet and replaced it with a new one; he ignored them. Without moving his gaze from the scene in the opposite field, Bill Door pulled a sharpening stone out of his pocket and began to hone his scythe, slowly and deliberately. Apart from the distant clink of the blacksmith’s tools, the schip-schip of stone on metal was the only sound in the heavy air. Simnel climbed back into the Harvester and nodded to the man leading the horse. “Here we go again!” “Any more for the Skylark?” “Put a sock in it . . .” The cries trailed off. Half a dozen pairs of eyes followed the Combination Harvester up the field, stared while it was turned around on the headland, watched it come back again. It clicked past, reciprocating and oscillating. At the bottom of the field it turned around neatly. It whirred by again. After a while one of the watchers said, gloomily, “It’ll never catch on, you mark my words.” “Right enough. Who’s going to want a gadget like that?” said another. “Sure and it’s only like a big clock. Can’t do anything more than go up and down a field -” “- very fast -” “- cutting the corn like that and stripping the grain off -” “It’s done three rows already.” “Bugger me!” “You can’t hardly see the bits move! What do you think of that, Bill? Bill?” They looked around. He was halfway up his second row, but accelerating. Miss Flitworth opened the door a fraction. “Yes?” she said, suspiciously. “It’s Bill Door, Miss FIitworth. We’ve brought him home.” She opened the door wider. “What happened to him?” The two men shuffled in awkwardly, trying to support a figure a foot taller than they were. It raised its head and squinted muzzily at Miss Flitworth. Duke Bottomley. “He’s a devil for working,” said William. “Don’t know what come over him,” said Spigot. ‘You’re getting your money’s worth out of him all right, Miss Flitworth.” “It’ll be the first time, then, in these parts,” she said sourly. “Up and down the field like a madman, trying to better that contraption of Ned Simnel’s. Took four of us to do the binding. He nearly beat it, too.” “Put him down on the sofa.” “We tole him he was doing too much in all that sun -” Duke craned his neck to see around the kitchen, just in case jewels and treasure were hanging out of the dresser drawers. Miss FIitworth eclipsed his view. “I’m sure you did. Thank you. Now I expect you’ll be wanting to be off home.” “If there’s anything we can do -” “I know where you live. And you ain’t paid no rent there for five years, too. Goodbye. Mr. Spigot.” She ushered them to the door and shut it in their faces, then she turned around. “What the hell have you been doing, Mr. So-Called Bill?” I AM TIRED AND IT WON’T STOP. Bill Door clutched at his skull. ALSO SPIGOT GAVE ME A HUMOROUS APPLE JUICE FERMENTED DRINK BECAUSE OF THE HEAT AND NOW I FEEL ILL. “I ain’t surprised. He makes it up in the woods. Apples isn’t the half of it.” I HAVE NEVER FELT ILL BEFORE. OR TIRED. “It’s all part of being alive.” AND HOW DO HUMANS STAND IT? “Well, fermented apple juice can help.” Bill Door sat staring gloomily at the floor. BUT WE FINISHED THE FIELD, he said, with a hint of triumph. ALL STACKED IN STOOKS, OR POSSIBLY THE OTHER-WAY AROUND. He clutched at his skull again. AARCH. Miss Flitworth disappeared into the scullery. There was the creaking of a pump. She returned with a damp flannel and a glass of water. THERE’S A NEWT IN IT! “Shows it’s fresh,” said Miss Flitworth, fishing the amphibian out and releasing it on the flagstones, where it scuttled away into a crack. Bill Door tried to stand up. NOW I ALMOST KNOW WHY SOME PEOPLE WISH TO DIE. he said. I HAD HEARD OF PAIN AND MISERY BUT I HAD NOT HITHERTO FULLY UNDERSTOOD WHAT THEY MEANT. Miss Flitworth peered through the dusty window. The clouds that had been piling up all afternoon towered over the hills, grey with a menacing hint of yellow. The heat pressed down like a vice. “There’s a big storm coming.” WILL IT SPOIL MY HARVEST? “No. It’ll dry out after.” HOW IS THE CHILD? Bill Door unfolded his palm. Miss Flitworth raised her eyebrows. The golden glass was there, the top bulb almost empty. But it simmered in and out of vision. “How come you’ve got it? It’s upstairs! She was holding it like,” - she floundered – “like someone holds something very tightly.” SHE STILL IS. BUT IT IS ALSO HERE. OR ANYWHERE. IT IS ONLY A METAPHOR. AFTER ALL. “What she’s holding looks real enough.” JUST BECAUSE SOMETHING IS A METAPHOR DOESN’T MEAN IT CAN’T BE REAL. Miss Flitworth was aware of a faint echo in the voice, as though the words were being spoken by two people almost, but not quite, in sync. “How long have you got?” A MATTER OF HOURS. “And the scythe?” I GAVE THE BLACKSMITH STRICT INSTRUCTIONS. She frowned. “I’m not saying young Simnel’s a bad lad, but are you sure he’ll do it? It’s asking a lot of a man like him to destroy something like that.” I HAD NO CHOICE. THE LITTLE FURNACE HERE ISN’T GOOD ENOUGH. “It’s a wicked sharp scythe.” I FEAR IT MAY NOT BE SHARP ENOUGH. “And no-one ever tried this on you?” THERE IS A SAYING: YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU? “Yes.” HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE SERIOUSLY BELIEVED IT? “I remember reading once,” said Miss Flitworth. “about these heathen kings in the desert somewhere who build huge pyramids and put all sorts of stuff in them. Even boats. Even gels in transparent trousers and a couple of saucepan lids. You can’t tell me that’s right.” I’VE NEVER BEEN VERY SURE ABOUT WHAT IS RIGHT, said Bill Door. I AM NOT SURE THERE IS SUCH A THING AS RIGHT. OR WRONG. JUST PLACES TO STAND. “No, right’s right and wrong’s wrong,” said Miss FIitworth. “I was brought up to tell the difference.” BY A CONTRABANDISTOR. “A what?” A MOVER OF CONTRABAND. “There’s nothing wrong with smuggling!” I MERELY POINT OUT THAT SOME PEOPLE THINK OTHERWISE. “They don’t count!” BUT - Lightning struck, somewhere on the hill. The thunder-clap rocked the house; a few bricks from the chimney rattled into the grate. Then the windows shook to a fierce wind. Bill Door strode across the room and threw open the door. Hailstones the size of hens’ eggs bounced off the doorstep and into the kitchen. OH. DRAMA. “Oh, hell!” Miss Flitworth ducked under his arm. “And where’s the wind come from?” THE SKY? said Bill Door, surprised at the sudden excitement. “Come on!” She whirled back into the kitchen and scrabbled on the dresser for a candle lantern and some matches. BUT YOU SAID IT WOULD DRY. “In a normal storm, yes. In this lot? It’s going to be ruined! We’ll find it spread all over the hill in the morning!” She fumbled the candle alight and ran back again. Bill Door looked out into the storm. Straws whirred past, tumbling on the gale. RUINED? MY HARVEST? He straightened up. BUGGER THAT. The hail rumbled on the roof of the smithy. Ned Simnel pumped the furnace bellows until the heart of the coals was white with the merest hint of yellow. It had been a good day. The Combination Harvester had worked better than he’d dared to hope; old Peedbury had insisted on keeping it to do another field tomorrow, so it had been left out with a tarpaulin over it, securely tied down. Tomorrow he could teach one of the men to use it, and start work on a new improved model. Success was assured. The future definitely lay ahead. Then there was the matter of the scythe. He went to the wall where it had been hung. A bit of a mystery, that. Here was the most superb instrument of its kind he’d ever seen. You couldn’t even blunt it. Its sharpness extended well beyond its actual edge. And yet he was supposed to destroy it. Where was the sense in that? Ned Simnel was a great believer in sense, of a certain specialised kind. Maybe Bill Door just wanted to be rid of it, and that was understandable, because even now when it hung innocuously enough from the wall it seemed to radiate sharpness. There was a faint violet corona around the blade, caused by the draughts in the room driving luckless air molecules to their severed death. Ned Simnel picked it up with great care. Weird fellow, Bill Door. He’d said he wanted to be sure it was absolutely dead. As if you could kill a thing. Anyway, how could anyone destroy it? Oh, the handle would burn and the metal would calcine and, if he worked hard enough, eventually there’d be nothing more than a little heap of dust and ashes. That was what the customer wanted. On the other hand, presumably you could destroy it just by taking the blade off the handle . . . After all, it wouldn’t be a scythe if you did that. It’d just be, well . . . bits. Certainly, you could make a scythe out of them, but you could probably do that with the dust and ashes if you knew how to do it. Ned Simnel was quite pleased with this line of argument. And, after all. Bill Door hadn’t even asked for proof that the thing had been, er, killed. He took sight carefully and then used the scythe to chop the end off the anvil. Uncanny. Total sharpness. He gave in. It was unfair. You couldn’t ask someone like him to destroy something like this. It was a work of art. It was better than that. It was a work of craft. He walked across the room to a stack of timber and thrust the scythe well out of the way behind the heap. There was a brief, punctured squeak. Anyway, it would be all right. He’d give Bill his farthing back in the morning. The Death of Rats materialised behind the heap in the forge, and trudged to the sad little heap of fur that had been a rat that got in the way of the scythe. Its ghost was standing beside it, looking apprehensive. It didn’t seem very pleased to see him. “Squeak? Squeak?” SQUEAK. the Death of Rats explained. “Squeak?” SQUEAK, the Death of Rats confirmed. “[Preen whiskers] [twitch nose]?” The Death of Rats shook its head. SQUEAK. The rat was crestfallen. The Death of Rats laid a bony but not entirely unkind paw on its shoulder. Squeak. The rat nodded sadly. It had been a good life in the forge. Ned’s housekeeping was almost non-existent, and he was probably the world champion absent-minded-leaver of unfinished sandwiches. It shrugged, and trooped after the small robed figure. It wasn’t as if it had any choice. People were streaming through the streets. Most of them were chasing trolleys. Most of the trolleys were full of whatever people had found a trolley useful to carry - firewood, children, shopping. And they were no longer dodging, but moving blindly, all in the same direction. You could stop a trolley by turning it over, when its wheels spun madly and uselessly. The wizards saw a number of enthusiastic individuals trying to smash them, but the trolleys were practically indestructible - they bent but didn’t break, and if they had even one wheel left they’d make a valiant attempt to keep going. “Look at that one!” said the Archchancellor. ‘It’s got my laundry in it! My actual laundry! Darn that for a lark!” He pushed his way through the crowds and rammed his staff into the trolley’s wheels, toppling it over. “We can’t get a clear shot at anything with all these civilians around,” complained the Dean. “There’s hundreds of trolleys!” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “It’s just like vermine! Get away from me, you - you basket!” He flailed at an importunate trolley with his staff. The tide of wheeled baskets was flowing out of the city. The struggling humans gradually dropped out or fell under the wobbling wheels. Only the wizards stayed in the flowing tide, shouting at one another and attacking the silvery swarm with their staves. It wasn’t that magic didn’t work. It worked quite well. A good zap could turn a trolley into a thousand intricate little wire puzzles. But what good did that do? A moment later two others would trundle over their stricken sibling. Around the Dean trolleys were being splashed into metal droplets. “He’s really getting the hang of it, isn’t he?” said the Senior Wrangler, as he and the Bursar levered yet another basket on to its back. “He’s certainly saying Yo a lot,“ said the Bursar. The Dean himself didn’t know when he’d been happier. For sixty years he’d been obeying all the self-regulating rules of wizardry, and suddenly he was having the time of his life. He’d never realised that, deep down inside, what he really wanted to do was make things go splat. Fire leapt from the tip of his staff. Handles and bits of wire and pathetically spinning wheels tinkled down around him. And what made it even better was that there was no end to the targets. A second wave of trolleys, crammed into a tighter space, was trying to advance over the tops of those still in actual contact with the ground. It wasn’t working, but they were trying anyway. And trying desperately, because a third wave was already crunching and smashing its way over the top of them. Except that you couldn’t use the word “trying”. It suggested some sort of conscious effort, some sort of possibility that there might also be a state of ‘not trying’. Something about the relentless movement, the way they crushed one another in their surge, suggested that the wire baskets had as much choice in the matter as water has about flowing downhill. “Yo!” shouted the Dean. Raw magic smacked into the grinding tangle of metal. It rained wheels. “Eat hot thaumaturgy, you m-,” the Dean began. “Don’t swear! Don’t swear!” shouted Ridcully above the noise. He tried to swat a Silly Bugger that was orbiting his hat. “There’s no telling what it might turn into!” “Bother!” screamed the Dean. “It’s no good. We might as well be trying to hold back the sea,” said the Senior Wrangler. “I vote we head back to the University and pick up some really tough spells.” “Good idea,” said Ridcully. He looked up at the advancing wall of twisted wire. “Any idea how?” he said. “Yo! Scallywags!” said the Dean. He aimed his staff again. It made a sad little noise that, if it was written down, could only be spelled pfffft. A feeble spark fell off the end and on to the cobbles. Windle Poons slammed another book shut. The Librarian winced. “Nothing! Volcanoes, tidal waves, wrath of gods, meddling wizards . . . I don’t want to know how other cities have been killed, I want to know how they ended . . .” The Librarian stacked another pile of books on the reading desk. Another plus about being dead, Windle was finding, was an ability with languages. He could see the sense in the words without knowing the actual meaning. Being dead wasn’t like falling asleep after all. It was like waking up. He glanced across the Library to where Lupine was having his paw bandaged. “Librarian?” he said softly. “Oook?” “You’ve changed species in your time . . . what would you do if, for the sake of argument, you found a couple of people who . . . well, suppose there was a wolf that changed into a wolfman at the full moon, and a woman that changed into a wolfwoman at the full moon . . . you know, approaching the same shape but from opposite directions? And they’d met. What do you tell them? Do you let them sort it out for themselves?” “Oook, “ said the Librarian, instantly. “It’s tempting.” “Oook.” “Mrs. Cake wouldn’t like it, though.” “Eeek oook.” “You’re right. You could have put it a little less coarsely, but you’re right. Everyone has to sort things out for themselves.” He sighed, and turned the page. His eyes widened. “The city of Kahn Li,” he said. “Ever heard of it? What’s this book? “Stripfettle’s Believe-It-Or-Not Grimoire. “ Says here . . . “little carts . . . none knew from where they came . . . of such great use, men were employed to herd them and bring them into the city . . . of a sudden, like unto a rush of creatures . . . men followed them and behold, there was a new city outside the walls, a city as of merchants’ booths wherein the carts ran” . . .” He turned the page. “It seems to say . . .” I still haven’t understood it properly, he told himself. One-Man-Bucket thinks we’re talking about the breeding of cities. But that doesn’t feel right. A city is alive. Supposing you were a great slow giant, like a Counting Pine, and looked down at a city? You’d see buildings grow; you’d see attackers driven off; you’d see fires put out. You’d see the city was alive but you wouldn’t see people, because they’d move too fast. The life of a city, the thing that drives it, isn’t some sort of mysterious force. The life of a city is people. He turned the pages absently, not really looking . . . So we have the cities - big, sedentary creatures, growing from one spot and hardly moving at all for thousands of years. They breed by sending out people to colonise new land. They themselves just lie there. They’re alive, but only in the same way that a jelly fish is alive. Or a fairly bright vegetable. After all, we call Ankh-Morpork the Big Wahooni . . . And where you get big slow living things, you get small fast things that eat them . . . Windle Poons felt the brain cells firing. Connections were made. Thought gushed along new channels. Had he ever really thought properly when he was alive? He doubted it. He’d just been a lot of complicated reactions attached to a lot of nerve endings, with everything from idle rumination about the next meal to random, distracting memories getting between him and real thought. It’d grow inside the city, where it’s warm and protected. And then it’d break out, outside the city, and build . . . something, not a real city, a false city . . . that pulls the people, the life, out of the host . . . The word we’re looking for here is predator. The Dean stared at his staff in disbelief. He gave it a shake, and aimed it again. This time the sound would be spelled pfwt. He looked up. A curling wave of trolleys, rooftop high, was poised to fall on him. “Oh . . . shucks,” he said, and folded his arms over his head. Someone grabbed the back of his robe and pulled him away as the trolleys crashed down. “Come on,” said Ridcully. ‘If we run we can keep ahead of ‘em.” “I’m out of magic! I’m out of magic!” moaned the Dean. “You’ll be out of a lot more if you don’t hurry, “ said the Archchancellor. Trying to keep together, bumping into one another, the wizards staggered ahead of the trolleys. Streams of them were surging out of the city and across the fields. “Know what this reminds me of?” said Ridcully, as they fought their way through. “Do tell, “ muttered the Senior Wrangler. “Salmon run, “ said the Archchancellor. “What?” “Not in the Ankh, of course,” said Ridcully. “I don’t reckon a salmon could get upstream in our river - “ “Unless it walked,” said the Senior Wrangler. “- but I’ve seen ‘em thick as milk in some rivers,” said Ridcully. “Fightin‘ to get ahead. The whole river just a mass of silver.” “Fine, fine,” said the Senior Wrangler. ‘What’d they do that for?” “Well . . . it’s all to do with breeding.” “Disgusting. And to think we have to drink water,” said the Senior Wrangler. “Right, we’re in the open now, this is where we out-flank ‘em,” said Ridcully. “We’ll just aim for a clear space and - “ “I don’t think so,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. Every direction was filled with an advancing, grinding, fighting wall of trolleys. “They’re coming to get us! They’re coming to get us!” wailed the Bursar. The Dean snatched his staff. “Hey, that’s mine!” The Dean pushed him away and blew off the wheels of a leading trolley. “That’s my staff!” The wizards stood back to back in a narrowing ring of metal. “They’re not right for this city, “ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “I know what you mean, “ said Ridcully. “Alien.” “I suppose no-one’s got a flying spell on them today?” the Senior Wrangler enquired. The Dean took aim again and melted a basket. “That’s my staff you’re using, you know.” “Shut up, Bursar,” said the Archchancellor. ‘And, Dean, you’re getting nowhere picking them off one by one like that. OK, lads? We want to do them all as much damage as possible. Remember - wild, uncontrolled bursts . . .” The trolleys advanced. Ow. Ow. Miss Flitworth staggered through the wet, rattling gloom. Hailstones crunched underfoot. Thunder cannonaded around the sky. “They sting, don’t they,” she said. THEY ECHO. Bill Door fielded a stook as it was blown past, and stacked it with the others. Miss Flitworth scuttled past him, bent double under a load of corn. The two of them worked steadily, crisscrossing the field in the teeth of the storm to snatch up the harvest before the wind and hail stole it away. Lightning flickered around the sky. It wasn’t a normal storm. It was war. “It’s going to pour with rain in a minute. “ screamed Miss Flitworth, above the noise. ‘We’ll never get it down to the barn! Go and fetch a tarpaulin or something! That’ll do for tonight!” Bill Door nodded, and ran through the squelching darkness towards the farm buildings. Lightning was striking so many times around the fields that the air itself was sizzling, and a corona danced along the top of the hedge. And there was Death. He saw it looming ahead of him, a crouched skeletal shape poised to spring, its robe flapping and rattling behind it in the wind. Tightness gripped him, trying to force him to run while at the same time rooting him to the spot. It invaded his mind and froze there, blocking all thought save for the innermost, tiny voice which said, quite calmly: SO THlS IS TERROR. Then Death vanished as the lightning glow faded, reappeared as a tree was struck on the next hill. Then the quiet, internal voice added: BUT WHY DOESN’T IT MOVE? Bill Door let himself inch forward slightly. There was no response from the hunched thing. Then it dawned on him that the thing on the other side of the hedge was only a robed assemblage of ribs and femurs and vertebrae if viewed from one point of view but, if looked at slightly differently, was equally just a complexity of sparging arms and reciprocating levers that had been covered by a tarpaulin which was now blowing off. The Combination Harvester was in front of him. Bill Door grinned horribly. Un-Bill Door thoughts rose up in his mind. He stepped forward. The wall of trolleys surrounded the wizards. The last flare from a staff melted a hole, which was instantly filled up by more trolleys. Ridcully turned to his fellow wizards. They were red in the face, their robes were torn, and several over-enthusiastic shots had resulted in singed beards and burnt hats. “Hasn’t anyone got any more spells on them?” he said. They thought feverishly. “I think I can remember one,” said the Bursar hesitantly. “Go on, man. Anything’s worth trying at a time like this.” The Bursar stretched out a hand. He shut his eyes. He muttered a few syllables under his breath. There was a brief flicker of octarine light and - “Oh, “ said the Archchancellor. ‘And that’s all of it?” “ “Eringyas’ Surprising Bouquet”,” said the Bursar, bright eyed and twitching. “I don’t know why, but it’s one I’ve always been able to do. Just a knack, I suppose.” Ridcully eyed the huge bunch of flowers now gripped in the Bursar’s fist. “But not, I venture to point out, entirely useful at this time,” he added. The Bursar looked at the approaching walls and his smile faded. “I suppose not,” he said. “Anyone else got any ideas?” said Ridcully. There was no reply. “Nice roses, though,” said the Dean. “That was quick,” said Miss Flitworth, when Bill Door arrived at the pile of stooks dragging a tarpaulin behind him. YES, WASN’T IT, he mumbled noncommittally, as she helped him drag it over the stack and weigh it down with stones. The wind caught at it and tried to drag it out of his hands; it might as well have tried to blow a mountain over. Rain swept over the fields, among shreds of mist that shimmered with blue electric energies. “Never known a night like it,” Miss Flitworth said. There was another crack of thunder. Sheet lightning fluttered around the horizon. Miss Flitworth clutched Bill Door’s arm. “Isn’t that . . . a figure on the hill?” she said. ‘Thought I saw a. . .shape.” NO, IT’S MERELY A MECHANICAL CONTRIVANCE. There was another flash. “On a horse?” said Miss Flitworth. A third sheet seared across the sky. And this time there was no doubt about it. There was a mounted figure on the nearest hilltop. Hooded. Holding a scythe as proudly as a lance. POSING. Bill Door turned towards Miss Flitworth. POSING. I NEVER DID ANYTHING LIKE THAT. WHY DO ANYTHING LIKE THAT? WHAT PURPOSE DOES IT SERVE? He opened his palm. The gold timer appeared. “How much longer have you got?” PERHAPS AN HOUR. PERHAPS MINUTES. “Come on, then!” Bill Door remained where he was, looking at the timer. “I said, come on!” IT WON’T WORK. I WAS WRONG TO THINK THAT IT WOULD. BUT IT WON’T. THERE ARE SOME THINGS THAT YOU CANNOT ESCAPE. YOU CANNOT LIVE FOREVER. “Why not?” Bill Door looked shocked. WHAT DO YOU MEAN? “Why can’t you live for ever?” I DON’T KNOW. COSMIC WISDOM? “What does cosmic wisdom know about it? Now, will you come on?” The figure on the hill hadn’t moved. The rain had turned the dust into a fine mud. They slithered down the slope and hurried across the yard and into the house. I SHOULD HAVE PREPARED MORE. I HAD PLANS - “But there was the harvest.” YES. “Is there any way we can barricade the doors or something?” DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’RE SAYING? “Well, think of something! Didn’t anything ever work against you?” NO, said Bill Door with a tiny touch of pride. Miss Flitworth peered out of the window, and then flung herself dramatically against the wall on one side of it. “He’s gone!” IT, said Bill Door. IT WON’T BE A HE YET. “It’s gone. It could be anywhere.” IT CAN COME THROUGH THE WALL. She darted forward, and then glared at him. VERY WELL. FETCH THE CHILD. I THINK WE SHOULD LEAVE HERE. A thought struck him. He brightened up a little bit. WE DO HAVE SOME TIME. WHAT IS THE HOUR? “I don’t know. You go around stopping the clocks the whole time.” BUT IT IS NOT YET MIDNIGHT? “I shouldn’t think it’s more than a quarter past eleven.” THEN WE HAVE THREE-QUARTERS OF AN HOUR. “How can you be sure?” BECAUSE OF DRAMA, MISS FLITWORTH. THE KIND OF DEATH WHO POSES AGAINST THE SKYLINE AND GETS LIT UP BY LIGHTNING FLASHES, said Bill Door, disapprovingly, DOESN’T TURN UP AT FIVE AND-TWENTY PAST ELEVEN IF HE CAN POSSIBLY TURN UP AT MIDNIGHT. She nodded, white-faced, and disappeared upstairs. After a minute or two she returned, with Sal wrapped up in a blanket. “Still fast asleep,” she said. THAT’S NOT SLEEP. The rain had stopped, but the storm still marched around the hills. The air sizzled, still seemed oven-hot. Bill Door led the way past the henhouse, where Cyril and his elderly harem were crouched back in the darkness, all trying to occupy the same few inches of perch. There was a pale green glow hovering around the farmhouse chimney. “We call that Mother Carey’s Fire,” said Miss Flitworth. “It’s an omen.” AN OMEN OF WHAT? “What? Oh, don’t ask me. Just an omen, I suppose. Just basic omenery. Where are we going?” INTO THE TOWN. “To be near the scythe?” YES. He disappeared into the barn. After a while he came out leading Binky, saddled and harnessed. He mounted up, then leaned down and pulled both her and the sleeping child on to the horse in front of him. IF I’M WRONG, he added, THIS HORSE WILL TAKE YOU WHEREVER YOU WANT TO GO. “I shan’t want to go anywhere except back home!” WHEREVER. Binky broke into a trot as they turned on to the road to the town. Wind blew the leaves off the trees, which tumbled past them and on up the road. The occasional flash of lightning still hissed across the sky. Miss Flitworth looked at the hill beyond the farm. I KNOW. “- it’s there again -” I KNOW. “Why isn’t it chasing us?” WE’RE SAFE UNTIL THE SAND RUNS OUT. “And you die when the sand runs out?” NO. WHEN THE SAND RUNS OUT IS WHEN I SHOULD DIE. I WILL BE IN THE SPACE BETWEEN LIFE AND AFTERLIFE. “Bill, it looked as though the thing it was riding . . . I thought it was a proper horse, just very skinny, but . . .” IT’S A SKELETAL STEED. IMPRESSIVE BUT IMPRACTICAL. I HAD ONE ONCE BUT THE HEAD FELL OFF. “A bit like flogging a dead horse, I should think.” HA. HA. MOST AMUSING, MISS FLITWORTH. “I think that at a time like this you can stop calling me Miss Flitworth,” said Miss Flitworth. RENATA? She looked startled. ‘How did you know my name? Oh. You’ve probably seen it written down, right?” ENGRAVED. “On one of them hourglasses?” YES. “With all them sands of time pouring through?” YES. “Everyone’s got one?” YES. “So you know how long I’ve -” YES. “It must be very odd, knowing . . . the kind of things you know . . .” DO NOT ASK ME. “That’s not fair, you know. If we knew when we were going to die, people would live better lives.” IF PEOPLE KNEW WHEN THEY WERE GOING TO DIE, I THINK THEY PROBABLY WOULDN’T LIVE AT ALL. “Oh, very gnomic. And what do you know about it, Bill Door?” EVERYTHING. Binky trotted up one of the town’s meagre handful of streets and over the cobbles of the square. There was no-one else around. In cities like Ankh-Morpork midnight was just late evening, because there was no civic night at all, just evenings fading into dawns. But here people regulated their lives by things like sunsets and mispronounced cockcrows. Midnight meant what it said. Even with the storm stalking the hills, the square itself was hushed. The ticking of the clock in its tower, unnoticeable at midday, now seemed to echo off the buildings. As they approached, something whirred deep in its cogwheeled innards. The minute hand moved with a clonk, and shuddered to a halt on the 9. A trapdoor opened in the clock face and two little mechanical figures whirred out self-importantly and tapped a small bell with great apparent effort. Ting-ting-ling. The figures lined up and wobbled back into the clock. “They’ve been there ever since I was a girl. Mr. Simnel’s great-great-grandad made them,” said Miss Flitworth. “I always wondered what they did between chimes, you know. I thought they had a little house in there, or something.” I DON’T THINK SO. THEY’RE JUST A THING. THEY’RE NOT ALIVE. “Hmm. Well, they’ve been there for hundreds of years. Maybe life is something you sort of acquire?” YES. They waited in silence, except for the occasional thud as the minute hand climbed the night. “It’s been quite nice having you around the place, Bill Door.” He didn’t reply. “Helping me with the harvest and everything.” IT WAS . . . INTERESTING. “It was wrong of me to delay you, just for a lot of corn.” NO. THE HARVEST IS IMPORTANT. Bill Door unfolded his palm. The timer appeared. “I still can’t work out how you do that.” IT IS NOT DIFFICULT. The hiss of the sand grew until it filled the square. “Have you got any last words?” YES. I DON’T WANT TO GO. “Well. Succinct, anyway.” Bill Door was amazed to find she was trying to hold his hand. Above him the hands of midnight came together. There was a whirring from the clock. The door opened. The automata marched out. They clicked to a halt on either side of the hour bell, bowed to one another, and raised their hammers. Dong. And then there was the sound of a horse trotting. Miss Flitworth found the edge of her vision filling with purple and blue blotches, like the flashes of after-image with no image to come after. If she jerked her head quickly and peered out of the tail of her eye, she could see small greyclad shapes hovering around the walls. The Revenooers, she thought. They’ve come to make sure it all happens. “Bill?” she said. He closed his palm over the gold timer. NOW IT STARTS. The hoofbeats grew louder, and echoed off the buildings behind them. REMEMBER: YOU ARE IN NO DANGER. Bill Door stepped back into the gloom. Then he reappeared momentarily. PROBABLY, he added, and retreated into the darkness. Miss Flitworth sat down on the steps of the clock, cradling the body of the girl across her knees. “Bill?” she ventured. A mounted figure rode into the square. It was, indeed on a skeletal horse. Blue flame crackled over the creature’s bones as it trotted forward; Miss Flitworth found herself wondering whether it was a real skeleton, animated in some way, something that had once been the inside of a horse, or a skeletal creature in its own right. It was a ridiculous chain of thought to follow, but it was better than dwelling on the ghastly reality that was approaching. Did it get rubbed down, or just given a good polish? Its rider dismounted. It was much taller than Bill Door had been, but the darkness of its robe hid any details; It held something that wasn’t exactly a scythe but which might have had a scythe in its ancestry in the same way that even the most cunningly-fashioned surgical implement has a stick somewhere in its past. It was a long way from any implement that ever touched a straw. The figure stalked towards Miss Flitworth, scythe over its shoulder, and stopped. Where is He? “Don’t know who you’re talking about,” said Miss Flitworth. “And if I was you, young man, I’d feed my horse.” The figure appeared to have trouble digesting this information, but finally it seemed to reach a conclusion. It unshipped the scythe and looked down at the child. I will find Him, it said. But first - It stiffened. A voice behind it said: DROP THE SCYTHE. AND TURN AROUND SLOWLY. Something within the city, Windle thought. Cities grow up full of people, but they’re also full of commerce and shops and religions and . . . This is stupid, he told himself. They’re just things. They’re not alive. Maybe life is something you acquire. Parasites and predators, but not like the sort affecting animals and vegetables. They were some kind of big, slower, metaphorical lifeform, living off cities. But they incubate in the cities, like those, what are they? those icky newman wasp things. He could remember now, just as he could remember everything, reading as a student about creatures that laid their eggs inside other creatures. For months after he’d refused omelettes and caviar, just in case. And the eggs would . . . look like the city, in a way, so that citizens would carry them home. Like cuckoo eggs. I wonder how many cities died in the past? Ringed by parasites, like a coral reef surrounded by starfish. They’d just become empty, they’d lose whatever spirit they had. He stood up. “Where’s everyone gone, Librarian?” “Oook oook.” “Just like them. I’d have done that. Rush off without thinking. May the gods bless them and help them, if they can find the time from their eternal family squabbles.” And then he thought: well, what now? I’ve thought, and what am I going to do? Rush off, of course. But slowly. The centre of the heap of trolleys was no longer visible. Something was going on. A pale blue glow hung over the huge pyramid of twisted metal, and there were occasional flashes of lightning deep within the pile. Trolleys slammed into it like asteroids accreting around the core of a new planet, but a few arrivals did something else. They headed for tunnels that had opened within the structure, and disappeared into the glittering core. Then there was a movement at the tip of the mountain and something thrust its way up through the broken metal. It was a glistening spike, supporting a globe about two metres across. It did nothing very much for a minute or two and then, as the breeze dried it out, it split and crumbled. White objects cascaded out, were caught by the wind, and fountained over Ankh-Morpork and the watching crowds. One of them zig-zagged gently down across the rooftops and landed at the feet of Windle Poons as he lurched outside the Library. It was still damp, and there was writing on it. At least, an attempt at writing. It looked like the strange organic inscription of the snowflake balls - words created by something that was not at all at home with words: So\le S~l~ I I solre!~~ d b, S~Q~--%S to/70rro~*-, Windle reached the University gateway. People were streaming past. Windle knew his fellow citizens. They’d go to look at anything. They were suckers for anything written down with more than one exclamation mark after it. He felt someone looking at him, and turned. A trolley was watching from an alleyway; it backed up and whizzed away. “What’s happening, Mr. Poons?” said Ludmilla. There was something unreal about the expression of the passers-by. They wore an expression of unbudgeable anticipation. You didn’t have to be a wizard to know that something was wrong. And Windle’s senses were whining like a dynamo. Lupine leapt at a drifting sheet of paper and brought it to him. ~\M,..i\09 recloctio~s ir)~l J ~ooo, Windle shook his head sadly. Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind. And then he heard the music. Lupine sat back on his haunches and howled. In the cellar under Mrs. Cake’s house, Schleppel the bogeyman paused halfway through his third rat and listened. Then he finished his meal and reached for his door. Count Arthur Winkings Notfaroutoe was working on the crypt. Personally, he could have lived, or re-lived, or un-lived, or whatever it was he was supposed to be doing, without a crypt. But you had to have a crypt. Doreen had been very definite about the crypt. It gave the place ton, she said. You had to have a crypt anal a vault, otherwise the rest of vampire society would look down their teeth at you. They never told you about that sort of thing when you started vampiring. They never told you to build your own crypt out of some cheap two-by-four from Challry the Troll’s Wholesale Building Supplies. It wasn’t something that happened to most vampires, Arthur reflected. Not your proper vampires. Your actual Count Jugular, for example. No, a toff like him’d have someone for it. When the villagers came to burn the place down, you wouldn’t catch the Count his own self whipping down to the gate to drop the draw-bridge. Oh, no. He’d just say, “Igor’ - as it might be - ‘Igor, just svort it out, chop chop’. Huh. Well, they’d had an advert in Mr. Keeble’s job shop for months now. Bed, three meals a day, and hump provided if necessary. Not so much as an enquiry. And people said there was all this unemployment around. It made you livid. He picked up another piece of wood and measured it, grimacing as he unfolded the ruler. Arthur’s back ached from digging the moat. And that was another thing your posh vampire didn’t have to worry about. The moat came with the job, style of thing. And it went all the way round, because other vampires didn’t have the street out in front of them and old Mrs. Pivey complaining on one side and a family of trolls Doreen wasn’t speaking to on the other and therefore they didn’t end up with a moat that just went across the back yard. Arthur kept falling in it. And then there was the biting the necks of young women. Or rather, there wasn’t. Arthur was always prepared to see the other person’s point of view, but he felt certain that young women came into the vampiring somewhere, whatever Doreen said. In diaphanous pegnoyers. Arthur wasn’t quite certain what a diaphanous pegnoyer was, but he’d read about them and he definitely felt that he’d like to see one before he died . . . or whatever . . . And other vampires didn’t suddenly find their wives talking with Vs instead of Ws. The reason being, your natural vampire talked like that anyway. Arthur sighed. It was no life, or half-life or after-life or whatever it was, being a lower-middle-class wholesale fruit and vegetable merchant with an upper-class condition. And then the music filtered in through the hole in the wall that he’d knocked out to put in the barred window. “Ow,” he said, and clutched at his jaw. ‘Doreen?” Reg Shoe thumped his portable podium. “- and, let me see, we shall not lie back and let the grass grow over our heads,” he bellowed. “So what is your seven-point plan for Equal Opportunities with the living, I hear you cry?” The wind blew the dried grasses in the cemetery. The only creature apparently paying any attention to Reg was a solitary raven. Reg Shoe shrugged and lowered his voice. “You might at least make some effort,” he said, to the next world at large. “Here’s me wearing my fingers to the bone” - he flexed his hands to demonstrate – “and do I hear a word of thanks?” He paused, just in case. The raven, which was one of the extra large, fat ones that infested the rooftops of the University, put its head on one side and gave Reg Shoe a thoughtful look. “You know,” said Reg, “sometimes I just feel like giving up -” The raven cleared its throat. Reg Shoe spun around. “You say one word, “ he said, “just one bloody word . . .” And then he heard the music. Ludmilla risked removing her hands from her ears. “It’s horrible! What is it, Mr. Poons?” Windle tried to pull the remains of his hat over his ears. “Don’t know,” he said. “It could be music. If you’d never heard music before.” There weren’t notes. There were strung-together noises that might have been intended to be notes, put together as one might draw a map of a country that one had never seen. Hnyip. Ynyip. Hulyomp. “It’s coming from outside the city,” said Ludmilla. ‘Where all the people . . . are . . . going . . . They can’t like it, can they?” “I can’t imagine why they should,” said Windle. “It’s just that . . . you remember the trouble with the rats last year? That man who said he had a pipe that played music only rats could hear?” “Yes, but that wasn’t really true, it was all a fraud, it was just the Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents -” “But supposing it could have been true?” Windle shook his head. “Music to attract humans? Is that what you’re getting at? But that can’t be true. It’s not attracting us. Quite the reverse, I assure you.” “Yes, but you’re not human . . . exactly,” said Ludmilla. “And –“ She stopped, and went red in the face. Windle patted her on the shoulder. “Good point. Good point,” was all he could think of to say. “You know, don’t you,” she said, without looking up. “Yes. I don’t think it’s anything to be ashamed of, if that’s any help.” “Mother said it would be dreadful if anyone ever found out!” “That probably depends on who it is,” said Windle, glancing at Lupine. “Why is your dog staring at me like that?” said Ludmilla. “He’s very intelligent,” said Windle. Windle felt in his pocket, tipped out a couple of handfuls of soil, and unearthed his diary. Twenty days to next full moon. Still, it’d be something to look forward to. The metal debris of the heap started to collapse. Trolleys whirred around it, and a large crowd of Ankh-Morpork’s citizens were standing in a big circle, trying to peer inside. The unmusical music filled the air. “There’s Mr. Dibbler,” said Ludmilla, as they pushed their way through the unresisting people. “What’s he selling this time?” “I don’t think he’s trying to sell anything, Mr. Poons.” “It’s that bad? Then we’re probably in lots of trouble.” Blue light shone out from one of the holes in the heap. Bits of broken trolley tinkled to the ground like metal leaves. Windle bent down stiffly and picked up a pointy hat. It was battered and had been run over by a lot of trolleys, but it was still recognisable as something that by rights should be on someone’s head. “There’s wizards in there,” he said. Silver light glittered off the metal. It moved like oil. Windle reached out and a fat spark jumped across and grounded itself on his fingers. “Hmm,” he said. “Lot of potential, too -” Then he heard the cry of the vampires. “Coo-ee, Mr. Poons!” He turned. The Notfaroutoes were bearing down on him. “We - I mean, Ve vould have been here sooner, only -” “- I couldn’t find the blasted collar stud,” muttered Arthur, looking hot and flustered. He was wearing a collapsible opera hat, which was fine on the collapsible part but regrettably lacking in hatness, so that Arthur appeared to be looking at the world from under a concertina. “Oh, hallo,” said Windle. There was something dreadfully fascinating about the Winkings’ dedication to accurate vampirism. “Unt who iss the yunk laty?” said Doreen, beaming at Ludmilla. “Pardon?” said Windle. “Vot?” “Doreen - I mean, the Countess asked who she is,” Arthur supplied, wearily. “I understood what I said,” snapped Doreen, in the more normal tones of one born and brought up in Ankh-Morpork rather than some tran-sylvanian fastness. “Honestly, if I left it to you, we’d have no standards at all -” “My name’s Ludmilla, “ said Ludmilla. “Charmed,” said the Countess Notfaroutoe graciously, extending a hand that would have been thin and pale if it had not been pink and stubby. “Alvays nice to meet fresh blood. If you ever fancy a dog biscuit when you’re out and about, our door iss alwace open.” Ludmilla turned to Windle Poons. “It’s not written on my forehead, is it?” she said. “These are a special kind of people. “ said Windle gently. “I should think so,” said Ludmilla, levelly. “I hardly know anyone who wears an opera cloak the whole time.” “You’ve got to have the cloak,” said Count Arthur. “For the wings, you see. Like -” He spread the cloak dramatically. There was a brief, implosive noise, and a small fat bat hung in the air. It looked down, gave an angry squeak, and nosedived on to the soil. Doreen picked it up by its feet and dusted it off. “It’s having to sleep with the window open all night that I object to,” she said vaguely. “I wish they’d stop that music! I’m getting a headache.” There was another whoomph. Arthur reappeared upside down and landed on his head. “It’s the drop, you see,” said Doreen. “It’s like a run-up, sort of thing. If he doesn’t get at least a one storey start he can’t get up a proper airspeed.” “I can’t get a proper airspeed,” said Arthur, struggling to his feet. “Excuse me, “ said Windle, “The music doesn’t affect you?” “It puts my teeth on edge is what it does,” said Arthur. “Which is not a good thing for a vampire, I prob’ly don’t have to tell you.” “Mr. Poons thinks it does something to people,“ said Ludmilla. “Sets everyone’s teeth on edge?” said Arthur. Windle looked at the crowd. No-one was taking any notice of the Fresh Starters. “They look as though they’re waiting for something,” said Doreen. “Vaiting, I mean.” “It’s scary, “ said Ludmilla. “Nothing wrong with scary,” said Doreen. “We’re scary.” “Mr. Poons wants to go inside the heap,” said Ludmilla. “Good idea. Get them to turn that damn music off,” said Arthur. “But you could get killed!” said Ludmilla. Windle clapped his hands together, and rubbed them thoughtfully. “Ah,” he said, “that’s where we’re ahead of the game.” He walked into the glow. He’d never seen such bright light. It seemed to emanate from everywhere, hunting down every last shadow and eradicating it ruthlessly. It was much brighter than daylight without being anything like it - there was a blue edge to it that cut vision like a knife. “You all right, Count?” he said. “Fine, fine,” said Arthur. Lupine growled. Ludmilla pulled at a tangle of metal. “There’s something under this, you know. It looks like . . . marble. Orange-coloured marble. “ She ran her hand over it. “But warm. Marble shouldn’t be warm, should it?” “It can’t be marble. There can’t be this much marble in the whole world . . . vorld, “ said Doreen. “We tried to get marble for the vault,” she tasted the sound of the word and nodded to herself, “the vault, yes. Those dwarfs should be shot, the prices they charge. It’s a disgrace.” “I don’t think dwarfs built this,” said Windle. He knelt down awkwardly to examine the floor. “I shouldn’t think so, the lazy little buggers. They wanted nearly seventy dollars to do our vault. Didn’t they, Arthur?” “Nearly seventy dollars,” said Arthur. “I don’t think anyone built it,” said Windle quietly. Cracks. There should be cracks, he thought. Edges and things, where one slab joins another. It shouldn’t be all one piece. And slightly sticky. “So Arthur did it himself.” “I did it myself.” Ah. Here was an edge. Well, not exactly an edge. The marble became clear, like a window, looking into another brightly lit space. There were things in there, indistinct and melted-looking, but no way in to them. The chatter of the Winkings flowed over him as he crepe forward. “- more of a vaultette, really. But he got a dungeon in, even if you have to go out into the hall to shut the door properly -” Gentility meant all sorts of things, Windle thought. To some people it was not being a vampire. To others it was a matched set of flying plaster bats on the wall. He ran his fingers over the clear substance. The world here was all rectangles. There were corners, and the corridor was lined on both sides with the clear panels. And the non-music played all the time. It couldn’t be alive, could it? Life was . . . more rounded. “What do you think, Lupine?” he said. Lupine barked. “Hmm. Not a lot of help.” Ludmilla knelt down and put her hand on Windle’s shoulder. “What did you mean, no-one built it?” she said. Windle scratched his head. “I’m not sure . . . but I think maybe it was . . . secreted.” “Secreted? From what? By what?” They looked up. A trolley whirred out of the mouth of a side corridor and skidded away down another on the opposite side of the passage. “Them?” said Ludmilla. “I shouldn’t think so. I think they’re more like servants. Like ants. Bees in a hive, maybe.” “What’s the honey?” “Not sure. But it’s not ripe yet. I don’t think things are quite finished. No-one touch anything.” They walked onward. The passage opened up into a wide, bright, domed area. Stairways led up and down to different floors, and there was a fountain and a grove of potted plants that looked too healthy to be real. “Isn’t it nice?” said Doreen. “You keep thinking there should be people,” said Ludmilla. “Lots of people.” “There should at least be wizards,” muttered Windle Poons. “Half a dozen wizards don’t just disappear.” The five of them moved closer. Passages the size of the one they’d just walked down could have accommodated a couple of elephants walking abreast. “Do you think it might be a good idea to go back outside?” said Doreen. “What good would that do?” said Windle. “Well, it’d get us out of here.” Windle turned, counting. Five of the passages radiated equidistantly-out of the domed area. “And presumably it’s the same above and below, “ he said aloud. “It’s very clean here, “ Doreen said nervously. “Isn’t it clean, Arthur?” “It’s very clean.” “What’s that noise?” said Ludmilla. “What noise?” “That noise. Like someone sucking something.” Arthur looked around with a certain amount of interest. “It’s not me.” “It’s the stairs,” said Windle. “Don’t be silly, Mr. Poons. Stairs don’t suck.” Windle looked down. “These do.” They were black, like a sloping river. As the dark substance flowed out from under the floor it humped itself into something resembling steps, which travelled up the slope until they disappeared under the floor again, somewhere above. When the steps emerged they made a slow, rhythmic shlup-shlup noise, like someone investigating a particularly annoying dental cavity. “Do you know,” said Ludmilla, “that’s quite possibly the most unpleasant thing I’ve ever seen?” “I’ve seen worse,” said Windle. “But it’s pretty bad. Shall we go up or down?” “You want to stand on them?” “No. But the wizards aren’t on this floor and it’s that or slide down the handrail. Have you looked closely at the handrail?” They looked at the handrail. “I think,” said Doreen nervously, “that down is more us.” They went down in silence. Arthur fell over at the point where the travelling stairs were sucked into the floor again. “I had this horrible feeling it was going to drag me under,” he said apologetically, and then looked around him. “It’s big,” he concluded. “Roomy. I could do wonders down here with some stone-effect wallpaper.” Ludmilla wandered over to the nearest wall. “You know,” she said, “there’s more glass than I’ve seen before, but these clear bits look a bit like shops. Does that make sense? A great big shop full of shops?” “And not ripe yet,” said Windle. “Sorry?” “Just thinking aloud. Can you see what the merchandise is?” Ludmilla shaded her eyes. “It just looks like a lot of colour and glitter.” “Let me know if you see a wizard.” Someone screamed. “Or hear one, for example,” Windle added. Lupine bounded off down a passageway. Windle lurched swiftly after him. Someone was on their back, trying desperately to fight off a couple of the trolleys. They were bigger than the ones Windle had seen before, with a golden sheen to them. “Hey!” he yelled. They stopped trying to gore the prone figure and three-point-turned towards him. “Oh, “ he said, as they got up speed. The first one dodged Lupine’s jaws and butted Windle full in the knees, knocking him over. As the second passed over him he reached up wildly, grabbed randomly at the metal, and pulled hard. A wheel spun off and the trolley cartwheeled into the wall. He scrambled up in time to see Arthur hanging grimly on to the handle of the other trolley as the two of them whirred around in a mad centrifugal waltz. “Let go! Let go!” Doreen screamed. “I can’t! I can’t!” “Well, do something!” There was a pop of inrushing air. The trolley was suddenly not straining against the weight of a middle-aged wholesale, fruit and vegetable entrepreneur but only against a small terrified bat. It rocketed into a marble pillar, bounced off, hit a wall and landed on its back, wheels spinning. “The wheels!” shouted Ludmilla. “Pull the wheels off!” “I’ll do that,” said Windle. “You help Reg.” “Is that Reg down there?” said Doreen. Windle jerked his thumb towards the distant wall. The words “Better late than nev” ended in a desperate streak of paint. “Show him a wall and a paint pot and he doesn’t know what world he’s in,” said Doreen. “He’s only got a choice of two,” said Windle, throwing the trolley wheels across the floor. “Lupine, keep a look-out in case there’s any more.” The wheels had been sharp, like ice skates. He was definitely feeling tattered around the legs. Now, how did healing go? Reg Shoe was helped into a sitting position. “What’s happening?” he said. “No-one else was coming in, and I came down here to see where the music was coming from, and the next thing, there’s these wheels -” Count Arthur returned to his approximately human form, looked around proudly, realised that no-one was paying him any attention, and sagged. “They looked a lot tougher than the others,” said Ludmilla. “Bigger and nastier and covered in sharp edges.” “Soldiers,” said Windle. ‘We’ve seen the workers. And now there’s soldiers. Just like ants.” “I had an ant farm when I was a lad,” said Arthur, who had hit the floor rather heavily and was having temporary trouble with the nature of reality. “Hang on,” said Ludmilla. “I know about ants. We have ants in the back yard. If you have workers and soldiers, then you must also have a -” “I know. I know,” said Windle. “- mind you, they called it a farm, I never saw them doing any farming -” Ludmilla leaned against the wall. “It’ll be somewhere close,” she said. “I think so, “ said Windle. “What does it look like, do you think?” “- what you do is, you get two bits of glass and some ants -” “I don’t know. How should I know? But the wizards will be somewhere near it.” “I don’t see vy you’re bothering about them,” said Doreen. ‘They buried you alive just because you vere dead.” Windle looked up at the sound of wheels. A dozen warrior baskets turned the corner and pulled up in formation. “They thought they were doing it for the best,” said Windle. “People often do. It’s amazing, the things that seem a good idea at the time.” The new Death straightened up. Or? AH. ER. Bill Door stepped back, turned round, and ran for it. It was, as he was wonderfully well placed to know, merely putting off the inevitable. But wasn’t that what living was all about? No-one had ever run away from him after they were dead. Many had tried it before they were dead, often with great ingenuity. But the normal reaction of a spirit, suddenly pitched from one world into the next, was to hang around hopefully. Why run, after all? It wasn’t as if you knew where you were running to. The ghost Bill Door knew where he was running to. Ned Simnel’s smithy was locked up for the night, although this did not present a problem. Not alive and not dead, the spirit Bill Door dived through the wall. The fire was a barely-visible glow, settling in the forge. The smithy was full of warm darkness. What it didn’t contain was the ghost of a scythe. Bill Door looked around desperately. SQUEAK? There was a small dark-robed figure sitting on a beam above him. It gestured frantically towards the corner. He saw a dark handle sticking out from the load of timber. He tried to pull at it with fingers now as substantial as a shadow. HE SAID HE WOULD DESTROY IT FOR ME! The Death of Rats shrugged sympathetically. The new Death stepped through the wall, scythe held in both hands. It advanced on Bill Door. There was a rustling. The grey robes were pouring into the smithy. Bill Door grinned in terror. The new Death stopped, posing dramatically in the glow from the forge. It swung. It almost lost its balance. You‘re not supposed to duck! Bill Door dived through the wall again and pounded across the square, skull down, spectral feet making no noise on the cobbles. He reached the little group by the clock. ON THE HORSE! GO! “What’s happening? What’s happening!” IT HASN’T WORKED! Miss Flitworth gave him a panicky look but put the unconscious child on Binky’s back and climbed up after her. Then Bill Door brought his hand down hard on the horse’s flank. There at least there was contact - Binky existed in all worlds. Go! He didn’t look around but darted on up the road towards the farm. A weapon! Something he could hold! The only weapon in the undead world was in the hands of the new Death. As Bill Door ran he was aware of a faint, higher-pitched clicking noise. He looked down. The Death of Rats was keeping pace with him. It gave him an encouraging squeak. He skidded through the farm gate and flung himself against the wall. There was the distant rumble of the storm. Apart from that, silence. He relaxed slightly, and crept cautiously along the wall towards the back of the farmhouse. He caught a glimpse of something metallic. Leaning against the wall there where the men from the village had left it when they brought him back, was his scythe; not the one he’d carefully prepared but the one he’d used for the harvest. What edge it had had been achieved only by the whetstone and the caress of the stalks, but it was a familiar shape and he made a tentative grab at it. His hand passed right through. The further you run, the closer you get. The new Death stepped unhurriedly out of the shadows. You should know that, it added. Bill Door straightened up. We will enjoy this. ENJOY? The new Death advanced. Bill Door backed away. Yes. The lacking of one Death is the same as achieving the end of a billion lesser lives. LESSER LIVES? THIS IS NOT A GAME! The new Death hesitated. What is a game? Bill Door felt the tiny flicker of hope. I COULD SHOW YOU - The end of the scythe handle caught him under the chin and knocked him against the wall, where he slid to the ground. We deed a Crick. We do not listen. The reaper does not listen to the harvest. Bill Door tried to get up. The scythe handle struck him again. We will not make the same mistakes. Bill Door looked up. The new Death was holding the golden timer; the top bulb was empty. Around both of them the landscape shifted, reddened, began to take on the unreal appearance of reality seen from the other side . . . You ‘re out of Time, Mr. Bill Door. The new Death raised his cowl. There was no face there. There was not even a skull. Smoke curled formlessly between the robe and a golden crown. Bill Door raised himself on his elbows. A CROWN? His voice shook with rage. I NEVER WORE A CROWN! You never wanted to rule. The Death swung the scythe back. And then it dawned on the old Death and the new Death that the hissing of passing time had not, in fact, stopped. The new Death hesitated, and took out the golden glass. It shook it. Bill Door looked into the empty face under the crown. There was an expression of puzzlement there, even with no features actually to wear it; the expression hung in the air all by itself. He saw the crown turn. Miss Flitworth stood with her hands held a foot apart and her eyes closed. Between her hands, in the air in front of her hovered the faint outline of a lifetimer, its sand pouring away in a torrent. The Deaths could just make out, on the glass the spidery name: Renata Flitworth. The new Death’s featureless expression became one of terminal puzzlement. It turned to Bill Door. For YOU? But Bill Door was already rising and unfolding like the wrath of kings. He reached behind him, growling, living on loaned time, and his hands closed around the harvest scythe. The crowned Death saw it coming and raised its own weapon but there was very possibly nothing in the world that would stop the worn blade as it snarled through the air, rage arid vengeance giving it an edge beyond any definition of sharpness. It passed through the metal without slowing. NO CROWN, said Bill Door, looking directly into the smoke. NO CROWN. ONLY THE HARVEST. The robe folded up around his blade. There was a thin wail, rising beyond the peak of hearing. A black column, like the negative of lightning, flashed up from the ground and disappeared into the clouds. Death waited for a moment, and then gingerly gave the robe a prod with his foot. The crown, bent slightly out of shape, rolled out of it a little way before evaporating. OH, he said, dismissively. DRAMA. He walked over to Miss Flitworth and gently pressed her hands together. The image of the lifetimer disappeared. The blue-and-violet fog on the edge of sight faded as solid reality flowed back. Down in the town, the clock finished striking midnight. The old woman was shivering. Death snapped his fingers in front of her eyes. MISS FLITWORTH? RENATA? “I - I didn’t know what to do and you said it wasn’t difficult and -” Death walked into the barn. When he came out, he was wearing his black robe. She was still standing there. “I didn’t know what to do,” she repeated, possibly not to him. “What happened? Is it all over?” Death looked around. The grey shapes were pouring into the yard. POSSIBLY NOT, he said. More trolleys appeared behind the row of soldiers. They looked like the small silvery workers with the occasional pale golden gleam of a warrior. “We should retreat back to the stairs,” said Doreen. “I think that’s where they want us to go,” said Windle. “Then that’s fine by me. Anyway, I vouldn’t think those wheels could manage steps, could they?” “And you can’t exactly fight to the death,” said Ludmilla. Lupine was keeping close to her, yellow eyes fixed on the slowly advancing wheels. “Chance would be a fine thing,” said Windle. They reached the moving stairs. He looked up. Trolleys clustered around the top of the upward stair, but the way to the floor below looked clear. “Perhaps we could find another way up?” said Ludmilla hopefully. They shuffled on to the moving stair. Behind them, the trolleys moved in to block their return. The wizards were on the floor below. They werestanding so still among the potted plants and fountains that Windle passed them at first, assuming that they were some sort of statue or piece of esoteric furniture. The Archchancellor had a false red nose and was holding some balloons. Beside him, the Bursar was juggling coloured balls, but like a machine, his eyes staring blankly at nothing. The Senior Wrangler was standing a little way off, wearing a pair of sandwich boards. The writing on them hadn’t fully ripened yet, but Windle would have bet his afterlife that it would eventually say something like SALE!!!! The other wizards were clustered together like dolls whose clockwork hadn’t been wound up. Each one had a large oblong badge on his robe. The familiar organic-looking writing was growing into a word that looked like: I K Y although why it was doing so was a complete mystery. The wizards certainly didn’t look very secure. Windle snapped his fingers in front of the Dean’s pale eyes. There was no response. “He’s not dead,” said Reg. “Just resting,” said Windle. “Switched off.” Reg gave the Dean a push. The wizard tottered forward, and then staggered to a precarious, swaying halt. “Well, we’ll never get them out,” said Arthur. “Not like that. Can’t you wake them up?” “Light a feather under their nose,” Doreen volunteered. “I don’t think that will work, “ said Windle. He based the statement on the fact that Reg Shoe was very nearly under their noses, and anyone whose nasal equipment failed to register Mr. Shoe would certainly not react to a mere burning feather. Or a heavy weight dropped from a great height, if it came to that. “Mr. Poons,” said Ludmilla. “I used to know a golem looked like him,” said Reg Shoe. “Just like him. Great big chap, made out of clay. That’s what your typical golem basically is. You just have to write a special holy word on ‘em to start ‘em up.” “What, like “security”?” “Could be.” Windle peered at the Dean. ‘No,” he said at last, “no-one’s got that much clay.“ He looked around them. “We ought to find out where that blasted music’s coming from.” “Where the musicians are hidden, you mean?” “I don’t think there are musicians.” “You’ve got to have musicians, brother,” said Reg. “That’s why it’s called music.” “Firstly, this isn’t like any music I’ve ever heard, and secondly I always thought you’ve got to have oil lamps or candles to make light and there aren’t any and there’s still light shining everywhere,” said Windle. “Mr. Poons?” said Ludmilla again, prodding him. “Yes?” “Here come some trolleys again.” They were blocking all five passages leading off the central space. “There’s no stairs down,” said Windle. “Maybe it’s - she’s - in one of the glassy bits,” said Ludmilla. ‘The shops?” “I don’t think so. They don’t look finished. Anyway, that feels wrong - “ Lupine growled. Spikes glistened on the leading trolleys, but they weren’t rushing to attack. “They must have seen what we did to the others,” said Arthur. “Yes. But how could they? That was upstairs,” said Windle. “Well, maybe they talk to each other.” “How can they talk? How can they think? There can’t be any brains in a lot of wire,“ said Ludmilla. “Ants and bees don’t think, if it comes to that,” said Windle. “They’re just controlled -” He looked upwards. They looked upwards. “It’s coming from somewhere in the ceiling,“ he said. “We’ve got to find it right now!” “There’s just panels of light,” said Ludmilla. “Something else! Look for something it could be coming from!” “It’s coming from everywhere!” “Whatever you’re thinking of doing,” said Doreen, picking up a potted plant and holding it like a club, “I hope you do it fast.” “What’s that round black thing up there?” said Arthur. “Where?” “There. “ Arthur pointed. “OK, Reg and me will help you up, come on -” “Me? But I can’t stand heights!” “I thought you could turn into a bat?” “Yeah, but a very nervous one!” “Stop complaining. Right - one foot here, now your hand here, now put your foot on Reg’s shoulder -” “And don’t go through,” said Reg. “I don’t like this!” Arthur moaned, as they hoisted him up. Doreen stopped glaring at the creeping trolleys. “Artor! Nobblyesse obligay!” “What? Is that some sort of vampire code?” Reg whispered. “It means something like: a count’s gotta do what a count’s gotta do,” said Windle. “Count!” snarled Arthur, swaying dangerously. “I never should have listened to that lawyer! I should have known nothing good ever comes in a long brown envelope! And I can’t reach the bloody thing anyway!” “Can’t you jump?” said Windle. “Can’t you drop dead?” “No.” “And I’m not jumping!” “Fly, then. Turn into a bat and fly.” “I can’t get the airspeed!” “You could throw him up,” said Ludmilla. “You know, like a paper dart.” “Blow that! I’m a count!” “You just said you didn’t want to be,” said Windle mildly. “On the ground I don’t want to be, but when it comes to being chucked around like a frisbee -” “Arthur! Do what Mr. Poons says!” “I don’t see way -” “Arthur!” Arthur as a bat was surprisingly heavy. Windle held him by the ears like a misshapen bowling ball and tried to take aim. “Remember - I’m an endangered species!” the Count squeaked, as Windle brought his arm back. It was an accurate throw. Arthur fluttered to the disc in the ceiling and gripped it in his claws. “Can you move it?” “No!” “Then hang on tight and change back.” “No!” “We’ll catch you.” “No!” “Arthur!” screamed Doreen, prodding an advancing trolley with her makeshift club. “Oh, all right.” There was a momentary vision of Arthur Winkings clinging desperately to the ceiling, and then he dropped on Windle and Reg, the disc clasped to his chest. The music stopped abruptly. Pink tubing poured out of the ravaged hole above them and coiled upon Arthur, making him look like a very cheap plate of spaghetti and meatballs. The fountains seemed to operate in reverse for a moment, and then dried up. The trolleys halted. The ones at the back ran into the ones at the front, and there was a chorus of pathetic clanking noises. Tubing still poured out of the hole. Windle picked up a bit. It was an unpleasant pink, and sticky. “What do you think it is?” said Ludmilla. “I think,” said Windle, “that we’d better get out of here now.” The floor trembled. Steam gushed from the fountain. “If not sooner,” Windle added. There was a gasp from the Archchancellor. The Dean slumped forward. The other wizards remained upright, but only just. “They’re coming out of it,” said Ludmilla. ‘But I don’t think they’ll manage the stairs.” “I don’t think anyone should even think about trying to manage the stairs,” said Windle. “Look at them.” The moving stairs weren’t. The black steps glistened in the shadowless light. “I see what you mean,” said Ludmilla. “I’d rather try and walk on quicksand.” “It’d probably be safer,” said Windle. “Maybe there’s a ramp? There must be some way for the trolleys to get around.” “Good idea.” Ludmilla eyed the trolleys. They were milling around aimlessly. “I think I might have an even better one . . . “ she said, and grabbed a passing handle. The trolley fought for a moment and then, lacking any contrary instructions, settled down docilely. “The ones that can walk’ll walk, and the ones that can’t walk’ll get pushed. Come on, grandad. “ This was to the Bursar, who was persuaded to flop across the trolley. He said ‘yo’, faintly, and shut his eyes again. The Dean was manhandled on top of him. “And now where?” said Doreen. A couple of floor tiles buckled upwards. A heavy grey vapour started to pour out. “It must be somewhere at the end of a passage,” said Ludmilla. “Come on.” Arthur looked down at the mists coiling around his feet. “I wonder how you can do that?” he said. “It’s amazingly difficult to get stuff that does that. We tried it, you know, to make our crypt more . . . more cryptic, but it just smokes up the place and sets fire to the curtains -” “Come on, Artor. We are going.” “You don’t think we’ve done too much damage, do you? Perhaps we should leave a note -” “Yeah, I could write something on the wall if you like,” said Reg. He picked up a struggling worker trolley by its handle and, with some satisfaction, smashed it against a pillar until its wheels dropped off. Windle watched the Fresh Start Club head up the nearest passage, pushing a bargain assortment of wizardry. “Well, well, well,” he said. “As simple as that. That’s all we had to do. Hardly any drama at all.” He went to move forward, and stopped. Pink tubes were forcing their way through the floor and were already coiled tightly around his legs. More floor tiles leapt into the air. The stairways shattered, revealing the dark, serrated and above all living tissue that had powered them. The walls pulsed and caved inwards, the marble cracking to reveal purple and pinkness underneath. Of course, thought a tiny calm part of Windle’s mind, none of this is really real. Buildings aren’t really alive. It’s all just a metaphor, only at the moment metaphors are like candles in a firework factory. That being said, what sort of creature is the Queen? Like a queen bee, except she’s also the hive. Like a caddis fly, which builds, if I’m not mistaken, a shell out of bits of stone and things, to camouflage itself. Or like a nautilus, which adds on to its shell as it gets bigger. And very much, to judge by the way the floors are ripping up, like a very angry starfish. I wonder how cities would defend themselves against this sort of thing? Creatures generally evolve some sort of defence against predators. Poisons and stings and spikes and things. Here and now, that’s probably me. Spiky old Windle Poons. At least I can try to see to it that the others get out all right. Let’s make my presence felt . . . He reached down, grabbed a double handful of pulsating tubes, and heaved. The Queen’s screech of rage was heard all the way to the University. The storm clouds sped towards the hill. They piled up in a towering mass, very fast. Lightning flashed, somewhere in the core. THERE’S TOO MUCH LIFE AROUND, said Death. NOT THAT I’M ONE TO COMPLAIN. WHERE’S THE CHILD? “I put her to bed. She’s sleeping now. Just ordinary sleep.” Lightning struck on the hill, like a thunderbolt. It was followed by a clanking, grinding noise, somewhere in the middle distance. Death sighed. AH. MORE DRAMA? He walked around the barn, so that he could command a good view of the dark fields. Miss Flitworth followed very closely on his heels, using him as a shield against whatever terrors were out there. A blue glow crackled behind a distant hedge. It was moving. “What is it?” IT WAS THE COMBINATION HARVESTER. “Was? What is it now?” Death glanced at the clustering watchers. A POOR LOSER. The Harvester tore across the soaking fields, cloth arms whirring, levers moving inside an electric blue nimbus. The shafts for the horse waved uselessly in the air. “How can it go without a horse? It had a horse yesterday!” IT DOESN’T NEED ONE. He looked around at the grey watchers. There were ranks of them now. “Binky’s still in the yard. Come on!” No. The Combination Harvester accelerated towards them. The schip-schip of its blades became a whine. “Is it angry because you stole its tarpaulin?” THAT’S NOT ALL I STOLE. Death grinned at the watchers. He picked up his scythe, turned it over in his hands and then, when he was sure their gaze was fixed upon it, let it fall to the ground. Then he folded his arms. Miss Flitworth dragged at him. “What do you think you’re doing?” DRAMA. The Harvester reached the gate into the yard and came through in a cloud of sawdust. “Are you sure we’ll be all right?” Death nodded. “Well. That’s all right then.” The Harvester’s wheels were a blur. PROBABLY. And then . . . . . . something in the machinery went clonk. Then the Harvester was still travelling, but in pieces. Sparks fountained up from its axles. A few spindles and arms managed to hold together, jerking madly as they spun away from the whirling, slowing confusion. The circle of blades tore free, smashed up through the machine, and skimmed away across the fields. There was a jangle, a clatter, and then the last isolated boing, which is the audible equivalent of the famous pair of smoking boots. And then there was silence. Death reached down calmly and picked up a complicated-looking spindle as it pinwheeled towards his feet. It had been bent into a right-angle. Miss Flitworth peered around him. “What happened?” I THINK THE ELLIPTICAL CAM HAS GRADUALLY SLID UP THE BEAM SHAFT AND CAUGHT ON THE FLANGE REBATE. WITH DISASTROUS RESULTS. Death stared defiantly at the grey watchers. One by one, they began to disappear. He picked up the scythe. AND NOW I MUST GO, he said. Miss FIitworth looked horrified. “What? Just like that?” YES. EXACTLY LIKE THAT. I HAVE A LOT OF WORK TO DO. “And I won’t see you again? I mean -” OH. YES. SOON. He sought for the right words, and gave up. THAT’S A PROMISE. Death pulled up his robe and reached into the pocket of his Bill Door overall, which he was still wearing underneath. WHEN MR. SIMNEL COMES TO COLLECT THE BITS IN THE MORNING HE WILL PROBABLY BE LOOKING FOR THIS, he said, and dropped something small and bevelled into her hand. “What is it?” A THREE-EIGHTHS GRIPLEY. Death walked over to his horse, and then remembered something. AND HE OWES ME A FARTHING, TOO. Ridcully opened one eye. People were milling around. There were lights and excitement. Lots of people were talking at once. He seemed to be sitting in a very uncomfortable pram, with some strange insects buzzing around him. He could hear the Dean complaining, and there were groans that could only be coming from the Bursar, and the voice of a young woman. People were being ministered to, but no-one was paying him any attention. Well, if there was ministering going on, he was damn well going to get ministered to as well. He coughed loudly. “You could try,” he said, to the cruel world in general, “forcing some brandy between m’lips.” An apparition appeared above him holding a lamp over its head. It was a size five face in a size thirteen skin; it said ‘Oook?” in a concerned way. “Oh, it’s you,” said Ridcully. He tried to sit up quickly just in case the Librarian tried the kiss of life. Confused memories wobbled across his brain. He could remember a wall of clanking metal, and then pinkness, and then . . . music. Endless music, designed to turn the living brain to cream cheese. He turned around. There was a building behind him, surrounded by crowds of people. It was squat and clung to the ground in a strangely animal way, as if it might be possible to lift up a wing of the building and hear the pop-pop-pop of suckers letting go. Light streamed out of it, and steam curled out of its doors. “Ridcully’s woken up!” More faces appeared. Ridcully thought: it’s not Soul Cake Night, so they’re not wearing masks. Oh, blast. Behind them he heard the Dean say, “I vote we work up Herpetty’s Seismic Reorganiser and lob it through the door. No more problem.” “No! We’re too close to the city walls! We just need to drop Quondum’s Attractive Point in the right place -” “Or Sumpjumper’s Incendiary Surprise, perhaps?” this was the Bursar’s voice. “Burn it out, it’s the best way -” “Yeah? Yeah? And what do you know about military tactics? You can’t even say “yo” properly!” Ridcully gripped the sides of the trolley. “Would anyone mind tellin’ me,” he said, “what the - what the heck is goin’ on?” Ludmilla pushed her way through the members of the Fresh Start Club. “You’ve got to stop them, Archchancellor!” she said. ‘They’re talking about destroying the big shop!” More nasty recollections settled on Ridcully’s mind. “Good idea,” he said. “But Mr. Poons is still in there!” Ridcully tried to focus on the glowing building. “What, dead Windle Poons?” “Arthur flew back when we realised he wasn’t with us and he said Windle was fighting something that’d come out of the walls! We saw lots of trolleys but they weren’t bothered about us! He let us get out!” “What, dead Windle Poons?” “You can’t magic the place to bits with one of your wizards in there!” “What, dead Windle Poons?” “Yes!” “But he’s dead,” said Ridcully. “Isn’t he? He said he was.” “Ha!” said someone who had much less skin than Ridcully would have liked him to have. “That’s typical. That’s naked vitalism, that is. I bet they’d rescue someone in there if they happened to be alive.” “But he wanted . . . he wasn’t keen on . . . he . . . “ Ridcully hazarded. A lot of this was beyond him, but to people like Ridcully this didn’t matter for very long. Ridcully was simple-minded. This doesn’t mean stupid. It just meant that he could only think properly about things if he cut away all the complicated bits around the edges. He concentrated on the single main fact. Someone who was technically a wizard was in trouble. He could relate to that. It struck a chord. The whole dead-or-alive business could wait. There was another minor point that nagged at him, though. “. . . Arthur? . . . flew? . . .” “Hallo.” Ridcully turned his head. He blinked slowly. “Nice teeth YOU got there,” he said. “Thank you,” said Arthur Winkings. “All your own, are they?” “Oh, yes.” “Amazing. Of course, I expect you brush regularly.” “Yes?” “Hygienic. That’s the important thing.” “So what are you going to do?” said Ludmilla. “Well, we’ll just go and fetch him out, “ said Ridcully. What was it about the girl? He felt a strange urge to pat her on the head. “We’ll get some magic and get him out. Yes. Dean!” “Yo!” “We ‘re just going to go in there to get Windle out.” “Yo!” “What?” said the Senior Wrangler. ‘You must be out of your mind!” Ridcully tried to look as dignified as possible, given his situation. “Remember that I am your Archchancellor,” he snapped. “Then you must be out of your mind, Archchancellor!” said the Senior Wrangler. He lowered his voice. “Anyway, he’s an undead. I don’t see how you can save undeads. It’s a sort of contradiction in terms.” “A dichotomy, “ said the Bursar helpfully. “Oh, I don’t think surgery is involved.” “Anyway, didn’t we bury him?” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “And now we dig him up again,” said the Archchancellor. “It’s probably a miracle of existence.” “Like pickles,” said the Bursar, happily. Even the Fresh Starters went blank. “They do that in parts of Howondaland,” said the Bursar. “They make these big, big jars of special pickles and then they bury them in the ground for months to ferment and they get this lovely piquant -” “Tell me,” Ludmilla whispered to Ridcully, “is this how wizards usually behave?” “The Senior Wrangler is an amazingly fine example,” said Ridcully. “Got the same urgent grasp of reality as a cardboard cut-out. Proud to have him on the team.“ He rubbed his hands together. “OK, lads. Volunteers?” “Yo! Hut!” said the Dean, who was in an entirely different world now. “I would be remiss in my duty if I failed to help a brother,” said Reg Shoe. “Oook.” “You? We can’t take you,” said the Dean, glaring at the Librarian. “You don’t know a thing about guerrilla warfare.” “Oook!” said the Librarian, and made a surprisingly comprehensive gesture to indicate that, on the other hand, what he didn’t know about orangutan warfare could be written on the very small pounded-up remains of, for example, the Dean. “Four of us should be enough,” said the Archchancellor. “I’ve never even heard him say “Yo”,” muttered the Dean. He removed his hat, something a wizard doesn’t ordinarily do unless he’s about to pull something out of it, and handed it to the Bursar. Then he tore a thin strip off the bottom of his robe, held it dramatically in both hands, and tied it around his forehead. “It’s part of the ethos,” he said, in answer to their penetratingly unspoken question. ‘That’s what the warriors on the Counter-weight Continent do before they go into battle. And you have to shout -’ He tried to remember some far-off reading. “- er, bonsai. Yes. Bonsai!” “I thought that meant chopping bits off trees to make them small,” said the Senior Wrangler. The Dean hesitated. He wasn’t too sure himself, if it came to it. But a good wizard never let uncertainty stand in his way. “No, it’s definitely got to be bonsai,” he said. He considered it some more and then brightened up. “On account of it all being part of bushido. Like . . . small trees. Bush-i-do. Yeah. Makes sense, when you think about it.” “But you can’t shout “bonsai!” here,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “We’ve got a totally different cultural background. It’d be useless. No-one will know what you mean.” “I’ll work on it,” said the Dean. He noticed Ludmilla standing with her mouth open. “This is wizard talk,” he said. “It is, isn’t it,” said Ludmilla. “I never would have guessed.” The Archchancellor had got out of the trolley and was wheeling it experimentally back and forth. It usually took quite a long time for a fresh idea to fully lodge in Ridcully’s mind, but he felt instinctively that there were all sorts of uses for a wire basket on four wheels. “Are we going or are we standin’ around all night bandagin’ our heads?” he said. “Yo!” snapped the Dean. “Yo?” said Reg Shoe. “Oook!” “Was that a yo?” said the Dean, suspiciously. “Oook.” “Well . . . all right, then.” Death sat on a mountaintop. It wasn’t particularly high, or bare, or sinister. No witches held naked sabbats on it; Discworld witches, on the whole, didn’t hold with taking off any more clothes than was absolutely necessary for the business in hand. No spectres haunted it. No naked little men sat on the summit dispensing wisdom, because the first thing the truly-wise man works out is that sitting around on mountaintops gives you not only haemorrhoids but frostbitten haemorrhoids. Occasionally people would climb the mountain and add a stone or two to the cairn at the top, if only to prove that there is nothing really damn stupid that humans won’t do. Death sat on the cairn and ran a stone down the blade of his scythe in long, deliberate strokes. There was a movement of air. Three grey servants popped into existence. One said, You think you have won? One said, You think you have triumphed? Death turned the stone in his hand, to get a fresh surface and brought it slowly down the length of the blade. One said, We will inform Azrael. One said, You are only, after all, a little Death. Death held the blade up to the moonlight, twisting it this way and that, noting the play of light on the tiny flecks of metal on its edge. Then he stood up, in one quick movement. The servants backed away hurriedly. He reached out with the speed of a snake and grasped a robe, pulling its empty hood level with his eye sockets. DO YOU KNOW WHY THE PRISONER IN THE TOWER WATCHES THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS? he said. It said, Take your hands off me . . . oops . . . Blue flame flared for a moment. Death lowered his hand and looked around at the other two. One said, You haven’t heard the last of this. They vanished. Death brushed a speck of ash off his robe, and then planted his feet squarely on the mountaintop. He raised the scythe over his head in both hands, and summoned all the lesser Deaths that had arisen in his absence. After a while they streamed up the mountain in a faint black wave. They flowed together like dark mercury. It went on for a long time and then stopped. Death lowered the scythe, and examined himself. Yes, all there. Once again, he was the Death, containing all the deaths of the world. Except for - For a moment he hesitated. There was one tiny area of emptiness somewhere, some fragment of his soul, something unaccounted for . . . He couldn’t be quite certain what it was. He shrugged. Doubtless he’d find out. In the meantime, there was a lot of work to be done . . . He rode away. Far off, in his den under the barn, the Death of Rats relaxed his determined grip on a beam. Windle Poons brought both feet down heavily on a tentacle snaking out from under the tiles, and lurched off through the steam. A slab of marble smashed down, showering him with fragments. Then he kicked the wall, savagely. There was very probably no way out now, he realised, and even if there was he couldn’t find it. Anyway, he was already inside the thing. It was shaking its own walls down in an effort to get at him. At least he could give it a really bad case of indigestion. He headed towards an orifice that had once been the entrance to a wide passage, and dived awkwardly through it just before it snapped shut. Silver fire crackled over the walls. There was so much life here it couldn’t be contained. There were a few trolleys still here, skittering madly across the shaking floor, as lost as Windle. He set off along another likely-looking corridor, although most corridors he’d been down in the last one hundred and thirty years hadn’t pulsated and dripped so much. Another tentacle thrust through the wall and tripped him up. Of course, it couldn’t kill him. But it could make him bodiless. Like old One-Man-Bucket. A fate worse than death, probably. He pulled himself up. The ceiling bounced down on him, flattening him against the floor. He counted under his breath and scampered forward. Steam washed over him. He slipped again, and thrust out his hands. He could feel himself losing control. There were too many things to operate. Never mind the spleen, just keeping heart and lungs going was taking too much effort. . . “Topiary!” “What the heck do you mean?” “Topiary! Get it? Yo!” “Oook!” Windle looked up through foggy eyes. Ah. Obviously he was losing control of his brain, too. A trolley came sideways out of the steam with shadowy figures clinging on to its sides. One hairy arm and one arm that was barely an arm any more reached down, picked him up bodily and dumped him into the basket. Four tiny wheels skidded on the floor, the trolley bounced off the wall, and then it righted itself and rattled away. Windle was only vaguely aware of voices. “Off you go, Dean. I know you’ve been looking forward to it.“ That was the Archchancellor. “Yo!” “You’ll kill it totally? I don’t think we want it ending up at the Fresh Start Club. I don’t think it’s a joiner.“ That was Reg Shoe. “Oook!” That was the Librarian. “Don’t you worry, Windle. The Dean is going to do something military, apparently, “ said Ridcully. “Yo! Hut!” “Oh, good grief.” Windle saw the Dean’s hand float past with something glittering in it. “What are you going to use?” said Ridcully, as the trolley rocketed through the steam. “The Seismic Reorganiser, the Attractive Point or the Incendiary Surprise?” “Yo, “ said the Dean, with satisfaction. “What, all three at once?” “Yo!” “That’s going a bit far, isn’t it? And incidentally, if you say “yo” one more time, Dean, I will personally have you thrown out of the University, pursued to the rim of the world by the finest demons that thaumaturgy can conjure up, torn into extremely small pieces, minced, turned into a mixture reminiscent of steak tartare, and turned out into a dog bowl.” “Y –“ The Dean caught Ridcully’s eye. “Yes. Yes? Oh, go on, Archchancellor. What’s the good of having mastery over cosmic balance and knowing the secrets of fate if you can’t blow something up? Please? I’ve got them all ready. You know how it upsets the inventory if you don’t use them after you’ve got them ready -” The trolley whirred up a trembling slope and cornered on two wheels. “Oh, all right,“ said Ridcully. “If it means that much to you.” “Y - sorry.” The Dean started to mutter urgently under his breath, and then screamed. “I’ve gone blind!” “Your bonsai bandage has slipped over your eyes, Dean. “ Windle groaned. “How are you feeling, brother Poons?” Reg Shoe’s ravaged features occluded Windle’s view. “Oh, you know, “ said Windle. “Could be better, could be worse.” The trolley ricocheted off a wall and jerked away in another direction. “How are those spells coming along, Dean?” said Ridcully, through gritted teeth. “I’m having real difficulties controlling this thing.” The Dean muttered a few more words, and then waved his hands dramatically. Octarine flame spurted from his fingertips and earthed itself somewhere in the mists. “Yee-haw!” he crowed. “Dean?” “Yes, Archchancellor?” “The comment I made recently about the Y-word . . .” “Yes? Yes?” “You can definitely include Yee-haw, too.” The Dean hung his head. “Oh. Yes. Archchancellor.” “And why hasn’t everythin’ gone boom?” “I put a slight delay on it, Archchancellor. I thought perhaps we ought to get out before things happened.” “Good thinking, that man.” “Soon have you out, Windle,” said Reg Shoe. ‘We don’t leave our people in there. Isn’t this -” And then the floor erupted ahead of them. And then, behind them. The thing that arose from the shattered tiles was either formless or many forms at once. It writhed angrily, snapping its tubing at them. The trolley skewed to a halt. “Got any more magic, Dean?” “Er . . . no, Archchancellor.” “And the spells you just said will go off . . . ?” “Any second now, Archchancellor.” “So . . . whatever’s going to happen . . . is going to happen to us?” “Yes, Archchancellor.” Ridcully patted Windle on the head. “Sorry about this,” he said. Windle turned awkwardly to look down the passageway. There was something behind the Queen. It looked like a perfectly ordinary bedroom door, advancing in a series of small steps, as though someone was carefully pushing it along in front of them. “What is it?” said Reg. Windle raised himself as far as he could. “Schleppel!” “Oh, come on,” said Reg. “It’s Schleppel!” shouted Windle. ‘Schleppel! It’s us! Can you help us out?” The door paused. Then it was flung aside. Schleppel unfolded himself to his full height. “Hallo, Mr. Poons. Hallo, Reg,” he said. They stared at the hairy shape that nearly filled the passageway. “Er, Schleppel . . . er . . . could you clear the way for us?” Windle quavered. “No problem, Mr. Poons. Anything for a friend.” A hand the size of a wheelbarrow glided through the steam and tore into the blockage, ripping it out with incredible ease. “Hey, look at me!” said Schleppel. “You’re right. A bogeyman needs a door like a fish needs a bicycle! Say it now and say it loud, I’m -” “And now could you get out of the way, please?” “Sure. Sure. Wow!” Schleppel took another swipe at the Queen. The trolley shot forward. “And you’d better come with us!” Windle shouted, as Schleppel disappeared in the mists. “No he shouldn’t,” said the Archchancellor, as they sped along. “Believe me. What was it?” “He’s a bogeyman,” said Windle. “I thought you only get them in closets and things?” shouted Ridcully. “He’s come out of the closet,” said Reg Shoe proudly. “And he’s found himself.” “Just so long as we can lose him.” “We can’t just leave him -” “We can! We can!” snapped Ridcully. There was a sound behind them like an eruption of swamp gas. Green light streamed past. “The spells are starting to go off!” shouted the Dean. ‘”Move it!” The trolley whirred out of the entrance and soared up into the cool of the night, wheels screaming. “Yo!” bellowed Ridcully, as the crowd scattered ahead of them. “Does that mean I can say yo too?” said the Dean. “All right. Just once. Everyone can say it just once.” “Yo!” “Yo!” echoed Reg Shoe. “Oook!” “Yo!” said Windle Poons. “Yo!” said Schleppel. (Somewhere in the darkness, where the crowd was thinnest, the gaunt shape of Mr. Ixolite, the world’s last surviving banshee, sidled up to the shaking building and bashfully shoved a note under the door. It said: OOOOeeeOOOeeeOOOeee.) The trolley ploughed to a very definitive stop. No-one turned around. Reg said, slowly: “You’re behind us, right?”. “That’s right, Mr. Shoe, “ said Schleppel happily. “Should we worry when he’s in front of us?” said Ridcully, “Or is it worse because we know he’s behind us?” “Hah! No more closets and cellars for this bogey,” said Schleppel. “That’s a shame, because we’ve got some really big cellars at the University,” said Windle Poons quickly. Schleppel was silent for a while. Then he said, in an exploratory tone of voice, “How big?” “Huge.” “Yeah? With rats?” “Rats aren’t the half of it. There’s escaped demons and all sorts down there. Infested, they are.” “What are you doing?” hissed Ridcully. “That’s our cellars you’re talking about!” “You’d prefer him under your bed, would you?” murmured Windle. ‘Or walking around behind you?” Ridcully nodded briskly. “Wow, yes, those rats are getting really out of hand down there,” he said loudly. “Some of them - oh, about two feet long, wouldn’t you say, Dean?” “Three feet, “ said the Dean. “At least.” “Fat as butter, too,” said Windle. Schleppel gave this some thought. ‘Well, all right,” he said reluctantly. ‘Maybe I’ll just wander in and have a look at them.” The big store exploded and imploded at the same time, something it is almost impossible to achieve without a huge special effects budget or three spells all working against one another. There was the impression of a vast cloud expanding but at the same time moving away so rapidly that the overall effect was of a shrinking point. Walls buckled and were sucked in. Soil ripped up from the ravaged fields and spiralled into the vortex. There was a violent burst of non-music, which died almost instantly. And then nothing, except a muddy field. And, floating down from the early morning sky like snow, thousands of white flakes. They slid silently through the air and landed lightly on the crowd. “It’s not seeding, is it?” said Reg Shoe. Windle grabbed one of the flakes. It was a crude rectangle, uneven and blotchy. It was just about possible, with a certain amount of imagination, to make out the words: C)OS ~I’~ ~o~~o S\ae. v ~3VQr~~hnia t7u~, O9 ,l c/ J o “No, “ said Windle. ‘Probably not.” He lay back and smiled. It was never too late to have a good life. And when no-one was looking, the last surviving trolley on the Discworld rattled off sadly into the oblivion of the night, lost and alone. “Pog-a-grodle-fig!” Miss Flitworth sat in her kitchen. Outside, she could hear the despondent clanking as Ned Simnel and his apprentice picked up the tangled remains of the Combination Harvester. A handful of other people were theoretically helping, but were really taking the opportunity to have a good look around. She’d made a tray of tea, and left them to it. Now she sat with her chin in her hands, staring at nothing. There was a knock at the open door. Spigot poked his red face into the room. “Please, Miss Flitworth -” “Hmm?” “Please, Miss Flitworth, there’s a skeleton of a horse walking around in the barn! It’s eating hay!” “How?” “And it’s all falling through!” “Really? We’ll keep it, then. At least it’ll be cheap to feed.” Spigot hung around for a while, twisting his hat in his hands. “You all right. Miss Flitworth?” “You all right, Mr. Poons?” Windle stared at nothing. “Windle?” said Reg Shoe. “Hmm?” “The Archchancellor just asked if you wanted a drink.” “He’d like a glass of distilled water,” said Mrs. Cake. “What, just water?” said Ridcully. “That’s what he wants,” said Mrs. Cake. “I’d like a glass of distilled water, please,” said Windle. Mrs. Cake looked smug. At least, as much of her as was visible looked smug, which was that part between the Hat and her handbag, which was a sort of counterpart of the hat and so big that when she sat clasping it on her lap she had to reach up to hold the handles. When she’d heard that her daughter had been invited to the University she’d come too. Mrs. Cake always assumed that an invitation to Ludmilla was an invitation to Ludmilla’s mother as well. Mothers like her exist everywhere, and apparently nothing can be done about them. The Fresh Starters were being entertained by the wizards, and trying to look as though they were enjoying it. It was one of those problematical occasions with long silences, sporadic coughs, and people saying isolated things like, “Well, isn’t this nice.” “You looked a bit lost there, Windle, for a moment,” said Ridcully. “I’m just a bit tired, Archchancellor.” “I thought you zombies never slept.” “I’m still tired,” said Windle. “You‘re sure you wouldn’t like us to have another go with the burial and everything? We could do it properly this time.” “Thank you all the same, but no. I’m just not cut out for the undead life, I think. “ Windle looked at Reg Shoe. “Sorry about that. I don’t know how you manage it. “ He grinned apologetically. “You’ve got every right to be alive or dead, just as you choose,” said Reg severely. “One-Man-Bucket says people are dying properly again,” said Mrs. Cake. “So you could probably get an appointment.” Windle looked around. “She’s taken your dog for a walk,” said Mrs. Cake. “Where’s Ludmilla?” he said. Windle smiled awkwardly. Mrs. Cake’s premonitions could be very wearing. “It’d be nice to know that Lupine was being looked after if I . . . went,” he said. “I wonder, could you take him in?” “Well . . . “ said Mrs. Cake uncertainly. “But he’s –“ Reg Shoe began, and then saw Windle’s expression. “I must admit it’d be a relief to have a dog around the place,” said Mrs. Cake. “I’m always worrying about Ludmilla. There’s a lot of strange people around.” “But your dau –“ Reg began again. “Shut up, Reg,” said Doreen. “That’s all settled, then,” said Windle. “And have you got any trousers?” “What?” “Any trousers in the house?” “Well, I suppose I’ve got some that belonged to the late Mr. Cake, but why -” “Sorry,” said Windle. ‘My mind was wandering. Don’t know what I’m saying, half the time.” “Ah,” said Reg, brightly, “I see. What you’re saying is that when he -” Doreen nudged him viciously. “Oh,” said Reg. ‘Sorry. Don’t mind me. I’d forget my own head if it wasn’t sewn on.” Windle leaned back, and shut his eyes. He could hear the occasional scrap of conversation. He could hear Arthur Winkings asking the Archchancellor who did his decorating, and where the University got its vegetables. He heard the Bursar moaning about the cost of exterminating all the curse-words, which had somehow survived the recent changes and had taken up residence in the darkness of the roof. He could even, if he strained his perfect hearing, hear the whoops of Schleppel in the distant cellars. They didn’t need him. At last. The world didn’t need Windle Poons. He got up quietly and lurched to the door. “I’m just going out,” he said. “I may be some time.” Ridcully gave him a half-hearted nod, and concentrated on what Arthur had to say about how the Great Hall could be entirely transformed with some pine-effect wallpaper. Windle shut the door behind him and leaned against the thick, cool wall. Oh, yes. There was one other thing. “Are you there, One-Man-Bucket?” he said softly. how did you know? “You’re generally around.” heh heh, you’ve caused some real trouble there! you know what’s going to happen next full moon ? “Yes, I do. And I think, somehow, that they do too.” but he’ll become a wolfman. “Yes. And she’ll become a wolfwoman.” all right, but what kind of relationship can people have one week in four? “Maybe at least as good a chance of happiness as most people get. Life isn’t perfect, One-Man-Bucket.” you’re telling me? “Now, can I ask you a personal question?” said Windle. ‘I mean I’ve just got to know . . .” huh. “After all, you’ve got the astral plane to yourself again.” oh, all right. “Why are you called One -” is that all? I thought you could work that one out, a clever man like you. in my tribe we’re traditionally named after the First thing the mother sees when she looks out of the teepee after the birth. it’s short for One-Man-Pouring-a-Bucket-of-Water-over-Two-Dogs. “That’s pretty unfortunate, “ said Windle. it’s not too bad, said One-Man-Bucket. it was my twin brother you had to feel sorry for. she looked out ten seconds before me to give him his name. Windle Poons thought about it. “Don’t tell me, let me guess,” he said. ‘Two-Dogs-Fighting?” Two-Dogs-Fighting a Two-Dogs-Fighting? said One-Man-Bucket. Wow, he’d have given his right arm to be called Two-Dogs-Fighting. It was later that the story of Windle Poons really came to an end, if “story” means all that he did and caused and set in motion. In the Ramtop village where they dance the real Morris dance, for example, they believe that no-one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away - until the clock he wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone’s life, they say, is only the core of their actual existence. As he walked through the foggy city to an appointment he had been awaiting ever since he was born, Windle felt that he could predict that final end. It would be in a few weeks‘ time, when the moon was full again. A sort of codicil or addendum to the life of Windle Poons - born in the year of the Significant Triangle in the Century of the Three Lice (he’d always preferred the old calendar with its ancient names to all this new-fangled numbering they did today) and died in the year of the Notional Serpent in the Century of the Fruitbat, more or less. There’d be two figures running across the high moorland under the moon. Not entirely wolves, not entirely human. With any luck, they’d have best of both worlds. Not just feeling . . . but knowing. Always best to have both worlds. Death sat in his chair in his dark study, his hands steepled in front of his face. Occasionally he’d swivel the chair backwards and forwards. Albert brought him in a cup of tea and exited with diplomatic soundlessness. There was one lifetimer left on Death’s desk. He stared at it. Swivel, swivel. Swivel, swivel. In the hall outside, the great clock ticked on, killing time. Death drummed his skeletal fingers on the desk’s scarred woodwork. In front of him, stacked up with impromptu bookmarks in their pages, were the lives of some of the Discworld’s great lovers. Their fairly repetitive experiences hadn’t been any help at all. He got up and stalked to a window and stared out at his dark domain, his hands clenching and unclenching behind his back. Then he snatched up the lifetimer and strode out of the room. Binky was waiting in the warm fug of the stables. Death saddled him quickly and led him out into the courtyard, and then rode up into the night, towards the distant glittering jewel of the Discworld. He touched down silently in the farmyard, at sunset. He drifted through a wall. He reached the foot of the stairs. He raised the hourglass and watched the draining of Time. And then he paused. There was something he had to know. Bill Door had been curious about things, and he could remember everything about being Bill Door. He could look at emotions laid out like trapped butterflies, pinned on cork, under glass. Bill Door was dead, or at least had ceased his brief existence. But - what was it? - someone’s actual life was only the core of their real existence? Bill Door had gone, but he had left echoes. The memory of Bill Door was owed something. Death had always wondered why people put flowers on graves. It made no sense to him. The dead had gone beyond the scent of roses, after all. But now . . . it wasn’t that he felt he understood, but at least he felt that there was something there capable of understanding. In the curtained blackness of Miss Flitworth’s parlour a darker shape moved through the darkness, heading towards the three chests on the dresser. Death opened one of the smaller ones. It was full of gold coins. They had an untouched look about them. He tried the other small chest. It was also full of gold. He’d expected something more from Miss Flitworth, although probably not even Bill Door would have known what. He tried the large chest. There was a layer of tissue paper. Under the paper, some white silky thing, some sort of a veil, now yellowed and brittle with age. He gave it an uncomprehending stare and laid it aside. There were some white shoes. Quite impractical for farm wear, he felt. No wonder they’d been packed away. There was more paper; a bundle of letters tied together. He put them on top of the veil. There was never anything to be gained from observing what humans said to one another - language was just there to hide their thoughts. And then there was, right at the bottom, a smaller box. He pulled it out and turned it over and over in his hands. Then he unclicked the little latch and lifted the lid. Clockwork whirred. The tune wasn’t particularly good. Death had heard all the music that had ever been written, and almost all of it had been better than this tune. It had a plinkety plonkety quality. a tinny little one-two-three rhythm. In the musical box, over the busily spinning gears, two wooden dancers jerked around in a parody of a waltz. Death watched them until the clockwork ran down. Then he read the inscription. It had been a present. Beside him, the lifetimer poured its grains into the bottom bulb. He ignored it. When the clockwork ran down, he wound it up again. Two figures, spinning through time. And when the music stopped, all you needed was to turn the key. When it ran down again, he sat in the silence and the dark, and reached a decision. There were only seconds left. Seconds had meant a lot to Bill Door, because he’d had a limited supply. They meant nothing at all to Death, who’d never had any. He left the sleeping house, mounted up, and rode away. The journey took an instant that would have taken mere light three hundred million years, but Death travels inside that space where Time has no meaning. Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it. There was company on the ride - galaxies, stars, ribbons of shining matter, streaming and eventually spiralling towards the distant goal. Death on his pale horse moved down the darkness like a bubble on a river. And every river flows somewhere. And then, below, a plain. Distance was as meaningless here as time. but there was a sense of hugeness. The plain could have been a mile away, or a million miles; it was marked by long valleys or rills which flowed away to either side as he got closer. And landed. He dismounted, and stood in the silence. Then he went down on one knee. Change the perspective. The furrowed landscape falls away into immense distances, curves at the edges, becomes a fingertip. Azrael raised his finger to a face that filled the sky, lit by the faint glow of dying galaxies. There are a billion Deaths, but they are all aspects of the one Death: Azrael, the Great Attractor, the Death of Universes, the beginning and end of time. Most of the universe is made up of dark matter, and only Azrael knows who it is. Eyes so big that a supernova would be a mere suggestion of a gleam on the iris turned slowly and focused on the tiny figure on the immense whorled plains of his fingertips. Beside Azrael the big Clock hung in the centre of the entire web of the dimensions, and ticked onward. Stars glittered in Azrael’s eyes. The Death of the Discworld stood up. LORD, I ASK FOR - Three of the servants of oblivion slid into existence alongside him. One said, Do not listen. He stands accused of meddling. One said, And morticide. One said, And pride. And living with intent to survive. One said, And fighting with chaos against good order. Azrael raised an eyebrow. The servants drifted away from Death, expectantly. LORD, WE KNOW THERE IS NO GOOD ORDER EXCEPT THAT WHICH WE CREATE . . . Azrael’s expression did not change. THERE IS NO HOPE BUT US. THERE IS NO MERCY BUT US. THERE IS NO JUSTICE. THERE IS JUST US. The dark, sad face filled the sky. ALL THINGS THAT ARE, ARE OURS. BUT WE MUST CARE. FOR IF WE DO NOT CARE, WE DO NOT EXIST. IF WE DO NOT EXIST, THEN THERE IS NOTHING BUT BLIND OBLIVION. AND EVEN OBLIVION MUST END SOME DAY. LORD, WILL YOU GRANT ME JUST A LITTLE TIME? FOR THE PROPER BALANCE OF THINGS. TO RETURN WHAT WAS GIVEN. FOR THE SAKE OF PRISONERS AND THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS. Death took a step backwards. It was impossible to read expression in Azrael’s features. Death glanced sideways at the servants. LORD, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT FOR THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN? He waited. LORD? said Death. In the time it took to answer, several galaxies unfolded, whirled around Azrael like paper streamers, impacted, and were gone. Then Azrael said: T 1 l~ ~C) I And another finger reached out across the darkness towards the Clock. There were faint screams of rage from the servants, and then screams of realisation, and then three brief, blue flames. All other clocks, even the handless clock of Death, were reflections of the Clock. Exactly reflections of the Clock; they told the universe what the time was, but the Clock told Time what time is. It was the mainspring from which all time poured. And the design d the Clock was this: that the biggest hand only went around once. The second hand whirred along a circular path that even light would take days to travel, forever chased by the minutes, hours, days, months, years, centuries and ages. But the Universe hand went around once. At least, until someone wound up the clockwork. And Death returned home with a handful of Time. A shop bell jangled. Druto Pole, florist, looked over a spray of floribunda Mrs. Shooer. Someone was standing among the vases of flowers. They looked slightly indistinct; in fact, even afterwards, Druto was never sure who had been in his shop and how his words had actually sounded. He oiled forward, rubbing his hands. “How may I hel -” FLOWERS. Druto hesitated only for a moment. “And the, er, destination for these -” A LADY. “And do you have any pref -” LILIES. “Ah? Are you sure that lilies are -?” I LIKE LILIES. “Um . . . it’s just that lilies are a little bit sombre -” I LIKE SOMB - The figure hesitated. WHAT DO YOU RECOMMEND? Druto slipped smoothly into gear. “Roses are always very well received,” he said. ‘Or orchids. Many gentlemen these days tell me that ladies find a single specimen orchid more acceptable than a bunch of roses -” GIVE ME LOTS. “Would that be orchids or roses?” BOTH. Druto’s fingers twined sinuously, like eels in grease. “And I wonder if I could interest you in these marvellous sprays of Neroousa GIoriosa -” LOTS OF THEM. “And if Sir’s budget would stretch, may I suggest a single specimen of the extremely rare -” YES. “And possibly -” YES. EVERYTHING. WITH A RIBBON. When the shop bell had jangled the purchaser out, Druto looked at the coins in his hand. Many of them were corroded, all of them were strange, and one or two were golden. “Um,” he said. ‘That will do nicely . . .” He became aware of a soft pattering sound. Around him, all over the shop, petals were falling like rain. AND THESE? “That’s our De Luxe assortment,” said the lady in the chocolate shop. It was such a highclass establishment that it sold, not sweets, but confectionery - often in the form of individual gold-wrapped swirly things that made even larger holes in a bank balance than they did in a tooth. The tall dark customer picked up a box that was about two feet square. On a lid like a satin cushion it had a picture of a couple of hopelessly cross-eyed kittens looking out of a boot. WHAT FOR IS THIS BOX PADDED? IS IT TO BE SAT ON? CAN IT BE THAT IT IS CAT-FLAVOURED? he added, his tone taking on a definite menace, or rather more menace than it had already. “Um, no. That’s our Supreme Assortment.” The customer tossed it aside. No. The shopkeeper looked both ways and then pulled open a drawer under the counter, at the same time lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘Of course,” she said, “for that very special occasion . . .” It was quite a small box. It was also entirely black, except for the name of the contents in small white letters; cats, even in pink ribbons, wouldn’t be allowed within a mile of a box like this. To deliver a box of chocolates like this, dark strangers drop from chairlifts and abseil down buildings. The dark stranger peered at the lettering. “DARK ENCHANTMENTS,” he said. I LIKE IT. “For those intimate moments,” said the lady. The customer appeared to consider the relevance of this. YES. THAT SEEMS APPROPRIATE. The shopkeeper beamed. “Shall I wrap them up, then?” YES. WITH A RIBBON. “And will there be anything else, sir?” The customer seemed to panic. ELSE? SHOULD THERE BE ANYTHING ELSE? IS THERE SOMETHING ELSE? WHAT IS IT THAT SHOULD BE DONE? “I’m sorry, sir?” A PRESENT FOR A LADY. The shopkeeper was left a little adrift by this sudden turning of the tide of conversation. She swam towards a reliable cliche. “Well, they do say, don’t they, that diamonds are a girl’s best friend?” she said brightly. DIAMONDS? OH. DIAMONDS. IS THAT SO? They glittered like bits of starlight on a black velvet sky. “This one. “ said the merchant, “is a particularly excellent stone, don’t you think? Note the fire, the exceptional -” HOW FRIENDLY IS IT? The merchant hesitated. He knew about carats, about adamantine lustre, about “water” and “make” and “fire”, but he’d never before been called upon to judge gems in terms of general affability. “Quite well-disposed?” he hazarded. NO. The merchant’s fingers seized on another splinter of frozen light. “Now this,” he said, confidence flowing back into his voice, “is from the famous Shortshanks mine. May I draw your attention to the exquisite -” He felt the penetrating stare drill through the back of his head. “But not, I must admit, noted for its friendliness,” he said lamely. The dark customer looked disapprovingly around the shop. In the gloom, behind troll-proof bars, gems glowed like the eyes of dragons in the back of a cave. ARE ANY OF THESE FRIENDLY? he said. “Sir, I think I can say, without fear of contradiction, that we have never based our purchasing policy on the amiability of the stones in question,” said the merchant. He was uncomfortably aware that things were wrong, and that somewhere in the back of his mind he knew what was wrong with them, and that somehow his mind was not letting him make that final link. And it was getting on his nerves. WHERE IS THE BIGGEST DIAMOND IN THE WORLD? “The biggest? That’s easy. It’s the Tear of Offler, it’s in the innermost sanctuary of the Lost Jewelled Temple of Doom of Offler the Crocodile God in darkest Howandaland, and it weighs eight hundred and fifty carats. And, sir, to forestall your next question, I personally would go to bed with it.” One of the nice things about being a priest in the Lost Jewelled Temple of Doom of Offler the Crocodile God was that you got to go home early most afternoons. This was because it was lost. Most worshippers never found their way there. They were the lucky ones. Traditionally, only two people ever went into the innermost sanctuary. They were the High Priest and the other priest who wasn’t High. They had been there for years, and took turns at being the high one. It was an undemanding job, given that most prospective worshippers were impaled, squashed, poisoned or sliced by booby-traps even before making it as far as the little box and the jolly drawing of a thermometer outside the vestry. They were playing Cripple Mr. Onion on the high altar, beneath the very shadow of the jewel-encrusted statue of Offler Himself, when they heard the distant creak of the main door. The High Priest didn’t look up. “‘Lost Jewelled Temple Roof Repair Fund! Only 6,000 gold pieces to go!! Please Give Generously!! Thank you!!!” “Heyup.“ he said. “Another one for the big rolling ball, then.” There was a thump and a rumbling, grinding sound. And then a very final bang. “Now,” said the High Priest. “What was the stake?” “Two pebbles,” said the low priest. “Right.“ The High Priest peered at his cards. “OK, I’ll see your two peb-” There was the faint sound of footsteps. “Chap with a whip got as far as the big sharp spikes last week,” said the low priest. There was a sound like the flushing of a very old dry lavatory. The footsteps stopped. The High Priest smiled to himself. “Right,” he said. “See your two pebbles and raise you two pebbles.” The low priest threw down his cards. “Double Onion’ he said. The High Priest looked down suspiciously. The low priest consulted a scrap of paper. “That’s three hundred thousand, nine hundred and sixty-four pebbles you owe me,” he said. There was the sound of footsteps. The priests exchanged glances. “Haven’t had one for poisoned dart alley for quite some time,” said the High Priest. “Five says he makes it,” said the low priest. “You’re on.” There was a faint clatter of metal points on stone. “It’s a shame to take your pebbles.” There were footsteps again. “All right, but there’s still the –“ a creak, a splash “ - the crocodile tank.” There were footsteps. “No-one’s ever got past the dreaded guardian of the portals -” The priests looked into one another’s horrified faces. “Hey,” said the one who was not High. “You don’t think it could be -” “Here? Oh, come on. We’re in the middle of a godsdamn jungle. “ The High Priest tried to smile. ‘There’s no way it could be -” The footsteps got nearer. The priests clutched at one another in terror. “Mrs. Cake!” The doors exploded inwards. A dark wind drove into the room, blowing out the candles and scattering the cards like polka of snow. The priests heard the chink of a very large diamond being lifted out of its socket. THANK YOU. After a while, when nothing else seemed to be happening, the priest who wasn’t High managed to find a tinder box and, after several false starts, got a candle alight. The two priests looked up through the dancing shadows at the statue, where a hole now gaped that should have contained a very large diamond. After a while, the High Priest sighed and said, “Well, look at it like this: apart from us, who’s going to know?” “Yeah. Never thought of it like that. Hey, can I be High Priest tomorrow?” “It’s not your turn until Thursday.” “Oh, come on.” The High Priest shrugged, and removed his High Priesting hat. “It’s very depressing, this kind of thing,” he said, glancing up at the ravaged statue. ‘Some people just don’t know how to behave in a house of religion.” Death sped across the world, landing once again in the farmyard. The sun was on the horizon when he knocked on the kitchen door. Miss Flitworth opened it, wiping her hands on her apron. She grimaced short-sightedly at the visitor, and then took a step back. “Bill Door? You gave me quite a start -” I HAVE BROUGHT YOU SOME FLOWERS. She stared at the dry, dead stems. ALSO SOME CHOCOLATE ASSORTMENT, THE SORT LADIES LIKE. She stared at the black box. ALSO HERE IS A DIAMOND TO BE FRIENDS WITH YOU. It caught the last rays of the setting sun. Miss Flitworth finally found her voice. “Bill Door, what are you thinking of?” I HAVE COME TO TAKE YOU AWAY FROM ALL THIS. “You have? Where to?” Death hadn’t thought this far. WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE? “I ain’t proposing to go anywhere tonight except to the dance,” said Miss Flitworth firmly. Death hadn’t planned for this, either. WHAT IS THIS DANCE? “Harvest dance. You know? It’s tradition. When the harvest is in. It’s a sort of celebration, and like a thanksgiving.” THANKSGIVING TO WHO? “Dunno. No-one in particular, I reckon. Just general thankfulness, I suppose.” I HAD PLANNED TO SHOW YOU MARVELS. FINE CITIES. ANYTHING YOU WANTED. “Anything?” YES. “Then we’re going to the dance, Bill Door. I always go every year. They rely on me. You know how it is.” YES. MISS FLITWORTH. He reached out and took her hand. “What, you mean now?” she said, “I’m not ready -” LOOK. She looked down at what she was suddenly wearing. “That’s not my dress. It’s got all glitter on it.” Death sighed. The great lovers of history had never encountered Miss Flitworth. Casanunder would have handed in his stepladder. THEY’RE DIAMONDS. A KING’S RANSOM IN DIAMONDS. “Which king?” ANY KING. “Coo.” Binky walked easily along the road to the town. After the length of infinity, a mere dusty road was a bit of a relief. Sitting side-saddle behind Death, Miss Flitworth explored the rustling contents of the box of Dark Enchantments. “Here,” she said, “someone’s had all the rum truffles.” There was another crackle of paper. ‘And from the bottom layer, too. I hate that, people starting the bottom layer before the top one’s been properly finished. And I can tell you’ve been doing it because there’s a little map in the lid and by rights there should be rum truffles. Bill Door?” I’M SORRY, MISS FLITWORTH. “This big diamond’s a bit heavy. Nice, though,” she added, grudgingly. “Where’d you get it?” FROM PEOPLE WHO THOUGHT IT WAS THE TEAR OF A GOD. “And is it?” NO. GODS NEVER WEEP. IT IS COMMON CARBON THAT HAS BEEN SUBJECT TO GREAT HEAT AND PRESSURE. THAT IS ALL. “Inside every lump of coal there’s a diamond waiting to get out, right?” YES, MISS FLITWORTH. There was no sound for a while, except the clipclop of Binky’s hoofs. Then Miss Flitworth said, archly: “I do know what’s going on, you know. I saw how much sand there was. And so you thought “She’s not a bad old stick, I’ll show her a good time for a few hours, and then when she’s not expecting it, it’ll be time for the old cut-de-grass, am I right?” Death said nothing. “I am right, aren’t I?” I CAN’T HIDE ANYTHING FROM YOU, MISS FLITWORTH. “Huh. I suppose I should be flattered. Yes? I expect you’ve got a lot of calls on your time.” MORE THAN YOU COULD POSSIBLY IMAGINE, MISS FLITWORTH. “In the circumstances, then, you might as well go back to calling me Renata again.” There was a bonfire in the meadow beyond the archery field. Death could see figures moving in front of it. An occasional tortured squeak suggested that someone was tuning up a fiddle. “I always come along to the harvest dance,” said Miss Flitworth, conversationally. “Not to dance, of course. I generally look after the food and so on.” WHY? “Well, someone’s got to look after the food.” I MEANT WHY DON’T YOU DANCE? “ ‘Cos I’m old, that’s why.” YOU ARE AS OLD AS YOU THINK YOU ARE. “Huh! Yeah? Really? That’s the kind of stupid thing people always say. They always say, My word, you’re looking well. They say, There’s life in the old dog yet. Many a good tune played on an old fiddle. That kind of stuff. It’s all stupid. As if being old was some kind of thing you should be glad about! As if being philosophical about it will earn you marks! My head knows how to think young, but my knees aren’t that good at it. Or my back. Or my teeth. Try telling my knees they’re as old as they think they are and see what good it does you. Or them.” IT MAY BE WORTH A TRY. More figures moved in front of the firelight. Death could see striped poles strung with bunting. “The lads usually bring a couple of barn doors down here and nail ‘em together for a proper floor,” observed Miss Flitworth. “Then everyone can join in.” FOLK DANCING? said Death, wearily. “No. We have some pride, you know.” SORRY. “Hey, it’s Bill Door, isn’t it?” said a figure looming out of the dusk. “It’s good old Bill!” “Hey, Bill!” Death looked at a circle of guileless faces. HALLO. MY FRIENDS. “We heard you’d gone away,” said Duke Bottomley. He glanced at Miss Flitworth, as Death helped her down from the horse. His voice faltered a bit as he tried to analyse the situation. “You’re looking very . . . sparkly . . . tonight, Miss Flitworth,” he finished, gallantly. The air smelled of warm, damp grass. An amateur orchestra was still setting up under an awning. There were trestle tables covered with the kind of food that’s normally associated with the word “repast” - pork pies like varnished military fortifications, vats of demonical pickled onions, jacket potatoes wallowing in a cholesterol ocean of melted butter. Some of the local elders had already established themselves on the benches provided, and were chewing stoically if toothlessly through the food with the air of people determined to sit there all night, if necessary. “Nice to see the old people enjoying themselves,” said Miss Flitworth. Death looked at the eaters. Most of them were younger than Miss Flitworth. There was a giggle from somewhere in the scented darkness beyond the firelight. “And the young people,” Miss Flitworth added, evenly. “We used to have a saying about this time of year. Let’s see . . . something like “Corn be ripe, nuts be brown, petticoats up . . . “ something.“ She sighed. “Don’t time fly, eh?” YES. “You know, Bill Door, maybe you were right about the power of positive thinking. I feel a lot better tonight.” YES? Miss Flitworth looked speculatively at the dance floor. “I used to be a great dancer when I was a gel. I could dance anyone off their feet. I could dance down the moon. I could dance the sun up.” She reached up and removed the bands that held her hair in its tight bun, and shook it out in a waterfall of white. “I take it you do dance, Mr. Bill Door?” FAMED FOR IT, MISS FLITWORTH. Under the band’s awning, the lead fiddler nodded to his fellow musicians, stuck his fiddle under his chin, and pounded on the boards with his foot - “Hwun! Htwo! Hwun htwo three four . . .” Picture a landscape. with the orange light of a crescent moon drifting across it. And, down below, a circle of fire-light in the night. There were the old favourites - the square dances, the reels, the whirling, intricate measures which, if the dancers had carried lights, would have traced out topological complexities beyond the reach of ordinary physics, and the sort of dances that lead perfectly sane people to shout out things like ‘Do-si-do!” and ‘Och-aye!” without feeling massively ashamed for quite a long time. When the casualties were cleared away the survivors went on to polka, mazurka, fox-trot, turkey-trot and trot a variety of other plants and beasts, and then to those dances where people form an arch and other people dance down it, which are incidentally generally based on folk memories of executions, and other dances where people form a circle, which are generally based on folk memories of plagues. Through it all two figures whirled as though there was no tomorrow. The lead fiddler was dimly aware that, when he paused for breath, a spinning figure tapdanced a storm out of the floor and a voice by his ear said: YOU WILL CONTINUE, I PROMISE YOU. When he flagged a second time a diamond as big as his fist landed on the boards in front of him. A smaller figure sashayed out of the dancers and said: “If you boys don’t go on playing, William Spigot. I will personally make sure your life becomes absolutely foul.” And it returned to the press of bodies. The fiddler looked down at the diamond. It could have ransomed any five kings the world would care to name. He kicked it hurriedly behind him. “More power to your elbow, eh?” said the drummer, grinning. “Shut up and play!” He was aware that tunes were turning up at the ends of his fingers that his brain had never known. The drummer and the piper felt it too. Music was pouring in from somewhere. They weren’t playing it. It was playing them. IT IS TIME FOR A NEW DANCE TO BEGIN. “Duurrrump-da-dum-dum,” hummed the fiddler, the sweat running off his chin as he was caught up in a different tune. The dancers milled around uncertainly, unsure about the steps. But one pair moved purposefully through them at a predatory crouch, arms clasped ahead of them like the bowsprit of a killer galleon. At the end of the floor they turned in a flurry of limbs that appeared to defy normal anatomy and began the angular advance back through the crowd. “What’s this one called?” TANGO. “Can you get put in prison for it?” I DON’T BELIEVE SO. “Amazing.” The music changed. “I know this one! It’s the Quirmish bullfight dance! Oh-lay!” WITH MILK? A high-speed fusillade of hollow snapping noises suddenly kept time with the music. “Who’s playing the maracas?” Death grinned. MARACAS? I DON’T NEED . . . MARACAS. And then it was now. The moon was a ghost of itself on one horizon. On the other there was already the distant glow of the advancing day. They left the dance floor. Whatever had been propelling the band through the hours of the night drained slowly away. They looked at one another. Spigot the fiddler glanced down at the jewel. It was still there. The drummer tried to massage some life back into his wrists. Spigot stared helplessly at the exhausted dancers. “Well, then . . . “ he said, and raised the fiddle one more time. Miss Flitworth and her companion listened from the mists that were threading around the field in the dawn light. Death recognised the slow, insistent beat. It made him think of wooden figures, whirling through Time until the spring unwound. I DON’T KNOW THAT ONE. “It’s the last waltz.” I SUSPECT THERE’S NO SUCH THING. “You know,” said Miss Flitworth, “I’ve been wondering all evening how it’s going to happen. How you’re going to do it. I mean, people have to die of something, don’t they? I thought maybe it was going to be of exhaustion, but I’ve never felt better. I’ve had the time of my life and I’m not even out of breath. In fact it’s been a real tonic, Bill Door. And I -” She stopped. “I’m not breathing, am I.“ It wasn’t a question. She held a hand in front of her face and huffed on it. NO. “I see. I’ve never enjoyed myself so much in all my life . . . ha! So . . . when -?” YOU KNOW WHEN YOU SAID THAT SEEING ME GAVE YOU QUITE A START? “Yes?” I GAVE YOU QUITE A STOP. Miss Flitworth didn’t appear to hear him. She kept turning her hand backwards and forwards, as if she’d never seen it before. “I see you made a few changes, Bill Door,” she said. NO. IT IS LIFE THAT MAKES MANY CHANGES. “I mean that I appear to be younger.” THAT’S WHAT I MEANT ALSO. He snapped his fingers. Binky stopped his grazing by the hedge and trotted over. “You know,” said Miss Flitworth, “I’ve often thought . . . I often thought that everyone has their, you know, natural age. You see children of ten who act as though they’re thirty-five. Some people are born middle-aged, even. It’d be nice to think I’ve been . . . “ she looked down at herself, “oh, let’s say eighteen . . . all my life. Inside.” Death said nothing. He helped her up on to the horse. “When I see what life does to people, you know, you don’t seem so bad. “ she said nervously. Death made a clicking noise with his teeth. Binky walked forward. “You’ve never met Life, have you?” I CAN SAY IN ALL HONESTY THAT I HAVE NOT. “Probably some great white crackling thing. Like an electric storm in trousers,” said Miss Flitworth. I THINK NOT. Binky rose up into the morning sky. “Anyway . . . death to all tyrants,” said Miss FIitworth. YES. “Where are we going?” Binky was galloping, but the landscape did not move. “That’s a pretty good horse you’ve got there,” said Miss Flitworth. her voice shaking. YES. “But what is he doing?” GETTING UP SPEED. “But we’re not going anywhere -” They vanished. They reappeared. The landscape was snow and green ice on broken mountains. These weren’t old mountains, worn down by time and weather and full of gentle ski slopes, but young, sulky, adolescent mountains. They held secret ravines and merciless crevices. One yodel out of place would attract, not the jolly echo of a lonely goat herd, but fifty tons of express-delivery snow. The horse landed on a snowbank that should not, by rights, have been able to support it. Death dismounted and helped Miss Flitworth down. They walked over the snow to a frozen muddy track that hugged the mountain side. “Why are we here?” said the spirit of Miss Flitworth. I DO NOT SPECULATE ON COSMIC MATTERS. “I mean here on this mountain. Here on this geography,” said Miss Flitworth patiently. THAT IS NOT GEOGRAPHY. “What is it, then?” HISTORY. They rounded a bend in the track. There was a pony there, eating a bush, with a pack on its back. The track ended in a wall of suspiciously clean snow. Death removed a lifetimer from the recesses of his robe. Now, he said, and stepped into the snow. She watched it for a moment, wondering if she could have done that too. Solidity was an awfully hard habit to give up. And then she didn’t have to. Someone came out. Death adjusted Binky’s bridle, and mounted up. He paused for a moment to watch the two figures by the avalanche. They had faded almost to invisibility, their voices no more than textured air. “All he said was “WHEREVER YOU GO, YOU GO TOGETHER. “ I said where? He said he didn’t know. What’s happened?” “Rufus - you’re going to find this very hard to believe, my love -” “And who was that masked man?” They both looked around. There was no-one there. In the village in the Ramtops where they understand what the Morris dance is all about, they dance it just once, at dawn, on the first day of spring. They don’t dance it after that, all through the summer. After all, what would be the point? What use would it be? But on a certain day when the nights are drawing in, the dancers leave work early and take, from attics and cupboards, the other costume, the black one, and the other bells. And they go by separate ways to a valley among the leafless trees. They don’t speak. There is no music. It’s very hard to imagine what kind there could be. The bells don’t ring. They’re made of octiron, a magic metal. But they’re not, precisely, silent bells. Silence is merely the absence of noise. They make the opposite of noise, a sort of heavily textured silence. And in the cold afternoon, as the light drains from the sky, among the frosty leaves and in the damp air, they dance the other Morris. Because of the balance of things. You’ve got to dance both, they say. Otherwise you can’t dance either. Windle Poons wandered across the Brass Bridge. It was the time in Ankh-Morpork’s day when the night people were going to bed and the day people were waking up. For once, there weren’t many of either around. Windle had felt moved to be here, at this place, on this night, now. It wasn’t exactly the feeling he’d had when he knew he was going to die. It was more the feeling that a cogwheel gets inside a clock - things turn, the spring unwinds, and this is where you’ve got to be . . . He stopped, and leaned over. The dark water, or at least very runny mud, sucked at the stone supports. There was an old legend . . . what was it, now? If you threw a coin into the Ankh from the Brass Bridge you’d be sure to return? Or was it if you just threw wood into the Ankh? Probably the former. Most of the citizens, if they dropped a coin into the river, would be sure to come back if only to look for the coin. A figure loomed out of the mist. He tensed. “Morning, Mr. Poons.” Windle let himself relax. “Oh. Sergeant Colon? I thought you were someone else.” “Just me, your lordship,” said the watchman cheerfully. “Turning up like a bad copper.” “I see the bridge has got through another night without being stolen, sergeant. Well done.” “You can’t be too careful, I always say.” “I’m sure we citizens can sleep safely in one another’s beds knowing that no-one can make off with a five-thousand-ton bridge overnight, “ said Windle. Unlike Modo the dwarf, Sergeant Colon did know the meaning of the word ‘irony’. He thought it meant “sort of like iron”. He gave Windle a respectful grin. “You have to think quick to keep ahead of today’s international criminal, Mr. Poons,” he said. “Good man. Er. You haven’t, er, seen anyone else around, have you?” “Dead quiet tonight,” said the sergeant. He remembered himself and added, “No offence meant.” “Oh.” “I’ll be moving along, then,” said the sergeant. “Fine. Fine.” “Are you all right, Mr. Poons?” “Fine. Fine.” “Not going to throw yourself in the river again?” “No.” “Sure?” “Yes.” “Oh. Well. Good night, then. “ He hesitated. “Forget my own head next,” he said. “Chap over there asked me to give this to you. “ He held out a grubby envelope. Windle peered into the mists. “What chap?” “That ch- oh, he’s gone. Tall chap. Bit odd-looking.” Windle unfolded the scrap of paper, on which was written: OOoooEeeeOooEeeeOOOeee. “Ah,” he said. “Bad news?” said the sergeant. “That depends,” said Windle, “on your point of view.” “Oh. Right. Fine. Well . . . good night, then.” “Goodbye.” Sergeant Colon hesitated for a moment, and then shrugged and strolled on. As he wandered away, the shadow behind him moved and grinned. WINDLE POONS? Windle didn’t look around. “Yes?” Out of the corner of his eye Windle saw a pair of bony arms rest themselves on the parapet. There was the faint sound of a figure trying to make itself comfortable, and then a restful silence. “Ah,” said Windle. “I suppose you’ll want to be getting along?” NO RUSH. “I thought you were always so punctual.” IN THE CIRCUMSTANCES, A FEW MINUTES MORE WILL NOT MAKE A LOT OF DIFFERENCE. Windle nodded. They stood side by side in silence, while around them was the muted roar of the city. “You know,” said Windle, “it’s a wonderful afterlife. Where were you?” I WAS BUSY. Windle wasn’t really listening. “I’ve met people I never even knew existed. I’ve done all sorts of things. I’ve really got to know who Windle Poons is.” WHO IS HE, THEN? “Windle Poons.” I CAN SEE WHERE THAT MUST HAVE COME AS A SHOCK. “Well, yes.” ALL THESE YEARS AND YOU NEVER SUSPECTED. Windle Poons did know exactly what irony meant, and he could spot sarcasm too. “It’s all very well for you,” he mumbled. PERHAPS. Windle looked down at the river again. “It’s been great,” he said. “After all this time. Being needed is important.” YES. BUT WHY? Windle looked surprised. “I don’t know. How should I know? Because we’re all in this together, I suppose. Because we don’t leave our people in there. Because you’re a long time dead. Because anything is better than being alone. Because humans are human.” AND SIXPENCE IS SIXPENCE. BUT CORN IS NOT JUST CORN. “It isn’t?” NO. Windle leaned back. The stone of the bridge was still warm from the day’s heat. To his surprise, Death leaned back as well. BECAUSE YOU’RE ALL YOU’VE GOT, said Death. “What? Oh. Yes. That as well. It’s a great big cold universe out there.” YOU’D BE AMAZED. “One lifetime just isn’t enough.” OH, I DON’T KNOW. “Hmm?” WINDLE POONS? “Yes?” THAT WAS YOUR LIFE. And, with great relief, and general optimism, and a feeling that on the whole everything could have been much worse, Windle Poons died. Somewhere in the night, Reg Shoe looked both ways, took a furtive paintbrush and small pot of paint from inside his jacket, and painted on a handy wall: Inside Every Living Person is a Dead Person Waiting to Get Out. . . And then it was all over. The end. Death stood at the window of his dark study, looking out on to his garden. Nothing moved in that still domain. Dark lilies bloomed by the trout pool, where little plaster skeleton gnomes fished. There were distant mountains. It was his own world. It appeared on no map. But now, somehow, it lacked something. Death selected a scythe from the rack in the huge hall. He strode past the huge clock without hands and went outside. He stalked through the black orchard, where Albert was busy about the beehives, and on until he climbed a small mound on the edge of the garden. Beyond, to the mountains, was unformed land - it would bear weight, it had an existence of sorts, but there had never been any reason to define it further. Until now, anyway. Albert came up behind him, a few dark bees still buzzing around his head. “What are you doing, master?” he said. REMEMBERING. “Ah?” I REMEMBER WHEN ALL THIS WAS STARS. What was it? Oh, yes . . . He snapped his fingers. Fields appeared, following the gentle curves of the land. “Golden,” said Albert. ‘That’s nice. I’ve always thought we could do with a bit more colour around here.” Death shook his head. It wasn’t quite right yet. Then he realised what it was. The lifetimers, the great room filled with the roar of disappearing lives, was efficient and necessary; you needed something like that for good order. But . . . He snapped his fingers again and a breeze sprang up. The cornfields moved, billow after billow unfolding across the slopes. ALBERT? “Yes, master?” HAVE YOU NOT GOT SOMETHING TO DO? SOME LITTLE JOB? “I don’t think so,” said Albert. AWAY FROM HERE, IS WHAT I MEAN. “Ah. What you mean is, you want to be alone,” said Albert. I AM ALWAYS ALONE. BUT JUST NOW I WANT TO BE ALONE BY MYSELF. “Right. I’ll just go and, uh, do some little jobs back at the house, then,” said Albert. YOU DO THAT. Death stood alone, watching the wheat dance in the wind. Of course, it was only a metaphor. People were more than corn. They whirled through tiny crowded lives, driven literally by clock work, filling their days from edge to edge with the sheer effort of living. And all lives were exactly the same length. Even the very long and very short ones. From the point of view of eternity, anyway. Somewhere, the tiny voice of Bill Door said: from the point of view of the owner, longer ones are best. SQUEAK. Death looked down. A small figure was standing by his feet. He reached down and picked it up, held it up to an investigative eye socket. I KNEW I’D MISSED SOMEONE. The Death of Rats nodded. SQUEAK? Death shook his head. NO, I CAN’T LET YOU REMAIN, he said. IT’S NOT AS THOUGH I’M RUNNING A FRANCHISE OR SOMETHING. SQUEAK? ARE YOU THE ONLY ONE LEFT? The Death of Rats opened a tiny skeletal hand. The tiny Death of Fleas stood up, looking embarrassed but hopeful. NO. THIS SHALL NOT BE. I AM IMPLACABLE. I AM DEATH . . . ALONE. He looked at the Death of Rats. He remembered Azrael in his tower of loneliness. ALONE . . . The Death of Rats looked back at him. SQUEAK? Picture a tall, dark figure, surrounded by cornfields . . . NO. YOU CAN’T RIDE A CAT. WHO EVER HEARD OF THE DEATH OF RATS RIDING A CAT? THE DEATH OF RATS WOULD RIDE SOME KIND OF DOG. Picture more fields, a great horizon-spanning network of fields, rolling in gentle waves . . . DON’T ASK ME I DON’T KNOW. SOME KIND OF TERRIER, MAYBE. . . . fields of corn, alive, whispering in the breeze . . . RIGHT, AND THE DEATH OF FLEAS CAN RIDE IT TOO. THAT WAY YOU KILL TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE. . . . awaiting the clockwork of the seasons. METAPHORICALLY. And at the end of all stories Azrael, who knew the secret, thought: I REMEMBER WHEN ALL THIS WILL BE AGAIN. THE END 
 - Terry Pratchett	----	Eric Faust Eric The bees of Death are big and black, they buzz low and sombre, they keep their honey in combs of wax as white as alter candles. The honey is black as night, thick as sin and sweet as treacle. It is well known the eight colours make up white. But there are also eight colours of blackness, for those that have the seeing of them, and the hives of Death are among the black grass in the black orchard under the black-blossomed, ancient boughs of trees that will, eventually, produce apples that... put it like this... probably won’t be red. The grass was short now. The scythe that had done the work leaned against the gnarled bole of a pear tree. Now Death was inspecting his bees, gently lifting the combs in his skeletal fingers. A few bees buzzed around him. Like all beekeepers, Death wore a veil. It wasn’t that he had anything to sting, but sometimes a bee would get inside his skull and buzz around and give him a headache. As he held a comb up to the grey light of his little world between the realities there was the faintest of tremors. A hum went up from the hive, a leaf floated down. A wisp of wind blew for a moment through the orchard, and that was the most uncanny thing, because the air in the land of Death is always warm and still. Death fancied that he heard, very briefly, the sound of running feet and a voice saying, no, a voice thinking oshitoshitoshit, I’m gonna die I’m gonna die I’m gonna DIE! Death is almost the oldest creature in the universe, with habits and modes of thought that mortal man cannot begin to understand, but because he was also a good beekeeper he carefully replaced the comb in its rack and put the lid on the hive before reacting. He strode back through the dark garden to his cottage, removed his veil, carefully dislodged a few bees who had got lost in the depths of his cranium, and retired to his study. As he sat down at his desk there was another gust of wind, which rattled the hour-glasses on the shelves and made the big pendulum clock in the hall pause briefly in its interminable task of slicing time into manageable bits. Death sighed, and focused his gaze. There is nowhere Death will not go, no matter how distant and dangerous. In fact the more dangerous it is, the more likely he is to be there already. Now he stared through the mists of time and space. OH, he said. IT’S HIM.   It was a hot afternoon in the late summer in Ankh-Morpork, normally the most thriving, bustling and above all the most crowded city on the Disc. Now the spears of the sun had achieved what innumerable invaders, several civil wars and the curfew law had never achieved. It had pacified the place. Dogs lay panting in the scalding shade. The river Ankh, which never what you might call sparkled, oozed between its banks as if the heat had sucked all the spirit out of it. The streets were empty, oven-brick hot. No enemies had ever taken Ankh-Morpork. Well, technically they had, quite often; the city welcomed free-spending barbarian invaders, but somehow the puzzled raiders always found, after a few days, that they didn’t own their own horses any more, and within a couple of months they were just another minority group with its own graffiti and food shops. But the heat had besieged the city and triumphed over the walls. It lay over the trembling streets like a shroud. Under the blowlamp of the sun assassins were too tired to kill. It turned thieves honest. In the ivy-covered fastness of the Unseen University, premier college of wizardry, the inmates dozed with their pointy hats over their faces. Even bluebottles were too exhausted to bang against windowpanes. The city siesta’d, awaiting the sunset and the brief, hot, velvet surcease of the night. Only the librarian was cool. He was also swinging and hanging out. This was because he’d rigged up a few ropes and rings in one of the sub-basements of the Unseen University library - the one where they kept the, um, erotic1 books. In vats of crushed ice. And he was dreamily dangling in the chilly vapour above them. All books of magic have a life of their own. Some of the really energetic ones can’t simply be chained the bookshelves; they have to be nailed shut or kept between steel plates. Or, in the case of the volumes on tantric sex magic for the serious connoisseur, kept under very cold water to stop them bursting into flames and scorching their severely plain covers. The Librarian swung gently back and forth above the seething vats, dozing peacefully. Then the footsteps came out of nowhere, raced across the floor with a noise that scraped the raw surface of the soul, and disappeared through the wall. There was a faint, distant scream that sounded like ogodsogodsogods, this is IT, I’m gonna DIE. The Librarian woke up, lost his grip, and flopped into the few inches of tepid water that was all that stood between The Joy of Tantric Sex with Illustrations for the Advanced Student, by A Lady, and spontaneous combustion. And it would have gone badly for him if the Librarian had been a human being. Fortunately, he was currently an orang-utan. With so much raw magic sloshing around in the Library it would be surprising if accidents did not happen sometimes, and one particularly impressive one had turned him into an ape. Not many people get the chance to leave the human race while still alive, and he’d strenuously resisted all efforts to turn him back. Since he was the only librarian in the universe who could pick up books with his feet the University hadn’t pressed the point. It also meant that his idea of desirable female companionship now looked something like a sack of butter thrown through a roll of old inner tubes, and so he was lucky to get away with only minor burns, a headache, and some rather ambivalent feelings about cucumbers, which wore off by teatime. In the Library above, the grimoires creaked and rustled their pages in astonishment as the invisible runner passed straight through the bookshelves and disappeared, or rather disappeared even more... Ankh-Morpork gradually awoke from its slumber. Something invisible and yelling at the top of its voice was passing through every part of the city, dragging in its wake a trail of destruction. Wherever it went, things changed. A fortune-teller in the Street of Cunning Artificers heard the footsteps run across her bedroom floor and found her crystal ball had turned into a little glass sphere with a cottage in it, plus snowflakes. In a quite corner of the Mended Drum tavern, where the adventuresses Herrena the Henna-Haired Harridan, Red Scharron and Diome, Witch of the Night, were meeting for some girl talk and a game of canasta, all the drinks turned into small yellow elephants. “It’s them wizards up at the university,” said the barman, hastily replacing the glasses. “It oughtn’t to be allowed.” Midnight dropped off the clock. The Council of Wizardry rubbed their eyes and stared blearily at one another. They felt it oughtn’t to be allowed too, especially since they weren’t the ones that were allowing it. Finally the new Archchancellor, Ezrolith Churn, suppressed a yawn, sat up straight in his chair, and tried to look suitably magisterial. He knew he wasn’t really Archchancellor material. He hadn’t really wanted the job. He was ninety-eight, and had achieved this worthwhile age by carefully not being any trouble to anyone. He had hoped to spend his twilight years completing his seven-volume treatise on Some Little Known Aspects of Kuian Rain-making Rituals, which were an ideal subject for academic study in his opinion since the rituals only ever worked in Ku, and that particular continent had slipped into the ocean several thousand years ago.2 The trouble was that in recent years the lifespan of Archchancellors seemed to be a bit on the short side, and the natural ambition of all wizards for the job had given way to a curious, self-effacing politeness. He’d come down one morning to find everyone calling him ‘sir’. It had taken him days to find out why. His head ached. He felt it was several weeks past his bedtime. But he had to say something. “Gentlemen -“ he began. “Oook.” “Sorry, and mo -“ “Oook.” “I mean apes, of course -“ “Oook.” The Archchancellor opened and shut his mouth in silence for a while, trying to re-route his train of thought. The Librarian was, ex officio, a member of the college council. No-one had been able to find any rule about orang-utans being barred, although they had surreptitiously looked very hard for one. “It’s a haunting,” he ventured. “Some sort of a ghost, maybe. A bell, book and a candle job.” The Bursar sighed. “We tried that, Archchancellor.” The Archchancellor leaned towards him. “Eh?” he said. “I said, we tried that, Archchancellor,” said the Bursar loudly, directing his voice at the old man’s ear. “After dinner, you remember? We used Humptemper’s Names of the Ants and rang Old Tom.” “Did we, indeed. Worked, did it?” “No, Archchancellor.” “Eh?” “Anyway, we’ve never had trouble with ghosts before,” said the Senior Tutor. “Wizards just don’t haunt places.” The Archchancellor groped for a crumb of comfort. “Perhaps it’s just something natural,” he said. “Possibly the rumblings of an underground spring. Earth movements, perhaps. Something in the drains. They can make very funny noises, you know, when the wind is in the right direction.” He sat back and beamed. The rest of the council exchanged glances. “The drains don’t sound like hurrying feet, Archchancellor,” said the Bursar wearily. “Unless someone left a tap running,” said the Senior Tutor. The Bursar scowled at him. He’d been in the tub when the invisible screaming thing had hurtled through his room. It was not an experience he wanted to repeat. The Archchancellor nodded at him. “That’s settled, then,” he said, and fell asleep. The Bursar watched him in silence. Then he pulled the old man’s hat off and tucked it gently under his head. “Well?” he said wearily. “Has anyone got any suggestions?” The Librarian put his hand up. “Oook,” he said. “Yes, well done, good boy,” said the Bursar, breezily. “Anyone else?” The orang-utan glared at him as the other wizards shook their heads. “It’s a tremor in the texture of reality,” said the Senior Tutor. “That’s what it is.” “What should we do about it, then?” “Search me. Unless we tried the old -“ “Oh, no,” said the Bursar. “Don’t say it. Please. It’s far too dangerous -“ His words were chopped off by a scream that began at the far end of the room and dopplered along the table, accompanied by the sound of many running feet. The wizards ducked in a scatter of overturned chairs. The candle flames were drawn into long thin tongues of octarine light before being snuffed out. Then there was silence, the special kind that you get after a really unpleasant noise. And the Bursar said, “All right. I give in. We will try the Rite of AshkEnte.” It is the most serious ritual eight wizards can undertake. It summons Death, who naturally knows everything that is going on everywhere. And of course it is done with reluctance, because senior wizards are generally very old and would prefer not to do anything to draw Death’s attention in their direction. It took place in the midnight in the University’s Great Hall, in a welter of incense, candlesticks, runic inscriptions and magic circles, none of which was strictly necessary but made the wizards feel better. Magic flared, the chants were chanted, the invocations were truly invoked. The wizards stared into the magic octogram, which remained empty. After a while the circle of robed figures began to mutter amongst themselves. “We must have done something wrong.” “Oook.” “Maybe He is out.” “Or busy...” “Do you think we could give up and go back to bed?” WHO ARE WE WAITING FOR, EXACTLY? The Bursar turned slowly to the figure beside him. You could always tell a wizard’s robe; it was bedecked with sequins, sigils, fur and lace, and there was usually a considerable amount of wizard inside it. This robe, however, was very black. The material looked as though it had been chosen for its hard-wearing qualities. So did its owner. He looked as though if he wrote a diet book it would be a bestseller. Death was watching the octogram with an expression of polite interest. “Er,” said the Bursar. “The fact is, in fact, that, er, you should be on the inside.” I’M SO SORRY. Death stalked in a dignified way into the centre of the room and watched the Bursar expectantly. I HOPE WE ARE NOT GOING TO HAVE ANY OF THIS “FOUL FIEND” BUSINESS AGAIN, he said. “I trust we are not interrupting any important enterprise?” said the Bursar. TO SOMEBODY. “Er. Er. The reason, o fou - sir, that we have called you here, is for the reason -“ IT IS RINCEWIND. “What?” THE REASON YOU HAVE SUMMONED ME. THE ANSWER IS: IT IS RINCEWIND. “But we haven’t asked you the question yet!” NEVERTHELESS THE ANSWER IS: IT IS RINCEWIND. “Look, what we want to know is, what is causing this outbreak of... oh.” Death pointedly picked invisible particles off the edge of his scythe. The Archchancellor cupped a gnarled hand over his ear. “What’d he say? Who’s the fella with the stick?” “It’s Death, sir. You know.” “Tell him we don’t want any,” said the old wizard, waving his stick. The Bursar sighed. “We summoned him, Archchancellor.” “Is it? What’d we go and do that for? Bloody silly thing to do.” The Bursar gave Death an embarrassed grin. He was on the point of asking him to excuse the Archchancellor on account of his age, but realised that this would in the circumstances be a complete waste of breath. “Are we talking about the wizard Rincewind? The one with the -“ the Bursar gave a shudder - “horrible Luggage on legs? But he got blown up when there was all that business with the sourcerer, didn’t he?” INTO THE DUNGEON DIMENSIONS. AND NOW HE IS TRYING TO GET BACK HOME. “Can he do that?” THERE WOULD NEED TO BE AN UNUSUAL CONJUNCTION OF CIRCUMSTANCES. REALITY WOULD NEED TO BE WEAKENED IN CERTAIN UNEXPECTED WAYS. “That isn’t likely to happen, is it?” said the Bursar anxiously. People who have it on record that they were visiting their aunt for two months are always nervous about people turning up who may have mistakenly thought that they weren’t, and owing to some trick of the light might have believed they had seen them doing things that they couldn’t have been doing owing to being at their aunt’s. IT WOULD BE A MILLION TO ONE CHANCE, said Death. EXACTLY A MILLION TO ONE CHANCE. “Oh,” said the Bursar, intensely relieved. “Oh dear. What a shame.” He brightened up considerably. “Of course, there’s all the noise. But, unfortunately, I expect he won’t survive for long.” THIS COULD BE THE CASE, said Death blandly. I AM SURE, THOUGH, THAT YOU WOULD NOT WISH ME TO MAKE A PRACTICE OF ISSUING DEFINITIVE STATEMENTS IN THIS FIELD. “No! No, of course not,” said the Bursar hurriedly. “Right. Well, many thanks. Poor chap. What a great pity. Still can’t be helped. Perhaps we should be philosophical about these things.” PERHAPS YOU SHOULD. “And we had better not keep you,” the Bursar added politely. THANK YOU. “Goodbye.” BE SEEING YOU. In fact the noise stopped just before breakfast. The Librarian was the only one unhappy about it. Rincewind had been his assistant and his friend, and was a good man when it came to peeling a banana. He had also been uniquely good at running away from things. He was not, the Librarian considered, the type to be easily caught. There had probably been an unusual conjunction of circumstances. That was a far more likely explanation. There had been an unusual conjunction of circumstances. By exactly a million to one chance there had been someone watching, studying, looking for the right tools for a special job. And here was Rincewind. It was almost too easy.   So Rincewind opened his eyes. There was a ceiling above him; if it was the floor, then he was in trouble. So far, so good. He cautiously felt the surface he was laying on. It was grainy, woody in fact, with the odd nail-hole. A human sort of surface. His ears picked up the crackle of a fife and a bubbling noise, source unknown. His nose, feeling that it was being left out of things, hastened to report a whiff of brimstone. Right, so where did that leave him? Lying on a rough wooden floor in a firelit room with something that bubbled and gave off sulphurous smells. In his unreal, dreamy state he felt quite pleased at this process of deduction. What else? Oh, yes. He opened his mouth and screamed and screamed and screamed. This made him feel slightly better. He lay there a bit longer. Though the tumbled heap of his memories came the recollections of mornings in bed when he was a little boy, desperately subdividing the passing time into smaller and smaller units to put off the terrible moment of getting up and having to face all the problems of life such as, in this case, who he was, where he was, and why he was. “What are you?” said a voice on the edge of his consciousness. “I was coming to that,” muttered Rincewind. The room oscillated into focus as he pushed himself up on his elbows. “I warn you,” said the voice, which seemed to be coming from a table, “I am protected by many powerful amulets.” “Jolly good,” said Rincewind. “I wish I was.” Details began to distil out of the blur. It was a long, low room, one end of which was occupied by an enormous fireplace. A bench all down one wall contained a selection of glassware apparently created by a drunken glassblower with hiccups, and inside its byzantine coils coloured liquids seethed and bubbled. A skeleton hung from a hook in a relaxed fashion. On a perch beside it someone had nailed a stuffed bird. Whatever sins it had committed in life, it hadn’t deserved what the taxidermist had done to it. Rincewind’s gaze swept across the floor. It was obvious that it was the only sweeping the floor had had for some time. Only around him had space been cleared among the debris of broken glass and overturned retorts for - A magic circle. It looked an extremely thorough job. Whoever had chalked it was clearly aware that its purpose was to divide the universe into two bits, the inside and the outside. Rincewind was, of course, inside. “Ah,” he said, feeling a familiar and almost comforting sense of dread sweep over him. “I adjure and conjure thee against all aggressive acts, o demon of the pit,” said the voice from, Rincewind now realised, behind the table. “Fine, fine,” said Rincewind quickly. “That’s all right by me. Er. It isn’t possible that there has been the teeniest little mistake here, could there?” “Avaunt!” “Right!” said Rincewind. He looked around him desperately. “How?” “Don’t you think you can lure me to my doom with thy lying tongue, o fiend of Shamharoth,” said the table. “I am learned in the ways of demons. Obey my every command or I will return thee unto the boiling hell from which you came. Thou came, sorry. Thou came’st, in fact. And I really mean it.” The figure stepped out. It was quite short, and most of it was hidden by a variety of charms, amulets and talismans which, even if not effective against magic, would have protected it against a tolerably determined sword thrust. It wore glasses and had a hat with long sidepieces that gave it the air of a short-sighted spaniel. It held a sword in one shaking hand. It was so heavily etched with sigils that it was beginning to bend. “Boiling hell, did you say?” said Rincewind weakly. “Absolutely. Where the screams of anguish and the tortured torments -“ “Yes, yes, you’ve made your point,” said Rincewind. “Only, you see, the thing is, in fact, that I am not a demon. So if you would just let me out?” “I am not fooled by thy outer garb, demon,” said the figure. In a more normal voice it added, “Anyway, demons always lie. Well-known fact.” “It is?” said Rincewind, clutching at this straw. “In that case, then - I am a demon.” “Aha! Condemned out of your own mouth!” “Look, I don’t have to put up with this,” said Rincewind. “I don’t know who you are or what’s happening, but I’m going to have a drink, all right?” He went to walk out of the circle, and went rigid with shock as sparks crackled up from the runic inscriptions and earthed themselves all over his body. “Thou mays’nt - thou maysn’t - thou mays’n’t -“ The conjurer of demons gave up. “Look, you can’t step over the circle until I release you, right? I mean, I don’t want to be unpleasant, it’s just that if I let you out of the circle you will be able to resume your true shape, and a pretty awful shape it is too, I expect. Avaunt!” he added feeling that he wasn’t keeping up the tone. “All right. I’m avaunting. I’m avaunting,” said Rincewind, rubbing his elbow. “But I’m still not a demon.” “How come you answered the conjuration, then? I suppose you just happened to be passing through the paranatural dimensions, eh?” “Something like that, I think. It’s all a bit blurred.” “Pull the other one, it has got bells on.” The conjurer leaned his sword against a lectern on which a heavy book, dripping bookmarks, lay open. Then he did a mad little jig on the floor. “It’s worked!” he said. “Heheh!” He caught sight of Rincewind’s horrified gaze and pulled himself together. He gave an embarrassed cough, and stepped up to the lectern. “I really am not -“ Rincewind began. “I had this list here somewhere,” said the figure. “Let’s see, now. Oh, yes. I command you - thee, I mean - to, ah, grant me three wishes. Yes. I want mastery of the kingdoms of the world, I want to meet the most beautiful woman who has ever lived, and I wan to live forever.” He gave Rincewind an encouraging look. “All that?” said Rincewind. “Yes.” “Oh, no problem,” said Rincewind sarcastically. “And then I get to have the rest of the day off, right?” “And I want a chest full of gold, too. Just to be going on with.” “I can see you’ve got it all thought out.” “Yes. Avaunt!” “Right, right. Only -“ Rincewind thought hurriedly, he’s quite mad, but mad with a sword in his hands, the only chance I’ve got is to argue him out of it on his own terms,” - only, d’you see, I’m not a very superior kind of demon and I’m afraid those sort of errands are a bit out of my league, sorry. You can avaunt as much as you like, but they’re just beyond me.” The little figure peered over the top of its glasses. “I see,” he said testily. “What could you manage then, do you think?” “Well, er -“ said Rincewind, “I suppose I could go down to the shops and get a packet of mints, or something.” There was a pause. “You really can’t do all those things?” “Sorry. Look I’ll tell you what. You just release me, and I’ll be sure to pass the word around when I get back to -“ Rincewind hesitated. Where the hell did demons live, anyway? “Demon City,” he said hopefully. “You mean Pandemonium?” said his captor suspiciously. “Yes, that’s right. That’s what I meant. I’ll tell everyone, next time you’re in the real world be sure and look up - what’s your name?” “Thursley. Eric Thursley.” “Right” “Demonologist. Midden Lane, Pseudopolis. Next door to the tannery,” said Thursley hopefully. “Right you are. Don’t you worry about it. Now, if you’ll just let me out -“ Thursley’s face fell. “You’re sure you really can’t do it?” he said, and Rincewind couldn’t help noticing the edge of pleading in his voice. “Even a small chest of gold would do. And, I mean, it needn’t be the most beautiful woman in the whole of history. Second most beautiful would do. Or third. You pick any one out of, you know, the top one hundr - thousand. Whatever you’ve got in stock, sort of thing.” By the end of the sentence his voice twanged with longing. Rincewind wanted to say: Look, what you should do is stop all this messing around with chemicals in dark rooms and have a shave, a haircut, a bath, make that two baths, buy yourself a new wardrobe and get out of an evening and then - but he’d have to be honest, because even washed, shaved and soaked in body splash Thursley wasn’t going to win any prizes - and then you could have your face slapped by any woman of your choice. I mean, it wouldn’t be much, but it would be body contact. “Sorry,” he said again. Thursley sighed. “The kettle’s on,” he said. “Would you like a cup of tea?” Rincewind stepped forward into a crackle of psychic energy. “Ah,” said Thursley uncertainly, as the wizard sucked his fingers, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll put you under a conjuration of duress.” “There’s no need, I assure you.” “No, it’s best this way. It means you can move around. I had it all ready anyway, in case you could go and fetch, you know, her.” “Fine,” said Rincewind. As the demonologist mumbled words from the book he thought: Feet. Door. Stairs. What a great combination. It occurred to him that there was something about the demonologist that wasn’t quite usual, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. He looked pretty much like the demonologists Rincewind had known back in Ankh-Morpork, who were all bent and chemical-stained and had eyes with pupils like pinheads from all the chemical fumes. This one would have fitted in easily. It was just that there was something odd. “To be honest,” said Thursley, industriously mopping away part of the circle, “you’re my first demon. It’s never worked before. What is your name?” “Rincewind.” Thursley thought about this. “It doesn’t ring a bell,” he said. “There’s a Riinjswin in the Demonologie. And a Winswin. But they’ve got more wings than you. You can step out now. I must say that’s a first-class materialisation. No-one would think you were a fiend, to look at you. Most demons, when they want to look human, materialise in the shape of nobles, kings and princes. This moth-eaten-wizard look is very clever. You could’ve almost fooled me. It’s a shame you can’t do any of those things.” “I can’t see why you’d want to live for ever,” said Rincewind, privately determining that the words “moth-eaten” would be paid for, if ever he got the opportunity. “Being young again, I can understand that.” “Huh. Being young’s not much fun,” said Thursley, and then clapped his hand over his mouth. Rincewind leaned forward. About fifty years. That was what was missing. “That’s a false beard!” he said. “How old are you?” “Eighty-seven!” squeaked Thursley. “I can see the hooks over your ears!” “Seventy-eight, honest! Avaunt!” “You’re a little boy!” Eric pulled himself up haughtily. “I’m not!” he snapped. “I’m nearly fourteen!” “Ah-ha!” The boy waved the sword at Rincewind. “It doesn’t matter, anyway!” he shouted. “Demonologists can be any age, you’re still my demon and you have to do as I say!” “Eric!” came a voice from somewhere below them. Eric’s face went white. “Yes, mother?” he shouted, his eyes fixed on Rincewind. His mouth shaped the words: don’t say anything, please. “What’s all that noise up there?” “Nothing, mother!” “Come down and wash your hands, dear, your breakfast’s ready!” “Yes, mother.” He looked sheepishly at Rincewind. “That’s my mother,” he said. “She’s got a good pair of lungs, hasn’t she,” said Rincewind. “I’d, I’d better go, then,” said Eric. “You’ll have to stay up here, of course.” It dawned on him that he was losing a certain amount of credibility at this point. He waved the sword again. “Avaunt!” he said. “I command you not to leave this room!” “Right. Sure,” said Rincewind, eyeing the windows. “Promise? Otherwise you’ll be sent back to the Pit.” “Oh, I don’t want that,” said Rincewind. “Off you trot. Don’t worry about me.” “I’m going to leave the sword and stuff here,” said Eric, removing most of his accoutrements to reveal a slim, dark-haired young man whose face would be a lot better when his acne cleared up. “If you touch them, terrible things will befall.” “Wouldn’t dream of it,” said Rincewind. When he was left alone he wandered he wandered over to the lectern and looked at the book. The title, in impressively flickering red letters, was Mallificarum Sumpta Diabolicite Occularis Singularum, the Book of Ultimate Control. He knew about it. There was a copy in the Library somewhere, although wizards never bothered with it. This might seem odd, because if there is one thing a wizard would trade his grandfather for, it is power. But it wasn’t all that strange, because any wizard bright enough to survive for five minutes was also bright enough to realise that if there was any power in demonology, then it lay with the demons. Using it for your own purposes would be like trying to beat mice to death with a rattlesnake. Even wizards thought demonologists were odd; they tended to be surreptitious, pale men who got up to complicated things in darkened rooms and had damp, weak handshakes. It wasn’t like good clean magic. No self-respecting wizard would have any truck with the demonic regions, whose inhabitants were as big a collection of ding-dong as you’d find outside a large belfry. He inspected the skeleton closely, just in case. It didn’t seem inclined to make a contribution to the situation. “It belonged to his wossname, grandfather,” said a cracked voice behind him “Bit of an unusual bequest,” said Rincewind. “Oh, not personally. He got it in a shop somewhere. It’s one of them wossname, articulate wossnames.” “It’s not saying much right now,” said Rincewind, and then went very quiet and thoughtful. “Er,” he said, without moving his head, “what, precisely, am I talking to?” “I’m a wossname. Tip of my tongue. Begins with a P.” Rincewind turned around slowly. “You’re a parrot?” he said. “That’s it.” Rincewind stared at the thing on the perch. It had one eye that glittered like a ruby. Most of the rest of it was pink and purple skin, studded with the fag-ends of feathers, so that the net effect was of an oven-ready hairbrush. It jiggled arthritically on its perch and then slowly lost its balance, until it was hanging upside down. “I thought you were stuffed,” said Rincewind. “Up yours, wizard.” Rincewind ignored it and crept over to the window. It was small, but gave out on to a gently sloping roof. And out there was a real life, real sky, real buildings. He reached out to open the shutters - A crackling current coursed up his arm and earthed itself in his cerebellum. He sat on the floor, sucking his fingers. “He tole you,” said the parrot, swinging backwards and forwards upside down. “But you wouldn’t wossname. He’s got you by the wossnames.” “But it should only work on demons!” “Ah,” said the parrot, achieving enough momentum to swing upright again, whereupon it steadied itself with the stubby remains of what had once been wings. “It’s all according, isn’t it. If you come in the door marked ‘wossnames’ that means you get treated as a wossname, right? Demon, I mean. Subject to all the rules and wossnames. Tough one for you.” “But you know I’m a wizard, don’t you!” The parrot gave a squawk. “I’ve seen ‘em, mate. The real McWossname. Some of the ones we’ve had in here, they’d make you choke on your millet. Great scaly fiery wossnames. Took weeks to get the soot off the walls,” it added, in an approving tone of voice. “That was in his granddad’s day, of course. The kid hasn’t been any good at it. Up to now. Bright lad. I blame the wossnames, parents. New money, you know. Wine business. Spoil him rotten, let him play with his wossname’s old stuff, ‘Oh, he’s such an intelligent lad, nose always in a book’,” the parrot mimicked. “They never give him any of the things a sensitive growing wossname really needs, if you was to ask me.” “What you mean love and guidance?” said Rincewind. I was thinking of a bloody good wossname, thrashing,” said the parrot. Rincewind clutched at his aching head. If this was what demons usually had to go through, no wonder they were always so annoyed. “Polly want a biscuit,” said the parrot vaguely, in much the same way as a human would say “Er” or “As I was saying”, and went on, “His granddad was keen on it. That and his pigeons.” “Pigeons,” said Rincewind “Not that he was particularly successful. It was all a bit trial and wossname.” “I thought you said great big scaly - “Oh, yes. But that wasn’t what he was after. He was trying to conjure up a succubus.” It should be impossible to leer when all you’ve got is a beak, but the parrot managed it. “That’s a female demon what comes in the night and makes mad passionate wossn -“ “I’ve heard of them,” said Rincewind. “Bloody dangerous things.” The parrot put its head on one side. “It never worked. All he ever got was a neuralger.” “What’s that?” “It’s a demon that comes and has a headache at you.”   Demons have existed on the Discworld for at least as long as the gods, who in many ways they closely resemble. The difference is basically the same as that between terrorists and freedom fighters. Most of the demons occupy a spacious dimension close to reality, traditionally decorated in shades of flame and maintained at roasting point. This isn’t actually necessary, but if there is one thing that your average demon is, it is a traditionalist. In the centre of the inferno, rising majestically from a lake of lava substitute and with unparalleled views of the Eight Circles, lies the city of Pandemonium.5 At the moment, it was living up to its name. Astfgl, the new King of the Demons, was furious. Not simply because the air-conditioning had broken down again, not because he felt surrounded by idiots and plotters on every side, and not even because no-one could pronounce his name properly yet, but also because he had just been given bad news. The demon who had been chosen by lottery to deliver it cowered in front of his throne with its tail between its legs. It was immortally afraid that something wonderful was soon to happen to it. “It did what?” said Astfgl. “It, er, it opened, o lord. The circle in Pseudopolis.” “Ah. The clever boy. We have great hopes of him.” “Er. Then it closed again, lord.” The demon shut its eyes. “And who went through?” “Er.” The demon looked around at its colleagues, clustered at the far end of the mile-long throne room. “I said, and who went through?” “In point of fact, o lord -“ “Yes?” “We don’t know. Someone.” “I gave orders, did I not, that when the boy succeeded the Duke Vassenego was to materialise unto him, and offer him forbidden pleasures and dark delights to bend him to Our will?” The King growled. The problem with being evil, he’d been forced to admit, was that demons were not great innovatory thinkers and really needed the spice of human ingenuity. And he’d really been looking forward to Eric Thursley, whose brand of super-intelligent gormlessness was a rare delight. Hell heeded horribly-bright, self-centred people like Eric. They were much better at being nasty than demons could ever manage. “Indeed, lord,” said the demon, “And the duke has been awaiting the summons there for years, shunning all other temptations, steadfastly and patiently studying the world of men -“ “So where was he?” “Er. Call of supernatural, lord,” the demon gabbled. “Hadn’t turned his back for two minutes when -“ “And someone went through?” “We’re trying to find out -“ Lord Astfgl’s patience, which in any case had the tensile strength of putty, snapped at this point. That just about summed it up. He had the kind of subjects who used the words “find out” when they meant “ascertain”. Damnation was too good for them. “Get out,” he whispered. “And I shall see to it that you get a commendation for this -“ “O master, I plead -“ “Get out!” The King stamped along the glowing corridors to his private apartments. His predecessors had favoured shaggy hind legs and hoofs. Lord Astfgl had rejected all that sort of thing out of hand. He held that no-one would ever get taken seriously by those stuck-up bastards in Dunmanifestin when their rear end kept ruminating all the time, and so he favoured a red silk cloak, crimson tights, a cowl with two rather sophisticated little horns on it, and a trident. The end kept dropping off the trident but, he felt, it was the sort of get-up in which a demon king could be taken seriously... In the coolness of his chambers - oh, by all the gods or, rather, not by all the gods, it had taken him ages to get them up to some sort of civilised standard, his predecessors had been quite content just to lounge around and tempt people, they had never heard of executive stress - he gently lifted the cover off the Mirror of Souls and watched it flicker into life. Its cool black surface was surrounded by an ornate frame, from which curls of greasy smoke constantly unfolded and drifted. Your wish, master? it said. “Show me the events around the Pseudopolis gate over the last hour,” said the King, and settled down to watch. After a while he went and looked up the name “Rincewind” in the filing cabinet he had recently had installed, in place of the distressingly-bound old ledgers that had been there; the system still needed ironing out, though, because the bewildered demons filed everything under P for People. Then he sat watching the flickering pictures and absent-mindedly playing with the stuff on his desk, to soothe his nerves. He had any amount of desk things; notepads with magnets for paperclips, handy devices for holding pens and those tiny jotters that always came in handy, incredibly funny statuettes with slogans like “You’re the Boss!”, and little chromium balls and spirals operated by a sort of ersatz and short-lived perpetual motion. No-one looking at that desk could have any doubt that they were, in cold fact, truly damned. “I see,” said Lord Astfgl, setting a selection of shiny balls swinging with one tap of a talon. He couldn’t remember any demon called Rincewind. On the other hand, there were millions of the wretched things, swarming all over the place with no sense of order, and he hadn’t yet had time to carry out a proper census and retire the unnecessary ones. This one seemed to have a fewer appendages and more vowels in his name than most. But it had to be a demon. Vassenego was a proud old fool, one of the elder demons who smiled and despised him and not-quite-obeyed him, just because the King’d worded hard over the millennia to get humble beginnings to where he was today. He wouldn’t put it past the old devil to do this on purpose, just to spite him. Well, he’d have to see about that later. Send him a memo or something. Too late to do anything about it now. He’d have to take a personal interest. Eric Thursley was too good a prospect to pass up. Getting Eric Thursley would really annoy the gods. God! How he hated the gods! He hated the gods even more than he hated the old guard like Vassenego, even more than he hated humans. He’d thrown a little soirée’e last week, he’d put a lot of thought into it, he wanted to show that he was prepared to let bygones be bygones, work with them for a new, better and more efficient universe. He’d called it a “Getting to know you!” party. There’d been sausages on sticks and every thing, he’d done his best to make it nice. They hadn’t even bothered to answer the invitations. And he’d made a special point of putting RSVP on them. “Demon?” Eric peered around the door. “What shape are you?” he said. “Pretty poor shape,” said Rincewind. “I’ve brought you some food. You do eat, do you?” Rincewind tried some. It was a bowl of cereal, nuts, and dried fruit. He didn’t have any quarrel with any of that. It was just that somewhere in the preparation something had apparently done to these innocent ingredients what it takes a million gravities to do a neutron star. If you died of eating this sort of thing they wouldn’t have to bury you, they would just need to drop you somewhere where the ground was soft. He managed to swallow it. It wasn’t difficult. The trick would have been preventing it from heading downwards. “Lovely,” he choked. The parrot did a splendid impersonation of someone being sick. “I’ve decided to let you go,” said Eric. “It’s pretty pointless keeping you, isn’t it.” “Absolutely.” “You haven’t any powers at all?” “Sorry. Dead failure.” “You don’t look too demonic, come to think about it,” said Eric. “They never do. You can’t trust them wossnames,” chortled the parrot. It lost its balance again. “Polly want a biscuit,” it said, upside down. Rincewind spun around. “You stay out of this beaky!” There was a sound behind them, like the universe clearing its throat. The chalk marks of the magic circle grew terribly bright for a moment, became fiery lines against the scuffed planks, and something dropped out of the empty air and landed heavily on the floor. It was a large, metal-bound chest. It had fallen on its curved lid. After a while it started to rock violently, and then it extended hundreds of little pink legs and with considerable effort flipped itself over. Finally it shuffled around until it was watching the pair of them. It was all the more disconcerting because it was staring without having any eyes to do it with. Eric moved first. He grasped the home-made magic sword, which flapped wildly. “You are a demon!” he said. “I nearly believed you when you said you weren’t!” “Wheee!” said the parrot. “It’s just my luggage,” said Rincewind desperately. “It’s a sort of... well. it goes everywhere with me, there’s nothing demonic about it... er.” He hesitated. “Not much, anyway,” he finished lamely. “Avaunt!” “Oh, not again.” The boy looked at the open book. “My commands earlier resume,” he said firmly. “The most beautiful woman who has ever lived, mastery of all the kingdoms of the world, and to live forever. Get on with it.” Rincewind stood frozen. “Well, go on,” said Eric. “You’re supposed to disappear in a puff of smoke.” “Listen, do you think I can just snap my fingers -“ Rincewind snapped his fingers. There was a puff of smoke.   Rincewind gave his fingers a long shocked stare, as one might regard a gun that has been hanging on the wall for decades and has suddenly gone off and perforated the cat. “They’ve hardly ever done that before,” he said. He looked down. “Aargh,” he said, and closed his eyes. It was a better world in the darkness behind his eyelids. If he tapped his foot he could persuade himself that he could feel the floor, he could know that he was really standing in the room, and that the urgent signals from all his other senses, which were telling him that he was suspended in the air some thousand miles or so above the Disc, were just a bad dream he’d wake up from. He hastily cancelled that thought. If he was asleep he’d prefer to stay that way. You could fly in dreams. If he woke up, it was a long way to fall. Perhaps I have died and I really am a demon, he thought. It was an interesting point. He opened his eyes again. “Wow!” said Eric, his eyes gleaming. “Can I have all of it?” The boy was standing in the same position he had been in the room. So was the luggage. So, to Rincewind’s annoyance, was the parrot. It was perching in mid-air, looking speculatively at the cosmic panorama below. The Disc might almost have been designed to be seen from space; it hadn’t, Rincewind was damn sure, been designed to be lived on. But he had to admit that it was impressive. The sun was about to rise on the far rim and made a line of fire that glittered around half the circumference. A long slow dawn was just beginning its sweep across the dark, massive landscape. Below, harshly lit in the arid vacuum of space, Great A’Tuin the world turtle toiled under the weight of Creation. On his - or her, the matter had never really been resolved - carapace the four giant elephants strained to support the Disc itself. There might have been more efficient ways to build a world. You might start with a ball of molten iron and then coat it with successive layers of rock, like an old-fashioned gobstopper. And you’d have a very efficient planet, but it wouldn’t look so nice. Besides, things would drop off the bottom. “Pretty good,” said the parrot. “Polly want a continent.” “It’s so big,” breathed Eric. “Yes,” said Rincewind flatly. He felt that something more was expected of him. “Don’t break it,” he added. He had a nagging doubt about all this. If he was for the sake of argument a demon, and so many things had happened to him recently he was prepared to concede that he might have died and not noticed it in the confusion7, then he still didn’t quite see how the world was his to give away. He was pretty sure that it had owners who felt the same way. Also, he was sure that a demon had to get something in writing. “I think that you have to sign for it,” he said. “In blood.” “Whose?” said Eric. “Yours, I think,” said Rincewind. “Or bird blood will do, at a pinch.” He glared meaningfully at the parrot, which growled at him. “Aren’t I allowed to try it out first?” “What?” “Well suppose it doesn’t work? I’m not signing for it until I’ve seen it work.” Rincewind stared at the boy. Then he looked down at the broad panorama of the kingdoms of the world. I wonder if I was like him at his age? he thought. I wonder how I survived? “It’s the world,” he said patiently. “Of course it will bloody well work. I mean, look at it. Hurricanes, continental drift, rainfall cycle - it’s all there. All ticking over like a bloody watch. It’ll last you a lifetime, a world like that. Used carefully.” Eric gave the world a critical examination. He wore the expression of someone who knows that all the best gifts in life seem to require the psychic equivalent of two U2 batteries and the shops won’t be open until after the holidays. “There’s got to be tribute,” he said flatly. “You what?” “The kings of the world,” said Eric. “They’ve got to pay me tribute.” “You’ve really been studying this, haven’t you,” said Rincewind sarcastically. “Just tribute? You don’t fancy the moon while we’re up here? This week’s special offer, one free satellite with every world dominated?” “Are there any useful minerals?” “What?” Eric gave a sigh of long-suffering patience. “Minerals,” he said. “Ores. You know.” Rincewind coloured. “I don’t think a lad your age should be thinking of -“ “I mean metal and things. It’s no use to me if it’s just a load of rock.” Rincewind looked down. The Discworld’s tiny moonlet was just rising over the far edge, and shed a pale radiance across the jigsaw pattern of land and sea. “Oh, I don’t know. It looks quite nice,” he volunteered. “Look, it’s dark now. Perhaps everyone can pay you tribute in the morning?” “I want some tribute now.” “I thought you might.” Rincewind gave his fingers a careful examination. It wasn’t as if he’d ever been particularly good at snapping them. He gave it another try. When he opened his eyes again he was standing up to his ankles in mud. Pre-eminent amongst Rincewind’s talents was his skill in running away, which over the years he had elevated to the status of a genuinely pure science; it didn’t matter if you were fleeing from or to, so long as you were fleeing. It was flight alone that counted. I run, therefore I am; more correctly, I run, therefore with any luck I’ll still be. But he was also skilled in languages and in practical geography. He could shout ‘help!’ in fourteen languages and scream for mercy in a further twelve. He had passed through many of the countries on the Disc, some of them at high speed, and during the long, lovely, boring hours when he’d worked in the Library he’d whiled away the time by reading up on all the exotic and faraway places he’d never visited. He remembered that at the time he’d sighed with relief that he’d never have to visit them. And, now, here he was. Jungle surrounded him. It wasn’t nice, interesting, open jungle, such as leopard-skin-clad heroes might swing through, but serious, real jungle, jungle that towered up like solid slabs of greenness, thorned and barbed, jungle in which every representative of the vegetable kingdom had really rolled up its bark and got down to the strenuous business of outgrowing all competitors. The soil was hardly soil at all, but dead plants on the way to composthood; water dripped from leaf to leaf, insects whined in the humid, spore-laden air, and there was the terrible breathless silence made by the motors of photosynthesis running flat out. Any yodelling hero who tried to swing through that lot might just as well take his chances with a bean-slicer. “How do you do that?” said Eric. “It’s probably a knack,” said Rincewind. Eric subjected the wonders of Nature to a cursory and disdainful glance. “This doesn’t look like a kingdom,” he complained. “You said we could go to a kingdom. Do you call this a kingdom?” “This is probably the rain forests of Klatch,” said Rincewind. “They’re stuffed full of lost kingdoms.” “You mean mysterious ancient races of Amazonian princesses who subject all male prisoners to strange and exhausting progenitative rites?” said Eric, his glasses beginning to fog. “Haha,” said Rincewind stonily. “What an imagination the child has.” “Wossname, wossname, wossname!” shrieked the parrot. “I’ve read about them,” said Eric, peering into the greenery. “Of course, I own those kingdoms as well.” He stared at some private inner vision. “Gosh,” he said, hungrily. “I should concentrate on the tribute if I was you,” said Rincewind, setting off down what was possibly a path. The brightly-coloured blooms on a tree nearby turned to watch him go. In the jungles of central Klatch there are, indeed, lost kingdoms of mysterious Amazonian princesses who capture male explorers for specifically masculine duties. These are indeed rigorous and exhausting and the luckless victims do not last long. There are also hidden plateaux where the reptilian monsters of a bygone epoch romp and play, as well as elephants’ graveyards, lost diamond mines, and strange ruins decorated with hieroglyphs the very sight of which can freeze the most valiant heart. On any reasonable amp there’s barely room for the trees. The few explorers who have passed on a number of handy hints to those who follow after, such as: 1) avoid if possible any hanging-down creepers with beady eyes and a forked tongue at one end; 2) don’t pick up any orange-and-black-stripped creepers that are apparently lying across the path, twitching, because there is often a tiger on the other end; and 3) don’t go. If I’m a demon, Rincewind thought hazily, why is everything stinging me and trying to trip me up? I mean, surely I can only be harmed by a wooden dagger through my heart? Or do I mean garlic? Eventually the jungle opened out into a very wide, cleared area that stretched all the way to a distant blue range of volcanoes. The land fell away below them to a patchwork of lakes and swampy fields, here and there punctured by great stepped pyramids, each one crowned with a thin plume of smoke curling into the dawn air. The jungle track opened out into a narrow, but paved, road. “Where’s this demon?” said Eric. “It looks like one of the Tezuman kingdoms,” said Rincewind. “They’re ruled over by the Great Muzuma, I think.” “She’s an Amazonian princess, is she?” “Strangely enough, no. You’d be astonished how many kingdoms aren’t ruled by Amazonian princesses, Eric.” “It looks pretty primitive, anyway. A bit Stone Age.” “The Tezuman priests have a sophisticated calendar and an advanced horology,” quoted Rincewind. “Ah,” said Eric, “Good.” “No,” said Rincewind patiently. “It means time measurement.” “Oh.” “You’d approve of them. They’re superb mathematicians, apparently.” “Huh,” said Eric, blinking solemnly. “Shouldn’t think they’ve got a lot to count in a backward civilisation like this.” Rincewind eyed the chariots that were heading rapidly towards them. “I think they usually count victims,” he said. The Tezuman Empire in the jungle valleys of central Klatch is known for its organic market gardens, its exquisite craftsmanship in obsidian, feathers and jade, and its mass human sacrifices in honour of Quezovercoatl, the Feathered Boa, god of mass human sacrifices. As they said, you always knew where you stood with Quezovercoatl. It was generally with a lot of people on top of a great stepped pyramid with someone in an elegant feathered head-dress chipping an exquisite obsidian knife for your very own personal use. The Tezuman are renowned on the continent for being the most suicidally gloomy, irritable and pessimistic people you could ever hope to meet, for reasons that may soon be made clear. It was true about the time measurement as well. The Tezuman had realised long ago that everything was getting worse and, having a terrible literal-mindedness, had developed a complex system to keep track of how much worse each succeeding day was. Contrary to general belief, the Tezumen did invent the wheel. They just had radically different ideas about what you used it for. It was the first chariot that Rincewind had ever seen that was pulled by llamas. That wasn’t what was odd about it. What was odd about it was that it was being carried by people, two holding each side of the axle and running after the animals, their sandalled feet flapping on the flagstones. “Do you think it’s got the tribute in it?” said Eric. All the leading chariot seemed to contain, apart from the driver, was a squat, basically cube-shaped man wearing a puma-skin outfit and a feather head-dress. The runners panted to a halt, and Rincewind saw that each man wore what would probably be described as a primitive sword, made by affixing shards of obsidian into a wooden club. They looked to him no less deadly than sophisticated, extremely civilised swords. In fact they looked worse. “Well?” said Eric. “Well what?” said Rincewind. “Tell him to give me my tribute.” The fat man got down ponderously, marched over to Eric and, to Rincewind’s extreme surprise, grovelled. Rincewind felt something claw its way up his back and onto his shoulder, where a voice like a sheet of metal being torn in half said, “That’s better. Very wossname, comfy. If you try and knock me off, demon, you can wossname your ear goodbye. What a turn up for the scrolls, eh? They seemed to be expecting him.” “Why do you keep saying wossname?” said Rincewind. “Limited wossname. Doodah. Thingy. You know. It’s got words in it,” said the parrot. “Dictionary?” said Rincewind. They passengers in the other chariots had got out and were also grovelling to Eric, who was beaming like an idiot. The parrot considered this. “Yeah, probably,” it said. “I’ve got to wing it to you,” it went on. “I thought you were a bit of a wossname at the start, but you seem to be delivering the wossname.” “Demon?” said Eric, airily. “Yes?” “What are they saying? Can’t you speak their language?” “Er, no,” said Rincewind. “I can read it, though,” he called out, as Eric turned away. “If you could just sort of make signs for them to write it down...” It was around noon. In the jungle behind Rincewind creatures whooped and gibbered. Mosquitoes the size of humming-birds whined around his head. “Of course,” he said, for the tenth time, “They’ve never really got around to inventing paper.” The stonemason stood bake, handed the latest blunted obsidian chisel to his assistant, and gave Rincewind and expectant look. Rincewind stood back and examined the rock critically. “It’s very good,” he said. “I mean, it’s a very good likeness. You’ve got his hairstyle and everything. Of course, he’s not as, er, square as that normally but, yes, very good. And here’s the chariot and there’s the step-pyramids. Yes. Well, it looks as though they want you to go to the city with them,” he said to Eric. “Tell them yes,” said Eric firmly. Rincewind turned to the headman. “Yes,” he said. “¿[Hunched-figure-in-triple-feathered-headdress-over-three-dots]?” Rincewind sighed. Without saying a word, the stonemason put a fresh stone chisel into his unresisting fingers and manhandled a new slab of granite into position. One of the problems of being a Tezuman, apart from having a god like Quezovercoatl, is that if you unexpectedly need to order an extra pint of milk tomorrow you should have started writing the note last month. Tezumen are the only people who beat themselves to death with their own suicide notes. It was late afternoon by the time the chariot trotted into the slab city around the largest pyramid, between lines of cheering Tezumen. “This is more like it,” said Eric, graciously acknowledging the cheers. “They’re very pleased to see us.” “Yes,” said Rincewind, gloomily. “I wonder why?” “Well, because I’m the new ruler, of course.” “Hmm.” Rincewind glanced sidelong at the parrot, who had been unnaturally silent for some time and was now cowering up against his ear like an elderly spinster in a strip club. It was having serious thoughts about the exquisite feather headdresses. “Wossname bastards,” it croaked. “Any wossname lays a hand on me and that wossname is minus one finger, I’m telling you.” “There’s something not right about this,” said Rincewind. “What’s that?” “Everything.” “I’m telling you, one feather out of place -“ Rincewind wasn’t used to people being pleased to see him. It was unnatural, and boded no good. These people were not only cheering, they were throwing flowers and hats. The hats were made out of stone, but the thought was there. Rincewind thought they were rather odd hats. They didn’t have crowns. They were, in fact, mere discs with holes in the middle. The procession trotted up the wide avenues of the city to a cluster of buildings at the foot of the pyramid, where another group of dignitaries was waiting for them. They were wearing lots of jewellery. It was all basically the same. There are quite a lot of uses to which you can put a stone disc with a hole in the middle, and the Tezumen had explored all but one of them. More important, though, were the boxes and boxes of treasure stacked in front of them. They were stuffed with jewels. Eric’s eyes widened. “The tribute!” he said. Rincewind gave up. It was really working. He didn’t know why, but at last it was all going Right. The setting sun glinted off a dozen fortunes. Of course, it belonged to Eric, presumably, but maybe there was enough for him too... “Naturally,” he said weakly. “What else did you expect?” And there was feasting, and long speeches that Rincewind couldn’t understand but which were punctuated with cheers and nods and bows in Eric’s direction. And there were long recitals of Tezuman music, which sounds like someone clearing a particularly difficult nostril. Rincewind left Eric sitting proudly enthroned in the firelight and wandered disconsolately across to the pyramid. “I was enjoying the wossname,” said the parrot reproachfully. “I can’t settle down,” said Rincewind. “I’m sorry, but this sort of thing has never happened to me before. All the jewels and things. Everything going as expected. It’s not right.” He looked up the monstrous face of the steep pyramid, red and flickering in the firelight. Every huge block was carved with a bas-relief of Tezumen doing terribly inventive things to their enemies. It suggested that the Tezumen, whatever sterling qualities they possessed, were not traditionally inclined to welcome perfect strangers and heap them with jewels. The overall effect of the great heap of carvings was very artistic - it was just the details that were horrible. While working his way along the wall he came to a huge door, which artistically portrayed a group of prisoners apparently being given a complete medical check-up. It opened into a short, torch-lit tunnel. Rincewind took a few steps along it, telling himself he could always hurry out again, and came out into a lofty space which occupied most of the inside of the pyramid. There were more torches all around the walls, which illuminated everything quite well. That wasn’t really welcome because what they mainly illuminated was a giant-sized statue of Quezovercoatl, the Feathered Boa. If you had to be in a room with that statue, you’d prefer it to be pitch black. Or, then again, perhaps not. A better option would be to put the thing in a darkened room while you had insomnia a thousand miles away, trying to forget what it looked like. It’s just a statue, Rincewind told himself. It’s not real. They’ve just used their imagination, that’s all. “What the wossname is it?” said the parrot. “It’s their god.” “Get a way?” “No, really. It’s Quezovercoatl. Half man, half chicken, half jaguar, half serpent, half scorpion and half mad.” The parrot’s beak moved as it worked this out. “That makes a wossname total of three homicidal maniacs,” it said. “About right, yes,” said the statue. “On the other hand,” said Rincewind instantly, “I do think it’s frightfully important for people to have the right to worship in their own special way, and now I think we’ll just be going, so just -“ “Please don’t leave me here,” said the statue. “Please take me with you.” “Could be tricky, could be tricky,” Rincewind said hurriedly, backing away. “It’s not me, you understand, it’s just that where I come from everyone has this racial prejudice against thirty-foot-high people with fangs and talons and necklaces of skulls all over them. I just think you’ll have trouble fitting in.” The parrot tweaked his ear. “It’s coming from behind the statue, you stupid wossname,” it croaked. It turned out to be coming from a hole in the floor. A pale face peered short-sightedly up at Rincewind from the depths of a pit. It was an elderly, good-natured face with a faintly worried expression. “Hallo?” said Rincewind. “You don’t know what it means to hear a friendly voice again,” said the face, breaking into a grin. “If you could just sort of help me up...?” “Sorry?” said Rincewind. “You’re a prisoner, are you?” “Alas, this is so.” “I don’t know that I ought to go around rescuing prisoners just like that,” said Rincewind. “I mean, you might have done anything.” “I am entirely innocent of all crimes, I assure you.” “Ah, well, so you say,” said Rincewind gravely. “But if the Tezumen have judged -“ “Wossname, wossname, wossname!” shrieked the parrot in his ear as it bounced up and down on his shoulder. “Haven’t you got the faintest? Where’ve you been? He’s a prisoner! A prisoner in a temple! You’ve got to rescue prisoners in temples! That’s what they’re bloody there for!” “No it isn’t,” snapped Rincewind. “That’s all you know! He’s probably here to be sacrificed! Isn’t that right?” He looked at the prisoner for confirmation. The face nodded. “Indeed, you are correct. Flayed alive in fact.” “There!” said Rincewind to the parrot. “See? You think you know everything! He’s to be flayed alive.” “Every inch of skin removed to the accompaniment of exquisite pain,” added the prisoner, helpfully. Rincewind paused. He thought he knew the meaning of the word “exquisite”, and it didn’t seem to belong anywhere near “pain”. “What, every bit?” he said. “This is apparently the case.” “Gosh. What was it you did?” The prisoner sighed. “You’d never believe me...” he said.   The Demon King let the mirror darken and drummed his fingers on his desk for a moment. Then he picked up a speaking tube and blew into it. Eventually a distant voice said: “Yes, guv?” “Yes sir!” snapped the King The distant voice muttered something. “Yes, SIR?” it added. “Do we have a Quezovercoatl working here?” “I’ll see, guv.” The voice faded, came back. “Yes, guv.” “Is he a Duke, Earl, Count or Baron?” said the King. “No, guv.” “Well, what is he?” There was a long silence at the other end. “Well?” said the King “He’s no-one much, guv” The King glared at the tube for some time. You try, he thought. You make proper plans, you try to get organised, you try to help people, and this is what you get. “Send him to see me,” he said. Outside, the music rose to a crescendo and stopped. The fires crackled. >From the distant jungles a thousand glowing eyes watched the proceedings. The high priest stood up and made a speech. Eric beamed like a pumpkin. A long line of Tezumen brought baskets of jewels which they scattered before him. Then the high priest made a second speech. This one seemed to end in a question. “Fine,” said Eric. “Jolly good. Keep it up.” He scratched his ear and ventured, “You can all have a half holiday.” The high priest repeated the question again, in a slightly impatient tone of voice. “I’m the one, yes,” said Eric, just in case they were unclear. “You’ve got it exactly right.” The high priest spoke again. This time there was no slightly about it. “Let’s just run through this again, shall we?” said the Demon King. He leaned back in his throne. “You just happened to find the Tezumen one day and decided, I think I recall your words correctly, that they were ‘a bunch of Stone-Age no-hopers sitting around in a swamp being no trouble to anyone’, am I right? Whereupon you entered the mind of one of their high priests - I believe at the time they worshiped a small stick - drove him insane and inspired the tribes to unite, terrorise their neighbours and bring forth upon the continent a new nation dedicated to the proposition that all men should be taken to the top of ceremonial pyramids and be chopped up with stone knives.” The King pulled his notes towards him. “Oh yes, some of them were also to be flayed alive,” he added. Quezovercoatl shuffled his feet. “Whereupon,” said the King, “they immediately engaged in a prolonged war with just about everyone else, bringing death and destruction to thousands of moderately blameless people, ekcetra, ekcetra. Now, look, this sort of thing has got to stop.” Quezovercoatl swayed back a bit. “It was only, you know, a hobby,” said the imp. “I thought, you know, it was the right thing, sort of, thing. Death and destruction and that.” “You did, did you?” said the king. “Thousands of more-or-less innocent people dying? Straight out of our hands,” he snapped his fingers, “just like that. Straight off to their happy hunting ground or whatever. That’s the trouble with you people. You don’t think of the Big Picture. I mean, look at the Tezumen. Gloomy, unimaginative, obsessive... by now they could have invented a whole bureaucracy and taxation system that could have turned the minds of the continent to slag. Instead of which, they’re just a bunch of second-rate axe-murderers. What a waste.” Quezovercoatl squirmed. The King swivelled the throne back and forth a bit. “Now, I want you to go back down there and tell them you’re sorry,” he said. “Pardon?” “Tell them you’ve changed your mind. Tell them that what you really wanted them to do was strive day and night to improve the lot of their fellow men. It’ll be a winner.” “What?” said Quezovercoatl, looking extremely shifty. “You want me to manifest myself?” “They’ve seen you already, haven’t they? I saw the statue, it’s ver lifelike.” “Well, yes. I’ve appeared in dreams and that,” said the demon uncertainly. “Right, then. Get on with it.” Quezovercoatl was clearly unhappy about something. “Er,” he said. “You want me to actually materialise, sort of thing? I mean, actually sort of turn up on the spot?” “Yes!” “Oh.”   The prisoner dusted himself down and extended a wrinkled hand to Rincewind. “Many thanks. Ponce da Quirm,” he said. “Pardon?” “It’s my name.” “Oh.” “It’s a proud old name,” said da Quirm, searching Rincewind’s eyes for any traces of mockery. “Fine,” said Rincewind blankly. “We were searching for the Fountain of Youth,” da Quirm went on Rincewind looked him up and down. “Any luck?” he said politely. “Not significantly, no.” Rincewind peered back down into the pit. “You said we,” ha said. “Where’s everyone else?” “They got religion.” Rincewind looked up at the statue of Quezovercoatl. I took no imagination whatsoever to imagine what kind. “I think,” he said carefully, “that we had better go.” “Too true,” said the old man. “And quickly, too. Before the Ruler of the World turns up.” Rincewind went cold. It starts, he thought. I knew it was all going to turn out badly, and this is where it starts. I must have an instinct for these things. “How do you know about that?” he said. “Oh, they’ve got this prophecy, really, it’s more the entire history of the world, start to finish. It’s written all over this pyramid,” said da Quirm, cheerfully. “My word, I wouldn’t like to be the Ruler when he arrives. They’ve got plans.” Eric stood up. “Now just you listen to me,” he said. “I’m not going to stand for this sort of thing. I’m your ruler, you know...” Rincewind stared at the blocks nearest the statue. It had taken the Tezumen two storeys, twenty years and ten thousand tons of granite to explain what they intended to do to the Ruler of the World, but the result was, well, graphic. He would be left in no doubt that they were annoyed. He might even go so far as to deduce that they were quite vexed. “But why do they give him all these jewels to start with?” he said, pointing. “Well, he is the Ruler,” said da Quirm. “He’s entitled to some respect, I suppose.” Rincewind nodded. There was a sort of justice in it. If you were a tribe who lived in a swamp in the middle of a damp forest, didn’t have any metal, had been saddled with a god like Quezovercoatl, and then found someone who said he was in charge of the whole affair, you probably would want to spend some time explaining to him how incredibly disappointed in him you were. The Tezumen had never seen any reason to be subtle in dealing with deities. It was a very good likeness of Eric. His eye followed the story on to the next wall. This block showed a very good likeness of Rincewind. He had a parrot on his shoulder. “Hang on,” he said. “That’s me!” “You should see what they’re doing to you on the next block,” said the parrot smugly. “It’ll turn your wossname.” Rincewind looked at the block. His wossname revolved. “We’ll just leave very quietly,” he said firmly. “I mean, we won’t stop to thank them for the meal. We can always send them a letter later. You know, so’s not to be impolite.” “Just a moment,” said da Quirm, as Rincewind dragged at his arm, “I haven’t had a chance to read all the blocks yet. I want to see how the world’s going to end -“ “How it’s going to end for everybody else I don’t know,” said Rincewind grimly, dragging him down the tunnel. “I know how it’s going to end for me.” He stepped out in to the dawn light, which was fine. Where he went wrong was stepping into a semi-circle of Tezumen. They had spears. They had exquisitely chipped obsidian spearheads, which, like their swords, were nowhere near as sophisticated as ordinary, coarse, inferior steel weapons. Was it better to know that you were going to be skewered by delicate examples of genuine ethnic origin rather than nasty forge-made items hammered out by people not in contact with the cycles of nature? Probably not, Rincewind decided. “I always say,” said da Quirm, “that there is a good side to everything.” Rincewind, trussed to the next slab, turned his head with difficulty. “Where is it at the moment, precisely?” he said. Da Quirm squinted down across the swamps and the forest roof. “Well. It’s a first-class view from up here, to begin with.” “Oh, good,” said Rincewind. “You know, I never would have looked at it like that. You’re absolutely right. It’s the kind of view you’ll remember for the rest of your life, I expect. I mean, it’s not as if it will be any great feat of recollection.” “There’s no need to be sarcastic. I was only passing a remark.” “I want my mum,” said Eric, from the middle slab. “Chin up, lad,” said da Quirm. “At least you’re being sacrificed for something worthwhile. I just suggested they tried using the wheels upright, so they’d roll. I’m afraid they’re not very responsive to new ideas around here. Still, nil desperandum. Where there’s life there’s hope.” Rincewind growled. If there was one thing he couldn’t stand, it was people who were fearless in the face of death. It seemed to strike at something absolutely fundamental in him. “In fact,” said da Quirm, “I think -“ He rolled from side to side experimentally, tugging at the vines which were holding him down. “Yes, I think when they did these ropes up - yes, definitely, they -“ “What? What?” said Rincewind. “Yes, definitely,” said da Quirm. “I’m absolutely sure about it. They did them up very tightly and professionally. Not an inch of give in them anywhere.” “Thank you,” said Rincewind. The flat top of the truncated pyramid was in fact quite large, with plenty of room for statues, priests, slabs, gutters, knife-chipping production lines and all the other things the Tezumen needed for the bulk disposal of religion. In front of Rincewind several priests were busily chanting a long list of complaints about swamps, mosquitoes, lack of metal ore, volcanoes, the weather, the way obsidian never kept it’s edge, the trouble with having a god like Quezovercoatl, the way wheels never worked properly however often you laid them flat and pushed them, and so on. The prayers of most religions generally praise and thank the gods involved, either out of general piety or in the hope that he or she will take the hint and start acting responsibly. The Tezumen, having taken a long hard look around their world and decided bluntly that things were just about as bad as they were ever going to get, had perfected the art of the plain-chant winge. “Won’t be long now,” said the parrot, from its perch atop a statue of one of the Tezumen’s lesser gods. It had got there by a complicated sequence of events that had involved a lot of squawking, a cloud of feathers and three Tezumen priests with badly swollen thumbs. “The high priest is just performing a wossname in honour of Quezovercoatl,” it went on, conversationally. “You’ve drawn quite a crowd.” “I suppose you wouldn’t kind of hop down here and bite through these ropes, would you?” said Rincewind. “Not a chance.” “Thought so.” “Sun’s coming up soon,” the parrot continued. Rincewind felt that it sounded unnecessarily cheerful. “I’m going to complain about this, demon,” moaned Eric. “You wait my mother finds out. My parents have got influence, you know.” “Oh, good,” said Rincewind weakly. “Why don’t you tell the high priest that if he cuts your heart out she’ll be right down to the school tomorrow to complain.” The Tezumen priests bowed towards the sun, and all eyes in the crowd below turned to the jungle. Where something was happening. There was the sound of crackling undergrowth. Tropical birds erupted through the trees, shrieking. Rincewind, of course, could not see this. “You never should have wanted to be ruler of the world,” he said. “I mean, what did you expect? You can’t expect people to be happy about seeing you. No-one ever is when the landlord turns up.” “But they’re going to kill me!” “It’s just their way of saying that, metaphorically, they’re fed up with waiting for you to repaint the place and see to the drains.” The whole jungle was in uproar now. Animals exploded out of the bushes as if running from a fire. A few heavy thumps indicated that trees were falling over. At last a frantic jaguar crashed through the undergrowth and loped down the causeway. The Luggage was a few feet behind it. It was covered with creepers, leaves and the feathers of various rare jungle fowls, some of which were now even rarer. The jaguar could have avoided it by zigging or zagging to either side, but sheer idiot terror prevented it. It made the mistake of turning its head to see what was behind. This was the last mistake it ever made. “You know that box of yours?” said the parrot. “What about it?” said Rincewind. “It’s heading this way.” The priests peered down at the running figure far below. The Luggage had a straightforward way of dealing with things between it and its intended destination: it ignored them. It was at this moment, against all his instincts, in great trepidation and, most unfortunately of all, in deep ignorance of what was happening, that Quezovercoatl himself chose to materialise on top of the pyramid. Several of the priests noticed him. The knives fell from their fingers. “Er,” squeaked the demon. Other priests turned around. “Right. Now, I want you all to pay attention,” squeaked Quezovercoatl, cupping his tiny hands around his main mouth in an effort to be heard. This was very embarrassing. He’d enjoyed being the Tezumen god, he’d been really impressed by their single-minded devotion to duty, he’d been very gratified by the incredible lifelike statue in the pyramid, and it really hurt to have to reveal that, in one important particular, it was incorrect. He was six inches high. “Now then,” he began, “this is very important -“ Unfortunately, no-one ever found out why. At that moment the Luggage breasted the top of the pyramid, its legs whirring like propellers, and landed squarely on the slabs. There was a brief, flat squeak. It was a funny old world, said da Quirm. You had to laugh, really. If you didn’t, you’d go mad, wouldn’t you? One minute strapped to a slab and about to undergo exquisite torture, the next being given breakfast, a change of clothes, a hot tub and a free lift out of the kingdom. It made you believe there was a god. Of course the Tezumen knew there was a god, and that he was currently a small and distressing greasy patch on top of the pyramid. Which left them with a bit of a problem. The Luggage squatted in the city’s main plaza. The entire priesthood was sitting around it and watching it carefully, in case it did anything amusing or religious. “Are you going to leave it behind?” said Eric. “It’s not as simple as that,” said Rincewind. “It generally catches up. Let’s just go away quickly.” “But we’ll take the tribute, won’t we?” “I think that could be an amazingly bad idea,” said Rincewind. “Let’s just quietly go, while they’re in a good temper. The novelty will wear off soon, I expect.” “And I’ve got to get on with my search for the Fountain of Youth,” said da Quirm. “Oh yes,” said Rincewind. “I’ve devoted my whole life to it, you know,” said the old man proudly. Rincewind looked him up and down. “Really?” he said. “Oh, yes. Exclusively. Ever since I was a boy.” Rincewind’s expression was one of acute puzzlement. “In that case,” he began, in the manner of one talking to a child, “wouldn’t it have been better... you know, more sensible... if you’d just got on with...” “What?” said da Quirm. “Oh, never mind,” said Rincewind. “I’ll tell you what though,” he added, “I think, in order to prevent you getting, you know, bored, we should present you with this wonderful talking parrot.” He made a swift grab, while keeping his thumbs firmly out of harm’s way. “It’s a jungle fowl,” he said. “Cruel to subject it to city life, isn’t it?” “I was born in a cage, you raving wossname!” screamed the parrot. Rincewind faced it, nose to beak. “It’s that or fricassee time,” he said. The parrot opened its beak to bite his nose, saw his expression, and thought better of it. “Polly want a biscuit,” it managed, adding, sotto voce, “wossnamewossnamewossname.” “A dear little bird of my very own,” said da Quirm. “I shall look after it.” “wossnamewossname.” They reached the jungle. A few minutes later the Luggage trotted after them. It was noon in the kingdom of Tezuma. From inside the main pyramid came the sounds of a very large statue being dismantled. The priests sat around thoughtfully. Occasionally one of them stood up and made a short speech. It was clear that points were being made. For example, how the economics of the kingdom depended on a buoyant obsidian knife industry, how the enslaved neighbouring kingdoms had come to rely on the smack of firm government, and incidentally on the hack, slash and disembowelling of firm government as well, and on the terrible fate that awaited any people who didn’t have gods. Godless people might get up to anything, they might turn against the fine old traditions of thrift and non-self-sacrifice that had made the kingdom what it was today, they might start wondering why, if they didn’t have a god, they needed all these priests, anything. The point was well put by Mazuma, the high priest, when he said: “[Squashed-figure-with-broken-nose, jaguar claw, three feathers, stylised spiny anteater].” After a while a vote was taken. By nightfall, the kingdom’s leading stonemasons were at work on a new statue. It was basically oblong, with lots of legs. The Demon King drummed his fingers on his desk. It wasn’t that he was unhappy about the fate of Quezovercoatl, who would now have to spend several centuries in one of the nether hells while he grew a new corporeal body. Serve him right, the ghastly little imp. Nor was it the broad trend of events on the pyramid. After all, the whole point of the wish business was to see to it that what the client got was exactly what he asked for and exactly what he didn’t really want. It was just that he didn’t feel in control of things. Which was of course ridiculous. If the best came to the best he could always materialise and sort things out personally. But he liked people to believe that all the bad things happening to them were just fate and destiny. It was one of the few things that cheered him up. He turned back to the mirror. After a while he had to adjust the temporal control. One minute the breathless, humid jungles of Klatch, the next... “I thought we were going back to my room,” Eric complained. “I thought that, too,” said Rincewind, shouting to be heard over the rumbling. “Snap your fingers again, demon.” “Not on your life! There’s plenty of places worse than this!” “But it’s all hot and dark.” Rincewind had to concede that. It was also shaking and noisy. When his eyes grew used to the blackness he could make out a few spots of light here and there, whose dim radiance suggested that they were inside something like a boat. There was a definite feel of carpentry about everything, and a powerful smell of wood shavings and glue. If it was a boat, then it was having an awfully painful launching down a slipway greased with rocks. A jolt slung him heavily against a bulkhead. “I must say,” complained Eric, “if this is where the most beautiful woman lives I don’t think much of her choice of boodwah. You’d think she’d put a few cushions or something around the place.” “Boodwah?” said Rincewind. “She’s bound to have one,” said Eric smugly. “I’ve read about ‘em. She reclines on it.” “Tell me,” said Rincewind, “have you ever felt the need to have a cold bath and a brisk run around the playing fields?” “Never.” “It could be worth a try.” The rumbling stopped abruptly. There was a distant clanging noise, such as might be made by a pair of great big gates being shut. Rincewind thought he heard some voices fading into the distance, and a chuckle. It wasn’t a particularly pleasant chuckle, it was more of a snigger, and it boded no good for someone. Rincewind had a pretty good idea who. He’d stopped wondering how he’d come to be here, wherever it was. Malign forces, that was probably it. At least nothing particularly dreadful was happening to him right now. Probably it was only a matter of time. He groped around a bit until his fingers encountered what turned out to be, following an inspection by the light of the nearest knot-hole, a rope ladder. Further probing at one end of the hull, or whatever it was, brought him in contact with a small, round hatchway. It was bolted on the inside. He crawled back to Eric. “There’s a door,” he whispered. “Where does it go?” “It stays where it is, I think,” said Rincewind. “find out where it leads to, demon!” “Could be a bad idea,” said Rincewind cautiously. “Get on with it!” Rincewind crawled gloomily to the hatch and grasped the bolt. The hatch creaked open. Down below - quite a long way below - there were damp cobblestones, across which a breeze was driving a few shards of morning mist. With a little sigh, Rincewind unrolled the ladder. Two minutes later they were standing in the gloom of what appeared to be a large plaza. A few buildings showed through the mist. “Where are we?” said Eric. “Search me.” “You don’t know?” “Not a clue,” said Rincewind. Eric glared at the mist-shrouded architecture. “Fat chance of finding the most beautiful woman in the world in a dump like this,” he said. It occurred to Rincewind to see what they had just climbed out of. He looked up. Above them - a long way above them - and supported on four massive legs, which ran down to a huge wheeled platform, there was undoubtedly a huge wooden horse. More correctly, the rear of a huge wooden horse. The builder could have put the exit hatch in a more dignified place, but for humorous reasons of his own had apparently decided not to. “Er,” said Rincewind. Someone coughed. He looked down. The evaporating mists now revealed a broad circle of armed men, many of them grinning and all of them carrying mass-produced, soulless but above all sharp long spears. “Ah,” said Rincewind. He looked back at the hatchway. It said it all, really. “The only thing I don’t understand,” said the captain of the guard, “is: why two of you? We were expecting maybe a hundred.” He leaned back on his stool, his great plumed helmet in his lap, a pleased smile on his face. “Honestly, you Ephebian!” he said. Talk about laugh! You must think we was born yesterday! All night nothing but sawing and hammering, the next thing there’s a damn great wooden horse outside the gates, so I think, that’s funny, a bloody great wooden horse with airholes. That’s the kind of little detail I notice, see. Airholes. So I muster all the lads and we nips out extra early and drag it in the gates, as per expectations, and then we bides quiet, like, around it, waiting to see what it coughs up. In a manner of speaking. Now,” he pushed his unshaven face close to Rincewind, “you’ve got a choice, see? Top seat or bottom seat, it’s up to you. I just have to put the word in. You play discus with me and I’ll play discus with you.” “What seat?” said Rincewind, reeling from the gusts of garlic. “It’s the war triremes,” said the sergeant cheerfully. “Three seats, see, one above the other? Triremes. You get chained to the oars for years, see, and it’s all according whether you’re in the top seat, up in the fresh air and that, or the bottom seat where” - he grinned - “you’re not. So it’s down to you, lads. Be co-operative and all you’ll need to worry about will be the seagulls. Now. Why only the two of you?” He leaned back again. “Excuse me,” said Eric, “is that Tsort, by any chance?” “You wouldn’t be trying to make fun of me, would you now, boy? Only there’s such a thing as quinquiremes, see? You wouldn’t like that at all.” “No, sir,” said Eric. “If you please, sir, I’m just a little lad lead astray by bad companionship.” “Oh, thank you,” said Rincewind bitterly. “You just accidentally drew a lot of occult circles, did you, and - “ “Sarge! Sarge!” A soldier burst into the guardroom. The sergeant looked up. “There’s another of ‘em, sarge! Right out side the gates this time!” The sergeant grinned triumphantly at Rincewind. “Oh, that’s it, is it?” he said. “You were just the advance party, come to open the gates or whatever. Right. We’ll just go and sort your friends out, and we’ll be right back.” He indicated the captives. “You stay here. If they move, do something horrible to them.” Rincewind and Eric were left alone with the guard. “You know what you’ve done, don’t you,” said Eric. “You’ve only taken us all the way back to the Tsortean Wars! Thousands of Years! We did it at school, the wooden horse, everything! How the beautiful Elenor was kidnapped from the Ephebians - or maybe it was by the Ephebians - and there was this siege to get her back and everything.” He paused. “Hey, that means I’m going to meet her.” He paused again. “Wow!” he said. Rincewind looked around the room. It didn’t look ancient, but then it wouldn’t, because it wasn’t, yet. Everywhere in time was now, once you were there, or then. He tried to remember what little he knew of classical history, but it was just a confusion of battles, one-eyed giants and women launching thousands of ships with their faces. “Don’t you see?” hissed Eric, his glasses aglow. “They must have brought the horse in before the soldiers had hidden in it! We know what’s going to happen! We could make a fortune!” “How, exactly?” “Well...” The boy hesitated. “We could bet on horses, sort of thing.” “Good idea,” said Rincewind. “Yes, and -“ “All we’ve got to do is escape, then find out if they have horse races here, and then really try hard to remember the names of the horses that won races in Tsort thousands of years ago.” They went back to looking glumly at the floor. That was the thing about time travel. You were never ready for it. About the only thing he could hope for, Rincewind decided, was finding da Quirm’s Fountain of Youth and managing to stay alive for a few thousand years so he’d be ready to kill his own grandfather, which was the only aspect of time travel that had ever remotely appealed to him. He had always felt that his ancestors had it coming to them. Funny thing, though. He could remember the famous wooden horse, which had been used to trick a way into the fortified city. He didn’t remember anything about there being two of them. There was something inevitable about the next thought that turned up. “Excuse me,” he said to the guard. “This, er, this second wooden thing outside the gate... it’s probably not a horse, I expect?” “Well, of course you’d know that, wouldn’t you?” said the guard. “You’re spies.” “I bet it’s more oblong and sort of smaller?” said Rincewind, his face a picture of innocent enquiry. “You bet. Pretty unimaginative bastards, aren’t you?” “I see.” Rincewind folded his hands on his lap. “Try to escape,” said the guard. “Go on, just try it. You try it and see what happens.” “I expect your colleagues will be bringing it into the city,” Rincewind went on. “They might do,” the guard conceded. Eric began to giggle. It had just begun to dawn on the guard that there was a lot of shouting going on in the distance. Someone tried to blow a bugle, but the notes gurgled into silence after a few bars. “Bit of a fight going on out there, by the sound of it,” said Rincewind. “People winning their spurs, doing heroic deeds of valour, being noticed by superior officers, that sort of thing. And here’s you hanging around in here with us.” “I’ve got to stick to my post,” said the guard. “Exactly the right attitude,” said Rincewind. “Never mind about everyone else out there fighting valiantly to defend their city and womenfolk against the foe. You stop in here and guard us. That’s the spirit. They’ll probably put up a statue to you in the city square, if there’s one left. ‘He did his duty,’ they’ll write on it.” The soldier appeared to think about this, and while he was doing so there was a terrible splintering creak from the direction of the main gates. “Look,” he said desperately, “if I just pop out for a moment...” “Don’t you worry about us,” said Rincewind encouragingly. “It’s not even as if we’re armed.” “Right,” said the soldier. “Thanks.” He gave Rincewind a worried smile and hurried off in the direction of the noise. Eric looked at Rincewind with something like admiration. “That was actually quite amazing,” he said. “Going to go a long way, that lad,” said Rincewind. “A sound military thinker if ever I saw one. Come on. Let’s run away.” “Where to?” Rincewind sighed. He’d tried to make his basic philosophy clear time and again, and people never got the message. “Don’t you worry about to,” he said. “In my experience that always takes care of itself. The important word is away.” The captain raised his head cautiously over the barricade, and snarled. “It’s just a box, sergeant,” he snapped. “It’s not even as if it could hold one or two men.” “Beg pardon, sir,” said the sergeant, and his face was the face of a man whose world has changed a lot in a few short minutes. “It holds at least four, sir. Corporal Disuse and his squad, sir. I sent them out to open it sir.” “Are you drunk, sergeant?” “Not yet, sir,” said the sergeant, with feeling. “Little boxes don’t eat people, sergeant.” “After that it got angry, sir. You can see what it did to the gates.” The captain peered over the broken timbers again. “I suppose it grew legs and walked over there, did it?” he said sarcastically. The sergeant broke into a relieved grin. At last they seemed to be on the same wavelength. “Got it in one, sir,” he said. “Legs. Hundreds of the little bleeders, sir.” The captain glared at him. The sergeant put on the poker face which has been handed down from NCO to NCO ever since one protoamphibian told another, lower-ranking protoamphibian to muster a squad of newts and Take That Beach. The captain was eighteen and fresh from the academy, where he had passed with flying colours in such subjects as Classical Tactics, Valedictory Odes and Military Grammar. The sergeant was fifty-five, and instead of an education he had spent about forty years attacking or being attacked by harpies, humans, cyclopses, furies and horrible things on legs. He felt put upon. “Well, I’m going to have a look at it, sergeant - “ “- not a good plan, sir, if I may - “ “- and after I’ve had a look at it, sergeant, there is going to be trouble.” The sergeant threw him a salute. “Right you are, sir,” he predicted. The captain snorted and climbed over the barricade towards the box which sat, silent and unmoving, in its circle of devastation. The sergeant, meanwhile, slid into a sitting position behind the stoutest timber he could find and, with determination, pulled his helmet down hard over his ears. Rincewind crept through the streets of the city, with Eric tagging along behind. “Are we going to find Elenor?” the boy said. “No,” said Rincewind firmly. “What we’re going to do is, we’re going to find another way out. And we’re going to go out through it.” “That’s not fair!” “She’s thousands of years older that you! I mean attraction of the mature woman, all right, but it’d never work out.” “I demand that you take me to her,” wailed Eric. “Avaunt!” Rincewind stopped so sharply that Eric walked into him. “Listen,” he said. “We’re in the middle of the most fatuous war there has ever been, any minute now thousands of warriors will be locked in mortal combat, and you want me to go and find this over-rated female and say, my friend wants to know if you’ll go out with him. Well, I won’t.” Rincewind stalked up to another gateway in the city wall; it was smaller that the main one, didn’t have any guards, and had a wicket gate in it. Rincewind slid back the bolts. “This isn’t anything to do with us,” he said. “We haven’t even been born yet, we’re not old enough to fight, it isn’t our business and we’re not going to do anything more to upset the course of history, all right?” He opened the door, which saved the entire Ephebian army a bit of effort. They were just about to knock. All day long the noise of battle raged. This was chronicled by later historians, who went on at length about beautiful women being kidnapped, fleets being assembled, wooden animals being constructed, heroes fighting one another, and completely failed to mention the part played by Rincewind, Eric and the Luggage. The Ephebians did notice, however, how enthusiastically the Tsortean soldiery ran towards them... not so much keen to get into battle as very anxious to get away from something else. The historians also failed to note another interesting fact about ancient Klatchian warfare, which was that it was still at that stage quite primitive and just between soldiers and hadn’t yet been thrown open to the general public. Basically, everyone knew that one side or the other would win, a few unlucky generals would get their heads chopped off, large sums of money would be paid in tribute to the winners, everyone would go home for the harvest and that bloody woman would have to make up her mind whose side she was on, the hussy. So Tsortean street life went on more or less as normal, with the citizens stepping around the occasional knots of fighting men or trying to sell them kebabs. Several of the more enterprising ones began to dismantle the wooden horse for souvenirs. Rincewind didn’t attempt to understand it. He sat down at a street café and watched a spirited battle take place between market stalls, so that amid the cries of “Ripe olives!” there were the screams of the wounded and shouts of “Mind your backs please, mêlée coming through.” The hard part was watching the soldiers apologise when they bumped into customers. The even harder part was getting the café owner to accept a coin bearing the head of someone whose great-great-great-grand father wasn’t born yet. Fortunately, Rincewind was able to persuade the man that the future was another country. “And a lemonade for the boy,” he added. “My parents let me drink wine,” said Eric. “I’m allowed one glass.” “I bet you are,” said Rincewind. The owner industriously swabbed the tabletop, spreading its coating of dregs and spilt retsina into a thin varnish. “Up for the fight, are you?” he said. “In a manner of speaking,” said Rincewind guardedly. “I shouldn’t wander about too much,” said the owner. “They say a civilian let the Ephebians in - not that I’ve got anything against the Ephebians, a fine body of men,” he added hurriedly, as a knot of soldiery jogged past. “A stranger, they say. That’s cheating, using civilians. There’s people out looking for him so’s they can explain.” He made a chopping motion with his hand. Rincewind stared at the hand as though hypnotised. Eric opened his mouth. Eric screeched and clutched at his shins. “Have they got a description?” Rincewind said. “Don’t think so.” “Well best of luck to them,” said Rincewind, rather more cheerfully. “What’s up with the lad?” “Cramp.” When the man had gone back behind his counter Eric hissed, “You didn’t have to kick me!” “You’re quite right. It was an entirely voluntary act on my part.” A heavy hand dropped on to Rincewind’s shoulder. He looked around and up into the face of an Ephebian centurion. A soldier beside him said: “That’s the one, sarge. I’d bet a year’s salt.” “who’d of thought it?” said the sergeant. He gave Rincewind an evil grin. “Up we come, chummy. The chief would like a word with you.” Some talk of Alexander and some of Hercules, of Hector and Lysander and such great names as these. In fact, throughout the history of the multiverse people have said nice things about every cauliflower-eared sword-swinger, at least in their vicinity, on the basis that it was a lot safer that way. It’s funny how the people have always respected the kind of commander who comes up with strategies like “I want fifty thousand of you chappies to rush at the enemy”, whereas the more thoughtful commanders who say things like “Why don’t we build a damn great wooden horse and then nip in at the back date while they’re all round the thing waiting for us to come out” are considered only one step above common oiks and not the kind of person you’d lend money to. This is because most of the first type of commanders are brave men, whereas cowards make far better strategists. Rincewind was dragged before the Ephebian leaders, who had set up a command post in the city’s main square so that they could oversee the storming of the central citadel, which loomed over the city on its vertiginous hill. They were not too close, however, because the defenders were dropping rocks. They were discussing strategy when Rincewind arrived. The consensus seemed to be that if really large numbers of men were sent to storm the mountain, then enough might survive the rocks to take the citadel. This is essentially the basis of all military thinking. Several of the more impressively dressed chieftains glanced up when Rincewind and Eric approached, gave them a look which suggested that maggots were more interesting, and turned away again. The only person who seemed to be pleased to see them - - didn’t look like a soldier at all. He had the armour, which was tarnished, and he had the helmet, which looked as though its plume had been used as a paintbrush, but he was skinny and had all the military bearing of a weasel. There was something vaguely familiar about his face, though. Rincewind thought it looked quite handsome. “Pleased to see them” was only a comparative description. He was the only one who acknowledged their existence. He was lounging in a chair and feeding the Luggage with sandwiches. “Oh, hallo,” he said gloomily. “It’s you.” It was amazing how much information can be crammed in to a couple of words. To achieve the same effect the man could have said: It’s been a long night, I’m having to organise everything from wooden horse building to the laundry rota, these idiots are about as much help as a rubber hammer, I never wanted to be here anyway and, on top of all this there’s you. Hallo, you. He indicated the Luggage, which opened its lid expectantly. “This yours?” he said. “Sort of,” said Rincewind guardedly. “I can’t afford to pay for anything it’s done, mind you.” “Funny little thing, isn’t it?” said the soldier. “We found it herding fifty Tsorteans into a corner. Why was it doing that, do you think?” Rincewind thought quickly. “It has this amazing ability to know when people are thinking about harming me,” he said. He glared at the Luggage as one might glare at a sly, evil-tempered and generally reprehensible family pet who, after years of biting visitors, has rolled over on its scabby back and played as Lovable Puppy to impress the bailiffs. “Yes?” said the man, without much surprise. “Magic, is it?” “Yes.” “Something in the wood, is it?” “Yes.” “Good job we didn’t build the sodding horse out of it, then.” “Yes.” “Got into it by magic, did you?” “Yes.” “Thought so.” He threw another sandwich at the Luggage. “Where you from?” Rincewind decided to come clean. “The future,” he said. This didn’t have the expected effect. The man just nodded. “Oh,” he said, and then he said, “Did we win?” “Yes.” “Oh. I suppose you can’t remember the results of any horse races?” said the man, without much hope. “No.” “I thought you probably wouldn’t. why did you open the gate for us?” It occurred to Rincewind that saying it was because he had always been a firm admirer of the Ephebian political position would not, strangely enough, be the right thing to do. He decided to try the truth again. It was a novel approach and worth experimenting with. “I was looking for a way out,” he said. “To run away.” “Yes.” “Good man. Only sensible thing, in the circumstances.” He noticed Eric, who was staring at the other captains clustered around their table and deep in argument. “You, lad,” he said. “Want to be a soldier when you grow up?” “No, sir.” The man brightened a bit. “That’s the stuff,” he said. “I want to be a eunuch, sir,” Eric added. Rincewind’s head turned as though it was being dragged. “Why?” he said, and then came up with the obvious answer at the same as Eric: “Because you get to work in the harem all day long,” they chorused slowly. The captain coughed. “You’re not this boy’s teacher, are you?” he said. “No.” “Do you think anyone has explained to him - ?” “No.” “Perhaps it would be a good idea if I got one of the centurions to have a word? You’d be amazed at the grasp of language those chaps have got.” “Do him the power of good, I expect,” said Rincewind. The soldier picked up his helmet, sighed, nodded at the sergeant and smoothed out the creases in his cloak. It was a grubby cloak. “I think I’m expected to tell you off, or something,” he said. “What for?” “Spoiling the war, apparently.” “Spoiling the war?” The soldier sighed. “Come on. Let’s go for a stroll. Sergeant - you and a couple of lads, please.” A stone whistled down from the fort high above them, and shattered. “They can hold out for bloody weeks, up there.” Said the soldier gloomily, as they walked away with the Luggage padding patiently behind them. “I’m Lavaeolus. Who’re you?” “He’s my demon,” said Eric. Lavaeolus raised an eyebrow, the closest he ever came to expressing surprise at anything “Is he? I suppose it takes all sorts. Any good at getting into places, is he?” “He’s more the getting-out kind,” said Eric. “Right,” said  Lavaeolus. He stopped beside a building and walked up and down a bit with his hands in his pockets, tapping on the flagstones with the toe of his sandal. “Just here, I think, sergeant,” he said after a while. “Right you are, sir.” “Look at that lot, will you?” said Lavaeolus, while the sergeant and his men started to lever up the stones. “That bunch around the table. Brave lads, I’ll grant you, but look at them. Too busy posing for triumphant statues and making sure the historians spell their names right. Bloody years we’ve been laying siege to this place. More military, they said. You know, they actually enjoy it? I mean, when all’s said and done, who cares? Let’s just get it over with and go home, that’s what I say.” “Found it, sir,” said the sergeant. “Right.” Lavaeolus didn’t look round. “O-kay.” He rubbed his hands together. “Let’s sort this out, and then we can get an early night. Would you care to accompany me? Your pet might be useful.” “What are we going to do?” said Rincewind suspiciously. “We’re just going to meet some people.” “Is it dangerous?” A stone smashed through the roof of a building nearby. “No, not really,” said Lavaeolus. “Compared to staying here, I mean. And if the rest to them try to storm the place, you know, in a proper military way - “ The hole led into a tunnel. The tunnel, after winding a bit, led to stairs. Lavaeolus mooched along it, occasionally kicking bits of fallen masonry as if he had a personal grudge against them. “Er,” said Rincewind, “where does this lead?” “Oh, it’s just a secret passageway into the centre of this citadel.” “You know, I thought it would be something like that,” said Rincewind. “I’ve got an instinct for it, you know. And I expect all the really top Tsorteans will be up there, will they?” “I hope so,” said Lavaeolus, trudging up the steps. “With lots of guards?” “Dozens, I imagine.” “Highly trained, too?” Lavaeolus nodded. “The best.” “And this is where we’re going,” said Rincewind, determined to explore the full horror of the plan as one probes the site of a rotting tooth. “That’s right.” “All six of us.” “And your box, of course.” “Oh, yes,” said Rincewind, making a face in the darkness. The sergeant tapped him gently on the shoulder and leaned forward. “Don’t you worry about the captain, sir” he said. “He’s got the finest military brain on the continent.” “How do you know? Has anyone ever seen it?” said Rincewind. “You see, sir, what it is, he likes to get it over with without anyone getting hurt, sir, especially him. That’s why he dreams up things like the horse, sir. And bribing people and that. We got into civvies last night and come in and got drunk in a pub with one of the palace cleaners, see, and found out about this tunnel.” “Yes, but secret passages!” said Rincewind. “There’ll be guards and everything at the other end!” “No, sir. They use it to store the cleaning things, sir.” There was a clang in the darkness ahead of them. Lavaeolus had tripped over a mop. “Sergeant?” “Sir?” “Just open the door, will you?” Eric was tugging at Rincewind’s robe. “What?” said Rincewind testily. “You know who Lavaeolus is, don’t you?” whispered Eric. “Well -“ “He’s Lavaeolus!” “Get away?” “Don’t you know the Classics?” “That isn’t one of these horse race we’re supposed to remember, is it?” Eric rolled his eyes. “Lavaeolus was responsible for the fall of Tsort, on account of being so cunning,” he said. “And then afterwards it took him ten years to get home and he had all sorts of adventures with temptresses and sirens and sensual witches.” “Well I can see why you’ve been studying him. Ten years, eh? Where did he live?” “About two hundred miles away,” said Eric earnestly. “Kept getting lost, did he?” “And when he got home he fought his wife’s suitors and everything, and his dear dog recognised him and died.” “Oh, dear.” “It was the carrying his slippers in its mouth for fifteen years that killed it off.” “Shame.” “And you know what, demon? All this hasn’t happened yet. We could save him all that trouble!” Rincewind thought about this. “We could tell him to get a better navigator, for a start,” he said. There was a creak. The soldiers had got the door open. “Everyone fall in, or whatever the bloody stupid command is,” said Lavaeolus. “The magic box to the front, please. No killing anyone unless it’s really necessary. Try not to damage things. Right. Forward.” The door led into a column-lined corridor. There was the distant murmur of voices. The troop crept towards the sound until it reached a heavy curtain. Lavaeolus took a deep breath, pushed it aside and stepped forward and launched into a prepared speech. “Now, I want to make myself absolutely clear,” he said. “I don’t want there to be any unpleasantness of any kind, or any shouting for guards and so forth. Or indeed any shouting at all. We will just take the young lady and go home, which is where anyone of any sense ought to be. Otherwise I shall really have to put everyone to the sword, and I hate having to do things like that.” The audience to this statement did not appear to be impressed. This was because it was a small child on a potty. Lavaeolus changed mental gear and went on smoothly: “On the other hand, if you don’t tell me where everyone is, I shall ask the sergeant here to give you a really hard smack.” The child took its thumb out of its mouth. “Mummy is seeing to Cassie,” it said. “Are you Mr Beekle?” “I don’t think so,” said Lavaeolus. “Mr Beekle is a silly.” The child withdrew its thumb and, with the air of one concluding some exhaustive research, added: “Mr Beekle is a poo.” “Sergeant?” “Sir?” “Guard this child.” “Yessir. Corporal?” “Sarge?” “Take care of the kid.” “Yes, sarge. Private Archeios?” “Yes, corp,” said the soldier, his voice gloomy with prescience. “See to the sprog.” Private Archeios looked around. There was only Rincewind and Eric left and, while it was true that a civilian was in every respect the lowest possible rank there was, coming somewhere after the regimental donkey, the expressions on their faces suggested that they weren’t about to take any orders. Lavaeolus wandered across the room and listened at another curtain. “We could tell him all kinds of stuff about his future,” hissed Eric. “He had - I mean, he will have - all kinds of things happen to him. Shipwrecks and magic and all his crew turned into animals and stuff like that.” “Yes. We could say ‘Walk home’,” said Rincewind. The curtain swished aside. There was a woman there - plump, good-looking in a slightly faded way, wearing a black dress and the beginnings of a moustache. A number of children of varying sizes were trying to hide behind her. Rincewind counted at least seven of them. “Who’s that?” said Eric. “Ahem,” said Rincewind. “I rather think it’s Elenor of Tsort.” “Don’t be silly,” whispered Eric. “She looks like a mum. Elenor was much younger and was all -“ His voice gave out and he made several wavy motions with his hand, indicative of the shape of a woman who would probably be unable to keep her balance. Rincewind tried not to catch the sergeant’s eye. “Yes,” he said, going a bit red. “Well, you see. Er. You’re absolutely right, but well, it’s been a long siege, hasn’t it, what with one thing and another.” “I don’t see what that’s got to do with it,” said Eric sternly. “The Classics never said anything about children. They said she spent all her time mooning around the towers of Tsort and pining for her lost love.” “Well, yes, I expect she did pine a bit,” said Rincewind. “Only, you know, you can only pine so much, and it must have been a bit chilly up on those towers.” “You can catch your death, mooning,” nodded the sergeant. Lavaeolus watched the woman thoughtfully. Then he bowed. “I expect you know why we’re here, my lady?” he said. “If you touch any of the children I shall scream,” said Elenor flatly. Once again Lavaeolus showed that along with his guerilla abilities was a marked reluctance to waste a prepared speech once he had it all sorted out in his head. “Fair maiden,” he began. “We have faced many dangers in order to rescue you and take you back to your loved...” His voice faltered. “...ones. Er. This has all gone terribly wrong, hasn’t it?” “I can’t help it,” said Elenor. “The siege seemed to go on for such a long time and King Mausoleum was very kind and I never liked it much in Ephebe anyway -“ “Where is everyone now? The Tsorteans, I mean. Apart from you.” “They’re all out on the battlements throwing rocks, if you must know.” Lavaeolus flung up his hands in desperation. “Couldn’t you, you know, have slipped us a note or something? Or invited us to one of the christenings?” “You all seemed to be enjoying yourselves so much,” she said. Lavaeolus turned and shrugged gloomily. “All right,” he said. “Fine. QED. No problem. I wanted to leave home and spend ten years sitting in a swamp with a bunch of meat-headed morons. It wasn’t as if I had anything important to do back home, just a little kingdom to rule, that sort of thing. O-kay. Well, then. We might as well be off. I’m sure I don’t know how I shall break it to everyone,” he said bitterly, “they were having such fun. They’ll probably have a bloody great banquet and laugh about it and get drunk, it’d be their style.” He looked at Rincewind and Eric. “You might as well tell me what happens next,” he said. “I’m sure you know.” “Um,” said Rincewind. “The city burns down,” said Eric. “Especially the topless towers. I didn’t get to see them,” he added sulkily. “Who did it? Their lot or our lot?” said Lavaeolus. “Your lot, I think,” said Eric. Lavaeolus sighed. “Sounds like them,” he said. He turned to Elenor. “Our lot - that is, my lot - are going to burn down the city,” he said. “It sounds very heroic. It’s just the kind of thing they go for. It might be a good idea to come with us. Bring the kids. Make it a day out for all the family, why don’t you?” Eric pulled Rincewind’s ear towards his mouth. “This is a joke, isn’t it?” he said. “She’s not really the fair Elenor, you’re just having me on?” “It’s always the same with these hot-blooded types,” said Rincewind. “They definitely go downhill at thirty-five.” “It’s the pasta that does it,” said the sergeant. “But I read where she was the most beautiful -“ “Ah, well,” said the sergeant. “If you’re going to go around reading -“ “The thing is,” said Rincewind quickly, “it’s what they call dramatic necessity. No-one’s going to be interested in a war fought over a, a quite pleasant lady, moderately attractive in a good light. Are they?” Eric was nearly in tears. “But it said her face launched a thousand ships - “ “That’s what you call a metaphor,” said Rincewind. “Lying,” the sergeant explained, kindly. “Anyway, you shouldn’t believe everything you read in the classics,” Rincewind added. “They never check their facts. They’re just out to sell legends.” Lavaeolus, meanwhile, was deep in argument with Elenor. “All right, all right,” he said. “Stay here if you like. Why should I care? Come on, you lot. We’re going. What are you doing, Private Archeios?” “I’m being a horse, sir,” explained the soldier. “He’s Mr poo,” said the child, who was wearing Private Archaios’ helmet. “Well, when you’ve finished being a horse, find us an oil lamp. I caught my knees a right wallop in that tunnel.” Flames roared over Tsort. The entire hubward sky was red. Rincewind and Eric watched from a rock down by the beach. “They’re not topless towers, anyway,” said Eric after a while. “I can see the tops.” “I think they meant the toppleless towers,” Rincewind hazarded, as another one collapsed, red-hot, into the ruins of the city. “And that was wrong, too.” They watched in silence for a while longer, and the Eric said, “Funny, that. The way you tripped over the Luggage and dropped the lamp and everything.” “Yes,” said Rincewind shortly. “Makes you think history is always going to find a way to work itself out.” “Yes.” “Good, though, the way your luggage rescued everyone.” “Yes.” “Funny to see all those kids riding on its back.” “Yes.” “Everyone seems quite pleased about it.” The opposing armies were, at any rate. No-one was bothered to ask the civilians, whose views on warfare were never reliable. Among the soldiery, at least among the soldiery of a certain rank, there was a lot of back-slapping and telling of anecdotes, jovial exchanging of shields and a general consensus that, what with the fires and sieges and armadas and wooden horses and everything, it had been a jolly good war. The sound of singing echoed across the wine-dark sea. “Hark at them,” said Lavaeolus, emerging from the gloom around the beached Ephebian ships. “It’ll be fifteen choruses of ‘The Ball of Philodelphus’ next, you mark my words. Lot of idiots with their brains in their jockstraps.” He sat down on the rock. “Bastards,” he said, with feeling. “Do you think Elenor will be able to explain it all to her boyfriend?” said Eric. “I imagine so,” said Lavaeolus. “They usually can.” “She did get married. And she’s got lots of children,” said Eric. Lavaeolus shrugged. “A moment’s wild passion,” he said. He gave Rincewind a sharp look. “Hey, you, demon,” he said. “I’d like a quiet word, if I may.” He led Rincewind towards the boats, pacing heavily across the damp sand as if there was a lot on weighing on his mind. “I’m going home tonight, on the tide,” he said. “No sense in hanging about here, what with the war being over and everything.” “Good idea.” “If there’s one thing I hate, it’s sea voyages,” said Lavaeolus. He gave the nearest boat a kick. “It’s all idiots striding around and shouting, you know? Pull this, lower that, avast the other. And I get seasick, too.” “It’s heights with me,” said Rincewind, sympathetically. Lavaeolus kicked the boat again, obviously wrestling with some big emotional problem. “The thing is,” he said, wretchedly. “You wouldn’t happen to know if I get home all right, would you?” “What?” “It’s only a few hundred miles, it shouldn’t take too long, should it?” said Lavaeolus, radiating anxiety like a lighthouse. “Oh.” Rincewind looked at the man’s face. Ten years, he thought. And all kinds of weird stuff with winged wossnames and sea-monsters. On the other hand, would it do him any good to know? “You get home okay,” he said. “You’re well known for it, in fact. There’s whole legends about you going home.” “Phew.” Lavaeolus leaned against a hull, took off his helmet and wiped his forehead. “That’s a load off my mind, I’ll tell you. I was afraid the gods might have a grudge against me.” Rincewind said nothing. “They get a bit angry if you go around thinking up ideas like wooden horses and tunnels,” said Lavaeolus. “they’re traditionalists, you know. They prefer people just to hack at one another. I thought, you see, that if I could show people how to get what they wanted more easily they’d stop being so bloody stupid.” From further along the shoreline came the sound of male voices raised in song: “ - vestal virgins, Came down from Heliodeliphilodelphiboschromenos, And when the ball was over, There were - “ “It never works,” said Rincewind. “It’s got to be worth a try, though. Hasn’t it?” “Oh, yes.” Lavaeolus slapped him on the back. “Cheer up,” he said. “Things can only get better.” They walked out into the dark breakers  where Lavaeolus’ ship was riding at anchor, and Rincewind watched him swim out and climb aboard. After a while the oars were shipped, or unshipped, or whatever they called it when they were stuck through the holes in the sides, and the boat moved slowly out into the bay. A few voices floated back over the surf. “Point the pointed end that way, sergeant.” “Aye, aye, sir!” “And don’t shout. Did I tell you to shout? Why do you all have to shout? Now I’m going downstairs for a lie down.” Rincewind trudged back up the beach. “The trouble is,” he said, “is that things never get better, they just say the same, only more so. But he’s going to have enough to worry about.” Behind him, Eric blew his nose. “That was the saddest thing I’ve ever heard,” he said. From further along the beach the Ephebian and Tsortean armies were still in full voice around their convivial campfires. “ - the village harpy she was there - “ “Come on,” said Rincewind. “Let’s go home.” “You know the funny thing about his name?” said Eric, as they strolled along the sand. “No. what do you mean?” “Lavaeolus means ‘Rinser of winds’.” Rincewind looked at him. “He’s my ancestor?” he said. “Who knows?” said Eric. “Oh. Gosh.” Rincewind thought about this. “Well, I whish I’d told him to avoid getting married. Or visiting Ankh-Morpork.” “It probably isn’t even built yet...” Rincewind tried snapping his fingers. This time it worked.   Astfgl sat back. He wondered what did happen to Lavaeolus. Gods and demons, being creatures outside of time, don’t move in it like bubbles in the stream. Everything happens at the same time for them. This should mean they know everything that is going to happen because, in a sense, it already has. The reason they don’t is that reality is a big place with a lot of interesting things going on, and keeping track of all of them is like trying to use a very big video recorder with no freeze button or tape counter. It’s usually easier just to wait and see. One day he’d have to go and look. Right here and now, insofar as the words can be employed about an outside of space and time, matters were not progressing well. Eric seemed marginally more likeable, which wasn’t acceptable. He also appeared to have changed the course of history, although this is impossible since the only thing you can do to the course of history is facilitate it. What was needed was something climactic. Something really soul-destroying. The Demon King realised he was twirling his moustaches. The trouble with snapping your fingers is that you never knew what it would lead to... Everything around Rincewind was black. It wasn’t simply an absence of colour. It was a darkness that flatly denied any possibility that colour might ever have existed. His feet weren’t touching anything, and he appeared to be floating. There was something else missing. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. “Are you there, Eric?” he ventured. A clear voice nearby said: “Yes. Are you there, demon?” “Ye-ess.” “Where are we? Are we falling?” “I don’t think so,” said Rincewind, speaking from experience. “There’s no rushing wind. You get a rushing wind when you’re falling. Also your past life flashes before your eyes, and I haven’t seen anything I recognise yet.” “Rincewind?” “Yes?” “When I open my mouth no sounds come out.” “Don’t be - “ Rincewind hesitated. He wasn’t making any sound either. He knew what he was saying, it just wasn’t reaching the outside world. But he could hear Eric. Perhaps the words just gave up on his ears and went straight to his brains. “It’s probably some kind of magic, or something,” he said. “There’s no air. That’s why there no sound. All the little bits of air sort of knock together, like marbles. That’s how you get sound, you know.” “Is it? Gosh.” “So we’re surrounded by absolutely nothing,” said Rincewind. “Total nothing.” He hesitated. “There’s a word for it,” he said. “It’s what you get when there’s nothing left and everything’s been used up.” “Yes. I think it’s called the bill,” said Eric. Rincewind gave this some thought. It sounded about right. “Okay,” he said. “The bill. That’s where we are. Floating in absolute bill. Total, complete, rock-hard bill.” Astfgl was going frantic now. He had spells that could find anyone anywhere, anywhen, and they weren’t anywhere. One minute he was watching them on the beach, the next... nothing. That left only two other places. Fortunately he chose the wrong one first.   “Even some stars would be nice,” said Eric. “There’s something very odd about all this,” said Rincewind. “I mean, do you feel cold?” “No.” “Well do you feel warm?” “No. I don’t feel anything much, really.” “No hot, no cold, no light, no heat, no air,” said Rincewind. “Just bill. How long have we been here?” “Don’t know. Seems like ages, but...” “Aha. I’m not sure there’s any time, either. Not what you’d call proper time. Just the kind of time people make up as they go along.” “Well, I didn’t expect to see anybody else here,” said a voice by Rincewind’s ear. It was a slightly put-upon voice, a voice made for complaining in, but at least there was no hint of menace. Rincewind let himself float around. A little rat-faced man was sitting cross-legged, watching him with vague suspicion. He had a pencil behind one ear. “Ah. Hallo,” said Rincewind. “And where is here, exactly?” “Nowhere. S’whole point, innit?” “Nowhere at all?” “Not yet.” “All right,” said Eric. “When is it going to be somewhere?” “Hard to say,” said the little man. “Looking at the pair of you, and taking one thing with another, metabolic rates and that, I’d say that this place is due to become somewhere in, well, give or take a bit, in about five hundred seconds. “He began to unwrap the pack in his lap. “Fancy a sandwich while we’re waiting?” “What? Would I - “ At this point Rincewind’s stomach, aware that if his brain was allowed to make the running it was in danger of losing the initiative, cut in and prompted him to say, “What sort?” “Search me. What sort would you like it to be?” “Sorry?” “Don’t mess about. Just say what sort you’d like it to be.” “Oh?” Rincewind stared at him. “Well, if you’ve got egg and cress -“ “Let there be egg and cress, sort of  thing,” said the little man. He reached into the package, and proffered a white triangle to Rincewind. “Gosh,” said Rincewind. “What a coincidence.” “It should be starting any minute now,” said the little man. “Over - not that they’ve got any proper directions sorted out yet, of course, not them - there.” “All I can see is darkness,” said Eric. “No you can’t,” said the little man, triumphantly. “You’re just seeing what there is before the darkness has been installed, sort of thing.” He gave the not-yet-darkness a dirty look. “Come on,” he said. “Why are we waiting, why-eye are we waiting?” “Waiting for what?” said Rincewind. “Everything.” “Everything what?” said Rincewind. “Everything. Not everything what. Everything, sort of thing.”   Astfgl peered through the swirling gas clouds. At least he was in the right place. The whole point about the end of the universe was that you couldn’t go past it accidentally. The last few embers winked out. Time and space collided silently, and collapsed. Astfgl coughed. It can get so very lonely, when you’re twenty million light years from home. “Anyone there?” he said. YES. The voice was right by his ear. Even demon kings can shiver. “Apart from you, I mean,” he said. “Have you seen anybody?” YES. “Who?” EVERYONE. Astfgl sighed. “I mean anyone recently.” IT’S BEEN VERY QUIET, said Death. “Damn.” WERE YOU EXPECTING SOMEONE ELSE? “I thought there might be someone called Rincewind, but -“ Astfgl began. Death’s eyesockets flared red. THE WIZARD? he said. “No, he’s a dem -“ Astfgl stopped. For what would have been several seconds, had time still existed, he floated in a state of horrible suspicion. “A human?” he growled. IT IS STRETCHING THE TERM A LITTLE, BUT YOU ARE BROADLY CORRECT. “Well I’ll be damned!” Astfgl said. I BELIEVE YOU ALREADY ARE. The Demon King extended a shaking hand. His mounting fury was over-ridding his sense of style; his red silk gloves ripped as the talons unfolded. And then, because it’s never a good idea to get on the wrong side of anyone with a scythe, Astfgl said, “Sorry you’ve been troubled,” and vanished. Only when he judged himself out of Death’s extremely acute hearing did he scream his rage. Nothingness uncoiled its interminable length through the draughty spaces at the end of time. Death waited. After a while his skeletal fingers began to drum on the handle of his scythe. Darkness lapped around him. There wasn’t even any infinity any more. He attempted to whistle a few snatches of unpopular songs between his teeth, but the sound was simply sucked into nothingness. Forever was over. All the sands had fallen. The great race between entropy and energy had been run, and the favourite had been the winner after all. Perhaps he ought to sharpen the blade again? No. Not much point, really. Great roils of absolutely nothing stretched into what would have been called the distance, if there had been a space-time reference frame to give words like “distance” any sensible meaning any more. There didn’t seem to be much to do. PERHAPS IT’S TIME TO CALL IT A DAY. He thought. Death turned to go but, just as he did so, he heard the faintest of noises. It was to sound what one photon is to light, so weak and feeble that it would have passed entirely unheard in the din of an operating universe. It was a tiny piece of matter, popping into existence. Death stalked over to the point of arrival and watched carefully. It was a paperclip. Well, it was a start. There was another pop, which left a small white shirt-button spinning gently in the vacuum. Death relaxed a little. Of course, it was going to take some time. There was going to be an interlude before all this got complicated enough to produce gas clouds, galaxies, planets and continents, let alone tiny corkscrew-shaped things wiggling around in slimy pools and wondering whether evolution was worth all the bother of growing fins and legs and things. But it indicated the start of an unstoppable trend. All he had to do was be patient, and he was good at that. Pretty soon there’d  be living creatures, developing like mad, running and laughing in the new sunlight. Growing tired. Growing old. Death sat back. He could wait. Whenever they needed him, he’d be there.   The Universe came into being. Any created-again cosmogonist will tell you that all the interesting stuff happened in the firs couple of minutes, when nothingness bunched together to form space and time and lots of really tiny black holes appeared and so on. After that, they say, it became just a matter of, well, matter. It was basically all over bar the microwave radiation. Seen from close by, though, it had a certain gaudy attraction. The little man sniffed. “Too showy,” he said. “You don’t need all that noise. It could just as easily have been a Big Hiss, or a bit of music.” “Could it?” said Rincewind. “Yeah, and it looked pretty iffy around the two picosecond mark. Definitely a bit of ropey filling-in. but that’s how it goes these days. No craftsmanship. When I was a lad it took days to make a universe. You could take pride in it. Now they just throw it together and it’s back on the lorry and away. And, you know what?” “No?” said Rincewind weakly. “They pinches stuff off the site. They finds someone nearby who wants to expand their universe a bit, next thing you know they’ve had it away with a bunch of firmament and flogged it for an extension somewhere.” Rincewind stared at him. “Who are you?” The man took the pencil from behind his ear and looked reflectively at the space around Rincewind. “I makes things,” he said. “What sort of things?” “What sort of things would you like?” “You’re the Creator?” The little man looked very embarrassed. “Not the. Not the. Just a. I don’t contract for the big stuff, the stars, the gas giants, the pulsars and so on. I just specialise in what you might call the bespoke trade.” He gave them a look of defiant pride. “I do all my own trees, you know,” he confided. “Craftsmanship. Takes years to learn how to make a tree. Even the conifers.” “Oh,” said Rincewind. “I don’t get someone in to finish them off. No sub-contracting, that’s my motto. The buggers always keep you hanging about while they’re installing stars or something for someone else. “The little man sighed. “You know, people think it must all be very easy, creating. They think you just have to move on the face of the waters and wave your hands a bit. It’s not like that at all.” “It isn’t?” The little man scratched his nose again. “You soon run out of ides for snowflakes, for example.” “Oh.” “You start thinking it’d be a doddle to sneak in a few identical ones.” “You do?” “You think to yourself, ‘There’s a billion trillion squillion of them, no-one’s going to notice’. But that’s where professionalism comes in, sort of thing.” “It does?” “Some people” - and here the creator looked sharply at the unformed matter still streaming past - “think it’s enough to install a few basic physical formulas and then take the money and run. A billion years later you got leaks all over the sky, black holes the size of your head, and when you pray up to complain there’s just a girl on the counter who says she don’t know where the boss is. I think people appreciate the personal touch, don’t you?” “Ah,” said Rincewind. “So... when people get struck by lightning... er... it’s not just because of all that stuff about electrical discharges and high points and everything... er... you actually mean it?” “Oh, not me. I don’t run the things. It’s a big enough job just building ‘em, you can’t expect me to operate them as well. There’s a load of other universes, you know,” he added, a slight note of accusation in his voice. “Got a list of jobs as long as your arm.” He reached underneath him and produced a large, leatherbound book, which he had apparently been sitting on. It opened with a creak. Rincewind felt a tugging at his robe. “Look,” said Eric. “This isn’t really... Him, is it?” “He says it is,” said Rincewind. “What are we doing here?” “I don’t know.” The creator glared at him. “A little quiet there, please,” he said. “But listen,” hissed Eric, “if he really is the creator of the world, that sandwich is a religious relic!” “Gosh,” said Rincewind weakly. He hadn’t eaten for ages. He wondered what the penalty was for eating a venerated object. It was probably severe. “You could put it in a temple somewhere and millions of people would come to look at it.” Rincewind cautiously levered up the top slice of bread. “It’s got no mayonnaise in it,” he said. “Will that still count?” The creator cleared his throat, and began to read aloud. Astfgl surfed across the entropy slope, an angry red spark against the swirls of interspace. He was so angry now that the last vestiges of self-control were slipping away; his jaunty cap with its stylish hornlets had become a mere wisp of crimson dangling from the tip of one of the great coiled ramshorns that framed his skull. With a rather sensuous ripping noise the red silk across his back tore open and his wings unfolded. They are conventionally represented as leathery, but leather wouldn’t survive more than a few seconds in that environment. Besides, it doesn’t fold up very well. These wings were made of magnetism and shaped space, and spread out until they were a faint curtain against the incandescent firmament and they beat as slowly as the rise of civilisations. They still looked batlike, but that was just for the sake of tradition. Somewhere around the 29th millennium he was overtaken, quite without noticing, by something small and oblong and probably even angrier than he was. Eight spells go to make up the world. Rincewind knew that well enough. He knew that the book which contained them was the Octavo, because it still existed in the library of the Unseen University - currently inside a welded iron box at the bottom of a specially-dug shaft, where its magical radiations could be kept under control. Rincewind had wondered how it had all started. He’d imagined a sort of explosion in reverse, with interstellar gases roaring together to form Great A’Tuin, or at least a roll of thunder or something. Instead there was a faint, musical twang, and where the Discworld hadn’t been, there the Discworld was, as if it had always been hiding somewhere the whole time. He also realised that the feeling of falling he had so recently learned to live with was one he was probably going to die with, too. As the world appeared beneath him it brought this aeon’s special offer - gravity, available in a choice of strengths from your nearest massive planetary body. He said, as so often happens on these occasions, “Aargh.” The creator, still sitting serenely in mid-air, appeared beside him as he plummeted. “Nice clouds, don’t you think? Done a good job on the clouds,” he said. “Aargh.” Rincewind repeated. “Something the matter?” “Aargh.” “That’s humans for you,” said the creator. “Always rushing off somewhere.” He leaned closer. “It’s not up to me, of course, but I’ve often wondered what it is that goes through your heads.” “It’s going to be my feet in a minute!” screamed Rincewind. Eric, falling alongside him, tugged at his ankle. “That’s not the way to talk to the creator of the universe!” he shouted. “Just tell him to do something, make the ground soft or something!” “O, I dunno if I could do that,” said the creator. “It’s causality regulations. I’d have the Inspector down on me like a ton of, a ton of, a ton of weight,” he added. “I could probably knock you up a really spongy bog. Or quicksand’s very popular at the moment. I could do you a complete quicksand with marsh and swamp en suite, no problem.” “!” said Rincewind. “You’re going to have to speak up a bit, I’m sorry. Wait a moment.” There was another harmonious twanging noise. When Rincewind opened his eyes he was standing on a beach. So was Eric. The creator floated nearby. There was no rushing wind. He hadn’t go so much as a bruise. “I just wedged a thingy in the velocities and positions,” said the creator, noticing his expression. “Now: what was it you were saying?” “I rather wanted to stop plunging to my death,” said Rincewind. “Oh. Good. Glad that’s sorted out, then.” The creator looked around distractedly. “You haven’t seen my book around, have you? I thought I had it in my hand when I started.” He sighed. “Lose me own head next. I done a whole world once and completely left out the fingles. Not one of the buggers. Couldn’t get ‘em at the time, told myself I could nip back when they were in stock, completely forgot. Imagine that. No-one spotted it, of course, because obviously they just evolved there and they didn’t know there ought to be fingles, but it was definitely causing them deep, you know, psychological problems. Deep down inside they could tell there was something missing, sort of thing.” The creator pulled himself together. “Anyway, I can’t hang about all day,” he said. “Like I said, I’ve got a lot of jobs on.” “Lots?” said Eric. “I thought there was only one.” “Oh, no. There’s masses of them,” said the creator, beginning to fade away. “That’s quantum mechanics for you, see. You don’t do it once and have done. No, they keep on branching off. Multiple choice they call it, it’s like painting the - painting the - painting something very big that you have to keep on painting, sort of thing. It’s all very well saying you just have to change one little detail, but which one, that’s the real bugger. Well, nice to have met you. If you need any extra work, you know, an extra moon or something - “ “Hey!” The creator reappeared, his eyebrows raised in polite surprise. “What happens now?” said Rincewind. “Now? Well, I imagine there’ll be some gods along soon. They don’t wait long to move in, you know. Like flies around a - flies around a - like flies. They tend to be a bit high-spirited to start with, but they soon settle down. I suppose they take care of all the people, ekcetra.” The creator leaned forward. “I’ve never been good at doing people. Never seem to get the arms and legs right.” He vanished. They waited. “I think he’s really gone this time,” said Eric, after a while. “What a nice man.” “You certainly understand a lot more about why the world is like it is after talking to him,” said Rincewind. “What’re quantum mechanics?” “I don’t know. People who repair quantums, I suppose.” Rincewind looked at the egg and cress sandwich, still in his hand. There was still no mayonnaise in it, and the bread was soggy, but it would be thousands of years before there was another one. There had to be the dawn of agriculture, the domestication of animals, the evolution of the breadknife from its primitive flint ancestry, the development of dairy technology - and, if there was any desire to make a proper job of it, the cultivation of olive trees, pepper plants, salt pans, vinegar fermentation processes and the techniques of elementary food chemistry - before the world would see another on like it. It was unique, a little white triangle full of anachronisms, lost and all alone in an unfriendly world, He bit it anyway. It wasn’t very nice. “What I don’t understand,” said Eric, “is why we are here.” “I take it that isn’t a philosophical question,” said Rincewind, “I take it you mean: why are we here at the dawn of creation on this beach which has hardly been used?” “Yes. That’s what I meant.” Rincewind sat down on a rock and sighed. “I think it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?” he said. “You wanted to live forever.” “I didn’t say anything about travelling in time,” said Eric. “I was very clear about it so there’d be no tricks.” “There isn’t a trick. The wish is trying to be helpful. I mean, it’s pretty obvious when you think about it. ‘Forever’ means the entire span of space and time. Forever. For Ever. See?” “You mean you have to sort of start at Square One?” “Precisely.” “But that’s no good! It’s going to be years before there’s anyone else around!” “Centuries,” corrected Rincewind gloomily. “Millennia. Iains. And then there’s going to be all kinds of wars and monsters and stuff. Most of history is pretty appalling, when you look hard at it. Or even not very hard.” “But what I meant was, I just wanted to go on living for ever from now,” said Eric frantically. “I mean, from then. I mean, look at this place. No girls. No people. Nothing to do on Saturday nights...” “It won’t even have any Saturday nights for thousands of years,” said Rincewind. “Just nights.” “You must take me back at once,” said Eric. “I order it. Avaunt!” “You say that one more time and I will give you a thick ear,” said Rincewind. “But all you have to do is snap your fingers!” “It won’t work. You’ve had your three wishes. Sorry.” “What shall I do?” “Well, if you see anything crawl out of the sea and try to breathe, you could try telling it not to bother.” “You think this is funny, don’t you?” “It is rather amusing, since you mention it,” said Rincewind, his face expressionless. “The joke’s going to be wearing pretty thin over the years, then,” said Eric. “What?” “Well, you’re not going to go anywhere, are you? You’ll have to stay with me.” “Nonsense, I’ll - “ Rincewind looked around desperately. I’ll what? He thought. The waves rolled peacefully up the beach, not very strongly at the moment because they were still feeling their way. The first high tide was coming in, cautiously. There was no tideline, no streaky line of old seaweed and shells to give it some idea of what was expected of it. The air had the clean, fresh smell of air that has yet to know the effusions of a forest floor or the ins and outs of a ruminant’s digestive system. Rincewind had grown up in Ankh-Morpork. He liked air that had been around a bit, had got to know people, had been lived in. “We’ve got to get back,” he said urgently. “That’s what I’ve been saying,” said Eric, with strained patience. Rincewind took another bite of the sandwich. He’d looked death in the face many times, or more precisely Death had looked him in the back of his rapidly-retreating head many times, and suddenly the prospect of living forever didn’t appeal. There were of course great questions he might learn the answer to, such as how life evolved and all the rest of it, but looked at as a way of spending all your spare time for the next infinity it wasn’t a patch on a quiet evening strolling through the streets of Ankh. Still, he’d acquired an ancestor. That was something. Not everyone had an ancestor. What would his ancestor have done in a situation like this? He wouldn’t have been here. Well, yes, of course, but apart from that, he would have - he would have used his fine military mind to consider the tools available, that’s what he would have done. He had: item, one half-eaten egg and cress sandwich. No help there. He threw it away. He had: item, himself. He drew a tick in the sand. He wasn’t certain what use he could be, but he could come back to that later. He had: item, Eric. Thirteen-year-old demonologist and acne attack ground zero. That seemed to be about it. He stared at the clean, fresh sand for a while, doodling in it. Then he said, quietly: “Eric. Come here a moment...” The waves were a lot stronger now. They had really got the hang of the tide thing, and were venturing a little ebb and flow. Astfgl materialised in a puff of blue smoke. “Aha!” he said, but this fell rather flat because there was no-one to hear it. He looked down. There were footprints in the sand. Hundreds of them. They ran backwards and forwards, as if something had been frantically searching, and then vanished. He leaned nearer. It was hard to make out, what with all the footprints and the effects of the wind and the tide, but just on the edge of the encroaching surf were the unmistakable signs of a magic circle. Astfgl said a swearword that fused the sand around him into glass, and vanished. The tide got on with things. Further down the beach the last surge poured into a hollow in the rocks, and the new sun beamed down on the soaking remains of a half-eaten egg and cress sandwich. Tidal action turned it over. Thousands of bacteria suddenly found themselves in the midst of a taste explosion, and started to breed like mad. If only there had been some mayonnaise, life might have turned out a whole lot different. More piquant, and perhaps with a little extra cream in it. Travelling by magic always had major drawbacks. There was the feeling that your stomach was lagging behind. And your mind filled up with terror because the destination was always a little uncertain. It wasn’t that you could come out anywhere. “Anywhere” represented a very restricted range of choices compared to the kind of places magic could transport you to. The actual travelling was easy. It was achieving a destination which, for example, allowed you to survive in all four dimensions at once that took the real effort. In fact the scope for error was so huge it seemed something of an anti-climax to emerge in a fairly ordinary, sandy-floored cavern. It contained, on the far wall, a door. There was a forbidding door. It looked as though its designer had studied all the cell doors he could find and had then gone away and produced a version for, as it were, full visual orchestra. It was more of a portal. Some ancient and probably fearful warning was etched over its crumbling arch, but it was destined to remain unread because over it someone else had pasted a bright red-and-white notice which read: “You Don’t Have To Be ‘Damned’ To Work Here, But It Helps!!!” Rincewind squinted up at the notice. “Of course I can read it,” he said. “I just don’t happen to believe it.” “Multiple exclamation marks,” he went on, shaking his head, “are a sure sign of a diseased mind.” He looked behind him. The glowing outlines of Eric’s magic circle faded and winked out. “I’m not being picky, you understand,” he said. “It’s just that I thought you said you could get us back to Ankh. This isn’t Ankh. I can tell by the little details, like the flickering red shadows and the distant screaming. In Ankh the screaming is usually much closer,” he added. “I think I did very well to get it to work at all,” said Eric, bridling. “You’re not supposed to be able to run magic circles in reverse. In theory it means you stay in the circle and reality moves around you. I think I did very well. You see,” he added, his voice suddenly vibrating with enthusiasm, “if you rewrite the source codex and, this is the difficult bit, you route it through a high-level - “ “Yes, yes, very clever, what will you people think of next,” said Rincewind. “The only thing is, we’re, I think it’s quite possible that we’re in Hell.” “Oh?” Eric’s lack of reaction made Rincewind curious. “You know,” he added. “The place with all the demons in it?” “Oh?” “Not a good place to be, it’s generally felt,” said Rincewind. Rincewind thought about this. He wasn’t, when you got right down to it, quite sure what it was that demons did to you. But he did know what humans did to you, and after a lifetime in Ankh-Morpork this place could turn out to be an improvement. Warmer, at any rate. He looked at the door-knocker. It was black and horrible, but that didn’t matter because it was also tied up so that it couldn’t be used. Beside it, with all the signs of being installed recently by someone who didn’t know what they were doing and didn’t want to do it, was a button set into the splintered woodwork. Rincewind gave it an experimental prod. The sound it produced might once have been a popular tune, possibly even one written by a skilled composer to whom had been vouchsafed, for a brief ecstatic moment, the music of the spheres. Now, however, it just went bing-BONG-ding-DONG. And it would be a lazy use of language to say that the thing that answered the door was a nightmare. Nightmares are usually rather daft things and it’s very hard to explain to a listener what was so dreadful about your socks coming alive or giant carrots jumping out of hedgerows. This thing was the kind of terrifying thing that could only be created by someone sitting down and thinking horrible thoughts very clearly. It had more tentacles than legs, but fewer arms than heads. It also had a badge. The badge said: “My name is Urglefloggah, Spawn of the Pit and Loathly Guardian of the Dread Portal: How May I Help You?” It was not very happy about this. “Yes?” it rasped. Rincewind was still reading the badge. “How may you help us?” he said, aghast. Urglefloggah, who bore a certain resemblance to the late Quezovercoatl, ground some of its teeth. “’Hi... there’,” it intoned, in the manner of one who has had the script patiently explained to him by someone with a red-hot branding iron. “’My name is Urglefloggah, Spawn of the Pit, and I am your host for today... May I be the first to welcome you to our luxuriously-appointed -‘” “Hang on a moment,” said Rincewind. “’-chosen for your convenience—‘,” Urglefloggah rumbled. “There’s something not right here,” said Rincewind. “’- full regard for the wishes of YOU, the consumer -‘,” the demon continued stoically. “Excuse me,” said Rincewind. “’- as pleasurable as possible’,” said Urglefloggah. It made a noise like a sigh of relief, from somewhere deep in its mandibles. Now it appeared listening for the first time. “Yes? What?” it said. “Where are we?” said Rincewind. Various mouths beamed. “Quail, mortals!” “What? We’re in a bird?” “Grovel and cower, mortals!” the demon corrected itself, “for you are condemned to everlast - “ It paused, and gave a little whimper. “There will be a brief period of corrective therapy,” it corrected itself again, spitting out each word, “which we hope to make as instructive and enjoyable as possible, with due regard to all the rights of YOU, the customer.” It eyed Rincewind with several eyes. “Dreadful, isn’t it?” it said, in a more normal voice. “Don’t blame me. If it was up to me it would be the old burning thingys up the whatsit, toot sweet.” “This is hell, isn’t it,” said Eric. “I’ve seen pictures.” “You’re right there,” said the demon mournfully. It sat down, or at least folded itself in some complicated way. “Personal service, that’s what it used to be. People used to feel that we were taking an interest, that they weren’t just numbers but, well, victims. We had a tradition of service. Fat lot he cares. But what am I telling you my troubles for? It’s not as if you haven’t got plenty of your own, what with being dead and being here. You’re not musicians, are you?” “Actually we’re not even dea - “ Rincewind began. The demon ignored him, but got up and began to plod ponderously down the dank corridor, beckoning them to follow. “You’d really hate it here if you was musicians. Hate it more, I mean. The walls play music all day long, well, he calls it music, I’ve got nothing against a good tune, mark you, something to scream along with, but this isn’t it, I mean, I heard where we’re supposed to all the best tunes, so why’ve we got all this stuff that sounds like someone turned on the piano and then walked away and left it?” “In point of fact -“ “And then there’s the potted plants. Don’t get me wrong, I like to see a bit of green around the place. Only some of the lads says these plants aren’t real but what I say is, they must be, no-one in their right mind would make a plant that looks like dark green leather and smells like a dead sloth. He says it gives the place a friendly and open aspect. Friendly and open aspect! I’ve seen keen gardeners break down and cry. I’m telling you, they said it made everything we did to them afterwards seem like an improvement.” “Dead is not what we -“ said Rincewind, trying to hammer the words into a gap in the things endless monotone, but he was too late. “The coffee machine, now, the coffee machine’s a good one, I’ll grant you. We only used to drown people in lakes of cat’s pee, wee didn’t make them buy it by the cup.” “We’re not dead!” Eric shouted. Urglefloggah came to a quivering halt. “Of course you’re dead,” it said. “Else you wouldn’t be here. They wouldn’t last five minutes.” It opened several of its mouths, showing a choice of fangs. “Hur hur,” it added. “If I was to catch any live people down here -“ Not for nothing had Rincewind survived for years in the paranoid complexities of Unseen University. He felt almost at home. His reflexes operated with incredible precision. “You mean you weren’t told?” he said. It was hard to see if Urglefloggah’s expression changed, if only because it was hard to know what part of it was expression, but it definitely projected a familiar air of sudden and resentful uncertainty. “Told what?” it said. Rincewind looked at Eric. “You’d think they’d tell people, wouldn’t you?” “Tell them wh - argarg,” said Eric, clutching his ankle. “That’s modern management for you,” said Rincewind, his face radiating angry concern. “They go ahead and make all these changes, all these new arrangements, and do they consult the very people who form the backbone -“ “- exoskeleton -“ corrected the demon. “- or other calcareous or chitinous structure, of the organisation?” Rincewind finished smoothly. He waited for what he knew would have to come. “Not them,” said Urglefloggah. “Too busy sticking up notices, they are.” “I think that’s pretty disgusting,” said Rincewind. “D’you know, said Urglefloggah, “they wouldn’t let me on the Club 18,000 - 30,000 holiday? Said I was too old. Said I would spoil the fun.” “What’s the netherworld coming to?” said Rincewind sympathetically. “They never come down here, you know,” said the demon, sagging a bit. “They never tell me anything. Oh yes, very important, only keeping the bloody gate, most important I don’t think!” “Look,” said Rincewind. “You wouldn’t like me to have a word, would you?” “Down here all hours, seeing ‘em in -“ “Perhaps if we spoke to someone?” said Rincewind. The demon sniffed, from several noses at once. “Would you?” it said. “Be happy to,” said Rincewind. Urglefloggah brightened a little, but not too much, just in case. “Can’t do any harm, can it?” it said. Rincewind steeled himself and patted the thing on what he hoped fervently was its back. “Don’t you worry about it,” he said. “That’s very kind of you.” Rincewind looked across the shuddering heap at Eric. “We’d better go,” he said. “So we’re not late for our appointment.” He made frantic signals over the demon’s head. Eric grinned. “Yeah, right, appointment,” he said. They walked up the wide passage. Eric started to giggle hysterically. “This is where we run, right?” he said. “This is where we walk,” said Rincewind. “Just walk. The important ting is to act nonchalant. The important thing is to get the timing right.” He looked at Eric. Eric looked at him. Behind them, Urglefloggah made a kind of I’ve-just-worked-it-out noise. “About now?” said Eric. “About now I think would do it, yes.” They ran.   Hell wasn’t what Rincewind had been led to expect, although there were signs of what it might once have been - a few clinkers in a corner, a bad scorch mark on the ceiling. It was hot, though, with the kind of heat that you get by boiling air inside an oven for years - Hell, it has been suggested, is other people. This has always come as a bit of a surprise to many working demons, who had always thought hell was sticking sharp things into people and pushing them into lakes of blood and so on. This is because demons, like most people, have failed to distinguish between the body and the soul. The fact was that, as droves of demon kings had noticed, there was a limit to what you could do to a soul with, e.g., red-hot tweezers, because even fairly evil and corrupt souls were bright enough to realise that since they didn’t have the concomitant body and nerve endings attached to them there was no real reason, other than force of habit, why they should suffer excruciating agony. So they didn’t. Demons went on doing it anyway, because numb and mindless stupidity is part of what being a demon is all about, but since no-one was suffering they didn’t enjoy it much either and the whole thing was pointless. Centuries and centuries of pointlessness. Astfgl had adopted, without realising what he was doing, a radically new approach. Demons can move interdimensionally, and so he’d found the basic ingredients for a very worthwhile lake of blood equivalent, as it were, for the soul. Learn from humans, he’d told the demon lords. Learn from humans. It’s amazing what you can learn from humans. You take, for example, a certain type of hotel. It is probably an English version of an American hotel, but operated with that peculiarly English genius for taking something American and subtracting from it its one worthwhile aspect, so that you end up with slow fast food, West Country and Western music and, well, this hotel. It’s early closing day. The bar is really just a pastel-pink paneled table with a silly bucket on it, set in one corner, and it won’t be open for hours yet. And then you add rain, and let the one channel available on the TV be, perhaps, Welsh Channel Four, showing its usual mobius Eisteddfod from Pant-y-gyrdl. And there is only one book in this hotel, left behind by a previous victim. It is one of those where the name of the author is on the front in raised gold letters much bigger than the tittle, and it probably has a rose and a bullet on there too. Half the pages are missing. And the only cinema in the town is showing something with sub-titles and French umbrellas in it. And then you stop time, but not experience, so that it seems as though the very fluff in the carpet is gradually rising up to fill the brain and your mouth starts to taste like an old denture. And you make it last for ever and ever. That’s even longer than from now to opening time. And then you distil it. Of course the Discworld lacks a number of the items listed above, but boredom is universal and Astfgl had achieved in Hell a particularly high brand of boredom which is like the boredom you get which is a) costing you money, and b) is taking place while you should be having a nice time. The caverns that opened before Rincewind were full of mist and tasteful room dividers. Now and again screams of ennui rose from between the pot plants, but mainly there was the terrible numbing silence of the human brain being reduced to cream cheese from the inside out. “I don’t understand,” said Eric, “Where are the furnaces? Where are the flames? Where,” he added, hopefully, “are the succubi?” Rincewind peered at the nearest exhibit. A disconsolate demon, whose badge proclaimed it to be Azaremoth, the Stench of Dog Breath, and moreover hoped the reader would have a nice day, was sitting on the edge of a shallow pit wherein lay a rock on which a man was chained and spreadeagled. A very tired-looking bird was perched beside him. Rincewind thought that Eric’s had it bad, but this bird had definitely been through the mangle of Life. It looked as though it had been plucked first and then had its feathers stuck back on. Curiosity overcame Rincewind’s usual cowardice “What’s going on?” he said. “What’s happening to him?” The demon stopped kicking his heels on the edge of the pit. It didn’t occur to it to question Rincewind’s presence. It assumed that he wouldn’t be here unless he had a right to be. The alternative was unbelievable. “I don’t know what he done,” it said, “but when I first come here his punishment was to be chained to that rock and every day an eagle would come down and peck his liver out. Bit of an old favourite, that one” “It doesn’t look as though it’s attacking him now,” said Rincewind. “Nah. That’s all changed. Now it flies down every day and tells him about its hernia operation. Now it’s effective, I’ll grant you,” said the demon sadly, “but it’s not what I’d call torture.” Rincewind turned away, but not before catching a glimpse of the look of terminal agony on the victim’s face. It was terrible. There was worse, however. In the next pit several chained and groaning people were being shown a series of paintings. A demon in front of them was reading from a script. “- this is when we were in the Fifth Circle, only you can’t see where we stayed, it was just off to the left there, and this is that funny couple we met, you’d never believe it, they lived on the Icy Plains of Doom just next door to -“ Eric looked at Rincewind. “It’s showing them pictures of itself on holiday?” he said. They both shrugged and walked away, shaking their heads. Then there was a small hill. At the bottom of the hill there was a round rock. Beside the rock sat a manacled man, his despairing head buried in his hands. A squat green demon stood beside him, almost buckling under the weight of an enormous book. “I’ve heard of this one,” said Eric. “Man who went and defied the gods or something. Got to keep pushing that rock up the hill even though it rolls back all the time -“ The demon looked up. “But first,” it trilled, “he must listen to the Unhealthy and Unsafety Regulations governing the lifting and moving of Large Objects.” Volume 93 of the Commentaries, in fact. The Regulations themselves comprised a further 1,440 volumes. Part 1, that is. Rincewind had always liked boredom, treasuring it if only because of its rarity value. It had always seemed to him that the only times in his life when he wasn’t being chased, imprisoned or hit were when he was being dropped from things, and while falling a long way always had a certain sameness about it, it did not really count as “boring”. The only time he could look back on with a certain amount of fondness was his brief spell as assistant Librarian at Unseen University, when there wasn’t much to do except read books, make sure the Librarian’s banana supply wasn’t interrupted and, rarely, help him with a particularly recalcitrant grimoire. Now he realised what made boredom so attractive. It was the knowledge that worse things, dangerously exciting things, were going on just around the corner and that you were well out of them. For boredom to be enjoyable there had to be something to compare it with. Whereas this was just boredom on top of more boredom, winding in on itself until it became a great crushing sledgehammer which paralysed all thought and experience and pounded eternity into something like flannel. “This is dreadful,” he said. The chained man raised a haggard face. “You’re telling me?” he said. “I used to like pushing the ball up the hill. You could stop for a chat, you could see what was going on, you could try various holds and everything. I was a bit of a tourist attraction, people used to point me out. I wouldn’t say it was fun, but it gave you a purpose in the afterlife.” “And I used to help him,” said the demon, its voice raw with sullen indignation. “Give you a bit of a hand, sometimes, didn’t I? Pass on a bit of gossip and that. Sort of encourage him when it rolled back and that. I’d say things like ‘whoops, there goes the bleeder again,’ and he’d say ‘Bugger it’. We had some times, dint we? Great times.” It blew its nose. Rincewind coughed. “Sgetting too much,” said the demon. “We used to be happy in the old days. It wasn’t as if it used to hurt anyone much and, well, we was all in it together.” “That’s it,” said the chained man. “You knew if you kept your nose clean you’d stand a chance of getting out one day. You know, once a week now I have to stop this for craft lessons?” “That must be nice,” said Rincewind uncertainly. The man’s eyes narrowed. “Basketwork?” he said. “I been here eighteen millennia, demon and imp,” grumbled the demon. “I learned my trade, I did. Eighteen thousand bloody years behind the pitchfork, and now this. Reading a -“ A sonic boom echoed the length of Hell. “Oi oi,” said the demon. “He’s back. He sounds angry, too. We’d better get our heads down.” And indeed, all over the circles of Hades, demons and damned were groaning in unison and getting back to their private hells. The chained man broke into a sweat. “Look, Vizzimuth,” he said, “couldn’t we just sort of miss out one or two of paragraphs -“ “It’s my job,” said the demon wretchedly. “You know He checks up, it’s more than my job’s worth -“ He broke off, gave Rincewind a sad grimace, and patted the sobbing figure with a gentle talon. “Tell you what,” he said kindly, “I’ll skip some of the sub-clauses.” Rincewind took Eric by an unresisting shoulder. “We’d better get along,” he said quietly. “This is really horrible,” said Eric, as they walked away. “It gives evil a bad name.” “Um,” said Rincewind. He didn’t like the sound of Him being back and Him being angry. Whenever something important enough to deserve capital letters was angry in the vicinity of Rincewind, it was usually angry with him. “If you know such a lot about this place,” he said, “perhaps you can remember how to get out?” Eric scratched his head. “It helps if one of you is a girl,” he said. “According to Ephebian mythology, there’s a girl who comes down here every winter.” “To keep warm?” “I think the story says she actually creates the winter, sort of.” “I’ve known women like that,” said Rincewind, nodding wisely. “Or it helps if you’ve got a lyre, I think.” “Ah. We could be on firmer ground here,” said Rincewind. He thought for a bit and then said, “Er. My dog... my dog has six legs.” “The kind you play,” said Eric patiently. “Oh.” “And, and, and when you do leave, if you look back... I think pomegranates come into it somewhere, or, or, or you turn into a piece of wood.” “I never look back,” said Rincewind firmly. “One of the first rules of running away is, never look back.” There was a roar behind them. “Especially when you hear loud noises,” Rincewind went on. “When it comes to cowardice, that’s what sorts out the men from the sheep. You run straight away.” He grabbed the skirts of his robe. And they ran and ran, until a familiar voice said: “Ho there, dear lads. Hop up. It’s amazing how you meet old friends down here.” And another voice said, “Wossname? Wossname?” “Where are they!” The sub-lords of Hell trembled. This was going to be dreadful. It might even result in a memo. “They cant have escaped,” rasped Astfgl. “They’re here somewhere. Why can you not find them? Am I surrounded by incompetents as well as fools?” “My lord -“ The demon princes turned. The speaker was Duke Vassenego, one of the oldest demons. How old, no-one knew. But if he didn’t actually invent original sin, at least he made one of the first copies. In terms of sheer enterprise and deviousness of mind he might even have passed for human and, in fact, generally took the form of an old, rather sad lawyer with an eagle somewhere in his ancestry. And every demonic mind thought: poor Vassenego, he’s done it this time. This won’t be just a memo, this will be a policy statement, c.c.’d to all departments and a copy for files. Astfgl turned slowly, as though mounted on a turntable. He was back in his preferred form now but had pulled himself together, as it were, on a higher level of emotion. The mere thought of living humans in his domain made him twang with fury like a violin string. You couldn’t trust them. They were unreliable. The last human allowed down here alive had given the place a terribly bad press. Above all, they made him feel inferior. Now the full wattage of his anger focused on the old demon. “You had a point to make?” he said. “I was merely going to say, lord, that we have made an extensive search of all eight circles and I am really certain -“ “Silence! Don’t think I don’t know what’s going on,” growled Astfgl, circling the drawn figure. “I’ve seen you - and you, and you” - his trident pointed at some of the other lords - “plotting in corners, encouraging rebellion! I rule here, is that not so? And I will be obeyed!” Vassenego was pale. His patrician nostrils flared like jet intakes. Everything about him said: you pompous little creature, of course we encourage rebellion, we’re demons! And I was maddening the minds of princes when you were encouraging cats to leave dead mice under the bed, you small-minded, paper-worshipping nincompoop! Everything about him said this except his voice, which said, calmly, “No-one is denying this, sire.” “Then search again! And the demon who let them in is to be taken to the lowest pit and disassembled, is that clear?” Vassenego’s eyebrows rose. “Old Urglefloggah, sire? He was foolish, certainly, but he is loyal -“ “Are you by any chance endeavouring to contradict me?” Vassenego hesitated. Dreadful as he privately held the king to be, demons are strong believers in precedence and hierarchy. There were too many young demons pressing below them for the senior lords to openly demonstrate the ways of regicide and coup, no matter what the provocation. Vassenego had plans of his own. No sense in spoiling things now. “No, sire,” he said. “But that will mean, sire, that the dread portal is no longer -“ “Do it!” The Luggage arrived at the dread portal. There was no way to describe how angry you can get running nearly twice the length of the space-time continuum, and the Luggage had been pretty annoyed to start with. It looked at the hinges. It looked at the locks. It backed away a bit and appeared to read the new sign over the portal. Possibly this made it angrier, although with the Luggage there wasn’t any reliable way of telling because it spent all its time beyond, in a manner of speaking, the hostility event horizon. The doors of Hell were ancient. It wasn’t just time and heat that had baked their wood to something like black granite. They’d picked up fear and dull evil. They were more than mere things to fill a hole in the wall. They were bright enough to be dimly aware what their future was likely to hold. They watched  the Luggage shuffle back across the sand, flex its legs and crouch down. The lock clicked. The bolts dragged themselves back hurriedly. The great bars jerked from their sockets. The doors flung themselves back against the wall. The Luggage untensed. It straightened. It stepped forward. It almost strutted. It passed between the straining hinges and, when it was nearly through, turned and gave the nearest door a damn good kick. There was a great treadmill. It didn’t power anything, and had particularly creaky bearings. It was one of Astfgl’s more inspired ideas, and had no use whatsoever except to show several hundred people that if they had thought their lives had been pretty pointless, they hadn’t seen anything yet. “We cant stay here for ever,” said Rincewind. “We need to do things. Like eat.” “That’s one of the tremendous advantages of being a damned soul,” said Ponce da Quirm. “All the old bodily cares fade away. Of course, you get a completely new set of cares, but I have always found it advisable to look for the silver lining.” “Wossname!” said the parrot, who was sitting on his shoulder. “Fancy that,” said Rincewind. “I never knew animals could go to Hell. Although I can quite see why they made an exception in this case.” “Up yours wizard!” “Why don’t they look for us here, that’s what I don’t understand?” said Eric. “Shut up and keep walking,” said Rincewind. “They’re stupid, that’s why. They can’t imagine that we would be doing something like this.” “Yes, they’re right there. I can’t imagine that we are doing something like this, either,” said Eric. Rincewind treadled for a bit, watching a crowd of frantically searching demons hurry past. “So you didn’t find the Fountain of Youth, then,” he said, feeling that he should make some conversation. “Oh, but I did,” said da Quirm earnestly. “A clear spring, deep in the jungle. It was very impressive. I had a good long drink, too. Or draught, which I think is the more appropriate word.” “And - ?” said Rincewind. “It definitely worked. Yes. For a while there I could definitely feel myself younger.” “But -“ Rincewind waved a vague hand to take in da Quirm, the treadmill, the towering circles of the Pit. “Ah,” said the old man. “Of course, that’s the really annoying bit. I’d read so much about the fountain, and you’d have thought someone in all those books would have mentioned the really vital thing about the water, wouldn’t you?” “Which was - ?” “Boil it first. Says it all doesn’t it? Terrible shame, really.” The Luggage trotted down the great spiral road that linked the circles of the Pit. Even if conditions had been normal it probably would not have attracted much attention. If anything, it was rather less astonishing than most of the denizens “This is really boring,” said Eric. “That’s the point,” said Rincewind. “We shouldn’t be lurking here, we should be trying to find a way out!” “Well, yes, but there isn’t one.” “There is, in fact,” said a voice behind Rincewind. It was the voice of someone who had seen it all and hadn’t liked any of it very much. “Lavaeolus?” said Rincewind. His ancestor was right behind them. “’You’ll get home all right,’” said Lavaeolus bitterly. “Your very words. Huh. Ten years of one damn thing after another. You might have told a chap.” “Er,” said Eric. “We didn’t want to upset the course of history.” “You didn’t want to upset the course of history,” said Lavaeolus slowly. He stared down at the woodwork of the treadmill. “Oh. Good. That makes it all right. I feel a lot better for knowing that. Speaking as the course of history, I’d like to say thank you very much.” “Excuse me,” said Rincewind. “Yes?” “You said there’s another way out?” “Oh, yes. A back way.” “Where is it?” Lavaeolus stopped treadling for a moment and pointed across the misty hollow. “See that arch over there?” Rincewind peered into the distance. “Just about,” he said. “Is that it?” “Yes. A long steep climb. Don’t know where it comes out, though.” “How did you find out about it?” Lavaeolus shrugged. “I asked a demon,” he said. “There’s always an easier way of doing everything, you know.” “It’d take forever to get there,” said Eric. “It’s right on the other side, we’d never make it.” Rincewind nodded, and glumly continued the endless walk. After a few minutes he said: “Has it struck you we seem to be going faster?” Eric turned around. The Luggage had stepped aboard and was trying to catch up with them. Astfgl stood in front of his mirror. “Show me what they can see,” he commanded. Yes, master. Astfgl inspected the whirring image for a moment. “Tell me what this means,” he said. I’m just a mirror, master. What do I know? Astfgl growled. “And I’m Lord of Hades,” he said, gesturing with his trident. “And I’m prepared to risk another seven years’ bad luck.” The mirror considered the available options. I might be able to hear some creaking, lord, it ventured. “And?” I smell smoke. “No smoke. I specifically banned all open fires. A very old-fashioned concept. It gave the place a bad name.” Nevertheless, master. “Show me... Hades.” The mirror gave of its best. The King was just in time to see the treadwheel, its bearings glowing red hot, crash down from its mountings and roll, as deceptively slowly as an avalanche, across the country of the damned. Rincewind hung from the pushbar, watching the rungs whirr past at a speed that would have burned the soles off his sandals if he’d bee foolish enough to let his feet down. The dead, however, were taking it all with the cheerful aplomb of those who know that the worst has already happened to them. Cries of “Pass the candyfloss,” drifted down. He heard Lavaeolus commending the wheel’s splendid traction and explaining to da Quirm how, if you had a vehicle which put down its road in front of it, just like the Luggage was in fact doing, and then you covered it with armour, then wars would be less bloody, over in half the time and everyone could spend even longer going home. The Luggage made no comment at all. It could see its master hanging a few feet away, and just kept going. It may have occurred to it that the journey was taking some time, but that was Time’s problem. And so, flinging out the occasional screaming soul, bumping and gyrating and crushing the occasional luckless demon, the wheel bowled on. It smashed against the opposite cliff. Lord Vassenego smiled. “Now,” he said, “it is time.” The other senior demons looked a bit shifty. They were, of course, steeped in evil, and Astfgl was definitely Not One Of Us and the most revolting little oik ever to oil his way into the post... But... well, this... perhaps there were some things that were too... “’Learn from the ways of humans’,” mimicked Vassenego. “He bade me learn from humans. Me! The impudence! The arrogance! But I watched, oh, yes. I learned. I planned.” The look on his face was unspeakable. Even the lords of the nethermost circles, who gloried in villainy, had to turn their heads. Duke Drazometh the Putrid raised a hesitant talon. “But if he even suspects,” he said, “I mean, he has a foul temper on him. Those memos -“ He shuddered. “But what are we doing?” Vassenego spread his hands in a gesture of innocence. “Where is the harm in it? Brothers, I ask you: where is the harm?” His fingers curled. The knuckles shone white under the thin, blue-veined skin as he surveyed the doubting faces. “Or would you rather receive another statement of policy?” he said. Expressions twitched as the lords made up their minds like a row of dominoes falling over. There were some things on which even they were united. No more policy statements, no more consultative documents, no more morale-boosting messages to all staff. This was Hell, but you had to draw the line somewhere. Earl Beezlemoth rubbed one of his three noses. “And humans somewhere thought this up all by themselves?” he said. “We didn’t give them any you know, hints?” Vassenego shook his head. “All their own work,” he said proudly, like a fond schoolmaster who has just seen a star pupil graduate summa cum laude. The earl stared into infinity. “I thought we were supposed to be the ghastly ones,” he said, his voice filled with awe. The old lord nodded. He’d waited a long time for this. While others had talked of red-hot revolution he’d just stared out into the world of men, and watched, and marvelled. This Rincewind character had been extremely useful. He’d managed to keep the King totally occupied. He’d been worth all the effort. The damn-fool human still thought it was his fingers doing the business! Three wishes, indeed! And thus it was, when Rincewind pulled himself free of the wreckage of the wheel, he found Astfgl, King of Demon, Lord of Hell, Master of the Pit, standing over him. Astfgl had passed through the earlier stage of fury and was now in that calm lagoon of rage where the voice is steady, the manner is measured and polite, and only a faint trace of spittle at the corner of the mouth betrays the inner inferno. Eric crawled out from under a broken spar and looked up. “Oh dear,” he said. The Demon King twirled the trident. Suddenly, it didn’t look comical any more. It looked like a heavy metal stick with three horrible spikes on the end. Astfgl smiled, and looked around. “No,” he said, apparently to himself. “Not here. It is not public enough. Come!” A hand grasped each of them by the shoulder. They could no more resist it than a couple of non-identical snowflakes could resist a flamethrower. There was a moment’s disorientation, and Rincewind found himself in the largest room in the universe. It was the great hall. You could have built moon rockets in it. The kings of Hell might have heard of words like “subtlety” and “discretion”, but they had also heard that if you had it you should flaunt it and reasoned that, if you didn’t have it, you should flaunt it even more, and what they didn’t have was good taste. Astfgl had done what he could but even he had been unable to add much to the basic bad design, the clashing colours, and the terrible wallpaper. He’d put in a few coffee tables and a bullfight poster, but they were more or less lost in the overall chaos, and the new antimacassar on the back of the Throne of Dread only served to highlight some of its more annoying bas-reliefs. The two humans sprawled on the floor. “And now -“ said Astfgl. But his voice was lost in a sudden cheering. He looked up. Demons of every size and shape filled almost all the hall, piling up the walls and even hanging from the ceiling. A demonic band struck up a choice of chords on a variety of instruments. A banner, slung from one side of the hall to the other, read: Hale To Ther Cheve. Astfgl’s brow knitted in instant paranoia as Vassenego, trailed by the other lords, bore down on him. The old demon’s face was split in a totally guileless grin, and the King nearly panicked and hit it with the trident before Vassenego reached out and slapped him on the back. “Well done!” he cried. “What?” “Oh, very well done!” Astfgl looked down at Rincewind. “Oh,” he said. “Yes. Well.” He coughed. “It was nothing,” he said, straightening up, “I knew you people weren’t getting anywhere so I just -“ “Not these,” sneered Vassenego. “Such trivial things. No, sire. I was referring to your elevation.” “Elevation?” said Astfgl. “Your promotion, sire!” A great cheer went up from the younger demons, who would cheer anything. “Promotion? But, but I am the King -“ Astfgl protested weakly. He could feel his grasp on events beginning to slip. “Pfooie!” said Vassenego expansively. “Pfooie?” “Indeed, sire. King? King? Sire, I speak for us all when I say that is no title for a demon such as you, sire, a demon whose grasp of organisational matters and priorities, whose insight into the proper functions of our being, whose - if I may say so - sheer intellectual capabilities have taken us to new and greater depths, sire!” Despite himself, Astfgl preened. “Well, you know -“ he began. “And yet we find, despite your position, that you interest yourself in the tiniest details of our work,” said Vassenego, looking down his nose at Rincewind. “Such dedication! Such devotion!” Astfgl swelled. “Of course, I’ve always felt -“ Rincewind pulled himself up on his elbows, and thought: look out, behind you... “And so,” said Vassenego, beaming like a coastful of lighthouses, “the Council met and has decided, and may I add, sire, has decided unanimously, to create an entirely new award in honour of your outstanding achievements!” “The importance of proper paperwork has - what award?” said Astfgl, the minnows of suspicion suddenly darting across the oceans of self-esteem. “The position, sire, of Supreme Life President of Hell!” The band struck up again. “With your own office - much bigger than the pokey thing you have had to suffer all these years, sire. Or rather, Mr President!” The band had a go at another chord. The demons waited. “Will there be... potted plants?” said Astfgl, slowly. “Hosts! Plantations! Jungles!” Astfgl appeared to be lit by a gentle, inner glow. “And carpets? I mean, wall to wall - ?” “The walls have had to be moved apart especially to accommodate them all, sire. And think pile, sire? Whole tribes of pygmies are wondering why the light stays on at night, sire!” The bewildered King allowed himself to have an expansive arm thrown across his shoulder and was gently led, all thoughts of vengeance forgotten, through the cheering crowds. “I’ve always fancied one of those special things for making coffee,” he murmured, as the last vestiges of self-control were eroded. “A positive manufactory has been installed, sire! And a speaking tube, sire, for you to communicate your instructions to your underlings. And the very latest in diaries, two aeons to a page, and a thing for -“ “Coloured marker pens. I’ve always held that -“ “Complete rainbows, sire,” Vassenego boomed. “And let us go there without delay, sire, for I suspect that with your normal keen insight you cannot wait to get to grips with the mighty tasks ahead of you, sire” “Certainly, certainly! Time they were done, indeed -“ an expression of vague perplexity passed across Astfgl’s flushed face. “These mighty tasks...” “Nothing less than a complete, full, authoritative, searching and in-depth analysis of our role, function, priorities and goals, sire!” Vassenego stood back. The demon lords held their breath. Astfgl frowned. The universe appeared to slow down. The stars halted momentarily in their courses. “With forward planning?” he said, at last. “A top priority, sire, which you have instantly pinpointed with your normal incisiveness,” said Vassenego quickly. The demon lords breathed again. Astfgl’s chest expanded several inches. “I shall need special staff, of course, in order to formulate -“ “Formulate! The very thing!” said Vassenego, who was perhaps getting just a bit carried away. Astfgl gave him a faintly suspicious glance, but at that moment the band struck up again. The last words that Rincewind heard, as the King was led out of the hall, were: “And in order to analyse information, I shall need -“ And then he was gone. The rest of the demons, aware that the entertainment seemed to be over for the day, started to mill around and drift out of the green doors. It was beginning to dawn on the brightest of them that the fires would soon be roaring again. No-one seemed to be taking any notice of the two humans. Rincewind tugged at Eric’s robe. “This is where we run, right?” said Eric. “Where we walk,” said Rincewind firmly. “Nonchalantly, calmly, and, er -“ “Fast?” “You pick things up quickly, don’t you?” It is essential that the proper use of three wishes should bring happiness to the greatest available number of people, and this is what in fact had happened. The Tezumen were happy. When no amount of worshipping caused the Luggage to come back and trample their enemies they poisoned all their priests and tried enlightened atheism instead, which still meant they could kill as many people as they liked but didn’t have to get up so early to do it. The people of Tsort and Ephebe were happy - at least, the ones who write and feature in the dramas of history were happy, which is all that mattered. Now their long war was over and they could get on with the proper concern of civilised nations, which is to prepare for the next one. The people of Hell were happy, or at least happier than hitherto. The flames were flickering brightly again, the same old familiar tortures were being inflicted on ethereal bodies quite incapable of feeling them, and the damned had been given the insight which makes hardship easier to bear - the absolute and certain knowledge that things could be worse. The demon lords were happy: They stood around the magic mirror, enjoying a celebratory drink. Occasionally one of them would risk slapping Vassenego on the back. “Shall we let them go, sire?” said a duke, peering at the climbing figures in the mirror’s dark image. “Oh, I think so,” said Vassenego airily. “It’s always a good thing to let a few tales spread, you know. Pour encouragy le - poor encoura - to make everyone sit up and take notice. And they have been useful, after their fashion.” He looked into the depths of his drink, exulting quietly. And yet, and yet, in the depths of his curly mind he thought he could hear the tiny voice that would grow louder over the years, the voice that haunts all demon kings, everywhere: look out, behind you... It is hard to say whether the Luggage was happy or not. It had viciously attacked fourteen demons so far, and had three of them cornered in their own pit of boiling oil. Soon it would have to follow its master, but it didn’t have to rush. One of the demons made a frantic grab for the bank. The Luggage stamped heavily on its fingers. The creator of universes was happy. He’d just inserted one seven-sided snowflake into a blizzard as an experiment, and no-one had noticed. Tomorrow he was half-inclined to try small, delicately-crystallised letters of the alphabet. Alphabet Snow. It could be a winner. Rincewind and Eric were happy: “I can see blue sky!” said Eric. “Where do you think we’ll come out?” he added. “And when?” “Anywhere,” said Rincewind. “Anytime.” He looked down at the broad steps they were climbing. They were something of a novelty; each one was built out of large stone letters. The one he was just stepping on to, for example, read: I Meant It For The Best. The next one was: I Thought You’d Like It. Eric was standing on: For the Sake of the Children. “Weird, isn’t it?” he said. “Why do it like this?” “I think they’re meant to be good intentions,” said Rincewind. This was a road to Hell, and demons were, after all, traditionalists. And, while they are of course irredeemably evil, they are not always bad. And so Rincewind stepped off We Are Equal Opportunity Employers and through a wall, which healed up behind him, and into the world. It could, he had to admit, have been a lot worse. President Astfgl, sitting in a pool of light in his huge, dark office, blew into the speaking tube again. “Hallo?” he said. “Hallo?” There didn’t seem to be anyone answering. Strange. He picked up one of his coloured pens, and looked around at the stack of work behind him. All those records, to be analysed, considered, assessed and evaluated, and then suitable management directives to be arrived at, and an in-depth policy document to be drafted and then, after due consideration, redrafted again... He tried the tube once more. “Hallo? Hallo?” No-one there. Still, not to worry, lots to do. His time was far too important to waste. He sank his feet into his thick, warm carpet. He looked proudly at his plotted plants. He tapped a complicated assembly of chromed wire and balls, which began to swing and click executively. He unscrewed the top of his pen with a firm, decisive hand. He wrote: What business are we in??? He thought for a bit, and then carefully wrote, underneath: We are in the damnation business!!! And this, too, was happiness. Of a sort.     1 Just erotic. Nothing kinky. It’s the difference between using a feather and using a chicken. 2 It took thirty years to subside. The inhabitants spent a lot of the time wading. It went down in history as the multiverse’s most embarrassing continental catastrophe. 3 Old Tom was the single cracked bronze bell in the University bell tower. The clapper dropped out shortly after it was cast, but the bell still tolled out some tremendously sonorous silences every hour. 4 The Bursar was referring obliquely to the difficult occasion when the University very nearly caused the end of the world, and would in fact have done so had it not been for a chain of events involving Rincewind, a magic carpet and a half-brick in a sock. (See Sourcery.) The whole affair was very embarrassing to wizards, as it always is to people who find out afterwards that they were on the wrong side all along, and it was remarkable how many of the University’s senior staff were now adamant that at the time they had been off sick, visiting their aunt, or doing research with the door locked while humming loudly and had had no idea of what was going on outside. There had been some desultory talk about putting a statue up to Rincewind but, by the curious alchemy that tends to apply in these sensitive issues, this quickly became a plaque, then a note on the Roll of Honour, and finally a motion of censure for being improperly dressed. 5 Demons and their Hell are quite different from the Dungeon Dimensions, those endless parallel wastelands outside space and time. The sad, mad things in the Dungeon Dimensions have no understanding of the world but simply crave light and shape and try to warm themselves by the fires of reality, clustering around it with about the same effect - if they ever broke through - as an ocean trying to warm itself around a candle. Whereas demons belong to the same space-time wossname, more or less, as humans, and have a deep and abiding interest in humanity’s day-to-day affairs. Interestingly enough, the gods of the Disc have never bothered much about judging the souls of the dead, and so people only go to hell if that’s where they deserve to go. Which they won’t do if they don’t know about it. This explains why it is important to shoot missionaries on sight. 6 Demons have a distorted sense of values. 7 Rincewind had been told that death was just like going into another room. The difference is, when you shout, “Where’s my clean socks?”, no-one answers. 8 This is because wiring plugs, putting up shelves, sorting out the funny noise in attics and mowing lawns can eventually reduce even the strongest constitution. 9 From a distance it did, anyway. Close to, no. 10 Ball games were unknown in the Discworld at this time. 11 Many people think it should have been a hydrogen molecule, but this is against the observed facts. Everyone who has found a hitherto unknown egg-whisk jamming an innocent kitchen drawer knows that raw matter is continually flowing into the universe in fairly developed forms, popping into existence normally in ashtrays, vases and glove compartments. It chooses its shape to allay suspicion, and common manifestations are paperclips, the pins out of shirt packaging, the little keys for central heating radiators, marbles, bits of crayon, mysterious sections of herb-chopping devices and old Kate Bush albums. Why matter does this is unclear, but it is evident that matter has Plans. It is also apparent that creators sometimes favour the Big Bang method of universe construction, and at other times use the more gentle methods of Continual Creation. This follows studies by cosmotherapists which have revealed that the violence of the Big Bang can give a universe serious psychological problems when it gets older.     
The Amazing Maurice and His Edu - Terry Pratchett	----	The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents Terry Pratchett Published: 2001. ISBN 0-385-60123-9 CONTENTS CHAPTER 1............................................................................................................................................................... 3 CHAPTER 2............................................................................................................................................................. 10 CHAPTER 3............................................................................................................................................................. 14 CHAPTER 4............................................................................................................................................................. 21 CHAPTER 5............................................................................................................................................................. 27 CHAPTER 6............................................................................................................................................................. 33 CHAPTER 7............................................................................................................................................................. 39 CHAPTER 8............................................................................................................................................................. 46 CHAPTER 9............................................................................................................................................................. 56 CHAPTER 10........................................................................................................................................................... 65 CHAPTER 11........................................................................................................................................................... 75 CHAPTER 12........................................................................................................................................................... 86 AUTHOR'S NOTE................................................................................................................................................... 94 FOOT NOTES.......................................................................................................................................................... 95 CHAPTER 1 One day, when he was naughty, Mr Bunnsy looked over the hedge into Farmer Fred's field and it was full of green lettuces. Mr Bunnsy, however, was not full of lettuces. This did not seem fair. - From Mr Bunnsy Has an Adventure   Rats! They chased the dogs and bit the cats, they- But there was more to it than that. As the amazing Maurice said, it was just a story about people and rats. And the difficult part of it was deciding who the people were, and who were the rats. But Malicia Grim said it was a story about stories. It began-part of it began-on the mail coach that came over the mountains from the distant cities of the plain. This was the part of the journey that the driver didn't like. The way wound through forests and around mountains on crumbling roads. There were deep shadows between the trees. Sometimes he thought things were following the coach, keeping just out of sight. It gave him the willies. And on this journey, the really big willie was that he could hear voices. He was sure of it. They were coming from behind him, from the top of the coach, and there was nothing there but the big oilcloth mail-sacks and the young man's luggage. There was certainly nothing big enough for a person to hide inside. But occasionally he was sure he heard squeaky voices, whispering. There was only one passenger at this point. He was a fair-haired young man, sitting all by himself inside the rocking coach, reading a book. He was reading slowly, and aloud, moving his finger over the words. 'Ubberwald,' he read out. 'That's "Uberwald",' said a small, squeaky but very clear voice. 'The dots make it a sort of long "ooo" sound. But you're doing well.' 'Ooooooberwald?' 'There's such a thing as too much pronunciation, kid,' said another voice, which sounded half asleep. 'But you know the best thing about Uberwald? It's a long, long way from Sto Lat. It's a long way from Pseudopolis. It's a long way from anywhere where the Commander of the Watch says he'll have us boiled alive if he ever sees us again. And it's not very modern. Bad roads. Lots of mountains in the way. People don't move about much up here. So news doesn't travel very fast, see? And they don't have policemen. Kid, we can make a fortune here!' 'Maurice?' said the boy, carefully. 'Yes, kid?' 'You don't think what we're doing is, you know… dishonest, do you?' There was a pause before the voice said, 'How do you mean, dishonest?' 'Well… we take their money, Maurice.' The coach rocked and bounced over a pot-hole. 'All right,' said the unseen Maurice, 'but what you've got to ask yourself is: who do we take the money from, actually?' 'Well… it's generally the mayor or the city council or someone like that.' 'Right. And that means it's… what? I've told you this bit before.' 'Er…' 'It is gov-ern-ment money, kid,' said Maurice patiently. 'Say it? Gov-ern-ment money.' 'Gov-ern-ment money,' said the boy obediently. 'Right! And what do governments do with money?' 'Er, they…' 'They pay soldiers,' said Maurice. 'They have wars. In fact, we've prob'ly stopped a lot of wars by taking the money and putting it where it can't do any harm. They'd put up stachoos to us, if they thought about it.' 'Some of those towns looked pretty poor, Maurice,' said the kid doubtfully. 'Hey, just the kind of places that don't need wars, then.' 'Dangerous Beans says it's…' The boy concentrated, and his lips moved before he said the word, as if he was trying out the pronunciation to himself, '… It's un-eth-ickle.' 'That's right, Maurice,' said the squeaky voice. 'Dangerous Beans says we shouldn't live by trickery.' 'Listen, Peaches, trickery is what humans are all about,' said the voice of Maurice. 'They're so keen on tricking one another all the time that they elect governments to do it for them. We give them value for money. They get a horrible plague of rats, they pay a rat piper, the rats all follow the kid out of town, hoppity-skip, end of plague, everyone's happy that no-one's widdling in the flour any more, the government gets re-elected by a grateful population, general celebration all round. Money well spent, in my opinion.' 'But there's only a plague because we make them think there is,' said the voice of Peaches. 'Well, my dear, another thing all those little governments spend their money on is rat-catchers, see? I don't know why I bother with the lot of you, I really don't.' 'Yes, but we-' They realized that the coach had stopped. Outside, in the rain, there was the jingle of harness. Then the coach rocked a little, and there was the sound of running feet. A voice from out of the darkness said, 'Are there any wizards in there?' The occupants looked at one another in puzzlement. 'No?' said the kid, the kind of 'no' that means 'why are you asking?' 'How about any witches?' said the voice. 'No, no witches,' said the kid. 'Right. Are there any heavily-armed trolls employed by the mail-coach company in there?' 'I doubt it,' said Maurice. There was a moment's pause, filled with the sound of the rain. 'OK, how about werewolves?' said the voice eventually. 'What do they look like?' asked the kid. 'Ah, well, they look perfectly normal right up to the point where they grow all, like, hair and teeth and giant paws and leap through the window at you,' said the voice. The speaker sounded as though he was working through a list. 'We've all got hair and teeth,' said the kid. 'So you are werewolves, then?' 'No.' 'Fine, fine.' There was another pause filled with rain. 'OK, vampires,' said the voice. 'It's a wet night, you wouldn't want to be flying in weather like this. Any vampires in there?' 'No!' said the kid. 'We're all perfectly harmless!' 'Oh boy,' muttered Maurice, and crawled under the seat. 'That's a relief,' said the voice. 'You can't be too careful these days. There's a lot of funny people about.' A crossbow was pushed through the window, and the voice said, 'Your money and your life. It's a two-for-one deal, see?' 'The money's in the case on the roof,' said Maurice's voice, from floor level. The highwayman looked around the dark interior of the coach. 'Who said that?' he asked. 'Er, me,' said the boy. 'I didn't see your lips move, kid!' 'The money is on the roof. In the case. But if I was you I wouldn't-' 'Hah, I just 'spect you wouldn't,' said the highwayman. His masked face disappeared from the window. The boy picked up the pipe that was lying on the seat beside him. It was the type still known as a penny whistle, although no-one could remember when they'd ever cost only a penny. 'Play "Robbery with Violence", kid,' said Maurice, quietly. 'Couldn't we just give him money?' said the voice of Peaches. It was a little voice. 'Money is for people to give us,' said Maurice, sternly. Above them, they heard the scrape of the case on the roof of the coach as the highwayman dragged it down. The boy obediently picked up the flute and played a few notes. Now there were a number of sounds. There was a creak, a thud, a sort of scuffling noise and then a very short scream. When there was silence, Maurice climbed back onto the seat and poked his head out of the coach, into the dark and rainy night. 'Good man,' he said. 'Sensible. The more you struggle, the harder they bite. Prob'ly not broken skin yet? Good. Come forward a bit so I can see you. But carefully, eh? We don't want anyone to panic, do we?' The highwayman reappeared in the light of the coach lamps. He was walking very slowly and carefully, his legs spread wide apart. And he was quietly whimpering. 'Ah, there you are,' said Maurice, cheerfully. 'Went straight up your trouser legs, did they? Typical rat trick. Just nod, 'cos we don't want to set 'em off. No tellin' where it might end.' The highwayman nodded very slowly. Then his eyes narrowed. 'You're a cat?' he mumbled. Then his eyes crossed and he gasped. 'Did I say talk?' said Maurice. 'I don't think I said talk, did I? Did the coachman run away or did you kill him?' The man's face went blank. 'Ah, quick learner, I like that in a highwayman,' said Maurice. 'You can answer that question.' 'Ran away,' said the highwayman hoarsely. Maurice stuck his head back inside the coach. 'Whadja think?' he said. 'Coach, four horses, probably some valuables in the mail-bags… could be, oh, a thousand dollars or more. The kid could drive it. Worth a try?' 'That's stealing, Maurice,' said Peaches. She was sitting on the seat beside the kid. She was a rat. 'Not stealing as such,' said Maurice. 'More… findin'. The driver's run away, so it's like… salvage. Hey, that's right, we could turn it in for the reward. That's much better. Legal, too. Shall we?' 'People would ask too many questions,' said Peaches. 'If we just leave it, someone yawlp will steal it,' wailed Maurice. 'Some thief will take it away! Much better if we take it, eh? We're not thieves.' 'We will leave it, Maurice,' said Peaches. 'In that case, let's steal the highwayman's horse,' said Maurice, as if the night wouldn't be properly finished unless they stole something. 'Stealing from a thief isn't stealing, 'cos it cancels out.' 'We can't stay here all night,' said the kid to Peaches. 'He's got a point.' 'That's right!' said the highwayman urgently. 'You can't stay here all night!' 'That's right,' said a chorus of voices from his trousers, 'we can't stay here all night!' Maurice sighed, and stuck his head out of the window again. 'O-K,' he said. 'This is what we're going to do. You're going to stand very still looking straight in front of you, and you won't try any tricks because if you do I've only got to say the word-' 'Don't say the word!' said the highwayman even more urgently. 'Right,' said Maurice, 'and we'll take your horse as a punishment and you can have the coach because that'd be stealing and only thieves are allowed to steal. Fair enough?' 'Anything you say!' said the highwayman, then he thought about this and added hurriedly, 'But please don't say anything!' He kept staring straight ahead. He saw the boy and the cat get out of the coach. He heard various sounds behind him as they took his horse. And he thought about his sword. All right, he was going to get a whole mail coach out of this deal, but there was such a thing as professional pride. 'All right,' said the voice of the cat after a while. 'We're all going to leave now, and you've got to promise not to move until we're gone. Promise?' 'You have my word as a thief,' said the highwayman, slowly lowering a hand to his sword. 'Right. We certainly trust you,' said the voice of the cat. The man felt his trousers lighten as the rats poured out and scampered away, and he heard the jingle of harness. He waited a moment, then spun around, drew his sword and ran forward. Slightly forward, in any case. He wouldn't have hit the ground so hard if someone hadn't tied his bootlaces together. They said he was amazing. The Amazing Maurice, they said. He'd never meant to be amazing. It had just happened. He'd realized something was odd that day, just after lunch, when he'd looked into a reflection in a puddle and thought that's me. He'd never been aware of himself before. Of course, it was hard to remember how he'd thought before he became amazing. It seemed to him that his mind had been just a kind of soup. And then there had been the rats, who lived under the rubbish heap in one corner of his territory. He'd realized there was something educated about the rats when he jumped on one and it'd said, 'Can we talk about this?', and part of his amazing new brain had told him you couldn't eat someone who could talk. At least, not until you'd heard what they'd got to say. The rat had been Peaches. She wasn't like other rats. Nor were Dangerous Beans, Donut Enter, Darktan, Hamnpork, Big Savings, Toxie and all the rest of them. But, then, Maurice wasn't like other cats any more. Other cats were, suddenly, stupid. Maurice started to hang around with the rats, instead. They were someone to talk to. He got on fine so long as he remembered not to eat anyone they knew. The rats spent a lot of time worrying about why they were suddenly so clever. Maurice considered that this was a waste of time. Stuff happened. But the rats went on and on about whether it was something on the rubbish heap that they'd eaten, and even Maurice could see that wouldn't explain how he'd got changed, because he'd never eaten rubbish. And he certainly wouldn't eat any rubbish off that heap, seeing as where it came from… He considered that the rats were, quite frankly, dumb. Clever, OK, but dumb. Maurice had lived on the streets for four years and barely had any ears left and scars all over his nose, and he was smart. He swaggered so much when he walked that if he didn't slow down he flipped himself over. When he fluffed out his tail people had to step around it. He reckoned you had to be smart to live for four years on these streets, especially with all the dog gangs and freelance furriers. One wrong move and you were lunch and a pair of gloves. Yes, you had to be smart. You also had to be rich. This took some explaining to the rats, but Maurice had roamed the city and learned how things worked and money, he said, was the key to everything. And then one day he'd seen the stupid-looking kid playing the flute with his cap in front of him for pennies, he'd had an idea. An amazing idea. It just turned up, bang, all at once. Rats, flute, stupid-looking kid… And he'd said, 'Hey, stupid-looking kid! How would you like to make your fortu-nah, kid, I'm down here…' Dawn was breaking when the highwayman's horse came out of the forests, over a pass, and was reined to a halt in a convenient wood. The river valley stretched out below, with a town hunched up against the cliffs. Maurice clambered out of the saddle-bag, and stretched. The stupid-looking kid helped the rats out of the other bag. They'd spent the journey hunched up on the money, although they were too polite to say that this was because no-one wanted to sleep in the same bag as a cat. 'What's the name of the town, kid?' Maurice said, sitting on a rock and looking down at the town. Behind them, the rats were counting the money again, stacking it in piles beside its leather bag. They did this every day. Even though he had no pockets, there was something about Maurice that made everyone want to check their change as often as possible. ' 's called Bad Blintz,' said the kid, referring to the guide-book. 'Ahem… should we be going there, if it's bad?' said Peaches, looking up from the counting. 'Hah, it's not called Bad because it's bad,' said Maurice. 'That's foreign language for bath, see?' 'So it's really called Bath Blintz?' said Donut Enter. 'Nah, nah, they call it Bath because…' The Amazing Maurice hesitated, but only for a moment, 'because they got a bath, see? Very backward place, this. Not many baths around. But they've got one, and they're very proud of it, so they want everyone to know. You prob'ly have to buy tickets even to have a look at it.' 'Is that true, Maurice?' said Dangerous Beans. He asked the question quite politely, but it was clear that what he was really saying was 'I don't think that is true, Maurice.' Ah, yes… Dangerous Beans. Dangerous Beans was difficult to deal with. Really, he shouldn't be. Back in the old days, Maurice thought, he wouldn't even have eaten a rat so small and pale and generally ill-looking. He stared down at the little albino rat, with his snow-white fur and pinky eyes. Dangerous Beans did not stare back, because he was too short-sighted. Of course, being nearly blind was not too much of a drawback to a species that spent most of its time in the darkness and had a sense of smell that was, as far as Maurice could understand it, almost as good as sight and sound and speech all put together. For example, the rat always turned to face Maurice and looked directly at him when he spoke. It was uncanny. Maurice had known a blind cat that walked into doors a lot, but Dangerous Beans never did that. Dangerous Beans wasn't the head rat. That was Hamnpork's job. Hamnpork was big and fierce and a bit scabby, and he didn't much like having a new-fangled brain and he certainly didn't like talking to a cat. He'd been quite old when the rats had Changed, as they called it, and he said he was too old to change. He left talking-to-Maurice to Dangerous Beans, who'd been born just after the Change. And that little rat was clever. Incredibly clever. Too clever. Maurice needed all his tricks when he was dealing with Dangerous Beans. 'It's amazing, the stuff I know,' said Maurice, blinking slowly at him. 'Anyway, it's a nice-looking town. Looks rich to me. Now, what we'll do is-' 'Ahem…' Maurice hated that sound. If there was a sound worse than Dangerous Beans asking one of his odd little questions, it was Peaches clearing her throat. It meant she was going to say something, very quietly, which was going to upset him. 'Yes?' he said sharply. 'Do we really need to keep on doing this?' she said. 'Well, of course, no,' said Maurice. 'I don't have to be here at all. I'm a cat, right? A cat with my talents? Hah! I could've got myself a really cushy job with a conjurer. Or a ventrilosqwist, maybe. There's no end to the things I could be doing, right, 'cos people like cats. But, owing to being incredibly, you know, stupid and kind-hearted, I decided to help a bunch of rodents who are, and let's be frank here, not exactly number one favourites with humans. Now some of you,' and here he cast a yellow eye towards Dangerous Beans, 'have some idea of going to some island somewhere and starting up a kind of rat civilization of your very own, which I think is very, you know, admirable, but for that you need… what did I tell you that you need?' 'Money, Maurice,' said Dangerous Beans, 'but-' 'Money. That's right, 'cos what can you get with money?' He looked around at the rats. 'Begins with a B,' he prompted. 'Boats, Maurice, but-' 'And then there's all the tools you'll need, and food, of course-' 'There's coconuts,' said the stupid-looking kid, who was polishing his flute. 'Oh, did someone speak?' said Maurice. 'What do you know about it, kid?' 'You get coconuts,' said the kid. 'On desert islands. A man selling them told me.' 'How?' said Maurice. He wasn't too sure about coconuts. 'I don't know. You just get them.' 'Oh, I suppose they just grow on trees, do they?' said Maurice sarcastically. 'Sheesh, I just don't know what you lot would do without… anyone?' He glared at the group. 'Begins with an M.' 'You, Maurice,' said Dangerous Beans. 'But, you see, what we think is, really-' 'Yes?' said Maurice, 'Ahem,' said Peaches. Maurice groaned. 'What Dangerous Beans means,' said the female rat, 'is that all this stealing grains and cheese and gnawing holes in walls is, well…' She looked up into Maurice's yellow eyes. 'Is not morally right.' 'But it's what rats do!' said Maurice. 'But we feel we shouldn't,' said Dangerous Beans. 'We should be making our own way in the world!' 'Oh dear oh dear oh dear,' said Maurice, shaking his head. 'Ho for the island, eh? The Kingdom of the Rats! Not that I'm laughing at your dream,' he added hastily. 'Everyone needs their little dreams.' Maurice truly that, too. If you knew what it was that people really, really wanted, you very nearly controlled them. Sometimes he wondered what the stupid-looking kid wanted. Nothing, as far as Maurice could tell, but to be allowed to play his flute and be left alone. But… well, it was like that thing with the coconuts. Every so often the kid would come out with something that suggested he'd been listening all along. People like that are hard to steer. But cats are good at steering people. A miaow here, a purr there, a little gentle pressure with a claw… and Maurice had never had to think about it before. Cats didn't have to think. They just had to know what they wanted. Humans had to do the thinking. That's what they were for. Maurice thought about the good old days before his brain had started whizzing like a firework. He'd turn up at the door of the University kitchens and look sweet, and then the cooks would try to work out what he wanted. It was amazing! They'd say things like 'Does oo want a bowl of milk, den? Does oo want a biscuit? Does oo want dese nice scraps, den?' And all Maurice would have to do was wait patiently until they got to a sound he recognized, like 'turkey legs' or 'minced lamb'. But he was sure he'd never eaten anything magical. There was no such thing as enchanted chicken giblets, was there? It was the rats who'd eaten the magical stuff. The dump they called 'home' and also called 'lunch' was round the back of the University, and it was a university for wizards, after all. The old Maurice hadn't paid much attention to people who weren't holding bowls, but he was aware that the big men in pointy hats made strange things happen. And now he knew what happened to the stuff they used, too. It got tossed over the wall when they'd finished with it. All the old worn-out spell-books and the stubs of the dribbly candles and the remains of the green bubbly stuff in the cauldrons all ended up on the big dump, along with the tin cans and old boxes and the kitchen waste. Oh, the wizards had put up signs saying 'Dangerous' and 'Toxic', but the rats hadn't been able to read in those days and they liked dribbly candle ends. Maurice had never eaten anything off the dump. A good motto in life, he'd reckoned, was: don't eat anything that glows. But he'd become intelligent, too, at about the same time as the rats. It was a mystery. Since then he'd done what cats always did. He steered people. Now some of the rats counted as people too, of course. But people were people, even if they had four legs and had called themselves names like Dangerous Beans, which is the kind of name you give yourself if you learn to read before you understand what all the words actually mean, and read the notices and the labels off the old rusty cans and give yourself names you like the sound of. The trouble with thinking was that, once you started, you went on doing it. And as far as Maurice was concerned, the rats were thinking a good deal too much. Dangerous Beans was bad enough, but he was so busy thinking stupid thoughts about how rats could actually build their own country somewhere that Maurice could deal with him. It was Peaches who was the worst. Maurice's usual trick of just talking fast until people got confused didn't work on her at all. 'Ahem,' she began again, 'we think that this should be the last time.' Maurice stared. The other rats backed away slightly, but Peaches just stared back. 'This must be the very last time we do the silly "plague of rats" trick,' said Peaches. 'And that's final.' 'And what does Hamnpork think about this?' said Maurice. He turned to the head rat, who had been watching them. It was always a good idea appealing to Hamnpork when Peaches was giving trouble, because he didn't like her very much. 'What d'you mean, think?' said Hamnpork. 'I… sir, I think we should stop doing this trick,' said Peaches, dipping her head nervously. 'Oh, you think too, do you?' said Hamnpork. 'Everyone's thinking these days. I think there's a good deal too much of this thinking, that's what I think. We never thought about thinking when I was a lad. We'd never get anything done if we thought first.' He gave Maurice a glare, too. Hamnpork didn't like Maurice. He didn't like most things that had happened since the Change. In fact Maurice wondered how long Hamnpork was going to last as leader. He didn't like thinking. He belonged to the days when a rat leader just had to be big and stroppy. The world was moving far too fast for him now, which made him angry. He wasn't so much leading now as being pushed. 'I… Dangerous Beans, sir, believes that we should be thinking of settling down, sir,' said Peaches. Maurice scowled. Hamnpork wouldn't listen to Peaches, and she knew it, but Dangerous Beans was the nearest thing the rats had to a wizard and even big rats listened to him. 'I thought we were going to get on a boat and find an island somewhere,' said Hamnpork. 'Very ratty places, boats,' he added, approvingly. Then he went on, with a slightly nervous and slightly annoyed look at Dangerous Beans, 'And people tell me that we need this money stuff because now we can do all this thinking we've got to be eff… efit…' 'Ethical, sir,' said Dangerous Beans. 'Which sounds unratty to me. Not that my opinion counts for anything, it seems,' said Hamnpork. 'We've got enough money, sir,' said Peaches. 'We've already got a lot of money. We have got a lot of money, haven't we, Maurice.' It wasn't a question; it was a kind of accusation. 'Well, when you say a lot-' Maurice began. 'And in fact we've got more money than we thought,' said Peaches, still in the same tone of voice. It was very polite, but it just kept going and it asked all the wrong questions. A wrong question for Maurice was one that he didn't want anyone to ask. Peaches gave her little cough again. 'The reason I say we've got more money, Maurice, is that you said what were called "gold coins" were shiny like the moon and "silver coins" were shiny like the sun, and you'd keep all the silver coins. In fact, Maurice, that's the wrong way around. It's the silver coins that are shiny like the moon.' Maurice thought a rude word in cat language, which has a great many of them. What was the point of education, he thought, if people went out afterwards and used it? 'So we think, sir,' said Dangerous Beans to Hamnpork, 'that after this one last time we should share out the money and go our separate ways. Besides, it's getting dangerous to keep repeating the same trick. We should stop before it's too late. There's a river here. We should be able to get to the sea.' 'An island with no humans or krllrrt cats would be a good place,' said Hamnpork. Maurice didn't let his smile fade, even though he knew what krllrrt meant. 'And we wouldn't want to keep Maurice from his wonderful new job with the conjurer,' said Peaches. Maurice's eyes narrowed. For a moment he came close to breaking his iron rule of not eating anyone that could talk. 'What about you, kid?' he said, looking up at the stupid-looking kid. 'I don't mind,' said the kid. 'Don't mind what?' said Maurice. 'Don't mind anything, really,' said the kid. 'Just so long as no-one stops me playing.' 'But you've got to think of the future!' said Maurice. 'I am,' said the kid. 'I want to go on playing my music in the future. It doesn't cost anything to play. But maybe the rats are right. We've had a couple of narrow squeaks, Maurice.' Maurice gave the kid a sharp look to see if he was making a joke, but the kid had never done that kind of thing before. He gave up. Well, not exactly gave up. Maurice hadn't got where he was by giving up on problems. He just put them to one side. After all, something always turned up. 'OK, fine,' he said. 'We'll do it one more time and split the money three ways. Fine. Not a problem. But if this is going to be the last time, let's make it one to remember, eh?' He grinned. The rats, being rats, were not keen on seeing a grinning cat, but they understood that a difficult decision had been made. They breathed tiny sighs of relief. 'Are you happy with that, kid?' said Maurice. 'I can go on playing my flute afterwards?' said the kid. 'Absolutely.' 'OK,' said the kid. The money, shiny like the sun and shiny like the moon, was solemnly put back in its bag. The rats dragged the bag under the bushes and buried it. No-one could bury money like rats, and it didn't pay to take too much into towns. Then there was the horse. It was a valuable horse, and Maurice was very, very sorry to turn it loose. But, as Peaches pointed out, it was a highwayman's horse, with a very ornate saddle and bridle. Trying to sell it here could be dangerous. People would talk. It might attract the attention of the government. This was no time to have the Watch on their tails. Maurice walked to the edge of the rock and looked down at the town, which was waking up under the sunrise. 'Let's make this the big one, then, eh?' he said, as rats came back. 'I want to see maximum squeaking and making faces at people and widdling on stuff, OK?' 'We think that widdling on stuff is not really-' Dangerous Beans began, but 'Ahem,' said Peaches, and so Dangerous Beans went on: 'Oh, I suppose, if it's the last time…' 'I've widdled on everything since I was out of the nest,' said Hamnpork. 'Now they tell me it's not right. If that's what thinking means, I'm glad I don't do any.' 'Let's leave 'em amazed,' said Maurice. 'Rats? They think they've seen rats in that town? After they've seen us, they'll be making up storiesl' CHAPTER 2 Mr Bunnsy had a lot of friends in Furry Bottom. But what Mr Bunnsy was friendly with more than anything else was food. - From Mr Bunnsy Has An Adventure   This was the plan. And it was a good plan. Even the rats, even Peaches, had to admit that it had worked. Everyone knew about plagues of rats. There were famous stories about the rat pipers, who made their living going from town to town getting rid of plagues of rats. Of course there weren't just rat plagues-sometimes there were plagues of accordion-players, bricks tied up with string, or fish-but it was the rats everyone knew about. And that, really, was it. You didn't need many rats for a plague, not if they knew their business. One rat, popping up here and there, squeaking loudly, taking a bath in the fresh cream and widdling in the flour, could be a plague all by himself. After a few days of this, it was amazing how glad people were to see the stupid-looking kid with his magical rat pipe. And they were amazed when rats poured out of every hole to follow him out of the town. They were so amazed that they didn't bother much about the fact that there were only a few hundred rats. They'd have been really amazed if they'd ever found out that the rats and the piper met up with a cat somewhere in the bushes out of town, and solemnly counted out the money. Bad Blintz was waking up when Maurice entered with the kid. No-one bothered them, although Maurice got a lot of interest. This did not worry him. He knew he was interesting. Cats walked as if they owned the place anyway, and the world was full of stupid-looking kids and people weren't rushing to see another one. It looked as though today was a market day, but there weren't many stalls and they were mostly selling, well, junk. Old pans, pots, used shoes… the kind of things people have to sell when they're short of money. Maurice had seen plenty of markets, on their journeys through other towns, and he knew how they should go. 'There should be fat women selling chickens,' he said. 'And people selling sweets for the kids, and ribbons. Tumblers and clowns. Even weasel jugglers, if you're lucky.' 'There's nothing like that. There's hardly anything to buy, by the look of it,' said the kid. 'I thought you said this was a rich town, Maurice.' 'Well, it looked rich,' said Maurice. 'All those big fields in the valley, all those boats on the river… you'd think the streets'd be paved with gold!' The kid looked up. 'Funny thing,' he said. 'What?' 'The people look poor,' he said. 'It's the buildings that look rich.' And they did. Maurice wasn't an expert on architecture but the wooden buildings had been carefully carved and painted. He noticed something else, too. There was nothing careful about the sign that had been nailed up on the nearest wall. It said: RATS WANTED DEAD! 50 PENCE PER TAIL! APPLY TO: THE RAT-CATCHERS C/O THE RATHAUS The kid was staring at it. 'They must really want to get rid of their rats here,' said Maurice, cheerfully. 'No-one has ever offered a reward of half a dollar a tail!' said the kid. 'I told you this would be the big one,' said Maurice. 'We'll be sitting on a pile of gold before the week's out!' 'What's a rat house?' said the kid, doubtfully. 'It can't be a house for rats, can it? And why is everyone staring at you?' 'I'm a handsome-looking cat,' said Maurice. Even so, it was a little surprising. People were nudging one another and pointing at him. 'You'd think they'd never seen a cat before,' he muttered, staring at the big building across the street. It was a big, square building, surrounded by people, and the sign said: RATHAUS. 'Rathouse's just the local word for… like the council house, the town hall,' he said. 'It's nothing to do with rats, amusing though it may be.' 'You really know a lot of words, Maurice,' said the kid, admiringly. 'I amaze myself, sometimes,' said Maurice. A queue of people were standing in front of one huge open door. Other people, who had presumably done whatever it was the queue was queuing to do, were emerging from another doorway in ones and twos. They were all carrying loaves of bread. 'Shall we queue up too?' said the kid. 'I shouldn't think so,' said Maurice, carefully. 'Why not?' 'See those men on the door? They look like watchmen. They've got big truncheons. And everyone's showing them a bit of paper as they go past. I don't like the look of that,' said Maurice. 'That looks like government to me.' 'We haven't done anything wrong,' said the kid. 'Not here, anyway.' 'You never know, with governments. Just sit still here, kid. I'll take a look.' People did look at Maurice when he stalked into the building, but it seemed that in a town beset by rats a cat was quite popular. A man did try to pick him up, but lost interest when Maurice turned and clawed the back of his hand. The queue wound into a big hall and passed in front of a long trestle table. There, each person showed their piece of paper to two women in front of a big tray of bread, and were given some bread. Then they moved on to a man with a vat of sausages, and got considerably less sausage. Watching over all this, and occasionally saying something to the food servers, was the mayor. Maurice recognized him instantly because he had a gold chain around his neck. He had run across a lot of mayors since working with the rats. This one was different from the rest. He was smaller, far more worried, and had a bald spot that he'd tried to cover with three strands of hair. He was a lot thinner than other mayors Maurice had seen, too. He didn't look as if he'd been bought by the ton. So… food is scarce, Maurice thought. They're having to ration it out. Looks like they'll be, needing a piper any day now. Lucky for us we arrived just in time… He walked out again, but this time a bit faster, because he realized that someone was playing a pipe. It was, as he feared, the kid. He'd put his cap on the ground in front of him, and had even accumulated a few coins. The queue had bent round so that people could hear him, and one or two small children were actually dancing. Maurice was only an expert on cat singing, which of standing two inches in front of other cats and screaming at them until they give in. Human music always sounded thin and watery to him. But people tapped their feet when they heard the kid play. They smiled for a while. Maurice waited until the kid had finished the tune. While the queue was clapping, he sidled up behind the kid, brushed up against him and hissed, 'Well done, fish-for-brains! We're supposed to be inconspicuousl Come on, let's go. Oh, grab the money, too.' He led the way across the square until he stopped so suddenly that the kid almost trod on him. 'Whoops, here comes some more government,' he said. 'And we know what these are, don't we… ?' The kid did. They were rat-catchers, two of them. Even here, they wore the long dusty coats and battered black top hats of their profession. They each carried a pole over one shoulder, from which dangled a variety of traps. From the other shoulder hung a big bag, the kind you really wouldn't want to look inside. And each man had a terrier on a string. They were skinny, argumentative dogs, and growled at Maurice when they were dragged past. The queue cheered as the men approached, and clapped when they both reached into their bags and held up a couple of handfuls of what looked, to Maurice, like black string. 'Two hundred today!' shouted one of the rat-catchers. One of the terriers lunged at Maurice, tugging frantically on its string. The cat didn't move. Probably only the stupid-looking kid heard him say, in a low voice, 'Heel, fleabag! Bad dog!' The terrier's face screwed up in the horribly worried expression of a dog trying to have two thoughts at the same time. It knew cats shouldn't talk, and this cat had just talked. It was a terrible problem. It sat down awkwardly and whined. Maurice washed himself. It was a deadly insult. The rat-catcher, annoyed at such a cowardly performance from his dog, jerked it away. And dropped a few of the black strings. 'Rat tails!' said the kid. 'They really must have a problem here!' 'A bigger one than you think,' said Maurice, staring at the bunch of tails. 'Just pick those up when no-one's looking, will you?' The kid waited until people weren't looking towards them, and reached down. Just as his fingers touched the tangle of tails a large, shiny black boot trod heavily on it. 'Now, you don't want to go touching them, young sir,' said a voice above him. 'You can get plague, you know, from rats. It makes your legs explode.' It was one of the rat-catchers. He gave the kid a big grin, but it was not a humorous one. It smelled of beer. 'That's right, young sir, and then your brains come down your nose,' said the other rat-catcher, coming up behind the kid. 'You wouldn't dare use your hanky, young sir, if you got the plague.' 'My associate has as usual put his finger right on it, young sir,' said the first rat-catcher, breathing more beer into the kid's face. 'Which is more than you'd be able to do, young sir,' said Rat-catcher 2, 'because when you get the plague, your fingers go all-' 'Your legs haven't exploded,' said the kid. Maurice groaned. It was never a good idea to be rude to a smell of beer. But the rat-catchers were at the stage where, against all the odds, they thought they were funny. 'Ah, well said, young sir, but that's because lesson one at the Guild of Rat-catchers' school is not letting your legs explode,' said Rat-catcher 1. 'Which is a good thing 'cos the second lesson is upstairs,' said Rat-catcher 2. 'Oh, I am a one, aren't I, young sir?' The other rat-catcher picked up the bundle of black strings, and his smile faded as he stared at the kid. 'Ain't seen you before, kid,' he said, 'And my advice to you is, keep your nose clean and don't say nothing to nobody about anything. Not a word. Understand?' The kid opened his mouth, and then shut it hurriedly. The rat-catcher grinned his awful grin again. 'Ah. You catch on quick, young sir,' he said. 'Perhaps we'll see you around, eh?' 'I bet you'd like to be a rat-catcher when you grow up, eh, young sir,' said Rat-catcher 2, patting the kid too heavily on the back. The kid nodded. It seemed the best thing to do. Rat-catcher 1 leaned down until his red, pock-marked nose was an inch away from the kid's face. 'If you grow up, young sir,' he said. The rat-catchers walked away, dragging their dogs with them. One of the terriers kept looking back at Maurice. 'Very unusual rat-catchers they have hereabouts,' said the cat. 'I haven't seen rat-catchers like them before,' said the kid. 'They looked nasty. Like they enjoyed it.' 'I haven't seen rat-catchers who've been so busy but still have nice clean boots,' said Maurice. 'Yes, they did, didn't they…' said the kid. 'But even that's not as odd as the rats round here,' said Maurice, in the same quiet voice, as though he was adding up money. 'What's odd about the rats?' said the kid. 'Some of them have very strange tails,' said Maurice. The kid looked around the square. The queue for bread was still quite long, and it made him nervous. But so did the steam. Little bursts of it puffed up from gratings and manhole-covers all over the place, as if the whole town had been built on a kettle. Also, he had the distinct feeling that someone was watching him. 'I think we ought to find the rats and move on,' he said. 'No, this smells like a town with opportunities,' said Maurice. 'Something's going on, and when something's going on, that means someone's getting rich, and when someone's getting rich, I don't see why that shouldn't be m-us.' 'Yes, but we don't want those people killing Dangerous Beans and the rest of them!' 'They won't get caught,' said Maurice. 'Those men wouldn't win any prizes for thinking. Even Hamnpork could run rings round 'em, I'd say. And Dangerous Beans has got brains coming out of his ears.' 'I hope not!' 'Nah, nah,' said Maurice, who generally told people what they wanted to hear, 'I mean our rats can out-think most humans, OK? Remember back in Scrote when Sardines got in that kettle and blew a raspberry at the old woman when she lifted the lid? Hah, even ordinary rats can out-think humans. Humans think that just because they're bigger, they're better-Hold on, I'll shut up, someone's watching us…' A man carrying a basket had stopped on his way out of the Rathaus and was staring at Maurice with a good deal of interest. Then he looked up at the kid and said, 'Good ratter, is he? I'll bet he is, a big cat like that. Is he yours, boy?' 'Say yes,' Maurice whispered. 'Sort of, yes,' said the kid. He picked Maurice up. 'I'll give you five dollars for him,' said the man. 'Ask for ten,' Maurice hissed. 'He's not for sale,' said the kid. 'Idiot!' Maurice purred. 'Seven dollars, then,' said the man. 'Look, I'll tell you what I'll do… four whole loaves of bread, how about that?' 'That's silly. A loaf of bread shouldn't cost more'n twenty pence,' said the kid. The man gave him a strange look. 'New here, are you? Got plenty of money, have you?' 'Enough,' said the kid. 'You think so? It won't do you much good, anyway. Look, four loaves of bread and a bun, I can't say fairer than that. I can get a terrier for ten loaves and they're mad for rats… no? Well, when you're hungry you'll give it away for half a slice of bread and scrape[1] <> and think you've done well, believe me.' He strode off. Maurice wriggled out of the kid's arms, and landed lightly on the cobbles. 'Honestly, if only I was good at ventrilosqwism we could make a fortune,' he grumbled. 'Ventrilosqwism?' said the kid, watching the man's retreating back. 'It's where you open and shut your mouth and I do the talking,' said Maurice. 'Why didn't you sell me? I could've been back in ten minutes! I heard of a man who made a fortune selling homing pigeons, and he only had the one!' 'Don't you think there's something wrong with a town where people'd pay more than a dollar for a loaf of bread?' said the kid. 'And pay half a dollar just for a rat tail?' 'Just so long as they've got enough money left to pay the piper,' said Maurice. 'Bit of luck there already being a plague of rats here, eh? Quick, pat me on the head, there's a girl watching us.' The kid looked up. There was a girl watching them. People were passing up and down the street, and some of them walked between the kid and the girl, but she stood stock still and just stared at him. And at Maurice. She had the same nail-you-to-the-wall look that he associated with Peaches. She looked like the kind of person who asked questions. And her hair was too red and her nose was too long. And she wore a long black dress with black lace fringing. No good comes of that sort of thing. She marched across the street and confronted the kid. 'You're new, aren't you? Come here looking for work, have you? Probably sacked from your last job, I expect. Probably because you fell asleep, and things got spoiled. That was probably what it was. Or you ran away because your master beat you with a big stick, although,' she added, as another idea struck her, 'you probably deserved it because of being lazy. And then you probably stole the cat, knowing how much people would pay for a cat here. And you must have gone mad with hunger because you were talking to the cat and everyone knows that cats can't talk.' 'Can't say a single word,' said Maurice. 'And probably you're a mysterious boy who-' The girl stopped and gave Maurice a puzzled look. He arched his back and said 'prppt', which is cat language for 'biscuits!' 'Did that cat just say something?' she demanded. 'I thought that everyone knew that cats can't talk,' said the kid. 'Ah, but maybe you were apprenticed to a wizard,' said the girl. 'Yes, that sounds about right. That'll do for now. You were an apprentice to a wizard, but you fell asleep and let the cauldron of bubbling green stuff boil over and he threatened to turn you into a, a, a-' 'Gerbil,' said Maurice, helpfully. '-a gerbil, and you stole his magical cat because you hated it so much and-what's a gerbil? Did that cat just say "gerbil"?' 'Don't look at me!' said the kid. 'I'm just standing here!' 'All right, and then you brought the cat here because you know there's a terrible famine and that's why you were going to sell it and that man would have given you ten dollars, you know, if you'd held out for it.' 'Ten dollars is too much money even for a good ratter,' said the kid. 'Ratter? He wasn't interested in catching rats!' said the red-haired girl. 'Everyone's hungry here! There's at least two meals on that cat!' 'What? You eat cats here?' said Maurice, his tail fluffing like a brush. The girl leaned down to Maurice with a dreadful grin, just like the one that Peaches always wore when she'd won an argument with him, and prodded him on the nose with a finger. 'Got you!' she said. 'You fell for a very simple trick! I think you two had better come with me, don't you? Or I'll scream. And people listen to me when I'm screaming!'   CHAPTER 3 "Never go into the Dark Wood, my friend," said Ratty Rupert. "There are bad things in there" - From Mr Bunnsy Has An Adventure   Far below Maurice's paws, the rats were creeping through the undertown of Bad Blintz. Old towns are like that. People build down as well as up. Cellars butt against other cellars, and some of the cellars get forgotten-except by creatures that want to stay out of sight. In the thick, warm, damp darkness a voice said, 'All right, who's got the matches?' 'Me, Dangerous Beans. Feedsfour.' 'Well done, young rat. And who has the candle?' 'Me, sir.[2] <> I'm Bitesize.' 'Good. Put it down and Peaches will light it.' There was a lot of scuffling in the darkness. Not all the rats had got used to the idea of making fire, and some were getting out of the way. There was a scratching noise, and then the match flared. Holding the match with both front paws, Peaches lit the candle stub. The flame swelled for a moment and settled down to a steady glow. 'Can you really see it?' said Hamnpork. 'Yes, sir,' said Dangerous Beans. 'I am not completely blind. I can tell the difference between light and dark.' 'Y'know,' said Hamnpork, watching the flame suspiciously, 'I don't like it at all, even so. Darkness was good enough for our parents. It'll end in trouble. Besides, setting fire to a candle is a waste of perfectly good food.' 'We have to be able to control the fire, sir,' said Dangerous Beans calmly. 'With the flame we make a statement to the darkness. We say: we are separate. We say: we are not just rats. We say: we are The Clan.' 'Hrumph,' said Hamnpork, which was his usual response when he didn't understand what had just been said. Just lately he'd been hrumphing a lot. 'I've heard the younger rats are saying that the shadows frighten them,' said Peaches. 'Why?' said Hamnpork. 'They're not frightened of complete darkness, are they? Darkness is ratty! Being in the dark is what a rat is all about!' 'It's odd,' said Peaches, 'but we didn't know the shadows were there until we had the light.' One of the younger rats timorously raised a paw. 'Um… and even when the light has gone out, we know the shadows are still around,' it said. Dangerous Beans turned towards the young rat. 'You're-?' he said. 'Delicious,' said the younger rat. 'Well, Delicious,' said Dangerous Beans, in a kindly voice, 'being afraid of shadows is all part of us becoming more intelligent, I think. Your mind is working out that there's a you, and there's also everything outside you. So now you're not just frightened of things that you can see and hear and smell, but also of things that you can… sort of… see inside your head. Learning to face the shadows outside helps us to fight the shadows inside. And you can control all the darkness. It's a big step forward. Well done.' Delicious looked slightly proud, but mostly nervous. 'I don't see the point, myself,' said Hamnpork. 'We used to do all right on the dump. I was never scared of anything.' 'We were prey to every stray cat and hungry dog, sir,' said Dangerous Beans. 'Oh, well, if we're going to talk about cats,' growled Hamnpork. 'I think we can trust Maurice, sir,' said Dangerous Beans. 'Perhaps not when it comes to money, I admit. But he is very good at not eating people who talk, you know. He checks, every time.' 'You can trust a cat to be a cat,' said Hamnpork. 'Talking or not!' 'Yes, sir. But we are different, and so is he. I believe he is a decent cat at heart.' 'Ahem. That remains to be seen,' said Peaches. 'But now we are here, let's get organized.' Hamnpork growled. 'Who are you to say "let's get organized"?' he said sharply. 'Are you the leader, young female who refuses to rllk with me? No! I am the leader. It's my job to say "let's get organized"!' 'Yes, sir,' said Peaches, crouching low. 'How would you like us to be organized, sir?' Hamnpork stared at her. He looked at the waiting rats, with their packs and bundles, and then around at the ancient cellar, and then back to the still-crouching Peaches. 'Just… get organized,' he muttered. 'Don't bother me with details! I am the leader.' And he stalked off into the shadows. When he'd gone, Peaches and Dangerous Beans looked around the cellar, which was filled with trembling shadows created by the candlelight. A trickle of water ran down one crusted wall. Here and there stones had fallen out, leaving inviting holes. Earth covered the floor, and there were no human footprints in it. 'An ideal base,' said Dangerous Beans. 'It smells secret and safe. A perfect place for rats.' 'Right,' said a voice. 'And you know what's worrying me about that?' The rat called Darktan stepped into the candlelight, and hitched up one of his belts of tools. A lot of the watching rats suddenly paid attention. People listened to Hamnpork because he was the leader, but they listened to Darktan because he was often telling you things that you really, really needed to know if you wanted to go on living. He was big, and lean, and tough, and spent most of his time taking traps apart to see how they worked. 'What is worrying you, Darktan?' asked Dangerous Beans. 'There aren't any rats here. Except us. Rat tunnels, yes. But we've seen no rats. No rats at all. A town like this should be full of them.' 'Oh, they're probably scared of us,' said Peaches. Darktan tapped the side of his scarred muzzle. 'Maybe,' he said. 'But things don't smell right. Thinking is a great invention, but we were given noses and it pays to listen to them. Be extra careful.' He turned to the assembled rats and raised his voice. 'OK, people! You know the drill!' he shouted. 'In front of me, in your platoons, now!' It didn't take long for the rats to form three groups. They'd had plenty of practice. 'Very nice,' said Darktan, as the last few shuffled into position. 'Right! This is tricky territory, troops, so we're going to be careful…' Darktan was unusual among the rats because he wore things. When the rats had discovered books - and the whole idea of books was still a difficult one for most of the older ones - they found, in the bookshop they invaded every night, the Book. This book was amazing. Even before Peaches and Donut Enter had learned how to read human words, they'd been amazed by the pictures. There were animals in there wearing clothes. There was a rabbit who walked on its hind legs and wore a blue suit. There was a rat in a hat, and he wore a sword and a big red waistcoat, complete with a watch on a chain. Even the snake had a collar and tie. And all of them talked and none of them ate any of the others and - and this was the unbelievable part - they all talked to humans, who treated them like, well, smaller humans. There were no traps, no poisons. Admittedly (according to Peaches, who was painstakingly working her way through the book, and sometimes read out parts) Oily the Snake was a bit of a rascal, but nothing truly bad happened. Even when the rabbit got lost in the Dark Wood he just had a bit of a scare. Yes, Mr Bunnsy Has An Adventure was the cause of much discussion amongst the Changelings. What was it for? Was it, as Dangerous Beans believed, a vision of some bright future? Had it been made by humans? The shop had been for humans, true, but surely even humans wouldn't make a book about Ratty Rupert the rat, who wore a hat, and poison rats under the floorboards at the same time. Would they? How mad would anything have to be to think like that? Some of the younger rats had suggested that perhaps clothes were more important than everyone thought. They'd tried wearing waistcoats, but it had been very difficult to bite out the pattern, they couldn't make the buttons work and, frankly, the things got caught on every splinter and were very hard to run in. Hats just fell off. Darktan just thought that humans were mad, as well as bad. But the pictures in the book had given him an idea. What he wore was not so much a waistcoat as a network of wide belts, easy to wriggle in and out of. On them he'd sewn pockets - and that had been a good idea, like giving yourself extra paws - to hold all the things he needed, like metal rods and bits of wire. Some of the rest of the squad had taken up the idea, too. You never knew what you were going to need next, on the Trap Disposal Squad. It was a tough, ratty life. The rods and wires jangled as Darktan walked up and down in front of his teams. He stopped in front of one large group of younger rats. 'All right, Number Three platoon, you're on widdling duty,' he said. 'Go and have a good drink.' 'Oooh, we're always on widdling,' a rat complained. Darktan pounced on it and faced it nose to nose, until it backed away. 'That's 'cos you're good at it, my lad! Your mother raised you to be a widdler, so off you go and do what comes naturally! Nothing puts humans off like seeing that rats have been there before, if you catch my meaning! And if you get the opportunity, do some gnawing as well. And run around under the floorboards and squeak! And remember, no-one is to move in until they get the all-clear from the trap squad. To the water, now, at the double! Hup! Hup! Hup! One two, one two, one two!' The platoon headed off, at speed. Darktan turned to Number Two platoon. They were some of the older rats, scarred and bitten and ragged, some of them with stubs of tails or no tails at all, some of them missing a paw or an ear or an eye. In fact although there were about twenty of them, they had between them only enough bits to make up about seventeen complete rats. But because they were old they were cunning, because a rat who isn't cunning and shifty and suspicious doesn't become an old rat. They'd all been grown up when the intelligence came. They were more set in their old ways. Hamnpork always said he liked them that way. They still had a lot of basic rattiness, the kind of raw cunning that would get you out of the traps that over-excited intelligence got you into. They thought with their noses. And you didn't have to tell them where to widdle. 'All right, people, you know the drill,' said Darktan. 'I want to see lots of cheeky stuff. Stealing the food out of cats' bowls, pies from under the cooks' noses-' '- false teeth from out of old men's mouths-' said a small rat, who seemed to be dancing on the spot while he stood there. His feet moved all the time, tippity-tapping on the cellar floor. He wore a hat, too, a battered, home-made thing out of straw. He was the only rat who could make a hat work, by wedging his ears through it. He said to get ahead, you had to get a hat. 'That was a fluke, Sardines. I bet you can't do it again,' said Darktan, grinning. 'And don't keep on telling the kids how you went for a swim in someone's bathtub. Yeah, I know you did, but I don't want to lose anyone who can't scramble out of a slippery tub. Anyway… if I don't hear ladies screaming and running out of their kitchens within ten minutes I'll know you're not the rats I think you are. Well? Why are you all standing around? Get on with it! And… Sardines?' 'Yes, boss?' 'Easy on the tap-dancing this time, all right?' 'I just got these dancing feet, boss!' 'And do you have to keep wearing that stupid hat?' Darktan continued, grinning again. 'Yes, boss!' Sardines was one of the older rats, but most of the time you wouldn't know it. He danced and joked and never got into fights. He'd lived in a theatre and once ate a whole box of greasepaint. It seemed to have got into his blood. 'And no going on ahead of the trap squad!' said Darktan. Sardines grinned. 'Aw, boss, can't I have any fun?' He danced after the rest of them, towards the holes in the walls. Darktan moved on, to Number One platoon. It was the smallest. You had to be a certain kind of rat to last a long time in the Trap Disposal Squad. You had to be slow, and patient, and thorough. You had to have a good memory. You had to be careful. You could join the squad if you were fast and slapdash and hasty. You just didn't last very long. He looked them up and down, and smiled. He was proud of these rats. 'OK, people, you know it all by now,' he said. 'You don't need a long lecture from me. Just remember that this is a new town so we don't know what we're going to find. There're bound to be plenty of new types of traps, but we learn fast, don't we? Poisons, too. They might be using stuff we've never run across before, so be careful. Never rush, never run. We don't want to be like the first mouse, eh?' 'No, Darktan,' the rats chorused dutifully. 'I said, what mouse don't we want to be like?' Darktan demanded. 'We don't want to be like the first mouse!' shouted the rats. 'Right! What mouse do we want to be like?' 'The second mouse, Darktan!' said the rats, who'd had this lesson dinned into them many times. 'Right! And why do we want to be like the second mouse?' 'Because the second mouse gets the cheese, Darktan!' 'Good!' said Darktan. 'Inbrine will take squad two… Bestbefore? You're promoted, you take squad three, and I hope you're as good as old Farmhouse was right up until the time she forgot how to disengage the trip-catch on a Snippet and Poison Ratsnapper Number 5. Over-confidence is our enemy! So if you see anything suspicious, any little trays you don't recognize, anything with wires and springs and stuff, you mark it and send a runner to me-yes?' A young rat was holding up its paw. 'Yes? What's your name… miss?' 'Er… Nourishing, sir,' said the rat. 'Er… can I ask a question, sir?' 'Are you new in this platoon, Nourishing?' said Darktan. 'Yes, sir! Transferred out of the Light Widdlers, sir!' 'Ah, they thought you'd be good at trap disposal, did they?' Nourishing looked uneasy, but there was no going back now. 'Er… not really, sir. They said I couldn't be any worse than I am at widdling, sir.' There was general laughter from the ranks. 'How can a rat not be good at that?' said Darktan. 'It's just so… so… so embarrassing, sir,' said Nourishing. Darktan sighed to himself. All this new thinking was producing some strange things. He personally approved of the idea of the Right Place, but some of the ideas the kids were coming up with were… odd. 'All right,' he said. 'What was your question, Nourishing?' 'Er… you said the second mouse gets the cheese, sir?' 'That's right! That's the squad motto, Nourishing. Remember it! It is your friend!' 'Yes, sir. I will, sir. But… doesn't the first mouse get something, sir?' Darktan stared at the young rat. He was slightly impressed that she stared back, instead of cringing. 'I can see you're going to be a valuable addition to the squad, Nourishing,' he said. He raised his voice. 'Squad! What does the first mouse get?' The roar of voices made dust fall down from the ceiling. 'The Trap!' 'And don't you forget it,' said Darktan. 'Take 'em out, Specialoffer. I'll be with you in a minute.' A younger rat stepped forward, and faced the squads. 'Let's go, rats! Hut, hut, hut…' The trap squads trotted away. Darktan walked over to Dangerous Beans. 'That's got us started,' he said. 'If we can't get the humans looking for a good rat-catcher by tomorrow, we don't know our business.' 'We need to stay longer than that,' said Peaches. 'Some of the ladies are going to have their babies.' 'I said we don't know it's safe here yet,' said Darktan. 'Do you want to be the one to tell Big Savings?' said Peaches, sweetly. Big Savings was the old head female, widely agreed to have a bite like a pick-axe and muscles like rock. She also had a short temper with males. Even Hamnpork kept out of her way when she was in a bad mood. 'Nature has to take its course, obviously,' said Darktan, quickly. 'But we haven't explored. There must be other rats here.' 'Oh, the keekees all keep out of the way of us,' said Peaches. That was true, Darktan had to agree. Ordinary rats did keep out of the way of the Changelings. Oh, there was some trouble sometimes, but the Changelings were big and healthy and could think their way through a fight. Dangerous Beans was unhappy about this but, as Hamnpork said, it was either us or them and when you got right down to it, it was a rat-eat-rat world… 'I'm going to go and join my squad,' said Darktan, still unnerved at the thought of confronting Big Savings. He moved closer. 'What's up with Hamnpork?' 'He's… thinking about things,' said Peaches. 'Thinking,' said Darktan, blankly. 'Oh. Right. Well, I've got traps to see to. Smell you later!' 'What is the matter with Hamnpork?' said Dangerous Beans, when he and Peaches were alone again. 'He's getting old,' said Peaches. 'He needs to rest a lot. And I think he's worried that Darktan or one of the others is going to challenge him.' 'Will they, do you think?' 'Darktan's more wrapped up in breaking traps and testing poisons. There's more interesting things to do now than bite one another.' 'Or do rllk, from what I hear,' said Dangerous Beans. Peaches looked down, demurely. If rats could blush, she would have done. It was amazing how pink eyes that could hardly see you could look straight through you at the same time. 'The ladies are a lot more choosy,' she said. 'They want to find fathers who can think.' 'Good,' said Dangerous Beans. 'We must be careful. We don't need to breed like rats. We don't have to rely on numbers. We are the Changelings.' Peaches watched him anxiously. When Dangerous Beans was thinking, he seemed to be staring into a world only he could see. 'What is it this time?' she asked. 'I have been thinking that we shouldn't kill other rats. No rat should kill another rat.' 'Even keekees?' she queried. 'They are rats too.' Peaches shrugged. 'Well, we've tried talking to them and that didn't work. Anyway, they mostly stay away these days.' Dangerous Beans was still staring at the unseen world. 'Even so,' he said quietly, 'I should like you to write it down.' Peaches sighed, but went off anyway to one of the packs the rats had carried in and pulled out her bag. It was no more than a roll of cloth with a handle made from a scrap of string, but it was big enough to hold a few matches, some pieces of pencil lead, a tiny sliver of a broken knife blade for sharpening the leads, and a grubby piece of paper. All the important things. She was also the official carrier of Mr Bunnsy. 'Carrier' wasn't quite correct;'dragger' was mostly more accurate. But Dangerous Beans always liked to know where it was and seemed to think better when it was around, and it gave him some comfort, and that was good enough for Peaches. She smoothed out the paper on an ancient brick, picked up a piece of lead and looked down the list. The first Thought had been: In the Clan is Strength. This had been quite a hard one to translate, but she had made an effort. Most rats couldn't read human. It was just too hard to make the lines and squiggles turn into any sense. So Peaches had worked very hard on making a language that rats could read. She'd tried to draw a big rat made up of little rats:   The writing had led to trouble with Hamnpork. New ideas needed a running jump to get into the old rat's head. Dangerous Beans had explained in his strange calm voice that writing things down would mean that a rat's knowledge would go on existing even when the rat had died. He said that all the rats could learn the knowledge of Hamnpork. Hamnpork had said: not likely! It'd had taken him years to learn some of the tricks he'd learned! Why should he give it all away? That'd mean any young rat would know as much as him! Dangerous Beans had said: We co-operate, or we die.   That had become the next Thought. 'Co-operate' had been difficult, but even keekees would sometimes lead a blind or wounded comrade, and that was certainly cooperation. The thick line, where she'd pressed heavily, had to mean 'no'. The trap sign could mean'die' or 'bad' or 'avoid'. The last Thought on the paper was: Not to Widdle where you Eat. That one was quite simple.   She grasped the piece of lead in both paws and carefully drew: No Rat to Kill Another Rat.   She sat back. Yes… not bad…'trap' was a good sign for death, and she'd added the dead rat to make it all more serious. 'But supposing you have to?' she said, still staring at the drawings. 'Then you have to,' said Dangerous Beans. 'But you shouldn't.' Peaches shook her head sadly. She supported Dangerous Beans because there was… well, something about him. He wasn't big or fast and he was almost blind and quite weak and sometimes he forgot to eat because he came up with thoughts that nobody-at least, nobody who was a rat-had thought before. Most of them had annoyed Hamnpork no end, like the time when Dangerous Beans had said, 'What is a rat?' and Hamnpork had replied, Teeth. Claws. Tail. Run. Hide. Eat. That's what a rat is.' Dangerous Beans had said, 'But now we can also say "what is a rat?"' he said. 'And that means we're more than that.' 'We're rats,' Hamnpork had argued. 'We run around and squeak and steal and make more rats. That's what we're made for!' 'Who by?' Dangerous Beans had said, and that had led to another argument about the Big Rat Deep Under The Ground theory. But even Hamnpork followed Dangerous Beans, and so did rats like Darktan and Donut Enter, and they listened when he talked. Peaches listened when they talked. 'We were given noses,' Darktan had told the squads. Who had given them noses? The thoughts of Dangerous Beans worked their ways into other people's heads without them noticing. He came up with new ways of thinking. He came up with new words. He came up with ways of understanding the things that were happening to them. Big rats, rats with scars, listened to the little rat because the Change had led them into dark territory and he seemed to be the only one with an idea of where they were going. She left him sitting by the candle and went and looked for Hamnpork. He was sitting by a wall. Like most of the old rats he always stuck close to walls, and kept away from open spaces and too much light. He seemed to be shaking. 'Are you all right?' she said. The shaking stopped. 'Fine, fine, nothing wrong with me!' snapped Hamnpork. 'Just a few twinges, nothing permanent!' 'Only I noticed you didn't go out with any of the squads,' said Peaches. 'There's nothing wrong with me!' shouted the old rat. 'We've still got some potatoes in the baggage-' 'I don't want any food ! There is nothing wrong with me!' … which meant that there was. It was the reason he didn't want to share all the things he knew. What he knew was all he had left. Peaches knew what rats traditionally did to leaders who were too old. She'd watched Hamnpork's face when Darktan-younger, stronger Darktan-had been talking to his squads, and knew that Hamnpork was thinking about it, too. Oh, he was fine when people were watching him, but lately he'd been resting more, and skulking in corners. Old rats were driven out, to lurk around by themselves and go rotten and funny in the head. Soon there would be another leader. Peaches wished she could make him understand one of the Thoughts of Dangerous Beans, but the old rat didn't much like talking to females. He'd grown up thinking females weren't for talking to. The Thought was:   It meant: We Are The Changelings. We Are Not Like Other Rats.   CHAPTER 4 The important thing about adventures, thought Mr Bunnsy, was that they shouldn't be so long as to make you miss mealtimes. - From Mr Bunnsy Has An Adventure   The kid and the girl and Maurice were in a large kitchen. The kid could tell it was a kitchen because of the huge black iron range in the chimney breast and the pans hanging on the walls and the long scarred table. What it didn't seem to have was what a kitchen traditionally had, which was food. The girl went to a metal box in the corner and fumbled round her neck for a string which, it turned out, held a large key. 'You can't trust anybody,' she said. 'And the rats steal a hundred times what they eat, the devils.' 'I don't think they do,' said the kid. 'Ten times, at most.' 'You know all about rats all of a sudden?' said the girl, unlocking the metal case. 'Not all of a sudden, I learned it when-Ow! That really hurt!' 'Sorry about that,' said Maurice. 'I accidentally scratched you, did I?' He tried to make a face which said Don't be a complete twerp, OK? which is quite hard to do with a cat's head. The girl gave him a suspicious look, and then turned back to the metal box. 'There's some milk that's not gone hard yet and a couple of fish-heads,' she said, peering inside. 'Sounds good to me,' said Maurice. 'What about your human?' 'Him? He'll eat any old scraps.' 'There's bread and sausage,' said the girl, taking a can from the metal cupboard. 'We're all very suspicious about the sausages. There's a tiny bit of cheese, too, but it's rather ancestral.' 'I don't think we should eat your food if it's so short,' said the kid. 'We have got money.' 'Oh, my father says it'd reflect very badly on the town if we weren't hospitable. He's the mayor, you know.' 'He's the government?' said the kid. The girl stared at him. 'I suppose so,' she said. 'Funny way of putting it. The town council makes the laws, really. He just runs the place and argues with everyone. And he says we shouldn't have any more rations than other people, to show solidarity in these difficult times. It was bad enough that tourists stopped visiting our hot baths, but the rats have made it a lot worse.' She took a couple of saucers from the big kitchen dresser. 'My father says that if we're all sensible there will be enough to go around,' she went on. 'Which I think is very commendable. I entirely agree. But I think that once you've shown solidarity, you should be allowed just a little extra. In fact, I think we get a bit less than everyone else. Can you imagine? Anyway… so you really are a magical cat, then?' she finished, pouring the milk into a saucer. It oozed rather than gushed, but Maurice was a street cat and would drink milk so rotten that it would try to crawl away. 'Oh, yes, that's right, magical,' he said, with a yellow-white ring around his mouth. For two fish-heads he'd be anything for anybody. 'Probably belonged to a witch, I expect, with a name like Griselda or one of those names,' said the girl, putting the fish-heads on another saucer. 'Yeah, right, Griselda, right,' said Maurice, not raising his head. 'Who lived in a gingerbread cottage in the forest, probably.' 'Yeah, right,' said Maurice. And then, because he wouldn't be Maurice if he couldn't be a bit inventive, he added: 'Only it was a crispbread cottage, 'cos she was slimming. Very healthy witch, Griselda.' The girl looked puzzled for a moment. 'That's not how it should go,' she said. 'Sorry, I tell a lie, it was gingerbread really,' said Maurice quickly. Someone giving you food was always correct. 'And she had big warts, I'm sure.' 'Miss,' said Maurice, trying to look sincere,'some of those warts had so much personality they used to have friends of their own. Er… what's your name, miss?' 'Promise not to laugh?' 'All right.' After all, there might be more fish-heads. 'It's… Malicia.' 'Oh.' 'Are you laughing?' she said, in a threatening voice. 'No,' said Maurice, mystified. 'Why should I?' 'You don't think it's a funny name?' Maurice thought about the names he knew-Hamnpork, Dangerous Beans, Darktan, Sardines… 'Sounds like an ordinary kind of name to me,' he said. Malicia gave him another suspicious look, but turned her attention to the kid, who was sitting with the usual happy, faraway smile he wore when he didn't have anything else to do. 'And have you got a name?' she said. 'You're not the third and youngest son of a king, are you? If your name starts "Prince" that's a definite clue.' The kid said, 'I think it's Keith.' 'You never said you had a name!' said Maurice. 'No-one ever asked before,' said the kid. 'Keith is not a promising name-start,' said Malicia. 'It doesn't hint of mystery. It just hints of Keith. Are you sure it's your real name?' 'It's just the one they gave me.' 'Ah, that's more like it. A slight hint of mystery,' said Malicia, suddenly looking interested. 'Just enough to up suspense. You were stolen away at birth, I expect. You probably are the rightful king of some country, but they found someone who looked like you and did a swap. In that case, you'll have a magic sword, only it won't look magic, you see, until it's time for you to manifest your destiny. You were probably found on a doorstep.' 'I was, yes,' said Keith. 'See? I'm always right!' Maurice was always on the lookout for what people wanted. And what Malicia wanted, he felt, was a gag. But he'd never heard the stupid-looking kid talk about himself before. 'What were you doing on a doorstep?' he said. 'I don't know. Gurgling, I expect,' said Keith. 'You never said,' said Maurice, accusingly. 'Is it important?' said Keith. 'There was a magic sword or a crown in the basket with you, probably. And you've got a mysterious tattoo or a strange-shaped birthmark, too,' said Malicia. 'I don't think so. No-one ever mentioned them,' said Keith. 'There was just me and a blanket. And a note.' 'A note? But that's important!' 'It said "19 pints and a Strawberry Yoghurt",' said Keith. 'Ah. Not helpful, then,' said Malicia. 'Why nineteen pints of milk?' 'It was the Guild of Musicians,' said Keith. 'Quite a large place. I don't know about the strawberry yoghurt.' 'Abandoned orphan is good,' said Malicia. 'After all, a prince can only grow up to be a king but a mysterious orphan could be anybody. Were you beaten and starved and locked in a cellar?' 'I don't think so,' said Keith, giving her a funny look. 'Everyone at the Guild was very kind. They were mostly nice people. They taught me a lot.' 'We've got Guilds here,' said Malicia. 'They teach boys to be carpenters and stonemasons and things like that.' 'The Guild taught me music,' said Keith. 'I'm a musician. I'm good at it, too. I've been earning my own living since I was six.' 'Aha! Mysterious orphan, strange talent, distressed upbringing… it's all shaping up,' said Malicia. 'The strawberry yoghurt is probably not important. Would your life have been different if it had been banana-flavoured? Who can say? What kinds of music do you play?' 'Kinds? There aren't any kinds. There's just music,' said Keith. 'There's always music, if you listen.' Malicia looked at Maurice. 'Is he always like this?' she demanded. 'This is the most I've ever heard him say,' said the cat. 'I expect you're very keen to know all about me,' said Malicia. 'I expect you're just too polite to ask.' 'Gosh, yes,' said Maurice. 'Well, you probably won't be surprised to know that I've got two dreadful step-sisters,' said Malicia. 'And I have to do all the chores!' 'Gosh, really,' said Maurice, wondering if there were any more fish-heads and, if there were any more fish-heads, whether they were worth all this. 'Well, most of the chores,' said Malicia, as if revealing an unfortunate fact. 'Some of them, definitely. I have to clean up my own room, you know! And it's extremely untidy!' 'Gosh, really.' 'And it's very nearly the smallest bedroom. There're practically no cupboards and I'm running out of bookshelf space!' 'Gosh, really.' 'And people are incredibly cruel to me. You will note that we're here in a kitchen. And I'm the mayor's daughter. Should the daughter of a mayor be expected to wash up at least once a week? I think not!' 'Gosh, really.' 'And will you just look at these torn and bedraggled clothes I have to wear?' Maurice looked. He wasn't good on clothes. Fur was enough for him. As far as he could tell, Malicia's dress was pretty much like any other dress. It seemed to be all there. There weren't any holes, except where the arms and head poked through. 'Here, just here,' said Malicia, pointing to a place on the hem which, to Maurice, looked no different from the rest of the dress. 'I had to sew that back myself, you know?' 'Gosh, re-' Maurice stopped. From here he could see the bare shelves. More importantly, he could see Sardines abseiling down from a crack in the ancient ceiling. He had a knapsack on his back. 'And on top of this I'm the one who has to queue for the bread and sausages every day-' Malicia continued, but Maurice was listening even less than he had been before. It had to be Sardines, he thought. Idiot! He always goes ahead of the trap squad! Of all the kitchens in all the town he could turn up in, he's turned up in this one. Any minute she's going to turn round and scream. Sardines would probably treat it as applause, too. He lived life as if it was a performance. Other rats just ran around squeaking and messing up things, and that was quite good enough to convince humans there was a plague. But, oh, no, Sardines always had to go further. Sardines and his yowoorll song and dance act! '-and the rats take everything,' Malicia was saying. 'What they don't take, they spoil. It's been terrible! The council have been buying in food from other towns, but no-one has very much to spare. We have to buy corn and stuff from the traders that sail up the river. That's why bread is so expensive.' 'Expensive, eh?' said Maurice. 'We've tried traps and dogs and cats and poison and still the rats keep coming,' said the girl. 'They've learned to be really sneaky, too. They hardly ever end up in our traps any more. Huh! I only ever got 50p for one tail. What's the good of the rat-catchers offering us 50p a tail if the rats are so cunning? The rat-catchers have to use all kinds of tricks to get them, they say.' Behind her, Sardines looked carefully around the room and then signalled to the rats in the ceiling to pull the rope up. 'Don't you think this would be a good time to go away!' said Maurice. 'Why are you making faces like that?' said Malicia, staring at him. 'Oh… well, you know that kind of cat that grins all time? Heard of that? Well, I'm the kind that makes, you know, weird faces,' said Maurice desperately. 'And sometimes I just burst out and say things get away get away, see, I did it again. It is an affliction. I probably need counselling oh no don't do that this is not the time to do that whoops, there I go again…' Sardines had pulled his straw hat out of his knapsack. He was holding a small walking-stick. It was a good routine, even Maurice had to admit. Some towns had advertised for a rat piper the very first time he'd done it. People could tolerate rats in the cream, and rats in the roof, and rats in the teapot, but they drew the line at tap-dancing. If you saw tap-dancing rats, you were in big trouble. Maurice had reckoned that if only the rats could play an accordion as well they could do two towns a day. He'd stared for too long. Malicia turned and her mouth opened in shock and horror as Sardines went into his routine. The cat saw her hand reach out for a pan that was on the table. She threw it, very accurately. But Sardines was a good pot-dodger. The rats were used to having things thrown at them. He was already running when the pan was halfway across the room, and then he leapt onto the chair and then he jumped onto the floor and then he dodged behind the dresser and then there was a sharp, final, metallic… snap. 'Hah!' said Malicia, and Maurice and Keith stared at the dresser. 'That's one rat less, at any rate. I really hate them…' 'It was Sardines,' said Keith. 'No, it was definitely a rat,' said Malicia. 'Sardines hardly ever invade a kitchen. I expect you're thinking about the plague of lobsters over in-' 'He just called himself Sardines because he saw the name on a rusty old tin and thought it sounded stylish,' said Maurice. He wondered if he dared look behind the dresser. 'He was a good rat,' said Keith. 'He used to steal books for me when they were teaching me to read.' 'Excuse me, are you mad?' said Malicia. 'It was a rat. The only good rat is a dead rat!' 'Hello?' said a little voice. It came from behind the dresser. 'It can't be alive! It's a huge trap!' said Malicia. 'It's got teeth!' 'Anyone there? Only the stick is bending…' said the voice. The dresser was massive, the wood so old that time had turned it black and it had become as solid and heavy as stone. 'That's not a rat talking, is it?' said Malicia. 'Please tell me rats can't talk!' 'In fact it's bending quite a bit now,' said the voice, which was slightly muffled. Maurice squinted into the space behind the dresser. 'I can see him,' he said. 'He wedged the stick in the jaws as they closed! Wotcha, Sardines, how're you doing?' 'Fine, boss,' said Sardines, in the gloom. 'If it wasn't for this trap I'd say everything was perfect. Did I mention the stick is bending?' 'Yes, you said.' 'It's bent some more since then, boss.' Keith grabbed one end of the dresser and grunted as he tried to move it. 'It's like a rock!' he said. 'It's full of crockery,' said Malicia, now quite bewildered. 'But rats don't really talk, do they?' 'Get out of the way!' shouted Keith. He grabbed the back edge of the dresser with both hands, and braced one foot against the wall, and heaved. Slowly, like a mighty forest tree, the dresser pitched forward. The crockery started to fall out as it tipped, plate slipping off plate like one glorious chaotic deal from a very expensive pack of cards. Even so, some of them survived the fall onto the floor, and so did some of the cups and saucers as the cupboard opened and added to the fun, but that didn't make any difference because then the huge, heavy woodwork thundered down on top of them. One miraculously whole plate rolled past Keith, spinning round and round and getting lower on the floor with the groiyuoiyoiyooooinnnnggg sound you always get in these distressing circumstances. Keith reached down to the trap and grabbed Sardines. As he pulled the rat up the stick gave way and the trap snapped shut. A bit of the stick spun away through the air. 'Are you all right?' Keith asked. 'Well, boss, all I can say is it's a good job rats don't wear underwear… Thanks, boss,' said Sardines. He was quite plump for a rat, but when his feet were dancing he could float across the floor like a balloon. There was the sound of a tapping foot. Malicia, with arms folded and an expression like a thunderstorm, looked at Sardines, and then at Maurice, and then at the stupid-looking Keith, and then at the wreckage on the floor. 'Er… sorry about the mess,' said Keith. 'But he was-' She waved this away. 'OK,' she said, as if she'd been thinking deeply. 'It goes like this, I think. The rat is a magical rat. I bet he's not the only one. Something happened to him, or them, and now they're really quite intelligent, despite the tap-dancing. And… they're friends with the cat. So… why would rats and a cat be friends? And it goes… there's some kind of an arrangement, right? I know! Don't tell me, don't tell me…' 'Huh?' said Keith. 'I shouldn't think anyone ever has to tell you anything,' said Maurice. '… it's something to do with plagues of rats, right? All those towns we've heard about… well, you heard about them too, and so you got together with thingy here-' 'Keith,' said Keith. '… yes… and so you go from town to town pretending to be a plague of rats, and thingy-' 'Keith.' '… yes… pretends to be a rat piper and you all follow him out. Right? It's all a big swindle, yes?' Sardines looked up at Maurice. 'She's got us bang to rights, boss,' he said. 'So now you've got to give me a good reason why I don't call the Watch out on you,' said Malicia triumphantly. I don't have to, Maurice thought, because you won't. Gosh, humans are so easy. He rubbed up against Malicia's legs and gave her a smirk. 'If you do, you'll never find out how the story ends,' he said. 'Ah, it'll end with you going to prison,' said Malicia, but Maurice saw her staring at the stupid-looking Keith and at Sardines. Sardines still had his little straw hat on. When it comes to attracting attention, that sort of thing counts for a lot. When he saw her frowning at him Sardines hastily removed his straw hat and held it in front of him, by the brim. 'There's something I'd like to find out, boss,' he said, 'if we're finding out things.' Malicia raised an eyebrow. 'Well?' she said. 'And don't call me boss!' 'I'd like to find out why there's no rats in this city, guv,' said Sardines. He tap-danced a few steps, nervously. Malicia could glare better than a cat. 'What do you mean, no rats?' she said. 'There's a plague of rats! And you're a rat, anyway!' 'There's rat runs all over the place and there's a few dead rats but we haven't found a living rat anywhere, guv.' Malicia leaned down. 'But you are a rat,' she said. 'Yes, guv. But we only arrived this morning.' Sardines grinned nervously as Malicia gave him another long stare. 'Would you like some cheese?' she said. 'I'm afraid it's only mousetrap.' 'I don't think so, thank you very much all the same,' said Sardines, very carefully and politely. 'It's no use, I think it really is time to tell the truth,' said Keith. 'Nonononononono,' said Maurice, who hated that kind of thing. 'It's all because-' 'You were right, miss,' said Keith, wearily. 'We go from town to town with a bunch of rats and fool people into giving us money to leave. That's what we do. I'm sorry we've been doing it. This was going to be the last time. I'm very sorry. You shared your food with us and you haven't got much, either. We ought to be ashamed.' It seemed to Maurice, while he was watching Malicia make up her mind, that her mind worked in a different way to other people's minds. She understood all the hard things without even thinking. Magical rats? Yeah, yeah. Talking cats? Been there, done that, bought the singlet. It was the simple things that were hard. Her lips were moving. She was, Maurice realized, making up a story out of it. 'So…' she said, 'you come along with your trained rats-' 'We prefer "educated rodents", guv,' said Sardines. '-all right, your educated rodents, and you move into a city, and… what happens to the rats that are there already?' Sardines looked helplessly at Maurice. Maurice nodded at him to keep on. They were all going to be in big trouble if Malicia didn't make up a story she liked. 'They keep out of our way, boss, I mean guv,' said Sardines. 'Can they talk too?' 'No, guv.' 'I think the Clan think of them as a bit like monkeys,' said Keith. 'I was talking to Sardines,' said Malicia. 'Sorry,' said Keith. 'And there're no other rats here at all?' Malicia went on. 'No, guv. A few old skeletons and some piles of poisons and lots of traps, boss. But no rats, boss.' 'But the rat-catchers nail up a load of rat tails every day!' 'I speak as I find, boss. Guv. No rats, boss. Guv. No other rats anywhere we've been, boss guv.' 'Have you ever looked at the rat tails, miss?' said Maurice. 'What do you mean?' said Malicia. 'They're fake,' said Maurice. 'Some of them, anyway. They're just old leather bootlaces. I saw some in the street.' 'They weren't real tails?' said Keith. 'I'm a cat. You think I don't know what rats' tails look like?' 'Surely people would notice!' said Malicia. 'Yeah?' said Maurice. 'Do you know what an aglet is?' 'Aglet? Aglet? What's an aglet got to do with anything?' snapped Malicia. 'It's those little metal bits on the end of shoelaces,' said Maurice. 'How come a cat knows a word like that?' said the girl. 'Everyone's got to know something,' said Maurice. 'Have you ever looked closely at the rat tails?' 'Of course not. You can get the plague from rats!' said Malicia. 'That's right, your legs explode,' said Maurice, grinning. 'That's why you didn't see the aglets. Your leg exploded lately, Sardines?' 'Not today, boss,' said Sardines. 'Mind you, it's not even lunchtime yet.' Malicia looked pleased. 'Ah-ha,' she said, and it seemed to Maurice that the 'ha' had a very nasty edge to it. 'So… you're not going to tell the Watch about us?' he ventured, hopefully. 'What, that I've been talking to a rat and a cat?' said Malicia. 'Of course not. They'll tell my father I've been telling stories and I'll get locked out of my room again.' 'You get locked out of your room as a punishment?' said Maurice. 'Yes. It means I can't get at my books. I'm rather a special person, as you may have guessed,' said Malicia, proudly. 'Haven't you heard of the Sisters Grim? Agoniza and Eviscera Grim? They were my grandmother and my great-aunt. They wrote… fairy-tales.' Ah, so we're temporarily out of trouble here, thought Maurice. Best to keep her talking. 'I'm not a big reader, as cats go,' he said. 'So what were these, then? Stories about little people with wings going tinkle-tinkle?' 'No,' said Malicia. 'They were not big on tinkling little people. They wrote… real fairy-tales. Ones with lots of blood and bones and bats and rats in. I've inherited the story-telling talent,' she added. 'I kind of thought you had,' said Maurice. 'And if there's no rats under the town but the ratcatchers are nailing up bootlaces, I smell a rat,' said Malicia. 'Sorry,' said Sardines, 'I think that was me. I'm a bit nervous-' There were sounds from upstairs. 'Quick, go out across the back yard!' Malicia commanded. 'Get up into the hayloft over the stables! I'll bring you some food! I know exactly how this sort of thing goes!'   CHAPTER 5 Ratty Rupert was the bravest rat that ever was. Everyone in Furry Bottom said so. - From Mr Bunnsy Has An Adventure   Darktan was in a tunnel several streets away, hanging from four bits of string attached to his harness. They were tied onto a stick which had been balanced like a seesaw on the back of a very fat rat; two other rats were sitting on the other end, and several other rats were steering it. Darktan was hanging just above the teeth of the big steel trap that completely filled the tunnel. He squeaked the signal to stop. The stick vibrated a little under his weight. 'I'm right over the cheese,' he said. 'Smells like Lancre Blue Vein, Extra Tasty. Not touched. Pretty old, too. Move me in about two paws.'[3] <> The stick bounced up and down as he was pushed forward. 'Careful, sir,' said one of the younger rats who crowded the tunnel behind the Trap Disposal Squad. Darktan grunted, and looked down at the teeth, an inch away from his nose. He pulled a short piece of wood out of one of his belts; a tiny sliver of mirror had been glued to one end of it. 'You lot move the candle this way a bit,' he commanded. 'That's right. That's right. Let's see, now…' He pushed the mirror past the teeth and turned it gently. 'Ah, just as I thought… it's a Prattle and Johnson Little Snapper, sure enough. One of the old Mk. Threes, but with the extra safety-catch. That's come a long way. OK. We know about these, don't we? Cheese for tea, lads!' There was nervous laughter from the watchers, but a voice said, 'Oh, they're easy…' 'Who said that?' said Darktan sharply. There was silence. Darktan craned his head back. The young rats had carefully moved aside, leaving one looking very, very alone. 'Ah, Nourishing,' said Darktan, turning back to the trap's trigger mechanism. 'Easy, is it? Glad to hear it. You can show us how it's done, then.' 'Er, when I said easy…' Nourishing began. 'I mean, Inbrine showed me on the practice trap and he said-' 'No need to be modest,' said Darktan, a gleam in his eye. 'It's all ready. I'll just watch, shall I? You can get into the harness and do it, can you?' '-but, but, but, I couldn't see too well when he showed us, now I come to think about it, and, and, and-' 'I'll tell you what,' said Darktan, 'I'll work on the trap, shall I?' Nourishing looked very relieved. 'And you can tell me exactly what to do,' Darktan added. 'Er…' Nourishing began. Now she looked like a rat prepared to rejoin the widdling squad really quickly. 'Jolly good,' said Darktan. He carefully put his mirror away and pulled a length of metal out of his harness. He prodded the trap carefully. Nourishing shuddered at the sound of metal on metal. 'Now, where was I… oh, yes, here's a bar and a little spring and a catch. What shall I do now, Miss Nourishing?' 'Er, er, er,' Nourishing stuttered. 'Things are creaking here, Miss Nourishing,' said Darktan, from the depths of the trap. 'Er, er, you wedge the thingy…' 'Which one is the thingy, Miss Nourishing? Take your time, whoops, this bit of metal is wobbling but don't let me hurry you in any way…' 'You wedge the, er, the thingy, er, the thingy… er…' Nourishing's eyes rolled wildly. 'Maybe it's this big SNAP argh argh argh…' Nourishing fainted. Darktan slipped out of the harness and dropped onto the trap. 'All fixed,' he said. 'I've clipped it firm, it won't off now. You boys can drag it out of the way.' He walked back to the squad and dropped a lump of hairy cheese onto Nourishing's quivering stomach. 'It's very important in the trap business to be definite, you see. You're definite or you're dead. The second mouse gets the cheese.' Darktan sniffed. 'Well, no human coming here would have any difficulty thinking there's rats around now…' The other trainees laughed in the nervous, tittering way of people who've seen someone else attract the teacher's attention and are glad it isn't them. Darktan unrolled a scrap of paper. He was a rat of action, and the idea that the world could be pinned down in little signs worried him a bit. But he could see how useful it was. When he drew pictures of a tunnel layout the paper remembered. It didn't get confused by new smells. Other rats, if they knew how to read, could see in their heads what the writer had seen. He'd invented maps. It was a drawing of the world. 'Amazing stuff, this new technology,' he said. 'So… there's poison marked here, two tunnels back. Did you see to it, Inbrine?' 'Buried and widdled on,' said Inbrine, his deputy. 'It was the grey No. 2 poison, too.' 'Good rat,' said Darktan. 'That's nasty eating.' 'There were dead keekees all round it.' 'I'll bet there were. No antidote for that stuff.' 'We found trays of No. 1 and No. 3 too,' said Inbrine. 'Lots of them.' 'You can survive No. 1 poison if you're sensible,' said Darktan. 'Remember that, all of you. And if you ever eat No. 3 poison, we've got some stuff that'll sort you out. I mean, you'll live in the end, but there'll be a day or two when you'd wish you were dead ' 'There's lots of poison, Darktan,' said Inbrine, nervously. 'More than I've ever seen before. Rat bones all over the place.' 'Important safety tip there, then,' said Darktan, setting off along a new tunnel. 'Don't eat a dead rat unless you know what they died of. Otherwise you'll die of it, too.' 'Dangerous Beans says he thinks we shouldn't eat rats at all,' said Inbrine. 'Yeah, well, maybe,' said Darktan, 'but out in the tunnels you have to be practical. Never let good food go to waste. And someone wake up Nourishing!' 'A lot of poison,' said Inbrine, as the squad moved on. 'They must really hate rats here.' Darktan didn't answer. He could see the rats were already getting nervous. There was a smell of fear in the rat runs. They'd never come across so much poison before. Darktan didn't usually worry about anything, and hated to feel the worry starting, deep in his bones A small rat, out of breath, scurried up the tunnel and crouched in front of him. 'Kidney, sir, No. 3 Heavy Widdlers,' it burst out. 'We've found a trap, sir! Not like the usual sort! Fresh walked right into it! Please come!' There was a lot of straw in the loft over the stables, and the heat of the horses coming up from below made it quite snug. Keith was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling and to himself. Maurice was watching his lunch, which was twitching its nose. Right up until the time he pounced, Maurice looked like a sleek killing machine. It all went wrong just before he jumped. His rear rose, it waggled faster and faster from side to side, his tail slashed at the air like a snake, and then he dived forward, claws out- 'Squeak!' 'OK, here's the deal,' said Maurice to the shivering ball in his claws. 'You just have to say something. Anything. "Let me go", maybe, or even "Help!" Squeak does not cut the mustard. It's just a noise. Just ask, and I'll let you go. No-one can say I'm not highly moral in that respect.' 'Squeak!' screamed the mouse. 'Fair enough,' said Maurice, and killed it instantly. He carried it back to the corner, where Keith was now sitting in the straw and finishing a pickled beef sandwich. 'It couldn't talk,' said Maurice, hurriedly. 'I didn't ask you,' said Keith. 'I mean, I gave it a chance,' said Maurice. 'You heard me, right? It only had to say it didn't want to be eaten.' 'Good.' 'It's all right for you, I mean, it's not as though you have to speak to sandwiches,' said Maurice, as if he was still bothered about something. 'I wouldn't know what to say to them,' said Keith. 'And I'd like to point out that I didn't play with it, either,' said Maurice. 'One swipe with the ol' paw and it was "goodbye, that's all she wrote" except that obviously the mouse didn't write anything, not being intelligent in any way.' 'I believe you,' said Keith. 'It never felt a thing,' Maurice went on. There was a scream, from somewhere in a nearby street, and then the sound of crockery breaking. There had been quite a lot of that in the last half hour. 'Sounds like the lads are still at work,' said Maurice, carrying the dead mouse behind a pile of hay. 'Nothing gets a good scream like Sardines dancing across the table.' The stable doors opened. A man came in, harnessed two of the horses, and led them out. Shortly afterwards, there was the sound of a coach leaving the yard. A few seconds later, there were three loud knocks from below. They were repeated. And then they were repeated again. Finally, Malicia's voice said: 'Are you two up there or not?' Keith crawled out of the hay and looked down. 'Yes,' he said. 'Didn't you hear the secret knock?' said Malicia, staring up at him in annoyance. 'It didn't sound like a secret knock,' said Maurice, his mouth full. 'Is that Maurice's voice?' said Malicia suspiciously. 'Yes,' said Keith. 'You'll have to excuse him, he's eating someone.' Maurice swallowed quickly. 'It's not someone!' he hissed. 'It's not someone unless it can talk! Otherwise it's just food!' 'It is a secret knock!' Malicia snapped. 'I know about these things! And you're supposed to give the secret knock in return!' 'But if it's just someone knocking on the door in, you know, general high spirits, and we knock back, what are they going to think is up here?' said Maurice. 'An extremely heavy beetle?' Malicia went uncharacteristically silent for a moment. Then she said: 'Good point, good point. I know, I'll shout "It's me, Malicia!" and then give the secret knock, and that way you'll know it's me and you can give the secret knock back. OK?' 'Why don't we just say "Hello, we're up here"? said Keith innocently. Malicia sighed. 'Don't you have any sense of drama? Look, my father's gone off to the Rathaus to see the other council members. He said the crockery was the last straw!' 'The crockery?' said Maurice. 'You told him about Sardines?' 'I had to say I'd been frightened by a huge rat and tried to climb up the dresser to escape,' said Malicia. 'You lied?' 'I just told a story,' said Malicia, calmly. 'It was a good one, too. It was much more true than the truth would sound. A tap-dancing rat? Anyway, he wasn't really interested because there's been a lot of complaints today. Your tame rats are really upsetting people. I am gloating.' 'They're not our rats, they're their rats,' said Keith. 'And they always work fast,' said Maurice proudly. 'They don't mess about when it comes to… messing about.' 'One town we were in last month, the council advertised for a rat piper the very next morning,' said Keith. 'That was Sardines' big day.' 'My father shouted a lot and sent for Blunkett and Spears, too,' said Malicia. 'They're the rat-catchers! And you know what that means, don't you?' Maurice and Keith looked at one another. 'Let's pretend we don't,' said Maurice. 'It means we can break into their shed and solve the mystery of the bootlace tails!' said Malicia. She gave Maurice a critical look. 'Of course, it would be more… satisfying if we were four children and a dog, which is the right number for an adventure, but we'll make do with what we've got.' 'Hey, we just steal from governments!' said Maurice. 'Er, only governments who aren't people's fathers, obviously,' said Keith. 'So?' said Malicia, giving Keith an odd look. 'That's not the same as being criminals!' said Maurice. 'Ah, but when we've got the evidence, we can take it to the council and then it won't be criminal at all because we will be saving the day,' said Malicia, with weary patience. 'Of course, it may be that the council and the Watch are in league with the rat-catchers, so we shouldn't trust anyone. Really, haven't you people ever read a book? It'll be dark soon, and I'll come over and pick you up and we can shimmy the nodger.' 'Can we?' said Keith. 'Yes. With a hairpin,' said Malicia. 'I know it's possible, because I've read about it hundreds of times.' 'What kind of nodger is it?' said Maurice. 'A big one,' said Malicia. 'That makes it easier, of course.' She turned round abruptly and ran out of the stables. 'Maurice?' said Keith. 'Yes?' said the cat. 'What is a nodger and how do you shimmy it?' 'I don't know. A lock, maybe?' 'But you said-' 'Yes, but I was just trying to keep her talking in case she turned violent,' said Maurice. 'She's gone in the head, if you ask me. She's one of those people like… actors. You know. Acting all the time. Not living in the real world at all. Like it's all a big story. Dangerous Beans is a bit like that. Highly dangerous person, in my opinion.' 'He's a very kind and thoughtful rat!' 'Ah, yes, but the trouble is, see, that he thinks everyone else is like him. People like that are bad news, kid. And our lady friend, she thinks life works like a fairytale.' 'Well, that's harmless, isn't it?' said Keith. 'Yeah, but in fairy-tales, when someone dies… it's just a word.' The No. 3 Heavy Widdlers squad were taking a rest, and they'd run out of ammunition in any case. No-one felt like going past the trap to the trickle of water that dripped down the wall. And no-one liked looking at what was in the trap. 'Poor old Fresh,' said a rat. 'He was a good rat.' 'Should've paid attention to where he was going, though,' said another rat. 'Thought he knew it all,' said yet another rat. 'A decent rat, though, if a bit smelly.' 'So let's get him out of the trap, shall we?' said the first rat. 'Doesn't seem right, leaving him in there like that.' 'Yes. Especially since we're hungry.' One of the rats said, 'Dangerous Beans says we shouldn't eat rat at all.' Another rat said, 'No, it's only if you don't know what they died of, 'cos they might have died of poison.' Another rat said, 'And we know what he died of. He died of squashing. You can't catch squashing.' They all looked at the late Fresh. 'What do you think happens to you, after you're dead?' said a rat, slowly. 'You get eaten. Or you go all dried up, or mouldy.' 'What, all of you?' 'Well, people usually leave the feet.' The rat who'd asked the question said, 'But what about the bit inside?' And the rat who'd mentioned the feet said, 'Oh, the squishy green wobbly bit? No, you ought to leave that, too. Tastes awful.' 'No, I meant the bit inside you that's you. Where does that go?' 'Sorry, you've lost me there.' 'Well… you know, like… dreams?' The rats nodded. They knew about dreams. Dreams had come as a big shock when they started to happen. 'Well, then, in the dreams, when you're being chased by dogs or flying or whatever… who is it that's doing that? It's not your body, 'cos that's asleep. So it must be an invisible part that lives inside you, yes? And being dead is like being asleep, isn't it?' 'Not exactly like asleep,' said a rat, uncertainly, glancing at the fairly flat thing formerly known as Fresh. 'I mean, you don't get all blood and bits sticking out. And you wake up.' 'So,' said the rat who'd raised the whole question about the invisible part, 'when you wake up, where does the dreaming part go? When you die, where does that bit that's inside you go?' 'What, the green wobbly bit?' 'No! The bit that's behind your eyes!' 'You mean the pinky-grey bit?' 'No, not that! The invisible bit!' 'How would I know? I've never seen an invisible bit!' All the rats stared down at Fresh. 'I don't like this kind of talk,' said one of them. 'It reminds me of the shadows in the candlelight.' Another one said, 'Did you hear about the Bone Rat? It comes and gets you when you're dead, they say.' 'They say, they say,' muttered a rat. 'They say there's a Big Rat Underground who made everything, they say. So it made humans, too? Must be really keen on us, to go and make humans too! Huh?' 'How do I know? Maybe they were made by a Big Human?' 'Oh, now you're just being silly,' said the doubting rat, who was called Tomato. 'All right, all right, but you've got to admit that everything couldn't have just, well, turned up, could it? There's got to be a reason. And Dangerous Beans says there's things we should do 'cos they're right, well, who works out what's right? Where does "right" and "wrong" come from? They say, if you've been a good rat, maybe the Big Rat has got this tunnel full of good eating that the Bone Rat will take you to' 'But Fresh is still here. And I ain't seen a bony rat!' 'Ah, but they say you only see it if it's coming for you.' 'Oh? Oh?' said another rat, nervous to the point of mad sarcasm. 'So how did they see it, eh? Tell me that! Life's bad enough as it is without having to worry about invisible things you can't see!' 'All right, all right, what's been happening?' The rats turned, suddenly incredibly pleased to see Darktan scurry up the tunnel. Darktan pushed past. He'd brought Nourishing with him. It was never too soon, he said, for a member of the squad to find out what happened to people who got things wrong. 'I see,' he said, looking at the trap. He shook his head sadly. 'What do I tell everyone?' 'Not to use tunnels that haven't been marked clear, sir,' said Tomato. 'But Fresh, well, he's not a… he never was a good listener. And he was keen to get on with it, sir.' Darktan examined the trap, and tried to keep his face fixed in an expression of confident purpose. It was hard to do it, though. He'd never seen a trap like it. It looked a really nasty one, a squeezer rather than a chopper. It had been put where a rat hurrying to the water would be bound to trip it. 'He's not going to do any more listening now, that's for certain,' he said. 'The face looks familiar. Apart from the bulging eyes and the tongue hanging out, that is.' 'Er, you talked to Fresh in the muster this morning, sir,' said a rat. 'Told him he was raised to be a widdler and to get on with it, sir.' Darktan's expression remained blank. Then he said, 'We've got to go. We're finding a lot of traps all over. We'll work our way back to you. No-one is to go any further along that tunnel, understood? Everyone say "yes, Darktan"!' 'Yes, Darktan,' the rats chorused. 'And one of you stand guard,' said Darktan. 'There could be more traps up that way.' 'What shall we do with Fresh, sir?' said Tomato. 'Don't eat the green wobbly bit,' said Darktan, and hurried off. Traps! he thought. There were too many of them. And too much poison. Even the experienced members of the squad were getting nervous now. He didn't like to come across unknown things. You found out what unknown things were when they killed you. The rats were spreading out under the town, and it was like no other town they'd found. The whole place was a rat trap. They hadn't found a single living keekee. Not one. That wasn't normal. Everywhere had rats. Where you got humans, you got rats. And on top of everything else the young rats were spending too much time worrying about… things. Things you couldn't see or smell. Shadow things. Darktan shook his head. There was no room in the tunnels for that sort of thinking. Life was real, life was practical, and life could get taken away really quickly if you weren't paying attention… He noticed Nourishing looking around and sniffing the air as they trotted along a pipe. 'That's right,' he said approvingly. 'You can't be too careful. Never rush in. Even the rat in front of you might have been lucky and missed the trigger.' 'Yes, sir.' 'Don't worry too much, though.' 'He did look awfully… flat, sir.' 'Fools rush in, Nourishing. Fools rush in…' Darktan could sense the fear spreading. It worried him. If the Changelings panicked, they'd panic as rats. And the tunnels in this city were no place for a terrified rat to be running. But if one rat broke ranks and ran, then most of them would follow. Smell held sway in the tunnels. When things went well, everyone felt good. When fear arrived, it flowed through the runs like flood-water. Panic in the rat world was a kind of disease that could be caught too easily. Things did not get any better when they caught up with the rest of the trap-squad. This time, they'd found a new poison. 'Not to worry,' said Darktan, who was worried. 'We've come across new poisons before, right?' 'Not for ages,' said a rat. 'Remember that one in Scrote? With the sparkly blue bits? It burned if you got it on your feet? People ran into it before they knew?' 'They've got that here?' 'You'd better come and see.' In one of the tunnels a rat was lying on its side. Its feet were curled up tight, like fists. It was whimpering. Darktan took one look and knew that, for this rat, it was all over. It was only a matter of time. For the rats back in Scrote, it had been a matter of horrible time. 'I could bite her in the back of the neck,' a rat volunteered. 'It'd be all over quickly.' 'It's a kind thought, but that stuff gets into the blood,' said Darktan. 'Find a snapper trap that hasn't been made safe. Do it carefully.' 'Put a rat in a trap, sir?' said Nourishing. 'Yes! Better die fast than slow!' 'Even so, it's-' the rat who had volunteered to do the biting started to protest. The hairs around Darktan's face stood out. He reared up and showed his teeth. 'Do what you're told or I'll bite you!' he roared. The other rat crouched back. 'All right, Darktan, all right…' 'And warn all the other squads!' Darktan bellowed. 'This isn't rat-catching, this is war! Everyone's to pull back smartly! No-one touch nothing! We're going to-Yes? What is it this time?' A small rat had crept up to Darktan. As the trap-hunter spun around, the rat crouched hurriedly, almost rolling on its back to show how small and harmless it was. 'Please, sir…' it mumbled. 'Yes?' 'This time we've found a live one…'   CHAPTER 6 There were big adventures and small adventures, Mr Bunnsy knew. You didn't get told what size they were going to be before you started. Sometimes you could have a big adventure even when you were standing still. - From Mr Bunnsy Has An Adventure   'Hello? Hello, it's me. And I'm going to give the secret knock now! There were three knocks on the stable door, and then Malicia's voice rose again with 'Hello, did you hear the secret knock?' 'Perhaps she'll go away if we keep quiet,' said Keith, in the straw. 'I shouldn't think so,' said Maurice. He raised his voice and called out, 'We're up here!' 'You've still got to give the secret knock,' shouted Malicia. 'Oh, prbllttrrrp,' said Maurice under his breath, and fortunately no human knows how bad a swearword that is in cat language. 'Look, this is me, OK? A cat? Which talks? How will you recognize me? Shall I wear a red carnation?' 'I don't think you're a proper talking cat, anyway,' said Malicia, climbing the ladder. She was still wearing black, and had bundled up her hair under a black scarf. She also had a big bag slung from her shoulder. 'Gosh, you've got that right,' said Maurice. 'I mean, you don't wear boots and a sword and have a big hat with a feather in it,' said the girl, pulling herself into the loft. Maurice gave her a long stare. 'Boots?' he said at last. 'On these paws?' 'Oh, it was in a picture in a book I read,' said Malicia, calmly. 'A silly one for children. Full of animals that dressed up as humans.' It crossed Maurice's cat mind, and not for the first time, that if he moved fast he could be out of the city in five minutes and on to a barge or something. Once, when he was no more than a kitten, he'd been taken home by a small girl who'd dressed him up in doll's clothes and sat him at a small table with a couple of dolls and three-quarters of a teddy bear. He'd managed to escape through an open window, but it had taken him all day to get out of the dress. That girl could have been Malicia. She thought animals were just people who hadn't been paying enough attention. 'I don't do clothes,' he said. It wasn't much of a line, but it was probably better than saying 'I think you are a loony'. 'Could be an improvement,' said Malicia. 'It's nearly dark. Let's go! We shall move like cats!' 'Oh, right,' said Maurice. 'I expect I can do that.' Although, he thought a few minutes later, no cats ever moved like Malicia. She obviously thought that it was no good looking inconspicuous unless people could see that you were being inconspicuous. People in the street actually stopped to watch her as she sidled along walls and scuttled from one doorway to another. Maurice and Keith strolled along after her. No-one paid them any attention. Eventually, in a narrow street, she stopped at a black building with a big wooden sign hanging over the door. The sign showed a lot of rats, a sort of star made of rats, with all their tails tied together in a big knot. 'Sign of the ancient Guild of Rat-catchers,' whispered Malicia, swinging her bag off her shoulder. 'I know,' said Keith. 'It looks horrible.' 'Makes an interesting design, though,' said Malicia. One of the most significant things about the door below the sign was the big padlock holding it shut. Odd, Maurice thought. If rats make your legs explode, why do rat-catchers have to have a big lock on their shed? 'Luckily, I'm prepared for every eventuality,' said Malicia, and reached into her bag. There was a sound as of lumps of metal and bottles being moved around. 'What have you got in there?' asked Maurice. 'Everything?' 'The grapnel and rope ladder take up a lot of the room,' said Malicia, still feeling around. 'And then there's the big medicine kit, and the small medicine kit, and the knife, and the other knife, and the sewing kit, and the mirror for sending signals and… these…' She pulled out a small bundle of black cloth. When she unrolled it, Maurice saw the gleam of metal. 'Ah,' he said. 'Lock picks, right? I've seen burglars at work-' 'Hair pins,' said Malicia, selecting one. 'Hair pins always work in the books I've read. You just push it into the keyhole and twiddle. I have a selection of pre-bent ones.' Once again, Maurice felt a little chill at the back of his head. They work in stories, he thought. Oh dear me. 'And how come you know so much about picking locks?' he said. 'I told you, they lock me out of my room to punish me,' said Malicia, twiddling. Maurice had seen thieves at work. Men breaking into buildings at night hated to see dogs, but they didn't mind cats. Cats never attempted to tear their throats out. And what thieves tended to have, he knew, were complicated little tools which were used with great care and precision. They didn't use stupi- Click! 'Good,' said Malicia, in a satisfied voice. 'That was just luck,' said Maurice, as the padlock swung free. He looked up at Keith. 'You think it's just luck too, eh, kid?' 'How would I know?' said Keith. 'I've never seen it done before.' 'I knew it would work,' said Malicia. 'It worked in the fairy-story The Seventh Wife of Greenbeard, where she broke out of his Room of Terror and stabbed him in the eye with a frozen herring.' 'That was a,'airy-story?' said Keith. 'Yes,' said Malicia, proudly. 'Right out of Grim Fairy-Tales.' 'You've got some bad fairies in these parts,' said Maurice, shaking his head. Malicia pushed the door open. 'Oh, no,' she moaned. 'I didn't expect this…' Somewhere below Maurice's paws, and about a street away, the one local rat that the Changelings had found alive was crouched in front of Dangerous Beans. The squads had been called back. This was not turning out to be a good day. Traps that didn't kill, Darktan thought. You found them sometimes. Sometimes humans wanted to catch rats alive. Darktan didn't trust humans who wanted to catch rats alive. Honest traps that killed outright… well, they were bad, but you could usually avoid them and at least there was something clean about them. Live traps were like poison. They cheated. Dangerous Beans was watching the newcomer. It was strange, but the rat who could think the most un-rat-like thoughts was also the best at talking to keekees, except that talking wasn't the right word. No-one, not even Hamnpork, had a sense of smell like Dangerous Beans. The new rat certainly wasn't giving any trouble. For one thing, it was surrounded by rats who were big and well-fed and tough, so its body was respectfully saying sir as hard as it could. The Changelings had also given it some food, which it was engulfing rather than eating. 'She was in a box,' said Darktan, who was drawing on the floor with a stick. 'There's a lot of them here.' 'I got caught in one once,' said Hamnpork. 'Then a female human came along and tipped me out over the garden wall. Couldn't see the point of it.' 'I believe some humans do it to be kind,' said Peaches. 'They get the rat out of the house without killing them.' 'Didn't do her any good, anyway,' said Hamnpork, with satisfaction. 'I went back next night and widdled on the cheese.' 'I don't think anyone is trying to be kind here,' said Darktan. 'There was another rat in there with her. At least,' he added,'there was part of a rat in there with her. I think she'd been eating it to stay alive.' 'Very sensible,' nodded Hamnpork. 'We found something else,' Darktan said, still drawing furrows in the dirt. 'Can you see these, sir?' He'd drawn lines and squiggles on the floor. 'Hrumph. I can see them, but I don't have to know what they are,' said Hamnpork. He rubbed his nose. 'I've never needed any more than this.' Darktan gave a patient sigh. 'Then smell, sir, that this is a… a picture of all the tunnels we've explored today. It's… the shape I have in my head. We've explored a lot of the town. There's a lot of the…' he glanced at Peaches, 'a lot of the kind traps, mostly empty. There's poison all over the place. It's mostly quite old. Lots of empty live traps. Lots of killer traps, still set. And no live rats. None at all, except for our… new friend. We know there's something very odd. I sniffed around a bit near where I found her, and I smelled rats. Lots of rats. I mean lots.' 'Alive?' said Dangerous Beans. 'Yes.' 'All in one place?' 'It smells that way,' said Darktan. 'I think a squad should go and look.' Dangerous Beans got closer to the rat and sniffed at her again. The rat sniffed at him. They touched paws. The watching Changelings were astonished. Dangerous Beans was treating the keekee as an equal. 'Lots of things, lots of things,' he murmured. 'Many rats… humans… fear… lots of fear… lots of rats, crowded… food… rat… you said she's been eating rat?' 'It's a rat-eat-rat world,' said Hamnpork. 'Always has been, always will be.' Dangerous Beans wrinkled his nose. 'There's something else. Something… odd. Strange… she's really scared.' 'She has been in a trap,' said Peaches. 'And then she met us.' 'Much…worse than that,' said Dangerous Beans. 'She's… she's frightened of us because we're strange rats but she smells relieved that we're not… what she's used to…' 'Humans!' Darktan spat. 'I… don't… think… so…' 'Other rats?' 'Yes… no… I… don't… it's hard to tell…' 'Dogs? Cats?' 'No.' Dangerous Beans stepped back. 'Something new.' 'What shall we do with her?' said Peaches. 'Let her go, I suppose.' 'We can't do that!' said Darktan. 'We've triggered all the traps we've found but there are still poisons all over the place. I wouldn't send a mouse out into that lot. She hasn't tried to attack us, after all.' 'So?' said Hamnpork. 'What's another dead keekee?' 'I know what Darktan means,' said Peaches. 'We can't just send her out to die.' Big Savings stepped forward and put a paw around the young female, cuddling her protectively. She glared at Hamnpork. Although she might nip him sometimes if she was annoyed, she wouldn't argue with him. She was too old to do that. But her look said: all males are stupid, you stupid old rat. He looked lost. 'We've killed keekees, haven't we?' he said sadly. 'Why do we want this one hanging around?' 'We can't send her out to die,' said Peaches again, looking at Dangerous Beans' expression. He had that faraway look in his pink eyes. 'You want it trailing around eating our food and messing things up?' said Hamnpork. 'It can't talk, it can't think…' 'Nor could we, not long ago!' snapped Peaches. 'We were all like her!' 'We can think now, young female!' said Hamnpork, his hair rising. 'Yes,' said Dangerous Beans quietly. 'We can think. We can think about what we do. We can pity the innocent one who means us no harm. And that's why she can stay.' Hamnpork's head turned sharply. Dangerous Beans was still facing the newcomer. Hamnpork reared up instinctively, a rat ready to fight. But Dangerous Beans couldn't see him. Peaches watched the old rat with concern. He'd been challenged, by a weedy little rat who would not last a second in a fight. And Dangerous Beans hadn't even realized he'd made the challenge. He doesn't think like that, Peaches told herself. The other rats were watching Hamnpork. They still thought like that, and were waiting to see what he would do. But it was dawning even on Hamnpork that pouncing on the white rat would be unthinkable. It would be like cutting off his own tail. He very carefully let himself relax. 'It's just a rat,' he muttered. 'But you, dear Hamnpork, are not,' said Dangerous Beans. 'Will you go with Darktan's crew to find out where she came from? It could be dangerous.' This made Hamnpork's hair rise again. 'I'm not afraid of danger!' he roared. 'Of course not. That is why you should go. She was terrified,' said Dangerous Beans. 'I've never been scared of anything!' shouted Hamnpork. Now Dangerous Beans turned to face him. In the candlelight there was a glow in the pink eyes. Hamnpork was not a rat who spent a lot of time thinking about things he couldn't see or smell or bite, but… He looked up. The candlelight made big rat shadows dance on the wall. Hamnpork had heard the young rats talking about shadows and dreams and what happened to your shadow after you died. He didn't worry about that stuff. Shadows couldn't bite you. There was nothing to be frightened of in shadows. But now his own voice in his head told him I'm frightened of what those eyes can see. He glared at Darktan, who was scratching something in the mud with one of his sticks. 'I'll go, but I will lead the expedition,' he said. 'I'm senior rat here!' 'That doesn't worry me,' said Darktan. 'Mr Clicky is going to be going in front in any case.' 'I thought he got smashed last week?' said Peaches. 'We've got two left,' said Darktan. 'Then we'll have to raid another pet shop.' 'I'm the leader,' said Hamnpork. 'I'll say what we do, Darktan.' 'Fine, sir. Fine,' said Darktan, still drawing in the mud. 'And you know how to make all the traps safe, do you?' 'No, but I can tell you to!' 'Good. Good,' said Darktan, making more marks with his stick and not looking at the leader. 'And you'll tell me which levers to leave alone and which bits to wedge open, will you?' 'I don't have to understand about traps,' said Hamnpork. 'But I do, sir,' said Darktan, speaking in the same calm voice. 'And I'm telling you that there's a couple of things about some of these new traps I don't understand, and until I understand them I'd very respectfully suggest you leave it all to me,' 'That is not the way to talk to a superior rat!' Darktan gave him a look, and Peaches held her breath. This is the showdown, she thought. This is where we find out who is the leader. Then Darktan said, 'I am sorry. Impertinence was not intended.' Peaches picked up the astonishment amongst the older males who were watching. Darktan. He'd backed down! He hadn't leapt! But he hadn't cowered back, either. Hamnpork's fur settled. The old rat was at a loss to know how to deal with this. All the signals were mixed up. 'Well, er…' 'Obviously, as the leader you must give the orders,' said Darktan. 'Yes, er…' 'But my advice, sir, is that we investigate this. Unknown things are dangerous.' 'Yes. Certainly,' said Hamnpork. 'Yes, indeed. We will investigate. Of course. See to it. I am the leader, and that is what I am saying.' Maurice looked around at the inside of the rat-catchers' shed. 'It looks like a rat-catchers' shed,' he said. 'Benches, chairs, stove, lots of rat skins hanging up, piles of old traps, a couple of dog muzzles, rolls of wire netting, considerable evidence of a lack of any dusting ever being done. It's what I'd have expected a rat-catchers' hut to look like inside.' 'I was expecting something… horrible yet interesting,' said Malicia. 'Some ghastly clue.' 'Does there have to be a clue?' said Keith. 'Of course!' said Malicia, looking under a chair. 'Look, cat, there's two types of people in the world. There are those who have got the plot, and those who haven't.' 'The world hasn't got a plot,' said Maurice. 'Things just… happen, one after another.' 'Only if you think of it like that,' said Malicia, far too smugly in Maurice's opinion. 'There's always a plot. You just have to know where to look.' She paused for a moment and then said, 'Look! That's the word! There'll be a secret passage, of course! Everyone look for the entrance to the secret passage!' 'Er… how will we know it's the entrance to a secret passage?' said Keith, looking even more bewildered than norrmal. 'What does a secret passage look like?' 'It won't look like one, of course!' 'Oh, well, in that case I can see dozens of secret passages,' said Maurice. 'Doors, windows, that calendar from the Acme Poison Company, that cupboard over there, that rathole, that desk, that-' 'You're just being sarcastic,' said Malicia, lifting up the calendar and sternly inspecting the wall behind it. 'Actually, I was just being flippant,' said Maurice, 'but I can do sarcastic if you like.' Keith stared at the long bench which was in front of a winckow frosted with ancient cobwebs. Traps were piled up on it. All kinds of traps. And beside them were row uporm row of battered old tins and jars with labels like 'Danger: Hydrogen Dioxide!' and 'RatBane' and 'FireGut' and Polyputaketlon: Extreme Caution' and 'RatAway!!!' and 'Killerat!' and 'Essence of Barbed Wire: Danger!!!' and-he leaned closer to look at this one-'Sugar'. There were a couple of mugs, too, and a teapot. White and green and grey powder was scattered on the bench. Some of it had even fallen on the floor. 'You might try to be some help,' said Malicia, tapping the walls. 'I don't know how to look for something that doesn't look like the thing I'm looking for,' said Keith. 'And they keep the poison right next to the sugar! And so many poisons…' Malicia stood back and brushed her hair out of her eyes. 'This isn't working,' she said. 'I suppose there might not be a secret passage?' said Maurice. 'I know it's a rather daring idea, but perhaps this is just an ordinary shed?' Even Maurice leaned back a little from the force of Malicia's stare. 'There has to be a secret passage,' she said. 'Otherwise there's no point.' She snapped her fingers. 'Of course! We're doing it wrong! Everyone knows you never find the secret passage by looking for it! It's when you give up and lean against the wall that you inadvertently operate the secret switch!' Maurice looked at Keith for help. He was a human, after all. He should know how to deal with something like Malicia. But Keith was just wandering around the shed, staring at things. Malicia leaned against the wall with incredible nonchalance. There was not a click. A panel in the floor not slide back. 'Probably the wrong place,' she said. 'I'll just rest my arm innocently on this coat hook,' A sudden door in the wall completely failed to happen. 'Of course, it'd help if there was an ornate candlestick,' said Malicia. 'They're always a sure-fire secret passage lever. Every adventurer knows that.' 'There isn't a candlestick,' said Maurice. 'I know. Some people totally fail to have any idea of how to design a proper secret passage,' said Malicia. She leaned against another piece of wall, which had no effect whatsoever. 'I don't think you'll find it that way,' said Keith, who was carefully examining a trap. 'Oh? Won't I?' said Malicia. 'Well, at least I'm being constructive about things! Where would you look, if you're such an expert?' 'Why is there a rat hole in a rat-catchers' shed?' said Keith. 'It smells of dead rats and wet dogs and poison. I wouldn't come near this place if I was a rat.' Malicia glared at him. Then her face wrapped itself in an expression of acute concentration, as if she was trying out several ideas in her head. 'Ye-es,' she said. 'That usually works, in stories. It's often the stupid person who comes up with the good idea by accident,' She crouched down and peered into the hole. 'There's a sort of little lever,' she said. 'I'll just give it a little push…' There was a clonk under the floor, part of it swung back, and Keith dropped out of sight. 'Oh, yes,' said Malicia. 'I thought something like that would probably happen…' Mr Clicky bumped along the tunnel, making a whirring noise. Young rats had chewed his ears, and his string tail had been chopped off by a trap, and other traps had dented his body, but he had this advantage: surprise traps couldn't kill Mr Clicky because he wasn't alive, and he wasn't alive because he was powered by clockwork. His key whirred around. A stub of candle burned on his back. The rest of the No. 1 trap squad watched. 'Any minute now…' said Darktan. There was a snap, and a sound best described as gloink! The light went out. Then a gear wheel rolled slowly back down the tunnel and fell over in front of Hamnpork. 'I thought the soil looked a bit disturbed there,' said Darktan in a satisfied voice. He turned around. 'OK, lads! Break out the other Mr Clicky, and I want half a dozen of you with a rope to dig out that trap and drag it out of the way!' 'All this testing the ground is slowing us down, Darktan,' said Hamnpork. 'Fine, sir,' said Darktan, as the squad hurried past them. 'You go on ahead. That'd be a good idea, because we've only got one Mr Clicky left. I hope this town's got a pet shop.'[4] <> 'I just think we should move faster,' said Hamnpork. 'OK, off you go then, sir. Try to shout out where the next trap is before it gets you,' 'I am the leader, Darktan.' 'Yes, sir, I'm sorry. We're all getting a bit tired.' 'This is not a good place, Darktan,' said Hamnpork wearily. 'I've been in some bad rprptlt holes, and this is worse than any of them.' 'That's true, sir. This place is dead.' 'What's that word Dangerous Beans invented?' 'Evil,' said Darktan, watching the squad drag the trap out of the walls of the tunnel. He could see mangled springs and wheels in the jaws. He added, 'I couldn't quite understand what he was going on about, at the time. But now I think I can see what he meant.' He looked back along the tunnel to where a candle flame burned, and grabbed a passing rat. 'Peaches and Dangerous Beans are to stay right back, understand?' he said. 'They're not to come any further.' 'Right, sir!' said the rat, and hurried away. The expedition moved forward, cautiously, as the runnel opened up into a large, old drain. It had a trickle of water in the bottom. There were ancient pipes in the roof of it. Here and there steam hissed from them. Weak green light came from a street grating, further down the drain. The place smelled of rats. It smelled freshly of rats. In fact there was a rat in there, nibbling at a tray of food that had been set on a crumbling brick. It glanced at the Changelings and fled. 'Get after it!' Hamnpork yelled. 'No!' shouted Darktan. A couple of rats, who'd begun to chase the keekee hesitated. 'That was an order I gave!' roared Hamnpork, turning on Darktan. The trap expert made a very brief crouch and said, 'Of course. But I think the view of Hamnpork in possession of all the facts will be a little different than the view of Hamnpork who just shouted because he saw a rat run away, hmm? Sniff the air!' Hamnpork's nose wrinkled. 'Poison?' Darktan nodded. 'Grey No. 2,' he said. 'Foul stuff. It's best to keep well away.' Hamnpork looked both ways along the pipe. It went on for a long way, and was just about high enough for a human to crawl along it. Lots of smaller pipes hung near the ceiling. 'It's warm here,' he said. 'Yes, sir. Peaches has been reading the guide-book. Hot springs of water come up out of the ground here and they pump it around to some of the houses.' 'Why?' 'To bath in, sir.' 'Hrumph.' Hamnpork didn't like that idea. A lot of the young rats were keen on taking baths. Darktan turned to the squad. 'Hamnpork wants that poison buried and widdled on and a marker on it right now!' Hamnpork heard a metallic sound beside him. He turned and saw that Darktan had drawn, from his web of tools, a long thin piece of metal. 'What the krckrck is that?' he said. Darktan swished the thing backwards and forwards. 'I got the stupid-looking kid to make this for me,' he said. And then Hamnpork realized what it was. 'That's a sword,' he said. 'You got the idea out of Mr Bunnsy Has An Adventure!' 'That's right.' 'I've never believed that stuff,' Hamnpork grumbled. 'But a spike is a spike,' said Darktan, calmly. 'I think we're close to the other rats. It'd be a good idea if most of us stay here… sir.' Hamnpork felt he was being given orders again, but Darktan was being polite. 'I suggest that a few of us go on ahead to sniff them out,' Darktan went on. 'Sardines would be useful, and I'll go, of course' 'And me,' said Hamnpork. He glared at Darktan, who said, 'Of course.'   CHAPTER 7 And because of Olly the Snake's trick with the road sign, Mr Bunnsy did not know that he had lost his way. He wasn't going to Howard the Stoat's tea party. He was heading into the Dark Wood. - From Mr Bunnsy Has An Adventure   Malicia looked at the open trapdoor as if giving it marks out of ten. 'Quite well hidden,' she said. 'No wonder we didn't see it.' 'I'm not hurt much,' Keith called up from the darkness. 'Good,' said Malicia, still inspecting the trapdoor. 'How far down are you?' 'It's some sort of cellar. I'm OK because I landed on some sacks,' 'All right, all right, no need to go on about it, this wouldn't be an adventure if there weren't some minor hazards,' said the girl. 'Here's the top of a ladder. Why didn't you use it?' 'I was unable to on account of falling past,' said the voice of Keith. 'Shall I carry you down?' Malicia said to Maurice. 'Shall I scratch your eyes out?' Maurice responded. Malicia's brow wrinkled. She always looked annoyed when she didn't understand something. 'Was that sarcasm?' she said. 'That was a suggestion,' said Maurice. 'I don't do "picking up" by strangers. You go down. I'll follow.' 'But you haven't got the legs for ladders!' 'Do I make personal remarks about your legs?' Malicia descended into the dark. There was a metallic noise, and then the flare of a match. 'It's full of sacks!' she said. 'I know,' came the voice of Keith. 'I landed on them. I did say.' 'It's grain! And… and there's strings and strings of sausages! There's smoked meat! Bins of vegetables! It's full of food! Aargh! Get out of my hair! Get off! That cat just jumped onto my head!' Maurice leapt off her and onto some sacks. 'Hah!' said Malicia, rubbing her head. 'We were told that the rats had got it all. I see it all now. The rat-catchers get everywhere, they know all the sewers, all the cellars… and to think those thieves get paid out of our taxes!' Maurice looked around the cellar, lit by the flickering lantern in Malicia's hand. There was, indeed, a lot of food. Nets hanging from the ceiling were indeed stuffed with big, white, heavy cabbages. The aforesaid sausages did indeed loop from beam to beam. There were indeed jars and barrels and sacks and sacks. And, indeed, they all worried him. 'That's it, then,' said Malicia. 'What a hiding place! We're going to go right away to the town Watch, report what we've found, and then it's a big cream tea for all of us and possibly a medal and then-' 'I'm suspicious,' said Maurice. 'Why?' 'Because I'm a suspicious character! I wouldn't trust your rat-catchers if they told me the sky was blue. What have they been doing? Pinching the food and then saying, "It was the rats, honest"? And everyone believed them?' 'No, stupid. People have found gnawed bones and empty egg baskets, that sort of thing,' said Malicia. 'And rat droppings all over the place!' 'I suppose you could scratch the bones and I suppose rat-catchers could shovel up a lot of rat droppings…' Maurice conceded. 'And they're killing all the real rats so that there's more for them!' said Malicia triumphantly. 'Very clever!' 'Yeah, and that's a bit puzzling,' said Maurice, 'because we've met your rat-catchers and, frankly, if it was raining meatballs they wouldn't be able to find a fork.' 'I've been thinking about something,' said Keith, who had been humming to himself. 'Well, I'm glad someone has,' Malicia began. 'It's about wire netting,' said Keith. 'There was wire netting in the shed.' 'Is this important?' 'Why do rat-catchers need rolls of wire netting?' 'How should I know? Cages, maybe? Does it matter?' 'Why would rat-catchers put rats in cages? Dead rats don't run away, do they?' There was silence. Maurice could see that Malicia was not happy about that comment. It was an unnecessary complication. It spoiled the story. 'I may be stupid-looking,' Keith added, 'but I'm not stupid. I have time to think about things because I don't keep on talking all the time. I look at things. I listen. I try to learn. I-' 'I don't talk all the time!' Maurice let them argue and stalked away into the corner of the cellar. Or cellars. They seemed to go on a long way. He saw something streak across the floor in the shadows, and leapt before he could think. His stomach remembered that it had been a long time since the mouse, and it connected itself straight to his legs. 'All right,' he said, as the thing squirmed in his paws,'speak up or-' A small stick hit him very sharply. 'Do you mind?' said Sardines, struggling to get up. 'Dere's bno deed to be like dab!' muttered Maurice, trying to lick his smarting nose. 'I've got a rkrklk HAT on, right?' snapped Sardines. 'Do you ever bother to look?' 'All ride, all ride, sorwy… why're you here?' Sardines brushed himself off. 'Looking for you or stupid-looking kid,' he said. 'Hamnpork sent me! We're in trouble now! You just won't believe what we've found!' 'He wants me?' said Maurice. 'I thought he didn't like me!' 'Well, he said it's nasty and evil so you'd know what to do, boss,' said Sardines, picking up his hat. 'Look at that, will you? Your claw went right through it!' 'But I did ask you if you could talk, didn't I?' said Maurice. 'Yes, you did, but-' 'I always ask!' 'I know, so-' 'I'm very definite about asking, you know!' 'Yes, yes, you've made your point, I believe you,' said Sardines. 'I only complained about the hat!' 'I'd hate anyone to think I don't ask,' said Maurice. 'There's no need to go on and on about it,' said Sardines. 'Where's the kid?' 'Back there, talking to the girl,' said Maurice sulkily. 'What, the mad one?' 'That's her.' 'You'd better get them. This is seriously evil. There's a door at the other end of these cellars. I'm amazed you can't smell it from here!' 'I'd just like everyone to be clear that I asked, that's all…' 'Boss,' said Sardines,'this is serious!' Peaches and Darktan waited for the exploration party. They were with Toxie, another young male rat, who was good at reading and acted as a kind of assistant. Peaches had also brought Mr Bunnsy Has An Adventure. 'They've been gone a long time,' said Toxie. 'Darktan checks every step,' said Peaches. 'Something's wrong,' said Dangerous Beans. His nose wrinkled. A rat scurried down the tunnel and pushed frantically past them. Dangerous Beans sniffed the air. 'Fear,' he said. Three more rats scrambled past, knocking him over. 'What's happening?' said Peaches, as another rat spun her around in its effort to get past. It squeaked at her and rushed on. 'That was Finest,' she said. 'Why didn't she say anything?' 'More… fear,' said Dangerous Beans. 'They're… scared. Terrified…' Toxie tried to stop the next rat. It bit him, and ran on, chittering. 'We must go back,' said Peaches urgently. 'What've they found up there? Maybe it's a ferret!' 'Can't be!' said Toxie. 'Hamnpork killed a ferret once!' Three more rats ran past, trailing fear behind them. One of them squealed at Peaches, gibbered madly at Dangerous Beans and ran on. 'They… they've forgotten how to talk…' whispered Dangerous Beans. 'Something terrible must have frightened them!' said Peaches, snatching up her notes. 'They've never been that frightened!' said Toxie. 'Remember when that dog found us? We were all frightened but we talked and we trapped it and Hamnpork saw it off whimpering…' To her shock, Peaches saw that Dangerous Beans was crying. 'They've forgotten how to talk.' Half a dozen more rats pushed their way past, screeching. Peaches tried to stop one, but it just squeaked at her and dodged out of the way. That was Feedsfour!' she said, turning to Toxie. 'I was talking to her only an hour ago! She… Toxie?' Toxic's fur was bristling. His eyes were unfocused. His mouth was open, showing his teeth. He stared at her, or right through her, and then turned and ran. She turned and put her paws around Dangerous Beans, as the fear swept over them. There were rats. From wall to wall, floor to ceiling, there were rats. The cages were crammed full of them; they clung to the wire in front, and to the ceilings. The netting strained with the weight. Glistening bodies boiled and tumbled, paws and noses thrusting through the holes. The air was solid with squeaking and rustling and chittering, and it stank. What was left of Hamnpork's exploration party were clustered in the middle of the room. Most of it had fled by now. If the smells in that room had been sounds, they would have been shouts and screams, thousands of them. They filled the long room with a strange kind of pressure. Even Maurice could feel it, as soon as Keith broke down the door. It was like a headache outside your head, trying to get in. It banged on the ears. Maurice was staying a little way behind. You didn't need to be very clever to see that this was a bad situation and one which might need some running away from at any time. He saw, between their legs, Darktan and Hamnpork and a few other Changelings. They were in the middle of the floor, looking up at the cages. He was amazed to see that even Hamnpork was trembling. But he was trembling with rage. 'Let them out!' he shouted up to Keith. 'Let them all out! Let them all out now!' 'Another talking rat?' said Malicia. 'Let them out!' Hamnpork screamed. 'All these foul cages…' said Malicia, staring. 'I did say about the wire netting,' said Keith. 'Look, you can see where it's been repaired… they gnawed through wire to escape!' 'I said let them out!' screamed Hamnpork. 'Let them out or I will kill you! Evil! Evil! Evil!' 'But they're just rats-' said Malicia. Hamnpork leapt and landed on the girl's dress. He swarmed up towards her neck. She froze. He hissed, 'There are rats eating one another in there! I will gnaw you, you evil-' Keith's hand grasped him firmly around the waist and pulled him off her neck. Screeching, hair bristling, Hamnpork sunk his teeth into Keith's finger. Malicia gasped. Even Maurice winced. Hamnpork drew his head back, blood dripping from his muzzle, and blinked in horror. Tears welled up in Keith's eyes. Very carefully, he put Hamnpork down on the floor. 'It's the smell,' he said, quietly. 'It upsets them.' 'I… I thought you said they were tame!' said Malicia, able to speak at last. She picked up a lump of wood that was leaning against the cages. Keith knocked it out of her hand. 'Never, ever threaten one of us!' 'He attacked you!' 'Look around! This is not a story! This is real! Do you understand? They're frightened out of their minds!' 'How dare you talk to me like that!' Malicia shouted. 'I rrkrkrk will!' 'One of us, eh? Was that a rat swearword? Do you even swear in Rat, rat boy?' Just like cats, Maurice thought. You stand face to face and scream at one another. His ears swivelled as he heard another sound, in the distance. Someone was coming down the ladder. Maurice knew from experience that this was no time to talk to humans. They always said things like 'What?' and 'That's not right!' or 'Where?' 'Get out of here right now,' he said, as he ran past Darktan. 'Don't get human about it, just run!' And that was quite enough heroism, he decided. It didn't pay to let other people actually slow you down. There was a rusty old drain set in the wall. He skidded on the slimy floor as he changed direction, and there, yes, was a Maurice-sized hole where a bar had rusted clean away. Paws scrabbling for speed, he darted through the hole just as the rat-catchers entered the room of cages. Then, safe in the darkness, he turned around and peered out. Time to check. Was Maurice safe? All legs present? Tail? Yes. Good. He could see Darktan tugging at Hamnpork, who seemed to have frozen on the spot, the others scuttling towards another drain in the opposite wall. They moved unsteadily. That's what happens when you let yourself go, Maurice thought. They thought they'd got educated, but in a tight corner a rat is just a rat. Now me, I'm different. Brain functioning perfectly at all times. Always on the lookout. On the case and sniffing bottom. The caged rats were making a din. Keith and the story-telling girl were watching the rat-catchers in amazement. The rat-catchers weren't unamazed, either. On the floor, Darktan gave up trying to get Hamnpork to move. He drew his sword, looked up at the humans, hesitated, and then ran for the drain. Yes, let them sort it out. They're all human, Maurice thought. They've got big brains, they can talk, it should be no problem at all. Hah! Tell them a story, story-telling girl! Rat-catcher 1 stared at Malicia and Keith. 'What're you doing here, miss?' he said, his voice creaking with suspicion. 'Playing Mummies and Daddies?' said Rat-catcher 2 cheerfully. 'You broke into our shed,' said Rat-catcher 1. 'That's called "breaking in", that is!' 'You've been stealing, yes, stealing food and blaming it on rats!' snapped Malicia. 'And why have you got all these rats caged up in here? And what about the aglets, eh? Surprised, eh? Didn't think anyone would notice them, eh?' 'Aglets?' said Rat-catcher 1, his brow wrinkling. 'The little bits on the end of bootlaces,' mumbled Keith. Rat-catcher 1 spun around. 'You bloody idiot, Bill! I said we had enough real ones! I told you someone would notice! Didn't I tell you someone would notice? Someone has noticed!' 'Yes, don't think you've got away with anything!' said Malicia. Her eyes were gleaming. 'I know you're only the humorous thugs. One big fat one, one thin one - it's obvious! So who's the big boss?' Rat-catcher 1's eyes glazed slightly, as they often did when Malicia talked at people. He waved a fat finger at her. 'You know what your father's been and gone and done just now?' he said. 'Hah! Humorous thug talk!' said Malicia triumphantly. 'Do go on!' 'He's been and gone and sent off for the Rat Piper!' said Rat-catcher 2. 'He costs a fortune! Three hundred dollars a town and if you don't pay up he gets really mean!' Oh dear, thought Maurice. Someone's been and gone and sent for the real one… three hundred dollars. Three hundred dollars? Three hundred dollars? And we only charged thirty! 'It's you, isn't it,' said Rat-catcher 1, waving his finger at Keith. 'The stupid-looking kid! You turn up, and suddenly there's all these new rats around! There's something I don't like about you! You and your funny-looking cat! If I see that funny-looking cat again it's going to have mittens!' In the darkness of the drain, Maurice shrank back. 'Hur, hur, hur,' said Rat-catcher 2. He'd probably studied to get a thug laugh like that, Maurice thought. 'And we don't have a boss,' said Rat-catcher 1. 'Yeah, we're our own bosses,' said Rat-catcher 2. And then the story went wrong. 'And you, miss,' said Rat-catcher 1, turning to Malicia, 'are too lippy by half.' He swung his fist, lifting her off her feet and slamming her against the rat cages. The rats went mad and the cages boiled with frantic activity as she slumped to the ground. The rat-catcher turned to Keith. 'You going to try anything, kid?' he said. 'You going to try anything? She was a girl so I was nice and kind but you I'll put in one of the cages-' 'Yeah, and they ain't been fed today!' said a delighted Rat-catcher 2. Go on, kid! Maurice thought. Do something! But Keith just stood there, staring at the man. Rat-catcher 1 looked him up and down, scornfully. 'What's that you've got there, boy? A pipe? Give it here!' The pipe was grabbed from Keith's belt and he was pushed onto the floor. 'A penny whistle? Think you're the rat piper, do you?' Rat-catcher 1 snapped the pipe in two and tossed the bits inside the cages. 'Y'know, they say that over in Porkscratchenz the Rat Piper led all the kids out of the town. Now there was a man with the right idea!' Keith looked up. His eyes narrowed. He got to his feet. Here it comes, thought Maurice. He's going to leap forward with superhuman strength because he's so angry and they're going to wish he'd never been born… Keith leapt forward with ordinary human strength, landed one punch on Rat-catcher 1 and was smacked to the floor again by a big, brutal, sledgehammer blow. All right, all right, he got knocked down, thought Maurice as Keith struggled for breath, but he's going to get up again. There was a shrill scream, and Maurice thought: aha! But the scream hadn't come from the wheezing Keith. A grey figure had launched itself from the top of the rat cages right at the rat-catcher's face. It landed teeth first, and blood spurted on the rat-catcher's nose. Aha! thought Maurice again, it's Hamnpork to the rescue! What? Mrillp! I'm thinking like the girl! I keep thinking it's a story! The rat-catcher grabbed at the rat and held him out at arm's length by his tail. Hamnpork twisted and turned, squealing with rage. His captor dabbed at his nose with his spare hand, and stared at Hamnpork as he struggled. 'He's a bit of a fighter,' said Rat-catcher 2. 'How'd he get out?' 'Not one of ours,' said Rat-catcher 1. 'He's a red.' 'Red? What's red about him?' 'A red rat's a kind of grey rat, as you would very well know if you'd were an hexperienced Guild member like me,' said the rat-catcher. 'They ain't local. You get 'em down on the plains. Funny to find one up here. Very funny. Greasy old devil, too. But game as anything.' 'Your nose is all runny.' 'Yeah. I know. I've had more rat bites than you've had hot dinners. Don't feel 'em any more,' said Rat-catcher 1, in a voice that suggested that the spinning, screeching Hamnpork was a lot more interesting than his colleague. 'I only have cold sausage for dinner.' 'There you are then. What a little fighter you are, to be sure. Real little devil, aren't you. Plucky as anything.' 'Kind of you to say so.' 'I was talking to the rat, mister.' He prodded Keith with his boot. 'Go and tie up these two somewhere, OK? We'll put them in one of the other cellars for now. One with a proper door. And a proper lock. And no handy little trapdoors. And you give me the key.' 'She's the mayor's daughter,' said Rat-catcher 2. 'Mayors can get really upset about daughters.' 'Then he'll do what he's told, right?' 'You gonna give that rat a good squeezing?' 'What, a fighter like this one? Are you joking? It's thinking like that that'll keep you a rat-catcher's assistant your whole life. I've got a much better idea. How many's in the special cage?' Maurice watched Rat-catcher 2 go and examine one of the other cages on the far wall. 'Only two rats left. They've eaten the other four,' he reported. 'Just skin left. Very neat.' 'Ah, so they'll be full o' vim and vinegar. Well, we'll see what they do to him, shall we?' Maurice heard a little wire door open and shut. Hamnpork was seeing red. It filled his vision. He'd been angry for months, down inside, angry at humans, angry at the poisons and the traps, angry at the way younger rats weren't showing respect, angry that the world was changing so fast, angry that he was growing old… And now the smells of terror and hunger and violence met the anger coming the other way and they mingled and flowed through Hamnpork in a great red river of rage. He was a cornered rat. But he was a cornered rat who could think. He'd always been a vicious fighter, long before there was all this thinking, and he was still very strong. A couple of dumb, swanking young keekees with no tactics and no experience of down-and-dirty cellar fighting and no fancy footwork and no thoughts were simply not a contest. A tumble, a twist and two bites were all it took… The caged rats across the room leapt back from the netting. Even they could feel the fury. 'Now there's a clever boy,' said Rat-catcher 1 admiringly, when it was all over. 'I've got a use for you, my lad.' 'Not the pit?' said Rat-catcher 2. 'Yes, the pit.' 'Tonight?' 'Yeah, 'cos Fancy Arthur is putting in his Jacko on a bet to kill a hundred rats in less than a quarter of an hour.' 'I bet he can, too. Jacko's a good terrier. He did ninety a few months ago and Fancy Arthur been training him up. Should be a good show.' 'You'd bet on Jacko doing it, would you?' said Ratcatcher 1. 'Sure. Everyone will be.' 'Even with our little friend here among the rats?' said Rat-catcher 1. 'Full of lovely spite and bite and boilin' bile?' 'Well, er…' 'Yeah, right.' Rat-catcher 1 grinned. 'I don't like leaving those kids here, though.' 'It's "them kids", not "those kids". Get it right. How many times have I told you? Rule 27 of the Guild: sound stupid. People get suspicious of rat-catchers that talk too good.' 'Sorry.' 'Talk thick, be clever. That's the way to do it,' said Ratcatcher 1. 'Sorry, I forgot.' 'You tend to do it the other way around.' 'Sorry. Them kids. It's cruel, tying people up. And they're only kids, after all.' 'So?' 'So it'd be a lot easier to take 'em down the tunnel to the river and hit 'em on the head and throw 'em in. They'll be miles down river before anyone fishes 'em out, and they prob'ly won't even be recognizable by the time the fish have finished with 'em.' Maurice heard a pause in the conversation. Then Ratcatcher 1 said, 'I didn't know that you were such a kind-hearted soul, Bill.' 'Right, and, sorry, an' I've got an idea about gettin' rid of this piper, too-' The next voice came from everywhere. It sounded like a rushing wind and, in the heart of the wind, the groan of something in agony. It filled the air. NO! We can use the piper! 'No, we can use the piper,' said Rat-catcher 1. 'That's right,' said Rat-catcher 2. 'I was just thinking the same thing. Er… how can we use the piper?' Once again, Maurice heard a sound in his head like wind blowing through a cave. Isn't it OBVIOUS? Isn't it obvious?' said Rat-catcher 1. 'Yeah, obvious,' muttered Rat-catcher 2. 'Obviously it's obvious. Er…' Maurice watched the rat-catchers open several of the cages, grab rats and drop them into a sack. He saw Hamnpork tipped into one, too. And then the ratcatchers had gone, dragging the other humans with them, and Maurice wondered: where, in this maze of cellars, is a Maurice-sized hole? Cats can't see in the dark. What they can do is see by very little light. A tiny scrap of moonlight was filtering into the space behind him. It was coming through a tiny hole in the ceiling, barely big enough for a mouse and certainly not big enough for a Maurice even if he could reach it. It illuminated another cellar. By the looks of it, the ratcatchers used this one too; there were a few barrels stacked in one corner, and piles of broken rat cages. Maurice prowled around it, looking for another way out. There were doors, but they had handles, and even his mighty brain couldn't figure out the mystery of doorknobs. There was another drain grating in a wall, though. He squeezed through it. Another cellar. And more boxes and sacks. At least it was dry, though. A voice behind him said, What kind of thing are you? He spun around. All he could make out were boxes sacks. The air still stank of rats, and there was a continuous rustling, and the occasional faint squeak, but the place was a little piece of heaven compared to the hell of the cage room. The voice had come from behind him, hadn't it? He must have heard it, mustn't he? Because it seemed to him that he just had something like the memory of hearing a voice, something that had arrived in his head without bothering to go through his ragged ears. It had been the same with the rat-catchers. They'd talked as if they'd heard a voice and thought it was their own thoughts. The voice hadn't really been there, had it? I can't see you, said the memory, I don't know what you are. It was not a good voice for a memory to have. It was all hisses, and it slid into the mind like a knife. Come closer. Maurice's paws twitched. The muscles in his legs started to push him forward. He extended his claws, and got control of himself. Someone was hiding amongst the boxes, he thought. And it would probably not be a good idea to say anything. People could get funny about talking cats. You couldn't rely on everyone being as mad as the story-telling girl. Come CLOSER. The voice seemed to pull at him. He'd have to say something. 'I'm happy where I am, thank you,' said Maurice. Then will you share our PAIN? The last word hurt. But it did not, and this was surprising, hurt a lot. The voice had sounded sharp and and dramatic, as if the owner was keen to see Maurice rolling in agony. Instead, it gave him a very brief headache. When the voice arrived again, it sounded very suspicious. What kind of creature are you? Your mind is WRONG. 'I prefer amazing,' said Maurice. 'Anyway, who are you, asking me questions in the dark?' All he could smell was rat. He heard a faint sound off to his left, and just made out the shape of a very large rat, creeping towards him. Another sound made him turn. Another rat was coming from the other direction. He could only just make it out in the gloom. A rustle ahead of him suggested that there was a rat right in front, slipping quietly through the dark. Here come my eyes… WHAT? CAT! CAT! KILL!   CHAPTER 8 Mr Bunnsy realized that he was a fat rabbit in the Dark Wood and wished he wasn't a rabbit or, at least, not a fat one. But Ratty Rupert was on the way. Little did he know what was waiting for him. - From Mr Bunnsy Has An Adventure   The three rats leapt they were already too late. There was just a Maurice-shaped hole in the air. Maurice was across the room and scrambling up some boxes. There was squeaking below him. He jumped onto another box and saw a place in the wall where some of the rotten bricks had fallen out. He aimed for it, scrabbled on thin air as more bricks moved under him, and pushed himself into the unknown. It was another cellar. And it was full of water. In fact, what it was full of was not exactly water. It was what water eventually becomes when rat cages drain into it, and gutters up above drain into it, and it has had a chance to sit and bubble gently to itself for a year or so. To call it 'mud' would be an insult to perfectly respectable swamps all over the world. Maurice landed in it. It went 'gloop'. He cat-paddled furiously through the thick stuff, trying not to breathe, and dragged himself out on a pile of rubble on the other side of the room. A fallen rafter, slimy with mould, led up to more tangled, fire-blackened wood in the ceiling. He could still hear the dreadful voice in his head, but it was muffled. It was trying to give him orders. Trying to give a cat orders? It was easier to nail jelly to a wall. What did it think he was, a dog? Stinking mud oozed off him. Even his ears were full of mud. He went to lick himself clean, and then stopped. It was a perfectly normal cat reaction, licking yourself clean. But licking this off would probably kill him- There was a movement in the dark. He could just make out some big rat shapes pouring through the hole. There were a couple of splashes. Some of the shapes were creeping along the walls. Ah, said the voice. You see them? Watch them come for you, CAT! Maurice stopped himself from running. This was no time to listen to his inner cat. His inner cat had got him out of the room, but his inner cat was stupid. It wanted him to attack things small enough and run away from everything else. But no cat could tackle a bunch of rats this size. He froze, and tried to keep an eye on the advancing rats. They were heading directly for him. Hold on… hold on… The voice had said: You can see them… How did it know? Maurice tried to think loudly: Can… You… Read… My… Mind? Nothing happened. Maurice had a burst of inspiration. He shut his eyes. Open them! came the immediate command, and his eyelids trembled. Shan't, thought Maurice. You can't hear my thoughts! he thought. You only use my eyes and ears! You're just guessing what I'm thinking. There was no reply. Maurice didn't wait. He leapt. The sloping beam was where he remembered it. He clawed his way up, and hung on. At least all they could do was follow him up. With any luck, he could use his claws… The rats got closer. Now they were sniffing for him down below, and he imagined quivering noses in the darkness. One started to climb the beam, still sniffing. It must have been within inches of Maurice's tail when it turned around and went back down again. He heard them reach the top of the rubble. There was more bewildered sniffing and then, in the dark, the sound of the rats paddling through the mud. Maurice wrinkled his mud-caked forehead in amazement. Rats who couldn't smell a cat? And then he realized. He didn't smell of cat - he stank of mud, he felt like mud, in a room full of stinking mud. He sat, still as stone, until through muddy-caked ears he heard claws heading back to the hole in the wall. Then, without opening his eyes, he crept carefully back down to the rubble and found that it had piled up against a rotten wooden door. What must have been a piece of plank, soggy as a sponge, fell out as he touched it. A feeling of openness suggested that there was another cellar beyond. It stank of rot and burned wood. Would the… voice know where he was if he opened his eyes now? Didn't one cellar look like another? Perhaps this room was full of rats, too. His eyes sprang open. There were no rats, but there was another rusted drain cover which opened into a tunnel just big enough for him to walk through. He could see a faint light. So this is the rat world, he thought, as he tried to scrape the mud off himself. Dark and muddy and stinky and full of weird voices. I'm a cat. Sunlight and fresh air, that's my style. All I need now is a hole into the outside world and they won't see me for dust, or at least for bits of dried mud. A voice in his head, which wasn't the mysterious voice but a voice just like his own, said: But what about the stupid-looking kid and the rest of them? You ought to help them! And Maurice thought: Where did you come from? I'll tell you what, you help them and I'll go somewhere warm, how about that? The light at the end of the tunnel grew brighter. It still wasn't anything like daylight, or even moonlight, but anything was better than this gloom. At least, nearly anything. He pushed his head out of the pipe into a much larger one, made of bricks that were slimy with strange underground nastiness, and into the circle of candlelight. 'It's… Maurice?' said Peaches, staring at the mud dripping off his matted fur. 'Smells better than he usually does, then,' said Darktan, grinning in what Maurice considered was an unfriendly way. 'Oh ha, ha,' said Maurice, weakly. He wasn't in the mood for repartee. 'Ah, I knew you wouldn't let us down, old friend,' said Dangerous Beans. 'I have always said that we can depend on Maurice, at least.' He sighed deeply. 'Yes,' said Darktan, giving Maurice a much more knowing look. 'Depend on him to do what, though?' 'Oh,' said Maurice. 'Er. Good. I've found you all, then.' 'Yes,' said Darktan, in what Maurice thought was a nasty tone of voice. 'Amazing, isn't it. I expect you've been looking for a long time, too. I saw you rush off to look for us.' 'Can you help us?' said Dangerous Beans. 'We need a plan.' 'Ah, right,' said Maurice. 'I suggest we go upwards at every opportun-' 'To rescue Hamnpork,'said Darktan. 'We don't leave our people behind.' 'We don't?' said Maurice. 'We don't,' said Darktan. 'And then there's the kid,' said Peaches. 'Sardines says he's tied up with the female kid in one of the cellars.' 'Oh, well, you know, humans,' said Maurice, wrinkling his face. 'Humans and humans, you know, it's a human kind of thing, I don't think we should meddle, could be misunderstood, I know about humans, they'll sort it out' 'I don't care a ferret's shrlt for humans!' snapped Darktan. 'But those rat-catchers took Hamnpork off in a sack! You saw that room, cat! You saw the rats crammed in cages! It's the rat-catchers who are stealing the food! Sardines says there's sacks and sacks of food! And there's something else…' 'A voice,' said Maurice, before he could stop himself. Darktan looked up, wild-eyed. 'You heard it?' he said. 'I thought it was just us!' 'The rat-catchers can hear it too,' said Maurice. 'Only they think it's their own thoughts.' 'It frightened the others,' mumbled Dangerous Beans. 'They just… stopped thinking…' He looked absolutely dejected. Open beside him, grubby with dirt and paw marks, was Mr Bunnsy Has An Adventure. 'Even Toxie ran off,' he went on. 'And he knows how to write! How can that happen?' 'It seemed to affect some of us more than others,' said Darktan, in a more matter-of-fact voice. 'I've sent some of the more sensible ones out to try and round up the rest, but it's going to be a long job. They were just running blindly. We've got to get Hamnpork. He's the leader. We're rats, after all. A clan. Rats will follow the leader.' 'But he's a bit old, and you're the tough one, and he's not exactly the brains of the outfit ' Maurice began. 'They took him away!' said Darktan. 'They're ratcatchers! He's one of us! Are you going to help or not?' Maurice thought he heard a scrabbling noise at the other end of his pipe. He couldn't turn around to check, and he suddenly felt very exposed. 'Yeah, help you, yeah, yeah,' he said hurriedly. 'Ahem. Do you really mean that, Maurice?' said Peaches. 'Yeah, yeah, right,' said Maurice. He crawled out of the pipe and looked back along it. There was no sign of any rats. 'Sardines is following the rat-catchers,' said Darktan,'so we'll find out where they're taking him ' 'I've got a bad feeling that I already know,' said Maurice. 'How?' snapped Peaches. 'I'm a cat, right?' said Maurice. 'Cats hang around places. We see things. A lot of places don't mind cats wandering, right, because we keep down the vermi-we keep the, er-' 'All right, all right, we know you don't eat anyone who can talk, you keep telling us,' said Peaches. 'Get on with it!' 'I was in a place once, it was a barn, I was up in the hayloft, where you can always find a, er-' Peaches rolled her eyes. 'Yes, yes, go on!' 'Well, anyway, all these men came in and I couldn't get away because they had lots of dogs and they shut the barn doors and, er, they put up this kind of, kind of big round wooden wall in the middle of the floor, and there were some men with boxes of rats and they tipped rats into the ring and then, and then they put some dogs in, too. Terriers,' he added, trying to avoid their expressions. 'The rats fought the dogs?' said Darktan. 'Well, I suppose they could have done,' said Maurice. 'They mostly ran around and around. It's called rat-coursing. The rat-catchers bring the rats along, of course. Alive.' 'Rat-coursing…' said Darktan. 'How is it we've never heard of this?' Maurice blinked at him. For clever creatures, the rats could be amazingly stupid at times. 'Why would you hear about it?' he said. 'Surely one of the rats who-?' 'You don't seem to understand,' said Maurice. 'The rats that go into the pit don't come out. At least, not breathing.' There was silence. 'Can't they jump out?' asked Peaches in a little voice. 'Too high,' said Maurice. 'Why don't they fight the dogs?' said Darktan. Really, really stupid, Maurice thought. 'Because they're rats, Darktan,' said Maurice. 'Lots of rats. All stinking of one another's fear and panic. You know how it happens.' 'I bit a dog on the nose once!' said Darktan. 'Right, right,' said Maurice soothingly. 'One rat can think and be brave, right. But a bunch of rats is a mob. A bunch of rats is just a big animal with lots of legs and no brain.' 'That's not true!' said Peaches. 'Together we are strong!' 'Exactly how high?' said Darktan, who was staring at the candlelight as if seeing pictures in it. 'What?' asked Peaches and Maurice together. 'The wall… how high, exactly?' 'Huh? I don't know! High! Humans were leaning their elbows on it! Does it matter? It's far too high for a rat to jump, I know that.' 'Everything we've done we've done because we've stuck together-' Peaches began. 'We'll rescue Hamnpork together, then,' said Darktan. 'We'll-' He spun around at the sound of a rat coming along the pipe, and then wrinkled his nose. 'It's Sardines,' he said. 'And… let's see, smells female, young, nervous… Nourishing?' The youngest member of the Trap Disposal Squad was trailing after Sardines. She was wet and dejected. 'You look like a drowned rat, miss,' said Darktan. 'Fell in a broken drain, sir,' said Nourishing. 'Good to see you, anyway. What's happening, Sardines?' The dancing rat did a few nervous steps. 'I've been climbing up more drainpipes and along more washing lines than is good for me,' he said. 'And don't ask me about krrkk cats, boss, I'd like to see every last one of 'em dead-savin' yer honour's presence, o'course,' Sardines added, eyeing Maurice nervously. 'And?' said Peaches. 'They've gone to some kind of stables right on the edge of the town,' said Sardines. 'Smells bad. Lots of dogs around. Men, too.' 'Rat pit,' said Maurice. 'I told you. They've been breeding rats for the rat pit!' 'Right,' said Darktan. 'We're going to get Hamnpork out of there. Sardines, you will show me the way. We'll try to pick up others as we go. The rest of you should try to find the kid.' 'Why are you giving orders?' said Peaches. 'Because someone has to,' said Darktan. 'Hamnpork might be a bit scabby and set in his ways but he's the leader and everyone smells that and we need him. Any questions? Right-' 'Can I come, sir?' said Nourishing. 'She's helping me carry my string, boss,' Sardines explained. Both he and the younger rat were carrying bundles of it. 'You need all of that?' said Darktan. 'You should never say no to a piece of string, boss,' said Sardines earnestly. 'It's amazing, some of the stuff I've been finding-' 'All right, so long as she's useful for something,' said Darktan. 'She'd better be able to keep up. Let's go!' And then there was just Dangerous Beans, Peaches, and Maurice. Dangerous Beans sighed. 'One rat can be brave, but a bunch of rats is just a mob?' he said. 'Are you right, Maurice?' 'No, I was… look, there was something back there,' said Maurice. 'It's in a cellar. I don't know what it is. It's the voice that gets into people's heads!' 'Not everyone,' said Peaches. 'It didn't frighten you, did it? Or us. Or Darktan. It made Hamnpork very angry. Why?' Maurice blinked. He could hear the voice in his head again. It was very faint, and it certainly wasn't his own thoughts, and it said I will find a way in, CAT! 'Did you hear that?' he said. 'I didn't hear anything,' said Peaches. Perhaps you have to be close, Maurice thought. Perhaps, if you've been close, it knows where your head lives. He'd never seen a rat so miserable as Dangerous Beans. The little rat was huddled by the candle, staring unseeing at Mr Bunnsy Has An Adventure. 'I hoped it would be better than this,' said Dangerous Beans. 'But it turns out we're just… rats. As soon as there's trouble, we're just… rats.' It was very unusual for Maurice to feel sympathetic to anyone who wasn't Maurice. In a cat, that is a major character flaw. I must be ill, he thought. 'If it's any help, I'm just a cat,' he said. 'Oh, but you are not. You are kind and, deep down, I sense that you have a generous nature,' said Dangerous Beans. Maurice tried not to look at Peaches. Oh boy, he thought. 'At least you ask people before you eat them,' said Peaches. You'd better tell them, said Maurice's thoughts. Go on, tell them. You'd feel better. Maurice tried to tell his thoughts to shut up. What a time to get a conscience! What good was a cat with a conscience? A cat with a conscience was a… a hamster, or something… 'Um, I've been meaning to talk to you about that,' he muttered. Go on, tell them, said his shiny new conscience. Get it out in the open. 'Yes?' said Peaches. Maurice squirmed. 'Well, you know I do always check my food these days…' 'Yes, and it does you great credit,' said Dangerous Beans. Now Maurice felt even worse. 'Well, you know how we've always wondered how come I got Changed even though I never ate any of that magical stuff on the dump…' 'Yes,' said Peaches. 'That has always puzzled me.' Maurice shifted uneasily. 'Well, you know… er… did you ever know a rat, quite big, one ear missing, bit of white fur on one side, couldn't run too fast 'cos of a bad leg?' 'That sounds like Additives,' said Peaches. 'Oh, yes,' said Dangerous Beans. 'He disappeared before we met you, Maurice. A good rat. Had a bit of a speech… difficulty.' 'Speech difficulty,' said Maurice, gloomily. 'He stammered,' said Peaches, giving Maurice a long, cool stare. 'Couldn't get his words out very easily.' 'Not very easily,' said Maurice, his voice now quite hollow. 'But I'm sure you never met him, Maurice,' said Dangerous Beans. 'I miss him. He was a wonderful rat once you got him talking.' 'Ahem. Did you meet him, Maurice?' said Peaches, her stare nailing him to the wall. Maurice's face moved. It tried various expressions one after another. Then he said, 'All right! I ate him, OK? All of him! Except for the tail and the green wobbly bit and that nasty purple lump, no-one knows what it is! I was just a cat! I hadn't learned to think yet! I didn't know! I was hungry! Cats eat rats, that's how it goes! It wasn't my fault! And he'd been eating the magic stuff and I ate him so then I got Changed too! Know how that feels, seeing the green wobbly bit like that? It doesn't feel good! Sometimes on dark nights I think I can hear him talking down there! All right? Satisfied? I didn't know he was anyone! I didn't know I was anyone! I ate him! He'd been eating the stuff on the dump and I ate him so that's how I got Changed! I admit it! I ate him! It wasn't my faauulltt!' And then there was silence. After a while Peaches said, 'Yes, but that was a long time ago, wasn't it?' 'What? You mean have I eaten anyone lately? No!' 'Are you sorry for what you did?' said Dangerous Beans. 'Sorry? What do you think? Sometimes I have nightmares where I burp and he-' 'Then that's probably all right,' said the little rat. 'All right?' said Maurice. 'How can it be all right? And you know the worst part? I'm a cat! Cats don't go round feeling sorry! Or guilty! We never regret anything! Do you know what it feels like, saying "Hello food, can you talk?" That's not how a cat is supposed to behave!' 'We don't act how rats are supposed to behave,' said Dangerous Beans. And then his face fell again. 'Up until now,' he sighed. 'Everyone was frightened,' said Peaches. 'Fear spreads.' 'I hoped we could be more than rats,' said Dangerous Beans. 'I thought we could be more than things that squeak and widdle, whatever Hamnpork says. And now… where is everyone?' 'Shall I read to you from Mr Bunnsy?' said Peaches, her voice full of concern. 'You know that always cheers you up when you're in one of your… dark times.' There was a nod from Dangerous Beans. Peaches pulled the huge book towards her and began to read. 'One day Mr Bunnsy and his friend Ratty Rupert the Rat went to see Old Man Donkey, who lived by the river-' 'Read the bit where they talk to the humans,' said Dangerous Beans. Peaches obediently turned a page. '"Hello, Ratty Rupert," said Farmer Fred. "What a lovely day it is, to be sure-"' This is mad, thought Maurice, as he listened to a story about wild woods and fresh bubbling streams, being read to one rat by another rat while they sat beside a drain along which ran something that certainly wasn't fresh. Anything but fresh. To be fair, though, it was bubbling a bit, or at least glooping. Everything's going down the drain and they have this little picture in their heads about how nice things could be… Look at those little pink sad eyes, said Maurice's own thoughts in Maurice's own head. Look at those little wobbly wrinkly noses. If you ran out on them and left them here, how could you look those little wobbly noses in the face again? 'I wouldn't have to,' said Maurice, out loud. 'That's the point!' 'What?' said Peaches, looking up from the book. 'Oh, nothing…' Maurice paused. There was nothing for it. It went against everything a cat stood for. This is what thinking does for you, he thought. It gets you into trouble. Even when you know other people can think for themselves, you start thinking for them too. He groaned. 'We'd better see what's happened to the kid,' he said. It was completely black in the cellar. All there was, apart from the occasional drip of water, were voices. 'So,' said the voice of Malicia, 'let's go over it again, shall we? You don't have a knife of any kind?' 'That's right,' said Keith. 'Or some handy matches that could burn through the rope?' 'No.' 'And no sharp edge near you that you could rub the rope on?' 'No.' 'And you can't sort of pull your legs through your arms so that you can get your hands in front of you?' 'No.' 'And you don't have any secret powers?' 'No.' 'Are you sure? The moment I saw you, I thought: he's got some amazing power that will probably manifest itself when he's in dire trouble. I thought: no-one could really be as useless as that unless it was a disguise.' 'No. I'm sure. Look, I'm just a normal person. Yes, all right, I was abandoned as a baby. I don't know why. It was something that happened. They say it happens quite a lot. It doesn't make you special. And I don't have any secret markings as if I was some kind of sheep, and I don't think I'm a hero in disguise and I don't have some kind of amazing talent that I'm aware of. OK, I'm good at playing quite a few musical instruments. I practise a lot. But I'm the kind of person heroes aren't. I get by and I get along. I do my best. Understand?' 'Oh.' 'You should have found someone else.' 'In fact, you can't be any help at all?' 'No.' There was silence for a while and then Malicia said, 'You know, in many ways I don't think this adventure has been properly organized.' 'Oh, really?' said Keith. 'This is not how people should be tied up.' 'Malicia, do you understand? This isn't a story,' said Keith, as patiently as he could. 'That's what I'm trying to tell you. Real life isn't a story. There isn't some kind of… of magic that keeps you safe and makes crooks look the other way and not hit you too hard and tie you up next to a handy knife and not kill you. Do you understand?' There was some more dark silence. 'My granny and my great-aunt were very famous story-tellers, you know,' said Malicia eventually, in a strained little voice. 'Agoniza and Eviscera Grim.' 'You said,' said Keith. 'My mother would have been a good story-teller, too, but my father doesn't like stories. That's why I've changed my name to Grim for professional purposes.' 'Really…' 'I used to get beaten when I was small for telling stories,' Malicia went on. 'Beaten?' said Keith. 'All right, then, smacked,' said Malicia. 'On the leg. But it did hurt. My father says you can't run a city on stories. He says you have to be practical.' 'Oh.' 'Aren't you interested in anything except music? He broke your pipe!' 'I expect I'll buy another one.' The calm voice infuriated Malicia. 'Well, I'll tell you something,' she said. 'If you don't turn your life into a story, you just become a part of someone else's story.' 'And what if your story doesn't work?' 'You keep changing it until you find one that does.' 'Sounds silly.' 'Huh, look at you. You're just a face in someone else's background. You let a cat make all the decisions.' 'That's because Maurice is-' A voice said, 'Would you like us to go away until you've stopped being human?' 'Maurice?' said Keith. 'Where are you?' 'I'm in a drain and believe me, this has not been a good night. Do you know how many old cellars there are here?' said the voice of Maurice, in the blackness. 'Peaches is bringing a candle in. It's too dark even for me to see you.' 'Who's Peaches?' whispered Malicia. 'She's another Changeling. A thinking rat,' said Keith. 'Like Pilchards?' 'Like Sardines, yes.' 'Aha,' hissed Malicia. 'See? A story. I am smug, I gloat. The plucky rats rescue our heroes, probably by gnawing through the ropes.' 'Oh, we're back in your story, are we?' said Keith. 'And what am I in your story?' 'I know it's not going to be romantic interest,' said Malicia. 'And you're not funny enough for comic relief. I don't know. Probably just… someone. You know, like "man in street", something like that.' There were faint sounds in the darkness. 'What are they doing now?' she whispered. 'Trying to light their candle, I think.' 'Rats play with fire?' Malicia hissed. 'They don't play. Dangerous Beans thinks lights and shadows are very important. They always have a candle alight somewhere in their tunnels, wherever they-' 'Dangerous Beans? What sort of name is that?' 'Shssh! They just learned words off old food tins and signs and things! They didn't know what the words meant, they just chose them because they liked the sounds!' 'Yes, but… Dangerous Beans? It sounds as if he makes you' 'It's his name. Don't make fun of it!' 'Sorry, I'm sure,' said Malicia, haughtily. The match flared. The candle flame grew. Malicia looked down at two rats. One was… well, just a small rat, although sleeker than most of the ones she'd seen. In fact most of the ones she'd seen had been dead, but even the living ones had always been… twitchy, nervy, sniffing the air all the time. This one just… watched. It stared right at her. The other rat was white, and even smaller. It was also watching her, although peering was a better word. It had pink eyes. Malicia had never been very interested in other people's feelings, since she'd always considered that her own were a lot more interesting, but there was something sad and worrying about that rat. It was dragging a small book, or at least what would be a small book to a human; it was about half the size of a rat. The cover was quite colourful, but Malicia couldn't make out what it was. 'Peaches and Dangerous Beans,' said Keith. 'This is Malicia. Her father is the mayor here.' 'Hello,' said Dangerous Beans. 'Mayor? Isn't that like government!' said Peaches. 'Maurice says governments are very dangerous criminals and steal money from people.' 'How did you teach them to speak?' said Malicia. 'They taught themselves,' said Keith. 'They're not trained animals, you know.' 'Well, my father does not steal from anyone. Who taught them that governments are very-?' ''Scuse me, 'scuse me,' said Maurice's voice hurriedly, from the drain gate. 'That's right, I'm down here. Can we get on with things?' 'We'd like you to gnaw at our ropes, please,' said Keith. 'I've got a bit of broken knife blade,' said Peaches. 'It's for sharpening the pencil. Would that be better?' 'Knife?' said Malicia. 'Pencil?' 'I did say they weren't ordinary rats,' said Keith. Nourishing had to run to keep up with Darktan. And Darktan was running because he had to run to keep up with Sardines. When it came to moving fast across a town, Sardines was champion of the world. They picked up more rats on the way. Nourishing couldn't help noticing that these were mostly the younger ones, who'd fled because of the terror but hadn't gone far. They fell in behind Darktan readily, almost grateful to be doing something with a purpose. Sardines danced on ahead. He just couldn't help it. And he liked drainpipes, roofs and gutters. You got no dogs up there, he said, and not many cats. No cat could have followed Sardines. The people of Bad Blintz had strung washing lines between the ancient houses and he leapt onto them, clinging upside down and moving as fast as he would on a flat surface. He went straight up walls, plunged through thatch, tap-danced around smoking chimneys, slid down tiles. Pigeons erupted from their roosts as he sped past, the other rats trailing behind him. Clouds rolled across the moon. Sardines reached the edge of a roof and leapt, landing on a wall just below. He ran along the top and disappeared in the crack between two planks. Nourishing followed him into a kind of loft. Hay was piled in parts of it, but a larger part was simply open to the ground floor below, and supported by several heavy beams that ran right across the building. Bright light shone up from below, and there was the buzz of human voices and - she shuddered - the barking of dogs. 'This is a big stables, boss,' said Sardines. 'The pit's under the beam over there. Come on…' They crept out on the ancient woodwork and peered over the edge. Far below was a wooden circle, like half a giant barrel. Nourishing realized that they were right over the pit; if she fell now, she'd land in the middle of it. Men were crowded around it. Dogs were tied up around the walls, barking at one another and at the universe in general in the mad, I'm-going-to-do-this-for-ever way of all dogs. And off to one side was a stack of boxes and sacks. The sacks were moving. 'Crtlk! How the krrp will we find Hamnpork in this lot?' Darktan said, his eyes gleaming in the light from below. 'Well, with old Hamnpork, boss, I reckon we'll know when he turns up,' said Sardines. 'Could you drop into the pit on a string?' 'I'm game for anything, guv,' said Sardines, loyally. 'Into a pit with a dog in it, sir?' said Nourishing. 'And won't the string cut you in half?' 'Ah, I've got something that helps there, boss,' said Sardines. He took off his thick coil of string and put it aside. There was another coil under it, glistening and light brown. He pulled at a piece of it, and it snapped back with a faint 'twang'. 'Bands of rubber,' he said. 'I pinched them off a desk when I was looking for more string. I've used 'em before, boss. Very handy for a long drop, boss.' Darktan took a step back on the boards. There was an old candle lantern there, lying on its side, the glass smashed, the candle eaten long ago. 'Good,' he said. 'Because I've got an idea. If you can drop down-' There was a roar from below. The rats looked over the beam again. The circle of heads had thickened around the lip of the pit. A man was talking in a loud voice. Occasionally there was a cheer. The black top hats of the rat-catchers moved through the crowd. Seen from above, they were sinister black blobs among the grey and brown caps. One of the rat-catchers emptied a sack into the pit, and the watchers saw the dark shapes of rats scurrying in a panic, as they tried to find, in that circle, a corner to hide in. The crowd opened slightly and a man walked to the edge of the pit, holding a terrier. There was some more shouting, a ripple of laughter, and the dog was dropped in with the rats. The Changelings stared down at the circle of death, and the cheering humans. After a minute or two Nourishing tore her gaze away. When she looked around she caught the expression on Darktan's face. Maybe it wasn't just the lamplight that made his eyes full of fire. She saw him look along the stable to the big doors at the far end. They had been barred shut. Then his head turned to the hay and straw piled up in the loft, and in the cribs and mangers below. Darktan pulled a length of wood out of one of his belts. Nourishing smelled the sulphur in the red blob on the end. It was a match. Darktan turned and saw him staring at her. He nodded towards the piles of hay in the loft. 'My plan might not work,' he said. 'If it doesn't, you'll be in charge of the other plan.' 'Me?' said Nourishing. 'You. Because I won't be… around,' said Darktan. He held out the match. 'You know what to do,' he said, nodding to the nearest rack of hay. Nourishing swallowed. 'Yes. Yes, I think so. Er… when?' 'When the time comes. You'll know when,' said Darktan, and looked back down at the massacre. 'One way or the other, I want them to remember tonight,' he said quietly. 'They'll remember what they did. And they'll remember what we did. For as long as they… live.' Hamnpork lay in his sack. He could smell the other rats nearby, and the dogs, and the blood. Especially the blood. He could hear his own thoughts, but they were like a little chirp of insects against the thunderstorm of his senses. Bits of memory danced in front of his eyes. Cages. Panic. The white rat. Hamnpork. That was his own name. Odd. Never used to have names. Just used to smell other rats. Darkness. Darkness inside, behind the eyes. That bit was Hamnpork. Everything outside was everything else. Hamnpork. Me. Leader. The red-hot rage still boiled inside him but now it had a kind of shape, like the shape a canyon gives to a river in flood, narrowing it, forcing it to flow faster, giving it direction. Now he could hear voices. '… just slip him in, no-one'll notice…' '… OK, I'll shake it up a bit first to get him angry…' The sack was jerked around. It didn't make Hamnpork any more angry than he was already. There wasn't any room for more anger. The sack swung as it was carried. The roar of humans grew louder, the smells grew stronger. There was a moment of silence, the sack was upturned, and Hamnpork slid out into a roar of noise and a pile of struggling rats. He snapped and clawed his way to the top as the rats scattered, and saw a growling dog being lowered into the pit. It snatched up a rat, shook it vigorously, and sent the limp body flying. The rats stampeded. 'Idiots!' screamed Hamnpork. 'Work together! You could strip this fleabag to the bone!' The crowd stopped shouting. The dog stared down its nose at Hamnpork. It was trying to think. The rat had spoken. Only humans spoke. And it didn't smell right. Rats stank of panic. This one didn't. The silence rang like a bell. Then Jacko grabbed the rat, shook him, not too hard, and tossed him down. He'd decided to do a sort of test; rats shouldn't be able to talk like humans, but this rat looked like a rat - and killing rats was OK - but talked like a human - and biting humans got you a serious thrashing. He had to find out for sure. If he got a wallop, this rat was a human. Hamnpork rolled, and managed to get upright, but there was a deep tooth wound in his side. The other rats were still in a boiling huddle as far away from the dog as possible, every rat trying to be the one at the bottom. Hamnpork spat blood. 'All right, then,' he snarled, advancing on the puzzled dog. 'Now you find out how a real rat dies!' 'Hamnpork!' He looked up. String uncoiled behind Sardines as he fell through the smoky air towards the frantic circle. He was right above Hamnpork, getting bigger and bigger… … and slower and slower… He came to a stop between the dog and the rat. For a moment he hung there. He raised his hat, politely, and said, 'Good evening!' Then he wrapped all four legs around Hamnpork. And now the rope of elastic bands, stretched to twanging point, finally sprang back. Too late, too late, Jacko snapped at empty air. The rats were accelerated upwards, out of the pit-and stopped, bouncing in mid air, just out of reach. The dog was still looking up when Darktan leapt off the other side of the beam. As the crowd stared in astonishment, he plummeted down towards the terrier. Jacko's eyes narrowed. Rats disappearing into the air was one thing, but rats dropping right towards his mouth was something else. It was rat on a plate, it was rat on a stick. Darktan looked back as he fell. Up above, Nourishing was doing some frantic knotting and biting. Now Darktan was on the other end of Sardines' string. But Sardines had explained things very carefully. Darktan's weight alone wasn't heavy enough to pull the weight of two other rats back up to the beam… So, when Darktan saw Sardines and his struggling passenger had disappeared safely into the gloom of the roof- -he let go of the big old candle lamp he'd been holding for the extra weight and bit through the rope. The lamp landed heavily on Jacko and Darktan landed on the lamp, rolling down onto the floor. The crowd was silent. They'd been silent since Hamnpork had been propelled out of the pit. Around the top of the wall which, yes, was far too high for a rat to jump, Darktan saw faces. They were mostly red. The mouths were mostly open. The silence was the silence of red faces drawing breath ready to start shouting at any moment. Around Darktan the surviving rats were scrambling aimlessly for a foothold on the wall. Fools, he thought. Four or five of you together could make any dog wish you'd never been born. But you scrabble and panic and you get picked off one at a time… The slightly-stunned Jacko blinked and stared down at Darktan, a growl rising in his throat. 'Right, you kkrrkk,' said Darktan, loud enough for the watchers to hear. 'Now I'm going to show you how a rat can live.' He attacked. Jacko was not a bad dog, according to the way of dogs. He was a terrier and liked killing rats in any case, and killing lots of rats in the pit meant that he got well fed and called a good boy and wasn't kicked very often. Some rats did fight back and that wasn't much of a problem, because they were smaller than Jacko and he had a lot more teeth. Jacko wasn't that smart, but he was a lot smarter than a rat and, in any case, his nose and mouth did most of the thinking. And he was surprised, therefore, when his jaws snapped shut on this new rat and it wasn't there. Darktan didn't run like a rat should. He ducked like a fighter. He nipped Jacko under the chin and vanished. Jacko spun around. The rat still wasn't there. Jacko had spent his show business career biting rats that tried to run away. Rats that stayed really close were unfair! There was a roar from the watchers. Someone shouted, 'Ten dollars on the rat!' and someone else punched him in the ear. Another man started to climb into the pit. Someone smashed a beer bottle on that man's head. Dancing back and forth under the spinning, yapping Jacko, Darktan waited for his moment… … and saw it, and lunged, and bit hard. Jacko's eyes crossed. A piece of Jacko that was very private and of interest only to Jacko and any lady dogs he might happen to meet was suddenly a little ball of pain. He yelped. He snapped at the air. And then, in the uproar, he tried to climb out of the pit. His claws scraped desperately as he reared up against the greasy, smooth planking. Darktan jumped onto his tail, ran up his back, scampered to the tip of Jacko's nose, and leapt over the wall. He landed among legs. Men tried to stamp on him, but that meant other men would have to give them room. By the time they'd elbowed one another out of the way and stamped heavily on one another's boots, Darktan was gone. But there were other dogs. They were half-mad with excitement in any case, and now they pulled away from ropes and chains and set off after a running rat. They knew about chasing rats. Darktan knew about running. He sped across the floor like a comet, with a tail of snarling, barking dogs, headed for the shadows, spied a hole in the planking and dived through into the nice, safe, darkness- Click went the trap.   CHAPTER 9 Farmer Fred opened his door and saw all the animals of Furry Bottom waiting for him. "We can't find Mr Bunnsy or Ratty Rupert!" they cried. - From Mr Bunnsy Has An Adventure   'At last!' said Malicia, shaking the ropes off. 'Somehow I thought rats would gnaw quicker.' 'They used a knife,' said Keith. 'And you could say thank you, couldn't you?' 'Yes, yes, tell them I'm very grateful,' said Malicia, pushing herself upright. 'Tell them yourself!' 'I'm sorry, I find it so embarrassing to… talk to rats.' 'I suppose that's understandable,' said Keith. 'If you've been brought up to hate them because they-' 'Oh, it's not that,' said Malicia, walking over to the door and looking at the keyhole. 'It's just that it's so… childish. So… tinkly-winkly. So… Mr Bunnsy.' 'Mr Bunnsy?' squeaked Peaches, and it really was a squeak, a word that came out as a sort of little shriek. 'What about Mr Bunnsy?' said Keith. Malicia reached into her pocket and pulled out her packet of bent hair pins. 'Oh, some books some silly woman wrote,' she said, poking at the lock. 'Stupid stuff for ickle kids. There's a rat and a rabbit and a snake and a hen and an owl and they all go around wearing clothes and talking to humans and everyone's so nice and cosy it makes you absolutely sick. D'you know my father kept them all from when he was a kid? Mr Bunnsy Has An Adventure, Mr Bunnsy's Busy Day, Ratty Rupert Sees It Through… he read them all to me when I was small and there's not an interesting murder in any of them.' 'I think you'd better stop,' said Keith. He didn't dare look down at the rats. 'There's no sub-texts, no social commentary…' Malicia went on, still fiddling. 'The most interesting thing that happens at all is when Doris the Duck loses a shoe - a duck losing a shoe, right? - and it turns up under the bed after they've spent the entire story looking for it. Do you call that narrative tension? Because I don't. If people are going to make up stupid stories about animals pretending to be human, at least there could be a bit of interesting violence…' 'Oh, boy,' said Maurice, from behind the grating. This time Keith did look down. Peaches and Dangerous Beans had gone. 'You know, I never had the heart to tell them,' he said, not to anyone in particular. 'They thought it was all true.' 'In the land of Furry Bottom, possibly,' said Malicia, and stood up as the lock gave a final click. 'But not here. Can you imagine someone actually invented that name and didn't laugh? Let's go.' 'You upset them,' said Keith. 'Look, shall we get out of here before the rat-catchers come back?' said Malicia. The thing about this girl, Maurice thought, was that she was no good at all at listening to the way people spoke. She wasn't much good at listening, if it came to that. 'No,' said Keith. 'No what?' 'No, I'm not coming with you,' said Keith. 'There's something bad going on here, much worse than stupid men stealing food.' Maurice watched them argue again. Humans, eh? Think they're lords of creation. Not like us cats. We know we are. Ever see a cat feed a human? Case proven. How the humans shout, hissed a tiny voice in his head. Is that my conscience? Maurice thought. His own thoughts said: what, me? No. But I feel a lot better now you told them about Additives. He shifted uneasily from paw to paw. 'Well then,' he whispered, looking at his stomach, 'is that you, Additives?' He'd been worried about that ever since he'd realized he'd eaten a Changeling. They had voices, right? Supposing you ate one? Suppose their voice stayed inside you? Suppose the… the dream of Additives around inside him? That sort of thing could seriously interfere with a cat's napping time, it really could. No, said the voice, like the sound of wind in distant trees, it is I. I am… SPIDER. 'Oh, you're a spider?' whispered thought-Maurice. 'I could take on a spider with three paws tied behind my back.' Not a spider. SPIDER. The word actually hurt. It hadn't before. Now I'm in your HEAD, cat. Cats, cats, bad as dogs, worse than rats. I'm in your HEAD, and I will never go AWAY. Maurice's paw jerked. I'll be in your DREAMS. 'Look, I'm just passing through,' Maurice whispered desperately. 'I'm not looking for trouble. I'm unreliable! I'm a cat! I wouldn't trust me, and I am me! Just let me get into the nice fresh air and I'll be right out of your… hair or legs or furry bits or whatever!' You don't want to run AWAY. That's right, thought Maurice, I don't want to run-Hold on, I do want to run away! 'I'm a cat!' he muttered. 'No rat is going to control me. You've tried!' Yes, came the voice of Spider, but then you were STRONG. Now your little mind runs in circles and wants someone else to do the thinking for it. I can think for you. I can think for EVERYONE. I will always be with you. The voice faded away. Right, thought Maurice. Time to say farewell, then, Bad Blintz. The party is over. The rats have got lots of other rats and even these two humans have got one another, but I've just got me and I'd like to get me somewhere where strange voices don't talk to me. ''scuse me,' he said, raising his voice. 'Are we going or what?' The two humans turned to look at the grating. 'What?' said Keith. 'I'd prefer going,' said Maurice. 'Pull this grating out, will you? It's rusted right through, it shouldn't be a problem. Good lad. And then we can make a run for it-' 'They've called in a rat piper, Maurice,' said Keith. 'And the Clan is all over the place. He'll be here in the morning. A real rat piper, Maurice. Not a fake one like me. They have magical pipes, you know. Do you want to see that happen to our rats?' His new conscience gave Maurice a good kicking. 'Well, not exactly see,' he said reluctantly. 'Not as such, no.' 'Right. So we're not going to run away,' said Keith. 'Oh? And what are we going to do, then?' said Malicia. 'We're going to talk to the rat-catchers when they come back,' said Keith. He had a thoughtful look. 'And what makes you think they'll want to talk to us?' 'Because if they don't talk to us,' said Keith,'they're going to die.' It was twenty minutes later that the rat-catchers arrived. The door of their hut was unlocked, thrown back, then slammed shut. Rat-catcher 2 bolted it, as well. 'You know where you said it was going to be such a good evening?' he said, leaning against it and panting. 'Tell me about it again, 'cos I think I missed that part.' 'Shut up,' said Rat-catcher 1. 'Someone punched me in the eye.' 'Shut up.' 'And I think I lost my wallet. That's twenty dollars I won't see again in a hurry.' 'Shut up.' 'And I wasn't able to pick up any of the surviving rats from the last fight!' 'Shut up.' 'And we left the dogs behind, too! We could've stopped to untie 'em! Someone'll pinch 'em.' 'Shut up.' 'Do rats often whizz through the air like that? Or is that the kind of thing you only get to hear about when you are a hexperienced rat-catcher?' 'Did I say shut up?' 'Yes.' 'Shut up. All right, we'll leave right now. We'll take the money and nick a boat down at the jetty, OK? We'll leave the stuff we haven't sold and just go.' 'Just like that? Johnny No Hands and his lads are coming upriver tomorrow night to pick up the next load and-' 'We'll go, Bill. I can smell things going bad.' 'Just like that? He owes us two hundred doll-' 'Yes! Just like that! Time to move on! The jig is up, the bird has flown, and the cat is out of the bag! The-Did you say that?' 'Say what?' 'Did you just say "I wish I was"?' 'Me? No.' The rat-catcher looked around the shed. There was no-one else there. 'All right, then,' he said. 'It's been a long night. Look, when things start to go bad, then it's time to go away. Nothing fancy. We just go, right? I don't want to be here when people come looking for us. And I don't want to meet any of them rat pipers. They are sharp men. They pry around. And they cost a lot of money. People are going to ask questions, and the only question I want them to ask is "Where did the rat-catchers go?" Understand? It's a good man who knows when to quit. What's in the kitty-? What did you say?' 'What, me? Nothing. Cup of tea? You always feel better after a cup of tea.' 'Didn't you say "kitty yourself"?' Rat-catcher 1 demanded. 'I just asked if you wanted a cup of tea! Honest! Are you all right?' Rat-catcher 1 stared at his friend, as if trying to see a lie in his face. Then he said, 'Yeah, yeah. I'm fine. Three sugars, then.' 'That's right,' said Rat-catcher 2, spooning it in. 'Keep up the blood sugar. You have to look after yourself.' Rat-catcher 1 took the mug, sipped the tea, and stared at the swirling surface. 'How did we get into this?' he said. 'I mean, all this! Y'know? Sometimes I wake up in the night and think, it's stupid, this, and then I come to work and it all seems, well, sensible. I mean, stealin' stuff and blaming it on the rats, yes, and breeding big tough rats for the rat pits and bringing back the ones that survive so we can breed even bigger rats, yes, but… I dunno… I didn't used to be the kind of bloke that ties up kids…' 'We've made a big wad of cash, though.' 'Yeah.' Rat-catcher 1 swirled the tea in his mug and took another drink. 'There's that, I suppose. Is this a new tea?' 'No, it's just Lord Green, like normal.' 'Tastes a bit different.' Rat-catcher 1 drained the mug and put it on the bench. 'OK, let's get the-' 'That's about enough,' said a voice overhead. 'Now, stand still and listen to me. If you run away, you'll die. If you talk too much, you'll die. If you wait too long, you'll die. If you think you're smart, you'll die. Any questions?' A few wisps of dust drifted down from the rafters. The rat-catchers looked up, and saw a cat face peering down. 'It's that kid's damn mog!' said Rat-catcher 1. 'I told you it was looking at me in a funny way!' 'If I was you, I wouldn't look at me,' said Maurice, conversationally. 'I'd look at the rat poison.' Rat-catcher 2 turned to look at the table. 'Here, who stole some of the poison?' he said. 'Oh,' said Rat-catcher 1, who was a much faster thinker. 'Steal it?' said the cat on high. 'We don't steal. That's thieving. We just put it somewhere else.' 'Oh,' said Rat-catcher 1, sitting down suddenly. 'That's dangerous stuff!' said Rat-catcher 2, looking for something to throw. 'You had no business touching it! You tell me where it is right now!' There was a thump as the trapdoor in the floor slammed back. Keith stuck his head up, and then came up the ladder while the rat-catchers watched in amazement. He was holding a crumpled paper bag. 'Oh dear,' said Rat-catcher 1. 'What have you done with the poison?' Rat-catcher 2 demanded. 'Well,' said Keith, 'now that you mention it, I think I put most of it in the sugar…' Darktan woke up. His back was on fire and he couldn't breathe. He could feel the weight of the trap's jaw pressing down on him, and the dreadful bite of the steel teeth on his belly. I shouldn't be alive, he thought. I wish I wasn't… He tried to push himself upwards, which made it worse. The pain came back a little stronger as he sagged down again. Caught like a rat in a trap, he thought. I wonder what type it is? 'Darktan?' The voice was a little way off. Darktan tried to speak, but every tiny movement pushed him further into the teeth below him. 'Darktan?' Darktan managed a faint squeak. Words hurt too much. Feet scrabbled forward in the dry darkness. 'Darktan!' It smelled like Nourishing. 'Gnh,' Darktan managed, trying to turn his head. 'You're caught in a trap!' That was too much for Darktan, even if every word was agony. 'Oh… really?' he said. 'I'll go and fetch S-sardines, shall I?' stammered Nourishing. Darktan could smell the rat's panic begin. And there wasn't time for panic. 'No! Tell… me…' he panted, '… what… kind… of… trap?' 'Er… er… er…' said Nourishing. Darktan took a deep, fiery breath. 'Think, you… miserable widdler!' 'Er, er… it's all rusty… er… Rust everywhere! Looks like… er… could be a… Breakback…' There was a scratching noise behind Darktan. 'Yes! I gnawed the rust off! It says Nugent Brothers Breakback Mk. 1, sir!' Darktan tried to think as the constant, dreadful pressure squeezed him further. Mk. 1? Ancient! Something out of the dawn of time! The oldest he'd ever seen was an Improved Breakback Mk. 7! And all he had to help him was Nourishing, a complete drrtlt with four left feet. 'Can you… see how…?' he began, but there were purple lights in front of his eyes now, a great tunnel of purple lights. He tried again, as he felt himself drift towards the lights. 'Can… you… see… how… the… spring… ?' 'It's all rusted, sir!' came the panicking voice. 'It looks like it's a non-return action like on the Jenkins and Jenkins Big Snapper, sir, but it hasn't got the hook on the end! What does this bit do, sir? Sir? Sir?' Darktan felt the pain go away. So this is how it happens, he thought dreamily. Too late now. She'll panic, and she'll run. That's what we do. When we're in trouble, we bolt for the first hole. But it doesn't matter. It is just like a dream, after all. Nothing to worry about. Quite nice, really. Perhaps there really is a Big Rat Deep Under The Ground. That'd be nice. He drifted happily, in the warm silence. There were bad things happening, but they were a long way off and they didn't matter any more… He thought he heard a sound behind him, like rats' claws moving across a stone floor. Perhaps it's Nourishing running away, part of him thought. But another part thought: perhaps it is the Bone Rat. The idea didn't frighten him. Nothing could frighten him here. Anything bad that could happen already had. He felt that if he turned his head, he'd see something. But it was easier just to float in this big warm space. The purple light was darkening now, to a deep blue and, in the centre of the blue, a circle of black. It looked like a rat tunnel. And that's where he lives, thought Darktan. That's the tunnel of the Big Rat. How simple it all is… A shining white dot appeared in the centre of the tunnel and got bigger quickly. And here he comes, thought Darktan. He must know a lot, the Big Rat. I wonder what he's going to tell me? The light grew bigger, and did indeed begin to look like a rat. How strange, thought Darktan, as the blue light faded into the black, to find it's all true. Off we go, then, into the tunn- There was noise. It filled the world. And the terrible, terrible pain was back. And the Big Rat shouted, in the voice of Nourishing: 'I gnawed through the spring, sir! I gnawed through the spring! It was old and weak, sir! Prob'ly why you weren't cut in half, sir! Can you hear me, sir? Darktan? Sir? I gnawed right through the spring, sir! Are you still dead, sir? Sir?' Rat-catcher 1 leapt out of his chair, his hands bunching into fists. At least, it started out as a leap. About halfway, it turned into a stagger. He sat down heavily, clutching at his stomach. 'Oh, no. Oh, no. I knew that tea tasted funny…'he muttered. Rat-catcher 2 had gone a pale green. 'You nasty little-' he began. 'And don't even think of attacking us,' said Malicia. 'Otherwise you'll never walk out of here. And we might get hurt and forget where we left the antidote. You haven't got time to attack us.' Rat-catcher 1 tried standing up again, but his legs didn't want to play. 'What poison was it?' he muttered. 'By the smell of it, it's the one the rats call Number Three,' said Keith. 'It was in the bag labelled Killalot!!!' 'The rats call it Number Three?' said Rat-catcher 2. 'They know a lot about poison,' said Keith. 'And they told you about this antidote, yeah?' said Rat-catcher 2. Rat-catcher 1 glared at him. 'We heard them talk, Bill. In the pit, remember?' He looked back at Keith, and shook his head. 'Nah,' he said. 'You don't look like the kind of kid that'd poison a man to his face…' 'How about me?' said Malicia, leaning forward. 'She would! She would!' said Rat-catcher 2, clutching at his colleague's arm. 'She's weird, that one. Everyone says so!' He clutched his stomach again, and leaned forward, groaning. 'You said something about an antidote,' said Ratcatcher 1. 'But there's no antidote to Killalot!!!' 'And I told you there is,' said Keith. 'The rats found one.' Rat-catcher 2 fell on his knees. 'Please, young sir! Have mercy! If not for me, please think of my dear wife and my four lovely children who'll be without their daddy!' 'You're not married,' said Malicia. 'You don't have any children!' 'I might want some one day!' 'What happened to that rat you took away?' said Keith. 'Dunno, sir. A rat in a hat come down out of the roof and grabbed it and flew away!' Rat-catcher 2 burbled. 'And then another big rat come down into the pit, shouted at everyone, bit Jacko on the on the unutterables and jumped right out of the pit and did a runner!' 'Sounds like your rats are all right,' said Malicia. 'I haven't finished,' said Keith. 'You stole from everyone and blamed it on the rats, didn't you?' 'Yes! That's it! Yes! We did, we did!' 'You killed the rats,' said Maurice, quietly. Rat-catcher 1's head turned sharply. There was an edge to that voice that he recognized. He'd heard it at the pit. You got them there sometimes, high-rolling types with fancy waistcoats, who travelled through the mountains making a living by betting and sometimes making a killing by knives. They had a look to their eye and a tone to their voice. They were known as 'killing gentlemen'. You didn't cross a killing gentleman. 'Yes, yes, that's right, we did!' babbled Rat-catcher 2. 'Just go carefully there, Bill,' said Rat-catcher 1, still eyeing Maurice. 'Why did you do it?' said Keith. Rat-catcher 2 looked from his boss to Malicia and then to Keith, as if trying to decide who frightened him the most. 'Well, Ron said the rats ate stuff anyway,' he said. 'So… he said if we got rid of all the rats and pinched the stuff ourselves, well, it wouldn't exactly be like stealing, would it? More like… re-arranging stuff. There's a bloke Ron knows who comes up with a sailing barge in the middle of the night and pays us-' 'That is a diabolical lie!' snapped Rat-catcher 1, and then looked as if he was going to be sick. 'But you caught rats alive and crammed them into cages without food,' Keith went on. 'They live on rat, those rats. Why did you do that?' Rat-catcher 1 clutched at his stomach. 'I can feel things happening!' he said. 'That's just your imagination!' snapped Keith. 'It is?' 'Yes. Don't you know anything about the poisons you use? Your stomach won't start to melt for at least twenty minutes.' 'Wow!' said Malicia. 'And after that,' said Keith, 'if you blow your nose, your brain will well, let's just say you'll need a really big handkerchief.' 'This is great!' said Malicia, rummaging in her bag. 'I'm going to take notes!' 'And then, if you… just don't go to the lavatory, that's all. Don't ask why. Just don't. It'll all be over in an hour, except for the oozing.' Malicia was scribbling fast. 'Will they go runny?' she said. 'Very,' said Keith, not taking his eyes off the men. 'This is inhuman!' shrieked Rat-catcher 2. 'No, it's very human,' said Keith. 'It's extremely human. There isn't a beast in the world that'd do it to another living thing, but your poisons do it to rats every day. Now tell me about the rats in the cages.' Sweat was pouring down the assistant rat-catcher's face. He looked as if he, too, were caught in a trap. 'See, rat-catchers have always caught rats alive for the rat pits,' he moaned. 'It's a perk. Nothing wrong with it! Always done it! So we had to keep up a supply, so we bred 'em. Had to! No harm in feeding 'em dead rats from the rat pits. Everyone knows rats eat rats, if you leave out the green wobbly bit! And then-' 'Oh? There's a then?' said Keith, calmly. 'Ron said if we bred rats from the rats that survived in pit, you know, the ones that dodged the dogs, well, we'd end up with bigger, better rats, see?' 'That's scientific, that is,' said Rat-catcher 1. 'What would be the point of that?' said Malicia. 'Well, miss, we-Ron said… we thought… I thought… we thought that… well, it's not exactly cheating to put really tough rats in amongst the others, see, especially if the dog that's going in is a bit borderline. Where's the harm in that? Gives us an edge, see, when it come to betting. I thought… he thought…' 'You seem a bit confused about whose idea it was,' said Keith. 'His,' said the rat-catchers together. Mine, said a voice in Maurice's head. He almost fell off his perch. What does not kill us makes us strong, said the voice of Spider. The strongest breed. 'You mean,' said Malicia, 'if they didn't have ratcatchers here they'd have fewer rats?' She paused, head on one side. 'No, that's not right. It doesn't feel right. There's something else. Something you haven't told us. Those rats in those cages are… mad, insane…' I'd be too, Maurice thought, with this horrible voice in my head every hour of the day. 'I'm going to throw up,' said Rat-catcher 1. 'I am, I'm going to-' 'Don't,' said Keith, watching Rat-catcher 2. 'You won't like it. Well, Mr Assistant Rat-catcher?' 'Ask them what's in the other cellar,' said Maurice. He said it fast; he could feel the voice of Spider try to stop his mouth moving even as the sentence came out. 'What is in the other cellar then?' said Keith. 'Oh, just more stuff, old cages, stuff like that…' said Rat-catcher 2. 'What else?' said Maurice. 'Only the… only the… that's where…' The ratcatcher's mouth opened and shut. His eyes bulged. 'Can't say,' he said. 'Er. There's nothing. Yes, that's it. There's nothing in there, just the old cages. Oh, and plague. Don't go in there 'cos there's plague. That's why you shouldn't go in there, see? 'Cos of the plague.' 'He's lying,' said Malicia. 'No antidote for him.' 'I had to do it!' Rat-catcher 2 moaned. 'You've gotta do one to join the Guild!' 'That's a Guild secret!' Rat-catcher 1 snapped at him. 'We don't give away Guild secrets' He stopped, and clutched at his rumbling stomach. 'What was it you had to do?' said Keith. 'Make a rat king!' Rat-catcher 2 burst out. 'A rat king?' said Keith sharply. 'What's a rat king?' 'I - I - I' the man stuttered. 'Stop it, I - I - I don't want to-' Tears ran down his face. 'We-I made a rat king Stop it, stop it… stop it…' 'And it's still alive?' said Malicia. Keith turned to her in amazement. 'You know about these things?' he said. 'Of course. There's a lot of stories about them. Rat kings are deadly evil. They-' 'Antidote, antidote, please,' moaned Rat-catcher 2. 'My stomach feels like there's rats running round in it!' 'You made a rat king,' said Malicia. 'Oh, dear. Well, we left the antidote in that little cellar you locked us up in. I should hurry if I was you.' Both of the men staggered to their feet. Rat-catcher 1 fell through the trapdoor. The other man landed on him. Swearing, moaning and, it had to be said, farting enormously, they made their way to the cellar. Dangerous Beans' candle was still alight. Beside it was a fat twist of paper. The door was slammed behind the men. There was the sound of a piece of wood being wedged under it. 'There's enough antidote for one person,' said Keith's voice, muffled through the wood. 'But I'm sure you can sort it out-in a humane sort of way.' Darktan tried to get his breath back, but he thought he'd never get it all, even if he breathed in for a year. There was a ring of pain all around his back and chest. 'It's amazing!' said Nourishing. 'You were dead in the trap and now you're alive!' 'Nourishing?' said Darktan, carefully. 'Yes, sir?' 'I'm very… grateful,' said Darktan, still wheezing, 'but don't get silly. The spring was stretched and weak and… the teeth were rusted and blunt. That's all.' 'But there's teeth marks all round you! No-one's ever come out of a trap before, except the Mr Squeakies, and they were made of rubber!' Darktan licked his stomach. Nourishing had been right. He looked perforated. 'I was just lucky,' he said. 'No rat has ever come alive out of a trap,' Nourishing repeated. 'Did you see the Big Rat?' 'The what?' 'The Big Rat!' 'Oh, that,' said Darktan. He was going to add 'no, I don't go in for that nonsense', but stopped. He could remember the light, and then the darkness ahead of him. It hadn't seemed bad. He'd almost felt sorry that Nourishing had got him out. In the trap, all the pain had been a long way off. And there had been no more hard decisions. He settled for saying, 'Is Hamnpork all right?' 'Sort of. I mean, we can't see any wounds that won't heal. He's had worse. But, well, he was pretty old. Nearly three years.' 'Was?' said Darktan. 'Is pretty old, I mean, sir. Sardines sent me to find you because we'll need you to help us get him back, but-' Nourishing gave Darktan a doubtful look. 'It's all right, I'm sure it looks worse than it is,' said Darktan, wincing. 'Let's get up there, shall we?' An old building is full of pawholds for a rat. No-one noticed them as they climbed up from manger to saddle, harness to hayrack. Besides, no-one was looking for them. Some of the other rats had taken the Jacko route to freedom, and the dogs were going mad searching for them and fighting with one another. So were the men. Darktan knew a little bit about beer, since he had gone about his business under pubs and breweries, and the rats had often wondered why humans sometimes liked to switch their brains off. To the rats, living in the centre of a web of sound and light and smells, it made no sense at all. To Darktan, now, it didn't sound quite so bad. The idea that, for a while, you could forget things and not have a head buzzing with troublesome thoughts… well, that seemed quite attractive. He couldn't remember a lot about life before he'd been Changed, but he was certain that it hadn't been so complicated. Oh, bad things had happened, because life on the tip had been pretty hard. But when they were over, they were over, and tomorrow was a new day. Rats didn't think about tomorrow. There was just a faint sensation that more things would happen. It wasn't thinking. And there was no 'good' and 'bad' and 'right' and 'wrong'. They were new ideas. Ideas! That was their world now! Big questions and big answers, about life, and how you had to live it, and what you were for. New ideas spilled into Darktan's weary head. And among the ideas, in the middle of his head, he saw the little figure of Dangerous Beans. Darktan had never talked much to the little white rat or the little female who scurried around after him and drew pictures of the things he'd been thinking about. Darktan liked people who were practical. But now he thought: he's a trap-hunter! Just like me! He goes ahead of us and finds the dangerous ideas and thinks about them and traps them in words and makes them safe and shows us the way through. We need him… we need him now. Otherwise, we're all running around like rats in a barrel… Much later on, when Nourishing was old and grey around the muzzle, and smelled a bit strange, she dictated the story of the climb and how she'd heard Darktan muttering to himself. The Darktan that she'd pulled out of the trap, she said, was a different rat. It was as though his thoughts had slowed down but got bigger. The strangest bit, she said, was when they reached the beam. Darktan made sure that Hamnpork was all right, and then picked up the match he'd shown to Nourishing. 'He struck it on an old bit of iron,' said Nourishing, 'and then he walked out along the beam with it flaring, and down below I could see all the crowd, the hay racks and the straw all over the place, and the people milling around, just like, hah, just like rats… and I thought, if you drop that, mister, the place will fill with smoke in a few seconds and they've locked the doors and by the time they realize it they'll be caught like, hah, yeah, like rats in a barrel and we'll be away along the gutters. 'But he just stood there, looking down, until the match went out. Then he put it down and helped us with Hamnpork and never said a word about it. I asked him about it later on, after all the stuff with the piper and everything, and he said, "Yes. Rats in a barrel." And that's all he said about it.' 'What was it you really put in the sugar?' said Keith, as he led the way back to the secret trapdoor. 'Cascara,' said Malicia. 'That's not a poison, is it?' 'No, it's a laxative.' 'What's that?' 'It makes you… go.' 'Go where?' 'Not where, stupid. You just… go. I don't particularly want to draw you a picture.' 'Oh. You mean… go.' 'That's right.' 'And you just happened to have it on you?' 'Yes. Of course. It was in the big medicine bag.' 'You mean you take something like that out just for something like this?' 'Of course. It could easily be necessary.' 'How?' said Keith, climbing the ladder. 'Well, supposing we were kidnapped? Suppose we ended up at sea? Supposing we were captured by pirates? Pirates have a very monotonous diet, which might be why they're angry all the time. Or supposing we escaped and swam ashore and ended up on an island where there's nothing but coconuts? They have a very binding effect.' 'Yes, but… but… anything can happen! If you think like that, you'd end up taking just about everything in case of anything!' 'That's why it's such a big bag,' said Malicia calmly, pulling herself through the trapdoor and dusting herself off. Keith sighed. 'How much did you give them?' 'Lots. But they should be all right if they don't take too much of the antidote.' 'What did you give them for the antidote?' 'Cascara.' 'Malicia, you are not a nice person.' 'Really? You wanted to poison them with the real poison, and you were getting very imaginative with all that stuff about their stomachs melting.' 'Yes, but rats are my friends. Some of the poisons really do that. And… sort of… making the antidote more of the poison-' 'It's not a poison. It's a medicine. They'll feel lovely and clean afterwards.' 'All right, all right. But… giving it to them as the antidote as well, that's a bit… a bit…' 'Clever? Narratively satisfying?' said Malicia. 'I suppose so,' Keith admitted reluctantly. Malicia looked around. 'Where's your cat? I thought he was following us.' 'Sometimes he just wanders off. And he's not my cat.' 'Yes, you're his boy. But a young man with a smart cat can go a long way, you know.' 'How?' 'There was Puss in Boots, obviously,' said Malicia, 'and of course everyone knows about Dick Livingstone and his wonderful cat, don't they?' 'I don't,' said Keith. 'It's a very famous story!' 'Sorry. I haven't been able to read for very long.' 'Really? Well, Dick Livingstone was a penniless boy who became Lord Mayor of Ubergurgl because his cat was so good at catching… er… pigeons. The town was overrun with… pigeons, yes, and in fact later on he even married a sultan's daughter because his cat cleared all the… pigeons out of her father's royal palace-' 'It was rats really, wasn't it?' said Keith, glumly. 'I'm sorry, yes.' 'And it was just a story,' said Keith. 'Look, are there really stories about rat kings? Rats have kings? I've never heard of it. How does it work?' 'Not the way you think. They've been known about for years. They really do exist, you know. Just like on the sign outside.' 'What, the rats with their tails all knotted together? How do-?' There was a loud and persistent knocking on the door. Some of it sounded as though it was being done with someone's boot. Malicia went over to it and pulled back the bolts. 'Yes?' she said, coldly, as the night air poured in. There was a group of angry men outside. The leader, who looked as though he was only the leader because he happened to be the one in front, took a step back when he saw Malicia. 'Oh… it's you, miss…' 'Yes. My father's the mayor, you know,' said Malicia. 'Er… yes. We all know.' 'Why're you all holding sticks?' said Malicia. 'Er… we want to talk to the rat-catchers,' said the spokesman. He tried to look past her, and she stood aside. 'There's no-one in here but us,' she said. 'Unless you think there's a trapdoor to a maze of underground cellars where desperate animals are caged up and vast supplies of stolen food are hoarded?' The man gave her another nervous look. 'You and your stories, miss,' he said. 'Has there been some trouble?' said Malicia. 'We think they were a… a bit naughty…' said the man. He blanched under the look she gave him. 'Yes?' she said. 'They cheated us in the rat pit!' said a man behind him, made bold because there was someone else between him and Malicia. 'They must've trained those rats! One of them flew around on a string!' 'And one of them bit my Jacko on the… on the… on the unmentionables!' said someone further back. 'You can't tell me it wasn't trained to do that!' 'I saw one with a hat on this morning,' said Malicia. 'There's been a good deal too many strange rats today,' said another man. 'My mum said she saw one dancing on the kitchen shelves! And when my granddad got up and reached for his false teeth he said a rat bit him with them. Bit him with his own teeth!' 'What, wearing them?' said Malicia. 'No, it just snapped them around in the air! And a lady down our street opened her pantry door and there were rats swimming in the cream bowl. Not just swimming, either! They'd been trained. They were making kind of patterns, and diving and waving their legs in the air and stuff!' 'You mean synchronized swimming?' said Malicia. 'Who's telling stories now, eh?' 'Are you sure you don't know where those men are?' said the leader suspiciously. 'People said they headed this way.' Malicia rolled her eyes. 'All right, yes,' she said. 'They got here and a talking cat helped us to feed them poison and now they're locked in a cellar.' The men looked at her. 'Yeah, right,' said the leader, turning away. 'Well, if you do see them, tell them we're looking for them, OK?' Malicia shut the door. 'It's terrible, not being believed,' she said. 'Now tell me about rat kings,' said Keith.   CHAPTER 10 And as night fell, Mr Bunnsy remembered: there's something terrible in the Dark Wood. - From Mr Bunnsy Has An Adventure   Why am I doing this? Maurice asked himself, as he squirmed along a pipe. Cats are not built for this stuff! Because we are a kind person at heart, said his conscience. No, I'm not, thought Maurice. Actually, that's true, said his conscience. But we don't want to tell that to Dangerous Beans, do we? The little wobbly nose? He thinks we're a hero! Well, I'm not, thought Maurice. Then why are we scrabbling around underground trying to find him? Well, obviously it's because he's the one with the big dream about finding the rat island and without him the rats won't co-operate and I won't get paid, said Maurice. We're a cat! What does a cat need money for? Because I have a Retirement Plan, thought Maurice. I'm four years old already! Once I've made a pile, it's me for a nice home with a big fire and a nice old lady giving me cream every day. I've got it all worked out, every detail. Why should she give us a home? We're smelly, we've got ragged ears, we've got something nasty and itchy on our leg, we look like someone kicked us in the face… why should an old lady take us in instead of a fluffy little kitten? Aha! But black cats are lucky, thought Maurice. Really? Well, we don't want to be first with the bad news, but we're not black! We're a sort of mucky tabby! There's such a thing as dyes, thought Maurice. A couple of packets of black dye, hold my breath for a minute, and it's 'hello, cream and fish' for the rest of my life. Good plan, eh? And what about the luck? said the conscience. Ah! That's the clever bit. A black cat that brings in a gold coin every month or so, wouldn't you say that's a lucky cat to have? His conscience fell silent. Probably amazed at the cleverness of the plan, Maurice told himself. He had to admit that he was cleverer at plans than at underground navigation. He wasn't exactly lost, because cats never got lost. He merely didn't know where everything else was. There wasn't a lot of earth under the town, that was certain. Cellars and grating and pipeways and ancient sewers and crypts and bits of forgotten buildings formed a sort of honeycomb. Even humans could get around, Maurice thought. The rat-catchers certainly had. He could smell rats everywhere. He'd wondered about calling out to Dangerous Beans, but decided against it. Calling out might help him find out where the little rat was, but it'd also alert… anyone else to where Maurice was. Those big rats had been, well, big, and nasty-looking. Even an idiot dog would have trouble with them. Now he was in a small square tunnel with lead pipes in it. There was even a hiss of escaping steam, and here and there warm water dipped into a gutter that ran along the bottom of the tunnel. Up ahead was a grating leading up to the street. Faint light came through it. The water in the gutter looked clean. At least, you could see through it. Maurice was thirsty. He leaned down, tongue out- There was a thin, bright red streak curling gently in the water… Hamnpork seemed confused and half asleep but he knew enough to hold on to Sardines' tail as the rats made their way back from the stables. It was a slow journey. Sardines didn't think the old rat would manage the washing lines. They skulked along gutters, and along drains, hiding in nothing more than the cloak of night. A few rats were milling around in the cellar when they finally arrived. By then Darktan and Sardines were walking on either side of Hamnpork, who was barely moving his legs. There was still a candle burning in the cellar. Darktan was surprised. But a lot of things had happened in the last hour. They let Hamnpork sink to the floor, where he lay, breathing heavily. His body shook with each breath. 'Poison, guv?' whispered Sardines. 'I think it was just too much for him,' said Darktan. 'Just too much.' Hamnpork opened one eye. 'Am… I… still… the… leader?' he said. 'Yes, sir,' said Darktan. 'Need… to… sleep…' Darktan looked around the circle. Rats were creeping towards the group. He could see them whispering to one another. They kept looking at him. He stared around, trying to spot the pale figure of Dangerous Beans. 'Nourishing… tells me… you saw the… tunnel… of the… Big Rat…' said Hamnpork. Darktan glared at Nourishing, who looked embarrassed. 'I saw… something,' he said. 'Then I shall dream there and… never wake up,' said Hamnpork. His head sagged again. This isn't… the way a… an old rat should die,' he mumbled. 'Not… like this. Not… in the light.' Darktan nodded urgently at Sardines, who snuffed out the candle with his hat. The damp, thick underground darkness closed in. 'Darktan,' Hamnpork whispered. 'You need to know this…' Sardines strained his ears to hear the old leader's last words to Darktan. Then, a few seconds later, he shivered. He could smell the change in the world. There was movement in the darkness. A match burst into life and the candle flame grew again, bringing shadows back into the world. Hamnpork was lying very still. 'Do we have to eat him now?' said someone. 'He's… gone,' said Darktan. Somehow, the idea of eating Hamnpork didn't feel right. 'Bury him,' he said. 'And mark the place so we know he's there.' There was a sense of relief in the group. However much anyone might have respected Hamnpork, he was still a bit on the whiffy side, even for a rat. A rat at the front of the crowd looked uncertain. 'Er… when you say "mark the place",' it said, 'do you mean like we mark other places where we bury things?' 'He means by widdling on it,' said the rat beside him. Darktan looked at Sardines, who shrugged. Darktan had a sinking feeling inside. When you were the leader, everyone waited to see what you said. And there was still no sign of the white rat. He was on his own. He thought hard for a moment, and then nodded. 'Yes,' he said at last. 'He'd like that. It's very… ratty. But do this, too. Draw it on the ground above him.' He scraped a sign on the ground:   ' "He was a rat from a long line of rats and he thought about rats",' said Sardines. 'Good one, boss.' 'And will he come back like Darktan did?' said someone else. 'If he does, he'll get really mad if we've eaten him,' said a voice. There was some nervous laughter. 'Listen, I didn't-' Darktan began, but Sardines nudged him. 'Word in your ear, guv?' he said, raising his charred hat politely. 'Yes, yes…' Darktan was getting worried. He'd never had so many rats watching him so closely. He followed Sardines away from the group. 'You know I used to hang around in the theatre an' that,' said Sardines. 'And you pick up stuff in the theatre. And the thing is… look, what I'm saying is, you're the leader, right? So you got to act like you know what you're doing, OK? If the leader doesn't know what he's doing, no-one else does, either.' 'I only know what I'm doing when I'm dismantling traps,' said Darktan. 'All right, think of the future as a great big trap,' said Sardines. 'With no cheese.' 'That is not a lot of help!' 'And you should let them think what they like about you and… that scar you've got,' said Sardines. 'That's my advice, guv.' 'But I didn't die, Sardines!' 'Something happened, didn't it? You were going to set fire to the place. I watched you. Something happened to you in the trap. Don't ask me what it was, I just do tap-dancing. I'm just a little rat. Always will be, boss. But there's big rats like Inbrine and Sellby and a bunch of others, boss, and now Hamnpork's dead they might think they should be the leader. Get my drift?' 'No.' Sardines sighed. 'I reckon you do, boss. Do we want a lot of scrapping amongst ourselves at a time like this?' 'No!' 'Right! Well, thanks to chattery little Nourishing, you're the rat that looked the Bone Rat right in the face and came back, aren't you…?' 'Yes, but she…' 'Seems to me, boss, that anyone who could stare down the Bone Rat… well, no-one is going to want to mess with him, am I right? A rat who wears the teeth-marks of the Bone Rat like a belt? Uh-uh, no. Rats'll follow a rat like that. Time like this, rats need someone to follow. That was a good thing you did back there, with ol' Hamnpork. Burying him and widdling on top and putting a sign on him… well, the old rats like that, and so do the young ones. Shows 'em you're thinking for everyone.' Sardines put his head on one side, and grinned a worried grin. 'I can see I'm going to have to watch you, Sardines,' said Darktan. 'You think like Maurice.' 'Don't worry about me, boss. I'm small. I gotta dance. I wouldn't be any good at leadering.' Thinking for everyone, Darktan thought. The white rat… 'Where is Dangerous Beans?' he said, looking around. 'Isn't he here?' 'Haven't seen him, boss.' 'What? We need him! He's got the map in his head.' 'Map, boss?' Sardines looked concerned. 'I thought you drew maps in the mud ' 'Not a map like a picture of tunnels and traps! A map of… of what we are and where we're going…' 'Oh, you mean like that lovely island? Never really believed in it, boss,' 'I don't know about any islands, I really don't,' said Darktan. 'But when I was in that… place, I… saw the shape of an idea. There's been a war between humans and rats for ever! It's got to end. And here, now, in this place, with these rats… I can see that it can. This might be the only time and the only place where it can. I can see the shape of an idea in my head but I can't think of the words for it, do you understand? So we need the white rat, because he knows the map for thinking. We've got to think our way out of this. Running around and squeaking won't work any more!' 'You're doing fine so far, boss,' said the dancer, patting him on the shoulder. 'It's all going wrong,' said Darktan, trying to keep his voice down. 'We need him! I need him!' 'I'll get some squads together, boss, if you show me where to start looking,' said Sardines meekly. 'In the drains, not far from the cages,' said Darktan. 'Maurice was with him,' he added. 'Is that a good thing or a bad thing, guv?' said Sardines. 'You know what Hamnpork always said: "You can always trust a cat-" ' '"-to be a cat". Yes. I know. I wish I knew the answer to that, Sardines.' Sardines stepped closer. 'Can I ask a question, guv?' 'Of course.' 'What was it Hamnpork whispered to you just before he died? Special leader wisdom, was it?' 'Good advice,' said Darktan. 'Good advice.' Maurice blinked. Very slowly, his tongue wound itself back in. He flattened his ears and, legs moving in silent slow motion, crept along beside the gutter. Right under the grating there was something pale. The red streak was coming from further upstream, and divided in two as it flowed around the thing, before becoming one swirling thread again. Maurice reached it. It was a rolled-up scrap of paper, sodden with water and stained with red. He extended a claw and fished it out. It flopped on the side of the gutter and, as Maurice gently peeled the paper apart, he saw the smudged pictures drawn in thick pencil. He knew what they were. He'd learned them, one day when he had nothing better to do. They were stupidly simple. 'No Rat Shall…' he began. Then there was a damp mess, down to the bit that read: 'We are not like other Rats'. 'Oh, no,' he said. They wouldn't drop this, would they? Peaches carried it around as though it was a hugely precious thing- Will I find them first? said an alien voice in Maurice's head. Or perhaps I have… Maurice ran, skidding on the slimy stone as the tunnel turned a corner. What strange things they are, CAT. Rats that think they are not rats. Shall I be like you? Shall I act like a CAT? Shall I keep one of them alive? FOR A WHILE? Maurice yowled under his breath. Other, smaller tunnels branched off on either side but the thin red streak led straight on and there, under another grating, the thing lay in the water, the red leaking gently from it. Maurice sagged. He'd been expecting-what? But this… this was… this was worse, in a way. Worse than anything. Soaked in water, leaking the red ink from Ratty Rupert the Rat's red waistcoat, was Mr Bunnsy Has An Adventure. Maurice hooked it out on claw-tip, and the cheap paper pages fell out, one by one, and drifted away in the water. They'd dropped it. Had they been running? Or… had they thrown it away? What was it Dangerous Beans had said? 'We're nothing but rats'? And he'd said it in such a sad, hollow voice… Where are they now, CAT? Can you find them? Which way now? It can see what I see, he thought. It can't read my mind, but it can see what I see and hear what I hear and it's good at working out what I must be thinking… Once again, he shut his eyes. In the dark, CAT? How will you fight my rats? The ones BEHIND YOU? Maurice spun around, eyes wide. There were rats there, dozens of them, some of them nearly half the size of Maurice. They watched him, all with the same blank expression. Well done, well done, CAT! You see the squeaky creatures and yet you don't leap! How did a cat learn not to be a cat? The rats, as one rat, moved forward. They rustled as they moved. Maurice took a step backwards. Imagine it, CAT, said the voice of Spider. Imagine a million clever rats. Rats that don't run. Rats that fight. Rats that share one mind, one vision. MINE. 'Where are you?' said Maurice, aloud. You will see me soon. Keep going, pussy-cat. You have to keep going. One word from me, one mere flicker of a thought, and the rats you see will take you down. Oh, you might kill one or two, but there are always more rats. Always more rats. Maurice turned, and edged forward. The rats followed. He spun around. They stopped. He turned again, took a couple of steps, looked behind him. The rats followed as if they were on string. There was a familiar smell in the air here, of old, stale water. He was somewhere near the flooded cellar. But how close? The stuff stank worse than tinned cat food. It could be in any direction. He could probably outrun the rats over a short distance. Bloodthirsty rats right behind you can give you wings. Are you planning to run to help the white rat? said his conscience. Or are you thinking of making a dash for the daylight? Maurice had to admit that the daylight had never seemed a better idea. There was no point in lying to himself. After all, rats didn't live very long in any case, even if they had wobbly noses- They are close, CAT. Shall we play a game? Cats like PLAYING. Did you play with Additives? BEFORE YOU BIT HIS HEAD OFF? Maurice stopped dead. 'You are going to die,' he said softly. They are getting closer to me, Maurice. So close now. Shall I tell you that the stupid-looking kid and the silly-sounding girl are going to die? Do you know that rats can eat a human alive? Malicia bolted the shed door. 'Rat kings are deeply mysterious,' she said. 'A rat king is a group of rats with their tails tied together' 'How?' 'Well, the stories say it just… happens.' 'How does it happen?' 'I read somewhere that their tails become stuck together when they're in the nest, because of all the muck, and they get twisted up as-' 'Rats generally have six or seven babies, and they have quite short tails, and the parents keep the nests quite clean,' said Keith. 'Have the people who tell these stories ever seen rats?' 'I don't know. Maybe the rats just get crowded together and their tails get twisted up? There's a preserved rat king in a big jar of alcohol in the town museum.' 'A dead one?' 'Or very, very drunk. What do you think?' said Malicia. 'It's ten rats, like a sort of star, with a big knot of tail in the middle. Lots of others have been found, too. One had thirty-two rats! There's folklore about them.' 'But that rat-catcher said he made one,' said Keith firmly. 'He said he did it to get into the Guild. Do you know what a masterpiece is?' 'Oh course. It's anything really good' 'I mean a real masterpiece,' said Keith. 'I grew up in a big city, with guilds everywhere. That's how I know. A masterpiece is something that an apprentice makes at the end of his training to show the senior members of the Guild that he deserves to be a "master". A full member. You understand? It might be a great symphony, or a beautiful piece of carving, or a batch of magnificent loaves - his "master piece".' 'Very interesting. So?' 'So what sort of master piece would you have to make to become a master rat-catcher? To show that you could really control rats? Remember the sign over the door?' Malicia frowned the frown of someone faced with an inconvenient fact. 'Anyone could tie a bunch of rat tails together if they wanted to,' she said. 'I'm sure I could.' 'While they're alive? You'd have to trap them first, and then you've got slippery bits of string that are moving all the time and the other end keeps on biting you? Eight of them? Twenty of them? Thirty-two? Thirty-two angry rats?' Malicia looked around at the untidy shed. 'It works,' she said. 'Yes. It makes almost as good a story. Probably there were one or two real rat kings… all right, all right, maybe just one - and people heard about this and decided that since there was all this interest they'd try to make one. Yes. It's just like crop circles. No matter how many aliens own up to making them, there are always a few diehards who believe that humans go out with garden rollers in the middle of the night-' 'I just think that some people like to be cruel,' said Keith. 'How would a rat king hunt? They'd all pull in different directions.' 'Ah, well, some of the stories about rat kings say that they can control other rats,' said Malicia. 'With their minds, sort of. Get them to bring them food and go to different places and so on. You're right, rat kings can't move around easily. So they… learn how to see out of the eyes of other rats, and hear what they hear.' 'Just other rats?' said Keith. 'Well, one or two stories do say that they can do it to people,' said Malicia. 'How?' said Keith. 'Has it ever happened, really?' 'It couldn't, could it?' said Malicia. Yes. 'Yes what?' said Malicia. 'I didn't say anything. You just said "yes",' said Keith. Silly little minds. Sooner or later there is always a way in. The cat is much better at resisting! You will OBEY me. Let the rats GO. 'I think we should let the rats go,' said Malicia. 'It's just too cruel, having them packed into those cages like that.' 'I was just thinking that,' said Keith. And forget about me. I am just a story. 'Personally, I think rat kings really are just a story,' said Malicia, walking over to the trapdoor and raising it. 'That rat-catcher was a stupid little man. He was just babbling.' 'I wonder if we should let the rats out,' Keith mused. 'They looked pretty hungry.' 'They can't be worse than the rat-catchers, can they?' said Malicia. 'Anyway, the piper will be here soon. He'd lead them all into the river, or something-' 'Into the river…' muttered Keith. 'That's what he does, yes. Everyone knows that.' 'But rats can-' Keith began. Obey me! Don't THINK! Follow the story! 'Rats can what?' 'Rats can… rats can…' Keith stammered. 'I can't remember. Something about rats and rivers. Probably not important.' Thick, deep darkness. And, somewhere in it, a little voice. 'I dropped Mr Bunnsy,' said Peaches. 'Good,' said Dangerous Beans. 'It was just a lie. Lies drag us down.' 'You said it was important!' 'It was a lie!' … endless, dripping darkness… 'And… I've lost the Rules, too.' 'So?' Dangerous Beans' voice was bitter. 'No-one bothered with them.' 'That's not true! People tried to. Mostly. And they were sorry when they didn't!' 'They were just another story, too. A silly story about rats who thought they weren't rats,' said Dangerous Beans. 'Why're you talking like this? This isn't like you!' 'You saw them run. They ran and squeaked and forgot how to talk. Underneath, we're just… rats.' … foul, stinking darkness… 'Yes, we are,' said Peaches. 'But what are we on top? That's what you used to say. Come on-please? Let's go back. You're not well.' 'It was all so clear to me…' Dangerous Beans mumbled. 'Lie down. You're tired. I've got a few matches left. You know you always feel better when you see a light…' Worried in her heart, and feeling lost and a long way from home, Peaches found a wall that was rough enough and dragged a match from her crude bag. The red head flared and cracked. She raised the match as high as she could. There were eyes everywhere. What's the worst part? she thought, her body rigid with fear. That I can see the eyes? Or that I'm going to know they're still there when the match goes out? 'And I've only got two more matches…' she mumbled to herself. The eyes withdrew into the shadows, noiselessly. How can rats be so still and so silent? she thought. 'There's something wrong,' said Dangerous Beans. 'Yes.' 'There's something here,' he said. 'I smelled it on that keekee they found in the trap. It's a kind of terror. I can smell it on you.' 'Yes,' said Peaches. 'Can you see what we should do?' said Dangerous Beans. 'Yes.' The eyes in front were gone, but Peaches could still see them on either side. 'What can we do?' said Dangerous Beans. Peaches swallowed. 'We could wish we had more matches,' she said. And, in the darkness behind their eyes, a voice said: And so, in your despair, you come, at last, tome… Light has a smell. In the dank, damp cellars the sharp sulphur stink of the match flew like a yellow bird, rising on drafts, plunging through cracks. It was a clean and bitter smell and it cut through the dull underground reek like a knife. It filled the nostrils of Sardines, who turned his head. 'Matches, boss!' he said. 'Head that way!' Darktan commanded. 'It's through the room of cages, boss,' Sardines warned. 'So?' 'Remember what happened last time, boss?' Darktan looked around at his squad. It wasn't everything he could have wished for. Rats were still trailing back from their hiding-places, and some rats-good, sensible rats-had run into traps and poisons in the panic. But he'd picked the best he could. There were a few of the experienced older ones, like Inbrine and Sardines, but most of them were young. Maybe that wasn't such a bad thing, he thought. It was the older rats who'd panicked most. They hadn't been so used to thinking. 'O-K,' he said. 'Now, we don't know what we're going to-' he began, and caught sight of Sardines. The rat was shaking his head slightly. Oh, yes. Leaders weren't allowed not to know. He stared at the young, worried faces, took a deep breath and started again. 'There's something new down here,' he said, and suddenly he knew what to say. 'Something that no-one's ever seen before. Something tough. Something strong.' The squad was almost cowering, except for Nourishing, who was staring at Darktan with shining eyes. 'Something fearful. Something new. Something sudden,' said Darktan, leaning forward. 'And it's you. All of you. Rats with brains. Rats who can think. Rats who don't turn and run. Rats who aren't afraid of dark or fire or noises or traps or poisons. Nothing can stop rats like you, right?' Now the words bubbled up. 'You heard about the Dark Wood in the Book? Well, we're in the Dark Wood now. There's something else down there. Something terrible. It hides behind your fear. It thinks it can stop you and it's wrong. We're going to find it and drag it out and we're gonna make it wish we'd never been born! And if we die… well,' and he saw them, as one rat, stare at the livid wound across his chest, 'death ain't so bad. Shall I tell you about the Bone Rat? He waits for those who break and run, who hide, who falter. But if you stare into his eyes he'll give you a nod and pass right on.' Now he could smell their excitement. In the world behind their eyes they were the bravest rats that there ever were. Now he had to lock that thought there. Without thinking, he touched the wound. It was healing badly, still leaking blood, and there was going to be a huge scar there for ever. He brought his hand up, with his own blood, and the idea came to him right out of his bones. He walked along the row, touching each rat just above the eyes, leaving a red mark. 'And afterwards,' he said quietly, 'people will say, "They went there, and they did it, and they came back out of the Dark Wood, and this is how they know their own".' He looked across their heads to Sardines, who raised his hat. That broke the spell. The rats started to breathe again. But something of the magic was still there, lodged in the gleam of an eye and the twitch of a tail. 'Ready to die for the Clan, Sardines?' Darktan shouted. 'No, boss! Ready to kill!' 'Good,' said Darktan. 'Let's go. We love the Dark Wood! It belongs to us!' The smell of light drifted along the tunnels and reached the face of Maurice, who sniffed it up. Peaches! She was mad about light. It was more or less all Dangerous Beans could see. She always carried a few matches. Mad! Creatures that lived in darkness, carrying matches! Well, obviously not mad when you thought about it, but even so… The rats behind were pushing him in that direction. I'm being played with, he thought. Batted from paw to paw so Spider can hear me squeak. He heard in his head the voice of Spider: And so, in your despair, you come, at last, to me… And heard with his ears, far off and faint, the voice of Dangerous Beans. 'Who are you?' I am the Big Rat That Lives Underground. 'You are? Really. I have thought… a lot about you.' There was a hole in the wall here and, beyond it, the brilliance of a lighted match. Sensing the press of the rats behind him, Maurice sidled through. There were big rats everywhere, on the floor, on boxes, clinging to the walls. And, in the centre, a circle of light from one half-burned match held aloft by a trembling Peaches. Dangerous Beans was standing a little in front of her, staring up at a stack of boxes and sacks. Peaches spun around. As she did so the flame of the match blew wide and flared. The nearest rats jerked away as it did so, bending like a wave. 'Maurice?' she said. The cat will not move, said the voice of Spider. Maurice tried to, and his paws wouldn't obey him. Be still, CAT. Or I shall command your lungs to stop. See, little rats? Even a cat obeys me! 'Yes. I see you have a power,' said Dangerous Beans, tiny in the circle of light. Clever rat. I have heard you talk to the others. You understand the truth. You know that by facing the dark we become strong. You know about the darkness in front of us and the darkness behind the eyes. You know that we co-operate or die. Will you… CO-OPERATE? 'Co-operate?' said Maurice. His nose wrinkled. 'Like these other rats I smell here? They smell… strong and stupid.' But the strong survive, said the voice of Spider. They dodge the rat-catchers and bite their way out of cages. And, like you, they are called to me. As for their minds… I can think for everyone. 'I, alas, am not strong,' said Dangerous Beans, carefully. You have an interesting mind. You, too, look forward to the domination of rats. 'Domination?' said Dangerous Beans. 'Do I?' You will have worked out that there is a race in this world which steals and kills and spreads disease and despoils what it cannot use, said the voice of Spider. 'Yes,' said Dangerous Beans. 'That's easy. It's called humanity.' Well done. See my fine rats? In a few hours the silly piper will come and play his silly pipe and, yes, my rats will scamper after him out of the town. Do you know how a piper kills rats? 'No.' He leads them into the river where… are you listening?… where they all drown! 'But rats are good swimmers,' said Dangerous Beans. Yes! Never trust a rat-catcher! They will leave themselves work for tomorrow. But humans like to believe stones! They would prefer to believe stories rather than the truth! But we, we are RATS! And my rats will swim, believe me. Big rats, different rats, rats who survive, rats with part of my mind in them. And they will spread from town to town and then there will be destruction such as people cannot imagine! We will pay them back a thousandfold for every trap! Humans have tortured and poisoned and killed and all of that is now given form in me and there will be REVENGE. 'Given form in you. Yes, I think I begin to understand,' said Dangerous Beans. There was a crackle and flare behind him. Peaches had lit the second match from the dying, flickering flame of the first one. The ring of rats, which had been creeping closer, swayed back again. Two more matches, said Spider. And then, one way or another, little rat, you belong to me. 'I want to see who I am talking to,' said Dangerous Beans, firmly. You are blind, little white rat. Through your pink eyes I see only mist. 'They see more than you think,' said Dangerous Beans. 'And if you are, as you say, the Big Rat… then show yourself to me. Smelling is believing.' There was a scrabbling, and Spider came out of the shadows. It looked to Maurice like a bundle of rats, rats scampering across the boxes but flowing, as if all the legs were being operated by one creature. As it crawled into the light, over the top of a sack, he saw that the tails were twisted together into one huge, ugly knot. And each rat was blind. As the voice of Spider thundered in his head, the eight rats reared and tugged at the knot. Then tell me the truth, white rat. Do you see me? Come closer! Yes, you see me, in your mist. You see me. Men made me for sport! Tie the rats' tails together and watch them struggle! But I did not struggle. Together we are strong! One mind is as strong as one mind and two minds are as strong as two minds, but three minds are four minds, and four minds are eight minds and eight minds… are one-one mind stronger than eight. My time is near. The stupid men let rats fight and the strong survive, and then they fight, and the strongest of the strong survive… and soon the cages will open, and men shall know the meaning of the word 'plague'! See the stupid cat? It wants to leap, but I hold it so easily. No mind can withstand me. Yet you… you are interesting. You have a mind like mine, that thinks for many rats, not just one rat. We want the same things. We have plans. We want the triumph of rats. Join us. Together we will be… STRONG. There was a long pause. It was, Maurice thought, too long. And then: 'Yes, your offer is… interesting,' said Dangerous Beans. There was a gasp from Peaches, but Dangerous Beans went on, in a small voice: 'The world is big and dangerous, indeed. And we are weak, and I am tired. Together we can be strong.' Indeed! 'But what of those who aren't strong, please?' The weak are food. That is how it has always been! 'Ah,' said Dangerous Beans. 'How it has always been. Things are becoming clearer.' 'Don't listen to it!' Peaches hissed. 'It's affecting your mind!' 'No, my mind is working perfectly, thank you,' said Dangerous Beans, still in the same calm voice. 'Yes, the proposition is beguiling. And we would rule the rat world together, would we?' We would… co-operate. And Maurice, on the sidelines, thought: yeah, right. You co-operate, they rule. Surely you can't fall for this! But Dangerous Beans said: 'Co-operate. Yes. And together we could give the humans a war they won't believe. Tempting. Very tempting. Of course, millions of rats would die…' They die anyway. 'Mmm, yes. Yes. Yes, that is true. And this rat here,' said Dangerous Beans, suddenly waving a paw towards one of the big rats that was hypnotized by the flame, 'can you tell me what she thinks about this?' Spider sounded taken aback. Thinks? Why should it think anything? It is a rat! 'Ah,' said Dangerous Beans. 'How clear it is now. But it would not work.' Would not work? Dangerous Beans raised his head. 'Because, you see, you just think for many rats,' he said. 'But you don't think of them. Nor are you, for all that you say, the Big Rat. Every word you utter is a lie. If there is a Big Rat, and I hope there is, it would not talk of war and death. It would be made of the best we could be, not the worst that we are. No, I will not join you, liar in the dark. I prefer our way. We are silly and weak, sometimes. But together we are strong. You have plans for rats? Well, I have dreams for them.' Spider reared up, quivering. The voice raged in Maurice's mind. Oh, so you think you are a good rat? But a good rat is one that steals most! You think a good rat is a rat in a waistcoat, a little human with fur! Oh yes, I know about the stupid, stupid book! Traitor! Traitor to rats! Will you feel my… PAIN? Maurice did. It was like a blast of red-hot air, leaving his head full of steam. He recognized the sensation. It was how he used to feel before he was changed. It was how he used to feel before he was Maurice. He'd just been a cat. A bright cat, but nothing more than a cat. You defy me? Spider screamed at the bowed form of Dangerous Beans. When I am everything that truly is RAT? I am filth and darkness! I am the noise under the floor, the rustling in the walls! I am the thing that undermines and despoils! I am the sum of all that you deny! I am your true self! Will you OBEY ME? 'Never,' said Dangerous Beans. 'You are nothing but shadows.' Feel my PAIN! Maurice was more than a cat, he knew. He knew the world was big and complex and involved a lot more than wondering if the next meal was going to be beetles or chicken legs. The world was huge and difficult and full of amazing things and… … the red-hot flame of that horrible voice was boiling his mind away. The memories were unwinding and whirling into the darkness. All the other little voices, not the horrible voice but the Maurice voices, the ones that nagged at him and argued amongst themselves and told him he was doing wrong or could be better, were getting fainter- And still Dangerous Beans stood there, small and wobbly, staring up into the dark. 'Yes,' said Dangerous Beans. 'I feel the pain.' You are nothing but a rat. A little rat. And I am the very SOUL of ratdom. Admit it, little blind rat, little blind pet rat. Dangerous Beans swayed, and Maurice heard him say, 'I will not. And I am not so blind that I can't see darkness.' Maurice sniffed, and realized that Dangerous Beans was widdling himself in terror. But the little rat didn't move, even so. Oh, yes, whispered the voice of Spider. And you can control the dark, yes? You told a little rat that. You can learn to control the dark. 'I am a rat,' whispered Dangerous Beans. 'But I am not vermin.' VERMIN? 'Once we were just another squeaking thing in the forest,' said Dangerous Beans. 'And then men built barns and pantries full of food. Of course we took what we could. And so they called us vermin, and they have trapped us and covered us in poison and, somehow, out of that wretchedness, you have come. But you are no answer. You are just another bad thing humans made. You offer rats nothing except more pain. You have a power that lets you enter people's minds when they are tired or stupid or upset. And you are in mine now.' Yes. Oh, yes! 'And still I stand here,' said Dangerous Beans. 'Now that I have smelled you, I can face you down. Even though my body is shaking, I can keep a place free from you. I can feel you running round in my head, you see, but all the doors are closed to you now. I can control the dark inside, which is where all darkness is. You have shown me that I am more than just a rat. If I am not more than a rat, I am nothing at all.' The many heads of Spider turned this way and that. There wasn't much left of Maurice's mind to do any thinking now, but it looked as though the rat king was trying to reach a conclusion. Its reply came in a roar. THEN BE NOTHING! Keith blinked. He had his hand on the latch of one of the rat cages. The rats were watching him. All standing the same way, all watching his fingers. Hundreds of rats. They looked… hungry. 'Did you hear something?' said Malicia. Keith lowered his hand very carefully, and took a couple of steps back. 'Why are we letting these out?' he said. 'It was like I'd been… dreaming…' 'I don't know. You're the rat boy.' 'But we agreed to let them out.' 'I… it was… I had a feeling that-' 'Rat kings can talk to people, can't they?' said Keith. 'Has it been talking to us?' 'But this is real life,' said Malicia. 'I thought it was an adventure,' said Keith. 'Damn! I forgot,' said Malicia. 'What're they doing?' It was almost as if the rats were melting. They were no longer upright, attentive statues. Something like panic was spreading through them again. Then other rats poured out of the walls, running madly across the floor. They were much bigger than the caged ones. One of them bit Keith on the ankle, and he kicked it away. 'Try to stamp on them but don't lose your balance, whatever you do!' he said. 'These are not friendly!' 'Tread on them?' said Malicia. 'Yuk!' 'You mean you haven't got anything in your bag to fight rats? This is a rat-catchers' lair! You've got plenty of stuff for pirates and bandits and robbers!' 'Yes, but there's never been a book about having an adventure in a rat-catcher's cellar!' Malicia shouted. 'Ow! One's on my neck! One's on my neck! And there's another one!' She bent down frantically to shake the rats loose and reared up as one leapt at her face. Keith grabbed her hand. 'Don't fall over! They'll go mad if you do! Try to get to the door!' 'They're so fast!' Malicia panted. 'Now there's another one on my hair' 'Hold still, stupid female!' said a voice in her ear. 'Hold quite still or I'll gnaw you!' There was a scrabble of claws, a swish and a rat dropped past her eyes. Then another rat thumped onto her shoulder and slid away. 'Right!' said the voice at the back of her neck. 'Now don't move, don't tread on anyone and keep out of the way!' 'What was that?' she hissed, as she felt something slide down her skirt. 'I think it was the one they call Big Savings,' said Keith. 'Here comes the Clan!' More rats were scrambling into the room, but these moved differently. They stayed together and spread out into a line that moved forward slowly. When an enemy rat attacked it, the line would close up over it quickly, like a fist, and when it opened again that rat was dead. Only when the surviving rats smelled the terror of their fellows and tried to escape from the room did the attacking line break, become pairs of rats that, with terrible purpose, hunted down one scurrying enemy after another and brought them down with a bite. And then, seconds after it started, the war was over. The squeaking of a few lucky refugees faded in the walls. There was a ragged cheer from the Clan rats, the cheer which says 'I'm still alive! After all that!' 'Darktan?' said Keith. 'What happened to you?' Darktan reared up and pointed a paw to the door at the other end of the cellar. 'If you want to help, open that door!' he shouted. 'Move it!' Then he darted into a drain with the rest of the squad pouring in after him. One of them tap-danced as he went.   CHAPTER 11 And there he found Mr Bunnsy, tangled in the brambles and his blue coat all torn. - From Mr Bunnsy Has An Adventure   The rat king raged. The watching rats clutched at their heads, Peaches shrieked and stumbled back, the last flaring match flying out of her hand. But something of Maurice survived that roar, that storm of thought. Some tiny part hid behind some brain cell and cowered as the rest of Maurice was blown away. Thoughts peeled back and vanished in the gale. No more talking, no more wondering, no more seeing the world as something out there… layers of his mind streamed past as the blast stripped away everything that he'd thought of as me, leaving only the brain of a cat. A clever cat, but still… just a cat. Nothing but a cat. All the way back to the forest and the cave, the fang and the claw… Just a cat. And you can always trust a cat to be a cat. The cat blinked. It was bewildered and angry. Its ears went flat. Its eyes flashed green. It couldn't think. It didn't think. It was instinct that moved it now, something that operated right down at the level of its roaring blood. It was a cat and there was a twitching squeaky thing and what cats do to twitching squeaking things is this: they leap… The rat king fought back. Teeth snapped at the cat; it was tangled in fighting rats, and it yowled as it rolled across the floor. More rats poured in, rats that could kill a dog… but now, just for a few seconds, this cat could have brought down a wolf. It didn't notice the crackling flame as the dropped match set fire to some straw. It ignored the other rats breaking ranks and running. It paid no attention to the thickening smoke. What it wanted to do was kill things. Some dark river deep inside had been dammed up over the months. It had spent too much time helpless and fuming while little squeaky people ran around in front of it. It had longed to leap and bite and kill. It had longed to be a proper cat. And now the cat was out of the bag and so much ancestral fight and spite and viciousness was flowing through Maurice's veins that it sparked off his claws. And as the cat rolled and struggled and bit, a weak little voice right at the back of his tiny brain, cowering out of the way, the last tiny bit of him that was still Maurice and not a blood-crazed maniac said, 'Now! Bite here!' Teeth and claws closed on a lump made up of eight knotted tails, and tore it apart. The tiny part of what had once been the me of Maurice heard a thought shoot past. Noooo… ooo… oo… o… And then it died away, and the room was full of rats, just rats, nothing more than rats, fighting to get out of the way of a furious, spitting, snarling, bloodthirsty cat, catching up on catness. It clawed and bit and ripped and pounced and turned to see a small white rat that had not moved throughout the whole fight. It brought its claws down- Dangerous Beans screamed. 'Maurice!' The door rattled, and rattled again as Keith's boot hit the lock for the second time. On the third blow the wood split and burst apart. There was a wall of fire at the other end of the cellar. The flames were dark and evil, as much thick smoke as fire. The Clan were scrambling in through the grating and spreading out on either side, staring at the flames. 'Oh, no! Come on, there's buckets next door!' said Keith. 'But-' Malicia began. 'We've got to do it! Quickly! This is a big people job!' The flames hissed and popped. Everywhere, on fire or in the floor beyond the flames, were dead rats. Sometimes there were only bits of dead rats. 'What happened here?' said Darktan. 'Looks like a war, guv,' said Sardines, sniffing the bodies. 'Can we get round it?' 'Too hot, boss. Sorry, but we-isn't that Peaches?' She was sprawled close to the flames, mumbling to herself and covered in mud. Darktan crouched down. Peaches opened her eyes, blearily. 'Are you all right, Peaches? What's happened to Dangerous Beans?' Sardines wordlessly tapped Darktan on the shoulder, and pointed. Coming through the fire, a shadow… It padded slowly between walls of flame. For a moment the waving air made it look huge, like some monster emerging from a cave, and then it became… just a cat. Smoke poured off its fur. What wasn't smoking was caked with mud. One eye was shut. The cat was leaving a trail of blood and, every few footsteps, it sagged a little. It had a small bundle of white fur in its mouth. It reached Darktan and continued past, without a glance. It was growling all the time, under its breath. 'Is that Maurice?' said Sardines. 'That's Dangerous Beans he's carrying!' shouted Darktan. 'Stop that cat!' But Maurice had stopped by himself, turned, lay down with his paws in front of him, and looked blearily at the rats. Then he gently dropped the bundle on the floor. He it once or twice, to see if it would move. He blinked slowly when it didn't. He looked puzzled, in a land of slow-motion way. He opened his mouth to yawn, and smoke came out. Then he put his head down, and died. The world seemed to Maurice to be full of the ghost light you got before dawn, when it was just bright enough to see things but not bright enough to see colours. He sat up and washed himself. There were rats and humans running around, very, very slowly. They didn't concern him much. Whatever it was they thought they had to be doing, they were doing it. Other people were rushing about, in a silent, ghostly way, and Maurice was not. This seemed a pretty good arrangement. And his eye didn't hurt and his skin wasn't painful and his paws weren't torn, which was a big improvement on matters as they stood recently. Now he came to think about it, he wasn't quite sure what had happened recently. Something wretchedly bad, obviously. There was something Maurice-shaped lying beside him, like a three-dimensional shadow. He stared at it, and then turned when in this soundless ghost-world he heard a noise. There was movement near the wall. A small figure was striding across the floor towards the tiny lump that was Dangerous Beans. It was rat-sized, but it was much more solid than the rest of the rats, and unlike any rat he'd seen before it wore a black robe. A rat in clothes, he thought. But this one did not belong in a Mr Bunnsy book. Just poking out from the hood of the robe was the bony nose of a rat skull. And it was carrying a tiny scythe over its shoulder. The other rats and the humans, who were drifting back and forth with buckets, paid it no attention. Some of them walked right through it. The rat and Maurice seemed to be in a separate world of their own. It's the Bone Rat, thought Maurice. It's the Grim Squeaker. He's come for Dangerous Beans. After all I've been through? That is not happening! He sprang into the air and landed on the Bone Rat. The little scythe skidded across the floor. 'OK, mister, let's hear you talk-' Maurice began. 'Er…' said Maurice, as the horrible awareness of what he'd done caught up with him. A hand grabbed him by the back of the neck and lifted him up, higher and higher, and then turned him around. Maurice stopped struggling immediately. He was being held by another figure, much taller, human size, but with the same style of black robe, a much bigger scythe, and a definite lack of skin around the face. Strictly speaking, there was a considerable lack of face about the face, too. It was just bone. DESIST FROM ATTACKING MY ASSOCIATE, MAURICE, said Death. 'Yessir, Mr Death, sir! Atoncesir!' said Maurice quickly. 'Noproblemsir!' I HAVEN'T SEEN YOU LATELY, MAURICE. 'No sir,' said Maurice, relaxing slightly. 'Been very careful, sir. Looking both ways when I cross the street and everything, sir.' AND HOW MANY DO YOU HAVE LEFT NOW? 'Six, sir. Six. Very definitely. Very definitely six lives, sir.' Death looked surprised. BUT YOU WERE RUN OVER BY A CART ONLY LAST MONTH, WEREN'T YOU? 'That, sir? Barely grazed me, sir. Got away with hardly a scratch, sir.' EXACTLY! 'Oh.' THAT MAKES FIVE LIVES, MAURICE. UP UNTIL TODAY'S ADVENTURE. YOU STARTED WITH NINE. 'Fair enough, sir. Fair enough.' Maurice swallowed. Oh, well, might as well try. 'So let's say I'm left with three, right?' THREE? I WAS ONLY GOING TO TAKE ONE. YOU CAN'T LOSE MORE THAN ONE LIFE AT A TIME, EVEN IF YOU'RE A CAT. THAT LEAVES YOU FOUR, MAURICE. 'And I say take two, sir,' said Maurice urgently. 'Two of mine, and call it quits?' Death and Maurice looked down at the faint, shadowy outline of Dangerous Beans. Some other rats were standing around him now, picking him up. YOU SURE? said Death. AFTER ALL, HE IS A RAT. 'Yessir. That's where it all gets complicated, sir.' YOU CAN'T EXPLAIN? 'Yessir. Don't know why, sir. Everything's been a bit odd lately, sir.' THAT IS VERY UN-CAT-LIKE OF YOU, MAURICE. I'M AMAZED. 'I'm pretty shocked too, sir. I just hope no-one finds out, sir.' Death lowered Maurice to the floor, next to his body. YOU LEAVE ME LITTLE CHOICE. THE SUM IS CORRECT, EVEN THOUGH IT IS AMAZING. WE CAME FOR TWO, AND TWO WE WILL TAKE… THE BALANCE IS PRESERVED. 'Can I ask a question, sir?' said Maurice, as Death turned to go. YOU MAY NOT GET AN ANSWER. 'I suppose there isn't a Big Cat in the Sky, is there?' I'M SURPRISED AT YOU, MAURICE. OF COURSE THERE ARE NO CAT GODS. THAT WOULD BE TOO MUCH LIKE… WORK. Maurice nodded. One good thing about being a cat, apart from the extra lives, was that the theology was a lot simpler. 'I won't remember all this, will I, sir?' he said. 'It'd be just too embarrassing.' OF COURSE NOT, MAURICE… 'Maurice?' Colours returned to the world, and Keith was stroking him. Every bit of Maurice stung or ached. How could fur ache? And his paws screamed at him, and one eye felt like a lump of ice, and his lungs were full of fire. 'We thought you were dead!' said Keith. 'Malicia was going to bury you at the bottom of her garden! She says she's already got a black veil.' 'What, in her adventuring bag?' 'Certainly,' said Malicia. 'Supposing we'd ended up on a raft in a river full of flesh-eating-' 'Yeah, right, thanks,' growled Maurice. The air stank of burnt wood and dirty steam. 'Are you all right?' said Keith, still looking worried. 'You're a lucky black cat now!' 'Ha ha, yes, ha ha,' said Maurice gloomily. He pushed himself up, painfully. 'The little rat OK?' he said, trying to look around. 'He was out just like you, but when they tried to move him he coughed up a lot of muck. He's not well, but he's getting better.' 'All's well that ends-' Maurice began, and then winced. 'I can't turn my head very well,' he said. 'You're covered in rat bites, that's why.' 'What's my tail like?' 'Oh, fine. It's nearly all there.' 'Oh, well. All's well that ends well, then. Adventure over, time for tea and buns, just like the girl says.' 'No,' said Keith. 'There's still the piper.' 'Can't they just give him a dollar for his trouble and tell him to go away?' 'Not the Rat Piper,' said Keith. 'You don't say that sort of thing to the Rat Piper.' 'Nasty piece of work, is he?' 'I don't know. He sounds like it. But we've got a plan.' Maurice growled. 'You've got a plan?' he said. 'You made it up?' 'Me and Darktan and Malicia.' 'Tell me your wonderful plan,' sighed Maurice. 'We're going to keep the keekees caged up and no rats will come out to follow the piper. That way he'll look pretty silly, eh?' said Malicia. 'That's it? That's your plan?' 'You don't think it'll work?' said Keith. 'Malicia says he'll be so embarrassed he'll leave.' 'You don't know anything about people, do you?' sighed Maurice. 'What? I'm a person!' said Malicia. 'So? Cats know about people. We have to. No-one else can open cupboards. Look, even the rat king had a better plan than that. A good plan isn't one where someone wins, it's where nobody thinks they've lost. Understand? This is what you have to do… no, it wouldn't work, we'd need a lot of cotton-wool…' Malicia swung her bag around with a look of triumph. 'As a matter of fact,' she said, 'I'd worked out that if I was ever taken prisoner in a giant underwater mechanical squid and need to block up-' 'You're going to say you've got a lot of cotton-wool, aren't you,' said Maurice, flatly. 'Yes!' 'It was silly of me to worry, wasn't it?' said Maurice. Darktan stuck his sword in the mud. The senior rats gathered round him, but seniority had changed. Among the older rats were younger ones, each one with a dark red mark on its head, and they were pushing to the front. All of them were chattering. He could smell the relief that came when the Bone Rat had gone past and had not turned aside… 'Silence!' he yelled. It struck like a gong. Every red eye turned to him. He felt tired, he couldn't breathe properly, and he was streaked with soot and blood. Some of the blood wasn't his. 'It's not over,' he said. 'But we just-' 'It's not over!' Darktan looked around the circle. 'We didn't get all of those big rats, the real fighters,' he panted. 'Inbrine, take twenty rats and go back and help guard the nests. Big Savings and the old females are back there and they'll tear any attacker in half but I want to be certain.' For a moment Inbrine glared at Darktan. 'I don't see why you-' he began. 'Do it!' Inbrine crouched hurriedly, waved at the rats behind him, and scurried away. Darktan looked at the others. As his gaze passed across them, some of them leaned back, as if it was a flame. 'We'll form into squads,' he said. 'All of the Clan that we can spare from guarding will form into squads. At least one trap disposal rat in each squad! Take fire with you! And some of the young rats'll be runners, so you can keep in touch! Don't go near the cages, those poor creatures can wait! But you'll work through all these tunnels, all these cellars, all these holes and all these corners! And if you meet a strange rat and it cowers, then take it prisoner! But if it tries to fight-and the big ones will try to fight, because that's all they know-then you will kill it! Burn it or bite it! Kill it deadl Do you hear me?' There was a murmur of agreement. 'I said do you hear me?' This time there was a roar. 'Good! And we'll go on and on until these tunnels are safe, from end to end! Then we'll do it again! Until these tunnels are ours! Because…' Darktan grasped his sword, but leaned on it for a moment to catch his breath, and when he spoke next it was almost in a whisper, 'because we're in the heart of the Dark Wood now and we've found the Dark Wood in our hearts and… for tonight… we are something… terrible.' He took another breath, and his next words were heard only by the rats closest to him: 'And we have nowhere else to go.' It was dawn. Sergeant Doppelpunkt, who was one half of the city's official Watch (and the largest half) awoke with a snort in the tiny office by the main gates. He got dressed, a little unsteadily, and washed his face in the stone sink, peering at himself in the scrap of mirror hanging on the wall. He stopped. There was a faint but desperate squeaking sound, and then the little grille over the plughole was pushed aside and a rat plunged out. It was big and grey and it ran up his arm before leaping onto the floor. Water dripping from his face, Sergeant Doppelpunkt stared in bleary amazement as three smaller rats erupted from the pipe and chased after it. It turned to fight in the middle of the floor but the small rats hit it together, from three sides at once. It wasn't like a fight. It looked, thought the sergeant, more like an execution… There was an old rat hole in the wall. Two of the rats grabbed the tail and dragged the body into the hole and out of sight. But the third rat stopped at the hole and turned, standing up on its hind legs. The sergeant felt that it was staring at him. It didn't look like an animal watching a human to see if it was dangerous. It didn't look scared, it merely looked curious. It had some kind of red blob on its head. The rat saluted him. It was definitely a salute, even though it only took a second. Then all the rats had gone. The sergeant stared at the hole for some time, with water still dripping off his chin. And heard the singing. It was drifting up from the sink's plughole and it echoed a lot, as if it was coming from a long way away, one voice singing out and a chorus of voices replying: 'We fight dogs and we chase cats…' '… ain't no trap can stop the rats!' 'Got no plague and got no fleas…' '… we drink poison, we steal cheese!' 'Mess with us and you will see…' '… we'll put poison in your tea!' 'Here we fight and here we'll stay…' '… WE WILL NEVER GO AWAY!' The sound faded. Sergeant Doppelpunkt blinked, and looked at the bottle of beer he'd drunk last night. It got lonely, on night watch. And it wasn't as if anyone invaded Bad Blintz, after all. They didn't have anything to steal. But it'd probably be a good idea not to mention this to anyone. It probably hadn't happened. It was probably just a bad bottle of beer… The guardhouse door opened and Corporal Knopf stepped in. 'Morning, sergeant,' he began. 'It's that… what's up with you?' 'Nothing, corporal!' said Doppelpunkt quickly, wiping his face. 'I certainly haven't seen anything strange at all! Why're you standing around? Time to get those gates open, corporal!' The watchmen stepped out and swung open the city gates and the sunlight streamed through. It brought with it a long, long shadow. Oh dear, thought Sergeant Doppelpunkt. This really is not going to be a nice day… The man on horseback rode past them without a glance, and on into the town square. The guards hurried after him. People aren't supposed to ignore people with weapons. 'Halt, what is your business here?' demanded Corporal Knopf, but he had to run crabwise to keep up with the horse. The rider was dressed in white and black, like a magpie. He didn't answer, but just smiled faintly to himself. 'All right, maybe you haven't any actual business, but it won't cost you anything just to say who you are, will it?' said Corporal Knopf, who was not interested in any trouble. The rider looked down at him, and then stared ahead again. Sergeant Doppelpunkt spotted a small covered wagon coming through the gates, drawn by a donkey which was accompanied by an old man. He was a sergeant, he told himself, which meant that he was paid more than the corporal, which meant that he thought more expensive thoughts. And this one was: they didn't have to check everyone that came through the gate, did they? Especially if they were busy. They had to pick people at random. And if you were going to pick people at random, it was a good idea to randomly pick a little old man who looked small enough and old enough to be frightened of a rather grubby uniform with rusty chainmail. 'Halt!' 'Heh, heh! Not gonna,' said the old man. 'Mind the donkey, he can give you a nasty bite when he's roused. Not that I care.' 'Are you trying to show contempt of the Law?' demanded Sergeant Doppelpunkt. 'Well, I'm not trying to conceal it, mister. You want to make something of it, you talk to my boss. That's him on the horse. The big horse.' The black-and-white stranger had dismounted by the fountain in the centre of the square, and was opening his saddle-bags. 'I'll just go and talk to him, shall I?' said the sergeant. By the time he'd reached the stranger, walking as slowly as he dared, the man had propped a small mirror against the fountain and was having a shave. Corporal Knopf was watching him. He'd been given the horse to hold. 'Why haven't you arrested him?' the sergeant whispered to the corporal. 'What, for illegal shaving? Tell you what, sarge, you do it.' Sergeant Doppelpunkt cleared his throat. A few early risers among the population were already watching him. 'Er… now, listen, friend, I'm sure you didn't mean-' he began. The man straightened up, and gave the guards a look which made both men take a step backwards. He reached out and undid the thong holding a thick roll of leather behind the saddle. It unrolled. Corporal Knopf whistled. All down the length of leather, held in place by straps, were dozens of pipes. They glistened in the rising sun. 'Oh, you're the pipe-' the sergeant began, but the other man turned back to the mirror and said, as if talking to his reflection, 'Where can a man get a breakfast around here?' 'Oh, if it's breakfast you want then Mrs Shover at the Blue Cabbage will-' 'Sausages,' said the piper, still shaving. 'Burned on one side. Three. Here. Ten minutes. Where is the mayor?' 'If you go down that street and take the first left' 'Fetch him.' 'Here, you can't-' the sergeant began, but Corporal Knopf grabbed his arm and pulled him away. 'He's the piper!' he hissed. 'You don't mess with the piper! Don't you know about him? If he blows the right note on his pipes, your legs will fall off!' 'What, like the plague?' 'They say that in Porkscratchenz the council didn't pay him and he played his special pipe and led all the kids up into the mountains and they were never seen again!' 'Good, do you think he'll do that here? The place'd be a lot quieter.' 'Hah! Did you ever hear about that place in Klatch? They hired him to get rid of a plague of mime artists, and when they didn't pay up he made all the town's watchmen dance into the river and drown!' 'No! Did he? The devil!' said Sergeant Doppelpunkt. 'Three hundred dollars he charges, did you know that?' 'Three hundred dollars!' 'That's why people hate paying,' said Corporal Knopf. 'Hang on, hang on… how can you have a plague of mime artists?' 'Oh, it was terrible, so I heard. People didn't dare go out onto the streets at all.' 'You mean, all those white faces, all that creeping around…' 'Exactly. Terrible. Still, when I woke up there was a rat dancing on my dressing-table. Tapitty, tapitty, tap.' 'That's odd,' said Sergeant Doppelpunkt, giving his corporal a strange look. 'And it was humming There's no Business like Show Business. I call that more than just "odd"!' 'No, I meant it's odd you've got a dressing-table. I mean, you're not even married.' 'Stop messing about, sarge.' 'Has it got a mirror?' 'Come on, sarge. You get the sausages, sarge, I'll get the mayor.' 'No, Knopf. You get the sausages and I'll get the mayor, 'cos the mayor's free and Mrs Shover will want paying.' The mayor was already up when the sergeant arrived, and wandering around the house with a worried expression. He looked more worried when the sergeant arrived. 'What's she done this time?' he said. 'Sir?' said the watchman. 'Sir' said like that meant 'what are you talking about?' 'Malicia hasn't been home all night,' said the mayor. 'You think something might have happened to her, sir?' 'No, I think she might have happened to someone, man! Remember last month? When she tracked down the Mysterious Headless Horseman?' 'Well, you must admit he was a horseman, sir.' 'That is true. But he was also a short man with a very high collar. And he was the chief tax-gatherer from Mintz. I'm still getting official letters about it! Tax-gatherers do not as a rule like young ladies dropping on them out of trees! And then in September there was that business about the, the-' 'The Mystery of Smuggler's Windmill, sir,' said the sergeant, rolling his eyes. 'Which turned out to be Mr Vogel the town clerk and Mrs Schuman the shoemaker's wife, who happened to be there merely because of their shared interest in studying the habits of barn owls…' '… and Mr Vogel had his trousers off because he'd torn them on a nail…' said the sergeant, not looking at the mayor. '… which Mrs Schuman was very kindly repairing for him,' said the mayor. 'By moonlight,' said the sergeant. 'She happens to have very good eyesight!' snapped the mayor. 'And she didn't deserve to be bound and gagged along with Mr Vogel, who caught quite a chill as a result! I had complaints from him and from her, and from Mrs Vogel and from Mr Schuman and from Mr Vogel after Mr Schuman went around to his house and hit him with a last and from Mrs Schuman after Mrs Vogel called her a-' 'A last what, sir?' 'What?' 'Hit him with a last what?' 'A last, man! It's a kind of wooden foot shoemakers use when they're making shoes! Heaven knows what Malicia's doing this time!' 'I expect you'll find out when we hear the bang, sir.' 'And what was it you wanted me for, sergeant?' 'The rat piper's here, sir.' The mayor went pale. 'Already?' he said. 'Yessir. He's having a shave in the fountain.' 'Where's my official chain? My official robe? My official hat? Quick, man, help me!' 'He looks like quite a slow shaver, sir,' said the sergeant, following the mayor out of the room at a run. 'Over in Klotz the mayor kept the piper waiting too long and he played his pipe and turned him into a badger!' said the mayor, flinging open a cupboard. 'Ah, here they are… help me on with them, will you?' When they arrived in the town square, out of breath, the piper was sitting on a bench, surrounded at a safe distance by a very large crowd. He was examining half a sausage on the end of a fork. Corporal Knopf was standing next to him like a schoolboy who has just turned in a nasty piece of work and is waiting to be told exactly how bad it is. 'And this is called a-?' the piper was saying. 'A sausage, sir,' Corporal Knopf muttered. 'This is what you think is a sausage here, is it?' There was a gasp from the crowd. Bad Blintz was very proud of its traditional vole-and-pork sausages. 'Yessir,' said Corporal Knopf. 'Amazing,' said the piper. He looked up at the mayor. 'And you are-?' 'I am the mayor of this town, and-' The piper held up a hand, and then nodded towards the old man who was sitting on his cart, grinning broadly. 'My agent will deal with you,' he said. He threw away the sausage, put his feet up on the other end of the bench, pulled his hat down over his eyes and lay back. The mayor went red in the face. Sergeant Doppelpunkt leaned towards him. 'Remember the badger, sir!' he whispered. 'Ah… yes…' The mayor, with what little dignity he had left, walked over to the cart. 'I believe the fee for ridding the town of rats will be three hundred dollars?' he said. 'Then I expect you'll believe anything,' said the old man. He glanced at a notebook on his knee. 'Let's see… call-out fee… plus special charge because it's St Prodnitz's Day… plus pipe tax… looks like a medium-sized town, so that's extra… wear and tear on cart… travelling costs at a dollar a mile… miscellaneous expenses, taxes, charges…' He looked up. 'Tell you what, let's say one thousand dollars, OK?' 'One thousand dollars! We haven't got one thousand dollars! That's outrag-' 'Badger, sir!' hissed Sergeant Doppelpunkt. 'You can't pay?' said the old man. 'We don't have that kind of money! We've had to spend a lot of money bringing in food!' 'You don't have any money?' said the old man. 'Nothing like that amount, no!' The old man scratched his chin. 'Hmm,' he said, 'I can see where that's going to be a bit difficult, because… let's see…' He scribbled in his notebook for a moment and then looked up. 'You already owe us four hundred and sixty-seven dollars and nineteen pence for call-out, travel and miscellaneous sundries.' 'What? He hasn't blown a note!' 'Ah, but he's ready to,' said the old man. 'We've come all this way. You can't pay? Bit of what they call a imp arse, then. He's got to lead something out of the town, you see. Otherwise the news'll get around and no-one'll show him any respect, and if you haven't got respect, what have you got? If a piper doesn't have respect, he's-' '-rubbish,' said a voice. 'I think he's rubbish.' The piper raised the brim of his hat. The crowd in front of Keith parted in a hurry. 'Yeah?' said the piper. 'I don't think he can pipe up even one rat,' said Keith. 'He's just a fraud and a bully. Huh, I bet I can pipe up more rats than him.' Some of the people in the crowd began to creep away. No-one wanted to be around when the rat piper lost his temper. The piper swung his boots down onto the ground and pushed his hat back on his head. 'You a rat piper, kid?' he said softly. Keith stuck out his chin defiantly. 'Yes. And don't call me kid… old man.' The piper grinned. 'Ah,' he said. 'I knew I was going to like this place. And you can make a rat dance, can you, kid?' 'More than you can, piper.' 'Sounds like a challenge to me,' said the piper. 'The piper doesn't accept challenges from-' the old man on the cart began, but the rat piper waved him into silence. 'Y'know, kid,' he said, 'this isn't the first time some kid has tried this. I'm walking down the street and someone yells, "Go for your piccolo, mister!" and I turn around, and it's always a kid like you with a stupid-looking face. Now, I don't want anyone to say I'm an unfair man, kid, so if you'd just care to apologize you might walk away from here with the same number of legs you started with ' 'You're frightened.' Malicia stepped out of the crowd. The piper grinned at her. 'Yeah?' he said. 'Yes, because everyone knows what happens at a time like this. Let me ask this stupid-looking kid, who I've never seen before: are you an orphan?' 'Yes,' said Keith. 'Do you know nothing about your background at all?' 'No.' 'Aha!' said Malicia. 'That proves it! We all know what happens when a mysterious orphan turns up and challenges someone big and powerful, don't we? It's like being the third and youngest son of a king. He can't help but win!' She looked triumphantly at the crowd. But the crowd looked doubtful. They hadn't read as many stories as Malicia, and were rather attached to the experience of real life, which is that when someone small and righteous takes on someone big and nasty he is grilled bread product, very quickly. However, someone at the back shouted, 'Give the stupid-looking kid a chance! At least he'll be cheaper!' and someone else shouted, 'Yes, that's right!' and someone else shouted, 'I agree with the other two!' and no-one seemed to notice that all the voices came from near ground level or were associated with the progress around the crowd of a scruffy-looking cat with half its fur missing. Instead, there was a general murmuring, no real words, nothing that would get anyone into trouble if the piper turned nasty, but a muttering indicating, in a general sense, without wishing to cause umbrage, and seeing everyone's point of view, and taking one thing with another, and all things being equal, that people would like to see the boy given a chance, if it's all right with you, no offence meant. The piper shrugged. 'Fine,' he said. 'It'll be something to talk about. And when I win, what will I get?' The mayor coughed. 'Is a daughter's hand in marriage usual in these circumstances?' he said. 'She has very good teeth, and would make a goo-a wife for anyone with plenty of free wall space-' 'Father!' said Malicia. 'Later on, later on, obviously,' said the mayor. 'He's unpleasant, but he is rich.' 'No, I'll just take my payment,' said the piper. 'One way or another.' 'And I said we can't afford it!' said the mayor. 'And I said one way or the other,' said the piper. 'And you, kid?' 'Your rat pipe,' said Keith. 'No. It's magic, kid.' 'Then why are you scared to bet it?' The piper narrowed his eyes. 'OK, then,' he said. 'And the town must let me solve its rat problem,' said Keith. 'And how much will you charge?' said the mayor. 'Thirty gold pieces! Thirty gold pieces. Go on, say it!' shouted a voice at the back of the crowd. 'No, I won't cost you a thing,' said Keith. 'Idiot!' shouted the voice in the crowd. People looked around, puzzled. 'Nothing at all?' said the mayor. 'No, nothing.' 'Er… the hand-in-marriage thing is still on offer, if you-' 'Father!' 'No, that only happens in stories,' said Keith. 'And I shall also bring back a lot of the food that the rats stole.' 'They ate it!' said the mayor. 'What're you going to do, stick your fingers down their throats?' 'I said that I'll solve your rat problem,' said Keith. 'Agreed, Mr Mayor?' 'Well, if you're not charging-' 'But first, I shall need to borrow a pipe,' Keith went on. 'You haven't got one?' said the mayor. 'It got broken.' Corporal Knopf nudged the mayor. 'I've got a trombone from when I was in the army,' he said. 'It won't take a mo to nip and get it.' The rat piper burst out laughing. 'Doesn't that count?' said the mayor, as Corporal Knopf hurried off. 'What? A trombone for charming rats? No, no, let him try. Can't blame a kid for trying. Good with a trombone, are you?' 'I don't know,' said Keith. 'What do you mean, you don't know?' 'I mean, I've never played one. I'd be a lot happier with a flute, trumpet, piccolo or Lancre bagpipe, but I've seen people playing the trombone and it doesn't look too difficult. It's only an overgrown trumpet, really.' 'Hah!' said the piper. The watchman came running back, rubbing a battered trombone with his sleeve and therefore making it just a bit more grimy. Keith took it, wiped the mouthpiece, put it to his mouth, pressed the keys a few times and then blew one long note. 'Seems to work,' he said. 'I expect I can learn as I go along.' He gave the rat piper a brief smile. 'Do you want to go first?' 'You won't charm one rat with that mess, kid,' said the piper, 'but I'm glad I'm here to see you try.' Keith gave him a smile again, took a breath, and played. There was a tune there. The instrument squeaked and wheezed, because Corporal Knopf had occasionally used the thing as a hammer, but there was a tune, quite fast, almost jaunty. You could tap your feet to it. Someone tapped his feet to it. Sardines emerged from a crack in a nearby wall, going 'hwunftwothreefour' under his breath. The crowd him dance ferociously across the cobbles until he disappeared into a drain. Then they broke into applause. The piper looked at Keith. 'Did that one have a hat on?' he said. 'I didn't notice,' said Keith. 'Your go.' The piper pulled a short length of pipe from inside his jacket. He took another length from his pocket, and slotted it into place on the first piece. It went click, in a military kind of way. Still watching Keith, and still grinning, the piper took a mouthpiece from his top pocket, and screwed it into the rest of the pipe with another, very final, click. Then he put it to his mouth and played. From her lookout on a roof Big Savings shouted down a drainpipe, 'Now!' Then she pushed two lumps of cotton-wool in her ears. At the bottom of the pipe, Inbrine shouted into a drain, 'Now!' and then he too snatched up his earplugs. … ow, ow, ow echoed through the pipes… … 'Now!' shouted Darktan in the room of cages. He rammed some straw into the drainpipe. 'Everyone block their ears!' They'd done their best with the rat cages. Malicia had brought blankets, and the rats had spent a feverish hour blocking up holes with mud. They'd done their best to feed the prisoners properly, too, and even though they were only keekees it was heartbreaking to see them cower so desperately. Darktan turned to Nourishing. 'Got your ears blocked?' he said. 'Pardon?' 'Good!' Darktan picked up two lumps of cotton-wool. 'The silly-sounding girl better be right about this stuff,' he said. 'I don't think many of us have got any strength left to run.' The piper blew again, and then stared at his pipe. 'Just one rat,' said Keith. 'Any rat you like.' The piper glared at him, and blew again. 'I can't hear anything,' said the mayor. 'Humans can't,' muttered the piper. 'Perhaps it's broken,' said Keith helpfully. The piper tried again. There was murmuring from the crowd. 'You've done something,' he hissed. 'Oh yes?' said Malicia, loudly. 'What could he have done? Told the rats to stay underground with their ears blocked up?' The murmuring turned into muffled laughter. The piper tried one more time. Keith felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. A rat emerged. It moved slowly across the cobbles, bouncing from side to side, until it reached the piper's feet, where it fell over and started making a whirring noise. People's mouths fell open. It was a Mr Clicky. The piper nudged it with his foot. The clockwork rat rolled over a few times and then its spring, as a result of months of being punished in traps, gave up. There was a poiyonngggg, and a brief shower of cogwheels. The crowd burst out laughing. 'Hmm,' said the piper, and this time the look he gave Keith was shaded with grudging admiration. 'OK, kid,' he said. 'Shall you and I have a little talk? Piper to piper? Over by the fountain?' 'Provided people can see us,' said Keith. 'You don't trust me, kid?' 'Of course not.' The piper grinned. 'Good. You've got the makings of a piper, I can see that.' Over by the fountain, he sat down with his booted legs in front of him, and held out the pipe. It was bronze, with a raised pattern of brass rats on it, and it glinted in the sunlight. 'Here,' said the piper. 'Take it. It's a good one. I've got plenty of others. Go on, take it. I'd like to hear you play it.' Keith looked at it uncertainly. 'It's all trickery, kid,' said the piper, as the pipe shone like a sunbeam. 'See the little slider there? Move it down and the pipe plays a special note humans can't hear. Rats can. Sends 'em nuts. They come rushing out of the ground and you drive 'em into the river, just like a sheepdog.' 'That's all there is to it?' said Keith. 'You were expecting something more?' 'Well, yes. They say you turn people into badgers and lead children into magic caves and-' The piper leaned forward conspiratorially. 'It always pays to advertise, kid. Sometimes these little towns can be pretty slow when it comes to parting with the cash. 'Cos the thing about turning people into badgers and all the rest of that stuff is this: it never happens round here. Most of the people round here never go more than ten miles away in their lives. They'll believe just about anything could happen fifty miles away. Once the story gets around, it does your work for you. Half the things people say I've done even I didn't make up.' 'Tell me,' said Keith, 'have you ever met someone called Maurice?' 'Maurice? Maurice? I don't think so.' 'Amazing,' said Keith. He took the pipe, and gave the piper a long, slow stare. 'And now, piper,' he said, 'I think you're going to lead the rats out of town. It's going to be the most impressive job you've ever done.' 'Hey? What? You won, kid.' 'You'll lead out the rats because that's how it should go,' said Keith, polishing the pipe on his sleeve. 'Why do you charge such a lot?' 'Because I give 'em a show,' said the piper. 'The fancy clothes, the bullying… charging a lot is part of the whole thing. You've got to give 'em magic, kid. Let 'em think you're just a fancy rat-catcher and you'll be lucky to get a cheese lunch and a warm handshake.' 'We'll do it together, and the rats will follow us, really follow us into the river. Don't bother about the trick note, this will be even better. It'll be… it'll be a great… story,' said Keith. 'And you'll get your money. Three hundred dollars, wasn't it? But you'll settle for half, because I'm helping you.' 'What are you playing at, kid? I told you, you won.' 'Everyone wins. Trust me. They called you in. They should pay the piper. Besides…' Keith smiled. 'I don't want people to think pipers shouldn't get paid, do I?' 'And I thought you were just a stupid-looking kid,' said the piper. 'What kind of a deal have you got with the rats?' 'You wouldn't believe it, piper. You wouldn't believe it.' Inbrine scurried through the tunnels, scrabbled through the mud and straw that had been used to block the last one, and jumped into the cage room. The Clan rats unblocked their ears when they saw him. 'He's doing it?' said Darktan. 'Yessir! Right now!' Darktan looked up at the cages. The keekees were more subdued, now that the rat king was dead and they'd been fed. But by the smell of it they were desperate to leave this place. And rats in a panic will follow other rats… 'OK,' he said. 'Runners, get ready! Open the cages! Make sure they're following you! Go! Go! Go!' And that was almost the end of the story. How the crowd yelled when rats erupted from every hole and drain. How they cheered when both pipers danced out of the town, with the rats racing along behind them. How they whistled when the rats plunged off the bridge into the river. They didn't notice that some rats stayed on the bridge, urging the others with shouts of 'Remember, strong regular strokes!' and 'There's a nice beach just downstream!' and 'Hit the water feet first, it won't hurt so much!' Even if they had noticed, they probably wouldn't have said anything. Details like that don't fit in. And the piper danced off over the hills and never, ever came back. There was general applause. It had been a good show, everyone agreed, even if it had been expensive. It was definitely something to tell their children. The stupid-looking kid, the one who had duelled with the piper, strolled back into the square. He got a round of applause too. It was turning out to be a good day all round. People wondered if they'd have to have extra children to make room for all the stories. But they realized they'd have enough to save for the grandchildren when the other rats arrived. They were suddenly there, pouring up out of drains and gutters and cracks. They didn't squeak, and they weren't running. They sat there, watching everyone. 'Here, piper!' shouted the mayor. 'You missed some!' 'No. We're not the rats who follow pipers,' said a voice. 'We're the rats you have to deal with.' The mayor looked down. A rat was standing by his boots, looking up at him. It appeared to be holding a sword. 'Father,' said Malicia behind him, 'it would be a good idea to listen to this rat.' 'But it's a rat!' 'He knows, Father. And he knows how to get your money back and a lot of the food and where to find some of the people who've been stealing food from us all.' 'But he's a rat!' 'Yes, Father. But if you talk to him properly, he can help us.' The mayor stared at the assembled ranks of the Clan. 'We should talk to rats?' he said. 'It would be a very good idea, Father.' 'But they're rats!' The mayor seemed to be trying to hold on to this thought as if it was a lifebelt on a stormy sea, and he'd drown if he let go of it. ''Scuse me, 'scuse me,' said a voice from beside him. He looked down at a dirty, half-scorched cat, which grinned at him. 'Did that cat just speak?' said the mayor. Maurice looked around. 'Which one?' he said. 'You! Did you just talk?' 'Would you feel better if I said no?' said Maurice. 'But cats can't talk!' 'Well, I can't promise that I could give a, you know, full-length after-dinner speech, and don't ask me to do a comic monologue,' said Maurice, 'and I can't pronounce difficult words like "marmalade" and "lumbago". But I'm pretty happy with basic repartee and simple wholesome conversation. Speaking as a cat, I'd like to know what the rat has got to say.' 'Mr Mayor?' said Keith, strolling up and twirling the new rat pipe in his fingers. 'Don't you think it's time I sorted out your rat problem once and for all?' 'Sort it out? But-' 'All you have to do is talk to them. Get your town council together and talk to them. It's up to you, Mr Mayor. You can yell and shout and call out the dogs and people can run around and flail at the rats with brooms and, yes, they'll run away. But they won't run far. And they'll come back.' When he was standing next to the bewildered man he leaned towards him and whispered, 'And they live under your floorboards, sir. They know how to use fire. They know all about poison. Oh, yes. So… listen to this rat.' 'Is it threatening us?' said the Mayor, looking down at Darktan. 'No, Mr Mayor,' said Darktan, 'I'm offering you…' He glanced at Maurice, who nodded. '… a wonderful opportunity.' 'You really can talk? You can think?' said the mayor. Darktan looked up at him. It had been a long night. He didn't want to remember any of it. And now it was going to be a longer, harder day. He took a deep breath. 'Here's what I suggest,' he said. 'You pretend that rats can think, and I'll promise to pretend that humans can think, too.'   CHAPTER 12 "Well done, Ratty Rupert!" cried the animals of Furry Bottom. - From Mr Bunnsy Has An Adventure   The crowd clustered into the Rathaus's council hall. Most of it had to stay outside, craning over other people's heads to see what was going on. The town council was crammed around one end of their long table. A dozen or so of the senior rats were crouched at the other end. And, in the middle, was Maurice. He was suddenly there, leaping up from the floor. Hopwick the clockmaker glared at the other members of the council. 'We're talking to rats!' he snapped, trying to make himself heard above the hubbub. 'We'll be a laughing stock if this gets out! "The Town That Talked To Its Rats". Can't you just see it?' 'Rats aren't there to be spoken to,' said Raufman the bootmaker, prodding the mayor with a finger. 'A mayor who knew his business would send for the ratcatchers!' 'According to my daughter, they are locked in a cellar,' said the mayor. He stared at the finger. 'Locked in by your talking rats?' said Raufman. 'Locked in by my daughter,' said the mayor, calmly. 'Take your finger away, Mr Raufman. She's taken the watchmen down there. She's making very serious allegations, Mr Raufman. She says there's a lot of food stored under their shed. She says they've been stealing it and selling it to the river traders. The head rat-catcher is your brother-in-law, isn't he, Mr Raufman? I remember you were very keen to see him appointed, weren't you?' There was a commotion outside. Sergeant Doppelpunkt pushed his way through, grinning broadly, and laid a big sausage on the table. 'One sausage is hardly theft,' said Raufman. There was rather more commotion in the crowd, which parted to reveal what was, strictly speaking, a very slowly moving Corporal Knopf. This fact only became clear, though, when he'd been stripped of three bags of grain, eight strings of sausages, a barrel of pickled beetroot and fifteen cabbages. Sergeant Doppelpunkt saluted smartly, to the sound of muffled swearing and falling cabbages. 'Requesting permission to take six men to help us bring up the rest of the stuff, sir!' he said, beaming happily. 'Where are the rat-catchers?' said the mayor. 'In deep… trouble, sir,' said the sergeant. 'I asked them if they wanted to come out, but they said they'd like to stay in there a bit longer, thanks all the same, although they'd like a drink of water and some fresh trousers.' 'Was that all they said?' Sergeant Doppelpunkt pulled out his notebook. 'No, sir, they said quite a lot. They were crying, actually. They said they'd confess to everything in exchange for the fresh trousers. Also, sir, there was this.' The sergeant stepped out and came back with a heavy box, which he thumped down onto the polished table. 'Acting on information received from a rat, sir, we took a look under one of the floorboards. There must be more'n two hundred dollars in it. Ill-gotten gains, sir.' 'You got information from a rat?' The sergeant pulled Sardines out of his pocket. The rat was eating a biscuit, but he raised his hat politely. 'Isn't that a bit… unhygienic?' said the mayor. 'No, guv, he's washed his hands,' said Sardines. 'I was talking to the sergeant!' 'No, sir. Nice little chap, sir. Very clean. Reminds me of a hamster I used to have when I was a lad, sir.' 'Well, thank you, sergeant, well done, please go and-' 'His name was Horace,' added the sergeant helpfully. 'Thank you, sergeant, and now-' 'Does me good to see little cheeks bulging with grub again, sir.' 'Thank you, sergeant!' When the sergeant had left, the mayor turned and stared at Mr Raufman. The man had the grace to look embarrassed. 'I hardly know the man,' he said. 'He's just somebody my sister married, that's all! I hardly ever see him!' 'I quite understand,' said the mayor. 'And I've no intention of asking the sergeant to go and search your larder,' and he gave another little smile, and a sniff, and added, 'yet. Now, where were we?' 'I was about to tell you a story,' said Maurice. The town council stared at him. 'And your name is-?' said the mayor, who was feeling in quite a good mood now. 'Maurice,' said Maurice. 'I'm a freelance negotiator, style of thing. I can see it's difficult for you to talk to rats, but humans like talking to cats, right?' 'Like in Dick Livingstone?' said Hopwick. 'Yeah, right, him yeah, and-' Maurice began. 'And Puss in Boots?' said Corporal Knopf. 'Yeah, right, books,' said Maurice, scowling. 'Anyway… cats can talk to rats, OK? And I'm going to tell you a story. But first, I'm going to tell you that my clients, the rats, will all leave this town if you want them to, and they won't come back. Ever.' The humans stared at him. So did the rats. 'Will we?' said Darktan. 'Will they?' said the mayor. 'Yes,' said Maurice. 'And now, I'm going to tell you a story about the lucky town. I don't know its name yet. Let's suppose my clients leave here and move down river, shall we? There are lots of towns on this river, I'll be bound. And somewhere there's a town that'll say, why, we can do a deal with the rats. And that will be a very lucky town, because then there'll be rules, see?' 'Not exactly, no,' said the mayor. 'Well, in this lucky town, right, a lady making, as it might be, a tray of cakes, well, all she'll need to do is shout down the nearest rat hole and say, "Good morning, rats, there's one cake for you, I'll be much obliged if'n you didn't touch the rest of them", and the rats will say "Right you are, missus, no problem at all". And then-' 'Are you saying we should bribe the rats?' said the mayor. 'Cheaper than pipers. Cheaper than rat-catchers,' said Maurice. 'Anyway, it'll be wages. Wages for what, I hear you cry?' 'Did I cry that?' said the mayor. 'You were going to,' said Maurice. 'And I was going to tell you that it'd be wages for… for vermin control.' 'What? But rats are ver-' 'Don't say it!' said Darktan. 'Vermin like cockroaches,' said Maurice, smoothly. 'I can see you've got a lot of them here.' 'Can they talk?' said the mayor. Now he had the slightly hunted expression of anyone who'd been talked to by Maurice for any length of time. It said 'I'm going where I don't want to go, but I don't know how to get off.' 'No,' said Maurice. 'Nor can the mice, and nor can norma-can other rats. Well, vermin'll be a thing of the past in that lucky town, because its new rats will be like a police force. Why, the Clan'll guard your larders-sorry, I mean the larders in that town. No rat-catchers required. Think of the savings. But that'll only be the start. The will be getting richer, too, in the lucky town.' 'How?' said Hauptmann the woodcarver, sharply. 'Because rats will be working for them,' said Maurice. 'They have to gnaw all the time to wear their teeth down, so they might as well be making cuckoo clocks. And the clockmakers will be doing well, too,' 'Why?' said Hopwick the clockmaker. 'Tiny little paws, very good with little springs and things,' said Maurice. 'And then-' 'Would they just do cuckoo clocks, or could they do other stuff?' said Hauptmann. '-and then there's the whole tourism aspect,' said Maurice. 'For example, the Rat Clock. You know that clock they've got in Bonk? In the town square? Little figures come out every quarter of an hour and bang the bells? Cling bong bang, bing clong bong? Very popular, you can get postcards and everything. Big attraction. People come a long way just to stand there waiting for it. Well, the lucky town will have rats striking the bells!' 'So what you're saying,' said the clockmaker, 'is that if we that is, if the lucky town had a special big clock, and rats, people might come to see it?' 'And stand around waiting for up to a quarter of an hour,' said someone. 'A perfect time to buy hand-crafted models of the clock,' said the clockmaker. People began to think about this. 'Mugs with rats on,' said a potter. 'Hand-gnawed souvenir wooden cups and plates,' said Hauptmann. 'Cuddly toy rats!' 'Rats-on-a-stick!' Darktan took a deep breath. Maurice said, quickly, 'Good idea. Made of toffee, naturally.' He glanced towards Keith. 'And I expect the town would want to employ its very own rat piper, even. You know. For ceremonial purposes. "Have your picture drawn with the Official Rat Piper and his Rats", sort of thing.' 'Any chance of a small theatre?' said a little voice. Darktan spun around. 'Sardines!' he said. 'Well, guv, I thought if everyone was getting in on the act-' Sardines protested. 'Maurice, we ought to talk about this,' said Dangerous Beans, tugging at the cat's leg. 'Excuse me a moment,' said Maurice, giving the mayor a quick grin, 'I need to consult with my clients. Of course,' he added, 'I'm talking about the lucky town. Which won't be this one because, of course, when my clients move out some new rats will move in. There are always more rats. And they won't talk, and they won't have rules, and they'll widdle in the cream and you'll have to find some new rat-catchers, ones you can trust, and you won't have as much money because everyone will be going to the other town. Just a thought.' He marched down the table and turned to the rats. 'I was doing so well!' he said. 'You could be on ten per cent, you know? Your faces on mugs, everything!' 'And is this what we fought for all night?' spat Darktan. 'To be pets?' 'Maurice, this isn't right,' said Dangerous Beans. 'Surely it is better to appeal to the common bond between intelligent species than-' 'I don't know about intelligent species. We're dealing with humans here,' said Maurice. 'Do you know about wars? Very popular with humans. They fight other humans. Not hugely big on common bonding.' 'Yes, but we are not-' 'Now listen,' said Maurice. 'Ten minutes ago these people thought you were pests. Now they think you're… useful. Who knows what I can have them thinking in half an hour?' 'You want us to work for them?' said Darktan. 'We've won our place here!' 'You'll be working for yourself,' said Maurice. 'Look, these people aren't philosophers. They're just… everyday. They don't understand about the tunnels. This is a market town. You've got to approach them the right way. Anyway, you will keep other rats away, and you won't go around widdling in the jam, so you might as well get thanked for it.' He tried again. 'There's going to be a lot of shouting, right, yeah. And then sooner or later you have to talk.' He saw the bewilderment still glazing their eyes, and turned to Sardines in desperation. 'Help me,' he said. 'He's right, boss. You've got to give 'em a show,' said Sardines, dancing a few steps nervously. 'They'll laugh at us!' said Darktan. 'Better laugh than scream, boss. It's a start. You gotta dance, boss. You can think and you can fight, but the world's always movin', and if you wanna stay ahead you gotta dance.' He raised his hat and twirled his cane. On the other side of the room, a couple of humans saw him and chuckled. 'See?' he said. 'I'd hoped there was an island somewhere,' said Dangerous Beans. 'A place where rats could really be rats.' 'And we've seen where that leads,' said Darktan. 'And, you know, I don't think there're any wonderful islands in the distance for people like us. Not for us.' He sighed. 'If there's a wonderful island anywhere, it's here. But I'm not intending to dance.' 'Figure of speech, boss, figure of speech,' said Sardines, hopping from one foot to the other. There was a thump from the other end of the table. The mayor had hit it with his fist. 'We've got to be practical!' he was saying. 'How much worse off can we be? They can talk. I'm not going to go all through this again, understand? We've got food, we've got a lot of the money back, we survived the piper… these are lucky rats…' The figures of Keith and Malicia loomed over the rats. 'It sounds as if my father's coming round to the idea,' said Malicia. 'What about you?' 'Discussions are continuing,' said Maurice. 'I… er… I'm sorr… er… look, Maurice told me where to look and I found this in the tunnel,' said Malicia. The pages were stuck together, and they were all stained, and they had been sewn together by a very impatient person, but it was still recognizable as Mr Bunnsy Has An Adventure. 'I had to lift up a lot of drain gratings to find all the pages,' she said. The rats looked at it. Then they looked at Dangerous Beans. 'It's Mr Bunn-' Peaches began. 'I know. I can smell it,' said Dangerous Beans. The rats all looked again at the remains of the book. 'It's a lie,' said Peaches. 'Maybe it's just a pretty story,' said Sardines. 'Yes,' said Dangerous Beans. 'Yes.' He turned his misty pink eyes to Darktan, who had to stop himself from crouching, and added: 'Perhaps it's a map.' If it was a story, and not real life, then humans and rats would have shaken hands and gone on into a bright new future. But since it was real life, there had to be a contract. A war that had been going on since people first lived in houses could not end with just a happy smile. And there had to be a committee. There was so much detail to be discussed. The town council were on it, and most of the senior rats, and Maurice marched up and down the table, joining in. Darktan sat at one end. He really wanted to sleep. His wound ached, his teeth ached, and he hadn't eaten for ages. For hours the argument flowed back and forwards over his drooping head. He didn't pay attention to who was doing the talking. Most of the time, it seemed to be everyone. 'Next item: compulsory bells on all cats. Agreed?' 'Can we just get back to clause thirty, Mr, er, Maurice? You were saying killing a rat would be murder?' 'Yes. Of course.' 'But it's just-' 'Talk to the paw, mister, 'cos the whiskers don't want to know!' 'The cat is right,' said the mayor. 'You're out of order, Mr Raufman! We've been through this.' 'Then what about if a rat steals from me?' 'Ahem. Then that'll be theft, and the rat will have to go before the justices.' 'Oh, young-?' said Raufman. 'Peaches. I'm a rat, sir.' 'And… er… and the Watch officers will be able to get down the rat tunnels, will they?' 'Yes! Because there will be rat officers in the Watch. There'll have to be,' said Maurice. 'No problem!' 'Really? And what does Sergeant Doppelpunkt think about that? Sergeant Doppelpunkt?' 'Er… dunno, sir. Could be all right, I suppose. I know I couldn't get down a rat hole. We'll have to make the badges smaller, of course.' 'But surely you wouldn't suggest a rat officer could be allowed to arrest a human?' 'Oh, yes, sir,' said the sergeant. 'What?' 'Well, if your rat's a proper sworn-in watchman… I mean, a watchrat… then you can't go around saying you're not allowed to arrest anyone bigger than you, can you? Could be useful, a rat watchman. I understand they have this trick where they run up your trouser leg-' 'Gentlemen, we should move on. I suggest this one goes to the sub-committee.' 'Which one, sir? We've already got seventeen!' There was a snort from one of the councillors. This was Mr Schlummer, who was 95 and had been peacefully asleep all morning. The snort meant that he was waking up. He stared at the other side of the table. His whiskers moved. 'There's a rat there!' he said, pointing. 'Look, mm, bold as brass! A rat! In a hat!' 'Yes, sir. This is a meeting to talk to the rats, sir,' said the person beside him. He looked down and fumbled for his glasses. 'Wassat?' he said. He looked closer. 'Here,' he said, 'aren't, mm, you a rat, too?' 'Yes, sir. Name of Nourishing, sir. We're here to talk to humans. To stop all the trouble.' Mr Schlummer stared at the rat. Then he looked across the table at Sardines, who raised his hat. Then he looked at the mayor, who nodded. He looked at everyone again, his lips moving as he tried to sort this out. 'You're all talking?' he said, at last. 'Yes, sir,' said Nourishing. 'So… who's doing the listening?' he said. 'We're getting round to that,' said Maurice. Mr Schlummer glared at him. 'Are you a cat?' he demanded. 'Yes, sir,' said Maurice. Mr Schlummer slowly digested this point too. 'I thought we used to kill rats?' he said, as if he wasn't quite certain any more. 'Yes, but, you see, sir, this is the future,' said Maurice. 'Is it?' said Mr Schlummer. 'Really? I always wondered when it was going to happen. Oh, well. Cats talk now, too? Well done! Got to move with the, mm, the… things that move, obviously. Wake me up when they bring the, mm, tea in, will you, puss?' 'Er… it's not allowed to call cats "puss" if you're over ten years old, sir,' said Nourishing. 'Clause 19b,' said Maurice, firmly. '"No-one is to call cats by silly names unless they intend to give them an immediate meal". That's my clause,' he added, proudly. 'Really?' said Mr Schlummer. 'My word, the future is strange. Still, I daresay everything needed sorting out…' He settled back in his chair, and after a while began to snore. Around him the arguments started again, and kept going. A lot of people talked. Some people listened. Occasionally, they agreed… and moved on… and argued. But the piles of paper on the table grew bigger, and looked more and more official. Darktan forced himself to wake up again, and realized that someone was watching him. At the other end of the table, the mayor was giving him a long, thoughtful stare. As he watched, the man leaned back and said something to a clerk, who nodded and walked around the table, past the arguing people, until he reached Darktan. He leaned down. 'Can… you… un-der-stand… me?' he said, pronouncing each word very carefully. 'Yes… be-cause… I'm… not… stu-pid,' said Darktan. 'Oh, er… the mayor wonders if he can see you in his private office,' said the clerk. 'The door over there. I could help you down, if you like.' 'I could bite your finger, if you like,' said Darktan. The mayor was already walking away from the table. Darktan slid down and followed him. No-one paid any attention to either of them. The mayor waited until Darktan's tail was out of the way and carefully shut the door. The room was small and untidy. Paper occupied most flat surfaces. Bookcases filled several of the walls; extra books and more paper were stuffed in between the tops of the books and any space in the shelves. The mayor, moving with exaggerated delicacy, went and sat in a big, rather tatty swivel chair, and looked down at Darktan. 'I'm going to get this wrong,' he said. 'I thought we should have a… a little talk. Can I pick you up? I mean, it'd be easier to talk to you if you were on my desk…' 'No,' said Darktan. 'And it'd be easier to talk to you if you lay flat on the floor.' He sighed. He was too tired for games. 'If you put your hand flat on the floor I'll stand on it and you can raise it up to the height of the desk,' he said, 'but if you try anything nasty I'll bite your thumb off.' The mayor lifted him up, with extreme caution. Darktan hopped off into the mass of papers, empty teacups and old pens that covered the battered leather top, and stood looking up at the embarrassed man. 'Er… do you have to do much paperwork in your job?' said the mayor. 'Peaches writes things down,' said Darktan, bluntly. 'That's the little female rat that coughs before she speaks, isn't it?' said the mayor. 'That's right.' 'She's very… definite, isn't she?' said the mayor, and Darktan could see that he was sweating. 'She's rather frightening some of the councillors, ha ha.' 'Ha ha,' said Darktan. The mayor looked miserable. He seemed to be searching for something to say. 'You are, er, settling in well?' he said. 'I spent part of last night fighting a dog in a rat pit, and then I think I was stuck in a rat trap for a while,' said Darktan, in a voice like ice. 'And then there was a bit of a war. Apart from that, I can't complain.' The mayor gave him a worried look. For the first time he could remember, Darktan felt sorry for a human. The stupid-looking kid had been different. The mayor seemed to be as tired as Darktan felt. 'Look,' he said, 'I think it might work, if that's what you want to ask me.' The mayor brightened up. 'You do?' he said. 'There's a lot of arguing.' 'That's why I think it might work,' said Darktan. 'Men and rats arguing. You're not poisoning our cheese, and we're not widdling in your jam. It's not going to be easy, but it's a start.' 'But there's something I have to know,' said the mayor. 'Yes?' 'You could have poisoned our wells. You could have set fire to our houses. My daughter tells me you are very… advanced. You don't owe us anything. Why didn't you?' 'What for? What would we have done afterwards?' said Darktan. 'Gone to another town? Gone through all this again? Would killing you have made anything better for us? Sooner or later we'd have to talk to humans. It might as well be you.' 'I'm glad you like us!' said the mayor. Darktan opened his mouth to say: Like you? No, we just don't hate you enough. We're not friends. But… There would be no more rat pits. No more traps, no more poisons. True, he was going to have to explain to the Clan what a policeman was, and why rat watchmen might chase rats who broke the new Rules. They weren't going to like that. They weren't going to like that at all. Even a rat with the marks of the Bone Rat's teeth on him was going to have difficulty with that. But as Maurice had said: they'll do this, you'll do that. No-one will lose very much and everyone will gain a lot. The town will prosper, everyone's children will grow up, and suddenly, it'll all be normal. And everyone likes things to be normal. They don't like to see normal things changed. It must be worth a try, thought Darktan. 'Now I want to ask you a question,' he said. 'You've been the leader for… how long?' 'Ten years,' said the mayor. 'Isn't it hard?' 'Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Everyone argues with me all the time,' said the mayor. 'Although I must say I'm expecting a little less arguing if all this works. But it's not an easy job.' 'It's ridiculous to have to shout all the time just to get things done,' said Darktan. 'That's right,' said the mayor. 'And everyone expects you to decide things,' said Darktan. 'True.' 'The last leader gave me some advice just before he died, and do you know what it was? "Don't eat the green wobbly bit"!' 'Good advice?' said the mayor. 'Yes,' said Darktan. 'But all he had to do was be big and tough and fight all the other rats that wanted to be leader.' 'It's a bit like that with the council,' said the mayor. 'What?' said Darktan. 'You bite them in the neck?' 'Not yet,' said the mayor. 'But it's a thought, I must say.' 'It's just all a lot more complicated than I ever thought it would be!' said Darktan, bewildered. 'Because after you've learned to shout you have to learn not to!' 'Right again,' said the mayor. 'That's how it works.' He put his hand down on the desk, palm up. 'May I?' he said. Darktan stepped aboard, and kept his balance as the mayor carried him over to the window and set him down on the sill. 'See the river?' said the mayor. 'See the houses? See the people in the streets? I have to make it all work. Well, not the river, obviously, that works by itself. And every year it turns out that I haven't upset enough people for them to choose anyone else as mayor. So I have to do it again. It's a lot more complicated than I ever thought it would be.' 'What, for you, too? But you're a human!' said Darktan in astonishment. 'Hah! You think that makes it easier? I thought rats were wild and free!' 'Hah!' said Darktan. They both stared out of the window. Down in the square below they could see Keith and Malicia walking along, deep in conversation. 'If you like,' said the mayor, after a while, 'you could have a little desk here in my office-' 'I'll live underground, thank you all the same,' said Darktan, pulling himself together. 'Little desks are a bit too Mr Bunnsy.' The mayor sighed. 'I suppose so. Er…' He looked as if he was about to share some guilty secret and, in a way, he was. 'I did like those books when I was a boy, though. Of course I knew it was all nonsense but, all the same, it was nice to think that-' 'Yeah, yeah,' said Darktan. 'But the rabbit was stupid. Whoever heard of a rabbit talking?' 'Oh, yes. I never liked the rabbit. It was the minor characters everyone liked. Ratty Rupert and Phil the Pheasant and Olly the Snake-' 'Oh, come on,' said Darktan. 'He had a collar and tie!' 'Well?' 'Well, how did it stay on? A snake is tube-shaped!' 'Do you know, I never thought of it like that,' said the mayor. 'Silly, really. He'd wriggle out of it, wouldn't he?' 'And waistcoats on rats don't work.' 'No?' 'No,' said Darktan. 'I tried it. Tool belts are fine, but waistcoats. Dangerous Beans got quite upset about that. But I told him, you've got to be practical.' 'It's just like I always tell my daughter,' said the man. 'Stories are just stories. Life is complicated enough as it is. We have to plan for the real world. There's no room for the fantastic.' 'Exactly,' said the rat. And man and rat talked, as the long light faded into the evening. A man was painting, very carefully, a little picture underneath the street sign that said 'River Street'. It was a long way underneath, only just higher than the pavement, and he had to kneel down. He kept referring to a small piece of paper in his hand. The picture looked like:   Keith laughed. 'What's funny?' said Malicia. 'It's in the Rat alphabet,' said Keith. 'It says Water+Fast+Stones. The streets have got cobbles on, right? So rats see them as stones. It means River Street.' 'Both languages on the street signs. Clause 193,' said Malicia. 'That's fast. They only agreed that two hours ago. I suppose that means there will be tiny signs in human language in the rat tunnels?' 'I hope not,' said Keith. 'Why not?' 'Because rats mostly mark their tunnels by widdling on them.' He was impressed at the way Malicia's expression didn't change a bit. 'I can see we're all going to have to make some important mental adjustments,' she said, thoughtfully. 'It was odd about Maurice, though, after my father told him there were plenty of kind old ladies in the town that'd be happy to give him a home.' 'You mean when he said that wouldn't be any fun, getting it that way?' said Keith. 'Yes. Do you know what he meant?' 'Sort of. He meant he's Maurice,' said Keith. 'I think he had the time of his life, strutting up and down the table ordering everyone around. He even said the rats could keep the money! He said a little voice in his head told him it was really theirs!' Malicia appeared to think about things for a while, and then said, as if it wasn't very important really, 'And, er… you're staying, yes?' 'Clause 9, Resident Rat Piper,' said Keith. 'I get an official suit that I don't have to share with anyone, a hat with a feather and a pipe allowance.' 'That will be… quite satisfactory,' said Malicia. 'Er…' 'Yes?' 'When I told you that I had two sisters, er, that wasn't entirely true,' she said. 'Er… it wasn't a lie, of course, but it was just… enhanced a bit.' 'Yes.' 'I mean it would be more literally true to say that I have, in fact, no sisters at all.' 'Ah,' said Keith. 'But I have millions of friends, of course,' Malicia went on. She looked, Keith thought, absolutely miserable. 'That's amazing,' he said. 'Most people just have a few dozen.' 'Millions,' said Malicia. 'Obviously, there's always room for another one.' 'Good,' said Keith. 'And, er, there's Clause 5,' said Malicia, still looking a bit nervous. 'Oh, yes,' said Keith. 'That one puzzled everyone. "A slap-up tea with cream buns and a medal", right?' 'Yes,' said Malicia. 'It wouldn't be properly over, otherwise. Would you, er, join me?' Keith nodded. He stared around at the town. It seemed a nice place. Just the right size. A man could find a future here… 'Just one question…' he said. 'Yes?' said Malicia, meekly. 'How long does it take to become mayor?' There's a town in Uberwald where, every time the clock shows a quarter of an hour, the rats come out and strike the bells. And people watch, and cheer, and buy the souvenir gnawed mugs and plates and spoons and clocks and other things which have no use whatsoever other than to be bought and taken home. And they go to the Rat Museum, and they eat RatBurgers (Guaranteed No Rat) and buy Rat Ears that you can wear and buy the books of Rat poetry in Rat language and say 'how odd' when they see the streets signs in Rat and marvel at how the whole place seems so clean… And once a day the town's Rat Piper, who is rather young, plays his pipes and the rats dance to the music, usually in a conga line. It's very popular (on special days a little tap-dancing rat organizes vast dancing spectaculars, with hundreds of rats in sequins, and water ballet in the fountains, and elaborate sets). And there are lectures about the Rat Tax and how the whole system works, and how the rats have a town of their own under the human town, and get free use of the library, and even sometimes send their young rats to the school. And everyone says: How perfect, how well organized, how amazing! And then most of them go back to their own towns and set their traps and put down their poisons, because some minds you couldn't change with a hatchet. But a few see the world as a different place. It's not perfect, but it works. The thing about stories is that you have to pick the ones that last. And far downstream a handsome cat, with only a few bare patches still in its fur, jumped off a barge, sauntered along the dock, and entered a large and prosperous town. It spent a few days beating up the local cats and getting the feel of the place and, most of all, in sitting and watching. Finally, it saw what it wanted. It followed a young lad out of the city. He was carrying a stick over his back, on the end of which was a knotted handkerchief of the kind used by people in story circumstances to carry all their worldly goods. The cat grinned to himself. If you knew their dreams, you could handle people. The cat followed the boy all the way to the first milestone along the road, where the boy stopped for a rest. And heard: 'Hey, stupid-looking kid? Wanna be Lord Mayor? Nah, down here, kid…' Because some stories end, but old stories go on, and you gotta dance to the music if you want to stay ahead. THE END AUTHOR'S NOTE I think I have read, in the past few months, more about rats than is good for me. Most of the true stuff-or, at least, the stuff that people say is true-is so unbelievable that I didn't include it in case readers thought I'd made it up. Rats have been known to escape from a rat pit using the same method Darktan used on poor Jacko. If you don't believe it, this was witnessed by Old Alf, Jimma and Uncle Bob. I have it on the best authority. Rat kings really exist. How they come into existence is a mystery; in this book Malicia mentions a couple of the theories. I am indebted to Dr Jack Cohen for a more modern and depressing one, which is that down the ages some cruel and inventive people have had altogether too much time on their hands. FOOT NOTES [1]: You scrape the butter on. Then you scrape the butter off. Then you eat the bread. [2]: It's hard to translate 'sir' into Rat The rat word for'sir' isn't a word; it's a sort of momentary crouch, indicating that, just at the moment, the crouching rat is prepared to accept that the other rat is the boss, but that he or she shouldn't get funny about it. [3]: Rat measurement. About an inch. [4]: The rats had found one in the town of Quirm, which is where they'd got the Mr Clickies. They were on a shelf labelled 'Kitty Toys', along with a box of squeaky rubber rats called, with great imagination, Mr Squeaky. The rats had tried to set off traps by poking them with a rubber rat on the end of a stick, but the squeak when the trap shut upset everyone. No-one cared about what happened to a Mr Clicky. 
Sourcery - Terry Pratchett	----	Sourcery Sourcery By Terry Pratchett DEDICATION Many years ago I saw, in Bath, a very large American lady towing a huge tartan suitcase very fast on little rattly wheels which caught in the pavement cracks and generally gave it a life of its own. At that moment the Luggage was born. Many thanks to that lady and everyone else in places like Power Cable, Neb., who don’t get nearly enough encouragement. This book does not contain a map. Please feel free to draw your own. There was a man and he had eight sons. Apart from that, he was nothing more than a comma on the page of History. It’s sad, but that’s all you can say about some people. But the eighth son grew up and married and had eight sons, and because there is only one suitable profession for the eighth son of an eighth son, he became a wizard. And he became wise and powerful, or at any rate powerful, and wore a pointed hat and there it would have ended . . . Should have ended . . . But against the Lore of Magic and certainly against all reason-except the reasons of the heart, which are warm and messy and, well, unreasonable - he fled the halls of magic and fell in love and got married, not necessarily in that order. And he had seven sons, each one from the cradle at least as powerful as any wizard in the world. And then he had an eighth son . . . A wizard squared. A source of magic. A sourcerer. Summer thunder rolled around the sandy cliffs. Far below, the sea sucked on the shingle as noisily as an old man with one tooth who had been given a gobstopper. A few seagulls hung lazily in the updraughts, waiting for something to happen. And the father of wizards sat among the thrift and rattling sea grasses at the edge of the cliff, cradling the child in his arms, staring out to sea. There was a roil of black cloud out there, heading inland, and the light it pushed before it had that deep syrup quality it gets before a really serious thunderstorm. He turned at a sudden silence behind him, and looked up through tear-reddened eyes at a tall hooded figure in a black robe. IPSLORE THE RED? it said. The voice was as hollow as a cave, as dense as a neutron star. Ipslore grinned the terrible grin of the suddenly mad, and held up the child for Death’s inspection. “My son,” he said. “I shall call him Coin.” A NAME AS GOOD AS ANY OTHER, said Death politely. His empty sockets stared down at a small round face wrapped in sleep. Despite rumour, Death isn’t cruel-merely terribly, terribly good at his job. “You took his mother,” said Ipslore. It was a flat statement, without apparent rancour. In the valley behind the cliffs Ipslore’s homestead was a smoking ruin, the rising wind already spreading the fragile ashes across the hissing dunes. IT WAS A HEART ATTACK AT THE END, said Death. THERE ARE WORSE WAYS TO DIE. TAKE IT FROM ME. Ipslore looked out to sea. “All my magic could not save her,” he said. THERE ARE PLACES WHERE EVEN MAGIC MAY NOT GO. “And now you have come for the child?” NO. THE CHILD HAS HIS OWN DESTINY I HAVE COME FOR YOU. “Ah.” The wizard stood up, carefully laid the sleeping baby down on the thin grass, and picked up a long staff that had been lying there. It was made of a black metal, with a meshwork of silver and gold carvings that gave it a rich and sinister tastelessness; the metal was octiron, intrinsically magical. “I made this, you know,” he said. “They all said you couldn’t make a staff out of metal, they said they should only be of wood, but they were wrong. I put a lot of myself into it. I shall give it to him.” He ran his hands lovingly along the staff, which gave off a faint tone. He repeated, almost to himself, “I put a lot of myself into it.” IT IS A GOOD STAFF, said Death. Ipslore held it in the air and looked down at his eighth son, who gave a gurgle. “She wanted a daughter,” he said. Death shrugged. Ipslore gave him a look compounded of bewilderment and rage. “What is he?” THE EIGHTH SON OF AN EIGHTH SON OF AN EIGHTH SON, said Death, unhelpfully. The wind whipped at his robe, driving the black clouds overhead. “What does that make him?” A SOURCERER, AS YOU ARE WELL AWARE. Thunder rolled, on cue. “What is his destiny?” shouted Ipslore, above the rising gale. Death shrugged again. He was good at it. SOURCERERS MAKE THEIR OWN DESTINY. THEY TOUCH THE EARTH LIGHTLY. Ipslore leaned on the staff, drumming on it with his fingers, apparently lost in the maze of his own thoughts. His left eyebrow twitched. “No,” he said, softly, “no. I will make his destiny for him.” I ADVISE AGAINST IT. “Be quiet! And listen when I tell you that they drove me out, with their books and their rituals and their Lore! They called themselves wizards, and they had less magic in their whole fat bodies than I have in my little finger! Banished! Me! For showing that I was human! And what would humans be without love?” RARE, said Death. NEVERTHELESS “Listen! They drove us here, to the ends of the world, and that killed her! They tried to take my staff away!” Ipslore was screaming above the noise of the wind. “Well, I still have some power left,” he snarled. “And I say that my son shall go to Unseen University and wear the Archchancellor’s hat and the wizards of the world shall bow to him! And he shall show them what lies in their deepest hearts. Their craven, greedy hearts. He’ll show the world its true destiny, and there will be no magic greater than his.” NO. And the strange thing about the quiet way Death spoke the word was this: it was louder than the roaring of the storm. It jerked Ipslore back to momentary sanity. Ipslore rocked back and forth uncertainly. “What?” he said. I SAID NO. NOTHING IS FINAL. NOTHING IS ABSOLUTE. EXCEPT ME, OF COURSE. SUCH TINKERING WITH DESTINY COULD MEAN THE DOWNFALL OF THE WORLD. THERE MUST BE A CHANCE, HOWEVER SMALL. THE LAWYERS OF FATE DEMAND A LOOPHOLE IN EVERY PROPHECY. Ipslore stared at Death’s implacable face. “I must give them a chance?” YES. Tap, tap, tap went Ipslore’s fingers on the metal of the staff. “Then they shall have their chance,” he said, “when hell freezes over.” NO. I AM NOT ALLOWED TO ENLIGHTEN YOU, EVEN BY DEFAULT, ABOUT CURRENT TEMPERATURES IN THE NEXT WORLD. “Then,” Ipslore hesitated, “then they shall have their chance when my son throws his staff away.” NO WIZARD WOULD EVER THROW HIS STAFF AWAY, said Death. THE BOND IS TOO GREAT. “Yet it is possible, you must agree.” Death appeared to consider this. Must was not a word he was accustomed to hearing, but he seemed to concede the point. AGREED, he said. “Is that a small enough chance for you?” SUFFICIENTLY MOLECULAR. Ipslore relaxed a little. In a voice that was nearly normal, he said: “I don’t regret it, you know. I would do it all again. Children are our hope for the future.” THERE IS NO HOPE FOR THE FUTURE, said Death. “What does it contain, then?” ME. “Besides you I mean!” Death gave him a puzzled look. I’M SORRY? The storm reached its howling peak overhead. A seagull went past backwards. “I meant,” said Ipslore, bitterly, “what is there in this world that makes living worth while?” Death thought about it. CATS, he said eventually, CATS ARE NICE. “Curse you!” MANY HAVE, said Death, evenly. “How much longer do I have?” Death pulled a large hourglass from the secret recesses of his robe. The two bulbs were enclosed in bars of black and gold, and the sand was nearly all in the bottom one. OH, ABOUT NINE SECONDS. Ipslore pulled himself up to his full and still impressive height, and extended the gleaming metal staff towards the child. A hand like a little pink crab reached out from the blanket and grasped it. “Then let me be the first and last wizard in the history of the world to pass on his staff to his eighth son,” he said slowly and sonorously. “And I charge him to use it to-” I SHOULD HURRY UP, IF I WERE YOU . . . “-the full,” said Ipslore, “becoming the mightiest-” The lightning screamed from the heart of the cloud, hit Ipslore on the point of his hat, crackled down his arm, flashed along the staff and struck the child. The wizard vanished in a wisp of smoke. The staff glowed green, then white, then merely red-hot. The child smiled in his sleep. When the thunder had died away Death reached down slowly and picked up the boy, who opened his eyes. They glowed golden, from the inside. For the first time in what, for want of any better word, must be called his life, Death found himself looking at a stare that he found hard to return. The eyes seemed to be focused on a point several inches inside his skull. I did not mean for that to happen, said the voice of Ipslore, from out of the empty air. Is he harmed? NO. Death tore his gaze away from that fresh, knowing smile. HE CONTAINED THE POWER. HE IS A SOURCERER: NO DOUBT HE WILL SURVIVE MUCH WORSE. AND NOW -YOU WILL COME WITH ME. No. YES. YOU ARE DEAD, YOU SEE. Death looked around for Ipslore’s wavering shade, and failed to find it. WHERE ARE YOU? In the staff. Death leaned on his scythe and sighed. FOOLISH. HOW EASILY COULD I CUT YOU LOOSE. Not without destroying the staff, said the voice of Ipslore, and it seemed to Death that there was a new, thick, exultant quality to it. And now the child has accepted the staff you cannot destroy it without destroying him. And that you cannot do without upsetting destiny. My last magic. Rather neat, l feel. Death prodded the staff. It crackled, and sparks crawled obscenely along its length. Strangely enough, he wasn’t particularly angry. Anger is an emotion, and for emotion you need glands, and Death didn’t have much truck with glands and needed a good run at it to get angry. But he was mildly annoyed. He sighed again. People were always trying this sort of thing. On the other hand, it was quite interesting to watch, and at least this was a bit more original than the usual symbolic chess game, which Death always dreaded because he could never remember how the knight was supposed to move. YOU;RE ONLY PUTTING OFF THE INEVITABLE, he said. That’s what being alive is all about. BUT WHAT PRECISELY DO YOU EXPECT TO GAIN? I shall be by my son’s side. l shall teach him, even though he won’t know it. I shall guide his understanding. And, when he is ready, l shall guide his steps. TELL ME, said Death, HOW DID YOU GUIDE THE STEPS OF YOUR OTHER SONS? I drove them out. They dared to argue with me, they would not listen to what I could teach them. But this one will. IS THIS WISE? The staff was silent. Beside it, the boy chuckled at the sound of a voice only he could hear. There was no analogy for the way in which Great A’Tuin the world turtle moved against the galactic night. When you are ten thousand miles long, your shell pocked with meteor craters and frosted with comet ice, there is absolutely nothing you can realistically be like except yourself. So Great A’Tuin swam slowly through the interstellar deeps like the largest turtle there has ever been, carrying on its carapace the four huge elephants that bore on their backs the vast, glittering waterfall-fringed circle of the Discworld, which exists either because of some impossible blip on the curve of probability or because the gods enjoy a joke as much as anyone. More than most people, in fact. Near the shores of the Circle Sea, in the ancient, sprawling city of Ankh-Morpork, on a velvet cushion on a ledge high up in the Unseen University, was a hat. It was a good hat. It was a magnificent hat. It was pointy, of course, with a wide floppy brim, but after disposing of these basic details the designer had really got down to business. There was gold lace on there, and pearls, and bands of purest vermine, and sparkling Ankhstones[1], and some incredibly tasteless sequins, and - a dead giveaway, of course - a circle of octarines. Since they weren’t in a strong magical field at the moment they weren’t glowing, and looked like rather inferior diamonds. Spring had come to Ankh-Morpork. It wasn’t immediately apparent, but there were signs that were obvious to the cognoscenti. For example, the scum on the river Ankh, that great wide slow waterway that served the double city as reservoir, sewer and frequent morgue, had turned a particularly iridescent green. The city’s drunken rooftops sprouted mattresses and bolsters as the winter bedding was put out to air in the weak sunshine, and in the depths of musty cellars the beams twisted and groaned when their dry sap responded to the ancient call of root and forest. Birds nested among the gutters and eaves of Unseen University, although it was noticeable that however great the pressure on the nesting sites they never, ever, made nests in the invitingly open mouths of the gargoyles that lined the rooftops, much to the gargoyles’ disappointment. A kind of spring had even come to the ancient University itself. Tonight would be the Eve of Small Gods, and a new Archchancellor would be elected. Well, not exactly elected, because wizards didn’t have any truck with all this undignified voting business, and it was well known that Archchancellors were selected by the will of the gods, and this year it was a pretty good bet that the gods would see their way clear to selecting old Virrid Wayzygoose, who was a decent old boy and had been patiently waiting his turn for years. The Archchancellor of Unseen University was the official leader of all the wizards on the Disc. Once upon a time it had meant that he would be the most powerful in the handling of magic, but times were a lot quieter now and, to be honest, senior wizards tended to look upon actual magic as a bit beneath them. They tended to prefer administration, which was safer and nearly as much fun, and also big dinners. And so the long afternoon wore on. The hat squatted on its faded cushion in Wayzygoose’s chambers, while he sat in his tub in front of the fire and soaped his beard. Other wizards dozed in their studies, or took a gentle stroll around the gardens in order to work up an appetite for the evening’s feast; about a dozen steps was usually considered quite sufficient. In the Great Hall, under the carved or painted stares of two hundred earlier Archchancellors, the butler’s staff set out the long tables and benches. In the vaulted maze of the kitchens -well, the imagination should need no assistance. It should include lots of grease and heat and shouting, vats of caviar, whole roast oxen, strings of sausages like paperchains strung from wall to wall, the head chef himself at work in one of the cold rooms putting the finishing touches to a model of the University carved for some inexplicable reason out of butter. He kept doing this every time there was a feast - butter swans, butter buildings, whole rancid greasy yellow menageries - and he enjoyed it so much no-one had the heart to tell him to stop. In his own labyrinth of cellars the butler prowled among his casks, decanting and tasting. The air of expectation had even spread to the ravens who inhabited the Tower of Art, eight hundred feet high and reputedly the oldest building in the world. Its crumbling stones supported thriving miniature forests high above the city’s rooftops. Entire species of beetles and small mammals had evolved up there and, since people rarely climbed it these days owing to the tower’s distressing tendency to sway in the breeze, the ravens had it all to themselves. Now they were flying around it in a state of some agitation, like gnats before a thunderstorm. If anyone below is going to take any notice of them it might be a good idea. Something horrible was about to happen. You can tell, can’t you? You’re not the only one. “What’s got into them?” shouted Rincewind above the din. The Librarian ducked as a leather-bound grimoire shot out from its shelf and jerked to a mid-air halt on the end of its chain. Then he dived, rolled and landed on a copy of Maleficio’s Discouverie of Demonologie that was industriously bashing at its lectern. “Oook!” he said. Rincewind put his shoulder against a trembling bookshelf and forced its rustling volumes back into place with his knees. The noise was terrible. Books of magic have a sort of life of their own. Some have altogether too much; for example, the first edition of the Necrotelicomicon has to be kept between iron plates, the True Arte of Levitatione has spent the last one hundred and fifty years up in the rafters, and Ge Fordge’s Compenydyum of Sex Majick is kept in a vat of ice in a room all by itself and there’s a strict rule that it can only be read by wizards who are over eighty and, if possible, dead. But even the everyday grimoires and incunabula on the main shelves were as restless and nervy as the inmates of a chickenhouse with something rank scrabbling under the door. From their shut covers came a muffled scratching, like claws. “What did you say?” screamed Rincewind. “Oook!”[2] “Right!” Rincewind, as honorary assistant librarian, hadn’t progressed much beyond basic indexing and banana fetching, and he had to admire the way the Librarian ambled among the quivering shelves, here running a black-leather hand over a trembling binding, here comforting a frightened thesaurus with a few soothing simian murmurings. After a while the Library began to settle down, and Rincewind felt his shoulder muscles relax. It was a fragile peace, though. Here and there a page rustled. From distant shelves came the ominous creak of a spine. After its initial panic the Library was now as alert and jittery as a long-tailed cat in a rocking-chair factory. The Librarian ambled back down the aisles. He had a face that only a lorry tyre could love and it was permanently locked in a faint smile, but Rincewind could tell by the way the ape crept into his cubbyhole under the desk and hid his head under a blanket that he was deeply worried. Examine Rincewind, as he peers around the sullen shelves. There are eight levels of wizardry on the Disc; after sixteen years Rincewind has failed to achieve even level one. In fact it is the considered opinion of some of his tutors that he is incapable even of achieving level zero, which most normal people are born at; to put it another way, it has been suggested that when Rincewind dies the average occult ability of the human race will actually go up by a fraction. He is tall and thin and has the scrubby kind of beard that looks like the kind of beard worn by people who weren’t cut out by nature to be beard wearers. He is dressed in a dark red robe that has seen better days, possibly better decades. But you can tell he’s a wizard, because he’s got a pointy hat with a floppy brim. It’s got the word “Wizzard” embroidered on it in big silver letters, by someone whose needlework is even worse than their spelling. There’s a star on top. It has lost most of its sequins. Clamping his hat on his head, Rincewind pushed his way through the Library’s ancient doors and stepped out into the golden light of the afternoon. It was calm and quiet, broken only by the hysterical croaking of the ravens as they circled the Tower of Art. Rincewind watched them for a while. The University’s ravens were a tough bunch of birds. It took a lot to unsettle them. On the other hand- -the sky was pale blue tinted with gold, with a few high wisps of fluffy cloud glowing pinkly in the lengthening light. The ancient chestnut trees in the quadrangle were in full bloom. From an open window came the sound of a student wizard practising the violin, rather badly. It was not what you would call ominous. Rincewind leaned against the warm stonework. And screamed. The building was shuddering. He could feel it come up through his hand and along his arms, a faint rhythmic sensation at just the right frequency to suggest uncontrollable terror. The stones themselves were frightened. He looked down in horror at a faint clinking noise. An ornamental drain cover fell backwards and one of the University’s rats poked its whiskers out. It gave Rincewind a desperate look as it scrambled up and fled past him, followed by dozens of its tribe. Some of them were wearing clothes but that wasn’t unusual for the University, where the high level of background magic does strange things to genes. As he stared around him Rincewind could see other streams of grey bodies leaving the University by every drainpipe and flowing towards the outside wall. The ivy by his ear rustled and a group of rats made a series of death-defying leaps on to his shoulders and slid down his robe. They otherwise ignored him totally but, again, this wasn’t particularly unusual. Most creatures ignored Rincewind. He turned and fled into the University, skirts flapping around his knees, until he reached the bursar’s study. He hammered on the door, which creaked open. “Ah. It’s, um, Rincewind, isn’t it?” said the bursar, without much enthusiasm. “What’s the matter?” “We’re sinking!” The bursar stared at him for a few moments. His name was Spelter. He was tall and wiry and looked as though he had been a horse in previous lives and had only just avoided it in this one. He always gave people the impression that he was looking at them with his teeth. “Sinking?” “Yes. All the rats are leaving!” The bursar gave him another stare. “Come inside, Rincewind,” he said, kindly. Rincewind followed him into the low, dark room and across to the window. It looked out over the gardens to the river, oozing peacefully towards the sea. “You haven’t been, um, overdoing it?” said the bursar. “Overdoing what?” said Rincewind, guiltily. “This is a building, you see,” said the bursar. Like most wizards when faced with a puzzle, he started to roll himself a cigarette. “It’s not a ship. There are ways of telling, you know. Absence of porpoises frolicking around the bows, a shortage of bilges, that sort of thing. The chances of foundering are remote. Otherwise, um, we’d have to man the sheds and row for shore. Um?” “But the rats-” “Grain ship in harbour, I expect. Some, um, springtime ritual.” “I’m sure I felt the building shaking, too,” said Rincewind, a shade uncertainly. Here in this quiet room, with the fire crackling in the grate, it didn’t seem quite so real. “A passing tremor. Great A’Tuin hiccuping, um, possibly. A grip on youself, um, is what you should get. You haven’t been drinking, have you?” “No!” “Um. Would you like to?” Spelter padded over to a dark oak cabinet and pulled out a couple of glasses, which he filled from the water jug. “I tend to be best at sherry this time of day,” he said, and spread his hands over the glasses. “Say, um, the word - sweet or dry?” “Um, no,” said Rincewind. “Perhaps you’re right. I think I’ll go and have a bit of rest.” “Good idea.” Rincewind wandered down the chilly stone passages. Occasionally he’d touch the wall and appear to be listening, and then he’d shake his head. As he crossed the quadrangle again he saw a herd of mice swarm over a balcony and scamper towards the river. The ground they were running over seemed to be moving, too. When Rincewind looked closer he could see that it was because it was covered with ants. These weren’t ordinary ants. Centuries of magical leakage into the walls of the University had done strange things to them. Some of them were pulling very small carts, some of them were riding beetles, but all of them were leaving the University as quickly as possible. The grass on the lawn rippled as they passed. He looked up as an elderly striped mattress was extruded from an upper window and flopped down on to the flagstones below. After a pause, apparently to catch its breath, it rose a little from the ground. Then it started to float purposefully across the lawn and bore down on Rincewind, who managed to jump out of its way just in time. He heard a high-pitched chittering and caught a glimpse of thousands of determined little legs under the bulging fabric before it hurtled onward. Even the bedbugs were on the move, and in case they didn’t find such comfortable quarters elsewhere they were leaving nothing to chance. One of them waved at him and squeaked a greeting. Rincewind backed away until something touched the back of his legs and froze his spine. It turned out to be a stone seat. He watched it for some time. It didn’t seem in any hurry to run away. He sat down gratefully. There’s probably a natural explanation, he thought. Or a perfectly normal unnatural one, anyway. A gritty noise made him look across the lawn. There was no natural explanation of this. With incredible slowness, easing themselves down parapets and drainpipes in total silence except for the occasional scrape of stone on stone, the gargoyles were leaving the roof. It’s a shame that Rincewind had never seen poor quality stop-motion photography, because then he would have known exactly how to describe what he was seeing. The creatures didn’t exactly move, but they managed to progress in a series of high speed tableaux, and lurched past him in a spindly procession of beaks, manes, wings, claws and pigeon droppings. “What’s happening?” he squeaked. A thing with a goblin’s face, harpy’s body and hen’s legs turned its head in a series of little jerks and spoke in a voice like the peristalsis of mountains (although the deep resonant effect was rather spoiled because, of course, it couldn’t close its mouth). It said: “A Ourcerer is umming! Eee orr ife!” Rincewind said “Pardon?” But the thing had gone past and was lurching awkwardly across the ancient lawn.[3] So Rincewind sat and stared blankly at nothing much for fully ten seconds before giving a little scream and running as fast as he could. He didn’t stop until he’d reached his own room in the Library building. It wasn’t much of a room, being mainly used to store old furniture, but it was home. Against one shadowy wall was a wardrobe. It wasn’t one of your modern wardrobes, fit only for nervous adulterers to jump into when the husband returned home early, but an ancient oak affair, dark as night, in whose dusty depths coat-hangers lurked and bred; herds of flaking shoes roamed its floor. It was quite possible that it was a secret doorway to fabulous worlds, but no-one had ever tried to find out because of the distressing smell of mothballs. And on top of the wardrobe, wrapped in scraps of yellowing paper and old dust sheets, was a large brassbound chest. It went by the name of the Luggage. Why it consented to be owned by Rincewind was something only the Luggage knew, and it wasn’t telling, but probably no other item in the entire chronicle of travel accessories had quite such a history of mystery and grievous bodily harm. It had been described as half suitcase, half homicidal maniac. It had many unusual qualities which may or may not become apparent soon, but currently there was only one that set it apart from any other brassbound chest. It was snoring, with a sound like someone very slowly sawing a log. The Luggage might be magical. It might be terrible. But in its enigmatic soul it was kin to every other piece of luggage throughout the multiverse, and preferred to spend its winters hibernating on top of a wardrobe. Rincewind hit it with a broom until the sawing stopped, filled his pockets with odds and ends from the banana crate he used as a dressing table, and made for the door. He couldn’t help noticing that his mattress had gone but that didn’t matter because he was pretty clear that he was never going to sleep on a mattress again, ever. The Luggage landed on the floor with a solid thump. After a few seconds, and with extreme care, it rose up on hundreds of little pink legs. It tilted backwards and forwards a bit, stretching every leg, and then it opened its lid and yawned. “Are you coming or not?” The lid shut with a snap. The Luggage manoeuvred its feet into a complicated shuffle until it was facing the doorway, and headed after its master. The Library was still in a state of tension, with the occasional clinking[4] of a chain or muffled crackle of a page. Rincewind reached under the desk and grabbed the Librarian who was still hunched under his blanket. “Come on, I said!” “Oook.” “I’ll buy you a drink,” said Rincewind desperately. The Librarian unfolded like a four-legged spider. “Oook?” Rincewind half-dragged the ape from his nest and out through the door. He didn’t head for the main gates but for an otherwise undistinguished area of wall where a few loose stones had, for two thousand years, offered students an unobtrusive way in after lights-out. Then he stopped so suddenly that the Librarian cannoned into him and the Luggage ran into both of them. “Oook!” “Oh, gods,” he said. “Look at that!” “Oook?” There was a shiny black tide flowing out of a grating near the kitchens. Early evening starlight glinted off millions of little black backs. But it wasn’t the sight of the cockroaches that was so upsetting. It was the fact that they were marching in step, a hundred abreast. Of course, like all the informal inhabitants of the University the roaches were a little unusual, but there was something particularly unpleasant about the sound of billions of very small feet hitting the stones in perfect time. Rincewind stepped gingerly over the marching column. The Librarian jumped it. The Luggage, of course, followed them with a noise like someone tapdancing over a bag of crisps. And so, forcing the Luggage to go all the way around to the gates anyway, because otherwise it’d only batter a hole in the wall, Rincewind quit the University with all the other insects and small frightened rodents and decided that if a few quiet beers wouldn’t allow him to see things in a different light, then a few more probably would. It was certainly worth a try. That was why he wasn’t present in the Great Hall for dinner. It would turn out to be the most important missed meal of his life. Further along the University wall there was a faint clink as a grapnel caught the spikes that lined its top. A moment later a slim, black-clad figure dropped lightly into the University grounds and ran soundlessly towards the Great Hall, where it was soon lost in the shadows. No-one would have noticed it anyway. On the other side of the campus the Sourcerer was walking towards the gates of the University. Where his feet touched the cobbles blue sparks crackled and evaporated the early evening dew. It was very hot. The big fireplace at the turnwise end of the Great Hall was practically incandescent. Wizards feel the cold easily, so the sheer blast of heat from the roaring logs was melting candles twenty feet away and bubbling the varnish on the long tables. The air over the feast was blue with tobacco smoke, which writhed into curious shapes as it was bent by random drifts of magic. On the centre table the complete carcass of a whole roast pig looked extremely annoyed at the fact that someone had killed it without waiting for it to finish its apple, and the model University made of butter was sinking gently into a pool of grease. There was a lot of beer about. Here and there red-faced wizards were happily singing ancient drinking songs which involved a lot of knee-slapping and cries of “Ho!” The only possible excuse for this sort of thing is that wizards are celibate, and have to find their amusement where they can. Another reason for the general conviviality was the fact that no-one was trying to kill anyone else. This is an unusual state of affairs in magical circles. The higher levels of wizardry are a perilous place. Every wizard is trying to dislodge the wizards above him while stamping on the fingers of those below; to say that wizards are healthily competitive by nature is like saying that piranhas are naturally a little peckish. However, ever since the great Mage Wars left whole areas of the Disc uninhabitable[5], wizards have been forbidden to settle their differences by magical means, because it caused a lot of trouble for the population at large and in any case it was often difficult to tell which of the resultant patches of smoking fat had been the winner. So they traditionally resort to knives, subtle poisons, scorpions in shoes and hilarious booby traps involving razor-sharp pendulums. On Small Gods’ Eve, however, it was considered extremely bad form to kill a brother wizard, and wizards felt able to let their hair down without fear of being strangled with it. The Archchancellor’s chair was empty. Wayzygoose was dining alone in his study, as befits a man chosen by the gods after their serious discussion with sensible senior wizards earlier in the day. Despite his eighty years, he was feeling a little bit nervous and hardly touched his second chicken. In a few minutes he would have to make a speech. Wayzygoose had, in his younger days, sought power in strange places; he’d wrestled with demons in blazing octagrams, stared into dimensions that men were not meant to wot of, and even outfaced the Unseen University grants committee, but nothing in the eight circles of nothingness was quite so bad as a couple of hundred expectant faces staring up at him through the cigar smoke. The heralds would soon be coming by to collect him. He sighed and pushed his pudding away untasted, crossed the room, stood in front of the big mirror, and fumbled in the pocket of the robe for his notes. After a while he managed to get them in some sort of order and cleared his throat. “My brothers in art,” he began, “I cannot tell you how much I -er, how much . . . fine traditions of this ancient university . . . er . . . as I look around me and see the pictures of Archchancellors gone before . . .” He paused, sorted through his notes again, and plunged on rather more certainly. “Standing here tonight I am reminded of the story about the three-legged pedlar and the, er, merchant’s daughters. It seems that this merchant . . .” There was a knock at the door. “Enter,” Wayzygoose barked, and peered at the notes carefully. “This merchant,” he muttered, “this merchant, yes, this merchant had three daughters. I think it was. Yes. It was three. It would appear. . .” He looked into the mirror, and turned round. He started to say, “Who are y-” And found that there are things worse than making speeches, after all. The small dark figure creeping along the deserted corridors heard the noise, and didn’t take too much notice. Unpleasant noises were not uncommon in areas where magic was commonly practised. The figure was looking for something. It wasn’t sure what it was, only that it would know it when it found, it. After some minutes its search led it to Wayzygoose’s room. The air was full of greasy coils. Little particles of soot drifted gently on the air currents, and there were several foot-shaped burn marks on the floor. The figure shrugged. There was no accounting for the sort of things you found in wizard’s rooms. It caught sight of its multifaceted reflection in the shattered mirror, adjusted the set of its hood, and got on with the search. Moving like one listening to inner directions, it padded noiselessly across the room until it reached the table whereon stood a tall, round and battered leather box. It crept closer and gently raised the lid. The voice from inside sounded as though it was talking through several layers of carpet when it said, At last. What kept you? “I mean, how did they all get started? I mean, back in the old times, there were real wizards, there was none of this levels business. They just went out and - did it. POW!” One or two of the other customers in the darkened bar of the Mended Drum tavern looked around hastily at the noise. They were new in town. Regular customers never took any notice of surprising noises like groans or unpleasantly gristly sounds. It was a lot healthier. In some parts of the city curiosity didn’t just kill the cat, it threw it in the river with lead weights tied to its feet. Rincewind’s hands weaved unsteadily over the array of empty glasses on the table in front of him. He’d almost been able to forget about the cockroaches. After another drink he might manage to forget about the mattress, too. “Whee! A fireball! Fizz! Vanishing like smoke! Whee!- Sorry.” The Librarian carefully pulled what remained of his beer out of the reach of Rincewind’s flailing arms. “Proper magic.” Rincewind stifled a belch. “Oook.” Rincewind stared into the frothy remnants of his last beer, and then, with extreme care in case the top of his head fell off, leaned down and poured some into a saucer for the Luggage. It was lurking under the table, which was a relief. It usually embarrassed him in bars by sidling up to drinkers and terrorising them into feeding it crisps. He wondered fuzzily where his train of thought had been derailed. “Where was I?” “Oook,” the Librarian hinted. “Yeah.” Rincewind brightened. “They didn’t have all this levels and grades business, you know. They had sourcerers in those days. They went out in the world and found new spells and had adventures-” He dipped a finger in a puddle of beer and doodled a design on the stained, scratched timber of the table. One of Rincewind’s tutors had said of him that “to call his understanding of magical theory abysmal is to leave no suitable word to describe his grasp of its practice.” This had always puzzled him. He objected to the fact that you had to be good at magic to be a wizard. He knew he was a wizard, deep in his head. Being good at magic didn’t have anything to do with it. That was just an extra, it didn’t actually define somebody. “When I was a little boy,” he said wistfully, “I saw this picture of a sourcerer in a book. He was standing on a mountain top waving his arms and the waves were coming right up, you know, like they do down in Ankh Bay in a gale, and there were flashes of lightning all round him-” “Oook?” “I don’t know why they didn’t, perhaps he had rubber boots on,” Rincewind snapped, and went on dreamily, “And he had this staff and a hat on, just like mine, and his eyes were sort of glowing and there was all this sort of like glitter coming out of his fingertips, and I thought one day I’ll do that, and-” “Oook?” “Just a half, then.” “Oook.” “How do you pay for this stuff? Every time anyone gives you any money you eat it.” “Oook.” “Amazing.” Rincewind completed his sketch in the beer. There was a stick figure on a cliff. It didn’t look much like him - drawing in stale beer is not a precise art - but it was meant to. “That’s what I wanted to be,” he said. “Pow! Not all this messing around. All this books and stuff, that isn’t what it should all be about. What we need is real wizardry.” That last remark would have earned the prize for the day’s most erroneous statement if Rincewind hadn’t then said: “It’s a pity there aren’t any of them around any more.” Spelter rapped on the table with his spoon. He was an impressive figure, in his ceremonial robe with the purple-and-vermine[6] hood of the Venerable Council of Seers and the yellow sash of a fifth level wizard; he’d been fifth level for three years, waiting for one of the sixty-four sixth level wizards to create a vacancy by dropping dead. He was in an amiable mood, however. Not only had he just finished a good dinner, he also had in his quarters a small phial of a guaranteed untastable poison which, used correctly, should guarantee him promotion within a few months. Life looked good. The big clock at the end of the hall trembled on the verge of nine o;clock. The tattoo with the spoon hadn’t had much effect. Spelter picked up a pewter tankard and brought it down hard. “Brothers!” he shouted, and nodded as the hubbub died away. “Thank you. Be upstanding, please, for the ceremony of the, um, keys.” There was a ripple of laughter and a general buzz of expectancy as the wizards pushed back their benches and got unsteadily to their feet. The double doors to the hall were locked and triple barred. An incoming Archchancellor had to request entry three times before they would be unlocked, signifying that he was appointed with the consent of wizardry in general. Or some such thing. The origins were lost in the depths of time, which was as good a reason as any for retaining the custom. The conversation died away. The assembled wizardry stared at the doors. There was a soft knocking. “Go away!” shouted the wizards, some of them collapsing at the sheer subtlety of the humour. Spelter picked up the great iron ring that contained the keys to the University. They weren’t all metal. They weren’t all visible. Some of them looked very strange indeed. “Who is that who knocketh without?” he intoned. “I do.” What was strange about the voice was this: it seemed to every wizard that the speaker was standing right behind him. Most of them found themselves looking over their shoulders. In that moment of shocked silence there was the sharp little snick of the lock. They watched in fascinated horror as the iron bolts travelled back of their own accord; the great oak balks of timber, turned by Time into something tougher than rock, slid out of their sockets; the hinges flared from red through yellow to white and then exploded. Slowly, with a terrible inevitability, the doors fell into the hall. There was an indistinct figure standing in the smoke from the burning hinges. “Bloody hell, Virrid,” said one of the wizards nearby, “that was a good one.” As the figure strode into the light they could all see that it was not, after all, Virrid Wayzygoose. He was at least a head shorter than any other wizard, and wore a simple white robe. He was also several decades younger; he looked about ten years old, and in one hand he held a staff considerably taller than he was. “Here, he’s no wizard-” “Where’s his hood, then?” “Where’s his hat?” The stranger walked up the line of astonished wizards until he was standing in front of the top table. Spelter looked down at a thin young face framed by a mass of blond hair, and most of all he looked into two golden eyes that glowed from within. But he felt they weren’t looking at him. They seemed to be looking at a point six inches beyond the back of his head. Spelter got the impression that he was in the way, and considerably surplus to immediate requirements. He rallied his dignity and pulled himself up to his full height. “What is the meaning of, um, this?” he said. It was pretty weak, he had to admit, but the steadiness of that incandescent glare appeared to be stripping all the words out of his memory. “I have come,” said the stranger. “Come? Come for what?” “To take my place. Where is the seat for me?” “Are you a student?” demanded Spelter, white with anger. “What is your name, young man?” The boy ignored him and looked around at the assembled wizards. “Who is the most powerful wizard here?” he said. “I wish to meet him.” Spelter nodded his head. Two of the college porters, who had been sidling towards the newcomer for the last few minutes, appeared at either elbow. “Take him out and throw him in the street,” said Spelter. The porters, big solid serious men, nodded. They gripped the boy’s pipestem arms with hands like banana bunches. “Your father will hear of this,” said Spelter severely. “He already has,” said the boy. He glanced up at the two men and shrugged. “What’s going on here?” Spelter turned to see Skarmer Billias, head of the Order of the Silver Star. Whereas Spelter tended towards the wiry, Billias was expansive, looking rather like a small captive balloon that had for some reason been draped in blue velvet and vermine; between them, the wizards averaged out as two normal-sized men. Unfortunately, Billias was the type of person who prided himself on being good with children. He bent down as far as his dinner would allow and thrust a whiskery red face towards the boy. “What’s the matter, lad?” he said. “This child had forced his way into here because, he says, he wants to meet a powerful wizard,” said Spelter, disapprovingly. Spelter disliked children intensely, which was perhaps why they found him so fascinating. At the moment he was successfully preventing himself from wondering about the door. “Nothing wrong with that,” said Billias. “Any lad worth his salt wants to be a wizard. I wanted to be a wizard when I was a lad. Isn’t that right lad?” “Are you puissant?” said the boy. “Hmm?” “I said, are you puissant? How powerful are you?” “Powerful?” said Billias. He stood up, fingered his eighth-level sash, and winked at Spelter. “Oh, pretty powerful. Quite powerful as wizards go.” “Good. I challenge you. Show me your strongest magic. And when I have beaten you, why, then I shall be Archchancellor.” “Why, you impudent-” began Spelter, but his protest was lost in the roar of laughter from the rest of the wizards. Billias slapped his knees, or as near to them as he could reach. “A duel, eh?” he said. “Pretty good, eh?” “Duelling is forbidden, as well you know,” said Spelter. “Anyway, it’s totally ridiculous! I don’t know who did the doors for him, but I will not stand here and see you waste all our time-” “Now, now,” said Billias. “What’s your name, lad?” “Coin.” “Coin sir,” snapped Spelter. “Well, now, Coin,” said Billias. “You want to see the best I can do, eh?” “Yes.” “Yes sir,” snapped Spelter. Coin gave him an unblinking stare, a stare as old as time, the kind of stare that basks on rocks on volcanic islands and never gets tired. Spelter felt his mouth go dry. Billias held out his hands for silence. Then, with a theatrical flourish, he rolled up the sleeve of his left arm and extended his hand. The assembled wizards watched with interest. Eighth-levels were above magic, as a rule, spending most of their time in contemplation - normally of the next menu - and, of course, avoiding the attentions of ambitious wizards of the seventh-level. This should be worth seeing. Billias grinned at the boy, who returned it with a stare that focused on a point a few inches beyond the back of the old wizard’s head. Somewhat disconcerted, Billias flexed his fingers. Suddenly this wasn’t quite the game he had intended, and he felt an overpowering urge to impress. It was swiftly overtaken by a surge of annoyance at his own stupidity in being unnerved. “I shall show you,” he said, and took a deep breath, “Maligree’s Wonderful Garden.” There was a susurration from the diners. Only four wizards in the entire history of the University had ever succeeded in achieving the complete Garden. Most wizards could create the trees and flowers, and a few had managed the birds. It wasn’t the most powerful spell, it couldn’t move mountains, but achieving the fine detail built into Maligree’s complex syllables took a finely tuned skill. “You will observe,” Billias added, “nothing up my sleeve.” His lips began to move. His hands flickered through the air. A pool of golden sparks sizzled in the palm of his hand, curved up, formed a faint sphere, began to fill in the detail . . . Legend had it that Maligree, one of the last of the true sourcerers, created the Garden as a small, timeless, private self-locking universe where he could have a quiet smoke and a bit of a think while avoiding the cares of the world. Which was itself a puzzle, because no wizard could possibly understand how any being as powerful as a sourcerer could have a care in the world. Whatever the reason, Maligree retreated further and further into a world of his own and then, one day, closed the entrance after him. The garden was a glittering ball in Billias’s hands. The nearest wizards craned admiringly over his shoulders, and looked down into a two-foot sphere that showed a delicate, flower-strewn landscape; there was a lake in the middle distance, complete in every ripple, and purple mountains behind an interesting-looking forest. Tiny birds the size of bees flew from tree to tree, and a couple of deer no larger than mice glanced up from their grazing and stared out at Coin. Who said critically: “It’s quite good. Give it to me.” He took the intangible globe out of the wizard’s hands and held it up. “Why isn’t it bigger?” he said. Billias mopped his brow with a lace-edged handkerchief. “Well,” he said weakly, so stunned by Coin’s tone that he was quite unable to be affronted, “since the old days, the efficacity of the spell has rather-” Coin stood with his head on one side for a moment, as though listening to something. Then he whispered a few syllables and stroked the surface of the sphere. It expanded. One moment it was a toy in the boy’s hands, and the next . . . . . . the wizards were standing on cool grass, in a shady meadow rolling down to the lake. There was a gentle breeze blowing from the mountains; it was scented with thyme and hay. The sky was deep blue shading to purple at the zenith. The deer watched the newcomers suspiciously from their grazing ground under the trees. Spelter looked down in shock. A peacock was pecking at his bootlaces. “-” he began, and stopped. Coin was still holding a sphere, a sphere of air. Inside it, distorted as though seen through a fisheye lens or the bottom of a bottle, was the Great Hall of Unseen University. The boy looked around at the trees, squinted thoughtfully at the distant, snow-capped mountains, and nodded at the astonished men. “It’s not bad,” he said. “I should like to come here again.” He moved his hands in a complicated motion that seemed, in some unexplained way, to turn them inside out. Now the wizards were back in the hall, and the boy was holding the shrinking Garden in his palm. In the heavy, shocked silence he put it back into Billias’s hands, and said: “That was quite interesting. Now I will do some magic.” He raised his hands, stared at Billias, and vanished him. Pandemonium broke out, as it tends to on these occasions. In the centre of it stood Coin, totally composed, in a spreading cloud of greasy smoke. Ignoring the tumult, Spelter bent down slowly and, with extreme care, picked a peacock feather off the floor. He rubbed it thoughtfully back and forth across his lips as he looked from the doorway to the boy to the vacant Archchancellor’s chair, and his thin mouth narrowed, and he began to smile. An hour later, as thunder began to roll in the clear skies above the city, and Rincewind was beginning to sing gently and forget all about cockroaches, and a lone mattress was wandering the streets, Spelter shut the door of the Archchancellor’s study and turned to face his fellow mages. There were six of them, and they were very worried. They were so worried, Spelter noted, that they were listening to him, a mere fifth level wizard. “He’s gone to bed,” he said, “with a hot milk drink.” “Milk?” said one of the wizards, with tired horror in his voice. “He’s too young for alcohol”, explained the bursar. “Oh, yes. Silly of me.” The hollow-eyed wizard opposite said: “Did you see what he did to the door?” “I know what he did to Billias!” “What did he do?” “I don’t want to know!” “Brothers, brothers,” said Spelter soothingly. He looked down at their worried faces and thought: too many dinners. Too many afternoons waiting for the servants to bring in the tea. Too much time spent in stuffy rooms reading old books written by dead men. Too much gold brocade and ridiculous ceremony. Too much fat. The whole University is ripe for one good push . . . Or one good pull . . . “I wonder if we really have, um, a problem here,” he said. Gravie Derment of the Sages of the Unknown Shadow hit the table with his fist. “Good grief, man!” he snapped. “Some child wanders in out of the night, beats two of the University’s finest, sits down in the Archchancellor’s chair and you wonder if we have a problem? The boy’s a natural! From what we’ve seen tonight, there isn’t a wizard on the Disc who could stand against him!” “Why should we stand against him?” said Spelter, in a reasonable tone of voice. “Because he’s more powerful than we are!” “Yes?” Spelter’s voice would have made a sheet of glass look like a ploughed field, it made honey look like gravel. “It stands to reason-” Gravie hesitated. Spelter gave him an encouraging smile. “Ahem.” The ahemmer was Marmaric Carding, head of the Hoodwinkers. He steepled his beringed fingers and peered sharply at Spelter over the top of them. The bursar disliked him intensely. He had considerable doubt about the man’s intelligence. He suspected it might be quite high, and that behind those vein-crazed jowls was a mind full of brightly polished little wheels, spinning like mad. “He does not seem overly inclined to use that power,” said Carding. “What about Billias and Virrid?” “Childish pique,” said Carding. The other wizards stared from him to the bursar. They were aware of something going on, and couldn’t quite put their finger on it. The reason that wizards didn’t rule the Disc was quite simple. Hand any two wizards a piece of rope and they would instinctively pull in opposite directions. Something about their genetics or their training left them with an attitude towards mutual co-operation that made an old bull elephant with terminal toothache look like a worker ant. Spelter spread his hands. “Brothers,” he said again, “do you not see what has happened? Here is a gifted youth, perhaps raised in isolation out in the untutored, um, countryside, who, feeling the ancient call of the magic in his bones, has journeyed far across tortuous terrain, through who knows what perils, and at last has reached his journey’s end, alone and afraid, seeking only the steadying influence of us, his tutors, to shape and guide his talents? Who are we to turn him away, into the, um, wintry blast, shunning his-” The oration was interrupted by Gravie blowing his nose. “It’s not winter,” said one of the other wizards flatly, “and it’s quite a warm night.” “Out into the treacherously changeable spring weather,” snarled Spelter, “and cursed indeed would be the man who failed, um, at this time-” “It’s nearly summer.” Carding rubbed the side of his nose thoughtfully. “The boy has a staff,” he said. “Who gave it to him? Did you ask?” “No,” said Spelter, still glowering at the almanackical interjector. Carding started to look at his fingernails in what Spelter considered to be a meaningful way. “Well, whatever the problem, I feel sure it can wait until morning,” he said in what Spelter felt was an ostentatiously bored voice. “Ye gods, he blew Billias away!” said Gravie. “And they say there’s nothing in Virrid’s room but soot!” “They were perhaps rather foolish,” said Carding smoothly. “I am sure, my good brother, that you would not be defeated in affairs of the Art by a mere stripling?” Gravie hesitated. “Well, er,” he said, “no. Of course not.” He looked at Carding’s innocent smile and coughed loudly. “Certainly not, of course. Billias was very foolish. However, some prudent caution is surely-” “Then let us all be cautious in the morning,” said Carding cheerfully. “Brothers, let us adjourn this meeting. The boy sleeps, and in that at least he is showing us the way. This will look better in the light.” “I have seen things that didn’t,” said Gravie darkly, who didn’t trust Youth. He held that no good ever came of it. The senior wizards filed out and back to the Great Hall, where the dinner had got to the ninth course and was just getting into its stride. It takes more than a bit of magic and someone being blown to smoke in front of him to put a wizard off his food. For some unexplained reason Spelter and Carding were the last to leave. They sat at either end of the long table, watching each other like cats. Cats can sit at either end of a lane and watch each other for hours, performing the kind of mental manoeuvring that would make a grand master appear impulsive by comparison, but cats have got nothing on wizards. Neither was prepared to make a move until he had run the entire forthcoming conversation through his mind to see if it left him a move ahead. Spelter weakened first. “All wizards are brothers,” he said. “We should trust one another. I have information.” “I know,” said Carding. “You know who the boy is.” Spelter’s lips moved soundlessly as he tried to foresee the next bit of the exchange. “You can’t be certain of that,” he said, after a while. “My dear Spelter, you blush when you inadvertently tell the truth.” “I didn’t blush!” “Precisely,” said Carding, “my point.” “All right,” Spelter conceded. “But you think you know something else.” The fat wizard shrugged. “A mere suspicion of a hunch,” he said. “But why should I ally,” he rolled the unfamiliar word around his tongue, “with you, a mere fifth level? I could more certainly obtain the information by rendering down your living brain. I mean no offence, you understand, I ask only for knowledge.” The events of the next few seconds happened far too fast to be understood by non-wizards, but went approximately like this: Spelter had been drawing the signs of Megrim’s Accelerator in the air under cover of the table. Now he muttered a syllable under his breath and fired the spell along the tabletop, where it left a smoking path in the varnish and met, about halfway, the silver snakes of Brother Hushmaster’s Potent Asp-Spray as they spewed from Carding’s fingertips. The two spells cannoned into one another, turned into a ball of green fire and exploded, filling the room with fine yellow crystals. The wizards exchanged the kind of long, slow glare you could roast chestnuts on. Bluntly, Carding was surprised. He shouldn’t have been. Eighth-level wizards are seldom faced with challenging tests of magical skill. In theory there are only seven other wizards of equal power and every lesser wizard is, by definition - well, lesser. This makes them complacent. But Spelter, on the other hand, was at the fifth level. It may be quite tough at the top, and it is probably even tougher at the bottom, but halfway up it’s so tough you could use it for horseshoes. By then all the no-hopers, the lazy, the silly and the downright unlucky have been weeded out, the field’s cleared, and every wizard stands alone and surrounded by mortal enemies on every side. There’s the pushy fours below, waiting to trip him up. There’s the arrogant sixes above, anxious to stamp out all ambition. And, of course, all around are his fellow fives, ready for any opportunity to reduce the competition a little. And there’s no standing still. Wizards of the fifth level are mean and tough and have reflexes of steel and their eyes are thin and narrow from staring down the length of that metaphorical last furlong at the end of which rests the prize of prizes, the Archchancellor’s hat. The novelty of co-operation began to appeal to Carding. There was worthwhile power here, which could be bribed into usefulness for as long as it was necessary. Of course, afterwards it might have to be - discouraged . . . Spelter thought: patronage. He’d heard the term used, though never within the University, and he knew it meant getting those above you to give you a leg up. Of course, no wizard would normally dream of giving a colleague a leg up unless it was in order to catch them on the hop. The mere thought of actually encouraging a competitor . . . But on the other hand, this old fool might be of assistance for a while, and afterwards, well . . . They looked at one another with mutual, grudging admiration and unlimited mistrust, but at least it was a mistrust each one felt he could rely on. Until afterwards. “His name is Coin,” said Spelter. “He says his father’s name is Ipslore.” “I wonder how many brothers has he got?” said Spelter. “I’m sorry?” “There hasn’t been magic like that in this university in centuries,” said Carding, “maybe for thousands of years. I’ve only ever read about it.” “We banished an Ipslore thirty years ago,” said Spelter. “According to the records, he’d got married. I can see that if he had sons, um, they’d be wizards, but I don’t understand how-” “That wasn’t wizardry. That was sourcery,” said Carding, leaning back in his chair. Spelter stared at him across the bubbling varnish. “Sourcery?” “The eighth son of a wizard would be a sourcerer.” “I didn’t know that!” “It is not widely advertised.” “Yes, but - sourcerers were a long time ago, I mean, the magic was a lot stronger then, um, men were different . . . it didn’t have anything to do with, well, breeding.” Spelter was thinking, eight sons, that means he did it eight times. At least. Gosh. “Sourcerers could do everything,” he went on. “They were nearly as powerful as the gods. Um. There was no end of trouble. The gods simply wouldn’t allow that sort of thing any more, depend upon it.” “Well, there was trouble because the sourcerers fought among themselves,” said Carding, “But one sourcerer wouldn’t be any trouble. One sourcerer correctly advised, that is. By older and wiser minds.” “But he wants the Archchancellor’s hat!” “Why can’t he have it?” Spelter’s mouth dropped open. This was too much, even for him. Carding smiled at him amiably. “But the hat-” “It’s just a symbol,” said Carding. “It’s nothing special. If he wants it, he can have it. It’s a small enough thing. Just a symbol, nothing more. A figurehat.” “Figurehat?” “Worn by a figurehead.” “But the gods choose the Archchancellor!” Carding raised an eyebrow. “Do they?” he said, and coughed. “Well, yes, I suppose they do. In a manner of speaking.” “In a manner of speaking?” Carding got up and gathered his skirts around him. “I think,” he said, “that you have a great deal to learn. By the way, where is that hat?” “I don’t know,” said Spelter, who was still quite shaken. “Somewhere in, um, Virrid’s apartments, I suppose.” “We’d better fetch it,” said Carding. He paused in the doorway and stroked his beard reflectively. “I remember Ipslore,” he said. “We were students together. Wild fellow. Odd habits. Superb wizard, of course, before he went to the bad. Had a funny way of twitching his eyebrow, I remember, when he was excited.” Carding looked blankly across forty years of memory, and shivered. “The hat,” he reminded himself. “Let’s find it. It would be a shame if anything happened to it.” In fact the hat had no intention of letting anything happen to it, and was currently hurrying towards the Mended Drum under the arm of a rather puzzled, black-clad thief. The thief, as will become apparent, was a special type of thief. This thief was an artist of theft. Other thieves merely stole everything that was not nailed down, but this thief stole the nails as well. This thief had scandalised Ankh by taking a particular interest in stealing, with astonishing success, things that were in fact not only nailed down but also guarded by keen-eyed guards in inaccessible strongrooms. There are artists that will paint an entire chapel ceiling; this was the kind of thief that could steal it. This particular thief was credited with stealing the jewelled disembowelling knife from the Temple of Offler the Crocodile God during the middle of Evensong, and the silver shoes from the Patrician’s finest racehorse while it was in the process of winning a race. When Gritoller Mimpsey, vice-president of the Thieves” Guild, was jostled in the marketplace and then found on returning home that a freshly-stolen handful of diamonds had vanished from their place of concealment, he knew who to blame.[7] This was the type of thief that could steal the initiative, the moment and the words right out of your mouth. However, it was the first time it had stolen something that not only asked it to, in a low but authoritative voice, but gave precise and somehow unarguable instructions about how it was to be disposed of. It was that cusp of the night that marks the turning point of Ankh-Morpork’s busy day, when those who make their living under the sun are resting after their labours and those who turn an honest dollar by the cold light of the moon are just getting up the energy to go to work. The day had, in fact, reached that gentle point when it was too late for housebreaking and too early for burglary. Rincewind sat alone in the crowded, smoky room, and didn’t take much notice when a shadow passed over the table and a sinister figure sat down opposite him. There was nothing very remarkable about sinister figures in this place. The Drum jealousy guarded its reputation as the most stylishly disreputable tavern in Ankh-Morpork and the big troll that now guarded the door carefully vetted customers for suitability in the way of black cloaks, glowing eyes, magic swords and so forth. Rincewind never found out what he did to the failures. Perhaps he ate them. When the figure spoke, its husky voice came from the depths of a black velvet hood, lined with fur. “Psst,” it said. “Not very,” said Rincewind, who was in a state of mind where he couldn’t resist it, “but I’m working on it.” “I’m looking for a wizard,” said the voice. It sounded hoarse with the effort of disguising itself but, again, this was nothing unusual in the Drum. “Any wizard in particular?” Rincewind said guardedly. People could get into trouble this way. “One with a keen sense of tradition who would not mind taking risks for high reward,” said another voice. It appeared to be coming from a round black leather box under the stranger’s arm. “Ah,” said Rincewind, “that narrows it down a bit, then. Does this involve a perilous journey into unknown and probably dangerous lands?” “It does, as a matter of fact.” “Encounters with exotic creatures?” Rincewind smiled. “Could be.” “Almost certain death?” “Almost certainly.” Rincewind nodded, and picked up his hat. “Well, I wish you every success in your search,” he said, “I’d help you myself, only I’m not going to.” “What?” “Sorry. I don’t know why, but the prospect of certain death in unknown lands at the claws of exotic monsters isn’t for me. I’ve tried it, and I couldn’t get the hang of it. Each to their own, that’s what I say, and I was cut out for boredom.” He rammed his hat on his head and stood up a little unsteadily. He’d reached the foot of the steps leading up into the street when a voice behind him said: “A real wizard would have accepted.” He could have kept going. He could have walked up the stairs, out into the street, got a pizza at the Klatchian takeaway in Sniggs Alley, and gone to bed. History would have been totally changed, and in fact would also have been considerably shorter, but he would have got a good night’s sleep although, of course, it would have been on the floor. The future held its breath, waiting for Rincewind to walk away. He didn’t do this for three reasons. One was alcohol. One was the tiny flame of pride that flickers in the heart of even the most careful coward. But the third was the voice. It was beautiful. It sounded like wild silk looks. The subject of wizards and sex is a complicated one, but as has already been indicated it does, in essence, boil down to this: when it comes to wine, women and song, wizards are allowed to et drunk and croon as much as they like. The reason given to young wizards was that the practice of magic is hard and demanding and incompatible with sticky and furtive activities. It was a lot more sensible, they were told, to stop worrying about that sort of thing and really get to grips with Woddeley’s Occult Primer instead. Funnily enough this didn’t seem to satisfy, and young wizards suspected that the real reason was that the rules were made by old wizards. With poor memories. They were quite wrong, although the real reason had long been forgotten: if wizards were allowed to go around breeding all the time, there was a risk of sourcery. Of course, Rincewind had been around a bit and had seen a thing or two, and had thrown off his early training to such an extent that he was quite capable of spending hours at a time in a woman’s company without having to go off for a cold shower and a lie-down. But that voice would have made even a statue get down off its pedestal for a few brisk laps of the playing field and fifty press-ups. It was a voice that could make “Good morning” sound like an invitation to bed. The stranger threw back her hood and shook out her long hair. It was almost pure white. Since her skin was tanned golden the general effect was calculated to hit the male libido like a lead pipe. Rincewind hesitated, and lost a splendid opportunity to keep quiet. From the top of the stairs came a thick trollish voice: “Ere, I thed you can’t go freu dere-” She sprang forward and shoved a round leather box into Rincewind’s arms. “Quick, you must come with me,” she said. “You’re in great danger!” “Why?” “Because I will kill you if you don’t.” “Yes, but hang on a moment, in that case-” Rincewind protested feebly. Three members of the Patrician’s personal guard appeared at the top of the stairs. Their leader beamed down at the room. The smile suggested that he intended to be the only one to enjoy the joke. “Don’t nobody move,” he suggested. Rincewind heard a clatter behind him as more guards appeared at the back door. The Drum’s other customers paused with their hands on assorted hilts. These weren’t the normal city watch, cautious and genially corrupt. These were walking slabs of muscle and they were absolutely unbribable, if only because the Patrician could outbid anyone else. Anyway, they didn’t seem to be looking for anyone except the woman. The rest of the clientele relaxed and prepared to enjoy the show. Eventually it might be worth joining it, once it was certain which was the winning side. Rincewind felt the pressure tighten on his wrist. “Are you mad?” he hissed. “This is messing with the Man!” There was a swish and the sergeant’s shoulder suddenly sprouted a knife hilt. Then the girl spun around and with surgical precision planted a small foot in the groin of the first guard through the door. Twenty pairs of eyes watered in sympathy. Rincewind grabbed his hat and tried to dive under the nearest table, but that grip was steel. The next guard to approach got another knife in the thigh. Then she drew a sword like a very long needle and raised it threateningly. “Anyone else?” she said. One of the guards raised a crossbow. The Librarian, sitting hunched over his drink, reached out a lazy arm like two broom handles strung with elastic and slapped him backwards. The bolt rebounded from the star on Rincewind’s hat and hit the wall by a respected procurer who was sitting two tables away. His bodyguards threw another knife which just missed a thief across the room, who picked up a bench and hit two guards, who struck out at the nearest drinkers. After that one thing sort of led to another and pretty soon everyone was fighting to get something - either away, out or even. Rincewind found himself pulled relentlessly behind the bar. The landlord was sitting on his moneybags under the counter with two machetes crossed on his knees, enjoying a quiet drink. Occasionally the sound of breaking furniture would make him wince. The last thing Rincewind saw before he was dragged away was the Librarian. Despite looking like a hairy rubber sack full of water, the orang-utan had the weight and reach of any man in the room and was currently sitting on a guard’s shoulders and trying, with reasonable success, to unscrew his head. Of more concern to Rincewind was the fact that he was being dragged upstairs. “My dear lady,” he said desperately. “What do you have in mind?” “Is there a way on to the roof?” “Yes. What’s in this box?” “Shhh!” She halted at a bend in the dingy corridor, reached into a belt pouch and scattered a handful of small metal objects on the floor behind them. Each one was made of four nails welded together so that, however the things fell, one was always pointing upwards. She looked critically at the nearest doorway. “You haven’t got about four feet of cheesewire on you, have you?” she said wistfully. She’d drawn another throwing knife and was throwing it up and catching it again. “I don’t think so,” said Rincewind weakly. “Pity. I’ve run out. Okay, come on.” “Why? I haven’t done anything!” She went to the nearest window, pushed open the shutters and paused with one leg over the sill. “Fine,” she said, over her shoulder. “Stay here and explain it to the guards.” “Why are they chasing you?” “I don’t know.” “Oh, come on! There must be a reason!” “Oh, there’s plenty of reasons. I just don’t know which one. Are you coming?” Rincewind hesitated. The Patrician’s personal guard was not known for its responsive approach to community policing, preferring to cut bits off instead. Among the things they took a dim view of was, well, basically, people being in the same universe. Running away from them was likely to be a capital offence. “I think maybe I’ll come along with you,” he said gallantly. “A girl can come to harm all alone in this city.” Freezing fog filled the streets of Ankh-Morpork. The flares of street traders made little yellow haloes in the smothering billows. The girl peered around a corner. “We’ve lost them,” she said. “Stop shaking. You’re safe now.” “What, you mean I’m all alone with a female homicidal maniac?” said Rincewind. “Fine.” She relaxed and laughed at him. “I was watching you,” she said. “An hour ago you were afraid that your future was going to be dull and uninteresting.” “I want it to be dull and uninteresting,” said Rincewind bitterly. “I’m afraid it’s going to be short.” “Turn your back,” she commanded, stepping into an alley. “Not on your life,” he said. “I’m going to take my clothes off.” Rincewind spun around, his face red. There was a rustling behind him, and a waft of scent. After a while she said, “You can look round now.” He didn’t. “You needn’t worry. I’ve put some more on.” He opened his eyes. The girl was wearing a demure white lace dress with fetchingly puffed sleeves. He opened his mouth. He realised with absolute clarity that up to now the trouble he had been in was simple, modest and nothing he couldn’t talk his way out of given a decent chance or, failing that, a running start. His brain started to send urgent messages to his sprinting muscles, but before they could get through she’d grabbed his arm again. “You really shouldn’t be so nervous,” she said sweetly. “Now, let’s have a look at this thing.” She pulled the lid off the round box in Rincewind’s unprotesting hands, and lifted out the Archchancellor’s hat. The octarines around its crown blazed in all eight colours of the spectrum, creating the kind of effects in the foggy alley that it would take a very clever special effects director and a whole battery of star filters to achieve by any non-magical means. As she raised it high in the air it created its own nebula of colours that very few people ever see in legal circumstances. Rincewind sank gently to his knees. She looked down at him, puzzled. “Legs given out?” “It’s - it’s the hat. The Archchancellor’s hat,” said Rincewind, hoarsely. His eyes narrowed. “You’ve stolen it!” he shouted, struggling back to his feet and grabbing for the sparkling brim. “It’s just a hat.” “Give it to me this minute! Women musn”t touch it! It belongs to wizards!” “Why are you getting so worked up?” she said. Rincewind opened his mouth. Rincewind closed his mouth. He wanted to say: It’s the Archchancellor’s hat, don’t you understand? It’s worn by the head of all wizards, well, on the head of the head of all wizards, no, metaphorically it’s worn by all wizards, potentially, anyway, and it’s what every wizard aspires to, it’s the symbol of organised magic, it’s the pointy tip of the profession, it’s a symbol, it’s what it means to all wizards . . . And so on. Rincewind had been told about the hat on his first day at University, and it had sunk into his impressionable mind like a lead weight into a jelly. He wasn’t sure of much in the world, but he was certain that the Archchancellor’s hat was important. Maybe even wizards need a little magic in their lives. Rincewind, said the hat. He stared at the girl. “It spoke to me!” “Like a voice in your head?” “Yes!” “It did that to me, too.” “But it knew my name!” Of course we do, stupid fellow. We are supposed to be a magic hat after all. The hat’s voice wasn’t only clothy. It also had a strange choral effect, as if an awful lot of voices were talking at the same time, in almost perfect unison. Rincewind pulled himself together. “O great and wonderful hat,” he said pompously, “strike down this impudent girl who has had the audacity, nay, the-” Oh, do shut up. She stole us because we ordered her to. It was a near thing, too. “But she’s a-” Rincewind hesitated. “She’s of the female persuasion. . .” he muttered. So was your mother. “Yes, well, but she ran away before I was born,” Rincewind mumbled. Of all the disreputable taverns in all the city you could have walked into, you walked into his, complained the hat. “He was the only wizard I could find,” said the girl, “He looked the part. He had “blizzard” written on his hat and everything.” Don’t believe everything you read. Too late now, anyway. We haven’t got much time. “Hold on, hold on,” said Rincewind urgently, “What’s going on? You wanted her to steal you? Why haven’t we got much time?” He pointed an accusing finger at the hat. “Anyway, you can’t go around letting yourself be stolen, you’re supposed to be on - on the Archchancellor’s head! The ceremony was tonight, I should have been there-” Something terrible is happening at the University. It is vital that we are not taken back, do you understand? You must take us to Klatch, where there is someone fit to wear me. “Why?” There was something very strange about the voice, Rincewind decided. It sounded impossible to disobey, as though it was solid destiny. If it told him to walk over a cliff, he thought, he’d be halfway down before it could occur to him to disobey. The death of all wizardry is at hand. Rincewind looked around guiltily. “Why?” he said. The world is going to end. “What, again?” I mean it, said the hat sulkily. The triumph of the Ice Giants, the Apocralypse, the Teatime of the Gods, the whole thing. “Can we stop it?” The future is uncertain on that point. Rincewind’s expression of determined terror faded slowly. “Is this a riddle?” he said. Perhaps it would be simpler if you just did what you’re told and didn’t try to understand things, said the hat. Young woman, you will put us back in our box. A great many people will shortly be looking for us. “Hey, hold on,” said Rincewind. “I’ve seen you around here for years and you never talked before.” I didn’t have anything that needed to be said. Rincewind nodded. That seemed reasonable. “Look, just shove it in its box, and let’s get going,” said the girl. “A bit more respect if you please, young lady,” said Rincewind haughtily. “That is the symbol of ancient wizardry you happen to be addressing.” “You carry it, then,” she said. “Hey, look,” said Rincewind, scrambling along after her as she swept down the alleys, crossed a narrow street and entered another alley between a couple of houses that leaned together so drunkenly that their upper storeys actually touched. She stopped. “Well?” she snapped. “You’re the mystery thief, aren’t you?” he said, “Everyone’s been talking about you, how you’ve taken things even from locked rooms and everything. You’re different than I imagined. . .” “Oh?” she said coldly. “How?” “Well, you’re . . . shorter.” “Oh, come on.” The street cressets, not particularly common in this part of the city in any case, gave out altogether here. There was nothing but watchful darkness ahead. “I said come on,” she repeated. “What are you afraid of?” Rincewind took a deep breath. “Murderers, muggers, thieves, assassins, pickpockets, cutpurses, reevers, snigsmen, rapists and robbers,” he said. “That’s the Shades you’re going into!”[8] “Yes, but people won’t come looking for us in here,” she said. “Oh, they’ll come in all right, they just won’t come out,” said Rincewind. “Nor will we. I mean, a beautiful young woman like you . . . it doesn’t bear thinking about . . . I mean, some of the people in there . . .” “But I’ll have you to protect me,” she said. Rincewind thought he heard the sound of marching feet several streets away. “You know,” he sighed, “I knew you’d say that.” Down these mean streets a man must walk, he thought. And along some of them he will break into a run. It is so black in the Shades on this foggy spring night that it would be too dark to read about Rincewind’s progress through the eerie streets, so the descriptive passage will lift up above the level of the ornate rooftops, the forest of twisty chimneys, and admire the few twinkling stars that manage to pierce the swirling billows. It will try to ignore the sounds drifting up from below the patter of feet, the rushes, the gristly noises, the groans, the muffled screams. It could be that some wild animal is pacing through the Shades after two weeks on a starvation diet. Somewhere near the centre of the Shades - the district has never been adequately mapped - is a small courtyard. Here at least there are torches on the walls, but the light they throw is the light of the Shades themselves: mean, reddened, dark at the core. Rincewind staggered into the yard and hung on to the wall for support. The girl stepped into the ruddy light behind him, humming to herself. “Are you all right?” she said. “Nurrgh,” said Rincewind. “Sorry?” “Those men,” he bubbled, “I mean, the way you kicked his . . . when you grabbed them by the . . . when you stabbed that one right in . . . who are you?” “My name is Conina.” Rincewind looked at her blankly for some time. “Sorry,” he said, “doesn’t ring a bell.” “I haven’t been here long,” she said. “Yes, I didn’t think you were from around these parts,” he said. “I would have heard.” “I’ve taken lodgings here. Shall we go in?” Rincewind glanced up at the dingy pole just visible in the smoky light of the spitting torches. It indicated that the hostelry behind the small dark door was the Troll’s Head. It might be thought that the Mended Drum, scene of unseemly scuffles only an hour ago, was a seedy disreputable tavern. In fact it was a reputable disreputable tavern. Its customers had a certain rough-hewn respectability - they might murder each other in an easygoing way, as between equals, but they didn’t do it vindictively. A child could go in for a glass of lemonade and be certain of getting nothing worse than a clip round the ear when his mother heard his expanded vocabulary. On quiet nights, and when he was certain the Librarian wasn’t going to come in, the landlord was even known to put bowls of peanuts on the bar. The Troll’s Head was a cesspit of a different odour. Its customers, if they reformed, tidied themselves up and generally improved their image out of all recognition might, just might, aspire to be considered the utter dregs of humanity. And in the Shades, a dreg is a dreg. By the way, the thing on the pole isn’t a sign. When they decided to call the place the Troll’s Head, they didn’t mess about. Feeling sick, and clutching the grumbling hatbox to his chest, Rincewind stepped inside. Silence. It wrapped itself around them, nearly as thickly as the smoke of a dozen substances guaranteed to turn any normal brain to cheese. Suspicious eyes peered through the smog. A couple of dice clattered to a halt on a tabletop. They sounded very loud, and probably weren’t showing Rincewind’s lucky number. He was aware of the stares of several score of customers as he followed the demure and surprisingly small figure of Conina into the room. He looked sideways into the leering faces of men who would kill him sooner than think, and in fact would find it a great deal easier. Where a respectable tavern would have had a bar there was just a row of squat black bottles and a couple of big barrels on trestles against the wall. The silence tightened like a tourniquet. Any minute now, Rincewind thought. A big fat man wearing nothing but a fur vest and a leather loincloth pushed back his stool and lurched to his feet and winked evilly at his colleagues. When his mouth opened, it was like a hole with a hem. “Looking for a man, little lady?” he said. She looked up at him. “Please keep away” A snake of laughter writhed around the room. Conina’s mouth snapped shut like a letterbox. “Ah,” the big man gurgled, “that’s right, I likes a girl with spirit-” Conina’s hand moved. It was a pale blur, stopping here and here: after a few seconds of disbelief the man gave a little grunt and folded up, very slowly. Rincewind shrank back as every other man in the room leaned forward. His instinct was to run, and he knew it was an instinct that would get him instantly killed. It was the Shades out there. Whatever was going to happen to him next was going to happen to him here. It was not a reassuring thought. A hand closed around his mouth. Two more grabbed the hatbox from his arms. Conina spun past him, lifting her skirt to place a neat foot on a target beside Rincewind’s waist. Someone whimpered in his ear and collapsed. As the girl pirouetted gracefully around she picked up two bottles, knocked out their bottoms on the shelf and landed with their jagged ends held out in front of her. Morpork daggers, they were called in the patois of the streets. In the face of them, the Troll’s Head’s clientele lost interest. “Someone got the hat,” Rincewind muttered through dry lips, “They slipped out of the back way.” She glared at him and made for the door. The Head’s crowd of customers parted automatically, like sharks recognising another shark, and Rincewind darted anxiously after her before they came to any conclusion about him. They ran out into another alley and pounded down it. Rincewind tried to keep up with the girl; people following her tended to tread on sharp things, and he wasn’t sure she’d remember he was on her side, whatever side that was. A thin, half-hearted drizzle was falling. And at the end of the alley was a faint blue glow. “Wait!” The terror in Rincewind’s voice was enough to slow her down. “What’s wrong?” “Why’s he stopped?” “I’ll ask him,” said Conina, firmly. “Why’s he covered in snow?” She stopped and turned around, arms thrust into her sides, one foot tapping impatiently on the damp cobbles. “Rincewind, I’ve known you for an hour and I’m astonished you’ve lived even that long!” “Yes, but I have, haven’t I? I’ve got a sort of talent for it. Ask anyone. I’m an addict.” “Addicted to what?” “Life. I got hooked on it at an early age and I don’t want to give it up and take it from me, this doesn’t look right!” Conina looked back at the figure surrounded by the glowing blue aura. It seemed to be looking at something in its hands. Snow was settling on its shoulder like really bad dandruff. Terminal dandruff. Rincewind had an instinct for these things, and he had a deep suspicion that the man had gone where shampoo would be no help at all. They sidled along a glistening wall. “There’s something very strange about him,” she conceded. “You mean the way he’s got his own private blizzard?” “Doesn’t seem to upset him. He’s smiling.” “A frozen grin, I’d call it.” The man’s icicle-hung hands had been taking the lid off the box, and the glow from the hat’s octarines shone up into a pair of greedy eyes that were already heavily rimed with frost. “Know him?” said Conina. Rincewind shrugged. “I’ve seen him around,” he said. “He’s called Larry the Fox or Fezzy the Stoat or something. Some sort of rodent, anyway. He just steals things. He’s harmless.” “He looks incredibly cold.” Conina shivered. “I expect he’s gone to a warmer place. Don’t you think we should shut the box?” It’s perfectly safe now, said the hat’s voice from inside the glow. And so perish all enemies of wizardry. Rincewind wasn’t about to trust what a hat said. “We need something to shut the lid,” he muttered. “A knife or something. You wouldn’t have one, would you?” “Look the other way,” Conina warned. There was a rustle and another gust of perfume. “You can look back now.” Rincewind was handed a twelve-inch throwing knife. He took it gingerly. Little particles of metal glinted on its edge. “Thanks.” He turned back. “Not leaving you short, am I?” “I have others.” “I’ll bet.” Rincewind reached out gingerly with the knife. As it neared the leather box its blade went white and started to steam. He whimpered a little as the cold struck his hand - a burning, stabbing cold, a cold that crept up his arm and made a determined assault on his mind. He forced his numb fingers into action and, with great effort, nudged the edge of the lid with the tip of the blade. The glow faded. The snow became sleet, then melted into drizzle. Conina nudged him aside and pulled the box out of the frozen arms. “I wish there was something we could do for him. It seems wrong just to leave him here.” “He won’t mind,” said Rincewind, with conviction. “Yes, but we could at least lean him against the wall. Or something.” Rincewind nodded, and grabbed the frozen thief by his icicle arm. The man slipped out of his grasp and hit the cobbles. Where he shattered. Conina looked at the pieces. “Urg,” she said. There was a disturbance further up the alley, coming from the back door of the Troll’s Head. Rincewind felt the knife snatched from his hand and then go past his ear in a flat trajectory that ended in the doorpost twenty yards away. A head that had been sticking out withdrew hurriedly. “We’d better go,” said Conina, hurrying along the alley. “Is there somewhere we can hide? Your place?” “I generally sleep at the University,” said Rincewind, hopping along behind her. You must not return to the University, growled the hat from the depths of its box. Rincewind nodded distractedly. The idea certainly didn’t seem attractive. “Anyway, they don’t allow women inside after dark,” he said. “And before dark?” “Not then, either.” Conina sighed. “That’s silly. What have you wizards got against women, then?” Rincewind’s brow wrinkled. “We’re not supposed to put anything against women,” he said. “That’s the whole point.” Sinister grey mists rolled through the docks of Morpork, dripping from the rigging, coiling around the drunken rooftops, lurking in alleys. The docks at night were thought by some to be even more dangerous than the Shades. Two muggers, a sneak thief and someone who had merely tapped Conina on the shoulder to ask her the time had already found this out. “Do you mind if I ask you a question?” said Rincewind, stepping over the luckless pedestrian who lay coiled around his private pain. Well?” “I mean, I wouldn’t like to cause offence.” “Well?” “It’s just that I can’t help noticing-” “Hmmm?” “You have this certain way with strangers.” Rincewind ducked, but nothing happened. “What are you doing down there?” said Conina, testily. “Sorry.” “I know what you’re thinking. I can’t help it, I take after my father.” “Who was he, then? Cohen the Barbarian?” Rincewind grinned to show it was a joke. At least, his lips moved in a desperate crescent. “No need to laugh about it, wizard.” “What?” “It’s not my fault.” Rincewind’s lips moved soundlessly. “Sorry,” he said. “Have I got this right? Your father really is Cohen the Barbarian?” “Yes.” The girl scowled at Rincewind. “Everyone has to have a father,” she added. “Even you, I imagine.” She peered around a corner. “All clear. Come on,” she said, and then when they were striding along the damp cobbles she continued: “I expect your father was a wizard, probably.” “I shouldn’t think so,” said Rincewind. “Wizardry isn’t allowed to run in families.” He paused. He knew Cohen, he’d even been a guest at one of his weddings when he married a girl of Conina’s age; you could say this about Cohen, he crammed every hour full of minutes. “A lot of people would like to take after Cohen, I mean, he was the best fighter, the greatest thief, he-” “A lot of men would,” Conina snapped. She leaned against a wall and glared at him. “Listen,” she said, “There’s this long word, see, an old witch told me about it . . .can’t remember it . . .you wizards know about long words.” Rincewind thought about long words. “Marmalade?” he volunteered. She shook her head irritably. “It means you take after your parents.” Rincewind frowned. He wasn’t too good on the subject of parents. “Kleptomania? Recidivist?” he hazarded. “Begins with an H.” “Hedonism?” said Rincewind desperately. “Herrydeterry,” said Conina. “This witch explained it to me. My mother was a temple dancer for some mad god or other, and father rescued her, and - they stayed together for a while. They say I get my looks and figure from her.” “And very good they are, too,” said Rincewind, with hopeless gallantry. She blushed. “Yes, well, but from him I got sinews you could moor a boat with, reflexes like a snake on a hot tin, a terrible urge to steal things and this dreadful sensation every time I meet someone that I should be throwing a knife through his eye at ninety feet. I can, too,” she added with a trace of pride. “Gosh.” “It tends to put men off.” “Well, it would,” said Rincewind weakly. “I mean, when they find out, it’s very hard to hang on to a boyfriend.” “Except by the throat, I imagine,” said Rincewind. “Not what you really need to build up a proper relationship.” “No. I can see,” said Rincewind. “Still, pretty good if you want to be a famous barbarian thief.” “But not,” said Conina, “if you want to be a hairdresser.” “Ah.” They stared into the mist. “Really a hairdresser?” said Rincewind. Conina sighed. “Not much call for a barbarian hairdresser, I expect,” said Rincewind. “I mean, no-one wants a shampoo-and-beheading.” “It’s just that every time I see a manicure set I get this terrible urge to lay about me with a double-handed cuticle knife. I mean sword,” said Conina. Rincewind sighed. “I know how it is,” he said. “I wanted to be a wizard.” “But you are a wizard.” “Ah. Well, of course, but-” “Quiet!” Rincewind found himself rammed against the wall, where a trickle of condensed mist inexplicably began to drip down his neck. A broad throwing knife had mysteriously appeared in Conina’s hand, and she was crouched like a jungle animal or, even worse, a jungle human. “What-” Rincewind began. “Shut up!” she hissed. “Something’s coming!” She stood up in one fluid movement, spun on one leg and let the knife go. There was a single, hollow, wooden thud. Conina stood and stared. For once, the heroic blood that pounded through her veins, drowning out all chances of a lifetime in a pink pinny, was totally at a loss. “I’ve just killed a wooden box,” she said. Rincewind looked round the corner. The Luggage stood in the dripping street, the knife still quivering in its lid, and stared at her. Then it changed its position slightly, its little legs moving in a complicated tango pattern, and stared at Rincewind. The Luggage didn’t have any features at all, apart from a lock and a couple of hinges, but it could stare better than a rockful of iguanas. It could outstare a glass-eyed statue. When it came to a look of betrayed pathos, the Luggage could leave the average kicked spaniel moping back in its kennel. It had several arrowheads and broken swords sticking in it. “What is it?” hissed Conina. “It’s just the Luggage,” said Rincewind wearily. “Does it belong to you?” “Not really. Sort of.” “Is it dangerous?” The Luggage shuffled round to stare at her again. “There’s two schools of thought about that,” said Rincewind. “There’s some people who say it’s dangerous, and others who say it’s very dangerous. What do you think?” The Luggage raised its lid a fraction. The Luggage was made from the wood of the sapient peartree, a plant so magical that it had nearly died out on the Disc and survived only in one or two places; it was a sort of rosebay willowherb, only instead of bomb sites it sprouted in areas that had seen vast expenditures of magic. Wizards’ staves were traditionally made of it; so was the Luggage. Among the Luggage’s magical qualities was a fairly simple and direct one: it would follow its adopted owner anywhere. Not anywhere in any particular set of dimensions, or country, or universe, or lifetime. Anywhere. It was about as easy to shake off as a head cold and considerably more unpleasant. The Luggage was also extremely protective of its owner. It would be hard to describe its attitude to the rest of creation, but one could start with the phrase “bloody-minded malevolence” and work up from there. Conina stared at that lid. It looked very much like a mouth. “I think I’d vote for “terminally dangerous”,” she said. “It likes crisps,” volunteered Rincewind, and then added, “Well, that’s a bit strong. It eats crisps.” “What about people?” “Oh, and people. About fifteen so far; I think.” “Were they good or bad?” “Just dead, I think. It also does your laundry for you, you put your clothes in and they come out washed and ironed.” “And covered in blood?” “You know, that’s the funny thing,” said Rincewind. “The funny thing?” repeated Conina, her eyes not leaving the Luggage. “Yes, because, you see, the inside isn’t always the same, it’s sort of multidimensional, and-” “How does it feel about women?” “Oh, it’s not choosy. It ate a book of spells last year. Sulked for three days and then spat it out.” “It’s horrible,” said Conina, and backed away. “Oh, yes,” said Rincewind, “absolutely.” “I mean the way it stares!” “It’s very good at it, isn’t it?” We must leave for Klatch, said a voice from the hatbox. One of these boats will be adequate. Commandeer it. Rincewind looked at the dim, mist-wreathed shapes that loomed in the mist under a forest of rigging. Here and there a riding light made a little fuzzy ball of light in the gloom. “Hard to disobey, isn’t it?” said Conina. “I’m trying,” said Rincewind. Sweat prickled on his forehead. Go aboard now, said the hat. Rincewind’s feet began to shuffle of their own accord. “Why are you doing this to me?” he moaned. Because I have no alternative. Believe me, if I could have found an eighth level mage I would have done so. I must not be worn! “Why not? You are the Archchancellor’s hat.” And through me speak all the Archchancellors who ever lived. I am the University. I am the Lore. I am the symbol of magic under the control of men - and I will not be worn by a sourcerer! There must be no more sourcerers! The world is too worn out for sourcery! Conina coughed. “Did you understand any of that?” she said, cautiously. “I understood some of it, but I didn’t believe it,” said Rincewind. His feet remained firmly rooted to the cobbles. They called me a figurehat! The voice was heavy with sarcasm. Fat wizards who betray everything the University ever stood for, and they called me a figurehat! Rincewind, I command you. And you, madam. Serve me well and I will grant you your deepest desire. “How can you grant my deepest desire if the world’s going to end?” The hat appeared to think about it. Well, have you got a deepest desire that need only take a couple of minutes? “Look, how can you do magic? You’re just a-” Rincewind’s voice trailed off. I AM magic. Proper magic. Besides, you don’t get worn by some of the world’s greatest wizards for two thousand years without learning a few things. Now. We must flee. But with dignity of course. Rincewind looked pathetically at Conina, who shrugged again. “Don’t ask me,” she said. “This looks like an adventure. I’m doomed to have them, I’m afraid. That’s genetics[9] for you.” “But I’m no good at them! Believe me, I’ve been through dozens!” Rincewind wailed. Ah. Experience, said the hat. “No, really, I’m a terrible coward, I always run away.” Rincewind’s chest heaved. “Danger has stared me in the back of the head, oh, hundreds of times!” I don’t want you to go into danger. “Good!” I want you to stay OUT of danger. Rincewind sagged. “Why me?” he moaned. For the good of the University. For the honour of wizardry. For the sake of the world. For your heart’s desire. And I’ll freeze you alive if you don’t. Rincewind breathed a sigh almost of relief. He wasn’t good on bribes, or cajolery, or appeals to his better nature. But threats, now, threats were familiar. He knew where he was with threats. The sun dawned on Small Gods’ Day like a badly poached egg. The mists had closed in over Ankh-Morpork in streamers of silver and gold - damp, warm, silent. There was the distant grumbling of springtime thunder, out on the plains. It seemed warmer than it ought to be. Wizards normally slept late. On this morning, however, many of them had got up early and were wandering the corridors aimlessly. They could feel the change in the air. The University was filling up with magic. Of course, it was usually full of magic anyway, but it was an old, comfortable magic, as exciting and dangerous as a bedroom slipper. But seeping through the ancient fabric was a new magic, saw-edged and vibrant, bright and cold as comet fire. It sleeted through the stones and crackled off sharp edges like static electricity on the nylon carpet of Creation. It buzzed and sizzled. It curled wizardly beards, poured in wisps of octarine smoke from fingers that had done nothing more mystical for three decades than a little light illusion. How can the effect be described with delicacy and taste? For most of the wizards, it was like being an elderly man who, suddenly faced with a beautiful young woman, finds to his horror and delight and astonishment that the flesh is suddenly as willing as the spirit. And in the halls and corridors of the University the word was being whispered: Sourcery! A few wizards surreptitiously tried spells that they hadn’t been able to master for years, and watched in amazement as they unrolled perfectly. Sheepishly at first, and then with confidence, and then with shouts and whoops, they threw fireballs to one another or produced live doves out of their hats or made multi-coloured sequins fall out of the air. Sourcery! One or two wizards, stately men who had hitherto done nothing more blameworthy that eat a live oyster, turned themselves invisible and chased the maids and bedders through the corridors. Sourcery! Some of the bolder spirits had tried out ancient flying spells and were bobbing a little uncertainly among the rafters. Sourcery! Only the Librarian didn’t share in the manic breakfast. He watched the antics for some time, pursing his prehensile lips, and then knuckled stiffly off towards his Library. If anyone had bothered to notice, they’d have heard him bolting the door. It was deathly quiet in the Library. The books were no longer frantic. They’d passed through their fear and out into the calm waters of abject terror, and they crouched on their shelves like so many mesmerised rabbits. A long hairy arm reached up and grabbed Casplock’s Compleet Lexicon of Majik with Precepts for the Wise before it could back away, soothed its terror with a longfingered hand, and opened it under “S”. The Librarian smoothed the trembling page gently and ran a horny nail down the entries until he came to: Sourcerer, n. (mythical). A proto-wizard, a doorway through which new majik may enterr the world, a wizard not limited by the physical capabilities of hys own bodie, not by Destinie, nor by Deathe. It is written that there once werre sourcerers in the youth of the world but not may there by nowe and blessed be, for sourcery is not for menne and the return of sourcery would mean the Ende of the Worlde . . . If the Creator hadd meant menne to bee as goddes, he ould have given them wings. SEE ALSO: thee Apocralypse, the legende of thee Ice Giants, and thee Teatime of the Goddes. The Librarian read the cross-references, turned back to the first entry, and stared at it through deep dark eyes for a long time. Then he put the book back carefully, crept under his desk, and pulled the blanket over his head. But in the minstrel gallery over the Great Hall Carding and Spelter watched the scene with entirely different emotions. Standing side by side they looked almost exactly like the number 10. “What is happening?” said Spelter. He’d had a sleepless night, and wasn’t thinking very straight. “Magic is flowing into the University,” said Carding. “That’s what sourcerer means. A channel for magic. Real magic, my boy. Not the tired old stuff we’ve made do with these past centuries. This is the dawning of a . . . a-” “New, um, dawn?” “Exactly. A time of miracles, a . . . a-” “Anus mirabilis?” Carding frowned. “Yes,” he said, eventually, “something like that, I expect. You have quite a way with words, you know.” “Thank you, brother.” The senior wizard appeared to ignore the familiarity. Instead he turned and leaned on the carved rail, watching the magical displays below them. His hands automatically went to his pockets for his tobacco pouch, and then paused. He grinned, and snapped his fingers. A lighted cigar appeared in his mouth. “Haven’t been able to do that in years,” he mused. “Big changes, my boy. They haven’t realised it yet, but it’s the end of Orders and Levels. That was just a - rationing system. We don’t need them any more. Where is the boy?” “Still asleep-” Spelter began. “I am here,” said Coin. He stood in the archway leading to the senior wizard’s quarters, holding the octiron staff that was half again as tall as he was. Little veins of yellow fire coruscated across its matt black surface, which was so dark that it looked like a slit in the world. Spelter felt the golden eyes bore through him, as if his innermost thoughts were being scrolled across the back of his skull. “Ah,” he said, in a voice that he believed was jolly and avuncular but in fact sounded like a strangled death rattle. After a start like that his contribution could only get worse, and it did. “I see you’re, um, up,” he said. “My dear boy,” said Carding. Coin gave him a long, freezing stare. “I saw you last night,” he said. “Are you puissant?” “Only mildly,” said Carding, hurriedly recalling the boy’s tendency to treat wizardry as a terminal game of corkers. “But not so puissant as you, I’m sure.” “I am to be made Archchancellor, as is my destiny?” “Oh, absolutely,” said Carding. “No doubt about it. May I have a look at your staff? Such an interesting design-” He reached out a pudgy hand. It was a shocking breach of etiquette in any case; no wizard should even think of touching another’s staff without his express permission. But there are people who can’t quite believe that children are fully human, and think that the operation of normal good manners doesn’t apply to them. Carding’s fingers curled around the black staff. There was a noise that Spelter felt rather than heard, and Carding bounced across the gallery and struck the opposite wall with a sound like a sack of lard hitting a pavement. “Don’t do that,” said Coin. He turned and looked through Spelter, who had gone pale, and added: “Help him up. He is probably not badly hurt.” The bursar scuttled hurriedly across the floor and bent over Carding, who was breathing heavily and had gone an odd colour. He patted the wizard’s hand until Carding opened one eye. “Did you see what happened?” he whispered. “I’m not sure. Um. What did happen?” hissed Spelter. “It bit me.” “The next time you touch the staff,” said Coin, matter of factly, “you will die. Do you understand?” Carding raised his head gently, in case bits of it fell off. “Absolutely,” he said. “And now I would like to see the University,” the boy continued. “I have heard a great deal about it. . .” Spelter helped Carding to his unsteady feet and supported him as they trotted obediently after the boy. “Don’t touch his staff,” muttered Carding. “I’ll remember, um, not to,” said Spelter firmly. “What did it feel like?” “Have you ever been bitten by a viper?” “No.” “In that case you’ll understand exactly what it felt like.” “Hmmm?” “It wasn’t like a snake bite at all.” They hurried after the determined figure as Coin marched down the stairs and through the ravished doorway of the Great Hall. Spelter dodged in front, anxious to make a good impression. “This is the Great Hall,” he said. Coin turned his golden gaze towards him, and the wizard felt his mouth dry up. “It’s called that because it’s a hall, d’you see. And big.” He swallowed. “It’s a big hall,” he said, fighting to stop the last of his coherence being burned away by the searchlight of that stare. “A great big hall, which is why it’s called-” “Who are those people?” said Coin. He pointed with his staff. The assembled wizards, who had turned to watch him enter, backed out of the way as though the staff was a flamethrower. Spelter followed the sourcerer’s stare. Coin was pointing to the portraits and statues of former Archchancellors, which decorated the walls. Full-bearded and pointhatted, clutching ornamental scrolls or holding mysterious symbolic bits of astrological equipment, they stared down with ferocious self-importance or, possibly, chronic constipation. “From these walls,” said Carding, “two hundred supreme mages look down upon you.” “I don’t care for them,” said Coin, and the staff streamed octarine fire. The Archchancellors vanished. “And the windows are too small-” “The ceiling is too high-” “Everything is too old-” The wizards threw themselves flat as the staff flared and spat. Spelter pulled his hat over his ayes and rolled under a table when the very fabric of the University flowed around him. Wood creaked, stone groaned. Something tapped him on the head. He screamed. “Stop that!” shouted Carding above the din. “And pull your hat up! Show a little dignity!” “Why are you under the table, then?” said Spelter sourly. “We must seize our opportunity!” “What, like the staff?” “Follow me!” Spelter emerged into a bright, a horrible bright new world. Gone were the rough stone walls. Gone were the dark, owlhaunted rafters. Gone was the tiled floor, with its eye-boggling pattern of black and white tiles. Gone, too, were the high small windows, with their gentle patina of antique grease. Raw sunlight streamed into the hall for the first time. The wizards stared at one another, mouths open, and what they saw was not what they had always thought they’d seen. The unforgiving rays transmuted rich gold embroidery into dusty gilt, exposed opulent fabric as rather stained and threadbare velvet, turned fine flowing beards into nicotine-stained tangles, betrayed splendid diamonds as rather inferior Ankhstones. The fresh light probed and prodded, stripping away the comfortable shadows. And, Spelter had to admit, what was left didn’t inspire confidence. He was suddenly acutely aware that under his robes - his tattered, badly-faded robes, he realised with an added spasm of guilt; the robes with the perforated area where the mice had got at them - he was still wearing his bedroom slippers. The hall was now almost all glass. What wasn’t glass was marble. It was all so splendid that Spelter felt quite unworthy. He turned to Carding, and saw that his fellow wizard was staring at Coin with his eyes gleaming. Most of the other wizards had the same expression. If wizards weren’t attracted to power they wouldn’t be wizards, and this was real power. The staff had them charmed like so many cobras. Carding reached out to touch the boy on the shoulder, and then thought better of it. “Magnificent,” he said, instead. He turned to the assembled wizardry and raised his arms. “My brothers,” he intoned, “we have in our midst a wizard of great power!” Spelter tugged at his robe. “He nearly killed you,” he hissed. Carding ignored him. “And I propose-” Carding swallowed - “I propose him for Archchancellor!” There was a moment’s silence, and then a burst of cheering and shouts of dissent. Several quarrels broke out at the back of the crowd. The wizards nearer the front weren’t quite so ready to argue. They could see the smile on Coin’s face. It was bright and cold, like the smile on the face of the moon. There was a commotion, and an elderly wizard fought his way to the front of the throng. Spelter recognised Ovin Hakardly, a seventh-level wizard and a lecturer in Lore. He was red with anger, except where he was white with rage. When he spoke, his words seared through the air like so many knives, clipped as topiary, crisp as biscuits. “Are you mad?” he said. “No-one but a wizard of the eighth level may become Archchancellor! And he must be elected by the other most senior wizards in solemn convocation! (Duly guided by the gods, of course.) It is the Lore! (The very idea!)” Hakardly had studied the Lore of magic for years and, because magic always tends to be a two-way process, it had made its mark on him; he gave the impression of being as fragile as a cheese straw, and in some unaccountable way the dryness of his endeavours had left him with the ability to pronounce punctuation. He stood vibrating with indignation and, he became aware, he was rapidly standing alone. In fact he was the centre of an expanding circle of empty floor fringed with wizards who were suddenly ready to swear that they’d never clapped eyes on him in their life. Coin had raised his staff. Hakardly raised an admonitory finger. “You do not frighten me, young man,” he snapped. “Talented you may be, but magical talent alone is not enough. There are many other qualities required of a great wizard. Administrative ability, for example, and wisdom, and the-” Coin lowered his staff. “The Lore applies to all wizards, does it not?” he said. “Absolutely! It was drawn up-” “But I am not a wizard, Lord Hakardly.” The wizard hesitated. “Ah,” he said, and hesitated again. “Good point,” he said. “But I am well aware of the need for wisdom, foresight and good advice, and I would be honoured if you could see your way clear to providing those much-valued commodities. For example - why is it that wizards do not rule the world?” “What?” “It is a simple question. There are in this room-” Coin’s lips moved for a fraction of a second - “four hundred and seventy-two wizards, skilled in the most subtle of arts. Yet all you rule are these few acres of rather inferior architecture. Why is this?” The most senior wizards exchanged knowing glances. “Such it may appear,” said Hakardly eventually, “but, my child, we have domains beyond the ken of the temporal power.” His eyes gleamed. “Magic can surely take the mind to inner landscape of arcane-” “Yes, yes,” said Coin. “Yet there are extremely solid walls outside your University. Why is this?” Carding ran his tongue over his lips. It was extraordinary. The child was speaking his thoughts. “You squabble for power,” said Coin, sweetly, “and yet, beyond these walls, to the man who carts nightsoil or the average merchant, is there really so much difference between a highlevel mage and a mere conjuror?” Hakardly stared at him in complete and untrammelled astonishment. “Child, it’s obvious to the meanest citizen,” he said. “The robes and trimmings themselves . . .” “Ah,” said Coin, “the robes and trimmings. Of course.” A short, heavy and thoughtful silence filled the hall. “It seems to me,” said Coin eventually, “that wizards rule only wizards. Who rules in the reality outside?” “As far as the city is concerned, that would be the Patrician, Lord Vetinari,” said Carding with some caution. “And is he a fair and just ruler?” Carding thought about it. The Patrician’s spy network was said to be superb. “I would say,” he said carefully, “that he is unfair and unjust, but scrupulously evenhanded. He is unfair and unjust to everyone, without fear or favour.” “And you are content with this?” said Coin. Carding tried not to catch Hakardly’s eye. “It’s not a case of being content with it,” he said. “I suppose we’ve not given it much thought. A wizard’s true vocation, you see-” “Is it really true that the wise suffer themselves to be ruled in this way?” Carding growled. “Of course not! Don’t be silly! We merely tolerate it. That’s what wisdom is all about, you’ll find that out when you grow up, it’s a case of biding one’s time-” “Where is this Patrician? I would like to see him.” “That can be arranged, of course,” said Carding. “The Patrician is always graciously pleased to grant wizards an interview, and-” “Now I will grant him an interview,” said Coin. “He must learn that wizards have bided their time long enough. Stand back, please.” He pointed the staff. The temporal ruler of the sprawling city of Ankh-Morpork was sitting in his chair at the foot of the steps leading up to the throne, looking for any signs of intelligence in intelligence reports. The throne had been empty for more than two thousand years, since the death of the last of the line of the kings of Ankh. Legend said that one day the city would have a king again, and went on with various comments about magic swords, strawberry birthmarks and all the other things that legends gabble on about in these circumstances. In fact the only real qualification now was the ability to stay alive for more than about five minutes after revealing the existence of any magic swords or birthmarks, because the great merchant families of Ankh had been ruling the city for the last twenty centuries and were about to relinquish power as the average limpet is to let go of its rock. The current Patrician, head of the extremely rich and powerful Vetinari family, was thin, tall and apparently as cold-blooded as a dead penguin. Just by looking at him you could tell he was the sort of man you’d expect to keep a white cat, and caress it idly while sentencing people to death in a piranha tank; and you’d hazard for good measure that he probably collected rare thin porcelain, turning it over and over in his blue-white fingers while distant screams echoed from the depths of the dungeons. You wouldn’t put it past him to use the word “exquisite” and have thin lips. He looked the kind of person who, when they blink, you mark it off on the calendar. Practically none of this was in fact the case, although he did have a small and exceedingly elderly wire-haired terrier called Wuffles that smelled badly and wheezed at people. It was said to be the only thing in the entire world he truly cared about. He did of course sometimes have people horribly tortured to death, but this was considered to be perfectly acceptable behaviour for a civic ruler and generally approved of by the overwhelming majority of citizens.[10] The people of Ankh are of a practical persuasion, and felt that the Patrician’s edict forbidding all street theatre and mime artists made up for a lot of things. He didn’t administer a reign of terror, just the occasional light shower. The Patrician sighed, and laid the latest report on top of the large heap beside the chair. When he had been a little boy he had seen a showman who could keep a dozen plates spinning in the air. If the man had been capable of working the same trick with a hundred of them, Lord Vetinari considered, he would just about begin to be ready for training in the art of ruling Ankh-Morpork, a city once described as resembling an overturned termite heap without the charm. He glanced out of the window at the distant pillar of the Tower of Art, the centre of Unseen University, and wondered vaguely whether any of those tiresome old fools could come up with a better way of collating all this paperwork. They wouldn’t, of course - you couldn’t expect a wizard to understand anything as basic as elementary civic espionage. He sighed again, and picked up the transcript of what the president of the Thieves” Guild had said to his deputy at midnight in the soundproof room hidden behind the office in the Guild headquarters, and . . . Was in the Great Ha . . . Was not in the Great Hall of Unseen University, where he had spent some interminable dinners, but there were a lot of wizards around him and they were . . . . . . different. Like Death, which some of the city’s less fortunate citizens considered he intimately resembled, the Patrician never got angry until he had time to think about it. But sometimes he thought very quickly. He stared around at the assembled wizards, but there was something about them that choked the words of outrage in his throat. They looked like sheep who had suddenly found a trapped wolf at exactly the same time as they heard about the idea of unity being strength. There was something about their eyes. “What is the meaning of this outr-” he hesitated, and concluded, “this? A merry Small Gods’ Day prank, is it?” His eyes swivelled to meet those of a small boy holding a long metal staff. The child was smiling the oldest smile the Patrician had ever seen. Carding coughed. “My lord,” he began. “Out with it, man,” snapped Lord Vetinari. Carding had been diffident, but the Patrician’s tone was just that tiny bit too peremptory. The wizard’s knuckles went white. “I am a wizard of the eighth level,” he said quietly, “and you will not use that tone to me.” “Well said,” said Coin. “Take him to the dungeons,” said Carding. “We haven’t got any dungeons,” said Spelter. “This is a university.” “Then take him to the wine cellars,” snapped Carding. “And while you’re down there, build some dungeons.” “Have you the faintest inkling of what you are doing?” said the Patrician. “I demand to know the meaning of this-” “You demand nothing at all,” said Carding. “And the meaning is that from now on the wizards will rule, as it was ordained. Now take-” “You? Rule Ankh-Morpork? Wizards who can barely govern themselves?” “Yes!” Carding was aware that this wasn’t the last word in repartee, and was even more alive to the fact that the dog Wuffles, who had been teleported along with his master, had waddled painfully across the floor and was peering short-sightedly at the wizard’s boots. “Then all truly wise men would prefer the safety of a nice deep dungeon,” said the Patrician. “And now you will cease this foolery and replace me in my palace, and it is just possible that we will say no more about this. Or at least that you won’t have the chance to.” Wuffles gave up investigating Carding’s boots and trotted towards Coin, shedding a few hairs on the way. “This pantomime has gone on long enough,” said the Patrician. “Now I am getting-” Wuffles growled. It was a deep, primeval noise, which struck a chord in the racial memory of all those present and filled them with an urgent desire to climb a tree. It suggested long grey shapes hunting in the dawn of time. It was astonishing that such a small animal could contain so much menace, and all of it was aimed at the staff in Coin’s hand. The Patrician strode forward to snatch the animal, and Carding raised his hand and sent a blaze of orange and blue fire searing across the room. The Patrician vanished. On the spot where he had been standing a small yellow lizard blinked and glared with malevolent reptilian stupidity. Carding looked in astonishment at his fingers, as if for the first time. “All right,” he whispered hoarsely. The wizards stared down at the panting lizard, and then out at the city sparkling in the early morning light. Out there was the council of aldermen, the city watch, the Guild of Thieves, the Guild of Merchants, the priesthoods . . .and none of them knew what was about to hit them. It has begun, said the hat, from its box on the deck. “What has?” said Rincewind. The rule of sourcery. Rincewind looked blank. “Is that good?” Do you ever understand anything anyone says to you? Rincewind felt on firmer ground here. “No,” he said. “Not always. Not lately. Not often.” “Are you sure you are a wizard?” said Conina. “It’s the only thing I’ve ever been sure of,” he said, with conviction. “How strange.” Rincewind sat on the Luggage in the sun on the foredeck of the Ocean Waltzer as it lurched peacefully across the green waters of the Circle Sea. Around them men did what he was sure were important nautical things, and he hoped they were doing them correctly, because next to heights he hated depths most of all. “You look worried,” said Conina, who was cutting his hair. Rincewind tried to make his head as small as possible as the blades flashed by. “That’s because I am.” What exactly is the Apocralypse?” Rincewind hesitated. “Well”, he said, “it’s the end of the world. Sort of.” “Sort of? Sort of the end of the world? You mean we won’t be certain? We’ll look around and say “Pardon me, did you hear something?”?” “It’s just that no two seers have ever agreed about it. There have been all kinds of vague predictions. Quite mad, some of them. So it was called the Apocralypse.” He looked embarrassed. “It’s a sort of apocryphal Apocalypse. A kind of pun, you see.” “Not very good.” “No. I suppose not.”[11] Conina’s scissors snipped busily. “I must say the captain seemed quite happy to have us aboard,” she observed. “That’s because they think it’s lucky to have a wizard on the boat,” said Rincewind. “It isn’t, of course.” “Lots of people believe it,” she said. “Oh, it’s lucky for other people, just not for me. I can’t swim.” “What, not a stroke?” Rincewind hesitated, and twiddled the star on his hat cautiously. “About how deep is the sea here, would you say? Approximately?” he said. “About a dozen fathoms, I believe.” “Then I could probably swim about a dozen fathoms, whatever they are.” “Stop trembling like that, I nearly had your ear off,” Conina snapped. She glared at a passing seaman and waved her scissors. “What’s the matter, you never saw a man have a haircut before?” Someone up in the rigging made a remark which caused a ripple of ribald laughter in the topgallants, unless they were forecastles. “I shall pretend I didn’t hear that,” said Conina, and gave the comb a savage yank, dislodging numerous inoffensive small creatures. “Well, you should keep still!” “It’s a little difficult to keep still knowing who it is that’s waving a couple of steel blades around my head!” And so the morning passed, with scudding wavelets, the creaking of the rigging, and a rather complex layer cut. Rincewind had to admit, looking at himself in a shard of mirror, that there was a definite improvement. The captain had said that they were bound for the city of Al Khali, on the hubward coast of Klatch. “Like Ankh, only with sand instead of mud,” said Rincewind, leaning over the rail. “But quite a good slave market.” “Slavery is immoral,” said Conina firmly. “Is it? Gosh,” said Rincewind. “Would you like me to trim your beard?” said Conina, hopefully. She stopped, scissors drawn, and stared out to sea. “Is there a kind of sailor that uses a canoe with sort of extra bits on the side and a sort of red eye painted on the front and a small sail?” she said. “I’ve heard of Klatchian slave pirates,” said Rincewind, “but this is a big boat. I shouldn’t think one of them would dare attack it.” “One of them wouldn’t,” said Conina, still staring at the fuzzy area where the sea became the sky, “but these five might.” Rincewind peered at the distant haze, and then looked up at the man on watch, who shook his head. “Come on,” he chuckled, with all the humour of a blocked drain. “You can’t really see anything out there. Can you?” “Ten men in each canoe,” said Conina grimly. “Look, a joke’s a joke-” “With long curvy swords.” “Well, I can’t see a-” - their long and rather dirty hair blowing in the wind – “ “With split ends, I expect?” said Rincewind sourly. “Are you trying to be funny?” “Me?” “And here’s me without a weapon,” said Conina, sweeping back across the deck. “I bet there isn’t a decent sword anywhere on this boat.” “Never mind. Perhaps they’ve just come for a quick shampoo.” While Conina rummaged frantically in her pack Rincewind sidled over to the Archchancellor’s hatbox and cautiously raised the lid. “There’s nothing out there, is there?” he asked. How should I know? Put me on. “What? On my head?” Good grief. “But I’m not an Archchancellor!” said Rincewind. “I mean, I’ve heard of cool-headed, but-” I need to use your eyes. Now put me on. On your head. “Um.” Trust me. Rincewind couldn’t disobey. He gingerly removed his battered grey hat, looked longingly at its dishevelled star, and lifted the Archchancellor’s hat out of its box. It felt rather heavier than he’d expected. The octarines around the crown were glowing faintly. He lowered it carefully on to his new hairstyle, clutching the brim tightly in case he felt the first icy chill. In fact he simply felt incredibly light. And there was a feeling of great knowledge and power - not actually present, but just, mentally speaking, on the tip of his metaphorical tongue. Odd scraps of memory flickered across his mind, and they weren’t any memories he remembered remembering before. He probed gently, as one touches a hollow tooth with the tongue, and there they were - Two hundred dead Archchancellors, dwindling into the leaden, freezing past, one behind the other, watched him with blank grey eyes. That’s why it’s so cold, he told himself, the warmth seeps into the dead world. Oh, no . . . When the hat spoke, he saw two hundred pairs of pale lips move. Who are you? Rincewind, thought Rincewind. And in the inner recesses of his head he tried to think privately to himself . . . help. He felt his knees begin to buckle under the weight of centuries. What’s it like, being dead? he thought. Death is but a sleep, said the dead mages. But what does it feel like? Rincewind thought. You will have an unrivalled chance to find out when those war canoes get here, Rincewind. With a yelp of terror he thrust upwards and forced the hat off his head. Real life and sound flooded back in, but since someone was frantically banging a gong very close to his ear this was not much of an improvement. The canoes were visible to everyone now, cutting through the water with an eerie silence. Those black-clad figures manning the paddles should have been whooping and screaming; it wouldn’t have made it any better, but it would have seemed more appropriate. The silence bespoke an unpleasant air of purpose. “Gods, that was awful,” he said. “Mind you, so is this.” Crew members scurried across the deck, cutlasses in hand. Conina tapped Rincewind on the shoulder. “They’ll try to take us alive,” she said. “Oh,” said Rincewind weakly. “Good.” Then he remembered something else about Klatchian slavers, and his throat went dry. “You’ll - you’ll be the one they’ll really be after,” he said. “I’ve heard about what they do-” “Should I know?” said Conina. To Rincewind’s horror she didn’t appear to have found a weapon. “They’ll throw you in a seraglio!” She shrugged. “Could be worse.” “But it’s got all these spikes and when they shut the door-” hazarded Rincewind. The canoes were close enough now to see the determined expressions of the rowers. “That’s not a seraglio. That’s an Iron Maiden. Don’t you know what a seraglio is?” “Um . . .” She told him. He went crimson. “Anyway, they’ll have to capture me first,” said Conina primly. “It’s you who should be worrying.” “Why me?” “You’re the only other one who’s wearing a dress.” Rincewind bridled. “It’s a robe-” “Robe, dress. You better hope they know the difference.” A hand like a bunch of bananas with rings on grabbed Rincewind’s shoulder and spun him around. The captain, a Hublander built on generous bear-like lines, beamed at him through a mass of facial hair. “Hah!” he said. “They know not that we aboard a wizard have! To create in their bellies the burning green fire! Hah?” The dark forests of his eyebrows wrinkled as it became apparent that Rincewind wasn’t immediately ready to hurl vengeful magic at the invaders. “Hah?” he insisted, making a mere single syllable do the work of a whole string of blood-congealing threats. “Yes, well, I’m just - I’m just girding my loins,” said Rincewind. “That’s what I’m doing. Girding them. Green fire, you want?” “Also to make hot lead run in their bones,” said the captain. “Also their skins to blister and living scorpions without mercy to eat their brains from inside, and-” The leading canoe came alongside and a couple of grapnels thudded into the rail. As the first of the savers appeared the captain hurried away, drawing his sword. He stopped for a moment and turned to Rincewind. “You gird quickly,” he said. “Or no loins. Hah?” Rincewind turned to Conina, who was leaning on the rail examining her fingernails. “You’d better get on with it,” she said. “That’s fifty green fires and hot leads to go, with a side order for blisters and scorpions. Hold the mercy.” “This sort of thing is always happening to me,” he moaned. He peered over the rail to what he thought of as the main floor of the boat. The invaders were winning by sheer weight of numbers, using nets and ropes to tangle the struggling crew. They worked in absolute silence, clubbing and dodging, avoiding the use of swords wherever possible. “Mustn’t damage the merchandise,” said Conina. Rincewind watched in horror as the captain went down under a press of dark shapes, screaming, “Green fire! Green fire!” Rincewind backed away. He wasn’t any good at magic, but he’d had a hundred per cent success at staying alive up to now and didn’t want to spoil the record. All he needed to do was to learn how to swim in the time it took to dive into the sea. It was worth a try. “What are you waiting for? Let’s go while they’re occupied,” he said to Conina. “I need a sword,” she said. “You’ll be spoilt for choice in a minute.” “One will be enough.” Rincewind kicked the Luggage. “Come on,” he snarled. “You’ve got a lot of floating to do.” The Luggage extended its little legs with exaggerated nonchalance, turned slowly, and settled down beside the girl. “Traitor,” said Rincewind to its hinges. The battle already seemed to be over. Five of the raiders stalked up the ladder to the afterdeck, leaving most of their colleagues to round up the defeated crew below. The leader pulled down his mask and leered briefly and swarthily at Conina; and then he turned and leered for a slightly longer period at Rincewind. “This is a robe,” said Rincewind quickly. “And you’d better watch out, because I’m a wizard.” He took a deep breath. “Lay a finger on me, and you’ll make me wish you hadn’t. I warn you.” “A wizard? Wizards don’t make good strong slaves,” mused the leader. “Absolutely right,” said Rincewind. “So if you’ll just see your way clear to letting me go-” The leader turned back to Conina, and signalled to one of his companions. He jerked a tattooed thumb towards Rincewind. “Do not kill him too quickly. In fact-” he paused, and treated Rincewind to a smile full of teeth. “Maybe . . . yes. And why not? Can you sing, wizard?” “I might be able to,” said Rincewind, cautiously. “Why?” “You could be just the man the Seriph needs for a job in the harem.” A couple of slavers sniggered. “It could be a unique opportunity,” the leader went on, encouraged by this audience appreciation. There was more broad-minded approval from behind him. Rincewind backed away. “I don’t think so,” he said, “thanks all the same. I’m not cut out for that kind of thing.” “Oh, but you could be,” said the leader, his eyes bright. “You could be.” “Oh, for goodness sake,” muttered Conina. She glanced at the men on either side of her, and then her hands moved. The one stabbed with the scissors was possibly better off than the one she raked with the comb, given the kind of mess a steel comb can make of a face. Then she reached down, snatched up a sword dropped by one of the stricken men, and lunged at the other two. The leader turned at the screams, and saw the Luggage behind him with its lid open. And then Rincewind cannoned into the back of him, pitching him forward into whatever oblivion lay in the multidimensional depths of the chest. There was the start of a bellow, abruptly cut off. Then there was a click like the shooting of the bolt on the gates of Hell. Rincewind backed away, trembling. “Unique opportunity,” he muttered under his breath, having just got the reference. At least he had a unique opportunity to watch Conina fight. Not many men ever got to see it twice. Her opponents started off grinning at the temerity of a slight young girl in attacking them, and then rapidly passed through various stages of puzzlement, doubt, concern and abject gibbering terror as they apparently became the centre of a flashing, tightening circle of steel. She disposed of the last of the leader’s bodyguard with a couple of thrusts that made Rincewind’s eyes water and, with a sigh, vaulted the rail on the main deck. To Rincewind’s annoyance the Luggage barrelled after her, cushioning its fall by dropping heavily on to a slaver, and adding to the sudden panic of the invaders because, while it was bad enough to be attacked with deadly and ferocious accuracy by a rather pretty girl in a white dress with flowers on it, it was even worse for the male ego to be tripped up and bitten by a travel accessory; it was pretty bad for all the rest of the male, too. Rincewind peered over the railing. “Showoff,” he muttered. A throwing knife clipped the wood near his chin and ricocheted past his ear. He raised his hand to the sudden stinging pain, and stared at in in horror before gently passing out. It wasn’t blood in general he couldn’t stand the sight of, it was just his blood in particular that was so upsetting. The market in Sator Square, the wide expanse of cobbles outside the black gates of the University, was in full cry. It was said that everything in Ankh-Morpork was for sale except for the beer and the women, both of which one merely hired. And most of the merchandise was available in Sator market, which over the years had grown, stall by stall, until the newcomers were up against the ancient stones of the University itself; in fact they made a handy display area for bolts of cloth and racks of charms. No-one noticed the gates swing back. But a silence rolled out of the University, spreading out across the noisy, crowded square like the first fresh wavelets of the tide trickling over a brackish swamp. In fact it wasn’t true silence at all, but a great roar of anti-noise. Silence isn’t the opposite of sound, it is merely its absence. But this was the sound that lies on the far side of silence, anti-noise, its shadowy decibels throttling the market cries like a fall of velvet. The crowds stared around wildly, mouthing like goldfish and with about as much effect. All heads turned towards the gates. Something else was flowing out besides that cacophony of hush. The stalls nearest the empty gateway began to grind across the cobbles, shedding merchandise. Their owners dived out of the way as the stalls hit the row behind them and scraped relentlessly onwards, piling up until a wide avenue of clean, empty stones stretched the whole width of the square. Ardrothy Longstaff, Purveyor of Pies Full of Personality, peered over the top of the wreckage of his stall in time to see the wizards emerge. He knew wizards, or up until now he’d always thought he did. They were vague old boys, harmless enough in their way, dressed like ancient sofas, always ready customers for any of his merchandise that happened to be marked down on account of age and rather more personality than a prudent housewife would be prepared to put up with. But these wizards were something new to Ardrothy. They walked out into Sator Square as if they owned it. Little blue sparks flashed around their feet. They seemed a little taller, somehow. Or perhaps it was just the way they carried themselves. Yes, that was it . . . Ardrothy had a touch of magic in his genetic makeup, and as he watched the wizards sweep across the square it told him that the very best thing he could do for his health would be to pack his knives, and mincers in his little pack and have it away out of the city at any time in the next ten minutes. The last wizard in the group lagged behind his colleagues and looked around the square with disdain. “There used to be fountains out here,” he said. “You people - be off.” The traders stared at one another. Wizards normally spoke imperiously, that was to be expected. But there was an edge to the voice that no-one had heard before. It had knuckles in it. Ardrothy’s eyes swivelled sideways. Arising out of the ruins of his jellied starfish and clam stall like an avenging angel, dislodging various molluscs from his beard and spitting vinegar, was Miskin Koble, who was said to be able to open oysters with one hand. Years of pulling limpets off rocks and wrestling the giant cockles in Ankh Bay had given him the kind of physical development normally associated with tectonic plates. He didn’t so much stand up as unfold. Then he thudded his way towards the wizard and pointed a trembling finger at the ruins of his stall, from which half a dozen enterprising lobsters were making a determined bid for freedom. Muscles moved around the edges of his mouth like angry eels. “Did you do that?” he demanded. “Stand aside, oaf,” said the wizard, three words which in the opinion of Ardrothy gave him the ongoing life expectancy of a glass cymbal. “I hates wizards,” said Koble. “I really hates wizards. So I am going to hit you, all right?” He brought his fist back and let fly. The wizard raised an eyebrow, yellow fire sprang up around the shellfish salesman, there was a noise like tearing silk, and Koble had vanished. All that was left was his boots, standing forlornly on the cobbles with little wisps of smoke coming out of them. No-one knows why smoking boots always remain, no matter how big the explosion. It seems to be just one of those things. It seemed to the watchful eyes of Ardrothy that the wizard himself was nearly as socked as the crowd, but he rallied magnificently and gave his staff a flourish. “You people had better jolly well learn from this,” he said. “No-one raises their hand to a wizard, do you understand? There are going to be a lot of changes around here. Yes, what do you want?” This last comment was to Ardrothy, who was trying to sneak past unnoticed. He scrabbled quickly in his pie tray. “I was just wondering if your honourship would care to purchase one of these finest pies,” he said hurriedly. “Full of nourish-” “Watch closely, pie-selling person,” said the wizard. He stretched out his hand, made a strange gesture with his fingers, and produced a pie out of the air. It was fat, golden-brown and beautifully glazed. just by looking at it Ardrothy knew it was packed edge to edge with prime lean pork, with none oft hose spacious areas of good fresh air under the lid that represented his own profit margin. It was the kind of pie piglets hope to be when they grew up. His heart sank. His ruin was floating in front of him with short-crust pastry on it. “Want a taste?” said the wizard. “There’s plenty more where that came from.” “Wherever it came from,” said Ardrothy. He looked past the shiny pastry to the face of the wizard, and in the manic gleam of those eyes he saw the world turning upside down. He turned away, a broken man, and set out for the nearest city gate. As if it wasn’t bad enough that wizards were killing people, he thought bitterly, they were taking away their livelihood as well. A bucket of water splashed into Rincewind’s face, jerking him out of a dreadful dream in which a hundred masked women were attempting to trim his hair with broadswords and cutting it very fine indeed. Some people, having a nightmare like that, would dismiss it as castration anxiety, but Rincewind’s subconscious knew being-cut-to-tiny-bits-mortal dread when it saw it. It saw it most of the time. He sat up. “Are you all right?” said Conina, anxiously. Rincewind swivelled his eyes around the cluttered deck. “Not necessarily,” he said cautiously. There didn’t seem to be any black-clad slavers around, at least vertically. There were a good many crew members, all of them maintaining a respectful distance from Conina. Only the captain stood reasonably close, an inane grin on his face. “They left,” said Conina. “Took what they could and left.” “They bastards,” said the captain, “but they paddle pretty fast!” Conina winced as he gave her a ringing slap on the back. “She fight real good for a lady,” he added. “Yes!” Rincewind got unsteadily to his feet. The boat was scudding along cheerfully towards a distant smear on the horizon that had to be hubward Klatch. He was totally unharmed. He began to cheer up a bit. The captain gave them both a hearty nod and hurried off to shout orders connected with sails and ropes and things. Conina sat down on the Luggage, which didn’t seem to object. “He said he’s so grateful he’ll take us all the way to Al Khali,” she said. “I thought that’s what we arranged anyway,” said Rincewind. “I saw you give him money, and everything.” “Yes, but he was planning to overpower us and sell me as a slave when he got there.” “What, not sell me?” said Rincewind, and then snorted, “Of course, it’s the wizard’s robes, he wouldn’t dare-” “Um. Actually, he said he’d have to give you away,” said Conina, picking intently at an imaginary splinter on the Luggage’s lid. “Give me away?” “Yes. Um. Sort of like, one free wizard with every concubine sold? Um.” “I don’t see what vegetables have got to do with it.” Conina gave him a long, hard stare, and when he didn’t break into a smile she sighed and said, “Why are you wizards always nervous around women?” Rincewind bridled at this slur. “I like that!” he said, “I’ll have you know that - look, anyway, the point is, I get along very well with women in general, it’s just women with swords that upset me.” He considered this for a while, and added, “Everyone with swords upset me, if it comes to that.” Conina picked industriously at the splinter. The Luggage gave a contented creak. “I know something else that’ll upset you,” she muttered. “Hmmm?” “The hat’s gone.” “What?” “I couldn’t help it, they just grabbed whatever they could-” “The slavers have made off with the hat?” “Don’t you take that tone with me! I wasn’t having a quiet sleep at the time-” Rincewind waved his hands frantically. “Nonono, don’t get excited, I wasn’t taking any tone - I want to think about this. . .” “The captain says they’ll probably go back to Al Khali,” he heard Conina say. “There’s a place where the criminal element hang out, and we can soon-” “I don’t see why we have to do anything,” said Rincewind. “The hat wanted to keep out the way of the University, and I shouldn’t think those slavers ever drop in there for a quick sherry.” “You’ll let them run off with it?” said Conina, in genuine astonishment. “Well, someone’s got to do it. The way I see it, why me?” “But you said it’s the symbol of wizardry! What wizards all aspire to! You can’t just let it go like that!” “You watch me.” Rincewind sat back. He felt oddly surprised. He was making a decision. It was his. It belonged to him. Noone was forcing him to make it. Sometimes it seemed that his entire life consisted of getting into trouble because of what other people wanted, but this time he’d made a decision and that was that. He’d get off the boat at Al Khali and find some way of going home. Someone else could save the world, and he wished them luck. He’d made a decision. His brow furrowed. Why didn’t he feel happy about it? Because it’s the wrong bloody decision, you idiot. Right, he thought, I’ve had enough voices in my head. Out. But I belong here. You mean you’re me? Your conscience. Oh. You can’t let the hat be destroyed. It’s the symbol . . . . . . all right, I know . . . . . . the symbol of magic under the Lore. Magic under the control of mankind. You don’t want to go back to those dark Ians . . . . . . What? . . . Ians . . . Do I mean aeons? Right. Aeons. Go back aeons to the time when raw magic ruled. The whole framework of reality trembled daily. It was pretty terrible, I can tell me. How do I know? Racial memory. Gosh. Have I got one of those? Well. A part of one. Yes, all right, but why me? In your soul you know you are a true wizard. The word “Wizard” is engraved on your heart. “Yes, but the trouble is I keep meeting people who might try to find out,” said Rincewind miserably. “What did you say?” said Conina. Rincewind stared at the smudge on the horizon and sighed. “Just talking to myself,” he said. Carding surveyed the hat critically. He walked around the table and stared at it from a new angle. At last he said: “It’s pretty good. Where did you get the octarines?” “They’re just very good Ankhstones,” said Spelter. “They fooled you, did they?” It was a magnificent hat. In fact, Spelter had to admit, it looked a lot better than the real thing. The old Archchancellor’s hat had looked rather battered, its gold thread tarnished and unravelling. The replica was a considerable improvement. It had style. “I especially like the lace,” said Carding. “It took ages.” “Why didn’t you try magic?” Carding waggled his fingers, and grasped the tall cool glass that appeared in mid-air. Under its paper umbrella and fruit salad it contained some sticky and expensive alcohol. “Didn’t work,” said Spelter. “Just couldn’t seem, um, to get it right. I had to sew every sequin on by hand.” He picked up the hatbox. Carding coughed into his drink. “Don’t put it away just yet,” he said, and took it out of the bursar’s hands. “I’ve always wanted to try this-” He turned to the big mirror on the bursar’s wall and reverently lowered the hat on his rather grubby locks. It was the ending of the first day of the sourcery, and the wizards had managed to change everything except themselves. They had all tried, on the quiet and when they thought no-one else was looking. Even Spelter had a go, in the privacy of his study. He had managed to become twenty years younger with a torso you could crack rocks on, but as soon as he stopped concentrating he sagged, very unpleasantly, back into his old familiar shape and age. There was something elastic about the way you were. The harder you threw it, the faster it came back. The worse it was when it hit, too. Spiked iron balls, broadswords and large heavy sticks with nails in were generally considered pretty fearsome weapons, but they were nothing at all compared to twenty years suddenly applied with considerable force to the back of the head. This was because sourcery didn’t seem to work on things that were instrinsically magical. Nevertheless, the wizards had made a few important improvements. Carding’s robe, for example, had become a silk and lace confection of overpoweringly expensive tastelessness, and gave him the appearance of a big red jelly draped with antimacassars. “It suits me, don’t you think?” said Carding. He adjusted the hat brim, giving it an inappropriately rakish air. Spelter said nothing. He was looking out of the window. There had been a few improvements all right. It had been a busy day. The old stone walls had vanished. There were some rather nice railings now. Beyond them, the city fairly sparkled, a poem in white marble and red tiles. The river Ankh was no longer the silt-laden sewer he’d grown up knowing, but a glittering glassclear ribbon in which - a nice touch - fat carp mouthed and swam in water pure as snowmelt.[12] From the air Ankh-Morpork must have been blinding. It gleamed. The detritus of millennia had been swept away. It made Spelter strangely uneasy. He felt out of place, as though he was wearing new clothes that itched. Of course, he was wearing new clothes and they did itch, but that wasn’t the problem. The new world was all very nice, it was exactly how it should be, and yet, and yet - had he wanted to change, he thought, or had he only wanted things rearranged more suitably? “I said, don’t you think it was made for me?” said Carding. Spelter turned back, his face blank. “Um?” “The hat, man.” “Oh. Um. Very - suitable.” With a sigh Carding removed the baroque headpiece and carefully replaced it in its box. “We’d better take it to him,” he said. “He’s starting to ask about it.” “I’m still bothered about where the real hat is,” said Spelter. “It’s in here,” said Carding firmly, tapping the lid. “I mean the, um, real one.” “This is the real one.” “I meant-” “This is the Archchancellor’s Hat,” said Carding carefully. “You should know, you made it.” “Yes, but-”began the bursar wretchedly. “After all, you wouldn’t make a forgery, would you?” “Not as, um, such-” “It’s just a hat. It’s whatever people think it is. People see the Archchancellor wearing it, they think it’s the original hat. In a certain sense, it is. Things are defined by what they do. And people, of course. Fundamental basis of wizardry, is that.” Carding paused dramatically, and plonked the hatbox into Spelter’s arms. “Cogitum ergot hatto, you might say.” Spelter had made a special study of old languages, and did his best. ““I think, therefore I am a hat?”“ he hazarded. “What?” said Carding, as they set off down the stairs to the new incarnation of the Great Hall. ““I considered I’m a mad hat?”“ Spelter suggested. “Just shut up, all right?” The haze still hung over the city, its curtains of silver and gold turned to blood by the light of the setting sun which streamed in through the windows of the hall. Coin was sitting on a stool with his staff across his knees. It occurred to Spelter that he had never seen the boy without it, which was odd. Most wizards kept their staves under the bed, or hooked up over the fireplace. He didn’t like this staff. It was black, but not because that was its colour, more because it seemed to be a moveable hole into some other, more unpleasant set of dimensions. It didn’t have eyes but, nevertheless, it seemed to stare at Spelter as if it knew his innermost thoughts, which at the moment was more than he did. His skin prickled as the two wizards crossed the floor and felt the blast of a raw magic flowing outwards from the seated figure. Several dozen of the most senior wizards were clustered around the stool, staring in awe at the floor. Spelter craned to see, and saw- The world. It floated in a puddle of black night somehow set into the floor itself, and Spelter knew with a terrible certainty that it was the world, not some image or simple projection. There were cloud patterns and everything. There were the frosty wastes of the Hublands, the Counterweight Continent, the Circle Sea, the Rimfall, all tiny and pastel-coloured but nevertheless real . . . Someone was speaking to him. “Um?” he said, and the sudden drop in metaphorical temperature jerked him back into reality. He realised with horror that Coin had just directed a remark at him. “I’m sorry?” he corrected himself. “It was just that the world . . . so beautiful . . .” “Our Spelter is an aesthete,” said Coin, and there was a brief chuckle from one or two wizards who knew what the word meant, “but as to the world, it could be improved. I had said, Spelter, that everywhere we look we can see cruelty and inhumanity and greed, which tell us that the world is indeed governed badly, does it not?” Spelter was aware of two dozen pairs of eyes turning to him. “Um,” he said. “Well, you can’t change human nature.” There was dead silence. Spelter hesitated. “Can you?” he said. “That remains to be seen,” said Carding. “But if we change the world, then human nature also will change. Is that not so, brothers?” “We have the city,” said one of the wizards. “I myself have created a castle-” “We rule the city, but who rules the world?” said Carding. “There must be a thousand petty kings and emperors and chieftains down there.” “Not one of whom can read without moving his lips,” said a wizard. “The Patrician could read,” said Spelter. “Not if you cut off his index finger,” said Carding. “What happened to the lizard, anyway? Never mind. The point is, the world should surely be run by men of wisdom and philosophy. It must be guided. We’ve spent centuries fighting amongst ourselves, but together. . . who knows what we could do?” “Today the city, tomorrow the world,” said someone at the back of the crowd. Carding nodded. “Tomorrow the world, and-” he calculated quickly-”on Friday the universe!” That leaves the weekend free, thought Spelter. He recalled the box in his arms, and held it out towards Coin. But Carding floated in front of him, seized the box in one fluid movement and offered it to the boy with a flourish. “The Archchancellor’s hat,” he said. “Rightfully yours, we think.” Coin took it. For the first time Spelter saw uncertainty cross his face. “Isn’t there some sort of formal ceremony?” he said. Carding coughed. “I-er, no,” he said. “No, I don’t think so.” He glanced up at the other senior mages, who shook their heads. “No. We’ve never had one. Apart from the feast, of course. Er. You see, it’s not like a coronation, the Archchancellor, you see, he leads the fraternity of wizards, he’s,” Carding’s voice ran down slowly in the light of that golden gaze, “he’s you see . . . he’s the . . . first . . .among . . . equals . . .” He stepped back hurriedly as the staff moved eerily until it pointed towards him. Once again Coin seemed to be listening to an inner voice. “No,” he said eventually, and when he spoke next his voice had that wide, echoing quality that, if you are not a wizard, you can only achieve with a lot of very expensive audio equipment. “There will be a ceremony. There must be a ceremony, people must understand that wizards are ruling, but it will not be here. I will select a place. And all the wizards who have passed through these gates will attend, is that understood?” “Some of them live far off,” said Carding, carefully. “It will take them some time to travel, so when were you thinking of-” “They are wizards!” shouted Coin. “They can be here in the twinkling of an eye! I have given them the power! Besides,” his voice dropped back to something like normal pitch, “the University is finished. It was never the true home of magic, only its prison. I will build us a new place.” He lifted the new hat out of its box, and smiled at it. Spelter and Carding held their breath. “But-” They looked around. Hakardly the Lore master had spoken, and now stood with his mouth opening and shutting. Coin turned to him, one eyebrow raised. “You surely don’t mean to close the University?” said the old wizard, his voice trembling. “It is no longer necessary,” said Coin. “It’s a place of dust and old books. It is behind us. Is that not so . . . brothers?” There was a chorus of uncertain mumbling. The wizards found it hard to imagine life without the old stones of UU. Although, come to think of it, there was a lot of dust, of course, and the books were pretty old . . . “After all . . . brothers . . . who among you has been into your dark library these past few days? The magic is inside you now, not imprisoned between covers. Is that not a joyous thing? Is there not one among you who has done more magic, real magic, in the past twenty-four hours than he has done in the whole of his life before? Is there one among you who does not, in his heart of hearts, truly agree with me?” Spelter shuddered. In his heart of hearts an inner Spelter had woken, and was struggling to make himself heard. It was a Spelter who suddenly longed for those quiet days, only hours ago, when magic was gentle and shuffled around the place in old slippers and always had time for a sherry and wasn’t like a hot sword in the brain and, above all, didn’t kill people. Terror seized him as he felt his vocal chords twang to attention and prepare, despite all his efforts, to disagree. The staff was trying to find him. He could feel it searching for him. It would vanish him, just like poor old Billias. He clamped his jaws together, but it wouldn’t work. He felt his chest heave. His jaw creaked. Carding, shifting uneasily, stood on his foot. Spelter yelped. “Sorry”, said Carding. “Is something the matter, Spelter?” said Coin. Spelter hopped on one leg, suddenly released, his body flooding with relief as his toes flooded with agony, more grateful than anyone in the entire history of the world that seventeen stones of wizardry had chosen his instep to come down heavily on. His scream seemed to have broken the spell. Coin sighed, and stood up. “It has been a good day,” he said. It was two o’clock in the morning. River mists coiled like snakes through the streets of Ankh-Morpork, but they coiled alone. Wizards did not hold with other people staying up after midnight, and so no-one did. They slept the troubled sleep of the enchanted, instead. In the Plaza of Broken Moons, once the boutique of mysterious pleasures from whose flare-lit and curtain-hung stalls the late-night reveller could obtain anything from a plate of jellied eels to the venereal disease of his choice, the mists coiled and dripped into chilly emptiness. The stalls had gone, replaced by gleaming marble and a statue depicting the spirit of something or other, surrounded by illuminated fountains. Their dull splashing was the only sound that broke the cholesterol of silence that had the heart of the city in its grip. Silence reigned too in the dark bulk of Unseen University. Except-Spelter crept along the shadowy corridors like a two-legged spider, darting - or at least limping quickly -from pillar to archway, until he reached the forbidding doors of the Library. He peered nervously at the darkness around him and, after some hesitation, tapped very, very lightly. Silence poured from the heavy woodwork. But, unlike the silence that had the rest of the city under its thrall, this was a watchful, alert silence; it was the silence of a sleeping cat that had just opened one eye. When he could bear it no longer Spelter dropped to his hands and knees and tried to peer under the doors. Finally he put his mouth as close as he could to the draughty, dusty gap under the bottommost hinge and whispered: “I say! Um. Can you hear me?” He felt sure that something moved, far back in the darkness. He tried again, his mood swinging between terror and hope with every erratic thump of his heart. “I say? It’s me, um, Spelter. You know? Could you speak to me, please?” Perhaps large leathery feet were creeping gently across the floor in there, or maybe it was only the creaking of Spelter’s nerves. He tried to swallow away the dryness in his throat, and had another go. “Look, all right, but, look, they’re talking about shutting the Library!” The silence grew louder. The sleeping cat had cocked an ear. “What is happening is all wrong!” the bursar confided, and clapped his hand over his mouth at the enormity of what he had said. “Oook?” It was the faintest of noises, like the eructation of cockroaches. Suddenly emboldened, Spelter pressed his lips closer to the crack. “Have you got the, um, Patrician in there?” “Oook.” “What about the little doggie?” “Oook.” “Oh. Good.” Spelter lay full length in the comfort of the night, and drummed his fingers on the chilly floor. “You wouldn’t care to, um, let me in too?” he ventured. “Oook!” Spelter made a face in the gloom. “Well, would you, um, let me come in for a few minutes? We need to discuss something urgently, man to man.” “Eeek.” “I meant ape.” “Oook.” “Look, won’t you come out, then?” “Oook.” Spelter sighed. “This show of loyalty is all very well, but you’ll starve in there.” “Oook oook.” “What other way in?” “Oook.” “Oh, have it your way,” Spelter sighed. But, somehow, he felt better for the conversation. Everyone else in the University seemed to be living in a dream, whereas the Librarian wanted nothing more in the whole world than soft fruit, a regular supply of index cards and the opportunity, every month or so, to hop over the wall of the Patrician’s private menagerie.[13] It was strangely reassuring. “So you’re all right for bananas and so forth?” he inquired, after another pause. “Oook.” “Don’t let anyone in, will you? Um. I think that’s frightfully important.” “Oook.” “Good.” Spelter stood up and dusted off his knees. Then he put his mouth to the keyhole and added, “Don’t trust anyone.” “Oook.” It was not completely dark in the Library, because the serried rows of magical books gave off a faint octarine glow, caused by thaumaturgical leakage into a strong occult field. It was just bright enough to illuminate the pile of shelves wedged against the door. The former Patrician had been carefully decanted into a jar on the Librarian’s desk. The Librarian himself sat under it, wrapped in his blanket and holding Wuffles on his lap. Occasionally he would eat a banana. Spelter, meanwhile, limped back along the echoing passages of the University, heading for the security of his bedroom. It was because his ears were nervously straining the tiniest of sounds out of the air that he heard, right on the cusp of audibility, the sobbing. It wasn’t a normal noise up here. In the carpeted corridors of the senior wizards’ quarters there were a number of sounds you might hear late at night, such as snoring, the gentle clinking of glasses, tuneless singing and, once in a while, the zip and sizzle of a spell gone wrong. But the sound of someone quietly crying was such a novelty that Spelter found himself edging down the passage that led to the Archchancellor’s suite. The door was ajar. Telling himself that he really shouldn’t, tensing himself for a hurried dash, Spelter peered inside. Rincewind stared. “What is it?” he whispered. “I think it’s a temple of some sort,” said Conina. Rincewind stood and gazed upwards, the crowds of AI Khali bouncing off and around him in a kind of human Brownian motion. A temple, he thought. Well, it was big, and it was impressive, and the architect had used every trick in the book to make it look even bigger and even more impressive than it was, and to impress upon everyone looking at it that they, on the other hand, were very small and ordinary and didn’t have as many domes. It was the kind of place that looked exactly as you were always going to remember it. But Rincewind felt he knew holy architecture when he saw it, and the frescoes on the big and, of course, impressive walls above him didn’t look at all religious. For one thing, the participants were enjoying themselves. Almost certainly, they were enjoying themselves. Yes, they must be. It would be pretty astonishing if they weren’t. “They’re not dancing, are they?” he said, in a desperate attempt not to believe the evidence of his own eyes. “Or maybe it’s some sort of acrobatics?” Conina squinted upwards in the hard, white sunlight. “I shouldn’t think so,” she said, thoughtfully. Rincewind remembered himself. “I don’t think a young woman like you should be looking at this sort of thing,” he said sternly. Conina gave him a smile. “I think wizards are expressly forbidden to,” she said sweetly. “It’s supposed to turn you blind.” Rincewind turned his face upwards again, prepared to risk maybe one eye. This sort of thing is only to be expected, he told himself. They don’t know any better. Foreign countries are, well, foreign countries. They do things differently there. Although some things, he decided, were done in very much the same way, only with rather more inventiveness and, by the look of it, far more often. “The temple frescoes of Al Khali are famous far and wide,” said Conina, as they walked through crowds of children who kept trying to sell Rincewind things and introduce him to nice relatives. “Well, I can see they would be,” Rincewind agreed. “Look, push off, will you? No, I don’t want to buy whatever it is. No, I don’t want to meet her. Or him, either. Or it, you nasty little boy. Get off, will you?” The last scream was to the group of children riding sedately on the Luggage, which was plodding along patiently behind Rincewind and making no attempt to shake them off. Perhaps it was sickening for something, he thought, and brightened up a bit. “How many people are there on this continent, do you think?” he said. “I don’t know,” said Conina, without turning round. “Millions, I expect?” “If I were wise, I wouldn’t be here,” said Rincewind, with feeling. They had been in Al Khali, gateway to the whole mysterious continent of Klatch, for several hours. He was beginning to suffer. A decent city should have a bit of fog about it, he considered, and people should live indoors, not spend all their time out on the streets. There shouldn’t be all this sand and heat. As for the wind . . . Ankh-Morpork had its famous smell, so full of personality that it could reduce a strong man to tears. But Al Khali had its wind, blowing from the vastness of the deserts and continents nearer the rim. It was a gentle breeze, but it didn’t stop and eventually it had the same effect on visitors that a cheesegrater achieves on a tomato. After a while it seemed to have worn away your skin and was rasping directly across the nerves. To Conina’s sensitive nostrils it carried aromatic messages from the heart of the continent, compounded of the chill of deserts, the stink of lions, the compost of jungles and the flatulence of wildebeest. Rincewind, of course, couldn’t smell any of this. Adaptation is a wonderful thing, and most Morporkians would be hard put to smell a burning feather mattress at five feet. “Where to next?” he said. “Somewhere out of the wind?” “My father spent some time in Khali when he was hunting for the Lost City of Ee,” said Conina. “And I seem to remember he spoke very highly of the soak. It’s a kind of bazaar.” “I suppose we just go and look for the second-hand hat stalls,” said Rincewind. “Because the whole idea is totally-” “What I was hoping was that maybe we could be attacked. That seems the most sensible idea. My father said that very few strangers who entered the soak ever came out again. Some very murderous types hang out there, he said.” Rincewind gave this due consideration. “Just run that by me again, will you?” he said. “After you said we should be attacked I seemed to hear a ranging in my ears.” “Well, we want to meet the criminal element, don’t we?” “Not exactly want,” said Rincewind. “That wasn’t the phrase I would have chosen.” “How would you put it, then?” “Er. I think the phrase “not want” sums it up pretty well.” “But you agreed that we should get the hat!” “But not die in the process,” said Rincewind, wretchedly. “That won’t do anyone any good. Not me, anyway.” “My father always said that death is but a sleep,” said Conina. “Yes, the hat told me that,” said Rincewind, as they turned down a narrow, crowded street between white adobe walls. “But the way I see it, it’s a lot harder to get up in the morning.” “Look,” said Conina, “there’s not much risk. You’re with me.” “Yes, and you’re looking forward to it, aren’t you,” said Rincewind accusingly, as Conina piloted them along a shady alley, with their retinue of pubescent entrepreneurs at their heels. “It’s the old herrydeterry at work.” “Just shut up and try to look like a victim, will you?” “I can do that all right,” said Rincewind, beating off a particularly stubborn member of the junior Chamber of Commerce, “I’ve had a lot of practice. For the last time, I don’t want to buy anyone, you wretched child!” He looked gloomily at the walls around them. At least there weren’t any of those disturbing pictures here, but the hot breeze still blew the dust around him and he was sick and tired of looking at sand. What he wanted was a couple of cool beers, a cold bath and a change of clothing; it probably wouldn’t make him feel better, but it would at least make feeling awful more enjoyable. Not that there was any beer here, probably. It was a funny thing, but in chilly cities like Ankh-Morpork the big drink was beer, which cooled you down, but in places like this, where the whole sky was an oven with the door left open, people drank tiny little sticky drinks which set fire to the back of your throat. And the architecture was all wrong. And they had statues in their temples that, well, just weren’t suitable. This wasn’t the right kind of place for wizards. Of course, they had some local grown alternative, enchanters or some such, but not what you’d call decent magic . . . Conina strolled ahead of him, humming to herself. You rather like her, don’t you? I can tell, said a voice in his head. Oh blast, thought Rincewind, you’re not my conscience again, are you? Your libido. It’s a bit stuffy in here, isn’t it? You haven’t had it done up since the last time I was around. Look, go away, will you? I’m a wizard! Wizards are ruled by their heads, not by their hearts! And I’m getting votes from your glands, and they’re telling me that as far as your body is concerned your brain is in a minority of one. Yes? But it’s got the casting vote, then. Hah! That’s what you think. Your heart has got nothing to do with this, by the way, it’s merely a muscular organ which powers the circulation of the blood. But look at it like this - you quite like her, don’t you? Well . . . Rincewind hesitated. Yes, he thought, er . . . She’s pretty good company, eh? Nice voice? Well, of course . . . You’d like to see more of her? Well . . . Rincewind realised with some surprise that, yes, he would. It wasn’t that he was entirely unused to the company of women, but it always seemed to cause trouble and, of course, it was a well known fact that it was bad for the magical abilities, although he had to admit that his particular magical abilities, being approximately those of a rubber hammer, were shaky enough to start with. Then you’ve got nothing to lose, have you? his libido put in, in an oily tone of thought. It was at this point Rincewind realised that something important was missing. It took him a little while to realise what it was. No-one had tried to sell him anything for several minutes. In Al Khali, that probably meant you were dead. He, Corona and the Luggage were alone in a long, shady alley. He could hear the bustle of the city some way away, but immediately around them there was nothing except a rather expectant silence. “They’ve run off,” said Conina. “Are we going to be attacked?” “Could be. There’s been three men following us on the rooftops.” Rincewind squinted upwards at almost the same time as three men, dressed in flowing black robes, dropped lightly into the alleyway in front of them. When he looked around two more appeared from around a corner. All five were holding long curved swords and, although the lower halves of their faces were masked, it was almost certain that they were grinning evilly. Rincewind rapped sharply on the Luggage’s lid. “Kill,” he suggested. The Luggage stood stock still for a moment, and then plodded over and stood next to Conina. It looked slightly smug and, Rincewind realised with jealous horror, rather embarrassed. “Why, you-” he growled, and gave it a kick - “you handbag.” He sidled closer to the girl, who was standing there with a thoughtful smile on her face. “What now?” he said. “Are you going to offer them all a quick perm?” The men edged a little closer. They were, he noticed, only interested in Conina. “I’m not armed,” she said. “What happened to your legendary comb?” “Left it on the boat.” “You’ve got nothing?” Conina shifted slightly to keep as many of the men as possible in her field of vision. “I’ve got a couple of hairgrips,” she said out of the corner of her mouth. “Any good?” “Don’t know. Never tried.” “You got us into this!” “Relax. I think they’ll just take us prisoner.” “Oh, that’s fine for you to say. You’re not marked down as this week’s special offer.” The Luggage snapped its lid once or twice, a little uncertain about things. One of the men gingerly extended his sword and prodded Rincewind in the small of the back. “They want to take us somewhere, see?” said Conina. She gritted her teeth. “Oh, no,” she muttered. “What’s the matter now?” “I can’t do it!” “What?” Conina put her head in her hands. “I can’t let myself be taken prisoner without a fight! I can feel a thousand barbarian ancestors accusing me of betrayal!” she hissed urgently. “Pull the other one.” “No, really. This won’t take a minute.” There was a sudden blur and the nearest man collapsed in a small gurgling heap. Then Conina’s elbows went back and into the stomachs of the men behind her. Her left hand rebounded past Rincewind’s ear with a noise like tearing silk and felled the man behind him. The fifth made a run for it and was brought down by a flying tackle, hitting his head heavily on the wall. Conina rolled off him and sat up, panting, her eyes bright. “I don’t like to say this, but I feel better for that,” she said. “It’s terrible to know that I betrayed a fine hairdressing tradition, of course. Oh.” “Yes,” said Rincewind sombrely, “I wondered if you’d noticed them.” Conina’s eyes scanned the line of bowmen who had appeared along the opposite wall. They had that stolid, impassive look of people who have been paid to do a job, and don’t much mind if the job involves killing people. “Time for those hairgrips,” said Rincewind. Conina didn’t move. “My father always said that it was pointless to undertake a direct attack against an enemy extensively armed with efficient projectile weapons,” she said. Rincewind, who knew Cohen’s normal method of speech, gave her a look of disbelief. “Well, what he actually said,” she added, “was never enter an arse-kicking contest with a porcupine.” Spelter couldn’t face breakfast. He wondered whether he ought to talk to Carding, but he had a chilly feeling that the old wizard wouldn’t listen and wouldn’t believe him anyway. In fact he wasn’t quite sure he believed it himself . . . Yes he was. He’d never forget it, although he intended to make every effort. One of the problems about living in the University these days was that the building you went to sleep in probably wasn’t the same building when you woke up. Rooms had a habit of changing and moving around, a consequence of all this random magic. It built up in the carpets, charging up the wizards to such an extent that shaking hands with somebody was a sure-fire way of turning them into something. The build up of magic, in fact, was overflowing the capacity of the area to hold it. If something wasn’t done about it soon, then even the common people would be able to use it - a chilling thought but, since Spelter’s mind was already so full of chilling thoughts you could use it as an ice tray, not one he was going to spend much time worrying about. Mere household geography wasn’t the only difficulty, though. Sheer pressure of thaumaturgical inflow was even affecting the food. What was a forkful of kedgeree when you lifted it off the plate might well have turned into something else by the time it entered your mouth. If you were lucky, it was inedible. If you were unlucky, it was edible but probably not something you liked to think you were about to eat or, worse, had already eaten half of. Spelter found Coin in what had been, late last night, a broom cupboard. It was a lot bigger now. It was only because Spelter had never heard of aircraft hangars that he didn’t know what to compare it with, although, to be fair, very few aircraft hangars have marble floors and a lot of statuary around the place. A couple of brooms and a small battered bucket in one corner looked distinctly out of place, but not as out of place as the crushed tables in the former Great Hall which, owing to the surging tides of magic now flowing through the place, had shrunk to the approximate size of what Spelter, if he had ever seen one, would have called a small telephone box. He sidled into the room with extreme caution and took his place among the council of wizards. The air was greasy with the feel of power. Spelter created a chair beside Carding and leant across to him. “You’ll never believe-” he began. “Quiet!” hissed Carding. “This is amazing!” Coin was sitting on his stool in the middle of the circle, one hand on his staff, the other extended and holding something small, white and egg-like. It was strangely fuzzy. In fact, Spelter thought, it wasn’t something small seen close to. It was something huge, but a long way off. And the boy was holding it in his hand. “What’s he doing?” Spelter whispered. “I’m not exactly sure,” murmured Carding. “As far as we can understand it, he’s creating a new home for wizardry” Streamers of coloured light flashed about the indistinct ovoid, like a distant thunderstorm. The glow lit Coin’s preoccupied face from below, giving it the semblance of a mask. “I don’t see how we will all fit in,” the bursar said. “Carding, last night I saw-” “It is finished,” said Coin. He held up the egg, which flashed occasionally from some inner light and gave off tiny white prominences. Not only was it a long way off, Spelter thought, it was also extremely heavy; it went right through heaviness and out the other side, into that strange negative realism where lead would be a vacuum. He grabbed Carding’s sleeve again. “Carding, listen, it’s important, listen, when I looked in-” “I really wish you’d stop doing that.” “But the staff, his staff, it’s not-” Coin stood up and pointed the staff at the wall, where a doorway instantly appeared. He marched out through it, leaving the wizards to follow him. He went through the Archchancellor’s garden, followed by a gaggle of wizards in the same way that a comet is followed by its tail, and didn’t stop until he reached the banks of the Ankh. There were some hoary old willows here, and the river flowed, or at any rate moved, in a horseshoe bend around a small newt-haunted meadow known rather optimistically as Wizards Pleasaunce. On summer evenings, if the wind was blowing towards the river, it was a nice area for an afternoon stroll. The warm silver haze still hung over the city as Coin padded through the damp grass until he reached the centre. He tossed the egg, which drifted in a gentle arc and landed with a squelch. He turned to the wizards as they hurried up. “Stand well back,” he commanded. “And be prepared to run.” He pointed the octiron staff at the half-sunken thing. A bolt of octarine light shot from its tip and struck the egg, exploding into a shower of sparks that left blue and purple after-images. There was a pause. A dozen wizards watched the egg expectantly. A breeze shook the willow trees in a totally unmysterious way. Nothing else happened. “Er-” Spelter began. And then came the first tremor. A few leaves fell out of the trees and some distant water bird took off in fright. The sound started as a low groaning, experienced rather than heard, as though everyone’s feet had suddenly become their ears. The trees trembled, and so did one or two wizards. The mud around the egg began to bubble. And exploded. The ground peeled back like lemon rind. Gouts of steaming mud spattered the wizards as they dived for the cover of the trees. Only Coin, Spelter and Carding were left to watch the sparkling white building arise from the meadow, grass and dirt pouring off it. Other towers erupted from the ground behind them; buttresses grew through the air, linking tower with tower. Spelter whimpered when the soil flowed away from around his feet, and was replaced by flagstones flecked with silver. He lurched as the floor rose inexorably, carrying the three high above the treetops. The rooftops of the University went past and fell away below them. Ankh-Morpork spread out like a map, the river a trapped snake, the plains a misty blur. Spelter’s ears popped, but the climb went on, into the clouds. They emerged drenched and cold into blistering sunlight with the cloud cover spreading away in every direction. Other towers were rising around them, glinting painfully in the sharpness of the day. Carding knelt down awkwardly and felt the floor gingerly. He signalled to Spelter to do the same. Spelter touched a surface that was smoother than stone. It felt like ice would feel if ice was slightly warm, and looked like ivory. While it wasn’t exactly transparent, it gave the impression that it would like to be. He got the distinct feeling that, if he closed his eyes, he wouldn’t be able to feel it at all. He met Carding’s gaze. “Don’t look at, um, me,” he said. “I don’t know what it is either.” They looked up at Coin, who said: “It’s magic.” “Yes, lord, but what is it made of?” said Carding. “It is made of magic. Raw magic. Solidified. Curdled. Renewed from second to second. Could you imagine a better substance to build the new home of sourcery?” The staff flared for a moment, melting the clouds. The Discworld appeared below them, and from up here you could see that it was indeed a disc, pinned to the sky by the central mountain of Cori Celesti, where the gods lived. There was the Circle Sea, so close that it might even be possible to dive into it from here; there was the vast continent of Klatch, squashed by perspective. The Rimfall around the edge of the world was a sparkling curve. “It’s too big,” said Spelter under his breath. The world he had lived in hadn’t stretched much further than the gates of the University, and he’d preferred it that way. A man could be comfortable in a world that size. He certainly couldn’t be comfortable about being half a mile in the air standing on something that wasn’t, in some fundamental way, there. The thought shocked him. He was a wizard, and he was worrying about magic. He sidled cautiously back towards Carding, who said: “It isn’t exactly what I expected.” “Um?” “It looks a lot smaller up here, doesn’t it.” “Well, I don’t know. Listen, I must tell you-” “Look at the Ramtops, now. You could almost reach out and touch them.” They stared out across two hundred leagues towards the towering mountain range, glittering and white and cold. It was said that if you travelled hubwards through the secret valleys of the Ramtops, you would find, in the frozen lands under Cori Celesti itself, the secret realm of the Ice Giants, imprisoned after their last great battle with the Gods. In those days the mountains had been mere islands in a great sea of ice, and ice lived on them still. Coin smiled his golden smile. “What did you say, Carding?” he said. “It’s the clear air, lord. And they look so close and small. I only said I could almost touch them-” Coin waved him into silence. He extended one thin arm, rolling back his sleeve in the traditional sign that magic was about to be performed without trickery. He reached out, and then turned back with his fingers closed around what was, without any shadow of a doubt, a handful of snow. The two wizards observed it in stunned silence as it melted and dripped on to the floor. Coin laughed. “You find it so hard to believe?” he said. “Shall I pick pearls from rim-most Krull, or sand from the Great Nef? Could your old wizardry do half as much?” It seemed to Spelter that his voice took on a metallic edge. He stared intently at their faces. Finally Carding sighed and said rather quietly, “No. All my life I have sought magic, and all I found was coloured lights and little tricks and old, dry books. Wizardry has done nothing for the world.” “And if I tell you that I intend to dissolve the Orders and close the University? Although, of course, my senior advisors will be accorded all due status.” Carding’s knuckles whitened, but he shrugged. “There is little to say,” he said. “What good is a candle at noonday?” Coin turned to Spelter. So did the staff. The filigree carvings were regarding him coldly. One of them, near the top of the staff, looked unpleasantly like an eyebrow. “You’re very quiet, Spelter. Do you not agree?” No. The world had sourcery once, and gave it up for wizardry. Wizardry is magic for men, not gods. It’s not for us. There was something wrong with it, and we have forgotten what it was. I liked wizardry. It didn’t upset the world. It fitted. It was right. A wizard was all I wanted to be. He looked down at his feet. “Yes,” he whispered. “Good,” said Coin, in a satisfied tone of voice. He strolled to the edge of the tower and looked down at the street map of Ankh-Morpork far below. The Tower of Art came barely a tenth of the way towards them. “I believe,” he said, “I believe that we will hold the ceremony next week, at full moon.” “Er. It won’t be full moon for three weeks,” said Carding. “Next week,” Coin repeated. “If I say the moon will be full, there will be no argument.” He continued to stare down at the model buildings of the University, and then pointed. “What’s that?” Carding craned. “Er. The Library. Yes. It’s the Library. Er.” The silence was so oppressive that Carding felt something more was expected of him. Anything would be better than that silence. “It’s where we keep the books, you know. Ninety thousand volumes, isn’t it, Spelter?” “Um? Oh. Yes. About ninety thousand, I suppose.” Coin leaned on the staff and stared. “Burn them,” he said. “All of them.” Midnight strutted its black stuff along the corridors of Unseen University as Spelter, with rather less confidence, crept cautiously towards the impassive doors of the Library. He knocked, and the sound echoed so loudly in the empty building that he had to lean against the wall and wait for his heart to slow down a bit. After a while he heard a sound like heavy furniture being moved about. “Oook?” “It’s me.” “Oook?” “Spelter.” “Oook.” “Look, you’ve got to get out! He’s going to burn the Library!” There was no reply. Spelter let himself sag to his knees. “He’ll do it, too,” he whispered. “He’ll probably make me do it, it’s that staff, um, it knows everything that’s going on, it knows that I know about it . . . please help me . . .” “Oook?” “The other night, I looked into his room . . . the staff, the staff was glowing, it was standing there in the middle of the room like a beacon and the boy was on the bed sobbing, I could feel it reaching out, teaching him, whispering terrible things, and then it noticed me, you’ve got to help me, you’re the only one who isn’t under the-” Spelter stopped. His face froze. He turned around very slowly, without willing it, because something was gently spinning him. He knew the University was empty. The wizards had all moved into the New Tower, where the lowliest student had a suite more splendid than any senior mage had before. The staff hung in the air a few feet away. It was surrounded by a faint octarine glow. He stood up very carefully and, keeping his back to the stonework and his eyes firmly fixed on the thing, slithered gingerly along the wall until he reached the end of the corridor. At the corner he noted that the staff, while not moving had revolved on its axis to follow him. He gave a little cry, grasped the skirts of his robe, and ran. The staff was in front of him. He slid to a halt and stood there, catching his breath. “You don’t frighten me,” he lied, and turned on his heel and marched off in a different direction, snapping his fingers to produce a torch that burned with a fine white flame (only its penumbra of octarine proclaimed it to be of magical origin). Once again, the staff was in front of him. The light of his torch was sucked into a thin, singing steam of white fire that flared and vanished with a “pop”. He waited, his eyes watering with blue after-images, but if the staff was still there it didn’t seem to be inclined to take advantage of him. When vision returned he felt he could make out an even darker shadow on his left. The stairway down to the kitchens. He darted for it, leaping down the unseen steps and landing heavily and unexpectedly on uneven flags. A little moonlight filtered through a grating in the distance and somewhere up there, he knew, was a doorway into the outside world. Staggering a little, his ankles aching, the noise of his own breath booming in his ears as though he’d stuck his entire head in a seashell, Spelter set off across the endless dark desert of the floor. Things clanked underfoot. There were no rats here now, of course, but the kitchen had fallen into disuse lately - the University’s cooks had been the best in the world, but now any wizard could conjure up meals beyond mere culinary skill. The big copper pans hung neglected on the wall, their sheen already tarnishing, and the kitchen ranges under the giant chimney arch were filled with nothing but chilly ash . . . The staff lay across the back door like a bar. It spun up as Spelter tottered towards it and hung, radiating quiet malevolence, a few feet away. Then, quite smoothly, it began to glide towards him. He backed away, his feet slipping on the greasy stones. A thump across the back of his thighs made him yelp, but as he reached behind him he found it was only one of the chopping blocks. His hand groped desperately across its scarred surface and, against all hope, found a cleaver buried in the wood. In an instinctive gesture as ancient as mankind, Spelter’s fingers closed around its handle. He was out of breath and out of patience and out of space and time and also scared, very nearly, out of his mind. So when the staff hovered in front of him he wrenched the chopper up and around with all the strength he could muster . . . And hesitated. All that was wizardly in him cried out against the destruction of so much power, power that perhaps even now could be used, used by him. . . And the staff swung around so that its axis was pointing directly at him. And several corridors away, the Librarian stood braced with his back against the Library door, watching the blue and white flashes that flickered across the floor. He heard the distant snap of raw energy, and a sound that started low and ended up in zones of pitch that even Wuffles, lying with his paws over his head, could not hear. And then there was a faint, ordinary tinkling noise, such as might be made by a fused and twisted metal cleaver dropping on to flagstones. It was the sort of noise that makes the silence that comes after it roll forward like a warm avalanche. The Librarian wrapped the silence around him like a cloak and stood staring up at the rank on rank of books, each one pulsing faintly in the glow of its own magic. Shelf after shelf looked down[14] at him. They had heard. He could feel the fear. The orang-utan stood statue-still for several minutes, and then appeared to reach a decision. He knuckled his way across to his desk and, after much rummaging, produced a heavy key-ring bristling with keys. Then he went back and stood in the middle of the floor and said, very deliberately, “Oook.” The books craned forward on their shelves. Now he had their full attention. “What is this place?” said Conina. Rincewind looked around him, and made a guess. They were still in the heart of Al Khali. He could hear the hum of it beyond the walls. But in the middle of the teeming city someone had cleared a vast space, walled it off, and planted a garden so romantically natural that it looked as real as a sugar pig. “It looks like someone has taken twice five miles of inner city and girdled them round with walls and towers,” he hazarded. “What a strange idea,” said Conina. “Well, some of the religions here-well, when you die, you see, they think you go to this sort of garden, where there’s all this sort of music and, and,” he continued, wretchedly, “sherbet and, and - young women.” Conina took in the green splendour of the walled garden, with its peacocks, intricate arches and slightly wheezy fountains. A dozen reclining women stared back at her, impassively. A hidden string orchestra was playing the complicated Klatchian bhong music. “I’m not dead,” she said. “I’m sure I would have remembered. Besides, this isn’t my idea of paradise.” She looked critically at the reclining figures, and added, “I wonder who does their hair?” A sword point prodded her in the small of the back, and the two of them set out along the ornate path towards a small domed pavilion surrounded by olive trees. She scowled. “Anyway, I don’t like sherbet.” Rincewind didn’t comment. He was busily examining the state of his own mind, and wasn’t happy at the sight of it. He had a horrible feeling that he was falling in love. He was sure he had all the symptoms. There were the sweaty palms, the hot sensation in the stomach, the general feeling that the skin of his chest was made of tight elastic. There was the feeling every time Conina spoke, that someone was running hot steel into his spine. He glanced down at the Luggage, tramping stoically alongside him, and recognised the symptoms. “Not you, too?” he said. Possibly it was only the play of sunlight on the Luggage’s battered lid, but it was just possible that for an instant it looked redder than usual. Of course, sapient pearwood has this sort of weird mental link with its owner . . . Rincewind shook his head. Still, it’d explain why the thing wasn’t its normal malignant self. “It’d never work,” he said. “I mean, she’s a female and you’re a, well, you’re a-” He paused. “Well, whatever you are, you’re of the wooden persuasion. It’d never work. People would talk.” He turned and glared at the black-robed guards behind him. “I don’t know what you’re looking at,” he said severely. The Luggage sidled over to Conina, following her so closely that she banged an ankle on it. “Push off,” she snapped, and kicked it again, this time on purpose. Insofar as the Luggage ever had an expression, it looked at her in shocked betrayal. The pavilion ahead of them was an ornate onion-shaped dome, studded with precious stones and supported on four pillars. Its interior was a mass of cushions on which lay a rather fat, middle-aged man surrounded by three young women. He wore a purple robe interwoven with gold thread; they, as far as Rincewind could see, demonstrated that you could make six small saucepan lids and a few yards of curtain netting go a long way although - he shivered - not really far enough. The man appeared to be writing. He glanced up at them. “I suppose you don’t know a good rhyme for “thou”?” he said peevishly. Rincewind and Conina exchanged glances. “Plough?” said Rincewind. “Bough?” “Cow?” suggested Conina, with forced brightness. The man hesitated. “Cow I quite like,” he said, “Cow has got possibilities. Cow might, in fact, do. Do pull up a cushion, by the way. Have some sherbet. Why are you standing there like that?” “It’s these ropes,” said Conina. “I have this allergy to cold steel,” Rincewind added. “Really, how tiresome,” said the fat man, and clapped a pair of hands so heavy with rings that the sound was more of a clang. Two guards stepped forward smartly and cut the bonds, and then the whole battalion melted away, although Rincewind was acutely conscious of dozens of dark eyes watching them from the surrounding foliage. Animal instinct told him that, while he now appeared to be alone with the man and Conina, any aggressive moves on his part would suddenly make the world a sharp and painful place. He tried to radiate tranquillity and total friendliness. He tried to think of something to say. “Well,” he ventured, looking around at the brocaded hangings, the ruby-studded pillars and the gold filigree cushions, “you’ve done this place up nicely. It’s-” he sought for something suitably descriptive - “well, pretty much of a miracle of rare device.” “One aims for simplicity,” sighed the man, still scribbling busily. “Why are you here? Not that it isn’t always a pleasure to meet fellow students of the poetic muse.” “We were brought here,” said Conina. “Men with swords,” added Rincewind. “Dear fellows, they do so like to keep in practice. Would you like one of these?” He snapped his fingers at one of the girls. “Not, er, right now,” Rincewind began, but she’d picked up a plate of golden-brown sticks and demurely passed it towards him. He tried one. It was delicious, a sort of sweet crunchy flavour with a hint of honey. He took two more. “Excuse me,” said Conina, “but who are you? And where is this?” “My name is Creosote, Seriph of Al Khali,” said the fat man, “and this is my Wilderness. One does one’s best.” Rincewind coughed on his honey stick. “Not Creosote as in “As rich as Creosote”?” he said. “That was my dear father. I am, in fact, rather richer. When one has a great deal of money, I am afraid, it is hard to achieve simplicity. One does one’s best.” He sighed. “You could try giving it away,” said Conina. He sighed again. “That isn’t easy, you know. No, one just has to try to do a little with a lot.” “No, no, but look”, said Rincewind, spluttering bits of stick, “they say, I mean, everything you touch turns into gold, for goodness sake.” “That could make going to the lavatory a bit tricky,” said Conina brightly. “Sorry.” “One hears such stories about oneself,” said Creosote, affecting not to have heard. “So tiresome. As if wealth mattered. True riches lie in the treasure houses of literature.” “The Creosote I heard of,” said Conina slowly, “was head of this band of, well, mad killers. The original Assassins, feared throughout hubward Klatch. No offence meant.” “Ah yes, dear father,” said Creosote junior. “The hashishim. Such a novel idea.[15] But not really very efficient. So we hired Thugs instead.” “Ah. Named after a religious sect,” said Conina knowingly. Creosote gave her a long look. “No,” he said slowly, “I don’t think so. I think we named them after the way they push people’s faces through the back of their heads. Dreadful, really.” He picked up the parchment he had been writing on, and continued, “I seek a more cerebral life, which is why I had the city centre converted into a Wilderness. So much better for the mental flow. One does one’s best. May I read you my latest oeuvre?” “Egg?” said Rincewind, who wasn’t following this. Creosote thrust out one pudgy hand and declaimed as follows: “A summer palace underneath the bough, A flask of wine, a loaf of bread, some lamb couscous with courgettes, roast peacock tongues, kebabs, iced sherbet, selection of sweets from the trolley and choice of Thou, Singing beside me in the Wilderness, And Wilderness is-” He paused, and picked up his pen thoughtfully. “Maybe cow isn’t such a good idea,” he said. “Now that I come to look at it-” Rincewind glanced at the manicured greenery, carefully arranged rocks and high surrounding walls. One of the Thous winked at him. “This is a Wilderness?” he said. “My landscape gardeners incorporated all the essential features, I believe. They spent simply ages getting the rills sufficiently sinuous. I am reliably informed that they contain prospects of rugged grandeur and astonishing natural beauty.” “And scorpions,” said Rincewind, helping himself to another honey stick. “I don’t know about that,” said the poet. “Scorpions sound unpoetic to me. Wild honey and locusts seem more appropriate, according to the standard poetic instructions, although I’ve never really developed the taste for insects.” “I always understood that the kind of locust people ate in wildernesses was the fruit of a kind of tree,” said Conina. “Father always said it was quite tasty.” “Not insects?” said Creosote. “I don’t think so.” The Seriph nodded at Rincewind. “You might as well finish them up, then,” he said. “Nasty crunchy things, I couldn’t see the point.” “I don’t wish to sound ungrateful,” said Conina, over the sound of Rincewind’s frantic coughing. “But why did you have us brought here?” “Good question.” Creosote looked at her blankly for a few seconds, as if trying to remember why they were there. “You really are a most attractive young woman,” he said. “You can’t play a dulcimer, by any chance?” “How many blades has it got?” said Conina. “Pity,” said the Seriph, “I had one specially imported.” “My father taught me to play the harmonica,” she volunteered. Creosote’s lips moved soundlessly as he tried out the idea. “No good,” he said. “Doesn’t scan. Thanks all the same, though.” He gave her another thoughtful look. “You know, you really are most becoming. Has anyone ever told you your neck is as a tower of ivory?” “Never,” said Conina. “Pity,” said Creosote again. He rummaged among his cushions and produced a small bell, which he rang. After a while a tall, saturnine figure appeared from behind the pavilion. He had the look of someone who could think his way through a corkscrew without bending, and a certain something about the eyes which would have made the average rabid rodent tiptoe away, discouraged. That man, you would have said, has got Grand Vizier written all over him. No-one can tell him anything about defrauding widows and imprisoning impressionable young men in alleged jewel caves. When it comes to dirty work he probably wrote the book or, more probably, stole it from someone else. He wore a turban with a pointy hat sticking out of it. He had a long thin moustache, of course. “Ah, Abrim,” said Creosote. “Highness?” “My Grand Vizier,” said the Seriph. - thought so -, said Rincewind to himself. “These people, why did we have them brought here?” The vizier twirled his moustache, probably foreclosing another dozen mortgages. “The hat, highness,” he said. “The hat, if you remember.” “Ah, yes. Fascinating. Where did we put it?” “Hold on,” said Rincewind urgently. “This hat . . . it wouldn’t be a sort of battered pointy one, with lots of stuff on it? Sort of lace and stuff, and, and-” he hesitated-”no-one’s tried to put it on, have they?” “It specifically warned us not to,” said Creosote, “so Abrim got a slave to try it on, of course. He said it gave him a headache.” “It also told us that you would shortly be arriving,” said the vizier, bowing slightly at Rincewind, “and therefore I - that is to say, the Seriph felt that you might be able to tell us more about this wonderful artifact?” There is a tone of voice known as interrogative, and the vizier was using it; a slight edge to his words suggested that, if he didn’t learn more about the hat very quickly, he had various activities in mind in which further words like “red hot” and “knives” would appear. Of course, all Grand Viziers talk like that all the time. There’s probably a school somewhere. “Gosh, I’m glad you’ve found it,” said Rincewind, “That hat is gngngnh-” “I beg your pardon?” said Abrim, signalling a couple of lurking guards to step forward. “I missed the bit after the young lady-” he bowed at Conina-”elbowed you in the ear.” “I think,” said Conina, politely but firmly, “you’d better take us to see it.” Five minutes later, from its resting place on a table in the Seriph’s treasury, the hat said, At last. What kept you? It is at a time like this, with Rincewind and Conina probably about to be the victims of a murderous attack, and Coin about to address the assembled cowering wizards on the subject of treachery, and the Disc about to fall under a magical dictatorship, that it is worth mentioning the subject of poetry and inspiration. For example, the Seriph, in his bijou wildernessette, has just riffled back through his pages of verse to revise the lines which begin: “Get up! For morning in the cup of day, Has dropped the spoon that scares the stars away” - and he has sighed, because the white-hot lines searing across his imagination never seem to come out exactly as he wants them. It is, in fact, impossible that they ever will. Sadly, this sort of thing happens all the time. It is a well-known established fact throughout the many-dimensional worlds of the multiverse that most really great discoveries are owed to one brief moment of inspiration. There’s a lot of spadework first, of course, but what clinches the whole thing is the sight of, say, a falling apple or a boiling kettle or the water slopping over the edge of the bath. Something goes click inside the observer’s head and then everything falls into place. The shape of DNA, it is popularly said, owes its discovery to the chance sight of a spiral staircase when the scientist’s mind was just at the right receptive temperature. Had he used the lift, the whole science of genetics might have been a good deal different.[16] This is thought of as somehow wonderful. It isn’t. It is tragic. Little particles of inspiration sleet through the universe all the time travelling through the densest matter in the same way that a neutrino passes through a candyfloss haystack, and most of them miss. Even worse, most of the ones that hit the exact cerebral target hit the wrong one. For example, the weird dream about a lead doughnut on a mile-high gantry, which in the right mind would have been the catalyst for the invention of repressed-gravitational electricity generation (a cheap and inexhaustible and totally non-polluting form of power which the world in question had been seeking for centuries, and for the lack of which it was plunged into a terrible and pointless war) was in fact had by a small and bewildered duck. By another stroke of bad luck, the sight of a herd of white horses galloping through a field of wild hyacinths would have led a struggling composer to write the famous Flying God Suite, bringing succour and balm to the souls of millions, had he not been at home in bed with shingles. The inspiration therefore fell to a nearby frog, who was not in much of a position to make a startling contribution to the field of tone poetry. Many civilisations have recognised this shocking waste and tried various methods to prevent it, most of them involving enjoyable but illegal attempts to tune the mind into the right wavelength by the use of exotic herbage or yeast products. It never works properly. And so Creosote, who had dreamt the inspiration for a rather fine poem about life and philosophy and how they both look much better through the bottom of a wine glass, was totally unable to do anything about it because he had as much poetic ability as a hyena. Why the gods allow this sort of thing to continue is a mystery. Actually, the flash of inspiration needed to explain it clearly and precisely has taken place, but the creature who received it -a small female bluetit - has never been able to make the position clear, even after some really strenuous coded messages on the tops of milk bottles. By a strange coincidence, a philosopher who had been devoting some sleepless nights to the same mystery woke up that morning with a wonderful new idea for getting peanuts out of bird tables. Which brings us rather neatly on to the subject of magic. A long way out in the dark gulfs of interstellar space, one single inspiration particle is clipping along unaware of its destiny, which is just as well, because its destiny is to strike, in a matter of hours, a tiny area of Rincewind’s mind. It would be a tough destiny even if Rincewind’s creative node was a reasonable size, but the particle’s karma had handed it the problem of hitting a moving target the size of a small raisin over a distance of several hundred lightyears. Life can be very difficult for a little subatomic particle in a great big universe. If it pulls it off, however, Rincewind will have a serious philosophic idea. If it doesn’t, a nearby brick will have an important insight which it will be totally unequipped to deal with. The Seriph’s palace, known to legend as the Rhoxie, occupied most of the centre of Al Khali that wasn’t occupied by the wilderness. Most things connected with Creosote were famed in mythology and the arched, domed, many-pillared palace was said to have more rooms than any man had been able to count. Rincewind didn’t know which number he was in. “It’s magic, isn’t it?” said Abrim the vizier. He prodded Rincewind in the ribs. “You’re a wizard,” he said. “Tell me what it does.” “How do you know I’m a wizard?” said Rincewind desperately. “It’s written on your hat,” said the vizier. “Ah.” “And you were on the boat with it. My men saw you.” “The Seriph employs slavers?” snapped Conina. “That doesn’t sound very simple!” “Oh, I employ the slavers. I am the vizier, after all,” said Abrim. “It is rather expected of me.” He gazed thoughtfully at the girl, and then nodded at a couple of the guards. “The current Seriph is rather literary in his views,” he said. “I, on the other hand, am not. Take her to the seraglio, although,” he rolled his eyes and gave an irritable sigh, “I’m sure the only fate that awaits her there is boredom, and possibly a sore throat.” He turned to Rincewind. “Don’t say anything,” he said. “Don’t move your hands. Don’t try any sudden feats of magic. I am protected by strange and powerful amulets.” “Now just hold on a minute-” Rincewind began, and Conina said, “All right. I’ve always wondered what a harem looked like.” Rincewind’s mouth went on opening and shutting, but no sounds came out. Finally he managed, “Have you?” She waggled an eyebrow at him. It was probably a signal of some sort. Rincewind felt he ought to have understood it, but peculiar passions were stirring in the depths of his being. They weren’t actually going to make him brave, but they were making him angry. Speeded up, the dialogue behind his eyes was going something like this: Ugh. Who’s that? Your conscience. I feel terrible. Look, they’re marching her off to the harem. Rather her than me, thought Rincewind, but without much conviction. Do something! There’s too many guards! They’ll kill me! So they’ll kill you, it’s not the end of the world. It will be for me, thought Rincewind grimly. But just think how good you’ll feel in your next life - Look, just shut up, will I? I’ve had just about enough of me. Abrim stepped across to Rincewind and looked at him curiously. “Who are you talking to?” he said. “I warn you,” said Rincewind, between clenched teeth, “I have this magical box on legs which is absolutely merciless with attackers, one word from me and-” “I’m impressed,” said Abrim. “Is it invisible?” Rincewind risked a look behind him. “I’m sure I had it when I came in,” he said, and sagged. It would be mistaken to say the Luggage was nowhere to be seen. It was somewhere to be seen, it was just that the place wasn’t anywhere near Rincewind. Abrim walked slowly around the table on which sat the hat, twirling his moustache. “Once again,” he said, “I ask you: this is an artifact of power, I feel it, and you must tell me what it does.” “Why don’t you ask it?” said Rincewind. “It refuses to tell me.” “Well, why do you want to know?” Abrim laughed. It wasn’t a nice sound. It sounded as though he had had laughter explained to him, probably slowly and repeatedly, but had never heard anyone actually do it. “You’re a wizard,” he said. “Wizardry is about power. I have taken an interest in magic myself. I have the talent, you know.” The vizier drew himself up stiffly. “Oh, yes. But they wouldn’t accept me at your University. They said I was mentally unstable, can you believe that?” “No,” said Rincewind, truthfully. Most of the wizards at Unseen had always seemed to him to be several bricks short of a shilling. Abrim seemed pretty normal wizard material. Abrim gave him an encouraging smile. Rincewind looked sideways at the hat. It said nothing. He looked back at the vizier. If the laughter had been weird, the smile made it sound as normal as birdsong. It looked as though the vizier had learned it from diagrams. “Wild horses wouldn’t get me to help you in any way,” he said. Ah,” said the vizier. “A challenge.” He beckoned to the nearest guard. “Do we have any wild horses in the stables?” “Some fairly angry ones, master.” “Infuriate four of them and take them to the turnwise courtyard. And, oh, bring several lengths of chain.” “Right away, master.” “Um. Look,” said Rincewind. “Yes?” said Abrim. “Well, if you put it like that . . .” “You wish to make a point?” “It’s the Archchancellor’s hat, if you must know,” said Rincewind. “The symbol of wizardry.” “Powerful?” Rincewind shivered. “Very,” he said. “Why is it called the Archchancellor’s hat?” “The Archchancellor is the most senior wizard, you see. The leader. But, look –“ Abrim picked up the hat and turned it around and around in his hands. “It is, you might say, the symbol of office?” “Absolutely, but look, if you put it on, I’d better warn you-” Shut up. Abrim leapt back, the hat dropping to the floor. The wizard knows nothing. Send him away. We must negotiate. The vizier stared down at the glittering octarines around the hat. “I negotiate? With an item of apparel?” I have much to offer, on the right head. Rincewind was appalled. It has already been indicated that he had the kind of instinct for danger usually found only in certain small rodents, and it was currently battering on the side of his skull in an attempt to run away and hide somewhere. “Don’t listen!” he shouted. Put me on, said the hat beguilingly, in an ancient voice that sounded as though the speaker had a mouthful of felt. If there really was a school for viziers, Abrim had come top of the class. “We’ll talk first,” he said. He nodded at the guards, and pointed to Rincewind. “Take him away and throw him in the spider tank,” he said. “No, not spiders, on top of everything else!” moaned Rincewind. The captain of the guard stepped forward and knuckled his forehead respectfully. “Run out of spiders, master,” he said. “Oh.” The vizier looked momentarily blank. “In that case, lock him in the tiger cage.” The guard hesitated, trying to ignore the sudden outburst of whimpering beside him. “The tiger’s been ill, master. Backwards and forwards all night.” “Then throw this snivelling coward down the shaft of eternal fire!” A couple of the guards exchanged glances over the head of Rincewind, who had sunk to his knees. “Ah. We’ll need a bit of notice of that, master-” “- to get it going again, like.” The vizier’s fist came down hard on the table. The captain of the guard brightened up horribly. “There’s the snake pit, master,” he said. The other guards nodded. There was always the snake pit. Four heads turned towards Rincewind, who stood up and brushed the sand off his knees. “How do you feel about snakes?” said one of the guards. “Snakes? I don’t like snakes much-” “The snake pit,” said Abrim. “Right. The snake pit,” agreed the guards. “- I mean, some snakes are okay-” Rincewind continued, as two guards grabbed him by the elbows. In fact there was only one very cautious snake, which remained obstinately curled up in a corner of the shadowy pit watching Rincewind suspiciously, possibly because he reminded it of a mongoose. “Hi,” it said eventually. “Are you a wizard?” As a line of snake dialogue this was a considerable improvement on the normal string of esses, but Rincewind was sufficiently despondent not to waste time wondering and simply replied, “It’s on my hat, can’t you read?” “In seventeen languages, actually. I taught myself.” “Really?” “I sent off for courses. But I try not to read, of course. It’s not in character.” “I suppose it wouldn’t be.” It was certainly the most cultured snake voice that Rincewind had ever heard. “It’s the same with the voice, I’m afraid,” the snake added. “I shouldn’t really be talking to you now. Not like this, anyway. I suppose I could grunt a bit. I rather think I should be trying to kill you, in fact.” “I have curious and unusual powers,” said Rincewind. Fair enough, he thought, an almost total inability to master any form of magic is pretty unusual for a wizard and anyway, it doesn’t matter about lying to a snake. “Gosh. Well, I expect you won’t be in here long, then.” “Hmm?” “I expect you’ll be levitating out of here like a shot, any minute.” Rincewind looked up at the fifteen-foot-deep walls of the snake pit, and rubbed his bruises. “I might,” he said cautiously. “In that case, you wouldn’t mind taking me with you, would you?” “Eh?” “It’s a lot to ask, I know, but this pit is, well, it’s the pits.” “Take you? But you’re a snake, it’s your pit. The idea is that you stay here and people come to you. I mean, I know about these things.” A shadow behind the snake unfolded itself and stood up. “That’s a pretty unpleasant thing to say about anyone,” it said. The figure stepped forward, into the pool of light. It was a young man, taller than Rincewind. That is to say, Rincewind was sitting down, but the boy would have been taller than him even if he was standing up. To say that he was lean would be to miss a perfect opportunity to use the word “emaciated”. He looked as though toast racks and deckchairs had figured in his ancestry, and the reason it was so obvious was his clothes. Rincewind looked again. He had been right the first time. The lank-haired figure in front of him was wearing the practically traditional garb for barbarian heroes - a few studded leather thongs, big furry boots, a little leather holdall and goosepimples. There was nothing unusual about that, youd see a score of similarly-dressed adventurers in any street of Ankh-Morpork, except that you’d never see another one wearing - The young man followed his gaze, looked down, and shrugged. “I can’t help it,” he said. “I promised my mother.” “Woolly underwear?” Strange things were happening in Al Khali that night. There was a certain silveriness rolling in from the sea, which baffled the city’s astronomers, but that wasn’t the strangest thing. There were little flashes of raw magic discharging off sharp edges, like static electricity, but that wasn’t the strangest thing. The strangest thing walked into a tavern on the edge of the city, where the everlasting wind blew the smell of the desert through every unglazed window, and sat down in the middle of the floor. The occupants watched it for some time, sipping their coffee laced with desert orakh. This drink, made from cacti sap and scorpion venom, is one of the most virulent alcoholic beverages in the universe, but the desert nomads don’t drink it for its intoxicating effects. They use it because they need something to mitigate the effect of Klatchian coffee. Not because you could use the coffee to waterproof roofs. Not because it went through the untrained stomach lining like a hot ball bearing through runny butter. What it did was worse. It made you knurd.[17] The sons of the desert glanced suspiciously into their thimble-sized coffee-cups, and wondered whether they had overdone the orakh. Were they all seeing the same thing? Would it be foolish to pass a remark? These are the sort of things you need to worry about if you want to retain any credibility as a steely-eyed son of the deep desert. Pointing a shaking finger and saying, “Hey, look, a box just walked in here on hundreds of little legs, isn’t that extraordinary!” would show a terrible and possibly fatal lack of machismo. The drinkers tried not to catch one another’s eye, even when the Luggage slid up to the row of orakh jars against the far wall. The Luggage had a way of standing still that was somehow even more terrible than watching it move about. Finally one of them said, “I think it wants a drink.” There was a long silence, and then one of the others said, with the precision of a chess Grand Master making a killing move, “What does?” The rest of the drinkers gazed impassively into their glasses. There was no sound for a while other than the plop-plopping of a gecko’s footsteps across the sweating ceiling. The first drinker said, “The demon that’s just moved up behind you is what I was referring to, O brother of the sands.” The current holder of the All-Wadi Imperturbability Championship smiled glassily until he felt a tugging on his robe. The smile stayed where it was but the rest of his face didn’t seem to want to be associated with it. The Luggage was feeling crossed in love and was doing what any sensible person would do in these circumstances, which was get drunk. It had no money and no way of asking for what it wanted, but the Luggage somehow never had much difficulty in making itself understood. The tavern keeper spent a very long lonely night filling a saucer with orakh, before the Luggage rather unsteadily walked out through one of the walls. The desert was silent. It wasn’t normally silent. It was normally alive with the chirruping of crickets, the buzz of mosquitoes, the hiss and whisper of hunting wings skimming across the cooling sands. But tonight it was silent with the thick, busy silence of dozens of nomads folding their tents and getting the hell out of it. “I promised my mother,” said the boy. “I get these colds, you see.” “Perhaps you should try wearing, well, a bit more clothing?” “Oh, I couldn’t do that. You’ve got to wear all this leather stuff.” “I wouldn’t call it all,” said Rincewind. “There’s not enough of it to call it all. Why have you got to wear it?” “So people know I’m a barbarian hero, of course.” Rincewind leaned his back against the fetid walls of the snake pit and stared at the boy. He looked at two eyes like boiled grapes, a shock of ginger hair, and a face that was a battleground between its native freckles and the dreadful invading forces of acne. Rincewind rather enjoyed times like this. They convinced him that he wasn’t mad because, if he was mad, that left no word at all to describe some of the people he met. “Barbarian hero,” he murmured. “It’s all right, isn’t it? All this leather stuff was very expensive.” “Yes, but, look - what’s your name, lad?” “Nijel-” “You see, Nijel “Nijel the Destroyer,” Nijel added. “You see, Nijel “- the Destroyer-” “All right, the Destroyer-” said Rincewind desperately. “- son of Harebut the Provision Merchant-” “What?” “You’ve got to be the son of someone,” Nijel explained. “It says it here somewhere-” He half-turned and fumbled inside a grubby fur bag, eventually bringing out a thin, torn and grubby book. “There’s a bit in here about selecting your name,” he muttered. “How come you ended up in this pit, then?” “I was intending to steal from Creosote’s treasury, but I had an asthma attack,” said Nijel, still fumbling through the crackling pages. Rincewind looked down at the snake, which was still trying to keep out of everyone’s way. It had a good thing going in the pit, and knew trouble when it saw it. It wasn’t about to cause any aggro for anyone. It stared right back up at Rincewind and shrugged, which is pretty clever for a reptile with no shoulders. “How long have you been a barbarian hero?” “I’m just getting started. I’ve always wanted to be one, you see, and I thought maybe I could pick it up as I went along.” Nijel peered short-sightedly at Rincewind. “That’s all right, isn’t it?” “It’s a desperate sort of life, by all accounts,” Rincewind volunteered. “Have you thought what it might be like selling groceries for the next fifty years?” Nijel muttered darkly. Rincewind thought. “Is lettuce involved?” he said. “Oh yes,” said Nijel, shoving the mysterious book back in his bag. Then he started to pay close attention to the pit walls. Rincewind sighed. He liked lettuce. It was so incredibly boring. He had spent years in search of boredom, but had never achieved it. Just when he thought he had it in his grasp his life would suddenly become full of near-terminal interest. The thought that someone could voluntarily give up the prospect of being bored for fifty years made him feel quite weak. With fifty years ahead of him, he thought, he could elevate tedium to the status of an art form. There would be no end to the things he wouldn’t do. “Do you know any lamp-wick jokes?” he said, settling himself comfortably on the sand. “I don’t think so,” said Nijel politely, tapping a slab. “I know hundreds. They are very droll. For example, do you know how many trolls it takes to change a lamp-wick?” “This slab moves,” said Nijel. “Look, it’s a sort of door. Give me a hand.” He pushed enthusiastically, his biceps standing out on his arms like peas on a pencil. “I expect it’s some sort of secret passage,” he added. “Come on, use a bit of magic, will you? It’s stuck.” “Don’t you want to hear the rest of the joke?” said Rincewind, in a pained voice. It was warm and dry down here, with no immediate danger, not counting the snake, which was trying to look inconspicuous. Some people were never satisfied. “I think not right at the moment,” said Nijel. “I think I would prefer a bit of magical assistance.” “I’m not very good at it,” said Rincewind. “Never got the hang of it, see, it’s more than just pointing a finger at it and saying “Kazam-“ “ There was a sound like a thick bolt of octarine lightning zapping into a heavy rock slab and smashing it into a thousand bits of spitting, white-hot shrapnel, and no wonder. After a while Nijel slowly got to his feet, beating out the small fires in his vest. “Yes,” he said, in the voice of one determined not to lose his self-control. “Well. Very good. We’ll just let it cool down a bit, shall we? And then we, then we, we might as well be going.” He cleared his throat a bit. “Nnh,” said Rincewind. He was starting fixedly at the end of his finger, holding it out at arm’s length in a manner that suggested he was very sorry he hadn’t got longer arms. Nijel peered into the smouldering hole. “It seems to open into some kind of room,” he said. “Nnh.” “After you,” said Nijel. He gave Rincewind a gentle push. The wizard staggered forward, bumped his head on the rock and didn’t appear to notice, and then rebounded into the hole. Nijel patted the wall, and his brow wrinkled. “Can you feel something?” he said. “Should the stone be trembling?” “Nnh.” Are you all right?” “Nnh.” Nijel put his ear to the stones. “There’s a very strange noise,” he said. A sort of humming.” A bit of dust shook itself free from the mortar over his head and floated down. Then a couple of much heavier rocks danced free from the walls of the pits and thudded into the sand. Rincewind had already staggered off down the tunnel, making little shocked noises and completely ignoring the stones that were missing him by inches and, in some cases, hitting him by kilograms. If he had been in any state to notice it, he would have known what was happening. The air had a greasy feel and smelled like burning tin. Faint rainbows filmed every point and edge. A magical charge was building up somewhere very close to them, and it was a big one, and it was trying to earth itself. A handy wizard, even one as incapable as Rincewind, stood out like a copper lighthouse. Nijel blundered out of the rumbling, broiling dust and bumped into him standing, surrounded by an octarine corona, in another cave. Rincewind looked terrible. Creosote would have probably noted his flashing eyes and floating hair. He looked like someone who had just eaten a handful of pineal glands and washed them down with a pint of adrenochrome. He looked so high you could bounce intercontinental TV off him. Every single hair stood out from his head, giving off little sparks. Even his skin gave the impression that it was trying to get away from him. His eyes appeared to be spinning horizontally; when he opened his mouth, peppermint sparks flashed from his teeth. Where he had trodden, stone melted or grew ears or turned into something small and scaly and purple and flew away. “I say,” said Nijel, “are you all right?” “Nnh,” said Rincewind, and the syllable turned into a large doughnut. “You don’t look all right,” said Nijel with what might be called, in the circumstances, unusual perspicacity. “Nnh.” “Why not try getting us out of here?” Nijel added, and wisely flung himself flat on the floor. Rincewind nodded like a puppet and pointed his loaded digit at the ceiling, which melted like ice under a blowlamp. Still the rumbling went on, sending its disquieting harmonics dancing through the palace. It is a well-known factoid that there are frequencies that can cause panic, and frequencies that can cause embarrassing incontinence, but the shaking rock was resonating at the frequency that causes reality to melt and run out at the corners. Nijel regarded the dripping ceiling and cautiously tasted it. “Lime custard,” he said, and added, “I suppose there’s no chance of stairs, is there?” More fire burst from Rincewind’s ravaged fingers, coalescing into an almost perfect escalator, except that possibly no other moving staircase in the universe was floored with alligator skin. Nijel grabbed the gently spinning wizard and leapt aboard. Fortunately they had reached the top before the magic vanished, very suddenly. Sprouting out of the centre of the palace, shattering rooftops like a mushroom bursting through an ancient pavement, was a white tower taller than any other building in Al Khali. Huge double doors had opened at its base and out of them, striding along as though they owned the place, were dozens of wizards. Rincewind thought he could recognise a few faces, faces which he’d seen before bumbling vaguely in lecture theatres or peering amiably at the world in the University grounds. They weren’t faces built for evil. They didn’t have a fang between them. But there was some common denominator among their expressions that could terrify a thoughtful person. Nijel pulled back behind a handy wall. He found himself looking into Rincewind’s worried eyes. “Hey, that’s magic!” “I know,” said Rincewind, “It’s not right!” Nijel peered up at the sparkling tower. “But-” “It feels wrong,” said Rincewind. “Don’t ask me why.” Half a dozen of the Seriph’s guards erupted from an arched doorway and plunged towards the wizards, their headlong rush made all the more sinister by their hastly battle silences. For a moment their swords flashed in the sunlight, and then a couple of the wizards turned, extended their hands and - Nijel looked away. “Urgh,” he said. A few curved swords dropped on to the cobbles. “I think we should very quietly go away,” said Rincewind. “But didn’t you see what they just turned them into?” “Dead people,” said Rincewind. “I know. I don’t want to think about it.” Nijel thought he’d never stop thinking about it, especially around 5am on windy nights. The point about being killed by magic was that it was much more inventive than, say, steel; there were all sorts of interesting new ways to die, and he couldn’t put out of his mind the shapes he’d seen, just for an instant, before the wash of octarine fire had mercifully engulfed them. “I didn’t think wizards were like that,” he said, as they hurried down a passageway. “I thought they were more, well, more silly than sinister. Sort of figures of fun.” “Laugh that one off, then,” muttered Rincewind. “But they just killed them, without even-” “I wish you wouldn’t go on about it. I saw it as well.” Nijel drew back. His eyes narrowed. “You’re a wizard, too,” he said accusingly. “Not that kind I’m not,” said Rincewind shortly. “What kind are you, then?” “The non-killing kind.” “It was the way they looked at them as if it just didn’t matter-” said Nijel, shaking his head. “That was the worst bit.” “Yes.” Rincewind dropped the single syllable heavily in front of Nijel’s train of thought, like a tree trunk. The boy shuddered, but at least he shut up. Rincewind actually began to feel sorry for him, which was very unusual-he normally felt he needed all his pity for himself. “Is that the first time you’ve seen someone killed?” he said. “Yes.” “Exactly how long have you been a barbarian hero?” “Er. What year is this?” Rincewind peered around a corner, but such people as were around and vertical were far too busy panicking to bother about them. “Out on the road, then?” he said quietly. “Lost track of time? I know how it is. This is the Year of the Hyena.” “Oh. In that case, about-” Nijel’s lips moved soundlessly-”about three days. Look”, he added quickly, “how can people kill like that? Without even thinking about it?” “I don’t know,” said Rincewind, in a tone of voice that suggested he was thinking about it. “I mean, even when the vizier had me thrown in the snake pit, at least he seemed to be taking an interest.” “That’s good. Everyone should have an interest.” “I mean, he even laughed!” “Ah. A sense of humour, too.” Rincewind felt that he could see his future with the same crystal clarity that a man falling off a cliff sees the ground, and for much the same reason. So when Nijel said: “They just pointed their fingers without so much as-” , Rincewind snapped: “Just shut up, will you? How do you think I feel about it? I’m a wizard, too!” “Yes, well, you’ll be all right then,” muttered Nijel. It wasn’t a heavy blow, because even in a rage Rincewind still had muscles like tapioca, but it caught the side of Nijel’s head and knocked him down more by the weight of surprise than its intrinsic energy. “Yes, I’m a wizard all right,” Rincewind hissed. “A wizard who isn’t much good at magic! I’ve managed to survive up till now by not being important enough to die! And when all wizards are hated and feared, exactly how long do you think I’ll last?” “That’s ridiculous!” Rincewind couldn’t have been more taken aback if Nijel had struck him. “What?” “Idiot! All you have to do is stop wearing that silly robe and get rid of that daft hat and no one will even know you’re a wizard!” Rincewind’s mouth opened and shut a few times as he gave a very lifelike impression of a goldfish trying to grasp the concept of tap-dancing. “Stop wearing the robe?” he said. “Sure. All those tatty sequins and things, it’s a total giveaway,” said Nijel, struggling to his feet. “Get rid of the hat?” “You’ve got to admit that going around with “wizzard” written on it is a bit of a heavy hint.” Rincewind gave him a worried grin. “Sorry,” he said, “I don’t quite follow you-” “Just get rid of them. It’s easy enough, isn’t it? Just drop them somewhere and then you could be a, a, well, whatever. Something that isn’t a wizard.” There was a pause, broken only by the distant sounds of fighting. “Er,” said Rincewind, and shook his head. “You’ve lost me there . . .” “Good grief, it’s perfectly simple to understand!” “. . . not sure I quite catch your drift. . .” murmured Rincewind, his face ghastly with sweat. “You can just stop being a wizard.” Rincewind’s lips moved soundlessly as he replayed every word, one at a time, then all at once. “What?” he said, and then he said, “Oh.” “Got it? Want to try it one more time?” Rincewind nodded gloomily. “I don’t think you understand. A wizard isn’t what you do, it’s what you are. If I wasn’t a wizard, I wouldn’t be anything.” He took off his hat and twiddled nervously with the loose star on its point, causing a few more cheap sequins to part company. “I mean, it’s got wizard written on my hat,” he said. “It’s very important -” He stopped and stared at the hat. “Hat,” he said vaguely, aware of some importunate memory pressing its nose up against the windows of his mind. “It’s a good hat,” said Nijel, who felt that something was expected of him. “Hat,” said Rincewind again, and then added, “the hat! We’ve got to get the hat!” “You’ve got the hat,” Nijel pointed out. “Not this hat, the other hat. And Conina!” He took a few random steps along a passageway, and then sidled back. “Where do you suppose they are?” he said. “Who?” “There’s a magic hat I’ve got to find. And a girl.” “Why?” “It might be rather difficult to explain. I think there might be screaming involved somewhere.” Nijel didn’t have much of a jaw but, such as it was, he stuck it out. “There’s a girl needs rescuing?” he said grimly. Rincewind hesitated. “Someone will probably need rescuing,” he admitted. “It might possibly be her. Or at least in her vicinity.” “Why didn’t you say so? This is more like it, this is what I was expecting. This is what heroism is all about. Let’s go!” There was another crash, and the sound of people yelling. “Where?” said Rincewind. “Anywhere!” Heroes usually have an ability to rush madly around crumbling palaces they hardly know, save everyone and get out just before the whole place blows up or sinks into the swamp. In fact Nijel and Rincewind visited the kitchens, assorted throne rooms, the stables (twice) and what seemed to Rincewind like several miles of corridor. Occasionally groups of black-clad guards would scurry past them, without so much as a second glance. “This is ridiculous,” said Nijel. “Why don’t we ask someone? Are you all right?” Rincewind leaned against a pillar decorated with embarrassing sculpture and wheezed. “You could grab a guard and torture the information out of him,” he said, gulping air. Nijel gave him an odd look. “Wait here,” he said, and wandered off until he found a servant industriously ransacking a cupboard. “Excuse me,” he said, “which way to the harem?” “Turn left three doors down,” said the man, without looking around. “Right.” He wandered back again and told Rincewind. “Yes, but did you torture him?” “No.” “That wasn’t very barbaric of you, was it?” “Well, I’m working up to it,” said Nijel. “I mean, I didn’t say “thank you”.” Thirty seconds later they pushed aside a heavy bead curtain and entered the seraglio of the Seriph of Al Khali. There were gorgeous songbirds in cages of gold filigree. There were tinkling fountains. There were pots of rare orchids through which humming-birds skimmed like tiny, brilliant jewels. There were about twenty young women wearing enough clothes for, say, about half a dozen, huddled together in a silent crowd. Rincewind had eyes for none of this. That is not to say that the sight of several dozen square yards of hip and thigh in every shade from pink to midnight black didn’t start certain tides flowing deep in the crevasses of his libido, but they were swamped by the considerably bigger flood of panic at the sight of four guards turning towards him with scimitars in their hands and the light of murder in their eyes. Without hesitation, Rincewind took a step backwards. “Over to you, friend,” he said. “Right!” Nijel drew his sword and held it out in front of him, his arms trembling at the effort. There were a few seconds of total silence as everyone waited to see what would happen next. And then Nijel uttered the battle cry that Rincewind would never quite forget to the end of his life. “Erm,” he said, “excuse me. . .” “It seems a shame,” said a small wizard. The others didn’t speak. It was a shame, and there wasn’t a man among them who couldn’t hear the hot whine of guilt all down their backbones. But, as so often happens by that strange alchemy of the soul, the guilt made them arrogant and reckless. “Just shut up, will you?” said the temporary leader. He was called Benado Sconner, but there is something in the air tonight that suggests that it is not worth committing his name to memory. The air is dark and heavy and full of ghosts. The Unseen University isn’t empty, there just aren’t any people there. But of course the six wizards sent to burn down the Library aren’t afraid of ghosts, because they’re so charged with magic that they practically buzz as they walk, they’re wearing robes more splendid than any Archchancellor has worn, their pointy hats are more pointed than any hats have hitherto been, and the reason they’re standing so close together is entirely coincidental. “It’s awfully dark in here,” said the smallest of the wizards. “It’s midnight,” said Sconner sharply, “and the only dangerous things in here are us. Isn’t that right, boys?” There was a chorus of vague murmurs. They were all in awe of Sconner, who was rumoured to do positive-thinking exercises. “And we’re not scared of a few old books, are we, lads?” He glowered at the smallest wizard. “You’re not, are you?” he added sharply. “Me? Oh. No. Of course not. They’re just paper, like he said,” said the wizard quickly. “Well, then.” “There’s ninety thousand of them, mind,” said another wizard. “I always heard there was no end to “em,” said another. “It’s all down to dimensions, I heard, like what we see is only the tip of the whatever, you know, the thing that is mostly underwater-” “Hippopotamus?” “Alligator?” “Ocean?” “Look, just shut up, all of you!” shouted Sconner. He hesitated. The darkness seemed to suck at the sound of his voice. It packed the air like feathers. He pulled himself together a bit. “Right then,” he said, and turned towards the forbidding doors of the Library. He raised his hands, made a few complicated gestures in which his fingers, in some eye-watering way, appeared to pass through each other, and shattered the doors into sawdust. The waves of silence poured back again, strangling the sound of falling woodchips. There was no doubt that the doors were smashed. Four forlorn hinges hung trembling from the frame, and a litter of broken benches and shelves lay in the wreckage. Even Sconner was a little surprised. “There,” he said. “It’s as easy as that. You see? Nothing happened to me. Right?” There was a shuffling of curly-toed boots. The darkness beyond the doorway was limned with the indistinct, eye-aching glow of thaumaturgic radiation as possibility particles exceeded the speed of reality in a strong magical field. “Now then,” said Sconner, brightly, “who would like the honour of setting the fire?” Ten silent seconds later he said, “In that case I will do it myself. Honestly, I might as well be talking to the wall.” He strode through the doorway and hurried across the floor to the little patch of starlight that lanced down from the glass dome high above the centre of the Library (although, of course, there has always been considerable debate about the precise geography of the place; heavy concentrations of magic distort time and space, and it is possible that the Library doesn’t even have an edge, never mind a centre). He stretched out his arms. “There. See? Absolutely nothing has happened. Now come on in.” The other wizards did so, with great reluctance and a tendency to duck as they passed through the ravished arch. “Okay,” said Sconner, with some satisfaction. “Now, has everyone got their matches as instructed? Magical fire won’t work, not on these books, so I want everyone to . . .” “Something moved up there,” said the smallest wizard. Sconner blinked. “What?” “Something moved up by the dome,” said the wizard, adding by way of explanation, “I saw it.” Sconner squinted upwards into the bewildering shadows, and decided to exert a bit of authority. “Nonsense,” he said briskly. He pulled out a bundle of foul-smelling yellow matches, and said, “Now, I want you all to pile . . .” “I did see it, you know,” said the small wizard, sulkily. “All right, what did you see?” “Well, I’m not exactly-” “You don’t know, do you?” snapped Sconner. “I saw someth-” “You don’t know!” repeated Sconner, “You’re just seeing shadows, just trying to undermine my authority, isn’t that it?” Sconner hesitated, and his eyes glazed momentarily. “I am calm,” he intoned, “I am totally in control. I will not let -“ “It was-” “Listen, shortarse, you can just jolly well shut up, all right?” One of the other wizards, who had been staring upwards to conceal his embarrassment, gave a strangled little cough. “Er, Sconner-” “And that goes for you too!” Sconner pulled himself to his full, bristling height and flourished the matches. “As I was saying,” he said, “I want you to light the matches and -I suppose I’ll have to show you how to light matches, for the benefit of shortarse there-and I’m not out of the window, you know. Good grief. Look at me. You take a match-” He lit a match, the darkness blossomed into a ball of sulphurous white light, and the Librarian dropped on him like the descent of Man. They all knew the Librarian, in the same definite but diffused way that people know walls and floors and all the other minor but necessary scenery on the stage of life. If they recall him at all, it was as a sort of gentle mobile sigh, sitting under his desk repairing books, or knuckling his way among the shelves in search of secret smokers. Any wizard unwise enough to hazard a clandestine rollup wouldn’t know anything about it until a soft leathery hand reached up and removed the offending homemade, but the Librarian never made a fuss, he just looked extremely hurt and sorrowful about the whole sad business and then ate it. Whereas what was now attempting with considerable effort to unscrew Sconner’s head by the ears was a screaming nightmare with its lips curled back to reveal long yellow fangs. The terrified wizards turned to run and found themselves bumping into bookshelves that had unaccountably blocked the aisles. The smallest wizard yelped and rolled under a table laden with atlases, and lay with his hands over his ears to block out the dreadful sounds as the remaining wizards tried to escape. Eventually there was nothing but silence, but it was that particularly massive silence created by something moving very stealthily, as it might be, in search of something else. The smallest wizard ate the tip of his hat out of sheer terror. The silent mover grabbed him by the leg and pulled him gently but firmly out into the open, where he gibbered a bit with his eyes shut and then, when ghastly teeth failed to meet in his throat, ventured a quick glance. The Librarian picked him up by the scruff of his neck and dangled him reflectively a foot off the ground, just out of reach of a small and elderly wire-haired terrier who was trying to remember how to bite people’s ankles. “Er-!” said the wizard, and was then thrown in an almost flat trajectory through the broken doorway, where his fall was broken by the floor. After a while a shadow next to him said, “Well, that’s it, then. Anyone seen that daft bastard Sconner?” And a shadow on the other side of him said, “I think my neck’s broken.” “Who’s that?” “That daft bastard,” said the shadow, nastily. “Oh. Sorry, Sconner.” Sconner stood up, his whole body now outlined in magical aura. He was trembling with rage as he raised his hands. “I’ll show that wretched throwback to respect his evolutionary superiors-” he snarled. “Get him, lads!” And Sconner was borne to the flagstones again under the weight of all five wizards. “Sorry, but-” “- you know that if you use-” “- magic near the Library, with all the magic that’s in there-” “- get one thing wrong and it’s a critical Mass and then -” “BANG! Goodnight, world!” Sconner growled. The wizards sitting on him decided that getting up was not the wisest thing they could do at this point. Eventually he said, “Right. You’re right. Thank you. It was wrong of me to lose my temper like that. Clouded my judgement. Essential to be dispassionate. You’re absolutely right. Thank you. Get off. They risked it. Sconner stood up. “That monkey,” he said, “has eaten its last banana. Fetch-” “Er. Ape, Sconner,” said the smallest wizard, unable to stop himself. “It’s an ape, you see. Not a monkey. . .” He wilted under the stare. “Who cares? Ape, monkey, what’s the difference?” said Sconner. “What’s the difference, Mr Zoologist?” “I don’t know, Sconner,” said the wizard meekly. “I think it’s a class thing.” “Shut up.” “Yes, Sconner.” “You ghastly little man,” said Sconner. He turned and added, in a voice as level as a sawblade: “I am perfectly controlled. My mind is as cool as a bald mammoth. My intellect is absolutely in charge. Which one of you sat on my head? No, I must not get angry. I am not angry. I am thinking positively. My faculties are fully engaged - do any of you wish to argue?” “No, Sconner,” they chorused. “Then get me a dozen barrels of oil and all the kindling you can find! That ape’s gonna fry!” From high in the Library roof, home of owls and bats and other things, there was a clink of chain and the sound of glass being broken as respectfully as possible. “They don’t look very worried,” said Nijel, slightly affronted. “How can I put this?” said Rincewind. “When they come to write the list of Great Battle Cries of the World, “Erm, excuse me” won’t be one of them.” He stepped to one side. “I’m not with him,” he said earnestly to a grinning guard. “I just met him, somewhere. In a pit.” He gave a little laugh. “This sort of thing happens to me all the time,” he said. The guards stared through him. “Erm,” he said. “Okay,” he said. He sidled back to Nijel. “Are you any good with that sword?” Without taking his eyes off the guards, Nijel fumbled in his pack and handed Rincewind the book. “I’ve read the whole of chapter three,” he said. “It’s got illustrations.” Rincewind turned over the crumpled pages. The book had been used so hard you could have shuffled it, but what was probably once the front cover showed a rather poor woodcut of a muscular man. He had arms like two bags full of footballs, and he was standing kneedeep in languorous women and slaughtered victims with a smug expression on his face. About him was the legend: Inne Juste 7 Dayes I wille make You a Barbearian Hero! Below it, in a slightly smaller type, was the name: Cohen the Barbarean. Rincewind rather doubted it. He had met Cohen and, while he could read after a fashion, the old boy had never really mastered the pen and still signed his name with an “X”, which he usually spelled wrong. On the other hand, he gravitated rapidly to anything with money in it. Rincewind looked again at the illustration, and then at Nijel. “Seven days?” “Well, I’m a slow reader.” “Ah,” said Rincewind. “And I didn’t bother with chapter six, because I promised my mother I’d stick with just the looting and pillaging, until I find the right girl.” “And this book teaches you how to be a hero?” “Oh, yes. It’s very good.” Nijel gave him a worried glance. “That’s all right, isn’t it? It cost a lot of money.” “Well, er. I suppose you’d better get on with it, then.” Nijel squared his, for want of a better word, shoulders, and waved his sword again. “You four had better just jolly well watch out,” he said, “or . . . hold on a moment.” He took the book from Rincewind and riffled through the pages until he found what he was looking for, and continued, “Yes, or “the chill winds of fate will blow through your bleached skeletons,” the legions of Hell will drown your living soul in acid”. There. How d’you like them . . . excuse me a moment . . . apples?” There was a metallic chord as four men drew their swords in perfect harmony. Nijel’s sword became a blur. It made a complicated figure eight in the air in front of him, spun over his arm, flicked from hand to hand behind his back, seemed to orbit his chest twice, and leapt like a salmon. One or two of the harem ladies broke into spontaneous applause. Even the guards looked impressed. “That’s a Triple Orcthrust with Extra Flip,” said Nijel proudly. “I broke a lot of mirrors learning that. Look, they’re stopping.” “They’ve never seen anything like it, I imagine,” said Rincewind weakly, judging the distance to the doorway. “I should think not.” “Especially the last bit, where it stuck in the ceiling.” Nijel looked upwards. “Funny,” he said, “it always did that at home, too. I wonder what I’m doing wrong.” “Search me.” “Gosh, I’m sorry,” said Nijel, as the guards seemed to realise that the entertainment was over and closed in for the kill. “Don’t blame youself-” said Rincewind, as Nijel reached up and tried unsuccessfully to free the blade. “Thank you.” “- I’ll do it for you.” Rincewind considered his next step. In fact, he considered several steps. But the door was too far away and anyway, by the sound of it, things were not a lot healthier out there. There was only one thing for it. He’d have to try magic. He raised his hand and two of the men fell over. He raised his other hand and the other two fell over. Just as he was beginning to wonder about this, Conina stepped daintily over the prone bodies, idly rubbing the sides of her hands. “I thought you’d never turn up,” she said. “Who’s your friend?” As has already been indicated, the Luggage seldom shows any sign of emotion, or at least any emotion less extreme than blind rage and hatred, and therefore it is hard to gauge its feelings when it woke up, a few miles outside Al Khali, on its lid in a dried-up wadi with its legs in the air. Even a few minutes after dawn the air was like the breath of a furnace. After a certain amount of rocking the Luggage managed to get most of its feet pointing the right way, and stood doing a complicated slow-motion jig to keep as few of them on the burning sand as possible. It wasn’t lost. It always knew exactly where it was. It was always here. It was just that everywhere else seemed to have been temporarily mislaid. After some deliberation the Luggage turned and walked very slowly, into a boulder. It backed away and sat down, rather puzzled. It felt as though it had been stuffed with hot feathers, and it was dimly aware of the benefits of shade and a nice cool drink. After a few false starts it walked to the top of a nearby sand dune, which gave it an unrivalled view of hundreds of other dunes. Deep in its heartwood the Luggage was troubled. It had been spurned. It had been told to go away. It had been rejected. It had also drunk enough orakh to poison a small country. If there is one thing a travel accessory needs more than anything else, it is someone to belong to. The Luggage set off unsteadily across the scorching sand, full of hope. “I don’t think we’ve got time for introductions,” said Rincewind, as a distant part of the palace collapsed with a thump that vibrated the floor. “It’s time we were-” He realised he was talking to himself. Nijel let go of the sword. Conina stepped forward. “Oh, no,” said Rincewind, but it was far too late. The world had suddenly separated into two parts - the bit which contained Nijel and Conina, and the bit which contained everything else. The air between them crackled. Probably, in their half, a distant orchestra was playing, bluebirds were tweeting, little pink clouds were barrelling through the sky, and all the other things that happen at times like this. When that sort of thing is going on, mere collapsing palaces in the next world don’t stand a chance. “Look, perhaps we can just get the introductions over with,” said Rincewind desperately. “Nijel-” “- the Destroyer-” said Nijel dreamily. “All right, Nijel the Destroyer,” said Rincewind, and added, “Son of Harebut the-” “Mighty,” said Nijel. Rincewind gaped a bit, and then shrugged. “Well, whoever,” he conceded. “Anyway, this is Conina. Which is rather a coincidence, because you’ll be interested to know that her father was mmph.” Conina, without turning her gaze, had extended a hand and held Rincewind’s face in a gentle grip which, with only a slight increase in finger pressure, could have turned his head into a bowling ball. “Although I could be mistaken,” he added, when she took her hand away. “Who knows? Who cares? What does it matter?” They didn’t take any notice. “I’ll just go and see if I can find the hat, shall I?” he said. “Good idea,” murmured Conina. “I expect I shall get murdered, but I don’t mind,” said Rincewind. “Jolly good,” said Nijel. “I don’t expect anyone will even notice I’m gone,” said Rincewind. “Fine, fine,” said Conina. “I shall be chopped into small pieces, I expect,” said Rincewind, walking toward the door at the speed of a dying snail. Conina blinked. “What hat?” she said, and then, “Oh, that hat.” “I suppose there’s no possible chance that you two might be of some assistance?” Rincewind ventured. Somewhere inside Conina and Nijel’s private world the bluebirds went to roost, the little pink clouds drifted away and the orchestra packed up and sneaked off to do a private gig at a nightclub somewhere. A bit of reality reasserted itself. Conina dragged her admiring gaze away from Nijel’s rapt face and turned it on to Rincewind, where it grew slightly cooler. She sidled across the floor and grabbed the wizard by the arm. “Look,” she said, “you won’t tell him who I really am, will you? Only boys get funny ideas and - well, anyway, if you do I will personally break all your-” “I’ll be far too busy,” said Rincewind, “what with you helping me get the hat and everything. Not that I can imagine what you see in him,” he added, haughtily. “He’s nice. I don’t seem to meet many nice people.” “Yes, well-” “He’s looking at us!” “So what? You’re not frightened of him, are you?” “Suppose he talks to me!” Rincewind looked blank. Not for the first time in his life, he felt that there were whole areas of human experience that had passed him by, if areas could pass by people. Maybe he had passed them by. He shrugged. “Why did you let them take you off to the harem without a fight?” he said. “I’ve always wanted to know what went on in one.” There was a pause. “Well?” said Rincewind. “Well, we all sat round, and then after a bit the Seriph came in, and then he asked me over and said that since I was new it would be my turn, and then, you’ll never guess what he wanted me to do. The girls said it’s the only thing he’s interested in.” “Er.” “Are you all right?” “Fine, fine,” Rincewind muttered. “Your face has gone all shiny.” “No, I’m fine, fine.” “He asked me to tell him a story.” “What about?” said Rincewind suspiciously. “The other girls said he prefers something with rabbits in it.” “Ah. Rabbits.” “Small fluffy white ones. But the only stories I know are the ones father taught me when I was little, and I don’t think they’re really suitable.” “Not many rabbits?” “Lots of arms and legs being chopped off,” said Conina, and sighed. “That’s why you mustn’t tell him about me you see? I’m just not cut out for a normal life.” “Telling stories in a harem isn’t bloody normal,” said Rincewind. “It”ll never catch on.” “He’s looking at us again!” Conina grabbed Rincewind’s arm. He shook her off. “Oh, good grief,” he said, and hurried across the room to Nijel, who grabbed his other arm. “You haven’t been telling her about me, have you?” he demanded. “I’ll never live it down if you’ve told her that I’m only just learning how-” “Nonono. She just wants you to help us. It’s a sort of quest.” Nijel’s eyes gleamed. “You mean a geas?” he said. “Pardon?” “It’s in the book. To be a proper hero it says you’ve got to labour under a geas.” Rincewind’s forehead wrinkled. “Is it a sort of bird?” “I think it’s more a sort of obligation, or something,” said Nijel, but without much certainty. “Sounds more like a kind of bird to me,” said Rincewind, “I’m sure I read it in a bestiary once. Large. Couldn’t fly. Big pink legs, it had.” His face went blank as his ears digested what they had just heard his lips say. Five seconds later they were out of the room, leaving behind four prone guards and the harem ladies themselves, who settled down for a bit of story-telling. The desert rimwards of Al Khali is bisected by the river Tsort, famed in myth and lies, which insinuates its way through the brown landscapes like a long damp descriptive passage punctuated with sandbanks. And every sandbank is covered with sunbaked logs, and most of the logs are the kind of logs that have teeth, and most of the logs opened one lazy eye at the distant sounds of splashing from upstream, and suddenly most of the logs had legs. A dozen scaly bodies slipped into the turbid waters, which rolled over them again. The dark waters were unruffled, except for a few inconsequential V -shaped ripples. The Luggage paddled gently down the stream. The water was making it feel a little better. It spun gently in the weak current, the focus of several mysterious little swirls that sped across the surface of the water. The ripples converged. The Luggage jerked. Its lid flew open. It shot under the surface with a brief, despairing creak. The chocolate-coloured waters of the Tsort rolled back again. They were getting good at it. And the tower of sourcery loomed over Al Khali like a vast and beautiful fungus, the kind that appear in books with little skull-and-crossbones symbols beside them. The Seriph’s guard had fought back, but there were now quite a lot of bewildered frogs and newts around the base of the tower, and they were the fortunate ones. They still had arms and legs, of a sort, and most of their essential organs were still on the inside. The city was under the rule of sourcery . . . martial lore. Some of the buildings nearest the base of the tower were already turning into the bright white marble that the wizards obviously preferred. The trio stared out through a hole in the palace walls. “Very impressive,” said Conina critically. “Your wizards are more powerful than I thought.” “Not my wizards,” said Rincewind. “I don’t know whose wizards they are. I don’t like it. All the wizards I knew couldn’t stick one brick on another.” “I don’t like the idea of wizards ruling everybody,” said Nijel. “Of course, as a hero I am philosophically against the whole idea of wizardry in any case. The time will come when,” his eyes glazed slightly, as if he was trying to remember something he’d seen somewhere, “the time will come when all wizardry has gone from the face of the world and the sons of, of - anyway, we can all be a bit more practical about things,” he added lamely. “Read it in a book, did you?” said Rincewind sourly. “Any geas in it?” “He’s got a point,” said Conina. “I’ve nothing against wizards, but it’s not as if they do much good. There just a bit of decoration, really. Up to now.” Rincewind pulled off his hat. It was battered, stained and covered with rock dust, bits of it had been sheared off, the point was dented and the star was shedding sequins like pollen, but the word “blizzard” was still just readable under the grime. “See this?” he demanded, red in the face. “Do you see it? Do you? What does it tell you?” “That you can’t spell?” said Nijel. “What? No! It says I’m a wizard, that’s what! Twenty years behind the staff, and proud of it! I’ve done my time, I have! I’ve pas - I’ve sat dozens of exams! If all the spells I’ve read were piled on top of one another, they’d . . . it’d . . . you’d have a lot of spells!” “Yes, but-” Conina began. “Yes?” “You’re not actually very good at them, are you?” Rincewind glared at her. He tried to think of what to say next, and a small receptor area opened in his mind at the same time as an inspiration particle, its path bent and skewed by a trillion random events, screamed down through the atmosphere and burst silently just at the right spot. “Talent just defines what you do,” he said. “It doesn’t define what you are. Deep down, I mean. When you know what you are, you can do anything.” He thought a bit more and added, “That’s what makes sourcerers so powerful. The important thing is to know what you really are.” There was a pause full of philosophy. “Rincewind?” said Conina, kindly. “Hmm?” said Rincewind, who was still wondering how the words got into his head. “You really are an idiot. Do you know that?” “You will all stand very still.” Abrim the vizier stepped out of a ruined archway. He was wearing the Archchancellor’s hat. The desert fried under the flame of the sun. Nothing moved except the shimmering air, hot as a stolen volcano, dry as a skull. A basilisk lay panting in the baking shade of a rock, dribbling corrosive yellow slime. For the last five minutes its ears had been detecting the faint thump of hundreds of little legs moving unsteadily over the dunes, which seemed to indicate that dinner was on the way. It blinked its legendary eyes and uncoiled twenty feet of hungry body, winding out and on to the sand like fluid death. The Luggage staggered to a halt and raised its lid threateningly. The basilisk hissed, but a little uncertainly, because it had never seen a walking box before, and certainly never one with lots of alligator teeth stuck in its lid. There were also scraps of leathery hide adhering to it, as though it had been involved in a fight in a handbag factory, and in a way that the basilisk wouldn’t have been able to describe even if it could talk, it appeared to be glaring. Right, the reptile thought, if that’s the way you want to play it. It turned on the Luggage a stare like a diamond drill, a stare that nipped in via the staree’s eyeballs and flayed the brain from the inside, a stare that tore the frail net curtains on the windows of the soul, a stare that - The basilisk realised something was very wrong. An entirely new and unwelcome sensation started to arise just behind its saucer-shaped eyes. It started small, like the little itch in those few square inches of back that no amount of writhing will allow you to scratch, and grew until it became a second, red-hot, internal sun. The basilisk was feeling a terrible, overpowering and irresistible urge to blink . . . It did something incredibly unwise. It blinked. “He’s talking through his hat,” said Rincewind. “Eh?” said Nijel, who was beginning to realise that the world of the barbarian hero wasn’t the clean, simple place he had imagined in the days when the most exciting thing he had ever done was stack parsnips. “The hat’s talking through him, you mean,” said Conina, and she backed away too, as one tends to do in the presence of horror. “Eh?” “I will not harm you. You have been of some service,” said Abrim, stepping forwards with his hands out. “But you are right. He thought he could gain power through wearing me. Of course, it is the other way around. An astonishingly devious and clever mind.” “So you tried his head on for size?” said Rincewind. He shuddered. He’d worn the hat. Obviously he didn’t have the right kind of mind. Abrim did have the right kind of mind, and now his eyes were grey and colourless, his skin was pale and he walked as though his body was hanging down from his head. Nijel had pulled out his book and was riffling feverishly through the pages. “What on earth are you doing?” said Conina, not taking her eyes off the ghastly figure. “I’m looking up the Index of Wandering Monsters,” said Nijel. “Do you think it’s an Undead? They’re awfully difficult to kill, you need garlic and,-” “You won’t find this in there,” said Rincewind slowly. “It’s - it’s a vampire hat.” “Of course, it might be a Zombie,” said Nijel, running his finger down a page. “It says here you need black pepper and sea salt, but-” “You’re supposed to fight the bloody things, not eat them,” said Conina. “This is a mind I can use,” said the hat. “Now I can fight back. I shall rally wizardry. There is room for only one magic in this world, and I embody it. Sourcery beware!” “Oh, no,” said Rincewind under his breath. “Wizardry has learned a lot in the last twenty centuries. This upstart can be beaten. You three will follow me.” It wasn’t a request. It wasn’t even an order. It was a sort of forecast. The voice of the hat went straight to the hindbrain without bothering to deal with the consciousness, and Rincewind’s legs started to move of their own accord. The other two also jerked forward, walking with the awkward doll-like jerking that suggested that they, too, were on invisible strings. “Why the oh, no?” said Conina, “I mean, “Oh, no” on general principles I can understand, but was there any particular reason?” “If we get a chance we must run,” said Rincewind. “Did you have anywhere in mind?” “It probably won’t matter. We’re doomed anyway.” “Why?” said Nijel. “Well,” said Rincewind, “have you ever heard of the Mage Wars?” There were a lot of things on the Disc that owed their origin to the Mage Wars. Sapient pearwood was one of them. The original tree was probably perfectly normal and spent its days drinking groundwater and eating sunshine in a state of blessed unawareness and then the magic wars broke around it and pitchforked its genes into a state of acute perspicacity. It also left it ingrained, as it were, with a bad temper. But sapient pearwood got off lightly. Once, when the level of background magic on the Disc was young and high and found every opportunity to burst on the world, wizards were all as powerful as sourcerers and built their towers on every hilltop. And if there was one thing a really powerful wizard can’t stand, it is another wizard. His instinctive approach to diplomacy is to hex “em till they glow, then curse them in the dark. That could only mean one thing. All right, two things. Three things. All-out. Thaumaturgical. War. And there were of course no alliances, no sides, no deals, no mercy, no cease. The skies twisted, the seas boiled. The scream and whizz of fireballs turned the night into day, but that was all right because the ensuing clouds of black smoke turned the day into night. The landscape rose and fell like a honeymoon duvet, and the very fabric of space itself was tied in multidimensional knots and bashed on a flat stone down by the river of Time. For example, a popular spell at the time was Pelepel’s Temporal Compressor, which on one occasion resulted in a race of giant reptiles being created, evolving, spreading, flourishing and then being destroyed in the space of about five minutes, leaving only its bones in the earth to mislead forthcoming generations completely. Trees swam, fishes walked, mountains strolled down to the shops for a packet of cigarettes, and the mutability of existence was such that the first thing any cautious person would do when they woke up in the mornings was count their arms and legs. That was, in fact, the problem. All the wizards were pretty evenly matched and in any case lived in high towers well protected with spells, which meant that most magical weapons rebounded and landed on the common people who were trying to scratch an honest living from what was, temporarily, the soil, and lead ordinary, decent (but rather short) lives. But still the fighting raged, battering the very structure of the universe of order, weakening the walls of reality and threatening to topple the whole rickety edifice of time and space into the darkness of the Dungeon Dimensions . . . One story said that the gods stepped in, but the gods don’t usually take a hand in human affairs unless it amuses them. Another one - and this was the one that the wizards themselves told, and wrote down in their books - was that the wizards themselves got together and settled their differences amicably for the good of mankind. And this was generally accepted as the true account, despite being as internally likely as a lead lifebelt. The truth isn’t easily pinned to a page. In the bathtub of history the truth is harder to hold than the soap, and much more difficult to find . . . “What happened, then?” said Conina. “It doesn’t matter,” said Rincewind, mournfully. “It’s going to start all over again. I can feel it. I’ve got this instinct. There’s too much magic flowing into the world. There’s going to be a horrible war. It’s all going to happen. The Disc is too old to take it this time. Everything’s been worn too thin. Doom, darkness and destruction bear down on us. The Apocralypse is nigh.” “Death walks abroad,” added Nijel helpfully. “What?” snapped Rincewind, angry at being interrupted. “I said, Death walks abroad,” said Nijel. “Abroad I don’t mind,” said Rincewind. “They’re all foreigners. It’s Death walking around here I’m not looking forward to.” “It’s only a metaphor,” said Conina. “That’s all you know. I’ve met him.” “What did he look like?” said Nijel. “Put it like this-” “Yes?” “He didn’t need a hairdresser.” Now the sun was a blowlamp nailed to the sky, and the only difference between the sand and red-hot ash was the colour. The Luggage plodded erratically across the burning dunes. There were a few traces of yellow slime rapidly drying on its lid. The lonely little oblong was watched, from atop of a stone pinnacle the shape and temperature of a firebrick, by a chimera.[18] The chimera was an extremely rare species, and this particular one wasn’t about to do anything to help matters. It judged its moment carefully, kicked away with its talons, folded its leathery wings and plummeted down towards its victim. The chimera’s technique was to swoop low over the prey, lightly boiling it with its fiery breath, and then turn and rend its dinner with its teeth. It managed the fire part but then, at the point where experience told the creature it should be facing a stricken and terrified victim, found itself on the ground in the path of a scorched and furious Luggage. The only thing incandescent about the Luggage was its rage. It had spent several hours with a headache, during which it had seemed the whole world had tried to attack it. It had had enough. When it had stamped the unfortunate chimera into a greasy puddle on the sand it paused for a moment, apparently considering its future. It was becoming clear that not belonging to anyone was a lot harder than it had thought. It had vague, comforting recollections of service and a wardrobe to call its own. It turned around very slowly, pausing frequently to open its lid. It might have been sniffing the air, if it had a nose. At last it made up its mind, if it had a mind. The hat and its wearer also strode purposefully across the rubble that had been the legendary Rhoxie to the foot of the tower of sourcery, their unwilling entourage straggling along behind them. There were doors at the foot of the tower. Unlike those of Unseen University, which were usually propped wide open, they were tightly shut. They seemed to glow. “You three are privileged to be here,” said the hat through Abrim’s slack mouth. “This is the moment when wizardry stops running,” he glanced witheringly at Rincewind, “and starts fighting back. You will remember it for the rest of your lives.” “What, until lunchtime?” said Rincewind weakly. “Watch closely,” said Abrim. He extended his hands. “If we get a chance,” whispered Rincewind to Nijel, “we run, right?” “Where to?” “From,” said Rincewind, “the important word is from.” “I don’t trust this man,” said Nijel. “I try not to judge from first impressions, but I definitely think he’s up to no good.” “He had you thrown in a snake pit!” “Perhaps I should have taken the hint.” The vizier started to mutter. Even Rincewind, whose few talents included a gift for languages, didn’t recognise it, but it sounded the kind of language designed specifically for muttering, the words curling out like scythes at ankle height, dark and red and merciless. They made complicated swirls in the air, and then drifted gently towards the doors of the tower. Where they touched the white marble it turned black and crumbled. As the remains drifted to the ground a wizard stepped through and looked Abrim up and down. Rincewind was used to the dressy ways of wizards, but this one was really impressive, his robe so padded and crenellated and buttressed in fantastic folds and creases that it had probably been designed by an architect. The matching hat looked like a wedding cake that had collided intimately with a Christmas tree. The actual face, peering through the small gap between the baroque collar and the filigreed fringe of the brim, was a bit of a disappointment. At some time in the past it had thought its appearance would be improved by a thin, scruffy moustache. It had been wrong. “That was our bloody door!” it said. “You’re really going to regret this!” Abrim folded his arms. This seemed to infuriate the other wizard. He flung up his arms, untangled his hands from the lace on his sleeves, and sent a flare screaming across the gap. It struck Abrim in the chest and rebounded in a gout of incandescence, but when the blue after-images allowed Rincewind to see he saw Abrim, unharmed. His opponent frantically patted out the last of the little fires in his own clothing and looked up with murder in his eyes. “You don’t seem to understand,” he rasped. “It’s sourcery you’re dealing with now. You can’t fight sourcery.” “I can use sourcery,” said Abrim. The wizard snarled and lofted a fireball, which burst harmlessly inches from Abrim’s dreadful grin. A look of acute puzzlement passed across the other one’s face. He tried again, sending lines of blue-hot magic lancing straight from infinity towards Abrim’s heart. Abrim waved them away. “Your choice is simple,” he said. “You can join me, or you can die.” It was at this point that Rincewind became aware of a regular scraping sound close to his ear. It had an unpleasant metallic ring. He half-turned, and felt the familiar and very uncomfortable prickly feeling of Time slowing down around him. Death paused in the act of running a whetstone along the edge of his scythe and gave him a nod of acknowledgement, as between one professional and another. He put a bony digit to his lips, or rather, to the place where his lips would have been if he’d had lips. All wizards can see Death, but they don’t necessarily want to. There was a popping in Rincewind’s ears and the spectre vanished. Abrim and the rival wizard were surrounded by a corona of randomised magic, and it was evidently having no effect on Abrim. Rincewind drifted back into the land of the living just in time to see the man reach out and grab the wizard by his tasteless collar. “You cannot defeat me,” he said in the hat’s voice. “I have had two thousand years of harnessing power to my own ends. l can draw my power from your power. Yield to me or you won’t even have time to regret it.” The wizard struggled and, unfortunately, let pride win over caution. “Never!” he said. “Die,” suggested Abrim. Rincewind had seen many strange things in his life, most of them with extreme reluctance, but he had never seen anyone actually killed by magic. Wizards didn’t kill ordinary people because a) they seldom noticed them and b) it wasn’t considered sporting and c) besides, who”d do all the cooking and growing food and things. And killing a brother wizard with magic was well-nigh impossible on account of the layers of protective spells that any cautious wizard maintained about his person at all times.[19] The first thing a young wizard learns at Unseen University - apart from where his peg is, and which way to the lavatory - is that he must protect himself at all times. Some people think this is paranoia, but it isn’t. Paranoids only think everyone is out to get them. Wizards know it. The little wizard was wearing the psychic equivalent of three feet of tempered steel and it was being melted like butter under a blowlamp. It streamed away, vanished. If there are words to describe what happened to the wizard next then they’re imprisoned inside a wild thesaurus in the Unseen University Library. Perhaps it’s best left to the imagination, except that anyone able to imagine the kind of shape that Rincewind saw writhing painfully for a few seconds before it mercifully vanished must be a candidate for the famous white canvas blazer with the optional long sleeves. “So perish all enemies,” said Abrim. He turned his face up to the heights of the tower. “I challenge,” he said. “And those who will not face me must follow me, according to the Lore.” There was a long, thick pause caused by a lot of people listening very hard. Eventually, from the top of the tower, a voice called out uncertainly, “Whereabouts in the Lore?” “I embody the Lore.” There was a distant whispering and then the same voice called out, “The Lore is dead. Sourcery is above the Lo-” The sentence ended in a scream because Abrim raised his left hand and sent a thin beam of green light in the precise direction of the speaker. It was at about this moment that Rincewind realised that he could move his limbs himself. The hat had temporarily lost interest in them. He glanced sideways at Conina. In instant, unspoken agreement they each grasped one of Nijel’s arms and turned and ran, and didn’t stop until they’d put several walls between them and the tower. Rincewind ran expecting something to hit him in the back of the neck. Possibly the world. All three landed in the rubble and lay there panting. “You needn’t have done that,” muttered Nijel. “I was just getting ready to really give him a seeing-to. How can I ever-” There was an explosion behind them and shafts of multicoloured fire screamed overhead, striking sparks off the masonry. Then there was a sound like an enormous cork being pulled out of a small bottle, and a peal of laughter that somehow wasn’t very amusing. The ground shook. “What’s going on?” said Conina. “Magical war,” said Rincewind. “Is that good?” “No.” “But surely you want wizardry to triumph?” said Nijel. Rincewind shrugged, and ducked as something unseen and big whirred overhead making a noise like a partridge. “I’ve never seen wizards fight,” said Nijel. He started to scramble up the rubble and screamed as Conina grabbed him by the leg. “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” she said. “Rincewind?” The wizard shook his head gloomily, and picked up a pebble. He tossed it up above the ruined wall, where it turned into a small blue teapot. It smashed when it hit the ground. “The spells react with one another,” he said. “There’s no telling what they’ll do.” “But we’re safe behind this wall?” said Conina. Rincewind brightened a bit. “Are we?” he said. “I was asking you.” “Oh. No. I shouldn’t think so. It’s just ordinary stone. The right spell and . . . phooey.” “Phooey?” “Right.” “Shall we run away again?” “It’s worth a try.” They made it to another upright wall a few seconds before a randomly spitting ball of yellow fire landed where they had been lying and turned the ground into something awful. The whole area around the tower was a tornado of sparkling air. “We need a plan,” said Nijel. “We could try running again,” said Rincewind. “That doesn’t solve anything!” “Solves most things,” said Rincewind. “How far do we have to go to be safe?” said Conina. Rincewind risked a look around the wall. “Interesting philosophical question,” he said. “I’ve been a long way, and I’ve never been safe.” Conina sighed and stared at a pile of rubble nearby. She stared at it again. There was something odd there, and she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. “I could rush at them,” said Nijel, vaguely. He stared yearningly at Conina’s back. “Wouldn’t work,” said Rincewind. “Nothing works against magic. Except stronger magic. And then the only thing that beats stronger magic is even stronger magic. And next thing you know. . .” “Phooey?” suggested Nijel. “It happened before,” said Rincewind. “Went on for thousands of years until not a-” “Do you know what’s odd about that heap of stone?” said Conina. Rincewind glanced at it. He screwed up his eyes. “What, apart from the legs?” he said. It took several minutes to dig the Seriph out. He was still clutching a wine bottle, which was almost empty, and blinked at them all in vague recognition. “Powerful,” he said, and then after some effort added, “stuff, this vintage. Felt,” he continued, “as though the place fell on me.” “It did,” said Rincewind. “Ah. That would be it, then.” Creosote focused on Conina, after several attempts, and rocked backwards. “My word,” he said, “the young lady again. Very impressive.” “I say-” Nijel began. “Your hair,” said the Seriph, rocking slowly forward again, “is like, is like a flock of goats that graze upon the side of Mount Gebra.” “Look here –“ “Your breasts are like, like,” the Seriph swayed sideways a little, and gave a brief, sorrowful glance at the empty bottle, “are like the jewelled melons in the fabled gardens of dawn.” Conina’s eyes widened. “They are?” she said. “No,” said the Seriph, “doubt about it. I know jewelled melons when I see them. As the white does in the meadows of the water margin are your thighs, which-” “Erm, excuse me-”said Nijel, clearing his throat with malice aforethought. Creosote swayed in his direction. “Hmm?” he said. “Where I come from,” said Nijel stonily, “we don’t talk to ladies like that.” Conina sighed as Nijel shuffled protectively in front of her. It was, she reflected, absolutely true. “In fact,” he went on, sticking out his jaw as far as possible, which still made it appear like a dimple, “I’ve a jolly good mind-” “Open to debate,” said Rincewind, stepping forward. “Er, sir, sire, we need to get out. I suppose you wouldn’t know the way?” “Thousands of rooms,” said the Seriph,” in here, you know. Not been out in years.” He hiccuped. “Decades. Ians. Never been out, in fact.” His face glazed over in the act of composition. “The bird of Time has but, um, a little way to walk and lo! the bird is on its- feet.” “It’s a geas,” muttered Rincewind. Creosote swayed at him. “Abrim does all the ruling, you see. Terrible hard work.” “He’s not,” said Rincewind, “making a very good job of it just at present.” “And we’d sort of like to get away,” said Conina, who was still turning over the phrase about the goats. “And I’ve got this geas,” said Nijel, glaring at Rincewind. Creosote patted him on the arm. “That’s nice,” he said. “Everyone should have a pet.” “So if you happen to know if you own any stables or anything. . .” prompted Rincewind. “Hundreds,” said Creosote. “I own some of the finest, most . . . finest horses in the world.” His brow wrinkled. “So they tell me.” “But you wouldn’t happen to know where they are?” “Not as such,” the Seriph admitted. A random spray of magic turned the nearby wall into arsenic meringue. “I think we might have been better off in the snake pit,” said Rincewind, turning away. Creosote took another sorrowful glance at his empty wine bottle. “I know where there’s a magic carpet,” he said. “No,” said Rincewind, raising his hands protectively. “Absolutely not. Don’t even-” “It belonged to my grandfather-” “A real magic carpet?” said Nijel. “Listen,” said Rincewind urgently. “I get vertigo just listening to tall stories.” “Oh, quite,” the Seriph burped gently, “genuine. Very pretty pattern.” He squinted at the bottle again, and sighed. “It was a lovely blue colour,” he added. “And you wouldn’t happen to know where it is?” said Conina slowly, in the manner of one creeping up very carefully to a wild animal that might take fright at any moment. “In the treasury. I know the way there. I’m extremely rich, you know. Or so they tell me.” He lowered his voice and tried to wink at Conina, eventually managing it with both eyes. “We could sit on it,” he said, breaking into a sweat. “And you could tell me a story. . .” Rincewind tried to scream through gritted teeth. His ankles were already beginning to sweat. “I’m not going to ride on a magic carpet!” he hissed. “I’m afraid of grounds!” “You mean heights,” said Conina. “And stop being silly.” “I know what I mean! It’s the grounds that kill you!” The battle of Al Khali was a hammer-headed cloud, in whose roiling depths weird shapes could be heard and strange sounds were seen. Occasional misses seared across the city. Where they landed things were . . . different. For example, a large part of the soak had turned into an impenetrable forest of giant yellow mushrooms. No-one knew what effect this had on its inhabitants, although possibly they hadn’t noticed. The temple of Offler the Crocodile God, patron deity of the city, was now a rather ugly sugary thing constructed in five dimensions. But this was no problem because it was being eaten by a herd of giant ants. On the other hand, not many people were left to appreciate this statement against uncontrolled civic alteration, because most of them were running for their lives. They fled across the fertile fields in a steady stream. Some had taken to boats, but this method of escape had ceased when most of the harbour area turned into a swamp in which, for no obvious reason, a couple of small pink elephants were building a nest. Down below the panic on the roads the Luggage paddled slowly up one of the reed-lined drainage ditches. A little way ahead of it a moving wave of small alligators, rats and snapping turtles was pouring out of the water and scrambling frantically up the bank, propelled by some vague but absolutely accurate animal instinct. The Luggage’s lid was set in an expression of grim determination. It didn’t want much out of the world, except for the total extinction of every other lifeform, but what it needed more than anything else now was its owner. It was easy to see that the room was a treasury by its incredible emptiness. Doors hung off hooks. Barred alcoves had been smashed in. Lots of smashed chests lay around, and this gave Rincewind a pang of guilt and he wondered, for about two seconds, where the Luggage had got to. There was a respectful silence, as there always is when large sums of money have just passed away. Nijel wandered off and prodded some of the chests in a forlorn search for secret drawers, as per the instructions in Chapter Eleven. Conina reached down and picked up a small copper coin. “How horrible,” said Rincewind eventually. “A treasury with no treasure in it.” The seriph stood and beamed. “Not to worry”, he said. “But all your money has been stolen!” said Conina. “The servants, I expect,” said Creosote. “Very disloyal of them.” Rincewind gave him an odd look. “Doesn’t it worry you?” “Not much. I never really spent anything. I’ve often wondered what being poor was like.” “You’re going to get a huge opportunity to find out.” “Will I need training?” “It comes naturally,” said Rincewind. “You pick it up as you go along.” There was a distant explosion and part of the ceiling turned to jelly. “Erm, excuse me,” said Nijel, “this carpet . . .” “Yes,” said Conina, “the carpet.” Creosote gave them a benevolent, slightly tipsy smile. “Ah, yes. The carpet. Push the nose of the statue behind you, peach-buttocked jewel of the desert dawn.” Conina, blushing, performed this act of minor sacrilege on a large green statue of Offler the Crocodile God. Nothing happened. Secret compartments assiduously failed to open. “Um. Try the left hand.” She gave it an experimental twist. Creosote scratched his head. “Maybe it was the right hand. . .” “I should try and remember, if I were you,” said Conina sharply, when that didn’t work either. “There aren’t many bits left that I’d care to pull.” “What’s that thing there?” said Rincewind. “You’re really going to hear about it if it isn’t the tail,” said Conina, and gave it a kick. There was a distant metallic groaning noise, like a saucepan in pain. The statue shuddered. It was followed by a few heavy clonks somewhere inside the wall, and Offler the Crocodile God grated ponderously aside. There was a tunnel behind him. “My grandfather had this built for our more interesting treasure,” said Creosote. “He was very-” he groped for a word-”ingenious.” “If you think I’m setting foot in there-” Rincewind began. “Stand aside,” said Nijel, loftily. “I will go first.” “There could be traps-” said Conina doubtfully. She shot the Seriph a glance. “Oh, probably, O gazelle of Heaven,” he said. “I haven’t been in there since I was six. There were some slabs you shouldn’t tread on, I think.” “Don’t worry about that,” said Nijel, peering into the gloom of the tunnel. “I shouldn’t think there’s a booby trap that I couldn’t spot.” “Had a lot of experience at this sort of thing, have you?” said Rincewind sourly. “Well, I know Chapter Fourteen off by heart. It had illustrations,” said Nijel, and ducked into the shadows. They waited for several minutes in what would have been a horrified hush if it wasn’t for the muffled grunts and occasional thumping noises from the tunnel. Eventually Nijel’s voice echoed back down to them from a distance. “There’s absolutely nothing,” he said. “I’ve tried everything. It’s as steady as a rock. Everything must have seized up, or something.” Rincewind and Conina exchanged glances. “He doesn’t know the first thing about traps,” she said. “When I was five, my father made me walk all the way down a passage that he’d rigged up, just to teach me-” “He got through, didn’t he?” said Rincewind. There was a noise like a damp finger dragged across glass, but amplified a billion times, and the floor shook. “Anyway, we haven’t got a lot of choice,” he added, and ducked into the tunnel. The others followed him. Many people who had got to know Rincewind had come to treat him as a sort of two-legged miner’s canary[20] and tended to assume that if Rincewind was still upright and not actually running then some hope remained. “This is fun,” said Creosote. “Me, robbing my own treasury. If I catch myself I can have myself flung into the snake pit.” “But you could throw yourself on your mercy,” said Conina, running a paranoid eye over the dusty stonework. “Oh, no. I think I would have to teach me a lesson, as an example to myself.” There was a little click above them. A small slab slid aside and a rusty metal hook descended slowly and jerkily. Another bar creaked out of the wall and tapped Rincewind on the shoulder. As he swung around, the first hook hung a yellowing notice on his back and retracted into the roof. “What’d it do? What’d it do?” screamed Rincewind, trying to read his own shoulderblades. “It says, Kick Me,” said Conina. A section of wall slid up beside the petrified wizard. A large boot on the end of a complicated series of metal joints gave a half-hearted wobble and then the whole thing snapped at the knee. The three of them looked at it in silence. Then Conina said, “We’re dealing here with a warped brain, I can tell.” Rincewind gingerly unhooked the sign and let it drop. Conina pushed past him and stalked along the passage with an air of angry caution, and when a metal hand extended itself on a spring and waggled in a friendly fashion she didn’t shake it but instead traced its moulting wiring to a couple of corroded electrodes in a big glass jar. “Your grandad was a man with a sense of humour?” she said. “Oh, yes. Always liked a chuckle,” said Creosote. “Oh, good,” said Conina. She prodded gingerly at a flagstone which, to Rincewind, looked no different to any of its fellows. With a sad little springy noise a moulting feather duster wobbled out of the wall at armpit height. “I think I would have quite liked to meet the old Seriph,” she said, through gritted teeth, “although not to shake him by the hand. You’d better give me a leg up here, wizard.” “Pardon?” Conina pointed irritably to a half-open stone doorway just ahead of them. “I want to look up there,” she said. “You just put your hands together for me to stand on, right? How do you manage to be so useless?” “Being useful always gets me into trouble,” muttered Rincewind, trying to ignore the warm flesh brushing against his nose. He could hear her rooting around above the door. “I thought so,” she said. “What is it? Fiendishly sharp spears poised to drop?” “No.” “Spiked grill ready to skewer -?” “It’s a bucket,” said Conina flatly, giving it a push. “What, of scalding, poisonous -?” “Whitewash. Just a lot of old, dried-up whitewash.” Conina jumped down. “That’s grandfather for you,” said Creosote. “Never a dull moment.” “Well, I’ve just about had enough,” Conina said firmly, and pointed to the far end of the tunnel. “Come on, you two.” They were about three feet from the far end when Rincewind felt a movement in the air above him. Conina struck him in the small of the back, shoving him forward into the room beyond. He rolled when he hit the floor, and something nicked his foot at the same time as a loud thump deafened him. The entire roof, a huge block of stone four feet thick, had dropped into the tunnel. Rincewind crawled forward through the dust clouds and, with a trembling finger, traced the lettering on the side of the slab. “Laugh This One Off,” he said. He sat back. “That’s grandad,” said Creosote happily, “always a-” He intercepted Conina’s gaze, which had the force of a lead pipe, and wisely shut up. Nijel emerged from the clouds, coughing. “I say, what happened?” he said. “Is everyone all right? It didn’t do that when I went through.” Rincewind sought for a reply, and couldn’t find anything better than, “Didn’t it?” Light filtered into the deep room from tiny barred windows up near the roof. There was no way out except by walking through the several hundred tons of stone that blocked the tunnel or, to put it in another way, which was the way Rincewind put it, they were undoubtedly trapped. He relaxed a bit. At least there was no mistaking the magic carpet. It lay rolled up on a raised slab in the middle of the room. Next to it was a small, sleek oil lamp and - Rincewind craned to see - a small gold ring. He groaned. A faint octarine corona hung over all three items, indicating that they were magical. When Conina unrolled the carpet a number of small objects tumbled on to the floor, including a brass herring, a wooden ear, a few large square sequins and a lead box with a preserved soap bubble in it. “What on earth are they?” said Nijel. “Well,” said Rincewind, “before they tried to eat that carpet, they were probably moths.” “Gosh.” “That’s what you people never understand,” said Rincewind, wearily. “You think magic is just something you can pick up and use, like a, a-” “Parsnip?” said Nijel. “Wine bottle?” said the Seriph. “Something like that,” said Rincewind cautiously, but rallied somewhat and went on, “But the truth is, is-” “Not like that?” “More like a wine bottle?” said the Seriph hopefully. “Magic uses people,” said Rincewind hurriedly. “It affects you as much as you affect it, sort of thing. You can’t mess around with magical things without it affecting you. I just thought I’d better warn you.” “Like a wine bottle,” said Creosote, “that-” “-drinks you back,” said Rincewind. “So you can put down that lamp and ring for a start, and for goodness’ sake don’t rub anything.” “My grandfather built up the family fortunes with them,” said Creosote wistfully. “His wicked uncle locked him in a cave, you know. He had to set himself up with what came to hand. He had nothing in the whole world but a magic carpet, a magic lamp, a magic ring and a grotto-ful of assorted jewels.” “Came up the hard way, did he?” said Rincewind. Conina spread the carpet on the floor. It had a complex pattern of golden dragons on a blue background. They were extremely complicated dragons, with long beards, ears and wings, and they seemed to be frozen in motion, caught in transition from one state to another, suggesting that the loom which wove them had rather more dimensions than the usual three, but the worst thing about it was that if you looked at it long enough the pattern became blue dragons on a gold background, and a terrible feeling stole over you that if you kept on trying to see both types of dragon at once your brains would trickle out of your ears. Rincewind tore his gaze away with some difficulty as another distant explosion rocked the building. “How does it work?” he said. Creosote shrugged. “I’ve never used it,” he said. “I suppose you just say “up” and “down” and things like that.” “How about “fly through the wall”?” said Rincewind. All three of them looked up at the high, dark and, above all, solid walls of the room. “We could try sitting on it and saying “rise”,” Nijel volunteered. “And then, before we hit the roof, we could say, well, “stop”.” He considered this for a bit, and then added, “If that’s the word.” “Or, “drop”,” said Rincewind, “or “descend”, “dive”, “fall”, “sink”. Or “plunge”.” “Plummet”,” suggested Conina gloomily. “Of course,” said Nijel, “with all this wild magic floating around, you could try using some of it.” Ah-” said Rincewind, and, “Well-” “You’ve got “wizzard” written on your hat,” said Creosote. “Anyone can write things on their hat,” said Conina. “You don’t want to believe everything you read.” “Now hold on a minute,” said Rincewind hotly. They held on a minute. They held on for a further seventeen seconds. “Look, it’s a lot harder than you think,” he said. “What did I tell you?” said Conina. “Come on, let’s dig the mortar out with our fingernails.” Rincewind waved her into silence, removed his hat, pointedly blew the dust off the star, put the hat on again, adjusted the brim, rolled up his sleeves, flexed his fingers and panicked. In default of anything better to do, he leaned against the stone. It was vibrating. It wasn’t that it was being shaken; it felt that the throbbing was coming from inside the wall. It was very much the same sort of trembling he had felt back at the University, just before the sourcerer arrived. The stone was definitely very unhappy about something. He sidled along the wall and put his ear to the next stone, which was a smaller, wedge-shaped stone cut to fit an angle of the wall, not a big, distinguished stone, but a bantam stone, patiently doing its bit for the greater good of the wall as a whole. It was also shaking. “Shh!” said Conina. “I can’t hear anything,” said Nijel loudly. Nijel was one of those people who, if you say “don’t look now”, would immediately swivel his head like an owl on a turntable. These are the same people who, when you point out, say, an unusual crocus just beside them, turn round aimlessly and put their foot down with a sad little squashy noise. If they were lost in a trackless desert you could find them by putting down, somewhere on the sand, something small and fragile like a valuable old mug that had been in your family for generations, and then hurrying back as soon as you heard the crash. Anyway. “That’s the point! What happened to the war?” A little cascade of mortar poured down from the ceiling on to Rincewind’s hat. “Something’s acting on the stones,” he said quietly. “They’re trying to break free.” “We’re right underneath quite a lot of them,” observed Creosote. There was a grinding noise above them and a shaft of daylight lanced down. To Rincewind’s surprise it wasn’t accompanied by sudden death from crushing. There was another silicon creak, and the hole grew. The stones were falling out, and they were falling up. “I think,” he said, “that the carpet might be worth a try at this point.” The wall beside him shook itself like a dog and drifted apart, its masonry giving Rincewind several severe blows as it soared away. The four of them landed on the blue and gold carpet in a storm of flying rock. “We’ve got to get out of here,” said Nijel, keeping up his reputation for acute observation. “Hang on,” said Rincewind. “I’ll say-” “You won’t,” snapped Conina, kneeling beside him. “I’ll say. I don’t trust you.” “But you’ve-” “Shut up,” said Conina. She patted the carpet. “Carpet - rise,” she commanded. There was a pause. “Up.” “Perhaps it doesn’t understand the language,” said Nijel. “Lift. Levitate. Fly.” “Or it could be, say, sensitive to one particular voice-” “Shut. Up.” “You tried up,” said Nijel. “Try ascend.” “Or soar,” said Creosote. Several tons of flagstone swooped past an inch from his head. “If it was going to answer to them it would have done, wouldn’t it?” said Conina. The air round her was thick with dust as the flying stones ground together. She thumped the carpet. “Take off, you blasted mat! Arrgh!” A piece of cornice clipped her shoulder. She rubbed the bruise irritably, and turned to Rincewind, who was sitting with his knees under his chin and his hat pulled down over his head. “Why doesn’t it work?” she said. “You’re not saying the right words,” he said. “It doesn’t understand the language?” “Language hasn’t got anything to do with it. You’ve neglected something fundamental.” “Well?” “Well what?” sniffed Rincewind. “Look, this isn’t the time to stand on your dignity!” “You keep on trying, don’t you mind me.” “Make it fly!” Rincewind pulled his hat further over his ears. “Please?” said Conina. The hat rose a bit. “We’d all be terribly bucked,” said Nijel. “Hear, hear,” said Creosote. The hat rose some more. “You’re quite sure?” said Rincewind. “Yes!” Rincewind cleared his throat. “Down,” he commanded. The carpet rose from the ground and hovered expectantly a few feet over the dust. “How did-” Conina began, but Nijel interrupted her. “Wizards are privy to arcane knowledge, that’s probably what it is,” he said. “Probably the carpet’s got a geas on it to do the opposite of anything that’s said. Can you make it go up further?” “Yes, but I’m not going to,” said Rincewind. The carpet drifted slowly forward and, as happens so often at times like this, a rolling of masonry bounced right across the spot where it had lain. A moment later they were out in the open air, the storm of stone behind them. The palace was pulling itself to pieces, and the pieces were funnelling up into the air like a volcanic eruption in reverse. The sourcerous tower had completely disappeared, but the stones were dancing towards the spot where it had stood and . . . “They’re building another tower!” said Nijel. “Out of my palace, too,” said Creosote. “The hat’s won,” said Rincewind. “That’s why it’s building its own tower. It’s a sort of reaction. Wizards always used to build a tower around themselves, like those . . . what do you call those things you find at the bottom of rivers?” “Frogs.” “Stones.” “Unsuccessful gangsters.” “Caddis flies is what I meant,” said Rincewind. “When a wizard set out to fight, the first thing he always did was build a tower.” “It’s very big,” said Nijel. Rincewind nodded glumly. “Where are we going?” said Conina. Rincewind shrugged. “Away,” he said. The outer palace wall drifted just below them. As they passed over it began to shake, and small bricks began to loop towards the storm of flying rock that buzzed around the new tower. Eventually Conina said, “All right. How did you get the carpet to fly? Does it really do the opposite of what you command?” “No. I just paid attention to certain fundamental details of laminar and spatial arrangements.” “You’ve lost me there,” she admitted. “You want it in non-wizard talk?” “Yes.” “You put it on the floor upside down,” said Rincewind. Conina sat very still for a while. Then she said, “I must say this is very comfortable. It’s the first time I’ve ever flown on a carpet.” “It’s the first time I’ve ever flown one,” said Rincewind vaguely. “You do it very well,” she said. “Thank you.” “You said you were frightened of heights.” “Terrified.” “You don’t show it.” “I’m not thinking about it.” Rincewind turned and looked at the tower behind them. It had grown quite a lot in the last minute, blossoming at the top into a complexity of turrets and battlements. A swarm of tiles was hovering over it, individual tiles swooping down and clinking into place like ceramic bees on a bombing run. It was impossibly high - the stones at the bottom would have been crushed if it wasn’t for the magic that crackled through them. Well, that was just about it as far as organised wizardry was concerned. Two thousand years of peaceful magic had gone down the drain, the towers were going up again, and with all this new raw magic floating around something was going to get very seriously hurt. Probably the universe. Too much magic could wrap time and space around itself, and that wasn’t good news for the kind of person who had grown used to things like effects following things like causes. And, of course, it would be impossible to explain things to his companions. They didn’t seem to grasp ideas properly; more particularly, they didn’t seem able to get the hang of doom. They suffered from the terrible delusion that something could be done. They seemed prepared to make the world the way they wanted it or die in the attempt, and the trouble with dying in the attempt was that you died in the attempt. The whole point about the old University organisation was that it kept a sort of peace between wizards who got along with one another about as easily as cats in a sack, and now the gloves were off anyone who tried to interfere was going to end up severely scratched. This wasn’t the old, gentle, rather silly magic that the Disc was used to; this was magic war, white-hot and searing. Rincewind wasn’t very good at precognition; in fact he could barely see into the present. But he knew with weary certainty that at some point in the very near future, like thirty seconds or so, someone would say: “Surely there’s something we could do?” The desert passed below them, lit by the low rays of the setting sun. “There don’t seem to be many stars,” said Nijel. “Perhaps they’re scared to come out.” Rincewind looked up. There was a silver haze high in the air. “It’s raw magic settling out of the atmosphere,” he said. “It’s saturated.” Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twen- “Surely there’s-” Conina began. “There isn’t,” said Rincewind flatly, but with just the faintest twinge of satisfaction. “The wizards will fight each other until there’s one victor. There isn’t anything anyone else can do.” “I could do with a drink,” said Creosote. “I suppose we couldn’t stop somewhere where I could buy an inn?” “What with?” said Nijel. “You’re poor, remember?” “Poor I don’t mind,” said the Seriph. “It’s sobriety that is giving me difficulties.” Conina prodded Rincewind gently in the ribs. “Are you steering this thing?” she said. “No.” “Then where is it going?” Nijel peered downwards. “By the look of it,” he said, “it’s going hubwards. Towards the Circle Sea.” “Someone must be guiding it.” Hallo, said a friendly voice in Rincewind’s head. You’re not my conscience again, are you? thought Rincewind. I’m feeling really bad. Well, I’m sorry, Rincewind thought, but none of this is my fault. I’m just a victim of circuses. I don’t see why I should take the blame. Yes, but you could do something about it. Like what? You could destroy the sourcerer. All this would collapse then. I wouldn’t stand a chance. Then at least you could die in the attempt. That might be preferable to letting magical war break out. “Look, just shut up, will you?” said Rincewind. “What?” said Conina. “Um?” said Rincewind, vaguely. He looked down blankly at the blue and gold pattern underneath him, and added, “You’re flying this, aren’t you?” Through me! That’s sneaky!” “What are you talking about?” “Oh. Sorry. Talking to myself.” “I think,” said Conina, “that we’d better land.” They glided down towards a crescent of beach where the desert reached the sea. In a normal light it would have been blinding white with a sand made up of billions of tiny shell fragments, but at this time of day it was blood-red and primordial. Ranks of driftwood, carved by the waves and bleached by the sun, were piled up on the tideline like the bones of ancient fish or the biggest floral art accessory counter in the universe. Nothing stirred, apart from the waves. There were a few rocks around, but they were firebrick hot and home to no mollusc or seaweed. Even the sea looked arid. If any proto-amphibian emerged on to a beach like this, it would have given up there and then, gone back into the water and told all its relatives to forget the legs, it wasn’t worth it. The air felt as though it had been cooked in a sock. Even so, Nijel insisted that they light a fire. “It’s more friendly,” he said. “Besides, there could be monsters.” Conina looked at the oily wavelets, rolling up the beach in what appeared to be a half-hearted attempt to get out of the sea. “In that?” she said. “You never can tell.” Rincewind mooched along the waterline, distractedly picking up stones and throwing them in the sea. One or two were thrown back. After a while Conina got a fire going, and the bone-dry, salt-saturated wood sent blue and green flames roaring up under a fountain of sparks. The wizard went and sat in the dancing shadows, his back against a pile of whitened wood, wrapped in a cloud of such impenetrable gloom that even Creosote stopped complaining of thirst and shut up. Conina woke up after midnight. There was a crescent moon on the horizon and a thin, chilly mist covered the sand. Creosote was snoring on his back. Nijel, who was theoretically on guard, was sound asleep. Conina lay perfectly still, every sense seeking out the thing that had awoken her. Finally she heard it again. It was a tiny, diffident clinking noise, barely audible above the muted slurp of the sea. She got up, or rather, she slid into the vertical as bonelessly as a jellyfish, and flicked Nijel’s sword out of his unresisting hand. Then she sidled through the mist without causing so much as an extra swirl. The fire sank down further into its bed of ash. After a while Conina came back, and shook the other two awake. “Warrizit?” “I think you ought to see this,” she hissed. “I think it could be important.” “I just shut my eyes for a second-” Nijel protested. “Never mind about that. Come on.” Creosote squinted around the impromptu campsite. “Where’s the wizard fellow?” “You’ll see. And don’t make a noisy. It could be dangerous.” They stumbled after her knee-deep in vapour, towards the sea. Eventually Nijel said, “Why dangerous-” “Shh! Did you hear it?” Nijel listened. “Like a sort of ringing noise?” “Watch. . . Rincewind walked jerkily up the beach, carrying a large round rock in both hands. He walked past them without a word, his eyes staring straight ahead. They followed him along the cold beach until he reached a bare area between the dunes, where he stopped and, still moving with all the grace of a clothes horse, dropped the rock. It made a clinking noise. There was a wide circle of other stones. Very few of them had actually stayed on top of another one. The three of them crouched down and watched him. “Is he asleep?” said Creosote. Conina nodded. “What’s he trying to do?” “I think he’s trying to build a tower.” Rincewind lurched back into the ring of stones and, with great care, placed another rock on empty air. It fell down. “He’s not very good at it, is he,” said Nijel. “It is very sad,” said Creosote. “Maybe we ought to wake him up,” said Conina. “Only I heard that if you wake up sleepwalkers their legs fall off, or something. What do you think?” “Could be risky, with wizards,” said Nijel. They tried to make themselves comfortable on the chilly sand. “It’s rather pathetic, isn’t it?” said Creosote. “It’s not as if he’s really a proper wizard.” Conina and Nijel tried to avoid one another’s gaze. Finally the boy coughed, and said, “I’m not exactly a barbarian hero, you know. You may have noticed.” They watched the toiling figure of Rincewind for a while, and then Conina said, “If it comes to that, I think I lack a certain something when it comes to hairdressing.” They both stared fixedly at the sleepwalker, busy with their own thoughts and red with mutual embarrassment. Creosote cleared his throat. “If it makes anyone feel better,” he said, “I sometimes perceive that my poetry leaves a lot to be desired.” Rincewind carefully tried to balance a large rock on a small pebble. It fell off, but he appeared to be happy with the result. “Speaking as a poet,” said Conina carefully, “what would you say about this situation?” Creosote shifted uneasily. “Funny old thing, life,” he said. “Pretty apt.” Nijel lay back and looked up at the hazy stars. Then he sat bolt upright. “Did you see that?” he demanded. “What?” “It was a sort of flash, a kind of-” The hubward horizon exploded into a silent flower of colour, which expanded rapidly through all the hues of the conventional spectrum before flashing into brilliant octarine. It etched itself on their eyeballs before fading away. After a while there was a distant rumble. “Some sort of magical weapon,” said Conina, blinking. A gust of warm wind picked up the mist and streamed it past them. “Blow this,” said Nijel, getting to his feet. “I’m going to wake him up, even if it means we end up carrying him.” He reached out for Rincewind’s shoulder just as something went past very high overhead, making a noise like a flock of geese on nitrous oxide. It disappeared into the desert behind them. Then there was a sound that would have set false teeth on edge, a flash of green light, and a thump. “I’ll wake him up,” said Conina. “You get the carpet.” She clambered over the ring of rocks and took the sleeping wizard gently by the arm, and this would have been a textbook way of waking a somnambulist if Rincewind hadn’t dropped the rock he was carrying on his foot. He opened his eyes. “Where am I?” he said. “On the beach. You’ve been . . . er . . . dreaming.” Rincewind blinked at the mist, the sky, the circle of stones, Conina, the circle of stones again, and finally back at the sky. “What’s been happening?” he said. “Some sort of magical fireworks.” “Oh. It’s started, then.” He lurched unsteadily out of the circle, in a way that suggested to Conina that perhaps he wasn’t quite awake yet, and staggered back towards the remains of the fire. He walked a few steps and then appeared to remember something. He looked down at his foot, and said, “Ow.” He’d almost reached the fire when the blast from the last spell reached them. It had been aimed at the tower in Al Khali, which was twenty miles away, and by now the wavefront was extremely diffuse. It was hardly affecting the nature of things as it surged over the dunes with a faint sucking noise; the fire burned red and green for a second, one of Nijel’s sandals turned into a small and irritated badger, and a pigeon flew out of the Seriph’s turban. Then it was past and boiling out over the sea. “What was that?” said Nijel. He kicked the badger, who was sniffing at his foot. “Hmm?” said Rincewind. “That!” “Oh, that,” said Rincewind. “Just the backwash of a spell. They probably hit the tower in Al Khali.” “It must have been pretty big to affect us here.” “It probably was.” “Hey, that was my palace,” said Creosote weakly. “I mean, I know it was a lot, but it was all I had.” “Sorry.” “But there were people in the city!” “They’re probably all right,” said Rincewind. “Good.” “Whatever they are.” “What?” Conina grabbed his arm. “Don’t shout at him,” she said. “He’s not himself.” “Ah,” said Creosote dourly, “an improvement.” “I say, that’s a bit unfair,” Nijel protested. “I mean, he got me out of the snake pit and, well, he knows a lot-” “Yes, wizards are good at getting you out of the sort of trouble that only wizards can get you into,” said Creosote. “Then they expect you to thank them.” “Oh, I think-” “It’s got to be said,” said Creosote, waving his hands irritably. He was briefly illuminated by the passage of another spell across the tormented sky. “Look at that!” he snapped. “Oh, he means well. They all mean well. They probably all think the Disc would be a better place if they were in charge. Take it from me, there’s nothing more terrible than someone out to do the world a favour. Wizards! When all’s said and done, what good are they? I mean, can you name me something worthwhile any wizard’s done?” “I think that’s a bit cruel,” said Conina, but with an edge in her voice that suggested that she could be open to persuasion on the subject. “Well, they make me sick,” muttered Creosote, who was feeling acutely sober and didn’t like it much. “I think we’ll all feel better if we try to get a bit more sleep,” said Nijel diplomatically. “Things always look better by daylight. Nearly always, anyway.” “My mouth feels all horrible, too,” muttered Creosote, determined to cling on to the remnant of his anger. Conina turned back to the fire, and became aware of a gap in the scenery. It was Rincewind-shaped. “He’s gone!” In fact Rincewind was already half a mile out over the dark sea, squatting on the carpet like an angry buddha, his mind a soup of rage, humiliation and fury, with a side order of outrage. He hadn’t wanted much, ever. He’d stuck with wizardry even though he wasn’t any good at it, he’d always done his best, and now the whole world was conspiring against him. Well, he’d show them. Precisely who “they” were and what they were going to be shown was merely a matter of detail. He reached up and touched his hat for reassurance, even as it lost its last few sequins in the slipstream. The Luggage was having problems of its own. The area around the tower of Al Khali, under the relentless magical bombardment, was already drifting beyond that reality horizon where time, space and matter lose their separate identities and start wearing one another’s clothes. It was quite impossible to describe. Here is what it looked like. It looked like a piano sounds shortly after being dropped down a well. It tasted yellow, and felt Paisley. It smelled like a total eclipse of the moon. Of course, nearer to the tower it got really weird. Expecting anything unprotected to survive in that would be like expecting snow on a supernova. Fortunately the Luggage didn’t know this, and slid through the maelstrom with raw magic crystallising on its lid and hinges. It was in a foul mood but, again, there was nothing very unusual about this, except that the crackling fury earthing itself spectacularly all over the Luggage in a multi-coloured corona gave it the appearance of an early and very angry amphibian crawling out of a burning swamp. It was hot and stuffy inside the tower. There were no internal floors, just a series of walkways around the walls. They were lined with wizards, and the central space was a column of octarine light that creaked loudly as they poured their power into it. At its base stood Abrim, the octarine gems on the hat blazing so brightly that they looked more like holes cut through into a different universe where, in defiance of probability, they had come out inside a sun. The vizier stood with his hands out, fingers splayed, eyes shut, mouth a thin line of concentration, balancing the forces. Usually a wizard could control power only to the extent of his own physical capability, but Abrim was learning fast. You made yourself the pinch in the hourglass, the fulcrum on the balance, the roll around the sausage. Do it right and you were the power, it was part of you and you were capable of-Has it been pointed out that his feet were several inches off the ground? His feet were several inches off the ground. Abrim was pulling together the potency for a spell that would soar away into the sky and beset the Ankh tower with a thousand screaming demons when there came a thunderous knock at the door. There is a mantra to be said on these occasions. It doesn’t matter if the door is a tent flap, a scrap of hide on a wind-blown yurt, three inches of solid oak with great iron nails in or a rectangle of chipboard with mahogany veneer, a small light over it made of horrible bits of coloured glass and a bellpush that plays a choice of twenty popular melodies that no music lover would want to listen to even after five years’ sensory deprivation. One wizard turned to another and duly said: “I wonder who that can be at this time of night?” There was another series of thumps on the woodwork. “There can’t be anyone alive out there,” said the other wizard, and he said it nervously, because if you ruled out the possibility of it being anyone alive that always left the suspicion that perhaps it was someone dead. This time the banging rattled the hinges. “One of us had better go out,” said the first wizard. “Good man.” “Ah. Oh. Right.” He set off slowly down the short, arched passage. “I’ll just go and see who it is, then?” he said. “First class.” It was a strange figure that made its hesitant way to the door. Ordinary robes weren’t sufficient protection in the high-energy field inside tower, and over his brocade and velvet the wizard wore a thick, padded overall stuffed with rowan shavings and embroidered with industrial-grade sigils. He’d affixed a smoked glass visor to his pointy hat and his gauntlets, which were extremely big, suggested that he was a wicket keeper in a game of cricket played at supersonic speeds. The actinic flashes and pulsations from the great work in the main hall cast harsh shadows around him as he fumbled for the bolts. He pulled down the visor and opened the door a fraction. “We don’t want any-” he began, and ought to have chosen his words better, because they were his epitaph. It was sometime before his colleague noticed his continued absence, and wandered down the passage to find him. The door had been thrown wide open, the thaumatic inferno outside roaring against the web of spells that held it in check. In fact the door hadn’t been pushed completely back; he pulled it aside to see why, and gave a little whimper. There was a noise behind him. He turned around. “Wha-” he began, which is a pretty poor syllable on which to end a life. High over the Circle Sea Rincewind was feeling a bit of an idiot. This happens to everyone sooner or later. For example, in a tavern someone jogs your elbow and you turn around quickly and give a mouthful of abuse to, you become slowly aware, the belt buckle of a man who, it turns out, was probably hewn rather than born. Or a little car runs into the back of yours and you rush out to show a bunch of fives to the driver who, it becomes apparent as he goes on unfolding more body like some horrible conjuring trick, must have been sitting on the back seat. Or you might be leading your mutinous colleagues to the captain’s cabin and you hammer on the door and he sticks his great head out with a cutlass in either hand and you say “We’re taking over the ship, you scum, and the lads are right with me!” and he says “What lads?” and you suddenly feel a great emptiness behind you and you say “Um . . .” In other words, it’s the familiar hot sinking feeling experienced by everyone who has let the waves of their own anger throw them far up on the beach of retribution, leaving them, in the poetic language of the everyday, up shit creek. Rincewind was still angry and humiliated and so forth, but these emotions had died down a bit and something of his normal character had reasserted itself. It was not very pleased to find itself on a few threads of blue and gold wool high above the phosphorescent waves. He’d been heading for Ankh-Morpork. He tried to remember why. Of course, it was where it had all started. Perhaps it was the presence of the University, which was so heavy with magic it lay like a cannonball on the incontinence blanket of the Universe, stretching reality very thin. Ankh was where things started, and finished. It was also his home, such as it was, and it called to him. It has already been indicated that Rincewind appeared to have a certain amount of rodent in his ancestry, and in times of stress he felt an overpowering urge to make a run for his burrow. He let the carpet drift for a while on the air currents while dawn, which Creosote would probably have referred to as pink-fingered, made a ring of fire around the edge of the Disc. It spread its lazy light over a world that was subtly different. Rincewind blinked. There was a weird light. No, now he came to think about it, not weird but wyrd, which was much weirder. It was like looking at the world through a heat haze, but a haze that had a sort of life of its own. It danced and stretched, and gave more than a hint that it wasn’t just an optical illusion but that it was reality itself that was being tensed and distended, like a rubber balloon trying to contain too much gas. The wavering was greatest in the direction of Ankh-Morpork, where flashes and fountains of tortured air indicated that the struggle hadn’t abated. A similar column hung over Al Khali, and then Rincewind realised that it wasn’t the only one. Wasn’t that a tower over in Quirm, where the Circle Sea opened on to the great Rim Ocean? And there were others. It had all gone critical. Wizardry was breaking up. Goodbye to the University, the levels, the Orders; deep in his heart, every wizard knew that the natural unit of wizardry was one wizard. The towers would multiply and fight until there was one tower left, and then the wizards would fight until there was one wizard. By then, he’d probably fight himself. The whole edifice that operated as the balance wheel of magic was falling to bits. Rincewind resented that, deeply. He’d never been any good at magic, but that wasn’t the point. He knew where he fitted. It was right at the bottom, but at least he fitted. He could look up and see the whole delicate machine ticking away, gently, browsing off the natural magic generated by the turning of the Disc. All he had was nothing, but that was something, and now it had been taken away. Rincewind turned the carpet until it was facing the distant gleam that was Ankh-Morpork, which was a brilliant speck in the early morning light, and a part of his mind that wasn’t doing anything else wondered why it was so bright. There also seemed to be a full moon, and even Rincewind, whose grasp of natural philosophy was pretty vague, was sure there had been one of those only the other day. Well, it didn’t matter. He’d had enough. He wasn’t going to try to understand anything any more. He was going home. Except that wizards can never go home. This is one of the ancient and deeply meaningful sayings about wizards and it says something about most of them that they have never been able to work out what it means. Wizards aren’t allowed to have wives but they are allowed to have parents, and many of them go back to the old home town for Hogswatch Night or Soul Cake Thursday, for a bit of a singsong and the heart-warming sight of all their boyhood bullies hurriedly avoiding them in the street. It’s rather like the other saying they’ve never been able to understand, which is that you can’t cross the same river twice. Experiments with a long-legged wizard and a small river say you can cross the same river thirty, thirty-five times a minute. Wizards don’t like philosophy very much. As far as they are concerned, one hand clapping makes a noise like “cl”. In this particular case, though, Rincewind couldn’t go home because it actually wasn’t there any more. There was a city straddling the river Ankh, but it wasn’t one he’d ever seen before; it was white and clean and didn’t smell like a privy full of dead herrings. He landed in what had once been the Plaza of Broken Moons, and also in a state of some shock. There were fountains. There had been fountains before, of course, but they had oozed rather than played and they had looked like thin soup. There were milky flagstones underfoot, with little glittery bits in. And, although the sun was sitting on the horizon like half a breakfast grapefruit, there was hardly anyone around. Normally Ankh was permanently crowded, the actual shade of the sky being a mere background detail. Smoke drifted over the city in long greasy coils from the crown of boiling air above the University. It was the only movement, apart from the fountains. Rincewind had always been rather proud of the fact that he always felt alone, even in the teeming city, but it was even worse being alone when he was by himself. He rolled up the carpet and slung it over one shoulder and padded through the haunted streets towards the University. The gates hung open to the wind. Most of the building looked half ruined by misses and ricochets. The tower of sourcery, far too high to be real, seemed to be unscathed. Not so the old Tower of Art. Half the magic aimed at the tower next door seemed to have rebounded on it. Parts of it had melted and started to run; some parts glowed, some parts had crystallised, a few parts seemed to have twisted partly out of the normal three dimensions. It made you feel sorry even for stone that it should have to undergo such treatment. In fact nearly everything had happened to the tower except actual collapse. It looked so beaten that possibly even gravity had given up on it. Rincewind sighed, and padded around the base of the tower towards the Library. Towards where the Library had been. There was the arch of the doorway, and most of the walls were still standing, but a lot of the roof had fallen in and everything was blackened by soot. Rincewind stood and stared for a long time. Then he dropped the carpet and ran, stumbling and sliding through the rubble that half-blocked the doorway. The stones were still warm underfoot. Here and there the wreckage of a bookcase still smouldered. Anyone watching would have seen Rincewind dart backwards and forwards across the shimmering heaps, scrabbling desperately among them, throwing aside charred furniture, pulling aside lumps of fallen roof with less than superhuman strength. They would have seen him pause once or twice to get his breath back, then dive in again, cutting his hands on shards of half-molten glass from the dome of the roof. They would have noticed that he seemed to be sobbing. Eventually his questing fingers touched something warm and soft. The frantic wizard heaved a charred roof beam aside, scrabbled through a drift of fallen tiles and peered down. There, half squashed by the beam and baked brown by the fire, was a large bunch of overripe, squashy bananas. He picked one up, very carefully, and sat and watched it for sometime until the end fell off. Then he ate it. “We shouldn’t have let him go like that,” said Conina. “How could we have stopped him, oh, beauteous doeeyed eaglet?” “But he may do something stupid!” “I should think that is very likely,” said Creosote primly. “While we do something clever and sit on a baking beach with nothing to eat or drink, is that it?” “You could tell me a story,” said Creosote, trembling slightly. “Shut up.” The Seriph ran his tongue over his lips. “I suppose a quick anecdote is out of the question?” he croaked. Conina sighed. “There’s more to life than narrative, you know.” “Sorry. I lost control a little, there.” Now that the sun was well up the crushed-shell beach glowed like a salt flat. The sea didn’t look any better by daylight. It moved like thin oil. Away on either side the beach stretched in long, excruciatingly flat curves, supporting nothing but a few clumps of withered dune grass which lived off the moisture in the spray. There was no sign of any shade. “The way I see it,” said Conina, “this is a beach, and that means sooner or later we’ll come to a river, so all we have to do is keep walking in one direction.” “And yet, delightful snow on the slopes of Mount Eritor, we do not know which one.” Nijel sighed, and reached into his bag. “Erm,” he said, “excuse me. Would this be any good? I stole it. Sorry.” He held out the lamp that had been in the treasury. “It’s magic, isn’t it?” he said hopefully. “I’ve heard about them, isn’t it worth a try?” Creosote shook his head. “But you said your grandfather used it to make his fortune!” said Conina. “A lamp,” said the Seriph, “he used a lamp. Not this lamp. No, the real lamp was a battered old thing, and one day this wicked pedlar came round offering new lamps for old and my greatgrandmother gave it to him for this one. The family kept it in the vault as a sort of memorial to her. A truly stupid woman. It doesn’t work, of course.” “You tried it?” “No, but he wouldn’t have given it away if it was any good, would he?” “Give it a rub,” said Conina. “It can’t do any harm.” “I wouldn’t,” warned Creosote. Nijel held the lamp gingerly. It had a strangely sleek look, as if someone had set out to make a lamp that could go fast. He rubbed it. The effects were curiously unimpressive. There was a half-hearted pop and a puff of wispy smoke near Nijel’s feet. A line appeared in the beach several feet away from the smoke. It spread quickly to outline a square of sand, which vanished. A figure barrelled out of the beach, jerked to a stop, and groaned. It was wearing a turban, an expensive tan, a small gold medallion, shiny shorts and advanced running shoes with curly toes. It said, “I want to get this absolutely straight. Where am I?” Conina recovered first. “It’s a beach,” she said. “Yah,” said the genie. “What I mean was, which lamp? What world?” “Don’t you know?” The creature took the lamp out of Nijel’s unresisting grasp. “Oh, this old thing,” he said. “I’m on time share. Two weeks every August but, of course, usually one can never get away.” “Got a lot of lamps, have you?” said Nijel. “I am somewhat over-committed on lamps,” the genie agreed. “In fact I am thinking of diversifying into rings. Rings are looking big at the moment. There’s a lot of movement in rings. Sorry, people; what can I do you for?” The last phrase was turned in that special voice which people use for humorous self-parody, in the mistaken hope that it will make them sound less like a prat. “We-” Conina began. “I want a drink,” snapped Creosote. “And you are supposed to say that my wish is your command.” “Oh, absolutely no-one says that sort of thing any more,” said the genie, and produced a glass out of nowhere. He treated Creosote to a brilliant smile lasting a small percentage of one second. “We want you to take us across the sea to Ankh-Morpork,” said Conina firmly. The genie looked blank. Then he pulled a very thick book[21] from the empty air and consulted it. “It sounds a really neat concept,” he said eventually. “Let’s do lunch next Tuesday, okay?” “Do what?” “I’m a little energetic right now.” “You’re a little-?” Conina began. “Great,” said the genie, sincerely, and glanced at his wrist. “Hey, is that the time?” He vanished. The three of them looked at the lamp in thoughtful silence, and then Nijel said, “Whatever happened to, you know, the fat guys with the baggy trousers and I Hear And Obey O Master?” Creosote snarled. He’d just drunk his drink. It had turned out to be water with bubbles in it and a taste like warm flatirons. “I’m bloody well not standing for it,” snarled Conina. She snatched the lamp from his hand and rubbed it as if she was sorry she wasn’t holding a handful of emery cloth. The genie reappeared at a different spot, which still managed to be several feet away from the weak explosion and obligatory cloud of smoke. He was now holding something curved and shiny to his ear, and listening intently. He looked hurriedly at Conina’s angry face and contrived to suggest, by waggling his eyebrows and waving his free hand urgently, that he was currently and inconveniently tied up by irksome matters which, regretfully, prevented him giving her his full attention as of now but, as soon as he had disentangled himself from this importunate person, she could rest assured that her wish, which was certainly a wish of tone and brilliance, would be his command. “I shall smash the lamp,” she said quietly. The genie flashed her a smile and spoke hastily into the thing he was cradling between his chin and his shoulder. “Fine,” he said. “Great. It’s a slice, believe me. Have your people call my people. Stay beyond, okay? Bye.” He lowered the instrument. “Bastard,” he said vaguely. “I really shall smash the lamp,” said Conina. “Which lamp is this?” said the genie hurriedly. “How many have you got?” said Nijel. “I always thought genies had just the one.” The genie explained wearily that in fact he had several lamps. There was a small but well-appointed lamp where he lived during the week, another rather unique lamp in the country, a carefully restored peasant rushlight in an unspoilt winegrowing district near Quirm, and just recently a set of derelict lamps in the docks area of Ankh-Morpork that had great potential, once the smart crowd got there, to become the occult equivalent of a suite of offices and a wine bar. They listened in awe, like fish who had inadvertently swum into a lecture on how to fly. “Who are your people the other people have got to call?” said Nijel, who was impressed, although he didn’t know why or by what. “Actually, I don’t have any people yet,” said the genie, and gave a grimace that was definitely upwardly-mobile at the corners. “But I will.” “Everyone shut up,” said Conina firmly, “and you, take us to Ankh-Morpork.” “I should, if I were you,” said Creosote. “When the young lady’s mouth looks like a letter box, it’s best to do what she says.” The genie hesitated. “I’m not very deep on transport,” he said. “Learn,” said Conina. She was tossing the lamp from hand to hand. “Teleportation is a major headache,” said the genie, looking desperate. “Why don’t we do lun-” “Right, that’s it,” said Conina. “Now I just need a couple of big flat rocks-” “Okay, okay. Just hold hands, will you? I’ll give it my best shot, but this could be one big mistake-” The astro-philosophers of Krull once succeeded in proving conclusively that all places are one place and that the distance between them is an illusion, and this news was an embarrassment to all thinking philosophers because it did not explain, among other things, signposts. After years of wrangling the whole thing was then turned over to Ly Tin Wheedle, arguably the Disc’s greatest philosopher[22], who after some thought proclaimed that although it was indeed true that all places were one place, that place was very large. And so psychic order was restored. Distance is, however, an entirely subjective phenomenon and creatures of magic can adjust it to suit themselves. They are not necessarily very good at it. Rincewind sat dejectedly in the blackened ruins of the Library, trying to put his finger on what was wrong with them. Well, everything, for a start. It was unthinkable that the Library should be burned. It was the largest accumulation of magic on the Disc. It underpinned wizardry. Every spell ever used was written down in it somewhere. Burning them was, was, was . . . There weren’t any ashes. Plenty of wood ashes, lots of chains, lots of blackened stone, lots of mess. But thousands of books don’t burn easily. They would leave bits of cover and piles of feathery ash. And there wasn’t any. Rincewind stirred the rubble with his toe. There was only the one door into the Library. Then there were the cellars - he could see the stairs down to them, choked with garbage - but you couldn’t hide all the books down there. You couldn’t teleport them out either, they would be resistant to such magic; anyone who tried something like that would end up wearing his brains outside his hat. There was an explosion overhead. A ring of orange fire formed about halfway up the tower of sourcery, ascended quickly and soared off towards Quirm. Rincewind slid around on his makeshift seat and stared up at the Tower of Art. He got the distinct impression that it was looking back at him. It was totally without windows, but for a moment he thought he saw a movement up among the crumbling turrets. He wondered how old the tower really was. Older than the University, certainly. Older than the city, which had formed about it like scree around a mountain. Maybe older than geography. There had been a time when the continents were different, Rincewind understood, and then they’d sort of shuffled more comfortably together like puppies in a basket. Perhaps the tower had been washed up on the waves of rock, from somewhere else. Maybe it had been there before the Disc itself, but Rincewind didn’t like to consider that, because it raised uncomfortable questions about who built it and what for. He examined his conscience. It said: I’m out of options. Please yourself. Rincewind stood up and brushed the dust and ash off his robe, removing quite a lot of the moulting red plush as well. He removed his hat, made a preoccupied attempt at straightening the point, and replaced it on his head. Then he walked unsteadily towards the Tower of Art. There was a very old and quite small door at the base. He wasn’t at all surprised when it opened as he approached. “Strange place,” said Nijel. “Funny curve to the walls.” “Where are we?” said Conina. “And is there any alcohol?” said Creosote. “Probably not,” he added. “And why is it rocking?” said Conina. “I’ve never been anywhere with metal walls before.” She sniffed. “Can you smell oil?” she added, suspiciously. The genie reappeared, although this time without the smoke and erratic trapdoor effects. It was noticeable that he tried to keep as far away from Conina as politely possible. “Everyone okay?” he said. “Is this Ankh?” she said. “Only when we wanted to go there, we rather hoped you’d put us somewhere with a door.” “You’re on your way,” said the genie. “In what?” Something about the way in which the spirit hesitated caused Nijel’s mind to leap a tall conclusion from a standing start. He looked down at the lamp in his hands. He gave it an experimental jerk. The floor shook. “Oh, no,” he said. “It’s physically impossible.” “We’re in the lamp?” said Conina. The room trembled again as Nijel tried to look down the spout. “Don’t worry about it,” said the genie. “In fact, don’t think about it if possible.” He explained - although “explained” is probably too positive a word, and in this case really means failed to explain but at some length - that it was perfectly possible to travel across the world in a small lamp being carried by one of the party, the lamp itself moving because it was being carried by one of the people inside it, because of a) the fractal nature of reality, which meant that everything could be thought of as being inside everything else and b) creative public relations. The trick relied on the laws of physics failing to spot the flaw until the journey was complete. “In the circumstances it is best not to think about it, yuh?” said the genie. “Like not thinking about pink rhinoceroses,” said Nijel, and gave an embarrassed laugh as they stared at him. “It was a sort of game we had,” he said. “You had to avoid thinking of pink rhinoceroses.” He coughed. “I didn’t say it was a particularly good game.” He squinted down the spout again. “No,” said Conina, “not very.” “Uh,” said the genie, “Would anyone like coffee? Some sounds? A quick game of Significant Quest?”[23] “Drink?” said Creosote. “White wine?” “Foul muck.” The genie looked shocked. “Red is bad for -” it began. “- but any port in a storm,” said Creosote hurriedly. “Or sauterne, even. But no umbrella in it.” It dawned on the Seriph that this wasn’t the way to talk to the genie. He pulled himself together a bit. “No umbrella, by the Five Moons of Nasreem. Or bits of fruit salad or olives or curly straws or ornamental monkeys, I command thee by the Seventeen Siderites of Sarudin -“ “I’m not an umbrella person,” said the genie sulkily. “It’s pretty sparse in here,” said Conina, “Why don’t you furnish it?” “What I don’t understand,” said Nijel, “is, if we’re all in the lamp I’m holding, then the me in the lamp is holding a smaller lamp and in that lamp-” The genie waved his hands urgently. “Don’t talk about it!” he commanded. “Please!” Nijel’s honest brow wrinkled. “Yes, but,” he said, “is there a lot of me, or what?” “It’s all cyclic, but stop drawing attention to it, yuh? . . . Oh, shit.” There was the subtle, unpleasant sound of the universe suddenly catching on. It was dark in the tower, a solid core of antique darkness that had been there since the dawn of time and resented the intrusion of the upstart daylight that nipped in around Rincewind. He felt the air move as the door shut behind him and the dark poured back, filling up the space where the light had been so neatly that you couldn’t have seen the join even if the light had still been there. The interior of the tower smelled of antiquity, with a slight suspicion of raven droppings. It took a great deal of courage to stand there in that dark. Rincewind didn’t have that much, but stood there anyway. Something started to snuffle around his feet, and Rincewind stood very still. The only reason he didn’t move was for fear of treading on something worse. Then a hand like an old leather glove touched his, very gently, and a voice said: “Oook.” Rincewind looked up. The dark yielded, just once, to a vivid flash of light. And Rincewind saw. The whole tower was lined with books. They were squeezed on every step of the rotting spiral staircase that wound up inside. They were piled up on the floor, although something about the way in which they were piled suggested that the word “huddled” would be more appropriate. They had lodged -all right, they had perched - on every crumbling ledge. They were observing him, in some covert way that had nothing to do with the normal six senses. Books are pretty good at conveying meaning, not necessarily their own personal meanings of course, and Rincewind grasped the fact that they were trying to tell him something. There was another flash. He realised that it was magic from the sourcerer’s tower, reflected down from the distant hole that led on to the roof. At least it enabled him to identify Wuffles, who was wheezing at his right foot. That was a bit of a relief. Now if he could just put a name to the soft, repetitive slithering noise near his left ear . . . There was a further obliging flash, which found him looking directly into the little yellow eyes of the Patrician, who was clawing patiently at the side of his glass jar. It was a gentle, mindless scrabbling, as if the little lizard wasn’t particularly trying to get out but was just vaguely interested in seeing how long it would take to wear the glass away. Rincewind looked down at the pear-shaped bulk of the Librarian. “There’s thousands of them,” he whispered, his voice being sucked away and silenced by the massed ranks of books. “How did you get them all in here?” “Oook oook.” “They what?” “Oook,” repeated the Librarian, making vigorous flapping motions with his bald elbows. “Fly?” “Oook.” “Can they do that?” “Oook,” nodded the Librarian. “That must have been pretty impressive. I’d like to see that one day.” “Oook.” Not every book had made it. Most of the important grimoires had got out but a seven-volume herbal had lost its index to the flames and many a trilogy was mourning for its lost volume. Quite a few books had scorch marks on their bindings; some had lost their covers, and trailed their stitching unpleasantly on the floor. A match flared, and pages rippled uneasily around the walls. But it was only the Librarian, who lit a candle and shambled across the floor at the base of a menacing shadow big enough to climb skyscrapers. He had set up a rough table against one wall and it was covered with arcane tools, pots of rare adhesives and a bookbinder’s vice which was already holding a stricken folio. A few weak lines of magic fire crawled across it. The ape pushed the candlestick into Rincewind’s hand, picked up a scalpel and a pair of tweezers, and bent low over the trembling book. Rincewind went pale. “Um,” he said, “er, do you mind if I go away? I faint at the sight of glue.” The Librarian shook his head and jerked a preoccupied thumb towards a tray of tools. “Oook,” he commanded. Rincewind nodded miserably, and obediently handed him a pair of long-nosed scissors. The wizard winced as a couple of damaged pages were snipped free and dropped to the floor. “What are you doing to it?” he managed. “Oook.” “An appendectomy? Oh.” The ape jerked his thumb again, without looking up. Rincewind fished a needle and thread out of the ranks on the tray and handed them over. There was silence broken only by the scritching sound of thread being pulled through paper until the Librarian straightened up and said: “Oook.” Rincewind pulled out his handkerchief and mopped the ape’s brow. “Oook.” “Don’t mention it. Is it - going to be all right?” The Librarian nodded. There was also a general, almost inaudible sigh of relief from the tier of books above them. Rincewind sat down. The books were frightened. In fact they were terrified. The presence of the sourcerer made their spines creep, and the pressure of their attention closed in around him like a vice. “All right,” he mumbled, “but what can I do about it?” “Oook.” The Librarian gave Rincewind a look that would have been exactly like a quizzical look over the top of a pair of half-moon spectacles, if he had been wearing any, and reached for another broken book. “I mean, you know I’m no good at magic.” “Oook.” “The sourcery that’s about now, it’s terrible stuff. I mean, it’s the original stuff, from right back in the dawn of time. Or around breakfast, at any rate.” “Oook.” “It’ll destroy everything eventually, won’t it?” “Oook.” “It’s about time someone put a stop to this sourcery, right?” “Oook.” “Only it can’t be me, you see. When I came here I thought I could do something, but that tower! It’s so big! It must be proof against all magic! If really powerful wizards won’t do anything about it, how can I?” “Oook,” agreed the Librarian, sewing a ruptured spine. “So, you see, I think someone else can save the world this time. I’m no good at it.” The ape nodded, reached across and lifted Rincewind’s hat from his head. “Hey!” The Librarian ignored him, picked up a pair of shears. “Look, that’s my hat, if you don’t mind don’t you dare do that to my-” He leapt across the floor and was rewarded with a thump across the side of the head, which would have astonished him if he’d had time to think about it; the Librarian might shuffle around the place like a good-natured wobbly balloon, but underneath that oversized skin was a framework of superbly-cantilevered bone and muscle that could drive a fistful of calloused knuckles through a thick oak plank. Running into the Librarian’s arm was like hitting a hairy iron bar. Wuffles started to bounce up and down, yelping with excitement. Rincewind screamed a hoarse, untranslatable yell of fury, bounced off the wall, snatched up a fallen rock as a crude club, kicked forward and stopped dead. The Librarian was crouched in the centre of the floor with the shears touching-but not yet cutting-the hat. And he was grinning at Rincewind. They stood like a frozen tableau for some seconds. Then the ape dropped the shears, flicked several imaginary flecks of dust off the hat, straightened the point, and placed it on Rincewind’s head. A few shocked moments after this Rincewind realised that he was holding up, at arm’s length, a very large and extremely heavy rock. He managed to force it away on one side before it recovered from the shock and remembered to fall on him. “I see,” he said, sinking back against the wall and rubbing his elbows. “And all that’s supposed to tell me something, is it? A moral lesson, let Rincewind confront his true self, let him work out what he’s really prepared to fight for. Eh? Well, it was a very cheap trick. And I’ve news for you. If you think it worked-” he snatched the hat brim - “if you think it worked. If you think I’ve. You’ve got another thought. Listen, it’s. If you think.” His voice stuttered into silence. Then he shrugged. “All right. But when you get down to it, what can I actually do?” The Librarian replied with an expansive gesture that indicated, as clearly as if he had said “oook”, that Rincewind was a wizard with a hat, a library of magical books and a tower. This could be regarded as everything a magical practitioner could need. An ape, a small terrier with halitosis and a lizard in a jar were optional extras. Rincewind felt a slight pressure on his foot. Wuffles, who was extremely slow on the uptake, had fastened his toothless gums on the toe of Rincewind’s boot and was giving it a vicious suck. He picked the little dog up by the scruff of its neck and the bristly stub that, for the want of a better word, it called its tail, and gently lifted it sideways. “Okay,” he said. “You’d better tell me what’s been happening here.” From the Carrack Mountains, overlooking the vast cold Sto Plain in the middle of which Ankh-Morpork sprawled like a bag of dropped groceries, the view was particularly impressive. Mishits and ricochets from the magical battle were expanding outwards and upwards, in a bowl-shaped cloud of curdled air at the heart of which strange lights flashed and sparkled. The roads leading away from it were packed with refugees, and every inn and wayside tavern was crowded out. Or nearly every one. No-one seemed to want to stop at the rather pleasant little pub nestling among trees just off the road to Quirm. It wasn’t that they were frightened to go inside, it was just that, for the moment, they weren’t being allowed to notice it. There was a disturbance in the air about half a mile away and three figures dropped out of nowhere into a thicket of lavender. They lay supine in the sunshine among the broken, fragrant branches, until their sanity came back. Then Creosote said, “Where are we, do you suppose?” “It smells like someone’s underwear drawer,” said Conina. “Not mine,” said Nijel, firmly. He eased himself up gently and added, “Has anyone seen the lamp?” “Forget it. It’s probably been sold to build a wine-bar,” said Conina. Nijel scrabbled around among the lavender stems until his hands found something small and metallic. “Got it!” he declared. “Don’t rub it!” said the other two, in harmony. They were too late anyway, but that didn’t much matter, because all that happened when Nijel gave it a cautious buff was the appearance of some small smoking red letters in mid-air. “ “Hi”,” Nijel read aloud. “ “Do not put down the lamp, because your custom is important to us. Please leave a wish after the tone and, very shortly, it will be our command. In the meantime, have a nice eternity.” “ He added, “You know, I think he’s a bit over-committed.” Conina said nothing. She was staring out across the plains to the broiling storm of magic. Occasionally some of it would detach and soar away to some distant tower. She shivered, despite the growing heat of the day. “We ought to get down there as soon as possible,” she said. “It’s very important.” “Why?” said Creosote. One glass of wine hadn’t really restored him to his former easygoing nature. Conina opened her mouth, and - quite unusually for her - shut it again. There was no way to explain that every gene in her body was dragging her onwards, telling her that she should get involved; visions of swords and spiky balls on chains kept invading the hairdressing salons of her consciousness. Nijel, on the other hand, felt no such pounding. All he had to drive him onwards was imagination, but he did have enough of that to float a medium-sized war galley. He looked towards the city with what would have been, but for his lack of chin, an expression of setjawed determination. Creosote realised that he was outnumbered. “Do they have any drink down there?” he said. “Lots,” said Nijel. “That might do for a start,” the Seriph conceded. “All right, lead on, O peach-breasted daughter of-” “And no poetry.” They untangled themselves from the thicket and walked down the hillside until they reached the road which, before very long, went past the aforementioned tavern or, as Creosote persisted in calling it, caravanserai. They hesitated about going in. It didn’t seem to welcome visitors. But Conina, who by breeding and upbringing tended to skulk around the back of buildings, found four horses tethered in the yard. They considered them carefully. “It would be stealing,” said Nijel, slowly. Conina opened her mouth to agree and the words “Why not?” slid past her lips. She shrugged. “Perhaps we should leave some money-” Nijel suggested. “Don’t look at me,” said Creosote. “- or maybe write a note and leave it under the bridle. Or something. Don’t you think?” By way of an answer Conina vaulted up on to the largest horse, which by the look of it belonged to a soldier. Weaponry was slung all over it. Creosote hoisted himself uneasily on to the second horse, a rather skittish bay, and sighed. “She’s got that letter-box look,” he said. “I should do what she says.” Nijel regarded the other two horses suspiciously. One of them was very large and extremely white, not the off-white which was all that most horses could manage, but a translucent, ivory white tone which Nijel felt an unconscious urge to describe as “shroud”. It also gave him a distinct impression that it was more intelligent than he was. He selected the other one. It was a bit thin, but docile, and he managed to get on after only two tries. They set off. The sound of their hoofbeats barely penetrated the gloom inside the tavern. The innkeeper moved like someone in a dream. He knew he had customers, he’d even spoken to them, he could even see them sitting round a table by the fire, but if asked to describe who he’d talked to and what he had seen he’d have been at a loss. This is because the human brain is remarkably good at shutting out things it doesn’t want to know. His could currently have shielded a bank vault. And the drinks! Most of them he’d never heard of, but strange bottles kept appearing on the shelves above the beer barrels. The trouble was that whenever he tried to think about it, his thoughts just slid away . . . The figures around the table looked up from their cards. One of them raised a hand. It’s stuck on the end of his arm and it’s got five fingers, the innkeeper’s mind said. It must be a hand. One thing the innkeeper’s brain couldn’t shut out was the sound of the voices. This one sounded as though someone was hitting a rock with a roll of sheet lead. BAR PERSON. The innkeeper groaned faintly. The thermic lances of horror were melting their way steadily through the steel door of his mind. LET ME SEE, NOW. THAT’s A - WHAT WAS IT AGAIN “A Bloody Mary.” This voice made a simple drinks order sound like the opening of hostilities. OH, YES. AND “Mine was a small egg none,” said Pestilence. AN EGG NOW. “With a cherry in it.” GOOD, lied the heavy voice. AND THAT’LL BE A SMALL PORT WINE FOR ME AND, the speaker glanced across the table at the fourth member of the quartet and sighed, YOU’D BETTER BRING ANOTHER BOWL OF PEANUTS. About three hundred yards down the road the horse thieves were trying to come to terms with a new experience. “Certainly a smooth ride,” Nijel managed eventually. “And a lovely - a lovely view,” said Creosote, his voice lost in the slipstream. “But I wonder,” said Nijel, “if we have done exactly the right thing.” “We’re moving, aren’t we?” demanded Conina. “Don’t be petty.” “It’s just that, well, looking at cumulus clouds from above is-” “Shut up.” “Sorry.” “Anyway, they’re stratus. Cumulus at most.” “Right,” said Nijel miserably. “Does it make any difference?” said Creosote, who was lying flat on his horse’s neck with his eyes shut. “About a thousand feet.” “Oh.” “Could be seven hundred and fifty,” conceded Conina. “Ah.” The tower of sourcery trembled. Coloured smoke rolled through its vaulted rooms and shining corridors. In the big room at the very tip, where the air was thick and greasy and tasted of burning tin, many wizards had passed out with the sheer mental effort of the battle. But enough remained. They sat in a wide circle, locked in concentration. It was just possible to see the shimmering in the air as the raw sourcery swirled out of the staff in Coin’s hand and into the centre of the octogram. Outlandish shapes appeared for a brief instant and vanished. The very fabric of reality was being put through the wringer in there. Carding shuddered, and turned away in case he saw anything he really couldn’t ignore. The surviving senior wizards had a simulacrum of the Disc hovering in front of them. As Carding looked at it again the little red glow over the city of Quirm flared and went out. The air creaked. “There goes Quirm,” murmured Carding. “That just leaves Al Khali,” said one of the others. “There’s some clever power there.” Carding nodded glumly. He’d quite liked Quirm, which was a -had been a pleasant little city overlooking the Rim Ocean. He dimly recalled being taken there, once, when he was small. For a moment he gazed sadly into the past. It had wild geraniums, he recalled, filling the sloping cobbled streets with their musky fragrance. “Growing out of the walls,” he said out loud. “Pink. They were pink.” The other wizards looked at him oddly. One or two, of a particularly paranoid frame of mind even for wizards, glanced suspiciously at the walls. “Are you all right?” said one of them. “Um?” said Carding, “Oh. Yes, Sorry. Miles away.” He turned back to look at Coin, who was sitting off to one side of the circle with the staff across his knees. The boy appeared to be asleep. Perhaps he was. But Carding knew in the tormented pit of his soul that the staff didn’t sleep. It was watching him, testing his mind. It knew. It even knew about the pink geraniums. “I never wanted it to be like this,” he said softly. “All we really wanted was a bit of respect.” “Are you sure you’re all right?” Carding nodded vaguely. As his colleagues resumed their concentration he glanced sideways at them. Somehow, all his old friends had gone. Well, not friends. A wizard never had friends, at least not friends who were wizards. It needed a different word. Ah yes, that was it. Enemies. But a very decent class of enemies. Gentlemen. The cream of their profession. Not like these people, for all that they seemed to have risen in the craft since the sourcerer had arrived. Other things besides the cream floated to the top, he reflected sourly. He turned his attention to Al Khali, probing with his mind, knowing that the wizards there were almost certainly doing the same, seeking constantly for a point of weakness. He thought: am I a point of weakness? Spelter tried to tell me something. It was about the staff. A man should lean on his staff, not the other way around . . . it’s steering him, leading him . . . I wish I’d listened to Spelter . . . this is wrong, I’m a point of weakness . . . He tried again, riding the surges of power, letting them carry his mind into the enemy tower. Even Abrim was making use of sourcery, and Carding let himself modulate the wave, insinuating himself past the defences erected against him. The image of the interior of the Al Khali tower appeared, focused . . . . . . the Luggage trundled along the glowing corridors. It was exceedingly angry now. It had been awoken from hibernation, it had been scorned, it had been briefly attacked by a variety of mythological and now extinct lifeforms, it had a headache and now, as it entered the Great Hall, it detected the hat. The horrible hat, the cause of everything it was currently suffering. It advanced purposefully . . . Carding, testing the resistance of Abrim’s mind, felt the man’s attention waver. For a moment he saw through the enemy’s eyes, saw the squat oblong cantering across the stone. For a moment Abrim attempted to shift his concentration and then, no more able to help himself than is a cat when it sees something small and squeaky run across the floor, Carding struck. Not much. It didn’t need much. Abrim’s mind was attempting to balance and channel huge forces, and it needed hardly any pressure to topple it from its position. Abrim extended his hands to blast the Luggage, gave the merest beginnings of a scream, and imploded. The wizards around him thought they saw him grow impossibly small in a fraction of a second and vanish, leaving a black after-image . . . The more intelligent of them started to run . . . And the magic he had been controlling surged back out and flooded free in one great, randomised burst that blew the hat to bits, took out the entire lower levels of the tower and quite a large part of what remained of the city. So many wizards in Ankh had been concentrating on the hall that the sympathetic resonance blew them across the room. Carding ended up on his back, his hat over his eyes. They hauled him out and dusted him off and carried him to Coin and the staff, amid cheers - although some of the older wizards forbore to cheer. But he didn’t seem to pay any attention. He stared sightlessly down at the boy, and then slowly raised his hands to his ears. “Can’t you hear them?” he said. The wizards fell silent. Carding still had power, and the tone of his voice would have quelled a thunderstorm. Coin’s eyes glowed. “I hear nothing,” he said. Carding turned to the rest of the wizards. “Can’t you hear them?” They shook their heads. One of them said, “Hear what, brother?” Carding smiled, and it was a wide, mad smile. Even Coin took a step backwards. “You’ll hear them soon enough,” he said. “You’ve made a beacon. You’ll all hear them. But you won’t hear them for long.” He pushed aside the younger wizards who were holding his arms and advanced on Coin. “You’re pouring sourcery into the world and other things are coming with it,” he said. “Others have given them a pathway but you’ve given them an avenue!” He sprang forward and snatched the black staff out of Coin’s hands and swung it up in the air to smash it against the wall. Carding went rigid as the staff struck back. Then his skin began to blister . . . Most of the wizards managed to turn their heads away. A few -and there are always a few like that - watched in obscene fascination. Coin watched, too. His eyes widened in wonder. One hand went to his mouth. He tried to back away. He couldn’t. “They’re cumulus.” “Marvellous,” said Nijel weakly. WEIGHT DOESN’T COME INTO IT. MY STEED HAS CARRIED ARMIES. MY STEED HAS CARRIED CITIES. YEA, HE HATH CARRIED ALL THINGS IN THEIR DUE TIME, said Death. BUT HE’S NOT GOING TO CARRY YOU THREE. “Why not?” IT’s A MATTER OF THE LOOK OF THE THING. “It’s going to look pretty good, then, isn’t it,” said War testily, “the One Horseman and Three Pedestrians of the Apocralypse.” “Perhaps you could ask them to wait for us?” said Pestilence, his voice sounding like something dripping out of the bottom of a coffin. I HAVE THINGS TO ATTEND TO, said Death. He made a little clicking noise with his teeth. I’M SURE YOU’LL MANAGE. YOU NORMALLY DO. War watched the retreating horse. “Sometimes he really gets on my nerves. Why is he always so keen to have the last word?” he said. “Force of habit, l suppose.” They turned back to the tavern. Neither spoke for some time, and then War said, “Where’s Famine?” “Went to find the kitchen.” “Oh.” War scuffed one armoured foot in the dust, and thought about the distance to Ankh. It was a very hot afternoon. The Apocralypse could jolly well wait. “One for the road?” he suggested. “Should we?” said Pestilence, doubtfully. “I thought we were expected. l mean, l wouldn’t like to disappoint people.” “We’ve got time for a quick one, I’m sure,” War insisted. “Pub clocks are never right. We’ve got bags of time. All the time in the world.” Carding slumped forward and thudded on the shining white floor. The staff rolled out of his hands and upended itself. Coin prodded the limp body with his foot. “I did warn him,” he said. “I told him what would happen if he touched it again. What did he mean, them?” There was an outbreak of coughing and a considerable inspection of fingernails. “What did he mean?” Coin demanded. Ovin Hakardly, lecturer in Lore, once again found that the wizards around him were parting like morning mist. Without moving he appeared to have stepped forward. His eyes swivelled backwards and forwards like trapped animals. “Er,” he said. He waved his thin hands vaguely. “The world, you see, that is, the reality in which we live, in fact, it can be thought of as, in a manner of speaking, a rubber sheet.” He hesitated, aware that the sentence was not going to appear in anyone’s book of quotable quotes. “In that,” he added hurriedly, “it is distorted, uh, distended by the presence of magic in any degree and, if I may make a point here, too much magical potentiality, if foregathered in one spot, forces our reality, um, downwards, although of course one should not take the term literally (because in no sense do I seek to suggest a physical dimension) and it has been postulated that a sufficient exercise of magic can, shall we say, um, break through the actuality at its lowest point and offer, perhaps, a pathway to the inhabitants or, if I may use a more correct term, denizens of the lower plane (which is called by the loose-tongued the Dungeon Dimensions) who, because perhaps of the difference in energy levels, are naturally attracted to the brightness of this world. Our world.” There was the typical long pause which usually followed Hakardly’s speeches, while everybody mentally inserted commas and stitched the fractured clauses together. Coin’s lips moved silently for a while. “Do you mean magic attracts these creatures?” he said eventually. His voice was quite different now. It lacked its former edge. The staff hung in the air above the prone body of Carding, rotating slowly. The eyes of every wizard in the place were on it. “So it appears,” said Hakardly. “Students of such things say their presence is heralded by a coarse susurration.” Coin looked uncertain. “They buzz,” said one of the other wizards helpfully. The boy knelt down and peered closely at Carding. “He’s very still,” he said cautiously. “Is anything bad happening to him?” “It may be,” said Hakardly, guardedly. “He’s dead.” “I wish he wasn’t.” “It is a view, I suspect, which he shares.” “But I can help him,” said Coin. He held out his hands and the staff glided into them. If it had a face, it would have smirked. When he spoke next his voice once again had the cold distant tones of someone speaking in a steel room. “If failure had no penalty success would not be a prize,” he said. “Sorry?” said Hakardly. “You’ve lost me there.” Coin turned on his heel and strode back to his chair. “We can fear nothing,” he said, and it sounded more like a command. “What of these Dungeon Dimensions? If they should trouble us, away with them! A true wizard will fear nothing! Nothing!” He jerked to his feet again and strode to the simulacrum of the world. The image was perfect in every detail, down to a ghost of Great A’Tuin paddling slowly through the interstellar deeps a few inches above the floor. Coin waved his hand through it disdainfully. “Ours is a world of magic,” he said. “And what can be found in it that can stand against us?” Hakardly thought that something was expected of him. “Absolutely no-one,” he said. “Except for the gods, of course.” There was a dead silence. “The gods?” said Coin quietly. “Well, yes. Certainly. We don’t challenge the gods. They do their job, we do ours. No sense in-” “Who rules the Disc? Wizards or gods?” Hakardly thought quickly. “Oh, wizards. Of course. But, as it were, under the gods.” When one accidentally puts one boot in a swamp it is quite unpleasant. But not as unpleasant as pushing down with the other boot and hearing that, too, disappear with a soft sucking noise. Hakardly pressed on. “You see, wizardry is more-” “Are we not more powerful than the gods, then?” said Coin. Some of the wizards at the back of the crowd began to shuffle their feet. “Well. Yes and no,” said Hakardly, up to his knees in it now. The truth was that wizards tended to be somewhat nervous about the gods. The beings who dwelt on Cori Celesti had never made their feelings plain on the subject of ceremonial magic, which after all had a certain godness about it, and wizards tended to avoid the whole subject. The trouble with gods was that if they didn’t like something they didn’t just drop hints, so common sense suggested that it was unwise to put the gods in a position where they had to decide. “There seems to be some uncertainty?” said Coin. “If I may counsel-” Hakardly began. Coin waved a hand. The walls vanished. The wizards stood at the top of the tower of sourcery, and as one man their eyes turned to the distant pinnacle of Cori Celesti, home of the gods. “When you’ve beaten everyone else, there’s only the gods left to fight,” said Coin. “Have any of you seen the gods?” There was a chorus of hesitant denials. “I will show them to you.” “You’ve got room for another one in there, old son,” said War. Pestilence swayed unsteadily. “I’m sure we should be getting along,” he muttered, without much conviction. “Oh, go on.” “Just a half, then. And then we really must be going.” War slapped him on the back, and glared at Famine. “And wed better have another fifteen bags of peanuts,” he added. “Oook,” the Librarian concluded. “Oh,” said Rincewind. “It’s the staff that’s the problem, then.” “Oook.” “Hasn’t anyone tried to take it away from him?” “Oook.” “What happened to them, then?” “Eeek.” Rincewind groaned. The Librarian had put his candle out because the presence of the naked flame was unsettling the books, but now that Rincewind had grown accustomed to the dark, he realised it wasn’t dark at all. The soft octarine glow from the books filled the inside of the tower with something that, while it wasn’t exactly light, was a blackness you could see by. Now and again the ruffle of stiff pages floated down from the gloom. “So, basically, there’s no way our magic could defeat him, isn’t that right?” The Librarian cooked disconsolate agreement and continued to spin around gently on his bottom. “Pretty pointless, then. It may have struck you that I am not exactly gifted in the magical department? I mean, any duel is going to go on the lines of “Hallo, I’m Rincewind” closely followed by bazaam!” “Oook.” “Basically, what you’re saying is that I’m on my own.” “Oook.” “Thanks.” By their own faint glow Rincewind regarded the books that had stacked themselves around the inner walls of the ancient tower. He sighed, and marched briskly to the door, but slowed down noticeably as he reached it. “I’ll be off, then,” he said. “Oook.” “To face who knows what dreadful perils,” Rincewind added. “To lay down my life in the service of mankind-” “Eeek.” “All right, bipeds-” “Woof.” “- and quadrapeds, all right.” He glanced at the Patrician’s jamjar, a beaten man. “And lizards,” he added. “Can I go now?” A gale was howling down out of a clear sky as Rincewind toiled towards the tower of sourcery. Its high white doors were shut so tightly it was barely possible to see their outline in the milky surface of the stone. He hammered on it for a bit, but nothing much happened. The doors seemed to absorb the sound. “Fine thing,” he muttered to himself, and remembered the carpet. It was lying where he had left it, which was another sign that Ankh had changed. In the thieving days before the sourcerer nothing stayed for long where you left it. Nothing printable, anyway. He rolled it out on the cobbles so that the golden dragons writhed against the blue ground, unless of course the blue dragons were flying against a golden sky. He sat down. He stood up. He sat down again and hitched up his robe and, with some effort, unrolled one of his socks. Then he replaced his boot and wandered around for a bit until he found, among the rubble, a half-brick. He inserted the half-brick into the sock and gave the sock a few thoughtful swings. Rincewind had grown up in Morpork. What a Morpork citizen liked to have on his side in a fight was odds of about twenty to one, but failing that a sockful of half-brick and a dark alley to lurk in was generally considered a better bet than any two magic swords you cared to name. He sat down again. “Up,” he commanded. The carpet did not respond. Rincewind peered at the pattern, then lifted a corner of the carpet and tried to make out if the underside was any better. “All right,” he conceded, “down. Very, very carefully. Down.” “Sheep,” slurred War. “It was sheep.” His helmeted head hit the bar with a clang. He raised it again. “Sheep.” “Nonono,” said Famine, raising a thin finger unsteadily. “Some other domess . . . dummist . . . tame animal. Like pig. Heifer. Kitten? Like that. Not sheep.” “Bees,” said Pestilence, and slid gently out of his seat. “O-kay,” said War, ignoring him, “right. Once again, then. From the top.” He rapped the side of his glass for the note. “We are poor little . . . unidentified domesticated animals . . . that have lost our way . . .” he quavered. “Baabaabaa,” muttered Pestilence, from the floor. War shook his head. “It isn’t the same, you know,” he said. “Not without him. He used to come in beautifully on the bass.” “Baabaabaa,” Pestilence repeated. “Oh, shut up,” said War, and reached uncertainly for a bottle. The gale buffeted the top of the tower, a hot, unpleasant wind that whispered with strange voices and rubbed the skin like fine sandpaper. In the centre of it Coin stood with the staff over his head. As dust filled the air the wizards saw the lines of magic force pouring from it. They curved up to form a vast bubble that expanded until it must have been larger than the city. And shapes appeared in it. They were shifting and indistinct, wavering horribly like visions in a distorting mirror, no more substantial than smoke rings or pictures in the clouds, but they were dreadfully familiar. There, for a moment, was the fanged snout of Offler. There, clear for an instant in the writhing storm, was Blind lo, chief of the gods, with his orbiting eyes. Coin muttered soundlessly and the bubble began to contract. It bulged and jerked obscenely as the things inside fought to get out, but they could not stop the contraction. Now it was bigger than the University grounds. Now it was taller than the tower. Now it was twice the height of a man, and smoke grey. Now it was an iridescent pearl, the size of . . . well, the size of a large pearl. The gale had gone, replaced by a heavy, silent calm. The very air groaned with the strain. Most of the wizards were flat on the floor, pressed there by the unleashed forces that thickened the air and deadened sound like a universe of feathers, but every one of them could hear his own heart beating loud enough to smash the tower. “Look at me,” Coin commanded. They turned their eyes upwards. There was no way they could disobey. He held the glistening thing in one hand. The other held the staff, which had smoke pouring from its ends. “The gods,” he said. “Imprisoned in a thought. And perhaps they were never more than a dream.” His voice become older, deeper. “Wizards of Unseen University,” it said, “have I not given you absolute dominion?” Behind. them the carpet rose slowly over the side of the tower, with Rincewind trying hard to keep his balance. His eyes were wide with the sort of terror that comes naturally to anyone standing on a few threads and several hundred feet of empty air. He lurched off the hovering thing and on to the tower, swinging the loaded sock around his head in wide, dangerous sweeps. Coin saw him reflected in the astonished stares of the assembled wizards. He turned carefully and watched the wizard stagger erratically towards him. “Who are you?” he said. “I have come,” said Rincewind thickly, “to challenge the sourcerer. Which one is he?” He surveyed the prostrate wizardry, hefting the half-brick in one hand. Hakardly risked a glance upwards and made frantic eyebrow movements at Rincewind who, even at the best of times, wasn’t much good at interpreting non-verbal communication. This wasn’t the best of times. “With a sock?” said Coin. “What good is a sock?” The arm holding the staff rose. Coin looked down at it in mild astonishment. “No, stop,” he said. “I want to talk to this man.” He stared at Rincewind, who was swaying back and forth under the influence of sleeplessness, horror and the after-effects of an adrenaline overdose. “Is it magical?” he said, curiously. “Perhaps it is the sock of an Archchancellor? A sock of force?” Rincewind focused on it. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I think I bought it in a shop or something. Um. I’ve got another one somewhere.” “But in the end it has something heavy?” “Um. Yes,” said Rincewind. He added, “It’s a half-brick.” “But it has great power.” “Er. You can hold things up with it. If you had another one, you’d have a brick.” Rincewind spoke slowly. He was assimilating the situation by a kind of awful osmosis, and watching the staff turn ominously in the boy’s hand. “So. It is a brick of ordinariness, within a sock. The whole becoming a weapon.” “Um. Yes.” “How does it work?” “Um. You swing it, and then you. Hit something with it. Or sometimes the back of your hand, sometimes.” “And then perhaps it destroys a whole city?” said Coin. Rincewind stared into Coin’s golden eyes, and then at his sock. He had pulled it on and off several times a year for years. It had darns he’d grown to know and lo-well, know. Some of them had whole families of darns of their own. There were a number of descriptions that could be applied to the sock, but slayer-of-cities wasn’t among them. “Not really,” he said at last. “It sort of kills people but leaves buildings standing.” Rincewind’s mind was operating at the speed of continental drift. Parts of it were telling him that he was confronting the sourcerer, but they were in direct conflict with other parts. Rincewind had heard quite a lot about the power of the sourcerer, the staff of the sourcerer, the wickedness of the sourcerer and so on. The only thing no-one had mentioned was the age of the sourcerer. He glanced towards the staff. “And what does that do?” he said slowly. And the staff said, You must kill this man. The wizards, who had been cautiously struggling upright, flung themselves flat again. The voice of the hat had been bad enough, but the voice of the staff was metallic and precise; it didn’t sound as though it was offering advice but simply stating the way the future had to be. It sounded quite impossible to ignore. Coin half-raised his arm, and hesitated. “Why?” he said. You do not disobey me. “You don’t have to,” said Rincewind hurriedly. “It’s only a thing.” “I do not see why I should hurt him,” said Coin. “He looks so harmless. Like an angry rabbit.” He defies us. “Not me,” said Rincewind, thrusting the arm with the sock behind his back and trying to ignore the bit about the rabbit. “Why should I do everything you tell me?” said Coin to the staff. “I always do everything you tell me, and it doesn’t help people at all.” People must fear you. Have I taught you nothing? “But he looks so funny, He’s got a sock,” said Coin. He screamed, and his arm jerked oddly. Rincewind’s hair stood on end. You will do as you are commanded. “I won’t”. You know what happens to boys who are bad. There was a crackle and a smell of scorched flesh. Coin dropped to his knees. “Here, hang on a minute-” Rincewind began. Coin opened his eyes. They were gold still, but flecked with brown. Rincewind swung his sock around in a wide humming arc that connected with the staff halfway along its length. There was a brief explosion of brick dust and burnt wool and the staff spun out of the boy’s hand. Wizards scattered as it tumbled end over end across the floor. It reached the parapet, bounced upwards and shot over the edge. But, instead of falling, it steadied itself in the air, spun in its own length and sped back again trailing octarine sparks and making a noise like a buzzsaw. Rincewind pushed the stunned boy behind him, threw away the ravaged sock and whipped his hat off, flailing wildly as the staff bored towards him. It caught him on the side of the head, delivering a shock that almost welded his teeth together and toppled him like a thin and ragged tree. The staff turned again in mid-air, glowing red-hot now, and swept back for another and quite definitely final run. Rincewind struggled up on his elbows and watched in horrified fascination as it swooped through the chilly air which, for some reason he didn’t understand, seemed to be full of snowflakes. And became tinged with purple, blotched with blue. Time slowed and ground to a halt like an underwound phonograph. Rincewind looked up at the tall black figure that had appeared a few feet away. It was, of course, Death. He turned his glowing eyesockets towards Rincewind and said, in a voice like the collapse of undersea chasms, GOOD AFTERNOON. He turned away as if he had completed all necessary business for the time being, stared at the horizon for a while, and started to tap one foot idly. It sounded like a bagful of maracas. “Er,” said Rincewind. Death appeared to remember him. I’M SORRY? he said politely. “I always wondered how it was going to be,” said Rincewind. Death took an hourglass out from the mysterious folds of his ebon robes and peered at it. DID YOU? he said, vaguely. “I suppose I can’t complain,” said Rincewind virtuously. “I’ve had a good life. Well, quite good.” He hesitated. “Well, not all that good. I suppose most people would call it pretty awful.” He considered it further. “I would,” he added, half to himself. WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, MAN? Rincewind was nonplussed. “Don’t you make an appearance when a wizard is about to die?” OF COURSE. AND I MUST SAY YOU PEOPLE ARE GIVING ME A BUSY DAY “How do you manage to be in so many places at the same time?” GOOD ORGANISATION. Time returned. The staff, which had been hanging in the air a few feet away from Rincewind, started to scream forward again. And there was a metallic thud as Coin caught it onehandedly in mid-flight. The staff uttered a noise like a thousand fingernails dragging across glass. It thrashed wildly up and down, flailing at the arm that held it, and bloomed into evil green flame along its entire length. So. At the last, you fail me. Coin groaned but held on as the metal under his fingertips went red, then white. He thrust the arm out in front of him, and the force streaming from the staff roared past him and drew sparks from his hair and whipped his robe up into weird and unpleasant shapes. He screamed and whirled the staff round and smashed it on the parapet, leaving a long bubbling line in the stone. Then he threw it away. It clattered against the stones and rolled to a halt, wizards scattering out of its path. Coin sagged to his knees, shaking. “I don’t like killing people,” he said. “I’m sure it can’t be right.” “Hold on to that thought,” said Rincewind fervently. “What happens to people after they’re dead?” said Coin. Rincewind glanced up at Death. “I think this one’s for you,” he said. HE CANNOT SEE OR HEAR ME, said Death, UNTIL HE WANTS TO. There was a little clinking noise. The staff was rolling back towards Coin, who looked down at it in horror. Pick me up. “You don’t have to,” said Rincewind again. You cannot resist me. You cannot defeat yourself, said the staff. Coin reached out very slowly, and picked it up. Rincewind glanced at his sock. It was a stub of burnt wool, its brief career as a weapon of war having sent it beyond the help of any darning needle. Now kill him. Rincewind held his breath. The watching wizards held their breath. Even Death, who had nothing to hold but his scythe, held it tensely. “No,” said Coin. You know what happens to boys who are bad. Rincewind saw the sourcerer’s face go pale. The staff’s voice changed. Now it wheedled. Without me, who would there be to tell you what to do? “That is true,” said Coin slowly. See what you have achieved. Coin stared slowly around at the frightened faces. “I am seeing,” he said. I taught you everything I know. “I am thinking,” said Coin, “that you do not know enough.” Ingrate! Who gave you your destiny? “You did,” said the boy. He raised his head. “I realise that I was wrong,” he added, quietly. Good - “I did not throw you far enough!” Coin got to his feet in one movement and swung the staff over his head. He stood still as a statue, his hand lost in a ball of light that was the colour of molten copper. It turned green, ascended through shades of blue, hovered in the violet and then seared into pure octarine. Rincewind shaded his eyes against the glare and saw Coin’s hand, still whole, still gripping tight, with beads of molten metal glittering between his fingers. He slithered away, and bumped into Hakardly. The old wizard was standing like a statue, with his mouth open. “What’ll happen?” said Rincewind. “He’ll never beat it,” said Hakardly hoarsely. “It’s his. It’s as strong as him. He’s got the power, but it knows how to channel it.” “You mean they’ll cancel each other out?” “Hopefully.” The battle was hidden in its own infernal glow. Then the floor began to tremble. “They’re drawing on everything magical,” said Hakardly. “We’d better leave the tower.” “Why?” “I imagine it will vanish soon enough.” And, indeed, the white flagstones around the glow looked as though they were unravelling and disappearing into it. Rincewind hesitated. “Aren’t we going to help him?” he said. Hakardly stared at him, and then at the iridescent tableau. His mouth opened and shut once or twice. “I’m sorry”, he said. “Yes, but just a bit of help on his side, you’ve seen what that thing is like-” “I’m sorry.” “He helped you.” Rincewind turned on the other wizards, who were scurrying away. “All of you. He gave you what you wanted, didn’t he?” “We may never forgive him,” said Hakardly. Rincewind groaned. “What will be left when it’s all over?” he said. “What will be left?” Hakardly looked down. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. The octarine light had grown brighter and was beginning to turn black around the edge. It wasn’t the black that is merely the opposite of light, though; it was the grainy, shifting blackness that glows beyond the glare and has no business in any decent reality. And it buzzed. Rincewind did a little dance of uncertainty as his feet, legs, instincts and incredibly well-developed sense of self-preservation overloaded his nervous system to the point where, just as it was on the point of fusing, his conscience finally got its way. He leapt into the fire and reached the staff. The wizards fled. Several of them levitated down from the tower. They were a lot more perspicacious than those that used the stairs because, about thirty seconds later, the tower vanished. The snow continued to fall around a column of blackness, which buzzed. And the surviving wizards who dared to look back saw, tumbling slowly down the sky, a small object trailing flames behind it. It crashed into the cobbles, where it smouldered for a bit before the thickening snow put it out. Pretty soon it became just a small mound. A little while later a squat figure swung itself across the courtyard on its knuckles, scrabbled in the snow, and hauled the thing out. It was, or rather it had been, a hat. Life had not been kind to it. A large part of the wide brim had been burned off, the point was entirely gone, and the tarnished silver letters were almost unreadable. Some of them had been torn off in any case. Those that were left spelled out: WIZD. The Librarian turned around slowly. He was entirely alone, except for the towering column of burning blackness and the steadily falling flakes. The ravaged campus was empty. There were a few other pointy hats that had been trampled by terrified feet, and no other sign that people had been there. All the wizards were wazards. “War?” “Wazzat?” “Wasn’t there,” Pestilence groped for his glass, “something?” “Wazzat?” “We ought to be . . . there’s something we ought to be doing,” said Famine. “S’right. Got an appointment.” “The-” Pestilence gazed reflectively into his drink. “Thingy.” They stared gloomily at the bar counter. The innkeeper had long ago fled. There were several bottles still unopened. “Okra,” said Famine, eventually. “That was it.” “Nah.” “The Apos . . . the Apostrophe,” said War, vaguely. They shook their heads. There was a lengthy pause. “What does “apocrustic” mean?” said Pestilence, gazing intently into some inner world. “Astringent,” said War, “I think.” “It’s not that, then?” “Shouldn’t think so,” said Famine, glumly. There was another long, embarrassed silence. “Better have “nother drink,” said War, pulling himself together. “S”right.” About fifty miles away and several thousand feet up, Conina at last managed to control her stolen horse and brought it to a gentle trot on the empty air, displaying some of the most determined nonchalance the Disc had ever seen. “Snow?” she said. Clouds were roaring soundlessly from the direction of the Hub. They were fat and heavy and shouldn’t be moving so fast. Blizzards trailed beneath them, covering the landscape like a sheet. It didn’t look like the kind of snow that whispers down gently in the pit of the night and in the morning turns the landscape into a glittering wonderland of uncommon and ethereal beauty. It looked like the kind of snow that intends to make the world as bloody cold as possible. “Bit late in the year,” said Nijel. He glanced downwards, and then immediately closed his eyes. Creosote watched in delighted astonishment. “Is that how it happens?” he said. “I’ve only heard about it in stories. I thought it sprouted out of the ground somehow. Bit like mushrooms, I thought.” “Those clouds aren’t right,” said Conina. “Do you mind if we go down now?” said Nijel weakly. “Somehow it didn’t look so bad when we were moving.” Conina ignored this. “Try the lamp,” she commanded. “I want to know about this.” Nijel fumbled in his pack and produced the lamp. The voice of the genie sounded rather tinny and far off, and said: “If you would care to relax a little . . . trying to connect you.” There then followed some tinkly little music, the kind that perhaps a Swiss chalet would make if you could play it, before a trapdoor outlined itself in the air and the genie himself appeared. He looked around him, and then at them. “Oh, wow,” he said. “Something’s happening to the weather,” said Conina. “Why?” “You mean you don’t know?” said the genie. “We’re asking you, aren’t we?” “Well, I’m no judge, but it rather looks like the Apocralypse, yuh?” “What?” The genie shrugged. “The gods have vanished, okay?” he said. “And according to, you know, legend, that means-” “The Ice Giants,” said Nijel, in a horrified whisper. “Speak up,” said Creosote. “The Ice Giants,” Nijel repeated loudly, with a trace of irritation. “The gods keep them imprisoned, see. At the Hub. But at the end of the world they’ll break free at last, and ride out on their dreadful glaciers and regain their ancient domination, crushing out the flames of civilisation until the world lies naked and frozen under the terrible cold stars until Time itself freezes over. Or something like that, apparently.” “But it isn’t time for the Apocralypse,” said Conina desperately. “I mean, a dreadful ruler has to arise, there must be a terrible war, the four dreadful horsemen have to ride, and then the Dungeon Dimensions will break into the world-” She stopped, her face nearly as white as the snow. “Being buried under a thousand-foot ice sheet sounds awfully like it, anyway,” said the genie. He reached forward and snatched his lamp out of Nijel’s hands. “Mucho apologies,” he said, “but it’s time to liquidise my assets in this reality. See you around. Or something.” He vanished up to the waist, and then with a faint last cry of “Shame about lunch”, disappeared entirely. The three riders peered through the veils of driving snow towards the Hub. “It may be my imagination,” said Creosote, “but can either of you hear a sort of creaking and groaning?” “Shut up,” said Conina distractedly. Creosote leaned over and patted her hand. “Cheer up,” he said, “it’s not the end of the world.” He thought about this statement for a bit, and then added, “Sorry. Just a figure of speech.” “What are we going to do?” she wailed. Nijel drew himself up. “I think,” he said, “that we should go and explain.” They turned towards him with the kind of expression normally reserved for messiahs or extreme idiots. “Yes,” he said, with a shade more confidence. “We should explain.” “Explain to the Ice Giants?” said Conina. “Yes.” “Sorry,” said Conina, “have I got this right? You think we should go and find the terrifying Ice Giants and sort of tell them that there are a lot of warm people out here who would rather they didn’t sweep across the world crushing everyone under mountains of ice, and could they sort of reconsider things? Is that what you think we should do?” “Yes. That’s right. You’ve got it exactly.” Conina and Creosote exchanged glances. Nijel remained sitting proudly in the saddle, a faint smile on his face. “Is your geese giving you trouble?” said the Seriph. “Geas,” said Nijel calmly. “It’s not giving me trouble, it’s just that I must do something brave before I die.” “That’s it though,” said Creosote. “That’s the whole rather sad point. You’ll do something brave, and then you’ll die.” “What alternative have we got?” said Nijel. They considered this. “I don’t think I’m much good at explaining,” said Conina, in a small voice. “I am,” said Nijel, firmly. “I’m always having to explain.” The scattered particles of what had been Rincewind’s mind pulled themselves together and drifted up through the layers of dark unconsciousness like a three-day corpse rising to the surface. It probed its most recent memories, in much the same way that one might scratch a fresh scab. He could recall something about a staff, and a pain so intense that it appeared to insert a chisel between every cell in his body and hammer on it repeatedly. He remembered the staff fleeing, dragging him after it. And then there had been that dreadful bit where Death had appeared and reached past him, and the staff had twisted and become suddenly alive and Death had said, IPSLORE THE RED, I HAVE YOU NOW. And now there was this. By the feel of it Rincewind was lying on sand. It was very cold. He took the risk of seeing something horrible and opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was his left arm and, surprisingly, his hand. It was its normal grubby self. He had expected to see a stump. It seemed to be night-time. The beach, or whatever it was, stretched on towards a line of distant low mountains, under night sky frosted with a million white stars. A little closer to him there was a rough line in the silvery sand. He lifted his head slightly and saw the scatter of molten droplets. They were octiron, a metal so intrinsically magical that no forge on the Disc could even warm it up. “Oh,” he said. “We won, then.” He flopped down again. After a while his right hand came up automatically and patted the top of his head. Then it patted the sides of his head. Then it began to grope, with increasing urgency, in the sand around him. Eventually it must have communicated its concern to the rest of Rincewind, because he pulled himself upright and said, “Oh, bugger.” There seemed to be no hat anywhere. But he could see a small white shape lying very still in the sand a little way away and, further off - A column of daylight. It hummed and swayed in the air, a three-dimensional hole into somewhere else. Occasional flurries of snow blew out of it. He could see skewed images in the light, that might be buildings or landscapes warped by the weird curvature. But he couldn’t see them very clearly, because of the tall, brooding shadows that surrounded it. The human mind is an astonishing thing. It can operate on several levels at once. And, in fact, while Rincewind had been wasting his intellect in groaning and looking for his hat, an inner part of his brain had been observing, assessing, analysing and comparing. Now it crept up to his cerebellum, tapped it on the shoulder, thrust a message into its hand and ran for it. The message ran something like this: I hope I find me well. The last trial of magic has been too much for the tortured fabric of reality. It has opened a hole. I am in the Dungeon Dimensions. And the things in front of me are . . . the Things. It has been nice knowing me. The particular thing nearest Rincewind was at least twenty feet high. It looked like a dead horse that had been dug up after three months and then introduced to a range of new experiences, at least one of which had included an octopus. It hadn’t noticed Rincewind. It was too busy concentrating on the light. Rincewind crawled back to the still body of Coin and nudged it gently. “Are you alive?” he said. “If you’re not, I’d prefer it if you didn’t answer.” Coin rolled over and stared up at him with puzzled eyes. After a while he said, “I remember-” “Best not to,” said Rincewind. The boy’s hand groped vaguely in the sand beside him. “It isn’t here any more,” said Rincewind, quietly. The hand stopped its searching. Rincewind helped Coin to sit up. He looked blankly at the cold silver sand, then at the sky, then at the distant Things, and then at Rincewind. “I don’t know what to do,” he said. “No harm in that. I’ve never known what to do,” said Rincewind with hollow cheerfulness. “Been completely at a loss my whole life.” He hesitated. “I think it’s called being human, or something.” “But I’ve always known what to do!” Rincewind opened his mouth to say that he’d seen some of it, but changed his mind. Instead he said, “Chin up. Look on the bright side. It could be worse.” Coin took another look around. “In what respect, exactly?” he said, his voice a shade more normal. “Um.” “What is this place?” “It’s a sort of other dimension. The magic broke through and we went with it, I think.” “And those things?” They regarded the Things. “I think they’re Things. They’re trying to get back through the hole,” said Rincewind. “It isn’t easy. Energy levels, or something. I remember we had a lecture on them once. Er.” Coin nodded, and reached out a thin pale hand towards Rincewind’s forehead. “Do you mind-?” he began. Rincewind shuddered at the touch. “Mind what?” he said. - if I have a look in your head? “Aargh.” It’s rather a mess in here. No wonder you can’t find things. “Ergh.” You ought to have a clear out. “Oogh.” Ah.” Rincewind felt the presence retreat. Coin frowned. “We can’t let them get through,” he announced. “They have horrible powers. They’re trying to will the hole bigger, and they can do it. They’ve been waiting to break into our world for-” he frowned -”ians?” “Aeons,” said Rincewind. Coin opened his other hand, which had been tightly clenched, and showed Rincewind the small grey pearl. “Do you know what this is?” he said. “No. What is it?” “I—can’t remember. But we should put it back.” “Okay. Just use sourcery. Blow them to bits and let’s go home.” “No. They live on magic. It’d only make them worse. I can’t use magic.” “Are you sure?” said Rincewind. “I’m afraid your memory was very clear on the subject.” “Then what shall we do?” “I don’t know!” Rincewind thought about this and then, with an air of finality, started to take off his last sock. “No half-bricks,” he said, to no-one in particular. “Have to use sand.” “You’re going to attack them with a sockful of sand?” “No. I’m going to run away from them. The sockful of sand is for when they follow.” People were returning to Al Khali, where the ruined tower was a smoking heap of stones. A few brave souls turned their attention to the wreckage, on the basis that there might be survivors who could be rescued or looted or both. And, among the rubble, the following conversation might have been heard: “There’s something moving under here!” “Under that? By the two beards of Imtal, you are mishearing. It must weigh a ton.” “Over here, brothers!” And then sounds of much heaving would have been heard, and then: “It’s a box!” “It could be treasure, do you think?” “It’s growing legs, by the Seven Moons of Nasreem!” “Five moons-” “Where’d it go? Where’d it go?” “Never mind about that, it’s not important. Let’s get this straight, according to the legend it was five moons-” In Klatch they take their mythology seriously. It’s only real life they don’t believe. The three horsepersons sensed the change as they descended through the heavy snowclouds at the Hub end of the Sto Plain. There was a sharp scent in the air. “Can’t you smell it?” said Nijel, “I remember it when I was a boy, when you lay in bed on that first morning in winter, and you could sort of taste it in the air and-” The clouds parted below them and there, filling the high plains country from end to end, were the herds of the Ice Giants. They stretched for miles in every direction, and the thunder of their stampede filled the air. The bull glaciers were in the lead, bellowing their vast creaky calls and throwing up great sheets of earth as they ploughed relentlessly forward. Behind them pressed the great mass of cows and their calves, skimming over land already ground down to the bedrock by the leaders. They bore as much resemblance to the familiar glaciers the world thought it knew as a lion dozing in the shade bears to three hundred pounds of wickedly coordinated muscle bounding towards you with its mouth open. “. . . and . . . and . . . when you went to the window,” Nijel’s mouth, lacking any further input from his brain, ran down. Moving, jostling ice packed the plain, roaring forward under a great cloud of clammy steam. The ground shook as the leaders passed below, and it was obvious to the onlookers that whoever was going to stop this would need more than a couple of pounds of rock salt and a shovel. “Go on, then,” said Conina, “explain. I think you’d better shout.” Nijel looked distractedly at the herd. “I think I can see some figures,” said Creosote helpfully. “Look, on top of the leading . . . things.” Nijel peered through the snow. There were indeed beings moving around on the backs of the glaciers. They were human, or humanoid, or at least humanish. They didn’t look very big. That turned out to be because the glaciers themselves were very big, and Nijel wasn’t very good at perspective. As the horses flew lower over the leading glacier, a huge bull heavily crevassed and scarred by moraine, it became apparent that one reason why the Ice Giants were known as the Ice Giants was because they were, well, giants. The other was that they were made of ice. A figure the size of a large house was crouched at the crest of the bull, urging it to greater efforts by means of a spike on a long pole. It was craggy, in fact it was more nearly faceted, and glinted green and blue in the light; there was a thin band of silver in its snowy locks, and its eyes were tiny and black and deep set, like lumps of coal.[24] There was a splintering crash ahead as the leading glaciers smacked into a forest. Birds rattled up in panic. Snow and splinters rained down around Nijel as he galloped on the air alongside the giant. He cleared his throat. “Erm,” he said, “excuse me?” Ahead of the boiling surf of earth, snow and smashed timber a herd of caribou was running in blind panic, their rear hooves a few feet from the tumbling mess. Nijel tried again. “I say?” he shouted. The giant’s head turned towards him. “Vot you want?” it said. “Go avay, hot person.” “Sorry, but is this really necessary?” The giant looked at him in frozen astonishment. It turned around slowly and regarded the rest of the herd, which seemed to stretch all the way to the Hub. It looked at Nijel again. “Yarss,” it said, “I tink so. Otherwise, why ve do it?” “Only there’s a lot of people out there who would prefer you not to, you see”, said Nijel, desperately. A rock spire loomed briefly ahead of the glacier, rocked for a second and then vanished. He added, “Also children and small furry animals.” “They vill suffer in the cause of progress. Now is the time ve reclaim the world,” rumbled the giant. “Whole vorld of ice. According to inevitability of history and triumph of thermodynamics.” “Yes, but you don’t have to,” said Nijel. “Ve vant to,” said the giant. “The gods are gone, ve throw off shackles of outmoded superstition.” “Freezing the whole world solid doesn’t sound very progressive to me,” said Nijel. “Ve like it.” “Yes, yes,” said Nijel, in the maniacally glazed tones of one who is trying to see all sides of the issue and is certain that a solution will be found if people of goodwill will only sit around a table and discuss things rationally like sensible human beings. “But is this the right time? Is the world ready for the triumph of ice?” “It bloody veil better be,” said the giant, and swung his glacier prod at Nijel. It missed the horse but caught him full in the chest, lifting him clean out of the saddle and flicking him on to the glacier itself. He spun, spreadeagled, down its freezing flanks, was carried some way by the boil of debris, and rolled into the slush of ice and mud between the speeding walls. He staggered to his feet, and peered hopelessly into the freezing fog. Another glacier bore down directly on him. So did Conina. She leaned over as her horse swept down out of the fog, caught Nijel by his leather barbarian harness, and swung him up in front of her. As they rose again he wheezed, “Cold-hearted bastard. I really thought I was getting somewhere for a moment there. You just can’t talk to some people.” The herd breasted another hill, scraping off quite a lot of it, and the Sto Plain, studded with cities, lay helpless before it. Rincewind sidled towards the nearest Thing, holding Coin with one hand and swinging the loaded sock in the other. “No magic, right?” he said. “Yes,” said the boy. “Whatever happens, you musn’t use magic?” “That’s it. Not here. They haven’t got much power here, if you don’t use magic. Once they break through, though . . .” His voice trailed away. “Pretty awful,” Rincewind nodded. “Terrible,” said Coin. Rincewind sighed. He wished he still had his hat. He’d just have to do without it. “All right,” he said. “When I shout, you make a run for the light. Do you understand? No looking back or anything. No matter what happens.” “No matter what?” said Coin uncertainly. “No matter what.” Rincewind gave a brave little smile. “Especially no matter what you hear.” He was vaguely cheered to see Coin’s mouth become an “O” of terror. “And then,” he continued, “when you get back to the other side-” “What shall I do?” Rincewind hesitated. “I don’t know,” he said. “Anything you can. As much magic as you like. Anything. Just stop them. And . . . um . . .” “Yes?” Rincewind gazed up at the Thing, which was still staring into the light. “If it . . . you know . . . if anyone gets out of this, you know, and everything is all right after all, sort of thing, Id like you to sort of tell people I sort of stayed here. Perhaps they could sort of write it down somewhere. I mean, I wouldn’t want a statue or anything,” he added virtuously. After a while he added, “I think you ought to blow your nose.” Coin did so, on the hem of his robe, and then shook Rincewind’s hand solemnly. “If ever you . . .” he began, “that is, you’re the first . . . it’s been a great . . . you see, I never really . . .” His voice trailed off, and then he said, “I just wanted you to know that.” “There was something else I was trying to say,” said Rincewind, letting go of the hand. He looked blank for a moment, and then added, “Oh, yes. It’s vital to remember who you really are. It’s very important. It isn’t a good idea to rely on other people or things to do it for you, you see. They always get it wrong.” “I’ll try and remember,” said Coin. “It’s very important,” Rincewind repeated, almost to himself. “And now I think you’d better run.” Rincewind crept closer to the Thing. This particular one had chicken legs, but most of the rest of it was mercifully hidden in what looked like folded wings. It was, he thought, time for a few last words. What he said now was likely to be very important. Perhaps they would be words that would be remembered, and handed down, and maybe even carved deeply in slabs of granite. Words without too many curly letters in, therefore. “I really wish I wasn’t here,” he muttered. He hefted the sock, whirled it once or twice, and smashed the Thing on what he hoped was its kneecap. It gave a shrill buzz, spun wildly with its wings creaking open, lunged vaguely at Rincewind with its vulture head and got another sockful of sand on the upswing. Rincewind looked around desperately as the Thing staggered back, and saw Coin still standing where he had left him. To his horror he saw the boy begin to walk towards him, hands raised instinctively to fire the magic which, here, would doom both of them. “Run away, you idiot!” he screamed, as the Thing began to gather itself for a counter-attack. From out of nowhere he found the words, “You know what happens to boys who are bad!” Coin went pale, turned and ran towards the light. He moved as though through treacle, fighting against the entropy slope. The distorted image of the world turned inside out hovered a few feet away, then inches, wavering uncertainly . . . A tentacle curled around his leg, tumbling him forward. He flung his hands out as he fell, and one of them touched snow. It was immediately grabbed by something else that felt like a warm, soft leather glove, but under the gentle touch was a grip as tough as tempered steel and it tugged him forward, also dragging whatever it was that had caught him. Light and grainy dark flicked around him and suddenly he was sliding over cobbles slicked with ice. The Librarian let go his hold and stood over Coin with a length of heavy wooden beam in his hand. For a moment the ape reared against the darkness, the shoulder, elbow and wrist of his right arm unfolding in a poem of applied leverage, and in a movement as unstoppable as the dawn of intelligence brought it down very heavily. There was a squashy noise and an offended screech, and the burning pressure on Coin’s leg vanished. The dark column wavered. There were squeals and thumps coming from it, distorted by distance. Coin struggled to his feet and started to run back into the dark, but this time the Librarian’s arm blocked his path. “We can’t just leave him in there!” The ape shrugged. There was another crackle from the dark, and then a moment of almost complete silence. But only almost complete. Both of them thought they heard, a long way off but very distinct, the sound of running feet fading into the distance. They found an echo in the outside world. The ape glanced around, and then pushed Coin hurriedly to one side as something squat and battered and with hundreds of little legs barrelled across the stricken courtyard and, without so much as pausing in its stride, leapt into the disappearing darkness, which flickered for one last time and vanished. There was a sudden flurry of snow across the air where it had been. Coin wrenched free of the Librarian’s grip and ran into the circle, which was already turning white. His feet scuffed up a sprinkle of fine sand. “He didn’t come out!” he said. “Oook,” said the Librarian, in a philosophic manner. “I thought he’d come out. You know, just at the last minute.” “Oook?” Coin looked closely at the cobbles, as if by mere concentration he could change what he saw. “Is he dead?” “Gook,” observed the Librarian, contriving to imply that Rincewind was in a region where even things like time and space were a bit iffy, and that it was probably not very useful to speculate as to his exact state at this point in time, if indeed he was at any point in time at all, and that, all in all, he might even turn up tomorrow or, for that matter, yesterday, and finally that if there was any chance at all of surviving then Rincewind almost certainly would. “Oh,” said Coin. He watched the Librarian shuffle around and head back for the Tower of Art, and a desperate loneliness overcame him. “I say!” he yelled. “Gook?” “What should I do now?” “Gook?” Coin waved vaguely at the desolation. “You know, perhaps I could do something about all this?”, he said in a voice tilting on the edge of terror. “Do you think that would be a good idea? I mean, I could help people. I’m sure you’d like to be human again, wouldn’t you?” The Librarian’s everlasting smile hoisted itself a little further up his face, just enough to reveal his teeth. “Okay, perhaps not,” said Coin hurriedly, “but there’s other things I could do, isn’t there?” The Librarian gazed at him for some time, then dropped his eyes to the boy’s hand. Coin gave a guilty start, and opened his fingers. The ape caught the little silver ball neatly before it hit the ground and held it up to one eye. He sniffed it, shook it gently, and listened to it for a while. Then he wound up his arm and flung it away as hard as possible. “What-” Coin began, and landed full length in the snow when the Librarian pushed him over and dived on top of him. The ball curved over at the top of its arc and tumbled down, its perfect path interrupted suddenly by the ground. There was a sound like a harp string breaking, a brief babble of incomprehensible voices, a rush of hot wind, and the gods of the Disc were free. They were very angry. “There is nothing we can do, is there?” said Creosote. “No,” said Conina. “The ice is going to win, isn’t it?” said Creosote. “Yes,” said Conina. “No,” said Nijel. He was trembling with rage, or possibly with cold, and was nearly as pale as the glaciers that rumbled past below them. Conina sighed. “Well, just how do you think-” she began. “Take me down somewhere a few minutes ahead of them,” said Nijel. “I really don’t see how that would help.” “I wasn’t asking your opinion,” said Nijel, quietly. “Just do it. Put me down a little way ahead of them so I’ve got a while to get sorted out.” “Get what sorted out?” Nijel didn’t answer. “I said,” said Conina, “get what-” “Shut up!” “I don’t see why-” “Look,” said Nijel, with the patience that lies just short of axe-murdering. “The ice is going to cover the whole world, right? Everyone’s going to die, okay? Except for us for a little while, I suppose, until these horses want their, their, their oats or the lavatory or whatever, which isn’t much use to us except maybe Creosote will just about have time to write a sonnet or something about how cold it is all of a sudden, and the whole of human history is about to be scraped up and in these circumstances I would like very much to make it completely clear that I am not about to be argued with, is that absolutely understood?” He paused for breath, trembling like a harpstring. Conina hesitated. Her mouth opened and shut a few times, as though she was considering arguing, and then she thought better of it. They found a small clearing in a pine forest a mile or two ahead of the herd, although the sound of it was clearly audible and there was a line of steam above the trees and the ground was dancing like a drumtop. Nijel strolled to the middle of the clearing and made a few practice swings with his sword. The others watched him thoughtfully. “If you don’t mind,” whispered Creosote to Conina, “I’ll be off. It’s at times like this that sobriety loses its attractions and I’m sure the end of the world will look a lot better through the bottom of a glass, if it’s all the same to you. Do you believe in Paradise, o peachcheeked blossom?” “Not as such, no.” “Oh,” said Creosote. “Well, in that case we probably won’t be seeing each other again.” He sighed. “What a waste. All this was just because of a geas. Um. Of course, if by some unthinkable chance-” “Goodbye,” said Conina. Creosote nodded miserably, wheeled the horse and disappeared over the treetops. Snow was shaking down from the branches around the clearing. The thunder of the approaching glaciers filled the air. Nijel started when she tapped him on the shoulder, and dropped his sword. “What are you doing here?” he snapped, fumbling desperately in the snow. “Look, I’m not prying or anything,” said Conina meekly, “but what exactly do you have in mind?” She could see a rolling heap of bulldozed snow and soil bearing down on them through the forest, the mind-numbing sound of the leading glaciers now overlaid with the rhythmic snapping of tree trunks. And, advancing implacably above the treeline, so high that the eye mistook them at first for sky, the blue-green prows. “Nothing,” said Nijel, “nothing at all. We’ve just got to resist them, that’s all there is to it. That’s what we’re here for.” “But it won’t make any difference,” she said. “It will to me. If we’re going to die anyway, I’d rather die like this. Heroically.” “Is it heroic to die like this?” said Conina. “I think it is,” he said, “and when it comes to dying, there’s only one opinion that matters.” “Oh.” A couple of deer blundered into the clearing, ignored the humans in their blind panic, and rocketed away. “You don’t have to stay,” said Nijel. “I’ve got this geas, you see.” Conina looked at the backs of her hands. “I think I should,” she said, and added, “You know, I thought maybe, you know, if we could just get to know one another better-” “Mr and Mrs Harebut, was that what you had in mind?” he said bluntly. Her eyes widened. “Well-” she began. “Which one did you intend to be?” he said. The leading glacier smashed into the clearing just behind its bow wave, its top lost in a cloud of its own creation. At exactly the same time the trees opposite it bent low as a hot wind blew from the Rim. It was loaded with voices - petulant, bickering voices - and tore into the clouds like a hot iron into water. Conina and Nijel threw themselves down into snow which turned to warm slush under them. Something like a thunderstorm crashed overhead, filled with shouting and what they at first thought were screams although, thinking about them later, they seemed more like angry arguments. It went on for a long time, and then began to fade in the direction of the Hub. Warm water flooded down the front of Nijel’s vest. He lifted himself cautiously, and then nudged Conina. Together they scrambled through the slush and mud to the top of the slope, climbed through a logjam of smashed timber and boulders, and stared at the scene. The glaciers were retreating, under a cloud stuffed with lightning. Behind them the landscape was a network of lakes and pools. “Did we do that?” said Conina. “It would be nice to think so, wouldn’t it?” said Nijel. “Yes, but did-” she began. “Probably not. Who knows? Let’s just find a horse,” he said. “The Apogee,” said War, “or something. I’m pretty sure.” They had staggered out of the inn and were sitting on a bench in the afternoon sunshine. Even War had been persuaded to take off some of his armour. “Dunno,” said Famine, “Don’t think so.” Pestilence shut his crusted eyes and leaned back against the warm stones. “I think,” he said, “it was something about the end of the world.” War sat and thoughtfully scratched his chin. He hiccuped. “What, the whole world?” he said. “I reckon.” War gave this some further consideration. “I reckon we’re well out of it, then,” he said. People were returning to Ankh-Morpork, which was no longer a city of empty marble but was once again its old self, sprawling as randomly and colourfully as a pool of vomit outside the all-night takeaway of History. And the University had been rebuilt, or had rebuilt itself, or in some strange way had never been unbuilt; every strand of ivy, every rotting casement, was back in place. The sourcerer had offered to replace everything as good as new, all wood sparkling, all stone unstained, but the Librarian had been very firm on the subject. He wanted everything replaced as good as old. The wizards came creeping back with the dawn, in ones or twos, scuttling for their old rooms, trying to avoid one another’s gaze, trying to remember a recent past that was already becoming unreal and dream-like. Conina and Nijel arrived around breakfast time and, out of kindness, found a livery stable for War’s horse.[25] It was Conina who insisted that they look for Rincewind at the University, and who, therefore, first saw the books. They were flying out of the Tower of Art, spiralling around the University buildings and swooping through the door of the reincarnated Library. One or two of the more impudent grimoires were chasing sparrows, or hovering hawk-like over the quad. The Librarian was leaning against the doorway, watching his charges with a benevolent eye. He waggled his eyebrows at Conina, the nearest he ever got to a conventional greeting. “Is Rincewind here?” she said. “Oook.” “Sorry?” The ape didn’t answer but took them both by the hand and, walking between them like a sack between two poles, led them across the cobbles to the tower. There were a few candles alight inside, and they saw Coin seated on a stool. The Librarian bowed them into his presence like an ancient retainer in the oldest family of all, and withdrew. Coin nodded at them. “He knows when people don’t understand him,” he said. “Remarkable, isn’t he?” “Who are you?” said Conina. “Coin,” said Coin. “Are you a student here?” “I’m learning quite a lot, I think.” Nijel was wandering around the walls, giving them the occasional prod. There had to be some good reason why they didn’t fall down, but if there was it didn’t lie in the realms of civil engineering. “Are you looking for Rincewind?” said Coin. Conina frowned. “How did you guess that?” “He told me some people would come looking for him.” Conina relaxed. “Sorry,” she said, “we’ve had a bit of a trying time. I thought perhaps it was magic, or something. He’s all right, isn’t he? I mean, what’s been happening? Did he fight the sourcerer?” “Oh, yes. And he won. It was very . . . interesting. I saw it all. But then he had to go,” said Coin, as though reciting. “What, just like that?” said Nijel. “Yes.” “I don’t believe it,” said Conina. She was beginning to crouch, her knuckles whitening. “It is true,” said Coin. “Everything I say is true. It has to be.” “I want to-” Conina began, and Coin stood up, extended a hand and said, “Stop.” She froze. Nijel stiffened in mid-frown. “You will leave,” said Coin, in a pleasant, level voice, “and you will ask no more questions. You will be totally satisfied. You have all your answers. You will live happily ever after. You will forget hearing these words. You will go now.” They turned slowly and woodenly, like puppets, and trooped to the door. The Librarian opened it for them, ushered them through and shut it behind them. Then he stared at Coin, who sagged back on to the stool. “All right, all right,” said the boy, “but it was only a little magic. I had to. You said yourself people had to forget.” “Oook?” “I can’t help it! It’s too easy to change things!” He clutched his head. “I’ve only got to think of something! I can’t stay, everything I touch goes wrong, it’s like trying to sleep on a heap of eggs! This world is too thin! Please tell me what to do!” The Librarian spun around on his bottom a few times, a sure sign of deep thought. Exactly what he said is not recorded, but Coin smiled, nodded, shook the Librarian’s hand, and opened his own hands and drew them up and around him and stepped into another world. It had a lake in, and some distant mountains, and a few pheasants watching him suspiciously from under the trees. It was the magic all sourcerers learned, eventually. Sourcerers never become part of the world. They merely wear it for a while. He looked back, halfway across the turf, and waved at the Librarian. The ape gave him an encouraging nod. And then the bubble shrank inside itself, and the last sourcerer vanished from this world and into a world of his own. Although it has nothing much to do with the story, it is an interesting fact that, about five hundred miles away, a small flock, or rather in this case a herd, of birds were picking their way cautiously through the trees. They had heads like a flamingo, bodies like a turkey, and legs like a Sumo wrestler; they walked in a jerky, bobbing fashion, as though their heads were attached to their feet by elastic bands. They belonged to a species unique even among Disc fauna, in that their prime means of defence was to cause a predator to laugh so much that they could run away before it recovered. Rincewind would have been vaguely satisfied to know that they were geas. Custom was slow in the Mended Drum. The troll chained to the doorpost sat in the shade and reflectively picked someone out of his teeth. Creosote was singing softly to himself. He had discovered beer and wasn’t having to pay for it, because the coinage of compliments - rarely employed by the swains of Ankh - was having an astonishing effect on the landlord’s daughter. She was a large, good-natured girl, with a figure that was the colour and, not to put too fine a point on it, the same shape as unbaked bread. She was intrigued. No-one had ever referred to her breasts as jewelled melons before. “Absolutely,” said the Seriph, sliding peacefully off his bench, “no doubt about it.” Either the big yellow sort or the small green ones with huge warty veins, he told himself virtuously. “And what was that about my hair?” she said encouragingly, hauling him back and refilling his glass. “Oh.” The Seriph’s brow wrinkled. “Like a goat of flocks that grazes on the slopes of Mount Wossname, and no mistake. And as for your ears,” he added quickly, “no pink-hued shells that grace the sea-kissed sands of-” “Exactly how like a flock of goats?” she said. The Seriph hesitated. He’d always considered it one of his best lines. Now it was meeting Ankh-Morpork’s famous literal-mindedness head-on for the first time. Strangely enough, he felt rather impressed. “I mean, in size, shape or smell?” she went on. “I think,” said the Seriph, “that perhaps the phrase I had in mind was exactly not like a flog of gits.” “Ah?” The girl pulled the flagon towards her. “And I think perhaps I would like another drink,” he said indistinctly, “and then - and then-” He looked sideways at the girl, and took the plunge. “Are you much of a raconteur?” “What?” He licked his suddenly dry lips. “I mean, do you know many stories?” he croaked. “Oh, yes. Lots.” “Lots?” whispered Creosote. Most of his concubines only knew the same old one or two. “Hundreds. Why, do you want to hear one?” “What, now?” “If you like. It’s not very busy in here.” Perhaps I did die, Creosote thought. Perhaps this is Paradise. He took her hands. “You know,” he said, “it’s ages since I’ve had a good narrative. But I wouldn’t want you to do anything you don’t want to.” She patted his arm. What a nice old gentleman, she thought. Compared to some we get in here. “There’s one my granny used to tell me. I know it backwards,” she said. Creosote sipped his beer and watched the wall in a warm glow. Hundreds, he thought. And she knows some of them backwards. She cleared her throat, and said, in a sing-song voice that made Creosote’s pulse fuse. “There was a man and he had eight sons-” The Patrician sat by his window, writing. His mind was full of fluff as far as the last week or two was concerned, and he didn’t like that much. A servant had lit a lamp to dispel the twilight, and a few early evening moths were orbiting it. The Patrician watched them carefully. For some reason he felt very uneasy in the presence of glass but that, as he stared fixedly at the insects, wasn’t what bothered him most. What bothered him was that he was fighting a terrible urge to catch them with his tongue. And Wuffles lay on his back at his master’s feet, and barked in his dreams. Lights were going on all over the city, but the last few strands of sunset illuminated the gargoyles as they helped one another up the long climb to the roof. The Librarian watched them from the open door, while giving himself a philosophic scratch. Then he turned and shut out the night. It was warm in the Library. It was always warm in the Library, because the scatter of magic that produced the glow also gently cooked the air. The Librarian looked at his charges approvingly, made his last rounds of the slumbering shelves, and then dragged his blanket underneath his desk, ate a goodnight banana, and fell asleep. Silence gradually reclaimed the Library. Silence drifted around the remains of a hat, heavily battered and frayed and charred around the edges, that had been placed with some ceremony in a niche in the wall. No matter how far a wizard goes, he will always come back for his hat. Silence filled the University in the same way that air fills a hole. Night spread across the Disk like plum jam, or possibly blackberry preserve. But there would be a morning. There would always be another morning. THE END [1] Like rhinestones, but different river. When it comes to glittering objects, wizards have all the taste and self-control of a deranged magpie. [2] A magical accident in the Library, which as has already been indicated is not a place for your average rubber-stamp-and-Deweydecimal employment, had some time ago turned the Librarian into an orang-utan. He had since resisted all efforts to turn him back. He liked the handy long arms, the prehensile toes and the right to scratch himself in public, but most of all he liked the way all the big questions of existence had suddenly resolved themselves into a vague interest in where his next banana was coming from. It wasn’t that he was unaware of the despair and nobility of the human condition. It was just that as far as he was concerned you could stuff it. [3] The furrow left by the fleeing gargoyles caused the University’s head gardener to bite through his rake and led to the famous quotation: “How do you get a lawn like this? You mows it and you rolls it for five hundred years and then a bunch of bastards walks across it.” [4] In most old libraries the books are chained to the shelves to prevent them being damaged by people. In the Library of Unseen University, of course, it’s more or less the other way about. [5] At least, by anyone who wanted to wake up the same shape, or even the same species, as they went to bed. [6] The vermine is a small black and white relative of the lemming, found in the cold Hublandish regions. Its skin is rare and highly valued, especially by the vermine itself; the selfish little bastard will do anything rather than let go of it. [7] This was because Gritoller had swallowed the jewels for safe keeping. [8] The Ankh-Morpork Merchants” Guild publication Wellcome to Ankh-Morporke, Citie of One Thousand Surprises describes the area of Old Morpork known as The Shades as “a folklorique network of old alleys and picturesque streets, wherre exitment and romans lurkes arounde everry corner and much may be heard the traditinal street cries of old time also the laughing visages of the denuizens as they goe about their business private.” In other words, you have been warned. [9] The study of genetics on the Disc had failed at an early stage, when wizards tried the experimental crossing of such well known subjects as fruit flies and sweet peas. Unfortunately they didn’t quite grasp the fundamentals, and the resultant offspring - a sort of green bean thing that buzzed -led a short sad life before being eaten by a passing spider. [10] The overwhelming majority of citizens being defined in this case as everyone not currently hanging upside down over a scorpion pit. [11] Wizards” tastes in the matter of puns are about the same as their taste in glittery objects. [12] Of course, Ankh-Morpork’s citizens had always claimed that the river water was incredibly pure in any case. Any water that had passed through so many kidneys, they reasoned, had to be very pure indeed. [13] No-one ever had the courage to ask him what he did there. [14] Or up, or obliquely. The layout of the Library of Unseen University was a topographical nightmare, the sheer presence of so much stored magic twisting dimensions and gravity into the kind of spaghetti that would make M. C. Escher go for a good lie down, or possibly sideways. [15] The Hashishim, who derived their name from the vast quantities of hashish they consumed, were unique among vicious killers in being both deadly and, at the same time, inclined to giggle, groove to interesting patterns of light and shade on their terrible knife blades and, in extreme cases, fall over. [16] Although, possibly, quicker. And only licensed to carry fourteen people. [17] In a truly magical universe everything has its opposite. For example, there’s anti-light. That’s not the same as darkness, because darkness is merely the absence of light. Anti-light is what you get if you pass through darkness and out the other side. On the same basis, a state of knurdness isn’t like sobriety. By comparison, sobriety is like having a bath in cotton wool. Knurdness strips away all illlusion, all the comforting pink fog in which people normally spend their lives, and lets them see and think clearly for the first time ever. Then, after they’ve screamed a bit, they make sure they never get knurd again. [18] For a description of the chimera we shall turn to Broomfog’s famous bestiary Anima Unnaturale: “It have thee legges of an mermade, the hair of an tortoise, the teeth of an fowel, and the winges of an snake. Of course, I have only my worde for it, the beast having the breathe of an furnace and the temperament of an rubber balloon in a hurricane.” [19] Of course, wizards often killed one another by ordinary, nonmagical means, but this was perfectly allowable and death by assassination was considered natural causes for a wizard. [20] All right. But you’ve got the general idea. [21] It was a Fullomyth, an invaluable aid for all whose business is with the arcane and hermetic. It contained lists of things that didn’t exist and, in a very significant way, weren’t important. Some of its pages could only be read after midnight, or by strange and improbable illuminations. There were descriptions of underground constellations and wines as yet unfermented. For the really up-to-the-epoch occultist, who could afford the version bound in spider skin, there was even an insert showing the London Underground with the three stations they never dare show on the public maps. [22] He always argued that he was. [23] Very popular among gods, demi-gods, daemons and other supernatural creatures, who feel at home with questions like “What is It all About?” and “Where will It all End?” [24] Although this was the only way in which they resembled the idols built, in response to ancient and unacknowledged memories, by children in snowy weather; it was extremely unlikely that this Ice Giant would be a small mound of grubby ice with a carrot in it by the morning. [25] Which wisely decided not to fly again, was never claimed, and lived out the rest of its days as the carriage horse of an elderly lady. What War did about this is unrecorded; it is pretty certain that he got another one. 
The Color of Magic - Terry Pratchett	----	The Colour of Magic The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett   [Online version, v1.2] v1.3 (17-mar-01) Layout and spelling corrections, full proofread by 4i Publications.     Prologue   In a distant and second-hand set of dimensions, in an astral plane that was never meant to fly, the curling star-mists waver and part... See... Great A'Tuin the turtle comes, swimming slowly through the interstellar gulf, hydrogen frost on his ponderous limbs, his huge and ancient shell pocked with meteor craters. Through sea-sized eyes that are crusted with rheum and asteroid dust He stares fixedly at the Destination. In a brain bigger than a city, with geological slowness, He thinks only of the Weight. Most of the weight is of course accounted for by Berilia, Tubul, Great T'Phon and Jerakeen, the four giant elephants upon whose broad and startanned shoulders the disc of the World rests, garlanded by the long waterfall at its vast circumference and domed by the baby-blue vault of Heaven. Astropsychology has been, as yet, unable to establish what they think about. The Great Turtle was a mere hypothesis until the day the small and secretive kingdom of Krull, whose rim-most mountains project out over the Rimfall, built a gantry and pulley arrangement at the tip of the most precipitous crag and lowered several observers over the Edge in a quartzwindowed brass vessel to peer through the mist veils. The early astrozoologists, hauled back from their long dangle by enormous teams of slaves, were able to bring back much information about the shape and nature of A'Tuin and the elephants but this did not resolve fundamental questions about the nature and purpose of the universe.[1] For example, what was Atuin's actual sex? This vital question, said the Astrozoologists with mounting authority, would not be answered until a larger and more powerful gantry was constructed for a deep-space vessel. In the meantime they could only speculate about the revealed cosmos. There was, for example, the theory that A'Tuin had come from nowhere and would continue at a uniform crawl, or steady gait, into nowhere, for all time. This theory was popular among academics. An alternative, favoured by those of a religious persuasion, was that A'Tuin was crawling from the Birthplace to the Time of Mating, as were all the stars in the sky which were, obviously, also carried by giant turtles. When they arrived they would briefly and passionately mate, for the first and only time, and from that fiery union new turtles would be born to carry a new pattern of worlds. This was known as the Big Bang hypothesis. Thus it was that a young cosmochelonian of the Steady Gait faction, testing a new telescope with which he hoped to make measurements of the precise albedo of Great A'Tuin's right eye, was on this eventful evening the first outsider to see the smoke rise hubward from the burning of the oldest city in the world. Later that night he became so engrossed in his studies he completely forgot about it. Nevertheless, he was the first. There were others...   The Colour of Magic   Fire roared through the bifurcated city of Ankh-Morpork. Where it licked the Wizards' Quarter it burned blue and green and was even laced with strange sparks of the eighth colour, octarine; where its outriders found their way into the vats and oil stores all along Merchants Street it progressed in a series of blazing fountains and explosions; in the Streets of the perfume blenders it burned with a sweetness; where it touched bundles of rare and dry herbs in the storerooms of the drugmasters it made men go mad and talk to God. By now the whole of downtown Ankh-Morpork was alight, and the richer and worthier citizens of Ankh on the far bank were bravely responding to the situation by feverishly demolishing the bridges. But already the ships in the Morpork docks - laden with grain, cotton and timber, and coated with tar - were blazing merrily and, their moorings burnt to ashes, were breasting the river Ankh on the ebb tide, igniting riverside palaces and bowers as they drifted like drowning fireflies towards the sea. In any case, sparks were riding the breeze and touching down far across the river in hidden gardens and remote brickyards. The smoke from the merry burning rose miles high, in a wind-sculpted black column that could be seen across the whole of the Discworld. It was certainly impressive from the cool, dark hilltop a few leagues away, where two figures were watching with considerable interest. The taller of the pair was chewing on a chicken leg and leaning on a sword that was only marginally shorter than the average man. If it wasn't for the air of wary intelligence about him it might have been supposed that he was a barbarian from the hubland wastes. His partner was much shorter and wrapped from head to toe in a brown cloak. Later, when he has occasion to move, it will be seen that he moves lightly, cat-like. The two had barely exchanged a word in the last twenty minutes except for a short and inconclusive argument as to whether a particularly powerful explosion had been the oil bond store or the workshop of Kerible the Enchanter. Money hinged on the fact. Now the big man finished gnawing at the bone and tossed it into the grass, smiling ruefully. "There go all those little alleyways," he said. "I liked them." "All the treasure houses," said the small man. He added thoughtfully, "Do gems burn, I wonder? 'Tis said they're kin to coal." "All the gold, melting and running down the gutters," said the big one, ignoring him. "And all the wine, boiling in the barrels." "There were rats," said his brown companion. "Rats, I'll grant you." "It was no place to be in high summer." "That, too. One can't help feeling, though, a well, a momentary-" He trailed off, then brightened. "We owed old Fredor at the Crimson Leech eight silver pieces," he added. The little man nodded. They were silent for a while as a whole new series of explosions carved a red line across a hitherto dark section of the greatest city in the world. Then the big man stirred "Weasel?" "Yes?" "I wonder who started it?" The small swordsman known as the Weasel said nothing. He was watching the road in the ruddy light. Few had come that way since the widershins gate had been one of the first to collapse in a shower of white-hot embers. But two were coming up it now. The Weasel's eyes always at their sharpest in gloom and halflight, made out the shapes of two mounted men and some sort of low beast behind them. Doubtless a rich merchant escaping with as much treasure as he could lay frantic hands on. The Weasel said as much to his companion, who sighed. "The status of footpad ill suits us," said the barbarian, "but as you say, times are hard and there are no soft beds tonight." He shifted his grip on his sword and, as the leading rider drew near, stepped out onto the road with a hand held up and his face set in a grin nicely calculated to reassure yet threaten. "Your pardon, sir-" he began. The rider reined in his horse and drew back his hood. The big man looked into a face blotched with superficial burns and punctuated by tufts of singed beard. Even the eyebrows had gone. "Bugger off," said the face. "You're Bravd the Hublander, aren't you?" Bravd became aware that he had fumbled the initiative. "Just go away, will you?" said the rider. "I just haven't got time for you, do you understand?" He looked around and added: "That goes for your shadow-loving fleabag partner too, wherever he's hiding." The Weasel stepped up to the horse and peered at the dishevelled figure. "Why, it's Rincewind the wizard, isn't it?" he said in tones of delight, meanwhile filing the wizard's description of him in his memory for leisurely vengeance. "I thought I recognized the voice." Bravd spat and sheathed his sword. It was seldom worth tangling with wizards, they so rarely had any treasure worth speaking of. "He talks pretty big for a gutter wizard," he muttered. "You don't understand at all," said the wizard wearily. "I’m so scared of you my spine has turned to jelly, it's just that I’m suffering from an overdose of terror right now. I mean, when I’ve got over that then I'll have time to be decently frightened of you." The Weasel pointed towards the burning city. "You’ve been through that?" he asked. The wizard rubbed a red, raw hand across his eyes. "I was there when it started. See him? Back there?" He pointed back down the road to where his travelling companion was still approaching, having adopted a method of riding that involved falling out of the saddle every few seconds. "Well?" said Weasel. "He started it," said Rincewind simply. Bravd and Weasel looked at the figure, now hopping across the road with one foot in a stirrup. "Fire-raiser, is he?" said Bravd at last. "No," said Rincewind. "Not precisely. Let's just say that if complete and utter chaos was lightning, then he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting "All gods are bastards". Got any food?" "There's some chicken," said Weasel. "in exchange for a story." "What's his name?" said Bravd, who tended to lag behind in conversations. "Twoflower." "Twoflower?" said Bravd. "What a funny name." "You," said Rincewind, dismounting, "do not know the half of it. Chicken, you say?" "Devilled," said Weasel. The wizard groaned. "That reminds me," added the Weasel, snapping his fingers, "there was a really big explosion about, oh, half an hour ago." "That was the oil bond store going up," said Rincewind, wincing at the memory of the burning rain. Weasel turned and grinned expectantly at his companion, who grunted and handed over a coin from his pouch. Then there was a scream from the roadway, cut off abruptly. Rincewind did not look up from his chicken. "One of the things he can't do, he can't ride a horse," he said. Then he stiffened as if sandbagged by a sudden recollection, gave a small yelp of terror and dashed into the gloom. When he returned, the being called Twoflower was hanging limply over his shoulder. It was small and skinny, and dressed very oddly in a pair of knee length britches and a shirt in such a violent and vivid conflict of colours that Weasel's fastidious eye was offended even in the half-light. "No bones broken, by the feel of things," said Rincewind. He was breathing heavily. Bravd winked at the Weasel and went to investigate the shape that they assumed was a pack animal. "You'd be wise to forget it," said the wizard, without looking up from his examination of the unconscious Twoflower. "Believe me. A power protects it." "A spell?" said Weasel, squatting down. "No-oo. But magic of a kind, I think. Not the usual sort. I mean, it can turn gold into copper while at the same time it is still gold, it makes men rich by destroying their possessions, it allows the weak to walk fearlessly among thieves, it passes through the strongest doors to leach the most protected treasuries. Even now it has me enslaved - so that I must follow this madman willynilly and protect him from harm. It's stronger than you, Bravd. It is, I think, more cunning even than you, Weasel." "What is it called then, this mighty magic?" Rincewind shrugged. "in our tongue it is reflected-sound-as-of-underground-spirits. Is there any wine?" "You must know that I am not without artifice where magic is concerned," said Weasel. "only last year did I– assisted by my friend there – part the notoriously powerful Archmage of Ymitury from his staff, his belt of moon jewels and his life, in that approximate order. I do not fear this reflected-sound-of-underground-spirits of which you speak. However," he added, "you engage my interest. Perhaps you would care to tell me more?" Bravd looked at the shape on the road. It was closer now, and clearer in the pre-dawn light. It looked for all the world like a– "A box on legs?" he said. "I'll tell you about it," said Rincewind. "if there's any wine, that is." Down in the valley there was a roar and a hiss. Someone more thoughtful than the rest had ordered to be shut the big river gates that were at the point where the Ankh flowed out of the twin city. Denied its usual egress, the river had burst its banks and was pouring down the fire-ravaged streets. Soon the continent of flame became a series of islands, each one growing smaller as the dark tide rose. And up from the city of fumes and smoke rose a broiling cloud of steam, covering the stars. Weasel thought that it looked like some dark fungus or mushroom. The twin city of proud Ankh and pestilent Morpork, of which all the other cities of time and space are, as it were, mere reflections, has stood many assaults in its long and crowded history and has always risen to flourish again. So the fire and its subsequent flood, which destroyed everything left that was not flammable and added a particularly noisome flux to the survivors' problems, did not mark its end. Rather it was a fiery punctuation mark, a coal-like comma, or salamander semicolon, in a continuing story. Several days before these events a ship came up the Ankh on the dawn tide and fetched up, among many others, in the maze of wharves and docks on the Morpork shore. It carried a cargo of pink pearls, milk-nuts, pumice, some official letters for the Patrician of Ankh, and a man. It was the man who engaged the attention of Blind Hugh, one of the beggars on early duty at Pearl Dock. He nudged Cripple Wa in the ribs, and pointed wordlessly. Now the stranger was standing on the quayside watching several straining seamen carry a large brass-bound chest down the gangplank. Another man, obviously the captain, was standing beside him. There was about the seaman - every nerve in Blind Hugh's body, which tended to vibrate in the presence of even a small amount of impure gold at fifty paces, screamed into his brain - the air of one anticipating imminent enrichment. Sure enough, when the chest had been deposited on the cobbles, the stranger reached into a pouch and there was the flash of a coin. Several coins. Gold. Blind Hugh, his body twanging like a hazel rod in the presence of water, whistled to himself. Then he nudged Wa again, and sent him scurrying off down a nearby alley into the heart of the city. When the captain walked back onto his ship, leaving the newcomer looking faintly bewildered on the quayside, Blind Hugh snatched up his begging cup and made his way across the street with an ingratiating leer. At the sight of him the stranger started to fumble urgently with his money pouch. "Good day to thee, sire," Blind Hugh began, and found himself looking up into a face with four eyes in it. He turned to run… "!" said the stranger, and grabbed his arm. Hugh was aware that the sailors lining the rail of the ship were laughing at him. At the same time his specialised senses detected an overpowering impression of money. He froze. The stranger let go and quickly thumbed through a small black book he had taken from his belt. Then he said "Hallo." "What?" said Hugh. The man looked blank. "Hallo?" he repeated, rather louder than necessary and so carefully that Hugh could hear the vowels tinkling into place. "Hallo yourself," Hugh riposted. The stranger smiled widely, fumbled yet again in the pouch. This time his hand came out holding a large gold coin. It was in fact slightly larger than an 8,000-dollar Ankhian crown and the design on it was unfamiliar, but it spoke inside Hugh's mind in a language he understood perfectly. My current owner, it said, is in need of succour and assistance; why not give it to him, so you and me can go off somewhere and enjoy ourselves? Subtle changes in the beggar's posture made the stranger feel more at ease. He consulted the small book again. "I wish to be directed to an hotel, tavern, lodging house, inn, hospice, caravanserai," he said. "What, all of them?" said Hugh, taken aback. "?" said the stranger. Hugh was aware that a small crowd of fishwives, shellfish diggers and freelance gawpers were watching them with interest. "Look," he said, "I know a good tavern, is that enough?" He shuddered to think of the gold coin escaping from his life. He'd keep that one, even if Ymor confiscated all the rest. And the big chest that comprised most of the newcomer's luggage looked to be full of gold, Hugh decided. The four-eyed man looked at his book. "I would like to be directed to an hotel, place of repose, tavern, a–" "Yes, all right. Come on then," said Hugh hurriedly. He picked up one of the bundles and walked away quickly. The stranger, after a moment's hesitation, strolled after him. A train of thought shunted its way through Hugh's mind. Getting the newcomer to the Broken Drum so easily was a stroke of luck, no doubt of it, and Ymor would probably reward him. But for all his new acquaintance's mildness there was something about him that made Hugh uneasy, and for the life of him he couldn't figure out what it was. Not the two extra eyes, odd though they were. There was something else. He glanced back. The little man was ambling along in the middle of the street, looking around him with an expression of keen interest. Something else Hugh saw nearly made him gibber. The massive wooden chest, which he had last seen resting solidly on the quayside, was following on its master's heels with a gentle rocking gait. Slowly, in case a sudden movement on his part might break his fragile control over his own legs, Hugh bent slightly so that he could see under the chest. There were lots and lots of little legs. Very deliberately, Hugh turned around and walked very carefully towards the Broken Drum.     "Odd," said Ymor. "He had this big wooden chest," added Cripple Wa. "He'd have to be a merchant or a spy," said Ymor. He pulled a scrap of meat from the cutlet in his hand and tossed it into the air. It hadn't reached the zenith of its arc, before a black shape detached itself from the shadows in the corner of the room and swooped down, taking the morsel in mid-air. "A merchant or a spy," repeated Ymor. "I'd prefer a spy. A spy pays for himself twice, because there's always the reward when we turn him in. What do you think, Withel?" Opposite Ymor the second greatest thief in Ankh-Morpork half-closed his one eye and shrugged. "I’ve checked on the ship," he said. "it's a freelance trader. Does the occasional run to the Brown islands. People there are just savages. They don't understand about spies and I expect they eat merchants." "He looked a bit like a merchant," volunteered Wa. "Except he wasn't fat." There was a flutter of wings at the window. Ymor shifted his bulk out of the chair and crossed the room, coming back with a large raven. After he'd unfastened the message capsule from its leg it flew to join its fellows lurking among the rafters. Withel regarded it without love. Ymor's ravens were notoriously loyal to their master, to the extent that Withel's one attempt to promote himself to the rank of greatest thief in Ankh-Morpork had cost their master's right hand man his left eye. But not his life, however. Ymor never grudged a man his ambitions. "B12," said Ymor, tossing the little phial aside and unrolling the tiny scroll within. "Gorrin the Cat," said Withel automatically. "On station up in the gong tower at the Temple of Small Gods." "He says Hugh has taken our stranger to the Broken Drum. Well, that's good enough. Broadman is a - friend of ours, isn't he?" "Aye," said Withel, "if he knows what's good for trade." "Among his customers has been your man Gorrin," said Ymor pleasantly, "for he writes here about a box on legs, if I read this scrawl correctly." He looked at Withel over the top of the paper. Withel looked away. "He will be disciplined," he said flatly. Wa looked at the man leaning back in his chair, his black-clad frame resting as nonchalantly as a Rimland puma on a jungle branch, and decided that Gorrin atop Small Gods temple would soon be joining those little deities in the multifold dimensions of Beyond. And he owed Wa three copper pieces. Ymor crumpled the note and tossed it into a corner. "I think we'll wander along to the Drum later on, Withel. Perhaps, too, we may try this beer that your men find so tempting." Withel said nothing. Being Ymor's right-hand man was like being gently flogged to death with scented bootlaces.     The twin city of Ankh-Morpork, foremost of all the cities bounding the Circle Sea, was as a matter of course the home of a large number of gangs, thieves' guilds, syndicates and similar organisations. This was one of the reasons for its wealth. Most of the humbler folk on the widdershin side of the river, in Morpork's mazy alleys, supplemented their meagre incomes by filling some small role for one or other of the competing gangs. So it was that by the time Hugh and Twoflower entered the courtyard of the Broken Drum the leaders of a number of them were aware that someone had arrived in the city who appeared to have much treasure. Some reports from the more observant spies included details about a book that told the stranger what to say, and a box that walked by itself. These facts were immediately discounted. No magician capable of such enchantments ever came within a mile of Morpork docks. It still being that hour when most of the city was just rising or about to go to bed there were few people in the Drum to watch Twoflower descend the stairs. When the Luggage appeared behind him and started to lurch confidently down the steps the customers at the rough wooden tables, as one man, looked suspiciously at their drinks. Broadman was browbeating the small troll who swept the bar when the trio walked past him. "What in hell's that?" he said. "Just don't talk about it," hissed Hugh. Twoflower was already thumbing through his book. "What's he doing?" said Broadman, arms akimbo. "It tells him what to say. I know it sounds ridiculous," muttered Hugh. "How can a book tell a man what to say?" "I wish for an accommodation, a room, lodgings, the lodging house, full board, are your rooms clean, a room with a view, what is your rate for one night?" said Twoflower in one breath. Broadman looked at Hugh. The beggar shrugged. "He's got plenty money," he said. "Tell him it's three copper pieces, then. And that thing will have to go in the stable." "?" said the stranger. Broadman held up three thick red fingers and the man's face was suddenly a sunny display of comprehension. He reached into his pouch and laid three large gold pieces on Broadman's palm. Broadman stared at them. They represented about four times the worth of the Broken Drum, Staff included. He looked at Hugh. There was no help there. He looked at the stranger. He swallowed. "Yes," he said, in an unnaturally high voice. "And then there's meals, o’course. Uh. You understand, yes? Food. You eat. No?" He made the appropriate motions. "Fut?" said the little man. "Yes," said Broadman, beginning to sweat. "Have a look in your little book, I should." The man opened the book and ran a finger down one page. Broadman, who could read after a fashion, peered over the top of the volume. What he saw made no sense. "Fooood," said the stranger. "Yes. Cutlet, hash chop, stew, ragout, fricassee, mince, collops, souffle, dumpling, blancmange, sorbet, gruel, sausage, not to have a sausage, beans, without a hear, kickshaws, jelly, jam. Giblets." He beamed at Broadman. "All that?" said the innkeeper weakly. "It's just the way he talks," said Hugh, "Don't ask me why. He just does." All eyes in the room were watching the stranger–except for a pair belonging to Rincewind the wizard, who was sitting in the darkest corner nursing a mug of very small beer. He was watching the Luggage. Watch Rincewind. Look at him. Scrawny, like most wizards, and clad in a dark red robe on which a few mystic sigils were embroidered in tarnished sequins. Some might have taken him for a mere apprentice enchanter who had run away from his master out of defiance, boredom, fear and a lingering taste for heterosexuality. Yet around his neck was a chain bearing the bronze octagon that marked him as an alumnus of Unseen University, the high school of magic whose time-and-space transcendent campus is never precisely Here or There. Graduates were usually destined for mageship at least, but Rincewind - after an unfortunate event - had left him knowing only one spell and made a living of sorts around the town by capitalising on an innate gift for languages. He avoided work as a rule, but had a quickness of wit that put his acquaintances in mind of a bright rodent. And he knew sapient pearwood when he saw it. He was seeing it now, and didn't quite believe it. An archmage, by dint of great effort and much expenditure of time, might eventually obtain a small staff made from the timber of the sapient peartree. It grew only on the sites of ancient magic–there were probably no more than two such staffs in all the cities of the circle sea. A large chest of it... Rincewind tried to work it out, and decided that even if the box were crammed with star opals and sticks of auricholatum the contents would not be worth one-tenth the price of the container. A vein started to throb in his forehead. He stood up and made his way to the trio. "May I be of assistance?" he ventured. "Shove off, Rincewind," snarled Broadman. "I only thought it might be useful to address this gentleman in his own tongue," said the wizard gently. "He's doing all right on his own," said the innkeeper, but took a few steps backward. Rincewind smiled politely at the stranger and tried a few words of Chimeran. He prided himself on his fluency in the tongue, but the stranger only looked bemused. "It won't work," said Hugh knowledgeably, "it's the book, you see. It tells him what to say. Magic." Rincewind switched to High Borogravian, to Vanglemesht, Sumtri and even Black Oroogu, the language with no nouns and only one adjective, which is obscene. Each was met with polite incomprehension. In desperation he tried heathen Trob, and the little man's face split into a delighted grin. "At last!" he said. "My good sir! This is remarkable!" (Although in Trob the last word in fact became "a thing which may happen but once in the usable lifetime of a canoe hollowed diligently by axe and fire from the tallest diamondwood tree that grows in the noted diamondwood forests on the lower Slopes of Mount Awayawa, home of the firegods or so it is said."). "What was all that?" said Broadman suspiciously. "What did the innkeeper say?" said the little man. Rincewind swallowed. "Broadman," he said. "Two mugs of your best ale, please." "You can understand him?" "Oh, sure." "Tell him tell him he's very welcome. Tell him breakfast is - uh - one gold piece." For a moment Broadman's face looked as though some vast internal struggle was going on, and then he added with a burst of generosity. "I'll throw in yours, too." "Stranger," said Rincewind levelly. "if you stay here you will be knifed or poisoned by nightfall. But don't stop smiling, or so will I." "Oh, come now," said the stranger, looking around. "This looks like a delightful place. A genuine Morporkean tavern. I’ve heard so much about them, you know. All these quaint old beams. And so reasonable, too." Rincewind glanced around quickly, in case some leakage of enchantment from the Magician's Quarter across the river had momentarily transported them to some other place. No - this was still the interior of the Drum, its walls stained with smoke, its floor a compost of old rushes and nameless beetles, its sour beer not so much purchased as merely hired for a while. He tried to fit the image around the word "quaint", or rather the nearest Trob equivalent, which was "that pleasant oddity of design found in the little coral houses of the sponge-eating pigmies on the Orohai peninsular". His mind reeled back from the effort. The visitor went on, "My name is Twoflower," and extended his hand. Instinctively, the other three looked down to see if there was a coin in it. "Pleased to meet you," said Rincewind. "I’m Rincewind. Look, I wasn't joking. This is a tough place." "Good! Exactly what I wanted!" "Eh?" "What is this stuff in the mugs?" "This? Beer. Thanks, Broadman. Yes. Beer. You know. Beer." "Ah, the so-typical drink. A small gold piece will be sufficient payment, do you think? I do not want to cause offense." It was already half out of his purse. "Yarrt," croaked Rincewind. "I mean, no, it won't cause Offense." "Good. You say this is a tough place. Frequented, you mean, by heroes and men of adventure?" Rincewind considered this. "Yes?" he managed. "Excellent. I would like to meet some." An explanation occurred to the wizard. "Ah," he said. "You’ve come to hire mercenaries ("warriors who fight for the tribe with most milknut-meal")?" "Oh no. I just want to meet them. So that when I get home I can say that I did it." Rincewind thought that a meeting with most of the Drum's clientele would mean that Twoflower never went home again, unless he lived downriver and happened to float past. "Where is your home?" he inquired. Broadman had slipped away into some back room, he noticed. Hugh was watching them suspiciously from a nearby table. "Have you heard of the city of Des Palargic?" "Well, I didn't spend much time in Trob. I was just passing through, you know-" "Oh, it's not in Trob. I speak Trob because there are many beTrobi sailors in our ports. Des Palargic is the major seaport of the Agatean Empire." "Never heard of it, I’m afraid." Twoflower raised his eyebrows. "No? It is quite big. You sail turnwise from the Brown Islands for about a week and there it is. Are you all right?" He hurried around the table and patted the wizard on the back. Rincewind choked on his beer–The Counterweight Continent!     Three streets away an old man dropped a coin into a saucer of acid and swirled it gently. Broadman waited impatiently, ill at ease in a room made noisome by vats and bubbling beakers and lined with shelves containing shadowy shapes suggestive of skulls and stuffed impossibilities. "Well?" he demanded. "One cannot hurry these things," said the old alchemist peevishly. "Assaying takes time. Ah." He prodded the saucer, where the coin now lay in a swirl of green colour. He made some calculations on a scrap of parchment. "Exceptionally interesting," he said at last. "Is it genuine?" The old man pursed his lips. "it depends on how you define the term," he said. "if you mean: is this coin the same as, say, a fifty-dollar piece, then the answer is no." "I knew" it," screamed the innkeeper, and started towards the door. "I’m not sure that I’m making myself clear," said the alchemist. Broadman turned round angrily. "What do you mean?" "Well, you see, what with one thing and another our coinage has been somewhat watered, over the years. The gold content of the average coin is barely four parts in twelve, the balance being made up of silver, copper-" "What of it?" "I said this coin isn't like ours. It is pure gold." After Broadman had left, at a run, the alchemist spent some time staring at the ceiling. Then he drew out a very small piece of thin parchment, rummaged for a pen amongst the debris on his workbench, and wrote a very short, small, message. Then he went over to his cages of white doves, black cockerels and other laboratory animals. From one cage he removed a glossy coated rat, rolled the parchment into the phial attached to a hind leg, and let the animal go. It sniffed around the floor for a moment, then disappeared down a hole in the far wall. At about this time a hitherto unsuccessful fortune-teller living on the other side of the block chanced to glance into her scrying bowl, gave a small scream and, within the hour, had sold her jewellery, various magical accoutrements, most of her clothes and almost all her other possessions that could not be conveniently carried on the fastest horse she could buy. The fact that later on, when her house collapsed in flames, she herself died in a freak landslide in the Morpork Mountains, proves that Death, too, has a sense of humour. Also at about the same moment as the homing rat disappeared into the maze of runs under the city, scurrying along in faultless obedience to an ancient instinct, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork picked up the letters delivered that morning by albatross. He looked pensively at the topmost one again, and summoned his chief of spies.     And in the Broken Drum Rincewind was listening open-mouthed as Twoflower talked. "So I decided to see for myself," the little man was saying. "Eight years' saving up, this has cost me. But worth every half-rhinu. I mean, here I am. In Ankh-Morpork. Famed in song and story, I mean. In the streets that have known the tread of Hemic Whiteblade. Hrun the Barbarian, and Bravd the Hublander and the Weasel... It's all just like I imagined, you know." Rincewind's face was a mask of fascinated horror. "I just couldn't stand it any more back in Des Pelargic," Twoflower went on blithely, "sitting at a desk all day, just adding up columns of figures, just a pension to look forward to at the end of it... where's the romance in that? Twoflower, I thought, it's now or never. You don't just have to listen to stories. You can go there. Now's the time to stop hanging around the docks listening to sailors' tales. So I compiled a phrase book and bought a passage on the next ship to the Brown Islands." "No guards?" murmured Rincewind. "No. Why? What have I got that's worth stealing?" Rincewind coughed. "You have, uh, gold," he said. "Barely two thousand rhinu. Hardly enough to keep a man alive for more than a month or two. At home, that is. I imagine they might stretch a bit further here." "Would a rhinu be one of those big gold coins?" said Rincewind. "Yes." Twoflower looked worriedly at the wizard over the top of his strange seeing-lenses. "Will two thousand be sufficient, do you think?" "Yarrrt," croaked Rincewind. "I mean, yes sufficient . " "Good." "Um. Is everyone in the Agatean Empire as rich as you?" "Me? Rich? Bless you, whatever put that idea into your head? "I am but a poor clerk! Did I pay the innkeeper too much, do you think?" Twoflower added. "Uh. He might have settled for less," Rincewind conceded. "Ah. I shall know better next time. I can see I have a lot to learn. An idea occurs to me. Rincewind would you perhaps consent to be employed as a, I don't know, perhaps the word "guide" would fit the circumstances? I think I could afford to pay you a rhinu a day." Rincewind opened his mouth to reply but felt the words huddle together in his throat, reluctant to emerge in a world that was rapidly going mad. Twoflower blushed. "I have offended you," he said. it was an impertinent request to make of a professional man such as yourself. Doubtless you have many projects you wish to return to- some works of high magic, no doubt..." "No," said Rincewind faintly. "Not just at present. A rhinu, you say? One a day. Every day?" "I think perhaps in the circumstances I should make it one and one-half rhinu per day. Plus any out-of-pocket expenses, of course." The wizard rallied magnificently. "That will be fine," he Said. "Great." Twoflower reached into his pouch and took out a large round gold object, glanced at it for a moment, and slipped it back. Rincewind didn't get a chance to see it properly. "I think," said the tourist, "that I would like a little sleep now. It was a long crossing. And then perhaps you would care to call back at noon and we can take a look at the city." "Sure." "Then please be good enough to ask the innkeeper to Show me to my room." Rincewind did so, and watched the nervous Broadman, who had arrived at a gallop from some back room, lead the way up the wooden steps behind the bar. After a few seconds the luggage got up and pattered across the floor after them. Then the wizard looked down at the six big coins in his hand. Twoflower had insisted on paying his first four days' wages in advance. Hugh nodded and smiled encouragingly. Rincewind snarled at him. As a student wizard Rincewind had never achieved high marks in precognition, but now unused circuits in his brain were throbbing and the future might as well have been engraved in bright colours on his eyeballs. The space between his shoulder blades began to itch. The sensible thing to do, he knew, was to buy a horse. It would have to be a fast one, and expensive - offhand, Rincewind couldn't think of any horse-dealer he knew who was rich enough to give change out of almost a whole ounce of gold. And then, of course, the other five coins would help him set up a useful practice at some safe distance, say two hundred miles. That would be the sensible thing. But what would happen to Twoflower, all alone in a city where even the cockroaches had an unerring instinct for gold? A man would have to be a real heel to leave him.     The Patrician of Ankh-Morpork smiled, but with his mouth only. "The Hub Gate, you say?" he murmured. The guard captain saluted smartly. "Aye, lord. We had to shoot the horse before he would stop." "Which, by a fairly direct route, brings you here," said the Patrician, looking down at Rincewind. "And what have you got to say for yourself?" It was rumoured that an entire wing of the Patrician's palace was filled with clerks who spent their days collating and updating all the information collected by their master's exquisitely organized spy system. Rincewind didn't doubt it. He glanced towards the balcony that ran down one side of the audience room. A sudden run, a nimble jump – a sudden hail of crossbow quarrels. He shuddered. The Patrician cradled his chins in a beringed hand, and regarded the wizard with eyes as small and hard as beads. "Let me see," he said. "Oathbreaking, the theft of a horse, uttering false coinage - yes, I think it's the Arena for you, Rincewind." This was too much. "I didn't steal the horse! I bought it fairly!" "But with false coinage. Technical theft, you see." "But those rhinu are solid gold!" "Rhinu?" The Patrician rolled one of them around in his thick fingers. "is that what they are called? How interesting. But, as you point out, they are not very similar to dollars..." "Well, of course they're not-" "Ah you admit it, then?" Rincewind opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it, and shut it again. "Quite so. And on top of these there is, of course, the moral obloquy attendant on the cowardly betrayal of a visitor to this shore. For shame, Rincewind!" The Patrician waved a hand vaguely. The guards behind Rincewind backed away, and their captain took a few paces to the right. Rincewind suddenly felt very alone. It is said that when a wizard is about to die Death himself turns up to claim him (instead of delegating the task to a subordinate, such as Disease or Famine, as is usually the case). Rincewind looked around nervously for a tall figure in black( wizards, even failed wizards, have in addition to rods and cones in their eyeballs the tiny octagons that enable them to see into the far octarine, the basic colour of which all other colours are merely pale shadows impinging on normal four-dimensional space. It is said to be a sort of fluorescent greenish-yellow purple). Was that a flickering shadow in the corner? "Of course," said the Patrician, "I could be merciful." The shadow disappeared. Rincewind looked up an expression of insane hope on his face. "Yes?" he said. The Patrician waved a hand again. Rincewind saw the guards leave the chamber. Alone with the lord of the twin cities, he almost wished they would come back. "Come hither, Rincewind," said the Patrician. He indicated a bowl of savouries on a low onyx table by the throne. "Would you care for a crystallised jellyfish? No?" "Um," said  Rincewind, "no." "Now I want you to listen very carefully to what I am about to say," said the Patrician amiably, "otherwise you will die. In an interesting fashion. Over a period. Please stop fidgetting like that. Since you are a wizard of sorts, you are of course aware that we live upon a world shaped, as it were, like a disc? And that there is said to exist, towards the far rim, a continent which though small is equal in weight to all the mighty landmasses in this hemicircle? And that this, according to ancient legend, is because it is largely made of gold?" Rincewind nodded. Who hadn't heard of the Counterweight Continent? Some sailors even believed the childhood tales and sailed in search of it. Of course, they returned either empty handed or not at all. Probably eaten by giant turtles, in the opinion of more serious mariners. Because, of course, the Counterweight Continent was nothing more than a solar myth. "It does, of course, exist," said the Patrician. "Although it is not made of gold, it is true that gold is a very common metal there. Most of the mass is made up by vast deposits of octiron deep within the crust. Now it will be obvious to an incisive mind like yours that the existence of the Counterweight Continent poses a deadly threat to our people here–" he paused, looking at Rincewind's open mouth. He sighed. He said, "Do you by some chance fail to follow me?" "Yarrg," said Rincewind. He swallowed, and licked his lips. "I mean, no. I mean - well, gold..." "I see," said the Patrician sweetly. "You feel, perhaps, that it would be a marvellous thing to go to the Counterweight Continent and bring back a shipload of gold?" Rincewind had a feeling that some sort of trap was being set. "Yes?" he ventured. "And if every man on the shores of the Circle Sea had a mountain of gold of his own? Would that be a good thing? What would happen? – think carefully." Rincewind's brow furrowed. He thought. "We'd all be rich?" The way the temperature fell at his remark told him that it was not the correct one. "I may as well tell you, Rincewind, that there is some contact between the Lords of the Circle Sea and the Emperor of the Agatean Empire, as it is styled," the Patrician went on. "It is only very slight. There is little common ground between us. We have nothing they want, and they have nothing we can afford. It is an old Empire, Rincewind. Old and cunning and cruel and very, very rich. So we exchange fraternal greetings by albatross mail. At infrequent intervals. "One such letter arrived this morning. A subject of the Emperor appears to have taken it into his head to visit our city. It appears he wishes to look at it. Only a madman would possibly undergo all the privations of crossing the Turnwise Ocean in order to merely look at anything. However, he landed this morning. He might have met a great hero, or the cunningest of thieves, or some wise and great sage. He met you. He has employed you as a guide. You will be a guide, Rincewind, to this looker, this Twoflower. You will see that he returns home with a good report of our little homeland. What do you say to that?" "Er. Thank you, lord," said Rincewind miserably. "There is another point, of course. It would be a tragedy should anything untoward happen to our little visitor. It would be dreadful if he were to die, for example. Dreadful for the whole of our land, because the Agatean Emperor looks after his own and could certainly extinguish us at a nod. A mere nod. And that would be dreadful for you, Rincewind, because in the weeks that remained before the Empire's huge mercenary fleet arrived certain of my servants would occupy themselves about your person in the hope that the avenging captains, on their arrival, might find their anger tempered by the sight of your still-living body. There are certain spells that can prevent the life departing from a body, be it never so abused, and- I see by your face that understanding dawns?" "Yarrg." "I beg your pardon?" "Yes, lord. I'll, er, see to it, I mean, I'll endeavour to see, I mean, well, I'll try to look after him and see he comes to no harm." And after that I'll get a job juggling snowballs through Hell, he added bitterly in the privacy of his own skull. "Capital! I gather already that you and Twoflower are on the best of terms. An excellent beginning! When he returns safely to his homeland you will not find me ungrateful. I shall probably even dismiss the charges against you. Thank you, Rincewind. You may go." Rincewind decided not to ask for the return of his five remaining rhinu. He backed away, cautiously. "Oh, and there is one other thing," the Patrician said, as the wizard groped for the door handles. "Yes, lord?" he replied, with a sinking heart. "I’m sure you won't dream of trying to escape from your obligations by fleeing the city. I judge you to be a born city person. But you may be sure that the lords of the other cities will be appraised of these conditions by nightfall." "I assure you the thought never even crossed my mind, lord." "Indeed? Then if I were you I'd sue my face for slander."     Rincewind reached the Broken Drum at a dead run and was just in time to collide with a man who came out backwards, fast. The stranger's haste was in part accounted for by the spear in his chest. He bubbled noisily and dropped dead at the wizard's feet. Rincewind peered around the doorframe and jerked back as a heavy throwing axe whirred past like a partridge. It was probably a lucky throw, a second cautious glance told him. The dark interior of the Drum was a broil of fighting men, quite a number of them - a third and longer glance confirmed - in bits. Rincewind swayed back as a wildly thrown stool sailed past and smashed on the far side of the street. Then he dived in. He was wearing a dark robe, made darker by constant wear and irregular washings. In the raging gloom no-one appeared to notice a shadowy shape that shuffled desperately from table to table. At one point a fighter, staggering back, trod on what felt like fingers. A number of what felt like teeth bit his ankle. He yelped shrilly and dropped his guard just sufficiently for a sword, swung by a surprised opponent, to skewer him. Rincewind reached the stairway, sucking his bruised hand and running with a curious, bent-over gait. A crossbow quarrel thunked into the banister rail above him, and he gave a whimper. He made the stairs in one breathless rush, expecting at any moment another, more accurate shot. In the corridor above he stood upright, gasping and saw the floor in front of him scattered with bodies. A big black-bearded man, with a bloody sword in one hand, was trying a door handle. "Hey!" screamed Rincewind. The man looked around and then, almost absent-mindedly, drew a short throwing knife from his bandolier and hurled it. Rincewind ducked. There was a brief scream behind him as the crossbow man, sighting down his weapon, dropped it and clutched at his throat. The big man was already reaching for another knife. Rincewind looked around wildly, and then with wild improvisation drew himself up into a wizardly pose. His hand was flung back. "Asoniti! Kyoruchal Beazleblor! " The man hesitated, his eyes flicking nervously from side to side as he waited for the magic. The conclusion that there was not going to be any hit him at the same time as Rincewind, whirring wildly down the passage, kicked him sharply in the groin. As he screamed and clutched at himself the wizard dragged open the door, sprang inside, slammed it behind him and threw his body against it, panting. It was quiet in here. There was Twoflower, sleeping peacefully on the bed. And there, at the foot of the bed, was the Luggage. Rincewind took a few steps forward, cupidity moving him as easily as if he were on little wheels. The chest was open. There were bags inside, and in one of them he caught the gleam of gold. For a moment greed overcame caution, and he reached out gingerly... but what was the use? He'd never live to enjoy it. Reluctantly he drew his hand back, and was surprised to see a slight tremor in the chest's open lid. Hadn't it shifted slightly, as though rocked by the wind? Rincewind looked at his fingers, and then at the lid. It looked heavy, and was bound with brass bands. It was quite still now. What wind? "Rincewind!" Twoflower sprang off the bed. The wizard jumped back, wrenching his features into a smile. "My dear chap, right on time! We'll just have lunch, and then I’m sure you’ve got a wonderful programme lined up for this afternoon." "That's great," Rincewind took a deep breath. "look," he said desperately, "let's eat somewhere else. There's been a bit of a fight down below. "A tavern brawl? Why didn't you wake me up?" "Well, you see, I – what?" "I thought I made myself clear this morning, Rincewind. I want to see genuine Morporkian life–the slave market, the Whore Pits, the Temple of Small Gods, the Beggars' Guild... and a genuine tavern brawl." A faint note of suspicion entered Twoflower's voice. "You do have them, don't you? You know, people swinging on chandeliers, swordfights over the table, the sort of thing Hrun the Barbarian and the Weasel are always getting involved in. You know - excitement." Rincewind sat down heavily on the bed. "You want to see a fight?" he said. "Yes. What's wrong with that?" "For a start, people get hurt." "Oh, I wasn't suggesting we get involved. I just want to see one, that's all. And some of your famous heroes. You do have some, don't you? It's not all dockside talk?" And now, to the wizard's astonishment, Twoflower was almost pleading. "Oh, yeah. We have them all right," said Rincewind hurriedly. He pictured them in his mind, and recoiled from the thought. All the heroes of the Circle Sea passed through the gates of Ankh-Morpork sooner or later. Most of them were from the barbaric tribes nearer the frozen Hub, which had a sort of export trade in heroes Almost all of them had crude magic swords, whose unsuppressed harmonics on the astral plane played hell with any delicate experiments in applied sorcery for miles around, but Rincewind didn't object to them on that score. He knew himself to be a magical dropout, so it didn't bother him that the mere appearance of a hero at the city gates was enough to cause retorts to explode and demons to materialise all through the Magical Quarter. No, what he didn't like about heroes was that they were usually suicidally gloomy when sober and homicidally insane when drunk. There were too many of them, too. Some of the most notable questing grounds near the city were a veritable hubbub in the season. There was talk of organizing a rota. He rubbed his nose. The only heroes he had much time for were Bravd and the Weasel, who were out of town at the moment, and Hrun the Barbarian, who was practically an academic by Hub standards in that he could think without moving his lips. Hrun was said to be roving somewhere Turnwise. "Look," he said at last. "have you ever met a barbarian?" Twoflower shook his head. "I was afraid of that," said Rincewind. "Well. they're–" There was a clatter of running feet in the street outside and a fresh uproar from downstairs. It was followed by a commotion on the stairs. The door was flung open before Rincewind could collect himself sufficiently to make a dash for the window. But instead of the greed-crazed madman he expected, he found himself looking into the round red face of a Sergeant of the Watch. He breathed again. Of course. The Watch were always careful not to intervene too soon in any brawl where the odds were not heavily stacked in their favour. The job carried a pension, and attracted a cautious, thoughtful kind of man. The Sergeant glowered at Rincewind, and then peered at Twoflower with interest. "Everything all right here, then?" he said. "Oh, fine," said Rincewind. "got held up, did you?" The sergeant ignored him. "This the foreigner?" he inquired. "We were just leaving," said Rincewind quickly, and switched to Trob. "Twoflower, I think we ought to get lunch somewhere else. I know some places." He marched out into the corridor with as much aplomb as he could muster. Twoflower followed, and a few seconds later there was a strangling sound from the sergeant as the luggage closed its lid with a snap, stood up, stretched, and marched after them. Watchmen were dragging bodies out of the room downstairs. There were no survivors. The Watch had ensured this by giving them ample time to escape via the back door, a neat compromise between caution and justice that benefited all parties. "Who are all these men?" said Twoflower. "Oh, you know. Just men," said Rincewind. And before he could stop himself some part of his brain that had nothing to do took control of his mouth and added, "Heroes, in fact." "Really?" When one foot is stuck in the Grey Miasma of krull it is much easier to step right in and sink rather than prolong the struggle. Rincewind let himself go. "Yes, that one over there is Frig Stronginthearm, over there is Black Zenell-" "Is Hrun the Barbarian here?" said Twoflower, looking around eagerly. Rincewind took a deep breath. "That's him behind us," he said. The enormity of this lie was so great that its ripples did in fact spread out one of the lower astral planes as far as the Magical Quarter across the river, where it picked up tremendous velocity from the huge standing wave of power that always hovered there and bounced wildly across the Circle Sea. A harmonic got as far as Hrun himself, currently fighting a couple of gnolls on a crumbling ledge high in the Caderack Mountains, and caused him a moment's unexplained discomfort. Twoflower, meanwhile, had thrown back the lid of the Luggage and was hastily pulling out a heavy black cube. "This is fantastic," he said. "They're never going to believe this at home." "What's he going on about?" said the sergeant doubtfully. "He's pleased you rescued us," said Rincewind. He looked sidelong at the black box, half-expecting it to explode or emit strange musical tones. "Ah," said the sergeant. He was staring at the box, too. Twoflower smiled brightly at them. "I'd like a record of the event," he said. "Do you think you could ask them all to stand over by the window, please? This won't take a moment. And, er, Rincewind? " "Yes?" Twoflower stood on tiptoe to whisper. "I expect you know what this is, don't you?" Rincewind stared down at the box. It had a round glass eye protruding from the centre of one face, and a lever at the back. "Not wholly, " he said. "It's a device for making pictures quickly," said Twoflower. "Quite a new invention. I’m rather proud of it but, look, I don't think these gentlemen would - well, I mean they might be - sort of apprehensive? Could you explain it to them? I'll reimburse them for their time, of course." "He's got a box with a demon in it that draws pictures," said Rincewind shortly. 'do what the madman says and he will give you gold." The Watch smiled nervously. "I'd like you in the picture, Rincewind. That's fine." Twoflower took out the golden disc that Rincewind had noticed before, squinted at its unseen face for a moment, muttered "Thirty seconds should about do it," and said brightly, "Smile please!" "Smile," rasped Rincewind. There was a whirr from the box. "Right."     High above the disc the second albatross soared; so high in fact that its tiny mad orange eyes could see the whole of the world and the great, glittering, girdling Circle Sea. There was a yellow message capsule strapped to one leg. Far below it, unseen in the clouds, the bird that had brought the earlier message to the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork flapped gently back to its home.     Rincewind looked at the tiny square of glass in astonishment. There he was, all right - a tiny figure, in perfect colour, standing in front of a group of Watchmen whose faces were each frozen in a terrified rictus. A buzz of wordless terror went up from the men around him as they craned over his shoulder to look. Grinning, Twoflower produced a handful of the Smaller coins Rincewind now recognized as quarter-rhinu. He winked at the wizard. "I had similar problems when I stopped over in the Brown Islands," he said. "They thought the iconograph steals a bit of their souls. Laughable, isn't it?" "Yarg," said Rincewind and then, because somehow that was hardly enough to keep up his side of the conversation, added, "I don't think it looks very like me, though." "It's easy to operate," said Twoflower, ignoring him. "Look, all you have to do is press this button. The iconograph does the rest. Now, I'll just stand over here next to Hrun, and you can take the picture." The coins quietened the men's agitation in the way that gold can, and Rincewind was amazed to find, half a minute later, that he was holding a little glass portrait of Twoflower wielding a huge notched sword and smiling as though all his dreams had come true.     They lunched at a small eating-house near the Brass Bridge, with the luggage nestling under the table. The food and wine, both far superior to Rincewind's normal fare, did much to relax him. Things weren't going to be too bad, he decided. A bit of invention and some quick thinking, that was all that was needed. Twoflower seemed to be thinking too. Looking reflectively into his wine cup he said, "Tavern fights are pretty common around here, I expect?" "Oh, fairly." "No doubt fixtures and fittings get damaged?" "Fixt - oh, I see. You mean like benches and whatnot. Yes, I suppose so." "That must be upsetting for the innkeepers." "I’ve never really thought about it. I suppose it must be one of the risks of the job." Twoflower regarded him thoughtfully. "I might be able to help there." he said. "Risks are my business. I say, this food is a bit greasy, isn't it?" "You did say you wanted to try some typical Morporkean food," said Rincewind. "What was that about risks?" "Oh, I know all about risks. They're my business." "I thought that's what you said. I didn't believe it the first time either." "Oh, I don't take risks. About the most exciting thing that happened to me was knocking some ink over. I assess risks. Day after day. Do you know what the odds are against a house catching fire in the Red Triangle district of des Pelargic? Five hundred and thirty-eight to one. I calculated that," he added with a trace of pride. "What–" Rincewind tried to suppress a burp– "what for? 'Scuse me." He helped himself to some more wine "For–" Twoflower paused. "I can't say it in Trob, I don't think the beTrobi have a word for it. In our language we call it-" he said a collection of outlandish syllables. "Inn-sewer-ants," repeated Rincewind. "That's a funny word. Wossit mean?" "Well suppose you have a ship loaded with, say, gold bars. it might run into storms or be taken by pirates. You don't want that to happen, so you take out an ensewer-ants-polly-sea. I work out the odds of the cargo being lost, based on weather and piracy records for the last twenty years, then I add on a bit, then you pay me some money based on those odds-" "-and the bit-" Rincewind said, waggling a finger solemnly. "Then, if the cargo is lost, I reimburse you." "Reeburs?" "Pay you the value of your cargo," said Twoflower patiently. "Oh I get it. It's like a bet, right?" "A wager? In a way, I suppose." "And you make money at this inn-sewer-ants?" "It offers a return on investment, certainly." Wrapped in the warm yellow glow of the wine, Rincewind tried to think of inn-sewer-ants in circle sea terms. "I don't think I unnerstan' this inn-sewer-ants," he said firmly, idly watching the world spin by, "Magic now.  Magic I unnerstan'." Twoflower grinned. "Magic is one thing, and reflected-sound-of-underground-spirits is another, he said." "Whah?" "What?" "That funny word you used," said Rincewind impatiently. "Reflected-sound-of-underground-spirits? "Never heard of it." Twoflower tried to explain. Rincewind tried to understand.     In the long afternoon they toured the city Turnwise of the river. Twoflower led the way, with the strange picture-box slung on a strap round his neck, Rincewind trailed behind, whimpering at intervals and checking to see that his head was still there. A few others followed, too. In a city where public executions, duels, fights, magical feuds and strange events regularly punctuated the daily round the inhabitants had brought the profession of interested bystander to a peak of perfection. They were, to a man, highly skilled yawpers. In any case, Twoflower was delightedly taking picture after picture of people engaged in what he described as typical activities, and since a quarter-rhinu would subsequently change hands "for their trouble" a tail of bemused and happy nouveux-riches was soon following him in case this madman exploded in a shower of gold. At the Temple of the Seven-Handed Sek a hasty convocation of priests and ritual heart-transplant artisans agreed that the hundred-span high statue of Sek was altogether too holy to be made into a magic picture, but a payment of two rhinu left them astoundedly agreeing that perhaps He wasn't as holy as all that. A prolonged session at the Whore Pits produced a number of colourful and instructive pictures, a number of which Rincewind concealed about his person for detailed perusal in private. As the fumes cleared from his brain he began to speculate seriously as to how the iconograph worked. Even a failed wizard knew that some substances were sensitive to light. Perhaps the glass plates were treated by some arcane process that froze the light, that passed through them: or something like that, anyway. Rincewind often suspected that there was something, somewhere, that was better than magic. He was usually disappointed. However, he soon took every opportunity to operate the box. Twoflower was only too pleased to allow this, since that enabled the little man to appear in his own pictures. It was at this point that Rincewind noticed something strange. Possession of the box conferred a kind of power on the wielder which was that anyone, confronted with the hypnotic glass eye, would submissively obey the most peremptory orders about stance and expression. It was while he was thus engaged in the Plaza of Broken Moons that disaster struck. Twoflower had posed alongside a bewildered charm-seller, his crowd of new-found admirers watching him with interest in case he did something humorously lunatic. Rincewind got down on one knee, the better to arrange the picture, and pressed the enchanted lever. The box said, "It's no good. I’ve run out of pink." A hitherto unnoticed door opened in front of his eyes. A small, green and hideously warty humanoid figure leaned out, pointed at a colour-encrusted palette in one clawed hand, and screamed at him. "No pink, See?" screeched the homunculus. "No good you going on pressing the lever when there's no pink, is there? If you wanted pink you shouldn't of took all those pictures of young ladies, should you? It's monochrome from now on, friend. Alright?" "Alright. Yeah, Sure," said Rincewind. In one dim corner of the little box he thought he could see an easle, and a tiny unmade bed. He hoped he couldn't. "So long as that's understood," said the imp, and shut the door. Rincewind thought he could hear the muffled sound of grumbling and the scrape of a stool being dragged across the floor. "Twoflower-" he began, and looked up. Twoflower had vanished. As Rincewind stared at the crowd, with sensations of prickly horror traveling up his spine, there came a gentle prod in the small of his back. "Turn without haste," said a voice like black silk. "Or kiss your kidneys goodbye." The crowd watched with interest. It was turning out to be quite a good day. Rincewind turned slowly, feeling the point of the sword scrape along his ribs. At the other end of the blade he recognized Stren Withel - thief, cruel swordsman, disgruntled contender for the title of worst man in the world. "Hi," he said weakly. A few yards away he noticed a couple of unsympathetic men raising the lid of the Luggage and pointing excitedly at the bags of gold. Withel smiled. It made an unnerving effect on his scar-crossed face. "I know you," he said. "a gutter wizard. What is that thing?" Rincewind became aware that the lid of the Luggage was trembling slightly, although there was no wind. And he was still holding the picture-box. "This? It makes pictures," he said brightly. "Hey. just hold that smile, will you?" He backed away quickly and pointed the box. For a moment Withel hesitated. "What? he said. "That's fine, hold it just like that..." said Rincewind. The thief paused, then growled and swung his sword back. There was a snap, and a duet of horrible screams Rincewind did not glance around for fear of the terrible things he might see, and by the time Withel looked for him again he was on the other side of the plaza and still accelerating.     The albatross descended in wide, slow sweeps that ended in an undignified flurry of feathers and a thump as it landed heavily on its platform in the Patrician's bird garden. The custodian of the birds, dozing in the sun and hardly expecting a long-distance message so soon after this morning's arrival, jerked to his feet and looked up. A few moments later he was scuttling through the palace's corridors holding the message capsule and - owing to carelessness brought on by surprise - sucking at the nasty beak wound on the back of his hand     Rincewind pounded down an alley, paying no heed to the screams of rage coming from the picture box and cleared a high wall with his frayed robe flapping around him like the feathers of a dishevelled jackdaw. He landed in the forecourt of a carpet shop, scattering the merchandise and customers dived through its rear exit trailing apologies, skidded down another alley and stopped, teetering dangerously, just as he was about to plunge unthinkingly into the Ankh. There are said to be some mystic rivers – one drop of which can steal a man's life away. After its turbid passage through the twin cities the Ankh could have been one of them. In the distance the cries of rage took on a shrill note of terror. Rincewind looked around desperately for a boat, or a handhold up the sheer walls on either side of him. He was trapped. Unbidden, the Spell welled up in his mind. It was perhaps untrue to say that he had learned it; it had learned him. The episode had led to his expulsion from Unseen University, because, for a bet, he had dared to open the pages of the last remaining copy of the creators own grimoire, The Octavo, while the University librarian was otherwise engaged.. The spell had leapt out of the page and instantly burrowed deeply into his mind, from whence even the combined talents of the Faculty of Medicine had been unable to coax it. Precisely which one it was they were also unable to ascertain, except that it was one of the eight basic spells that were intricately interwoven with the very fabric of time and space itself. Since then it had been showing a worrying tendency, when Rincewind was feeling rundown or especially threatened, to try to get itself said. He clenched his teeth together but the first syllable forced itself around the corner of his mouth. His left hand raised involuntarily and, as the magical force whirled him round, began to give off octarine sparks... The Luggage hurtled around the corner, its several hundred knees moving like pistons. Rincewind gaped. The spell died, unsaid. The box didn't appear to be hampered in any way by the ornamental rug draped roguishly over it, nor by the thief hanging by one arm from the lid. It was in a very real sense, a dead weight. Further along the lid were the remains of two fingers, owner unknown. The Luggage halted a few feet from the wizard and, after a moment, retracted its legs. It had no eyes that Rincewind could see, but he was never the less sure that it was staring at him. Expectantly. "Shoo," he said weakly. It didn't budge, but the lid creaked open, releasing the dead thief. Rincewind remembered about the gold. Presumably the box had to have a master. In the absence of Twoflower, had it adopted him? The tide was turning and he could see debris drifting downstream in the yellow afternoon light towards the river gate, a mere hundred yards downstream. It was the work of a moment to let the dead thief join them. Even if it was found later it would hardly cause comment. And the sharks in the Ankh were used to solid, regular meals. Rincewind watched the body drift away, and considered his next move. The Luggage would probably float. All he had to do was wait until dusk, and then go out with the tide. There were plenty of wild places downstream where he could wade ashore, and then - well, if the Patrician really had sent out word about him then a change of clothing and a shave should take care of that. In any case, there were other lands and he had a facility for languages. Let him but get to Chimera or Gonim or Ecalpon and half a dozen armies couldn't bring him back. And then - wealth, comfort, security... There was, of course, the problem of Twoflower. Rincewind allowed himself a moment's sadness. "It could be worse," he said by way of farewell. "It could be me." It was when he tried to move that he found his robe was caught on some obstruction. By craning his neck he found that the edge of it was being gripped firmly by the Luggage's lid.     "Ah, Gorphal," said the Patrician pleasantly. Come in. Sit down. Can I press you to a candied starfish?" "I am yours to command, master," said the old man calmly. "Save, perhaps, in the matter of preserved echinoderms." The Patrician shrugged, and indicated the scroll on the table. "Read that," he said. Gorphal picked up the parchment and raised one eyebrow slightly when he saw the familiar ideograms of the Golden Empire. He read in silence for perhaps a minute, and then turned the scroll over to examine minutely the seal on the obverse. "You are famed as a student of empire affairs," said the Patrician. "Can you explain this?" "Knowledge in the matter of the Empire lies less in noting particular events than in studying a certain cast of mind," said the old diplomat. "The message is curious, yes, but not surprising." "This morning the Emperor instructed," the Patrician allowed himself the luxury of a scowl, "instructed me, Gorphal, to protect this Twoflower person. Now it seems I must have him killed. You don't find that surprising?" "No. The Emperor is no more than a boy. He is idealistic. Keen. A god to his people. Whereas this afternoon's letter is, unless I am very much mistaken, from Nine Turning mirrors, the Grand Vizier. He has grown old in the service of several Emperors. He regards them as a necessary but tiresome ingredient in the successful running of the Empire. He does not like things out of place. The Empire was not built by allowing things to get out of place. That is his view." "I begin to see–" said the Patrician. "Quite so." Gorphal smiled into his beard. "This tourist is a thing that is out of place. After acceding to his master's wishes Nine Turning Mirrors would, I am quite sure, make his own arrangements with a view to ensuring that one wanderer would not be allowed to return home bringing, perhaps, the disease of dissatisfaction. The Empire likes people to stay where it puts them. So much more convenient, then, if this Two Flower disappears for good in the barbarian lands. Meaning here, master." "And your advice?" said the Patrician. Gorphal shrugged. "Merely that you should do nothing. Matters will undoubtedly resolve themselves. However," he scratched an ear thoughtfully, "perhaps the Assassins' Guild...?" "Ah yes," said the Patrician. "The Assassins guild. Who is their president at the moment?" "Zlorf Flannelfoot, master." "Have a word with him, will you?" "Quite so, master." The Patrician nodded. It was all rather a relief. He agreed with Nine Turning Mirrors - life was difficult enough; People ought to stay where they were put.     Brilliant constellations shone down on the Discworld. One by one the traders shuttered their shops. One by one the gonophs, thieves, finewirers, whores, illusionists, backsliders and second-storey men awoke and breakfasted. Wizards went about their polydimensional affairs. Tonight saw the conjunction of two powerful planets, and already the air over the Magical Quarter was hazy with early spells.     "Look," said Rincewind, "this isn't getting us anywhere." He inched sideways. The Luggage followed faithfully, lid half open and menacing. Rincewind briefly considered making a desperate leap to safety. The lid smacked in anticipation. In any case, he told himself with sinking heart, the damn thing would only follow him again. It had that dogged look about it. Even if he managed to get to a horse, he had a nasty suspicion that it would follow him at its own pace. Endlessly. Swimming rivers and oceans. Gaining slowly every night, while he had to stop to sleep. And then one day, in some exotic city and years hence, he'd hear the sound of hundreds of tiny feet accelerating down the road behind him... "You’ve got the wrong man!" he moaned. "it's not my fault! I didn't kidnap him!" The box moved forward slightly. Now there was just a narrow strip of greasy jetty between Rincewind’s heels and the river. A flash of precognition told him that the box would be able to swim faster than he could. He tried not to imagine what it would be like to drown in the Ankh. "It won't stop until you give in, you know," said a small voice conversationally. Rincewind looked down at the iconograph, still hanging around his neck. Its trapdoor was open and the homunculus was leaning against the trap, smoking a pipe and watching the proceedings with amusement. "I'll take you in with me, at least," said Rincewind through gritted teeth. The imp took the pipe out of his mouth. "What did you say?" he said. "I said I'll take you in with me, dammit!" "Suit yourself." The imp tapped the side of the box meaningfully. "We'll see who sinks first." The luggage yawned, and moved forward a fraction of an inch. "Oh all right," said Rincewind irritably. "But you'll have to give me time to think." The luggage backed off slowly. Rincewind edged his way back onto reasonably safe land and sat down with his back against a wall. Across the river the lights of Ankh city glowed. "You're a wizard," said the picture imp. "You'll think of some way to find him." "Not much of a wizard, I’m afraid." "You can just jump down on everyone and turn them into worms," the imp added encouragingly, ignoring his last remark. "No. Turning To Animals is an Eighth Level spell. I never even completed my training. I only know one spell." "Well, that'll do." "I doubt it," said Rincewind hopelessly "What does it do, then?" "Can't tell you. Don't really want to talk about it. But frankly," he sighed , "no spells are much good. It takes three months to commit even a simple one to memory, and then once you’ve used it, pow it's gone. that's what's so stupid about the whole magic thing, You know. You spend twenty years learning the spell that makes nude virgins appear in your bedroom, and then you're so poisoned by quicksilver fumes and half-blind from reading old grimoires that you can't remember what happens next." "I never thought of it like that," said the imp. "Hey, look - this is all wrong. When Twoflower said they'd got better kind of magic in the empire I thought- I thought..." The imp looked at him expectantly. Rincewind cursed to himself. "Well, if you must know, I thought he didn't mean magic. Not as such." "What else is there, then?" Rincewind began to feel really wretched. "I don't know," he said. "A better way of doing things, I suppose. Something with a bit of sense in it. Harnessing - harnessing the lightning, or something." The imp gave him a kind but pitying look. "Lightning is the spears hurled by the thunder giants when they fight," it said gently, "established meteorological fact. You can't harness it." "I know," said Rincewind miserably. That's the flaw in the argument, of course." The imp nodded. and disappeared into the depths of the iconograph. A few moments later Rincewind smelled bacon frying. He waited until his stomach couldn't stand the strain any more, and rapped on the box. The imp reappeared. "I’ve been thinking about what you said," it said even before Rincewind could open his mouth. "And even if you could get a harness on it, how could you get it to pull a cart?" "What the hell are you talking about?" "Lightning. It just goes up and down. "You'd want it to go along, not up and down. Anyway, it'd probably burn through the harness." "I don't care about the lightning! How can I think on an empty stomach?" "Eat something, then. That's logic." "How? Every time I move that damn box flexes its hinges at me!" The luggage, on cue, gaped widely. "See?" "It's not trying to bite you," said the imp. "There's food in there. You're no use to it starved." Rincewind peered into the dark recesses of the Luggage. There were indeed, among the chaos of boxes and bags of gold, several bottles and packages in oiled paper. He gave a cynical laugh, mooched around the abandoned jetty until he found a piece of wood about the right length, wedged it as politely as possible in the gap between the lid and the box, and pulled out one of the flat packages. It held biscuits that turned out to be as hard as diamond-wood. "Bloody hell," he muttered, nursing his teeth. "Captain Eightpanther's Travellers' Digestives, them," said the imp from the doorway to his box, "saved many a life at sea, they have." "Oh, sure. Do you use them as a raft, or just throw them to the sharks and sort of watch them sink? What's in the bottles? Poison?" "Water." "But there's water everywhere! Why'd he want to bring water?" "Trust." "Trust?" "Yes. That's what he didn't, the water here. See?" Rincewind opened a bottle. The liquid inside might have been water. It had a flat, empty flavour, with no trace of life. "Neither taste nor smell." he grumbled The luggage gave a little creak, attracting his attention. With a lazy air of calculated menace it shut its lid slowly, grinding Rincewind's impromptu wedge like a dry loaf. "All right, all right," he said. "I’m thinking."     Ymor's headquarters were in the leaning Tower at the junction of Rime Street and Frost Alley. At midnight the solitary guard leaning in the shadows looked up at the conjoining planets and wondered idly what change in his fortunes they might herald. There was the faintest of sounds, as of a gnat yawning. The guard glanced down the deserted street, and now caught the glimmer of moonlight on something lying in the mud a few yards away. He picked it up. The lunar light gleamed on gold, and his intake of breath was almost loud enough to echo down the alleyway. There was a slight sound again, and another coin rolled into the gutter on the other side of the street. By the time he had picked it up there was another one, a little way off and still spinning. Gold was, he remembered, said to be formed from the crystallized light of stars. Until now he had never believed it to be true, that something as heavy as gold could fall naturally from the sky. As he drew level with the opposite alley mouth some more fell. It was still in its bag, there was an awful lot of it, and Rincewind brought it down heavily onto his head. When the guard came to he found himself looking up into the wild-eyed face of a wizard, who was menacing his throat with a sword. In the darkness too, something was gripping his leg. It was the disconcerting sort of grip that suggested that the gripper could grip a whole lot harder, if he wanted to. "Where is he, the rich foreigner?" hissed the wizard. "Quickly!" "What's holding my leg?" said the man, with a note of terror in his voice. He tried to wriggle free. The pressure increased "You wouldn't want to know," said Rincewind "Pay attention, please. Where's the foreigner?" "Not here. They’ve got him at Broadman's place." "Everyone's looking for him! You're Rincewind aren't you? The box - the box that bites people ononono... pleasssse..." Rincewind had gone. The guard felt the unseen leg-gripper release his - or, as he was beginning to fear, it’s - hold. Then, as he tried to pull himself to his feet, something big and heavy and square cannoned into him out of the dark and plunged off after the wizard. Something with hundreds of tiny feet.     With only his home-made phrase book to help him Twoflower was trying to explain the mysteries of in-sour-ants to Broadman. The fat innkeeper was listening intently, his little black eyes glittering. From the other end of the table Ymor watched with mild amusement, occasionally feeding one of his ravens with scraps from his plate. Beside him Withel paced up and down. "You fret too much," said Ymor, without taking his eyes from the two men opposite him. "I can feel it, Stren. Who would dare attack us here? And the gutter wizard will come. He's too much of a coward not to. And he'll try to bargain. And we shall have him. And the gold. And the chest." Withel's one eye glared, and he made a fist into the palm of a black-gloved hand. "Who would have thought there was so much sapient pearwood in the whole of the disc?" he said. "How could we have known?" "You fret too much, Stren. I’m sure you can do better this time," said Ymor pleasantly. The lieutenant snorted in disgust, and strode off around the room to bully his men. Ymor carried on watching the tourist. It was strange, but the little man didn't seem to realise the seriousness of his position. Ymor had on several occasions seen him look around the room with an expression of deep satisfaction he had also been talking for ages to Broadman and Ymer had seen a piece of paper change hands and Broadman had given the foreigner some coins. It was strange. When Broadman got up and waddled past Ymer's chair the thiefmasters arm shot out like a steel spring and grabbed the fat man by his apron. "What was that all about, friend?" asked Ymor quietly. "N-nothing, Ymor. Just private business, like." "There are no secrets between friends, Broadman." "Yar. Well, I’m not sure about it myself, really. It's a sort of bet, see?" said the innkeeper nervously "inn-sewer-ants, it's called. It's like a bet that the Broken Drum won't get burned down." Ymor held the man's gaze until Broadman twitched in fear and embarrassment. Then the thiefmaster laughed. "This worm-eaten old tinder pile?" he said. "The man must be mad! " "Yes, but mad with money. He says now he's got the - can't remember the word, begins with a P, it's what you might call the stake money- the people he works for in the Agatean Empire will pay up. If the Broken Drum burns down. Not that I hope it does. Burn down. The Broken Drum, I mean. I mean, it's like a home to me, is the Drum..." "Not entirely stupid, are you?" said Ymor, and pushed the innkeeper away. The door slammed back on its hinges and thudded into the wall. "Hey, that's my door. " screamed Broadman. Then he realised who was standing at the top of the steps, and ducked behind the table a mere shaving of time before a short black dart sped across the room and thunked into the woodwork. Ymor moved his hand carefully, and poured out another flagon of beer. "Won't you join me, Zlorf?" he said levelly. "and put that sword away, Stren. Zlorf Flannelfoot is our friend " The president of the Assassins' Guild spun his short blowgun dexterously and slotted it into its holster in one smooth movement. "Stren!" said Ymor. The black-clad thief hissed, and sheathed his sword. But he kept his hand on the hilt, and his eyes on the assassin. That wasn't easy. Promotion in the Assassins Guild was by competitive examination, the Practical being the most important - indeed, the only - part. Thus Zlorf's broad, honest face was a welter of scar tissue, the result of many a close encounter. It probably hadn't been all that good-looking in any case- it was said that Zlorf had chosen a profession in which dark hoods, cloaks and nocturnal prowlings figured largely because there was a day-fearing trollish streak in his parentage. People who said this in earshot of Zlorf tended to carry their ears home in their hats. He strolled down the stairs, followed by a number of assassins. When he was directly in front of Ymor he said: "I've come for the tourist." "Is it any of Your business, Zlorf?" "Yes. Gringo, Urmond - take him." Two of the assassins stepped forward. Then Stren was in front of them, his sword appearing to materialise an inch from their throats without having to pass through the intervening air. "Possibly I could only kill one of you," he murmured, "but I suggest you ask yourselves which one?" "Look up, Zlorf," said Ymor. A row of yellow, baleful eyes looked down from the darkness among the rafters. "One step more and you'll leave here with fewer eyeballs than you came with," said the thiefmaster. "So sit down and have a drink, Zlorf, and let's talk about this sensibly. I thought we had an agreement. You don't rob- I don't kill. Not for payment, that is," he added after a pause. Zlorf took the proffered beer. "So?" he said. "I’ll kill him. Then you rob him. Is he that funny looking one over there?" "Yes." Zlorf stared at Twoflower, who grinned at him. He shrugged. He seldom wasted time wondering why people wanted other people dead. It was just a living. "Who is your client, may I ask?" said Ymor. Zlorf held up a hand. "Please!" he protested. "Professional etiquette." "Of course. By the way-" "Yes?" "I believe I have a couple of guards outside-" "Had." "And some others in the doorway across the street-" "Formerly." "And two bowmen on the roof." A flicker of doubt passed across Zlorf's face, like the last shaft of sunlight over a badly ploughed field. The door flew open, badly damaging the assassin who was standing beside it. "Stop doing that!" shrieked Broadman, from under his table. Zlorf and Ymor stared up at the figure on the threshold. It was short, fat and richly dressed. Very richly dressed. There were a number of tall, big shapes looming behind it. Very big, threatening shapes. "Who's that?" said Zlorf. "I know him," said Ymor. "His name's Rerpf. He runs the Groaning Platter tavern down by Brass Bridge. Stren - remove him." Rerpf held up a beringed hand. Stren Withel hesitated halfway to the door as several very large trolls ducked under the doorway and stood on either side of the fat man, blinking in the light. Muscles the size of melons bulged in forearms like flour sacks. Each troll held a double-headed axe. Between thumb and forefinger. Broadman erupted from cover, his face Suffused with rage. "Out!" he screamed. "Get those trolls out of here!" No-one moved. The room was suddenly quiet. Broadman looked around quickly. It began to dawn on him just what he had said, and to whom. A whimper escaped from his lips, glad to be free. He reached the doorway to his cellars just as one of the trolls, with a lazy flick of one ham-sized hand, sent his axe whirling across the room. The slam of the door and its subsequent splitting as the axe hit it merged into one sound. "Bloody hell!" exclaimed Zlorf Flannelfoot. "What do you want?" said Ymor. "I am here on behalf of the Guild of Merchants and Traders," said Rerpf evenly. "to protect our interests, you might say. Meaning the little man." Ymor wrinkled his brows. "I’m sorry," he said. "I thought I heard you say the Guild of Merchants?" "And traders," agreed Rerpf. Behind him now, in addition to more trolls, were several humans that Ymor vaguely recognized. He had seen them, maybe, behind counters and bars. Shadowy figures, usually - easily ignored, easily forgotten. At the back of his mind a bad feeling began to grow. He thought about how it might be to be, say, a fox confronted with an angry sheep. A sheep, moreover, that could afford to employ wolves. "How long has this - Guild - been in existence, may I ask?" he said. "Since this afternoon," said Rerpf. "I’m viceguildmaster in charge of tourism, you know." "What is this tourism of which you Speak?" "Uh - we are not quite sure..." said Rerpf. An old bearded man poked his head over the guildmaster's shoulder and cackled, "speaking on behalf of the winesellers of Morpork, Tourism means Business See?" "Well?" said Ymor coldly. "Well," said Rerpf, "we're protecting our interests, like I said." "Thieves OUT, Thieves OUT!" cackled his elderly companion. Several others took up the chant. Zlorf grinned. "and assassins," chanted the old man. Zlorf growled. "Stands to reason," said Rerpf. "People robbing and murdering all over the place, what sort of impression are visitors going to take away? You come all the way to see our fine city with its many points of historical and civic interest, also many quaint customs, and you wake up dead in some back alley or as it might be floating down the Ankh, how are you going to tell all your friends what a great time you're having? Let's face it, you’ve got to move with the times." Zlorf and Ymor met each other's gaze. "We have, have we?" said Ymor. "Then let us move, brother," agreed Zlorf. In one movement he brought his blowgun to his mouth and sent a dart hissing towards the nearest troll. It spun around, hurling its axe, which whirred over the assassin's head and buried itself in a luckless thief behind him. Rerpf ducked, allowing a troll behind him to raise its huge iron crossbow and fire a spear-length quarrel into the nearest assassin. That was the start...     It has been remarked before that those who are sensitive to radiations in the far octarine - the eighth colour, the pigment of the imagination- can see things that others cannot. Thus it was that Rincewind, hurrying through the crowded, flare-lit evening bazaars of Morpork. With the luggage trundling behind him, jostled a tall dark figure, turned to deliver a few suitable curses, and beheld Death. It had to be Death. No-one else went around with empty eye sockets and, of course, the scythe over one shoulder was another clue. As Rincewind stared in horror a courting couple, laughing at some private joke, walked straight through the apparition without appearing to notice it. Death, insofar as it was possible in a face with no movable features, looked surprised. RINCEWIND? Death said, in tones as deep and heavy as the slamming of leaden doors, far underground. "Um," said Rincewind, trying to back away from that eyeless stare. BUT WHY ARE YOU HERE? (Boom, boom went crypt lids, in the worm-haunted fastnesses under old mountains...) "Um, why not?" said Rincewind. "Anyway, I’m sure you’ve got lots to do, so if you'll just-" I WAS SURPRISED THAT YOU JOSTLED ME, RINCEWIND. FOR I HAVE AN APPOINTMENT WITH THEE THIS VERY NIGHT. "Oh no, not-" OF COURSE, WHAT'S SO BLOODY VEXING ABOUT THE WHOLE BUSINESS IS THAT I WAS EXPECTING TO MEET THEE IN PSEUDOPOLIS. "But that's five hundred miles away!" YOU DON'T HAVE TO TELL ME, THE WHOLE SYSTEM'S GOT SCREWED UP AGAIN. I CAN SEE THAT. LOOK THERE'S NO CHANCE OF YOU–? Rincewind backed away, hands spread protectively in front of him. The dried fish salesman on a nearby stall watched this madman with interest. I COULD LEND YOU A VERY FAST HORSE. IT WON'T HURT A BIT. "No!" Rincewind turned and ran. Death watched him go and shrugged bitterly. SOD YOU, THEN, Death said. He turned, and noticed the fish salesman. With a snarl Death reached out a bony finger and stopped the man's heart, but he didn't take much pride in it. Then Death remembered what was due to happen later that night. It would not be true to say that Death smiled, because in any case His features were perforce frozen in a calcareous grin. But He hummed a little tune, cheery as a plague pit, and pausing only to extract the life from a passing mayfly, and one-ninth of the lives from a cat cowering under the fish stall (all cats can see into the octarine) - Death turned on His heel and set off towards the Broken Drum.     Short Street, Morpork, is in fact one of the longest in the city. Filigree Street crosses its turnwise end in the manner of the crosspiece of a T, and the Broken Drum is so placed that it looks down the full length of the street. At the furthermost end of Short Street a dark oblong rose on hundreds of tiny legs, and started to run. At first it moved at no more than a lumbering trot, but by the time it was halfway up the street it was moving arrow-fast... A darker shadow inched its way along one of the walls of the Drum, a few yards from the two trolls who were guarding the door. Rincewind was sweating. If they heard the faint clinking of the specially-prepared bags at his belt... One of the trolls tapped his colleague on the shoulder, producing a noise like two pebbles being knocked together. He pointed down the starlit street... Rincewind darted from his hiding place, turned, and hurled his burden through the Drum's nearest window. Withel saw it arrive. The bag arced across the room, turning slowly in the air, and burst on the edge of a table. A moment later gold coins were rolling across the floor, spinning, glittering. The room was suddenly silent, save for the tiny noises of gold and the whimpers of the wounded. With a curse Withel despatched the assassin he had been fighting. "It's a trick!" he screamed. "No-one move!" Three score men and a dozen trolls froze in mid-grope. Then, for the third time, the door burst open. Two trolls hurried through it, slammed it behind them dropped the heavy bar across it and fled down the stairs. Outside there was a sudden crescendo of running feet. And, for the last time, the door opened. In fact it exploded, the great wooden bar being hurled far across the room and the frame itself giving way. Door and frame landed on a table, which flew into splinters. It was then that the frozen fighters noticed that there was something else in the pile of wood. It was a box, shaking itself madly to free itself of the smashed timber around it. Rincewind appeared in the ruined doorway hurling another of his gold grenades. It smashed into a wall, showering coins.     Down in the cellar Broadman looked up, muttered to himself, and carried on with his work. His entire spindlewinter's supply of candles had already been strewn on the floor, mixed with his store of kindling wood. Now he was attacking a barrel of lamp oil. "inn-sewer-ants" he muttered. Oil gushed out and swirled around his feet.     Withel stormed across the floor, his face a mask of rage. Rincewind took careful aim and caught the thief full in the chest with a bag of gold. But now Ymor was shouting, and pointing an accusing finger. A raven swooped down from its perch in the rafters and dived at the wizard, talons open and gleaming. It didn't make it. At about the halfway point the Luggage leapt from its bed of splinters, gaped briefly in mid-air, and snapped shut. It landed lightly. Rincewind saw its lid open again, slightly. Just far enough for a tongue, large as a palm leaf, red as mahogany, to lick up a few errant feathers. At the same moment the giant candlewheel fell from the ceiling, plunging the room into gloom. Rincewind, coiling himself like a spring, gave a standing jump and grasped a beam, swinging himself up into the relative safety of the roof with a strength that amazed him. "Exciting, isn't it?" said a voice by his ear. Down below, thieves, assassins, trolls and merchants all realised at about the same moment that they were in a room made treacherous of foothold by gold coins and containing something, among the suddenly menacing shapes in the semi-darkness, that was absolutely horrible. As one they made for the door, but had two dozen different recollections of its exact position. High above the chaos Rincewind stared  at Twoflower. "Did you cut the lights down?" he hissed. "Yes." "How come you're up here?" "I thought I'd better not get in everyone's way–" Rincewind considered this. There didn't seem to be much he could say. Twoflower added: "A real brawl! Better than anything I'd imagined! Do you think I ought to thank them? Or did you arrange it? " Rincewind looked at him blankly. "I think we ought to be getting down now," he said hollowly. "Everyone's gone." He dragged Twoflower across the littered floor and up the steps. They burst out into the tail end of the night. There were still a few stars but the moon was down, and there was a faint grey glow to rimward. Most important, the street was empty. Rincewind sniffed. "Can you smell oil?" he said. Then Withel stepped out of the shadows and tripped him up.     At the top of the cellar steps Broadman knelt down and fumbled in his tinderbox. It turned out to be damp. "I'll kill that bloody cat," he muttered, and groped for the spare box that was normally on the ledge by the door. It was missing. Broadman said a bad word. A lighted taper appeared in mid-air, right beside him. HERE, TAKE THIS. "Thanks," said Broadman. DON'T MENTION IT. Broadman went to throw the taper down the steps. His hand paused in mid-air. He looked at the taper, his brow furrowing. Then he turned around and held the taper up to illuminate the scene. It didn't shed much light, but it did give the darkness a shape... "Oh, no" he breathed. BUT YES, said Death.     Rincewind rolled. For a moment he thought Withel was going to spit him where he lay. But it was worse than that. He was waiting for him to get up. "I see you have a sword, wizard," he said quietly. "I suggest you rise, and we shall see how well you use it." Rincewind stood up as slowly as he dared, and drew from his belt the short sword he had taken from the guard a few hours and a hundred years ago. It was a short blunt affair compared to Withel 's hair-thin rapier. "But I don't know how to use a sword," he wailed. "Good." "You know that wizards can't be killed by edged weapons?" said Rincewind desperately. Withel smiled coldly. "So I have heard," he said. "I look forward to putting it to the test." He lunged. Rincewind caught the thrust by sheer luck, jerked his hand away in shock, deflected the second stroke by coincidence, and took the third one through his robe at heart-height. There was a clink. Withel's snarl of triumph died in his throat. He drew the sword out and prodded again at the wizard, who was rigid with terror and guilt. There was another clink, and gold coins began to drop out of the hem of the wizard's robe. "So you bleed gold, do you?" hissed Withel. "But have you got gold concealed in that raggedy beard, you little-" As his sword went back for his final sweep the sullen glow that had been growing in the doorway of the Broken Drum flickered, dimmed, and erupted into a roaring fireball that sent the walls billowing outward and carried the roof a hundred feet into the air before bursting through it, in a gout of red-hot tiles. Withel stared at the boiling flames, unnerved. And Rincewind leapt. He ducked under the thief's sword arm and brought his own blade around in an arc so incompetently misjudged that it hit the man flat-first and jolted out of the wizard's hand. Sparks and droplets of flaming oil rained down as Withel reached out with both gauntleted hands and grabbed Rincewind's neck, forcing him down. "You did this!" he screamed. "You and your box of trickery. " His thumb found Rincewind's windpipe. This is it, the wizard thought. Wherever I’m going, it can't be worse than here... "Excuse me," said Twoflower. Rincewind felt the grip lessen. And now Withel was slowly getting up, a look of absolute hatred on his face. A glowing ember landed on the wizard. He brushed it off hurriedly, and scrambled to his feet. Twoflower was behind Withel, holding the man's own needle-sharp sword with the point resting in the small of the thief’s back. Rincewind's eyes narrowed. He reached into his robe, then withdrew his hand bunched into a fist. "Don't move," he said. "Am I doing this right?" asked Twoflower anxiously. "He says he'll skewer your liver if you move," Rincewind translated freely. "I doubt it," said Withel. "Bet?" "No!" As Withel tensed himself to turn on the tourist Rincewind lashed out and caught the thief on the jaw. Withel stared at him in amazement for a moment, and then quietly toppled into the mud. The wizard uncurled his stinging fist and the roll of gold coins slipped between his throbbing fingers. He looked down at the recumbent thief. "Good grief," he gasped. He looked up and yelled as another ember landed on his neck. Flames were racing along the rooftops on the other side of the street. All around him people were hurling possessions from windows and dragging horses from smoking stables. Another explosion in the white-hot volcano that was the Drum sent a whole marble mantelpiece scything overhead. "The Widdershin Gate's the nearest!" Rincewind shouted above the crackle of collapsing rafters. "Come on!" He grabbed Twoflower's reluctant arm and dragged him down the street. "My luggage!" "Blast your luggage. Stay here much longer and you'll go where you don't need luggage. Come on!" screamed Rincewind. They jogged on through the crowd of frightened people leaving the area, while the wizard took great mouthfuls of cool dawn air. Something was puzzling him. "I’m sure all the candles went out," he said. "So how did the Drum catch fire?" "I don't know," moaned Twoflower. "it's terrible, Rincewind. We were getting along so well, too." Rincewind stopped in astonishment, so that another refugee cannoned into him and spun away with an oath. "Getting on?" "Yes, a great bunch of fellows, I thought language was a bit of a problem, but they were so keen for me to join their party, they just wouldn't take no for an answer - really friendly people, I thought..." Rincewind started to correct him, then realised he didn't know how to begin. "It'll be a blow for old Broadman," Twoflower continued. "Still, he was wise. I’ve still got the rhinu he paid as his first premium." Rincewind didn't know the meaning of the word premium, but his mind was working fast. "You inn-sewered the Drum?" he said. "You bet Broadman it wouldn't catch fire?" "Oh yes. Standard valuation. Two hundred rhinu, Why do you ask?" Rincewind turned and stared at the flames racing towards them, and wondered how much of Ankh Morpork could be bought for two hundred rhinu. Quite a large piece, he decided. Only not now, not the way those flames were moving... He glanced down at the tourist. "You-" he began, and searched his memory for the worst word in the Trob tongue; the happy little beTrobi didn't really know how to swear properly. "You," he repeated. Another hurrying figure bumped into him, narrowly missing him with the blade over its shoulder. Rincewind's tortured temper exploded. "You little (such a one who, while wearing a copper nose ring, stands in a footbath atop Mount Raruaruaha during a heavy thunderstorm and shouts that Alohura, Goddess of Lightning, has the facial features of a diseased uloruaha root!)" JUST DOING MY JOB, said the figure, stalking off. Every word fell as heavily as slabs of marble; moreover, Rincewind was certain that he was the only one who heard them. He grabbed Twoflower again. "Let's get out of here!" he suggested.     One interesting side effect of the fire in Ankh-Morpork concerns the inn-sewer-ants policy, which left the city through the ravaged roof of the Broken Drum, was wafted high into the Discworld's atmosphere on the ensuing thermal, and came to earth several days and a few thousand miles away on an uloruaha bush in the beTrobi islands. The simple, laughing islanders subsequently worshipped it as a god, much to the amusement of their more sophisticated neighbours. Strangely enough the rainfall and harvests in the next few years were almost supernaturally abundant, and this led to a research team being despatched to the islands by the Minor Religions faculty of Unseen University. Their verdict was that it only went to show.     The fire, driven by the wind, spread out from the Drum faster than a man could walk. The timbers of the Widdershin Gate were already on fire when Rincewind, his face blistered and reddened from the flames, reached them. By now he and Twoflower were on horseback - mounts hadn't been that hard to obtain. A wily merchant had asked fifty times their worth, and had been left gaping when one thousand times their worth had been pressed into his hands. They rode through just before the first of the big gate timbers descended in an explosion of sparks Morpork was already a cauldron of flame. As they galloped up the red-lit road Rincewind glanced sideways at his travelling companion currently trying hard to learn to ride a horse. Bloody hell, he thought. He's alive! Me too. Who'd have thought it? Perhaps there is something in this reflected-sound-of-underground- spirits? It was a cumbersome phrase. Rincewind tried to get his tongue round the thick syllables that were the word in Twoflower's own language. "Ecolirix?" he tried. "Ecro-gnothics? Echo-gnomics?" That would do. That sounded about right.     Several hundred yards downriver from the last smouldering suburb of the city a strangely rectangular and apparently heavily-waterlogged object touched the mud on the widdershin bank. Immediately it sprouted numerous legs and scrabbled for a purchase. Hauling itself to the top of the bank the Luggage–streaked with soot, stained with water and very very angry - shook itself and took its bearings. Then it moved away at a brisk trot, the small and incredibly ugly imp that was perching on its lid watching the scenery with interest.     Bravd looked at the Weasel and raised his eyebrows. "And that's it," said Rincewind, "The Luggage caught up with us, don't ask me how. Is there any more wine?" The Weasel picked up the empty wineskin. "I think you have had just about enough wine this night," he said. Bravd's forehead wrinkled. "Gold is gold," he said finally. "How can a man with plenty of gold consider himself poor? You're either poor or rich. It stands to reason–" Rincewind hiccupped. He was finding Reason rather difficult to hold on to. "Well," he said, "what I think is, the point is, well, you know octiron?" The two adventurers nodded. The strange iridescent metal was almost as highly valued in the lands around the Circle Sea as sapient pearwood, and was about as rare. A man who owned a needle made of octiron would never lose his way, since it always pointed to the Hub of the Discworld, being acutely sensitive to the disc's magical field; it would also miraculously darn his socks. "Well, my point is, you see, that gold also has its sort of magical field. Sort of financial wizardry. Echo-gnomics." Rincewind giggled. The Weasel stood up and stretched. The sun was well up now, and the city below them was wreathed in mists and full of foul vapours. Also gold, he decided. Even a citizen of Morpork would, at the very point of death, desert his treasure to save his skin. Time to move. The little man called Twoflower appeared to be asleep. The Weasel looked down at him and shook his head. "The city awaits, such as it is," he said. "Thank you for a pleasant tale, Wizard. What will you do now?" He eyed the Luggage, which immediately backed away and snapped its lid at him. "Well, there are no ships leaving the city now," giggled Rincewind. "I suppose we'll take the coast road to Quirm. I’ve got to look after him, you see. But look, I didn't make it-" "Sure, sure," said the Weasel soothingly. He turned away and swung himself into the saddle of the horse that Bravd was holding. A few moments later the two heroes were just specks under a cloud of dust, heading down towards the charcoal city. Rincewind stared muzzily at the recumbent tourist. At two recumbent tourists. In his somewhat defenceless state a stray thought, wandering through the dimensions in search of a mind to harbour it, slid into his brain. "Here's another fine mess you’ve got me into," he moaned, and slumped backwards.     "Mad," said the Weasel. Bravd, galloping along a few feet away, nodded. "All wizards get like that," he said. "it's the quicksilver fumes. Rots their brains. Mushrooms, too " "However–" said the brown-clad one. He reached into his tunic and took out a golden disc on a short chain. Bravd raised his eyebrows. "The wizard said that the little man had some sort of golden disc that told him the time," said the Weasel. "Arousing your cupidity, little friend? You always were an expert thief, Weasel." "Aye," agreed the Weasel modestly. He touched the knob at the disc's rim, and it flipped open. The very small demon imprisoned within looked up from its tiny abacus and scowled. "It lacks but ten minutes to eight of the clock," it snarled. The lid slammed shut, almost trapping the Weasel's fingers– With an oath the Weasel hurled the time-teller far out into the heather, where it possibly hit a stone. Something, in any event, caused the case to split; there was a vivid octarine flash and a whiff of brimstone as the time being vanished into whatever demonic dimension it called home. "What did you do that for?" said Bravd, who hadn't been close enough to hear the words. "Do what?" said the Weasel. "I didn't do anything. Nothing happened at all. Come on - we're wasting opportunities! " Bravd nodded. Together they turned their steeds and galloped towards ancient Ankh, and honest enchantments.       The Sending of Eight ---- Prologue   The Discworld offers sights far more impressive than those found in universes built by Creators with less imagination but more mechanical aptitude. Although the disc's sun is but an orbiting moonlet, its prominences hardly bigger than croquet hoops, this slight drawback must be set against the tremendous sight of Great A'Tuin the Turtle, upon Whose ancient and meteor-riddled shell the disc ultimately rests. Sometimes, in His slow journey across the shores of infinity, He moves His countrysized head to snap at a passing comet. But perhaps the most impressive sight of all - if only because most brains, when faced with the sheer galactic enormity of A'Tuin, refuse to believe it- is the endless Rimfall, where the seas of the disc boil ceaselessly over the Edge into space. Or perhaps it is the Rimbow, the eight-coloured, worldgirdling rainbow that hovers in the mist-laden air over the Fall. The eighth colour is octarine, caused by the scatter-effect of strong sunlight on an intense magical field. Or perhaps, again, the most magnificent sight is the Hub. There, a spire of green ice ten miles high rises through the clouds and supports at its peak the realm of Dunmanifestin, the abode of the disc gods. The disc gods themselves, despite the splendour of the world below them, are seldom satisfied. It is embarrassing to know that one is a god of a world that only exists because every improbability curve must have its far end; especially when one can peer into other dimensions at worlds whose Creators had more mechanical aptitude than imagination No wonder, then, that the disc gods spend more time in bickering than in omnicognizance. On this particular day Blind Io, by dint of constant vigilance the chief of the gods, sat with his chin on his hand and looked at the gaming board on the red marble table in front of him. Blind Io had got his name because, where his eye sockets should have been, there were nothing but two areas of blank skin. His eyes, of which he had an impressively large number, led a semi-independent life of their own. Several were currently hovering above the table. The gaming board was a carefully-carved map of the disc world, overprinted with squares. A number of beautifully modelled playing pieces were now occupying some of the squares. A human onlooker would, for example, have recognized in two of them the likenesses of Bravd and the Weasel. Others represented yet more heroes and champions, of which the disc had a more than adequate supply. Still in the game were Io, Offler the Crocodile God, Zephyrus the god of slight breezes, Fate, and the lady. There was an air of concentration around the board now that the lesser players had been removed from the Game. Chance had been an early casualty, running her hero into a full house of armed gnolls (the result of a lucky throw by Offler) and shortly afterwards Night had cashed his chips, pleading an appointment with Destiny. Several minor deities had drifted up and were kibitzing over the shoulders of the players. Side bets were made that the Lady would be the next to leave the board. Her last champion of any standing was now a pinch of potash in the ruins of still-smoking Ankh-Morpork. and there were hardly any pieces that she could promote to first rank. Blind Io took up the dice-box, which was a skull–various orifices had been stoppered with rubies, and with several of his eyes on the lady he rolled three fives. She smiled This was the nature of the Lady's eyes: they were bright green, lacking iris or pupil, and they glowed from within. The room was silent as she scrabbled in her box of pieces and, from the very bottom, produced a couple that she set down on the board with two decisive clicks. The rest of the players, as one God, craned forward to peer at them. "A wenegad wiffard and tome fort of clerk," said Offler the Crocodile God, hindered as usual by his tusks. "Well, weally! " With one claw he pushed a pile of bone-white tokens into the centre of the table. The Lady nodded slightly. She picked up the dicecup and held it as steady as a rock, yet all the Gods could hear the three cubes rattling about inside. And then She sent them bouncing across the table. A six. A three. A five. Something was happening to the five, however. Battered by the chance collision of several billion molecules, the die flipped onto a point, spun gently and came down a seven. Blind Io picked up the cube and counted the sides. "Come on," he said wearily, "play fair."   2.  The Sending of Eight   The road from Ankh-Morpork to Quirm is high, white and winding, a thirty-league stretch of potholes and half-buried rocks that spirals around mountains and dips into cool green valleys of citrus trees, crosses liana-webbed gorges on creaking rope bridges and is generally more picturesque than Picturesque. That was a new word to Rincewind the wizard (Being Unseen University failed.) It was one of a number he had picked up since leaving the charred ruins of Ankh-Morpork. Quaint was another one. Picturesque meant - he decided after careful observation of the scenery that inspired Twoflower to use the word - that the landscape was horribly precipitous. Quaint, when used to describe the occasional village through which they passed, meant fever-ridden and tumbledown. Twoflower was a tourist, the first ever seen on the Discworld. Tourist, Rincewind had decided, meant "idiot". As they rode leisurely through the thyme-scented bee-humming air, Rincewind pondered on the experiences of the last few days. While the little foreigner was obviously insane, he was also generous and considerably less lethal than half the people the wizard had mixed with in the city–Rincewind rather liked him. Disliking him would have been like kicking a puppy. Currently Twoflower was showing a great interest in the theory and practice of magic. "It all seems, well, rather useless to me," he said. "I always thought that, you know, a wizard just said the magic words and that was that. Not all this tedious memorising." Rincewind agreed moodily. He tried to explain that magic had indeed once been wild and lawless, but had been tamed back in the mists of time by the Olden Ones, who had bound it to obey among other things the Law of Conservation of Reality; this demanded that the effort needed to achieve a goal should be the same regardless of the means used. In practical terms this meant that, say, creating the illusion of a glass of wine was relatively easy, since it involved merely the subtle shifting of light patterns. On the other hand, lifting a genuine wineglass a few feet in the air by sheer mental energy required several hours of systematic preparation if the wizard wished to prevent the simple principle of leverage flicking his brain out through his ears. He went on to add that some of the ancient magic could still be found in its raw state, recognisable- to the initiated - by the eightfold shape it made in the crystalline structure of space-time. There was the metal octiron, for example, and the gas octogen. Both radiated dangerous amounts of raw enchantment. "It's all very depressing," he finished. "Depressing?" Rincewind turned in his saddle and glanced at Twoflower's Luggage, which was currently ambling along on its little legs, occasionally snapping its lid at butterflies. He sighed. "Rincewind thinks he ought to be able to harness the lightning," said the picture-imp, who was observing the passing scene from the tiny doorway of the box slung around Twoflower's neck. He had spent the morning painting picturesque views and quaint scenes for his master, and had been allowed to knock off for a smoke. "When I said harness I didn't mean harness, snapped Rincewind. "I meant, well I just meant that - I dunno, I just can't think of the right words. I just think the world ought to be more sort of organised." "That's just fantasy," said Twoflower. "I know. That's the trouble." Rincewind sighed again. It was all very well going on about pure logic and how the universe was ruled by logic and the harmony of numbers, but the plain fact of the matter was that the disc was manifestly traversing space on the back of a giant turtle and the gods had a habit of going round to atheists' houses and smashing their windows. There was a faint sound, hardly louder than the noise of the bees in the rosemary by the road. It had a curiously bony quality, as of rolling skulls or a whirling dicebox. Rincewind peered around. There was no-one nearby. For some reason that worried him. Then came a slight breeze, that grew and went in the space of a few heartbeats. It left the world unchanged save in a few interesting particulars. There was now, for example, a five-metre tall mountain troll standing in the road. It was exceptionally angry. This was partly because trolls generally are, in any case, but it was exacerbated by the fact that the sudden and instantaneous teleportation from its lair in the Rammerorck Mountains three thousand miles away and a thousand yards closer to the Rim had raised its internal temperature to a dangerous level, in accordance with the laws of conservation of energy. So it bared its fangs and charged. "What a strange creature," Twoflower remarked, "Is it dangerous?" "Only to people!" shouted Rincewind. He drew his sword and, with a smooth overarm throw, completely failed to hit the troll. The blade plunged on into the heather at the side of the track. There was the faintest of sounds, like the rattle of old teeth. The sword struck a boulder concealed in the heather - concealed, a watcher might have considered, so artfully that a moment before it had not appeared to be there at all. It sprang up like a leaping salmon and in mid-ricochet plunged deeply into the back of the troll's grey neck. The creature grunted, and with one swipe of a claw gouged a wound in the flank of Twoflower's horse, which screamed and bolted into the trees at the roadside. The troll spun around and made a grab for Rincewind. Then its sluggish nervous system brought it the message that it was dead. It looked surprised for a moment, and then toppled over and shattered into gravel (trolls being silicaceous lifeforms, their bodies reverted instantly to stone at the moment of death). "Aaargh," thought Rincewind as his horse reared in terror. He hung on desperately as it staggered two-legged across the road and then, screaming, turned and galloped into the woods. The sound of hoofbeats died away, leaving the air to the hum of bees and the occasional rustle of butterfly wings. There was another sound, too, a strange noise for the bright time of noonday. It sounded like dice. "Rincewind?" The long aisles of trees threw Twoflower's voice from side to side and eventually tossed it back to him, unheeded. He sat down on a rock and tried to think. Firstly, he was lost. That was vexing, but it did not worry him unduly. The forest looked quite interesting and probably held elves or gnomes, perhaps both. In fact on a couple of occasions he had thought he had seen strange green faces peering down at him from the branches. Twoflower had always wanted to meet an elf. In fact what he really wanted to meet was a dragon, but an elf would do. Or a real goblin. His Luggage was missing, and that was annoying. It was also starting to rain. He squirmed uncomfortably on the damp stone, and tried to look on the bright side. for example, during its mad dash his plunging horse had burst through some rushes and disturbed a she-bear with her cubs, but had gone on before the bear could react. Then it had suddenly been galloping over the sleeping bodies of a large wolf pack and, again, its mad speed had been such that the furious yelping had been left far behind. Nevertheless, the day was wearing on and perhaps it would be a good idea - Twoflower thought - not to hang about, in the open. Perhaps there was a...he racked his brains trying to remember what sort of accommodation forests traditionally offered... perhaps there was a ginger bread house or something? The stone really was uncomfortable. Twoflower looked down and, for the first time, noticed the strange carving. It looked like a spider. Or was it a squid? Moss and lichens rather blurred the precise details. But they didn't blur the runes carved below it. Twoflower could read them clearly, and they said:   Traveller the hospitable temple of Bel-Shamharoth lies one thousand paces Hubwards.   Now this was strange, Twoflower realized, because although he could read the message the actual letters were completely unknown to him. Somehow the message was arriving in his brain without the tedious necessity of passing through his eyes. He stood up and untied his now-riddable horse from a sapling. He wasn't sure which way the Hub lay, but there seemed to be an old track of sorts leading away between the trees. This Bel-Shamharoth seemed prepared to go out of his way to help stranded travellers. In any case, it was that or the wolves. Twoflower nodded decisively. It is interesting to note that, several hours later, a couple of wolves who were following Twoflower's scent arrived in the glade. Their green eyes fell on the strange eight-legged carving - which may indeed have been a spider, or an octopus, or may yet again have been something altogether more strange – and they immediately decided that they weren't so hungry, at that. About three miles away a failed wizard was hanging by his hands from a high branch in a beech tree. This was the end result of five minutes of crowded activity. First, an enraged she-bear had barged through the undergrowth and taken the throat out of his horse with one swipe of her paw. Then, as Rincewind had fled the carnage, he had run into a glade in which a number of irate wolves were milling about. His instructors at Unseen University, who had despaired of Rincewind's inability to master levitation, would have then been amazed at the speed with which he reached and climbed the nearest tree, without apparently touching it. Now there was just the matter of the snake. It was large and green, and wound itself along the branch with reptilian patience. Rincewind wondered if it was poisonous, then chided himself for asking such a silly question. Of course it would be poisonous. "What are you grinning for?" he asked the figure on the next branch. I CAN'T HELP IT, said Death. NOW WOULD YOU BE SO KIND AS TO LET GO? I CAN'T HANG AROUND ALL DAY. "I can," said Rincewind defiantly. The wolves clustered around the base of the tree looked up with interest at their next meal talking to himself. IT WON'T HURT, said Death. If words had weight, a single sentence from Death would have anchored a ship. Rincewind's arms screamed their agony at him. He scowled at the vulture-like, slightly transparent figure. "Won't hurt?" he said. "Being torn apart by wolves won't hurt?" He noticed another branch crossing his dangerously narrowing one a few feet away. If he could just reach it... He swung himself forward, one hand outstretched. The branch, already bending, did not break. It simply made a wet little sound and twisted. Rincewind found that he was now hanging on to the end of a tongue of bark and fibre, lengthening as it peeled away from the tree. He looked down, and with a sort of fatal satisfaction realized that he would land right on the biggest wolf. Now he was moving slowly as the bark peeled back in a longer and longer strip. The snake watched him thoughtfully. But the growing length of bark held. Rincewind began to congratulate himself until, looking up, he saw what he had hitherto not noticed. There was the largest hornets' nest he had ever seen, hanging right in his path. He shut his eyes tightly. Why the troll? he asked himself. Everything else is just my usual luck, but why the troll? What the hell is going on? Click. It may have been a twig snapping, except that the sound appeared to be inside Rincewind's head. Click, click. And a breeze that failed to set a single leaf atremble. The hornets' nest was ripped from the branch as the strip passed by. It shot past the wizard's head and he watched it grow smaller as it plummeted towards the circle of upturned muzzles. The circle suddenly closed. The circle suddenly expanded. The concerted yelp of pain as the pack fought to escape the furious cloud echoed among the trees. Rincewind grinned inanely. Rincewind's elbow nudged something. It was the tree trunk. The strip had carried him right to the end of the branch. But there were no other branches. The smooth bark beside him offered no handholds. It offered hands, though. Two were even now thrusting through the mossy bark beside him; slim hands, green as young leaves. Then a shapely arm followed, and then the hamadryad leaned right out and grasped the astonished wizard firmly and, with that vegetable strength that can send roots questing into rock, drew him into the tree. The solid bark parted like a mist, closed like a clam. Death watched impassively. He glanced at the cloud of mayflies that were dancing their joyful zigzags near His skull. He snapped His fingers. The insects fell out of the air. But, somehow, it wasn't quite the same.     Blind Io pushed his stack of chips across the table, glowered through such of his eyes that were currently in the room, and strode out. A few demigods tittered. At least Offler had taken the loss of a perfectly good troll with precise, if somewhat reptilian, grace. The Lady's last opponent shifted his seat until he faced her across the board. "Lord," she said, politely. "Lady," he acknowledged. Their eyes met. He was a taciturn god. It was said that he had arrived in the Discworld after some terrible and mysterious incident in another Eventuality. It is of course the privilege of gods to control their apparent outward form, even to other gods; the Fate of the Discworld was currently a kindly man in late middle age, greying hair brushed neatly around features that a maiden would confidently proffer a glass of small beer to, should they appear at her back door. It was a face a kindly youth would gladly help over a stile. Except for his eyes, of course. No deity can disguise the manner and nature of his eyes. The nature of the two eyes of the Fate of the Discworld was this: that while at a mere glance they were simply dark, a closer look would reveal - too late! - that they were but holes opening on to a blackness so remote, so deep that the watcher would feel himself inexorably drawn into the twin pools of infinite night and their terrible, wheeling stars... The lady coughed politely, and laid twenty-one white chips on the table. Then from her robe she took another chip, silvery and translucent and twice the size of the others. The soul of a true Hero always finds a better rate of exchange, and is valued highly by the gods. Fate raised an eyebrow. "And no cheating, Lady." he said. "But who could cheat Fate?" she asked. He shrugged. "No-one. Yet everyone tries." "And yet, again, I believe I felt you giving me a little assistance against the others?" "But of course. So that the endgame could be the sweeter, lady. And now..." He reached into his gaming box and brought forth a piece, setting it down on the board with a satisfied air. The watching deities gave a collective sigh. Even the Lady was momentarily taken aback. it was certainly ugly. The carving was uncertain, as if the craftsman's hands were shaking in horror of the thing taking shape under his reluctant fingers. It seemed to be all suckers and tentacles. And mandibles, the lady observed. And one great eye. "I thought such as He died out at the beginnings of Time," she said. "Mayhap our necrotic friend was loathe even to go near this one," laughed Fate. He was enjoying himself. "It should never have been spawned." "Nevertheless," said Fate gnomically. He scooped the dice into their unusual box, and then glanced up at her. "Unless," he added, "you wish to resign...?" She shook her head. "Play," she said. "You can match my stake?" "Play."     Rincewind knew what was inside trees: wood, sap, possibly squirrels. Not a palace. Still–the cushions underneath him were definitely softer than wood, the wine in the wooden cup beside him was much tastier than sap, and there could be absolutely no comparison between a squirrel and the girl sitting before him, clasping her knees and watching him thoughtfully, unless mention was made of certain hints of furriness. The room was high, wide and lit with a soft yellow light which came from no particular source that Rincewind could identify. Through gnarled and knotted archways he could see other rooms, and what looked like a very large winding staircase. And it had looked a perfectly normal tree from the outside, too. The girl was green – flesh green. Rincewind could be absolutely certain about that, because all she was wearing was a medallion around her neck. Her long hair had a faintly mossy look about it. Her eyes had no pupils and were a luminous green. Rincewind wished he had paid more attention to anthropology lectures at University. She had said nothing. Apart from indicating the couch and offering him the wine she had done no more than sit watching him, occasionally rubbing a deep scratch on her arm. Rincewind hurriedly recalled that a dryad was so linked to her tree that she suffered wounds in sympathy. "Sorry about that," he said quickly. "it was just an accident. I mean, there were these wolves, and-" "You had to climb my tree, and I rescued you," said the dryad smoothly. "How lucky for you. And for your friend, perhaps?" "Friend?" "The little man with the magic box," said the dryad. "Oh, sure, him," said Rincewind vaguely. "Yeah, I hope he's okay." "He needs your help." "He usually does. Did he make it to a tree too?" "He made it to the Temple of Bel-Shamharoth." Rincewind choked on his wine. His ears tried to crawl into his head in terror of the syllables they had just heard. The Soul Eater–before he could stop them the memories came galloping back. Once, while a student of practical magic at Unseen University, and for a bet, he'd slipped into the little room off the main library - the room with walls covered in protective lead pentagrams, the room no-one was allowed to occupy for more than four minutes and thirty-two seconds, which was a figure arrived at after two hundred years of cautious experimentation. He had gingerly opened the Book, which was chained to the octiron pedestal in the middle of the rune-strewn floor not lest someone steal it, but lest it escape for it was the Octavo, so full of magic that it had its own vague sentience. One spell had indeed leapt from the crackling pages and lodged itself in the dark recesses of his brain. And, apart from knowing that it was one of the Eight Great Spells, no-one would know which one until he said it. Even Rincewind did not. But he could feel it sometimes, sidling out of sight behind his Ego, biding its time... On the front of the Octavo had been a representation of Bel-Shamharoth. He was not Evil, for even EVIL has a certain vitality - Bel-Shamharoth was the flip side of the coin of which Good and Evil are but one side. "The Soul Eater. His number lyeth between seven and nine; it is twice four," Rincewind quoted, his mind frozen with fear. "Oh no. Where's the Temple?" "Hubwards, towards the centre of the forest," said the dryad. "it is very old." "But who would be so stupid as to worship Bel–him? I mean, devils yes, but he's the Soul Eater-" "There were – certain advantages. And the race that used to live in these parts had strange notions." "What happened to them, then?" "I did say they used to live in these parts." The dryad stood up and stretched out her hand. "Come. I am Druellae. Come with me and watch your friend's fate. It should be interesting." "I’m not sure that-" began Rincewind. The dryad turned her green eyes on him. "Do you believe you have a choice?" she asked. A staircase broad as a major highway wound up through the tree, with vast rooms leading off at every landing. The sourceless yellow light was everywhere. There was also a sound like - Rincewind concentrated, trying to identify it- like far off thunder, or a distant waterfall. "It's the tree," said the dryad shortly. "What's it doing?" said Rincewind. "Living." "I wondered about that. I mean, are we really in a tree? Have I been reduced in size? From outside it looked narrow enough for me to put my arms around." "It is." "Um, but here I am inside it?" "You are." "Um," said Rincewind. Druellae laughed. "I can see into your mind, false wizard! Am I not a dryad? Do you not know that, what you belittle by the name tree is but the mere four-dimensional analogue of a whole multidimensional universe which - no, I can see you do not. I should have realised that you weren't a real wizard when I saw you didn't have a staff." "Lost it in a fire," lied Rincewind automatically. "No hat with magic sigils embroidered on it." "It blew off." "No familiar." "It died. Look, thanks for rescuing me, but if you don't mind I think I ought to be going. If you could show me the way out-" Something in her expression made him turn around. There were three he-dryads behind him. They were as naked as the woman, and unarmed. That last fact was irrelevant, however. They didn't look as though they would need weapons to fight Rincewind. They looked as though they could shoulder their way through solid rock and beat up a regiment of trolls into the bargain. The three handsome giants looked down at him with wooden menace. Their skins were the colour of walnut husks, and under it muscles bulged like sacks of melons. He turned around again and grinned weakly at Druellae. Life was beginning to take on a familiar shape again. "I'm not rescued, am I?" he said. "I'm captured, right?" "Of course." "And you're not letting me go?" It was a statement. Druellae shook her head. "You hurt the Tree. But you are lucky. Your friend is going to meet Bel-Shamharoth. You will only die." From behind two hands gripped his shoulders in much the same way that an old tree root coils relentlessly around a pebble. "With a certain amount of ceremony, of course," the dryad went on. "After the Sender of Eight has finished with your friend." All Rincewind could manage to say was, "You know, I never imagined there were he-dryads. Not even in an oak tree." One of the giants grinned at him. Druellae snorted. "Stupid! Where do you think acorns come from?"     There was a vast empty space like a hall, its roof lost in the golden haze. The endless stair ran right through it. Several hundred dryads were clustered at the other end of the hall. They parted respectfully when Druellae approached, and stared through Rincewind as he was propelled firmly along behind. Most of them were females, although there were a few of the giant males among them. They stood like god-shaped statues among the small, intelligent females. Insects, thought Rincewind. The Tree is like a hive. But why were there dryads at all? As far as he could recall, the tree people had died out centuries before. They had been out-evolved by humans, like most of the other Twilight Peoples. Only elves and trolls had survived the coming of Man to the Discworld; the elves because they were altogether too clever by half, and the troller-folk because they were at least as good as humans at being nasty, spiteful and greedy. Dryads were supposed to have died out, along with gnomes and pixies. The background roar was louder here. Sometimes a pulsing golden glow would race up the translucent walls until it was lost in the haze overhead. Some power in the air made it vibrate. "Now incompetent wizard," said Druellae, "see some magic. Not your weasel-faced tame magic, but root-and-branch magic, the old magic. Wild magic. Watch." Fifty or so of the females formed a tight cluster, joined hands and walked backwards until they formed the circumference of a large circle. The rest of the dryads began a low chant. Then, at a nod from Druellae, the circle began to spin widdershins. As the pace began to quicken and the complicated threads of the chant began to rise Rincewind found himself watching fascinated. He had heard about the Old Magic at University, although it was forbidden to wizards. He knew that when the circle was spinning fast enough against the standing magical field of the Discworld itself in its slow turning, the resulting astral friction would build up a vast potential difference which would earth itself in a vast discharge of the Elemental Magical Force. The circle was a blur now, and the walls of the Tree rang with the echoes of the chant. Rincewind felt the familiar sticky prickling in the scalp that indicated the build-up of a heavy charge of raw enchantment in the vicinity, and so he was not utterly amazed when, a few seconds later, a shaft of vivid octarine light speared down from the invisible ceiling and focused, crackling, in the centre of the circle. There it formed an image of a storm-swept, treegirt hill with a temple on its crest. Its shape did unpleasant things to the eye. Rincewind knew that if it was a temple to Bel-Shamharoth it would have eight sides. (Eight was also the Number of Bel-Shamharoth, which was why a sensible wizard would never mention the number if he could avoid it. Or you'll be eight alive, apprentices were jocularly warned. Bel-Shamharoth was especially attracted to dabblers in magic who, by being as it were beachcombers on the shores of the unnatural were already half-enmeshed in his nets. Rincewind's room number in his hall of residence had been 7a. He hadn't been surprised). Rain streamed off the black walls of the temple. The only sign of life was the horse tethered outside, and it wasn't Twoflower's horse. For one thing, it was too big. It was a white charger with hooves the size of meat dishes and leather harness aglitter with ostentatious gold ornamentation. It was currently enjoying a nosebag. There was something familiar about it. Rincewind tried to remember where he had seen it before. It looked as though it was capable of a fair turn of speed, anyway. A speed which, once it had lumbered up to it, it could maintain for a long time. All Rincewind had to do was shake off his guards, fight his way out of the Tree, find the temple and steal the horse out from under whatever it was that Bel-Shamharoth used for a nose. "The Sender of Eight has two for dinner, it seems." said Druellae, looking hard at Rincewind. "Who does that steed belong to, false wizard?" "I’ve no idea." "No? Well, it does not matter. We shall see soon enough." She waved a hand. The focus of the image moved inwards, darted through a great octagonal archway and sped along the corridor within. There was a figure there, sidling along stealthily with its back against one wall. Rincewind saw the gleam of gold and bronze. There was no mistaking that shape. He'd seen it many times. The wide chest, the neck like a treetrunk, the surprisingly small head under its wild thatch of black hair looking like a tomato on a coffin... he could put a name to the creeping figure, and that name was Hrun the Barbarian. Hrun was one of the Circle Sea's more durable heroes: a fighter of dragons, a despoiler of temples, a hired sword, the kingpost of every street brawl, He could even - and unlike many heroes of Rincewind's acquaintance - speak words of more than two syllables, if given time and maybe a hint or two. There was a sound on the edge of Rincewind's hearing. It sounded like several skulls bouncing down the steps of some distant dungeon. He looked sideways at his guards to see if they had heard it. They had all their limited attention focused on Hrun, who was admittedly built on the same lines as themselves. Their hands were resting lightly on the wizard's shoulders. Rincewind ducked, jerked backwards like a tumbler, and came up running. Behind him he heard Druellae shout, and he redoubled his speed. Something caught the hood of his robe, which tore off. A he-dryad waiting at the stairs spread his arms, hurtling towards him. Without breaking his stride Rincewind ducked again, so low that his chin was on a level with his knees, while a fist like a log sizzled through the air by his ear. Ahead of him a whole spinney of the tree men awaited. He spun around, dodged another blow from the puzzled guard, and sped back towards the circle, passing on the way the dryads who were pursuing him and leaving them as disorganized as a set of skittles. But there were still more in front, pushing their way through the crowds of females and smacking their fists into the horny palms of their hands with anticipatory concentration. "Stand still, false wizard," said Druellae, stepping forward. Behind her the enchanted dancers spun on, the focus of the circle was now drifting along a violet-lit corridor. Rincewind cracked. "Will you knock that off," he snarled, "Let's just get this Straight, right? I am, a real wizard!" He stamped a foot petulantly. "Indeed?" said the dryad. "Then let us see you pass a spell." "Uh-" began Rincewind. The fact was that, since the ancient and mysterious spell had squatted in his mind, he had been unable to remember even the simplest cantrap for, say, killing cockroaches or scratching the small of his back without using his hands. The mages at Unseen University had tried to explain this by suggesting that the involuntary memorising of the spell had, as it were, tied up all his spell-retention cells. In his darker moments Rincewind had come up with his own explanation as to why even minor spells refused to stay in his head for more than a few seconds. They were scared, he decided. "Um-" he repeated. "A small one would do," said Druellae, watching him curl his lips in A frenzy of anger and emberrassment. She signalled, and a couple of he-dryads closed in. The spell chose that moment to vault into the temporarily-abandoned saddle of Rincewind's consciousness. He felt it sitting there, leering defiantly at him. "I do know a spell," he said wearily. "Yes? Pray tell," said Druellae. Rincewind wasn't sure that he dared, although the Spell was trying to take control of his tongue. He fought it. "You said you could read my mind," he said indistinctly. "Read it." She stepped forward, looking mockingly into his eyes. Her smile froze. Her hands raised protectively, she crouched back. From her throat came a sound of pure terror. Rincewind looked around. The rest of the dryads were also backing away. What had he done? Something terrible, apparently. But in his experience it was only a matter of time before the normal balance of the universe restored itself and started doing the usual terrible things to him. He backed away, ducked between the still-spinning dryads who were creating the magic circle, and watched to see what Druellae would do next. "Grab him," she screamed. "Take him a long way from the Tree and kill him!" Rincewind turned and bolted. Across the focus of the circle. There was a brilliant flash. There was a sudden darkness. There was a vaguely Rincewind-shaped violet shadow, dwindling to a point and winking out. There was nothing at all.     Hrun the Barbarian crept soundlessly along the corridors, which were lit with a light so violet that it was almost black. His earlier confusion was gone. This was obviously a magical temple, and that explained everything. It explained why, earlier in the afternoon, he had espied a chest by the side of the track while riding through this benighted forest. Its top was invitingly open, displaying much gold. But when he had leapt off his horse to approach it the chest had sprouted legs and had gone trotting off into the forest, stopping again a few hundred yards away. Now, after several hours of teasing pursuit, he had lost it in these hell-lit tunnels. On the whole, the unpleasant carvings and occasional disjointed skeletons he passed held no fears for Hrun. This was partly because he was not exceptionally bright while being at the same time exceptionally unimaginative, but it was also because odd carvings and perilous tunnels were all in a day's work. He spent a great deal of time in similar situations, seeking gold or demons or distressed virgins and relieving them respectively of their owners, their lives and at least one cause of their distress. Observe Hrun, as he leaps cat-footed across a suspicious tunnel mouth. Even in this violet light his skin gleams coppery. There is much gold about his person, in the form of anklets and wristlets, but otherwise he is naked except for a leopardskin loincloth. He took that in the steaming forests of Howondaland, after killing its owner with his teeth. In his right hand he carried the magical black sword Kring, which was forged from a thunderbolt and had a soul but suffers no scabbard. Hrun had stolen it only three days before from the impregnable palace of the Archmandrite of B'Ituni, and he was already regretting it. It was beginning to get on his nerves. "I tell you it went down that last passage on the right," hissed Kring in a voice like the scrape of a blade over stone. "Be silent!" "All I said was-" "Shut up!"     And Twoflower... He was lost, he knew that. Either the building was much bigger than it looked, or he was now on some wide underground level without having gone down any steps, or - as he was beginning to suspect - the inner dimensions of the place disobeyed a fairly basic rule of architecture by being bigger than the outside. And why all these strange lights? They were eight-sided crystals set at regular intervals in the walls and ceiling, and they shed a rather unpleasant glow that didn't so much illuminate as outline the darkness. And whoever had done those carvings on the wall, Twoflower thought charitably, had probably been drinking too much. For years. On the other hand, it was certainly a fascinating building. Its builders had been obsessed with the number eight. The floor was a continuous mosaic of eight-sided tiles, the corridor walls and ceilings were angled to give the corridors eight sides if the walls and ceilings were counted and, in those places where part of the masonry had fallen in Twoflower noticed that even the stones themselves had eight sides. "I don't like it," said the picture imp, from his box around Twoflower's neck. "Why not?" inquired Twoflower. "It's weird." "But you're a demon. Demons can't call things weird. I mean, what's weird to a demon?" "Oh, you know," said the demon cautiously, glancing around nervously and shifting from claw to claw. "Things. Stuff." Twoflower looked at him sternly. "What things?" The demon coughed nervously (demons do not breathe, however, every intelligent being, whether it breathes or not, coughs nervously at some time in its life. And this was one of them as far as the demon was concerned). "Oh, things," it said wretchedly. "Evil things. Things we don't talk about is the point I'm broadly trying to get across, master." Twoflower shook his head wearily. "I wish Rincewind was here," he said. "He'd know what to do." "Him?" sneered the demon. "Can't see a wizard coming here. They can't have anything to do with the number eight." The demon slapped a hand across his mouth guiltily. Twoflower looked up at the ceiling. "What was that?" he asked. "Didn't you hear something?" "Me? Hear? No! Not a thing," the demon insisted. It jerked back into its box and slammed the door. Twoflower tapped on it. The door opened a crack. "It sounded like a stone moving," he explained. The door banged shut. Twoflower shrugged. "The place is probably falling to bits," he said to himself. He stood up. "I say!" he shouted. "Is anyone there?" AIR, Air, air, replied the dark tunnels. "Hullo?" he tried. lo, Lo, lo. "I know there's someone here, I just heard you playing dice! " ICE, Ice, ice. "Look, I had just-" Twoflower stopped. The reason for this was the bright point of light that had popped into existence a few feet from his eyes. It grew rapidly, and after a few seconds was the tiny bright shape of a man. At this stage it began to make a noise, or, rather Twoflower started to hear the noise it had been making all along. It sounded like a sliver of a scream, caught in one long instant of time. The iridescent man was doll-sized now, a tortured shape tumbling in slow motion while hanging in mid-air. Twoflower wondered why he had thought of the phrase "a sliver of a scream"...and began to wish he hadn't. It was beginning to look like Rincewind. The wizard's mouth was open, and his face was brilliantly lit by the light of – what? Strange suns, Twoflower found himself thinking. Suns men don't usually see. He shivered. Now the turning wizard was half man-size. At that point the growth was faster, there was a sudden crowded moment, a rush of air, and an explosion of sound. Rincewind tumbled out of the air, screaming. He hit the floor hard, choked, then rolled over with his head cradled in his arms and his body curled up tightly. When the dust had settled Twoflower reached out gingerly and tapped the wizard on the shoulder. The human ball rolled up tighter. "It's me," explained Twoflower helpfully. The wizard unrolled a fraction. "What?" he said. "Me." In one movement Rincewind unrolled and bounced up in front of the little man, his hands gripping his shoulders desperately. His eyes were wild and wide. "Don't say it!" he hissed. "Don't say it and we might get out! " "Get out? How did you get in? Don't you know-" "Don't say it!" Twoflower backed away from this madman "Don't say it!" "Don't say what?" "The number." "Number?" said Twoflower. "Hey, Rincewind-" "Yes, number! Between seven and nine. Four plus four" "What, ei–" Rincewind's hands clapped over the man's mouth. "Say it and we're doomed. Just don't think about, right. Trust me!" "I don't understand," wailed Twoflower. Rincewind relaxed slightly; which was to say that he still made a violin string look like a bowl of jelly. "Come on," he said. "Let's try and get out. And I'll try and tell you."     After the first Age of Magic the disposal of grimoires began to become a severe problem on the Discworld. A spell is still a spell even when imprisoned temporarily in parchment and ink. It has potency. This is not a problem while the book's owner still lives, but on his death the Spell book becomes a source of uncontrolled power that cannot easily be defused. In short, spell books leak magic. Various solutions have been tried. Countries near the Rim simply loaded down the books of dead mages with leaden pentagrams and threw them over the Edge. Near the Hub less satisfactory alternatives were available. Inserting the offending books in canisters of negatively polarized octiron and sinking them in the fathomless depths of the sea was one (burial in deep caves on land was earlier ruled out after some districts complained of walking trees and five-headed cats) but before long the magic seeped out and eventually fishermen complained of shoals of invisible fish or psychic clams. A temporary solution was the construction, in various centres of magical lore, of large rooms made of denatured octiron, which is impervious to most forms of magic. Here the more critical grimoires could be stored until their potency had attenuated. That was how there came to be at Unseen University the Octavo, greatest of all grimoires, formerly owned by the Creator of the Universe. It was this book that Rincewind had once opened for a bet. He had only a second to stare at a page before setting off various alarm spells, but that was time enough for one spell to leap from it and settle in his memory like a toad in a stone.     "Then what?" said Twoflower. "Oh, they dragged me out. Thrashed me, of course." "And no-one knows what the spell does?" Rincewind shook his head. "It'd vanished from the page," he said. "No-one will know until I say it. Or until I die, of course. Then it will sort of say itself. For all I know it stops the universe, or ends Time, or anything." Twoflower patted him on the shoulder. "No sense in brooding," he said cheerfully. "Let's have another look for a way out." Rincewind shook his head. All the terror had been spent now. He had broken through the terror barrier, perhaps, and was in the dead calm state of mind that lies on the other side. Anyway, he had ceased to gibber. "We're doomed," he stated. "We’ve been walking around all night. I tell you, this place is a spiderweb. It doesn't matter which way we go, we're heading twoards the centre." "It was very kind of you to come looking for me, said Twoflower. "How did you manage it it was very impressive." "Well," began the wizard awkwardly. "I just 'I can't leave old Twoflower there' and-" "So what we’ve got to do now is find this Bel-Shamharoth person and explain things to him and perhaps he'll let us out," said Twoflower. Rincewind ran a finger around his ear. "It must be the funny echoes in here," he said. "I thought I heard you use words like find and explain. "That's right." Rincewind glared at him in the hellish purple glow. "Find Bel-Shamharoth?" he said. "Yes. We don't have to get involved." "Find the Soul Render and not get involved? Just give him a nod, I suppose, and ask the way to the exit? Explain things to the Sender of Eignnnngh," Rincewind bit off the end of the word just in time and finished, "You're insane. Hey! Come back!" He darted down the passage after Twoflower, and after a few moments came to a halt with a groan. The violet light was intense here, giving everything new and unpleasant colours. This wasn't a passage, it was a wide room with walls to a number that Rincewind didn't dare to contemplate, and 7 passages radiating from it. Rincewind saw, a little way off, a low altar with the Same number of sides as four times two. It didn't occupy the centre of the room, however. The centre was occupied by a huge stone slab with twice as many sides as a square. It looked massive. In the strange light it appeared to be slightly tilted with one edge standing proud of the slabs around it. Twoflower was standing on it. "Hey. Rincewind! Look what's here! The Luggage came ambling down one of the other passages that radiated from the room. "That's great," said Rincewind. "Fine. It can lead us out of here. Now." Twoflower was already rummaging in the chest "Yes," he said. "After I’ve taken a few pictures Just let me fit the attachment–" "I said now–" Rincewind stopped. Hrun the Barbarian was standing in the passage mouth directly opposite him, a great black sword held in one ham-sized fist. "You?" said Hrun uncertainly. "Ahaha. Yes," said Rincewind. "Hrun, isn't it? Long time no see. What brings you here?" Hrun pointed to the luggage. "That," he said. This much conversation seemed to exhaust Hrun. Then he added, in a tone that combined statement, claim, threat and ultimatum: "Mine." "It belongs to Twoflower here," said Rincewind. "Here's a tip. Don't touch it." It dawned on him that this was precisely the wrong thing to say, but Hrun had already pushed Twoflower away and was reaching for the Luggage... which sprouted legs, backed away, and raised its lid threateningly. In the uncertain light Rincewind thought he could see rows of enormous teeth, white as bleached beechwood. "Hrun," he said quickly, "there's something I ought to tell you." Hrun turned a puzzled face to him. "What?" he said. "It's about numbers. Look, you know if you add seven and one, or three and five, or take two from ten. You get a number. While you're here don't say it and we might all stand a chance of getting out of here alive. Or merely just dead." "Who is he?" asked Twoflower. He was holding a cage in his hands, dredged from the bottom-most depths of the Luggage. It appeared to be full of sulking pink lizards. "I am Hrun," said Hrun proudly. Then he looked at Rincewind. "What?" he said. "Just don't say it, okay?" said Rincewind. He looked at the sword in Hrun's hand. It was black, the sort of black that is less a colour than a graveyard of colours, and there was a highly ornate runic inscription up the blade. More noticeable still was the faint octarine glow that surrounded it. The sword must have noticed him, too, because it suddenly spoke in a voice like a claw being scraped across glass. "Strange," it said. "Why can't he say eight?" EIGHT, hate, ate said the echoes. There was the faintest of grinding noises, deep under the earth. And the echoes, although they became softer, refused to die away. They bounced from wall to wall, crossing and recrossing, and the violet light flickered in time with the sound. "You did it!" screamed Rincewind. "I said you shouldn't say eight!" He stopped, appalled at himself. But the word was out now, and joined its colleagues in the general susurration. Rincewind turned to run, but the air suddenly seemed to be thicker than treacle. A charge of magic bigger than he had ever seen was building up; when he moved, in painful slow motion, his limbs left trails of golden sparks that traced their shape in the air. Behind him there was a rumble as the great octagonal slab rose into the air, hung for a moment on one edge, and crashed down on the floor. Something thin and black snaked out of the pit and wrapped itself around his ankle. He screamed as he landed heavily on the vibrating flagstones. The tentacle started to pull him across the floor. Then Twoflower was in front of him, reaching out for his hands. He grasped the little man's arms desperately and they lay looking into each other's faces. Rincewind slid on, even so. "What's holding you?" he gasped. "N-nothing!" said Twoflower. "What's happening?" "I'm being dragged into this pit, what do you think?" "Oh Rincewind, I'm sorry-" "You're sorry-" There was a noise like a singing saw and the pressure on Rincewind's legs abruptly ceased. He turned his head and saw Hrun crouched by the pit, his sword a blur as it hacked at the tentacles racing out towards him. Twoflower helped the wizard to his feet and they crouched by the altar stone, watching the manic figure as it battled the questing arms. "It won't work," said Rincewind. "The Sender can materialise tentacles. What are you doing?" Twoflower was feverishly attaching the cage of subdued lizards to the picture box, which he had mounted on a tripod. "I've just got to get a picture of this," he muttered. "It's stupendous! Can you hear me, imp?" The picture imp opened his tiny hatch, glanced momentarily at the scene around the pit, and vanished into the box. Rincewind jumped as something touched his leg, and brought his heel down on a questing tentacle. "Come on," he said. "Time to go zoom." He grabbed Twoflower's arm, but the tourist resisted. "Run away and leave Hrun with that thing?" he said. Rincewind looked blank. "Why not?" he said. "it's his job." "But it'll kill him," "It could be worse," said Rincewind. "What?" "It could be us," Rincewind pointed out logically. "Come on!" Twoflower pointed. "Hey" he said. "It's got my Luggage! " Before Rincewind could restrain him Twoflower ran around the edge of the pit to the box, which was being dragged across the floor while its lid snapped ineffectually at the tentacle that held it. The little man began to kick at the tentacle in fury. Another one snapped out of the melee around Hrun and caught him around the waist. Hrun himself was already an indistinct shape amid the tightening coils. Even as Rincewind stared in horor the Hero's sword was wrenched from his grasp and hurled against a wall. "Your spell!" shouted Twoflower. Rincewind did not move. He was looking at the Thing rising out of the pit. It was an enormous eye, and it was staring directly at him. He whimpered as a tentacle fastened itself around his waist. The words of the spell rose unbidden in his throat. He opened his mouth as in a dream, shaping it around the first barbaric syllable. Another tentacle shot out like a whip and coiled around his throat, choking him. Staggering and gasping, Rincewind was dragged across the floor. One flailing arm caught Twoflower's picture box as it skittered past on its tripod. He snatched it up instinctively, as his ancestors might have snatched up a stone when faced with a marauding tiger. If only he could get enough room to swing it against the Eye... ...the Eye filled the whole universe in front of him. Rincewind felt his will draining away like water from a sieve. In front of him the torpid lizards stirred in their cage on the picture box. Irrationally, as a man about to be beheaded notices every scratch and stain on the executioner's block, Rincewind saw that they had overlarge tails that were bluish-white and, he realized, throbbing alarmingly. As he was drawn towards the Eye the terrors-truck Rincewind raised the box protectively, and at the same time heard the picture imp say "They're about ripe now, can't hold them any longer. Everyone smile, please." There was a flash of light so white and so bright it didn't seem like light at all. Bel-Shamharoth screamed, a sound that started in the far ultrasonic and finished somewhere in Rincewind's bowels. The tentacles went momentarily as stiff as rods, hurling their various cargoes around the room, before bunching up protectively in front of the abused Eye. The whole mass dropped into the pit and a moment later the big slab was snatched up by several dozen tentacles and slammed into place, leaving a number of thrashing limbs trapped around the edge. Hrun landed rolling, bounced off a wall and came up on his feet. He found his sword and started to chop methodically at the doomed arms. Rincewind lay on the floor, concentrating on not going mad. A hollow wooden noise made him turn his head. The Luggage had landed on its curved lid. Now it was rocking angrily and kicking its little legs in the air. Warily, Rincewind looked around for Twoflower The little man was in a crumpled heap against the wall, but at least he was groaning. The wizard pulled himself across the floor painfully, and whispered, "What the hell was that? "Why were they so bright?" muttered Twoflower "God, my head..." "Too bright?" said Rincewind. He looked across the floor to the cage on the picture box. The lizards inside, now noticeably thinner, were watching him with interest. "The salamanders," moaned Twoflower. "The picture'll be over-exposed, I know it..." "They're salamanders?" asked Rincewind incredulously. "Of course. Standard attachment." Rincewind staggered across to the box and picked it up. He'd seen salamanders before, of course, but they had been small specimens. They had also been floating in a jar of pickle in the curiobiological museum down in the cellars of Unseen University, since live salamanders were extinct around the Circle Sea. He tried to remember the little he knew about them. They were magical creatures. They also had no mouths, since they subsisted entirely on the nourishing quality of the octarine wavelength in the Discworld’s sunlight, which they absorbed through their skins. Of course, they also absorbed the rest of the sunlight as well, storing it in a special sac until it was excreted in the normal way. A desert inhabited by discworld salamanders was a veritable lighthouse at night. Rincewind put them down and nodded grimly. With all the octarine light in this magical place the creatures had been gorging themselves, and then nature had taken its course. The picture box sidled away on its tripod. Rincewind aimed a kick at it, and missed. He was beginning to dislike sapient pearwood. Something small stung his cheek. He brushed it away irritably. He looked around at a sudden grinding noise, and a voice like a carving knife cutting through silk said, "This is very undignified." "Shuddup," Said Hrun. He was using Kring to lever the top off the altar. He looked up at Rincewind and grinned. Rincewind hoped that rictus-strung grimace was a grin. "Mighty magic," commented the barbarian, pushing down heavily on the complaining blade with a hand the size of a ham. "Now we share the treasure eh?" Rincewind grunted as something small and hard struck his ear. There was a gust of wind, hardly felt. "How do you know there's treasure in there?" he said. Hrun heaved, and managed to hook his fingers under the stone. "You find chokeapples under a chokeapple tree," he said. "You find treasure under altars. Logic." He gritted his teeth. The stone swung up and landed heavily on the floor. This time something struck Rincewind's hand heavily. He clawed at the air and looked at the thing he had caught. It was a piece of stone with five-plus-three sides. He looked up at the ceiling Should it be sagging like that? Hrun hummed a little tune as he began to pull crumbling leather from the desecrated altar. The air crackled, fluoresced, hummed. Intangible winds gripped the wizard's robe, flapping it out in eddies of blue and green sparks. Around Rincewind's head mad, half-formed spirits howled and gibbered as they were sucked past. He tried raising a hand. It was immediately surrounded by a glowing octarine corona as the rising magical wind roared past. The gale raced through the room without stirring one iota of dust, yet it was blowing Rincewind's eyelids inside out. It screamed along the tunnels, its banshee-wail bouncing madly from stone to stone. Twoflower staggered up, bent double in the teeth of the astral gale. "What the hell is this?" he shouted. Rincewind half-turned. Immediately the howling wind caught him, nearly pitching him over. Poltergeist eddies, spinning in the rushing air, snatched at his feet. Hrun's arm shot out and caught him. A moment later he and Twoflower had been dragged into the lee of the ravaged altar, and lay panting on the floor. Beside them the talking sword Kring sparkled, its magical field boosted a hundredfold by the storm. "Hold on!" screamed Rincewind. "The wind!" shouted Twoflower. "Where's it coming from? Where's it blowing to?" He looked into Rincewind's mask of sheer terror, which made him redouble his own grip on the stones. "We're doomed," murmured Rincewind, while overhead the roof cracked and shifted. "Where do Shadows come from? That's where the wind is blowing." What was in fact happening, as the wizard knew, was that as the abused spirit of Bel-Shamharoth sank through the deeper chthonic planes his brooding spirit was being sucked out of the very stones into the region which, according to the Discworld’s most reliable priests, was both under the ground and Somewhere Else. In consequence his temple was being abandoned to the ravages of Time, who for thousands of shamefaced years had been reluctant to go near the place. Now the suddenly released, accumulated weight of all those pent-up seconds was bearing down heavily on the unbraced stones. Hrun glanced up at the widening cracks and sighed. Then he put two fingers into his mouth and whistled. Strangely the real sound rang out loudly over the pseudosound of the widening astral whirlpool that was forming in the middle of the great octagonal slab. It was followed by a hollow echo which sounded, he fancied, strangely like the bouncing of strange bones. Then came a noise with no hint of strangeness. it was hollow hoofbeats. Hrun's warhorse cantered through a creaking archway and reared up by its master, its mane streaming in the gale. The barbarian pulled himself to his feet and slung his treasure bags into a sack that hung from the saddle, then hauled himself onto the beast's back. He reached down and grabbed Twoflower by the scruff of his neck dragging him across the saddle tree. As the horse turned around Rincewind took a desperate leap and landed behind Hrun, who raised no objection. The horse pounded surefooted along the tunnels leaping sudden slides of rubble and adroitly side stepping huge stones as they thundered down from the straining roof. Rincewind, clinging on grimly looked behind them. No wonder the horse was moving so swiftly close behind, speeding through the flickering violet light, were a large ominous-looking chest and a picture box that skittered along dangerously on its three legs. So great was the ability of sapient pearwood to follow its master anywhere, the grave goods of dead emperors had traditionally been made of it... They reached the outer air a moment before the octagonal arch finally broke and smashed into the flags. The sun was rising. Behind them a column of dust rose as the temple collapsed in on itself, but they did not look back. That was a shame, because Twoflower might have been able to obtain pictures unusual even by discworld standards. There was movement in the smoking ruins. They seemed to be growing a green carpet. Then an oak tree spiralled up, branching out like an exploding green rocket, and was in the middle of a venerable copse even before the tips of its aged branches had stopped quivering. A beech burst out like a fungus, matured, rotted, and fell in a cloud of tinder dust amid its struggling offspring. Already the temple was a half-buried heap of mossy stones. But Time, having initially gone for the throat, was now setting out to complete the job. The boiling interface between decaying magic and ascendant entropy roared down the hill and overtook the galloping horse, whose riders, being themselves creatures of Time, completely failed to notice it. But it lashed into the enchanted forest with the whip of centuries. "Impressive, isn't it?" observed a voice by Rincewind's knee as the horse cantered through the haze of decaying timber and falling leaves. The voice had an eerie metallic ring to it. Rincewind looked down at Kring the sword. It had a couple of rubies set in the pommel. He got the impression they were watching him.     From the moorland rimwards of the wood they watched the battle between the trees and Time, which could only have one ending. It was a sort of cabaret to the main business of the halt, which Was the consumption of quite a lot of a bear which had incautiously come within bowshot of Hrun. Rincewind watched Hrun over the top of his slab of greasy meat. Hrun going about the business of being a hero, he realised, was quite different to the wine-bibbing, carousing Hrun who occasionally came to Ankh-Morpork. He was cat-cautious, lithe as a panther, and thoroughly at home. And I've survived Bel-Shamharoth, Rincewind reminded himself. Fantastic. Twoflower was helping the hero sort through the treasure stolen from the temple. It was mostly silver set with unpleasant purple stones. Representations of spiders, octopi and the tree-dwelling octarsier of the hubland wastes figured largely in the heap. Rincewind tried to shut his ears to the grating voice beside him. It was no use. "-and then I belonged to the Pasha of Re'durat and played a prominent part in the battle of the Great Nef, which is where I received the slight nick you may have noticed some two-thirds of the way up my blade," Kring was saying from its temporary home in a tussock. "Some infidel was wearing an octiron collar, most unsporting, and of course I was a lot sharper in those days and my master used to use me to cut silk handkerchiefs in mid-air and - am I boring you?" "Huh? Oh, no, no, not at all. It's all very interesting," said Rincewind, with his eyes still on Hrun. How trustworthy would he be? Here they were, out in the wilds, there were trolls about... "I could see you were a cultured person," Kring went on. " seldom do I get to meet really interesting people, for any length of time, anyway. What I'd really like is a nice mantelpiece to hang over, somewhere nice and quiet. I spent a couple of hundred years on the bottom of a lake once." "That must have been fun," said Rincewind absently. "Not really," said Kring. "No, I suppose not." "What I'd really like is to be a ploughshare. I don't know what that is, but it sounds like an existence with some point to it. Twoflower hurried over to the wizard "I had a great idea," he burbled. "Yah," said Rincewind, wearily. "Why don't we get Hrun to accompany us to Quirm?" Twoflower looked amazed. "How did you know?" he said. "I just thought you'd think it," said Rincewind. Hrun ceased stuffing silverware into his saddlebags and grinned encouragingly at them. Then his eyes strayed back to the Luggage. "If we had him with us, who'd attack us?" said Twoflower. Rincewind scratched his chin. "Hrun?" he suggested. "But we saved his life in the Temple!" "Well, if by attack you mean kill," said Rincewind, "I don't think he'd do that. He's not that sort. He'd just rob us and tie us up and leave us for the wolves, I expect." "Oh, come on." "Look, this is real life," snapped Rincewind. "I mean, here you are, carrying around a box full of gold, don't you think anyone in their right minds would jump at the chance of pinching it?" I would, he added mentally –if I hadn't seen what the Luggage does to prying fingers. Then the answer hit him. He looked from Hrun to the picture box. The picture imp was doing its laundry in a tiny tub, while the salamanders dozed in their cage. "I’ve got an idea," he said. "I mean, what is it heroes really want?" "Gold?" said Twoflower. "No. I mean really want." Twoflower frowned. "I don't quite understand," he said. Rincewind picked up the picture box. "Hrun," he said. "Come over here, will you?"     The days passed peacefully. True, a small band of bridge trolls tried to ambush them on one occasion, and a party of brigands nearly caught them unawares one night (but unwisely tried to investigate the Luggage before slaughtering the sleepers). Hrun demanded, and got, double pay for both occasions. "If any harm comes to us," said Rincewind, "then there will be no-one to operate the magic box. No more pictures of Hrun, you understand?" Hrun nodded, his eyes fixed on the latest picture. It showed Hrun striking a heroic pose, with one foot on a heap of slain trolls. "Me and you and little friend Twoflowers, we all get on hokay," he said. "Also tomorrow, may we get a better profile, hokay?" He carefully wrapped the picture in trollskin and stowed it in his saddlebag, along with the others. "It seems to be working," said Twoflower admiringly, as Hrun rode ahead to scout the road. "Sure," said Rincewind. "What heroes like best is themselves." "You're getting quite good at using the picture box, you know that?" "Yar." "So you might like to have this." Twoflower held out a picture. "What is it?" asked Rincewind. "Oh, just the picture you took in the temple." Rincewind looked in horror. There, bordered by a few glimpses of tentacle, was a huge, whorled, calloused, potion-stained and unfocused thumb. "That's the story of my life," he said wearily.     "You win," said Fate, pushing the heap of souls across the gaming table. The assembled gods relaxed. "There will be other games," he added. The Lady smiled into two eyes that were like holes in the universe.     And then there was nothing but the ruin of the forests and a cloud of dust on the horizon, which drifted away on the breeze. And, sitting on a pitted and moss-grown milestone, a black and raggedy figure. His was the air of one who is unjustly put upon, who is dreaded and feared, yet who is the only friend of the poor and the best doctor for the mortally wounded. Death, although of course completely eyeless, watched Rincewind disappearing with what would, had His face possessed any mobility at all, have been a frown. Death, although exceptionally busy at all times, decided that He now had a hobby. There was something about the wizard that irked Him beyond measure. He didn't keep appointments for one thing. I'LL GET YOU YET, CULLY, said Death, in the voice like the slamming of leaden coffin lids.       The Lure of the Wyrm   It was called the Wyrmberg and it rose almost one half of a mile above the green valley; a mountain huge, grey and upside down. At its base it was a mere score of yards across. Then it rose through clinging cloud, curving gracefully outward like an upturned trumpet until it was truncated by a plateau fully a quarter of a mile across. There was a tiny forest up there, its greenery cascading over the lip. There were buildings. There was even a small river, tumbling over the edge in a waterfall so wind-whipped that it reached the ground as rain. There were also a number of cave mouths, a few yards below the plateau. They had a crudely-carved, regular look about them, so that on this crisp autumn morning the Wyrmberg hung over the clouds like a giant's dovecote. This would mean that the "doves" had a wingspan slightly in excess of forty yards.     "I knew it," said Rincewind. "We're in a strong magical field." Twoflower and Hrun looked around the little hollow where they had made their noonday halt. Then they looked at each other. The horses were quietly cropping the rich grass by the stream. Yellow butterflies skittered among the bushes. There was a smell of thyme and a buzzing of bees. The wild pigs on the spit sizzled gently. Hrun shrugged and went back to oiling his biceps. They gleamed. "Looks alright to me," he said. "Try tossing a coin," said Rincewind. "What?" "Go on. Toss a coin." "Hokay," Said Hrun. "if it gives you any pleasure." He reached into his pouch and withdrew a handful of loose change plundered from a dozen realms. With some care he selected a Zchloty leaden quarter-iotum and balanced it on a purple thumbnail. "You call," he said. "Heads or-" he inspected the obverse with an air of intense concentration, "some sort of a fish with legs." "When it's in the air," said Rincewind. Hrun grinned and flicked his thumb. The iotum rose, spinning. "Edge," said Rincewind, without looking at it.     Magic never dies. It merely fades away. Nowhere was this more evident on the wide blue expanse of the Discworld than in those areas that had been the scene of the great battles of the Mage Wars, which had happened very shortly after Creation. In those days magic in its raw state had been widely available, and had been eagerly utilized by the First Men in their war against the Gods. The precise origins of the Mage Wars have been lost in the fogs of Time, but disc philosophers agree that the First Men, shortly after their creation, understandably lost their temper. And great and pyrotechnic were the battles that followed - the sun wheeled across the sky, the seas boiled, weird storms ravaged the land, small white pigeons mysteriously appeared in people's clothing, and the very stability of the disc (carried as it was through space on the backs of four giant turtle-riding elephants) was threatened. This resulted in stern action by the Old High Ones, to whom even the Gods themselves are answerable. The Gods were banished to high places, men were re-created a good deal smaller, and much of the old wild magic was sucked out of the earth. That did not solve the problem of those places on the disc which, during the wars, had suffered a direct hit by a spell. The magic faded away slowly, over the millenia, releasing as it decayed myriads of sub-astral particles that severely distorted the reality around it...     Rincewind, Twoflower and Hrun stared at the coin. "Edge it is," said Hrun. "Well, you're a wizard. So what?" "I don't do – that sort of spell." "You mean you can't." Rincewind ignored this, because it was true. "Try it again," he suggested. Hrun pulled out a fistful of coins. The first two landed in the usual manner. So did the fourth. The third landed on its edge and balanced there. The fifth turned into a small yellow caterpillar and crawled away. The sixth, upon reaching its zenith, vanished with a sharp "spang!" A moment later there was a small thunder clap. "Hey, that one was silver," exclaimed Hrun, rising to his feet and staring upwards. "Bring it back!" "I don't know where it's gone, said Rincewind wearily. "it's probably still accelerating. The ones I tried this morning didn't come down, anyway." Hrun was still staring into the sky. "What?" said Twoflower. Rincewind sighed. He had been dreading this. "We’ve strayed into a zone with a high magical index," he said. "Don't ask me how. Once upon a time a really powerful magic field must have been generated here, and we're feeling the after-effects." "Precisely," said a passing bush. Hrun's head jerked down. "You mean this is one of those places?" he asked. "Let's get out of here!" "Right," agreed Rincewind. "if we retrace our steps we might make it. We can stop every mile or so and toss a coin." He stood up urgently and started stuffing things into his saddlebags. "What?" said Twoflower. Rincewind stopped. "Look," he snapped. "Just don't argue. Come on." "It looks alright," said Twoflower. "Just a bit underpopulated that's all..." "Yes," said Rincewind. "Odd, isn't it? Come on!" There was a noise high above them, like a strip of leather being slapped on a wet rock. Something glassy and indistinct passed over Rincewind's head, throwing up a cloud of ashes from the fire, and the pig carcass took off from the spit and rocketed into the sky. It banked to avoid a clump of trees, righted itself, roared around in a tight circle, and headed hubwards leaving a trail of hot pork-fat droplets.     "What are they doing now?" asked the old man. The young woman glanced at the scrying glass. "Heading rimwards at speed," she reported. "By the way – they’ve still got that box on legs." The old man chuckled, an oddly disturbing sound in the dark and dusty crypt. "Sapient pearwood," he said. "Remarkable. Yes, I think we will have that. Please see to it, my dear – before they go beyond your power, perhaps?" "Silence! Or–" "Or what, Liessa?" said the old man (in this dim light there was something odd about the way he was slumped in the stone chair). "You killed me once already, remember?" She snorted and stood up, tossing back her hair scornfully. It was red, flecked with gold. Erect, Liessa Wyrmbidder was entirely a magnificent sight. She was also almost naked, except for a couple of mere scraps of the lightest chain mail and riding boots of iridescent dragonhide. In one boot was thrust a riding crop, unusual in that it was as long as a spear and tipped with tiny steel barbs. "My power will be quite sufficient," she said. The indistinct figure appeared to nod, or at least to wobble. "So you keep assuring me," he said. Liessa snorted, and strode out of the hall. Her father did not bother to watch her go. One reason for this was, of course, that since he had been dead for three months his eyes were in any case not in the best of condition. The other was that as a wizard - even a dead wizard of the fifteenth grade, his optic nerves had long since become attuned to seeing into levels and dimensions far removed from common reality, and were therefore somewhat inefficient at observing the merely mundane. (During his life they had appeared to others to be eight-faceted and eerily insectile.) Besides, since he was now suspended in the narrow space between the living world and the dark shadow-world of Death he could survey the whole of Causality itself. That was why, apart from a mild hope that this time his wretched daughter would get herself killed, he did not devote his considerable powers to learning more about the three travellers galloping desperately out of his realm. Several hundred yards away, Liessa was in a strange humour as she strode down the worn steps that led into the hollow heart of the Wyrmberg followed by half a dozen Riders. Would this be the opportunity? Perhaps here was the key to break the deadlock, the key to the throne of the Wyrmberg. It was rightfully hers, of course; but tradition said that only a man could rule the Wyrmberg. That irked Liessa, and when she was angry the Power flowed stronger and the dragons were especially big and ugly. If she had a man, things would be different Someone who, for preference, was a big strapping lad but short on brains. Someone who would do what he was told. The biggest of the three now fleeing the dragonlands might do. And if it turned out that he wouldn't, then dragons were always hungry and needed to be fed regularly. She could see to it that they got ugly. Uglier than usual, anyway. The stairway passed through a stone arch and ended in a narrow ledge near the roof of the great cavern where the Wyrms roosted. Sunbeams from the myriad entrances around the walls cries-crossed the dusty gloom like amber rods in which a million golden insects had been preserved. Below, they revealed nothing but a thin haze. Above... The walking rings started so close to Liessa's head that she could reach up and touch one. They stretched away in their thousands across the upturned acres of the cavern roof. It had taken a score of masons a score of years to hammer the pitons for all those, hanging from their work as they progressed. Yet they were as nothing compared to the eighty-eight major rings that clustered near the apex of the dome. A further fifty had been lost in the old days, as they were swung into place by teams of sweating slaves (and there had been slaves aplenty, in the first days of the Power) and the great rings had gone crashing into the depths, dragging their unfortunate manipulators with them. But eighty-eight had been installed, huge as rainbows, rusty as blood. From them the dragons sense Liessa's presence. Air swishes around the cavern as eighty-eight pairs of wings unfold like a complicated puzzle. Great heads with green, multi-faceted eyes peer down at her. The beasts were still faintly transparent. While the men around her take their hookboots from the rack. Liessa bends her mind to the task of full visualisation; about her in the musty air the dragons become fully visible, bronze scales dully reflecting the sunbeam shafts. Her mind throbs, but now that the Power is flowing fully she can, with barely a wander of concentration, think of other things. Now she too buckles on the hookboots and turns a graceful cartwheel to bring their hooks, with a faint clung, against a couple of the walking rings in the ceiling. Only now it is the floor. The world has changed. Now she is standing on the edge of a deep bowl or crater, floored with the little rings across which the dragonriders are already strolling with a pendulum grit. In the centre of the bowl their huge mounts wait among the herd. Far above are the distant rocks of the cavern floor, discoloured by centuries of dragon droppings. Moving with the easy gliding movement that is second nature Liessa sets off towards her own dragon, Laolith, who turns his great horsey head towards her. His jowls are greasy with pork fat. It was very enjoyable, he says in her mind. "I thought I said there were to be no unaccompanied flights?" she snaps. I was hungry, Liessa. "Curb your hunger. Soon there will be horses to eat." The reins stick in our teeth. Are there any warriors? We like warriors. Liessa swings down the mounting ladder and lands with her legs locked around Laolith's leathery neck. "The warrior is mine. There are a couple of others you can have. One appears to be a wizard of sorts," she adds by way of encouragement. Oh, you know how it is with wizards. Half an hour afterwards you could do with another one, the dragon grumbles. He spreads his wings and drops.     "They're gaining," screamed Rincewind. He bent even lower over his horse's neck and groaned. Twoflower was trying to keep up while at the same time craning round to look at the flying beasts. "You don't understand!" screamed the tourist, above the terrible noise of the wingbeats. "All my life I've wanted to see dragons!" "From the inside?" shouted Rincewind. "Shut up and ride!" He whipped at his horse with the reins and stared at the woods ahead, trying to drag it closer by sheer willpower. Under those trees they'd be safe. Under those trees no dragons could fly... He heard the clap of wings before shadows folded around him. Instinctively he rolled in the saddle and felt the white-hot stab of pain as something sharp scored a line across his shoulders. Behind him Hrun screamed, but it sounded more like a bellow of rage than a cry of pain. The barbarian had vaulted down into the heather and had drawn the black sword, Kring. He flourished it as one of the dragons curved in for another low pass. "No bloody lizard does that to me!" he roared. Rincewind leaned over and grabbed Twoflower's reins. "Come on," he hissed. "But, the dragons–" said Twoflower, entranced. "Blast the–" began the wizard, and froze. Another dragon had peeled off from the circling dots overhead and was gliding towards them. Rincewind let go of Twoflower's horse, swore bitterly, and spurred his own mount towards the trees, alone. He didn't look back at the sudden commotion behind him and, when a shadow passed over him, merely gibbered weakly and tried to burrow into the horse's mane. Then, instead of the searing, piercing pain he had expected, there was a series of stinging blows as the terrified animal passed under the leaves of the wood. The wizard tried to hang on but another low branch, stouter than the others, knocked him out of the saddle. The last thing he heard before the flashing blue lights of unconsciousness closed in was a high reptilian scream of frustration, and the thrashing of talons in the treetops. When he awoke a dragon was watching him; at least, it was staring in his general direction. Rincewind groaned and tried to dig his way into the moss with his shoulderblades, then gasped as the pain hit him. Through the mists of agony and fear he looked back at the dragon. The creature was hanging from a branch of a large dead oak tree, several hundred feet away. Its bronze-gold wings were tightly wrapped around its body but the long equine head turned this way and that at the end of a remarkably prehensile neck. It was scanning the forest. It was also semi-transparent. Although the sun glinted off its scales, Rincewind could clearly make out the outlines of the branches behind it. On one of them a man was sitting, dwarfed by the hanging reptile. He appeared to be naked except for a pair of high boots, a tiny leather holdall in the region of his groin, and a high-crested helmet. He was swinging a short sword back and forth idly, and stared out across the tree tops with the air of one carrying out a tedious and unglamorous assignment. A beetle began to crawl laboriously up Rincewind's leg. The wizard wondered how much damage a half solid dragon could do. Would it only half-kill him? He decided not to stay and find out. Moving on heels, fingertips and shoulder muscles, Rincewind wriggled sideways until foliage masked the oak and its occupants. Then he scrambled to his feet and hared off between the trees. He had no destination in mind, no provisions, and no horse. But while he still had legs he could run. Ferns and brambles whipped at him, but he didn't feel them at all. When he had put about a mile between him and the dragon he stopped and collapsed against a tree, which then spoke to him. "Psst," it said. Dreading what he might see, Rincewind let his gaze slide upwards. It tried to fasten on innocuous bits of bark and leaf, but the scourge of curiosity forced it to leave them behind. Finally it fixed on a black sword thrust straight through the branch above Rincewind's head. "Don't just stand there," said the sword (in a voice like the sound of a finger dragged around the rim of a large empty wine glass). "Pull me out." "What?" said Rincewind, his chest still heaving. "Pull me out," repeated Kring. "It's either that or I'll be spending the next million years in a coal measure. Did I ever tell you about the time I was thrown into a lake up in th–" "What happened to the others?" said Rincewind, still clutching the tree desperately. "Oh, the dragons got them. And the horses. And that box thing. Me too, except that Hrun dropped me. What a stroke of luck for you." "Well-" began Rincewind. Kring ignored him. "I expect you'll be in a hurry to rescue them," it added. "Yes, well-" "So if you'll just pull me out we can be off." Rincewind squinted up at the sword. A rescue attempt had hitherto been so far at the back of his mind that, if some advanced speculations on the nature and shape of the many-dimensioned multiplexity of the universe were correct, it was right at the front; but a magic sword was a valuable item... And it would be a long trek back home, wherever that was... He scrambled up the tree and inched along the branch. Kring was buried very firmly in the wood. He gripped the pommel and heaved until lights flashed in front of his eyes. "Try again," said the sword encouragingly. Rincewind groaned and gritted his teeth. "Could be worse," said Kring. "This could have been an anvil." "Yaargh," hissed the wizard, fearing for the future of his groin. "I have had a multidimensional existence," said the sword. "Ungh?" "I have had many names, you know." "Amazing," said Rincewind. He swayed backwards as the blade slid free. It felt strangely light. back on the ground again he decided to break the news. "I really don't think rescue is a good idea," he said. "I think we'd better head back to a city, you know. To raise a search party." "The dragons headed hubwards," said Kring. "However, I suggest we start with the one in the trees over there." "Sorry, but-" "You can't leave them to their fate!" Rincewind looked surprised. "I can't?" he said. "No. You can't. Look, I'll be frank. I’ve worked with better material than you, but it's either that or–have you ever spent a million years in a coal measure?" "Look,I–" "So if you don't stop arguing I'll chop your head off." Rincewind saw his own arm snap up until the shimmering blade was humming a mere inch from his throat. He tried to force his fingers to let go. They wouldn't. "I don't know how to be a hero!" he shouted. "I propose to teach you."     Bronze Psepha rumbled deep in his throat. K!sdra the dragonrider leaned forward and squinted across the clearing. "I see him," he said. He swung himself down easily from branch to branch and landed lightly on the tussocky grass, drawing his sword. He took a long look at the approaching man, who was obviously not keen on leaving the shelter of the trees. He was armed, but the dragonrider observed with some interest the strange way in which the man held the sword in front of him at arm's length, as though embarrassed to be seen in its company. K!sdra hefted his own sword and grinned expansively as the wizard shuffled towards him. Then he leapt. Later, he remembered only two things about the fight. He recalled the uncanny way in which the wizard's sword curved up and caught his own blade with a shock that jerked it out of his grip. The other thing - and it was this, he averred, that led to his downfall - was that the wizard was covering his eyes with one hand. K!sdra jumped back to avoid another thrust and fell full length on the turf. With a snarl Psepha unfolded his great wings and launched himself from his tree. A moment later the wizard was standing over him, shouting, "Tell it that if it singes me I'll let the sword go. I will. I'll let it go! So tell it!" The tip of the black sword was hovering over K!sdra's throat, What was odd was that the wizard was obviously struggling with it, and it appeared to be singing to itself. "Psepha!" K!sdra shouted. The dragon roared in defiance, but pulled out of the dive that would have removed Rincewind's head, and flapped ponderously back to the tree. "Talk!" screamed Rincewind. K!sdra squinted at him up the length of the sword. "What would you like me to say?" he asked. "What?" "I said what would you like me to say?" "Where are my friends? The barbarian and the little man is what I mean." "I expect they have been taken back to the Wyrmberg." Rincewind tugged desperately against the surge of the sword, trying to shut his mind to Kring's bloodthirsty humming. "The Wyrmberg. There is only one. It is Dragonhome." "And I suppose you were waiting to take me there, eh?" K!sdra gulped involuntarily as the tip of the sword pricked a bead of blood from his adam's apple. "Don't want people to know you've got dragons here, eh?" snarled Rincewind. The dragonrider forgot himself enough to nod, and came within a quarter-inch of cutting his own throat. Rincewind looked around desperately, and realized that this was something he was really going to have to go through with. "Right then," he said as diffidently as he could manage. "You'd better take me to this Wyrmberg of yours, hadn't you?" "I was supposed to take you in dead," muttered K!sdra sullenly. Rincewind looked down at him and grinned slowly. It was a wide, manic and utterly humourless rictus that was the sort of grin that is normally accompanied by small riverside birds wandering in and out picking scraps out of the teeth. "Alive will do," said Rincewind. "If we're talking about anyone being dead, remember whose sword is in which hand." "If you kill me, nothing will prevent Psepha killing you," shouted the prone dragonrider. "So what I'll do is, I'll chop bits off," agreed the wizard. He tried the effect of the grin again. "Oh, all right," said K!sdra sulkily. "Do you think I’ve got an imagination?" He wriggled out from under the sword and waved at the dragon, which took wing again and glided in towards them. Rincewind swallowed. "You mean we've got to go on that?" he said. K!sdra looked at him scornfully, the point of Kring still aimed at his neck. "How else would anyone get to the Wyrmberg?" "I don't know," said Rincewind. "How else?" "I mean, there is no other way. It's flying or nothing." Rincewind looked again at the dragon before him. He could quite clearly see through it to the crushed grass on which it lay but, when he gingerly touched a scale that was a mere golden sheen on thin air, it felt solid enough. Either dragons should exist completely or fail to exist at all, he felt. A dragon only half-existing was worse than the extremes. "I didn't know dragons could be seen through," he said. K!sdra shrugged. "Didn't you?" he said. He swung himself astride the dragon awkwardly because Rincewind was hanging on to his belt. Once uncomfortably aboard the wizard moved his white-knuckle grip to a convenient piece of harness and prodded K!sdra lightly with the sword. "Have you ever flown before?" said the dragonrider, without looking round. "Not as such, no." "Would you like something to suck?" Rincewind gazed at the back of the man's head, then dropped to the bag of red and yellow sweets that was being proffered. "Is it necessary?" he asked. "It is traditional," said K!sdra. "Please yourself." The dragon stood up, lumbered heavily across the meadow, and fluttered into the air. Rincewind occasionally had nightmares about teetering on some intangible but enormously high place, and seeing a blue-distanced, cloud-punctuated landscape reeling away below him (this usually woke him up with his ankles sweating; he would have been even more worried had he known that the nightmare was not, as he thought, just the usual discworld vertigo. It was a backwards memory of an event in his future so terrifying that it had generated harmonics of fear all the way along his lifeline). This was not that event, but it was good practise for it. Psepha clawed its way into the air with a series of vertebrae-shattering bounds. At the top of its last leap the wide wings unfolded with a snap and spread out with a thump which shook the trees. Then the ground was gone, dropping away in a series of gentle jerks. Psepha was suddenly rising gracefully, the afternoon sunlight gleaming off wings that were still no more than a golden film. Rincewind made the mistake of glancing downwards, and found himself looking through the dragon to the treetops below. Far below. His stomach shrank at the sight. Closing his eyes wasn't much better, because it gave his imagination full rein. He compromised by gazing fixedly into the middle distance, where moorland and forest drifted by and could be contemplated almost casually. Wind Snatched at him. K!sdra half turned and shouted into his ear. "Behold the Wyrmberg!" Rincewind turned his head slowly, taking care to keep Kring resting lightly on the dragon's back. His streaming eyes saw the impossibly inverted mountain rearing out of the deep forested valley like a trumpet in a tub of nose. Even at this distance he could make out the faint octarine glow in the air that must be indicating a stable magic aura of at least - he gasped - several milliPrime? At least! "Oh no," he said. Even looking at the ground was better than that. He averted his eyes quickly, and realized that he could now no longer see the ground through the dragon. As they glided around in a wide circle towards the Wyrmberg it was definitely taking on a more solid form, as if the creature's body was filling with a gold mist. By the time the Wyrmberg was in front of them, swinging wildly across the sky, the dragon was as real as a rock. Rincewind thought he could see a faint streak in the air, as if something from the mountain had reached out and touched the beast. He got the strange feeling that the dragon was being made more genuine. Ahead of it the Wyrmberg turned from a distant toy to several billion tons of rock poised between heaven and earth. He could see small fields, woods and a lake up there, and from the lake a river spilled out and over the edge... He made the mistake of following the thread of foaming water with his eyes, and jerked himself back just in time. The flared plateau of the upturned mountain drifted towards them. The dragon didn't even slow. As the mountain loomed over Rincewind like the biggest fly-swatter in the universe he saw a cave mouth. Psepha skimmed towards it, shoulder muscles pumping. The wizard screamed as the dark spread and enfolded him. There was a brief vision of rock flashing past, blurred by speed. Then the dragon was in the open again. It was inside a cave, but bigger than any cave had a right to be. The dragon, gliding across its vast emptiness, was a mere gilded fly in a banqueting hall. There were other dragons – gold, silver, black, white – flapping across the sun-shafted air on errands of their own or perched on outcrops of rock. High in the domed roof of the cavern scores of others hung from huge rings, their wings wrapped bat-like around their bodies. There were men up there, too. Rincewind swallowed hard when he saw them, because they were walking on that broad expanse of ceiling like flies. Then he made out the thousands of tiny rings that studded the ceiling. A number of inverted men were watching Psepha's flight with interest. Rincewind swallowed again. For the life of him he couldn't think of what to do next. "Well?" he asked, in a whisper. "Any suggestions? "Obviously you attack," said Kring scornfully. "Why didn't I think of that?" said Rincewind "Could it be because they all have crossbows?" "You're a defeatist." "Defeatist? That's because I'm going to be defeated!" "You're your own worst enemy, Rincewind," said the sword. Rincewind looked up at grinning men. "Bet?" he said wearily. Before Kring could reply Psepha reared in midair and alighted on one of the large rings, which rocked alarmingly. "Would you like to die now, or surrender first?" asked K!sdra calmly. Men were converging on the ring from all directions, walking with a swaying motion as their hooked boots engaged the ceiling rings. There were more boots on a rack that hung in a small platform built on the side of the perch-ring. Before Rincewind could stop him the dragonrider had leapt from the creature's back to land on the platform, where he stood grinning at the wizard's discomfiture. There was a small expressive sound made by a number of crossbows being cocked. Rincewind looked up at a number of impassive, upside down faces. The dragonfolk's taste in clothing didn't run to anything much more imaginative than a leather harness, studded with bronze ornaments. Knives and sword sheaths were worn inverted. Those who were not wearing helmets let their hair flow freely, so that it moved like seaweed in the ventilation breeze near the roof. There were several women among them. The inversion did strange things to their anatomy. Rincewind stared. "Surrender," said K!sdra again. Rincewind opened his mouth to do so. Kring hummed a warning, and agonising waves of pain shot up his arm. "Never," he squeaked. The pain stopped. "Of course he won't!" boomed an expansive voice behind him. "He's a hero, isn't he?" Rincewind turned and looked into a pair of hairy nostrils. They belonged to a heavily built young man, hanging nonchalantly from the ceiling by his boots. "What is your name, hero?" said the man. "so that we know who you were." Agony shot up Rincewind's arm. "I-I'm Rincewind of Ankh," he managed to gasp. "And I am Lio!rt Dragonlord," said the hanging man, pronouncing the word with the harsh click in the back of the throat that Rincewind could only think of as a kind of integral punctuation. "You have come to challenge me in mortal combat." "Well, no, I didn't-" "You are mistaken. K!sdra, help our hero into a pair of hookboots. I am sure he is anxious to get started." "No, look, I just came here to find my friends. I'm sure there's no-" Rincewind began, as the dragonrider guided him firmly onto the platform, pushed him onto a seat, and proceeded to strap hookboots to his feet. "Hurry up, K!sdra. We mustn't keep our hero from his destiny," said Lio!rt. "Look, I expect my friends are happy enough here, so if you could just, you know, set me down somewhere "You will see your friends soon enough," said the dragonlord airily. "If you are religious, I mean. None who enter the Wyrmberg ever leave again. Except metaphorically, of course. Show him how to reach the rings, K!sdra." "Look what you’ve got me into!" Rincewind hissed. Kring vibrated in his hand. "Remember that I am a magic sword," it hummed. "How can I forget?" "Climb the ladder and grab a ring," said the dragonrider, "then bring your feet up until the hooks catch." He helped the protesting wizard climb until he was hanging upside down, robe tucked into his britches, Kring dangling from one hand. At this angle the dragonfolk looked reasonably bearable but the dragons themselves, hanging from their perches, loomed over the scene like immense gargoyles. Their eyes glowed with interest. "Attention, please," said Lio!rt. A dragonrider handed him a long shape, wrapped in red silk. "We fight to the death," he said. "Yours." "And I suppose I earn my freedom if I win?" said Rincewind, without much hope. Lio!rt indicated the assembled dragonriders with a tilt of his head. "Don't be naive, he said. Rincewind took a deep breath "I suppose I should warn you," he said, his voice hardly quavering at all, "that this is a magic sword." Lio!rt let the red silk wrapping drop away into the gloom and flourished a jet-black blade. Runes glowed on its surface. "What a coincidence," he said, and lunged. Rincewind went rigid with fright, but his arm swung out as Kring shot forward. The swords met in an explosion of octarine light. Lio!rt swung himself backwards, his eyes narrowing. Kring leapt past his guard and, although the dragonlord's sword jerked up to deflect most of the force, the result was a thin red line across its master's torso. With a growl he launched himself at the wizard boots clattering as he slid from ring to ring. The swords met again in another violent discharge of magic and, at the same time, Lio!rt brought his other hand down against Rincewind's head, jarring him so hard that one foot jerked out of its ring and flailed desperately. Rincewind knew himself to be almost certainly the worst wizard on the Discworld since he knew but one spell; yet for all that he was still a wizard, and thus by the inexorable laws of magic this meant that upon his demise it would be Death himself who appeared to claim him (instead of sending one of his numerous servants, as is usually the case). Thus it was that, as a grinning Lio!rt swung back and brought his sword around in a lazy arc, time ran into treacle. To Rincewind's eyes the world was suddenly lit by a flickering octarine light, tinged with violet as photons impacted on the sudden magical aura. Inside it the dragonlord was a ghastly-hued statue, his sword moving at a snail's pace in the glow. Beside Lio!rt was another figure, visible only to those who can see into the extra four dimensions of magic. It was tall and dark and thin and, against a sudden night of frosty stars, it swung a two-handed scythe of proverbial sharpness... Rincewind ducked. The blade hissed coldly through the air beside his head and entered the rock of the cavern roof without slowing. Death screamed a curse in his cold crypt voice. The scene vanished. What passed for reality on the Discworld reasserted itself with a rush of sound. Lio!rt gasped at the sudden turn of speed with which the wizard had dodged his killing stroke and, with that desperation only available to the really terrified, Rincewind uncoiled like a snake and launched himself across the space between them. He locked both hands around the dragonlord's sword arm, and wrenched. It was at that moment that Rincewind's one remaining ring, already overburdened, slid out of the rock with a nasty little metal sound. He plunged down, swung wildly, and ended up dangling over a bone-splintering death with his hands gripping the dragonlord's arm so tightly that the man screamed. Lio!rt looked up at his feet. Small flakes of rock were dropping out of the roof around the ring pitons. "Let go, damn you." he screamed. "Or we'll both die!" Rincewind said nothing. He was concentrating on maintaining his grip and keeping his mind closed to the pressing images of his fate on the rocks below. "Shoot him!" bellowed Lio!rt. Out of the corner of his eye Rincewind saw several crossbows levelled at him. Lio!rt chose that moment to flail down with his free hand, and a fistful of rings stabbed into the wizard's fingers. He let go.     Twoflower grabbed the bars and pulled himself up. "See anything?" said Hrun, from the region of his feet. "Just clouds." Hrun lifted him down again, and sat on the edge of one of the wooden beds that were the only furnishings in the cell. "Bloody hell," he said. "Don't despair," said Twoflower. "I'm not despairing." "I expect it's all some sort of misunderstanding. I expect they'll release us soon. They seem very civilised." Hrun stared at him from under bushy eyebrows. He started to say something, then appeared to think better of it. He sighed instead. "And when we get back we can say we've seen dragons," Twoflower continued. "What about that, eh?" "Dragons don't exist," said Hrun flatly. "Codice of Chimeria killed the last one two hundred years ago. I don't know what we're seeing, but they aren't dragons." "But they carried us up in the air! In that hall there must have been hundreds-" "I expect it was just magic," said Hrun, dismissively. "Well, they looked like dragons," said Twoflower, an air of defiance about him. "I always wanted to see dragons, ever since I was a little lad. Dragons flying around in the sky, breathing flames..." "They just used to crawl around in swamps and stuff, and all they breathed was stink," said Hrun lying down in the bunk. "They weren't very big either. They used to collect firewood." "I heard they used to collect treasure," said Twoflower. "And firewood. Hey," Hrun added, brightening "did you notice all those rooms they brought us through? Pretty impressive, I thought. Lot of good stuff about, plus some of those tapestries have got to be worth a fortune." He scratched his chin thoughtfully, making a noise like a porcupine shouldering its way through gorse. "What happens next?" asked Twoflower. Hrun screwed a finger in his ear and inspected it absently. "Oh," he said, "I expect in a minute the door will be flung back and I'll be dragged off to some sort of temple arena where I'll fight maybe a couple of giant spiders and an eight-foot slave from the jungles of Klatch and then I'll rescue some kind of a princess from the altar and then kill off a few guards or whatever and then this girl will show me the secret passage out of the place and we'll liberate a couple of horses and escape with the treasure." Hrun leaned his head back on his hands and looked at the ceiling, whistling tunelessly. "All that?" said Twoflower. "Usually." Twoflower sat down on his bunk and tried to think. This proved difficult, because his mind was awash with dragons. Dragons! Ever since he was two years old he had been captivated by the pictures of the fiery beasts in The Octarine Fairy Book. His sister had told him they didn't really exist, and he recalled the bitter disappointment. If the world didn't contain those beautiful creatures, he'd decided, it wasn't half the world it ought to be. And then later he had been bound apprentice to Ninereeds the Masteraccount, who in his grey-mindedness was everything that dragons were not, and there was no time for dreaming. But there was something wrong with these dragons. They were too small and sleek, compared to the ones in his mind's eye. Dragons ought to be big and green and clawed and exotic and firebreathing - big and green with long sharp... Something moved at the edge of his vision, in the furthest, darkest corner of the dungeon. When he turned his head it vanished, although he thought he heard the faintest of noises that might have been made by claws scrabbling on stone. "Hrun?" he said. There was a snore from the other bunk. Twoflower padded over to the corner, peering gingerly at the stones in case there was a secret panel. At that moment the door was flung back thumping against the wall. Half a dozen guards hurtled through it, spread out and flung them selves down on one knee. Their weapons were aimed exclusively at Hrun. When he thought about this later, Twoflower felt quite offended. Hrun snored. A woman strode into the room. Not many women can stride convincingly, but she managed it. She glanced briefly at Twoflower, as one might look at a piece of furniture, then glared down at the man on the bed. She was wearing the same sort of leather harness that the dragonriders had been wearing but in her case it was much briefer. That, and the magnificent mane of chestnut-red hair that fell to her waist, was her only concession to what even on the Discworld passed for decency. She was also wearing a thoughtful expression. Hrun made a glubbing noise, turned over, and slept on. With a careful movement, as though handling some instrument of rare delicacy, the woman drew a slim black dagger from her belt and stabbed downward. Before it was halfway through its arc Hrun's right hand moved so fast that it appeared to travel between two points in space without at any time occupying the intervening air. It closed around the woman's wrist with a dull smack. His other hand groped feverishly for a sword that wasn't there... Hrun awoke. "Gngh?" he said, looking up at the woman with a puzzled frown. Then he caught sight of the bowmen. "Let go," said the woman, in a voice that was calm and quiet and edged with diamonds. Hrun released his grip slowly. She stepped back, massaging her wrist and looking at Hrun in much the same way that a cat watches a mousehole. "So," she said at last. "You pass the first test. What is your name, barbarian?" "Who are you calling a barbarian?" snarled Hrun. "That is what I want to know." Hrun counted the bowmen slowly and made a brief calculation. His shoulders relaxed. "I am Hrun of Chimeria. And you?" "Liessa Dragonlady." "You are the lord of this place?" "That remains to be seen. You have the look about you of a hired sword, Hrun of Chimeria. I could use you - if you pass the tests, of course. There are three of them. You have passed the first." "What are the other-" Hrun paused, his lips moved soundlessly and then he hazarded, "two?" "Perilous." "And the fee?" "Valuable." "Excuse me," said Twoflower "And if I fail these tests?" said Hrun, ignoring him. The air between Hrun and Liessa crackled with small explosions of charisma as their gazes sought for a hold. "If you had failed the first test you would now be dead. This may be considered a typical penalty." "Um, look," began Twoflower. Liessa spared him a brief glance, and appeared actually to notice him for the first time. "Take that away," she said calmly, and turned back to Hrun. Two of the guards shouldered their bows, grasped Twoflower by the elbows and lifted him off the ground. Then they trotted smartly through the doorway. "Hey," said Twoflower, as they hurried down the corridor outside, "where" (as they stopped in front of another door) "is my" (as they dragged the door open) "Luggage?" He landed in a heap of what might once have been straw. The door banged shut, its echoes punctuated by the sound of bolts being slammed home. In the other cell Hrun had barely blinked. "Okay," he said, "what is the second test?" "You must kill my two brothers." Hrun considered this. "Both at the same time, or one after the other?" he said. "Consecutively or concurrently," she assured him "What?" "Just kill them," she said sharply "Good fighters, are they?" "Renowned." "So in return for all this...?" "You will wed me and become Lord of the Wyrmberg." There was a long pause. Hrun's eyebrows twisted themselves in unaccustomed calculation. "I get you and this mountain?" he said at last. "Yes." She looked him squarely in the eye, and her lips twitched. "The fee is worthwhile, I assure you." Hrun dropped his gaze to the rings on her hand The stones were large, being the incredibly rare blue milk diamonds from the clay basins of Mithos. When he managed to turn his eyes from them he saw Liessa glaring down at him in fury. "So calculating?" she rasped. "Hrun the Barbarian who would boldly walk into the jaws of Death Himself?" Hrun shrugged. "Sure," he said, "the only reason for walking into the jaws of Death is so's you can steal His gold teeth." He brought one arm around expansively, and the wooden bunk was at the end of it. It cannoned into the bowmen and Hrun followed it joyously, felling one man with a blow and snatching the weapon from another. A moment later it was all over. Liessa had not moved. "Well?" she said. "Well what?" said Hrun, from the carnage "Do you intend to kill me?" "What? Oh no. No, this is just, you know, kind of a habit. Just keeping in practice. So where are these brothers?" He grinned.     Twoflower sat on his straw and stared into the darkness. He wondered how long he had been there. Hours, at least. Days, probably. He speculated that perhaps it had been years, and he had simply forgotten. No, that sort of thinking wouldn't do. He tried to think of something else - grass, trees, fresh air, dragons. Dragons... There was the faintest of scrabblings in the darkness. Twoflower felt the sweat prickle on his forehead. Something was in the cell with him. Something that made small noises, but even in the pitch blackness gave the impression of hugeness. He felt the air move. When he lifted his arm there was the greasy feel and faint shower of sparks that betokened a localised magical field. Twoflower found himself fervently wishing for light. A gout of flame rolled past his head and struck the far wall. As the rocks flashed into furnace heat he looked up at the dragon that now occupied more than half the cell. I obey, lord said a voice in his head. By the glow of the crackling, spitting stone Twoflower looked into his own reflection in two enormous green eyes. Beyond them the dragon was as multi-hued, horned, spiked and lithe as the one in his memory - a real dragon. Its folded wings were nevertheless still wide enough to scrape the wall on both sides of the room. It lay with him between its talons. "Obey?" he said, his voice vibrating with terror and delight. Of course, lord. The glow faded away. Twoflower pointed a trembling finger at where he remembered the door to be and said, "Open it!" The dragon raised its huge head. Again the ball of flame rolled out but this time, as the dragon's neck muscles contracted, its colour faded from orange to yellow, from yellow to white, and finally to the faintest of blues. By that time the flame was also very thin, and where it touched the wall the molten rock spat and ran. When it reached the door the metal exploded into a shower of hot droplets. Black shadows arced and jiggered over the walls. The metal bubbled for an eye-aching moment, and then the door fell in two pieces in the passage beyond. The flame winked out with a suddenness that was almost as startling as its arrival. Twoflower stepped gingerly over the cooling door and looked up and down the corridor. It was empty. The dragon followed. The heavy door frame caused it some minor difficulty, which it overcame with a swing of its shoulders that tore the timber out and tossed it to one side. The creature looked expectantly at Twoflower, its skin rippling and twitching as it sought to open its wings in the confines of the passage. "How did you get in there?" said Twoflower. You summoned me, master. "I don't remember doing that." In your mind. You called me up, in, your mind thought the dragon, patiently. "You mean I just thought of you and there You were?" Yes. "It was magic?" Yes. "But I've thought about dragons all my life." In this place the frontier between thought and reality is probably a little confused. All I know is that once I was not, and then you thought of me, and then I was. Therefore, of course, I am yours to command. "Good grief" Half a dozen guards chose that moment to turn the bend in the corridor. They stopped, openmouthed. Then one remembered himself sufficiently to raise his crossbow and fire. The dragon's chest heaved. The quarrel exploded into flaming fragments in mid-air. The guards scurried out of sight. A fraction of a second later a wash of flame played over the stones where they had been standing. Twoflower looked up in admiration "Can you fly too?" he said. Of course. Twoflower glanced up and down the corridor, and decided against following the guards. Since he knew himself to be totally lost already, any direction was probably an improvement. He edged past the dragon and hurried away, the huge beast turning with difficulty to follow him. They padded down a series of passages that crisscrossed like a maze. At one point Twoflower thought he heard shouts, a long way behind them but they soon faded away. Sometimes the dark arch of a crumbling doorway loomed past them in the gloom. Light filtered through dimly from various shafts and, here and there, bounced off big mirrors that had been mortared into angles of the passage. Sometimes there was a brighter glow from a distant light-well. What was odd, thought Twoflower as he strolled down a wide flight of stairs and kicked up billowing clouds of silver dust motes, was that the tunnels here were much wider. And better constructed, too. There were statues in niches set in the walls, and here and there faded but interesting tapestries had been hung. They mainly showed dragons - dragons by the hundreds in flight or hanging from their perch rings, dragons with men on their backs hunting down deer and, sometimes other men. Twoflower touched one tapestry gingerly. The fabric crumbled instantly in the hot dry air, leaving only a dangling mesh where some threads had been plaited with fine gold wire. "I wonder why they left all this?" he said. I don't know said a polite voice in his head. He turned and looked up into the scaley horse face above him. "What is your name, dragon?" said Twoflower. I don't know. "I think I shall call you Ninereeds." That is my name, then. They waded through the all-encroaching dust in a series of huge, dark-pillared halls which had been delved out of the solid rock. With some cunning too, from floor to ceiling the walls were a mass of statues, gargoyles, bas-reliefs and fluted columns that cast weirdly-moving shadows when the dragon gave an obliging illumination at Twoflower's request. They crossed the lengthy galleries and vast carven amphitheatres, all awash with deep soft dust and completely uninhabited. No-one had come to these dead caverns in centuries. Then he saw the path, leading away into yet another dark tunnel mouth. Someone had been using it regularly, and recently. It was a deep narrow trail in the grey blanket. Twoflower followed it. It led through still more lofty halls and winding corridors quite big enough for a dragon (and dragons had come this way once, it seemed; there was a room full of rotting harness, dragon-sized, and another room containing plate and chain mail big enough for elephants). They ended in a pair of green bronze doors, each so high that they disappeared into the gloom. In front of Twoflower, at chest height, was a small handle shaped like a brass dragon. When he touched it the doors swung open instantly and with a disconcerting noiselessness. Instantly sparks crackled in Twoflower's hair and there was a sudden gust of hot dry wind that didn't disturb the dust in the way that ordinary wind should but, instead, whipped it up momentarily into unpleasantly half-living shapes before it settled again. In Twoflower's ears came the strange shrill twittering of the Things locked in the distant dungeon Dimensions, out beyond the fragile lattice of time and space. Shadows appeared where there was nothing to cause them. The air buzzed like a hive. In short, there was a vast discharge of magic going on around him. The chamber beyond the door was lit by a pale green glow. Stacked around the walls, each on its own marble shelf, were tier upon tier of coffins. In the centre of the room was a stone chair on a raised dais, and it contained a slumped figure which did not move but said, in a brittle old voice, "Come in, young man." Twoflower stepped forward. The figure in the seat was human, as far as he could make out in the murky light, but there was something about the awkward way it was sprawled in the chair that made him glad he couldn't see it any clearer. "I'm dead, you know," came a voice from what Twoflower fervently hoped was a head, in conversational tones. "I expect you can tell." "Um," said Twoflower. "Yes." He began to back away. "Obvious, isn't it?" agreed the voice. "You'd be Twoflower, wouldn't you? Or is that later?" "Later?" said Twoflower. "Later than what?" He stopped. "Well," said the voice. "You see, one of the disadvantages of being dead is that one is released as it were from the bonds of time and therefore I can see everything that has happened or will happen, all at the same time except that of course I now know that Time does not, for all practical purposes, exist." "That doesn't sound like a disadvantage," said Twoflower. "You don't think so? Imagine every moment being at one and the same time a distant memory and a nasty surprise and you'll see what I mean. Anyway, I now recall what it was I am about to tell you. Or have I already done so? That's a fine looking dragon, by the way. Or don't I say that, yet?" "It is rather good. It just turned up," said Twoflower. "It turned up?" said the voice. "You summoned it!" "Yes, well, all I did-" "You have the Power! " "All I did was think of it." "That's what the Power is. Have I already told you that I am Greicha the First? Or is that next? I'm sorry, but I haven't had too much experience of transcendence. Anyway, yes - the Power. It summons dragons, you know." "I think you already told me that," said Twoflower. "Did I? I certainly intended to," said the dead man. "But how does it? I've been thinking about dragons all my life, but this is the first time one has turned up." "Oh well, you see, the truth of the matter is that dragons have never existed as you (and, until I was poisoned some three months ago,) I understand existence. I'm talking about the true dragon, draconis nobilis, you understand; the swamp dragon, draconis vulgaris, is a base creature and not worth our consideration. The true dragon, on the other hand, is a creature of such refinement of spirit that they can only take on form in this world if they are conceived by the most skilled imagination. And even then the said imagination must be in some place heavily impregnated with magic which helps to weaken the walls between the world of the seen and unseen. Then the dragons pop through, as it were, and impress their form on this world's possibility matrix. I was very good at it when I was alive. I could imagine up to, oh, five hundred dragons at a time. Now Liessa, the most skilled of my children, can barely imagine fifty rather nondescript creatures. So much for a progressive education. She doesn't really believe in them. That's why her dragons are rather boring while yours," said the voice of Greicha, "is almost as good as some of mine used to be. A sight for sore eyes, not that I have any to speak of now." Twoflower said hurriedly, "You keep saying you're dead..." "Well?" "Well, the dead, er, they, you know, don't talk much. As a rule." "I used to be an exceptionally powerful wizard. My daughter poisoned me, of course. It is the generally accepted method of succession in our family, but," the corpse sighed, or at least a sigh came from the air a few feet above it, "it soon became obvious that none of my three children is sufficiently powerful to wrest the lordship of the Wyrmberg from the other two. A most unsatisfactory arrangement. A kingdom like ours has to have one ruler. So I resolved to remain alive in an unofficial capacity, which of course annoys them all immensely. I won't give my children the satisfaction of burying me until there is only one of them left to perform the ceremony." There was a nasty wheezing noise. Twoflower decided that it was meant to be a chuckle. "So it was one of them that kidnapped us?" said Twoflower. "Liessa," said the dead wizard's voice. "My daughter. Her power is strongest, you know. My sons' dragons are incapable of flying more than a few miles before they fade." "Fade? I did notice that we could see through the one that brought us here," said Twoflower. "I thought that was a bit odd." "Of course," said Greicha. "The Power only works near the Wyrmberg. It's the inverse square law you know. At least, I think it is. As the dragons fly further away they begin to dwindle. Otherwise my little Liessa would be ruling the whole world by now, if I know anything about it. But I can see I mustn't keep you. I expect you'll be wanting to rescue your friend." Twoflower gaped. "Hrun?" he said. "Not him. The skinny wizard. My son Lio!rt is trying to hack him to pieces. I admired the way you rescued him. Will, I mean." Twoflower drew himself up to his full height, an easy task. "Where is he?" he said, heading towards the door with what he hoped was an heroic stride. "Just follow the pathway in the dust," said the voice. "Liessa comes to see me sometimes. She still comes to see her old dad, my little girl. She was the only one with the strength of character to murder me. A chip off the old block. Good luck, by the way. I seem to recall I said that. Will say it now, I mean." The rambling voice got lost in a maze of tenses as Twoflower ran along the dead tunnels, with the dragon loping along easily behind him. But soon he was leaning against a pillar, completely out of breath. It seemed ages since he'd had anything to eat. Why don't you fly? said Ninereeds, inside his head. The dragon spread its wings and gave an experimental flap, which lifted it momentarily off the ground. Twoflower stared for a moment, then ran forward and clambered quickly on to the beast's neck. Soon they were airborne, the dragon skimming along easily a few feet from the floor and leaving a billowing cloud of dust in its wake. Twoflower hung on as best he could as Ninereeds swooped through a succession of caverns and soared around a spiral staircase that could easily have accommodated a retreating army. At the top they emerged into the more inhabited regions, the mirrors at every corridor corner brightly polished and reflecting a pale light. I smell other dragons. The wings became a blur and Twoflower was jerked back as the dragon veered and sped off down a side corridor like a gnat-crazed swallow. Another sharp turn sent them soaring out of a tunnel mouth in the side of a vast cavern. There were rocks far below, and up above were broad shafts of light from great holes near the roof. A lot of activity on the ceiling, too... as Ninereeds hovered, thumping the air with his wings, Twoflower peered up at the shapes of roosting beasts and tiny men-shaped dots that were somehow walking upside down. This is a roosting hall, said the dragon in a satisfied tone. As Twoflower watched, one of the shapes far above detached itself from the roof and began to grow larger...     Rincewind watched as Lio!rt's pale face dropped away from him. This is funny, gibbered a small part of his mind, why am I rising? Then he began to tumble in the air and reality took over. He was dropping to the distant, guano-speckled rocks. His brain reeled with the thought. The words of the Spell picked just that moment to surface from the depths of his mind, as they always did in time of crisis. Why not say us, they seemed to urge. What have you got to lose? Rincewind waved a hand in the gathering slipstream. "Ashonai," he called. The word formed in front of him in a cold blue flame that streamed in the wind. He waved the other hand, drunk with terror and magic. "Ebiris," he intoned. The sound froze into a flickering orange word that hung beside its companion. "Urshoring. Kvanti. Pythan. N'gurad. Feringomalee." As the words blazed their rainbow colours around him he flung his hands back and prepared to say the eighth and final word that would appear in corruscating octarine and seal the spell. The imminent rocks were forgotten. "–" he began. The breath was knocked out of him, the spell scattered and snuffed out. A pair of arms locked around his waist and the whole world jerked sideways as the dragon rose out of its long dive claws grazing just for a moment the topmost rock on the Wyrmberg's noisome floor. Twoflower laughed triumphantly. "Got him!" And the dragon, curving gracefully at the top of his flight, gave a lazy flip of his wings and soared through a cavemouth into the morning air.     At noon, in a wide green meadow on the lush tableland that was the top of the impossibly-balanced Wyrmberg, the dragons and their riders formed a wide circle. There was room beyond them for a rabble of servants and slaves and others who scratched a living here on the roof of the world, and they were all watching the figures clustered in the centre of the grassy arena. The group contained a number of senior dragon lords, and among them were Lio!rt and his brother Liartes. The former was still rubbing his legs, with Small grimaces of pain. Slightly to one side stood Liessa and Hrun, with some of the woman's own followers. Between the two factions stood the Wyrmberg's hereditary Loremaster. "As you know," he said uncertainly, "the not-fully-late Lord of the Wyrmberg, Greicha the First, has stipulated that there will be no succession until one of his children feels himself - or as it might be, herself - powerful enough to challenge and defeat his or her siblings in mortal combat." "Yes", yes, we know all that. Get on with it," said a thin peevish voice from the air beside him. The loremaster swallowed. He had never come to terms with his former master's failure to expire properly. Is the old buzzard dead or isn't he? he wondered. "It is not certain," he quavered, "whether it is allowable to issue a challenge by proxy–" "It is, it is," snapped Greicha's disembodied voice. "It shows intelligence. Don't take all day about it." "I challenge you," said Hrun, glaring at the brothers, "both at once." Lio!rt and Liartes exchanged looks. "You'll fight us both together?" said Liartes, a tall, wiry man with long black hair. "Yah." "That's pretty uneven odds, isn't it?" "Yah. I outnumber you one to two." Lio!rt scowled. "You arrogant barbarian-" "That just about does it," growled Hrun. "I'll-" The Loremaster put out a blue-veined hand to restrain him. "It is forbidden to fight on the Killing Ground," he said, and paused while he considered the sense of this. "You know what I mean, anyway," he hazarded, giving up, and added "As the challenged parties my lords Lio!rt and Liartes have choice of weapons." "Dragons," they said together. Liessa snorted. "Dragons can be used offensively, therefore they are weapons," said Lio!rt firmly. "if you disagree we can fight over it." "Yah," said his brother, nodding at Hrun. The Loremaster felt a ghostly finger prod him in the chest "Don't stand there with your mouth open," said Greicha's graveyard voice. "Just hurry up, will you?" Hrun stepped back, shaking his head. "Oh no," he said. "Once was enough. I'd rather be dead than fight on one of those things." "Die, then," said the Loremaster, as kindly as he could manage. Lio!rt and Liartes were already striding back across the turf to where the servants stood waiting with their mounts. Hrun turned to Liessa. She shrugged. "Don't I even get a sword?" he pleaded. "A knife, even?" "No," she said. "I didn't expect this." She suddenly looked smaller, all defiance gone. "I'm sorry." "You're sorry?" "Yes. I'm sorry." "Yes, I thought you said you're sorry." "Don't glare at me like that! I can imagine you the finest dragon to ride" "NO!" The Loremaster wiped his nose on a handkerchief, held the little silken square aloft for a moment, then let it fall. A boom of wings made Hrun spin around. Lio!rt's dragon was already airborne and circling around towards them. As it swooped low over the turf a billow of flame shot from its mouth, scoring a black streak across the grass that rushed towards Hrun. At the last minute he pushed Liessa aside, and felt the wild pain of the flame on his arm as he dived for safety. He rolled as he hit the ground, and flipped on to his feet again while he looked around frantically for the other dragon. It came in from one side, and Hrun was forced to take a badly-judged standing jump to escape the flame. The dragon's tail whipped around as it passed and caught him a stinging blow across the forehead. He pushed himself upright, shaking his head to make the wheeling stars go away. His blistered back screamed pain at him. Lio!rt came in for a second run, but slower this time to allow for the big man's unexpected agility. As the ground drifted up he saw the barbarian standing stock still, chest heaving, arms hanging loosely by his sides. An easy target. As his dragon swooped away Lio!rt turned his head, expecting to see a dreadfully big cinder. There was nothing there. Puzzled, Lio!rt turned back. Hrun, heaving himself over the dragon's shoulder scales with one hand and beating out his flaming hair with the other, presented himself to his view. Lio!rt's hand flew to his dagger, but pain had sharpened Hrun's normally excellent reflexes to needle point. A backhand blow hammered into the dragonlord's wrist, sending the dagger arcing away towards the ground, and another caught the man full on the chin. The dragon, carrying the weight of two men, was only a few yards above the grass. This turned out to be fortunate, because at the moment Lio!rt lost consciousness the dragon winked out of existence. Liessa hurried across the grass and helped Hrun stagger to his feet. He blinked at her. "What happened? What happened?" he said thickly. "That was really fantastic," she said. "The way you turned that somersault in mid-air and everything." "Yah, but what happened?" "It's rather difficult to explain-" Hrun peered up at the sky. Liartes, by far the most cautious of the two brothers, was circling high above them. "Well, you've got about ten seconds to try," he said "The dragons-" "Yah?" "They're imaginary." "Like all these imaginary burns on my arm, you mean?" "Yes. No!" she shook her head violently. "I'll have to tell you later!" "Fine, if you can find a really good medium," snapped Hrun. He glared up at Liartes, who was beginning to descend in wide sweeps. "Just listen, will you? Unless my brother is conscious his dragon can't exist, it's got no pathway through to this-" "Run!" shouted Hrun. He threw her away from him and flung himself flat on the ground as Liartes' dragon thundered by, leaving another smoking scar across the turf. While the creature sought height for another sweep Hrun scrambled to his feet and set off at a dead run for the woods at the edge of the arena. They were sparse, little more than a wide and overgrown hedge, but at least no dragon would be able to fly through them. It didn't try. Liartes brought his mount in to land on the turf a few yards away and dismounted casually. The dragon folded its wings and poked its head in among the greenery, while its master leaned against a tree and whistled tunelessly. "I can burn you out," said Liartes, after a while. The bushes remained motionless. "Perhaps you're in that holly bush over there?" The holly bush became a waxy ball of flame. "I'm sure I can see movement in those ferns." The ferns became mere skeletons of white ash. "You're only prolonging it, barbarian. Why not give in now? I've burned lots of people; it doesn't hurt a bit," said Liartes, looking sideways at the bushes. The dragon continued through the spinney, incinerating every likely-looking bush and clump of ferns. Liartes drew his sword and waited. Hrun dropped from a tree and landed running. Behind him the dragon roared and crashed through the bushes as it tried to turn around, but Hrun was running, running, with his gaze fixed on Liartes and a dead branch in his hands. It is a little known but true fact that a two legged creature can usually beat a four legged creature over a short distance, simply because of the time it takes the quadruped to get its legs sorted out. Hrun heard the scrabble of claws behind him and then an ominous thump. The dragon had half-opened its wings and was trying to fly. As Hrun bore down on the dragonlord Liartes' sword came up wickedly, to be caught on the branch. Then Hrun cannoned into him and the two men sprawled on the ground. The dragon roared. Liartes screamed as Hrun brought a knee upwards with anatomical precision, but managed a wild blow that rebroke the barbarian's nose for him. Hrun kicked away and scrambled to his feet, to find himself looking up into the wild horse-face of the dragon, its nostrils distended. He lashed out with a foot and caught Liartes, who was trying to stand up, on the side of his head. The man slumped. The dragon vanished. The ball of fire that was billowing towards Hrun faded until, when it reached him, it was no more than a puff of warm air. Then there was no sound but the crackle of burning bushes. Hrun slung the unconscious dragonlord over his shoulder and set off at a trot back to the arena. Halfway there he found Lio!rt sprawled on the ground, one leg bent awkwardly. He stooped and, with a grunt, hoisted the man on to his vacant shoulder. Liessa and the Loremaster were waiting on a raised dais at one end of the meadow. The dragonwoman had quite recovered her composure now, and looked levelly at Hrun as he threw the two men down on the steps before her. The people around her were standing in deferential poses, like a court. "Kill them," she said. "I kill in my own time," he said. "In any case, killing unconscious people isn't right." "I can't think of a more opportune time," said the Loremaster. Liessa snorted. "Then I shall banish them," she said. "Once they are beyond the reach of the Wyrmberg's magic then they'll have no Power. They'll be simply brigands. Will that satisfy you?" "Yes." "I am surprised that you are so merciful, Hrun." Hrun shrugged. "A man in my position, he can't afford to be anything else, he's got to consider his image." He looked around. "Where's the next test, then?" "I warn you that it is perilous. If you wish, you may leave now. If you pass the test, however, you will become lord of the Wyrmberg and, of course, my lawful husband." Hrun met her gaze. He thought about his life, to date. It suddenly seemed to him to have been full of long damp nights sleeping under the stars, desperate fights with trolls, city guards, countless bandits and evil priests and, on at least three occasions, actual demigods - and for what? Well, for quite a lot of treasure, he had to admit - but where had it all gone? Rescuing beleagured maidens had a certain passing reward, but most of the time he'd finished up by setting them up in some city somewhere with a handsome dowry, because after a while even the most agreeable exmaiden became possessive and had scant sympathy for his efforts to rescue her sister sufferers. In short, life had really left him with little more than a reputation and a network of scars. Being a lord might be fun. Hrun grinned. With a base like this, all these dragons and a good bunch of fighting men, a man could really be a contender. Besides, the wench was not uncomely. "The third test?" she said. "Am I to be weaponless again?" said Hrun. Liessa reached up and removed her helmet letting the coils of red hair tumble out. Then she unfastened the brooch of her robe. Underneath, she was naked. As Hrun's gaze swept over her his mind began to operate two notional counting machines. One assessed the gold in her bangles, the tiger-rubies that ornamented her toe-rings, the diamond spangle that adorned her navel, and two highly individual whirligigs of silver filigree. The other was plugged straight into his libido. Both produced tallies that pleased him mightily. As she raised a hand and proffered a glass of wine she smiled, and said, "I think not."     "He didn't attempt to rescue you," Rincewind pointed out as a last resort. He clung desperately to Twoflower's waist as the dragon circled slowly, tilting the world at a dangerous angle. The new knowledge that the scaley back he was astride only existed as a sort of threedimensional daydream did not, he had soon realised, do anything at all for his ankle-wrenching sensations of vertigo. His mind kept straying towards the possible results of Twoflower losing his concentration. "Not even Hrun could have prevailed against those crossbows," said Twoflower stoutly. As the dragon rose higher above the patch of woodland, where the three of them had slept a damp and uneasy sleep, the sun rose over the edge of the disc. Instantly the gloomy blues and greys of pre-dawn were transformed into a bright bronze river that flowed across the world, flaring into gold where it struck ice or water or a light-dam. (Owing to the density of the magical field surrounding the disc, light itself moved at sub-sonic speeds; this interesting property was well utilized by the Sorca people of the Great Nef, for example, who over the centuries had constructed intricate and delicate dams, and valleys walled with polished silica, to catch the slow sunlight and sort of store it. The Scintillating reservoirs of the Nef, overflowing after several weeks of uninterrupted sunlight, were a truly magnificent sight from the air and it is therefore unfortunate that Twoflower and Rincewind did not happen to glance in that direction.) In front of them the billion-ton impossibility that was the magic-wrought Wyrmberg hung against the sky and that was not too bad, until Rincewind turned his head and saw the mountain's shadow slowly unroll itself across the cloudscape of the world... "What can you see?" said Twoflower to the dragon. I see fighting on the top of the mountain came the gentle reply. "See?" said Twoflower. "Hrun's probably fighting for his life at this very moment." Rincewind was silent. After a moment Twoflower looked around. The wizard was staring intently at nothing at all, his lips moving soundlessly. "Rincewind?" The wizard made a small croaking noise. "I'm sorry," said Twoflower. "What did you say?" "...all the way... the great fall..." muttered Rincewind, His eyes focused, looked puzzled for a moment, then widened in terror. He made the mistake of looking down. "Aargh," he opined, and began to slide. Twoflower grabbed him. "What's the matter?" Rincewind tried shutting his eyes, but there were no eyelids to his imagination and it was staring widely. "Don't you get scared of heights?" he managed to say. Twoflower looked down at the tiny landscape, mottled with cloud shadows. The thought of fear hadn't actually occurred to him. "No," he said. "Why should I? You're just as dead if you fall from forty feet as you are from four thousand fathoms, that's what I say." Rincewind tried to consider this dispassionately, but couldn't see the logic of it. It wasn't the actual falling, it was the hitting he... Twoflower grabbed him quickly. "Steady on," he said cheerfully. "We're nearly there." "I wish I was back in the city," moaned Rincewind. "I wish I was back on the ground." "I wonder if dragons can fly all the way to the stars?" mused Twoflower. "Now that would be something..." "You're mad," said Rincewind flatly. There was no reply from the tourist, and when the wizard craned around he was horrified to see Twoflower looking up at the paling stars with an odd smile on his face. "Don't" you even think about it," added Rincewind, menacingly. The man you seek is talking to the dragon-woman said the dragon. "Hmm?" said Twoflower, still looking at the paling stars. "What?" said Rincewind urgently. "Oh yes. Hrun," said Twoflower. "I hope we're in time. Dive now. Go low." Rincewind opened his eyes as the wind increased to a whistling gale. Perhaps they were blown open - the wind certainly made them impossible to shut. The flat summit of the Wyrmberg rose up at them, lurched alarmingly, then somersaulted into a green blur that flashed by on either side. Tiny woods and fields blurred into a rushing patchwork. A brief silvery flash in the landscape may have been the little river that overflowed into the air at the plateau's rim. Rincewind tried to force the memory out of his mind , but it was rather enjoying itself there, terrorizing the other occupants and kicking over the furniture.     "I think not," said Liessa. Hrun took the wine cup, slowly. He grinned like a pumpkin. Around the arena the dragons started to bay. Their riders looked up. And something like a green blur flashed across the arena, and Hrun had gone. The winecup hung momentarily in the air, then crashed down on the steps. Only then did a single drop spill. This was because, in the instant of enfolding Hrun gently in his claws, Ninereeds the dragon had momentarily synchronized their bodily rhythms. Since the dimension of the imagination is much more complex than those of time and space, which are very junior dimensions indeed, the effect of this was to instantly transform a stationary and priapic Hrun into a Hrun moving sideways at eighty miles an hour with no ill-effects whatsoever, except for a few wasted mouthfuls of wine. Another effect was to cause Liessa to scream with rage and summon her dragon. As the gold beast materialised in front of her she leapt astride it, still naked, and snatched a crossbow from one of the guards. Then she was airborne, while the other dragonriders swarmed towards their own beasts. The Loremaster, watching from the pillar he had prudently slid behind in the mad scramble happened at that moment to catch the cross dimensional echoes of a theory being at the same instant hatched in the mind of an early psychiatrist in an adjacent universe, possibly because the dimension-leak was flowing both ways, and for a moment the psychiatrist saw the girl on the dragon. The loremaster smiled. "Want to bet that she won't catch him?" said Greicha, in a voice of worms and sepulchres, right by his ear. The loremaster shut his eyes and swallowed hard. "I thought that my Lord would now be residing fully in the Dread Land," he managed. "I am a wizard," said Greicha. "Death Himself must claim a wizard. And, aha, He doesn't appear to be in the neighbourhood..." SHAL WE GO? asked Death. He was on a white horse, a horse of flesh and blood but red of eye and fiery of nostril, and He stretched out a bony hand and took Greicha's soul out of the air and rolled it up until it was a point of painful light, and then He swallowed it. Then He clapped spurs to his steed and it sprang into the air, sparks corruscating from its hooves. "Lord Greicha!" whispered the old Loremaster, as the universe flickered around him. "That was a mean trick," came the wizard's voice, a mere speck of sound disappearing into the infinite black dimensions. "My Lord... what is Death like?" called the old man tremulously. "When I have investigated it fully, I will let you know," came the faintest of modulations on the breeze. "Yes," murmured the loremaster. A thought struck him. "During daylight, please," he added.     "You clowns," screamed Hrun, from his perch on Ninereed's foreclaws. "What did he say?" roared Rincewind, as the dragon ripped its way through the air in the race for the heights. "Didn't hear." bellowed Twoflower, his voice torn away by the gale. As the dragon banked slightly he looked down at the little toy spinning top that was the mighty Wyrmberg and saw the swarm of creatures rising in pursuit. Ninereed's wings pounded and flicked the air away contemptuously. Thinner air, too. Twoflower's ear popped for the third time. Ahead of the swarm, he noticed, was a golden dragon. Someone on it, too. "Hey, are you all right?" said Rincewind urgently. He had to drink in several lungfuls of the strangely distilled air in order to get the words out. "I could have been a lord, and you clowns had to go and-" Hrun gasped. as the chill thin air drew the life even out of his mighty chest "Wass happnin to the air?" muttered Rincewind. Blue lights appeared in front of his eyes. "Unk," said Twoflower, and passed out. The dragon vanished. For a few seconds the three men continued upwards. Twoflower and the wizard presenting an odd picture as they sat one in front of the other with their legs astride something that wasn't there, Then what passed for gravity on the Disc recovered from the surprise, and claimed them. At that moment Liessa's dragon flashed by, and Hrun landed heavily across its neck. Liassa leaned over and kissed him. This detail was lost to Rincewind as he dropped away, with his arms still clasped around Twoflower's waist. The disc was a little round map pinned against the sky. It didn't appear to be moving, but Rincewind knew that it was. The whole world was coming towards him like a giant custard pie. "Wake up!" he shouted, above the roar of the wind. "Dragons! Think of dragons!" There was a flurry of wings as they plummeted through the host of pursuing creatures, which fell away and up. Dragons screamed and wheeled across the sky. No answer came from Twoflower. Rincewind's robe whipped around him, but he did not wake. Dragons, thought Rincewind in a panic. He tried to concentrate his mind, tried to envisage a really lifelike dragon. If he can do it, he thought, then so can I. But nothing happened. The disc was bigger now, a cloud-swirled circle rising gently underneath them. Rincewind tried again, screwing up his eyes and straining every nerve in his body. A dragon. His imagination, a somewhat battered and over-used organ, reached out for a dragon... any dragon. IT WON'T WORK, laughed a voice like the dull tolling of a funereal bell, YOU DON'T BELIEVE IN THEM. Rincewind looked at the terrible mounted apparition grinning at him, and his mind bolted in terror. There was a brilliant flash. There was utter darkness. There was a soft floor under Rincewind's feet, a pink light around him, and the sudden shocked cries of many people. He looked around wildly. He was standing in some kind of tunnel, which was mostly filled with seats in which outlandishly-dressed people had been strapped. They were all shouting at him. "Wake up," he hissed. "Help me!" Dragging the still-unconscious tourist with him he backed away from the mob until his free hand found an oddly-shaped door handle. He twisted it and ducked through, then slammed it hard. He stared around the new room in which he found himself and met the terrified gaze of a young woman who dropped the tray she was holding and screamed. It sounded like the sort of scream that brings muscular help. Rincewind, awash with fear-distilled adrenalin, turned and barged past her. There were more seats here, and the people in them ducked as he dragged Twoflower urgently along the central gangway. Beyond the rows of seats were little windows. Beyond the windows, against a background of fleecy clouds, was a dragon's wing. It was silver. I've been eaten by a dragon, he thought. That's ridiculous, he replied, you can't see out of dragons. Then his shoulder hit the door at the far end of the tunnel, and he followed it through into a cone-shaped room that was even stranger than the tunnel. It was full of tiny glittering lights. Among the lights, in contoured chairs, were four men who were now staring at him open-mouthed. As he stared back he saw their gazes dart sideways. Rincewind turned slowly. Beside him was a fifth man - youngish, bearded, as swarthy as the nomad folk of the Great Nef. "Where am I?" said the wizard. "in the belly of a dragon?" The young man crouched back and shoved a small black box in the wizard's face. The men in the chairs ducked down. "What is it?" said Rincewind. "A picture box?" He reached out and took it, a movement which appeared to surprise the swarthy man, who shouted and tried to snatch it back. There was another shout, this time from one of the men in the chairs. Only now he wasn't sitting. He was standing up, pointing something small and metallic at the young man. It had an amazing effect. The man crouched back with his hands in the air. "Please give me the bomb, sir," said the man with the metallic thing. "Carefully, please." "This thing?" said Rincewind. "You have it–" "I don't want it!" The man took it very carefully and put it on the floor. The seated men relaxed, and one of them started speaking urgently to the wall. The wizard watched him in amazement. "Don't move." snapped the man with the metal– an amulet, Rincewind decided, it must be an amulet. The swarthy man backed into the corner. "That was a very brave thing you did," said Amulet-holder to Rincewind. "You know that? "What?" "What's the matter with your friend?" "Friend?" Rincewind looked down at Twoflower, who was still slumbering peacefully. That was no surprise. What was really surprising was that Twoflower was wearing new clothes. Strange clothes. His britches now ended just above his knees. Above that he wore some sort of vest of brightly-striped material. On his head was a ridiculous little straw hat. With a feather in it. An awkward feeling around the leg regions made Rincewind look down. His clothes had changed too. Instead of the comfortable old robe, so marvellously well-adapted for speed into action in all possible contingencies, his legs were encased in cloth tubes. He was wearing a jacket of the same grey material... Until now he'd never heard the language the man with the amulet was using. It was uncouth and vaguely Hublandish - so why could he understand every word? Let's see, they'd suddenly appeared in this dragon after, they'd materialised in this drag, they'd sudd, they'd, they'd - they had struck up a conversation in the airport so naturally they had chosen to sit together on the plane, and he'd promised to show Jack Zweiblumen around when they got back to the States. Yes, that was it. And then Jack had been taken ill and he'd panicked and come through here and surprised this hijacker. Of course. What on earth was "Hublandish"? Dr Rjinswand rubbed his forehead. What he could do with was a drink. Ripples of paradox spread out across the sea of causality. Possibly the most important point that would have to be borne in mind by anyone outside the sum totality of the multiverse was that although the wizard and the tourist had indeed only recently appeared in an aircraft in mid-air, they had also at one and the same time been riding on that aeroplane in the normal course of things. That is to say: "while it was true that they had just appeared in this particular set of dimensions, it was also true that they had been living in them all along. It is at this point that normal language gives up, and goes and has a drink. The point is that several quintillion atoms had just materialized (however, they had not. See below) in a universe where they should not strictly have been. The usual upshot of this sort of thing is a vast explosion but, since universes are fairly resilient things, this particular universe had saved itself by instantaneously unravelling its spacetime continuum back to a point where the surplus atoms could safely be accommodated and then rapidly rewinding back to that circle of firelight which for want of a better term its inhabitants were wont to call The Present. This had of course changed history - there had been a few less wars, a few extra dinosaurs and so on - but on the whole the episode passed remarkably quietly. Outside of this particular universe, however, the repercussions of the sudden double-take bounced to and fro across the face of The Sum of Things, bending whole dimensions and sinking galaxies without a trace. All this was however totally lost on Dr Rjinswand, 33, a bachelor, born in Sweden, raised in New Jersey, and a specialist in the breakaway oxidation phenomena of certain nuclear reactors. Anyway, he probably would not have believed any of it. Zweiblumen still seemed to be unconscious. The stewardess, who had helped Rjinswand to his seat to the applause of the rest of the passengers, was bering over him anxiously. "I radioed ahead," she told Rjinswand "there'll be an ambulance waiting when we land Uh, it says on the passenger list that you're a doctor" "I don't know what's wrong with him," said Rincewind hurriedly, it might be a different matter if he was a Magnox reactor of course. "Is it shock of some kind?" "I've never-" Her sentence terminated in a tremendous crash from the rear of the plane. Several passengers screamed. A sudden gale of air swept every loose magazine and newspaper into a screaming whirlwind that twisted madly down the aisle. Something else was coming up the aisle. Something big and oblong and wooden and brassbound. It had hundreds of legs. If it was what it seemed - a walking chest of the kind that appeared in pirate stories brim full of ill-gotten gold and jewels - then what would have been its lid suddenly gaped open. There were no jewels. But there were lots of big square teeth, white as sycamore, and a pulsating tongue, red as mahogany. An ancient suitcase was coming to eat him. Rjinswand clutched at the unconscious  Zweiblumen for what little comfort there was there, and gibbered. He wished fervently that he was  somewhere else... There was a sudden darkness. There was a brilliant flash. The sudden departure of several quintillion atoms from a universe that they had no right to be in anyway caused a wild imbalance in the harmony of the Sum Totality which it tried frantically to retrieve, wiping out a number of subrealities in the process. Huge surges of raw magic boiled uncontrolled around the very foundations of the multiverse itself, welling up through every crevice into hitherto peaceful dimensions and causing novas, supernovas, stellar collisions, wild flights of geese and drowning of imaginary continents. Worlds as far away as the other end of time experienced brilliant sunsets of corruscating octarine as highly-charged magical particles roared through the atmosphere. In the cometary halo around the fabled Ice System of Zeret a noble comet died as a prince flamed across the sky. All this was however lost on Rincewind as, clutching the inert Twoflower around the waist, he plunged towards the Disc's sea several hundred feet below. Not even the convulsions of all the dimensions could break the iron Law of the Conservation of Energy, and Rjinswand's brief journey in the plane had sufficed to carry him several hundred miles horizontally and seven thousand feet vertically. The word "plane" flamed and died in Rincewind's mind. Was that a ship down there? The cold waters of the Circle Sea roared up at him and sucked him down into their green, suffocating embrace. A moment later there was another splash as the luggage, still bearing a label carrying the powerful travelling rune TWA, also hit the sea. Later on, they used it as a raft.       Close to the Edge   It had been a long time in the making. Now it was almost completed, and the slaves hacked away at the last clay remnants of the mantle. Where other slaves were industriously rubbing its metal flanks with silver sand it was already beginning to gleam in the sun with the silken organic sheen of young bronze. It was still warm even after a week of cooling in the casting pit. The Arch-astronomer of Krull motioned lightly with his hand and his bearers set the throne down in the shadow of the hull. Like a fish, he thought. A great flying fish. And of what seas? "It is indeed magnificent," he whispered. "A work of true art." "Craft," said the thickset man by his side. The Arch-astronomer turned slowly and looked up at the man's impassive face. It isn't particularly hard for a face to look impassive-when there are two golden spheres where the eyes should be. They glowed disconcertingly. "Craft, indeed," said the astronomer, and smiled "I would imagine that there is no greater craftsman on the entire disc than you, Goldeneyes. Would I be right?" The craftsman paused, his naked body - naked at least, were it not for a toolbelt, a wrist abacus and a deep tan - tensing as he considered the implications of this last remark. The golden eyes appeared to be looking into some other world. "The answer is both yes and no," he said at last Some of the lesser astronomers behind the throne gasped at this lack of etiquette, but the Arch astronomer appeared not to have noticed it. "Continue," he said. "There are some essential skills that I lack. Yet I am Goldeneyes Silverhand Dactylos," said the craftsman. "I made the Metal Warriors that guard the Tomb of Pitchiu, I designed the Light Dams of the Great Nef, I built the Palace of the Seven Deserts. And yet-" he reached up and tapped one of his eyes, which rang faintly, "when I built the golem army for Pitchiu he loaded me down with gold and then, so that I would create no other work to rival my work for him, he had my eyes put out." "Wise but cruel," said the Arch-astronomer sympathetically. "Yah. So I learned to hear the temper of metals and to see with my fingers. I learned how to distinguish ores by taste and smell. I made these eyes, but I cannot make them see. "Next I was summoned to build the Palace of the Seven Deserts, as a result of which the Emir showered me with silver and then, not entirely to my surprise, had my right hand cut off." "A grave hindrance in your line of business," nodded the Arch-astronomer. "I used some of the silver to make myself this new hand, putting to use my unrivalled knowledge of levers and fulcrums. It suffices. After I created the first great Light Dam, which had a capacity of 50,000 daylight hours, the tribal councils of the Nef loaded me down with fine silks and then hamstrung me so that I could not escape. As a result I was put to some inconvenience to use the silk and some bamboo to build a flying machine from which I could launch myself from the top-most turret of my prison." "Bringing you, by various diversions, to Krull," said the Arch-astronomer. "And one cannot help feeling that some alternative occupation - lettuce farming, say - would offer somewhat less of a risk of being put to death by instalments. Why do you continue in it? Goldeneyes Dactylos shrugged. "I'm good at it," he said. The Arch-astronomer looked up again bronze fish, shining now like a gong in the noontime sun. "Such beauty," he murmured. "And unique. Come, Dactylos. Recall to me what it was that I promised should be your reward?" "You asked me to design a fish that would swim through the seas of space that lie between the worlds," intoned the master craftsman. "In return for which - in return-" "Yes? My memory is not what it used to be," purred the Arch-astronomer, stroking the warm bronze. "In return," continued Dactylos, without much apparent hope, "you would set me free, and refrain from chopping off any appendages. I require no treasure." "Ah, yes. I recall now." The old man raised a  blueveined hand, and added, "I lied." There was the merest whisper of sound, and the goldeneyed man rocked on his feet. Then he looked down at the arrowhead protruding from his chest, and nodded wearily. A speck of blood bloomed on his lips. There was no sound in the entire square (save for the buzzing of a few expectant flies) as his silver hand came up, very slowly, and fingered the arrowhead. Dactylos grunted. "Sloppy workmanship," he said, and toppled backwards. The Arch-astronomer prodded the body with his toe, and sighed. "There will be a short period of mourning, as befits a master craftsman," he said. He watched a bluebottle alight on one golden eye and fly away puzzled... "That would seem to be long enough," said the Arch-astronomer, and beckoned a couple of slaves to carry the corpse away. "Are the chelonauts ready?" he asked. The master launchcontroller hustled forward. "Indeed, your prominence," he said. "The correct prayers are being intoned? "Quite so, your prominence." "How long to the doorway?" "The launch window," corrected the master launchcontroller carefully. "Three days, your prominence. Great A'Tuin's tail will be in an unmatched position." "Then all that remains," concluded the Arch-astronomer, "is to find the appropriate sacrifice." The master launchcontroller bowed. "The ocean shall provide," he said. The old man smiled. it always does," he said. "If only you could navigate" "If only you could steer-"     A wave washed over the deck. Rincewind and Twoflower looked at each other. "Keep bailing!" they screamed in unison, and reached for the buckets. After a while Twoflower's peevish voice filtered up from the waterlogged cabin. "I don't see how it's my fault," he said. He handed up another bucket, which the wizard tipped over the side. "You were supposed to be on watch," snapped Rincewind. "I saved us from the slavers, remember," said Twoflower. "I'd rather be a slave than a corpse," replied the wizard. He straightened up and looked out to sea. He appeared puzzled. He was a somewhat different Rincewind from the one that escaped the fire of Ankh-Morpork six months before. More scarred, for one thing. And much more travelled. He had visited the Hublands, discovered the curious folkways of many colourful peoples - invariably obtaining more scars in the process - and had even, for a never-to-be-forgotten few days, sailed on the legendary Dehydrated Ocean at the heart of the incredibly dry desert known as the Great Nef. On a colder and wetter sea he had seen floating mountains of ice. He had ridden on an imaginary dragon. He had very nearly said the most powerful spell on the disc. He had- -there was definitely less horizon than there ought to be. "Hmm" Said Rincewind. "I said nothing's worse than slavery," said Twoflower. His mouth opened as the wizard flung his bucket far out to sea and sat down heavily on the waterlogged deck, his face a grey mask. "Look, I'm sorry I steered us into the reef, but this boat doesn't seem to want to sink and we're bound to strike land sooner or later," said Twoflower comfortingly. "This current must go somewhere." "Look at the horizon," Said Rincewind, in a monotone. Twoflower squinted. "It looks all right," he said after a while. "Admittedly, there seems to be less than there usually is, but-" "That's because of the Rimfall," said Rincewind. "We're being carried over the edge of the world." There was a long silence, broken only by the lapping of the waves as the foundering ship spun slowly in the current. It was already quite strong. "That's probably why we hit that reef," Rincewind added. "we got pulled off course during the night." "Would you like something to eat?" asked Twoflower. He began to rummage through the bundle that he had tied to the rail, out of the damp. "Don't you understand?" snarled Rincewind. "We are going over the Edge, godsdammit!" "Can't we do anything about it?" "No!" "Then I can't see the sense in panicking," said Twoflower calmly. "I knew we shouldn't have come this far Edgewise," complained Rincewind to the skye "I wish-" "I wish I had my picture-box," said Twoflower, "but it's back on that slaver ship with the rest of the Luggage and-" "You won't need luggage where we're going," said Rincewind. He sagged, and stared moodily at a distant whale that had carelessly strayed into the rimward current and was now struggling against it. There was a line of white on the foreshortened horizon, and the wizard fancied he could hear a distant roaring. "What happens after a ship goes over the Rimfall?" said Twoflower. "Who knows?" "Well, in that case perhaps we'll just sail on through space and land on another world." A faraway look came into the little man's eyes. "I'd like that," he said. Rincewind snorted. The sun rose in the sky, looking noticeably bigger this close to the Edge. They stood with their backs against the mast, busy with their own thoughts. Every so often one or other would pick up a bucket and do a bit of desultory bailing, for no very intelligent reason. The sea around them seemed to be getting crowded. Rincewind noticed several tree trunks keeping station with them, and just below the surface the water was alive with fish of all sorts. The current must be teeming with food washed from the continents near the Hub. He wondered what kind of life it would be, having to keep swimming all the time to stay exactly in the same place. Pretty similar to his own, he decided. He spotted a small green frog which was paddling desperately in the grip of the inexorable current. To Twoflower's amazement he found a paddle and carefully extended it towards the little amphibian, which scrambled onto it gratefully. A moment later a pair of jaws broke the water and snapped impotently at the spot where it had been swimming. The frog looked up at Rincewind from the cradle of his hands, and then bit him thoughtfully on the thumb. Twoflower giggled. Rincewind tucked the frog away in a pocket, and pretended he hadn't heard. "All very humanitarian, but why?" said Twoflower. "It'll all be the same in an hour." "Because," said Rincewind vaguely, and did a bit of bailing. Spray was being thrown up now and the current was so strong that waves were forming and breaking all around them. It all seemed unnaturally warm. There was a hot golden haze on the sea. The roaring was louder now. A squid bigger than anything Rincewind had seen before broke the surface a few hundred yards away and thrashed madly with its tentacles before sinking away. Something else that was large and fortunately unidentifiable howled in the mist. A whole squadron of flying fish tumbled up in a cloud of rainbow-edged droplets and managed to gain a few yards before dropping back and being swept in an eddy. They were running out of world. Rincewind dropped his bucket and snatched at the mast as the roaring, final end of everything raced towards them. "I must see this" said Twoflower, half falling and half diving towards the prow. Something hard and unyielding smacked into the hull, which spun ninety degrees and came side on to the invisible obstacle. Then it stopped suddenly and a wash of cold sea foam cascaded over the deck, so that for a few seconds Rincewind was under several feet of boiling green water. He began to scream and then the underwater world became the deep clanging purple colour of fading consciousness, because it was at about this point that Rincewind started to drown. He awoke with his mouth full of burning liquid and, when he swallowed, the searing pain in his throat jerked him into full consciousness. The boards of a boat pressed into his back and Twoflower was looking down at him with an expression of deep concern. Rincewind groaned and sat up. This turned out to be a mistake. The edge of the world was a few feet away. Beyond it, at a level just below that of the lip of the endless Rimfall, was something altogether magical.     Some seventy miles away, and well beyond the tug of the rim current, a scow with the red sails typical of a freelance slaver drifted aimlessly through the velvety twilight. The crew - such as remained were clustered on the foredeck, surrounding the men working feverishly on the raft. The captain, a thickset man who wore the elbowturbans typical of a Great Nef tribesman, was much travelled and had seen many strange peoples and curious things, many of which he had subsequently enslaved or stolen. He had begun his career as a sailor on the Dehydrated Ocean in the heart of the disc's driest desert. (Water on the disc has an uncommon fourth state, caused by intense magic combined with the strange desiccating effects of octarine light) it dehydrates, leaving a silvery mildue like free-flowing sand through which a well-designed hull can glide with ease. The Dehydrated Ocean is a strange place, but not so strange as its fish.) The captain had never before been really frightened. Now he was terrified. "I can't hear anything," he muttered to the first mate. The mate peered into the gloom. "Perhaps it fell overboard?" he suggested hopefully. As if in answer there came a furious pounding from the oar deck below their feet, and the sound of splintering wood. The crewmen drew together fearfully, brandishing axes and torches. They probably wouldn't dare to use them, even if the Monster came rushing towards them. Before its terrible nature had been truly understood several men had attacked it with axes, whereupon it had turned aside from its single-minded searching of the ship and had either chased them overboard or had - eaten them? The captain was not quite certain. The Thing looked like an ordinary wooden sea chest. A bit larger than usual, maybe, but not suspiciously so. But while it sometimes seemed to contain things like old socks and miscellaneous luggage, at other times - and he shuddered - it seemed to be, seemed to have... He tried not to think about it. It was just that the men who had been drowned overboard had probably been more fortunate than those it had caught. He tried not to think about it. There had been teeth, teeth like white wooden gravestones, and a tongue red as mahogany... He tried not to think about it. It didn't work. But he thought bitterly about one thing. This was going to be the last time he rescued ungrateful drowning men in mysterious circumstances. Slavery was better than sharks, wasn't it? And then they had escaped and when his sailors had investigated their big chest - how had they appeared in the middle of an untroubled ocean sitting on a big chest, anyway? - and it had bitt... He tried not to think about it again, but he found himself wondering what would happen when the damned thing realized that its owner wasn't on board any longer... "Raft's ready, lord," said the first mate. "Into the water with it," shouted the captain, and "Get aboard!" and "Fire the ship!" After all, another ship wouldn't be too hard to come by, he philosophised, but a man might have to wait a long time in that Paradise the mullahs advertised before he was granted another life. Let the magical box eat lobsters. Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or derring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality by not dying.     "What the hell is that?" demanded Rincewind. "It's beautiful,"  said Twoflower beatifically. "I'll decide about that when I know what it is, said the wizard. "It is the Rimbow," said a voice immediately behind his left ear, "And you are fortunate indeed to be looking at it. From above, at any rate." and the voice was accompanied by a gust of cold and fishy breath, Rincewind sat quite still. "Twoflower?" he said. "Yes?" "If I turn around, what will I see?" "His name is Tethis. He says he's a sea troll. This is his boat. He rescued us," explained Twoflower "Will you look around now?" "Not just at the moment, thank you. So why aren't we going over the Edge, then?" asked Rincewind with glassy calmness. "Because your boat hit the Circumfence," said the voice behind him (in tones that made Rincewind imagine submarine chasms and lurking Things in coral reefs). "The Circumfence?" he repeated. "Yes. It runs along the edge of the world," said the unseen troll. Above the roar of the waterfall Rincewind thought he could make out the splash of oars. He hoped they were oars. "Ah. You mean the circumference," said Rincewind. "The circumference makes the edge of things." "So does the Circumfence," said the troll. "He means this," said Twoflower, pointing down Rincewind's eyes followed the finger, dreading what they might see... Hubwards of the boat was a rope suspended a few feet above the surface of the white water. The boat was attached to it, moored yet mobile, by a complicated arrangement of pulleys and little wooden wheels. They ran along the rope as the unseen rower propelled the craft along the very lip of the Rimfall. That explained one mystery - but what supported the rope? Rincewind peered along its length and saw a stout wooden post sticking up out of the water a few yards ahead. As he watched the boat neared it and then passed it, the little wheels clacking neatly around it in a groove obviously cut for the purpose. Rincewind also noticed that smaller ropes hung down from the main rope at intervals of a yard or so. He turned back to Twoflower. "I can see what it is," he said, "But what is it?" Twoflower shrugged. Behind Rincewind the sea troll said, "Up ahead is my house. We will talk more when we are there. Now I must row." Rincewind found that looking ahead meant that he would have to turn and find out what a sea troll actually looked like, and he wasn't sure he wanted to do that yet. He looked at the Rimbow instead. It hung in the mists a few lengths beyond the edge of the world, appearing only at morning and evening when the light of the Disc's little orbiting sun shone past the massive bulk of Great A'tuin the World Turtle and struck the Disc's magical field at exactly the right angle. A double rainbow corruscated into being. Close into the lip of the Rimfall were the seven lesser colours, sparkling and dancing in the spray of the dying seas. But they were pale in comparison to the wider band that floated beyond them, not deigning to share the same spectrum. It was the King Colour, of which all the lesser colours are merely partial and wishy-washy reflections. It was octarine, the colour of magic. It was alive and glowing and vibrant and it was the undisputed pigment of the imagination, because wherever it appeared it was a sign that mere matter was a servant of the powers of the magical mind. It was enchantment itself. But Rincewind always thought it looked a sort of greenish-purple. After a while a small speck on the rim of the world resolved itself into a eyot or crag, so perilously perched that the waters of the fall swirled around it at the start of their long drop. A driftwood shanty had been built on it, and Rincewind saw that the top rope of the Circumfence climbed over the rocky island on a number of iron stakes and actually passed through the shack by a small round window. He learned later that this was so that the troll could be alerted to the arrival of any salvage on his stretch of the Circumfence by means of a series of small bronze bells, balanced delicately on on the rope. A floating stockade had been built out of rough timber on the hubward side of the island. It contained one or two hulks and quite a large amount of floating wood in the form of planks, baulks and even whole natural tree trunks, some still sporting green leaves. This close to the Edge the disc's magical field was so intense that a hazy corona flickered across everything as raw illusion spontaneously discharged itself. With a last few squeaky jerks the boat slid up against a small driftwood jetty. As it grounded itself and formed a circuit Rincewind felt all the familiar sensations of a huge occult aura - oily, bluish-tasting, and smelling of tin. All around them pure, unfocused magic was sleeting soundlessly into the world. The wizard and Twoflower scrambled onto the planking and for the first time Rincewind saw the troll. It wasn't half so dreadful as he had imagined. Umm, said his imagination after a while. It wasn't that the troll was horrifying. Instead of the rotting, betentacled monstrosity he had been expecting Rincewind found himself looking at a rather squat but not particularly ugly old man who would quite easily have passed for normal on any city street, always provided that other people on the street were used to seeing old men who were apparently composed of water and very little else. It was as if the ocean had decided to create life without going through all that tedious business of evolution, and had simply formed a part of itself into a biped and sent it walking squishily up the beach. The troll was a pleasant translucent blue colour. As Rincewind stared a small shoal of silver fish flashed across its chest. "It's rude to stare," said the troll. Its mouth opened with a little crest of foam, and shut again in exactly the same way that water closes over a stone." "Is it? Why?" asked Rincewind. How does he hold himself together, his mind screamed at him. Why doesn't he spill? "If you will follow me to my house I will find you food and a change of clothing," said the troll solemnly. He set off over the rocks without turning to see if they would follow him. After all, where else could they go? It was getting dark, and a chilly damp breeze was blowing over the edge of the world. Already the transient Rimbow had faded and the mists above the waterfall were beginning to thin. "Come on," said Rincewind, grabbing Twoflower's elbow. But the tourist didn't appear to want to move. "Come on," the wizard repeated. "When it gets really dark, do you think we'll be able to look down and see Great A'tuin the World Turtle?" asked Twoflower, staring at the rolling clouds. "I hope not," said Rincewind, "I really do. Now let's go, shall we?" Twoflower followed him reluctantly into the shack. The troll had lit a couple of lamps and was sitting comfortably in a rocking chair. He got to his feet as they entered and poured two cups of a green liquid from a tall pitcher. In the dim light he appeared to phosphoresce, in the manner of warm seas on velvety summer nights. Just to add a baroque gloss to Rincewind's dull terror he seemed to be several inches taller, too. Most of the furniture in the room appeared to be boxes. "Uh. Really great place you've got here," said Rincewind. "Ethnic." He reached for a cup and looked at the green pool shimmering inside it. It'd better be drinkable, he thought. Because I'm going to drink it. He swallowed. It was the same stuff Twoflower had given him in the rowing boat but, at the time, his mind had ignored it because there were more pressing matters. Now it had the leisure to savour the taste. Rincewind's mouth twisted. He whimpered a little. One of his legs came up convulsively and caught him painfully in the chest. Twoflower swirled his own drink thoughtfully while he considered the flavour. "Ghlen Livid," he said. "The fermented vul nut drink they freeze-distil in my home country. A certain smokey quality... Piquant. From the western plantations in, ah, Rehigreed Province, yes? Next year's harvest, I fancy, from the colour. May I ask how you came by it?" (Plants on the disc, while including the categories known commonly as annuals, which were sown this year to come up later this year, rieanuals, sown this year to grow next year, and perennials, sown this year to grow until further notice, also included a few rare re-annuals which, because of an unusual four-dimensional twist in their genes, could be planted this year to come up last year. The Vul nut vine was particularly exceptional in that it could flourish as many as eight years prior to its seed actually being sown. Vul nut wine was reputed to give certain drinkers an insight into the future which was, from the nut's point of view, the past. Strange but true.) "All things drift into the Circumfence in time," said the troll, gnomically, gently rocking in his chair. "My job is to recover the flotsam. Timber, of course, and ships. Barrels of wine. Bales of cloth. You." Light dawned inside Rincewind's head. "It's a net, isn't it? You've got a net right on the edge of the Sea!" "The Circumfence," nodded the troll. Ripples radiating across his chest. Rincewind looked out into the phosphorescent darkness that surrounded the island, and grinned inanely. "Of course," he said. "Amazing! You could sink piles and attach it to reefs and - good grief! The net would have to be very strong." "It is," said Tethis. "It could be extended for a couple of miles, if you found enough rocks and things," said the wizard. "Ten thousands of miles. I just patrol this length." "That's a third of the way around the disc!" Tethis sloshed a little as he nodded again. While the two men helped themselves to some more of the green wine, he told them about the Circumfence, the great effort that had been made to build it, and the ancient and wise Kingdom of Krull which had constructed it several centuries before, and the seven navies that patrolled it constantly to keep it in repair and bring its salvage back to Krull, and the manner in which Krull had become a land of leisure ruled by the most learned seekers after knowledge, and the way in which they sought constantly to understand in every possible particular the wondrous complexity of the universe, and the way in which sailors marooned on the Circumfence were turned into slaves, and usually had their tongues cut out. After some interjections at this point he spoke, in a friendly way, on the futility of force, the impossibility of escaping from the island except by boat to one of the other three hundred and eighty isles that lay between the island and Krull itself, or by leaping over the Edge and the high merit of muteness in comparison to for example, death. There was a pause. The muted night-roar of the Rimfall only served to give the silence a heavier texture. The rocking chair started to creak again. Tethis seemed to have grown alarmingly during the monologue. "There is nothing personal in all this," he added. "I, too, am a slave. If you try to overpower me I shall have to kill you, of course, but I won't take any particular pleasure in it." Rincewind looked at the shimmering fists that rested lightly in the troll's lap. He suspected they could strike with all the force of a tsunami. "I don't think you understand," explained Twoflower. "I am a citizen of the Golden Empire. I'm sure Krull would not wish to incur the displeasure of the Emperor." "How will the emperor know?" asked the troll. "Do you think you're the first person from the Empire who has ended up on the Circumfence?" "I won't be a slave," shouted Rincewind. "I'd - I'd jump over the Edge first!" He was amazed at the sound in his own voice. "Would you, though?" asked the troll. The rocking chair flicked back against the wall and one blue arm caught the wizard around the waist. A moment later the troll was striding out of the shack with Rincewind gripped carelessly in one fist. He did not stop until he came to the Rimward edge of the island. Rincewind squealed. "Stop that or I really will throw you over the edge," snapped the troll. "I'm holding you, aren't I? Look." Rincewind looked. In front of him was a soft black night whose mist-muted stars glowed peacefully. But his eyes turned downwards, drawn by some irresistible fascination. It was midnight on the Disc and so, therefore, the sun was far, far below, swinging slowly under Great A'Tuin's vast and frosty plastron.  Rincewind tried a last attempt to fix his gaze on the tips of his boots, which were protruding over the rim of the rock, but the sheer drop wrenched it away. On either side of him two glittering curtains of water hurtled towards infinity as the sea swept around the island on its way to the long fall. A hundred yards below the wizard the largest sea salmon he had ever seen flicked itself out of the foam in a wild, jerky and ultimately hopeless leap. Then it fell back, over and over, in the golden underworld light. Huge shadows grew out of that light like pillars supporting the roof of the universe. Hundreds of miles below him the wizard made out the shape of something, the edge of something- Like those curious little pictures where the silhouette of an ornate glass suddenly becomes the outline of two faces, the scene beneath him flipped into a whole, new, terrifying perspective. Because down there was the head of an elephant as big as a reasonably-sized continent. One mighty tusk cut like a mountain against the golden light, trailing a widening shadow towards the stars. The head was slightly tilted, and a huge ruby eye might almost have been a red super-giant that had managed to shine at noonday. Below the elephant-Rincewind swallowed and tried not to think-Below the elephant there was nothing but the distant, painful disc of the sun. And, sweeping slowly past it, was something that for all its city-sized scales, its crater-pocks, its lunar cragginess, was indubitably a flipper. "Shall I let go?" suggested the troll "Gnah," said Rincewind, straining backwards. "I have lived here on the Edge for five years and I have not had the courage," boomed Tethis. "Nor have you, if I'm any judge." He stepped back, allowing Rincewind to fling himself onto the ground. Twoflower strolled up to the rim and peered over. "Fantastic," he said. "If only I had my picture box." "What else is down there? I mean, if you fell off, what would you see?" Tethis sat down on an outcrop. High over the disc the moon came out from behind a cloud, giving him the appearance of ice. "My home is down there, perhaps," he said slowly. "Beyond your silly elephants and that ridiculous turtle. A real world. Sometimes I come out here and look, but somehow I can never bring myself to take that extra step... A real world, with real people. I have wives and little ones, somewhere down there..." He stopped, and blew his nose. "You soon learn what you're made of, here on the Edge." "Stop saying that. Please," moaned Rincewind. He turned over and saw Twoflower standing unconcernedly at the very lip of the rock. "Gnah," he said, and tried to burrow into the stone. "There's another world down there?" said Twoflower, peering over. "Where, exactly?" The troll waved an arm vaguely. "Somewhere," he said. "That's all I know. It was quite a small world. Mostly blue." "So why are you here?" said Twoflower. "Isn't it obvious?" snapped the troll. "I fell off the edge!" He told them of the world of Bathys, somewhere among the Stars, where the seafolk had built a number of thriving civilisations in the three large oceans that sprawled across its disc. He had been a meatman, one of the caste which earned a perilous living in large, sail-powered land yachts that ventured far out to land and hunted the shoals of deer and buffalo that abounded in the stormhaunted continents. His particular yacht had been blown into uncharted lands by a freak gale. The rest of the crew had taken the yacht's little rowing trolley and had struck out for a distant lake, but Tethis, as master, had elected to remain with his Vessel. The storm had carried it right over the rocky rim of the world, smashing it to matchwood in the process. "At first I fell," said Tethis, "but falling isn't so bad, you know. It's only the landing that hurts, and there was nothing below me. As I fell I saw the world spin off into space until it was lost against the stars." "What happened next?" said Twoflower breathlessly, glancing towards the misty universe. "I froze solid," said Tethis simply. "Fortunately it is something my race can survive. But I thawed out occasionally when I passed near other worlds. There was one, I think it was the one with what, I thought was this strange ring of mountains around it that turned out to be the biggest dragon you could ever imagine, covered in snow and glaciers and holding its tail in its mouth - well, I came within a few leagues of that, I shot over the landscape like a comet, in fact, and then I was off again. Then there was a time I woke up and there was your world coming at me like a custard pie thrown by the Creator and, well, I landed in the sea not far from the Circumfence widdershins of Krull. All sorts of creatures get washed up against the Fence, and at the time they were looking for slaves to man the way stations, and I ended up here." He stopped and stared intently at Rincewind. "every night I come out here and look down." he finished "and I never jump. Courage is hard to come by, here on the Edge." Rincewind began to crawl determinedly towards the shack. He gave a little scream as the troll picked him up, not unkindly, and set him on his feet. "Amazing," said Twoflower, and leaned further out over the Edge. "There are lots of other worlds out there?" "Quite a number, I imagine," said the troll. "I suppose one could contrive some sort of, I don't know, some sort of a thing that could preserve one against the cold," said the little man thoughtfully. "Some sort of a ship that one could sail over the Edge and sail to far-off worlds, too. I wonder..." "Don't even think about it!" moaned Rincewind. "Stop talking like that, do you hear?" "They all talk like that in Krull," said Tethis. "Those with tongues, of course," he added. "Are you awake?" Twoflower snored on. Rincewind jabbed him viciously in the ribs. "I said, are you awake?" he snarled. "Scrdfngh..." "We've got to get out of here before this salvage fleet comes!"     The dishwater light of dawn oozed through the shack's one window, slopping across the piles of salvaged boxes and bundles that were strewn around the interior. Twoflower grunted again and tried to burrow into the pile of furs and blankets that Tethis had given them. "Look, there's all kinds of weapons and stuff in here," said Rincewind. "He's gone out somewhere. When he comes back we could overpower him and- and- well, then we can think of something. How about it?" "That doesn't sound like a very good idea," said Twoflower. "Anyhow, it's a bit ungracious isn't it?" "Tough buns," snapped Rincewind. "This is a rough universe." He rummaged through the piles around the walls and selected a heavy, wavy-bladed scimitar that had probably been some pirate's pride and joy. It looked the sort of weapon that relied as much on its weight as its edge to cause damage. He raised it awkwardly. "Would he leave that sort of thing around if it could hurt him?" Twoflower wondered aloud. Rincewind ignored him and took up a position beside the door. When it opened some ten minutes later he moved unhesitatingly, swinging it across the opening at what he judged was the troll's head height. It swished harmlessly through nothing at all and struck the doorpost, jerking him off his feet and on to the floor. There was a sigh above him. He looked up into Tethis' face, which was shaking sadly from side to side. "It wouldn't have harmed me," said the troll, "but nevertheless, I am hurt. Deeply hurt." He reached over the wizard and jerked the sword out of the wood. With no apparent effort he bent its blade into a circle and sent it bowling away over the rocks until it hit a stone and sprang, still spinning, in a silver arc that ended in the mists forming over the Rimfall. "Very deeply hurt," he concluded. He reached down beside the door and tossed a sack towards Twoflower. "It's the carcass of a deer that is just about how you humans like it, and a few lobsters, and a sea salmon. The Circumfence provides," he said casually. He looked hard at the tourist, and then down again at Rincewind. "What are you staring at?" he said. "It's just that-" said Twoflower. "-compared to last night-" said Rincewind. "You're so small," finished Twoflower. "I see, said the troll carefully."Personal remarks now." He drew himself up to his full height, which was currently about four feet. "Just because I'm made of water doesn't mean I'm made of wood, you know." "I'm sorry," said Twoflower, climbing hastily out of the furs. "You're made of dirt," said the troll,"but I didn't pass comments about things you can't help, did I? Oh, no. We can't help the way the Creator made us, that's my view, but if you must know, your moon here is rather more powerful than the ones around my own world." "The moon?" said Twoflower."I don't under-" "If I've got to spell it out," said the troll. testily, "I'm suffering from chronic tides." A bell jangled in the darkness of the shack. Tethis strode across the creaking floor to the complicated devices of levers, strings and bells that was mounted on the Circumfence's topmost strand where it passed through the hut. The bell rang again, and then started to clang away in an odd jerky rhythm for several minutes. The troll stood with his ear pressed close to it. When it stopped he turned slowly and looked at them with a worried frown. "You're more important than I thought," he said. "You're not to wait for the salvage fleet. You're to be collected by a flyer. That's what they say in Krull." He shrugged. "And I hadn't even sent a message that you're here, yet. Someone's been drinking vul nut wine again." He picked up a large mallet that hung on a pillar beside the bell and used it to tap out a brief carillon. "That'll be passed from lengthman to lengthman all the way back to Krull," he said. "Marvellous really, isn't it?"     It came speeding across the sea, floating a man-length above it, but still leaving a foaming wake as whatever power that held it up smacked brutally into the water.  Rincewind knew what power held it up. He was, he would be the first to admit, a coward, an incompetent, and not even very good at being a failure; but he was still a wizard of sorts, he knew one of the Eight Great Spells, he would be claimed by Death himself when he died and he recognized really finely honed magic when he saw it. The lens skimming towards the island was perhaps twenty feet across, and totally transparent. Sitting around its circumference were a large number of black-robed men, each one strapped securely to the disc by a leather harness and each one staring down at the waves with an expression so tormented, so agonising, that the transparent disc seemed to be ringed with gargoyles. Rincewind sighed with relief. This was such an unusual sound that it made Twoflower take his eyes off the approaching disc and turn them on him. "We're important, no lie," explained Rincewind. "They wouldn't be wasting all that magic on a couple of potential slaves." He grinned. "What is it?" said Twoflower. "Well, the disc itself would have been created by Fresnel's Wonderful Concentrator," said Rincewind, authoritatively. "That calls for many rare and unstable ingredients, such as demon's breath and so forth, and it takes at least eight fourthgrade wizards a week to envision. Then there's those wizards on it, who must all be gifted hydrophobes-" "You mean they hate water?" said Twoflower. "No, that wouldn't work," said Rincewind."Hate is an attracting force, just like love. They really loathe it, the very idea of it revolts them. A really good hydrophobe has to be trained on dehydrated water from birth. I mean, that costs a fortune in magic alone. But they make great weather magicians. Rain clouds just give up and go away." "It sounds terrible," said the water troll behind them. "And they all die young," said Rincewind, ignoring him. "They just can't live with themselves." "Sometimes I think a man could wander across the disc all his life and not see everything there is to see," said Twoflower. "And now it seems there are lots of other worlds as well. When I think I might die without seeing a hundredth of all there is to see it makes me feel," he paused, then added, "well, humble, I suppose. And very angry, of course." The flyer halted a few yards hubward of the island, throwing up a sheet of spray. It hung there, spinning slowly. A hooded figure standing by the stubby pillar at the exact centre of the lens beckoned to them. "You'd better wade out," said the troll. "It doesn't do to keep them waiting. It has been nice to make your acquaintance." He shook them both, wetly, by the hand. As he waded out a little way with them the two nearest loathers on the lens shied away with expressions of extreme disgust. The hooded figure reached down with one hand and released a rope ladder. In its other hand it held a silver rod, which had about it the unmistakable air of something designed for killing people. Rincewind's first impression was reinforced when the figure raised the stick and waved it carelessly towards the shore. A section of rock vanished, leaving a small grey haze of nothingness. "That's so you don't think I'm afraid to use it," said the figure. "Don't think you're afraid?" said Rincewind. The hooded figure snorted. "We know all about you, Rincewind the magician. You are a man of great cunning and artifice. You laugh in the face of Death. Your affected air of craven cowardice does not fool me." It fooled Rincewind. "I-" he began, and paled as the nothingness-stick was turned towards him. "I see you know all about me," he finished weakly, and sat down heavily on the slippery surface. He and Twoflower, under instructions from the hooded commander, strapped themselves down to rings set in the transparent disc. "If you make the merest suggestion of weaving a spell," said the darkness under the hood, "you die. Third quadrant reconcile, ninth quadrant redouble, forward all!" A wall of water shot into the air behind Rincewind and the disc jerked suddenly. The dreadful presence of the sea troll had probably concentrated the hydrophobes' minds wonderfully, because it then rose at a very steep angle and didn't begin level flight until it was a dozen fathoms above the waves. Rincewind glanced down through the transparent surface and wished he hadn't. "Well, off again then," said Twoflower cheerfully. He turned and waved at the troll, now no more than a speck on the edge of the world. Rincewind glared at him. "Doesn't anything ever worry you?" he asked. "We're still alive, aren't we?" asked Twoflower. "And you yourself said they wouldn't be going to all this trouble if we were just going to be slaves. I expect Tethis was exaggerating. I expect it's all a misunderstanding. I expect we'll be sent home. After we've seen Krull, of course. And I must say it all sounds fascinating." "Oh yes," said Rincewind, in a hollow voice. "Fascinating." He was thinking: I've seen excitement, and I've seen boredom. And boredom was best.     Had either of them happened to look down at that moment they would have noticed a strange v-shaped wave surging through the water far below them, its apex pointing directly at Tethis' island. But they weren't looking. The twenty-four hydrophobic magicians were looking, but to them it was just another piece of dreadfulness, not really any different from the liquid horror around it. They were probably right. Sometime before all this the blazing pirate ship had hissed under the waves and started the long slow slide towards the distant ooze. It was more distant than average, because directly under the stricken keel was the Gorunna Trench - a chasm in the Disc's surface that was so black, so deep and so reputedly evil that even the krakens went there fearfully, and in pairs. In less reputedly evil chasms the fish went about with natural lights on their heads and on the whole managed quite well. In Gorunna they left them unlit and, insofar as it is possible for something without legs to creep, they crept; they tended to bump into things, too. Horrible things. The water around the ship turned from green to purple, from purple to black, from black to a darkness so complete that blackness itself seemed merely grey by comparison. Most of its timbers had already been crushed into splinters under the intense pressure. It spiralled past groves of nightmare polyps and drifting forests of seaweed which glowed with faint, diseased colours. Things brushed it briefly with soft, cold tentacles as they darted away into the freezing silence. Something rose up from the murk and ate it in one mouthful. Some time later the islanders on a little rimward atoll were amazed to find, washed into their little local lagoon, the wave-rocked corpse of a hideous sea monster, all beaks, eyes and tentacles. They were further astonished at its size, since it was rather larger than their village. But their surprise was tiny compared to the huge, stricken expression on the face of the dead monster, which appeared to have been trampled to death. Somewhat further rimward of the atoll a couple of little boats, trolling a net for the ferocious free-swimming oysters which abounded in those seas, caught something that dragged both vessels for several miles before one captain had the presence of mind to sever the lines. But even his bewilderment was as nothing compared to that of the islanders on the last atoll in the archipelago. During the following night they were awakened by a terrific crashing and splintering noise coming from their minute jungle; when some of the bolder spirits went to investigate in the morning they found that the trees had been smashed in a broad swathe that started on the hubmost shore of the atoll and made a line of total destruction pointing precisely Edgewise, littered with broken lianas, crushed bushes and a few bewildered and angry oysters.     They were high enough now to see the wide curve of the Rim sweeping away from them, lapped by the fluffy clouds that mercifully hid the waterfall for most of the time. From up here the sea, a deep blue dappled with cloud-shadows, looked almost inviting. Rincewind shuddered. "Excuse me," he said. The hooded figure turned from its contemplation of the distant haze and raised its wand threateningly. "I don't want to use this," it said. "You don't?" said Rincewind. "What is it, anyway?" said Twoflower. "Ajandurah's Wand of Utter Negativity," said Rincewind. "And I wish you'd stop waving it about. It might go off," he added, nodding at the wand's glittering point. "I mean, it's all very flattering, all this magic being used just for our benefit, but there's no need to go quite that far. And-" "Shut up." The figure reached up and pulled back its hood, revealing itself to be a most unusually tinted young woman. Her skin was black. Not the dark brown of Urabewe, or the polished blue-black of monsoon-haunted Klatch, but the deep black of midnight at the bottom of a cave. Her hair and eyebrows were the colour of moonlight. There was the same pale sheen around her lips. She looked about fifteen, and very frightened. Rincewind couldn't help noticing that the hand holding the wand was shaking, this was because a piece of sudden death, wobbling uncertainly a-mere five feet from your nose, is very hard to miss. It dawned on him - very slowly, because it was a completely new sensation - that someone in the world was frightened of him. The complete reverse was so often the case that he had come to think of it as a kind of natural law. "What is your name?" he said, as reassuringly as he could manage. She might be frightened, but she did have the wand. If I had a wand like that, he thought, I wouldn't be frightened of anything. So what in Creation can she imagine I could do? "My name is immaterial," she said. "That's a pretty name," said Rincewind. "Where are you taking us, and why? I can't see any harm in your telling us." "You are being brought to Krull," said the girl. "And don't mock me, hublander. Else I'll use the wand. I must bring you in alive, but no-one said anything about bringing you in whole. My name is Marchesa, and I am a wizard of the fifth level. Do you understand?" "Well, since you know all about me then you know that I never even made it to Neophyte," said Rincewind. "I'm not even a wizard, really." He caught Twoflower's astonished expression, and added hastily, "Just a wizard of sorts." "You can't do magic because one of the Eight Great Spells is indelibly lodged in your mind," said Marchesa, shifting her balance gracefully as the great lens described a wide arc over the sea. "That's why you were thrown out of Unseen University. We know." "But you said just now that he was a magician of great cunning and artifice," protested Twoflower. "Yes, because anyone who survives all that he has survived - most of which was brought on himself by his tendency to think of himself as a wizard - well, he must be some kind of a magician," said Marchesa. "I warn you, Rincewind. If you give me the merest suspicion that you are intoning the Great Spell I really will kill you." She scowled at him nervously. "Seems to me your best course would be to just, you know, drop us off somewhere," said Rincewind. "I mean, thanks for rescuing us and everything, so , if you'd just let us get on with leading our lives I'm sure we'd all-" "I hope you're not proposing to enslave us," said Twoflower." Marchesa looked genuinely shocked. "Certainly not! Whatever could have given you that idea? Your lives in Krull will be rich, full and comfortable-" "Oh, good," said Rincewind. "-just not very long."     Krull turned out to be a large island, quite mountainous and heavily wooded, with pleasant white buildings visible here and there among the trees. The land sloped gradually up towards the rim, so that the highest point in Krull in fact slightly overhung the Edge. Here the Krullians had built their major city, also called Krull, and since so much of their building material had been salvaged from the Circumfence the houses of Krull had a decidedly nautical persuasion. To put it bluntly, entire ships had been mortic artfully together and converted into buildings. Triremes, chows and caravels protruded at strange angles from the general wooden chaos. Painted figureheads and hublandish dragonprows reminded the citizens of Krull that their good fortune stemmed from the sea; barquentines and carracks lent a distinctive shape to the larger buildings. And so the city rose tier on tier between the blue-green ocean of the Disc and the soft cloud sea of the Edge, the eight colours of the Rimbow reflected in every window and in the many telescope lenses of the city's multitude of astronomers. "It's absolutely awful," said Rincewind gloomily. The lens was approaching now along the very lip of the rimfall. The island not only got higher as it neared the Edge. It got narrower too, so that the lens was able to remain over water until it was very near the city. The parapet along the edgewise cliff was dotted with gantries projecting into nothingness. The lens glided smoothly towards one of them and docked with it as smoothly as a boat might glide up to a quay. Four guards, with the same moonlight hair and nightblack faces as Marchesa, were waiting. They did not appear to be armed, but as Twoflower and Rincewind stumbled on to the parapet they were each grabbed by the arms and held quite firmly enough for any thought of escape to be instantly dismissed. Then Marchesa and the watching hydrophobic wizards were quickly left behind and the guards and their prisoners set off briskly along a lane that wound between the ship-houses. Soon it lead downwards, into what turned out to be a palace of some sort, half-hewn out of the rock of the cliff itself. Rincewind was vaguely aware of brightly-lit tunnels, and courtyards open to the distant sky. A few elderly men, their robes covered in mysterious occult symbols, stood aside and watched with interest as the sextet passed. Several times Rincewind noticed hydrophobes - their ingrained expressions of self-revulsion at their own body-fluids was distinctive- and here and there trudging men who could only be slaves. He didn't have much time to reflect on all this before a door was opened ahead of them and they were pushed, gently but firmly, into a room. Then the door slammed behind them. Rincewind and Twoflower regained their balance and stared around the room in which they now found themselves. "Gosh," said Twoflower ineffectually, after a pause during which he had tried unsuccessfully to find a better word. "This is a prison cell?" wondered Rincewind aloud. "All that gold and silk and stuff," Twoflower added. "I've never seen anything like it!" In the centre of the richly decorated room, on a carpet that was so deep and furry that Rincewind trod on it gingerly lest it be some kind of shaggy, floor-loving beast, was a long gleaming table laden with food. Most were fish dishes, including the biggest and most ornately-prepared lobster Rincewind had ever seen, but there were also plenty of bowls and platters piled with strange creations that he had never seen before. He reached out cautiously and picked up some sort of purple fruit crusted with green crystals. "Candied sea urchin," said a cracked, cheerful voice behind him. "A great delicacy." He dropped it quickly and turned around. An old man had stepped out from behind the heavy curtains. He was tall, thin and looked almost benign compared to some of the faces Rincewind had seen recently. "The puree of sea cucumbers is very good too," said the face, conversationally. "Those little green bits are baby starfish." "Thank you for telling me," said Rincewind weakly. "Actually, they're rather good," said Twoflower, his mouth full. "I thought you liked seafood?" "Yes, I thought I did," said Rincewind. "What's this wine – crushed octopus eyeballs?" "Sea grape," said the old man. "Great," said Rincewind, and swallowed a glassful. "Not bad. A bit salty, maybe." "Sea grape is a kind of small jellyfish," explained the stranger. "And now I really think I should introduce myself. Why has your friend gone that strange colour?" "Culture shock, I imagine," said Twoflower. "What did you say your name was?" "I didn't. It's Garhartra. I'm the Guestmaster, you see. It is my pleasant task to make sure that your stay here is as delightful as possible." He bowed. "If there is anything you want you have only to say." Twoflower sat down on an ornate mother-of-pearl chair with a glass of oily wine in one hand and a crystallised squid in the other. He frowned. "I think I've missed something along the way," he said. "First we were told we were going to be slaves-" "A base canard!" interrupted Garhartra. "What's a canard?" said Twoflower. "I think it's a kind of duck," said Rincewind from the far end of the long table. "Are these biscuits made of something really nauseating, do you suppose?" "-and then we were rescued at great magical expense-" "They're made of pressed seaweed," snapped the Guestmaster. "-but then we're threatened, also at a vast expenditure of magic-" "Yes, I thought it would be something like seaweed," agreed Rincewind. "They certainly taste like seaweed would taste if anyone was masochistic enough to eat seaweed." "–and then we're manhandled by guards and thrown in here–" "Pushed gently," corrected Garhartra. "–which turned out to be this amazingly rich room and there's all this food and a man saying he's devoting his life to making us happy," Twoflower concluded. "What I'm getting at is this sort of lack of consistency." "Yar," said Rincewind. "What he means is, are you about to start being generally unpleasant again? Is this just a break for lunch?" Garhartra held up his hands reassuringly. "Please, please," he protested. "It was just necessary to get you here as soon as possible. We certainly do not want to enslave you. Please be reassured on that score." "Well, fine," said Rincewind. "Yes, you will in fact be sacrificed," Garhartra continued placidly. "Sacrificed? You're going to kill us?" shouted the wizard. "Kill? Yes, of course. Certainly! It would hardly be a sacrifice if we didn't, would it? But don't worry - it'll be comparatively painless." "Comparatively? Compared to what?" said Rincewind. He picked up a tall green bottle that was full of sea grape jellyfish wine and hurled it hard at the Guestmaster, who flung up a hand as if to protect himself. There was a crackle of octarine flame from his fingers and the air suddenly took on the thick, greasy feel that indicated a powerful magical discharge. The flung bottle slowed and then stopped in mid-air, rotating gently. At the same time an invisible force picked Rincewind up and hurled him down the length of the room, pinning him awkwardly halfway up the far wall with no breath left in his body. He hung there with his mouth open in rage and astonishment. Garhartra lowered his hand and brushed it slowly on his robe. "I didn't enjoy doing that, you know," he said. "I could tell," muttered Rincewind. "But what do you want to sacrifice us for?" asked Twoflower. "You hardly know us!" "That's rather the point, isn't it? It's not very good manners to sacrifice a friend. Besides, you were, um, specified. I don't know a lot about the god in question, but He was quite clear on that point. Look, I must be running along now. So much to organise, you know how it is," the Guestmaster opened the door, and then peered back around it. "Please make yourselves comfortable, and don't worry." "But you haven't actually told us anything!" wailed Twoflower. "It's not really worth it, is it? What with you being sacrificed in the morning," said Garhartra. "It's hardly worth the bother of knowing, really. Sleep well. Comparatively well, anyway." He shut the door. A brief octarine flicker of balefire around it suggested that it had now been sealed beyond the skills of any earthly locksmith.     Gling, clang, tang went the bells along the Circumfence in the moonlit, rimfall-roaring night. Terton, lengthman of the 45th Length, hadn't heard such a clashing since the night a giant kraken had been swept into the Fence five years ago. He leaned out of his hut, which for the lack of any convenient eyot on this Length had been built on wooden piles driven into the sea bed, and stared into the darkness. Once or twice he thought he could see movement, far off. Strictly speaking, he should row out to see what was causing the din. But here in the clammy darkness it didn't seem like an astoundingly good idea, so he slammed the door, wrapped some sacking around the madly jangling bells, and tried to get back to sleep. That didn't work, because even the top strand of the Fence was thrumming now, as if something big and heavy was bouncing on it. After staring at the ceiling for a few minutes, and trying hard not to think of great long tentacles and pond-sized eyes, Terton blew out the lantern and opened the door a crack. Something was coming along the Fence, in giant loping bounds that covered metres at a time. It loomed up at him and for a moment Terton saw something rectangular, multi-legged, shaggy with seaweed and - although it had absolutely no features from which he could have deduced this - it was also very angry indeed. The hut was smashed to fragments as the monster charged through it, although Terton survived by clinging to the Circumfence; some weeks later he was picked up by a returning salvage fleet, subsequently escaped from Krull on a hijacked lens (having developed hydrophobia to an astonishing degree) and after a number of adventures eventually found his way to the Great Nef, an area of the Disc so dry that it actually has negative rainfall, which he nevertheless considered uncomfortably damp.     "Have you tried the door?" "Yes," said Twoflower. "And it isn't any less locked than it was last time you asked. There's the window, though." "A great way of escape," muttered Rincewind, from his perch halfway up the wall. "You said it looks out over the Edge. Just step out, eh, and plunge through space and maybe freeze solid or hit some other world at incredible speeds or plunge wildly into the burning heart of a sun?" "Worth a try," said Twoflower. "Want a seaweed biscuit?" "No!" "When are you coming down?" Rincewind snarled. This was partly in embarrassment. Garhartra's spell had been the little-used and hard-to-master Atavarr's Personal Gravitational Upset, the practical result of which was that until it wore off Rincewind's body was convinced that "down" lay at ninety degrees to that direction normally accepted as of a downward persuasion by the majority of the Disc's inhabitants. He was in fact standing on the wall. Meanwhile the flung bottle hung supportless in the air a few yards away. In its case time had well, not actually been stopped, but had been slowed by several orders of magnitude, and its trajectory had so far occupied several hours and a couple of inches as far as Twoflower and Rincewind were concerned. The glass gleamed in the moonlight. Rincewind sighed and tried to make himself comfortable on the wall. "Why don't you ever worry?" he demanded petulantly. "Here we are, going to be sacrificed to some god or other in the morning, and you just sit there eating barnacle canapes." "I expect something will turn up," said Twoflower. "I mean, it's not as if we know why we're going to be killed," the wizard went on. You'd like to, would you? "Did you say that?" asked Rincewind. "Say what?" Twoflower gave him a worried look. "I'm Twoflower," he said. "surely you remember?" Rincewind put his head in his hands. "It's happened at last," he moaned. "I'm going out of my mind." Good idea said the voice. It's getting pretty crowded in here. The spell pinning Rincewind to the wall vanished with a faint "pop." He fell forward and landed in a heap on the floor. Careful– you nearly squashed me. Rincewind struggled to his elbows and reached into the pocket of his robe. When he withdrew his hand the green frog was sitting on it, its eyes oddly luminous in the half-light. "Yes?" said Rincewind. Put me down on the floor and stand back. The frog blinked. The wizard did so, and dragged a bewildered Twoflower out of the way. The room darkened. There was a windy, roaring sound. Streamers of green, purple and octarine cloud appeared out of nowhere and began to spiral rapidly towards the recumbent amphibian, shedding small bolts of lightning as they whirled. Soon the frog was lost in a golden haze which began to elongate upwards, filling the room with a warm yellow light. Within it was a darker, indistinct shape, which wavered and changed even as they watched. And all the time there was the high, brain-curdling whine of a huge magical field... As suddenly as it had appeared, the magical tornado vanished. And there, occupying the space where the frog had been, was a frog. "Fantastic," said Rincewind. The frog gazed at him reproachfully. "Really amazing," said Rincewind sourly. "A frog magically transformed into a frog. Wondrous." "Turn around," said a voice behind them. It was a soft, feminine voice, almost an inviting voice, the sort of voice you could have a few drinks with, but it was coming from a spot where there oughtn't to be a voice at all. They managed to turn without really moving, like a couple of statues revolving on plinths. There was a woman standing in the pre-dawn light. She looked - she was - she had a - in point of actual fact she... Later Rincewind and Twoflower couldn't quite agree on any single fact about her, except that she had appeared to be beautiful (precisely what physical features made her beautiful they could not, definitively, state) and that she had green eyes. Not the pale green of ordinary eyes, either these were the green of fresh emeralds and as iridescent as a dragonfly. And one of the few genuinely magical facts that Rincewind knew was that no god or goddess, contrary and volatile as they might be in all other respects, could change the colour or nature of their eyes... "L-"he began. She raised a hand. "You know that if you say my name I must depart," she hissed. "surely you recall that I am the one goddess who comes only when not invoked?" "Uh. Yes, I suppose I do," croaked the wizard, trying not to look at the eyes. "You're the one they call the Lady?" "Yes." "Are you a goddess then?" said Twoflower excitedly. "I’ve always wanted to meet one." Rincewind tensed, waiting for the explosion of rage. Instead, the Lady merely smiled. "Your friend the wizard should introduce us," she said. Rincewind coughed. "Uh, yar," he said. "This is Twoflower, Lady, he's a tourist-" "–I have attended him on a number of occasions–" "And, Twoflower, this is the Lady. Just the Lady, right? Nothing else. Don't try and give her any other name, okay?" he went on desperately, his eyes darting meaningful glances that were totally lost on the little man. Rincewind shivered. He was not, of course, an atheist; on the Disc the gods dealt severely with atheists. On the few occasions when he had some spare change he had always made a point of dropping a few coppers into a temple coffer somewhere, on the principle that a man needed all the friends he could get. But usually he didn't bother the Gods, and he hoped the Gods wouldn't bother him. Life was quite complicated enough. There were two gods, however, who were really terrifying. The rest of the gods were usually only sort of large-scale humans, fond of wine and war and whoring. But Fate and the Lady were chilling. In the Gods' Quarter, in Ankh-Morpork, Fate had a small, heavy, leaden temple, where hollow-eyed and gaunt worshippers met on dark nights for their predestined-and fairly pointless rites. There were no temples at all to the Lady, although she was arguably the most powerful goddess in the entire history of Creation. A few of the more daring members of the Gamblers' Guild had once experimented with a form of worship, in the deepest cellars of Guild headquarters, and had all died of penury, murder or just Death within the week. She was the Goddess Who Must Not Be Named; those who sought her never found her, yet she was known to come to the aid of those in greatest need. And, then again, sometimes she didn't. She was like that. She didn't like the clicking of rosaries, but was attracted to the sound of dice. No man knew what She looked like, although there were many times when a man who was gambling his life on the turn of the cards would pick up the hand he had been dealt and stare Her full in the face. Of course, sometimes he didn't. Among all the gods she was at one and the same time the most courted and the most cursed. "We don't have gods where I come from," said Twoflower. "You do, you know," said the Lady."Everyone has gods. You just don't think they're gods." Rincewind shook himself mentally. "Look," he said. "I don't want to sound impatient, but in a few minutes some people are going to come through that door and take us away and kill us." "Yes," said the Lady. "I suppose you wouldn't tell us why?" said Twoflower. "Yes," said the Lady. "The Krullians intend to launch a bronze vessel over the edge of the Disc. Their prime purpose is to learn the sex of A'tuin the World Turtle." "Seems rather pointless," said Rincewind. "No. Consider. One day Great A'tuin may encounter another member of the species chelys galactica, somewhere in the vast night in which we move. Will they fight? Will they mate? A little imagination will show you that the sex of Great A'tuin could be very important to us. At least, so the Krullians say." Rincewind tried not to think of World Turtles mating. It wasn't completely easy. "So," continued the goddess, "they intend to launch this ship of space, with two voyagers aboard. It will be the culmination of decades of research. It will also be very dangerous for the travellers. And so, in an attempt to reduce the risks, the Arch-astronomer of Krull has bargained with Fate to sacrifice two men at the moment of launch. Fate, in His turn, has agreed to smile on the space ship. A neat barter, is it not?" "And we're the sacrifices," said Rincewind. "Yes." "I thought Fate didn't go in for that sort of bargaining. I thought Fate was implacable," said Rincewind. "Normally, yes. But you two have been thorns in his side for some time. He specified that the sacrifices should be you. He allowed you to escape from the pirates. He allowed you to drift into the Circumfence. Fate can be one mean god at times." There was a pause. The frog sighed and wandered off under the table. "But you can help us?" prompted Twoflower. "You amuse me," said the Lady. "I have a sentimental streak. You'd know that, if you were gamblers. So for a little while I rode in a frog's mind and you kindly rescued me, for, as we all know, no-one likes to see pathetic and helpless creatures swept to their death." "Thank you," said Rincewind. "The whole mind of Fate is bent against you," said the Lady. "But all I can do is give you one chance. Just one, small chance. The rest is up to you." She vanished. "Gosh," said Twoflower, after a while. "That's the first time I've ever seen a goddess." The door swung open. Garhartra entered, holding a wand in front of him. Behind him were two guards, armed more conventionally with swords. "Ah," he said conversationally. "You are ready, I see." Ready, said a voice inside Rincewind's head. The bottle that the wizard had flung some eight hours earlier had been hanging in the air, imprisoned by magic in its own personal time-field. But during all those hours the original mana of the spell had been slowly leaking away until the total magical energy was no longer sufficient to hold it against the Universe's own powerful normality field, and when that happened Reality snapped back in a matter of microseconds. The visible sign of this was that the bottle suddenly completed the last part of its parabola and burst against the side of the Guestmaster's head, showering the guards with glass and jellyfish wine. Rincewind grabbed Twoflower's arm, kicked the nearest guard in the groin, and dragged the startled tourist into the corridor. Before the stunned Garhartra had sunk to the floor his two guests were already pounding across distant flagstones. Rincewind skidded around a corner and found himself on a balcony that ran around the four sides of a courtyard. Below them, most of the floor of the yard was taken up by an ornamental pond in which a few terrapins sunbathed among the lily leaves. And ahead of Rincewind were a couple of very surprised wizards wearing the distinctive dark blue and black robes of trained hydrophobes. One of them, quicker on the uptake than his companion, raised a hand and began the first words of a spell. There was a short sharp noise by Rincewind's side. Twoflower had spat. The hydrophobe screamed and dropped his hand as though it had been stung. The other didn't have time to move before Rincewind was on him, fists swinging wildly. One stiff punch with the weight of terror behind it sent the man tumbling over the balcony rail and into the pond, which did a very strange thing; the water smacked aside as though a large invisible balloon had been dropped into it, and the hydrophobe hung screaming in his own revulsion field. Twoflower watched him in amazement until Rincewind snatched at his shoulder and indicated a likely looking passage. They hurried down it, leaving the remaining hydrophobe writhing on the floor and snatching at his damp hand. For a while there was some shouting behind them, but they scuttled along a cross corridor and another courtyard and soon left the sounds of pursuit behind. Finally Rincewind picked a safe looking door, peered around it, found the room beyond to be unoccupied, dragged Twoflower inside, and slammed it behind him. Then he leaned against it, wheezing horribly. "We're totally lost in a palace on an island we haven't a hope of leaving," he panted. "And what's more we– hey!" he finished, as the sight of the contents of the room filtered up his deranged optic nerves. Twoflower was already staring at the walls. Because what was so odd about the room was, it contained the whole Universe.     Death sat in His garden, running a whetstone along the edge of His scythe. It was already so sharp that any passing breeze that blew across it was sliced smoothly into two puzzled zephyrs, although breezes were rare indeed in Death's silent garden. It lay on a sheltered plateau overlooking the Disc world's complex dimensions, and behind it loomed the cold, still, immensely high and brooding mountains of Eternity. Swish! went the stone. Death hummed a dirge, and tapped one bony foot on the frosty flagstones. Someone approached through the dim orchard where the nightapples grew, and there came the sickly sweet smell of crushed lilies. Death looked up angrily, and found Himself staring into eyes that were black as the inside of a cat and full of distant stars that had no counterpart among the familiar constellations of the Realtime universe. Death and Fate looked at each other. Death grinned - He had no alternative, of course, being made of implacable bone. The whetstone sang rhythmically along the blade as He continued His task. "I have a task for you," said Fate. His words drifted across death's scythe and split tidily into two ribbons of consonants and vowels. I HAVE TASKS ENOUGH THIS DAY, said Death in a voice as heavy as neutronium, THE WHITE PLAGUE ABIDES EVEN NOW IN PSEUDOPOLIS AND I AM BOUND THERE TO RESCUE MANY OF ITS CITIZENS FROM HIS GRASP. SUCH A ONE HAS NOT BEEN SEEN THESE HUNDRED YEARS. I AM EXPECTED TO STALK THE STREETS, AS IS MY DUTY. "I refer to the matter of the little wanderer and the rogue wizard," said Fate softly, seating himself beside Death's black-robed form and staring down at the,distant, multifaceted jewel which was the Disc universe as seen from this extra-dimensional vantage point. The scythe ceased its song. "They die in a few hours," said Fate. "It is fated." Death stirred, and the stone began to move again. "I thought you would be pleased," said Fate. Death shrugged, a particularly expressive gesture for someone whose visible shape was that of a skeleton. I DID INDEED CHASE THEM MIGHTILY. ONCE, he said, BUT AT LAST THE THOUGHT CAME TO ME THAT SOONER OR LATER ALL MEN MUST DIE. EVERYTHING DIES IN THE END. I CAN BE ROBBED BUT NEVER DENIED, I TOLD MYSELF. WHY WORRY? "I too cannot be cheated," snapped Fate. SO I HAVE HEARD, said Death, still grinning. "Enough!" shouted Fate, jumping to his feet. "They will die!" He vanished in a sheet of blue fire. Death nodded to Himself and continued at His work. After some minutes the edge of the blade seemed to be finished to His satisfaction. He stood up and levelled the scythe at the fat and noisome candle that burned on the edge of the bench and then, with two deft sweeps, cut the flame into three bright slivers. Death grinned. A short while later he was saddling his white stallion, which lived in a stable at the back of Death's cottage. The beast snuffled at him in a friendly fashion; though it was crimson-eyed and had flanks like oiled silk, it was nevertheless a real flesh-and-blood horse and, indeed, was in all probability better treated than most beasts of burden on the Disc. Death was not an unkind master. He weighed very little and, although He often rode back with His saddlebags bulging, they weighed nothing whatsoever.     "All those worlds!" said Twoflower. "It's fantastic!" Rincewind grunted, and continued to prowl warily around the star-filled room. Twoflower turned to a complicated astrolabe, in the centre of which was the entire Great A'Tuin-Elephant-Disc system wrought in brass and picked out with tiny jewels. Around it stars and planets wheeled on fine silver wires. "Fantastic!" he said again. On the walls around him constellations made of tiny phosphorescent seed pearls had been picked out on vast tapestries made of jet-black velvet, giving the room's occupants the impression of floating in the interstellar gulf. Various easels held huge sketches of Great A'Tuin as viewed from various parts of the Circumfence, with every mighty scale and cratered pock-mark meticulously marked in. Twoflower stared about him with a faraway look in his eyes. Rincewind was deeply troubled. What troubled him most of all were the two suits that hung from supports in the centre of the room. He circled them uneasily. They appeared to be made of fine white leather, hung about with straps and brass nozzles and other highly unfamiliar and suspicious contrivances. The leggings ended in high, thick-soled boots, and the arms were shoved into big supple gauntlets. Strangest of all were the big copper helmets that were obviously supposed to fit on heavy collars around the neck of the suits. The helmets were almost certainly useless for protection a light sword would have no difficulty in splitting them, even if it didn't hit the ridiculous little glass windows in the front. Each helmet had a crest of white feathers on top, which went absolutely no way at all towards improving their overall appearance. Rincewind was beginning to have the glimmerings of a suspicion about those suits. In front of them .was a table covered with celestial charts and scraps of parchment covered with figures. Whoever would be wearing those suits, Rincewind decided, was expecting to boldly go where no man - other than the occasional luckless sailor, who didn't really count - had boldly gone before, and he was now beginning to get not just a suspicion but a horrible premonition. He turned round and found Twoflower looking at him with a speculative expression. "No– began Rincewind, urgently. Twoflower ignored him. "The goddess said two men were going to be sent over the Edge," he said, his eyes gleaming, "and you remember Tethis the troll saying you'd need some kind of protection? The Krullians have got over that. These are suits of space armour." "They don't look very roomy to me," said Rincewind hurriedly, and grabbed the tourist by the arm, "so if you'd just come on, no sense in staying here-" "Why must you always panic?" asked Twoflower petulantly. "Because the whole of my future life just flashed in front of my eyes, and it didn't take very long, and if you don't move now I'm going to leave without you because any second now you're going to suggest that we put on-" The door opened. Two husky young men stepped into the room. All they were wearing was a pair of woollen pants apiece. One of them was still towelling himself briskly. They both nodded at the two escapees with no apparent surprise. The taller of the two men sat down on one of the benches in front of the seats. He beckoned to Rincewind, and said: "?Tyo yur atl ho sooten gatrunen?" And this was awkward, because although Rincewind considered himself an expert in most of the tongues of the western segments of the Disc it was the first time that he had ever been addressed in Krullian, and he did not understand one word of it. Neither did Twoflower, but that did not stop him stepping forward and taking a breath. The speed of light through a magical aura such as the one that surrounded the Disc was quite slow, being not much faster than the speed of sound in less highly-tuned universes. But it was still the fastest thing around with the exception, in moments like this, of Rincewind's mind. In an instant he became aware that the tourist was about to try his own peculiar brand of linguistics, which meant that he would speak loudly and slowly in his own language. Rincewind's elbow shot back, knocking the breath from Twoflower's body. When the little man looked up in pain and astonishment Rincewind caught his eye and pulled an imaginary tongue out of his mouth and cut it with an imaginary pair of scissors. The second chelonaut- for such was the profession of the men whose fate it would shortly be to voyage to Great A'Tuin - looked up from the chart table and watched this in puzzlement. His big heroic brow wrinkled with the effort of speech. "?Hor yu latruin nor u?" he said. Rincewind smiled and nodded and pushed Twoflower in his general direction. With an inward sigh of relief he saw the tourist pay sudden attention to a big brass telescope that lay on the table. "! Sooten u!" commanded the seated chelonaut. Rincewind nodded and smiled and took one of the big copper helmets from the rack and brought it down on the man's head as hard as he possibly could. The chelonaut fell forward with a soft grunt. The other man took one startled step before Twoflower hit him amateurishly but effectively with the telescope. He crumpled on top of his colleague. Rincewind and Twoflower looked at each other over the carnage. "All right!" snapped Rincewind, aware that he had lost some kind of contest but not entirely certain what it was. "Don't bother to say it. Someone out there is expecting these two guys to come out in the suits in a minute. I suppose they thought we were slaves. Help me hide these behind the drapes and then, and then-" "–e'd better suit up," said Twoflower, picking up the second helmet. "Yes," said Rincewind. "You know, as soon as I saw the suits I just knew I'd end up wearing one. Don't ask me how I knew - I suppose it was because it was just about the worst possible thing that was likely to happen." "Well, you said yourself we have no way of escaping," said Twoflower, his voice muffled as he pulled the top half of a suit over his head. "Anything's better than being sacrificed." "As soon as we get a chance we run for it," said Rincewind. "Don't get any ideas." He thrust an arm savagely into his suit and banged his head on the helmet. He reflected briefly that someone up there was watching over him. "Thanks a lot," he said bitterly.     At the very edge of the city and country of Krull was a large semicircular amphitheatre, with seating for several tens of thousands of people. The arena was only semi-circular for the very elegant reason that it overlooked the cloud sea that boiled up from the Rimfall, far below, and now every seat was occupied. And the crowd was growing restive. It had come to see a double sacrifice and also the launching of the great bronze space ship. Neither event had yet materialised. The Arch-astronomer beckoned the Master Launchcontroller to him. "Well?" he said, filling a mere four letters with a full lexicon of anger and menace. The Master Launchcontroller went pale. "No news, lord," said the Launchcontroller, and added with a brittle brightness, "except that your prominence will be pleased to hear that Garhartra has recovered." "That is a fact he may come to regret," said the Arch-astronomer. "Yes, lord." "How much longer do we have?" The Launchcontroller glanced at the rapidly-climbing sun. "Thirty minutes, your prominence. After that Krull will have revolved away from Great A'Tuin's tail and the Potent Voyager will be doomed to spin away into the interterrapene gulf. I have already set the automatic controls, so-" "All right, all right," the Arch-astronomer said, waving him away. "The launch must go ahead. Maintain the watch on the harbour, of course. When the wretched pair are caught I will personally take a great deal of pleasure in executing them myself." "Yes, lord. Er-" The Arch-astronomer frowned. "What else have you got to say, man?" The Launchcontroller swallowed. All this was very unfair on him, he was a practical magician rather than a diplomat, and that was why some wiser brains had seen to it that he would be the one to pass on the news. "A monster has come out of the sea and it's attacking the ships in the harbour," he said. "A runner just arrived from there." "A big monster?" said the Arch-astronomer. "Not particularly, although it is said to be exceptionally fierce, lord." The ruler of Krull and the Circumfence considered this for a moment, then shrugged. "The sea is full of monsters," he said. It is one of its prime attributes. Have it dealt with. And–Master Launchcontroller?" "Lord?" "If I am further vexed, you will recall that two people are due to be sacrificed. I may feel generous and increase the number." "Yes, lord. The Master Launchcontroller scuttled away, relieved to be out of the autocrat's sight. The Potent Voyager, no longer the blank bronze shell that had been smashed from the mould a few days earlier, rested in its cradle on top of a wooden tower in the centre of the arena. In front of it a railway ran down towards the Edge, where for the space of a few yards it turned suddenly upwards. The late Dactylos Goldeneyes, who had designed the launching pad as well as the Potent Voyager itself, had claimed that this last touch was merely to ensure that the ship would not snag on any rocks as it began its long plunge. Maybe it was merely coincidental that it would also, because of that little twitch in the track, leap like a salmon and shine theatrically in the sunlight before disappearing into the cloud sea. There was a fanfare of trumpets at the edge of the arena. The chelonauts' honour guard appeared, to much cheering from the crowd. Then the whitesuited explorers themselves stepped out into the light. It immediately dawned on the Arch-astronomer that something was wrong. Heroes always walked in a certain way, for example. They certainly didn't waddle, and one of the chelonauts was definitely waddling. The roar of the assembled people of Krull was deafening. As the chelonauts and their guards crossed the great arena, passing between the many altars that had been set up for the various wizards and priests of Krull's many sects to ensure the success of the launch, the Arch-astronomer frowned. By the time the party was halfway across the floor his mind had reached a conclusion. By the time the chelonauts were standing at the foot of the ladder that led to the ship- and was there more than a hint of reluctance about them? - the Arch-astronomer was on his feet, his words lost in the noise of the crowd. One of his arms shot out and back fingers spread dramatically in the traditional spell-casting position, and any passing lip-reader who was also familiar with the standard texts on magic would have recognized the opening words of Vestcake's Floating Curse, and would then have prudently run away. Its final words remained unsaid, however. The Arch-astronomer turned in astonishment as a commotion broke out around the big arched entrance to the arena. Guards were running out into the daylight, throwing down their weapons as they scuttled among the altars or vaulted the parapet into the stands. Something emerged behind them, and the crowd around the entrance ceased its raucous cheering and began a silent, determined scramble to get out of the way. The something was a low dome of seaweed, moving slowly but with a sinister sense of purpose. One guard overcame his horror sufficiently to stand in its path and hurl his spear, which landed squarely among the weeds. The crowd cheered then went deathly silent as the dome surged forward and engulfed the man completely. The Arch-astronomer dismissed the half-formed shape of Vestcake's famous Curse with a sharp wave of his hand, and quickly spoke the words of one of the most powerful spells in his repertoire: the Infernal Combustion Enigma. Octarine fire spiralled around and between his fingers as he shaped the complex rune of the spell in mid-air and sent it, screaming and trailing blue smoke, towards the shape. There was a satisfying explosion and a gout of flame shot up into the clear morning sky, shedding flakes of burning seaweed on the way. A cloud of smoke and steam concealed the monster for several minutes, and when it cleared the dome had completely disappeared. There was a large charred circle on the flagstones, however, in which a few clumps of kelp and bladderwrack still smouldered. And in the centre of the circle was a perfectly ordinary, if somewhat large, wooden chest. It was not even scorched. Someone on the far side of the arena started to laugh, but the sound was broken off abruptly as the chest rose up on dozens of what could only be legs and turned to face the Arch-astronomer. A perfectly ordinary if somewhat large wooden chest does not, of course, have a face with which to face, but this one was quite definitely facing. In precisely the same way as he understood that, the Arch-astronomer was also horribly aware that this perfectly normal box was in some indescribable way narrowing its eyes. It began to move resolutely towards him. He shuddered. "Magicians!" he screamed. "Where are my magicians?" Around the arena pale-faced men peeped out from behind altars and under benches. One of the bolder ones, seeing the expression on the Arch-astronomer's face, raised an arm tremulously and essayed a hasty thunderbolt. It hissed towards the chest and struck it squarely in a shower of white sparks. That was the signal for every magician, enchanter and thaumaturgist in Krull to leap up eagerly and, under the terrified eyes of their master, unleash the first spell that came to each desperate mind. Charms curved and whistled through the air. Soon the chest was lost to view again in an expanding cloud of magical particles, which billowed out and wreathed it in twisting, disquieting shapes. Spell after spell screamed into the melee. Flame and lightning bolts of all eight colours stabbed out brightly from the seething thing that now occupied the space where the box had been. Not since the Mage Wars had so much magic been concentrated on one small area. The air itself wavered and glittered. Spell ricocheted off spell, creating short-lived wild spells whose brief half-life was both weird and uncontrolled. The stones under the heaving mass began to buckle and split. One of them in fact turned into something best left undescribed and slunk off into some dismal dimension. Other strange side-effects began to manifest themselves. A shower of small lead cubes bounced out of the storm and rolled across the heaving floor, and eldritch shapes gibbered and beckoned obscenely; four-sided triangles and double-ended circles existed momentarily before merging again into the booming, screaming tower of runaway raw magic that boiled up from the molten flagstones and spread out over Krull. It no longer mattered that most of the magicians had ceased their spell casting and fled - the thing was now feeding on the stream of octarine particles that were always at their thickest near the Edge of the Disc. Throughout the island of Krull every magical activity failed as all the available mana in the area was sucked into the cloud, which was already a quarter of a mile high and streaming out into mind-curdling shapes; hydrophobes on their seaskimming lenses crashed screaming into the waves, magic potions turned to mere impure water in their phials, magic swords melted and dripped from their scabbards. But none of this in any way prevented the thing at the base of the cloud, now gleaming mirrorbright in the intensity of the power storm around it, from moving at a steady walking pace towards the Arch-astronomer. Rincewind and Twoflower watched in awe from the shelter of Potent Voyager's launch tower. The honour party had long since vanished, leaving their weapons scattered behind them. "Well," sighed Twoflower at last, "there goes the Luggage." He sighed. "Don't you believe it," said Rincewind. "sapient pearwood is totally impervious to all known forms of magic. It's been constructed to follow you anywhere. I mean, when you die, if you go to Heaven, you'll at least have a clean pair of socks in the afterlife. But I don't want to die yet, so let's just get going, shall we?" "Where?" said Twoflower. Rincewind picked up a crossbow and a handful of quarrels. "Anywhere that isn't here," he said. "What about the Luggage?" "Don't worry. When the storm has used up all the free magic in the vicinity it'll just die out." In fact that was already beginning to happen. The billowing cloud was still flowing up from the area but now it had a tenuous, harmless look about it. Even as Twoflower stared, it began to flicker uncertainly. Soon it was a pale ghost. The luggage was now visible as a squat shape among the almost invisible flames. Around it the rapidly cooling stones began to crack and buckle. Twoflower called softly to his luggage. It stopped its stolid progression across the tortured flags and appeared to be listening intently; then, moving its dozens of feet in an intricate pattern, it turned on its length and headed towards the Potent Voyager. Rincewind watched it sourly. The Luggage had an elemental nature, absolutely no brain, a homicidal attitude towards anything that threatened its master, and he wasn't quite sure that its inside occupied the same space-time framework as its outside. "Not a mark on it," said Twoflower cheerfully, as the box settled down in front of him. He pushed open the lid. "This is a fine time to change your underwear," snarled Rincewind. "In a minute all those guards and priests are going to come back, and they're going to be upset, man!" "Water," murmured Twoflower. "The whole box is full of water!" Rincewind peered over his shoulder. There was no sign of clothes, moneybags, or any other of the tourist's belongings. The whole box was full of water. A wave sprang up from nowhere and lapped over the edge. It hit the flagstones but, instead of spreading out, began to take the shape of-a foot. Another foot and the bottom half of a pair of legs followed as more water streamed down as if filling an invisible mould. A moment later Tethis the sea troll was standing in front of them, blinking. "I see," he said at last. "You two. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised." He looked around, ignoring their astonished expressions. "I was just sitting outside my hut, watching the sun set, when this thing came roaring up out of the water and swallowed me," he said. "I thought it was rather strange. Where is this place?" "Krull," said Rincewind. He stared hard at the now closed luggage, which was managing to project a smug expression. Swallowing people was something it did quite frequently, but always when the lid was next opened there was nothing inside but Twoflower's laundry. Savagely he wrenched the lid up. There was nothing inside but Twoflower's laundry. It was perfectly dry. "Well, well," said Tethis. He looked up. "Hey!" he said. "Isn't this the ship they're going to send over the Edge? Isn't it? It must be!" An arrow zipped through his chest, leaving a faint ripple. He didn't appear to notice. Rincewind did. Soldiers were beginning to appear at the edge of the arena, and a number of them were peering around the entrances. Another arrow bounced off the tower behind Twoflower. At this range the bolts did not have a lot of force, but it would only be a matter of time... "Quick!" said Twoflower. "Into the ship! They won't dare fire at that!" "I knew you were going to suggest that," groaned Rincewind. "I just knew it!" He aimed a kick at the Luggage. It backed off a few inches, and opened its lid threateningly. A spear arced out of the sky and trembled to a halt in the woodwork by the wizard's ear. He screamed briefly and scrambled up the ladder after the others. Arrows whistled around them as they came out on to the narrow catwalk that led along the spine of the Potent Voyager. Twoflower led the way, jogging along with what Rincewind considered to be too much suppressed excitement. Atop the centre of the ship was a large round bronze hatch with hasps around it. The troll and the tourist knelt down and started to work on them.     In the heart of the Potent Voyager fine sand had been trickling into a carefully designed cup for several hours. Now the cup was filled by exactly the right amount to dip down and upset a carefully-balanced weight. The weight swung away, pulling a pin from an intricate little mechanism. A chain began to move. There was a clonk...     "What was that?" said Rincewind urgently. He looked down. The hail of arrows had stopped. The crowd of priests and soldiers were standing motionless, staring intently at the ship. A small worried man elbowed his way through them and started to shout something. "What was what?" said Twoflower, busy with a wing-nut. "I thought I heard something," said Rincewind. "Look," he said, "we'll threaten to damage the thing if they don't let us go, right? That's all we're going to do, right?" "Yah," said Twoflower vaguely. He sat back on his heels. "That's it," he said. "It ought to lift off now." Several muscular men were swarming up the ladder to the ship. Rincewind recognized the two chelonauts among them. They were carrying swords. "I-" he began. The ship lurched. Then, with infinite slowness, it began to move along the rails. In that moment of black horror Rincewind saw that Twoflower and the troll had managed to pull the hatch up. A metal ladder inside led into the cabin below. The troll disappeared. "We've got to get off," whispered Rincewind. Twoflower looked at him, a strange mad smile on his face. "Stars," said the tourist. "Worlds. The whole damn sky full of worlds. Places no-one will ever see. Except me." He stepped through the hatchway. "You're totally mad," said Rincewind hoarsely, trying to keep his balance as the ship began to speed up. He turned as one of the chelonauts tried to leap the gap between the Voyager and the tower, landed on the curving flank of the ship, scrabbled for an instant for purchase, failed to find any, and dropped away with a shriek. The Voyager was travelling quite fast now. Rincewind could see past Twoflower's head to the sunlit cloud sea and the impossible Rimbow, floating tantalisingly beyond it, beckoning fools to venture too far... He also saw a gang of men climbing desperately over the lower slopes of the launching ramp and manhandling a large baulk of timber on to the track, in a frantic attempt to derail the ship before it vanished over the Edge. The wheels slammed into it, but the only effect was to make the ship rock, Twoflower to lose his grip on the ladder and fall into the cabin, and the hatch to slam down with the horrible sound of a dozen fiddly little catches snapping into place. Rincewind dived forward and scrabbled at them, whimpering. The cloud sea was much nearer now. The Edge itself, a rocky perimeter to the arena, was startlingly close. Rincewind stood up. There was only one thing to do now, and he did it. He panicked blindly, just as the ship's bogeys hit the little upgrade and flung it sparkling like a salmon, into the sky and over the Edge. A few seconds later there was a thunder of little feet and the Luggage cleared the rim of the world, legs still pumping determinedly, and plunged down into the Universe.   THE END   Rincewind woke up and shivered. He was freezing cold. So this is it, he thought. When you die you go to a cold, damp, misty freezing place. Hades, where the mournful spirits of the Dead troop forever across the sorrowful marshes, corpse-lights flickering fit fully in the encircling–hang on a minute... Surely Hades wasn't this uncomfortable? And he was very uncomfortable indeed. His back ached where a branch was pressing into it, his legs and arms hurt where the twigs had lacerated them and, judging by the way his head was feeling, something hard had recently hit it. If this was Hades it sure was hell-hang on a minute... Tree. He concentrated on the word that floated up from his mind, although the buzzing in his ears and the flashing lights in front of his eyes made this an unexpected achievement. Tree. Wooden thing. That was it. Branches and twigs and things. And Rincewind, lying in it. Tree. Dripping wet. Cold white cloud all around. Underneath, too. Now that was odd. He was alive and lying covered in bruises in a small thorn tree that was growing in a crevice in a rock that projected out of the foaming white wall that was the Rimfall. The realization hit him in much the same way as an icy hammer. He shuddered. The tree gave a warning creak. Something blue and blurred shot past him, dipped briefly into the thundering waters, and whirred back and settled on a branch near Rincewind's head. It was a small bird with a tuft of blue and green feathers. It swallowed the little silver fish that it had snatched from the Fall and eyed him curiously. Rincewind became aware that there were lots of similar birds around. They hovered, darted and swooped easily across the face of the water, and every so often one would raise an extra plume of spray as it stole another doomed morsel from the waterfall. Several of them were perching in the tree. They were as iridescent as jewels. Rincewind was entranced. He was in fact the first man ever to see the rimfishers, the tiny creatures who had long ago evolved a lifestyle quite unique even for the Disc. long before the Krullians had built the Circumfence the rimfishers had devised their own efficient method of policing the edge of the world for a living. They didn't seem bothered about Rincewind. He had a brief but chilling vision of himself living the rest of his life out in this tree, subsisting on raw birds and such fish as he could snatch as they plummeted past. The tree moved distinctly. Rincewind gave a whimper as he found himself sliding backwards, but managed to grab a branch. Only, sooner or later, he would fall asleep... There was a subtle change of scene, a slight purplish tint to the sky. A tall, black-cloaked figure was standing on the air next to the tree. It had a scythe in one hand. Its face was hidden in the shadows of the hood. I HAVE COME FOR THEE, said the invisible mouth, in tones as heavy as a whale's heartbeat. The trunk of the tree gave another protesting creak, and a pebble bounced off Rincewind's helmet as one root tore loose from the rock. Death Himself always came in person to harvest the souls of wizards. "What am I going to die of?" said Rincewind. The tall figure hesitated. PARDON? it said. "Well, I haven't broken anything, and I haven't drowned, so what am I about to die of? You can't just be killed by Death; there has to be a reason," said Rincewind. To his utter amazement he didn't feel terrified any more. For about the first time in his life he wasn't frightened. Pity the experience didn't look like lasting for long. Death appeared to reach a conclusion. YOU COULD DIE OF TERROR, the hood intoned. The voice still had its graveyard ring, but there was a slight tremor of uncertainty. "Won't work," said Rincewind smugly. THERE DOESN'T HAVE TO BE A REASON, said Death, I CAN JUST KILL YOU. "Hey, you can't do that! It'd be murder!" The cowled figure sighed and pulled back its hood. Instead of the grinning death's head that Rincewind had been expecting he found himself looking up into the pale and slightly transparent face of a rather worried demon, of sorts. "I'm making rather a mess of this, aren't I?" it said wearily. "You're not Death! Who are you?" cried Rincewind. "Scrofula." "Scrofula?" "Death couldn't come," said the demon wretchedly. "There's a big plague on in Pseudopolis. He had to go and stalk the streets. So he sent me." "No-one dies of scrofula! I've got rights. I'm a wizard!" "All right, all right. This was going to be my big chance," said Scrofula, "but look at it this way - if I hit you with this scythe you'll be just as dead as you would be if Death had done it. Who'd know?" "I'd know!" snapped Rincewind. "You wouldn't. You'd be dead," said Scrofula logically. "Piss off," said Rincewind. "That's all very well," said the demon, hefting the scythe, "but why not try to see things from my point of view? This means a lot to me, and you've got to admit that your life isn't all that wonderful. Reincarnation can only be an improvement- uh." His hand flew to his mouth but Rincewind was already pointing a trembling finger at him. "Reincarnation!" he said excitedly. "So it is true what the mystics say!" "I'm admitting nothing," said Scrofula testily. "It was a slip of the tongue. Now–are you going to die willingly or not?" "No," said Rincewind. "Please yourself," replied the demon. He raised the scythe. It whistled down in quite a professional way, but Rincewind wasn't there. He was in fact several metres below, and the distance was increasing all the time, because the branch had chosen that moment to snap and send him on his interrupted journey towards the interstellar gulf. "Come back!" screamed the demon. Rincewind didn't answer. He was lying belly down in the rushing air, staring down into the clouds that even now were thinning. They vanished. Below, the whole Universe twinkled at Rincewind. There was Great A'Tuin, huge and ponderous and pocked with craters. There was the little Disc moon. There was a distant gleam that could only be the Potent Voyager. And there were all the stars, looking remarkably like powdered diamonds spilled on black velvet, the stars that lured and ultimately called the boldest towards them... The whole of Creation was waiting for Rincewind to drop in. He did so. There didn't seem to be any alternative.       [1] The shape and cosmology of the disc system are perhaps worthy of note at this point. There are, of course, two major directions on the disc: Hubward and Rimward. But since the disc itself revolves at the rate of once every eight hundred days (in order to distribute the weight fairly upon its supportive pachyderms, according to Reforgule of Krull) there are also two lesser directions, which are Turnwise and Widdershins. Since the disc's tiny orbiting sunlet maintains a fixed orbit while the majestic disc turns slowly beneath it, it will be readily deduced that a disc year consists of not four but eight seasons. The summers are those times when the sun rises or sets at the nearest point on the Rim, the winters those occasions when it rises or sets at a point around ninety degrees along the circumference. Thus, in the lands around the Circle Sea, the year begins on Hogs' Watch Night, progresses through a Spring Prime to its first midsummer (Small Gods' Eve) which is followed by Autumn Prime and, straddling the half-year point of Crueltide, Winter Secundus (also known as the Spindlewinter, since at this time the sun rises in the direction of spin). Then comes Secundus Spring with Summer Two on its heels, the three quarter mark of the year being the night of Alls Fallow - the one night of the year, according to legend, when witches and warlocks stay in bed. Then drifting leaves and frosty nights drag on towards Backspindlewinter and a new Hogs' Watch Night nestling like a frozen jewel at its heart. Since the Hub is never closely warmed by the weak sun the lands there are locked in permafrost. The Rim, on the other hand, is a region of sunny islands and balmy days. There are, of course, eight days in a disc week and eight colours in its light spectrum. Eight is a number of some considerable occult significance on the disc and must never, ever, be spoken by a wizard. Precisely why all the above should be so is not clear, but goes some way to explain why, on the disc, the Gods are not so much worshipped as blamed. Unknown The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett v1.0 ??? v1.1 ??? v1.2 ??? v1.3 (15-mar-01) Proofread & Layout corrections 
Small Gods - Terry Pratchett	----	Small Gods TERRY PRATCHETT SMALL GODS   v1.0 (22-mar-01) Scanned, OCR’d and proofed in Word2000 by 4i Publications     NOW CONSIDER THE TORTOISE AND the eagle. The tortoise is a ground-living creature. It is impossible to live nearer the ground without being under it. Its horizons are a few inches away. It has about as good a turn of speed as you need to hunt down a lettuce. It has survived while the rest of evolution flowed past it by being, on the whole, no threat to anyone and too much trouble to eat. And then there is the eagle. A creature of the air and high places, whose horizons go all the way to the edge of the world. Eyesight keen enough to spot the rustle of some small and squeaky creature half a mile away. All power, all control. Lightning death on wings. Talons and claws enough to make a meal of anything smaller than it is and at least take a hurried snack out of anything bigger. And yet the eagle will sit for hours on the crag and survey the kingdoms of the world until it spots a distant movement and then it will focus, focus, focus on the small shell wobbling among the bushes down there on the desert. And it will leap . . . And a minute later the tortoise finds the world dropping away from it. And it sees the world for the first time, no longer one inch from the ground but five hundred feet above it, and it thinks: what a great friend I have in the eagle. And then the eagle lets go. And almost always the tortoise plunges to its death. Everyone knows why the tortoise does this. Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off. No one knows why the eagle does this. There's good eating on a tortoise but, considering the effort involved, there's much better eating on practically anything else. It's simply the delight of eagles to torment tortoises. But of course, what the eagle does not realize is that it is participating in a very crude form of natural selection. One day a tortoise will learn how to fly.     The story takes place in desert lands, in shades of umber and orange. When it begins and ends is more problematical, but at least one of its beginnings took place above the snowline, thousands of miles away in the mountains around the Hub.[1] One of the recurring philosophical questions is: "Does a falling tree in the forest make a sound when there is no one to hear?" Which says something about the nature of philosophers, because there is always someone in a forest. It may only be a badger, wondering what that cracking noise was, or a squirrel a bit puzzled by all the scenery going upwards, but someone. At the very least, if it was deep enough in the forest, millions of small gods would have heard it. Things just happen, one after another. They don't care who knows. But history . . . ah, history is different. History has to be observed. Otherwise it's not history. It's just . . . well, things happening one after another. And, of course, it has to be controlled. Otherwise it might turn into anything. Because history, contrary to popular theories, is kings and dates and battles. And these things have to happen at the right time. This is difficult. In a chaotic universe there are too many things to go wrong. It's too easy for a general's horse to lose a shoe at the wrong time, or for someone to mishear an order, or for the carrier of the vital message to be waylaid by some men with sticks and a cash flow problem. Then there are wild stories, parasitic growths on the tree of history, trying to bend it their way. So history has its caretakers. They live . . . well, in the nature of things they live wherever they are sent, but their spiritual home is in a hidden valley in the high Ramtops of the Discworld, where the books of history are kept. These aren't books in which the events of the past are pinned like so many butterflies to a cork. These are the books from which history is derived. There are more than twenty thousand of them; each one is ten feet high, bound in lead, and the letters are so small that they have to be read with a magnifying glass. When people say "It is written . . ." it is written here. There are fewer metaphors around than people think. Every month the abbot and two senior monks go into the cave where the books are kept. It used to be the duty of the abbot alone, but two other reliable monks were included after the unfortunate case of the 59th Abbot, who made a million dollars in small bets before his fellow monks caught up with him. Besides, it's dangerous to go in alone. The sheer concentratedness of History, sleeting past soundlessly out into the world, can be overwhelming. Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you. The 493rd Abbot folded his wrinkled hands and addressed Lu-Tze, one of his most senior monks. The clear air and untroubled life of the secret valley was such that all the monks were senior; besides, when you work with Time every day, some of it tends to rub off. "The place is Omnia," said the abbot, "on the Klatchian coast." "I remember," said Lu-Tze. "Young fellow called Ossory, wasn't there?" "Things must be . . . carefully observed," said the abbot. "There are pressures. Free will, predestination . . . . the power of symbols . . . turning-point . . . you know all about this." "Haven't been to Omnia for, oh, must be seven hundred years," said Lu-Tze. "Dry place. Shouldn't think there's a ton of good soil in the whole country, either." "Off you go, then," said the abbot. "I shall take my mountains," said Lu-Tze. "The climate will be good for them." And he also took his broom and his sleeping mat. The history monks don't go in for possessions. They find most things wear out in a century or two. It took him four years to get to Omnia. He had to watch a couple of battles and an assassination on the way, otherwise they would just have been random events.     It was the Year of the Notional Serpent, or two hundred years after the Declaration of the Prophet Abbys. Which meant that the time of the 8th Prophet was imminent. That was the reliable thing about the Church of the Great God Om. It had very punctual prophets. You could set your calendar by them, if you had one big enough. And, as is generally the case around the time a prophet is expected, the Church redoubled its efforts to be holy. This was very much like the bustle you get in any large concern when the auditors are expected, but tended towards taking people suspected of being less holy and putting them to death in a hundred ingenious ways. This is considered a reliable barometer of the state of one's piety in most of the really popular religions. There's a tendency to declare that there is more backsliding around than in the national toboggan championships, that heresy must be torn out root and branch, and even arm and leg and eye and tongue, and that it's time to wipe the slate clean. Blood is generally considered very efficient for this purpose.     And it came to pass that in that time the Great God Om spake unto Brutha, the Chosen One: "Psst!" Brutha paused in mid-hoe and stared around the Temple garden. "Pardon?" he said. It was a fine day early in the lesser Spring. The prayer mills spun merrily in the breeze off the mountains. Bees loafed around in the bean blossoms, but buzzed fast in order to give the impression of hard work. High above, a lone eagle circled. Brutha shrugged, and got back to the melons. Yea, the Great God Om spake again unto Brutha, the Chosen One: "Psst!" Brutha hesitated. Someone had definitely spoken to him from out of the air. Perhaps it was a demon. Novice master Brother Nhumrod was hot on the subject of demons. Impure thoughts and demons. One led to the other. Brutha was uncomfortably aware that he was probably overdue a demon. The thing to do was to be resolute and repeat the Nine Fundamental Aphorisms. Once more the Great God Om spake unto Brutha, the Chosen One: "Are you deaf, boy?" The hoe thudded on to the baking soil. Brutha spun around. There were the bees, the eagle and, at the far end of the garden, old Brother Lu-Tze dreamily forking over the dung heap. The prayer mills whirled reassuringly along the walls. He made the sign with which the Prophet Ishkible had cast out spirits. "Get thee behind me, demon," he muttered. "I am behind you." Brutha turned again, slowly. The garden was still empty. He fled.     Many stories start long before they begin, and Brutha's story had its origins thousands of years before his birth. There are billions of gods in the world. They swarm as thick as herring roe. Most of them are too small to see and never get worshiped, at least by anything bigger than bacteria, who never say their prayers and don't demand much in the way of miracles. They are the small gods-the spirits of places where two ant trails cross, the gods of microclimates down between the grass roots. And most of them stay that way. Because what they lack is belief. A handful, though, go on to greater things. Anything may trigger it. A shepherd, seeking a lost lamb, finds it among the briars and takes a minute or two to build a small cairn of stones in general thanks to whatever spirits might be around the place. Or a peculiarly shaped tree becomes associated with a cure for disease. Or someone carves a spiral on an isolated stone. Because what gods need is belief, and what humans want is gods. Often it stops there. But sometimes it goes further. More rocks are added, more stones are raised, a temple is built on the site where the tree once stood. The god grows in strength, the belief of its worshipers raising it upwards like a thousand tons of rocket fuel. For a very few, the sky's the limit. And, sometimes, not even that.     Brother Nhumrod was wrestling with impure thoughts in the privacy of his severe cell when he heard the fervent voice from the novitiates' dormitory. The Brutha boy was flat on his face in front of a statue of Om in His manifestation as a thunderbolt, shaking and gabbling fragments of prayer. There was something creepy about that boy, Nhumrod thought. It was the way he looked at you when you were talking, as if he was listening. He wandered out and prodded the prone youth with the end of his cane. "Get up, boy! What do you think you're doing in the dormitory in the middle of the day? Mmm?" Brutha managed to spin around while still flat on the floor and grasped the priest's ankles. "Voice! A voice! It spoke to me!" he wailed. Nhumrod breathed out. Ah. This was familiar ground. Voices were right up Nhumrod's cloister. He heard them all the time. "Get up, boy," he said, slightly more kindly. Brutha got to his feet. He was, as Nhumrod had complained before, too old to be a proper novice. About ten years too old. Give me a boy up to the age of seven, Nhumrod had always said. But Brutha was going to die a novice. When they made the rules, they'd never allowed for anything like Brutha. His big red honest face stared up at the novice master. "Sit down on your bed, Brutha," said Nhumrod. Brutha obeyed immediately. Brutha did not know the meaning of the word disobedience. It was only one of a large number of words he didn't know the meaning of. Nhumrod sat down beside him. "Now, Brutha," he said, "you know what happens to people who tell falsehoods, don't you?" Brutha nodded, blushing. "Very well. Now tell me about these voices." Brutha twisted the hem of his robe in his hands. "It was more like one voice, master," he said. "-like one voice," said Brother Nhumrod. "And what did this voice say? Mmm?" Brutha hesitated. Now he came to think about it, the voice hadn't said anything very much. It had just spoken. It was, in any case, hard to talk to Brother Nhumrod, who had a nervous habit of squinting at the speaker's lips and repeating the last few words they said practically as they said them. He also touched things all the time-walls, furniture, people-as if he was afraid the universe would disappear if he didn't keep hold of it. And he had so many nervous tics that they had to queue. Brother Nhumrod was perfectly normal for someone who had survived in the Citadel for fifty years. "Well . . ." Brutha began. Brother Nhumrod held up a skinny hand. Brutha could see the pale blue veins in it. "And I am sure you know that there are two kinds of voice that are heard by the spiritual," said the master of novices. One eyebrow began to twitch. "Yes, master. Brother Murduck told us that," said Brutha, meekly. "-told us that. Yes. Sometimes, as He in His infinite wisdom sees fit, the God speaks to a chosen one and he becomes a great prophet," said Nhumrod. "Now, I am sure you wouldn't presume to consider yourself one of them? Mmm?" "No, master." "-master. But there are other voices," said Brother Nhumrod, and now his voice had a slight tremolo, "beguiling and wheedling and persuasive voices, yes? Voices that are always waiting to catch us off our guard?" Brutha relaxed. This was more familiar ground. All the novices knew about those kinds of voices. Except that usually they talked about fairly straightforward things, like the pleasures of night-time manipulation and the general desirability of girls. Which showed that they were novices when it came to voices. Brother Nhumrod got the kind of voices that were, by comparison, a full oratorio. Some of the bolder novices liked to get Brother Nhumrod talking on the subject of voices. He was an education, they said. Especially when little bits of white spit appeared at the corners of his mouth. Brutha listened.     Brother Nhumrod was the novice master, but he wasn't the novice master. He was only master of the group that included Brutha. There were others. Possibly someone in the Citadel knew how many there were. There was someone somewhere whose job it was to know everything. The Citadel occupied the whole of the heart of the city of Kom, in the lands between the deserts of Klatch and the plains and jungles of Howondaland. It extended for miles, its temples, churches, schools, dormitories, gardens, and towers growing into and around one another in a way that suggested a million termites all trying to build their mounds at the same time. When the sun rose the reflection of the doors of the central Temple blazed like fire. They were bronze, and a hundred feet tall. On them, in letters of gold set in lead, were the Commandments. There were five hundred and twelve so far, and doubtless the next prophet would add his share. The sun's reflected glow shone down and across the tens of thousands of the strong-in-faith who labored below for the greater glory of the Great God Om. Probably no one did know how many of them there were. Some things have a way of going critical. Certainly there was only one Cenobiarch, the Superior Iam. That was certain. And six Archpriests. And thirty lesser Iams. And hundreds of bishops, deacons, subdeacons, and priests. And novices like rats in a grain store. And craftsmen, and bull breeders, and torturers, and Vestigial Virgins . . . No matter what your skills, there was a place for you in the Citadel. And if your skill lay in asking the wrong kinds of questions or losing the righteous kind of wars, the place might just be the furnaces of purity, or the Quisition's pits of justice. A place for everyone. And everyone in their place.     The sun beat down on the temple garden. The Great God Om tried to stay in the shade of a melon vine. He was probably safe here, here inside these walls and with the prayer towers all around, but you couldn't be too careful. He'd been lucky once, but it was asking too much to expect to be lucky again. The trouble with being a god is that you've got no one to pray to. He crawled forward purposefully towards the old man shoveling muck until, after much exertion, he judged himself to be within earshot. He spake thusly: "Hey, you!" There was no answer. There was not even any suggestion that anything had been heard. Om lost his temper and turned Lu-Tze into a lowly worm in the deepest cesspit of hell, and then got even more angry when the old man went on peacefully shoveling. "The devils of infinity fill your living bones with sulphur!" he screamed. This did not make a great deal of difference. "Deaf old bugger," muttered the Great God Om.     Or perhaps there was someone who did know all there was to be known about the Citadel. There's always someone who collects knowledge, not because of a love of the stuff but in the same way that a magpie collects glitter or a caddis fly collects little bits of twigs and rock. And there's always someone who has to do all those things that need to be done but which other people would rather not do or, even, acknowledge existed. The third thing the people noticed about Vorbis was his height. He was well over six feet tall, but stickthin, like a normal proportioned person modeled in clay by a child and then rolled out. The second thing that people noticed about Vorbis was his eyes. His ancestors had come from one of the deep desert tribes that had evolved the peculiar trait of having dark eyes-not just dark of pupil, but almost black of eyeball. It made it very hard to tell where he was looking. It was as if he had sunglasses on under his skin. But the first thing they noticed was his skull. Deacon Vorbis was bald by design. Most of the Church's ministers, as soon as they were ordained, cultivated long hair and beards that you could lose a goat in. But Vorbis shaved all over. He gleamed. And lack of hair seemed to add to his power. He didn't menace. He never threatened. He just gave everyone the feeling that his personal space radiated several meters from his body, and that anyone approaching Vorbis was intruding on something important. Superiors fifty years his senior felt apologetic about interrupting whatever it was he was thinking about. It was almost impossible to know what he was thinking about and no one ever asked. The most obvious reason for this was that Vorbis was the head of the Quisition, whose job it was to do all those things that needed to be done and which other people would rather not do. You do not ask people like that what they are thinking about in case they turn around very slowly and say "You." The highest post that could be held in the Quisition was that of deacon, a rule instituted hundreds of years ago to prevent this branch of the Church becoming too big for its boots.[2] But with a mind like his, everyone said, he could easily be an archpriest by now, or even an Iam. Vorbis didn't worry about that kind of trivia. Vorbis knew his destiny. Hadn't the God himself told him?     "There," said Brother Nhumrod, patting Brutha on the shoulder. "I'm sure you will see things clearer now." Brutha felt that a specific reply was expected. "Yes, master," he said. "I'm sure I shall." "-shall. It is your holy duty to resist the voices at all times," said Nhumrod, still patting. "Yes, master. I will. Especially if they tell me to do any of the things you mentioned." "-mentioned. Good. Good. And if you hear them again, what will you do? Mmm?" "Come and tell you," said Brutha, dutifully. "-tell you. Good. Good. That's what I like to hear," said Nhumrod. "That's what I tell all my boys. Remember that I'm always here to deal with any little problems that may be bothering you." "Yes, master. Shall I go back to the garden now?" "-now. I think so. I think so. And no more voices, d'you hear?" Nhumrod waved a finger of his nonpatting hand. A cheek puckered. "Yes, master." "What were you doing in the garden?" "Hoeing the melons, master," said Brutha. "Melons? Ah. Melons," said Nhumrod slowly. "Melons. Melons. Well, that goes some way toward explaining things, of course." An eyelid flickered madly.     It wasn't just the Great God that spoke to Vorbis, in the confines of his head. Everyone spoke to an exquisitor, sooner or later. It was just a matter of stamina. Vorbis didn't often go down to watch the inquisitors at work these days. Exquisitors didn't have to. He sent down instructions, he received reports. But special circumstances merited his special attention. It has to be said . . . there was little to laugh at in the cellar of the Quisition. Not if you had a normal sense of humor. There were no jolly little signs saying: You Don't Have To Be Pitilessly Sadistic To Work Here But It Helps!!! But there were things to suggest to a thinking man that the Creator of mankind had a very oblique sense of fun indeed, and to breed in his heart a rage to storm the gates of heaven. The mugs, for example. The inquisitors stopped work twice a day for coffee. Their mugs, which each man had brought from home, were grouped around the kettle on the hearth of the central furnace which incidentally heated the irons and knives. They had legends on them like A Present From the Holy Grotto of Ossory, or To The World's Greatest Daddy. Most of them were chipped, and no two of them were the same. And there were the postcards on the wall. It was traditional that, when an inquisitor went on holiday, he'd send back a crudely colored woodcut of the local view with some suitably jolly and risque message on the back. And there was the pinned-up tearful letter from Inquisitor First Class Ishmale "Pop" Quoom, thanking all the lads for collecting no fewer than seventyeight obols for his retirement present and the lovely bunch of flowers for Mrs. Quoom, indicating that he'd always remember his days in No. 3 pit, and was looking forward to coming in and helping out any time they were short-handed. And it all meant this: that there are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal, kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do. Vorbis loved knowing that. A man who knew that, knew everything he needed to know about people. Currently he was sitting alongside the bench on which lay what was still, technically, the trembling body of Brother Sasho, formerly his secretary. He looked up at the duty inquisitor, who nodded. Vorbis leaned over the chained secretary. "What were their names?" he repeated. ". . . don't know . . ." "I know you gave them copies of my correspondence, Sasho. They are treacherous heretics who will spend eternity in the hells. Will you join them?" ". . . don't know names . . ." "I trusted you, Sasho. You spied on me. You betrayed the Church." ". . . no names . . ." "Truth is surcease from pain, Sasho. Tell me." ". . . truth . . ." Vorbis sighed. And then he saw one of Sasho's fingers curling and uncurling under the manacles. Beckoning. "Yes?" He leaned closer over the body. Sasho opened his one remaining eye. ". . .truth . . ." "Yes?" ". . . The Turtle Moves . . ." Vorbis sat back, his expression unchanged. His expression seldom changed unless he wanted it to. The inquisitor watched him in terror. "I see," said Vorbis. He stood up, and nodded at the inquisitor. "How long has he been down here?" "Two days, lord." "And you can keep him alive for-?" "Perhaps two days more, lord." "Do so. Do so. It is, after all," said Vorbis, "our duty to preserve life for as long as possible. Is it not?" The inquisitor gave him the nervous smile of one in the presence of a superior whose merest word could see him manacled on a bench. "Er . . . yes, lord." "Heresy and lies everywhere," Vorbis sighed. "And now I shall have to find another secretary. It is too vexing."     After twenty minutes Brutha relaxed. The siren voices of sensuous evil seemed to have gone away. He got on with the melons. He felt capable of understanding melons. Melons seemed a lot more comprehensible than most things. "Hey, you!" Brutha straightened up. "I do not hear you, oh foul succubus," he said. "Oh yes you do, boy. Now, what I want you to do is-” "I've got my fingers in my ears!" "Suits you. Suits you. Makes you look like a vase. Now "I'm humming a tune! I'm humming a tune!" Brother Preptil, the master of the music, had described Brutha's voice as putting him in mind of a disappointed vulture arriving too late at the dead donkey. Choral singing was compulsory for novitiates, but after much petitioning by Brother Preptil a special dispensation had been made for Brutha. The sight of his big round face screwed up in the effort to please was bad enough, but what was worse was listening to his voice, which was certainly powerful and full of intent conviction, swinging backward and forward across the tune without ever quite hitting it. He got Extra Melons instead. Up in the prayer towers a flock of crows took off in a hurry. After a full chorus of He is Trampling the Unrighteous with Hooves of Hot Iron Brutha unplugged his ears and risked a quick listen. Apart from the distant protests of the crows, there was silence. It worked. Put your trust in the God, they said. And he always had. As far back as he could remember. He picked up his hoe and turned back, in relief, to the vines. The hoe's blade was about to hit the ground when Brutha saw the tortoise. It was small and basically yellow and covered with dust. Its shell was badly chipped. It had one beady eye -the other had fallen to one of the thousands of dangers that attend any slow-moving creature which lives an inch from the ground. He looked around. The gardens were well inside the temple complex; and surrounded by high walls. "How did you get in here, little creature?" he said. "Did you fly?" The tortoise stared monoptically at him. Brutha felt a bit homesick. There had been plenty of tortoises in the sandy hills back home. "I could give you some lettuce," said Brutha. "But I don't think tortoises are allowed in the gardens. Aren't you vermin?" The tortoise continued to stare. Practically nothing can stare like a tortoise. Brutha felt obliged to do something. "There's grapes," he said. "Probably it's not sinful to give you one grape. How would you like a grape, little tortoise?" "How would you like to be an abomination in the nethermost pit of chaos?" said the tortoise. The crows, who had fled to the outer walls, took off again to a rendering of The Way of the Infidel Is A Nest Of Thorns. Brutha opened his eyes and took his fingers out of his ears again. The tortoise said, "I'm still here." Brutha hesitated. It dawned on him, very slowly, that demons and succubi didn't turn up looking like small old tortoises. There wouldn't be much point. Even Brother Nhumrod would have to agree that when it came to rampant eroticism, you could do a lot better than a one-eyed tortoise. "I didn't know tortoises could talk," he said. "They can't," said the tortoise. "Read my lips." Brutha looked closer. "You haven't got lips," he said. "No, nor proper vocal chords," agreed the tortoise. "I'm doing it straight into your head, do you understand?" "Gosh!" "You do understand, don't you?" "No." The tortoise rolled its eye. "I should have known. Well, it doesn't matter. I don't have to waste time on gardeners. Go and fetch the top man, right now." "Top man?" said Brutha. He put his hand to his mouth. "You don't mean . . . Brother Nhumrod?" "Who's he?" said the tortoise. "The master of the novices!" "Oh, Me!" said the tortoise. "No," it went on, in a singsong imitation of Brutha's voice, "I don't mean the master of the novices. I mean the High Priest or whatever he calls himself. I suppose there is one?" Brutha nodded blankly. "High Priest, right?" said the tortoise. "High. Priest. High Priest." Brutha nodded again. He knew there was a High Priest. It was just that, while he could just about encompass the hierarchical structure between his own self and Brother Nhumrod, he was unable to give serious consideration to any kind of link between Brutha the novice and the Cenobiarch. He was theoretically aware that there was one, that there was a huge canonical structure with the High Priest at the top and Brutha very firmly at the bottom, but he viewed it in the same way as an amoeba might view the chain of evolution all the way between itself and, for example, a chartered accountant. It was missing links all the way to the top. "I can't go asking the-” Brutha hesitated. Even the thought of talking to the Cenobiarch frightened him into silence. "I can't ask anyone to ask the High Cenobiarch to come and talk to a tortoise!" "Turn into a mud leech and wither in the fires of retribution!" screamed the tortoise. "There's no need to curse," said Brutha. The tortoise bounced up and down furiously. "That wasn't a curse! That was an order! I am the Great God Om!" Brutha blinked. Then he said, "No you're not. I've seen the Great God Om," he waved a hand making the shape of the holy horns, conscientiously, "and he isn't tortoiseshaped. He comes as an eagle, or a lion, or a mighty bull. There's a statue in the Great Temple. It's seven cubits high. It's got bronze on it and everything. It's trampling infidels. You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look. It's got horns of real gold. Where I used to live there was a statue one cubit high in the next village and that was a bull too. So that's how I know you're not the Great God"-holy horns-"Om. The tortoise subsided. "How many talking tortoises have you met?" it said sarcastically. "I don't know," said Brutha. "What d'you mean, you don't know?" "Well, they might all talk," said Brutha conscientiously, demonstrating the very personal kind of logic that got him Extra Melons. "They just might not say anything when I'm there." "I am the Great God Om," said the tortoise, in a menacing and unavoidably low voice, "and before very long you are going to be a very unfortunate priest. Go and get him." "Novice," said Brutha. "What?" "Novice, not priest. They won't let me-” "Get him!" "But I don't think the Cenobiarch ever comes into our vegetable garden," said Brutha. "I don't think he even knows what a melon is. " "I'm not bothered about that," said the tortoise. "Fetch him now, or there will be a shaking of the earth, the moon will be as blood, agues and boils will afflict mankind and diverse ills will befall. I really mean it," it added. "I'll see what I can do," said Brutha, backing away. "And I'm being very reasonable, in the circumstances!" the tortoise shouted after him. "You don't sing badly, mind you!" it added, as an afterthought. "I've heard worse!" as Brutha's grubby robe disappeared through the gateway. "Puts me in mind of that time there was the affliction of plague in Pseudopolis," it said quietly, as the footsteps faded. "What a wailing and a gnashing of teeth was there, all right." It sighed. "Great days. Great days!"     Many feel they are called to the priesthood, but what they really hear is an inner voice saying, "It's indoor work with no heavy lifting, do you want to be a ploughman like your father?" Whereas Brutha didn't just believe. He really Believed. That sort of thing is usually embarrassing when it happens in a God-fearing family, but all Brutha had was his grandmother, and she Believed too. She believed like iron believes in metal. She was the kind of woman every priest dreads in a congregation, the one who knows all the chants, all the sermons. In the Omnian Church women were allowed in the temple only on sufferance, and had to keep absolutely silent and well covered-up in their own section behind the pulpit in case the sight of one half of the human race caused the male members of the congregation to hear voices not unakin to those that plagued Brother Nhumrod through every sleeping and waking hour. The problem was that Brutha's grandmother had the kind of personality that can project itself through a lead sheet and a bitter piety with the strength of a diamond-bit auger. If she had been born a man, Omnianism would have found its 8th Prophet rather earlier than expected. As it was, she organized the temple-cleaning, statue-polishing, and stoning-of-suspected-adulteresses rotas with a terrible efficiency. So Brutha grew up in the sure and certain knowledge of the Great God Om. Brutha grew up knowing that Om's eyes were on him all the time, especially in places like the privy, and that demons assailed him on all sides and were only kept at bay by the strength of his belief and the weight of grandmother's cane, which was kept behind the door on those rare occasions when it was not being used. He could recite every verse in all seven Books of the Prophets, and every single Precept. He knew all the Laws and the Songs. Especially the Laws. The Omnians were a God-fearing people. They had a great deal to fear.     Vorbis's room was in the upper Citadel, which was unusual for a mere deacon. He hadn't asked for it. He seldom had to ask for anything. Destiny has a way of marking her own. He also got visited by some of the most powerful men in the Church's hierarchy. Not, of course, the six Archpriests or the Cenobiarch himself. They weren't that important. They were merely at the top. The people who really run organizations are usually found several levels down, where it's still possible to get things done. People liked to be friends with Vorbis, mainly because of the aforesaid mental field which suggested to them, in the subtlest of ways, that they didn't want to be his enemy. Two of them were sitting down with him now. They were General Iam Fri'it, who whatever the official records might suggest was the man who ran most of the Divine Legion, and Bishop Drunah, secretary to the Congress of Iams. People might not think that was much of a position of power, but then they'd never been minutes secretary to a meeting of slightly deaf old men. Neither man was in fact there. They were not talking to Vorbis. It was one of those kinds of meeting. Lots of people didn't talk to Vorbis, and went out of their way not have meetings with him. Some of the abbots from the distant monasteries had recently been summoned to the Citadel, traveling secretly for up to a week across tortuous terrain, just so they definitely wouldn't join the shadowy figures visiting Vorbis's room. In the last few months, Vorbis had apparently had about as many visitors as the Man in the Iron Mask. Nor were they talking. But if they had been there, and if they had been having a conversation, it would have gone like this: "And now," said Vorbis, "the matter of Ephebe." Bishop Drunah shrugged.[3] "Of no consequence, they say. No threat." The two men looked at Vorbis, a man who never raised his voice. It was very hard to tell what Vorbis was thinking, often even after he had told you. "Really? Is this what we've come to?" he said. "No threat? After what they did to poor Brother Murduck? The insults to Om? This must not pass. What is proposed to be done?" "No more fighting," said Fri'it. "They fight like madmen. No. We've lost too many already." "They have strong gods," said Drunah. "They have better bows," said Fri'it. "There is no God but Om," said Vorbis. "What the Ephebians believe they worship are nothing but djinns and demons. If it can be called worship. Have you seen this?" He pushed forward a scroll of paper. "What is it?" said Fri'it cautiously. "A lie. A history that does not exist and never existed . . . the . . . the things . . ." Vorbis hesitated, trying to remember a word that had long since fallen into disuse, ". . . like the . . . tales told to children, who are too young . . . words for people to say . . . the . . ." "Oh. A play," said Fri'it. Vorbis's gaze nailed him to the wall. "You know of these things?" "I-when I traveled in Klatch once-” Fri'it stuttered. He visibly pulled himself together. He had commanded one hundred thousand men in battle. He didn't deserve this. He found he didn't dare look at Vorbis's expression. "They dance dances," he said limply. "On their holy days. The women have bells on their . . . And sing songs. All about the early days of the worlds, when the gods-” He faded. "It was disgusting," he said. He clicked his knuckles, a habit of his whenever he was worried. "This one has their gods in it," said Vorbis. "Men in masks. Can you believe that? They have a god of wine. A drunken old man! And people say Ephebe is no threat! And this-” He tossed another, thicker scroll on to the table. "This is far worse. For while they worship false gods in error, their error is in their choice of gods, not in their worship. But this-” Drunah gave it a cautious examination. "I believe there are other copies, even in the Citadel," said Vorbis. "This one belonged to Sasho. I believe you recommended him to my service, Fri'it?" "He always struck me as an intelligent and keen young man," said the general. "But disloyal," said Vorbis, "and now receiving his just reward. It is only to be regretted that he has not been induced to give us the names of his fellow heretics." Fri'it fought against the sudden rush of relief. His eyes met those of Vorbis. Drunah broke the silence. "De Chelonian Mobile," he said aloud. " `The Turtle Moves.' What does that mean?" "Even telling you could put your soul at risk of a thousand years in hell," said Vorbis. His eyes had not left Fri'it, who was now staring fixedly at the wall. "I think it is a risk we might carefully take," said Drunah. Vorbis shrugged. "The writer claims that the world . . . travels through the void on the back of four huge elephants," he said. Drunah's mouth dropped open. "On the back?" he said. "It is claimed," said Vorbis, still watching Fri'it. "What do they stand on?" "The writer says they stand on the shell of an enormous turtle," said Vorbis. Drunah grinned nervously. "And what does that stand on?" he said. "I see no point in speculating as to what it stands on," snapped Vorbis, "since it does not exist!" "Of course, of course," said Drunah quickly. "It was only idle curiosity." "Most curiosity is," said Vorbis. "It leads the mind into speculative ways. Yet the man who wrote this walks around free, in Ephebe, now. " Drunah glanced at the scroll. "He says here he went on a ship that sailed to an island on the edge and he looked over and-” "Lies," said Vorbis evenly. "And it would make no difference even if they were not lies. Truth lies within, not without. In the words of the Great God Om, as delivered through his chosen prophets. Our eyes may deceive us, but our God never will." "But-” Vorbis looked at Fri'it. The general was sweating. "Yes?" he said. "Well . . . Ephebe. A place where madmen have mad ideas. Everyone knows that. Maybe the wisest course is leave them to stew in their folly?" Vorbis shook his head. "Unfortunately, wild and unstable ideas have a disturbing tendency to move around and take hold." Fri'it had to admit that this was true. He knew from experience that true and obvious ideas, such as the ineffable wisdom and judgment of the Great God Om, seemed so obscure to many people that you actually had to kill them before they saw the error of their ways, whereas dangerous and nebulous and wrongheaded notions often had such an attraction for some people that they would-he rubbed a scar thoughtfully-hide up in the mountains and throw rocks at you until you starved them out. They'd prefer to die rather than see sense. Fri'it had seen sense at an early age. He'd seen it was sense not to die. "What do you propose?" he said. "The Council want to parley with Ephebe," said Drunah. "You know I have to organize a deputation to leave tomorrow." "How many soldiers?" said Vorbis. "A bodyguard only. We have been guaranteed safe passage, after all," said Fri'it. "We have been guaranteed safe passage," said Vorbis. It sounded like a lengthy curse. "And once inside . . . ?" Fri'it wanted to say: I've spoken to the commander of the Ephebian garrison, and I think he is a man of honor, although of course he is indeed a despicable infidel and lower than the worms. But it was not the kind of thing he felt it wise to say to Vorbis. He substituted: "We shall be on our guard." "Can we surprise them?" Fri'it hesitated. "We?" he said. "I shall lead the party," said Vorbis. There was the briefest exchange of glances between himself and the secretary. "I . . . would like to be away from the Citadel for a while. A change of air. Besides, we should not let the Ephebians think they merit the attentions of a superior member of the Church. I was just musing as to the possibilities, should we be provoked-” Fri'it's nervous click was like a whip-crack. "We have given them our word-” "There is no truce with unbelievers," said Vorbis. "But there are practical considerations," said Fri'it, as sharply as he dared. "The palace of Ephebe is a labyrinth. I know. There are traps. No one gets in without a guide." "How does the guide get in?" said Vorbis. "I assume he guides himself," said the general. "In my experience there is always another way," said Vorbis. "Into everything, there is always another way. Which the God will show in his own good time, we can be assured of that." "Certainly matters would be easier if there was a lack of stability in Ephebe," said Drunah. "It does indeed harbor certain . . . elements." "And it will be the gateway to the whole of the Turnwise coast," said Vorbis. "Well-” "The Djel, and then Tsort," said Vorbis. Drunah tried to avoid seeing Fri'it's expression. "It is our duty," said Vorbis. "Our holy duty. We must not forget poor Brother Murduck. He was unarmed and alone."     Brutha's huge sandals flip-flopped obediently along the stone-flagged corridor toward Brother Nhumrod's barren cell. He tried composing messages in his head. Master, there's a tortoise who says-Master, this tortoise wants-Master, guess what, I heard from this tortoise in the melons that-  Brutha would never have dared to think of himself as a prophet, but he had a shrewd idea of the outcome of any interview that began in this way. Many people assumed that Brutha was an idiot. He looked like one, from his round open face to his splayfeet and knock-ankles. He also had the habit of moving his lips while he thought deeply, as if he was rehearsing every sentence. And this was because that was what he was doing. Thinking was not something that came easily to Brutha. Most people think automatically, thoughts dancing through their brains like static electricity across a cloud. At least, that's how it seemed to him. Whereas he had to construct thoughts a bit at a time, like someone building a wall. A short lifetime of being laughed at for having a body like a barrel and feet that gave the impression that they were about to set out in opposite directions had given him a strong tendency to think very carefully about anything he said. Brother Nhumrod was prostrate on the floor in front of a statue of Om Trampling the Ungodly, with his fingers in his ears. The voices were troubling him again. Brutha coughed. He coughed again. Brother Nhumrod raised his head. "Brother Nhumrod?" said Brutha. "What?" "Er . . . Brother Nhumrod?" "What?" Brother Nhumrod unplugged his ears. "Yes?" he said testily. "Um. There's something you ought to see. In the . . . in the garden. Brother Nhumrod?" The master of novices sat up. Brutha's face was a glowing picture of concern. "What do you mean?" Brother Nhumrod said. "In the garden. It's hard to explain. Um. I found out . . . where the voices were coming from, Brother Nhumrod. And you did say to be sure and tell you." The old priest gave Brutha a sharp look. But if ever there was a person without guile or any kind of subtlety, it was Brutha.     Fear is strange soil. Mainly it grows obedience like corn, which grows in rows and makes weeding easy. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground. The Citadel had a lot of underground. There were the pits and tunnels of the Quisition. There were cellars and sewers, forgotten rooms, dead ends, spaces behind ancient walls, even natural caves in the bedrock itself. This was such a cave. Smoke from the fire in the middle of the floor found its way out through a crack in the roof and, eventually, into the maze of uncountable chimneys and light-wells above. There were a dozen figures in the dancing shadows. They wore rough hoods over nondescript clothes-crude things made of rags, nothing that couldn't easily be burned after the meeting so that the wandering fingers of the Quisition would find nothing incriminating. Something about the way most of them moved suggested men who were used to carrying weapons. Here and there, clues. A stance. The turn of a word. On one wall of the cave there was a drawing. It was vaguely oval, with three little extensions at the top-the middle one slightly the largest of the three-and three at the bottom, the middle one of these slightly longer and more pointed. A child's drawing of a turtle. "Of course he'll go to Ephebe," said a mask. "He won't dare not to. He'll have to dam the river of truth, at its source." "We must bail out what we can, then," said another mask. "We must kill Vorbis!" "Not in Ephebe. When that happens, it must happen here. So that people will know. When we're strong enough." "Will we ever be strong enough?" said a mask. Its owner clicked his knuckles nervously. "Even the peasants know there's something wrong. You can't stop the truth. Dam the river of truth? Then there are leaks of great force. Didn't we find out about Murduck? Hah! 'Killed in Ephebe,' Vorbis said." "One of us must go to Ephebe and save the Master. If he really exists." "He exists. His name is on the book." "Didactylos. A strange name. It means Two-Fingered, you know." "They must honor him in Ephebe." "Bring him back here, if possible. And the Book." One of the masks seemed hesitant. His knuckles clicked again. "But will people rally behind . . . a book? People need more than a book. They're peasants. They can't read." "But they can listen!" "Even so . . . they need to be shown . . . they need a symbol . . ." "We have one!" Instinctively, every masked figure turned to look at the drawing on the wall, indistinct in the firelight but graven on their minds. They were looking at the truth, which can often impress. "The Turtle Moves!" "The Turtle Moves!" "The Turtle Moves!" The leader nodded. "And now," he said, "we will draw lots . . ."     The Great God Om waxed wroth, or at least made a spirited attempt. There is a limit to the amount of wroth that can be waxed one inch from the ground, but he was right up against it. He silently cursed a beetle, which is like pouring water onto a pond. It didn't seem to make any difference, anyway. The beetle plodded away. He cursed a melon unto the eighth generation, but nothing happened. He tried a plague of boils. The melon just sat there, ripening slightly. Just because he was temporarily embarrassed, the whole world thought it could take advantage. Well, when Om got back to his rightful shape and power, he told himself, Steps would be Taken. The tribes of Beetles and Melons would wish they'd never been created. And something really horrible would happen to all eagles. And . . . and there would be a holy commandment involving the planting of more lettuces . . . By the time the big boy arrived back with the waxy-skinned man, the Great God Om was in no mood for pleasantries. Besides, from a tortoise-eye viewpoint even the most handsome human is only a pair of feet, a distant pointy head, and, somewhere up there, the wrong end of a pair of nostrils. "What's this?" he snarled. "This is Brother Nhumrod," said Brutha. "Master of the novices. He is very important." "Didn't I tell you not to bring me some fat old pederast!" shouted the voice in his head. "Your eyeballs will be spitted on shafts of fire for this!" Brutha knelt down. "I can't go to the High Priest," he said, as patiently as possible. "Novices aren't even allowed in the Great Temple except on special occasions. I'd be Taught the Error of My Ways by the Quisition if I was caught. It's the Law." "Stupid fool!" the tortoise shouted. Nhumrod decided that it was time to speak. "Novice Brutha," he said, "for what reason are you talking to a small tortoise?" "Because-” Brutha paused. "Because it's talking to me . . . isn't it?" Brother Nhumrod looked down at the small, one-eyed head poking out of the shell. He was, by and large, a kindly man. Sometimes demons and devils did put disquieting thoughts in his head, but he saw to it that they stayed there and he did not in any literal sense deserve to be called what the tortoise called him which, in fact, if he had heard it, he would have thought was something to do with feet. And he was well aware that it was possible to hear voices attributed to demons and, sometimes, gods. Tortoises was a new one. Tortoises made him feel worried about Brutha, whom he'd always thought of as an amiable lump who did, without any sort of complaint, anything asked of him. Of course, many novices volunteered for cleaning out the cesspits and bull cages, out of a strange belief that holiness and piety had something to do with being up to your knees in dirt. Brutha never volunteered, but if he was told to do something he did it, not out of any desire to impress, but simply because he'd been told. And now he was talking to tortoises. "I think I have to tell you, Brutha," he said, "that it is not talking." "You can't hear it?" "I cannot hear it, Brutha." "It told me it was . . ." Brutha hesitated. "It told me it was the Great God." He flinched. Grandmother would have hit him with something heavy now. "Ah. Well, you see, Brutha," said Brother Nhumrod, twitching gently, "this sort of thing is not unknown among young men recently Called to the Church. I daresay you heard the voice of the Great God when you were Called, didn't you? Mmm?" Metaphor was lost on Brutha. He remembered hearing the voice of his grandmother. He hadn't been Called so much as Sent. But he nodded anyway. "And in your . . . enthusiasm, it's only natural that you should think you hear the Great God talking to you," Nhumrod went on. The tortoise bounced up and down. "Smite you with thunderbolts!" it screamed. "I find healthy exercise is the thing," said Nhumrod. "And plenty of cold water." "Writhe on the spikes of damnation!" Nhumrod reached down and picked up the tortoise, turning it over. Its legs waggled angrily. "How did it get here, mmm?" "I don't know, Brother Nhumrod," said Brutha dutifully. "Your hand to wither and drop off!" screamed the voice in his head. "There's very good eating on one of these, you know," said the master of novices. He saw the expression on Brutha's face. "Look at it like this," he said. "Would the Great God Om"-holy horns-"ever manifest Himself in such a lowly creature as this? A bull, yes, of course, an eagle, certainly, and I think on one occasion a swan . . . but a tortoise?" "Your sexual organs to sprout wings and fly away!" "After all," Nhumrod went on, oblivious to the secret chorus in Brutha's head, "what kind of miracles could a tortoise do? Mmm?" "Your ankles to be crushed in the jaws of giants!" "Turn lettuce into gold, perhaps?" said Brother Nhumrod , in the jovial tones of those blessed with no sense of humor. "Crush ants underfoot? Ahaha." "Haha," said Brutha dutifully. "I shall take it along to the kitchen, out of your way," said the master of novices. "They make excellent soup. And then you'll hear no more voices, depend upon it. Fire cures all Follies, yes?" "Soup?" "Er . . ." said Brutha. "Your intestines to be wound around a tree until you are sorry!" Nhumrod looked around the garden. It seemed to be full of melons and pumpkins and cucumbers. He shuddered. "Lots of cold water, that's the thing," he said. "Lots and lots." He focused on Brutha again. "Mmm?" He wandered off toward the kitchens.     The Great God Om was upside down in a basket in one of the kitchens, half-buried under a bunch of herbs and some carrots. An upturned tortoise will try to right itself firstly by sticking out its neck to its fullest extent and trying to use its head as a lever. If this doesn't work it will wave its legs frantically, in case this will rock it upright. An upturned tortoise is the ninth most pathetic thing in the entire multiverse. An upturned tortoise who knows what's going to happen to it next is, well, at least up there at number four. The quickest way to kill a tortoise for the pot is to plunge it into boiling water. Kitchens and storerooms and craftsmen's workshops belonging to the Church's civilian population honeycombed the Citadel.[4] This was only one of them, a smoky-ceilinged cellar whose focal point was an arched fireplace. Flames roared up the flue. Turnspit dogs trotted in their treadmills. Cleavers rose and fell on the chopping blocks. Off to one side of the huge hearth, among various other blackened cauldrons, a small pot of water was already beginning to seethe. "The worms of revenge to eat your blackened nostrils!" screamed Om, twitching his legs violently. The basket rocked. A hairy hand reached in and removed the herbs. "Hawks to peck your liver!" A hand reached in again and took the carrots. "Afflict you with a thousand cuts!" A hand reached in and took the Great God Om. "The cannibal fungi of-!" "Shut up!" hissed Brutha, shoving the tortoise under his robe. He sidled toward the door, unnoticed in the general culinary chaos. One of the cooks looked at him and raised an eyebrow. "Just got to take this back," Brutha burbled, bringing out the tortoise and waving it helpfully. "Deacon's orders." The cook scowled, and then shrugged. Novices were regarded by one and all as the lowest form of life, but orders from the hierarchy were to be obeyed without question, unless the questioner wanted to find himself faced with more important questions like whether or not it is possible to go to heaven after being roasted alive. When they were out in the courtyard Brutha leaned against the wall and breathed out. "Your eyeballs to-!" the tortoise began. "One more word," said Brutha, "and it's back in the basket." The tortoise fell silent. "As it is, I shall probably get into trouble for missing Comparative Religion with Brother Whelk," said Brutha. "But the Great God has seen fit to make the poor man shortsighted and he probably won't notice I'm not there, only if he does I shall have to say what I've done because telling lies to a Brother is a sin and the Great God will send me to hell for a million years." "In this one case I could be merciful," said the tortoise. "No more than a thousand years at the outside." "My grandmother told me I shall go to hell when I die anyway," said Brutha, ignoring this. "Being alive is sinful. It stands to reason, because you have to sin every day when you're alive." He looked down at the tortoise. "I know you're not the Great God Om"-holy horns-"because if I was to touch the Great God Om"-holy horns-"my hands would burn away. The Great God would never become a tortoise, like Brother Nhumrod said. But it says in the Book of the Prophet Cena that when he was wandering in the desert the spirits of the ground and the air spoke unto him, so I wondered if you were one of those." The tortoise gave him a one-eyed stare for a while. Then it said: "Tall fellow? Full beard? Eyes wobbling all over the place?" "What?" said Brutha. "I think I recall him," said the tortoise. "Eyes wobbled when he talked. And he talked all the time. To himself. Walked into rocks a lot." "He wandered in the wilderness for three months," said Brutha. "That explains it, then," said the tortoise. "There's not a lot to eat there that isn't mushrooms." "Perhaps you are a demon," said Brutha. "The Septateuch forbids us to have discourse with demons. Yet in resisting demons, says the Prophet Fruni, we may grow strong in faith-” "Your teeth to abscess with red-hot heat!" "Pardon?" "I swear to me that I am the Great God Om, greatest of gods!" Brutha tapped the tortoise on the shell. "Let me show you something, demon." He could feel his faith growing, if he listened hard.     This wasn't the greatest statue of Om, but it was the closest. It was down in the pit level reserved for prisoners and heretics. And it was made of iron plates riveted together. The pits were deserted except for a couple of novices pushing a rough cart in the distance. "It's a big bull," said the tortoise. "The very likeness of the Great God Om in one of his worldly incarnations!" said Brutha proudly. "And you say you're him?" "I haven't been well lately," said the tortoise. Its scrawny neck stretched out further. "There's a door on its back," it said. "Why's there a door on its back?" "So that the sinful can be put in," said Brutha. "Why's there another one in its belly?" "So the purified ashes can be let out," said Brutha. "And the smoke issues forth from the nostrils, as a sign to the ungodly." The tortoise craned its neck round at the rows of barred doors. It looked up at the soot-encrusted walls. It looked down at the now empty fire trench under the iron bull. It reached a conclusion. It blinked its one eye. "People?" it said eventually. "You roast people in it?" "There!" said Brutha triumphantly. "And thus you prove you are not the Great God! He would know that of course we do not burn people in there. Burn people in there? That would be unheard of!" "Ah," said the tortoise. "Then what-?" "It is for the destruction of heretical materials and other such rubbish," said Brutha. "Very sensible," said the tortoise. "Sinners and criminals are purified by fire in the Quisition's pits or sometimes in front of the Great Temple," said Brutha. "The Great God would know that." "I think I must have forgotten," said the tortoise quietly. "The Great God Om"-holy horns-"would know that He Himself said unto the Prophet Wallspur-” Brutha coughed and assumed the creased-eyebrow squint that meant serious thought was being undertaken. " `Let the holy fire destroy utterly the unbeliever.' That's verse sixty-five." "Did I say that?" "In the Year of the Lenient Vegetable the Bishop Kreeblephor converted a demon by the power of reason alone," said Brutha. "It actually joined the Church and became a subdeacon. Or so it is said." "Fighting I don't mind," the tortoise began. "Your lying tongue cannot tempt me, reptile," said Brutha. "For I am strong in my faith!" The tortoise grunted with effort. "Smite you with thunderbolts!" A small, a very small black cloud appeared over Brutha's head and a small, a very small bolt of lightning lightly singed an eyebrow. It was about the same strength as the spark off a cat's fur in hot dry weather. "Ouch!" "Now do you believe me?" said the tortoise.     There was a bit of breeze on the roof of the Citadel. It also offered a good view of the high desert. Fri'it and Drunah waited for a while to get their breath back. Then Fri'it said, "Are we safe up here?" Drunah looked up. An eagle circled over the dry hills. He found himself wondering how good an eagle's hearing was. It certainly was good at something. Was it hearing? It could hear a creature half a mile below in the silence of the desert. What the hells-it couldn't talk as well, could it? "Probably," he said. "Can I trust you?" said Fri'it. "Can I trust you?" Fri'it drummed his fingers on the parapet. "Uh," he said. And that was the problem. It was the problem of all really secret societies. They were secret. How many members did the Turtle Movement have? No one knew, exactly. What was the name of the man beside you? Two other members knew, because they would have introduced him, but who were they behind these masks? Because knowledge was dangerous. If you knew, the inquisitions could wind it slowly out of you. So you made sure you didn't know. This made conversation much easier during cell meetings, and impossible outside of them. It was the problem of all tentative conspirators throughout history: how to conspire without actually uttering words to an untrusted possible fellow-conspirator which, if reported, would point the accusing red-hot poker of guilt. The little beads of sweat on Drunah's forehead, despite the warm breeze, suggested that the secretary was agonizing along the same lines. But it didn't prove it. And for Fri'it, not dying had become a habit. He clicked his knuckles nervously. "A holy war," he said. That was safe enough. The sentence included no verbal clue to what Fri'it thought about the prospect. He hadn't said, "Ye god, not a damn holy war, is the man insane? Some idiot missionary gets himself killed, some man writes some gibberish about the shape of the world, and we have to go to war?" If pressed, and indeed stretched and broken, he could always claim that his meaning had been "At last! A not-to-be-missed opportunity to die gloriously for Om, the one true God, who shall Trample the Unrighteous with Hooves of Iron!" It wouldn't make a lot of difference, evidence never did once you were in the deep levels where accusation had the status of proof, but at least it might leave one or two inquisitors feeling that they might just have been wrong. "Of course, the Church has been far less militant in the last century or so," said Drunah, looking out over the desert. "Much taken up with the mundane problems of the empire." A statement. Not a crack in it where you could insert a bone-disjointer. "There was the crusade against the Hodgsonites," said Fri'it distantly. "And the Subjugation of the Melchiorites. And the Resolving of the false prophet Zeb. And the Correction of the Ashelians, and the Shriving of the-” "But all that was just politics," said Drunah. "Hmm. Yes. Of course, you are right." "And, of course, no one could possibly doubt the wisdom of a war to further the worship and glory of the Great God." "No. None could doubt it," said Fri'it, who had walked across many a battlefield the day after a glorious victory, when you had ample opportunity to see what winning meant. The Omnians forbade the use of all drugs. At times like that the prohibition bit hard, when you dared not go to sleep for fear of your dreams. "Did not the Great God declare, through the Prophet Abbys, that there is no greater and more honorable sacrifice than one's own life for the God?" "Indeed he did," said Fri'it. He couldn't help recalling that Abbys had been a bishop in the Citadel for fifty years before the Great God had Chosen him. Screaming enemies had never come at him with a sword. He'd never looked into the eyes of someone who wished him dead-no, of course he had, all the time, because of course the Church had its politics-but at least they hadn't been holding the means to that end in their hands at the time. "To die gloriously for one's faith is a noble thing," Drunah intoned, as if reading the words off an internal notice-board. "So the prophets tell us," said Fri'it, miserably. The Great God moved in mysterious ways, he knew. Undoubtedly He chose His prophets, but it seemed as if He had to be helped. Perhaps He was too busy to choose for Himself. There seemed to be a lot more meetings, a lot more nodding, a lot more exchanging of glances even during the services in the Great Temple. Certainly there was a glow about young Vorbis-how easy it was to slip from one thought to the other. There was a man touched by destiny. A tiny part of Fri'it, the part that had lived for much of its life in tents, and been shot at quite a lot, and had been in the middle of melees where you could just as easily be killed by an ally as an enemy, added: or at least by something. It was a part of him that was due to spend all the eternities in all the hells, but it had already had a lot of practice. "You know I traveled a lot when I was much younger?" he said. "I have often heard you talk most interestingly of your travels in heathen lands," said Drunah politely. "Often bells are mentioned." "Did I ever tell you about the Brown Islands?" "Out beyond the end of the world," said Drunah. "I remember. Where bread grows on trees and young women find little white balls in oysters. They dive for them, you said, while wearing not a stitc-” "Something else I remember," said Fri'it. It was a lonely memory, out here with nothing but scrubland under a purple sky. "The sea is strong there. There are big waves, much bigger than the ones in the Circle Sea, you understand, and the men paddle out beyond them to fish. On strange planks of wood. And when they wish to return to shore, they wait for a wave, and then . . . they stand up, on the wave, and it carries them all the way to the beach." "I like the story about the young swimming women best," said Drunah. "Sometimes there are very big waves," said Fri'it, ignoring him. "Nothing would stop them. But if you ride them, you do not drown. This is something I learned." Drunah caught the glint in his eye. "Ah," he said, nodding. "How wonderful of the Great God to put such instructive examples in our path." "The trick is to judge the strength of the wave," said Fri'it. "And ride it." "What happens to those who don't?" "They drown. Often. Some of the waves are very big." "Such is often the nature of waves, I understand." The eagle was still circling. If it had understood anything, then it wasn't showing it. "Useful facts to bear in mind," said Drunah, with sudden brightness. "If ever one should find oneself in heathen parts." "Indeed."     From prayer towers up and down the contours of the Citadel the deacons chanted the duties of the hour. Brutha should have been in class. But the tutor priests weren't too strict with him. After all, he had arrived word-perfect in every Book of the Septateuch and knew all the prayers and hymns off by heart, thanks to grandmother. They probably assumed he was being useful. Usefully doing something no one else wanted to do. He hoed the bean rows for the look of the thing. The Great God Om, although currently the small god Om, ate a lettuce leaf. All my life, Brutha thought, I've known that the Great God Om-he made the holy horns sign in a fairly half-hearted way-was a . . . a . . . great big beard in the sky, or sometimes, when He comes down into the world, as a huge bull or a lion or . . . something big, anyway. Something you could look up to. Somehow a tortoise isn't the same. I'm trying hard . . . but it isn't the same. And hearing him talk about the SeptArchs as if they were just . . . just some mad old men . . . it's like a dream . . . In the rain-forests of Brutha's subconscious the butterfly of doubt emerged and flapped an experimental wing, all unaware of what chaos theory has to say about this sort of thing . . . "I feel a lot better now," said the tortoise. "Better than I have for months." "Months?" said Brutha. "How long have you been . . . ill?" The tortoise put its foot on a leaf. "What day is it?" it said. "Tenth of Grune," said Brutha. "Yes? What year?" "Er . . . Notional Serpent . . . what do you mean, what year?" "Then . . . three years," said the tortoise. "This is good lettuce. And it's me saying it. You don't get lettuce up in the hills. A bit of plantain, a thorn bush or two. Let there be another leaf:" Brutha pulled one off the nearest plant. And lo, he thought, there was another leaf. "And you were going to be a bull?" he said. "Opened my eyes . . . my eye . . . and I was a tortoise." "Why?" "How should I know? I don't know!" lied the tortoise. "But you . . . you're omnicognisant," said Brutha. "That doesn't mean I know everything." Brutha bit his lip. "Um. Yes. It does." "You sure?" "Yes." "Thought that was omnipotent." "No. That means you're all-powerful. And you are. That's what it says in the Book of Ossory. He was one of the Great Prophets, you know. I hope," Brutha added. "Who told him I was omnipotent?" "You did." "No I didn't." "Well, he said you did." "Don't even remember anyone called Ossory," the tortoise muttered. "You spoke to him in the desert," said Brutha. "You must remember. He was eight feet tall? With a very long beard? And a huge staff? And the glow of the holy horns shining out of his head?" He hesitated. But he'd seen the statues and the holy icons. They couldn't be wrong. "Never met anyone like that," said the small god Om. "Maybe he was a bit shorter," Brutha conceded. "Ossory. Ossory," said the tortoise. "No . . . no . . . can't say I-” "He said that you spoke unto him from out of a pillar of flame," said Brutha. "Oh, that Ossory," said the tortoise. "Pillar of flame. Yes." "And you dictated to him the Book of Ossory," said Brutha. "Which contains the Directions, the Gateways, the Abjurations, and the Precepts. One hundred and ninetythree chapters." "I don't think I did all that," said Om doubtfully. "I'm sure I would have remembered one hundred and ninety-three chapters." "What did you say to him, then?" "As far as I can remember it was 'Hey, see what I can do!' " said the tortoise. Brutha stared at it. It looked embarrassed, insofar as that's possible for a tortoise. "Even gods like to relax," it said. "Hundreds of thousands of people live their lives by the Abjurations and the Precepts!" Brutha snarled. "Well? I'm not stopping them," said Om. "If you didn't dictate them, who did?" "Don't ask me. I'm not omnicognisant!" Brutha was shaking with anger. "And the Prophet Abbys? I suppose someone just happened to give him the Codicils, did they?" "It wasn't me-” "They're written on slabs of lead ten feet tall!" "Oh, well, it must have been me, yes? I always have a ton of lead slabs around in case I meet someone in the desert, yes?" "What! If you didn't give them to him, who did?" "I don't know. Why should I know? I can't be everywhere at once!" "You're omnipresent!" "What says so?" "The Prophet Hashimi!" "Never met the man!" "Oh? Oh? So I suppose you didn't give him the Book of Creation, then?" "What Book of Creation?" "You mean you don't know?" "No. "Then who gave it to him?" "I don't know! Perhaps he wrote it himself!" Brutha put his hand over his mouth in horror. "Thaff blafhngf!" "What?" Brutha removed his hand. "I said, that's blasphemy!" "Blasphemy? How can I blaspheme? I'm a god!" "I don't believe you!" "Hah! Want another thunderbolt?" "You call that a thunderbolt?" Brutha was red in the face, and shaking. The tortoise hung its head sadly. "All right. All right. Not much of one, I admit," it said. "If I was better, you'd have been just a pair of sandals with smoke coming out." It looked wretched. "I don't understand it. This sort of thing has never happened to me before. I intended to be a great big roaring white bull for a week and ended up a tortoise for three years. Why? I don't know, and I'm supposed to know everything. According to these prophets of yours who say they've met me, anyway. You know, no one even heard me? I tried talking to goatherds and stuff, and they never took any notice! I was beginning to think I was a tortoise dreaming about being a god. That's how bad it was getting." "Perhaps you are," said Brutha. "Your legs to swell to tree trunks!" snapped the tortoise. "But-but," said Brutha, "you're saying the prophets were . . . just men who wrote things down! " "That's what they were!" "Yes, but it wasn't from you!" "Some of it was, perhaps," said the tortoise. "I've . . . forgotten so much, the past few years." "But if you've been down here as a tortoise, who's been listening to the prayers? Who has been accepting the sacrifices? Who has been judging the dead?" "I don't know," said the tortoise. "Who did it before?" "You did!" "Did I?" Brutha stuck his fingers in his ears and opened up with the third verse of Lo, the infidels flee the wrath of Om. After a couple of minutes the tortoise stuck its head out from under its shell. "So," it said, "before unbelievers get burned alive . . . do you sing to them first?" "No!" "Ah. A merciful death. Can I say something?" "If you try to tempt my faith one more time-” The tortoise paused. Om searched his fading memory. Then he scratched in the dust with a claw. "I . . . remember a day . . . summer day . . . you were . . . thirteen . . ." The dry little voice droned on. Brutha's mouth formed a slowly widening O. Finally he said, "How did you know that?" "You believe the Great God Om watches everything you do, don't you?" "You're a tortoise, you couldn't have-” "When you were almost fourteen, and your grandmother had beaten you for stealing cream from the stillroom, which in fact you had not done, she locked you in your room and you said, 'I wish you were-' "     There will be a sign, thought Vorbis. There was always a sign, for the man who watched for them. A wise man always put himself in the path of the God. He strolled through the Citadel. He always made a point of taking a daily walk through some of the lower levels, although of course always at a different time, and via a different route. Insofar as Vorbis got any pleasure in life, at least in any way that could be recognized by a normal human being, it was in seeing the faces of humble members of the clergy as they rounded a corner and found themselves face-to-chin with Deacon Vorbis of the Quisition. There was always that little intake of breath that indicated a guilty conscience. Vorbis liked to see properly guilty consciences. That was what consciences were for. Guilt was the grease in which the wheels of the authority turned. He rounded a corner and saw, scratched crudely on the wall opposite, a rough oval with four crude legs and even cruder head and tail. He smiled. There seemed to be more of them lately. Let heresy fester, let it come to the surface like a boil. Vorbis knew how to wield the lance. But the second or two of reflection had made him walk past a turning and, instead, he stepped out into the sunshine. He was momentarily lost, for all his knowledge of the byways of the church. This was one of the walled gardens. Around a fine stand of tall decorative Klatchian corn, bean vines raised red and white blossoms towards the sun; in between the bean rows, melons baked gently on the dusty soil. In the normal way, Vorbis would have noted and approved of this efficient use of space, but in the normal way he wouldn't have encountered a plump young novice, rolling back and forth in the dust with his fingers in his ears. Vorbis stared down at him. Then he prodded Brutha with his sandal. "What ails you, my son?" Brutha opened his eyes. There weren't many superior members of the hierarchy he could recognize. Even the Cenobiarch was a distant blob in the crowd. But everyone recognized Vorbis the exquisitor. Something about him projected itself on your conscience within a few days of your arrival at the Citadel. The God was merely to be feared in the perfunctory ways of habit, but Vorbis was dreaded. Brutha fainted. "How very strange," said Vorbis. A hissing noise made him look round. There was a small tortoise near his foot. As he glared, it tried to back away, and all the time it was staring at him and hissing like a kettle. He picked it up and examined it carefully, turning it over and over in his hands. Then he looked around the walled garden until he found a spot in full sunshine, and put the reptile down, on its back. After a moment's thought he took a couple of pebbles from one of the vegetable beds and wedged them under the shell so that the creature's movement wouldn't tip it over. Vorbis believed that no opportunity to acquire esoteric knowledge should ever be lost, and made a mental note to come back again in a few hours to see how it was getting on, if work permitted. Then he turned his attention to Brutha.     There was a hell for blasphemers. There was a hell for the disputers of rightful authority. There were a number of hells for liars. There was probably a hell for little boys who wished their grandmothers were dead. There were more than enough hells to go around. This was the definition of eternity; it was the space of time devised by the Great God Om to ensure that everyone got the punishment that was due to them. The Omnians had a great many hells. Currently, Brutha was going through all of them. Brother Nhumrod and Brother Vorbis looked down at him, tossing and turning on his bed like a beached whale. "It's the sun," said Nhumrod, almost calm now after the initial shock of having the exquisitor come looking for him. "The poor lad works all day in that garden. It was bound to happen." "Have you tried beating him?" said Brother Vorbis. "I'm sorry to say that beating young Brutha is like trying to flog a mattress," said Nhumrod. "He says `ow!' but I think it's only because he wants to show he's willing. Very willing lad, Brutha. He's the one I told you about." "He doesn't look very sharp," said Vorbis. "He's not," said Nhumrod. Vorbis nodded approvingly. Undue intelligence in a novice was a mixed blessing. Sometimes it could be channeled for the greater glory of Om, but often it caused . . . well, it did not cause trouble, because Vorbis knew exactly what to do with misapplied intelligence, but it did cause unnecessary work. "And yet you tell me his tutors speak so highly of him," he said. Nhumrod shrugged. "He is very obedient," he said. "And . . . well, there's his memory." "What about his memory?" "There's so much of it," said Nhumrod. "He has got a good memory?" "Good is the wrong word. It's superb. He's word-perfect on the entire Sept-" "Hmm?" said Vorbis. Nhumrod caught the deacon's eye. "As perfect, that is, as anything may be in this most imperfect world," he muttered. "A devoutly read young man," said Vorbis. "Er," said Nhumrod, "no. He can't read. Or write." "Ah. A lazy boy." The deacon was not a man who dwelt in grey areas. Nhumrod's mouth opened and shut silently as he sought for the proper words. "No," he said. "He tries. We're sure he tries. He just does not seem to be able to make the . . . he cannot fathom the link between the sounds and the letters." "You have beaten him for that, at least?" "It seems to have little effect, deacon." "How, then, has he become such a capable pupil?" "He listens," said Nhumrod. No one listened quite like Brutha, he reflected. It made it very hard to teach him. It was like-it was like being in a great big cave. All your words just vanished into the unfillable depths of Brutha's head. The sheer concentrated absorption could reduce unwary tutors to stuttering silence, as every word they uttered whirled away into Brutha's ears. "He listens to everything," said Nhumrod. "And he watches everything. He takes it all in." Vorbis stared down at Brutha. "And I've never heard him say an unkind word," said Nhumrod. "The other novices make fun of him, sometimes. Call him The Big Dumb Ox. You know the sort of thing?" Vorbis's gaze took in Brutha's ham-sized hands and tree-trunk legs. He appeared to be thinking deeply. "Cannot read and write," said Vorbis. "But extremely loyal, you say?" "Loyal and devout," said Nhumrod. "And a good memory," Vorbis murmured. "It's more than that," said Nhumrod. "It's not like memory at all." Vorbis appeared to reach a decision. "Send him to see me when he is recovered," he said. Nhumrod looked panicky. "I merely wish to talk to him," said Vorbis. "I may have a use for him." "Yes, lord?" "For, I suspect, the Great God Om moves in mysterious ways."     High above. No sound but the hiss of wind in feathers. The eagle stood on the breeze, looking down at the toy buildings of the Citadel. It had dropped it somewhere, and now it couldn't find it. Somewhere down there, in that little patch of green.     Bees buzzed in the bean blossoms. And the sun beat down on the upturned shell of Om. There is also a hell for tortoises. He was too tired to waggle his legs now. That was all you could do, waggle your legs. And stick your head out as far as it would go and wave it about in the hope that you could lever yourself over. You died if you had no believers, and that was what a small god generally worried about. But you also died if you died. In the part of his mind not occupied with thoughts of heat, he could feel Brutha's terror and bewilderment. He shouldn't have done that to the boy. Of course he hadn't been watching him. What god did that? Who cared what people did? Belief was the thing. He'd just picked the memory out of the boy's mind, to impress, like a conjuror removing an egg from someone's ear. I'm on my back, and getting hotter, and I'm going to die . . . And yet . . . and yet . . . that bloody eagle had dropped him on a compost heap. Some kind of clown, that eagle. A whole place built of rocks on a rock in a rocky place, and he landed on the one thing that'd break his fall without breaking him as well. And really close to a believer. Odd, that. Made you wonder if it wasn't some kin f divine providence, except that you were divine providence . . . and on your back, getting hotter, preparing to die . . . That man who'd turned him over. That expression on that mild face. He'd remember that. That expression, not of cruelty, but of some different level of being. That expression of terrible peace . . . A shadow crossed the sun. Om squinted up into the face of Lu-Tze, who gazed at him with gentle, upsidedown compassion. And then turned him the right way up. And then picked up his broom and wandered off, without a second glance. Om sagged, catching his breath. And then brightened up. Someone up there likes me, he thought. And it's Me.     Sergeant Simony waited until he was back in his own quarters before he unfolded his own scrap of paper. He was not at all surprised to find it marked with a small drawing of a turtle. He was the lucky one. He'd lived for a moment like this. Someone had to bring back the writer of the Truth, to be a symbol for the movement. It had to be him. The only shame was that he couldn't kill Vorbis. But that had to happen where it could be seen. One day. In front of the Temple. Otherwise no one would believe.     Om stumped along a sandy corridor. He'd hung around a while after Brutha's disappearance. Hanging around is another thing tortoises are very good at. They're practically world champions. Bloody useless boy, he thought. Served himself right for trying to talk to a barely coherent novice. Of course, the skinny old one hadn't been able to hear him. Nor had the chef. Well, the old one was probably deaf. As for the cook . . . Om made a note that, when he was restored to his full godly powers, a special fate was going to lie in wait for the cook. He wasn't sure exactly what it was going to be, but it was going to involve boiling water and probably carrots would come into it somewhere. He enjoyed the thought of that for a moment. But where did it leave him? It left him in this wretched garden, as a tortoise. He knew how he'd got in-he glared in dull terror at the tiny dot in the sky that the eye of memory knew was an eagle-and he'd better find a more terrestrial way out unless he wanted to spend the next month hiding under a melon leaf. Another thought struck him. Good eating! When he had his power again, he was going to spend quite some time devising a few new hells. And a couple of fresh Precepts, too. Thou shalt not eat of the Meat of the Turtle. That was a good one. He was surprised he hadn't thought of it before. Perspective, that's what it was. And if he'd thought of one like Thou Shalt Bloody Well Pick up Any Distressed Tortoises and Carry Them Anywhere They Want Unless, And This is Important, You're an Eagle a few years ago, he wouldn't be in this trouble now. Nothing else for it. He'd have to find the Cenobiarch himself. Someone like a High Priest would be bound to be able to hear him. And he'd be in this place somewhere. High Priests tended to stay put. He should be easy enough to find. And while he might currently be a tortoise, Om was still a god. How hard could it be? He'd have to go upwards. That's what a hierarchy meant. You found the top man by going upwards. Wobbling slightly, his shell jerking from side to side, the former Great God Om set off to explore the citadel erected to his greater glory. He couldn't help noticing things had changed a lot in three thousand years.     "Me?" said Brutha. "But, but-” "I don't believe he means to punish you," said Nhumrod. "Although punishment is what you richly deserve, of course. We all richly deserve," he added piously. "But why?" “-why? He said he just wants to talk to you." "But there is nothing I could possibly say that a quisitor wants to hear!" wailed Brutha. "-Hear. I am sure you are not questioning the deacon's wishes," said Nhumrod. "No. No. Of course not," said Brutha. He hung his head. "Good boy," said Nhumrod. He patted as far up Brutha's back as he could reach. "Just you trot along," he said. "I'm sure everything will be all right." And then, because he too had been brought up in habits of honesty, he added, "Probably all right."     There were few steps in the Citadel. The progress of the many processions that marked the complex rituals of Great Om demanded long, gentle slopes. Such steps as there were, were low enough to encompass the faltering steps of very old men. And there were so many very old men in the Citadel. Sand blew in all the time from the desert. Drifts built up on the steps and in the courtyards, despite everything that an army of brush-wielding novices could do. But a tortoise has very inefficient legs. "Thou Shall Build Shallower Steps," he hissed, hauling himself up. Feet thundered past him, a few inches away. This was one of the main thoroughfares of the Citadel, leading to the Place of Lamentation, and was trodden by thousands of pilgrims every day. Once or twice an errant sandal caught his shell and spun him around. "Your feet to fly from your body and be buried in a termite mound!" he screamed. It made him feel a little better. Another foot clipped him and slid him across the stones. He fetched up, with a clang, against a curved metal grille set low in one wall. Only a lightning grab with his jaws stopped him slipping through it. He ended up hanging by his mouth over a cellar. A tortoise has incredibly powerful jaw muscles. He swayed a bit, legs wobbling. All right. A tortoise in a crevassed, rocky landscape was used to this sort of thing. He just had to get a leg hooked . . . Faint sounds drew themselves to his attention. There was the clink of metal, and then a very soft whimper. Om swiveled his eye around. The grille was high in one wall of a very long, low room. It was brightly illuminated by the light-wells that ran everywhere through the Citadel. Vorbis had made a point of that. The inquisitors shouldn't work in the shadows, he said, but in the light. Where they could see, very clearly, what they were doing. So could Om. He hung from the grille for some time, unable to take his eye off the row of benches. On the whole, Vorbis discouraged red-hot irons, spiked chains, and things with drills and big screws on, unless it was for a public display on an important Fast day. It was amazing what you could do, he always said, with a simple knife . . . But many of the inquisitors liked the old ways best. After a while, Om very slowly hauled himself up to the grille, neck muscles twitching. Like a creature with its mind on something else, the tortoise hooked first one front leg over a bar, then another. His back legs waggled for a while, and then he hooked a claw on to the rough stonework. He strained for a moment and then pulled himself back into the light. He walked off slowly, keeping close to the wall to avoid the feet. He had no alternative to walking slowly in any case, but now he was walking slowly because he was thinking. Most gods find it hard to walk and think at the same time.     Anyone could go to the Place of Lamentation. It was one of the great freedoms of Omnianism. There were all sorts of ways to petition the Great God, but they depended largely on how much you could afford, which was right and proper and exactly how things should be. After all, those who had achieved success in the world clearly had done it with the approval of the Great God, because it was impossible to believe that they had managed it with His disapproval. In the same way, the Quisition could act without possibility of flaw. Suspicion was proof. How could it be anything else? The Great God would not have seen fit to put the suspicion in the minds of His exquisitors unless it was right that it should be there. Life could be very simple, if you believed in the Great God Om. And sometimes quite short, too. But there were always the improvident, the stupid, and those who, because of some flaw or oversight in this life or a past one, were not even able to afford a pinch of incense. And the Great God, in His wisdom and mercy as filtered through His priests, had made provision for them. Prayers and entreaties could be offered up in the Place of Lamentation. They would assuredly be heard. They might even be heeded. Behind the Place, which was a square two hundred meters across, rose the Great Temple itself. There, without a shadow of a doubt, the God listened. Or somewhere close, anyway . . . Thousands of pilgrims visited the Place every day. A heel knocked Om's shell, bouncing him off the wall. On the rebound a crutch caught the edge of his carapace and whirled him away into the crowd, spinning like a coin. He bounced up against the bedroll of an old woman who, like many others, reckoned that the efficacy of her petition was increased by the amount of time she spent in the square. The God blinked muzzily. This was nearly as bad as eagles. It was nearly as bad as the cellar . . . no, perhaps nothing was as bad as the cellar . . . He caught a few words before another passing foot kicked him away. "The drought has been on our village for three years . . . a little rain, oh Lord?" Rotating on the top of his shell, vaguely wondering if the right answer might stop people kicking him, the Great God muttered, "No problem." Another foot bounced him, unseen by any of the pious, between the forest of legs. The world was a blur. He caught an ancient voice, steeped in hopelessness, saying, "Lord, Lord, why must my son be taken to join your Divine Legion? Who now will tend the farm? Could you not take some other boy?" "Don't worry about it," squeaked Om. A sandal caught him under his tail and flicked him several yards across the square. No one was looking down. It was generally believed that staring fixedly at the golden horns on the temple roof while uttering the prayer gave it added potency. Where the presence of the tortoise was dimly registered as a bang on the ankle, it was disposed of by an automatic prod with the other foot . ". . . my wife, who is sick with the . . ." "Right!" Kick ". . , make clean the well in our village, which is foul with . . ." "You got it!" Kick ". . . every year the locusts come, and . . ." "I promise, only . . . !" Kick ". . . lost upon the seas these five months . . ." ". . . stop kicking me!" The tortoise landed, right side up, in a brief, clear space. Visible . . . So much of animal life is the recognition of pattern, the shapes of hunter and hunted. To the casual eye the forest is, well, just forest; to the eye of the dove it is so much unimportant fuzzy green background to the hawk which you did not notice on the branch of a tree. To the tiny dot of the hunting buzzard in the heights, the whole panorama of the world is just a fog compared to the scurrying prey in the grass. From his perch on the Horns themselves, the eagle leapt into the sky. Fortunately, the same awareness of shapes that made the tortoise so prominent in a square full of scurrying humans made the tortoise's one eye swivel upwards in dread anticipation. Eagles are single-minded creatures. Once the idea of lunch is fixed in their mind, it tends to remain there until satisfied.     There were two Divine Legionaries outside Vorbis's quarters. They looked sideways at Brutha as he knocked timorously at the door, as if looking for a reason to assault him. A small gray priest opened the door and ushered Brutha into a small, barely furnished room. He pointed meaningfully at a stool. Brutha sat down. The priest vanished behind a curtain. Brutha took one glance around the room and- Blackness engulfed him. Before he could move, and Brutha's reflexes were not well coordinated at the best of times, a voice by his ear said, "Now, brother, do not panic. I order you not to panic." There was cloth in front of Brutha's face. "Just nod, boy." Brutha nodded. They put a hood over your face. All the novices knew that. Stories were told in the dormitories. They put a cloth over your face so the inquisitors didn't know who they were working on . . . "Good. Now, we are going into the next room. Be careful where you tread." Hands guided him upright and across the floor. Through the mists of incomprehension he felt the brush of the curtain, and then was jolted down some steps and into a sandyfloored room. The hands spun him a few times, firmly but without apparent ill-will, and then led him along a passageway. There was the swish of another curtain, and then the indefinable sense of a larger space. Afterward, long afterward, Brutha realized: there was no terror. A hood had been slipped over his head in the room of the head of the Quisition, and it never occurred to him to be terrified. Because he had faith. "There is a stool behind you. Be seated." Brutha sat. "You may remove the hood." Brutha removed the hood. He blinked. Seated on stools at the far end of the room, with a Holy Legionary on either side of them, were three figures. He recognized the aquiline face of Deacon Vorbis; the other two were a short and stocky man, and a very fat one. Not heavily built, like Brutha, but a genuine lard tub. All three wore plain gray robes. There was no sign of any branding irons, or even of scalpels. All three were staring intently. "Novice Brutha?" said Vorbis. Brutha nodded. Vorbis gave a light laugh, the kind made by very intelligent people when they think of something that probably isn't very amusing. "And, of course, one day we shall have to call you Brother Brutha," he said. "Or even Father Brutha? Rather confusing, I think. Best to be avoided. I think we shall have to see to it that you become Subdeacon Brutha just as soon as possible; what do you think of that?" Brutha did not think anything of it. He was vaguely aware that advancement was being discussed, but his mind had gone blank. "Anyway, enough of this," said Vorbis, with the slight exasperation of someone who realizes that he is going to have to do a lot of work in this conversation. "Do you recognize these learned fathers on my left and right?" Brutha shook his head. "Good. They have some questions to ask you." Brutha nodded. The very fat man leaned forward. "Do you have a tongue, boy?" Brutha nodded. And then, feeling that perhaps this wasn't enough, presented it for inspection. Vorbis laid a restraining hand on the fat man's arm. "I think our young friend is a little overawed," he said mildly. He smiled. "Now, Brutha-please put it away-I am going to ask you some questions. Do you understand?" Brutha nodded. "When you first came into my apartments, you were for a few seconds in the anteroom. Please describe it to me." Brutha stared frog-eyed at him. But the turbines of recollection ground into life without his volition, pouring their words into the forefront of his mind. "It is a room about three meters square. With white walls. There is sand on the floor except in the corner by the door, where the flagstones are visible. There is a window on the opposite wall, about two meters up. There were three bars in the window. There is a threelegged stool. There is a holy icon of the Prophet Ossory, carved from aphacia wood and set with silver leaf. There is a scratch in the bottom left-hand corner of the frame. There is a shelf under the window. There is nothing on the shelf but a tray." Vorbis steepled his long thin fingers in front of his nose. "On the tray?" he said. "I am sorry, lord?" "What was on the tray, my son?" Images whirled in front of Brutha's eyes. "On the tray was a thimble. A bronze thimble. And two needles. On the tray was a length of cord. There were knots in the cord. Three knots. And nine coins were on the tray. There was a silver cup on the tray, decorated with a pattern of aphacia leaves. There was a long dagger, I think it was steel, with a black handle with seven ridges on it. There was a small piece of black cloth on the tray. There was a stylus and a slate-” "Tell me about the coins," murmured Vorbis. "Three of them were Citadel cents," said Brutha promptly. "Two were showing the Horns, and one the sevenfold-crown. Four of the coins were very small and golden. There was lettering on them which . . . which I could not read, but which if you were to give me a stylus I think I could-” "This is some sort of trick?" said the fat man. "I assure you," said Vorbis, "the boy could have seen the entire room for no more than a second. Brutha . . . tell us about the other coins." "The other coins were large. They were bronze. They were derechmi from Ephebe." "How do you know this? They are hardly common in the Citadel." "I have seen them once before, lord." "When was this?" Brutha's face screwed up with effort. "I am not sure-” he said. The fat man beamed at Vorbis. "Hah," he said. "I think . . ." said Brutha ". . . it was in the afternoon. But it may have been the morning. Around midday. On Grune 3, in the year of the Astounded Beetle. Some merchants came to our village." "How old were you at that time?" said Vorbis. "I was within one month of three years old, lord." "I don't believe this," said the fat man. Brutha's mouth opened and shut once or twice. How did the fat man know? He hadn't been there! "You could be wrong, my son," said Vorbis. "You are a wellgrown lad of . . . what . . . seventeen, eighteen years? We feel you could not really recall a chance glimpse of a foreign coin fifteen years ago." "We think that you are making it up," said the fat man. Brutha said nothing. Why make anything up? When it was just sitting there in his head. "Can you remember everything that's ever happened to you?" said the stocky man, who had been watching Brutha carefully throughout the exchange. Brutha was glad of the interruption. "No, lord. Most things." "You forget things?" "Uh. There are sometimes things I don't remember." Brutha had heard about forgetfulness, although he found it hard to imagine. But there were times in his life, in the first few years of his life especially, when there was . . . nothing. Not an attrition of memory, but great locked rooms in the mansion of his recollection. Not forgotten, any more than a locked room ceases to exist, but . . . locked. "What is the first thing you can remember, my son?" said Vorbis, kindly. "There was a bright light, and then someone hit me," said Brutha. The three men stared at him blankly. Then they turned to one another. Brutha, through the misery of his terror, heard snatches of whispering. ". . . is there to lose? . . . "Foolishness and probably demonic . . ." "Stakes are high . . ." "One chance, and they will be expecting us . . ." And so on. He looked around the room. Furnishing was not a priority in the Citadel. Shelves, stools, tables . . . There was a rumor among the novices that priests towards the top of the hierarchy had golden furniture, but there was no sign of it here. The room was as severe as anything in the novices' quarters although it had, perhaps, a more opulent severity; it wasn't the forced bareness of poverty, but the starkness of intent. "My son?" Brutha looked back hurriedly. Vorbis glanced at his colleagues. The stocky man nodded. The fat man shrugged. "Brutha," said Vorbis, "return to your dormitory now. Before you go, one of the servants will give you something to eat, and a drink. You will report to the Gate of Horns at dawn tomorrow, and you will come with me to Ephebe. You know about the delegation to Ephebe?" Brutha shook his head. "Perhaps there is no reason why you should," said Vorbis. "We are going to discuss political matters with the Tyrant. Do you understand?" Brutha shook his head. "Good," said Vorbis. "Very good. Oh, and-Brutha?" "Yes, lord?" "You will forget this meeting. You have not been in this room. You have not seen us here." Brutha gaped at him. This was nonsense. You couldn't forget things just by wishing. Some things forgot themselves-the things in those locked rooms-but that was because of some mechanism he could not access. What did this man mean? "Yes, lord," he said. It seemed the simplest way.     Gods have no one to pray to. The Great God Om scurried towards the nearest statue, neck stretched, inefficient legs pumping. The statue happened to be himself as a bull, trampling an infidel, although this was no great comfort. It was only a matter of time before the eagle stopped circling and swooped. Om had been a tortoise for only three years, but with the shape he had inherited a grab-bag of instincts, and a lot of them centered around a total terror of the one wild creature that had found out how to eat tortoise. Gods have no one to pray to. Om really wished that this was not the case. But everyone needs someone. "Brutha! "     Brutha was a little uncertain about his immediate future. Deacon Vorbis had clearly cut him loose from his chores as a novice, but he had nothing to do for the rest of the afternoon. He gravitated towards the garden. There were beans to tie up, and he welcomed the fact. You knew where you were with beans. They didn't tell you to do impossible things, like forget. Besides, if he was going to be away for a while, he ought to mulch the melons and explain things to Lu-Tze. Lu-Tze came with the gardens. Every organization has someone like him. They might be pushing a broom in obscure corridors, or wandering among the shelves in the back of the stores (where they are the only person who knows where anything is) or have some ambiguous but essential relationship with the boiler-room. Everyone knows who they are and no one remembers a time when they weren't there, or knows where they go when they're not, well, where they usually are. Just occasionally, people who are slightly more observant than most other people, which is not on the face of it very difficult, stop and wonder about them for a while . . . and then get on with something else. Strangely enough, given his gentle ambling from garden to garden around the Citadel, Lu-Tze never showed much interest in the plants themselves. He dealt in soil, manure, muck, compost, loam, and dust, and the means of moving it about. Generally he was pushing a broom, or turning over a heap. Once anyone put seeds in anything he lost interest. He was raking the paths when Brutha entered. He was good at raking paths. He left scallop patterns and gentle soothing curves. Brutha always felt apologetic about walking on them. He hardly ever spoke to Lu-Tze, because it didn't matter much what anyone ever said to Lu-Tze. The old man just nodded and smiled his single-toothed smile in any case. "I'm going away for a little while," said Brutha, loudly and distinctly. "I expect someone else will be sent to look after the gardens, but there are some things that need doing . . ." Nod, smile. The old man followed him patiently along the rows, while Brutha spoke beans and herbs. "Understand?" said Brutha, after ten minutes of this. Nod, smile. Nod, smile, beckon. "What?" Nod, smile, beckon. Nod, smile, beckon, smile. Lu-Tze walked his little crab-monkey walk to the little area at the far end of the walled garden which contained his heaps, the flowerpot stacks, and all the other cosmetics of the garden beautiful. The old man slept there, Brutha suspected. Nod, smile, beckon. There was a small trestle table in the sun by a stack of bean canes. A straw mat had been spread on it, and on the mat were half a dozen pointy-shaped rocks, none of them bigger than a foot high. A careful arrangement of sticks had been constructed around them. Bits of thin wood shadowed some parts of the rocks. Small metal mirrors directed sunlight towards other areas. Paper cones at odd angles appeared to be funneling the breeze to very precise points. Brutha had never heard about the art of bonsai, and how it was applied to mountains. "They're . . . very nice," he said uncertainly. Nod, smile, pick up a small rock, smile, urge, urge. "Oh, I really couldn't take-” Urge, urge. Grin, nod. Brutha took the tiny mountain. It had a strange, unreal heaviness-to his hand it felt like a pound or so, but in his head it weighed thousands of very, very small tons. "Uh. Thank you. Thank you very much." Nod, smile, push away politely. "It's very . . . mountainous." Nod, grin. "That can't really be snow on the top, can-” "Brutha!" His head jerked up. But the voice had come from inside. Oh, no, he thought wretchedly. He pushed the little mountain back into Lu-Tze's hands. "But, er, you keep it for me, yes?" "Brutha! " All that was a dream, wasn't it? Before I was important and talked to by deacons. "No, it wasn't! Help me!"     The petitioners scattered as the eagle made a pass over the Place of Lamentation. It wheeled, only a few feet above the ground, and perched on the statue of Great Om trampling the Infidel. It was a magnificent bird, golden-brown and yellow-eyed, and it surveyed the crowds with blank disdain. "It's a sign?" said an old man with a wooden leg. "Yes! A sign!" said a young woman next to him. "A sign!" They gathered around the statue. "It's a bugger," said a small and totally unheard voice from somewhere around their feet. "But what's it a sign of?" said an elderly man who had been camping out in the square for three days. "What do you mean, of? It's a sign!" said the wooden-legged man. "It don't have to be a sign of anything. That's a suspicious kind of question to ask, what's it a sign of." "Got to be a sign of something," said the elderly man. "That's a referential wossname. A gerund. Could be a gerund." A skinny figure appeared at the edge of the group, moving surreptitiously yet with surprising speed. It was wearing the djeliba of the desert tribes, but around its neck was a tray on a strap. There was an ominous suggestion of sticky sweet things covered in dust. "It could be a messenger from the Great God himself," said the woman. "It's a bloody eagle is what it is," said a resigned voice from somewhere among the ornamental bronze homicide at the base of the statue. "Dates? Figs? Sherbets? Holy relics? Nice fresh indulgences? Lizards? Onna stick?" said the man with the tray hopefully. "I thought when He appeared in the world it was as a swan or a bull," said the wooden-legged man. "Hah!" said the unregarded voice of the tortoise. "Always wondered about that," said a young novice at the back of the crowd. "You know . . . well . . . swans? A bit . . . lacking in machismo, yes?" "May you be stoned to death for blasphemy!" said the woman hotly. "The Great God hears every irreverent word you utter!" "Hah!" from under the statue. And the man with the tray oiled forward a little further, saying, "Klatchian Delight? Honeyed wasps? Get them while they're cold!" "It's a point, though," said the elderly man, in a kind of boring, unstoppable voice. "I mean, there's something very godly about an eagle. King of birds, am I right?" "It's only a better-looking turkey," said the voice from under the statue. "Brain the size of a walnut." "Very noble bird, the eagle. Intelligent, too," said the elderly man. "Interesting fact: eagles are the only birds to work out how to eat tortoises. You know? They pick them up, flying up very high, and drop them on to the rocks. Smashes them right open. Amazing." "One day," said a dull voice from down below, "I'm going to be back on form again and you're going to be very sorry you said that. For a very long time. I might even go so far as to make even more Time just for you to be sorry in. Or . . . no, I'll make you a tortoise. See how you like it, eh? That rushing wind around y'shell, the ground getting bigger the whole time. That'd be an interesting fact!" "That sounds dreadful," said the woman, looking up at the eagle's glare. "I wonder what passes through the poor little creature's head when he's dropped?" "His shell, madam," said the Great God Om, trying to squeeze himself even further under the bronze overhang. The man with the tray was looking dejected. "Tell you what," he said. "Two bags of sugared dates for the price of one, how about it? And that's cutting my own hand off." The woman glanced at the tray. "Ere, there's flies all over everything!" she said. "Currants, madam." "Why'd they just fly away, then?" the woman demanded. The man looked down. Then he looked back up into her face. "A miracle!" he said, waving his hands dramatically. "The time of miracles is at hand!" The eagle shifted uneasily. It recognized humans only as pieces of mobile landscape which, in the lambing season in the high hills, might be associated with thrown stones when it stooped upon the newborn lamb, but which otherwise were as unimportant in the scheme of things as bushes and rocks. But it had never been so close to so many of them. Its mad eyes swiveled backward and forward uncertainly. At that moment trumpets rang out across the Place. The eagle looked around wildly, its tiny predatory mind trying to deal with this sudden overload. It leapt into the air. The worshipers fought to get out of its way as it dipped across the flagstones and then rose majestically toward the turrets of the Great Temple and the hot sky. Below it, the doors of the Great Temple, each one made of forty tons of gilded bronze, opened by the breath (it was said) of the Great God Himself, swung open ponderously and-and this was the holy part-silently.     Brutha's enormous sandals flapped and flapped on the flagstones. Brutha always put a lot of effort into running; he ran from the knees, lower legs thrashing like paddlewheels. This was too much. There was a tortoise who said he was the God, and this couldn't be true except that it must be true, because of what it knew. And he'd been tried by the Quisition. Or something like that. Anyway, it hadn't been as painful as he'd been led to expect. "Brutha!" The square, normally alive with the susurration of a thousand prayers, had gone quiet. The pilgrims had all turned to face the Temple. His mind boiling with the events of the day, Brutha shouldered his way through the suddenly silent crowd . . . . "Brutha!" People have reality-dampers. It is a popular fact that nine-tenths of the brain is not used and, like most popular facts, it is wrong. Not even the most stupid Creator would go to the trouble of making the human head carry around several pounds of unnecessary gray goo if its only real purpose was, for example, to serve as a delicacy for certain remote tribesmen in unexplored valleys. It is used. And one of its functions is to make the miraculous seem ordinary and turn the unusual into the usual. Because if this was not the case, then human beings, faced with the daily wondrousness of everything, would go around wearing big stupid grins, similar to those worn by certain remote tribesmen who occasionally get raided by the authorities and have the contents of their plastic greenhouses very seriously inspected. They'd say "Wow!" a lot. And no one would do much work. Gods don't like people not doing much work. People who aren't busy all the time might start to think. Part of the brain exists to stop this happening. It is very efficient. It can make people experience boredom in the middle of marvels. And Brutha's was working feverishly. So he didn't immediately notice that he'd pushed through the last row of people and had trotted out into the middle of a wide pathway, until he turned and saw the procession approaching. The Cenobiarch was returning to his apartments, after conducting-or at least nodding vaguely while his chaplain conducted on his behalf-the evening service. Brutha spun around, looking for a way to escape. Then there was a cough beside him, and he stared up into the furious faces of a couple of Lesser Iams and, between them, the bemused and geriatrically good-natured expression of the Cenobiarch himself. The old man raised his hand automatically to bless Brutha with the holy horns, and then two members of the Divine Legion picked up the novice by the elbows, on the second attempt, and marched him swiftly out of the procession's path and hurled him into the crowd. "Brutha!" Brutha bounded across the plaza to the statue and leaned against it, panting. "I'm going to go to hell!" he muttered. "For all eternity! " "Who cares? Now . . . get me away from here. " No one was paying him any attention now. They were all watching the procession. Even watching the procession was a holy act. Brutha knelt down and peered into the scrollwork around the base of the statue. One beady eye glared back at him. "How did you get under there?" "It was touch and go," said the tortoise. "I tell you, when I'm back on form, there's going to be a considerable redesigning of eagles." "What's the eagle trying to do to you?" said Brutha. "It wants to carry me off to its nest and give me dinner," snarled the tortoise. "What do you think it wanted to do?" There was a short pause in which it contemplated the futility of sarcasm in the presence of Brutha; it was like throwing meringues at a castle. "It wants to eat me," it said patiently. "But you're a tortoise!" "I am your God!" "But currently in the shape of a tortoise. With a shell on, is what I mean." "That doesn't worry eagles," said the tortoise darkly. "They pick you up, carry you up a few hundred feet, and then . . . drop you." "Urrgh." "No. More like . . . crack . . . splat. How did you think I got in here?" "You were dropped? But-” "Landed on a pile of dirt in your garden. That's eagles for you. Whole place built of rock and paved with rock on a big rock and they miss." "That was lucky. Million-to-one chance," said Brutha. "I never had this trouble when I was a bull. The number of eagles who can pick up a bull, you can count them on the fingers of one head. Anyway," said the tortoise, "there's worse here than eagles. There's a-” "There's good eating on one of them, you know," said a voice behind Brutha. He stood up guiltily, the tortoise in his hand. "Oh, hello, Mr. Dhblah," he said. Everyone in the city knew Cut-Me-Own-Hand-Off Dhblah, purveyor of suspiciously new holy relics, suspiciously old rancid sweetmeats on a stick, gritty figs, and long-past-thesell-by dates. He was a sort of natural force, like the wind. No one knew where he came from or where he went at night. But he was there every dawn, selling sticky things to the pilgrims. And in this the priests reckoned he was on to a good thing, because most of the pilgrims were coming for the first time and therefore lacked the essential thing you needed in dealing with Dhblah, which was the experience of having dealt with him before. The sight of someone in the Place trying to unstick their jaws with dignity was a familiar one. Many a devout pilgrim, after a thousand miles of perilous journey, was forced to make his petition in sign language. "Fancy some sherbet for afters?" said Dhblah hopefully. "Only one cent a glass, and that's cutting me own hand off." "Who is this fool?" said Om. "I'm not going to eat it," said Brutha hurriedly. "Going to teach it to do tricks, then?" said Dhblah cheerfully. "Look through hoops, that kind of thing?" "Get rid of him," said Om. "Smite him on the head, why don't you, and push the body behind the statue." "Shut up," said Brutha, beginning to experience once again the problems that occur when you're talking to someone no one else can hear. "No need to be like that about it," said Dhblah. "I wasn't talking to you," said Brutha. "Talking to the tortoise, were you?" said Dhblah. Brutha looked guilty. "My old mum used to talk to a gerbil," Dhblah went on. "Pets are always a great help in times of stress. And in times of starvation too, o'course." "This man is not honest," said Om. "I can read his mind." "Can you?" "Can I what?" said Dhblah. He gave Brutha a lopsided look. "Anyway, it'll be company on your journey." "What journey?" "To Ephebe. The secret mission to talk to the infidel." Brutha knew he shouldn't be surprised. News went around the enclosed world of the Citadel like bushfire after a drought. "Oh," he said. "That journey." "They say Fri'it's going," said Dhblah. "And-that other one. The éminence grease." "Deacon Vorbis is a very nice person," said Brutha. "He has been very kind to me. He gave me a drink." "What of? Never mind," said Dhblah. "Of course, I wouldn't say a word against him, myself," he added quickly. "Why are you talking to this stupid person?" Om demanded. "He's a . . . friend of mine," said Brutha. "I wish he was a friend of mine," said Dhblah. "Friends like that, you never have enemies. Can I press you to a candied sultana? Onna stick?"     There were twenty-three other novices in Brutha's dormitory, on the principle that sleeping alone promoted sin. This always puzzled the novices themselves, since a moment's reflection would suggest that there were whole ranges of sins only available in company. But that was because a moment's reflection was the biggest sin of all. People allowed to be by themselves overmuch might indulge in solitary cogitation. It was well known that this stunted your growth. For one thing, it could lead to your feet being chopped off. So Brutha had to retire to the garden, with his God screaming at him from the pocket of his robe, where it was being jostled by a ball of garden twine, a pair of shears, and some loose seeds. Finally he was fished out. "Look, I didn't have a chance to tell you," said Brutha. "I've been chosen to go on a very important mission. I'm going to Ephebe, on a mission to the infidels. Deacon Vorbis picked me. He's my friend." "Who's he?" "He's the chief exquisitor. He . . . makes sure you're worshiped properly." Om picked up the hesitation in Brutha's voice, and remembered the grating. And the sheer busyness below . . . "He tortures people," he said coldly. "Oh, no! The inquisitors do that. They work very long hours for not much money, too, Brother Nhumrod says. No, the exquisitors just . . . arrange matters. Every inquisitor wants to become an exquisitor one day, Brother Nhumrod says. That's why they put up with being on duty at all hours. They go for days without sleep, sometimes." "Torturing people," mused the God. No, a mind like that one in the garden wouldn't pick up a knife. Other people would do that. Vorbis would enjoy other methods. "Letting out the badness and the heresy in people," said Brutha. "But people . . . perhaps . . . don't survive the process?" "But that doesn't matter," said Brutha earnestly. "What happens to us in this life is not really real. There may be a little pain, but that doesn't matter. Not if it ensures less time in the hells after death." "But what if the exquisitors are wrong?" said the tortoise. "They can't be wrong," said Brutha. "They are guided by the hand of . . . by your hand . . . your front leg . . . I mean, your claw," he mumbled. The tortoise blinked its one eye. It remembered the heat of the sun, the helplessness, and a face watching it not with any cruelty but, worse, with interest. Someone watching something die just to see how long it took. He'd remember that face anywhere. And the mind behind it-that steel ball of a mind. "But suppose something went wrong," it insisted. "I'm not any good at theology," said Brutha. "But the testament of Ossory is very clear on the matter. They must have done something, otherwise you in your wisdom would not direct the Quisition to them." "Would I?" said Om, still thinking of that face. "It's their fault they get tortured. Did I really say that?" " `We are judged in life as we are in death' . . . Ossory III, chapter VI, verse 56. My grandmother said that when people die they come before you, they have to cross a terrible desert and you weigh their heart in some scales," said Brutha. "And if it weighs less than a feather, they are spared the hells." "Goodness me," said the tortoise. And it added: "Has it occurred to you, lad, that I might not be able to do that and be down here walking around with a shell on?" "You could do anything you wanted to," said Brutha. Om looked up at Brutha. He really believes, he thought. He doesn't know how to lie. The strength of Brutha's belief burned in him like a flame. And then the truth hit Om like the ground hits tortoises after an attack of eagles. "You've got to take me to this Ephebe place," he said urgently. "I'll do whatever you want," said Brutha. "Are you going to scourge it with hoof and flame?" "Could be, could be," said Om. "But you've got to take me." He was trying to keep his innermost thoughts calm, in case Brutha heard. Don't leave me behind! "But you could get there much quicker if I left you," said Brutha. "They are very wicked in Ephebe. The sooner it is cleansed, the better. You could stop being a tortoise and fly there like a burning wind and scourge the city." A burning wind, thought Om. And the tortoise thought of the silent wastes of the deep desert, and the chittering and sighing of the gods who had faded away to mere djinns and voices on the air. Gods with no more believers. Not even one. One was just enough. Gods who had been left behind. And the thing about Brutha's flame of belief was this: in all the Citadel, in all the day, it was the only one the God had found.     Fri'it was trying to pray. He hadn't done so for a long time. Oh, of course there had been the eight compulsory prayers every day, but in the pit of the wretched night he knew them for what they were. A habit. A time for thought, perhaps. And method of measuring time. He wondered if he'd ever prayed, if he'd ever opened heart and mind to something out there, or up there. He must have done, mustn't he? Perhaps when he was young. He couldn't even remember that. Blood had washed away the memories. It was his fault. It had to be his fault. He'd been to Ephebe before, and had rather liked the white marble city on its rock overlooking the blue Circle Sea. And he'd visited Djelibeybi, those madmen in their little river valley who believed in gods with funny heads and put their dead in pyramids. He'd even been to far Ankh-Morpork, across the water, where they'd worship any god at all so long as he or she had money. Yes, Ankh-Morpork-where there were streets and streets of gods, squeezed together like a deck of cards. And none of them wanted to set fire to anyone else, or at least any more than was normally the case in Ankh-Morpork. They just wanted to be left in peace, so that everyone went to heaven or hell in their own way. And he'd drunk too much tonight, from a secret cache of wine whose discovery would deliver him into the machinery of the inquisitors within ten minutes. Yes, you could say this for old Vorbis. Once upon a time the Quisition had been bribable, but not anymore. The chief exquisitor had gone back to fundamentals. Now there was a democracy of sharp knives. Better than that, in fact. The search for heresy was pursued even more vigorously among the higher levels in the Church. Vorbis had made it clear: the higher up the tree, the blunter the saw. Give me that old-time religion . . . He squeezed his eyes shut again, and all he could see were the horns of the temple, or fragmented suggestions of the carnage to come, or . . . the face of Vorbis. He'd liked that white city. Even the slaves had been content. There were rules about slaves. There were things you couldn't do to slaves. Slaves had value. He'd learned about the Turtle, there. It had all made sense. He'd thought: it sounds right. It makes sense. But sense or not, that thought was sending him to hell. Vorbis knew about him. He must do. There were spies everywhere. Sasho had been useful. How much had Vorbis got out of him? Had he said what he knew? Of course he'd say what he knew . . . Something went snap inside Fri'it. He glanced at his sword, hanging on the wall. And why not? After all, he was going to spend all eternity in a thousand hells . . . The knowledge was freedom, of a sort. When the least they could do to you was everything, then the most they could do to you suddenly held no terror. If he was going to be boiled for a lamb, then he might as well be roasted for a sheep. He staggered to his feet and, after a couple of tries, got the swordbelt off the wall. Vorbis's quarters weren't far away, if he could manage the steps. One stroke, that's all it would take. He could cut Vorbis in half without trying. And maybe . . . maybe nothing would happen afterward. There were others who felt like him-somewhere. Or, anyway, he could get down to the stables, be well away by dawn, get to Ephebe, maybe, across the desert . . . He reached the door and fumbled for the handle. It turned of its own accord. Fri'it staggered back as the door swung inward. Vorbis was standing there. In the flickering light of the oil lamp, his face registered polite concern. "Excuse the lateness of the hour, my lord," he said. "But I thought we should talk. About tomorrow." The sword clattered out of Fri'it's hand. Vorbis leaned forward. "Is there something wrong, brother?" he said. He smiled, and stepped into the room. Two hooded inquisitors slipped in behind him. "Brother," Vorbis said again. And shut the door.     "How is it in there?" said Brutha. "I'm going to rattle around like a pea in a pot," grumbled the tortoise. "I could put some more straw in. And, look, I've got these." A pile of greenstuff dropped on Om's head. "From the kitchen," said Brutha. "Peelings and cabbage. I stole them," he added, "but then I thought it can't be stealing if I'm doing it for you." The fetid smell of the half-rotten leaves suggested strongly that Brutha had committed his crime when the greens were halfway to the midden, but Om didn't say so. Not now. "Right," he mumbled. There must be others, he told himself. Sure. Out in the country. This place is too sophisticated. But . . . there had been all those pilgrims in front of the Temple. They weren't just country people, they were the devoutest ones. Whole villages clubbed together to send one person carrying the petitions of many. But there hadn't been the flame. There had been fear, and dread, and yearning, and hope. All those emotions had their flavor. But there hadn't been the flame. The eagle had dropped him near Brutha. He'd . . . woken up. He could dimly remember all that time as a tortoise. And now he remembered being a god. How far away from Brutha would he still remember? A mile? Ten miles? How would it be . . . feeling the knowledge drain away, dwindling back to nothing but a lowly reptile? Maybe there would be a part of him that would always remember, helplessly . . . He shuddered. Currently Om was in a wickerwork box slung from Brutha's shoulder. It wouldn't have been comfortable at the best of times, but now it shook occasionally as Brutha stamped his feet in the pre-dawn chill. After a while some of the Citadel grooms arrived, with horses. Brutha was the subject of a few odd looks. He smiled at everyone. It seemed the best way. He began to feel hungry, but didn't dare leave his post. He'd been told to be here. But after a while sounds from around the corner made him sidle a few yards to see what was going on. The courtyard here was U-shaped, around a wing of the Citadel buildings, and around the corner it looked as though another party was preparing to set out. Brutha knew about camels. There had been a couple in his grandmother's village. There seemed to be hundreds of them here, though, complaining like badly oiled pumps and smelling like a thousand damp carpets. Men in djeliba moved among them and occasionally hit them with sticks, which is the approved method of dealing with camels. Brutha wandered over to the nearest creature. A man was strapping water-bottles round its hump. "Good morning, brother," said Brutha. "Bugger off," said the man without looking round. "The Prophet Abbys tells us (chap. XXV, verse 6): `Woe unto he who defiles his mouth with curses for his words will be as dust,' " said Brutha. "Does he? Well, he can bugger off too," said the man, conversationally. Brutha hesitated. Technically, of course, the man had bought himself vacant possession of a thousand hells and a month or two of the attentions of the Quisition, but now Brutha could see that he was a member of the Divine Legion; a sword was halfhidden under the desert robes. And you had to make special allowances for Legionaries, just as you did for inquisitors. Their often intimate contact with the ungodly affected their minds and put their souls in mortal peril. He decided to be magnanimous. "And where are you going to with all these camels on this fine morning, brother?" The soldier tightened a strap. "Probably to hell," he said, grinning nastily. "Just behind you." "Really? According to the word of the Prophet Ishkible, a man needs no camel to ride to hell, yea, nor horse, nor mule; a man may ride into hell on his tongue," said Brutha, letting just a tremor of disapproval enter his voice. "Does some old prophet say anything about nosy bastards being given a thump alongside the ear?" said the soldier. " `Woe unto him who raises his hand unto his brother, dealing with him as unto an Infidel,' " said Brutha. "That's Ossory, Precepts XI, verse 16." " `Sod off and forget you ever saw us otherwise you're going to be in real trouble, my friend.' Sergeant Aktar, chapter 1, verse 1," said the soldier. Brutha's brow wrinkled. He couldn't remember that one. "Walk away," said the voice of the God in his head. "You don't need trouble." "I hope your journey is a pleasant one," said Brutha politely. "Whatever the destination." He backed away and headed toward the gate. "A man who will have to spend some time in the hells of correction, if I am any judge," he said. The god said nothing. The Ephebian traveling group was beginning to assemble now. Brutha stood to attention and tried to keep out of everyone's way. He saw a dozen mounted soldiers, but unlike the camel riders they were in the brightly polished fishmail and black-and-yellow cloaks that the Legionaries usually only wore on special occasions. Brutha thought they looked very impressive. Eventually one of the stable servants came up to him. "What are you doing here, novice?" he demanded. "I am going to Ephebe," said Brutha. The man glared at him and then grinned. "You? You're not even ordained! You're going to Ephebe?" "Yes." "What makes you think that?" "Because I told him so," said the voice of Vorbis, behind the man. "And here he is, most obedient to my wishes." Brutha had a good view of the man's face. The change in his expression was like watching a grease slick cross a pond. Then the stableman turned as though his feet were nailed to a turntable. "My Lord Vorbis," he oiled. "And now he will require a steed," said Vorbis. The stableman's face was yellow with dread. "My pleasure. The very best the sta-” "My friend Brutha is a humble man before Om," said Vorbis. "He will ask for no more than a mule, I have no doubt. Brutha?" "I-I do not know how to ride, my lord," said Brutha. "Any man can get on a mule," said Vorbis. "Often many times in a short distance. And now, it would appear, we are all here?" He raised an eyebrow at the sergeant of the guard, who saluted. "We are awaiting General Fri'it, lord," he said. "Ah. Sergeant Simony, isn't it?" Vorbis had a terrible memory for names. He knew every one. The sergeant paled a little, and then saluted crisply. "Yes! Sir!" "We will proceed without General Fri'it," said Vorbis. The B of the word "But" framed itself on the sergeant's lips, and faded there. "General Fri'it has other business," said Vorbis. "Most pressing and urgent business. Which only he can attend to."     Fri'it opened his eyes in grayness. He could see the room around him, but only faintly, as a series of edges in the air. The sword . . . He'd dropped the sword, but maybe he could find it again. He stepped forward, feeling a tenuous resistance around his ankles, and looked down. There was the sword. But his fingers passed through it. It was like being drunk, but he knew he wasn't drunk. He wasn't even sober. He was . . . suddenly clear in his mind. He turned and looked at the thing that had briefly impeded his progress. "Oh," he said. GOOD MORNING. "Oh." "THERE IS A LITTLE CONFUSION AT FIRST. IT IS ONLY TO BE EXPECTED. To his horror, Fri'it saw the tall black figure stride away through the gray wall. "Wait!" A skull draped in a black hood poked out of the wall. YES? "You're Death, aren't you?" INDEED. Fri'it gathered what remained of his dignity. "I know you," he said. "I have faced you many times." Death gave him a long stare. NO YOU HAVEN'T. "I assure you-” YOU HAVE FACED MEN. IF YOU HAD FACED ME, I ASSURE YOU . . . YOU WOULD HAVE KNOWN. "But what happens to me now?" Death shrugged. DON'T YOU KNOW? he said, and disappeared. "Wait!" Fri'it ran at the wall and found to his surprise that it offered no barrier. Now he was out in the empty corridor. Death had vanished. And then he realized that it wasn't the corridor he remembered, with its shadows and the grittiness of sand underfoot. That corridor didn't have a glow at the end, that pulled at him like a magnet pulls at an iron filing. You couldn't put off the inevitable. Because sooner or later, you reached the place when the inevitable just went and waited. And this was it. Fri'it stepped through the glow into a desert. The sky was dark and pocked with large stars, but the black sand that stretched away to the distance was nevertheless brightly lit. A desert. After death, a desert. The desert. No hells, yet. Perhaps there was hope. He remembered a story from his childhood. Unusually, it wasn't about smiting. No one was trampled underfoot. It wasn't about Om, dreadful in His rage. It was worse. It was about what happened when you died . . . the journey of your soul. They said: you must walk a desert . . . "Where is this place?" he said hoarsely. THIS IS NO PLACE, said Death . . . . all alone . . . "What is at the end of the desert?" JUDGEMENT . . . . with your beliefs . . . Fri'it stared at the endless, featureless expanse. "I have to walk it alone?" he whispered. "But . . . now, I'm not sure what I believe-” YES? AND NOW, IF YOU WILL EXCUSE ME- Fri'it took a deep breath, purely out of habit. Perhaps he could find a couple of rocks out there. A small rock to hold and a big rock to hide behind, while he waited for Vorbis . . . And that thought was habit, too. Revenge? Here? He smiled. Be sensible, man. You were a soldier. This is a desert. You crossed a few in your time. And you survive by learning about them. There's whole tribes that know how to live in the worst kinds of desert. Licking water off the shady sides of dunes, that sort of thing . . . They think it's home. Put 'em in a vegetable garden and they'd think you were mad. The memory stole over him: a desert is what you think it is. And now, you can think clearly . . . There were no lies here. All fancies fled away. That's what happened in all deserts. It was just you, and what you believed. What have I always believed? That on the whole, and by and large, if a man lived properly, not according to what any priests said, but according to what seemed decent and honest inside, then it would, at the end, more or less, turn out all right. You couldn't get that on a banner. But the desert looked better already. Fri'it set out.     It was a small mule and Brutha had long legs; if he'd made the effort he could have remained standing and let the mule trot out from underneath. The order of progression was not as some may have expected. Sergeant Simony and his soldiers rode ahead, on either side of the track. They were trailed by the servants and clerks and lesser priests. Vorbis rode in the rear, where an exquisitor rode by right, like a shepherd watching over his flock. Brutha rode with him. It was an honor he would have preferred to avoid. Brutha was one of those people who could raise a sweat on a frosty day, and the dust was settling on him like a gritty skin. But Vorbis seemed to derive some amusement from his company. Occasionally he would ask him questions: "How many miles have we traveled, Brutha?" "Four miles and seven estado, lord." "But how do you know?" That was a question he couldn't answer. How did he know the sky was blue? It was just something in his head. You couldn't think about how you thought. It was like opening a box with the crowbar that was inside. "And how long has our journey taken?" "A little over seventy-nine minutes." Vorbis laughed. Brutha wondered why. The puzzle wasn't why he remembered, it was why everyone else seemed to forget. "Did your fathers have this remarkable faculty?" There was a pause. "Could they do it as well?" said Vorbis patiently. "I don't know. There was only my grandmother. She had-a good memory. For some things." Transgressions, certainly. "And very good eyesight and hearing." What she could apparently see or hear through two walls had, he remembered, seemed phenomenal. Brutha turned gingerly in the saddle. There was a cloud of dust about a mile behind them on the road. "Here come the rest of the soldiers," he said conversationally. This seemed to shock Vorbis. Perhaps it was the first time in years that anyone had innocently addressed a remark to him. "The rest of the soldiers?" he said. "Sergeant Aktar and his men, on ninety-eight camels with many water-bottles," said Brutha. "I saw them before we left." "You did not see them," said Vorbis. "They are not coming with us. You will forget about them." "Yes, lord." The request to do magic again. After a few minutes the distant cloud turned off the road and started up the long slope that led to the high desert. Brutha watched them surreptitiously, and raised his eyes to the dune mountains. There was a speck circling up there. He put his hand to his mouth. Vorbis heard the gasp. "What ails you, Brutha?" he said. "I remembered about the God," said Brutha, without thinking. "We should always remember the God," said Vorbis, "and trust that He is with us on this journey." "He is," said Brutha, and the absolute conviction in his voice made Vorbis smile. He strained to hear the nagging internal voice, but there was nothing. For one horrible moment Brutha wondered if the tortoise had fallen out of the box, but there was a reassuring weight on the strap. "And we must bear with us the certainty that He will be with us in Ephebe, among the infidel," said Vorbis. "I am sure He will," said Brutha. "And prepare ourselves for the coming of the prophet," said Vorbis. The cloud had reached the top of the dunes now, and vanished in the silent wastes of the desert. Brutha tried to put it out of his mind, which was like trying to empty a bucket underwater. No one survived in the high desert. It wasn't just the dunes and the heat. There were terrors in the burning heart, where even the mad tribes never went. An ocean without water, voices without mouths . . . Which wasn't to say that the immediate future didn't hold terrors enough . . . He'd seen the sea before, but the Omnians didn't encourage it. This may have been because deserts were so much harder to cross. They kept people in, though. But sometimes the desert barriers were a problem, and then you had to put up with the sea. Il-drim was nothing more than a few shacks around a stone jetty, at one of which was a trireme flying the holy oriflamme. When the Church traveled, the travelers were very senior people indeed, so when the Church traveled it generally traveled in style. The party paused on a hill and looked at it. "Soft and corrupt," said Vorbis. "That's what we've become, Brutha." "Yes, Lord Vorbis." "And open to pernicious influence. The sea, Brutha. It washes unholy shores, and gives rise to dangerous ideas. Men should not travel, Brutha. At the center there is truth. As you travel, so error creeps in." "Yes, Lord Vorbis." Vorbis sighed. "In Ossory's day we sailed alone in boats made of hides, and went where the winds of the God took us. That's how a holy man should travel." A tiny spark of defiance in Brutha declared that it, personally, would risk a little corruption for the sake of traveling with two decks between its feet and the waves. "I heard that Ossory once sailed to the island of Erebos on a millstone," he ventured by way of conversation. "Nothing is impossible for the strong in faith," said Vorbis. "Try striking a match on jelly, mister." Brutha stiffened. It was impossible that Vorbis could have failed to hear the voice. The Voice of the Turtle was heard in the land. "Who's this bugger?" "Forward," said Vorbis. "I can see that our friend Brutha is agog to get on board." The horse trotted on. "Where are we? Who's that? It's as hot as hell in here and, believe me, I know what I'm talking about." "I can't talk now!" hissed Brutha. "This cabbage stinks like a swamp! Let there be lettuce! Let there be slices of melon!" The horses edged along the jetty and were led one at a time up the gangplank. By this time the box was vibrating. Brutha kept looking around guiltily, but no one else was taking any notice. Despite his size, Brutha was easy not to notice. Practically everyone had better things to do with their time than notice someone like Brutha. Even Vorbis had switched him off, and was talking to the captain. He found a place up near the pointed end, where one of the sticking-up bits with the sails on gave him a bit of privacy. Then, with some dread, he opened the box. The tortoise spoke from deep within its shell. "Any eagles about?" Brutha scanned the sky. "No." The head shot out. "You-” it began. "I couldn't talk!" said Brutha. "People were with me all the time! Can't you . . . read the words in my mind? Can't you read my thoughts?" "Mortal thoughts aren't like that," snapped Om. "You think it's like watching words paint themselves across the sky? Hah! It's like trying to make sense of a bundle of weeds. Intentions, yes. Emotions, yes. But not thoughts. Half the time you don't know what you're thinking, so why should I?" "Because you're the God," said Brutha. "Abbys, chapter LVI, verse 17: `All of mortal mind he knows, and there are no secrets.' " "Was he the one with the bad teeth?" Brutha hung his head. "Listen," said the tortoise, "I am what I am. I can't help it if people think something else." "But you knew about my thoughts . . . in the garden . . ." muttered Brutha. The tortoise hesitated. "That was different," it said. "They weren't . . . thoughts. That was guilt." "I believe that the Great God is Om, and in His Justice," said Brutha. "And I shall go on believing, whatever you say, and whatever you are." "Good to hear it," said the tortoise fervently. "Hold that thought. Where are we?" "On a boat," said Brutha. "On the sea. Wobbling." "Going to Ephebe on a boat? What's wrong with the desert?" "No one can cross the desert. No one can live in the heart of the desert." "I did." "It's only a couple of days' sailing." Brutha's stomach lurched, even though the boat had hardly cleared the jetty. "And they say that the God-” "-me-” "-is sending us a fair wind." "I am? Oh. Yes. Trust me for a fair wind. Flat as a mill-race the whole way, don't you worry."     "I meant mill-pond! I meant mill-pond!"     Brutha clung to the mast. After a while a sailor came and sat down on a coil of rope and looked at him interestedly. "You can let go, Father," he said. "It stands up all by itself." "The sea . . . the waves . . ." murmured Brutha carefully, although there was nothing left to throw up. The sailor spat thoughtfully. "Aye," he said. "They got to be that shape, see, so's to fit into the sky." "But the boat's creaking!" "Aye. It does that." "You mean this isn't a storm?" The sailor sighed, and walked away. After a while, Brutha risked letting go. He had never felt so ill in his life. It wasn't just the seasickness. He didn't know where he was. And Brutha had always known where he was. Where he was, and the existence of Om, had been the only two certainties in his life. It was something he shared with tortoises. Watch any tortoise walking, and periodically it will stop while it files away the memories of the journey so far. Not for nothing, elsewhere in the multiverse, are the little traveling devices controlled by electric thinking-engines called "turtles." Brutha knew where he was by remembering where he had been-by the unconscious counting of footsteps and the noting of landmarks. Somewhere inside his head was a thread of memory which, if you had wired it directly to whatever controlled his feet, would cause Brutha to amble back through the little pathways of his life all the way to the place he was born. Out of contact with the ground, on the mutable surface of the sea, the thread flapped loose. In his box, Om tossed and shook to Brutha's motion as Brutha staggered across the moving deck and reached the rail. To anyone except the novice, the boat was clipping through the waves on a good sailing day. Seabirds wheeled in its wake. Away to one side-port or starboard or one of those directions-a school of flying fish broke the surface in an attempt to escape the attentions of some dolphins. Brutha stared at the gray shapes as they zigzagged under the keel in a world where they never had to count at all "Ah, Brutha," said Vorbis. "Feeding the fishes, I see." "No, lord," said Brutha. "I'm being sick, lord." He turned. There was Sergeant Simony, a muscular young man with the deadpan expression of the truly professional soldier. He was standing next to someone Brutha vaguely recognized as the number-one salt or whatever his title was. And there was the exquisitor, smiling. "Him! Him!" screamed the voice of the tortoise. "Our young friend is not a good sailor," said Vorbis. "Him! Him! I'd know him anywhere!" "Lord, I wish I wasn't a sailor at all," said Brutha. He felt the box trembling as Om bounced around inside. "Kill him! Find something sharp! Push him overboard!" "Come with us to the prow, Brutha," said Vorbis. "There are many interesting things to be seen, according to the captain." The captain gave the frozen smirk of those caught between a rock and a hard place. Vorbis could always supply both. Brutha trailed behind the other three, and risked a whisper. "What's the matter?" "Him! The bald one! Push him over the side!" Vorbis half-turned, caught Brutha's embarrassed attention, and smiled. "We will have our minds broadened, I am sure," he said. He turned back to the captain, and pointed to a large bird gliding down the face of the waves. "The Pointless Albatross," said the captain promptly. "Flies from the Hub to the Ri-” he faltered. But Vorbis was gazing with apparent affability at the view. "He turned me over in the sun! Look at his mind!" "From one pole of the world to the other, every year," said the captain. He was sweating slightly. "Really?" said Vorbis. "Why?" "No one knows." "Excepting the God, of course," said Vorbis. The captain's face was a sickly yellow. "Of course. Certainly," he said. "Brutha?" shouted the tortoise. "Are you listening to me?" "And over there?" said Vorbis. The sailor followed his extended arm. "Oh. Flying fish," he said. "But they don't really fly," he added quickly. "They just build up speed in the water and glide a little way." "One of the God's marvels," said Vorbis. "Infinite variety, eh?" "Yes, indeed," said the captain. Relief was crossing his face now, like a friendly army. "And the things down there?" said the exquisitor. "Them? Porpoises," said the captain. "Sort of a fish." "Do they always swim around ships like this?" "Often. Certainly. Especially in the waters off Ephebe." Vorbis leaned over the rail, and said nothing. Simony was staring at the horizon, his face absolutely immobile. This left a gap in the conversation which the captain, very stupidly, sought to fill. "They'll follow a ship for days," he said. "Remarkable." Another pause, a tar pit of silence ready to snare the mastodons of unthinking comment. Earlier exquisitors had shouted and ranted confessions out of people. Vorbis never did that. He just dug deep silences in front of them. "They seem to like them," said the captain. He glanced nervously at Brutha, who was trying to shut the tortoise's voice out of his head. There was no help there. Vorbis came to his aid instead. "This must be very convenient on long voyages," he said. "Uh. Yes?" said the captain. "From the provisions point of view," said Vorbis. "My lord, I don't quite-” "It must be like having a traveling larder," said Vorbis. The captain smiled. "Oh no, lord. We don't eat them." "Surely not? They look quite wholesome to me. " "Oh, but you know the old saying, lord . . . "Saying?" "Oh, they say that after they die, the souls of dead sailors become-” The captain saw the abyss ahead, but the sentence had plunged on with a horrible momentum of its own. For a while there was no sound but the zip of the waves, the distant splash of the porpoises, and the heaven-shaking thundering of the captain's heart. Vorbis leaned back on the rail. "But of course we are not prey to such superstitions," he said lazily. "Well, of course," said the captain, clutching at this straw. "Idle sailor talk. If ever I hear it again I shall have the man flog-” Vorbis was looking past his ear. "I say! Yes, you there!" he said. One of the sailors nodded. "Fetch me a harpoon," said Vorbis. The man looked from him to the captain and then scuttled off obediently. "But, ah, uh, but your lordship should not, uh, ha, attempt such sport," said the captain. "Ah. Uh. A harpoon is a dangerous weapon in untrained hands, I am afraid you might do yourself an injury-” "But I will not be using it," said Vorbis. The captain hung his head and held out his hand for the harpoon. Vorbis patted him on the shoulder. "And then," he said, "you shall entertain us to lunch. Won't he, sergeant?" Simony saluted. "Just as you say, sir." "Yes."     Brutha lay on his back among sails and ropes somewhere under the decking. It was hot, and the air smelled of all air anywhere that has ever come into contact with bilges. Brutha hadn't eaten all day. Initially he'd been too ill to. Then he just hadn't. "But being cruel to animals doesn't mean he's a . . . bad person," he ventured, the harmonics of his tone suggesting that even he didn't believe this. It had been quite a small porpoise. "He turned me on to my back," said Om. "Yes, but humans are more important than animals," said Brutha. "This is a point of view often expressed by humans," said Om. "Chapter IX, verse 16 of the book of-” Brutha began. "Who cares what any book says?" screamed the tortoise. Brutha was shaken. "But you never told any of the prophets that people should be kind to animals," he said. "I don't remember anything about that. Not when you were . . . bigger. You don't want people to be kind to animals because they're animals, you just want people to be kind to animals because one of them might be you." "That's not a bad idea!" "Besides, he's been kind to me. He didn't have to be. "You think that? Is that what you think? Have you looked at the man's mind?" "Of course I haven't! I don't know how to!" "You don't?" "No! Humans can't do-” Brutha paused. Vorbis seemed to do it. He only had to look at someone to know what wicked thoughts they harbored. And grandmother had been the same. "Humans can't do it, I'm sure," he said. "We can't read minds." "I don't mean reading them, I mean looking at them," said Om. "Just seeing the shape of them. You can't read a mind. You might as well try and read a river. But seeing the shape's easy. Witches can do it, no trouble." " `The way of the witch shall be as a path strewn with thorns,' " said Brutha. "Ossory?" said Om. "Yes. But of course you'd know," said Brutha. "Never heard it before in my life," said the tortoise bitterly. "It was what you might call an educated guess." "Whatever you say," said Brutha, "I still know that you can't truly be Om. The God would not talk like that about His chosen ones." "I never chose anyone," said Om. "They chose themselves." "If you're really Om, stop being a tortoise." "I told you, I can't. You think I haven't tried? Three years! Most of that time I thought I was a tortoise." "Then perhaps you were. Maybe you're just a tortoise who thinks he's a god." "Nah. Don't try philosophy again. Start thinking like that and you end up thinking maybe you're just a butterfly dreaming it's a whelk or something. No. One day all I had on my mind was the amount of walking necessary to get to the nearest plant with decent lowgrowing leaves, the next . . . I had all this memory filling up my head. Three years before the shell. No, don't you tell me I'm a tortoise with big ideas." Brutha hesitated. He knew it was wicked to ask, but he wanted to know what the memory was. Anyway, could it be wicked? If the God was sitting there talking to you, could you say anything truly wicked? Face to face? Somehow, that didn't seem so bad as saying something wicked when he was up on a cloud or something. "As far as I can recall," said Om, "I'd intended to be a big white bull." "Trampling the infidel," said Brutha. "Not my basic intention, but no doubt some trampling could have been arranged. Or a swan, I thought. Something impressive. Three years later, I wake up and it turns out I've been a tortoise. I mean, you don't get much lower." Careful, careful . . . you need his help, but don't tell him everything. Don't tell him what you suspect. "When did you start think-when did you remember all this?" said Brutha, who found the phenomenon of forgetting a strange and fascinating one, as other men might find the idea of flying by flapping your arms. "About two hundred feet above your vegetable garden," said Om, "which is not a point where it's fun to become sapient, I'm here to tell you." "But why?" said Brutha. "Gods don't have to stay tortoises unless they want to!" "I don't know," lied Om. If he works it out himself I'm done for, he thought. This is a chance in a million. If I get it wrong, it's back to a life where happiness is a leaf you can reach. Part of him screamed: I'm a god! I don't have to think like this! I don't have to put myself in the power of a human! But another part, the part that could remember exactly what being a tortoise for three years had been like, whispered: no. You have to. If you want to be up there again. He's stupid and gormless and he's not got a drop of ambition in his big flabby body. And this is what you've got to work with . . . The god part said: Vorbis would have been better. Be rational. A mind like that could do anything! He turned me on my back! No, he turned a tortoise on its back. Yes. Me. No. You're a god. Yes, but a persistently tortoise-shaped one. If he had known you were a god . . . But Om remembered Vorbis's absorbed expression, in a pair of grey eyes in front of a mind as impenetrable as a steel ball. He'd never seen a mind shaped like that on anything walking upright. There was someone who probably would turn a god on his back, just to see what would happen. Someone who'd overturn the universe, without thought of consequence, for the sake of the knowledge of what happened when the universe was flat on its back . . . But what he had to work with was Brutha, with a mind as incisive as a meringue. And if Brutha found out that . . . Or if Brutha died . . . "How are you feeling?" said Om. "Ill." "Snuggle down under the sails a bit more," said Om. "You don't want to catch a chill." There's got to be someone else, he thought. It can't be just him who . . . the rest of the thought was so terrible he tried to block it from his mind, but he couldn't . . . . it can't be just him who believes in me. Really in me. Not in a pair of golden horns. Not in a great big building. Not in the dread of hot iron and knives. Not in paying your temple dues because everyone else does. Just in the fact that the Great God Om really exists. And now he's got himself involved with the most unpleasant mind I've ever seen, someone who kills people to see if they die. An eagle kind of person if ever there was one . . . Om was aware of a mumbling. Brutha was lying face down on the deck. "What are you doing?" said Om. Brutha turned his head. "Praying." "That's good. What for?" "You don't know?" "Oh." If Brutha dies . . . The tortoise shuddered in its shell. If Brutha died, then it could already hear in its mind's ear the soughing of the wind in the deep, hot places of the desert. Where the small gods went.     Where do gods come from? Where do they go? Some attempt to answer this was made by the religious philosopher Koomi of Smale in his book Ego-Video Liber Deorum, which translates into the vernacular roughly as Gods: A Spotter's Guide. People said there had to be a Supreme Being because otherwise how could the universe exist, eh? And of course there clearly had to be, said Koomi, a Supreme Being. But since the universe was a bit of a mess, it was obvious that the Supreme Being hadn't in fact made it. If he had made it he would, being Supreme, have made a much better job of it, with far better thought given, taking an example at random, to thinks like the design of the common nostril. Or, to put it another way, the existence of a badly puttogether watch proved the existence of a blind watchmaker. You only had to look around to see that there was room for improvement practically everywhere. This suggested that the Universe had probably been put together in a bit of a rush by an underling while the Supreme Being wasn't looking, in the same way that Boy Scouts' Association minutes are done on office photocopiers all over the country. So, reasoned Koomi, it was not a good idea to address any prayers to a Supreme Being. It would only attract his attention and might cause trouble. And yet there seemed to be a lot of lesser gods around the place. Koomi's theory was that gods come into being and grow and flourish because they are believed in. Belief itself is the food of the gods. Initially, when mankind lived in small primitive tribes, there were probably millions of gods. Now there tended to be only a few very important ones-local gods of thunder and love, for example, tended to run together like pools of mercury as the small primitive tribes joined up and became huge, powerful primitive tribes with more sophisticated weapons. But any god could join. Any god could start small. Any god could grow in stature as its believers increased. And dwindle as they decreased. It was like a great big game of ladders and snakes. Gods liked games, provided they were winning. Koomi's theory was largely based on the good old Gnostic heresy, which tends to turn up all over the multiverse whenever men get up off their knees and start thinking for two minutes together, although the shock of the sudden altitude tends to mean the thinking is a little whacked. But it upsets priests, who tend to vent their displeasure in traditional ways. When the Omnian Church found out about Koomi, they displayed him in every town within the Church's empire to demonstrate the essential flaws in his argument. There were a lot of towns, so they had to cut him up quite small.     Ragged clouds ripped across the skies. The sails creaked in the rising wind, and Om could hear the shouts of the sailors as they tried to outrun the storm. It was going to be a big storm, even by the mariners' standards. White water crowned the waves. Brutha snored in his nest. Om listened to the sailors. They were not men who dealt in sophistries. Someone had killed a porpoise, and everyone knew what that meant. It meant that there was going to be a storm. It meant that the ship was going to be sunk. It was simple cause and effect. It was worse than women aboard. It was worse than albatrosses. Om wondered if tortoises could swim. Turtles could, he was pretty sure. But those buggers had the shell for it. It would be too much to ask (even if a god had anyone to ask) that a body designed for trundling around a dry wilderness had any hydrodynamic properties other than those necessary to sink to the bottom. Oh, well. Nothing else for it. He was still a god. He had rights. He slid down a coil of rope and crawled carefully to the edge of the swaying deck, wedging his shell against a stanchion so that he could see down into the roiling water. Then he spoke in a voice audible to nothing that was mortal. Nothing happened for a while. Then one wave rose higher than the rest, and changed shape as it rose. Water poured upward, filling an invisible mold; it was humanoid, but obviously only because it wanted to be. It could as easily have been a waterspout, or an undertow. The sea is always powerful. So many people believe in it. But it seldom answers prayers. The water shape rose level with the deck and kept pace with Om. It developed a face, and opened a mouth. "Well?" it said. "Greetings, oh Queen of-” Om began. The watery eyes focused. "But you are just a small god. And you dare to summon me?" The wind howled in the rigging. "I have believers," said Om. "So I have the right." There was the briefest of pauses. Then the Sea Queen said, "One believer?" "One or many does not matter here," said Om. "I have rights." "And what rights do you demand, little tortoise?" said the Queen of the Sea. "Save the ship," said Om. The Queen was silent. "You have to grant the request," said Om. "It's the rules." "But I can name my price," said the Sea Queen. "That's the rules, too." "And it will be high." "It will be paid." The column of water began to collapse back into the waves. "I will consider this." Om stared down into the white sea. The ship rolled, sliding him back down the deck, and then rolled back. A flailing foreclaw hooked itself around the stanchion as Om's shell spun around, and for a moment both hind legs paddled helplessly over the waters. And then Om was shaken free. Something white swept down toward him as he seesawed over the edge, and he bit it. Brutha yelled and pulled his hand up, with Om trailing on the end of it. "You didn't have to bite!" The ship pitched into a wave and flung him to the deck. Om let go and rolled away. When Brutha got to his feet, or at least to his hands and knees, he saw the crewmen standing around him. Two of them grabbed him by the elbows as a wave crashed over the ship. "What are you doing?" They were trying to avoid looking at his face. They dragged him toward the rail. Somewhere in the scuppers Om screamed at the Sea Queen. "It's the rules! The rules!" Four sailors had got hold of Brutha now. Om could hear, above the roaring of the storm, the silence of the desert. "Wait," said Brutha. "It's nothing personal," said one of the sailors. "We don't want to do this." "I don't want you to do it either," said Brutha."Is that any help?" "The sea wants a life," said the oldest sailor. "Yours is nearest. Okay, get his-” "Can I make my peace with my God?" "What?" "If you're going to kill me, can I pray to my God first?" "It's not us that's killing you," said the sailor. "It's the sea." " `The hand that does the deed is guilty of the crime,' " said Brutha. "Ossory, chapter LVI, verse 93." The sailors looked at one another. At a time like this, it was probably not wise to antagonize any god. The ship skidded down the side of a wave. "You've got ten seconds," said the oldest sailor. "That's ten seconds more than many men get." Brutha lay down on the deck, helped considerably by another wave that slammed into the timbers. Om was dimly aware of the prayer, to his surprise. He couldn't make out the words, but the prayer itself was an itch at the back of his mind. "Don't ask me," he said, trying to get upright, "I'm out of options-” The ship smacked down . . . . . . on to a calm sea. The storm still raged, but only around a widening circle with the ship in the middle. The lightning, stabbing at the sea, surrounded them like the bars of a cage. The circle lengthened ahead of them. Now the ship sped down a narrow channel of calm between gray walls of storm a mile high. Electric fire raged overhead. And then was gone. Behind them, a mountain of grayness squatted on the sea. They could hear the thunder dying away. Brutha got uncertainly to his feet, swaying wildly to compensate for a motion that was no longer there. "Now I-” he began. He was alone. The sailors had fled. "Om?" said Brutha. "Over here." Brutha fished his God out of the seaweed. "You said you couldn't do anything!" he said accusingly. "That wasn't m-” Om paused. There will be a price, he thought. It won't be cheap. It can't be cheap. The Sea Queen is a god. I've crushed a few towns in my time. Holy fire, that kind of thing. If the price isn't high, how can people respect you? "I made arrangements," he said. Tidal waves. A ship sunk. A couple of towns disappearing under the sea. It'll be something like that. If people don't respect then they won't fear, and if they don't fear, how can you get them to believe? Seems unfair, really. One man killed a porpoise. Of course, it doesn't matter to the Queen who gets thrown overboard, just as it didn't matter to him which porpoise he killed. And that's unfair, because it was Vorbis who did it. He makes people do things they shouldn't do . . . What am I thinking about? Before I was a tortoise, I didn't even know what unfair meant . . .     The hatches opened. People came on deck and hung on the rail. Being on deck in stormy weather always has the possibility of being washed overboard, but that takes on a rosy glow after hours below decks with frightened horses and seasick passengers. There were no more storms. The ship ploughed on in favorable winds, under a clear sky, in a sea as empty of life as the hot desert. The days passed uneventfully. Vorbis stayed below decks for most of the time. The crew treated Brutha with cautious respect. News like Brutha spreads quickly. The coast here was dunes, with the occasional barren salt marsh. A heat haze hung over the land. It was the kind of coast where shipwrecked landfall is more to be dreaded than drowning. There were no seabirds. Even the birds that had been trailing the ship for scraps had vanished. "No eagles," said Om. There was that to be said about it. Toward the evening of the fourth day the unedifying panorama was punctuated by a glitter of light, high on the dune sea. It flashed with a sort of rhythm. The captain, whose face now looked as if sleep had not been a regular nighttime companion, called Brutha over. "His . . . your . . . the deacon told me to watch out for this," he said. "You go and fetch him now." Vorbis had a cabin somewhere near the bilges, where the air was as thick as thin soup. Brutha knocked. "Enter."[1][5] There were no portholes down here. Vorbis was sitting in the dark. "Yes, Brutha?" "The captain sent me to fetch you, lord. Something's shining in the desert." "Good. Now, Brutha. Attend. The captain has a mirror. You will ask to borrow it." "Er . . . what is a mirror, lord?" "An unholy and forbidden device," said Vorbis. "Which regretfully can be pressed into godly service. He will deny it, of course. But a man with such a neat beard and tiny mustache is vain, and a vain man must have his mirror. So take it. And stand in the sun and move the mirror so that it shines the sun towards the desert. Do you understand?" "No, lord," said Brutha. "Your ignorance is your protection, my son. And then come back and tell me what you see."     Om dozed in the sun. Brutha had found him a little space near the pointy end where he could get sun with little danger of being seen by the crew-and the crew were jittery enough at the moment not to go looking for trouble in any case. A tortoise dreams . . . . . . for millions of years. It was the dreamtime. The unformed time. The small gods chittered and whirred in the wilderness places, and the cold places, and the deep places. They swarmed in the darkness, without memory but driven by hope and lust for the one thing, the one thing a god craves-belief. There are no medium-sized trees in the deep forest. There are only the towering ones, whose canopy spreads across the sky. Below, in the gloom, there's light for nothing but mosses and ferns. But when a giant falls, leaving a little space . . . then there's a race-between the trees on either side, who want to spread out, and the seedlings below, who race to grow up. Sometimes, you can make your own space. Forests were a long way from the wilderness. The nameless voice that was going to be Om drifted on the wind on the edge of the desert, trying to be heard among countless others, trying to avoid being pushed into the center. It may have whirled for millions of years-it had nothing with which to measure time. All it had was hope, and a certain sense of the presence of things. And a voice. Then there was a day. In a sense, it was the first day. Om had been aware of the shepherd for some ti-for a while. The flock had been wandering closer and closer. The rains had been sparse. Forage was scarce. Hungry mouths propelled hungry legs further into the rocks, searching out the hitherto scorned clumps of sun-seared grass. They were sheep, possibly the most stupid animal in the universe with the possible exception of the duck. But even their uncomplicated minds couldn't hear the voice, because sheep don't listen. There was a lamb, though. It had strayed a little way. Om saw to it that it strayed a little further. Around a rock. Down the slope. Into the crevice. Its bleating drew the mother. The crevice was well hidden and the ewe was, after all, content now that she had her lamb. She saw no reason to bleat, even when the shepherd wandered about the rocks calling, cursing, and, eventually, pleading. The shepherd had a hundred sheep, and it might have been surprising that he was prepared to spend days searching for one sheep; in fact, it was because he was the kind of man prepared to spend days looking for a lost sheep that he had a hundred sheep. The voice that was going to be Om waited. It was on the evening of the second day that he scared up a partridge that had been nesting near the crevice, just as the shepherd was wandering by. It wasn't much of a miracle, but it was good enough for the shepherd. He made a cairn of stones at the spot and, next day, brought his whole flock into the area. And in the heat of the afternoon he lay down to sleep-and Om spoke to him, inside his head. Three weeks later the shepherd was stoned to death by the priests of Ur-Gilash, who was at that time the chief god in the area. But they were too late. Om already had a hundred believers, and the number was growing . . . Only a mile away from the shepherd and his flock was a goatherd and his herd. The merest accident of microgeography had meant that the first man to hear the voice of Om, and who gave Om his view of humans, was a shepherd and not a goatherd. They have quite different ways of looking at the world, and the whole of history might have been different. For sheep are stupid, and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent, and need to be led.     Ur-Gilash, thought Om. Ah, those were the days . . . when Ossory and his followers had broken into the temple and smashed the altar and had thrown the priestesses out of the window to be torn apart by wild dogs, which was the correct way of doing things, and there had been a mighty wailing and gnashing of feet and the followers of Om had lit their campfires in the crumbled halls of Gilash just as the Prophet had said, and that counted even though he'd said it only five minutes earlier, when they were only looking for the firewood, because everyone agreed a prophecy is a prophecy and no one said you had to wait a long time for it to come true. Great days. Great days. Every day fresh converts. The rise of Om had been unstoppable . . . He jerked awake. Old Ur-Gilash. Weather god, wasn't he? Yes. No. Maybe one of your basic giant spider gods? Something like that. Whatever happened to him? What happened to me? How does it happen? You hang around the astral planes, going with the flow, enjoy the rhythms of the universe, you think that all the, you know, humans are getting on with the believing back down there, you decide to go and stir them up a bit and then . . . a tortoise. It's like going to the bank and finding the money's been leaking out through a hole. The first you know is when you stroll down looking for a handy mind, and suddenly you're a tortoise and there's no power left to get out. Three years of looking up at practically everything . . . Old Ur-Gilash? Perhaps he was hanging on as a lizard somewhere, with some old hermit as his only believer. More likely he had been blown out into the desert. A small god was lucky to get one chance. There was something wrong. Om couldn't quite put his finger on it, and not only because he didn't have a finger. Gods rose and fell like bits of onion in a boiling soup, but this time was different. There was something wrong this time . . . He'd forced out Ur-Gilash. Fair enough. Law of the jungle. But no one was challenging him . . . Where was Brutha? "Brutha! "     Brutha was counting the flashes of light off the desert. "It's a good thing I had a mirror, yes?" said the captain hopefully. "I expect his lordship won't mind about the mirror because it turned out to be useful?" "I don't think he thinks like that," said Brutha, still counting. "No. I don't think he does either," said the captain gloomily. "Seven, and then four." "It'll be the Quisition for me," said the captain. Brutha was about to say, "Then rejoice that your soul shall be purified." But he didn't. And he didn't know why he didn't. "I'm sorry about that," he said. A veneer of surprise overlaid the captain's grief. "You people usually say something about how the Quisition is good for the soul," he said. "I'm sure it is," said Brutha. The captain was watching his face intently. "It's flat, you know," he said quietly. "I've sailed out into the Rim Ocean. It's flat, and I've seen the Edge, and it moves. Not the Edge. I mean . . . what's down there. They can cut my head off but it will still move." "But it will stop moving for you," said Brutha. "So I should be careful to whom you speak, captain." The captain leaned closer. "The Turtle Moves!" he hissed, and darted away. "Brutha! " Guilt jerked Brutha upright like a hooked fish. He turned around, and sagged with relief. It wasn't Vorbis, it was only God. He padded over to the place in front of the mast. Om glared up at him. "Yes?" said Brutha. "You never come and see me," said the tortoise. "I know you're busy," it added sarcastically, "but a quick prayer would be nice, even." "I checked you first thing this morning," said Brutha. "And I'm hungry." "You had a whole melon rind last night." "And who had the melon, eh?" "No, he didn't," said Brutha. "He eats stale bread and water." "Why doesn't he eat fresh bread?" "He waits for it to get stale." "Yes. I expect he does," said the tortoise. "Om?" "What?" "The captain just said something odd. He said the world is flat and has an edge." "Yes? So what?" "But, I mean, we know the world is a ball, because . . . The tortoise blinked. "No, it's not," he said. "Who said it's a ball?" "You did," said Brutha. Then he added: "According to Book One of the Septateuch, anyway." I've never thought like this before, he thought. I'd never have said "anyway." "Why'd the captain tell me something like that?" he said. "It's not normal conversation." "I told you, I never made the world," said Om. "Why should I make the world? It was here already. And if I did make a world, I wouldn't make it a ball. People'd fall off. All the sea'd run off the bottom." "Not if you told it to stay on." "Hah! Will you hark at the man!" "Besides, the sphere is a perfect shape," said Brutha. "Because in the Book of-” "Nothing amazing about a sphere," said the tortoise. "Come to that, a turtle is a perfect shape." "A perfect shape for what?" "Well, the perfect shape for a turtle, to start with," said Om. "If it was shaped like a ball, it'd be bobbing to the surface the whole time." "But it's a heresy to say the world is flat," said Brutha. "Maybe, but it's true." "And it's really on the back of a giant turtle?" "That's right." "In that case," said Brutha triumphantly, "what does the turtle stand on?" The tortoise gave him a blank stare. "It doesn't stand on anything," it said. "It's a turtle, for heaven's sake. It swims. That's what turtles are for." "I . . . er . . . I think I'd better go and report to Vorbis," said Brutha. "He goes very calm if he's kept waiting. What did you want me for? I'll try and bring you some more food after supper." "How are you feeling?" said the tortoise. "I'm feeling all right, thank you." "Eating properly, that sort of thing?" "Yes, thank you." "Pleased to hear it. Run along now. I mean, I'm only your God. " Om raised its voice as Brutha hurried off. "And you might visit more often! "And pray louder, I'm fed up with straining!" he shouted.     Vorbis was still sitting in his cabin when Brutha puffed along the passage and knocked on the door. There was no reply. After a while, Brutha pushed the door open. Vorbis did not appear to read. Obviously he wrote, because of the famous Letters, but no one ever saw him do it. When he was alone he spent a lot of time staring at the wall, or prostrate in prayer. Vorbis could humble himself in prayer in a way that made the posturings of power-mad emperors look subservient. "Um," said Brutha, and tried to pull the door shut again. Vorbis waved one hand irritably. Then he stood up. He did not dust off his robe. "Do you know, Brutha," he said, "I do not think there is a single person in the Citadel who would dare to interrupt me at prayer? They would fear the Quisition. Everyone fears the Quisition. Except you, it appears. Do you fear the Quisition?" Brutha looked into the black-on-black eyes. Vorbis looked into a round pink face. There was a special face that people wore when they spoke to an exquisitor. It was flat and expressionless and glistened slightly, and even a half-trained exquisitor could read the barely concealed guilt like a book. Brutha just looked out of breath but then, he always did. It was fascinating. "No, lord," he said. "Why not?" "The Quisition protects us, lord. It is written in Ossory, chapter VII, verse-” Vorbis put his head on one side. "Of course it is. But have you ever thought that the Quisition could be wrong?" "No, lord," said Brutha. "But why not?" "I do not know why, Lord Vorbis. I just never have." Vorbis sat down at a little writing table, no more than a board that folded down from the hull. "And you are right, Brutha," he said. "Because the Quisition cannot be wrong. Things can only be as the God wishes them. It is impossible to think that the world could run in any other way, is this not so?" A vision of a one-eyed tortoise flickered momentarily in Brutha's mind. Brutha had never been any good at lying. The truth itself had always seemed so incomprehensible that complicating things even further had always been beyond him. "So the Septateuch teaches us," he said. "Where there is punishment, there is always a crime," said Vorbis. "Sometimes the crime follows the punishment, which only serves to prove the foresight of the Great God." "That's what my grandmother used to say," said Brutha automatically. "Indeed? I would like to know more about this formidable lady." "She used to give me a thrashing every morning because I would certainly do something to deserve it during the day," said Brutha. "A most complete understanding of the nature of mankind," said Vorbis, with his chin on one hand. "Were it not for the deficiency of her sex, it sounds as though she would have made an excellent inquisitor." Brutha nodded. Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. "And now," said Vorbis, with no change in his tone, "you will tell me what you saw in the desert." "Uh. There were six flashes. And then a pause of about five heartbeats. And then eight flashes. And another pause. And two flashes." Vorbis nodded thoughtfully. "Three-quarters," he said. "All praise to the Great God. He is my staff and guide through the hard places. And you may go." Brutha hadn't expected to be told what the flashes meant, and wasn't going to enquire. The Quisition asked the questions. They were known for it.     Next day the ship rounded a headland and the bay of Ephebe lay before it, with the city a white smudge on the horizon which time and distance turned into a spilling of blindingly white houses, all the way up a rock. It seemed of considerable interest to Sergeant Simony. Brutha had not exchanged a word with him. Fraternization between clergy and soldiers was not encouraged; there was a certain tendency to unholiness about soldiers . . . Brutha, left to his own devices again as the crew made ready for port, watched the soldier carefully. Most soldiers were a bit slovenly and generally rude to minor clergy. Simony was different. Apart from anything else, he gleamed. His breastplate hurt the eyes. His skin looked scrubbed. The sergeant stood at the prow, staring fixedly as the city drew nearer. It was unusual to see him very far away from Vorbis. Wherever Vorbis stood there was the sergeant, hand on sword, eyes scanning the surroundings for . . . what? And always silent, except when spoken to. Brutha tried to be friends. "Looks very . . . white, doesn't it?" he said. "The city. Very white. Sergeant Simony?" The sergeant turned slowly, and stared at Brutha. Vorbis's gaze was dreadful. Vorbis looked through your head to the sins inside, hardly interested in you except as a vehicle for your sins. But Simony's glance was pure, simple hatred. Brutha stepped back. "Oh. I'm sorry," he muttered. He walked back sombrely to the blunt end, and tried to keep out of the soldier's way. Anyway, there were more soldiers, soon enough . . . The Ephebians were expecting them. Soldiers lined the quay, weapons held in a way that stopped just short of being a direct insult. And there were a lot of them. Brutha trailed along, the voice of the tortoise insinuating itself in his head. "So the Ephebians want peace, do they?" said Om. "Doesn't look like that. Doesn't look like we're going to lay down the law to a defeated enemy. Looks like we took a pasting and don't want to take any more. Looks like we're suing for peace. That's what it looks like to me." "In the Citadel everyone said it was a glorious victory," said Brutha. He found he could talk now with his lips hardly moving at all; Om seemed able to pick up his words as they reached his vocal chords. Ahead of him, Simony shadowed the deacon, staring suspiciously at each Ephebian guard. "That's a funny thing," said Om. "Winners never talk about glorious victories. That's because they're the ones who see what the battlefield looks like afterward. It's only the losers who have glorious victories." Brutha didn't know what to reply. "That doesn't sound like god talk," he hazarded. "It's this tortoise brain." "What?" "Don't you know anything? Bodies aren't just handy things for storing your mind in. Your shape affects how you think. It's all this morphology that's all over the place." "What?" Om sighed. "If I don't concentrate, I think like a tortoise!" "What? You mean slowly?" "No! Tortoises are cynics. They always expect the worst." ,Why?" "I don't know. Because it often happens to them, I suppose." Brutha stared around at Ephebe. Guards with helmets crested with plumes that looked like horses' tails gone rogue marched on either side of the column. A few Ephebian citizens watched idly from the roadside. They looked surprisingly like the people at home, and not like two-legged demons at all. "They're people," he said. "Full marks for comparative anthropology." "Brother Nhumrod said Ephebians eat human flesh," said Brutha. "He wouldn't tell lies." A small boy regarded Brutha thoughtfully while excavating a nostril. If it was a demon in human form, it was an extremely good actor. At intervals along the road from the docks were white stone statues. Brutha had never seen statues before. Apart from the statues of the SeptArchs, of course, but that wasn't the same thing. "What are they?" "Well, the tubby one with the toga is Tuvelpit, the God of Wine. They call him Smimto in Tsort. And the broad with the hairdo is Astoria, Goddess of Love. A complete bubblehead. The ugly one is Offler the Crocodile God. Not a local boy. He's Klatchian originally, but the Ephebians heard about him and thought he was a good idea. Note the teeth. Good teeth. Good teeth. Then the one with the snakepit hairdo is-” "You talk about them as if they were real," said Brutha. "They are." "There is no other god but you. You told Ossory that." "Well. You know. I exaggerated a bit. But they're not that good. There's one of 'em that sits around playing a flute most of the time and chasing milkmaids. I don't call that very divine. Call that very divine? I don't." The road wound up steeply around the rocky hill. Most of the city seemed to be built on outcrops or was cut into the actual rock itself, so that one man's patio was another man's roof. The roads were really a series of shallow steps, accessible to a man or a donkey but sudden death to a cart. Ephebe was a pedestrian place. More people watched them in silence. So did the statues of the gods. The Ephebians had gods in the same way that other cities had rats. Brutha got a look at Vorbis's face. The exquisitor was staring straight ahead of himself. Brutha wondered what the man was seeing. It was all so new! And devilish, of course. Although the gods in the statues didn't look much like demons-but he could hear the voice of Nhumrod pointing out that this very fact made them even more demonic. Sin crept up on you like a wolf in a sheep's skin. One of the goddesses had been having some very serious trouble with her dress, Brutha noticed; if Brother Nhumrod had been present, he would have had to hurry off for some very serious lying down. "Petulia, Goddess of Negotiable Affection," said Om. "Worshiped by the ladies of the night and every other time as well, if you catch my meaning." Brutha's mouth dropped open. "They've got a goddess for painted jezebels?" "Why not? Very religious people I understand. They're used to being on their-they spend so much time looking at the-look, belief is where you find it. Specialization. That's safe, see. Low risk, guaranteed returns. There's even a God of Lettuce somewhere. I mean, it's not as though any one else is likely to try to become a God of Lettuce. You just find a lettuce-growing community and hang on. Thunder gods come and go, but it's you they turn to every time when there's a bad attack of Lettuce Fly. You've got to . . . uh . . . hand it to Petulia. She spotted a gap in the market and filled it." "There's a God of Lettuce?" "Why not? If enough people believe, you can be god of anything . . ." Om stopped himself and waited to see if Brutha had noticed. But Brutha seemed to have something else on his mind. "That's not right. Not treating people like that. Ow." He'd walked into the back of a subdeacon. The party had halted, partly because the Ephebian escort had stopped too, but mainly because a man was running down the street. He was quite old, and in many respects resembled a frog that had been dried out for quite some time. Something about him generally made people think of the word "spry," but, at the moment, they would be much more likely to think of the words "mother naked" and possibly also "dripping wet" and would be one hundred percent accurate, too. Although there was the beard. It was a beard you could camp out in. The man thudded down the street without any apparent selfconsciousness and stopped outside a potter's shop. The potter didn't seem concerned at being addressed by a little wet naked man; in fact, none of the people in the street had given him a second glance. "I'd like a Number Nine pot and some string, please," said the old man. "Yes sir, Mr. Legibus." The potter reached under his counter and pulled out a towel. The naked man took it in an absent-minded way. Brutha got the feeling that this had happened to both of them before. "And a lever of infinite length and, um, an immovable place to stand," said Legibus, drying himself off. "What you see is what I got, sir. Pots and general household items, but a bit short on axiomatic mechanisms." "Well, have you got a piece of chalk?" "Got some right here from last time," said the potter. The little naked man took the chalk and started to draw triangles on the nearest bit of wall. Then he looked down. "Why haven't I got any clothes on?" he said. "We've been having our bath again, haven't we?" said the potter. "I left my clothes in the bath?" "I think you probably had an idea while you were in the bath?" prompted the potter. "That's right! That's right! Got this splendid idea for moving the world around!" said Legibus. "Simple lever principle. Should work perfectly. It's just a matter of getting the technical details sorted out." "That's nice. We can move somewhere warm for the winter," said the potter. "Can I borrow the towel?" "It's yours anyway, Mr. Legibus." "Is it?" "I said, you left it here last time. Remember? When you had that idea for the lighthouse?" "Fine. Fine," said Legibus, wrapping the towel around himself. He drew a few more lines on the wall. "Fine. Okay. I'll send someone down later to collect the wall." He turned and appeared to see the Omnians for the first time. He peered forward and then shrugged. "Hmm," he said, and wandered away. Brutha tugged at the cloak of one of the Ephebian soldiers. "Excuse me, but why did we stop?" he said. "Philosophers have right of way," said the soldier. "What's a philosopher?" said Brutha. "Someone who's bright enough to find a job with no heavy lifting," said a voice in his head. "An infidel seeking the just fate he shall surely receive,' said Vorbis. "An inventor of fallacies. This cursed city attracts them like a dung heap attracts flies." "Actually, it's the climate," said the voice of the tortoise. "Think about it. If you're inclined to leap out of your bath and run down the street every time you think you've got a bright idea, you don't want to do it somewhere cold. If you do do it somewhere cold, you die out. That's natural selection, that is. Ephebe's known for its philosophers. It's better than street theater." "What, a lot of old men running around the streets with no clothes on?" said Brutha, under his breath, as they were marched onward. "More or less. If you spend your whole time thinking about the universe, you tend to forget the less important bits of it. Like your pants. And ninety-nine out of a hundred ideas they come up with are totally useless." "Why doesn't anyone lock them away safely, then? They don't sound much use to me," said Brutha. "Because the hundredth idea," said Om, "is generally a humdinger." "What?" "Look up at the highest tower on the rock." Brutha looked up. At the top of the tower, secured by metal bands, was a big disc that glittered in the morning light. "What is it?" he whispered. "The reason why Omnia hasn't got much of a fleet any more," said Om. "That's why it's always worth having a few philosophers around the place. One minute it's all Is Truth Beauty and Is Beauty Truth, and Does a Falling Tree in the Forest Make a Sound if There's No one There to Hear It, and then just when you think they're going to start dribbling one of 'em says, Incidentally, putting a thirty-foot parabolic reflector on a high place to shoot the rays of the sun at an enemy's ships would be a very interesting demonstration of optical principles," he added. "Always coming up with amazing new ideas, the philosophers. The one before that was some intricate device that demonstrated the principles of leverage by incidentally hurling balls of burning sulphur two miles. Then before that, I think, there was some kind of an underwater thing that shot sharpened logs into the bottom of ships." Brutha stared at the disc again. He hadn't understood more than one-third of the words in the last statement. "Well," he said, "does it?" "Does what?" "Make a sound. If it falls down when no one's there to hear it." "Who cares?" The party had reached a gateway in the wall that ran around the top of the rock in much the same way that a headband encircles a head. The Ephebian captain stopped, and turned. "The . . . visitors . . . must be blindfolded," he said. "That is outrageous!" said Vorbis. "We are here on a mission of diplomacy!" "That is not my business," said the captain. "My business is to say: If you go through this gate you go blindfolded. You don't have to be blindfolded. You can stay outside. But if you want to go through, you got to wear a blindfold. This is one of them life choices." One of the subdeacons whispered in Vorbis's ear. He held a brief sotto voce conversation with the leader of the Omnian guard. "Very well," he said, "under protest." The blindfold was quite soft, and totally opaque. But as Brutha was led . . . . . . ten paces along a passage, and then left five paces, then diagonally forward and left threeand-a-half paces, and right one hundred and three paces, down three steps, and turned around seventeen-and-one-quarter times, and forward nine paces, and left one pace, and forward nineteen paces, and pause three seconds, and right two paces, and back two paces, and left two paces, and turned threeand-a-half times, and wait one second, and up three steps, and right twenty paces, and turned around five-and-a-quarter times, and left fifteen paces, and forward seven paces, and right eighteen paces, and up seven steps, and diagonally forward, and pause two seconds, right four paces, and down a slope that went down a meter every ten paces for thirty paces, and then turned around seven-and-a-half times, and forward six paces . . . . . . he wondered what good it was supposed to do. The blindfold was removed in an open courtyard, made of some white stone that turned the sunlight into a glare. Brutha blinked. Bowmen lined the yard. Their arrows were pointing downwards, but their manner suggested that pointing horizontally could happen any minute. Another bald man was waiting for them. Ephebe seemed to have an unlimited supply of skinny bald men wearing sheets. This one smiled, with his mouth alone. No one likes us much, Brutha thought. "I trust you will excuse this minor inconvenience," said the skinny man. "My name is Aristocrates. I am secretary to the Tyrant. Please ask your men to put down their weapons." Vorbis drew himself up to his full height. He was a head taller than the Ephebian. Pale though his complexion normally was, it had gone paler. "We are entitled to retain our arms!" he said. "We are an emissary to a foreign land!" "But not a barbarian one," said Aristocrates mildly. "Weapons will not be required here." "Barbarian?" said Vorbis. "You burned our ships!" Aristocrates held up a hand. "This is a discussion for later," he said. "My pleasant task now is to show you to your quarters. I am sure you would like to rest a little after your journey. You are, of course, at liberty to wander anywhere you wish in the palace. And if there is anywhere where we do not wish you to wander, the guards will be sure to inform you with speed and tact." "And we can leave the palace?" said Vorbis coldly. Aristocrates shrugged. "We do not guard the gateway except in times of war," he said. "If you can remember the way, you are free to use it. But vague perambulations in the labyrinth are unwise, I must warn you. Our ancestors were sadly very suspicious and put in many traps out of distrust; we keep them well-greased and primed, of course, merely out of a respect for tradition. And now, if you would care to follow me . . ." The Omnians kept together as they followed Aristocrates through the palace. There were fountains. There were gardens. Here and there groups of people sat around doing nothing very much except talking. The Ephebians seemed to have only a shaky grasp of the concepts of "inside" and "outside"-except for the palace's encircling labyrinth, which was very clear on the subject. "Danger attends us at every turn," said Vorbis quietly. "Any man who breaks rank or fraternizes in any way will explain his conduct to the inquisitors. At length." Brutha looked at a woman filling a jug from a well. It did not look like a very military act. He was feeling that strange double feeling again. On the surface there were the thoughts of Brutha, which were exactly the thoughts that the Citadel would have approved of. This was a nest of infidels and unbelievers, its very mundanity a subtle cloak for the traps of wrong thinking and heresy. It might be bright with sunlight, but in reality it was a place of shadows. But down below were the thoughts of the Brutha that watched Brutha from the inside . . . Vorbis looked wrong here. Sharp and unpleasant. And any city where potters didn't worry at all when naked, dripping wet old men came and drew triangles on their walls was a place Brutha wanted to find out more about. He felt like a big empty jug. The thing to do with something empty was fill it up. "Are you doing something to me?" he whispered. In his box, Om looked at the shape of Brutha's mind. Then he tried to think quickly. "No," he said, and that at least was the truth. Had this ever happened before? Had it been like this back in the first days? It must have been. It was all so hazy now. He couldn't remember the thoughts he'd had then, just the shape of the thoughts. Everything had been highly colored, everything had been growing every day-he had been growing every day; thoughts and the mind that was thinking them were developing at the same speed. Easy to forget things from those times. It was like a fire trying to remember the shape of its flames. But the feeling-he could remember that. He wasn't doing anything to Brutha. Brutha was doing it to himself. Brutha was beginning to think in godly ways. Brutha was starting to become a prophet. Om wished he had someone to talk to. Someone who understood. This was Ephebe, wasn't it? Where people made a living trying to understand?     The Omnians were to be housed in little rooms around a central courtyard. There was a fountain in the middle, in a very small grove of sweet-smelling pine trees. The soldiers nudged one another. People think that professional soldiers think a lot about fighting, but serious professional soldiers think a lot more about food and a warm place to sleep, because these are two things that are generally hard to get, whereas fighting tends to turn up all the time. There was a bowl of fruit in Brutha's cell, and a plate of cold meat. But first things first. He fished the God out of the box. "There's fruit," he said. "What're these berries?" "Grapes," said Om. "Raw material for wine." "You mentioned that word before. What does it mean?" There was a cry from outside. "Brutha! " "That's Vorbis. I'll have to go." Vorbis was standing in the middle of his cell. "Have you eaten anything?" he demanded. "No, lord." "Fruit and meat, Brutha. And this is a fast day. They seek to insult us!" "Um. Perhaps they don't know that it is a fast day?" Brutha hazarded. "Ignorance is itself a sin," said Vorbis. "Ossory VII, verse 4," said Brutha automatically. Vorbis smiled and patted Brutha's shoulder. "You are a walking book, Brutha. The Septateuch perambulatus. " Brutha looked down at his sandals. He's right, he thought. And I had forgotten. Or at least, not wanted to remember. And then he heard his own thoughts echoed back to him: it's fruit and meat and bread, that's all. That's all it is. Fast days and feast days and Prophets' Days and bread days . . . who cares? A God whose only concern about food now is that it's low enough to reach? I wish he wouldn't keep patting my shoulder. Vorbis turned away. "Shall I remind the others?" Brutha said. "No. Our ordained brothers will not, of course, require reminding. As for soldiers . . . a little licence, perhaps, is allowable this far from home . . ." Brutha wandered back to his cell. Om was still on the table, staring fixedly at the melon. "I nearly committed a terrible sin," said Brutha. "I nearly ate fruit on a fruitless day." "That's a terrible thing, a terrible thing," said Om. "Now cut the melon." "But it is forbidden!" said Brutha. "No it's not," said Om. "Cut the melon." "But it was the eating of fruit that caused passion to invade the world," said Brutha. "All it caused was flatulence," said Om. "Cut the melon!" "You're tempting me!" "No I'm not. I'm giving you permission. Special dispensation! Cut the damn melon!" "Only a bishop or higher is allowed to giv-” Brutha began. And then he stopped. Om glared at him. "Yes. Exactly," he said. "And now cut the melon." His tone softened a bit. "If it makes you feel any better, I shall declare that it is bread. I happen to be the God in this immediate vicinity. I can call it what I damn well like. It's bread. Right? Now cut the damn melon." "Loaf," corrected Brutha. "Right. And give me a slice without any seeds in it. Brutha did so, a bit carefully. "And eat up quick," said Om. "In case Vorbis finds us?" "Because you've got to go and find a philosopher," said Om. The fact that his mouth was full didn't make any difference to his voice in Brutha's mind. "You know, melons grow wild in the wilderness. Not big ones like this. Little green jobs. Skin like leather. Can't bite through 'em. The years I've spent eating dead leaves a goat'd spit out, right next to a crop of melons. Melons should have thinner skins. Remember that." "Find a philosopher?" "Right. Someone who knows how to think. Someone who can help me stop being a tortoise." "But . . . Vorbis might want me." "You're just going for a stroll. No problem. And hurry up. There's other gods in Ephebe. I don't want to meet them right now. Not looking like this." Brutha looked panicky. "How do I find a philosopher?" he said. "Around here? Throw a brick, I should think."     The labyrinth of Ephebe is ancient and full of one hundred and one amazing things you can do with hidden springs, razor-sharp knives, and falling rocks. There isn't just one guide through it. There are six, and each one knows his way through one-sixth of the labyrinth. Every year they have a special competition, when they do a little redesigning. They vie with one another to see who can make his section even more deadly than the others to the casual wanderer. There's a panel of judges, and a small prize. The furthest anyone ever got through the labyrinth without a guide was nineteen paces. Well, more or less. His head rolled a further seven paces, but that probably doesn't count. At each changeover point there is a small chamber without any traps at all. What it does contain is a small bronze bell. These are the little waiting-rooms where visitors are handed on to the next guide. And here and there, set high in the tunnel roof over the more ingenious traps, are observation windows, because guards like a good laugh as much as anyone else. All of this was totally lost on Brutha, who padded amiably along the tunnels and corridors without really thinking much about it, and at last pushed open the gate into the late evening air. It was fragrant with the scent of flowers. Moths whirred through the gloom. "What do philosophers look like?" said Brutha, "When they're not having a bath, I mean." "They do a lot of thinking," said Om. "Look for someone with a strained expression." "That might just mean constipation." "Well, so long as they're philosophical about it . . ." The city of Ephebe surrounded them. Dogs barked. Somewhere a cat yowled. There was that general susurration of small comfortable sounds that shows that, out there, a lot of people are living their lives. And then a door burst open down the street and there was the cracking noise of a quite large wine amphora being broken over someone's head. A skinny old man in a toga picked himself up from the cobbles where he had landed, and glared at the doorway. "I'm telling you, listen, a finite intellect, right, cannot by means of comparison reach the absolute truth of things, because being by nature indivisible, truth excludes the concepts of "more" or "less" so that nothing but truth itself can be the exact measure of truth. You bastards," he said. Someone from inside the building said, "Oh yeah? Sez you." The old man ignored Brutha but, with great difficulty, pulled a cobblestone loose and hefted it in his hand. Then he dived back through the doorway. There was a distant scream of rage. "Ah. Philosophy," said Om. Brutha peered cautiously round the door. Inside the room two groups of very nearly identical men in togas were trying to hold back two of their colleagues. It is a scene repeated a million times a day in bars around the multiverse-both would-be fighters growled and grimaced at one another and fought to escape the restraint of their friends, only of course they did not fight too hard, because there is nothing worse than actually succeeding in breaking free and suddenly finding yourself all alone in the middle of the ring with a madman who is about to hit you between the eyes with a rock. "Yep," said Om, "that's philosophy, right enough." "But they're fighting!" "A full and free exchange of opinions, yes." Now that Brutha could get a clearer view, he could see that there were one or two differences between the men. One had a shorter beard, and was very red in the face, and was waggling a finger accusingly. "He bloody well accused me of slander!" he was shouting. "I didn't!" shouted the other man. "You did! You did! Tell 'em what you said!" "Look, I merely suggested, to indicate the nature of paradox, right, that if Xeno the Ephebian said, `All Ephebians are liars-' " "See? See? He did it again!" "-no, no, listen, listen . . . then, since Xeno is himself an Ephebian, this would mean that he himself is a liar and therefore-” Xeno made a determined effort to break free, dragging four desperate fellow philosophers across the floor. "I'm going to lay one right on you, pal!" Brutha said, "Excuse me, please?" The philosophers froze. Then they turned to look at Brutha. They relaxed by degrees. There was a chorus of embarrassed coughs. "Are you all philosophers?" said Brutha. The one called Xeno stepped forward, adjusting the hang of his toga. "That's right," he said. "We're philosophers. We think, therefore we am." "Are," said the luckless paradox manufacturer automatically. Xeno spun around. "I've just about had it up to here with you, Ibid!" he roared. He turned back to Brutha. "We are, therefore we am," he said confidently. "That's it." Several of the philosophers looked at one another with interest. "That's actually quite interesting," one said. "The evidence of our existence is the fact of our existence, is that what you're saying?" "Shut up," said Xeno, without looking around. "Have you been fighting?" said Brutha. The assembled philosophers assumed various expressions of shock and horror. "Fighting? Us? We're philosophers," said Ibid, shocked. "My word, yes," said Xeno. "But you were-” Brutha began. Xeno waved a hand. "The cut and thrust of debate," he said. "Thesis plus antithesis equals hysteresis," said Ibid. "The stringent testing of the universe. The hammer of the intellect upon the anvil of fundamental truth-” "Shut up," said Xeno. "And what can we do for you, young man?" "Ask them about gods," Om prompted. "Uh, I want to find out about gods," said Brutha. The philosophers looked at one another. "Gods?" said Xeno. "We don't bother with gods. Huh. Relics of an outmoded belief system, gods." There was a rumble of thunder from the clear evening sky. "Except for Blind to the Thunder God," Xeno went on, his tone hardly changing. Lightning flashed across the sky. "And Cubal the Fire God," said Xeno. A gust of wind rattled the windows. "Flatulus the God of the Winds, he's all right too," said Xeno. An arrow materialized out of the air and hit the table by Xeno's hand. "Fedecks the Messenger of the Gods, one of the alltime greats," said Xeno. A bird appeared in the doorway. At least, it looked vaguely like a bird. It was about a foot high, black and white, with a bent beak and an expression that suggested that whatever it was it really dreaded ever happening to it had already happened. "What's that?" said Brutha. "A penguin," said the voice of Om inside his head. "Patina the Goddess of Wisdom? One of the best," said Xeno. The penguin croaked at him and waddled off into the darkness. The philosophers looked very embarrassed. Then Ibid said, "Foorgol the God of Avalanches? Where's the snowline?" "Two hundred miles away," said someone. They waited. Nothing happened. "Relic of an outmoded belief system," said Xeno. A wall of freezing white death did not appear anywhere in Ephebe. "Mere unthinking personification of a natural force," said one of the philosophers, in a louder voice. They all seemed to feel a lot better about this. "Primitive nature worship." "Wouldn't give you tuppence for him." "Simple rationalization of the unknown." "Hah! A clever fiction, a bogey to frighten the weak and stupid!" The words rose up in Brutha. He couldn't stop himself. "Is it always this cold?" he said. "It seemed very chilly on my way here." The philosophers all moved away from Xeno. "Although if there's one thing you can say about Foorgol," said Xeno, "it's that he's a very understanding god. Likes a joke as much as the next . . . man." He looked both ways, quickly. After a while the philosophers relaxed, and seemed to completely forget about Brutha. And only now did he really have time to take in the room. He had never seen a tavern before in his life, but that was what it was. The bar ran along one side of the room. Behind it were the typical trappings of an Ephebian bar-the stacks of wine jars, racks of amphorae, and the cheery pictures of vestal virgins on cards of salted peanuts and goat jerky, pinned up in the hope that there really were people in the world who would slatheringly buy more and more packets of nuts they didn't want in order to look at a cardboard nipple. "What's all this stuff?" Brutha whispered. "How should I know?" said Om. "Let me out so's I can see." Brutha unfastened the box and lifted the tortoise out. One rheumy eye looked around. "Oh. Typical tavern," said Om. "Good. Mine's a saucer of whatever they were drinking." "A tavern? A place were alcohol is drunk?" "I very much intend this to be the case, yes." "But . . . but . . . the Septateuch, no less than seventeen times, adjures us most emphatically to refrain from-” "Beats the hell out of me why," said Om. "See that man cleaning the mugs? You say unto him, Give me a-” "But it mocks the mind of Man, says the Prophet Ossory. And-” "I'll say this one more time! I never said it! Now talk to the man!" In fact the man talked to Brutha. He appeared magically on the other side of the bar, still wiping a mug. "Evening, sir," he said. "What'll it be?" "I'd like a drink of water, please," said Brutha, very deliberately. "And something for the tortoise?" "Wine!" said the voice of Om. "I don't know," said Brutha. "What do tortoises usually drink?" "The ones we have in here normally have a drop of milk with some bread in it," said the barman. "You get a lot of tortoises?" said Brutha loudly, trying to drown out Om's outraged screams. "Oh, a very useful philosophical animal, your average tortoise. Outrunning metaphorical arrows, beating hares in races . . . very handy." "Uh . . . I haven't got any money," said Brutha. The barman leaned towards him. "Tell you what," he said. "Declivities has just bought a round. He won't mind." "Bread and milk?" "Oh. Thank you. Thank you very much." "Oh, we get all sorts in here," said the barman, leaning back. "Stoics. Cynics. Big drinkers, the Cynics. Epicureans. Stochastics. Anamaxandrites. Epistemologists. Peripatetics. Synoptics. All sorts. That's what I always say. What I always say is"-he picked up another mug and started to dry it "it takes all sorts to make a world." "Bread and milk!" shouted Om. "You'll feel my wrath for this, right? Now ask him about gods!" "Tell me," said Brutha, sipping his mug of water, "do any of them know much about gods?" "You'd want a priest for that sort of thing," said the barman. "No, I mean about . . . what gods are . . . how gods came to exist . . . that sort of thing," said Brutha, trying to get to grips with the barman's peculiar mode of conversation. "Gods don't like that sort of thing," said the barman. "We get that in here some nights, when someone's had a few. Cosmic speculation about whether gods really exist. Next thing, there's a bolt of lightning through the roof with a note wrapped round it saying `Yes, we do' and a pair of sandals with smoke coming out. That sort of thing, it takes all the interest out of metaphysical speculation." "Not even fresh bread," muttered Om, nose deep in his saucer. "No, I know gods exist all right," said Brutha, hurriedly. "I just want to find out more about . . . them." The barman shrugged. "Then I'd be obliged if you don't stand next to anything valuable," he said, "Still, it'll all be the same in a hundred years." He picked up another mug and started to polish it. "Are you a philosopher?" said Brutha. "It kind of rubs off on you after a while," said the barman. "This milk's off," said Om. "They say Ephebe is a democracy. This milk ought to be allowed to vote." "I don't think," said Brutha carefully, "that I'm going to find what I want here. Um. Mr. Drink Seller?" "Yes?" "What was that bird that walked in when the Goddess"-he tasted the unfamiliar word-"of Wisdom was mentioned?" "Bit of a problem there," said the barman. "Bit of an embarrassment." "Sorry? " "It was," said the barman, "a penguin." "Is it a wise sort of bird, then?" "No. Not a lot," said the barman. "Not known for its wisdom. Second most confused bird in the world. Can only fly underwater, they say." "Then why-” "We don't like to talk about it," said the barman. "It upsets people. Bloody sculptor," he added, under his breath. Down the other end of the bar the philosophers had started fighting again. The barman leaned forward. "If you haven't got any money," he said, "I don't think you're going to get much help. Talk isn't cheap around here." "But they just-” Brutha began. "There's the expenditure on soap and water, for a start. Towels. Flannels. Loofahs. Pumice stones. Bath salts. It all adds up." There was a gurgling noise from the saucer. Om's milky head turned to Brutha. "You've got no money at all?" he said. "No," said Brutha. "Well, we've got to have a philosopher," said the tortoise flatly. "I can't think and you don't know how to. We've got to find someone who does it all the time." "Of course, you could try old Didactylos," said the barman. "He's about as cheap as they come." "Doesn't use expensive soap?" said Brutha. "I think it could be said without fear of contradiction," said the barman solemnly, "that he doesn't use any soap at all whatsoever in any way." "Oh. Well. Thank you," said Brutha. "Ask him where this man lives," Om commanded. "Where can I find Mr. Didactylos?" said Brutha. "In the palace courtyard. Next door to the Library. You can't miss him. Just follow your nose." "We just came-” Brutha said, but his inner voice prompted him not to complete the sentence. "We'll just be going then." "Don't forget your tortoise," said the barman. "There's good eating on one of them." "May all your wine turn to water!" Om shrieked. "Will it?" said Brutha, as they stepped out into the night. No. "Tell me again. Why exactly are we looking for a philosopher?" said Brutha. "I want to get my power back," said Om. "But everyone believes in you!" "If they believed in me they could talk to me. I could talk to them. I don't know what's gone wrong. No one is worshiping any other gods in Omnia, are they?" "They wouldn't be allowed to," said Brutha. "The Quisition would see to that." "Yeah. It's hard to kneel if you have no knees." Brutha stopped in the empty street. "I don't understand you!" "You're not supposed to. The ways of gods aren't supposed to be understandable to men." "The Quisition keeps us on the path of truth! The Quisition works for the greater glory of the Church!" "And you believe that, do you?" said the tortoise. Brutha looked, and found that certainty had gone missing. He opened and shut his mouth, but there were no words to be said. "Come on," said Om, as kindly as he could manage. "Let's get back."     In the middle of the night Om awoke. There were noises from Brutha's bed. Brutha was praying again. Om listened curiously. He could remember prayers. There had been a lot of them, once. So many that he couldn't make out an individual prayer even if he had felt inclined to, but that didn't matter, because what mattered was the huge cosmic susurration of thousands of praying, believing minds. The words weren't worth listening to, anyway. Humans! They lived in a world where the grass continued to be green and the sun rose every day and flowers regularly turned into fruit, and what impressed them? Weeping statues. And wine made out of water! A mere quantum-mechanistic tunnel effect, that'd happen anyway if you were prepared to wait zillions of years. As if the turning of sunlight into wine, by means of vines and grapes and time and enzymes, wasn't a thousand times more impressive and happened all the time . . . Well, he couldn't even do the most basic of god tricks now. Thunderbolts with about the same effect as the spark off a cat's fur, and you could hardly smite anyone with one of those. He had smitten good and hard in his time. Now he could just about walk through water and feed the One. Brutha's prayer was a piccolo tune in a world of silence. Om waited until the novice was quiet again and then unfolded his legs and walked out, rocking from side to side, into the dawn.     The Ephebians walked through the palace courtyards, surrounding the Omnians almost, but not quite, in the manner of a prisoners' escort. Brutha could see that Vorbis was boiling with fury. A small vein on the side of the exquisitor's bald temple was throbbing. As if feeling Brutha's eyes on him, Vorbis turned his head. "You seem ill at ease this morning, Brutha," he said. "Sorry, lord." "You seem to be looking into every corner. What are you expecting to find?" "Uh. Just interested, lord. Everything's new." "All the so-called wisdom of Ephebe is not worth one line from the least paragraph in the Septateuch," said Vorbis. "May we not study the works of the infidel in order to be more alert to the ways of heresy?" said Brutha, surprised at himself. "Ah. A persuasive argument, Brutha, and one that the inquisitors have heard many times, if a little indistinctly in many cases." Vorbis glowered at the back of the head of Aristocrates, who was leading the party. "It is but a small step from listening to heresy to questioning established truth, Brutha. Heresy is often fascinating. Therein lies its danger." "Yes, lord." "Hah! And not only do they carve forbidden statues, but they can't even do it properly." Brutha was no expert, but even he had to agree that this was true. Now the novelty of them had worn off, the statues that decorated every niche in the palace did have a certain badly made look. Brutha was pretty sure he'd just passed one with two left arms. Another one had one ear larger than the other. It wasn't that someone had set out to carve ugly gods. They had clearly been meant to be quite attractive statues. But the sculptor hadn't been much good at it. "That woman there appears to be holding a penguin," said Vorbis. "Patina, Goddess of Wisdom," said Brutha automatically, and then realized he'd said it. "I, er, heard someone mention it," he added. "Indeed. And what remarkably good hearing you must have," said Vorbis. Aristocrates paused outside an impressive doorway and nodded at the party. "Gentlemen," he said, "the Tyrant will see you now." "You will recall everything that is said," whispered Vorbis. Brutha nodded. The doors swung open. All over the world there were rulers with titles like the Exalted, the Supreme, and Lord High Something or Other. Only in one small country was the ruler elected by the people, who could remove him whenever they wanted-and they called him the Tyrant. The Ephebians believed that every man should have the vote.[6] Every five years someone was elected to be Tyrant, provided he could prove that he was honest, intelligent, sensible, and trustworthy. Immediately after he was elected, of course, it was obvious to everyone that he was a criminal madman and totally out of touch with the view of the ordinary philosopher in the street looking for a towel. And then five years later they elected another one just like him, and really it was amazing how intelligent people kept on making the same mistakes. Candidates for the Tyrantship were elected by the placing of black or white balls in various urns, thus giving rise to a well-known comment about politics. The Tyrant was a fat little man with skinny legs, giving people the impression of an egg that was hatching upside down. He was sitting alone in the middle of the marble floor, in a chair surrounded by scrolls and scraps of paper. His feet didn't touch the marble, and his face was pink. Aristocrates whispered something in his ear. The Tyrant looked up from his paperwork. "Ah, the Omnian delegation," he said, and a smile flashed across his face like something small darting across a stone. "Do be seated, all of you." He looked down again. "I am Deacon Vorbis of the Citadel Quisition," said Vorbis coldly. The Tyrant looked up and gave him another lizard smile. "Yes, I know," he said. "You torture people for a living. Please be seated, Deacon Vorbis. And your plump young friend who seems to be looking for something. And the rest of you. Some young women will be along in a moment with grapes and things. This generally happens. It's very hard to stop it, in fact." There were benches in front of the Tyrant's chair. The Omnians sat down. Vorbis remained standing. The Tyrant nodded. "As you wish," he said. "This is intolerable!" snapped Vorbis. "We have been treated- "Much better than you would have treated us," said the Tyrant mildly. "You sit or you stand, my lord, because this is Ephebe and indeed you may stand on your head for all I care, but don't expect me to believe that if it was I, seeking peace in your Citadel, I would be encouraged to do anything but grovel on what was left of my stomach. Be seated or be upstanding, my lord, but be quiet. I have nearly finished." "Finished what?" said Vorbis. "The peace treaty," said the Tyrant. "But that is what we are here to discuss," said Vorbis. "No," said the Tyrant. The lizard scuttled again: "That is what you are here to sign."     Om took a deep breath and then pushed himself forward. It was quite a steep flight of steps. He felt every one as he bumped down, but at least he was upright at the bottom. He was lost, but being lost in Ephebe was preferable to being lost in the Citadel. At least there were no obvious cellars. Library, library, library . . . There was a library in the Citadel, Brutha had said. He'd described it, so Om had some idea of what he was looking for. There would be a book in it.     Peace negotiations were not going well. "You attacked us!" said Vorbis. "I would call it preemptive defense," said the Tyrant. "We saw what happened to Istanzia and Betrek and Ushistan." "They saw the truth of Om!" "Yes," said the Tyrant. "We believe they did, eventually." "And they are now proud members of the Empire." "Yes," said the Tyrant. "We believe they are. But we like to remember them as they were. Before you sent them your letters, that put the minds of men in chains." "That set the feet of men on the right road," said Vorbis. "Chain letters," said the Tyrant. "The Chain Letter to the Ephebians. Forget Your Gods. Be Subjugated. Learn to Fear. Do not break the chain-the last people who did woke up one morning to find fifty thousand armed men on their lawn." Vorbis sat back. "What is it you fear?" he said. "Here in your desert, with your . . . gods? Is it not that, deep in your souls, you know that your gods are as shifting as your sand?" "Oh, yes," said the Tyrant. "We know that. That's always been a point in their favor. We know about sand. And your God is a rock-and we know about rock."     Om stumped along a cobbled alley, keeping to the shade as much as possible. There seemed to be a lot of courtyards. He paused at the point where the alley opened into yet another of them. There were voices. Mainly there was one voice, petulant and reedy. This was the philosopher Didactylos. Although one of the most quoted and popular philosophers of all time, Didactylos the Ephebian never achieved the respect of his fellow philosophers. They felt he wasn't philosopher material. He didn't bathe often enough or, to put it another way, at all. And he philosophized about the wrong sorts of things. And he was interested in the wrong sorts of things. Dangerous things. Other philosophers asked questions like: Is Truth Beauty, and is Beauty Truth? and: is Reality Created by the Observer? But Didactylos posed the famous philosophical conundrum: "Yes, But What's It Really All About, Then, When You Get Right Down To It, I Mean Really!" His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools-the Cynics, the Stoics, and the Epicureansand summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, "You can't trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there's nothing you can do about it, so let's have a drink. Mine's a double, if you're buying. Thank you. And a packet of nuts. Her left bosom is nearly uncovered, eh? Two more packets, then!" Many people have quoted from his famous Meditations: "It's a rum old world all right. But you've got to laugh, haven't you? Nil Illegitimo Carborundum is what I say. The experts don't know everything. Still, where would we be if we were all the same?" Om crawled closer to the voice, bringing himself around the corner of the wall so that he could see into a small courtyard. There was a very large barrel against the far wall. Various debris around it-broken wine amphorae, gnawed bones, and a couple of lean-to shacks made out of rough boardssuggested that it was someone's home. And this impression was given some weight by the sign chalked on a board and stuck to the wall over the barrel. It read:   DIDACTYLOS and Nephew Practical Philosophers   No Proposition Too Large "We Can Do Your Thinking For You"   Special Rates after 6 pm Fresh Axioms Every Day   In front of the barrel, a short man in a toga that must have once been white, in the same way that once all continents must have been joined together, was kicking another one who was on the ground. "You lazy bugger!" The younger one sat up. "Honest, Uncle-” "I turn my back for half an hour and you go to sleep on the job!" "What job? We haven't had anything since Mr. Piloxi the farmer last week-” "How d'you know? How d'you know? While you were snoring dozens of people could've been goin' past, every one of 'em in need of a pers'nal philosophy!" "-and he only paid in olives." "I shall prob'ly get a good price for them olives!" "They're rotten, Uncle." "Nonsense! You said they were green!" "Yes, but they're supposed to be black." In the shadows, the tortoise's head turned back and forth like a spectator's at a tennis match. The young man stood up. "Mrs. Bylaxis came in this morning," he said. "She said the proverb you did for her last week has stopped working." Didactylos scratched his head. "Which one was that?" he said. "You gave her `It's always darkest before dawn.' " "Nothing wrong with that. Damn good philosophy." "She said she didn't feel any better. Anyway, she said she'd stayed up all night because of her bad leg and it was actually quite light just before dawn, so it wasn't true. And her leg still dropped off. So I gave her part exchange on `Still, it does you good to laugh.' " Didactylos brightened up a bit. "Shifted that one, eh?" "She said she'd give it a try. She gave me a whole dried squid for it. She said I looked like I needed feeding up." "Right? You're learning. That's lunch sorted out at any rate. See, Urn? Told you it would work if we stuck at it." "I don't call one dried squid and a box of greasy olives much of a return, master. Not for two weeks' thinking." "We got three obols for doing that proverb for old Grillos the cobbler." "No we didn't. He brought it back. His wife didn't like the color." "And you gave him his money back?" Yes." "What, all of it?" "Yes." "Can't do that. Not after he's put wear and tear on the words. Which one was it?" " `It's a wise crow that knows which way the camel points.' " "I put a lot of work in on that one." "He said he couldn't understand it." "I don't understand cobbling, but I know a good pair of sandals when I wears 'em." Om blinked his one eye. Then he looked at the shapes of the minds in front of him. The one called Urn was presumably the nephew, and had a fairly normal sort of mind, even if it did seem to have too many circles and angles in it. But Didactylos's mind bubbled and flashed like a potful of electric eels on full boil. Om had never seen anything like it. Brutha's thoughts took eons to slide into place, it was like watching mountains colliding; Didactylos's thoughts chased after one another with a whooshing noise. No wonder he was bald. Hair would have burned off from the inside. Om had found a thinker. A cheap one, too, by the sound of it. He looked up at the wall behind the barrel. Further along was an impressive set of marble steps leading up to some bronze doors, and over the doors, made of metal letters set in the stone, was the word LIBRVM. He'd spent too much time looking. Urn's hand clamped itself on to his shell, and he heard Didactylos's voice say, "Hey . . . there's good eating on one of these things . . .     Brutha cowered. "You stoned our envoy!" shouted Vorbis. "An unarmed man!" "He brought it upon himself," said the Tyrant. "Aristocrates was there. He will tell you." The tall man nodded and stood up. "By tradition anyone may speak in the marketplace," he began. "And be stoned?" Vorbis demanded. Aristocrates held up a hand. "Ah," he said, "anyone can say what they like in the square. We have another tradition, though, called free listening. Unfortunately, when people dislike what they hear, they can become a little . . . testy." "I was there too," said another advisor. "Your priest got up to speak and at first everything was fine, because people were laughing. And then he said that Om was the only real God, and everyone went quiet. And then he pushed over a statue of Tuvelpit, the God of Wine. That's when the trouble started." "Are you proposing to tell me he was struck by lightning?" said Vorbis. Vorbis was no longer shouting. His voice was level, without passion. The thought rose in Brutha's mind: this is how the exquisitors speak. When the inquisitors have finished, the exquisitors speak . . . "No. By an amphora. Tuvelpit was in the crowd, you see." "And striking honest men is considered proper godly behavior, is it?" "Your missionary had said that people who did not believe in Om would suffer endless punishment. I have to tell you that the crowd considered this rude." "And so they threw stones at him . . ." "Not many. They only hurt his pride. And only after they'd run out of vegetables." "They threw vegetables?" "When they couldn't find any more eggs." "And when we came to remonstrate-” "I am sure sixty ships intended more than remonstrating," said the Tyrant. "And we have warned you, Lord Vorbis. People find in Ephebe what they seek. There will be more raids on your coast. We will harass your ships. Unless you sign." "And passage through Ephebe?" said Vorbis. The Tyrant smiled. "Across the desert? My lord, if you can cross the desert, I am sure you can go anywhere." The Tyrant looked away from Vorbis and towards the sky, visible between the pillars. "And now I see it is nearing noon," he said. "And the day heats up. Doubtless you will wish to discuss our . . . uh . . . proposals with your colleagues. May I suggest we meet again at sunset?" Vorbis appeared to give this some consideration. "I think," he said eventually, "that our deliberations may take longer. Shall we say . . . tomorrow morning?" The Tyrant nodded. "As you wish. In the meantime, the palace is at your disposal. There are many fine temples and works of art should you wish to inspect them. When you require meals, mention the fact to the nearest slave." "Slave is an Ephebian word. In Om we have no word for slave," said Vorbis. "So I understand," said the Tyrant. "I imagine that fish have no word for water." He smiled the fleeting smile again. "And there are the baths and the Library, of course. Many fine sights. You are our guests." Vorbis inclined his head. "I pray," he said, "that one day you will be a guest of mine." "And what sights I shall see," said the Tyrant. Brutha stood up, knocking over his bench and going redder with embarrassment. He thought: they lied about Brother Murduck. They beat him within an inch of his life, Vorbis said, and flogged him the rest of the way. And Brother Nhumrod said he saw the body, and it was really true. Just for talking! People who would do that sort of thing deserve . . . punishment. And they keep slaves. People forced to work against their will. People treated like animals. And they even call their ruler a Tyrant! And why isn't any of this exactly what it seems? Why don't I believe any of it? Why do I know it isn't true? And what did he mean about fish not having a word for water?     The Omnians were half-escorted, half-led back to their compound. Another bowl of fruit was waiting on the table in Brutha's cell, with some more fish and a loaf of bread. There was also a man, sweeping the floor. "Um," said Brutha. "Are you a slave?" "Yes, master." "That must be terrible." The man leaned on his broom. "You're right. It's terrible. Really terrible. D'you know, I only get one day off a week?" Brutha, who had never heard the words "day off" before, and who was in any case unfamiliar with the concept, nodded uncertainly. "Why don't you run away?" he said. "Oh, done that," said the slave. "Ran away to Tsort once. Didn't like it much. Came back. Run away for a fortnight in Djelibeybi every winter, though." "Do you get brought back?" said Brutha. "Huh!" said the slave. "No, I don't. Miserable skinflint, Aristocrates. I have to come back by myself. Hitching lifts on ships, that kind of thing." "You come back?" "Yeah. Abroad's all right to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there. Anyway, I've only got another four years as a slave and then I'm free. You get the vote when you're free. And you get to keep slaves." His face glazed with the effort of recollection as he ticked off points on his fingers. "Slaves get three meals a day, at least one with meat. And one free day a week. And two weeks being-allowed-to-runaway every year. And I don't do ovens or heavy lifting, and worldly-wise repartee only by arrangement." "Yes, but you're not free, " said Brutha, intrigued despite himself. "What's the difference?" "Er . . . you don't get any days off." Brutha scratched his head. "And one less meal." "Really? I think I'll give freedom a miss then, thanks." "Er . . . have you seen a tortoise anywhere around here?" said Brutha. "No. And I cleaned under the bed." "Have you seen one anywhere else today?" "You want one? There's good eating on a-” "No. No. It's all right-” "Brutha! " It was Vorbis's voice. Brutha hurried out into the courtyard and into Vorbis's cell. "Ah, Brutha." "Yes, lord?" Vorbis was sitting cross-legged on the floor, staring at the wall. "You are a young man visiting a new place," said Vorbis. "No doubt there is much you wish to see." "There is?" said Brutha. Vorbis was using the exquisitor voice again-a level monotone, a voice like a strip of dull steel. "You may go where you wish. See new things, Brutha. Learn everything you can. You are my eyes and ears. And my memory. Learn about this place." "Er. Really, lord?" "Have I impressed you with my use of careless language, Brutha?" "No, lord." "Go away. Fill yourself. And be back by sunset." "Er. Even the Library?" said Brutha. "Ah? Yes, the Library. The Library that they have here. Of course. Crammed with useless and dangerous and evil knowledge. I can see it in my mind, Brutha. Can you imagine that?" "No, Lord Vorbis." "Your innocence is your shield, Brutha. No. By all means go to the Library. I have no fear of any effect on you. " "Lord Vorbis?" "Yes?" "The Tyrant said that they hardly did anything to Brother Murduck . . ." Silence unrolled its restless length. Vorbis said, "He lied." "Yes." Brutha waited. Vorbis continued to stare at the wall. Brutha wondered what he saw there. When nothing else appeared to be forthcoming, he said, "Thank you." He stepped back a bit before he went out, so that he could squint under the deacon's bed.     He's probably in trouble, Brutha thought as he hurried through the palace. Everyone wants to eat tortoises. He tried to look everywhere while avoiding the friezes of unclad nymphs. Brutha was technically aware that women were a different shape from men; he hadn't left the village until he was twelve, by which time some of his contemporaries were already married. And Omnianism encouraged early marriage as a preventive against Sin, although any activity involving any part of the human anatomy between neck and knees was more or less Sinful in any case. Brutha wished he was a better scholar so he could ask his God why this was. Then he found himself wishing his God was a more intelligent God so it could answer. He hasn't screamed for me, he thought. I'm sure I would have heard. So maybe no one's cooking him. A slave polishing one of the statues directed him to the Library. Brutha pounded down an aisle of pillars. When he reached the courtyard in front of the Library it was crowded with philosophers, all craning to look at something. Brutha could hear the usual petulant squabbling that showed that philosophical discourse was under way. In this case: "I've got ten obols here says it can't do it again!" "Talking money? That's something you don't hear every day, Xeno." "Yeah. And it's about to say goodbye." "Look, don't be stupid. It's a tortoise. It's just doing a mating dance . . ." There was a breathless pause. Then a sort of collective sigh. "There!" "That's never a right angle!" "Come on! I'd like to see you do better in the circumstances!" "What's it doing now?" "The hypotenuse, I think." "Call that a hypotenuse? It's wiggly." "It's not wiggly. It's drawing it straight and you're looking at it in a wiggly way!" "I'll bet thirty obols it can't do a square!" "Here's forty obols says it can." There was another pause, and then a cheer. "Yeah!" "That's more of a parallelogram, if you ask me," said a petulant voice. "Listen, I knows a square when I sees one! And that's a square." "All right. Double or nothing then. Bet it can't do a dodecagon." "Hah! You bet it couldn't do a septagon just now." "Double or nothing. Dodecagon. Worried, eh! Feeling a bit avis domestica? Cluck-cluck?" "It's a shame to take your money . . ." There was another pause. "Ten sides? Ten sides? Hah!" "Told you it wasn't any good! Whoever heard of a tortoise doing geometry?" "Another daft idea, Didactylos?" "I said so all along. It's just a tortoise." "There's good eating on one of those things . . ." The mass of philosophers broke up, pushing past Brutha without paying him much attention. He caught a glimpse of a circle of damp sand, covered with geometrical figures. Om was sitting in the middle of them. Behind him was a very grubby pair of philosophers, counting out a pile of coins. "How did we do, Urn?" said Didactylos. "We're fifty-two obols up, master." "See? Every day things improve. Pity it didn't know the difference between ten and twelve, though. Cut one of its legs off and we'll have a stew." "Cut off a leg?" "Well, a tortoise like that, you don't eat it all at once." Didactylos turned his face towards a plump young man with splayed feet and a red face, who was staring at the tortoise. "Yes?" he said. "The tortoise does know the difference between ten and twelve," said the fat boy. "Damn thing just lost me eighty obols," said Didactylos. "Yes. But tomorrow . . ." the boy began, his eyes glazing as if he was carefully repeating something he'd just heard ". . . tomorrow . . . you should be able to get odds of at least three to one." Didactylos's mouth dropped open. "Give me the tortoise, Urn," he said. The apprentice philosopher reached down and picked up Om, very carefully. "You know, I thought right at the start there was something funny about this creature," said Didactylos. "I said to Urn, there's tomorrow's dinner, and then he says no, it's dragging its tail in the sand and doing geometry. That doesn't come natural to a tortoise, geometry." Om's eye turned to Brutha. "I had to," he said. "It was the only way to get his attention. Now I've got him by the curiosity. When you've got 'em by the curiosity, their hearts and minds will follow." "He's a God," said Brutha. "Really? What's his name?" said the philosopher. "Don't tell him! Don't tell him! The local gods'll hear!" "I don't know," said Brutha. Didactylos turned Om over. "The Turtle Moves," said Urn thoughtfully. "What?" said Brutha. "Master did a book," said Urn. "Not really a book," said Didactylos modestly. "More a scroll. Just a little thing I knocked off." "Saying that the world is flat and goes through space on the back of a giant turtle?" said Brutha. "Have you read it?" Didactylos's gaze was unmoving. "Are you a slave?" "No," said Brutha. "I am a-” "Don't mention my name! Call yourself a scribe or something!" "-scribe," said Brutha weakly. "Yeah," said Urn. "I can see that. The telltale callus on the thumb where you hold the pen. The inkstains all over your sleeves." Brutha glanced at his left thumb. "I haven't-” "Yeah," said Urn, grinning. "Use your left hand, do you?" "Er, I use both," said Brutha. "But not very well, everyone says." "Ah," said Didactylos. "Ambi-sinister?" "What?" "He means incompetent with both hands," said Om. "Oh. Yes. That's me." Brutha coughed politely. "Look . . . I'm looking for a philosopher. Um. One that knows about gods." He waited. Then he said, "You aren't going to say they're a relic of an outmoded belief system?" Didactylos, still running his fingers over Om's shell, shook his head. "Nope. I like my thunderstorms a long way off." "Oh. Could you stop turning him over and over? He's just told me he doesn't like it." "You can tell how old they are by cutting them in half and counting the rings," said Didactylos. "Um. He hasn't got much of a sense of humor, either." "You're Omnian, by the sound of it." Yes." "Here to talk about the treaty?" "I do the listening." "And what do you want to know about gods?" Brutha appeared to be listening. Eventually he said: "How they start. How they grow. And what happens to them afterwards." Didactylos put the tortoise into Brutha's hands. "Costs money, that kind of thinking," he said. "Let me know when we've used more than fifty-two obols' worth," said Brutha. Didactylos grinned. "Looks like you can think for yourself," he said. "Got a good memory?" "No. Not exactly a good one." "Right? Right. Come on into the Library. It's got an earthed copper roof, you know. Gods really hate that sort of thing." Didactylos reached down beside him and picked up a rusty iron lantern. Brutha looked up at the big white building. "That's the Library?" he said. "Yes," said Didactylos. "That's why it's got LIBRVM carved over the door in such big letters. But a scribe like you'd know that, of course."     The Library of Ephebe was-before it burned down-the second biggest on the Disc. Not as big as the library in Unseen University, of course, but that library had one or two advantages on account of its magical nature. No other library anywhere, for example, has a whole gallery of unwritten books-books that would have been written if the author hadn't been eaten by an alligator around chapter 1, and so on. Atlases of imaginary places. Dictionaries of illusory words. Spotters' guides to invisible things. Wild thesauri in the Lost Reading Room. A library so big that it distorts reality and has opened gateways to all other libraries, everywhere and everywhen . . . And so unlike the Library at Ephebe, with its four or five hundred volumes. Many of them were scrolls, to save their readers the fatigue of having to call a slave every time they wanted a page turned. Each one lay in its own pigeonhole, though. Books shouldn't be kept too close together, otherwise they interact in strange and unforeseeable ways. Sunbeams lanced through the shadows, as palpable as pillars in the dusty air. Although it was the least of the wonders in the Library, Brutha couldn't help noticing a strange construction in the aisles. Wooden laths had been fixed between the rows of stone shelves about two meters from the floor, so that they supported a wider plank of no apparent use whatsoever. Its underside had been decorated with rough wooden shapes. "The Library," announced Didactylos. He reached up. His fingers gently brushed the plank over his head. It dawned on Brutha. "You're blind aren't you?" he said. "That's right." "But you carry a lantern?" "It's all right," said Didactylos. "I don't put any oil in it." "A lantern that doesn't shine for a man that doesn't see?" "Yeah. Works perfectly. And of course it's very philosophical." "And you live in a barrel." "Very fashionable, living in a barrel," said Didactylos, walking forward briskly, his fingers only occasionally touching the raised patterns on the plank. "Most of the philosophers do it. It shows contempt and disdain for worldly things. Mind you, Legibus has got a sauna in his. It's amazing the kind of things you can think of in it, he says." Brutha looked around. Scrolls protruded from their racks like cuckoos piping the hour. "It's all so . . . I never met a philosopher before I came here," he said. "Last night, they were all . . ." "You got to remember there's three basic approaches to philosophy in these parts," said Didactylos. "Tell him, Urn." "There's the Xenoists," said Urn promptly. "They say the world is basically complex and random. And there's the Ibidians. They say the world is basically simple and follows certain fundamental rules." "And there's me," said Didactylos, pulling a scroll out of its rack. "Master says basically it's a funny old world," said Urn. "And doesn't contain enough to drink," said Didactylos. "And doesn't contain enough to drink." "Gods," said Didactylos, half to himself. He pulled out another scroll. "You want to know about gods? Here's Xeno's Reflections, and old Aristocrates' Platitudes, and Ibid's bloody stupid Discourses, and Legibus's Geometries and Hierarch's Theologies . . . " Didactylos's fingers danced across the racks. More dust filled the air. "These are all books?" said Brutha. "Oh, yes. Everyone writes 'em here. You just can't stop the buggers." "And people can read them?" said Brutha. Omnia was based on one book. And here were . . . hundreds . . . "Well, they can if they want," said Urn. "But no one comes in here much. These aren't books for reading. They're more for writing." "Wisdom of the ages, this," said Didactylos. "Got to write a book, see, to prove you're a philosopher. Then you get your scroll and free official philosopher's loofah." The sunlight pooled on a big stone table in the center of the room. Urn unrolled the length of a scroll. Brilliant flowers glowed in the golden light. "Orinjcrates' On the Nature of Plants," said Didactylos. "Six hundred plants and their uses . . ." "They're beautiful," whispered Brutha. "Yes, that is one of the uses of plants," said Didactylos. "And one which old Orinjcrates neglected to notice, too. Well done. Show him Philo's Bestiary, Urn." Another scroll unrolled. There were dozens of Pictures of animals, thousands of unreadable words. "But . . . pictures of animals . . . it's wrong . . . isn't it wrong to . . ." "Pictures of just about everything in there," said Didactylos. Art was not permitted in Omnia. "And this is the book Didactylos wrote," said Urn. Brutha looked down at a picture of a turtle. There were . . . elephants, they're elephants, his memory supplied, from the fresh memories of the bestiary sinking indelibly into his mind . . . elephants on its back, and on them something with mountains and a waterfall of an ocean around its edge . . . "How can this be?" said Brutha. "A world on the back of a tortoise? Why does everyone tell me this? This can't be true!" "Tell that to the mariners," said Didactylos. "Everyone who's ever sailed the Rim Ocean knows it. Why deny the obvious?" "But surely the world is a perfect sphere, spinning about the sphere of the sun, just as the Septateuch tells us," said Brutha. "That seems so . . . logical. That's how things ought to be." "Ought?" said Didactylos. "Well, I don't know about ought. That's not a philosophical word." "And . . . what is this . . ." Brutha murmured, pointing to a circle under the drawing of the turtle. "That's a plan view," said Urn. "Map of the world," said Didactylos. "Map? What's a map?" "It's a sort of picture that shows you where you are," said Didactylos. Brutha stared in wonderment. "And how does it know?" "Hah!" "Gods," prompted Om again. "We're here to ask about gods!" "But is all this true?" said Brutha. Didactylos shrugged. "Could be. Could be. We are here and it is now. The way I see it is, after that, everything tends towards guesswork." "You mean you don't know it's true?" said Brutha. "I think it might be," said Didactylos. "I could be wrong. Not being certain is what being a philosopher is all about." "Talk about gods," said Om. "Gods," said Brutha weakly. His mind was on fire. These people made all these books about things, and they weren't sure. But he'd been sure, and Brother Nhumrod had been sure, and Deacon Vorbis had a sureness you could bend horseshoes around. Sureness was a rock. Now he knew why, when Vorbis spoke about Ephebe, his face was gray with hatred and his voice was tense as a wire. If there was no truth, what was there left? And these bumbling old men spent their time kicking away the pillars of the world, and they'd nothing to replace them with but uncertainty. And they were proud of this? Urn was standing on a small ladder, fishing among the shelves of scrolls. Didactylos sat opposite Brutha, his blind gaze still apparently fixed on him. "You don't like it, do you?" said the philosopher. Brutha had said nothing. "You know," said Didactylos conversationally, "people'll tell you that us blind people are the real business where the other senses are concerned. It's not true, of course. The buggers just say it because it makes them feel better. It gets rid of the obligation to feel sorry for us. But when you can't see you do learn to listen more. The way people breathe, the sounds their clothes make . . ." Urn reappeared with another scroll. "You shouldn't do this," said Brutha wretchedly. "All this . . ." His voice trailed off. "I know about sureness," said Didactylos. Now the light, irascible tone had drained out of his voice. "I remember, before I was blind, I went to Omnia once. This was before the borders were closed, when you still let people travel. And in your Citadel I saw a crowd stoning a man to death in a pit. Ever seen that?" "It has to be done," Brutha mumbled. "So the soul can be shriven and-' "Don't know about the soul. Never been that kind of a philosopher," said Didactylos. "All I know is, it was a horrible sight." "The state of the body is not-” "Oh, I'm not talking about the poor bugger in the pit," said the philosopher. "I'm talking about the people throwing the stones. They were sure all right. They were sure it wasn't them in the pit. You could see it in their faces. So glad it wasn't them that they were throwing just as hard as they could." Urn hovered, looking uncertain. "I've got Abraxas's On Religion," he said. "Old 'Charcoal' Abraxas," said Didactylos, suddenly cheerful again. "Struck by lightning fifteen times so far, and still not giving up. You can borrow this one overnight if you want. No scribbling comments in the margins, mind you, unless they're interesting." "This is it!" said Om. "Come on, let's leave this idiot." Brutha unrolled the scroll. There weren't even any pictures. Crabbed writing fiIled it, line after line. "He spent years researching it," said Didactylos. "Went out into the desert, talked to the small gods. Talked to some of our gods, too. Brave man. He says gods like to see an atheist around. Gives them something to aim at." Brutha unrolled a bit more of the scroll. Five minutes ago he would have admitted that he couldn't read. Now the best efforts of the inquisitors couldn't have forced it out of him. He held it up in what he hoped was a familiar fashion. "Where is he now?" he said. "Well, someone said they saw a pair of sandals with smoke coming out just outside his house a year or two back," said Didactylos. "He might have, you know, pushed his luck." "I think," said Brutha, "that I'd better be going. I'm sorry to have intruded on your time." "Bring it back when you've finished with it," said Didactylos. "Is that how people read in Omnia?" said Urn. "What?" "Upside down." Brutha picked up the tortoise, glared at Urn, and strode as haughtily as possible out of the Library. "Hmm," said Didactylos. He drummed his fingers on the tables. "It was him I saw in the tavern last night," said Urn. "I'm sure, master." "But the Omnians are staying here in the palace." "That's right, master." "But the tavern is outside." "Yes." "Then he must have flown over the wall, do you think?" "I'm sure it was him, master." "Then . . . maybe he came later. Maybe he hadn't gone in when you saw him." "It can only be that, master. The keepers of the labyrinth are unbribable." Didactylos clipped Urn across the back of the head with his lantern. "Stupid boy! I've told you about that sort of statement." "I mean, they are not easily bribable, master. Not for all the gold in Omnia, for example." "That's more like it." "Do you think that tortoise was a god, master?" "He's going to be in big trouble in Omnia if he is. They've got a bastard of a god there. Did you ever read old Abraxas?" "No, master." "Very big on gods. Big gods man. Always smelled of burnt hair. Naturally resistant."     Om crawled slowly along the length of a line. "Stop walking up and down like that," he said, "I can't concentrate." "How can people talk like that?" Brutha asked the empty air. "Acting as if they're glad they don't know things! Finding out more and more things they don't know! It's like children proudly coming to show you a full potty!" Om marked his place with a claw. "But they find things out," he said. "This Abraxas was a thinker and no mistake. I didn't know some of this stuff. Sit down!" Brutha obeyed. "Right," said Om. "Now . . . listen. Do you know how gods get power?" "By people believing in them," said Brutha. "Millions of people believe in you." Om hesitated. All right, all right. We are here and it is now. Sooner or later he'll find out for himself . . . "They don't believe," said Om. "But-” "It's happened before," said the tortoise. "Dozens of times. D'you know Abraxas found the lost city of Ee? Very strange carvings, he says. Belief, he says. Belief shifts. People start out believing in the god and end up believing in the structure." "I don't understand," said Brutha. "Let me put it another way," said the tortoise. "I am your God, right?" "Yes." "And you'll obey me." "Yes." "Good. Now take a rock and go and kill Vorbis." Brutha didn't move. "I'm sure you heard me," said Om. "But he'll . . . he's . . . the Quisition would-” "Now you know what I mean," said the tortoise. "You're more afraid of him than you are of me, now. Abraxas says here: `Around the Godde there forms a Shelle of prayers and Ceremonies and Buildings and Priestes and Authority, until at Last the Godde Dies. Ande this maye notte be noticed.' " "That can't be true!" "I think it is. Abraxas says there's a kind of shellfish that lives in the same way. It makes a bigger and bigger shell until it can't move around any more, and so it dies." "But . . . but . . . that means . . . the whole Church . . ." "Yes." Brutha tried to keep hold of the idea, but the sheer enormity of it kept wrenching it from his mental grasp. "But you're not dead," he managed. "Next best thing," said Om. "And you know what? No other small god is trying to usurp me. Did I ever tell you about old Ur-Gilash? No? He was the god back in what's now Omnia before me. Not much of one. Basically a weather god. Or a snake god. Something, anyway. It took years to get rid of him, though. Wars and everything. So I've been thinking . . ." Brutha said nothing. "Om still exists," said the tortoise. "I mean the shell. All you'd have to do is get people to understand." Brutha still said nothing. "You can be the next prophet," said Om. "I can't! Everyone knows Vorbis will be the next prophet!" "Ah, but you'll be official. " "No." "No? I am your God!" "And I am my me. I'm not a prophet. I can't even write. I can't read. No one will listen to me." Om looked him up and down. "I must admit you're not the chosen one I would have chosen," he said. "The great prophets had vision," said Brutha. "Even if they . . . even if you didn't talk to them, they had something to say. What could I say? I haven't got anything to say to anyone. What could I say?" "Believe in the Great God Om," said the tortoise. "And then what?" "What do you mean, and then what?" Brutha looked out glumly at the darkening courtyard. "Believe in the Great God Om or be stricken with thunderbolts," he said. "Sounds good to me." "Is that how it always has to be?" The last rays of the sun glinted off the statue in the center of the courtyard. It was vaguely feminine. There was a penguin perched on one shoulder. "Patina, Goddess of Wisdom," said Brutha. "The one with a penguin. Why a penguin?" "Can't imagine," said Om hurriedly. "Nothing wise about penguins, is there?" "Shouldn't think so. Unless you count the fact that you don't get them in Omnia. Pretty wise of them." "Brutha!" "That's Vorbis," said Brutha, standing up. "Shall I leave you here?" "Yes. There's still some melon. I mean loaf." Brutha wandered out into the dusk. Vorbis was sitting on a bench under a tree, as still as a statue in the shadows. Certainty, Brutha thought. I used to be certain. Now I'm not so sure. "Ah, Brutha. You will accompany me on a little stroll. We will take the evening air." "Yes, lord." "You have enjoyed your visit to Ephebe." Vorbis seldom asked a question if a statement would do. "It has been . . . interesting." Vorbis put one hand on Brutha's shoulder and used the other to haul himself up on his staff. "And what do you think of it?" he asked. "They have many gods, and they don't pay them much attention," said Brutha. "And they search for ignorance." "And they find it in abundance, be sure of that," said Vorbis. He pointed his staff into the night. "Let us walk," he said. There was the sound of laughter, somewhere in the darkness, and the clatter of pans. The scent of evening-opening flowers hung thickly in the air. The stored heat of daytime radiating from the stones, made the night seem like a fragrant soup. "Ephebe looks to the sea," said Vorbis after a while. "You see the way it is built? All on the slope of a hill facing the sea. But the sea is mutable. Nothing lasting comes from the sea. Whereas our dear Citadel looks towards the high desert. And what do we see there?" Instinctively Brutha turned, and looked over the rooftops to the black bulk of the desert against the sky. "I saw a flash of light," he said. "And again. On the slope." "Ah. The light of truth," said Vorbis. "So let us go forth to meet it. Take me to the entrance to the labyrinth, Brutha. You know the way." "My lord?" said Brutha. "Yes, Brutha?" "I would like to ask you a question." "Do so." "What happened to Brother Murduck?" There was the merest suggestion of hesitation in the rhythm of Vorbis's stick on the cobbles. Then the exquisitor said, "Truth, good Brutha, is like the light. Do you know about light?" "It . . . comes from the sun. And the moon and stars. And candles. And lamps." "And so on," said Vorbis, nodding. "Of course. But there is another kind of light. A light that fills even the darkest of places. This has to be. For if this metalight did not exist, how could darkness be seen?" Brutha said nothing. This sounded too much like philosophy. "And so it is with truth," said Vorbis. "There are some things which appear to be the truth, which have all the hallmarks of truth, but which are not the real truth. The real truth must sometimes be protected by a labyrinth of lies." He turned to Brutha. "Do you understand me?" "No, Lord Vorbis." "I mean, that which appears to our senses is not the fundamental truth. Things that are seen and heard and done by the flesh are mere shadows of a deeper reality. This is what you must understand as you progress in the Church." "But at the moment, lord, I know only the trivial truth, the truth available on the outside," said Brutha. He felt as though he was at the edge of a pit. "That is how we all begin," said Vorbis kindly. "So did the Ephebians kill Brother Murduck?" Brutha persisted. Now he was inching out over the darkness. "I am telling you that in the deepest sense of the truth they did. By their failure to embrace his words, by their intransigence, they surely killed him." "But in the trivial sense of the truth," said Brutha, picking every word with the care an inquisitor might give to his patient in the depths of the Citadel, "in the trivial sense, Brother Murduck died, did he not, in Omnia, because he had not died in Ephebe, had been merely mocked, but it was feared that others in the Church might not understand the, the deeper truth, and thus it was put about that the Ephebians had killed him in, in the trivial sense, thus giving you, and those who saw the truth of the evil of Ephebe, due cause to launch a-a just retaliation." They walked past a fountain. The deacon's steelshod staff clicked in the night. "I see a great future for you in the Church," said Vorbis, eventually. "The time of the eighth Prophet is coming. A time of expansion, and great opportunity for those true in the service of Om." Brutha looked into the pit. If Vorbis was right, and there was a kind of light that made darkness visible, then down there was its opposite, the darkness where no light could ever reach: darkness that blackened light. He thought of blind Didactylos and his empty lantern. He heard himself say, "And with people like the Ephebians, there is no truce. No treaty can be held binding, if it is between people like the Ephebians and those who follow a deeper truth?" Vorbis nodded. "When the Great God is with us," he said, "who can stand against us? You impress me, Brutha." There was more laughter in the darkness, and the twang of stringed instruments. "A feast," sneered Vorbis. "The Tyrant invited us to a feast! I sent some of the party, of course. Even their generals are in there! They think themselves safe behind their labyrinth, as a tortoise thinks himself safe in his shell, not realizing it is a prison. Onward." The inner wall of the labyrinth loomed out of the darkness. Brutha leaned against it. From far above came the chink of metal on metal as a sentry went on his rounds. The gateway to the labyrinth was wide open. The Ephebians had never seen the point of stopping people entering. Up a short side-tunnel the guide for the first sixth of the way slumbered on a bench, a candle guttering beside him. Above his alcove hung the bronze bell that would-be traversers of the maze used to summon him. Brutha slipped past. "Brutha?" "Yes, lord?" "Lead the way through the labyrinth. I know you can." "Lord-” "This is an order, Brutha," said Vorbis, pleasantly. There is no hope for it, Brutha thought. It is an order. "Then tread where I tread, lord," he whispered. "Not more than one step behind me." "Yes, Brutha." "If I step around a place on the floor for no reason, you step around it too." "Yes, Brutha." Brutha thought: perhaps I could do it wrong. No. I took vows and things. You can't just disobey. The whole world ends if you start thinking like that . . . He let his sleeping mind take control. The way through the labyrinth unrolled in his head like a glowing wire . . . . diagonally forward and right three and-a-half paces, and left sixty-three paces, pause two secondswhere a steely swish in the darkness suggested that one of the guardians had devised something that won him a prize-and up three steps . . . I could run forward, he thought. I could hide, and he'd walk into one of the pits or a deadfall or something, and then I could sneak back to my room and who would ever know? I would . . . . forward nine paces, and right one pace, and forward nineteen paces, and left two paces . . . There was a light ahead. Not the occasional white glow of moonlight from the slits in the roof, but yellow lamplight, dimming and brightening as its owner came nearer. "Someone's coming," he whispered. "It must be one of the guides!" Vorbis had vanished. Brutha hovered uncertainly in the passageway as the light bobbed nearer. An elderly voice said, "That you, Number Four?" The light came round a corner. It half-illuminated an old man, who walked up to Brutha and raised the candle to his face. "Where's Number Four?" he said, peering around Brutha. A figure appeared behind the man, from out of a sidepassage. Brutha had the briefest glimpse of Vorbis, his face strangely peaceful, as he gripped the head of his staff, twisted and pulled. Sharp metal glittered for a moment in the candlelight. Then the light went out. Vorbis's voice said, "Take the lead again." Trembling, Brutha obeyed. He felt the soft flesh of an outflung arm under his sandal for a moment. The pit, he thought. Look into Vorbis's eyes, and there's the pit. And I'm in it with him. I've got to remember about fundamental truth. No more guides were patrolling the labyrinth. After a mere million years, the night air blew cool on his face, and Brutha stepped out under the stars. "Well done. Can you remember the way to the gate?" "Yes, Lord Vorbis." The deacon pulled his hood over his face. "Carry on." There were a few torches lighting the streets, but Ephebe was not a city that stayed awake in darkness. A couple of passers-by paid them no attention. "They guard their harbor," said Vorbis, conversational. "But the way to the desert . . . everyone knows that no one can cross the desert. I am sure you know that, Brutha." "But now I suspect that what I know is not the truth," said Brutha. "Quite so. Ah. The gate. I believe it had two guards yesterday?" "I saw two." "And now it is night and the gate is shut. But there will be a watchman. Wait here." Vorbis disappeared into the gloom. After a while there was a muffled conversation. Brutha stared straight ahead of him. The conversation was followed by muffled silence. After a while Brutha started to count to himself. After ten, I'll go back. Another ten, then. All right. Make it thirty. And then I'll . . . "Ah, Brutha. Let us go." Brutha swallowed his heart again, and turned slowly. "I did not hear you, lord," he managed. "I walk softly." "Is there a watchman?" "Not now. Come help me with the bolts." A small wicket gate was set into the main gate. Brutha, his mind numb with hatred, shoved the bolts aside with the heel of his hand. The door opened with barely a creak. Outside there was the occasional light of a distant farm, and crowding darkness. Then the darkness poured in.     Hierarchy, Vorbis said later. The Ephebians didn't think in terms of hierarchies. No army could cross the desert. But maybe a small army could get a quarter of the way, and leave a cache of water. And do that several times. And another small army could use part of that cache to go further, maybe reach halfway, and leave a cache. And another small army . . . It had taken months. A third of the men had died, of heat and dehydration and wild animals and worse things, the worse things that the desert held . . . You had to have a mind like Vorbis's to plan it. And plan it early. Men were already dying in the desert before Brother Murduck went to preach; there was already a beaten track when the Omnian fleet burned in the bay before Ephebe. You had to have a mind like Vorbis's to plan your retaliation before your attack.     It was over in less than an hour. The fundamental truth was that the handful of Ephebian guards in the palace had no chance at all.     Vorbis sat upright in the Tyrant's chair. It was approaching midnight. A collection of Ephebian citizens, the Tyrant among them, had been herded in front of him. He busied himself with some paperwork and then looked up with an air of mild surprise, as if he'd been completely unaware that fifty people were waiting in front of him at crossbow point. "Ah," he said, and flashed a little smile. "Well," he said, "I am pleased to say that we can now dispense with the peace treaty. Quite unnecessary. Why prattle of peace when there is no more war? Ephebe is now a diocese of Omnia. There will be no argument." He threw a paper on to the floor. "There will be a fleet here in a few days. There will be no opposition, while we hold the palace. Your infernal mirror is even now being smashed." He steepled his fingers and looked at the assembled Ephebians. "Who built it?" The Tyrant looked up. "It was an Ephebian construction," he said. "Ah," said Vorbis, "democracy. I forgot. Then who"-he signaled one of the guards, who handed him a sack-"wrote this?" A copy of De Chelonian Mobile was flung on to the marble floor. Brutha stood beside the throne. It was where he had been told to stand. He'd looked into the pit and now it was him. Everything around him was happening in some distant circle of light, surrounded by darkness. Thoughts chased one another round his head. Did the Cenobiarch know about this? Did anyone else know about the two kinds of truth? Who else knew that Vorbis was fighting both sides of a war, like a child playing with soldiers? Was it really wrong if it was for the greater glory of . . . . . . a god who was a tortoise. A god that only Brutha believed in? Who did Vorbis talk to when he prayed? Through the mental storm Brutha heard Vorbis's level tones: "If the philosopher who wrote this does not own up, the entirety of you will be put to the flame. Do not doubt that I mean it." There was a movement in the crowd, and the sound of Didactylos's voice. "Let go! You heard him! Anyway . . . I always wanted a chance to do this . . ." A couple of servants were pushed aside and the philosopher stumped out of the crowd, his barren lantern held defiantly over his head. Brutha watched the philosopher pause for a moment in the empty space, and then turn very slowly until he was directly facing Vorbis. He took a few steps forward then, and held the lantern out as he appeared to regard the deacon critically. "Hmm," he said. "You are the . . . perpetrator?" said Vorbis. "Indeed. Didactylos is my name." "You are blind?" "Only as far as vision is concerned, my lord." "Yet you carry a lantern," said Vorbis. "Doubtless for some catchword reason. Probably you'll tell me you're looking for an honest man?" "I don't know, my lord. Perhaps you could tell me what he looks like?" "I should strike you down now," said Vorbis. "Oh, certainly." Vorbis indicated the book. "These lies. This scandal. This . . . this lure to drag the minds of men from the path of true knowledge. You dare to stand before me and declare"-he pushed the book with a toe-"that the world is flat and travels through the void on the back of a giant turtle?" Brutha held his breath. So did history. Affirm your belief, Brutha thought. Just once, someone please stand up to Vorbis. I can't. But someone . . . He found his eyes swiveling toward Simony, who stood on the other side of Vorbis's chair. The sergeant looked transfixed, fascinated. Didactylos drew himself up to his full height. He half-turned and for a moment his blank gaze passed across Brutha. The lantern was extended at arm's length. "No," he said. "When every honest man knows that the world is a sphere, a perfect shape, bound to spin around the sphere of the Sun as Man orbits the central truth of Om," said Vorbis, "and the stars-” Brutha leaned forward, heart pounding. "My lord?" he whispered. "What?" snapped Vorbis. "He said `no,' " said Brutha. "That's right," said Didactylos. Vorbis sat absolutely motionless for a moment. Then his jaw moved a fraction, as if he was rehearsing some words under his breath. "You deny it?" he said. "Let it be a sphere," said Didactylos. "No problem with a sphere. No doubt special arrangements are made for everything to stay on. And the Sun can be another larger sphere, a long way off. Would you like the Moon to orbit the world or the Sun? I advise the world. More hierarchical, and a splendid example to us all." Brutha was seeing something he'd never seen before. Vorbis was looking bewildered. "But you wrote . . . you said the world is on the back of a giant turtle! You gave the turtle a name!" Didactylos shrugged. "Now I know better," he said. "Who ever heard of a turtle ten thousand miles long? Swimming through the emptiness of space? Hah. For stupidity! I am embarrassed to think of it now." Vorbis shut his mouth. Then he opened it again. "This is how an Ephebian philosopher behaves?" he said. Didactylos shrugged again. "It is how any true philosopher behaves," he said. "One must always be ready to embrace new ideas, take account of new proofs. Don't you agree? And you have brought us many new points"-a gesture seemed to take in, quite by accident, the Omnian bowmen around the room-"for me to ponder. I can always be swayed by powerful argument." "Your lies have already poisoned the world!" "Then I shall write another book," said Didactylos calmly. "Think how it will look-proud Didactylos swayed by the arguments of the Omnians. A full retraction. Hmm? In fact, with your permission, lord-I know you have much to do, looting and burning and so on-I will retire to my barrel right away and start work on it. A universe of spheres. Balls spinning through space. Hmm. Yes. With your permission, lord, I will write you more balls than you can imagine . . ." The old philosopher turned and, very slowly, walked towards the exit. Vorbis watched him go. Brutha saw him half-raise his hand to signal the guards, and then lower it again. Vorbis turned to the Tyrant. "So much for your-" he began. "Coo-ee!" The lantern sailed through the doorway and shattered against Vorbis's skull. "Nevertheless . . . the Turtle Moves!" Vorbis leapt to his feet. "I-” he screamed, and then got a grip on himself. He waved irritably at a couple of the guards. "I want him caught. Now. And . . . Brutha?" Brutha could hardly hear him for the rush of blood in his ears. Didactylos had been a better thinker than he'd thought. "Yes, lord?" "You will take a party of men, and you will take them to the Library . . . and then, Brutha, you will burn the Library."     Didactylos was blind, but it was dark. The pursuing guards could see, except that there was nothing to see by. And they hadn't spent their lives wandering the twisty, uneven and above all many-stepped lanes of Ephebe. "-eight, nine, ten, eleven," muttered the philosopher, bounding up a pitch-dark flight of steps and haring around a corner. "Argh, ow, that was my knee," muttered most of the guards, in a heap about halfway up. One made it to the top, though. By starlight he could just make out the skinny figure, bounding madly along the street. He raised his crossbow. The old fool wasn't even dodging . . . A perfect target. There was a twang. The guard looked puzzled for a moment. The bow toppled from his hands, firing itself as it hit the cobbles and sending its bolt ricocheting off a statue. He looked down at the feathered shaft sticking out of his chest, and then at the figure detaching itself from the shadows. "Sergeant Simony?" he whispered. "I'm sorry," said Simony. "I really am. But the Truth is important." The soldier opened his mouth to give his opinion of the truth and then slumped forward. He opened his eyes. Simony was walking away. Everything looked lighter. It was still dark. But now he could see in the darkness. Everything was shades of gray. And the cobbles under his hand had somehow become a coarse black sand. He looked up. ON YOUR FEET, PRIVATE ICHLOS. He stood up sheepishly. Now he was more than just a soldier, an anonymous figure to chase and be killed and be no more than a shadowy bit-player in other people's lives. Now he was Dervi Ichlos, aged thirtyeight, comparatively blameless in the general scheme of things, and dead. He raised a hand to his lips uncertainly. "You're the judge?" he said. NOT ME. Ichlos looked at the sands stretching away. He knew instinctively what he had to do. He was far less sophisticated than General Fri'it, and took more notice of songs he'd learned in his childhood. Besides, he had an advantage. He'd had even less religion than the general. JUDGEMENT IS AT THE END OF THE DESERT. Ichlos tried to smile. "My mum told me about this," he said. "When you're dead, you have to walk a desert. And you see everything properly, she said. And remember everything right." Death studiously did nothing to indicate his feelings either way. "Might meet a few friends on the way, eh?" said the soldier. POSSIBLY. Ichlos set out. On the whole, he thought, it could have been worse.     Urn clambered across the shelves like a monkey, pulling books out of their racks and throwing them down to the floor. "I can carry about twenty," he said. "But which twenty?" "Always wanted to do that," murmured Didactylos happily. "Upholding truth in the face of tyranny and so on. Hah! One man, unafraid of the-” "What to take? What to take?" shouted Urn. "We don't need Grido's Mechanics," said Didactylos. "Hey, I wish I could have seen the look on his face! Damn good shot, considering. I just hope someone wrote down what I-” "Principles of gearing! Theory of water expansion!" shouted Urn. "But we don't need Ibid's Civics or Gnomon's Ectopia, that's for sure-” "What? They belong to all mankind!" snapped Didactylos. "Then if all mankind will come and help us carry them, that's fine," said Urn. "But if it's just the two of us, I prefer to carry something useful." "Useful? Books on mechanisms?" "Yes! They can show people how to live better!" "And these show people how to be people," said Didactylos. "Which reminds me. Find me another lantern. I feel quite blind without one-” The Library door shook to a thunderous knocking. It wasn't the knocking of people who expected the door to be opened. "We could throw some of the others into the-” The hinges leapt out of the walls. The door thudded down. Soldiers scrambled over it, swords drawn. "Ah, gentlemen," said Didactylos. "Pray don't disturb my circles." The corporal in charge looked at him blankly, and then down at the floor. "What circles?" he said. "Hey, how about giving me a pair of compasses and coming back in, say, half an hour?" "Leave him, corporal," said Brutha. He stepped over the door. "I said leave him." "But I got orders to-” "Are you deaf? If you are, the Quisition can cure that," said Brutha, astonished at the steadiness of his own voice. "You don't belong to the Quisition," said the corporal. "No. But I know a man who does," said Brutha. "You are to search the palace for books. Leave him with me. He's an old man. What harm can he do?" The corporal looked hesitantly from Brutha to his prisoners. "Very good, corporal. I will take over." They all turned. "Did you hear me?" said Sergeant Simony, pushing his way forward. "But the deacon told us-” "Corporal?" "Yes, sergeant?" "The deacon is far away. I am right here." "Yes, sergeant." Go. "Yes, sergeant." Simony cocked an ear as the soldiers marched away. Then he stuck his sword in the door and turned to Didactylos. He made a fist with his left hand and brought his right hand down on it, palm extended. "The Turtle Moves," he said. "That all depends," said the philosopher, cautiously. "I mean I am . . . a friend," he said. "Why should we trust you?" said Urn. "Because you haven't got any choice," said Sergeant Simony briskly. "Can you get us out of here?" said Brutha. Simony glared at him. "You?" he said. "Why should I get you out of here? You're an inquisitor!" He grasped his sword. Brutha backed away. "I'm not!" "On the ship, when the captain sounded you, you just said nothing," said Simony. "You're not one of us." "I don't think I'm one of them, either," said Brutha. "I'm one of mine." He gave Didactylos an imploring look, which was a wasted effort, and turned it towards Urn instead. "I don't know about this soldier," he said. "All I know is that Vorbis means to have you killed and he will burn your Library. But I can help. I worked it out on the way here." "And don't listen to him," said Simony. He dropped on one knee in front of Didactylos, like a supplicant. "Sir, there are . . . some of us . . . who know your book for what it is . . . see, I have a copy . . ." He fumbled inside his breastplate. "We copied it out," said Simony. "One copy! That's all we had! But it's been passed around. Some of us who could read, read it to the others! It makes so much sense!" "Er . . ." said Didactylos. "What?" Simony waved his hands in excitement. "Because we know it-I've been to places that-it's true! There is a Great Turtle. The turtle does move! We don't need gods!" "Urn? No one's stripped the copper off the roof, have they?" said Didactylos. "Don't think so." "Remind me not to talk to this chap outside, then." "You don't understand!" said Simony. "I can save you. You have friends in unexpected places. Come on. I'll just kill this priest . . ." He gripped his sword. Brutha backed away. "No! I can help, too! That's why I came. When I saw you in front of Vorbis I knew what I could do!" "What can you do?" sneered Urn. "I can save the Library." "What? Put it on your back and run away?" sneered Simony. "No. I don't mean that. How many scrolls are there?" "About seven hundred," said Didactylos. "How many of them are important?" "All of them!" said Urn. "Maybe a couple of hundred," said Didactylos, mildly. "Uncle! " "All the rest is just wind and vanity publishing," said Didactylos. "But they're books!" "I may be able to take more than that," said Brutha slowly. "Is there a way out?" "There . . . could be," said Didactylos. "Don't tell him!" said Simony. "Then all your books will burn," said Brutha. He pointed to Simony. "He said you haven't got a choice. So you haven't got anything to lose, have you?" "He's a-” Simony began. "Everyone shut up," said Didactylos. He stared past Brutha's ear. "There may be a way out," he said. "What do you intend?" "I don't believe this!" said Urn. "There's Omnians here and you're telling them there's another way out!" "There's tunnels all through this rock," said Didactylos. "Maybe, but we don't tell people!" "I'm inclined to trust this person," said Didactylos. "He's got an honest face. Speaking philosophically." "Why should we trust him?" "Anyone stupid enough to expect us to trust him in these circumstances must be trustworthy," said Didactylos. "He'd be too stupid to be deceitful." "I can walk out of here right now," said Brutha. "And where will your Library be then?" "You see?" said Simony. "Just when things apparently look dark, suddenly we have unexpected friends everywhere," said Didactylos. "What is your plan, young man?" "I haven't got one," said Brutha. "I just do things, one after the other." "And how long will doing things one after another take you?" "About ten minutes, I think." Simony glared at Brutha. "Now get the books," said Brutha. "And I shall need some light." "But you can't even read!" said Urn. "I'm not going to read them." Brutha looked blankly at the first scroll, which happened to be De Chelonian Mobile. "Oh. My god," he said. "Something wrong?" said Didactylos. "Could someone fetch my tortoise?"     Simony trotted through the palace. No one was paying him much attention. Most of the Ephebian guard was outside the labyrinth, and Vorbis had made it clear to anyone who was thinking of venturing inside just what would happen to the palace's inhabitants. Groups of Omnian soldiers were looting in a disciplined sort of way. Besides, he was returning to his quarters. There was a tortoise in Brutha's room. It was sitting on the table, between a rolled-up scroll and a gnawed melon rind and, insofar as it was possible to tell with tortoises, was asleep. Simony grabbed it without ceremony, rammed it into his pack, and hurried back towards the Library. He hated himself for doing it. The stupid priest had ruined everything! But Didactylos had made him promise, and Didactylos was the man who knew the Truth. All the way there he had the impression that someone was trying to attract his attention.     "You can remember them just by looking?" said Urn. "Yes." "The whole scroll?" "Yes." "I don't believe you." "The word LIBRVM outside this building has a chip in the top of the first letter,' said Brutha. "Xeno wrote Reflections, and old Aristocrates wrote Platitudes, and Didactylos thinks Ibid's Discourses are bloody stupid. There are six hundred paces from the Tyrant's throne room to the Library. There is a-” "He's got a good memory, you've got to grant him that," said Didactylos. "Show him some more scrolls." "How will we know he's remembered them?" Urn demanded, unrolling a scroll of geometrical theorems. "He can't read! And even if he could read, he can't write! " "We shall have to teach him." Brutha looked at a scroll full of maps. He shut his eyes. For a moment the jagged outline glowed against the inside of his eyelids, and then he felt them settle into his mind. They were still there somewhere-he could bring them back at any time. Urn unrolled another scroll. Pictures of animals. This one, drawings of plants and lots of writing. This one, just writing. This one, triangles and things. They settled down in his memory. After a while, he wasn't even aware of the scroll unrolling. He just had to keep looking. He wondered how much he could remember. but that was stupid. You just remembered everything you saw. A tabletop, or a scroll full of writing. There was as much information in the grain and coloring of the wood as there was in Xeno's Reflections. Even so, he was conscious of a certain heaviness of mind, a feeling that if he turned his head sharply then memory would slosh out of his ears. Urn picked up a scroll at random and unrolled it partway. "Describe what an Ambiguous Puzuma looks like," he demanded. "Don't know," said Brutha. He blinked. "So much for Mr. Memory," said Urn. "He can't read, boy. That's not fair," said the philosopher. "All right. I mean-the fourth picture in the third scroll you saw," said Urn. "A four-legged creature facing left," said Brutha. "A large head similar to a cat's and broad shoulders with the body tapering towards the hindquarters. The body is a pattern of dark and light squares. The ears are very small and laid flat against the head. There are six whiskers. The tail is stubby. Only the hind feet are clawed, three claws on each foot. The fore feet are about the same length as the head and held up against the body. A band of thick hair-” "That was fifty scrolls ago," said Urn. "He saw the whole scroll for a second or two." They looked at Brutha. Brutha blinked again. "You know everything?" said Urn. "I don't know." "You've got half the Library in your head!" "I feel . . . a . . . bit . . ."     The Library of Ephebe was a furnace. The flames burned blue where the melted copper roof dripped on to the shelves. All libraries, everywhere, are connected by the bookworm holes in space created by the strong spacetime distortions found around any large collections of books. Only a very few librarians learn the secret, and there are inflexible rules about making use of the fact. Because it amounts to time travel, and time travel causes big problems. But if a library is on fire, and down in the history books as having been on fire . . . There was a small pop, utterly unheard among the crackling of the bookshelves, and a figure dropped out of nowhere on to a small patch of unburned floor in the middle of the Library. It looked ape-like, but it moved in a very purposeful way. Long simian arms beat out the flames, pulled scrolls off the shelves, and stuffed them into a sack. When the sack was full, it knuckled back into the middle of the room . . . and vanished, with another pop. This has nothing to do with the story. Nor does the fact that, some time later, scrolls thought to have been destroyed in the Great Ephebian Library Fire turned up in remarkably good condition in the Library of Unseen University in Ankh-Morpork. But it's nice to know, even so.     Brutha awoke with the smell of the sea in his nostrils. At least it was what people think of as the smell of the sea, which is the stink of antique fish and rotten seaweed. He was in some sort of shed. Such light as managed to come through its one unglazed window was red, and flickered. One end of the shed was open to the water. The ruddy light showed a few figures clustered around something there. Brutha gently probed the contents of his memory. Everything seemed to be there, the Library scrolls neatly arranged. The words were as meaningless to him as any other written word, but the pictures were interesting. More interesting than most things in his memory, anyway. He sat up, carefully. "You're awake, then," said the voice of Om, in his head. "Feel a bit full, do we? Feel a bit like a stack of shelves? Feel like we've got big notices saying "SILENCIOS!" all over the place inside our head? What did you go and do that for?" "I . . . don't know. It seemed like . . . the next thing to do. Where are you?" "Your soldier friend has got me in his pack. Thanks for looking after me so carefully, by the way." Brutha managed to get to his feet. The world revolved round him for a moment, adding a third astronomical theory to the two currently occupying the minds of local thinkers. He peered out of the window. The red light was coming from fires all over Ephebe, but there was one huge glow over the Library. "Guerrilla activity," said Om. "Even the slaves are fighting. Can't understand why. You think they'd jump at the chance to be revenged on their masters, eh?" "I suppose a slave in Ephebe has the chance to be free," said Brutha. There was a hiss from the other end of the shed, and a metallic, whirring noise. Brutha heard Urn say, "There! I told you. Just a block in the tubes. Lets get some more fuel in." Brutha tottered towards the group. They were clustered round a boat. As boats went, it was of normal shape-a pointed end in front, a flat end at the back. But there was no mast. What there was, was a large, coppercolored ball, hanging in a wooden framework toward the back of the boat. There was an iron basket underneath it, in which someone had already got a good fire going. And the ball was spinning in its frame, in a cloud of steam. "I've seen that," he said. "In De Chelonian Mobile. There was a drawing." "Oh, it's the walking Library," said Didactylos. "Yes. You're right. Illustrating the principle of reaction. I never asked Urn to build a big one. This is what comes of thinking with your hands." "I took it round the lighthouse one night last week," said Urn. "No problems at all." "Ankh-Morpork is a lot further than that," said Simony. "Yes, it is five times further than the distance between Ephebe and Omnia," said Brutha solemnly. "There was a scroll of maps," he added. Steam rose in scalding clouds from the whirring ball. Now he was closer, Brutha could see that half a dozen very short oars had been joined together in a star-shaped pattern behind the copper globe, and hung over the rear of the boat. Wooden cogwheels and a couple of endless belts fiIled the intervening space. As the globe spun, the paddles thrashed at the air. "How does it work?" he said. "Very simple," said Urn. "The fire makes-” "We haven't got time for this," said Simony. "-makes the water hot and so it gets angry," said the apprentice philosopher. "So it rushes out of the globe through these four little nozzles to get away from the fire. The plumes of steam push the globe around, and the cogwheels and Legibus's screw mechanism transfer the motion to the paddles which turn, pushing the boat through the water." "Very philosophical," said Didactylos. Brutha felt that he ought to stand up for Omnian progress. "The great doors of the Citadel weigh tons but are opened solely by the power of faith," he said. "One push and they swing open." "I should very much like to see that," said Urn. Brutha felt a faint sinful twinge of pride that Omnia still had anything he could be proud of. "Very good balance and some hydraulics, probably." "Oh." Simony thoughtfully prodded the mechanism with his sword. "Have you thought of all the possibilities?" he said. Urn's hands began to weave through the air. "You mean mighty ships ploughing the wine-dark sea with no-” he began. "On land, I was thinking," said Simony. "Perhaps . . . on some sort of cart . . ." "Oh, no point in putting a boat on a cart." Simony's eyes gleamed with the gleam of a man who had seen the future and found it covered with armor plating. "Hmm," he said. "It's all very well, but it's not philosophy," said Didactylos. "Where's the priest?" "I'm here, but I'm not a-” "How're you feeling? You went out like a candle back there." "I'm . . . better now." "One minute upright, next minute a draftexcluder." "I'm much better." "Happen a lot, does it?" "Sometimes." "Remembering the scrolls okay?" "I . . . think so. Who set fire to the Library?" Urn looked up from the mechanism. "He did," he said. Brutha stared at Didactylos. "You set fire to your own Library?" "I'm the only one qualified," said the philosopher. "Besides, it keeps it out of the way of Vorbis." "What?" "Suppose he'd read the scrolls? He's bad enough as it is. He'd be a lot worse with all that knowledge inside him." "He wouldn't have read them," said Brutha. "Oh, he would. I know that type," said Didactylos "All holy piety in public, and all peeled grapes and self-indulgence in private." "Not Vorbis," said Brutha, with absolute certainty. "He wouldn't have read them." "Well, anyway," said Didactylos, "if it had to be done, I did it." Urn turned away from the bow of the boat, where he was feeding more wood into the brazier under the globe. "Can we all get on board?" he said. Brutha eased his way on a rough bench seat amidships, or whatever it was called. The air smelled of hot water. "Right," said Urn. He pulled a lever. The spinning paddles hit the water; there was a jerk and then, steam hanging in the air behind it, the boat moved forward. "What's the name of this vessel?" said Didactylos. Urn looked surprised. "Name?" he said. "It's a boat. A thing, of the nature of things. It doesn't need a name." "Names are more philosophical," said Didactylos, with a trace of sulkiness. "And you should have broken an amphora of wine over it." "That would have been a waste." The boat chugged out of the boathouse and into the dark harbor. Away to one side, an Ephebian galley was on fire. The whole of the city was a patchwork of flame. "But you've got an amphora on board?" said Didactylos. "Yes." "Pass it over, then." White water trailed behind the boat. The paddles churned. "No wind. No rowers!" said Simony. "Do you even begin to understand what you have here, Urn?" "Absolutely. The operating principles are amazingly simple," said Urn. "That wasn't what I meant. I meant the things you could do with this power!" Urn pushed another log on the fire. "It's just the transforming of heat into work," he said. "I suppose . . . oh, the pumping of water. Mills that can grind even when the wind isn't blowing. That sort of thing? Is that what you had in mind?" Simony the soldier hesitated. "Yeah," he said. "Something like that." Brutha whispered, "Om?" "Yes?" "Are you all right?" "It smells like a soldier's knapsack in here. Get me out." The copper ball spun madly over the fire. It gleamed almost as brightly as Simony's eyes. Brutha tapped him on the shoulder. "Can I have my tortoise?" Simony laughed bitterly. "There's good eating on one of these things," he said, fishing out Om. "Everyone says so," said Brutha. He lowered his voice to a whisper. "What sort of place is Ankh?" "A city of a million souls," said the voice of Om, "many of them occupying bodies. And a thousand religions. There's even a temple to the small gods! Sounds like a place where people don't have trouble believing things. Not a bad place for a fresh start, I think. With my brains and your . . . with my brains, we should soon be in business again." "You don't want to go back to Omnia?" "No point," said the voice of Om. "It's always possible to overthrow an established god. People get fed up, they want a change. But you can't overthrow yourself, can you?" "Who're you talking to, priest?" said Simony. "I . . . er . . . was praying." "Hah! To Om? You might as well pray to that tortoise." "Yes." "I am ashamed for Omnia," said Simony. "Look at us. Stuck in the past. Held back by repressive monotheism. Shunned by our neighbors. What good has our God been to us? Gods? Hah!" "Steady on, steady on," said Didactylos. "We're on seawater and that's highly conductive armor you're wearing." "Oh, I say nothing about other gods," said Simony quickly. "I have not the right. But Om? A bogeyman for the Quisition! If he exists, let him strike me down here and now!" Simony drew his sword and held it up at arm's length. Om sat peacefully on Brutha's lap. "I like this boy," he said. "He's almost as good as a believer. It's like love and hate, know what I mean?" Simony sheathed his sword again. "Thus I refute Om," he said. "Yes, but what's the alternative?" "Philosophy! Practical philosophy! Like Urn's engine there. It could drag Omnia kicking and screaming into the Century of the Fruitbat!" "Kicking and screaming," said Brutha. "By any means necessary," said Simony. He beamed at them. "Don't worry about him," said Om. "We'll be far away. Just as well, too. I don't think Omnia's going to be a popular country when news of last night's work gets about." "But it was Vorbis's fault!" said Brutha out loud. "He started the whole thing! He sent poor Brother Murduck, and then he had him killed so he could blame it on the Ephebians! He never intended any peace treaty! He just wanted to get into the palace!" "Beats me how he managed that, too," said Urn. "No one ever got through the labyrinth without a guide. How did he do it?" Didactylos's blind eyes sought out Brutha. "Can't imagine," he said. Brutha hung his head. "He really did all that?" said Simony. "Yes." "You idiot! You total sandhead!" screamed Om. "And you'd tell this to other people?" said Simony, insistently. "I suppose so." "You'd speak out against the Quisition?" Brutha stared miserably into the night. Behind them, the flames of Ephebe had merged into one orange spark. "All I can say is what I remember," he said. "We're dead," said Om. "Throw me over the side, why don't you? This bonehead will want to take us back to Omnia!" Simony rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Vorbis has many enemies," he said, "in certain circumstances. Better he should be killed, but some would call that murder. Or even martyrdom. But a trial . . . if there was evidence . . . if they even thought there could be evidence . . " "I can see his mind working!" Om screamed. "We'd all be safe if you'd shut up!" "Vorbis on trial," Simony mused. Brutha blanched at the thought. It was the kind of thought that was almost impossible to hold in the mind. It was the kind of thought that made no sense. Vorbis on trial? Trials were things that happened to other people. He remembered Brother Murduck. And the soldiers who had been lost in the desert. And all the things that had been done to people, even to Brutha. "Tell him you can't remember!" Om yelled. "Tell him you can't recall!" "And if he was on trial," said Simony, "he'd be found guilty. No one would dare do anything else." Thoughts always moved slowly through Brutha's mind, like icebergs. They arrived slowly and left slowly and when they were there they occupied a lot of space, much of it below the surface. He thought: the worst thing about Vorbis isn't that he's evil, but that he makes good people do evil. He turns people into things like himself. You can't help it. You catch it off him. There was no sound but the slosh of water against the Unnamed Boat's hull and the spinning of the philosophical engine. "We'd be caught if we returned to Omnia," said Brutha slowly. "We can land away from the ports," said Simony eagerly. "Ankh-Morpork!" shouted Om. "First we should take Mr. Didactylos to Ankh-Morpork," said Brutha. "Then-I'll come back to Omnia." "You can damn well leave me there too!" said Om. "I'll soon find some believers in Ankh-Morpork, don't you worry, they believe anything there!" "Never seen Ankh-Morpork," said Didactylos. "Still, we live and learn. That's what I always say." He turned to face the soldier. "Kicking and screaming." "There's some exiles in Ankh," said Simony. "Don't worry. You'll be safe there." "Amazing!" said Didactylos. "And to think, this morning, I didn't even know I was in danger." He sat back in the boat. "Life in this world," he said, "is, as it were, a sojourn in a cave. What can we know of reality? For all we see of the true nature of existence is, shall we say, no more than bewildering and amusing shadows cast upon the inner wall of the cave by the unseen blinding light of absolute truth, from which we may or may not deduce some glimmer of veracity, and we as troglodyte seekers of wisdom can only lift our voices to the unseen and say, humbly, `Go on, do Deformed Rabbit . . . it's my favorite.' "     Vorbis stirred the ashes with his foot. "No bones," he said. The soldiers stood silently. The fluffy gray flakes collapsed and blew a little way in the dawn breeze. "And the wrong sort of ash," said Vorbis. The sergeant opened his mouth to say something. "Be assured I know that of which I speak," said Vorbis. He wandered over to the charred trapdoor, and prodded it with his toe. "We followed the tunnel," said the sergeant, in the tones of one who hopes against experience that sounding helpful will avert the wrath to come. "It comes out near the docks." "But if you enter it from the docks it does not come out here," Vorbis mused. The smoking ashes seemed to hold an endless fascination for him. The sergeant's brow wrinkled. "Understand?" said Vorbis. "The Ephebians wouldn't build a way out that was a way in. The minds that devised the labyrinth would not work like that. There would be . . . valves. Sequences of triggerstones, perhaps. Trips that trip only one way. Whirring blades that come out of unexpected walls." ` Ah. "Most intricate and devious, I have no doubt." The sergeant ran a dry tongue over his lips. He could not read Vorbis like a book, because there had never been a book like Vorbis. But Vorbis had certain habits of thought that you learned, after a while. "You wish me to take the squad and follow it up from the docks," he said hollowly. "I was just about to suggest it," said Vorbis. "Yes, lord." Vorbis patted the sergeant on the shoulder. "But do not worry!" he said cheerfully. "Om will protect the strong in faith." "Yes, lord." "And the last man can bring me a full report. But first . . . they are not in the city?" "We have searched it fully, lord." "And no one left by the gate? Then they left by sea." "All the Ephebian war vessels are accounted for, Lord Vorbis." "This bay is lousy with small boats." "With nowhere to go but the open sea, sir." Vorbis looked out at the Circle Sea. It filled the world from horizon to horizon. Beyond lay the smudge of the Sto plains and the ragged line of the Ramtops, all the way to the towering peaks that the heretics called the Hub but which was, he _ knew, the Pole, visible around the curve of the world only because of the way light bent in atmosphere, just as it did in water . . . and he saw a smudge of white, curling over the distant ocean. Vorbis had very good eyesight, from a height. He picked up a handful of gray ash, which had once been Dykeri's Principles of Navigation, and let it drift through his fingers. "Om has sent us a fair wind," he said. "Let us get down to the docks." Hope waved optimistically in the waters of the sergeant's despair. "You won't be wanting us to explore the tunnel, lord?" he said. "Oh, no. You can do that when we return."     Urn prodded at the copper globe with a piece of wire while the Unnamed Boat wallowed in the waves. "Can't you beat it?" said Simony, who was not up to speed on the difference between machines and people. "It's a philosophical engine," said Urn. "Beating won't help." "But you said machines could be our slaves," said Simony. "Not the beating sort," said Urn. "The nozzles are bunged up with salt. When the water rushes out of the globe it leaves the salt behind." "Why?" "I don't know. Water likes to travel light." "We're becalmed! Can you do anything about it?" "Yes, wait for it to cool down and then clean it out and put some more water in it." Simony looked around distractedly. "But we're still in sight of the coast!" "You might be," said Didactylos. He was sitting in the middle of the boat with his hands crossed on the top of his walking-stick, looking like an old man who doesn't often get taken out for an airing and is quite enjoying it. "Don't worry. No one could see us out here," said Urn. He prodded at the mechanism. "Anyway, I'm a bit worried about the screw. It was invented to move water along, not move along on water." "You mean it's confused?" said Simony. "Screwed up," said Didactylos happily. Brutha lay in the pointed end, looking down at the water. A small squid siphoned past, just under the surface. He wondered what it was- -and knew it was the common bottle squid, of the class Cephalopoda, phylum Mollusca, and that it had an internal cartilaginous support instead of a skeleton and a well-developed nervous system and large, image-forming eyes that were quite similar to vertebrate eyes. The knowledge hung in the forefront of his mind for a moment, and then faded away. "Om?" Brutha whispered. "What?" "What're you doing?" "Trying to get some sleep. Tortoises need a lot of sleep, you know." Simony and Urn were bent over the philosophical engine. Brutha stared at the globe -a sphere of radius r, which therefore had a volume V = (4/3)(pi) rrr, and surface area A = 4(pi) rr- "Oh, my god . . ." "What now?" said the voice of the tortoise. Didactylos's face turned towards Brutha, who was clutching at his head. "What's a pi?" Didactylos reached out a hand and steadied Brutha. "What's the matter?" said Om. "I don't know! It's just words! I don't know what's in the books! I can't read!" "Getting plenty of sleep is vital," said Om. "It builds a healthy shell." Brutha sagged to his knees in the rocking boat. He felt like a householder coming back unexpectedly and finding the old place full of strangers. They were in every room, not menacing, but just filling the space with their thereness. "The books are leaking!" "I don't see how that can happen," said Didactylos. "You said you just looked at them. You didn't read them. You don't know what they mean." "They know what they mean!" "Listen. They're just books, of the nature of books," said Didactylos. "They're not magical. If you could know what books contained just by looking at them, Urn there would be a genius." "What's the matter with him?" said Simony. "He thinks he knows too much." "No! I don't know anything! Not really know," said Brutha. "I just remembered that squids have an internal cartilaginous support!" "I can see that would be a worry," said Simony. "Huh. Priests? Mad, the lot of them." "No! I don't know what cartilaginous means!" "Skeletal connective tissue," said Didactylos. "Think of bony and leathery at the same time." Simony snorted. "Well, well," he said, "we live and learn, just like you said." "Some of us even do it the other way round," said Didactylos. "Is that supposed to mean something?" "It's philosophy," said Didactylos. "And sit down, boy. You're making the boat rock. We're overloaded as it is." "It's being buoyed upward by a force equal to the weight of the displaced fluid," muttered Brutha, sagging. "Hmm?" "Except that I don't know what buoyed means." Urn looked up from the sphere. "We're ready to start again," he said. "Just bale some water in here with your helmet, mister." "And then we shall go again?" "Well, we can start getting up steam," said Urn. He wiped his hands on his toga. "Y'know," said Didactylos, "there are different ways of learning things. I'm reminded of the time when old Prince Lasgere of Tsort asked me how he could become learned, especially since he hadn't got any time for this reading business. I said to him, `There is no royal road to learning, sire,' and he said to me, `Bloody well build one or I shall have your legs chopped off. Use as many slaves as you like.' A refreshingly direct approach, I always thought. Not a man to mince words. People, yes. But not words." "Why didn't he chop your legs off?" said Urn. "I built him his road. More or less." "How? I thought that was just a metaphor." "You're learning, Urn. So I found a dozen slaves who could read and they sat in his bedroom at night whispering choice passages to him while he slept." "Did that work?" "Don't know. The third slave stuck a six-inch dagger in his ear. Then after the revolution the new ruler let me out of prison and said I could leave the country if I promised not to think of anything on the way to the border. But I don't believe there was anything wrong with the idea in principle." Urn blew on the fire. "Takes a little while to heat up the water," he explained. Brutha lay back in the bow again. If he concentrated, he could stop the knowledge flowing. The thing to do was avoid looking at things. Even a cloud- -devised by natural philosophy as a means of occasioning shade on the surface of the world, thus preventing overheating- -caused an intrusion. Om was fast asleep. Knowing without learning, thought Brutha. No. The other way round. Learning without knowing . . .     Nine-tenths of Om dozed in his shell. The rest of him drifted like a fog in the real world of the gods, which is a lot less interesting than the three-dimensional world inhabited by most of humanity. He thought: we're a little boat. She'll probably not even notice us. There's the whole of the ocean. She can't be everywhere. Of course, she's got many believers. But we're only a little boat . . . He felt the minds of inquisitive fishes nosing around the end of the screw. Which was odd, because in the normal course of things fishes were not known for their- "Greetings," said the Queen of the Sea. "Ah." "I see you're still managing to exist, little tortoise." "Hanging in there," said Om. "No problems." There was a pause which, if it were taking place between two people in the human world, would have been spent in coughing and looking embarrassed. But gods are never embarrassed. "I expect," said Om guardedly, "you are looking for your price." "This vessel and everyone in it," said the Queen. "But your believer can be saved, as is the custom." "What good are they to you? One of them's an atheist." "Hah! They all believe, right at the end." "That doesn't seem . . ." Om hesitated. "Fair?" Now the Sea Queen paused. "What's fair?" "Like . . . underlying justice?" said Om. He wondered why he said it. "Sounds a human idea to me." "They're inventive, I'll grant you. But what I meant was . . . I mean . . . they've done nothing to deserve it." "Deserve? They're human. What's deserve got to do with it?" Om had to concede this. He wasn't thinking like a god. This bothered him. "It's just . . ." "You've been relying on one human for too long, little god." "I know. I know." Om sighed. Minds leaked into one another. He was seeing too much from a human point of view. "Take the boat, then. If you must. I just wish it was-” "Fair?" said the Sea Queen. She moved forward. Om felt her all around him. "There's no such thing," she said. "Life's like a beach. And then you die." Then she was gone. Om let himself retreat into the shell of his shell. "Brutha?" "Yes?" "Can you swim?" The globe started to spin. Brutha heard Urn say, "There. Soon be on our way." "We'd better be." This was Simony. "There's a ship out there." "This thing goes faster than anything with sails or oars." Brutha looked across the bay. A sleek Omnian ship was passing the lighthouse. It was still a long way off, but Brutha stared at it with a dread and expectation that magnified better than telescopes. "It's moving fast," said Simony. "I don't understand it-there's no wind." Urn looked round at the flat calm. "There can't be wind there and not here," he said. "I said, can you swim?" The voice of the tortoise was insistent in Brutha's head. "I don't know," said Brutha. "Do you think you could find out quickly?" Urn looked upwards. "Oh," he said. Clouds had massed over the Unnamed Boat. They were visibly spinning. "You've got to know!" shouted Om. "I thought you had a perfect memory!" "We used to splash around in the big cistern in the village," whispered Brutha. "I don't know if that counts!" Mist whipped off the surface of the sea. Brutha's ears popped. And still the Omnian ship came on, flying across the waves. "What do you call it when you've got a dead calm surrounded by winds-” Urn began. "Hurricane?" said Didactylos. Lightning crackled between sky and sea. Urn yanked at the lever that lowered the screw into the water. His eyes glowed almost as brightly as the lightning. "Now there's a power," he said. "Harnessing the lightning! The dream of mankind!" The Unnamed Boat surged forward. "Is it? It's not my dream," said Didactylos. "I always dream of a giant carrot chasing me through a field of lobsters." "I mean metaphorical dream, master," said Urn. "What's a metaphor?" said Simony. Brutha said, "What's a dream?" A pillar of lightning laced the mist. Secondary lightnings sparked off the spinning globe. "You can get it from cats," said Urn, lost in a philosophical world, as the Boat left a white wake behind it. "You stroke them with a rod of amber, and you get tiny lightnings . . . if I could magnify that a million times, no man would ever be a slave again and we could catch it in jars and do away with the night . . ." Lightning struck a few yards away. "We're in a boat with a large copper ball in the middle of a body of salt water," said Didactylos. "Thanks, Urn." "And the temples of the gods would be magnificently lit, of course," said Urn quickly. Didactylos tapped his stick on the hull. "It's a nice idea, but you'd never get enough cats," he said. The sea surged up. "Jump into the water!" Om shouted. "Why?" said Brutha. A wave almost overturned the boat. Rain hissed on the surface of the sphere, sent up a scalding spray. "I haven't got time to explain! Jump overboard! It's for the best! Trust me!" Brutha stood up, holding the sphere's framework to steady himself. "Sit down!" said Urn. "I'm just going out," said Brutha. "I may be some time." The boat rocked under him as he half-jumped, half-fell into the boiling sea. Lightning struck the sphere. As Brutha bobbed to the surface he saw, for a moment, the globe glowing white-hot and the Unnamed Boat, its screw almost out of the water, skimming away through the mists like a comet. It vanished in the clouds and rain. A moment later, above the noise of the storm, there was a muffled "boom." Brutha raised his hand. Om broke the surface, blowing seawater out of his nostrils. "You said it would be for the best!" screamed Brutha. "Well? We're still alive! And hold me out of the water! Tortoises can't swim!" "But they might be dead!" "Do you want to join them?" A wave submerged Brutha. For a moment the world was a dark green curtain, ringing in his ears. "I can't swim with one hand!" he shouted, as he broke surface again. "We'll be saved! She wouldn't dare!" "What do you mean?" Another wave slapped at Brutha, and suction dragged at his robes. "Om?" "Yes?" "I don't think I can swim . . ."     Gods are not very introspective. It has never been a survival trait. The ability to cajole, threaten, and terrify has always worked well enough. When you can flatten entire cities at a whim, a tendency toward quiet reflection and seeing-things-from-the-other-fellow's-point-of-view is seldom necessary. Which had led, across the multiverse, to men and women of tremendous brilliance and empathy devoting their entire lives to the service of deities who couldn't beat them at a quiet game of dominoes. For example, Sister Sestina of Quirm defied the wrath of a local king and walked unharmed across a bed of coals and propounded a philosophy of sensible ethics on behalf of a goddess whose only real interest was in hairstyles, and Brother Zephilite of Klatch left his vast estates and his family and spent his life ministering to the sick and poor on behalf of the invisible god F'rum, generally considered unable, should he have a backside, to find it with both hands, should he have hands. Gods never need to be very bright when there are humans around to be it for them. The Sea Queen was considered fairly dumb even by other gods. But there was a certain logic to her thoughts, as she moved deep below the storm-tossed waves. The little boat had been a tempting target . . . but here was a bigger one, full of people, sailing right into the storm. This one was fair game. The Sea Queen had the attention span of an onion bahji. And, by and large, she created her own sacrifices. And she believed in quantity.     The Fin of God plunged from wave crest to wave trough, the gale tearing at its sails. The captain fought his way through waist-high water to the prow, where Vorbis stood clutching the rail, apparently oblivious to the fact that the ship was wallowing half-submerged. "Sir! We must reef sail! We can't outrun this!" Green fire crackled on the tops of the masts. Vorbis turned. The light was reflected in the pit of his eyes. "It is all for the glory of Om," he said. "Trust is our sail, and glory is our destination." The captain had had enough. He was unsteady on the subject of religion, but felt fairly confident that after thirty years he knew something about the sea. "The ocean floor is our destination!" he shouted. Vorbis shrugged. "I did not say there would not be stops along the way," he said. The captain stared at him and then fought his way back across the heaving deck. What he knew about the sea was that storms like this didn't just happen You didn't just sail from calm water into the midst of a raging hurricane. This wasn't the sea. This was personal. Lightning struck the mainmast. There was a scream from the darkness as a mass of torn sail and rigging crashed on to the deck. The captain half-swam, half-climbed up the ladder to the wheel, where the helmsman was a shadow in the spray and the eerie storm glow. "We'll never make it alive!" CORRECT. "We'll have to abandon ship!" NO. WE WILL TAKE IT WITH US. IT'S A NICE SHIP. The captain peered closer in the murk. "Is that you, Bosun Coplei?" WOULD YOU LIKE ANOTHER GUESS? The hull hit a submerged rock and ripped open. Lightning struck the remaining mast and, like a paper boat that had been too long in the water, the Fin of God folded up. Baulks of timber splintered and fountained up into the whirling sky . . . And there was a sudden, velvety silence. The captain found that he had acquired a recent memory. It involved water, and a ringing in his ears, and the sensation of cold fire in his lungs. But it was fading. He walked over to the rail, his footsteps loud in the quietness, and looked over the side. Despite the fact that the recent memory included something about the ship being totally smashed, it now seemed to be whole again. In a way. "Uh," he said, "we appear to have run out of sea." YES. "And land, too." The captain tapped the rail. It was grayish, and slightly transparent. "Uh. Is this wood?" MORPHIC MEMORY. "Sorry?" YOU WERE A SAILOR. YOU HAVE HEARD A SHIP REFERRED TO AS A LIVING THING? "Oh, yes. You can't spend a night on a ship without feeling that it has a sou-” YES. The memory of Fin of God sailed on through the silence. There was the distant sighing of wind, or of the memory of wind. The blown-out corpses of dead gales. "Uh," said the ghost of the captain, "did you just say `were'?" YES. "I thought you did." The captain stared down. The crew was assembling on deck, looking up at him with anxious eyes. He looked down further. In front of the crew the ship's rats had assembled. There was a tiny robed shape in front of them. It said, SQUEAK. He thought: even rats have a Death . . . Death stood aside and beckoned to the captain. YOU HAVE THE WHEEL. "But-but where are we going?" WHO KNOWS? The captain gripped the spokes helplessly. "But . . . there's no stars that I recognize! No charts! What are the winds here? Where are the currents?" Death shrugged. The captain turned the wheel aimlessly. The ship glided on through the ghost of a sea. Then he brightened up. The worst had already happened. It was amazing how good it felt to know that. And if the worst had already happened . . . "Where's Vorbis?" he growled. HE SURVIVED. "Did he? There's no justice!" THERE'S JUST ME. Death vanished. The captain turned the wheel a bit, for the look of the thing. After all, he was still captain and this was still, in a way, a ship. "Mr. Mate?" The mate saluted. Sir!" "Um. Where shall we go now?" The mate scratched his head. "Well, cap'n, I did hear as the heathen Klatch have got this paradise place where there's drinking and singing and young women with bells on and . . . you know . . . regardless." The mate looked hopefully at his captain. "Regardless, eh?" said the captain thoughtfully. "So I did hear." The captain felt that he might be due some regardless. "Any idea how you get there?" "I think you get given instructions when you're alive," said the mate. "Oh." "And there're some barbarians up toward the Hub," said the mate, relishing the word, "who reckon they go to a big hall where there's all sorts to eat and drink." "And women?" "Bound to be." The captain frowned. "It's a funny thing," he said, "but why is it that the heathens and the barbarians seem to have the best places to go when they die?" "A bit of a poser, that," agreed the mate. "I s'pose it makes up for 'em . . . enjoying themselves all the time when they're alive, too?" He looked puzzled. Now that he was dead, the whole thing sounded suspicious. "I suppose you've no idea of the way to that paradise either?" said the captain. "Sorry, cap'n." "No harm in searching, though." The captain looked over the side. If you sailed for long enough, you were bound to strike a shore. And no harm in searching. A movement caught his eye. He smiled. Good. A sign. Maybe it was all for the best, after all . . . Accompanied by the ghosts of dolphins, the ghost of a ship sailed on . . .     Seagulls never ventured this far along the desert coast. Their niche was filled by the scalbie, a member of the crow family that the crow family would be the first to disown and never talked about in company. It seldom flew, but walked everywhere in a sort of lurching hop. Its distinctive call put listeners in mind of a malfunctioning digestive system. It looked like other birds looked after an oil slick. Nothing ate scalbies, except other scalbies. Scalbies ate things that made a vulture sick. Scalbies would eat vulture sick. Scalbies ate everything. One of them, on this bright new morning, sidled across the flea-hopping sand, pecking aimlessly at things in case pebbles and bits of wood had become edible overnight. In the scalbie's experience, practically anything became edible if it was left for long enough. It came across a mound lying on the tideline, and gave it a tentative jab with its beak. The mound groaned. The scalbie backed away hurriedly and turned its attention to a small domed rock beside the mound. It was pretty certain this hadn't been there yesterday, either. It essayed an exploratory peck. The rock extruded a head and said, "Bugger off, you evil sod." The scalbie leapt backward and then made a kind of running jump, which was the nearest any scalbie ever bothered to come to actual flight, on to a pile of sun-bleached driftwood. Things were looking up. If this rock was alive, then eventually it would be dead. The Great God Om staggered over to Brutha and butted him in the head with its shell until he groaned. "Wake up, lad. Rise and shine. Huphuphup. All ashore who's going ashore." Brutha opened an eye. "Wha' happened?" he said. "You're alive is what happened," said Om. Life's a beach, he remembered. And then you die. Brutha pulled himself into a kneeling position. There are beaches that cry out for brightly colored umbrellas. There are beaches that speak of the majesty of the sea. But this beach wasn't like that. It was merely a barren hem where the land met the ocean. Driftwood piled up on the high-tide line, scoured by the wind. The air buzzed with unpleasant small insects. There was a smell that suggested that something had rotted away, a long time ago, somewhere where the scalbies couldn't find it. It was not a good beach. "Oh. God." "Better than drowning," said Om encouragingly. "I wouldn't know." Brutha looked along the beach. "Is there any water to drink?" "Shouldn't think so," said Om. "Ossory V, verse 3, says that you made living water flow from the dry desert," said Brutha. "That was by way of being artistic license," said Om. "You can't even do that?" "No." Brutha looked at the desert again. Behind the driftwood lines, and a few patches of grass that appeared to be dying even while it grew, the dunes marched away. "Which way to Omnia?" he said. "We don't want to go to Omnia," said Om. Brutha stared at the tortoise. Then he picked him up. "I think it's this way," he said. Om's legs waggled frantically. "What do you want to go to Omnia for?" he said. "I don't want to," said Brutha. "But I'm going anyway."     The sun hung high above the beach. Or possibly it didn't. Brutha knew things about the sun now. They were leaking into his head. The Ephebians had been very interested in astronomy. Expletius had proved that the Disc was ten thousand miles across. Febrius, who'd stationed slaves with quick reactions and carrying voices all across the country at dawn, had proved that light travelled at about the same speed as sound. And Didactylos had reasoned that, in that case, in order to pass between the elephants, the sun had to travel at least thirty-five thousand miles in its orbit every day or, to put it another way, twice as fast as its own light. Which meant that mostly you could only ever see where the sun had been, except twice every day when it caught up with itself, and this meant that the whole sun was a faster-than-light particle, a tachyon or, as Didactylos put it, a bugger. It was still hot. The lifeless sea seemed to steam. Brutha trudged along, directly above the only piece of shadow for hundreds of miles. Even Om had stopped complaining. It was too hot. Here and there fragments of wood rolled in the scum at the edge of the sea. Ahead of Brutha the air shimmered over the sand. In the middle of it was a dark blob. He regarded it dispassionately as he approached, incapable of any real thought. It was nothing more than a reference point in a world of orange heat, expanding and contracting in the vibrating haze. Closer to, it turned out to be Vorbis. The thought took a long time to seep through Brutha's mind. Vorbis. Not with a robe. All torn off. Just his singlet with. The nails sewn in. Blood -all. Over one leg. Torn by. Rocks. Vorbis. Vorbis. Brutha slumped to his knees. On the high-tide line, a scalbie gave a croak. "He's still . . . alive," Brutha managed. "Pity," said Om. "We should do something . . . for him." "Yes? Maybe you can find a rock and stove his head in," said Om. "We can't just leave him here." "Watch us." No." Brutha got his hand under the deacon and tried to lift him. To his dull surprise, Vorbis weighed almost nothing. The deacon's robe had concealed a body that was just skin stretched over bone. Brutha could have broken him with bare hands. "What about me?" whined Om. Brutha slung Vorbis over his shoulder. "You've got four legs," he said. "I am your God!" "Yes. I know." Brutha trudged on along the beach. "What are you going to do with him?" "Take him to Omnia," said Brutha thickly. "People must know. What he did." "You're mad! You're mad! You think you're going to carry him to Omnia?" "Don't know. Going to try." "You! You!" Om pounded a claw on the sand. "Millions of people in the world and it had to be you! Stupid! Stupid!" Brutha was becoming a wavering shape in the haze. "That's it!" shouted Om. "I don't need you! You think I need you? I don't need you! I can soon find another believer! No problem about that!" Brutha disappeared. "And I'm not chasing after you!" Om screamed.     Brutha watched his feet dragging one in front of the other. He was past the point of thinking now. What drifted through his frying brain were disjointed images and fragments of memory. Dreams. They were pictures in your head. Coaxes had written a whole scroll about them. The superstitious thought they were messages sent by God, but really they were created by the brain itself, thrown up as it nightly sorted and fiIed the experiences of the day. Brutha never dreamed. So sometimes . . . blackout, while the mind did the filing. It fiIed all the books. Now he knew without learning . . . That was dreams. God. God needed people. Belief was the food of the gods. But they also needed a shape. Gods became what people believed they ought to be. So the Goddess of Wisdom carried a penguin. It could have happened to any god. It should have been an owl. Everyone knew that. But one bad sculptor who had only ever had an owl described to him makes a mess of a statue, belief steps in, next thing you know the Goddess of Wisdom is lumbered with a bird that wears evening dress the whole time and smells of fish. You gave a god its shape, like a jelly fills a mold. Gods often became your father, said Abraxas the Agnostic. Gods became a big beard in the sky, because when you were three years old that was your father. Of course Abraxas survived . . . This thought arrived sharp and cold, out of the part of his own mind that Brutha could still call his own. Gods didn't mind atheists, if they were deep, hot, fiery atheists like Simony, who spend their whole life not believing, spend their whole life hating gods for not existing. That sort of atheism was a rock. It was nearly belief . . . Sand. It was what you found in deserts. Crystals of rock, sculpted into dunes. Gordo of Tsort said that sand was worn-down mountains but Irexes had found that sandstone was stone pressed out of sand, which suggested that grains were the fathers of mountains . . . Every one a little crystal. And all of them getting bigger . . . Much bigger . . . Quietly, without realizing it, Brutha stopped falling forward and lay still.     "Bugger Off!" The scalbie took no notice. This was interesting. It was getting to see whole new stretches of sand it had never seen before and, of course, there was the prospect, even the certainty, of a good meal at the end of it all. It had perched on Om's shell. Om stumped along the sand, pausing occasionally to shout at his passenger. Brutha had come this way. But here one of the outcrops of rocks, littering the desert like islands in a sea, stretched right down to the water's edge. He'd never have been able to climb it. The footprints in the sand turned inland, toward the deep desert. "Idiot!" Om struggled up the side of a dune, digging his feet in to stop himself slaloming backward. On the far side of the dune the tracks became a long groove, where Brutha must have fallen. Om retracted his legs and tobogganed down it. The tracks veered here. He must have thought that he could walk around the next dune and find the rock again on the other side. Om knew about deserts, and one of the things he knew was that this kind of logical thinking had been previously applied by a thousand bleached, lost skeletons. Nevertheless, he plodded after the tracks, grateful for the brief shade of the dune now that the sun was sinking. Around the dune and, yes, here they zigzagged awkwardly up a slope about ninety degrees away from where they should be heading. Guaranteed. That was the thing about deserts. They had their own gravity. They sucked you into the center.     Brutha crawled forward, Vorbis held unsteadily by one limp arm. He didn't dare stop. His grandmother would hit him again. And there was Master Nhumrod, too, drifting in and out of vision. "I am really disappointed in you, Brutha. Mmm?" "Want . . . water . . ." "-water," said Nhumrod. "Trust in the great God." Brutha concentrated. Nhumrod vanished. "Great God?" he said. Somewhere there was some shade. The desert couldn't go on for ever.     The sun set fast. For a while, Om knew, heat would radiate off the sand and his own shell would store it, but that would soon go and then there would be the bitterness of a desert night. Stars were already coming on when he found Brutha. Vorbis had been dropped a little way away. Om pulled himself level with Brutha's ear. "Hey!" There was no sound, and no movement. Om butted Brutha gently in the head and then looked at the cracked lips. There was a pecking noise behind him. The scalbie was investigating Brutha's toes, but its explorations were interrupted when a tortoise jaw closed around its foot. "I old oo, ugger ogg!" The scalbie gave a burp of panic and tried to fly away, but it was hindered by a determined tortoise hanging on to one leg. Om was bounced along the sand for a few feet before he let go. He tried to spit, but tortoise mouths aren't designed for the job. "I hate all birds," he said, to the evening air. The scalbie watched him reproachfully from the top of a dune. It ruffled its handful of greasy feathers with the air of one who was prepared to wait all night, if necessary. As long as it took. Om crawled back to Brutha. Well, there was still breathing going on. Water . . . The god gave it some thought. Smiting the living rock. That was one way. Getting water to flow . . . no problem. It was just a matter of molecules and vectors. Water had a natural tendency to flow. You just have to see to it that it flowed here instead of there. No problem at all to a god in the peak of condition. How did you tackle it from a tortoise perspective? The tortoise dragged himself to the bottom of the dune and then walked up and down for a few minutes. Finally he selected a spot and began digging.     This wasn't right. It had been fiery hot. Now he was freezing. Brutha opened his eyes. Desert stars, brilliant white, looked back at him. His tongue seemed to fill his mouth. Now, what was it . . . Water. He rolled over. There had been voices in his head, and now there were voices outside his head. They were faint, but they were definitely there, echoing quietly over the moonlit sands. Brutha crawled painfully toward the foot of the dune. There was a mound there. In fact, there were several mounds. The muffled voice was coming from one of them. He pulled himself closer. There was a hole in the mound. Somewhere far underground, someone was swearing. The words were unclear as they echoed backward and forward up the tunnel, but the general effect was unmistakable. Brutha flopped down, and watched. After a few minutes there was movement at the mouth of the hole and Om emerged, covered with what, if this wasn't a desert, Brutha would have called mud. "Oh, it's you," said the tortoise. "Tear off a bit of your robe and pass it over." Dreamlike, Brutha obeyed. "Turnin' round down there", said Om, "is no picnic, let me tell you." He took the rag in his jaws, backed around carefully, and disappeared down the hole. After a couple of minutes he was back, still dragging the rag. It was soaked. Brutha let the liquid dribble into his mouth. It tasted of mud, and sand, and cheap brown dye, and slightly of tortoise, but he would have drunk a gallon of it. He could have swum in a pool of it. He tore off another strip for Om to take down. When Om re-emerged, Brutha was kneeling beside Vorbis. "Sixteen feet down! Sixteen bloody feet!" shouted Om. "Don't waste it on him! Isn't he dead yet?" "He's got a fever." "Put him out of our misery." "We're still taking him back to Omnia." "You think we'll get there? No food? No water?" "But you found water. Water in the desert." "Nothing miraculous about that," said Om. "There's a rainy season near the coast. Flash floods. Wadis. Dried-up river beds. You get aquifers," he added. "Sounds like a miracle to me," croaked Brutha. "Just because you can explain it doesn't mean it's not still a miracle." "Well, there's no food down there, take it from me," said Om. "Nothing to eat. Nothing in the sea, if we can find the sea again. I know the desert. Rocky ridges you have to go round. Everything turning you out of your path. Dunes that move in the night . . . lions . . . other things . . ." . . . gods. "What do you want to do, then?" said Brutha. "You said better alive than dead. You want to go back to Ephebe? We'll be popular there, you think?" Om was silent. Brutha nodded. "Fetch more water, then."     It was better traveling at night, with Vorbis over one shoulder and Om under one arm. At this time of year- -the glow in the sky over there is the Aurora Corealis, the hublights, where the magical field of the Discworld constantly discharges itself among the peaks of Cori Celesti, the central mountain. And at this time of year the sun rises over the desert in Ephebe and over the sea in Omnia, so keep the hublights on the left and the sunset glow behind you- "Did you ever go to Cori Celesti?" said Brutha. Om, who had been nodding off in the cold, woke up with a start. "Huh?" "It's where the gods live." "Hah! I could tell you stories," said Om darkly. "What?" "Think they're so bloody elite!" "You didn't live up there, then?" "No. Got to be a thunder god or something. Got to have a whole parcel of worshipers to live on Nob Hill. Got to be an anthropomorphic personification, one of them things." "Not just a Great God, then?" Well, this was the desert. And Brutha was going to die. "May as well tell you," muttered Om. "It's not as though we're going to survive . . . See, every god's a Great God to someone. I never wanted to be that great. A handful of tribes, a city or two. It's not much to ask, is it?" "There's two million people in the empire," said Brutha. "Yeah. Pretty good, eh? Started off with nothing but a shepherd hearing voices in his head, ended up with two million people." "But you never did anything with them," said Brutha. "Like what?" "Well . . . tell them not to kill one another, that sort of thing . . ." "Never really given it much thought. Why should I tell them that?" Brutha sought for something that would appeal to god psychology. "Well, if people didn't kill one another, there'd be more people to believe in you?" he suggested. "It's a point," Om conceded. "Interesting point. Sneaky." Brutha walked along in silence. There was a glimmer of frost on the dunes. "Have you ever heard", he said, "of Ethics?" "Somewhere in Howondaland, isn't it?" "The Ephebians were very interested in it." "Probably thinking about invading." "They seemed to think about it a lot." "Long-term strategy, maybe." "I don't think it's a place, though. It's more to do with how people live." "What, lolling around all day while slaves do the real work? Take it from me, whenever you see a bunch of buggers puttering around talking about truth and beauty and the best way of attacking Ethics, you can bet your sandals it's because dozens of other poor buggers are doing all the real work around the place while those fellows are living like-” "-gods?" said Brutha. There was a terrible silence. "I was going to say kings," said Om, reproachfully. "They sound a bit like gods." "Kings," said Om emphatically. "Why do people need gods?" Brutha persisted. "Oh, you've got to have gods," said Om, in a hearty, no-nonsense voice. "But it's gods that need people," said Brutha. "To do the believing. You said." Om hesitated. "Well, okay," he said. "But people have got to believe in something. Yes? I mean, why else does it thunder?" "Thunder," said Brutha, his eyes glazing slightly, "I don't-" "-is caused by clouds banging together; after the lightning stroke, there is a hole in the air, and thus the sound is engendered by the clouds rushing to fill the hole and colliding, in accordance with strict cumulodynamic principles." "Your voice goes funny when you're quoting," said Om. "What does engendered mean?" "I don't know. No one showed me a dictionary." "Anyway, that's just an explanation," said Om. "It's not a reason." "My grandmother said thunder was caused by the Great God Om taking his sandals off," said Brutha. "She was in a funny mood that day. Nearly smiled." "Metaphorically accurate," said Om. "But I never did thundering. Demarcation, see. Bloody I've-got-a-big-hammer Blind Io up on Nob Hill does all the thundering." "I thought you said there were hundreds of thunder gods," said Brutha. "Yeah. And he's all of 'em. Rationalization. A couple of tribes join up, they've both got thunder gods, right? And the gods kind of run together-you know how amoebas split?" "No." "Well, it's like that, only the other way." "I still don't see how one god can be a hundred thunder gods. They all look different . . ." "False noses." "What?" "And different voices. I happen to know Io's got seventy different hammers. Not common knowledge, that. And it's just the same with mother goddesses. There's only one of 'em. She just got a lot of wigs and of course it's amazing what you can do with a padded bra." There was absolute silence in the desert. The stars, smeared slightly by high-altitude moisture, were tiny, motionless rosettes. Away toward what the Church called the Top Pole, and which Brutha was coming to think of as the Hub, the sky flickered. Brutha put Om down, and laid Vorbis on the sand. Absolute silence. Nothing for miles, except what he had brought with him. This must have been how the prophets felt, when they went into the desert to find . . . whatever it was they found, and talk to . . . whoever they talked to. He heard Om, slightly peevish, say: "People've got to believe in something. Might as well be gods. What else is there?" Brutha laughed. "You know," he said, "I don't think I believe in anything any more." "Except me!" "Oh, I know you exist," said Brutha. He felt Om relax a little. "There's something about tortoises. Tortoises I can believe in. They seem to have a lot of existence in one place. It's gods in general I'm having difficulty with." "Look, if people stop believing in gods, they'll believe in anything," said Om. "They'll believe in young Urn's steam ball. Anything at all." "Hmm." A green glow in the sky indicated that the light of dawn was chasing frantically after its sun. Vorbis groaned. "I don't know why he won't wake up," said Brutha. "I can't find any broken bones." "How do you know?" "One of the Ephebian scrolls was all about bones. Can't you do anything for him?" "Why?" "You're a god." "Well, yes. If I was strong enough, I could probably strike him with lightning." "I thought to did the lightning." "No, just the thunder. You're allowed to do as much lightning as you like but you have to contract for the thundering." Now the horizon was a broad golden band. "How about rain?" said Brutha. "How about something useful?" A line of silver appeared at the bottom of the gold. Sunlight was racing towards Brutha. "That was a very hurtful remark," said the tortoise. "A remark calculated to wound." In the rapidly growing light Brutha saw one of the rock islands a little way off. Its sand-blasted pillars offered nothing but shade, but shade, always available in large quantities in the depths of the Citadel, was now in short supply here. "Caves?" said Brutha. "Snakes." "But still caves?" "In conjunction with snakes." "Poisonous snakes?" "Guess."     The Unnamed Boat clipped along gently, the wind filling Urn's robe attached to a mast made out of bits of the sphere's framework bound together with Simony's sandal thongs. "I think I know what went wrong," said Urn. "A mere overspeed problem." "Overspeed? We left the water!" said Simony. "It needs some sort of governor device," said Urn, scratching a design on the side of the boat. "Something that'd open the valve if there was too much steam. I think I could do something with a pair of revolving balls." "It's funny you should say that," said Didactylos. "When I felt us leave the water and the sphere exploded I distinctly felt my-” "That bloody thing nearly killed us!" said Simony. "So the next one will be better," said Urn, cheerfully. He scanned the distant coastline. "Why don't we land somewhere along here?" he said. "The desert coast?" said Simony. "What for? Nothing to eat, nothing to drink, easy to lose your way. Omnia's the only destination in this wind. We can land this side of the city. I know people. And those people know people. All across Omnia, there's people who know people. People who believe in the Turtle." "You know, I never meant for people to believe in the Turtle," said Didactylos unhappily. "It's just a big turtle. It just exists. Things just happen that way. I don't think the Turtle gives a damn. I just thought it might be a good idea to write things down and explain things a bit." "People sat up all night, on guard, while other people made copies," said Simony, ignoring him. "Passing them from hand to hand! Everyone making a copy and passing it on! Like a fire spreading underground!" "Would this be lots of copies?" said Didactylos cautiously. "Hundreds! Thousands!" "I suppose it's too late to ask for, say, a five per cent royalty?" said Didactylos, looking hopeful for a moment. "No. Probably out of the question, I expect. No. Forget I even asked." A few flying fish zipped out of the waves, pursued by a dolphin. "Can't help feeling a bit sorry for that young Brutha," said Didactylos. "Priests are expendable," said Simony. "There's too many of them." "He had all our books," said Urn. "He'll probably float with all that knowledge in him," said Didactylos. "He was mad, anyway," said Simony. "I saw him whispering to that tortoise." "I wish we still had it. There's good eating on one of those things," said Didactylos.     It wasn't much of a cave, just a deep hollow carved by the endless desert winds and, a long time ago, even by water. But it was enough. Brutha knelt on the stony floor and raised the rock over his head. There was a buzzing in his ears and his eyeballs felt as though they were set in sand. No water since sunset and no food for a hundred years. He had to do it. "I'm sorry," he said, and brought the rock down. The snake had been watching him intently but in its early-morning torpor it was too slow to dodge. The cracking noise was a sound that Brutha knew his conscience would replay to him, over and over again. "Good," said Om, beside him. "Now skin it, and don't waste the juice. Save the skin, too." "I didn't want to do it," said Brutha. "Look at it this way," said Om, "if you'd walked in the cave without me to warn you, you'd be lying on the floor now with a foot the size of a wardrobe. Do unto others before they do unto you." "It's not even a very big snake," said Brutha. "And then while you're writhing there in indescribable agony, you imagine all the things you would have done to that damn snake if you'd got to it first," said Om. "Well, your wish has been granted. Don't give any to Vorbis," he added. "He's running a bad fever. He keeps muttering." "Do you really think you'll get him back to the Citadel and they'll believe you?" said Om. "Brother Nhumrod always said I was very truthful," said Brutha. He smashed the rock on the cave wall to create a crude cutting edge, and gingerly started dismembering the snake. "Anyway, there isn't anything else I can do. I couldn't just leave him." "Yes you could," said Om. "To die in the desert?" "Yes. It's easy. Much easier than not leaving him to die in the desert." No. "This is how they do things in Ethics, is it?" said Om sarcastically. "I don't know. It's how I'm doing it."     The Unnamed Boat bobbed in a gully between the rocks. There was a low cliff beyond the beach. Simony climbed back down it, to where the philosophers were huddling out of the wind. "I know this area," he said. "We're a few miles from the village where a friend lives. All we have to do is wait till nightfall." "Why're you doing all this?" said Urn. "I mean, what's the point?" "Have you ever heard of a country called Istanzia?" said Simony. "It wasn't very big. It had nothing anyone wanted. It was just a place for people to live." "Omnia conquered it fifteen years ago," said Didactylos. "That's right. My country," said Simony. "I was just a kid then. But I won't forget. Nor will others. There's lots of people with a reason to hate the Church." "I saw you standing close to Vorbis," said Urn. "I thought you were protecting him." "Oh, I was, I was," said Simony. "I don't want anyone to kill him before I do." Didactylos wrapped his toga around himself and shivered.     The sun was riveted to the copper dome of the sky. Brutha dozed in the cave. In his own corner, Vorbis tossed and turned. Om sat waiting in the cave mouth. Waited expectantly. Waited in dread. And they came. They came out from under scraps of stone, and from cracks in the rock. They fountained up from the sand, they distilled out of the wavering sky. The air was fiIled with their voices, as faint as the whispering of gnats. Om tensed. The language he spoke was not like the language of the high gods. It was hardly language at all. It was a mere modulation of desires and hungers, without nouns and with only a few verbs . . . . Want . . . Om replied, mine. There were thousands of them. He was stronger, yes, he had a believer, but they fiIled the sky like locusts. The longing poured down on him with the weight of hot lead. The only advantage, the only advantage, was that the small gods had no concept of working together. That was a luxury that came with evolution . . . . Want . . . Mine! The chittering became a whine. But you can have the other one, said Om . . . . Dull, hard, enclosed, shut-in . . . I know, said Om. But this one, mine! The psychic shout echoed around the desert. The small gods fled. Except for one. Om was aware that it had not been swarming with the others, but had been hovering gently over a piece of sun-bleached bone. It had said nothing. He turned his attention on it. You. Mine! I know, said the small god. It knew speech, real god speech, although it talked as though every word had been winched from the pit of memory. Who are you? said Om. The small god stirred. There was a city once, said the small god. Not just a city. An empire of cities. I, I, I remember there were canals, and gardens. There was a lake. They had floating gardens on the lake, I recall. I, I. And there were temples. Such temples as you may dream of. Great pyramid temples that reached to the sky. Thousands were sacrificed. To the greater glory. Om felt sick. This wasn't just a small god. This was a small god who hadn't always been small . . . Who were you? And there were temples. I, I, me. Such temples as you may dream of. Great pyramid temples that reached to the sky. The glory of. Thousands were sacrificed. Me. To the greater glory. And there were temples. Me, me, me. Greater glory. Such glory temples as you may dream of. Great pyramid dream temples that reached to the sky. Me, me. Sacrificed. Dream. Thousands were sacrificed. To me the greater sky glory- You were their God? Om managed. Thousands were sacrificed. To the greater glory. Can you hear me? Thousands sacrificed greater glory. Me, me, me. What was your name? shouted Om. Name? A hot wind blew over the desert, shifting a few grains of sand. The echo of a lost god blew away, tumbling over and over, until it vanished among the rocks. Who were you? There was no answer. That's what happens, Om thought. Being a small god was bad, except at the time you hardly knew that it was bad because you only barely knew anything at all, but all the time there was something which was just possibly the germ of hope, the knowledge and belief that one day you might be more than you were now. But how much worse to have been a god, and to now be no more than a smoky bundle of memories, blown back and forth across the sand made from the crumbled stones of your temples . . . Om turned around and, on stumpy legs, walked purposefully back into the cave until he came to Brutha's head, which he butted. "Wst?" "Just checking you're still alive." "Fgfl." "Right." Om staggered back to his guard position at the mouth of the cave. There were said to be oases in the desert, but they were never in the same place twice. The desert wasn't mappable. It ate map-makers. So did the lions. Om could remember them. Scrawny things, not like the lions of the Howondaland veldt. More wolf than lion, more hyena than either. Not brave, but with a kind of vicious, rangy cowardice that was much more dangerous . . . Lions. Oh, dear . . . He had to find lions. Lions drank.     Brutha awoke as the afternoon light dragged across the desert. His mouth tasted of snake. Om was butting him on the foot. "Come on, come on, you're missing the best of the day." "Is there any water?" Brutha murmured thickly. "There will be. Only five miles off. Amazing luck." Brutha pulled himself up. Every muscle ached. "How do you know?" "I can sense it. I am a god, you know." "You said you could only sense minds." Om cursed. Brutha didn't forget things. "It's more complicated than that," lied Om. "Trust me. Come on, while there's some twilight. And don't forget Mister Vorbis." Vorbis was curled up. He looked at Brutha with unfocused eyes, stood up like a man still asleep when Brutha helped him. "I think he might have been poisoned," said Brutha. "There's sea creatures with stings. And poisonous corals. He keeps moving his lips, but I can't make out what he's trying to say." "Bring him along," said Om. "Bring him along. Oh, yes." "You wanted me to abandon him last night," said Brutha. "Did I?" said Om, his very shell radiating innocence. "Well, maybe I've been to Ethics. Had a change of heart. I can see he's with us for a purpose now. Good old Vorbis. Bring him along."     Simony and the two philosophers stood on the clifftop, looking across the parched farmlands of Omnia to the distant rock of the Citadel. Two of them looking, anyway. "Give me a lever and a place to stand, and I'd smash that place like an egg," said Simony, leading Didactylos down the narrow path. "Looks big," said Urn. "See the gleam? Those are the doors." "Look massive." "I was wondering," said Simony, "about the boat. The way it moved. Something like that could smash the doors, right?" "You'd have to flood the valley," said Urn. "I mean if it was on wheels." "Hah, yes," said Urn, sarcastically. It had been a long day. "Yes, if I had a forge and half a dozen blacksmiths and a lot of help. Wheels? No problem. But-- "We shall have to see," said Simony, "what we can do."     The sun was on the horizon when Brutha, his arm around Vorbis's shoulders, reached the next rock island. It was bigger than the one with the snake. The wind had carved the stones into gaunt, unlikely shapes, like fingers. There were even plants lodging in crevices in the rock. "There's water somewhere," said Brutha. "There's always water, even in the worst deserts," said Om. "One, oh, maybe two inches of rain a year." "I can smell something," said Brutha, as his feet stopped treading on sand and crunched up the limestone scree around the boulders. "Something rank." "Hold me over your head." Om scanned the rocks. "Right. Now bring me down again. And head for that rock that looks like . . . that looks very unexpected, really." Brutha stared. "It does, too," he croaked, eventually. "Amazing to think it was carved by the wind." "The wind god has a sense of humor," said Om. "Although it's pretty basic." Near the foot of the rock huge slabs had fallen over the years, forming a jagged pile with, here and there, shadowy openings. "That smell-” Brutha began. "Probably animals come to drink the water," said Om. Brutha's foot kicked against something yellowwhite, which bounced away among the rocks making a noise like a sackful of coconuts. In the stifling empty silence of the desert, it echoed loudly. "What was that?" "Definitely not a skull," lied Om. "Don't worry . . . "There's bones everywhere!" "Well? What did you expect? This is a desert! People die here! It's a very popular occupation in this vicinity!" Brutha picked up a bone. He was, as he well knew, stupid. But people didn't gnaw their own bones after they died. "Om-” "There's water here!" shouted Om. "We need it! But-there's probably one or two drawbacks!" "What kind of drawbacks?" "As in natural hazards!" "Like-?" "Well, you know lions?" said Om desperately. "There's lions here?" "Well . . . slightly." "Slightly lions?" "Only one lion." "Only one-” "-generally a solitary creature. Most to be feared are the old males, who are forced into the most inhospitable regions by their younger rivals. They are eviltempered and cunning and in their extremity have lost all fear of man-' The memory faded, letting go of Brutha's vocal chords. "That kind?" Brutha finished. "It won't take any notice of us once it's fed," said Om. "Yes?" "They go to sleep." "After feeding-?" Brutha looked round at Vorbis, who was slumped against a rock. "Feeding?" he repeated. "It'll be a kindness," said Om. "To the lion, yes! You want to use him as bait?" "He's not going to survive the desert. Anyway, he's done much worse to thousands of people. He'll be dying for a good cause." "A good cause?" "I like it." There was a growl, from somewhere in the stones. It wasn't loud, but it was a sound with sinews in it. Brutha backed away. "We don't just throw people to the lions!" "He does." "Yes. I don't." "All right, we'll get on top of a slab and when the lion starts on him you can brain it with a rock. He'll probably get away with an arm or a leg. He'll never miss it." "No! You can't do that to people just because they're helpless!" "You know, I can't think of a better time?" There was another growl from the rock pile. It sounded closer. Brutha looked down desperately at the scattered bones. Among them, half-hidden by debris, was a sword. It was old, and not well-made, and scoured by sand. He picked it up gingerly by the blade. "Other end," said Om. "I know!.. "Can you use one?" "I don't know!" "I really hope you're a fast learner." The lion emerged, slowly. Desert lions, it has been said, are not like the lions of the veldt. They had been, when the great desert had been verdant woodland.[7] Then there had been time to lie around for most of the day, looking majestic, in between regular meals of goat.[8] But the woodland had become scrubland, the scrubland had become, well, poorer scrubland, and the goats and the people and, eventually, even the cities, went away. The lions stayed. There's always something to eat, if you're hungry enough. People still had to cross the desert. There were lizards. There were snakes. It wasn't much of an ecological niche, but the lions were hanging on to it like grim death, which was what happened to most people who met a desert lion. Someone had already met this one. Its mane was matted. Ancient scars criss-crossed its pelt. It dragged itself towards Brutha, back legs trailing uselessly. "It's hurt," said Brutha. "Oh, good. And there's plenty of eating on one of those," said Om. "A bit stringy, but-” The lion collapsed, its toast-rack chest heaving. A spear was protruding from its flank. Flies, which can always find something to eat in any desert, flew up in a swarm. Brutha put down the sword. Om stuck his head in his shell. "Oh no," he murmured. "Twenty million people in this world, and the only one who believes in me is a suicide" "We can't just leave it," said Brutha. "We can. We can. It's a lion. You leave lions alone. " Brutha knelt down. The lion opened one crusted yellow eye, too weak even to bite him. "You're going to die, you're going to die. I'm not going to find anyone to believe in me out here-” Brutha's knowledge of animal anatomy was rudimentary. Although some of the inquisitors had an enviable knowledge of the insides of the human body that is denied to all those who are not allowed to open it while it's still working, medicine as such was frowned upon in Omnia. But somewhere, in every village, was someone who officially didn't set bones and who didn't know a few things about certain plants, and who stayed out of reach of the Quisition because of the fragile gratitude of their patients. And every peasant picked up a smattering of knowledge. Acute toothache can burn through all but the strongest in faith. Brutha grasped the spear-haft. The lion growled as he moved it. "Can't you speak to it?" said Brutha. "It's an animal." "So are you. You could try to calm it down. Because if it gets excited-” Om snapped into concentration. In fact the lion's mind contained nothing but pain, a spreading nebula of the stuff, overcoming even the normal background hunger. Om tried to encircle the pain, make it flow away . . . and not to think about what would happen if it went. By the feel of things, the lion had not eaten for days. The lion grunted as Brutha withdrew the spearhead. "Omnian," he said. "It hasn't been there long. It must have met the soldiers when they were on the way to Ephebe. They must have passed close by." He tore another strip from his robe, and tried to clean the wound. "We want to eat it, not cure it!" shouted Om. "What're you thinking of? You think it's going to be grateful?" "It wanted to be helped." "And soon it will want to be fed, have you thought about that?" "It's looking pathetically at me." "Probably never seen a week's meals all walking around on one pair of legs before." That wasn't true, Om reflected. Brutha was shedding weight like an ice-cube, out here in the desert. That kept him alive! The boy was a two-legged camel. Brutha crunched towards the rock pile, shards and bones shifting under his feet. The boulders formed a maze of half-open tunnels and caves. By the smell, the lion had lived there for a long time, and had quite often been ill. He stared at the nearest cave for some time. "What's so fascinating about a lion's den?" said Om. "The way it's got steps down into it, I think," said Brutha.     Didactylos could feel the crowd. It filled the barn. "How many are there?" he said. "Hundreds!" said Urn. "They're even sitting on the rafters! And . . . master?" "Yes?" "There's even one or two priests! And dozens of soldiers!" "Don't worry," said Simony, joining them on the makeshift platform made of fig barrels. "They are Turtle believers, just like you. We have friends in unexpected places!" "But I don't-" Didactylos began, helplessly. "There isn't anyone here who doesn't hate the Church with all their soul," said Simony. "But that's not-” "They're just waiting for someone to lead them!" "But I never-” "I know you won't let us down. You're a man of reason. Urn, come over here. There's a blacksmith I want you to meet-” Didactylos turned his face to the crowd. He could feel the hot, hushed silence of their stares.     Each drop took minutes. It was hypnotic. Brutha found himself staring at each developing drip. It was almost impossible to see it grow, but they had been growing and dripping for thousands of years. "How?" said Om. "Water seeps down after the rains," said Brutha. "It lodges in the rocks. Don't gods know these things?" "We don't need to." Om looked around. "Let's go. I hate this place." "It's just an old temple. There's nothing here." "That's what I mean." Sand and rubble half-filled it. Light lanced in through the broken roof high above, on to the slope that they had climbed down. Brutha wondered how many of the windcarved rocks in the desert had once been buildings. This one must have been huge, perhaps a mighty tower. And then the desert had come. There were no whispering voices here. Even the small gods kept away from abandoned temples, fo the same reason that people kept away from graveyards. The only sound was the occasional plink of the water. It dripped into a- shallow pool in front of what looked like an altar. From the pool it had worn a groove in the slabs of the floor all the way to a round pit, which appeared to be bottomless. There were a few statues, all of them toppled; they were heavy-proportioned, lacking any kind of detail, each one a child's clay model chiseled in granite. The distant walls had once been covered with some kind of bas-relief, but it had crumbled away except in a few places, which showed strange designs that mainly consisted of tentacles. "Who were the people who lived here?" said Brutha. "I don't know." "What god did they worship?" "I don't know." "The statues are made of granite, but there's no granite near here." "They were very devout, then. They dragged it all the way." "And the altar block is covered in grooves." "Ah. Extremely devout. That would be to let the blood run off." "You really think they did human sacrifice?" "I don't know! I want to get out of here!" "Why? There's water and it's cool-” "Because . . . a god lived here. A powerful god. Thousands worshiped it. I can feel it. You know? It comes out of the walls. A Great God. Mighty were his dominions and magnificent was his word. Armies went forth in his name and conquered and slew. That kind of thing. And now no one, not you, not me, no one, even knows who the god was or his name or what he looked like. Lions drink in the holy places and those little squidgy things with eight legs, there's one by your foot, what d'you call 'em, the ones with the antennae, crawl beneath the altar. Now do you understand?" "No," said Brutha. "Don't you fear death? You're a human!" Brutha considered this. A few feet away. Vorbis stared mutely at the patch of sky. "He's awake. He's just not speaking." "Who cares? I didn't ask you about him." "Well . . . sometimes . . . when I'm on catacomb duty . . . it's the kind of place where you can't help . . . I mean, all the skulls and things . . . and the Book says . . ." "There you are," said Om, a note of bitter triumph in his voice. "You don't know. That's what stops everyone going mad, the uncertainty of it, the feeling that it might work out all right after all. But it's different for gods. We do know. You know that story about the sparrow flying through a room?" "No." "Everyone knows it." "Not me." "About life being like a sparrow flying through a room? Nothing but darkness outside? And it flies through the room and there's just a moment of warmth and light?" "There are windows open?" said Brutha. "Can't you imagine what it's like to be that sparrow, and know about the darkness? To know that afterward there'll be nothing to remember, ever, except that one moment of the light?" No. "No. Of course you can't. But that's what it's like, being a god. And this place . . . it's a morgue." Brutha looked around at the ancient, shadowy temple. "Well . . . do you know what it's like, being human?" Om's head darted into his shell for a moment, the nearest he was capable of to a shrug. "Compared to a god? Easy. Get born. Obey a few rules. Do what you're told. Die. Forget." Brutha stared at him. "Is something wrong?" Brutha shook his head. Then he stood up and walked over to Vorbis. The deacon had drunk water from Brutha's cupped hands. But there was a switched-off quality about him. He walked, he drank, he breathed. Or something did. His body did. The dark eyes opened, but appeared to be looking at nothing that Brutha could see. There was no sense that anyone was looking out through them. Brutha was certain that if he walked away, Vorbis would sit on the cracked flagstones until he very gently fell over. Vorbis' body was present, but the whereabouts of his mind was probably not locatable on any normal atlas. It was just that, here and now and suddenly, Brutha felt so alone that even Vorbis was good company. "Why do you bother with him? He's had thousands of people killed!" "Yes, but perhaps he thought you wanted it." "I never said I wanted that." "You didn't care," said Brutha. "But I-” "Shut up!" Om's mouth opened in astonishment. "You could have helped people," said Brutha. "But all you did was stamp around and roar and try to make people afraid. Like . . . like a man hitting a donkey with a stick. But people like Vorbis made the stick so good, that's all the donkey ends up believing in." "That could use some work, as a parable," said Om sourly. "This is real life I'm talking about!" "It's not my fault if people misuse the-” "It is! It has to be! If you muck up people's minds just because you want them to believe in you, what they do is all your fault!" Brutha glared at the tortoise, and then stamped off toward the pile of rubble that dominated one end of the ruined temple. He rummaged around in it. "What are you looking for?" "We'll need to carry water," said Brutha. "There won't be anything," said Om. "People just left. The land ran out and so did the people. They took everything with them. Why bother to look?" Brutha ignored him. There was something under the rocks and sand. "Why worry about Vorbis?" Om whined. "In a hundred years' time, he'll be dead anyway. We'll all be dead." Brutha tugged at the piece of curved pottery. It came away, and turned out to be about two-thirds of a wide bowl, broken right across. It had been almost as wide as Brutha's outstretched arms, but had been too broken for anyone to loot. It was useful for nothing. But it had once been useful for something. There were embossed figures round its rim. Brutha peered at them, for want of something to distract himself, while Om's voice droned on in his head. The figures looked more or less human. And they were engaged in religion. You could tell by the knives (it's not murder if you do it for a god). In the center of the bowl was a larger figure, obviously important, some kind of god they were doing it for . . . "What?" he said. "I said, in a hundred years' time we'll all be dead." Brutha stared at the figures round the bowl. No one knew who their god was, and they were gone. Lions slept in the holy places and- -Chilopoda aridius, the common desert centipede, his memory resident library supplied -scuttled beneath the altar. "Yes," said Brutha. "We will." He raised the bowl over his head, and turned. Om ducked into his shell. "But here-” Brutha gritted his teeth as he staggered under the weight. "And now-” He threw the bowl. It landed against the altar. Fragments of ancient pottery fountained up, and clattered down again. The echoes boomed around the temple. "-we are alive!" He picked up Om, who had withdrawn completely into his shell. "And we'll make it home. All of us," he said. "I know it." "It's written, is it?" said Om, his voice muffled. "It is said. And if you argue-a tortoise shell is a pretty good water container, I expect." "You wouldn't." "Who knows? I might. In a hundred years' time we'll all be dead, you said." "Yes! Yes!" said Om desperately. "But here and now-” "Right."     Didactylos smiled. It wasn't something that came easily to him. It wasn't that he was a somber man, but he could not see the smiles of others. It took several dozen muscle movements to smile, and there was no return on his investment. He'd spoken many times to crowds in Ephebe, but they were invariably made up of other philosophers, whose shouts of "Bloody daft!," "You're making it up as you go along!" and other contributions to the debate always put him at his ease. That was because no one really paid any attention. They were just working out what they were going to say next. But this crowd put him in mind of Brutha. Their listening was like a huge pit waiting for his words to fill it. The trouble was that he was talking in philosophy, but they were listening in gibberish. "You can't believe in Great A'Tuin," he said. "Great A'Tuin exists. There's no point in believing in things that exist." "Someone's put up their hand," said Urn. "Yes?" "Sir, surely only things that exist are worth believing in?" said the enquirer, who was wearing a uniform of a sergeant of the Holy Guard. "If they exist, you don't have to believe in them," said Didactylos. "They just are." He sighed. "What can I tell you? What do you want to hear? I just wrote down what people know. Mountains rise and fall, and under them the Turtle swims onward. Men live and die, and the Turtle Moves. Empires grow and crumble, and the Turtle Moves. Gods come and go, and still the Turtle Moves. The Turtle Moves. " From the darkness came a voice, "And that is really true?" Didactylos shrugged. "The Turtle exists. The world is a flat disc. The sun turns round it once every day, dragging its light behind it. And this will go on happening, whether you believe it is true or not. It is real. I don't know about truth. Truth is a lot more complicated than that. I don't think the Turtle gives a bugger whether it's true or not, to tell you the truth." Simony pulled Urn to one side as the philosopher went on talking. "This isn't what they came to hear! Can't you do anything?" "Sorry?" said Urn. "They don't want philosophy. They want a reason to move against the Church! Now! Vorbis is dead, the Cenobiarch is gaga, the hierarchy are busy stabbing one another in the back. The Citadel is like a big rotten plum." "Still a few wasps in it, though," said Urn. "You said you've only got a tenth of the army." "But they're free men," said Simony. "Free in their heads. They'll be fighting for more than fifty cents a day." Urn looked down at his hands. He often did that when he was uncertain about anything, as if they were the only things he was sure of in all the world. "They'll get the odds down to three to one before the rest know what's happening," said Simony grimly. "Did you talk to the blacksmith?" "Yes." "Can you do it?" "I . . . think so. It wasn't what I . . ." "They tortured his father. Just for having a horseshoe hanging up in his forge, when everyone knows that smiths have to have their little rituals. And they took his son off into the army. But he's got a lot of helpers. They'll work through the night. All you have to do is tell them what you want." "I've made some sketches . . ." "Good," said Simony. "Listen, Urn. The Church is run by people like Vorbis. That's how it all works. Millions of people have died for-for nothing but lies. We can stop all that-” Didactylos had stopped talking. "He's muffed it," said Simony. "He could have done anything with them. And he just told them a lot of facts. You can't inspire people with facts. They need a cause. They need a symbol."     They left the temple just before sundown. The lion had crawled into the shade of some rocks, but stood up unsteadily to watch them go. "It'll track us," moaned Om. "They do that. For miles and miles." "We'll survive." "I wish I had your confidence." "Ah, but I have a God to have faith in." "There'll be no more ruined temples." "There'll be something else." "And not even snake to eat." "But I walk with my God." "Not as a snack, though. And you're walking the wrong way, too." "No. I'm still heading away from the coast." "That's what I mean." "How far can a lion go with a spear wound like that in him?" "What's that got to do with anything?" "Everything." And, half an hour later, a black shadowy line on the silver moonlit desert, there were the tracks. "The soldiers came this way. We just have to follow the tracks back. If we head where they've come from, we'll get where we're going." "We'll never do it!" "We're traveling light." "Oh, yeah. They were burdened by all the food and water they had to carry," said Om bitterly. "How lucky for us we haven't got any." Brutha glanced at Vorbis. He was walking unaided now, provided that you gently turned him around whenever you needed to change direction. But even Om had to admit that the tracks were some comfort. In a way they were alive, in the same way that an echo is alive. People had been this way, not long ago. There were other people in the world. Someone, somewhere, was surviving. Or not. After an hour or so they came across a mound beside the track. There was a helmet atop it, and a sword stuck in the sand. "A lot of soldiers died to get here quickly," said Brutha. Whoever had taken enough time to bury their dead had also drawn a symbol in the sand of the mound. Brutha halfexpected it to be a turtle, but the desert wind had not quite eroded the crude shape of a pair of horns. "I don't understand that," said Om. "They don't really believe I exist, but they go and put something like that on a grave." "It's hard to explain. I think it's because they believe they exist," said Brutha. "It's because they're people, and so was he." He pulled the sword out of the sand. "What do you want that for?" "Might be useful." "Against who?" "Might be useful." An hour later the lion, who was limping after Brutha, also arrived at the grave. It had lived in the desert for sixteen years, and the reason it had lived so long was that it had not died, and it had not died because it never wasted handy protein. It dug. Humans have always wasted handy protein ever since they started wondering who had lived in it. But, on the whole, there are worse places to be buried than inside a lion.     There were snakes and lizards on the rock islands. They were probably very nourishing and every one was, in its own way, a taste explosion. There was no more water. But there were plants . . . more or less. They looked like groups of stones, except where a few had put up a central flower spike that was a brilliant pink and purple in the dawn light. "Where do they get the water from?" "Fossil seas." "Water that's turned to stone?" "No. Water that sank down thousands of years ago. Right down in the bedrock." "Can you dig down to it?" "Don't be stupid." Brutha glanced from the flower to the nearest rock island. "Honey," he said. "What?"     The bees had a nest high on the side of a spire of rock. The buzzing could be heard from ground level. There was no possible way up. "Nice try," said Om. The sun was up. Already the rocks were warm to the touch. "Get some rest," said Om, kindly. "I'll keep watch." "Watch for what?" "I'll watch and find out." Brutha led Vorbis into the shade of a large boulder, and gently pushed him down. Then he lay down too. The thirst wasn't too bad yet. He'd drunk from the temple pool until he squelched as he walked. Later on, they might find a snake . . . When you considered what some people in the world had, life wasn't too bad. Vorbis lay on his side, his black-on-black eyes staring at nothing. Brutha tried to sleep. He had never dreamed. Didactylos had been quite excited about that. Someone who remembered everything and didn't dream would have to think slowly, he said. Imagine a heart,[9] he said, that was nearly all memory, and had hardly any beats to spare for the everyday purposes of thinking. That would explain why Brutha moved his lips while he thought. So this couldn't have been a dream. It must have been the sun. He heard Om's voice in his head. The tortoise sounded as though he was holding a conversation with people Brutha could not hear. Mine! Go away! No. Mine! Both of them! Mine! Brutha turned his head. The tortoise was in a gap between two rocks, neck extended and weaving from side to side. There was another sound, a sort of gnat-like whining, that came and went . . . and promises in his head. They flashed past . . . faces talking to him, shapes, visions of greatness, moments of opportunity, picking him up, taking him high above the world, all this was his, he could do anything, all he had to do was believe, in me, in me, in me- An image formed in front of him. There, on a stone beside him, was a roast pig surrounded by fruit, and a mug of beer so cold the air was frosting on the sides. Mine! Brutha blinked. The voices faded. So did the food. He blinked again. There were strange after-images, not seen but felt. Perfect though his memory was, he could not remember what the voices had said or what the other pictures had been. All that lingered was a memory of roast pork and cold beer. "That's because they don't know what to offer you," said Om's voice, quietly. "So they try to offer you anything. Generally they start with visions of food and carnal gratification." "They got as far as the food," said Brutha. "Good job I overcame them, then," said Om. "No telling what they might have achieved with a young man like yourself." Brutha raised himself on his elbows. Vorbis had not moved. "Were they trying to get through to him, too?" "I suppose so. Wouldn't work. Nothing gets in, nothing gets out. Never seen a mind so turned in on itself." "Will they be back?" "Oh, yes. It's not as if they've got anything else to do." "When they do," said Brutha, feeling lightheaded, "could you wait until they've shown me visions of carnal gratification?" "Very bad for you." "Brother Nhumrod was very down on them. But I think perhaps we should know our enemies, yes?" Brutha's voice faded to a croak. "I could have done with the vision of the drink," he said, wearily. The shadows were long. He looked around in amazement. "How long were they trying?" "All day. Persistent devils, too. Thick as flies." Brutha learned why at sunset. He met St. Ungulant the anchorite, friend of all small gods. Everywhere.     "Well, well, well," said St. Ungulant. "We don't get very many visitors up here. Isn't that so, Angus?" He addressed the air beside him. Brutha was trying to keep his balance, because the cartwheel rocked dangerously every time he moved. They'd left Vorbis seated on the desert twenty feet below, hugging his knees and staring at nothing. The wheel had been nailed flat on top of a slim pole. It was just wide enough for one person to lie uncomfortably. But St. Ungulant looked designed to lie uncomfortably. He was so thin that even skeletons would say, "Isn't he thin?" He was wearing some sort of minimalist loin-cloth, insofar as it was possible to tell under the beard and hair. It had been quite hard to ignore St. Ungulant, who had been capering up and down at the top of his pole shouting "Coo-ee!" and "Over here!" There was a slightly smaller pole a few feet away, with an old-fashioned half-moon-cutout-on-the-door privy on it. Just because you were an anchorite, St. Ungulant said, didn't mean you had to give up everything. Brutha had heard of anchorites, who were a kind of oneway prophet. They went out into the desert but did not come back, preferring a hermit's life of dirt and hardship and dirt and holy contemplation and dirt. Many of them liked to make life even more uncomfortable for themselves by being walled up in cells or living, quite appropriately, at the top of a pole. The Omnian Church encouraged them, on the basis that it was best to get madmen as far away as possible where they couldn't cause any trouble and could be cared for by the community, insofar as the community consisted of lions and buzzards and dirt. "I was thinking of adding another wheel," said St. Ungulant, "just over there. To catch the morning sun, you know." Brutha looked around him. Nothing but flat rock and sand stretched away on every side. "Don't you get the sun everywhere all the time?" he said. "But it's much more important in the morning," said St. Ungulant. "Besides, Angus says we ought to have a patio." "He could barbecue on it," said Om, inside Brutha's head. "Um," said Brutha. "What . . . religion . . . are you a saint of, exactly?" An expression of embarrassment crossed the very small amount of face between St. Ungulant's eyebrows and his mustache. "Uh. None, really. That was all rather a mistake," he said. "My parents named me Sevrian Thaddeus Ungulant, and then one day, of course, most amusing, someone drew attention to the initials. After that, it all seemed rather inevitable." The wheel rocked slightly. St. Ungulant's skin was almost blackened by the desert sun. "I've had to pick up herming as I went along, of course," he said. "I taught myself. I'm entirely selftaught. You can't find a hermit to teach you herming, because of course that rather spoils the whole thing." "Er . . . but there's . . . Angus?" said Brutha, stating at the spot where he believed Angus to be, or at least where he believed St. Ungulant believed Angus to be. "He's over here now," said the saint sharply, pointing to a different part of the wheel. "But he doesn't do any of the herming. He's not, you know, trained. He's just company. My word, I'd have gone quite mad if it wasn't for Angus cheering me up all the time!" "Yes . . . I expect you would," said Brutha. He smiled at the empty air, in order to show willing. "Actually, it's a pretty good life. The hours are rather long but the food and drink are extremely worthwhile." Brutha had a distinct feeling that he knew what was going to come next. "Beer cold enough?" he said. "Extremely frosty," said St. Ungulant, beaming. "And the roast pig?" St. Ungulant's smile was manic. "All brown and crunchy round the edges, yes," he said. "But I expect, er . . . you eat the occasional lizard or snake, too?" "Funny you should say that. Yes. Every once in a while. Just for a bit of variety." "And mushrooms, too?" said Om. "Any mushrooms in these parts?" said Brutha innocently. St. Ungulant nodded happily. "After the annual rains, yes. Red ones with yellow spots. The desert becomes really interesting after the mushroom season." "Full of giant purple singing slugs? Talking pillars of flame? Exploding giraffes? That sort of thing?" said Brutha carefully. "Good heavens, yes," said the saint. "I don't know why. I think they're attracted by the mushrooms." Brutha nodded. "You're catching on, kid," said Om. "And I expect sometimes you drink . . . water?" said Brutha. "You know, it's odd, isn't it," said St. Ungulant. "There's all this wonderful stuff to drink but every so often I get this, well, I can only call it a craving, for a few sips of water. Can you explain that?" "It must be . . . a little hard to come by," said Brutha, still talking very carefully, like someone playing a fifty-pound fish on a fifty-one-pound breakingstrain fishing-line. "Strange, really," said St. Ungulant. "When icecold beer is so readily available, too." "Where, uh, do you get it? The water?" said Brutha. "You know the stone plants?" "The ones with the big flowers?" "If you cut open the fleshy part of the leaves, there's up to half a pint of water," said the saint. "It tastes like weewee, mind you." "I think we could manage to put up with that," said Brutha, through dry lips. He backed toward the rope-ladder that was the saint's contact with the ground. "Are you sure you won't stay?" said St. Ungulant. "It's Wednesday. We get sucking pig plus chef's selection of sun-drenched dew-fresh vegetables on Wednesdays." "We, uh, have lots to do," said Brutha, halfway down the swaying ladder. "Sweets from the trolley?" "I think perhaps . . . St. Ungulant looked down sadly at Brutha helping Vorbis away across the wilderness. "And afterward there's probably mints!" he shouted, through cupped hands. "No?" Soon the figures were mere dots on the sand. "There may be visions of sexual grati-no, I tell a lie, that's Fridays . . ." St. Ungulant murmured. Now that the visitors had gone, the air was once again filled with the zip and whine of the small gods. There were billions of them. St. Ungulant smiled. He was, of course, mad. He'd occasionally suspected this. But he took the view that madness should not be wasted. He dined daily on the food of the gods, drank the rarest vintages, ate fruits that were not only out of season but out of reality. Having to drink the occasional mouthful of brackish water and chew the odd lizard leg for medicinal purposes was a small price to pay. He turned back to the laden table that shimmered in the air. All this . . . and all the little gods wanted was someone to know about them, someone to even believe that they existed. There was jelly and ice-cream today, too. "All the more for us, eh, Angus?" Yes, said Angus.     The fighting was over in Ephebe. It hadn't lasted long, especially when the slaves joined in. There were too many narrow streets, too many ambushes and, above all, too much terrible determination. It's generally held that free men will always triumph over slaves, but perhaps it all depends on your point of view. Besides, the Ephebian garrison commander had declared somewhat nervously that slavery would henceforth be abolished, which infuriated the slaves. What would be the point of saving up to become free if you couldn't own slaves afterwards? Besides, how'd they eat? The Omnians couldn't understand, and uncertain people fight badly. And Vorbis had gone. Certainties seemed less certain when those eyes were elsewhere. The Tyrant was released from his prison. He spent his first day of freedom carefully composing messages to the other small countries along the coast. It was time to do something about Omnia.     Brutha sang. His voice echoed off the rocks. Flocks of scalbies shook off their lazy pedestrian habits and took off frantically, leaving feathers behind in their rush to get airborne. Snakes wriggled into cracks in the stone. You could live in the desert. Or at least survive . . . Getting back to Omnia could only be a matter of time. One more day . . . Vorbis trooped along a little behind him. He said nothing and, when spoken to, gave no sign that he had understood what had been said to him. Om, bumping along in Brutha's pack, began to feel the acute depression that steals over every realist in the presence of an optimist. The strained strains of Claws of Iron shall Rend the Ungodly faded away. There was a small rockslide, some way off. "We're alive," said Brutha. "For now." "And we're close to home." "Yes?" "I saw a wild goat on the rocks back there." "There's still a lot of 'em about." "Goats?" "Gods. And the ones we had back there were the puny ones, mind you." "What do you mean?" Om sighed. "It's reasonable, isn't it? Think about it. The stronger ones hang around the edge, where there's prey . . . I mean, people. The weak ones get pushed out to the sandy places, where people hardly ever go-” "The strong gods," said Brutha, thoughtfully. "Gods that know about being strong." "That's right." "Not gods that know what it feels like to be weak . . ." "What? They wouldn't last five minutes. It's a god-eat-god world." "Perhaps that explains something about the nature of gods. Strength is hereditary. Like sin." His face clouded. "Except that . . . it isn't. Sin, I mean. I think, perhaps, when we get back, I shall talk to some people." "Oh, and they'll listen, will they?" "Wisdom comes out of the wilderness, they say." "Only the wisdom that people want. And mushrooms." When the sun was starting to climb Brutha milked a goat. It stood patiently while Om soothed its mind. And Om didn't suggest killing it, Brutha noticed. Then they found shade again. There were bushes here, lowgrowing, spiky, every tiny leaf barricaded behind its crown of thorns. Om watched for a while, but the small gods on the edge of the wilderness were more cunning and less urgent. They'd be here, probably at noon, when the sun turned the landscape into a hellish glare. He'd hear them. In the meantime, he could eat. He crawled through the bushes, their thorns scraping harmlessly along his shell. He passed another tortoise, which wasn't inhabited by a god and gave him that vague stare that tortoises employ when they're deciding whether something is there to be eaten or made love to, which are the only things on a normal tortoise mind. He avoided it, and found a couple of leaves it had missed. Periodically he'd stomp back through the gritty soil and watch the sleepers. And then he saw Vorbis sit up, look around him in a slow methodical way, pick up a stone, study it carefully, and then bring it down sharply on Brutha's head. Brutha didn't even groan. Vorbis got up and strode directly toward the bushes that hid Om. He tore the branches aside, regardless of the thorns, and pulled out the tortoise Om had just met. For a moment it was held up, legs moving slowly, before the deacon threw it overarm into the rocks. Then he picked up Brutha with some effort, slung him across his shoulders, and set off towards Omnia. It happened in seconds. Om fought to stop his head and legs retracting automatically into his shell, a tortoise's instinctive panic reaction. Vorbis was already disappearing round some rocks. He disappeared. Om started to move forward and then ducked into his shell as a shadow skimmed over the ground. It was a familiar shadow, and one fiIled with tortoise dread. The eagle swept down and towards the spot where the stricken tortoise was struggling and, with barely a pause in the stoop, snatched the reptile and soared back up into the sky with long, lazy sweeps of its wings. Om watched it until it became a dot, and then looked away as a smaller dot detached itself and tumbled over and over toward the rocks below. The eagle descended slowly, preparing to feed. A breeze rattled the thornbushes and stirred the sand. Om thought he could hear the taunting, mocking voices of all the small gods.     St. Ungulant, on his bony knees, smashed open the hard swollen leaf of a stone plant. Nice lad, he thought. Talked to himself a lot, but that was only to be expected. The desert took some people like that, didn't it, Angus? Yes, said Angus. Angus didn't want any of the brackish water. He said it gave him wind. "Please yourself," said St. Ungulant. "Well, well! Here's a little treat." You didn't often get Chilopoda aridius out here in the open desert, and here were three, all under one rock! Funny how you felt like a little nibble, even after a good meal of Petit porc rôti avec pommes de terre nouvelles et légumes du jour et bière glacée avec figment de l'imagination. He was picking the legs of the second one out of his tooth when the lion padded to the top of the nearest dune behind him. The lion was feeling odd sensations of gratitude. It felt it should catch up with the nice food that had tended to it and, well, refrain from eating it in some symbolic way. And now here was some more food, hardly paying it any attention. Well, it didn't owe this one anything . . . It padded forward, then lumbered up into a run. Oblivious to his fate, St. Ungulant started on the third centipede. The lion leapt . . . And things would have looked very bad for St. Ungulant if Angus hadn't caught it right behind the ear with a rock.     Brutha was standing in the desert, except that the sand was as black as the sky and there was no sun, although everything was brilliantly lit. Ah, he thought. So this is dreaming. There were thousands of people walking across the desert. They paid him no attention. They walked as if completely unaware that they were in the middle of a crowd. He tried to wave at them, but he was nailed to the spot. He tried to speak, and the words evaporated in his mouth. And then he woke up.     The first thing he saw was the light, slanting through a window. Against the light was a pair of hands, raised in the sign of the holy horns. With some difficulty, his head screaming pain at him, Brutha followed the hands along a pair of arms to where they joined not far under the bowed head of- "Brother Nhumrod?" The master of novices looked up. "Brutha?" "Yes?" "Om be praised!" Brutha craned his neck to look around. "Is he here?" "-here? How do you feel?" "I-” His head ached, his back felt as though it was on fire, and there was a dull pain in his knees. "You were very badly sunburned," said Nhumrod. "And that was a nasty knock on the head you had in the fall." "What fall?" "-fall. From the rocks. In the desert. You were with the Prophet," said Nhumrod. "You walked with the Prophet. One of my novices." "I remember . . . the desert . . ." said Brutha, touching his head gingerly. "But . . . the . . . Prophet . . . ?" "-Prophet. People are saying you could be made a bishop, or even an Iam," said Nhumrod. "There's a precedent, you know. The Most Holy St. Bobby was made a bishop because he was in the desert with the Prophet Ossory, and he was a donkey." "But I don't . . . remember . . . any Prophet. There was just me and-” Brutha stopped. Nhumrod was beaming. "Vorbis?" "He most graciously told me all about it," said Nhumrod. "I was privileged to be in the Place of Lamentation when he arrived. It was just after the Sestine prayers. The Cenobiarch was just departing . . . well, you know the ceremony. And there was Vorbis. Covered in dust and leading a donkey. I'm afraid you were across the back of the donkey." "I don't remember a donkey," said Brutha. "-donkey. He'd picked it up at one of the farms. There was quite a crowd with him!" Nhumrod was flushed with excitement. "And he's declared a month of Jhaddra, and double penances, and the Council has given him the Staff and the Halter, and the Cenobiarch has gone off to the hermitage in Skant!" "Vorbis is the eighth Prophet," said Brutha. "-Prophet. Of course." "And . . . was there a tortoise? Has he mentioned anything about a tortoise?" "-tortoise? What have tortoises got to do with anything?" Nhumrod's expression softened. "But, of course, the Prophet said the sun had affected you. He said you were raving-excuse me-about all sorts of strange things." "He did?" "He sat by your bed for three days. It was . . . inspiring." "How long . . . since we came back?" "-back? Almost a week." "A week!" "He said the journey exhausted you very much." Brutha stared at the wall. "And he left orders that you were to be brought to him as soon as you were fully conscious," said Nhumrod. "He was very definite about that." His tone of voice suggested that he wasn't quite sure of Brutha's state of consciousness, even now. "Do you think you can walk? I can get some novices to carry you, if you'd prefer." "I have to go and see him now?" "-now. Right away. I expect you'll want to thank him."     Brutha had known about these parts of the Citadel only by hearsay. Brother Nhumrod had never seen them, either. Although he had not been specifically included in the summons, he had come nevertheless, fussing importantly around Brutha as two sturdy novices carried him in a kind of sedan chair normally used by the more crumbling of the senior clerics. In the center of the Citadel, behind the Temple, was a walled garden. Brutha looked at it with an expert eye. There wasn't an inch of natural soil on the bare rock-every spadeful that these shady trees grew in must have been carried up by hand. Vorbis was there, surrounded by bishops and Iams. He looked round as Brutha approached. "Ah, my desert companion," he said, amiably. "And Brother Nhumrod, I believe. My brothers, I should like you to know that I have it in mind to raise our Brutha to archbishophood." There was a very faint murmur of astonishment from the clerics, and then a clearing of a throat. Vorbis looked at Bishop Treem, who was the Citadel's archivist. "Well, technically he is not yet even ordained," said Bishop Treem, doubtfully. "But of course we all know there has been a precedent." "Ossory's ass," said Brother Nhumrod promptly. He put his hand over his mouth and went red with shame and embarrassment. Vorbis smiled. "Good Brother Nhumrod is correct," he said. "Who had also not been ordained, unless the qualifications were somewhat relaxed in those days." There was a chorus of nervous laughs, such as there always is from people who owe their jobs and possibly their lives to a whim of the person who has just cracked the not very amusing line. "Although the donkey was only made a bishop," said Bishop "Deathwish" Treem. "A role for which it was highly qualified," said Vorbis sharply. "And now, you will all leave. Including Subdeacon Nhumrod," he added. Nhumrod went from red to white at this sudden preferment. "But Archbishop Brutha will remain. We wish to talk." The clergy withdrew. Vorbis sat down on a stone chair under an elder tree. It was huge and ancient, quite unlike its short-lived relatives outside the garden, and its berries were ripening. The Prophet sat with his elbows on the stone arms of the chair, his hands interlocked in front of him, and gave Brutha a long, slow stare. "You are . . . recovered?" he said, eventually. "Yes, lord," said Brutha. "But, lord, I cannot be a bishop, I cannot even-” "I assure you the job does not require much intelligence," said Vorbis. "If it did, bishops would not be able to do it." There was another long silence. When Vorbis next spoke, it was as if every word was being winched up from a great depth. "We spoke once, did we not, of the nature of reality?" "Yes." "And about how often what is perceived is not that which is fundamentally true?" "Yes." Another pause. High overhead, an eagle circled, looking for tortoises. "I am sure you have confused memories of our wanderings in the wilderness." No." "It is only to be expected. The sun, the thirst, the hunger . . ." "No, lord. My memory does not confuse readily." "Oh, yes. I recall." "So do I, lord." Vorbis turned his head slightly, looking sidelong at Brutha as if he was trying to hide behind his own face. "In the desert, the Great God Om spoke to me." "Yes, lord. He did. Every day." "You have a mighty if simple faith, Brutha. When it comes to people, I am a great judge." "Yes, lord. Lord?" "Yes, my Brutha?" "Nhumrod said you led me through the desert, lord." "Remember what I said about fundamental truth, Brutha? Of course you do. There was a physical desert, indeed, but also a desert of the soul. My God led me, and I led you." "Ah. Yes. I see." Overhead, the spiraling dot that was the eagle appeared to hang motionless in the air for a moment. Then it folded its wings and fell- "Much was given to me in the desert, Brutha. Much was learned. Now I must tell the world. That is the duty of a prophet. To go where others have not been, and bring back the truth of it." -faster than the wind, its whole brain and body existing only as a mist around the sheer intensity of its purpose- "I did not expect it to be this soon. But Om guided my steps. And now that we have the Cenobiarchy, we shall . . . make use of it." Somewhere out on the hillsides the eagle swooped, picked something up, and strove for height . . . "I'm just a novice, Lord Vorbis. I am not a bishop, even if everyone calls me one." "You will get used to it." It sometimes took a long time for an idea to form in Brutha's mind, but one was forming now. It was something about the way Vorbis was sitting, something about the edge in his voice. Vorbis was afraid of him. Why me? Because of the desert? Who would care? For all I know, it was always like this-probably it was Ossory's ass that carried him in the wilderness, who found the water, who kicked a lion to death. Because of Ephebe? Who would listen? Who would care? He is the Prophet and the Cenobiarch. He could have me killed just like that. Anything he does is right. Anything he says is true. Fundamentally true. "I have something to show you that may amuse you," said Vorbis, standing up. "Can you walk?" "Oh, yes. Nhumrod was just being kind. It's mainly sunburn." As they moved away, Brutha saw something he hadn't noticed before. There were members of the Holy Guard, armed with bows, in the garden. They were in the shade of trees, or amongst bushes-not too obvious, but not exactly hidden. Steps led from the garden to the maze of underground tunnels and rooms that underlay the Temple and, indeed, the whole of the Citadel. Noiselessly, a couple of guards fell in behind them at a respectful distance. Brutha followed Vorbis through the tunnels to the artificers' quarter, where forges and workshops clustered around one wide, deep light-well. Smoke and fumes billowed up around the hewn rock walls. Vorbis walked directly to a large alcove that glowed red with the light of forge fires. Several workers were clustered around something wide and curved. "There," said Vorbis. "What do you think?" It was a turtle. The iron-founders had done a pretty good job, even down to the patterning on the shell and the scales on the legs. It was about eight feet long. Brutha heard a rushing noise in his ears as Vorbis spoke. "They speak poisonous gibberish about turtles, do they not? They think they live on the back of a Great Turtle. Well, let them die on one." Now Brutha could see the shackles attached to each iron leg. A man, or a woman, could with great discomfort lie spread-eagled on the back of the turtle and be chained firmly at the wrists and ankles. He bent down. Yes, there was the firebox underneath. Some aspects of Quisition thinking never changed. That much iron would take ages to heat up to the point of pain. Much time, therefore, to reflect on things . . . "What do you think?" said Vorbis. A vision of the future flashed across Brutha's mind. "Ingenious," he said. "And it will be a salutary lesson for all others tempted to stray from the path of true knowledge," said Vorbis. "When do you intend to, uh, demonstrate it?" "I am sure an occasion will present itself," said Vorbis. When Brutha straightened up, Vorbis was staring at him so intently that it was as if he was reading Brutha's thoughts off the back of his head. "And now, please leave," said Vorbis. "Rest as much as you can . . . my son."     Brutha walked slowly across the Place, deep in unaccustomed thought. "Afternoon, Your Reverence." "You know already?" Cut-Me-Own-Hand-Off Dhblah beamed over the top of his lukewarm ice-cold sherbet stand. "Heard it on the grapevine," he said. "Here, have a slab of Klatchian Delight. Free. Onna stick." The Place was more crowded than usual. Even Dhblah's hot cakes were selling like hot cakes. "Busy today," said Brutha, hardly thinking about it. "Time of the Prophet, see," said Dhblah, "when the Great God is manifest in the world. And if you think it's busy now, you won't be able to swing a goat here in a few days' time." "What happens then?" "You all right? You look a bit peaky." "What happens then?" "The Laws. You know. The Book of Vorbis? I suppose-” Dhblah leaned toward Brutha-"you wouldn't have a hint, would you? I suppose the Great God didn't happen to say anything of benefit to the convenience food industry?" "I don't know. I think he'd like people to grow more lettuce." "Really?" "It's only a guess." Dhblah grinned evilly. "Ah, yes, but it's your guess. A nod's as good as a poke with a sharp stick to a deaf camel, as they say. I know where I can get my hands on a few acres of well-irrigated land, funnily enough. Perhaps I ought to buy now, ahead of the crowd?" "Can't see any harm in it, Mr. Dhblah." Dhblah sidled closer. This was not hard. Dhblah sidled everywhere. Crabs thought he walked sideways. "Funny thing," he said. "I mean . . . Vorbis?" "Funny?" said Brutha. "Makes you think. Even Ossory must have been a man who walked around, just like you and me. Got wax in his ears, just like ordinary people. Funny thing." "What is?" "The whole thing." Dhblah gave Brutha another conspiratorial grin and then sold a footsore pilgrim a bowl of hummus that he would come to regret. Brutha wandered down to his dormitory It was empty at this time of day, hanging around dormitories being discouraged in case the presence of the rockhard mattresses engendered thoughts of sin. His few possessions were gone from the shelf by his bunk. Probably he had a room of his own somewhere, although no one had told him. Brutha felt totally lost. He lay down on the bunk, just in case, and offered up a prayer to Om. There was no reply. There had been no reply for almost all of his life, and that hadn't been too bad, because he'd never expected one. And before, there'd always been the comfort that perhaps Om was listening and simply not deigning to say anything. Now, there was nothing to hear. He might as well be talking to himself, and listening to himself. Like Vorbis. That thought wouldn't go away. Mind like a steel ball, Om had said. Nothing got in or out. So all Vorbis could hear were the distant echoes of his own soul. And out of the distant echoes he would forge a Book of Vorbis, and Brutha suspected he knew what the commandments would be. There would be talk of holy wars and blood and crusades and blood and piety and blood. Brutha got up, feeling like a fool. But the thoughts wouldn't go away. He was a bishop, but he didn't know what bishops did. He'd only seen them in the distance, drifting along like earthbound clouds. There was only one thing he felt he knew how to do. Some spotty boy was hoeing the vegetable garden. He looked at Brutha in amazement when he took the hoe, and was stupid enough to try to hang on to it for a moment. "I am a bishop, you know," said Brutha. "Anyway, you aren't doing it right. Go and do something else." Brutha jabbed viciously at the weeds around the seedlings. Only away a few weeks and already there was a haze of green on the soil. You're a bishop. For being good. And here's the iron turtle. In case you're bad. Because . . . . . . there were two people in the desert, and Om spoke to one of them. It had never occurred to Brutha like that before. Om had spoken to him. Admittedly, he hadn't said the things that the Great Prophets said he said. Perhaps he'd never said things like that . . . He worked his way along to the end of the row. Then he tidied up the bean vines. Lu-Tze watched Brutha carefully from his little shed by the soil heaps.     It was another barn. Urn was seeing a lot of barns. They'd started with a cart, and invested a lot of time in reducing its weight as much as possible. Gearing had been a problem. He'd been doing a lot of thinking about gears. The ball wanted to spin much faster than the wheels wanted to turn. That was probably a metaphor for something or other. "And I can't get it to go backward," he said. "Don't worry," said Simony. "It won't have to go backward. What about armor?" Urn waved a distracted hand around his workshop. "This is a village forge!" he said. "This thing is twenty feet long! Zacharos can't make plates bigger than a few feet across. I've tried nailing them on a framework, but it just collapses under the weight." Simony looked at the skeleton of the steam car and the pile of plates stacked beside it. "Ever been in a battle, Urn?" he said. "No. I've got flat feet. And I'm not very strong." "Do you know what a tortoise is?" Urn scratched his head. "Okay. The answer isn't a little reptile in a shell, is it? Because you know I know that." "I mean a shield tortoise. When you're attacking a fortress or a wall, and the enemy is dropping everything he's got on you, every man holds his shield overhead so that it . . . kind of . . . slots into all the shields around it. Can take a lot of weight." "Overlapping," murmured Urn. "Like scales," said Simony. Urn looked reflectively at the cart. "A tortoise," he said. "And the battering-ram?" said Simony. "Oh, that's no problem," said Urn, not paying much attention. "Tree-trunk bolted to the frame. Big iron rammer. They're only bronze doors, you say?" "Yes. But very big." "Then they're probably hollow. Or cast bronze plates on wood. That's what I'd do." "Not solid bronze? Everyone says they're solid bronze." "That's what I'd say, too." "Excuse me, sirs." A burly man stepped forward. He wore the uniform of the palace guards. "This is Sergeant Fergmen," said Simony. "Yes, sergeant?" "The doors is reinforced with Klatchian steel. Because of all the fighting in the time of the False Prophet Zog. And they opens outwards only. Like lock gates on a canal, you understand? If you push on 'em, they only locks more firmly together." "How are they opened, then?" said Urn. "The Cenobiarch raises his hand and the breath of God blows them open," said the sergeant. "In a logical sense, I meant." "Oh. Well, one of the deacons goes behind a curtain and pulls a lever. But . . . when I was on guard down in the crypts, sometimes, there was a room . . . there was gratings and things . . . well, you could hear water gushing . . ." "Hydraulics," said Urn. "Thought it would be hydraulics." "Can you get in?" said Simony. "To the room? Why not? No one bothers with it." "Could he make the doors open?" said Simony. "Hmm?" said Urn. Urn was rubbing his chin reflectively with a hammer. He seemed to be lost in a world of his own. "I said, could Fergmen make these hydra haulics work?" "Hmm? Oh. Shouldn't think so," said Urn, vaguely. "Could you?" "What?" "Could you make them work?" "Oh. Probably. It's just pipes and pressures, after all. Um." Urn was still staring thoughtfully at the steam cart. Simony nodded meaningfully at the sergeant, indicating that he should go away, and then tried the mental interplanetary journey necessary to get to whatever world Urn was in. He tried looking at the cart, too. "How soon can you have it all finished?" "Hmm?" "I said-” "Late tomorrow night. If we work through tonight." "But we'll need it for the next dawn! We won't have time to see if it works!" "It'll work first time," said Urn. "Really?" "I built it. I know about it. You know about swords and spears and things. I know about things that go round and round. It will work first time." "Good. Well, there are other things I've got to do-” "Right." Urn was left alone in the barn. He looked reflectively at his hammer, and then at the iron cart. They didn't know how to cast bronze properly here. Their iron was pathetic, just pathetic. Their copper? It was terrible. They seemed to be able to make steel that shattered at a blow. Over the years the Quisition had weeded out all the good smiths. He'd done the best he could, but . . . "Just don't ask me about the second or third time," he said quietly to himself.     Vorbis sat in the stone chair in his garden, papers strewn around him. "Well?" The kneeling figure did not look up. Two guards stood over it, with drawn swords. "The Turtle people . . . the people are plotting something," it said, the voice shrill with terror. "Of course they are. Of course they are," said Vorbis. "And what is this plot?" "There is some kind of . . . when you are confirmed as Cenobiarch . . . some kind of device, some machine that goes by itself . . . it will smash down the doors of the Temple . . ." The voice faded away. "And where is this device now?" said Vorbis. "I don't know. They've bought iron from me. That's all I know." "An iron device." "Yes." The man took a deep breath-half-breath, half-gulp. "People say . . . the guards said . . . you have my father in prison and you might . . . I plead . . ." Vorbis looked down at the man. "But you fear," he said, "that I might have you thrown into the cells as well. You think I am that sort of person. You fear that I may think, this man has associated with heretics and blasphemers in familiar circumstances . . ." The man continued to stare fixedly at the ground. Vorbis's fingers curled gently around his chin and raised his head until they were eye to eye. "What you have done is a good thing," he said. He looked at one of the guards. "Is this man's father still alive?" "Yes, lord." "Still capable of walking?" The inquisitor shrugged. "Ye-es, lord." "Then release him this instant, put him in the charge of his dutiful son here, and send them both back home." The armies of hope and fear fought in the informant's eyes. "Thank you, lord," he said. "Go in peace." Vorbis watched one of the guards escort the man from the garden. Then he waved a hand vaguely at one of the head inquisitors. "Do we know where he lives?" "Yes, lord." "Good." The inquisitor hesitated. "And this . . . device, lord?" "Om has spoken to me. A machine that goes by itself? Such a thing is against all reason. Where are its muscles? Where is its mind?" "Yes, lord." The inquisitor, whose name was Deacon Cusp, had got where he was today, which was a place he wasn't sure right now that he wanted to be, because he liked hurting people. It was a simple desire, and one that was satisfied in abundance within the Quisition. And he was one of those who were terrified in a very particular way by Vorbis. Hurting people because you enjoyed it . . . that was understandable. Vorbis just hurt people because he'd decided that they should be hurt, without passion, even with a kind of hard love. In Cusp's experience, people didn't make things up, ultimately, not in front of an exquisitor. Or course there were no such things as devices that moved by themselves, but he made a mental note to increase the guard- "However," said Vorbis, "there will be a disturbance during the ceremony tomorrow." "Lord?" "I have . . . special knowledge," said Vorbis. "Of course, lord." "You know the breaking strain of sinews and muscles, Deacon Cusp." Cusp had formed an opinion that Vorbis was somewhere on the other side of madness. Ordinary madness he could deal with. In his experience there were quite a lot of mad people in the world, and many of them became even more insane in the tunnels of the Quisition. But Vorbis had passed right through that red barrier and had built some kind of logical structure on the other side. Rational thoughts made out of insane components . . . "Yes, lord," he said. "I know the breaking strain of people."     It was night, and cold for the time of year. Lu-Tze crept through the gloom of the barn, sweeping industriously. Sometimes he took a rag from the recesses of his robe and polished things. He polished the outside of the Moving Turtle, which loomed low and menacing in the shadows. And he swept his way toward the forge, where he watched for a while. It takes extreme concentration to pour good steel. No wonder gods have always clustered around isolated smithies. There are so many things that can go wrong. A slight mis-mix of ingredients, a moment's lapse-- Urn, who was almost asleep on his feet, grunted as he was nudged awake and something was put in his hands. It was a cup of tea. He looked into the little round face of LuTze. "Oh," he said. "Thank you. Thank you very much." Nod, smile. "Nearly done," said Urn, more or less to himself. "Just got to let it cool now. Got to let it cool really slowly. Otherwise it crystallises, you see." Nod, smile, nod. It was good tea. "S'not 'n important cast anyway," said Urn, swaying. "Jus' the control levers-” Lu-Tze caught him carefully and steered him to a seat on a heap of charcoal. Then he went and watched the forge for a while. The bar of steel was glowing in the mold. He poured a bucket of cold water over it, watched the great cloud of steam spread and disperse, and then put his broom over his shoulder and ran away hurriedly. People to whom Lu-Tze was a vaguely glimpsed figure behind a very slow broom would have been surprised at his turn of speed, especially in a man six thousand years old who ate nothing but brown rice and drank only green tea with a knob of rancid butter in it. A little way away from the Citadel's main gates he stopped running and started sweeping. He swept up to the gates, swept around the gates themselves, nodded and smiled at a soldier who glared at him and then realized that it was only the daft old sweeper, polished one of the handles of the gates, and swept his way by passages and cloisters to Brutha's vegetable garden. He could see a figure crouched among the melons. Lu-Tze found a rug and padded back out into the garden, where Brutha was sitting hunched up with his hoe over his knees. Lu-Tze had seen many agonized faces in his time, which was a longer time than most whole civilizations managed to see. Brutha's was the worst. He tugged the rug over the bishop's shoulders. "I can't hear him," said Brutha hoarsely. "It may mean that he's too far away. I keep on thinking that. He might be out there somewhere. Miles away!" Lu-Tze smiled and nodded. "It'll happen all over again. He never told anyone to do anything. Or not to do anything. He didn't care!" Lu-Tze nodded and smiled again. His teeth were yellow. They were in fact his two-hundredth set. "He should have cared." Lu-Tze disappeared into his corner again and returned with a shallow bowl full of some kind of tea. He nodded and smiled and proffered it until Brutha took it and had a sip. It tasted like hot water with a lavender bag in it. "You don't understand anything I'm talking about, do you?" said Brutha. "Not much," said Lu-Tze. "You can talk?" Lu-Tze put a wisened finger to his lips. "Big secret," he said. Brutha looked at the little man. How much did he know about him? How much did anyone know about him? "You talk to God," said Lu-Tze. "How do you know that?" "Signs. Man who talk to God have difficult life." "You're right!" Brutha stared at Lu-Tze over the cup. "Why are you here?" he said. "You're not Omnian. Or Ephebian." "Grew up near Hub. Long time ago. Now Lu-Tze a stranger everywhere he goes. Best way. Learned religion in temple at home. Now go where job is." "Carting soil and pruning plants?" "Sure. Never been bishop or high panjandrum. Dangerous life. Always be man who cleans pews or sweeps up behind altar. No one bother useful man. No one bother small man. No one remember name." "That's what I was going to do! But it doesn't work for me." "Then find other way. I learn in temple. Taught by ancient master. When trouble, always remember wise words of ancient and venerable master." "What were they?" "Ancient master say: `That boy there! What you eating? Hope you brought enough for everybody!' Ancient master say: `You bad boy! Why you no do homework?' Ancient master say: `What boy laughing? No tell what boy laughing, whole dojo stay in after school!' When remember these wise words, nothing seems so bad." "What shall I do? I can't hear him!" "You do what you must. I learn anything, it you have to walk it all alone." Brutha hugged his knees. "But he told me nothing! Where's all this wisdom? All the other prophets came back with commandments!" "Where they get them?" "I . . . suppose they made them up." "You get them from same place."     "You call this philosophy?" roared Didactylos, waving his stick. Urn cleaned pieces of the sand mold from the lever. "Well . . . natural philosophy," he said. The stick whanged down on the Moving Turtle's flanks. "I never taught you this sort of thing!" shouted the philosopher. "Philosophy is supposed to make life better! " "This will make it better for a lot of people," said Urn, calmly. "It will help overthrow a tyrant." "And then?" said Didactylos. "And then what?" "And then you'll take it to bits, will you?" said the old man. "Smash it up? Take the wheels off? Get rid of all those spikes? Burn the plans? Yes? When it's served its purpose, yes?" "Well-” Urn began. "Aha!" "Aha what? What if we do keep it? It'll be a . . . a deterrent to other tyrants!" "You think tyrants won't build 'em too?" "Well . . . I can build bigger ones!" Urn shouted. Didactylos sagged. "Yes," he said. "No doubt you can. So that's all right, then. My word. And to think I was worrying. And now . . . I think I'll go and have a rest somewhere . . . He looked hunched up, and suddenly old. "Master?" said Urn. "Don't `master' me," said Didactylos, feeling his way along the barn walls to the door. "I can see you know every bloody thing there is to know about human nature now. Hah!"     The Great God Om slid down the side of an irrigation ditch and landed on his back in the weeds at the bottom. He righted himself by gripping a root with his mouth and hauling himself over. The shape of Brutha's thoughts flickered back and forth in his mind. He couldn't make out any actual words, but he didn't need to, any more than you needed to see the ripples to know which way the river flowed. Occasionally, when he could see the Citadel as a gleaming dot in the twilight, he'd try shouting his own mind back as loudly as he could: "Wait! Wait! You don't want to do that! We can go to Ankh-Morpork! Land of opportunity! With my brains and your . . . with you, the world is our mollusk! Why throw it all away . . . And then he'd slide into another furrow. Once or twice he saw the eagle, forever circling. "Why put your hand into a grinder? This place deserves Vorbis! Sheep deserve to be led!" It had been like this when his very first believer had been stoned to death. Of course, by then he had dozens of other believers. But it had been a wrench. It had been upsetting. You never forgot your first believer. They gave you shape. Tortoises are not well equipped for cross-country navigation. They need longer legs or shallower ditches. Om estimated that he was doing less than a fifth of a mile an hour in a direct line, and the Citadel was at least twenty miles away. Occasionally he made good time between the trees in an olive grove, but that was more than pulled back by rocky ground and field walls. All the time, as his legs whirred, Brutha's thoughts buzzed in his head like a distant bee. He tried shouting in his mind again. "What've you got? He's got an army! You've got an army? How many divisions have you got?" But thoughts like that needed energy, and there was a limit to the amount of energy available in one tortoise. He found a bunch of fallen grapes and gobbled them until the juice covered his head, but it didn't make a lot of difference. And then there was nightfall. Nights here weren't as cold as the desert, but they weren't as warm as the day. He'd slow down at night as his blood cooled. He wouldn't be able to think as fast. Or walk as fast. He was losing heat already. Heat meant speed. He pulled himself up on to an anthill- "You're going to die! You're going to die!" -and slid down the other side.     Preparations for the inauguration of the Cenobiarch Prophet began many hours before the dawn. Firstly, and not according to ancient tradition, there was a very careful search of the temple by Deacon Cusp and some of his colleagues. There was a prowling for tripwires and a poking of odd corners for hidden archers. Although it was against the thread, Deacon Cusp had his head screwed on. He also sent a few squads into the town to round up the usual suspects. The Quisition always found it advisable to leave a few suspects at large. Then you knew where to find them when you needed them. After that a dozen lesser priests arrived to shrive the premises and drive out all afreets, djinns, and devils. Deacon Cusp watched them without comment. He'd never had any personal dealings with supernatural entities, but he knew what a well-placed arrow would do to an unexpecting stomach. Someone tapped him on the rib-cage. He gasped at the sudden linkage of real life into the chain of thought, and reached instinctively for his dagger. "Oh," he said. Lu-Tze nodded and smiled and indicated with his broom that Deacon Cusp was standing on a patch of floor that he, Lu-Tze, wished to sweep. "Hello, you ghastly little yellow fool," said Deacon Cusp. Nod, smile. "Never say a bloody word, do you?" said Deacon Cusp. Smile, smile. "Idiot." Smile. Smile. Watch.     Urn stood back. "Now," he said, "you sure you've got it all?" "Easy," said Simony, who was sitting in the Turtle's saddle. "Tell me again," said Urn. "We-stoke-up-the-firebox," said Simony. "Then-when-thered-needle-points-to-xxvi, turn-the-brass-tap; when-the-bronze-whistle-blows, pull-the-big-lever. And steer by pulling the ropes." "Right," said Urn. But he still looked doubtful. "It's a precision device," he said. "And I am a professional soldier," said Simony. "I'm not a superstitious peasant." "Fine, fine. Well . . . if you're sure . . . ' They'd had time to put a few finishing touches to the Moving Turtle. There were serrated edges to the shell and spikes on the wheels. And of course the waste steam pipe . . . he was a little uncertain about the waste steam pipe . . . "It's merely a device," said Simony. "It does not present a problem." "Give us an hour, then. You should just get to the Temple by the time we get the doors open." "Right. Understood. Off you go. Sergeant Fergmen knows the way." Urn looked at the steam pipe and bit his lip. I don't know what effect it's going to have on the enemy, he thought, but it scares the hells out of me.     Brutha woke up, or at least ceased trying to sleep. Lu-Tze had gone. Probably sweeping somewhere. He wandered through the deserted corridors of the novice section. It would be hours before the new Cenobiarch was crowned. There were dozens of ceremonies to be undertaken first. Everyone who was anyone would be in the Place and the surrounding piazzas, and so would the even greater number of people who were no one very much. The sestinas were empty, the endless prayers left unsung. The Citadel might have been dead, were it not for the huge indefinable background roar of tens of thousands of people being silent. Sunlight filtered down through the light-wells. Brutha had never felt more alone. The wilderness had been a feast of fun compared to this. Last night . . . last night, with Lu-Tze, it had all seemed so clear. Last night he had been in a mood to confront Vorbis there and then. Last night there seemed to be a chance. Anything was possible last night. That was the trouble with last nights. They were always followed by this mornings. He wandered out into the kitchen level, and then into the outside world. There were one or two cooks around, preparing the ceremonial meal of meat, bread, and salt, but they paid him no attention at all. He sat down outside one of the slaughterhouses. There was, he knew, a back gate somewhere around. Probably no one would stop him, today, if he walked out. Today they would be looking for unwanted people walking in. He could just walk away. The wilderness had seemed quite pleasant, apart from the thirst and hunger. St. Ungulant with his madness and his mushrooms seemed to have life exactly right. It didn't matter if you fooled yourself provided you didn't let yourself know it, and did it well. Life was so much simpler, in the desert. But there were a dozen guards by the gate. They had an unsympathetic look. He went back to his seat, which was tucked away in a corner, and stared gloomily at the ground. If Om was alive, surely he could send a sign? A grating by Brutha's sandals lifted itself up a few inches and slid aside. He stared at the hole. A hooded head appeared, stared back, and disappeared again. There was a subterranean whispering. The head reappeared, and was followed by a body. It pulled itself on to the cobbles. The hood was pushed back. The man grinned conspiratorially at Brutha, put his finger to his lips and then, without warning, launched himself at him with violent intent. Brutha rolled across the cobbles and raised his hands frantically as he saw the gleam of metal. One filthy hand clamped against his mouth. A knifeblade made a dramatic and very final silhouette against the light- "No! " "Why not? We said the first thing we'll do, we'll kill all the priests!" "Not that one!" Brutha dared to swivel his eyes sideways. Although the second figure rising from the hole was also wearing a filthy robe, there was no mistaking the paintbrush hairstyle. He tried to say "Urn?" "Shut up, you," said the other man, pressing the knife to his throat. "Brutha?" said Urn. "You're alive?" Brutha moved his eyes from his captor to Urn in a way which he hoped would indicate that it was too soon to make any commitment on this point. "He's all right," said Urn. "All right? He's a priest!" "But he's on our side. Aren't you, Brutha?" Brutha tried to nod, and thought: I'm on everyone's side. It'd be nice if, just for once, someone was on mine. The hand was unclamped from his mouth, but the knife remained resting on his throat. Brutha's normally careful thought processes ran like quicksilver. "The Turtle Moves?" he ventured. The knife was withdrawn, with obvious reluctance. "I don't trust him," said the man. "We should shove him down the hole at least." "Brutha's one of us," said Urn. "That's right. That's right," said Brutha. "Which ones are you?" Urn leaned closer. "How's your memory?" "Unfortunately, it is fine." "Good. Good. Uh. It would be a good idea to stay out of trouble, d'you hear . . . if anything happens. Remember the Turtle. Well, of course you would." "What things?" Urn patted him on the shoulder, making Brutha think for a moment of Vorbis. Vorbis, who never touched another person inside his head, was a great toucher with his hands. "Best if you don't know what's happening," said Urn. "But I don't know what's happening," said Brutha. "Good. That's the way." The burly man gestured with his knife towards the tunnels that led into the rock. "Are we going, or what?" he demanded. Urn ran after him and then stopped briefly and turned. "Be careful," he said. "We need what's in your head!" Brutha watched them go. "So do I," he murmured. And then he was alone again. But he thought: Hold on. I don't have to be. I'm a bishop. At least I can watch. Om's gone and soon the world will end, so at least I might as well watch it happen. Sandals flapping, Brutha set off towards the Place. Bishops move diagonally. That's why they often turn up where the kings don't expect them to be.     "You godawful idiot! Don't go that way!" The sun was well up now. In fact it was probably setting, if Didactylos's theories about the speed of light were correct, but in matters of relativity the point of view of the observer is very important, and from Om's point of view the sun was a golden ball in a flaming orange sky. He pulled himself up another slope, and stared blearily at the distant Citadel. In his mind's eye, he could hear the mocking voices of all small gods. They didn't like a god who had failed. They didn't like that at all. It let them all down. It reminded them of mortality. He'd be thrust out into the deep desert, where no one would ever come. Ever. Until the end of the world. He shivered in his shell.     Urn and Fergmen walked nonchalantly through the tunnels of the Citadel, using the kind of nonchalant walk which, had there been anyone to take an interest in it, would have drawn detailed and arrow-sharp attention to them within seconds. But the only people around were those with vital jobs to do. Besides, it was not a good idea to stare too hard at the guards, in case they stared back. Simony had told Urn he'd agreed to this. He couldn't quite remember doing so. The sergeant knew a way into the Citadel, that was sensible. And Urn knew about hydraulics. Fine. Now he was walking through these dry tunnels with his toolbelt clinking. There was a logical connection, but it had been made by someone else. Fergmen turned a corner and stopped by a large grille, which stretched from floor to ceiling. It was very rusty. It might once have been a door-there was a suggestion of hinges, rusted into the stone. Urn peered through the bars. Beyond, in the gloom, there were pipes. "Eureka," he said. "Going to have a bath, then?" said Fergmen. "Just keep watch." Urn selected a short crowbar from his belt and inserted it between the grille and the stonework. Give me a foot of good steel and a wall to brace . . . my . . . foot . . . against-the grille ground forward and then popped out with a leaden sound-and I can change the world . . . He stepped inside the long, dark, damp room, and gave a whistle of admiration. No one had done any maintenance for-well, for as long as it took iron hinges to become a mass of crumbling rust-but all this still worked? He looked up at lead and iron buckets bigger than he was, and a tangle of man-sized pipes. This was the breath of God. Probably the last man who knew how it worked had been tortured to death years before. Or as soon as it was installed. Killing the creator was a traditional method of patent-protection. There were the levers and there, hanging over pits in the rock floor, were the two sets of counterweights. Probably it'd only take a few hundred gallons of water to swing the balance either way. Of course, the water'd have to be pumped up- "Sergeant?" Fergmen peered round the door. He looked nervous, like an atheist in a thunderstorm. "What?" Urn pointed. "There's a big shaft through the wall there, see? At the bottom of the gear-chain?" "The what?" "The big knobbly wheels?" "Oh. Yeah." "Where does the shaft go to?" "Don't know. There's the big Treadmill of Correction through there." Ah. The breath of God was ultimately the sweat of men. Didactylos would have appreciated the joke, Urn thought. He was aware of a sound that had been there all the time but was only now penetrating through his concentration. It was tinny and faint and full of echoes, but it was voices. From the pipes. The sergeant, to judge by his expression, had heard them too. Urn put his ear to the metal. There was no possibility of making out words, but the general religious rhythm was familiar enough. "It's just the service going on in the Temple," he said. "It's probably resonating off the doors and the sound's being carried down the pipes." Fergmen did not look reassured. "No gods are involved in any way," Urn translated. He turned his attention to the pipes again. "Simple principle," said Urn, more to himself than to Fergmen. "Water pours into the reservoirs on the weights, disturbing the equilibrium. One lot of weights descends and the other rises up the shaft in the wall. The weight of the door is immaterial. As the bottom weights descend, these buckets here tip over, pouring the water out. Probably quite a smooth action. Perfect equilibrium at either end of the movement, too. Nicely thought out." He caught Fergmen's expression. "Water goes in and out and the doors swing open," he translated. "So all we've got to do is wait for . . . what did he say the sign would be?" "They'll blow a trumpet when they're through the main gate," said Fergmen, pleased to be of service. "Right." Urn eyed the weights and the reservoirs overhead. The bronze pipes dripped with corrosion. "But perhaps we'd better just check that we know what we're doing," he said. "It probably takes a minute or two before the doors start moving." He fumbled under his robe and produced something that looked, to Fergmen's eye, very much like a torture instrument. This must have communicated itself to Urn, who said very slowly and kindly: "This is an ad-just-ab-ble span-ner." "Yes?" "It's for twisting nuts off." Fergmen nodded miserably. "Yes?" he said. "And this is a bottle of penetrating oil." "Oh, good." "Just give me a leg up, will you? It'll take time to unhook the linkage to the valve, so we might as well make a start." Urn heaved himself into the ancient machinery while, above, the ceremony droned on.     Cut-Me-Own-Hand-Off Dhblah was all for new prophets. He was even in favor of the end of the world, if he could get the concession to sell religious statues, cut-price icons, rancid sweetmeats, fermenting dates, and putrescent olives on a stick to any watching crowds. Subsequently, this was his testament. There never was a Book of the Prophet Brutha, but an enterprising scribe, during what came to be called the Renovation, did assemble some notes, and Dhblah had this to say: "I. I was standing right by the statue of Ossory, right, when I noticed Brutha just beside me. Everyone was keeping away from him because of him being a bishop and they do things to you if you jostle bishops. "II. I said to him, hello, Your Graciousness, and offered him a yoghurt practically free. "III. He responded, no. "IV. I said, it's very healthy, it's a live yoghurt. "V. He said, yes, he could see. "VI. He was staring at the doors. This was about the time of the third gong, right, so we all knew we'd got hours to wait. He was looking a bit down and it's not as if he even ate the yoghurt, which I admit was on the hum a bit, what with the heat. I mean, it was more alive than usual. I mean, I had to keep hitting it with a spoon to stop it getting out of the . . . all right. I was just explaining about the yoghurt. All right. I mean, you want to put a bit of color in, don't you? People like a bit of color. It was green. "VII. He just stood there, staring. So I said, got a problem, Your Reverence? Upon which he vouchsafed, I cannot hear him. I said, what is this he to whom what you refer? He said, if he was here, he would send me a sign. "VIII. There is no truth whatsoever in the rumor that I ran away at this juncture. It was just the pressure of the crowd. I have never been a friend of the Quisition. I might have sold them food, but I always charged them extra. "IX. Anyway, right, then he pushed through the line of guards what was holding the crowd back and stood right in front of the doors, and they weren't sure what to do about bishops, and I heard him say something like, I carried you in the desert, I believed all my life, just give me this one thing. "X. Something like that, anyway. How about some yoghurt? Bargain offer. Onna stick."     Om lifted himself over a creeper-clad wall by grasping tendrils in his beak and hauling himself up by the neck muscles. Then he fell down the other side. The Citadel was as far away as ever. Brutha's mind was flaming like a beacon in Om's senses. There's a streak of madness in everyone who spends quality time with gods, and it was driving the boy now. "It's too soon!" Om yelled. "You need followers! It can't be just you! You can't do it by yourself! You have to get disciples first!"     Simony turned to look down the length of the Turtle. Thirty men were crouched under the shell, looking very apprehensive. A corporal saluted. "The needle's there, sergeant." The brass whistle whistled. Simony picked up the steering ropes. This was what war should be, he thought. No uncertainty. A few more Turtles like this, and no one would ever fight again. "Stand by," he said. He pulled the big lever hard. The brittle metal snapped in his hand. Give anyone a lever long enough and they can change the world. It's unreliable levers that are the problem.     In the depths of the Temple's hidden plumbing, Urn grasped a bronze pipe firmly with his spanner and gave the nut a cautious turn. It resisted. He changed position, and grunted as he used more pressure. With a sad little metal sound, the pipe twisted-and broke . . . Water gushed out, hitting him in the face. He dropped the tool and tried to block the flow with his fingers, but it spurted around his hands and gurgled down the channel towards one of the weights. "Stop it! Stop it!" he shouted. "What?" said Fergmen, several feet below him. "Stop the water!" "How?" "The pipe's broken!" "I thought that's what we wanted to do?" "Not yet!" "Stop shouting, mister! There's guards around!" Urn let the water gush for a moment as he struggled out of his robe, and then he rammed the sodden material into the pipe. It shot out again with some force and slapped wetly against the lead funnel, sliding down until it blocked the tube that led to the weights. The water piled up behind it and then spilled over on to the floor. Urn glanced at the weight. It hadn't begun to move. He relaxed slightly. Now, provided there was still enough water to make the weight drop . . . "Both of you-stand still." He looked around, his mind going numb. There was a heavy-set man in a black robe standing in the stricken doorway. Behind him, a guard held a sword in a meaningful manner. "Who are you? Why are you here?" Urn hesitated for only a moment. He gestured with his spanner. "Well, it's the seating, innit," he said. "You've got shocking seepage around the seating. Amazing it holds together." The man stepped into the room. He glared uncertainly at Urn for a moment and then turned his attention to the gushing pipe. And then back to Urn. "But you're not-” he began. He spun around as Fergmen hit the guard hard with a length of broken pipe. When he turned back, Urn's spanner caught him full in the stomach. Urn wasn't strong, but it was a long spanner, and the wellknown principles of leverage did the rest. He doubled up and then sagged backwards against one of the weights. What happened next happened in frozen time. Deacon Cusp grabbed at the weight for support. It sank down, ponderously, his extra poundage adding to the weight of the water. He clawed higher. It sank further, dropping below the lip of the pit. He sought for balance again, but this time it was against fresh air, and he tumbled on top of the falling weight. Urn saw his face staring up at him as the weight fell into the gloom. With a lever, he could change the world. It had certainly changed it for Deacon Cusp. It had made it stop existing. Fergmen was standing over the guard, his pipe raised. "I know this one," he said. "I'm going to give him a-” "Never mind about that!" "But-” Above them linkage clanked into action. There was a distant creaking of bronze against bronze. "Let's get out of here," said Urn. "Only the gods know what's happening up there."     And blows rained on the unmoving Moving Turtle's carapace. "Damn! Damn! Damn!" shouted Simony, thumping it again. "Move! I command you to move! Can you understand plain Ephebian! Move!" The unmoving machine leaked steam and sat there.     And Om pulled himself up the slope of a small hill. So it came to this, then. There was only one way to get to the Citadel now. It was a million-to-one chance, with any luck.     And Brutha stood in front of the huge doors, oblivious to the crowd and the muttering guards. The Quisition could arrest anyone, but the guards weren't certain what happened to you if you apprehended an archbishop, especially one so recently favored by the Prophet. Just a sign, Brutha thought, in the loneliness of his head. The doors trembled, and swung slowly outwards. Brutha stepped forward. He wasn't fully conscious now, not in any coherent way as understood by normal people. Just one part of him was still capable of looking at the state of his own mind and thinking: perhaps the Great Prophets felt like this all the time. The thousands inside the temple were looking around in confusion. The choirs of lesser Iams paused in their chant. Brutha walked on up the aisle, the only one with a purpose in the suddenly bewildered throng. Vorbis was standing in the center of the temple, under the vault of the dome. Guards hurried toward Brutha, but Vorbis raised a hand in a gentle but very positive movement. Now Brutha could take in the scene. There was the staff of Ossory, and Abbys's cloak, and the sandals of Cena. And, supporting the dome, the massive statues of the first four prophets. He'd never seen them. He'd heard about them every day of his childhood. And what did they mean now? They didn't mean anything. Nothing meant anything, if Vorbis was Prophet. Nothing meant anything, if the Cenobiarch was a man who'd heard nothing in the inner spaces of his own head but his own thoughts. He was aware that Vorbis's gesture had not only halted the guards, although they surrounded him like a hedge. It had also filled the temple with silence. Into which Vorbis spoke. "Ah. My Brutha. We had looked for you in vain. And now even you are here . . ." Brutha stopped a few feet away. The moment of . . . whatever it had been . . . that had propelled him through the doors had drained away. Now all there was, was Vorbis. Smiling. The part of him still capable of thought was thinking: there is nothing you can say. No one will listen. No one will care. It doesn't matter what you tell people about Ephebe, and Brother Murduck, and the desert. It won't be fundamentally true. Fundamentally true. That's what the world is, with Vorbis in it. Vorbis said, "There is something wrong? Something you wish to say?" The black-on-black eyes filled the world, like two pits. Brutha's mind gave up, and Brutha's body took over. It brought his hand back and raised it, oblivious to the sudden rush forward of the guards. He saw Vorbis turn his cheek, and smile. Brutha stopped, and lowered his hand. He said, "No. I won't." Then, for the first and only time, he saw Vorbis really enraged. There had been times before when the deacon had been angry, but it had been something driven by the brain, switched on and off as the need arose. This was something else, something out of control. And it flashed across his face only for a moment. As the hands of the guards closed on him, Vorbis stepped forward and patted him on the shoulder. He looked Brutha in the eye for a moment and then said softly: "Thrash him within an inch of his life and burn him the rest of the way." An Iam began to speak, but stopped when he saw Vorbis's expression. "Do it now."     A world of silence. No sound up here, except the rush of wind through the feathers. Up here the world is round, bordered by a band of sea. The viewpoint is from horizon to horizon, the sun is closer. And yet, looking down, looking for shapes . . . . . . down in the farmland on the edge of the wilderness . . . . . . on a small hill . . . . . . a tiny moving dome, ridiculously exposed . . . No sound but the rush of wind through feathers as the eagle pulls in its wings and drops like an arrow, the world spinning around the little moving shape that is the focus of all the eagle's attention. Closer and . . . . . . talons down . . . . . . grip . . . . . . and rise . . .     Brutha opened his eyes. His back was merely agonizing. He'd long ago got used to switching off pain. But he was spread-eagled on a surface, his arms and legs chained to something he couldn't see. Sky above. The towering frontage of the temple to one side. By turning his head a little he could see the silent crowd. And the brown metal of the iron turtle. He could smell smoke. Someone was just tightening the shackles on his hand. Brutha looked over at the inquisitor. Now, what was it he had to say? Oh, yes. "The Turtle Moves?" he mumbled. The man sighed. "Not this one, friend," he said.     The world spun under Om as the eagle sought for shellcracking height, and his mind was besieged by the tortoise's existential dread of being off the ground. And Brutha's thoughts, bright and clear this close to death . . . I'm on my back and getting hotter and I'm going to die . . . Careful, careful. Concentrate, concentrate. It'll let go any second . . . Om stuck out his long scrawny neck, stared at the body just above him, picked what he hoped was about the right spot, plunged his beak through the brown feathers between the talons, and gripped. The eagle blinked. No tortoise had ever done that to an eagle, anywhere else in history. Om's thoughts arrived in the little silvery world of its mind: "We don't want to hurt one another, now do we?" The eagle blinked again. Eagles have never evolved much imagination or forethought, beyond that necessary to know that a turtle smashes when you drop it on the rocks. But it was forming a mental picture of what happened when you let go of a heavy tortoise that was still intimately gripping an essential bit of you. Its eyes watered. Another thought crept into its mind. "Now. You play, uh, ball with me, I'll play . . . ball with you. Understand? This is important. This is what I want you to do . . ." The eagle soared on a thermal off the hot rocks, and sped towards the distant gleam of the Citadel. No tortoise had ever done this before. No tortoise in the whole universe. But no tortoise had ever been a god, and knew the unwritten motto of the Quisition: Cuius testiculos habes, habeas cardia et cerebellum. When you have their full attention in your grip, their hearts and minds will follow.     Urn pushed his way through the crowds, with Fergmen trailing behind. That was the best and the worst of civil war, at least at the start-everyone wore the same uniform. It was much easier when you picked enemies who were a different color or at least spoke with a funny accent. You could call them "gooks" or something. It made things easier. Hey, Urn thought. This is nearly philosophy. Pity I probably won't live to tell anyone. The big doors were ajar. The crowd was silent, and very attentive. He craned forward to see, and then looked up at the soldier beside him. It was Simony. "I thought-” "It didn't work," said Simony, bitterly. "Did you-?" "We did everything! Something broke!" "It must be the steel they make here," said Urn. "The link pins on-” "That doesn't matter now," said Simony. The flat tones of his voice made Urn follow the eyes of the crowd. There was another iron turtle there-a proper model of a turtle, mounted on a sort of open gridwork of metal bars in which a couple of inquisitors were even now lighting a fire. And chained to the back of the turtle- "Who's that?" "Brutha." "What?" "I don't know what happened. He hit Vorbis, or didn't hit him. Or something. Enraged him anyway. Vorbis stopped the ceremony, right there and then." Urn glanced at the deacon. Not Cenobiarch yet, so uncrowned. Among the Iams and bishops standing uncertainly in the open doorway, his bald head gleamed in the morning light. "Come on, then," said Urn. "Come on what?" "We can rush the steps and save him!" "There's more of them than there are of us," said Simony. "Well, haven't there always been? There's not magically more of them than there are of us just because they've got Brutha, are there?" Simony grabbed his arm. "Think logically, will you?" he said. "You're a philosopher, aren't you? Look at the crowd!" Urn looked at the crowd. "Well?" "They don't like it,." Simon turned. "Look, Brutha's going to die anyway. But this way it'll mean something. People don't understand, really understand, about the shape of the universe and all that stuff, but they'll remember what Vorbis did to a man. Right? We can make Brutha's death a symbol for people, don't you see?" Urn stared at the distant figure of Brutha. It was naked, except for a loin-cloth. "A symbol?" he said. His throat was dry. "It has to be." He remembered Didactylos saying the world was a funny place. And, he thought distantly, it really was. Here people were about to roast someone to death, but they'd left his loin-cloth on, out of respectability. You had to laugh. Otherwise you'd go mad. "You know," he said, turning to Simony. "Now I know Vorbis is evil. He burned my city. Well, the Tsorteans do it sometimes, and we burn theirs. It's just war. It's all part of history. And he lies and cheats and claws power for himself, and lots of people do that, too. But do you know what's special? Do you know what it is?" "Of course," said Simony. "It's what he's doing to-” "It's what he's done to you." "What?" "He turns other people into copies of himself." Simony's grip was like a vice. "You're saying I'm like him?" "Once you said you'd cut him down," said Urn. "Now you're thinking like him . . . "So we rush them, then?" said Simony. "I'm sure of-maybe four hundred on our side. So I give the signal and a few hundred of us attack thousands of them? And he dies anyway and we die too? What difference does that make?" Urn's face was gray with horror now. "You mean you don't know?" he said. Some of the crowd looked round curiously at him. "You don't know?" he said.     The sky was blue. The sun wasn't high enough yet to turn it into Omnia's normal copper bowl. Brutha turned his head again, towards the sun. It was about a width above the horizon, although if Didactylos's theories about the speed of light were correct, it was really setting, thousands of years in the future. It was eclipsed by the head of Vorbis. "Hot yet, Brutha?" said the deacon. "Warm." "It will get warmer." There was a disturbance in the crowd. Someone was shouting. Vorbis ignored it. "Nothing you want to say?" he said. "Can't you manage even a curse? Not even a curse?" "You never heard Om," said Brutha. "You never believed. You never, ever heard his voice. All you heard were the echoes inside your own mind." "Really? But I am the Cenobiarch and you are going to burn for treachery and heresy," said Vorbis. "So much for Om, perhaps?" "There will be justice," said Brutha. "If there is no justice, there is nothing." He was aware of a small voice in his head, too faint yet to distinguish words. "Justice?" said Vorbis. The idea seemed to enrage him. He spun around to the crowd of bishops. "Did you hear him? There will be justice? Om has judged! Through me! This is justice!" There was a speck in the sun now, speeding toward the Citadel. And the little voice was saying left left left up up left right a bit up left-The mass of metal under him was getting uncomfortably hot. "He comes now," said Brutha. Vorbis waved his hand to the great facade of the temple. "Men built this. We built this," he said. "And what did Om do? Om comes? Let him come! Let him judge between us!" "He comes now," Brutha repeated. "The God." People looked apprehensively upward. There was that moment, just one moment, when the world holds its breath and against all experience waits for a miracle. -up left now, when I say three, one, two, THREE- "Vorbis?" croaked Brutha. "What?" snapped the deacon. "You're going to die." It was hardly a whisper, but it bounced off the bronze doors and carried across the Place . . . It made people uneasy, although they couldn't quite say why. The eagle sped across the square, so low that people ducked. Then it cleared the roof of the temple and curved away towards the mountains. The watchers relaxed. It was only an eagle. For a moment there, just for a moment . . . No one saw the tiny speck, tumbling down from the sky. Don't put your faith in gods. But you can believe in turtles. A feeling of rushing wind in Brutha's mind, and a voice . . . -obuggerbuggerbuggerhelpaarghnoNoNoAarghBuggerNONOAARGH- Even Vorbis got a grip of himself. There had been just a moment, when he'd seen the eagle-but, no . . . He extended his arms and smiled beatifically at the sky. "I'm sorry," said Brutha. One or two people, who had been watching Vorbis closely, said later that there was just time for his expression to change before two pounds of tortoise, traveling at three meters a second, hit him between the eyes. It was a revelation. And that does something to people watching. For a start, they believe with all their heart.     Brutha was aware of feet running up the steps, and hands pulling at the chains. And then a voice: I. He is Mine. The Great God rose over the Temple, billowing and changing as the belief of thousands of people flowed into him. There were shapes there, of eagle-headed men, and bulls, and golden horns, but they tangled and flamed and fused into one another. Four bolts of fire whirred out of the cloud and burst the chains holding Brutha. II. He Is Cenobiarch And Prophet of Prophets. The voice of theophany rumbled off the distant mountains. III. Do I Hear Any Objections? No? Good. The cloud had by now condensed into a shimmering golden figure, as tall as the Temple. It leaned down until its face was a few feet away from Brutha, and in a whisper that boomed across the Place said: IV. Don't Worry. This Is Just The Start. You and Me, Kid! People Are Going To Find Out What Wailing and Gnashing Of Teeth Really Is. Another shaft of flame shot out and struck the Temple doors. They slammed shut, and then the white-hot bronze melted, erasing the commandments of the centuries. V. What Shall It Be, Prophet? Brutha stood up, unsteadily. Urn supported him by one arm, and Simony by the other. "Mm?" he said, muzzily. VI. Your Commandments? "I thought they were supposed to come from you," said Brutha. "I don't know if I can think of any . . . The world waited. "How about `Think for Yourself'?" said Urn, staring in horrified fascination at the manifestation. "No," said Simony. "Try something like `Social Cohesiveness is the Key to Progress.' " "Can't say it rolls off the tongue," said Urn. "If I can be of any help," said Cut-Me-Own-Hand-Off Dhblah, from the crowd, "something of benefit to the convenience food industry would be very welcome." "Not killing people. We could do with one like that," said someone else. "It'd be a good start," said Urn. They looked at the Chosen One. He shook himself free of their grip and stood alone, swaying a little. "No-oo," said Brutha. "No. I thought like that once, but it wouldn't. Not really." Now, he said. Only now. Just one point in history. Not tomorrow, not next month, it'll always be too late unless it's now. They stared at him. "Come on," said Simony. "What's wrong with it? You can't argue with it." "It's hard to explain," said Brutha. "But I think it's got something to do with how people should behave. I think . . . you should do things because they're right. Not because gods say so. They might say something different another time." VII. I Like One About Not Killing, said Om, from far above. VIII. It's Got A Good Ring To It. Hurry Up, I've Got Some Smiting To Do. "You see?" said Brutha. "No. No smiting. No commandments unless you obey them too." Om thumped on the roof of the Temple. IX. You Order Me? Here? NOW? ME? "No. I ask." X. That's Worse Than Ordering! "Everything works both ways." Om thumped his Temple again. A wall caved in. That part of the crowd that hadn't managed to stampede from the Place redoubled its efforts. XI. There Must Be Punishment! Otherwise There Will Be No Order! ` No. XII. I Do Not Need You! I Have Believers Enough Now! "But only through me. And, perhaps, not for long. It will all happen again. It's happened before. It happens all the time. That's why gods die. They never believe in people. But you have a chance. All you need to do is . . . believe." XIII. What? Listen To Stupid Prayers? Watch Over Small Children? Make It Rain? "Sometimes. Not always. It could be a bargain." XIV. BARGAIN! I don't Bargain! Not With Humans! "Bargain now," said Brutha. "While you have the chance. Or one day you'll have to bargain with Simony, or someone like him. Or Urn, or someone like him. " XV. I Could Destroy You Utterly. "Yes. I am entirely in your power." XVI. I Could Crush You Like An Egg! "Yes." Om paused. Then he said: XVII. You Can't Use Weakness As A Weapon. "It's the only one I've got." XVIII. Why Should I Yield, Then? "Not yield. Bargain. Deal with me in weakness. Or one day you'll have to bargain with someone in a position of strength. The world changes." XIX. Hah! You Want A Constitutional Religion? "Why not? The other sort didn't work." Om leaned on the Temple, his temper subsiding. Chap. II v. l. Very Well, Then. But Only For A Time. A grin spread across the enormous, smoking face. For One Hundred Years, Yes? "And after a hundred years?" II. We Shall See. "Agreed." A finger the length of a tree unfolded, descended, touched Brutha. III. You Have A Persuasive Way. You Will Need It. A Fleet Approaches. "Ephebians?" said Simony. IV. And Tsorteans. And Djelibeybians. And Klatchians. Every Free Country Along The Coast. To Stamp Out Omnia For Good. Or Bad. "You don't have many friends, do you?" said Urn. "Even I don't like us much, and I am us," said Simony. He looked up at the god. "Will you help?" V. You Don't Even Believe In Me! "Yes, but I'm a practical man." VI. And Brave, Too, To Declare Atheism Before Your God. "This doesn't change anything, you know!" said Simony. "Don't think you can get round me by existing! " "No help," said Brutha, firmly. "What?" said Simony. "We'll need a mighty army against that lot!" "Yes. And we haven't got one. So we'll do it another way." "You're crazy!" Brutha's calmness was like a desert. "This may be the case." "We have to fight!" "Not yet." Simony clenched his fists in anger. "Look . . . listen . . . We died for lies, for centuries we died for lies." He waved a hand towards the god. "Now we've got a truth to die for!" "No. Men should die for lies. But the truth is too precious to die for." Simony's mouth opened and shut soundlessly as he sought for words. Finally, he found some from the dawn of his education. "I was told it was the finest thing to die for a god," he mumbled. "Vorbis said that. And he was . . . stupid. You can die for your country or your people or your family, but for a god you should live fully and busily, every day of along life." "And how long is that going to be?" "We shall see." Brutha looked up at Om. "You will not show yourself like this again?" Chap. III v. I. No. Once Is Enough. "Remember the desert." II. I Will Remember. "Walk with me." Brutha went over to the body of Vorbis and picked it up. "I think," he said, "that they will land on the beach on the Ephebian side of the forts. They won't use the rock shore and they can't use the cliffs. I'll meet them there." He glanced down at Vorbis. "Someone should." "You can't mean you want to go by yourself?" "Ten thousand won't be sufficient. One might be enough." He walked down the steps. Urn and Simony watched him go. "He's going to die," said Simony. "He won't even be a patch of grease on the sand." He turned to Om. "Can you stop him?" III. It May Be That I Cannot. Brutha was already halfway across the Place. "Well, we're not deserting him," said Simony. IV. Good. Om watched them go, too. And then he was alone, except for the thousands watching him, crammed around the edges of the great square. He wished he knew what to say to them. That's why he needed people like Brutha. That's why all gods needed people like Brutha. "Excuse me?" The god looked down. V. Yes? "Um. I can't sell you anything, can I?" VI. What Is Your Name? "Dhblah, god." VII. Ah, Yes. And What Is It You Wish? The merchant hopped anxiously from one foot to the other. "You couldn't manage just a small commandment? Something about eating yoghurt on Wednesdays, say? It's always very difficult to shift, midweek." VIII. You Stand Before Your God And Look For Business Opportunities? "We-ell," said Dhblah, "we could come to an arrangement. Strike while the iron is hot, as the inquisitors say. Haha. Twenty percent? How about it? After expenses, of course-” The Great God Om smiled. IX. I Think You Will Make A Little Prophet, Dhblah, he said. "Right. Right. That's all I'm looking for. Just trying to make both ends hummus." X. Tortoises Are To Be Left Alone. Dhblah put his head on one side. "Doesn't sing, does it?" he said. "But . . . tortoise necklaces . . . hmm . . . brooches, of course. Tortoiseshel-” XI. NO! "Sorry, sorry. See what you mean. All right. Tortoise statues. Ye-ess. I thought about them. Nice shape. Incidentally, you couldn't make a statue wobble every now and again, could you? Very good for business wobbling statues. The statue of Ossory wobbles eve; Fast of Ossory, reg'lar. By means of a small piston device operated in the basement, it is said. But very good for the prophets, all the same." XII. You Make me Laugh, Little Prophet. Sell Your Tortoises, By All Means. "Tell you the truth," said Dhblah, "I've already drawn a few designs just now . . ." Om vanished. There was a brief thunderclap. Dhblah looked reflectively at his sketches. ". . . but I suppose I'll have to take the little figure off them," he said, more or less to himself.     The shade of Vorbis looked around. "Ah. The desert," he said. The black sand was absolutely still under the starlit sky. It looked cold. He hadn't planned on dying yet. In fact . . . he couldn't quite remember how he'd died . . . "The desert," he repeated, and this time there was a hint of uncertainty. He'd never been uncertain about anything in his . . . life. The feeling was unfamiliar and terrifying. Did ordinary people feel like this? He got a grip on himself. Death was impressed. Very few people managed this, managed to hold on to the shape of their old thinking after death. Death took no pleasure in his job. It was an emotion he found hard to grasp. But there was such a thing as satisfaction. "So," said Vorbis. "The desert. And at the end of the desert?" JUDGEMENT. "Yes, yes, of course." Vorbis tried to concentrate. He couldn't. He could feel certainty draining away. And he'd always been certain. He hesitated, like a man opening a door to a familiar room and finding nothing there but a bottomless pit. The memories were still there. He could feel them. They had the right shape. It was just that he couldn't remember what they were. There had been a voice . . . . Surely, there had been a voice? But all he could remember was the sound of his own thoughts, bouncing off the inside of his own head. Now he had to cross the desert. What could there be to fear? The desert was what you believed. Vorbis looked inside himself. And went on looking. He sagged to his knees. I CAN SEE THAT YOU ARE BUSY, said Death. "Don't leave me! It's so empty!" Death looked around at the endless desert. He snapped his fingers and a large white horse trotted up. I SEE A HUNDRED THOUSAND PEOPLE, he said, swinging himself into the saddle. "Where? Where?" HERE. WITH YOU. "I can't see them!" Death gathered up the reins. NEVERTHELESS, he said. His horse trotted forward a few steps. "I don't understand!" screamed Vorbis. Death paused. YOU HAVE PERHAPS HEARD THE PHRASE, he said, THAT HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE? "Yes. Yes, of course." Death nodded. IN TIME, he said, YOU WILL LEARN THAT IT IS WRONG.     The first boats grounded in the shallows, and the troops leapt into shoulder-high surf. No one was quite sure who was leading the fleet. Most of the countries along the coast hated one another, not in any personal sense, but simply on a kind of historical basis. On the other hand, how much leadership was necessary? Everyone knew where Omnia was. None of the countries in the fleet hated the others worse than they did Omnia. Now it was necessary for it . . . not to exist. General Argavisti of Ephebe considered that he was in charge, because although he didn't have the most ships he was avenging the attack on Ephebe. But Imperiator Borvorius of Tsort knew that he was in charge, because there were more Tsortean ships than any others. And Admiral Rham-ap-Efan of Djelibeybi knew that he was in charge, because he was the kind of person who always thought he was in charge of anything. The only captain who did not, in fact, think that he was commanding the fleet was Fasta Benj, a fisherman from a very small nation of marsh-dwelling nomads of whose existence all the other countries were in complete ignorance, and whose small reed boat had been in the path of the fleet and had got swept along. Since his tribe believed that there were only fifty-one people in the world, worshiped a giant newt, spoke a very personal language which no one else understood, and had never seen metal or fire before, he was spending a lot of time wearing a puzzled grin. Clearly they had reached a shore, not of proper mud and reeds, but of very small gritty bits. He lugged his little reed boat up the sand, and sat down with interest to see what the men in the feathery hats and shiny fish-scale vests were going to do next. General Argavisti scanned the beach. "They must have seen us coming," he said. "So why would they let us establish a beachhead?" Heat haze wavered over the dunes. A dot appeared, growing and contracting in the shimmering air. More troops poured ashore. General Argavisti shaded his eyes against the sun. "Fella's just standing there," he said. "Could be a spy," said Borvorius. "Don't see how he could be a spy in his own country," said Argavisti. "Anyway, if he was a spy he'd be creepin' around. That's how you can tell." The figure had stopped at the foot of the dunes. There was something about it that drew the eye. Argavisti had faced many an opposing army, and this was normal. One patiently waiting figure was not. He found he kept turning to look at it. "S'carrying something," he said eventually. "Sergeant? Go and bring that man here." A few minutes later the sergeant returned. "Says he'll meet you in the middle of the beach, sir," he reported. "Didn't I tell you to bring him here?" "He didn't want to come, sir." "You've got a sword, haven't you?" "Yessir. Prodded him a bit, but he dint want to move, sir. And he's carrying a dead body, sir." "On a battlefield? It's not bring-your-own, you know." "And . . . sir?" "What?" "Says he's probably the Cenobiarch, sir. Wants to talk about a peace treaty." "Oh, he does? Peace treaty? We know about peace treaties with Omnia. Go and tell . . . no. Take a couple of men and bring him here." Brutha walked back between the soldiers, through the organized pandemonium of the camp. I ought to feel afraid, he thought. I was always afraid in the Citadel. But not now. This is through fear and out the other side. Occasionally one of the soldiers would give him a push. It's not allowed for an enemy to walk freely into a camp, even if he wants to. He was brought before a trestle table, behind which sat half a dozen large men in various military styles, and one small olive-skinned man who was gutting a fish and grinning hopefully at everyone. "Well, now," said Argavisti, "Cenobiarch of Omnia, eh?" Brutha dropped Vorbis's body on to the sand. Their gaze followed it. "I know him-” said Borvorius. "Vorbis! Someone killed him at last, eh? And will you stop trying to sell me fish? Does anyone know who this man is?" he added, indicating Fasta Benj. "It was a tortoise," said Brutha. "Was it? Not surprised. Never did trust them, always creeping around. Look, I said no fish! He's not one of mine, I know that. Is he one of yours?" Argavisti waved a hand irritably. "Who sent you, boy?" "No one. I came by myself. But you could say I come from the future." "Are you a philosopher? Where's your sponge?" "You've come to wage war on Omnia. This would not be a good idea." "From Omnia's point of view, yes." "From everyone's. You will probably defeat us. But not all of us. And then what will you do? Leave a garrison? For ever? And eventually a new generation will retaliate. Why you did this won't mean anything to them. You'll be the oppressors. They'll fight. They might even win. And there'll be another war. And one day people will say: why didn't they sort it all out, back then? On the beach. Before it all started. Before all those people died. Now we have that chance. Aren't we lucky?" Argavisti stared at him. Then he nudged Borvorius. "What did he say?" Borvorius, who was better at thinking than the others, said, "Are you talking about surrender?" "Yes. If that's the word." Argavisti exploded. "You can't do that!" "Someone will have to. Please listen to me. Vorbis is dead. He's paid." "Not enough. What about your soldiers? They tried to sack our city!" "Do your soldiers obey your orders?" "Certainly! " "And they'd cut me down here and now if you commanded it?" "I should say so!" "And I'm unarmed," said Brutha. The sun beat down on an awkward pause. "When I say they'd obey-” Argavisti began. "We were not sent here to parley," said Borvorius abruptly. "Vorbis's death changes nothing fundamental. We are here to see that Omnia is no longer a threat." "It is not. We will sent materials and people to help rebuild Ephebe. And gold, if you like. We will reduce the size of our army. And so on. Consider us beaten. We will even open Omnia to whatever other religions wish to build holy places here." A voice echoed in his head, like the person behind you who says, "Put the red Queen on the black King," when you think you have been playing all by yourself . . . I. What? "This will encourage . . . local effort," said Brutha. IL Other Gods? Here? "There will be free trade along the coast. I wish to see Omnia take its place among its fellow nations." III. I heard You Mention Other Gods. "Its place is at the bottom," said Borvorius. "No. That won't work." IV. Could We Please Get Back To The Matter Of Other Gods? "Will you please excuse me a moment?" said Brutha, brightly. "I need to pray." Even Argavisti raised no objection as Brutha walked off a little way up the beach. As St. Ungulant preached to any who would listen, there were plus points in being a madman. People hesitated to stop you, in case it made things worse. "Yes?" said Brutha, under his breath. V. I Don't Seem To Recall Any Discussion About Other Gods Being Worshiped In Omnia? "Ah, but it'll work for you," said Brutha. "People will soon see that those other ones are no good at all, won't they?" He crossed his fingers behind his back. VI. This Is Religion, Boy. Not Comparison Bloody Shopping! You Shall Not Subject Your God To Market Forces! "I'm sorry. I can see that you would be worried about-” VII. Worried? Me? By A Bunch Of Primping Women And Musclebound Posers In Curly Beards? "Fine. Is that settled, then?" VIII. They Won't Last Five Minutes! . . . what? "And now I'd better go and talk to these men one more time." His eye was caught by a movement among the dunes. "Oh, no," he said. "The idiots . . . He turned and ran desperately toward the beached fleet. "No! It's not like that! Listen! Listen!" But they had seen the army, too. It looked impressive, perhaps more impressive than it really was. When news gets through that a huge enemy fleet has beached with the intent of seriously looting, pillaging, and-because they are from civilized countries-whistling and making catcalls at the women and impressing them with their flash bloody uniforms and wooing them away with their flash bloody consumer goods, I don't know, show them a polished bronze mirror and it goes right to their heads, you'd think there was something wrong with the local lads . . . then people either head for the hills or pick up some handy, swingable object, get Granny to hide the family treasures in her drawers, and prepare to make a fight of it. And, in the lead, the iron cart. Steam poured out of its funnel. Urn must have got it working again. "Stupid! Stupid!" Brutha shouted, to the world in general, and carried on running. The fleet was already forming battle-lines, and its commander, whichever he was, was amazed to see an apparent attack by one man. Borvorius caught him as he plunged towards a line of spears. "I see," he said. "Keep us talking while your soldiers got into position, eh?" "No! I didn't want that!" Borvorius's eyes narrowed. He had not survived the many wars of his life by being a stupid man. "No," he said, "maybe you didn't. But it doesn't matter. Listen to me, my innocent little priest. Sometimes there has to be a war. Things go too far for words. There's . . . other forces. Now . . . go back to your people. Maybe we'll both be alive when all this is over and then we can talk. Fight first, talk after. That's how it works, boy. That's history. Now, go back." Brutha turned away. I. Shall I Smite Them? "No!" Il. I Could Make Them As Dust. Just Say The Word. "No. That's worse than war." III. But You Said A God Must Protect His People "What would we be if I told you to crush honest men?" IV. Not Stuck Full Of Arrows? No. The Omnians were assembling among the dunes. A lot of them had clustered around the iron-shielded cart. Brutha looked at it through a mist of despair. "Didn't I say I'd go down there alone?" he said. Simony, who was leaning against the Turtle, gave him a grim smile. "Did it work?" he said. "I think . . . it didn't." "I knew it. Sorry you had to find out. Things have a way of wanting to happen, see? Sometimes you get people facing off and . . . that's it." "But if only people would-” "Yeah. You could use that as a commandment." There was a clanging noise, and a hatch opened on the side of the Turtle. Urn emerged, backward, holding a spanner. "What is this thing?" said Brutha. "It's a machine for fighting," said Simony. "The Turtle Moves, eh?" "For fighting Ephebians?" said Brutha. Urn turned around. "What?" he said. "You've built this . . . this thing . . . to fight Ephebians?" "Well . . . no . . . no," said Urn, looking bewildered. "We're fighting Ephebians?" "Everyone," said Simony. "But I never . . . I'm an . . . I never-” Brutha looked at the spiked wheels and the sawedged plates around the edge of the Turtle. "It's a device that goes by itself," said Urn. "We were going to use it for . . . I mean . . . look, I never wanted it to . . .' "We need it now," said Simony. "Which we?" "What comes out of the big long spout thing at the front?" said Brutha. "Steam," said Urn dully. "It's connected to the safety valve." "Oh." "It comes out very hot," said Urn, sagging even more. "Oh?" "Scalding, in fact." Brutha's gaze drifted from the steam funnel to the rotating knives. "Very philosophical," he said. "We were going to use it against Vorbis," said Urn. "And now you're not. It's going to be used against Ephebians. You know, I used to think I was stupid, and then I met philosophers." Simony broke the silence by patting Brutha on the shoulder. "It will all work out," he said. "We won't lose. After all," he smiled encouragingly, "we have God on our side." Brutha turned. His fist shot out. It wasn't a scientific blow, but it was hard enough to spin Simony around. He clutched his chin. "What was that for? Isn't this what you wanted?" "We get the gods we deserve," said Brutha, "and I think we don't deserve any. Stupid. Stupid. The sanest man I've met this year lives up a pole in the desert. Stupid. I think I ought to join him." I. Why? "Gods and men, men and gods," said Brutha. "Everything happens because things have happened before. Stupid." II. But You Are The Chosen One. "Choose someone else." Brutha strode off through the ragged army. No one tried to stop him. He reached the path that led up to the cliffs, and did not even turn to look at the battlelines. "Aren't you going to watch the battle? I need someone to watch the battle." Didactylos was sitting on a rock, his hands folded on his stick. "Oh, hello," said Brutha, bitterly. "Welcome to Omnia." "It helps if you're philosophical about it," said Didactylos. "But there's no reason to fight!" "Yes there is. Honor and revenge and duty and things like that." "Do you really think so? I thought philosophers were supposed to be logical?" Didactylos shrugged. "Well, the way I see it, logic is only a way of being ignorant by numbers." "I thought it would all be over when Vorbis was dead." Didactylos stared into his inner world. "It takes a long time for people like Vorbis to die. They leave echoes in history." "I know what you mean." "How's Urn's steam machine?" said Didactylos. "I think he's a bit upset about it," said Brutha. Didactylos cackled and banged his stick on the ground. "Hah! He's learning! Everything works both ways!" "It should do," said Brutha.     Something like a golden comet sped across the sky of the Discworld. Om soared like an eagle, buoyed up by the freshness, by the strength of the belief. For as long as it lasted, anyway. Belief this hot, this desperate, never lasted long. Human minds could not sustain it. But while it did last, he was strong. The central spire of Cori Celesti rises up from the mountains at the Hub, ten vertical miles of green ice and snow, topped by the turrets and domes of Dunmanifestin. There the gods of the Discworld live. At the least, any god who is anybody. And it is strange that, although it takes years of effort and work and scheming for a god to get there, once there they never seem to do a lot apart from drink too much and indulge in a little mild corruption. Many systems of government follow the same broad lines. They play games. They tend to be very simple games, because gods are easily bored by complicated things. It is strange that, while small gods can have one aim in mind for millions of years, are in fact one aim, large gods seem to have the attention span of the common mosquito. And style? If the gods of the Discworld were people they would think that three plaster ducks is a bit avant-garde. There was a double door at the end of the main hall. It rocked to a thunderous knocking. The gods looked up vaguely from their various preoccupations, shrugged and turned away. The doors burst inward. Om strode through the debris, looking around with the air of one who has a search to complete and not a lot of time to do it in. "Right," he said. Io, God of Thunder, looked up from his throne and waved his hammer threateningly. "Who are you?" Om strode toward the throne, picked up to by his toga, and gave a quick jab with his forehead. Hardly anyone really believes in thunder gods any more . . . Ow. "Listen, friend. I've got no time for talking to some pantywaister in a sheet. Where's the gods of Ephebe and Tsort?" lo, clutching at his nose, waved vaguely towards the center of the hall. "You nidn't naf to ndo dat!" he said reproachfully. Om strode across the hall. In the center of the room was what at first looked like a round table, and then looked like a model of the Discworld, Turtle, elephants and all, and then in some undefinable way looked like the real Discworld, seen from far off yet brought up close to. There was something subtly wrong about the distances, a feeling of vast space curled up small. But possibly the real Discworld wasn't covered with a network of glowing lines, hovering just above the surface. Or perhaps miles above the surface? Om hadn't seen this before, but he knew what it was. Both a wave and a particle; both a map and the place mapped. If he focused on the tiny glittering dome on top of the tiny Cori Celesti, he would undoubtedly see himself, looking down on an even smaller model . . . and so on, down to the point where the universe coiled up like the tail of an ammonite, a kind of creature that lived millions of years ago and never believed in any gods at all . . . The gods clustered around it, watching intently. Om elbowed aside a minor Goddess of Plenty. There were dice floating just above the world, and a mess of little clay figures and gaming counters. You didn't need to be even slightly omnipotent to know what was going on. "He hid by nose!" Om turned around. "I never forget a face, friend. Just take yours away, right? While you still have some left?" He turned back to the game. "S'cuse me," said a voice by his waist. He looked down at a very large newt. "Yes?" "You not supposed do that here. No Smiting. Not up here. It the rules. You want fight, you get your humans fight his humans." "Who're you?" "P'tang-P'tang, me." "You're a god?" "Definite." "Yeah? How many worshipers have you got?" "Fifty-one!" The newt looked at him hopefully, and added, "Is that lots? Can't count." It pointed at a rather crudely molded figure on the beach in Omnia and said, "But got a stake!" Om looked at the figure of the little fisherman. "When he dies, you'll have fifty worshippers," he said. "That more or less than fifty-one?" "A lot less." "Definite?" "Yes." "No one tell me that." There were several dozen gods watching the beach. Om vaguely remembered the Ephebian statues. There was the goddess with the badly carved owl. Yes. Om rubbed his head. This wasn't god-like thinking. It seemed simpler when you were up here. It was all a game. You forgot that it wasn't a game down there. People died. Bits got chopped off. We're like eagles up here, he thought. Sometimes we show a tortoise how to flY. Then we let go. He said, to the occult world in general, "There's people going to die down there." A Tsortean God of the Sun did not even bother to look round. "That's what they're for," he said. In his hand he was holding a dice box that looked very much like a human skull with rubies in the eye-sockets. "Ah, yes," said Om. "I forgot that, for a moment." He looked at the skull, and then turned to the little Goddess of Plenty. "What's this, love? A cornucopia? Can I have a look? Thanks." Om emptied some of the fruit out. Then he nudged the Newt God. "If I was you, friend, I'd find something long and hefty," he said. "Is one less than fifty-one?" said P'Tang-P'Tang. "It's the same," said Om, firmly. He eyed the back of the Tsortean God's head. "But you have thousands," said the Newt God. "You fight for thousands." Om rubbed his forehead. I spent too long down there, he thought. I can't stop thinking at ground level. "I think," he said, "I think, if you want thousands, you have to fight for one." He tapped the Solar God on the shoulder. "Hey, sunshine?" When the God looked around, Om broke the cornucopia over his head.     It wasn't a normal thunderclap. It stuttered like the shyness of supernovas, great ripping billows of sound that tore up the sky. Sand fountained up and whirled across the recumbent bodies lying face down on the beach. Lightning stabbed down, and sympathetic fire leapt from spear-tip and sword-point. Simony looked up at the booming darkness. "What the hell's happening?" He nudged the body next to him. It was Argavisti. They stared at one another. More thunder smashed across the sky. Waves climbed up one another to rip into the fleet. Hull drifted with awful grace into hull, giving the bass line of the thunder a counterpoint of groaning wood. A broken spar thudded into the sand by Simony's head. "We're dead if we stay here," he said. "Come on." They staggered through the spray and sand, amidst groups of cowering and praying soldiers, fetching up against something hard, half-covered. They crawled into the calm under the Turtle. Other people had already had the same idea. Shadowy figures sat or sprawled in the darkness. Urn sat dejectedly on his toolbox. There was a hint of gutted fish. "The gods are angry," said Borvorius. "Bloody furious," said Argavisti. "I'm not that happy myself," said Simony. "Gods? Huh!" "This is no time for impiety," said Rham-ap-Efan. There was a shower of grapes outside. "Can't think of a better one," said Simony. A piece of cornucopia shrapnel bounced off the roof of the Turtle, which rocked on its spiked wheels. "But why be angry with us?" said Argavisti. "We're doing what they want." Borvorius tried to smile. "Gods, eh?" he said. "Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em." Someone nudged Simony, and passed him a soggy cigarette. It was a Tsortean soldier. Despite himself, he took a puff. "It's good tobacco," he said. "The stuff we grow tastes like camel's droppings." He passed it along to the next hunched figure. THANK YOU. Borvorius produced a flask from somewhere. "Will you go to hell if you have a drop of spirit?" he said. "So it seems," said Simony, absently. Then he noticed the flask. "Oh, you mean alcohol? Probably. But who cares? I won't be able to get near the fire for priests. Thanks." "Pass it round." THANK YOU. The Turtle rocked to a thunderbolt. "G'n y'himbe bo?" They all looked at the pieces of raw fish, and Fasta Benj's hopeful expression. "I could rake some of the coals out of the firebox from here," said Urn, after a while. Someone tapped Simony on the shoulder, creating a strange tingling sensation. THANK YOU. I HAVE TO GO. As he took it he was aware of the rush of air, a sudden breath in the universe. He looked around in time to see a wave lift a ship out of the water and smash it against the dunes. A distant scream colored the wind. The soldiers stared. "There were people under there," said Argavisti. Simony dropped the flask. "Come on," he said. And no one, as they hauled on timbers in the teeth of the gale, as Urn applied everything he knew about levers, as they used their helmets as shovels to dig under the wreckage, asked who it was they were digging for, or what kind of uniform they'd been wearing. Fog rolled in on the wind, hot and flashing with electricity, and still the sea pounded down. Simony hauled on a spar, and then found the weight lessen as someone grasped the other end. He looked up into Brutha's eyes. "Don't say anything," said Brutha. "Gods are doing this to us?" "Don't say anything!" "I've got to know!" "It's better than us doing this to us, isn't it?" "There's still people who never got off the ships!" "No one ever said it was going to be nice!" Simony pulled aside some planking. There was a man there, armor and leathers so stained as to be unrecognizable, but alive. "Listen," said Simony, as the wind whipped at him, "I'm not giving in! You've haven't won! I'm not doing this for any sort of god, whether they exist or not! I'm doing it for other people! And stop smiling like that!" A couple of dice dropped on to the sand. They sparkled and crackled for a while and then evaporated. The sea calmed. The fog went ragged and curled into nothingness. There was still a haze in the air, but the sun was at least visible again, if only as a brighter area in the dome of the sky. Once again, there was the sensation of the universe drawing breath. The gods appeared, transparent and shimmering in and out of focus. The sun glinted off a hint of golden curls, and wings, and lyres. When they spoke, they spoke in unison, their voices drifting ahead or trailing behind the others, as always .happens when a group of people are trying to faithfully repeat something they've been told to say. Om was in the throng, standing right behind the Tsortean God of Thunder with a faraway expression on his face. It was noticeable, if only to Brutha, that the Thunder God's right arm disappeared up behind his own back in a way that, if such a thing could be imagined, would suggest that someone was twisting it to the edge of pain. What the gods said was heard by each combatant in his own language, and according to his own understanding. It boiled down to: I. This is Not a Game. II. Here and Now, You are Alive.     And then it was over.     "You'd make a good bishop," said Brutha. "Me?" said Didactylos. "I'm a philosopher!" "Good. It's about time we had one." ""And an Ephebian!" "Good. You can think up a better way of ruling the country. Priests shouldn't do it. They can't think about it properly. Nor can soldiers." "Thank you," said Simony. They were sitting in the Cenobiarch's garden. Far overhead an eagle circled, looking for anything that wasn't a tortoise. "I like the idea of democracy. You have to have someone everyone distrusts," said Brutha. "That way, everyone's happy. Think about it. Simony?" "Yes?" "I'm making you head of the Quisition." "What?" "I want it stopped. And I want it stopped the hard way." "You want me to kill all the inquisitors? Right!" "No. That's the easy way. I want as few deaths as possible. Those who enjoyed it, perhaps. But only those. Now . . . where's Urn?" The Moving Turtle was still on the beach, wheels buried in the sand blown about by the storm. Urn had been too embarrassed to try to unearth it. "The last I saw, he was tinkering with the door mechanism," said Didactylos. "Never happier than when he's tinkering with things." "Yes. We shall have to find things to keep him occupied. Irrigation. Architecture. That sort of thing." "And what are you going to do?" said Simony. "I've got to copy out the Library," said Brutha. "But you can't read and write," said Didactylos. "No. But I can see and draw. Two copies. One to keep here." "Plenty of room when we burn the Septateuch," said Simony. "No burning of anything. You have to take a step at a time," said Brutha. He looked out at the shimmering line of the desert. Funny. He'd been as happy as he'd ever been in the desert. "And then . . ." he began. "Yes?" Brutha lowered his eyes, to the farmlands and villages around the Citadel. He sighed. "And then we'd better get on with things," he said. "Every day."     Fasta Benj rowed home, in a thoughtful frame of mind. It had been a very good few days. He'd met a lot of new people and sold quite a lot of fish. P'Tang-P'Tang, with his lesser servants, had talked personally to him, making him promise not to wage war on some place he'd never heard of. He'd agreed.[10] Some of the new people had shown him this amazing way of making lightning. You hit this rock with this piece of hard stuff and you got little bits of lightning which dropped on to dry stuff which got red and hot like the sun. If you put more wood on it got bigger and if you put a fish on it got black but if you were quick it didn't get black but got brown and tasted better than anything he'd ever tasted, although this was not difficult. And he'd been given some knives not made out of rock and cloth not made out of reeds and, all in all, life was looking up for Fasta Benj and his people. He wasn't sure why lots of people would want to hit Pacha Moj's uncle with a big rock, but it definitely escalated the pace of technological progress.     No one, not even Brutha, noticed that old Lu-Tze wasn't around any more. Not being noticed, either as being present or absent, is part of a history monk's stock in trade. In fact he'd packed his broom and his bonsai mountains and had gone by secret tunnels and devious means to the hidden valley in the central peaks, where the abbot was waiting for him. The abbot was playing chess in the long gallery that overlooked the valley. Fountains bubbled in the gardens, and swallows flew in and out of the windows. "All went well?" said the abbot, without looking up. "Very well, lord," said Lu-Tze. "I had to nudge things a little, though." "I wish you wouldn't do that sort of thing," said the abbot, fingering a pawn. "You'll overstep the mark one day." "It's the history we've got these days," said Lu-Tze. "Very shoddy stuff, lord. I have to patch it up all the time-” "Yes, Yes-” "We used to get much better history in the old days." "Things were always better than they are now. It's in the nature of things." "Yes, lord. Lord?" The abbot looked up in mild exasperation. "Er . . . you know the books say that Brutha died and there was a century of terrible warfare?" "You know my eyesight isn't what it was, Lu-Tze." "Well . . . it's not entirely like that now." "Just so long as it all turns out all right in the end," said the abbot. "Yes, lord," said the history monk. "There are a few weeks before your next assignment. Why don't you have a little rest?" "Thank you, lord. I thought I might go down to the forest and watch a few falling trees." "Good practice. Good practice. Mind always on the job, eh?" As Lu-Tze left, the abbot glanced up at his opponent. "Good man, that," he said. "Your move." The opponent looked long and hard at the board. The abbot waited to see what long-term, devious strategies were being evolved. Then his opponent tapped a piece with a bony finger. REMIND ME AGAIN, he said. HOW THE LITTLE HORSESHAPED ONES MOVE.     Eventually Brutha died, in unusual circumstances. He had reached a great age, but this at least was not unusual in the Church. As he said, you had to keep busy, every day. He rose at dawn, and wandered over to the window. He liked to watch the sunrise. They hadn't got around to replacing the Temple doors. Apart from anything else, even Urn hadn't been able to think of a way of removing the weirdly contorted heap of molten metal. So they'd just built steps over them. And after a year or two people had quite accepted it, and said it was probably a symbol. Not of anything, exactly, but still a symbol. Definitely symbolic. But the sun did shine off the copper dome of the Library. Brutha made a mental note to enquire about the progress of the new wing. There were too many complaints about overcrowding these days. People came from everywhere to visit the Library. It was the biggest non-magical library in the world. Half the philosophers of Ephebe seemed to live there now, and Omnia was even producing one or two of its own. And even priests were coming to spend some time in it, because of the collection of religious books. There were one thousand, two hundred and eighty-three religious books in there now, each one-according to itself-the only book any man need ever read. It was sort of nice to see them all together. As Didactylos used to say, you had to laugh. Ix was while Brutha was eating his breakfast that the subdeacon whose job it was to read him his appointments for the day, and tactfully make sure he wasn't wearing his underpants on the outside, shyly offered him congratulations. "Mmm?" said Brutha, his gruel dripping off the spoon. "One hundred years," said the subdeacon. "Since you walked in the desert, Sir." "Really? I thought it was, mm, fifty years? Can't be more than sixty years, boy." "Uh, one hundred years, lord. We had a look in the records." "Really. One hundred years? One hundred years' time?" Brutha laid down his spoon very carefully, and stared at the plain white wall opposite him. The subdeacon found himself turning to see what it was the Cenobiarch was looking at, but there was nothing, only the whiteness of the wall. "One hundred years," mused Brutha. "Mmm. Good lord. I forgot." He laughed. "I forgot. One hundred years, eh? But here and now, we-” The subdeacon turned round. "Cenobiarch?" He stepped closer, the blood draining from his face. "Lord?" He turned and ran for help. Brutha's body toppled forward almost gracefully, smacking into the table. The bowl overturned, and 'gruel dripped down on to the floor. And then Brutha stood up, without a second glance at his corpse. "Hah. I wasn't expecting you," he said. Death stopped leaning against the wall. HOW FORTUNATE YOU WERE. "But there's still such a lot to be done . . ." YES. THERE ALWAYS IS. Brutha followed the gaunt figure through the wall where, instead of the privy that occupied the far side in normal space, there was . . . . . . black sand. The light was brilliant, crystalline, in a black sky filled with stars. "Ah. There really is a desert. Does everyone get this?" said Brutha. WHO KNOWS? "And what is at the end of the desert?" JUDGEMENT. Brutha considered this. "Which end?" Death grinned and stepped aside. What Brutha had thought vas a rock in the sand was a hunched figure, sitting clutching its knees. It looked paralyzed with fear. He stared. "Vorbis?" he said. He looked at Death. "But Vorbis died a hundred years ago!" YES. HE HAD TO WALK IT ALL ALONE. ALL ALONE WITH HIMSELF. IF HE DARED. "He's been here for a hundred years?" POSSIBLY NOT. TIME IS DIFFERENT HERE. IT IS . . . MORE PERSONAL. "Ah. You mean a hundred years can pass like a few seconds?" A HUNDRED YEARS CAN PASS LIKE INFINITY. The black-on-black eyes stared imploringly at Brutha, who reached out automatically, without thinking . . . and then hesitated. HE WAS A MURDERER, said Death. AND A CREATOR OF MURDERERS. A TORTURER. WITHOUT PASSION. CRUEL. CALLOUS. COMPASSIONLESS. "Yes. I know. He's Vorbis," said Brutha. Vorbis changed people. Sometimes he changed them into dead people. But he always changed them. That was his triumph. He sighed. "But I'm me," he said. Vorbis stood up, uncertainly, and followed Brutha across the desert. Death watched them walk away.     -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Or, if you are a believer in Omnianism, the Pole. [2] Which were of the one-size-fits-all, tighten-the-screws variety. [3] Or would have done. If he had been there. But he wasn't. So he couldn't. [4] It takes forty men with their feet on the ground to keep one man with his head in the air. [5] Words are the litmus paper of the mind. If you find yourself in the power of someone who will use the word "commence" in cold blood, go somewhere else very quickly. But if they say "Enter," don't stop to pack. [6] Provided that he wasn't poor, foreign, nor disqualified by reason of being mad, frivolous, or a woman. [7] i.e., before the inhabitants had let goats graze everywhere. Nothing makes a desert like a goat. [8] But not enough. [9] Like many early thinkers, the Ephebians believed that thoughts originated in the heart and that the brain was merely a device to cool the blood. [10] Fasta Benj's people had no word for war, since they had no one to fight and life was quite tough enough as it was. P'Tang-P'tang's words had arrived as: "remember when Pacha Moj hit his uncle with big rock? Like that, only more worse." 
The Last Hero_ A Discworld Fabl - Terry Pratchett	----	The Last Hero: A Discworld Fable The Last Hero by Terry Pratchett The place where the story happened was a world on the back of four elephants perched on the shell of a giant turtle. That's the advantage of space. It's big enough to hold practically anything, and so, eventually, it does. People think that it is strange to have a turtle ten thousand miles long and an elephant more than two thousand miles tall, which just shows that the human brain is ill-adapted for thinking and was probably originally designed for cooling the blood. It believes mere size is amazing. There's nothing amazing about size. Turtles are amazing, and elephants are quite astonishing. But the fact that there's a big turtle is far less amazing than the fact that there is a turtle anywhere. The reason for the story was a mix of many things. There was humanity's desire to do forbidden deeds merely because they were forbidden. There was its desire to find new horizons and kill the people who live beyond them. There were the mysterious scrolls. There was the cucumber. But mostly there was the knowledge that one day, quite soon, it would be all over. "Ah, well, life goes on," people say when someone dies. But from the point of view of the person who has just died, it doesn't. It's the universe that goes on. Just as the deceased was getting the hang of everything it's all whisked away, by illness or accident or, in one case, a cucumber. Why this has to be is one of the imponderables of life, in the face of which people either start to pray... or become really, really angry.   The beginning of the story happened tens of thousands of years ago, on a wild and stormy night, when a speck of flame came down the mountain at the centre of the world. It moved in dodges and jerks, as if the unseen person carrying it was sliding and falling from rock to rock. At one point the line became a streak of sparks, ending in a snowdrift at the bottom of a crevasse. But a hand thrust up through the snow held the smoking embers of the torch, and the wind, driven by the anger of the gods, and with a sense of humour of its own, whipped the flame back into life... And, after that, it never died.   The end of the story began high above the world, but got lower and lower as it circled down towards the ancient and modern city of Ankh-Morpork, where, it was said, anything could be bought and sold — and if they didn't have what you wanted they could steal it for you. Some of them could even dream it... The creature now seeking out a particular building below was a trained Pointless Albatross and, by the standards of the world, was not particularly unusual.[1] It was, though, pointless. It spent its entire life in a series of lazy journeys between the Rim and the Hub, and where was the point in that?   This one was more or less tame. Its beady mad eye spotted where, for reasons entirely beyond its comprehension, anchovies could be found. And someone would remove this uncomfortable cylinder from its leg. It seemed a pretty good deal to the albatross and from this it can be deduced that these albatrosses are, if not completely pointless, at least rather dumb. Not at all like humans, therefore.   Flight has been said to be one of the great dreams of Mankind. In fact it merely harks back to Man's ancestors, whose greatest dream was of falling off the branch. In any case, other great dreams of Mankind have included the one about being chased by huge boots with teeth. And no one says that one has to make sense.   Three busy hours later Lord Vetinari, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, was standing in the main hall of Unseen University, and he was impressed. The wizards, once they understood the urgency of a problem, and then had lunch, and argued about the pudding, could actually work quite fast. Their method of finding a solution, as far as the Patrician could see, was by creative hubbub. If the question was, "What is the best spell for turning a book of poetry into a frog?", then the one thing they would not do was look in any book with a title like Major Amphibian Spells in a Literary Environment: A Comparison. That would, somehow, be cheating. They would argue about it instead, standing around a blackboard, seizing the chalk from one another and rubbing out bits of what the current chalk-holder was writing before he'd finished the other end of the sentence. Somehow, though, it all seemed to work. Now something stood in the centre of the hall. It looked, to the arts-educated Patrician, like a big magnifying glass surrounded by rubbish. "Technically, my lord, an omniscope can see anywhere," said Archchancellor Ridcully, who was technically the head of All Known Wizardry.[2] "Really? Remarkable." "Anywhere and any time," Ridcully went on, apparently not impressed himself. "How extremely useful." "Yes, everyone says that," said Ridcully, kicking the floor morosely. "The trouble is, because the blasted thing can see everywhere, it's practically impossible to get it to see anywhere. At least, anywhere worth seeing. And you'd be amazed at how many places there are in the universe. And times, too." "Twenty past one, for example," said the Patrician. "Among others, indeed. Would you care to have a look, my lord?" Lord Vetinari advanced cautiously and peered into the big round glass. He frowned. "All I can see is what's on the other side of it," he said. "All, that's because it's set to here and now, sir," said a young wizard who was still adjusting the device. "Oh, I see," said the Patrician. "We have these at the palace, in fact. We call them win-dows." "Well, if I do this," said the wizard, and did something to the rim of the glass, "it looks the other way." Lord Vetinari looked into his own face. "And these we call mir-rors," he said, as if explaining to a child. "I think not, sir," said the wizard. "It takes a moment to realise what you're seeing. It helps if you hold up your hand..." Lord Vetinari gave him a severe look, but essayed a little wave. "Oh. How curious. What is your name, young man?" "Ponder Stibbons, sir. The new Head of Inadvisably Applied Magic, sir. You see, sir, the trick isn't to build an omniscope because, after all, that's just a development of the old-fashioned crystal ball. It's to get it to see what you want. It's like tuning a string, and if —" "Sorry, what applied magic?" said the Patrician. "Inadvisably, sir." said Ponder smoothly, as if hoping that he could avoid the problem by driving straight through it. "Anyway... I think we can get it to the right area, sir. The power drain is considerable; we may have to sacrifice another gerbil." The wizards began to gather around the device. "Can you see into the future?" said Lord Vetinari. "In theory yes, sir," said Ponder, "But that would be highly... well, inadvisable, you see, because initial studies indicate that the fact of observation would collapse the waveform in phase space." Not a muscle moved on the Patrician's face. "Pardon me, I'm a little out of date on faculty staff," he said. "Are you the one who has to take the dried frog pills?" "No, sir. That's the Bursar, sir," said Ponder. "He has to have them because he's insane, sir." "Ah," said Lord Vetinari, and now he did have an expression. It was that of a man resolutely refraining from saying what was on his mind. "What Mr Stibbons means, my lord," said the Archchancellor, "is that there are billions and billions of futures that, er, sort of exist, d'yer see? They're all... the possible shapes of the future. But apparently the first one you actually look at is the one that becomes the future. It might not be one you'd like. Apparently it's all to do with the Uncertainty Principle." "And that is... ?" "I'm not sure. Mr Stibbons is the one who knows about that sort of thing." An orangutan ambled past, carrying an extremely large number of books under each arm. Lord Vetinari looked at the hoses that snaked from the omniscope and out through the open door and across the lawn to... what was it? ... the High Energy Magic building? He remembered the old days, when wizards had been gaunt and edgy and full of guile. They wouldn't have allowed an Uncertainty Principle to exist for any length of time; if you weren't certain, they'd say, what were you doing wrong? What you were uncertain of could kill you. The omniscope flickered and showed a snowfield, with black mountains in the distance. The wizard called Ponder Stibbons appeared to be very pleased with this. "I thought you said you could find him with this thing?" said Vetinari to the Archchancellor. Ponder Stibbons looked up. "Do we have something that he has owned? Some personal item he has left lying around?" he said. "We could put it in the morphic resonator, connect that up to the omniscope and it'll home in on him like a shot." "Whatever happened to the magic circles and dribbly candles?" said Lord Vetinari. "Oh, they're for when we're not in a hurry, sir," said Ponder. "Cohen the Barbarian is not known for leaving things lying around, I fear," said the Patrician. "Bodies, perhaps. All we know is that he is heading for Cori Celesti." "The mountain at the Hub of the world, sir? Why?" "I was hoping you would tell me, Mr Stibbons. That's why I'm here." The Librarian ambled past again, with another load of books. Another response of the wizards, when faced with a new and unique situation, was to look through their libraries to see if it had ever happened before. This was, Lord Vetinari reflected, a good survival trait. It meant that in times of danger you spent the day sitting very quietly in a building with very thick walls. He looked again at the piece of paper in his hand. Why were people so stupid? One sentence caught his eye: "He says the last hero ought to return what the first hero stole." And, of course, everyone knew what the first hero stole.   The gods play games with the fate of men. Not complex ones, obviously, because gods lack patience. Cheating is part of the rules. And gods play hard. To lose all believers is, for a god, the end. But a believer who survives the game gains honour and extra belief. Who wins with the most believers, lives. Believers can include other gods, of course. Gods believe in belief. There were always many games going on in Dunmanifestin, the abode of the gods on Cori Celesti. It looked, from outside, like a crowded city.[3] Not all gods lived there, many of them being bound to a particular country or, in the case of the smaller ones, even one tree. But it was a Good Address. It was where you hung your metaphysical equivalent of the shiny brass plate, like those small discreet buildings in the smarter areas of major cities which nevertheless appear to house one hundred and fifty lawyers and accountants, presumably on some sort of shelving. The city's domestic appearance was because, while people are influenced by gods, so gods are influenced by people. Most gods were people-shaped; people don't have much imagination, on the whole. Even Offler the Crocodile God was only crocodile-headed. Ask people to imagine an animal god and they will, basically, come up with the idea of someone in a really bad mask. Men have been much better at inventing demons, which is why there are so many. Above the wheel of the world, the gods played on. They sometimes forgot what happened if you let a pawn get all the way up the board.   It took a little longer for the rumour to spread around the city, but in twos and threes the leaders of the great Guilds hurried into the University. Then the ambassadors picked up the news. Around the city the big semaphore towers faltered in their endless task of exporting market prices to the world, sent the signal to clear the line for high-priority emergency traffic, and then clack'd the little packets of doom to chancelleries and castles across the continent. They were in code, of course. If you have news about the end of the world, you don't want everyone to know.   Lord Vetinari stared along the table. A lot had been happening in the past few hours. "If I may recap, then, ladies and gentlemen," he said, as the hubbub died away, "according to the authorities in Hunghung, the capital of the Agatean Empire, the Emperor Ghengiz Cohen, formerly known to the world as Cohen the Barbarian, is well en route to the home of the gods with a device of considerable destructive power and the intention, apparently, of, in his words, "returning what was stolen". And, in short, they ask us to stop him." "Why us?" said Mr Boggis, head of the Thieves" Guild. "He's not our Emperor!" "I understand the Agatean government believes us to be capable of anything," said Lord Vetinari. "We have zip, zing, vim and a go-getting, can-do attitude." "Can do what?" Lord Vetinari shrugged. "In this case, save the world." "But we'll have to save it for everyone, right?" said Mr Boggis. "Even foreigners?" "Well, yes. You cannot just save the bits you like," said Lord Vetinari. "But the thing about saving the world, gentlemen and ladies, is that it inevitably includes whatever you happen to be standing on. So let us move forward. Can magic help us, Archchancellor?" "No. Nothing magical can get within a hundred miles of the mountains," said the Archchancellor. "Why not?" "For the same reason you can't sail a boat into a hurricane. There's just too much magic. It overloads anything magical. A magic carpet would unravel in midair." "Or turn into broccoli," said the Dean. "Or a small volume of poetry." "Are you saying that we cannot get there in time?" "Well... yes. Exactly. Of course. They're already near the base of the mountain." "And they're heroes," said Mr Betteridge of the Guild of Historians. "And that means, exactly?" said the Patrician, sighing. "They're good at doing what they want to do." "But they are also, as I understand it, very old men." "Very old heroes," the historian corrected him. "That just means they've had a lot of experience in doing what they want to do." Lord Vetinari sighed again. He did not like to live in a world of heroes. You had civilisation, such as it was, and you had heroes. "What exactly has Cohen the Barbarian done that is heroic?" he said. "I seek only to understand." "Well... you know... heroic deeds..." "And they are... ?" "Fighting monsters, defeating tyrants, stealing rare treasures, rescuing maidens... that sort of thing," said Mr Betteridge vaguely. "You know... heroic things." "And who, precisely, defines the monstrousness of the monsters and the tyranny of the tyrants?" said Lord Vetinari, his voice suddenly like a scalpel — not vicious like a sword, but probing its edge into vulnerable places. Mr Betteridge shifted uneasily. "Well... the hero, I suppose." "Ah. And the theft of these rare items... I think the word that interests me here is the term "theft", an activity frowned on by most of the world's major religions, is it not? The feeling stealing over me is that all these terms are defined by the hero. You could say: I am a hero, so when I kill you that makes you, de facto, the kind of person suitable to be killed by a hero. You could say that a hero, in short, is someone who indulges every whim that, within the rule of law, would have him behind bars or swiftly dancing what I believe is known as the hemp fandango. The words we might use are: murder, pillage, theft and rape. Have I understood the situation?" "Not rape, I believe," said Mr Betteridge, finding a rock on which he could stand. "Not in the case of Cohen the Barbarian. Ravishing, possibly." "There is a difference?" "It's more a matter of approach, I understand," said the historian. "I don't believe there were ever any actual complaints." "Speaking as a lawyer," said Mr Slant of the Guild of Lawyers, "it is clear that the first ever recorded heroic deed to which the message refers was an act of theft from the rightful owners. The legends of many different cultures testify to this." "Was it something you could actually steal?" said Ridcully. "Manifestly yes," said the lawyer. "Theft is central to the legend. Fire was stolen from the gods." "This is not currently the issue," said Lord Vetinari. "The issue, gentlemen, is that Cohen the Barbarian is climbing the mountain on which the gods live. And we cannot stop him. And he intends to return fire to the gods. Fire, in this case, in the shape of... let me see —" Ponder Stibbons looked up from his notebooks, where he had been scribbling. "A fifty-pound keg of Agatean Thunder Clay," he said. "I'm amazed their wizards let him have it." "He was... indeed. I assume he still is the Emperor," said Lord Vetinari. "So I would imagine that when the supreme ruler of your continent asks you for something, it is not the time for a prudent man to ask for a docket signed by Mr Jenkins of Requisitions." "Thunder Clay is terribly powerful stuff," said Ridcully. "But it needs a special detonator. You have to smash a jar of acid inside the mixture. The acid soaks into it, and then — kablooie, I believe the term is." "Unfortunately the prudent man also saw fit to give one of these to Cohen," said Lord Vetinari. "And if the resulting kablooie takes place atop the mountain, which is the hub of the world's magic field, it will, as I understand it, result in the field collapsing for... remind me, Mister Stibbons?" "About two years," he said. "Really? Well, we can do without magic for a couple of years, can't we?" said Mr Slant, managing to suggest that this would be a jolly good thing, too. "With respect," said Ponder, without respect, "we cannot. The seas will run dry. The sun will burn out and crash. The elephants and the turtle may cease to exist altogether." "That'll happen in just two years?" "Oh, no. That'll happen within a few minutes, sir. You see, magic isn't just coloured lights and balls. Magic holds the world together." In the sudden silence, Lord Vetinari's voice sounded crisp and clear. "Is there anyone who knows anything about Ghengiz Cohen?" he said. "And is there anyone who can tell us why, before leaving the city, he and his men kidnapped a harmless minstrel from our embassy? Explosives, yes, very barbaric... but why a minstrel? Can anyone tell me?"   There was a bitter wind this close to Cori Celesti. From here the world mountain, which looked like a needle from afar, was a raw and ragged cascade of ascending peaks. The central spire was lost in a haze of snow crystals, miles high. The sun sparkled on them. Several elderly men sat huddled around a fire. "I hope he's right about the stair of light," said Boy Willie. "We're going to look real muffins if it isn't there." "He was right about the giant walrus," said Truckle the Uncivil. "When?" "Remember when we were crossing the ice? When he shouted, "Look out! We're going to be attacked by a giant walrus!"" "Oh, yeah." Willie looked back up at the spire. The air seemed thinner already, the colours deeper, making him feel that he could reach up and touch the sky. "Anyone know if there's a lavatory at the top?" he said. "Oh, there's got to be," said Caleb the Ripper. "Yeah, I'm sure I heard tell about it. The Toilet of the Gods." "Whut?" They turned to what appeared to be a pile of furs on wheels. When the eye knew what it was looking for this became an ancient wheelchair, mounted on skis and covered with rags of blanket and animal skins. A pair of beady, animal eyes peered out suspiciously from the heap. There was a barrel strapped behind the wheelchair. "It must be time for his gruel," said Boy Willie, putting a soot-encrusted pot on the fire. "Whut?" "JUST WARMING UP YOUR GRUEL, HAMISH!" "Bludy walrus again?" "YES!" "Whut?" They were, all of them, old men. Their background conversation was a litany of complaints about feet, stomachs and backs. They moved slowly. But they had a look about them. It was in their eyes. Their eyes said that wherever it was, they had been there. Whatever it was, they had done it, sometimes more than once. But they would never, ever, buy the T-shirt. And they did know the meaning of the word 'fear'. It was something that happened to other people. "I wish Old Vincent was here," said Caleb the Ripper, poking the fire aimlessly. "Well, he's gone, and there's an end of it," said Truckle the Uncivil shortly. "We said we weren't going to bloody talk about it." "But what a way to go... gods, I hope that doesn't happen to me. Something like that... it shouldn't happen to anyone..." "Yes, all right," said Truckle. "He was a good bloke. Took everything the world threw at him." "All right." "And then to choke on —" "We all know! Now bloody well shut up!" "Dinner's done," said Caleb, pulling a smoking slab of grease out of the embers. "Nice walrus steak, anyone? What about Mr Pretty?" They turned to an evidently human figure that had been propped against a boulder. It was indistinct, because of the ropes, but it was clearly dressed in brightly coloured clothes. This wasn't the place for brightly coloured clothes. This was a land for fur and leather. Boy Willie walked over to the colourful thing. "We'll take the gag off," he said, "if you promise not to scream." Frantic eyes darted this way and that, and then the gagged head nodded. "All right, then. Eat your nice walrus... er, lump," said Boy Willie, pulling at the cloth. "How dare you drag me all —" the minstrel began. "Now look," said Boy Willie, "none of us like havin' to wallop you alongside the ear when you go on like this, do we? Be reasonable." "Reasonable? When you kidnap —" Boy Willie snapped the gag back into place. "Thin streak of nothin'," he muttered at the angry eyes. "You ain't even got a harp. What kind of bard doesn't even have a harp? Just this sort of little wooden pot thing. Damn silly idea." "'S called a lute," said Caleb, through a mouthful of walrus. "Whut?" "IT'S CALLED A LUTE, HAMISH!" "Aye, I used to loot!" "Nah, it's for singin' posh songs for ladies," said Caleb. "About... flowers and that. Romance." The Horde knew the word, although the activity had been outside the scope of their busy lives. "Amazin', what songs do for the ladies," said Caleb. "Well, when I was a lad," said Truckle, "if you wanted to get a girl's int'rest, you had to cut off your worst enemy's wossname and present it to her." "Whut?" "I SAID YOU HAD TO CUT OFF YOUR WORST ENEMY'S WOSSNAME AND PRESENT IT TO HER!" "Aye, romance is a wonderful thing," said Mad Hamish. "What'd you do if you didn't have a worst enemy?" said Boy Willie. "You try and cut off anyone's wossname," said Truckle, "and you've soon got a worst enemy." "Flowers is more usual these days," said Caleb, reflectively. Truckle eyed the struggling lutist. "Can't think what the boss was thinking of, draggin' this thing along," he said. "Where is he, anyway?"   Lord Vetinari, despite his education, had a mind like an engineer. If you wished to open something, you found the appropriate spot and applied the minimum amount of force necessary to achieve your end. Possibly the spot was between a couple of ribs and the force was applied via a dagger, or between two warring countries and applied via an army, but the important thing was to find that one weak spot which would be the key to everything. "And so you are now the unpaid Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography?" he said to the figure who had been brought before him. The wizard known as Rincewind nodded slowly, just in case an admission was going to get him into trouble. "Er... yes?" "Have you been to the Hub?" "Er... yes?" "Can you describe the terrain?" "Er..." "What did the scenery look like?" Lord Vetinari added helpfully, "Er... blurred, sir. I was being chased by some people." "Indeed? And why was this?" Rincewind looked shocked. "Oh, I never stop to find out why people are chasing me, sir. I never look behind, either. That'd be rather silly, sir." Lord Vetinari pinched the bridge of his nose. "Just tell me what you know about Cohen, please," he said wearily. "Him? He's just a hero who never died, sir. A leathery old man. Not very bright, really, but he's got so much cunning and guile you'd never know it." "Are you a friend of his?" "Well, we've met a couple of times and he didn't kill me," said Rincewind. "That probably counts as a 'yes'." "And what about the old men who're with him?" "Oh, they're not old men... well, yes, they are old men... but, well... they're his Silver Horde, sir." "Those are the Silver Horde? All of it?" "Yes, sir," said Rincewind. "But I thought the Silver Horde conquered the entire Agatean Empire!" "Yes, sir. That was them." Rincewind shook his head. "I know it's hard to believe, sir. But you haven't seen them fight. They're experienced. And the thing is... the big thing about Cohen is... he's contagious." "You mean he's a plague carrier?" "It's like a mental illness, sir. Or magic. He's as crazy as a stoat, but... once they've been around him for a while, people start seeing the world the way he does. All big and simple. And they want to be part of it." Lord Vetinari looked at his fingernails. "But I understood that those men had settled down and were immensely rich and powerful," he said. "That's what heroes want, isn't it? To crush the thrones of the world beneath their sandalled feet, as the poet puts it?" "Yes, sir." "So what's this? One last throw of the dice? Why?" "I can't understand it, sir. I mean... they had it all." "Clearly," said the Patrician. "But everything wasn't enough, was it?"   There was argument in the anteroom beyond the Patrician's Oblong Office. Every few minutes a clerk slipped in through a side door and laid another pile of papers on the desk. Lord Vetinari stared at them. Possibly, he felt, the thing to do would be to wait until the pile of international advice and demands grew as tall as Cori Celesti, and simply climb to the top of it. Zip, zing and can-do, he thought. So, as a man full of get up and go must do, Lord Vetinari got up and went. He unlocked a secret door in the panelling and a moment later was gliding silently through the hidden corridors of his palace. The dungeons of the palace held a number of felons imprisoned "at his lordship's pleasure', and since Lord Vetinari was seldom very pleased they were generally in for the long haul. His destination now, though, was the strangest prisoner of all, who lived in the attic. Leonard of Quirm had never committed a crime. He regarded his fellow man with benign interest. He was an artist and he was also the cleverest man alive, if you used the word "clever" in a specialised and technical sense. But Lord Vetinari felt that the world was not yet ready for a man who designed unthinkable weapons of war as a happy hobby. The man was, in his heart and soul, and in everything he did, an artist. Currently, Leonard was painting a picture of a lady, from a series of sketches he had pinned up by his easel. "Ah, my lord," he said, glancing up. "And what is the problem?" "Is there a problem?" said Lord Vetinari. "There generally is, my lord, when you come to see me." "Very well," said Lord Vetinari. "I wish to get several people to the centre of the world as soon as possible." "Ah, yes," said Leonard. "There is much treacherous terrain between here and there. Do you think I have the smile right? I've never been very good at smiles." "I said —" "Do you wish them to arrive alive?" "What? Oh... yes. Of course. And fast." Leonard painted on, in silence. Lord Vetinari knew better than to interrupt. "And do you wish them to return?" said the artist, after a while. "You know, perhaps I should show the teeth. I believe I understand teeth." "Returning them would be a pleasant bonus, yes." "This is a vital journey?" "If it is not successful, the world will end." "Ah. Quite vital, then." Leonard laid down his brush and stood back, looking critically at his picture. "I shall require the use of several sailing ships and a large barge," he said, after a while. "And I will make a list of other materials for you." "A sea voyage?" "To begin with, my lord." "Are you sure you don't want further time to think?" said Lord Vetinari. "Oh, to sort out the fine detail, yes. But I believe I already have the essential idea." Vetinari looked up at the ceiling of the workroom and the armada of paper shapes and bat-winged devices and other aerial extravaganzas that hung there, turning gently in the breeze. "This doesn't involve some kind of flying machine, does it?" he said suspiciously. "Um... why do you ask?" "Because the destination is a very high place, Leonard, and your flying machines have an inevitable downwards component." "Yes, my lord. But I believe that sufficient down eventually becomes up, my lord." "Ah. Is this philosophy?" "Practical philosophy, my lord." "Nevertheless, I find myself amazed, Leonard, that you appear to have come up with a solution just as soon as I presented the problem..." Leonard of Quirm cleaned his brush. "I always say, my lord, that a problem correctly posed contains its own solution. But it is true to say that I have given some thought to issues of this nature. I do, as you know, experiment with devices... which of course, obedient to your views on this matter, I subsequently dismantle because there are, indeed, evil men in the world who might stumble upon them and pervert their use. You were kind enough to give me a room with unlimited views of the sky, and I... notice things. Oh... I shall require several dozen swamp dragons, too. No, that should be... more than a hundred, I think." "Ah, you intend to build a ship that can be drawn into the sky by dragons?" said Lord Vetinari, mildly relieved. "I recall an old story about a ship that was pulled by swans and flew all the way to —" "Swans, I fear, would not work. But your surmise is broadly correct, my lord. Well done. Two hundred dragons, I suggest, to be on the safe side." "That at least is not a difficulty. They are becoming rather a pest." "And the help of, oh, sixty apprentices and journeymen from the Guild of Cunning Artificers. Perhaps there should be a hundred. They will need to work round the clock." "Apprentices? But I can see to it that the finest craftsmen —" Leonard held up a hand. "Not craftsmen, my lord," he said. "I have no use for people who have learned the limits of the possible."   The Horde found Cohen sitting on an ancient burial mound a little way from the camp. There were a lot of them in this area. The members of the Horde had seen them before, sometimes, on their various travels across the world. Here and there an ancient stone would poke through the snow, carved in a language none of them recognised. They were very old. None of the Horde had ever considered cutting into a mound to see what treasures might lie within. Partly this was because they had a word for people who used shovels, and that word was 'slave'. But mainly it was because, despite their calling, they had a keen moral Code, even if it wasn't the sort adopted by nearly everyone else, and this Code led them to have a word for anyone who disturbed a burial mound. That word was 'die!'. The Horde, each member a veteran of a thousand hopeless charges, nevertheless advanced cautiously towards Cohen, who was sitting cross-legged in the snow. His sword was thrust deep into a drift. He had a distant, worrying expression. "Coming to have some dinner, old friend?" said Caleb. "It's walrus," said Boy Willie. "Again." Cohen grunted. "I havfen't finiffed," he said, indistinctly. "Finished what, old friend?" "Rememb'rin'," said Cohen. "Remembering who?" "The hero who waff buried here, all right?" "Who was he?" "Dunno." "What were his people?" "Fearch me," said Cohen. "Did he do any mighty deeds?" "Couldn't fay." "Then why— ?" "Fomeone 'f got to remember the poor bugger!" "You don't know anything about him!" "I can ftill remember him!" The rest of the Horde exchanged glances. This was going to be a difficult adventure. It was a good job that it was to be the last. "You ought to come and have a word with that bard we captured," said Caleb. "He's getting on my nerves. He don't seem to understand what he's about." "He'f juft got to write the faga afterwardf," said Cohen flatly and damply. A thought appeared to strike him. He started to pat various parts of his clothing, which, given the amount of clothing, didn't take long. "Yeah, well, this isn't your basic heroic saga kind of bard, y'see," said Caleb, as his leader continued the search. "I told you he wasn't the right sort when we grabbed him. He's more the kind of bard you want if you need some ditty being sung to a girl. We're talking flowers and spring here, boss." "Ah, got 'em," said Cohen. From a bag on his belt he produced a set of dentures, carved from the diamond teeth of trolls. He inserted them in his mouth, and gnashed them a few times. "That's better. What were you saying?" "He's not a proper bard, boss." Cohen shrugged. "He'll just have to learn fast, then. He's got to be better'n the ones back in the Empire. They don't have a clue about poems longer'n seventeen syllables. At least this one's from Ankh-Morpork. He must've heard about sagas." "I said we should've stopped off at Whale Bay," said Truckle. "Icy wastes, freezing nights... good saga country." "Yeah, if you like blubber." Cohen drew his sword from the snowdrift. "I reckon I'd better go and take the lad's mind off of flowers, then."   "It appears that things revolve around the Disc," said Leonard. "This is certainly the case with the sun and the moon. And also, if you recall... the Maria Pesto?" "The ship they said went right under the Disc?" said Archchancellor Ridcully. "Quite. Known to be blown over the Rim near the Bay of Mante during a dreadful storm, and seen by fishermen rising above the Rim near TinLing some days later, where it crashed down upon a reef. There was only one survivor, whose dying words were... rather strange." "I remember," said Ridcully. "He said, "My God, it's full of elephants!"" "It is my view that with sufficient thrust and a lateral component a craft sent off the edge of the world would be swung underneath by the massive attraction and rise on the far side." said Leonard, "probably to a sufficient height to allow it to glide down to anywhere on the surface." The wizards stared at the blackboard. Then, as one wizard, they turned to Ponder Stibbons, who was scribbling in his notebook. "What was that about, Ponder?" Ponder stared at his notes. Then he stared at Leonard. Then he stared at Ridcully. "Er... yes. Possibly. Er... if you fall over the edge fast enough, the... world pulls you back... and you go on falling but it's all round the world." "You're saying that by falling off the world we — and by we, I hasten to point out, I don't actually include myself — we can end up in the sky?" said the Dean. "Um... yes. After all, the sun does the same thing every day..." The Dean looked enraptured. "Amazing!" he said. "Then... you could get an army into the heart of enemy territory! No fortress would be safe! You could rain fire down on to —" He caught the look in Leonard's eye. "— on to bad people," he finished, lamely. "That would not happen," said Leonard severely. "Ever!" "Could the... thing you are planning land on Cori Celesti?" said Lord Vetinari. "Oh, certainly there should be suitable snowfields up there," said Leonard. "If there are not, I feel sure I can devise some appropriate landing method. Happily, as you have pointed out, things in the air have a tendency to come down." Ridcully was about to make an appropriate comment, but stopped himself. He knew Leonard's reputation. This was a man who could invent seven new things before breakfast, including two new ways with toast. This man had invented the ball-bearing, such an obvious device that no one had thought of it. That was the very centre of his genius — he invented things that anyone could have thought of, and men who can invent things that anyone could have thought of are very rare men. This man was so absent-mindedly clever that he could paint pictures that didn't just follow you around the room but went home with you and did the washing-up. Some people are confident because they are fools. Leonard had the look of someone who was confident because, so far, he'd never found a reason not to be. He would step off a high building in the happy state of mind of someone who intended to deal with the problem of the ground when it presented itself. And might. "What do you need from us?" said Ridcully. "Well, the... thing cannot operate by magic. Magic will be unreliable near the Hub, I understand. But can you supply me with wind?" "You have certainly chosen the right people," said Lord Vetinari. And it seemed to the wizards that there was just too long a pause before he went on, "They are highly skilled in weather manipulation." "A severe gale would be helpful at the launch..." Leonard continued. "I think I can say without fear of contradiction that our wizards can supply wind in practically unlimited amounts," said the Patrician. "Is that not so, Archchancellor?" "I am forced to agree, my lord." "Then if we can rely on a stiff following breeze. I am sure —" "Just a moment, just a moment," said the Dean, who rather felt the wind comment had been directed at him. "What do we know of this man? He makes... devices, and paints pictures, does he? Well, I'm sure this is all very nice, but we all know about artists, don't we? Flibbertigibbets, to a man. And what about Bloody Stupid Johnson? Remember some of the things he built?[4] I'm sure Mr da Quirm draws lovely pictures, but I for one would need a little more evidence of his amazing genius before we entrust the world to his... device. Show me one thing he can do that anyone couldn't do, if they had the time." "I have never considered myself a genius," said Leonard, looking down bashfully and doodling on the paper in front of him. "Well, if I was a genius I think I'd know it —" the Dean began, and stopped. Absent-mindedly, while barely paying attention to what he was doing, Leonard had drawn a perfect circle.   Lord Vetinari found it best to set up a committee system. More of the ambassadors from other countries had arrived at the university, and more heads of the Guilds were pouring in, and every single one of them wanted to be involved in the decision-making process without necessarily going through the intelligence-using process first. About seven committees, he considered, should be about right. And when, ten minutes later, the first sub-committee had miraculously budded off, he took aside a few chosen people into a small room, set up the Miscellaneous Committee, and locked the door. "The flying ship will need a crew, I'm told," he said. "It can carry three people. Leonard will have to go because, to be frank, he will be working on it even as it departs. And the other two?" "There should be an assassin," said Lord Downey of the Assassins" Guild. "No. If Cohen and his friends were easy to assassinate, they would have been dead long ago," said Lord Vetinari. "Perhaps a woman's touch?" said Mrs Palm, head of the Guild of Seamstresses. "I know they are elderly gentlemen, but my members are —" "I think the problem there, Mrs Palm, is that although the Horde are apparently very appreciative of the company of women, they don't listen to anything they say. Yes, Captain Carrot?" Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson of the City Watch was standing to attention, radiating keenness and a hint of soap. "I volunteer to go, sir," he said. "Yes, I thought you probably would." "Is this a matter for the Watch?" said the lawyer Mr Slant. "Mr Cohen is simply returning property to its original owner." "That is an insight which had not hitherto occurred to me," said Lord Vetinari smoothly. "However, the City Watch would not be the men I think they are if they couldn't think of a reason to arrest anyone. Commander Vimes?" "Conspiracy to make an affray should do it," said the head of the Watch, lighting a cigar. "And Captain Carrot is a persuasive young man," said Lord Vetinari. "With a big sword," grumbled Mr Slant. "Persuasion comes in many forms," said Lord Vetinari. "No, I agree with Archchancellor Ridcully, sending Captain Carrot would be an excellent idea." "What? Did I say something?" said Ridcully. "Do you think that sending Captain Carrot would be an excellent idea?" "What? Oh. Yes. Good lad. Keen. Got a sword." "Then I agree with you," said Lord Vetinari, who knew how to work a committee. "We must make haste, gentlemen. The flotilla needs to leave tomorrow. We need a third member of the crew —" There was a knock at the door. Vetinari signalled to a college porter to open it. The wizard known as Rincewind lurched into the room, white-faced, and stopped in front of the table. "I do not wish to volunteer for this mission," he said. "I beg your pardon?" said Lord Vetinari. "I do not wish to volunteer, sir." "No one was asking you to." Rincewind wagged a weary finger. "Oh, but they will, sir, they will. Someone will say: hey, that Rincewind fella, he's the adventurous sort, he knows the Horde, Cohen seems to like him, he knows all there is to know about cruel and unusual geography, he'd be just the job for something like this." He sighed. "And then I'll run away, and probably hide in a crate somewhere that'll be loaded on to the flying machine in any case." "Will you?" "Probably, sir. Or there'll be a whole string of accidents that end up causing the same thing. Trust me, sir. I know how my life works. So I thought I'd better cut through the whole tedious business and come along and tell you I don't wish to volunteer." "I think you've left out a logical step somewhere," said the Patrician. "No, sir. It's very simple. I'm volunteering. I just don't wish to. But, after all, when did that ever have anything to do with anything?" "He's got a point, you know," said Ridcully. "He seems to come back from all sorts of —" "You see?" Rincewind gave Lord Vetinari a jaded smile. "I've been living my life for a long time. I know how it works."   There were always robbers near the Hub. There were pickings to be had among the lost valleys and forbidden temples, and also among the less prepared adventurers. Too many people, when listing all the perils to be found in the search for lost treasure or ancient wisdom, had forgotten to put at the top of the list "the man who arrived just before you". One such party was patrolling its favourite area when it espied, first, a well-equipped warhorse tethered to a frost-shrivelled tree. Then it saw a fire, burning in a small hollow out of the wind, with a small pot bubbling beside it. Finally it saw the woman. She was attractive or, at least, had been conventionally so perhaps thirty years ago. Now she looked like the teacher you wished you'd had in your first year at school, the one with the understanding approach to life's little accidents, such as a shoe full of wee. She had a blanket around her to keep out the cold. She was knitting. Stuck in the snow beside her was the largest sword the robbers had ever seen. Intelligent robbers would have started to count up the incongruities here. These, however, were the other kind, the kind for whom evolution was invented. The woman glanced up, nodded at them, and went on with her knitting. "Well now, what have we here?" said the leader. "Are you —" "Hold this, will you?" said the old woman, standing up. "Over your thumbs, young man. It won't take a moment for me to wind a fresh ball. I was hoping someone would drop by." She held out a skein of wool. The robber took it uncertainly, aware of the grins on the faces of his men. But he opened his arms with what he hoped was a suitably evil little-does-she-suspect look on his face. "That's right," said the old woman, standing back. She kicked him viciously in the groin in an incredibly efficient if unladylike way, reached down as he toppled, caught up the cauldron, flung it accurately at the face of the first henchman, and picked up her knitting before he fell. The two surviving robbers hadn't had time to move, but then one unfroze and leapt for the sword. He staggered back under its weight, but the blade was long and reassuring. "Aha!" he said, and grunted as he raised the sword. "How the hell did you carry this, old woman?" "It's not my sword," she said. "It belonged to the man over there." The man risked a look sideways. A pair of feet in armoured sandals were just visible behind a rock. They were very big feet. But I've got a weapon, he thought. And then he thought: so did he. The old woman sighed and drew two knitting needles from the ball of wool. The light glinted on them, and the blanket slid away from her shoulders and fell on to the snow. "Well, gentlemen?" she said.   Cohen pulled the gag off the minstrel's mouth. The man stared at him in terror. "What's your name, son?" said Cohen. "You kidnapped me! I was walking along the street and —" "How much?" said Cohen. "What?" "How much to write me a saga?" "You stink!" "Yeah, it's the walrus," said Cohen evenly. "It's a bit like garlic in that respect. Anyway... a saga, that's what I want. And what you want is a big bag of rubies, not unadjacent in size to the rubies what I have here." He upended a leather bag into the palm of his hand. The stones were so big the snow glowed red. The musician stared at them. "You got — what's that word, Truckle?" said Cohen. "Art," said Truckle. "You got art, and we got rubies. We give you rubies, you give us art," said Cohen. "End of problem, right?" "Problem?" The rubies were hypnotic. "Well, mainly the problem you'll have if you tell me you can't write me a saga," said Cohen, still in a pleasant tone of voice. "But... look, I'm sorry, but... sagas are just primitive poems, aren't they?" The wind, never ceasing here near the Hub, had several seconds in which to produce its more forlorn yet threatening whistle. "It'll be a long walk to civilisation, all by yourself," said Truckle, at length. "Without yer feet," said Boy Willie. "Please!" "Nah, nah, lads, we don't want to do that to the boy," said Cohen. "He's a bright lad, got a great future ahead of him..." He took a pull of his home-rolled cigarette and added, "up until now. Nah, I can see he's thinking about it. A heroic saga, lad. It'll be the most famousest one ever." "What about?" "Us." "You? But you're all ol—" The minstrel stopped. Even after a life that had hitherto held no danger greater than a hurled meat bone at a banquet, he could recognise sudden death when he saw it. And he saw it now. Age hadn't weakened here — well, except in one or two places. Mostly, it had hardened. "I wouldn't know how to compose a saga," he said feebly. "We'll help," said Truckle. "We know lots," said Boy Willie. "Been in most of 'em," said Cohen. The minstrel's thoughts ran like this: These men are rubies insane. They are rubies sure to kill me. Rubies. They've dragged me rubies all the rubies rubies. They want to give me a big bag of rubies rubies... "I suppose I could extend my repertoire," he mumbled. A look at their faces made him readjust his vocabulary. "All right, I'll do it," he said. A tiny bit of honesty, though, survived even the glow of the jewels. "I'm not the world's greatest minstrel, you know." "You will be after you write this saga," said Cohen, untying his ropes. "Well... I hope you like it..." Cohen grinned again. "'S not up to us to like it. We won't hear it," he said. "What? But you just said you wanted me to write you a saga —" "Yeah, yeah. But it's gonna be the saga of how we died."   It was a small flotilla that set sail from Ankh-Morpork next day. Things had happened quickly. It wasn't that the prospect of the end of the world was concentrating minds unduly, because that is a general and universal danger that people find hard to imagine. But the Patrician was being rather sharp with people, and that is a specific and highly personal danger and people had no problem relating to it at all. The barge, under whose huge tarpaulin something was already taking shape, wallowed between the boats. Lord Vetinari went aboard only once, and looked gloomily at the vast piles of material that littered the deck. "This is costing us a considerable amount of money," he told Leonard, who had set up an easel. "I just hope there will be something to show for it." "The continuation of the species, perhaps," said Leonard, completing a complex drawing and handing it to an apprentice. "Obviously that, yes." "We shall learn many new things," said Leonard, "that I am sure will be of immense benefit to posterity. For example, the survivor of the Maria Pesto reported that things floated around in the air as if they had become extremely light, so I have devised this." He reached down and picked up what looked, to Lord Vetinari, like a perfectly normal kitchen utensil. "It's a frying pan that sticks to anything," he said, proudly. "I got the idea from observing a type of teazel, which —" "And this will be useful?" said Lord Vetinari. "Oh, indeed. We will need to eat meals and cannot have hot fat floating around. The small details matter, my lord. I have also devised a pen which writes upside down." "Oh. Could you not simply turn the paper up the other way?"   The line of sledges moved across the snow. "It's damn cold," said Caleb. "Feeling your age, are you?" said Boy Willie. "You're as old as you feel, I always say." "Whut?" "HE SAYS YOU'RE AS OLD AS YOU FEEL, HAMISH!" "Whut? Feelin' whut?" "I don't think I've become old," said Boy Willie. "Not your actual old. Just more aware of where the next lavatory is." "The worst bit," said Truckle, "is when young people come and sing happy songs at you." "Why're they so happy?" said Caleb. "'Cos they're not you, I suppose." Fine, sharp snow crystals, blown off the mountain tops, hissed across their vision. In deference to their profession, the Horde mostly wore tiny leather loincloths and bits and pieces of fur and chainmail. In deference to their advancing years, and entirely without comment among themselves, these has been underpinned now with long woolly combinations and various strange elasticated things. They were dealing with Time as they had dealt with nearly everything else in their lives, as something you charged at and tried to kill. At the front of the party, Cohen was giving the minstrel some tips. "First off, you got to describe how you feel about the saga," he said. "How singing it makes your blood race and you can hardly contain yourself that... you got to tell 'em what a great saga it's gonna be... understand?" "Yes, yes... I think so... and then I say who you are..." said the minstrel, scribbling furiously. "Nah, then you say what the weather was like." "You mean like, 'It was a bright day'?" "Nah, nah, nah. You got to talk saga. So, first off, you gotta put the sentences the wrong way round." "You mean like, 'Bright was the day'?" "Right! Good! I knew you was clever." "Clever you was, you mean!" said the minstrel, before he could stop himself. There was a moment of heart-stopping uncertainty, and then Cohen grinned and slapped him on the back. It was like being hit with a shovel. "That's the style! What else, now... ? Ah, yes... no one ever talks, in sagas. They always spakes." "Spakes?" "Like 'Up spake Wulf the Sea-rover', see? An'... an'... an' people are always the something. Like me, I'm Cohen the Barbarian, right? But it could be &'Cohen the Bold-hearted' or 'Cohen the Slayer of Many', or any of that class of a thing." "Er... why are you doing this?" said the minstrel. "I ought to put that in. You're going to return fire to the gods?" "Yeah. With interest." "But... why?" "'Cos we've seen a lot of old friends die," said Caleb. "That's right," said Boy Willie. "And we never saw no big wimmin on flying horses come and take 'em to the Halls of Heroes." "When Old Vincent died, him being one of us," said Boy Willie, "where was the Bridge of Frost to take him to the Feast of the Gods, eh? No, they got him, they let him get soft with comfy beds and someone to chew his food for him. They nearly got us all." "Hah! Milky drinks!" spat Truckle. "Whut?" said Hamish, waking up. "HE ASKED WHY WE WANT TO RETURN FIRE TO THE GODS, HAMISH!" "Eh? Someone's got to do it!" cackled Hamish. "Because it's a big world and we ain't seen it all," said Boy Willie. "Because the buggers are immortal," said Caleb. "Because of the way my back aches on chilly nights," said Truckle. The minstrel looked at Cohen, who was staring at the ground. "Because..." said Cohen, "because... they've let us grow old." At which point, the ambush was sprung. Snowdrifts erupted. Huge figures raced towards the Horde. Swords were in skinny, spotted hands with the speed born of experience. Clubs were swung — "Hold everything!" shouted Cohen. It was a voice of command. The fighters froze. Blades trembled an inch away from throat and torso. Cohen looked up into the cracked and craggy features of an enormous troll, its club raised to smash him. "Don't I know you?" he said.   The wizards were working in relays. Ahead of the fleet, an area of sea was mill-pond calm. From behind, came a steady unwavering breeze. The wizards were good at wind, weather being a matter not of force but of lepidoptery. As Archchancellor Ridcully said, you just had to know where the damn butterflies were. And therefore some million-to-one chance must have sent the sodden log under the barge. The shock was slight, but Ponder Stibbons, who had been carefully rolling the omniscope across the deck, ended up on his back surrounded by twinkling shards. Archchancellor Ridcully hurried across the deck, his voice full of concern. "Is it badly damaged? That cost a hundred thousand dollars, Mr Stibbons! Oh, look at it! A dozen pieces!" "I'm not badly hurt, Archchancellor —" "Hundreds of hours of time wasted! And now we won't be able to watch the progress of the flight. Are you listening, Mr Stibbons?" Ponder wasn't. He was holding two of the shards and staring at them. "I think I may have stumbled, haha, on an amazing piece of serendipity, Archchancellor." "What say?" "Has anyone ever broken an omniscope before, sir?" "No, young man. And that is because other people are careful with expensive equipment!" "Er... would you care to look in this piece, sir?" said Ponder urgently. "I think it's very important you look at this piece, sir."   Up on the lower slopes of Cori Celesti, it was time for old times. Ambushers and ambushees had lit a fire. "So how come you left the Evil Dark Lord business, Harry?" said Cohen. "Werl, you know how it is these days," said Evil Harry Dread. The Horde nodded. They knew how it was these days. "People these days, when they're attacking your Dark Evil Tower, the first thing they do is block up your escape tunnel," said Evil Harry. "Bastards!" said Cohen. "You've got to let the Dark Lord escape. Everyone knows that." "That's right," said Caleb. "Got to leave yourself some work for tomorrow." "And it wasn't as if I didn't play fair." said Evil Harry. "I mean, I always left a secret back entrance to my Mountain of Dread, I employed really stupid people as cell guards —" "Dat's me," said the enormous troll proudly. "— that was you, right, and I always made sure all my henchmen had the kind of helmets that covered the whole face, so an enterprising hero could disguise himself in one, and those come damn expensive, let me tell you." "Me and Evil Harry go way back," said Cohen, rolling a cigarette. "I knew him when he was starting up with just two lads and his Shed of Doom." "And Slasher, the Steed of Terror," Evil Harry pointed out. "Yes, but he was a donkey, Harry," Cohen pointed out. "He had a very nasty bite on him, though. He'd take your finger off as soon as look at you." "Didn't I fight you when you were the Doomed Spider God?" said Caleb. "Probably. Everyone else did. They were great days," said Harry. "Giant spiders is always reliable, better'n octopussies, even." He sighed. "And then, of course, it all changed." They nodded. It had all changed. "They said I was an evil stain covering the face of the world," said Harry. "Not a word about bringing jobs to areas of traditionally high unemployment. And then of course the big boys moved in, and you can't compete with an out-of-town site. Anyone heard of Ning the Uncompassionate?" "Sort of," said Boy Willie. "I killed him." "You couldn't have done! What was it he always said? 'I shall revert to this vicinity!'" "Sort of hard to do that," said Boy Willie, pulling out a pipe and beginning to fill it with tobacco, "when your head's nailed to a tree." "How about Pamdar the Witch Queen?" said Evil Harry. "Now there was —" "Retired," said Cohen. "She'd never retire!" "Got married," Cohen insisted. "To Mad Hamish." "Whut?" "I SAID YOU MARRIED PAMDAR, HAMISH," Cohen shouted. "Hehehehe, I did that! Whut?" "That was some time ago, mark you," said Boy Willie. "I don't think it lasted." "But she was a devil woman!" "We all get older, Harry. She runs a shop now. Pam's Pantry. Makes marmalade," said Cohen. "What? She used to queen it on a throne on top of a pile of skulls!" "I didn't say it was very good marmalade." "How about you, Cohen?" said Evil Harry. "I heard you were an Emperor." "Sounds good, doesn't it?" said Cohen mournfully. "But you know what? It's dull. Everyone creepin' around bein' respectful, no one to fight, and those soft beds give you backache. All that money, and nothin' to spend it on 'cept toys. It sucks all the life right out of you, civilisation." "It killed Old Vincent the Ripper," said Boy Willie. "He choked to death on a concubine." There was no sound but the hiss of snow in the fire and a number of people thinking fast. "I think you mean cucumber," said the bard. "That's right, cucumber," said Boy Willie. "I've never been good at them long words." "Very important difference in a salad situation." said Cohen. He turned back to Evil Harry. "That's no way for a hero to die, all soft and fat and eating big dinners. A hero should die in battle." "Yeah, but you lads've never got the hang of dying," Evil Harry pointed out. "That's because we haven't picked the right enemies," said Cohen. "This time we're going to see the gods." He tapped the barrel he was sitting on, and the other members of the Horde winced when he did so. "Got something here that belongs to them." Cohen added. He glanced around the group and noted some almost imperceptible nods. "Why don't you come with us, Evil Harry?" he said. "You can bring your evil henchmen." Evil Harry drew himself up. "Hey, I'm a Dark Lord! How'd it look if I was to go around with a bunch of heroes?" "It wouldn't look anything," said Cohen sharply. "And I'll tell you for why, shall I? We're the last, see. Us "n" you. No one else cares. There's no more heroes, Evil Harry. No more villains, neither." "Oh, there's always villains!" said Evil Harry. "No, there's vicious evil underhand bastards, true enough. But they use laws now. They'd never call themselves Evil Harry." "Men who don't know the Code," said Boy Willie. Everyone nodded. You mightn't live by the law but you had to live by the Code. "Men with bits of paper," said Caleb. There was another group nod. The Horde were not great readers. Paper was the enemy, and so were the men who wielded it. Paper crept around you and took over the world. "We always liked you, Harry," said Cohen. "You played it by the rules. How about it... are you coming with us?" Evil Harry looked embarrassed. "Well, I'd like to," he said. "But... well, I'm Evil Harry, right? You can't trust me an inch. First chance I get, I'll betray you all, stab you in the back or something... I'd have to, see? Of course, if it was up to me, it'd be different... but I've got a reputation to think about, right? I'm Evil Harry. Don't ask me to come." "Well spake," said Cohen. "I like a man I can't trust. You know where you stand with an untrustworthy man. It's the ones you ain't never sure about who give you grief. You come with us, Harry. You're one of us. And your lads, too. New ones, I see..." Cohen raised his eyebrows. "Well, yeah, you know how it is with the really stupid henchmen," said Evil. "This is Slime —" "... nork nork," said Slime. "Ah, one of the old Stupid Lizard Men," said Cohen. "Good to see there's one left. Hey, two left. And this one is— ?" "... nork nork." "He's Slime, too." said Evil Harry, patting the second lizard man gingerly to avoid the spikes. "Never good at remembering more than one name, your basic lizard man. Over here we have..." He nodded at something vaguely like a dwarf, who gave him an imploring look. "You're Armpit," prompted Evil Harry. "Your Armpit," said Armpit gratefully. "... nork nork," said one of the Slimes, in case this remark had been addressed to him. "Well done, Harry," said Cohen. "It's damn hard to find a really stupid dwarf." "Wasn't easy, I can tell you." Harry admitted proudly as he moved on. "And this is Butcher." "Good name, good name," said Cohen, looking up at the enormous fat man. "Your jailer, right?" "Took a lot of finding," said Evil Harry, while Butcher grinned happily at nothing. "Believes anything anyone tells him, can't see through the most ridiculous disguise, would let a transvestite washerwomen go free even if she had a beard you could camp in, falls asleep real easily on a chair near the bars and —" "— carries his keys on a big hook on his belt so's they can be easily lifted off!" said Cohen. "Classic. A master touch, that. And you've got a troll, I see." "Dat's me," said the troll. "... nork, nork." "Dat's me." "Well, you've got to have a troll, haven't you?" said Evil Harry. "Bit brighter than I'd like, but he's got no sense of direction and can't remember his name." "And what do we have here?" said Cohen. "A real old zombie? Where did you dig him up? I like a man who's not afraid to let all his flesh fall off." "Gak," said the zombie. "No tongue, eh?" said Cohen. "Don't worry, lad, a blood-curdling screech is all you need. And a few bits of wire, by the look of it. It's all a matter of style." "Dat's me." "... nork nork." "Gak." "Dat's me." "Your Armpit." "They must make you proud. I don't know when I've ever seen a more stupid bunch of henchmen," said Cohen, admiring. "Harry, you're like a refreshin' fart in a roomful of roses. You bring 'em all along. I wouldn't hear of you staying behind." "Nice to be appreciated," said Evil Harry, looking down and blushing. "And what else've you got to look forward to, anyway?" said Cohen. "Who really appreciates a good Dark Lord these days? The world's too complicated now. It don't belong to the likes of us any more... it chokes us to death with cucumbers." "What are you actually going to do, Cohen?" said Evil Harry. "... nork, nork." "Well. I reckon it's time to go out like we started," said Cohen. "One last roll of the dice." He tapped the keg again. "It's time," he said, "to give something back." "... nork, nork." "Shut up."   At night rays of light shone through holes and gaps in the tarpaulin. Lord Vetinari wondered if Leonard was getting any sleep. It was quite possible that the man had designed some sort of contrivance to do it for him. At the moment, there were other things to concern him. The dragons were travelling in a ship of their own. It was far too dangerous to have them on board anything else. Ships were made of wood, and even when in a good mood dragons puffed little balls of fire. When they were over-excited, they exploded. "They will be all right, won't they?" he said, keeping well back from the cages. "If any of them are harmed I shall be in serious trouble with the Sunshine Sanctuary in Ankh-Morpork. This is not a prospect I relish, I assure you." "Mr da Quinn says there is no reason why they should not all get back safely, sir." "And would you, Mister Stibbons, trust yourself in a contrivance pushed along by dragons?" Ponder swallowed. "I'm not the stuff of heroes, sir." "And what causes this lack in you, may I ask?" "I think it's because I've got an active imagination." This seemed a good explanation, Lord Vetinari mused as he walked away. The difference was that while other people imagined in terms of thoughts and pictures, Leonard imagined in terms of shape and space. His daydreams came with a cutting list and assembly instructions. Lord Vetinari found himself hoping more and more for the success of his other plan. When all else fails, pray...   "All right now, lads, settle down. Settle down." Hughnon Ridcully, Chief Priest of Blind Io, looked down at the multitude of priests and priestesses that filled the huge Temple of Small Gods. He shared many of the characteristics of his brother Mustrum. He also saw his job as being, essentially, one of organiser. There were plenty of people who were good at the actual believing, and he left them to it. It took a lot more than prayer to make sure the laundry got done and the building was kept in repair. There were so many gods now... at least two thousand. Many were, of course, still very small. But you had to watch them. Gods were very much a fashion thing. Look at Om, now. One minute he was a bloodthirsty little deity in some mad hot country, and then suddenly he was one of the top gods. It had all been done by not answering prayers, but doing so in a sort of dynamic way that left open the possibility that one day he might and then there'd be fireworks. Hughnon, who had survived through decades of intense theological dispute by being a mean man at swinging a heavy thurible, was impressed by this novel technique. And then, of course, you had your real newcomers like Amger, Goddess of Squashed Animals. Who would have thought that better roads and faster carts would have led to that? But gods grew bigger when called upon at need, and enough minds had cried out, "Oh god, what was that I hit?" "Brethren!" he shouted, getting tired of waiting. "And sistren!" The hubbub died away. A few flakes of dry and crumbling paint drifted down from the ceiling. "Thank you," said Ridcully. "Now, can you please listen? My colleagues and I —" and here he indicated the senior clergy behind him — "have, I assure you, been working for some time on this idea, and there is no doubt that it is theologically sound. Can we please get on?" He could still sense the annoyance among the priesthood. Born leaders didn't like being led. "If we don't try this," he tried, "the godless wizards may succeed with their plans. And a fine lot of mugginses we will look." "This is all very well, but the form of things is important!" snapped a priest. "We can't all pray at once! You know the gods don't like ecumenicalism! And what form of words will we use, pray?" "I would have felt that a short non-controversial —" Hughnon Ridcully paused. In front of him were priests forbidden by holy edict from eating broccoli, priests who required unmarried girls to cover their ears lest they inflame the passions of other men, and priests who worshipped a small shortbread-and-raisin biscuit. Nothing was non-controversial. "You see, it does appear that the world is going to end," he said weakly. "Well? Some of us have been expecting that for some considerable time! It will be a judgement on mankind for its wickedness!" "And broccoli!" "And the short haircuts girls are wearing today!" "Only the biscuits will be saved!" Ridcully waved his crozier frantically for silence. "But this isn't the wrath of the gods," he said. "I did tell you! It's the work of a man!" "Ah, but he may be the hand of a god!" "It's Cohen the Barbarian," said Ridcully. "Even so, he might —" The speaker in the crowd was nudged by the priest next to him. "Hang on..." There was a roar of excited conversation. There were few temples that hadn't been robbed or despoiled in a long life of adventuring, and the priests soon agreed that no god ever had anything in his hand that looked like Cohen the Barbarian. Hughnon turned his eyes up to the ceiling, with its beautiful but decrepit panorama of gods and heroes. Life must be a lot easier for gods, he decided. "Very well," said one of the objectors, haughtily. "In that case, I think perhaps we could, in these special circumstances, get around a table just this once." "Ah, that is a good —" Ridcully began. "But of course we will need to give some very serious consideration as to what shape the table is going to be." Ridcully looked blank for a moment. His expression did not change as he leaned down to one of his sub-deacons and said, "Scallop, please have someone ran along and tell my wife to pack my overnight bag, will you? I think this is going to take a little while..."   The central spire of Cori Celesti seemed to get no closer day by day. "Are you sure Cohen's all right in the head?" said Evil Harry, as he helped Boy Willie manoeuvre Hamish's wheelchair over the ice. "'Ere, are you tryin' to spread discontent among the troops, Harry?" "Well, I did warn you, Will. I am a Dark Lord. I've got to keep in practice. And we're following a leader who keeps forgetting where he put his false teeth." "Whut?" said Mad Hamish. "I'm just saying that blowing up the gods could cause trouble," said Evil Harry. "It's a bit... disrespectful." "You must've defiled a few temples in your time, Harry?" "I ran 'em, Will, I ran 'em. I was a Mad Demon Lord for a while, you know. I had a Temple of Terror." "Yes, on your allotment," said Boy Willie, grinning. "That's right, that's right, rub it in," said Harry sulkily. "Just because I was never in the big league, just because —" "Now, now, Harry, you know we don't think like that. We respected you. You knew the Code. You kept the faith. Well, Cohen just reckons the gods've got it comin' to them. Now, me, I'm worried because there's some tough ground ahead." Evil Harry peered along the snowy canyon. "There's some kind of magic path leads up the mountain," Willie went on. "But there's a mass of caves before you get there." "The Impassable Caves of Dread," said Evil Harry. Willie looked impressed. "Heard of them, have you? Accordin' to some old legend they're guarded by a legion of fearsome monsters and some devilishly devious devices and no one has ever passed through. Oh, yeah... perilous crevasses, too. Next, we'll have to swim through underwater caverns guarded by giant man-eating fish that no man has ever yet passed. And then there's some insane monks, and a door you can pass only by solving some ancient riddle... the usual sort of stuff." "Sounds like a big job," Evil Harry ventured. "Well, we know the answer to the riddle," said Boy Willie. "It's 'teeth'." "How did you find that out?" "Didn't have to. It's always teeth in poxy old riddles," Boy Willie grunted as they heaved the wheelchair through a particularly deep drift. "But the biggest problem, is going to be getting this damn thing through all that without Hamish waking up and making trouble."   In the study of his dark house on the edge of Time, Death looked at the wooden box. Perhaps I shall try one more time, he said. He reached down and lifted up a small kitten, patted it on the head, lowered it gently into the box, and closed the lid. The cat dies when the air runs out? "I suppose it might, sir," said Albert, his manservant. "But I don't reckon that's the point. If I understand it right, you don't know if the cat's dead or alive until you look at it." Things will have come to a pretty pass, Albert, if I did not know whether a thing was dead or alive without having to go and look. "Er... the way the theory goes, sir, it's the act of lookin" that determines if it's alive or not." Death looked hurt. Are you suggesting I will kill the cat just by looking at it? "It's not quite like that, sir." I mean, it's not as if I make faces or anything. "To be honest with you, sir, I don't think even the wizards understand the uncertainty business." said Albert. "We didn't truck with that class of stuff in my day. If you weren't certain, you were dead." Death nodded. It was getting hard to keep up with the times. Take parallel dimensions. Parasite dimensions, now, he understood them. He lived in one. They were simply universes that weren't quite complete in themselves and could only exist by clinging on to a host universe, like remora fish. But parallel dimensions meant that anything you did, you didn't do somewhere else. This presented exquisite problems to a being who was, by nature, definite. It was like playing poker against an infinite number of opponents. He opened the box and took out the kitten. It stared at him with the normal mad amazement of kittens everywhere. I don't hold with cruelty to cats, said Death, putting it gently on the floor. "I think the whole cat in the box idea is one of them metaphors," said Albert. Ah. A lie. Death snapped his fingers. Death's study did not occupy space in the normal sense of the word. The walls and ceiling were there for decoration rather than as any kind of dimensional limit. Now they faded away and a giant hourglass filled the air. Its dimensions would be difficult to calculate, but they could be measured in miles. Inside, lightnings crackled among the falling sands. Outside, a giant turtle was engraved upon the glass. I think we shall have to clear the decks for this one, said Death.   Evil Harry knelt in front of a hastily constructed altar. It consisted mostly of skulls, which were not hard to find in this cruel landscape. And now he prayed. In a long lifetime of being a Dark Lord, even in a small way, he'd picked up a few contacts on the other planes. They were... sort of gods, he supposed. They had names like Olk-Kalath the Soul Sucker, but, frankly, the overlap between demons and gods was a bit uncertain at the best of times. "Oh, Mighty One," he began, always a safe beginning and the religious equivalent of 'To Whom It May Concern', "I have to warn you that a bunch of heroes are climbing the mountain to destroy you with returned fire. May you strike them down with wrathful lightning and then look favourably upon thy servant, i.e. Evil Harry Dread. Mail may be left with Mrs Gibbons, 12 Dolmen View, Pant-y-Girdl, Llamedos. Also if possible I should like a location with real lava pits, every other evil lord manages to get a dread lava pit even when they are on one hundred feet of bloody alluvial soil, excuse my Klatchian, this is further discrimination against the small trader, no offence meant." He waited a moment, just in case there was any reply, sighed, and got rather shakily to his feet. "I'm an evil, distrustful Dark Lord," he said. "What do they expect? I told 'em. I warned 'em. I mean, if it was up to me... but where'd I stand as a Dark Lord if I —" His eye caught something pink, a little way off. He climbed a snow-covered rock for a better look. Two minutes later the rest of the Horde had joined him and were looking at the scene reflectively, although the minstrel was being sick. "Well, that's something you don't often see," said Cohen. "What, a man throttled with pink knitting wool?" said Caleb. "No, I was looking at the other two..." "Yes, it's amazing what you can do with a knitting needle," said Cohen. He glanced back at the makeshift altar and grinned. "Did you do this, Harry? You said you wanted to be alone." "Pink knitting wool?" said Evil Harry nervously. "Me and pink knitting wool?" "Sorry for suggestin" it," said Cohen. "Well, we ain't got time for this. Let's go and sort out the Caves of Dread. Where's our bard? Right. Stop throwin' up and get yer notebook out. First man to be cut in half by a concealed blade is a rotten egg, okay? And, everyone... try not to wake up Hamish, all right?"   The sea was full of cool green light. Captain Carrot sat near the prow. To the astonishment of Rincewind, who'd got out for a gloomy evening walk, he was sewing. "It's a badge for the mission," said Carrot. "See? This is yours." He held it up. "But what is it for?" "Morale." "Ah, that stuff," said Rincewind. "Well, you've got lots, Leonard doesn't need it and I've never had any." "I know you are being good-humoured about it, but I think it's vital that there is something that holds the crew together," said Carrot, still calmly sewing. "Yes, it's called skin. It's important to keep all of you on the inside of it." Rincewind stared at the badge. He'd never had one before. Well, that was technically a lie... he'd had one that said 'Hello, I Am 5 Today!', which was just about the worst possible present to get when you are six. That birthday had been the rottenest day of his life. "It needs an uplifting motto," said Carrot. "Wizards know about this sort of thing, don't they?" "How about Morituri Nolumus Mori, that's got the right ring," said Rincewind gloomily. Carrot's lips moved as he parsed the sentence. "We who are about to die..." he said, "but I don't recognise the rest." "It's very uplifting," said Rincewind. "It's straight from the heart." "Very well. Many thanks. I'll get to work on it right away," said Carrot. Rincewind sighed. "You're finding this exciting, aren't you?" he said. "You actually are." "It will certainly be a challenge to go where no one has gone before," said Carrot. "Wrong! We're going where no one has come back from before." Rincewind hesitated. "Well, except me. But I didn't go that far, and I... sort of dropped on to the Disc again." "Yes, they told me about it. What did you see?" "My whole life, passing in front of my eyes." "Perhaps we shall see something more interesting." Rincewind glared at Carrot, bent once again over his sewing. Everything about the man was neat, in a workmanlike sort of way: he looked like someone who washed thoroughly. He also seemed to Rincewind to be a complete idiot with gristle between the ears. But complete idiots didn't make comments like that. "I'm taking an iconograph and lots of paint for the imp. You know the wizards want us to make all kinds of observations?" Carrot went on. "They say it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity." "You're not making any friends here, you know," said Rincewind. "Have you any idea what it is that the Silver Horde wants?" "Drink, treasure, and women," said Rincewind. "But I think they may have eased back on the last one." "But didn't they have more or less all of that anyway?" Rincewind nodded. That was the puzzler. The Horde had it all. They had everything that money could buy, and since there was a lot of money on the Counterweight Continent, that was everything. It occurred to him that when you'd had everything, all that was left was nothing.   The valley was full of cool green light, reflected off the towering ice of the central mountain. It shifted and flowed like water. Into it, grumbling and asking one another to speak up, walked the Silver Horde. Behind them, walking almost bent double with horror and dread, white-faced, like a man who has gazed upon direful things, came the minstrel. His clothes were torn. One leg of his tights had been ripped off. He was soaking wet, although parts of his clothing were singed. The twanging remains of the lute in his trembling hand had been half bitten away. Here was a man who had truly seen life, mostly on the point of departure. "Not very insane, as monks go," said Caleb. "More sad than mad. I've known monks that frothed." "And some of those monsters were long past their date with the knackerman, and that's the truth," said Truckle. "Honestly, I felt embarrassed about killing them. They was older than us." "The fish were good," said Cohen. "Real big buggers." "Just as well, really, since we've run out of walrus," said Evil Harry. "Wonderful display by your henchmen, Harry," said Cohen. "Stupidity wasn't the word for it. Never seen so many people hit themselves over the head with their own swords." "They were good lads," said Harry. "Morons to the end." Cohen grinned at Boy Willie, who was sucking a cut finger. "Teeth," he said. "Huh... the answer is always 'teeth', is it?" "All right, all right, sometimes it's 'tongue'," said Boy Willie. He turned to the minstrel. "Did you get that bit where I cut up that big taranchula?" he said. The minstrel raised his head slowly. A lute string broke. "Mwwa," he bleated. The rest of the Horde gathered round quickly. There was no sense in letting just one of them get the best verses. 'Remember to sing about that bit where that fish swallowed me and I cut my way out from inside, okay?' "Mwwa..." 'And did you get that bit when I killed that big six-armed dancin' statue?' "Mwwa..." 'What're you talkin' about? It was me what killed that statue!' 'Yeah? Well, I clove him clean in twain, mate. No one could have survived that!' 'Why didn't you just cut 'is 'ead off?' 'Couldn't. Someone'd already done that.' "'Ere, 'e's not writin' this down! Why isn't 'e writin' this down? Cohen, you tell 'im 'e's got to write this down!" "Let him be for a while," said Cohen. "I reckon the fish disagreed with him." "Don't see why," said Truckle. "I pulled him out before it'd hardly chewed him. And he must've dried out nicely in that corridor. You know, the one where the flames shot up out of the floor unexpectedly." "I reckon our bard wasn't expecting flames to shoot out of the floor unexpectedly," said Cohen. Truckle shrugged theatrically. "Well, if you're not going to expect unexpected flames, what's the point of going anywhere?" "And we'd have been in some strife with those gate demons from the netherworlds if Mad Hamish hadn't woken up," Cohen went on. Hamish stirred in his wheelchair, under a pile of large fish fillets inexpertly wrapped in saffron robes. "Whut?" "I SAID YOU WERE GROUCHY WHAT WITH MISSING YER NAP!" Cohen shouted. "Ach, right!" Boy Willie rubbed his thigh. "I got to admit it, one of those monsters nearly got me," he said. "I'm going to have to give this up." Cohen turned around quickly. "And die like old Old Vincent?" he said. "Well, not —" "Where would he have been if we weren't there to give him a proper funeral, eh? A great big bonfire, that's the funeral of a hero. And everyone else said it was a waste of a good boat! So stop talking like that and follow me!" "Mw... mw... mw," the minstrel sang, and finally the words came out. "Mad! Mad! Mad! You're all stark staring mad!" Caleb patted him gently on the shoulder as they turned to follow their leader. "We prefer the word berserk, lad," he said.   Some things needed testing... "I have watched the swamp dragons at night," Leonard said conversationally as Ponder Stibbons adjusted the static-firing mechanism. "And it is clear to me that the flame is quite useful to them as a means of propulsion. In a sense, a swamp dragon is a living rocket. A strange creature to have come into being on a world like ours, I have always thought. I suspect they come from elsewhere." "They tend to explode a lot," said Ponder, standing back. The dragon in the steel cage watched him carefully. "Bad diet," said Leonard firmly. "Possibly not what they were used to. But I am sure the mixture I have devised is both nourishing and safe and will have... usable effect..." "But we will go and get behind the sandbags now, sir," said Ponder. "Oh, do you really think— ?" "Yes, sir." With his back firmly against the sandbags, Ponder shut his eyes and pulled the string. In front of the dragon's cage, a mirror swung down, just for a moment. And the first reaction of a male swamp dragon on seeing another male is to flame... There was a roar. The two men peered over the barrier and saw a yellow-green lance of fire thundering out across the evening sea. "Thirty-three seconds!" said Ponder, when it finally winked out. He leapt up. The small dragon belched. The flame was more or less gone, so it was the dampest explosion Ponder had ever experienced. "Ah," said Leonard, arising from behind the sandbags and peeling a piece of scaly skin off his head. "Nearly there, I think. Just a pinch more charcoal and seaweed extract to prevent blowback." Ponder removed his hat. What he needed right now, he felt, was a bath. And then another bath. "I'm not exactly a rocket wizard, am I?" he said, wiping bits of dragon off his face. But an hour later another flame lanced over the waves, thin and white with a blue core... and this time, this time, the dragon merely smiled.   "I'd rather die than sign my name," said Boy Willie. "I'd rather face a dragon," said Caleb. "One of the proper old ones, too, not the little fireworky ones you get today." "Once they get you signin' your name, they've got you where they want you," said Cohen. "Too many letters," said Truckle. "All different shapes, too. I always put an X." The Horde had stopped for a breather and a smoke on an outcrop at the end of the green valley. Snow was thick on the ground, but the air was almost mild. Already there was the prickly sensation of a high magical field. "Readin', now," said Cohen, "that's another matter. I don't mind a man who does a bit of readin'. Now, you come across a map, as it might be, and it's got a big cross on it, well, a readin' man can tell something from that." "What? That it's Truckle's map?" said Boy Willie. "Exactly. Could very well be." "I can read and write," said Evil Harry. "Sorry. Part of the job. Etiquette, too. You've got to be polite to people when you march them out on the plank over the shark tank... it makes it more evil." "No one's blaming you, Harry," said Cohen. "Huh, not that I could get sharks," said Harry. "I should've known better when Johnny No Hands told me they were sharks that hadn't grown all their fins yet, but all they did was swim around squeaking happily and start beggin' for fish. When I throw people into a torture tank it's to be torn to bits, not to get in touch with their inner self and be one with the cosmos." "Shark'd be better than this fish," said Caleb, making a face. "Nah, shark tastes like piss," said Cohen. He sniffed. "Now that..." "Now that," said Truckle, "is what I call cookery." They followed the smell through a maze of rocks to a cave. To the minstrel's amazement, each man drew his sword as they approached. "You can't trust cookery," said Cohen, apparently as an attempt at an explanation. "But you've just been fighting monstrous mad devil fish!" said the minstrel. "No, the priests were mad, the fish were... hard to tell with fish. Anyway, you know where you stand with a mad priest, but someone cooking as well as that right up here — well, that's a mystery." "Well?" "Mysteries get you killed." "You're not dead, though." Cohen's sword swished through the air. The minstrel thought he heard it sizzle. "I solve mysteries," he said. "Oh. With your sword... like Carelinus untied the Tsortean Knot?" "Don't know anything about any knots, lad." In a clear space among the rocks, a stew was cooking over a fire and an elderly lady was working at her embroidery. It was not a scene the minstrel would have expected out here, even though the lady was somewhat... youngly dressed for a grandmother, and the message on the sampler she was sewing, surrounded by little flowers, was EAT COLD STEEL PIGDOG. "Well, well," said Cohen, sheathing his sword. "I thought I recognised the handiwork back there. How're you doing, Vena?" "You're looking well, Cohen," said the woman, as calmly as though she had been expecting them. "You boys want some stew?" "Yeah," said Truckle, grinning. "Let the bard try it first, though." "Shame on you, Truckle," said the woman, putting aside her embroidery. "Well, you did drug me and steal a load of jewels off me last time we met..." "That was forty years ago, man! Anyway, you left me alone to fight that band of goblins." "I knew you'd beat the goblins, though." "I knew you didn't need the jewels. Morning, Evil Harry. Hello, boys. Pull up a rock. Who's the thin streak of misery?" "This is the bard," said Cohen. "Bard, this is Vena the Raven-Haired." "What?" said the bard. "No, she's not! Even I've heard of Vena the Raven-Haired, and she's a tall young woman with — oh..." Vena sighed. "Yes, the old stories do hang around so, don't they?" she said, patting her grey hair. "And it's Mrs McGarry now, boys." "Yes, I heard you'd settled down," said Cohen, dipping the ladle into the stew and tasting it. "Married an innkeeper, didn't you? Hung up your sword, had kids..." "Grandchildren," said Mrs McGarry, proudly. But then the proud smile faded. "One of them's taken over the inn, but the other's a paper-maker." "Running an inn's a good trade," said Cohen. "But there's not much heroing in wholesale stationery. A paper cut's just not the same." He smacked his lips. "This is good stuff, girl." "Its funny," said Vena. "I never knew I had the talent, but people will come miles for my dumplings." "No change there, then," said Truckle the Uncivil. "Hur, hur, hur." "Truckle," said Cohen, "remember when you told me to tell you when you were bein' too uncivil?" "Yeah?" "That was one of those times." "Anyway," said Mrs McGarry, smiling sweetly at the blushing Truckle, "I was sitting around after Charlie died, and I thought, well, is this it? I've just got to wait for the Grim Reaper? And then... there was this scroll..." "What scroll?" said Cohen and Evil Harry together. Then they stared at one another. "Y'see," said Cohen, reaching into his pack, "I found this old scroll, showing a map of how to get to the Mountains and all the little tricks for getting past —" "Me too," said Harry. "You never told me!" "I'm a Dark Lord, Cohen," said Evil Harry patiently. "I'm not supposed to be Captain Helpful." "Tell me where you found it, at least." "Oh, in some ancient sealed tomb we was despoilin'." "I found mine in an old storeroom back in the Empire," said Cohen. "Mine was left in my inn by a traveller all in black," said Mrs McGarry. In the silence, the minstrel said, "Um? Excuse me?" "What?" said all three together. "Is it just me," said the minstrel, "or are we missing something here?" "Like what?" demanded Cohen. "Well, these scrolls all tell you how to get to the mountain, a perilous trek that no one has ever survived?" "Yes? So?" "So... um... who wrote the scrolls?"   Offler the Crocodile looked up from the playing board which was, in fact, the world. "All right, who doth he belong to?" he lisped. "We've got a clever one here." There was a general craning of necks among the assembled deities, and then one put up his hand. "And you are... ?" said Offler. "The Almighty Nuggan. I'm worshipped in parts of Borogravia. The young man was raised in my faith." "What do Nugganoteth believe in?" "Er... me. Mostly me. And followers are forbidden to eat chocolate, ginger, mushrooms and garlic." Several of the gods winced. "When you prohibit you don't meth about, do you?" said Offler. "No sense in forbidding broccoli, is there? That sort of approach is very old-fashioned," said Nuggan. He looked at the minstrel. "He's never been particularly bright up till now. Shall I smite him? There's bound to be some garlic in that stew, Mrs McGarry looks the type." Offler hesitated. He was a very old god, who had arisen from steaming swamps in hot, dark lands. He had survived the rise and fall of more modern and certainly more beautiful gods by developing, for a god, a certain amount of wisdom. Besides, Nuggan was one of the newer gods, all full of hellfire and self-importance and ambition. Offler was not bright, but he had some vague inkling that for long-term survival gods needed to offer their worshippers something more than a mere lack of thunderbolts. And he felt an ungodlike pang of sympathy for any human whose god banned chocolate and garlic. Anyway, Nuggan had an unpleasant moustache. No god had any business with a fussy little moustache like that. "No," he said, shaking the dice box. "It'll add to the run."   Cohen pinched out the end of his ragged cigarette, stuffed it behind his ear, and looked up at the green ice. "It's not too late to turn back," said Evil Harry. "If anyone wanted to, I mean." "Yes it is," said Cohen, without looking around. "Besides, someone's not playing fair." "Funny, really," said Vena. "All my life I've gone adventuring with old maps found in old tombs and so on, and I never ever worried about where they came from. It's one of those things you never think about, like who leaves all the weapons and keys and medicine kits lying around in the unexplored dungeons." "Someone be setting a trap," said Boy Willie. "Probably. Won't be the first trap I've walked into," said Cohen. "We're going up against the gods, Cohen," said Harry. "A man does that, a man's got to be sure of his luck." "Mine's worked up to now," said Cohen. He reached out and touched the rock face in front of him. "It's warm." "But it's got ice on!" said Harry. "Yeah. Strange, eh?" said Cohen. "It's just like the scrolls said. And see the way the snow's sticking to it? It's the magic. Well... here goes..."   Archchancellor Ridcully decided that the crew needed to be trained. Ponder Stibbons pointed out that they were going into the completely unexpected, and Ridcully ruled therefore that they should be given some unexpected training. Rincewind, on the other hand, said that they were heading for certain death, which everyone managed eventually with no training whatsoever. Later he said that Leonard's device would do, though. After five minutes on it, certain death seemed like a release. "He's thrown up again," said the Dean. "He's getting better at it, though," said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. "How can you say that? Last time it was a whole ten seconds before he let go!" "Yes, but he's throwing up more, and it's going further," said the Chair as they strolled away. The Dean looked up. It was hard to see the flying device in the shadows of the tarpaulin-covered barge. Sheets were spread over the more interesting bits. There were strong smells of glue and varnish. The Librarian, who tended to get involved in things, was hanging peacefully from a spar and hammering wooden pegs into a plank. "It'll be balloons, you mark my words," said the Dean. "I've got a mental picture. Balloons and sails and rigging and so on. Probably an anchor, too. Fanciful stuff." "Over in the Agatean Empire they have kites big enough to carry men," said the Chair. "Perhaps he's just building a bigger kite, then." In the distance Leonard of Quirm was sitting in a pool of light, sketching. Occasionally he'd hand a page to a waiting apprentice, who would hurry away. "Did you see the design he came up with yesterday?" said the Dean. "Had this idea that they might have to get outside the machine to repair it so — so he designed a sort of device to let you fly around with a dragon on your back! Said it was for emergencies!" "What kind of emergency would be worse than having a dragon strapped to your back?" said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. "Exactly! The man lives in an ivory tower!" "Does he? I thought Vetinari had him locked up in some attic." "Well. I mean, years of that is going to give a man a very limited vision, in my humble opinion. Nothing much to do but tick the days off on the wall." "They say he paints good pictures," said the Chair. "Well, pictures," said the Dean dismissively. "But they say that his are so good the eyes follow you round the room." "Really? What does the rest of the face do?" "That stays where it is, I suppose," said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. "To me, this does not sound good," said the Dean as they wandered out into the daylight. At his desk, while considering the problem of steering a craft in thin air, Leonard carefully drew a rose.   Evil Harry shut his eyes. "This does not feel good," he said. "It's easy when you get used to it," said Cohen. "It's just a matter of how you look at things." Evil Harry opened his eyes again. He was standing on a broad, greenish plain, which curved down gently to right and left. It was like being on a high, grassy ridge. It stretched off into a cloudy distance. "It's just a stroll," said Boy Willie, beside him. "Look, my feet aren't the problem here," said Evil Harry. "My feet aren't quarrelling. It's my brain." "It helps if you think of the ground as being behind you," said Boy Willie. "No," said Evil Harry. "It doesn't." The strange feature of the mountain was this: once a foot was set on it, direction became a matter of personal choice. To put it another way, gravity was optional. It stayed under your feet, no matter which way your feet were pointing. Evil Harry wondered why it was affecting only him. The Horde seemed entirely unmoved. Even Mad Hamish's horrible wheelchair was bowling along happily in a direction which, up until now, Harry had thought of as vertical. It was, he thought, probably because Evil Lords were generally brighter than heroes. You needed some functioning brain cells to do the payroll even for half a dozen henchmen. And Evil Harry's braincells were telling him to look straight ahead and try to believe that he was strolling along a broad, happy ridge and on no account to turn around, to even think about turning round, because behind him was gnh gnh gnk... "Steady on!" said Boy Willie, steadying his arm. "Listen to your feet. They know what they're about." To Harry's horror, Cohen chose this moment to turn around. "Will you look at that view!" he said. "I can see everybody's house from up here!" "Oh, no, please, no," mumbled Evil Harry, flinging himself forward and holding on to the mountain. "It's great, isn't it?" said Truckle. "Seein" all them seas sort of hanging right over you like — What's up with Harry?" "Just a bit poorly," said Vena. To Cohen's surprise, the minstrel seemed quite at home with the view. "I came from up in the mountains," he explained. "You get a head for heights up there." "I bin to everywhere I can see," said Cohen, looking around. "Been there, done that... been there again, done it twice... nowhere left where I ain't been..." The minstrel looked him up and down, and a kind of understanding dawned. I know why you are doing this now, he thought. Thank goodness for a classical education. Now, what was the quote? "'And Carelinus wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer'," he said. "Who's that bloke? You mentioned him before," said Cohen. "You haven't heard of the Emperor Carelinus?" "Nope." "But... he was the greatest conquerer that ever lived! His empire spanned the entire Disc! Except for the Counterweight Continent and Fourecks, of course." "I don't blame him. You can't get a good beer in one of 'em for love nor money, and the other's a bugger to get to." "Well, when he got as far as the coast of Muntab, it was said that he stood on the shore and wept. Some philosopher told him there were more worlds out there somewhere, and that he'd never be able to conquer them. Er... that reminded me a bit of you." Cohen strolled along in silence for a moment. "Yeah," he said at last. "Yeah, I can see how that could be. Only not as cissy, obviously."   "It is now," said Ponder Stibbons, "T minus twelve hours." His audience, sitting on the deck, watched him with alert and polite incomprehension. "That means the flying machine will go over the Edge just before dawn tomorrow," Ponder explained. Everyone turned to Leonard, who was watching a seagull. "Mr da Quirm?" said Lord Vetinari. "What? Oh. Yes." Leonard blinked. "Yes. The device will be ready, although the privy is giving me problems." The Lecturer in Recent Runes fumbled in the capacious pockets of his robe. "Oh dear, I believe I have a bottle of something... the sea always affects me that way, too." "I was rather thinking of problems associated with the thin air and low gravity," said Leonard. "That's what the survivor of the Maria Pesto reported. But this afternoon I feel I can come up with a privy that, happily, utilises the thinner air of altitude to achieve the effect normally associated with gravity. Gentle suction is involved." Ponder nodded. He had a quick mind when it came to mechanical detail, and he'd already formed a mental picture. Now a mental eraser would be useful, "Er... good," he said. "Well, most of the ships will fall behind the barge during the night. Even with magically assisted wind we dare not venture closer than thirty miles to the Rim. After that, we could be caught in the current and swept over the Edge." Rincewind, who had been leaning moodily over the rail and watching the water, turned at this. "How far are we from the island of Krull?" he said. "That place? Hundreds of miles," said Ponder. "We want to keep well away from those pirates." "So... we'll run straight into the Circumfence, then?" There was technically silence, although it was loud with unspoken thoughts. Each man was busy trying to think of a reason why it would have been far too much to expect him to have thought of this, while at the same time being a reason why someone else should have. The Circumfence was the biggest construction ever built; it extended almost a third of the way around the world. On the large island of Krull, an entire civilisation lived on what they recovered from it. They ate a lot of sushi, and their dislike for the rest of the world was put down to permanent dyspepsia. In his chair, Lord Vetinari grinned in a thin, acid way. "Yes indeed," he said. It extends for several thousands of miles, I understand. However, I gather the Krullians no longer keep captive seamen as slaves. They simply charge ruinous salvage rates." "A few fireballs would blow the thing apart," said Ridcully. "That does rather require you to be very close to it, though," said Lord Vetinari. "That is to say, so close to the Rimfall that you would be destroying the very thing that is preventing you from being swept over the Edge. A knotty problem, gentlemen." "Magic carpet," said Ridcully. "Just the job. We've got one in —" "Not that close to the Edge, sir," said Ponder, dismally. "The thaumic field is very thin and there are some ferocious air currents." There was the crisp rattle of a big drawing pad being turned to the next page. "Oh, yes," said Leonard, more or less to himself. "Pardon me?" said the Patrician. "I did once design a simple means whereby entire fleets could be destroyed quite easily, my lord. Only as a technical exercise, of course." "But with numbered parts and a list of instructions?" said the Patrician. "Why, yes, my lord. Of course. Otherwise it would not be a proper exercise. And I feel sure that with the help of these magical gentlemen we should be able to adapt it for this purpose." He gave them a bright smile. They looked at his drawing. Men were leaping from ships in flames, into a boiling sea. "You do this sort of thing as a hobby, do you?" said the Dean. "Oh, yes. There are no practical applications." "But couldn't someone build something like that?" said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. "You practically include glue and transfers!" "Well, I daresay there are people like that," said Leonard diffidently. "But I am sure the government would put a stop to things before they went too far." And the smile on Lord Vetinari's face was one that probably even Leonard of Quirm, with all his genius, would never be able to capture on canvas.   Very carefully, knowing that if they dropped one they probably wouldn't even know they'd dropped one, a team of students and apprentices lifted the cages of dragons into the racks under the rear of the flying machine. Occasionally one of the dragons hiccuped. Everyone present, bar one, would freeze. The exception was Rincewind, who would be crouched down behind a pile of timber many yards away. "They've all been well fed on Leonard's special feed and should be quite docile for four or five hours," said Ponder, pulling him out for the third time. "The first two stages were given their meals with a carefully timed interval, and the first lot should be in a mood to flame just as you go over the Rimfall." "What if we're delayed?" Ponder gave this some deep thought. "Whatever you do, don't be delayed," he said. "Thank you." "The ones that you'll be taking with you in flight may need feeding, too. We've loaded a mixture of naphtha, rock oil and anthracite dust." "For me to feed to the dragons." "Yes." "In this wooden ship, which will be very, very high?" "Well, in a technical sense, yes." "Could we focus on that technicality?" "Strictly speaking, there won't be any down. As such. Er... you could say that you will be travelling so fast that you won't be in any one place long enough to fall down." Ponder sought a glimmer of understanding in Rincewind's face. "Or, to put in another way, you'll be falling permanently without ever hitting the ground." Up above them, rack on rack of dragons sizzled contentedly. Wisps of steam drifted through the shadows. "Oh," said Rincewind. "You understand?" said Ponder. "No. I was just hoping that if I didn't say anything you'd stop trying to explain things to me." "How are we doing, Mr Stibbons?" said the Archchancellor, strolling up at the head of his wizards. "How's our enormous kite?" "Everything's going to plan, sir. We're at T minus five hours, sir." "Really? Good. We're at supper in ten minutes." Rincewind had a small cabin, with cold water and running rats. Most of it that wasn't occupied by his bunk was occupied by his luggage. The Luggage. It was a box that walked around on hundreds of little legs. It was magical, as far as he knew. He'd had it for years. It understood every word he said. It obeyed about one in every hundred, unfortunately. "There won't be any room," he said. "And you know every time you've gone up in the air you've got lost." The Luggage watched him in its eyeless way. "So you stay with nice Mr Stibbons, all right? You've never been at ease around gods, either. I shall be back very soon." Still the eyeless stare went on. "Just don't look at me that way, will you?" said Rincewind.   Lord Vetinari cast his eye over the three... what was the word? "Men," he said, settling for one that was undoubtedly correct, "it falls to me to congratulate you on... on..." He hesitated. Lord Vetinari was not a man who delighted in the technical. There were two cultures, as far as he was concerned. One was the real one, the other was occupied by people who liked machinery and ate pizza at unreasonable hours. "... on being the first people to leave the Disc with the resolute intention of returning to it," he went on. "Your... mission is to land on or near Con Celesti, locate Cohen the Barbarian and his men, and by whatever means feasible stop this ridiculous scheme of theirs. There must be some misunderstanding. Even barbarian heroes generally draw the line at blowing up the world." He sighed. "They're usually not civilised enough for that," he added. "Anyway... we implore him to listen to reason, et cetera. Barbarians are generally sentimentalists. Tell him about all the dear little puppies that will be killed, or something. Beyond that, I can't advise you further. I suspect classical force is out of the question. If Cohen was easy to kill, people would have done it a long time ago." Captain Carrot saluted. "Force is always the last resort, sir," he said. "I believe that for Cohen it's the first choice," said Lord Vetinari. "He's not too bad if you don't come up behind him suddenly," said Rincewind. "Ah, there is the voice of our mission specialist," said the Patrician. "I just hope — What is that on your badge, Captain Carrot?" "Mission motto, sir," said Carrot cheerfully. "Morituri Nolumus Mori. Rincewind suggested it." "I imagine he did," said Lord Vetinari, observing the wizard coldly. "And would you care to give us a colloquial translation, Mr Rincewind?" "Er..." Rincewind hesitated, but there really was no escape. "Er... roughly speaking, it means, 'We who are about to die don't want to', sir." "Very clearly expressed. I commend your determination... Yes?" Ponder had whispered something in his ear. "Ah, I'm informed that we have to leave you shortly," said Lord Vetinari. "Mr Stibbons tells me that there is a means of keeping in touch with you, at least until you're close to the mountain." "Yes, sir," said Carrot. "The fractured omniscope. An amazing device. Each part sees what the other parts sees. Astonishing." "Well, I trust your new careers will be uplifting if not, ahaha, meteoric. To your places, gentlemen." "Er... I just want to take an iconograph, sir," said Ponder, hurrying forward and clutching a large box. "To record the moment? If you would all stand in front of the flag and smile, please... that means the corners of your mouth go up, Rincewind... thank you." Ponder, like all bad photographers, took the shot just a fraction of a second after the smiles had frozen. "And do you have any last words?" "You mean, last words before we go and come back?" said Carrot, his brow wrinkling. "Oh, yes. Of course. That's what I meant! Because of course you will be coming back, won't you?" said Ponder, far too quickly in Rincewind's opinion. "I have absolute confidence in Mr da Quirm's work, and I'm sure he has too." "Oh, dear. No, I never bother to have any confidence," said Leonard. "You don't?" "No, things just work. You don't have to wish," said Leonard. "And, of course, if we do fail, then things won't be that bad, will they? If we fail to come back, there won't be anywhere left to fail to come back to in any case, will there? So it will all cancel out." He gave his happy little smile. "Logic is a great comfort in times like this, I always find." "Personally," said Captain Carrot, "I am happy, thrilled and delighted to be going." He tapped a box by his side. "And I am, as instructed, also bringing along an iconograph and intend to take many useful and deeply moving images of our world from the perspective of space which will perhaps cause us to see humanity in an entirely new light." "Is this the time to resign from the crew?" said Rincewind, staring at his fellow voyagers. "No," said Lord Vetinari. "Possibly on grounds of insanity?" "Your own, I assume?" "Take your pick!" Vetinari beckoned Rincewind forward. "But it could be said that someone would have to be insane to take part in this venture," he murmured. "In which case, of course, you are fully qualified." "Then... supposing I'm not insane?" "Oh, as ruler of Ankh-Morpork I have a duty to send only the keenest, coolest minds on a vital errand of this kind." He held Rincewind's gaze for a moment. "I think there's a catch there," said the wizard, knowing that he'd lost. "Yes. The best kind there is," said the Patrician.   The lights of the anchored ships disappeared into the murk as the barge drifted on, faster now as the current began to pull. "No turning back now," said Leonard. There was a roll of thunder, and fingers of lightning walked along the Edge of the world. "Just a squall, I expect," he added, as fat drops of rain thudded on the tarpaulins. "Shall we get aboard? The draglines will keep us pointed directly at the Rim, and we might as well make ourselves comfortable while we wait." "We ought to release the fire boats first, sir," said Carrot. "Silly me, yes," said Leonard. "I'd forget my own head if it was wasn't held on with bones and skin and things!" A couple of ship's boats had been sacrificed for the attempt on the Circumfence. They wallowed slightly, laden as they were with spare tins of varnish, paint and the remains of the dragons" supper. Carrot picked up a couple of lanterns and, after a couple of tries in the gusting wind, managed to light them and place them carefully according to Leonard's instructions. Then the boats were cast adrift. Freed of the drag of the barge, they pulled away in the quickening current. The rain was hammering down now. "And now let us get aboard," said Leonard, ducking back out of the rain. "A cup of tea will do us good." "I thought we decided we couldn't have any naked flames on board, sir," said Carrot. "I have brought along a special jug of my own devising which keeps things warm," said Leonard. "Or cold, if you prefer. I call it the Hot or Cold Flask. I am at a loss as to how it knows which it is that you prefer, but nevertheless it seems to work." He led the way up the ladder. Only one small lamp lit the little cabin. It illuminated three seats, embedded among a network of levers, armatures and springs. The crew had been up here before. They knew the layout. There was one little bed further aft, on the basis that there would only be time for any one person to be asleep. String bags had been stapled to every bit of unused wall to hold water bottles and food. Unfortunately, some of Lord Vetinari's committees, devised in order to prevent their members from interfering with anything important, had turned their attention to provisioning the craft. It appeared packed for every eventuality, including alligator-wrestling on a glacier. Leonard sighed. "I really didn't like to say no to anyone." he said, "I did suggest that, er, nourishing but concentrated and, er, low-residue food would be preferred —" As one man, they turned in their seats to look at the Experimental Privy Mk 2. Mk 1 had worked — Leonard's devices tended to — but since a key to its operation was that it tumbled very fast on a central axis while in use it had been abandoned after a report by its test pilot (Rincewind) that, whatever you had in mind when you went in, the only thing you wanted to do once inside was get out. Mk 2 was as yet untried. It creaked ominously under their gaze, an open invitation to constipation and kidney stones. "It will undoubtedly function," said Leonard, and just this once Rincewind noted the harmonic of uncertainty. "It is all just a matter of opening the correct valves in sequence." "What happens if we don't open the right valves in sequence, sir?" said Carrot, buckling himself in. "You must appreciate that I have had to design so many things for this craft —" Leonard began. "We'd still like to know," said Rincewind. "Er... in truth, what happens if you don't open the right valves in sequence is that you will wish you had opened the right valves in sequence," said Leonard. He fumbled below his seat and produced a large metal flask of curious design. "Tea, anyone?" he said. "Just a small cup," said Carrot firmly. "Make mine a spoonful," said Rincewind. "And what's this thing hanging in the ceiling in front of me?" "It's my new device for looking behind you," said Leonard. "It's very simple to use. I call it the Device For Looking Behind You." "Looking behind you is a bad move," said Rincewind firmly. "I've always said so. It slows you down." "Ah, but this way we won't slow down at all." "Really?" said Rincewind, brightening up. A squall of rain banged on the tarpaulins. Carrot tried to see ahead. A gap had been cut in the covers so that the — "By the way... what are we?" he said. "I mean, what do we call ourselves?" "Possibly foolish." said Rincewind. "I meant officially?" Carrot looked around the crammed cabin. "And what do we call this craft?" "The wizards call it the big kite," said Rincewind. "But it's nothing like a kite, a kite is something on a string which —" "It has to have a name," said Carrot. "It's very bad luck to attempt a voyage in a vessel with no name." Rincewind looked at the levers in front of his seat. They had to do mainly with dragons. "We're in a big wooden box and behind us are about a hundred dragons who are getting ready to burp," he said. "I think we need a name. Er... do you actually know how to fly this thing, Leonard?" "Not as such, but I intend to learn very soon." "A really good name," said Rincewind fervently. Ahead of them the stormy horizon was lit by an explosion. The boats had hit the Circumfence, and burst into fierce, corrosive flame. "Right now?" he added. "The kite, the real kite, is a very beautiful bird," said Leonard. "It's what I had in mind when I —" "The Kite it is, then," said Carrot firmly. He glanced at a list pinned in front of him and ticked off one item. "Shall I drop the tarpaulin anchor, sir?" "Yes. Er. Yes. Do that," said Leonard. Carrot pulled a lever. Below and behind them there was the sound of a splash, and then of cable running out very fast "There's a reef! There's rocks!" Rincewind stood up, pointing. The firelight ahead glowed on something squat and immovable, surrounded by surf. "No turning back," said Leonard as the sinking anchor dragged the Kite's coverings off like an enormous canvas egg. He reached out and pulled handles and knobs like an organist in full fugue. "Number One Blinkers... down. Tethers... off. Gentlemen, each pull those big handles beside you when I say..." The rocks loomed. The white water at the lip of the endless Fall was red with fire and glowing with lightning. Jagged rocks were a few yards away, hungry as a crocodile's teeth. "Now! Now! Now! Mirrors... down! Good! We have flame! Now what was it... oh, yes... Everyone hold on to something!" Wings unfolding, dragons flaring, the Kite rose from the splintering barge and into the storm and over the Rim of the world...   The only sound was a faint whisper of air as Rincewind and Carrot clambered off the shivering floor. Their pilot was staring out of the window. "Look at the birds! Oh, do look at the birds!" In the calm sunlit air beyond the storm they swooped and turned in their thousands around the gliding ship, as small birds will mob an eagle. And it did look like an eagle, one that had just snatched a giant salmon from the Fall... Leonard stood entranced, tears running down his cheeks. Carrot tapped him very gently on the shoulder. "Sir?" "It's so beautiful... so beautiful..." "Sir, we need you to fly this thing, sir! Remember? Stage Two?" "Hmm?" Then the artist shuddered, and part of him returned to his body. "Oh, yes, very well, very well..." He sat down heavily in his seat. "Yes... to be sure... yes. We shall, er, we shall test the controls. Yes." He laid a trembling hand on the levers in front of him, and placed his feet on the pedals. The Kite lurched sideways on the air. "Oops... ah, now I think I have it... sorry... yes... oh, sorry, dear me... ah, now I think..." Rincewind, flung against the window by another judder, looked down the face of the Rimfall. Here and there, all the way down, mountain-sized islands projected from the wall of white water, glowing in the evening light. Little white clouds scudded between them. And everywhere there were birds, wheeling, nesting, gliding — "There's forests on those rocks! They're like little countries... there's people! I can see houses!" He was thrown back again as the Kite banked into some cloud. "There's people living over the Edge!" he said. "Old shipwrecks, I suppose," said Carrot. "I, er, I think I have the hang of it now," said Leonard, staring fixedly ahead. "Rincewind, please be so good as to pull that lever there, will you?" Rincewind did so. There was a clunk behind them, and the ship shook slightly as the first-stage cage was dropped. As it tumbled slowly apart in the air, small dragons spread their wings and flapped hopefully back towards the Disc. "I thought there would be more than that," said Rincewind. "Oh, those are just the ones we used to help us get clear of the Rim," said Leonard, as the Kite turned lazily in the air. "Most of the others we'll use to go down." "Down?" said Rincewind. "Oh, yes. We need to go down, as quickly as we can. No time to waste." "Down? This is not the time to talk about down! You kept on talking about around. Around is fine! Not down!" "Ah, but you see, in order to go around we need to go down. Fast." Leonard looked reproachful. "I did put it in my notes —" "Down is not a direction with which I am happy!" "Hello? Hello?" came a voice, out of the air. "Captain Carrot," said Leonard, as Rincewind sulked in his seat, "oblige me by opening the cabinet there, will you?" This revealed a fragment of smashed omniscope and the face of Ponder Stibbons. "It works!" His shout sounded muffled and somehow small, like the squeaking of an ant. "You're alive?" "We have separated the first dragons and everything is going well, sir," said Carrot. "No, it's not!" Rincewind shouted. "They want to go dow— !" Without turning his head, Carrot reached around behind Leonard and pulled Rincewind's hat down over his face. "The second-stage dragons will be about ready to burn now," said Leonard. "We had better get on, Mr Stibbons." "Please take careful observations of all —" Ponder began, but Leonard had politely closed the case. "Now then," he said, "if you gentlemen will undo the clips beside you and turn the large red handles you should be able to start the process of folding the wings back in. I believe that as we increase speed the impellers will make the process easier." He looked at Rincewind's blank face as the angry wizard freed himself from his hat. "We will use the rushing air as we fall to help us reduce the size of the wings, which we will not require for a while." "I understand that," said Rincewind distantly. "I just hate it." "The only way home is down, Rincewind," said Carrot, adjusting his seat belt. "And put your helmet on!" "So if everyone would once again hold tight?" said Leonard, and pushed gently on a lever. "Don't look so worried, Rincewind. Think of it as a sort of... well, a magic carpet ride..." The Kite shuddered. And dived... And suddenly the Rimfall was under them, stretching to an infinite misty horizon, its rocky outcrops now islands in a white wall. The ship shook again, and the handle Rincewind had been leaning on started to move under its own power. There was no solid surface any more. Every piece of the ship was vibrating. He stared out of the porthole next to him. The wings, the precious wings, the things that kept you up, were folding gracefully in on themselves... "Rrincewwind," said Leonard, a blur in his seat, "pplease ppull the bblack lleverr!" The wizard did so, on the basis that it couldn't make things worse. But it did. He heard a series of thumps behind him. Five score of dragons, having recently digested a hydrocarbon-rich meal, saw their own reflections in front of them as a rack of mirrors was, for a moment, lowered in front of their cages. They flared. Something crashed and smashed, back in the fuselage. A giant foot pressed the crew back into their seats. The Rimfall blurred. Through red-rimmed eyes they stared at the speeding white sea and the distant stars and even Carrot joined in the hymn of terror, which goes: "Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhggggggg..." Leonard was trying to shout something. With terrible effort Rincewind turned his huge and heavy head and just made out the groan: "Ttthe wwwhite lllever!" It took him years to reach it. For some reason his arms had been made out of lead. Bloodless fingers with muscles weak as string managed to get a grip and tow the lever back. Another foreboding thump rattled the ship. The pressure ceased. Three heads thumped forward. And then there was silence. And lightness. And peace. Dreamily, Rincewind pulled down the periscope and saw the huge fish section curving gently away from them. It came apart as it flew, and more dragons spread their wings and whirled away behind the Kite. Magnificent. A device for seeing behind you without slowing down? Just the thing no coward should be without. "I've got to get one of these," he murmured. "That seemed to go quite well, I thought," said Leonard. "I'm sure the little creatures will get back, too. Flitting from rock to rock... yes, I'm sure they will..." "Er... there's a strong draught by my seat —" Carrot began. "Ah, yes... it would be a good idea to keep the helmets handy," Leonard said. "I've done my best, varnishing and laminating and so forth... but the Kite is not, alas, completely airtight. Well, here we are, well on our way," he added brightly. "Breakfast, anyone?" "My stomach feels very —" Rincewind began, but stopped. A spoon drifted past, tumbling gently. "What has switched off the down-ness?" he demanded. Leonard opened his mouth to say: No, this was expected, because everything is falling at the same speed, but he didn't, because he could see this was not a happy thing to say. "It's the sort of thing that happens," he said. "It's... er... magic." "Oh. Really? Oh." A cup bumped gently off Carrot's ear. He batted it away and it disappeared somewhere aft. "What kind of magic?" he said.   The wizards were clustered around the piece of omniscope, while Ponder struggled to adjust it. A picture exploded into view. It was horrible. "Hello? Hello? This is Ankh-Morpork calling!" The gibbering face was pushed aside and Leonard's dome rose slowly into view. "Ah, yes. Good morning," he said. "We are having a few... teething troubles." From somewhere offscreen came the sound of someone being sick. "What is going on?" bellowed Ridcully. "Well, you see, it's rather amusing... I had this idea of putting food in tubes, you see, so that it could be squeezed out and eaten neatly in weightless conditions and, er, because we didn't tie everything down, er, I'm afraid my box of paints came open and the tubes got, er, confused, so what Mr Rincewind thought was broccoli and ham turned out to be Forest Green... er." "Let me speak to Captain Carrot, will you?" "I'm afraid that is not entirely convenient at the moment," said Leonard, his face clouded with concern. "Why? Did he have the broccoli and ham too?" "No, he had the Cadmium Yellow." There was a yelp and a series of clangs somewhere behind Leonard. "On the brighter side, however, I can report that the Mk II privy appears to function perfectly."   The Kite, in its headlong plunge, curved back towards the Rimfall. Now the water was a great tumbling cloud of mist. Captain Carrot hovered in front of a window, taking pictures with the iconograph. "This is amazing," he said. "I'm sure we'll find the answers to some questions that have puzzled mankind for millennia." "Good. Can you get this frying pan off my back?" said Rincewind. "Um," said Leonard. It was a sufficiently troubling syllable for the others to look at him. "We seem to be, er, losing air rather faster than I thought," said the genius. "But I'm sure the hull isn't any leakier than I allowed for. And we seem to be falling faster, according to Mr Stibbons. Uh... it's a little difficult to piece it all together, of course, because of the uncertain effects of the Disc's magical field. Um... we should be all right if we wear our helmets all the time..." "There's plenty of air nearer to the world, isn't there?" said Rincewind. "Can't we just fly into it and open a window?" Leonard stared mournfully into the mists that filled half of their view. "We are, er, moving very fast," he said, slowly. "And air at this speed... air is... the thing about air... tell me, what do you understand by the words "shooting star"?" "What is that supposed to mean?" Rincewind demanded. "Um... that we die an immensely horrible death." "Oh, that," said Rincewind. Leonard tapped a dial on one of the tanks of air. "I really don't think my calculations were that wro—" Light exploded into the cabin. The Kite rose through tendrils of mist. The crew stared. "No one will ever believe us," said Carrot, eventually. He raised his iconograph towards the view and even the imp inside, which belonged to a species that was seldom impressed with anything, said "Gosh!" in a tiny voice as it painted furiously. "I don't believe this," said Rincewind, "and I'm seeing it." A tower, an immensity of rock, rose from the mist. And looming over the mist, huge as worlds, the backs of four elephants. It was like flying through a cathedral, thousands of miles high. "It sounds like a joke," Rincewind babbled, "elephants holding up the world, hahaha... and then you see it..." "My paints, where are my paints... ?" mumbled Leonard. "Well, some of them are in the privy," said Rincewind. Carrot turned, and looked puzzled. The iconograph floated away, trailing small curses. "And where's my apple?" he said. "What?" said Rincewind, perplexed at the sudden subject of fruit. "I'd just started eating an apple, and I just rested it in the air... and it's gone." The ship creaked in the glaring sunlight. And an apple core came tumbling gently through the air. "I suppose there are just the three of us aboard?" said Rincewind innocently. "Don't be silly," said Carrot. "We're sealed in!" "So... your apple ate itself?" They looked at the jumble of bundles held in the webbing behind them. "I mean, call me Mr Suspicious," said Rincewind, "but if the ship is heavier than Leonard thought, and we're using up more air, and food is vanishing —" "You're not suggesting that there's some kind of monster floating around below the Rim that can bore into wooden hulls, are you?" said Carrot, drawing his sword. "Ah, I hadn't thought of that one," said Rincewind. "Well done." "Interesting," said Leonard. "It would be, perhaps, a cross between a bird and a bivalve. Somewhat squid-like, possibly, using jets of —" "Thank you, thank you, thank you, yes!" Carrot pulled out a roll of blankets and tried to look back along the cabin. "I think I saw something move," he said. "Just behind the air reservoirs..." He ducked under a bundle of skis and disappeared into the shadows. They heard him groan. "Oh, no..." "What? What?" said Rincewind. Carrot's voice was muffled. "I've found a... it looks like a... skin..." "Ah, fascinating," said Leonard, sketching on his notepad. "Possibly, once aboard a hospitable vessel, such a creature would metamorphose into —" Carrot emerged, a banana skin kebabed on the end of his sword. Rincewind rolled his eyes. "I have a very definite feeling about this," he said. "So have I," said Carrot. It took them some time, but finally they pushed away a box of dishcloths and there were no more hiding places. A worried face looked out of the nest it had made. "Ook?" it said. Leonard sighed, laid aside his pad and opened up the omniscope's box. He banged on it once or twice, and it flickered and showed the outline of a head. Leonard took a deep breath. "Ankh-Morpork, we have an orangutan..."   Cohen sheathed his sword. "Wouldn't have expected much to be living up here," he said, surveying the carnage. "There's even less now," said Caleb. The latest fight had been over in the twinkling of an eye and the cleaving of a backbone. Any... creatures that ambushed the Horde did so at the end of their lives. "The raw magic here must be huge," said Boy Willie. "I suppose creatures like this get used to living off it. Sooner or later something will learn to live anywhere." "It's certainly doing Mad Hamish good," said Cohen. "I'll swear he's not as deaf as he was." "Whut?" "I SAID YOU'RE NOT AS DEAF AS YOU WERE, HAMISH!" "There's no need to shout, mon!" "Can we cook 'em, do you think?" said Boy Willie. "They'll probably taste a bit like chicken," said Caleb. "Everything does, if you're hungry enough." "Leave it to me," said Mrs McGarry. "You get a fire going, and I'll make this taste more like chicken than... chicken." Cohen wandered off to where the minstrel was sitting by himself, working on the remains of his lute. The lad had brightened up considerably as the climb progressed, Cohen thought. He had completely stopped whimpering. Cohen sat down next to him. "What're you doing, lad?" he said. "I see you found a skull." "It's going to be the sound box," said the minstrel. He looked worried for a moment. "That is all right, isn't it?" "Sure. Good fate for a hero, having his bones made into a harp or something. It should sing out wonderful." "This will be a kind of lyre," said the minstrel. "It's going to be a bit primitive, I'm afraid." "Even better. Good for the old songs," said Cohen. "I have been thinking about the... the saga," the minstrel admitted. "Good lad, good lad. Plenty of spakes?" "Um, yes. But I thought I'd start off with the legend of how Mazda stole fire for mankind in the first place." "Nice," said Cohen, "And then a few verses about what the gods did to him," the minstrel went on, tightening a string. "Did to him? Did to him?" said Cohen. "They made him immortal!" "Er... yes. In a way, I suppose." "What do you mean, 'in a way'?" "It's classical mythology, Cohen," said the minstrel. "I thought everyone knew. He was chained to a rock for eternity and every day an eagle comes and pecks out his liver." "Is that true?" "It's mentioned in many of the classic texts." "I'm not much of a reader," said Cohen. "Chained to a rock? For a first offence? He's still there?" "Eternity isn't finished yet, Cohen." "He must've had a big liver!" "It grows again every night, according to the legend," said the minstrel. "I wish my kidneys did," said Cohen. He stared at the distant clouds that hid the snowy top of the mountain. "He brought fire to everyone, and the gods did that to him, eh? Well... we'll have to see about that."   The omniscope showed a snowstorm. "Bad weather down there, then," said Ridcully. "No, it's thaumic interference," said Ponder. "They're passing under the elephants. We'll get a lot more of it, I'm afraid." "Did they really say "Ankh-Morpork, we have an orangutan"?" said the Dean. "The Librarian must have got on board somehow," said Ponder. "You know what he's like for finding odd corners to sleep in. And that, I'm afraid, explains about the weight and the air. Er... I have to tell you that I'm not sure that they have enough time or power to get back on to the Disc now." "What do you mean, you're not sure?" said Lord Vetinari. "Er... I mean I am sure but, er, no one likes bad news all at once, sir." Lord Vetinari looked at the big spell that dominated the cabin. It floated in the air: the whole world, sketched in glowing lines and, dropping from one glittering edge, a small curving line. As he watched it lengthened slightly. "They can't just turn around and come back?" he said. "No, sir. It doesn't work like that." "Can they throw the Librarian out?" The wizards looked shocked. "No, sir," said Ponder. "That would be murder, sir." "Yes, but they may save the world. One ape dies, one world lives. You do not need to be a rocket wizard to work that out, surely?" "You can't ask them to make a decision like that, sir!" "Really? I make decisions like that every day," said Lord Vetinari. "Oh, very well. What are they short of?" "Air and dragon power, sir." "If they chop up the orangutan and feed him to the dragons, won't that kill two birds with one stone?" The sudden iciness told Lord Vetinari that once again he hadn't taken his audience with him. He sighed. "They need dragon flame to... ?" he said. "To bring their ringpath over the Disc, sir. They have to fire the dragons at the right time." Vetinari looked at the magical orrery again. "And now... ?" "I'm not quite sure, sir. They may crash into the Disc, or they may shoot straight out into endless space." "And they need air..." "Yes, sir." Vetinari's arm moved through the outline of the world and a long forefinger pointed. "Is there any air here?" he said.   "That meal," said Cohen, "was heroic. No other word for it." "That's right, Mrs McGarry," said Evil Harry. "Even rat doesn't taste this much like chicken." "Yes, the tentacles hardly spoiled it at all!" said Caleb enthusiastically. They sat and watched the view. What had once been the world below was now a world in front, rising like an endless wall. "What're they, right up there?" said Cohen, pointing. "Thanks, friend," said Evil Harry, looking away. "I'd like the... chicken to stay down, if it's all the same to you." "They're the Virgin Islands," said the minstrel. "So called because there's so many of them." "Or maybe they're hard to find," said Truckle the Uncivil, burping. "Hur, hur, hur." "Ye can see the stars from up here," said Mad Hamish, "e'en though 'tis day." Cohen grinned at him. It wasn't often Mad Hamish volunteered anything. "They say every one of 'em's a world," said Evil Harry. "Yeah," said Cohen. "How many, bard?" "I don't know. Thousands. Millions," said the minstrel. "Millions of worlds, and we get... what? How old are you, Hamish?" "Whut? I were born the day the old thane died," said Hamish. "When was that? Which old thane?" said Cohen patiently. "Whut? I ain't a scholar! I canna remember that kinda stuff!" "A hundred years, maybe," said Cohen. "One hundred years. And there's millions o' worlds." He took a pull of his cigarette and rubbed his forehead with the back of his thumb. "It's a bugger." He nodded at the minstrel. "What did your mate Carelinus do after he'd blown his nose?" "Look, you really shouldn't think of him like that," said the minstrel hotly. "He built a huge empire... too big, really. And in many ways he was a lot like you. Haven't you heard of the Tsortean Knot?" "Sounds dirty," said Truckle. "Hur, hur, hur... sorry." The minstrel sighed. "It was a huge, complicated knot that tied two beams together in the Temple of Offler in Tsort, and it was said that whoever untied it would reign over the whole of the continent," he said. "They can be very tricky, knots," said Mrs McGarry. "Carelinus sliced right through it with his sword!" said the minstrel. The revelation of this dramatic gesture did not get the applause he expected. "So he was a cheat as well as a cry-baby?" said Boy Willie. "No! It was a dramatic, nay, portentous gesture!" snapped the minstrel. "Yeah, okay, but it's not exactly untying it, is it? I mean, if the rules said 'untying', I don't see why he should —" "Nah, nah, the lad's got a point," said Cohen, who seemed to have been turning this one over in his mind. "It wasn't cheating, because it was a good story. Yeah. I can understand that." He chuckled. "I can just imagine it, too. A load of whey-faced priests and suchlike standin' around and thinkin', 'that's cheating, but he's got a really big sword so I won't be the first to point this out, plus this damn great army is just outside'. Hah. Yeah. Hmm. What did he do next?" "Conquered most of the known world." "Good lad. And after that?" "He... er... went home, reigned for a few years, then he died and his sons squabbled and there were a few wars... and that was the end of the empire." "Children can be a problem," said Vena, without looking up from carefully embroidering forget-me-nots around BURN THIS HOUSE. "Some people say you achieve immortality through your children," said the minstrel. "Yeah?" said Cohen. "Name one of your great-granddads, then." "Well... er..." "See? Now, I got lots of kids," said Cohen. "Haven't seen most of 'em... you know how it is. But they had fine strong mothers and I hope like hell they're all living for themselves, not for me. Fat lot of good they did your Carelinus, losin' his empire for him." "But there's lots more a proper historian could tell you —" said the minstrel. "Hah!" said Cohen. "It's what ordin'ry people remember that matters. It's songs and sayin's. It doesn't matter how you live and die, it's how the bards wrote it down." The minstrel felt their joint gaze fix on him. "Um... I'm making lots of notes," he said.   "Ook," said the Librarian, by way of explanation. "And then he says something fell on his head," Rincewind translated. "It must have been when we dived." "Can we throw some of this stuff out of the ship to lighten it?" said Carrot. "We don't need most of it." "Alas, no," said Leonard. "We will lose all our air if we open the door." "But we've got these breathing helmets," Rincewind pointed out. "Three helmets," said Leonard. The omniscope crackled. They ignored it. The Kite was still passing under the elephants, and the thing showed mostly a kind of magical snow. But Rincewind did glance up, and saw that someone in the storm was holding a card on which had been scrawled, in large letters: STAND BY.   Ponder shook his head. "Thank you, Archchancellor, but I'm far too busy for you to help me," he said. "But will it work?" "It has to, sir. It's a million-to-one chance." "Oh, then we don't have to worry. Everyone knows million-to-one chances always work." "Yes, sir. So all I have to do is work out if there's still enough air outside the ship for Leonard to steer it, or how many dragons he will need to fire for how long, and if there will be enough power left to get them off again. I think he's travelling at nearly the right speed, but I'm not sure how much flame the dragons will have left, and I don't know what kind of surface he'll land on or anything they'll find there. I can adapt a few spells, but they were never devised for this sort of thing." "Good man," said Ridcully. "Is there anything we can do to help?" said the Dean. Ponder gave the other wizards a desperate look. How would Lord Vetinari have handled this? "Why, yes," he said brightly. "Perhaps you would be kind enough to find a cabin somewhere and come up with a list of all the various ways I could solve this? And I will just sit here and toy with a few ideas?" "That's what I like to see," said the Dean. "A lad with enough sense to make use of the wisdom of his elders." Lord Vetinari gave Ponder a faint smile as they left the cabin. In the sudden silence Ponder... pondered. He stared at the orrery, walked around it, enlarged sections of it, peered at them, pored over the notes he had made about the power of dragon flight, stared at a model of the Kite, and spent a lot of time looking at the ceiling. This wasn't the normal way of working for a wizard. A wizard evolved the wish, and then devised the command. He didn't bother much with observing the universe; rocks and trees and clouds could not have anything very intelligent to impart. They didn't even have writing on them, after all. Ponder looked at the numbers he had scribbled. As a calculation, it was like balancing a feather on a soap bubble which wasn't there. So he guessed.   On the Kite, the situation was being 'workshopped'. This is the means by which people who don't know anything get together to pool their ignorance. "Could we all hold our breath for a quarter of the time?" said Carrot. "No. Breath doesn't work like that, alas," said Leonard. "Perhaps we should all stop talking?" said Rincewind. "Ook," said the Librarian, pointing to the fuzzy screen of the omniscope. Someone was holding up another placard. The huge words could just be made out: THIS IS WHAT YOU DO. Leonard snatched a pencil and began to scribble in the corner of a drawing of a machine for undermining city walls. Five minutes later he put it down again. "Remarkable," he said. "He wants us to point the Kite in a different direction and go faster." "Where to?" "He doesn't say. But... ah, yes. He wants us to fly directly towards the sun." Leonard gave them one of his bright smiles. It faced three blank stares. "It will mean allowing one or two individual dragons to flare for a few seconds, to bring us around, and then —" "The sun," said Rincewind. "It's hot," said Carrot. "Yes, and I am sure we're all very glad of that," said Leonard, unrolling a plan of the Kite. "Ook!" "I'm sorry?" "He said, "And this boat is made of wood!"" said Rincewind. "All that in one syllable?" "He's a very concise thinker! Look, Stibbons must have made a mistake. I wouldn't trust a wizard to give me directions to the other side of a very small room!" "He does seem to be a bright young man, though," said Carrot. "You'll be bright, too, if you're in this thing when it hits the sun," said Rincewind. "Incandescent, I expect." "We can point the Kite if we're very careful how we operate the port and starboard mirrors," said Leonard thoughtfully. "There may be a little trial and error..." "Ah, we seem to have the hang of it," said Leonard. He turned over a small eggtimer. "And now, all dragons for two minutes..." "I ssuppose he'll ttell uss ssoon wwhat happens nnext?" shouted Carrot, while behind them things tinkled and creaked. "Mmr Sstibbonss hhas ttwo ththousand yyears of uuniversity eexpertise bbehind hhim!" yelled Leonard, above the din. "Hhow mmuch of ththat hhas iinvolved ssteering fflying sships wwith ddragons?" screamed Rincewind. Leonard leaned against the tug of home-made gravity and looked at the eggtimer. "Aabout wwwwwone hhundred sseconds!" "Ah! Iiit'ss ppractically aaa ttradition, tthenn!" Erratically, the dragons stopped flaming. Once again, things filled the air. And there was the sun. But no longer circular. Something had clipped its edge. "Ah," said Leonard. "How clever. Gentlemen, behold the moon!" "We're going to hit the moon instead?" said Carrot. "Is that better?" "My feelings exactly," said Rincewind. "Ook!" "I don't think we're going so very fast," said Leonard. "We're only just catching it up. I think Mr Stibbons intends that we land on it." He flexed his fingers. "There's some air there, I'm sure of it," he went on. "Which means there is probably something we can feed to the dragons. And then, and this is very clever thinking, we ride on the moon until it rises over the Disc, and all we need to do is drop down lightly." He kicked the release on the wing levers. The cabin rattled to the spinning of the flywheels. On either side, the Kite spread its wings. "Any questions?" he said. "I'm trying to think of all the things that could go wrong," said Carrot. "I've got to nine so far," said Rincewind. "And I haven't started on the fine detail." The moon was getting bigger, a dark sphere eclipsing the light of the distant sun. "As I understand it," said Leonard, as it began to loom in the windows, "the moon, being much smaller and lighter than the Disc, can only hold on to light things, like air. Heavier things, like the Kite, should hardly be able to stay on the ground." "And that means... ?" said Carrot. "Er... we should just float down," said Leonard. "But holding on to something might be a good idea..." They landed. It's a short sentence, but contains a lot of incident.   There was silence on the boat, apart from the sound of the sea and Ponder Stibbons's urgent muttering as he tried to adjust the omniscope. "The screams..." murmured Mustrum Ridcully, after a while. "But then they screamed a second time, a few seconds later," said Lord Vetinari. "And a few seconds after that," said the Dean. "I thought the omniscope could see anywhere," said the Patrician, watching the sweat pour off Ponder. "The shards, er, don't seem stable when they're too far apart, sir," said Ponder. "Uh... and there's still a couple of thousand miles of world and elephant between them... ah..." The omniscope flickered, and then went blank again. "A good wizard, Rincewind," said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. "Not particularly bright, but, frankly, I've never been quite happy with intelligence. An overrated talent, in my humble opinion." Ponder's ears went red. "Perhaps we should put a small plaque up somewhere in the University," said Ridcully. "Nothing garish, of course." "Gentlemen, are you forgetting?" said Lord Vetinari. "Soon there will be no University." "Ah. Well, a small saving there, then." 'Hello? Hello? Is there anyone there?' And there was, fuzzy but recognisable, a face peering out of the omniscope. "Captain Carrot?" Ridcully roared. "How did you get that damn thing to work?" 'I just stopped sitting on it, sir.' "Are you all right? We heard screams!" said Ponder. 'That was when we hit the ground, sir.' "But then we heard screams again? 'That was probably when we hit the ground for the second time, sir.' "And the third time?" 'Ground again, sir. You could say the landing was a bit... tentative... for a while there.' Lord Vetinari leaned forward. "Where are you?" 'Here, sir. On the moon. Mr Stibbons was right. There is air here. It's a bit thin, but it's fine if your plans for the day include breathing.' "Mr Stibbons was right, was he?" said Ridcully, staring at Ponder. "How did you work that out so exactly, Mr Stibbons?" "I, er..." Ponder felt the eyes of the wizards on him. "I —" He stopped. "It was a lucky guess, sir." The wizards relaxed. They were extremely uneasy with cleverness, but lucky guessing was what being a wizard was all about. "Well done, that man," said Ridcully, nodding. "Wipe your forehead, Mr Stibbons, you've got away with it again." 'I've taken the liberty of asking Rincewind to take a picture of me planting the flag of Ankh-Morpork and claiming the moon on behalf of all the nations of the Disc, your lordship,' Carrot went on. "Very... patriotic," said Lord Vetinari. "I may even tell them." 'However, I can't show you this on the omniscope because, shortly afterwards, something ate the flag. Things here... aren't entirely what you'd expect, sir.'   They were definitely dragons. Rincewind could see that. But they resembled swamp dragons in the same way that greyhounds resembled those odd yappy little dogs with lots of Zs and Xs in their name. They were all nose and sleek body, with longer arms and legs than the swamp variety, and they were so silvery that they looked like moonlight hammered into shape. And... they flamed. But it was not from the end that Rincewind had, hitherto, associated with dragons. The strange thing was, as Leonard said, that once you stopped sniggering about the whole idea it made a lot of sense. It was so stupid for a flying creature to have a weapon which stopped it dead in midair, for example. Dragons of all sizes surrounded the Kite, watching it with deer-like curiosity. Occasionally one or two would leap into the air and roar away, but others would land to join the throng. They stared at the crew of the Kite as if they were expecting them to do tricks, or make an important announcement. There was greenery, too, except that it was silvery. Lunar vegetation covered most of the surface. The Kite's third bounce and long slide had left a trail through it. The leaves were — "Hold still, will you?" Rincewind's attention was drawn to his patient as the Librarian struggled; the problem with bandaging an orangutan's head is knowing when to stop. "It's your own fault," he said. "I told you. Small steps, I said. Not giant leaps." Carrot and Leonard bounced around the side of the Kite. "Hardly any damage at all," said the inventor as he drifted down. "The whole thing took the shock remarkably well. And we're pointing slightly upwards. In this... general lightness, that should be quite sufficient to allow us to take off again, although there is one minor problem — Shoo, will you?" He waved away a small silver dragon that was sniffing at the Kite, and it took off vertically on a needle of blue flame. "We're out of food for our dragons," said Rincewind. "I've looked. The fuel bunker broke open when we landed for the first time." "But we can feed them some of the silver plants, can't we?" said Carrot. "The ones here seem to do very well on them." "Aren't they magnificent creatures?" said Leonard as a squadron of the creatures sailed overhead. They turned to watch the flight, and then stared beyond it. There was possibly no limit to how often the view could amaze you. The moon was rising over the world, and elephant's head filled half the sky. It was... simply big. Too big to describe. Wordlessly, all four voyagers climbed a small mound to get a clear view, and they stood in silence for some time. Dark eyes the size of oceans stared at them. Great crescents of ivory obscured the stars. There was no sound but the occasional click and swish as the iconograph imp painted picture after picture. Space wasn't big. It wasn't there. It was just nothing and therefore, in Rincewind's view, nothing to get humble about. But the world was big, and the elephant was huge. "Which one is it?" said Leonard, after a while. "I don't know," said Carrot. "You know, I'm not sure I ever really believed it before. You know... about the turtle and the elephants and everything. Seeing it all like this makes me feel very... very..." "Scared?" suggested Rincewind. "No." "Upset?" "No." "Easily intimidated?" "No." Beyond the Rimfall, the continents of the world were coming into view under swirls of white cloud. "You know... from up here... you can't see the boundaries between nations," said Carrot, almost wistfully. "Is that a problem?" said Leonard. "Possibly something could be done." "Maybe huge, really huge buildings in lines, along the frontiers," said Rincewind. "Or... or very wide roads. You could paint them different colours to save confusion." "Should aerial travel become widespread," said Leonard, "it would be a useful idea to grow forests in the shape of the name of the country, or of other areas of note. I will bear this in mind." "I wasn't actually sugges—" Carrot began. And then he stopped, and just sighed. They went on watching, unable to tear themselves away from the view. Tiny sparkles in the sky showed where more flocks of dragons were sweeping between the world and the moon. "We never see them back home," said Rincewind. "I suspect the swamp dragons are their descendants, poor little things," said Leonard. "Adapted for heavy air." "I wonder what else lives down here that we don't know about?" said Carrot. "Well, there's always the invisible squid-like creature that sucks all the air out of —" Rincewind began, but sarcasm did not carry very well out here. The universe diluted it. The huge, black, solemn eyes in the sky withered it. Besides, there was just... too much. Too much of everything. He wasn't used to seeing this much universe all in one go. The blue disc of the world, unrolling slowly as the moon rose, looked outnumbered. "It's all too big," said Rincewind. "Yes." "Ook." There was nothing to do but wait for full moonrise. Or Discsink. Carrot carefully lifted a small dragon out of a coffee cup. "The little ones get everywhere," he said. "Just like kittens. But the adults just keep their distance and stare at us." "Like cats, then," said Rincewind. He lifted up his hat and untangled a small silvery dragon from his hair. "I wonder if we ought to take a few back?" "We'll be taking them all back if we're not careful!" "They look a bit like Errol," said Carrot. "You know, the little dragon that was our Watch mascot? He saved the city by working out how to, er, flame backwards. We all thought he was some new kind of dragon," Carrot added, "but now it looks as though he was a throwback. Is Leonard still out there?" They looked out at Leonard, who had taken half an hour off to do some painting. A small dragon had perched on his shoulder. "He says he's never seen light like it," said Rincewind. "He says he must have a picture. He's doing very well, considering." "Considering what?" "Considering that two of the tubes he was using contain tomato puree and cream cheese." "Did you tell him?" "I didn't like to. He was so enthusiastic." "We'd better start feeding the dragons," said Carrot, putting his cup down. "All right. Can you unstick this frying pan from my head, please?"   Half an hour later the flicker of the omniscope screen illuminated Ponder's cabin. 'We've fed the dragons,' said Carrot. 'The plants here are... odd. They seem to be made of a sort of glassy metal. Leonard has a rather impressive theory that they absorb sunlight during the day and then shine at night, thus creating "moonlight". The dragons seem to find it very tasty. Anyway, we shall be leaving shortly. I am just collecting some rocks.' "I'm sure they will come in useful," said Lord Vetinari. "Actually, sir, they will be very valuable," whispered Ponder Stibbons. "Really?" said the Patrician. "Oh, yes! They may well be completely different from rocks on the Disc!" "And if they are exactly the same?" "Oh, that would be even more interesting, sir!" Lord Vetinari looked at Ponder without speaking. He could deal with most types of mind, but the one apparently operating Ponder Stibbons was of a sort he had yet to find the handles on. It was best to nod and smile and give it the bits of machinery it seemed to think were so important, lest it run amok. "Well done," he said. "Ah, yes, of course... and the rocks may contain valuable ores, or possibly even diamonds?" Ponder shrugged. "I wouldn't know about that, sir. But they may tell us more about the history of the moon." Vetinari's brow wrinkled. "History?" he said. "But no one lives th— I mean, yes, well done. Tell me, do you have all the machinery you need?"   The swamp dragons chewed at the moon leaves. They were metallic, with a glassy surface, and little blue and green sparks sizzled over the dragons" teeth when they bit into them. The voyagers piled them up high in front of the cages. Unfortunately, the only explorer who would have noticed that the moon dragons ate only the occasional leaf was Leonard, and he had been too busy painting. Swamp dragons, on the other hand, were used to eating a lot of things in the energy-poor environment of their world. Stomachs used to transmuting the equivalent of stale cakes into usable flame took delivery of dialectric surfaces chock-full of almost pure energy. It was the food of the gods. It was only going to be a matter of time before one of them burped. The whole of the Disc was... well, there was the problem, from Rincewind's point of view. It was below them now. It looked below, even if it was really just over there. He couldn't get over the dreadful feeling that once the Kite was airborne it would simply drop down to those distant, fleecy clouds. The Librarian helped him winch in the wing on his side, as Leonard made ready to depart. "Well, I mean, I know we've got wings and everything," Rincewind said. "It's just that I'm not at home in an environment where every direction is down." "Ook." "I don't know what I'll say to him. "Don't blow the world up" sounds a pretty persuasive argument to me. I'd listen to it. And I don't like the idea of going anywhere near the gods. We're like toys to them, you know." And they don't realise how easily the arms and legs come off, he added to himself. "Ook?" "Pardon? Do you really say that?" "Ook." "There is a... monkey god?" "Ook?" "No, no, that's fine, fine. Not one of our locals ones, is he?" "Eek." "Oh, the Counterweight Continent. Well, they'll believe just about anything over..." He glanced out of the window and shuddered, "Down there." There was a thud as the ratchet clicked into place. "Thank you, gentlemen," said Leonard. "Now if you'll just take your seats we —" The thump of an explosion rocked the Kite and knocked Rincewind off his feet. "How curious, one of the dragons appears to have fired a little earl—"   "Behold!" said Cohen, striking a pose. The Silver Horde looked around. "What?" said Evil Harry. "Behold, the citadels of the gods!" said Cohen, striking the pose again. "Yes, well, we can see it," said Caleb. "Is there something wrong with your back?" "Write down that I spake "Behold!"," said Cohen to the minstrel. "You don't have to write down any of this other stuff." "You wouldn't mind saying —" "— spaking —" "— sorry, spoking, 'Behold the temples of the gods', would you?" said the minstrel. "It's got a better rhythm." "Hah, this takes me back," said Truckle. "Remember, Hamish? You and me signed on with Duke Leofric the Legitimate when he invaded Nothingfjord?" "Aye, I mind it." "Five damn days, that battle took," said Truckle, "'cos the Duchess was doing a tapestry to commemorate it, right? We had to keep doing the fights over and over again, and there was the devil to pay when she was changing needles. There's no place for the media on the field of battle, I've always said." "Aye, and I mind you makin' a rude sign to the ladies!" Hamish cackled. "I saw that ol' tapestry in the castle of Rosante years later and I could tell it wuz you!" "Could we just get on with it?" said Vena. "Y'see, there's the problem," said Cohen. "It's no good just doin' it. You got to remember your posterity." "Hur, hur, hur," said Truckle. "Laugh away," said Cohen. "But what about all those heroes that aren't remembered in songs and sagas, eh? You tell me about them." "Eh? What heroes that aren't remembered in songs and sagas?" 'Exactly!' "What's the plan?" said Evil Harry, who had been watching the shimmering light over the city of the gods. "Plan?" said Cohen. "I thought you knew. We're going to sneak in, smash the igniter, and run like hell." "Yes, but how do you plan to do this?" said Evil Harry. He sighed when he saw their faces. "You haven't got one, have you?" he said wearily. "You were just going to rush in, weren't you? Heroes never have a plan. It's always left up to us Dark Lords to have the plans. This is the home of the gods, lads! You think they won't notice a bunch of humans wandering around?" "We are intendin' to have a magnificent death," said Cohen. "Right, right. Afterwards. Oh, deary me. Look, I'd be thrown out of the secret society of evil madmen if I let you go at it mob-handed." Evil Harry shook his head. "There's hundreds of gods, right? Everyone knows that. And new gods turning up all the time, right? Well? Doesn't a plan suggest itself? Anyone?" Truckle raised a hand. "We rush in?" he said. "Yes, we're all real heroes here, aren't we?" said Evil Harry. "No. That wasn't exactly what I had in mind. Lads, it's lucky for you that you've got me..."   It was the Chair of Indefinite Studies who saw the light on the moon. He was leaning on the ship's rail at the time, having a quiet afternoon smoke. He was not an ambitious wizard, and generally just concentrated on keeping out of trouble and not doing anything very much. The nice thing about Indefinite Studies was that no one could describe exactly what they were. This gave him quite a lot of free time. He watched the moon's pale ghost for a while, and then went and found the Archchancellor, who was fishing. "Mustrum, should the moon be doing that?" he said. Ridcully looked up. "Good grief! Stibbons! Where's the man got to?" Ponder was located in the bunk where he had flopped asleep fully dressed. He was hustled up the ladder half-asleep, but he awoke quickly when he saw the sky. "Should it be doing that?" Ridcully demanded, pointing at the moon. "No, sir! It certainly shouldn't!" "It's a definite problem, is it?" said the Chair, hopefully. "It certainly is! Where's the omniscope? Has anyone tried to talk to them?" "Ah, well, not my field then," said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, backing away. "Sorry. Would help if I could. Can see you're busy. Sorry."   All the dragons must have fired by now. Rincewind felt his eyeballs being pressed into the back of his head. Leonard was unconscious in the next seat. Carrot was presumably lying in the debris that had been rammed to the other end of the cabin. By the ominous creaking, and the smell, an orangutan was hanging on to the back of Rincewind's seat. Oh, and when he managed to turn his head to see out of the window, one of the dragon pods was on fire. It was no wonder — the flame coming from the dragons was almost pure white. Leonard had mentioned one of these levers... Rincewind stared at them through a red mist. "If we have to drop all the dragons," Leonard had said, "we —" What? Which lever? Actually, at a time like this the choice was plain. Rincewind, his vision blurred, his ears insulted by the sound of a ship in pain, pulled the only one he could reach.   I can't put this in a saga, the minstrel thought. No one will ever believe it. I mean, they just won't ever believe it... "Trust me, right?" said Evil Harry, inspecting the Horde. "I mean, yes, obviously I am untrustworthy, point taken, but it's a matter of pride here, you understand? Trust me. This will work. I bet even the gods don't know all the gods, right?" "I feel a right twerp with these wings," Caleb complained. "Mrs McGarry did a very good job on'em, so don't complain," snapped Evil Harry. "You make a very good God of Love. What kind of love, I wouldn't like to say. And you are... ?" "God of Fish, Harry," said Cohen, who had stuck scales on his skin and made himself a sort of fish-head helmet from one of their late adversaries. Evil Harry tried to breathe. "Good, good, a very old fish god, yes. And you, Truckle, are... ?" "The God of bloody Swearing," said Truckle the Uncivil firmly. "Er, that could actually work," said the minstrel, as Evil Harry frowned. "After all, there are Muses of dance and song, and there's even a Muse of erotic poetry —" "Oh, I can do that," said Truckle dismissively. "'There was a young lady from Quirm, Whose grip was — '" "All right, all right. And you, Hamish?" "God o' Stuff," said Hamish. "What stuff?" Hamish shrugged. He hadn't survived all this time by being unnecessarily imaginative. "Just... things, y'ken," he said. "Lost things, mebbe. Things lyin' aroound?" The Silver Horde turned to the minstrel, who nodded after some thought. "Could work," he said, at last. Evil Harry moved on to Boy Willie. "Willie, why have you got a tomato on your head and a carrot in your ear?" Boy Willie grinned proudly. "You'll love this one," he said. "God of Bein' Sick." "It's been done," said the minstrel, before Evil Harry could reply. "Vometia. Goddess in Ankh-Morpork, thousands of years ago. 'To give an offering to Vometia' meant to —" "So you'd better think of something else," growled Cohen. "Oh? And what are you going to be, Harry?" said Willie. "Me? Er... I'm going to be a Dark God," said Evil Harry. "There's a lot of them around —" "Here, you never said we could be demonic," said Caleb. "If we can be demonic, I'm blowed if I'm gonna be a stupid cupid." "But if I'd said we could be demons you'd all have wanted to be demons," Harry pointed out. "An' we'd have been arguing for hours. Besides, the other gods're goin" to smell a rat if a whole bunch of dark gods turn up all at once." "Mrs McGarry hasn't done a thing," said Truckle. "Well, I thought if I could borrow Evil Harry's helmet I could slip in as a Valkyrie maiden," said Vena. "Good sensible thinkin'," said Evil Harry. "There's bound to be a few of them around." "And Harry won't need it because in a minute he's going to make an excuse about his leg or his back or something and how he can't come in with us," said Cohen, in a conversational voice. "On account of him havin' betrayed us. Right, Harry?"   The game was getting more exciting. Most of the gods were watching now. Gods enjoy a good laugh, although it has to be said that their sense of humour is not subtle. Blind Io, the elderly chief of the gods, said, "I suppose there is no harm they can do us?" "No," said Fate, passing the dice box. "If they were very intelligent, they would not be heroes." There was the rattle of a die, and one flew across the board and then began to spin in the air, tumbling faster and faster. Finally it vanished in a puff of ivory. "Someone has thrown uncertainty," said Fate. He looked along the table. "Ah... my Lady..." "My lord," said the Lady. Her name was never spoken, although everyone knew what it was; speaking her name aloud would mean that she would instantly depart. Despite the fact that she had very few actual worshippers, she was nevertheless one of the most powerful of the deities on the Disc, since in their hearts nearly everyone hoped and believed that she existed. "And what is your move, my dear?" said Io. "I have already made it," said the Lady. "But I've thrown the dice where you can't see them." "Good, I like a challenge," said Io. "In that case —" "If I may suggest a diversion, sir?" said Fate smoothly. "And that is?" "Well, they do want to be treated like gods," said Fate. "So I suggest we do so..." "Are you thaying we thould take them theriouthly?" said Offler. "Up to a point. Up to a point." "Up to which point?" said the Lady. "Up to the point, madam, where it ceases to amuse."   On the veldt of Howondaland live the N'tuitif people, the only tribe in the world to have no imagination whatsoever. For example, their story about the thunder runs something like this: "Thunder is a loud noise in the sky, resulting from the disturbance of the air masses by the passage of lightning." And their legend "How the Giraffe Got His Long Neck" runs: "In the old days the ancestors of Old Man Giraffe had slightly longer necks than other grassland creatures, and the access to the high leaves was so advantageous that it was mostly long-necked giraffes that survived, passing on the long neck in their blood just as a man might inherit his grandfather's spear. Some say, however, that it is all a lot more complicated and this explanation only applies to the shorter neck of the okapi. And so it is." The N'tuitif are a peaceful people, and have been hunted almost to extinction by neighbouring tribes, who have lots of imagination, and therefore plenty of gods, superstitions and ideas about how much better life would be if they had a bigger hunting ground. Of the events on the moon that day, the N'tuitif said: "The moon was brightly lit and from it rose another light which then split into three lights and faded. We do not know why this happened. It was just a thing." They were then wiped out by a nearby tribe who knew that the lights had been a signal from the god Ukli to expand the hunting ground a bit more. However, they were soon defeated entirely by a tribe who knew that the lights were their ancestors, who lived in the moon, and who were urging them to kill all non-believers in the goddess Glipzo. Three years later they in turn were killed by a rock falling from the sky, as a result of a star exploding a billion years ago. What goes around, comes around. If not examined too closely, it passes for justice.   In the shaking, rattling Kite, Rincewind watched the last two dragon pods drop from the wings. They tumbled alongside for a moment, broke up, and fell away. He stared at the levers again. Someone, he thought muzzily, really should be doing something with them, shouldn't they?   Dragons contrailed across the sky. Now they were free of the pods, they were in a hurry to get home. The wizards had created Thurlow's Interesting Lens just above the deck. The display was quite impressive. "Better than fireworks," observed the Dean. Ponder banged on the omniscope. "Ah, it's working now," he said, "but all I can see is this huge —" More of Rincewind's face than a giant nose became visible as he drew back. "What levers do I pull? What levers do I pull?" he screamed. "What's happened?" "Leonard's still out cold and the Librarian is pulling Carrot out of all the junk and this is definitely a bumpy ride! We've got no dragons left! What are all these dials for? I think we're falling! What shall I do?" "Didn't you watch how Leonard did it?" "He had his feet on two pedals and was pulling all the levers all the time!" "All right, all right, I'll see if I can work out what to do from his plans and we can talk you down!" "Don't! Talk me Up! Up is where we want to stay! Not down!" "Are any of the levers marked?" said Ponder, scrabbling through Leonard's sketches. "Yes, but I don't understand them! Here's one marked 'Troba'!" Ponder scanned the pages, covered in Leonard's backwards writing. "Er... er..." he muttered. "Do not pull the lever marked 'Troba'!" snapped Lord Vetinari, leaning forward. "My lord!" said Ponder, and went red as Lord Vetinari's gaze fell upon him. "I'm sorry, my lord, but this is rather technical, it is about machinery, and it would perhaps be better if those whose education had been more in the field of the arts did not..." His voice faded under the Patrician's stare. "This one's got a normal label! It's called 'Prince Haran's Tiller'!" said a desperate voice from the omniscope. Lord Vetinari patted Ponder Stibbons on the shoulder. "I quite understand," he said. "The last thing a trained machinery person wants at a time like this is well-meant advice from ignorant people. I do apologise. And what is it that you intend to do?" "Well, I, er, I..." "As the Kite and all our hopes plunge towards the ground, I mean," Lord Vetinari went on. "I, er, I, let's see, we've tried..." Ponder stared at the omniscope, and at his notes. His mind had become a huge, white, sticky field of hot fluff. "I imagine we have at least a minute left," said Lord Vetinari. "No rush." "I, er, perhaps we, er..." The Patrician leaned down towards the omniscope. "Rincewind, pull Prince Haran's Tiller," he said. "We don't know what it does —" Ponder began. "Do tell me if you have a better idea," said Lord Vetinari. "In the meantime, I suggest that the lever is pulled." On the Kite, Rincewind decided to respond to the voice of authority. "Er... there's a lot of clicking and whirring..." he reported. "And... some of the levers are moving by themselves... now the wings are unfolding... we're sort of flying in a straight line, at least... quite gently, really..." "Good. I suggest you apply yourself to waking up Leonard," said the Patrician. He turned and nodded at Ponder. "You yourself have not studied the classics, young man? I know Leonard has." "Well... no, sir." "Prince Haran was a legendary Klatchian hero who sailed around the world on a ship with a magical tiller," said Lord Vetinari. "It steered the ship while he slept. If I can be of any further help, don't hesitate to ask."   Evil Harry stood frozen with terror as Cohen advanced across the snow, hand raised. "You tipped off the gods, Harry," said Cohen. "We all heard yez," said Mad Hamish. "But it's okay," Cohen added. "Makes it more interestin'." His hand came down and slapped the small man on the back. "We thought: That Evil Harry, he may be dumber'n a thick brick, but betrayin' us at a time like this... well, that's what we call nerve," said Cohen. "I've known a few Evil Dark Lords in my time, Harry, but I'd def'nit'ly give you three great big goblins' heads for style. You might have never made it into the, you know, big Dark Lord league, but you've got... well, Harry, you've definitely got the Wrong Stuff." "We likes a man who sticks to his siege catapults," said Boy Willie. Evil Harry looked down and shuffled his feet, his face a battle between pride and relief. "Good of you to say that, lads," he mumbled. "I mean, you know, if it was up to me I wouldn't do this to yer, but I got a reputation to —" "I said we understand," said Cohen. "It's just like with us. You see a big hairy thing galloping towards you, you don't stop to think: Is this a rare species on the point of extinction? No, you hack its head off. 'Cos that's heroing, am I right? An' you see someone, you betray 'em, quick as wink, 'cos that's villaining." There was a murmur of approval from the rest of the Horde. In a strange way, this too was part of the Code. "You're letting him go?" said the minstrel. "Of course. You haven't been paying attention, lad. The Dark Lord always gets away. But you'd better put in the song that he betrayed us. That'll look good." "And... er... you wouldn't mind saying I fiendishly tried to cut your throats?" said Harry. "All right," said Cohen loftily. "Put in that he fought like a black-hearted tiger." Harry wiped a tear from his eye. "Thanks, lads," he said. "I don't know what to say. I won't forget this. This could turn things right round for me." "But do us a favour and see the bard gets back all right, though, will you?" said Cohen. "Sure," said Evil Harry. "Um... I'm not going back," said the minstrel. This surprised everyone. It certain surprised him. But life had suddenly opened two roads in front of him. One of them led back to a life singing songs about love and flowers. The other could lead anywhere. There was something about these old men that made the first choice completely impossible. He couldn't explain it. That was just how it was. "You've got to go back —" said Cohen. "No, I've got to see how it ends," said the minstrel. "I must be mad, but that's what I want to do." "You can make that bit up," said Vena. "No, ma'am," said the minstrel. "I don't think I can. I don't think this is going to end in any way that I could make up. Not when I look at Mr Cohen there in his fish hat and Mr Willie as the God of Being Sick Again. No, I want to come along. Mr Dread can wait for me here. And I'll be perfectly safe, sir. No matter what. Because I'm absolutely certain that when the gods find they're under attack by a man with a tomato on his head and another one disguised as the Muse of Swearing they're really, really going to want the whole world to know what happened next."   Leonard was still out cold. Rincewind tried mopping his brow with a wet sponge. "Of course I watched him," said Carrot, glancing back at the gently moving levers. "But he built it, so it was easy for him. Um... I shouldn't touch that, sir..." The Librarian had swung himself into the driver's seat and was sniffing the levers. Somewhere underneath them, the automatic tiller clicked and purred. "We're going to have to come up with some ideas soon," Rincewind said. "It won't fly itself for ever." "Perhaps if we gently... I shouldn't do that, sir —" The Librarian gave the pedals a cursory glance. Then he pushed Carrot away with one hand while the other unhooked Leonard's flying goggles from their hook. His feet curled around the pedals. He pushed the handle that operated Prince Haran's Tiller and, far under his feet, something went thud. Then, as the ship shook, he cracked his knuckles, reached out, waggled his fingers for a moment, and grabbed the steering column. Carrot and Rincewind dived for their seats.   The gates of Dunmanifestin swung open, apparently by themselves. The Silver Horde walked inside, keeping together, peering around suspiciously. "You better mark our cards for us, lad," whispered Cohen, looking around the busy streets. "I wasn't expecting this." "Sir?" said the minstrel. "We expected a lot of carousing in a big 'all," said Boy Willie. "Not... shops. And everyone's different sizes!" "Gods can be any size, I reckon," said Cohen, as gods hurried towards them. "Maybe we could... come back another time?" said Caleb. The doors slammed behind them. "No," said Cohen. And suddenly there was a crowd around them. "You must be the new gods," said a voice from the sky. "Welcome to Dunmanifestin! You'd better come along with us!" "Ah, the God of Fish," said a god to Cohen, falling in beside him. "And how are the fish, your mightiness?" "Er... what?" said Cohen. "Oh... er... wet. Still very wet. Very wet things." "And things?" a goddess asked Hamish. "How are things?" "Still lyin' aroond!" "And are you omnipotent?" "Aye, lass, but there's pills I'm takin' f'r it!" "And you're the Muse of Swearing?" said a god to Truckle. "Bloody right!" said Truckle desperately. Cohen looked up and saw Offler the Crocodile God. He wasn't a god who was hard to recognise, but in any case Cohen had seen him many times before. His statue in temples throughout the world was a pretty good likeness, and now was the time for a man to reflect on the fact that so many of those temples had been left a good deal poorer as a result of Cohen's activities. He didn't, however, because it was not the kind of thing he ever did. But it did seem to him that the Horde was being hustled along. "Where're we off to, friend?" he said. To watch the Gameth, your fithneth," said Offler. "Oh, yeah. That's where yo— we play around with u— mortals, right?" said Cohen. "Yes, indeed," said a god on the other side of Cohen. "And currently we've found some mortals actually attempting to enter Dunmanifestin." "The devils, eh?" said Cohen pleasantly. "Give 'em a taste of hot thunderbolt, that's my advice. It's the only language they understand." "Mostly because it's the only language you use," mumbled the minstrel, eyeing the surrounded gods. "Yes, we thought something like that would be a good idea," said the god. "I'm Fate, by the way." "Oh, you're Fate?" said Cohen, as they reached the gaming table. "Always wanted to meet you. I thought you were supposed to be blind?" "No." "How about if someone stuck two fingers in yer eyes?" "I'm sorry?" "Just my little joke." "Ha. Ha," said Fate. "I wonder, O God of Fish, how good a player you are?" "Never been much of a gambler," said Cohen, as a solitary die appeared between Fate's fingers. "A mug's game." "Perhaps you would care for a little... venture?" The crowd went silent. The minstrel looked into Fate's bottomless eyes, and knew that if you played dice with Fate the roll was always fixed. You could have heard a sparrow fall. "Yeah," said Cohen, at last. "Why not?" Fate tossed the die on to the board. "Six," he said, without breaking eye contact. "Right," said Cohen. "So I've got to a get a six too, yeah?" Fate smiled. "Oh, no. You are, after all, a god. And gods play to win. You, O mighty one, must throw a seven." 'Seven?' said the minstrel. "I fail to see why this should present a difficulty," said Fate, "to one entitled to be here." Cohen turned the die over and over. It had the regulation six sides. "I could see that could present a difficulty," he said, "but only for mortals, o' course." He tossed the die up in the air once or twice. "Seven?" he said. "Seven," said Fate. "Could be a knotty one," said Cohen. The minstrel stared at him, and felt a shiver run down his spine. "You'll remember I said that, lad?" Cohen added.   The Kite banked through high cloud. "Ook!" said the Librarian happily. "He flies it better than Leonard did!" said Rincewind. "It must come more... easily," whispered Carrot. "You know... what with him being naturally atavistic." "Really? I've always thought of him as quite good-natured. Except when he's called a monkey, of course." The Kite turned again, curving through the sky like a pendulum. "Ook!" "'If you look out of the left window you can see practically everywhere'," Rincewind translated. "Ook!" "'And if you look out of the right window, you can see—' Good grief!" There was the Mountain. And there, glittering in the sunlight, was the home of the gods. Above it, just visible even in the brilliant air, was the shimmering misty funnel of the world's magical field earthing itself at the centre of the world. "Are you, er, are you much of a religious man yourself?" said Rincewind as clouds whipped by the window. "I believe all religions do reflect some aspect of an eternal truth, yes," said Carrot. "Good wheeze," said Rincewind. "You might just get away with it." "And you?" said Carrot. "We-ll... you know that religion that thinks that whirling round in circles is a form of prayer?" "Oh, yes. The Hurtling Whirlers of Klatch." "Mine is like that, only we go more in... straight lines. Yes. That's it. Speed is a sacrament." "You believe it gives you some sort of eternal life?" "Not eternal, as such. More... well, just more, really. More life. That is," Rincewind added, "more life than you would have if you did not go very fast in a straight line. Although curving lines are acceptable in broken country." Carrot sighed. "You're just a coward really, aren't you?" "Yes, but I've never understood what's wrong with the idea. It takes guts to run away, you know. Lots of people would be as cowardly as me if they were brave enough." They looked out of the window again. The mountain was nearer. "According to the mission notes," said Carrot, thumbing through the sheaf of hastily written research notes that Ponder had thrust into his hand just before departure, "a number of humans have entered Dunmanifestin in the past and returned alive." "Returned alive per se is not hugely comforting," said Rincewind. "With their arms and legs? Sanity? All minor extremities?" "Mostly they were mythical characters," said Carrot, uncertainly. "Before or after?" "The gods traditionally look favourably on boldness, daring and audacity," Carrot went on. "Good. You can go in first." "Ook," said the Librarian. "He says we'll have to land soon," said Carrot. "Was there some position we're supposed to get into?" "Ook!" said the Librarian. He seemed to be fighting the levers. "What do you mean, 'lie on your back with your arms folded across your chest'?" "Eek!" "Didn't you watch what Leonard did when he landed us on the moon?" "Ook!" "And that was a good landing," said Rincewind. "Oh well, shame about the end of the world, but these things happen, eh?" Would you like a peanut? I am afraid it is a little hard to get the packet open. A ghostly chair hung in the air next to Rincewind. A violet flaring round the edge of his vision told him that he was suddenly in a little private time and space of his own. "So we are going to crash?" he said. Possibly. I'm afraid the uncertainty principle is making my job very difficult. How about a magazine? The Kite curved around and began to glide gently towards the clouds around Cori Celesti. The Librarian glared at the levers, bit one or two of them, tugged the handle of Prince Haran's Tiller and then swung himself back along the cabin and hid under a blanket. "We're going to land in that snowfield," said Carrot, slipping into the pilot's seat. "Leonard designed the ship to land in snow, didn't he? After all —" The Kite did not so much land as kiss the snow. It bounced up into the air, glided a little further, and touched down again. There were a few more skips, and then the keel was running crisply and smoothly over the snowfield. "Outstanding!" said Carrot. "It's just a walk in the park!" "You mean people are going to mug us and steal all our money and kick us viciously in the ribs?" said Rincewind. "Could be. We're heading directly towards the city. Have you noticed?" They stared ahead. The gates of Dunmanifestin were getting closer very quickly. The Kite breasted a snowdrift and sailed on. "This is not the time to panic," said Rincewind. The Kite hit the snow, rebounded into the air and flew through the gateway of the gods. Halfway through the gateway of the gods.   "So... seven and I win," said Cohen. "It comes down showin' seven and I win, right?" "Yes. Of course," said Fate. "Sounds like a million-to-one chance to me," said Cohen. He tossed the die high in the air, and it slowed as it rose, tumbling glacially with a noise like the swish of windmill blades. It reached the top of its arc and began to fall. Cohen was staring fixedly at it, absolutely still. Then his sword was out of its scabbard and it whirled around in a complex curve. There was a snick and a green flash in the middle of the air and... ... two halves of an ivory cube bounced across the table. One landed showing the six. The other landed showing the one. One or two of the gods, to the minstrel's amazement, began to applaud. "I think we had a deal?" said Cohen, still holding his sword. "Really? And have you heard the saying 'You cannot cheat Fate'?" said Fate. Mad Hamish rose in his wheelchair. "Ha' ye heard the sayin' 'Can yer mither stitch, pal'?" he yelled. As one man, or god, the Silver Horde closed up and drew its weaponry. "No fighting!" shouted Blind Io. "That is the rule here! We've got the world to fight in!" "That wasn't cheating!" Cohen growled. "Leavin' scrolls around to lure heroes to their death, that's cheatin'!" "But where would heroes be without magic maps?" said Blind Io. "Many of 'em 'd still be alive!" snapped Cohen. "Not pieces in some damn game!" "You cut the thing in half," said Fate. "Show me where it says that in the rules! Yeah, why not show me the rules, eh?" said Cohen, dancing with rage. "Show me all the rules! What's up, Mr Fate? You want another go, is it? Double or quits? Double stakes?" "You mutht admit it wath a good thtroke," said Offler. Several of the lesser gods nodded. "What? Are you prepared to let them stand here and defy us?" said Fate. "Defy you, my lord," said a new voice. "I suggest they have won. He did cheat Fate. If you do cheat Fate, I do not believe it says anywhere that Fate's subsequent opinion matters." The Lady stepped daintily through the crowd. The gods parted to let her pass. They recognised a legend in the making when they saw it. "And who are you?" snapped Cohen, still red with rage. "I?" The Lady unfolded her hands. A die lay on each palm, the solitary single dot facing up. But at a flick of her wrist the two flew together, lengthened, entwined, became a hissing snake writhing in the air — and vanished. "I... am the million-to-one-chance," she said. "Yeah?" said Cohen, less impressed than the minstrel thought he ought to be. "And who are all the other chances?" "I am those, also." Cohen sniffed. "Then you ain't no lady." "Er, that's not really —" the minstrel began. "Oh, that wasn't what I was supposed to say, was it?" said Cohen. "I was supposed to say. 'Ooh, ta, missus, much obliged'? Well, I ain't. They say fortune favours the brave, but I say I've seen too many brave men walkin' into battles they never walked out of. The hell with all of it — What's up with you?" The minstrel was staring at a god on the edge of the crowd. "It's you, isn't it?" he growled. "You're Nuggan, aren't you?" The little god took a step backward, but made the mistake of trying dignity. "Be silent, mortal!" "You utter, utter... fifteen years! Fifteen damn years before I ever tasted garlic! And the priests used to get up early in the countryside round us to jump on all the mushrooms! And do you know how much a small slab of chocolate cost in our town, and what they did to people who were caught with one?" The minstrel shouldered the Horde aside and advanced on the retreating god, his lyre raised like a club. "I shall smite you with lightning!" squeaked Nuggan, raising his hands to protect himself. "You can't! Not here! You can only do that stuff back in the world! All you can do here is bluff and illusion! And bullying. That's what prayers are... it's frightened people trying to make friends with the bully! All those temples were built and... and you're nothing but a little —" Cohen laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. "Well said, lad. Well said. But it's time you were goin'." 'Broccoli,' murmured Offler to Sweevo, God of Cut Timber. 'You can't go wrong with broccoli.' 'I prohibit the practice of panupunitoplasty,' said Sweevo. 'What'th that? 'Search me, but it's got them worried.' "Just let me give him one wallop —" shouted the minstrel. "Listen, son, listen," said Cohen, struggling to hold him. "You got better things to do with that lyre than smash it over someone's head, right? A few little verses — it's 'mazin' how they stick in the mind. Listen to me, listen, do you hear what I'm tellin' you? ... I've got a sword and it's a good one, but all the bleedin" thing can do is keep someone alive, listen. A song can keep someone immortal. Good or bad!" The minstrel relaxed a little, but only a little. Nuggan had taken refuge behind a group of other gods. "He'll wait until I'm out of the gates —" groaned the minstrel. "He'll be busy! Truckle, press that plunger!" "Ah, your famous firework," said Blind Io. "But, my dear mortal, fire cannot harm the gods..." "Well now," said Cohen, "that depends, right? 'Cos in a minute or so, the top of this mountain is gonna look like a volcano. Everyone in the world will see it. I wonder if they'll believe in the gods any more?" "Hah!" sneered Fate, but a few of the brighter gods looked suddenly thoughtful. "Anyway," Cohen went on, "it dunt matter if someone kills the gods. It does matter that someone tried. Next time, someone'll try harder." "All that will happen is that you will be killed," said Fate, but the more thoughtful gods were edging away. "What have we got to lose?" said Boy Willie. "We're going to die anyway. We're ready to die." "We've always been ready to die," said Caleb the Ripper. "That's why we've lived such a long time," said Boy Willie. "But... why be so upset?" said Blind Io. "You've had long eventful lives, and the great cycle of nature —" "Ach, the great cycle o' nature can eat ma loin-cloth!" said Mad Hamish. "And there's not many as would want to do that," said Cohen. "And I ain't much good with words, but... I reckon we're doing this 'cos we are goin' to die, d'yer see? And 'cos some bloke got to the edge of the world somewhere and saw all them other worlds out there and burst into tears 'cos there was only one lifetime. So much universe, and so little time. And that's not right..." But the gods were looking around.   The wings had shattered and broken off. The fuselage smashed down on to the cobbles, and slid on. "Now is the time to panic," said Rincewind. The stricken Kite continued to scrape across the flagstones in a growing smell of scorched wood. A pale hand reached past Rincewind. "It would be advisable," said Leonard, "to hold on to something." He pulled a small handle labelled 'Sekarb'. Now the Kite stopped. In a very dynamic sort of way. The gods looked down. A hatch opened in the strange wooden bird. It fell off and rolled a little way. The gods saw a figure get out. He appeared, in many ways, to be a hero, except that he was far too clean. He looked around, removed his helmet and saluted. "Good afternoon, O mighty ones," he said. "I do apologise, but this should not take long. And may I take this opportunity to say on behalf of the people of the Disc that you are doing a wonderful job here." He marched towards the Horde, past the astonished gods, and stopped in front of Cohen. "Cohen the Barbarian?" "What's it to you?" said Cohen, mystified. "I am Captain Carrot of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, and I hereby arrest you on a charge of conspiracy to end the world. You need not say anything —" "I don't intend to say anything," said Cohen, raising his sword. "I'm just gonna cut your —ing head off." "Hold it, hold it," said Boy Willie urgently. "Do you know who we all are?" "Yessir. I believe so. You are Boy Willie, aka Mad Bill, Wilhelm the Chopper, the Great —" "And you are going to arrest us? You say you are some kind of a watchman?" "That is correct, sir." "We must've killed hundreds of watchmen in our time, lad!" "I'm sorry to hear that, sir." "'Ow much do they pay you, boy?" said Caleb. "Forty-three dollars a month, Mr Ripper. With allowances." The Horde burst out laughing. Then Carrot drew his sword. "I must insist, sir. What you are planning to do will destroy the world." "Only this bit, lad," said Cohen. "Now you could go off home and —" "I'm being patient, sir, out of respect for your grey hairs." There was a further burst of laughing and Mad Hamish had to be slapped on the back. "Just a moment, boys," said Mrs McGarry quietly. "Are we thinking this one through? Look around you." They looked around. "Well?" Cohen demanded. "There's me, and you," said Vena, "and Truckle and Boy Willie and Hamish and Caleb and the minstrel," "So? So?" "That's seven," said Vena, "Seven of us, against one of him. Seven against one. And he thinks he's going to save the world. And he knows who we are and he's still going to fight us..." "You think he's a hero?" cackled Mad Hamish. "Hah! Wha' kind o' hero works for forty-three dollars a month? Plus allowances!" But the cackle was all alone in the sudden quietness. The Horde could calculate the peculiar mathematics of heroism quite quickly. There was, there always was, at the start and finish... the Code. They lived by the Code. You followed the Code, and you became part of the Code for those who followed you. The Code was it. Without the Code, you weren't a hero. You were just a thug in a loincloth. The Code was quite clear. One brave man against seven... won. They knew it was true. In the past, they'd all relied on it. The higher the odds, the greater the victory. That was the Code. Forget the Code, dismiss the Code, deny the Code... and the Code would take you. They looked down at Captain Carrot's sword. It was short, sharp and plain. It was a working sword. It had no runes on it. No mystic gleam twinkled on its edge. If you believed in the Code, that was worrying. One simple sword in the hands of a truly brave man would cut through a magical sword like suet. It wasn't a frightening thought, but it was a thought. "Funny thing," said Cohen, "but I heard tell once that down in Ankh-Morpork there's some watchman who's really heir to the throne but keeps very quiet about it because he likes being a watchman..." Oh dear, thought the Horde. Kings in disguise... that was Code material, right there. Carrot met Cohen's gaze. "Never heard of him," he said. "To die for forty-three dollars a month," said Cohen, holding the gaze, "a man's got to be very, very stupid or very, very brave..." "What's the difference?" said Rincewind, stepping forward. "Look, I don't want to break up a moment of drama or anything, but he's not joking. If that... keg explodes here, it will destroy the world. It'll... open a sort of hole and all the magic will drain away." "Rincewind?" said Cohen. "What're you doing here, you old rat?" "Trying to save the world," said Rincewind. He rolled his eyes. 'Again.' Cohen looked uncertain, but heroes don't back down easily, even in the face of the Code. "It'll really all blow up?" "Yes!" "'S not much of a world," Cohen muttered. "Not any more..." "What about all the dear little kittens —" Rincewind began. "Puppies," hissed Carrot, not taking his eyes off Cohen. "Puppies, I mean. Eh? Think of them." "Well. What about them?" "Oh... nothing." "But everyone will die," said Carrot. Cohen shrugged his skinny shoulders. "Everyone dies, sooner or later. So we're told." "There will be no one left to remember," said the minstrel, as if he was talking to himself. "If there's no one left alive, no one will remember." The Horde looked at him. "No one will remember who you were or what you did," he went on. "There will be nothing. No more songs. No one will remember." Cohen sighed, "All right, then let's say supposing I don't —" "Cohen?" said Truckle, in an unusually worried voice. "You know a few minutes ago, where you said 'press the plunger'?" "Yes?" "You meant I shouldn't've?" The keg was sizzling. "You pressed it?" said Cohen. "Well, yes! You said." "Can we stop it?" "No," said Rincewind. "Can we outrun it?" "Only if you can think of a way to run ten miles really, really fast," said Rincewind. "Gather round, lads! Not you, minstrel boy, this is sword stuff..." Cohen beckoned the other heroes, and they went into a hurried huddle. It didn't seem to take long. "Right," said Cohen, as they straightened up. "You got all our names down right, Mr Bard?" "Of course —" "Then let's go, lads!" They heaved the keg back on to Hamish's wheelchair. Truckle half turned as they started to push it. "Here, bard! You sure you made a note of that bit where I— ?" "We are leaving!" shouted Cohen, grabbing him. "See you later, Mrs McGarry" She nodded, and stood back. "You know how it is," she said sadly. "Great-grandchildren on the way and everything..." The wheelchair was already moving fast. "Get 'em to name one after me!" yelled Cohen as he leapt aboard. "What're they doing?" said Rincewind as the chair rolled down the street towards the far gates. "They'll never get it down from the mountain quickly enough!" said Carrot, starting to run. The chair passed through the arch at the end of the street and rattled over the icy rocks. As they hurried after it, Rincewind saw it bounce out and into ten miles of empty air. He thought he heard the last words, as the downward plunge began: "Aren't we supposed to shout somethinggggg..." Then chair and figures and barrel became smaller and smaller and merged into the hazy landscape of snow and sharp hungry rocks. Carrot and Rincewind watched. After a while the wizard noticed Leonard, out of the corner of his eye. The man had his fingers on his own pulse and was counting under his breath. "Ten miles... hmm... allow for air resistance... call it three minutes plus... yes... yes, indeed... we should be averting our eyes around... yes... now. Yes, I think that would be a good i—" Even through closed lids, the world went red. When Rincewind crawled to the edge, he saw a small distant circle of evil black and crimson. Several seconds later thunder boomed up the flanks of Cori Celesti, causing avalanches. And that, too, died away. "Do you think they've survived?" said Carrot, peering down into the fog of dislodged snow. "Huh?" said Rincewind. "It wouldn't be the proper story if they didn't survive." "Captain, they fell about ten miles into an explosion which has just reduced a mountain to a valley," said Rincewind. "They could have landed in really deep snow on some ledge," said Carrot. "Or there may have been a passing flock of really large soft birds?" said Rincewind. Carrot bit his lip. "On the other hand... giving up their lives to save everyone in the world... that's a good ending, too." "But it was them who were going to blow it up!" "Still very brave of them, though." "In a way, I suppose." Carrot shook his head sadly. "Perhaps we could get down and check." "It's a great bubbling crater of boiling rock!" Rincewind burst out. "It'd take a miracle!" "There's always hope." "So? There's always taxes, too. It doesn't make any difference." Carrot sighed and straightened up. "I wish you weren't right." "You wish I wasn't right? Come on, let's get back. We're not exactly out of trouble ourselves, are we?" Behind them, Vena blew her nose and then tucked her handkerchief back into her armoured corset. It was time, she thought, to follow the smell of horses.   The remains of the Kite were the subject of keen but uncomprehending interest among the deitic classes. They weren't certain what it was, but they definitely disapproved of it. "I feel," said Blind Io, "that if we had wanted people to fly, we would have given them wings." "We allow broomthtickth and magic carpeth," said Offler. "Ah, but they're magical. Magic... religion... there is a certain association. This is an attempt to subvert the natural order. Just anyone could float around the place in one of these things." He shuddered. "Men could look down upon their gods!" He looked down upon Leonard of Quirm. "Why did you do it?" he said. "You gave me wings when you showed me birds," said Leonard of Quirm. "I just made what I saw." The rest of the gods said nothing. Like many professionally religious people — and they were pretty professional, being gods — they tended towards unease in the presence of the unashamedly spiritual. "None of us recognise you as a worshipper," said Io. "Are you an atheist?" "I think I can say that I definitely believe in the gods," said Leonard, looking around. This seemed to satisfy everyone except Fate. "And is that all?" he said. Leonard thought for a while. "I think I believe in the secret geometries, and the colours on the edge of light, and the marvellous in everything," he said. "So you're not a religious man, then?" said Blind Io. "I am a painter." "That's a "no", then, is it? I want to be clear on this." "Er... I don't understand the question," said Leonard. "As you ask it." "I don't think we understand the answers," said Fate. "As you give them." "But I suppose we owe you something," said Blind Io. "Never let it be said the gods are unjust." "We don't let it be said the gods are unjust," said Fate. "If I may suggest —" "Will you be silent!" Blind Io thundered. "We'll do it the old way, thank you!" He turned to the explorers and pointed a finger at Leonard. "Your penalty," said Blind Io, "is this: you will paint the ceiling of the Temple of Small Gods in Ankh-Morpork. All of it. The decoration is in a terrible state." "But that's not fair," said Carrot. "He's not a young man, and it took the great Angelino Tweebsly twenty years to paint that ceiling!" "Then it will keep his mind occupied," said Fate. "And prevent him thinking the wrong sort of thoughts. That is the correct punishment for those who usurp the powers of the gods! We will find work for idle hands to do." "Hmm," said Leonard. "A considerable amount of scaffolding..." "Vatht amounth," said Offler, with satisfaction. "And the nature of the painting?" said Leonard. "I would like to paint..." "The entire world." said Fate. "Nothing less." "Really? I was thinking of perhaps just a nice duck-egg blue with a few stars," said Blind Io. "The entire world," said Leonard, staring off into some private vision. "With elephants, and dragons, and the swirl of clouds, and mighty forests, and the currents of the sea, and birds, and the great yellow veldts, and the pattern of storms, and the crests of mountains?" "Er, yes," said Blind Io. "Without assistance," said Fate. "Even with the thcaffolding," said Offler. "This is monstrous," said Carrot. Blind Io said: "And if it is not completed in twenty years —" "— ten years," said Fate. "— ten years, the city of Ankh-Morpork will be razed with heavenly fire!" "Hmm, yes, good idea," said Leonard, still staring at nothing. "Some of the birds will have to be quite small..." "He's in shock," said Rincewind. Captain Carrot had gone quiet with anger, as the sky does just before a thunderstorm. "Tell me," said Blind Io. "Is there a god of policemen?" "No, sir," said Carrot. "Coppers would be far too suspicious of anyone calling themselves a god of policemen to believe in one." "But you are a gods-fearing man?" "What I've seen of them certainly frightens the life out of me, sir. And my commander always says, when we go about our business in the city, that when you look at the state of mankind you are forced to accept the reality of the gods." The gods smiled their approval of this, which was indeed an accurate quotation. Gods have little use for irony. "Very good," said Blind Io. "And you have a request?" "Sir?" "Everyone wants something from the gods." "No, sir. I offer you an opportunity." "You will give something to us?" "Yes, sir. A wonderful opportunity to show justice and mercy. I ask you, sir, to grant me a boon." There was silence. Then Blind Io said, "Is that one of those... wooden objects, wasn't it? ... with a handle, and... mmm... beads on one side, and a sort of... thing, with hooks on..." He paused. "Did you mean one of those rubber things?" "No, sir. That would be a balloon, sir. A boon is a request." "Is that all? Oh. Well?" "Allow the Kite to be repaired so that we can go home —" "Impossible!" said Fate. "It sounds reasonable to me," said Blind Io, glaring at Fate. "It must be its last flight." "It will be the last flight of the Kite, won't it?" said Carrot to Leonard. "Hmm? What? Oh, yes. Oh, certainly. I can see I designed a lot of it wrong. The next one — mmph..." "What happened there?" said Fate suspiciously. "Where?" said Rincewind. "Where you clamped your hand over his mouth?" "Did I?" "You're still doing it!" "Nerves," said Rincewind, releasing his grip on Leonard. "I've been a bit shaken up." "And do you want a boon too?" said Leonard. "What? Oh. Er... I'd prefer a balloon, as a matter of fact. A blue balloon." Rincewind gave Carrot a defiant look. "It's all to do with when I was six, all right? There was this big unpleasant girl... and a pin. I don't want to talk about it." He looked up at the watching gods. "I don't know what everyone's staring at, I'm sure." "Ook," said the Librarian. "Does your pet want a balloon as well?" said Blind Io. "We do have a monkey god if he wants some mangoes and so on..." In the sudden chill, Rincewind said. "In fact he said he wants three thousand file cards, a new stamp and five gallons of ink." "Eek!" said the Librarian, urgently. "Oh, all right. And a red balloon too, please, if they're free."   The repairing of the Kite was simple enough. Although gods, on the whole, do not feel at home around mechanical things, every pantheon everywhere in the universe finds it necessary to have some minor deity — Vulcan, Wayland, Dennis, Hephaistos — who knows how bits fit together and that sort of thing. Most large organisations, to their regret and expense, have to have someone like that.   Evil Harry surfaced from the snowdrift, and gasped for breath. Then he was plunged back down again by a firm hand. "So it's a deal, then, is it?" said the minstrel, who was kneeling on his back and holding on to his hair. Evil Harry rose again. "Deal!" he roared, spitting snow. "And if you tell me later that I shouldn't have listened to you because everyone knows Dark Lords can't be trusted, I'll garotte you with a lyre string!" "You got no respect!" "Well? You are an evil treacherous Dark Lord, right?" said the minstrel, pushing the spluttering head back into the snow. "Well, yeah, of course... obviously. But respect costs nothi nnnn n n nn'." "You help me get down and I'll write you into the saga as the most wicked, iniquitous and depraved evil warlord there has even been, understand?" The head came up again, wheezing. "All right, all right. But you gotta promise..." "And if you betray me, remember that I don't know the Code! I don't have to let Dark Lords get away!" They descended in silence and, in Harry's case, mostly with his eyes shut. Off to one side and a long way down, a foothill that was now a valley still fumed and bubbled. "We'd never even find the bodies," said the minstrel, as they sought for a path. "Ah, and that'd be 'cos they didn't die, see?" said Harry. "They'd have come up with some plan at the last minute, you can bet on it." "Harry —" "You can call me Evil, lad." "Evil, they spent the last minute falling down a mountain!" "Ah, but maybe they kind of glided through the air, see? And there's all those lakes down there. Or maybe they spotted where the snow was really deep." The minstrel stared. "You really think they could have survived?" he said. There was a slight touch of desperation in Harry's raddled face. "Sure. O' course. All that talk from Cohen... that was just talk. He's not the sort to go around dyin" all the time. No old Cohen! I mean... not him. 'E's one of a kind." The minstrel surveyed the Hublands ahead of him. There were lakes and there was deep snow. But the Horde was not in favour of cunning. If they needed cunning, they hired it. Otherwise, they simply attacked. And you couldn't attack the ground. It's all mixed up, he thought. Just like that captain said. Gods and heroes and wild adventure... but when the last hero goes, it all goes. He'd never been keen on heroes. But he realised that he needed them to be there, like forests and mountains... he might never see them, but they filled some sort of hole in his mind. Some sort of hole in everyone's mind. "Bound to be fine," said Evil Harry, behind him. "They'll probably be waitin' for us when we get down there." "What's that, hanging on that rock?" said the minstrel. It turned out, when they'd scrambled up to it over slippery rocks, to be part of a shattered wheel from Mad Hamish's wheelchair. "Doesn't mean nothing," said Evil Harry, tossing it aside. "Come on, let's get a move on. This is not a mountain you want to be on at night." "No. You're right. It doesn't," said the minstrel. He unslung his lyre and began to tune it. "It doesn't mean anything." Before he turned to leave, he reached into a ragged pocket and pulled out a small leather bag. It was full of rubies. He tipped them out on to the snow, where they glowed. And then he walked on.   There was a field of deep snow. Here and there a hollow suggested that the snow had been thrust aside with great force by a falling body, but the edges had been softened by the wind drift. The seven horsewomen landed gently, and the thing about the snow was this: there were hoofprints in it, but they did not appear exactly where the horses trod or exactly when they did. They seemed superimposed on the world, as if they had been drawn first and the artist did not have much time to paint the reality behind them. They waited for a while. "Well, this is jolly unsatisfactory," said Hilda (soprano). "They ought to be here. They do know they're dead, don't they?" "We haven't come to the wrong place, have we?" said Gertrude (mezzo-soprano). "Ladies? If you would be so kind as to dismount?" They turned. The seventh Valkyrie had drawn her sword and was smiling at them. "What cheek. Here, you're not Grimhilda!" "No, but I think I could probably beat all six of you," said Vena, tossing aside the helmet. "I shoved her in the privy with one hand. It would be... better if you simply dismounted." "Better? Better than what?" said Hilda. Mrs McGarry sighed. "This," she said. The snow erupted old men. "Evening, miss!" said Cohen, grabbing Hilda's bridle. "Now, are you goin' to do like she says, or shall I get my friend Truckle here to ask you? Only he's a bit... uncivil." "Hur, hur, hur!" "How dare you —" "I'll dare anything, miss. Now get off or I'll push yer off!" "Well, really!" "Excuse me? I say? Excuse me?" said Gertrude. "Are you dead?" "Are we dead, Willie?" said Cohen. "We ought to be dead. But I don't feel dead." "I ain't dead!" roared Mad Hamish. "I'll knock any man doon as tells me a'm dead!" "There's an offer you can't refuse," said Cohen, swinging himself on to Hilda's horse. "Saddle up, boys." "But... excuse me?" said Gertrude, who was one of those people afflicted with terminal politeness. "We were supposed to take you to the great Halls of the Slain. There's mead and roast pork and fighting in between courses! Just for you! That's what you wanted! They laid it on just for you!" "Yeah? Thanks all the same, but we ain't goin'," said Cohen. "But that's where dead heroes have got to go!" "I don't remember signin' anythin'," said Cohen. He looked up at the sky. The sun had set, and the first stars were coming out. Every one was a world, eh? "You still not joining us, Mrs McGarry?" he said. "Not yet, boys." Vena smiled. "Not quite ready, I think. There'll come a time." "Fair enough. Fair enough. We'll be going, then. Got a lot to do..." "But —" Mrs McGarry looked across the snowfield. The wind had blown the snow over... shapes. Here a sword hilt projected from a drift, there a sandal was just visible. "Are you dead or not?" she said. Cohen scanned the snow. "Well, the way I see it, we don't think we are; so why should we care what anyone else thinks? We never have. Ready, Hamish? Then follow me, boys!" Vena watched as the Valkyries, squabbling among themselves, made their way back to the mountain. Then she waited. She had a feeling that there would be something to wait for. After a while, she heard another horse whinny. "Are you collecting?" she said, and turned to look at the mounted figure. That is something about which I do not propose to enlighten you, said Death. "But you are here," said Vena, although now she felt a lot more like Mrs McGarry again. Vena would probably have killed a few of the horsewomen just to make sure the others paid attention, but they'd all looked so young. I am, of course, everywhere. Mrs McGarry looked up at the stars. "In the olden days," she said, "when a hero had been really heroic, the gods would put them up in the stars." The heavens change, said Death. What today looks like a mighty hunter may look like a teacup in a hundred years" time. "That doesn't seem fair." No one ever said it had to be. But there are other stars.   At the base of the mountain, at Vena's camp, Harry got the fire going again while the minstrel sat and picked out notes. "I want you listen to this," he said, after a while, and played something. It went on, it seemed to Evil Harry, for a lifetime. He wiped away a tear as the last notes died away. "I've got to do some more work on it," said the minstrel, in a faraway voice. "But will it do?" "You asking me will it do?" said Evil Harry. "You're telling me you think you could make it even better?" "Yes." "Well, it's not like... a real saga," said Evil Harry hoarsely. "It's got a tune. You could whistle it, even. Well, hum it. I mean, it even sounds like them. Like they'd sound if they was music..." "Good." "It's... wonderful..." "Thank you. It will get better as more people hear it. It's music for people to listen to." "And... it's not like we found any bodies, is it?" said the very small Dark Lord. "So they could be alive somewhere." The minstrel picked a few notes on the lyre. The strings shimmered. "Somewhere," he agreed. "Y'know, kid," said Harry, "I don't even know your name." The minstrel's brow wrinkled. He wasn't certain himself, any more. And he didn't know where he was going to go, or what he was going to do, but he suspected that life might be a lot more interesting from now on. "I'm just the singer," he said. "Play it again," said Evil Harry.   Rincewind blinked, stared, and then looked away from the window. "We've just been overtaken by some men on horseback." he said. "Ook," said the Librarian, which probably meant. "Some of us have got some flying to do." "I just thought I'd mention it." Spiralling through the air like a drunken clown, the Kite climbed the column of hot air from the distant crater. It was the only instruction Leonard had given before going and sitting so quietly at the back of the cabin that Carrot was getting seriously worried. "He just sits there whispering things like "ten years!" and "the whole world!"," he reported. "It's come as a terrible shock. What a penance!" "But he looks cheerful," said Rincewind. "And he keeps drawing sketches. And he's leafing through all those pictures you took on the moon." "Poor chap. It's affecting his mind." Carrot leaned forward. "We ought to get him home as soon as possible. What's the usual direction? "Second star to the left and straight on 'til morning"?" "I think that may very probably be the stupidest piece of astronavigation ever suggested," said Rincewind. "We're just going to head for the lights. Oh, and we'd better be careful not to look down on the gods." Carrot nodded. "That's quite hard." "Practically impossible," said Rincewind.   And in a place on no map the immortal Mazda, bringer of fire, lay on his eternal rock. Memory can play tricks after the first ten thousand years, and he wasn't quite sure what had happened. There had been some old men on horseback, who'd swooped out of the sky. They'd cut his chains, and given him a drink, and had taken it in turns to shake his withered hand. Then they'd ridden away, into the stars, as quickly as they'd come. Mazda lay back into the shape his body had worn into the stone over the centuries. He wasn't quite sure about the men, or why they'd come, or why they'd been so happy. He was only sure, in fact, about two things. He was sure it was nearly dawn. He was sure that he held, in his right hand, the very sharp sword the old men had given him. And he could hear, coming closer with the dawn, the beat of an eagle's wings. He was going to enjoy this.   It is in the nature of things that those who save the world from certain destruction often don't get hugely rewarded because, since the certain destruction does not take place, people are uncertain how certain it may have been and are, therefore, somewhat tight when it comes to handing out anything more substantial than praise. The Kite was landed rather roughly on the corrugated surface of the river Ankh and, as happens to public things lying around which don't appear to belong to anyone, quickly became the private property of many, many people. And Leonard began the penance for his hubris. This was much approved of by the Ankh-Morpork priesthood. It was definitely the sort of thing to encourage piety. Lord Vetinari was therefore surprised when he received an urgent message three weeks after the events recounted, and forced his way through the mob to the Temple of Small Gods. "What's going on?" he demanded of the priests peering around the door. "This is... blasphemy!" said Hughnon Ridcully. "Why? What has he painted?" "It's not what he's painted, my lord. What he's painted is... is amazing. And he's finished it!"   Up on the mountain, as the blizzards closed in, there was a red glow in the snow. It was there all winter, and when the spring gales blew, the rubies glittered in the sunshine. No one remembers the singer. The song remains. THE END [1] Compared to, say, the Republican Bees, who committeed rather than swarmed and tended to stay in the hive a lot, voting for more honey. [2] That is, all those wizards who knew Archchancellor Ridcully, and were prepared to be led. [3] Few religions are definite about the size of Heaven, but on the planet Earth the Book of Revelation (ch. XXI, v. 16) gives it as a cube 12,000 furlongs on a side. This is somewhat less than 500,000,000.000,000,000,000 cubic feet. Even allowing that the Heavenly Host and other essential services take up at least two thirds of this space, this leaves about one million cubic feet of space for each human occupant — assuming that every creature that could be called "human" is allowed in, and that the human race eventually totals a thousand times the number of humans alive up until now. This is such a generous amount of space that it suggests that room has also been provided for some alien races or — a happy thought — that pets are allowed. [4] Many of the things built by the architect and freelance designer Bergholt Stuttley ('Bloody Stupid') Johnson were recorded in Ankh-Morpork, often on the line where it says 'Cause of Death'. He was, people agreed, a genius, at least if you defined the word broadly. Certainly no one else in the world could make an explosive mixture out of common sand and water. A good designer, he always said, should be capable of anything. And, indeed, he was. 
Snuff_ (Discworld Novel 39) - Terry Pratchett	----	Snuff About the Book It is a truth universally acknowledged that a policeman taking a holiday would barely have had time to open his suitcase before he finds his first corpse. And Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch is on holiday in the pleasant and innocent countryside, but not for him a mere body in the wardrobe. There are many, many bodies and an ancient crime more terrible than murder. He is out of his jurisdiction, out of his depth, out of bacon sandwiches, and occasionally snookered and out of his mind, but never out of guile. Where there is a crime there must be a finding, there must be a chase and there must be a punishment. They say that in the end all sins are forgiven. But not quite all … Contents Cover About the Book Title Page Dedication Snuff Footnotes Epilogue About the Author Also by Terry Pratchett Copyright For Rob … for in between his days off. For Emma … for helping me understand goblins. And for Lyn … for always. THE GOBLIN EXPERIENCE of the world is the cult or perhaps religion of Unggue. In short, it is a remarkably complex resurrection-based religion founded on the sanctity of bodily secretions. Its central tenet runs as follows: everything that is expelled from a goblin’s body was clearly once part of them and should, therefore, be treated with reverence and stored properly so that it can be entombed with its owner in the fullness of time. In the meantime the material is stored in unggue pots, remarkable creations of which I shall speak later. A moment’s distasteful thought will tell us that this could not be achieved by any creature, unless in possession of great wealth, considerable storage space and compliant neighbours. Therefore, in reality, most goblins observe the Unggue Had – what one might term the common and lax form of Unggue – which encompasses earwax, finger and toenail clippings, and snot. Water, generally speaking, is reckoned as not unggue, but something which goes through the body without ever being part of it: they reason that there is no apparent difference in the water before and after, as it were (which sadly shines a light on the freshness of the water they encounter in their underground lairs). Similarly, faeces are considered to be food that has merely undergone a change of state. Surprisingly, teeth are of no interest to the goblins, who look on them as a type of fungus, and they appear to attach no importance to hair, of which, it has to be said, they seldom have very much. At this point, Lord Vetinari, Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, stopped reading and stared at nothing. After a few seconds, nothing was eclipsed by the form of Drumknott, his secretary (who, it must be said, had spent a career turning himself into something as much like nothing as anything). Drumknott said, ‘You look pensive, my lord,’ to which observation he appended a most delicate question mark, which gradually evaporated. ‘Awash with tears, Drumknott, awash with tears.’ Drumknott stopped dusting the impeccably shiny black lacquered desk. ‘Pastor Oats is a very persuasive writer, isn’t he, sir … ?’ ‘Indeed he is, Drumknott, but the basic problem remains and it is this: humanity may come to terms with the dwarf, the troll and even the orc, terrifying though all these may have proved to be at times, and you know why this is, Drumknott?’ The secretary carefully folded the duster he had been using and looked at the ceiling. ‘I would venture to suggest, my lord, that in their violence we recognize ourselves?’ ‘Oh, well done, Drumknott, I shall make a cynic of you yet! Predators respect other predators, do they not? They may perhaps even respect the prey: the lion may lie down with the lamb, even if only the lion is likely to get up again, but the lion will not lie down with the rat. Vermin, Drumknott, an entire race reduced to vermin!’ Lord Vetinari shook his head sadly, and the ever-attentive Drumknott noticed that his lordship’s fingers had now gone back, for the third time that day, to the page headed ‘Unggue Pots’ and he seemed, quite unusually, to be talking to himself as he did so … ‘These are traditionally crafted by the goblin itself, out of anything from precious minerals to leather, wood or bone. Among the former are some of the finest eggshell-thin containers ever found in the world. The plundering of goblin settlements by treasure-hunters in search of these, and the retaliation by the goblins themselves, has coloured human–goblin relationships even to the present day.’ Lord Vetinari cleared his throat and continued, ‘I quote Pastor Oats again, Drumknott: I must say that goblins live on the edge, often because they have been driven there. When nothing else can survive, they do. Their universal greeting is, apparently, “Hang”, which means “Survive”. I know dreadful crimes have been laid at their door, but the world itself has never been kind to them. Let it be said here that those who live their lives where life hangs by less than a thread understand the dreadful algebra of necessity, which has no mercy, and when necessity presses in extremis, well, that is the time when the women need to make the unggue pot called “soul of tears”, the most beautiful of all the pots, carved with little flowers and washed with tears.’ Drumknott, with meticulous timing, put a cup of coffee in front of his master just as Lord Vetinari finished the sentence and looked up. ‘“The dreadful algebra of necessity”, Drumknott. Well, we know about that, don’t we?’ ‘Indeed we do, sir. Incidentally, sir, we have received a missive from Diamond King of Trolls, thanking us for our firm stance on the drugs issue. Well done, sir.’ ‘Hardly a concession,’ Vetinari observed, waving it away. ‘You know my position, Drumknott. I have no particular objection to people taking substances that make them feel better or more contented, or, for that matter, see little dancing purple fairies – or even their god if it comes to that. It’s their brain, after all, and society can have no claim on it, providing they’re not operating heavy machinery at the time. However, to sell drugs to trolls that actually make their heads explode is simply murder, the capital crime. I am glad to say that Commander Vimes fully agrees with me on this issue.’ ‘Indeed, sir, and may I remind you that he will be leaving us very shortly. Do you intend to see him off, as it were?’ The Patrician shook his head. ‘I think not. The man must be in terrible turmoil, and I fear that my presence might make things worse.’ Was there a hint of pity in Drumknott’s voice when he said, ‘Don’t blame yourself, my lord. After all, you and the commander are in the hands of a higher power.’? His Grace the Duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, was feverishly pushing a pencil down the side of his boot in order to stop the itching. It didn’t work. It never did. All his socks made his feet itch. For the hundredth time he considered telling his wife that among her sterling qualities, and they were many, knitting did not feature. But he would rather have chopped his foot off than do so. It would break her heart. They were dreadful socks, though, so thick, knotted and bulky that he had had to buy boots that were one and a half times bigger than his feet. And he did this because Samuel Vimes, who had never gone into a place of worship with religious aforethought, worshipped Lady Sybil, and not a day went past without his being amazed that she seemed to do the same to him. He had made her his wife and she had made him a millionaire; with her behind him the sad, desolate, penniless and cynical copper was a rich and powerful duke. He’d managed to hold on to the cynical, however, and a brace of oxen on steroids would not have been able to pull the copper out of Sam Vimes; the poison was in too deep, wrapped around the spine. And so Sam Vimes itched, and counted his blessings until he ran out of numbers. Among his curses was doing the paperwork. There was always paperwork. It is well known that any drive to reduce paperwork only results in extra paperwork. Of course, he had people to do the paperwork, but sooner or later he had, at the very least, to sign it and, if no way of escape presented itself, even read it. There was no getting away from it: ultimately, in all police work, there was a definite possibility that the manure would hit the windmill. The initials of Sam Vimes were required to be on the paper to inform the world that it was his windmill, and therefore his manure. But now he stopped to call through the open door to Sergeant Littlebottom, who was acting as his orderly. ‘Anything yet, Cheery?’ he said hopefully. ‘Not in the way I think you mean, sir, but I think you’ll be pleased to hear that I’ve just had a clacks message from Acting Captain Haddock down in Quirm, sir. He says he’s getting on fine, sir, and really enjoying the avec.’1 Vimes sighed. ‘Anything else?’ ‘Dead as a doorknob, sir,’ said the dwarf, poking her head around the door. ‘It’s the heat, sir, it’s too hot to fight and too sticky to steal. Isn’t that wonderful, sir?’ Vimes grunted. ‘Where there are policemen there’s crime, sergeant, remember that.’ ‘Yes, I do, sir, although I think it sounds better with a little reordering of the words.’ ‘I suppose there’s no chance at all that I’ll be let off?’ Sergeant Littlebottom looked concerned. ‘I’m sorry, sir, I think there’s no appeal. Officially Captain Carrot will relieve you of your badge at noon.’ Vimes thumped his desk and exploded. ‘I don’t deserve this treatment after a lifetime of dedication to the city!’ ‘Commander, if I may say so, you deserve a lot more.’ Vimes leaned back in his chair and groaned. ‘You too, Cheery?’ ‘I really am very sorry, sir. I know this is hard for you.’ ‘To be forced out after all this time! I begged, you know, and that doesn’t come easy to a man like me, you can be sure. Begged!’ There was a sound of footsteps on the stairs. Cheery watched as Vimes pulled a brown envelope out of his desk drawer, inserted something into it, licked it ferociously, sealed it with a spit and dropped it on his desk, where it clanged. ‘There,’ he said, through gritted teeth. ‘My badge, just like Vetinari ordered. I put it down. It won’t be said they took it off me!’ Captain Carrot stepped into the office, ducking briefly as he came through the door. He had a package in his hand and several grinning coppers were clustered behind him. ‘Sorry about this, sir, higher authority and all that. If it’s any help I think you’ve been lucky to be let off with two weeks. She was originally talking about a month.’ He handed Vimes the package and coughed. ‘Me and the lads had a bit of a whip-round, commander,’ he said with a forced grin. ‘I prefer something sensible like Chief Constable,’ said Vimes, grabbing the package. ‘Do you know, I reckoned that if I let them give me enough titles I’d eventually get one I could live with.’ He tore open the package and pulled out a very small and colourful bucket and spade, to the general amusement of the surreptitious onlookers. ‘We know you’re not going to the seaside, sir,’ Carrot began, ‘but …’ ‘I wish it was the seaside,’ Vimes complained. ‘You get shipwrecks at the seaside, you get smugglers at the seaside and you get drownings and crime at the flaming seaside! Something interesting!’ ‘Lady Sybil says you’re bound to find lots to amuse yourself with, sir,’ said Carrot. Vimes grunted. ‘The countryside! What’s to amuse you in the countryside? Do you know why it’s called the countryside, Carrot? Because there’s bloody nothing there except damn trees, which we’re supposed to make a fuss about, but really they’re just stiff weeds! It’s dull! It’s nothing but a long Sunday! And I’m going to have to meet nobby people!’ ‘Sir, you’ll enjoy it. I’ve never known you to take even a day off unless you were injured,’ said Carrot. ‘And even then he worried and grumbled every moment,’ said a voice at the doorway. It belonged to Lady Sybil Vimes, and Vimes found himself resenting the way his men deferred to her. He loved Lady Sybil to distraction, of course, but he couldn’t help noticing how, these days, his bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich was no longer, as it had been traditionally, bacon, tomato and lettuce but had become a lettuce, tomato and bacon sandwich. It was all about health, of course. It was a conspiracy. Why did they never find a vegetable that was bad for you, hey? And what was so wrong with onion gravy anyway? It had onions in it, didn’t it? They made you fart, didn’t they? That was good for you, wasn’t it? He was sure he had read that somewhere. Two weeks’ holiday with every meal overseen by his wife. It didn’t bear thinking about, but he did anyway. And then there was Young Sam, growing up like a weed and into everything. A holiday in the fresh air would do him good, his mother said. Vimes hadn’t argued. There was no point in arguing with Sybil, because even if you thought that you’d won, it would turn out, by some magic unavailable to husbands, that you had, in fact, been totally misinformed. At least he was allowed to leave the city wearing his armour. It was part of him, and just as battered as he was, except that in the case of the armour the dents could be hammered out. Vimes, with his son on his knee, stared out at the departing city as the coach hurried him towards a fortnight of bucolic slumber. He felt like a man banished. But, to look on the bright side, there was bound to be some horrible murder or dreadful theft in the city which for the very important purposes of morale, if nothing else, would require the presence of the head of the Watch. He could but hope. Sam Vimes had known ever since their marriage that his wife had a place out in the country. One of the reasons he knew this was because she had given it to him. In fact, she had transferred all the holdings of her family, said family consisting solely of her at that point, to him in the old-fashioned but endearing belief that a husband should be the one doing the owning.2 She had insisted. Periodically, according to the season, a cart had come from the country house all the way to their home in Scoone Avenue, Ankh-Morpork, loaded with fruits and vegetables, cheeses and meats; all the produce of an estate that he’d never seen. He wasn’t looking forward to seeing it now. One thing he knew about the country was that it squelched underfoot. Admittedly most of the streets of Ankh-Morpork squelched underfoot, but, well, that was the right kind of squelch and a squelch that he had squelched ever since he could walk and, inevitably, slip. The place was officially called Crundells, although it was always referred to as Ramkin Hall. Apparently it had a mile of trout stream and, Vimes seemed to recall from the deeds, a pub. Vimes knew how you could own a pub but he wondered how you could own a trout stream because, if that was your bit, it had already gurgled off downstream while you were watching it, yes? That meant somebody else was now fishing in your water, the bastard! And the bit in front of you now had recently belonged to the bloke upstream; that bloated plutocrat of a fat neighbour now probably considered you some kind of poacher, that other bastard! And the fish swam everywhere, didn’t they? How did you know which ones were yours? Perhaps they were branded – that sounded very countryside to Vimes. To be in the countryside you had to be permanently on the defensive; quite the opposite of the city. * Uncharacteristically for him, Lord Vetinari laughed out loud. He very nearly gloated at the downfall of his enemy and slammed his copy of the Ankh-Morpork Times, open at the crossword page, on to his desk. ‘Cucumiform, shaped like a cucumber or a variety of squash! I thumb my nose at you, madam!’ Drumknott, who was carefully arranging paperwork, smiled and said, ‘Another triumph, my lord?’ Vetinari’s battle with the chief crossword compiler of the Ankh-Morpork Times was well known. ‘I am sure she is losing her grip,’ said Vetinari, leaning back in his chair. ‘What is it that you have there, Drumknott?’ He pointed at a bulky brown envelope. ‘Commander Vimes’s badge, sir, as delivered to me by Captain Carrot.’ ‘Sealed?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Then it doesn’t have Vimes’s badge in it.’ ‘No, sir. A careful fingertip examination of the envelope suggests that it contains an empty tin of Double Thunder snuff. A conclusion confirmed by a casual sniff, my lord.’ A still ebullient Vetinari said, ‘But the captain must have realized this, Drumknott.’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Of course, that would be in the nature of the commander,’ said Vetinari, ‘and would we have him any other way? He has won a little battle and a man who can win little battles is well set up to win big ones.’ Unusually, Drumknott hesitated a little before saying, ‘Yes, sir. Apropos of that, it was Lady Sybil who suggested the trip to the countryside, was it not?’ Vetinari raised an eyebrow. ‘Why yes, of course, Drumknott. I can’t imagine who would propose otherwise. The brave commander is well known for his dedication to his work. Who else but his loving wife could possibly persuade him that a few weeks of jolly holiday in the countryside would be a good thing?’ ‘Who indeed, sir,’ said Drumknott, and left it at that, because there was no point in doing anything else. His master appeared to have sources of information unavailable even to Drumknott, however hard he tried, and only the heavens knew who all those were who scuttled in darkness up the long stairs. And thus life in the Oblong Office was a world of secrets and considerations and misdirections, where the nature of truth changed like the colours of the rainbow. He knew this because he played a not insignificant role in the spectrum. But to know what Lord Vetinari knew and exactly what Lord Vetinari thought would be a psychological impossibility, and a wise man would accept that and get on with his filing. Vetinari stood up and stared out of the window. ‘This is a city of beggars and thieves, Drumknott, is it not? I pride myself that we have some of the most skilled. In fact, if there were such a thing as an inter-city thieving contest, Ankh-Morpork would bring home the trophy and probably everyone’s wallets. Theft has a purpose, Drumknott, but one intrinsically feels that while there are things by nature unavailable to the common man, there are also things not to be allowed to the rich and powerful.’ Drumknott’s understanding of his master’s thought processes would appear to an outsider to be magical, but it was amazing what could be gleaned by watching what Lord Vetinari was reading, listening to apparently pointless observations and integrating those, as only Drumknott could integrate, into current problems and concerns. He said, ‘Is this now about the smuggling, sir?’ ‘Quite so, quite so. I have no problem with smuggling. It involves the qualities of enterprise, stealth and original thinking. Attributes to be encouraged in the common man. In truth, it doesn’t do that much harm and allows the man in the street a little frisson of enjoyment. Everyone should occasionally break the law in some small and delightful way, Drumknott. It’s good for the hygiene of the brain.’ Drumknott, whose cranial cleanness could never be in dispute, said, ‘Nevertheless, sir, taxes must be levied and paid. The city is growing. All of this must be paid for.’ ‘Indeed,’ said Vetinari. ‘I could have taxed all kinds of things, but I have decided to tax something that you could eminently do without. It’s hardly addictive, is it?’ ‘Some people tend to think so. There is a certain amount of grumbling, sir.’ Vetinari did not look up from his paperwork. ‘Drumknott,’ he said. ‘Life is addictive. If people complain overmuch, I think I will have to draw that fact to their attention.’ The Patrician smiled again and steepled his fingers. ‘In short, Drumknott, a certain amount of harmless banditry amongst the lower classes is to be smiled upon if not actively encouraged, for the health of the city, but what should we do when the highborn and wealthy take to crime? Indeed, if a poor man will spend a year in prison for stealing out of hunger, how high would the gallows need to be to hang the rich man who breaks the law out of greed?’ ‘I would like to reiterate, sir, that I buy all my own paperclips,’ said Drumknott urgently. ‘Of course, but in your case I am pleased to say that you have a brain so pristine that it sparkles.’ ‘I keep the receipts, sir,’ Drumknott insisted, ‘just in case you wish to see them.’ There was silence for a moment, then he continued. ‘Commander Vimes should be well on his way to the Hall by now, my lord. That might prove a fortunate circumstance.’ Vetinari’s face was blank. ‘Yes indeed, Drumknott, yes indeed.’ The Hall had been a full day’s journey, which in coaching terms really meant two, with a stay at an inn. Vimes spent the time listening for the sound of overtaking horsemen from the city bringing much to be desired news of dire catastrophe. Usually Ankh-Morpork could supply this on an almost hourly basis but now it was singularly failing to deliver its desperate son in his hour of vegetation. The other sun was setting on this particular son when the coach pulled up outside a pair of gates. After a second or two, an elderly man, an extremely elderly man, appeared from nowhere and made a great show of opening said gates, then stood to attention as the coach went through, beaming in the knowledge of a job well done. Once inside, the coach stopped. Sybil, who had been reading, nudged her husband without looking up from her book and said, ‘It’s customary to give Mister Coffin a penny. In the old days my grandfather kept a little charcoal brazier in the coach, you know, in theory to keep warm but mostly to heat up pennies to red heat before picking them up in some tongs and tossing them out for the gatekeeper to catch. Apparently everybody enjoyed it, or so my grandfather said, but we don’t do that any more.’ Vimes fumbled in his purse for some small change, opened the carriage door and stepped down, much to the shock of the aforesaid Mr Coffin, who backed away into the thick undergrowth, watching Vimes like a cornered animal. ‘Nice job, Mister Coffin, very good lifting of the latch there, excellent work.’ Vimes proffered the coin and Mr Coffin backed further away, his stance suggesting that he was going to bolt at any moment. Vimes flicked the coin in the air and the fearful man caught it, deftly spat on it and melted back into the scenery. Vimes got the impression that he resented the lack of hiss. ‘How long ago did your family stop throwing hot money at the servants?’ he said, settling back into his seat as the coach progressed. Sybil laid aside her book. ‘My father put a stop to it. My mother complained. So did the gatekeepers.’ ‘I should think so!’ ‘No, Sam, they complained when the custom was stopped.’ ‘But it’s demeaning!’ Sybil sighed. ‘Yes, I know, Sam, but it was also free money, you see. In my great-grandfather’s day, if things were busy, a man might make sixpence in a day. And since the old boy was almost permanently sozzled on rum and brandy he quite often threw out a dollar. One of the real old-fashioned solid-gold dollars, I mean. A man could live quite well for a year on one of those, especially out here.’ ‘Yes, but—’ Vimes began, but his wife silenced him with a smile. She had a special smile for these occasions; it was warm and friendly and carved out of rock. You had to stop discussing politics or you would run right into it, causing no damage to anything but yourself. Wisely, with a wisdom that had been well learned, Sam Vimes restricted himself to staring out of the window. With the gate far behind he kept looking, in the fading light, to see the big house that was apparently at the centre of all this, and couldn’t find it until they had rattled along an avenue of trees, past what some wretched poet would have had to call ‘verdant pastures’ dotted with almost certainly, Vimes considered, sheep, through manicured woodland, and then reached a bridge that would not have been out of place back in the city.3 The bridge spanned what Vimes first thought was an ornamental lake but turned out to be a very wide river; even as they trundled over it, in dignified splendour, Vimes saw a large boat travelling along it by some means unknown, but which, to judge from the smell as it went past, must have something to do with cattle. At this point Young Sam said, ‘Those ladies haven’t got any clothes on! Are they going to have a swim?’ Vimes nodded absently because the whole area of naked ladies was not something you wanted to discuss with a six-year-old boy. In any case, his attention was still on the boat; white water churned all around it and the seamen on the deck made what was possibly a nautical gesture to Lady Sybil or, quite possibly, one of the naked ladies. ‘That is a river, isn’t it?’ said Vimes. ‘It’s the Quire,’ said Lady Sybil. ‘It drains most of the Octarine grass country and comes out in Quirm. If I recall correctly, however, most people call it “Old Treachery”. It has moods, but I used to enjoy those little riverboats when I was a child. They really were rather jolly.’ The coach rumbled down the far end of the bridge and up a long drive to, yes, the stately home, presumably so called, Vimes thought, because it was about the size of the average state. There was a herd of deer on the lawn, and a big herd of people clustered around what was obviously the front door. They were shuffling into two lines, as though they were a wedding party. They were, in fact, some kind of guard of honour, and there must have been more than three hundred there, from gardeners through to footmen, all trying to smile and not succeeding very well. It reminded Vimes of a Watch parade. Two footmen collided while endeavouring to place a step by the coach, and Vimes totally spoiled the moment by getting out of the opposite door and swinging Lady Sybil down after him. In the middle of the throng of nervous people was a friendly face, and it belonged to Willikins, Vimes’s butler and general manservant from the city. Vimes had been adamant about that, at least. If he was going to the countryside, then he would have Willikins there. He pointed out to his wife that Willikins was definitely not a policeman, and so it was not the same as bringing your work home. And that was true. Willikins was definitely not a policeman, because most policemen don’t know how to glass up somebody with a broken bottle without hurting their hands or how to make weapons of limited but specific destruction out of common kitchen utensils. Willikins had a history that showed up when he had to carve the turkey. And now Young Sam, seeing his scarred but familiar smile, ran up through the row of hesitant employees to cuddle the butler at the knees. For his part, Willikins turned Young Sam upside down and spun him around before gently putting him back on the gravel, the whole process being a matter of huge entertainment to a boy of six. Vimes trusted Willikins. He didn’t trust many people. Too many years as a copper made you rather discriminating in that respect. He leaned towards his wife. ‘What do I do now?’ he whispered, because the ranks of worried half-smiles were unnerving him. ‘Whatever you like, dear,’ she said. ‘You’re the boss. You take Watch parade, don’t you?’ ‘Yes, but I know who everyone is and their rank and, well, everything! It’s never been like this in the city!’ ‘Yes, dear, that’s because in Ankh-Morpork everybody knows Commander Vimes.’ Well, how hard could it be? Vimes walked up to a man with a battered straw hat, a spade and, as Vimes neared, a state of subdued terror even worse than that of Sam Vimes himself. Vimes held out his hand. The man looked at it as if he had never seen a hand before. Vimes managed to say, ‘Hello, I’m Sam Vimes. Who are you?’ The man thus addressed looked around for help, support and guidance or escape, but there was none; the crowd was deathly silent. He said, ‘William Butler, your grace, if it’s all the same to you.’ ‘Pleased to meet you, William,’ said Vimes, and held out his hand again, which William almost leaned away from before offering Vimes a palm the texture of an ancient leather glove. Well, thought Vimes, this isn’t too bad, and he ventured into unknown territory with, ‘And what’s your job around here, William?’ ‘Gardener,’ William managed, and held up his spade between himself and Vimes, both as a protection and as exhibit ‘A’, proof positive of his bona fides. Since Vimes himself was equally at sea, he settled for testing the blade with his finger and mumbling, ‘Properly maintained, I see. Well done, Mister Butler.’ He jumped when there was a tap on his shoulder and his wife said, ‘Well done yourself, dear, but all you really needed to do is go up the steps and congratulate the butler and the housekeeper on the wonderful turnout of the staff. We’ll be here all day if you want to chat to everybody.’ And with that, Lady Sybil took her husband firmly by the hand and led him up the steps between the rows of owlish stares. ‘All right,’ he whispered, ‘I can see the footmen and the cooks and gardeners, but who are those blokes in the thick jackets and the bowler hats? Have we got the bailiffs in?’ ‘That is reasonably unlikely, dear. In fact, they are some of the gamekeepers.’ ‘The hats look wrong on them.’ ‘Do you think so? As a matter of fact they were designed by Lord Bowler to protect his gamekeepers from vicious attacks by poachers. Deceptively strong, I’m told, and much better than steel helmets because you don’t get the nasty ringing in your ears.’ Clearly unable to hide their displeasure that their new master had chosen to shake the hand of a gardener before addressing either of them, the butler and housekeeper, who shared the traditional girth and pinkness that Vimes had learned to expect on these occasions, were aware that their master had not come to them and, he noticed, were coming to him as fast as their little legs would carry them. Vimes knew about life below stairs, hell, yes, he did! Not so long ago a policeman summoned to a big house would be sent round to the back door to be instructed to drag away some weeping chambermaid or not-very-bright boot boy accused without evidence of stealing some ring or silver-handled brush that the lady of the house would probably find later, perhaps when she had finished the gin. That wasn’t supposed to be what coppers were for, although in reality of course it was what coppers were for. It was about privilege, and young Vimes had hardly worn in his first pair of policeman’s boots when his sergeant had explained what that meant. It meant private law. In those days an influential man could get away with quite a lot if he had the right accent, the right crest on his tie or the right chums, and a young policeman who objected might get away without a job and without a reference. It wasn’t like that now, not even close. But in those days young Vimes had seen butlers as double-traitors to both sides and so the large man in the black tailcoat got a glare that skewered him. The fact that he gave Vimes a little nod did not help matters. Vimes lived in a world where people saluted. ‘I am Silver, the butler, your grace,’ the man carefully intoned reprovingly. Vimes immediately grabbed him by the hand and shook it warmly. ‘Pleased to meet you, Mister Silver!’ The butler winced. ‘It’s Silver, sir, not Mister.’ ‘Sorry about that, Mister Silver. So what’s your first name?’ The butler’s face was an entertainment. ‘Silver, sir! Always Silver!’ ‘Well, Mister Silver,’ said Vimes, ‘it’s an item of faith with me that once you get past the trousers all men are the same.’ The butler’s face was wooden as he said, ‘That is as maybe, sir, but I am and always will be, commander, Silver. Good evening, your grace,’ the butler turned, ‘and good evening, Lady Sybil. It must be seven or eight years since anyone from the family came to stay. May we look forward to further visits? And might I please introduce to you my wife, Mrs Silver, the housekeeper, whom I think you have not met before?’ Vimes could not stop his mind translating the little speech as: I am annoyed that you ignored me to shake hands with the gardener … which, to be fair, was not deliberate. Vimes had shaken the gardener’s hand out of sheer, overpowering terror. The translation continued: and now I am worried that we might not be having such an easy life in the near future. ‘Hold on a minute,’ said Vimes, ‘my wife is a Grace as well, you know, that’s a bit more than a lady. Syb—Her grace made me look at the score chart.’ Lady Sybil knew her husband in the way people living next door to a volcano get to know the moods of their neighbour. The important thing is to avoid the bang. ‘Sam, I have been Lady Sybil to all the servants in both our houses ever since I was a girl, and so I regard Lady Sybil as my name, at least among people I have come to look on as friends. You know that!’ And, she added to herself, we all have our little quirks, Sam, even you. And with that scented admonition floating in the air, Lady Sybil shook the housekeeper’s hand, and then turned to her son. ‘Now it’s bed for you, Young Sam, straight after supper. And no arguing.’ Vimes looked around as the little party stepped into the entrance hall which was to all intents and purposes an armoury. It would always be an armoury in the eyes of any policeman, although undoubtedly, to the Ramkins who had put the swords, halberds, cutlasses, maces, pikes and shields on every wall, the assemblage was no more than a bit of historical furniture. In the middle of it all was the enormous Ramkin coat of arms. Vimes already knew what the motto said: ‘What We Have We Keep’. You could call it … a hint. Soon afterwards Lady Sybil was busily engaged in the huge laundry and ironing room with Purity the maid, whom Vimes had insisted she take on after the birth of Young Sam, and who, both he and his wife believed, had an understanding with Willikins, although exactly what it was they understood remained a speculation. The two women were engrossed in the feminine pastime of taking clothes out of some things, and putting them into other things. This could go on for a long time, and included the ceremony of holding some things up to the light and giving a sad little sigh. In the absence of anything else to do, Vimes headed back out to the magnificent flight of steps, where he lit a cigar. Sybil was adamant about no smoking in the house. A voice behind him said, ‘You don’t need to do that, sir. The Hall has a rather good smoking room, including a clockwork air extractor, which is very posh, sir, believe me, you don’t often see them.’ Vimes let Willikins lead the way. It was a pretty good smoking room, thought Vimes, although his first-hand experience of them was admittedly limited. The room included a large snooker table and, down below, a cellar with more alcohol than any reformed alcoholic should ever see. ‘We did tell them I don’t drink, didn’t we, Willikins?’ ‘Oh yes, sir. Silver said that generally the Hall finds it appropriate – I think his words were – to keep the cellar full in case of arrivals.’ ‘Well, it seems to me to be a shame to pass up the opportunity, Willikins, so be my guest and pour yourself a drink.’ Willikins perceptibly recoiled. ‘Oh no, sir, I couldn’t possibly do that, sir.’ ‘Why not, man?’ ‘It’s just not done, sir. I would be the laughing stock of the League of Gentlemen’s Gentlemen if I was so impertinent as to have a drink with my employer. It would be getting ideas above my station, sir.’ This offended Vimes to his shakily egalitarian core.4 He said, ‘I know your station, Willikins, and it’s about the same station as mine when the chips are down and the wounds have healed.’ ‘Look, sir,’ said Willikins, almost pleading. ‘Just occasionally we have to follow some rules. So on this occasion I won’t drink with you, it not being Hogswatch or the birth of an heir, which are accounted for under the rules, but instead I’ll follow the acceptable alternative, which is to wait until you’ve gone to bed and drink half the bottle.’ Well, thought Vimes, we all have our funny little ways, although some of Willikins’ would not be funny if he was angry with you in a dark alley; but he brightened as he watched Willikins rummage through a well-stocked cocktail cabinet, meticulously dropping items into a glass shaker.5 It should not be possible to achieve the effect of alcohol in a drink without including alcohol, but among the skills that Willikins had learned, or possibly stolen, over the years was the ability to mix out of common household ingredients a totally soft drink that nevertheless had very nearly everything you wanted in alcohol. Tabasco, cucumber, ginger and chilli were all in there somewhere and beyond that it was best not to ask too many questions. Drink gloriously in hand, Vimes leaned back and said, ‘Staff okay, Willikins?’ Willikins lowered his voice. ‘Oh, they’re skimming stuff off the top, sir, but nothing more than usual in my experience. Everyone sneaks something, it’s the perk of the job and the way of the world.’ Vimes smiled at Willikins’ almost theatrically wooden expression and said loudly for the hidden listener, ‘A conscientious man, then, is he, Silver? I’m very glad to hear it.’ ‘Seems like a steady one to me, sir,’ said the manservant, rolling his eyes towards heaven and pointing a finger to a small grille in the wall: the inlet to the fabled extractor, which no doubt needed a man behind the scenes to wind the clockwork, and would any butler worth his bulging stomach forgo an opportunity to keep tabs on what the new master was thinking? Would he hell. It was perks, wasn’t it? Of course people here would be on the take. You didn’t need evidence. It was human nature. He had constantly suggested to Sybil – he wouldn’t have dared insist – that the place be closed down and sold to somebody who really wanted to live in what he had heard was a creaking, freezing pile that could have housed a regiment. She would not hear of it. She had warm childhood memories of the place, she said, of climbing trees and swimming and fishing in the river, and picking flowers and helping the gardeners and similar jolly rural enterprises that were, to Vimes, as remote as the moon, given that his adolescent preoccupations had had everything to do with just staying alive. You could fish in the River Ankh, provided you took care not to catch anything. In fact it was amazing what you could catch by just letting one drop of the Ankh pass your lips. And as for picnicking, well, in Ankh-Morpork when you were a kid sometimes you nicked and sometimes you picked, mostly at scabs. It had been a long day and last night’s sleep in the inn had not been salubrious or restful, but before he got into the huge bed Vimes opened a window and stared out at the night. The wind was murmuring in the trees; Vimes mildly disapproved of trees, but Sybil liked them and that was that. Things that he didn’t care to know about rustled, whooped, gibbered and went inexplicably crazy in the darkness outside. He didn’t know what they were and hoped never to find out. What kind of noise was this for a man to go to sleep to? He joined his wife in the bed, thrashing around for some time before he found her, and settled down. She had instructed him to leave the window open to get some allegedly glorious fresh air, and Vimes lay there miserably, straining his ears for the reassuring noises of a drunk going home, or arguing with the sedan-chair owner about the vomit on the cushions, and the occasional street fight, domestic disturbance or even piercing scream, all punctuated at intervals by the chiming of the city clocks, no two of which, famously, ever agreed; and the more subtle sounds, like the rumble of the honey wagons as Harry King’s night-soil collectors went about the business of business. And best of all was the cry of the night watchman at the end of the street: Twelve o’clock and all is well! It wasn’t so long ago that any man trying this would have had his bell, helmet and quite probably his boots stolen before the echoes had died away. But not any more! No, indeedy! This was the modern Watch, Vimes’s Watch, and anyone who challenged the watchman on his rounds with malice aforethought would hear the whistle blow and very quickly learn that if anybody was going to be kicked around on the street, it wasn’t going to be a watchman. The duty watchmen always made a point of shouting the hour with theatrical clarity and amazing precision outside Number One Scoone Avenue, so that the commander would hear it. Now, Vimes stuck his head under an enormous pillow and tried not to hear the tremendous and disturbing lack of noise whose absence could wake a man up when he had learned to ignore a carefully timed sound every night for years. But at five o’clock in the morning Mother Nature pressed a button and the world went mad: every blessed bird and animal and, by the sound of it, alligator vied with all the others to make itself heard. The cacophony took some time to get through to Vimes. The giant bed at least had an almost inexhaustible supply of pillows. Vimes was a great fan of pillows when away from his own bed. Not for him one or even two sad little bags of feathers as an afterthought to the bed – no! He liked pillows to burrow into and turn into some kind of soft fortress, leaving one hole for the oxygen supply. The awful racket was dying down by the time he drifted up to the linen surface. Oh yes, he recalled, that was another bloody thing about the country. It started too damn early. The commander was, by custom, necessity and inclination, a night-time man, sometimes even an all-night man; alien to him was the concept of two seven o’clocks in one day. On the other hand, he could smell bacon, and a moment later two nervous young ladies entered the room carrying trays on complex metallic things which, unfolded, made it almost but not totally impossible to sit up and eat the breakfast they contained. Vimes blinked. Things were looking up! Usually Sybil considered it her wifely duty to see to it that her husband lived for ever, and was convinced that this happy state of affairs could be achieved by feeding him bowel-scouring nuts and grains and yoghurt, which to Vimes’s mind was a type of cheese that wasn’t trying hard enough. Then there was the sad adulteration of his mid-morning bacon, lettuce and tomato snack. It was amazing but true that in this matter the watchmen were prepared to obey the boss’s wife to the letter and, if the boss yelled and stamped, which was perfectly understandable, nay forgivable, when a man was forbidden his mid-morning lump of charred pig, would refer him to the instructions given to them by his wife, in the certain knowledge that all threats of sacking were hollow and if carried out would be immediately rescinded. Now Sybil appeared among the pillows and said, ‘You’re on holiday, dear.’ What you could eat on holiday also included two fried eggs, just as he liked them, and a sausage – but not, unfortunately, the fried slice, which even on holiday was apparently still a sin. The coffee, however, was thick, black and sweet. ‘You slept very well,’ said Sybil, as Vimes stared at the unexpected largesse. He said, ‘No, I didn’t, dear, not a wink, I assure you.’ ‘Sam, you were snoring all night. I heard you!’ Vimes’s grasp of successful husbandry prevented him from making any further comment except, ‘Really? Was I, dear? Oh, I am sorry.’ Sybil leafed through a small pile of pastel envelopes that had been inserted into her breakfast tray. ‘Well, the news has got around,’ she said. ‘The Duchess of Keepsake has invited us to a ball, Sir Henry and Lady Withering have invited us to a ball, and Lord and Lady Hangfinger have invited us to, yes, a ball!’ ‘Well,’ said Vimes, ‘that’s a lot of—’ ‘Don’t you dare, Sam!’ his wife warned and Vimes finished lamely, ‘… invitations? You know I don’t dance, dear, I just shuffle about and tread on your feet.’ ‘Well, it’s mainly for the young people, you see? People come for the therapeutic baths at Ham-on-Rye, just down the road. Really, it’s all about getting the daughters married to suitable gentlemen, and that means balls, almost continuous balls.’ ‘I can manage a waltz,’ said Vimes, ‘that’s just a matter of counting, but you know I can’t stand all those jumping-about ones like Strip the Widow and the Gay Gordon.’ ‘Don’t worry, Sam. Most of the older men find a place to sit and smoke or take snuff. The mothers do the work of finding the eligible bachelors for their daughters. I just hope that my friend Ariadne will find suitable husbands for her girls. She had sextuplets, very rare, you know. Of course, young Mavis is very devout, and there is invariably a young clergyman looking for a wife and, above all, a dowry. And Emily is petite, blonde, an excellent cook but rather conscious of her enormous bosom.’ Vimes stared at the ceiling. ‘I suspect that not only will she find a husband,’ he forecast, ‘a husband will find her. Call it a man’s intuition.’ ‘And then there’s Fleur,’ said Lady Sybil, not rising to the bait. ‘She makes quite nice little bonnets, so I understand. And, er, Amanda, I think. Apparently quite interested in frogs, although I fear I may have misheard her mother.’ She thought for a moment and added, ‘Oh, and then there’s Jane. Rather a strange girl, according to her mother, who doesn’t seem to know what to make of her.’ Vimes’s lack of interest in other people’s children was limitless, but he could count. ‘And the last one?’ ‘Oh, Hermione, she may be difficult as she has rather scandalized the family, at least in their opinion.’ ‘How?’ ‘She’s a lumberjack.’ Vimes thought for a moment and said, ‘Well, dear, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a man with a lot of wood must be in want of a wife who can handle a great big—’ Lady Sybil interrupted sharply: ‘Sam Vimes, I believe that you intend to make an indelicate remark?’ ‘I think you got there before me,’ said Vimes, grinning. ‘You generally do, dear, admit it.’ ‘You may be right, dear,’ she said, ‘but that is only to forestall you from saying it aloud. After all, you are the Duke of Ankh and widely regarded as Lord Vetinari’s right-hand man, and that means a certain amount of decorum would be advisable, don’t you think?’ To a bachelor this would have appeared to be gentle advice; to an experienced husband it was a command, all the more powerful because it was made delicately. So, when Sir Samuel Vimes and Commander Vimes and His Grace the Duke of Ankh6 walked out after breakfast, they were all on their best behaviour. As it turned out, other people weren’t. There was a maid sweeping in the corridor outside the bedroom who took one frantic look at Vimes as he strolled towards her and turned her back on him, and remained staring fixedly at the wall. She appeared to be trembling with fear, and Vimes had learned that in these circumstances the last thing any man should do is ask a question or, above all, offer to lend a helping hand. Screaming could result. She was probably just shy, he told himself. But it seemed that shyness was catching: there were maids carrying trays or dusting or sweeping as he walked down through the building, and every time he came near one she turned her back crisply and stood staring at the wall as if her life depended on it. By the time he reached a long gallery lined with his wife’s ancestors, Vimes had had enough, and when a young lady carrying a tea tray spun around like the dancer on the top of a musical box he said, ‘Excuse me, miss, am I as ugly as all that?’ Well, that was surely better than asking her why she was so rude, wasn’t it? So why in the name of any three gods did she start to run away, crockery rattling as she headed down the hall? Among the various Vimeses it was the Commander who took over; the Duke would be too forbidding and the Blackboard Monitor just wouldn’t do the trick. ‘Stop where you are! Put down your tray and turn round slowly!’ She skidded, she actually skidded and, turning with perfect grace while still clutching the tray, slowed gently to a stop, where she stood shaking with anxiety as Vimes caught up with her and said, ‘What’s your name, miss?’ She answered while keeping her face turned away. ‘Hodges, your grace, I’m very sorry, your grace.’ The crockery was still rattling. ‘Look,’ said Vimes, ‘I can’t think with all that rattling going on! Just put it down carefully, will you? Nothing bad is going to happen to you, but I’d like to see who I’m talking to, thank you very much.’ The face turned reluctantly towards him. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Miss, er, Hodges, what is the matter? You don’t have to run away from me, surely?’ ‘Please, sir,’ and with that the girl headed for the nearest green baize door and vanished through it. It was at this point that Vimes realized there was another maid only a little way behind him, practically camouflaged by her dark uniform and facing the wall and, indeed, trembling. She was surely a witness to all that had happened, so he walked carefully towards her and said, ‘I don’t want you to say anything. Just nod or shake your head when I ask you a question. Do you understand?’ There was a barely perceptible nod. ‘Good, we make progress! Will you get into trouble if you say anything to me?’ Another microscopic nod. ‘And is it likely that you’ll get into trouble because I’ve talked to you?’ The maid, rather inventively, gave a shrug. ‘And the other girl?’ Still with her back to him, the unseen girl stuck out her left hand with the thumb emphatically turned down. ‘Thank you,’ said Vimes to the invisible informant. ‘You’ve been very helpful.’ He walked thoughtfully back upstairs, through an avenue of turned backs, and was thankful to encounter Willikins in the laundry on the way. The batman did not turn his back on Vimes, which was a relief.7 He was folding shirts with the care and attention he might otherwise have marshalled for the neat cutting off of a defeated opponent’s ear. When the cuffs of his own spotlessly clean jacket slid up a little you could just see part of the tattoos on his arms but not, fortunately, spell out anything they said. Vimes said, ‘Willikins, what are the whirling housemaids all about?’ Willikins smiled. ‘Old custom, sir. A reason to it, of course – there often is if it sounds bloody stupid. No offence, commander, but knowing you I’d suggest that you let twirling housemaids spin until you have got the lie of the land, as it were. Besides, her ladyship and Young Sam are in the nursery.’ A few minutes later Vimes, after a certain amount of trial and error, walked into what was, in a musty kind of way, a paradise. Vimes had never had much in the way of relatives. Not many people are anxious to let it be known that their distant ancestor was a regicide. All that, of course, was history and it amazed the new Duke of Ankh that the history books now lauded the memory of Old Stoneface, the watchman who executed the evil bastard on the throne and had suddenly struck a blow for freedom and law. History is what you make it, he had learned, and Lord Vetinari was a man with access to and the keys of a whole range of persuasive mechanisms left over, as luck would have it, from the regicide days and currently still well oiled in the cellar. History is, indeed, what you make it and Lord Vetinari could make it … anything he wanted. And thus the dreadful killer of kings was miraculously gone – never been there, you must be mistaken, never heard of him, no such person – and replaced with the heroic, if tragically misunderstood, Slayer of Tyrants Stoneface Vimes, the famous ancestor of the highly respected His Grace the Duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes. History was a wonderful thing, it moved like the sea and Vimes was taken at the flood. Vimes’s family had lived a generation at a time. There had never been heirlooms, family jewels, embroidered samplers stitched by a long-dead aunt, no interesting old urns found in granny’s attic which you hoped the bright young man who knew all about antiques would tell you was worth a thousand dollars so that you could burst with smugness. And there was absolutely no money, only a certain amount of unpaid debt. But here in the playroom, neatly stacked, were generations of toys and games, some of them a little worn from long usage, particularly the rocking horse, which was practically life-size and had a real leather saddle with trappings made from (Vimes discovered to his incredulity by rubbing them with a finger) genuine silver. There was also a fort, big enough for a kid to stand in and defend, and a variety of child-sized siege weapons to assault it, possibly with the help of boxes and boxes of lead soldiers, all painted in the correct regimental colours and in fine detail. For two pins Vimes would have got down on hands and knees and played with them there and then. There were model yachts, and a teddy bear so big that for one horrible moment Vimes wondered whether it was a real one, stuffed; there were catapults and boomerangs and gliders … and in the middle of all this, Young Sam stood paralysed, almost in tears with the knowledge that no matter how hard he tried he just couldn’t play with everything all at once. It was a far cry from the Vimes childhood, and playing poo sticks with real poo. While the apple of their eyes tentatively straddled the rocking horse, which had frighteningly big teeth, Vimes told his wife about the objectionable spinning housemaids. She simply shrugged, and said, ‘It’s what they do, dear. It’s what they’re used to.’ ‘How can you say that? It’s so demeaning!’ Lady Sybil had developed a totally calm and understanding tone of voice when dealing with her husband. ‘That’s because, technically speaking, they are demeaned. They spend a lot of time serving people who are a lot more important than they are. And you are right at the top of the list, dear.’ ‘But I don’t think I’m more important than them!’ Vimes snapped. ‘I think I know what you’re saying, and it does you credit, it really does,’ said Sybil, ‘but what you actually said was nonsense. You are a Duke, a Commander of the City Watch and …’ She paused. ‘A Blackboard Monitor,’ said Vimes automatically. ‘Yes, Sam, the highest honour that the King of the Dwarfs can bestow.’ Sybil’s eyes glittered. ‘Blackboard Monitor Vimes; one who can erase the writings, somebody who can rub out what is there. That’s you, Sam, and if you were killed the chanceries of the world would be in uproar and, Sam, regrettably they would not be perturbed at the death of a housemaid.’ She held up a hand because he’d opened his mouth and added, ‘I know you would be, Sam, but wonderful girls though I’m sure they are, I fear that if they were to die a family and, perhaps, a young man would be inconsolable, and the rest of the world would never know. And you, Sam, know that this is true. However, if you were ever murdered, dread the thought and indeed I do every time you go out on duty, not only Ankh-Morpork but the world would hear about it instantly. Wars might start and I suspect that Vetinari’s position might become a little dangerous. You are more important than girls in service. You are more important than anybody else in the Watch. You are mistaking value for worth, I think.’ She gave his worried face a brief kiss. ‘Whatever you think you once were, Sam Vimes, you’ve risen, and you deserved to rise. You know the cream rises to the top!’ ‘So does the scum,’ said Vimes automatically, although he immediately regretted it. ‘How dare you say that, Sam Vimes! You may have been a diamond in the rough, but you’ve polished yourself up! And however you cut it, husband of mine, although you are no longer a man of the people, it certainly seems to me that you are a man for the people, and I think the people are far better off for that, d’you hear?’ Young Sam looked up adoringly at his father, while the rocking horse rocked into a gallop. Between son and spouse, Vimes never had a chance. He looked so crestfallen that Lady Sybil, as wives do, tried a little consolation. ‘After all, Sam, you expect your men to get on with their duties, don’t you? Likewise the housekeeper expects the girls to get on with theirs.’ ‘That’s quite different, really it is. Coppers watch people, and I’ve never told them that they can’t pass the time of day with somebody. After all, that somebody might provide useful information.’ Vimes knew that this was technically true, but anybody who was seen giving anything more useful than the time of day to a policeman in most streets of the city would soon find a straw would be necessary to help him eat his meals. But the analogy was right, anyway, he thought, or would have thought, had he been a man to whom the word analogy came easily. Just because you were a member of somebody’s staff didn’t mean you had to act like some kind of clockwork toy … ‘Shall I tell you the reason for the spinning housemaids, Sam?’ said Sybil, as Young Sam cuddled the huge teddy bear, who frightened him by growling. ‘It was instituted in my grandfather’s time at the behest of my grandmother. In those days we entertained all the time with scores of guests on some weekends. Of course, a number of these guests would be young men from very good families in the city, quite well educated and full of, shall I say, vim and vigour.’ Sybil glanced down at Young Sam and was relieved to see he was now lining up some small soldiers. ‘The maids, on the other hand, in the very nature of things are not well educated and I’m ashamed to say might have been slightly too compliant in the face of people whom they had come to think of as their betters.’ She was starting to blush, and she pointed down at Young Sam, who she was glad to see was still paying no attention. ‘I’m sure you get the picture, Sam? Absolutely sure, and my grandmother, whom you would almost certainly have hated, had decent instincts, and therefore decreed that all the housemaids should not only refrain from talking to the male guests, but should not make eye contact with them either, on pain of dismissal. You might say she was being cruel to be kind, but not all that cruel, come to think of it. In the fullness of time, the housemaids would leave the Hall with good references and not be embarrassed about wearing a white dress on their wedding day.’ ‘But I’m happily married,’ Vimes protested. ‘And I can’t imagine Willikins risking the wrath of Purity, either.’ ‘Yes, dear, and I’ll have a word with Mrs Silver. But this is the country, Sam. We do things a little more slowly here. Now, why don’t you take Young Sam out to see the river? Take Willikins with you – he knows his way around.’ * Young Sam did not need very much in the way of entertainment. In fact he made his own entertainment, manufacturing it in large quantities out of observations of the landscape, the stories that had lulled him to sleep at bedtime last night, or some butterfly thought that had just sped across his mind, and, increasingly, he’d talk about Mister Whistle, who lived in a house in a tree but was sometimes a dragon. He also had a big boot and didn’t like Wednesdays because they smell funny and he had a rainbrella. Young Sam was thus totally unfazed by the countryside, and ran ahead of Vimes and Willikins, pointing out trees, sheep, flowers, birds, dragonflies, funny-shaped clouds and a human skull. He seemed quite impressed by the find and rushed to show it to his daddy, who stared at it as if he had seen, well, a human skull. It had clearly been a human skull for quite a long time, however, and appeared to have been looked after, to the point of being polished. As Vimes turned it over in his hands, searching forensically for any sign of foul play, there was a flip-flop sound approaching through the shrubbery, accompanied by a vocal number on the subject of what a person unknown would do to people who stole skulls off him. When the bushes parted said person unknown turned out to be a man of uncertain age and teeth, a grubby brown robe and a beard longer than any Vimes had seen before, and Vimes was a man who had often been inside Unseen University, where wizards considered that wisdom was embodied in the growing of a beard that would keep the knees warm. This one tailed comet-like behind its owner. It caught up with him when his hugely sandalled feet slithered to a stop, but its momentum meant that it began to pile up on his head. Possibly it carried wisdom with it, because its owner was bright enough to stop dead when he saw the look in Vimes’s eye. There was silence, apart from the chuckling of Young Sam as the endless beard, with a life of its own, settled on the man like the snows of winter. Willikins cleared his throat, and said, ‘I think this is the hermit, commander.’ ‘What’s a hermit doing here? I thought they lived up poles in deserts!’ Vimes glared at the raggedy man, who clearly felt that an explanation was called for and was going to deliver it whether it was called for or not. ‘Yes, sir, I know, sir, that is a popular delusion, and personally I’ve never given it much credence, on account of the difficulty of dealing with what I might call the bathroom necessities and similar. I mean, that sort of thing might be all right in foreign parts, where there’s sunshine and lots of sand, but it wouldn’t do for me, sir, no indeed.’ The apparition held out a grubby hand that was mostly fingernails and went on, proudly, ‘Stump, your grace, although I’m not often stumped, ha-ha, my little joke.’ ‘Yes, it is,’ said Vimes, keeping his eyes blank. ‘Indeed it is, sir,’ said Stump. ‘The only one I’ve got. I’ve been following the noble profession of herming here for nigh on fifty-seven years, practising piety, sobriety, celibacy and the pursuit of true wisdom in the tradition of my father and grandfather and great-grandfather before me. That’s my great-grandfather you are holding there, sir,’ he added cheerfully. ‘Lovely sheen, hasn’t he?’ Vimes managed not to drop the skull he was holding. Stump went on, ‘I expect your little boy wandered into my grotto, sir, no offence meant, sir, but the village lads round here are a bit frolicsome sometimes and I had to get granddad out of the tree only two weeks ago.’ It was Willikins who found the mental space to say, ‘You keep your great-grandfather’s skull in a cave?’ ‘Oh yes, gentlemen, and my father’s. Family tradition, see? And my grandfather’s. Unbroken tradition of herming for nearly three hundred years, dispensing pious thinking and the knowledge that all paths lead but to the grave, and other sombre considerations, to all those who seek us out – who are precious few these days, I might add. I hope my son will be able to step into my sandals when he’s old enough. His mother says that he’s turning out a very solemn young man, so I live in hopes that one day he might be giving me a right good polishin’ up. There’s plenty of room on the skull shelf back in the grotto, I’m pleased to say.’ ‘Your son?’ said Vimes. ‘You mentioned celibacy …’ ‘Very attentive of you, your grace. We get a week’s holiday every year. A man cannot live by snails and herbs of the riverbank alone …’ Vimes delicately indicated that they had ground to cover, and left the hermit carefully carrying the family relic back to his grotto, wherever that was. When they seemed to be safely out of earshot he said, waving his hands in the air, ‘Why? I mean … why?’ ‘Oh, quite a few of the really old ancestral homes had a hermit on the strength, sir. It was considered romantic to have a grotto with a hermit in it.’ ‘He was a bit whiffy on the nose,’ said Vimes. ‘Not allowed to bathe, I believe, sir, and you should know, sir, that he gets an allowance consisting of two pounds of potatoes, three pints of small beer or cider, three loaves of bread and one pound of pork dripping per week. And presumably all the snails and herbs of the riverbank he can force down. I looked at the accounts, sir. Not a bad diet for an ornamental garden feature.’ ‘Not too bad if you throw in some fruit and the occasional laxative, I suppose,’ said Vimes. ‘So Sybil’s ancestors used to come along and talk to the hermit whenever they were faced with a philosophical conundrum, yes?’ Willikins looked puzzled. ‘Good heavens, no, sir, I can’t imagine that any of them would ever dream of doing that. They never had any truck with philosophical conundra.8 They were aristocrats, you see? Aristocrats don’t notice philosophical conundra. They just ignore them. Philosophy includes contemplating the possibility that you might be wrong, sir, and a real aristocrat knows that he is always right. It’s not vanity, you understand, it’s built-in absolute certainty. They may sometimes be as mad as a hatful of spoons, but they are always definitely and certainly mad.’ Vimes stared at him in admiration. ‘How the hell do you know all this, Willikins?’ ‘Watched them, sir. In the good old days when her ladyship’s granddad was alive he made certain that the whole staff of Scoone Avenue came down here with the family in the summer. As you know, I’m not much of a scholar and, truth to tell, neither are you, but when you grow up on the street you learn fast because if you don’t learn fast you’re dead.’ They were now walking across an ornamental bridge, over what was probably the trout stream and, Vimes assumed, a tributary of Old Treachery, a name whose origin he had yet to comprehend. Two men and one little boy, walking over a bridge that might be carrying crowds, and carts and horses. The world seemed unbalanced. ‘You see, sir,’ said Willikins, ‘being definite is what gave them all this money and land. Sometimes lost it for them as well, of course. One of Lady Sybil’s great-uncles once lost a villa and two thousand acres of prime farmland by being definite in believing that a cloakroom ticket could beat three aces. He was killed in the duel that followed, but at least he was definitely dead.’ ‘It’s snobbishness and I don’t like it,’ Vimes said. Willikins rubbed the side of his nose. ‘Well, commander, it ain’t snobbishness. You don’t get much of that from the real McCoy, in my experience. The certain ones, I mean … they don’t worry about what the neighbours think or walking around in old clothes. They’re confident, see? When Lady Sybil was younger the family would come down here for the sheep-shearing, and her father would muck in with everybody else, with his sleeves rolled up and everything, and he’d see to it that there was a round of beer for all the lads afterwards, and he’d drink with them, flagon for flagon. Of course, he was a brandy man mostly, so a bit of beer wouldn’t have him on the floor. He never worried about who he was. He was a decent old boy, her father – and her granddad, too. Certain, you see, never worried.’ They walked along an avenue of chestnut trees for a while and then Vimes said, morosely, ‘Are you saying that I don’t know who I am?’ Willikins looked up into the trees and replied, thoughtfully, ‘It looks as though there’ll be a lot of conkers this year, commander, and if you don’t mind me suggesting it, you might think of bringing this young lad down here when they start falling. I was the dead-rat conkers champion for years when I was a kid, until I found out that the real things grew on trees and didn’t squish so easily. As for your question,’ he went on, ‘I think Sam Vimes is at his best when he’s confident that he’s Sam Vimes. Good grief, and they are fruiting early this year!’ The avenue of chestnut trees ended at this point and before them lay an apple orchard. ‘Not the best of fruit, as apples go,’ said Willikins as Vimes and Young Sam crossed over to it, raising the dust on the chalky road. The comment seemed inconsequential to Vimes, but Willikins appeared to consider the orchard very important. ‘The little boy will want to see this,’ Willikins said enthusiastically. ‘Saw it myself when I was the boot boy. Totally changed the way I thought about the world. The third earl, “Mad” Jack Ramkin, had a brother called Woolsthorpe, probably for his sins. He was something of a scholar and would have been sent to the university to become a wizard were it not for the fact that his brother let it be known that any male sibling of his who took up a profession that involved wearing a dress would be disinherited with a cleaver. ‘Nevertheless, young Woolsthorpe persevered in his studies of natural philosophy in the way a gentleman should, by digging into any suspicious-looking burial mounds he could find in the neighbourhood, filling up his lizard press with as many rare species as he could collect, and drying samples of any flowers he could find before they became extinct. The story runs that, on one warm summer day, he dozed off under an apple tree and was awakened when an apple fell on his head. A lesser man, as his biographer put it, would have seen nothing untoward about this, but Woolsthorpe surmised that, since apples and practically everything else always fell down, then the world would eventually become dangerously unbalanced … unless there was another agency involved that natural philosophy had yet to discover. He lost no time in dragging one of the footmen to the orchard and ordering him, on pain of dismissal, to lie under the tree until an apple hit him on the head! The possibility of this happening was increased by another footman who had been told by Woolsthorpe to shake the tree vigorously until the required apple fell. Woolsthorpe was ready to observe this from a distance. ‘Who can imagine his joy when the inevitable apple fell and a second apple was seen rising from the tree and disappearing at speed into the vaults of heaven, proving the hypothesis that what goes up must come down, provided that what goes down must come up, thus safeguarding the equilibrium of the universe. Regrettably, this only works with apples and, amazingly, only the apples on this one tree, Malus equilibria! I hear someone has worked out that the apples at the top of the tree fill with gas and fly up when the tree is disturbed so that it can set its seeds some way off. Wonderful thing, nature, shame the fruit tastes like dog’s business,’ Willikins added as Young Sam spat some out. ‘To tell you the truth, commander, I wouldn’t give you tuppence for a lot of the upper classes I’ve met, especially in the city, but some of them in these old country houses changed the world for the better. Like Turnip Ramkin, who revolutionized agriculture …’ ‘I think I’ve heard of him,’ said Vimes. ‘Wasn’t he something to do with planting root crops? Wasn’t that how he got his nickname?’ ‘Very nearly right, sir,’ said Willikins. ‘In fact, he invented the seed drill, which meant more reliable crops and a great saving in seed corn. He only looked like a turnip. People can be so cruel sometimes, sir. There was also his brother, “Rubber Ramkin”, who devised not only rubber boots but also rubberized fabric, even before the dwarfs did. Very interested indeed in rubber, so I heard, but it takes all sorts to make a world and it would be a funny old place if we were all the same, and especially if we were all like him. Dry feet and dry shoulders, sir, what every farmworker prays for! I did a spell cutting cabbages one winter, sir, weather as cold as charity and rain coming down so fast it had to queue up to hit the ground. I blessed his name then, so I did, even if it was true what they said about the young ladies, who I heard actually enjoyed the experience …’ ‘This is all very well,’ said Vimes, ‘but it doesn’t make up for all the stupid, arrogant—’ This time it was Willikins who interrupted his master. ‘And then there was the flying machine, of course. Her ladyship’s late brother put a lot of work into the project, but it never got off the ground. Flying without a broomstick or a magic spell was his goal, but regrettably he fell victim to the outbreak of crisms, poor lad. There’s a model of it in the nursery, as a matter of fact. It runs on rubber bands.’ ‘I expect there was plenty of material around the place, unless Rubber Ramkin tidied up after himself,’ said Vimes. The tour continued, across meadows of what Vimes decided to call cows and around fields of standing corn. They navigated their way around a ha-ha, kept their distance from the ho-ho and completely ignored the he-he, then climbed a gentle path up a hill on which was planted a grove of beech trees and from which you could see practically everywhere, and certainly to the end of the universe, but that probably involved looking straight up with no beech trees in the way. It was even possible to make out the tall cloud of smoke and fumes that rose from the city of Ankh-Morpork. ‘This is Hangman’s Hill,’ said Willikins, as Vimes got his breath back. ‘And you might not want to go any further,’ he said as they neared the summit, ‘unless, that is, you want to explain to your young lad what a gibbet is.’ Vimes looked questioningly at his servant. ‘Really?’ ‘Well, as I say, this is Hangman’s Hill. Why do you think they named it that, sir? “Black Jack” Ramkin was regrettably mistaken when he made an enormous drunken wager with one of his equally drunk drinking pals that he could see the smoke of the city from his estate. He was told by a surveyor, who had tested the hypothesis, that the hill was thirty feet too short. Pausing only to attempt to bribe the surveyor and when unsuccessful to subsequently horsewhip the same, he rallied all the working men from this estate and all the others round here and set them to raise the hill by the aforesaid thirty feet, a most ambitious project. It cost a fortune, of course, but every family in the district probably got warm winter clothes and new boots out of it. It made him very popular, and of course he won his bet.’ Vimes sighed. ‘Somehow I think I know the answer to this, but I’m going to ask anyway: how much was the bet?’ ‘Two gallons of brandy,’ said Willikins triumphantly, ‘which he drank in one go while standing on this very spot, to the cheers of the assembled workforce, and then, according to legend, rolled all the way down to the bottom, to more cheers.’ ‘Even when I was a boozer I don’t think I could have taken two gallons of brandy,’ said Vimes. ‘That’s twelve bottles!’ ‘Well, towards the end I expect a lot of it went down his trousers, one way or the other. There were plenty like him, even so …’ ‘All down his trousers,’ Young Sam piped up, and dissolved into that curious hoarse laughter of a six-year-old who thinks he has heard something naughty. And by the sound of it the workmen who had cheered the old drunk had thought the same way. Cheering a man drinking a year’s wages in one go? What was the point? Willikins must have read his thoughts. ‘The country isn’t as subtle as the city, commander. They like big and straightforward things here, and Black Jack was as big and as straight as you could hope for. That’s why they liked him, because they knew where they stood, even if he was about to fall down. I bet they boasted about him all over the Shires. I can just imagine it. Our drunken old lord can outdrink your drunken old lord any day of the week, and they would be proud of it. I’m sure you thought you were doing the right thing when you shook hands with the gardener, but you puzzled people. They don’t know what to make of you. Are you a man or a master? Are you a nob or one of them? Because, commander, from where they sit no man can be both. It would be against nature. And the countryside doesn’t like puzzles, either.’ ‘Big puzzled trousers!’ said Young Sam and fell on the grass, overwhelmed with humour. ‘I don’t know what to make of me either,’ said Vimes, picking up his son and following Willikins down the slope. ‘But Sybil does. She’s got me marked down for balls, dances, dinners, and, oh yes, soirées,’ he finished, in the tones of a man genetically programmed to distrust any word with an acute accent in it. ‘I mean, that sort of thing in the city I’ve come to terms with. If I reckon that it’s going to be too bloody dreadful I make certain I get called out in an emergency halfway through – at least I used to, before Sybil twigged. It’s a terrible thing when a man’s employees take their orders from his wife, you know?’ ‘Yes, commander. She has given the kitchen staff orders that no bacon sandwiches are to be prepared without her express permission.’ Vimes winced. ‘You brought the little cookery kit, didn’t you?’ ‘Unfortunately, her ladyship knows about our little cookery kit, commander. She has forbidden the kitchen to give me bacon unless the order comes directly from her.’ ‘Honestly, she’s as bad as Vetinari! How does she find out all this stuff?’ ‘As a matter of fact, commander, I don’t think she does, at least as an actual fact. She just knows you. Perhaps you should think of it as amiable suspicion. We should be getting along, commander. I’m told there is chicken salad for lunch.’ ‘Do I like chicken salad?’ ‘Yes, commander, her ladyship tells me that you do.’ Vimes gave in. ‘Then I do.’ Back in Scoone Avenue, Vimes and Sybil generally took only one meal a day together, in the kitchen, which was always pleasantly snug by then. They sat facing one another at the table, which was long enough to carry Vimes’s huge collection of sauce bottles, mustard pots, pickles and, of course, chutneys, Vimes being of the popular persuasion that no jar of pickles is ever truly empty if you rattle the spoon around inside it long enough. Things were different at the Hall. For one thing there was far too much food. Vimes had not been born yesterday, or even the day before, and refrained from commenting. Willikins served Vimes and Lady Sybil. Strictly speaking it wasn’t his job while they were away from home, but strictly speaking most gentlemen’s gentlemen didn’t carry a set of brass knuckles in their well-cut jacket either. ‘And what did you boys do this morning?’ said Sybil cheerfully, as the plates were emptied. ‘We saw the stinky bone man!’ said Young Sam. ‘He was like all beard, but stinky! And we found the smelly apple tree which is like poo!’ Lady Sybil’s placid expression did not change. ‘And then you came down the roly-poly hill, didn’t you? And what about the ha-ha, the ho-ho and the he-he?’ ‘Yes, but there’s all cow poo! I treaded in it!’ Young Sam waited for an adult response, and his mother said, ‘Well, you’ve got your new country boots, haven’t you? Treading in cow poo is what they’re for.’ Sam Vimes watched his son’s face glow with impossible pleasure as his mother went on. ‘Your grandfather always told me that if I saw a big pile of muck in a field I should kick it around a bit so as to spread it evenly, because that way all the grass will grow properly.’ She smiled at Vimes’s expression and said, ‘Well, it’s true, dear. A lot of farming is about manure.’ ‘Just so long as he understands that he doesn’t start kicking up the gutters when he gets back to the city,’ Vimes said. ‘Some of that stuff will kick back.’ ‘He should learn about the countryside. He should know where food comes from and how we get it. This is important, Sam!’ ‘Of course, dear.’ Lady Sybil gave her husband a look only a wife can give. ‘That was your put-upon-but-dutiful voice, Sam.’ ‘Yes, but I don’t see—’ Sybil interrupted him. ‘Young Sam will own all this one day and I’d like him to have some idea about it all, just as I’d like you to relax and enjoy your holiday. I’m taking Young Sam over to the Home Farm later on, to see the cows being milked, and to collect some eggs.’ She stood up. ‘But first I’m going to take him down to the crypt, to see his ancestors.’ She noted her husband’s look of panic and added, quickly, ‘It’s all right, Sam, they aren’t walking around; they are, in fact, in very expensive boxes. Why don’t you come too?’ Sam Vimes was no stranger to death, and vice versa. It was the suicides that got him down. They were mostly hangings, because you would have to be extremely suicidal to jump into the River Ankh, not least because you would bounce several times before you broke through the crust. And they all had to be investigated, just in case it was a murder in disguise,9 and whereas Mr Trooper, the current city hangman, could drop someone into eternity so quickly and smoothly that they probably didn’t notice, too often Vimes had seen what amateurs managed to do. The Ramkin family crypt reminded him of the city morgue after hours. It was crowded; some coffins were stacked edgewise, as though they were on shelves in the mortuary, but, it was to be hoped, they didn’t slide out. Vimes watched warily as his wife carefully took their son from plaque to plaque reading out the names and explaining a little about every occupant, and he felt the cold, bottomless depths of time around him, somehow breathing from the walls. How could it feel for Young Sam to know the names of all those grandfathers and grandmothers down the centuries? Vimes had never known his father. His mum told him that the man had been run over by a cart, but Vimes suspected that if this was true at all, then it was probably a brewer’s cart, which had ‘run him over’ a bit at a time for years. Oh, of course there was Old Stoneface, the regicide, now rehabilitated and with his own statue in the city which was never graffitied because Vimes had made it clear what would happen to the perpetrator. But Old Stoneface was just a point in time, a kind of true myth. There wasn’t a line between him and Sam Vimes, only an aching gulf. Still, Young Sam would be a duke one day, and that was a thought worth hanging on to. He wouldn’t grow up worrying about what he was, because he would know, and the influence of his mother might just outweigh the enormous drag factor of having Samuel Vimes as a father. Young Sam would be able to shake up the world the right way. You need confidence to do that, and having a bunch of (apparently) loony but interesting ancestors could only impress the man in the street, and Vimes knew a lot of streets, and a lot of men. Willikins hadn’t entirely told the truth. Even city people liked a character, especially a black-hearted one or one interesting enough to materially add to the endless crazy circus show which was the street life of Ankh-Morpork, and while having a drunkard for a father was a social faux pas, having a great-great-great-grandfather who could drink so much brandy that his urine must surely have been inflammable, and then, according to Willikins, proceed to go home to a meal of turbot followed by roast goose (with appropriate wines) and then play a hand of saddle pork10 with his cronies until dawn, winning back his earlier losses … Well, people loved that sort of thing, and that sort of person, who kicked the world in the arse and shouted at it. That was an ancestor to be proud of, surely? ‘I think … I’d like to go for a walk by myself,’ said Vimes. ‘You know, have a look round, poke about a bit, get the hang of this countryside business at my own pace.’ ‘Willikins ought to accompany you, dear,’ said Lady Sybil, ‘just in case.’ ‘In case of what, my dear? I walk around the streets of the city every night, don’t I? I don’t think I need a chaperone for a stroll in the country, do I? I’m trying to get into the spirit of things. I’ll look at daffodils to see if they fill me with joy, or whatever it is they’re supposed to do, and keep an eye open for the very rare grebe warbler and watch the moles take flight. I’ve been reading the nature notes in the paper for weeks. I think I know how to do this by myself, dear. The commander of the Watch is not afraid to spot the spotted flycatcher!’ Lady Sybil had learned from experience when it was wise not to argue, and contented herself with saying, ‘Don’t upset anybody, at least, will you, dear?’ After ten minutes of walking, Vimes was lost. Not physically lost but metaphorically, spiritually and peripatetically lost. The fragrances of the hedgerows were somehow without body compared with the robust stinks of the city, and he had not the faintest idea what was rustling in the undergrowth. He recognized heifers and bullocks, because he often walked through the slaughterhouse district, but the ones out here weren’t bewildered by fear and stared at him carefully as he walked past as if they were calmly taking notes. Yes – that was it! The world was back to front! He was a copper, he had always been a copper, and he would die a copper. You never stopped being a copper, on the whole, and as a copper he walked around the city more or less invisible, except to those people who make it their business to spot coppers, and whose livelihood depends upon their spotting coppers before coppers spot them. Mostly you were part of the scenery, until the scream, the tinkle of broken glass and the sound of felonious footsteps brought you into focus. But here everything was watching him. Things darted away behind a hedge, flew up in panic or just rustled suspiciously in the undergrowth. He was the stranger, the interloper, not wanted here. He turned another corner, and there was the village. He had seen the chimneys some way off, but the lanes and footpaths crisscrossed one another in a tangle, repeated in the overflowing hedgerows and trees, that made tunnels of shade – which were welcome – and played merry hells with his sense of direction, which was not. He had lost all his bearings and was hot and bothered by the time he came out into a long dusty lane with thatched cottages on either side and halfway down a large building which had ‘pub’ written all over it, particularly by the three old men who were sitting on the bench outside it eyeing the approaching Vimes hopefully in case he was the kind of man who would buy another man a pint. They wore clothes that looked as if they had been nailed on. Then, when he got closer, one said something to the other two and they stood up as he passed, index fingers touching their hat brims. One of them said, ‘Garternoon, yer grace,’ a phrase which Vimes interpreted after a little thought. There was also a slight and meaningful tip of the empty tankards to indicate that they were, in fact, empty tankards and therefore an anomaly in need of rectification. Vimes knew what was expected of him. There wasn’t a pub in Ankh-Morpork which didn’t have the equivalent three old men sunning themselves outside and ever ready to talk to strangers about the good old days, i.e. when the tankards they were nursing still had beer in them. And the form was that you filled them up with cheap ale and got a ‘Well, thank you, kind sir’, and quite possibly little bubbles of information about who had been seen where doing what and with whom and when, all grist to the copper’s mill. But the expressions on these three changed when another of them whispered hurriedly to his cronies. They pushed themselves back on the wooden seat as if trying to make themselves inconspicuous while still clasping the empty flagons because, well, you never knew. A sign over the door proclaimed that this was the Goblin’s Head. Opposite the pub was a large open space laid, as they say, to grass. A few sheep grazed on it and towards the far end was a large stack of wood like wicker hurdles, the purpose of which Vimes could not guess. He was, however, familiar with the term ‘village green’, although he had never seen one. Ankh-Morpork wasn’t very big on greens. The pub smelled of stale beer. This helped as a bulwark against temptation, although Vimes had been clean for years, and could face the occasional sherry at official events, because he hated the taste of it anyway. The smell of antique beer had the same effect. By the pitiful light of the tiny windows Vimes made out an elderly man industriously polishing a tankard. The man looked up at Vimes and gave him a nod, the basic nod which is understood everywhere as meaning ‘I see you, you see me, it’s up to you what happens next’, although some publicans can put an inflection on a nod which also manages to convey the information that there might just be a two-foot length of lead piping under the counter should the party of the second part want to start anything, as it were. Vimes said, ‘Do you serve anything that isn’t alcoholic?’ The barman very carefully hung the tankard on a hook over the bar and then looked directly at Vimes and said, without rancour, ‘Well, you see, sir, this is what we call a pub. People gets stuffy about it if I leaves out the alcohol.’ He drummed his fingers on the bar for a moment and went on, uncertainly, ‘My wife makes root beer, if that takes your fancy?’ ‘What kind of root?’ ‘Beetroot, as it happens, sir. It’s good for keeping you regular.’ ‘Well, I’ve always thought of myself as a regular kind of person,’ said Vimes. ‘Give me a pint – no, make that half a pint, thanks.’ There was another nod and the man disappeared briefly behind the scenes and came back with a large glass overflowing with red foam. ‘There you go,’ he said, putting it carefully on the bar. ‘We don’t put it in pewter because it does something to the metal. This one is on the house, sir. My name is Jiminy, landlord of the Goblin’s Head. I dare say I know yours. My daughter is a maid at the big house, and I treat every man alike, the reason being that the publican is a friend to any man with money in his pockets and also, if the whim takes him, perhaps even to those who temporarily find themselves stony broke, which does not, at the moment, include them three herberts outside. The publican sees all men after a couple of pints, and sees no reason to discriminate.’ Jiminy winked at Vimes, who held out his hand and said, ‘Then I’ll happily shake the hand of a republican!’ Vimes was familiar with the ridiculous litany. Every man who served behind a bar thought of himself as one of the world’s great thinkers and it was wise to treat him as such. After the handshake he added, ‘This juice is pretty good. Rather tangy.’ ‘Yes, sir, my wife puts chilli peppers in it, and celery seed to make a man think that he’s drinking something with bones in.’ Vimes leaned on the counter, inexplicably at peace. The wall over the bar was hung with the heads of dead animals, particularly those possessed of antlers and fangs, but it came as a shock to spot, in the grubby light, a goblin’s head. I’m on holiday, he thought, and that probably happened a long time ago, ancient history, and he left it at that. Jiminy busied himself with the dozens of little tasks that a barman can always find to do, while occasionally glancing at his single customer. Vimes thought for a moment and said, ‘Can you take a pint to those gentlemen outside, Mister Jiminy, and put a brandy in each one so that a man knows he’s drinking something?’ ‘That would be Long Tom, Short Tom and Tom Tom,’ said Jiminy, reaching for some mugs. ‘Decent lads – triplets, as it happens. They earn their keep but, as you might say, they shared one brain out between all three of them and it wasn’t that good a brain to start with. Very good when it comes to scaring crows, though.’ ‘And were all named Tom?’ said Vimes. ‘That’s right. It’s by way of being a family name, see, their dad being called Tom also. Maybe it saves confusion, them being easily confused. They’re getting on a bit now, of course, but if you give them a job they can do then they’ll do it well, and won’t stop until you tell them to. No beggars in the countryside, see? There’s always little jobs that need doing. By your leave, sir, I’ll give them short measure on the brandy. They don’t need too much confusing, if you get my drift.’ The publican put the mugs on a tray and disappeared out into the bright sunshine. Vimes moved swiftly behind the bar and back again without stopping. A few seconds later he was leaning nonchalantly on the counter as three faces peeped in through the open door. With a look of some apprehension three thumbs-up salutes were aimed at Vimes and the faces were hauled back out of sight again, presumably in case he exploded or developed horns. Jiminy came back with the empty tray, and gave Vimes a cheerful smile. ‘Well, you’ve made some friends there, sir, but don’t let me keep you. I’m sure you’ve got a lot to do.’ A copper, thought Vimes. I recognize a police truncheon when I see one. That’s the copper’s dream, isn’t it – to leave the streets behind and run a little pub somewhere, and because you’re a copper and because being a copper never leaves you, you will know what is going on. I know you and you don’t know that I do. And from where I’m sitting I call that a result. You wait, Mister Jiminy. I know where you live. Now Vimes could hear slow and heavy footsteps in the distance, getting closer. He saw the local men as they arrived in their working clothes and carrying what most people would call agricultural implements, but which Vimes mentally noted as offensive weapons. The troupe stopped outside the door and now he heard whispering. The three Toms were imparting today’s news, apparently, and it seemed to be received with either incredulity or scorn. Some sort of conclusion was being reached, not happily. And then the men trooped in, and Vimes’s mind clocked them for ready reference. Exhibit one was an elderly man with a long white beard and, good heavens, a smock. Did they really still wear those? Whatever his name the others probably called him ‘Granddad’. He shyly touched his forefinger to his forehead in salute and headed for the bar, job safely done. He had been carrying a big hook, not a nice weapon. Exhibit two carried a shovel, which could be an axe or a club if a man knew what he was doing. He was smocked up too, didn’t catch Vimes’s eye, and his salute had been more like a begrudged wave. Exhibit three, who was holding a toolbox (terrific weapon if swung accurately), scurried past with speed and barely glanced in Vimes’s direction. He looked young and rather weedy, but nevertheless you can get a good momentum on one of those boxes. Then there was another elderly man, wearing a blacksmith’s apron, but the wrong build, so Vimes marked him down as a farrier. Yes, that would be it, short and wiry, would easily be able to get under a horse. The man presented a reasonable attempt at a forelock salute, and Vimes was unable to make out any dangerous bulges concealed by the apron. He couldn’t help this algebra; it was what you did when you did the job. Even if you didn’t expect trouble, you, well, expected trouble. And then the room froze. There had been some desultory conversation in the vicinity of Jiminy but it stopped now as the real blacksmith came in. Bugger. All Vimes’s warning bells rang at once, and they weren’t tinkly bells. They clanged. After a brief glower round the room the man headed for the bar on the course that would take him past, or probably over, or even through Sam Vimes. As it was, Vimes carefully pulled his mug out of harm’s way so that the man’s undisguised attempt to ‘accidentally’ spill it failed. ‘Mister Jiminy,’ Vimes called out, ‘a round of drinks for these gentlemen, all right?’ This caused a certain amount of cheerfulness among the other newcomers, but the smith slammed a hand like a shovel down on the wood so that glasses jumped. ‘I don’t care to drink with them as grinds the faces of the poor!’ Vimes held his gaze, and said, ‘Sorry, I didn’t bring my grinder with me today.’ It was silly, because a couple of sniggers from hopeful drinkers at the bar merely stoked whatever fires the blacksmith had neglected to leave at work, and made him angry. ‘Who are you to think you’re a better man than me?’ Vimes shrugged, and said, ‘I don’t know if I am a better man than you.’ But he was thinking: you look to me like a big man in a small community, and you think you’re tough because you’re strong and metal doesn’t sneak up behind you and try to kick you in the goolies. Good grief, you don’t even know how to stand right! Even Corporal Nobbs could get you down and be kicking you industriously in the fork before you knew what was happening. Like any man fearing that something expensive could get broken, Jiminy came bustling across the floor and grabbed the smith by one arm, saying, ‘Come on, Jethro, let’s have no trouble. His grace is just having a drink the like of which any man is entitled to …’ This appeared to work, although aggression smouldered on Jethro’s face and indeed in the surrounding air. By the look on the faces of the other men, this was a performance they were familiar with. It was a poor copper who couldn’t read a pub crowd, and Vimes could probably write a history, with footnotes. Every community has its firebrand, or madman, or self-taught politician. Usually they are tolerated because they add to the gaiety of nations, as it were, and people say things like ‘It’s just his way’, and the air clears and life goes on. But Jethro, now sitting in the far corner of the bar nursing his pint like a lion huddled over his gazelle, well, Jethro, in the Vimes lexicon of risk, was a man likely to explode. Of course the world sometimes needed blowing up, just so long as it didn’t happen where Vimes was drinking. Vimes was becoming aware that the pub was filling up, mostly with other sons of the soil, but also with people who, whether they were gentlemen or not, would expect to be called so. They wore colourful caps and white trousers and spoke continuously. There was also further activity outside; horses and carriages were filling the lane. Hammering was going on somewhere and Jiminy’s wife was now manning or, more correctly, womaning the bar while her husband ran back and forth with his tray. Jethro remained in his corner like a man biding his time, occasionally glaring daggers, and probably fists as well with an option on boots, if Vimes so much as looked at him. Vimes decided to take a look out of the grubby pub window. Regrettably, the pub was that most terrifying of things, picturesque, which meant that the window consisted of small round panes fixed in place with lead. They were for letting the light in, not for looking out of, since they bent light so erratically that it nearly broke. One pane showed what was probably a sheep but looked like a white whale, until it moved, when it became a mushroom. A man walked past with no head until he reached another pane and then had one enormous eyeball. Young Sam would have loved it, but his father decided to give eventual blindness a miss and stepped out into the sunshine. Ah, he thought, some kind of game. Oh well. Vimes wasn’t keen on games because they led to crowds, and crowds led to work for coppers. But here in fact he wasn’t a copper, was he? It was a strange feeling, so he left the pub and became an innocent bystander. He couldn’t remember when he had been one before. It felt … vulnerable. He strolled over to the nearest man, who was hammering some stakes into the ground, and asked, ‘What’s going on here, then?’ Realizing that he had spoken in copper rather than in ordinary citizen, he added quickly, ‘If you don’t mind me asking?’ The man straightened up. He was one of the ones with the colourful caps. ‘Haven’t you ever seen a game of crockett, sir? It’s the game of games!’ Mr Civilian Vimes did his best to look like a man eager for more delicious information. Judging by his informant’s enthusiastic grin, he was about to learn the rules of crockett, whether he wanted to or not. Well, he thought, I did ask … ‘At first sight, sir, crockett might seem like just another ball game wherein two sides strive against one another by endeavouring to propel the ball by hand or bat or other device into the opponents’ goal of some sort. Crockett, however, was invented during a game of croquet at St Onan’s Theological College in Ham-on-Rye, when the novice priest Jackson Fieldfair, now the Bishop of Quirm, took his mallet in both hands, and instead of giving the ball a gentle tap …’ After that Vimes gave up, not only because the rules of the game were incomprehensible in their own right, but also because the extremely enthusiastic young man allowed his enthusiasm to overtake any consideration of the need to explain things in some sensible order, which meant that the flood of information was continually punctuated by apologetic comments on the lines of ‘I’m sorry, I should have explained earlier that a second cone is not allowed more than once per exchange, and in normal play there is only one tump, unless, of course, you’re talking about royal crockett …’ Vimes died … The sun dropped out of the sky, giant lizards took over the world, the stars exploded and went out and all hope vanished with a gurgle into the sink-trap of oblivion, and gas filled the firmament and combusted and behold there was a new heaven, one careful owner, and a new disc, and lo, and possibly verily, life crawled out of the sea, or possibly didn’t because it had been made by the gods – that was really up to the bystander – and lizards turned into less scaly lizards, or possibly did not, and lizards turned into birds, and worms turned into butterflies, and a species of apple turned into bananas, and possibly a kind of monkey fell out of a tree and realized that life was better when you didn’t have to spend your time hanging on to something, and, in only a few million years, evolved trousers and ornamental stripy hats and lastly the game of crockett and there, magically reincarnated, was Vimes, a little dizzy, standing on the village green looking into the smiling countenance of an enthusiast. He managed to say, ‘Well, that’s amazing, thank you so very much. I look forward to enjoying the game.’ At which point, he thought, a brisk walk home might be in order, only to be foiled by a regrettably familiar voice behind him saying, ‘You, I say you, yes, you! Aren’t you Vimes?’ It was Lord Rust, usually of Ankh-Morpork, and a fierce old warhorse, without whose unique grasp of strategy and tactics several wars would not have been so bloodily won. Now he was in a wheelchair, a newfangled variety pushed by a man whose life was, knowing his lordship, quite probably unbearable. But hatred tends not to have a long half-life and in recent years Vimes had regarded the man as now no more than a titled idiot, rendered helpless by age, yet still possessed of an annoying horsy voice that, suitably harnessed, might be used to saw down trees. Lord Rust was not a problem any more. There were surely only a few more years to go before he would rust in peace. And somewhere in his knobbly heart Vimes still retained a slight admiration for the cantankerous old butcher, with his evergreen self-esteem and absolute readiness not to change his mind about anything at all. The old boy had reacted to the fact that Vimes, the hated policeman, was now a duke, and therefore a lot more nobby than he was, by simply assuming that this could not possibly be true, and therefore totally ignoring it. Lord Rust, in Vimes’s book, was a dangerous buffoon but, and here was the difficult bit, an incredibly, if suicidally, brave one. This would have been absolutely ticketyboo were it not for the suicides of those poor fools who followed him into battle. Witnesses had said that it was uncanny: Rust would gallop into the jaws of death at the head of his men and was never seen to flinch, yet arrows and morningstars always missed him while invariably hitting the men right behind him. Bystanders – or rather people peering at the battle from behind comfortingly large rocks – had testified to this. Perhaps he was capable of ignoring, too, the arrows meant for him. But age could not be so easily upstaged, and the old man, while no less arrogant, had a sunken look. Rust, most unusually, smiled at Vimes and said, ‘First time I’ve ever seen you down here, Vimes. Is Sybil going back to her roots, what?’ ‘She wants Young Sam to get some mud on his boots, Rust.’ ‘Well done her, what! It’ll do the boy good and make a man of him, what!’ Vimes never understood where the explosive whats came from. After all, he thought, what’s the point of just barking out ‘What!’ for absolutely no discernible reason? And as for ‘What what!’, well, what was that all about? Why what? Whats seemed to be tent-pegs hammered into the conversation, but what the hells for, what? ‘So not down here on any official business, then, what?’ Vimes’s mind spun so quickly that Rust should have heard the wheels go round. It analysed the tone of voice, the look of the man, that slight, ever so slight but nevertheless perceptible hint of a hope that the answer would be ‘no’, and presented him with a suggestion that it might not be a bad idea to drop a tiny kitten among the pigeons. He laughed. ‘Well, Rust, Sybil has been banging on about coming down here since Young Sam was born, and this year she put her foot down and I suppose an order from his wife must be considered official, when!’ Vimes saw the man who pushed the enormous wheelchair trying to conceal a smile, especially when Rust responded with a baffled ‘What?’ Vimes decided not to go with ‘Where’ and instead said, in an offhand way, ‘Well, you know how it is, Lord Rust. A policeman will find a crime anywhere if he decides to look hard enough.’ Lord Rust’s smile remained, but it had congealed slightly as he said, ‘I should listen to the advice of your good lady, Vimes. I don’t think you’ll find anything worth your mettle down here!’ There was no ‘what’ to follow, and the lack of it was somehow an emphasis. It was often a good idea, Vimes had always found, to give the silly bits of the brain something to do, so that they did not interfere with the important ones which had a proper job to fulfil. So he watched his first game of crockett for a full half-hour before an internal alarm told him that shortly he should be back at the Hall in time to read to Young Sam – something that with any luck did not have poo mentioned on every page – and tuck him into bed before dinner. His prompt arrival got a nod of approval from Sybil, who gingerly handed him a new book to read to Young Sam. Vimes looked at the cover. The title was The World of Poo. When his wife was out of eyeshot he carefully leafed through it. Well, okay, you had to accept that the world had moved on and these days fairy stories were probably not going to be about twinkly little things with wings. As he turned page after page, it dawned on him that whoever had written this book, they certainly knew what would make kids like Young Sam laugh until they were nearly sick. The bit about sailing down the river almost made him smile. But interspersed with the scatology was actually quite interesting stuff about septic tanks and dunnakin divers and gongfermors and how dog muck helped make the very best leather, and other things that you never thought you would need to know, but once heard somehow lodged in your mind. Apparently it was by the author of Wee and if Young Sam had one vote for the best book ever written, then it would go to Wee. His enthusiasm was perhaps fanned all the more because a rare imp of mischief in Vimes led him to do all the necessary straining noises. Later, over dinner, Sybil quizzed him about his afternoon. She was particularly interested when he mentioned stopping by to watch the crockett. ‘Oh, they still play it? That’s wonderful! How did it go?’ Vimes put down his knife and fork and stared thoughtfully at the ceiling for a moment or two, then said, ‘Well, I was talking to Lord Rust for some of the time, and I had to leave, of course, because of Young Sam, but fortune favoured the priests, when their striker managed to tump a couple of the farmers by a crafty use of the hamper. There were several appeals to the hat man about this, because he broke his mallet in so doing, and in my opinion the hat man’s decision was entirely correct, especially since the farmers had played a hawk manoeuvre.’ He took a deep breath. ‘When play recommenced, the farmers still had not found their stride but got a breathing space when a sheep wandered on to the pitch and the priests, assuming that this would stop play, relaxed too soon, and Higgins J. fired a magnificent handsaw under the offending ruminant …’ Sybil finally stopped him when she realized that the meal was growing very cold, and said, ‘Sam! How did you become an expert on the noble game of crockett?’ Vimes picked up his knife and fork. ‘Please don’t ask me again,’ he sighed. In his head meanwhile a little voice said, Lord Rust tells me there is nothing here for me. Oh dear, I’d better find out what it is, what? He cleared his throat and said, ‘Sybil, did you actually look at that book I’m reading to Young Sam?’ ‘Yes, dear. Felicity Beedle is the most famous children’s writer in the world. She’s been at it for years. She wrote Melvin and the Enormous Boil, Geoffrey and the Magic Pillow Case, The Little Duckling Who Thought He Was an Elephant …’ ‘Did she write one about an elephant who thought he was a duckling?’ ‘No, Sam, because that would be silly. Oh, she also wrote Daphne and the Nose Pickers, and Gaston’s Enormous Problem won for her the Gladys H. J. Ferguson award – the fifth time she’s been given it. She gets children interested in reading, you see?’ ‘Yes,’ said Vimes, ‘but they’re reading about poo and brain-dead ducklings!’ ‘Sam, that’s part of the commonality of mankind, so don’t be so prudish. Young Sam’s a country boy now, and I’m very proud of him, and he likes books. That’s the whole point! Miss Beedle also finances scholarships for the Quirm College for Young Ladies. She must be quite wealthy now, but I hear she’s taken Apple Tree Cottage – you can practically see it from here, it’s on the side of the hill – and I think it right, if you don’t mind, of course, that we invite her here to the Hall.’ ‘Of course,’ said Vimes, though his don’tmindedness was entirely due to the way his wife’s question had been phrased and the subtle resonances that Miss Beedle’s attendance was a done deal. Vimes slept a lot better that night, partly because he could feel that somewhere in the universe near by there was a clue waiting for him to pull. That made his fingers itch already. In the morning, as he had promised, he took Young Sam horse-riding. Vimes could ride, but hated doing so. Nevertheless, falling off the back of a pony on to one’s head was a skill that every young man should learn if only so that he resolved never to do it again. The rest of the day, however, did not work out well. Vimes, suspicions filling his mind, was metaphorically and only just short of literally dragged by Sybil to see her friend Ariadne, the lady blessed with the six daughters. In actual fact there were only five visible in the chintzy drawing room when Sybil and he were ushered in. He was feted as ‘the Dear Brave Commander Vimes’ – he hated that shit, but under Sybil’s benign but careful gaze he was wise enough not to say so, at least not in those precise words. And so he grinned and bore it while they fluttered around him like large moths, and he waved away yet more teacakes, and cups of tea that would have been welcome were it not that they looked and tasted like what proper tea turns into shortly after you drink it. As far as Sam Vimes was concerned, he liked tea, but tea was not tea if, even before drinking, you could see the bottom of the cup. Still worse than the stuff he was being offered was the conversation, which inclined towards bonnets, a subject on which his ignorance was not just treasured but venerated. And besides, his breeches were chafing: wretched things, but Sybil had insisted, saying that he looked very smart in them, just like a country gentleman. Vimes had to suppose the country gentleman had different arrangements in the groinal department. There was, besides himself and Lady Sybil, a young Omnian curate, wisely dressed in a voluminous black robe, which presumably presented no groinal problems. Vimes had no idea why the young man was there, but presumably the young ladies needed somebody to fill with weak tea, suspect scones and mindless twittering conversation when someone like Vimes wasn’t there. And it seemed that when the subject of bonnets lost its fascination the only other topics were legacies and the prospects for forthcoming balls. And so, inevitably, given his restlessness in female company, a growing disaffection for urine-coloured tea, and small talk that would barely be visible under a microscope, Vimes said, ‘Excuse me asking, ladies, but what is it that you actually, I mean actually do … For a living, I mean?’ This question elicited five genuinely blank looks. Vimes couldn’t tell the daughters one from the other, except the one called Emily, who certainly lodged in the mind and possibly also in doorways, and who now said, in the tones of one slightly out of her depth, ‘I do beg your pardon, commander, but I don’t think we understand what you just vouchsafed?’ ‘I meant, well, how do you make a living? Are any of you in employment? How do you make your daily crust? What work do you do?’ Vimes could pick up nothing from Sybil, because he couldn’t see her face, but the girls’ mother was staring at him with gleeful fascination. Oh well, if he was going to get it in the neck he might as well get it all the way down. ‘I mean, ladies,’ he said, ‘how do you make your way in the world? How do you earn your keep? Apart from bonnets, do you have any skills – like cookery, for example?’ Another daughter, quite possibly Mavis, but Vimes was guessing, cleared her throat and said, ‘Fortunately, commander, we have servants for that sort of thing. We’re gentlewomen, you see? It would be quite, quite unthinkable for us to go into trade or commerce. The scandal! It’s just not done.’ By now there appeared to be a competition to see who could terminally baffle who, or possibly whom, first. But Vimes managed to say, ‘Don’t you have a sister in the timber business?’ It was amazing, he thought, that neither their mother nor Sybil was as yet adding anything to the conversation. And now another sister (possibly Amanda?) looked about to speak. Why in the world did they all wear those silly diaphanous dresses? You couldn’t hope to do a day’s work in something as skimpy as that. Amanda (possibly) said carefully, ‘I’m afraid our sister is a bit of an embarrassment to the family, your grace.’ ‘What, for getting a job! Why?’ Another one of the girls, and Vimes was in fact getting really confused at this point, said, ‘Well, commander, she has no hope of making a good marriage now … er, not to a gentleman.’ This was becoming a tangle and so Vimes said, ‘Tell me, ladies, what is a gentleman?’ After some whispered conversation a sacrificial daughter said, very nervously, ‘We understand the gentleman is a man who does not have to sully his hands by working.’ Adamantium is said to be the strongest of all metals, but it would have bent around the patience of Sam Vimes as he said, with every syllable carefully smelted, ‘Oh, a layabout. And how do you go about snagging such a gentleman, pray?’ Now the girls looked as if they were indeed praying. One of them managed to say, ‘You see, commander, our dear late father was unlucky in the money market, and I’m afraid that until the death of Great-aunt Marigold, of whom we have expectations, there is, alas, no money for a dowry for any of us.’ The heavens held their breath while the concept of a dowry was explained to Sam Vimes, and ice formed on the windows as he sat in strangulated thought. At last, he cleared his throat and said, ‘Ladies, the solution to your problem, in my opinion, would be to get off your quite attractive backsides, go out there in the world and make your own way! A dowry? You mean some man has to be paid to marry you? What century do you think you’re living in? Is it just me, or is it the most bloody stupid thing you could ever imagine?’ He glanced at the beautiful Emily and thought, good grief, men would line up on the lawn to fight one another, my dear. How come no one’s ever told you? Gentility is all very well, but practicality has its uses. Get out in the world and let the world see you and it might find a new word in its vocabulary such as, perhaps, ‘Wow!’ Aloud he continued, ‘Honestly, there are lots of jobs out there for a young lady with her wits about her. The Lady Sybil Free Hospital is always on the lookout for sharp girls to train as nurses, for example. Good pay, very fetching uniforms, and a fine chance of snagging a skilled young physician who is on the way to the top, especially if you get your boot behind him. Plus, of course, as a nurse you inherit an amazingly large amount of amusing and embarrassing stories about things which people put … Perhaps this is not the time, but anyway, there is also the possibility of becoming matron if you reach the specified weight. A very responsible job, of use to the community at large and giving you at the end of a long day the satisfaction that you have done some good in the world.’ Vimes looked around at the pink and white faces contemplating a jump into the unknown and continued. ‘Of course, if you really want to stick with bonnets, then Sybil and I own a decent property in Old Cobblers, in the big city, which is standing empty. Used to be a tough area, but the upwardly mobile trolls and vampires are moving in right now, and the heavy dollar and the dark dollar are not to be sneezed at, especially because they’ll pay top dollar for what they want. Quite a sophisticated area, too. People actually put tables and chairs out on the pavement and they don’t always all get stolen. We could let you have it rent free for three months to see how you do and then maybe you’d have to learn the concept of rent, if only for your self-respect. Trust me, ladies, self-respect is what you get when you don’t have to spend your life waiting for some rich old lady to pop her clogs. Any takers?’ Vimes took as an optimistic sign the fact that the girls were staring at one another with what could only be called a wild surmise at the prospect of not being totally useless ornaments, and so he added, ‘And whatever you do, stop reading bloody silly romantic novels!’ There was, however, a pocket – or possibly purse – of resistance to the revolution. One girl was standing by the curate as if she owned him. She looked at Vimes defiantly and said, ‘Please don’t think me forward, commander, but I’d rather like to marry Jeremy and help him in his ministry.’ ‘Very good, very good,’ said Vimes, ‘and you love him and he loves you? Speak up, the pair of you.’ They both nodded, red with embarrassment, with one eye on the girl’s mother, whose wide grin suggested that would be a definite plus. ‘Well then, I suggest you get yourselves sorted out, and you, young man, would be advised to find a better-paying job. Can’t help you with that, but there are loads of religions these days, and if I were you I’d impress some bishop somewhere with my common sense, which is what a clergyman needs above everything else … Well, nearly everything else, and remember there’s room at the top … Although in the case of religion, not right at the top, eh?’ Vimes thought for a moment and added, ‘But maybe the best idea, ladies, might be to take a look around a bit until you find some lad that’s got the makings of a successful man, noble or not, and if he suits then get behind him, support him as necessary, help him up when he’s down, and generally be around when he looks for you, and make certain that he’ll be around when you look for him. Well, if both of you put your backs into it then it might turn out to be something good. It has certainly worked once before, hasn’t it, Sybil?’ Sybil burst out laughing and the overwhelmed girls nodded dutifully as if they actually understood, but Vimes was gratified to feel a gentle little prod from Lady Sybil that offered hope that he was not going to pay too high a price for speaking his mind to these precious flowers. He looked around as if seeking to tidy things up. ‘Well, that seems to be that, yes?’ ‘Excuse me, commander?’ It took Vimes some time to see where the voice had come from; this daughter hadn’t spoken a word all afternoon, but had occasionally scribbled in a notebook. Now she gazed at him with a look somewhat brighter than those of her sisters. ‘Can I help you, miss? And perhaps you’ll tell me your name?’ ‘Jane, commander. I am endeavouring to be a writer. May I ask if you have any views on that as an acceptable career for a young lady?’ Jane, thought Vimes, the strange one. And she was. She was just as demure as the other sisters, but somehow as he looked at her he got the impression that she was seeing right through him, thoughts and all. Vimes leaned back in his chair, a little defensively, and said, ‘Well, it can’t be a difficult job, given that all the words have probably been invented already, so there’s a saving in time right there, considering that you simply have to put them together in a different order.’ That was about the limit of his expertise in the literary arts, but he added, ‘What sort of thing were you thinking of writing, Jane?’ The girl looked embarrassed. ‘Well, commander, at the moment I’m working on what might be considered a novel about the complexities of personal relationships, with all their hopes and dreams and misunderstandings.’ She coughed nervously, as if apologizing. Vimes pursed his lips. ‘Yes. Sounds basically like a good idea, miss, but I can’t really help you on that – though if I was you, and this is me talking off the top of my head, I’d be putting in a lot of fighting, and dead bodies falling out of wardrobes … and maybe a war, perhaps, as a bit of background?’ Jane nodded uneasily. ‘A remarkable suggestion, commander, with much to recommend it, but possibly the relationships would be somewhat neglected?’ Vimes considered this input and said, ‘Well, you might be right.’ Then, out of nowhere, possibly some deep hole, a thought struck him, just as it had many times before, sometimes in nightmares. ‘I wonder if any author has thought about the relationship between the hunter and the hunted, the policeman and the mysterious killer, the lawman who must think like a criminal sometimes in order to do his job, and may be unpleasantly surprised at how good he is at such thinking, perhaps. Just an idea, you understand,’ he said lamely, and wondered where the hell it had come from. Maybe the strange Jane had pulled it out of him and even, perhaps, could resolve it. ‘Would anybody like more tea?’ said Ariadne brightly. Lady Sybil was very quiet as their coach drove away, and so Vimes decided to bite the bullet now and get it over with. She was looking thoughtful, which was always worrying. ‘Am I in trouble, Sybil?’ His wife looked at him blankly for a moment and then said, ‘You mean for telling that bunch of precious blooms to stop yearning for a life and to get out there and make one? Good heavens, no! You did everything I would have expected of you, Sam. You always do. I told Ariadne that you wouldn’t let her down. She doesn’t have much of an income, and if you hadn’t given them the righteous word I think she would have eventually driven them out with a shovel. No, Sam, I just wonder what goes on in your head, that’s all. I mean, I’m sure some people think being a policeman is just a job, but you don’t, do you? I’m very proud of you, Sam, and wouldn’t have you any other way, but I do worry sometimes. Anyway, well done! I’ll look forward with interest to see what young Jane writes.’ Next day, Vimes took his little boy fishing, hampered somewhat by a total lack of knowledge of the art. Young Sam didn’t seem to mind. He had located a shrimping net among the largesse of the nursery and messed about in the shallows, chasing crayfish and sometimes going almost rigid in order to stare at things. Once he got over the shock, Vimes noticed that Young Sam did this quite happily, and on one occasion pointed out to his doting father things in the stream ‘like insects in the water with a coat made of little pebbles’, which Vimes had to investigate, to find that this was entirely true. This amazed Sam Vimes even more than it did his son, who in fact, he told his father as they strolled back for lunch, had been really looking to see if fish did a poo, a question that had never exercised Sam Vimes in his life, but appeared to be of great importance to his son. So much so that on the way home he had to be restrained from doubling back to the stream to see if they got out to do it because otherwise, er, yuck! Sybil had promised Young Sam another trip around Home Farm in the afternoon, which left Sam Vimes to his own devices, or such devices as the policeman could find in the quiet lanes. Vimes was streetwise; he didn’t know what lanewise might entail, but possibly it would deal with things like throttling stoats and knowing whether whatever it was that had just said ‘moo’ was a cow or a bull without having to bend down to find out. And as he walked around his rolling acres on his aching feet, wishing that there were cobblestones under him, once again he could feel the tingle; the tingle that raises little hairs on a copper’s neck when his well-honed senses tell him that there was something happening around here that shouldn’t be, and was crying out to have something done about it. But there was another copper here, wasn’t there, a real old flatfoot let out to grass, but being a copper stained you to the bone; you never got rid of it. He smiled. Time perhaps to go for a convivial drink with Mr Jiminy. The Goblin’s Head was bare of customers at this time of day except the ever-present trio on the bench outside. Vimes seated himself at the bar with a glass of Mrs Jiminy’s root beer and leaned confidentially towards the barman. ‘So, Mister Jiminy, what’s of interest here to an old copper?’ Jiminy opened his mouth, but Vimes went on, ‘Rosewood truncheon, Pseudopolis City Watch? I know I’m right. It’s no crime. That’s the copper’s dream, and you take your trusty truncheon with you to have a little friend you can depend on if the customer can’t hold his liquor and won’t take a hint.’ Vimes was now settled with one elbow on the bar and doodling on a small puddle of spilt beer. ‘But the job follows you, doesn’t it? And if you run a pub, well, that goes double, because you hear all sorts of things, things you don’t do anything about because you aren’t a copper any more, except you know you are. And it must worry you, somewhere in your soul, that there are things going wrong in these parts. Even I can tell. It’s the copper’s nose. I can smell it in the air. It comes up through my boots. Secrets and lies, Mister Jiminy, secrets and lies.’ Jiminy made a point of wiping his cloth over the spilt beer and said, as if absent-mindedly, ‘You know, Commander Vimes, things are different in the country. People think that the country is where you can go to hide out. It ain’t so. In the city you’re a face in the crowd. In the country people will stare at you until you’re out of sight, just for the entertainment value. Like you say, I’m not a copper any more: I ain’t got a warrant card, and I ain’t got the inclination. And now, if you don’t mind, I have some work to do. There’ll be more customers soon. Watch where you tread, your grace.’ Vimes didn’t let him off the hook. ‘Interesting thing, Mister Jiminy: I know you have the lease on this pub but, amazingly enough, I’m still your landlord. I’m sorry about that, but before we came down here I looked at a map and saw a pub on our land, and what a waste, I thought, but that makes me your landlord. Not very republican of me, I know, but I just wonder, Mister Jiminy, if it may be that not everyone in these parts is that keen on having the Commander of the City Watch down here in this quiet little hideaway, hmm?’ An image of poor old Lord Rust artlessly telling him that there was nothing here of interest passed across Vimes’s inner vision. Jiminy’s expression was frozen, but Vimes, who knew this game, saw that tiny twitch which, when decoded, meant, ‘Yes, but I didn’t say anything and no one can prove I did. Not even you, my friend.’ Further discussion on the point was interrupted when the sons of the soil began to come in, one by one, to celebrate the ending of the working day. This time there was less suspicion in their eyes as they nodded to Vimes en route to the bar, and so he sat nursing his pint of spiced-up beetroot juice and just enjoyed the moment. It was a very short moment, at the end of which the blacksmith swaggered into the bar and walked straight up to him. ‘You are sitting in my seat!’ Vimes looked around. He was sitting on a bench that was indistinguishable from all the others in the room, but he accepted the possibility that there was something mystic about the one he was occupying, picked up his glass and strolled over to an unoccupied one, where he sat down just in time to hear the blacksmith say, ‘That one’s my seat too, understand?’ Oh dear, here was the overture and beginners to a brawl, and Vimes was no beginner, right enough, and the blacksmith’s eyes held the look of a man who wanted to punch somebody and very likely thought that Vimes would make the ideal candidate. He felt the gentle pressure of his own brass knuckles in his trouser pocket. Vimes had been economical with the truth when he promised his wife that he would not take any weapons on holiday with him. However, he’d reasoned that a knuckleduster was not so much a weapon as a way of making certain that he stayed alive. It could be called a defensive instrument, a kind of shield, as it were, especially if you needed to get your defence in before you were attacked. He stood up. ‘Mister Jethro, I’d be grateful if you’d be so kind as to choose which chair is yours for the evening, thank you very much, after which I intend to enjoy my drink in peace.’ Whoever said that a soft answer turneth away wrath had never worked in a bar. The blacksmith glowered at about the same temperature as his forge. ‘I ain’t Jethro to you, not by a long way. You can call me Mister Jefferson, do you hear?’ ‘And you can call me Sam Vimes.’ He watched Jefferson very deliberately place his drink on the bar before he strode towards Vimes. ‘I know what I can call you, mister …’ Vimes felt the smooth brass of the surrogate knuckles, polished as they had been by years of abrasion from his pants and, needless to say, the occasional chin. As he dug down, they almost leapt to his grasp. ‘Sorry about this, your grace,’ said Jiminy as he pushed him gently out of the way and said to the smith. ‘Well now, Jethro, what’s this all about, then?’ ‘Your grace?’ sneered Jethro. ‘I ain’t going to call you that! I ain’t going to lick your boots like all the others do! Coming back here, lording it over us, ordering us about as if you owned the place! And that’s it, isn’t it? You do own the place! One man with all this country! That’s not right! You tell me, how did that happen? Go on, you tell me!’ Vimes shrugged. ‘Well, I’m not an expert, but as I understand it my wife’s ancestors fought somebody for it.’ The blacksmith’s face bloomed with an evil pleasure as he threw off his leather apron. ‘Well, okay. No problem. That’s how it’s done, is it? Fair enough. Tell you what I’ll do, I’ll fight you for it, here and now, and, tell you what I’ll do, I’ll fight you with one hand strapped behind my back, on account of you being a bit shorter than me.’ Vimes heard a slight wooden sound behind him: it was the sound of a barman stealthily pulling a two-foot-long rosewood truncheon from its accustomed place under the bar. Jethro must have heard it too, because he called out, ‘And don’t you try anything with that, Jim. You know I’ll have it out of your hands before you know what’s happening, and this time I’ll shove it where the sun doesn’t shine.’ Vimes took a look at the rest of the clientele, who were doing remarkable impersonations of stone statues. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘you really don’t want to fight me.’ ‘I do, indeed I do! You said it yourself. Some ancestor got all of this by fighting for it, yeah? Who said it’s the time to stop fighting?’ ‘Burleigh and Stronginthearm, sir,’ said a polite yet chilly voice behind the big man. To Vimes’s shock it was Willikins. ‘I’m not cruel, sir, I won’t shoot you in the guts, but I will make you realize how much you took your toes for granted. No, please do not make any sudden movements. Burleigh and Stronginthearm crossbows have notoriously responsive triggers.’ Vimes resumed breathing again when Jethro raised his hands. Somewhere in all that rage there must have been a halfpennyworth of self-preservation. Nevertheless the blacksmith glared at him and said, ‘You need to be protected by a hired killer, do you?’ ‘In point of fact, sir,’ said Willikins smoothly, ‘I am employed by Commander Vimes as a gentleman’s gentleman, and I require this crossbow because sometimes his socks fight back.’ He looked at Vimes. ‘Do you have any instructions, commander?’ and then he shouted, ‘Don’t move, mister, because as far as I know a blacksmith needs two hands to work with.’ He turned back to Vimes. ‘Do excuse that interjection, commander, but I know his sort.’ ‘Willikins, I rather think you are his sort.’ ‘Yes, sir, thank you, sir, and I wouldn’t trust me one little inch, sir. I knows a bad one when I sees them. I have a mirror.’ ‘Now, I want you to put that bloody thing down, Willikins. People could get hurt!’ Vimes said in his formal voice. ‘Yes, sir, that would have been my intention. I could not face her ladyship if anything had happened to you.’ Vimes looked from Willikins to Jethro. Here was a boil that needed lancing. But you couldn’t blame the lad. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t thought the same way himself, many times. ‘Willikins,’ he said, ‘please put that wretched thing down carefully and get out your notebook. Thank you. Now please write down as follows: “I, Samuel Vimes, somewhat reluctantly the Duke of Ankh, do intend to Duke it out, ha-ha, with my friend Jethro …” What’s your full name again, Jethro?’ ‘Now look here, mister, I didn’t—’ ‘I asked you your damn name, mister! Jiminy, what’s his surname?’ ‘Jefferson,’ said the landlord, holding his truncheon like a security blanket. ‘But look, your grace, you don’t want to go …’ Vimes ignored him and went on, ‘Now where was I? Oh, yes: “my friend Jethro Jefferson, in a friendly fight for the ownership of the Manor and environs, whatever the hell they are, which will go to the which of us that does not first cry ‘uncle’, and should it be myself that utters the same, there will be no repercussions of any sort upon my friend Jethro, or on my man Willikins, who pleaded with me not to engage in this friendly bout of fisticuffs.” Got that, Willikins? I’ll even give you a get-out-of-jail-free card to show to her ladyship if I get bruised. Now give it to me to sign.’ Willikins handed over the notebook with reluctance. ‘I don’t think it’ll work on her ladyship, sir. Look, dukes aren’t expected to go around—’ His voice faltered in the face of Vimes’s smile. ‘You were going to say that dukes shouldn’t fight, weren’t you, Willikins? And if you had, I would have said that the word “duke” absolutely means that you do fight.’ ‘Oh, very well, sir,’ said Willikins, ‘but perhaps you ought to warn him … ?’ Willikins was interrupted by the pub’s customers pushing their way out at speed and running through the village, leaving Jethro standing alone and bewildered. Halfway towards the man, Vimes turned to look back at Willikins and said, ‘You may think you see me lighting a cigar, Willikins, but on this occasion, I think, your eyes may turn out to be at fault, do you understand?’ ‘Yes, and in fact I am deaf as well, commander.’ ‘Good lad. Now let’s get outside where there’s less glass and a better view.’ Jethro looked like a man who had had the ground cut from under his feet but didn’t know how to fall down. Vimes lit his cigar and savoured, just for a moment, the forbidden fruit. Then he offered the packet to the blacksmith, who waved it away without a word. ‘Very sensible,’ said Vimes. ‘Now then, I’d better tell you that at least once a week, even these days, I have to fight people who’re trying to kill me with everything from swords to chairs and in one case a very large salmon. They probably don’t actually want to kill me, but they’ll try to stop me arresting them. Look,’ he waved a hand at the landscape in general, ‘all this … stuff, just happened, whether I wanted it to or not. By trade I’m just a copper.’ ‘Yeah,’ said Jethro, glaring at him. ‘Stamping on the faces of the struggling masses!’ Vimes was used to this sort of thing, and put it mildly. ‘Can’t tread on their faces these days, my grinder gets in the way. All right, not very funny, I admit.’ Vimes was aware that people were coming back down the lane. They included women and children. It looked as though the pub’s clientele had roused the neighbourhood. He turned to Jethro. ‘Are we going to do this by the Marquis of Fantailer’s Rules?’ ‘What are they?’ said the blacksmith, waving at the oncoming horde. ‘Rules of sparring by the Marquis of Fantailer,’ said Vimes. ‘If they was written by a marquis I don’t want no truck with them!’ Vimes nodded. ‘Willikins?’ ‘I heard that, commander, and have recorded it in my notebook: “refused Fantailer”.’ ‘Well then, Mister Jefferson,’ said Vimes. ‘I suggest we ask Mister Jiminy to start the proceedings?’ ‘I want your lackey to write down in that book of his that my mum won’t get put out of her cottage, whatever happens, right?’ ‘It’s a deal,’ said Vimes. ‘Willikins, please make a memorandum that Mister Jefferson’s old mum should not be thrown out of her cottage, hit with sticks, put in the stocks or otherwise manhandled in any way, understand?’ Willikins, trying ineffectually to hide a smile, licked his pencil and wrote industriously. Vimes, less noisily, made a mental note and the note said: ‘The ferocity is draining out of this lad. He is wondering if he actually might get killed. I haven’t thrown a punch, not one little punch, and he is already preparing for the worst. Of course, the right way to go about it is to prepare for the best.’ The crowd was growing by the second. Even as Vimes looked on, people came down the lane carrying a very old man on a mattress, their progress accelerated by his delight in hitting them on the back of the legs with his walking stick. Mothers towards the back of the crowd were holding up their children for a better look and, all unknown, every man had a weapon. It was like a peasants’ revolt, without the revolt and with a very polite class of peasant. Men touched their forelocks when Vimes looked in their direction, women curtsied, or at least bobbed up and down a bit, disturbingly out of sequence, like organ pedals trembling. Jiminy approached Vimes and the blacksmith cautiously and, to judge by the glistening of his face, very apprehensively. ‘Now then, gents, I’m choosing to consider this a little demonstration of fisticuffs, a jolly trial of strength and prowess such as may be found on any summer evening, all friends under the skin, okay?’ There was a pleading look in his eyes as he went on. ‘And when you’ve got it out of your systems there’ll be a pint waiting for each of you on the bar. Please don’t break anything.’ He produced an overused handkerchief from a waistcoat pocket and held it in the air. ‘When this touches the ground, gentlemen …’ he said, backing away very quickly. The slip of linen seemed to defy gravity for a while, but the moment it touched the ground Vimes caught the blacksmith’s boot in both hands as it swung towards him and said very quietly to the struggling man, ‘A bit previous, weren’t you? And what good has it done you? Hear them all sniggering? I’ll let you off, this time.’ Vimes gave a push as he loosened his grip on the foot, causing Jethro to stagger backwards. Vimes felt a certain pleasure in seeing the man losing it this early, but the blacksmith pulled himself together and rushed at him, and paused, possibly because Vimes was grinning. ‘That’s the ticket, my lad,’ said Vimes, ‘you just saved yourself a dreadful pain in the unmentionables.’ He made fists and beckoned suggestively to his bewildered adversary over the top of his left fist. The man came swinging and got a kick on the kneecap, which floored him, and he was picked up by Vimes, which metaphorically floored him again. ‘Whyever did you think I was going to box? That’s what we professionals call misdirection. You want to go for the hug? I would if I were a big bloke like you, but you ain’t going to get the chance.’ Vimes shook his head sorrowfully. ‘Should have gone for the Marquis of Fantailer. I believe that has been carved on many a gravestone.’ He took a generous pull of his cigar; the ash had yet to be disturbed. Enraged beyond belief, Jethro threw himself at Vimes and caught a glancing blow to his head, receiving at almost the same time a knee in the stomach which knocked all the breath out of him. They went down together with Vimes as the conductor of this orchestra. He made certain he ended on top, where he leaned down and hissed into Jethro’s ear, ‘Let’s see how smart you are, shall we? Are you a man who can control his temper? ’Cos if you aren’t, then I’ll give you a nose so wide that you’ll have to hold your handkerchief on the end of a stick. Don’t you, for one moment, think I’m not capable of it. But I reckon a blacksmith knows when to cool the metal, and I’m giving you a chance to say that at least you got the duke on the floor in front of all your friends, and we’ll stand up and shake hands like the gentlemen neither of us is, and the crowd will cheer and go into the pub to get happily ratted on the beer that I shall pay for. Are we men of one accord?’ There was a muffled ‘Yes’, and Vimes stood up, took the blacksmith’s hand in his and raised it up high, which caused some slight puzzlement, but when he then said, ‘Sam Vimes invites you all to take a drink with him in Mister Jiminy’s establishment!’ everybody shrugged bewilderment aside to make room for the beer. The crowd surged into the pub, leaving the blacksmith and Vimes on their own – plus Willikins, who could be remarkably self-effacing when he wanted. ‘Blacksmiths should know about temper, too,’ said Vimes, as the crowd dispersed pubwards. ‘Sometimes cool is better than hot. I don’t know anything much about you, Mister Jefferson, but the City Watch needs people who learn fast and I reckon you would soon make it to sergeant. We could use you as a smith, too. It’s amazing how dented the old armour can get when you’re standing on the faces of the poor.’ Jethro stared down at his boots. ‘All right, you can beat me in a fight, but that doesn’t mean it’s right, all right? You don’t know the half of it!’ There were sounds of merriment coming from the pub. Vimes wondered how embroidered that little scuffle would turn out to be. He turned back to the smith, who hadn’t moved. ‘Listen to me, you stupid young fool, I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth! When I was a kid the only spoons I ever saw were made of wood and you were lucky if there was some edible food on the end of them. I was a street kid, understand? If I had been dumped out here I would have thought it was paradise, what with food jumping out on you from every hedge. But I became a copper because they paid you and I was taught how to be a copper by decent coppers, because believe me, mister, I wake every night knowing that I could have been something else. Then I found a good lady and if I were you, kid, I’d hope that I’d find one of them, too. So I smartened myself up and then one day Lord Vetinari – you have heard of him, haven’t you, kid? Well, he needed a man to get things done, and the title opens doors so that I don’t actually have to kick them open myself, and do you know what? I reckon my boots have seen so much crime down the years that they walk me towards it of their own accord, and I know there’s something that needs kicking. So do you, I can smell it on you. Tell me what it is.’ Jethro still stared at his own boots and said nothing. Willikins cleared his throat. ‘I wonder, commander, if it might help if I had a little talk with the young man, from what you might call a less elevated position? Why don’t you take a look at the beauties of the local countryside?’ Vimes nodded. ‘By all means, if you think it’ll do some good.’ And he went away and examined a honeysuckle hedge with considerable interest, while Willikins, with his shiny gentleman’s gentleman shoes and his immaculate jacket, strolled over to Jethro, put an arm around him and said, ‘This is a stiletto I’m holding to your throat and it ain’t no ladies’ shoe, this is the real thing, the cutting edge, as it were. You are a little twit, and I ain’t the commander and I will slice you to the bone if you make a move. Got that? Now don’t nod your head! Good, we are learning, aren’t we? Now, my lad, the commander here is trusted by the Diamond King of Trolls and the Low King of the Dwarfs, who would only have to utter a word for your measly carcass to come under the caress of a large number of versatile axes, and by Lady Margolotta of Uberwald, who trusts very few people, and by Lord Vetinari of Ankh-Morpork, who doesn’t trust anybody at all. Got that? Don’t nod! And you, my little man, have the damn nerve to doubt his word. I’m an easygoing sort of fellow, but that sort of thing leaves me right out of sorts, I don’t mind telling you. You understand? I said, do you understand? Oh, all right, you can nod now. Incidentally, young man, be careful who you call a lackey, all right? Some people might take violent exception to that sort of thing. A word to the wise, lad: I know the commander, and you thought about your old mum and what might happen to her and I reckon that is why I won’t be seeing you in lavender, because he is a sensitive soul at heart.’ Willikins’ knife disappeared as quickly as it had come, and with the other hand the gentleman’s gentleman produced a small brush and tidied the blacksmith’s collar. ‘Willikins,’ said Vimes from the distance, ‘will you go for a little walk now, please?’ When his manservant was loitering under a tree a little way further up the lane, Vimes said, ‘Sorry about that, but every man has his pride. I bear that in mind. So should you. I’m a copper, a policeman, and something here is calling to me. It seems to me that you have something you’d like me to know and it’s not just about who sits in the high castle, am I right? Something bad has happened, you are practically sweating it. Well?’ Jethro leaned towards him and said, ‘Dead Man’s Copse, on the hill. Midnight. I won’t wait.’ The blacksmith then turned round and walked away without a glance behind. Vimes lit a fresh cigar and strolled towards the tree where Willikins was appearing to enjoy the landscape. He straightened up when he saw Vimes. ‘We’d better get a move on, sir. Dinner is at eight o’clock and her ladyship would like you to be smart. She sets a lot of store by your being smartly turned out, sir.’ Vimes groaned. ‘Not the official tights?’ ‘Happily not, sir, not in the country, but her ladyship was very specific about my bringing the plum-coloured evening dress, sir.’ ‘She says it makes me look dashing,’ said Vimes morosely. ‘Do you think it makes me look dashing? Am I a dashing kind of person, would you say?’ The birds started singing from a low branch of the tree. ‘I’d put you down as more the sprinting sort, sir,’ said Willikins. They set off home, in silence for a while, which is to say that neither man spoke while wildlife sang, buzzed and screeched, eventually causing Vimes to say, ‘I wish I knew what the hell all those things are.’ Willikins put his head on one side for a moment, then said, ‘Parkinson’s warbler, the deep-throated frog-eater and the common creed-waggler, sir.’ ‘You know?’ ‘Oh, yes, sir. I frequent the music halls, sir, and there’s always a bird or animal impersonator on the bill. It tends to stick. I also know seventy-three farmyard noises, my favourite of which is the sound of a farmer who has had one boot sucked from his foot by the muck he’s trying to avoid and has nowhere else to put his stockinged foot but in the said muck. Hugely amusing, sir.’ They had reached the long drive to the Hall now, and gravel crunched beneath their boots. Under his breath, Vimes said, ‘I’ve arranged to meet young Mister Jefferson at midnight in the copse on Hangman’s Hill. He wishes to tell me something important. Remind me, Willikins, what is a copse, exactly?’ ‘Anything between a clump of trees and a small wood. Technically, sir, the one at the top of Hangman’s Hill is a beech hanger. That just means, well, a small beech wood on top of a hill. You remember Mad Jack Ramkin? The bloke that got it made thirty feet higher at great expense? He had the beech trees planted on the top.’ Vimes liked the crunching of the gravel; it would mask the sound of their conversation. ‘I talked to the blacksmith with, I would swear, no one else in earshot. But this is the country, yes, Willikins?’ ‘There was a man setting rabbit snares in the hedge behind you,’ said Willikins. ‘Perfectly normal activity, although to my mind he took too long over it.’ They crunched onwards for a while, and Vimes said, ‘Tell me, Willikins. If a man had arranged to meet another man at midnight in a place with a name like Dead Man’s Copse, on Hangman’s Hill, what would you consider to be his most sensible course of action, given that his wife had forbidden him to bring weapons to his country house?’ Willikins nodded. ‘Why, sir, given your maxim that everything is a weapon if you choose to think of it as such, I would advise said man to see whether he has a compatriot what has, for example, acquired the keys to a cabinet that contains a number of superbly made carving knives, ideal for close fighting; and I personally would include a side order of cheesewire, sir, in conformance with my belief that the only important thing in a fight to the death is that the death should not be yours.’ ‘Can’t carry cheesewire, man! Not the Commander of the Watch!’ ‘Quite so, commander, and may I therefore advise your brass knuckles – the gentleman’s alternative? I know you never travel without them, sir. There’s some vicious people around and I know you have to be among them.’ ‘Look, Willikins, I don’t like to involve you in all this. It’s only a hunch, after all.’ Willikins waved this away. ‘You wouldn’t keep me out of it for a big clock, sir, because all this is tickling my fancy as well. I shall lay out a selection of cutting edges for you in your dressing room, sir, and I myself will go up to the copse half an hour before you’re due to be there, with my trusty bow and an assortment of favourite playthings. It’s nearly a full moon, clear skies, there’ll be shadows everywhere, and I’ll be standing in the darkest one of them.’ Vimes looked at him for a moment and said, ‘Could I please amend that suggestion? Could you not be there in the second darkest shadow one hour before midnight, to see who steps into the darkest shadow?’ ‘Ah yes, that’s why you command the Watch, sir,’ said Willikins, and to Vimes’s shock there was a hint of a tear in the man’s voice. ‘You’re listening to the street, aren’t you, sir, yes?’ Vimes shrugged. ‘No streets here, Willikins!’ Willikins shook his head. ‘Once a street boy always a street boy, sir. It comes with us, in the pinch. Mothers go, fathers go – if we ever knew who they were – but the Street, well, the Street looks after us. In the pinch it keeps us alive.’ Willikins darted ahead of Vimes and rang the doorbell, so that the footman had the door open by the time Vimes came up the steps. ‘You’ve got just enough time to listen to Young Sam read to you, sir,’ Willikins added, making his way up the stairs. ‘Wonderful thing, reading, I wish I’d learned it when I was a kid. Her ladyship will be in her dressing room and guests will be arriving in about half an hour. Must go, sir. I’ve got to teach that fat toad of a butler his manners, sir.’ Vimes winced. ‘You’re not allowed to strangle butlers, Willikins. I’m sure I read it in a book of etiquette.’ Willikins gave him a look of mock offence. ‘No garrotting will be involved, sir,’ he said, opening the door to Vimes’s dressing room, ‘but he is a snob of the first water. Never did meet a butler who wasn’t. I just have to give him an orientation lesson.’ ‘Well, he is the butler, and this is his house,’ said Vimes. ‘No, sir, it’s your house, and since I am your personal manservant I, by the irrevocable laws of the servants’ hall, outrank every one of the lazy buggers! I’ll show them how we do things in the real world, sir, don’t you worry—’ He was interrupted by a heavy knock at the door, followed by a determined rattling of the doorknob. Willikins opened the door and Young Sam stomped in and announced, ‘Reading!’ Vimes picked up his son and sat him on a chair. ‘How was your afternoon, my lad?’ ‘Do you know,’ said Young Sam, as if imparting the results of strict research, ‘cows do really big floppy poos, but sheep do small poos, like chocolates.’ Vimes tried not to look at Willikins, who was shaking with suppressed laughter. He managed to keep his own expression solemn and said, ‘Well, of course, sheep are smaller.’ Young Sam considered this. ‘Cow poos go flop,’ he said. ‘It never said that in Where’s My Cow?’ Young Sam’s voice betrayed a certain annoyance that this important information had been withheld. ‘Miss Felicity Beedle wouldn’t have left it out.’ Vimes sighed. ‘I just bet she wouldn’t.’ Willikins opened the door. ‘I’ll leave you gentlemen to it, then, and see you later, sir.’ ‘Willikins?’ said Vimes, just as the man had his hand on the doorknob. ‘You appear to think that my brass knuckles are inferior to yours. Is that so?’ Willikins smiled. ‘You’ve never really agreed with the idea of the spiked ones, have you, sir?’ He carefully shut the door behind him. Young Sam was already reading by himself these days, which was a great relief. Fortunately the works of Miss Felicity Beedle did not consist solely of exciting references to poo, in all its manifestations, but her output of small volumes for young children was both regular and highly popular, at least among the children. This was because she had researched her audience with care, and Young Sam had laughed his way through The Wee Wee Men, The War with the Snot Goblins, and Geoffrey and the Land of Poo. For boys of a certain age, they hit the squashy spot. At the moment he was giggling and choking his way through The Boy Who Didn’t Know How to Pick His Own Scabs, an absolute hoot for a boy just turned six. Sybil pointed out that the books were building Young Sam’s vocabulary, and not just about lavatorial matters, and it was indeed true that he was beginning, with encouragement, to read books in which nobody had a bowel movement at all. Which, when you came to think about it, was a mystery all by itself. Vimes carried his son to bed after ten minutes of enjoyable listening, and had managed to shave and get into the feared evening clothes a few moments before his wife knocked on the door. Separate dressing rooms and bathrooms, Vimes thought … if you had the money, there was no better way to keep a happy marriage happy. And in order to keep a happy marriage happy he allowed Sybil to bustle in, wearing, in fact, a bustle,11 to adjust his shirt, tweak his collar and make him fit for company. And then she said, ‘I understand you gave the blacksmith a short lesson in unarmed combat, my dear …’ The pause hung in the air like a silken noose. Vimes managed, ‘There’s something wrong here, I know it.’ ‘I think so, too,’ said Sybil. ‘You do?’ ‘Yes, Sam, but this is not the time. We have guests arriving at any minute. If you could refrain from throwing any of them over your shoulder in between courses I would be grateful.’ This was a terrific scolding by Sybil’s normally placid standards. Vimes did what any prudent husband would do, which was dynamically nothing. Suddenly all downstairs was full of voices and the noise of carriages crunching over the gravel. Sybil trimmed her sails and headed down to be the gracious hostess. Despite what his wife liked to imply, Vimes was rather good at dinners, having sat through innumerable civic affairs in Ankh-Morpork. The trick was to let the other diners do the talking while agreeing with them occasionally, giving himself time to think about other things. Sybil had made certain that this evening’s dinner was a light occasion. The guests were mostly people of a certain class who lived in the country but were not, as it were, of it. Retired warriors, a priest of Om, Miss Pickings, a spinster, together with her companion, a strict-looking lady with short hair and a man’s shirt and pocket watch, and, yes, Miss Felicity Beedle. Vimes thought he had put his foot in it when he said, ‘Oh yes, the poo lady,’ but she burst out laughing and shook his hand, saying, ‘Don’t worry, your grace, I wash mine thoroughly after writing!’ And it was a big laugh. She was a small woman with the strange aspect that you see in some people that causes them to appear to be subtly vibrating even when standing perfectly still. You felt that if some interior restraint suddenly broke, the pent-up energy released would catapult her through the nearest window. Miss Beedle prodded him in the stomach. ‘And you are the famous Commander Vimes. Come to arrest us all, have you?’ Of course, you got this all the time if you didn’t stop Sybil accepting the invitation to yet another posh society do. But while Miss Beedle laughed, silence fell on the other guests like a cast-iron safe. They were scowling at Miss Beedle, and Miss Beedle was staring intently at Vimes, and Vimes knew that expression. It was the expression of somebody with a story to tell. Certainly this was no time to broach the subject, and so Vimes filed it under ‘interesting’. Whatever Vimes’s misgivings, Ramkin Hall did a damn good dinner and – and this was the important thing – the dictates of popular social intercourse decreed that Sybil had to allow a menu full of things that would not be permitted at home if Vimes had asked for them. It’s one thing to act as arbiter of your own husband’s tastes, but it is frowned on to do the same to your guests. Across the table from him a retired military man was being assured by his wife that he did not, contrary to what he himself believed, like potted shrimps. In vain the man protested weakly that he thought he did like potted shrimps, to get the gentle response, ‘You may like potted shrimps, Charles, but they do not like you.’ Vimes felt for the man, who seemed puzzled at having developed enemies among the lower crustacea. ‘Well, er, does lobster like me, dear?’ he said, in a voice that did not express much hope. ‘No, dear, it does not get on with you at all. Remember what happened at the Parsleys’ whist evening.’ The man looked at the groaning sideboard and tried: ‘Do you think the scallops could get on with me for five minutes or so?’ ‘Good heavens no, Charles.’ He cast a glance at the sideboard again. ‘I expect the green salad is my bosom friend, though, isn’t it?’ ‘Absolutely, dear!’ ‘Yes, I thought so.’ The man looked across at Vimes and gave him a hopeless grin followed by, ‘I am given to believe that you are a policeman, your grace. That right?’ Vimes took proper stock of him for the first time: a whiskery old warrior, now out to grass – and that was probably all his wife was going to let him eat without an argument. He had burn scars on his face and hands and the accent of Pseudopolis. Easy. ‘You were with the Light Dragons, weren’t you, sir?’ The old man looked pleased. ‘Well done, that man! Not many people remember us. Alas, I’m the only one left. Colonel Charles Augustus Makepeace – strange name for a military man, or perhaps not, I don’t know.’ He sniffed. ‘We’re just a scorched page in the history of warfare. I dare say you haven’t read my memoirs, Twenty-four Years Without Eyebrows? No? Well, you are not alone in that, I have to say. Met your missus in those days. She told us it would be totally impossible to breed dragons stable enough for use in warfare. She was right, and no mistake. Of course, we went on trying, because that’s the military way!’ ‘You mean, pile dreadful failure on top of failure?’ said Vimes. The colonel laughed. ‘Well, it works sometimes! I still keep a few dragons, though. Wouldn’t be without ’em. A day without a singe is a day without sunshine. They’re a great saving in matches, and, of course, they keep undesirables away, too.’ Vimes reacted like an angler who, after some time dozing by the water’s edge, felt that the fish were rising. ‘Oh, you don’t get many of them around here, surely?’ ‘You think so? You don’t know the half of it, young man. I can tell you a few stories—’ He stopped talking abruptly, and Vimes’s experience of husbandry told him that the man had just been kicked under the table by his wife, who did not look happy and, to judge by the lines on her face, probably never had. She leaned past her husband, who was now accepting another brandy from the waiter, and said, icily, ‘As a policeman, your grace, does your jurisdiction extend to the Shires?’ Another ring in the water, thought the angler inside Vimes’s head. He said, ‘No, madam, my beat is Ankh-Morpork and some of the surrounding area. Traditionally, however, the policeman drags his jurisdiction with him if he is in hot pursuit in connection with crime committed within his domain. But, of course, Ankh-Morpork is a long way from here, and I doubt if I’d be able to run that far.’ This got a laugh from the table in general and a thin-lipped smile from Mrs Colonel. Play the fish, play the fish … ‘Nevertheless,’ Vimes continued, ‘if I was to witness an arrestable offence here and now, I’d have the authority to make an arrest. Like a citizen’s arrest, but somewhat more professional, and after that I’d be required to turn the suspect over to the local force or other suitable authority, as I deemed fit.’ The clergyman, whom Vimes had noticed out of the corner of his eye, was taking an interest in this conversation and leaned forward to say, ‘As you deem fit, your grace?’ ‘My grace would not come into it, sir. As a sworn member of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch it would be my bounden duty to ensure the safety of my suspect. Ideally I’d look for a lock-up. We don’t have them in the city any more, but I understand most rural areas still do, even if they only hold drunks and escaped pigs.’ There was laughter, and Miss Beedle said, ‘We do have a village constable, your grace, and he keeps pigs in the lock-up down by the old bridge!’ She looked brightly at Vimes, whose expression was stony. He said, ‘Does he ever put people in there? Does he have a warrant card? Does he have a badge?’ ‘Well, he puts the occasional drunk in there to sober up, and he says the pigs don’t seem to mind, but I have no idea what a warrant card is.’ There was more laughter at this but it faded quickly, sucked into nowhere by Vimes’s implacable silence. Then he said, ‘I would not consider him to be a policeman, and until I found that he was working within a framework of proper law enforcement I would regard him not as a policeman by my standards but as a slightly bossy street cleaner. Of some use, but not a policeman.’ ‘By your standards, your grace?’ said the clergyman. ‘Yes, sir, by my standards. My decision. My responsibility. My experience. My arse if things go wrong.’ ‘But, your grace, as you say, you are outside your jurisdiction here,’ said Mrs Colonel gently. Vimes could sense her husband’s nervousness, and it was certainly not to do with the food. The man was wishing heartily that he wasn’t there. It was funny how people always wanted to talk to policemen about crime, and never realize what strange little signals their anxieties betrayed. He turned to the man’s wife, smiled and said, ‘But as I’ve said, madam, if a copper comes across a flagrant crime his jurisdiction reaches out to him like an old friend. And do you mind if we change the subject? No offence meant to any of you ladies and gentlemen, but over the years I’ve noticed that bankers and military men and merchants all get a chance to eat their dinners at their leisure at affairs like this, while the poor old copper has to talk about police work, which is most of the time rather dull.’ He smiled again to keep everything friendly, and went on, ‘Exceedingly dull around here, I would imagine. From my point of view, this place is as quiet as the … grave.’ Score: one wince from the dear old colonel, and the priest looking down at his plate, although the latter shouldn’t be taken too seriously, he thought, because you seldom saw a clergyman who couldn’t strike sparks with his knife and fork. Sybil, using her hostess voice, shattered the silence like an icebreaker. ‘I think it’s time for the main course,’ she said, ‘which will be superb mutton avec no talking about police work at all. Honestly, if you get Sam going he’ll quote the laws and ordinances of Ankh-Morpork and force standing orders until you throw a cushion at him!’ Well done, Vimes thought, at least I can now eat my dinner in peace. He relaxed as the conversation around him became less fraught and once again replete with the everyday gossip and grumblings about other people living in the area, the difficulties with servants, the prospects for the harvest and, oh yes, the trouble with goblins. Vimes paid attention then. Goblins. The City Watch appeared to contain at least one member of every known bipedal sapient species plus one Nobby Nobbs. It had become a tradition: if you could make it as a copper, then you could make it as a species. But nobody had ever once suggested that Vimes should employ a goblin, the simple reason being that they were universally known to be stinking, cannibalistic, vicious, untrustworthy bastards. Of course, everybody knew that dwarfs were a chiselling bunch who would swindle you if they could, and that trolls were little more than thugs, and the city’s one resident medusa would never look you in the face, and the vampires couldn’t be trusted, however much they smiled, and werewolves were only vampires who couldn’t fly, when you got right down to it, and the man next door was a real bastard who threw his rubbish over your wall and his wife was no better than she should be. But then again it took all sorts to make a world. It was not as if you were prejudiced because, after all, there had been an orc working at the university, but he liked his football, didn’t he just, and you could forgive anyone who could score from the centre spot and, well, you took as you found … But not bloody goblins, thank you very much. People hounded them out if they came into the city and they tended to end up downriver, working for the likes of Harry King in the bone-grinding, leather-tanning and scrap-metal industries. A fair walk outside the city gates and so outside the law. And now there were some in the vicinity of the Hall, as evidenced by chickens and cats disappearing, and so on. Well, probably, but Vimes remembered when people said that trolls stole chickens. There was nothing of interest to a troll in a chicken. It would be like humans eating plaster. He certainly did not mention any of this. Yes, no one had a good word to say about goblins, but Miss Beedle had no word to say at all. Her gaze remained firmly fixed on Vimes’s face. You could read a dining table if you learned the knack and if you were a policeman then you could build a clear picture of what each diner thought about the others. It was all in the looks. The things said or not said. The people who were in the magic circle and the people who weren’t. Miss Beedle was an outsider, tolerated, because obviously there is such a thing as good manners, but not exactly included. What was the phrase? Not one of us. Vimes realized that he was staring at Miss Beedle just as she was staring at him. They both smiled, and he thought that an inquisitive man would go and see the nice lady who had written the books that his little boy enjoyed so much and not because she looked like somebody prepared to blow so many whistles that it would sound like a pipe band. Miss Beedle frowned a lot when the talk was about goblins, and occasionally people, especially the people he had tagged as Mrs Colonel, would cast a look at her as one might glance at a child who was doing something wrong. And so he maintained a nice exterior air of attention while at the same time sifting through the affairs of the day. The process was interrupted by Mrs Colonel saying, ‘By the way, your grace, we were very pleased to hear that you gave Jefferson a drubbing this afternoon. The man is insufferable! He upsets people!’ ‘Well, I noticed that he’s not afraid to air his views,’ said Vimes, ‘but nor are we, are we?’ ‘But surely you of all people, your grace,’ said the clergyman, looking up earnestly, ‘cannot possibly believe that Jack is as good as his master?’ ‘Depends on Jack. Depends on the master. Depends what you mean by good,’ said Vimes. ‘I suppose I was a Jack, but when it comes to the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, I am the master.’ Mrs Colonel was about to answer when Lady Sybil said brightly, ‘Talking of which, Sam, I had a letter from a Mrs Wainwright commending you highly. Remind me to show it to you.’ All long-term couples have their code. Classically there is one that the wife uses in polite conversation to warn her husband that, because of hasty dressing, or absent-mindedness, he is becoming exposed in the crotch department.12 In the case of Vimes and Lady Sybil, any mention of Mrs Wainwright was a code that meant, ‘If you don’t stop annoying people, Sam Vimes, then there will be a certain amount of marital discord later this evening.’ But this time Sam Vimes wanted the last word, and said, ‘In fact, come to think of it, I know quite a few risen Jacks in various places, and let me tell you, they often make better masters than their erstwhile masters ever did. All they needed was a chance.’ ‘Do remind me to show you the letter, Sam!’ Vimes gave in, and the arrival of the ice-cream pudding lowered the temperature somewhat, especially since her ladyship made certain that everybody’s glasses remained filled – and in the case of the colonel this meant an extremely regular top-up. Vimes would have liked to talk to him further, but he too was under wifely orders. The man had definitely had something important on his mind that caused the presence of a policeman to make him very nervous indeed. And the nervousness was apparently catching. This wasn’t a posh affair, by any means. Sybil had organized this little party before building up to anything more lavish, and some fairly amicable goodbyes were being said long before eleven. Vimes listened intently to the colonel and his wife as they walked, in his case unsteadily, to their carriage. All he heard, however, was a hissed, ‘You had the stable door open all evening!’ Followed by a growled, ‘But the horse was fast asleep, my dear.’ When the last carriage had been waved away and the big front door firmly shut, Sybil said, ‘Well, Sam, I understand, I really do, but they were our guests.’ ‘I know, and I’m sorry, but it’s as if they don’t think. I just wanted to shake their ideas up a bit.’ Lady Sybil examined a sherry bottle and topped up her glass. ‘Surely you don’t think that the blacksmith really had the right to fight you for this house?’ Sam wished that he could drink, right now. ‘No, of course not. I mean, there wouldn’t be an end to it. People have been winning and losing on the old roulette wheel of fate for thousands of years. I know that, but you know that I think that if you’re going to stop the wheel then you have to spare some thought for the poor buggers who’re sitting on zero.’ His wife gently took his hand. ‘But we endowed the hospital, Sam. You know how expensive that is. Dr Lawn will train up anyone who shows an aptitude for medicine, even if they, in his words, turn up with the arse hanging out of their trousers. He’s even letting girls train! As doctors! He even employs Igorinas! We’re changing things, Sam, a bit at a time, by helping people help themselves. And look at the Watch! These days a kid is proud to say that his father or even his mother is a watchman. And people need pride.’ Vimes grasped her hand. He said, ‘Thank you for being kind to the boy from Cockbill Street.’ She laughed this away. ‘I waited a long time for you to turn up, Samuel Vimes, and I don’t intend to let you go to waste!’ This seemed to Sam Vimes a good time to say, ‘You don’t mind if Willikins and I take a little stroll to Dead Man’s Copse before I go to bed?’ Lady Sybil gave him the smile women give to husbands and small boys. ‘Well, I can hardly say no, and there is a strange atmosphere. I’m glad Willikins is involved. And it’s very pleasant up there. Perhaps you’ll hear the nightingale.’ Vimes gave her a little kiss before going up to change and said, ‘Actually, dear, I’m hoping to hear a canary.’ Probably no duke or even Commander of the City Watch had found in their dressing room anything like that which lay on the bed of Sam Vimes right now. Pride of place was for a billhook, which was a useful agricultural implement. He had seen a couple of them being carried earlier in the day. He reminded himself that ‘agricultural implement’ did not mean ‘not a weapon’. They turned up sometimes among the street gangs and were almost as much to be feared as a troll with a headache. Then there was a truncheon. Vimes’s own truncheon, which his manservant had thoughtfully brought along. Of course, it had silver-work on it because it was the ceremonial truncheon of the Commander of the Watch, and wasn’t a weapon at all, oh dear me, no. On the other hand, Vimes knew himself not to be a cheese monger and therefore it would be somewhat difficult to explain why he had a foot of cheesewire about his person. That was going to stay here, but he’d take the billhook. It was a pretty poor lookout if a man walking on his own land couldn’t take the opportunity to trim a branch or two. But what to make of the pile of bamboo which resolved itself into a breastplate of articulated sections and a most unfetching bamboo helmet? There was a small note on the bed. It said, in Willikins’ handwriting, The gamekeeper’s friend, commander. Yours too!!! Vimes grunted and hit the breastplate with his truncheon. It flexed like a living thing and the truncheon bounced across the room. Well, we live and learn, Vimes thought, or perhaps more importantly, we learn and live. He crept downstairs and let himself out into the night … which was a chequerboard of black and white. He’d forgotten that outside the city, where the smogs, smokes and steams rendered the world into a thousand shades of grey, out in places like this there was black and white, and, if you were looking for a metaphor, there was one, right there. He knew the way to the hill, you couldn’t miss it. The moon illuminated the way as if it had wanted to make things easier for him. Actual agriculture ran out around here. The fields gave way to furze, and to turf nibbled by rabbits into something resembling the baize of a snooker table … although given that rabbits did other things than just eat grass, he would play snooker with a lot of very small balls. Bunnies scattered as he climbed and he worried that he was making too much noise, but it was his land and therefore this was just a walk in the park. So he walked a little more jauntily, following what seemed to be the only path, and saw, in the moonlight, the gibbet. Well, he thought, it says Dead Man’s Copse on the map, doesn’t it? They used to do a lot of things like this in the old days, didn’t they? And the metal cage was just there to keep the corpses upright so that the ravens didn’t have to kneel. Good old-fashioned policing, you could call it, if you wanted to chill a spine or two. A pile of crumbling ancient bones at the foot of the gibbet testified to the old-fashioned policing at work. Vimes felt the stealthy movement of a knife on the hairs of his neck. A moment later Willikins got up off the ground and fastidiously brushed dirt from his clothing. ‘Oh, well done, sir!’ he said, wheezing a little, owing to the shortness of breath. ‘I can see that I can’t put anything across you, commander.’ He stopped, held his hand up to his nose and sniffed. ‘Blow me down, commander! There’s blood all over my clothes! You didn’t stick me, did you, sir? You just spun round and kicked me in the nuts, which I may say, sir, was done most expertly.’ Vimes sniffed. You learned to smell blood. It smelled like metal. Now, people would say that metal doesn’t smell, but it does, it smells like blood. ‘You got up here on time?’ he said. ‘Yes, sir. Didn’t see a living soul.’ Willikins knelt down. ‘Didn’t see a thing. Wouldn’t have seen the blood if you hadn’t kicked me into a puddle of it. It’s all over the place.’ I wish I had Igor here, thought Vimes. These days he handed over the forensics to the experts. On the other hand, you acquired a forensic skill of your own and beyond the smell of blood he could smell butchery and unbelievable coincidence. Everybody sees everything in the countryside. Jefferson was going to meet Vimes, but here there was a definite shortage of Jefferson and no shortage whatsoever of blood while, at the same time, a noticeable absence of corpse. Vimes’s brain worked through things methodically. Of course, you took it for granted that if a citizen was surreptitiously going to tell a policeman a secret it was likely that somebody did not wish said citizen to say said thing. And if said citizen was found dead then said policeman, who had been seen to have a scrap with him earlier, might just be considered to be a tiny bit guilty when all was said and done, and while all was being said and all was being done, someone really intent on getting Vimes into difficulties would have left the corpse of the blacksmith there, wouldn’t they? ‘Found something, sir,’ said Willikins, straightening up. ‘You what?’ ‘Found something, sir, felt along the ground, as you might say.’ ‘But it’s soaked with blood, man!’ This didn’t seem to worry Willikins. ‘Never minded blood, commander, leastways when it wasn’t mine.’ There was some scrabbling, then light appeared: Willikins had shifted the trap door of a dark lantern. He handed it to Vimes and then held something small to the glow. ‘It’s a ring, sir. Looks like it’s been made of stone.’ ‘What? You mean it’s a stone with a hole in it?’ He heard Willikins sigh. ‘No, sir, it’s polished smooth. And there’s a claw in it. Looks like goblin to me.’ Vimes thought, all that blood. Severed claw. Goblins aren’t that big. Somebody bothered to come up here to kill a goblin. Where’s the rest of it? In theory, moonlight should help the search, but moonlight is deceptive, creating shadows where shadows should not be, and the wind was getting up. Dark lantern or not, there was little he could do here. The curtains were drawn and a few lights still burned in the Goblin’s Head. Apparently, there were licensing laws. A good copper should always be ready to test the strength of them. He led the way round to the back of the pub and knocked on the little wooden sliding panel set into the building’s back door. After a few moments Jiminy pulled the sliding panel aside and Vimes stuck his hand in the hole before the man could close it again. ‘Not you, please, your grace, the magistrates would have my guts for garters!’ ‘And I’m sure they’ll be very decorative,’ said Vimes, ‘but it won’t happen, because I’ll warrant that about a third of your regular customers are still imbibing intoxicating liquors at this hour, and probably at least one magistrate is among them … No, I take back that last remark. Magistrates do their drinking at home, where there are no licensing laws. I won’t say a word, but it’ll be a bad old day for the job if a thirsty copper can’t mump a night-time beverage from a former colleague.’ He slapped some coins on the tiny shelf inside the little panel and added, ‘That should buy a double brandy for my man here, and for me the address of Mister Jefferson, the smith.’ ‘You can’t treat me like this, you know.’ Vimes looked at Willikins. ‘Can I?’ The gentleman’s gentleman cleared his throat. ‘We are now in the world of feudal law, commander. You own the ground this public house stands on, but he has rights as strong as your own. If he has paid his rent, then you can’t even go into the property without his permission.’ ‘How do you know all this stuff?’ ‘Well, commander, as you know, I’ve had one or two holidays in the Tanty in my time, and one thing about prison is there are always a lot of books about the law lying around, criminals being very keen on going through the old legal smallprint, just in case it turns out that giving a rival gang member some cement boots and dropping him in the river might be legal after all. That kind of learning sticks.’ ‘But I’m investigating a mysterious disappearance now. The blacksmith was very keen to see me up the hill, but when I got up there there was nothing but a load of blood all over the place. Jefferson wanted to tell me something and you must know what that smells like to a copper.’ Even though I’m not sure, said Vimes to himself. ‘Definitely something iffy, that’s for sure.’ The landlord shrugged. ‘Not my business, squire.’ Vimes’s hand gripped the landlord’s wrist before the man could pull it away and tugged him so hard that his face was up against the woodwork. ‘Don’t you squire me. There’s something going down here, something wrong; I can feel it in my boots and, believe me, they are the most sensitive boots that ever were. The man who runs the village pub knows everything – I know that and so do you. If you’re not on my side you’re in my way and you know something, I can see it in your eyes. If it turns out you knew something of importance about the blacksmith you’ll have invited yourself to be an accessory after the fact, with a free option, if I can get the bit between my teeth, of before the fact, which leaves you right in the middle, and that’s a fact.’ Jiminy wriggled, but Vimes’s grip was steely. ‘Your badge doesn’t work here, Mister Vimes, you know that!’ Vimes heard the tiny whine of fear in the man’s voice, but old coppers were tough. If you weren’t tough, you never became an old copper. ‘I’m going to let go, sir,’ said Vimes, which is policeman’s code for ‘trembling arsehole’. ‘You think that legally around here I don’t have a leg to stand on. This may or may not be true, but my man here is not a policeman and is not accustomed to doing things nicely like we in the job do, and you might end up without a leg to stand on as well. I’m telling you this as a friend. We both know this game, eh? I expect you were working in the bar when the goblin was killed, yes?’ ‘I didn’t know a bloody goblin was killed, did I? So how would I know when it may or may not have happened? My advice, sir,’ said Jiminy, with the same coded inflection that Vimes had used, ‘would be to report the matter to the authorities in the morning. That would be young Upshot, calls himself a copper. Look, I came here to retire, Vimes, and staying alive is part of that. I do not poke my nose into that which does not concern me. And I know there’s a lot of things that you could do and I know you ain’t going to do them, but just so’s you don’t go home empty-handed, Jethro lives where all blacksmiths live, right in the centre of the village overlooking the green. He lives with his old mum, so I wouldn’t disturb her at this time of night. And now, gents, I’d better shut the pub. Don’t want to break the law.’ The panel slid back, and there was the sound of a bolt slotting into place. A moment later, to the time-honoured cry of ‘Ain’t you lot got no homes to go to?’, they heard the front door open and the lane filled with men trying to get their brains to go in the direction of their feet, or vice versa. In the shadows of the pub’s back yard, which smelled of old barrels, Willikins said, ‘Would you like to take a bet on whether your blacksmith is tucked up in his bed tonight, sir?’ ‘No,’ said Vimes, ‘but this stinks to me. I think I’ve got a murder, but I haven’t got a corpse, not all of it anyway,’ he said, as Willikins opened his mouth. He grunted. ‘For it to be definitely murder, Willikins, you need to be missing an important bit of you that you really need to stay alive, like your head. Okay, or like your blood, but it’s difficult to collect that in the dark, isn’t it?’ They set off, and Vimes said, ‘The one thing you can say about the dead is that they stay dead, well, generally speaking, and so … it’s been a long day, and that’s a long walk and old age is creeping on, okay?’ ‘Not very noticeably from the outside, commander,’ said Willikins loyally. The door was opened to them by a yawning night footman and as soon as he had retired Willikins produced from the pocket of his coat the reeking and severed goblin claw and placed it on the hall table. ‘Not much to a goblin once you get past the head, or so they say. See, there’s the ring on the finger. Definitely looks like stone. See the little blue bead? Pretty good workmanship for a goblin.’ ‘Animals don’t wear jewellery,’ said Vimes. ‘You know, Willikins, I’ve said it before, you’d make a bloody good copper if it wasn’t for the fact that you’d make a bloody good assassin.’ Willikins grinned. ‘I did think about the assassins when I was a lad, sir, but unfortunately I was not of the right social class and, besides, they have rules.’ He helped Vimes out of his jacket and went on, ‘The street don’t have rules, commander, except one, which is “Survive”, and my dear old dad would probably turn in his grave if I even thought of being a copper.’ ‘But I thought you never knew who your father was?’ ‘Indeed, sir, that is the case, but one must consider the fact of heredity.’ Willikins produced a small brush and whisked a speck of dirt off the coat before putting it on a hanger, then went on, ‘I do feel the absence of a parent sometimes and I have wondered whether it might be a sensible idea to go along to the cemetery at Small Gods and shout out, “Dad, I’m going to be a copper,” and then see which gravestone revolved, sir.’ The man was still grinning. Vimes reflected, and not for the first time, that he had quite an unusual gentleman to be a gentleman’s gentleman, especially given that neither of them was a gentleman in the first place. ‘Willikins, and I mean this most sincerely, if I were you I’d go instead down to the Tanty and shout it out into the lime pit next to the gallows.’ Willikins’ grin widened. ‘Thank you, sir. I don’t have to tell you that that means a lot to me. If you would excuse me, sir, I’ll go and put my jacket in the incinerator before retiring.’ Sybil turned over and made a big warm noise when Vimes got into bed next to her. It had been a long day, and he dropped into that pink semi-conscious stupor that is even better than sleep, waking up slightly every hour when nobody rang a bell in the street below to say that all was well. And he woke up again to hear the sound of heavy cart wheels rumbling over stones. Half asleep as Vimes was, suspicion woke him the rest of the way. Stones? It was all bloody gravel around the Hall. He opened a window and stared out into the moonlight. It was an echo bouncing off the hills. A few brain cells doing the night shift wondered what kind of agriculture had to be done at night. Did they grow mushrooms? Did turnips have to be brought in from the cold? Was that what they called crop rotation? These thoughts melted into his somnolent brain like little grains of sugar in a cup of tea, slithering and dripping from cell to synapse to neuro-transmitter until they arrived in the receptor marked ‘suspicion’, which if you saw a medical diagram of a policeman’s brain would probably be quite a visible lump, slightly larger than the lump marked ‘ability to understand long words’. He thought, Ah yes, contraband! and, feeling cheerful, and hopeful for the future, he gently closed the window and went back to bed. The food at the Hall was copious and sumptuous and quite probably very nearly everything else ending in us. Vimes was old enough to know that the senior staff got to eat the leftovers and therefore made certain there would be leftovers. With this in mind he had a very large helping of haddock kedgeree and ate all four rashers of bacon on his plate. Sybil tut-tutted about this, and Vimes pointed out that he was on holiday, after all, and on holiday you did not do the things you did on other days, causing Sybil, with forensic accuracy, to point out that this should therefore include police work, should it not, but Vimes was ready, and said that of course he understood this, which was why he was going to take Young Sam for a walk down to the centre of the village to put his suspicions in the hands of the local policeman. Sybil said, ‘All right, then,’ in deliberate tones of disbelief, and he was to be sure to take Willikins with him. This was another aspect of his wife that puzzled Vimes to the core. In the same way that Sybil thought that Nobby Nobbs, although a rough diamond, was a good watchman, she thought that Vimes was safer in the company of a man who never moved abroad without the weaponry of the street about his person, and who had once opened a beer bottle with somebody else’s teeth. This was true, but in some ways very disconcerting. He heard the doorbell ring, heard the footman open the front door, heard a muffled conversation followed by somebody walking on the gravel path round to the back of the Hall. It wasn’t important, it was just ambience, and the sound of a footman coming into the room and whispering to Sybil fell into the same category. He heard her say, ‘What? Oh well, I suppose you’d better show him in,’ then snapped to attention when she addressed him. ‘It’s the local policeman. Can you see him in the study? Policemen never wipe their feet properly, especially you, Sam.’ Vimes hadn’t seen the study yet. The Hall seemed never to run out of rooms. By dint of being pointed the way by a swivelling maid, he arrived in the study a few seconds before the local copper was shown in by a footman, who was making a face like a man having to handle a dead rat. At least, it was presumably the local copper; he looked like the local copper’s son. Seventeen years old, Vimes reckoned, and he smelled of pigs. He stood where the footman had deposited him, and stared. After a while Vimes said, ‘Can I help you, officer?’ The young man blinked. ‘Er, am I addressing Sir Samuel Vimes?’ ‘Who are you?’ This query appeared to take the young man by surprise, and after a while Vimes took pity on him and said, ‘Look, son, the correct drill is to say who you are and then ask me if I am me, so to speak. After all, I don’t know who you are. You’re not wearing a uniform I recognize, you have shown me no warrant card or badge and you don’t have a helmet. I assume, nevertheless, and for the purposes of concluding this interview before lunchtime, that you are the chief constable in this vicinity? What’s your name?’ ‘Er, Upshot, sir, Feeney Upshot … er, Chief Constable Upshot?’ Vimes felt ashamed of himself, but this kid was representing himself as a police officer and even Nobby Nobbs would have laughed. Aloud, he said, ‘Well, Chief Constable Upshot, I am Sir Samuel Vimes, amongst other things, and I was thinking only just now that I should talk to you.’ ‘Er, that’s good, sir, because I was thinking only just now that it was about time I should arrest you on suspicion of causing the death of Jethro Jefferson, the smith.’ Vimes’s expression did not change. So, what do I do now? Nothing, that’s what. You have the right to remain silent, I’ve said that to hundreds of people, knowing it for the rubbish that it is, and I’m absolutely certain of one other thing, that I certainly haven’t laid anything more than an educational hand on that damned blacksmith and therefore it’s going to be very interesting to find out why this little twerp thinks he can feel my collar for doing so. A copper should always be willing to learn, and Vimes had learned from Lord Vetinari that you should never react to any comment or situation until you had decided exactly what you were going to do. This had the dual attraction of preventing you from saying or doing the wrong thing while at the same time making other people extremely nervous. ‘Sorry about that, sir, but it took me an hour to get the pigs out and make the lock-up comfortable, sir, it still smells a bit of disinfectant, sir, and pig, if it comes to that, but I whitewashed the walls and there’s a chair and a bed you can curl up on. Oh, and so you don’t get bored I found the magazine.’ He looked hopefully at Vimes, whose expression had not changed, merely calcified, but after a suitably long stare Vimes said, ‘Which magazine?’ ‘Sir? I didn’t know there was more than one. We’ve always had it. It’s about pigs. It’s a bit worn now, but pigs is always pigs.’ Vimes stood up. ‘I’m going to go for a walk, chief constable. You can follow me if you like.’ ‘Sorry, sir, but I’ve arrested you!’ ‘No, son, you haven’t,’ said Vimes, heading towards the front door. ‘But I definitely told you that you were arrested, sir!’ It was almost a wail. Vimes opened the front door and started down the steps with Feeney trotting along behind him. A couple of gardeners who would otherwise have turned away leaned on their brooms at the sight, suspecting a cabaret. ‘What in the world have you got on you that tells me you are an official policeman?’ enquired Vimes over his shoulder. ‘I have the official truncheon, sir. It’s a family heirloom!’ Sam Vimes stopped walking and turned. ‘Well, my lad, if it’s official then you’d better let me look at it, hadn’t you? Come on, hand it over.’ Feeney did so. It was just an oversized blackjack, with the word ‘law’ inexpertly burnt into it with maybe a poker. Good weight, though. Vimes tapped it in his palm and said, ‘You’ve given me to understand that you believe that I’m potentially a murderer and you’ve handed your weapon to me! Don’t you think that’s unwise?’ Vimes saw the landscape drift past as he floated over the terrace and landed on his back in a flower bed, staring at the sky. Feeney’s concerned face, somewhat overlarge, appeared in his vision. ‘Sorry about that, commander. Personally I wouldn’t hurt you for anything, but I didn’t want to give you the wrong impression. That move translates as One Man He Up Down Very Sorry.’ Vimes watched the patch of sky above him in a state of inexplicable peace as the boy said, ‘You see, my granddad worked on the tall ships when he was a lad, sailing over to Bhangbhangduc and all them places where folk is so strange, and when he came back he brought my granny, Ming Chang, and she taught that to my dad and to me.’ He sniffed. ‘She died a few months ago, but at least she taught my mum cookery, too. Bung Ming Suck Dog is still a favourite in these parts and, of course, it’s not too difficult to get the ingredients, being so close to the sea. Bong Can Bang Keng doesn’t grow very well around here, although Packed Shop Chop Muck Dick grows pretty well. Oh, the colour is coming back to your face, sir, I’m very pleased to say.’ Aching at every joint, Vimes pulled himself upright. ‘Don’t do that again, d’you hear?’ ‘I’ll try not to do so, sir, but you are under arrest, sir.’ ‘I told you, young man, you have not properly arrested me.’ Vimes got to his feet, wheezing a little. ‘In order to effect a legal arrest, the arresting officer must be physically touching the suspect while clearly uttering the words “I arrest you”, like this, although at that time you need not specify the crime of which your suspect is suspected. While so doing …’ and here Vimes punched the boy so hard in the solar plexus that he curled up, ‘… it pays to take care, which you are going to need to do, my lad, if you intend to arrest me, which I may point out you still have not done, which is a shame because if you had you would now have a clear case against me for resisting arrest as well as assaulting a policeman in the execution of his duty. With the proviso that nothing about you so far leads me to believe that you truly are a policeman.’ Vimes sat down on a handy stone and watched as Feeney began to unfold. ‘I’m Sam Vimes, young man, so don’t try that chop sally stuff on me, understand?’ Now Feeney’s voice was a sort of attenuated wheeze: ‘And one day someone will say to you, “Do you know who I am, constable?” to which you will reply, “Yes, sir, or, as it may be, madam, you are the person I am interviewing in connection with the aforesaid crime,” or similar appropriate wording, which should not include such phrases as “You are going down, chummy” or “I’ve got you bang to rights and no mistake”. Ignore, but remember, all threats made. The law is one and immutable. It does not care who anybody is and at that moment you, in a very real way, are it, and therefore nor do you.’ Vimes sat with his mouth open as Feeney continued. ‘We don’t often get the Times over here, but I bought a load of pig medicine a year ago and it was wrapped in the Times and I saw your name when you spoke about being a policeman. It made me feel very proud, sir.’ Vimes remembered that speech. He’d had to write it for the passing-out parade of some newly trained officers from the Watch School. He had spent hours trying to get it down, hampered by the fact that for him any form of literature was in every sense a closed book. He had shown it to Sybil and asked her whether she thought he should get somebody to help him with it, and she had patted him on the head and said, ‘No, dear, because then it would look like something written by somebody for somebody else, whereas right now the pure Vimes shows through, like a radiant beacon.’ That had quite cheered him up, because he had never been a radiant beacon before. But now his heart sank as his train of thought was interrupted by a very polite cough and the voice of Willikins, who said, ‘Excuse me, commander, I thought it right at this time to introduce the young gentleman to my friends Mister Burleigh and Mister Stronginthearm. Lady Sybil would not be happy to see you arrested, commander. I fear that you would find her a bit … acerbic, sir.’ Vimes found his voice. ‘You’re a bloody fool, man! Put that damn thing down! You keep it on a hair trigger! Put it down right now!’ Willikins wordlessly set down the shining crossbow on the parapet of the staircase like a mother putting her baby to bed. There was a twang, and seventeen yards away a geranium was decapitated. This passed without notice, except by the geranium and a raggedy figure hiding in the rhododendrons, that said ‘Snack!’ to itself, but resolutely carried on staring at Vimes. The tableau of shock on the steps was interrupted by Lady Sybil, who could walk very quietly for a large woman. ‘Gentlemen, what is going on here?’ ‘This young man, allegedly the local policeman, wishes to take me into custody on a charge of suspicion of murder, my dear.’ There passed between husband and wife a look that deserved the status of telepathy. Sybil stared at Feeney. ‘Ah, you would be young Upshot, I suppose. I was sorry to hear about the death of your father, and I do trust that your mother continues well. I used to visit her when I was a girl. And you want to arrest my husband, do you?’ Feeney, goggle-eyed, managed an unprofessional ‘Yes, ma’am’. Sybil sighed and said sternly, ‘Well, then, can I hope that at least this can be done without further vegetable carnage?’ She looked at Vimes. ‘Is he taking you to prison?’ She turned her attention back to Feeney, a man now confronted by a cannon loaded with a thousand years of upper-class self-assurance. ‘He’ll need fresh clothing, constable. If you tell me where you’re taking him, and you will tell me where you’re taking him, I’ll personally bring down suitable garments. Will I need to sew the stripes on them, or does that happen automatically? And I would be grateful if you had him back here by teatime, because we’re expecting visitors.’ Lady Sybil took a step forward and Feeney took a step backwards to escape the wrath of the impending bosom. She said, ‘May I wish you the best of luck in your undertaking, young man. You’ll need it. Now please excuse me. I have to go and talk to the cook.’ She swept away, leaving the incredulous Feeney staring after her. Then the doors that had just closed behind her opened again, and she said, ‘Are you still a bachelor, young man?’ Feeney managed a ‘Yes’. ‘Then you are invited to tea,’ she said cheerfully. ‘There are some very eligible young ladies coming, and I’m sure that they will be most excited to see a young man who is prepared to dance on the very edge of hell. Do wear your helmet, Sam, in case there is any police brutality. Willikins, come with me. I want to have a talk to you!’ Vimes let the silence curdle. After too much of it, Feeney said, ‘Your wife is a very remarkable woman, sir.’ Vimes nodded. ‘You have no idea. What do you want to do now, chief constable?’ The boy hesitated. That was Sybil for you. Just by speaking calmly and confidently she could leave you believing that the world had turned upside down and dropped on to your head. ‘Well, sir, I believe I must take you before the magistrates?’ Vimes noted the little question mark. ‘Who is your boss, Feeney?’ ‘The aforesaid bench of magistrates, sir.’ Vimes began to walk down the steps, and Feeney hurried after him. Vimes waited until the boy was racing, and then stopped dead so that Feeney ran into him. ‘Your boss is the law, chief constable, and don’t you forget it. In fact, one of the jobs of the magistrates is to make certain that you do not! Did you ever take an oath? What did it say? Who was it to?’ ‘Oh, I remember that all right, sir. It was to the bench of magistrates, sir.’ ‘It … was … what? You made an oath to obey the magistrates? They can’t make you do that!’ He stopped. Remember, in the country there is always somebody watching you, he thought, and probably listening too. Feeney looked shocked, so Vimes said, ‘Get me down to your lock-up, kid, and lock me in. And while you’re about it, lock yourself in with me. Don’t rush, don’t ask questions, and keep your voice down, apart from possibly saying things like “I have you bang to rights, you miscreant”, and other rubbish of that general nature, because, young man, I believe somebody is in real difficulties here and I believe that person is you. If you have any sense, you’ll keep quiet and take me to your lock-up, okay?’ Eyes wide, Feeney nodded. It was a pleasant walk down to the lock-up, which turned out to be on a small quay by the river. The area had all the semi-nautical detritus that a man might expect and there was a swing bridge, presumably to allow the bigger boats to pass. The sun shone and nothing was happening, in a slow sort of way. And then there was the much spoken of lock-up. It looked like a giant pepperpot built of stone. A flowering creeper grew up it, and, next to the door and restrained by a chain, there was an enormous pig. When it saw their approach it got on its hind legs, and, tottering somewhat, begged. ‘This is Masher,’ said Feeney. ‘His father was a wild boar, his mother was surprised. See those fangs? No one gives me much trouble when I threaten to let Masher off his lead, do they, Masher?’ He disappeared behind the lock-up and returned immediately with a bucket of swill, into which Masher tried to bury himself, with hugely contented noises – as huge, in fact, as his fangs. Vimes was staring at them when a friendly-looking woman wearing an apron bustled out of a thatched cottage, stopped when she saw Vimes and dropped a curtsy. She looked hopefully at Feeney. ‘Who would this fine gentleman be, son?’ ‘It’s Commander Vimes, Mum … You know, the duke.’ There was a pause while the woman clearly wished that she had been wearing a better dress, hairdo, and shoes, and had cleaned the privy, the kitchen, the scullery, and had tidied up the garden, painted the front door and cleaned the inside of the roof. Vimes prevented her spin from making a hole in the ground by holding out his hand and saying, ‘Sam Vimes, madam, pleased to make your acquaintance,’ but this only caused her to run indoors in a panic. ‘My mum is very keen on the aristocracy,’ Feeney confided as he unlocked the door of the lock-up with an unfeasibly large key. ‘Why?’ said Vimes, mystified. It was reasonably comfortable in the lock-up. Granted, the pigs had left a fragrant memory behind them, but for a boy from Ankh-Morpork this counted as fresh air. Feeney sat down beside him on a well-scrubbed bench. ‘Well, sir, when my granddad was young, Lord Ramkin gave him a whole half-dollar for opening a gate, just to let the hunt go by. According to my dad, he said, “No canting hypocrite going on about the rights of man ever gave me as much as a quarter-farthing so I say here’s to Lord Ramkin, who gave me a whole half-dollar when he was as pissed as a fart, and never asked for it back when he were sober. That’s what I call a gentleman.”’ Vimes squirmed inside, knowing that the supposedly generous old drunkard would have had more money than you could ever imagine, and here was a working man pathetically grateful for a handout from the old piss-artist. He snarled in his soul to a man long dead. But the part of him that had been married to Sybil for years whispered, But he didn’t have to give the man anything, and in those days a whole half-dollar was probably more money than the old man could imagine! Once Sybil, in one of their very infrequent arguments, had surprised him by blurting out, ‘Well, Sam, my family got its start in life, its grub stake if you like, by piracy. You should like that, Sam! Good honest manual labour! And look what it led to! The trouble with you, Sam Vimes, is that you’re determined to be your very own class enemy.’ ‘Is there something wrong, commander?’ said Feeney. ‘Everything,’ said Vimes. ‘For one thing, no policeman swears allegiance to the civil power, he swears allegiance to the law. Oh, politicians can change the law, and if the copper doesn’t like it then he can quit, but while he is in the job it’s up to him to act in accordance with the law as laid down.’ He leaned his back against the stone wall. ‘You do not swear to obey magistrates! I’d like to see what it was that you signed—’ Vimes stopped talking because the little metal plate in the lock-up door slid open to reveal Feeney’s mother, looking very nervous. ‘I’ve made Bang Suck Duck, Feeney, with swede and chips, and there’s enough for the duke as well, if he would be so condescending as to accept it?’ Vimes leaned forward and whispered, ‘Does she know you’ve arrested me?’ Feeney shuddered. ‘No, and, sir, please, please don’t tell her, because I think she’d never let me into the house ever again.’ Vimes walked over to the door and said to the slot, ‘I shall be honoured by your hospitality, Mistress Upshot.’ There was a nervous giggle from the other side of the slot, and Feeney’s mother managed to say, ‘I’m sorry to say we have no silver plates, your highness!’ At home Vimes and Sybil ate off serviceable earthenware, cheap, practical and easy to keep clean. He said aloud, ‘I’m sorry you don’t have any silver plates, too, Mistress Upshot, and I’ll have a set sent to you directly.’ There was something like a scuffle from the other side of the slot, at the same time as Feeney said, ‘I beg your pardon? Have you gone mad, sir?’ Well, that would help, Vimes thought. ‘We’ve got hundreds of damn silver plates up at the Hall, my lad. Bloody useless, they make the food cold and they turn black as soon as your back is turned. We appear to be overrun with spoons, too. I’ll see what we’ve got.’ ‘You can’t do that, sir! She gets scared of having valuables in the house!’ ‘Do you have much theft hereabouts, chief constable?’ said Vimes, emphasizing the last two words. Feeney opened the door of the lock-up and picked up his mother, who had apparently been stunned by the possibility of owning silver plates, brushed her down and said over her shoulder, ‘No, sir, the reason being no one has anything to steal. My mum always told me money can’t buy you happiness, sir.’ Yes, Vimes thought, so did my ma, but she was glad enough when I gave her my first wages, because it meant we could have a meal with meat in it, even if we didn’t know what kind of meat it was. That’s happiness, isn’t it? Blimey, the lies we tell ourselves … When a blushing Mistress Upshot had gone to fetch the meal, Vimes said, ‘Between ourselves, chief constable, do you believe that I’m guilty of murder?’ ‘No, sir!’ said Feeney instantly. ‘You said that very quickly, young man. Are you going to say that it’s copper’s instinct? Because I get the impression you ain’t been a copper long and haven’t had much to do. I’m no expert, but I don’t reckon pigs try lying to you very much either.’ Feeney took a deep breath. ‘Well, sir,’ he said calmly, ‘my granddad was a wily old bird and he could read people like books. He used to walk me around the area introducing me to people, sir, and then as they strolled along he’d tell me their stories, like the one about the man who’d been caught in flagrante delicto with a common barnyard fowl …’ Vimes listened open-mouthed as the pink, well-scrubbed face talked about the gentle, fragrant landscape as if it was populated by devils from the most invidious pit. He unrolled a crime sheet that badly needed the laundry: no major murders, just nastiness, silliness and all the crimes of human ignorance and stupidity. Of course, where there were people there was crime. It just seemed out of place in the slow world of big spaces and singing birds. And yet he’d smelled it as soon as he was here and now he was in the middle of it. ‘You get a tingle,’ said Feeney. ‘That’s what my dad told me. He said watch, listen and keep your eye on every man. There never was a good policeman who didn’t have a slice of villain somewhere in him, and this will call to you. It will say “This man has something to hide”, or “This man is far more frightened than he should be” or “This man is acting too cocky by half because underneath he’s a bag of nerves”. It will call to you.’ Vimes opted for admiration rather than shock, but not too much admiration. ‘Well, Mister Feeney, I reckon your grandfather and your dad got it right. So I’m sending the right signals, am I?’ ‘No, sir, none at all, sir. My granddad and my dad could go like that sometimes. Totally blank. It makes people nervous.’ Feeney cocked his head on one side and said, ‘Just a moment, sir, I think we have a little problem …’ The door to the lock-up clanged open as Chief Constable Upshot skidded around to the rear of the squat little building. Something yelped and squealed and then Vimes, sitting peacefully inside, suddenly had goblins on his lap. In fact it was only one goblin, but one goblin is more than sufficient at close quarters. There was the smell, to begin with, and not to end with either, because it appeared to permeate the world. Yet it wasn’t the stink – although heavens knew that they stank with all the stinks an organic creature could generate – no, anyone who walked the streets of Ankh-Morpork was more or less immune to stinks, and indeed there was now a flourishing, if that was the word, hobby of stink-collecting,13 and Dave, of Dave’s Pin and Stamp Emporium, was extending the sign over his shop again. You couldn’t bottle (or whatever it was the collectors did) the intrinsic smell of a goblin because it wasn’t so much a stink as a sensation, the sensation in fact that your dental enamel was evaporating and any armour you might have was rusting at some speed. Vimes punched at the thing but it hung on with arms and legs together, screaming in what was theoretically a voice, but sounded like a bag of walnuts being jumped on. And yet it wasn’t attacking – unless you considered the biological warfare. It clung with its legs and waved its arms, and Vimes just managed to stop Feeney braining it with his official truncheon, because, once you paid attention, the goblin was using words, and the words were: Ice! Ice! We want just ice! Demand! Demand just ice! Right? Just ice! Feeney, on the other hand, was shouting, ‘Stinky, you little devil, I told you what I’d do to you if ever I saw you stealing the pigswill again!’ He looked at Vimes as if for support. ‘They can give you horrible diseases, sir!’ ‘Will you stop dancing around with that damn weapon, boy!’ Vimes looked down at the goblin now struggling in his grasp, and said, ‘As for you, you little bugger, stop your racket!’ The little room went silent, apart from the dying strains of ‘They eat their own babies!’ from Feeney and ‘Just ice!’ from the goblin, simply and accurately named as ‘Stinky’. Not panicking now, the goblin pointed a claw at Vimes’s left wrist, looked him in the face, and said, ‘Just ice?’ It was a plea. The claw tugged at his leg. ‘Just ice?’ The creature hobbled to the door and looked up at the glowering chief constable and then turned to Vimes with an expression that bored into the man’s face and said very deliberately, ‘Just ice? Mister Po-leess-maan?’ Vimes pulled out his snuffbox. You could say this for the brown stuff: all that ceremony you went through before you took a pinch gave you rather more thinking time than lighting a cigar. It also got people’s attention. He said, ‘Well now, chief constable, here is somebody asking you for justice. What are you going to do about it?’ Feeney looked uncertain, and took refuge in a certainty. ‘It’s a stinking goblin!’ ‘Do you often see them around the lock-up?’ said Vimes, keeping his tone mild. ‘Only Stinky,’ said Feeney, glowering at the goblin, who stuck out his worm-like tongue. ‘He’s always hanging around. The rest of them know what happens if they’re caught thieving around here!’ Vimes glanced down at the goblin and recognized a badly set broken leg when he saw one. He turned the snuffbox over and over in his hands, and did not look at the young man. ‘But surely a policeman wonders what has happened for a wretched thing like this to walk right up to the law and risk being maimed … again?’ It was a leap in the dark, but, hell, he had leapt so often that the dark was a trampoline. His arm itched. He tried to ignore it, but just for a moment there was a dripping cave in front of him, and no other thought except of terrible endless vengeance. He blinked and the goblin was tugging at his sleeve again and Feeney was getting angry. ‘I didn’t do that! I didn’t see it done!’ ‘But you know it happens, yes?’ And again Vimes remembered the darkness and the thirst for vengeance, in fact vengeance itself made sapient and hungry. And the little bugger had touched him on that arm. It all came back, and he wished that it hadn’t, because while all coppers must have a bit of villain in them, no copper should walk around with a piece of demon as a tattoo. Feeney had lost his anger now, because he was frightened. ‘Bishop Scour says they’re demonic and insolent creations made as a mockery of mankind,’ he said. ‘I don’t know about any bishops,’ said Vimes, ‘but something is going on here and I can feel the tingle, felt it on the day I came here, and it’s tingling on my land. Listen to me, chief constable. When you apprehend the suspect you should take the trouble to ask them if they did it, and if they say no you must ask them if they can prove their innocence. Got it? You’re supposed to ask. Understand? And my answers are, in order, hell no and hell yes!’ The little clawed hand scratched at Vimes’s shirt again. ‘Just ice?’ Vimes thought, Oh well, I thought I’d been gentle with the lad up until now. ‘Chief constable, something is wrong, and you know that something is wrong, and you are all alone, so you’d better enlist the help of anyone you know that can be trusted. Such as me, for example, in which case I’ll be the suspect who, having been bailed on my own recognizance of one penny,’ and here Vimes handed a partly corroded small copper disc to the astonished Feeney, ‘has been requested to help you with your inquiries, such as they are, and that will be all fine and dandy and in accordance with the standard work on police procedure, which, my lad, was written by me, and you had better believe it. I’m not the law, no policeman is the law. A policeman is just a man, but when he wakes up in the morning it is the law that is his alarm clock. I’ve been nice and kind to you up until now, but did you really think I was going to be spending the night in a pig pen? Time to be a real copper, lad. Do the right thing and fudge the paperwork afterwards, like I do.’ Vimes looked down at the persistent little goblin. ‘Okay, Stinky, lead the way.’ ‘But my old mum is just coming out with your dinner, commander!’ Feeney’s voice was a wail, and Vimes hesitated. It didn’t do to upset an old mum. It was time to let the duke out. Vimes never normally bowed to anybody, but he bowed to Mistress Upshot, who almost dropped her tray in ecstatic confusion. ‘I am mortified, my dear Mistress Upshot, to have to ask you to keep your Man Dog Suck Po warm for us for a little while, because your son here, a credit to his uniform and to his parents, has asked me to assist him in an errand of considerable importance, which can only be entrusted to a young man with integrity, as your lad here.’ As the woman very nearly melted in pride and happiness Vimes pulled the young man away. ‘Sir, the dish was Bang Suck Duck. We only have Man Dog Suck Po on Sundays. With mashed carrots.’ Vimes turned back and shook Mrs Upshot warmly by the hand, and said, ‘I look forward to tasting it later, my dear Mistress Upshot, but if you’ll excuse me, your son is a stickler for his police work, as I’m sure you know.’ Colonel Charles Augustus Makepeace had long ago, with the expertise of a lifelong strategist, decided to let Letitia have her way in all things. It saved so much trouble and left him able to potter around in his garden, take care of his dragons and occasionally go trout fishing, a pastime that he loved. He rented half a mile of stream, but was sadly now finding it difficult to keep running fast enough. Nowadays he spent a lot of time in his library, working on the second volume of his memoirs, keeping from under his wife’s feet and not getting involved. Until this moment he had been quite happy that she had the role of chairman of the magistrates because it kept her away from home for hours at a time. He had never been very much of a one for thinking in terms of good or bad and guilty or not guilty. He had learned to think in terms of us and them and dead and not dead. And therefore he wasn’t exactly listening to the group sitting around the long table at the other end of the library, talking in worried voices, but nevertheless he couldn’t help overhearing. She had signed that damned document! He ought to have tried to talk her out of it, but he knew where that would have ended. Commander Vimes! Okay, by all accounts the man was the sort to rush in, and maybe he did have a scrap with what’shisname the blacksmith, who wasn’t too bad a cove in his way, bit of a hot-head of course but he’d made a damn good dragon prod only the other day at quite a reasonable price. Vimes? Not a killer, surely. That’s one thing you learned in the military. You don’t last long if you’re a killer. Killing as duty called was another thing entirely. Letitia had listened to that unspeakable lawyer and they had all agreed that it be signed simply because that wretched Rust fella wanted it. He opened this month’s edition of Fang and Fire. Occasionally somebody lowered their voice, which you couldn’t help thinking was damn insulting, given that they were sitting in a chap’s library and especially when the chap hadn’t been consulted. But he didn’t protest. He had long ago learned not to protest, and so he kept his eyes focused on the pullout feature on flame-retardant incubators, holding it in front of him as if to ward off evil. However, among the words he didn’t hear were, ‘Of course, he only married her for her money, you know.’ That was his wife’s voice. Then, ‘I heard she was desperate to find a husband.’ The curiously sharp tone of that voice identified its owner as Miss Pickings, who, the colonel couldn’t help noting, as he stared grimly at a full-page advertisement for asbestos kennels, had clearly been in no hurry to find a husband herself. The colonel was, by inclination, a live-and-let-live personality and, frankly, if a gel wanted to go around with another gel who wore a shirt and tie, trained horses and had a face like a bulldog licking vinegar off a thistle, then it was entirely her business. After all, he told himself, what about old ‘Beefy’ Jackson, eh? Wore a dress every night in the mess and rather flowery aftershave for a chap, but when the call to arms came he could fight like a bloody demon. Funny old world. He tried to find his place on the page again, but was interrupted by the Very Reverend Mouser. He never could get on with padres, couldn’t see the point. ‘I find it very suspicious that the Ramkin family have turned up here after so many years, don’t you? I keep reading about Vimes in the newspaper, not the kind of person you can imagine as simply taking a holiday.’ ‘According to Gravid, he is known as Vetinari’s terrier,’ said Letitia. At the other end of the room her husband thrust his head even deeper into his magazine so as not to snigger. Gravid! Who would call their child Gravid? No one who had ever kept dragons or fish, that was certain. Of course, there was such a thing as a dictionary, but then the old Lord Rust had never been the kind of man to open a book if he could help it. The colonel tried to contemplate an article on the treatment of Zig-Zag Throat in older males and the wife of his heart continued, ‘Well, we don’t want any of Vetinari’s nonsense here. Apparently, his lordship rather enjoys allowing Vimes to break wind in the halls of the mighty. Apparently, Vimes is no respecter of rank. Indeed, quite the reverse. And indeed, it would seem that he is prepared to ambush a decent working man.’ Funny, thought the colonel, first time I ever heard her call the smith anything other than a blasted nuisance. It seemed to him that the gossip around the table was trite, artificial, like the conversation of raw recruits on the eve of their first battle. He thought, There’s a warrant out for Commander Vimes, hero of Koom Valley (bloody good show! Wonderful execution. Peace in our time between brother troll and brother dwarf and that sort of thing. Just the job! I’ve seen too much killing in my time), and now you are going to put him out of a job and a reputation, just because that greasy lad with a name like a pregnant frog has charmed you into doing so. ‘I understand he has a very violent nature,’ said, oh, what was his name? Bit of a bad hat in the colonel’s opinion. Bought a big villa up near Overhang, one of Rust’s cronies. Never seemed to do any work. What was his name, ah yes, Edgehill, not a man that you would trust behind you or in front of you, but they’d sworn him in even so. ‘And he was just a street kid and a drunkard!’ said Letitia. ‘What do you think of that?’ The colonel paid careful attention to his magazine while his unspoken thoughts said, Sounds jolly good to me, my dear. All I got when I married you was the promise of a half-share in your dad’s fish and chip shop when I left the service, and I never even got that. ‘Everybody knows that his ancestor killed a king, so I can’t imagine a Vimes would jib at killing a blacksmith,’ said the Honourable Ambrose. Bit of a mystery, this one. Something to do with shipping. Sent out from the city to lie low here because of something to do with a girl. And the colonel, who spent a lot of time thinking,14 had some time ago wondered to himself how, in these modern days, you got banished from the city because of a girl, and instinct had told him that possibly it had something to do with the age of the girl. After incubating that thought for a while, the colonel had written to his old chum ‘Jankers’ Robinson, who always knew a thing or two about this and that and one thing and another and was now some political wallah in the palace. He had made an enquiry, as one might, of his friend whom he had once dragged to safety over the pommel of his saddle before a Klatchian scimitar got him, and had received a little note with nothing more than ‘Yes indeed, under-age, hushed up at great expense’, and after that the colonel had taken great care never to shake the bastard’s hand again. Blithely unaware of the thoughts of the colonel, the Honourable Ambrose, who always seemed to be slightly bigger than his clothes – said clothes being of a fashion more suited to somebody twenty years his junior – sneered, ‘Frankly, I think we’re doing the world a service. They say that he favours dwarfs and all kinds of low-life. You might expect anything of a man like that!’ Yes, you might, thought the colonel. And Miss Pickings said, ‘But we haven’t done anything wrong … Have we?’ The colonel turned a page and smoothed it down with military exactitude. He thought, Well, you all condone smuggling when the right people are doing it because they’re chums, and when they aren’t they’re heavily fined. You apply one law for the poor and none for the rich, my dear, because the poor are such a nuisance. He felt eyes suddenly upon him because marital telepathy is a terrible thing. His wife said, ‘It doesn’t do any harm, everybody does it.’ Her head swung round again as her husband turned the page, his eyes fixedly on the type as he thought, as noiselessly as his brain could contrive: and of course there was the … incident, a few years ago. Not good, that. Not good. Not good when little babies of any sort are taken away from mothers. Not good at all. And you all know it and it worries you, and well it should. The room was silent for a moment and then Mrs Colonel continued. ‘There will not be any problems. Young Lord Rust has promised me. We have rights, after all.’ ‘I blame that wretched blacksmith,’ said Miss Pickings. ‘He keeps bringing it back into people’s memories, him and that damn writing woman.’ Mrs Colonel bridled at this. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about, Miss Pickings. Legally nothing wrong has happened here.’ Her head swivelled towards her husband. ‘Are you all right, dear?’ she demanded. For a moment he looked as though he wasn’t and then the colonel said, ‘Oh, yes, dear. Right as rain. Right as rain.’ But his thoughts continued: you have partaken in what is, I strongly suggest, a cynical attempt to ruin the career of a very good man. ‘I heard you coughing.’ It sounded like an accusation. ‘Oh, just a bit of dust or something, dear, right as rain. Right as rain.’ And then he slammed his magazine on to the table. Standing up, he said, ‘When I was nothing but a subaltern, dear, one of the first things I learned was that you never give away your position by frantic firing. I think I know the type of your Commander Vimes. Young Lord Rust may be safe, with his money and contacts, but I doubt very much that you all will be. Who knows what would have happened if you hadn’t been so hasty? What’s a bit of smuggling? You’ve just pulled the dragon’s tail and made him angry!’ When his wife regained control of her tongue, she said, ‘How dare you, Charles!’ ‘Oh, quite easily, as it turns out, dear,’ said the colonel, smiling happily. ‘A bit of smuggling might be considered a peccadillo, but not when you’re supposed to be upholding the law. It baffles me that none of you seems to realize that. If you have any sense, ladies and gentlemen, you will explain that whole unfortunate goblin event to his grace right now. After all, your chum Gravid organized it. The only little problem is that you allowed him to do it, as I recall, without so much as a murmur.’ ‘But it was not illegal,’ said his wife icily. Her husband didn’t move, but in some ineffable sense he was suddenly taller. ‘I think things got a bit tangled: you see, you thought about things as being legal or illegal. Well, I’m just a soldier and never was a very good one, but it’s my opinion you were so worried about legal and illegal that you never stopped to think about whether it was right or wrong. And now, if you will excuse me, I’m going down to the pub.’ Automatically, his wife said, ‘No, dear, you know drink doesn’t agree with you.’ The colonel was all smiles. ‘This evening I intend to settle my differences with drink and make it my friend.’ The rest of the magistrates looked at Mrs Colonel, who glared at her husband. ‘I’ll talk to you about this later, Charles,’ she growled. To her surprise, his smile did not change. ‘Yes, dear, I suspect you will, but I think you’ll find that I won’t be listening. Good evening to you all.’ There was a click as the door shut behind him. There should have been a slam, but some doors never quite understand the situation. The goblin was already moving quite fast with a dot-and-carry-one gait that was deceptively speedy. Vimes was surprised to find that Feeney made heavy weather of the little jog towards – he was not surprised – Hangman’s Hill. He could hear the boy wheezing slightly. Perhaps you didn’t need to be all that fast to overtake a wayward pig, but you needed to be very fast indeed to catch up with a young troll blizzarded to the eyeballs with Slice and you needed lots of stamina to overtake him and slap the cuffs on him before he came down enough to try to twist your head off. Policing was obviously very different in the country. In the country, there is always somebody watching you, he thought as they sped along. Well, there was always somebody watching you in the city, too, but that was generally in the hope that you might drop dead and they could run off with your wallet. They were never interested. But here he thought he could feel many eyes on him. Maybe they belonged to squirrels or badgers, or whatever the damn things were that Vimes heard at night-time; gorillas, possibly. He had no idea what he was going to see, but certainly didn’t expect to find the top of the hill bright with lines of rope, painted yellow. He gave it only a second’s glance, however. With their backs to one of the trees, and looking very apprehensive, were three goblins. One of them stood up, thus bringing its head and therefore its eyes to a level in the vicinity of Vimes’s groin, not a good position to find himself. It held up a wrinkled hand and said, ‘Vimes? Hang!’ Vimes stared down at it and then at Feeney. ‘What does he mean, “Hang”?’ ‘Never been quite sure,’ said Feeney. ‘Something like, have a nice day, I think, only in goblin.’ ‘Vimes!’ the old goblin continued. ‘It said be, you be Po-leess-maan. It be big po-leess-maan! If po-leess-maan, then just ice! But just ice it be no! And when dark inside dark! Dark moving! Dark must come, Vimes! Dark rises! Just ice!’ Vimes had no idea of the sex of the speaker, or even its age. Dress wasn’t a clue: goblins apparently wore anything that could be tied on. Its companions were watching him unblinkingly. They had stone axes, flint, vicious stuff, but it lost its edge after a couple of blows, which was no consolation when you were bleeding from the neck. He had heard that they were berserk fighters, too. Oh, and what was the other thing people said? Ah yes, whatever you do, don’t let them scratch you … ‘You want justice, do you? Justice for what?’ The goblin speaker stared at him and said, ‘Come with me, po-leess-maan,’ the words rolling out like a curse, or, at least, a threat. The speaker turned and began to walk solemnly down the far side of the hill. The other three goblins, including the one known to Vimes as Stinky, did not move. Feeney whispered, ‘This could be a trap, sir.’ Vimes rolled his eyes and sneered, ‘You think so, do you? I thought it was probably an invitation to a magical show featuring the Amazing Bonko and Doris and the Collapsing Unicycle Brothers with Fido the Cat. What’s this yellow rope all about, Mister Upshot?’ ‘Police cordon, sir. My mum knitted it for me.’ ‘Oh yes, I can see she’s managed to work the word PLICE in black in there several times, too.’ ‘Yes, sir, sorry about the spelling, sir,’ said Feeney, clearly spooked by the stares. He went on, ‘There was blood all over the ground, sir, so I scraped some into a clean jam jar, just in case.’ Vimes paid that no attention, because the two goblin guards had unfolded and were standing up. Stinky beckoned Vimes to walk ahead of them. Vimes shook his head, folded his arms and turned to Feeney. ‘Let me tell you what you thought, Mister Upshot. You acted on information received, didn’t you? And you heard that the blacksmith and I indulged in a bout of fisticuffs outside the pub yesterday, and that is true. No doubt you were also told that at some time later someone heard a conversation in which he arranged to meet me up at this place, yes? Don’t bother to answer, I can see it in your face – you haven’t quite got the copper’s deadpan yet. Has Mister Jefferson gone missing?’ Feeney gave up. ‘Yes, Mister Vimes.’ He didn’t deserve, or perhaps he did deserve, the force with which Vimes turned on him. ‘You will not call me Mister Vimes, lad, you ain’t earned the right. You call me “sir” or “commander”, or even “your grace” if you’re dumb enough to do so, understand? I could have sent the blacksmith home walking very strangely if I’d had a mind to do so yesterday. He’s a big man but no street hero. But I let him get the steam out of his tubes and calm down without losing face. Yes, he did say he wanted to meet me up here last night. When I came up here, with a witness, there was blood on the ground which I will warrant is goblin blood, and certainly no sign of any blacksmith. You had a bloody stupid case against me when you came up to my house and it’s still a bloody stupid case. Any questions?’ Feeney looked down at his feet. ‘No, sir, sorry, sir.’ ‘Good, I’m glad. Think of this as a training experience, my lad, and it won’t cost you a penny. Now, these goblins seem to want us to follow them and I intend to do so, and I also intend that you will come with me, understood?’ Vimes looked at Stinky and the two goblin guards. An axe was waved in a half-hearted sort of way, indicating that they should indeed be travelling. They set off and he could hear sorrowful Feeney trying to be brave, but broadcasting anxiety. ‘They’re not going to touch us, kid, first because if they had intended to do that they’d have done it already, and second, they want something from me.’ Feeney moved a little closer. ‘And what would that be, sir?’ ‘Justice,’ said Vimes. ‘And I think I have a premonition about what that is going to mean …’ Sometimes people asked Commander Vimes why Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobbs were still on the strength, such as it was, of the modern Ankh-Morpork City Watch, given that Nobby occasionally had to be held upside down and shaken to reclaim small items belonging to other people, while Fred Colon had actually cultivated the ability to walk his beat with his eyes closed, and end up, still snoring, back at Pseudopolis Yard, sometimes with graffiti on his breastplate. To Lord Vetinari, Commander Vimes had put forward three defences. The first was that both of them had an enviable knowledge of the city and its inhabitants, official and otherwise, that rivalled Vimes’s own. The second was the traditional urinary argument. It was better to have them inside pissing out than outside pissing in. It was at least easy to keep an eye on them. And not least, oh my word not least, they were lucky. Many a crime had been solved because of things that had fallen on them, tried to kill them, tripped one of them up, been found floating in their lunch, and in one case had tried to lay its eggs up Nobby’s nose. And so it was that, today, whatever god or other force it might be that regarded them as its playthings directed their steps to the corner of Cheapside and Rhyme Street, and the fragrant Emporium of Bewilderforce Gumption.15 Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobbs, as is the way with policemen, entered the building by the back door and were greeted by Mr Gumption with that happy but somewhat glassy smile with which a trader greets an old acquaintance who he knows will end up getting merchandise with a discount of one hundred per cent. ‘Why, Fred, how nice to see you again!’ he said, while awakening the mystic third eye developed by all small shopkeepers, especially those who see Nobby Nobbs coming into the shop. ‘We were patrolling in the area, Bewilderforce, and I thought I’d drop in to get my tobacco and see how you were managing, with all this fuss about the tax and everything?’ The sergeant had to speak up to be heard above the rumbling of the snuff mill, and the carts that were moving across the factory floor in a stream. Lines of women at tables were packing snuff and – here, he leaned sideways to get a better view – the cigarette production line was also a-bustle. Sergeant Colon looked around. Policemen always look, on the basis that there is always something to see. Of course, sometimes they may find it sensible to forget that they have seen anything, at least officially. Mr Gumption had a new tie pin, in which a diamond flashed. His shoes were also clearly new – bespoke, if Fred Colon was any judge – and a barely noticeable sniff suggested the wearing of, let’s see now, oh yes, Cedar Fragrance Pour Hommes, from Quirm at AM$15 a pop. He said, ‘How’s business doing? Is the new tax hitting you at all?’ Mr Gumption’s visage flew into the expression of a hardworking man sorely pressed by the machinations of politics and fate. He shook his head sadly. ‘We’re barely making ends meet, Fred. Lucky to break even at the end of the day.’ Oh, and a gold tooth, too, thought Sergeant Colon. I nearly missed that. Out loud he said, ‘I’m very sorry to hear that, Bewilderforce, I really am. Allow me to raise your profits by expending two dollars in the purchase of my usual three ounces of twist tobacco.’ Fred Colon proffered his wallet and Mr Gumption, with a scolding noise, waved it away. It was a ritual as old as merchants and policemen, and it allowed the world to keep on turning. He cut a length of tobacco from the coil on the marble counter, wrapped it quickly and expertly, and as an afterthought reached down and came up with a large cigar, which he handed to the sergeant. ‘Try one of these handsome smokes, Fred, just in, not local, made on the plantation for our valued customers. No no, my pleasure, I insist,’ he added, as Fred made grateful noises. ‘Always nice to see the Watch in here, you know that.’ Actually, Mr Gumption thought, as he watched the departing policemen, that was pretty mild: all that the Nobbs creature had done was stare around. ‘They must be coining it,’ said Nobby Nobbs as they ambled onwards. ‘Did you see the “staff wanted” note in their window? And he was writing out a list of prices on the counter. He’s lowering them! He must have a good deal going on with the plantation people, that’s all I can say.’ Sergeant Colon sniffed the big fat cigar, the fattest he had ever seen, which smelled so good it was probably illegal, and he felt the tingle, the feeling that he had walked into something that was a lot bigger than it seemed, the feeling that if you pulled a thread something large would unravel. He rolled the cigar between his fingers the way he had seen connoisseurs do. In truth, Sergeant Colon was, when it came to tobacco products, something of a bottom-feeder, cheapness being the overriding consideration, and the protocol of cigars was unfamiliar to a man who very much enjoyed a good length of chewing tobacco. What was the other thing he had seen posh types do? Oh yes, you had to roll it in your fingers and hold it up to your ear. He had no idea why this had to be done, but he did it anyway. And swore. And dropped it on the ground … The track from the top of Hangman’s Hill went beyond the trees and down, mostly through furze bushes and rocky outcrops, with the occasional patch of raw and useless soil, all substance eroded away. Wild land, wasteland, home to skinny rabbits, hopeless mice, the occasional concussed rat, and goblins. And there among the bushes was the entrance to a cave. A human would have to bend double to get into that fetid hole and would be an easy target. But Vimes knew, as he ducked through, that he was safe. He knew that. He had suspected it out in the daylight, and down in the darkness he knew. The knowledge was almost physical as wings of darkness spread over him, and he heard the sounds of the cave, every sound. He suddenly knew the cave, all the way down to the place where water could be found, the fungus and mushroom gardens, the pathetically empty storerooms, and the kitchen. These were human translations, of course. Goblins generally ate where they could and slept where they fell asleep; they had no real concept of a room with one particular purpose. He knew this now as if he had known it all his life, and he had never before been in any place that a goblin would call home. But this was the dark, and Vimes and the dark had an … understanding, didn’t they? At least, that’s what the dark thought. What Vimes thought, unprosaically, was Damn, here we go again. He was prodded in the small of his back, and he heard Feeney gasp. Vimes turned to a grinning goblin and said, ‘Try that one more time, sunshine, and I’ll give you a smack around the head, understand?’ And that was what he said, and that was what he heard himself say … Except that something, not exactly another voice, climbed along his words like a snake coiling itself around a tree, and both his guards dropped their weapons and bolted back into the daylight. It was instant. They didn’t yelp or shout. They wanted to save their breath for running. ‘Great hells, Commander Vimes! That was bloody magical!’ said Feeney, as he bent to grope for the fallen axes. Vimes watched in the thick darkness as he saw the boy’s hands scrabbling and, by luck, find them. ‘Drop them! I said drop them right now!’ ‘But we’re unarmed!’ ‘Don’t you bloody argue with me, boy!’ There were a couple of thumps as the axes hit the ground. Vimes breathed again. ‘Now, we’re going to see that nice senior goblin, you understand, and we walk without fear because we are the law, you understand? And the law can go everywhere in pursuit of its inquiries.’ The headroom increased as they walked onwards, until Vimes was able to stand fully upright. Feeney, on the other hand, was having difficulties. Behind Vimes there was a chorus of thumps, scrapes and words that dear old mums should not know about, let alone hear. Vimes had to stop and wait for the boy to catch up, stubbing his feet on easily avoidable outcrops and banging his head where the ceiling dipped briefly. ‘Come on, chief constable!’ Vimes shouted. ‘A copper should have good night vision! You should eat more carrots with your Bang Sung Suck Dog or whatever!’ ‘It’s pitch black, sir! I can’t see my hand in front of my face—Ouch!’ Feeney had walked directly into Vimes. Light dawned, although not on Feeney. Vimes looked around the meandering cave. It was lit as if by daylight. There were no torches, no candles, just a pervading, moderately bright light – the light he had seen before, years ago now, in a cave, a big cave, far away, and he knew what it meant: he was seeing darkness, probably better than the goblins did. The dark had become incredibly light on that day when Vimes, underground, had fought creatures – walking, speaking creatures – that made their home away from the light, and had hatched dark plans. But Vimes had fought them, and he had won, and because of that, the Koom Valley Accord had been written and signed, and the oldest war in the world had ended in, if not peace, then a place where the seeds of peace could hopefully be planted. It was good to know that, because out of the darkness Vimes had acquired … a companion. The dwarfs had one name for it: the Summoning Dark. And they had any number of explanations for what it was: a demon, a lost god, a curse, a blessing, vengeance made flesh, except that it had no flesh other than the flesh it borrowed, a law unto itself, a killer but sometimes a protector, or something that no one could find the right words for. It could travel through rock, water, air and flesh and, for all Vimes knew, through time. After all, what limits can you put on a creature made of nothing? Yes, he had met it and, when they parted, for amusement, playfulness, mischief or simply reward the Summoning Dark had put its mark on him, drifting through him and leaving that little glowing tattoo. Vimes pulled up his shirt sleeve and there it was, and it seemed to be brighter. Sometimes he met it in dreams, where they nodded at one another in respect and then went their separate ways. Months, even years might pass between meetings and he might think it had gone for good, but its mark was on his forearm. Sometimes it itched. All in all, it was like having a nightmare on a leash. And now it was giving him sight in the darkness. But hold on, this was a goblin burrow, not a dwarf cave! And his own thoughts came right back at him with that slight overtone, as if they were a duet: ‘Yes, but goblins steal everything, commander.’ Right here and now, it appeared that goblins had stolen away. The floor of the cave was covered with debris, rubbish and things that presumably goblins thought were important, which would probably mean everything, bearing in mind they religiously collected their own snot. He could see the old goblin beckoning him to follow before disappearing. There was a door ahead of him, of goblin manufacture, as was borne out by its look of rottenness and the fact that it was hanging by one hinge, which broke when Vimes gave the door a push. Behind him Feeney said, ‘What was that? Please, sir, I can’t see a thing!’ Vimes walked across to the boy and tapped him on the shoulder, causing him to jump. ‘Mister Upshot, I’ll take you up to the entrance so that you can go home, okay?’ He felt the boy shudder. ‘No, sir! I’d rather stay with you, if it’s all the same to you … Please?’ ‘But you can’t see in the dark, lad!’ ‘I know, sir. I’ve got some string in my pocket. My granddad said a good copper should always have a piece of string.’ His voice was trembling. ‘It is generally useful, yes,’ said Vimes, carefully picking it out of the boy’s pocket. ‘It’s amazing how helpless a suspect can be with his thumbs tied together. Are you sure you wouldn’t feel better up in the fresh air?’ ‘Sorry, sir, but if it’s all the same to you I think the safest place to be right now is behind you, sir.’ ‘You really can’t see a thing, lad?’ ‘Not a blessed thing, sir. It’s like I’ve gone blind, sir.’ In Vimes’s opinion the young man was about to go postal, and maybe tethering him to Vimes was better than hearing him knock himself out in an attempt to flee. ‘You’re not blind, lad, it’s just that all that night duty I’ve done … well, it looks as if I’m better than I thought at seeing in the dark.’ Feeney shuddered again at Vimes’s touch, but together they succeeded in linking Chief Constable Upshot to Vimes with about six feet of hairy string, which smelled of pig. There were no goblins behind the broken door, but a fire was smouldering fitfully, with a piece of blessedly unrecognizable meat on a spit above it. A man might think that a goblin had found a reason to leave his tea behind in a hurry. And talking of tea, there was a pot, which was to say a rusty tin can, bubbling in the embers of the fire. Vimes sniffed at it, and was surprised that it smelled of bergamot, and somehow the idea of a goblin drinking posh tea with his pinkie extended managed, temporarily, to overwhelm his incongruity functions. Well, it grew, didn’t it? And goblins probably got thirsty, didn’t they? Nothing to worry about. Although if he found a plate of delicate biscuits he would definitely have to sit down and rest. He walked on, the light never failing, goblins never appearing. The cave complex certainly sloped downwards, and there were still signs of goblins everywhere, but of goblins themselves no sign, which in theory should be a good thing, given that generally the first sign of a goblin would be one landing on your head and trying to turn it into a bowling ball. And then there was a flash of colour in this drab subterranean landscape of greys and browns: it was a bunch of flowers, or what had been a bunch before it had been dropped. Vimes wasn’t an expert on flowers, and when he bought them for Sybil, at maritally advisable intervals, he generally stuck to a bunch of roses, or its seemingly acceptable equivalent, one single orchid. He was vaguely aware of the existence of other flowers, of course, which brightened up the place, to be sure, but he had never been one for the names. There were no roses here, no orchids either. These flowers had been plucked from hedgerows and meadows and even included the scrawny plants that managed to hang on and flower in the wilderness up above. Someone had carried them. Someone had dropped them. Someone had been in a hurry. Vimes could read it in the flowers. They had fallen from somebody’s open hand, so that they spread back along their path like a comet tail. And then more than one person had trampled them underfoot, but probably not because they were chasing the aforesaid bouquet carrier, but by the look of it because they wanted to go the way that he or she had run, and even faster than he or she did. There had been a stampede, in fact. Scared people running away. But running away from what? ‘You, Commander Vimes, you, the majesty of the law. See how I help you, commander?’ The familiarity of the voice annoyed him; it sounded too much like his own voice. ‘But I’m here because they wanted me to come!’ he said to the cave in general. ‘I wasn’t intending to fight anybody!’ And in his head his own voice told him, ‘Oh my little ragtag, rubbish people, who do not trust and are not trusted! Tread with care, Mister Policeman; the hated have no reason to love! Oh, the strange and secret people, last and worst, born of rubbish, hopeless, bereft of god. The best of luck to you, my brother … my brother in darkness … Do what you can for them, Mister Po-leess-maan.’ On Vimes’s wrist the sigil of the Summoning Dark glowed for a moment. ‘I’m not your brother!’ Vimes shouted. ‘I’m not a killer!’ The words echoed around the caves, but under them Vimes thought he felt something slithering away. Could something with no body slither? Gods damn the dwarfs and their subterranean folklore! ‘Are you, er, all right, sir?’ came the nervous voice of Feeney behind him. ‘Er, you were shouting, sir.’ ‘I was just cussing because I banged my head on the ceiling, lad,’ Vimes lied. He had to deliver reassurance quickly before Feeney got so unnerved that he might try to make a break for the exit out of panic. ‘You’re doing very well, chief constable!’ ‘Only, I don’t like the dark, sir, never have … Er, do you think anyone’ll worry if I have a wee up against the wall?’ ‘I should go ahead if I was you, lad. I don’t think anything could make this place smell worse.’ Vimes heard some vague sounds behind him, and then Feeney said, in a damp little voice, ‘Er, nature has taken its course, sir. Sorry, sir.’ Vimes smiled to himself. ‘Don’t worry, lad, you won’t be the first copper to have to wring out his socks, and you won’t be the last, either. I remember the first time I had to arrest a troll. Big fellow, he was, a very nasty character. I was a bit damp around the socks that day, and I don’t mind admitting it. Think of it as a kind of baptism!’ Keep it jolly, he thought, make a joke of it. Don’t let him dwell on the fact that we’re walking into the scene of a crime that he can’t see. ‘Funny thing – that troll is now my best sergeant, and I’ve relied on him for my life quite a few times. That just goes to show that you never know, although what it is we never know I suspect we’ll never know.’ Vimes turned a corner and there were the goblins. He was glad that young Feeney couldn’t see them. Strictly speaking, Vimes wished he couldn’t see them either. There must have been a hundred of them, many of them holding weapons. They were crude weapons, to be sure, but a flint axe hitting your head does not need a degree in physics. ‘Have we got somewhere, sir?’ said Feeney behind him. ‘You’ve stopped walking.’ They’re just standing there, Vimes thought, as if they’re on parade. Just watching in silence, waiting for that silence to break. ‘There are a few goblins in this cave, lad, and they’re watching us.’ After a few seconds of silence Feeney said, ‘Could you tell me exactly what “a few” means, sir?’ Dozens and dozens of owlish faces stared at Vimes without expression. If the silence was going to be broken by the word ‘charge’ then he and Feeney would be smears on the floor, which was pretty smeared as it was. Why did I come in here? Why did I think it was a good thing to do? Oh well, the lad is a policeman, after all, and it isn’t as if he doesn’t already have a clothing problem. He said, ‘I would say there are about a hundred, lad, all heavily armed, as far as I can see, except for a couple of broken-down ones right at the front; could be chieftains, I suppose. Beards you could keep a rabbit in, and, by the look of it, may have. It looks as if they are waiting for something.’ There was a pause before Feeney said, ‘It’s been an education, working with you, sir.’ ‘Look,’ said Vimes, ‘if I have to turn and run, just hang on, okay? Running is another skill a policeman sometimes needs.’ He turned to the crowd of impassive goblins and said, ‘I am Commander Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch! How can I help you?’ ‘Just ice!’ The cry caused things to drop from the ceiling. It echoed around the cave and echoed again, as cavern after cavern picked up the shout, spun it around, and sent it back. Light rose as torches were kindled. It took Vimes a few moments to realize this, because the light he had seen, some curious artificial light that was probably in his head, had been brighter, and mixed strangely with the smoky orange that was now filling the cave. ‘Well, sir, it looks as though they’re pleased to see us, yes?’ Feeney’s relief and hope should have been bottled and sold to despairing people everywhere. Vimes just nodded, because the ranks were pulling apart, leaving a pathway of sorts, at the end of which there was, inarguably, a corpse. It was a mild relief to see that it was a goblin corpse, but no corpse is good news, particularly when seen in a grimy low light and especially for the corpse. And yet something inside him exulted and cried Hallelujah!, because here was a corpse and he was a copper and this was a crime and this place was smoky and dirty and full of suspicious-looking goblins and here was a crime. His world. Yes, here was his world. In the Ankh-Morpork City Watch forensic laboratory Igor was brewing coffee, to the accompaniment of distant rumblings, strange flashes of light and the smell of electricity. At last he pulled the big red lever and frothing brown liquid gurgled into a pot, to be subsequently delivered into two mugs, one of which carried the slogan ‘Igorth thtitch you up’, while the other was emblazoned with ‘Dwarfs do it slightly lower down’. He handed that one to Sergeant Cheery Littlebottom, whose previous experience as an alchemist meant that she sometimes did duty in the lab. But at this point the cosiness of morning coffee was interrupted by Nobby Nobbs, towing Sergeant Colon behind him. ‘The sergeant has had a bit of a shock, Igor, so I thought you might be able to help him.’ ‘Well, I could give him another one,’ Igor volunteered, as Fred Colon slumped into a chair, which creaked ominously under his weight. The chair had straps on it. ‘Look,’ said Nobby, ‘I’m not mucking about! You’ve heard of the tobacco that counts? Well, he just had a cigar that cries. I’ve put it in this ’ere evidence bag, as per standing instructions.’ Cheery took the bag and peered inside. ‘It’s got egg sandwiches in it! Honestly, Nobby, has anyone explained to you what forensic means?’ On the basis that she probably couldn’t make things actually worse, Cheery emptied the sandwiches on to the table, where they were joined by one cigar with mayonnaise. She wiped this down with some care and looked at it. ‘Well, Nobby? I don’t smoke and I don’t know much about cigars, but this one appears to be quite happy at the moment.’ ‘You have to hold it to your ear,’ said Nobby helpfully. Cheery did so, and said, ‘All I can hear is the crinkling of the tobacco, which I suspect hasn’t been properly kept.’ The dwarf held the cigar away from her face and looked at it suspiciously, and then wordlessly she handed it to Igor, who put it to his ear, or at least the one that he was currently using, because you never know with Igors. They looked at one another and Igor broke the silence. ‘There are such things, I believe, as tobacco weevils?’ ‘I’m sure there are,’ said Cheery, ‘but I doubt very much if they … chuckle?’ ‘Chuckle? It sounded to me like somebody crying,’ said Igor, as he squinted at the bulging cigar, and added, ‘We should wash down the table and clean a scalpel and use the number-two tweezers and two, no, make that four sterilized surgical masks and gloves. It may be some kind of unusual insect in there.’ ‘I held that cigar up to my ear,’ said Nobby. ‘What kind of insect are we talking about?’ ‘I’m not sure,’ said Igor, ‘but generally the places in the world where tobacco is cultivated are known for some remarkably dangerous ones. For example, the yellow grass weevil of Howondaland has been known to enter the skull via the ears, lay its eggs in the victim’s brain and leave the poor victim hallucinating continuously until it has exited via the nostrils. Death inevitably ensues. My cousin Igor has a tank full of them. They’re very good at getting skulls scrupulously clean.’ Igor paused. ‘So I’m told, that is, although I personally cannot confirm that.’ He paused again, then added, ‘Of course.’ Nobby Nobbs headed for the door, but, unusually, Sergeant Colon did not follow his friend. Instead, he said, ‘I’ll just stay with my fingers in my ears, if it’s all the same to you?’ He craned his head to watch as Igor carefully pulled the cigar apart, and said conversationally, ‘They say that the cigars made in foreign parts are rolled on the thighs of young women. Personally I call that disgusting.’ There was a tinkle and a glint16 and something dropped on to the table. Cheery leaned cautiously forward. It looked like a small expensive phial for the most delicate alchemical experiments and yet, she thought later, it seemed to have movement in it, movement while staying still. Igor looked over her shoulder and said, ‘Oh.’ They looked at the phial in silence, silence that was soon broken by Sergeant Colon. ‘That looks shiny,’ he said. ‘Is it worth anything?’ Cheery Littlebottom raised her eyebrows at Igor, who shrugged. He said, ‘Priceless, I should think, if you could find a buyer with enough money and the, how shall I put it, right taste in ornamentation.’ ‘It’s an unggue pot,’ Cheery said carefully. ‘A goblin ceremonial pot, sarge.’ The dawn of understanding began to flow across Sergeant Colon’s gas giant of a face. ‘Ain’t they the things they make to store all their piss and shit in?’ he said, backing away. Igor cleared his throat and looked at Cheery as he said, icily, ‘Not this type, if I’m right, and at least not down here on the Plains. Those that feel themselves protected in the high mountains make pots, and also use the unggue brushes and, of course, the unggue masks.’ He looked expectantly, but without any real hope, at the sergeant. Cheery, who had known Fred for longer, said, ‘I understand, sarge, that the goblins on the Plains think the ones in the mountains are rather strange. As for this pot,’ she hesitated, ‘I rather fear that this is a particularly special one.’ ‘Well, it looks like the little buggers got that right,’ said Fred cheerfully, and, to Cheery’s horror, he snatched up the tiny pot. ‘It’s mine, that’s why, far too good for a stinking goblin, but how come it makes a noise?’ Sergeant Littlebottom looked at Igor’s expression, and, to prevent trouble in the Forensic Department, she grabbed the sergeant’s arm and dragged him out of the door, slamming it behind them. ‘Sorry about this, sergeant, but I could see that Igor was becoming a little bit agitated.’ Sergeant Colon brushed himself down with as much dignity as he could muster, and said, ‘If it’s valuable, then I want it, thank you so very much. After all, it was given to me in good faith. Right?’ ‘Well, of course that is so, sergeant, but you see, it already belongs to a goblin.’ Sergeant Colon burst out laughing. ‘Them? What have they got to own apart from big piles of crap?’ Cheery hesitated. Lazy and bombastic as Fred Colon was, the record showed that, against all apparent evidence, he had been a helpful and useful officer. She needed to be tactful. ‘Sergeant, can I say right now that I appreciate all the help you have given to me since I arrived in Pseudopolis Yard? I’ll always remember you pointing out to me all those places where a watchman could stand out of the wind and the worst of the rain, and I definitely committed to memory the list of public houses who would be generous to a thirsty copper after hours. And indeed I remember you telling me that a copper should never take a bribe, and why a meal was not a bribe. I cherish your approval, sergeant, since I know that by upbringing you are not particularly happy about women in the Watch, and especially when one of those women is of the dwarf persuasion. I realize that in the course of your long career you have had to adapt your thinking to meet the new circumstances. Therefore, I’m proud to be a colleague of yours, Sergeant Colon, and I hope you’ll forgive me when I tell you that there are times when you should shut up and get some new ideas in that big fat head of yours rather than constantly reheating the old ones. You picked up a little trinket, sergeant, and now it really is yours, more yours than I think you can possibly imagine. I wish I could tell you more, but I only know what the average dwarf knows about goblins; and I don’t know too much about this type of unggue pot but I think, given the floral decoration and its small size, that it is the one they call the soul of tears, sergeant, and I think you have made your life suddenly very interesting because—Can I ask you to put it down for just one moment, please? I promise most sincerely that I won’t take it away from you.’ Colon’s somewhat piggy eyes looked at Cheery suspiciously, but he said, ‘Well, if it gives you any satisfaction.’ He went to put the pot on the nearby windowsill and she saw him shake his hand. ‘Seems to be stuck on.’ Cheery thought to herself, So it’s true. Out loud she said, ‘I’m very sorry to hear that, sergeant, but you see, in that pot is the living soul of a goblin child and it belongs to you. Congratulations!’ she said, trying to keep the rising sarcasm out of her voice. That night Sergeant Colon dreamed he was in a cave with monsters chattering away at him in their dreadful lingo. He put it down to the beer, but it was funny the way he couldn’t let the little glittering thing go. His fingers never quite managed it, however hard he tried. The mother of Sam Vimes had managed, heavens know how, to scrape up the penny a day necessary for him to be educated at the Dame School run by Mistress Slightly. Mistress Slightly was everything a dame should be. She was fat, and gave the impression of being made of marshmallows, had a gentle understanding of the fact that the bladders of small boys are almost as treacherous as the bladders of old men, and, in general, taught the basics of the alphabet with a minimum of cruelty and a maximum of marshmallow. She kept geese, as any self-respecting dame should do. Later in life the older Vimes had wondered if, underneath the endless layers of petticoats, Mistress Slightly wore red and white spotted drawers. She certainly had a mob cap and a laugh like rainwater going down a drain. Invariably, while she took lessons, she was peeling potatoes or plucking geese. There was still a place in his heart for old Mistress Slightly, who occasionally had a mint in her pocket for a boy who knew his alphabet and could say it backwards. And you had to be grateful to someone who taught you how not to be afraid. She had one book in her tiny sitting room, and the first time she had given it to young Sam Vimes to read he had got as far as page seven when he froze. The page showed a goblin: the jolly goblin, according to the text. Was it laughing, was it scowling, was it hungry, was it about to bite your head off? Young Sam Vimes hadn’t waited to find out and had spent the rest of the morning under a chair. These days he excused himself by remembering that most of the other kids felt the same way. When it came to the innocence of childhood, adults often got it wrong. In any case, she had sat him on her always slightly damp knee after class and made him really look at the goblin. It was made of lots of dots! Tiny dots, if you looked closely. The closer you looked at the goblin the more it wasn’t there. Stare it down and it lost all its power to frighten. ‘I hear that they are wretched, badly made mortals,’ the dame had said sadly. ‘Half-finished folk, or so I hear. It’s only a blessing this one had something to be jolly about.’ Later on, because he had been a good boy, she had made him blackboard monitor, the first time anyone had entrusted him with anything. Good old Mistress Slightly, Vimes thought, as he stood in this gloomy cave surrounded by ranks of silent, solemn goblins. I’ll have a bag of peppermints on your grave if I get out of this alive. He cleared his throat. ‘Well now, lad, what we appear to have here is a goblin who has been in a fight.’ He looked down at the corpse, and then to Feeney. ‘Perhaps you would care to tell me what you see?’ Feeney was one step away from trembling. ‘Well, sir, I surmise that it is dead, sir.’ ‘And how do you deduce this, please?’ ‘Er, its head isn’t attached to its body, sir?’ ‘Yes, we generally recognize that as a clue that the corpse is indeed dead. Incidentally, lad, you may as well take the string off. I wouldn’t say this is the best light I’ve ever seen by, but it’ll do. Do you notice anything else, chief constable?’ Vimes tried to keep his tone level. ‘Well, sir, it’s pretty cut about, sir.’ Vimes smiled encouragingly. ‘Notice anything about that, lad?’ Feeney was making heavy weather of it, but recruits often did at the start, doing so much looking that they forgot to see. ‘You’re doing well, chief constable. Would you care to extrapolate?’ ‘Sir? Extrapolate, sir?’ ‘Why would somebody be all cut about on their arms? Think about that.’ Feeney’s lips actually moved as he thought, and then he grinned. ‘He was defending himself with his hands, sir?’ ‘Well done, lad, and people who are defending themselves with their hands are doing so because they don’t have a shield or a weapon. I would wager, too, that his head was cut off while he was on the ground. Can’t exactly put my finger on it, but that looks to me like deliberate butchering rather than a hasty slice. Everything is messy, but you can see that the belly has been sliced open, yet there is hardly any blood around it.’ Now he was taken by surprise. ‘And because of the belly wound I know something else about him that I wish I didn’t know,’ he said. ‘What’s that, sir?’ ‘He is a she, and she was ambushed, or maybe trapped.’ And, he thought, there’s a claw missing. After a while it becomes a puzzle, not a corpse, said Vimes to himself as he knelt down, but never soon enough, and never for long enough. Aloud he said, ‘Look at the marks on this leg, lad. I reckon she stepped in a rabbit snare, probably because she was running away from … somebody.’ Vimes stood up so fast that the watching goblins backed away. ‘Good grief, boy, we shouldn’t do that, not even in the country! Isn’t there some kind of code? You kill the bucks, not the does, isn’t that right? And this isn’t some spur-of-the-moment thing! Someone wanted to get a lot of blood out of this lady! You tell me why!’ Vimes wasn’t certain what Feeney would have replied had they not been surrounded by solemn-faced goblins, which was just as well. ‘This is murder, lad, the capital crime! And do you know why it was done? I’ll wager anything that it was so that Constable Upshot, acting on information received, would find a lot of blood in Dead Man’s Copse, where Commander Vimes was apparently going to have a meeting with an annoying blacksmith, and so, given that both of them were men of quick temper, quite possibly foul play could have been involved, yes?’ ‘It’s a legitimate deduction, sir, you must admit that.’ ‘Of course I do, and now it’s a total bastard of a deduction, and now you must admit that.’ ‘Yes, sir, I do, sir, and apologize. However, I’d like to search the premises for any sign of Mister Jefferson.’ Feeney looked half ashamed, half defiant. ‘And why do you want to do that, chief constable?’ Feeney stuck out his chin. ‘Because I’ve been shown to be a bloody fool once, and I don’t intend to be one again. Besides, sir, you might be wrong. This poor lady might have been in a fight with the blacksmith, perhaps, I don’t know, but I do know that if I don’t make a search here in the circumstances, somebody important is bound to ask me why I didn’t. And that person would be you, wouldn’t it, commander?’ ‘Good answer, young man! And I have to admit that I’ve been a bloody fool more times than I can count, so I can sympathize.’ Vimes looked down again at the corpse and it was suddenly urgent to try to find out what Willikins had done with the claw, complete with ring, that they had found the previous night. Awkwardly, he said to the assembled goblins, ‘I believe that I have found some jewellery belonging to this young lady and, of course, I shall bring it to you.’ There was not so much as an acknowledgement from the impassive horde. Vimes considered that thought. Hordes come in killing and stealing. This lot look like a bunch of worried people. He walked over to a grizzled old goblin who might have been the one he had seen up on the surface a thousand years ago, and said, ‘I’d like to see more of this place, sir. I’m sorry for the death of the lady. I’ll bring the killers to justice.’ ‘Just ice!’ Once again it echoed around the cave. The old goblin stepped forward very gently and touched Vimes’s sleeve. ‘The dark is your friend, Mister Po-leess-maan. I hear you, you hear me. In the dark you may go where you wish. Mister Po-leess-maan, please do not kill us.’ Vimes looked past the goblin to the ranks behind, most of them as skinny as rakes, and this, well, chieftain probably, who looked as though he was decomposing while standing up, didn’t want him to hurt them? He remembered the scattered flowers. The orphaned bergamot tea. The uneaten meal. They were trying to hide away from me? He nodded and said, ‘I do not attack anyone who isn’t attacking me, sir, and I will not start today. Can you tell me how this lady came to be … killed?’ ‘She was thrown into our cave last night, Mister Po-leess-maan. She had gone out to check the rabbit snares. Thrown down like old bones, Mister Po-leess-maan, like old bones. No blood in her. Like old bones.’ ‘What was her name?’ The old goblin looked at Vimes as if shocked, and after a moment said, ‘Her name was The Pleasant Contrast of the Orange and Yellow Petals in the Flower of the Gorse. Thank you, Mister Po-leess-maan of the dark.’ ‘I’m afraid I’m only just starting to investigate this crime,’ said Vimes, feeling unusually embarrassed. ‘I meant, Mister Po-leess-maan, thank you for believing that goblins have names. My name is Sound of the Rain on Hard Ground. She was my second wife.’ Vimes stared at the rugged face that only a mother could tolerate and perhaps love, searching for any sign of anger or grief. There was just a sense of sorrow and hopeless resignation at the fact that the world was as it was and always would be and there was nothing that could be done. The goblin was a sigh on legs. In dejection he looked up at Vimes and said, ‘They used to send hungry dogs into the cave, Mister Po-leess-maan. Those were good days; we ate well.’ ‘This is my land,’ said Vimes, ‘and I think I can see to it that you’re not disturbed here.’ Something like a chuckle found its way through the old goblin’s ragged beard. ‘We know what the law is, Mister Po-leess-maan. The law is the land. You say, “This is my land”, but you did not make the land. You did not make your sheep, you did not make the rabbits on which we live, you did not make the cows, or the horses, but you say, “These things are mine”. This cannot be a truth. I make my axe, my pots, and these are mine. What I wear is mine. Some love was mine. Now it has gone. I think you are a good man, Mister Po-leess-maan, but we see the turning of the times. Maybe a hundred or two hundred years ago there was in the world what people called “the wilderness”, or “no man’s land”, or “wasteland”, and we lived in such places, we are waste people. There was the troll race, the dwarf race, the human race, and I am sorry for the goblin race that we cannot run so fast.’ Somebody pulled at Vimes’s shirt. This time it was Feeney. ‘You’d best be going now, sir.’ Vimes turned. ‘Why?’ ‘Sorry, sir, but her ladyship did instruct you to be back for tea.’ ‘We’re conducting a murder investigation, chief constable! I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m sure Mister Rain on Hard Ground here will understand. We must see for ourselves that the missing blacksmith is not here.’ Feeney fidgeted. ‘I couldn’t help noticing that her ladyship was very expressive on the subject, sir.’ Vimes nodded to the old goblin. ‘I’ll find out who killed your wife, sir, and I’ll bring them to justice.’ He paused on cue as another chorus of ‘Just ice!’ echoed around the caves. ‘But first I must, for police reasons, inspect the rest of this … establishment, if you have no objection.’ The goblin looked at him bright-eyed. ‘And if I object, Mister Po-leess-maan?’ Vimes matched his stare. ‘An interesting question,’ he said, ‘and if you threatened us with violence I would leave. Indeed, if you forbade me to search then I would leave, and, sir, the worst part is that I would not come back. Sir, I respectfully ask that I may in the pursuit of my inquiries be shown around the rest of these premises.’ Was that a smile on the old goblin’s face? ‘Of course, Mister Po-leess-maan.’ Behind the old goblin the rest of the crowd began to move away, presumably to either make pots or fill them. Rain on Hard Ground, who, it had to be assumed, because nothing had been said to the contrary, was either a chieftain (as Vimes would understand it) or simply a goblin tasked with talking to stupid humans, said, ‘You are seeking the blacksmith? He visits us sometimes. There is iron down here, not much, but he finds it useful. Of course it is no good for pots, but we trade it for food. I don’t think I have seen him for several days. However, by all means look for him without hindrance. The dark is in you. I would not dare to stand in your way, Mister Po-leess-maan. Such as it is, this place is yours.’ With that the old goblin beckoned to some juvenile goblins to pick up all that was left of his wife and drifted away towards another cave mouth. ‘Have you seen a lot of dead bodies, commander?’ said Feeney, in a voice that almost managed not to shake. ‘Oh yes, lad, and some of them I helped to make.’ ‘You’ve killed people?’ Vimes looked at the ceiling so as not to have to look at Feeney’s face. ‘I like to think I did my best not to,’ he said, ‘and on the whole I’ve been good at that, but sooner or later there’s always going to be somebody who is determined to finish you off and you end up having to take him down the wrong way because he’s just too damn stupid to surrender. It doesn’t get any better, and I’ve never seen a corpse that looked good.’ The funeral group had disappeared into the other cave now, and the two policemen were left alone, but feeling, however, that around them people were going about their business. The old goblin had just stood there and mentioned that the woman was his wife almost as an afterthought. He hadn’t even raised his voice! Vimes couldn’t have stood there like that if it had been Sybil’s body on the ground in front of him, and as sure as hell he would not be polite to any goblins who were in front of him either. How can you get like that? How can life so beat you down? The Street was always with you, just as Willikins had said. And Vimes remembered the ladies who scrubbed. Cockbill Street got scrubbed so often that it was surprising it wasn’t now at a lower level than the ground around it. The doorstep was scrubbed, and then whitened; the red tiles on the floor inside were scrubbed and then polished with red lead; and the black cooking stove was blackened even further by being rubbed ferociously with black lead. Women in those days had elbows that moved like pistons. And it was all about survival, and survival was all about pride. You didn’t have much control over your life, but by Jimmy you could keep it clean and show the world you were poor but respectable. That was the dread: the dread of falling back, losing standards, becoming no better than those people who bred and fought and stole in that ferocious turmoil of a rookery known as the Shades. The goblins had succumbed, had they? Going through the motions now, while the world gently expelled them, they were giving up, letting go … but murder was murder in any jurisdiction or none at all. He tied his thoughts in a knot under his chin, snatched a couple of smouldering torches and said, ‘Come on, chief constable, let’s go and fight crime.’ ‘Yes, sir,’ said Feeney, ‘but can I ask you another question?’ ‘Of course,’ said Vimes, heading towards a tunnel that was perceptibly sloping downwards. ‘What’s going on here, sir, if you don’t mind me asking? I mean, I know that there’s been a murder and maybe some bugger wanted me to think it was you as done it, but how come, sir, that you understand that heathen lingo of theirs? I mean, I hear you talking to them, and they must understand you, ’cos they talk back, sir, but they talk like somebody cracking walnuts under their foot, sir, and I can’t understand a damn word of it, sir, if you’ll excuse my Klatchian, not a damn word. I want an answer, sir, because I feel enough of a bloody fool as it is; I don’t want to be even more foolish than I feel now.’ Vimes, in the privacy of his own head, tried out the statement, ‘Well, since you ask, I have a deadly demon sharing my mind, which seems to be helping me for reasons of its own. It lets me see in this gloom and somehow allows me and goblins to communicate. It’s called the Summoning Dark. I don’t know what its interest in goblins is but the dwarfs think it brings down wrath on the unrighteous. If there has been a murder I’ll use any help I can get.’ He did not in fact articulate this, on the basis that most people would have left very quickly by the time he had finished, so he settled for saying, ‘I have the support of a higher power, chief constable. Now, let’s check out this place.’ This didn’t satisfy Feeney, but he appeared to understand that it was all he was going to get. It was an eerie journey. The hill was honeycombed with caves linked by passages natural and, occasionally, by the look of it, artificial. It was a small city. There were middens, crude cages now empty of whatever had been in them, and here and there quite large beds of fungus, in some cases being harvested very, very slowly, by goblins who barely glanced at the policemen. At one point they passed an opening which appeared to lead to a crèche, by the sound of it, in which case baby goblins twittered like birds. Vimes couldn’t bring himself to look further inside. As they went lower down they came across a very small rivulet that trickled out of one wall. The goblins in a rough and ready way had made a culvert, so that their journey onwards was to the sound of running water. And everywhere there were goblins, and the goblins were making pots. Vimes was prepared for this, but badly prepared. He had expected something like the dwarf workshops he had seen in Uberwald – noisy, busy and full of purposeful activity. But that wasn’t the goblin way. It appeared that if a goblin wanted to start on a pot, all it needed to do was find a place to hunker down, rummage through whatever it was it had in its pockets and get to work, so slowly that it was hard to tell that anything was going on. Several times Vimes thought he heard the chip of stone on stone, or the sound of scratching, or what might be sawing, but whenever he came close to a squatting goblin it politely edged around and leaned over the work like a child trying to keep a secret. How much snot, he thought, how many fingernail clippings, how much earwax did a goblin accumulate in one year? Would an annual pot of snot be something like a lady’s delicate snuffbox, or would it be a sloshing great bucketful? And why not, yes, why not teeth? Even humans were careful when it came to the escaped teeth, and, come to that, there were people, especially wizards, who made a point of ensuring that their toenails were put beyond use. He smiled to himself. Maybe the goblins weren’t all that stupid, only more stupid than humans were, which, when you came to think about it, took some effort. And then, as they crept past a cross-legged goblin, it sat back on its haunches and held up … light. Vimes had seen plenty of jewels: generations of rings, brooches, necklaces and tiaras had funnelled down the centuries and into Lady Sybil’s lap, although these days most of them were kept in a vault. That always amused him. Sparkle though Sybil’s jewels might, he would have sworn that none of them could have filled the air with light as much as the little pot did when its creator held it up for a critical appraisal. The goblin turned it this way and that, inspecting it like a man thinking of buying a horse from somebody called Honest Harry. White and yellow beams of light shimmered as it moved, filling the drab cave with what Vimes could only think of as echoes of light. Feeney was staring as a child might stare at his first party. The goblin, however, appeared to sneer at its creation and tossed it dismissively over its shoulder, where it smashed on the wall. ‘Why did you do that?’ Vimes shouted, so loudly that the goblin he was addressing cowered and looked as if it expected to be struck. It managed to say, ‘Bad pot! Bad work! For to be ashamed! Make much better one time more! Will start now!’ It took another terrified look at Vimes and hurried into the darkness of the cave. ‘He smashed it! He actually smashed it!’ Feeney stared at Vimes. ‘He took one look at it and smashed it! And it was wonderful! That was criminal! You can’t just destroy something as wonderful as that, can you?’ Vimes put a hand on Feeney’s shoulder. ‘I think you can if you’ve just made it and think you could have done it better. After all, even the best craftsmen sometimes make mistakes, yes?’ ‘You think that was a mistake?’ Feeney rushed over to where the debris of the late pot had hit the floor, and picked up a handful of glittering remains. ‘Sir, he did throw these away, sir?’ Vimes opened his mouth to reply, but there was a faint noise from Feeney’s hand: dust was falling between his fingers like the sands of time. Feeney grinned nervously at Vimes and said, ‘Maybe it was a bit shoddy after all, sir!’ Vimes squatted down and ran his fingers through the pile of dust. And it was just dust, stone dust, no more colour or sparkle to it than you would find in a pebble by the road. There was no trace of the scintillating rainbow that they had just seen. But on the other side of this cave another goblin was trying to look inconspicuous as it worked on what was probably another pot. Vimes stepped over to it with care, because it was holding its pot as if prepared to use it to defend itself. Casually, to show that he meant no harm, Vimes put his arms behind his back and said in tones learned from his wife, ‘My word! That looks like a very good pot. Tell me, how do you make a pot, sir? Can you tell me?’ The potter looked down at the thing in its hands, or the thing in its claws if you wanted to be nasty, and perhaps slightly more accurate, and said, ‘I make the pot.’ It raised the work in progress. Vimes wasn’t that good at stone which wasn’t part of masonry, but this one was slightly yellow and shiny. He said, ‘Yes, I can see that, but how do you actually make the pot?’ Once again, the potter sought enlightenment from the universe, looking up and down and everywhere that Vimes wasn’t. At last inspiration dawned. ‘I make pot.’ Vimes nodded gravely. ‘Thank you for sharing the secrets of your success,’ he said, and turned to Feeney. ‘Come on, let’s keep going.’ It seemed that a goblin cave – or lair or burrow, depending on what effect you wanted to give – was not quite the hellhole that you might have thought. Instead it was just, well, a hole, stuffy with the smoke of the innumerable small fires goblins appeared to need, along with the associated small pile of rotted kindling, and not forgetting the personal midden. Goblins old and young watched them carefully as they passed, as if expecting them to put on a programme of entertainment. There were certainly juvenile goblins. Vimes had to admit that alone among the talking species, goblin babies were plug ugly, merely small versions of their parents who themselves were no oil paintings, and not even a watercolour. Vimes told himself that they could not help it, that some incompetent god had found a lot of bits left over, and decided that the world needed a creature that looked like a cross between a wolf and an ape, and gave them what was surely one of the most unhelpful pieces of religious dogma, even by the standards of celestial idiocy. They looked like the bad guys and, without the intervention of the Summoning Dark, they sounded like them, too. If walnuts could shriek when they were being cracked, then people would say, ‘Doesn’t that remind you of a goblin?’ And it appeared that, not content with all this, the laughing god had apparently given them that worst of gifts, self-knowledge, leaving them so certain that they were irrevocably walking rubbish that metaphorically they couldn’t even find the energy to clean the step. ‘Oh, blast! I’m treading on something … in something,’ said Feeney. ‘You seem to be able to see much better than me down here, sir.’ ‘Good clean living, lad, carrots and whatnot.’ ‘Jefferson could be in here somewhere. I’m sure there are caves that we’re missing.’ ‘I know he’s not in here, lad, only don’t ask me how I know because I would have to lie to you. I’m going through the motions to help myself think. It’s an old copper trick.’ ‘Yes, sir, treading in every motion, I should think!’ Vimes smiled in the gloom. ‘Well done, lad. A sense of humour is the copper’s friend. I always say the day isn’t complete without a little chuckle—’ He paused because something had clanged against his helmet. ‘We’ve reached Jefferson’s iron workings, my lad. I just found an oil lamp; I certainly haven’t seen those higher up.’ He felt in his pocket and soon a match flame bloomed. Well, Vimes thought, it’s not that much of a mine, but I bet it works out better than paying dwarf prices. ‘I can’t see any way out,’ Feeney volunteered. ‘I suppose he drags the ore out through the main entrance.’ ‘I don’t think that the goblins are stupid enough to live in a set of caves that have just one entrance. There’s probably one that doesn’t even show up on the outside. Look, you can see where somebody’s been lugging heavy weights across the stone—’ Vimes stopped. There was another human in the cave. Well, thank you, darkness, he thought. I suppose asking who it is might be in order? ‘Sir, I don’t think it’s just mining that goes on here. Take a look at these,’ said Feeney, behind Vimes. Feeney held out some books, children’s books, by the look of it. They were grubby – this was, after all, the home of goblins – but Vimes turned to the first page of the first book and was not surprised to see an unfeasibly large red apple, currently somewhat soiled by the pressure of many dirty hands. A voice in the gloom, a female voice, said, ‘Not all questions are answered, commander, but fortunately some answers are questioned. I’m attempting to teach the goblin children. Of course, I had to bring in an apple for the young ones to see,’ the woman in the shadows added. ‘Not many knew what one was, and certainly not what they were called. Troll language is unbelievably complex compared with what these poor devils have got. Good day to you too, Mr Upshot. Not cowering away from the truth in your lock-up?’ Vimes had spun round when he first heard that voice, and was now staring with his mouth open. ‘You? Aren’t you the, er …’ ‘The poo lady, yes, Commander Vimes. It’s amazing, isn’t it, how people remember?’ ‘Well, you must admit that it does – how can I put it? – stick in the mind, Miss Felicity Beedle.’ ‘Very well done, commander, considering that we’ve met only once!’ And now Vimes noticed that with her there was a goblin, a young one by the size of it, but more noticeable because it was staring directly at him with a keen and interested gaze, quite uncharacteristic of the goblins that he had seen so far, apart from the wretched Stinky. Feeney, on the other hand, was taking great care not to catch the lady’s eye, Vimes noticed. He smiled at Miss Beedle. ‘Madam, I reckon I see your name at least once every day. When I was putting my lad to bed yesterday, do you know what he said? He said, “Dad, do you know why cows do big wet sloppy poos and horses do them all nice and soft and smelling of grass? Because it’s weird, isn’t it? That you get two different kinds of poo when they’re both about the same size and it’s the same grass, isn’t it, Dad? Well, the poo lady says it’s because cows have room in ants, and the ants help them get, sort of, more food out of their food, but because horses don’t have room in ants, they don’t sort of chew all that much, so that their poo is still very much like grass and doesn’t smell too bad.”’ Vimes saw that the woman was grinning, and went on, ‘I believe that tomorrow he is going to ask his mother if he may chew his dinner very hard one day, and the next day not do it very much, and see if he gets different smells. What do you think of that, madam?’ Miss Beedle laughed. It was a very enjoyable laugh. ‘Well, commander, it would seem that your son combines your analytical thinking with the inherited Ramkin talent for experimentation. You must be very proud? I certainly hope you are.’ ‘You can bet on that, madam.’ The child standing in Miss Beedle’s shadow was smiling too, the first smile he’d seen on a goblin. But before he could say anything, Miss Beedle directed a disapproving look at Feeney and went on, ‘I only wish I could find you in better company, commander. I wonder if you know where my friend Jethro is, officer?’ Even in the lamplight, Feeney looked furious, but if you read people, and Vimes was a ferocious reader, it was clear the fury was spiced with shame and dread. Then Vimes looked down at the little bench, where there were a few tools and some more brightly covered books. It was the Street that had taught Vimes that there were times when you would find it best to let a nervous person get really nervous, and so he picked up a book as if the previous dreadful exchange had not taken place, and said, ‘Oh, here’s Where’s My Cow?! Young Sam loves it. Are you teaching it to the goblins, miss?’ With her eyes still on the agitated Feeney, Miss Beedle said, ‘Yes, for what it’s worth. It’s hard work. Incidentally, technically I’m Mrs Beedle. My husband was killed in the Klatchian war. I went back to “Miss” because, well, it’s more authory, and besides, it wasn’t as though I’d had much time to get accustomed to “Mrs”.’ ‘I’m sorry about that, madam. Had I known I’d have been a lot less flippant,’ said Vimes. Miss Beedle gave him a wan smile. ‘Don’t worry, flippant sometimes does the trick.’ Beside the teacher the little goblin said, ‘Flip-ant? The ant is turned over?’ ‘Tears of the Mushroom is my star pupil. You’re wonderful, aren’t you, Tears of the Mushroom?’ ‘Wonderful is good,’ said the goblin girl, as though tasting every word. ‘Gentle is good, the mushroom is good. Tears are soft. I am Tears of the Mushroom, this much is now said.’ It was a strange little speech: the girl spoke as if she were pulling words out of a rack and then tidily putting them back in their places as soon as they had been said. It sounded very solemn and it came from an odd, flat, pale face. In a way, Tears of the Mushroom looked handsome, if not exactly pretty, in what looked like a wraparound apron, and Vimes wondered how old she was. Thirteen? Fourteen, maybe? And he wondered if they would all look as smart as this if they got their hands on some decent clothing and did something about their godawful hair. The girl’s hair was long and braided and pure white. Amazingly, in this place, she looked like a piece of fragile porcelain. Not knowing what to say, he said it anyway: ‘Pleased to meet you, Tears of the Mushroom.’ Vimes held out his hand. The goblin girl looked at it, then looked at him, and then turned to Miss Beedle, who said, ‘They don’t shake hands, commander. For people who seem so simple they’re astoundingly complicated.’ She went on. ‘It would seem that providence has brought you here in time to solve the murder of Pleasant Contrast, who was an excellent pupil. I came up here as soon as I heard, but the goblins are used to undeserved and casual death. I’ll walk with you to the entrance, and then I’ve got a class to teach.’ Vimes tugged at Feeney to make him keep up as they followed Miss Beedle and her charge towards the surface and blessed fresh air. He wondered what had become of the corpse. What did they do with their dead? Bury them, eat them, throw them on the midden? Or was he just not thinking right, a thought which itself had been knocking at his brain for some time. Without thinking, he said, ‘What else do you teach them, Miss Beedle? To be better citizens?’ The slap caught him on the chin, probably because even in her anger Miss Beedle realized that he still had his steel helmet on. It was a corker, nonetheless, and out of the corner of his stinging gaze he saw Feeney take a step back. At least the boy had some sense. ‘You are the gods’ own fool, Commander Vimes! No, I’m not teaching them to be fake humans, I’m teaching them how to be goblins, clever goblins! Do you know that they have only five names for colours? Even trolls have around sixty, and a lot more than that if they find a paint salesman! Does this mean goblins are stupid? No, they have a vast number of names that even poets haven’t come up with, for things like the way colours shift and change, the melting of one hue into another. They have single words for the most complicated of feelings; I know about two hundred of them, I think, and I’m sure there are a lot more! What you may think are grunts and growls and snarls are in fact carrying vast amounts of information! They’re like an iceberg, commander: most of them is where you can’t see or understand, and I’m teaching Tears of the Mushroom and some of her friends so that they may be able to speak to people like you, who think goblins are dumb. And do you know what, commander? There isn’t much time! They’re being slaughtered! It’s not called that, of course, but slaughter is how it ends, because they’re just dumb nuisances, you see. Why don’t you ask Mister Upshot what happened to the rest of the goblins three years ago, Commander Vimes?’ And with that Miss Beedle turned on her heel and disappeared down into the darkness of the cave with Tears of the Mushroom bobbing along behind her, leaving Vimes to walk the last few yards out into the glorious sunlight. The feeling that hit Samuel Vimes when he stepped into the vivid light of day was as if somebody had pushed an iron wire through his body and then, in one moment, pulled it out again. It was all he could do to keep his balance and the boy grabbed him by the arm. Full marks, Vimes thought, for being either smart enough to see how the land lay, or at least smart enough not to make a run for it just now. He sat down on the turf, relishing the breeze through the gorse bushes and sucking in pure fresh air. Whatever you thought about goblins, their cave had the kind of atmosphere about which people say, ‘I should wait two minutes before going in there, if I was you.’ ‘I’d like to talk with you, chief constable,’ he said now. ‘Copper to copper. About the past and maybe about the shape of things to come.’ ‘Actually, I meant to thank you, commander, for thinking that I’m a policeman.’ ‘Your father was policeman down here three years ago, yes?’ Feeney stared straight ahead. ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘So, what happened with the goblins, Feeney?’ Feeney cleared his throat. ‘Well, Dad told me and Mum to stay indoors. He said we was not to look, but he couldn’t tell us not to listen, and there was a lot of shouting and I don’t know what, and it upset my old mum no end. I heard later that a load of goblins had been taken out of the hill, but Dad never spoke about it until much later. I think it broke him, sir, it really did. He said he watched while a bunch of men, gamekeepers and roughs mostly, came down from the cave dragging goblins behind them, sir. Lots of them. He said what was so dreadful was that the goblins were all sort of meek, you know? Like they didn’t know what to do.’ Vimes relented a little at the sight of Feeney’s face. ‘Go on, lad.’ ‘Well, sir, he told me people came out of their houses and there was a lot of running about and he started to ask questions and, well, the magistrates said it was all right because they were nothing more than vermin, and they were going to be taken down to the docks so they could earn their living for a change and not bother other people. It was all right, Dad said. They were going somewhere sunny, a long way away from here.’ ‘Just out of interest, Mister Feeney, how could he know that?’ ‘Dad said the magistrates were very firm about it, sir. They were just to be put to work for their living. He said that it was doing them a favour. It wasn’t as if they were going to be killed.’ Vimes kept his expression deliberately blank. He sighed. ‘If it was without their consent, then that would be slavery, and if a slave doesn’t work for his living he’s dead. Do you understand?’ Feeney looked at his boots. If eyeballs had polish on them his boots would have been gleaming. ‘After he told me this, my dad told me that I was a copper now and I was to look after Mum, and he gave me the truncheon and his badge. And then his hands started shaking, sir, and a few days later he was dead, sir. I reckon something snuck up on him, sir, in his head, like. It overcame him.’ ‘Have you heard about Lord Vetinari, Feeney? I can’t say I like him all that much but sometimes he’s bang on the money. Well, there was a bit of a fracas, as we say, and it turned out that a man had a dog, a half-dead thing, according to bystanders, and he was trying to get it to stop pulling at its leash, and when it growled at him he grabbed an axe from the butcher’s stall beside him, threw the dog to the ground and cut off its back legs, just like that. I suppose people would say “Nasty bugger, but it was his dog”, and so on, but Lord Vetinari called me in and he said to me, “A man who would do something like that to a dog is a man to whom the law should pay close attention. Search his house immediately.” The man was hanged a week later, not for the dog, although for my part I wouldn’t have shed a tear if he had been, but for what we found in his cellar. The contents of which I will not burden you with. And bloody Vetinari got away with it again, because he was right: where there are little crimes, large crimes are not far behind.’ Vimes stared at the rolling acres stretching out below: his fields, his trees, his fields of yellow corn … All his, even though he’d never planted a seed in his life, except for the time when he was a kid and he tried to grow mustard and cress on a flannel, which he’d then thrown up because no one had told him he should have washed the flannel first to get all the soap out. Not a good background for a landowner. But … His land, right? And he was sure that neither he nor Sybil had ever said yes to turning a lot of sad-looking goblins out of the mess they were pleased to call a home and taking them to who knew where. ‘Nobody told us!’ Feeney leaned back to escape that particular ball of wrath. ‘I wouldn’t know about that, sir.’ Vimes stood up and stretched his arms. ‘I’ve heard enough, lad, and I’ve had enough too! It’s time to report to a higher authority!’ ‘I think it’d take at least a day and a half to get a galloper to the city, sir, and you’d have to be lucky with horses.’ Sam Vimes began to walk smartly down the hill. ‘I was talking about Lady Sybil, lad.’ Sybil was in a drawing room full of teacups and ladies when Vimes arrived at the Hall in a run, with Feeney lagging behind. She took one look at him and said, rather more brightly than warranted, ‘Oh, I see you have something to discuss with me.’ She turned to the ladies, smiled and said, ‘Please do excuse me, ladies. I must just have a brief word with my husband.’ And with that she grabbed Vimes and pulled him none too gently back into the hallway. She opened her mouth to deliver a wifely sermon on the importance of punctuality, sniffed and recoiled. ‘Sam Vimes, you stink! Did you fall into something rural? I’ve hardly seen you since breakfast! And why are you still dragging that young policeman behind you? I’m sure he’s got something more important to do. Didn’t he want to arrest you? Is he still coming to tea? I hope he washes first.’ This was said to Vimes but aimed at Feeney, who was keeping his distance and looked ready to run. ‘That was a misunderstanding,’ said Vimes hastily, ‘and I’m sure that if I ever find out where my escutcheon is there won’t be a stain on it, but Mister Feeney here has been generously and of his own free will imparting information to me.’ And by the time the husband and wife conversation was in full swing, containing shouted whispers on the lines of ‘Surely not!’ and ‘I think he’s telling the truth’, Feeney looked ready to sprint. ‘And they didn’t put up a fight?’ said Sybil. The young policeman tried to avoid her gaze, but she had the kind of gaze that came around to find you wherever you stood. ‘No, your ladyship,’ was all he managed. Lady Sybil looked at her husband and shrugged. ‘There would be one hell of a fight with someone who wanted to take me off to a place I didn’t want to go to,’ she said, ‘and I thought goblins had weapons? Pretty nasty fighters, so I’ve heard. I’d have thought there’d have been a war! We would have heard about it! From the way you talk about it, it sounds as if they were sleepwalking. Or perhaps they were starving? I haven’t noticed very many rabbits around here, compared with when I was a little girl. And why leave some behind? It’s all a bit of a puzzle, Sam. Nearly everyone around here is a family friend—’ She held up a hand quickly. ‘I wouldn’t dream of asking you to fail in your duty, Sam, you must understand that, but be careful and be sure of every step. And please, Sam – and I know you, Sam – don’t go at it like a bull at a gate. People round here might get the wrong idea.’ Sam Vimes was certain that he did have the wrong idea and his brow wrinkled as he said, ‘I don’t know, Sybil, how does a bull go at a gate? Does it just stop and look puzzled?’ ‘No, dear, it smashes everything to pieces.’ Lady Sybil gave a warning smile and brushed herself down. ‘I don’t think we need detain you any longer, after all, Mister Upshot,’ she said to the grateful Feeney. ‘Do remember me to your dear mother. If she doesn’t mind, I’d like to meet her while I’m down here again to talk about old times. In the meantime I suggest you leave via the kitchen, no matter what my husband thinks about a policeman using the servants’ entrance, and tell Cook to supply you with, well, anything your mother would like.’ She turned to her husband. ‘Why don’t you escort him down there, Sam? And since you’re enjoying the fresh air, why not go and find Young Sam? I think he’s back in the barnyard, with Willikins.’ Feeney was silent as they went down the long corridors, but Vimes sensed the boy’s mind working its way through a problem, which came out when he said, ‘Lady Sybil is a very nice kind lady, isn’t she, sir?’ ‘I do not need to be reminded of that,’ said Vimes, ‘and I’d like you to understand that she stands in vivid contrast to me. I get edgy when I think there’s a crime unsolved. A crime unsolved is against nature.’ ‘I keep thinking of the goblin girl, sir. She looked like a statue, and the way she spoke, well, I don’t know what to say. I mean, they can be a bloody nuisance – they’ll have the laces out of your boots if you don’t move quick enough – but when you see them in their cave you realize there’s, well, kids, old granddad goblins and—’ ‘Old mum goblins?’ Vimes suggested quietly. Once again, Mrs Upshot’s little boy struggled in the unfamiliar and terrifying grip of philosophy and fetched up with, ‘Well, sir, I dare say cows make good mothers, but at the end of the day a calf is veal on the hoof, yes?’ ‘Maybe, but what would you say if the calf walked up to you and said, “Hello, my name is Tears of the Mushroom”?’ Feeney’s face once again frowned in the effort of novel cogitation. ‘I think I’d have the salad, sir.’ Vimes smiled. ‘You were in a difficult position, lad, and I’ll tell you something: so am I. It’s called being a copper. That’s why I like it when they run. That makes it all so simple. They run and I chase. I don’t know if it’s metaphysical, or something like that. But there was a corpse. You saw it, so did I and so did Miss Beedle. Keep that in mind.’ Young Sam was sitting on a hay bale in the farmyard, watching the horses come in. He ran to his dad, looking very pleased with himself, and said, ‘Dad, you know chickens?’ Vimes picked up his son and said, ‘Yes, I have heard of them, Sam.’ Young Sam wriggled out of his father’s grasp as if being picked up and swung around was inappropriate activity for a serious researcher in scatological studies, and looked solemn. ‘Do you know, Dad, that when a chicken does a poo, there’s a white bit on top which is the wee? Sometimes it’s like the icing on a bun, Dad!’ ‘Thank you for letting me know,’ said Vimes. ‘I’ll remember that next time I eat a bun.’ And every time after that, he added to himself. ‘I suppose you know everything about poo now, Sam?’ he said hopefully, and he saw Willikins smile. Young Sam, still staring at a pile of chicken droppings through a little magnifying glass, shook his head without looking up. ‘Oh no, Dad, Mister …’ Here, Young Sam stopped and looked at Willikins hopefully. Willikins cleared his throat and said, ‘Mister Trout, one of the gamekeepers, was around half an hour ago, and of course your lad will strike up a conversation with anybody, and the upshot is that young Sam, it would appear, sir, would like to amass a collection of the droppings of a number of woodland creatures.’ Gamekeepers, thought Vimes. He ran that across his brain and thought about who had actually rounded the goblins up three years ago. And then he thought, how important is that compared with the question who told them to? I think I’ve got the smell of this place: people do what they’re told because they’ve always done what they’re told. But gamekeepers are a canny lot; it’s not just human beings they have to outsmart. And remember, this is the countryside, where everybody knows everybody else, and notices everybody else. I don’t think Feeney is lying, so other people know what happened here one night three years ago. I mustn’t be a bull at a gate, Sybil said, and she’s right. I need to know where I’m treading. What happened happened three years ago. I can afford to take my time over this one. Aloud he said, ‘How far can I take this?’ ‘It seems you’ve had a busy day, sir,’ said Willikins. ‘This morning you went down to the lock-up with a little tit who thinks he is a copper, and then, in company with a goblin, you and said little tit went up to Dead Man’s Copse, where you remained for quite some time, until you and the aforesaid little tit came out and you arrived here, minus one tit, just now.’ Willikins grinned at Vimes. ‘There’s people coming and going down in the kitchens all the time, sir, and gossip is a kind of currency when you get beyond the green door. You’ve got to remember, sir, that, despite Mister Silver’s dirty looks, I am the top nob below stairs and I can go where I like and do what I like and they can choke on it if they like. The whole of the hill is visible from some window or other in this house, and maids are very cooperative, sir. It seems that all the girls are busting for a job in the Scoone Avenue establishment. Very keen they are for the city lights, sir. Very cooperative. Also, I found quite a good telescope in the study. Remarkable view of Hangman’s Hill, you know. I could practically read your lips. Young Sam quite enjoyed the game of searching for Dad.’ Vimes felt a pang of guilt at those words. This was supposed to be a family holiday, wasn’t it? But … ‘Someone killed a goblin girl up at Dead Man’s Copse,’ he said, his voice dull. ‘They made sure there was a lot of blood to give our keen young copper something that he could think of as a case. He’s floundering; I don’t think he’s ever seen a corpse before.’ Willikins looked genuinely taken aback. ‘What, never? Maybe I’ll retire down here, except I’d die of boredom.’ A thought struck Vimes and he said, ‘When you were looking through the telescope, did you see anyone else go up the hill?’ Willikins shook his head. ‘No, sir, just you.’ They both turned to watch Young Sam, who was carefully drawing chicken poo in his notebook, and Willikins said quietly, ‘You’ve got a good lad there, very bright. Make the most of the time, sir.’ Vimes shook his head. ‘Gods know you’re right, but, well, she was cut about, and with steel, definitely steel. They only have stone weapons. They cut her about to make certain there was so much blood that even a stupid flatfoot would spot it. And she was named after the colours of a flower.’ There was a disapproving noise from Willikins. ‘Coppers shouldn’t get sentimental, it’s bad for the judgement. You said it yourself. You find yourself in some bloody awful domestic scene and you think things could be improved by kicking the shit out of somebody, only how do you know when to stop? That’s what you said. You said whacking a bloke in a fight is one thing, but when he’s been cuffed, it ain’t right.’ To Vimes’s surprise Willikins tapped him on the shoulder in a kindly way (you’d know it instantly if Willikins tapped you in an unfriendly way). ‘Take my advice, commander, and have tomorrow off, too. There’s a boating house on the lake, and later you could take the little lad out in the woods, which are, by all accounts, knee-deep in poo of all sorts. He’ll be in poo heaven! Oh, and he also told me that he wants to go and see the smelly skull man again. I’ll tell you what, I reckon with a mind like his, he’ll be Archchancellor of Unseen University by the time he’s sixty!’ Willikins must have seen the grimace on Vimes’s face, because he went on, ‘Why so surprised sir? He might want to be an alchemist, right? Don’t say you’d want him to be a copper: you wouldn’t, would you? At least when you’re a wizard people don’t try to kick you in the fork, right? Of course you do have to go up against dreadful creatures from hellish dimensions, but they don’t carry knives, and you get training. Worth thinking about, commander, ’cos he’s growing like a weed and you should be putting him on the right track through life. And now, if you’ll excuse me, commander, I’m off to annoy the servants.’ Willikins took a few steps then stopped, looked at Vimes and said, ‘Look at it like this, sir. If you take some time off, the guilty will be no less guilty, and the dead won’t get any less dead, and her ladyship will not try to behead you with a coat hanger.’ The guests at Lady Sybil’s tea party were leaving when Vimes got back to the Hall. He scraped the countryside off his boots and headed to the Hall’s master bathroom. Of course, there were plenty of bathrooms around the place – probably more than there were in a street in most of the city, where a tin bath, a jug and basin, or nothing at all were the ablutions of choice or necessity … but this bathroom had been built to a design by Mad Jack Ramkin and resembled the famous bathroom at Unseen University, although, had Mad Jack designed that one, it would have been called the Obscene University, since Mad Jack had a healthy (or possibly unhealthy) liking for the ladies, and in his bathroom it showed, oh dear, it showed. Of course, the white marble lovelies were dignified with urns, bunches of marble grapes, and the ever-popular length of gauze which had, happily, landed in just the right place to stop art becoming pornography. It was also, in all probability, the only bath that had taps marked hot, cold, brandy. And then there were the frescoes, such that if you were a man easily persuaded then it was a good job there was a cold tap, because not to put too fine a point on it, as it were, there were a large number of fine points all over them, yes indeed, and the ladies were only the start of the problem. There were marble gentlemen, as well, definitely gentlemen, even the ones with goats’ feet. It was surprising that the water in the bath didn’t boil of its own accord. He had asked Sybil about it, and she said that it was an important feature of the Hall, and gentlemen collectors of antiquities would often visit in order to inspect it. Vimes had said that he expected that they did, oh yes indeed. Sybil had said that there was no need for that tone of voice, because she had occasionally taken a bath there from the time she had been twelve and had seen no harm in it. It had, she said, stopped her from being surprised later on. And now Vimes lay in the luxurious tub, feeling as if he was trying to fit all the bits of his brain together. He was only vaguely aware of the bathroom door opening, and of hearing Sybil say, ‘I’ve put Young Sam to bed, and he’s sleeping soundly, although I can’t imagine what he might be dreaming about.’ Then Vimes floated again in the warm steamy atmosphere and was only just aware of the swish of cloth hitting the floor. Lady Sybil slid in beside him. The water rose, and so, in accordance with the physics of this business, did the spirits of Sam Vimes. A few hours later, almost drowning in the pillows on the huge bed and floating just above unconsciousness in a warm pink glow, Sam Vimes was certain that he heard his own voice whispering to him. And it said, ‘Think of the things that don’t fit. Wonder why the nice lady of the nobby classes wanders down into a goblin cave as if it’s a natural thing to do.’ He replied, ‘Well, Sybil spends half her time at home covered in heavy protective gear and a flameproof helmet because she likes dragons. It’s the sort of thing that nobby ladies tend to do.’ He considered what he had to say, and responded to himself, ‘Yes, but dragons are what you might call socially acceptable. Goblins, on the other hand, definitely aren’t. No one has got a good word to say for goblins, except Miss Beedle. Why not take Young Sam along to see her tomorrow? After all, she’s the one that got him on to this poo business, and she is a writer, so I expect she’ll be quite glad of the interruption. Yes, that’d be a good idea, and it’d be educational for Young Sam and not an investigation at all …’ Thus satisfied, he waited for the onset of sleep, against a chorus of howls, shrieks, mysterious distant bangs, surreptitious rustlings, screeches, disconcerting ticking noises, dreadful scratching sounds, terrible flappings of wings very close, and all the rest of the unholy orchestra that is known as the peace of the countryside. He had enjoyed a late-night game of snooker with Willikins, just to keep his hand in, and Vimes, half listening now to the outlandish cacophony, wondered whether the solving of a complex crime, one that needed a certain amount of care, could be compared to a game of snooker. Sure, there were a lot of red balls and they got in the way, so you had to knock them down, but your target, your ultimate target, was going to be the black. Powerful people lived in the Shires and so he would tread with care. Metaphorically, Sam Vimes, somewhere in his head, picked up his cue. He lay back in the bed, enjoying the wonderful sensation of gradually being eaten by the pillows, and said to Sybil, ‘Do the Rust family have a place down here?’ Too late he reflected that this might be a bad move because she might well have told him all about it on one of those occasions when, so unusually for a married man, he was not paying much attention to what his wife was saying, and therefore he might be the cause of grumpiness in those precious, warm minutes before sleep. All he could see of her right now was the very tip of her nose, as the pillows claimed her, but she mumbled, drowsily, ‘Oh, they bought Hangnail Manor ten years or so ago, after the Marquis of Fantailer murdered his wife with a pruning knife in the pineapple house. Don’t you remember? You spent weeks searching the city for him. In the end everybody seemed to think he’d gone off to Fourecks and disguised himself by not calling himself the Marquis of Fantailer.’ ‘Oh yes,’ said Vimes, ‘and I remember that a lot of his chums were quite indignant about the investigation! They said that he’d only done one murder, and it was his wife’s fault for having the bad taste to die after just one little stab!’ Lady Sybil turned over, which meant that – since she was a woman happily rich in gravitational attraction – as she turned, the pillow closest to Sam, acting like a gear in a chain, spun softly in the opposite direction so that Sam Vimes found himself now lying on his face. He struck out for the surface again and said, ‘And Rust bought it, did he? It’s unusual for the old fart to spend a penny more than he needs to.’ ‘It wasn’t him, dear, it was Gravid.’ Vimes woke a little more. ‘The son? The criminal?’ ‘I believe, Sam, that the word is entrepreneur, and I’d like to go to sleep now, if it’s all the same to you.’ Sam Vimes knew that the best thing he could say was nothing, and he sank back into the depths, thinking words like fiddler, sharp dealer, inserter of a crafty crowbar between what is right and wrong, and mine and thine, wide boy, financier and untouchable … Gently drifting into a nightmare world where the good guys and bad guys so often changed hats without warning, Vimes wrestled sleeplessness to the ground and made certain that it got eight hours. Next morning Vimes, hand in hand with his son, walked thoughtfully towards the house of Miss Beedle, not knowing what to expect. He had little experience of the literary world, much preferring the literal one, and he had heard that writers spent all day in their dressing gowns drinking champagne.17 On the other hand, as he approached the place up another little lane, some reconsideration began to take place. For one thing, the ‘cottage’ had a garden that would do credit to a farm. When he looked over the fence he saw rows of vegetables and soft fruit, and there was an orchard and what was probably a pigsty and, over there, a proper outdoor privy, very professionally done, with the very nearly compulsory crescent-moon shape fretsawed into the door, and the log pile close at hand so that the most efficient use could be made of every trip down the path. The whole place had a sensible and serious air, and certainly wasn’t what you would expect of somebody who just mucked about with words every day. Miss Beedle opened the door a fraction of a second after he had knocked. She didn’t look surprised. ‘I was rather expecting you, your grace,’ she said, ‘or is it Mister Policeman today? From what I hear, it’s always Mister Policeman one way or the other.’ Then she looked down. ‘And this must be Young Sam.’ She glanced up at his father and said, ‘They tend to get rather tongue-tied, don’t they?’ ‘You know, I’ve got lots of poo,’ said Young Sam proudly. ‘I keep it in jam jars and I’ve got a laboratory in the lavatory. Have you got any elephant poo? It goes – and here he paused for effect – ‘dung!’ For a moment Miss Beedle had that slightly glazed sheen often seen on the face of someone meeting Young Sam for the first time. She looked at Vimes. ‘You must be very proud of him.’ The proud father said, ‘It’s very hard to keep up – I know that.’ Miss Beedle led the way out of the hall and into a room in which chintz played a major part, and drew young Sam over to a large bureau. She opened a drawer and handed the boy what looked like a small book. ‘This is a bound proof of The Joy of Earwax, and I shall sign it for you if you like.’ Young Sam took it like one receiving a holy object, and his father, temporarily becoming his mum, said, ‘What do you say?’ To which Young Sam responded with a beam and a thank you and a ‘Please don’t scribble on it. I’m not allowed to scribble in books.’ While Young Sam was happily turning the pages of his new book, his father was introduced to an overstuffed chair. Miss Beedle gave him a smile and hurried off towards the kitchen, leaving Vimes with not much to look at except for a room full of bookcases, more overstuffed furniture, a full-size concert harp, and a wall clock made to look like an owl, whose eyes swung backwards and forwards hypnotically in time with the tick – presumably to the point where you either committed suicide or picked up the poker in the hearth nearby and beat the damn thing until the springs broke. While Vimes was warmly contemplating this he realized that he was being watched, and he looked round into the worried face and prognathous jaw of the goblin called Tears of the Mushroom. Instinctively he looked at Young Sam, and suddenly the biggest raisin in his cake of apprehension was: what will Young Sam do? How many books had he read? They hadn’t told him nasty tales about goblins, had they, or read him too many of those innocent, colourful fairytale books which contain nightmares ready to leap out and some needless fear that will cause trouble one day? And what Young Sam did was march across the floor, stop dead in front of the girl and say, ‘I know a lot about poo. It’s very interesting!’ Tears of the Mushroom looked frantically for Miss Beedle while Young Sam, totally at ease, began a brief dissertation on sheep poo. In response, with words slapping together like little bricks, she said, ‘What … is … poo … for?’ Young Sam frowned at this as if somebody was questioning his life’s work. Then he looked up brightly and said, ‘Without poo, you would go off bang!’ And he stood there beaming, the meaning of life completely solved. And Tears of the Mushroom laughed. It was a rather staccato laugh, reminding Vimes of the laughter of certain kinds of women, after certain kinds of too much gin. But it was laughter – straight, genuine and unaffected – and Young Sam bathed in it, giggling, and so did Sam Vimes, with sweat beginning to cool on his neck. Then Young Sam said, ‘I wish I had big hands like you. What’s your name?’ In that clipped way Vimes was learning to recognize, the goblin girl said, ‘I am the Tears of the Mushroom.’ Instantly Young Sam threw his arms around as much of her as he could encompass and shouted, ‘Mushrooms shouldn’t cry!’ The look that the goblin girl gave Vimes was one that he had seen many times before on the face of someone in receipt of Young Sam’s hugs: a mixture of surprise and what Vimes had to call non-plussedness. At this point Miss Beedle came back into the room holding a plate which she passed to Tears of the Mushroom. ‘Please be so good as to serve our guests, my dear.’ Tears of the Mushroom picked up the plate and tentatively pushed it towards Vimes, and said something that sounded like half a dozen coconuts rolling downstairs, but somehow managed to include the syllables you and eat and I make. There seemed to be a pleading in her expression, as if trying to make him understand. Vimes stared at her face a while and then thought, Well, I could understand, couldn’t I? It has to be worth a try, and closed his eyes, an errand of some dubiousness when you were face-to-longer-face with a jaw like that. With eyes firmly shut, and one hand over them to cut out the last vestige of light, he said, ‘Will you say that again, young … lady?’ And in the darkness of his skull he heard, quite clearly, ‘I have baked biscuits today, Mister Po-leess-man. I washed my hands,’ she added nervously. ‘They are clean and tasty. This I have said and it is a thing exact.’ Baked by a goblin, thought Vimes as he opened his eyes and took a knobbly but appetizing-looking biscuit from the plate in front of him, then shut his eyes again and asked, ‘Why does the mushroom cry?’ In the dark he heard the goblin girl gasp, and then say, ‘It cries so that there are many more mushrooms. This is a certain thing.’ Vimes heard the faint chink of crockery behind him, but as he took his hands away from his eyes Miss Beedle said, ‘No, stay in darkness, commander. So it’s true what the dwarfs say about you.’ ‘I wouldn’t know. What do the dwarfs say about me, Miss Beedle?’ Vimes opened his eyes. Miss Beedle sat down on a chair almost opposite, while Tears of the Mushroom waited for more biscuit activity with the air of someone who would probably wait for ever or until told not to. She looked imploringly at Vimes and then at Young Sam, who was studying Tears of the Mushroom with interest, although, knowing Young Sam, most of the interest had to do with the plate of biscuits. So he said, ‘Okay, lad, you may ask the lady for a biscuit, but mind your manners.’ ‘They say that the dark is in you, commander, but you keep it in a cage. A present from Koom Valley, they say.’ Vimes blinked in the light. ‘A dwarf superstition in a goblin cave? You know a lot about dwarfs?’ ‘Quite a lot,’ said Miss Beedle, ‘but far more about goblins, and they believe in the Summoning Dark, just like the dwarfs; after all, they are both creatures of the caves and the Summoning Dark is real. It’s not all in your head, commander: no matter what you hear, I sometimes hear it too. Oh dear, you of all people must recognize a substition when you’re possessed by it? It’s the opposite of a superstition: it’s real even if you don’t believe in it. My mother taught me that; she was a goblin.’ Vimes looked at the pleasant brown-haired woman in front of him and said, politely, ‘No.’ ‘All right, perhaps you’ll allow me a little theatricality and misdirection for effect? Truthfully, my mother was found as a child when she was three and raised by goblins in Uberwald. Until she was about eleven – and I say about because she was never quite certain about the passage of time – she pretty much thought and acted like a goblin and picked up their language, which is insanely difficult to learn if you’re not brought up to it. She ate with them, had her own plot in the mushroom farm and was very highly thought of among them for the way she looked after the rat farm. She once told me that until she met my father, all her best recollections were of those years in the goblin cave.’ Miss Beedle stirred her coffee and continued. ‘And she also told me her worst recollections, the ones that haunted her nightmares and, I might say, haunt mine now: of one day after some nearby humans had found out that there was a golden-haired, pink-cheeked human girl running around underground with evil, treacherous brutes who, as everybody knows, eat babies. Well, she screamed and fought as they tried to take her away, especially since people who she had thought of as family were being slaughtered around her.’ There was a pause. And Vimes glanced somewhat fearfully at Young Sam, who, thankfully, had returned to The Joy of Earwax and was therefore oblivious of all else. ‘You haven’t touched your coffee, commander. You’re just holding it in your hand and looking at me.’ Vimes took a deep draught of very hot coffee, which at the moment suited him just fine. He said, ‘This is true? I’m sorry, I don’t know what to say.’ Tears of the Mushroom was watching him carefully, ready should he feel a biscuit attack coming on. They were in fact pretty good, and to hide his confusion he thanked her and took another one. ‘Best not to say anything, then,’ said Miss Beedle. ‘All slaughtered, for no reason at all. It happens. Everybody knows they’re a worthless people, don’t they? I tell you, commander, it’s true that some of the most terrible things in the world are done by people who think, genuinely think, that they’re doing it for the best, especially if there is some god involved. Well, it took a lot of those things, and quite a lot of time, to convince a little girl that she wasn’t one of the nasty goblins any more and was really one of the human beings who were not nasty at all, because they were certain she would understand one day that all this terrible business with the bucket of cold water and the beatings every time she spoke in the goblin tongue, or started absent-mindedly to sing a goblin song, was in her best interest. Fortunately, although she probably didn’t think so at the time, she was strong and clever and she learned: learned to be a good girl, learned to wear proper dresses and eat with a knife and fork and kneel down to pray her thanks for all that she was receiving, including the beatings. And she learned not to be a goblin so successfully that they allowed her to work in the garden, where she vaulted over the wall. They never broke her, and she said to me that there would always be some goblin in her. I never met my father. According to my mother he was a decent and hardworking man, and a considerate and understanding one too, I suspect.’ Miss Beedle stood up and brushed at her dress, as if trying to remove the crumbs of history. Standing there, in the chintzy room with the harp in it, she said, ‘I don’t know who those people were who killed the goblins and beat my mother, but if I ever found out I would slaughter them without a thought, because good people have no business being so bad. Goodness is about what you do. Not what you pray to. And that’s how it went,’ she said. ‘My father was a jeweller, and he soon found out that my mother was absolutely gifted in that respect, probably because of her goblin background that led her to have a feel for stones. I’m sure that made up for having a wife who would swear in goblin when she was annoyed – and let me tell you a good goblin swear can go on for at least a quarter of an hour. She wasn’t one for the books, as you might expect, but my dad had been, and one day I thought, how hard can writing be? After all, most of the words are going to be and, the and I and it, and so on, and there’s a huge number to choose from, so a lot of the work has already been done for you. That was fifty-seven books ago. It seems to have worked.’ Miss Beedle sat back down in her chair and leaned forward. ‘They have the most complex language you could possibly imagine, commander. The meaning of every word is contingent on the words around it, the speaker, the listener, the time of year, the weather, oh, and so many other things. They have something equivalent to what we think of as poetry; they use and control fire … And about three years ago nearly all of them in this countryside were rounded up and carted away, because they were a nuisance. Isn’t that why you’re here?’ Vimes took a deep breath. ‘Actually, Miss Beedle, I came here to see my wife’s family estate and let my lad learn about the countryside. In the process of which I’ve already been arrested on suspicion of killing a blacksmith and have seen the brutally slaughtered body of a goblin woman. On top of this I have no knowledge of the whereabouts of said blacksmith and, Miss Beedle, would like somebody to enlighten me, preferably yourself.’ ‘Yes, I saw the poor thing, and I’m sorry that I can’t tell you where Jethro is.’ Vimes stared at her and thought, She’s probably telling the truth. ‘He’s not hiding in some part of the mine, is he?’ ‘No, I’ve looked. I’ve looked everywhere. No note, nothing. And his parents have no idea either. He’s a bit of a free spirit, but he’s not the sort of person to go away without telling me.’ She looked down, clearly embarrassed. The silence said a lot. Vimes broke it by saying, ‘The murder of that poor girl on the hill will not go unpunished while I live. I’m taking it personally, you might say. I think someone was trying to set me up and mud sticks.’ He paused. ‘Tell me – these pots the goblins make. Do they carry them around all the time?’ ‘Well, yes, of course, but only the ones they’re filling at the moment, obviously,’ said Miss Beedle, with a trace of annoyance. ‘Is this relevant?’ ‘Well, a policeman, you might say, thinks in goblin language: everything is contingent on everything else. Incidentally, how many other people know that you have a tunnel into the hill?’ ‘What makes you think I have a tunnel going into the hill?’ ‘Let me see now. This place is practically at the foot of the hill, and if I lived here I’d have dug out a decent wine cellar for myself. That’s one reason, and the other is because I saw the flash in your eyes when I asked you the question. Would you like me to ask you the question again?’ The woman opened her mouth to speak, and Vimes raised a finger. ‘Not finished yet. What isn’t so simple as that is the fact that yesterday you arrived in the cave without anybody seeing you walk up the hill. Everyone tells me that there are eyes watching you everywhere in the country and, as luck would have it, I had a few working for me yesterday. Please don’t waste my time. You’ve committed no crime that I know of – you understand being kind to goblins is not a crime?’ He thought about that and added, ‘Although perhaps some people round here might think it is. But I don’t and I’m not stupid, Miss Beedle. I saw that goblin head in the pub. It looked as if it’s been there for years. Now, I just want to go back up to the cave without anybody seeing me, if you don’t mind, because I have a few questions to ask.’ Miss Beedle said, ‘You want to interrogate the goblins?’ ‘No, that word suggests that I mean to bully them. I simply have to obtain the information I need to know before I start to investigate the murder of the girl. If you don’t want to help me, I’m afraid that will be your choice.’ The next day Sergeant Colon did not turn up for work. Mrs Colon sent a note around by a boy as soon as she got back from work herself.18 There was nothing romantic about Fred Colon when she got home, and so after sweeping the floor, doing the washing-up, wiping all the surfaces and spending some time teasing out the lumps of mud that had got caught on the doormat, she made haste to Pseudopolis Yard – after visiting her friend Mildred who had a rather nice porcelain jug and basin set she wanted to sell. When she eventually got to the Watch House she explained that Fred was terribly poorly, and sweating cobs and gabbling about rabbits. Sergeant Littlebottom was sent to investigate, and returned looking solemn as she climbed the steps to Vimes’s office, now occupied by Captain Carrot. You could tell he was the occupant now not simply because he was sitting in the chair, which was a persuasive hint, but also because all the paperwork was done and aligned, a trait which always impressed Inspector A. E. Pessimal, a small man who had the heart of a lion and the physical strength of a kitten and the face, disposition and general demeanour that would make even hardened accountants say, ‘Just look at him. Doesn’t he look like a typical accountant to you?’ But this didn’t worry the lion heart of A. E. Pessimal. He was the Watch’s secret weapon. There wasn’t a bookkeeper in the city who would like to see a visit from A. E. Pessimal unless, of course, he was perfectly innocent – although generally that could be ruled out, because Mr and Mrs Pessimal’s little boy could track an error all the way through the ledger and down into the cellar where the real books had been hidden. And all Inspector A. E. Pessimal wanted for his genius was a meticulously calculated wage and a chance, every now and again, to go out on the streets with a real policeman, swinging his truncheon and glaring at trolls. Carrot leaned back. ‘So how’s Fred getting on, Cheery?’ ‘Nothing much that I can see, really, um …’ ‘That was a big um, Cheery.’ The trouble was that Captain Carrot had a friendly, honest and open face that made you want to tell him things. It didn’t help that Sergeant Littlebottom held a small torch for the captain, even though he was well and truly spoken for – he was also a dwarf, well, technically, and you can’t help how you dream. ‘Well …’ she began reluctantly. Carrot leaned forward. ‘Yes, Cheery?’ She gave in. ‘Well, sir, it’s unggue. You come from Copperhead … Did you run into many goblins up there?’ ‘No, but I know that unggue is their religion, if you can call it that.’ Cheery Littlebottom shook her head, trying to get out of her mind some speculation about the part a reasonably high stool might play in a relationship, and telling herself that Sergeant Hammer-of-Gold, over in the Dolly Sisters Watch House, caught her eye every time she was busily catching his eye when they happened to meet on patrol, and was probably a really good catch if she could pluck up the courage to ask him if he was actually male.19 She said, ‘Unggue is not a religion, it’s a superstition. The goblins don’t believe in Tak,20 sir, they’re savages, scavengers, but …’ She hesitated again. ‘There’s something I was told once, and it’s unbelievable, but sometimes they eat their babies, sir, or at least, the mother will eat her child, her newborn child, if there’s famine. Can you believe that?’ Carrot’s mouth dropped open for a moment, and then a small voice said, ‘Yes, I think I can, sergeant, if you would excuse my saying so.’ A. E. Pessimal looked defiantly at their expressions and tried to stand a little straighter. ‘It’s a matter of logic, you see? No food? But the mother may survive by reconsuming the child, as it were, whereas, if all other food has been exhausted, then the child will die. In fact the child is dead as soon as the conundrum is postulated. The mother, on the other hand, might, by so doing, survive for long enough for more food to be found and become available, and in the course of time may bear another child.’ ‘You know, that is a very accountancy thing to say!’ said Cheery. A. E. Pessimal remained calm. ‘Thank you, Sergeant Littlebottom, I shall take that as a compliment because the logic is impeccable. It’s what is known as the dreadful logic of necessity. I’m well versed in the logistics of survival situations.’ The chair creaked as Captain Carrot leaned forward. ‘No offence meant, Inspector Pessimal, but may I enquire as to what kind of issues of survival arise during double-entry bookkeeping?’ A. E. Pessimal sighed. ‘It can get pretty hazardous as the end of the fiscal year draws near, captain. However, I take your point and would like you to understand that I believe I have read every single memoir, manual, log, and message in a bottle – by which I mean, of course, message taken from a bottle – that is currently available, and I can assure you that you would be amazed at the terrible decisions that sometimes have to be made by a group of people so that some, if not all, may live. Classically we have the shipwrecked sailors adrift in an open boat far on the ocean with succour extremely unlikely. Generally, the procedure is to eat one another’s legs, although sooner or later the supply of legs is going to run, if I may use the word, out; and then arises the question who will die so that some may live. Dreadful algebra, captain.’ Only then did A. E. Pessimal blush. ‘I’m sorry. I know that I am a small, weak man, but I have amassed a large library; I dream of dangerous places.’ ‘Perhaps you should walk through the Shades, inspector,’ said Carrot, ‘you wouldn’t have to dream. Do carry on, Cheery.’ Cheery Littlebottom shrugged. ‘But eating your own child, that’s got to be wrong, yes?’ ‘Well, sergeant,’ said A. E. Pessimal, ‘I have read about such things and if you think of the outcomes, which are the death of both mother and child or the death of the child but the possible life of the mother, the conclusion must be that her decision is right. In his book A Banquet of Worms Colonel F. J. Massingham does mention this about the goblins and apparently, according to the goblins’ world view, a consumed child, which clearly did emerge from the mother, has been returned whence it came and will, hopefully, be reborn anew at some future date when circumstances are more favourable with, therefore, no actual harm done. You may think that this view does not stand up to scrutiny, but when you’re faced with the dreadful algebra, the world becomes quite a different place.’ There was silence while they all contemplated this. Carrot said, ‘You know how it is in a street fight, Cheery. Sometimes if things get hot and you know it’s you or them – that’s when you do the algebra.’ ‘Fred doesn’t seem to know where he is,’ said Cheery. ‘He wasn’t running a temperature and his bedroom isn’t particularly warm, but he acts as if he’s very hot and he won’t let go of that damn little pot. He shouts if anyone tries even to get near it. Actually, he screamed at me! And that’s another thing, his voice has changed, he sounds like a man who’s gargling rocks. I had a word with Ponder Stibbons at the university, but they don’t appear to have anyone who knows anything much about goblins.’ Captain Carrot raised his eyebrows. ‘Are you sure? I know for a fact that they have a Professor of Dust, Miscellaneous Particles and Filaments, and you tell me that there’s no expert on an entire species of talking humanoids?’ ‘That’s about right, sir. All we could turn up was stuff about what a bloody nuisance they are – you know the kind of thing.’ ‘Nobody knows anything about goblins? I mean, stuff worth knowing?’ A. E. Pessimal actually saluted. ‘Harry King does, captain. There’s quite a few of them downriver. They don’t come into town much, though. You may remember that Lord Vetinari was gracious enough to ask for me to be seconded to the revenue in order that I might go through Mister King’s returns, given that all the other tax officers were frightened to set foot on his property. I myself, sir, was not frightened,’ said A. E. Pessimal proudly, ‘because I am protected by my badge and the majesty of the law. Harry King might throw a taxman out of the building, but he’s clever enough not to try that with one of Commander Vimes’s men, no indeed!’ You could have lit the city with the proud glow from A. E. Pessimal’s face as he tried to puff out a chest that mostly went in. It became a little more swollen when Carrot said, ‘Very well done, inspector. You’re a mean man with a smoking abacus indeed. I think I shall pay a visit to our old friend Harry first thing in the morning.’ Vimes did some thinking about the problem of taking Young Sam to a crime scene, but frankly, the lad was showing himself to be up to just about any encounter. Besides, any lad wants to go and see where his dad works. He looked down at his son. ‘Would you be scared of a long walk in the dark, lad? With me and these ladies?’ Young Sam looked solemn for a moment and then said, ‘I think I’ll let Mister Whistle do the being scared and then it won’t bother me.’ The door to the secret tunnel, if indeed it was secret, was in Miss Beedle’s cellar, which had quite a well-appointed wine rack and a general, not unpleasant smell of, well, a cellar. But once through the door there was a smell of distant goblins. It was a long walk in the dark, especially when you were obliged to walk up quite a steep slope very nearly on hands and knees. The smell of goblins grew stronger after a while, but during that while, you tended to get used to it. Here and there light shone into the gloom from holes to the outside world, which Vimes thought was sensible engineering until he realized that rabbits used this tunnel too, and had left plenty of droppings as evidence. He wondered whether he should pocket a few samples for Young Sam’s collection and suggested this to Young Sam, toiling manfully behind him, who said, ‘No, Dad, got rabbits. Want elephant if we find one.’ Rabbit poo, Vimes noticed, was about the size of a chocolate raisin, a thought which instantly dragged him back to his youth, when if by some means, never entirely legal, he had acquired some cash, he would spend it on a ticket to the fleapit music hall and buy a packet of chocolate raisins with the change. Nobody knew, or cared to guess, what the things were that scuttled and scratched down below the seats, but you soon learned a very important rule: if you dropped your chocolate raisins, it was vitally important not to pick them up! Vimes stopped, causing Miss Beedle to walk into the sack of apples that she had asked him to carry, and got a grip on himself sufficiently to say, ‘I’d like a moment or two to catch my breath, Miss Beedle. Sorry, not as young as I was and all that. I’ll catch you up. What are we carrying these bags for anyway?’ ‘Fruit and vegetables, commander.’ ‘What? To goblins? I’d have thought they found their own food.’ Miss Beedle inched her way around him and climbed on into the dark, saying, over her shoulder, ‘Yes, they do.’ Vimes sat with Young Sam for a moment until he felt better and said, ‘How are you doing, lad?’ In the dark a small voice said, ‘I told Mister Whistle not to worry, Dad, because he’s a bit silly.’ So is your father, thought Vimes, and is probably going to continue to be so. But he was on the chase. One way or another he was on the chase. Who you were chasing could wait. The chasing was the thing. Anger helped Vimes up the last leg of the climb. Anger at himself and whoever it was who had punctured his holiday. But it was worrying: he had wanted something to happen and now it had. Somebody was dead. Sometimes you had to take a look at yourself and then look away. He found Miss Beedle and Tears of the Mushroom waiting with a dozen or so other … ladies. It was a calculated guess, given that he had yet to find any reliable way of telling one goblin from another – except, of course, that Tears of the Mushroom was wearing her apron with pockets in which he hadn’t seen before, and apparently neither had the other ladies, since Tears of the Mushroom was now the hit of the season as far as her sisters were concerned, given that they currently wore daring little outfits of old sacking, plaited grasses and rabbit skin. They gathered around her chorusing, presumably, the goblin equivalent of ‘Oh my dear, you look fabulous’.21 Miss Beedle sidled up to Vimes and said, ‘I know what you’re thinking, but it’s a start. Carrying things, useful things, without having to use your hands – well, that’s a step in the right direction.’ She pulled Vimes a little way from the newly formed goblin branch of the Women’s Institute, who had by now attracted the attention of Young Sam, whose cheerful reluctance to be overawed by anything had clearly won over the girls, resulting in his being where he always felt he should be, the centre of attention. It was a knack. Miss Beedle went on, ‘If you want to change a whole people, then you start with the girls. It stands to reason: they learn faster, and they pass on what they learn to their children. I suppose you’re wondering why we were trekking up here with all the sacks?’ Behind them, the apron was being tried on by one girl after another: this year’s must-have item. Vimes turned back to the woman and said, ‘Well, this is just a guess, but I see a lot of rabbit bones around the place, and I have heard that you can die if you live only on rabbit, only I don’t know why this is.’ Miss Beedle lit up. ‘Well, Commander Vimes, you’ve certainly gone up in my estimation! Yes, rabbit has been the scourge of the goblin nation! I understand it depletes the body of some vital nutrient if you don’t eat other things as well. Just about any green stuff will do, but the male goblins think a proper meal is a rabbit on a stick.’ She sighed. ‘Dwarfs know about this, and they’re absolutely fanatical about good food, as you should be if you spend much of your time underground, but nobody cared to tell the goblins, as if they would listen anyway, and so bad health and premature death is their lot. Some survive, of course, mostly those who prefer rat or eat the whole rabbit, not just the more apparently edible bits, or they simply eat their vegetables.’ She began to unfasten a sack of cabbages and continued, ‘I was well in with the wife of the head man here, because he got sick and I made certain he got a few good meals. Of course he swears it was because he did the magic, but his wife was remarkably sensible, and the other males don’t worry about what the girls get up to, so they slip fruit and veg into their stews, saying they’re magical, and so they have children who survive and thus we change the world one meal at a time. That is if the goblins get a chance to live at all.’ She looked sadly at the gossiping girls and said, ‘What they really need is a first-class theologian, because, you see, they agree with the rest of the world: they think they’re rubbish! They think they did something very bad, a long time ago, and because of it they’ve lived as they do. They think they have it coming to them, as you might say.’ Vimes frowned. He couldn’t remember ever going into a church or temple or one of the numerous other places of more or less spirituality for any other reason than the occasional requirements of the job. These days he tended to go in for reasons of Sybil, i.e., his wife dragging him along so that he could be seen, and, if possible, be seen remaining awake. No, the world of next worlds, afterlives and purgatorial destinations simply did not fit into his head. Whether you wanted it or not, you were born, you did the best you could, and then, whether you really wanted to or not, you died. They were the only certainties, and so the best thing for a copper to do was to get on with the job. And it was about time that Sam Vimes got back to doing his. Young Sam at this point had tired of petticoat company and had drifted over to an elderly goblin man who was working on a pot, and was watching with extreme fascination to the apparent pleasure, as far as Vimes could tell, of the elderly goblin. That’s a lesson to us … I don’t know what kind of lesson, but it’s a lesson, he thought. Vimes waited until Miss Beedle returned from discussing the possible new fashion explosion with the girls, then politely asked her, ‘Did the victim have any unggue pots on her?’ ‘I would be amazed if she hadn’t,’ said Miss Beedle. ‘One or two at the very least, but probably the quite small ones for use during the day.’ ‘I see,’ said Vimes, ‘but were any found on her, er, afterwards, I mean, if she was laid out?’ He didn’t know what the protocol was and continued, ‘Look, Miss Beedle, is it possible that she had an unggue pot on her that’s now missing? I know they’re valuable, of course – they’re shiny.’ ‘I don’t know, but I’ll go and ask The Cold Bone Wakes. He’s the head goblin. He’ll know.’ That reminded Vimes. Feeling embarrassed, he delved into his pocket and took out a small package very, very carefully wrapped, and handed it to Miss Beedle with a pleading look. ‘I believe this belonged to the dead girl,’ he said. ‘A stone ring with a little blue bead in it? Can you see that it gets to someone here who’ll value it?’ All she had was a stone ring, he thought, and even that got taken away. There were times when the world did not need policemen, because what it really did need was for somebody who knew what they were doing to shut it all down and start it all up again so that this time it could be done properly … But before despair could entirely set in, Miss Beedle was back, and excited. ‘How apposite that you should ask that question, commander! One of them was missing! Unggue cat!’ Vimes could register absolute flat-faced incomprehension as well as any copper born. It radiated a searchlight of ignorance, but that was fine because Miss Beedle was prepared to be a fountainhead of information. ‘I’m sure you know what everybody knows, commander, which is that goblins do, I might say religiously, store certain bodily secretions in pots, in the belief that these must be reunited with their corpse when they are buried. This obligation is called unggue. All goblins must, by custom, which is very strict among goblins, maintain the Unggue Had, the trinity of snot, nail clippings and earwax. The missing pot in this case is the pot of cat, which contains nail clippings. Don’t get misled by the word “cat”. Felines don’t come into the picture … it’s simply that there are only so many syllables in the world.’ ‘And this is the first time you’ve heard that it’s missing, Miss Beedle?’ ‘Well, this is my first time up here since yesterday, and it’s a difficult time to talk to her family, as you may imagine …’ ‘I see,’ said Vimes, though he didn’t, not very much – although he could sense a tiny bead of light growing in the darkness of his mind. He glanced again at Young Sam, who was studying the pot-maker with every sign of forensic interest. That’s my boy. He continued, ‘Did they look for the pot?’ ‘Looked everywhere, commander, even outside. And it’ll be quite small. You see, every goblin makes a set of pots which are kept deep inside the cave. I don’t know where they are, though in most other things they trust me. This is because humans steal pots. For this reason, most goblins make other comparatively small pots for daily use and for when they leave the cave, and decant them into the larger pots later, in secret.’ She tried to smile, and said, ‘I’m sure this seems quite outlandish to you, commander, but the making and maintaining of the pots is to them a religion in itself.’ At this point Samuel Vimes was not keen to be heard giving his views about pots, so he contented himself with saying, ‘Is it possible that another goblin might have stolen the pot? Anyway, what size is “quite small”?’ Miss Beedle gave him a surprised look. ‘If you trust me on anything, commander, trust me on this. No goblin would dream of stealing another goblin’s pot. The concept of doing so would be totally alien to them, I assure you. The size? Oh, usually similar to a lady’s compact or perhaps a snuffbox. They have a shine on them like opals.’ ‘Yes,’ said Vimes, ‘I know,’ and he thought, bright colours in the dark. He said, ‘I don’t want to be difficult, but could I borrow another of the poor lady’s pots? I might need one to show people what it is I’m looking for.’ Miss Beedle looked surprised again. ‘That would be impossible, but I think that if I talk to Tears of the Mushroom she might, just might, loan you one of hers, in which case I may say you will be a very special person, commander. A pot usually changes hands only because of distress, but Tears of the Mushroom spends a lot of time with me and has learned, shall I say, the uses of flexible thinking, and, if I may say so, she has taken a little bit of a shine to you.’ She walked away, leaving the startled Vimes and Young Sam to their own devices. Here and there, goblins were doing whatever they did, tending small fires, sleeping, or in many cases fussing with their pots. And a few just sat there staring blankly at nothing at all, like a policeman wondering how you spell phantasmagorical. And a new image dragged itself out of Vimes’s memory. It was of a lot of little blue men shouting, ‘Crivens!’ Ah yes, the Nac mac Feegle! They lived in holes in the ground as well. Admittedly, these were said to be rather more salubrious than this midden-ridden cave system, but however you looked at it, they were in the same situation as the goblins. They lived on the edge too, but they – they danced on the edge, they jumped up and down on it, made faces at it, thumbed their snotty noses at it, refused to see the peril of their situation and, in general, seemed to have a huge appetite for life, adventure and alcohol. As a copper, he shouldn’t say it, because they could be a bloody nuisance, but there was something commendable about the cheerfully feisty way they faced, well, everything … Somebody tugged at his sleeve. He looked down into the face of Tears of the Mushroom, with Miss Beedle standing over her like a chaperone. The other goblin girls stood behind the pair of them like an Ephebian chorus. The solemn voice from the little face said, ‘Hearts must give, Mister Po-leess-man.’ With dreadfully bad timing, Miss Beedle broke in like an overactive schoolteacher, and Vimes was privately overjoyed to see a brief look of annoyance on Tears of the Mushroom’s face. ‘She means that if she is to trust you with a pot, then you must trust her with something equally valuable. I suppose you would call it a hostage situation.’ No, I wouldn’t, Vimes thought, looking into the dark eyes of the goblin girl. That was a strange thing: when he got past the features, which at best could be considered homely, depending on what kind of home you had in mind, the eyes were as human as you could imagine. They had a depth that not even the brightest animal could achieve. He reached for his wallet, and Miss Beedle said sharply, ‘Money won’t do!’ He ignored her and finished pulling out the picture of Young Sam that he took everywhere and carefully passed it to Tears of the Mushroom, who accepted it as if holding a rare and delicate object – which, from the point of view of Vimes, it certainly was. She looked at it, then down at the boy himself, who gave her a cheery smile, and her eyes confirmed that the grimace on her face was in fact an answering smile. For Young Sam, the goblin cave was an interesting fairyland. You had to admire his ability not to be immediately frightened of anything. Tears of the Mushroom looked back at the picture and then back at Young Sam and then at the face of Vimes. She tucked the picture carefully into her apron and pulled out a small, iridescent pot. She held it out to Vimes, her hand trembling slightly, and he found himself taking it gingerly in both hands. Then Tears of the Mushroom said in her strange voice, like a living filing cabinet, ‘Hearts have given.’ Which almost brought Vimes to his knees. He thought: it could just as well have been her head grinning on the pub wall! Someone is going to burn! In the back of his mind a cheerful voice said, ‘Well done, Commander Vimes, at last you are singing from my hymn sheet!’ He ignored it, feeling the little pot; it was as smooth as skin. Whatever it was made to contain, and he wasn’t going to ask, the contents were masked by a carved latticework of flowers and mushrooms. In the cool depths of his cellar, Jiminy the publican was preparing for the evening rush when he heard a sound in the darkness among the barrels. He dismissed it as being yet another rat until a hand was clamped over his mouth. ‘Excuse me, sir, I have reason to believe that you can help me with my inquiries.’ The man struggled, but Vimes knew every trick when it came to apprehending a suspect. He hissed, ‘You know who I am, sir, and I know what you are. We’re both coppers and we’ve been around the houses. You said that the barman sees everything, hears everything and says nothing, and I’m a fair man, Mister Jiminy, but I’m investigating a murder. A murder, sir, the capital crime, and maybe something much, much worse. So excuse me if I take the view that those who aren’t behind me are standing in my way, with all that that entails.’ Jiminy was running out of breath now, and squirming feebly. ‘Oh, too much of the booze and too little walking the beat, I fancy,’ said Vimes. ‘Now, I would not ask a man to break the barman’s solemn oath, so when I take my hand away, we’ll sit down peacefully and play a little game of charades. I’m letting go … now.’ The barman wheezed a curse, and added, ‘You didn’t need to do that, commander. I’ve got a bad chest, you know!’ ‘Not as bad as it might otherwise be, Mister Jiminy. And now a word on the subject of being too clever.’ The publican glared as Vimes went on, ‘I’m strictly a copper. I don’t kill people unless they’re trying to kill me. You may be aware of my batman, Mister Willikins. You saw him the other day. Regrettably he’s more direct, and also extremely loyal. A few years ago, to save my family, he killed an armed dwarf with a common ice knife. And he has other talents: among them, I have to say, is that he can iron a shirt as crisply as any man I know. And, as I say, very loyal indeed. C’mon, Jiminy. I’m a copper and you’re a copper. You’re still a copper whatever you say – the stain never leaves you. You know what I can do and I know what you can do and you’re smart enough to choose the right side.’ ‘All right, you don’t need to rub it in,’ Jiminy grumbled. ‘We both know about the ins and outs.’ His voice was suddenly and almost theatrically helpful as he crooned, ‘How may I help you, officer, just like the good citizen that I am?’ Vimes carefully pulled out of his coat the little pot. It was indeed about the size of a snuffbox. The incongruity was not lost on Vimes: in one pocket he held the glorious gem, quite likely the repository of goblin snot, and in the other he had his own small snuffbox. How hilarious would it be if he’d mixed them up? Jiminy certainly reacted when he saw it, although he probably thought he hadn’t. There is a subtle difference between hiding your reaction and showing that you are hiding your reaction. ‘All right, all right, Mister Vimes, you’re right. We don’t have to play games, old coppers like us. I give in. I know what that is. Seen one like it recently, as a matter of fact.’ ‘And?’ ‘I can give you a name, Mister Vimes. ’Cos why? ’Cos he’s a nut job, a toe rag, and he ain’t from around here. Name of Stratford, or so they call him. A knife cove, the kind of bloke you never want to see walk through your pub door, I don’t mind telling you. He isn’t often here, thank goodness. Day before yesterday was the first time I’ve seen him in months. I don’t know where he kips, but the snotty bugger he was hanging out with is called Ted Flutter, works for young Lord Rust up at Hangnail. His lordship is big in tobacco, so they tell me.’ Jiminy stopped. Vimes interpreted this in exactly the way Jiminy wanted, he was sure. Lord Rust was up to something, and by insinuating as much Jiminy was throwing a bone to Vimes to get the man off his back. Some people would have thought this despicable, but the man was an ex-policeman, after all. Jiminy gave a little cough as he endeavoured to find another victim for Vimes to pursue. ‘But Flutter, well, you know, he’s just a bloke. If someone needs help for something or other, he’s the kind of bloke who’d be the lookout or be told to take away the bones. When not up to mischief I think he hangs wallpaper and runs a turkey farm up on the road towards Overhang. You can’t miss it, it’s a stinky ol’ place and he doesn’t take care of his birds. Not entirely all there, in my opinion.’ Vimes seized his opening. ‘Tobacco, eh? Oh yes, Mister Jiminy, I did think I smelled rather more tobacco down here than might otherwise be expected, and, of course, as a policeman, it’s something that I’ll have to look into, perhaps, when time allows.’ He winked, and Jiminy nodded knowingly. With the atmosphere now tentatively upbeat, Jiminy said, ‘They brings a few barrels up here some nights and then picks it up again as and when. All right, I know it’s the revenue and all that, but I don’t see the harm. And since we understand one another so well, Mister Vimes, I’ve been here for only three years. I know there was some stuff way back, maybe they did scrag a few goblins, I don’t know, not my business. Don’t know why, don’t know who, if you get my meaning?’ Jiminy was sweating cobs, Vimes noticed. There are times when reacting the way that simple, common decency requires fails to serve a higher purpose, and because of this Vimes merely gave the man a little smile and said, ‘One day, Mister Jiminy, I’ll bring a lady here. I think she’d be very interested to see your establishment.’ Jiminy was puzzled but had the grace to say, ‘I’ll look forward to it, commander.’ ‘What I’m trying to say,’ said Vimes, ‘is that if this pub still has the head of a goblin hanging over the bar the next time I’m here there’ll be a mysterious fire, do you understand? No doubt you want to keep in with young Lord Rust and his chums, because it always pays to keep in with the powerful. I know that well enough. You’ll find me a good friend, Mister Jiminy, and I’d like to suggest to you that it would not be in your interest to have Commander Vimes as your enemy. Just a word to the wise, you know, one copper to another.’ With forced cheerfulness Jiminy said, in a voice that dripped butter and sugar, ‘No one ever said that Constable Jiminy didn’t know how the wind was blowing, and since you’ve been so gracious as to visit my humble establishment I think I can take the view that the wind has begun to blow due Vimes.’ Vimes lifted the cellar hatch to depart and said, ‘Oh, so do I, Mister Jiminy, so do I, and if ever the weathercock decides to blow the other way, I’ll bite its bloody head off.’ Jiminy smiled uncertainly and said, ‘Do you have jurisdiction here, commander?’ And was dragged by the shirt to within an inch of Vimes’s face, eyeball to eyeball, and Vimes said, ‘Try me.’ Feeling rather chirpy after this interlude, Vimes jogged to the lane that led to the hill and found Miss Beedle and Tears of the Mushroom at the door of the cottage. By the look of it they had been picking apples; several baskets of fruit had been piled up. He thought that Tears of the Mushroom smiled when she saw him, although how could you tell, really? Goblin faces were hard to read. The pot was dutifully traded back for the picture, and Vimes couldn’t help noticing, because he always made a point of noticing, that both he and the girl tried surreptitiously to examine their precious items without causing offence. He was sure he heard Miss Beedle stifle a sigh of relief. ‘Did you find the murderer?’ she said, leaning forward anxiously. She turned to the girl. ‘Go inside, dear, while I talk to Commander Vimes, will you?’ ‘Yes, Miss Beedle, I will go inside as you request.’ There it was again: a language of little boxes, opening and shutting as required. The girl disappeared into the house, and Vimes said, ‘I have information that two men were in the pub on the night of the murder, and one of them certainly had a pot. Neither of them, I’ve been led to believe, was a pillar of society.’ Miss Beedle clapped her hands. ‘Well, that’s good, isn’t it? You have them bang to rights!’ It always embarrassed Samuel Vimes when civilians tried to speak to him in what they thought was ‘policeman’. If it came to that, he hated thinking of them as civilians. What was a policeman, if not a civilian with a uniform and a badge? But they tended to use the term these days as a way of describing people who were not policemen. It was a dangerous habit: once policemen stopped being civilians the only other thing they could be was soldiers. He sighed. ‘As far as I know, miss, it is not illegal to have a goblin pot. Neither is it, strictly speaking, illegal to be described as not a pillar of society. Do goblins sign their pots in some way?’ ‘Oh yes, indeed, commander, goblin pots are always distinctive. Do these criminals have a modus operandi?’ Vimes’s heart sank. ‘No, and I don’t think they’d know one if they saw it.’ He tried to say this firmly, because Miss Beedle looked as if she would at any moment turn out with a magnifying glass and a bloodhound. Then, falling across his world like a rainbow of sound, came music, drifting out of the open cottage window. He listened with his mouth open, entirely forgetting the conversation. His Grace the Duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes, was not a man who made a point of frequenting performances of classical music, or indeed any music that you couldn’t whistle on the way home. But apparently being a nob carried with it a requirement to attend the opera, the ballet and as many musical events as Sybil could drag him to. Fortunately, they generally had a box, and Sybil, very wisely, having dragged him to the performance, did not subsequently drag him into consciousness. But some of it seeped through and it was enough for him to know that what he was hearing was the real, highbrow stuff: you couldn’t hum it, and at no point did anybody shout ‘Whoops! Have a banana!’ It was the pure quill of music, a sound that came close to making you want to fall on your knees and promise to be a better person. He turned wordlessly to Miss Beedle, who said, ‘She’s very good, isn’t she?’ ‘That’s a harp, isn’t it? A goblin playing a harp?’ Miss Beedle seemed embarrassed by the fuss. ‘Certainly, why shouldn’t she? Strangely enough, her large hands are suited to the instrument. I don’t think she understands the concept of reading music yet, and I have to help her tune it, but she does play very well. Heaven knows where she’s getting the music from …’ ‘Heaven?’ said Vimes, adding urgently, ‘How long will she be playing? Have I got time to bring Sybil over here?’ He didn’t wait for an answer but hurried off down the lane, clambered over a gate, caused a flock of sheep to explode in all directions, swore at a kissing gate, jumped over the ha-ha, completely ignored the he-he and totally avoided the ho-ho. He hurtled down the drive, scampered up the steps and, providentially, went through the front door at exactly the same time as a footman swung it open. Sybil was taking tea with a group of ladies, which appeared to be obligatory procedure in the afternoons, but Vimes leaned against the wall and panted out, ‘You must come and listen to this music! Bring Young Sam! Bring these ladies if they want to come, but whatever you do, come on! I’ve never heard anything so good!’ Sybil looked around. ‘Well, we were just breaking up, Sam. You know, you look very flushed. Is anything the matter?’ She looked imploringly at her friends, who were already rising in their seats, and said, ‘I do hope you’ll forgive me, ladies. It’s so very difficult being the wife of an important man.’ There was a slight barb to the last syllable. ‘I’m sure, Sam, that whatever it is can wait until I’ve said goodbye to my guests, yes?’ And so Sam Vimes shook hands, smiled, shook hands, smiled and fretted until the last twitterer had tweeted and the last lady had left. Having seen the final carriage away, Lady Sybil came back in, flopped into a chair in front of Sam and listened to Vimes’s garbled account. ‘And this is that young goblin girl Miss Beedle has been teaching to talk?’ Vimes was almost frantic. ‘Yes! And she plays wonderful music! Wonderful!’ ‘Sam Vimes, when I take you to a concert you fall asleep in ten minutes. Do you know what? You’ve convinced me. Let’s go, shall we?’ ‘Where?’ said Vimes, in husbandly confusion. Sybil affected surprise. ‘Why, to hear the young lady play the harp, of course. I thought that was what you wanted. I’ll go and get my jacket while you find Young Sam, please? He’s in the laboratory.’ For Vimes, bewilderment was now accumulating. ‘The …’ ‘The laboratory, Sam! You know my family were famous meddlers, don’t you? Willikins is in there with him, and I believe they’re dissecting some, shall I say, excrement? Make certain they’ve both washed their hands – thoroughly,’ she added, on the way out of the room. ‘And tell them I was emphatic, and tell Young Sam what emphatic means!’ The coach stood empty in the lane. They hadn’t dared knock on the door, not while that heavenly music was drifting out of the cottage window. Sybil was in tears, but often she looked up, and said things like, ‘That shouldn’t be possible on a harp!’ Even Young Sam was transfixed, standing there with his little mouth open, while the music rushed in and, for a moment upon the world, lifted all hearts and forgave all sins – not having its work cut out in the case of Young Sam, a part of Vimes managed to reflect, but doing a sterling and heavyweight job on his father. And when the music stopped Young Sam said, ‘More!’ and that went for his parents, too. They stood there, not looking at one another, and then the cottage door opened and Miss Beedle stepped out. ‘I saw you out there, of course. Do come in, but quietly. I’ve made lemonade.’ She led them through the hall and turned into the living room. Tears of the Mushroom must have been forewarned by Miss Beedle. She sat on a chair next to the harp with her oversized hands clasped demurely over her apron. Wordlessly, Young Sam walked over to her and cuddled her leg. The goblin girl looked panicky and Vimes said, ‘Don’t worry, he just wants to show that he loves you.’ And he thought, I’ve just told a goblin not to be frightened of my son because he loves her and the world has turned upside-down and all sins are forgiven, except possibly mine. As the coach rattled gently back towards Ramkin Hall Lady Sybil said quietly to Vimes, ‘I understand that the young lady goblin who was … murdered could play the harp as well as Miss Mushroom.’ Vimes stirred from his inner thoughts and said, ‘I didn’t know that.’ ‘Oh yes,’ said Sybil, in a curiously chatty voice. ‘Apparently Miss Beedle wants young goblin girls to have something to be proud of.’ She cleared her throat, and, after a pause, said, ‘Do you have any suspects, Sam?’ ‘Oh yes, two. I have the testimony of a reliable witness that they were in the area, and I’m beginning to consider a chain of events that might lead me also to the whereabouts of Mister Jefferson the smith. This is the countryside, after all. Everyone sees where you go and you never know who is behind a hedge. I believe they may have heard him invite me to Dead Man’s Copse on what the Times would call “that fateful night”.’ Sybil looked down at Young Sam, dozing between them, and said, ‘Do you know where they live?’ ‘Yes, one of them at least. I think the other one just hangs around, as they say.’ And now the rattle of gravel under wheel told them that they were going down the long drive. Sybil cleared her throat again, and in a quiet voice said, ‘I fear you may have felt that I was being rather acerbic to you, Sam, on the subject of letting your professional concerns get in the way of our holiday. I may, at times, have been somewhat … blunt.’ ‘Not at all, Sybil, I fully understood your concern.’ It seemed that Lady Sybil really could have done with some cough drops, but she carried on carefully and said, ‘Sam, I’d be very grateful if you could see your way clear to perhaps taking Willikins with you to wherever it is that these scoundrels poison the world with their existence, and bring them to justice, if you would be so good.’ He could feel her trembling with rage and said, ‘I was considering doing so as soon as possible, my dear, but I must tell you that things may not go entirely in accordance with the rulebook. After all, I’m out of my jurisdiction here.’ But his wife said, ‘You’re a stickler for the book, Sam, and I admire that, but the jurisdiction of a good man extends to the end of the world – though who will you take them to? Havelock would hang them, you know that. But he’s a long way away. Nonetheless, Sam, I am certain of one thing and it’s this: the worst thing you can do is nothing. Go to it, Sam.’ ‘Actually, Sybil, I was considering delivering them to the local justices.’ ‘What? They’re a terrible bunch, apparently using what they call the law here for their own ends! There’ll be an enormous stink!’ Vimes smiled. ‘Oh dear, do you really think so?’ There was no point going to bed, thought Vimes later that evening, and so he kissed his wife goodnight and went to the snooker room where Willikins was idly practising one of the more socially acceptable skills he had learned during a misspent youth. The man straightened up when Vimes walked in and said, ‘Good evening, commander. Would you like a sustaining drink to be going on with?’ Vimes also indulged in a rare cigar because, well, what good is a snooker room without smoke twisting among the lights and turning the air a desolate blue, the colour of dead hopes and lost chances? Willikins, who knew the protocol, waited until Vimes had made his shot before coughing gently. ‘Oh, well done, sir, and I understand her ladyship is somewhat vexed about the goblin situation, sir. I believe this to be the case, sir, because I met her in the corridor earlier and she used language I haven’t heard on the lips of a woman since my old mother passed away, gods bless her soul, if they can find it. But, well done again, sir.’ Vimes laid his cue aside. ‘I want to get them all, Willikins. It’s no good slamming up some local thug.’ ‘Yes indeed, commander, it’s all about potting the black.’ Vimes looked up from his fiery drink. ‘I can see you must have played a lot in your time, Willikins. Did you ever see Pelvic Williams? Very religious man in his way, lived somewhere in Hen-and-Chickens Court with his sister, played like I’ve never seen anyone else play before or since. I swear he could make a ball jump the table, roll along the edge and drop back on to the cloth just where he wanted it, to drop neatly into the pocket.’ Vimes gave a grunt of satisfaction, and went on, ‘Of course, everyone used to say that was cheating, but he used to stand there, as meek as milk, just repeating “The ball dropped”. Tell you the truth, the reason he never got beaten up was that it was an education watching the man. He once sank a ball by bouncing it off the lamp and a pint mug. But, like he said, the ball dropped.’ Vimes relaxed and said, ‘The trouble is, of course, that in real life rules are more stringent.’ ‘Yes indeed, commander,’ said Willikins. ‘Where I used to play the only rule was that after you’d hit your opponent over the head with your cue you had to be able to run very fast. I understand from her ladyship that you might be requiring my assistance tonight?’ ‘Yes, please. We’re going to the village of Hangnails. It’s about twenty miles upriver.’ Willikins nodded. ‘Yes indeed, sir, once the seat of the Hangnail family and most notably of Lord Justice Hangnail, who famously declared that he never took account of any plea of not guilty on the basis that “criminals always lie” and was, by happy chance, the Worshipful Master of the Benevolent Company of Rope Makers and Braiders. With any luck, we’ll not see his like again.’ ‘Excellent, Willikins, and we’ll stop en route to pick up our keen young local constable, who’ll see fair play. I intend to make sure of that.’ ‘Glad to hear it, sir,’ said Willikins, ‘but bear this in mind: what does it matter once the ball has dropped?’ It was Mrs Upshot who opened the cottage door, gave a little scream, slammed the door, opened the door to apologize for slamming the door, and then shut the door carefully, leaving Vimes on the doorstep. Thirty seconds later Feeney opened the door, with his nightshirt half-tucked into his trousers. ‘Commander Vimes! Is something wrong?’ he said, trying valiantly to tuck all the nightshirt inside. Vimes rubbed his hands together briskly. ‘Yes, Chief Constable Upshot, almost everything is, but there is one part that can be made right with your help. Regarding the murder of the goblin girl, I have sufficient information to warrant apprehending two men for questioning. This is your manor, so professionally speaking I think it’s only right and proper that you assist me with the arrests.’ Vimes took a step into the room so that the face of Willikins was visible, and went on, ‘And I think you know Willikins, my manservant, who has volunteered to drive my coach and, of course, provide me with a clean white shirt should I need it.’ ‘Yerrr,’ growled Willikins, turning to wink at Vimes. ‘Chief Constable Upshot, I’d be obliged if you would arm yourself with whatever you think you might need and, since you don’t have a pair of handcuffs worth a damn, oh I’m so sorry, then at least can you source some rope?’ The face of Feeney Upshot was a whole palette of conflicting emotions. I’ll be working with the famous Commander Vimes – hooray! But this is big and serious – oh dear. But it’ll be like being a real policeman – hooray! But there’s already a hot water bottle in my bed – oh dear. On the other hand, if it all goes wrong, well, after all, the Duke of Ankh owns most of this place, so he’ll have to take most of the blame – hooray! And maybe if I distinguish myself I can get a job in the city, so that my mum can live in a place where you don’t lie awake at night listening to the mice fighting the cockroaches – hooray!22 It was a treat for Vimes to watch the lad’s face in the candlelight, especially as Feeney moved his lips as he thought. And so he said, ‘I’m sure, Chief Constable Upshot, that assistance in this matter will be very helpful to your future career.’ This last comment caused Mrs Upshot, peering over her son’s shoulder, to flush with pride and say, ‘Hark at his grace, Feeney! You could make something of yourself, just like I’m always telling you! No arguing now, off you go, my lad.’ This motherly advice was punctuated by Mrs Upshot bobbing up and down so fast that she could have been harnessed to a sewing machine. Thank goodness for old mums, Vimes thought, as Feeney eventually got into the coach with a flask of hot tea, a spare pair of clean drawers and half an apple pie. As the wheels started to turn, and after Feeney had finished waving to his old mum out of the window, Vimes, balancing carefully against the rocking, lit the little spirit lamp that was all the coach had for illumination. He fell back into his seat again and said, ‘I’d be grateful, lad, if you would take some time to write down in your notebook everything I’ve said to you since I arrived this evening. It might be of assistance to both of us.’ Feeney practically saluted, and Vimes continued, ‘When we saw the dead goblin girl the other day, Mister Feeney, did you make a note of that in your notebook?’ ‘Yes, sir!’ Feeney nearly saluted again. ‘My granddad told me always to write everything down in my notebook!’ They bounced in their seats as the coach hit a stone and Vimes said quietly, ‘Did he ever tell you to accidentally sometimes turn over two pages at once so that you had the occasional blank page?’ ‘Oh, no, sir. Should I?’ The seat bounced them up and down again as Vimes said, ‘Strictly speaking, lad, the answer is no, especially if you never work with me. Now please write it all down, just as I asked. And since I am not as young as you, I’m going to try to get some rest.’ ‘Yessir, I understand that, sir. Just one thing, sir? Mister Stoner, the Clerk to the Magistrates, came to see me this afternoon, and had a chat and said not to bother about the goblin girl because goblins are officially vermin. He was very kind, and brought some brandy for my old mum, and he said that you were a fine gentleman but tended to get a bee in your bonnet, sir, what with being upper-class and out of touch, sir. Sir? Sir? Have you gone to sleep, sir?’ Vimes turned his head and in honeyed tones said, ‘Did you make a note of that in your notebook, lad?’ ‘Oh, yessir!’ ‘And you still got in this coach with me? Why did you do that, Mister Feeney?’ Stones rattled behind them and it seemed some time before Feeney Upshot had assembled his thoughts to his satisfaction. He said, ‘Well, Commander Vimes, I thought, well, that Mister Stoner he’s a nob more or less, and so is Commander Vimes, only he’s a duke and is therefore a very big nob and if you’re going to get caught between nobs, maybe you’d better pick the biggest one to be on the side of.’ He heard Vimes grunt, and continued, ‘And then, sir, I thought, well, I was up there, I saw that poor creature and what had been done to her, and I remembered that Stoner had tried to make a fool out of me by making me arrest your good self, sir, and I thought about the goblins and I thought, well, they’re mucky and smelly and the old goblin was crying, and animals don’t cry and goblins, well, they make stuff, beautiful stuff and as for pinching our pigswill and being generally mucky, we surely ain’t short of humans around here who are pretty big in that respect, I could tell you some stories, and so I thought some more and I thought, well, that Mister Stoner, I thought he must have got it wrong.’ There was a rumbling as the coach went over a bridge and then the sound of wheels on packed flints was back. Feeney said anxiously, ‘Is that all right, sir?’ He waited nervously. And then the voice of Vimes, and this time sounding rather far away, said, ‘Do you know what that little speech you made was called, Mister Feeney?’ ‘Don’t know, sir, it’s just what I think.’ ‘It was called redemption, Mister Feeney. Hold on to it.’ Vimes woke from a doze in which he had dreamed about Young Sam playing a harp, and by the time he had understood that this was a dream the noise of the coach wheels had changed as they slowed down and stopped. Willikins slid open the small slot that allowed discourse between passenger and coachman and said quietly, ‘Rise and shine, sir, we’re about a quarter of a mile from Hangnails, population thirty-seven and still stupid. And you can smell turkey from here and wish you bloody well couldn’t, excuse my Klatchian. I surmised that it might be a good idea to walk quietly the rest of the way, sir.’ Vimes got down from the coach and stamped the cramp out of his limbs. The air stank with the curiously invasive smell of birds; not even goblins persecuted the sinuses one half so badly. But this was a tiny distraction compared with the thrill, yes, the thrill. How long was it since he had led a dawn raid? Far too long, that’s how long, and now captains and senior sergeants got the job while he stayed in the office, being the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. Well, not today. Whispering as they walked through the knee-high mist, he said, ‘You, Chief Constable Upshot, you will hammer on the front door when I give you the signal, and I will be stationed outside the back door in case the gentleman does a runner, okay?’ They were nearing the property now, yes, they would just need the two of them. The farmhouse looked barely big enough to have two doors, let alone three. ‘What shall I say, commander?’ hissed Feeney. ‘Oh, blimey, you’re the bloody son and grandson of coppers, my lad, what the hell do you think you should shout? Let me give you a clue. It does not include the word “please”. I’ll give you a whistle when I’m in position, got it? Good.’ They walked with care across the stinking yard and Vimes took up station around the back, where an interesting thought occurred to him and he made a mental note. He then leaned against the dirty wall of the house a little bit away from the back door, took a pinch of snuff to clear the air of turkey and gave one faint whistle. ‘Open up in the name of the law! You are surrounded! You have one minute to open the door! I mean it! Open the door! This is the police!’ Leaning cosily against the wall, Vimes grudgingly rated that as pretty good for a beginner, with one point taken off for adding ‘I mean it’, then, as a man flew out of the back door, he stuck out his boot. ‘Good morning, sir. My name is Commander Vimes! I hope you’re in a position to remember yours!’ In the sheds the turkeys were going insane, causing a slight rise in the smell. The man struggled to his feet, looking around desperately. ‘Oh, yes, you could run, yes, you could do that,’ said Vimes in a conversational tone of voice, ‘but it might be thought by others that this might indicate that you knew you had some reason to run. Now, personally, I would agree that anyone stopped by a copper should run like buggery, innocent or not, on first principles. Besides, we get so fat these days that we need the exercise. But do run if you want to, Mister Flutter, because I can run too, and very fast.’ By now Flutter was smiling the smile of a man who thinks that this copper is not very smart. ‘I bet you don’t have a magistrate’s warrant, do ya?’ ‘Well now, Mister Flutter, why might you think that, eh? Perhaps you think the magistrates might not issue a warrant to arrest you, yes? By the way, thank you for showing me where the tobacco barrels are stored. Your cooperation will be taken into consideration.’ Some days are bad days, like when you stare right down into the mangled corpse of a young woman, and then you get good days, when the suspect’s darting eyes flashing across the yard show you exactly where the loot is hidden. ‘I shall, of course, mention your cooperation to the authorities and, of course, in the local pub as well, ah, yes.’ And now Mr Flutter was visualizing the result of being seen as some kind of grass, so stupidly he went for, ‘I never told you anything about any tobacco, and you know it, copper!’ At this point Feeney stepped around the corner with his fearsome club raised and a look of almost comical aggression on his face. ‘You want me to give him the old one-two, commander, just say the word, guv!’ Vimes rolled his eyes in mock despair. ‘No need for that, Feeney, no need for that, just when Mister Flutter here is so anxious to talk to us, understand?’ Flutter decided that the way forward was an appeal to Feeney. ‘Look, Feeney, you know me—’ He got that far and no further because Feeney said, ‘It’s Constable Upshot to you, Flutter. My dad had you up before the beaks two dozen times. He used to call you the blue bottle on account of whenever there was a load of shit going down he’d find you flapping about in it. And he told me to watch you, which is what I am doing right now, in fact.’ He glanced at Vimes, who gave him an encouraging nod and then said, ‘You see my problem, Mister Flutter, we’re not here to talk about contraband tobacco, okay? Now, I never saw myself as a revenuer, not a popular profession. I’m a copper pure and simple, right, and in my hand I have this man what is only doing a favour to his employer by storing a few barrels of tobacco in his shed, but on the other hand, well, if I found a murderer in the other hand, why, gods bless you, I might totally forget all about the first hand … Don’t ask me to draw you a picture, Flutter, because my hands are full.’ Flutter looked aghast. ‘This is about that goblin, right? Look, it wasn’t me! Okay, I’m a bit of a naughty boy, I put my hand up to that, but I ain’t like him! I’m a scallywag, not a damn murderer!’ Vimes looked at Feeney. Some people could be said to be as pleased as Punch. Feeney could be said to look as pleased as Punch, Judy, the dog Toby, the crocodile and, above all, the policeman, all rolled in together. Vimes raised his eyebrows in new interrogation, and Feeney said, ‘I believe him, chief. He hasn’t got it in him, I swear. The best he could manage would be knocking over an old lady for her purse, and even then she’d probably have to be blind too.’ ‘There, you see!’ said Flutter triumphantly. ‘I’m not really a bad person!’ ‘No,’ said Vimes, ‘you’re a veritable choirboy, Mister Flutter, I can see that, and I’m rather religious too, and I like chapter and verse, but are you willing to swear that the individual known as Stratford knifed a goblin girl to death on Hangman’s Hill in the grounds of Ramkin Hall, three nights ago?’ Flutter raised a finger. ‘Can I say that I told him to leave off, and he laughed, and I didn’t know it was a girl neither – I mean, how can you tell?’ Vimes’s face was deadpan. ‘Tell me, Ted, what would you have done if you had known? I’m intrigued.’ Flutter looked down at his feet. ‘Well, I, well, well, I mean … not a girl, I mean … well, not a girl … I mean, that’s not right, know what I mean?’ And you can find someone like this dangerous clown in nearly every neighbourhood, Vimes thought. ‘Clearly chivalry is not dead, Mister Flutter. Okay, Feeney, let’s carry on. Mister Flutter, why were you on Hangman’s Hill on the aforesaid night?’ ‘We were just having a walk,’ said Flutter. Vimes’s face was again deadpan, so deadpan as to be mortified. ‘Of course you were, Mister Flutter. Silly of me to ask the question, really. Constable Upshot, I can see Willikins over there having a smoke.’ He pushed at the open door and dragged Flutter inside. ‘Does this building have a cellar?’ Flutter was one step away from a toilet break, but nevertheless, being the kind of fool to dig himself in deeper, managed to sneer, ‘There might be. So what?’ ‘Mister Flutter, I have already told you that I’m a religious man, and since you would test the patience of a saint I need to spend a moment in quiet contemplation, understand? I’m sure you know that there’s always an easy way, and then again, there’s always the hard way. Currently, this is the easy way, but the hard way is also quite easy, in a manner of speaking. Before talking to you again I want to be alone with my thoughts. And it occurs to me, Mister Flutter, that you might have some thoughts about, as it were, legging it, and so my colleague, Chief Constable Upshot, will guard the door and I shall send in my batman, Mister Willikins, to keep you company.’ Before Vimes was even able to tap on the window, the door opened and Willikins, immaculate as ever, stepped into the grubby room, all smart and crisp with shiny shoes and a hint of pomade on his hair. The three men then watched Vimes heave at a likely ring on the floor, which pulled back to reveal the trap door to a dark cellar and a ladder going down. Vimes said, ‘Constable Upshot, I need a little time to think in the darkness. I won’t be long.’ He went down the ladder and pulled the trap door closed behind him. The darkness said, ‘Ah, commander, at long last. I suspect that you’re here to take a witness statement.’ This is wrong, Vimes told himself. How can you take testimony from a demon, especially when it’s one of no fixed abode? But on the other hand, who needs a witness statement if you’ve got a confession? Up above, Ted Flutter’s eyes rolled this way and that as he analysed the situation. Let’s see: we have one young twit who is playing at being a copper, and a snooty butler type, all pink and shiny. I reckon Mrs Flutter’s little boy is out of here. At this point, at this very point, Willikins, without looking at Flutter, reached into his jacket and there was a slap as he laid down a steel comb on the table in front of him. It gleamed. And it gleamed even stronger in Flutter’s imagination. He took one look at Willikins’ expression, and Mrs Flutter’s little boy decided he would sit very still until that nice Commander Vimes came back. Out of another pocket Willikins produced the sharpest-looking knife Flutter had ever seen and, without paying any attention whatsoever to Flutter, began to clean his fingernails. In fact it was only a matter of seconds before the trap door was heaved back, and Vimes emerged, then nodded to Willikins, who secured the comb and walked out of the room without a word. Vimes regained the chair. ‘Mister Flutter, I have a witness statement that puts you on Hangman’s Hill on the night in question with another man, said man being known as Stratford. The witness tells me that you said to him that you could have got hold of some turkey blood, but he said that there were rabbits all over the place and he never missed with his slingshot. At this point the witness says a young goblin girl came out of the bushes and your companion struck at her as she was begging for her life – and furiously, to the extent that you yourself told him, in your words, to leave off, upon which he turned on you, still holding his knife, described to me as a machete, so swiftly that you urinated into your boots. ‘No, don’t speak, I haven’t finished. Nevertheless, I am informed that you did say to your companion that you were supposed to leave just blood, and not, as you put it, “guts all over the place”, whereupon he forced you to put them back into the cadaver and hide it further down the hill in some gorse bushes. No, I said don’t talk! In your pocket you had a pork pie, which you’d brought from home, and three dollars in cash, which was your payment for this little errand. ‘After that you and Stratford walked back some distance to your horses, which you had temporarily stabled in the tumbledown old barn on the other side of the village. The horses were a chestnut mare and a grey gelding, both of them broken down by ill use. In fact, the gelding threw a shoe as you were leaving, and you had to stop your companion from killing it there and then. Oh, and the witness told me that you were naked to the waist when you left, since your shirt was soaked with blood and you left it in the barn after an argument with Stratford. I’ll recover it when we get back. Your friend told you to take your trousers off as well, but you declined; however, I noted splashes of blood on them earlier. I don’t want to go to the expense of sending a rider back to the city, where my Igor will ascertain whether the blood is human, goblin or turkey. I said don’t speak, didn’t I? I haven’t mentioned some of the other conversation between you and Mister Stratford, because Feeney here is listening, and you should be relieved about that; gossip can be so cruel. ‘And now Mister Flutter, I’m going to stop talking and upon doing so I would like the first words you utter to be – pay attention – “I want to turn King’s evidence”. Yes, I know we don’t have kings any more, but nobody has amended the law. You are a little shit, but I’m reluctantly persuaded that you were dragged into something beyond your control and worse than you could have imagined. The good news is that Lord Vetinari will almost certainly take my advice and you will live. Remember: “I want to turn King’s evidence”, that’s what I want to hear, Mister Flutter, otherwise I’ll go for a walk and Mister Willikins will comb his hair.’ Flutter, who had listened to most of this with his eyes shut, blurted out the words so fast that Vimes had to ask him to repeat them more slowly. When he had finished he was allowed to go to the privy, with Willikins waiting outside, cleaning his nails with his knife, and Feeney was sent to feed the frantic turkeys. For his part, Vimes entered one of the stinking sheds and prodded around in the dirty straw for what he knew would be there. He was not disappointed. Sufficiently close to, the smell of tobacco was just discernible above the stifling stink of turkey. He rolled a barrel out, found Feeney and said, ‘I think this is full of tobacco and so I’m intending to take it as evidence. Your job right now is to scout out a jemmy for me and somebody known to you as a decent upstanding citizen, insofar as there might be one around this place.’ ‘Well, there’s Dave who runs the Dog and Badger,’ Feeney volunteered. ‘And he is an upstanding citizen?’ said Vimes. ‘I have seen him sitting down,’ said Feeney, ‘but he knows the score, if you get my meaning.’ Vimes nodded and waited a few minutes before Feeney returned with a crowbar, a bandy-legged man and a small tail of people who, for the moment, until proved otherwise, had to be counted as ‘innocent bystanders’. They gathered around as Vimes prepared to open the barrel. He announced, ‘Pay attention, gentlemen. I believe this barrel contains contraband goods.’ He rolled up his sleeves – ‘You see that I have nothing up my sleeves, but a crowbar in my hand’ – and with some effort on his part the lid of the barrel came off, and the smell of tobacco was overpowering. And some of the bystanders decided it was now time to take the wonderful opportunity for a quick nonchalant walk. Vimes pulled out bale after bale of brown leaves bound with cotton. ‘Can’t take too much on the coach,’ he said, ‘but if Mister Dave here will, as an upstanding member of the community, sign to say that he saw me pull these from a sealed barrel, then you, Mister Feeney, will take a brief statement and we can all go about our business.’ Feeney beamed. ‘Oh, very well spotted, commander! I reckon you could hide anything in this stink, eh?’ After a moment he looked at Vimes and said, ‘Commander?’ Vimes appeared to look through him and said, ‘You’re going to go far, Chief Constable Upshot. Let’s empty the whole barrel, shall we?’ He didn’t know where the thought had come from. Maybe from first principles. If you were going to smuggle, where would you stop? What would your market be? How would you get the best price per pound of product carried? He pulled and pulled at the bundles, and one, almost at the bottom of the barrel, was noticeably heavier than the others. Trying to keep his expression unchanged, he handed the heavy bundle to Feeney and said, ‘I’d be grateful if you and Mister Dave would open this bundle and tell me what you see inside.’ He sat down on the barrel and took a pinch of snuff while behind him he heard the rustling, and then Feeney said, ‘Well, commander, what this appears to be—’ Vimes held up a hand. ‘Does it look like stone dust to you, Feeney?’ ‘Yes, but—’ Vimes held up his hand again. ‘Does it appear to have little red and blue flecks in it when you hold it to the light?’ Sometimes the ancestral copper in Feeney picked up the vibration. ‘Yes, Commander Vimes!’ ‘Then it’s a good job for you and your friend Dave’ – Vimes glanced at the said Dave for the second time and decided to give him the benefit of the doubt – ‘that the two of you are not trolls, because if you were you’d be stone dead, as it were, right now. The stuff you are holding is Crystal Slam, I’d bet my badge on it. Troll kids use it as a drug, do you know that? They take a hit as small as your little pinky and think they can walk through walls, which they invariably do, too, and when they’ve done it a few times more they drop down dead. It’s illegal everywhere in the world, and very difficult to make because the smell when they’re boiling it up is unmistakable; you get a lot of sparks too. Selling it is a hanging offence in Ankh-Morpork, Uberwald and every troll city. Diamond King of Trolls gives a very handsome bounty to anyone who presents him with evidence of manufacture.’ Vimes looked hopefully at the aforesaid Dave, just in case the man would take the bait. No, he thought, they wouldn’t do it round here. All this tobacco must come from somewhere hot, and that means a long way away. Gingerly, they broke open other barrels and found plenty of tobacco and several packs of very high-class cigars, one or two of which Vimes put in his breast pocket for detailed forensic examination later, and, somewhere at the bottom of every barrel, there were neat packets of Crystal Slam, Slunkie, Slab, Slice and Slap, all of them very nasty – although Slap was generally considered to be a recreational drug, at least if your idea of recreation was waking up in the gutter not knowing whose head you had on. As many samples as possible were piled into the coach and Vimes only stopped when it started to creak. The other barrels were piled up and, at Vimes’s instigation, a very proud Chief Constable Upshot set fire to them. When the controlled drugs caught alight there was a brief display of pyrotechnics and Vimes thought to himself that this was only the start of the fireworks. As people came running out to see what was happening, Vimes reassured them of his bona fides and explained that Mister Flutter would be away for a while, and could somebody please look after the birds. The responses he got made it clear that the neighbourhood considered a world without Mister Flutter and his stinking turkeys would be a much better world, so the last thing that Vimes did was to open the sheds and let the wretched creatures take their chances. As a last little bright idea, Vimes beckoned to the nervous Dave and said, ‘Diamond King of Trolls will be very appreciative of this day’s work. Of course, as serving officers we wouldn’t be able to take any remuneration …’ ‘We wouldn’t?’ said Feeney hopelessly. Vimes ignored this and continued, ‘I will, however, see to it that your help today is suitably rewarded.’ The publican’s face lit up. Something about the words diamond and rewarded in the same sentence does that to a face. They travelled with the creaking coach doors locked, but with a window slightly open because Mister Flutter was currently not somebody you would wish to be in any confined space with: he appeared to be sweating turkeys. King’s evidence! That was a result! Flutter hadn’t thought about arguing, and Vimes had seen his expression as the Summoning Dark’s statement was presented to him. Vimes had noticed every wince and shiver of recollection that, taken together, added up to rights well banged. King’s evidence! Any man would opt for that to save his skin, or maybe for a better class of cell. You took King’s evidence to save your miserable hide and it might indeed do so, but at a price, and that price was death by hanging if you lied. It was one of the absolutes: lying when you had turned King’s evidence was the lie of lies. You had lied to the judge, you had lied to the King, you had lied to society, you had lied to the world, and thus the cheerful Mr Trooper would welcome you to the gallows, and shake your hand to show you there were no hard feelings, and shortly afterwards would pull the lever that would drop you from the world you had betrayed, and stop … halfway down. And then, of course, there were the troll drugs. The evidence of their existence worried Flutter so much that he invented new gods to swear to that he knew nothing about them. Vimes believed him. As far as Flutter was concerned, the barrels contained nothing more than tobacco. Good old tobacco, nothing harmful about tobacco, and smuggling it was, well, it really was like a game, everybody knew that. Nothing wrong with outsmarting the revenue, that was what the revenue was for! Vimes thought, isn’t that how I’ve always said it worked? Little crimes breeding big crimes. You smile at little crimes and then big crimes blow your head off. Flutter was sitting miserably on the opposite seat, possibly fearing being kicked to death by trolls, but then, as Vimes had noted, Flutter probably feared everybody. And so Vimes found it in his heart to offer him not so much a crumb as a bacon sandwich of good news. ‘You were in the company of a violent man, Ted. You thought you were just going to make life difficult for a copper, and suddenly you were an accessory of the first part to murder and, even if unwittingly, tangled up in extremely serious troll narcotics, the worst there is. But you’ve got into bad company, Ted, and I will say so in court.’ Hope appeared in Flutter’s red-rimmed eyes, and he said, ‘That’s very kind of you, sir.’ That was it. No swagger, no whining, just gratitude for mercies received and fervently hoped for. Vimes leaned forward and offered the bewildered man his snuffbox. Flutter took a large pinch and sniffed it up so hard that the inevitable sneeze tried to escape via his ears. Ignoring this, and the faint haze of brown in the air, Vimes leaned back and said cheerfully, ‘I’ll have a word with the screws in the Tanty, they always owe me anyway …’ He looked at the hopeful face and thought, Blast it. I know they’re pretty crowded right now. A squirt like him would be on a hiding to nothing, whatever I do. Oh well. He carried on, ‘No, Mister Flutter, tell you what I’ll do, at least we’ll put you in a cell in Pseudopolis Yard. How about that? It can be lonely in a cell all by yourself, but some might consider that a blessing, especially after fifteen minutes in some parts of the Tanty, and, besides, my lads are fairly chatty when there’s not much happening. We also have a better class of rat, the straw is fresh and we don’t gob in your stirabout, and if you’re helpful and don’t keep people awake at night, then you’ll be as right as rain.’ ‘You won’t have any trouble from me, commander!’ The words came tumbling, frantic to be heard and terrified that they might not. ‘Glad to hear it, Ted,’ said Vimes jovially. ‘I like a man who makes the right choices! Incidentally, Ted, who suggested you play the little trick on the hill?’ ‘Honestly, sir, it was Stratford, sir. He said it would be a little joke. And I know what you’re going to ask me next, sir, and I asked him who was behind all this, because it worried me a bit, seeing as I mostly just breed turkeys and roll barrels around, you understand?’ Flutter assumed the expression of a simple, honest working man. ‘He said that if he told me he’d have to kill me, and I said to him, I said, “Thank you all the same, Mister Stratford, but I won’t put you to the trouble,” and kept my mouth shut, ’cos he had a funny look in his eye.’ Flutter seemed to think for a moment and added, ‘He always has a funny look in his eye.’ Vimes tried to pretend that this was of little interest. Like a man with a butterfly net, a killing jar and a passion to pin to a cork board the last of the very rare Lancre blue butterflies, which has just taken its repose on a thistle nearby, he tried to do nothing to make his quarry take flight. In an offhand way he said, ‘But you do know, don’t you, Ted? I mean, you’re smart, Ted, underneath it all. A lot of people would say that two planks are smarter than you, but frankly you can’t make a success of things in this old world without keeping your eyes open and your ears too, right?’ But of course, who would tell anything important to a twerp like Flutter? He wasn’t even a henchman – you needed a certain amount of tactical thinking before you could properly hench – but henchmen hang about, and when they’re with someone as thick as Flutter they don’t always guard their tongues. Aloud he said, ‘It’s a shame really, Ted, you being the only one to get banged up for all this, seeing that all you really did was help out a mate for a couple of dollars and a pint, don’t you think? Terrible, ain’t it, that decent folk have to take the rap, yes? Especially when it’s a big rap.’ He stopped talking and watched Flutter’s face. ‘Weeeell,’ said Flutter, ‘one day when he was a bit excited he did say to me that Lord Rust depended on him, took him into his confidence and everything and made sure his pockets always jingled, but I reckoned that was nothing but boasting.’ Vimes was impressed at his own patience and said, ‘Look, Ted, did you ever hear either of them talk about the goblin girl?’ A horrible grin suffused the man’s face. ‘I could if you want me to, commander!’ Vimes stared at Flutter for a moment and said, ‘Ted, I want to know things that you have either seen or heard. Not things you may have imagined and – and this is the important bit, Ted – not things made up to please me, right? Otherwise I won’t any longer be your friend …’ Vimes stopped to think for a moment. ‘Did you ever hear Lord Rust or Stratford say anything about the blacksmith?’ It was an education watching the prisoner rack his brains. He looked like a big dog chewing a toffee. Apparently he found something because his next words were, ‘The blacksmith? I didn’t know that it was about the blacksmith. Yeah, when we were stacking in the yard young Lord Rust came up to Stratford and said something like, “Any news about our friend?” and, well, Stratford said, “Don’t you worry, sir, he’s going to see the Queen,” and they both laughed, sir.’ In the silence he said, ‘Are you all right, sir?’ Vimes ignored this and said, ‘Have you any idea what he meant?’ ‘Nosir,’ said Flutter. ‘Is there anything called the Queen around here? Maybe a public house, perhaps? Maybe a riverboat?’ Vimes thought, Yes, they all have strange names, there has to be a Queen among them. Once again the dog chewed the toffee. ‘Sorry, commander, I don’t really know anything about that. No boat on the river called the Queen.’ Vimes left it at that. It was a result. Not the best result. Nothing that would satisfy Vetinari, but a hint at least of a minor conspiracy to send Jethro to somewhere he did not want to be. Vimes at least had to be satisfied. Vimes realized that Flutter was holding up his hand cautiously, like a child half fearful of a reprimand from the teacher. ‘Yes, Ted?’ he said wearily. The man lowered his hand. ‘Will I be able to find a god, sir?’ ‘What? Find what god?’ Flutter looked embarrassed but recovered manfully. ‘Well, sir, I’m hearing about people who go into prison and find a god, sir, and if you find a god then you get better treatment and maybe you get let out sooner, on account of praying, and I was wondering if I was in the Watch House whether there might be more or less chance of god avail ability, if you get my drift. I don’t want to be a trouble, of course.’ ‘Well, Ted, if there was any justice in the universe I think there would be quite a few gods in the Tanty, but if I were you and faced a choice between the possibility of heavenly intervention and a definite three meals a day that haven’t been spat on and no big blokes snoring in your ear all night and the certain knowledge that if you have to go down on your knees it will only be to pray, then I would say heaven can wait.’ The sun was already well up now and Willikins was keeping them moving at a good pace. Vimes took notice of that fact. The Street was talking to him even if it was in fact nothing more than a wide lane. He nudged Feeney awake. ‘Soon be home now, lad, and I think Mister Flutter can be housed in your lovely lock-up, don’t you?’ Flutter looked puzzled, and Vimes said, ‘Good grief, man. Surely you didn’t think I could rush you all the way to Ankh-Morpork in one go? As it is I’ll have to send someone to get someone else to come all the way down here with the hurry-up wagon! Don’t worry, the lock-up is strong and cosy and made of stone, plus – and I’m led to believe that this is indeed a big plus, this – Mrs Upshot will probably make you a delicious Bang Suck Muck Muck Dog, with carrots and garden peas. Speciality de Maisonette.’ Rank has its privileges, Vimes thought, when he alighted near the old lock-up a little later. ‘Chief Constable Upshot, please settle our prisoner down, see that he gets fed and watered and so on and so forth, okay, and, obviously, do the paperwork.’ ‘The what, sir?’ Vimes blinked. ‘Is it possible, Mister Feeney, that you don’t know what paperwork is?’ Feeney was perplexed. ‘Well, yes, sir, of course, but generally I just jot down the name in my notebook, sir. I mean, I know who he is, and I know where he is and what he’s done. Oh, yes, and since the trouble we had with old Mister Parsley, after he had a skinful, I also make certain to check if the prisoner is allergic to anything in Bhangbhangduc cuisine. It took me all day to clean out the place, on account of there’d been a tiny bit of winky.’ Seeing Vimes’s expression, he went on, ‘Very popular herb, sir.’ ‘Habeas corpus, lad! You want to be the copper here, right? Then Mister Flutter is your prisoner! You are responsible for him. If he gets ill, then he is your problem, if he dies then he is your corpse, and if he gets out and away then you would find yourself in a situation so problematical that the word “problem” just would not fit the situation. I’m trying to be helpful, honestly, but I could just as easily take him up to the Hall. We’ve got loads of cellars and we could easily bed him down in one of them, no problem. But then if I have to do that, what good are you?’ Feeney looked shocked. He pulled himself upright. ‘I wouldn’t hear of that, sir, and neither would my ancestors, sir. After all, we’ve never had anyone who has even been near a murder.’ ‘Very well, then, give me a receipt for the prisoner, which is a very important thing, and I’ll go back to the Hall to have a nap.’ Vimes stepped back as a riverboat came into view and a very small tidal wave of muddy water splashed gently on the little quayside. The boat was another one with paddle wheels; Sybil had explained all about them. An ox patiently trod its way around a treadmill in the bilges and wonderful gearing caused the paddle wheels to turn. The pilot of this one waved at him. As it went past he saw a woman in the stern, hanging out clothing, watched by a cat. A good life, at the speed of an ox, he thought, where probably no one is ever going to try to kill you. And, just for a moment, he felt jealous, while a line of barges followed the boat past a flotilla of ducklings. Vimes sighed, got back in the coach, was driven to the Hall by Willikins and, after a very brief shower, sank into the pillows and descended into darkness. People said that these days Ankh-Morpork was moving. Others said that while this might be true, so was a sufficiently aged cheese. And, like the hypothetical cheese, it was bursting out of its mould, in this case the outermost walls, which were, in the words of Lord Vetinari, ‘a corset that should be unlaced’. One of the first to let themselves spread had been Harry King, now, of course, known as Sir Harold King. He was a scallywag, a chancer, a ruthless fighter and a dangerous driver of bargains over the speed limit. Since all this was a bit of a mouthful, he was referred to as a successful business man, since that more or less amounted to the same thing. And he had the knack of turning rubbish into money. As Captains Carrot and Angua walked along the towpath towards the reedy swamps downriver, Harry King’s flame burned ahead of them. All was grist to the mills of the King of Muck. His armies of workers swept the streets, emptied the cesspits, cleaned the chimneys, scoured the middens of the slaughterhouse district and carried away from those selfsame houses all those bits of previously living matter that could not, for the love of decency, be put in a sausage. They said that Harry King would suck the smoke out of the air if he thought he could get a good price for it. And if you wanted a job, Harry King would give you one, at a wage not very much less than you might get elsewhere in the city, and if you stole from Harry King you would get what you deserved. The mills of Harry King stank, of course, but now the city itself did not, at least not as badly as it used to, and some people were complaining about the loss of the famous Ankh-Morpork smell, rumoured to be so strong that it kept away illnesses and ailments of all sorts and, moreover, put hairs on your chest and did you good. Ankh-Morpork being what it was, there was already a Smell Preservation Society. The two watchmen began to breathe less deeply as they approached the smoke and fumes. A small city surrounded the workings, a shanty town knocked together with Harry’s blessing by the workers themselves because, after all, that meant they wouldn’t be late for work. The security officer at the gate opened it instantly as they approached. Harry was probably not honest, but if there was dishonesty it happened at times and places that did not concern the Watch, and faded from the memory of all concerned just as soon as the ripples of the splash had died away and the tide had gone out. Also going out as Carrot and Angua climbed the outside steps to the large office where Harry presided over his kingdom was a man, moving horizontally at speed, with Harry King’s big hands grasping him by his collar and the seat of his pants and finally throwing him down the steps, accompanied by a shout of ‘You’re fired!’ The watchmen stood aside as the man rolled down from step to step. ‘And if I see you again, the dogs is always hungry! Oh, hello, Captain Carrot,’ said Harry, his voice suddenly all matey, ‘and the charming Miss Angua too. My word, what a lovely surprise, do come in, always a pleasure to be of assistance to the Watch!’ ‘Sir Harry, you really shouldn’t throw people down the steps like that,’ said Carrot. Harry King looked innocent and spread his huge hands widely, and said, ‘What? Are those bloody steps still there? I gave orders to have them taken away! Thank you for the advice, captain, but the way I see it is that I caught him trying to steal my money and so if he’s still alive then on the whole I reckon we’re square. Coffee? Tea? Something stronger? No, I thought not, but take a seat, no harm in that, at least.’ They sat down and Carrot said, ‘We need to talk about goblins.’ Harry King looked blank, but said, ‘Got a few of them working for me, if that’s any help. Decent workers, you might be surprised to know. A bit weird in their ways, not the fastest, but once they’ve got the hang of what you want them to do you can just leave them to it until you tell them to stop. I pay them half what I pay humans and I reckon they do twice as much work, and do it better. Be happy to hire another hundred if they turned up.’ ‘But you pay them far less than humans?’ said Angua. Harry gave her a pitying look. ‘And who else would pay them anything at all, love? Well, business is business. It’s not like I chain them down. Okay, not many people would want to employ goblins on account of the stink, but I know by the wrinkling of your pretty nose, captain, that I stink too. It goes with the job. Besides, I let them stay on my land and they make those weird little pots in their spare time, and I see to it they don’t have much of that, and when they have enough money for whatever they want, they bugger off back to where they came from. Young Slick and his granny are the only ones that’s ever stayed. Gonna make a name for himself, that one.’ ‘We’d like to talk to some of the goblins about the pots you mentioned, if that’s okay by you, Harry?’ said Carrot. Harry King smiled and waggled a finger at him. ‘Now, I’ll take that from you two, because we’ve all seen a bit of the world and know what’s what, but outside this office it’s Sir Harry, okay? Personally, I ain’t all that bothered, but her ladyship is a stickler, oh my word, yes! Nose so high in the air it brings down sparrows, I’m telling you! Still, I can’t say it does any harm.’ Harry King, or possibly Sir Harold King, thought for a moment. ‘Out of interest, why do you want to talk about goblin pots?’ Angua hesitated, but Carrot said, ‘We are both very interested in goblin folklore, Sir Harry.’ Harry King chuckled. ‘You know, I never could read your face, Captain Carrot. I’d hate to play poker with you! Okay, it’s not my business, I’ll take you at your word. Just you go down the steps and make your way to the sorting belts and find Billy Slick, and tell him that Harry King would deem it a favour if he would be so good as to take you to see his old granny, okay? No need to thank me, I suspect old Vimes put in a good word about me to Vetinari when the medals was being given out, if you know what I mean. They say one hand washes the other, but I bet that when it came to old Harry King it had to scrub.’ They found Billy Slick stacking old copies of the Ankh-Morpork Times on to a truck. You could always recognize a goblin, although this one, in his grubby overall, looked like any other working man in the place. The only difference was that he was a goblin working man. Carrot tapped him gently on the shoulder and Billy looked round. ‘Oh, coppers.’ ‘We’ve come from Harry King, Billy,’ said Carrot, adding quickly, ‘You’ve done nothing wrong. We just want to learn about unggue pots.’ ‘You want to learn about unggue?’ Billy stared at Carrot. ‘I know I ain’t done nothing wrong, guv, and I don’t need you to do the telling of me and I wouldn’t touch any of those bloody pots to save my life. I’m working my way up, I am. Can’t be bothered with fairy stories.’ Angua stepped forward and said, ‘Mister Slick, this is quite important. We need to find someone who can tell us about unggue pots. Do you know anyone who can help?’ Billy looked her up and down superciliously. ‘You’re a werewolf, ain’t ya? Can smell you a mile off. And what would you do if I said I didn’t know anybody?’ ‘Then,’ said Carrot, ‘we would regrettably have to go about our business.’ Billy looked sideways at him. ‘Would that be the business of giving me a good kicking?’ The morning sun shone on Carrot’s enthusiastically polished breastplate. ‘No, Mister Slick, it would not.’ Billy looked him up and down. ‘Well, there’s my granny. Maybe she’ll talk to you, maybe she won’t. I’m only telling you that much because of Mister King. She’s right careful about who she talks to, you may bet your helmet on that. What do you want to talk about pots for, anyway? She hardly gets out of bed these days. Can’t see her doing a robbery!’ ‘Nor do we, Billy, we just want some information about the pots.’ ‘Well, you’ve come to the right lady, she’s an expert, so I reckon, always fussing about the bloody things. Got a bottle of brandy on you? She’s not one for strangers, my granny, but I reckon that anyone with a bottle of brandy is no stranger to Granny as long as the drink holds out.’ Angua whispered to Carrot, ‘Harry’s got a huge drinks cabinet in his office, and it’s not like this is bribery. Worth a try?’ She waited with Billy Slick while Carrot went on the errand, and for something to say, she said, ‘Billy Slick doesn’t sound much like a goblin name?’ Billy made a face. ‘Too right! Granny calls me Of the Wind Regretfully Blown. What kind of name is that, I ask you? Who’s going to take you seriously with a name like that? This is modern times, right?’ He looked at her defiantly, and she thought: and so one at a time we all become human – human werewolves, human dwarfs, human trolls … the melting pot melts in one direction only, and so we make progress. Aloud, she said, ‘Aren’t you proud of your goblin name?’ He looked at her with his mouth open, showing his pointy teeth. ‘What? Proud? Why the fruckle should anyone be proud of being a goblin? Except my granny, of course. Come along inside, and I surely hope that the brandy arrives quickly. She can be fretful without the brandy.’ Billy Slick and his granny lived in a building of sorts in the shanty town. Willow and other saplings had been liberated from the damp swamps and used to make a reasonably large hemisphere, the size of a small cottage. It seemed to Angua that some skill and thought had gone into the construction: smaller twigs and branches had been interwoven with the structure and some had, as is the way with willow, rooted themselves and sprouted, and then somebody, presumably Billy Slick, had further interwoven the new growth so that, in the summertime at least, it was a pretty good gaff, especially since somebody had meticulously filled most of the gaps with smaller weaves. Inside, it was a smoky cave, but the dark-accustomed eye of the werewolf saw that the inner walls had been lined very carefully with old tarpaulin and any other rubbish that could be persuaded to bend, to keep away draughts. Okay, it had probably taken less than two days to build and cost nothing, but the city was full of people who would have been overjoyed to live there. ‘Sorry about this,’ said Billy. ‘I can’t say that Harry is a big payer, but he turns a blind eye to us snaffling the occasional bits and pieces if we don’t get cheeky about it.’ ‘But you’ve even got a stove pipe!’ said Angua, astonished. Billy looked down. ‘Leaks a bit; waiting for me to solder a few patches on, that’s all. Wait here, I’ll just make sure she’s ready for you. I know she’ll be ready for the brandy.’ There was a polite knock on the door which turned out to be courtesy of Captain Carrot who was on his way back with the brandy. He carefully opened the battered and many-times-painted outside door and let in some light. Then he looked around and said, ‘Very cosy!’ Angua tapped her foot. ‘Look, he’s even jigsawed broken bits of roof tile together to make a decent floor cover. There’s some thoughtful construction going on here.’ She lowered her voice and whispered, ‘And he’s a goblin. It’s not what I’d expected—’ ‘Got bloody good hearing as well, miss,’ said Billy, re-entering the room. ‘Amazing, innit, what tricks us goblins can learn. Cor, you’d almost think we were people!’ He pointed towards a hanging of some sort of felt that obscured the other end of the room. ‘Got the brandy wine? Off we go, then. Hold the bottle out in front of you, that usually does the trick. Officers, the lady ain’t my granny as such, she’s my great-granny, but that was too much of a mouthful for me when I was a little kid, so Granny she became. Let me do the talking, ’cos unless you are a bloody genius, you won’t understand a blind word she says! Come on in, quickly, I’ve got to go and make her lunch in half an hour, and, like I said, you’ve probably got until the drink runs out.’ ‘I can’t see a thing,’ said Carrot, as the felt sombrely swung back behind them, and Angua said, carefully, ‘I can. Would you be so good as to introduce us to your great-grandmother, Billy?’ Carrot still fought for any kind of vision but heard what he thought was the goblin boy speaking, although it sounded as if he was chewing gravel at the same time. Then, after a sense of movement in the darkness, another voice, cracking like ice, answered him. Then Billy quite clearly said, ‘Regret of the Falling Leaf welcomes you, watchmen, and bids you give her the bloody brandy right now.’ Carrot held the bottle out in the direction of Billy’s voice, and it was swiftly passed on to the shape beginning to form in front of him as sight trickled back. The shape apparently said, according to Billy, ‘Why you come to me, po-leess-man? Why you need help from dying lady? What is unggue to you, Mister Po-leess-man? Unggue is ours, ours! No good for you here, big Mister Po-leess-man!’ ‘What is unggue, madam?’ said Carrot. ‘No religion, no ringing bellsey, no knees all bendey, no chorus, no hallelujah, no by your leave, just unggue, pure unggue! Just unggue, who come when need. Little unggue! When gods wash hands and turn away there is unggue who roll up the sleeves! Unggue strikes in the dark. If unggue don’t come himself, he send. Unggue is everywhere!’ Carrot cleared his throat. ‘Regret of the Falling Leaf, we have a man, a policeman, a good man, who is dying of unggue. We don’t understand; please help us understand. In his hand he is holding an unggue pot.’ The screech must have echoed around the works; it certainly made the little shack rock. ‘Unggue thief! Pot stealer! Not fit to live!’ Billy translated with every sign of embarrassment. The old goblin woman tried to stand up and sank back into her cushions, muttering. Angua tried: ‘You are wrong, old lady. This pot came to him by chance. He found it, it is the pot called soul of tears.’ Regret of the Falling Leaf had filled the world with noise. Now she appeared to empty it with silence. She said, bitterly and, come to that, curiously, considering the fact that her great-grandson had said she didn’t know much Ankh-Morporkian, ‘Found in goblin cave, oh yes! Found on end of shovel, oh yes! Bad cess to him!’ ‘No!’ Suddenly Carrot was face to face with the goblin woman. ‘It came to him by accident, like a curse. He never wanted it and he didn’t know what it was. He found it in a cigar.’ There was a pause in which, presumably, the old woman was doing some complex thinking, because she said, ‘Would you pay me my price, Mister Po-leess-man?’ ‘We gave you the brandy,’ said Angua. ‘Indeedy, wolf whelp, but that was for consultation only. Now it’s price for diagnosis and cure, which will be from the Snuff Mill, two pounds of sweet raspberry, one pound of angler’s chum, and one pound of Dr Varies’ medicated upright mixture, just the job on a winter’s day.’ Something like a laugh escaped from the old goblin woman’s mouth. ‘Glad of the fresh air,’ she added. ‘My lad he gets around and about and says you are trustworthy, but goblins have learned not to rely on word, so we will seal the bargain the old way, which we have all understood since time was time.’ The bewildered Billy stood back as a long hand with longer fingernails extended towards Carrot, who spat on his own hand and slapped it, with no thought of health and safety, on to the palm of Regret of the Fallen Leaf, who cackled again. ‘That can’t be broke, that, it can’t be broke. Never.’ After a moment’s hesitation she said in an offhand voice, ‘Wash hand after using.’ There was a glug from the brandy bottle, and Billy Slick’s old granny went on, ‘A pot of tears, you say?’ Angua nodded. ‘If so, only one meaning. A poor goblin woman, a starving woman, had to eat her newborn baby, because she could not feed it. I hear you stop breathing for a moment. That such things happen? Is awful truth, oh yes. Is often awful truth in bad country when times are hard and food is nothing. And so, weeping, she carved a little unggue pot for soul of her baby and cried life into it and sent it away until better times when baby will come back.’ Quietly, Carrot said, ‘Could you tell us anything more, madam?’ The old goblin was silent for a moment and then said, ‘Inside cigar, wrapped in tobacco? Ask the man who sell tobacco!’ Billy turned his granny’s brandy bottle upside down and not a drop came out. ‘One last thing, please, madam: how can we help our friend? By the sound of it he’s dreaming that he’s a goblin!’ Little black eyes shone as the goblin said, ‘I trusting you for tobacco. Now trusting you for another bottle of brandy. Find goblin cave! Find goblin maiden! Only such a one will be able to grasp the pot, in hope one day of having child! So it goes, no other way. And big problem for you, Mister Po-leess-man, is that goblin girl these days are hard to find. None here. Maybe none anywhere. We shrivel and shrink like old leaves. Goodbye until more brandy. No! Make that Cognac from Quirm. Special Reserve. Sixty dollars if bought from Horrids on Broadway or two-for-one deal at Twister Boote’s bottle shop in the Shades. Slight taste of anchovy, but no questions asked and none answered.’ The old voice went silent, and gently the watchmen came back to the stuff of reality around them, troubling images fading into recent memory. Carrot managed to say, ‘I’m so sorry to have to ask, but will this harm my sergeant? He seems to be having continuous nightmares and we can’t get the pot out of his hand!’ ‘Three bottle of brandy, Mister Po-leess-man?’ translated Billy. Carrot nodded. ‘Okay.’ ‘How long pot had him?’ Carrot looked at Angua. ‘About two days, madam.’ ‘Then get your man to a goblin cave as quick as you can, Mister Po-leess-man. He may live. He may die. Either way, three bottle of brandy, Mister Po-leess-man.’ Small black eyes twinkled at Carrot. ‘So nice to meet a real gentleman. Hurry up, Mister Po-leess-man.’ The old lady slumped back into her mound of pillows and rugs. The audience was over, just like the brandy. ‘Granny likes you,’ said Billy, his voice full of awe, as he ushered them out. ‘I can tell. She never threw anything at you. Better get her the snuff and the brandy pretty soon, however, otherwise she might get a bit stroppy in an occult sort of way, if you hear what I’m saying, or rather, of course, what I ain’t saying. Nice to meet you folks, but old man King doesn’t like to see people not working.’ ‘Excuse me, Billy,’ said Carrot, grabbing him by his skinny arm. ‘Are there any goblin caves anywhere around here?’ ‘You got what you wanted, officer. There ain’t none, as far as I know. I don’t care. You could try up-country, that’s my advice, but I really don’t care. If you find a goblin cave on a map you can bet your teeth there won’t be any goblins there any more, not live ones, at least.’ ‘Thank you very much for your assistance, Mister Slick, and may I congratulate you on having a grandmother with such good grasp of contemporary vocabulary?’ said Carrot. There was a delighted shriek from the direction of the dome, the walls of which were very thin. ‘Damn right! Granny Slick ain’t so thick!’ ‘Well, perhaps we have a result,’ said Carrot as they headed back into the city, ‘but, well, I know Ankh-Morpork is a melting pot of a city, but don’t you think it’s rather sad when people come here and forget their ancestry?’ ‘Yes,’ said Angua, not looking at him. ‘It is.’ When they were back in Pseudopolis Yard, Carrot summoned Cheery. ‘I’d like you to go and see the tobacconist who gave Sergeant Colon that cigar. Ask him where his tobacco comes from. We know there’s lots of smuggling going on anyway, so he’ll be worried. It might be a nice idea to take along an officer whose mere presence will worry him a little more. Wee Mad Arthur is back from leave.’ Cheery grinned. ‘In that case, I’ll take him. He worries everybody.’ Mr Bewilderforce Gumption was having a good day so far. He had been to the bank to deposit the takings and had bought two tickets to the opera. Mrs Gumption would be very pleased about that and certainly more pleased than she was to be called a Gumption. She was always urging him into high society or, at least, higher society, but in some ways the name Gumption always held you back. And now he held open the door to his emporium and saw the policeman sitting patiently in the chair. Cheery Littlebottom stood up. ‘Mister Bewilderforce Gumption?’ He tried to smile. ‘I generally see Fred Colon, officer.’ ‘Yes. And it’s Sergeant Littlebottom. But strangely enough it’s about Sergeant Colon that I’m visiting you today. Do you remember giving him a cigar?’ Mr Gumption was suffering from the illusion that many people have that policemen don’t see people lying all the time, so he said, ‘Not as I recall,’ to which Cheery replied, ‘Mister Gumption, it is a well-known fact that Sergeant Colon buys or otherwise procures his tobacco requirements from your noble establishment.’ Once again Bewilderforce led off on the wrong note. ‘I want to see my lawyer!’ ‘I’d like to see your lawyer as well, Mister Gumption. Perhaps you’d send someone to collect him while I and my colleague wait here?’ Bewilderforce looked around bewildered. ‘What colleague?’ ‘Oh, aye, that’ll be me well enough,’ said the constable known, sometimes briefly, as Wee Mad Arthur, who had been lurking behind a packet of cigarettes. Two police officers are far more than doubly worse than one, and Cheery Littlebottom took advantage of the sudden panic to say, carefully, ‘It’s a very simple question, Mister Gumption. Where did that cigar come from?’ Cheery was aware that Commander Vimes didn’t like the phrase ‘The innocent have nothing to fear’, believing the innocent had everything to fear, mostly from the guilty but in the longer term even more from those who say things like ‘The innocent have nothing to fear’; but Bewilderforce was fearful – she could see him sweating. ‘We know you’re a smuggler, Mister Gumption, or perhaps I should say that you take advantage of very good deals when they are, ahem, presented to you. Right now, however, all I need from you is to tell me where that cigar came from. Once you’ve been so kind as to tell me that, we’ll walk out of this building in a happy and cooperative frame of mind.’ Bewilderforce brightened up. Cheery continued, ‘Of course, other departments of the Watch might wish to visit you in due course. At the moment, sir, you just have to deal with me. Do you know where that batch of cigars came from?’ Valiantly Bewilderforce tried it on. ‘I buy from dealers all the time,’ he said. ‘It’d take me ages to go through the records!’ Cheery kept smiling. ‘No problem there, Mister Gumption, I’ll call for my expert colleague Mister A. E. Pessimal right now. I don’t know if you know of him? It’s amazing how quickly he can work through paperwork and I’m sure he’ll find time in his busy schedule to help you out at no cost whatsoever.’ Five minutes later a grey-faced and breathless Bewilderforce handed Cheery a small scrap of paper. Cheery looked up at him. ‘Howondaland? I thought that tobacco mostly came from Klatch?’ Bewilderforce shrugged. ‘Well, they’ve been starting up plantations in Howondaland now. Good stuff, too.’ Feeling a little bit bolder, Bewilderforce went on. ‘All properly paid for, I can tell you. Yes, I know there’s smuggling going on, but we don’t have any truck with that. No need to when you can get a pretty good deal by buying in bulk. It’s all in my ledgers. Every invoice. Every payment. All set down properly.’ Cheery relented. A. E. Pessimal could probably find something to excite him somewhere in the Gumption ledgers. After all, business was business. But there was business and there was bad business. It didn’t do to get complicated. She stood up. ‘Thank you very much for your assistance, Mister Gumption. We’ll trouble you no further.’ Bewilderforce hesitated and said, ‘What’s up with Fred Colon? He’s a bit of a scrounger, I don’t mind saying, but I would hate anything to have happened to him. It wasn’t … poison or anything, was it?’ ‘No, Mister Gumption. His cigar started singing to him.’ ‘They don’t usually do that,’ said Bewilderforce nervously. ‘I’ll have to check my stock.’ ‘Please do that, sir. And while you’re doing so perhaps you’ll look out this little list of snuff products?’ The tobacconist took it from her carefully. His lips moved and he said, ‘That’s quite a lot of snuff, you know.’ ‘Yes, sir,’ said Cheery. ‘I’m authorized to pay cash down.’ Bewilderforce looked extremely bewildered. ‘What? Policemen pay?’ Walking the streets in the company of Wee Mad Arthur presented a difficulty even for a dwarf like Cheery Littlebottom. He was around six inches high, so if you spoke to him while you walked you sounded like a madman. On the other hand, he heartily disliked being picked up. You just had to put up with it. Most people made a slight detour if they saw Wee Mad Arthur in any case. They arrived back at the Watch House and reported to Carrot and the first thing he said to Cheery was, ‘Do you know where there are any goblin caves, Cheery?’ ‘No, sir. Why do you ask?’ ‘I’ll explain later,’ said Carrot. ‘It’s fairly unbelievable. Did you find out anything from old Gumption?’ Cheery nodded. ‘Yes, sir. Sergeant Colon’s haunted cigar came from Howondaland. no doubt about it.’ Carrot stared at her. ‘I didn’t think there were goblins in Howondaland. All Jolson’s family come from there.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Hang on one moment.’ He ran down the corridor to the canteen and came back followed by Constable Precious Jolson, a lady for whom the word large simply would not do. Everything about her was, as it were, family-sized, including her good nature. Everybody liked Precious. She seemed to be a fountainhead of jolliness with always a cheerful word for anybody, even when she was picking up a brace of drunks and throwing them into the hurry-up wagon. After brief questioning Precious said, ‘Dad sent me over there last year, remember, wanted me to find my roots. Can’t say I took to it, really. Nice weather. Not much to do. Not very exciting really, unless you try to stroke one of the cats, they get kind of stroppy. Never heard of goblins there, not the sort of place for them, I suspect. Excuse me, captain, can I get back to my tea now?’ The silence that followed was broken by Carrot, who said, ‘Howondaland is months away by boat, and broomsticks don’t work very well over water, even if we could persuade the wizards to lend us one. Any ideas?’ ‘Crivens!’ said Wee Mad Arthur. ‘No problemo! I reckon I could get there in less than a day, ye ken.’ They stared at him. Wee Mad Arthur was small enough to ride on the back of any bird larger than a medium-sized hawk – his aerial broadcasts from the sky concerning traffic hold-ups in the city23 were a regular feature of Ankh-Morpork street life – but all the way to another continent? He grinned. ‘As ye ken, I was away for a wee while lately, making the acquaintance o’ my brothers, the Nac mac Feegle. Weel, they fly the birds a lot, and there’s a thing they have called the craw step, ye ken? And I reckon I’m canny enough to use it, ye ken.’ ‘That’s three kens in one speech, Wee Mad Arthur,’ said Angua, to laughter from the rest of the watchmen. ‘You really got into the Feegle thing, didn’t you!’ ‘Oh, ye may scoff, but I’m the only one of ye scunners who knows why we get so many big birds flying over the city at this time o’ year. Ankh-Morpork is hot! See the big plume of smoke and fumes? That’s all heat. It lifts ye up, a free ride that puts the wind under your wings. Have ye heard of the surreptitious albatross? No, because only me and the Professor of Ornithology at the university know about it, and he only knows because I told the scunner. Outside the mating season it never touches ground. That’s not the only thing that’s odd. It’s an eagle masquerading as a type of albatross. Ye could call it a shark o’ the sky, and I reckon one of them will do me nicely. They like the city. They hover up where you’ll never see them unless you really know how to look. There’s always one about, and I could leave today. What you say?’ ‘But, constable,’ said Carrot, ‘you’ll freeze that high up in the sky, won’t you?’ ‘Oh aye, I ken my thermal drawers may not be sufficient, which is why the word “brandy” is about to enter this conversation. Trust me on this, captain. I reckon I can be back within twa days.’ ‘How many is that?’ said Angua. Wee Mad Arthur rolled his eyes. ‘Two, captain, for the likes o’ you.’ In fact it took Wee Mad Arthur only an hour to identify the peaceful-looking bird drifting happily high above the city with the meal it had just had courtesy of a seagull, the feathers of which were even now drifting gently towards the cityscape below. The surreptitious albatross had no enemies that it couldn’t easily digest, and paid little attention to the nondescript and relatively harmless hawk soaring towards it, right up until it found Wee Mad Arthur landing on its back. It struggled but was unable to reach the Feegle, because he was sitting comfortably and had his hands around its neck; Wee Mad Arthur tended towards the swift methods of domesticating wildlife. The surreptitious albatross fought for yet more height by constantly spiralling up on the huge wide pillar of free lift – as Ankh-Morpork was known and understood by the avian community – and Wee Mad Arthur passed the time by memorizing a tiny pencilled map of the world. Really, it wasn’t difficult. On the whole, continents aren’t hard to find, and neither are the edges of continents, where, by general consensus, you tended to find ships moored. Wee Mad Arthur was the world expert at looking for things from above, which amused him, given that most people who wanted to see Wee Mad Arthur had to look down. Oh well, he thought, let’s go! It was called the craw step, and the Nac mac Feegle of the chalk country had carefully shown their brother how it works when you are sitting on top of a large bird. People in Ankh-Morpork looked up at the bang high above and then, given that the sky was still clear, lost interest. Meanwhile, on one astonished surreptitious albatross sat one hugely satisfied Feegle, who settled down in the feathers and began to eat a piece of the single hardboiled egg and two-inch slice of bread that were his rations for the trip,24 while the universe rushed past them making a noise like weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. Darkness had lasted about four hours when Vimes was woken by a small boy bouncing up and down on the bed, and therefore on Sam Vimes, and saying, ‘Willikins has found a bird that just died. Dad! Mum says I can di … ssect it if you say it’s all right, Dad!’ Vimes managed a mumbled, ‘Yes, all right, if your mother says so,’ before slipping back into the black. And the black spread around him. He heard himself thinking: the Summoning Dark could tell me everything I need to know, and that is the truth. But would the truth that it told me be the truth, and how would I know that? If I rely on it then in some way I become its creature. Or perhaps it becomes mine? Perhaps we have an accord and it helped me under Koom Valley and because of that the world is a better place? Surely the darkness has no reason to lie? I’ve always liked the night, the dead of night, those nights that are sheer blackness, making dogs nervous and causing sheep to leap their hurdles out of terror. Darkness has always been my friend, but I cannot let it be my master, though sooner or later I will have to take an oath, and if I lie, me, the chief policeman, then what am I? How could I ever again rebuke a copper for looking the other way? He turned over among the pillows. And yet the cause is good. It is a good cause! The man Stratford did kill the goblin girl, I have the evidence of his associate and the word of a being whose assistance has been of material use to society. Admittedly, I have put a man in fear, but then, people like Flutter are always in fear, and better that he fears me than Stratford, because I at least know when to stop. He’s just another red ball on the baize, and for that matter, I suppose, so is Stratford. He’ll have a boss. They always have a nobby boss because nearly everybody around here is either a worker or nobby, and as far as I know practically everybody doesn’t have a good word to say for goblins. It’s a target-rich environment, and the trouble with a target-rich environment is that it is useless if you don’t know which target you have to aim at. Vimes dropped back into deep sleep, and was almost instantly shaken awake by the best efforts of his son, industriously pounding on the heap that was Vimes in slumber. ‘Mum says to come, Dad. She says there’s a man.’ Vimes wasn’t a dressing-gown type of person, so he struggled back into his clothing and made himself as presentable as a man could who needed a shave and didn’t appear to have the time to get one. There was a man sitting in the lounge, wearing a fantailer hat, jodhpurs and a nervous smile, three things that mildly annoyed Vimes. A nervous smile generally meant that somebody was after something they shouldn’t have; he personally thought a fantailer looked silly; and as for the jodhpurs, no man should meet a copper if he is wearing trousers that make his legs look as though he has just burgled a house full of silverware and shoved it hastily down his trousers. In fact, Vimes thought he could see the outline of a teapot, but possibly that was his eyes playing mischievous tricks on him. The wearer of this presumably self-inflicted triple misfortune stood up as Vimes entered. ‘Your grace?’ ‘Sometimes,’ said Vimes. ‘What can I do for you?’ The man looked apprehensively at Lady Sybil, who was sitting comfortably in the corner with a little smile on her face, and said, ‘Your grace, I’m afraid I must serve you with this Cease and Desist order, on behalf of the board of magistrates for this county. I am very sorry about this, your grace, and I hope you will understand that it does go against the grain to have to do this to a gentleman, but no one is above the law and the law must be obeyed. I myself am William Stoner, clerk to said justices—’ Mr Stoner hesitated because Vimes had strolled over to the door. ‘Just making sure you don’t leave in a hurry,’ said Vimes, as he locked the door. ‘Do sit down, Mister Stoner, because you’re just the man I want to talk to.’ The clerk sat down carefully, clearly not wanting to be that man. He held in front of him a scroll with a red wax seal affixed, the kind of thing believed to make a document official – or at least expensive and difficult to understand, which, in fact, amounts to the same thing. Suddenly, Vimes realized that all those years being confronted by Lord Vetinari had in fact been a masterclass, had he but known. Well, it was time for the examination. He went back to his chair, sat back comfortably, steepled his fingers together and frowned at the clerk over the top of them for ten whole seconds, a length of time that used to unnerve him every time it happened, and so should surely work on this little tit. Then he cracked the silence with, ‘Mister Stoner, three nights ago murder was committed on my land. Land ownership means something around here, doesn’t it, Mister Stoner? It appears that this was done to implicate me in the disappearance of one Jethro Jefferson, a blacksmith. You may consider me somewhat offended, but that was nothing like the amount of offence I experienced when I met Constable Feeney Upshot, our local copper, a decent lad, kind to his old mum, who nevertheless seemed to feel that he answered to a mysterious board of magistrates, rather than to the law. The magistrates? Who are the magistrates? Some kind of local body? There appears to be no oversight on these people, no circuit judge and—I haven’t finished talking yet!’ Mr Stoner, his face grey, sank back into his seat. So did Vimes, trying not to catch Sybil’s eye in case she laughed. He made his face a mask of calm again and continued, ‘And it appears, Mister Stoner, that officially, in this parish, goblins are vermin. Rats are vermin, so are mice, and I believe that pigeons and crows may be also. But they don’t play the harp, Mister Stoner, they don’t make exquisitely configured pots, and, Mister Stoner, they do not beg for mercy, although I must say I’ve seen the occasional mouse attempt it by wiggling its nose winsomely, which did indeed lead me to put the hammer down. But I digress. Goblins may be wretched, unhygienic and badly fed, and in that they are pretty much like the commonality of most of mankind. Where will your magistrates put the ruler, Mister Stoner? Then again we don’t use a ruler in Ankh-Morpork, because once the goblins are vermin, then the poor are vermin, and the dwarfs are vermin, and the trolls are vermin. She wasn’t vermin and she pleaded not to die.’ He leaned back and waited for Mr Stoner to realize that he did in fact have the power of speech. When he did so, the clerk dealt with his situation in true clerkly fashion, by ignoring it. ‘Nevertheless, Mister Vimes, you are out of your jurisdiction and, I may say, encouraging Constable Upshot in ways of thinking and, I might say, behaviour that will bode ill for him in his career—’ The clerk got no further than that because Vimes interrupted with, ‘What career? He has no career! He’s a copper all by himself, except maybe for some pigs. He’s a good lad at heart, doesn’t scare easy, and he writes with a clear, round hand and can spell, too, which in my book makes him automatically sergeant material. As for bloody jurisdiction, murder is the crime of crimes. According to the Omnians it was the third crime ever committed!25 I know of no society anywhere in the world that doesn’t consider it a crime to be pursued with vigour, understand? And as for the law, don’t try to talk to me about the law. I am not above the law, but I stand right underneath it, and I hold it up! And currently I work with Mister Feeney, and we have an accessory to murder in his cell, and justice, not convenience, will be served.’ ‘Well done, Sam,’ said Sybil loyally, giving the small but distinctive clap that people give when they want other people to join in. Mr Stoner, on the other hand, simply said, ‘Well done, sir, but nevertheless my instructions are to arrest you. The magistrates have sworn me in as a policeman, you see, and young Upshot has been relieved of his duties.’ He winced, because of the sudden freeze. Vimes stood up and said, ‘I don’t think I’m going to allow you to arrest me today, Mister Stoner! I dare say Sybil will allow you a cup of tea, should you want it, but I’m going to see Chief Constable Upshot.’ And he stood up, unlocked the door and walked out of the room, out of the Hall and, at a reasonable speed, down to the lock-up. Halfway down, Willikins overtook him, saying, ‘I couldn’t help hearing all that garbage, commander, on account of how I was listening at the door as per section five of the gentleman’s gentleman’s code. What a nerve! You’ll need me to watch your back!’ Vimes shook his head. ‘I don’t think a civilian should get involved, Willikins.’ Willikins had to run faster, because Vimes was speeding up, but he managed to gasp out, ‘That is a hell of a thing for you to say to me, commander.’ And hurried on regardless. Something was going on at the lock-up – it looked to Vimes as though it might be a domestic disturbance, a ruckus, possibly a fracas or even a free-for-all, in which case it was definitely unlucky for some. A happy thought occurred: yes, maybe it was an affray, always a useful word because nobody is quite certain what it means, but it sounds dangerous. Vimes burst out laughing as soon as he saw what was going on. Feeney was standing in front of the lock-up, his face beetroot red and his ancestral truncheon in his hands. Quite possibly it had already been used on the small mob trying to assault the lock-up, because there was a man lying on the floor clutching his groin and groaning. However, Vimes’s lengthy experience told him that the man’s carefully targeted misfortune had a lot to do with Mrs Upshot, who was in a semicircle of men, all of them ready to jump back as soon as she waved her broomstick at them. ‘Don’t you dare say my lad Feeney ain’t a copper! He is a copper, and so was his dad, and his granddad and his great-granddad before him.’ She paused for a moment and went on, grudgingly, ‘Pardon me, I tell a lie, he was a criminal, but anyway that’s nearly like being a copper!’ The broomstick made a whooshing sound as she swung it backwards and forwards. ‘I know you lot! Some of you is gamekeepers, and some of you is smugglers, and a few of you is bastards, excuse my Klatchian!’ By now she had caught sight of Vimes, and pausing only to bring her broomstick down like a mallet on the foot of a man who made a step in the wrong direction, she pointed her finger at Vimes and yelled, ‘See him? Now he is a gentleman, and also a great copper! You can tell a real copper, like my Henry, gods bless his soul, and Commander Vimes too, ’cos they’ve got proper badges what have been used to open thousands of beer bottles, I dare say, and believe me one of them would hurt you if they tried to stick it up your nose. The flimsy bits of cardboard you boys is waving make me laugh! Come any further, Davey Hackett,’ she said to the nearest man, ‘and I will shove this broomstick in your ear, trust me, I will!’ Vimes scanned the mob, trying to sort out the vile and dangerous from the innocent and stupid, and was about to brush off a fly from his head when he heard the gasp from the crowd, and saw the arrow on the cobbles and Mrs Upshot looking at her broom falling into two pieces. In theory, Mrs Upshot should have screamed, but she had been around coppers for a long time, and so, face red, she pointed at the broken broom and said, as only an old mum could say, ‘That cost half a dollar! They don’t grow on trees, you know! It wants paying for!’ Instantly there was the jingle of frantic hands in pockets. One man with great presence of mind removed his hat and coins showered into it. Since many of these coins were dollars and half-dollars snatched in haste, Mrs Upshot would clearly be self-sufficient in broomsticks for life. But Feeney, who had been simmering, smacked the hat to the ground just as it was proffered. ‘No! That’s like a bribe, Ma! Someone shot at you. I saw the arrow, it came straight out of this lot, right out the middle! Now I want you to go inside, Ma, ’cos I’m not going to lose you as well as Dad, understand? Damn well get inside the house, Ma, the reason being, the moment you shut the door I intend to show these gentlemen their manners!’ Feeney was on fire. If a chestnut had fallen on his head it would have exploded, and his rage – pure righteous rage, the kind of rage in which a man might find the idea and the inclination and, above all, the stamina to beat to death everyone around him – was a pants-wetting concern to the befuddled citizens quite outweighing the secondary one, which was that there was at least six dollars of anybody’s money lying there on the cobbles, and how much of it could they get away with reclaiming? Vimes did not say a word. There was no room to say a word. A word might dislodge the brake that held retribution in check. Feeney’s ancestral club over his shoulder looked like a warning from the gods. In his hands it would be sudden death. No one dared run; of a certainty, to run would be to make yourself a candidate for whistling oaken crushing. Now, perhaps, was the time. ‘Chief Constable Upshot, may I have a word, as one policeman to another?’ Feeney turned on Vimes a bleary look, like a man trying to focus from the other end of the universe. One of the outlying men took this as a cue to leg it, and behind the crowd there was a thump and the voice of Willikins, saying, ‘Oh, I do beg your pardon, your grace, but this gentleman stumbled over my feet. Regrettably, I have very large feet.’ And, to accompany the apology, Willikins held up a man whose nose would probably look a lot better by the end of next week. All eyes turned to Willikins, except those of Vimes – because there in the shadows, keeping his distance from the mob, was that bloody lawyer again. Not with the mob, obviously, a respectable lawyer could not be part of a mob, oh no, he was just there watching. Feeney glared at the rest of the men, because tripping can come so easily to a man. ‘I appreciate your man’s assistance, commander, but this is my manor, if you know what I mean, and I will have my say.’ Feeney was panting heavily, but his gaze swept backwards and forwards to find the first man to move or even look like someone about to move some time in the future. ‘I am a policeman! Not always a good one or a clever one, but I am a policeman and the man in my lock-up is my prisoner, and I’ll defend him to the death, and if it’s the death of some bastards who stood in front of my old mum with crossbows they didn’t know how to use, well, so be it!’ He lowered his voice to less than a scream. ‘Now, I know you, just like my father did, and Granddad too – well, some of you at least – and I know you ain’t as bad as all that—’ He stopped for a moment, staring. ‘What are you doing here, Mister Stoner? Standing there next to a mob? Have you been making a few pockets jingle?’ ‘That statement is actionable, young man,’ said Stoner. Vimes carefully made his way to Stoner and whispered, ‘I won’t say you’re pushing your luck, Mister Stoner, because your luck ran out the moment you set eyes on me.’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘A word to the wise: I’ve got big feet too.’ Oblivious of this, Feeney went on, ‘What I want you all to know is that a few nights ago a goblin girl up on the hill was chopped up while she was pleading for her life. That’s bad. Very bad! And one reason is that a man who can chop up a goblin girl will chop up your sister one day. But I will help my …’ Feeney hesitated and then said, ‘colleague, Commander Vimes, and will bring those responsible to justice. And that ain’t all, oh dear me not by a long chalk, because you see I know, just like you do, that three years ago a load of goblins were grabbed in the night and rounded up to be sent down the river. My poor old dad did what he was told and turned a blind eye, but I ain’t doing the same thing. I don’t know if any of you helped, and right now that don’t concern me overmuch, ’cos folks around here tend to do what they’re told, although maybe some like doing what they’re told more than others.’ Feeney turned round, making certain that all knew they were included. ‘And I know something else! I know that late yesterday, when we were actually on the way to Hangnails, a bunch of goblins from Overhang were grabbed and put on an ox boat down the river to—’ ‘What! Why haven’t you told me all this before?’ Vimes shouted. Feeney didn’t look in his direction, keeping his gaze on the mob. ‘What before? Sorry, commander, but it’s been all go and I only found out just before this bunch arrived, since when it’s all got busy. The boat probably came past here while we were still opening barrels in Hangnails. This lot wanted me to hand over my – your – our prisoner, and then of course my old mum got involved, as it were, and you know it’s always difficult when it involves an old mum. I never told anyone to move, did I?!’ This was to a man in some distress who was almost bent double with his hands on his groin. ‘I’m very sorry, er, Feeney, er, constable, er, Chief Constable Upshot, but I really need the privy, if it’s all the same to you, please, thanking you very much?’ Vimes looked down at the crouching man and said, ‘Oh, dear me, it’s you, Mister Stoner! Willikins! Do take him somewhere where he can go about his business, will you? But be sure to bring him back here. And if it turns out that he didn’t really need to do any business, do him the courtesy of making sure that he does.’ He wanted to say a great deal more at this time, but this was, after all, Feeney’s patch and the lad was surprisingly good at it, when it came to pushing people who pushed old mums. And the boy hadn’t finished yet; his mood had simply moved from molten steel to cold, hard iron. ‘Before I tell you what happens next, gentlemen, I’d like to draw your attention to the goblin sitting up there in the tree, watching you all. All you who are locals know Stinky, and you know sometimes you give him a kick, or sometimes he blags a cigarette off you, and sometimes he runs you a little errand, yes?’ There was a sense of sweating relief among the crowd that the worst appeared to be over now. In fact it had only just begun. ‘Commander Vimes would like you to know, and so indeed would I, that the law applies to everybody, and that means it applies to goblins as well.’ There was a certain amount of nodding at that and Feeney continued, ‘But if the law applies to goblins then goblins have rights and if goblins have rights then it would be right to have a goblin policeman attached to the Shire force.’ Vimes looked at Feeney with amazement and a not inconsiderable amount of admiration. That had got them: they had all been nodding and he had led them by the nod and before they knew it they were nodding at a goblin officer. ‘Well, gentlemen, I am intending to make Stinky a probationary special constable, just so he can keep me up to date with what’s happening up on the hill. He’ll have a badge, and anyone giving him a kick from now on will be assaulting a police officer in the course of his duty. I think the penalty for doing that is not just being hanged, but also to let you bounce up and down for a bit afterwards. This is an internal force decision, which does not require the authority of any magistrate. Is that not so, Commander Vimes?’ Vimes was amazed at how his mouth responded without any reference to his brain. ‘Yes, Chief Constable Upshot, as per section 12, part 3 of the Laws and Ordinances of Ankh-Morpork, generally considered a model for police procedure,’ he added confidently, knowing that no one present would have ever clapped eyes on them and would quite likely not have been able to read them even if they had. Inside Vimes winced. He’d got away with having dwarfs, trolls and finally even werewolves and vampires in the Watch, albeit on certain obvious conditions, but that had been the result of leverage over the years. Vetinari always said, ‘What is normal? Normal is yesterday and last week and last month taken together.’ And, Vimes supposed, they had slipped things in one at a time to allow normal to gradually evolve – although Mister Stinky, or rather Probationary Special Constable Stinky, had really better confine his policing activities to the cave. Yes, not such a bad idea at that, indeed if only he could get them to leave chickens alone maybe normal would have a chance. After all, people seemed quite easy about having their rights and liberties taken away by those they looked up to, but somehow a space on the perch was a slap in the face, and treated as such. And now Feeney, getting out of breath, was nearly talked out. ‘I can’t force any of you to tell me anything, but is there any one of you anxious to help me with my inquiries?’ Vimes tried not to let anyone see his expression, least of all Feeney. Of course, Captain Carrot had once been like that and – was it possible? – maybe even young Sam Vimes had been like that too, but surely anyone could see that you never expect people who are part of a crowd to put up their hand and pipe up, ‘Yes, constable! I’d be very happy to tell you everything I know, and I’d like these fine gentlemen here to be my witnesses.’ What you did do after a performance like that was just wait, wait until somebody sidles up and whispers something when you are alone, or just tilts his head in the right direction, or, and this had happened to Vimes, writes three initials in the spilled beer on a bar top and industriously wipes it clean within two seconds. Some bright spark would think: you never know your luck; after all, Feeney could be a coming man, right? And a happy relationship might come in handy, one day. Vimes blew away the pink cloud of embarrassment. ‘Well, gentlemen, speaking as Commander of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, it seems to me that your senior police officer is being considerably lenient with you. I would not be, so be grateful for him. How many of these …’ and here Vimes inserted a sneer, ‘gentlemen do you really know, Chief Constable Upshot?’ ‘Oh, about half of them, commander, that’s to say their names, families, home addresses and similar. The rest of them are from other places. I can’t say that they’re all angels, but they’re mostly not too bad.’ This sensible little speech in the circumstances earned Feeney a few smirks and a certain relieved look all round, and, happily, an opening for Vimes, who said, ‘So which one of them had an arrow ready in his crossbow, do you think, Mister Feeney?’ But before Feeney had time to open his mouth Vimes had spun round to confront the returning Mr Stoner, whose digestion had let him down. Willikins, whose instincts seldom failed, was still keeping an eye on him. Loudly and cheerfully Vimes said, ‘I see that my good friend Mister Stoner is back, and he’s a lawyer and I’m a policeman and we know how to talk to one another. Do come this way, Mister Stoner.’ He grabbed the unwilling lawyer gently but firmly by the arm and led him some way from the crowd, who watched, Vimes was pleased to see, with immediate deep suspicion. ‘You are a lawyer, are you not, Mister Stoner? Not a criminal lawyer by any chance?’ ‘No, your grace, I specialize mostly in land and property matters.’ ‘Ah, far less dangerous,’ said Vimes, ‘and I suppose you’re a member of the Ankh-Morpork bar, presided over by my old chum Mister Slant?’ He had said it convivially, but he knew that the name of the old zombie would strike terror into any lawyer’s heart – although whether Mr Slant still had one of his own was questionable. And now Mr Stoner must be thinking quite quickly. If he had any sense, and read his Law Journal between the lines, he would be aware that while Mr Slant would bow (rather stiffly) to the rich and influential, he did not like mistakes, and he did not like seeing the law being brought into disrepute by inept lawyers and laymen, believing that this particular duty should be left to senior lawyers, such as Mr Slant, who could do it with care and panache and AM$300 an hour. And Mr Stoner should be thinking that, since it appeared that landowners around here had made up the law to suit themselves, which was the prerogative of the legal profession as a whole, Mr Slant would not be a happy zombie; and, as custom and practice now dictated that he should no longer walk around groaning with his hands held out directly in front of him (one of them perhaps holding a severed head for effect), he was known to vent his still considerable spleen on snotty young lawyers with ideas above their station by talking to them for some time in a calm, low voice, causing them to say afterwards that the severed head was, by contrast, the vegetarian option. Vimes watched the young man’s face as he considered his own meagre options and found that there was no plural. ‘I did endeavour to properly advise the justices as to their situation, of course,’ he said, like a man rehearsing a plea, ‘but I’m sorry to say that they took the view that since they own the land hereabouts, then they decide the law of said land. I have to say that they are, in themselves, quite decent people.’ Vimes was surprised at how well his temper was keeping these days. He said, ‘Land, I quite like land, it’s one of my favourite things for standing on. But land, and landlord, and law, well … A man might get quite confused, yes? Especially in the presence of a pretty good fee? And it’s quite easy for people to be jolly decent people when they can afford to hire thoroughly un-decent people, people who don’t even need orders, just a nod and a wink.’ At this point there was a roll of thunder, not really appropriate to the last comment, and therefore without occult significance. Nevertheless, it was a giant roll that trundled around the sky, dropping blocks of sound. Vimes looked up and saw a horizon the colours of a bruise, while all round him the air was calm and warm and insects and other creatures that he couldn’t guess at were buzzing in the undergrowth. Satisfied that he need not look for cover yet, he turned his attention back to the squirming lawyer. ‘May I suggest, Mister Stoner, that you suddenly develop a pressing reason to go to the city and possibly talk to some of the senior lawyers there? I suggest that you describe yourself as foolish, and when they see your damp trousers, that will act as corroboration, believe me. If necessary, I might find it in my heart to make a statement on your behalf, to the effect that I think you were silly and badly led rather than criminal.’ The look of gratitude read well, and so Vimes added, ‘Why don’t you try criminal law? It’s mostly grievous bodily harm and murderers these days. You could call it ointment for the soul. Just a couple of things, though: what do you know about goblins being sent downriver? And what do you know about the disappearance of Jefferson the blacksmith?’ It’s never nice to face a difficult question when you’re thinking about getting on a horse and travelling long distances at speed. ‘I can assure you, your grace,’ replied the man, ‘that I know nothing about the disappearance of the smith, if indeed he hasn’t simply gone to work elsewhere. And goblins? Yes, I know that some were sent away some years ago, but I took up this post two years back and I cannot comment on those circumstances.’ He added primly, ‘I have no knowledge whatsoever of any goblins being dispossessed of their accommodation lately, as the chief constable appears to believe.’ Turning his back so the craning crowd could not easily see what was happening, Vimes glared at him. ‘I congratulate you on your careful ignorance, Mister Stoner.’ He then grabbed the prim lawyer by the neck and said, ‘Listen to me, you little shit. What you tell me may strictly speaking be true, but you are a bloody stupid lawyer if you haven’t realized that a bunch of landowners cannot decide all by themselves that anything they want to do is the law. If you want to keep in with both sides, Mister Stoner, and I imagine that you do, then you might find a moment in your busy schedule to tell your former employers that Commander Vimes knows all about them and Commander Vimes knows what to do about them. I know who they are, Mister Stoner, because Chief Constable Upshot has given me a list of names.’ He gently released the pressure and said quietly, ‘Very soon this will be an unfortunate place for you, Mister Stoner.’ Then, turning, so that the crowd could see, he took the bewildered lawyer’s hand, shook it lavishly and said loudly, ‘Thank you very much for such valuable information, sir. It’ll make my investigations a whole lot simpler, I can tell you! And I’m sure that Chief Constable Upshot will feel exactly the same way. It would be a much easier life for all of us if other upstanding folk were so quick to assist the police with their inquiries.’ He looked at the stricken lawyer and said more quietly, ‘I am no judge, but some of those men have a certain look about them. I know the sort, probably got more teeth than brain cells, and now, Mister Lawyer, they’re wondering how much you know and how much you’ve told me. I wouldn’t stop to pack if I was you, and I hope you’ve got a fast horse.’ The lawyer left at speed and, at a meaningful nod from Feeney, so did the mob, more or less evaporating into the scenery; and Vimes thought, another one snookered. Get the reds, get the colours, but sooner or later you’re after the black. And now he was left with the company of only Willikins and the chief constable, who looked around like someone realizing that he might not only have bitten off more than he could chew, but also more than he could lift. He straightened up when he saw Vimes looking at him. It was time for a little reinforcement, so Vimes walked over and slapped the lad on the back. ‘Well, I don’t know, I’m sure! Well done, Chief Constable Upshot, and this time I’m not laughing at you, Feeney, I’m not making fun, I’m not talking you down, and I cannot believe that you are the lad I met only two days ago! You stood up to them, right enough! A bunch of dangerous idiots! With a lawyer!’ ‘They shot an arrow at my old mum! Oh, they said they didn’t, ’cos they was hoping to frighten us off! They said they had no arrows! So I said, quick as a wink, well, you wouldn’t have any arrows now if you’d shot them at my old mum, would you? So that proves it, I told them, I said, that’s logic, and they didn’t know what to say!’ ‘Well, I’m at a loss for words myself, Feeney, because it seems to me that I heard you say some more goblins were sent downriver yesterday. How did you find that out?’ Feeney waved a thumb in the direction of the lock-up and grinned. ‘Here’s the key, sir, just you go and talk to our prisoner. You’ll love it, sir, he was beside himself when he knew they were coming for him and he sang like a nightingale, didn’t he just!’ ‘Generally, we say that they sing like a canary,’ said Vimes, turning towards the stubby little building. ‘Yes, sir, but this is a rural police station, sir, and I know my birds, sir, and he sang like a nightingale, right enough! A beautiful watery cadence, sir, second only to the trill of the robin in my opinion, possibly occasioned by his being really, really scared, sir. I’ll have to slosh a bucket in there in a minute.’ ‘Well done again, Feeney! Might I suggest at this time that you go in and see to your old mum? She’ll be worried about you. Old mums do worry, you know.’ Wee Mad Arthur was impressed. Why hadn’t anybody told him about the craw step before? Well, it was only recently that he had learned that he was, by birth, a Nac mac Feegle instead of, as he had been given to understand, the child of peaceful, shoe-making gnomes. Feegles did not wear shoes and neither were they peaceful. Like many people before and after, Wee Mad Arthur had always thought that he was in the wrong life. When the truth had fortuitously been uncovered, it all seemed to make sense. He could be proud of being a Nac mac Feegle, albeit one who enjoyed the occasional visit to the ballet and could read a menu in Quirmian and, for that matter, read at all. He cruised above the warm blue skies of Howondaland in great circles and enjoying himself no end. The whole continent! There were people on it, so he understood, but mostly what he was seeing from the air was either desert, mountain or, most of all, green jungle. He allowed the albatross to drift on the thermals as his keen eyes searched for what he suspected might be there. It was, in fact, not a thing, as such, but a concept: rectangular. People who planted things liked rectangular. It was orderly. It made things easy. And there it was! Right down there on the coast. Definitely rectangular and quite a lot of it. After a brief meal of hardboiled egg he persuaded the bird to perch in a treetop. Jumping to the ground was no fearsome undertaking for one of Feegle stock. As evening began to fall, Wee Mad Arthur walked through line after line of fragrant tobacco plants. But also noticeably rectangular, in this land where geometry was rare, were the sheds, visible not far away. He moved stealthily to begin with and increasingly more stealthily when he saw the pile, white and complex in the gloaming. The whiteness consisted of bones. Small bones, not Feegle but far too small for human; and then, when he investigated further, he saw the corpses. One of them was still moving, more or less. Wee Mad Arthur recognized a goblin when he saw one. There were enough people who did not like Feegles for Feegles not to be too snotty on the subject of goblins. They were a damn nuisance, but even Feegles would be happy to agree that so were they themselves. And being a nuisance is not something you should die of. In short, Wee Mad Arthur recognized this situation as very bad. He took a look at the one who was moving. There were wounds all over it. One leg was twisted back on itself and suppurating scars covered its body. Wee Mad Arthur knew death when he saw it and that was in the air right now. He looked at the pleading in the goblin’s one remaining eye, took out his knife and ended its suffering. While he was staring at this, a voice behind him said, ‘And where the hell did you escape from?’ Wee Mad Arthur pointed to his badge, which on him was the size of a shield, and said, ‘Ankh-Morpork City Watch, ye ken?’ The burly human stared at him and said, ‘There ain’t no law here, whatever you are, you little squirt.’ As Commander Vimes always said in his occasional rousing speeches to his men, it was the mark of a good officer if he or she is able to improvise in unfamiliar circumstances. Wee Mad Arthur recalled the words very clearly. ‘Nobody expects you to be a first-class lawyer,’ Vimes had said, ‘but if you have evidence that suggests that your proposed action is, on the face of it, justified, then you should take it.’ And then Wee Mad Arthur, ticking off points in his head, thought: slavery is illegal. I know it used to be done, but I don’t know anywhere it’s done any more. The dwarfs don’t do it and neither do the trolls and I know that Lord Vetinari is dead against it. He checked all this again to make certain that he had got it right, and then looked up at the scowling human and said, ‘Excuse me, sir? What was that you just said to me?’ The man smiled horribly, grasping the handle of his whip. ‘I said, there ain’t no law here, you rabid little skunk.’ There was a pause and Wee Mad Arthur glanced down at the dead goblin on the stinking bone-filled midden. ‘Guess again,’ he said. As battles go, it was one of the most one-sided, and that side belonged to Wee Mad Arthur. There were only a dozen or so guards on the plantation, because starving creatures in chains do not, as a rule, fight back. And they never knew who they were fighting. It was some kind of force that sped backwards and forwards across the ground and then up your trouser leg, leaving you in no heart whatsoever for fighting or, for that matter, anything else. Punches came out of nowhere. Those who ran were tripped. Those who didn’t were left unconscious. It was, of course, an unfair fight. It generally is if you are fighting even one Nac mac Feegle, even if you are a platoon. Afterwards, Wee Mad Arthur found chains in some of the huts and carefully chained every recumbent guard. Only then did he open the other huts. The iron door of the lock-up slammed against the stone as Vimes entered; nevertheless he was taking care where he placed his feet. And Mister Flutter sang, he certainly sang. Vimes was in no ornithological position to judge the singing in terms of nightingale or robin equivalent, but even if he had sung like a frog it would not have mattered, because he sang about a moocher called Benny No-Nose, who hung about as such men do in the hope of picking up unconsidered trifles and had traded a pair of boots – ‘I don’t know where they came from, and no more do you, okay?’ – for a turkey the very evening before the nightmare began for Ted. ‘Well, sir,’ Flutter told him. ‘You asked me about what happened years ago, see, and what with one thing and another, what might have happened yesterday didn’t cross my mind, if you see what I mean? It was all so sudden like. Anyway, yeah, he said they’d coupled a tender behind a two-oxen riverboat that very afternoon, and it smelled to him like goblins, him living near their cave in Overhang, and you never forget that smell, or so he said to the dockmaster, a man known to one and all as Wobbly No-Name, on account of him often walking funny when the drink is on him, and was told, “Yeah, they’re sending them down while the going is good, and you never saw them, and neither did I, understand?” Someone must think it very important ’cos Stratford is on the boat. Someone must have stamped their foot about that because Stratford, well, he don’t like boats. Don’t like water, come to that. Won’t travel on a boat at all if he can help it.’ Vimes didn’t whoop. He didn’t even smile, he hoped – you made sure you didn’t if you could help it – but he gave himself a point for being civil to Flutter. You couldn’t get off Feegle free after a charge of accessory to murder, but there were ways and ways of doing time, and if this all worked out as he hoped it would, Flutter might find that time would pass comfortably, and even, perhaps, faster than usual. He said, ‘Well, thank you, Ted, I’ll look into it. In the meantime, I’ll leave you in the capable hands of Chief Constable Upshot, to whom a prisoner is as sacred as his dear old mum, trust me.’ He pulled out the key to let himself out, and then paused as if an important point had just aimlessly struck him. ‘A two-oxen boat? Does that go twice as fast?’ And now Flutter was a riverboat expert. ‘Not really, but you can pull more load, even through the night, see? Now, your one-ox boat has to stop overnight at a cattle landing, so as the beast can have its rations and a jolly good chew and some shut-eye before dawn and there’s a cost in time and money, right there.’ Prisoner or not, Ted was now a self-styled lecturer to the unfortunately ignorant. ‘But with two oxen, well, one can be taking a bit of a rest while the other is keeping the boat moving. I reckon there were three or four barges behind that one, not too much for one ox downstream at this time of year.’ He sniffed. ‘I wanted to be an ox boat pilot, but of course, the bloody Zoons26 had got it sewn up. I did do a season on one, mucking out and feeding, but I prefer turkeys.’ ‘And the name of the boat?’ said Vimes carefully. ‘Oh, everybody knows it! It’s the biggest on the river. Everybody knows the Wonderful Fanny!’ Internal monologues can play themselves out quite fast, and Vimes’s went: let me think. Ah yes, almost certainly there was a captain who had a wife who was probably named Francesca at birth, but that’s too much of a mouthful, and he named his boat after her because he loved her very much. And there you have it. There is no need to dwell on the subject, because there are only so many words, letters and syllables available to the tongue, and if you can’t come to terms with that then you might as well never get out of bed. And so, having got his brain sorted out, he released the clamps on his silly-embarrassed-face reflex and said, ‘Thank you for your cooperation, Ted, but if you had told us earlier we might have been able to catch the damn boat!’ Flutter looked at him in astonishment. ‘Catch the Fanny? Bless you, sir, a man with one leg could do that! She’s a bulk carrier, not a streaker! Even going all night she won’t have got much past Fender’s Bend by now. There are bends all the way, you see? I reckon you never get more than half a mile without a bend! And it’s full of rocks, too. Seriously, you have to zigzag so much on Old Treachery that you’re often crossing your own wake.’ Vimes nodded at this. ‘One last thing, Ted. Remind me again … What exactly does Mister Stratford look like?’ ‘Oh, you know the type, sir, sort of average. Dunno how old he is. Maybe twenty-five. Maybe twenty. Sort of mousy hair. No scars that show, amazingly.’ Ted looked embarrassed at this paucity of information and shrugged. ‘Sort of average height, sir.’ He scrabbled for details and gave up. ‘To tell you the truth, he sort of looks like everyone else, sir, that is until he gets angry’ – Ted’s face lit up – ‘and that, sir, is when he looks like Stratford.’ Willikins was sitting on the bench under the chestnut tree with his hands resting peacefully on his knees. He was good at it. He had a talent for resting that had escaped Vimes. It must be a servant thing, Vimes thought: if you don’t have anything to do, don’t do anything. And right now he could do with a rest. Maybe evidence was going downstream even as he stood there, but by the sound of it at a speed that could almost be overtaken on foot. Regrettably Sybil was right. At his age you had to be sensible. You sometimes had to catch your breath, while you still had some. He sat down beside the man, and said, ‘An interesting day, Willikins.’ ‘Indeed, yes, commander, and may I say that young Constable Upshot handled his responsibilities with great aplomb. You have a talent for inspiring people, sir, if I may say so.’ There was silence for a while, and then Vimes said, ‘Well, of course, we were helped by the fact that some bloody fool actually let an arrow go! You could see them thinking about what might happen if you’re one of the gang that killed a dear old lady. That’s a kind of trouble you don’t get out of easily. That opened them up! And it was obviously a real stroke of luck for us,’ Vimes added, without turning his head. He let the silence continue as the storm raged in the distance, while, nearby, whatever it was that was chirruping in the bushes carried on doing so in the warm, sultry afternoon. ‘It puzzles me, though,’ he went on, as if a thought had only just crossed his mind. ‘If it was someone in the front of the crowd who had loosed his crossbow then surely I would have seen it, and if it was one towards the back then he would have to have been clever and skilful enough to sight through maybe a very narrow space. That would be very clever shooting, Willikins.’ Willikins was still staring placidly ahead. Vimes’s sideways glance spotted no hint of moisture on his brow. Then the gentleman’s gentleman said, ‘I expect these country lads excel at trick shooting, commander.’ Vimes slapped him on the back and laughed. ‘Well, that’s the funny thing, don’t you think? I mean, did you see their gear? It was low-grade stuff, in my opinion, not well maintained, the kind of stuff that granddad brought back from some war, whereas that arrow, I recognized that evil little package as a custom-made bolt for the Burleigh and Stronginthearm Piecemaker Mark IX, you remember?’ ‘I am afraid you will have to refresh my memory, commander.’ Vimes was beginning to enjoy himself and said, ‘Oh, you must! Only three of them were made, and two of them are still under wizard-assisted lock and key in the company vaults and the other – surely you remember this? – is locked safely in that little vault that we made in the cellar in Scoone Avenue last year? You and I poured concrete while Sybil and the lad were out, and rubbed dirt all over the floor so that you had to know it was there in order to find it. It’s a hanging matter for anyone to be found with one of them, according to Vetinari, and the Assassins’ Guild told the Times that hanging would be a picnic compared with what would happen to anyone they found in possession of one of those. I mean, think about it: can’t hardly tell it’s a crossbow. Silent, folds up and fits in a pocket in an instant, easily concealed and deadly in the hands of a skilled man, such as you or I.’ Vimes laughed again. ‘Don’t be surprised, Willikins, I recall your prowess with even a standard military bow during the war. Heavens know what someone like you could manage with the damn Piecemaker. I just wonder how one turned up out here in the country. After all, Feeney confiscated all the weapons he found, but maybe one of those chaps had hidden it in his boot. What do you think?’ Willikins cleared his throat. ‘Well, commander, if I may speak freely, I might surmise that there are many workers at Burleigh and Stronginthearm, which is one factor, and, of course, the directors of the most famous weapons producer on the Plains might also have decided to hide away a few souvenirs before the range was banned, and who knows where they might have got to. I can think of no other explanation.’ ‘Well, of course you may be right,’ said Vimes. ‘And while it’s a terrifying thought that one of these things might be out on the streets somewhere, I must admit that the idiot who used it really helped us out of a difficult situation.’ He paused for a while and then said, ‘Have you had a pay rise lately, Willikins?’ ‘I am entirely satisfied with my remuneration, commander.’ ‘It is entirely deserved, but to be on the safe side, I’d like you, as soon as we are back home, to check in the cellar just in case, will you? Because obviously, if there are more of those bloody things out there, I want to make certain that I’ve still got one too.’ And as Willikins turned away Vimes continued, ‘Oh, and Willikins, it’s a damn good job for you that Feeney cannot put two and two together.’ Was that the faintest sigh of relief? Surely not. ‘I will expedite that as soon as we enter the building, commander, and I am certain that should you yourself want to go down there some time later to make a personal check, you will find it resting where it has always been.’ ‘I’m sure I shall, Willikins; but I wonder if you could solve a problem for me? I have to catch the Wonderful Fanny.’ He added hurriedly, ‘Which is a boat, of course.’ ‘Yes, sir, I am aware of the vessel in question. Remember that I’d already been here for some time before you and her ladyship arrived, and I happened to be near the river when she went upstream. I recall the people pointed her out to me. I was given to understand that she was going up to Overhang to load up, probably with iron ore brought down from the dwarf mine, which rather surprised me, given that normally they smelt directly at their mines and export the bar-stock, this being a more economical method, sir.’ ‘Fascinating,’ said Vimes, ‘but I think that however slow it goes, I ought to get after her.’ Feeney was just emerging from the cottage. ‘I’ve heard about the … the boat, lad. We should get going while it’s still light.’ Feeney actually saluted. ‘Yes, I have that in hand, sir, but what about my prisoner? I mean, my old mum could give him his meals and empty his bucket for him, won’t be the first time she’s had to do that sort of thing, but I don’t like leaving her by herself, right now, if you get my thinking?’ Vimes nodded. Back home he only had to snap his fingers for a watchman to become immediately available, but now … Well, he had no choice. ‘Willikins!’ ‘Yes, commander?’ ‘Willikins, against my better judgement and I dare say yours, I hereby appoint you to the rank of special constable and I command you to take the prisoner back to the Hall and keep him under lock and key there. Even a bloody army would be mad to attack the Hall with Sybil in it. But just in case, Willikins, I can think of no man better suited to guard my family.’ Willikins beamed and saluted. ‘Yes, sir, orders received and understood, sir. You can depend on me, sir, only … er, well, when we get back to the city could you, er, please not let anyone know that I was a copper for a while? I have friends, sir, dear friends who have known me for a long time and they would cut my ears off if they heard I was a copper.’ ‘Well, far be it from me to whiten a man’s name against his will,’ said Vimes. ‘Do we have an understanding? I’d be grateful if you could refrain from too much adventurishness. Just guard the prisoner and ensure that no harm comes to him. If this means a little judicious harm has to come to someone else, I will regretfully accept the fact.’ Willikins looked solemn. ‘Yes, sir, fully understood, sir. My comb will not leave my pocket.’ Vimes sighed. ‘You have a great many things in your pockets, Willikins. Ration their usage, man. And by the way, please tell Sybil and Young Sam that Daddy is chasing the bad men and will see them again soon.’ Feeney looked from Vimes to Willikins. ‘Glad that’s sorted out, gentlemen,’ he said, and smiled nervously. ‘Now, if you’re ready, commander, we’ll just go along to the livery stable and pick up a couple of horses.’ With that he began to walk smartly down to the village, leaving Sam Vimes no alternative but to follow. Vimes said, ‘Horses?’ ‘Absolutely, commander. From what I hear we should catch up with the Fanny in an hour. To tell you the truth, we could probably outrun it, but it’s best to be on the safe side, don’t you think?’ Feeney looked sheepish for a moment and then added, ‘I don’t usually ride much, sir, but I’ll try not to disgrace myself in front of you.’ Vimes opened his mouth. Then Vimes shut his mouth, trapping the words: Lad, I’d rather ride a pig than a horse, if it’s all the same to you? I mean, pigs just run along, but horses? Most of the time I’ve got nothing against horses, and then I come down very firmly against horses, and then I’m shot up in the air again so that once more I have nothing against horses, but I know that in half a second the whole damn thing starts again, and yes before you come out with the whole business of ‘It’s all right if you rise up when they go down’ let me say that has never ever worked for me, because then I’m either above and a little behind the horse or against the horse so firmly that I’m really glad that Sybil and I have decided to have only one child … Feeney was, however, in keen and chattering form. ‘I expect there were a lot of horses at Koom Valley, eh, sir?’ And Vimes was stuck. ‘Actually, lad, the trolls have no use for them and the dwarfs are said to eat them, on the quiet.’ ‘Gosh, that must’ve been a blow to a fighting man like yourself, commander?’ Fighting man? Maybe, Vimes thought, at least when no alternative presents itself, but how in the seven hells did you get the idea that I’m comfortable even looking at horses? And why are we still walking towards some barn that is going to be full of the wretched things, stamping and snorting and dribbling and rolling their eyes backward like they do? Well, I’ll tell you why. It’s because I’m too damn scared to tell Feeney that I’m too damn scared. Hah, the story of my life, too much of a damn coward to be a coward! Now Feeney pushed aside a heavy wooden gate, which, to Vimes’s susceptible ear, creaked like a fresh gallows, and he groaned as they stepped through. Yes, it was a livery stable, and it made Vimes liverish. And there they were, the inevitable hangers-on: bandy-legged, no more than one button on their coats, and a certain suggestion of rat about the nose and wishbone about the legs. You could have played crockett with them. Every one of them had a straw in his mouth, presumably because that’s what they lived on. And, helplessly, Vimes was introduced to men who knew they had heard of him, very big policeman certainly, while Feeney painted a picture of him as just the sort of man who would insist on riding the swiftest beast that they had installed in the stalls. Two evil-looking mounts were led out, and Feeney generously brought the larger over to Vimes. ‘There you go, sir. Back in the saddle again, eh?’ he said, and handed him the reins. While Feeney was negotiating the hire, Vimes felt something tug at his leg and he looked down into the grinning face of Special Constable Stinky, who hissed, ‘Big trouble, fellow po-leess-maan colleague? Big trouble for a man scared of horses. Damn right! Hate horse, can smell fear. You take me, po-leess-maan. I fix. No worry. You need Stinky anyway, yes? You find frightened goblin? Panic panic panic! But Stinky say shut gob goblins, this man despite appearances not too much of an arsehole, yes indeed!’ The wretched little goblin lowered his cracked voice still further, and added, so that Vimes could barely hear it, ‘And Stinky never ever said anything about po-leess-maan’s shirt-washing man and very cross bow, hey? Mister Vimes? There is no race so wretched that there is not something out there that cares for them, Mister Vimes.’ The words hit Vimes like a slap in the face. Had the little bugger said that? Had Vimes really heard it? The words had dropped into the conversation as if from somewhere else, somewhere very elsewhere. He stared at Stinky, who rattled his teeth at him cheerfully and swung himself dreadfully under the horse just as, on the other side of the yard, the brains trust of debating equestrian experts settled the negotiations with Feeney. The apparent boss spat on his hand and Feeney, against all public safety procedures, spat on his hand and then shook hands and then money changed hands, and Vimes hoped that it washed its hands. Then, in front of Vimes, possibly to its own amazement, the horse knelt down. Vimes had only seen that in a circus, and everyone else acted as if they’d never seen it at all. Stinky had miraculously disappeared, but when incredulous eyes are watching, as the venerable philosopher Ly Tin Weedle says, you have to do something or be considered, in the great scheme of things, a tit. And so Vimes went bow-legged and shuffled along the horse as nonchalantly as he could, and made the strange clicking noise that he’d heard ostlers use for every command, and the horse got to its hooves, raising Vimes as gently as a cradle to the astonishment and subsequent wild applause of the bandy-legged throng, who clapped and said things like bless you, sir, you ought to get a job in a circus! And at the same time Feeney was all admiration, unfortunately. The wind was blowing up, but there was still some daylight left, and Vimes let the constable lead the way at a gentle trot, which indeed turned out to be gentle. ‘Looks like rain coming in, commander, so I reckon we’ll take it a little gently until we get down past Piper’s Holding, and then round by the shallows at Johnson’s Neck, where we can canter around the melon plantation, and by then we should be able to see the Fanny. Is that all right by you, sir?’ Sam Vimes solemnly waited for a few seconds to give the impression that he had the faintest idea about the local landscape, and then said, ‘Well, yes, I think that should be about right, Feeney.’ Stinky dragged himself up the horse’s mane, grinning again, and held up a large thumb, fortunately his own. Feeney gathered up the reins. ‘Good, sir, then I think we’d better bustle!’ It took Vimes a little while to fully understand what was going on. There was Feeney, on his horse, there was the statutory clicking noise, and then no Feeney, no horse, but quite a lot of dust in the distance and the cracked voice of Stinky saying, ‘Hold on tight, Mister Po-leess-maan!’ And then the horizon jumped towards him. Galloping was somehow not as bad as trotting, and he managed to more or less lie on the horse and hope that somebody knew what was going on. Stinky appeared to be in charge. The track was quite wide and they thundered along it, trailing white dust; and then suddenly they were heading downwards while the land on Vimes’s right was going up and the river was appearing behind some trees. He knew already that it was a river that saw no point in hurrying. After all, it was made up of water, and it is generally agreed that water has memory. It knew the score: you evaporated, you floated around in a cloud until somebody organized everybody, and then you all fell down as rain. It happened all the time. There was no point in hurrying. After your first splash, you’d seen it all before. And so the river meandered. Even the Ankh was faster – and while the Ankh stank like a drain, it didn’t wobble slowly backwards and forwards, from one bank to the other, as Old Treachery did, as if uncertain about the whole water cycle business. And as the river wiggled like a snake, so did the banks, which, in accordance with the general placid and unhurried landscape, were overgrown and thick with vegetation. Nevertheless, Feeney kept up the pace, and Vimes simply clung on, on the basis that horses probably didn’t wilfully try falling into water of their own accord. He remained lying flat because the increasingly low branches and tangled foliage otherwise threatened to smite him off his mount like a fly. Ah yes, the flies. The riverside bred them by the million. He could feel them crawling over his hair until some leaf or twig swatted them off. The likelihood of spotting the Wonderful—boat without having one’s head smacked off seemed extremely little. And yet here, suddenly, was a respite for Vimes’s aching backside, the sand bar with a few logs marooned on it, and Feeney just reining his horse to a stop. Vimes managed to get upright again, just in time, and both men slid to the ground. ‘Very well done, commander! You were born in the saddle, obviously! Good news! Can you smell that?’ Vimes sniffed, giving himself a noseful of flies and a very heavy stink of cattle dung. ‘Hangs in the air, don’t it?’ said Feeney. ‘That’s the smell of a two-oxen boat, right enough! They muck out as they go, you know.’ Vimes looked at the turgid water. ‘I’m not surprised.’ Perhaps, he thought, this might be the time to have a little discussion with the kid. He cleared his throat and looked blankly at the mud as he got his thoughts in order; a little trickle of water dribbled over the bar, and the horses shifted uneasily. ‘Feeney, I don’t know what we’ll be getting into when we catch up with the boat, understand? I don’t know if we can turn it round, or get the goblins out and then get them home overland, or if we’ll even have to ride it down all the way to the coast, but I’m in charge, do you understand? I’m in charge because I am very used to people not wanting to see me in front of them, or even alive.’ ‘Yessir,’ Feeney began, ‘but I think—’ Vimes ploughed on. ‘I don’t know what we’re going to find, but I suspect that people who try to take over boats, even a floating dung machine like the Fanny, probably get treated by the crew as pirates immediately, and so I’m going to give the orders and I want you to do exactly what I tell you, okay?’ For a while it looked as though Feeney was going to object, and then he simply nodded, patted his mount and waited, while another tiny wave splashed beside the horses. The sudden silence of someone normally so talkative disconcerted Vimes, and he said, ‘Are you waiting for something, Feeney?’ Feeney nodded and said, ‘I didn’t wish to interrupt you, commander, and as you say, you are in charge, but I was waiting until you said something I wanted to hear.’ ‘Oh yes? Such as?’ ‘Well, sir, to begin with I’d like to hear you say that it’s time to mount up and get out of here really fast because the water is rising and soon the alligators will wake up.’ Vimes looked around. One of the logs, which he had so carelessly dismissed, was extending legs. He landed on the back of his horse with the reins in his hand in little more than a second. ‘I’ll take that order as a given, then, shall I?’ shouted Feeney as he sped after Vimes. Vimes did not attempt to slow down until he judged them high enough up the bank not to be of interest to anything that lived in water, and then waited for Feeney to catch up. ‘All right, Chief Constable Upshot, I’m still in charge, but I agree to respect your local knowledge. Will that satisfy you? Where is the water coming from?’ It certainly was rising: when they had started out you would have needed a ruler to be certain that it was flowing at all, but now little waves were dancing after one another and a light rain was starting to fall. ‘It’s that storm coming up behind us,’ said Feeney, ‘but don’t worry, sir, all that means is that the Fanny will tie up if it gets too strong. Then we can just climb on board.’ The rain was falling faster now and Vimes said, ‘What happens if it decides to carry on? It’s not too far off sundown, surely?’ ‘That won’t be a problem, commander, don’t you worry!’ shouted Feeney with infuriating cheeriness. ‘We’ll stay on the trails. No water ever gets up that far. Besides, wherever she is, the Fanny will have running lights on, red ones, oil lamps as a matter of fact. So don’t worry,’ Feeney finished. ‘If she’s still on the river we’ll find her, sir, one way or the other, and may I ask, sir, what your intentions are then?’ Vimes wasn’t certain, but no officer ever likes to say that, so instead he parried with a question himself. ‘Mister Feeney, you make this river sound like a picnic! Look over there!’ He pointed across the river to a spot where the water spun and gurgled and was almost visibly rising as they stared at it. ‘Oh,’ said Feeney, ‘you always get debris coming down Old Treachery. The only time to worry is if you get a damn slam.27 They only happen very rarely when circumstances are right, sir, and you can be sure the captain will have the Fanny well out of any danger if one of those should happen. Besides, he can’t possibly navigate the river in bad weather at night; Old Treachery is full of snags and sand bars. It would be suicidal, even for a pilot as good as Mister Sillitoe!’ They rode on in silence, except for the terrible swirling and gurgling of dark waters down in the torrent below the bank. Only a little daylight remained now and it was a dirty orange, helped out occasionally by flashes of lightning, followed by stone-cracking thunder. In the woods on either side of the river trees lit and occasionally burned, which was, Vimes thought, at least a help to navigation. The rain was soaking his clothing now, and so he shouted in a voice which betrayed his belief that he would not like the answer to what he was about to ask, ‘Apropos of nothing, and just to pass the time, lad, would you tell me what exactly a damn slam is?’ Feeney’s voice was initially drowned by a thunder-roll behind them, but on the next go he managed, ‘It’s an occasional phenomenon caused by a storm getting stuck in the valley and the debris of the storm getting piled up in a certain way, sir …’ Stinky scrambled up from who would dare to speculate where and up on to the horse’s head. He glowed with a faint blue corpse light. Vimes reached out a finger to touch him and a tiny blue flame danced across his hand. He knew it. ‘St Ungulant’s fire,’ he said aloud, and wished that he was in a position to use it to light his last cigar, even if it was an exhalation of the corpses of the drowned. Sometimes you just needed a little tobacco. Feeney was staring at the blue light with an expression of such horror that Vimes hardly dared to disturb him. But he said, ‘Then what happens, lad?’ Lightning, with a sense for the dramatic moment, illuminated Feeney’s face as he turned. ‘Well, commander, the debris will build up and up and tangle until it’s one mass, and the river is building up so much behind it that sooner or later it’ll overcome the strength of the natural dam, which will plough down the river, mercilessly sweeping up or capsizing everything in its path, all the way to the sea, sir. That’s why this river is called “Old Treachery”!’ ‘Well, of course,’ said Vimes, ‘I’m a simple man from the city who doesn’t know very much about these things, but I take it that a build-up of debris which ploughs its way downriver sweeping up or capsizing everything in its path all the way down to the sea is generally considered to be a bad thing?’ There was a long-drawn-out creak behind them as another tree was hit by a flash. ‘Yes, sir. You left out the word “mercilessly”, sir,’ said Feeney, carefully. ‘I think we really should try to catch up with the Fanny as quickly as possible.’ ‘I think you’re right, lad, and right now I suggest—’ Whatever it was that Stinky was doing, and whatever it was that Stinky actually was, the horses were already becoming skittish to the point of bolting. There was so much water in the air and so little light left that the difference between the river and the shore could only be judged by seeing which one you fell into. And there was solid rain now, rain that blew from every direction, including upwards, and the symphony of dark destruction was punctuated by the sound of banks slipping inexorably into the churning water. The horses were now frantic and direction had no meaning, and nor did warmth and the world was nothing but darkness, water, cold despair and two red eyes. Feeney saw them first and then Vimes picked up the smell. It was the rich, desperate smell of oxen getting really worried and was thick enough to stink its way out of the turmoil. Amazingly, the boat was still churning the water, making progress of sorts despite the fact that its trailing flotilla of barges was jack-knifing, tangling and generally swishing across the river like the tail of an angry cat. ‘Why didn’t she tie up somewhere?’ shouted Feeney to the storm. It sounded like despair, but Vimes dismounted, grabbed the sticky shape of Stinky and slapped his horse on the rump. It certainly stood a better chance by itself now than it did with him, after all. And then for a moment his inner eyes looked at Koom Valley. He had nearly died that day as water poured off the valley walls and thundered through the endless caves in the limestone, smacking him against the walls, banging him on the floors and ceilings and finally dropping him on a tiny beach of sand, in utter darkness. And the darkness had been his friend, and Vimes had floated on the face of the darkness, and there he had found enlightenment growing, and understood that fear and rage could be hammered into a sword, and the desire to once again read a book to a child could be forged into a shield and armour for a ragged dying castaway, who thereafter shook hands with kings. After that, what could be frightening about rescuing goblins and who knew how many other people from a floundering boat on a black and treacherous river in thundering, streaming darkness? He was running now along the squelching bank, water pouring down his neck. But running wasn’t enough. You had to think. You thought that the pilot of the boat knew the river and knew the boat. He could have moored at any time, couldn’t he? And he hadn’t done so, but he clearly wasn’t a fool, because even having known the river for only a few hours, Vimes could see that no fool would survive on it for more than a few journeys. It was built to be a trap for the stupid. On the other hand, if you were not stupid then being an ox-boat pilot was a pretty good gig: you’d have prestige, respect, responsibility and a steady wage for a steady job, in addition to the envy of all the little boys on every landing stage. Sybil had told him all about them, with some enthusiasm, one evening. So why, in such a decent position, would a man pilot such a valuable boat with a valuable cargo down a river on an evening that promised annihilation around every snake-like bend when no blame would attach to mooring up for a while? Money? No, Vimes thought. They call this river Old Treachery, and surely money wasn’t any good to you when you were sinking dreadfully in its muddy embrace. Besides, Vimes knew men like that, and they tended to be proud, self-reliant and impossible to bribe. He probably wouldn’t jeopardize the boat, even if you held a knife to his throat—But traditionally the family comes too; the pilot was always working from home, wasn’t he? And what would a desperate pilot do then? What would he do if a knife was held to the throat of a wife, or a child? What else could he do but sail on, trusting a lifetime of experience to see them all to safety? And it wouldn’t be one unwelcome guest, no, because then you would try to run the boat heavily aground while you, muscles tensed, would rely on the confusion to leap at the fallen man and strangle him with your bare hands, but that would only work if he hadn’t brought along an ally. And so then you stayed at the wheel, hoping and praying, and expecting, at any moment, the rumble of the damn slam. Feeney was sprinting along the bank after him now, and managed to pant, ‘What are we going to do, sir? Seriously, what are we going to do!’ Vimes ignored Feeney for a moment. Rain, boiling surf and fallen logs were enough to contend with, but he kept his eye on the line of barges. Right now there was a rhythm as they snaked back and forth, but it was constantly interrupted by bits of driftwood and whatever attempt at steering was happening along there in the wheelhouse. Every time the rearmost barge hit the bank there was a moment, one precious little moment, when a man might jump aboard, if that man were foolish. So he jumped, and realized that a jump would have to beget another jump and failure to keep the rhythm would mean falling back into the torrent, but jumping on to the next barge, which was swinging and bucking in the swell, you just hoped that you didn’t get a foot stuck between the two of them, because two twenty-five-foot barges colliding as a sandwich with your foot in the middle would do more than just leave a bruise. But Stinky ran and jumped and pirouetted just ahead of him and Vimes was quick enough to get the message, landing squarely on the next barge, and so, surprisingly, did Feeney, who actually laughed, although you had to be within a foot of him to hear that. ‘Well done, sir! We did this when I was a lad … every boy did … the big ones were best …’ Vimes had got his breath back after the first two jumps. According to what Feeney had told him, the Wonderful Fanny was a bulk carrier, big and slow, but it could take any load. There could be anything in these barges, he thought, but there was no smell of goblins yet and there were two barges still to go and weather that was trying to get even worse. With that thought, there was Stinky again, who apparently could come and go without ever being seen either coming or going. And he still glowed faintly. Vimes had to crouch to speak to him. ‘Where are they, Stinky?’ The goblin farted, quite probably as a clown does, more for entertainment than relief. Clearly happy at the response, he cracked, ‘Number one barge! Easy to get to! Easy to feed!’ Vimes eyed the distance to the barge immediately behind the Fanny. Surely there had to be some kind of walkway? Some means of getting into the barges so that the crew could access the cargo? He turned again to Feeney, dripping with rain and illumined by another flash of lightning. ‘How many crew, do you think?’ Even this close, Feeney had to shout. ‘Probably two men, or a man and boy, down below in what they call the cowshed! Along with the engineer, and generally a loadmaster or cargo captain! Sometimes a cook, if the captain’s wife doesn’t want to do the job, although mostly they do, and then one or two lads learning the business and acting as general lookouts and wharf rats!’ ‘Is that all? No guards?’ ‘No, sir, this ain’t the high seas!’ Two barges crashed together, sending up a plume of water that succeeded in at last filling Vimes’s boots right to the top. There was no point in emptying them, but he managed to growl through the storm, ‘I’ve got news for you, lad. The water’s getting higher.’ He steeled himself for the jump on to the next erratic barge and wondered: even so, where are the people? Surely they don’t all want to die? He waited and jumped again as the barge presented itself, but fell back heavily just in time to see his sword cartwheeling roguishly into the stormy water. Cursing, and struggling to keep his balance, he awaited the next opportunity to narrowly survive and this time succeed. He leapt again and almost fell backwards between the crashing timbers but, balancing perilously, fell forward instead and fell on and right through a tarpaulin, into an indistinct face which cried, ‘Please! Please don’t kill me! I’m just a complicated chicken farmer! I’m not carrying any weapons! I don’t even like killing chickens!’ Vimes had managed to land with his arms around a plump man who would have screamed again had Vimes not clamped a hand over his mouth and hissed, ‘This is the police, sir. Sorry for the inconvenience, sir, but who the hell are you and what is going on? Come on, there’s no time to waste.’ He pushed the man further into the barge and a soggy darkness and a recognizable smell told Sam Vimes that whether the frantic speaker was complicated or not he wasn’t lying about the chickens. From the clucking, feathery gloom in the wire baskets beyond, there emanated yet another smell, announcing that a large number of chickens, never the most stoical creatures at the best of times, were now very frightened. The vague silhouette demanded, ‘The police? Here? Pull the other leg, mate! Who do you think you are? Bloody Commander Vimes?’ The barge bucked again and an errant egg spun out of the darkness and smacked into Vimes’s face. He wiped it off, or at least spread it around a bit, and said, ‘Well, well, sir, are you always this lucky?’ His name was false; in full it was Praise and Salvation False, and inevitably, when you have a false name you will insist on explaining why, even when imminent watery death is not only staring you in the eye but also everywhere else, possibly including both your trouser legs. ‘You see, sir, my family originally came from Klatch, and our name was Thalassa but, of course, over a period of time people tend to mispronounce the way they—’ Vimes interrupted him, because that was a more acceptable alternative to throttling him. ‘Please, Mister False, can you tell me what’s been happening on the Fanny?’ ‘Oh dear, it was terrible, it really was extremely terrible! There was shouting and yelling and I’m sure I heard a woman screaming! And now we keep hitting the bank, or at least that’s what it sounds like! And the storm, sir, it’ll have us under in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, I’m certain of it!’ ‘And you didn’t go forward to see, Mister False?’ said Vimes. The man looked startled. ‘Commander, I breed complicated chickens, sir, extremely complicated chickens. I don’t know anything about fighting! Chickens never get all that aggressive! I’m really sorry, sir, but I didn’t go to see in case I saw, sir, see? And if I saw, sir, then I’m sure people would see me, sir, and since I reasoned that they would be people who were alive after other people might possibly be dead, sir, and maybe had a responsibility for said deaths, sir, I made certain that they didn’t see me, sir, if you see what I mean? Besides, I have no weapons, weak lungs and a wooden toe. And I’m alive, at the moment.’ In truth, Vimes thought there was an inescapable logic to all this, so he said, ‘Don’t worry about it, Mister False, I bet you’ve got enough to do with your complicated chickens. So, no weapons at all, then?’ ‘I’m very sorry to disappoint you, commander, but I’m not a strong man. It was all I could do to drag my toolbox on board!’ Vimes’s face stayed blank. ‘Toolbox? You have a toolbox?’ Mr False clutched the wall again as the barge bounced off something it shouldn’t have, and said, ‘Well, yes, of course. If we manage to get off at Quirm I’ve got a site that I must make ready for a hundred chicken houses, and if you want a job done properly these days then you have to do it yourself, right?’ ‘You’re telling an expert,’ said Vimes as another crash sent them both staggering. ‘I wonder if I could take a look at this toolbox of yours?’ There are times in the symphony of the world when its aural kaleidoscope of crashes, thunderbolts, screams and storms suddenly merges into one great hallelujah! And the contents of the chicken farmer’s innocent toolbox, which contained nothing not made of ordinary iron and steel and wood, nevertheless gleamed in the eyes of Commander Sam Vimes like the hosts of heaven. Mallets, hammers, saws, oh my! There was even a large spiral awl! What could Willikins have managed with a toy like that? Hal-le-lu-jah! Oh, and here was a crowbar! Vimes balanced it in his hand, and felt the Street rise until it touched his feet. The complicated chicken man had heard a woman screaming … Vimes spun round as the tarpaulin was pushed aside and Feeney dropped into the barge in a flurry of spray. ‘I know you didn’t give me the signal, commander, but I thought I’d better tell you the water is going down.’ Vimes saw Mr False close his eyes and groan, but turned back to Feeney and said, ‘Well, that’s a good thing, isn’t it? The water? Going down?’ ‘No, it isn’t, sir!’ yelled Feeney. ‘It’s still raining hard and the water level is going down, and that means that upstream of us enough broken trees and bushes and mud and other junk are piling up to make a dam which is getting bigger and bigger and growing out sideways as the water builds up behind it, sir. Can you see what I mean?’ Vimes did. ‘Damn slam?’ Feeney nodded. ‘Damn right! We have two choices: would you rather die on the river or under it? What are your orders, please, sir?’ Another collision shook the barge, and Vimes stared at darkness. In this terrible twilight somebody was managing to stop this boat from foundering. A woman had screamed and Vimes had a crowbar. Almost absent-mindedly he reached down into the open toolbox and picked up a sledgehammer, handing it to Feeney. ‘There you go, lad. I know you’ve got your official firewood, but things might get up close and personal. Chalk it up to the dreadful algebra of necessity, and try not to hit me with it.’ He heard the voice of Feeney saying, more frantically this time, ‘What are we going to do, commander?’ And Vimes blinked and said, ‘Everything!’ The wind caught the tarpaulin as Vimes pulled it open, and it flapped off across the river, leaving the complicated chicken farmer living in hope and broken eggs. They pulled themselves out into the darkness, their shadows dancing to the rhythm of the lightning. How the hell was the pilot navigating in all this? Lamps up front? Surely they could do nothing on a night like this except show up the darkness. But although there was a suspicion, at every bang and bounce, that the Fanny was in real trouble, Vimes could hear now the splashing of the paddle wheels like one solid dependable theme in the cacophony, a regular, reassuring sound. It was making way. There was some order in the world, but how could the pilot manage the chaos? How could you steer when you couldn’t see? Feeney had explained in a hurry and Vimes had expressed utter disbelief even faster. ‘It’s true, sir! He knows every bend in the river, he knows the wind, he knows how fast we’re going and has a stopwatch and an hourglass in reserve. He takes a turn when it’s time to take it. Okay, he’s shaving the banks a bit with the old Fanny, but she’s pretty tough.’ They jumped together on to the last barge and found a hatch that was locked. However, a crowbar is a universal pass key. And there, under the hatch, were goblins, tied hand and foot, every one, and they had been stacked like cabbages. There were hundreds of them. Overwhelmed, Vimes looked around for Stinky, who turned out to be behind him. ‘Okay, my friend, over to you. We’ll cut them loose, certainly, but I wouldn’t mind a bit of reassurance that I won’t suddenly have a load of angry goblins twisting my head backwards and forwards to see which way would take it off, understand?’ Stinky, already as skinny as a skeleton, looked even thinner when he shrugged. He pointed at the groaning heaps. ‘Too sore, too stiff, too hungry, too …’ Stinky looked closely at a goblin at the bottom of a pile and touched a flaccid hand, ‘too dead to chase anyone, Mister Po-leess-maan. Hah! But later, give food, give water and they chase. Oh, they chase like the buggery, you bet! Once I talk to them, oh you bet! But I will say to them, po-leess-maan, him big arsehole, okay, but kind arsehole. I will say to them, you whack him, I whack you on account that I po-leess-maan now. Special po-leess-maan Stinky!’ Vimes considered that was the best valedictory he could expect in the circumstances. Just then Feeney managed to lever the lid off a large drum, one of several rolling around on the deck. Immediately the terrible stench in the barge doubled in intensity, and he backed away with his hands over his mouth. Stinky, on the other hand, sniffed approvingly. ‘Hot damn! Turkey gizzards! Food of the gods! Bastard murder voyage, but okay catering.’ Vimes stared at him. Well, okay, he thought, he hangs around near humans so he picks up a vocabulary, but maybe that is suspiciously clever. Perhaps Miss Beedle gave him language lessons? Or maybe he’s just some occult adventurer from hell knows where having fun at the expense of a hardworking copper. Not for the first time. Feeney was already cutting ropes, and Vimes tried to resurrect as many goblins as he could in a hurry. It was no errand for anyone with a concern for hygiene or even a notion of what the word meant – though after an hour in a storm on Old Treachery, it had no meaning anyway. They staggered up, and fell down again, found their way to the upended barrel of dead turkey bits and stumbled over slippery decks to a sloshing and now half-empty water trough that Feeney had found and was filling by the simple expedient of sticking a bucket over the side. They were coming back to life; mostly they were coming back to life. The barge bounced off a bank again, and amid tumbling goblins Vimes grabbed for a handhold. Half the entire barge was full of barrels which, if you sniffed anywhere near them, were certainly not full of sweet roses. He braved the rocking deck again and said, ‘I don’t think all this is for a little voyage to the seaside, do you? There’s more barrels of stinking turkey entrails than this lot of poor devils could possibly get through in a week! Someone was expecting a long journey! Good grief!’ The barge had smacked into something and, by the sound of breaking glass, that something had been smashed. Feeney stood up, holding on to a rope, and, wiping turkey gizzard off his coat, said, ‘Voyage, sir. Not journey, sir. You wouldn’t need all this stuff if you’re travelling on land. I reckon they’re bound for somewhere a long way away.’ ‘Do you think it’ll be a holiday of sun, sea, surf and fun?’ said Vimes. ‘No, sir,’ said Feeney, ‘and they wouldn’t like it if it was, would they? Goblins like the dark.’ Vimes slapped him on the shoulder. ‘Okay, Chief Constable Upshot, don’t hit somebody who surrenders and, if a man drops his weapon, be a little bit wary of him until you’re certain he hasn’t got another one tucked away somewhere, right? If in doubt, knock ’em out. And you know how to do that: use the old Bang Suck Cling Buck on them, eh?’ ‘Yes, sir, that’s a recipe for shoe polish, sir, but I’ll bear it in mind.’ Vimes turned to Stinky, who already looked slightly fatter than usual. ‘Stinky, I don’t have the faintest idea what is going to happen next. I can see your chums are starting to look alive, and so you’ve got the chance that we all get, sink or swim, and I can’t say better than that. Come on, let’s go, Feeney.’ This close, the Wonderful Fanny was now a rolling, creaking mess, half covered by flying weeds and sticks. Apart from the storm and the clanging and creaking of the mechanisms, it was silent. ‘Okay,’ said Feeney quietly, ‘we’d better go in by the cattle door at the stern, sir, or as you would say, “the back”. It won’t be a difficult jump, there’s lots of handholds because the loadmaster has to come out here to see to the barges. Can you see that double door and the little wicket gate? We go in that way. There’ll likely be more cargo along the cattle ramp, because a loadmaster never wastes floor space, and then we go midships …’ ‘That is to say “the middle of the ship”?’ said Vimes. Feeney smiled. ‘Yes, sir, and watch out because it’s a mass of machinery. You’ll see what I mean, because you’re smart. Take the wrong step and you could fall into a gear or on top of an ox, never a happy occasion. It’s noisy, smelly and dangerous, so if there are many bandits on this boat I wouldn’t expect to find them there.’ I would, Vimes thought; our Mr Stratford is the kind of maniac who would want to keep going in suicidal circumstances. Why? So that the cargo is a long way away before anyone knows about it? And Stratford works for Lord Rust and the Rusts believe the world belongs to them. We’re taking goblins somewhere, but they want to keep them alive – why? The shock of another collision brought him back to the dreadful here and now, and he said, ‘I’d expect to find any crew here being watched like hawks in case they put a spanner in the works.’ ‘Oh, very smart, sir, very smart indeed. There has to be some light in there for safety’s sake, but not much and all behind glass ’cos of …’ Feeney hesitated, so Vimes suggested, ‘Fire, perhaps? I’ve never known an engineer who doesn’t shove grease wherever he can.’ ‘Oh, it’s not exactly the grease, sir, it’s the beasts. The gas does build up, so it does! And if the glass breaks, well, it’s regrettably spectacular. Two years ago the Glorious Peggy was blown out of the water for just such a reason!’ ‘Do they eat the Hang Suck Butt Dog with turnips around here?’ ‘No, sir, not as far as I know, but Bhangbhangduc fusion cookery is very popular on the boats, it’s true. Anyway, further on you’ll find the pilot’s cabin, the sleeping quarters and then the wheelhouse, which has very wide windows, which is another good reason to attack from behind.’ Refreshingly, it was a short leap with a good handhold at the end of it. Vimes had no worries about being heard. The deck creaked under his feet as he crept inside the Wonderful Fanny and sidled towards the middle of the ship, or whatever the hell the real term for it was, but then she creaked everywhere, and all the time, and groaned, too. The boat was so noisy that a sudden patch of silence might have drawn attention to itself. And I’m looking for somebody who looks like everybody else, he thought, right up until he looks like the vicious killer he is. Well, that seems straightforward. Vimes was vaguely aware of huge wheels spinning frantically off to either side and chains travelling overhead and now, here, at the top of the flight of stairs, was somebody who clearly wasn’t where they should have been … It was a woman, with a small girl clinging to her dress. They had been loosely tied to a creaking beam, and a small oil lamp overhead held them in the centre of its circle of light. And this was probably because there was a man sitting a little way away from them on a stool, with a crossbow lying on his lap. And here was a puzzle because a length of string had been tied to each of his legs. One length of string ran across the floor and disappeared downwards into what was, to judge by the heat, the farmyard stink and the occasional bellow of troubled ungulate, the cowshed that Vimes had just passed. The other string disappeared forward towards the wheelhouse. The woman spotted him and immediately clasped the child to her chest and very slowly put a finger to her lips. He had to hope that the man hadn’t noticed, and did not have to hope that the woman realized that he was there to rescue her, not to add to her troubles. That wasn’t necessary, but he did feel better that she was a lady fast on the uptake. He held up a hand in front of Feeney, but the lad was definitely future captain material; he hadn’t moved at all. Like Vimes, he had become an observer. And Vimes observed, and let the dark rise up to assess the situation in its own inimitable way. This wasn’t the Summoning Dark, or at least he fervently hoped not. It was just his own human darkness and internal enemy, which knew his every thought, which knew that every time Commander Vimes dragged some vicious and inventive murderer to such mercy or justice as the law in its erratic wisdom determined, there was another Vimes, a ghost Vimes, whose urge to chop that creature into pieces on the spot had to be chained. This, regrettably, was harder every time, and he wondered if one day that darkness would break out and claim its heritage, and he wouldn’t know … the brakes and chains and doors and locks in his head would have vanished and he wouldn’t know. Right now, as he looked at the frightened child, he feared that moment was coming closer. Possibly only the presence of Feeney was holding the darkness at bay, the dreadful urge to do the hangman out of his entitlement of a dollar for the drop, thruppence for the rope and sixpence for his beer. How easy it is to kill, yes, but not when a smart young copper who thinks you are a good guy is looking to you. At home, the Watch and his family surrounded Vimes like a wall. Here the good guy was the good guy because he didn’t want anyone to see him being bad. He did not want to be ashamed. He did not want to be the darkness. The bow was pointed at the two hostages and its holder had surely been told to fire if a leg pull sounded the alarm. Would he do it? You needed to age a bit for the dark to start trickling in, although there were always one or two who were born as darkness on legs, who would kill for a pastime. Was he one? Even if he wasn’t, would he panic? How light was the trigger? Could a sudden jerk set it off? Outside, the storm raged. Whether the water was going down or not didn’t seem all that important, given there was so much of the damn stuff around already. The woman was watching him out of the corner of her eye. Oh well, every moment counted … Timing his steps carefully, as if a footstep would be heard in all the thunder and creaking, Vimes crept up to the unsuspecting guard, clamped both hands around his neck and jerked upwards. The arrow thudded into the ceiling. ‘I don’t want anybody to get hurt.’ Vimes tried to say it in a friendly way, but went on, ‘If you think you can pull strings, kid, then let me tell you that you’ll run out of gasp before I run out of squeeze. Chief Constable Upshot, grab that weapon and tie up this gentleman’s legs. You may keep his weapon. I know you like them.’ He must have inadvertently decreased the pressure, for his captive said hoarsely, ‘I don’t want to kill anybody, sir, please! They gave me the bow and told me I was to fire if the boat stopped or I got a pull on the ropes! Do you think I’d do that, sir? Do you really think I’d do that? I was only sitting here in case one of them came in! Please, sir, I never came along for anything like this! It’s Stratford, sir, he’s a total nutjob, sir, a bloody killer, he is!’ There was a crash and the whole boat shook. Maybe the pilot’s stopwatch had let him down. ‘What’s your name, mister?’ ‘Eddie, sir, Eddie Brassbound. I’m just a water rat, sir!’ The man was trembling. Vimes could see his hand shaking. He turned to the woman with the child, who was being supported now by Feeney, touched his forelock and flashed his carefully secreted badge. ‘Madam, I’m Commander Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. Has this man mishandled you or the little girl in any way?’ The woman had barely moved. She reminded him of the younger Sybil, calm and collected and much more likely to fight than scream, but she wouldn’t fight until she was ready. ‘It was done pretty slick, commander, just when I was putting Grace to bed. The bastards came on as owners of some cargo and acted like decent boys until my husband said he reckoned the weather was going to get really bad. I was in the galley, I heard a lot of yelling and then we were put down here. Personally, sir, I would deem it a favour if you killed every man jack of them, but life can’t be all fun. As far as this one is concerned, well, he could have been less gentlemanly, so although I’d like you to throw him into the river I wouldn’t object if you refused to tie a heavy weight to his leg.’ Feeney laughed. ‘Wouldn’t need weights, ma’am! The river is having a party and we’re all guests! I’m a pretty good swimmer, and I wouldn’t dare jump into what’s out there.’ Vimes grabbed Brassbound and stared into his eyes. After a moment he said, ‘No, I know a killer’s eyes when I see them. That doesn’t mean you ain’t a pirate, though, so we’re going to keep an eye on you, okay, so don’t try anything. I’m trusting you. Heavens help you if I’m wrong.’ Brassbound opened his mouth to speak, but Vimes added quickly, ‘You could make your life a little easier and possibly longer, Mister Brassbound, if you were to tell me how many of your jolly parcel of rogues there are on the Fanny.’ ‘Don’t know, sir. Don’t know who’s still alive, see?’ Vimes looked at the woman as the boat gave a lurch. It was a strange sensation – for a moment Vimes felt almost weightless – and there was a commotion behind them in the cowshed among the great spinning wheels. When he got his balance he managed to say, ‘I take it that you are Mrs Sillitoe, madam?’ She nodded. ‘Yes, I am, commander,’ she said as the little girl clung more tightly to her. ‘I know my husband is still alive, because so are we … at the moment.’ She stopped as another surge lifted the entire boat, then the Fanny came down with a splash and a spine-numbing thump, followed by the long-drawn-out bellow of a bullock who had had enough, and the start of a scream. Vimes, Feeney and Brassbound picked themselves up off the floor. Mrs Sillitoe and her daughter were, amazingly, still vertical and Mrs Sillitoe wore a grim smile. ‘That sound you heard was one of the pirates dying, I’m extremely pleased to say! That means everyone else in the cowshed is alive. Shall I tell you why? He almost certainly didn’t hop! Those lifts and drops are little slams to me: somewhere behind us a damn slam is getting so big that bits of it are calving off and coming down all the way to us at speed, you see, raising the water level and dropping it again like a stone as they go past – and that’s when you have to know enough to dance to the rhythm! Because if you don’t dance to the rhythm of the slam you’ll dance with the Devil soon enough! A man went down there with a crossbow when the fighting started. By the sound of it he wasn’t familiar with the dance. I expect it was Ten Gallon Charlie who got him when he was on the ground, poor lamb. Charlie is the Bullock Wrangler. If he hits a man once, no one will ever have to hit him again.’ Mrs Sillitoe said that in a matter-of-fact, satisfied voice. ‘If you want to try to steal from our riverboat you have to be prepared for some considerable inconvenience.’ And I thought the city was on the tough side, Vimes thought. He noticed that a prudent Feeney had rearmed the confiscated crossbow and said, ‘I’m going below to make certain. Mrs Sillitoe, how many other pirates do you think there are?’ ‘There were four that came aboard as owners of the cargo.’ She began to tick them off on her fingers. ‘Mister Harrison the loadmaster got one of them, but another one stabbed him, the devil. I know only one of them went down to the cowshed, and the other one helped this simpering little bastard rig up the ropes so that if anybody was left to try any funny business we were a hostage, and then went up to the wheelhouse. I was told that we would be all right, provided my husband gets the cargo to Quirm.’ The little girl clung to her dress as the woman continued, her face wooden. ‘Personally, I don’t believe it, but he hasn’t harmed my husband yet. He’s counting, all the time he’s counting. My husband is listening to Old Treachery and remembering! Trying to out-think sixty miles of murderous water! And if he dies, it wins, wherever you are …’ ‘Feeney, keep your crossbow pointing at this gentleman, will you?’ said Vimes. ‘And if he makes any movement whatsoever, up to and including trying to blow his nose, you have my full authority to shoot him somewhere where it will be seriously inconvenient.’ He headed to the steps and nodded to Feeney and Mrs Sillitoe, raised a finger and said, ‘Be with you in just one minute!’ And hurried down into the hot and noisome heart of the Wonderful Fanny. Snooker, Vimes thought. Knocking the balls until you have the right one right on cue. He felt pressure on his feet surge as the vessel lifted, and instantly jumped into the air, landing neatly as the Fanny slapped back down into the water. He was confronted by a man who would surely make even Willikins think twice. ‘You’d be Ten Gallons? Mrs Sillitoe sent me down here. I’m Commander Vimes, Ankh-Morpork City Watch!’ And the man with a face like a troll and a body to match said, ‘Heard about you. Thought you were dead!’ ‘I generally look like this at the end of boat trips, Mister Gallons,’ said Vimes. Then, pointing to an apparent corpse on the floor between them, ‘What happened to him?’ ‘I fink he is dead,’ Ten Gallons leered. ‘I’ve never seen a man suffocated by his own nose before.’ It was hard to hear anything down in the cowshed given the complaining of the oxen and the ominous whirring of overstressed gears, but Vimes shouted, ‘Did he have a crossbow?’ Ten Gallons nodded and fingers thicker than Vimes’s wrist unhooked said weapon off a nail on the wall. ‘Would come with you, mister, but it’s all the three of us can do to hold things together down here!’ He spat. ‘Ain’t really any hope anyway, the damn slam is right behind us! See you on the other side, copper!’ Vimes nodded at him, examined the crossbow for a moment, made a little adjustment and, satisfied, climbed back up the steps. Vimes looked at the few people left on the Wonderful Fanny who weren’t pouring water on the backs of steaming oxen or trying to hold the boat in one piece and above water. The shocks were indeed getting closer together, he was sure of it, and surely, once there was a big enough hole, the whole damn dam would give way. All the occupants of the cabin except Brassbound, who fell over, jumped together as yet another surge raised the boat. There was a sharp intake of breath from Feeney as Vimes went over to the trembling Brassbound, who had clearly realized that he was likely to be the unlucky winner of the first-over-the-side contest. And Feeney actually groaned when Vimes handed the man the recovered crossbow saying, ‘I told you, Chief Constable, I know a killer when I see one and I need back-up and I’m sure that our Mister Brassbound is very eager to get himself promptly on to the good side of the law right now, a decision that might well make him look better in court. Am I not right, Mister Brassbound?’ The young man nodded fervently. Vimes added, ‘I’d rather have you down here, Feeney. Until I know exactly who is still on this tub, I’d like you to look after the ladies. Right now I’m not sure I know who’s alive and who’s dead.’ ‘The Fanny is not a tub, commander,’ said Mrs Sillitoe sharply, ‘but I’ll forgive you this one time.’ Vimes gave her a little salute as all but Brassbound jumped and once again the idiot floundered. Vimes turned towards the stairs. ‘It’s going to be Stratford up there with the pilot, isn’t it, Mister Brassbound?’ Another, bigger surge this time, and Brassbound landed heavily. He managed to get out, ‘And he’s heard about you, you know how it is, and he’s determined to get down to the sea before you catch up with him. He’s a killer, sir, a stone killer! Don’t give him a chance, sir, I beg you for all our sakes, and do it quickly for yours!’ The air was electric, truly electric. Everything metal shook and jangled. ‘They say the dam is going to break pretty soon,’ said Brassbound. ‘Thank you for that, Mister Brassbound. You sound like a sensible young man to me and I’ll say so to the authorities.’ The worried young man’s face was wreathed in smiles as he said, ‘And you’re the famous Commander Vimes, sir! I’m glad to be at your back.’ There were a lot of steps up to the wheelhouse. The pilot was king and rode high over the river, monarch of all he surveyed even if, as now, rain hammered at the expensive glass windows as if it found such solid slabs of sky offensive. Vimes stepped inside quickly. It was hardly worth shouting, given that the storm drowned out everything, but you had to be able to say that you’d said it: ‘Commander Vimes, Ankh-Morpork City Watch! Statute of necessary action!’ Which didn’t exist, but he swore to himself that he would damn well get it enacted as soon as he got back, even if he had to call in favours from all over the world. A lawman faced with a dreadful emergency should at least have some kind of figleaf to shove down the throats of the lawyers! He could see the back of Mr Sillitoe’s head with his pilot’s cap. The pilot paid Vimes no attention, but a young man was standing looking at Vimes in knock-kneed, pants-wetting horror. The sword he had been carrying landed heavily on the deck. Brassbound was hopping from one foot to the other. ‘You’d better take care of him right now, commander, he’ll have a trick or two up his sleeve and no mistake!’ Vimes ignored this and carefully patted the young man down, freeing up one short knife, the sort a river rat might carry. He used it to cut a length of rope and tied the man’s hands together behind him. ‘Okay, Mister Stratford, we’re going downstairs. Though if you’d like to dive into the water first I won’t stop you.’ And then the man spoke for the first time. ‘I ain’t Stratford, sir,’ he said, pleading. ‘I’m Squeezy McIntyre. That’s Stratford behind you with the crossbow pointing at you, sir.’ The man formerly known as Brassbound gave a chuckle as Vimes turned. ‘Oh my, oh my, the great Commander Vimes! I’ll be damned if you ain’t as dumb as a pile of horseshit! You know the eyes of a killer when you see them, do you? Well, I reckon I’ve killed maybe sixteen people, not including goblins, of course, they don’t count.’ Stratford sighted on Vimes and grinned. ‘Maybe it’s my boyish features, would you say? What kind of bloody fool cares about the goblins, eh? Oh, they say they can talk, but you know how those little buggers can lie!’ The tip of the crossbow drifted back and forwards hypnotically in Stratford’s hands. ‘I’m curious, though. I mean, I don’t like you, and sure as salvation I’m going to shoot you, but do me a favour and tell me what you saw in my eyes, okay?’ Squeezy took the opportunity to hop desperately down the steps just as Vimes said, with a shrug, ‘I saw a goblin girl being murdered. What lies did she tell you? I know the eyes of a murderer, Mister Stratford, oh I surely do, because I’ve looked into eyes like that many times. And if I need reminding, I look into my shaving mirror. Oh, yes, I recognize your eyes and I’m interested to see what you’re going to do next, Mister Stratford. Though now I come to think about it, maybe it wasn’t sensible of me to give you that crossbow. Maybe I really am stupid, because I’m offering you the opportunity to surrender to me here and now and I’m doing it only once.’ Stratford stared with his mouth open and then said, ‘Hell, commander, I’ve got the drop on you, and you want me to surrender to you? Sorry, commander, but I’ll see you again in hell!’ There was a space in the world for the crossbow to sing when the grinning Stratford pulled the trigger. Unfortunately, the sound that it made approximated to the word thunk. He stared at it. ‘I took the safety pin out and stamped it into the dung,’ said Vimes. ‘You can’t fire it without the pin! Now, I expect you have a couple of knives about your person, and so if you fancy cutting your way out past me, then I’d be happy to accommodate you, although I’ll tell you that firstly you won’t succeed, and secondly, if you manage to get past a boy who grew up on the streets of Ankh-Morpork there’s a man down there with a punch that can fell an elephant, and if you knife him you’ll just make him more annoyed—’ The surge this time was bigger than ever, and Vimes banged his head on the cabin’s roof before coming down again in front of Stratford and kicking him smartly in the official police officer method and also the groin. ‘Oh, come on, Mister Stratford, don’t you have a reputation to keep up? Feared killer? You should spend some time in the city, my lad, and I’ll make certain you do.’ Stratford fell backwards and Vimes continued, ‘And then you’ll hang, as is right and proper, but don’t worry – Mister Trooper does a nifty noose and they say it hardly hurts at all. Tell you what, just to get the adrenalin pumping, Mister Stratford, imagine I’m the goblin girl. She begged for her life, Mister Stratford, remember that? I do! And so do you. You fell down at the first surge, Mister Stratford. River rats know what to do. You didn’t, although I must say you’ve covered it very well. Whoops!’ This was because Stratford had indeed tried his hand with a knife. Vimes twisted his wrist and flung the blade down the stairs just as the glass in the wheelhouse smashed and a branch longer than Vimes ploughed across the room, shedding leaves and dragging torrential rain and darkness behind it. Both the lamps had gone out and, as it turned out, so had Stratford, hopefully through a shattered window, possibly to his death, but Vimes wasn’t sure. He would have preferred definitely. But there was no time to fret about him, because now came another surge, and water poured in through the glassless windows. Vimes jerked open the little gate to the pilot’s deck and found Mr Sillitoe struggling up out of the pile of storm-washed debris. He was moaning, ‘I’ve lost count, I’ve lost count!’ Vimes pulled him upwards and helped him into his big chair, where he banged on the arms in frustration. ‘And now I can’t see a damned thing in all this murk! Can’t count, can’t see, can’t steer! Won’t survive!’ ‘I can see, Mister Sillitoe,’ said Vimes. ‘What do you want me to do?’ ‘You can?’ Vimes stared out at the homicidal river. ‘There’s a thundering great rock coming up on the left-hand side. Should it be doing that? Looks like there’s a busted landing stage there.’ ‘Ye gods! That’s Baker’s Knob! Here, let me at the wheel! How close is it now?’ ‘Maybe fifty yards?’ ‘And you can see it in all this? Damn me, mister, you must have been born in a cave! That means we ain’t that far from Quirm now, a touch under nineteen miles. You think you could stand lookout? Is my family okay? That little snot threatened to harm them if I didn’t keep the Fanny on schedule!’ Something big and heavy bounced off the roof and spun away into the night, and the pilot went on, ‘Gastric Sillitoe, delighted to make your acquaintance, sir.’ He stared ahead. ‘I’ve heard of you. Koom Valley, right? Happy to have you aboard.’ ‘Er, Gastric? Whole tree spinning in current near left-hand shore, ten yards ahead! Nothing much to see on right.’ The wheel spun frantically again. ‘Obliged to you, sir, and I surely hope you won’t take it amiss if I say that we generally talk about port and starboard?’ ‘Wouldn’t know about that, Gastric, never drank starboard. Mass of what looks like smashed logs ahead, forty yards, looks like small stuff, and I see a faint light high up on our right, can’t tell how far away.’ Vimes ducked and a jagged log bounced off the back of the wheelhouse. Beside him the pilot sounded as if he had got a grip on things now. ‘Okay, commander, that would be Jackson’s Light, very welcome sight! Now I’ve found my bearings and an hourglass that ain’t busted, I’d be further in your debt if you’d go below and tell Ten Gallons to cut loose the barges? There’s a chicken farmer on one of them! Best to get him on board before the dam breaks.’ ‘And hundreds of goblins, Gastric.’ ‘Pay them no mind, sir. Goblins is just goblins.’ For a moment Vimes stared into the darkness, and the darkness within the darkness, and it said to him, ‘You’re having fun, aren’t you, commander! This is Sam Vimes being Sam Vimes in the dark and the rain and the danger and because you’re a copper you’re not going to believe that Stratford is dead until you see the corpse. You know it. Some people take a devil of a lot of killing. You know you saw him go out of the cabin, but there’s all kinds of ropes and handholds on the boat, and the bugger was wiry and limber, and you know, just as day follows night, that he’ll be back. Double jeopardy, Commander Vimes, all the pieces on the board, goblins to save, a murderer to catch – and all the time, when you remember, there is a wife and a little boy waiting for you to come back.’ ‘I always remember!’ ‘Of course you do, Commander Vimes,’ the voice continued, ‘of course you do. But I know you, and sometimes a shadow passes every sun. Nevertheless, the darkness will always be yours, my tenacious friend.’ And then reality either came back or went away and Vimes was saying, ‘We bring the goblins aboard, Gastric, because they … Yes, they are evidence in an important police investigation!’ There was a further surge, and this time Vimes landed up on the deck, which was a little bit softer now because of the ragged carpet of leaves and branches. As he got up Mister Sillitoe said, ‘Police investigation, you say? Well, the Fanny has always been a friend of the law but, well, sir, they stink like the pits of hell, and that’s the truth of it! They’ll frighten the oxen something terrible!’ ‘Do you think they aren’t frightened already?’ said Vimes. ‘Er, small logjam ahead on the right. All clear on the left.’ He sniffed. ‘Trust me, sir, by the smell of it they’re pretty nervous as it is. Can’t you just stop and tie us up to the bank?’ Sillitoe’s laugh was brittle. ‘Sir, there are no banks now, none that I’d try to get to. I know this river and it’s angry and there’s a damn slam coming. Can’t stop it any more than I could stop the storm. You signed up for the long haul, commander: either we race the river or we fold our hands, pray to the gods and die right now.’ He saluted. ‘Nevertheless, I can see you’re a man, sir, who does what he sees needs doing, and, by hokey, I can’t argue with that! You’ve done a man’s job as it is, Commander Vimes, and may the gods go with you. May they go with all of us.’ Vimes ran down the steps, grabbing Feeney in passing, and danced over the heaving floor to the cowshed. ‘Come on, lad, it’s time to ditch the barges. There’s too much of a drag. Mister Ten Gallons? Let’s get those doors open, shall we? Mister Sillitoe has put me in charge down here. If you want to argue, feel free!’ The huge man didn’t even attempt an argument, and punched the doors open. Vimes swore. Mr Sillitoe had been right. There was roaring not far behind them and a river of lightning and blue fire was sweeping down the valley like a tide. For a moment he was hypnotized, and then got a grip. ‘Okay, Feeney, you start getting the goblins on board and I’ll fetch our chicken farmer! The bloody iron ore can sink for all I care.’ In the glaring light of the damn slam Vimes jumped twice to land on the barge from which was already coming the squawking of terrified birds. Water poured off him as he dragged open the hatch and shouted, ‘Mister False! No, don’t start grabbing the chickens! Better off farmer with no chickens than a load of chickens with no farmer! Anyway, they’ll probably float, or fly, or something!’ He coaxed the frightened man on to the next barge to find that it was still full of bewildered goblins. Feeney was looking out from the open door at the rear of the Fanny, and above the roar and hissing Vimes heard him shout, ‘It’s Mister Ten Gallons, sir! He says no goblins!’ Vimes glanced behind them, and then turned back to Feeney. ‘Very well, Mister Feeney, keep an eye on the goblins’ barge while I discuss matters with Mister Ten Gallons, understand?’ He flung Mr False on to the deck of the Fanny and looked around for Ten Gallons. He shook his head. What a copper that man would make if properly led by human beings. He sighed. ‘Mister Ten Gallons? I told you, Mister Sillitoe has given me carte blanche. Can we discuss the matter of the goblins?’ The giant growled, ‘I ain’t got no cart and I don’t know no Blanche, and I ain’t having no goblins on my deck, okay?’ Vimes nodded, poker-faced, and looked exhaustedly at the deck. ‘Is that your last word, Mister Ten Gallons?’ ‘It damn well is!’ ‘Okay, this is mine.’ Ten Gallons went over backwards like a tree and began to sleep like a log. The street never leaves you … And what the University of the Street told you was that fighting was a science, the science of getting the opponent out of your face and face-down on the ground with the maximum amount of speed and the minimum of effort. After that, of course, you had a range of delightful possibilities and the leisure in which to consider them. But if you wanted to fight fair, or at least more fair than most of the other street options, then you had to know how to punch, and what to punch and from precisely which angle to punch it. Of course, his treasured brass knuckles were an optional but helpful extra but, Vimes thought as he tried to wring some blood back into his fingers, probably any court, after sight of Ten Gallons, would have forgiven Vimes, even if he used a sledgehammer. He looked at the brass knuckles. They hadn’t even bent: good old Ankh-Morpork know-how. The country may have the muscle but the city has got the technology, he thought, as he slipped them back in his pocket. ‘Okay, Mister Feeney, let’s get them in, shall we? Find Stinky, he’s the brains of the outfit.’ * Possibly Stinky was the brains of the outfit. Even at the end Vimes was never certain just what Stinky was. But the goblins, spurred by his crunchy chattering, ran and leapt like ugly gazelles past Vimes and into the boat. He took one look at the growling death behind them, made the last jump into the boat and helped Feeney shut and bolt the doors. And that meant that now, with the ventilation gone, the bulls in the basement were getting nostrils full of goblin. It wasn’t, Vimes thought, all that bad when you got used to it – more alchemical than midden – but down below there was a lot of shouting and a jerk as the beasts tried to stampede inside their treadmill. Vimes ignored it, despite the shuddering of the boat, and shouted, ‘Let go of the barges, chief constable! I hope you really do know how!’ Feeney nodded and opened the hatch in the floor. Spray blew in and stopped when he knelt down and stuck his hand into the hole. ‘Takes quite a few turns before they drop, commander. If I was you I’d be holding on to something when the iron ore goes!’ Vimes elbowed his way through the terrified goblins, pulled himself with care up into the wheelhouse again, and tapped Gastric on the shoulder. ‘We’re dropping the barges any minute!’ The pilot, still clinging to the wheel and squinting into the dark, gave a brief nod; nothing less than a scream would be heard in the wheelhouse now. The wind and debris had smashed every window. Vimes looked out of the rear window and saw the great, floating, flying desolation of lightning-laced wood, mud and tumbling rock closing in. For a moment he thought he saw a naked marble lady tumbling with the debris and clutching her marble shift as if defending the remains of her modesty from the deluge. He blinked and she was gone … Perhaps he’d imagined it … He shouted, ‘I hope you can swim, sir?’ just as the damn slam caught up and the apparition called Stratford dived through the window and was fielded neatly by Vimes, to Stratford’s great surprise. ‘Do you think I’m a baby, Mister Stratford? Do you think that I don’t think?’ Stratford squirmed out of Vimes’s grip, spun neatly and threw a punch which Vimes very nearly dodged. It was harder than he had expected, and, to give a devil his due, Stratford knew how to defend and, perish the thought, was younger than Vimes, much younger. Yes, you could tell the eyes of a murderer, at least after they had done more than three or so and got away with it. Their eyes held the expression some gods probably had. But a killer in the process of trying to kill was always absorbed, constantly calculating, drawing upon some hideous strength. If you cut their leg off they wouldn’t notice until they fell over. Tricks didn’t work, and the floor was slippery with the debris of half a forest. As they kicked and punched their way back and forth across the wheelhouse deck, Stratford was winning. When had Vimes last eaten, or had a decent drink of water, or slept properly? And then from below was the cry ‘Barges away!’ And the Wonderful Fanny bucked like a thoroughbred, throwing both of the fighters to the floor, where Vimes barely had room to kick and fend off blows. Water poured over them, filling the cabin to waist level, reducing Vimes’s stamina to almost nothing. Stratford had his hands around his throat, and Vimes’s world turned dark blue and full of chuckling water, banging against his ears. He tried to think of Young Sam and Sybil, but the water kept washing them away … except that the pressure was suddenly gone, and his body, deciding that his brain had at last gone on holiday, flailed upwards. And there was Stratford, kneeling in water that was falling away very fast, a matter probably of no concern to him now since he was holding his head and screaming, owing to the fact that suddenly there was Stinky, spreadeagled on Stratford’s head, reaching down and kicking and scratching anything that could be kicked, scratched or, to one lengthy scream, pulled. His Grace the Duke of Ankh, assisted by Sir Samuel Vimes, with the help of Commander Vimes, got to his feet, with the last-minute assistance of Blackboard Monitor Vimes, and all of them coalesced into one man as he leapt across the shaking deck just too late to stop Stratford pulling Stinky – and a certain amount of hair – off his head, and throwing him to the streaming deck and stamping on him heavily. There was no mistaking it. He’d heard the crack of bones even while airborne, and so what hit Stratford was the full force of the law, and its rage. The street is old and cunning; but the street is always willing to learn and that is why Vimes, in mid air, felt his legs unfold and the full majesty of the law hit Stratford with the traditionally unstoppable One Man He Up Down Very Sorry. Even Vimes was surprised and wondered if he would be able to do it again. ‘We’re on the wave!’ Gastric shouted. ‘We’re on it, not under it! We’re surfing all the way to Quirm, commander! There’s light ahead! Glory be!’ Vimes grunted as he wrapped the last of the rope from his pocket around the stunned Stratford, tying him tightly to a stanchion. ‘Sink or swim, you’re going to pay, Mister Stratford, from heaven, hell or high water, I don’t care which.’ And then there was a creaking and a bellowing as the frantic oxen redoubled their attempts to escape the stench of the goblins immediately behind them, a surge skywards and, while it would be most poetic to say that the waters were on the face of the earth, in truth they were mostly on the face of Samuel Vimes. Vimes woke in damp and utter darkness with sand under his cheek. Some parts of his body reported for duty, others protested that they had a note from their mother. After a while little insistent clues evolved: there was the sound of surf, the chatter of people and, for some reason, what sounded like the trumpeting of an elephant. At this point something stuck a finger in one of his nostrils and pulled hard. ‘Upsee-daisy, Mister Po-leess-maan, otherwise you biggest pancake I ever seen! Upsee-daisy! Save goblins! Big hero! Hooray! Everybody get clap!’ It was a familiar voice, but it couldn’t have been Stinky, because Vimes had seen the little goblin completely crushed. But Vimes tried to pull himself up anyway and this was almost impossible because of the stinking fishy-smelling debris that covered him like a shroud. He couldn’t bring his arm around to swat whatever blasted thing it was that was still tugging at his nostril, but he did manage to at least raise himself enough to realize that there was a lot of debris on top of him. He could make out what seemed like the thump of an elephant’s footfall, and in his state of comfortable hallucination wondered idly what an elephant was doing at the seaside, and how much care said elephant would take to avoid just another load of flotsam. This thought crystallized just as the tugging at his nose stopped and the cracked voice shouted, ‘Rise and shine, Mr Vimes, ’cos here come Jumbo!’ Vimes managed the champion press-up of all time and sprang clear, dripping driftwood and barnacles, just as a foot the size of a dustbin thumped down where his head had been. ‘Hooray, no flattery for Mister Vimes!’ Vimes looked down and saw, about half an inch from the family-sized toenail of the elephant, who incidentally now wore an expression of some embarrassment, the figure of Stinky bouncing up and down excitedly on the tip of its trunk. Other people had spotted Vimes too, and were hurrying towards him, and it was with a terrifying relief that he spotted the distinctive helmets of the Quirm City Watch, which he had always thought were far too fussy and militaristic for proper coppers, but now viewed as shining beacons of sanity. An officer with a captain’s helmet said, ‘Commander? Are you all right? Everyone thought you’d been washed away!’ Vimes tried to brush mud and sand off his torn shirt and managed to say, ‘Well, the lads back in Ankh-Morpork gave me a bucket and spade for my holiday, so I thought I ought to try it out. Never mind about me, what about the Fanny? What about the people?’ ‘All fine, sir, as far as we can tell. A few bangs and bruises, of course. It was amazing, sir, the men who look after the elephants at Quirm Zoo saw it happen! They take the creatures down to the surf in the morning to have a wash and a bit of a play before the crowds come along, and one said he saw the Fanny go right over the top of the dock on the crest of the wave, sir, and it sort of settled down on the beach. I had a look inside, and I’d say she’ll need a month or so in the boat yard, and the paddle wheels are smashed to blazes, but it’ll be the talk of the river for years!’ By now an apologetic zookeeper was steering his charge away from Vimes, allowing him to see a beach covered in damp rubbish and, he was surprisingly pleased to note, quite a large number of chickens, scratching busily for worms. One of them, totally oblivious of Vimes, scratched at some seaweed for a moment, hunkered down with a cross-eyed expression, gurgled once or twice and then stood up, looking rather relieved. He saw that it had left an egg on the sand. At least he supposed it to be an egg. It was square. He picked it up and looked down at the chickens, and in his half-hallucinating state said, ‘Well, that definitely looks complicated to me.’ Out on the surf the two oxen were standing nearly neck-deep in the water, and perhaps it was only his imagination that led Vimes to believe that the water around them was steaming. And now more people were running and chickens were running away, and there was even Ten Gallons, and Mrs Sillitoe with her daughter, looking damp, and with blankets around them, but most importantly not looking dead. Vimes, who had been holding his breath for too long, breathed out. He breathed out even further when Ten Gallons slapped him on the back, and Mrs Sillitoe gave him a kiss. ‘What about Gastric?’ he said. ‘And where’s Feeney?’ Mrs Sillitoe smiled. ‘They’re fine, Commander Vimes, as far we can tell. They’re a bit battered, but sleeping it off. No long-term problems according to the medic. I’m sure they’ll be fine, thanks to you!’ She stood back as a Quirmian officer handed Vimes a mug of coffee. It had sand in it, but never had sandy coffee tasted better. ‘All sorted out very well, you might say, sir. We even made sure those damn goblins caught their boat!’ Never in the field of coffee-making had so much of the stuff been sprayed so far and over so many. Vimes stared beyond the surf where, in the distance, a ship had left the port and was making good sail. He said, ‘Fetch me Acting Captain Haddock right now!’ Acting Captain Haddock arrived at a run six minutes later and Vimes couldn’t help noticing that he had a bit of breakfast around the edge of his mouth. ‘Our relationship with Commandant Fournier is cordial at the moment, is it not?’ said Vimes. Haddock grinned widely. ‘Commander, when he gets down here you may have to try hard to stop him kissing you on both cheeks. Mrs Sillitoe is his daughter.’ ‘Was happy to be of assistance,’ said Vimes, looking around absently, ‘and so would you tell these gentlemen that I want a fast boat, one fast enough to catch that ship, and a decent squad of men to crew it, and I want them now, and while I’m waiting I’d like someone to get me a clean shirt and a bacon sandwich … without avec.’ ‘They have a pretty swift cutter, commander, for chasing smugglers!’ ‘Good, and get me a cutlass. I’ve always wanted to try one.’ Vimes thought for a moment and added, ‘And make that another two bacon sandwiches. And a lot more coffee. And make that one more bacon sandwich. And, Haddock, if you can scavenge a bottle of Merkel and Stingbat’s very famous old brown sauce, I swear I’ll make you a full sergeant when your term here is up, ’cos any man who can find a proper down-and-dirty Ankh-Morpork sauce in Quirm, home of five hundred bloody types of mayonnaise, without getting his eye full of spit deserves to be a sergeant in anybody’s force!’ And then, as whatever had been holding Sam Vimes up drained away, he fell gently backwards, dreaming of bacon sandwiches and brown sauce. Even Constable Haddock or, as he was now, Acting Captain Haddock, would agree that he was not the sharpest knife in the box, but it was amazing, the things you could open with a blunt instrument. As he hurried away on this prestigious errand he was stopped by one of the Quirm officers, who said, ‘Hareng!28 Have you heard of a watchman called Petit Fou Artour?’ ‘Wee Mad Arthur? Yes, he’s one of our lads!’ ‘Well, you had better come quickly, my friend, because he is in our Watch House. Strong little fellow, isn’t he? A few of the other officers had laughed at him, he said, but I believe that they have learned the error of their ways – the hard way, as it happened. Apparently he has been sent to find Commandant Vimes.’ Sam Vimes awoke from a pig’s nightmare to find himself lying on a pile of sacks in a godown in the docks. He was carefully lifted to his feet by Acting Constable Haddock and led unsteadily to a crude table behind which was a chef presiding over the sizzling makings of a bacon sandwich, or rather several bacon sandwiches. ‘He screamed a bit,’ said Haddock, ‘when I insisted on no mayonnaise, but right now you can do no wrong here, commander. And I have one unopened bottle of Merkel and Stingbat’s finest, sir, the only one in the city. I’m afraid, however, that you’ll have to eat on the go, but the chef is packing the sandwiches in a hamper, with hot charcoal to keep them warm. No time to hang about, sir. The cutter will leave the dock in ten minutes.’ A notebook was pushed under Vimes’s nose. ‘What’s this?’ ‘Your signature to my promotion to full sergeant, commander,’ said Haddock carefully. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but you did promise.’ ‘Good man,’ said Vimes. ‘Always write things down.’ Haddock looked proud. ‘I’ve also arranged to have on board a selection of cutlasses for your perusal, commander.’ Vimes struggled into his new shirt, and as his head appeared he said, ‘I want you to come too, Kipper. You know your way around here better than me. By the way, what did you do with the prisoner?’ Haddock said, ‘What prisoner would that be, commander?’ And for a moment Vimes’s blood froze. ‘You didn’t find a man tied up anywhere on the Fanny?’ Now Haddock looked worried. ‘No, sir, no one by the time we got there. The place was a mess, sir. Sorry, sir, we didn’t know!’ ‘No reason why you should’ve done. Sorry to shout, but if the Quirm police think the sun is shining out of my arse then tell them they should be looking for a youngish-looking individual known as Stratford. He’s a double murderer, at least … vicious and by now certainly armed. Tell them they’ll be doing everybody a favour if they keep guard on the boat, on the walking wounded and all the lads in your infirmary, and also they should send a clacks to Pseudopolis Yard right now to say that Commander Vimes requires that two members of the Watch should hasten via golem horse to Ramkin Hall to keep guard over Lady Sybil and Young Sam. I don’t want them to hang about: I know those things are bad news to ride, but Stratford is a nut job – they must hurry!’ ‘Excuse me, commander,’ said one of the Quirm officers, ‘we all speak pretty good Morporkian here. Everybody here speaks Morporkian. If you hear us speaking Quirmian it’s because we want to talk about you behind your back. We salute you, Commander Vimes, we will send your clacks and search everywhere for your murderer and take great care of the wounded. Now, please hurry down to the dock. The Queen of Quirm is pretty ancient, only one step away from being a hulk. Our cutter should catch up with it in a few hours. Shall we go?’ ‘Come on, sir,’ said Haddock, ‘and Wee Mad Arthur will brief you on the way.’ ‘Wee Mad Arthur!’ ‘Yes, commander. Apparently he got sent to foreign parts to do with this goblin business, flew back to Ankh-Morpork and then got sent straight here to you. He’s got a story to tell you and no mistake.’ ‘Where is he?’ said Vimes. ‘They should be releasing him from custody right now, sir. A laughable misunderstanding, no real harm done, all will be forgiven and all will probably heal, I’m sure.’ Vimes was wise enough to leave it at that. Of course, the seasickness didn’t help, but that didn’t begin to cut in until afterwards, when Wee Mad Arthur had finished his breathless account. ‘And what did you find in the huts?’ said Vimes. ‘More goblins, sir, all shapes and sizes, little ones too. Most of them dead, the rest in a very bad way, in my opinion. I did what I could for them, such as it was. To tell ye the truth, sir, I think they were bewildered about everything, the poor wee devils, but there’s grub and water there of a sort and I don’t reckon those guards are going to move in a hurry, ye ken.’ He made a face and added, ‘Really weird, those goblins. I let them out and they just milled around, not knowing what the hell to do. I mean, crivens, if it were me I’d be out of there like a shot and give those scunners a right good kicking in the fork while they was lying down. As for the men, well, I kenned this was urgent and I could always fly back tomorrow and pour some water on them at least, but I thought the Watch should know and so made haste back to Ankh-Morpork and they told me where you’d gone on holiday, and Lady Sybil said you’d gone down that mucky old river, so all I had to do was fly down until I got to Quirm and when I found a big awful terrible mess I kenned that was something to do with you, commander.’ Wee Mad Arthur hesitated. He was never quite sure what Vimes thought of him, given that the man considered Feegles in general a nuisance. When Vimes was slow to reply, he asked, ‘I hope I did what ye would have done, commander?’ Vimes looked at Wee Mad Arthur as if he was seeing him for the first time. ‘No, constable, you did not do what I would have done, which is fortunate, because if you had, then you would be in front of me on a charge for using brutally excessive force in the execution of your duties. However, you will get a medal and an official commendation for this, constable. Right now we’re chasing another ship that’s taking more goblins to that wretched place. And although I imagine you must be very tired, I expect you’d like to come along for the ride? Incidentally, may I congratulate you personally, constable: for someone raised as a gnome you really have got the hang of the whole Feegle business, haven’t you? You beat up a dozen armed men single-handed?’ ‘Oh aye, sir,’ said Wee Mad Arthur slyly, ‘but it was nae fair, I had them outnumbered. Och, and by the way in some of them sheds there was all kinds of like alchemy stuff. Didn’t ken what it was, but ye might find it o’ interest.’ ‘Well spotted,’ said Vimes. ‘Why don’t you go down below and get a rest?’ ‘Aye, I will sir, but as soon as I can I have to run an errand regarding Sergeant Colon, who is in a verra bad way indeed.’ He looked at Vimes’s blank expression and continued. ‘Did ye nae know? He got some goblin geegaw given tae him and it’s put some kind of fluence on him quite cruel, and he’s a-screaming and a-shouting and making oot like a goblin all day long according to Sergeant Littlebottom. She’s moved him into the sanatorium.’ ‘Sergeant Colon!’ ‘Aye, sir. And according to Captain Angua we have to find a goblin cave to break the fluence, ye ken? Sounds a wee bitty weird to me, but half the Watch is oot searching the place for goblins and they cannae find even one o’ the poor wee beings, being as the wee beasties is hardly going tae advertise these days, if you are getting my meaning.’ Once again Wee Mad Arthur looked at Vimes. ‘Sergeant Colon!’ ‘That’s what I told you, sir.’ The blood came back to Vimes’s face as rational thought came back to his brain. ‘Can he travel?’ Wee Mad Arthur shrugged. Ahead of them the Queen of Quirm seemed a little closer. ‘Then if you please, constable, can you go back to the clacks at the Quirm Watch House and tell them to put Fred on a coach to Ramkin Hall as soon as possible, okay?’ He added, ‘Best if Cheery comes with him, I should think.’ And in his head he added, Fred Colon! He hates anything non-human, on the quiet. And for now he left it at that, given what lay ahead, but thought, Fred Colon! I wonder what kind of pots he would make. Behind him, Wee Mad Arthur whistled a strange note and a seagull trailing the cutter in the vague hope of a free meal of fish entrails found a weight on its back and a voice in its ear saying, ‘Hello, beastie, my name is Wee Mad Arthur.’ Vimes liked to have his feet on something solid, such as his boots, and he liked his boots to do likewise. The sail of the Queen of Quirm now clearly visible, the cutter left the safety of the harbour and hit what is generally known as a moderate swell. And Commander Vimes, the Duke of Ankh-Morpork, Sir Samuel Vimes and, not least, Blackboard Monitor Vimes, was definitely going to eat his bacon sandwiches and not throw up in front of other watchmen. And he didn’t, and didn’t know how, although he did at one point think he detected, high in the rigging, the shape of a small goblin grinning down at him. He put it down to the bacon sandwiches, which were valiantly trying to come back up, just as he valiantly kept them down. Stratford would have got on to that damn hulk, he was sure of it. Damn sure of it. He would want paying, for one thing, and he wouldn’t want hanging. Vimes hesitated. How sure of it should he be? How much was he prepared to gamble on a hunch? It was Stratford after all. He was smart and nasty, so you covered every angle, even though you knew that a smart man in a hurry could find a new angle for himself. And so all the people who made up Sam Vimes walked backwards and forwards across the poop deck, or the scuppers or the starboard or whatever the damn slippery rocking wood he was standing on was called, veering between hope, nausea, despair, self-doubt, nausea and the thrill of the chase and nausea, while the cutter seemed to hit the hard bits of every wave as it plunged onwards after the Queen of Quirm and justice. The lieutenant came up to him and saluted, quite smartly, and said, ‘Commander, you have asked us to pursue the ship because it is carrying goblins, but I know of no law against taking goblins anywhere.’ ‘There ought to be a law, because there certainly is a crime, do you understand?’ said Vimes. He patted the lieutenant on the shoulder and continued, ‘Congratulations! This cutter of yours is actually travelling faster than the law. Lieutenant, the law will catch up. Goblins can speak, they have a society and I’ve heard one of them play music that would make a bronze statue burst into tears. The process of modern policing is such that I’m certain that these have been taken from their home, and the ship that we’re following is taking them somewhere where they don’t want to go. Look, if you’re queasy about it, just help me get on that ship and I’ll sort things out by myself, okay? And, besides, I believe our murderer could be on the boat as well. But, it’s up to you, lieutenant.’ Vimes nodded towards the prow and added, ‘We’re so close I can see the faces of their crew. Maybe you should tell me your intentions, lieutenant?’ He felt a little sorry for the lad, but not too much. He had taken the job, he had accepted the promotion and the money that went with it, hadn’t he? Any copper worth his truncheon would at least take a look at the Queen now they’d come this far, wouldn’t they? ‘Very well, commander,’ said the lieutenant. ‘I’m not sure of my bearings, but we will hail the Queen and ask permission to come aboard.’ ‘No! You don’t ask! You tell them to stand by to be inspected by the police! And if you’re not concerned about the goblins, then it is a fact that I am in pursuit of a murderer,’ Vimes added. ‘The capital crime – one that we can’t ignore!’ In fact, he could see the Queen was already heaving two.29 It was even hoisting a white flag, much to his surprise. And her captain was waiting for them as the cutter drew alongside. He had a look of resignation on his face, and said, ‘We won’t make any trouble, officers. I know it was a bloody stupid thing to do. We’ve got the man you’re looking for, and we’re bringing him up now. It’s not like we’re pirates, after all. Good morning, Lieutenant Perdix, sorry to put you to any trouble.’ Vimes turned to the lieutenant. ‘You know the captain?’ ‘Oh yes, commander, Captain Murderer is well respected on this coast,’ said the lieutenant as the cutter gently kissed the Queen. ‘Smuggles, of course, they all do it. It’s a sort of game.’ ‘But Captain … Murderer?’ said Vimes. The lieutenant scrambled on to the Queen’s deck with ease and gave Vimes a hand up, saying, ‘The Murderers are a highly respected family in these parts. To tell you the truth, commander, I think they rather like the name. They’d object more to Smuggler, I suspect.’ ‘We’re bringing the bloke up right now, lieutenant,’ said the captain, ‘and he ain’t very happy.’ Vimes looked him up and down and said, ‘I’m Commander Vimes, Ankh-Morpork City Watch, currently investigating at least two murders.’ Captain Murderer’s eyes shut, and he put a hand over his mouth for a moment before saying, in a voice weeping with forlorn hope, ‘That wouldn’t be that Commander Vimes, would it?’ ‘Captain … Murderer … produce for me the man I’m after, then I’m sure you’ll find me on a friendly footing. Do you get my meaning?’ There was some shouting and thumping down below and several suggestions that somebody was getting kicked very hard. Eventually a man with a cloth tied round his face as a blindfold was half pushed and half dragged up on to the deck. ‘To tell you the truth I’ll be glad to see the back of him,’ said the captain, turning away. Vimes made sure the man was held fast by the sailors, and pulled down the mask. He looked into bloodshot eyes for a moment and then, very calmly, said, ‘Lieutenant, will you please impound the Queen of Quirm and arrest the captain and first mate on a charge of kidnapping and possibly abduction of a number of persons, specifically Mr Jethro Jefferson, also goblins to the number of fifty or more. There may be other charges.’ ‘You can’t abduct goblins,’ said Captain Murderer. ‘Goblins is cargo!’ Vimes let this one pass for the moment. Captain Murderer would be orientated to the world as seen by Commander Vimes at Commander Vimes’s leisure. For now he said to the lieutenant, ‘I also suggest that you lock up the captain and first mate in the brig, if that is what it’s called, because when Mister Jefferson here has got his hands free I think he’s going to try to punch somebody’s lights out. I’m sure this can all be sorted out, but someone’s going to suffer for this and it’s just a matter of deciding who it’s going to be.’ He thought for a moment and then countermanded, ‘No, I think that first I’ll talk to the captain, in the captain’s quarters. Kipper, I’d like you to come and take notes. Lots of notes. Good to see you, Mister Jefferson. Lieutenant, to the best of my knowledge Mister Jefferson is guilty of no crime other than being in possession of a hot temper. But although he’s a man I’m very glad to find, he’s not the bastard I’m currently looking for.’ It was, Acting Captain Haddock thought, a good thing that he had a decent amount of room in his notebook … ‘Captain Murderer, let me recap,’ said Sam Vimes after a while, idly swivelling in the captain’s chair; it squeaked. ‘Some men unknown to you, but whom you decided to treat with respect because they had the right password, which is to say the password you used in your dealings with smugglers, with whom you have developed what I might call an understanding, delivered to you a man, bound and gagged, and told you to take said man to Howondaland to, and I quote, “cool his heels for a little while”; and you have also told me that these men said to you that this was okay by the law.’ The swivel chair under Vimes squeaked once or twice as he twisted for dramatic effect, and he went on, ‘Captain Murderer, I represent the law in Ankh-Morpork, and you may be aware that a number of influential politicians throughout the world trust my judgement, and, Captain Murderer, I know of no law that makes kidnapping legal, but I’ll ask my colleague and an expert on Quirm law whether he knows of any local edict that makes it legal to tie up somebody who has committed no crime and drag him on to a boat and send him to a questionable distant location against his will.’ The swivel chair only had one chance to squeak again before Lieutenant Perdix said, ponderously, ‘Commander Vimes, I know of no such change in the law, and therefore, Captain Murderer, I arrest you,’ and here the lieutenant placed a hand on the stricken captain’s shoulder, ‘on a charge of kidnapping, aiding and abetting kidnapping, actual and possibly grievous bodily harm, and other charges that may arise in the course of our continued investigations. In the meantime, upon its return to port, the Queen of Quirm is impounded and will, you may be sure, be inspected down to its gunwales.’ Vimes swivelled the chair again until his face was not visible to the downcast captain but could be clearly seen by the lieutenant, then winked at him and got a little nod in response. He rotated the chair again and said, ‘Depriving an innocent man of his liberty even for a week, captain, is a very serious crime. However, the lieutenant has told me that you are well thought of on this coast and in general are considered to be a model citizen. Personally, I don’t like a world in which small men who act out of fear, or even out of a misguided deference, get thrown into prison while big men, the instigators if not the perpetrators of crime, get off totally free. I expect you don’t like that world either, eh?’ Captain Murderer stared down at his sea boots as if he was expecting them to explode or perhaps break into song. He managed to mutter, ‘You’re right there, commander!’ ‘Thank you, captain! You’re a man of the world. Right now you need a friend, and I need names. I need the names of the people who got you into this mess. Now, Mister Jefferson the blacksmith has told me that in all conscience he cannot say that he was particularly badly treated once he was in your illegal hospitality. Apparently he was reasonably well fed, given beer and a daily tot of rum and even provided with a number of back issues of the magazine Girls, Giggles and Garters to while away his time. He also wants names, Captain Murderer, and it may just be that if we had those names, all put down legally in an affidavit, he might just be persuaded to forget his imprisonment in exchange for a certain sum of money, to be negotiated, and a chance to go hand to hand, fair and square, no holds barred, with your first mate, whom he describes as a “bag of shite”, a nautical term which I don’t pretend to understand. Apparently said man took pleasure in thumping him when he objected to his imprisonment, and Mister Jefferson would like, as it were, to settle the score.’ Vimes stood up and stretched his arms as if taking the cramp out of them. ‘Of course, captain, this is all very irregular, especially since we have here our lieutenant, a decent, clean and upstanding young officer, but I suspect that if he brought the Queen into dock and you in front of the authorities on a smuggling charge he might consider honour to be satisfied. It would be a bit of a knock for you, but not one half as bad as being an accessory to kidnapping. Don’t you agree?’ Vimes went on, cheerfully, ‘The lieutenant here will have got a feather in his chapeau and may put in a bon mot on your behalf, I suspect, what with you being an otherwise upstanding and, above all, helpful citizen.’ Vimes winked at Lieutenant Perdix. ‘I’m teaching this young man bad habits, captain, and so I suggest that you treat him as a friend, especially if at any time in the future he asks you any innocent questions to do with shipping movements and merchandise and other such concerns. It’s up to you, Captain Murderer. I think you know names, the names at least of the men you deal with, and also the name of their employer? You want to tell me anything?’ The boots shuffled. ‘Look, commander, I don’t want to become enemies with powerful men, if you know what I mean?’ Vimes nodded, and leaned forward so that he could look the man in the eyes. ‘Of course, I quite understand that, captain,’ he said quietly, ‘and that is why you should give me the names. The names, captain. The names. Because, Captain Murderer, I understand you do not wish to upset influential men, and right now I have half a mind to have your ship impounded and destroyed because you were trafficking in living, breathing, intelligent, creative if somewhat grubby sapient creatures. Strictly speaking, I would get into trouble for authorizing this, but who knows? The world can change quite quickly, and it’s changing quickly for you.’ He slapped the captain on the back. ‘Captain Murderer, here and now I’d like you to think of me as a friend.’ And Vimes listened and the red balls bounced across the baize, cannoning off the coloured balls, and the law was being broken wholesale for the purpose of upholding the law. How could you explain that to a layman? How could you explain it to a lawyer? How could he explain it to himself? But it was all happening fast and you got on top of it or perished. So you did your best and faced such music as anyone cared to play. The Queen of Quirm docked that day, two and a half months earlier than expected, to the dismay, distress or possibly even delight of the wives of the crew. The harbourmaster made a note of this, and also was intrigued by the fact that most of the crew after disembarkation immediately wandered along past the other ships in port to a quiet area of beach close to the repair yard where the somewhat battered Wonderful Fanny was already being pulled up the slipway. Walking alongside his boat, like a mother hen with one enormous chick, was Captain Sillitoe, nursing a plaster cast on his arm; he brightened up when he saw Vimes. ‘Well, sir, I have to hand it to you, by my halibut, so I must! You played a man’s job in getting us safely home, sir! I won’t forget it, and nor will my wife and daughter!’ Vimes looked up at the boat and hoped for the best. ‘She looks extremely battered to me, captain – I mean the boat, not your wife, of course.’ But it appeared that the captain was determined on optimism. ‘We lost much of the gearing for the paddle wheels, but truth to tell she was long overdue for refit in any case. But, my dear commander, we rode a damn slam, with all souls safe! And, moreover—What the seven hells are they doing?’ Vimes had already heard the shrill notes of a flute, but he had to look down to see, marching resolutely across the beach, a large number of goblins. At their head, and for the moment appearing bright blue, was Stinky, playing an old and empty crab leg. As he passed Vimes he stopped playing long enough to say, ‘No seaside rock for goblins! Hooray! Home again, home again, as fast as they can! And them above as watches, they applaud! And them what tries to stop, oh yes, Constable Stinky and his little chums, he find Stinky will be worst nightmare.’ Vimes laughed. ‘What? What do you mean? A goblin with a badge?’ He had to walk fast as he said that, because Stinky was understandably dead set on getting the goblins out of there as soon as possible. ‘Stinky don’t need no badges, fellow po-leess-maan! Stinky worst nightmare all by himself! Remember a little boy? Little boy open book? And he see evil goblin, and I see nasty little boy! Good for us, little boy, that we were both right!’ Vimes watched them march away, speeding up until they reached the undergrowth at the edge of the dockyard, where they disappeared, and for a moment it occurred to Vimes that even if he rushed forward and fished around for any trace of goblin he would not find one. He was bewildered. This didn’t matter very much; bewilderment was often a copper’s lot. His job was to make sense of the world, and there were times when he wished that the world would meet him halfway. ‘Are you feeling all right, commander?’ Vimes turned and looked at the serious face of Lieutenant Perdix. ‘Well, I’m not certain when I last slept properly, but at least I can stay standing up! And I have all the names and descriptions.’ Three names, and one, oh, what a name that was, that is if you trusted the word of someone happy to be called Captain Murderer. Well, the man was in his fifties, not a good age to have to run and hide. No, Murderer was not going to be a problem. Nor was Jefferson, idiot firebrand though he was. What Jefferson had suspected, Captain Murderer knew. But Vimes, on the other hand, hadn’t demanded the chance to take a crack at the Queen’s first mate, admittedly an unpleasant-looking cove with a chin like a butcher’s boot. He was swaggering towards them now, with the apprehensive Captain Murderer fussing along behind him. Vimes strolled up to the blacksmith. ‘Come on, sir, Murderer will pay you whatever it takes to keep the lieutenant happy, and keep his own boat. Chalk it up to experience, eh?’ ‘There’s still that bloody first mate,’ said the blacksmith. ‘The rest of the crew were civil enough but he’s a bullying bastard!’ ‘Well,’ said Vimes, ‘here he is and so are you. It’s man to man, and I’ll stay here to see fair play. It’s an interesting day here. We’re trying a different kind of law, one that’s quick and doesn’t have to trouble any lawyers. So go on, he knows what you want, and so do you, Mister Jefferson.’ Other crewmen were congregating at this end of the beach. Vimes looked from face to face, all showing the working man’s intuition that a good bit of healthy violence might cheerfully be expected, and read the unspoken language. The first mate did look like a man who made a lot of use of his fists and his temper, and so, Vimes thought, there would probably be many among the crew who would like to see him given a little lesson – or even a great big one. He beckoned both the men towards him. ‘Gentlemen, this is a grudge match; you both know the score. If I see a knife may the gods help him who holds it. There is to be no murder here, saving you of course, captain, and in front of you all I give my word that I’ll stop the fight when I deem that one man has definitely had enough. Gentlemen, over to you.’ And with this he stood back smartly. Neither man moved, but Jefferson said, ‘Do you know the Marquis of Fantailer Rules devised for the proper conduct for a bout of fisticuffs?’ The first mate’s smile was evil. He said, ‘Yus, I do!’ Vimes didn’t see, not actually see with his own eyes, what happened next, surely no one could, but it was agreed later that Jefferson had spun around in a blur and laid the sailor flat. The sound of his heavy body thumping down on the sand was all that broke the silence. After one second, Jefferson, massaging some blood back into his fist, looked down at the fallen giant and said, ‘I don’t.’ He turned and looked at Vimes. ‘You know? He deliberately pissed on the goblins in the hold. Bastard.’ Vimes tensed in case the fallen man had chums without a sense of humour, but in fact there was laughter. After all, a big man had gone down heavy right enough, bang to rights, and that was a definite result in anybody’s money. ‘Well done, Mister Jefferson, a fair fight if ever I saw one. Perhaps these gentlemen will take the first mate back to his ship for a lie-down.’ Vimes delivered this as an instruction, which was instantly obeyed as one, but he added, ‘If that’s all right by you, Captain Murderer? Good. And now I think that you and I’ll go, in an entirely friendly way, along with the lieutenant here, to the Quirm Watch headquarters, where there will be a little matter of affidavits to sign.’ ‘I expect you will want to be leaving with some haste, commander,’ said the lieutenant as they strolled along the rue de Wakening. ‘Well, yes,’ said Vimes. ‘I’m supposed to be on holiday. I’ll pick up young Feeney from the infirmary and find some way of getting back to the Hall.’ The lieutenant looked surprised. ‘And you don’t want to get back on the heels of the murderer as soon as possible, sir?’ ‘Him? I’ll see him soon enough, I have no doubt about that, but, you see, even he is not exactly the end of things. Do you play snooker down here?’ ‘Well, I haven’t learned to play, but I understand the game, if that’s what you’re asking.’ ‘Then you’ll know that the ultimate aim of the game is to sink the black, although you’ll hit all the other colours during the course of a frame, and you’ll bash the red ones again and again, sometimes making use of them to further your strategy. Well, I know where to find the black, and black can’t run. The others? The captain has helpfully given us names and descriptions. If you wish to arrest them yourselves, for aiding and abetting the practice of trafficking sapient creatures for profit, then I leave that honour to the Quirm constabulary.’ He grinned. ‘As for me, after I have the affidavits I intend to go straight back to see my wife and little boy, who I have shamefully, no, desperately neglected over the past few days, and do you know what? Just as soon as I’ve got there, I’m going to bring them back down here! My wife will enjoy the fresh air, and Young Sam will just love the elephants, oh, won’t he just!’ The lieutenant brightened up. ‘May I suggest, then, that after dinner you take the overnight boat? It will be the Black-Eyed Susan, quite speedy, like her namesake, according to popular legend. She’s due to go upriver in, let me see, three quarters of an hour. She’s very fast, doesn’t take much in the way of cargo so they gear her up high. You’ll be home in the morning, how about that? Just time to get yourself smartened up, and if you like the idea then I will get one of the men to go and find the Susan’s captain and make certain she doesn’t leave without you.’ Vimes smiled. ‘What’s the weather forecast?’ ‘Clear skies, commander, and Old Treachery is as flat as a mill pond, scoured of every snag and boulder for the rest of the season. It’s plain sailing from now on.’ ‘Good evening, your grace!’ The voice was somewhat familiar and Vimes saw, sauntering down the boulevard, what at first seemed liked a man wearing a huge cummerbund until further swift forensic inspection showed that it was the hermit from the Hall. His beard was remarkably clean and wrapped around his body, as were two young ladies of the giggling persuasion. Vimes peered at him. ‘Stump? What are you doing down here?’ This caused further giggling. ‘I’m on holiday, commander! Yes, indeed! Every man should have a holiday, sir!’ Vimes didn’t know what to say and so patted the man on the shoulder and said, ‘Knock yourself out, Mister Stump, and don’t forget the nourishing herbs.’ ‘I think I’m going to need them, commander …’ Say what you like, the food in the Quirm Watch House canteen was pretty damn good, even if they did use a shade too much avec, thought Vimes; avec on everything. Vimes, well fed and cleaned up and with some very important paperwork stuffed down the inside of his freshly laundered and immaculately ironed shirt, walked with Chief Constable Upshot down the quayside towards the Black-Eyed Susan. The lieutenant and two of the guards accompanied him to his cabin, where the dwarf butler demonstrated to him the cleanliness of the bed and the crispness of the sheets. ‘Honoured to have you sleeping in them, commander. You will find that the Susan gives a very smooth ride, although she can sometimes bounce around a little, very much like her namesake, but least said, soonest mended. And, of course, there is a berth next door for officer Feeney. You gentlemen might like to see the Susan get under way, perhaps?’ They did. The Susan had two oxen, just like the Wonderful Fanny, but with no heavy cargo and only about ten passengers she was the express of Old Treachery. Her paddle wheels, highly geared indeed, left a line of white water all down the valley behind her. ‘What happens now, commander?’ said Feeney, leaning on the rail as they watched Quirm disappearing in the wake behind them. ‘I mean, what are we going to do next?’ Vimes was smoking a cigar with great pleasure. Somehow this seemed the time and the place. Snuff was all very well, but a good cigar had time and wisdom and personality. He would be unhappy to see this one go. ‘I don’t need to do anything now,’ he said, turning to look at the sunset. And I don’t often see sunsets these days either, he thought. Mostly I see midnights; and I don’t need to chase Stratford, either. I know him like I know myself. He mentally paused, momentarily shocked at the implication. Aloud he continued, ‘You saw those two Quirmian officers get on the boat, didn’t you? I arranged that. They will, of course, make certain that we have an undisturbed voyage. The crew have also been told that there may be some attempt by a murderer to board the boat. According to the lieutenant, Captain Harbinger can vouch for all of his crew as having sailed with him loyally for many years. Personally, of course, I’ll make certain the door to my berth is locked, and I’d suggest you do the same thing, Feeney. ‘Greed is at the centre of this, greed and hellish poisons. They’re both killers and greed is the worst, by a long way. You know, usually when I’m talking to young officers such as yourself I say that in a certain type of case, you should always follow the money, you should ask, “Who stands to lose? Who stands to gain?”’ Vimes regretfully tossed the butt of his cigar into the water. ‘But sometimes you should follow the arrogance … You should look for those who can’t believe that the law would ever catch them, who believe that they act out of a right that the rest of us do not have. The job of the officer of the law is to let them know that they are wrong!’ The sun was setting. ‘I do believe, Commander Vimes, that you have something in you that would turn the wheels of this boat all by itself if a man could but harness it!’ said Feeney admiringly. ‘And I remember reading somewhere that you would arrest the gods for doing it wrong.’ Vimes shook his head. ‘I’m sure I never said anything of the sort! But law is order and order is law and it must be the highest thing. The world runs on it, the heavens run on it and without order, lad, one second cannot follow another.’ He could feel himself swaying. Lack of sleep can poison the mind, drive it in strange directions. Vimes felt Feeney’s hand on his shoulder. ‘I’ll help you along to your cabin, commander. It’s been a very long day.’ Vimes didn’t remember getting undressed and into bed, or rather into bunk, but he clearly had done so and, according to the little bits of white foam on the cabin’s tiny washbasin, he had cleaned his teeth as well. He had slept the sleep of the dead except for the bit where bits fall off and you crumble into dust, and all he could recall was cool blackness and, rising now to the surface, a certainty, as if a message had been left in the blackness to await the return of thought. He is after you, Blackboard Monitor Vimes. You know this because you recognize what was in his eyes. You know that type. They want to die from the day they are born, but something twists and so they kill instead. He will find you, and so will I. I hope the three of us meet in darkness. As the message drained away Vimes stared at the opposite wall, in which the door now opened, after a cursory knock, to reveal the steward bearing that which is guaranteed to frighten away all nightmares, to wit, a cup of hot tea.30 ‘No need to get up, commander,’ came the cheerful greeting of the steward, as he carefully placed the cup of tea in a little indentation that some foresighted person had designed into the tiny cabin so that said teacup would not slide around. ‘The captain would like to inform you that we’ll be docking in about twenty minutes, although of course you’ll be welcome to stay aboard and finish your breakfast while we clean the scuppers and take on fresh oxen and, of course, pick up mail and fodder and a few more passengers. In the galley, I have today …’ and here the steward enthusiastically rattled off a menu of belly-stuffing proportions, concluding triumphantly with ‘a bacon sandwich!’ Vimes cleared his throat and said gloomily, ‘I don’t suppose you have any muesli, do you?’ After all, Sybil was only twenty minutes away. The steward looked puzzled. ‘Well, yes, we would have the ingredients, of course, but I didn’t peg you as a rabbit food man?’ Vimes thought about Sybil again. ‘Well, perhaps today my little nose is twitching.’ Luxurious though the cabin was, roomy it was not. Vimes managed to shave with a razor donated by the steward, ‘with the compliments of the captain, commander’, and a thoughtfully placed basin, soap, flannel and minute towel, which at least helped him to deal with the form of ablution his old mother had called ‘washing the bits that showed’. He paid attention to them, nevertheless, taking some pains in the knowledge that this little wooden world would evaporate very soon and he would be back in the world of Sam Vimes, husband and father. Periodically, however, as he made himself respectable, he turned back to himself in the shaving mirror and said, ‘Fred Colon!’ The luxury cabin had turned out to be wonderful to sleep in, although so small that in reality it would only be suitable for a fastidious corpse. But eventually, when every part of Vimes he could reach had been decently, if erratically, scrubbed and the steward had brought him a hermit-sized portion of fruits and nuts and grains, he looked around to see what he might have left behind and saw a face in the shaving mirror. It was his own, although it must be said the phenomenon is not unusual in shaving mirrors. The Vimes in the mirror said, ‘You know he doesn’t just want to kill you. That wouldn’t be good enough for a bastard like that, not by a long way. He wants to destroy you and will try everything until he does.’ ‘I know,’ said Vimes, and added, ‘You’re not a demon, are you?’ ‘Absolutely not,’ said his mirror image. ‘I might be made up of your subconscious mind and a momentary case of muesli poisoning occasioned by a fermenting raisin. Watch where you walk, commander. Watch everywhere.’ And then it was gone. Vimes stepped away from the mirror and turned around slowly. It must have been my face, he said to himself, otherwise it would have been the other way round, wouldn’t it? He walked down the gangway into reality and what turned out to be Corporal Nobby Nobbs, beyond whom reality does not get much more real. ‘Good to see you, Mister Vimes! My word, you’re looking fit! Your holiday must be doing you a lot of good. Got any bags?’ This was asked in the absolute certainty that Vimes would have no bags, but a show of willing is always worth a try. ‘Is everything all right?’ said Vimes, ignoring this. Nobby scratched his nose and a bit fell off. Oh yes, thought Vimes, I’m back, all right! ‘Well, the usual stuff that happens is happening, but we’re on top of it. Could I draw your attention to the hill over there? They were very careful not to harm the trees, and Lady Sybil herself promised a lingering death to anyone who upset the goblins.’ Mystified, Vimes scanned the skyline and saw Hangman’s Hill. ‘Hells’ bells! It’s a clacks tower, it’s a bloody clacks tower! Sybil will go totally librarian about it!’ ‘As a matter of fact, Mister Vimes, Lady Sybil was all for it by the time she’d read all of Captain Carrot’s note. He said this was no time for you to be out of touch. You know that, sir, very persuasive officer, which is how come he got the clacks company to rush up here toot sweet with a temporary tower. Worked all night, so they did, and got it lined up on the Grand Trunk sweet as a nut!’ This time Nobby picked his nose, briefly inspected the contents for interest or value, then flicked them away and went on, ‘Only one thing, sir, the Ankh-Morpork Times wants to interview you about how you are a great hero what saved someone’s wonderful fanny—’ There was a pause while they waited for Feeney to stop choking with laughter and get his breath back and then Vimes said, ‘Corporal Nobby Nobbs, this here is Chief Constable Upshot. I call him chief constable because he’s the only law in these parts, that is until now. This is his patch, and so you will respect it, okay? Who else came with you from the Smoke?’ ‘Sergeant Detritus, Mister Vimes, but he’s up at the Hall, guarding her ladyship and Young Sam with delicate surreptition.’ A part of Vimes had unknowingly been holding its breath. Detritus and Willikins? Together they could face an army. He shook himself. ‘But not Fred Colon?’ ‘No, Mister Vimes, as I understand it we were on our way when the second clacks came through, but I reckon that he’ll be here pretty soon.’ ‘Gentlemen, I’m going home,’ said Vimes, ‘but, Mister Feeney, how soon will another boat go down to Quirm?’ Feeney beamed. ‘You’re in luck, commander. The Roberta E. Biscuit will be going tomorrow morning! Just the job for what I think you might want. Big and slow, but you won’t mind that, because there’s gambling and entertainment. Lots of tourists on it, but don’t you worry, sir, your name is big on the river already. Trust me! Say the word and the captain of the Biscuit will make certain that there’s a king-size, I mean, sorry, commander-size stateroom for you, how about that?’ Vimes opened his mouth to ask, is it expensive? And shut it again with the embarrassed realization that the Ramkin fortune could almost certainly buy every vessel on Old Treachery. Feeney, like the good copper he was becoming, noticed that slight moment of hesitation and said, ‘Your money won’t be good on the river, commander, believe me. The saviour of the Fanny won’t have to buy his own cigars or a stateroom anywhere along Old Treachery!’ Nobby Nobbs was almost bent double with laughter and managed to choke out, ‘The Fanny!’ Vimes sighed. ‘Nobby, her name was Francesca, Fanny for short. Understand?’ It didn’t work with some people; it only just did with Vimes. ‘And, Nobby, I want you to wait here, and as soon as Fred’s coach arrives you’re in charge of getting him up to the goblin cave on the hill, okay?’ ‘Yes, Mister Vimes,’ said Nobby, looking at his boots. ‘And, Nobby, if you see a goblin who stinks like a latrine and glows slightly blue, well, that’s a fellow copper and don’t you forget it.’ Sybil was halfway down the lane as Vimes quickly walked up it, and Young Sam was running ahead and cannoned into his father’s legs, throwing his arms around them as best he could. ‘Dad! I know how to milk a goat, Dad! You have to pull its tits, Dad, they’re all wiggly!’ Vimes’s expression did not change as Young Sam went on. ‘And I’m learning to make cheese! And I have some badger poo now, and some weasel poo, too!’ ‘My word, you have been busy,’ said Vimes. ‘Who told you the word “tits”, lad?’ Young Sam beamed. ‘That was Willy the cowherd, Dad.’ Vimes nodded. ‘I’ll have a little talk to you about that later, Sam, but first I think I’ll have a word with Willy the cowherd.’ He lifted up Young Sam, ignoring a twinge in his back. ‘I hope that washing your hands played a part in these adventures?’ ‘I take care of that,’ said Lady Sybil, catching up. ‘Honestly, Sam, I let you out of my sight for hardly any time at all and here you are a hero, again! Really! Honestly, the whole river is talking about it! Fights on a riverboat? Maritime chases? Oh dear me, I don’t know where to put my face, so if you would be so kind as to let our child down carefully I’ll press said face mightily to yours!’ When Vimes surfaced for breath he growled, ‘It is a real bloody clacks tower, isn’t it, yes? And now the Times have got hold of all this they’ll make out I’m some kind of hero, the damn fools!’ With the suction released, Lady Sybil said, ‘No, Sam – well maybe a little of that, but you would be amazed at how fast news travels along the river. Apparently you were standing on the wheelhouse roof of the Wonderful Fanny fighting with a murderer, and he shot a crossbow at you and it bounced off! I’m told there’s going to be a large artist’s impression in tomorrow’s paper! Once again, I won’t know where to put my face!’ And then Sybil couldn’t contain herself any more and burst out laughing. ‘Frankly, Sam, you may have anything you want for dinner tonight.’ Vimes leaned over and whispered, causing his wife to slap his hand and say, ‘Later, perhaps!’ At this point, somewhat emboldened, Vimes said, ‘I couldn’t help noticing that the bridge is severely damaged?’ Sybil nodded. ‘Oh, yes dear, a terrible storm, wasn’t it? It took away the entire central arch and all of the three disgraces.31 I remember them from my childhood. My mother used to put her hand over my eyes when we crossed the bridge and so I took a keen interest in them, especially as one was scratching her bottom.’ Her smile brightened. ‘But don’t worry, Sam, naked ladies are not difficult to come by.’ Vimes took comfort from her smile, and a tiny treacherous suspicion bubbled up once more. He thought he had stamped it down, but the damn thing kept coming back. And so he cleared his throat and said, ‘Sybil, you did discuss plans for my holiday with Vetinari, didn’t you?’ Sybil looked surprised. ‘Why yes, dear, of course. After all, he is technically your superior. Only technically, of course. I had a word with him on the subject at some charity do or other. I can’t remember which right now as there’re always so many. But there wasn’t any difficulty. He said that it was high time you took a decent rest from your valiant activities!’ Vimes was wise enough not to utter the words that entered his mouth, and instead said, carefully, ‘Er, so he didn’t actually suggest that you came down to the Shires?’ ‘To be honest, Sam, it was quite some time ago, but we both have your best interests at heart, as you surely know. We generally discussed the matter and that’s it, really.’ Vimes left it at that. He would never know for sure. And anyway, the ball had dropped. Later, Samuel Vimes, all of him, had a bath in the huge bathroom with his nose only just above the surface and came out feeling exactly the same man as before but at least a lot cleaner. The affidavits were in the strongroom, and when the Ramkins design a strongroom, it’s not a room that you’ll get into in a hurry: first you needed a combination, which opened a smaller but nevertheless dangerously efficient safe, simply to remove a key which then had to be inserted in locks hidden in three separate clocks in the Hall and each key triggered a clockwork timing mechanism. Sybil told him that she had fond memories of her grandfather running splitarse, as the old man called it, down the main hall to get the key into the last lock before the clock controlling the first lock had run down and certainly before the guillotines dropped. What we have we keep, Vimes had thought as he tried it out. Well, they definitely meant it. Now, he dressed in clothes that didn’t smell of fish. What next? It was nice to have a walk with Young Sam again. Dad self-consciously out for a walk with his lad, yes? That was the picture. Regrettably, this picture included a distant prospect of Sergeant Detritus, who was merging with the landscape, a feat that a troll officer can achieve by simply removing his armour and sticking a geranium behind his ear, whereupon he becomes, being of a rocky and stony persuasion, pretty much part of the landscape without even trying. Usually the troll officers wore super-sized versions of the standard-issue armour, because a lot of the power of a copper consists in looking like a copper.32 Safety considerations didn’t matter; there were plenty of weapons which, if handled with skill, could go through steel armour, but all they would do to a naked troll was make him angry. Right now Detritus was failing to maintain a low profile. He was a bodyguard, that was the truth of it, and he was also carrying his Piecemaker which could, as it were, do what it said on the box. Some weapons are called a Saturday Night Special; Detritus’s multi-arrow crossbow would last you all week. And somewhere, where Vimes couldn’t see him, which meant that nobody else could either, there was Willikins. There was your picture: Dad taking his lad for a walk in the presence of enough firepower to kill a platoon. Sybil had insisted, and that was that. Vimes himself being in danger was one thing, and Sybil had accepted that right from the start, but Young Sam? Never! As they strolled up Hangman’s Hill to see the new clacks tower, Vimes told himself that Stratford would not use a bow. A bow was for expediency, but a killer … now a killer would want to be up close, where he could see. Stratford had killed the goblin girl and had gone on killing her long after she was dead. He was a boy who liked his fun. He would want Vimes to know who was killing him. Vimes, Vimes realized, knew killers too well for his own peace of mind. As they arrived on the hill they were met by a grinning Nobby, who saluted with a variation on the theme of smartness, but with some embarrassment, because he was not alone. A young goblin woman was sitting next to him. Nobby hastily tried to shoo her away and she, apparently with reluctance, retired to a minimum safe distance, still looking adoringly at the corporal. Despite everything, Vimes tried to suppress the urge to smile, and managed to turn it into a stiff look. ‘Fraternising with the natives, are you, Nobby?’ Young Sam wandered over to the goblin girl and took hold of her hand, which was something he tended to do to any female that he met for the first time, a habit which his father considered would quite possibly open doors for him in later life. The girl tried gently to pull her hand away, but Young Sam was a ferocious holder. Nobby looked embarrassed. ‘I ain’t fraternizing with her, Mister Vimes, she wants to fraternize with me! She come out with the straw basket of little mushrooms and gives them to me, honestly!’ ‘Are you sure they aren’t poisonous?’ Nobby looked blank. ‘Don’t know, Mister Vimes. I ate them anyway, very nice, very crunchy, slightly nutty you might say, and Fred’s here now, sir. This young lady’ – and to Vimes’s surprise and approval Nobby did not put inverted commas around the word lady – ‘walked right up to him, took this weird shiny pot thing out of his hand, which was amazing because no one else could get it off of him, and there he was! Just like normal! Although I think we’re going to have to remind him about washing, and crapping only in the privy and so on.’ Vimes gave up. It was true that every organization had to have its backbone, and therefore it stood to reason that there also would have to be some person who equated to the bits usually destined for dog food. But Nobby was loyal and lucky, and if there is anything that a policeman really needs, it’s luck. Maybe Nobby had got lucky. ‘What are you doing up here, Nobby?’ he said. Nobby looked at Vimes as if he was mad, and pointed to the wobbling temporary clacks tower. ‘Have to check the clacks messages, Mister Vimes. Actually, young Tony, who is the only one manning it, he sort of types them, and wraps them around a stone and they drops down, which is—’ There was a rattle on Nobby’s helmet and he deftly caught a stone wrapped in a strip of paper before it hit the ground. ‘Which is why I stand just here, Mister Vimes.’ Nobby unrolled the paper and announced, ‘One double stateroom and one single on the Roberta E. Biscuit, departing at 9 p.m. tomorrow! Lucky you, Mister Vimes. Clacks! What would we do without it, eh?’ There was a shout from above: ‘Stand back, man coming down!’ and Vimes saw the whole structure of the clacks tower tremble as the young man carefully lowered himself from one spar to another, testing every one before putting his weight on it. He dropped the last few feet and held out his hand to Vimes. ‘Pleased to meet you, Sir Samuel! Sorry it’s shaky, but we were still working on it last night. A real rush job! Needs must when Lord Vetinari drives, you might say. We’ll do it properly later if that’s okay by you? I’ve got it lined up on a Grand Trunk tower, and they’ll bounce it to anywhere you want, plus a feed down to a clacks on your house, too. Of course you’ll have to have somebody manning this one to maintain the link, but from what I see that won’t be a problem.’ The young man saluted Vimes and added, ‘Best of luck to you, sir, and now I’m off to have my meal and a wash.’ There was another clang on the helmet of Nobby Nobbs, and a wad of paper wrapped around a pebble fell at his feet. The young clacksman picked it up proprietorially and read the message. ‘Oh, it’s just an acknowledgement of service closure, confirming that I am standing down for a break. My assistant typed it. He didn’t really need to pass it on, but he is a conscientious little bugger and I have never seen such a quick study. Show him how to do something once and that’s enough! Reliable little devil as well. And with those big hands he has no problem with the keyboard.’ As the man strode off whistling down the hill, Vimes jumped to a conclusion like a grasshopper. ‘Stinky! Just you come down here, you little perisher!’ he yelled. ‘Right here, commander!’ The little goblin was already standing almost between Vimes’s boots. ‘You? You! You operating a clacks? Can you read?’ Stinky held out both large hands. ‘No, but can look, but can remember! Green man say, “Stinky, this pointy thing it called A” and Stinky don’t need telling twice, and he say, “This one, look like bum, he called B”. Good fun!’ The cracked voice wheedled, but in a way that seemed to Vimes to be full of cynical knowingness. ‘The goblin is useful, goblin is trustworthy, goblin is helpful? Goblin isn’t dead!’ And it seemed to Vimes that he was the only one hearing these words. Young Sam had shuffled up to hold Stinky’s hand, but had thought better of it. Under his breath, Sam Vimes said, ‘What are you, Stinky?’ ‘What are you, Sam Vimes?’ Stinky grinned. ‘Hang, Sam Vimes. Hang together or hang separately. Above all, hang on. Hang, Mister Vimes.’ Vimes sighed. ‘I think it’s quite likely that I might,’ he said gloomily. He looked around to find himself pinned in the gazes of Young Sam, Nobby Nobbs and the goblin girl who had been looking at Nobby as if the little corporal was an Adonis. Embarrassed, he shrugged and said, ‘Just a passing thought.’ * However you put it, Fred Colon was one of Vimes’s oldest friends – and it was sobering to think that so was Nobby Nobbs. Vimes found the sergeant halfway down the goblin cave looking strangely pink, bemused, but nevertheless quite cheerful, possibly because he was eating a roasted rabbit like there was no tomorrow – which clearly had been the case for the rabbit. Cheery was watching him with some care from a distance, and when she saw Vimes gave him a smile and a thumbs-up sign, which was reassuring. Fred Colon tried to salute, but had to think about it for a moment. ‘Sorry about this, Mister Vimes, had some kind of nasty turn. All a bit vague, really, and suddenly here I am among these people.’ Vimes held his breath and Colon continued, ‘Very nice, very helpful, very generous, too. They’ve been giving me all kinds of mushrooms, extremely tasty. Not very well versed in the trouser department, but I speak as I find. Makes a man think; I ain’t sure what, but it does.’ He looked around with a strange fluorescence in his eyes. ‘Nice in here, isn’t it? Nice and calm away from the maddening crowd. Wouldn’t mind staying here for a bit … Nice.’ Sergeant Colon stopped, flung the rabbit bones over his shoulder and reached down quickly into the mess of stones beside him. He picked one up. Was it Vimes’s imagination or did it twinkle for a moment as it once again turned into just a stone. ‘Stay as long as you like, Fred,’ said Vimes. ‘I’ve got to go, but Nobby’ll be around, and just about everybody else from the Watch or so it seems. Stay as long as you like’ – he glanced at Cheery Littlebottom – ‘but perhaps not too long.’ More thoughts passed as Young Sam’s daily stroll progressed back down the hill and through the village, and when Jiminy appeared at the doorway of the pub and gave Vimes a little nod that spoke volumes, Vimes’s passing thought was that an astute publican knows which way the wind is blowing and adjusts his sails accordingly. No one knew better than he that no one knows where rumours come from and how they are spread, but the little convoy, even though it included Nobby Nobbs and the goblin girl, got smiles and nods where a week ago there would have been blank stares. Because the dreadful truth is that nobody wants to support the losing side. When they reached Ramkin Hall again Vimes found Sybil in the rose garden, apparently deadheading, something that had to be done because it was on the list of things you had to do in the country whether you liked to do it or not. She glanced up at her husband and then got on with what she was doing, and said quietly, ‘You’ve been worrying people, haven’t you, Sam? Lady Rust popped in unexpectedly for a social visit, right after you left.’ Snip! Snip! went the secateurs, furiously. ‘Did you let her in?’ Snip! Snip! ‘Of course! Of course!’ There was another Snip! Snip! ‘And I gave her tea and chocolate macaroons, too. She may be an ignorant whey-faced bitch who gives herself a title that is not rightfully hers, but there is such a thing as manners, when all is said and done.’ Snip! Snip! Snap! ‘I only did that because that one rather spoils the symmetry, honestly. Anyway, I had a lecture about maintaining standards, and banding together in defence of our culture, you know the sort of thing, it’s always just a code.’ Lady Sybil leaned back with her secateurs poised, and regarded the rose bushes like a bloody-handed revolutionary looking for his next aristocrat. ‘Do you know what the bitch said? She said, “My dear, who cares what happens to a few trolls! Let them take drugs if they want to, that’s what I say.”’ Eyes ablaze, Sybil continued, ‘And so I thought about Sergeant Detritus and how often he’s saved your life, and then there was young Brick, that troll lad he adopted. And it made me so angry that I nearly said something unrepeatable! They think that I’m like them! I hate that! They just don’t get it! They’ve got on well for years without ever having to think differently, and now they don’t know how!’ Snip! Snip! Crack! ‘You’ve just killed a rosebush, dear,’ said Vimes, impressed. It took a pretty good grip to push those blades through an inch of what looked like a small tree. ‘It was a brier, Sam, wouldn’t ever do any good.’ ‘You could have given it a chance, perhaps?’ ‘Sam Vimes, you treasure your ignorance of gardening, so don’t start weaving a social hypothesis in front of an angry woman holding a blade! There is a difference between plants and people!’ ‘Do you think her husband sent her?’ Vimes said, standing back a little. ‘He is in the frame, you know, and I expect by the end of the day to be able to link him to smuggling, trafficking in goblins and certainly attempting to send Jethro Jefferson abroad to get him out of the way. I know what happens to the goblins taken to Howondaland and it’s not good for their health. Jefferson told me that Rust was behind the eviction of the local goblins three years ago. I’m hoping to get confirmation of this very shortly. All in all, it’ll wipe the smile off his aristocratic face, at least.’ The birds were singing and roses were pumping perfume into the air and Lady Sybil dropped the secateurs into her apron pocket. ‘It will shame old Lord Rust, you know.’ ‘Don’t think I don’t know that,’ said Vimes. ‘The old boy tried to warn me off when we first got here, which just about shows his talent as a tactician. But I’ll say this for the old bastard: he is honourable, honest and straightforward. It’s a shame that he is also pigheaded, stupid, and incompetent. But you’re right, it’ll hurt him, although he must have killed so many soldiers by his own incompetence that shame should by now be second nature to him, an old friend as it were.’ He sighed. ‘Sybil, every time I have to arrest some twit who thought he could get away with swindling or extortion or blackmail, well, I know that there is probably going to be a family in difficulties, you understand? I think about it. It preys on my mind. The trouble is, the idiots commit the crimes! As it is, I’m trying to spare some of the hangers-on in this case, provided their gratitude results in testimony. I can stretch the law for the greater good, but that’s the end of it.’ Sybil nodded sadly, and then sniffed and said, ‘Can you smell smoke?’ Willikins, who had been standing patiently, said, ‘Corporal Nobbs and his, ahem, young … lady wandered off into the shrubbery with Young Sam, your ladyship. Sergeant Detritus accompanied them with what I now believe to be called …’ Willikins savoured the word like a toffee, ‘surreptition.’ This last fact was testified to by the shrubbery itself, because no shrubbery, however large, could hide the fact that a troll had just walked through it. There was a small, neat fire burning in the shrubbery, watched passively by Detritus and Young Sam, and nervously by Corporal Nobbs, who was watching his new young lady cooking something on a spit. ‘Oh, she’s cooking snails,’ said Sybil, with every sign of approval. ‘What a provident young lady.’ ‘Snails?’ said Vimes, shocked. ‘Quite traditional in these parts, as a matter of fact,’ said Sybil. ‘My father and his chums used to cook them up sometimes after a drinking session. Very wholesome, and full of vitamins and minerals, or so I understand. Apparently if you feed them on garlic they taste of garlic.’ Vimes shrugged. ‘I suppose that has to be better than them tasting of snails.’ Sybil pulled Sam off to one side and said quietly, ‘I think the goblin girl is the one that they call Shine of the Rainbow. Felicity says she’s very smart.’ ‘Well, I don’t think she’ll get anywhere with Nobby,’ said Vimes. ‘He’s carrying a torch for Verity Pushpram. You know, the fishmonger?’ Sybil whispered, ‘She got engaged last month, Sam. To a lad who’s building up his own fishing fleet.’ They stared through the leaves and tiptoed away. ‘But she’s a goblin!’ said Vimes, out of his depth. ‘And he is Nobby Nobbs, Sam. And she is quite attractive in a goblin sort of way, don’t you think? And to be honest, I’m not sure that even Nobby’s old mother knows what species her son is. Frankly, Sam, it’s not our business.’ ‘But what if Young Sam eats snails?’ ‘Sam, given what he’s already eaten in his short life I wouldn’t worry, if I was you. I expect the girl knows what she’s doing; they generally do, Sam, believe me. Besides, this is limestone country and there’s nothing poisonous for the snails to eat. Don’t worry, Sam!’ ‘Yes, but how will—’ ‘Don’t worry, Sam!’ ‘Yes, but I mean—’ ‘Don’t worry, Sam! There’s a troll and a dwarf in Lobbin Clout who have set up home together, so I’ve heard. Good for them, I say, it’s their business and definitely not ours.’ ‘Yes, but—’ ‘Sam!’ During the afternoon Sam Vimes worried. He wrote dispatches and walked up to the new tower to send them. Goblins were sitting around the tower now, staring at it. He tapped one of them on the shoulder, handed it the messages and watched it climb the tower as if it were horizontal. A couple of minutes later it came down with a smudged confirmation-of-sending slip, which it handed to him along with a couple of other messages before sitting down to stare at the tower again. He thought: you have lived your life in and around a cave in a hill and now here is this magical thing that sends words, right on your doorstep. That’s got to command respect! Then he opened the two messages that had arrived for him, carefully folded up the papers and walked back down the hill, breathing carefully and taking care not to punch the air and whoop. When Vimes reached the cottage of the woman who, to Young Sam, would for ever be the poo lady, he stopped to hear the music. It came and went, there were false starts, and then the world revolved as liquid sound called out of the window. Only then did he dare to knock at the door. Half an hour later, walking with the measured gait of the career copper, he proceeded to the lock-up. Jethro Jefferson was sitting on a stool outside. He was wearing a badge. Feeney was learning fast. The constabulary of the Waterside owned precisely one badge, made of pot metal, and so pinned to the shirt of the blacksmith was a carefully cut out cardboard circle with, inscribed in pains taking handwriting, the words Constable Jefferson works for me. Be told! Signed: Chief Constable Upshot. There was a second, empty stool by the blacksmith, reflecting the doubling of the staff. Vimes sat down with a grunt. ‘How do you like being a copper, Mister Jefferson?’ ‘If you’re looking for Feeney, commander, he’s on his lunch break. And since you ask, I can’t say coppering sits very well with me, but maybe it’s the kind of thing that grows on you. Besides, the smithy is a bit quiet right now, and so’s the crime.’ The blacksmith grinned. ‘No one wants me chasing them. I hear things are happening, right?’ Vimes nodded. ‘When you see Feeney, tell him that the Quirm constabulary has picked up two men who apparently volunteered the information that they had shanghaied you, amongst other misdemeanours, and it seems they have a whole lot of other information that they are desperate to tell us in exchange for a certain amount of clemency.’ Jefferson growled. ‘Give me five minutes with ’em and I’ll show ’em what clemency is.’ ‘You’re a copper now, Jethro, so you don’t have to think like that,’ said Vimes cheerfully. ‘Besides, the balls are all lining up.’ Jefferson gave a hollow laugh, laden with malice. ‘I’d line their balls up for them … and just you see how far apart. I was a kid when the first lot were taken and that bloody Rust kid was there all right, yes indeed, urging everybody on and laughing at them poor goblins. And when I ran out into the road to try and stop it, some of his chums gave me a right seeing to. That was just after my dad died. I was a bit innocent in those days, thought that some people were better than me, tipped me hat to gentry and so on, and then I took over the forge and if that don’t kill you it makes you strong.’ And he winked, and Vimes thought, you’ll do. You’ll probably do. You’ve got the fire. Vimes patted his shirt pocket and heard the reassuring rustle of paper. He was rather proud of the note at the end of the clacks message, which was a personal one from the commandant in Quirm. It read, ‘When they heard that you were on the case, Sam, they were so chatty that we used up two pencils!’ And then Sam Vimes went to the pub just as the men were coming in and sat in the corner nursing a pint of the beetroot juice with a touch of chilli, to help down a snack consisting of one pickled egg and one pickled onion nestling in a packet of crisps. Vimes did not know very much about gastronomy, but he knew what he liked. And, as he sat there, he saw people talking to one another and looking at him, and then one of them walked slowly over, holding his hat in front of him in both hands as if in penitence. ‘Name of Hasty, sir, William Hasty. Thatcher by trade, sir.’ Vimes moved his legs to make room and said, ‘Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mister Hasty. What can I do for you?’ Mr Hasty looked around at his fellows, and got that mixed assortment of waves and hoarse whispers that adds up to ‘Get on with it!’ Reluctantly he turned back to Vimes, cleared his throat, and said, ‘Well, sir, yes, of course we knew about the goblins and no one liked it much. I mean they’re a bloody nuisance if you forget to lock your chicken coop and suchlike, but we didn’t like what was done, because it wasn’t … I mean, wasn’t right, not done like that, and some of us said we would suffer for it, come the finish, because if they could do that to goblins then what might they think they could do to real people, and some said real or not, it wasn’t right! We’re just ordinary people, sir, tenants and similar, not big, not strong, not important, so who would listen to the likes of us? I mean, what could we have done?’ Heads leaned a little forward, breaths were held, and Vimes chewed the very last vinegary piece of crisp. Then he said, directing his gaze to the ceiling, ‘You’ve all got weapons. Every man jack of you. Huge, dangerous, deadly weapons. You could have done something. You could have done anything. You could have done everything. But you didn’t, and I’m not sure but that in your shoes I might not have done anything, either. Yes?’ Hasty had held up a hand. ‘I’m sure we’re sorry, sir, but we don’t have weapons.’ ‘Oh, dear me. Look around. One of the things that you could have done was think. It’s been a long day, gentlemen, it’s been a long week. Just remember, that’s all. Remember for next time.’ In silence, Vimes walked across to Jiminy at the bar, noticing above the man a patch on the wall showing gleaming paint on the plaster. For a moment Vimes’s memory filled that space with a goblin’s head. Another little triumph. ‘Jiminy, these gentlemen are drinking at my expense for the rest of the evening. See they get home okay even if wheelbarrows have to be deployed. I’ll send Willikins down to settle with you in the morning.’ Only the sound of his boots broke the silence as he walked to the pub door and closed it gently behind him. Fifty yards up the road he smiled when he heard the cheering start. The Roberta E. Biscuit was, unlike the Wonderful Fanny, a boat that strutted its stuff. It looked like a Hogswatch decoration, and on one deck a small band was trying to play as hard as a large band. Waiting on the quayside, though, was a man wearing a hat that the captain of any fleet would desire. ‘Welcome aboard, your grace, and of course your ladyship. I’m Captain O’Farrell, master of the Roberta.’ Then he looked down at Young Sam and said, ‘Want to take a turn at the wheel, young shaver? That shall be arranged! And I bet your daddy would like a turn, too.’ The captain shook Vimes’s hand industriously, saying, ‘Captain Sillitoe had nothing but good things to say about you, sir, nothing but good things indeed! And he hopes to see you again some day. But in the meantime, it’s my duty, sir, to make you King!’ The thoughts of Sam Vimes collided in their rush to get through first. Something about the word ‘king’ was getting in the way. Still smiling, the captain said, ‘That is to say King of the River, sir, a little honour that we bestow on those heroes who have taken on Old Treachery and bested him! Allow me to present you with this gold-ish medal, sir. It’s a small token, but show it to any captain on the river and you’ll be carried for free, sir, from the mountains to the sea if you so desire!’ Whipped to a frenzy by the oration, the crowd burst into loud applause and the band struck up with the old classic ‘Surprised, Aren’t You?’, and bouquets of flowers were hurled into the air, and then picked up again carefully, because waste not, want not. And the band played and the wheels turned and the water was whisked into a foam as the Vimes family went down the river for a wonderful holiday. Young Sam was allowed to stay up to see the dancing girls, although he didn’t see the point. Vimes, however, did. And there was a conjuror and all the other entertainment people subject themselves to in the name of fun, although he did laugh a bit when the conjuror picked his pocket in order to put in the ace of spades and found himself holding the knife that Sam had brought along just in case. When you aren’t expecting it, that’s when you should expect it! And the conjuror had not expected it and looked goggle-eyed at Vimes until he said, ‘Oh my, you’re him, aren’t you? Commander Vimes himself!’ And to Vimes’s horror, he turned to the crowd with, ‘A big hand, please, ladies and gentlemen, for the hero of the Wonderful Fanny!’ In the end Vimes had to take a bow, which meant obviously that Young Sam took a bow next to him, causing much moistening of female eyes throughout the restaurant. And then the barman, who apparently didn’t know the score, created on the spot the ‘Sam Vimes’, which Sam later pretended to be embarrassed about when it became part of the repertoire in every drinking establishment on the Plains, apart from, of course, those where the clientele tended to open their bottles with their teeth.33 In fact, he was so overcome by the honour that he actually drank one of the cocktails and another afterwards as well, on the basis that Sybil couldn’t really object in the circumstances. Then he sat signing beer mats and pieces of paper and chatting to people rather more loudly than he normally chatted until even the barman decided to call it a day and Sybil towed her tipsy husband to bed. And on the way to their suite he distinctly overheard one lady say to another in passing, ‘Who’s the new barman? Never seen him on this run before …’ The Roberta E. Biscuit ploughed on into the night, the water leaving a temporary white trail behind her ample stern. One ox had been led into the stable in the scuppers, leaving the other one to maintain some sensible headway while the pleasure cruise paddled towards the morning. Everyone except the pilot and the lookout was sleeping, drunk or otherwise prone. The barman was nowhere to be seen; barmen come and go, after all – whoever notices the barman? And in the corridor of staterooms a figure waited in the shadows, listening. It listened for whispers, creaks and snores building up. There was a snore, oh yes! The shadow drifted along the dark corridor, the occasional betraying creak lost among the symphony of sounds made by any wooden boat under way. There was a door. There was a lock. There was a gentle exploration; being the kind that portrays cunning and strength rather than actually having them. There was a lockpick, a delicate movement of hinges, and the same movement again as the door was gently pushed shut from the inside. There was a smile so unpleasant that it could almost be seen in the dark, especially by the dark-assisted eye, and so there was a scream, instantly cut short— ‘Let me tell you how this is going to be,’ said Sam Vimes, as urgent sounds suddenly filled the corridor. He leaned over the body spreadeagled on the floor. ‘You will be humanely handcuffed for the rest of this voyage, and you will be watched carefully by my valet Willikins, who, apart from making a really good cocktail, is also not burdened by being a policeman.’ He squeezed a little harder and went on in a conversational tone, ‘Every now and again I have to sack a decent copper for police brutality, and I do sack them, you may be sure of that, for doing what the average member of the public might do if they were brave enough and if they had seen the dying child, or the remains of the old woman. They would do it to restore in their mind the balance of terror.’ Vimes squeezed again. ‘Often the law treats them gently, if it worries about them at all, but a copper, now, he’s a lawman – certainly if he works for me – and that means his job stops at the arrest, Mister Stratford. So what’s stopping me from squeezing the life out of a murderer who has broken into the room he thought would hold my little boy, with, oh dear me, such a lot of little knives? Why will I squeeze him only to unconsciousness, while despising myself for every fragment of breath I begrudge him? I’ll tell you, mister, that what stands between you and sudden death right now is the law you don’t acknowledge. And now I’m going to let you go, just in case you die on me, and I couldn’t have that. However, I suggest you don’t try and make a run for it, because Willikins is not bound by the same covenant as I am, and he is also quite merciless and very fond of Young Sam, who’s sleeping with his mother, I’m glad to say. Understand? You picked the single room, didn’t you, where the little boy would be. It’s lucky for you that I’m a bastard, Mister Stratford, because if you’d broken into the stateroom, where my wife, although I never dare tell her so, is snoring at least as loud as any man, you would have found that she has at her command a considerable amount of weaponry and, knowing the temper of the Ramkins, she would have quite probably done things to you that would make Willikins say, “Whoa, that’s going a bit too far.” What they have they keep, Mister Stratford.’ Vimes momentarily changed his grip. ‘And you must think I’m a bloody fool. Some bloke they reckoned was a great thinker once said, “Know yourself.” Well, I know myself, Mister Stratford, I’m ashamed to say, right down to the depths, and because of that I know you, like I know my own face in the shaving mirror. You’re just a bully who found it easier and easier and decided that everybody else wasn’t really a real person, not like you, and when you know that, there’s no crime too big, is there? No crime you won’t do. You might reflect that, while you’re going to hang, I’m quite certain that Lord Rust, your boss, will in all probability walk free. Did you really think he’d protect you?’ The prostrate Stratford mumbled something. ‘Sorry, sir, didn’t quite catch that?’ ‘King’s evidence!’ Stratford blurted out. Vimes shook his head, even if Stratford couldn’t see it. ‘Mister Stratford, you’re going to hang, whatever you say. I’m not going to bargain with you. You must surely realize that you have nothing to bargain with. It’s that simple.’ On the floor Stratford growled, ‘Damn him! I’ll tell you anyway! I hate the smarmy bugger! What do you want me to say?’ It was a good job that he couldn’t see Vimes’s face, and Vimes merely said, ‘However, I’m sure that Lord Vetinari will be very happy to hear anything that you have to say, sir. He’s of a mercurial nature and I’m sure there is hanging or hanging.’ Slumped on the floor and wheezing, Stratford said, ‘Everyone had that bloody cocktail, I saw them! You had three, and everybody says you’re a lush!’ There was laughter as the door came open, letting in a little light. ‘His grace had what you might call the Virgin Sam Vimes,’ said Willikins, ‘no offence meant to the commander: ginger and chilli, a dash of cucumber juice and a lot of coconut milk.’ ‘And very tasty,’ said Vimes. ‘Take him away, Willikins, will you, and if he tries anything you know what to do … you were born knowing what to do.’ For a moment Willikins touched his forelock and then said, ‘Thank you, commander, I appreciate the compliment.’ And Sam Vimes finished his holiday. Of course it couldn’t be entirely fun, not with the clacks, not with people sending messages like, ‘I don’t want to bother you, but this will only take a moment of your time …’ A great many people didn’t want to bother Sam Vimes, but with a great effort of will they somehow managed to overcome their distaste and do so nevertheless. One of them, and this message did not contain an apology of any sort, came from Havelock, Lord Vetinari, and read, ‘We will talk about this.’ That morning Vimes hired a small boat with its captain and spent a happy time with Young Sam picking periwinkles off the rocks on one of the many small islands off the Quirm coast, and then they gathered driftwood, made a fire, and boiled them and ate them with the help of a pin, racing to be the first to get one wiggly morsel out of its shell, and of course there was brown bread and butter and finally plenty of salt and vinegar, so that the periwinkles tasted of salt and vinegar rather than of periwinkles, which would be a disaster.34 With the boys out of the way, Sybil changed the world in her own quiet way, by sitting at the table in their apartment and writing, in the neat cursive script that she had been taught as a girl, a large number of clacks messages. One of them was to the Director of the Royal Opera House of which her ladyship was a major patron, another was to Lord Vetinari, and three more went to the secretary of the Low King of the dwarfs, the secretary of Diamond King of Trolls and the secretary of Lady Margolotta of Uberwald, ruler of all that country that was above ground. But it didn’t stop there. No sooner had the maid come back from carrying the first batch to the local tower at the top of the hill than she was sent spinning up there again with all the rest. Lady Sybil was a ferocious writer of letters, and if there was any person of substance on the Plains and beyond who didn’t get a letter from Sybil that day, it was because their name had fallen out of her beautifully bound and obsessively updated little black book, which was, in fact, a delicate pink with tiny embroidered flowers on it, and a small phial of perfume. Nevertheless the only comparable weapon in the entire history of persuasion was probably the ballista. In the afternoon Lady Sybil took tea with some of her girlfriends, all old girls from the Quirm College for Young Ladies, and had a very satisfactory time talking about other people’s children while silently, driven by messages sleeting across the land with a precision and speed that no wizard would have contemplated, the world began to change its mind. Concurrently, Vimes took Young Sam to the zoo, where he met the keepers, nearly all of whom had known somebody on the Wonderful Fanny and who opened every door to them, and nearly every cage. The curator himself came along to witness this cheerful six-year-old who was methodically weighing giraffe poo on a pair of ancient snuff scales, dissecting it with a couple of old kitchen knives, and making notes in a notebook with a picture of a goblin on the front. But for Sam Vimes the highlight was the elephant’s delivery that Young Sam had been looking forward to – just as the Vimes party approached, Jumbo obliged and his son was, almost literally, in a hog heaven. Not even the philatelist finding a rare reversed-head blue triangle stamp in an unregarded secondhand stamp collection could have been happier than Young Sam toddling away with his steaming bucket. Young Sam had seen the elephant. And so had Sam Vimes. The curator had said that Young Sam was incredibly gifted, and seemed to have a natural grasp of the disciplines of natural philosophy, a comment that caused Sam’s father to nod wisely and hope for the best. They rounded off the day with a visit to the funfair, where Vimes gave the man a dollar for the ride on the upsy-daisy machine and was given change for a quarter-dollar. When he objected the man swore at Vimes, lashed out and was surprised to be caught in a grip of steel, marched through a cheering crowd and handed over to the nearest Quirm copper, who saluted and asked if Vimes could sign his helmet. That was a small thing, but, as Vimes always said, behind small things you often find big things. He also won a coconut, a definite result, and Young Sam got a stick of rock with ‘Quirm’ all the way through, which stuck his teeth together, another memorable occasion. In the middle of the night Vimes, who had been listening to the pounding of the surf for some time, said, ‘Are you awake, dear?’ And then, because this is how these things are done, raised his voice a little when he got no answer and repeated, ‘Are you awake, dear?’ ‘Yes, Sam. I am now.’ Vimes stared at the ceiling. ‘I wonder if it’s all going to work.’ ‘Of course it will! People are very enthusiastic about it, you know; they’re intrigued. And I’ve pulled more strings than an elephant’s corset. It will work. What about you?’ There was a gecko on the ceiling; you didn’t get them in Ankh-Morpork. It looked at Vimes with jewelled eyes. He said, ‘Well, it’ll be more or less a standard procedure.’ He shifted uneasily, and the gecko retreated to the corner of the room. ‘I’m a bit worried, though: some things I’ve done come within the law and one or two others are rather ad hoc, as it were.’ ‘You were just opening a way for the law to flow in, Sam. The end justifies the means.’ ‘I’m afraid a lot of bad men have used that to justify bad things, dear.’ Under the covers Sybil’s hand reached out to touch his. ‘That’s no reason why one good man shouldn’t use it to justify a good thing. Don’t worry, Sam!’ Woman’s logic, Sam thought: everything is going to be all right because it ought to be all right. The trouble is, reality is never as simple as that and doesn’t allow for paperwork. Vimes dozed comfortably for a while and then heard Sybil say, in a whisper, ‘He’s not going to escape, is he, Sam? You said he’s good with locks.’ ‘Well, they have damn good locks on the cells here in Quirm, there’s a guard watching him at all times and he’s going to be taken up to Ankh-Morpork on their hurry-up wagon under armed escort. I can’t imagine the circumstances that would allow him to escape. After all, the Quirm lads want to do this one by the numbers. I bet they’ll have shined up their armour until it looks like silver. They’ll want to impress me, you see? Don’t worry, I’m certain nothing will go wrong.’ They lay there, comfortable, and then Vimes said, ‘The curator of the zoo was very complimentary about Young Sam.’ Sleepily, Sybil murmured, ‘Perhaps he’ll be another Woolsthorpe, but maybe this time with the missing ingredient of common sense.’ ‘Well, I don’t know what he’s going to be,’ said Sam Vimes, ‘but I do know he’ll be good at it.’ ‘Then he’ll be Sam Vimes,’ said Sybil. ‘Let’s get some sleep.’ Next day the family went home, which is to say that Sybil and Young Sam went home to Ankh-Morpork on a fast coach, after a small hiatus which led to Young Sam’s growing collection being removed from inside the coach and strapped to the roof, while Sam Vimes took the Black-Eyed Susan back to the Hall, because there was still a matter of business to be concluded. Since he was a King of the River the pilot let him steer for part of the way, admittedly staring obsessively over his shoulder, just in case. And Vimes had fun, an infrequent event. It is a strange thing to find yourself doing something you have apparently always wanted to do, when in fact up until that moment you had never known that you had always wanted to do it, or even what it was, but Sam Vimes, for a moment upon the world, was a riverboat pilot and was as happy as a cat full of sixpences. That night he lay alone in the vastness of Ramkin Hall – except, of course, for the hundred or so servants – turning the events of the previous week over and over in his head, and especially his own actions during them. Time and again he cross-examined himself mercilessly. Had he cheated? Not exactly. Had he misled? Not exactly. Had he acted as a policeman should? Well, now, that was the question, wasn’t it? In the morning two young maids brought him his breakfast and Vimes was amused to see that they were accompanied by a footman as a chaperone. In a way he found that rather flattering. Then he went for a walk through the lovely countryside, listening to the liquid notes of the robin et cetera (he couldn’t remember the names of the others, but they were jolly good singers all the same). And as he walked he was aware of eyes upon him from every cottage and field. One or two people came up to him, shook him frantically by the hand and ran away just as quickly, and it seemed to Vimes that the world was dragging around after him. Nervousness was so saturating the atmosphere that he felt that any time soon he should shout ‘BOO!’ at the top of his voice. But Vimes was merely waiting … Waiting for the evening. The coaches started to arrive at Ankh-Morpork’s Opera House very early. This was going to be an important occasion: it was said that not only would the Patrician be there, but he would be accompanied by Lady Margolotta, ruler of all Uberwald, plus the dwarf ambassador, and the black ruby viceroy of Diamond King of Trolls, who arrived in the city with almost as many courtiers, secretaries, bodyguards, chefs and advisers as had been brought by the ambassador from the dwarfs. In an unsophisticated way, the people of Ankh-Morpork were very sophisticated and the streets buzzed more busily than usual. Something like this was important. Great matters of state would be settled over the canapés. The fate of millions and suchlike would be most likely decided by a quiet word in a corner somewhere and thereafter the world would be a slightly different place, you see if it isn’t. Unless you had a gold-edged invitation to the Opera House that evening this was no occasion to be fashionably late, in case you were left fashionably standing fashionable at the back, craning unfashionably to see over the heads of other people. Towards sunset Vimes lounged outside the lock-up, happy to acknowledge the fraternal salute of the pilot of a small boat that sailed past. Then he strolled along the lane until he reached the pub and took a seat on the bench outside. He took out his snuffbox, looked at it for a moment and decided that on an occasion like this Sybil would have probably allowed him a cigar. Through the smoke of the first luxurious pull he stared at the village green and most especially at that pillar of what seemed to be broken wickerwork. Somehow, soundlessly, it was speaking to him, calling to him, just as it had when he had first seen it. After a few more thoughtful puffs he wandered towards the pub door. Jiminy beamed at him from under the freshly painted sign of the Commander’s Arms, where he was enjoying the pint that the parsimonious publican drinks every day when cleaning the pipes. It’s old beer, obviously, but what’s beer but liquid bread, eh? And bread can’t do you no harm. ‘You look a bit preoccupied, commander,’ said the publican. ‘A mite pensive, as it were?’ Vimes nodded towards the tottering spire. ‘How important is that, my friend?’ The barman glanced at the stack as if he couldn’t care less. ‘Well, you know, it’s just a load of old wicker hurdles, that’s all. They just stack them there after the annual sheep fair so they don’t get in the way. A bit of a landmark, you might say, but not that much.’ ‘Oh,’ said Vimes. He stared at the tower. Nothing really, then, but nevertheless it spoke to him. Vimes stared at the heap for a while and then followed Jiminy into the bar. ‘How much brandy do you have in here?’ ‘Not much call for it, but I’d say five or six bottles and a small barrel.’ Jiminy stared intently at Vimes. Vimes knew Jiminy for what he was: nothing else but a man who knew enough to always be on the winning side. Vimes puffed his cigar again. ‘Put two of them aside for me, will you? And you’d better make sure you’ve got good beer on tap, because pretty soon you’re going to have a lot of customers.’ He left the barman bustling as he went back outside and he continued to stare, his mind elsewhere, and in many places. Of course it’ll work, he told himself. They’ve all got watches and I know they’ll have synchronized them, even if they don’t know how to spell synchronize. It’s a shout like any other, and I’ve trained most of them and I reckon that they know that if somebody says to them, ‘Do you know who I am?’ they know enough to say, ‘Yes, you’re nicked!’, and he smiled inwardly when he thought that among the officers drafted in from the city were two trolls, two vampires, a werewolf and a dwarf. That’s what they probably call symbolic, he thought. He pulled out his own watch again, just as the early seekers of an evening pint began to appear. Right about … now. There was a huge jamming of coaches around the Opera House as would-be patrons, high or low, forsook their carriages and took to their feet, fighting their way through the throng that was seeking admission. Of course, it helped if you had a squad of trolls or dwarfs with you. Ankh-Morpork liked surprises, provided they didn’t involve the revenue. The curtain was not due to go up for another hour, but that didn’t matter, because the important thing was to be there and even more importantly to be seen to be there, especially by the people you wanted to see. Whatever it was going to be it was going to be an occasion, and you would have been there and people would have seen you there and it was important and, therefore, so were you. It would be a night to remember, even if the mysterious performance was an act to forget. The really rich often put on these things out of vanity, but this one looked particularly mysterious and possibly a jolly good laugh if it fell on its face. Day was turning into night. The pub was filling up, as were the drinkers, who had been told by Jiminy that they were drinking courtesy of Commander Vimes, again. And Jiminy watched him carefully from the doorway as the shadows lengthened and Vimes stood there, motionless, occasionally looking at his watch. At last the lad everybody knew as young Feeney turned up, with his arm still in its cast but, nevertheless, the old boys agreed amongst themselves, looking rather more grown-up than they’d ever seen him before. He was accompanied by Jefferson the blacksmith, whom they regarded as a ticking bomb at the best of times, and he had a badge, just like Feeney. People overflowed from the pub as the two of them went up to Vimes, and there was an unheard conversation. They’d wondered why the blacksmith was carrying a megaphone, but now they watched him hand it to Vimes, and Feeney and the blacksmith walked back towards the pub and people parted like a wave to let them through. Vimes looked at his watch again. More people were hurrying towards the green. People with an instinct for the dramatic had run home to say that something was up and you’d better come and look. And country people liked a spectacle, or even a serious death, just like city people. They too liked to say, ‘I was there’, even if it came out as ‘I was there, ooh-arr’. Vimes put his watch in his pocket for the last time, and raised the megaphone to his lips. ‘LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!’ The blacksmith had hammered out a pretty good loudhailer and the voice echoed across the green. ‘I have heard it said, ladies and gentlemen, that in the end all sins are forgiven.’ Out of the corner of his mouth he said, so that only Feeney and the blacksmith could hear, ‘We shall see.’ And then he continued. ‘Bad things have been done. Bad things have been ordered. Bad orders have been obeyed. But they never will be again … will they, ladies and gentlemen? Because there needs to be a law, but before there is a law, there has to be a crime!’ There was absolute silence in the gloom as he walked over the green to the tower and broke the two bottles of brandy on its woodwork, stepped back a little way and threw the glowing end of his cigar after them. In the Opera House the gossip faded and died as Lady Sybil stepped through the curtains and on to the stage. She was a woman of, as they say, ample proportions, although she felt that some of them were more than ample. However, she could afford the very best dressmakers and did indeed have the manner and poise that were the symbol of her class, or at least the class she had been born into, and so she stepped out front of curtain and applause broke out and grew. When she judged that it had gone on long enough she made a little gesture which magically silenced the auditorium. Lady Sybil had exactly the right voice for these occasions. Somehow she could make everybody think she was talking just to them. She said, ‘My Lord Patrician, Lady Margolotta, your grace the viceroy, ambassadors, ladies and gentlemen, I am so touched you have all decided to come along to my little twilight soirée, especially since I have been rather naughty and have been very sparing of information.’ Lady Sybil took a deep breath, which caused several elderly gentlemen near the front of the audience to very nearly burst into tears.35 ‘I have been privileged recently to find a musician beyond compare, and without more ado I will let you into this wonderful secret. Can we have the house lights down, Jeffrey? Good. Ladies and gentlemen, I am honoured to be able to present to you tonight Tears of the Mushroom playing her own composition, the “Twilight Serenade”. I hope you will like it, and, in fact, I know that you will.’ Lady Sybil stepped back as the curtains dragged themselves aside, and took a chair next to Tears of the Mushroom, who was seated obediently at her concert harp. Beneath the seemingly impregnable composure, Sybil’s heart was bouncing like a flamenco dancer. A low light – that had been the thing. The girl shouldn’t be able to see the thousands out there. Sybil had taken her in hand, fearful that sudden exposure to the massed gaze of Ankh-Morpork, far from her home, would have some terrible effect, but in fact it wasn’t working like that. The girl had a curious tranquillity, as if she hadn’t realized that she should be in awe. She smiled at Sybil in her strange way and waited, with fingers poised, over the strings. There was no sound but the susurration of people asking one another what the intense little figure they were seeing really was. Lady Sybil smiled to herself. By the time they realized, it would be too late. She looked at her watch. The flames were so high over the Ramkin estate that the blaze could surely be seen all the way to Ankh-Morpork (bet you a gallon of brandy and a brace of turbot). There was barely any wind and it stood there like a beacon. Vimes announced to the gathered throng, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the area known as the Shires is under the rule of law tonight, and by that I mean the proper law, the law that is written down for everybody to see, and even to be changed if enough people agree. Chief Constable Upshot and Constable Jefferson are currently acting with the backing of their colleagues in the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, who would like to be assured that their colleagues receive the respect that is due. At this moment, a number of people from the Shires are being courteously brought here, although possibly to their dismay. Some of them will be the people who call themselves your magistrates and they will be taken away and asked to explain to a lawyer by what right they have assumed that position. If any one of you wants to argue with me, please come on and do so. The law is there for the people, rather than the other way round. When it is the other way round don’t hesitate to grab your weapons, understand? The bar is still free, BUT BEFORE YOU STAMPEDE, THERE IS ONE MORE THING!’ Vimes had to put the megaphone back to his mouth because the mention of ‘bar’ and ‘free’ in one breath has an invigorating effect on people. ‘Right now, ladies and gentlemen, the goblins on Hangman’s Hill, and indeed all other goblins in this area, are under my protection and the protection of the law. They are also subject to it, and I’ll see to it that they have their own police force. It appears that they make natural clacks operators, so if they wish they can derive a revenue from so doing. I’m paying to have that clacks tower made permanent. You will benefit from it and so will they! They won’t need to steal your chickens because they’ll buy them from you, and if they do pinch them, then that’s a crime and will be treated as such. One law, ladies and gentlemen … One size fits all!’ There was a cheer at this, as loud as any cheer in the vicinity of the prospect of a free bar can be. Of course, some of it might have been cheer at the fact that there was now some justice in the world, but on the whole it was quite likely that the bar won the day. You didn’t have to be a cynic, you just had to understand people. Vimes walked slowly towards the brightly lit pub, although the chances of getting inside were small. On the other hand, the chances of being given a hug by Miss Felicity Beedle were exactly one hundred per cent, because that was what she was doing, while being watched sheepishly by the blacksmith. He let go of her hand as she said, ‘You are a great man, commander, and I hope they put up a statue to you!’ ‘Oh dear, I hope not! You only get a statue when you’re dead!’ She laughed, but Vimes said, ‘Listen, Miss Beedle, right now I don’t know if I’m facing a statue or the sack. Some of the ways I’ve acted have been quite lawful, and others have been somewhat … debatable. I have an officer who can do with numbers what Sergeant Detritus can do with a hammer and he’s going through the records of the son of one of the most influential people in Ankh-Morpork. And at the same time experienced police officers have visited the home of every member on the list of local magistrates. They are presenting them with a document, under my seal, informing them that they are no longer members of the self-elected board of magistrates of the Shires and reiterating that there may be formal charges to be made. My justification for this ought to work, but now? It’s probably going to be a case of who has the best lawyers. ‘The future, Miss Beedle, is somewhat uncertain, but I have to tell you that Young Sam, thanks to you, is probably going to be the world expert on poo. I must tell you that his mother and I are very pleased and only hope he aspires to higher things.’ There was already the rattle of wagons and coaches in the distance; the sound of pigeons coming home to roost. ‘I think I’ll soon have people to talk to, Miss Beedle, although I suspect that they’d rather not talk to me.’ ‘Of course, commander. Can I say that the goblins seem very attached to your Corporal Nobbs? They treat him as one of their own, in fact, and he seems to be very fond of Shine of the Rainbow, as she is of him. You may be interested to know that the goblin name for him is Breaking Wind?’ She did not appear to smile and Vimes said, ‘Yes, very apt. I’ve always thought of Nobby as a draught-extruder. In fact, at my wife’s express suggestion I have breveted him to the rank of sergeant for his stay here, and I hope that he’ll assist the goblins to understand the benefits of the law – although, of course, the fusion might simply mean that people’s chickens will be more expertly stolen from now on.’ ‘Oh, you are a joker, commander!’ Vimes’s expression had not changed and did not change now. ‘Yes, aren’t I?’ He turned to Jefferson. ‘You know, things would have been a lot easier if you’d trusted me at the start.’ The blacksmith shrugged. ‘Why should I have trusted you? You’re a nob.’ ‘Do you trust me now?’ The blacksmith’s gaze remained steady for longer than Vimes could be happy with, but at last the man smiled and said, ‘Yeah, for now.’ There was only one reply that Vimes could conceivably deliver. He smiled back and said, ‘A policeman’s answer if ever I heard one.’ As the couple strolled away there was a polite cough behind Vimes. He turned round and recognized the worried face of the colonel. ‘Do you have a minute, commander?’ Oh dear, thought Vimes. ‘May I first say, commander, that I firmly agree with what you are doing and heavens know it needed doing.’ The colonel coughed again and said, ‘You will not have any disagreement with me on that point.’ Vimes waited and he continued, ‘My wife is a rather foolish woman who does appear to worship things like titles and, if I may say so, gives herself airs. Her father was a fisherman, an extremely good one, but do you know what? I think she would rather die than have anyone know.’ There was another pause, and in the red light Vimes could see the shine on the old man’s face. ‘What is going to happen to her, commander? At the moment, two polite young ladies in Ankh-Morpork City Watch uniform are standing guard over her in our house. I don’t know if this helps very much, but the first thing she did when the arresting officers arrived was make them tea. There is such a thing as good manners, you see. Is she going to prison?’ Vimes felt the urge to say, ‘Would you like her to?’ but he choked it back, because of the tears. ‘It’s Charles, isn’t it?’ The colonel looked surprised. ‘As a matter of fact, commander, it’s Chas to my friends.’ ‘Am I one of them?’ And Vimes went on, ‘Other people will decide what has to be done here. I’ve merely made certain that nobody can inadvertently leave before I’ve had a chance to talk to them all, do you understand? I’m not the judge and nor would I be allowed to sit on a jury. Coppers aren’t. And right now I’m not even certain what the penalty is for being stupid, vain and unthinking, although it does occur to me that if I was to put in prison every person guilty of these crimes we’d have to build about five hundred more. ‘Speaking for myself,’ he continued, ‘I’d like to see that murderers, if such I might find, are seen and dealt with as murderers, and the frightened and unthinking obedient also treated as they deserve. And right now, sir, I’d just like to not be living in a world of bloody fools. Personally, I have no particular interest in seeing your wife in prison, although I have a suspicion that if she was put in the women’s wing of the Tanty her horizon would be usefully expanded and I expect she’d be so bossy that she’d be running the place after a couple of weeks.’ ‘I do love her, you know,’ said the colonel. ‘We’ve been married for fifty-five years. I’m very sorry you’ve been troubled and, as I’ve said, I envy you your job.’ ‘I think, perhaps, I should envy her her husband,’ said Vimes. ‘You know, colonel, I’ll be happy just for the truth to come out, preferably on page one of the Ankh-Morpork Times, if you understand me.’ ‘Absolutely, commander.’ Vimes looked down at the man, who now looked rather relieved, and added, ‘For what it’s worth, I suspect Lord Vetinari will make certain of his backing and possibly there will be some token punishments. Too many skeletons, you see, too many cupboards. Too many things around the world that maybe happened too long ago. What in the world can you do if some copper is going to go around digging them up? That’s called real politik, sir, and so I suspect that the world will go on and you will not be very long without the company of your wife, which should, if I’m any judge, mean that you can have more or less anything for dinner that you want for the next week.’ The idea seemed to lift the colonel’s spirits. The old man smiled. ‘Do you know, commander, I’m sure that, if treated with respect, potted shrimps might turn out to be my bosom chums.’ The colonel held out his hand and Vimes took it, shook it and said, ‘Bon appétit.’ Afterwards, there were several explanations about why the Quirm wagon containing a very important prisoner overturned in the middle of the night and rolled down a very steep hill, coming to bits as it did so. You could blame the dark, you could blame the fog, you could blame its speed and above all you could blame the express mail coach from Ankh-Morpork that ran straight into it on the corner. By the time the wounded were in any state to comprehend what had happened they were minus one prisoner, who appeared to have picked the lock of his shackles, and plus one guard whose throat had been cut. It was dark, it was cold, it was foggy and, hunched together, the survivors waited until dawn. After all, how could you find a man in darkness? Stratford was good at speed. Speed was always useful, and he stayed on the road that was just visible in the murk. It didn’t really matter where he went; after all, he knew no one had ever given a description of him that helped. It was a gift to be indescribable. After a while, however, he was surprised and delighted to hear a horse trotting along the road behind him. Some brave traveller, he thought, and smiled in the fog and waited. To his further surprise, the horse was reined to a halt a little way from him and the rider slid off. Stratford could barely make out a shape in the shimmering, water-laden air. ‘My word! The famous Mister Stratford,’ said a voice cheerfully, as the stranger strolled towards him. ‘And let me tell you right now, if you make any kind of move you’ll be so dead that the graveyards would have to run backwards.’ ‘I know you! Vimes sent you, after me?’ ‘Oh, dear me no, sir,’ said Willikins. ‘The commander doesn’t know I’m here at all, sir, and nor will he ever. That is a certainty. No, sir, I’m here, as it might be, out of a matter of professional pride. By the way, sir, if you’re thinking of killing me and taking my horse I’d be most grateful if you’d try that right now.’ Stratford hesitated. There was something about the voice that induced hesitation. It was calm, friendly, and … worrying. Willikins strolled a little closer and there was a chuckle in his voice. ‘My word, sir, I’m a bit of a fighter myself, and when I heard about you chopping up that girl and that, I thought, goodness me, I thought. And so the other day, when I had my day off in lieu – very important your day off in lieu, if you’re a working man – I took a trip up to Overhang and learned a few things about you, and, my word, did I learn a few things. You really scare people, eh?’ Stratford still hesitated. This didn’t sound right. The man had a straightforward and cheerful voice, like a man you didn’t know very well having a companionable chat in the pub, and Stratford was used to people being very nervous when they spoke to him. ‘Now, me,’ said Willikins, ‘I was raised by the street as a fighter and I fight dirty, you can depend on that, and I’ll fight anybody, but I never punched a girl … oh, except Kinky Elsie, who was always game for that sort of thing and had me by the I’m-not-going-to-mentions at the time and my hands were tied, in more ways than one, as it were, and so I had to give her a sharp nudge with my foot. Happy days. But you? You’re just a killer. Worthless. A bully. I fight because I might get killed and the other bloke might win, or maybe we’d both end up in the gutter, too weak to throw another punch, when, quite likely, we’d prop each other up and go to the pub for a drink and a wash.’ He took another step closer. Stratford took a step back. ‘And you, Mister Stratford, set out to kill Commander Vimes’s little lad, or worse. And do you know what is even worser? I reckon that if you’d done so, the commander would have arrested you and dragged you to the nearest police station. But inside he’d be cutting himself up with razorblades from top to bottom. And he’d be doing that because the poor bugger is scared that he could be as bad as you.’ Willikins laughed. ‘Truth is, Mister Stratford, from where I sit he’s a choirboy, he really is, but there has to be some justice in the world, you see, not necessarily law justice, but justice justice, and that’s why I am going to kill you. Although, because I’m a fair man, I’m going to give you a chance to kill me first. That means one or other of us will die, so whatever happens the world is going to be a better place, eh? Call it … cleaning up. I know you have a weapon because you’d have run if you didn’t, and so I reckon you have a blade from one of those poor buggers from Quirm and I warrant that in all the confusion you probably stabbed him with it.’ ‘I did, too,’ said Stratford. ‘And he was a copper and you’re just a butler.’ ‘Very true,’ said Willikins, ‘and much older than you and heavier than you and slower than you, but still a bit spry. What’ve you got to lose?’ Only the horse, steaming patiently in the mist, saw what happened next, and being a horse was in no position to articulate its thoughts on the matter. Had it been able to do so it would have given as its opinion that one human ran towards another human carrying a huge metal stick while the other human quite calmly put his hand into his breast pocket. This was followed by a terrible scream, a gurgling noise and then silence. Willikins staggered to the side of the road and sat down on a stone, panting a little. Stratford certainly had been fast, no doubt about that. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve, pulled out a packet of cigarettes and lit one, staring at nothing but the fog. Then he stood up, looked down at the shadow on the ground and said, ‘But not fast enough.’ Then, like a good citizen, Willikins went back to see if he could help the unlucky gentlemen of the law, who appeared to be in difficulties. You should always help the gentlemen of the law. Where would we be without them? The chief sub-editor of the Ankh-Morpork Times really hated poetry. He was a plain man and had devoted a large part of his career to keeping it out of his paper. But they were a cunning bunch, poets, and could sneak it up on you when your back was turned. And tonight, with the paper already so late that the lads downstairs were into overtime, he stared at the report just delivered by hand from Knatchbull Harrington, the paper’s music critic. A man of whom he was deeply suspicious. He turned to his deputy and waved the page angrily. ‘“Whence came it, that ethereal music?” See what I mean? What’s wrong with “Where did that music come from”? Bloody stupid introductory sentence in any case. And what does ethereal mean, anyway?’ The deputy sub hesitated. ‘I think it means runny. Could be wrong.’ The chief sub-editor stood in misery. ‘Definitely poetry!’ Somebody had played some music that was very good. Apparently it made everybody amazed. Why didn’t that twit in his rather feminine purple silk shirts just write something like that? After all, it said everything that you needed to know, didn’t it? He took out his red pencil, and just as he was applying it to the wretched manuscript there was a sound on the metal staircase and Mr de Worde, the editor, staggered into the office, looking as if he had seen a ghost or, perhaps, a ghost had seen him. He looked groggily at the two puzzled men and managed to say, ‘Did Harrington send in his stuff?’ The chief sub held out the offending stuff in front of him. ‘Yes, guv, a load of rubbish in my opinion.’ De Worde grabbed it, read it with his lips moving and thrust it back at the man. ‘Don’t you dare change a single word. Front page, Bugsy, and I hope to hell that Otto got an iconograph.’ ‘Yessir, but, sir—’ ‘And don’t bloody argue!’ screamed de Worde. ‘And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be in my office.’ He clattered on up the stairs while the sub-editor and his deputy stood gloomily reading Knatchbull Harrington’s copy again. It began: Whence came it, that ethereal music, from what hidden grot or secret cell? From what dark cave? From what window into paradise? We watched the tiny figure under the spotlight and the music poured over us, sometimes soothing, sometimes blessing, sometimes accusing. Every one of us confronting ghosts, demons and old memories. The recital by Tears of the Mushroom, a young lady of the goblin persuasion, took but half an hour or, perhaps, it took a lifetime, and then it was over, to a silence which spread and grew and expanded until at last it exploded. Every single patron standing and clapping their hands raw, tears running down our faces. We had been taken somewhere and brought back and we were different people, longing for another journey into paradise, no matter what hell we had to atone for on the way. The chief sub and his deputy looked at each other with what Knatchbull would certainly have called a ‘wild surmise’. At last, the deputy sub-editor ventured, ‘I think he liked it.’ Three days passed. They were busy days for Vimes. He had to get back into the swing again, although, to tell the truth, it was a case of getting out of one swing and into another one, while they were both swinging. So much paperwork to read! So much paperwork to push away! So much paperwork to delegate! So much paperwork to pretend he hadn’t received and might have been eaten by the gargoyles. But today, in the Oblong Office, Lord Vetinari was close to ranting. Admittedly you needed to know him very well to realize this. He drummed his fingers on the table. ‘Snarkenfaugister? I’m sure she makes these things up!’ Drumknott carefully put a cup of coffee on his master’s desk. ‘Alas, sir, there really is such a word. In Nothingfjord it means a maker of small but necessary items such as, for example, spills and very small clothes pegs for indoor use and half-sized cocktail sticks for people who don’t drink long drinks. The term could be considered of historical interest, because my research this morning turned up the fact that the last known snarkenfaugister died twenty-seven years ago in a freak pencil-sharpener accident. As a matter of fact, I gather that your crossword adversary herself does actually come from Nothingfjord.’ ‘Ah! There you have it! All those long winters sitting around the stove! Such terrible patience! But she runs the pet shop in Pellicool Steps! Dog collars! Cat biscuits! Mealworms! Such deviousness! Such subterfuge! Such a vocabulary! Snarkenfaugister!’ ‘Well, sir, she is now the chief crossword compiler for the Times, and I suppose those things go with the territory.’ Lord Vetinari calmed down. ‘One down, one across. She has won and I am cross. And, as you know, I am very rarely cross, Drumknott. A calm if cynical detachment is generally my forte. I can change the fate of nations but am thwarted at every turn by an apparently blameless lady who compiles crosswords!’ Drumknott nodded. ‘Indeed, sir, but on that note, if you will permit me to extend that note a little, may I remind you that Commander Vimes is waiting in the other room.’ ‘Indeed? Show him in, by all means.’ Vimes marched in, saluted very nearly smartly, and stood to attention. ‘Ah, your grace, it is good to see you back at last. How went your holidays, apart from lawless actions, ad hoc activities, fights, chases on both land and sea and indeed fresh water, unauthorized expenditure and, of course, farting in the halls of the mighty?’ Vimes’s gaze was steady and just above the Patrician’s eye line. ‘Point of detail, my lord: didn’t fart, may have picked nose inadvertently.’ ‘The exigencies of the service, I assume?’ said Lord Vetinari wryly. ‘Vimes, you have caused a considerable amount of paperwork to cross my desk in the last few days. In some cases the writers wanted your head on a plate, others were more circumspect because the writers were in mortal dread of a prison cell. Can I make one thing perfectly clear, your grace, the law cannot operate retrospectively. If it did, none of us would be safe. ‘Lord Rust junior may have done, indeed has done many bad things, but making slaves of goblins under current law cannot be one of them. However, as I suspect, the recent revelations about his additional activities have done his reputation a considerable amount of no good. You might not know this, Vimes, but in society this sort of thing can be worse than a prison sentence, possibly worse than a death. Young Gravid is a man with not many friends right now. I hope that will give you some pleasure.’ Vimes said nothing, but he thought, The ball dropped. Vetinari glared at him and said, ‘I have here an eloquent missive from Lord Rust senior, pleading for the life of, if not the freedom of, his son, who he fully admits has trodden the family honour into the mud.’ Lord Vetinari held up a hand. ‘His lordship is an old man and so, Vimes, if your next remark was going to be something on the lines of even further then I suggest you deploy a little charity. His lordship is anxious to avoid a scandal. Apart from that, may I have your views?’ ‘Yes. The scandal has already taken place, sir, more than once,’ said Vimes coldly. ‘He trafficked in living, breathing and thinking people. Many of them died!’ ‘Once again, Vimes, I have to tell you that laws cannot be made retrospectively.’ ‘That may be so,’ said Vimes, ‘but what about the troll kids, who took that damn rubbish? Are you going to ask the Diamond King if they should be retrospective?’ ‘I can assure you, Vimes, that the laws will be upheld, and since you ask, right now I am having to negotiate with the King, who is demanding, demanding of me – me, Vimes – that young Lord Rust be handed over for questioning regarding the manufacture and distribution of absolutely deadly troll narcotics. Of course, under troll law the wretched man would be put to death, and I am saddened to say that at this moment in the complex world of human, troll and dwarven politics, I feel that that might have some long-term repercussions, making it an unfortunate option for this city. I have to negotiate this problem, and, believe me, it’s going to take a lot of quid for the pro quo. And it’s only nine thirty in the morning!’ Vimes’s knuckles reddened. ‘They are living creatures who can talk and think and have songs and names, and he treated them like some kind of disposable tools.’ ‘Indeed, Vimes, but, as I have indicated, goblins have always been considered a kind of vermin. However, Ankh-Morpork, the kingdom of the Low King and also that of the Diamond King, Uberwald, Lancre and all the independent cities of the plain are passing a law to the effect that goblins will henceforth be considered as sapient beings, equal to, if not the same as, trolls and dwarfs and humans and werewolves, et cetera et cetera, answerable to what we have agreed to call “the common law” and also protected by it. That means killing one would be a capital crime. You have won, commander, you have won. Because of a song, commander. Oh, and of course other efforts, but it was your wife who got most of the ambassadors to her little amusement which, I may say, Vimes, was eloquence personified. Though frankly, Vimes, I find myself shamed. One spends one’s life scheming, negotiating, giving and taking and greasing such wheels as squeak, and in general doing one’s best to stop this battered old world from exploding into pieces. And now, because of a piece of music, Vimes, a piece of music, some very powerful states have agreed to work together to heal the problems of another autonomous state and, almost as collateral, turn some animals into people at a stroke. Can you imagine that, Vimes? In what world could that possibly happen? All because of a song at twilight, Vimes. All because of a song. It was a thing of strangely tinkling tones and unbelievable cadences which somehow found its way into our souls, reminding some of us that we have some. Lady Sybil is worth a dozen diplomats. You are a lucky man, commander.’ Vimes opened his mouth to speak, but Vetinari interrupted. ‘And also a bloody fool, a bloody, headstrong fool. The law must start with a crime? I understand, but don’t condone.’ Vetinari picked the letter off his desk. ‘Lord Rust asks that his son be given a moderately short sentence, subsequent to which he be allowed to emigrate to Fourecks, to start a new life. Since the man was deeply involved in smuggling the fine will be harsh.’ He held up a hand. ‘No, hear me out; after all, I am the tyrant in this vicinity.’ Vetinari slumped into his chair, wiped his brow and said, ‘And I have already lost my temper with an otherwise inoffensive sweet lady who compiles crossword puzzles for the Times. However, Vimes, Lord Rust refers to you as a man of honour and probity and astonishing integrity and vigilance. Moreover, he is disinheriting his son, which means upon his death his title will devolve to his daughter Regina, a ferocious woman, very difficult and hot-headed. And that, Vimes, creates another problem for me. His lordship is extremely frail and, frankly, I was looking forward to dealing with the son, who is an ignorant, arrogant, pompous idiot, but his sister? She is smart!’ and then, almost to himself, Lord Vetinari added, ‘But at least she doesn’t compile crosswords … Now you may speak, commander.’ ‘There was a murder,’ said Vimes sullenly. Vetinari sighed hugely. ‘No, Vimes! There was a slaughter! Do you not understand? At that point goblins were vermin and no, do not shout at me! At this very moment in palaces and chancelleries all over the world goblins are becoming as human as you or I, but that was then. I would like you to be fully aware that the reason that Stratford would have gone to the tender mercies of Mister Trooper is that he and his ruffians boarded the Enormous Fanny—Yes, what is it?’ Vetinari looked round as Drumknott tapped him on the shoulder. There was a muffled whispering before Vetinari cleared his throat and said, ‘Of course, I meant the Wonderful Fanny,’ and he did not exactly meet Vimes’s gaze as he continued. ‘That was an act of piracy and the good people of Quirm, where the … boat in question was registered, are all in favour of the death penalty for that kind of thing. I am aware of his manifold other crimes but, alas, you can only hang a man once … Although, as it turned out, apparently Mister Stratford was mortally wounded in a collision three nights ago, being thrown some distance from the wreckage with a surgically cut throat. Convenient, don’t you think?’ ‘Don’t you dare look at me like that, sir.’ ‘Heavens, I wouldn’t accuse you, commander, I was just wondering if you knew of any other person with a grudge against the corpse?’ ‘Nosir,’ said Vimes, pulling himself to attention. ‘You know, Vimes, sometimes your expression becomes so wooden that I think I could make a table out of it. Just tell me this: did you give any instructions?’ How does he do it? thought Vimes. How? Out loud he said, ‘I don’t know what you are talking about, sir, but if what I suspect to be true is so, then the answer is no. If there was any foul play that night it wasn’t by my order. I wanted to see Stratford on the gallows. That’s legal.’ And he thought, I am never going to broach the subject with Willikins. Vetinari’s eyebrows rose as Vimes went on, ‘But his lordship’s wretched son is being allowed to go on a long holiday full of sun, sea, surf and sand and economically priced wines!’ He slammed his fist on the desk and Vetinari looked pointedly at it until Vimes took it away. ‘Are you going to leave it at that?’ ‘It has been known, as people put it, for the leopard to change its shorts. All of us hope for a little redemption, whether we deserve it or not. We will keep an eye on the young fool, you can be certain of that.’ ‘Oh, you’re sending the Dark Clerks after him?’ ‘Vimes, the Dark Clerks are a myth, as everybody knows. To tell you the truth, some flunkey from our embassy down there will pay attention to his progress. And now the world is a better place, commander. You have no understanding, Vimes, no understanding at all of the deals, stratagems and unseen expedients by which some of us make shift to see that it remains that way. Do not seek perfection. None exists. All we can do is strive. Understand this, commander, because from where I sit you have no alternative. And remember, for this week’s work you will be remembered. Lord Rust may not like it but news travels fast. The truth will be known and written down in the history books.’ Vetinari gave a wan smile. ‘It will, I shall see to it. And, slightly better than before, the world will continue to turn.’ Vetinari picked up yet another piece of paper, appearing to glance at it, and said, ‘You may go, commander, in the knowledge that I, for so many reasons, envy you. My regards to your good lady.’ Vimes looked at Drumknott. The man’s face so assiduously betrayed nothing that it betrayed everything. Vetinari pulled a file towards him and picked up his pen. ‘Don’t let me detain you, commander.’ An hour later Lord Vetinari was sitting at his desk with his fingers steepled, apparently lost in thought, staring at the ceiling, and, to Drumknott’s surprise, occasionally waving his hand as if conducting some hidden music. Drumknott knew enough not to disturb him, but at last he dared to say, ‘It was a most memorable recital, wasn’t it, sir?’ Vetinari ceased being the invisible conductor and said, brightly, ‘Yes, it was, wasn’t it? They say that the eyes of some paintings can follow you around the room, a fact that I doubt, but I am wondering whether some music can follow you for ever.’ He appeared to pull himself together and continued, ‘On the whole, the Rust dynasty, though not exactly empowered with brains, tends to be an honourable and patriotic bunch, by and large, am I not right, Drumknott?’ Drumknott meticulously and unnecessarily tidied some paperwork and said, ‘It is indeed so. Young Gravid is a regrettable exception.’ ‘Do you think him beyond redemption?’ said Vetinari. ‘Quite likely not,’ said Drumknott, carefully folding a pen wiper. ‘However, Arachne is working in Fourecks at the moment as a filing clerk in our embassy. She pleaded for the position because she’s particularly attracted by venomous spiders.’ ‘Well, I suppose every girl should have a hobby,’ said Vetinari. ‘And are there a lot of them in Fourecks?’ ‘The place is positively overwhelmed, I am given to understand, sir, and apparently Arachne already has a large selection of them.’ Vetinari said nothing, but remained sitting with eyes closed. Drumknott cleared his throat. ‘They do say, sir, that in the end all sins are forgiven?’ Reluctantly, Havelock, Lord Vetinari tore his recollection away from the wondrous music that he longed to hear again. ‘Not all, Drumknott, not all.’ In bed that night in Scoone Avenue, listening to the absence of owls and nightjars, Vimes said, ‘You know, dear, I’ll have to go back to the Shires soon. Feeney is a good lad but they need a proper headquarters and the right kind of guidance and that doesn’t mean just Nobby Nobbs and Fred Colon.’ Sybil turned over. ‘Oh, I don’t know, Sam. Fred and Nobby aren’t as bad as all that and might be all that’s needed right now. I mean, they’re coppers, but they amble about extremely slowly and on the whole it’s good to see them around. Right now you’ve got two young men full of vim and vigour and if you don’t want to upset things it might just be that, in that bewildered place, they should be backed up by slow and steady, don’t you think?’ ‘You are, as always, right, my dear.’ ‘Besides, I’ve seen Fred, and having to rethink his world view has clearly shaken him a little.’ ‘He’ll get over it,’ said Vimes. ‘Once you get past the stupid Fred there is, against all expectations, a decent man there.’ Sybil sighed. ‘Yes, Sam, but that decent man needs a holiday out in the sunshine away from the smoke and the grime and the terrible spells.’ ‘But they’re the best bits!’ said Vimes, laughing. ‘No, he needs a holiday. Everybody needs a holiday, Sam, even you.’ ‘I’ve just had one, dear, thank you.’ ‘No, you had a few days interspersed with fighting and floods and murders and I don’t know what else. Look at your desk, make certain everybody is on their toes, and then we’ll go down there for another week, do you hear me, Sam Vimes?’ 1 The exchange scheme with the Quirm gendarmerie was working very well: they were getting instruction on policing à la Vimes, while the food in the Pseudopolis Yard canteen had been improved out of all recognition by Captain Emile, even though he used far too much avec. 2 And thenceforth would be glad to get a gentle second place in almost every domestic decision. Lady Sybil took the view that her darling husband’s word was law for the City Watch while, in her own case, it was a polite suggestion to be graciously considered. 3 Apart, that is, from the line of artistically naked ladies along its parapets. They were holding urns; urns is art. 4 It was tricky; to Vimes all men were equal but, well, obviously a sergeant wasn’t as equal as a captain and a captain wasn’t as equal as a commander and as for Corporal Nobby Nobbs … well, nobody could be the equal of Corporal Nobby Nobbs. 5 Metal, in the circumstances, would not be appropriate … or safe. 6 Not to mention Blackboard Monitor Vimes, a figure of note in dwarfish society. 7 Willikins was an excellent butler and/or gentleman’s gentleman when the occasion required it, but in a long career he had also been an enthusiastic street fighter, and knew enough never to turn his back on anybody who could possibly have a weapon on them. 8 Later on Vimes pondered Willikins’ accurate grasp of the plural noun in the circumstances, but there you were; if someone hung around in houses with lots of books in them, some of it rubbed off just as, come to think of it, it had on Vimes. 9 More than once watchmen had found handwritten suicide notes which on careful examination weren’t in the right handwriting. 10 Saddle pork was invented some time around the Year of the Stoat by Reverend Joseph ‘Causality’ Robinson, rector of All Saints and Three Sinners in the parish of Lower Overhang. As far as can be determined from notes made by his contemporaries, the game may be considered an amalgam of spillikins, halma and brandy. No known rules exist, if, indeed, there ever really were any. 11 Sybil had explained to Vimes that in the country one dresses at least a decade earlier than in the city, hence the bustle, and, for Vimes, a pair of breeches: the ancient ones with trap doors front and rear and a slightly distressing smell all over. 12 See Dr Bentley Purchase, The Vicar is Coming to Tea and One Hundred and Twenty-seven Other Warnings of Social Embarrassment (Unseen University Press). 13 It was all a mystery to Vimes, who was absolutely sure that it was impossible to tell the difference between a chicken fart and a turkey fart, but there were those who professed to be able to do so, and he was glad that such people had chosen this outlet for their puzzling inclinations rather than, for example, fill their sink with human skulls, collected in the high street. 14 Because he wasn’t allowed much time talking. 15 The fourth Gumption to run the tobacco house and snuff mill felt that his surname lacked prestige, and for some reason chose the name ‘Bewilderforce’ – which did indeed become prestigious owing to the success of his tobacco enterprise, which was extremely well thought of by the gentry and others. And thereafter there was at least one Bewilderforce in every generation of the line (although girls were generally named Bewildred). 16 A glint is, in fact, a visual tinkle. 17 This is, of course, absolutely true. 18 The Colons had survived a long and happy marriage by having as little to do with each other as possible. This was achieved by the expedient of his working the night shift when she was working days, and vice versa. They had agreed this on the basis that anything else would have spoiled the romance. 19 Strictly speaking, the sexuality of any given dwarf remained a secret between him, or, as it might be, her, and his or, as it might be, her mother, until they decided to tell someone else about it, although generally you could work it out by observing dwarfs closely and spotting the ones who were drinking sherry or light white wine. Regrettably, this didn’t always work with dwarf policemen, because like all policemen everywhere they would drink anything strong enough to help them forget what they’d had to deal with that day. 20 According to dwarf lore the universe was written into being by Tak, who also wrote its lores. All writing is sacred to the dwarfs. 21 However that might be rendered in a language that at its best sounded like a man jumping up and down on a very large packet of crisps. 22 Regrettably, Constable Upshot was overly hopeful: in Ankh-Morpork the mice and the cockroaches had decided to forget their differences and gang up on the humans. 23 Which were, in fact, a permanency in any case. 24 Wee Mad Arthur was, as a Feegle, a very economical watchman to have, given that, size for size, he ate in a year what human watchmen ate in a week, although it had to be admitted he could drink, size for size, more alcohol in a week than any human watchman could drink in a year. 25 The first two being common theft and public indecency. 26 A race of freshwater mariners found everywhere in and around the Sto Plains. They are said to be incapable of lying, although this piece of information has been provided by the Zoons themselves, causing, as it were, a philosophical conundrum. Certainly it is maintained that they find the concept of a lie so difficult to understand that the few among them who have mastered the technique are venerated and given high office in Zoon society. 27 Technically, the violent surge of water on Old Treachery was written down in technical manuals as a Dam Slam, but anyone who has experienced one learns to swear, hence the subtle change of name. 28 Constable Haddock’s immediate nickname when he joined the force was Kipper, because policemen’s minds worked that way. 29 Or three or four, as far as Vimes the landlubber was concerned. 30 The sound of the gentle rattle of china cup on china saucer drives away all demons, a little-known fact. 31 The Three Disgraces were apparently the daughters of Blind Io (but you know how people talk); they were Nudicia, Pulchritudia and Voluptia. 32 That is to say, something bigger than he in fact is, which will turn very nasty if you think you can give this copper in front of you now a seeing-to because you are afloat to the tonsils on beer. 33 Or, perhaps, somebody else’s. 34 For those unfamiliar with them, periwinkles, like cockles and whelks, might be considered the snot of the sea. 35 It had been said by someone years before that to see Sybil Ramkin’s upholstered bosom rise and fall was to understand the history of empires. EPILOGUE AND THREE MONTHS later Sam Vimes went on holiday again, and this time he was allowed to steer the Black-Eyed Susan all the way to Quirm, hardly hitting anything important, and was so happy that they had to find another cat full of sixpences for him to be as happy as. He was amazed at how much fun a holiday could be, but not so amazed as he was eight months after that when he and Sybil were invited to be guests at the wedding of Ms Emily Gordon to the eldest son of Sir Abuthknott Makewar, owner of the famous Makewar pottery manufactory and incidentally the inventor of Makewar’s Crispy Nuts, the breakfast cereal of champions, without whose nourishing roughage the bowels of Ankh-Morpork would be more congested than was good for them. The Vimeses’ wedding present was a silver egg coddler, Sybil being of the view that you can’t go wrong with a coddled egg. And Vimes was gratified when he noticed at the ceremony that one of the Gordon daughters was wearing a spanking new nurse’s uniform, and three others were sporting some quite fabulous and also, to Sybil’s great glee, quite scandalous bonnets from the new Gordon Bonnets range. There was an apology from the axe-wielding Hermione, who, according to her mother, was detained in the woods dealing with a very large and troublesome Pinus, which caused Vimes’s face to go blank until Sybil nudged him and pointed out that Pinus strobus was the official name for the white pine. But most of all, later that year, Vimes was totally amazed to find that the bestselling novel taking the Ankh-Morpork literary world by storm was dedicated to Commander Samuel Vimes. The title of the book was Pride and Extreme Prejudice. About the Author Terry Pratchett is the acclaimed creator of the global bestselling Discworld series, the first of which, The Colour of Magic, was published in 1983. In all, he is the author of fifty bestselling books. His novels have been widely adapted for stage and screen, and he is the winner of multiple prizes, including the Carnegie Medal, as well as being awarded a knighthood for services to literature. Worldwide sales of his books now stand at 70 million, and they have been translated into thirty-seven languages. BOOKS BY TERRY PRATCHETT The Discworld® series 1. THE COLOUR OF MAGIC 2. THE LIGHT FANTASTIC 3. EQUAL RITES 4. MORT 5. SOURCERY 6. WYRD SISTERS 7. PYRAMIDS 8. GUARDS! GUARDS! 9. ERIC (illustrated by Josh Kirby) 10. MOVING PICTURES 11. REAPER MAN 12. WITCHES ABROAD 13. SMALL GODS 14. LORDS AND LADIES 15. MEN AT ARMS 16. SOUL MUSIC 17. INTERESTING TIMES 18. MASKERADE 19. FEET OF CLAY 20. HOGFATHER 21. JINGO 22. THE LAST CONTINENT 23. CARPE JUGULUM 24. THE FIFTH ELEPHANT 25. THE TRUTH 26. THIEF OF TIME 27. THE LAST HERO (illustrated by Paul Kidby) 28. THE AMAZING MAURICE & HIS EDUCATED RODENTS (for younger readers) 29. NIGHT WATCH 30. THE WEE FREE MEN (for younger readers) 31. MONSTROUS REGIMENT 32. A HAT FULL OF SKY (for younger readers) 33. GOING POSTAL 34. THUD 35. WINTERSMITH (for younger readers) 36. MAKING MONEY 37. UNSEEN ACADEMICALS 38. I SHALL WEAR MIDNIGHT (for younger readers) Other books about Discworld THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD (with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen) THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD II: THE GLOBE (with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen) THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD III: DARWIN’S WATCH (with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen) THE NEW DISCWORLD COMPANION (with Stephen Briggs) NANNY OGG’S COOKBOOK (with Stephen Briggs, Tina Hannan and Paul Kidby) THE PRATCHETT PORTFOLIO (with Paul Kidby) THE DISCWORLD ALMANAK (with Bernard Pearson) THE UNSEEN UNIVERSITY CUT-OUT BOOK (with Alan Batley and Bernard Pearson) WHERE’S MY COW? (illustrated by Melvyn Grant) THE ART OF DISCWORLD (with Paul Kidby) THE WIT AND WISDOM OF DISCWORLD (compiled by Stephen Briggs) THE FOLKLORE OF DISCWORLD (with Jacqueline Simpson) Discworld maps THE STREETS OF ANKH-MORPORK (with Stephen Briggs, painted by Stephen Player) THE DISCWORLD MAPP (with Stephen Briggs, painted by Stephen Player) A TOURIST GUIDE TO LANCRE – A DISCWORLD MAPP (with Stephen Briggs, illustrated by Paul Kidby) DEATH’S DOMAIN (with Paul Kidby) A complete list of Terry Pratchett ebooks and audio books as well as other books based on the Discworld series – illustrated screenplays, graphic novels, comics and plays – can be found on www.terrypratchett.co.uk Non-Discworld books THE DARK SIDE OF THE SUN STRATA THE UNADULTERATED CAT (illustrated by Gray Jolliffe) GOOD OMENS (with Neil Gaiman) Non-Discworld novels for younger readers THE CARPET PEOPLE TRUCKERS DIGGERS WINGS ONLY YOU CAN SAVE MANKIND* JOHNNY AND THE DEAD JOHNNY AND THE BOMB NATION * www.ifnotyouthenwho.com TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS 61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA A Random House Group Company www.transworldbooks.co.uk First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Doubleday an imprint of Transworld Publishers Copyright © Terry and Lyn Pratchett 2011 Terry Pratchett has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work. This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Discworld® and Unseen University® are trademarks registered by Terry Pratchett A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781409011828 ISBN 9780385619264 This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly. Addresses for Random House Group Ltd companies outside the UK can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk The Random House Group Ltd Reg. No. 954009 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1 
Soul Music - Terry Pratchett	----	Soul Music   THE HISTORY This is a story about memory. And this much can be remembered . . . . . . that the Death of the Discworld, for reasons of his own, once rescued a baby girl and took her to his home between the dimensions. He let her grow to become sixteen because he believed that older children were easier to deal with than younger children, and this shows that you can be an immortal anthropomorphic personification and still get things, as it were, dead wrong . . . . . . that he later hired an apprentice called Mortimer, or Mort for short. Between Mort and Ysabell there was an instant dislike and everyone knows what that means in the long term. As a substitute for the Grim Reaper Mort was a spectacular failure, causing problems that led to a wobbling of Reality and a fight between him and Death which Mort lost . . . . . . and that, for reasons of his own, Death spared his life and sent him and Ysabell back into the world. No-one knows why Death started to take a practical interest in the human beings he had worked with for so long. It was probably just curiosity. Even the most efficient rat-catcher will sooner or later take an interest in rats. They might watch rats live and die, and record every detail of rat existence, although they may never themselves actually know what it is like to run the maze. But if it is true that the act of observing changes the thing which is observed[1], it's even more true that it changes the observer. Mort and Ysabell got married. They had a child. This is also a story about sex and drugs and Music With Rocks In. Well . . . . . . one out of three ain't bad. Actually, it's only thirty-three per cent, but it could be worse.   Where to finish? A dark, stormy night. A coach, horses gone, plunging through the rickety, useless fence and dropping, tumbling into the gorge below. It doesn't even strike an outcrop of rock before it hits the dried river-bed far below, and erupts into fragments. Miss Butts shuffled the paperwork nervously. Here was one from the girl aged six: What We Did On our Holidys: What I did On my holidys I staid with grandad he has a big White hors and a garden it is al Black. We had Eg and chips. Then the oil from the coach-lamps ignites and there is a second explosion, out of which rolls - because there are certain conventions, even in tragedy - a burning wheel. And another paper, a drawing done at age seven. All in black. Miss Butts sniffed. It wasn't as though the gel had only a black crayon. It was a fact that the Quirm College for Young Ladies had quite expensive crayons of all colours. And then, after the last of the ember spits and crackles, there is silence. And the watcher. Who turns, and says to someone in the darkness: YES. I COULD HAVE DONE SOMETHING. And rides away. Miss Butts shuffled paper again. She was feeling distracted and nervous, a feeling common to anyone who had much to do with the gel. Paper usually made her feel better. It was more dependable. Then there had been the matter of . . . the accident. Miss Butts had broken such news before. It was an occasional hazard when you ran a large boarding school. The parents of many of the gels were often abroad on business of one sort or another, and it was sometimes the kind of business where the chances of rich reward go hand in hand with the risks of meeting unsympathetic men. Miss Butts knew how to handle these occasions. It was painful, but the thing ran its course. There was shock and tears, and then, eventually, it was all over. People had ways of dealing with it. There was a sort of script built into the human mind. Life went on. But the child had just sat there. It was the politeness that scared the daylights out of Miss Butts. She was not an unkind woman, despite a lifetime of being gently dried out on the stove of education, but she was conscientious and a stickler for propriety and thought she knew how this sort of thing should go and was vaguely annoyed that it wasn't going. “Er . . . if you would like to be alone, to have a cry–” she'd prompted, in an effort to get things moving on the right track. “Would that help?” Susan had said. It would have helped Miss Butts. All she'd been able to manage was: “I wonder if, perhaps, you fully understood what I have told you?” The child had stared at the ceiling as though trying to work out a difficult problem in algebra and then said, “ I expect I will.” It was as if she'd already known, and had dealt with it in some way. Miss Butts had asked the teachers to watch Susan carefully. They'd said that was hard, because . . . There was a tentative knock on Miss Butts's study door, as if it was being made by someone who'd really prefer not to be heard. She returned to the present. “Come,” she said. The door swung open. Susan always made no sound. The teachers had all remarked upon it. It was uncanny, they said. She was always in front of you when you least expected it. “Ah, Susan,” said Miss Butts, a tight smile scuttling across her face like a nervous tick over a worried sheep. “Please sit down.” “Of course, Miss Butts.” Miss Butts shuffled the papers. “Susan . . .” “Yes, Miss Butts?” “I'm sorry to say that it appears you have been missed in lessons again.” “I don't understand, Miss Butts.” The headmistress leaned forward. She felt vaguely annoyed with herself, but . . . there was something frankly unlovable about the child. Academically brilliant at the things she liked doing, of course, but that was just it; she was brilliant in the same way that a diamond is brilliant, all edges and chilliness. “Have you been . . . doing it?” she said. “You promised you were going to stop this silliness.” “Miss Butts?” “You've been making yourself invisible again, haven't you?” Susan blushed. So, rather less pinkly, did Miss Butts. I mean, she thought, it's ridiculous. It's against all reason. It's- oh, no . . . She turned her head and shut her eyes. “Yes, Miss Butts?” said Susan, just before Miss Butts said, “Susan?” Miss Butts shuddered. This was something else the teachers had mentioned. Sometimes Susan answered questions just before you asked them . . . She steadied herself. “You're still sitting there, are you?” “Of course, Miss Butts.” Ridiculous. It wasn't invisibility, she told herself. She just makes herself inconspicuous. She . . . who . . . She concentrated. She'd written a little memo to herself against this very eventuality, and it was pinned to the file. She read: You are interviewing Susan Sto Helit. Try not to forget it. “Susan?” she ventured. “Yes, Miss Butts?” If Miss Butts concentrated, Susan was sitting in front of her. If she made an effort, she could hear the gel's voice. She just had to fight against a pressing tendency to believe that she was alone. “I'm afraid Miss Cumber and Miss Greggs have complained,” she managed. “I'm always in class, Miss Butts.” “I dare say you are. Miss Traitor and Miss Stamp say they see you all the time.” There'd been quite a staffroom argument about that. “Is it because you like Logic and Maths and don't like Language and History?” Miss Butts concentrated. There was no way the child could have left the room. If she really stressed her mind, she could catch a suggestion of a voice saying, “Don't know, Miss Butts.” “Susan, it is really most upsetting when–” Miss Butts paused. She looked around the study, and then glanced at a note pinned to the papers in front of her. She appeared to read it, looked puzzled for a moment, and then rolled it up and dropped it into the wastepaper basket. She picked up a pen and, after staring into space for a moment, turned her attention to the school accounts. Susan waited politely for a while, and then got up and left as quietly as possible. Certain things have to happen before other things. Gods play games with the fates of men. But first they have to get all the pieces on the board, and look all over the place for the dice. It was raining in the small, mountainous country of Llamedos. It was always raining in Llamedos. Rain was the country's main export. It had rain mines. Imp the bard sat under the evergreen, more out of habit than any real hope that it would keep the rain off. Water just dribbled through the spiky leaves and formed rivulets down the twigs, so that it was really a sort of rain concentrator. Occasional lumps of rain would splat on to his head. He was eighteen, extremely talented and, currently, not at ease with his life. He tuned his harp, his beautiful new harp, and watched the rain, tears running down his face and mingling with the drops. Gods like people like this. It is said that whosoever the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. In fact, whosoever the gods wish to destroy, they first hand the equivalent of a stick with a fizzing fuse and Acme Dynamite Company written on the side. It's more interesting, and doesn't take so long. Susan mooched along the disinfectant-smelling corridors. She wasn't particularly worried about what Miss Butts was going to think. She didn't usually worry about what anyone thought. She didn't know why people forgot about her when she wanted them to, but afterwards they seemed a bit embarrassed about raising the subject. Sometimes, some teachers had trouble seeing her. This was fine. She'd generally take a book into the classroom and read it peacefully, while all around her The Principal Exports of Klatch happened to other people. It was, undoubtedly, a beautiful harp. Very rarely a craftsman gets something so right that it is impossible to imagine an improvement. He hadn't bothered with ornamentation. That would have been some kind of sacrilege. And it was new, which was very unusual in Llamedos. Most of the harps were old. It wasn't as if they wore out. Sometimes they needed a new frame, or a neck, or new strings - but the harp went on. The old bards said they got better as they got older, although old men tend to say this sort of thing regardless of daily experience. Imp plucked a string. The note hung in the air, and faded. The harp was fresh and bright and already it sang out like a bell. What it might be like in a hundred years' time was unimaginable. His father had said it was rubbish, that the future was written in stones, not notes. That had only been the start of the row. And then he'd said things, and he'd said things, and suddenly the world was a new and unpleasant place, because things can't be unsaid. He'd said, “You don't know anything! You're just a stupid old man! But I'm giving my life to music! One day soon everyone will say I was the greatest musician in the world!” Stupid words. As if any bard cared for any opinions except those of other bards, who'd spent a lifetime learning how to listen to music. But said, nevertheless. And, if they're said with the right passion and the gods are feeling bored, sometimes the universe will reform itself around words like that. Words have always had the power to change the world. Be careful what you wish for. You never know who will be listening. Or what, for that matter. Because, perhaps, something could be drifting through the universes, and a few words by the wrong person at the right moment may just cause it to veer in its course . . . Far away in the bustling metropolis of Ankh-Morpork there was a brief crawling of sparks across an otherwise bare wall and then . . . . . . there was a shop. An old musical instrument shop. No-one remarked on its arrival. As soon as it appeared, it had always been there. Death sat staring at nothing, chinbone resting on his hands.  Albert approached very carefully. It had continually puzzled Death in his more introspective moments, and this was one of them, why his servant always walked the same path across the floor. I MEAN, he thought, CONSIDER THE SIZE OF THE ROOM . . . . . . which went on to infinity, or as near infinity as makes no difference. In fact it was about a mile. That's big for a room, whereas infinity you can hardly see. Death had got rather flustered when he'd created the house. Time and space were things to be manipulated, not obeyed. The internal dimensions had been a little too generous. He'd forgotten to make the outside bigger than the inside. It was the same with the garden. When he'd begun to take a little more interest in these things, he'd realized the role people seemed to think that colour played in concepts like, for example, roses. But he'd made them black. He liked black. It went with anything. It went with everything, sooner or later. The humans he'd known - and there had been a few - had responded to the impossible size of the rooms in a strange way, by simply ignoring them. Take Albert, now. The big door had opened, Albert had stepped through, carefully balancing a cup and saucer . . . . . . and a moment later had been well inside the room, on the edge of the relatively small square of carpet that surrounded Death's desk. Death gave up wondering how Albert covered the intervening space when it dawned on him that, to his servant, there was no intervening space . . . “I've brought you some camomile tea, sir,” said Albert. HMM? “Sir?” SORRY. I WAS THINKING. WHAT WAS IT YOU SAID? “Camomile tea?” I THOUGHT THAT WAS A KIND OF SOAP. “You can put it in soap or tea, sir,” said Albert. He was worried. He was always worried when Death started to think about things. It was the wrong job for thinking about things. And he thought about them in the wrong way. HOW VERY USEFUL. CLEAN INSIDE AND OUT. Death put his chin on his hands again. “Sir?” said Albert, after a while. HMM? “It'll get cold if you leave it.” ALBERT . . . “Yessir?” I HAVE BEEN WONDERING . . . “Sir?” WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT? SERIOUSLY? WHEN YOU GET RIGHT DOWN TO IT? “Oh. Er. Couldn't really say, sir.” I DIDN'T WANT TO DO IT, ALBERT. YOU KNOW THAT. NOW I KNOW WHAT SHE MEANT. NOT JUST ABOUT THE KNEES. “Who, Sir?” There was no reply. Albert looked back when he'd reached the door. Death was staring into space again. No-one could stare quite like him. Not being seen wasn't a big problem. It was the things that she kept seeing that were more of a worry. There were the dreams. They were only dreams, of course. Susan knew that modern theory said that dreams were only images thrown up while the brain was filing the day's events. She would have been more reassured if the day's events had ever included flying white horses, huge dark rooms and lots of skulls. At least they were only dreams. She'd seen other things. For example, she'd never mentioned the strange woman in the dormitory the night Rebecca Snell put a tooth under the pillow. Susan had watched her come through the open window and stand by the bed. She looked a bit like a milkmaid and not at all frightening, even though she had walked through the furniture. There had been the jingle of coins. Next morning the tooth had gone and Rebecca was richer by one 50-pence coin. Susan hated that sort of thing. She knew that mentally unstable people told children about the Tooth Fairy, but that was no reason for one to exist. It suggested woolly thinking. She disliked woolly thinking, which in any case was a major misdemeanour under the regime of Miss Butts. It was not, otherwise, a particularly bad one. Miss Eulalie Butts and her colleague, Miss Delcross, had founded the college on the astonishing idea that, since gels had nothing much to do until someone married them, they may as well occupy themselves with learning things. There were plenty of schools in the world, but they were all run either by the various churches or by the Guilds. Miss Butts objected to churches on logical grounds and deplored the fact that the only Guilds that considered girls worth educating were the Thieves and the Seamstresses. But it was a big and dangerous world out there, and a gel could do worse than face it with a sound knowledge of geometry and astronomy under her bodice. For Miss Butts sincerely believed that there were no basic differences between boys and gels. At least, none worth talking about. None that Miss Butts would talk about, anyway. And therefore she believed in encouraging logical thought and a healthy enquiring mind among the nascent young women in her care, a course of action which is, as far as wisdom is concerned, on a par with going alligator-hunting in a cardboard boat during the sinking season. For example, when she lectured to the school, pointed chin trembling, on the perils to be found outside in the town, three hundred healthy enquiring minds decided that 1) they should be sampled at the earliest opportunity, and logical thought wondered 2) exactly how Miss Butt knew about them. And the high, spike-topped walls around the college grounds looked simple enough to anyone with a fresh mind full of trigonometry and a body honed by healthy fencing, calisthenics and cold baths. Miss Butts could make peril seem really interesting. Anyway, that was the incident of the midnight visitor. After a while, Susan considered that she must have imagined it. That was the only logical explanation. And Susan was good at those. Everyone, they say, is looking for something. Imp was looking for somewhere to go. The farm cart that had brought him the last stretch of the way was rumbling off across the fields. He looked at the signpost. One arm pointed to Quirm, the other to Ankh-Morpork. He knew just enough to know that Ankh-Morpork was a big city, but built on loam and therefore of no interest to the druids in his family. He had three Ankh-Morpork dollars and some change. It probably wasn't very much in Ankh-Morpork. He didn't know anything about Quirm, except that it was on the coast. The road to Quirm didn't look very worn, while the one to Ankh-Morpork was heavily rutted. It'd be sensible to go to Quirm to get the feel of city life. It'd be sensible to learn a bit about how city people thought before heading for Ankh-Morpork, which they said was the largest city in the world. It'd be sensible to get some kind of job in Quirm and raise a bit of extra cash. It'd be sensible to learn to walk before he started to run. Common sense told Imp all these things, so he marched off firmly towards Ankh-Morpork. As far as looks were concerned, Susan had always put people in mind of a dandelion on the point of telling the time. The college dressed its gels in a loose navy-blue woollen smock that stretched from neck to just above the ankle - practical, healthy and as attractive as a plank. The waistline was somewhere around knee level. Susan was beginning to fill it out, however, in accordance with the ancient rules hesitantly and erratically alluded to by Miss Delcross in Biology and Hygiene. Gels left her class with the vague feeling that they were supposed to marry a rabbit. (Susan had left with the feeling that the cardboard skeleton on the hook in the corner looked like someone she'd known . . .) It was her hair that made people stop and turn to watch her. It was pure white, except for a black streak. School regulations required that it be in two plait's, but it had an uncanny tendency to unravel itself and spring back into its preferred shape, like Medusa's snakes.[2] And then there was the birthmark, if that's what it was. It only showed up if she blushed, when three faint pale lines appeared across her cheek and made it look exactly as though she'd been slapped. On the occasions when she was angry - and she was quite often angry, at the sheer stupidity of the world - they glowed. In theory it was, around now, Literature. Susan hated Literature. She'd much prefer to read a good book. Currently she had Wold's Logic and Paradox open on her desk and was reading it with her chin in her hands. She listened with half an ear to what the rest of the class was doing. It was a poem about daffodils. Apparently the poet had liked them very much. Susan was quite stoical about this. It was a free country. People could like daffodils if they wanted to. They just should not, in Susan's very definite and precise opinion, be allowed to take up more than a page to say so. She got on with her education. In her opinion, school kept on trying to interfere with it. Around her, the poet's vision was taken apart with inexpert tools. The kitchen was built on the same gargantuan lines as the rest of the house. An army of cooks could get lost in it. The far walls were hidden in the shadows and the stovepipe, supported at intervals by soot-covered chains and bits of greasy rope, disappeared into the gloom somewhere a quarter of a mile above the floor. At least, it did to the eye of the outsider. Albert spent his time in a small tiled patch big enough to contain the dresser, the table and the stove. And a rocking chair. “When a man says "What's it all about then, seriously, when you get right down to it?" he's in a bad way,” he said, rolling a cigarette. “So I don't know what it means when he says it. It's one of his fancies again.” The room's only other occupant nodded. His mouth was full. “All that business with his daughter,” said Albert. “I mean . . . daughter? And then he heard about apprentices. Nothing would do but he had to go and get one! Hah! Nothing but trouble, that was. And you, too, come to think of it . . . you're one of his fancies. No offence meant,” he added, aware of who he was talking to. “You worked out all right. You do a good job.” Another nod. “He always gets it wrong,” said Albert. “That's the trouble. Like when he heard about Hogswatchnight? Remember that? We had to do the whole thing, the oak tree in a pot, the paper sausages, the pork dinner, him sitting there with a paper hat on saying IS THIS JOLLY? I made him a little desk ornament thing and he gave me a brick.” Albert put the cigarette to his lips. It had been expertly rolled. Only an expert could get a rollup so thin and yet so soggy. “It was a good brick, mind. I've still got it somewhere.” SQUEAK, said the Death of Rats. “You put your finger on it, right enough,” said Albert. “At least, you would have done if you had a proper one. He always misses the point. You see, he can't get over things. He can't forget.” He sucked on the wretched homemade until his eyes watered. “What's it all about, seriously, when you get right down to it?” said Albert. “Oh, dear.” He glanced up at the kitchen clock, out of a special human kind of habit. It had never worked since Albert had bought it. “He's normally in by this time,” he said. “I'd better do his tray. Can't think what's keeping him.” The holy man sat under a holy tree, legs crossed, hands on knees. He kept his eyes shut in order to focus better on the Infinite, and wore nothing but a loincloth in order to show his disdain of discly things. There was a wooden bowl in front of him. He was aware, after a while, that he was being watched. He opened one eye. There was an indistinct figure sitting a few feet away. Later on, he was sure that the figure had been of . . . someone. He couldn't quite remember the description, but the person must certainly have had one. He was about . . . this tall, and sort of . . . definitely . . . EXCUSE ME. “Yes, my son?” His brow wrinkled. “You are male, aren't you?” he added. YOU TOOK A LOT OF FINDING. BUT I AM GOOD AT IT. “Yes?” I AM TOLD YOU KNOW EVERYTHING. The holy man opened the other eye. “The secret of existence is to disdain earthly ties, shun the chimera of material worth, and seek one-ness with the Infinite,” he said. “And keep your thieving hands off my begging bowl.” The sight of the supplicant was giving him trouble. I'VE SEEN THE INFINITE, said the stranger. IT'S NOTHING SPECIAL. The holy man glanced around. “Don't be daft; he said. “You can't see the Infinite. ‘Cos it's infinite.”  I HAVE. “All right, what did it look like?” IT'S BLUE. The holy man shifted uneasily. This wasn't how it was supposed to go. A quick burst of the Infinite and a meaningful nudge in the direction of the begging bowl was how it was supposed to go. “’S black,” he muttered. NOT, said the stranger, WHEN SEEN FROM THE OUTSIDE. THE NIGHT SKY IS BLACK. BUT THAT IS JUST SPACE. INFINITY, HOWEVER, IS BLUE. “And I suppose you know what sound is made by one hand clapping, do you?” said the holy man nastily. YES. CL. THE OTHER HAND MAKES THE AP. “Ah-ha, no, you're wrong there,” said the holy man, back on firmer ground. He waved a skinny hand. “No sound, see?” THAT WASN'T A CLAP. THAT WAS JUST A WAVE. “It was a clap. I just wasn't using both hands. What kind of blue, anyway?” YOU JUST WAVED. I DON'T CALL THAT VERY PHILOSOPHICAL. DUCK EGG. The holy man glanced down the mountain. Several people were approaching. They had flowers in their hair and were carrying what looked very much like a bowl of rice. OR POSSIBLY EAU-DE-NIL. “Look, my son,” the holy man said hurriedly, “what exactly is it you want? I haven't got all day.” YES, YOU HAVE. TAKE IT FROM ME. “What do you want?” WHY DO THINGS HAVE TO BE THE WAY THEY ARE? “Well–” YOU DON'T KNOW, DO YOU? “Not exactly. The whole thing is meant to be a mystery, see?” The stranger stared at the holy man for some time, causing the man to feel that his head had become transparent. THEN I WILL ASK YOU A SIMPLER QUESTION. HOW DO HUMANS FORGET? “Forget what?” FORGET ANYTHING. EVERYTHING. “It . . . er . . . it happens automatically.” The prospective acolytes had turned the bend on the mountain path. The holy man hastily picked up his begging bowl. “Let's say this bowl is your memory,” he said, waving it vaguely. “It can only hold so much, see? New things come in, so old things must overflow–” NO. I REMEMBER EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING. DOORKNOBS. THE PLAY OF SUNLIGHT ON HAIR. THE SOUND OF LAUGHTER. FOOTSTEPS. EVERY LITTLE DETAIL. AS IF IT HAPPENED ONLY YESTERDAY. AS IF IT HAPPENED ONLY TOMMOROW. EVERYTHING. DO YOU UNDERSTAND? The holy man scratched his gleaming bald head. “Traditionally,” he said, “the ways of forgetting include joining the Klatchian Foreign Legion, drinking the waters of some magical river, no-one knows where it is, and imbibing vast amounts of alcohol.” AH, YES. “But alcohol debilitates the body and is a poison to the soul.” SOUNDS GOOD TO ME. “Master?” The holy man looked around irritably. The acolytes had arrived. “Just a minute, I'm talking to–” The stranger had gone. “Oh, master, we have travelled for many miles over–” said the acolyte. “Shut up a minute, will you?” The holy man put out his hand, palm turned vertical, and waved it a few times. He muttered under his breath. The acolytes exchanged glances. They hadn't expected this. Finally, their leader found a drop of courage. “Master–” The holy man turned and caught him across the ear. The sound this made was definitely a clap. “Ah! Got it!” said the holy man. “Now, what can I do for–” He stopped as his brain caught up with his ears. “What did he mean, humans?” Death walked thoughtfully across the hill to the place where a large white horse was placidly watching the view. He said, GO AWAY. The horse watched him warily. It was considerably more intelligent than most horses, although this was not a difficult achievement. It seemed aware that things weren't right with its master. I MAY BE SOME TIME, said Death. And he set out. It wasn't raining in Ankh-Morpork. This had come as a big surprise to Imp. What had also come as a surprise was how fast money went. So far he'd lost three dollars and twenty-seven pence. He'd lost it because he'd put it in a bowl in front of him while he played, in the same way that a hunter puts out decoys to get ducks. The next time he'd looked down, it had gone. People came to Ankh-Morpork to seek their fortune. Unfortunately, other people sought it too. And people didn't seem to want bards, even ones who'd won the mistletoe award and centennial harp in the big Eisteddfod in Llamedos. He'd found a place in one of the main squares, tuned up and played. No-one had taken any notice, except sometimes to push him out of the way as they hurried past and, apparently, to nick his bowl. Eventually, just when he was beginning to doubt that he'd made the right decision in coming here at all, a couple of watchmen had wandered up. “That's a harp he's playing, Nobby,” said one of them, after watching Imp for a while. “Lyre.” “No, it's the honest truth, I'm–” The fat guard frowned and looked down. “You've just been waiting all your life to say that, ain't you, Nobby,” he said. “ I bet you was born hoping that one day someone'd say "That's a harp" so you could say "lyre", on account of it being a pun or play on words. Well, har har.” Imp stopped playing. It was impossible to continue, in the circumstances. “It is a harp, actualllly,” he said. “I won it in–” “Ah, you're from Llamedos, right?” said the fat guard. “I can tell by your accent. Very musical people, the Llamedese.” “Sounds like garglin' with gravel to me,” said the one identified as Nobby. “You got a licence, mate?” “Llicence?” said Imp. “Very hot on licences, the Guild of Musicians,” said Nobby. “They catch you playing music without a licence, they take your instrument and they shove–” “Now, now,” said the other watchman. “Don't go scaring the boy.” “Let's just say it's not much fun if you're a piccolo player,” said Nobby. “But surelly music is as free as the air and the sky, see,” said Imp. “Not round here it's not. Just a word to the wise, friend,” said Nobby. “I never ever heard of a Guilld of Musicians,” said Imp. “It's in Tin Lid Alley,” said Nobby. “You want to be a musician, you got to join the Guild.” Imp had been brought up to obey the rules. The Llamedese were very law-abiding. “I shallll go there directlly,” he said. The guards watched him go. “He's wearing a nightdress,” said Corporal Nobbs. “Bardic robe, Nobby,” said Sergeant Colon. The guards strolled onwards. “Very bardic, the Llamedese.” “How long d'you give him, sarge?” Colon waved a hand in the flat rocking motion of someone hazarding an informed guess. “Two, three days,” he said. They rounded the bulk of Unseen University and ambled along The Backs, a dusty little street that saw little traffic or passing trade and was therefore much favoured by the Watch as a place to lurk and have a smoke and explore the realms of the mind. “You know salmon, sarge,” said Nobby. “It is a fish of which I am aware, yes.” “You know they sell kind of slices of it in tins . . .” “So I am given to understand, yes.” “Weell . . . how come all the tins are the same size? Salmon gets thinner at both ends.” “Interesting point, Nobby. I think–” The watchman stopped, and stared across the street. Corporal Nobbs followed his gaze. “That shop,” said Sergeant Colon. “That shop there . . . was it there yesterday?” Nobby looked at the peeling paint, the little grime-encrusted window, the rickety door. “Course,” he said. “It's always been there. Been there years.” Colon crossed the street and rubbed at the grime. There were dark shapes vaguely visible in the gloom. “Yeah, right,” he mumbled. “It's just that . . . I mean . . . was it there for years yesterday?” “You ail right, sarge?” “Let's go, Nobby,” said the sergeant, walking away as fast as he could. “Where, sarge?” “Anywhere not here.” In the dark mounds of merchandise, something felt their departure. Imp had already admired the Guild buildings - the majestic frontage of the Assassins' Guild, the splendid columns of the Thieves' Guild, the smoking yet still impressive hole where the Alchemists' Guild had been up until yesterday. And it was therefore disappointing to find that the Guild of Musicians, when he eventually located it, wasn't even a building. It was just a couple of poky rooms above a barber shop. He sat in the brown-walled waiting room, and waited. There was a sign on the wall opposite. It said 'For Your Comforte And Convenience YOU WILL NOT SMOKE'. Imp had never smoked in his life. Everything in Llamedos was too soggy to smoke. But he suddenly felt inclined to try. The room's only other occupants were a troll and a dwarf. He was not at ease in their company. They kept looking at him.  Finally the dwarf said, “Are you elvish?” “Me? No!” “You look a bit elvish around the hair.” “Not ellvish at allll. Honestlly.” “Where you from?” said the troll. “Llamedos,” said Imp. He shut his eyes. He knew what trolls and dwarfs traditionally did to people suspected of being elves. The Guild of Musicians could take lessons. “What dat you got dere?” said the troll. It had two large squares of darkish glass in front of its eyes, supported by wire frames hooked around its ears. “It's a harp, see.” “Dat what you play?” “Yes.” “You a druid, den?” “No!” There was silence again as the troll marshalled its thoughts. “You look like a druid in dat nightie,” it rumbled, after a while. The dwarf on the other side of Imp began to snigger. Trolls disliked druids, too. Any sapient species which spends a lot of time in a stationary, rock-like pose objects to any other species which drags it sixty miles on rollers and buries it up to its knees in a circle. It tends to feel it has cause for disgruntlement. “Everyone dresses like this in Llamedos, see,” said Imp. “But I'm a bard! I'm not a druid. I hate rocks!” “Whoops,” said the dwarf quietly. The troll looked Imp up and down, slowly and deliberately. Then it said, without any particular trace of menace, “You not long in dis town?” “Just arrived,” said Imp. I won't even reach the door, he thought. I'm going to be mashed into a pullp. “Here is some free advice what you should know. It is free advice I am giving you gratis for nothing. In dis town, "rock" is a word for troll. A bad word for troll used by stupid humans. You call a troll a rock, you got to be prepared to spend some time looking for your head. Especially if you looks a bit elvish around de ears. Dis is free advice 'cos you are a bard and maker of music, like me.” “Right! Thank you! Yes!” said Imp, awash with relief. He grabbed his harp and played a few notes. That seemed to lighten the atmosphere a bit. Everyone knew elves had never been able to play music. “Lias Bluestone,” said the troll, extending something massive with fingers on it. “Imp y Celyn,” said Imp. “Nothing to do with moving rocks around at allll in any way!” A smaller, more knobbly hand was thrust at Imp from another direction. His gaze travelled up its associated arm, which was the property of the dwarf. He was small, even for a dwarf. A large bronze horn lay across his knees. “Glod Glodsson,” said the dwarf. “You just play the harp?” “Anything with strings on it,” said Imp. “But the harp is the queen of instruments, see.” “I can blow anything,” said Glod. “Realllly?” said Imp. He sought for some polite comment. “That must make you very popullar.” The troll heaved a big leather sack off the floor. “Dis is what I play,” he said. A number of large round rocks tumbled out on to the floor. Lias picked one up and flicked it with a finger. It went bam. “Music made from rocks?” said Imp. “What do you callll it?” “We call it Ggroohauga,” said Lias, “which means, music made from rocks.” The rocks were all of different sizes, carefully tuned here and there by small nicks carved out of the stone. “May I?” said Imp. “Be my guest.” Imp selected a small rock and flicked it with his finger. It went bop. A smaller one went bing. “What do you do with them?” he said. “I bang them together.” “And then what?” “What do you mean, "And then what?"' “What do you do after you've banged them together?” “I bang them together again,” said Lias, one of nature's drummers. The door to the inner room opened and a man with a pointed nose peered around it. “You lot together?” he snapped. There was indeed a river, according to legend, one drop of which would rob a man of his memory. Many people assumed that this was the river Ankh, whose waters can be drunk or even cut up and chewed. A drink from the Ankh would quite probably rob a man of his memory, or at least cause things to happen to him that he would on no account wish to recall. In fact there was another river that would do the trick. There was, of course, a snag. No-one knows where it is, because they're always pretty thirsty when they find it. Death turned his attention elsewhere. “Seventy-five dollllars?” said Imp. “Just to pllay music?” “That's twenty-five dollars registration fee, twenty per cent of fees, and fifteen dollars voluntary compulsory annual subscription to the Pension Fund,” said Mr Clete, secretary of the Guild. “But we haven't got that much money!” The man gave a shrug which indicated that, although the world did indeed have many problems, this was one of them that was not his. “But maybe we shallll be ablle to pay when we've earned some,” said Imp weakly. “If you could just, you know, llet us have a week or two–” “Can't let you play anywhere without you being members of the Guild,” said Mr Clete. “But we can't be members of the Guild until we've played,” said Glod. “That's right,” said Mr Clete cheerfully. “Hat. Hat. Hat.” It was a strange laugh, totally mirthless and vaguely birdlike. It was very much like its owner, who was what you would get if you extracted fossilized genetic material from something in amber and then gave it a suit. Lord Vetinari had encouraged the growth of the Guilds. They were the big wheels on which the clockwork of a well-regulated city ran. A drop of oil here . . . a spoke inserted there, of course . . . and by and large it all worked. And gave rise, in the same way that compost gives rise to worms, to Mr Clete. He was not, by the standard definitions, a bad man; in the same way a plague-bearing rat is not, from a dispassionate point of view, a bad animal. Mr Clete worked hard for the benefit of his fellow men. He devoted his life to it. For there are many things in the world that need doing that people don't want to do and were grateful to Mr Clete for doing for them. Keeping minutes, for example. Making sure the membership roll was quite up to date. Filing. Organizing. He'd worked hard on behalf of the Thieves' Guild, although he hadn't been a thief, at least in the sense normally meant. Then there'd been a rather more senior vacancy in the Fools' Guild, and Mr Clete was no fool. And finally there had been the secretaryship of the Musicians. Technically, he should have been a musician. So he bought a comb and paper. Since up until that time the Guild had been run by real musicians, and therefore the membership roll was unrolled and hardly anyone had paid any dues lately and the organization owed several thousand dollars to Chrysoprase the troll at punitive interest, he didn't even have to audition. When Mr Clete had opened the first of the unkempt ledgers and looked at the unorganized mess, he had felt a deep and wonderful feeling. Since then, he'd never looked back. He had spent a long time looking down. And although the Guild had a president and council, it also had Mr Clete, who took the minutes and made sure things ran smoothly and smiled very quietly to himself. It is a strange but reliable fact that whenever men throw off the yoke of tyrants and set out to rule themselves there emerges, like a mushroom after rain, Mr Clete. Hat. Hat. Hat. Mr Clete laughed at things in inverse proportion to the actual humour of the situation. “But that's nonsense!” “Welcome to the wonderful world of the Guild economy,” said Mr Clete. “Hat. Hat. Hat.” “What happens if we pllay without belonging to the Guilld, then?” said Imp. “Do you confiscate our instruments?” “To start with,” said the president. “And then we sort of give them back to you. Hat. Hat. Hat. Incidentally . . . you're not elvish, are you?” “Seventy-five dollars is criminall,” said Imp, as they plodded along the evening streets. “Worse than criminal,” said Glod. “I hear the Thieves' Guild just charges a percentage.” “And dey give you a proper Guild membership and everything,” Lias rumbled. “Even a pension. And dey have a day trip to Quirm and a picnic every year.” “Music should be free,” said Imp. “So what we going to do now?” said Lias. “Anyone got any money?” said Glod. “Got a dollar,” said Lias. “Got some pennies,” said Imp. “Then we're going to have a decent meal,” said Glod. “Right here.” He pointed up at a sign. “Gimlet's Hole Food?” said Lias. “Gimlet? Sounds dwarfish. Vermincelli and stuff?” “Now he's doing troll food too,” said Glod. “Decided to put aside ethnic differences in the cause of making more money. Five types of coal, seven types of coke and ash, sediments to make you dribble. You'll like it.” “Dwarf bread too?” said Imp. “You like dwarf bread?” said Glod. “Llove it; said Imp. “What, proper dwarf bread?” said Glod. “You sure?” “Yes. It's nice and crunchy, see.” Glod shrugged. “That proves it,” he said. “No-one who likes dwarf bread can be elvish.” The place was almost empty. A dwarf in an apron that came up to its armpits watched them over the top of the counter. “You do fried rat?” said Glod. “Best damn fried rat in the city,” said Gimlet. “OK. Give me four fried rats.” “And some dwarf bread,” said Imp. “And some coke,” said Lias patiently. “You mean rat heads or rat legs?” “No. Four fried rats.” “And some coke.” “You want ketchup on those rats?” “No.” “You sure?” “No ketchup.” “And some coke.” “And two hard-boilled eggs,” said Imp. The others gave him an odd look. “Wellll? I just like hard-boilled eggs,” he said. “And some coke.” “And two hard-boiled eggs.” “And some coke.” “Seventy-five dollars,” said Glod, as they sat down. “What's three times seventy-five dollars?” “Many dollars,” said Lias. “More than two hundred dollllars,” said Imp. “I don't think I've even seen two hundred dollars,” said Glod. “Not while I've been awake.” “We raise money?” said Lias. “ We can't raise money by being musicians,” said Imp. “It's the Guild Raw. If they catch you, they take your instrument and shove–” He stopped. “Llet's just say it's not much fun for the piccollo pllayer,” he added from memory. “I shouldn't think the trombonist is very happy either,” said Glod, putting some pepper on his rat. “I can't go back home now,” said Imp. “I said I'd. . . I can't go back home yet. Even if I could, I'd have to raise monolliths llike my brothers. Allll they care about is stone circlles.” “If I go back home now,” said Lias, “I'll be clubbing druids.” They both, very carefully, sidled a little further away from each other. “Then we play somewhere where the Guild won't find us,” said Glod cheerfully. “ We find a club somewhere–” “Got a club,” said Lias, proudly. “Got a nail in it.” “I mean a night club,” said Glod. “Still got a nail in it at night.” “I happen to know,” said Glod, abandoning that line of conversation, “that there's a lot of places in the city that don't like paying Guild rates. We could do a few gigs and raise the money with no trouble.” “Allll three of us together?” said Imp. “Sure.” “But we pllay dwarf music and human music and trollll music,” said Imp. “I'm not sure they'llll go together. I mean, dwarfs llisten to dwarf music, humans llisten to human music, trolllls Ilisten to trollll music. What do we get if we mix it allll together? It'd be dreadfull.” “We're getting along OK,” said Lias, getting up and fetching the salt from the counter. “We're musicians,” said Glod. “It's not the same with real people.” “Yeah, right,” said the troll. Lias sat down. There was a cracking noise. Lias stood up. “Oh,” he said. Imp reached over. Slowly and with great care he picked the remains of his harp off the bench. “Oh,” said Lias. A string curled back with a sad little sound. It was like watching the death of a kitten. “I won that at the Eisteddfod,” said Imp. “Could you glue it back together?” said Glod, eventually. Imp shook his head. “There's no-one left in Llamedos who knows how, see.” “Yes, but in the Street of Cunning Artificers–” “I'm real sorry. I mean real sorry, I don't know how it got dere.” “It wasn't your faullt.” Imp tried, ineffectually, to fit a couple of pieces together. But you couldn't repair a musical instrument. He remembered the old bards saying that. They had a soul. All instruments had a soul. If they were broken, the soul of them escaped, flew away like a bird. What was put together again was just a thing, a mere assemblage of wood and wire. It would play, it might even deceive the casual listener, but . . . You might as well push someone over a cliff and then stitch them together and expect them to come alive. “Um . . . maybe we could get you another one, then?” said Glod. “There's . . . a nice little music shop in The Backs–” He stopped. Of course there was a nice little music shop in The Backs. It had always been there. “In The Backs,” he repeated, just to make sure. “Bound to get one there. In The Backs. Yes. Been there years.” “Not one of these,” said Imp. “Before a craftsman even touches the wood he has to spend two weeks sitting wrapped in a bullllock hide in a cave behind a waterfallll.” “Why?” “I don't know. It's traditionall. He has to get his mind pure of allll distractions.” “There's bound to be something else, though,” said Glod. “We'll buy something. You can't be a musician without an instrument.” “I haven't got any money,” said Imp. Glod slapped him on the back. “That doesn't matter,” he said. “You've got friends! We'll help you! Least we can do.” “But we allll spent everything we had on this meall. There's no more money,” said Imp. “That's a negative way of looking at it,” said Glod. “Wellll, yes. We haven't got any, see?” “I'll sort out something,” said Glod. “I'm a dwarf. We know about money. Knowing about money is practically my middle name.” “That's a long middle name.” It was almost dark when they reached the shop, which was right opposite the high walls of Unseen University. It looked the kind of musical instrument emporium which doubles as a pawnshop, since every musician has at some time in his life to hand over his instrument if he wants to eat and sleep indoors. “You ever bought anything in here?” said Lias. “No . . . not that I remember,” said Glod. “It shut,” said Lias. Glod hammered on the door. After a while it opened a crack, just enough to reveal a thin slice of face belonging to an old woman. “We want to buy an instrument, ma'am,” said Imp. One eye and a slice of mouth looked him up and down. “You human?” “Yes, ma'am.” “All right, then.” The shop was lit by a couple of candles. The old woman retired to the safety of the counter, where she watched them very carefully for any signs of murdering her in her bed. The trio moved carefully amongst the merchandise. It seemed that the shop had accumulated its stock from unclaimed pledges over the centuries. Musicians were often short of money; it was one definition of a musician. There were battle horns. There were lutes. There were drums. “This is junk,” said Imp under his breath. Glod blew the dust off a crumhorn and put it to his lips, achieving a sound like the ghost of a refried bean. “I reckon there's a dead mouse in here,” he said, peering into the depths. “It was all right before you blew it,” snapped the old woman. There was an avalanche of cymbals from the other end of the shop. “Sorry,” Lias called out. Glod opened the lid of an instrument that was entirely unfamiliar to Imp. It revealed a row of keys; Glod ran his stumpy fingers over them, producing a sequence of sad, tinny notes. “What is it?” whispered Imp. “A virginal,” said the dwarf. “Any good to us?” “Shouldn't think so.” Imp straightened up. He felt that he was being watched. The old lady was watching, but there was something else . . . “It's no use. There's nothing here,” he said loudly. “Hey, what was that?” said Glod. “I said there's–” “I heard something.” “What?” “There it is again.” There was a series of crashes and thumps behind them as Lias liberated a double-bass from a drift of old music-stands and tried to blow down the sharp bit. “There was a funny sound when you spoke,” said Glod. “Say something.” Imp hesitated, as people do when, after having used a language all their lives, they're told to 'say something'. “Imp?” he said. WHUM-Whum-whum. “It came from–” WHAA-Whaa-whaa. Glod lifted aside a pile of ancient sheet-music. There was a musical graveyard behind it, including a skinless drum, a set of Lancre bagpipes without the pipes and a single maraca, possibly for use by a Zen flamenco dancer. And something else. The dwarf pulled it out. It looked, vaguely, like a guitar carved out of a piece of ancient wood by a blunt stone chisel. Although dwarfs did not, as a rule, play stringed instruments, Glod knew a guitar when he saw one. They were supposed to be shaped like a woman, but this was only the case if you thought women had no legs, a long neck and too many ears. “Imp?” he said. “Yes?” Whauauaum. The sound had a saw-edged, urgent fringe to it. There were twelve strings, but the body of the instrument was solid wood, not at all hollow it was more or less just a shape to hold the strings. “It resonated to your voice,” said Glod. “How can-?” Whaum-wha. Glod clamped his hand over the strings, and beckoned the other two closer. “We're right by the University here,” he whispered. “Magic leaks out. It's a well-known fact. Or maybe some wizard pawned it. Don't look a gift rat in the mouth. Can you play a guitar?” Imp went pale. “You mean like . . . follk music?” He took the instrument. Folk music was not approved of in Llamedos, and the singing of it was rigorously discouraged; it was felt that anyone espying a fair young maiden one morning in May was entitled to take whatever steps they considered appropriate without someone writing it down. Guitars were frowned upon as being, well . . . too easy. Imp struck a chord. It created a sound quite unlike anything he'd heard before - there were resonances and odd echoes that seemed to run and hide among the instrumental debris and pick up additional harmonics and then bounce back again. It made his spine itch. But you couldn't be even the worst musician in the world without some kind of instrument . . . “Right,” said Glod. He turned to the old woman. “You don't call this a music instrument, do you?” he demanded. “Look at it, half of it's not even there.” “Glod, I don't think–” Imp began. Under his hand the strings trembled. The old woman looked at the thing. “Ten dollars,” she said. “Ten dollars? Ten dollars?” said Glod. “It's not worth two dollars!” “That's right,” said the old woman. She brightened up a bit in a nasty way, as if looking forward to a battle in which no expense would be spared. “And it's ancient,” said Glod. “Antique.” “Would you listen to that tone? It's ruined.” “Mellow. You don't get craftsmanship like that these days.” “Only because we've learned from experience!” Imp looked at the thing again. The strings resonated by themselves. They had a blue tint to them and a slightly fuzzy look, as though they never quite stopped vibrating. He lifted it close to his mouth and whispered, “Imp.” The strings hummed. Now he noticed the chalk mark. It was almost faded. And all it was was a mark. Just a stroke of the chalk . . . Glod was in full flow. Dwarfs were said to be the keenest of financial negotiators, second only in acumen and effrontery to little old ladies. Imp tried to pay attention to what was going on. “Right, then,” Glod was saying, “it's a deal, yes?” “A deal,” said the little old lady. “And don't go spitting on your hand before we shake, that sort of thing's unhygienic.” Glod turned to Imp. “I think I handled that pretty well,” he said. “Good. Llisten, this is a very–” “Got twelve dollars?” “What?” “Something of a bargain, I think.” There was a thump behind them. Lias appeared, rolling a very large drum and carrying a couple of cymbals under his arm. “I said I'd got no money!” Imp hissed. “Yes, but . . . well, everyone says they've got no money. That's sense. You don't want to go around saying you've got money. You mean you've really got no money?” “No!” “Not even twelve dollars?” “No!” Lias dumped the drum, the cymbals and a pile of sheet-music on the counter. “How much for everything?” he said. “Fifteen dollars,” said the old woman. Lias sighed and straightened up. There was a distant look in his eyes for a moment, and then he hit himself on the jaw. He fumbled around inside his mouth with a finger and then produced . . . Imp stared. “Here, let me have a look,” said Glod. He snatched the thing from Lias's unprotesting fingers and examined it carefully. “Hey! Fifty carats at least!” “I'm not taking that,” said the old woman. “It's been in a troll's mouth!” “You eat eggs, don't you?” said Glod. “Anyway, everyone knows trolls' teeth are pure diamond.” The old woman took the tooth and examined it by candlelight. “If I took it along to one of those jewellers in Nonesuch Street they'd tell me it's worth two hundred dollars,” said Glod. “Well, I'm telling you it's worth fifteen right here,” said the old lady. The diamond magically disappeared somewhere about her person. She gave them a bright, fresh smile. “Why couldn't we just take it off her?” said Glod, when they were outside. “Because she's a poor defencelless olld woman,” said Imp. “Exactly! My point exactly!” Glod looked up at Lias. “You got a whole mouthful of them things?” “Yup.” “Only I owe my landlord two months' re–” “Don't even fink about it,” said the troll levelly. Behind them, the door slammed shut. “Look, cheer up,” said Glod. “Tomorrow I'll find us a gig. Don't worry. I know everyone in this city. Three of us . . . that's a band.” “We haven't even practised together properlly,” said Imp. “We'll practise as we go along,” said Glod. “Welcome to the world of professional musicianship.” Susan did not know much about history. It always seemed a particularly dull subject. The same stupid things were done over and over again by tedious people. What was the point? One king was pretty much like another. The class was learning about some revolt in which some peasants had wanted to stop being peasants and, since the nobles had won, had stopped being peasants really quickly. Had they bothered to learn to read and acquire some history books they'd have learned about the uncertain merits of things like scythes and pitchforks when used in a battle against crossbows and broadswords. She listened half-heartedly for a while, until boredom set in, and then took out a book and let herself fade from the notice of the world. SQUEAK! Susan glanced sideways. There was a tiny figure on the floor by her desk. It looked very much like a rat skeleton in a black robe, holding a very small scythe. Susan looked back at her book. Such things did not exist. She was quite certain about that. SQUEAK! Susan looked down again. The apparition was still there. There had been cheese on toast for supper the previous night. In books, at least, you were supposed to expect things after a late-night meal like that. “You don't exist,” she said. “You're just a piece of cheese.” SQUEAK? When the creature was sure it had got her full attention, it pulled out a tiny hourglass on a silver chain and pointed at it urgently. Against all rational considerations, Susan reached down and opened her hand. The thing climbed on to it - its feet felt like pins - and looked at her expectantly. Susan lifted it up to eye level. All right, perhaps it was a figment of her imagination. She ought to take it seriously. “You're not going to say something like "Oh, my paws and whiskers", are you?” she said quietly. “If you do, I shall go and drop you in the privy.” The rat shook its skull. “And you're real?” SQUEAK. SQUEAKSQUEAKSQUEAK– “Look, I don't understand,” said Susan patiently. “I don't speak rodent. We only do Klatchian in Modern Languages and I only know how to say "My aunt's camel has fallen in the mirage". And if you are imaginary, you might try to be a bit more . . . lovable.” A skeleton, even a small one, is not a naturally lovable object, even if it has got an open countenance and a grin. But the feeling . . . no, she realized . . . the memory was creeping over her from somewhere that this one was not only real but on her side. It was an unfamiliar concept. Her side had normally consisted of her. The late rat regarded Susan for a moment and then, in one movement, gripped the tiny scythe between its teeth and sprang off Susan's hand, landed on the classroom floor, and scuttled away between the desks. “It's not even as if you've got paws and whiskers,” said Susan. “Not proper ones, anyway.” The skeletal rat stepped through the wall. Susan turned back to her book and ferociously read Noxeuse's Divisibility Paradox, which demonstrated the impossibility of falling off a log. They practised that very night, in Glod's obsessively neat lodgings. These were behind a tannery in Phedre Road, and were probably safe from the wandering ears of the Musicians' Guild. They were also freshly painted and well scrubbed. The tiny room sparkled. You never got cockroaches or rats or any kind of vermin in a dwarf home. At least, not while the owner could still hold a frying-pan. Glod and Imp sat and watched Lias the troll hit his rocks. “What d'you fink?” he said, when he'd finished. “Is that all you do?” said Imp, after a while. “They're rocks,” said the troll, patiently. “That's all you can do. Bop, bop, bop.” “Hmm. Can I have a go?” said Glod. He sat behind the array of stones and looked at them for a while. Then he rearranged a few of them, took a couple of hammers out of his toolbox, and tapped a stone experimentally. “Now, let's see . . .” he said. Bambam-bamBAM. Beside Imp, the guitar strings hummed. “Without A Shirt,” said Glod. “What?” said Imp. “It's just a bit of musical nonsense,” said Glod. “Like "Shave and a haircut, two pence"?” “Sorry?” Bam-bam-a-bambam, bamBAM. “Shave and haircut good value for two pence,” said Lias. Imp looked hard at the stones. Percussion wasn't approved of in Llamedos either. The bards said that anyone could hit a rock or a hollow log with a stick. That wasn't music. Besides, it was . . . and here they'd drop their voices . . . too animal. The guitar hummed. It seemed to pick up sounds. Imp suddenly had a nagging feeling that there was a lot you could do with percussion. “Can I try?” he said. He picked up the hammers. There was the faintest of tones from the guitar. Forty-five seconds later, he put down the hammers. The echoes died away. “Why did you hit me on the helmet at the end there?” said Glod, carefully. “Sorry,” said Imp. “I think I got carried away. I thought you were a cymball.” “It was very . . . unusual,” said the troll. “The music's . . . in the stones,” said Imp. “You just have to llet it out. There's music in everything, if you know how to find it.” “Can I try dat riff?” said Lias. He took the hammers and shuffled around behind the stones again. A-bam-bop-a-re-bop-a-bim-bam-boom. “What did you do to them?” he said. “They sound . . . wild.” “Sounded good to me,” said Glod. “Sounded a whole lot better.” Imp slept that night wedged between Glod's very small bed and the bulk of Lias. After a while, he snored. Beside him, the strings hummed gently in harmony. Lulled by their almost imperceptible sound, he'd completely forgotten about the harp. Susan awoke. Something was tugging at her ear. She opened her eyes. SQUEAK? “Oh, nooo–“ She sat up in bed. The rest of the girls were asleep. The window was open, because the school encouraged fresh air. It was available in large amounts for free. The skeletal rat leapt on to the window-ledge and then, when it had made sure she was watching, jumped into the night. As Susan saw it, the world offered two choices. She could go back to bed, or she could follow the rat. Which would be a stupid thing to do. Soppy people in books did that sort of thing. They ended up in some idiot world with goblins and feeble-minded talking animals. And they were such sad, wet girls. They always let things happen to them, without making any effort. They just went around saying things like 'My goodness me', when it was obvious that any sensible human being could soon get the place properly organized. Actually, when you thought of it like that, it was tempting . . . The world held too much fluffy thinking. She always told herself that it was the job of people like Susan, if there were any more like her, to sort it out. She pulled on her dressing-gown and climbed over the sill, holding on until the last moment and dropping into a flower-bed. The rat was a tiny shape scurrying across the moonlit lawn. She followed it around to the stables, where it vanished somewhere in the shadows. As she stood feeling slightly chilly and more than slightly an idiot, it returned dragging an object rather bigger than itself. It looked like a bundle of old rags. The skeletal rat walked around the side of it and gave the ragged bundle a good hard kick. “All right, all right!” The bundle opened one eye, which swivelled around wildly until it focused on Susan. “I warn you,” said the bundle, “I don't do the N word.” “I'm sorry?” said Susan. The bundle rolled over, staggered upright and extended two scruffy wings. The rat stopped kicking it. “I'm a raven, aren't I?” it said. “One of the few birds who speak. The first thing people say is, oh, you're a raven, go on, say the N word . . . If I had a penny every time that's happened, I'd . . .” SQUEAK. “All right, all right.” The raven ruffled its feathers. “This thing here is the Death of Rats. Note the scythe and cowl, yes? Death of Rats. Very big in the rat world.” The Death of Rats bowed. “Tends to spend a lot of time under barns and anywhere people have put down a plate of bran laced with strychnine,” said the raven. “Very conscientious.” SQUEAK. “All right. What does it - he want with me?” said Susan. “I'm not a rat.” “Very perspicacious of you,” said the raven. “Look, I didn't ask to do this, you know. I was asleep on my skull, next minute he had a grip on my leg. Being a raven, as I said, I'm naturally an occult bird–” “Sorry,” said Susan. “I know this is all one of those dreams, so I want to make sure I understand it. You said . . . you were asleep on your skull?” “Oh, not my personal skull,” said the raven. “It's someone else's.” “Whose?” The raven's eyes spun wildly. It never managed to have both eyes pointing in the same direction. Susan had to resist trying to move around to follow them. “How do I know? They don't come with a label on them,” it said. “It's just a skull. Look . . . I work for this wizard, right? Down in the town. I sit on this skull all day and go "caw" at people–” “Why?” “Because a raven sitting on a skull and going "caw" is as much part of your actual wizarding modus operandi as the big dribbling candles and the old stuffed alligator hanging from the ceiling. Don't you know anything? I should have thought anyone knows that who knows anything about anything. Why, a proper wizard might as well not even have bubbling green stuff in bottles as be without his raven sitting on a skull and going "caw"–” SQUEAK. “Look, you have to lead up to things with humans,” said the raven wearily. One eye focused on Susan again. “He's not one for subtleties, him. Rats don't argue questions of a philosophical nature when they're dead. Anyway, I'm the only person round here he knows who can talk–” “Humans can talk,” said Susan. “Oh, indeed,” said the raven, “but the key point about humans, a crucial distinction you might say, is that they're not prone to being woken up in the middle of the night by a skeletal rat who needs an interpreter in a hurry. Anyway, humans can't see him.” “I can see him.” “Ah. I think you've put your digit on the nub, crux  and gist of it all,” said the raven. “The marrow, as you might say.” “Look,” said Susan, “I'd just like you to know that I don't believe any of this. I don't believe there's a Death of Rats in a cowl carrying a scythe.” “He's standing in front of you.” “That's no reason to believe it.” “I can see you've certainly had a proper education,” said the raven sourly. Susan stared down at the Death of Rats. There was a blue glow deep in its eye sockets. SQUEAK. “The thing is,” said the raven, “that he's gone again.” “Your . . . grandfather.” “Grandad Lezek? How can he be gone again? He's dead!” “Your . . . er . . . other grandfather . . . ?” said the raven. “I haven't got–” Images rose from the mud at the bottom of her mind. Something about a horse . . . and there was a room full of whispers. And a bathtub, that seemed to fit in somewhere. And fields of wheat came into it, too. “This is what happens when people try to educate their children,” said the raven, “instead of telling them things.” “I thought my other grandad was also . . . dead,” said Susan. SQUEAK. “The rat says you've got to come with him. It's very important.” The image of Miss Butts rose like a Valkyrie in Susan's mind. This was silliness. “Oh, no,” said Susan. “It must be midnight already. And we've got a geography exam tomorrow.” The raven opened its beak in astonishment. “You can't be saying that,” it said. “You really expect me to take instructions from a . . . a bony rat and a talking raven? I'm going back!” “No, you're not,” said the raven. “No-one with any blood in them'd go back now. You'd never find things out if you went back now. You'd just get educated.” “But I haven't got time,” Susan wailed. “Oh, time,” said the raven. “Time's mainly habit. Time is not a particular feature of things for you.” “How–” “You'll have to find out, won't you?” SQUEAK. The raven jumped up and down excitedly. “Can I tell her? Can I tell her?” it squawked. It swivelled its eyes towards Susan. “Your grandfather,” it said, “is . . . (dah dah dah DAH) . . . Dea–” SQUEAK! “She's got to know some time,” said the raven. “Deaf? My grandfather is deaf?” said Susan. “You've got me out here in the middle of the night to talk about hearing difficulties?” “I didn't say deaf, I said your grandfather is . . . (dah dah dah DAH) . . . D–” SQUEAK! “All right! Have it your way!” Susan backed away while the two of them argued. Then she grasped the skirts of her nightdress and ran, out of the yard and across the damp lawns. The window was still open. She managed, by standing on the sill of the one below, to grab the ledge and heave herself up and into the dormitory. She got into bed and pulled the blankets over her head . . . After a while she realized that this was an unintelligent reaction. But she left them where they were, anyway. She dreamed of horses and coaches and a clock without hands. “D'you think we could have handled that better?” SQUEAK?”Dah dah dah DAH' SQUEAK? “How did you expect me to put it. "Your grandfather is Death?" Just like that? Where's the sense of occasion? Humans like drama.” SQUEAK, the Death of Rats pointed out. “Rats is different.” SQUEAK. “I reckon I ought to call it a night,” said the raven. “Ravens are not generally nocturnal, you know.” It scratched at its bill with a foot. “Do you just do rats, or mice and hamsters and weasels and stuff like that as well?” SQUEAK. “Gerbils? How about gerbils?” SQUEAK. “Fancy that. I never knew that. Death of Gerbils, too? Amazing how you can catch up with them on those treadmills–” SQUEAK. “Please yourself.” There are the people of the day, and the creature's of the night. And it's important to remember that the creatures of the night aren't simply the people of the day staying up late because they think that makes them cool and interesting. It takes a lot more than heavy mascara and a pale complexion to cross the divide. Heredity can help, of course. The raven had grown up in the forever-crumbling, ivy-clad Tower of Art, overlooking Unseen University in far Ankh-Morpork. Ravens are naturally intelligent birds, and magical leakage, which has a tendency to exaggerate things, had done the rest. It didn't have a name. Animals don't normally bother with them. The wizard who thought he owned him called him Quoth, but that was only because he didn't have a sense of humour and, like most people without a sense of humour, prided himself on the sense of humour he hadn't, in fact, got. The raven flew back to the wizard's house, skimmed in through the open window, and took up his roost on the skull. “Poor kid,” he said. “That's destiny for you,” said the skull. “I don't blame her for trying to be normal. Considering.” “Yes,” said the skull. “Quit while you're a head, that's what I say.” The owner of a grain silo in Ankh-Morpork was having a bit of a crackdown. The Death of Rats could hear the distant yapping of the terriers. It was going to be a busy night. It would be too hard to describe the Death of Rats' thought-processes, or even be certain that he had any. He had a feeling that he shouldn't have involved the raven, but humans set a great store by words. Rats don't think very far ahead, except in general terms. In general terms, he was very, very worried. He hadn't expected education.  Susan got through the next morning without having to go nonexistent. Geography consisted of the flora of the Sto Plains,[3] chief exports of the Sto Plains[4] and the fauna of the Sto Plains.[5] Once you mastered the common denominator, it was straightforward. The gels had to colour in a map. This involved a lot of green. Lunch was Dead Man's Fingers and Eyeball Pudding, a healthy ballast for the afternoon's occupation, which was Sport. This was the province of Iron Lily, who was rumoured to shave and lift weights with her teeth, and whose shouts of encouragement as she thundered up and down the touchline tended towards the nature of 'Get some ball, you bunch of soft nellies!” Miss Butts and Miss Delcross kept their windows closed on games afternoon. Miss Butts ferociously read logic and Miss Delcross, in her idea of a toga, practised eurhythmics in the gym. Susan surprised people by being good at sport. Some sport, anyway. Hockey, lacrosse and rounders, certainly. Any game that involved putting a stick of some sort in her hands and asking her to swing it, definitely. The sight of Susan advancing towards goal with a calculating look made any goalie lose all faith in her protective padding and throw herself flat as the ball flashed past at waist height, making a humming noise. It was only evidence of the general stupidity of the rest of humanity, Susan considered, that although she was manifestly one of the best players in the school she never got picked for teams. Even fat girls with spots got picked before her. It was so infuriatingly unreasonable, and she could never understand why. She'd explained to other girls how good she was, and demonstrated her skill, and pointed out just how stupid they were in not picking her. For some exasperating reason it didn't seem to have any effect. This afternoon she went for an official walk instead. This was an acceptable alternative, provided girls went in company. Usually they went into town and bought stale fish and chips from an unfragrant shop in Three Roses Alley; fried food was considered unhealthy by Miss Butts, and therefore bought out of school at every opportunity. Girls had to walk in groups of three or more. Peril, in Miss Butts's conjectural experience, couldn't happen to units of more than two. In any case it was certainly unlikely to happen to any group that contained Princess Jade and Gloria Thogsdaughter. The school's owners had been a bit bothered about taking a troll, but Jade's father was king of an entire mountain and it always looked good to have royalty on the roll. And besides, Miss Butts had remarked to Miss Delcross, it's our duty to encourage them if they show any inclination to become real people and the King is actually quite charming and assures me he can't even remember when he last ate anyone. Jade had bad eyesight, a note excusing her from unnecessary sunshine, and knitting chain mail in handicraft class. Whereas Gloria was banned from sport because of her tendency to use her axe in a threatening manner. Miss Butts had suggested that an axe wasn't a ladylike weapon, even for a dwarf, but Gloria had pointed out that, on the contrary, it had been left to her by her grandmother who had owned it all her life and polished it every Saturday, even if she hadn't used it at all that week. There was something about the way she gripped it that made even Miss Butts give in. To show willing, Gloria left off her iron helmet and, while not shaving off her beard - there was no actual rule about girls not having beards a foot long - at least plaited it. And tied it in ribbons in the school colours. Susan felt strangely at home in their company, and this had earned guarded praise from Miss Butts. It was nice of her to be such a chum, she said. Susan had been surprised. It had never occurred to her that anyone actually said a word like chum. The three of them trailed back along the beech drive by the playing field. “I don't understand sport,” said Gloria, watching the gaggle of panting young women stampeding across the pitch. “There's a troll game,” said Jade. “It's called aargrooha.” “How's it played?” said Susan. “Er . . . you rip off a human's head and kick it around with special boots made of obsidian until you score a goal or it bursts. But it's not played any more, of course,” she added quickly. “I should think not,” said Susan. “No-one knows how to make the boots, I expect,” said Gloria. “I expect if it was played now, someone like Iron Lily would go running up and down the touchline shouting, "Get some head, you soft nellies",” said Jade. They walked in silence for a while. “I think,” said Gloria, cautiously, “that she probably wouldn't, actually.” “I say, you two haven't noticed anything . . . odd lately, have you?” said Susan. “Odd like what?” said Gloria. “Well, like . . . rats . . .” said Susan. “Haven't seen any rats in the school,” said Gloria. “And I've had a good look.” “I mean . . . strange rats,” said Susan. They were level with the stables. These were normally the home of the two horses that pulled the school coach, and the term-time residence of a few horses belonging to gels who couldn't be parted from them. There is a type of girl who, while incapable of cleaning her bedroom even at knifepoint, will fight for the privilege of being allowed to spend the day shovelling manure in a stable. It was a magic that hadn't rubbed off on Susan. She had nothing against horses, but couldn't understand all the snaffles, bridles and fetlocks business. And she couldn't see why they had to be measured in 'hands' when there were perfectly sensible inches around to do the job. Having watched the jodhpured girls who bustled around the stables, she decided it was because they couldn't understand complicated machines like rulers. She'd said so, too. “All right,” said Susan. “How about ravens?” Something blew in her ear. She spun around. The white horse stood in the middle of the yard like a bad special effect. He was too bright. He glowed. He seemed like the only real thing in a world of pale shapes. Compared to the bulbous ponies that normally occupied the loose-boxes, he was a giant. A couple of the jodhpured girls were fussing around him. Susan recognized Cassandra Fox and Lady Sara Grateful, almost identical in their love of anything on four legs that went 'neigh' and their disdain for anything else, their ability to apparently look at the world with their teeth, and their expertise in putting at least four vowels in the word 'oh'. The white horse neighed gently at Susan, and began to nuzzle her hand.  You're Binky, she thought. I know you. I've ridden on you. You're . . . mine. I think. “I say,” said Lady Sara, “who does he belong to?” Susan looked around. “What? Me?” she said. “Yes. Me . . . I suppose.” “Oeuwa? He was in the loose-box next to Browny. I didn't knoeuwa you had a horse here. You have to get permission from Miss Butts, you knoeuwa.” “He's a present,” said Susan. “From . . . someone . . .?” The hippo of recollection stirred in the muddy waters of the mind. She wondered why she'd said that. She hadn't thought of her grandfather for years. Until last night. I remember the stable, she thought. So big you couldn't see the walls. And I was given a ride on you once. Someone held me so I wouldn't fall off. But you couldn't fall off this horse. Not if he didn't want you to. “Oeuwa. I didn't know you rode.” “I . . . used to.” “There's extra fees, you knoeuwa. For keeping a horse,” said Lady Sara. Susan said nothing. She strongly suspected they'd be paid. “And you've got noeuwa tack,” said Lady Sara. And Susan rose to it. “I don't need any,” she said. “Oeuwa, bareback riding,” said Lady Sara. “And you steer by the ears, ya?” Cassandra Fox said: “Probably can't afford them, out in the sticks. And stop that dwarf looking at my pony. She's looking at my pony!” “I'm only looking,” said Gloria. “You were . . . salivating,” said Cassandra. There was a pattering across the cobbles and Susan swung herself up and on to the horse's back. She looked down at the astonished girls, and then at the paddock beyond the stables. There were a few jumps there, just poles balanced on barrels. Without her moving a muscle, the horse turned and trotted into the paddock and turned towards the highest jump. There was a sensation of bunched energy, a moment of acceleration, and the jump passed underneath . . . Binky turned and halted, prancing from one hoof to the other. The girls were watching. All four of them had an expression of total amazement. “Should it do that?” said jade. “What's the matter?” said Susan. “Have none of you seen a horse jump before?” “Yes. The interesting point is . . .” Gloria began, in that slow, deliberate tone of voice people use when they don't want the universe to shatter, “. . . is that, usually; they come down again.” Susan looked. The horse was standing on the air. What sort of command was necessary to make a horse resume contact with the ground? It was an instruction that the equestrian sorority had not hitherto required. As if understanding her thoughts, the horse trotted forward and down. For a moment the hoofs dipped below the field, as if the surface were no more substantial than mist. Then Binky appeared to determine where the ground level should be, and decided to stand on it. Lady Sara was the first one to find her voice. “We'll tell Miss Butts of youewa,” she managed. Susan was almost bewildered with unfamiliar fright, but the pettymindedness in the tones slapped her back to something approaching sanity. “Oh yes?” she said. “And what will you tell her?” “You made the horse jump up and . . .” The girl stopped, aware of what she was about to say. “Quite so,” said Susan. “I expect that seeing horses float in the air is silly, don't you?” She slipped off the horse's back, and gave the watchers a bright smile. “It's against school rules, anyway,” muttered Lady Sara. Susan led the white horse back into the stables, rubbed him down, and put him in a spare loose-box. There was a rustling in the hay-rack for a moment. Susan thought she caught a glimpse of ivory-white bone. “Those wretched rats,” said Cassandra, struggling back to reality. “I heard Miss Butts tell the gardener to put poison down.” “Shame,” said Gloria. Lady Sara seemed to have something boiling in her mind. “Look, that horse didn't really stand in mid-air, did it?” she demanded. “Horses can't do that!” “Then it couldn't have done it,” said Susan. “Hang time,” said Gloria. “That's all it was. Hang time. Like in basketball.[6] Bound to be something like that.” “Yes.” “That's all it was.” “Yes.” The human mind has a remarkable ability to heal. So have the trollish and dwarfish minds. Susan looked at them in frank amazement. They'd all seen a horse stand on the air. And now they had carefully pushed it somewhere in their memories and broken off the key in the lock. “Just out of interest,” she said, still eyeing the hayrack, “I don't suppose any of you know where there's a wizard in this town, do you?” “I've found us somewhere to play!” said Glod. “Where?” said Lias. Glod told them. “The Mended Drum?” said Lias. “They throw axes!” “We'd be safe there. The Guild won't play in there,” said Glod. “Well, yah, dey lose members in there. Their members lose members,” said Lias. “We'll get five dollars,” said Glod. The troll hesitated. “I could use five dollars,” he conceded. “One-third of five dollars,” said Glod. Lias's brow creased. “Is that more or less than five dollars?” he said. “Look, it'll get us exposure,” said Glod. “I don't want exposure in de Drum,” said Lias. “Exposure's the last thing I want in de Drum. In de Drum, I want something to hide behind.” “All we have to do is play something,” said Glod. “Anything. The new landlord is dead keen on pub entertainment.” “I thought they had a one-arm bandit.” “Yes, but he got arrested.” There's a floral clock in Quirm. It's quite a tourist attraction. It turns out to be not what they expect. Unimaginative municipal authorities throughout the multiverse had made floral clocks, which turn out to be a large clock mechanism buried in a civic flowerbed with the face and numbers picked out in bedding plants.[7] But the Quirm clock is simply a round flower-bed, filled with twenty-four different types of flower, carefully chosen for the regularity of the opening and closing of their petals . . . As Susan ran past, the Purple Bindweed was opening and Love-in-a-Spin was closing. This meant that it was about half past ten. The streets were deserted. Quirm wasn't a night town. People who came to Quirm looking for a good time went somewhere else. Quirm was so respectable that even dogs asked permission before going to the lavatory. At least, the streets were almost deserted. Susan fancied she could hear something following her, fast and pattering, moving and dodging across the cobbles so quickly that it was never more than a suspicion of a shape. Susan slowed down as she reached Three Roses Alley. Somewhere in Three Roses near the fish shop, Gloria had said. The gels were not encouraged to know about wizards. They did not figure in Miss Butts's universe. The alley looked alien in the darkness. A torch burned in a bracket at one end. It merely made the shadows darker. And, halfway along in the gloom, there was a ladder leaning against the wall and a young woman just preparing to climb it. There was something familiar about her. She looked around as Susan approached, and seemed quite pleased to see her. “Hi,” she said. “Got change of a dollar, miss?” “Pardon?” “Couple of half-dollars'd do. Half a dollar is the rate. Or I'll take copper. Anything, really.” “Um. Sorry. No. I only get fifty pence a week allowance anyway.” “Blast. Oh, well, nothing for it.” In so far as Susan could see, the girl did not appear to be the usual sort of young woman who made her living in alleys. She had a kind of well-scrubbed beefiness about her; she looked like a nurse of the sort who assist doctors whose patients occasionally get a bit confused and declare they're a bedspread. She looked familiar, too. The girl took a pair of pliers from a pocket in her dress, shinned up the ladder and climbed in through an upper window. Susan hesitated. The girl had seemed quite businesslike about it all, but in her limited experience people who climbed ladders to get into houses at night were Miscreants whom Plucky Gels should Apprehend. And she might at least have gone to look for a watchman, had it not been for the opening of a door further up the alley. Two men staggered out, arm in arm, and zigzagged happily towards the main street. Susan stepped back. No-one bothered her when she didn't want to be noticed. The men walked through the ladder. Either the men weren't exactly solid, and they certainly sounded solid enough, or there was something wrong with the ladder. But the girl had climbed it... . . . and was now climbing down again, slipping something into her pocket. “Never even woke up, the little cherub,” she said. “Sorry?” said Susan. “Didn't have Sop on me,” said the girl. She swung the ladder easily up on to her shoulder. “Rules are rules. I had to take another tooth.” “Pardon?” “It's all audited, you see. I'd be in real trouble if the dollars and teeth didn't add up. You know how it is.” “I do?” “Still, can't stay here talking all night. Got sixty more to do.” “Why should I know? Do what? Whom to?” said Susan. “Children, of course. Can't disappoint them, can I? Imagine their little faces when they lift up their little pillows, bless them.” Ladder. Pliers. Teeth. Money. Pillows . . . “You don't expect me to believe you're the Tooth Fairy?” said Susan suspiciously. She touched the ladder. It felt solid enough. “Not the,” said the girl. “A. I'm surprised you don't know that.” She'd sauntered around the corner before Susan asked, “Why me?” “'Cos she can tell,” said a voice behind her. “Takes one to know one.” She turned. The raven was sitting in a small open window. “You'd better come in,” it said. “You can meet all sorts, out in that alley.” “I already have.” There was a brass plate screwed on the wall beside the door. It said: “C V Cheesewaller, DM (Unseen) B. Thau, B.F.” It was the first time Susan had ever heard metal speak. “Simple trick,” said the raven, dismissively. “It senses you looking at it. Just give–” “C V Cheesewaller, DM (Unseen) B. Thau, B.F.” “. . . shut up . . . just give the door a push.” “It's locked.” The raven gave her a beady-eyed look with its head on one side. Then it said: “That stops you? Oh, well. I'll fetch the key.” It appeared a moment later and dropped a large metal key on to the cobbles. “Isn't the wizard in?” “In, yes. In bed. Snoring his head off.” “I thought they stayed up all night!” “Not this one. Cup of cocoa around nine, dead to the world at five past.” “I can't just let myself into his house!” “Why not? You've come to see me. Anyway, I'm the brains of the outfit. He just wears the funny hat and does the hand waving.” Susan turned the key. It was warm inside. There was the usual wizardly paraphernalia - a forge, a bench with bottles and bundles strewn over it, a bookcase with books rammed in anyhow, a stuffed alligator hanging from the ceiling, some very big candles that were just lava streams of wax, and a raven on a skull. “They get it all out of a catalogue,” said the raven. “Believe me. It all comes in a big box. You think candles get dribbly like that by themselves? That's three days' work for a skilled candle dribbler.” “You're just making that up,” said Susan. “Anyway, you can't just buy a skull.” “You know best, I'm sure, being educated,” said the raven. “What were you trying to tell me last night?” “Tell you?” said the raven, with a guilty look on its beak. “All that dah-dah-dah-DAH stuff.” The raven scratched its head. “He said I wasn't to tell you. I was just supposed to warn you about the horse. I got carried away. Turned up, has it?” “Yes!” “Ride it.” “I did. It can't be real! Real horses know where the ground is.” “Miss, there's no horse realer than that one.” “I know his name! I've ridden him before!” The raven sighed, or at least made a sort of whistling noise which is as close to a sigh as a beak can get. “Ride the horse. He's decided you're the one.” “Where to?” “That's for me not to know and you to find out.” “Just supposing I was stupid enough to do it . . . can you kind of hint about what will happen?” “Well . . . you've read books, I can see. Have you ever read any about children who go to a magical faraway kingdom and have adventures with goblins and so on?” “Yes, of course,” said Susan, grimly. “It'd probably be best if you thought along those lines,” said the raven. Susan picked up a bundle of herbs and played with them. “I saw someone outside who said she was the Tooth Fairy,” she said. “Nah, couldn't've been the Tooth Fairy,” said the raven. “There's at least three of them.” “There's no such person. I mean . . . I didn't know, I thought that's just a . . . story. Like the Sandman or the Hogfather.[8] “Ah,” said the raven. “Changing our tone, yes? Not so much of the emphatic declarative, yes? A bit less of the "There's no such thing" and a bit more of the "I didn't know", yes?” “Everyone knows - I mean, it's not logical that there's an old man in a beard who gives everyone sausages and chitterlings on Hogswatchnight, is it?” “I don't know about logic. Never learned about logic,” said the raven. “Living on a skull ain't exactly logical, but that's what I do.” “And there can't be a Sandman who goes around throwing sand in children's eyes,” said Susan, but in tones of uncertainty. “You'd . . . never get enough sand in one bag.” “Could be. Could be.” “I'd better be going,” said Susan. “Miss Butts always checks the dorms on the stroke of midnight.” “How many dormitories are there?” said the raven. “About thirty, I think.” “You believe she checks them all at midnight and you don't believe in the Hogfather?” “I'd better be going anyway,” said Susan. “Um. Thank you.” “Lock up behind you and chuck the key through the window,” said the raven. The room was silent after she'd gone, except for the crackle as coals settled in the furnace. Then the skull said: “Kids today, eh?” “I blame education,” said the raven. “A lot of knowledge is a dangerous thing ' said the skull. “A lot more dangerous than just a little. I always used to say that, when I was alive.” “When was that, exactly?” “Can't remember. I think I was pretty knowledgeable. Probably a teacher or philosopher, something of that kidney. And now I'm on a bench with a bird crapping on my head.” “Very allegorical,” said the raven. No-one had taught Susan about the power of belief, or at least about the power of belief in a combination of high magical potential and low reality stability such as existed on the Discworld. Belief makes a hollow place. Something has to roll in to fill it. Which is not to say that belief denies logic. For example, it's fairly obvious that the Sandman needs only a small sack. On the Discworld, he doesn't bother to take the sand out first. It was almost midnight. Susan crept into the stables. She was one of those people who will not leave a mystery unsolved. The ponies were silent in the presence of Binky. The horse glowed in the darkness. Susan heaved a saddle down from the rack, and then thought better of it. If she was going to fall off, a saddle wouldn't be any help. And reins would be about as much use as a rudder on a rock. She opened the door to the loose-box. Most horses won't walk backwards voluntarily, because what they can't see doesn't exist. But Binky shuffled out by himself and walked over to the mounting block, where he turned and watched her expectantly. Susan climbed on to his back. It was like sitting on a table. “All right,” she whispered. “I don't have to believe any of this, mind you.” Binky lowered his head and whinnied. Then he trotted out into the yard and headed for the field. At the gate he broke into a canter, and turned towards the fence. Susan shut her eyes. She felt muscles bunch under the velvet skin and then the horse was rising, over the fence, over the field. Behind it, in the turf, two fiery hoofprints burned for a second or two. As she passed above the school she saw a light flicker in a window. Miss Butts was on her rounds. There's going to be trouble over this, Susan told herself. And then she thought: I'm on the back of a horse a hundred feet up in the air, being taken somewhere mysterious that's a bit like a magic land with goblins and talking animals. There's only so much more trouble I could get into . . . Besides, is riding a flying horse against school rules? I bet it's not written down anywhere. Quirm vanished behind her, and the world opened up in a pattern of darkness and moonlight silver. A chequer-board pattern of fields strobed by in the moonlight, with the occasional light of an isolated farm. Ragged clouds whipped past and away. Away on her left the Ramtop Mountains were a cold white wall. On her right, the Rim Ocean carried a pathway to the moon. There was no wind, or even a great sensation of speed - just the land flashing by, and the long slow strides of Binky. And then someone spilled gold on the night. Clouds parted in front of her and there, spread below, was Ankh-Morpork - a city containing more Peril than even Miss Butts could imagine. Torchlight outlined a pattern of streets in which Quirm would have not only been lost, but mugged and pushed into the river as well. Binky cantered easily over the rooftops. Susan could hear the sounds of the streets, even individual voices, but there was also the great roar of the city, like some kind of insect hive. Upper windows drifted by, each one a glow of candlelight. The horse dropped through the smoky air and landed neatly and at the trot in an alley which was otherwise empty except for a closed door and a sign with a torch over it. Susan read: CURRY GARDENS Kitchren Entlance - Keep Out. Ris Means You. Binky seemed to be waiting for something. Susan had expected a more exotic destination. She knew about curry. They had curry at school, under the name of Bogey and Rice. It was yellow. There were soggy raisins and peas in it. Binky whinnied, and stamped a hoof. A hatch in the door flew open. Susan got a brief impression of a face against the fiery atmosphere of the kitchen. “Ooorrh, nooorrrh! Binkorrr!” The hatch slammed shut again. Obviously something was meant to happen. She stared at a menu nailed to the wall. It was misspelled, of course, because the menu of the folkier kind of restaurant always has to have misspellings in it, so that customers can be lured into a false sense of superiority. She couldn't recognize the names of most of the dishes, which included: Curry with Vegetable 8p Curry with Sweat, and Sore Balls of Pig 10p Curry with Sweer and Sour, Ball of Fish 10p Curry with Meat 10p Curry with Named Meat 15p Extra Curry 5p Porn cracker 4p Eat It Here Or, Take It Away The hatch snapped open again and a large brown bag of allegedly but not really waterproof paper was dumped on the little ledge in front of it. Then the hatch slammed shut again. Susan reached out carefully. The smell rising from the bag had a sort of thermic lance quality that warned against metal cutlery. But tea had been a long time ago.  She realized she didn't have any money on her. On the other hand, no-one had asked her for any. But the world would go to wrack and ruin if people didn't recognize their responsibilities. She leaned forward and knocked on the door. “Excuse me . . . don't you want anything-?” There was shouting and a crash from inside, as if half a dozen people were fighting to get under the same table. “Oh. How nice. Thank you. Thank you very much,” said Susan, politely. Binky walked away, slowly. This time there was no bunched leap of muscle power - he trotted into the air carefully, as if some time in the past he'd been scolded for spilling something. Susan tried the curry several hundred feet above the speeding landscape, and then threw it away as politely as possible. “It was very . . . unusual,” she said. “And that's it? You carried me all the way up here for takeaway food?” The ground skimmed past faster, and it crept over her that the horse was going a lot faster now, a full gallop instead of the easy canter. A bunching of muscle . . . . . . and then the sky ahead of her erupted blue for a moment. Behind her, unseen because light was standing around red with embarrassment asking itself what had happened, a pair of hoofprints burned in the air for a moment. It was a landscape, hanging in space. There was a squat little house, with a garden around it. There were fields, and distant mountains. Susan stared at it as Binky slowed. There was no depth. As the horse swung around for a landing, the landscape was revealed as a mere surface, a thin-shaped film of . . . existence . . . imposed on nothingness. She expected it to tear when the horse landed, but there was only a faint crunch and a scatter of gravel. Binky trotted around the house and into the stableyard, where he stood and waited. Susan got off, gingerly. The ground felt solid enough under her feet. She reached down and scratched at the gravel; there was more gravel underneath. She'd heard that the Tooth Fairy collected teeth. Think about it logically . . . the only other people who collected any bits of bodies did so for very suspicious purposes, and usually to harm or control other people. The Tooth Fairies must have half the children in the world under their control. And this didn't look like the house of that sort of person. The Hogfather apparently lived in some kind of horrible slaughterhouse in the mountains, festooned with sausages and black puddings and painted a terrible blood-red. Which suggested style. A nasty style, but at least style of a sort. This place didn't have style of any sort. The Soul Cake Tuesday Duck didn't apparently have any kind of a home. Nor did Old Man Trouble or the Sandman, as far as she knew. She walked around the house, which wasn't much larger than a cottage. Definitely. Whoever lived here had no taste at all. She found the front door. It was black, with a knocker in the shape of an omega. Susan reached for it, but the door opened by itself. And the hall stretched away in front of her, far bigger than the outside of the house could possibly contain. She could distantly make out a stairway wide enough for the tap-dancing finale in a musical. There was something else wrong with the perspective. There clearly was a wall a long way off but, at the same time, it looked as though it was painted in the air a mere fifteen feet or so away. It was as if distance was optional. There was a large clock against one wall. Its slow tick filled the immense space. There's a room, she thought. I remember the room of whispers. Doors lined the hall at wide intervals. Or short intervals, if you looked at it another way. She tried to walk towards the nearest one, and gave up after a few wildly teetering steps. Finally she managed to reach it by taking aim and then shutting her eyes. The door was at one and the same time about normal human size and immensely big. There was a highly ornate frame around it, with a skulls-and-bones motif. She pushed the door open. This room could have housed a small town. A small area of carpet occupied the middle distance, no more than a hectare in size. It took Susan several minutes to reach the edge. It was a room within a room. There was a large, heavy-looking desk on a raised dais, with a leather swivel chair behind it. There was a large model of the Discworld, on a sort of ornament made of four elephants standing on the shell of a turtle. There were several bookshelves, the large volumes piled in the haphazard fashion of people who're far too busy using the books ever to arrange them properly. There was even a window, hanging in the air a few feet above the ground. But there were no walls. There was nothing between the edge of the carpet and the walls of the greater room except floor, and even that was far too precise a word for it. It didn't look like rock and it certainly wasn't wood. It made no sound when Susan walked on it. It was simply surface, in the purely geometrical sense. The carpet had a skull-and-bones pattern. It was also black. Everything was black, or a shade of grey. Here and there a tint suggested a very deep purple or ocean-depth blue. In the distance, towards the walls of the greater room, the metaroom or whatever it was, there was the suggestion of . . . something. Something was casting complicated shadows, too far away to be clearly seen. Susan got up on to the dais. There was something odd about the things around her. Of course, there was everything odd about the things around her, but it was a huge major oddness that was simply in their nature. She could ignore it. But there was an oddness on a human level. Everything was just slightly wrong, as if it had been made by someone who hadn't fully comprehended its purpose. There was a blotter on the oversize desk but it was part of it, fused to the surface. The drawers were just raised areas of wood, impossible to open. Whoever had made the desk had seen desks, but hadn't understood deskishness. There was even some sort of desk ornament. It was just a slab of lead, with a thread hanging down one side and a shiny round metal ball on the end of the thread. If you raised the ball it swung down and thumped into the lead, just once.  She didn't try to sit in the chair. There was a deep pit in the leather. Someone had spent a lot of time sitting there. She glanced at the spines of the books. They were in a language she couldn't understand. She trekked back to the distant door, went out into the hall, and tried the next door. A suspicion was beginning to form in her mind. The door led to another huge room, but this one was full of shelves, floor to distant, cloud-hung ceiling. Every shelf was lined with hourglasses. The sand pouring from the past to the future filled the room with a sound like surf, a noise made up of a billion small sounds. Susan walked between the shelves. It was like being in a crowd. Her eye was caught by a movement on a nearby shelf. In most of the hourglasses the falling sand was a solid silver line but in this one, just as she watched, the line vanished. The last grain of sand tumbled into the bottom bulb. The hourglass vanished with a small 'pop'. A moment later another one appeared in its place, with the faintest of 'pings'. In front of her eyes, sand began to fall . . . And she was aware that this process was going on all over the room. Old hourglasses vanished, new ones took their place. She knew about this, too. She reached out and picked up a glass, bit her lip thoughtfully, and started to turn the thing upside down . . . SQUEAK! She spun around. The Death of Rats was on the shelf behind her. It raised an admonitory finger. “All right,” said Susan. She put the glass back in its place. SQUEAK. “No. I haven't finished looking.” Susan set off for the door, with the rat skittering across the floor after her. The third room turned out to be . . . . . . the bathroom. Susan hesitated. You expected hourglasses in this place. You expected the skull-and-bones motif. But you didn't expect the very large white porcelain tub, on its own raised podium like a throne, with giant brass taps and - in faded blue letters just over the thing that held the plug chain - the words: C. H. Lavatory & Son, Mollymog St, Ankh-Morpork. You didn't expect the rubber duck. It was yellow. You didn't expect the soap. It was suitably bonewhite, but looked as if it had never been used. Beside it was a bar of orange soap which certainly had been used - it was hardly more than a sliver. It smelled a lot like the vicious stuff used at school. The bath, though big, was a human thing. There was brown-lined crazing around the plug-hole and a stain where the tap had dripped. But almost everything else had been designed by the person who hadn't understood deskishness, and now hadn't understood ablutionology either. They had created a towel rail an entire athletics team could have used for training. The black towels on it were fused to it and were quite hard. Whoever actually used the bathroom probably dried themselves on the white-and-blue, very worn towel with the initials Y M R-C-I-G-B-S A, A-M on it. There was even a lavatory, another fine example of C. H. Lavatory's porcelainic art, with an embossed frieze of green and blue flowers on the cistern. And again, like the bath and the soap, it suggested that this room had been built by someone . . . and then someone else had come along afterwards to add small details. Someone with a better knowledge of plumbing, for a start. And someone else who understood, really understood, that towels should be soft and capable of drying people, and soap should be capable of bubbles. You didn't expect any of it until you saw it. And then it was like seeing it again. The bald towel dropped off the rail and skipped across the floor, until it fell away to reveal the Death of Rats. SQUEAK? “Oh, all right,” said Susan. “Where do you want me to go now?” The rat scurried to the open door and disappeared into the hall. Susan followed it to yet another door. She turned yet another handle. Another room within a room lay beyond. There was a tiny area of lighted tiling in the darkness, containing the distant vision of a table, a few chairs, a kitchen dresser– –and someone. A hunched figure was sitting at the table. As Susan cautiously approached she heard the rattle of cutlery on a plate. An old man was eating his supper, very noisily. In between forkfuls, he was talking to himself with his mouth full. It was a kind of auto bad manners. “'Snot my fault! [spray] I was against it from the start but, oh no, he has to go and [recover piece of ballistic sausage from table] start gettin' involved, I told him, i's'not as if you're not involved [stab unidentified fried object], oh no, that's not his way [spray, jab fork at the air], once you get involved like that, I said, how're you getting out, tell me that [make temporary egg-and-ketchup sandwich] but, oh no–' Susan walked around the patch of carpet. The man took no notice. The Death of Rats shinned up the table leg and landed on a slice of fried bread. “Oh. It's you.” SQUEAK. The old man looked around. “Where? Where?” Susan stepped onto the carpet. The man stood up so quickly that his chair fell over. “Who the hells are you?” “Could you stop pointing that sharp bacon at me?” “I asked you a question, young woman!” “I'm Susan.” This didn't sound enough. “Duchess of Sto Helit,” she added. The man's wrinkled face wrinkled still further as he strove to comprehend this. Then he turned away and threw his hands up in the air. “Oh, yes!” he bawled, to the room in general. “That just puts the entire tin lid on it, that does!” He waved a finger at the Death of Rats, who leaned backwards. “You cheating little rodent! Oh, yes! I smell a rat here!” SQUEAK? The shaking finger stopped suddenly. The man spun around. “How did you manage to walk through the wall?” “I'm sorry?” said Susan, backing away. “I didn't know there was one.” “What d'you call this, then, Klatchian mist?” The man slapped the air. The hippo of memory wallowed . . . “. . . Albert . . .” said Susan, “right?” Albert thumped his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Worse and worse! What've you been telling her?” “He didn't tell me anything except SQUEAK and I don't know what that means,” said Susan. “But . . . look, there's no wall here, there's just . . .” Albert wrenched open a drawer. “Observe,” he said sharply. “Hammer, right? Nail, right? Watch.” He hammered the nail into the air about five feet up at the edge of the tiled area. It hung there. “Wall,” said Albert. Susan reached out gingerly and touched the nail. It had a sticky feel, a little like static electricity. “Well, it doesn't feel like a wall to me,” she managed. SQUEAK. Albert dropped the hammer on the table. He wasn't a small man, Susan realized. He was quite tall, but he walked with the kind of lopsided stoop normally associated with laboratory assistants of an Igor turn of mind. “I give in,” he said, wagging his finger at Susan again. “I told him no good'd come of it. He started meddlin', and next thing a mere chit of a girl- where'd you go?” Susan walked over to the table while Albert waved his arms in the air, trying to find her. There was a cheeseboard on the table, and a snuff box. And a string of sausages. No fresh vegetables at all. Miss Butts advocated avoiding fried foods and eating plenty of vegetables for what she referred to as Daily Health. She put a lot of troubles down to an absence of Daily Health. Albert looked like the embodiment of them all as he scuttled around the kitchen, grabbing at the air. She sat in the chair as he danced past. Albert stopped moving, and put his hand over one eye. Then he turned, very carefully. The one visible eye was screwed up in a frantic effort of concentration. He squinted at the chair, his eye watering with effort. “That's pretty good,” he said, quietly. “All right. You're here. The rat and the horse brought you. Damn fool things. They think it's the right thing to do.” “What right thing to do?” said Susan. “And I'm not a . . . what you said.” Albert stared at her. “The Master could do that,” he said at last. “It's part of the job. I 'spect you found you could do it a long time ago, eh? Not be noticed when you didn't want to be?” SQUEAK, said the Death of Rats. “What?” said Albert. SQUEAK. “He says to tell you,” said Albert wearily, “that a chit of a girl means a small girl. He thinks you may have misheard me.” Susan hunched up in the chair. Albert pulled up another one and sat down. “How old are you?” “Sixteen.” “Oh, my.” Albert rolled his eyes. “How long have you been sixteen?” “Since I was fifteen, of course. Are you stupid?” “My, my, how the time does pass,” said Albert. “Do you know why you're here?” “No . . . but,” Susan hesitated, “but it's got something to do with . . . it's something like . . . I'm seeing things that people don't see, and I've met someone who's just a story, and I know I've been here before . . . and all these skulls and bones on things . . .”  Albert's rangy, vulture-like shape loomed over her. “Would you like a cocoa?” he said. It was a lot different from the cocoa at the school, which was like hot brown water. Albert's cocoa had fat floating in it; if you turned the mug upside down, it would be a little while before anything fell out. “Your mum and dad,” said Albert, when she had a chocolate moustache that was far too young for her, “did they ever . . . explain anything to you?” “Miss Delcross did that in Biology,” said Susan. “She got it wrong,” she added. “I mean about your grandfather,” said Albert. “I remember things,” said Susan, “but I can't remember them until I've seen them. Like the bathroom. Like you.” “Your mum and dad thought it best if you forgot,” said Albert. “Hah! It's in the bone! They was afraid it was going to happen and it has! You've inherited.” “Oh, I know about that, too,” said Susan. “It's all about mice and beans and things.” Albert gave her a blank look. “Look, I'll try to put it tactful,” he said. Susan gave him a polite look. “Your grandfather is Death,” said Albert. “You know? The skeleton in the black robe? You rode in on his horse and this is his house. Only he's . . . gone away. To think things over, or something. What I reckon's happening is you're being sucked in. It's in the bone. You're old enough now. There's a hole and it thinks you're the right shape. I don't like it any more than you do.” “Death,” said Susan, flatly. “Well, I can't say I didn't have suspicions. Like the Hogfather and the Sandman and the Tooth Fairy?” “Yes.” SQUEAK. “You expect me to believe that, do you?” said Susan, trying to summon up her most withering scorn. Albert glared back like someone who'd done all his withering a long time ago. “It's no skin off my nose what you believe, madam,” he said. “You really mean the tall figure with the scythe and everything?” “Yes.” “Look, Albert,” said Susan, in the voice one uses to the simpleminded, “even if there was a "Death" like that, and frankly it's quite ridiculous to go anthropomorphizing a simple natural function, no-one can inherit anything from it. I know about heredity. It's all about having red hair and things. You get it from other people. You don't get it from . . . myths and legends. Um.” The Death of Rats had gravitated to the cheeseboard, where he was using his scythe to hack off a lump. Albert sat back. “I remember when you got brought here,” he said. “He'd kept on asking, you see. He was curious. He likes kids. Sees a lot of them really, but . . . not to get to know, if you see what I mean. Your mum and dad didn't want to, but they gave in and brought you all here for tea one day just to keep him quiet. They didn't like to do it because they thought you'd be scared and scream the place down. But you . . . you didn't scream. You laughed. Frightened the life out of your dad, that did. They brought you a couple more times when he asked, but then they got scared about what might happen and your dad put his foot down and that was the end of it. He was about the only one who could argue with the Master, your dad. You'd have been about four then, I think.”  Susan raised her hand thoughtfully and touched the pale lines on her cheek. “The Master said they were raising you according to,” Albert sneered, “modern methods. Logic. And thinking old stuff is silly. I dunno . . . I suppose they wanted to keep you away from . . . ideas like this . . .” “I was given a ride on the horse,” said Susan, not listening to him. “ I had a bath in the big bathroom.” “Soap all over the place,” said Albert. His face contorted into something approaching a smile. “I could hear the Master laughing from here. And he made you a swing, too. Tried to, anyway. No magic or anything. With his actual hands.” Susan sat while memories woke and yawned and unfolded in her head. “I remember about that bathroom now,” she said. “It's all coming back to me.” “Nah, it never went away. It just got papered over.” “He was no good at plumbing. What does Y M R-C-I-G-B-S A, AM mean?” “Young Men's Reformed-Cultists-of-the-Ichor-God-BelShamharoth Association, Ankh-Morpork,” said Albert. “It's where I stay if I have to go back down for anything. Soap and suchlike.” “But you're not . . . a young man,” said Susan, unable to prevent herself. “No-one argues,” he snapped. And Susan thought that was probably true. There was some kind of wiry strength in Albert, as if his whole body was a knuckle. “He can make just about anything,” she said, half to herself, “but some things he just doesn't understand, and one of them's plumbing.” “Right. We had to get a plumber from Ankh-Morpork, hah, he said he might be able to make it a week next Thursday, and you don't say that kind of thing to the Master,” said Albert. “I've never seen a bugger work so fast. Then the Master just made him forget. He can make everyone forget, except–” Albert stopped, and frowned. “Seems I've got to put up with it, “ he said. “Seems you've a right. I expect you're tired. You can stay here. There's plenty of rooms.” “No, I've got to get back! There'll be terrible trouble if I'm not at school in the morning.” “There's no Time here except what people brings with 'em. Things just happen one after the other. Binky'll take you right back to the time you left, if you like. But you ought to stop here a while.” “You said there's a hole and I'm being sucked in. I don't know what that means.” “You'll feel better after a sleep,” said Albert. There was no real day or night here. That had given Albert trouble at first. There was just the bright landscape and, above, a black sky with stars. Death had never got the hang of day and night. When the house had human inhabitants it tended to keep a 26-hour day. Humans, left to themselves, adopt a longer diurnal rhythm than the 24-hour day, so they can be reset like a lot of little clocks at sunset. Humans have to put up with Time, but days are a sort of personal option. Albert went to bed whenever he remembered. Now he sat up, with one candle alight, staring into space. “She remembered about the bathroom,” he muttered. “And she knows about things she couldn't have seen. She couldn't have been told. She's got his memory. She inherited.” SQUEAK, said the Death of Rats. He tended to sit by the fire at nights. “Last time he went off, people stopped dyin',” said Albert. “But they ain't stopped dyin' this time. And the horse went to her. She's fillin' the hole.” Albert glared at the darkness. When he was agitated it showed by a sort of relentless chewing and sucking activity, as if he was trying to extract some forgotten morsel of teatime from the recesses of a tooth. Now he was making a noise like a hairdresser's U-bend. He couldn't remember ever having been young. It must have happened thousands of years ago. He was seventy-nine, but Time in Death's house was a reusable resource. He was vaguely aware that childhood was a tricky business, especially towards the end. There was all the business with pimples and bits of your body having a mind of their own. Running the executive arm of mortality was certainly an extra problem. But the point was, the horrible, inescapable point was, that someone had to do it. For, as has been said before, Death operated in general rather than particular terms, just like a monarchy. If you are a subject in a monarchy, you are ruled by the monarch. All the time. Waking or sleeping. Whatever you - or they - happen to be doing. It's part of the general conditions of the situation. The Queen doesn't actually have to come around to your actual house, hog the chair and the TV remote control, and issue actual commands about how one is parched and would enjoy a cup of tea. It all takes place automatically, like gravity. Except that, unlike gravity, it needs someone at the top. They don't necessarily have to do a great deal. They just have to be there. They just have to be. “Her?” said Albert. SQUEAK. “She'll crack soon enough,” said Albert. “Oh, yes. You can't be an immortal and a mortal at the same time, it'll tear you in half. I almost feels sorry for her.” SQUEAK, agreed the Death of Rats. “And that ain't the worst bit,” said Albert. “You wait till her memory really starts working . . . SQUEAK. “You listen to me,” said Albert. “You'd better start looking for him right away.” Susan awoke, and had no idea what time it was. There was a clock by the bedside, because Death knew there should be things like bedside clocks. It had skulls and bones and the omega sign on it, and it didn't work. There were no working clocks in the house, except the special one in the hall. Any others got depressed and stopped, or unwound themselves all in one go. Her room looked as though someone had moved out yesterday. There were hairbrushes on the dressing table, and a few odds and ends of make-up. There was even a dressing-gown on the back of the door. It had a rabbit on the pocket. The cosy effect would have been improved if it hadn't been a skeletal one. She had a rummage through the drawers. This must have been her mother's room. There was a lot of pink. Susan had nothing against pink in moderation, but this wasn't it; she put on her old school dress. The important thing, she decided, was to stay calm. There was always a logical explanation for everything, even if you had to make it up. SQEAUFF. The Death of Rats landed on the dressing table, claws scrabbling for a purchase. He removed the tiny scythe from his jaws. “I think,” said Susan carefully, “that I would like to go home now, thank you.” The little rat nodded, and leapt. It landed on the edge of the pink carpet and scurried away across the dark floor beyond. When Susan stepped off the carpet the rat stopped and looked around in approval. Once again, she felt she'd passed some sort of test. She followed it out into the hall and then into the smoky cavern of the kitchen. Albert was bent over the stove. “Morning,” he said, out of habit rather than any acknowledgement of the time of day. “You want fried bread with your sausages? There's porridge to follow.” Susan looked at the mess sizzling in the huge fryingpan. It wasn't a sight to be seen on an empty stomach, although it could probably cause one. Albert could make an egg wish it had never been laid. “Haven't you got any muesli?” she said. “Is that some kind of sausage?” said Albert suspiciously. “It's nuts and grains.” “Any fat in it?” “I don't think so.” “How're you supposed to fry it, then?” “You don't fry it.” “You call that breakfast?” “It doesn't have to be fried to be breakfast,” said Susan. “I mean, you mentioned porridge, and you don't fry porridge–” “Who says?” “A boiled egg, then?” “Hah, boiling's no good, it don't kill off all the germs.” “BOIL ME AN EGG, ALBERT.” As the echoes bounced across and died away, Susan wondered where the voice had come from. Albert's ladle tinkled on the tiles. “Please?” said Susan. “You did the voice,” said Albert. “Don't bother about the egg,” said Susan. The voice had made her jaw ache. It worried her even more than it worried Albert. After all, it was her mouth. “I want to go home!” “You are home,” said Albert. “This place? This isn't my home!” “Yeah? What's the inscription on the big clock?” "'Too Late",” said Susan promptly. “Where are the beehives?” “In the orchard.” “How many plates've we got?” “Seven–” Susan shut her mouth firmly. “See? It's home to part of you,” said Albert. “Look . . . Albert,” said Susan, trying sweet reason in case it worked any better this time round, “maybe there is . . . someone. . . sort of . . . in charge of things, but I'm really no-one special . . . I mean . . .” “Yeah? How come the horse knows you?” “Yes, but I really am just a normal girl–” “Normal girls didn't get a My Little Binky set on their third birthday!” snapped Albert. “Your dad took it away. The Master was very upset about that. He was trying.” “I mean I'm an ordinary kid!” “Listen, ordinary kids get a xylophone. They don't just ask their grandad to take his shirt off!” “I mean I can't help it! That's not my fault! It's not fair!” “Really? Oh, why didn't you say?” said Albert sourly. “That cuts a lot of thin ice, that does. I should just go out now, if I was you, and tell the universe that it's not fair. I bet it'll say, oh, all right then, sorry you've been troubled, you're let off.” “That's sarcasm! You can't talk to me like that! You're just a servant!” “That's right. And so are you. So I should get started, if I was you. The rat'll help. He mainly does rats, but the principle's the same.” Susan sat with her mouth open. “I'm going outside,” she snapped. “I ain't stopping you.” Susan stormed out through the back door, across the enormous expanses of the outer room, past the grindstone in the yard, and into the garden. “Huh,” she said. If someone had told Susan that Death had a house, she would have called them mad or, even worse, stupid. But if she'd had to imagine one, she'd have drawn, in sensible black crayon, some towering, battlemented, Gothic mansion. It would loom, and involve other words ending in 'oom', like gloom and doom. There would have been thousands of windows. She'd fill odd corners of the sky with bats. It would be impressive. It wouldn't be a cottage. It wouldn't have a rather tasteless garden. It wouldn't have a mat in front of the door with 'Welcome' on it. Susan had invincible walls of common sense. They were beginning to melt like salt in a wet wind, and that made her angry. There was Grandfather Lezek, of course, on his little farm so poor that even the sparrows had to kneel down to eat. He'd been a nice old chap, so far as she could recall; a bit sheepish, now she came to think about it, especially when her father was around. Her mother had told Susan that her own father had been... Now she came to think about that, she wasn't sure what her mother had told her. Parents were quite clever at not telling people things, even when they used a lot of words. She'd just been left with the impression that he wasn't around. Now it was being suggested that he was renowned for being around all the time. It was like having a relative in trade. A god, now . . . a god would be something. Lady Odile Flume, in the fifth form, was always boasting that her great-great-grandmother had once been seduced by the god Blind to in the form of a vase of daisies, which apparently made her a demi-hemi-semi-goddess. She said her mother found it useful to get a table in restaurants. Saying you were a close relative of Death probably would not have the same effect. You probably wouldn't even manage a seat near the kitchen. If it was all some kind of dream, she didn't seem at any risk of waking up. Anyway, she didn't believe that kind of thing. Dreams weren't like this. A path led from the stable-yard past a vegetable garden and, descending slightly, into an orchard of black-leaved trees. Glossy black apples hung from them. Off to one side were some white beehives. And she knew she'd seen it all before. There was an apple tree that was quite, quite different from the others. She stood and stared at it as memory flooded back. She remembered being just old enough to see how logically stupid the whole idea was, and he'd been standing there, anxiously waiting to see what she'd do... Old certainties drained away, to be replaced by new certainties. Now she understood whose granddaughter she was. The Mended Drum had traditionally gone in for, well, traditional pub games, such as dominoes, darts and Stabbing People In The Back And Taking All Their Money. The new owner had decided to go up-market. This was the only available direction. There had been the Quizzing Device, a three-ton water-driven monstrosity based on a recently discovered design by Leonard of Quirm. It had been a bad idea. Captain Carrot of the Watch, who had a mind like a needle under his open smiling face, had surreptitiously substituted a new roll of questions like: Were you nere Vortin's Diamond Warehouse on the Nite of the 15th? and: Who was the Third Man Who did the Blagging At Bearhugger's Distillery Larst wee-k? and had arrested three customers before they caught on. The owner had promised another machine any day now. The Librarian, one of the tavern's regulars, had been collecting pennies in readiness. There was a small stage at one end of the bar. The owner had tried a lunch-time stripper, but only once. At the sight of a large orang-utan in the front row with a big innocent grin, a big bag of penny pieces and a big banana the poor girl had fled. Yet another entertainment Guild had blacklisted the Drum. The new owner's name was Hibiscus Dunelm. It wasn't his fault. He really wanted to make the Drum, he said, a fun place. For two pins he'd have put stripy umbrellas outside. He looked down at Glod. “Just three of you?” he said. “Yes.” “When I agreed to five dollars, you said you had a big band.” “Say hello, Lias.” “My word, that is a big band.” Dunelm backed away. “I thought,” he said, “just a few numbers that everyone knows? Just to provide some ambience.” “Ambience,” said Imp, looking around the Drum. He was familiar with the word. But, in a place like this, it was all lost and alone. There were only three or four customers in at this early hour of the evening. They weren't paying any attention to the stage. The wall behind the stage had clearly seen action. He stared at it as Lias patiently stacked up his stones. “Oh, just a bit of fruit and old eggs,” said Glod. “People probably get a bit boisterous. I shouldn't worry about that.” “I'm not worried about it,” said Imp. “I should think not.” “It's the axe marks and arrow holles I'm worried about. Gllod, we haven't even practised! Not properlly!” “You can play your guitar, can't you?” “Wellll, yes, I suppose . . .” He'd tried it out. It was easy to play. In fact, it was almost impossible to play badly. It didn't seem to matter how he touched the strings - they still rang out the tune he had in mind. It was, in solid form, the kind of instrument you dream about when you first start to play - the one you can play without learning. He remembered when he'd first picked up a harp and struck the strings, confidently expecting the kind of lambent tones the old men coaxed from them. He'd got a discord instead. But this was the instrument he'd dreamed of . . . “We'll stick to numbers everyone knows,” said the dwarf. "'The Wizard's Staff" and "Gathering Rhubarb". Stuff like that. People like songs they can snigger along to.” Imp looked down at the bar. It was filling up a bit now. But his attention was drawn to a large orang-utan, which had pulled up its chair right in front of the stage and was holding a bag of fruit. “Gllod, there's an ape watching us.” “Well?” said Glod, unfolding a string bag. “It's an ape.” “This is Ankh-Morpork. That's how things are here.” Glod removed his helmet and unfolded something from inside. “Why've you got a string bag?” said Imp. “Fruit's fruit. Waste not, want not. If they throw eggs, try to catch them.” Imp slung the guitar's strap over his shoulder. He'd tried to tell the dwarf, but what could he say: this is too easy to play? He hoped there was a god of musicians. And there is. There are many, one for almost every type of music. Almost every type. But the only one due to watch over Imp that night was Reg, god of club musicians, who couldn't pay much attention because he'd also got three other gigs to do. “We ready?” said Lias, picking his hammers. The others nodded. “Let's give 'em "The Wizard's Staff", then,” said Glod. “That always breaks the ice.” “OK,” said the troll. He counted on his fingers. “One, two . . . one, two, many, lots.” The first apple was thrown seven seconds later. It was caught by Glod, who didn't miss a note. But the first banana curved viciously and grounded in his ear. “Keep playing!” he hissed. Imp obeyed, ducking a fusillade of oranges. In the front row, the ape opened his bag and produced a very large melon. “Can you see any pears?” said Glod, taking a breath. “I like pears.” “I can see a man with a throwing axe!” “Does it look valuable?” An arrow vibrated in the wall by Lias's head. It was three in the morning. Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobbs were reaching the conclusion that anyone who intended to invade Ankh-Morpork probably wasn't going to do so now. And there was a good fire back in the watch house. “We could leave a note,” said Nobby, blowing on his fingers. “You know? Come back tomorrow, sort of thing?” He looked up. A solitary horse was walking under the gate arch. A white horse, with a sombre, black-clad rider. There was no question of 'Halt, who goes there?” The night watch walked the streets at strange hours and had become accustomed to seeing things not generally seen by mortal men. Sergeant Colon touched his helmet respectfully. “'Evenin', your lordship,” he said. “ER . . . GOOD EVENING.” The guards watched the horse walk out of sight. “Some poor bugger's in for it, then,” said Sergeant Colon. “He's dedicated, you got to admit it,” said Nobby. “Out at all hours. Always got time for people.” “Yeah.” The guards stared into the velvety dark. Something not quite right, thought Sergeant Colon. “What's his first name?” said Nobby. They stared some more. Then Sergeant Colon, who still hadn't quite been able to put his finger on it, said: “What do you mean, what's his first name?” “What's his first name?” “He's Death,” said the sergeant. “Death. That's his whole name. I mean . . . what do you mean? . . . You mean like . . . Keith Death?” “Well, why not?” “He's just Death, isn't he?” “No, that's just his job. What do his friends call him?” “What do you mean, friends?” “All right. Please yourself.” “Let's go and get a hot rum.” “I think he looks like a Leonard.” Sergeant Colon remembered the voice. That was it. Just for a moment there . . . “I must be getting old,” he said. “For a moment there I thought he sounded like a Susan.” “I think they saw me,” whispered Susan, as the horse rounded a corner. The Death of Rats poked its head out of her pocket. SQUEAK. “I think we're going to need that raven,” said Susan. “I mean, I . . . think I understand you, I just don't know what you're saying . . . Binky stopped outside a large house, set back a little from the road. It was a slightly pretentious residence with more gables and mullions than it should rightly have, and this was a clue to its origins: it was the kind of house built for himself by a rich merchant when he goes respectable and needs to do something with the loot. “I'm not happy about this,” said Susan. “It can't possibly work. I'm human. I have to go to the toilet and things like that. I can't just walk into people's houses and kill them!” SQUEAK. “All right, not kill. But it's not good manners, however you look at it.” A sign on the door said: Tradesmen to rear entrance. “Do I count as–” SQUEAK! Susan normally would never have dreamed of asking. She'd always seen herself as a person who went through the front doors of life. The Death of Rats scuttled up the path and through the door. “Hang on! I can't–” Susan looked at the wood. She could. Of course she could. More memories crystallized in front of her eyes. After all, it was only wood. It'd rot in a few hundred years. By the measure of infinity, it hardly existed at all. On average, considered over the lifetime of the multiverse, most things didn't. She stepped forward. The heavy oak door offered as much resistance as a shadow. Grieving relatives were clustered around the bed where, almost lost in the pillows, was a wrinkled old man. At the foot of the bed, paying no attention whatsoever to the keening around it, was a large, very fat, ginger cat. SQUEAK. Susan looked at the hourglass. The last few grains tumbled through the pinch. The Death of Rats, with exaggerated caution, sneaked up behind the sleeping cat and kicked it hard. The animal awoke, turned, flattened its ears in terror, and leapt off the quilt. The Death of Rats sniggered. SNH, SNH, SNH. One of the mourners, a pinch-faced man, looked up. He peered at the sleeper. “That's it,” he said. “He's gone.” “I thought we were going to be here all day,” said the woman next to him, standing up. “Did you see that wretched old cat move? Animals can tell, you know. They've got this sixth sense.” SNH, SNH, SNH. “Well, come on there, I know you're here somewhere,” said the corpse. It sat up. Susan was familiar with the idea of ghosts. But she hadn't expected it to be like this. She hadn't expected the ghosts to be the living, but they were merely pale sketches in the air compared to the old man sitting up in bed. He looked solid enough, but a blue glow outlined him. “One hundred and seven years, eh?” he cackled. “I expect I had you worried for a while there. Where are you?” “Er, HERE,” said Susan. “Female, eh?” said the old man. “Well, well, well.” He slid off the bed, spectral nightshirt flapping, and was suddenly pulled up short as though he'd reached the end of a chain. This was more or less the case; a thin line of blue light still tethered him to his late habitation. The Death of Rats jumped up and down on the pillow, making urgent slashing movements with its scythe. “Oh, sorry,” said Susan, and sliced. The blue line snapped with a high-pitched, crystalline twang. Around them, sometimes walking through them, were the mourners. Mourning seemed to have stopped, now the old man had died. The pinch-faced man was feeling under the mattress. “Look at 'em,” said the old man nastily. “Poor ole Grandad, sob, sob, sorely missed, we won't see his like again, where did the ole bugger leave his will? That's my youngest son, that is. Well, if you can call a card every Hogswatchnight a son. See his wife? Got a smile like a wave on a slop bucket. And she ain't the worst of 'em. Relatives? You can keep 'em. I only stayed alive out of mischief.” A couple of people were exploring under the bed. There was a humorous porcelain clang. The old man capered behind them, making gestures. “Not a chance!” he chortled. “Heh heh! It's in the cat basket! I left all the money to the cat!” Susan looked around. The cat was watching them anxiously from behind the washstand. Susan felt some response was called for. “That was very . . . kind of you . . .” she said. “Hah! Mangy thing! Thirteen years of sleepin' and crappin' and waiting for the next meal to turn up? Never took half an hour's exercise in his big fat life. Up until they find the will, anyway. Then he's going to be the richest fastest cat in the world–” The voice faded. So did its owner. “What a dreadful old man,” said Susan. She looked down at the Death of Rats, who was trying to make faces at the cat. “What'll happen to him?” SQUEAK. “Oh.” Behind them a former mourner tipped a drawer out on to the floor. The cat was beginning to tremble. Susan stepped out through the wall. Clouds curled behind Binky like a wake. “Well, that wasn't too bad. I mean, no blood or anything. And he was very old and not very nice.” “That's all right, then, is it?” The raven landed on her shoulder. “What're you doing here?” “Rat Death here said I could have a lift. I've got an appointment.” SQUEAK. The Death of Rats poked its nose out of the saddlebag. “Are we a cab service?” said Susan coldly. The rat shrugged and pushed a lifetimer into her hand. Susan read the name etched on the glass. “Volf Volfssonssonssonsson? Sounds a bit Hublandish to me.” SQUEAK. The Death of Rats clambered up Binky's mane and took up station between the horse's ears, tiny robe flapping in the wind. Binky cantered low over a battlefield. It wasn't a major war, just an inter-tribal scuffle. Nor were there any obvious armies - the fighters seemed to be two groups of individuals, some on horseback, who happened coincidentally to be on the same side. Everyone was dressed in the same sort of furs and exciting leatherwear, and Susan was at a loss to know how they told friend from foe. People just seemed to shout a lot and swing huge swords and battleaxes at random. On the other hand, anyone you managed to hit instantly became your foe, so it probably all came out right in the long run. The point was that people were dying and acts of incredibly stupid heroism were being performed. SQUEAK. The Death of Rats pointed urgently downward. “Gee . . . down.” Binky settled on a small hillock. “Er . . . right,” said Susan. She pulled the scythe out of its holster. The blade sprang into life. It wasn't hard to spot the souls of the dead. They were coming off the battlefield arm in arm, friend and hitherto foe alike, laughing and stumbling, straight towards her. Susan dismounted. And concentrated. “Er,” she said, “ANYONE HERE BEEN KILLED AND CALLED VOLF?” Behind her, the Death of Rats put its head in its paws. “Er. HELLO?” No-one took any notice. The warriors trooped past. They were forming a line on the edge of the battlefield, and appeared to be waiting for something. She didn't have to . . . do . . . all of them. Albert had tried to explain, but a memory had unfolded anyway. She just had to do some, determined by timing or historical importance, and that meant all the others happened; all she had to do was keep the momentum going. “You got to be more assertive,” said the raven, who had alighted on a rock. “That's the trouble with women in the professions. Not assertive enough.” “Why'd you want to come here?” she said. “This is a battlefield, isn't it?” said the raven patiently. “You've got to have ravens afterwards.” Its freewheeling eyes swivelled in its head. “Carrion regardless, as you might say.” “You mean everyone gets eaten?” “Part of the miracle of nature,” said the raven. “That's horrible,” said Susan. Black birds were already circling in the sky. “Not really,” said the raven. “Horses for courses, you might say.” One side, if that's what you could call it, was fleeing the field of battle with the others in pursuit. The birds started to settle on what was, Susan realized with horror, an early breakfast. Soft bits, sunny side up. “You'd better go and look for your lad,” said the raven. “Otherwise he'll miss his ride.” “What ride?” The eyes orbited again. “You ever learn mythology?” it said. “No. Miss Butts says it's just made-up stories with little literary content.” “Ah. Deary me. Can't have that, can we? Oh, well. You'll soon see. Must rush.” The raven leapt into the air. “I generally try to get a seat near the head.” “What will I–” And then someone started to sing. The voice swooped out of the sky like a sudden wind. It was a rather good mezzo-soprano “Hi-jo-to! Ho! Hi-jo-to! Ho!” And after it, mounted on a horse almost as fine as Binky, was a woman. Very definitely. A lot of woman. She was as much woman as you could get in one place without getting two women. She was dressed in chain mail, a shiny 46-D-cup breastplate, and a helmet with horns on it. The assembled dead cheered as the horse cantered in for a landing. There were six other singing horsewomen plunging out of the sky behind it. “Isn't it always the same?” said the raven, flapping away. “You can wait hours without seeing one and then you get seven all at once.” Susan watched in astonishment as each rider picked up a dead warrior and galloped up into the sky again. They disappeared abruptly a few hundred yards up and reappeared again almost instantly for a fresh passenger. Soon there was a busy shuttle service operating. After a minute or two one of the women trotted her horse over to Susan and pulled a scroll of parchment out of her breastplate. “What ho! Says here Volf,” she said, in the brisk voice used by people on horseback when addressing mere pedestrians. “Volf the Lucky . . . ?” “Er. I don't know - I MEAN, I DON'T KNOW WHICH ONE HE IS,” said Susan helplessly. The helmeted woman leaned forward. There was something rather familiar about her. “Are you new?” “Yes. I mean, YES.” “Well, don't stand there like a big girl's blouse. Jolly well go and fetch him, there's a good sport.” Susan looked around wildly, and saw him at last. He wasn't very far away. A youngish man, outlined in flickering pale blue, was visible among the fallen. Susan hurried over, scythe at the ready. There was a blue line connecting the warrior to his former body. SQUEAK! shouted the Death of Rats, jumping up and down and making suggestive motions. “Left hand thumb up, right hand bent at the wrist, give it some wellie!” shouted the horned woman. Susan swung the scythe. The line snapped. “What happened?” said Volf. He looked down. “That's me down there, isn't it?” he said. He turned slowly. “And down there. And over there. And . . .” He looked at the horned female warrior and brightened up. “By Io!” he said. “It's true? Valkyries will carry me off to the hall of Blind lo where there is perpetual feasting and drinking?” “Don't, I mean DON'T ASK ME,” said Susan. The Valkyrie reached down and hauled the warrior across her saddle. “Just keep quiet, there's a good chap,” she said. She stared thoughtfully at Susan. “Are you a soprano?” she said. “Pardon?” “Can you sing at all, gel? Only we could do with another soprano. Far too many mezzo-sopranos around these days.” “I'm not very musical, I'm sorry.” “Oh, well. Just a thought. Must be going.” She threw back her head. The mighty breastplate heaved. “Hi-jo-to! Ho!” The horse reared, and galloped into the sky. Before it reached the clouds it shrank to a gleaming pinpoint, which winked. “What,” said Susan, “was all that about?” There was a flurry of wings. The raven alighted on the head of the recently departed Volf. “Well, these guys believe that if you die in battle some big fat singing horned women carry you off to a sort of giant feast hall where you gobble yourself silly for the rest of eternity,” said the raven. It belched genteelly. “Damn stupid idea, really.” “But it just happened!” “Still a daft idea.” The raven looked around at the stricken battlefield, empty now except for the fallen and the flocks of his fellow ravens. “What a waste,” he added. “ I mean, just look at it all. Such a terrible waste.” “Yes!” “I mean, I'm near bursting and there's hundreds of 'em untouched. I think I'll see if I can have a doggy bag.” “They're dead bodies!” “Right!” “What are you eating?” “It's all right,” said the raven, backing away. “There's enough for everyone.” “That's disgusting!” “I didn't kill 'em,” it said. Susan gave up. “She looked a lot like Iron Lily,” she said, as they walked back to the patient horse. “Our gym mistress. Sounded like her, too.” She imagined the warbling Valkyries pounding across the sky. Get some warrior, you bunch of fainting blossoms . . . “Convergent evolution,” said the raven. “Often happens. I read once where apparently the common octopus has an eye almost exactly the same as the human eyeb– caw!” “You were going to say something like: except for the taste, weren't you?” said Susan. “Negger grossed by bind,” said the raven indistinctly. “Sure?” “Leg go ogg by beak glease?” Susan released her grip. “This is dreadful,” she said. “This is what he used to do? There's no element of choice?” SQUEAK “But what if they don't deserve to die?” SQUEAK. The Death of Rats contrived to indicate, quite effectively, that in that case they could apply to the universe and point out that they didn't deserve to die. In which case it was up to the universe to say, oh, didn't you? oh, well, that's all right, then, you can go on living. It was a remarkably succinct gesture. “So . . . my grandfather was Death, and he just let nature take its course? When he could have done some good? That's stupid.” The Death of Rats shook its skull. “I mean, was Volf on the right side?” said Susan. “Hard to say,” said the raven. “He was a Vasung. The other side were Bergunds. Apparently it all started with a Bergund carrying off a Vasung woman a few  hundred years ago. Or it may have been the other way round. Well, the other side invaded their village. There was a bit of a massacre. And then the other ones went to the other village and there was another massacre. After that, you might say, there was some residual bad feeling.” “Very well, then,” said Susan. “Who's next?” SQUEAK. The Death of Rats landed on the saddle. It leaned down and, with some effort, hauled another hourglass out of the pack. Susan read the label. It said: Imp y Celyn. Susan had a sensation of falling backwards. “I know this name,” she said. SQUEAK. “I . . . remember it from somewhere,” said Susan. “It's important. He's . . . important . . .” The moon hung over the desert of Klatch like a huge ball of rock. It wasn't much of a desert to be graced by so impressive a moon. It was just part of the belt of deserts, growing progressively hotter and drier, that surrounded the Great Nef and the Dehydrated Ocean. And no-one would have thought much about it if people very like Mr Clete of the Musicians' Guild hadn't come along and made maps and put across this part of the desert an innocent little dotted line that marked a border between Klatch and Hersheba. Up until that time the D'regs, a collection of cheerfully warlike nomadic tribes, had roamed the desert quite freely. Now there was a line, they were sometimes Klatchian D'regs and sometimes Hershebian D'regs, with all the rights due to citizens of both states, particularly the right to pay just as much tax as could be squeezed out of them and be drafted in to fight wars against people they'd never heard of. So as a result of the dotted line Klatch was now incipiently at war with Hersheba and the D'regs, Hersheba was at war with the D'regs and Klatch, and the D'regs were at war with everyone, including one another, and having considerable fun because the D'reg word for 'stranger' was the same as for 'target'. The fort was one of the legacies of the dotted line. Now it was a dark rectangle on the hot silver sands. From it came what could very accurately be called the strains of an accordion, since someone seemed to want to play a tune but kept on running into difficulties after a few bars, and starting again. Someone knocked on the door. After a while there was a scraping on the other side and a small hatch opened. “Yes, offendi?” IS THIS THE KLATCHIAN FOREIGN LEGION? The face of the little man on the other side of the door went blank. “Ah,” he said, “you've got me there. Hang on a moment.” The hatch shut. There was a whispered discussion on the other side of the door. The hatch opened. “Yes, it appears we are the . . . the . . . what was that again? Right, got it . . . the Klatchian Foreign Legion. Yes. What was it you were wanting?” I WISH TO JOIN. “Join? Join what?” THE KLATCHIAN FOREIGN LEGION. “Where's that?” There was some more whispering. “Oh. Right. Sorry. Yes. That's us.” The doors swung open. The visitor strode in. A  legionary with corporal's stripes on his arm walked up to him. “You'll have to report to . . .” his eyes glazed a little, . . . you know . . . big man, three stripes . . . on the tip of my tongue a moment ago . . .” SERGEANT? “Right,” said the corporal, with relief. “What's your name, soldier?” ER . . . “You don't have to say, actually. That's what the . . . the...” KLATCHIAN FOREIGN LEGION? “. . . what it's all about. People join to . . . to . . . with your mind, you know, when you can't . . . things that happened . . .” FORGET? “Right. I'm . . .” The man's face went blank. “Wait a minute, would you?” He looked down at his sleeve. “Corporal.. .” he said. He hesitated, looking worried. Then an idea struck him and he pulled at the collar of his vest and twisted his neck until he could squint, with considerable difficulty, at the label thus revealed. “Corporal . . . Medium? Does that sound right?” I DON'T THINK SO. “Corporal . . . Hand Wash Only?” PROBABLY NOT. “Corporal . . . Cotton?” IT'S A POSSIBILITY. “Right. Well, welcome to the . . . er . . .” KLATCHIAN FOREIGN LEGION . . . “Right. The pay is three dollars a week and all the sand you can eat. I hope you like sand.” I SEE YOU CAN REMEMBER ABOUT SAND. “Believe me, you won't ever forget sand,” said the corporal bitterly. I NEVER DO. “What did you say your name was?” The stranger remained silent. “Not that it matters,” said Corporal Cotton. “ In the. . .” KLATCHIAN FOREIGN LEGION? “. . . right . . . we give you a new name. You start out afresh.” He beckoned to another man. “Legionary . . . ?” “Legionary . . . er . . . ugh . . . er . . . Size 15, Sir.” “Right. Take this . . . man away and get him a . . .” he snapped his fingers irritably, “. . . you know . . . thing . . . clothes, everyone wears them . . . sand-coloured–” UNIFORM? The corporal blinked. For some inexplicable reason the word 'bone' kept elbowing its way into the melting, flowing mess that was his consciousness. “Right,” he said. “Er. It's a twenty-year tour, legionary. I hope you're man enough for it.” I LIKE IT ALREADY, said Death. “I suppose it's legal for me to go in licensed premises?” said Susan, as Ankh-Morpork appeared on the horizon again. SQUEAK. The city slid under them again. Where there were wider streets and squares she could make out individual figures. Huh, she thought . . . if only they knew I was up here! And, despite everything, she couldn't help feeling superior. All the people down there had to think about were, well, ground-level things. Mundane things. It was like looking down at ants. She'd always known she was different. Much more aware of the world, when it was obvious that most people went through it with their eyes shut and their brains set to 'simmer'. It was comforting in a way to know that she was different. The feeling wrapped around her like an overcoat. Binky landed on a greasy jetty. On one side the river sucked at the wooden pilings. Susan slid off the horse, unshipped the scythe, and stepped inside the Mended Drum. There was a riot going on. The patrons of the Drum tended to be democratic in their approach to aggressiveness. They liked to see that everyone got some. So, although it was the consensus of the audience that the trio were lousy musicians, and therefore a suitable target, various fights had broken out because people had been hit by badly aimed missiles, or hadn't had a fight all day, or were just trying to reach the door. Susan had no difficulty in spotting Imp y Celyn. He was at the front of the stage, his face a mask of terror. Behind him was a troll, with a dwarf trying to hide behind it. She glanced at the hourglass. Just a few more seconds . . . He was really rather attractive, in a dark, curlyheaded sort of way. He looked a little elvish. And familiar. She'd felt sorry for Volf, but at least he was on a battlefield. Imp was on a stage. You didn't expect to die on stage. I'm standing here with a scythe and an hourglass waiting for someone to die. He's not much older than me and I'm not supposed to do anything about it. That's silly. And I'm sure I've seen him . . . before . . . No-one actually tried to kill musicians in the Drum. Axes were thrown and crossbows fired in a goodhumoured, easy-going way. No-one really aimed, even if they were capable of doing so. It was more fun watching people dodge. A big, red-bearded man grinned at Lias, and selected a small throwing axe from his bandolier. It was OK to throw axes at trolls. They tended to bounce off. Susan could see it all. It'd bounce off, and hit Imp. No-one's fault, really. Worse things happened at sea. Worse things happened in Ankh-Morpork all the time, often continuously. The man doesn't even mean to kill him. It's so sloppy. That's not how things should go. Someone ought to do something about it. She reached over to grab the axe handle. SQUEAK! “Shut up!” Whaaauum. Imp stood like a discus thrower as the chord filled across the noisy room. It rang like an iron bar dropped on a library floor at midnight. Echoes bounced back from the corners of the room. Each one bore its own load of harmonics. It was an explosion of sound in the same way that a Hogswatchnight rocket explodes, each falling spark exploding again . . . Imp's fingers caressed the strings, picking out three more chords. The axe-thrower lowered his axe. This was music that had not only escaped but had robbed a bank on the way out. It was music with its sleeves rolled up and its top button undone, raising its hat and grinning and stealing the silver. It was music that went down to the feet by way of the pelvis without paying a call on Mr Brain. The troll picked up his hammers, looked blankly at his stones, and then began to beat out a rhythm. The dwarf took a deep breath, and extracted from the horn a deep, throbbing sound. People drummed their fingers on the edge of the tables. The orang was sitting with a huge rapt grin on his face, as though he'd swallowed a banana sideways. Susan looked down at the hourglass marked Imp y Celyn. The top bulb was now quite empty of sand, but something blue flickered in there. She felt tiny pin-like claws scrabble up her back and find purchase on her shoulder. The Death of Rats looked down at the glass. SQUEAK, it said, quietly. Susan still wasn't good on Rat but she thought she knew 'uh-oh' when she heard it. Imp's fingers danced over the strings, but the sound that came from them was no relative to the tones of harp or lute. The guitar screamed like an angel who had just discovered why it was on the wrong side. Sparks glittered on the strings. Imp himself had his eyes shut and was holding the instrument close to his chest, like a soldier holding a spear at the port. It was hard to know who was playing what. And still the music flooded out. The Librarian's hair was standing on end, all over his body. The ends crackled. It made you want to kick down walls and ascend the sky on steps of fire. It made you want to pull all the switches and throw all the levers and stick your fingers in the electric socket of the universe to see what happened next. It made you want to paint your bedroom wall black and cover it with posters. Now various muscles on the Librarian's body were twitching with the beat as the music earthed itself through him. There was a small party of wizards in the corner. They were watching the performance with their mouths open. And the beat strode on, and crackled from mind to mind, snapping its fingers and curling its lip. Live music. Music with rocks in it, running wild . . . Free at last! It leapt from head to head, crackling in through the ears and heading for the hindbrain. Some were more susceptible than others . . . closer to the beat . . . It was an hour later. The Librarian knuckled and swung through the midnight drizzle, head exploding with music. He landed on the lawns of Unseen University and ran into the Great Hall, hands waving wildly overhead to maintain balance. He stopped. Moonlight filtered in through the big windows, illuminating what the Archchancellor always referred to as 'our mighty organ', to the general embarrassment of the rest of the faculty. Rack upon rack of pipes entirely occupied one wall, looking like pillars in the gloom or possibly resembling the stalagmites of some monstrously ancient cave. Almost lost among them was the player's pulpit, with its three giant keyboards and the hundred knobs for special sound effects. It wasn't often used, except for the occasional civic affair or Wizards' Excuse Me.[9] But the Librarian, energetically pumping the bellows and making occasional little 'ooks' of excitement, felt there was a lot more that it could do. A fully grown male orang-utan may look like an amiable pile of old carpets but he has a strength in him that would make a human of equivalent weight eat lots of rug. The Librarian only stopped pumping when the lever was too hot to hold and the air reservoirs were farting and whistling around the rivets. Then he swung himself up into the organist's seat. The whole edifice was humming softly under the enormous pentup pressure. The Librarian locked his hands together and cracked his knuckles, which is impressive when you have as many knuckles as an orang-utan. He raised his hands. He hesitated. He lowered his hands again and pulled out the Vox Humana, the Vox Dei and the Vox Diabolica. The moan of the organ took on a more urgent tone. He raised his hands. He hesitated. He lowered his hands and pulled out all the rest of the stops, including the twelve knobs with '?” on them and the two with faded labels warning in several languages that they were on no account to be touched, .ever, in any circumstances. He raised his hands. He raised his feet also, positioning them over some of the more perilous pedals. He shut his eyes. He sat for a moment in contemplative silence, a test pilot ready to slit the edge of the envelope in the starship Melody. He let the plangent memory of the music fill his head and flow down his arms and fill his fingers. His hands dropped. “What did we do? What did we do?” said Imp. Excitement ran its barefoot races up and down his spine. They were sitting in the tiny cramped room behind the bar. Glod took off his helmet and wiped the inside. “Would you believe four beats to the bar, two-four time, melody led, with the bass beat forward in the melody?” “What's all dat?” said Lias. “What's all dem words mean?” “You're a musician, ain't you?” said Glod. “What do you think you do?” “I hits 'em with de hammers,” said Lias, one of nature's drummers. “But that bit you did . . .” said Imp, “you know . . . in the middle . . . you know, bam-bah bam-bah bambamBAH . . . how did you know how to do that bit?” “It was just de bit dat had to go dere,” said Lias. Imp looked at the guitar. He'd put it on the table. It was still playing quietly to itself, like a cat purring. “That's not a normall instrument,” he said, shaking a finger at it. “I was just standing there and it started pllaying all by itsellf!” “Probably belonged to a wizard, like I said,” said Glod. “Nah,” said Lias. “Never knew any wizard who was musical. Music and magic don't mix.” They looked at it. Imp had never heard of an instrument that played itself before, except the legendary harp of Owen Mwnyy, which sang when danger threatened. And that had been back in the days when there were dragons around. Singing harps went well with dragons. They seemed out of place in a city with guilds and everything. The door swung open. “That was . . . astonishing, boys,” said Hibiscus Dunelm. “Never heard anything like it! Can you come back tomorrow night? Here's your five dollars.” Glod counted the coins. “We did four encores,” he said darkly. “I'd complain to the Guild, if I was you,” said Hibiscus. The trio looked at the money. It looked very impressive to people whose last meal had been twenty-four hours ago. It wasn't Guild rate. On the other hand, it had been a long twenty-four hours. “If you come back tomorrow,” said Hibiscus, “I'll make it . . . six dollars, how about that?” “Oh, wow,” said Glod. Mustrum Ridcully was jolted upright in bed, because the bed itself was being gently vibrated across the floor. So it had happened at last! They were out to get him. The tradition of promotion in the University by filling dead men's shoes, sometimes by firstly ensuring the death of the man in those shoes, had lately ceased. This was largely because of Ridcully himself, who was big and kept himself in trim and, as three latenight aspirants to the Archchancellorship had found, also had very good hearing. They had been variously hung out of the window by their ankles, knocked unconscious with a shovel, and had their arm broken in two places. Besides, Ridcully was known to sleep with two loaded crossbows by his bed. He was a kind man and probably wouldn't shoot you in both ears. That sort of consideration encouraged a more patient type of wizard. Everyone dies sooner or later. They could wait. Ridcully took stock and found his first impression was mistaken. There appeared to be no murderous magic going on. There was just sound, cramming the room to every corner. Ridcully shuffled into his slippers and went out into the corridor, where other members of the faculty were milling around and blearily asking one another what the hell was happening. Plaster rained down on them from the ceiling in a steady fog. “Who's causing that din?” shouted Ridcully. There was a mute chorus of unheard replies, and much shrugging of shoulders. “Well, I will find out,” growled the Archchancellor, and set off for the stairs with the others trailing after him. He walked without his knees or elbows bending very much, a sure sign of a forthright man in a bad temper. The trio said nothing all the way out of the Drum. They said nothing all the way to Gimlet's delicatessen. They said nothing while they waited in the queue, and then all they said was: “So . . . right . . . that's one Quatre-rodenti with extra newts, hold the chillis, one Klatchian Hots with double salami and a Four Strata, no pitchblende.” They sat down to wait. The guitar played a little four-note riff. They tried not to think about it. They tried to think about other things. “I think I change my name,” said Lias, eventually. “I mean . . . Lias? Not a good name for the music business.” “What'll you change it to?” said Glod. “I thought . . . don't laugh . . . I thought . . . Cliff?” said Lias. “Cliff?” “Good troll name. Very stony. Very rocky. Nothing wrong with it,” said Cliff né Lias, defensively. “Well . . . yes . . . but, I dunno, I mean . . . well . . . Cliff? Can't see anyone lasting long in this business with a name like Cliff.” “Better than Glod, anyway.” “I'm sticking with Glod,” said Glod. “And Imp is sticking with Imp, right?” Imp looked at the guitar. It's not right, he thought. I hardly touched it. I just . . . And I feel so tired . . . “Not sure,” he said, wretchedly. “Not sure if Imp is the right name for . . . this music.” His voice trailed off. He yawned. “Imp?” said Glod, after a while. “Hmm?” said Imp. And he'd felt someone was watching him out there. That was daft, of course. He couldn't say to someone 'I was on stage and I thought someone was watching me'. They'd say 'Really? That's really occult, that is . . .” “Imp?” said Glod, “why're you snapping your fingers like that?” Imp looked down. “Was I?” “Yes.” “Just thinking. My name . . . it's not right for this music, either.” “What does it mean in real language?” said Glod. “Well, all my family are y Celyns,” said Imp, ignoring the insult to an ancient tongue. “It means "of the holllly ". That's allll that grows in Llamedos, you see. Everything else just rots.” “I wasn't goin' to say,” said Cliff, “but Imp sounds a bit like elf to me.” “It just means "small shoot",” said Imp. “You know. Like a bud.” “Bud y Celyn?” said Glod. “Buddy? Worse than Cliff, in my opinion.” “I . . . think it sounds right,” said Imp. Glod shrugged, and pulled a handful of coins out of his pocket. “We've still got more'n four dollars,” he said. “I know what we should do with it, too.” “We should put it towards Guild membership,” said the new Buddy. Glod stared into the middle distance. “No,” he said. “We haven't got the sound right. I mean, it was very good, very . . . new,” he stared hard at Imp-cum-Buddy, “but there's still something missing . . .” The dwarf gave Buddy né Imp another penetrating stare. “Do you know you're shaking all over?” he said. “Moving around on your seat like you got a pant full of ant.” “I can't help it,” said Buddy. He wanted to sleep, but a rhythm was bouncing around inside his head. “I saw it too,” said Cliff. “When we was walking here, you were bouncing along.” He looked under the table. “And you is tapping your feet.” “And you keep snapping your fingers,” said Glod. “I can't stop thinking about the music,” said Buddy. “You're right. We need . . .” he drummed his fingers along the table, “. . . a sound like . . . pang pang pang PANG Pang . . . “You mean a keyboard?” said Glod. “Do I?” “They've got one of those new pianofortes just over the river in the Opera House,” said Glod. “Yah, but dat sort of thing ain't for our kind of music,” said Cliff. “Dat sort of thing is for big fat guys in powdered wigs.” “I reckon,” said Glod, giving Buddy another lopsided stare, “if we put it anywhere near Im- near Buddy, it'll be for our kind of music soon enough. So go and get it.” “I heard where it cost four hundred dollars,” said Cliff. “No-one's got that many teeth.” “I didn't mean buy it,” said Glod. “Just . . . borrow it for a while.” “Days stealing,” said Cliff. “No it's not,” said the dwarf. “We'll let them have it back when we've finished with it.” “Oh. Dat's all right den.” Buddy wasn't a drummer or a troll and he could see the technical flaw in Glod's argument. And, a few weeks ago, he'd have said so. But then he'd been a good circle-going boy from the valleys, who didn't drink, didn't swear and played the harp at every druidic sacrifice. Now he needed that piano. The sound had been nearly right. He snapped his fingers in time with his thoughts. “But we ain't got anyone to play it,” said Cliff. “You get the piano,” said Glod. “I'll get the piano player.” And all the time they kept glancing at the guitar. The wizards advanced in a body towards the organ. The air around it vibrated as if super-heated. “What an unholy noise!” shouted the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “Oh, I don't know!” screamed the Dean. “It's rather catchy!” Blue sparks crackled between the organ pipes. The Librarian could just be seen high in the trembling structure. “Who's pumping it?” screamed the Senior Wrangler. Ridcully looked around at the side. The handle seemed to be going up and down by itself. “I'm not having this,” he muttered, “not in my damn university. It's worse than students.” And he raised his crossbow and fired, right at the main bellows. There was a long-drawn-out wail in the key of A, and then the organ exploded. The history of the subsequent seconds was put together during a discussion in the Uncommon Room where the wizards went for a stiff drink or, in the Bursar's case, a warm milk shortly afterwards. The Lecturer in Recent Runes swore that the 64-foot Gravissima organ pipe went skywards on a pillar of flame. The Chair of Indefinite Studies and the Senior Wrangler said that when they found the Librarian upside down in one of the fountains in Sator Square, outside the University, he was going 'ook ook' to himself and grinning. The Bursar said that he'd seen a dozen naked young women bouncing up and down on his bed, but the Bursar occasionally said things like this anyway, especially when he'd been indoors a lot. The Dean said nothing at all. His eyes were glazed. Sparks crackled in his hair. He was wondering if he'd be allowed to paint his bedroom black . . . . the beat went on . . . The lifetimer of Imp stood in the middle of the huge desk. The Death of Rats walked around it, squeaking under his breath. Susan looked at it, too. There was no doubt that all the sand was in the bottom bulb. But something else had filled the top and was pouring through the pinch. It was pale blue and coiling in frantically on itself, like excited smoke. “Have you ever seen anything like it?” she said. SQUEAK. “Nor me.” Susan stood up. The shadows around the walls, now that she'd got used to them, seemed to be of things -not exactly machinery, but not exactly furniture either. There had been an orrery on the lawn at the college. The distant shapes put her in mind of it, although what stars it measured in what dark courses she really couldn't say. They seemed to be projections of things too strange even for this strange dimension. She'd wanted to save his life, and that was right. She knew it. As soon as she'd seen his name she . . . well, it was important. She'd inherited some of Death's memory. She couldn't have met the boy, but perhaps he had. She felt that the name and the face had established themselves so deeply in her mind now that the rest of her thoughts were forced to orbit them. Something else had saved him first. She held the lifetimer up to her ear again. She found herself tapping her foot. And realized that distant shadows were moving. She ran across the floor, the real floor, the one outside the boundaries of the carpet. The shadows looked more like mathematics would be if it was solid. There were vast curves of . . . something. Pointers like clock hands, but longer than a tree, moved slowly through the air. The Death of Rats climbed on to her shoulder. “I suppose you don't know what's happening?” SQUEAK. Susan nodded. Rats, she supposed, died when they should. They didn't try to cheat, or return from the dead. There were no such things as zombie rats. Rats knew when to give up. She looked at the glass again. The boy - and she used the term as girls will of young males several years older than them - the boy had played a chord on the guitar or whatever it was, and history had been bent. Or had skipped, or something. Something besides her didn't want him dead. It was two o'clock in the morning, and raining. Constable Detritus, Ankh-Morpork City Watch, was guarding the Opera House. It was an approach to policing that he'd picked up from Sergeant Colon. When you were all by yourself in the middle of a rainy night, go and guard something big with handy overhanging eaves. Colon had pursued this policy for years, as a result of which no major landmark had ever been stolen.[10] It had been an uneventful night. About an hour earlier a 64-foot organ pipe had dropped out of the sky. Detritus had wandered over to inspect the crater, but he wasn't quite certain if this was criminal activity. Besides, for all he knew this was how you got organ pipes. For the last five minutes he'd also been hearing muffled thumps and the occasional tinkling noise from inside the Opera House. He'd made a note of it. He did not wish to appear stupid. Detritus had never been inside the Opera House. He didn't know what sound it normally made at 2 a.m. The front doors opened, and a large oddly shaped flat box came out, hesitantly. It advanced in a curious way - a few steps forward, a couple of steps back. And it was also talking to itself. Detritus looked down. He could see . . . he paused . . . at least seven legs of various sizes, only four of which had feet. He shambled across to the box and banged on the side. “Hello, hello, hello, what is all this . . . then?” he said, concentrating to get the sentence right. The box stopped. Then it said, “We're a piano.” Detritus gave this due consideration. He wasn't sure what a piano was. “A piano move about, does it?” he said. “It's . . . we've got legs,” said the piano. Detritus conceded the point. “But it are the middle of the night,” he said. “Even pianos have to have time off,” said the piano. Detritus scratched his head. This seemed to cover it. “Well . . . all right,” he said. He watched the piano jerk and wobble down the marble steps and round the corner. It carried on talking to itself: “How long have we got, d'you think?” “We ought to make it to the bridge. He not clever enough to be a drummer.” “But he's a policeman.” “So?” “Cliff?” “Yup?” “We might get caught.” “He can't stop us. We're on a mission from Glod.” “Right.” The piano tottered onward through the puddles for a little while, and then asked itself: “Buddy?” “Yup?” “Why did I just say dat?” “Say what?” “About us being on a mission . . . you know . . . from Glod?” “Weeell . . . the dwarf said to us, go and get the piano, and his name is Glod, so–' “Yeah. Yeah. Right . . . but . . . he could've stopped us, I mean, dere's nothing special about some mission from some dwarf–' “Maybe you were just a bit tired.” “Maybe dat's it,” said the piano, gratefully. “Anyway, we are on a mission from Glod.” “Yup.” Glod sat in his lodgings, watching the guitar. It had stopped playing when Buddy had gone out, although if he put his ear close to the strings he was sure that they were still humming very gently. Now he very carefully reached out and touched the– To call the sudden snapping sound discordant would be too mild. The sound had a snarl, it had talons. Glod sat back. Right. Right. It was Buddy's instrument. An instrument played by the same person over the years could become very adapted to them, although not in Glod's experience to the point of biting someone else. Buddy hadn't had it a day yet, but the principle maybe was the same. There was an old dwarf legend about the famous Horn of Furgle, which sounded itself when danger was near and also in the presence, for some reason, of horseradish. And there was even an Ankh-Morpork legend, wasn't there, about some old drum in the Palace or somewhere that was supposed to bang itself if an enemy fleet was seen sailing up the Ankh? The legend had died out in recent centuries, partly because this was the Age of Reason and also because no enemy fleet could sail up the Ankh without a gang of men with shovels going in front. And there was a troll story about some stones that, on frosty nights . . . The point was that magical instruments turned up every so often. Glod reached out again. JUD-Adud-adud-duh. “All right, all right . . .” The old music shop was right up against the University, after all, and magic did leak out despite what the wizards always said about the talking rats and walking trees just being statistical flukes. But this didn't feel like magic. It felt a lot older than that. It felt like music. Glod wondered whether he should persuade Im– Buddy to take it back to the shop, get a proper guitar . . . On the other hand, six dollars was six dollars. At least. Something hammered on the door. “Who's that?” said Glod, looking up. The pause outside was long enough to let him guess. He decided to help out. “Cliff?” he said. “Yup. Got a piano here.” “Bring it on in.” “Had to break off der legs and der lid and a few other bits but it's basically OK.” “Bring it on in, then.” “Door's too narrow.” Buddy, coming up the stairs behind the troll, heard the crunch of woodwork. “Try it again.” “Fits perfectly.” There was a piano-shaped hole around the doorway. Glod was standing next to it, holding his axe. Buddy looked at the wreckage all over the landing. “What the hell are you doing?” he said. “That's someone else's wall !” “Well? It's someone else's piano.” “Yes, but . . . you can't just hack holes in the wall–” “What's more important? Some wall or getting the sound right?” said -Glod. Buddy hesitated. Part of him thought: that's ridiculous, it's only music. Another part of him thought, rather more sharply: that's ridiculous, it's only a wall. All of him said: “Oh. Since you put it like that . . . but what about the piano player?” “I told you, I know just where to find one,” said Glod. A tiny part of him was amazed: I've hacked a hole in my own wall! It took me days to nail that wallpaper on properly. Albert was in the stable, with a shovel and a wheelbarrow. “Go well?” he said, when Susan's shadow appeared over the half-door. “Er . . . yes . . . I suppose . . .” “Pleased to hear it,” said Albert, without looking up. The shovel thumped on the barrow. “Only . . . something happened which probably wasn't usual . . . “Sorry to hear that.” Albert picked up the wheelbarrow and trundled it in the direction of the garden. Susan knew what she was supposed to do. She was supposed to apologize, and then it'd turn out that crusty old Albert had a heart of gold, and they'd be friends after all, and he'd help her and tell her things, and And she'd be some stupid girl who couldn't cope. No. She went back to the stable, where Binky was investigating the contents of a bucket. The Quirm College for Young Ladies encouraged self-reliance and logical thought. Her parents had sent her there for that reason. They'd assumed that insulating her from the fluffy edges of the world was the safest thing to do. In the circumstances, this was like not telling people about self-defence so that no-one would ever attack them. Unseen University was used to eccentricity among the faculty. After all, humans derive their notions of what it means to be a normal human being by constant reference to the humans around them, and when those humans are other wizards the spiral can only wiggle downwards. The Librarian was an orang-utan, and no-one thought that was at all odd. The Reader in Esoteric Studies spent so much time reading in what the Bursar referred to as 'the smallest room'[11] that he was generally referred to as the Reader in The Lavatory, even on official documents. The Bursar himself in any normal society would have been considered more unglued than a used stamp in a downpour. The Dean had spent seventeen years writing a treatise on The Use of the Syllable 'ENK' in Levitation Spells of the Early Confused Period. The Archchancellor, who regularly used the long gallery above the Great Hall for archery practice and had accidentally shot the Bursar twice, thought the whole faculty was as crazy as loons, whatever a loon was. “Not enough fresh air,” he'd say. “Too much sittin' around indoors. Rots the brain.” More often he'd say, “Duck!” None of them, apart from Ridcully and the Librarian, were early risers. Breakfast, if it happened at all, happened around midmorning. Wizards lined the buffet, lifting the big silver lids of the tureens and wincing at every clang. Ridcully liked big greasy breakfasts, especially if they included those slightly translucent sausages with the green flecks that you can only hope is a herb of some sort. Since it was the Archchancellor's prerogative to choose the menu, many of the more squeamish wizards had stopped eating breakfast altogether, and got through the day just on lunch, tea, dinner and supper and the occasional snack. So there weren't too many in the Great Hall this morning. Besides, it was a bit draughty. Workmen were busy somewhere up in the roof. Ridcully put down his fork. “All right, who's doing it?” he said. “Own up, that man.” “Doing what, Archchancellor?” said the Senior Wrangler. “Somone's tappin' his foot.” The wizards looked along the table. The Dean was staring happily into space. “Dean?” said the Senior Wrangler. The Dean's left hand was held not far from his mouth. The other was making rhythmic stroking motions somewhere in the region of his kidneys. “I don't know what he thinks he's doin',” said Ridcully, “but it looks unhygienic to me.” “I think he's playing an invisible banjo, Archchancellor,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “Well, it's quiet, at least,” said Ridcully. He looked at the hole in the roof, which was letting unaccustomed daylight into the hall. “Anyone seen the Librarian?” The orang-utan was busy. He had holed up in one of the Library cellars, which he currently used as a general workshop and book hospital. There were various presses and guillotines, a bench full of tins of nasty substances where he made his own binding glue and all the other tedious cosmetics of the Muse of literature. He'd brought a book down with him. It had taken even him several hours to find it. The Library didn't only contain magical books, the ones which are chained to their shelves and are very dangerous. It also contained perfectly ordinary books, printed on commonplace paper in mundane ink. It would be a mistake to think that they weren't also dangerous, just because reading them didn't make fireworks go off in the sky. Reading them sometimes did the more dangerous trick of making fireworks go off in the privacy of the reader's brain. For example, the big volume open in front of him contained some of the collected drawings of Leonard of Quirm, skilled artist and certified genius with a mind that wandered so much it came back with souvenirs. Leonard's books were full of sketches - of kittens, of the way water flows, of the wives of influential Ankh-Morporkian merchants whose portraits had provided his means of making a living. But Leonard had been a genius and was deeply sensitive to the wonders of the world, so the margins were full of detailed doodles of whatever was on his mind at that moment - vast water-powered engines for bringing down city walls on the heads of the enemy, new types of siege guns for pumping flaming oil over the enemy, gunpowder rockets that showered the enemy with burning phosphorus, and other manufactures of the Age of Reason. And there had been something else. The Librarian had noticed it in passing once before, and had been slightly puzzled by it. It seemed out of place.[12] His hairy hand thumbed through the pages. Ah . . . here it was . . . Yes. Oh, YES. . . . It spoke to him in the language of the Beat . . . The Archchancellor made himself comfortable at his snooker table. He'd long ago got rid of the official desk. A snooker table was much to be preferred. Things didn't fall off the edge, there were a number of handy pockets to keep sweets and things in, and when he was bored he could shovel the paperwork off and set up trick shots.[13] He never bothered to shovel the paperwork back on afterwards. In his experience, anything really important never got written down, because by then people were too busy shouting. He picked up his pen and started to write. He was composing his memoirs. He'd got as far as the title: Along the Ankh with Bow, Rod and Staff with a Knob on the End. “Not many people realize,” he wrote, “that the river Ankh has a large and varied pifcine population–'[14] He flung down the pen and stormed along the corridor into the Dean's office. “What the hell's that?” he shouted. The Dean jumped. “It's, it's, it's a guitar, Archchancellor,” said the Dean, walking hurriedly backwards as Ridcully approached. “I just bought it.” “I can see that, I can hear that, what was it you were tryin' to do?” “I was practising, er, riffs,” said the Dean. He waved a badly printed woodcut defensively in Ridcully's face. The Archchancellor grabbed it. “"Blert Wheedown's Guitar Primer",” he read. “ "Play your Way to Succefs in Three Easy Lefsons and Eighteen Hard Lefsons". Well? I've nothin' against guitars, pleasant airs, a-spying young maidens one morning in May and so on, but that wasn't playin'. That was just noise. I mean, what was it supposed to be?” “A lick based on an E pentatonic scale using the major seventh as a passing tone?” said the Dean. The Archchancellor peered at the open page. “But this says "Lesson One: Fairy Footsteps",” he said. “Um, um, um, I was getting a bit impatient,” said the Dean. “You've never been musical, Dean,” said Ridcully. “It's one of your good points. Why the sudden interest - what have you got on your feet?” The Dean looked down. “I thought you were a bit taller,” said Ridcully. “You standing on a couple of planks?” “They're just thick soles,” said the Dean. “Just . . . just something the dwarfs invented, I suppose . . . dunno . . . found them in my closet . . . Modo the gardener says he thinks they're crepe.” “That's strong language for Modo, but I'd say he's right enough.” “No . . . it's a kind of rubbery stuff . . .” said the Dean, dismally. “Erm . . . excuse me, Archchancellor . . .” It was the Bursar, standing in the doorway. A large red-faced man was behind him, craning over his shoulder. “What is it, Bursar?” “Erm, this gentleman has got a–” “It's about your monkey,” said the man. Ridcully brightened up. “Oh, yes?” “Apparently, erm, he sto- removed some wheels from this gentleman's carriage,” said the Bursar, who was on the depressive side of his mental cycle. “You sure it was the Librarian?” said the Archchancellor. “Fat, red hair, says "ook", a lot?” “That's him. Oh, dear. I wonder why he did that?” said Ridcully. “Still, you know what they say . . . a five-hundred-pound gorilla can sleep where he likes.” “But a three-hundred-pound monkey can give me my bloody wheels back,” said the man, unmoved. “If I don't get my wheels back, there's going to be trouble.” “Trouble?” said Ridcully. “Yeah. And don't think you can scare me. Wizards don't scare me. Everyone knows there's a rule that you mustn't use magic against civilians.” The man thrust his face close to Ridcully and raised a fist. Ridcully snapped his fingers. There was an inrush of air, and a croak. “I've always thought of it more as a guideline,” he said, mildly. “Bursar, go and put this frog in the flowerbed and when he becomes his old self give him ten dollars. Ten dollars would be all right, wouldn't it?” “Croak,” said the frog hastily. “Good. And now will someone tell me what's going on?” There was a series of crashes from downstairs. “Why do I think,” said Ridcully to the world in general, “that this isn't going to be the answer?” The servants had been laying the tables for lunch. This generally took some time. Since wizards took their meals seriously, and left a lot of mess, the tables were in a permanent state of being laid, cleaned or occupied. Place-settings alone took a lot of time. Each wizard required nine knives, thirteen forks, twelve spoons and one rammer, quite apart from all the wine-glasses. Wizards often turned up in ample time for the next meal. In fact they were often there in good time to have second helpings of the last one. A wizard was sitting there now. “That's Recent Runes, ain't it?” said Ridcully. He had a knife in each hand. He also had the salt, pepper and mustard pots in front of him. And the cake-stand. And a couple of tureen covers. All of which he was hitting vigorously with the knives. “What's he doing that for?” said Ridcully. “And, Dean, will you stop tapping your feet?” “Well, it's catchy,” said the Dean. “It's catching,” said Ridcully. The Lecturer in Recent Runes was frowning in concentration. Forks jangled across the woodwork. A spoon caught a glancing blow, pinwheeled through the air and hit the Bursar on the ear. “What the hells does he think he's doing?” “That really hurt!” The wizards clustered around the Lecturer in Recent Runes. He paid them no attention whatsoever. Sweat poured down his beard. “He just broke the cruet,” said Ridcully. “It's going to smart for hours.” “Ah, yes, he's as hot as mustard,” said the Dean. “I'd take that with a pinch of salt,” said the Senior Wrangler. Ridcully straightened up. He raised a hand. “Now, someone's about to say something like "I hope the Watch don't ketchup with him", aren't you?” he said. “Or "That's a bit of a sauce", or I bet you're all trying to think of somethin' silly to say about pepper. I'd just like to know what's the difference between this faculty and a bunch of pea-brained idiots.” “Hahaha,” said the Bursar nervously, still rubbing his ear. “It wasn't a rhetorical question.” Ridcully snatched the knives out of the Lecturer's hands. The man went on beating the air for a moment, and then appeared to wake up. “Oh, hello, Archchancellor. Is there a problem?” “What were you doing?” The Lecturer looked down at the table. “He was syncopating,” said the Dean. “I never was!” Ridcully frowned. He was a thick-skinned, single-minded man with the tact of a sledgehammer and about the same sense of humour, but he was not stupid. And he knew that wizards were like weathervanes, or the canaries that miners used to detect pockets of gas. They were by their nature tuned to an occult frequency. If there was anything strange happening, it tended to happen to wizards. They turned, as it were, to face it. Or dropped off their perch. “Why's everyone suddenly so musical?” he said. “Using the term in its loosest sense, of course.” He looked at the assembled wizardry. And then down towards the floor. “You've all got crepe on your shoes!” The wizards looked at their feet with some surprise. “My word, I thought I was a bit taller,” said the Senior Wrangler. “ I put it down to the celery diet.”[15] “Proper footwear for a wizard is pointy shoes or good stout boots,” said Ridcully. “When one's footwear turns creepy, something's amiss.” “It's crepe,” said the Dean. “It's got a little pointy thingy over the–' Ridcully breathed heavily. “When your boots change by themselves–' he growled. “There's magic afoot?” “Haha, good one, Senior Wrangler,” said the Dean. “I want to know what's going on,” said Ridcully, in a low and level voice, “and if you don't all shut up there will be trouble.” He reached into the pockets of his robe and, after a few false starts, produced a pocket thaumometer. He held it up. There was always a high level of background magic in the University, but the little needle was on the 'Normal' mark. On average, anyway. It was ticking backwards and forwards across it like a metronome. Ridcully held it up so they could all see. “What's this?” he said. “Four-four time?” said the Dean. “Music ain't magic,” said Ridcully. “Don't be daft. Music's just twanging and banging and–” He stopped. “Has anyone got anything they should be telling me?” The wizards shuffled their blue-suede feet nervously. “Well,” said the Senior Wrangler, “it is a fact that last night, er, I, that is to say, some of us, happened to be passing by the Mended Drum–” “Bona-Fide Travellers,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “It's allowable for Bona-Fide Travellers to get a Drink at Licensed Premises at any Hour of Day or Night. City statute, you know.” “Where were you travelling from, then?” Ridcully demanded. “The Bunch of Grapes.” “That's just around the corner.” “Yes, but we were . . . tired.” “All right, all right,” said Ridcully, in the voice of a man who knows that pulling at a thread any more will cause the whole vest to unravel. “The Librarian was with you?” “Oh, yes.” “Go on.” “Well, there was this music–” “Sort of twangy,” said the Senior Wrangler. “Melody led,” said the Dean. “It was . . .” “. . . sort of . . .” “. . . in a way it . . .” “. . . kind of gets under your skin and makes you feel fizzy,” said the Dean. “Incidentally, has anyone got any black paint? I've looked everywhere.” “Under your skin,” murmured Ridcully. He scratched his chin. “Oh, dear. One of those. Stuff leakin' into the universe again, eh? Influences coming from Outside, yes? Remember what happened when Mr Hong opened his takeaway fish bar on the site of the old temple in Dagon Street? And then there were those moving pictures. I was against them from the start. And those wire things on wheels. This universe has more damn holes in it than a Quirm cheese. Well, at–” “Lancre cheese,” said the Senior Wrangler helpfully. “That's the one with the holes. Quirm is the one with the blue veins.” Ridcully gave him a look. “Actually, it didn't feel magical,” said the Dean. He sighed. He was seventy-two. It had made him feel that he was seventeen again. He couldn't remember having been seventeen; it was something that must have happened to him while he was busy. But it made him feel like he imagined it felt like when you were seventeen, which was like having a permanent red-hot vest on under your skin. He wanted to hear it again. “I think they're going to have it again tonight,” he ventured. “We could, er, go along and listen. In order to learn more about it, in case it's a threat to society,” he added virtuously. “That's right, Dean,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “It's our civic duty. We're the city's first line of supernatural defence. Supposing ghastly creatures started coming out of the air?” “What about it?” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. “Well, we'd be there.” “Yes? That's good, is it?” Ridcully glared at his wizards. Two of them were surreptitiously tapping their feet. And several of them appeared to be twitching, very gently. The Bursar twitched gently all the time, of course, but that was only his way. Like canaries, he thought. Or lightning conductors. “All right,” he said reluctantly. “We'll go. But we won't draw attention to ourselves.” “Certainly, Archchancellor.” “And everyone's to buy their own drink.” “Oh.” Corporal (possibly) Cotton saluted in front of the fort's sergeant, who was trying to shave. “It's the new recruit, sir,” he said. “ He won't obey orders.” The sergeant nodded, and then looked blankly at something in his own hand. “Razor, sir,” said the corporal helpfully. “He just keeps on saying things like IT'S NOT HAPPENING YET.” 'Have you tried burying him up to the neck in the sand? That usually works.” “It's a bit . . . um . . . thing . . . nasty to people . . . had it a moment ago . . .” The corporal snapped his fingers. “Thing. Cruel. That's it. We don't give people . . . the Pit . . . these days.” “This is the . . .” the sergeant glanced at the palm of his left hand, where there were several lines of writing, “the Foreign Legion.” “Yessir. All right, sir. He's weird. He just sits there all the time. We call him Beau Nidle, sir.” The sergeant peered bemusedly at the mirror. “It's your face, sir,” said the corporal. Susan stared at herself critically. Susan . . . it wasn't a good name, was it? It wasn't a truly bad name, it wasn't like poor Iodine in the fourth form, or Nigella, a name which means 'oops, we wanted a boy'. But it was dull. Susan. Sue. Good old Sue. It was a name that made sandwiches, kept its head in difficult circumstances and could reliably look after other people's children. It was a name used by no queens or goddesses anywhere. And you couldn't do much even with the spelling. You could turn it into Suzi, and it sounded as though you danced on tables for a living. You could put in a Z and a couple of Ns and an E, but it still looked like a name with extensions built on. It was as bad as Sara, a name that cried out for a prosthetic H. Well, at least she could do something about the way she looked. It was the robe. It might be traditional but . . . she wasn't. The alternative was her school uniform or one of her mother's pink creations. The baggy dress of the Quirm College for Young Ladies was a proud one and, in the mind of Miss Butts at least, proof against all the temptations of the flesh . . . but it lacked a certain panache as costume for the Ultimate Reality. And pink was not even to be thought of. For the first time in the history of the universe, a Death wondered about what to wear. “Hold on,” she said, to her reflection. “Here . . . I can create things, can't I?” She held out her hand and thought: cup. A cup appeared. It had a skull-and-bones pattern around the rim. “Ah,” said Susan. “I suppose a pattern of roses is out of the question? Probably not right for the ambience, I expect.” She put the cup on the dressing table and tapped it. It went plink in a solid sort of way. “Well, then,” she said, “I don't want something soppy and posey. No silly black lace or anything worn by idiots who write poetry in their rooms and dress like vampires and are vegetarians really.” The images of clothes floated across her reflection. It was clear that black was the only option, but she settled on something practical and without frills. She put her head on one side critically. “Well, maybe a bit of lace,” she said. “And perhaps a bit more . . . bodice.” She nodded at her reflection in the mirror. Certainly it was a dress that no Susan would ever wear, although she suspected that there was a basic Susanness about her which would permeate it after a while. “It's a good job you're here,” she said, “or I'd go totally mad. Haha.” Then she went to see her grandf . . . Death. There was one place he had to be. Glod wandered quietly into the University Library. Dwarfs respected learning, provided they didn't have to experience it. He tugged at the robe of a passing young wizard. “There's a monkey runs this place, right?” he said. “Big fat hairy monkey, hands a couple of octaves wide?” The wizard, a pasty-faced post-graduate student, looked down at Glod with the disdainful air a certain type of person always reserves for dwarfs. It wasn't much fun being a student in Unseen University. You had to find your pleasures where you could. He grinned a big, wide, innocent grin. “Why, yes,” he said. “I do believe right at this moment he's in his workroom in the basement. But you have to be very careful how you address him.” “Is that so?” said Glod. “Yes, you have to be sure to say, "Do you want a peanut, Mr Monkey?"' said the student wizard. He signalled a couple of his colleagues. “That's so, isn't it? He has to say Mister Monkey.” “Oh, yes indeedy,” said a student. “Actually, if you don't want him to get annoyed it's best to be on the safe side and scratch under your arms. That puts him at his ease.” “And go ugh-ugh-ugh,” said a third student. “He likes that.” “Well, thank you very much,” said Glod. “Which way do I go?” “We'll show you,” said the first student. “That's so very kind.” “Don't mention it. Only too glad to help.” The three wizards led Glod down a flight of steps and into a tunnel. Light filtered down through the occasional pane of green glass set in the floor above. Every so often Glod heard a snigger behind him. The Librarian was squatting down on the floor in a long, high cellar. Miscellaneous items had been scattered on the floor in front of him; there was a cartwheel, odd bits of wood and bone, and various pipes, rods and lengths of wire that somehow suggested that, around the city, people were puzzling over broken pumps and fences with holes in. The Librarian was chewing the end of a piece of pipe and looking intently at the heap. “That's him,” said one of the wizards, giving Glod a push. The dwarf shuffled forward. There was another outburst of muffled giggling behind him. He tapped the Librarian on the shoulder. “Excuse me–” “Ook?” “Those guys just called you a monkey,” said Glod, jerking a thumb in the direction of the door. “I'd make them say sorry, if I was you.” There was a creaking, metallic noise, followed very closely by a scuffling outside as the wizards trampled one another in their effort to get away. The Librarian had bent the pipe into a U-shape, apparently without effort. Glod went to the door and looked out. There was a pointy hat on the flagstones, trampled flat. “That was fun,” he said. “If I'd just asked them where the Librarian was, they'd have said bugger off, you dwarf. You have to know how to deal with people in this game.” He came back and sat down beside the Librarian. The ape put a smaller bend in the pipe. “What're you making?” said Glod. “Gook-oook-OOK!” “My cousin Modo is the gardener here,” said Glod. “He says you're a mean keyboard player.” He stared at the hands, busy in the pipebending. They were big. And of course there were four of them. “He was certainly partly right,” he added. The ape picked up a length of driftwood and tasted it. “We thought you might like to play pianoforte with us at the Drum tonight,” said Glod. “Me and Cliff and Buddy, that is.” The Librarian rolled a brown eye towards him, then picked up a piece of wood, gripped one end and began to strum. “Ook?” “That's right,” said Glod. “The boy with the guitar.” “Eeek.” The Librarian did a back somersault. “Oookoook-ooka-ooka-OOOka-OOK!” “I can see you're in the swing of it already,” said Glod. Susan saddled the horse and mounted up. Beyond Death's garden were fields of corn, their golden sheen the only colour in the landscape. Death might not have been any good at grass (black) and apple trees (gloss black on black), but all the depth of colour he hadn't put elsewhere he'd put in the fields. They rippled as if in the wind, except that there wasn't any wind. Susan couldn't imagine why he'd done it. There was a path, though. It led across the fields for half a mile or so, then disappeared abruptly. It looked as though somebody walked out here occasionally and just stood, looking around. Binky followed the path and stopped at the end. Then he turned, managing not to disturb a single ear. “I don't know how you do this,” Susan whispered, “but you must be able to do it, and you know where I want to go.” The horse appeared to nod. Albert had said that Binky was a genuine flesh-and-blood horse, but maybe you couldn't be ridden by Death for hundreds of years without learning something. He looked as though he'd been pretty bright to start with. Binky began to trot, and then canter, and then gallop. And then the sky flickered, just once. Susan had expected more than that. Flashing stars, some sort of explosion of rainbow colours . . . not just a flicker. It seemed a rather dismissive way of travelling nearly seventeen years. The cornfields had gone, but the garden was pretty much the same. There was the strange topiary and the pond with the skeletal fish. There were, pushing jolly wheelbarrows and carrying tiny scythes, what might have been garden gnomes in a mortal garden but here were cheery little skeletons in black robes. Things tended not to change. The stables were a little different, though. Binky was in them, for a start. He whinnied quietly as Susan led him into an empty stall next to himself. “I'm sure you two know each other,” she said. She'd never expected it to work, but it had to, didn't it? Time was something that happened to other people, wasn't it? She slipped into the house. NO. I CANNOT BE BIDDEN. I CANNOT BE FORCED. I WILL ONLY DO THAT WHICH I KNOW TO BE RIGHT . . . Susan crept along behind the shelves of lifetimers. No-one noticed her. When you are watching Death fight, you don't notice shadows in the background. They'd never told her about this. Parents never do. Your father could be Death's apprentice and your mother Death's adopted daughter, but that's just fine detail when they become Parents. Parents were never young. They were merely waiting to become Parents. Susan reached the end of the shelves. Death was standing over her father . . . she corrected herself, the boy who would be her father. Three red marks burned on his cheek where Death had struck him. Susan raised a hand to the pale marks on her own face. But that's not how heredity works. At least . . . the normal kind . . . Her mother . . . the girl who would become her mother . . . was pressed against a pillar. She had actually improved with age, Susan thought. Her dress sense certainly had. And she mentally shook herself. Fashion comments? Now? Death stood over Mort, sword in one hand and Mort's own lifetimer in the other. YOU DON'T KNOW HOW SORRY THIS MAKES ME, he said. “I might,” said Mort. Death looked up, and looked straight at Susan. His eye sockets flared blue for a moment. Susan tried to press herself into the shadows. He looked back down at Mort for a moment, and then at Ysabell, and then back at Susan, and then back down at Mort. And laughed. And turned the hourglass over. And snapped his fingers. Mort vanished, with a small 'pop' of imploding air. So did Ysabell and the others. It was, suddenly, very quiet. Death put the hourglass down, very carefully, on the table and looked at the ceiling for a while. Then he said: ALBERT? Albert appeared from behind a pillar. WOULD YOU BE SO GOOD AS TO MAKE ME A CUP OF TEA, PLEASE. “Yes, Master. Hehe, you sorted him out right enough–” THANK YOU. Albert scurried off in the direction of the kitchen. Once again there was the closest thing there could ever be to silence in the room of lifetimers. YOU'D BETTER COME OUT. Susan did so, and stood before the Ultimate Reality. Death was seven feet tall. He looked taller. Susan had vague memories of a figure carrying her on its shoulders through the huge dark rooms, but in memory it had been a human figure - bony, but human in a way she was certain of but couldn't quite define. This wasn't human. It was tall, and haughty, and terrible. He might unbend enough to bend the Rules, Susan thought, but that doesn't make him human. This is the keeper of the gate of the world. Immortal, by definition. The end of everything. He is my grandfather. Will be, anyway. Is. Was. But . . . there was the thing in the apple tree. Her mind kept swinging back to that. You looked up at the figure, and thought about the tree. It was almost impossible to keep both images in one mind. WELL, WELL, WELL. YOU HAVE A LOT OF YOUR MOTHER ABOUT YOU, said Death. AND YOUR FATHER. “How did you know who I am?” said Susan. I HAVE A UNIQUE MEMORY. “How can you remember me? I haven't even been conceived yet!” I DID SAY UNIQUE. YOUR NAME IS– “Susan, but . . .” SUSAN? said Death bitterly. THEY REALLY WANTED TO MAKE SURE, DIDN'T THEY? He sat down in his chair, steepled his fingers and looked at Susan over the top of them. She looked back, matching stare for stare. TELL ME, said Death, after a while, WAS I . . . WILL I BE . . . AM I A GOOD GRANDFATHER? Susan bit her lip thoughtfully. “If I tell you, won't that be a paradox?” NOT FOR US. “Well . . . you've got bony knees.” Death stared at her. BONY KNEES? “Sorry.” YOU CAME HERE TO TELL ME THAT? “You've gone missing back . . . there. I'm having to do the Duty. Albert is very worried. I came here to . . . find things out. I didn't know my father worked for you.” HE WAS VERY BAD AT IT. “What have you done with him?” THEY'RE SAFE FOR NOW. I'M GLAD IT'S OVER. HAVING PEOPLE AROUND WAS BEGINNING TO AFFECT MY JUDGEMENT. AH, ALBERT . . . Albert had appeared on the edge of the carpet, bearing a tea-tray. ANOTHER CUP, IF YOU WOULD BE SO GOOD. Albert looked around, and totally failed to see Susan. If you could be invisible to Miss Butts, everyone else was easy. “If you say so, Master.” SO, said Death, when Albert had shuffled away, I HAVE GONE MISSING. AND YOU BELIEVE YOU HAVE INHERITED THE FAMILY BUSINESS. YOU? “I didn't want to! The horse and the rat just turned up!” RAT? “Er . . . I think that's something that's going to happen.” OH, YES. I REMEMBER. HMM. A HUMAN DOING MY JOB? TECHNICALLY POSSIBLE, OF COURSE, BUT WHY? “I think Albert knows something, but he changes the subject.” Albert reappeared, carrying another cup and saucer. He plonked it down pointedly on Death's desk, with the air of one who is being put upon. “That'll be all, will it, Master?” he said. THANK YOU, ALBERT. YES. Albert left again, more slowly than normal. He kept looking over his shoulder. “He doesn't change, does he?” said Susan. “Of course, that's the point about this place–” WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT CATS? “Sorry?” CATS. DO YOU LIKE 'EM? “They're . . .” Susan hesitated, “all right. But a cat's just a cat.” CHOCOLATE, said Death. DO YOU LIKE CHOCOLATE? “I think it's possible to have too much,” said Susan. YOU CERTAINLY DON'T TAKE AFTER YSABELL. Susan nodded. Her mother's favourite dish had been Genocide by Chocolate. AND YOUR MEMORY? YOU HAVE A GOOD MEMORY? “Oh, yes. I . . . remember things. About how to be Death. About how it's all supposed to work. Look, just then you said you remembered about the rat, and it hasn't even happ–“ Death stood up and strode across to the model of the Discworld. MORPHIC RESONANCE, he said, not looking at Susan. DAMN. PEOPLE DON'T BEGIN TO UNDERSTAND IT. SOUL HARMONICS. IT'S RESPONSIBLE FOR SO MANY THINGS. Susan pulled out Imp's lifetimer. Blue smoke was still pouring through the pinch. “Can you help me with this?” she said. Death spun around. I SHOULD NEVER HAVE ADOPTED YOUR MOTHER. “Why did you?” Death shrugged. WHAT'S THAT YOU'VE GOT THERE? He took Buddy's lifetimer from her and held it up. AH. INTERESTING. “Do you know what it means, Grandad?” I'VE NOT COME ACROSS IT BEFORE, BUT I SUPPOSE IT'S POSSIBLE. IN CERTAIN CIRCUMSTANCES. IT MEANS . . . SOMEHOW . . . THAT HE HAS RHYTHM IN HIS SOUL . . . GRANDAD? “Oh, no. That can't be right. That's just a figure of speech. And what's wrong with grandad?” GRANDFATHER I CAN LIVE WITH. GRANDAD? ONE STEP AWAY FROM GRAMPS, IN MY OPINION. ANYWAY, I THOUGHT YOU BELIEVED IN LOGIC. CALLING SOMETHING A FIGURE OF SPEECH DOESN'T MEAN IT'S NOT TRUE. Death waved the hourglass vaguely. FOR EXAMPLE, he said, MANY THINGS ARE BETTER THAN A POKE IN THE EYE WITH A BLUNT STICK. I'VE NEVER UNDERSTOOD THE PHRASE. SURELY A SHARP STICK WOULD BE EVEN WORSE– Death stopped. I'M DOING IT AGAIN! WHY SHOULD I CARE WHAT THE WRETCHED PHRASE MEANS? OR WHAT YOU CALL ME? UNIMPORTANT! GETTING ENTANGLED WITH HUMANS CLOUDS THE THINKING. TAKE IT FROM ME. DON'T GET INVOLVED. “But I am a human.” I DIDN'T SAY IT WAS GOING TO BE EASY, DID I? DON'T THINK ABOUT IT. DON'T FEEL. “You're an expert, are you?” said Susan hotly. I MAY HAVE ALLOWED MYSELF SOME FLICKER OF EMOTION IN THE RECENT PAST, said Death, BUT I CAN GIVE IT UP ANY TIME I LIKE. He held up the hourglass again. IT'S AN INTERESTING FACT THAT MUSIC, BEING OF ITS NATURE IMMORTAL, CAN SOMETIMES PROLONG THE LIFE OF THOSE INTIMATELY ASSOCIATED WITH IT, he said. I'VE NOTICED THAT FAMOUS COMPOSERS IN PARTICULAR HANG ON FOR A LONG TIME. DEAF AS POSTS, MOST OF THEM, WHEN I COME CALLING. I EXPECT SOME GOD SOMEWHERE FINDS THAT VERY AMUSING. Death contrived to look disdainful. IT'S THEIR KIND OF JOKE.[16] He set the glass down and twanged it with a bony digit. It went whauuummmmeeee-chida-chida-chida. HE HAS NO LIFE. HE HAS MUSIC. “Music's taken him over?” YOU COULD PUT IT LIKE THAT. “Making his life longer?” LIFE IS EXTENSIBLE. IT HAPPENS OCCASIONALLY AMONG HUMANS. NOT OFTEN. USUALLY TRAGICALLY, IN A THEATRICAL KIND OF WAY. BUT THIS ISN'T ANOTHER HUMAN. THIS IS MUSIC. “He played something, on some sort of stringed instrument like a guitar–“ Death turned. INDEED? WELL, WELL, WELL . . . “Is that important?” IT IS . . . INTERESTING. “Is it something I should know?” IT IS NOTHING IMPORTANT. A PIECE OF MYTHOLOGICAL DEBRIS. MATTERS WILL RESOLVE THEMSELVES, YOU MAY DEPEND UPON IT. “What do you mean, resolve themselves?” HE WILL PROBABLY BE DEAD IN A MATTER OF DAYS. Susan stared at the lifetimer. “But that's dreadful!” ARE YOU ROMANTICALLY INVOLVED WITH THE YOUNG MAN? “What? No! I've only ever seen him once!” YOUR EYES DIDN'T MEET ACROSS A CROWDED ROOM OR ANYTHING OF THAT NATURE? “No! Of course not.” WHY SHOULD YOU CARE, THEN? “Because he matt– because he's a human being, that's why,” said Susan, surprised at herself. “I don't see why people should be messed around like that,” she added lamely. “That's all. Oh, I don't know.” He leaned down again until his skull was on a level with her face. BUT MOST PEOPLE ARE RATHER STUPID AND WASTE THEIR LIVES. HAVE YOU NOT SEEN THAT? HAVE YOU NOT LOOKED DOWN FROM THE HORSE AT A CITY AND THOUGHT HOW MUCH IT RESEMBLED AN ANT HEAP, FULL OF BLIND CREATURES WHO THINK THEIR MUNDANE LITTLE WORLD IS REAL? YOU SEE THE LIGHTED WINDOWS AND WHAT YOU WANT TO THINK IS THAT THERE MAY BE MANY INTERESTING STORIES BEHIND THEM, BUT WHAT YOU KNOW IS THAT REALLY THERE ARE JUST DULL, DULL SOULS, MERE CONSUMERS OF FOOD, WHO THINK THEIR INSTINCTS ARE EMOTIONS AND THEIR TINY LIVES OF MORE ACCOUNT THAN A WHISPER OF WIND. The blue glow was bottomless. It seemed to be sucking her own thoughts out of her mind. “No,” whispered Susan, “no, I've never thought like that.” Death stood up abruptly and turned away. YOU MAY FIND THAT IT HELPS, he said. “But it's all just chaos,” said Susan. “There's no sense to the way people die. There's no justice!” HAH. “You take a hand,” she persisted. “You just saved my father.” I WAS FOOLISH. TO CHANGE THE FATE OF ONE INDIVIDUAL IS TO CHANGE THE WORLD. I REMEMBER THAT. SO SHOULD YOU. Death still hadn't turned to face her. “I don't see why we shouldn't change things if it makes the world better,” said Susan. HAH. “Are you too scared to change the world?” Death turned. The very sight of his expression made Susan back away. He advanced slowly towards her. His voice, when it came, was a hiss. YOU SAY THAT TO ME? YOU STAND THERE IN YOUR PRETTY DRESS AND SAY THAT TO ME? YOU? YOU PRATTLE ON ABOUT CHANGING THE WORLD? COULD YOU FIND THE COURAGE TO ACCEPT IT? TO KNOW WHAT MUST BE DONE AND DO IT, WHATEVER THE COST? IS THERE ONE HUMAN ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD WHO KNOWS WHAT DUTY MEANS? His hands opened and shut convulsively. I SAID YOU MUST REMEMBER . . . FOR US, TIME IS ONLY A PLACE. IT'S ALL SPREAD OUT. THERE IS WHAT IS, AND WHAT WILL BE. IF YOU CHANGE THAT, YOU CARRY THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE CHANGE. AND THAT IS TOO HEAVY TO BEAR. “That's just an excuse!” Susan glared at the tall figure. Then she turned and marched out of the room. SUSAN? She stopped halfway across the floor, but didn't turn around. “Yes?” REALLY . . . BONY KNEES? “Yes!” It was probably the first piano case that'd ever been made, and made out of a carpet at that. Cliff swung it easily on to his shoulder and picked up his sack of rocks in the other hand. “Is it heavy?” said Buddy. Cliff held the piano up on one hand and weighed it reflectively. “A bit,” he said. The floorboards creaked underneath him. “ Do you think we should've took all dem bits out?” “It's bound to work,” said Glod. “It's like . . . a coach. The more bits you take off, the faster it goes. Come on.” They set out. Buddy tried to look as inconspicuous as a human can look if he is accompanying a dwarf with a big horn, an ape, and a troll carrying a piano in a bag. “I'd like a coach,” said Cliff, as they headed for the Drum. “Big black coach with all dat liver on it.” “Liver?” said Buddy. He was beginning to get accustomed to the name. “Shields and dat.” “Oh. Livery.” “And dat.” “What'd you get if you had a pile of gold, Glod?” said Buddy. In its bag the guitar twanged gently to the sound of his voice. Glod hesitated. He wanted to say that for a dwarf the whole point of having a pile of gold was, well, to have a pile of gold. It didn't have to do anything other than be just as oraceous as gold could be. “Dunno,” he said. “Never thought I'd have a pile of gold. What about you?” “I swore I'd be the most famous musician in the world.” “Days dangerous, dat kinda swear,” said Cliff. “Cook.” “Isn't it what every artist wants?” said Buddy. “In my experience,” said Glod, “what every true artist wants, really wants, is to be paid.” “And famous,” said Buddy. “Famous I don't know about,” said Glod. “It's hard to be famous and alive. I just want to play music every day and hear someone say, "Thanks, that was great, here is some money, same time tomorrow OK?"' “Is that all?” “It's a lot. I'd like people to say, "We need a good horn man, get Glod Glodsson!"' “Sounds a bit dull,” said Buddy. “I like dull. It lasts.” They reached the side door of the Drum and entered a gloomy room that smelled of rats and second-hand beer. There was a distant murmur of voices from the bar. “Sounds like there's a lot of people in,” said Glod. Hibiscus bustled up. “You boys ready, then?” he said. “Hold on a minute,” said Cliff. “We ain't discussed our pay.” “I said six dollars,” said Hibiscus. “What d'you expect? You aren't Guild, and the Guild rate is eight dollars.” “We wouldn't ask you for eight dollars,” said Glod. “Right!” “We'll take sixteen.” “Sixteen? You can't do that! That's almost twice Guild rate!” “But there's a lot of people out there,” said Glod. “I bet you're renting a lot of beer. We don't mind going home.” “Let's talk about this,” said Hibiscus. He put his arm around Glod's head and led him to a corner of the room. Buddy watched the Librarian examine the piano. He'd never seen a musician begin by trying to eat his instrument. Then the ape lifted the lid and regarded the keyboard. He tried a few notes, apparently for taste. Glod returned, rubbing his hands. “That's sorted him out,” he said. “Hah!” “How much?” said Cliff. “Six dollars!” said Glod. There was some silence. “Sorry,” said Buddy. “We were waiting for the "-teen".” “I had to be firm,” said Glod. “He got down to two dollars at one point.” Some religions say that the universe was started with a word, a song, a dance, a piece of music. The Listening Monks of the Ramtops have trained their hearing until they can tell the value of a playing card by listening to it, and have made it their task to listen intently to the subtle sounds of the universe to piece together, from the fossil echoes, the very first sounds. There was certainly, they say, a very strange noise at the beginning of everything. But the keenest ears (the ones who win most at poker), who listen to the frozen echoes in ammonites and amber, swear they can detect some tiny sounds before that. It sounded, they say, like someone counting: One, Two, Three, Four. The very best one, who listened to basalt, said he thought he could make out, very faintly, some numbers that came even earlier. When they asked him what it was, he said: “It sounds like One, Two.” No-one ever asked what, if there was a sound that called the universe into being, happened to it afterwards. It's mythology. You're not supposed to ask that kind of question. On the other hand, Ridcully believed that everything had come into being by chance or, in the particular case of the Dean, out of spite. Senior wizards didn't usually drink in the Mended Drum except when they were off duty. They were aware that they were here tonight in some sort of ill-defined official capacity, and were seated rather primly in front of their drinks. There was a ring of empty seats around them, but it was not very big because the Drum was unusually crowded. “Lot of ambience in here,” said Ridcully, looking around. “Ah, I see they do Real Ale again. I'll have a pint of Turbot's Really Odd, please.” The wizards watched him as he drained the mug. Ankh-Morpork beer has a flavour all its own; it's something to do with the water. Some people say it's like consommé, but they are wrong. Consommé is cooler. Ridcully smacked his lips happily. “Ah, we certainly know what goes into good beer in AnkhMorpork,” he said. The wizards nodded. They certainly did. That's why they were drinking gin and tonic. Ridcully looked around. Normally at this time of night there was a fight going on somewhere, or at least a mild stabbing. But there was just a buzz of conversation and everyone was watching the small stage at the far end of the room, where nothing was happening in large amounts. There was theoretically a curtain across it; it was only an old sheet, and there was a succession of thuds and thumps from behind it. The wizards were quite close to the stage. Wizards tend to get good seats. Ridcully thought he could make out some whispering, and see shadows moving behind the sheet. “He said, what do we call ourselves?” “Cliff, Buddy, Glod and the Librarian. I thought he knew that.” “No, we've got to have one name for all of us.” “Dey rationed, den?” “Something like The Merry Troubadours, maybe.” “Oook!” “Glod and the Glodettes?” “Oh, yes? How about Cliff and the Cliffettes?” “Gook ook Oook-ook?” “No. We need a different type of name. Like the music.” “How about Gold? Good dwarf name.” “No. Something different from that.” “Silver, then.” “Ook!” “I don't think we should name ourselves after any kind of heavy metal, Glod.” “What's so special? We're a band of people who play music.” “Names are important.” “The guitar is special. How about The Band With Buddy's Guitar In It?” “Oook.” “Something shorter.” “Er ...” The universe held its breath. “The Band With Rocks In?” “I like it. Short and slightly dirty, just like me.” “Oook.” “We ought to think up a name for the music, too.” “It's bound to occur to us sooner or later.” . Ridcully looked around the bar. On the opposite side of the room was Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, Ankh-Morpork's most spectacularly unsuccessful businessman. He was trying to sell someone a felonious hot dog, a sign that some recent sure-fire business venture had collapsed. Dibbler sold his hot sausages only when all else failed.[17] He gave Ridcully a wave at no charge. The next table was occupied by Satchelmouth Lemon, one of the Musicians' Guild's recruiting officers, with a couple of associates whose apparent knowledge of music extended only to the amount of percussion available on the human skull. His determined expression suggested that he was not there for his health, although the fact that the Guild officers had a mean look about them rather hinted he was there for other people's health, mostly in order to take it away. Ridcully brightened up. The evening might just possibly be more interesting than he had expected. There was another table near the stage. He nearly didn't notice it, and then his gaze swivelled back to it of its own accord. There was a young woman sitting there, all by herself. Of course, it wasn't unusual to see young women in the Drum. Even unaccompanied young women. They were generally there in order to become accompanied. The odd thing was that, although people were jammed along the benches, she had space all around her. She was quite attractive in a skinny way, Ridcully thought. What was the tomboy word? Gammon, or something. She was wearing a black lace dress of the sort worn by healthy young women who want to look consumptive, and had a raven sitting on her shoulder. She turned her head, saw Ridcully looking at her, and vanished. More or less. He was a wizard, after all. He felt his eyes watering as she flickered in and out of vision. Ah. Well, he'd heard the Tooth Fairy girls were in the city these days. It'd be one of the night people. They probably had a day off, just like everyone else. A movement on the table made him look down. The Death of Rats scrittered past, carrying a bowl of peanuts. He turned back to the wizards. The Dean was still wearing his pointy hat. There was also something slightly shiny about his face. “You look hot, Dean,” said Ridcully. “Oh, I'm lovely and cool, Archchancellor, I assure you,” said the Dean. Something runny oozed past his nose. The Lecturer in Recent Runes sniffed suspiciously. “Is someone cooking bacon?” he said. “Take it off, Dean,” said Ridcully. “You'll feel a lot better.” “Smells more like Mrs Palm's House of Negotiable Affection to me,” said the Senior Wrangler. They looked at him in surprise. “I just happened to walk past once,” he said quickly. “Runes, please take the Dean's hat off for him, will you?” said Ridcully. “I assure you–” The hat came off. Something long and greasy and very nearly the same pointy shape flopped forward. “Dean,” said Ridcully eventually, “what have you done to your hair? It looks like a spike at the front and a duck's arse, excuse my Klatchian, at the back. And it's all shiny.” “Lard. That'd be the bacon smell,” said the Lecturer. “That's true,” said Ridcully, “but what about the floral smell?” “mumblemumblemumblelavendermumble,” said the Dean sullenly. “Pardon, Dean?” “I said it's because I added lavender oil,” said the Dean loudly. “And some of us happen to think it's a nifty hairstyle, thank you so very much. Your trouble, Archchancellor, is that you don't understand people of our age!” “What . . . you mean seven months older than me?” said Ridcully. This time the Dean hesitated. “What did I just say?” he said. “Have you been taking dried frog pills, old chap?” said Ridcully. “Of course not, they're for the mentally unstable!” said the Dean. “Ah. There's the trouble, then.” The curtain went up or, rather, was jerkily pulled aside. The Band With Rocks In blinked in the torchlight. No-one clapped. On the other hand, no-one threw anything, either. By Drum standards, this was a hearty welcome. Ridcully saw a tall, curly-headed young man clutching what looked like an undernourished guitar or possibly a banjo that had been used in a fight. Beside him was a dwarf, holding a battle horn. At the rear was a troll, hammer in each paw, seated behind a pile of rocks. And to one side was the Librarian, standing in front of . . . Ridcully leaned forward . . . what appeared to be the skeleton of a piano, balanced on some beer-kegs. The boy looked paralysed by the attention. He said: “Hello ... er ... Ankh-Morpork. And, this amount of conversation apparently having exhausted him, he started to play. It was a simple little rhythm, one that you might easily have ignored if you'd met it in the street. It was followed by a sequence of crashing chords and then, Ridcully realized, it hadn't been followed by the chords, because the rhythm was there all the time. Which was impossible. No guitar could be played like that. The dwarf blew a sequence of notes on the horn. The troll picked up the beat. The Librarian brought both hands down upon the piano keyboard, apparently at random. Ridcully had never heard such a din. And then . . . and then . . . it wasn't a din any more. It was like that nonsense about white light that the young wizards in the High Energy Magic Building went on about. They said that all the colours together made up white, which was bloody nonsense as far as Ridcully was concerned, because everyone knew that if you mixed up all the colours you could get your hands on, you got a sort of greeny-brown mess which certainly wasn't any kind of white. But now he had a vague idea what they meant. All this noise, this mess of music, suddenly came together and there was a new music inside it. The Dean's quiff was quivering. The whole crowd was moving. Ridcully realized his foot was tapping. He stamped on it with his other foot. Then he watched the troll carry the beat and hammer the rocks until the walls shook. The Librarian's fingers swooped along the keyboard. Then his toes did the same. And all the time the guitar hooted and screamed and sang out the melody. The wizards were bouncing in their seats and twirling their fingers in the air. Ridcully leaned over to the Bursar and screamed at him. “What?” shouted the Bursar. “I said, they've all gone mad except me and you!” “What?” “It's the music!” “Yes! It's great!” said the Bursar, waving his skinny hands in the air. “And I'm not too certain about you!” Ridcully sat down again and pulled out the thaumometer. It was vibrating crazily, which was no help at all. It didn't seem to be able to decide if this was magic or not. He nudged the Bursar sharply. “This ain't magic! This is something else!” “You're exactly right!” Ridcully had the feeling that he suddenly wasn't speaking the right language. “I mean it's too much!” “Yes!” Ridcully sighed. “Is it time for your dried frog pill?” Smoke was coming out of the stricken piano. The Librarian's hands were walking through the keys like Casanunda in a nunnery. Ridcully looked around. He felt all alone. Someone else hadn't been overcome by the music. Satchelmouth had stood up. So had his two associates. They had drawn some knobbly clubs. Ridcully knew the Guild laws. Of course, they had to be enforced. You couldn't run a city without them. This certainly wasn't licensed music - if ever there was unlicensed music, this was it. Nevertheless . . . he rolled up his sleeve and prepared a quick fireball, just in case. One of the men dropped his club and clutched his foot. The other one spun around as if something had slapped his ear. Satchelmouth's hat dented, as if someone had just hit him on the head. Ridcully, one eye watering terribly, thought he made out the Tooth Fairy girl bringing the handle of a scythe down on Satchelmouth's head. The Archchancellor was quite a bright man but often had trouble in forcing his train of thought to change tracks. He was having difficulty with the idea of a scythe, after all, grass didn't have teeth - and then the fireball burned his fingers, and then, as he sucked frantically at them, he realized that there was something in the sound. Something extra. “Oh, no,” he said, as the fireball floated to the floor and set fire to the Bursar's boot, “it's alive.” He grabbed the beer mug, finished the contents hurriedly, and rammed it upside down on the tabletop. The moon shone over the Klatchian desert, in the vicinity of the dotted line. Both sides of it got exactly the same amount of moonlight, although minds like Mr Clete's deplored this state of affairs. The sergeant strolled across the packed sand of the parade ground. He stopped, sat down, and produced a cheroot. Then he pulled out a match, reached down and struck it on something sticking out of the sand, which said: GOOD EVENING. “I expect you've had enough, eh, soldier?” said the sergeant. ENOUGH WHAT, SERGEANT? “Two days in the sun, no food, no water . . . I expect you're delirious with thirst and are just begging to be dug out, eh?” YES. IT IS CERTAINLY VERY DULL. “Dull?” I AM AFRAID SO. “Dull? It's not meant to be dull! It's the Pit! It's meant to be a horrible physical and mental torture! After one day of it you're supposed to by a . . .” The sergeant glanced surreptitiously at some writing on his wrist, “. . . a raving madman! I've been watching you all day! You haven't even groaned! I can't sit in my . . . thing, you sit in it, there's papers and things . . .” OFFICE. “. . . working, with you outside like this! I can't bear it!” Beau Nidle glanced upwards. He felt it was time for a kindly gesture.  HELP, HELP. HELP, HELP, he said. The sergeant sagged with relief. THIS ASSISTS PEOPLE TO FORGET, DOES IT? “Forget? People forget everything when they're given ...er...” THE PIT. “Yes! That's it!” AH. DO YOU MIND IF I ASK A QUESTION? “What?. DO YOU MIND IF PERHAPS I HAVE ANOTHER DAY? The sergeant opened his mouth to reply, and the D'regs attacked over the nearest sand-dune. “Music?” said the Patrician. “Ah. Tell me more.” He leaned back in an attitude that suggested attentive listening. He was extremely good at listening. He created a kind of mental suction. People told him things just to avoid the silence. Besides, Lord Vetinari, the supreme ruler of Ankh-Morpork, rather liked music. People wondered what sort of music would appeal to such a man. Highly formalized chamber music, possibly, or thunder-andlightning opera scores. In fact the kind of music he really liked was the kind that never got played. It ruined music, in his opinion, to torment it by involving it on dried skins, bits of dead cat and lumps of metal hammered into wires and tubes. It ought to stay written down, on the page, in rows of little dots and crotchets, all neatly caught between lines. Only there was it pure. It was when people started doing things with it that the rot set in. Much better to sit quietly in a room and read the sheets, with nothing between yourself and the mind of the composer but a scribble of ink. Having it played by sweaty fat men and people with hair in their ears and spit dribbling out of the end of their oboe . . . well, the idea made him shudder. Although not much, because he never did anything to extremes. So... “And then what happened?” he said. “An' then he started singin', yerronner,” said Cumbling Michael, licensed beggar and informal informant. “A song about Great Fiery Balls.” The Patrician raised an eyebrow. “Pardon?” “Somethin' like that. Couldn't really make out the words, the reason bein', the piano exploded.” “Ah? I imagine this interrupted the proceedings somewhat.” “Nah, the monkey went on playin' what was left,” said Cumbling Michael. “And people got up and started cheerin' and dancin and stampin' their feet like there was a plague of cockroaches.” “And you say the men from the Musicians' Guild were hurt?” “It was dead strange. They were white as a sheet afterwards. At least,” Cumbling Michael thought about the state of his own bedding, “white as some sheets–” The Patrician glanced at his reports while the beggar talked. It had certainly been a strange evening. A riot at the Drum . . . well, that was normal, although it didn't sound exactly like a typical riot and he'd never heard of wizards dancing. He rather felt he recognized the signs . . . There was only one thing that could make it worse. “Tell me,” he said. “What was Mr Dibbler's reaction to all this?” “What, yerronner?” “A simple enough question, I should have thought.” Cumbling Michael found the words 'But how did you know ole Dibbler was there? I never said' arranging themselves for the attention of his larynx, and then had second, third and fourth thoughts about saying them. “He just sat and stared, yerronner. With his mouth open. And then he rushed right out.” “I see. Oh, dear. Thank you, Cumbling Michael. Feel free to leave.” The beggar hesitated. “Foul Ole Ron said as yerronner sometimes pays for information,” he said. “Did he? Really? He said that, did he? Well, that is interesting.” Vetinari scribbled a note in the margin of a report. “Thank you.” “Er–” “Don't let me detain you.” “Er. No. Gods bless yerronner,” said Cumbling Michael, and ran for it. When the sound of the beggar's boots had died away the Patrician strolled over to the window, stood with his hands clasped behind his back, and sighed. There were probably city states, he reasoned, where the rulers only had to worry about the little things . . . barbarian invasions, the balance of payments, assassination, the local volcano erupting. There weren't people busily opening the door of reality and metaphorically saying, “Hi, come on in, pleased to see you, what a nice axe you have there, incidentally, can I make some money out of you since you're here?” Sometimes Lord Vetinari wondered what had happened to Mr Hong. Everyone knew, of course. In general terms. But not exactly what. What a city. In the spring, the river caught fire. About once a month, the Alchemists' Guild exploded. He walked back to his desk and made another brief note. He was rather afraid that he was going to have to have someone killed. Then he picked up the third movement of Fondel's Prelude in G Major and settled back to read. Susan walked back to the alley where she'd left Binky. There were half a dozen men lying around on the cobbles, clutching parts of themselves and moaning. Susan ignored them. Anyone trying to steal Death's horse soon understood the expression 'a world of hurts'. Binky had a good aim. It would be a very small, very private world. “The music was playing him, not the other way round,” she said. “You could see. I'm not sure his fingers even touched the strings.” SQUEAK. Susan rubbed her hand. Satchelmouth had turned out to have quite a hard head. “Can I kill it without killing him?” SQUEAK. “Not a hope,” the raven translated. “It's all that's keeping him alive.” “But Granda . . . but he said it'll end up killing him anyway!” “It's a big wide wonderful universe all right,” said the raven. SQUEAK. “But . . . look, if it's a . . . a parasite, or something like that,” said Susan, as Binky trotted skywards, “what's the good of it killing its host?” SQUEAK. “He says you've got him there,” said the raven. “Drop me off over Quirm, will you?” “What does it want him for?” said Susan. “It's using him, but what for?” “Twenty-seven dollars!” said Ridcully. “Twenty-seven dollars .to get you out! And the sergeant kept grinning all the time! Wizards arrested!” He walked along the row of crestfallen figures. “I mean, how often does the Watch get called in to the Drum?” said Ridcully. “I mean, what did you think you were doing?” “mumblemumblemumble,” said the Dean, looking at the floor. “I'm sorry?” “mumblemumbledancingmumble.” “Dancing,” said Ridcully levelly, walking back along the row. “That's dancing, is it? Banging into people? Throwin' one another over yer shoulders? Twirling around all over the place? Not even trolls act like that (not that I've got anything against trolls mind you marvellous people marvellous people) and you're supposed to be wizards. People are supposed to look up to you and that's not because you're somersaulting over their heads, Runes, don't think I didn't notice that little display, I was frankly disgusted. The poor Bursar has had to have a lie down. Dancing is . . . round in circles, don'tcherknow, Maypoles and suchlike, healthy reels, perhaps a little light ballroom . . . not swinging people round like a dwarf with a battleaxe (mind you salt of the earth dwarfs I've always said so). Do I make myself clear?” “mumblemumblemumbleeveryonewasdoingitmumble,” said the Dean, still looking at the floor. “I never thought I'd say this to any wizard over the age of eighteen, but you're all gated until further notice!” shouted Ridcully. Being confined to the campus was not much of a punishment. The wizards usually distrusted any air that hadn't hung around indoors for a while, and mostly lived in a kind of groove between their rooms and the dining table. But they were feeling strange. “mumblemumbledon'tseewhymumble,” mumbled the Dean. He said, much later on, on the day when the music died, that it must have been because he'd never been really young, or at least young while just being old enough to know he was young. Like most wizards, he'd begun his training while still so small that the official pointy hat came down over his ears. And after that he'd just been, well, a wizard. He had the feeling, once again, that he'd missed out on something somewhere. He'd never really realized it until the last couple of days. He didn't know what it was. He just wanted to do things. He didn't know what they were. But he wanted to do them soon. He wanted . . . he felt like a lifelong tundra dweller when he wakes up one morning with a deep urge to go water-skiing. He certainly wasn't going to stay indoors when there was music in the air . . . “mumblemumblemumblenotgonnastayindoorsmumble.” Unaccustomed feelings surged through him. He wanted to disobey! Disobey everything! Including the law of gravity. He was definitely not going to fold his clothes before going to bed! Ridcully was going to say, oh, you're a rebel, are you, what are you rebelling against, and he'd say . . . he'd say something pretty damn memorable, that's what he'd do! He was But the Archchancellor had stalked off. “mumblemumblemumble,” said the Dean defiantly, a rebel without a pause. There was a knock at the door, barely audible above the din. Cliff opened it a cautious fraction. “It's me, Hibiscus. Here's your beers. Drink 'em up and get out!” “How can we get out?” said Glod. “Every time they see us they force us to play some more!” Hibiscus shrugged. “I don't care,” he said. “But you owe me a dollar for the beer and twenty-five dollars for the broken furniture–' Cliff shut the door. “I could negotiate with him,” said Glod. “No, we can't afford it,” said Buddy. They looked at one another. “Well, the crowd loved us,” said Buddy. “I think we were a big success. Er.” In the silence Cliff bit the end off a beer bottle and poured the contents over his head.[18] “What we all want to know is,” said Glod, “what you thought you were doing out there?” “Gook.” “And how come,” said Cliff, crunching up the rest of the bottle, “we all knew what to play?” “Gook.” “And also,” said Glod, “what you were singing.” “Er... “"Don't Tread On My New Blue Boots"?” said Cliff. “Gook.” “"Good Gracious Miss Polly"?” said Glod. “Er...” “"Sto Helit Lace"?” said Cliff. “Gook?” “It's a kind of very fine lace they make iii the city of Sto Helit,” said Glod. Glod gave Buddy a lopsided look. “That bit where you said "hello, baby",” he said. “Why'd you do that?” “Er...” “I mean, it's not as if they even allow small children into the Drum.” “I don't know. The words were just there,” said Buddy. “They were sort of part of the music . . .” “And you were . . . moving about in a funny way. Like you were having trouble with your trousers,” said Glod. “I'm not expert on humans, of course, but I saw some ladies in the audience looking at you like a dwarf looks at a girl when he knows her father's got a big shaft and several rich seams.” “Yeah,” said Cliff, “and like when a troll is thinking: hey, will you look at der strata on dat one . . .” “You're certain you've got no elvish in you, are you?” said Glod. “Once or twice I thought you were acting a bit . . . elvish.” “I don't know what's happening!” said Buddy. The guitar whined. They looked at it. “What we do is,” said Cliff, “we take dat and throw it in de river. All those in favour say "Aye". Or Oook, as the case may be.” There was another silence. No-one rushed to pick up the instrument. “But the thing is,” said Glod, “the thing is . . . they did love us out there.” They thought about this. “It didn't actually feel . . . bad,” said Buddy. “Got to admit . . . I never had an audience like dat in my whole life,” said Cliff. “Oook.” “If we're so good,” said Glod, “why ain't we rich?” "Cos you do the negotiatin',” said Cliff. “If we've got to pay for der furniture, I'm soon goin' to have to eat my dinner through a straw.” “You saying I'm no good?” said Glod, getting angrily to his feet. “You blow good horn. But you ain't no financial wizard.” “Hah, I'd just like to see ' There was a knock on the door. Cliff sighed. “Dat'll be Hibiscus again,” he said. “Pass me dat mirror. I'll try to hit one out on de other side.” Buddy opened the door. Hibiscus was there, but behind a smaller man wearing a long coat and a wide, friendly grin. “Ah,” said the grin. “You'd be Buddy, right?” “Er, yes.” And then the man was inside, without actually appearing to have moved, and kicking the door shut in the landlord's face. “Dibbler's the name,” the grin went on. “C. M. O. T. Dibbler. I dare say you've heard of me?” “Gook!” “I ain't talking to you! I'm talking to you other guys.” “No,” said Buddy, “I don't think we have.” The grin appeared to widen. “I hear you boys are in a bit of trouble,” said Dibbler. “Broken furniture and whatnot.” “We're not even going to get paid,” said Cliff, glaring at Glod. “Well now,” said Dibbler, “it could just be that I could help you there. I'm a businessman. I do business. I can see you boys are musicians. You play music. You don't want to worry your heads about money stuff, right? Gets in the way of the creative processes, am I right? How about if you leave that to me?” “Huh,” said Glod, still smarting from the insult to his financial acumen. “And what can you do?” “Well,” said Dibbler, “ I can get you paid for tonight, for a start.” “What about the furniture?” said Buddy. “Oh, stuff gets busted here every night,” said Dibbler expansively. “Hibiscus was just having you on. I'll square it with him. Confidentially, you want to watch out for people like him.” He leaned forward. If his grin had been any wider the top of his head would have fallen off. “This city, boys,” he said, “is a jungle.” “If he can get us paid, I trust him,” said Glod. “As simple as dat?” said Cliff. “I trust anyone who gives me money.” Buddy glanced at the table. He didn't know why, but he had a feeling that if something was wrong the guitar would do something - play a discord, maybe. But it just purred gently to itself. “Oh, all right. If it means I get to keep my teef, I'm all for it,” said Cliff. “OK,” said Buddy. “Great! Great! We can make beautiful music together! At least -you boys can, eh?” He pulled out a sheet of paper and a pencil. In Dibbler's eyes, the lion roared. Somewhere high in the Ramtops, Susan rode Binky over a cloudbank. “How could he talk like that?” she said. “Play around with people's lives, and then talk about duty?” All the lights were on in the Musicians' Guild. A gin bottle played a tattoo on the edge of a glass. Then it rattled briefly on the desktop as Satchelmouth put it down. “Doesn't anyone know who the hells they are?” Mr Clete said, as Satchelmouth managed to grip the glass on the second try. “Someone must know who they are!” “Dunno about the boy,” said Satchelmouth. “No-one's ever seen him before. An' . . . an' . . . well, you know trolls . . . could've been anyone. . .” “One of them was definitely the Librarian from the University,” said Herbert 'Mr Harpsichord' Shuffle, the Guild's own librarian. “We can leave him for now,” said Clete. The others nodded. No-one really wanted to attempt to beat up the Librarian if there was anyone smaller available. “What about the dwarf?” “Ah.” “Someone said they thought he was Glod Glodsson. Lives in Phedre Road somewhere–” Clete growled. “Get some of the lads over there right now. I want the position of musicians in this city explained to them right now. Hat. Hat. Hat.” The musicians hurried through the night, the din of the Mended Drum behind them. “Wasn't he nice,” said Glod. “I mean, we haven't just got our pay, but he was so interested he gave us twenty dollars of his own money!” “I tink what he said,” said Cliff, “was dat he'd give us twenty dollars with interest.” “Same thing, isn't it? And he said he could get us more jobs. Did you read the contract?” “Did you?” “It was very small writing,” said Glod. He brightened up. “But there was a lot of it,” he added. “Bound to be a good contract, with that much writing on it.” “The Librarian ran away,” said Buddy. “Oooked a lot, and ran away.” “Hah! Well, he'll be sorry later on,” said Glod. “Later on, people'll talk to him and he'll say: I left, you know, before they became famous.” “He'll say ook.” “Anyway, that piano's going to need some work.” “Yeah,” said Cliff. “Like, I saw once where dis guy made stuff out of matches. He could repair it.” A couple of dollars became two lamb kormas and pitchblende vindaloo at the Curry Gardens, along with a bottle of wine so chemical that even trolls could drink it. “And after this,” said Glod, as they sat down to wait for the food, “we'll find somewhere else to stay.” “What wrong with your place?” said Cliff. “It's too draughty. It's got a piano-shaped hole in the door.” “Yes, but you put it there.” “So what?” “Won't the landlord object?” “Of course he'll object. That's what landlords are for. Anyway, we're on the up and up, lads. I can feel it in my water.” “I thought you were just happy to get paid,” said Buddy. “Right. Right. But I'm even happier to get paid a lot.” The guitar hummed. Buddy picked it up, and plucked a string. Glod dropped his knife. “That sounded like a piano!” he said. “I think it can sound like anything,” said Buddy. “And now it knows about pianos.” “Magic,” said Cliff. “Of course magic,” said Glod. “That's what I keep saying. A strange old thing found in a dusty old shop one stormy night–” “It wasn't stormy,” said Cliff. “-it's bound to . . . yes, all right, but it was raining a bit . . . it's bound to be a bit special. I bet if we was to go back now the shop wouldn't be there. And that'd prove it. Everyone knows things bought from shops which aren't there next day are dead mysterious and items of Fate. Fate's smiling on us, could be.” “Doing something on us,” said Cliff. “I hope it's smiling.” “And Mr Dibbler said he'd find us somewhere really special to play tomorrow.” “Good,” said Buddy. “We must play.” “Right,” said Cliff. “We play all right. It's our job.” “People should hear our music.” “Sure.” Cliff looked puzzled. “Right. Of course. Dat's what we want. And some pay, too.” “Mr Dibbler'll help us,” said Glod, who was too preoccupied to notice the edge in Buddy's voice. “He must be very successful. He's got an office in Sator Square. Only very posh businesses can afford that.” A new day dawned. It had hardly finished doing so before Ridcully hurried through the dewy grass of the University gardens and hammered on the door of the High Energy Magic Building. Generally he never went near the place. It wasn't that he didn't understand what it was the young wizards in there were actually doing, but because he strongly suspected that they didn't, either. They seemed to positively enjoy becoming less and less certain about everything and would come in to dinner saying things like 'Wow, we've just overturned Marrowleaf's Theory of Thaumic Imponderability! Amazing!” as if it was something to be proud of, instead of gross discourtesy. And they were always talking about splitting the thaum, the smallest unit of magic. The Archchancellor couldn't see the point. So you had bits all over the place. What good would that do? The universe was bad enough without people poking it. The door opened. “Oh, it's you, Archchancellor.” Ridcully pushed the door open further. "Morning, Stibbons. Glad to see you're up and about early.” Ponder Stibbons, the faculty's youngest member, blinked at the sky. “Is it morning already?” he said. Ridcully pushed his way past him and into the HEM. It was unfamiliar ground for a traditional wizard. There wasn't a skull or dribbly candle to be seen; this particular room looked like an alchemist's laboratory had suffered the inevitable explosion and landed in a blacksmith's shop. Nor did he approve of Stibbons's robe. It was the right length but a washed-out greeny-grey, with pockets and toggles and a hood with a bit of rabbit fur around the edge. There weren't any sequins or jewels or mystic symbols anywhere. Just a blodgy stain where Stibbons's pen leaked. “You ain't been out lately?” said Ridcully. “No, sir. Er. Should I have been? I've been busy working on my Make-It-Bigger device. You know, I showed you–'[19] “Right, right,” said Ridcully, looking around. “Anyone else been working in here?” “Well . . . there's me, and Tez the Terrible and Skazz and Big Mad Drongo, I think . . .” Ridcully blinked. “What are they?” he said. And then, from the depths of memory, a horrible answer suggested itself. Only a very specific species had names like that. “Students?” “Er. Yes?” said Ponder, backing away. “That's all right, isn't it? I mean, this is a university . . .” Ridcully scratched his ear. The man was right, of course. You had to have some of the buggers around, there was no getting away from it. Personally, he avoided them .whenever possible, as did the rest of the faculty, occasionally running the other way or hiding behind doors whenever they saw them. The Lecturer in Recent Runes had been known to lock himself in his wardrobe rather than take a tutorial. “You better fetch 'em,” he said. “The fact is, I seem to have lost my faculty.” “For what, Archchancellor?” said Ponder, politely. “What?” “Sorry?” They looked at one another in incomprehension, two minds driving opposite ways up a narrow street and waiting for the other man to reverse first. “The faculty,” said Ridcully, giving up. “The Dean and whatnot. Gone totally round the corner. Been up all night, playing guitars and whatnot. The Dean's made himself a coat out of leather.” “Well, leather is a very practical and functional material–” “Not the way he's using it,” said Ridcully darkly . . . [. . . the Dean stood back. He'd borrowed a dressmaker's dummy from Mrs Whitlow, the housekeeper. He'd made some changes to the design that had buzzed around his brain. For one thing, a wizard in his very soul is loath to wear any garment that doesn't reach down at least to the ankles, so there was quite a lot of leather. Lots of room for all the studs. He'd started with: DEAN. That had hardly begun to fill the space. After a while he'd added: BORN TO, and left a space because he wasn't quite sure what he'd been born to. BORN TO EAT BIG DINNERS wouldn't be appropriate. After some more bemused thought he'd gone on to: LIVE FATS DIE YO GNU. It wasn't quite right, he could see; he'd turned the material over while he was making the holes for the studs and had sort of lost track of which direction he was going. Of course, it didn't matter which direction you went, just so long as you went. That's what music with rocks in it was all about . . .] . . . “And Recent Runes is in his room playing drums, and the rest of them have all got guitars, and what the Bursar's done to the bottom of his robe is really strange,” said Ridcully. “And the Librarian's wandering around the place pinchin' stuff and no-one listens to a word I say.” He stared at the students. It was a worrying sight, and not just because of the natural look of students. Here were some people who, while this damn music was making everyone tap their feet, had stayed indoors all night - working. “What are you lot doing in here?” he said. “You . . . what's your name?” The student wizard pinned by Ridcully's pointing finger squirmed anxiously. “Er. Um. Big Mad Drongo,” he said, twisting the brim of his hat in his hands. “Big. Mad. Drongo,” said Ridcully. “That's your name, is it? That's what you've got sewn on your vest?” “Um. No, Archchancellor.” “It is...?” “Adrian Turnipseed, Archchancellor.” “So why're you called Big Mad Drongo, Mr Turnipseed?” said Ridcully. “Um . . . um . . .” “He once drank a whole pint of shandy,” said Stibbons, who had the decency to look embarrassed. Ridcully gave him a carefully blank look. Oh, well. They'd have to do. “All right, you lot,” he said, “what do you make of this?” He produced from his robe a Mended Drum beer tankard with a beer mat fastened over the top with a piece of string. “What have you got in there, Archchancellor?” said Ponder Stibbons. “A piece of music, lad.” “Music? But you can't trap music like that.” “I wish I was a clever bugger like you and knew every damn thing,” said Ridcully. “That big flask over there . . . You - Big Mad Adrian -take the top off it, and be ready to slam it down again when I say. Ready with that lid, Mad Adrian . . . right!” There was a brief angry chord as Ridcully pulled the beer mat off the mug and upended it quickly into the flask. Mad Drongo Adrian slammed the lid down, in total terror of the Archchancellor. And then they could hear it . . . a persistent faint beat, rebounding off the inner walls of the glass flask. The students peered in at it. There was something in there. A sort of movement in the air . . . “I trapped it in the Drum last night.” “That's not possible,” said Ponder. “You can't trap music.” “That isn't Klatchian mist, lad.” “It's been in that mug since last night?” said Ponder. “Yes.” “But that's not possible!” Ponder looked absolutely crestfallen. There are some people born with the instinctive feeling that the universe is solvable. Ridcully patted him on the shoulder. “You never thought that being a wizard was going to be easy, did you?” Ponder stared at the jar, and then his mouth snapped into a thin line of determination. “Right! We're going to sort this out! It must be something to do with the frequency! That's right! Tez the Terrible, get the crystal ball! Skazz, fetch the roll of steel wire! It must be the frequency!” The Band With Rocks In slept the night away in a single males' hostel in an alley off Gleam Street, a fact that would have interested the four enforcers of the Musicians' Guild sitting outside a piano-shaped hole in Phedre Road. Susan strode through the rooms of Death, seething gently with anger and just a touch of fear, which only made the anger worse. How could anyone even think like that? How could anyone be content to just be the personification of a blind force? Well, there were going to be changes . . . Her father had tried to change things, she knew. But only because he was, well, quite frankly, a bit soppy. He'd been made a duke by Queen Keli of Sto Lat. Susan knew what the title meant - duke meant 'war leader'. But her father never fought anyone. He seemed to spend all his time travelling from one wretched city state to another, all over the Sto Plains, just talking to people and trying to get them to talk to other people. He'd never killed anyone, as far as Susan knew, although he may have talked a few politicians to death. That didn't seem to be much of a job for a war leader. Admittedly there didn't seem to be all the little wars there used to be, but it was . . . not a proud kind of life. She walked through the hall of lifetimers. Even those on the highest shelves rattled gently as she passed. She'd save lives. The good could be spared, and the bad could die young. It would all balance up, too. She'd show him. As for responsibility, well . . . humans always made changes. That was what being human was all about. Susan opened another door and stepped into the library. It was a room even bigger than the hall of lifetimers. Bookcases rose like cliffs; a haze obscured the ceiling. But of course it'd be childish, she told herself, to think that she could go in waving the scythe like a magic wand and turn the world into a better place overnight. It might take some time. So she should start in a small way and work up. She held out a hand. “I'm not going to do the voice,” she said. “That's just unnecessary drama and really a bit stupid. I just want the book of Imp y Celyn, thank you very much.” Around her the busyness of the library went on. Millions of books quietly carried on writing themselves, causing a rustle like that of cockroaches. She remembered sitting on a knee or, rather, sitting on a cushion on a knee, because the knee itself had been out of the question. Watching a bony finger follow the letters as they formed on the page. She'd learned to read her own life– “I'm waiting,” said Susan meaningfully. She clenched her fists. IMP Y CELYN, she said. The book appeared in front of her. She just managed to catch it before it fluttered to the floor. “Thank you,” she said. She flicked through the pages of his life until she came to the last one, and stared. Then she hastily went back until she found, written neatly down, his death in the Drum. It was all there - all untrue. He hadn't died. The book was lying. Or - and this she knew was a far more accurate way of looking at it - the book was true and reality was lying. What was more important was that from the moment of his death the book was writing music. Page after page had been covered with neat staves. While Susan watched, a clef drew itself in a series of careful loops. What did it want? Why should it save his life? And it was vitally important that she save him instead. She could feel the certainty like a ball-bearing in her mind. It was absolutely imperative. She'd never met him up close, she'd not exchanged a word with him, he was just one person, but it was him she had to save. Grandfather had said she shouldn't do that sort of thing. What did he know about anything? He'd never lived. Blert Wheedown made guitars. It was quiet, satisfying work. It took him and Gibbsson, the apprentice, about five days to make a decent instrument, if the wood was available and properly seasoned. He was a conscientious man who'd devoted many years to the perfection of one type of musical instrument, on which he himself was no mean performer. In his experience, guitarists came in three categories. There were the ones he thought of as real musicians, who worked at the Opera House or for one of the small private orchestras. There were the folk singers, who couldn't play but that was all right because most of them couldn't sing either. Then there were the hemhem - troubadours and other swarthy types who thought a guitar was, like a red rose in the teeth, a box of chocolates and a strategically placed pair of socks, another weapon in the battle of the sexes. They didn't play at all, apart from one or two chords, but they were regular customers. When leaping out of a bedroom window just ahead of an angry husband the one thing a paramour is least concerned about leaving behind is his instrument. Blert thought he'd seen them all. Mind you, first thing this morning he'd sold some to some wizards. That was unusual. Some of them had even bought Blert's guitar primer. The bell rang. “Yes–”Blert looked at the customer, and made a huge mental effort '-sir?” It wasn't just the leather jerkin. It wasn't just the wristbands with studs. It wasn't just the broadsword. It wasn't just the helmet with the spikes. It was the leather and the studs and the sword and the helmet. This customer couldn't possibly be in categories one or two, Blert decided. The figure stood, looking uncertain, hands gripping convulsively, clearly not at home in a dialogue situation. “This a guitar shop?” it said. Blert looked around at the merchandise hanging from walls and ceiling. “Er. Yes?” he said. “I wants one.” As for category three, he didn't look like someone used to bothering with chocolates or roses. Or even 'hello'. “Er . . .” Blert grabbed one at random and held it out in front of him. “One like this?” “I wants one that goes blam-Blam-blamma-BLAM-blammmmooohieeee. Y'know?” Blert looked down at the guitar. “I'm not sure it does that,” he said. Two enormous black-nailed hands took it out of his grasp. “Er, you're holding it wro–' “Got a mirror?” “Er, no–” One hairy hand was raised high in the air, and then plunged towards the strings. Blert never wanted to repeat the next ten seconds. People shouldn't be allowed to do that sort of thing to a defenceless musical instrument. It was like raising a little pony, feeding it and grooming it properly, plaiting ribbons in its tail, giving it a nice field with bunnies and daisies in it, and then watching the first rider take it out with spurs and a whip. The thug played as if he were searching for something. He didn't find it, but as the last discords faded away his features twisted into the determined expression of one who intends to go on looking. “Yer, right. How much?” he said. It was on sale for fifteen dollars. But Blert's musical soul rebelled. He snapped. “Twenty-five dollars,” was what he snapped. “Yer, right. Will this be enough, then?” A small ruby was produced from somewhere in a pocket. “I can't change that!” Blert's musical soul was still protesting, but his business head stepped in and flexed its elbows. “But, but, but I'll throw in my guitar primer and a strap and a couple of pleckies, yes?” he said. “It's got pictures of where to put your fingers and everything, yes?” “Yer, right.” The barbarian walked out. Blert stared at the ruby in his hand. The bell rang. He looked up. This one wasn't quite so bad. There were fewer studs, and the helmet had only two spikes. Blert's hand shut around the jewel. “Don't tell me you want a guitar?” he said. “Yep. One of them that goes whoweeeooowweeeeoowwwwngngngng.” Blert looked around wildly. “Well, there's this one,” he said, grabbing the nearest instrument. “I don't know about wooeeoowweee but here's my primer as well and a strap and some pleckies, that'll be thirty dollars and I'll tell you what I'll do, I'll throw in the space between the strings for free, OK?” “Yep. Er. Got a mirror?” The bell rang. And rang. An hour later Blert leaned on the door-frame of his workshop, a manic grin on his face and his hands on his belt to stop the weight of money in his pockets pulling his trousers down. “Gibbsson?” “Yes, boss?” “You know those guitars you made? When you were learning?” “The ones you said sounded like a cat going to the toilet through a sewn-up bum, boss?” “Did you throw them away?” “No, boss. I thought: I'll keep them, so's in five years' time when I can make proper instruments, I'll be able to take 'em out and have a good laugh.” Blert wiped his forehead. Several small gold coins fell out with his handkerchief. “Where did you put them, out of interest?” “Chucked 'em inna shed, boss. Along with that whaney timber you said was about as useful as a mermaid in a chorus line.” “Just fetch them out again, will you? And that timber.” “But you said–” “And bring me a saw. And then nip out and get me, oh, a couple of gallons of black paint. And some sequins.” “Sequins, boss?” “You can get them up at Mrs Cosmopilite's dress shop. And ask her if she's got any of those glittery ankhstones. And some fancy material for straps. Oh . . . and see if she can lend us her biggest mirror . . .” Blert hitched up his trousers again. “And then go down to the docks and hire a troll and tell him to stand in the corner and if anyone else comes in and tries to play . . .” he paused, and then remembered, “Pathway to Paradise, I think they said it's called . . . he's to pull their head off.” “Shouldn't he give them a warning?” said Gibbsson. “That will be the warning.” It was an hour later. Ridcully had got bored and sent Tez the Terrible over to the kitchens to see about a snack. Ponder and the other two had been busying themselves around the flask, messing around with crystal balls and wire. And now... There was a wire stretched between two nails on the bench. It was a blur as it twanged an interesting beat. Big curved green lines hung in the air above it. “What's that?” said Ridcully. “That's what the sound looks like,” said Ponder. “Sound looks like,” said Ridcully. “Well, there's a thing. I never saw sound looking like that. This is what you boys used magic for, is it? Looking at sound? Hey, we've got some nice cheese in the kitchen, how about we go and listen to how it smells?” Ponder sighed. “It's what sound would be if your ears were eyes,” he said. “Really?” said Ridcully, brightly. “Amazing!” “It looks very complicated,” said Ponder. “Simple when you look at it from a distance and up close, very complex. Almost . . .” “Alive,” said Ridcully, firmly. “Er ...” It was the one known as Skazz. He looked about seven stone and had the most interesting haircut Ridcully had ever seen, since it consisted of a shoulderlength fringe of hair all round. It was only the tip of his nose poking out which told the world which way he was facing. If he ever developed a boil on the back of his neck, people would think he was walking the wrong way. “Yes, Mr Skazz?” said Ridcully. “Er. I read something about this once,” said Skazz. “Remarkable. How did you manage that?” “You know the Listening Monks up in the Ramtops? They say that there's a background noise to the universe? A sort of echo of some sound?” “Sounds sensible to me. The whole universe starting up, bound to make a big bang,” said Ridcully. “It wouldn't have to be very loud,” said Ponder. “It'd just have to be everywhere, all at once. I read that book. Old Riktor the Counter wrote it. The Monks are still listening to it, he said. A sound that never fades away.” “Sounds like loud to me,” said Ridcully. “Got to be loud to be heard any distance. If the wind's in the wrong direction, you can't even hear the bells on the Assassins' Guild.” “It wouldn't have to be loud to be heard everywhere,” said Ponder. “The reason being, at that point everywhere was all in one place.” Ridcully gave him the look people give conjurors who've just removed an egg from their ear. “Everywhere was all in one place?” “Yes.” “So where was everywhere else?” “That was all in one place, too.” “The same place?” “Yes.” “Crunched up very small?” Ridcully was beginning to show certain signs. If he had been a volcano, natives living nearby would be looking for a handy virgin. “Haha, in fact you could say it was crunched up very big,” said Ponder, who always walked into it. “The reason being, space didn't exist until there was a universe, so anything there was, was everywhere.” “The same everywhere we had just now?” “Yes.” “All right. Go on.” “Riktor said he thought that the sound came first. One great big complicated chord. The biggest, most complicated sound there ever was. A sound so complex that you couldn't play it within a universe, any more than you can open a box with the crowbar that's inside it. One great chord which . . . as it were . . . played everything into being. Started the music, if you like.” “A sort of ta-dahhh?” said Ridcully. “I suppose so.” “I thought the universe came into being because some god cut off some other god's wedding tackle and made the universe out of it,” said Ridcully. “Always seemed straightforward to me. I mean, it's the kind of thing you can imagine happenin'.” “Well–” “Now you're telling me someone blew a big hooter and here we are?” “I don't know about someone,” said Ponder. “Noises don't just make themselves, that I do know,” said Ridcully. . He relaxed a bit, certain in his own mind that reason had prevailed, and patted Ponder on the back. “It needs some work, lad,” he said. “Old Riktor was a bit . . . unsound, y'know. He thought everything came down to numbers.” “Mind you,” said Ponder, “the universe does have a rhythm. Day and night, light and dark, life and death–” “Chicken soup and croutons,” said Ridcully. “Well, not every metaphor bears close examination.” There was a knock on the door. Tez the Terrible entered, carrying a tray. He was followed by Mrs Whitlow, the housekeeper. Ridcully's jaw dropped. Mrs Whitlow curtsied. “Good morning, hyour grace,” she said. Her ponytail bobbed. There was a rustle of starched petticoats. Ridcully's jaw rose again, but only so that he could say: “What have you done to your–” “Excuse me, Mrs Whitlow,” said Ponder quickly, “but have you served breakfast to any of the faculty this morning?” “That's right, Mr Stibbons,” said Mrs Whitlow. Her ample and mysterious bosom shifted under its sweater. “None of the gentlemen came down, so I got trays taken up to them all. Daddio.” Ridcully's gaze continued downwards. He'd never thought of Mrs Whitlow as having legs before. Of course, in theory the woman needed something to move around on, but . . . well . . . But there were two pudgy knees protruding from the huge mushroom of skirts. Further down there were white socks. “Your hair–”he began, hoarsely. “Is there something wrong?” said Mrs Whitlow. “Nothing, nothing,” said Ponder. “Thank you very much.” The door closed behind her. “She was snapping her fingers as she went out, just like you said,” said Ponder. “Wasn't the only thing that's snapped,” said Ridcully, still shuddering. “Did you look at her shoes?” “I think my eyes shut themselves protectively about there.” “If it's really alive,” said Ponder, “then it's very contagious.” This scene took place in Crash's father's coach-house, but it was an echo of a scene evolving all around the city. Crash hadn't been christened Crash. He was the son of a rich dealer in hay and feedstuffs, but he despised his father for being dead from the neck up, totally concerned with material things, unimaginative and also for paying him a ridiculous three dollars a week allowance. Crash's father had left his horses in the coach-house. At the moment they were both trying to squeeze into one corner, having tried fruitlessly to kick a hole in the walls. “I reckon I nearly had it that time,” said Crash, as hay dust poured down from the roof and woodworm hurried off to find a better home. “It isn't- I mean, it ain't like the sound we heard in the Drum,” said Jimbo critically. “It's a bit like it, but it isn- it ain't it.” Jimbo was Crash's best friend and wished he was one of the people. “It's good enough to start with,” said Crash. “So you and Noddy, you two get guitars. And Scum, you . . . you can play the drums.” “Dunno how,” said Scum. It was actually his name. “No-one knows how to play the drums,” said Crash patiently. “There's nothing to know. You just hit them with the sticks.” “Yeah, but what if I sort of miss?” “Sit closer. Right,” said Crash, sitting back. “Now . . . the important thing, the really important thing is . . . what're we going to call ourselves?” Cliff looked around. “Well, I reckon we look at every house and I'm damned if I see der name Dibbler anywhere,” he growled. Buddy nodded. Most of Sator Square was the frontage of the University, but there was room for a few other buildings. They were the sort that have a dozen brass plates by the door. The sort that hinted that even wiping your feet on the doormat was going to cost you dear. “Hello, boys.” They turned. Dibbler beamed at them over a tray of possible sausages and buns. There were a couple of sacks beside him. “Sorry we're late,” said Glod, “but we couldn't find your office anywhere.” Dibbler spread his arms wide. “This is my office,” he said, equally expansively. “Sator Square! Thousands of square feet of space! Excellent communications! Passing trade! Try these on,” he added, picking up one of the sacks and opening it. “ I had to guess at sizes.” They were black, and made of cheap cotton. One of them was XXXXL. “A vest with words on?” said Buddy. “"The Band With Rocks In",” Cliff read, slowly. “Hey, dat's us, isn't it?” “What do we want these for?” said Glod. “We know who we are.” “Advertising,” said Dibbler. “Trust me.” He put a brown cylinder in his mouth and lit the end. “Wear them tonight. Have I got a gig for you!” “Have you?” said Buddy. “That's what I said!” “No, you asked us,” said Glod. “How should we know?” “Has it got dat livery on der side?” said Cliff. Dibbler started again. “It's a big place, you'll get a great audience! And you'll get . . .” he looked at their trusting, open faces, “ten dollars over Guild rate, how about that?” Glod's face split into a big grin. “What, each?” he said. Dibbler gave them another appraising look. “Oh . . . no,” he said. “Fair do's. Ten dollars between you. I mean, be serious. You need exposure.” “Dere's dat word again,” said Cliff. “The Musicians' Guild'll be right on our necks.” “Not this place,” said Dibbler. “Guaranteed.” “Where is it, then?” said Glod. “Are you ready for this?” They blinked at him. Dibbler beamed, and blew a cloud of greasy smoke. “The Cavern!” The beat went on . . . Of course, there are bound to be a few mutations . . . Gortlick and Hammerjug were songwriters, and fully paid-up members of the Guild. They wrote dwarf songs for all occasions. Some people say this is not hard to do so long as you can remember how to spell 'Gold', but this is a little bit cynical. Many dwarf songs[20] are on the lines of 'Gold, gold, gold' but it's all in the inflexion; dwarfs have thousands of words for 'gold' but will use any of them in an emergency, such as when they see some gold that doesn't belong to them. They had a small office in Tin Lid Alley, where they sat either side of an anvil and wrote popular songs to mine along to. “Gort?” “What?” “What do you think of this one?” Hammerjug cleared his throat. “I'm mean and turf and I'm mean and turf and I'm mean and turf and I'm mean and turf, “And me an' my friends can walk towards you with our hats on backwards in a menacing way, “Yo!” Gortlick chewed the end of his composing hammer thoughtfully. “Good rhythm,” he said, “but the words need some work.” “You mean more gold, gold, gold?” “Ye-es. What're you thinking of calling it?” “Er . . . r . . . rat . . . music. . .” “Why rat music?” Hammerjug looked puzzled. “Couldn't really say,” he said. “It was just an idea I had in my brain.” Gortlick shook his head. Dwarfs were a burrowing race. He knew what they liked. “Good music's got to have hole in it,” he said. “You ain't got nothing if you ain't got hole.” “Now calm down, calm down,” said Dibbler. “It's the biggest venue in Ankh-Morpork, that's why. I don't see what the problem is . . .” “The Cavern?” screamed Glod. “Chrysoprase the troll runs it, that's the problem!” “Dey say he's a godfather in the Breccia,” said Cliff. “Now now, that's never been proved . . .” “Only 'cos it's very hard to prove things when someone's scooped a hole in your head and buried your feet in it!” “There's no need for this prejudice, just because he's a troll–”said Dibbler. “I'm a troll! So I can be prejudiced against trolls, all right? He's one mean mutherlode! Dey say when dey found the De Bris gang none of 'em had any teef–' “What is the Cavern?” said Buddy. “Troll place,” said Cliff. “Dey say–” “It'll be great! Why worry?” said Dibbler. “It's a gambling joint, too!”[21] “But the Guild won't go in there,” said Dibbler. “Not if they know what's good for them.” “And I know what's good for me, too!” shouted Glod. “I'm good at knowing that! It's good for me not to go into a troll dive!” “They threw axes at you in the Drum,” said Dibbler, reasonably. “Yes, but only in fun. It's not as if they were aiming.” “Anyway,” said Cliff, “only trolls and damn silly young humans go there who think it clever to drink in a troll bar. You won't get an audience.” Dibbler tapped the side of his nose. “You play,” he said. “You'll get an audience. That's my job.” “The doors aren't big enough for me to go in!” snapped Glod. “They're huge doors,” said Dibbler. “They ain't big enough for me 'cos if you try to get me in there you'll have to drag the street in too, on account of me holding on to it!” “No, be sensible–” “No!” screamed Glod. “And I'm screaming for all three of us!” The guitar whined. Buddy swung it around until he could hold it, and played a couple of chords. That seemed to calm it down. “I think it . . . er . . . likes the idea,” he said. “It likes the idea,” said Glod, simmering down a little bit. “Oh, good. Well, do you know what they do to dwarfs who go into the Cavern?” “We do need the money, and it's probably not worse than what the Guild'll do to us if we play anywhere else,” said Buddy. “And we've got to play.” They stood looking at one another. “What you boys should do now,” said Dibbler, blowing out a smoke ring, `is find somewhere nice and quiet to spend the day. Have a bit of a rest.” “Damn right,” said Cliff. “I never expected to carry these rocks around the whole time–” Dibbler raised a finger. “Ah,” he said, “I thought of that, too. You don't want to waste your talents lugging stuff around, that's what I told myself. I hired you a helper. Very cheap, only a dollar a day, I'll take it straight out of your wages so's you don't have to bother about it. Meet Asphalt.” “Who?” said Buddy. “'S me,” said one of the sacks beside Dibbler. The sack opened up a bit and turned out not to be a sack at all, but a . . . a sort of crumbled . . . a kind of mobile heap of. . . Buddy felt his eyes watering. It looked like a troll, except that it was shorter than a dwarf. It wasn't smaller than a dwarf - what Asphalt lacked in height he made up in breadth and, while on the subject, also in smell. “How come,” said Cliff, “he's so short?” "N'elephant sat on me,” said Asphalt, sulkily. Glod blew his nose. “Only sat?” Asphalt was already wearing a 'Band With Rocks In' shirt. It was tight across the chest but reached down to the floor. “Asphalt'll look after you,” said Dibbler. “There isn't anything he doesn't know about show business.” Asphalt gave them a big grin. “You'll be OK with me,” he said. “I've worked with 'em all, I have. Been everywhere, done it all.” “We could go to the Fronts,” said Cliff. “No-one around there when the University's on holiday.” “Good. Got things to organize,” said Dibbler. “See you tonight. The Cavern. Seven o'clock.” He strode off. “You know the funny thing about him?” said Glod. “What?” “The way he was smoking that sausage. Do you think he knew?” Asphalt grabbed Cliff's bag and slung it easily over his shoulder. “Let's go, boss,” he said. “An elephant sat on you?” said Buddy, as they crossed the square. “Yup. At the circus,” said Asphalt. “I used to muck 'em arht.” “That's how you got like that?” “Nope. Dint get like this 'til elephants had sat on me tree, fo' times,” said the small flat troll. “Dunno why. I'd be cleanin' up after 'em, next minute it'd all be dark.” “I'd have quit after the first time, me,” said Glod. “Nah,” said Asphalt, with a contented smile. “Couldn't do that. Show business is in me soul.” Ponder looked down at the thing they had hammered together. “I don't understand it either,” he said. “But . . . it looks as though we can trap it in a string, and it makes the string play the music again. It's like an iconograph for sound.” They'd put the wire inside the box, which resonated beautifully. It played the same dozen bars, over and over again. “A box of music,” said Ridcully. “My word!” “What I'd like to try,” said Ponder, “is getting the musicians to play in front of a lot of strings like this. Perhaps we could trap the music.” “What for?” said Ridcully. “ What on Disc for?” “Well . . . if you could get music in boxes you wouldn't need musicians any more.” Ridcully hesitated. There was a lot to be said for the idea. A world without musicians had a certain appeal. They were a scruffy bunch, in his experience. Quite unhygienic. He shook his head, reluctantly. “Not this sort of music,” he said. `We want to stop it, not make more of it.” “What exactly is wrong with it?” said Ponder. “It's . . . well, can't you see?” said Ridcully. “It makes people act funny. Wear funny clothes. Be rude. Not do what they're told. I can't do a thing with them. It's not right. Besides . . . remember Mr Hong.” “It's certainly very unusual,” said Ponder. “Can we get some more? For study purposes? Archchancellor?” Ridcully shrugged. “ We follow the Dean,” he said. “Good grief,” breathed Buddy, in the huge echoing emptiness. “No wonder they call it the Cavern. It's huge.” “I feel dwarfed,” said Glod. Asphalt ambled to the front of the stage. “One two, one two,” he said. “One. One. One two, one tw-–” “Three,” said Buddy helpfully. Asphalt stopped and looked embarrassed. “Just trying the, you know, just trying the . . . trying out the . . .” he muttered. “Just trying . . . it.” “We'll never fill this,” said Buddy. Glod poked in a box by the side of the stage. He said, “We might. Look at these.” He unrolled a poster. The others clustered around. “Days a picture of us,” said Cliff. “Someone painted a picture of us.” “Looking mean,” said Glod. "S a good one of Buddy,” said Asphalt. “Waving his guitar like that.” “Why's there all that lightning and stuff?” said Buddy. “I never look that mean even when I'm mean,” said Glod. "'The New Sounde Dat's Goin' Arounde",” Cliff read, his forehead wrinkling with the effort. "'The Bande With Rockes",” said Glod. “Oh, no. It says we're going to be here and everything,” moaned Glod. “We're dead.” “"Bee There Orr Bee A Rectangular Thyng",” said Cliff. “I don't understand that.” “There's dozens of these rolls in here,” said Glod. “They're posters. You know what that means? He's been having them stuck up in places. Talking of which, when the Musicians' Guild get hold of us–” “Music's free,” said Buddy. “It has to be free.” “What?” said Glod. “Not in this dwarf's town!” “Then it should be,” said Buddy. “People shouldn't have to pay to play music.” “Right! That boy's right! That's just what I've always said! Isn't that what I've always said? That's what I've said, right enough.” Dibbler emerged from the shadows in the wings. There was a troll with him who, Buddy surmised, must have been Chrysoprase. He wasn't particularly big, or even very craggy. In fact he had a smooth and glossy look to him, like a pebble found on a beach. There wasn't a trace of lichen anywhere. And he was wearing clothes. Clothes, other than uniforms or special work clothes, weren't normally a troll thing. Mostly they wore a loincloth to keep stuff in, and that was that. But Chrysoprase had a suit on. It looked badly tailored. It was in fact very well tailored, but even a troll with no clothes on looks fundamentally badly tailored. Chrysoprase had been a very quick learner when he arrived in Ankh-Morpork. He began with an important lesson: hitting people was thuggery. Paying other people to do the hitting on your behalf was good business. “I'd like you lads to meet Chrysoprase,” said Dibbler. “An old friend of mine. Me and him go way back. That right, Chrys?” “Indeed.” Chrysoprase gave Dibbler the warm friendly smile a shark bestows on a haddock with whom it suits it, for now, to swim in the same direction. A certain play of silicon muscles in the corners also suggested that, one day, certain people would regret 'Chrys'. “Mr Throat tells me youse boys is the best ting since slicing bread,” he said. “Youse got everyting youse need?” They nodded, mutely. People tended not to speak to Chrysoprase in case they said something that offended him. They wouldn't know it at the time, of course. They'd know it later, when they were in some dark alley and a voice behind them said: Mr Chrysoprase is really upset. “Youse go and rest up in your dressing room,” he went on. “Youse wants any food or drink, youse only got to say.” He'd got diamond rings on his fingers. Cliff couldn't stop staring at them. The dressing room was next to the privies and half full of beer barrels. Glod leaned on the door. “I don't need the money,” he said. “Just let me get out of here with my life, that's all I ask.” “Oo ownt ave oo orry-” Cliff began. “You're trying to speak with your mouth shut, Cliff,” said Buddy. “I said, you don't have to worry, you've got der wrong sort of teeth,” said the troll. There was a knock on the door. Cliff slammed his hand back over his mouth. But the knock turned out to belong to Asphalt, who was carrying a tray. There were three types of beer. There were even smoked rat sandwiches with the crusts and tails cut off. And there was a bowl of finest anthracite coke with ash on it. “Crunch it up good,” moaned Glod, as Cliff took his bowl. “It may be the last chance you get–” “Maybe no-one'll turn up and we can go home?” said Cliff. Buddy ran his fingers over the strings. The others stopped eating as the chords filled up the room. “Magic,” said Cliff, shaking his head. “Don't you boys worry,” said Asphalt. “If there are any problems, it's the other guys who'll get it in the teeth.” Buddy stopped playing. “What other guys?” "S funny thing,” said the little troll, “suddenly everyone's playing music with rocks in it. Mr Dibbler's signed up another band for the concert, too. To kind of warm it up.” "S called Insanity,” said Asphalt. “Where are they?” said Cliff. “Well, put it like this . . . you know how your dressing room is next to the privy?” Crash, behind the Cavern's raggedy curtain, tried to tune his guitar. Several things got in the way of this simple procedure. Firstly, Blert had realized what his customers really wanted and, praying forgiveness from his ancestors, had spent more time gluing on bits of glittery stuff than he had on the actual functioning sections of the instrument. To put it another way, he'd knocked in a dozen nails and tied the strings to them. But this wasn't too much of a problem, because Crash himself had the musical talent of a blocked nostril. He looked at Jimbo, Noddy and Scum. Jimbo, now the bass player (Blert, giggling hysterically, had used a bigger lump of wood and some fence wire), was holding up his hand hesitantly. “What is it, Jimbo?” “One of my guitar strings has broke.” “Well, you've got five more, ain't you?” “Yur. But I doesn't know how to play them, like.” “You didn't know how to play six, right? So now you're a bit less ignorant.” Scum peered around the curtain. “Crash?” “Yes?” “There's hundreds of people out there. Hundreds! A lot of 'em have got guitars, too. They're sort of waving 'em in the air!” Insanity listened to the roar from the other side of the curtain. Crash did not have too many brain-cells, and they often had to wave to attract one another's attention, but he had a tiny flicker of doubt that the sound that Insanity had achieved, while a good sound, was the sound that he'd heard last night in the Drum. The sound made him want to scream and dance, while the other sound made him . . . well . . . made him want to scream and smash Scum's drum-kit over its owner's head, quite frankly. Noddy took a peek between the curtains. “Hey, there's a bunch of wiz . . . I think they're wizards, right in the front row,” he said. “I'm . . . pretty sure they're wizards, but, I mean . . .” “You can tell, stupid,” said Crash. “They've got pointy hats.” “There's one with . . . pointy hair . . .” said Noddy. The rest of Insanity applied eyes to the gap. “Looks like . . . a kind of unicorn spike made out of hair... “What's that he's got on the back of his robe?” said Jimbo. “It says BORN TO RUNE,” said Crash, who was the fastest reader in the group and didn't need to use his finger at all. “The skinny one's wearing a flared robe,” said Noddy. “He must be old.” “And they've all got guitars! Do you reckon they've come to see us?” “Bound to have,” said Noddy. “That's a bodacious audience,” said Jimbo. “Yeah, that's right, bodacious,” said Scum. “Er. What's bodacious mean?” “Means . . . means it bodes,” said Jimbo. “Right. It looks like it's boding all right.” Crash thrust aside his doubts. “Let's get out there,” he said, “and really show them what Music With Rocks In is about!” Asphalt, Cliff and Glod sat in one corner of the dressing room. The roar of the crowd could be heard from here. “Why's he not saying anything?” Asphalt whispered. “Dunno,” said Glod. Buddy was staring at nothing, with the guitar cradled in his arms. Occasionally he'd slap the casing, very gently, in time with whatever thoughts were sluicing through his head. “He goes like that sometimes,” said Cliff. “Just sits and looks at the air–” “Hey, they're shouting something out there,” said Glod. “Listen.” The roar had a rhythm to it. “Sounds like "Rocks, Rocks, Rocks",” said Cliff. The door burst open and Dibbler half-ran, half-fell in. “You've got to get out there!” he shouted. “Right now!” “I thought the Insanitary boys–”Glod began. “Don't even ask,” said Dibbler. “Come on! Otherwise they'll wreck the place!” Asphalt picked up the rocks. “OK,” he said. “No,” said Buddy. “What dis?” said Dibbler. “Nerves?” “No. Music should be free. Free as the air and the sky.” Glod's head spun around. Buddy's voice had a faint suggestion of harmonics. “Sure, right, that's what I said,” said Dibbler. “The Guild–” Buddy unfolded his legs and stood up. “I expect people had to pay to get in here, didn't they?” he said. Glod looked at the others. No-one else seemed to have noticed it. But there was a twang on the edge of Buddy's words, a sibilance of strings. “Oh, that. Of course,” said Dibbler. “Got to cover expenses. There's your wages . . . wear and tear on the floor . . . heating and lighting . . . depreciation . . .” The roar was louder now. It had a certain footstamping component. Dibbler swallowed. He suddenly had the look of a man prepared to make the supreme sacrifice. “I could . . . maybe go up . . . maybe . . . a dollar,” he said, each word fighting its way out of the strongroom of his soul. “If we go on stage now, I want us to do another performance,” said Buddy. Glod glared suspiciously at the guitar. “What? No problem. I can soon–”Dibbler began. “Free.” “Free?” The word got past Dibbler's teeth before they could snap shut. He rallied magnificently. “You don't want paying? Certainly, if–” Buddy didn't move. “I mean, we don't get paid and people don't have to pay to listen. As many people as possible.” “Free?” “Yes!” “Where's the profit in that?” An empty beer bottle vibrated off the table and smashed on the floor. A troll appeared in the doorway, or at least part of it did. It wouldn't be able to get into the room without ripping the door-frame out, but it looked as though it wouldn't think twice about doing so. “Mr Chrysoprase says, what's happening?” it growled. “Er–' Dibbler began. “Mr Chrysoprase don't like being kept waiting.” “I know, it–” “He gets sad if he's kept waiting–” “All right!” shouted Dibbler. “Free! And that's cutting my own throat. You do know that, don't you?” Buddy played a chord. It seemed to leave little lights in the air. “Let's go,” he said softly. “I know this city,” Dibbler mumbled, as The Band With Rocks In hurried towards the vibrating stage. “Tell people something's free and you'll get thousands of them turning up–” Needing to eat, said a voice in his head. It had a twang. Needing to drink. Needing to buy Band With Rocks In shirts . . . Dibbler's face, very slowly, rearranged itself into a grin. “A free festival,” he said. “Right! It's our public duty. Music should be free. And sausages in a bun should be a dollar each, mustard extra. Maybe a dollar-fifty. And that's cutting my own throat.” In the wings, the noise of the audience was a solid wall of sound. “There's lots of them,” said Glod. “I never played for that many in my entire life!” Asphalt was arranging Cliff's rocks on the stage and getting massive applause and catcalls. Glod glanced up at Buddy. He hadn't let go of the guitar all this time. Dwarfs weren't given to deep introspection, but Glod was suddenly aware of a desire to be a long way from here, in a cave somewhere. “Best of luck, you guys,” said a flat little voice behind them. Jimbo was bandaging Crash's arm. “Er, thanks,” said Cliff. “What happened to you?” “They threw something at us,” said Crash. “What?” “Noddy, I think.” What could be seen of Crash's face broke into a huge and terrible smile. “We done it, though!” he said. “We done music with rocks in all right! That bit where Jimbo smashed his guitar, they loved that bit!” “Smashed his guitar?” “Yeah,” said Jimbo, with the pride of the artist. “On Scum.” Buddy had his eyes closed. Cliff thought he could see a very, very faint glow surrounding him, like a thin mist. There were tiny points of light in it. Sometimes, Buddy looked very elvish. Asphalt scurried off the stage. “OK, all done,” he said. The others looked at Buddy. He was still standing with his eyes shut, as if he was asleep on his feet. “We'll . . . get on out there, then?” said Glod. “Yes,” said Cliff, “we'll get on out there, will we? Er. Buddy?” Buddy's eyes snapped open suddenly. “Let's rock,” he whispered. Cliff had thought that the sound was loud before, but it hit him like a club as they trooped out of the wings. Glod picked up his horn. Cliff sat down and found his hammers. Buddy walked to the centre of the stage and, to Cliff's amazement, just stood there looking down at his feet. The cheering began to subside. And then died away altogether. The huge hall was filled with the hush of hundreds of people holding their breath. Buddy's fingers moved. He picked out three simple little chords. And then he looked up. “Hello, Ankh-Morpork!” Cliff felt the music rise up behind him and rush him forward into a tunnel of fire and sparks and excitement. He brought his hammers down. And it was Music With Rocks In. C. M. O. T. Dibbler stood out in the street so that he didn't have to hear the music. He was smoking a cigar and doing calculations on the back of an overdue bill for stale buns. Lessee . . . OK, have it outside somewhere, so there's no rent . . . maybe ten thousand people, one sausageinna-bun each at a dollar-fifty, no, say a dollar-seventy-five, mustard tenpence extra - ten thousand Band With Rocks In shirts at five dollars each, make that ten dollars . . . add stall rental for other traders, because people who like Music With Rocks In could probably be persuaded to buy anything . . . He was aware of a horse coming along the street. He paid it no attention until a female voice said: “How do I get in here?” “No chance. Tickets all sold out,” said Dibbler, without turning his head. Even Band With Rocks In posters, people had been offering three dollars just for posters, and Chalky the troll could knock out a hundred a– He looked up. The horse, a magnificent white one, watched him incuriously. Dibbler looked around. “Where'd she go?” There were a couple of trolls lounging just inside the entrance. Susan ignored them. They ignored her. In the audience, Ponder Stibbons looked both ways and cautiously opened a wooden box. The stretched string inside began to vibrate. “This is all wrong!” he shouted in Ridcully's ear. “This is not according to the laws of sound!” “Maybe they're not laws!” screamed Ridcully. People a foot away couldn't hear him. “Maybe they're just guidelines!” “No! There have to be laws!” Ridcully saw the Dean try to climb on the stage in the excitement. Asphalt's huge troll feet landed heavily on his fingers. “Oh, I say, good shot,” said the Archchancellor. A prickling sensation on the back of his neck made him look around. Although the Cavern was crowded, a space seemed to have formed in the floor. People were pressed together but, somehow, this circle was as inviolate as a wall. In the middle of it was the girl he'd seen in the Drum. She was walking across the floor, holding her dress daintily. Ridcully's eyes watered. He stepped forward, concentrating. You could do almost anything if you concentrated. Anyone could have stepped into the circle if their senses had been prepared to let them know it was there. Inside the circle the sound was slightly muted. He tapped her on the shoulder. She spun around, startled. “Good evening,” said Ridcully. He looked her up and down, and then said, “I'm Mustrum Ridcully, Archchancellor of Unseen University. I can't help wondering who you are.” “Er . . .” The girl looked panicky for a moment. “Well, technically . . . I suppose I'm Death.” “Technically?” “Yes. But not on duty at the moment.” “Very glad to hear that.” There was a shriek from the stage as Asphalt threw the Lecturer in Recent Runes into the audience, which applauded. “Can't say I've seen that much of Death,” said Ridcully. “But in so far as I have, he's tended to be . . . well, he, to start with. And a good deal thinner . . . ?” “He's my grandfather.” “Ah. Ah. Really? I didn't even know he was–”Ridcully stopped. “Well, well, well, fancy that. Your grandfather? And you're in the family firm?” “Shut up, you stupid man,” said Susan. “Don't you dare patronize me. You see him?” She pointed to the stage, where Buddy was in mid-riff. “He's going to die soon because . . . because of silliness. And if you can't do anything about it, go away!” Ridcully glanced at the stage. When he looked back, Susan had vanished. He made a mighty effort and thought he caught a glimpse of her a little way off, but she knew he was looking for her and he had no chance of finding her now. Asphalt got back into the dressing room first. There is something very sad about an empty dressing room. It's like a discarded pair of underpants, which it resembles in a number of respects. It's seen a lot of activity. It may even have witnessed excitement and a whole gamut of human passions. And now there's nothing much left but a faint smell. The little troll dumped the bag of rocks on the floor and bit the top off a couple of beer bottles. Cliff entered. He got halfway across the floor and then fell over, hitting the boards with every part of his body at once. Glod stepped over him and flopped on to a barrel. He looked at the beer bottles. He took off his helmet. He poured the beer into the helmet. Then he let his head flop forward. Buddy entered and sat down in the corner, leaning against the wall. And Dibbler followed. “Well, what can I say? What can I say?” he said. “Don't ask us,” said Cliff from his prone position. “How should we know?” “That was magnificent,” said Dibbler. “What's up with the dwarf? Is he drowning?” Glod reached out an arm, without looking, smashed the top off another bottle of beer and poured it over his head. “Mr Dibbler?” said Cliff. “Yes?” “I think we want to talk. Just us, like. The band. If you don't mind.” Dibbler looked from one to the other. Buddy was staring at the wall. Glod was making bubbling noises. Cliff was still on the floor. “OK,” he said, and then added brightly, “Buddy? The free performance . . . great idea. I'll start organizing it right away and you can do it just as soon as you get back from your tour. Right. Well, I'll just–” He turned to leave and walked into Cliff's arm, which was suddenly blocking the doorway. “Tour? What tour?” Dibbler backed off a little. “Oh, a few places. Quirm, Pseudopolis, Sto Lat ' He looked around at them. “Didn't you want that?” “We'll talk about dat later,” said Cliff. He pushed Dibbler out of the door and slammed it shut. Beer dripped off Glod's beard. “Tour? Three more nights of this?” “What's the problem?” said Asphalt. “It was great! Everyone was cheering. You did two hours! I had to keep kickin' 'em off the stage! I never felt so–” He stopped. “That's it, really,” said Cliff. “The fing is, I go on dat stage, I sits down not knowing even what we're goin' to do, next minute Buddy plays something on his . . . on that thing, next I'm goin' bam-Bam-chcha-chcha-BAM-bam. I don't know what I'm playing. It just comes in my head and down my arms.” “Yes,” said Glod. “Me, too. Seems to me I'm getting stuff out of that horn I never put in there.” “And it ain't like proper playing,” said Cliff. “That's what I'm saying. It's more like being played.” “You've been in show business a long time, right?” said Glod to Asphalt. “Yep. Been there, done it. Seem 'em all.” “You ever seen an audience like that?” “I've seen 'em throw flowers and cheer at the Opera House–' “Ha! Just flowers? Some woman threw her . . . clothing at the stage!” “Dat’s right! Landed on my head!” “And when Miss VaVa Voom did the Feather Dance down at the Skunk Club in Brewer Street, the whole audience rushed the stage when she was down to the last feather–” “That was like this, was it?” “No,” the troll admitted. “I got to say it, I ain't never seen an audience so . . . hungry. Not even for Miss VaVa Voom, and they were pretty damn peckish then, I can tell you. Of course, no-one threw underwear on to the stage. She used to throw it off the stage.” “Dere's something else,” said Cliff. “Dere's four people in this room and only three of 'em's talking.” Buddy looked up. “The music's important,” he mumbled. “It ain't music,” said Glod. “Music don't do this to people. It don't make them feel like they've been put through a wringer. I was sweating so much I'm going to have to change my vest any day now.” He rubbed his nose. “Also, I looked at that audience, and I thought: they paid money to get in here. I bet it came to more than ten dollars.” Asphalt held up a slip of paper. “Found this ticket on the floor,” he said. Glod read it. “A dollar-fifty?” he said. “Six hundred people at a dollarfifty each? That . . . that's four hundred dollars!” “Nine hundred,” said Buddy, in the same flat tone, “but the money isn't important.” “The money's not important? You keep on saying that! What kind of musician are you?” There was still a muted roar from outside. “You want to go back to playing for half a dozen people in some cellar somewhere after this?” said Buddy. “Who's the most famous horn player there ever was, Glod?” “Brother Charnel,” said the dwarf promptly. “Everyone knows that. He stole the altar gold from the Temple of Offler and had it made into a horn and played magical music until the gods caught up with him and pulled his' “Right,” said Buddy, “but if you went out there now and asked who the most famous horn player is, would they remember some felonious monk or would they shout for Glod Glodsson?” “They'd–” Glod hesitated. “Right,” said Buddy. “Think about that. A musician has to be heard. You can't stop now. We can't stop now.” Glod waved a finger at the guitar. “It's that thing,” he said. “It's too dangerous.” “I can handle it!” “Yes, but where's it going to end?” “It's not how you finish that matters,” said Buddy. “It's how you get there.” “That sounds elvish to me–” The door burst open again. “Er,” said Dibbler, “boys, if you don't come back and play something else then we're in the deep brown. . .” “Can't play,” said Glod. “I've run out of breath through lack of money.” “I said ten dollars, didn't I?” said Dibbler. “Each,” said Cliff. Dibbler, who hadn't expected to get away with less than a hundred, waved his hands in the air. “Gratitude, is it?” he said. “You want me to cut my own throat?” “We'll help. If you like,” said Cliff. “All right, all right, thirty dollars,” said Dibbler. “And I go without my tea.” Cliff looked at Glod, who was still digesting the thing about the most famous horn player in the world. “There's a lot of dwarfs and trolls in the audience,” said Cliff. “"Cavern Deep, Mountain High"?” said Glod. “No,” said Buddy. “What, then?” “I'll think of something.” The audience spilled out into the street. The wizards gathered around the Dean, snapping their fingers. “Wella-wella-wella–” sang the Dean happily. “It's gone midnight!” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, snapping his fingers, “and I don't care a bit! What shall we do now?” “We could have a rumble,” said the Dean. “That's true,” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, “we did miss dinner.” “We missed dinner?” said the Senior Wrangler. “Wow! That's Music With Rocks In! We just don't care!” “No, I meant . . .” The Dean paused. He wasn't quite sure, now he came to really think about it, what he had meant. “It's a long walk back to the University,” he conceded. “I suppose we could at least stop for a coffee or something.” “Maybe a doughnut or two,” said Recent Runes. “And perhaps some cake,” said the Chair. “I could just fancy some apple pie,” said the Senior Wrangler. “And some cake.” “Coffee,” said the Dean. “Ye-ess. A coffee bar. That's right.” “What's a coffee bar?” said the Senior Wrangler. “Like a chocolate bar?” said Recent Runes. The missed dinner, hitherto forgotten, was beginning to loom large in everyone's stomachs. The Dean looked down at his shiny new leather robe. Everyone had said how good it was. They'd admired BORN TO RUNE. His hair was right, too. He was thinking of shaving off his beard but just leaving the side bits because that felt right. And coffee . . . yes . . . coffee was in there somewhere. Coffee was all part of it. And there was the music. That was in there. That was everywhere. But there was something else, too. Something missing. He wasn't sure what it was, only that he'd know it if he ever saw it. It was very dark in the alley behind the Cavern, and only the keenest-sighted would have seen several figures pressed against the wall. The occasional glint of a tarnished sequin would indicate to those who knew about such things that these were the Musicians' Guild's crack enforcers, the Grisham Frord Close Harmony Singers. Unlike most of the people employed by Mr Clete they did, in fact, genuinely have some musical talent. They'd also been in to see the band. “Do-wop, uh do-wop, uh do-wop–” said the thin one. “Bubububuh–” said the tall one. There's always a tall one. “Clete's right. If they keep pulling in audiences like that, everyone else is out of the show,” said Grisham. “Oh yeah,” said the bass man. “When they come through that door–” three more knives slipped from their sheaths '-well, just take your time from me.” They heard the sound of feet on stairs. Grisham nodded. “A-one, a-two, a-one-two-thr–” GENTLEMEN? They pivoted. A dark figure stood behind them, holding a glowing scythe in its hands. Susan smiled horribly. TAKE IT FROM THE TOP? “Oh, nooo,” said the bass man. Asphalt unbolted the door and stepped out into the night. “Hey, what was that?” he said. “What was what?” said Dibbler. “I thought I heard some people running away . . .” The troll stepped forward. There was a ting. He reached down and picked up something. “And whoever it was dropped this . . .” “Just some item or other,” said Dibbler loudly. “Come along, boys. You don't have to go back to any flophouse tonight. It's The Gritz for you!” “That's a troll hotel, isn't it?” said Glod suspiciously. “Trollish,” said Dibbler, waving a hand irritably. “Hey, I bin in dere once doing cabarett!” said Cliff. “Dey got nearly everything! Water out of taps in nearly every room! A speaking tube so's you can holler your meal order right down to the kitchen, and dese guys with actual shoes on who brings it right to you! The works!” “Treat yourself!” said Dibbler. “You boys can afford it!” “And then there's this tour, is there?” said Glod sharply. “ We can afford that too, can we?” “Oh, I shall help out with that,” said Dibbler expansively. “Tomorrow you'll go to Pseudopolis, that'll take two days, then you can come back via Sto Lat and Quirm and be back here on Wednesday for the Festival. Great idea that. Giving something to the community, I've always been in favour of giving to the community. It's very good for . . . for . . . for the community. I'll get it all organized while you're away, OK? And then . . .” He put one arm around Buddy's shoulders and another around Glod's head. “Genua! Klatch! Hersheba! Chimera! Howondaland! Maybe even the Counterweight Continent, they're talking about discovering it again real soon now, great opportunities for the right people! With your music and my unerring business sense, the world is our mollusc! Now, you just go off with Asphalt, the best rooms now, nothing's too much for my boys, and get some sleep without worrying about the bill–” “Thank you,” said Glod. “-you can pay it in the morning.” The Band With Rocks In shambled away in the direction of the best hotel. Dibbler heard Cliff say, “What's a mollusc?” “It's like two plates of precipitated calcium carbonate with a salty slimy fishy thing in the middle.” “Sounds tasty. You don't have to eat dat bit in the middle, do you?” When they'd gone, Dibbler looked at the knife he'd taken from Asphalt. It had sequins on it. Yes. A few days with the lads out of the way was definitely a good move. On his perch in the gutter above, the Death of Rats gibbered to himself. Ridcully walked slowly out of the Cavern. Only a light drift of used tickets on the steps bore witness to the hours of music. He felt like someone watching a game who didn't know the rules. For example, the boy had been singing . . . what was it? Rave In. What the hell did that mean? Raving, yes, he could understand that, and in the Dean's case it was perfectly accurate. Rave In? But everyone else had seemed to know what was meant. And then there had been, as far as he could remember, a song about not stepping on someone's shoes. Fair enough, sensible suggestion, no-one wanted their feet trodden on, but why a song asking people to avoid doing so should have such an effect Ridcully was at a loss to understand. And as for the girl . . . Ponder bustled up, clutching his box. “I've got nearly all of it, Archchancellor!” he shouted. Ridcully glanced past him. There was Dibbler, still bearing a tray of unsold Band With Rocks In shirts. “Yes, fine, Mr Stibbons (shutupshutupshutup),” he said. “Jolly good, let's get back home.” “Good evening, Archchancellor,” said Dibbler. “Why, hello, Throat,” said Ridcully. “Didn't see you there.” “What's in that box?” “Oh, nothing, nothing at all–” “It's amazing!” said Ponder, full of the undirected excitement of the true discoverer and idiot. “We can trap the arragh aargh aargh.” “My word, clumsy old me,” said Ridcully, as the young wizard clutched at his leg. “Here, let me take that totally innocent device you have there–” But the box had tumbled out of Ponder's arms. It hit the street before Ridcully could catch it, and the lid flew off. The music spilled out into the night. “How did you do that?” said Dibbler. “It is magic?” “The music lets itself be trapped so you can hear it again and again,” said Ponder. “And I think you did that on purpose, sir!” “You can hear it again and again?” said Dibbler. “What, by just opening a box?” “Yes,” said Ponder. “No,” said Ridcully. “Yes you can,” said Ponder. “I showed you, Archchancellor? Don't you remember?” “No,” said Ridcully. “Any kind of box?” said Dibbler, in a voice choked with money. “Oh, yes, but you have to stretch a wire inside it so the music has somewhere to live and ouch ouch ouch.” “Can't think what's come over me with these sudden muscular spasms,” said Ridcully. “Come, Mr Stibbons, let us not waste any more of Mr Dibbler's valuable time.” “Oh, you're not wasting it,” said Dibbler. “Boxes full of music, eh?” “We'll take this one,” said Ridcully, snatching it up. “It's an important magical experiment.” He frogmarched Ponder away, which was a little hard because the youth was bent double and wheezing. “What did you have to go . . . and do . . . that for?” 'Mr Stibbons, I know you to be a man who seeks to understand the universe. Here's an important rule: never give a monkey the key to the banana plantation. Sometimes you can just see an accident waiting to- oh, no.” He let Ponder go and waved vaguely up the street. “Got any theories about that, young man?” Something golden-brown and viscous was oozing out on to the street from what was just possibly, behind the mounds of the stuff, a shop. As the two wizards watched there was a tinkle of glass and the brown substance began to emerge from the second floor. Ridcully stamped forward and scooped up a handful, leaping back before the wall could reach him. He sniffed at it. “Is it some ghastly emanation from the Dungeon Dimensions?” said Ponder. “Shouldn't think so. Smells like coffee,” said Ridcully. “Coffee?” “Coffee-flavoured froth, anyway. Now, why is it I have this feeling that there's going to be wizards in there somewhere?” A figure lurched out of the foam, dripping brown bubbles. “Who goes there?” said Ridcully. “Ah, yes! Did anyone get the number of that ox-cart? Another doughnut, if you would be so good!” said the figure brightly, and fell over into the froth. “That sounded like the Bursar to me,” said Ridcully. “Come along, lad. It's only bubbles.” He strode into the foam. After a moment's hesitation Ponder realized that the honour of young wizardry was at stake, and pushed his way in behind him. Almost immediately he bumped into someone in the fog of bubbles. “Er, hello?” “Who's that?” “It's me, Stibbons. I've come to rescue you.” “Good. Which way is out?” “Er–” There were some explosions somewhere in the coffee cloud and a popping noise. Ponder blinked. The level of bubbles was sinking. Various pointy hats appeared like drowned logs in a drying lake. Ridcully waded over, coffee froth dripping from his hat. “Something bloody stupid's been going on here,” he said, “and I'm going to wait quite patiently until the Dean owns up.” “I don't see why you should assume it was me,” muttered a coffee-coloured column. “Well, who was it, then?” “The Dean said the coffee ought to be frothy,” said a mound of foam of a Senior Wranglish persuasion, “and he did some simple magic and I rather think we got carried away.” “Ah, so it was you, Dean.” “Yes, all right, but only by coincidence,” said the Dean testily. “Out of here, all of you,” said Ridcully. “Back to the University this minute.” “I mean, I don't see why you should assume it's my fault just because sometimes it might happen to be me who–” The froth had sunk a bit more, to reveal a pair of eyes under a dwarfish helmet. "Scuse me,” said a voice still under the bubbles, “but who's going to pay for all this? That's four dollars, thank you very much.” “The Bursar's got the money,” said Ridcully quickly. “Not any more,” said the Senior Wrangler. “He bought seventeen doughnuts.” “Sugar?” said Ridcully. “You let him eat sugar. You know that makes him, you know, a bit funny. Mrs Whitlow said she'd give notice if we let him get anywhere near sugar again.” He herded the damp wizards towards the door. “It's all right, my good man, you can trust us, we're wizards, I shall have some money sent around in the morning.” “Hah, you expect me to believe that, do you?” said the dwarf. It had been a long night. Ridcully turned and waved his hand at the wall. There was a crackle of octarine fire and the words 'IOU 4 DOLERS' burned themselves into the stone. “Right you are, no problem there,” said the dwarf, ducking back into the froth. “I shouldn't think Mrs Whitlow is going to worry,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes as they squelched through the night. “I saw her and some of the maids at the, er, concert. You know, the kitchen girls. Molly, Polly and, er, Dolly. They were, er, screaming.” “I didn't think the music was that bad,” said Ridcully. “No, er, not in pain, er, I wouldn't say that,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, beginning to go red, “but, er, when the young man was waggling his hips like that–” “He definitely looks elvish to me,” said Ridcully. “–er, I think she threw some of her, er, under . . . things on to the stage.” This silenced even Ridcully, at least for a while. Every wizard was suddenly busy with his own private thoughts. “What, Mrs Whitlow?” the Chair of Indefinite Studies began. “Yes.” “What, her-?” “I, er, think so.” Ridcully had once seen Mrs Whitlow's washing line. He'd been impressed. He'd never believed there was so much pink elastic in the world. “What, really her-?” said the Dean, his voice sounding as though it was coming from a long way away. “I'm, er, pretty sure.” “Sounds dangerous to me,” said Ridcully briskly. “Could do someone a serious injury. Now then, you lot, back to the University right now for cold baths all round.” “Really her-?” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. Somehow, none of them felt able to leave the idea alone. “Make yourself useful and find the Bursar,” snapped Ridcully. “And I'd have you lot up in front of the University authorities first thing in the morning, if it wasn't for the fact that you are the University authorities . . .” Foul Ole Ron, professional maniac and one of Ankh-Morpork's most industrious beggars, blinked in the gloom. Lord Vetinari had excellent night vision. And, unfortunately, a well-developed sense of smell. “And then what happened?” he said, trying to keep his face turned away from the beggar. Because the fact was that although in actual size Foul Ole Ron was a small hunched man in a huge grubby overcoat, in smell he filled the world. In fact Foul Ole Ron was a physical schizophrenic. There was Foul Ole Ron, and there was the smell of Foul Ole Ron, which had obviously developed over the years to such an extent that it had a distinct personality. Anyone could have a smell that lingered long after they'd gone somewhere else, but the smell of Foul Ole Ron could actually arrive somewhere several minutes before he did, in order to spread out and get comfortable before he arrived. It had evolved into something so striking that it was no longer perceived with the nose, which shut down instantly in selfdefence; people could tell that Foul Ole Ron was approaching by the way their ear wax started to melt. “Buggrit, buggrit, wrong side out, I told 'em, buggrem . . .” The Patrician waited. With Foul Ole Ron you had to allow time for his wandering mind to get into the same vicinity as his tongue . “. . . spyin' on me with magic, I told 'em, bean soup, see here . . . and then everyone was dancing, you see, and then afterwards there were two of the wizards in the street and one of them was going on about catching the music in a box and Mr Dibbler was interested and then the coffee house exploded and they all went back to the University . . . buggrit, buggrit, buggrem, see if I don't.” “The coffee house exploded, did it?” “Frothy coffee all over the place, yerronner . . . bugg–” “Yes, yes, and so on,” said the Patrician, waving a thin hand. “And that's all you can tell me?” “Well . . . bug–” Foul Ole Ron caught the Patrician's eye and got a grip on himself. Even in his own highly individualized sanity he could tell when not to push his threadbare luck. His Smell wandered around the room, reading documents and examining the pictures. “They say,” he said, “that he drives all the women mad.” He leaned forward. The Patrician leaned back. “They say after he moved his hips like that . . . Mrs Whitlow threw her . . . wossnames . . . on to the stage.” The Patrician raised an eyebrow. “"Wossnames"?” “You know.” Foul Ole Ron moved his hands vaguely in the air. “A pair of pillow cases? Two sacks of flour? Some very baggy trou- oh. I see. My word. Were there any casualties?” “Dunno, yerronner. But there's something I do know.” “Yes?” “Uh . . . Cumbling Michael says yerronner sometimes pays for information . . . ?” “Yes, I know. I can't imagine how these rumours get about,” said the Patrician, getting up and opening a window. “I shall have to have something done about it.” Once again, Foul Ole Ron reminded himself that while he was probably insane he definitely wasn't as mad as all that. “Only I got this, yerronner,” he said, pulling something out of the horrible recesses of his clothing. “It says writing on it, yerronner.” It was a poster, in glowing primary colours. It couldn't have been very old, but an hour or two as Foul Ole Ron's chestwarmer had aged it considerably. The Patrician unfolded it with a pair of tweezers. “Them's the pictures of the music players,” said Foul Ole Ron helpfully, “and that's writing. And there's more writing there, look. Mr Dibbler had Chalky the troll run 'em off just now, but I nipped in after and threatened to breathe on everyone less'n they gives me one.” “I'm sure that worked famously,” said the Patrician. He lit a candle and read the poster carefully. In the presence of Foul Ole Ron, all candles burned with a blue edge to the flame. "'Free Festival of Music with Rocks In It",” he said. “That's where you don't have to pay to go in,” said Foul Ole Ron helpfully. “Buggrem, buggrit.” Lord Vetinari read on. “In Hide Park. Next Wednesday. Well, well. A public open space, of course. I wonder if there'll be many people there?” “Lots, yerronner. There was hundreds couldn't get into the Cavern.” “And the band looks like that, do they?” said Lord Vetinari. “Scowling like that?” “Sweating, most of the time I saw 'em,” said Foul Ole Ron. "'Bee There Orr Bee A Rectangular Thyng",” said the Patrician. “This is some sort of occult code, do you think?” “Couldn't say, yerronner,” said Foul Ole Ron. “My brain goes all slow when I'm thirsty.” "'They Are Totallye Unable To Bee Seene! And A Longe Way Oute!"' said Lord Vetinari solemnly. He looked up. “Oh, I am sorry,” he said. “I'm sure I can find someone to give you a cool refreshing drink . . .” Foul Ole Ron coughed. It had sounded like a perfectly sincere offer but, somehow, he was suddenly not at all thirsty. “Don't let me keep you, then. Thank you so very much,” said Lord Vetinari. “Er ...” “Yes?” “Er . . . nothing . . .” “Very good.” When Ron had buggrit, buggrit, buggrem'd down the stairs, the Patrician tapped his pen thoughtfully on the paper and stared at the wall. The pen kept bouncing on the word Free. Finally he rang a small bell. A young clerk put his head around the door. “Ah, Drumknott,” said Lord Vetinari, “just go and tell the head of the Musicians' Guild he wants a word with me, will you?” “Er . . . Mr Clete is already in the waiting room, your lordship,” said the clerk. “Does he by any chance have some kind of poster with him?” “Yes, your lordship.” “And is he very angry?” “This is very much the case, your lordship. It's about some festival. He insists you have it stopped.” “Dear me.” “And he demands that you see him instantly.” “Ah. Then leave him for, say, twenty minutes, then show him up.” “Yes, your lordship. He keeps saying that he wants to know what you are doing about it.” “Good. Then I can ask him the same question.” The Patrician sat back. Si non confectus, non reficiat. That was the motto of the Vetinaris. Everything worked if you just let it happen. He picked up a stack of sheet-music and began to listen to Salami's Prelude to a Nocturne on a Theme by Bubbla. After a while he looked up. “Don't hesitate to leave,” he snapped. The Smell slunk away. SQUEAK! “Don't be stupid! All I did was frighten them off. It's not as though I hurt them. What's the good of having the power if you can't use it?” The Death of Rats put his nose in his paws. It was a lot easier, with rats.[22] C. M. O. T. Dibbler often did without sleep, too. He generally had to meet Chalky at night. Chalky was a large troll but tended to dry up and flake in daylight. Other trolls looked down on him because he came from a sedimentary family and was therefore a very low-class troll indeed. He didn't mind. He was a very amiable character. He did odd jobs for people who needed something unusual in a hurry and without entanglements and who had clinking money. And this job was pretty odd. “Just boxes?” he said. “With lids,” said Dibbler. “Like this one I've made. And a bit of wire stretched inside.” Some people would have said 'Why?” or 'What for?” but Chalky didn't make his money like that. He picked up the box and turned it this way and that. “How many?” he said. “Just ten to start with,” said Dibbler. “But I think there'll be more later. Lots and lots more.” “How many's ten?” said the troll. Dibbler held up both hands, fingers extended. “I'll do them for two dollar,” said Chalky. “You want me to cut my own throat?” “Two dollar.” “Dollar each for these and a dollar-fifty for the next batch.” “Two dollar.” “All right, all right, two dollars each. That's ten dollars the lot, right?” “Right.” “And that's cutting my own throat.” Chalky tossed the box aside. It bounced on the floor and the lid came off. Some time later a small, greyish-brown mongrel dog, on the prowl for anything edible, limped into the workshop and sat peering into the box for a while. Then it felt a bit of an idiot and wandered off. Ridcully hammered on the door of the High Energy Magic Building as the city clocks were striking two. He was supporting Ponder Stibbons, who was asleep on his feet. Ridcully was not a quick thinker. But he always got there eventually. The door opened and Skazz's hair appeared. “Are you facin' me?” said Ridcully. “Yes, Archchancellor.” “Let us in, then, the dew's soaking through me boots.” Ridcully looked around as he helped Ponder in. “Wish I knew what it was that keeps you lads working all hours,” he said. “I never found magic that interesting when I was a lad. Go and fetch some coffee for Mr Stibbons here, will you? And then get your friends.” Skazz bustled off and Ridcully was left alone, except for the slumbering Ponder. “What is it they do?” he said. He never really tried to find out. Skazz had been working at a long bench by one wall. At least he recognized the little wooden disc. There were small oblong stones ranged on it in a couple of concentric circles, and a candle lantern positioned on a swivelling arm so that it could be moved anywhere around the circumference. It was a travelling computer for druids, a sort of portable stone circle, something they called a 'kneetop'. The Bursar had sent off for one once. It had said For the Priest In a Hurry on the box. He'd never been able to make it work properly and now it was used as a doorstop. Ridcully couldn't see what they had to do with magic. After all, it wasn't much more than a calendar and you could get a perfectly good calendar for 8p. Rather more puzzling was the huge array of glass tubes behind it. That was where Skazz had been working; there was a litter of bent glassware and jars and bits of cardboard where the student had been sitting. The tubing seemed to be alive. Ridcully leaned forward. It was full of ants. They scuttled along the tubing and through complex little spirals in their thousands. In the silence of the room, their bodies made a faint, continuous rustling. There was a slot level with the Archchancellor's eyes. The word 'In' was written on a piece of paper that had been pasted onto the glass. And on the bench was an oblong of card which looked just the right shape to go in the slot. It had round holes punched in it. There were two round holes, then a whole pattern of round holes, and then a further two holes. On it, in pencil, someone had scribbled '2 x 2'. Ridcully was the kind of man who'd push any lever, just to see what it did. He put the card in the obvious slot . . . There was an immediate change in the rustling. Ants trailed in their busy way through the tubing. Some of them appeared to be carrying seeds . . . There was a small dull sound and a card dropped out of the other end of the glass maze. It had four holes in it. Ridcully was still staring at it when Ponder came up behind him, rubbing his eyes. “'S our ant counter,” he said. “Two plus two equals four,” said Ridcully. “Well, well, I never knew that.” “It can do other sums as well.” “You tellin' me ants can count?” “Oh, no. Not individual ants . . . it's a bit hard to explain . . . the holes in the cards, you see, block up some tubes and let them through others and . . .” Ponder sighed, “we think it might be able to do other things.” “Like what?” Ridcully demanded. “Er, that's what we're trying to find out . . .” “You're trying to find out? Who built it?” “Skazz.” “And now you're trying to find out what it does?” “Well, we think it might be able to do quite complicated maths. If we can get enough bugs in it.” Ants were still bustling around the enormous crystalline structure. “Had a rat thingy, a gerbil or something, when I was a lad,” said Ridcully, giving up in the face of the incomprehensible. “Spent all the time on a treadmill. Round and round, all night long. This is a bit like that, yes?” “In very broad terms,” said Ponder carefully. “Had an ant farm, too,” said Ridcully, thinking faraway thoughts. “The little devils never could plough straight.” He pulled himself together. “Anyway, get the rest of your chums here right now.” “What for?” “A bit of a tutorial,” said Ridcully. “Aren't we going to examine the music?” “In good time,” said Ridcully. “But first, we're going to talk to someone.” “I'm not sure,” said Ridcully. “We'll know when he turns up. Or her.” Glod looked at their suite. The hotel owners had just left, after going through the 'dis is der window, it really opens, dis is der pump, you get water out of it wit der handle here, dis is me waiting for some money' routine. “Well, that just about does it. That just about puts the iron helmet on it, that does,” he said. “We play Music With Rocks In all evening, and we've got a room that looks like this?” “It's homely,” said Cliff. “Look, trolls don't have much to do with de frills of life–” Glod looked towards his feet. “It's on the floor and it's soft,” he said. “Silly me for thinking it was a carpet. Someone fetch me a broom. No, someone fetch me a shovel. Then someone fetch me a broom.” “It'll do,” said Buddy. He put down his guitar and stretched out on the wooden slab that was apparently one of the beds. “Cliff,” said Glod, “can I have a word?” He jerked a stubby thumb at the door. They conferred on the landing. “It's getting bad,” said Glod. “Yep.” “He hardly says a word now when he's not on stage.” “Yep.” 'Ever met a zombie?” “I know a golem. Mr Dorfl down in Long Hogmeat.” “Him? He's a genuine zombie?” “Yep. Got a holy word on his head, I seen it.” “Yuk. Really? I buy sausages from him.” “Anyway . . . what about zombies?” “. . . you couldn't tell from the taste, I thought he was a really good sausage-maker . . .” “What were you saying about zombies?” “. . . funny how you can know someone for years and then find out they've got feet of clay . . .” “Zombies . . .” said Cliff patiently. “What? Oh. Yes. I mean he acts like one.” Glod recalled some of the zombies in AnkhMorpork. “At least, like zombies are supposed to act.” “Yep. I know what you mean.” “And we both know why.” “Yep. Er. Why?” “The guitar.” “Oh, that. Yeah.” “When we're on stage, that thing is in charge–' In the silence of the room, the guitar lay in the dark by Buddy's bed and its strings vibrated gently to the sound of the dwarf's voice . . . “OK, so what do we do about it?” said Cliff. “It's made of wood. Ten seconds with an axe, no more problem.” “I'm not sure. That ain't no ordinary instrument.” “He was a nice kid when we met him. For a human,” said Glod. “So what do we do? I don't think we could get it off him.” “Maybe we could get him to–' The dwarf paused. He was aware of a fuzzy echo to his voice. “That damn thing is listening to us!” he hissed. “Let's go outside.” They ended up out in the road. “Can't see how it can listen,” said Cliff. “An instrument's for listening to.” “The strings listen,” said Glod, flatly. “That is not an ordinary instrument.” Cliff shrugged. “Dere's one way we could find out,” he said. Early morning fog filled the streets. Around the University it was sculpted into curious forms by the slight magical background radiation. Strange-shaped things moved across the damp cobbles. Two of them were Glod and Cliff. “Right,” said the dwarf. “Here we are.” He looked up at a blank wall. “I knew it!” he said. “Didn't I say? Magic! How many times have we heard this story? There's a mysterious shop no-one's ever seen before, and someone goes in and buys some rusty old curio, and it turns out to–” “Glod–” “-some kind of talisman or a bottle full of genie, and then when there's trouble they go back and the shop–” “Glod-?” “-has mysteriously disappeared and gone back to whatever dimension it came from- yes, what is it?” “You're on the wrong side of the road. It's over here.” Glod glared at the blank wall, and then turned and stomped across the road. “It was a mistake anyone could have made.” “Yep.” “It doesn't invalidate anything I said.” Glod rattled the door and, to his surprise, found it was unlocked. “It's gone two in the morning! What kind of music shop is open at two in the morning?” Glod struck a match. The dusty graveyard of old instruments loomed around them. It looked as though a number of prehistoric animals had been caught in a flash flood and then fossilized. “What's that one that looks like a serpent?” whispered Cliff. “It's called a Serpent.” Glod was uneasy. He'd spent most of his life as a musician. He hated the sight of dead instruments, and these were dead. They didn't belong to anyone. No-one played them. They were like bodies without life, people without souls. Something they had contained had gone. Every one of them represented a musician down on his luck. There was a pool of light in a grove of bassoons. The old lady was deeply asleep in a rocking chair, with a tangle of knitting on her lap and a shawl around her shoulders. “Glod?” Glod jumped. “Yes? What?” “Why are we here? We know the place exists now–” “Grab some ceiling, hooligans!” Glod blinked at the crossbow bolt pricking the end of his nose, and raised his hands. The old lady had gone from asleep to firing stance without apparently passing through any intermediate stage. “This is the best I can do,” he said. “Er . . . the door wasn't locked, you see, and . . .” “So you thought you could rob a poor defenceless old lady?” “Not at all, not at all, in fact we–” “I belongs to the Neighbourhood Witch scheme, I do! One word from me and you'll be hopping around looking for some princess with an amphibian fixation–” “I think dis has gone far enough,” said Cliff. He reached down and his huge hand closed over the bow. He squeezed. Bits of wood oozed between his fingers. “We're quite harmless,” he said. “We've come about the instrument you sold our friend last week.” “Are you the Watch?” Glod bowed. “No, ma'am. We're musicians.” “That's supposed to make me feel better, is it? What instrument are you talking about?” “A kind of guitar.” The old woman put her head on one side. Her eyes narrowed. “I won't take it back, you know,” she said. “It was sold fair 'n' square. Good working condition, too.” “We just want to know where you got it from.” “Never got it from nowhere,” said the old lady. “It's always been here. Don't blow that!” Glod nearly dropped the flute he'd nervously picked up from the debris. “. . . or we'll be knee deep in rats,” said the old lady. She turned back to Cliff. “It's always been here,” she repeated. “It's got a one chalked on it,” said Glod. “It's always been here,” said the woman. “Ever since I've had the shop.” “Who brought it in?” “How should I know? I never asks them their name. People don't like that. They just gets the number.” Glod looked at the flute. There was a yellowing tag attached to it, on which the number 431 had been scrawled. He stared along the shelves behind the makeshift counter. There was a pink conch shell. That had a number on it, too. He moistened his lips and reached out... “If you blow that, you'd just better have a sacrificial virgin and a big cauldron of breadfruit and turtle meat standing by,” said the old lady. There was a trumpet next to it. It looked amazingly untarnished. “And this one?” he said. “It'll make the world end and the sky fall on me if I give it a tootle, will it?” “Interesting you should say that,” said the old lady. Glod lowered his hand, and then something else caught his eye. “Good grief,” he said, “is that still here? I'd forgotten about that . . .” “What is it?” said Cliff, and then looked where Glod was pointing. “That?” “We've got some money. Why not?” “Yeah. It might help. But you know what Buddy said. We'd never be able to find–” “It's a big city. If you can't find it in Ankh-Morpork, you can't find it anywhere.” Glod picked up half a drumstick and looked thoughtfully at a gong half buried in a pile of musicstands. “I shouldn't,” said the old lady. “Not if you don't want seven hundred and seventy-seven skeletal warriors springing out of the earth.” Glod pointed. “We'll take this.” “Two dollars.” “Hey, why should, we pay anything? It's not as though it's yours–” “Pay up,” said Cliff with a sigh. “Don't negotiate.” Glod handed over the money with bad grace, snatched the bag the old lady gave him, and strutted out of the shop. “Fascinating stock you have here,” said Cliff, staring at the gong. The old lady shrugged. “My friend's a bit annoyed because he thought you one of dose mysterious shops you hear about in folk tales,” Cliff went on. “You know, here today and gone tomorrow. He was looking for you on der other side of der road, haha!” “Sounds daft to me,” said the old lady, in a voice to discourage any further unseemly levity. Cliff glanced at the gong again, shrugged, and followed Glod. The woman waited until their footsteps had died away in the fog. Then she opened the door and peered up and down the street. Apparently satisfied by its abundance of emptiness, she went back to her counter and reached for a curious lever underneath. Her eyes glowed green for a moment. “Forget my own head next,” she said, and pulled. There was a grinding of hidden machinery. The shop vanished. A moment later, it reappeared on the other side of the road. Buddy lay looking at the ceiling. How did food taste? It was hard to remember. He'd eaten meals over the last few days, he must have done, but he couldn't remember the taste. He couldn't remember much of anything, except the playing. Glod and rest of them sounded as if they were talking through a thick gauze. Asphalt had wandered off somewhere. He swung himself off the hard bed and padded over to the window. The Shades of Ankh-Morpork were just visible in the grey, cheap-rate light before dawn. A breeze blew in through the open window. When he turned around, there was a young woman standing in the middle of the floor. She put her finger to her lips. “Don't go shouting to the little troll,” she said. “He's downstairs having some supper. Anyway, he wouldn't be able to see me.” “Are you my muse?” Susan frowned. “I think I know what you mean,” she said. “I've seen pictures. There were eight of them, led by . . . um . . . Cantaloupe. They're supposed to protect people. The Ephebians believe they inspire musicians and artists, but of course they don't exi–” She paused, and made a conscientious correction. “At least, I've never met them. My name's Susan. I'm here because . . .” Her voice trailed away. “Cantaloupe?” said Buddy. “I'm pretty sure it wasn't Cantaloupe.” “Whatever.” “How did you get in here?” “I'm . . . Look, sit down. Right. Well . . . you know how some things . . . like the Muses, as you said . . . people think that some things are represented by people?” A look of temporary understanding informed Buddy's perplexed features. “Like the Hogfather representing the spirit of the midwinter festival?” he said. “Right. Well . . . I'm sort of in that business,” said Susan. “It doesn't exactly matter what I do.” “You mean you're not human?” “Oh, yes. But I'm . . . doing a job. I suppose thinking of me as a Muse is probably as good as anything. And I'm here to warn you.” “A Muse for Music With Rocks In?” “Not really, but listen . . . hey, are you all right?” “Don't know.” “You looked all washed-out. Listen. The music is dangerous–” Buddy shrugged. “Oh, you mean the Guild of Musicians. Mr Dibbler says not to worry about that. We're leaving the city for–” Susan stamped forward and picked up the guitar. “I mean this!” The strings moved and whined under her hand. “Don't touch that!” “It's taken you over,” said Susan, throwing it on to the bed. Buddy grabbed it and played a chord. “I know what you're going to say,” he said. “Everyone says it. The other two think it's evil. But it's not!” “It might not be evil, but it's not right! Not here, not now.” “Yes, but I can handle it.” “You can't handle it. It handles you.” “Anyway, who are you to tell me all this? I don't have to take lessons from a tooth fairy!” “Listen, it'll kill you! I'm sure of it!” “So I'm supposed to stop playing, then?” Susan hesitated. “Well, not exactly . . . because then–” “Well, I don't have to listen to mysterious occult women! You probably don't even exist! So you can just fly back to your magic castle, OK?” Susan was temporarily speechless. She was reconciled to the irredeemable dumbness of most of mankind, particularly the section of it that stood upright and shaved in the mornings, but she was also affronted. No-one had ever talked to Death like this. At least, not for long. “All right,” she said, reaching out and touching his arm. “But you'll see me again, and . . . and you won't like it much! Because, let me tell you, I happen to be–” Her expression changed. She felt the sensation of falling backwards while standing still; the room drifted past her and away into darkness, pinwheeling around Buddy's horrified face. The darkness exploded, and there was light. Dribbly candle light. Buddy waved his hand through the empty space where Susan had been. “Are you still here? Where did you go? Who are you?” Cliff looked around. “Thought I heard something,” he muttered. “Here, you do know, don't you, dat some of dose instruments weren't just ordin–' “I know,” said Glod. “I wish I'd had a go on the rat pipe. I'm hungry again.” “I mean they were mythi–' “Yes.” “So how come dey end up in a second-hand music shop?” “Ain't you ever hocked your stones?” “Oh, sure,” said Cliff. “Everyone does, some time or other, you know that. Sometimes it's all you've got if you want to see another meal.” “There you are, then. You said it. It's something every working musician's going to do, sooner or later.” “Yeah, but the thing that Buddy . . . I mean, it's got the number one on it . . .” “Yes.” Glod peered up at a street-sign. “"Cunning Artificers",” he said. “Here we are. Look, half the workshops are still open even at this time of night.” He shifted the sack. Something cracked inside it. “You knock that side, I'll knock this.” “Yeah, all right . . . but, I mean, number one. Even the conch shell was number fifty-two. Who used to own the guitar?” “Don't know,” said Glod, knocking on the first door, “but I hope they never come back for it.” “And that,” said Ridcully, “is the Rite of AshkEnte. Quite easily done. You have to use a fresh egg, though.” Susan blinked. There was a circle drawn on the floor. Strange unearthly shapes surrounded it, although when she adjusted her mind set she realized that these were perfectly ordinary students. “Who are you?” she said. “What's this place? Let me go this instant!” She strode across the circle and rebounded from an invisible wall. The students were staring at her in the manner of those who have heard of the species 'female' but have never expected to get this close to one. “I demand that you let me go!” She glared at Ridcully. “Aren't you the wizard I saw last night?” “That's right,” said Ridcully, “and this is the Rite of AshkEnte. It calls Death into the circle and he - or as it may be, in this case, she - can't leave until we say so. There's a lot of stuff in this book here spelled with funny long esses and it goes on about abjuring and conjuration, but it's all show, really. Once you're in, you're in. I must say your predecessor - hah, bit of a pun there - was a lot more gracious about it.” Susan glared. The circle played tricks with her ideas of space. It seemed most unfair. “Why have you summoned me, then?” she said. “That's better. That's more according to the script,” said Ridcully. “ We are allowed to ask you questions, you see. And you have to answer them. Truthfully.” “Well?” “Would you like to sit down? A glass of something?” “No.” “Just as you like. This new music . . . tell us about it.” 'You summoned Death to ask that?” “I'm not sure who we've summoned,” said Ridcully. “It is really alive?” “I . . . think so.” “Does it live anywhere?” “It seems to have lived in one instrument but I think it's moving around now. Can I go?” “No. Can it be killed?” “I don't know.” “Should it be here?” “What?” “Should it be here?” Ridcully repeated patiently. “Is it something that's supposed to be happening?” Susan suddenly felt important. Wizards were rumoured to be wise - in fact, that's where the word came from.[23] But they were asking her things. They were listening to her. Pride sparkled in her eyes. “I . . . don't think so. It's turned up here by some kind of accident. This isn't the right world for it.” Ridcully looked smug. “That's what I thought. This isn't right, I said. It's making people try and be things they aren't. How can we stop it?” “I don't think you can. It's not susceptible to magic.” “Right. Music's not. Any music. But something must be able to make it stop. Show her your box, Ponder.” “Er . . . yes. Here.” He lifted the lid. Music, slightly tinny but still recognizable, drifted out into the room. “Sounds like a spider trapped in a matchbox, don't it?” said Ridcully. “You can't reproduce music like that on a piece of wire in a box,” said Susan. “It's against nature.” Ponder looked relieved. “That's what I said,” he said. “But it does it anyway. It wants to.” Susan stared at the box. She began to smile. There was no humour in it. “It's unsettling people,” said Ridcully. “And . . . look at this.” He pulled a roll of paper out of his robe and unfolded it. “Caught some lad trying to paste this on to our gates. Blooming cheek! So I took it off him and told him to hop it, which was,” Ridcully looked smugly at his fingertips, “quite appropriate as it turned out. It's going on about some festival of Music With Rocks In. It'll all end with monsters from another dimension breaking through, you can rely on that. That's the sort of thing that happens a lot in these parts.” “Excuse me,” said Big Mad Adrian, his voice cargoed with suspicion, “I don't want to cause any trouble, right, but is this Death or not? I've seen pictures, and they didn't look like her.” “We did the Rite stuff,” said Ridcully. “And this is what we got.” “Yes, but my father's a herring fisherman and he doesn't just find herring in his herring nets,” said Skazz. “Yeah. She could be anyone,” said Tez the Terrible. “I thought Death was taller and bonier.” “She's just some girl messing about,” said Skazz. Susan stared at them. “She hasn't even got a scythe,” said Tez. Susan concentrated. The scythe appeared in her hands, its blue-edged blade making a noise like a finger dragged around the rim of a glass. The students straightened up. “But I've always thought it was time for a change,” said Tez. “Right. It's about time girls got a chance in the professions,” said Skazz. “Don't you dare patronize me!” “That's right; said Ponder. “There's no reason why Death has to be male. A woman could be almost as good as a man in the job.” “You're doing it very well,” said Ridcully. He gave Susan an encouraging smile. She rounded on him. I'm Death, she thought technically, anyway - and this is a fat old man who has no right to give me any kind of orders. I'll glare at him, and he'll soon realize the gravity of his situation. She glared. “Young lady,” said Ridcully, “would you care for breakfast?” The Mended Drum seldom closed. There tended to be a lull around six in the morning, but Hibiscus stayed open so long as someone wanted a drink. Someone wanted a lot of drinks. Someone indistinct was standing at the bar. Sand seemed to be running out of him and, in so far as Hibiscus could tell, he had a number of arrows of Klatchian manufacture sticking in him. The barman leaned forward. “Have I seen you before?” I'M IN HERE QUITE OFTEN, YES. A WEEK LAST WEDNESDAY, FOR EXAMPLE. “Ha! That was a bit of a do. That's when poor old Vince got stabbed.” YES. “Asking for it, calling yourself Vincent the Invulnerable.” YES. INACCURATE, TOO. “The Watch are saying it was suicide.” Death nodded. Going into the Mended Drum and calling yourself Vincent the Invulnerable was clearly suicide by AnkhMorpork standards. THIS DRINK'S GOT MAGGOTS IN IT. The barman squinted at it. “That's not a maggot, sir,” he said. “That's a worm.” OH THAT'S BETTER, IS IT? “It's supposed to be there, sir. That's mexical, that is. They put the worm in to show how strong it is.” STRONG ENOUGH TO DROWN WORMS? The barman scratched his head. He'd never thought of it in those terms. “It's just something people drink,” he said vaguely. Death picked up the bottle and held it up to what normally would have been eye level. The worm rotated forlornly. WHAT'S IT LIKE? he said. “Well, it's a sort of–” I WASN'T TALKING TO YOU. “Breakfast? said Susan, I mean- BREAKFAST? “It must be coming up to that time,” said the Archchancellor. “It's a long time since I last had breakfast with a charming young woman.” “Good grief, you're all just as bad as each other,” said Susan. “Very well, scratch charming,” said Ridcully evenly. “But the sparrows are coughin' in the trees and the sun is peepin' over the wall and I smell cookin', and having a meal with Death is a chance that doesn't happen to everyone. You don't play chess, do you?” “Extremely well,” said Susan, still bewildered. “Thought as much. All right, you fellows. You can go back to prodding the universe. Will you step this way, madam?” “I can't leave the circle!” “Oh, you can if I invite you. It's all a matter of courtesy. I don't know if you've ever had the concept explained?” He reached out and took her hand. She hesitated, then stepped across the chalk line. There was a slight tingling feeling. The students backed away hurriedly. “Go on, get on with it,” said Ridcully. “This way, madam.” Susan had never experienced charm before. Ridcully possessed quite a lot of it, in a twinkly-eyed kind of way. She followed him across the lawns to the Great Hall. The breakfast tables had been laid out, but they were unoccupied. The big sideboard had sprouted copper tureens like autumn fungi. Three rather young maids were waiting patiently behind the array. “We tend to help ourselves,” said Ridcully conversationally, lifting a cover. “Waiters and so on make too much nois- this is some sort of a joke, is it?” He prodded what was under the cover and beckoned the nearest maid. “Which one are you?” he said. “Molly, Polly or Dolly?” “Molly, your lordship,” said the maid, dropping a curtsy and trembling slightly. “ Is there something wrong?” “A-wrong-wrong-wrong-wrong, a-do-wrong-wrong,” said the other two maids. “What happened to the kippers? What's this? Looks like a beef patty in a bun,” said Ridcully, staring at the girls. “Mrs Whitlow gave instructions to the cook,” said Molly nervously. “It's a–' “–yay-yay-yay–' “–it's a burger.” “You're telling me' said Ridcully. “And why've you got a beehive made of hair on your head, pray? Makes you look like a matchstick.” “Please sir, we–' “You went to see the Music With Rocks In concert, did you?” “Yes, sir.” “Yay, yay.” “You, er, you didn't throw anything on the stage, did you?” “No, sir!” “Where's Mrs Whitlow?” “In bed with a cold, sir.” “Not at all surprised.” Ridcully turned to Susan. “People are playing silly burgers, I'm afraid.” “I eat only muesli at breakfast,” said Susan. “There's porridge,” said Ridcully. “We do it for the Bursar because it's not exciting.” He lifted the lid of a tureen. “Yes, still here,” he said. “There's some things Music With Rocks In can't change, and one of them's porridge. Let me help you to a ladleful.” They sat on either side of the long table.. “Well, isn't this nice?” Ridcully said. “Are you laughing at me?” said Susan suspiciously. “Not at all. In my experience, what you mostly get in herring nets is herring. But, speaking as a mortal a customer, as you might say - I'm interested to know why Death is suddenly a teenage girl instead of the animate natomy we've come to know and . . . know.” “Natomy?” “Another word for skeleton. Probably derived from "anatomy".” “He's my grandfather.” “Ah. Yes, you said. And that's true, is it?” “It sounds a bit silly, now I come to tell someone else.” Ridcully shook his head. “You should do my job for five minutes. Then tell me about silly,” he said. He took a pencil out of his pocket and cautiously lifted the top half of the bun on his plate. “There's cheese in this,” he said, accusingly. “But he's gone off somewhere and next thing I know I've inherited the whole thing. I mean, I didn't ask for it! Why me? Having to go around with this silly scythe thing . . . that's not what I wanted out of life–” “It's certainly not something you get careers leaflets about,” said Ridcully. “Exactly.” “And I suppose you're stuck with it?” said Ridcully. “We don't know where he's gone. Albert says he's very depressed about something but he won't say what.” “Dear me. What could depress Death?” “Albert seems to think he might do something . . . silly.” “Oh, dear. Not too silly, I hope. Could that be possible? It'd be . . . morticide, I suppose. Or cidicide.” To Susan's amazement Ridcully patted her hand. “But I'm sure we'll all sleep safer in our beds knowing that you're in charge,” he said. “It's all so untidy! Good people dying stupidly, bad people living to a ripe old age . . . it's so disorganized. There's no sense to it. There's no justice at all. I mean, there's this boy–” “What boy?” To Susan's horror and amazement she found that she was blushing. “Just some boy,” she said. “He was supposed to have died quite ridiculously, and I was going to save him, and then the music saved him, and now it's getting him into all sorts of trouble and I've got to save him anyway and I don't know why.” “Music?” said Ridcully. “Does he play a sort of guitar?” “Yes! How did you know?” Ridcully sighed. “When you're a wizard you get an instinct for these things.” He prodded his burger some more. “And lettuce, for some reason. And one very, very thin slice of pickled cucumber.” He let the bread drop. “The music is alive,” he said. Something that had been knocking on Susan's attention for the past ten minutes finally used its boots. “Oh, my god,” she said. “Which one would that be?” said Ridcully politely. “It's so simple! It strolls into traps! It changes people! They want to play m- I've got to go,” said Susan hurriedly. “ Er. Thank you for the porridge . . .” “You haven't eaten any of it,” Ridcully pointed out mildly. “No, but . . . but I had a really good look at it.” She vanished. After a little while Ridcully leaned forward and waved his hand vaguely in the space where she had been sitting, just in case. Then he reached into his robe and pulled out the poster about the Free Festival. Great big things with tentacles, that was the problem. Get enough magic in one place and the fabric of the universe gave at the heel just like one of the Dean's socks which, Ridcully noticed, had been in some extremely bright colours the last few days. He waved a hand at the maids. “Thank you, Molly, Dolly or Polly,” he said. “You can clear this stuff away.” “Yay-yay.” “Yes, yes, thank you.” Ridcully felt rather alone. He'd quite enjoyed talking to the girl. She seemed to be the only person in the place who wasn't mildly insane or totally preoccupied with something that he, Ridcully, didn't understand. He wandered back to his study, but was distracted by the sounds of hammering coming from the Dean's chambers. The door was ajar. The senior wizards had quite large suites that included study, workshop and bedroom. The Dean was hunched over the furnace in the workshop area, with a smoked-glass mask over his face and a hammer in his hand. He was hard at work. There were sparks. This was much more cheering, Ridcully thought. Maybe this was an end to all this Music With Rocks In nonsense and a return to some real magic. “Everythin' all right, Dean?” he said. The Dean pushed up the glass and nodded. “Nearly finished, Archchancellor,” he said. “Heard you bangin' away right down the passage,” said Ridcully, conversationally. “Ah. I'm working on the pockets,” said the Dean. Ridcully looked blank. Quite a number of the more difficult spells involved heat and hammering, but pockets was a new one. The Dean held up a pair of trousers. They were not, strictly speaking, as trousery as normal trousers; senior wizards developed a distinctive 50" waist, 25" leg shape that suggested someone who sat on a wall and required royal assistance to be put together again. They were dark blue. “You were hammerin' them?” said Ridcully. “Mrs Whitlow been heavy on the starch again?” He looked closer. “You're rivetin' them together?” The Dean beamed. “These trousers,” he said, “are where it's at.” “Are you talkin' Music With Rocks In again?” said Ridcully suspiciously. “I mean they're cool.” “Well, better than a thick robe in this weather,” Ridcully conceded, “but– you're not going to put them on now, are you?” “Why not?” said the Dean, struggling out of his robe. “Wizards in trousers? Not in my university! It's cissy. People'd laugh,” said Ridcully. “You always try and stop me doing anything I want!” “There's no need to take that tone with me–' “Huh, you never listen to anything I say and I don't see why I shouldn't wear what I like!” Ridcully glared around the room. “This room is a total mess!” he bellowed. “Tidy it up right now!” “Sharn't!” “Then it's no more Music With Rocks In for you, young man!” Ridcully slammed the door behind him. He slammed it open again and added, “And I never gave you permission to paint it black!” He slammed the door shut. He slammed it open. “They don't suit you, either!” The Dean rushed out into the passage, waving his hammer. “Say what you like,” he shouted, “when history comes to name these, they certainly won't call them Archchancellors!” It was eight in the morning, a time when drinkers are trying either to forget who they are or to remember where they live. The other occupants of the Mended Drum were hunched over their drinks around the walls and watching an orang-utan, who was playing Barbarian Invaders and screaming with rage every time he lost a penny. Hibiscus really wanted to shut. On the other hand, it'd be like blowing up a goldmine. It was all he could do to keep up the supply of clean glasses. “Have you forgotten yet?” he said. IT APPEARS I HAVE ONLY FORGOTTEN ONE THING. “What's that? Hah, silly of me to ask really, seeing as you've forgotten–” I HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO GET DRUNK. The barman looked at the rows and rows of glasses. There were wine-glasses. There were cocktail glasses. There were beer mugs. There were steins in the shape of jolly fat men. There was a bucket. “I think you're on the right lines,” he hazarded. The stranger picked up his most recent glass and wandered over to the Barbarian Invaders machine. It was made of clockwork of a complex and intricate design. There was a suggestion of many gears and worm drives in the big mahogany cabinet under the game, the whole function of which appeared to be to make rows of rather crudely carved Barbarian Invaders jerk and wobble across a rectangular proscenium. The player, by means of a system of levers and pulleys, operated a small self-loading catapult that moved below the Invaders. This shot small pellets upwards. At the same time the Invaders (by means of a ratchet-and-pawl mechanism) dropped small metal arrows. Periodically a bell rang and an Invader on horseback oscillated hesitantly across the top of the game, dropping spears. The whole assemblage rattled and creaked continuously, partly because of all the machinery and partly because the orang-utan was wrenching both handles, jumping up and down on the Fire pedal, and screaming at the top of his voice. “I wouldn't have it in the place,” said the barman behind him. “But it's popular with the customers, you see.” ONE CUSTOMER, ANYWAY. “Well, it's better than the fruit machine, at least.” YES? “He ate all the fruit.” There was a screech of rage from the direction of the machine. The barman sighed. “You wouldn't think anyone'd make so much fuss over a penny, would you?” The ape slammed a dollar coin on the counter and went away with two handfuls of change. One penny in a slot allowed a very large lever to be pulled; miraculously, all the Barbarians rose from the dead and began their wobbly invasion again. “He poured his drink into it,” said the barman. “It may be my imagination, but I think they're wobbling a bit more now.” Death watched the game for a while. It was one of the most depressing things he'd ever seen. The things were going to get down to the bottom of the game anyway. Why shoot things at them? Why...? He waved his glass at the assembled drinkers. D'YOU. D'YOU. THING IS, D'YOU KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE, EH, HAVING A MEMORY SO GOOD, RIGHT, SO GOOD YOU EVEN REMEMBER WHAT HASN'T HAPPENED YET? THAT'S ME. OH, YES. RIGHT ENOUGH. AS THOUGH. AS THOUGH. AS THOUGH THERE'S NO FUTURE . . . ONLY THE PAST THAT HASN'T HAPPENED YET. AND. AND. AND. YOU HAVE TO DO THINGS ANYWAY. YOU KNOW WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN AND YOU HAVE TO DO THINGS. He looked around at the faces. People in the Drum were used to alcoholic lectures, but not ones like this. YOU SEE. YOU SHEE. YOU SEE STUFF LOOMING UP LIKE ICEBERG THINGS AHEAD BUT YOU MUSTN'T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT BECAUSE -BECAUSE BECAUSEITSALAW. CAN'T BREAK THE LAW. “SGOTABEALAW. SEE THIS GLASS, RIGHT? SEE IT?”S LIKE MEMORY. ONNACOUNTA IF YOU PUT MORE STUFF IN, MORE STUFF FLOWS OUT, RIGHT?”S' FACT. EVERYONEGOTTA MEMORY LIKE THIS. “S'WHAT KEEPS HUMANS FROM GOING ISS- ISH- INSH- MAD. “CEPT ME. POOROLE ME. I REMEMBER EVERYTHING. AS IF IT HAPPENED ONLY TOMORROW. EVERYTHING. He looked down at his drink. AH, he said, FUNNY HOW THINGS COME BACK TO YOU, ISN'T IT? It was the most impressive collapse the bar had ever seen. The tall dark stranger fell backwards slowly, like a tree. There was no cissy sagging of the knees, no cop-out bouncing off a table on the way down. He simply went from vertical to horizontal in one marvellous geometric sweep. Several people applauded as he hit the floor. Then they searched his pockets, or at least made an effort to search his pockets but couldn't find any. And then they threw him into the river.[24] In the giant black study of Death one candle burned, and got no shorter. Susan leafed frantically through the books. Life wasn't simple. She knew that; it was the Knowledge, which went with the job. There was the simple life of living things but that was, well . . . simple . . . There were other kinds of life. Cities had life. Anthills and swarms of bees had life, a whole greater than the sum of the parts. Worlds had life. Gods had a life made up of the belief of their believers. The universe danced towards life. Life was a remarkably common commodity. Anything sufficiently complicated seemed to get cut in for some, in the same way that anything massive enough got a generous helping of gravity. The universe had a definite tendency towards awareness. This suggested a certain subtle cruelty woven into the very fabric of space-time. Perhaps even a music could be alive, if it was old enough. Life is a habit. People said: I can't get that darn tune out of my head . . . Not just a beat, but a heartbeat. And anything alive wants to breed. C. M. O. T. Dibbler liked to be up at first light, in case there was an opportunity to sell a worm to the early bird. He had set up a desk in the corner of one of Chalky's workshops. He was, by and large, against the idea of a permanent office. On the positive side it made him easier to find, but on the negative side it made him easier to find. The success of Dibbler's commercial strategy hinged on him being able to find customers, not the other way around. Quite a large number of people seemed to have found him this morning. Many of them were holding guitars. “Right,” he said to Asphalt, whose flat head was just visible over the top of the makeshift desk. “All understood? It'll take you two days to get to Pseudopolis and then you report to Mr Klopstock at the Bull Pit. And I'll want receipts for everything.” “Yes, Mr Dibbler.” “It'll be a good idea to get away from the city for a bit.” “Yes, Mr Dibbler.” “Did I already say I wanted receipts for everything?” “Yes, Mr Dibbler,” sighed Asphalt. “Off you go, then.” Dibbler ignored the troll and beckoned to a group of dwarfs who'd been hanging around patiently. “OK, you lot, come over here. So you want to be Music With Rocks In stars, do you?” “Yes, sir!” “Then listen here to what I say . . .” Asphalt looked at the money. It wasn't much to feed four people for several days. Behind him, the interview continued. “So what do you call yourselves?” “Er - dwarfs, Mr Dibbler,” said the lead dwarf. “”Dwarfs"?” “Yes, sir.” “Why?” “Because we are, Mr Dibbler,” said the lead dwarf patiently. “No, no, no. That won't do. That won't do at all. You gotta have a name with a bit of–” Dibbler waved his hands in the air, “-with a bit of Music With Rocks In . . . uh . . . in. Not just "Dwarfs". You gotta be . . . oh, I don't know . . . something more interesting.” “But we're certainly dwarfs,” said one of the dwarfs. “"We're Certainly Dwarfs",” said Dibbler. “Yes, that might work. OK. I can book you in at the Bunch of Grapes on Thursday. And into the Free Festival, of course. Since it's free you don't get paid, of course.” “We've written this song,” said the head dwarf, hopefully. “Good, good,” said Dibbler, scribbling on his notepad. “It's called "Something's Gotten Into My Beard".” “Good.” “Don't you want to hear it?” Dibbler looked up. “Hear it? I'd never get anything done if I went around listening to music. Off you go. See you next Wednesday. Next! You all trolls?” “Days right.” In this case, Dibbler decided not to argue. Trolls were a lot bigger than dwarfs. “All right. But you've got to spell it with a Z. Trollz. Yep, looks good. Mended Drum, Friday. And the Free Festival. Yes?” “We've done a song–” “Good for you. Next!” “It's us, Mr Dibbler.” Dibbler looked at Jimbo, Noddy, Crash and Scum. “You've got a nerve,” he said, “after last night.” “We got a bit carried away,” said Crash. “We was wondering if we could have another chance?” “You did say the audience loved us,” said Noddy. “Loathed you. I said the audience loathed you,” said Dibbler. “Two of you kept looking at Blert Wheedown's guitar primer!” “We've changed our name,” said Jimbo. “We thought, well, Insanity was a bit daft, it's not a proper name for a serious band that's pushing back the boundaries of musical expression and is definitely going to be big one day.” “Thursday,” nodded Noddy. “So now we're Suck,” said Crash. Dibbler gave them a long, cool look. Bear-baiting, bullharassing, dog-fighting and sheep-worrying were currently banned in Ankh-Morpork, although the Patrician did permit the unrestricted hurling of rotten fruit at anyone suspected of belonging to a street theatre group. There was perhaps an opening. “All right,” he said. “You can play at the Festival. After that . . . we'll see.” After all, he thought, there was a possibility that they'd still be alive. A figure climbed slowly and unsteadily out of the Ankh on to a jetty by the Misbegot Bridge, and stood for a moment as mud dripped off him and formed a puddle under the planks. The bridge was quite high. There were buildings on it, lining it on both sides so that the actual roadway was quite cramped. The bridges were quite popular as building sites, because they had a very convenient sewage system and, of course, a source of fresh water. There was the red eye of afire in the shadows under the bridge. The figure staggered towards the light. The dark shapes around it turned and squinted into the gloom, trying to fathom the nature of the visitor. “It's a farm cart,” said Glod. “I know a farm cart when I see one. Even if it is painted blue. And it's all battered.” “It's all you can afford,” said Asphalt. “Anyway, I put fresh straw in.” “I thought we were going in the stagecoach,” said Cliff. “Oh, Mr Dibbler says artistes of your calibre shouldn't travel in a common public vehicle,” said Asphalt. “Besides, he said you wouldn't want the expense.” “What do you think, Buddy?” said Glod. “Don't mind,” said Buddy vaguely. Glod and Cliff shared a glance. “I bet if you were to go and see Dibbler and demand something better, you'd get it,” said Glod hopefully. “It's got wheels,” said Buddy. “It'll do.” . He climbed aboard and sat down in the straw. “Mr Dibbler's had some new shirts done,” said Asphalt, aware that there was not a lot of jolliness in the air. “It's for the tour. Look, it says on the back everywhere you're going, isn't that nice?” “Yes, when the Musicians' Guild twist our heads round we'll be able to see where we've been,” said Glod. Asphalt cracked his whip over the horses. They ambled off at a pace that suggested they intended to keep it up all day, and no idiot too soft to really use a whip properly was going to change their minds. “Buggrit, buggrit! The grawney man, says I. Buggrit. He's a yellow gloak, so he is. Ten thousand years! Buggrit.” REALLY? Death relaxed. There were half a dozen people around the fire. And they were convivial. A bottle was circling the group. Well, actually it was half a tin, and Death hadn't quite worked out what was in it or in the rather larger tin that was bubbling on the fire of old boots and mud. They hadn't asked him who he was. None of them had names, as far as he could tell. They had . . . labels, like Stalling Ken and Coffin Henry and Foul Ole Ron, which said something about what they were but nothing about what they had been. The tin reached him. He passed it on as tactfully as he could, and lay back peacefully. People without names. People who were as invisible as he was. People for whom Death was always an option. He could stay here awhile. “Free music,” Mr Clete growled. “Free! What sort of idiot makes music for free? At least you put a hat down, get people to drop the odd copper in. Otherwise what's the point?” He stared at the paperwork in front of him for so long that Satchelmouth coughed politely. “I'm thinking,” said Mr Clete. “That wretched Vetinari. He said it's up to Guilds to enforce guild law–' “I heard they're leaving the city,” said Satchelmouth. “On tour. Out in the country, I heard. It's not our law out there.” “The country,” said Mr Clete. “Yes. Dangerous place, the country.” “Right,” said Satchelmouth. “There's turnips, for a start.” Mr Clete's eye fell on the Guild's account books. It occurred to him, not for the first time, that far too many people put their trust in iron and steel when gold made some of the best possible weapons. “Is Mr Downey still head of the Assassins' Guild?” he said. The other musicians looked suddenly nervous. “Assassins?” said Herbert 'Mr Harpsichord' Shuffle. “I don't think anyone's ever called in the Assassins. This is guild business, isn't it? Can't have another guild interfering.” “That's right,” said Satchelmouth. “What'd happen if people knew we'd used the Assassins?” “We'd get a lot more members,” said Mr Clete in his reasonable voice, “and we could probably put the subscriptions up. Hat. Hat. Hat.” “Now hang on a minute,” said Satchelmouth. “I don't mind us seeing to people who won't join. That's proper guild behaviour, that is. But Assassins . . . well . . .” “Well what?” said Mr Clete. “They assassinate people.” “You want free music, do you?” said Mr Clete. “Well, of course I don't want–” “I don't remember you talking like this when you jumped up and down on that street violinist's fingers last month,” said Mr Clete. “Yeah, well, that wasn't, like, assassination,” said Satchelmouth. “ I mean, he was able to walk away. Well, crawl away. And he could still earn a living; he added. “Not one that required the use of his hands, sure, but–” “And that penny whistle lad? That one who plays a chord now every time he hiccups? Hat. Hat. Hat.” “Yeah, but that's not the sa–” “Do you know Wheedown the guitar-maker?” said Mr Clete. Satchelmouth was unbalanced by the change in direction. “I'm told he's been selling guitars like there was no next Wednesday; said Mr Clete. “But I don't see any increase in membership, do you?” “Well–” “Once people get the idea that they can listen to music for nothing, where will it end?” He glared at the other two. “Dunno, Mr Clete,” said Shuffle obediently. “Very well. And the Patrician has been ironical at me,” said Mr Clete. “ I'm not having that again. It's the Assassins this time.” “I don't think we should actually have people killed,” said Satchelmouth doggedly. “I don't want to hear any more from you,” said Mr Clete. “This is guild business.” “Yes, but it's our guild–” “Exactly! So shut up! Hat! Hat! Hat!” The cart rattled between the endless cabbage fields that led to Pseudopolis. “I've been on tour before, you know,” said Glod. “When I was with Snori Snoriscousin And His Brass Idiots. Every night a different bed. You forget what day of the week it is after a while.” “What day of the week is it now?” said Cliff. “See? And we've only been on the road . . . what . . . three hours?” said Glod. “Where're we stopping tonight?” said Cliff. “Scrote,” said Asphalt. “Sounds a really interesting place,” said Cliff. “Been there before, with the circus,” said Asphalt. “It's a onehorse town.” Buddy looked over the side of the cart, but it wasn't worth the effort. The rich silty Sto Plains were the grocery of the continent, but not an awe-inspiring panorama unless you were the kind of person who gets excited about fifty-three types of cabbage and eighty-one types of bean. Spaced every mile or so on the chequerboard of fields was a village, and spaced rather further apart were the towns. They were called towns because they were bigger than the villages. The cart passed through a couple of them. They had two streets in the form of a cross, one tavern, one seed store, one forge, one livery stable with a name like JOE'S LIVERY STABLE, a couple of barns, three old men sitting outside the tavern, and three young men lounging outside JOE'S swearing that one day really soon now they were going to leave town and make it big in the world outside. Real soon. Any day now. “Reminds you of home, eh?” said Cliff, nudging Buddy. “What? No! Llamedos is all mountains and valleys. And rain. And mist. And evergreens.” Buddy sighed. “You had a great house there, I expect?” said the troll. “Just a shack,” said Buddy. “Made of earth and wood. Well, mud and wood really.” He sighed again. “It's like this on the road,” said Asphalt. “Melancholy. No-one to talk to but each other, I've known people go totally ins–” “How long has it been now?” said Cliff. “Three hours and ten minutes,” said Glod. Buddy sighed. They were invisible people, Death realized. He was used to invisibility. It went with the job. Humans didn't see him until they had no choice. On the other hand, he was an anthropomorphic personification. Whereas Foul Ole Ron was human, at least technically. Foul Ole Ron made a small living by following people until they gave him money not to. He'd also got a dog, which added something to Foul Ole Ron's smell. It was a greyish-brown terrier with a torn ear and nasty patches of bare skin; it begged with an old hat in its remaining teeth, and since people will generally give to animals that which they'd withhold from humans it added considerably to the earning power of the group. Coffin Henry, on the other hand, earned his money by not going anywhere. People organizing important social occasions sent him anti-invitations and little presents of money to ensure he wouldn't turn up. This was because, if they didn't, Henry had a habit of sidling ingratiatingly into the wedding party and inviting people to look at his remarkable collection of skin diseases. He also had a cough which sounded almost solid. He had a sign on which was chalked 'For sum muny I wunt follo you home. Coff Coff'. Arnold Sideways had no legs. It was a lack that didn't seem to figure largely among his concerns. He would grab people by their knees and say, “Have you got change for a penny?”, invariably profiting by the ensuing cerebral confusion. And the one they called the Duck Man had a duck on his head. No-one mentioned it. No-one drew attention to it. It seemed to be a minor feature of no consequence, like Arnold's leglessness and Foul Ole Ron's independent smell or Henry's volcanic spitting. But it kept nagging at Death's otherwise peaceful mind. He wondered how to broach the subject. AFTER ALL, he thought, HE MUST KNOW, MUSTN'T HE? IT'S NOT LIKE LINT ON YOUR JACKET OR SOMETHING . . . By common agreement they'd called Death Mr Scrub. He didn't know why. On the other hand, he was among people who could hold a lengthy discussion with a door. There may have been a logical reason. The beggars spent their day wandering invisibly around the streets where people who didn't see them carefully circled out of their way and threw them the occasional coin. Mr Scrub fitted in very well. When he asked for money, people found it hard to say no. Scrote didn't even have a river. It existed simply because there's only so much land you can have before you have to have something else. . It had two streets in the form of a cross, one tavern, one seed store, one forge, a couple of barns and, in a gesture of originality, one livery stable called SETH'S LIVERY STABLE. Nothing moved. Even the flies were asleep. Long shadows were the only occupants of the streets. “I thought you said dis was a one-horse town,” said Cliff, as they pulled up in the rutted, puddled area that was probably glorified by the name of Town Square. “It must have died,” said Asphalt. Glod stood up in the cart and spread his arms wide. He yelled: “Hello, Scrote!” The name-board over the livery stable parted from its last nail and landed in the dust. “What I like about this life on the road,” said Glod, “is the fascinating people and interesting places.” “I expect it comes alive at night,” said Asphalt. “Yes,” said Cliff. “Yes, I can believe dat. Yes. Dis looks like the kind of town dat comes alive at night. Dis looks like the whole town should be buried at the crossroads with a stake through it.” “Talking of steak . . .” said Glod. They looked at the tavern. The cracked and peeling sign just managed to convey the words 'The Jolly Cabbage'. “I doubt it,” said Asphalt. There were people in the dimly lit tavern, sitting in sullen silence. The travellers were served by the innkeeper, whose manner suggested that he hoped they died horribly just as soon as they left the premises. The beer tasted as if it was happy to connive at this state of affairs. They huddled at one table, aware of the eyes on them. “I've heard about places like this,” whispered Glod. “You go into this little town with a name like Friendly or Amity, and next day you're spare ribs.” “Not me,” said Cliff. “I'm too stony.” “Well, you're in the rockery, then,” said the dwarf. He looked around at a row of furrowed faces and raised his mug theatrically. “Cabbages doing well?” he said. “I see in the fields they're nice and yellow. Ripe, eh? That's good, eh?” “That's Root Fly, that is,” said someone in the shadows. “Good, good,” said Glod. He was a dwarf. Dwarfs didn't farm. “We don't like circuses in Scrote,” said another voice. It was a slow, deep voice. “We're not a circus,” said Glod brightly. “We're musicians.” “We don't like musicians in Scrote,” said another voice. There seemed to be more and more figures in the gloom. “Er . . . what do you like in Scrote?” said Asphalt. “Well,” said the barman, now a mere outline in the gathering darkness, “round about this time of year we generally have a barbecue down by the rockery.” Buddy sighed. It was the first time he'd made a sound since they'd arrived in the town. “I guess we'd better show them what we play,” he said. There was a twang in his voice. It was some time later. Glod looked at the door handle. It was a door handle. You got hold of it with your hand. But what was supposed to happen next? “Door handle,” he said, in case that would help. “Y'r sposed do s'ning w'vit,” said Cliff, from somewhere near the floor. Buddy leaned past the dwarf and turned the handle. “Am'zing,” said Glod, and stumbled forward. He levered himself off the floor and looked around. “Wh's the?” “The tavern keeper said we could stay here for free,” said Buddy. “S'mess,” said Glod. “Some'ne fetch me a brm and a scr'bing brsh this min't.” Asphalt wobbled in, carrying the luggage and with Cliff's sack of rocks in his teeth. He dropped the lot on the floor. “Well, that was astonishing, sir,” he said. “The way you just went into that barn and said, and said . . . what was it you said?” “Let's do the show right here,” said Buddy, lying down on a straw mattress. “Amazing! They must have been coming in from miles around!” Buddy stared at the ceiling and played a few chords. “And that barbecue!” said Asphalt, still radiating enthusiasm. “The sauce!” “The be'f!” said Glod. “The charcoal,” murmured Cliff happily. There was a wide black ring around his mouth. “And who'davthought,” said Glod, “that you could brew a beer l'ke that outa cauliflowers?” “Had a great head on it,” said Cliff. “I thought we were going to be in a bit of trouble there, before you played,” said Asphalt, shaking the beetles out of another mattress. “I don't know how you got them dancing like that.” “Yes,” said Buddy. “And we din't even get paid,” murmured Glod. He slumped back. Shortly there were snores, given a slightly metallic edge by the reverberation in his helmet. When the others were asleep Buddy put the guitar down on the bed, quietly opened the door and crept downstairs and into the night. It would have been nice if there had been a full moon. Or even a crescent. A full moon would have been better. But there was just a half-moon, which never appears in romantic or occult paintings despite the fact that it is indeed the most magical phase. There was a smell of stale beer, dying cabbages, barbecue embers and insufficient sanitation. He leaned against Seth's livery stable. It shifted slightly. It was fine when he was on stage or, as it had been tonight, on an old barn door set on a few bricks. Everything was in bright colours. He could feel white-hot images arcing across his mind. His body felt as though it were on fire but also, and this was the important bit, as if it was meant to be on fire. He felt alive. And then, afterwards, he felt dead. There was still colour in the world. He could recognize it as colour, but it seemed to be wearing Cliff's smoked glasses. Sounds came as if through cotton wool. Apparently the barbecue had been good, he had Glod's word for that; but to Buddy it had been texture and not much else. A shadow moved across the space between two buildings . . . On the other hand, he was the best. He knew it, not as some matter of pride or arrogance, but simply as a matter of fact. He could feel the music flowing out of him and into the audience . . . “This one, sir?” whispered a shadow beside the livery stable, as Buddy wandered along the moonlit street. “Yes. This one first and then into the tavern for the other two. Even the big troll. There's a spot on the back of the neck.” “But not Dibbler, Sir?” “Strangely, no. He's not here.” “Shame. I bought a meat pie off him once.” “It's an attractive suggestion, but no-one's paying us for Dibbler.” The Assassins drew their knives, the blades blackened to avoid the tell-tale shine. “I could give you twopence, sir, if that'd help.” “It's certainly tempting–' The senior Assassin pressed himself against the wall as Buddy's footsteps grew louder. He gripped his knife at waist height. No-one who knew anything about knives ever used the famous over-arm stabbing motion so beloved of illustrators. It was amateurish and inefficient. A professional would strike upwards; the way to a man's heart was through his stomach. He drew his hand back and tensed An hourglass, glowing faintly blue, was suddenly thrust in front of his eyes. LORD ROBERT SELACHII? Said a voice by his ear. THIS IS YOUR LIFE. He squinted. There was no mistaking the name engraved on the glass. He could see every little grain of sand, pouring into the past . . . He turned, took one look at the hooded figure, and ran for it. His apprentice was already a hundred yards away, and still accelerating. “Sorry? Who's that?” Susan tucked the hourglass back into her robe and shook out her hair. Buddy appeared. “You?” “Yes. Me,” said Susan. Buddy took a step nearer. “Are you going to fade away again?” he said. “No. I have actually just saved your life, as a matter of fact.” Buddy looked around at the otherwise empty night. “From what?” Susan bent down and picked up a blackened knife. “This?” she said. “I know we've had this conversation before, but who are you? Not my fairy godmother, are you?” “I think you have to be a lot older,” said Susan. She backed away. “And probably a lot nicer, too. Look, I can't tell you any more. You're not even supposed to see me. I'm not supposed to be here. Neither are you-, “You're not going to tell me to stop playing again, are you?” said Buddy angrily. “Because I won't! I'm a musician! If I don't play, what am I then? I might as well be dead! Do you understand? Music is my life!” He took a few steps nearer. “Why're you following me around? Asphalt said there'd be girls like you!” “What on Disc do you mean, "girls like me"?” Buddy subsided a bit, but only a little. “They follow actors and musicians around,” he said, “because of, you know, the glamour and everything–” “Glamour? Some smelly cart and a tavern that smells of cabbages?” Buddy held up his hands. “Listen,” he said urgently. “I'm doing all right. I'm working, people are listening to me . . . I don't need any more help, all right? I've got enough to worry about, so please keep out of my life–” There was the sound of running feet and Asphalt appeared, with the other members of the band behind him. “The guitar was screaming,” said Asphalt. “Are you all right?” “You'd better ask her,” muttered Buddy. All three of them looked directly at Susan. “Who?” said Cliff. “She's right in front of you.” Glod waved a stubby hand in the air, missing Susan by inches. “It was probably dat cabbage,” said Cliff to Asphalt. Susan stepped backwards quietly. “She's right there! But she's going away now, can't you see?” “That's right, that's right,” said Glod, taking Buddy's arm. “She's going away now, and good riddance, so just you come on back–” “Now she's getting on that horse!” “Yes, yes, a big black horse–” “It's white, you idiot!” Hoofprints burned red on the ground for a moment and then faded. “And it's gone now!” The Band With Rocks In stared into the night. “Yes, I can see dat, now you mention it,” said Cliff. “Days a horse dat isn't dere, sure enough.” “Yes, that's certainly what a horse that's gone looks like,” said Asphalt carefully. “None of you saw her?” said Buddy, as they manoeuvred him gently back through the pre-dawn greyness. “I heard where musicians, really good musicians, got followed around by these half-naked young women called Muses,” said Glod. “Like Cantaloupe,” said Cliff. “We don't call 'em Muses,” said Asphalt, grinning. “I told you, when I worked for Bertie the Balladeer and His Troubadour Rascals, we used to get any amount of young women hanging arou–” “Amazing how legends get started, when you come to think about it,” said Glod. “Just you come along now, my lad.” “She was there,” Buddy protested. “She was there.” “Cantaloupe?” said Asphalt. “You sure, Cliff?” “Read it in a book once,” said the troll. “Cantaloupe. I'm pretty sure. Something like that.” “She was there,” said Buddy. The raven snored gently on top of his skull, counting dead sheep. The Death of Rats came through the window in an arc, bounced off a dribbly candle, and landed on all fours on the table. The raven opened one eye. “Oh, it's you–' Then a claw was round its leg, and the Death of Rats jumped off the skull and into infinite space. There were more cabbage fields next day, although the landscape did begin to change a bit. “Hey, that's interesting,” said Glod. “What is?” said Cliff. “There's a field of beans over there.” They watched it until it was out of sight. “Nice of the people to give us all this food, though,” said Asphalt. “ We shan't be wanting for cabbages, eh?” “Oh, shut up,” said Glod. He turned to Buddy, who was sitting with his chin resting on his arms. “Cheer up, we'll be in Pseudopolis in a couple of hours,” he said. “Good,” said Buddy, distantly. Glod climbed back into the front of the cart and pulled Cliff towards him. “Notice the way he goes all quiet?” he whispered. “Yup. Do you think it'll be . . . you know . . . done by the time we get back?” “You can get anything done in Ankh-Morpork,” said Glod firmly. “I must have knocked on every damn door in the Street of Cunning Artificers. Twenty-five dollars!” “You're complaining? It ain't your tooth dat's paying for it.” They both turned to look at their guitarist. He was staring out across the endless fields. “She was there,” he muttered. Feathers spiralled towards the ground. “You didn't have to go and do that,” said the raven, fluttering upright. “You could simply ask.” SQUEAK. “All right, but before would have been better.” The raven ruffled its feathers and looked around at the bright landscape under the dark sky. “This is the place then, is it?” it said. “You're sure you're not the Death of Ravens too?” SQUEAK. “Shape doesn't mean much. Anyway, you've got a pointy snout. What was it you were wanting?” The Death of Rats grabbed a wing and pulled. “All right, all right!” The raven glanced at a garden gnome. It was fishing in an ornamental pond. The fish were skeletal, but this didn't seem to interfere with their enjoyment of life, or whatever it was they were enjoying. It fluttered and hopped along after the rat. Cut-My-Own-Throat Dibbler stood back. Jimbo, Crash, Noddy and Scum looked at him expectantly. “What're all the boxes for, Mr Dibbler?” said Crash. “Yeah,” said Scum. Dibbler carefully positioned the tenth box on its tripod. “You boys seen an iconograph?” he said. “Oh, yes . . . I mean, yeah,” said Jimbo. “They've got a little demon inside them that paints pictures of things you point it at.” “This is like that, only for sound,” said Dibbler. Jimbo squinted past the open lid. “Can't see any . . . I mean, can't see no demon,” he said. “That's because there isn't one,” said Dibbler. It was worrying him, too. He'd have been a little bit happier if there'd been a demon or some sort of magic. Something simple and understandable. He didn't like the idea of meddling in science. “Now then . . . Suck–” he began. “The Surreptitious Fabric,” said Jimbo. “What?” “The Surreptitious Fabric,” Jimbo repeated helpfully. “It's our new name.” “Why have you changed it? You haven't been Suck for twentyfour hours.” “Yeah, but we thought the name was holding us back.” “How could it be holding you back? You aren't moving.” Dibbler glared at them and shrugged. “Anyway, whatever you call yourselves . . . I want you to sing your best song, what am I saying, in front of these boxes. Not yet . . . not yet . . . wait a moment . ..” Dibbler retired to the furthest corner of the room and pulled his hat down over his ears. “All right, you can start,” he said. He stared in blissful deafness at the group for several minutes until a general cessation of movement suggested that whatever they had been perpetrating had been committed. Then he inspected the boxes. The wires were vibrating gently, but there was barely any sound. The Surreptitious Fabric clustered around. “Is it working, Mr Dibbler?” said Jimbo. Dibbler shook his head. “You boys don't have what it takes,” he said. “What does it take, Mr Dibbler?” “You've got me there. You've got something,” he said, at the sight of their dejected faces, “but not a lot of it, whatever it is.” “Er . . . this doesn't mean we're not allowed to play at the Free Festival, does it, Mr Dibbler?” said Crash. “Maybe,” said Dibbler, smiling benevolently. “Thanks a lot, Mr Dibbler!” The Surreptitious Fabric wandered out into the street. “We need to get it together if we're going to wow them at the Festival,” said Crash. “What, you mean . . . like . . . learn to play?” said Jimbo. “No! Music With Rocks In just happens. If you go around learning you'll never get anywhere,” said Crash. “No, I mean . . .” He looked around. “Better clothes, for one thing. Did you see about them leather coats, Noddy?” “Sort of,” said Noddy. “What do you mean, sort of?” “Sort of leather. I went down the tannery in Phedre Road and they had some leather all right, but it's a bit . . . whiffy . . . “All right, we can get started on them tonight. And how about those leopardskin trousers, Scum? You know we said leopardskin trousers'd be a great idea.” A look of transcendental worry crossed Scum's face. “I kind of got some,” he said. “You either got them or you ain't,” said Crash. “Yeah, but they're kind of . . .” said Scum. “Look, I couldn't find a shop that'd heard of anything like that but, er, you know that circus that was here last week? Only I had a word with the guy in the top hat and, well, it was a kind of a bargain and–” “Scum,” said Crash quietly, “what have you bought?” “Look at it this way,” said Scum with sweating brightness, “it's sort of leopardskin trousers and a leopardskin shirt and a leopardskin hat.” “Scum,” said Crash, his voice low with resigned menace, “you've bought a leopard, haven't you?” “Sort of leopardy, yes.” “Oh, good grief–” “But sort of a real steal for twenty dollars,” said Scum. “Nothing important wrong with it, the man said.” “Why'd he get rid of it, then?” Crash demanded. “It's sort of deaf. Can't hear the lion-tamer, he said.” “Well, that's no good to us!” “Don't see why. Your trousers don't have to listen.” SPARE A COPPER, YOUNG SIR? “Push off, grandad,” said Crash easily. GOOD LUCK TO YOU. “Too many beggars around these days, my father says,” said Crash, as they pushed past. “He says the Beggars' Guild ought to do something about it.” “But the beggars all belong to the Guild,” said Jimbo. “Well, they shouldn't allow so many people to join.” “Yes, but it's better than being on the streets.” Scum, who out of the whole group had the least amount of cerebral activity to get between him and true observation of the world, was trailing behind. He had an uneasy feeling that he'd just walked over someone's grave. “That one looked a bit sort of thin,” he muttered. The others weren't paying any attention. They were back to the usual argument. “I'm fed up with being Surreptitious Fabric,” said Jimbo. “It's a silly name.” “Really, really thin,” said Scum. He felt in his pocket. “Yeah, I liked it best when we were The Whom,” said Noddy. “But we were only The Whom for half an hour!” said Crash.[25] 'Yesterday. In between bein' The Blots and Lead Balloon, remember?” Scum located a tenpenny piece and turned back. “There's bound to be some good name,” said Jimbo. “I just bet we'll know it's right just as soon as we see it.” “Oh, yeah. Well, we've got to come up with some name we don't start arguing about after five minutes,” said Crash. “It's not doing our career any good if people don't know who we are.” “Mr Dibbler says it definitely is,” said Noddy. “Yes, but a rolling stone gathers no moss, my father says,” said Crash. “There you go, old man,” said Scum, back down the street. THANK YOU, said the grateful Death. Scum hurried to catch up with the others, who were back on the subject of leopards with hearing difficulties. “Where did you put it, Scum?” said Crash. “Well, you know your sort of bedroom–' “How do you kill a leopard?” said Noddy. “Hey, here's an idea,” said Crash, gloomily. “We let it choke to death on Scum.” The raven inspected the hallway clock with the practised eye of one who knows the value of good props. As Susan had noted, it was not so much small as dimensionally displaced; it looked small, but in the same way that something very big a long way away looks small - that is to say, the mind keeps reminding the eyes that they are wrong. But this was up close as well. It was made of some dark, age-blackened wood. There was a pendulum, which oscillated slowly. The clock had no hands. “Impressive,” said the raven. “That scythe blade on the pendulum. Nice touch. Very Gothic. No-one could look at that clock and not think–” SQUEAK! “All right, all right, I'm coming.” The raven fluttered across to an ornamental door-frame. There was a skull-and-bones motif on it. “Excellent taste,” it said. SQUEAK. SQUEAK. “Well, anyone can do plumbing, I expect,” said the raven. “Interesting fact. Did you know the lavatory was actually named after Sir Charles Lavatory? Not many people–” SQUEAK. The Death of Rats pushed at the big door leading to the kitchen. It swung open with a creak but, here again, there was something not quite right. A listener had the sense that the creak had been added by someone who, feeling that a door like that with a door surround like that ought to creak, had inserted one. Albert was washing up at the stone sink and staring at nothing. “Oh,” he said, turning, “it's you. What's this thing?” “I'm a raven,” said the raven, nervously. “Incidentally, one of the most intelligent birds. Most people would say it's the mynah bird, but–” SQUEAK! The raven ruffled its feathers. “I'm here as an interpreter,” it said. “Has he found him?” said Albert. The Death of Rats squeaked at length. “Looked everywhere. No sign,” said the raven. “Then he don't want to be found,” said Albert. He smeared the grease off a plate with a skull pattern on it. “I don't like that.” SQUEAK. “The rat says that's not the worst thing,” said the raven. “The rat says you ought to know what the granddaughter has been doing . . . The rat squeaked. The raven talked. The plate shattered on the sink. “I knew it!” Albert shouted. “Saving him! She hasn't got the faintest idea! Right! I'm going to sort this out. The Master thinks he can slope off, eh? Not from old Albert! You two wait here!” There were already posters up in Pseudopolis. News travels fast, especially when C. M. O. T. Dibbler is paying for the horses . . . “Hello, Pseudopolis!” They had to call out the city Watch. They had to organize a bucket chain from the river. Asphalt had to stand outside Buddy's dressing room with a club. With a nail in it. Albert, in front of a scrap of mirror in his bedroom, brushed his hair furiously. It was white. At least, long ago it was white. Now it was the colour of a tobacco addict's index finger. “It's my duty, that's what it is,” he muttered. “Don't know where he'd be without me. Maybe he does remember the future, but he always gets it wrong! Oh, he can go on worrying about the eternal verities, but who has to sort it out when all's said and done . . . Muggins, that's who.” He glared at himself in the mirror. “Right!” he said. There was a battered shoe-box under the bed. Albert pulled it out very, very carefully and took the top off. It was half full of cotton wool; nestling in the wool, like a rare egg, was a lifetimer. Engraved on it was the name: Alberto Malich. The sand inside was frozen, immobile, in mid-pour. There wasn't much left in the top bulb. No time passed, here. It was part of the Arrangement. He worked for Death, and time didn't pass, except when he went into the World. There was a scrap of paper by the glass. The figures '91' had been written at the top, but lower numbers trailed down the page after it. 73 . . . 68 . . . 37 Nineteen! He must have been daft. He'd let his life leak away by hours and minutes, and there had been a lot more of them lately. There'd been all that business with the plumber, of course. And shopping. The Master didn't like to go shopping. It was hard to get served. And Albert had taken a few holidays, because it was nice to see the sun, any sun, and feel wind and rain; the Master did his best, but he could never get them right. And decent vegetables, he couldn't do them properly either. They never tasted grown. Nineteen days left in the world. But more than enough. Albert slipped the lifetimer into his pocket, put on an overcoat, and stamped back down the stairs. “You,” he said, pointing to the Death of Rats, “you can't sense a trace of him? There must be something. Concentrate.” SQUEAK. “What did he say?” “He said all he can remember is something about sand.” “Sand,” said Albert. “All right. Good start. We search all the sand.” SQUEAK? “Wherever the Master is, he'll make an impression.” Cliff awoke to a swish-swish sound. The shape of Glod was outlined in the light of dawn, wielding a brush. “What're you doing, dwarf?” “I got Asphalt to get some paint,” said Glod. “These rooms are a disgrace.” Cliff raised himself on his elbows and looked around. “What do you call the colour on the door?” “Eau-de-Nil.” “Nice.” “Thank you,” said Glod. “The curtains are good, too.” The door creaked open. Asphalt came in, with a tray, and kicked the door shut behind him. “Oh, sorry,” he said. “I'll paint over the mark,” said Glod. Asphalt put the tray down, trembling with excitement. “Everyone's talking about you guys!” he said. “And they're saying it was about time they built a new theatre anyway. I've got you eggs and bacon, eggs and rat, eggs and coke, and . . . and . . . what was it . . . oh, yes. The Captain of the Watch says if you're still in the city at sunrise he will personally have you buried alive. I've got the cart all ready by the back door. Young women have been writing things on it in lipstick. Nice curtains, by the way.” All three of them looked at Buddy. “He hasn't moved,” said Glod. “Flopped down right after the show and out like a light.” “He was certainly leaping around last night,” said Cliff. Buddy continued to snore gently. “When we get back,” said Glod, “we ought to have a nice holiday somewhere.” “Days right,” said Cliff. “If we get out of dis alive, I'm going to put my rock kit on my back and take a long walk, and the first time someone says to me, "What are dem things on your back?" days where I'm gonna settle down.” Asphalt peered down into the street. “Can you all eat fast?” he said. “Only there's some men in uniform out there. With shovels.” Back in Ankh-Morpork, Mr Clete was astonished. “But we hired you!” he said. “The term is "retained", not "hired",” said Lord Downey, head of the Assassins' Guild. He looked at Clete with an expression of unconcealed distaste. “Unfortunately, however, we can no longer entertain your contract.” “They're musicians,” said Mr Clete. “How hard can they be to kill?” “My associates are somewhat reluctant to talk about it,” said Lord Downey. “They seem to feel that the clients are protected in some way. Obviously, we will return the balance of your fee.” “Protected,” muttered Clete, as they stepped thankfully through the archway of the Assassins' Guild. “Well, I told you what it was like in the Drum when–” Satchelmouth began. “That's just superstition,” snapped Clete. He glanced up at a wall, where three Festival posters flaunted their primary colours. “It was stupid of you to think Assassins would be any good outside the city,” muttered Clete. “Me? I never–” “Get them more than five miles from a decent tailor and a mirror, and they go all to pieces,” Clete added. He stared at the poster. “Free,” he muttered. “Did you put it about that anyone who plays at this Festival is right out of the Guild?” “Yes, sir. I don't think they're worrying, sir. I mean, some of 'em have been getting together, sir. See, they say since there's a lot more people want to be musicians than we'll allow in the Guild then we should–” “It's mob rule!” said Clete. “Banding together to force unacceptable rules on a defenceless city!” “Trouble is, sir,” said Satchelmouth, “if there's a lot of them . . . if they think of talking to the palace . . . well, you know the Patrician, sir . . .” Clete nodded glumly. Any Guild was powerful just so long as it self-evidently spoke for its constituency. He thought of hundreds of musicians flocking to the palace. Hundreds of nonGuild musicians . . . The Patrician was a pragmatist. He never tried to fix things that worked. Things that didn't work, however, got broken. The only glimmer of hope was that they'd all be too busy messing around with music to think about the bigger picture. It had certainly worked for Clete. Then he remembered that the blasted Dibbler man was involved. Expecting Dibbler not to think about anything concerning money was like expecting rocks not to think about gravity. “Hello? Albert?” Susan pushed open the kitchen door. The huge room was empty. “Albert?” She tried upstairs. There was her own room, and there was a corridor of doors that didn't open and possibly never could - the doors and frames had an all-in-one, moulded-together look. Presumably Death had a bedroom, although proverbially Death never slept. Perhaps he just lay in bed reading. She tried the handles until she found one that turned. Death did have a bedroom. He'd got many of the details right. Of course. After all, he saw quite a lot of bedrooms. In the middle of the acres of floor was a large four-poster bed, although when Susan gave it an experimental prod it turned out that the sheets were as solid as rock. There was a full-length mirror, and a wardrobe. She had a look inside, just in case there was a selection of robes, but there was nothing in there except a few old shoes in the bottom.[26] A dressing table held a jug-and-basin set with a motif of skulls and omegas, and a variety of bottles and other items. She picked them up, one by one. After-shave lotion. Pomade. Breath freshener. A pair of silver-backed hairbrushes. It was all rather sad. Death clearly had picked up an idea of what a gentleman should have on his dressing table, without confronting one or two fundamental questions. Eventually she found a smaller, narrower staircase. “Albert?” There was a door at the top. “Albert? Anyone?” It's not actually barging in if I call out first, she told herself. She pushed open the door. It was a very small room. Really small. It contained a few sticks of bedroom furniture and a small narrow bed. A small bookcase contained a handful of small uninteresting-looking books. There was a piece of ancient paper on the floor which, when Susan picked it up, turned out to be covered with numbers, all crossed out except the last one, which was: 19. One of the books was Gardening In Difficult Conditions. She went back down to the study. She'd known that there was no-one in the house. There was a dead feeling in the air. There was the same feeling in the gardens. Death could create most things, except for plumbing. But he couldn't create life itself. That had to be added, like yeast in bread. Without it, everything was beautifully neat and tidy and boring, boring, boring. This is what it must have been like, she thought. And then, one day, he adopted my mother. He was curious. She took the path through to the orchard again. And when I was born Mum and Dad were so afraid that I felt at home here they brought me up to be . . . welt . . . a Susan. What kind of name is that for Death's granddaughter? A girl like that should have better cheekbones, straight hair and a name with Vs and Xs in it. And there, once again, was the thing he'd made for her. All by himself. Working it all out from first principles . . . A swing. A simple swing. It was already burning hot in the desert between Klatch and Hersheba. The air shimmied, and then there was a pop. Albert appeared on a sand-dune. There was a clay-brick fort on the horizon. “The Klatchian Foreign Legion,” he muttered, as sand began its inexorable progress into his boots. Albert trudged towards it with the Death of Rats sitting on his shoulder. He knocked on the door, which had a number of arrows in it. After a while a small hatch slid back. “What do you want, offendi?” said a voice from somewhere behind it. Albert held up a card. “Have you seen someone who didn't look like this?” he demanded. There was silence. “Then let's say: have you seen some mysterious stranger who didn't talk about his past?” said Albert. “This is the Klatchian Foreign Legion, offendi. People don't talk about their past. They join up to . . . to... It dawned on Albert as the pause lengthened that it was up to him to get the conversation going again. “Forget?” “Right. Forget. Yes.” “So have you had any recent recruits who were a little, shall we say, odd?” “Might have done,” said the voice slowly. “Can't remember.” The hatchway slammed shut. Albert hammered on it again. The hatchway opened. “Yes, what is it?” “Are you sure you can't remember?” “Remember what?” Albert took a deep breath. “I demand to see your commanding officer!” The hatch shut. The hatch opened. “Sorry. It appears that I am the commanding officer. You're not a D'reg or a Hershebian, are you?” “Don't you know?” “I'm . . . pretty sure I must have done. Once. You know how it is . . . head like . . . thing, you know . . . With holes in . . . You drain lettuce in it . . . er . . .” There was the sound of bolts being pulled back, and a wicket door opened in the gateway. The possible officer was a sergeant, in so far as Albert was at all familiar with Klatchian ranks. He had the look about him of someone who, among the things he couldn't remember, would include a good night's sleep. If he could remember to. There were a few other Klatchian soldiers inside the fort, sitting or, just barely, standing. Many were bandaged. And there was a rather greater number of soldiers slumped or lying on the packed sand who'd never need a night's sleep ever again. “What's been happening here?” said Albert. His tone was so authoritative that the sergeant found himself saluting. “We were attacked by Dregs, sir,” he said, swaying slightly. “Hundreds of them! They outnumbered us . . . er . . . what's the number after nine? Got a one in it.” “Ten.” “Ten to one, sir.” “I see you survived, though,” said Albert. “Ah,” said the sergeant. “Yes. Er. Yes. That's where it all gets a bit complicated, in fact. Er. Corporal? That's you. No, you just next to him. The one with the two stripes?” “Me?” said a small fat soldier. “Yes. Tell him what happened.” “Oh. Right. Er. Well, the bastards had shot us full of arrows, right? An' it looked like it was all up with us. Then someone suggested sticking bodies up on the battlements with their spears and crossbows and everything so's the bastards'd think we was still up to strength–” “It's not an original idea, mind you,” said the sergeant. “Been done dozens of times.” “Yeah,” said the corporal awkwardly. “That's what they must've thought. And then . . . and then . . . when they was galloping down the sand-dunes . . . when they was almost on us, laughing and everything, saying stuff like "that old trick again" . . . someone shouted "Fire!" and they did.” “The dead men-?” “I joined the Legion to . . . er . . . you know, with your mind . . .” the corporal began. “Forget?” said Albert. “That's right. Forget. And I've been getting good at it. But I'm not going to forget my old mate Nudger Malik stuck full of arrows and still giving the enemy what for,” said the corporal. “Not for a long time. I'm going to give it a try, mind you.” Albert looked up at the battlements. They were empty. “Someone formed 'em up in formation and they all marched out, afterwards,” said the corporal. “And I went out to look just now and there was just graves. They must have dug them for one another . . .” “Tell me,” said Albert, “who is this "someone" to whom you keep referring?” The soldiers looked at one another. “We've just been talking about that,” said the sergeant. “We've been trying to remember. He was in . . . the Pit . . . when it started . . .” “Tall, was he?” said Albert. “Could have been tall, could have been tall,” nodded the corporal. “He had a tall voice, certainly.” He looked puzzled at the words coming out of his own mouth. “What did he look like?” “Well, he had a . . . with . . . and he was about . . . more or less a . . .” “Did he look . . . loud and deep?” said Albert. The corporal grinned with relief. “That's him,” he said. “Private . . . Private . . . Beau . . . Beau . . . can't quite remember his name . . .” “I know that when he walked out of the . . .” the sergeant began, and began to snap his fingers irritably, “. . . thing you open and shut. Made of wood. Hinges and bolts on it. Thank you. Gate. That's right . . . gate. When he went out of the gate he said . . . what was it he said, corporal?” “He said, "EVERY LAST DETAIL", Sir.” Albert looked around the fort. “So he's gone.” “Who?” “The man you were just telling me about.” “Oh. Yes. Er. Have you any idea who he was, offendi? I mean, it was amazing . . . talk about morale . . .” “Esprit de corpse?” said Albert, who could be nasty at times. “I suppose he didn't say where he was going next?” “Where who was going next?” said the sergeant, wrinkling his forehead in honest enquiry. “Forget I asked,” said Albert. He took a last look round the little fort. It probably didn't matter much in the history of the world whether it survived or not, whether the dotted line on the map went one way or the other. Just like the Master to tinker with things . . . Sometimes he tries to be human, too, he thought. And he makes a pig's ear out of it. “Carry on, sergeant,” he said, and wandered back into the desert. The legionnaires watched him disappear over the dunes, and then got on with the job of tidying up the fort. “Who d'you think he was?” “Who?” “The person you just mentioned.” “Did I?” “Did you what?” Albert crested a dune. From here the dotted line was just visible, winding treacherously across the sand. SQUEAK. “You and me both,” said Albert. He removed an extremely grubby handkerchief from a pocket, knotted it in all four corners, and put it on his head. “Right,” he said, but there was a trace of uncertainty in his voice. “Seems to me we're not being logical about this.” SQUEAK. “I mean, we could be chasing him all over the place.” SQUEAK. “So maybe we ought to think about this.” SQUEAK. “Now . . . if you were on the Disc, definitely feeling a bit strange, and could go absolutely anywhere, anywhere at all . . . where would you go?” SQUEAK? “Anywhere at all. But somewhere where no-one remembers your name.” The Death of Rats looked around at the endless, featureless and above all dry desert. SQUEAK. “You know, I think you're right.” It was in an apple tree. He built me a swing, Susan remembered. She sat and stared at the thing. It was quite complicated. In so far as the thinking behind it could be inferred from the resulting construction, it had run like this: Clearly a swing should be hung from the stoutest branch. In fact - safety being paramount - it would be better to hang it from the two stoutest branches, one to each rope. They had turned out to be on opposite sides of the tree. Never go back. That was part of the logic. Always press on, step by logical step. So . . . he'd removed about six feet from the middle of the tree's trunk, thus allowing the swing to, well, swing. The tree hadn't died. It was still quite healthy. However, the lack of a major section of trunk had presented a fresh problem. This had been overcome by the addition of two large props under the branches, a little further out from the ropes of the swing, keeping the whole top of the tree at about the right height off the ground. She remembered how she'd laughed, even then. And he'd stood there, quite unable to see what was wrong. And then she saw it all, all laid out. That was how Death worked. He never understood exactly what he was doing. He'd do something, and it would turn out wrong. Her mother; suddenly he had a grown woman on his hands and didn't know what to do next. So he did something else to make it right, which made it more wrong. Her father. Death's apprentice! And when that went wrong, and its potential wrongness was built right into it, he did something else to make it right. He'd turned over the hourglass. After that, it was all a matter of maths. And the Duty. “Hello . . . hells, Glod, tell me where we are . . . Sto Lat! Yay !” It was an even bigger audience. There'd been more time for the posters to be up, more time for the word-of-mouth from AnkhMorpork. And, the band realized, a solid core of people had followed them from Pseudopolis. In a brief break between numbers, just before the bit where people started leaping around on the furniture, Cliff leaned over to Glod. “You see dat troll in der front row?” he said. “The one Asphalt's jumping on the fingers of?” “The one that looks like a spoil heap?” “She was in Pseudopolis,” said Cliff, beaming. “She keeps looking at me!” “Go for it, lad,” said Glod, emptying the spit from his horn. “In like Flint, eh?” “You think she's one of dem gropies Asphalt told us about?” “Could be.” Other news had travelled fast, too. Dawn saw another redecorated hotel room, a royal proclamation from Queen Keli that the band was to be out of the city in one hour on pain of pain, and one more rapid exit. Buddy lay in the cart as it bumped over the cobbles towards Quirm. She hadn't been there. He'd scanned the audience on both nights, and she hadn't been there. He'd even got up in the middle of the night and walked through the empty streets, in case she was looking for him. Now he wondered if she existed. If it came to that, he was only half certain that he existed, except for the times when he was on stage. He half listened to the conversation from the others. “Asphalt?” “Yes, Mr Glod?” “Cliff and me can't help noticing something.” “Yes, Mr Glod?” “You've been carrying a heavy leather bag around, Asphalt.” “Yes, Mr Glod.” “It was a bit heavier this morning, I think.” “Yes, Mr Glod.” “It's got the money in it, yes?” “Yes, Mr Glod.” “How much?” “Er. Mr Dibbler said I wasn't to worry you with money stuff,” said Asphalt. “We don't mind,” said Cliff. “That's right,” said Glod. “We want to worry.” “Er.” Asphalt licked his lips. There was something deliberate in Cliff's manner. “About two thousand dollars, Mr Glod.” The cart bounced on for a while. The landscape had changed a little. There were hills, and the farms were smaller. “Two thousand dollars,” said Glod. “Two thousand dollars. Two thousand dollars. Two thousand dollars.” “Whyd' you keep saying two thousand dollars?” said Cliff. “I've never had a chance to say two thousand dollars.” “Just don't say it so loud.” “TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS!” “Ssh!” said Asphalt, desperately, as Glod's shout echoed off the hills. “This is bandit country!” Glod eyed the satchel. “You're telling me,” he said. “I don't mean Mr Dibbler!” “We're on the road between Sto Lat and Quirm,” said Glod patiently. “This isn't the Ramtops road. This is civilization. They don't rob you on the road in civilization.” He glanced darkly at the satchel again. “They wait until you've got into the cities. That's why it's called civilization. Hah, can you tell me the last time anyone was ever robbed on this road?” “Friday, I believe,” said a voice from the rocks. “Oh, bugg–” The horses reared up and then galloped forward. Asphalt's crack of the whip had been an almost instinctive reaction. They didn't slow down until they were several miles further along the road. “Just shut up about money, all right?” hissed Asphalt. “I'm a professional musician,” said Glod. “Of course I think about money. How far is it to Quirm?” “A lot less now,” said Asphalt. “A couple of miles.” And after the next hill the city lay before them, nestling in its bay. There was a cluster of people at the town's gates, which were closed. Afternoon sunlight glittered off helmets. “What do you call them long sticks with axes on the end?” said Asphalt. “Pikes,” said Buddy. “There's certainly a lot of them,” said Glod. “They can't be for us, can dey?” said Cliff. “We're only musicians.” “And I can see some men in long robes and gold chains and things,” said Asphalt. “Burghers,” said Glod. “You know that horseman that passed us this morning . . .” said Asphalt. “I'm thinking that maybe news travels.” “Yes, but we didn't break up dat theatre,” said Cliff. “Well, you only gave them six encores,” said Asphalt. “We didn't do all dat rioting in the streets.” “I'm sure the men with the pointy blades will understand that.” “Maybe dey don't want der hotels redecorated. I said it was a mistake, orange curtains with yellow wallpaper.” The cart came to a halt. A rotund man with a tricorn hat and a fur-trimmed cloak scowled uncomfortably at the band. “Are you the musicians known as The Band With Rocks In?” he said. “What seems to be the problem, officer?” said Asphalt. “I am the mayor of Quirm. According to the laws of Quirm, Music With Rocks In cannot be played in the city. Look, it says so right here . . .” He flourished a scroll. Glod caught it. “That ink looks wet to me,” he said. “Music With Rocks In represents a public nuisance, is proven to be injurious to health and morals and to cause unnatural gyrations of the body; said the man, pulling the scroll back. “You mean we can't come into Quirm?” said Glod. “You can come in if you must,” said the mayor. “But you're not to play.” Buddy stood up on the cart. “But we've got to play,” he said. The guitar swung around on its strap. He gripped the neck and raised his strumming hand threateningly. Glod looked around in desperation. Cliff and Asphalt had put their hands over their ears. “Ah!” he said. “I think what we have here is an occasion for negotiation, yes?” He got down from the cart. “I expect what your worship hasn't heard of,” he said, “is the music tax.” “What music tax?” said Asphalt and the mayor together. “Oh, it's the latest thing,” said Glod. “On account of the popularity of Music With Rocks In. Music tax, fifty pence a ticket. Must have amounted to, oh, two hundred and fifty dollars in Sto Lat, I reckon. More than twice that in AnkhMorpork, of course. Patrician thought it up.” “Really? Sounds like Vetinari right enough,” said the mayor. He rubbed his chin. “Did you say two hundred and fifty dollars in Sto Lat? Really? And that place is hardly any size.” A watchman with a feather in his helmet saluted nervously. “Excuse me, your worship, but the note from Sto Lat did say–” “Just a minute,” said the mayor testily. “I'm thinking . . . Cliff leaned down. “Dis is bribery, is it?” he whispered. “This is taxation,” said Glod. The watchman saluted again. “But really, sir, the guards at–” “Captain,” snapped the mayor, still staring thoughtfully at Glod, “this is politics! Please!” “As well?” said Cliff. “And to show goodwill,” said Glod, “it'd be a good idea if we paid the tax before the peformance, don't you think?” The mayor looked at them in astonishment, a man not certain he could get his mind around the idea of musicians with money. “Your worship, the message said–” “Two hundred and fifty dollars,” said Glod. “Your worship–” “Now, captain,” said the mayor, apparently reaching a decision, “we know that folk are a bit odd in Sto Lat. It's only music, after all. I said I thought it was an odd note. I can't see the harm in music. And these young me- people are clearly very successful,” he added. This obviously carried a lot of weight with the mayor, as it does with many people. No-one likes a poor thief. “Yes,” he went on, “it'd be just like the Lats to try that on us. They think we're simple just because we live out here.” “Yes, but the Pseudopo ' “Oh, them. Stuck-up bunch. Nothing wrong with a bit of music, is there? Especially,” the mayor eyed Glod, “when it's for the civic good. Let 'em in, captain.” Susan saddled up. She knew the place. She'd even seen it once. They'd put a new fence along the road now, but it was still dangerous. She knew the time, too. Just before they called it Dead Man's Curve. “Hello, Quirm!” Buddy struck a chord. And a pose. A faint white glow, like the glitter of cheap sequins, outlined him. “Uh-huh-huh!” The cheering became the familiar wall of sound. I thought we were going to get killed by people who didn't like us, Glod thought. Now I think it's possible to be killed by people who love us . . . He looked around carefully. There were guards around the walls; the captain had been no fool. I just hope Asphalt put the horse and cart outside like I asked him . . . He glanced at Buddy, sparkling in the limelight. A couple of encores and then down the back stairs and away, Glod thought. The big leather satchel had been chained to Cliff's leg. Anyone snatching it would find themselves towing one ton of drummer. I don't even know what we're going to play, thought Glod. I never do, I just blow and . . . there it is. You can't tell me that's right. Buddy whirled his arm like a discus thrower and a chord sprang away and into the ears of the audience. Glod raised the horn to his lips. The sound that emerged was like burning black velvet in a windowless room. Before the Music With Rocks In spell filled his soul, he thought: I'm going to die. That's part of the music. I'm going to die really soon. I can feel it. Every day. It's getting closer . . . He glanced at Buddy again. The boy was scanning the audience, as if he was looking for someone in the screaming throng. They played 'There's A Great Deal Of Shaking Happening'. They played 'Give Me That Music With Rocks In'. They played 'Pathway To Paradise' (and a hundred people in the audience swore to buy a guitar in the morning). They played with heart and especially with soul. They got out after the ninth encore. The crowd was still stamping its feet for more as they climbed through the privy window and dropped into the alley. Asphalt emptied a sack into the leather satchel. “Another seven hundred dollars!” he said, helping them onto the cart. “Right, and we get ten dollars each,” said Glod. “You tell Mr Dibbler,” said Asphalt, as the horses' hoofs clattered towards the gates. “I will.” “It doesn't matter,” said Buddy. “Sometimes you do it for the money, but sometimes you do it for the show.” “Hah! That'll be the day.” Glod fumbled under the seat. Asphalt had stashed two crates of beer there. “There's the Festival tomorrow, lads,” rumbled Cliff. The gate arch passed above them. They could still hear the stamping from here. “After that we'll have a new contract,” said the dwarf. “With lots of zeroes in it.” “We got zeroes now,” said Cliff. “Yeah, but they ain't got many numbers in front of them. Eh, Buddy?” They looked around. Buddy was asleep, the guitar clutched to his chest. “Out like a candle,” said Glod. He turned back again. The road stretched ahead of them, pale in the starlight. “You said you just wanted to work,” said Cliff. “You said you didn't want to be famous. How'd you like it, having to worry about all that gold, and having girls throw their chain mail at you?” “I'd just have to put up with it.” “I'd like a quarry,” said the troll. “Yeah?” “Yeah. Heart-shaped.” A dark, stormy night. A coach, horses gone, plunged through the rickety, useless fence and dropped, tumbling, into the gorge below. It didn't even strike an outcrop of rock before it hit the dried river-bed far below and erupted into fragments. Then the oil from the coach-lamps ignited and there was a second explosion, out of which rolled - because there are certain conventions, even in tragedy - a burning wheel. What was strange to Susan was that she felt nothing. She could think sad thoughts, because in the circumstances they had to be sad. She knew who was in the coach. But it had already happened. There was nothing she could do to stop it, because if she'd stopped it, it wouldn't have happened. And she was here watching it happen. So she hadn't. So it had. She felt the logic of the situation dropping into place like a series of huge leaden slabs. Perhaps there was somewhere where it hadn't happened. Perhaps the coach had skidded the other way, perhaps there had been a convenient rock, perhaps it hadn't come this way at all, perhaps the coachman had remembered about the sudden curve. But those possibilities could only exist if there was this one. This wasn't her knowledge. It flowed in from a mind far, far older. Sometimes the only thing you could do for people was to be there. She rode Binky into the shadows by the cliff road, and waited. After a minute or two there was a clattering of stones and a horse and rider came up an almost vertical path from the river-bed. Binky's nostrils flared. Parapsychology has no word for the uneasy feeling you have when you're in the presence of yourself.[27] Susan watched Death dismount and stand looking down at the river-bed, leaning on his scythe. She thought: but he could have done something. Couldn't he? The figure straightened, but did not turn around. YES. I COULD HAVE DONE SOMETHING. “How . . . how did you know I was here . . . ?” Death waved a hand irritably. I REMEMBER YOU. AND NOW UNDERSTAND THIS: YOUR PARENTS KNEW THINGS MUST HAPPEN. EVERYTHING MUST HAPPEN SOMEWHERE. DO YOU NOT THINK I SPOKE TO THEM OF THIS? BUT I CANNOT GIVE LIFE. I CAN ONLY GRANT . . . EXTENSION. CHANGELESSNESS. ONLY HUMANS CAN GIVE LIFE. AND THEY WANTED TO BE HUMAN, NOT IMMORTAL. IF IT HELPS YOU, THEY DIED INSTANTLY. INSTANTLY. I've got to ask, Susan thought. I've got to say it. Or I'm not human. “I could go back and save them . . . ?” Only the faintest tremor suggested that the statement was a question. SAVE? FOR WHAT? A LIFE THAT HAS RUN OUT? SOME THINGS END. I KNOW THIS. SOMETIMES I HAVE THOUGHT OTHERWISE. BUT . . . WITHOUT DUTY, WHAT AM I? THERE HAS TO BE A LAW. He climbed into the saddle and, still without turning to face her, spurred Binky out and over the gorge. There was a haystack behind a livery stable in Phedre Road. It bulged for a moment, and there was a muffled swearing. A fraction of a second later there was a bout of coughing and another, much better, swear-word inside a grain silo down near the cattle market. Very shortly after that some rotten floorboards in an old feed store in Short Street exploded upwards, followed by a swear-word that bounced off a flour sack. “Idiot rodent!” bellowed Albert, fingering grain out of his ear. SQUEAK. “I should think so! What size do you think I am?” Albert brushed hay and flour off his coat and walked over to the window. “Ah,” he said, “let us repair to the Mended Drum, then.” In Albert's pocket, sand resumed its interrupted journey from future to past. Hibiscus Dunelm had decided to close up for an hour. It was a simple process. First he and his staff collected any unbroken mugs and glasses. This didn't take long. Then there was a desultory search for any weapons with a high resale value, and a quick search of any pockets whose owners were unable to object on account of being drunk, dead or both. Then the furniture was moved aside and everything else was swept out of the back door and into the broad brown bosom of the river Ankh, where it piled up and, by degrees, sank. Finally, Hibiscus locked and bolted the big front door . . . It wouldn't shut. He looked down. A boot was wedged in it. “We're shut,” he said. “No, you ain't.” The door ground back, and Albert was inside. “Have you seen this person?” he demanded, thrusting a pasteboard oblong in front of Dunelm's eyes. This was a gross breach of etiquette. Dunelm wasn't in the kind of job where you survived if you told people you'd seen people. Dunelm could serve drinks all night without seeing anyone. “Never seen him before in my life,” he said, automatically, without even looking at the card. “You've got to help me,” said Albert, “otherwise something dreadful will happen.” “Push off!” Albert kicked the door shut behind him. “Just don't say I didn't warn you,” he said. On his shoulder the Death of Rats sniffed the air suspiciously. A moment later Hibiscus was having his chin pressed firmly into the boards of one of his tables. “Now, I know he'd come in here,” said Albert, who wasn't even breathing heavily, “because everyone does, sooner or later. Have another look.” “That's a Caroc card,” said Hibiscus indistinctly. “That's Death!” “That's right. He's the one on the white horse. You can't miss him. Only he wouldn't look like that in here, I expect.” “Let me get this straight,” said the landlord, trying desperately to wriggle out of the iron grip. “You want me to tell you if I've seen someone who doesn't look like that?” “He'd have been odd. Odder than most.” Albert thought for a moment. “And he'd have drunk a lot, if I know him. He always does.” “This is Ankh-Morpork, you know.” “Don't be cheeky, or I'll get angry.” “You mean you're not angry now?” “I'm just impatient. You can try for angry if you like.” “There was . . . someone . . . few days ago. Can't remember exactly what he looked like–' “Ah. That'd be him.” “Drank me dry, complained about the Barbarian Invaders game, got legless and then . . .” “What?” “Can't recall. We just threw him out.” “Out the back door?” “Yes.” “But that's just river out there.” “Well, most people come round before they sink.” SQUEAK, said the Death of Rats. “Did he say anything?” said Albert, too busy to pay attention. “Something about remembering everything, I think. He said . . . he said being drunk didn't make him forget. Kept going on about doorknobs and . . . hairy sunlight.” “Hairy sunlight?” “Something like that.” And the pressure on Hibiscus's arm was suddenly released. He waited a second or two and then, very cautiously, turned his head. There was no-one behind him. Very carefully, Hibiscus bent down to look under the tables. Albert stepped out into the dawn and, after some fumbling, produced his box. He opened it and glanced at his lifetimer, then snapped the lid shut. “All right,” he said. “What next?” SQUEAK! “What?” And someone hit him across the head. It wasn't a killing stroke. Timo Laziman of the Thieves' Guild knew what happened to thieves who killed people. The Assassins' Guild came and talked briefly to them - in fact, all they said was, “Goodbye.” All he'd wanted to do was knock the old man out so that he could rifle his pockets. He'd not expected the sound as the body hit the ground. It was like the tinkle of broken glass, but with unpleasant overtones that carried on echoing in Timo's ears long after they should have stopped. Something leapt from the body and whirred into his face. Two skeletal claws grabbed his ears and a bony muzzle jerked forward and hit him hard on the forehead. He screamed and ran for it. The Death of Rats dropped to the ground again and scurried back to Albert. It patted his face, kicked him frantically a few times and then, in desperation, bit him on the nose. Then it grabbed Albert's collar and tried to pull him out of the gutter, but there was a warning tinkle of glass. The eye sockets turned madly towards the Drum's closed front door. Ossified whiskers bristled. A moment later Hibiscus opened the door, if only to stop the thunderous knocking. “I said we're–' Something shot between his legs, paused momentarily to bite him on the ankle, and scuttled towards the back door, nose pressed firmly to the floor. It was called Hide Park not because people could, but because a hide was once a measure of land capable of being ploughed by one man with three-and-one-half oxen on a wet Thursday, and the park was exactly this amount of land, and people in Ankh-Morpork stick to tradition and often to other things as well. And it had trees, and grass, and a lake with actual fish in it. And, by one of those twists of civic history, it was a fairly safe place. People seldom got mugged in Hide Park. Muggers like 'somewhere safe to sunbathe, just like everyone else. It was, as it were, neutral territory. And it was already filling up, even though there was nothing much to see except the workmen still hammering together a large stage by the lake. An area behind it had been walled off with strips of cheap sacking nailed to stakes. Occasionally excited people would try to get in and would be thrown into the lake by Chrysoprase's trolls. Among the practising musicians Crash and his group were immediately noticeable, partly because Crash had his shirt off so that Jimbo could paint iodine on the wounds. “I thought you were joking,” he growled. “I did say it was in your bedroom,” said Scum. “How'm I going to play my guitar like this?” said Crash. “You can't play your guitar anyway,” said Noddy. “I mean, look at my hand. Look at it.” They looked at his hand. Jimbo's mum had put a glove on it after treating the wounds; they hadn't been very deep, because even a stupid leopard won't hang around anyone who wants to take its trousers off. “A glove,” said Crash, in a terrible voice. “Whoever heard of a serious musician with a glove? How can I ever play my guitar with a glove on?” ' “How can you ever play your guitar anyway?” “I don't know why I put up with you three,” said Crash. “You're cramping my artistic development. I'm thinking of leaving and forming my own band.” “No you won't,” said Jimbo, “because you won't find anyone even worse than us. Let's face it. We're rubbish.” He was voicing a hitherto unspoken yet shared thought. The other musicians around them were, it was true, quite bad. But that's all they were. Some of them had some minor musical talent; as for the rest, they merely couldn't play. They didn't have a drummer who missed the drums and a bass guitarist with the same natural rhythm as a traffic accident. And they'd generally settled on their name. They might be unimaginative names, like 'A Big Troll and Some Other Trolls', or 'Dwarfs With Altitude', but at least they knew who they were. “How about "We're A Rubbish Band"?” said Noddy, sticking his hands in his pockets. “We may be rubbish,” snarled Crash, “but we're Music With Rocks In rubbish.” “Well, well, and how's it all going, then?” said Dibbler, pushing his way through the sacking. “It won't be long now - what're you doing here?” “We're in the programme, Mr Dibbler,” said Crash meekly. “How can you be in the programme when I don't know what you're called?” said Dibbler, waving a hand irritably at one of the posters. “Your name up there, is it?” “We're probably where it says Ande Supporting Bandes,” said Noddy. “What happened to your hand?” said Dibbler. “My trousers bit it,” said Crash, glowering at Scum. “Honest, Mr Dibbler, can't you give us one more chance?” “We'll see,” said Dibbler, and strode away. He was feeling too cheerful to argue much. The sausages-in-abun were selling very fast, but they were just covering minor expenses. There were ways of making money out of Music With Rocks In that he'd never thought of . . . and C. M. O. T. Dibbler thought of money all the time. For example, there were the shirts. They were of cotton so cheap and thin that it was practically invisible in a good light and tended to dissolve in the wash. He'd sold six hundred already! At five dollars each! All he had to do was buy them at ten for a dollar from Klatchian Wholesale Trading and pay Chalky half a dollar each to print them. And Chalky, with un-troll-like initiative, had even printed off his own shirts. They said: ChaIKies, 12 The Scours Thyngs Done. And people were buying them, paying money to advertise Chalky's workshop. Dibbler had never dreamed that the world could work like this. It was like watching sheep shear themselves. Whatever was causing this reversal of the laws of commercial practice he wanted in big lumps. He'd already sold the idea to Plugger the shoemaker in New Cobblers[28] and a hundred shirts had just walked out of the shop, which was more than Plugger's merchandise usually did. People wanted clothes just because they had writing on! He was making money. Thousands of dollars in a day! And a hundred music traps were lined up in front of the stage, ready to capture Buddy's voice. If it went on at this rate, in several billion years he'd be rich beyond his wildest dreams! Long Live Music With Rocks In! There was only one small cloud in this silver lining. The Festival was due to start at noon. Dibbler had planned to put on a lot of the small, bad groups first that is to say, all of them - and finish with The Band. So there was no reason to worry if they weren't here right now. But they weren't here right now. Dibbler was worried. A tiny dark figure quartered the shores of the Ankh, moving so fast as to be a blur. It zigzagged desperately back and forth, snuffling. People didn't see it. But they saw the rats. Black, brown and grey, they were leaving the godowns and wharfs by the river, running over one another's backs in a determined attempt to get as far away as possible. A haystack heaved, and gave birth to a Glod. He rolled out on to the ground, and groaned. Fine rain was drifting over the landscape. Then he staggered upright, looked around at the rolling fields, and disappeared behind a hedge for the moment. He trotted back a few seconds later, explored the haystack for a while until he found a part that was lumpier than normal, and kicked it repeatedly with his metal-topped boot. “Ow!” “C flat,” said Glod. “Good morning, Cliff. Hello, world! I don't think I can stand life in the fast leyline, you know - the cabbages, the bad beer, all those rats pestering you all the time–” Cliff crawled out. “I must have had some bad ammonium chloride last night,” he said. “Is the top of my head still on?” “Yes.” “Pity.” They hauled Asphalt out by his boots and brought him round by pounding him repeatedly. “You're our road manager,” said Glod. “You're supposed to see no harm comes to us.” “Well, I'm doing that, ain't I?” Asphalt muttered. “I'm not hitting you, Mr Glod. Where's Buddy?” The three circled the haystack, prodding at bulges which turned out to be damp hay. They found him on a small rise in the ground, not very far away. A few holly bushes grew there, carved into curves by the wind. He was sitting under one, guitar on his knees, rain plastering his hair to his face. He was asleep, and soaking wet. On his lap, the guitar played raindrops. “He's weird,” said Asphalt. “No,” said Glod. “He's wound up by some strange compulsion which leads him through dark pathways.” “Yeah. Weird.” The rain was slackening off. Cliff glanced at the sky. “Sun's high,” he said. “Oh, no!” said Asphalt. “How long were you asleep?” “Same as I am awake,” said Cliff. “It's almost noon. Where did I leave the horses? Has anyone seen the cart? Someone wake him up!” A few minutes later they were back on the road. “An' you know what?” said Cliff. “We left so quick last night I never did know if she turned up.” “What was her name?” said Glod. “Dunno,” said the troll. “Oh, that's real love, that is,” said Glod. “Ain't you got any romance in your soul?” said Cliff. “Eyes crossed in a crowded room?” said Glod. “No, not really–” They were pushed aside as Buddy leaned forward. “Shut up,” he said. The voice was low and contained no trace whatsoever of humour. “We were only joking,” said Glod. “Don't.” Asphalt concentrated on the road, aware of the general lack of amiability. “I expect you're looking forward to the Festival, eh?” he said, after a while. No-one replied. “I expect there'll be big crowds,” he said. There was silence, except for the clatter of the hoofs and the rattle of the cart. They were in the hills now, where the road wound alongside a gorge. There wasn't even a river down there, except in the wettest season. It was a gloomy area. Asphalt felt that it was getting gloomier. “I expect you'll really have fun,” he said, eventually. “Asphalt?” said Glod. “Yes, Mr Glod?” “Watch the road, will you?” The Archchancellor polished his staff as he walked along. It was a particularly good one, six feet long and quite magical. Not that he used magic very much. In his experience, anything that couldn't be disposed of with a couple of whacks from six feet of oak was probably immune to magic as well. “Don't you think we should have brought the senior wizards, sir?” said Ponder, struggling to keep up. “I'm afraid that taking them along in their present frame of mind would only make whatever happens–” Ridcully sought for a useful phrase, and settled for 'happen worse. I've insisted they stay in college.” “How about Drongo and the others?” said Ponder hopefully. “Would they be any good in the event of a thaumaturgical dimension rip of enormous proportions?” said Ridcully. “I remember poor old Mr Hong. One minute he was dishing up an order of double cod and mushy peas, the next . . .” “Kaboom?” said Ponder. “"Kaboom"?” said Ridcully, forcing his way up the crowded street. “Not that I heard tell. More like "Aaaaerrrrscream-gristlegristle-gristle-crack" and a shower of fried food. Big Mad Adrian and his friends any good when the chips are down?” “Um. Probably not, Archchancellor.” “Correct. People shout and run about. That never did any good. A pocket full of decent spells and a well-charged staff will get you out of trouble nine times out of ten.” “Nine times out of ten?” “Correct.” “How many times have you had to rely on them, sir?” “Well . . . there was Mr Hong . . . that business with the Thing in the Bursar's wardrobe . . . that dragon, you remember . . .” Ridcully's lips moved silently as he counted on his fingers. “Nine times, so far.” “It worked every time, sir?” “Absolutely! So there's no need to worry. Gangway! Wizard comin' through.” The city gates were open. Glod leaned forward as the cart rumbled in. “Don't go straight to the park,” he said. “But we're late,” said Asphalt. “This won't take long. Go to the Street of Cunning Artificers first.” “That's right on the other side of the river!” “It's important. We've got to pick up something.” People flocked the streets. This wasn't unusual, except that this time most of them were moving the same way. “And you get down in the back of the cart,” said Glod to Buddy. “We don't want young women trying to rip your clothes off, eh, Buddy . . . ?” He turned. Buddy had gone to sleep again. “Speaking for myself–” Cliff began. “You've only got a loincloth,” said Glod. “Well, they could grab it, couldn't they?” The cart threaded its way through the streets until it turned into Cunning Artificers. It was a street of tiny shops. In this street you could have anything made, repaired, crafted, rebuilt, copied or forged. Furnaces glowed in every doorway; smelters smoked in every backyard. Makers of intricate clockwork eggs worked alongside armourers. Carpenters worked next door to men who carved ivory into tiny shapes so delicate that they used grasshoppers' legs, cast in bronze, for saws. At least one in every four craftsmen was making tools to be used by the other three. Shops didn't just abut, they overlapped; if a carpenter had a big table to make he relied on the goodwill of his neighbours to make space, so that he'd be working at one end of it while two jewellers and a potter were using the other end as a wench. There were shops where you could drop in to be measured in the morning and pick up a complete suit of chain mail with an extra pair of pants in the afternoon. The cart stopped outside one small shop and Glod leapt down and went inside. Asphalt heard the conversation: “Have you done it?” “Here you are, mister. Right as rain.” “Will it play? You know I said where you have to have spent a fortnight wrapped in a bullock hide behind a waterfall before you should touch one of these things.” “Listen, mister, for this kind of money it had me in the shower for five minutes with a chamois leather on me head. Don't tell me that's not good enough for folk music.” There was a pleasant sound, which hung in the air for a moment before being lost in the busy din of the street. “We said twenty dollars, right?” “No, you said twenty dollars. I said twenty-five dollars.” “Just a minute, then.” Glod came out, and nodded at Cliff. “All right,” he said. “Cough up.” Cliff growled, but fumbled for a moment somewhere at the back of his mouth. They heard the cunning artificer say, “What the hell's that?” “A molar. Got to be worth at least–” “It'll do.” Glod came out again with a sack, which he tucked under the seat. “OK,” he said. “Head for the park.” They went in through one of the back gates. Or, at least, tried to. Two trolls barred their way. They had the glossy marble patina of Chrysoprase's basic gang thugs. He didn't have henchmen. Most trolls weren't clever enough to hench. “Dis is for der bands,” one said. “Days right,” said the other one. “We are The Band,” said Asphalt. “Which one?” said the first troll. “I got a list here.” “Days right.” “We're The Band With Rocks In,” said Glod. “Hah, you ain't them. I've seen them. Dere's a -guy with this glow round him, and when he plays der guitar it goes–' Whauauauaummmmm-eeeee-gngngn. “Dat's right–' The chord curled around the cart. Buddy was standing up, guitar at the ready. “Oh, wow,” said the first troll. “This are amazing!” He fumbled in his loincloth and produced a dog-eared piece of paper. “You couldn't write your name down, could you? My boy Clay, he won't believe I met–' “Yes, yes,” said Buddy wearily. “Pass it up.” “Only it not for me, it for my boy Clay–” said the troll, jumping from one foot to the other in excitement. “How d'you spell it?” “It don't matter, he can't read anyway.” “Listen,” said Glod, as the cart trundled into the backstage area, “someone's already playing. I said we–' Dibbler hurried up. “What kept you?” he said. “You'll be on soon! Right after . . . Boyz From The Wood. How did it go? Asphalt, come here.” He pulled the small troll into the shadows at the back of the stage. “You brought me some money?” he said. “About three thousand–' “Not so loud!” “I'm only whispering it, Mr Dibbler.” Dibbler looked around carefully. There was no such thing as a whisper in Ankh-Morpork when the sum involved had the word 'thousand' in it somewhere; people could hear you think that kind of money in Ankh-Morpork. “You be sure and keep an eye on it, right? There's going to be more before this day's out. I'll give Chrysoprase his seven hundred dollars and the rest is all prof–” He caught Asphalt's little beady eye and remembered himself. “Of course, there's depreciation . . . overheads . . . advertising . . . market research . . . buns . . . mustard . . . basically, I'll be lucky if I break even. I'm practically cutting me own throat in this deal.” “Yes, Mr Dibbler.” Asphalt peered around the edge of the stage. “Who's that playing now, Mr Dibbler?” "'And you".” “Sorry, Mr Dibbler?” “Only they write it &U,” said Dibbler. He relaxed a little and pulled out a cigar. “Don't ask me why. The right kind of name for musicians ought to be something like Blondie and his Merry Troubadours. Are they any good?” “Don't you know, Mr Dibbler?” “It's not what I call music,” said Dibbler. “When I was a lad we had proper music with real words . . . "Summer is icumen in, lewdly sing cuckoo", that sort of thing.” Asphalt looked at &U again. “Well, it's got a beat and you can dance to it,” he said, “but they're not very good. I mean, people are just watching them. They don't just watch when The Band are playing, Mr Dibbler.” “You're right,” said Dibbler. He looked at the front of the stage. In between the candles was a row of music traps. “You'd better go and tell them to get ready. I think this lot are running out of ideas.” “Um. Buddy?” He looked up from his guitar. Some of the other musicians were tuning theirs, but he'd found he never had to. He couldn't, anyway. The pegs didn't move. “What is it?” “Um,” said Glod. He waved vaguely at Cliff, who grinned sheepishly and produced the sack from behind his back. “This is . . . well, we thought . . . that is, all of us,” said Glod, “that . . . well, we saw it, you see, and I know you said it couldn't be repaired but there's people in this city that can do just about anything so we asked around, and we knew how much it meant to you, and there's this man in the Street of Cunning Artificers and he said he thought he could do it and it cost Cliff another tooth but here you are anyway because you're right, we're on top of the music business right enough and it's because of you and we know how much this meant to you so it's a sort of thank-you present, well, go on then, give it to him.” Cliff, who'd lowered his arm again as the sentence began to extend, pushed the sack towards the puzzled Buddy. Asphalt poked his head through the sacking. “We guys better get on the stage,” he said. “Come on!” Buddy put down the guitar. He opened the sack, and began to pull at the linen wrappings inside. “It's been tuned and everything,” said Cliff helpfully. The harp gleamed in the sun as the last wrapping came off. “They can do amazing things with glue and stuff,” said Glod. “ I mean, I know you said there wasn't anyone left in Llamedos that could repair it. But this is Ankh-Morpork. We can fix nearly everything.” “Please!” said Asphalt, as his head reappeared. “Mr Dibbler says you've got to come, they've started to throw things!” “I don't know much about strings,” said Glod, “but I had a go. Sounds . . . kind of nice.” “I . . . er . . . don't know what to say,” said Buddy. The chanting was like a hammer. “I . . . won this,” said Buddy, in a small, distant world of his own. “With a song. Sioni Bod Da, it was. I worked on it allll winter. Allll about . . . home, you know. And going away, see? And trees and things. The judges were . . . very plleased. They said that in fifty years I might realllly understand music.” He pulled the harp towards him. Dibbler pushed his way through the rabble of musicians backstage until he found Asphalt. “Well?” he said. “Where are they?” “They're just sitting around talking, Mr Dibbler.” “Listen,” said Dibbler. “You hear the crowd? It's Music With Rocks In they want! If they don't get it . . . they'd just better get it, all right? Letting the anticipation build up is all very well but . . . I want them on stage right now!” Buddy stared at his fingers. Then he looked up, whitefaced, at the other bands milling around. “You . . . with the guitar . . .” he said hoarsely. “Me, sir?” “Give it to me!” Every nascent group in Ankh-Morpork was in awe of The Band With Rocks In. The guitarist handed his instrument over with the expression of one passing over a holy item to be blessed. Buddy stared at it. It was one of Mr Wheedown's best. He struck a chord. The sound sounded like lead would sound if you could make guitar strings out of it. “OK, boys, what's the problem?” said Dibbler, hurrying towards them. “There's six thousand ears out there waiting to be filled up with music and you're still sitting around?” Buddy handed the guitar back to the musician and swung his own instrument around on its strap. He played a few notes that seemed to twinkle in the air. “But I can play this,” he said. “Oh, yes.” “Right, good, now get up there and play it,” said Dibbler. “Someone else give me a guitar!” Musicians fell over themselves to hand them to him. He strummed frantically at a couple. But the notes weren't simply flat. Flat would have been an improvement. The Musicians' Guild contingent had managed to secure an area close to the stage by the simple expedient of hitting any encroachers very hard. Mr Clete scowled at the stage. “I don't understand,” he said. “It's rubbish. It's all the same. It's just noise. What's so good about it?” Satchelmouth, who had twice had to stop himself tapping his feet, said, “ We haven't had the main band yet. Er. Are you sure you want to–” “We're within our rights,” said- Clete. He looked around at the shouting people. “There's a hot dog seller over there. Anyone else fancy a hot dog? Hot dog?” The Guild men nodded. “Hot dog? Right. That's three hot d–” The audience cheered. It wasn't the way that an audience normally applauds, with it starting at one point and rippling outwards, but all at once, every single mouth opening at the same time. Cliff had knuckled on to the stage. He sat down behind his rocks and looked desperately back towards the wings. Glod trailed on, blinking in the lights. And that seemed to be it. The dwarf turned and said something which was lost in the noise, and then stood looking awkward while the cheers gradually subsided. Buddy came on, staggering slightly as if he'd been pushed. Up until then Mr Clete had thought the crowd was yelling. And then he realized that it had been a mere murmur of approval compared to what was happening now. It went on and on while the boy stood there, head bowed. “But he's not doing anything,” Clete shouted into Satchelmouth's ear. “ Why're they all cheering him for not doing anything?” “Can't say, sir,” said Satchelmouth. He looked around at the glistening, staring, hungry faces, feeling like an atheist who has wandered into Holy Communion. The applause went on. It redoubled again when Buddy slowly raised his hands to the guitar. “He's not doing anything!” screamed Clete. “He's got us bang to rights, sir,” Satchelmouth bellowed. “He's not guilty of playing without belonging to the Guild if he doesn't play!” Buddy looked up. He stared at the audience so intently that Clete craned to see what it was the wretched boy was staring at. It was nothing. There was a patch of it right in front of the stage. People were packed tight everywhere else but there, right in front of the stage, was a little area of cleared grass. It seemed to rivet Buddy's attention. “Uh-huh-huh . . .” Clete rammed his hands over his ears but the force of the cheering made his head echo. And then, very gradually, layer by layer, it died away. It yielded to the sound of thousands of people being very quiet, which was somehow, Satchelmouth thought, a lot more dangerous. Glod glanced at Cliff, who made a face. Buddy was still standing, staring at the audience. If he doesn't play, Glod thought, then we've had it. He hissed at Asphalt, who sidled over. “Is the cart ready?” “Yes, Mr Glod.” “You filled up the horses with oats?” “Just like you said, Mr Glod.” “OK.” The silence was velvet. And it had that quality of suction found in the Patrician's study and in holy places and deep canyons, engendering in people a terrible desire to shout or sing or yell their name. It was a silence that demanded: fill me up. Somewhere in the darkness, someone coughed. Asphalt heard his name hissed from the side of the stage. With extreme reluctance he sidled over to the darkness, where Dibbler was frantically beckoning him. “You know that bag?” said Dibbler. “Yes, Mr Dibbler. I put it–” Dibbler held up two small but very heavy sacks. “Tip these in and be ready to leave in a big hurry.” “Yes, that's right, Mr Dibbler, because Glod said–” “Do it now!” Glod looked around. If I throw away the horn and helmet and this chain mail shirt, he thought, I might just get out of here alive. What's he doing? Buddy put down the guitar and walked into the wings. He returned before the audience had realized what was happening. He was carrying the harp. He stood facing the audience. Glod, who was closest to him, heard him murmur: “Just once? Cwm on? Just one more time? And then I'llll do whatefer you want, see? I'llll pay for it.” There were a few faint chords from the guitar. Buddy said, “I mean it, see.” There was another chord. “Just once.” Buddy smiled at an empty space in the audience, and began to play. Every note was sharp as a bell and as simple as sunlight - so that in the prism of the brain it broke up and flashed into a million colours. Glod's mouth hung open. And then the music unfolded in his head. It wasn't Music With Rocks In, although it used the same doors. The fall of the notes conjured up memories of the mine where he'd been born, and dwarf bread just like Mum used to hammer out on her anvil, and the moment when he'd first realized that he'd fallen in love.[29] He remembered life in the caves under Copperhead, before the city had called him, and more than anything else he wanted to be home. He'd never realized that humans could sing hole. Cliff laid aside his hammers. The same notes crept into his corroded ears, but in his mind they became quarries and moorlands. He told himself, as emotion filled his head with its smoke, that right after this he was going to go back and see how his old mum was, and never leave ever again. Mr Dibbler found his own mind spawning strange and disturbing thoughts. They involved things you couldn't sell and shouldn't pay for . . . The Lecturer in Recent Runes thumped the crystal ball. “The sound is a bit tinny,” he said. “Get out of the way, I can't see,” said the Dean. Recent Runes sat down again. They stared at the little image. “This doesn't sound like Music With Rocks In,” said the Bursar “Shut up,” said the Dean. He blew his nose. It was sad music. But it waved the sadness like a battle flag. It said the universe had done all it could but you were still alive. The Dean, who was as impressionable as a dollop of warm wax, wondered if he could learn to play the harmonica. The last note faded. There was no applause. The audience sagged a little, as each individual came down from whatever reflective corner they'd been occupying. One or two of them murmured things like 'Yeah, that's how it is', or 'You an' me both, brother'. A lot of people blew their noses, sometimes on other people. And then reality snuck back in, as it always does. Glod heard Buddy say, very quietly, “Thank you.” The dwarf leaned sideways and said, out of the corner of his mouth: “What was that?” Buddy seemed to shake himself awake. “What? Oh. It's called Sioni Bod Da. What do you think?” “It's got . . . hole,” said Glod. “It's definitely got hole.” Cliff nodded. When you're a long way from the old familiar mine or mountain, when you're lost among strangers, when you're just a great big aching nothingness inside . . . only then can you really sing hole. “She's watching us,” whispered Buddy. “The invisible girl?” said Glod, staring at the empty grass. “Yes.” “Ah, yes. I can definitely not see her. Good. And now, if you don't play Music With Rocks In this time, we're dead.” Buddy picked up the guitar. The strings trembled under his fingers. He felt elated. He'd been allowed to play it in front of them. Everything else was unimportant now. Whatever happened next didn't matter. “You ain't heard nothing yet,” he said. He stamped his foot. “One, two, one two three four–” Glod had time to recognize the tune before the music took him. He'd heard it only a few seconds before. But now it swung. Ponder peered into his box. “I think we're trapping this, Archchancellor,” he said, “but I don't know what it is.” Ridcully nodded, and scanned the audience. They were listening with their mouths open. The harp had scoured their souls, and now the guitar was hot-wiring their spines. And there was an empty patch near the stage. Ridcully put a hand over one eye and focused until the other eye watered. Then he smiled. He turned to look at the Musicians' Guild and saw, to his horror, that Satchelmouth was raising a crossbow. He seemed to be doing it with reluctance; Mr Clete was prodding him. Ridcully raised a finger and appeared to scratch his nose. Even above the sound of the playing he heard the twang as the crossbow's string broke and, to his secret delight, a yelp from Mr Clete as a loose end caught his ear. He hadn't even thought of that. “I'm just an old softy, that's my trouble,” Ridcully said to himself. “Hat. Hat. Hat.” “You know, this was an extremely good idea,” said the Bursar, as the tiny images moved in the crystal ball. “What an excellent way to see things. Could we perhaps have a look at the Opera House?” “How about the Skunk Club in Brewer Street?” said the Senior Wrangler. “Why?” said the Bursar. “Just a thought,” said the Senior Wrangler quickly. “I've never been in there at all in any way, you understand.” “We really shouldn't be doing this,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “ It's really not a proper use of a magic crystal–” “I can't think of a better use of a magic crystal,” said the Dean, “than to see people playing Music With Rocks In.” The Duck Man, Coffin Henry, Arnold Sideways, Foul Ole Ron and Foul Ole Ron's Smell and Foul Ole Ron's dog ambled around the edges of the crowd. Pickings had been particularly good. They always were when Dibbler's hot dogs were on sale. There were some things people wouldn't eat even under the influence of Music With Rocks In. There were some things even mustard couldn't disguise. Arnold gathered up the scraps and put them in a basket on his trolley. There was going to be the prince of a primal soup under the bridge tonight. The music had poured over them. They ignored it. Music With Rocks In was the stuff of dreams, and there were no dreams under the bridge. Then they'd stopped and listened, as new music poured out over the park and took every man and woman and thing by the hand and showed him or her or it the way home. The beggars stood and listened, mouths open. Some-one looking from face to face, if anyone did look at the invisible beggars, would have had to turn away . . . Except from Mr Scrub. You couldn't turn away there. When the band were playing Music With Rocks In     again, the beggars got back down to earth. Except for Mr Scrub. He just stood and stared. The last note rang out. Then, as the tsunami of applause began to roll, The Band ran off into the darkness. Dibbler watched happily from the wings at the other side of the stage. He'd been a bit worried for a while there, but it all seemed back on course now. Someone tugged at his sleeve. “What're they doing, Mr Dibbler?” Dibbler turned. “Scum, isn't it?” he said. “It's Crash, Mr Dibbler.” “What they're doing, Scum, is not giving the audience what they want,” said Dibbler. “Superb business practice. Wait till they're screaming for it, and then take it away. You wait. By the time the crowd is stamping its feet they'll come prancing back on again. Superb timing. When you learn that sort of trick, Scum–” “It's Crash, Mr Dibbler.” “-then maybe you'll know how to play Music With Rocks In. Music With Rocks In, Scum–” “-Crash- “. . . isn't just music,” said Dibbler, pulling some cotton wool out of his ears. “It's lots of things. Don't ask me how.” Dibbler lit a cigar. The din made the match flame flicker. “Any minute now,” he said. “You'll see.” There was a fire that had been made of old boots and mud. A grey shape circled it, snuffling excitedly. “Get on, get on, get on!” “Mr Dibbler's not going to like this,” moaned Asphalt. “Tough one for Mr Dibbler,” said Glod, as they hauled Buddy into the cart. “Now I want to see those hoofs spark, know what I mean?” “Head for Quirm,” said Buddy, as the cart jerked into motion. He didn't know why. It just seemed the right destination. “Not a good idea,” said Glod. “People'll probably want to ask questions about that cart I pulled out of the swimming pool.” “Head towards Quirm!” “Mr Dibbler's really not going to like this,” said Asphalt, as the cart swung out on to the road. “Any . . . moment . . . now,” said Dibbler. “I expect so,” said Crash, “because they're stamping their feet, I think.” There was indeed a certain thumping under the cheers. “You wait,” said Dibbler. “They'll judge it just right. No problem. Akk!” “You're supposed to put your cigar in your mouth the other way round, Mr Dibbler,” said Crash meekly. “Oh, shut up,” said Glod. “I don't know what he's got not to like.” “Well, for a start,” said Asphalt, “the main thing, the thing he won't like most, is . . . um . . . we've got the money . . .” Cliff reached down under the seat. There was a dull, clinking noise, of the sort made by a lot of gold keeping nice and quiet. The waxing moon lit the landscape as the cart bounced out of the gates and along the Quirm road. “How did you know I'd got the cart made ready?” said Glod, as they landed after a brief flight. “I didn't,” said Buddy. “But you ran out!” “Yes.” “Why?” “It was . . . just . . . time.” “Why'd you want to go to Quirm?” said Cliff. “I . . . I can get a boat home, can't I?” said Buddy. “That's right. A boat home.” Glod glanced at the guitar. This felt wrong. It couldn't just end . . . and then they'd just walk away . . . He shook his head. What could go wrong now? “Mr Dibbler's really not going to like this,” moaned Asphalt. The stage was trembling with the vibration of the stamping. There was some shouting now. Dibbler turned to Crash and grinned horribly. “Hey, I've just had a great idea,” he said. A tiny shape swarmed up the road from the river. Ahead of it, the lights of the stage glowed in the dusk. The Archchancellor nudged Ponder, and flourished his staff. “Now,” he said, “if there's a sudden rip in reality and horrible screaming Things come through, our job is to–” He scratched his head. “What is it the Dean says? Kick a righteous donkey?” “Some righteous ass, sir,” said Ponder. “He says kick some righteous ass.” Ridcully peered at the empty stage. “I don't see one,” he said. The four members of The Band sat up and stared straight ahead, over the moonlit plain. Finally Cliff broke the silence. “How much?” “Best part of five thousand dollars–” “FIVE THOUSAND DOL–?” Cliff clamped his huge hand over Glod's mouth. “Why?” said Cliff, as the dwarf squirmed. “MMF MMFMMF MMFMMFS?” “I got a bit confused,” said Asphalt. “Sorry.” “We'll never get far enough,” said Cliff. “You know dat? Not even if we die.” “I tried to tell you all!” Asphalt moaned. “Maybe . . . maybe we could take it back?” “MMF MMF MMF?” “How can we do dat?” “MMF MMF MMF?” “Glod,” said Cliff, in a reasonable tone of voice, “I'm going to take my hand away. And you're not to shout. Right?” “Mmf.” “OK.” “TAKE IT BACK? FIVE THOUSAND DOL–mmfmmfmmf–” “I suppose some of dat is ours,” said Cliff, tightening his grip. “Mmf!” “I know I haven't had any wages,” said Asphalt. “Let's get to Quirm,” said Buddy urgently. “We can take out what's . . . ours and send the rest back to him.” Cliff scratched his chin with his free hand. “Some of it belongs to Chrysoprase,” said Asphalt. “Mr Dibbler borrowed some money off'f him to set up the Festival.” “We won't get away from him,” said Cliff, “except if we drive all the way to the Rim and chuck ourselves over. And even den, only maybe.” “We could explain . . . couldn't . . . we?” said Asphalt. A vision of Chrysoprase's gleaming marble head formed in their vision. “Mmf.” No. “Quirm, then,” said Buddy. Cliff's diamond teeth glittered in the moonlight. “I thought . . .” he said, “I thought . . . I heard something on the road back there. Sounded like harness–” The invisible beggars began to wander away from the park. Foul Ole Ron's Smell had stayed on for a while, because it was enjoying the music. And Mr Scrub still hadn't moved. “We got nearly twenty sausages,” said Arnold Sideways. Coffin Henry coughed a cough with bones in it. “Buggrem?” said Foul Ole Ron. “ I told 'em, spyin' on me with rays!” Something bounded across the trodden turf towards Mr Scrub, ran up his robe and grabbed either side of his hood with both paws. There was the hollow sound of two skulls meeting. Mr Scrub staggered backwards. SQUEAK! Mr Scrub blinked and sat down suddenly. The beggars stared down at the little figure jumping up and down on the cobbles. Being of an invisible nature themselves, they were naturally good at seeing things unseen by other men or, in the case of Foul Ole Ron, by any known eyeball. “That's a rat,” said the Duck Man. “Buggrit,” said Foul Ole Ron. The rat pranced in circles on its hind legs, squeaking loudly. Mr Scrub blinked again . . . And Death stood up. I HAVE TO GO, he said. SQUEAK! Death strode away, stopped, and came back. He pointed a skeletal finger at the Duck Man. WHY, he said, ARE YOU WALKING AROUND WITH THAT DUCK? “What duck?” AH. SORRY. “Listen, how can it go wrong?” said Crash, waving his hands frantically. “It's got to work. Everyone knows that when you get your big chance because the star is ill or something, then the audience'll go mad for you. It happens every time, right?” Jimbo, Noddy and Scum peered around the curtain at the pandemonium. They nodded uncertainly. Of course things always went well when you had your big chance . . . “We could do "Anarchy in Ankh-Morpork",” said Jimbo doubtfully. “We haven't got that right,” said Noddy. “Yeah, but there's nothing new about that.” “I suppose we could give it a try . . . “Excellent!” said Crash. He raised his guitar defiantly. “ We can do it! For the sake of sex and drugs and Music With Rocks In!” He was aware of their disbelieving stares. “You never said you'd had any drugs,” said Jimbo accusingly. “If it comes to that,” said Noddy, “I don't reckon you've ever had–” “One out of three ain't bad!” shouted Crash. “Yes it is, it's only thirty-three per–” “Shut up!” People were stamping their feet and clapping their hands derisively. Ridcully squinted along his staff. “There was the Holy St Bobby,” he said. “I suppose he was a righteous ass, come to think about it.” “Sorry?” said Ponder. “He was a donkey,” said Ridcully. “Hundreds of years ago. Got made a bishop in the Omnian church for carrying some holy man, I believe. Can't get more righteous than that.” “No . . . no . . . no . . . Archchancellor,” said Ponder. “It's just a sort of military saying. It means . . . the . . . you know, sir . . . backside.” “I wonder how we tell which bit that is,” Ridcully said. “The creatures from the Dungeon Dimensions have legs and things all over the place.” “I don't know, sir; said Ponder wearily. “Perhaps we'd just better kick everything, to be on the safe side.” Death caught up with the rat near the Brass Bridge. No-one had disturbed Albert. Since he was in the gutter, he'd become nearly as invisible as Coffin Henry. Death rolled his sleeve up. His hand moved through the fabric of Albert's coat as if it was mist. DAFT OLD FOOL ALWAYS TOOK IT WITH HIM, he muttered. I CAN'T IMAGINE WHAT HE THOUGHT I'D DO WITH IT . . . The hand came out, cupping a fragment of curved glass. A pinch of sand glittered on it. THIRTY-FOUR SECONDS, said Death. He handed the glass to the rat. FIND SOMETHING TO PUT THIS IN. AND DON'T DROP IT. He stood up and surveyed the world. There was the glong-glong-glong noise of an empty beer bottle bouncing on the stones as the Death of Rats trotted back out of the Mended Drum. Thirty-four seconds of sand orbited slightly erratically inside it. Death hauled his servant to his feet. No time was passing for Albert. His eyes were glazed, his bodyclock idled. He hung from his master's arm like a cheap suit. Death snatched the bottle from the rat and tilted it gently. A bit of life began to flow. WHERE IS MY GRANDDAUGHTER? he said. YOU HAVE TO TELL ME. OTHERWISE I CAN'T KNOW. Albert's eyes clicked open. “She's trying to save the boy, Master!” he said. “She doesn't know the meaning of the word Duty–” Death tipped the bottle back. Albert froze in midsentence. BUT WE DO, DON'T WE? said Death bitterly. YOU AND ME. He nodded to the Death of Rats. LOOK AFTER HIM, he said. Death snapped his fingers. Nothing happened, apart from the click. ER. THIS IS VERY EMBARRASSING. SHE HAS SOME OF MY POWER. I DO SEEM MOMENTARILY UNABLE TO . . . ER . . . The Death of Rats squeaked helpfully. NO. YOU LOOK AFTER HIM. I KNOW WHERE THEY'RE GOING. HISTORY LIKES CYCLES. Death looked at the towers of Unseen University, rising over the rooftops. AND SOMEWHERE IN THIS TOWN IS A HORSE I CAN RIDE. “Hold on. Something's coming . . . at the stage. “What are they?” Ponder stared. “I think . . . they may be human, sir.” The crowd had stopped stamping its collective feet and was watching in a sullen 'this had better be good' silence. Crash stepped forward with a big mad glossy grin on his face. “Yes, but any minute they'll split down the middle and gharstely creatures will come out,” said Ridcully hopefully. Crash hefted his guitar and played a chord. “My word!” said Ridcully. “Sir?” “That sounded exactly like a cat trying to go to the lavatory through a sewn-up bum.” Ponder looked aghast. “Sir, you're not telling me you ever–” “No, but that's what it'd sound like, sure enough. Exactly like that.” The crowd hovered, uncertain of this new development. “Hello, Ankh-Morpork!” said Crash. He nodded at Scum, who hit his drums at the second attempt. Ande Supporting Bandes launched into its first and, in the event, last number. Three last numbers, in fact. Crash was trying for 'Anarchy in Ankh-Morpork', Jimbo' had frozen because he couldn't see himself in a mirror and was playing the only page he could remember from Blert Wheedown's book, which was the index, and Noddy had got his fingers caught in the strings. As far as Scum was concerned, tunes' names were things that happened to other people. He was concentrating on the rhythm. Most people don't have to. But Ridcully glared for Scum, even clapping his hands was an exercise in concentration. So he played in a small contented world of his own, and didn't even notice the audience rise like a bad meal and hit the stage. Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobbs were on duty at the Deosil Gate, sharing a comradely cigarette and listening to the distant roar of the Festival. “Sounds like a big night,” said Sergeant Colon. “Right enough, sarge.” “Sounds like some trouble.” “Good job we're out of it, sarge.” A horse came clattering up the street, its rider struggling to keep on. As it got closer they made out the contorted features of C. M. O. T. Dibbler, riding with the ease of a sack of potatoes. “Did a cart just go through here?” he demanded. “Which one, Throat?” said Sergeant Colon. “What do you mean, which one?” “Well, there was two,” said the sergeant. “One with a couple of trolls in, and one with Mr Clete just after that. You know, the Musicians' Guild–” “Oh, no!” Dibbler pummelled the horse into action again and bounced off into the night. “What was that about?” said Nobby. “Someone probably owes him a penny,” said Sergeant Colon, leaning on his spear. There was the sound of another horse approaching. The watchmen flattened themselves against the wall as it thundered past. It was big, and white. The rider's black cloak streamed in the air, as did her hair. There was a rush of wind and then they were gone, out on to the plains. Nobby stared after it. “That was her,” he said. “Susan Death.” The light in the crystal faded to a dot and winked out. “That's three days' worth of magic I won't see again,” the Senior Wrangler complained. “Worth every thaum,” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. “Not as good as seeing them live, though,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “There's something about the way the sweat drips on you.” “I thought it ended just as it was getting good,” said the Chair. “I thought–” The wizards went rigid as the howl rang through the building. It was slightly animal but also mineral, metallic, edged like a saw. Eventually the Lecturer in Recent Runes said, “Of course, just because we've heard a spine-chilling bloodcurdling scream of the sort to make your very marrow freeze in your bones doesn't automatically mean there's anything wrong.” The wizards looked out into the corridor. “It came from downstairs somewhere,” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, heading for the staircase. “So why are you going upstairs?” “Because I'm not daft!” “But it might be some terrible emanation!” “You don't say?” said the Chair, still accelerating. “All right, please yourself. That's the students' floor up there.” “Ah. Er–” The Chair came down slowly, occasionally glancing fearfully up the stairs. “Look, nothing can get in,” said the Senior Wrangler. “This place is protected by very powerful spells.” “That's right,” said Recent Runes. “And I'm sure we've all been strengthening them periodically, as is our duty,” said the Senior Wrangler. “Er. Yes. Yes. Of course,” said Recent Runes. The sound came again. There was a slow pulsating rhythm in the roar. “The Library, I think,” said the Senior Wrangler. “Anyone seen the Librarian lately?” “He always seems to be carrying something when I see him. You don't think he's up to something occult, do you?” “This is a magical university.” “Yes, but more occult is what I mean.” “Keep together, will you?” “I am together.” “For if we are united, what can possibly harm us?” “Well, (1), a great big–” “Shut up!” The Dean opened the library door. It was warm, and velvety quiet. Occasionally, a book would rustle its pages or clank its chains restlessly. A silvery light was coming from the stairway to the basement. There was also the occasional 'ook'. “He doesn't sound very upset,” said the Bursar. The wizards crept down the steps. There was no mistaking the door - the light streamed from it. The wizards stepped into the cellar. They stopped breathing. It was on a raised dais in the centre of the floor, with candles all around it. It was Music With Rocks In. A tall dark figure skidded around the corner into Sator Square and, accelerating, pounded through the gateway of Unseen University. It was seen only by Modo the dwarf gardener, as he happily wheeled his manure barrow through the twilight. It had been a good day. Most days were, in his experience. He hadn't heard about the Festival. He hadn't heard about Music With Rocks In. Modo didn't hear about most things, because he wasn't listening. He liked compost. Next to compost he liked roses, because they were something to compost the compost for. He was by nature a contented dwarf, who took in his short stride all the additional problems of gardening in a high magical environment, such as greenfly, whitefly and lurching things with tentacles. Proper lawn maintenance could be a real problem when things from another dimension were allowed to slither over it. Someone pounded across it and disappeared through the doorway of the library. Modo looked at the marks and said, “Oh, dear.” The wizards started breathing again. “Oh, my,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “Rave In . . .” said the Senior Wrangler. “Now that's what I call Music With Rocks In,” sighed the Dean. He stepped forward with the rapt expression of a miser in a goldmine. The candlelight glittered off black and silver. There was a lot of both. “Oh, my,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. It was like some kind of incantation. “I say, isn't that my nose-hair mirror?” said the Bursar, breaking the spell. “That's my nose-hair mirror, I'm sure–” Except that while the black was black the silver wasn't really silver. It was whatever mirrors and bits of shiny tin and tinsel and wire the Librarian had been able to scrounge and bend into shape . . . “–it's got the little silver frame . . . why's it on that two-wheeled cart? Two wheels, one after the other? Ridiculous. It'll fall over, depend upon it. And where's the horse going to go, may I ask?” The Senior Wrangler tapped him gently on the shoulder. “Bursar? Word to the wizard, old chap.” “Yes? What is it?” “I think if you don't stop talking this minute the Dean will kill you.” There were two small cart-wheels, one behind the other, with a saddle in between them. In front of the saddle was a pipe with a complicated double curve in it, so that someone sitting in the saddle would be able to get a grip. The rest was junk. Bones and tree branches and a jackdaw's banquet of gewgaws. A horse's skull was strapped over the front wheel, and feathers and beads hung from every point. It was junk, but as it stood in the flickering glow it had a dark, organic quality - not exactly life, but something dynamic and disquieting and coiled and potent that was making the Dean vibrate on his feet. It radiated something that suggested that, just by existing and looking like it did, it was breaking at least nine laws and twenty-three guidelines. “Is he in love?” said the Bursar. “Make it go!” said the Dean. “It's got to go! It's meant to go!” “Yes, but what is it?” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. “It's a masterpiece,” said the Dean. “A triumph!” “Oook?” “Perhaps you have to push it along with your feet?” whispered the Senior Wrangler. The Dean shook his head in a preoccupied way. “We're wizards, aren't we?” he said. “I expect we could make it go.” He walked around the circle. The draught from his studded leather robe made the candle-flames waver and the shadows of the thing danced on the wall. The Senior Wrangler bit his lip. “Not too certain about that,” he said. “Looks like it's got more than enough magic in it as it is. Is it . . . er. . . is it breathing or is that just my imagination?” The Senior Wrangler spun around and waved a finger at the Librarian. “You built it?” he barked. The orang-utan shook his head. “Oook.” “What'd he say?” “He said he didn't build it, he just put it together,” said the Dean, without turning his head. “Ook.” “I'm going to sit on it,” said the Dean. The other wizards felt something draining out of their souls and sudden uncertainty sloshing into its place. “I wouldn't do that if I were you, old chap,” said the Senior Wrangler. “You don't know where it might take you.” “Don't care,” said the Dean. He still didn't take his eyes off the thing. “I mean, it's not of this world,” said the Senior Wrangler. “I've been of this world for more than seventy years; said the Dean, “and it is extremely boring.” He stepped into the circle and put his hand on the thing's saddle. It trembled. EXCUSE ME. The tall dark figure was suddenly there, in the doorway, and then in a few strides was in the circle. A skeletal hand dropped on to the Dean's shoulder and propelled him gently but unstoppably aside. THANK YOU. The figure vaulted into the saddle and reached out for the handlebars. It looked down at the thing it bestrode. Some situations you had to get exactly right . . . A finger pointed at the Dean. I NEED YOUR CLOTHES. The Dean backed away. “What?” GIVE ME YOUR COAT. The Dean, with great reluctance, shrugged off his leather robe and handed it over. Death put it on. That was better . . . NOW, LET ME SEE . . . A blue glow flickered under his fingers and spread in jagged blue lines, forming a corona at the tip of every feather and bead. “We're in a cellar!” said the Dean. “Doesn't that matter?” Death gave him a look. NO. Modo straightened up, and paused to admire his rosebed, which contained the finest display of pure black roses he'd ever managed to produce. A high magical environment could be useful, sometimes. Their scent hung on the evening air like an encouraging word. The flower-bed erupted. Modo had a brief vision of flames and something arcing into the sky before his vision was blotted out by a rain of beads, feathers and soft black petals. He shook his head, and ambled off to fetch his shovel. “Sarge?” “Yes, Nobby?” “You know your teeth . . .” “What teeth?” “The teeth like in your mouth?” “Oh, right. Yep. What about 'em?” “How come they fit together at the back?” There was a pause while Sergeant Colon prodded the recesses of his mouth with his tongue. “It uh ah–” he began, and untangled himself. “Interesting observation, Nobby.” Nobby finished rolling a cigarette. “Reckon we should shut the gates, sarge?” “Might as well.” With the exact minimum amount of effort they swung the huge gates together. It wasn't much of a precaution. The keys had been lost a long time ago. Even the sign 'Thank you for Nott Invading Our City' was barely readable now. “I reckon we should–” Colon began, and then peered down the street. “What's that light?” he said. “And what's making that noise?” Blue light glittered on the buildings at the end of the long street. “Sounds like some kind of wild animal,” said Corporal Nobbs. The light resolved itself into two actinic blue lances. Colon shaded his eyes. “Looks like some kind of . . . horse or something.” “It's coming straight for the gates!” The tortured roar bounced off the houses. “Nobby, I don't think it's gonna stop!” Corporal Nobbs threw himself flat against the wall. Colon, slightly more aware of the responsibilities of rank, waved his hands vaguely at the approaching light. “Don't do it! Don't do it!” And then picked himself up out of the mud. Rose-petals, feathers and sparks fell softly around him. In front of him, a hole in the gates sparkled blue around the edges. “That's old oak, that is,” he said vaguely. “I just hope they don't make us pay for it out of our own money. Did you see who it was, Nobby? Nobby?” Nobby edged carefully along the wall. “He . . . he had a rose in his teeth, sarge.” “Yes, but would you recognize him if you saw him again?” Nobby swallowed. “If I didn't, sarge,” he said, “it'd have to be one hell of an identity parade.” “I don't like this, Mr Glod! I don't like this!” “Shut up and steer!” “But this isn't the kind of road you're supposed to go fast on!” “That's all right! You can't see where you're going anyway!” The cart went around a corner on two wheels. It was starting to snow, a weak, wet snow that melted as soon as it hit the ground. “But we're back in the hills! That's a drop down there! We'll go over the side!” “You want Chrysoprase to catch us?” “Giddyup, yah!” Buddy and Cliff clung to the sides of the cart as it rocked from side to side into the darkness. “Are they still behind us?” Glod yelled. “Can't see anything!” shouted Cliff. “If you stopped the cart, maybe we could hear something?” “Yeah, but suppose we heard something really up close?” “Giddyup hiyah!” “OK, so how about if we throw the money out?” “FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS?” Buddy looked over the edge of the cart. Darkness with a certain gulch-like quality, a certain suggestion of depth, was a few feet from the side of the road. The guitar twanged gently to the rhythm of the wheels. He picked it up in one hand. Strange how it was never silent. You couldn't silence it even by pressing on the strings heavily with both hands; he'd tried. There was the harp beside it. The strings were absolutely silent. “This is daft!” shouted Glod, from the front. “Slow down! You nearly had us over the side that time!” Asphalt hauled on the reins. The cart slowed, eventually, to walking pace. “That's better–” The guitar screamed. The note was so high that it hit the ears like a needle. The horses jerked nervously in the shafts and then shot forward again. “Hold them!” “I am!” Glod turned around, gripping the back of the seat. “Throw that thing out!” Buddy gripped the guitar and stood up, moving his arm back to hurl the thing into the gorge. He hesitated. “Throw it out!” Cliff got to his feet and tried to take the guitar. “No!” Buddy whirled it around his head and caught the troll on the chin, knocking him backwards. “No!” “Glod, slow down–” And a white horse was overtaking them. A hooded shape leaned over and grabbed the reins. The cart hit a stone and was airborne for a moment before crashing back down on the road. Asphalt heard the splintering of posts as the wheels smashed into the fence, saw the traces snap, felt the cart swing around . . . . . . and stop. So much happened later that Glod never did tell anyone about the sensation he had, that although the cart had definitely wedged itself uncertainly on the edge of the cliff it had also plunged on, tumbling over and over, towards the rocks . . . Glod opened his eyes. The image tugged at him like a bad dream. But he'd been thrown across the cart as it skewed around, and his head was lying on the backboard. He was looking straight into the gorge. Behind him, wood creaked. Someone was holding on to his leg. “Who's that?” he whispered, in case heavier words would send the cart over. “It's me. Asphalt. Who's that holding on to my foot?” “Me,” said Cliff. “What're you holding on to, Glod?” “Just . . . something my flailing hand happened to snatch at,” said Glod. The cart creaked again. “It's the gold, isn't it?” said Asphalt. “Admit it. You're holding on to the gold.” “Idiot dwarf!” shouted Cliff. “Let it go or we're going to die!” “Letting go of five thousand dollars is dying,” said Glod. “Fool! You can't take it with you!” Asphalt scrambled for purchase on the wood. The cart shifted. “It's going to be the other way around in a minute,” he muttered. “So who,” said Cliff, as the cart sagged another inch, “is holding Buddy?” There was a pause while the three counted their extremities and attachments thereto. “I . . . er . . . think he might have gone over,” said Glod. Four chords rang out. Buddy hung from a rear wheel, feet over the drop, and jerked as the music played an eight-note riff on his soul. Never age. Never die. Live for ever in that one last white-hot moment, when the crowd screamed. When every note was a heartbeat. Burn across the sky. You will never grow old. They will never say you died. That's the deal. You will be the greatest musician in the world. Live fast. Die young. The music tugged at his soul. Buddy's legs swung up slowly and touched the rocks of the cliff. He braced himself, eyes shut, and pulled at the wheel. A hand touched his shoulder. “No!” Buddy's eyes snapped open. He turned his head and looked into Susan's face, and then up at the cart. “What . . . ?” he said, his voice slurred with shock. He let go with one hand and fumbled clumsily for the guitar strap, slipping it off his shoulder. The strings howled as he gripped the guitar's neck and flung it into the darkness. His other hand slipped on the freezing wheel, and he dropped into the gorge. There was a white blur. He landed heavily on something velvety and smelling of horse sweat. Susan steadied him with her free hand as she urged Binky upwards through the sleet. The horse alighted on the road, and Buddy slipped off into the mud. He raised himself on his elbows. “You?” “Me,” said Susan. Susan pulled the scythe out of its holster. The blade sprang out; snowflakes that fell on it split gently into two halves without a pause in their descent. “Let's get your friends, shall we?” There was a friction in the air, as if the attention of the world were being focused. Death stared into the future. OH, BLAST. Things were coming apart. The Librarian had done his best, but mere bone and wood couldn't take this sort of strain. Feathers and beads whirled away and landed, smoking, in the road. A wheel parted company from its axle and bounced away, shedding spokes, as the machine took a curve almost horizontally. It made no real difference. Something like a soul flickered in the air where the missing pieces had been. If you took a shining machine, and shone a light on it so that there were gleams and highlights, and then took away the machine but left the light . . . Only the horse's skull remained. That and the rear wheel, which spun in forks now only of flickering light, and was smouldering. The thing whirred past Dibbler, causing his horse to throw him into the ditch and bolt. Death was used to travelling fast. In theory he was already everywhere, waiting for almost anything else. The fastest way to travel is to be there already. But he'd never been this fast while going this slow. The landscape had often been a blur, but never while it was only four inches from his knee on the bends. The cart shifted again. Now even Cliff was looking down into the darkness. Something touched his shoulder. HANG ON TO THIS. BUT DON'T TOUCH THE BLADE. Buddy leaned past. “Glod, if you let go of the bag I ,;an–” “Don't even think about it.” “There's no pockets in a shroud, Glod.” “You got the wrong tailor, then.” In the end Buddy grabbed a spare leg and hauled. One at a time, clambering over one another, the Band eased themselves back on to the road. And turned to look at Susan. “White horse,” said Asphalt. “Black cloak. Scythe. Um.” “You can see her too?” said Buddy. “I hope we're not going to wish we couldn't,” said Cliff. Susan held up a lifetimer and peered at it critically. “I suppose it's too late to cut some sort of deal?” said Glod. “I'm just looking to see if you're dead or not,” said Susan. “I think I'm alive,” said Glod. “Hold on to that thought.” They turned at a creaking sound. The cart slid forward and dropped into the gorge. There was a crash as it hit an outcrop halfway to the bottom, and then a more distant thud as it smashed into the rocks. There was a 'whoomph' and orange flames blossomed as the oil in the lamps exploded. Out of the debris, trailing flame, rolled a burning wheel. “We would have been in dat,” said Cliff. “You think maybe we're better off now?” said Glod. “Yep,” said Cliff. "Cos we're not dyin' in the wreckage of a burning cart.” “Yes, but she looks a bit . . . occult.” “Fine by me. I'll take occult over deep-fried any day.” Behind them, Buddy turned to Susan. “I . . . think I've worked it out,” she said. “The music . . . twisted up history, I think. It's not supposed to be in our history. Can you remember where you got it from?” Buddy just stared. When you've been saved from certain death by an attractive girl on a white horse, you don't expect a shopping quiz. “A shop in Ankh-Morpork,” said Cliff. I “A mysterious old shop?” “Mysterious as anything. There–” “Did you go back? Was it still there? Was it in the same place?” “Yes,” said Cliff. “No,” said Glod. “Lots of interesting merchandise that you wanted to pick up and learn more about?” “Yes!” said Glod and Cliff together. “Oh; said Susan, “that kind of shop.” “I knew it didn't belong here,” said Glod. “Didn't I say it didn't belong here? I said it didn't belong here. I said it was eldritch.” “I thought that meant oblong,” said Asphalt. Cliff held out his hand. “It's stopped snowing,” he said. “I dropped the thing into the gorge,” said Buddy. “I . . . didn't need it any more. It must have smashed.” “No,” said Susan, “it's not as–” “The clouds . . . now they look eldritch,” said Glod, looking up. “What? Oblong?” said Asphalt. They all felt it. . . a sensation that the walls had been removed from around the world. The air buzzed. “What's this now?” said Asphalt, as they instinctively huddled together. “You ought to know,” said Glod. “I thought you'd been everywhere and seen everything?” White light crackled in the air. And then the air became light, white as moonlight but as strong as sunlight. There was also a sound, like the roar of millions of voices. It said: Let me show you who I am. I am the music. Satchelmouth lit the coach-lamps. “Hurry up, man!” shouted Clete. “We want to catch them, you know! Hat. Hat. Hat.” “I don't see that it matters much if they get away,” Satchelmouth grumbled, climbing onto the coach as Clete lashed the horses into motion. “I mean, they're away. That's all that matters, isn't it?” “No! You saw them. They're the . . . the soul of all this trouble,” said Clete. “ We can't let this sort of thing go on!” Satchelmouth glanced sideways. The thought was flooding into his mind, and not for the first time, that Mr Clete was not playing with a full orchestra, that he was one of those people who built their own hot madness out of sane and chilly parts. Satchelmouth was by no means averse to the finger foxtrot and the skull fandango, but he'd never murdered anyone, at least on purpose. Satchelmouth had been made aware that he had a soul and, though it had a few holes in it and was a little ragged around the edges, he cherished the hope that some day the god Reg would find him a place in a celestial combo. You didn't get the best gigs if you were a murderer. You probably had to play the viola. “How about if we leave it right now?” he said. “They won't be back–” “Shut up!” “But there's no point–” The horses reared. The coach rocked. Something went past in a blur and vanished in the darkness, leaving a line of blue flames that flickered for a little while, then went out. Death was aware that at some point he would have to stop. But it was creeping up on him that, in whatever dark vocabulary the ghost machine had been envisaged, the words 'slow down' were as inconceivable as 'drive safely'. It was not in its very nature to reduce speed in any circumstances other than the dramatically calamitous at the end of the third verse. That was the trouble with Music With Rocks In. It liked to do things its own way. Very slowly, still spinning, the front wheel rose off the ground. Absolute darkness filled the universe. A voice spake: “Is that you, Cliff?” “Yup.” “OK. Is this me: Glod?” “Yup. Sounds like you.” “Asphalt?” “'Sme.” “Buddy?” “Glod?” “And . . . er . . . the lady in black?” “Yes?” “Do you know where we are, miss?” There was no ground under them. But Susan didn't feel that she was floating. She was simply standing. The fact that it was on nothing was a minor point. She wasn't falling because there was nowhere to fall to, or from. She'd never been interested in geography. But she had a very strong feeling that this place was not locatable on any atlas. “I don't know where our bodies are,” she said, carefully. “Oh, good,” said the voice of Glod. “Really? I'm here, but we don't know where my body is? How about my money?” There was the sound of faint footsteps far away in the darkness. They approached, slowly and deliberately. And stopped. A voice said: One. One. One, two. One, two. Then the footsteps went back into the distance. After a while, another voice said: One, two, three, four– And the universe came into being. It was wrong to call it a big bang. That would just be noise, and all that noise could create is more noise and a cosmos full of random particles. Matter exploded into being, apparently as chaos, but in fact as a chord. The ultimate power chord. Everything, all together, streaming out in one huge rush that contained within itself, like reverse fossils, everything that it was going to be. And, zigzagging through the expanding cloud, alive, that first wild live music. This had shape. It had spin. It had rhythm. It had a beat, and you could dance to it. Everything did. A voice right inside Susan's head said: And I will never die. She said, aloud: “There's a bit of you in everything that lives.” Yes. I am the heart beat. The back beat. She still couldn't see the others. The light was streaming past her. “But he threw away the guitar.” I wanted him to live for me. “You wanted him to die for you! In the wreckage of the cart!” What is the difference? He would be dead anyway. But to die in music . . . People will always remember the songs he never had the chance to sing. And they will be the greatest songs of all. Live your life in a moment. And then live for ever. Don't fade away. “Send us back!” You never left. She blinked. They were still on the road. The air flickered and crackled, and was full of wet snow. She looked around into Buddy's horrified face. “We've got to get away–” He held up a hand. It was transparent. Cliff had almost vanished. Glod was trying to grip the handle of the money bag, but his fingers were slipping through it. His face was full of the terror of death or, possibly, of poverty. Susan shouted: “He threw you away! That's not fair!” A piercing blue light was heading up the road. No cart could move that fast. There was a roar like the scream of a camel who has just seen two bricks. The light reached the bend, skidded, hit a rock and leapt into space over the gorge. There was just time for a hollow voice to say OH B– . . . before it hit the far wall in one great, spreading circle of flame. Bones bounced and rolled down to the river-bed, and were still. Susan spun around, scythe ready to swing. But the music was in the air. It had no soul to aim for. You could say to the universe, this is not fair. And the universe would say: Oh, isn't it? Sorry. You could save people. You could get there in the nick of time. And something could snap its fingers and say, no, it has to be this way. Let me tell you how it has to be. This is how the legend has to go. She reached out and tried to take Buddy's hand. She could feel it, but only as a coldness. “Can you hear me?” she shouted, above the triumphant chords. He nodded. “It's . . . it's like a legend! It has to happen! And I can't stop it – how can I kill something like music?” She ran to the edge of the gorge. The cart was well on fire. They wouldn't appear in it. They would have been in it. “I can't stop it! It's not fair!” She pounded at the air with her fists. “Grandfather!” Blue flames flickered fitfully on the rocks of the dry river-bed. A small fingerbone rolled across the stones until it came up against another, slightly larger bone. A third bone tumbled off a rock and joined them. In the semi-darkness there was a rattling among the stones and a handful of little white shapes bounced and tumbled between the rocks until a hand, indexfinger reaching for the sky, rose into the night. Then there was a series of deeper, more hollow noises as longer, larger things skipped end on end through the gloom. “I was going to make it better!” shouted Susan. “What's the good of being Death if you have to obey idiot rules all the time?” BRING THEM BACK. As Susan turned, a toe-bone hopped across the mud and scuttled into place somewhere under Death's robe. He strode forward, snatched the scythe from Susan and, in one movement, whirled it over his head and brought it down on the stone. The blade shattered. He reached down and picked up a fragment. It glittered in his fingers like a tiny star of blue ice. IT WAS NOT A REQUEST. When the music spoke, the falling snow danced. You can't kill me. Death reached into his robe, and brought out the guitar. Bits of it had broken off, but this didn't matter; the shape flickered in the air. The strings glowed. Death took a stance that Crash would have died to achieve, and raised one hand. In his fingers the sliver glinted. If light could have made a noise, it would have flashed ting. He wanted to be the greatest musician in the world. There has to be a law. Destiny runs its course. For once, Death appeared not to smile. He brought his hand down on the strings. There was no sound. There was, instead, a cessation of sound, the end of a noise which Susan realized she'd been hearing all along. All the time. All her life. A kind of sound you never notice until it stops . . . The strings were still. There are millions of chords. There are millions of numbers. And everyone forgets the one that is a zero. But without the zero, numbers are just arithmetic. Without the empty chord, music is just noise. Death played the empty chord. The beat slowed. And began to weaken. The universe spun on, every atom of it. But soon the whirling would end and the dancers would look around and wonder what to do next. It's not time for THAT! Play something else! I CANNOT. Death nodded towards Buddy. BUT HE CAN. He threw the guitar towards Buddy. It passed right through him. Susan ran and snatched it up, holding it out. “You've got to take it! You've got to play! You've got to start the music again!” She strummed frantically at the strings. Buddy winced. “Please!” she shouted. “Don't fade away!” The music screamed in her head. Buddy managed to grasp the guitar, but stood looking at it as if he'd never seen it before. “What'll happen if he doesn't play it?” said Glod. “You'll all die in the wreckage!” AND THEN, said Death, THE MUSIC WILL DIE. AND THE DANCE WILL END. THE WHOLE DANCE. The ghostly dwarf gave a cough. “We're getting paid for this number, right?” he said. YOU'LL GET THE UNIVERSE. “And free beer?” Buddy held the guitar to him. His eyes met Susan's. He raised his hand, and played. The single chord rang out across the gorge, and echoed back with strange harmonics. THANK YOU, said Death. He stepped forward and took the guitar. He moved suddenly, and smashed the thing against a rock. The strings parted, and something accelerated away, towards the snow and the stars. Death looked at the wreckage with some satisfaction. NOW THAT'S MUSIC WITH ROCKS IN. He snapped his fingers. The moon rose over Ankh-Morpork. The park was deserted. The silver light flowed over the wreckage of the stage, and the mud and halfconsumed sausages that marked the spot where the audience had been. Here and there it glinted off broken sound traps. After a while some of the mud sat up and spat out some more mud. “Crash? Jimbo? Scum?” it said. “Is that you, Noddy?” said a sad shape hanging from one of the stage's few remaining beams. The mud pulled some more mud out of its ears. “Right! Where's Scum?” “I think they threw him into the lake.” “Is Crash alive?” There was a groan from under a heap of wreckage. “Pity,” said Noddy, with feeling. A figure emerged out of the shadows, squelching. Crash half crawled, half fell out of the rubble. “You'fe got to admit,” he mumbled, because at some stage in the performance a guitar had hit him in the teeth, “that waf Music Wif Rocks In . . .” “All right,” said Jimbo, and slithered off his beam. “But next time, thanks all the same, I'd rather try sex 'n' drugs.” “My dad said he'd kill me if I took drugs,” said Noddy. “This is your brain on drugs . . .” said Jimbo. “No, this is your brain, Scum, on this lump here.” “Oh, cheers. Thanks.” “A painkiller'd be favourite right now,” said Jimbo. A little closer to the lake a heap of sacking slid sideways. “Archchancellor?” “Yes, Mr Stibbons?” “I think someone trod on my hat.” “So what?” “It's still on my head.” Ridcully sat up, easing the ache in his bones. “Come on, lad,” he said. “Let's go home. I'm not sure I'm that interested in music any more. It's a world of hertz.” A coach rattled along the winding mountain road. Mr Clete was standing on the box, whipping the horses. Satchelmouth got unsteadily to his feet. The cliff edge was so close he could see right down into the darkness. “I've had just about altogether too much of this by half,” he shouted, and tried to snatch at the whip. “Stop that! We'll never catch up with them!” shouted Clete. “So what? Who cares? I liked their music!” Clete turned. His expression was terrible. “Traitor!” The butt-end of the whip caught Satchelmouth in the stomach. He staggered back, clutched at the edge of the coach, and dropped. His outflung arm caught hold of what felt like a thin branch in the darkness. He swung wildly over the drop until his boots got a purchase on the rock, and his other hand gripped a broken fence-post. He was just in time to see the cart rumble straight on. The road, on the other hand, curved sharply. Satchelmouth shut his eyes and held on tight until the last scream and crackle and splinter had died away. When he opened them, it was just in time to see a burning wheel bounce down the canyon. “Blimey,” he said, “it was lucky there . . . was . . . some . . . thing . . .” His gaze went up. And up. YES. IT WAS, WASN'T IT? Mr Clete sat up in the ruins of the cart. It was clearly very much on fire. He was lucky, he told himself, to have survived that. A black-robed figure walked through the flames. Mr Clete looked at it. He'd never believed in this sort of thing. He never believed in anything. But if he had believed, he would have believed in someone . . . bigger. He looked down at what he'd thought was his body, and realized that he could see through it, and that it was fading away. “Oh, dear,” he said. “Hat. Hat. Hat.” The figure grinned, and swung its tiny scythe. SNH, SNH, SNH. Much later on, people went down into the canyon and sorted out the remains of Mr Clete from the remains of everything else. There wasn't very much. There were some suggestions that he was some musician . . . some musician had fled the city or something . . . hadn't he? Or was that something else? Anyway, he was dead now. Wasn't he? No-one took any notice of the other things. Stuff tended to congregate in the dry river-bed. There was a horse's skull, and some feathers and beads. And a few pieces of guitar, smashed open like an eggshell. Although it would be hard to say what had flown. Susan opened her eyes. She felt wind on her face. There were arms on either side of her. They were supporting her while, at the same time, grasping the reins of a white horse. She leaned forward. Clouds were scudding by, far below. “All right,” she said. “And now what happens?” Death was silent for a moment. HISTORY TENDS TO SWING BACK INTO LINE. THEY ARE ALWAYS PATCHING IT UP. THERE ARE ALWAYS SOME MINOR LOOSE ENDS . . . I DARE SAY SOME PEOPLE WILL HAVE SOME CONFUSED MEMORIES ABOUT A CONCERT OF SORTS IN THE PARK. BUT WHAT OF IT? THEY WILL REMEMBER THINGS THAT DID NOT HAPPEN. “But they did happen!” AS WELL. Susan stared down at the dark landscape. Here and there were the lights of homesteads and small villages, where people were getting on with their lives without thought of what was passing by, high over their heads. She envied them. “So,” she said, “just for an example, you understand . . . what would happen to the Band?” OH, THEY MIGHT BE ANYWHERE. Death glanced at the back of Susan's head. TAKE THE BOY, FOR EXAMPLE. PERHAPS HE LEFT THE BIG CITY. PERHAPS HE WENT SOMEWHERE ELSE. GOT A JOB JUST TO MAKE ENDS MEET. BIDED HIS TIME. DID IT HIS WAY. “But he was due in the Drum that night!” NOT IF HE DIDN'T GO THERE. “Can you do that? His life was due to end! You said you can't give life!” NOT ME. YOU MIGHT. “What do you mean?” LIFE CAN BE SHARED. “But he's . . . gone. It's not as though I'm ever likely to see him again.” YOU KNOW YOU WILL. “How do you know that?” YOU'VE ALWAYS KNOWN. YOU REMEMBER EVERYTHING. SO DO I. BUT YOU ARE HUMAN AND YOUR MIND REBELS FOR YOUR OWN SAKE. SOMETHING GOES ACROSS, THOUGH. DREAMS, PERHAPS. PREMONITIONS. FEELINGS. SOME SHADOWS ARE SO LONG THEY ARRIVE BEFORE THE LIGHT. “I don't think I understood any of that.” WELL, IT HAS BEEN A LONG DAY. More clouds passed underneath. “Grandfather?” YES. “You're back?” IT SEEMS SO. BUSY, BUSY, BUSY. “So I can stop? I don't think I was very good at it.” YES. “But . . . you've just broken a lot of laws . . .” PERHAPS THEY'RE SOMETIMES ONLY GUIDELINES. “But my parents still died.” I COULDN'T HAVE GIVEN THEM MORE LIFE. I COULD ONLY HAVE GIVEN THEM IMMORTALITY. THEY DIDN'T THINK IT WAS WORTH THE PRICE. “I . . . think I know what they mean.” YOU'RE WELCOME TO COME AND VISIT, OF COURSE. “Thank you.” YOU WILL ALWAYS HAVE A HOME THERE. IF YOU WANT IT. “Really?” I SHALL KEEP YOUR ROOM EXACTLY AS YOU LEFT IT. “Thank you.” A MESS. “Sorry.” I CAN HARDLY SEE THE FLOOR. YOU COULD HAVE TIDIED IT UP A BIT. “Sorry.” The lights of Quirm glittered below. Binky touched down smoothly. Susan looked around at the dark school buildings. “So I've . . . also . . . been here all the time?” she said. YES. THE HISTORY OF THE LAST FEW DAYS HAS BEEN . . . DIFFERENT. YOU DID QUITE WELL IN YOUR EXAMS. “Did I? Who sat them?” YOU DID. “Oh.” Susan shrugged. “What grade did I get in Logic?” YOU GOT AN A. “Oh, come on. I always get A-plus!” YOU SHOULD HAVE REVISED MORE. Death swung up into the saddle. “Just a minute,” said Susan, quickly. She knew she had to say it. YES? “What happened to . . . you know . . . changing the fate of one individual means changing the world?” SOMETIMES THE WORLD NEEDS CHANGING. “Oh. Er. Grandfather?” YES? “Er . . . the swing . . . “ said Susan. The one down in the orchard. I mean . . . It was pretty good. A good swing.” REALLY? “I was just too young to appreciate it.” YOU REALLY LIKED IT? “It had . . . style. I shouldn't think anyone else ever had one like it.” THANK YOU. “But . . . all this doesn't alter anything, you know. The world is still full of stupid people. They don't use their brains. They don't seem to want to think straight.” UNLIKE YOU? “At least I make an effort. For example . . . if I've been here for the last few days, who's in my bed now?” I THINK YOU JUST WENT OUT FOR A MOONLIGHT STROLL. “Oh. That's all right, then.” Death coughed. I SUPPOSE . . . ? “Sorry?” I KNOW IT'S RIDICULOUS, REALLY . . . “What is?” I SUPPOSE . . . YOU HAVEN'T GOT A KISS FOR YOUR OLD GRANDAD? Susan stared at him. The blue glow in Death's eyes gradually faded, and as the light died it sucked at her gaze so that it was dragged into the eye sockets and the darkness beyond ... . . . which went on and on, for ever. There was no word for it. Even eternity was a human idea. Giving it a name gave it a length; admittedly, a very long one. But this darkness was what was left when eternity had given up. It was where Death lived. Alone. She reached up and pulled his head down and kissed the top of his skull. It was smooth and ivory white, like a billiard ball. She turned and stared at the shadowy buildings in an attempt to hide her embarrassment. “I just hope I remembered to leave a window open.” Oh, well, nothing for it. She had to know, even if she felt angry with herself for asking. “Look, the . . . er, the people I met . . . do you know if I ever see–' When she turned back, there was nothing there. There were only a couple of hoofprints, fading on the cobbles. There was no open window. She went around to the door and climbed the stairs in the darkness. “Susan!” Susan felt herself fading protectively, out of habit. She stopped it. There was no need for that. There had never been a need for that. A figure stood at the end of the passage, in a circle of lamplight. “Yes, Miss Butts?” The headmistress peered at her, as if waiting for her to do something. “Are you all right, Miss Butts?” The teacher rallied. “Do you know it's gone midnight? For shame! And you're out of bed! And that is certainly not the school uniform!” Susan looked down. It was always hard to get every little detail right. She was still wearing the black dress with the lace. “Yes,” she said, “that's right.” She gave Miss Butts a bright friendly smile. “Well, there are school rules, you know,” said Miss Butts, but her tone was hesitant. Susan patted her on the arm. “I think they're probably more like guidelines, don't you? Eulalie?” Miss Butts's mouth opened and shut. And Susan realized that the woman was actually quite short. She had a tall bearing and a tall voice and a tall manner, and was tall in every respect except height. Amazingly, she'd apparently been able to keep this a secret from people. “But I'd better be off to bed,” said Susan, her mind dancing on adrenalin. “And you, too. It's far too late to be wandering around draughty corridors at your age, don't you think? Last day tomorrow, too. You don't want to look tired when the parents arrive.” “Er . . . Yes. Yes. Thank you, Susan.” Susan gave the forlorn teacher another warm smile and headed for the dormitory, where she undressed in the dark and got between the sheets. The room was silent except for the sound of nine girls breathing quietly and the rhythmic muffled avalanche that was Princess Jade asleep. And, after a while, the sound of someone sobbing and trying not to be heard. It went on for a long time. There was a lot of catching up to do. Far above the world, Death nodded. You could choose immortality, or you could choose humanity. You had to do it for yourself. It was the last day of the term, and therefore chaotic. Some girls were leaving early, there was a stream of parents of various races, and there was no question of there being any teaching. It was generally accepted all round that the rules were relaxed. Susan, Gloria and Princess Jade wandered down to the floral clock. It was a quarter to Daisy. Susan felt empty, but also stretched like a string. She was surprised sparks weren't coming from her fingertips. Gloria had bought a bag of fried fish from the shop in Three Roses. The smell of hot vinegar and solid cholesterol rose from the paper, without the taint of fried rot that normally gave the shop's produce its familiar edge. “My father says I've got to go home and marry some troll,” said Jade. “Hey, if there's any good fish bones in there I'll have them.” “Have you met him?” said Susan. “No. But my father says he's got a great big mountain.” “I wouldn't put up with that, if I was you,” said Gloria, through a mouthful of fish. “This is the Century of the Fruitbat, after all. I'd put my foot down right now and say no. Eh, Susan?” “What?” said Susan, who'd been thinking of something else; then, when everything had been repeated, she said, “No. I'd see what he was like first. Perhaps he's quite nice. And then the mountain is a bonus.” “Yes. That's logical. Didn't your dad send you a picture?” said Gloria. “Oh, yes,” said Jade. “Well...?” “Um . . . it had some nice crevasses,” said Jade thoughtfully. “And a glacier that my father says is permanent even at midsummer.” Gloria nodded approvingly. “He sounds a nice boy.” “But I've always liked Crag from the next valley. Father hates him. But he's working very hard and saving up and he's nearly got enough for his own bridge.” Gloria sighed. “Sometimes it's hard to be a woman,” she said. She nudged Susan. “Want some fish?” “I'm not hungry, thanks.” “It's really good. Not stale old stuff like it used to be.” “No, thanks.” Gloria gave her another nudge. “Want to go and get your own, then?” she said, leering behind her beard. “Why should I do that?” “Oh, quite a few girls have gone down there today,” said the dwarf. She leaned closer. “It's the new boy working there,” she said. “I'd swear he's elvish.” Something inside Susan was plucked and went twang. She stood up. “So that's what he meant! Things that haven't happened yet.” “What? Who?” said Gloria. “The shop in Three Roses Alley?” “That's right.” The door to the wizard's house was open. The wizard had put a rocking chair in the doorway and was asleep in the sun. A raven was perched on his hat. Susan stopped and glared at it. “And have you got any comment to make?” “Croak croak,” said the raven, and ruffled its feathers. “Good,” said Susan. She walked on, aware that she was blushing. Behind her a voice said, “Hah!” She ignored it. There was a blur of movement among the debris in the gutter. Something hidden by a fish wrapper went: SNH, SNH, SNH. “Oh yes, very funny,” said Susan. She walked on. And then broke into a run. Death smiled and pushed aside the magnifying lens and turned away from the Discworld to find Albert watching him. JUST CHECKING, he said. “That's right, Master,” said Albert. “I've saddled up Binky.” YOU UNDERSTAND I WAS JUST CHECKING? “Right you are, Master.” HOW ARE YOU FEELING NOW? “Fine, Master.” STILL GOT YOUR BOTTLE? “Yes, Master.” It was on the shelf in Albert's bedroom. He followed Death out into the stable-yard, helped him into the saddle, and passed up the scythe. AND NOW I MUST BE GOING OUT, said Death. “That's the ticket, Master.” SO STOP GRINNING LIKE THAT. “Yes, Master.” Death rode out, but found himself guiding the white horse down the track to the orchard. He stopped in front of one particular tree, and stared at it for some time. Eventually he said: LOOKS PERFECTLY LOGICAL TO ME. Binky turned obediently away and trotted into the world. The lands and cities of it lay before him. Blue light flamed along the blade of the scythe. Death felt attention on him. He looked up at the universe, which was watching him with puzzled interest. A voice which only he heard said: So you're a rebel, little Death? Against what? Death thought about it. If there was a snappy answer, he couldn't think of one. So he ignored it, and rode towards the lives of humanity. They needed him. Somewhere, in some other world far away from the Discworld, someone tentatively picked up a musical instrument that echoed to the rhythm in their soul. It will never die. It's here to stay. THE END [1] Because of quantum. [2] The question seldom addressed is where Medusa had snakes. Underarm hair is an even more embarrassing problem when it keeps biting the top of the deodorant bottle. [3] Cabbages [4] Cabbages [5] Anything that ate cabbages and didn't mind not having any friends. [6] Until an unfortunate axe incident, Gloria had been captain of the school basketball team. Dwarfs don't have height but they do have acceleration, and many a visiting team member got a nasty shock when Gloria appeared rising vertically out of the depths. [7] Or methane crystals. Or sea anemones. The principle is the same. In any case, it soon fills up with whatever is the local equivalent of fast-food boxes and derelict lager cans. [8] According to rural legend - at least in those areas where pigs are a vital part of the household economy - the Hogfather is a winter myth figure who, on Hogswatchnight, gallops from house to house on a crude sledge drawn by four tusked wild boars to deliver presents of sausages, black puddings, pork scratchings and ham to all children who have been good. He says 'Ho ho ho' a lot. Children who have been bad get a bag full of bloody bones (it's these little details which tell you it's a tale for the little folk). There is a song about him. It begins: You'd Better Watch Out . . . The Hogfather is said to have originated in the legend of a local king who, one winter's night, happened to be passing, or so he said, the home of three young women and heard them sobbing because they had no food to celebrate the midwinter feast. He took pity on them and threw a packet of sausages through the window.* * Badly concussing one of them, but there's no point in spoiling a good legend. [9] Wizards did not have balls. There was a popular song about it. But they did hold their annual Excuse Me, or free-for-all dance, which was one of the highlights of the Ankh-Morpork social calendar. The Librarian in particular always looked forward to it, and used an amazing amount of hair cream. [10] Well, except for Unseen University once, but that was just a student prank. [11] The smallest room in Unseen University is in fact a broom cupboard on the fourth floor. He really meant the privy. The Reader had a theory that all the really good books in any building - at least, all the really funny ones* - gravitate to a pile in the privy but no-one ever has time to read all of them, or even knows how they came to be there. His research was causing extreme constipation and a queue outside the door every morning. * The ones with cartoons about cows and dogs. And captions like: “As soon as he saw the duck, Elmer knew it was going to be a bad day.” [12] And didn't appear to do anything to the enemy at all. [13] He was a wizard. Trick shots for a wizard aren't the old three-timesround-the-table jobs. His best one was once off the cushion, once off a seagull, once off the back of the head of the Bursar who'd been walking along the corridor outside last Tuesday (a bit of temporal spin there) and a tricky rebound off the ceiling. He'd missed sinking the actual shot by a whisker, but it had been pretty tricky, even so. [14] And this was true. Nature can adapt to practically anything. There were fish evolved to live in the river. They looked like a cross between a soft-shelled crab and an industrial vacuum cleaner, and tended to explode in fresh water, and what you had to use for bait was nobody's business, but they were fish and a sportsman like Ridcully never cared about what the quarry tasted like. [15] The Senior Wrangler had a theory that long food - beans, celery and rhubarb - made you taller, because of the famous Doctrine of Signatures. It certainly made him lighter. [16] And, of course, one that misfires. Deafness doesn't prevent composers hearing the music. It prevents them hearing the distractions. [17] It wasn't the taste. Plenty of hot dogs taste bad. But Dibbler had now actually managed to produce sausages that didn't taste of anything. It was weird. No matter how much mustard, ketchup and pickle people put on them, they still didn't taste of anything. Not even the midnight dogs they sell to drunks in Helsinki can quite manage that. [18] Troll beer is ammonium sulphide dissolved in alcohol and tastes like drinking fermented batteries. [19] Not with very good results, however. Stibbons spent weeks grinding lenses and blowing glassware and had finally produced a device which showed the tremendous amount of tiny animals there were in one drop of water from the river Ankh. The Archchancellor had taken a look and then remarked that anything in which that much life could exist had to be healthy. [20] All right - all dwarf songs. Except the one about Hiho. [21] Troll gambling is even simpler than Australian gambling. One of the most popular games is One Up, which consists of throwing a coin in the air and betting on whether it will come down again. [22] Rats had featured largely in the history of Ankh-Morpork. Shortly before the Patrician came to power there was a terrible plague of rats. The city council countered it by offering twenty pence for every rat tail. This did, for a week or two, reduce the number of rats - and then people were suddenly queuing up with tails, the city treasury was being drained, and no-one seemed to be doing much work. And there still seemed to be a lot of rats around. Lord Vetinari had listened carefully while the problem was explained, and had solved the thing with one memorable phrase which said a lot about him, about the folly of bounty offers, and about the natural instinct of Ankh-Morporkians in any situation involving money: “Tax the rat farms.” [23] From the Old wys-ars, lit.: one who, at bottom, is very smart. [24] Or, at least, on to the river. [25] A very grammatical half an hour, however. [26] Old shoes always turn up in the bottom of every wardrobe. If a mermaid had a wardrobe old shoes would turn up in the bottom of it. [27] Although, strictly speaking, humans feel it all the time. [28] PLUGGERS They've Got Soles FEEL THE NALES! [29] He'd still got the nugget somewhere. 
The Light Fantastic - Terry Pratchett	----	The Light Fantastic The sun rose slowly, as if it wasn’t sure it was worth all the effort. Another Disc day dawned, but very gradually, and this is why. When light encounters a strong magical field it loses ail sense of urgency. It slows right down. And on the Discworld the magic was embarrassingly strong, which meant that the soft yellow light of dawn flowed over the sleeping landscape like the caress of a gentle lover or, as some would have it, like golden syrup. It paused to fill up valleys. It piled up against mountain ranges. When it reached Cori Celesti, the ten mile spire of grey stone and green ice that marked the hub of the Disc and was the home of its gods, it built up in heaps until it finally crashed in great lazy tsunami as silent as velvet, across the dark landscape beyond. It was a sight to be seen on no other world. Of course, no other world was carried through the starry infinity on the backs of four giant elephants, who A’ere themselves perched on the shell of a giant turtle. His name – or Her name, according to another school of thought – was Great A’Tuin; he – or, as it might be, she – will not take a central role in what follows but it is vital to an understanding of the Disc that he – or she – is there, down below the mines and sea ooze and fake fossil bones put there by a Creator with nothing better to do than upset archeologists and give them silly ideas. Great A’Tuin the star turtle, shell frosted with frozen methane, pitted with meteor craters, and scoured with asteroidal dust. Great A’Tuin, with eyes like ancient seas and a brain the size of a continent through which thoughts moved like little glittering glaciers. Great A’Tuin of the great slow sad flippers and star-polished carapace, labouring through the galactic night under the weight of the Disc. As large as worlds. As old as Time. As patient as a brick. Actually, the philosophers have got it all wrong. Great A’Tuin is in fact having a great time. Great A’Tuin is the only creature in the entire universe that knows exactly where it is going. Of course, philosophers have debated for years about where Great A’Tuin might be going, and have often said how worried they are that they might never find out. They’re due to find out in about two months. And then they’re really going to worry . . . Something else that has long worried the more imaginative philosophers on the Disc is the question of Great A’Tuin’s sex, and quite a lot of time and trouble has been spent in trying to establish it once and for all. In fact, as the great dark shape drifts past like an endless tortoiseshell hairbrush, the results of the latest effort are just coming into view. Tumbling past, totally out of control, is the bronze shell of the Potent Voyager, a sort of neolithic spaceship built and pushed over the edge by the astronomer-priests of Krull, which is conveniently situated on the very rim of the world and proves, whatever people say, that there is such a thing as a free launch. Inside the ship is Twoflower, the Disc’s first tourist. He had recently spent some months exploring it and is now rapidly leaving it for reasons that are rather complicated but have to do with an attempt to escape from Krull. This attempt has been one thousand per cent successful. But despite all the evidence that he may be the Disc’s last tourist as well, he is enjoying the view. Plunging along some two miles above him is Rincewind the wizard, in what on the Disc passes for a spacesuit. Picture it as a diving suit designed by men who have never seen the sea. Six months ago he was a perfectly ordinary failed wizard. Then he met Twoflower, was employed at an outrageous salary as his guide, and has spent most of the intervening time being shot at, terrorised, chased and hanging from high places with no hope of salvation or, as is now the case, dropping from high places. He isn’t looking at the view because his past life keeps flashing in front of his eyes and getting in the way. He is learning why it is that when you put on a spacesuit it is vitally important not to forget the helmet. A lot more could be included now to explain why these two are dropping out of the world, and why Twoflower’s Luggage, last seen desperately trying to follow him on hundreds of little legs, is no ordinary suitcase, but such questions take time and could be more trouble than they are worth. For example, it is said that someone at a party once asked the famous philosopher Ly Tin Weedle ‘Why are you here?’ and the reply took three years. What is far more important is an event happening way overhead, far above A’Tuin, the elephants and the rapidly-expiring wizard. The very fabric of time and space is about to be put through the wringer. The air was greasy with the distinctive feel of magic, and acrid with the smoke of candles made of a black wax whose precise origin a wise man wouldn’t inquire about. There was something very strange about this room deep in the cellars of Unseen University, the Disc’s premier college of magic. For one thing it seemed to have too many dimensions, not exactly visible, just hovering out of eyeshot. The walls were covered with occult symbols, and most of the floor was taken up by the Eightfold Seal of Stasis, generally agreed in magical circles to have all the stopping power of a well-aimed half brick. The only furnishing in the room was a lectern dark wood, carved into the shape of a bird – well, to be frank, into the shape of a winged thing it is probably best not to examine too closely – and on the lectern, fastened to it by a heavy chain covered in padlocks, was a book. A large, but not particularly impressive, book. Other books in the University’s libraries had covers inlaid with rare jewels and fascinating wood, or bound with dragon skin. This one was just a rather tatty leather. It looked the sort of book described in library catalogues as ‘slightly foxed’, although it would be more honest to admit that it looked as though it had been badgered, wolved and possibly beared as well. Metal clasps held it shut. They weren’t decorated, they were just very heavy – like the chain, which didn’t so much attach the book to the lectern as tether it. They looked like the work of someone who had a pretty definite aim in mind, and who had spent most of his life making training harness for elephants. The air thickened and swirled. The pages of the book began to crinkle in a quite horrible, deliberate way, and blue light spilled out from between them. The silence of the room crowded in like a fist, slowly being clenched. Half a dozen wizards in their nightshirts were taking turns to peer in through the little grille in the door. No wizard could sleep with this sort of thing going on – the build-up of raw magic was rising through the university like a tide. ‘Right,’ said a voice. What’s going on? And why wasn’t I summoned?’ Galder Weatherwax, Supreme Grand Conjuror of the Order of the Silver Star, Lord Imperial of the Sacred Staff, Eighth Level Ipsissimus and 304thChancellor of Unseen University, wasn’t simply an impressive sight even in his red nightshirt with the hand-embroidered mystic runes, even in his long cap with the bobble on, even with the Wee Willie Winkie candlestick in his hand. He even managed to very nearly pull it off in fluffy pompom slippers as well. Six frightened faces turned towards him. ‘Um, you were summoned, lord,’ said one of the under-wizards. ‘That’s why you’re here,’ he added helpfully. ‘I mean why wasn’t I summoned before?’ snapped Galder, pushing his way to the grille. ‘Um, before who, lord?’ said the wizard. Galder glared at him, and ventured a quick glance through the grille. The air in the room was now sparkling with tiny flashes as dust motes incinerated in the flow of raw magic. The Seal of Stasis was beginning to blister and curl up at the edges. The book in question was called the Octavo and, quite obviously, it was no ordinary book. There are of course many famous books of magic. Some may talk of the Necrotelicomnicon, with its pages made of ancient lizard skin; some may point to the Book of Going Forth Around Elevenish, written by a mysterious and rather lazy Llamaic sect; some may recall that the Bumper Fun Grimoire reputedly contains the one original joke left in the universe. But they are all mere pamphlets when compared with the Octavo, which the Creator of the Universe reputedly left behind – with characteristic absent-mindedness – shortly after completing his major work. The eight spells imprisoned in its pages led a secret and complex life of their own, and it was generally believed that — Galder’s brow furrowed as he stared into the troubled room. Of course, there were only seven spells now. Some young idiot of a student wizard had stolen a look at the book one day and one of the spells had escaped and lodged in his mind. No-one had ever managed to get to the bottom of how it had happened. What was his name, now? Winswand? Octarine and purple sparks glittered on the spine of the book. A thin curl of smoke was beginning to rise from the lectern, and the heavy metal clasps that held the book shut were definitely beginning to look strained. ‘Why are the spells so restless?’ said one of the younger wizards. Galder shrugged. He couldn’t show it, of course, but he was beginning to be really worried. As a skilled eighth-level wizard he could see the half-imaginary shapes that appeared momentarily in the vibrating air, wheedling arid beckoning. In much the same way that gnats appear before a thunderstorm, really heavy build-ups of magic always attracted things from the chaotic Dungeon Dimensions – nasty Things, all misplaced organs and spittle, forever searching for any gap through which they might sidle into the world of men.[1] This had to be stopped. ‘I shall need a volunteer,’ he said firmly. There was a sudden silence. The only sound came from behind the door. It was the nasty little noise of metal parting under stress. ‘Very well, then,’ he said. ‘In that case I shall need some silver tweezers, about two pints of cat’s blood, a small whip and a chair —‘ It is said that the opposite of noise is silence. This isn’t true. Silence is only the absence of noise. Silence would have been a terrible din compared to the sudden soft implosion of noiselessness that hit the wizards with the force of an exploding dandelion clock. A thick column of spitting light sprang up from the book, hit the ceiling in a splash of flame, and disappeared. Galder stared up at the hole, ignoring the smouldering patches in his beard. He pointed dramatically. To the upper cellars!’ he cried, and bounded up the stone stairs. Slippers flapping and nightshirts billowing he other wizards followed him, falling over one another in their eagerness to be last. Nevertheless, they were all in time to see the fireball of occult potentiality disappear into the ceiling of the room above. ‘Urgh,’ said the youngest wizard, and pointed to the floor. The room had been part of the library until the magic had drifted through, violently reassembling the possibility particles of everything in its path. So it was reasonable to assume that the small purple newts had been part of the floor and the pineapple custard may once have been some books. And several of the wizards later swore that the small sad orang outang sitting in the middle of it all looked very much like the head librarian. Galder stared upwards. ‘To the kitchen!’ he bellowed, wading through the custard to the next flight of stairs. No-one ever found out what the great cast-iron cooking range had been turned into, because it had broken down a wall and made good its escape before the dishevelled party of wild-eyed mages burst into the room. The vegetable chef was found much later hiding in the soup cauldron, gibbering unhelpful things like The knuckles! The horrible knuckles!’ The last wisps of magic, now somewhat slowed, were disappearing into the ceiling. ‘To the Great Hall!’ The stairs were much wider here, and better lit. Panting and pineapple-flavoured, the fitter wizards got to the top by the time the fireball had reached the middle of the huge draughty chamber that was the University’s main hall. It hung motionless, except for the occasional small prominence that arched and spluttered across its surface. Wizards smoke, as everyone knows. That probably explained the chorus of coffin coughs and sawtooth wheezes that erupted behind Galder as he stood appraising the situation and wondering if he dare look for somewhere to hide. He grabbed a frightened student. ‘Get me seers, farseers, scryers and withinlookmen!’ he barked. ‘I want this studied!’ Something was taking shape inside the fireball. Galder shielded his eyes and peered at the shape forming in front of him. There was no mistaking it. It was the universe. He was quite sure of this, because he had a model of it in his study and it was generally agreed to be far more impressive than the real thing. Faced with the possibilities offered by seed pearls and silver filigree, the Creator had been at a complete loss. But the tiny universe inside the fireball was uncannily – well, real. The only thing missing was colour. It was all in translucent misty white. There was Great A’Tuin, and the four elephants, and the Disc itself. From this angle Galder couldn’t see the surface very well, but he knew with cold certainty that it would be absolutely accurately modelled. He could, though, just make out a miniature replica of Cori Celesti, upon whose utter peak the world’s quarrelsome and somewhat bourgeois gods lived in a palace of marble, alabaster and uncut moquette three-piece suites they had chosen to call Dunmanifestin. It was always a considerable annoyance to any Disc citizen with pretensions to culture that they were ruled by gods whose idea of an uplifting artistic experience was a musical doorbell. The little embryo universe began to move slowly, tilting . . . Galder tried to shout, but his voice refused to come out. Gently, but with the unstoppable force of an explosion, the shape expanded. He watched in horror, and then in astonishment, as it passed through him as lightly as a thought. He held out a hand and watched the pale ghosts of rock strata stream through his fingers in busy silence. Great A’Tuin had already sunk peacefully below floor level, larger than a house. The wizards behind Galder were waist deep in seas. A boat smaller than a thimble caught Galder’s eye for a oment before the rush carried it through the walls and away. To the roof!’ he managed, pointing a shaking finger skywards. Those wizards with enough marbles left to think with and enough breath to run followed him, running through continents that sleeted smoothly through the solid stone. It was a still night, tinted with the promise of dawn. A crescent moon was just setting. Ankh-Morpork, largest city in the lands around the Circle Sea, slept. That statement is not really true. On the one hand, those parts of the city which normally concerned themselves with, for example, selling vegetables, shoeing horses, carving exquisite small jade ornaments, changing money and making tables, on the whole, slept. Unless they had insomnia. Or had got up in the night. as it might be, to go to the lavatory. On the other hand, many of the less law-abiding citizens were wide awake and, for instance, climbing through windows that didn’t, t belong to them, slitting throats, mugging one another, listening to loud music in smoky cellars and gener,erally having a lot more fun. But most of the animals were asleep, except for the rats. And the bats, too, of course. As far as the insects were concerned . . . The point is that descriptive writing is very rarely entireliy accurate and during the reign of Olaf Quimby II is Patrician of Ankh some legislation was passed in a determined attempt to put a stop to this sort of thing and introduce some honesty into reporting. Thus, if a legend said of a notable hero that ‘all men spoke of his prowess’ any bard who valued his life would add hastily ‘except for a couple of people in his home village who thought he was a liar, and quite a lot of other people who had never really heard of him.’ Poetic simile was strictly limited to statements like ‘his mighty steed was as fleet as the wind n a fairly calm day, say about Force Three,’ and any loose talk about a beloved having a face that launched a thousand ships would have to be backed by evidence that the object of desire did indeed look like a bottle of champagne. Quimby was eventually killed by a disgruntled poet during an experiment conducted in the palace grounds to prove the disputed accuracy of the proverb The pen is mightier than the sword,’ and in his memory it was amended to include the phrase ‘only if the sword is very small and the pen is very sharp.’ So. Approximately sixty-seven, maybe sixty-eight per cent, of the city slept. Not that the other citizens creeping about on their generally unlawful occasions noticed the pale tide streaming through the streets. Only the wizards, used to seeing the invisible, watched it foam across the distant fields. The Disc, being flat, has no real horizon. Any adventurous sailors who got funny ideas from staring at eggs and oranges for too long and set out for the antipodes soon learned that the reason why distant ships sometimes looked as though they were disappearing over the edge of the world was that they were disappearing over the edge of the world. But there was still a limit even to Galder’s vision in the mist-swirled, dust-filled air. He looked up. Looming high over the University was the grim and ancient Tower of Art, said to be the oldest building on the Disc, with its famous spiral staircase of eight thousand, eight hundred and eighty-eight steps. From its crenelated roof, the haunt of ravens and disconcertingly alert gargoyles, a wizard might see to the very edge of the Disc. After spending ten minutes or so coughing horribly, of course. ‘Sod that,’ he muttered. ‘What’s the good of being a wizard, after all? Avyento, thessalousl I would fly! To me, spirits of air and darkness!’ He spread a gnarled hand and pointed to a piece of crumbling parapet. Octarine fire sprouted from under his nicotine-stained nails and burst against the otting stone far above. It fell. By a finely calculated exchange of velocities Ga.cer rose, nightshirt flapping around his bony legs. Higher and higher he soared, hurtling through the pale night like a, like a – all right, like an elderly but powerful wizard being propelled upwards by an expertly judged thumb on the scales of the universe. He landed in a litter of old nests, caught his balance, and stared down at the vertiginous view of a Disc dawn. At this time of the long year the Circle Sea was almost on the sunset side of Cori Celesti, and as the daylight sloshed down into the lands around Ankh-Morpork the shadow of the mountain scythed across the landscape like the gnomon of God’s sundial. But nightwards, racing the slow light towards the edge of the world, a line of white mist surged on. There was a crackling of dry twigs behind him. He turned to see Ymper Trymon, second in command of the Order, who had been the only other wizard able to keep up. Galder ignored him for the moment, taking care only to keep a firm grip on the stonework and strengthen his personal spells of protection. Promotion was slow in a profession that traditionally bestowed long life, and it was accepted that younger wizards would frequently seek advancement via dead men’s curly shoes, having previosly emptied them of their occupants. Besides, there was something disquieting about young Trymon. He didn’t smoke, only drank boiled water, and Galder had the nasty suspicion that he was clever. He didn’t smile often enough, and he liked figures and the sort of organisation charts that show lots of squares with arrows pointing :o other squares. In short, he was the sort of man who could use the word ‘personnel’ and mean it. The whole of the visible Disc was now covered with a shmmering white skin that fitted it perfectly. Galder looked down at his own hands and saw them covered with a pale network of shining threads that ollowed every movement. He recognised this kind of spell. He’d used them himself. But his had been smaller – much smaller. ‘It’s a Change spell,’ said Trymon. The whole world is being changed.’ Some people, thought Galder grimly, would have had the decency to put an exclamation mark on the end of a statement like that. There was the faintest of pure sounds, high and sharp, like the breaking of a mouse’s heart. ‘What was that?’ he said. Trymon cocked his head. ‘C sharp, I think,’ he said. Galder said nothing. The white shimmer had vanished, and the.first sounds of the waking city began to filter up to the two wizards. Everything seemed exactly the same as it had before. All that, just to make things stay the same? He patted his nightshirt pockets distractedly and finally found what he was looking for lodged behind his ear. He put the soggy dogend in his mouth, called up mystical fire from between his fingers, and dragged hard on the wretched rollup until little blue lights flashed in front of his eyes. He coughed once or twice. He was thinking very hard indeed. He was trying to remember if any gods owed him any favours. In fact the Gods were as puzzled by all this as the wizards were, but they were powerless to do anything and in any case were engaged in an eons-old battle with the Ice Giants, who had refused to return the lawnmower. But some clue as to what actually had happened might be found in the fact that Rincewind, whose past life had just got up to a quite interesting bit when he was fifteen, suddenly found himself not dying after all but hanging upside down in a pine tree. He got down easily by dropping uncontrollably from branch to branch until he landed on his head in a pile of pine needles, where he lay gasping for breath and wishing he d been a better person. Somewhere, he knew, there had to be a perfectly logical connection. One minute one happens to be dying, having dropped off the rim of the world, and the next one is upside down in a tree. As always happened at times like this, the Spell rose up in his mind. Rincewind had been generally reckoned by his tutors to be a natural wizard in the same way that fish are natural mountaineers. He probably would have been thrown out of Unseen University anyway – he couldn’t remember spells and smoking made him feel ill – but what had really caused trouble was all that stupid business about sneaking into the room where the Octavo was chained and opening it. And what made the trouble even worse was that no-one could figure out why all the locks had temporarily become unlocked. The spell wasn|t;sa demanding lodger. It just sat there like an old toad at the bottom of a pond. But whenever Rincewind was feeling really tired or very afraid it tried to get itself said. No-one:knew what would happen if one of the Eight Great Spells was said by itself, but the general Agreement was that the best place from which to watch the effects would be the next universe. It was a weird thought to have, lying on a heap of pine needles after just falling off the edge of the world, but Rincewind had a feeling that the spell wanted to keep him alive. ‘Suits me,’ he thought. He sat up and looked at the trees. Rincewind was a city wizard and, although he was aware that there were various differences among types of tree by which their nearest and dearest could tell them apart, the only thing he knew for certain was that the end without the leaves on fitted nto the ground. There were far too many of them, arranged with absolutely no sense of order. The place hadn’t been swept for ages. He remembered something about being able to tell where you were by looking at which side of a tree the moss grew on. These trees had moss everywhere, and wooden warts, and scrabbly old branches; if trees were people, these trees would be sitting in rocking chairs. Rincewind gave the nearest one a kick. With unerring aim it dropped an acorn on him. He said ‘Ow.’ The tree, in a voice like a very old door swinging open, said, ‘Serves you right.’ There was a long silence. Then Rincewind said, ‘Did you say that?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And that too?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Oh.’ He thought for a bit. Then he tried, ‘I suppose you wouldn’t happen to know the way out of the forest, possibly, by any chance?’ ‘No. I don’t get about much,’ said the tree. ‘Fairly boring life, I imagine,’ said Rincewind. ‘I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been anything else,’ said the tree. Rincewind looked at it closely. It seemed pretty much like every other tree he’d seen. ‘Are you magical?’ he said. ‘No-one’s ever said,’ said the tree, ‘I suppose so.’ Rincewind thought: I can’t be talking to a tree. If I was talking to a tree I’d be mad, and I’m not mad, so trees can’t talk. ‘Goodbye,’ he said firmly. ‘Hey, don’t go,’ the tree began, and then realised the hopelessness of it all. It watched him stagger off through the bushes, and settled down to feeling the sun on its leaves, the slurp and gurgle of the water in its roots, and the very ebb and flow of its sap in response to the natural tug of the sun and moon. Boring, it thought. What a trange thing to say. Trees can be bored, of course, beetles do it all the time, but I don’t think that was what he was trying to mean. And: can you actually be anything else? In fact Rincewind never spoke to this particular tree again, but from that brief conversation it spun the basis of the first tree religion which, in time, swept the forests of the world. Its tenet of faith was this: a tree that was a good tree, and led a clean, decent and upstanding life, could be assured of a future life after death. If it was very good indeed it would eventually be reincarnated as five thousand rolls of lavatory paper. A few miles away Twoflower was also getting over his surprise at finding himself back on the Disc. He was sitting on the hull of the Potent Voyager as it gurgled gradually under the dark waters of a large lake, surrounded by trees. Strangely enough, he was not particularly worried. Twoflower was a tourist, the first of the species to evolve on the Disc, and fundamental to his very existence was the rock-hard belief that nothing bad could really happen to him because he was not involved; he also believed that anyone could understand anything he said provided he spoke loudly and slowly, that people were basically trustworthy, and that anything could be sorted out among men of goodwill if they just acted sensibly. On the face of it this gave him a survival value marginally less than, say, a soap herring, but to Rincewind’s amazement it all seemed to work and the little man’s total obliviousness to all forms of danger somehow made danger so discouraged that it gave up and went away. Merely being faced with drowning stood no chance. Twoflower was quite certain that in a well-organised society people would not be allowed to go around getting drowned. He was a little bothered, though, about where his Luggage had got to. But he comforted himself with the nowledge that it was made of sapient pearwood, and ought to be intelligent enough to look after itself . . . In yet another part of the forest a young shaman was undergoing a very essential part of his training. He had eaten of the sacred toadstool, he had smoked the holy rhizome, he had carefully powdered up and inserted into various orifices the mystic mushroom and now, sitting crosslegged under a pine tree, he was concentrating firstly on making contact with the strange and wonderful secrets at the heart of Being but mainly on stopping the top of his head from unscrewing and floating away. Blue four-side triangles pinwheeled across his vision. Occasionally he smiled knowingly at nothing very much and said things like ‘Wow’ and ‘Urgh.’ There was a movement in the air and what he later described as ‘like, a sort of explosion only backwards, you know?’, and suddenly where there had only been nothing there was a large, battered, wooden chest. It landed heavily on the leafmould, extended dozens of little legs, and turned around ponderously to look at the shaman. That is to say, it had no face, but even through the mycological haze he was horribly aware that it was looking at him. And not a nice look, either. It was amazing how baleful a keyhole and a couple of knotholes could be. To his intense relief it gave a sort of wooden shrug, and set off through the trees at a canter. With superhuman effort the shaman recalled the correct sequence of movements for standing up and even managed a couple of steps before he looked down and gave up, having run out of legs. Rincewind, meanwhile, had found a path. It wound about a good deal, and he would have been happier if it had been cobbled, but following it gave him something to do. Several trees tried to strike up a conversation, but Rincewind was nearly certain that this was not normal behaviour for trees and ignored them. The day lengthened. There was no sound but the murmur of nasty little stinging insects, the occasional crack of a falling branch, and the whispering of the trees discussing religion and the trouble with squirrels. Rincewind began to feel very lonely. He imagined himself living in the woods forever, sleeping on leaves and eating . . . and eating . . . whatever there was to eat in woods. Trees, he supposed, and nuts and berries. He would have to . . . ‘Rincewind!’ There, coming up the path, was Twoflower – dripping wet, but beaming with delight. The Luggage trotted along behind him (anything made of the wood would follow its owner anywhere and it was often used to make luggage for the grave goods of very rich dead kings who wanted to be sure of starting a new life in the next world with clean underwear). Rincewind sighed. Up to now, he’d thought the day couldn’t possibly get worse. It began to rain a particularly wet and cold rain. Rincewind and Twoflower sat under a tree and watched it. ‘Rincewind?’ ‘Um?’ ‘Why are we here?’ ‘Well, some say that the Creator of the Universe made the Disc and everything on it, others say that its all a very complicated story involving the testicles of the Sky God and the milk of the Celestial Cow, and some even hold that we’re all just due to the total random accretion of probability particles. But if you mean why are we here as opposed to falling off the Disc, I haven’t the faintest idea. It’s probably all some ghastly mistake.’ ‘Oh. Do you think there’s anything to eat in this forest?’ ‘Yes,’ said the wizard bitterly, us.’ ‘I’ve got some acorns, if you like,’ said the tree helpfully. They sat in damp silence for some moments. ‘Rincewind, the tree said—‘ ‘Trees can’t talk,’ snapped Rincewind. ‘It’s very important to remember that.’ ‘But you just heard—‘ Rincewind sighed. Took,’ he said. It’s all down to simple biology, isn’t it? If you’re going to talk you need the right equipment, like lungs and lips and, and—‘ ‘Vocal chords,’ said the tree. ‘Yeah, them,’ said Rincewind. He shut up and stared gloomily at the rain. ‘ I thought wizards knew all about trees and wild food and things,’ said Twoflower reproachfully. It was very seldom that anything in his voice suggested that he thought of Rincewind as anything other than a magnificent enchanter, and the wizard was stung into action. ‘I do, I do,’ he snapped. ‘Well, what kind of tree is this?’ said the tourist. Rincewind looked up. ‘Beech,’ he said firmly. ‘Actually—‘ began the tree, and shut up quickly. It had caught Rincewind’s look. ‘Those things up there look like acorns,’ said Twoflower. ‘Yes, well, this is the sessile or heptocarpic variety,’ said Rincewind. The nuts look very much like acorns, in fact. They can fool practically anybody.’ ‘Gosh,’ said Twoflower, and, What’s that bush over there, then?’ ‘Mistletoe.’ ‘But it’s got thorns and red berries!’ ‘Well?’ said Rincewind sternly, and stared hard at him. Twoflower broke first. ‘Nothing,’ he said meekly. ‘I must have been misinformed.’ ‘Right.’ ‘But there’s some big mushrooms under it. Can you eat them?’ Rincewind looked at them cautiously. They were, indeed, very big, and had red and white spotted caps. They were in fact a variety that the local shaman (who at this point was some miles away, making friends with a rock) would only eat after first attaching one leg to a large stone with a rope. There was nothing for it but to go out in the rain and look at them. He knelt down in the leafmould and peered under the cap. After a while he said weakly, ‘No, no good to eat at all.’ ‘Why?’ called Twoflower. ‘Are the gills the wrong shade of yellow?’ ‘No, not really . . .’ ‘I expect the stems haven’t got the right kind of fluting, then.’ ‘They look okay, actually.’ ‘The cap, then, I expect the cap is the wrong colour,’ said Twoflower. ‘Not sure about that.’ ‘Well then, why can’t you eat them?’ Rincewind coughed. It’s the little doors and windows,’ he said wretchedly, ‘it’s a dead giveaway.’ Thunder rolled across Unseen University. Rain poured over its roofs and gurgled out of its gargoyles, although one or two of the more cunning ones had scuttled off to shelter among the maze of tiles. Far below, in the Great Hall, the eight most powerful wizards on the Discworld gathered at the angles of a ceremonial octogram. Actually they probably weren’t the most powerful, if the truth were known, but they certainly had great powers of survival which, in the highly competitive world of magic, was pretty much the same thing. Behind every wizard of the eighth rank were half a dozen eventh rank wizards trying to bump him off, and senior wizards had to develop an inquiring attitude to, for example, scorpions in their bed. An ancient proverb summed it up: when a wizard is tired of looking for broken glass in his dinner, it ran, he is tired of life. The oldest wizard, Greyhald Spold of the Ancient and Truly Original Sages of the Unbroken Circle, leaned heavily on his carven staff and spake thusly: ‘Get on with it, Weatherwax, my feet are giving me gyp.’ Galder, who had merely paused for effect, glared at him. ‘Very well, then, I will be brief —‘ ‘Jolly good.’ We all sought guidance as to the events of this morning. Can anyone among us say he received it?’ The wizards looked sidelong at one another. Nowhere outside a trades union conference fraternal benefit night can so much mutual distrust and suspicion be found as among a gathering of senior enchanters. But the plain fact was that the day had gone very badly. Normally informative demons, summoned abruptly from the Dungeon Dimensions, had looked sheepish and sidled away when questioned. Magic mirrors had cracked. Tarot cards had mysteriously become blank. Crystal balls had gone all cloudy. Even tealeaves, normally scorned by wizards as frivolous and unworthy of contemplation, had clustered together at the bottom of cups and refused to move. In short, the assembled wizards were at a loss. There was a general murmur of agreement. ‘And therefore I propose that we perform the Rite of AshkEnte,’ said Galder dramatically. He had to admit that he had hoped for a better response, something on the lines of, well, ‘No, not the Rite of AshkEnte! Man was not meant to meddle with such things!’ In fact there was a general mutter of approval. ‘Good idea.’ ‘Seems reasonable.’ ‘Get on with it, then.’ Slightly put out, he summoned a procession of lesser wizards who carried various magical implements into the hall. It has already been hinted that around this time there was some disagreement among the fraternity of wizards about how to practise magic. Younger wizards in particular went about saying that it was time that magic started to update its image and that they should all stop mucking about with bits of wax and bone and put the whole thing on a properly-organised basis, with research programmes and three-day conventions in good hotels where they could read papers with titles like ‘Whither Geomancy?’ and The role of Seven-League Boots in a caring society.’ Trymon, for example, hardly ever did any magic these days but ran the Order with hourglass efficiency and wrote lots of memos and had a big chart on his office wall, covered with coloured blobs and flags and lines that no-one else really understood but which looked very impressive. The other type of wizard thought all this was so much marsh gas and wouldn’t have anything to do with an image unless it was made of wax and had pins stuck in it. The heads of the eight orders were all of this persuasion, traditionalists to a mage, and the utensils that were heaped around the octogram had a definite, no-nonsense occult look about them. Rams horns, skulls, baroque metalwork and heavy candles were much in evidence, despite the discovery by younger wizards that the Rite of AshkEnte could perfectly well be performed with three small bits of wood and 4 cc of mouse blood. The preparations normally took several hours, but the combined powers of the senior wizards shortened it considerably and, after a mere forty minutes, Galder chanted the final words of the spell. They hung in front of him for a moment before dissolving. The air in the centre of the octogram shimmered and thickened, and suddenly contained a tall, dark figure. Most of it was hidden by a black robe and hood and this was probably just as well. It held a long scythe in one hand and one couldn’t help noticing that what should have been fingers were simply white bone. The other skeletal hand held small cubes of cheese and pineapple on a stick. WELL?said Death, in a voice with all the warmth and colour of an iceberg. He caught the wizards’ gaze, and glanced down at the stick. I WAS AT A PARTY,he added, a shade reproachfully. ‘O Creature of Earth and Darkness, we do charge thee to abjure from—‘ began Galder in a firm, commanding voice. Death nodded. YES, YES, I KNOW ALL THAT,he said.WHY HAVE YOU SUMMONED ME? ‘It is said that you can see both the past and future,’ said Galder a little sulkily, because the big speech of binding and conjuration was one he rather liked and people had said he was very good at it. THAT IS ABSOLUTELY CORRECT. Then perhaps you can tell us what exactly it was that happened this morning?’ said Galder. He pulled himself together, and added loudly, ‘I command this by Azimrothe, by T’chikel, by—‘ ALL RIGHT, YOU’VE MADE YOUR POINT,said Death.WHAT PRECISELY WAS IT YOU WISHED TO KNOW? QUITE A LOT OF THINGS HAPPENED THIS MORNING, PEOPLE WERE BORN, PEOPLE DIED, ALL THE TREES GREW A BIT TALLER, RIPPLES MADE INTERESTING PATTERNS ON THE SEA— ‘I mean about the Octavo,’ said Galder coldly. THAT? OH, THAT WAS JUST A READJUSTMENT OF REALITY. I UNDERSTAND THE OCTAVO WAS ANXIOUS NOT TO LOSE THE EIGHTH SPELL. IT WAS DROPPING OFF THE DISC, APPARENTLY. ‘Hold on, hold on,’ said Galder. He scratched his chin. ‘Are we talking about the one inside the head of Rincewind? Tall thin man, bit scraggy? The one—‘ —THAT HE HAS BEEN CARRYING AROUND ALL THESE YEARS, YES. Galder frowned. It seemed a lot of trouble to go to. Everyone knew that when a wizard died all the spells in h:s head would go free, so why bother to save Rincewind? The spell would just float back eventually. Any idea why?’ he said without thinking and then, remembering himself in time, added hastily, ‘By Yrriph and Kcharla I do abjure thee and—‘ I WISH YOU WOULDN’T KEEP DOING THAT,said Death,ALL THAT I KNOW IS THAT ALL THE SPELLS HAVE TO BE SAID TOGETHER NEXT HOGS-WATCHNIGHT OR THE DISC WILL BE DESTROYED. ‘Speak up there!’ demanded Greyhald Spold. ‘Shut up!’ said Galder. ME? ‘No , him. Daft old—‘ ‘I heard that!’ snapped Spold, ‘You young people—‘ He stopped. Death was looking at him thoughtfully, as if he was trying to remember his face. ‘Look,’ said Galder, ‘just repeat that bit again, will you? The Disc will be what?’ DESTROYED,said Death.CAN I GO NOW? I LEFT MY DRINK. ‘Hang on,’ said Galder hurriedly. ‘By Cheliliki and Orizone and so forth, what do you mean, destroyed?’ IT’S AN ANCIENT PROPHECY WRITTEN ON THE INNER WALLS OF THE GREAT PYRAMID OF TSORT. THE WORD DESTROYED SEEMS QUITE SELF-EXPLANATORY TO ME. ‘That’s all you can tell us?’ YES. ‘But Hogswatchnight is only two months away!’ YES. ‘At least you can tell us where Rincewind is now!’ Death shrugged. It was a gesture he was particularly well built for. THE FOREST OF SKUND, RIMWARDS OF THE RAMTOP MOUNTAINS. What is he doing there?’ FEELING VERY SORRY FOR HIMSELF. ‘Oh.’ NOW MAY I GO? Galder nodded distractedly. He had been thinking wistfully of the banishment ritual, which started ‘Begone, foul shade’ and had some rather impressive passages which he had been practising, but somehow he couldn’t work up any enthusiasm. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. Thank you, yes.’ And then, because it’s as well not to make enemies even among the creatures of night, he added politely, ‘I hope it is a good party.’ Death didn’t answer. He was looking at Spold in the same way that a dog looks at a bone, only in this case things were more or less the other way around. ‘I said I hope it is a good party,’ said Galder, loudly. AT THE MOMENT IT IS,said Death levelly.I THINK IT MIGHT GO DOWNHILL VERY QUICKLY AT MIDNIGHT. ‘Why?’ THAT’S WHEN THEY THINK I’LL BE TAKING MY MASK OFF. He vanished, leaving only a cocktail stick and a short paper streamer behind. There had been an unseen observer of all this. It was of course entirely against the rules, but Trymon knew all about rules and had always considered they were for making, not obeying. Long before the eight mages had got down to some serious arguing about what the apparition had meant he was down in the main levels of the University library. It was an awe-inspiring place. Many of the books were magical, and the important thing to remember about grimoires is that they are deadly in the hands of any ibrarian who cares about order, because he’s bound to stick them all on the same shelf. This is not a good idea with books that tend to leak magic, because more than one or two of them together form a critical Black Mass. On top of that, many of the lesser spells are quite particular about the company they keep, and tend to express any objections by hurling their books viciously across the room. And, of course, there is always the half-felt presence of the Things from the Dungeon Dimensions, clustering around the magical leakage and constantly probing the walls of reality. The job of magical librarian, who has to spend his working days in this sort of highly charged atmosphere, is a high-risk occupation. The Head Librarian was sitting on top of his desk, quietly peeling a orange, and was well aware of that. He glanced up when Trymon entered. ‘I’m looking for anything we’ve got on the Pyramid of Tshut,’ said Trymon. He had come prepared: he took a banana out of his pocket. The librarian looked at it mournfully, and then flopped down heavily on the floor. Trymon found a soft hand poked gently into his and the librarian led the way, waddling sadly between the bookshelves. It was like holding a little leather glove. Around them the books sizzled and sparked, with the occasional discharge of undirected magic flashing over to the carefully-placed earthing rods nailed to the shelves. There was a tinny, blue smell and, just at the very limit of hearing, the horrible chittering of the dungeon creatures. Like many other parts of Unseen University the library occupied rather more space than its outside dimensions would suggest, because magic distorts space in strange ways, and it was probably the only library in the universe with Mobius shelves. But the librarian’s mental catalogue was ticking over perfectly. He stopped by a soaring stack of musty books and swung himself up into the darkness. There was the sound of rustling paper, and a cloud of dust oated down to Trymon. Then the librarian was back, a slim volume in his hands. ‘Oook,’ he said. Trymon took it gingerly. The cover was scratched and very dog-eared, the gold of its lettering had long ago curled off, but he could just make out, in the old magic tongue of the Tsort Valley, the words: I yt Gryet Teymple hyte Tsort, Y Hiystory Myistical. ‘Oook?’ said the librarian, anxiously. Trymon turned the pages cautiously. He wasn’t very good at languages, he’d always found them highly inefficient things which by rights ought to be replaced by some sort of easily understood numerical system, but this seemed exactly what he was looking for. There were whole pages covered with meaningful hieroglyphs. ‘Is this the only book you’ve got about the pyramid of Tsort?’ he said slowly. ‘Oook.’ ‘You’re quite sure?’ ‘Oook.’ Trymon listened. He could hear, a long way off, the sound of approaching feet and arguing voices. But he had been prepared for that, too. He reached into a pocket. ‘Would you like another banana?’ he said. The forest of Skund was indeed enchanted, which was nothing unusual on the Disc, and was also the only forest in the whole universe to be called – in the local language – Your Finger You Fool, which was the literal meaning of the word Skund. The reason for this is regrettably all too common. When the first explorers from the warm lands around the Circle Sea travelled into the chilly hinterland they filled in the blank spaces on their maps by grabbing the nearest native, pointing at some distant landmark, speaking very clearly n a loud voice, and writing down whatever the bemused man told them. Thus were immortalised in generations of atlases such geographical oddities as Just A Mountain, I Don’t Know, What? and, of course, Your Finger You Fool. Rainclouds clustered around the bald heights of Mt. Oolskunrahod (‘Who is this Fool who does Not Know what a Mountain Is’) and the Luggage settled itself more comfortably under a dripping tree, which tried unsuccessfully to strike up a conversation. Twoflower and Rincewind were arguing. The person they were arguing about sat on his mushroom and watched them with interest. He looked like someone who smelled like someone who lived in a mushroom, and that bothered Twoflower. ‘Well, why hasn’t he got a red hat?’ Rincewind hesitated, desperately trying to imagine what Twoflower was getting at. ‘What?’ he said, giving in. ‘He should have a red hat,’ said Twoflower. ‘And he certainly ought to be cleaner and more, more sort of jolly. He doesn’t look like any sort of gnome to me.’ ‘What are you going on about?’ ‘Look at that beard,’ said Twoflower sternly. ‘I’ve seen better beards on a piece of cheese.’ ‘Look, he’s six inches high and lives in a mushroom,’ snarled Rincewind. ‘Of course he’s a bloody gnome.’ ‘We’ve only got his word for it.’ Rincewind looked down at the gnome. ‘Excuse me,’ he said. He took Twoflower to the other side of the clearing. ‘Listen,’ he said between his teeth. ‘If he was fifteen feet tall and said he was a giant we’d only have his word for that too, wouldn’t we?’ ‘He could be a goblin,’ said Twoflower defiantly. Rincewind looked back at the tiny figure, which was industriously picking its nose. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘So what? Gnome, goblin, pixie – so what?’ ‘Not a pixie,’ said Twoflower firmly. ‘Pixies, they wear these sort of green combinations and they have pointy caps and little knobbly antenna thingies sticking out of their heads. I’ve seen pictures.’ ‘Where?’ Twoflower hesitated, and looked at his feet. ‘I think it was called the “mutter, mutter, mutter.” ‘ ‘The what? Called the what?’ The little man took a sudden interest in the backs of his hands. ‘The Little Folks’ Book of Flower Fairies,’ he muttered. Rincewind looked blank. ‘It’s a book on how to avoid them?’ he said. ‘Oh no,’ said Twoflower hurriedly. It tells you where to look for them. I can remember the pictures now.’ A dreamy look came over his face, and Rincewind groaned inwardly. There was even a special fairy that came and took your teeth away.’ ‘What, came and pulled out your actual teeth – ?’ ‘No, no, you’re wrong, I mean after they’d fallen out, what you did was, you put the tooth under your pillow and the fairy came and took it away and left a rhinu piece.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Why what?’ ‘Why did it collect teeth?’ ‘It just did.’ Rincewind formed a mental picture of some strange entity living in a castle made of teeth. It was the kind of mental picture you tried to forget. Unsuccessfully. ‘Urgh,’ he said. Red hats! He wondered whether to enlighten the tourist about what life was really like when a frog was a good meal, a rabbit hole a useful place to shelter out of the rain, and an owl a drifting, silent terror in the night. Moleskin trousers sounded quaint unless you personally had to remove them from their original owner when the vicious little sod was cornered in his burrow. As for red hats, anyone who went around a forest looking bright nd conspicuous would only do so very, very briefly. He wanted to say: look, the life of gnomes and goblins is nasty, brutish and short. So are they. He wanted to say all this, and couldn’t. For a man with an itch to see the whole of infinity, Twoflower never actually moved outside his own head. Telling him the truth would be like kicking a spaniel. ‘Swee whee weedle wheet,’ said a voice by his foot. He looked down. The gnome, who had introduced himself as Swires, looked up. Rincewind had a very good ear for languages. The gnome had just said, ‘I’ve got some newt sorbet left over from yesterday.’ ‘Sounds wonderful,’ said Rincewind. Swires gave him another prod in the ankle. ‘The other bigger, is he all right?’ he said solicitously. ‘He’s just suffering from reality shock,’ said Rincewind. You haven’t got a red hat, by any chance?’ ‘Wheet?’ ‘Just a thought.’ ‘I know where there’s some food for biggers,’ said the gnome, ‘and shelter, too. It’s not far.’ Rincewind looked at the lowering sky. The daylight was draining out of the landscape and the clouds looked as if they had heard about snow and were considering the idea. Of course, people who lived in mushrooms couldn’t necessarily be trusted, but right now a trap baited with a hot meal and clean sheets would have had the wizard hammering to get in. They set off. After a few seconds the Luggage got carefully to its feet and started to follow. ‘Psst!’ It turned carefully, little legs moving in a complicated pattern, and appeared to look up. ‘Is it good, being joinery?’ said the tree, anxiously. ‘Did it hurt?’ The Luggage seemed to think about this. Every brass handle, every knothole, radiated extreme concentration. Then it shrugged its lid and waddled away. The tree sighed, and shook a few dead leaves out of its twigs. The cottage was small, tumbledown and as ornate as a doily. Some mad whittler had got to work on it, Rincewind decided, and had created terrible havoc before he could be dragged away. Every door, every shutter had its clusters of wooden grapes and half-moon cutouts, and there were massed outbreaks of fretwork pinecones all over the walls. He half expected a giant cuckoo to come hurtling out of an upper window. What he also noticed was the characteristic greasy feel in the air. Tiny green and purple sparks flashed from his fingernails. ‘Strong magical field,’ he muttered. ‘A hundred milli-thaums[2]at least.’ ‘There’s magic all over the place,’ said Swires. ‘An old witch used to live around here. She went a long time ago but the magic still keeps the house going.’ ‘Here, there’s something odd about that door,’ said Twoflower. Why should a house need magic to keep it going?’ said Rincewind. Twoflower touched a wall gingerly. ‘It’s all sticky!’ ‘Nougat,’ said Swires. ‘Good grief! A real gingerbread cottage! Rincewind, a real—‘ Rincewind nodded glumly. Yeah, the Confectionary School of Architecture,’ he said. ‘It never caught on.’ He looked suspiciously at the liquorice doorknocker. ‘It sort of regenerates,’ said Swires. ‘Marvellous, really. You just don’t get this sort of place nowadays, you just an’t get the gingerbread.’ ‘Really?’ said Rincewind, gloomily. ‘Come on in,’ said the gnome, ‘ but mind the doormat. ‘Why?’ ‘Candyfloss.’ The great Disc spun slowly under its toiling sun, and daylight pooled in hollows and finally drained away as night fell. In his chilly room in Unseen University Trymon pored over the book, his lips moving as his finger traced the unfamiliar, ancient script. He read that the Great Pyramid of Tsort, now long vanished, was made of one million, three thousand and ten limestone blocks. He read that ten thousand slaves had been worked to death in its building. He learned that it was a maze of secret passages, their walls reputedly decorated with the distilled wisdom of ancient Tsort. He read that its height plus its length divided by half its width equalled exactly 1.67563, or precisely 1,237.98712567 times the difference between the distance to the sun and the weight of a small orange. He learned that sixty years had been devoted entirely to its construction. It all seemed, he thought, to be rather a lot of trouble to go to just to sharpen a razor blade. And in the Forest of Skund Twoflower and Rincewind settled down to a meal of gingerbread mantlepiece and thought longingly of pickled onions. And far away, but set as it were on a collision course, the greatest hero the Disc ever produced rolled himself a cigarette, entirely unaware of the role that lay in store for him. It was quite an interesting tailormade that he twirled expertly between his fingers because, like many of the wandering wizards from whom he had picked up the art, he was in the habit of saving dogends in a leather bag and rolling them into fresh smokes. The implacable law of verages therefore dictated that some of that tobacco had been smoked almost continuously for many years now. The thing he was trying unsuccessfully to light was, well, you could have coated roads with it. So great was the reputation of this person that a group of nomadic barbarian horsemen had respectfully invited him to join them as they sat around a horseturd fire. The nomads of the Hub regions usually migrated Rimwards for the winter, and these were part of a tribe who had pitched their felt tents in the sweltering heatwave of a mere -3 degrees and were going around with peeling noses and complaining about heatstroke. The barbarian chieftain said: What then are the greatest things that a man may find in life?’ This is the sort of thing you’re supposed to say to maintain steppe-cred in barbarian circles. The man on his right thoughtfully drank his cocktail of mare’s milk and snowcat blood, and spoke thus: The crisp horizon of the steppe, the wind in your hair, a fresh horse under you.’ The man on his left said: The cry of the white eagle in the heights, the fall of snow in the forest, a true arrow in your bow.’ The chieftain nodded, and said: ‘Surely it is the sight of your enemy slain, the humiliation of his tribe and the lamentation of his women.’ There was a general murmur of whiskery approval at this outrageous display. Then the chieftain turned respectfully to his guest, a small figure carefully warming his chilblains by the fire, and said: ‘But our guest, whose name is legend, must tell us truly: what is it that a man may call the greatest things in life?’ The guest paused in the middle of another unsuccessful attempt to light up. ‘What shay?’ he said, toothlessly. ‘I said: what is it that a man may call the greatest things in life?’ The warriors leaned closer. This should be worth hearing. The guest thought long and hard and then said, with deliberation: ‘Hot water, good dentishtry and shoft lavatory paper.’ Brilliant octarine light flared in the forge. Galder Weatherwax, stripped to the waist, his face hidden by a mask of smoked glass, squinted into the glow and brought a hammer down with surgical precision. The magic squealed and writhed in the tongs but still he worked it, drawing it into a line of agonised fire. A floorboard creaked. Galder had spent many hours tuning them, always a wise precaution with an ambitious assistant who walked like a cat. D flat. That meant he was just to the right of the door. ‘Ah, Trymon,’ he said, without turning, and noted with some satisfaction the faint indrawing of breath behind him. ‘Good of you to come. Shut the door, will you?’ Trymon pushed the heavy door, his face expressionless. On the high shelf above him various bottled impossibilities wallowed in their pickle jars and watched him with interest. Like all wizards’ workshops, the place looked as though a taxidermist had dropped his stock in a foundry and then had a fight with a maddened glassblower, braining a passing crocodile in the process (it hung from the ceiling and smelt strongly of camphor). There were lamps and rings that Trymon itched to rub, and mirrors that looked as though they could repay a second glance. A pair of seven-league boots stirred restlessly in a cage. A whole library of grimoires, not of course as powerful as the Octavo but still heavy with spells, creaked and rattled their chains as they sensed the wizard’s covetous glance on them. The naked power of it all stirred him as nothing else could, but he deplored the scruffiness and Galder’s sense of theatre. For example, he happened to know that the green liquid bubbling mysteriously through a maze of contorted pipework on one of the benches was just green dye with soap in it, because he’d bribed one of the servants. One day, he thought, it’s all going to go. Starting with that bloody alligator. His knuckles whitened . . . ‘Well now,’ said Galder cheerfully, hanging up his apron and sitting back in his chair with the lion paw arms and duck legs, ‘You sent me this memmy-thing.’ Trymon shrugged. ‘Memo. I merely pointed out, lord, that the other Orders have all sent agents to Skund Forest to recapture the spell, while you do nothing,’ he said. ‘No doubt you will reveal your reasons in good time.’ ‘Your faith shames me,’ said Galder. The wizard who captures the spell will bring great honour on himself and his order,’ said Trymon. The others have used boots and all manner of elsewhere spells. What do you propose using, master?’ ‘Did I detect a hint of sarcasm there?’ ‘Absolutely not, master.’ ‘Not even a smidgeon?’ ‘Not even the merest smidgeon, master.’ ‘Good. Because I don’t propose to go.’ Galder reached down and picked up an ancient book. He mumbled a command and it creaked open; a bookmark suspiciously like a tongue flicked back into the binding. He fumbled down beside his cushion and produced a little leather bag of tobacco and a pipe the size of an incinerator. With all the skill of a terminal nicotine addict he rubbed a nut of tobacco between his hands and tamped it into the bowl. He snapped his fingers and fire flared. He sucked deep, sighed with satisfaction . . . . . . looked up. ‘Still here, Tryrnon?’ ‘You summoned me, master,’ said Trymon levelly. At least, that’s what his voice said. Deep in his grey eyes was the faintest glitter that said he had a list of every slight, every patronising twinkle, every gentle reproof, every knowing glance, and for every single one Galder’s living brain was going to spend a year in acid. ‘Oh, yes, so I did. Humour the deficiencies of an old man,’ said Galder pleasantly. He held up the book he had been reading. ‘I don’t hold with all this running about,’ he said. ‘It’s all very dramatic, mucking about with magic carpets and the like, but it isn’t true magic to my mind. Take seven league boots, now. If men were meant to walk twenty-one miles at a step I am sure God would have given us longer legs . . . Where was I?’ ‘I am not sure,’ said Trymon coldly. ‘Ah, yes. Strange that we could find nothing about the Pyramid of Tsort in the Library, you would have thought there’d be something, wouldn’t you?’ The librarian will be disciplined, of course.’ Galder looked sideways at him. ‘Nothing drastic,’ he said. ‘Withold his bananas, perhaps.’ They looked at each other for a moment. Galder broke off first – looking hard at Trymon always bothered him. It had the same disconcerting effect as gazing into a mirror and seeing no-one there. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘strangely enough, I found assistance elsewhere. In my own modest bookshelves, in fact. The journal of Skrelt Changebasket, the founder of our order. You, my keen young man who would rush off so soon, do you know what happens when a wizard dies?’ ‘Any spells he has memorised say themselves,’ said Trymon. ‘It is one of the first things we learn.’ ‘In fact it is not true of the original Eight Great Spells. By dint of close study Skrelt learned that a Great Spell will simply take refuge in the nearest mind open and ready to receive it. Just push the big mirror over here, will you?’ Galder got to his feet and shuffled across to the forge, which was now cold. The strand of magic still writhed, though, at once present and not present, like a slit cut into another universe full of hot blue light. He picked it p easily, took a longbow from a rack, said a word of power, and watched with satisfaction as the magic grasped the ends of the bow and then tightened until the wood creaked. Then lie selected an arrow. Trymon had tugged a heavy, full-length mirror into the middle of the floor. When I am head of the Order, he told himself, I certainly won’t shuffle around in carpet slippers. Trymon, as mentioned earlier, felt that a lot could be done by fresh blood if only the dead wood could be removed – but, just for the moment, he was genuinely interested in seeing what the old fool would do next. He may have derived some satisfaction if he had known that Galder and Skrelt Changebasket were both absolutely wrong. Galder made a few passes in front of the glass, which clouded over and then cleared to show an aerial view of the Forest of Skund. He looked at it intently while holding the bow with the arrow pointing vaguely at the ceiling. He muttered a few words like ‘allow for wind speed of, say, three knots’ and ‘adjust for temperature’ and then, with a rather disappointing movement, released the arrow. If the laws of action and reaction had anything to do with it, it should have flopped to the ground a few feet away. But no-one was listening to them. With a sound that defies description, but which for the sake of completeness can be thought of basically as ‘spang!’ plus three days hard work in any decently equipped radiophonic workshop, the arrow vanished. Galder threw the bow aside and grinned. ‘Of course, it’ll take about an hour to get there,’ he said. Then the spell will simply follow the ionised path back here. To me.’ ‘Remarkable,’ said Trymon, but any passing telepath would have read in letters ten yards high: if you, then why not me? He looked down at the cluttered workbench, when a long and very sharp knife looked tailormade for what he suddenly had in mind. Violence was not something he liked to be involved in except at one remove. But the Pyramid of Tsort had been quite clear about the rewards for whoever brought all right spells together at the right time, and Trymon was not about to let years of painstaking work go for nothing because some old fool had a bright idea. ‘Would you like some cocoa while we’re waiting?’ said Galder, hobbling across the room to the servants’ bell. ‘Certainly,’ said Trymon. He picked up the knife, weighing it for balance and accuracy. ‘I must congratulate you, master. I can see that we must all get up very early in the morning to get the better of you.’ Galder laughed. And the knife left Trymon’s hand at such speed that (because of the somewhat sluggish nature of Disc light) it actually grew a bit shorter and a little more massive as it plunged, with unerring aim, towards Galder’s neck. It didn’t reach it. Instead, it swerved to one side and began a fast orbit – so fast that Galder appeared suddenly to be wearing a metal collar. He turned around, and to Trymon it seemed that he had suddenly grown several feet taller and much more powerful. The knife broke away and shuddered into the door a mere shadow’s depth from Trymon’s ear. ‘Early in the morning?’ said Galder pleasantly. ‘My dear lad, you will need to stay up all night.’ ‘Have a bit more table,’ said Rincewind. ‘No thanks, I don’t like marzipan,’ said Twoflower. ‘Anyway, I’m sure it’s not right to eat other people’s furniture.’ ‘Don’t worry,’ said Swires. The old witch hasn’t been seen for years. They say she was done up good and proper by a couple of young tearaways.’ ‘Kids of today,’ commented Rincewind. ‘I blame the parents,’ said Twoflower. Once you had made the necessary mental adjustments, the gingerbread cottage was quite a pleasant place. Residual magic kept it standing and it was shunned by such local wild animals who hadn’t already died of terminal tooth decay. A bright fire of liquorice logs burned rather messily in the fireplace; Rincewind had tried gathering wood outside, but had given up. It’s hard to burn wood that talks to you. He belched. ‘This isn’t very healthy,’ he said. ‘I mean, why sweets? Why not crispbread and cheese? Or salami, now – I could just do with a nice salami sofa.’ ‘Search me,’ said Swires. ‘Old Granny Whitlow just did sweets. You should have seen her meringues —‘ ‘I have,’ said Rincewind, ‘I looked at the mattresses . . .’ ‘Gingerbread is more traditional,’ said Twoflower. ‘What, for mattresses?’ ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Twoflower reasonably. Whoever heard of a gingerbread mattress?’ Rincewind grunted. He was thinking of food – more accurately, of food in Ankh-Morpork. Funny how the old place seemed more attractive the further he got from it. He only had to close his eyes to picture, in dribbling detail, the food stalls of a hundred different cultures in the market places. You could eat squishi or shark’s fin soup so fresh that swimmers wouldn’t go near it, and — ‘Do you think I could buy this place?’ said Twoflower. Rincewind hesitated. He’d found it always paid to think very carefully before answering Twoflower’s more surprising questions. ‘What for?’ he said, cautiously. ‘Well, it just reeks of ambience.’ ‘Oh.’ ‘What’s ambience?’ said Swires, sniffing cautiously and wearing the kind of expression that said that he hadn’t done it, whatever it was. ‘I think it’s a kind of frog,’ said Rincewind. ‘Anyway, you can’t buy this place because there isn’t anyone to buy t from—‘ ‘I think I could probably arrange that, on behalf of the forest council of course,’ interrupted Swires, trying to avoid Rincewind’s glare. ‘— and anyway you couldn’t take it with you, I mean, you could hardly pack it in the Luggage, could you?’ Rincewind indicated the Luggage, which was lying by the fire and managing in some quite impossible way to look like a contented but alert tiger, and then looked back at Twoflower. His face fell. ‘Could you?’ he repeated. He had never quite come to terms with the fact that the inside of the Luggage didn’t seem to inhabit quite the same world as the outside. Of course, this was simply a byproduct of its essential weirdness, but it was disconcerting to see Twoflower fill it full of dirty shirts and old socks and then open the lid again on a pile of nice crisp laundry, smelling faintly of lavender. Twoflower also bought a lot of quaint native artifacts or, as Rincewind would put it, junk, and even a seven-foot ceremonial pig tickling pole seemed to fit inside quite easily without sticking out anywhere. ‘I don’t know,’ said Twoflower. ‘You’re a wizard, you know about these things.’ ‘Yes, well, of course, but baggage magic is a highly specialised art,’ said Rincewind. ‘Anyway, I’m sure the gnomes wouldn’t really want to sell it, it’s, it’s—,’ he groped through what he knew of Twoflower’s mad vocabulary – ‘it’s a tourist attraction.’ ‘What’s that?’ said Swires, interestedly. ‘It means that lots of people like him will come and look at it,’ said Rincewind. ‘Why?’ ‘Because—‘ Rincewind groped for words – ‘it’s quaint. Urn, oldey worldey. Folkloresque. Er, a delightful example of a vanished folk art, steeped in the traditions of an age long gone.’ ‘It is?’ said Swires, looking at the cottage in bewilderment. ‘Yes.’ ‘All that?’ ‘Fraid so.’ ‘I’ll help you pack.’ And the night wears on, under a blanket of lowering clouds which covers most of the Disc – which is fortuitous, because when it clears and the astrologers get a good view of the sky they are going to get angry and upset. And in various parts of the forest parties of wizards are getting lost, and going around in circles, and hiding from each other, and getting upset because whenever they bump into a tree it apologises to them. But, unsteadily though it may be, many of them are getting quite close to the cottage . . . Which is a good time to get back to the rambling buildings of Unseen University and in particular the apartments of Greyhald Spold, currently the oldest wizard on the Disc and determined to keep it that way. He has just been extremely surprised and upset. For the last few hours he has been very busy. He may be deaf and a little hard of thinking, but elderly wizards have very well-trained survival instincts, and they know that when a tall figure in a black robe and the latest in agricultural handtools starts looking thoughtfully at you it is time to act fast. The servants have been dismissed. The doorways have been sealed with a paste made from powdered mayflies, and protective octograms have been drawn on the windows. Rare and rather smelly oils have been poured in complex patterns on the floor, in designs which hurt the eyes and suggest the designer was drunk or from some other dimension or, possibly, both; in the very centre of the room is the eightfold octogram of Witholding, surrounded by red and green candles. And in the centre of that is a box made from wood of the curly-fern pine, which grows to a great age, and it is lined with red silk and yet more protective amulets. Because Greyhald Spold knows that Death is looking for him, and has spent many years designing an impregnable hiding place. He has just set the complicated clockwork of the lock and shut the lid, lying back in the knowledge that here at last is the perfect defence against the most ultimate of all his enemies, although as yet he has not considered the important part that airholes must play in an enterprise of this kind. And right beside him, very close to his ear, a voice has just said:DARK IN HERE, ISN’T IT? It began to snow. The barleysugar windows of the cottage showed bright and cheerful against the blackness. At one side of the clearing three tiny red points of light-glowed momentarily and there was the sound of a chesty cough, abruptly silenced. ‘Shut up!’ hissed a third rank wizard. They’ll hear us!’ ‘Who will? We gave the lads from the Brotherhood of the Hoodwink the slip in the swamp, and those idiots from the Venerable Council of Seers went off the wrong way anyway.’ ‘Yeah,’ said the most junior wizard, ‘but who keeps talking to us? They say this is a magic wood, it’s full of goblins and wolves and —‘ ‘Trees,’ said a voice out of the darkness, high above. It possessed what can only be described as timbre. ‘Yeah,’ said the youngest wizard. He sucked on his dogend, and shivered. The leader of the party peered over the rock and watched the cottage. ‘Right then,’ he said, knocking out his pipe on the heel of his seven league boot, who squeaked in protest. ‘We rush in, we grab them, we’re away. Okay?’ ‘You sure it’s just people?’ said the youngest wizard, nervously. ‘Of course I’m sure,’ snarled the leader. ‘What do you expect, three bears?’ ‘There could be monsters. This is the sort of wood that 45 has monsters.’ ‘And trees,’ said a friendly voice from the branches. ‘Yeah,’ said the leader, cautiously. Rincewind looked carefully at the bed. It was quite a nice little bed, in a sort of hard toffee inlaid with caramel, but he’d rather eat it than sleep in it and it looked as though someone already had. ‘Someone’s been eating my bed,’ he said. ‘I like toffee,’ said Twoflower defensively. ‘If you don’t watch out the fairy will come and take all your teeth away,’ said Rincewind. ‘No, that’s elves,’ said Swires from the dressing table. ‘Elves do that. Toenails, too. Very touchy at times, elves can be.’ Twoflower sat down heavily on his bed. ‘You’ve got it wrong,’ he said. ‘Elves are noble and beautiful and wise and fair; I’m sure I read that somewhere.’ Swires and Rincewind’s kneecap exchanged glances. ‘I think you must be thinking about different elves,’ the gnome said slowly. ‘We’ve just got the other sort around here. Not that you could call them quick-tempered,’ he added hastily. ‘Not if you didn’t want to take your teeth home in your hat, anyway.’ There was the tiny, distinctive sound of a nougat door opening. At the same time, from the other side of the cottage, came the faintest of tinkles, like a rock smashing a barley sugar window as delicately as possible. ‘What was that?’ said Twoflower. ‘Which one?’ said Rincewind. There was the clonk of a heavy branch banging against the window sill. With a cry of ‘Elves!’ Swires scuttled across the floor to a mousehole and vanished. ‘What shall we do?’ said Twoflower. ‘Panic?’ said Rincewind hopefully. He always held that panic was the best means of survival; back in the olden days, his theory went, people faced with hungry sabre-toothed tigers could be divided very simply into those who panicked and those who stood there saying ‘What a magnificent brute!’ and ‘Here, pussy.’ ‘There’s a cupboard,’ said Twoflower, pointing to a narrow door that was squeezed between the wall and the chimneybreast. They scrambled into sweet, musty darkness. There was the creak of a chocolate floorboard outside. Someone said ‘I heard voices.’ Someone else said, ‘Yeah, downstairs. I think it’s the Hood winkers.’ ‘I thought you said we’d given them the slip!’ ‘Hey, you two, you can eat this place! Here, look you can —‘ ‘Shut up!’ There was a lot more creaking, and a muffled scream from downstairs where a Venerable Seer, creeping carefully through the darkness from the broken window, had trodden on the fingers of a Hoodwinker who was hiding under the table. There was the sudden zip and zing of magic. ‘Bugger!’said a voice outside. They’ve got him! Let’s go!’ There was more creaking, and then silence. After a while Twoflower said, ‘Rincewind, I think there’s a broomstick in this cupboard.’ Well, what’s so unusual about that?’ This one’s got handlebars.’ There was a piercing shriek from below. In the darkness a wizard had tried to open the Luggage’s lid. A crash from the scullery indicated the sudden arrival of a party of Illuminated Mages of the Unbroken Circle. ‘What do you think they’re after?’ whispered Twoflower. ‘I don’t know, but I think it might be a good idea not to find out,’ said Rincewind thoughtfully. ‘You could be right.’ Rincewind pushed open the door gingerly. The room was empty. He tiptoed across to the window, and looked own into the upturned faces of three Brothers of the Order of Midnight. ‘That’s him!’ He drew back hurriedly and rushed for the stairs. The scene below was indescribable but since that statement would earn the death penalty in the reign of Olaf Quimby II the attempt better be made. Firstly, most of the struggling wizards were trying to illuminate the scene by various flames, fireballs and magical glows, so the overall lighting gave the impression of a disco in a strobelight factory; each man was trying to find a position from which he could see the rest of the room without being attacked himself, and absolutely everyone was trying to keep out of the way of the Luggage, which had two Venerable Seers pinned in a corner and was snapping its lid at anyone who approached. But one wizard did happen to look up. ‘It’s him!’ Rincewind jerked back, and something bumped into him. He looked around hurriedly, and stared when he saw Twoflower sitting on the broomstick – which was floating in mid-air. ‘The witch must have left it behind!’ said Twoflower. ‘A genuine magic broomstick!’ Rincewind hesitated. Octarine sparks were spitting off the broomstick’s bristles and he hated heights almost more than anything else, but what he really hated more than anything at all was a dozen very angry and bad-tempered wizards rushing up the stairs towards him, and this was happening. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘but I’ll drive.’ He lashed out with a boot at a wizard who was halfway through a Spell of Binding and jumped onto the broomstick, which bobbed down the stairwell and then turned upside down so that Rincewind was horribly eye to eye with a Brother of Midnight. He yelped and gave the handlebars a convulsive twist. Several things happened at once. The broomstick shot orward and broke through the wall in a shower of crumbs: the Luggage surged forward and bit the Brother in the leg: and with a strange whistling sound an arrow appeared from nowhere, missed Rincewind by inches, and struck the Luggage’s lid with a very solid thud. The Luggage vanished. In a little village deep in the forest an ancient shaman threw a few more twigs on his fire and stared through the smoke at his shamefaced apprentice. ‘A box with legs on?’ he said. ‘Yes, master. It just appeared out of the sky and looked at me,’ said the apprentice. ‘It had eyes then, this box?’ ‘N—,’ began the apprentice and stopped, puzzled. The old man frowned. ‘Many have seen Topaxci, God of the Red Mushroom, and they earn the name of shaman,’ he said. ‘Some have seen Skelde, spirit of the smoke, and they are called sorcerers. A few have been privileged to see Umcherrel, the soul of the forest, and they are known as spirit masters. But none have seen a box with hundreds of legs that looked at them without eyes, and they are known as idio—‘ The interruption was caused by a sudden screaming noise and a flurry of snow and sparks that blew the fire across the dark hut; there was a brief blurred vision and then the opposite wall was blasted aside and the apparition vanished. There was a long silence. Then a slightly shorter silence. Then the old shaman said carefully, ‘You didn’t just see two men go through upside down on a broomstick, shouting and screaming at each other, did you?’ The boy looked at him levelly. ‘Certainly not,’ he said. The old man heaved a sigh of relief. Thank goodness for that,’ he said. ‘Neither did I.’ The cottage was in turmoil, because not only did the wizards want to follow the broomstick, they also wanted to prevent each other from doing so, and this led to several regrettable incidents.The most spectacular, and certainly the most tragic, happened when one Seer attempted to use his seven league boots without the proper sequence of spells and preparations. Seven league boots, as has already been intimated, are a tricksy form of magic at best, and he remembered too late that the utmost caution must be taken in using a means of transport which, when all is said and done, relies for its effectiveness on trying to put one foot twenty-one miles in front of the other. The first snowstorms of winter were raging, and in fact there was a suspiciously heavy covering of cloud over most of the Disc. And yet, from far above and by the silver light of the discworld’s tiny moon, it presented one of the most beautiful sights in the multiverse. Great streamers of cloud, hundreds of miles along, swirled from the waterfall at the Rim to the mountains of the Hub. In the cold crystal silence the huge white spiral glittered frostily under the stars, imperceptibly turning, very much as though God had stirred His coffee and then poured the cream in. Nothing disturbed the glowing scene, which — Something small and distant broke through the cloud layer, trailing shreds of vapour. In the stratospheric calm the sounds of bickering came sharp and clear. ‘You said you could fly one of these things!’ ‘No I didn’t; I just said you couldn’t!’ ‘But I’ve never been on one before!’ ‘What a coincidence!’ ‘Anyway, you said— look at the sky!’ ‘No I didn’t!’ ‘What’s happened to the stars?’ And so it was that Rincewind and Twoflower became the first two people on the Disc to see what the future held. A thousand miles behind them the Hub mountain of Cori Celesti stabbed the sky and cast a knife-bright shadow across the broiling clouds, so that Gods ought to have noticed too – but the Gods don’t normally look at the sky and in any case were engaged in litigation with the Ice Giants, who had refused to turn their radio down. Rimwards, in the direction of Great A’Tuin’s travel, the sky had been swept of stars. In that circle of blackness there was just one star, a red and baleful star, a star like the glitter in the eyesocket of a rabid mink. It was small and horrible and uncompromising. And the Disc was being carried straight towards it. Rincewind knew precisely what to do in these circumstances. He screamed and pointed the broomstick straight down. Galder Weatherwax stood in the centre of the octogram and raised his hands. ‘Urshalo, dileptor, c’hula, do my bidding!’ A small mist formed over his head. He glanced sideways at Trymon, who was sulking at the edge of the magic circle. ‘This next bit’s quite impressive,’ he said. ‘Watch. Kot-b’hai! Kot-sham! To me, o spirits of small isolated rocks and worried mice not less than three inches long!’ ‘What?’ said Trymon. That bit took quite a lot of research,’ agreed Galder, especially the mice. Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes . . .’ He raised his arms again. Trymon watched him, and licked his lips distractedly. The old fool was really concentrating, bending his mind entirely to the Spell and hardly paying any attention to Trymon. Words of power rolled around the room, bouncing off the walls and scuttling out of sight behind shelves and jars. Trymon hesitated. Galder shut his eyes momentarily, his face a mask of ecstacy as he mouthed the final word. Trymon tensed, his fingers curling around the knife again. And Galder opened one eye, nodded at him and sent a sideways blast of power that picked the younger man up and sent him sprawling against the wall. Galder winked at him and raised his arms again. ‘To me, o spirits of—‘ There was a thunderclap, an implosion of light and a moment of complete physical uncertainty during which even the walls seemed to turn in on themselves. Trymon heard a sharp intake of breath and then a dull, solid thump. The room was suddenly silent. After a few minutes Trymon crawled out from behind a chair and dusted himself off. He whistled a few bars of nothing much and turned towards the door with exaggerated care, looking at the ceiling as if he had never seen it before. He moved in a way that suggested he was attempting the world speed record for the nonchalant walk. The Luggage squatted in the centre of the circle and opened its lid. Trymon stopped. He turned very, very carefully, dreading what he might see. The Luggage seemed to contain some clean laundry, smelling slightly of lavender. Somehow it was quite the most terrifying thing the wizard had ever seen. ‘Well, er,’ he said. ‘You, um, wouldn’t have seen another wizard around here, by any chance?’ The Luggage contrived to look more menacing. ‘Oh,’ said Trymon. ‘Well, fine. It doesn’t matter.’ He pulled vaguely at the hem of his robe and took a brief interest in the detail of its stitching. When he looked up the horrible box was still there. ‘Goodbye,’ he said, and ran. He managed to get through the door just in time. ‘Rincewind?’ Rincewind opened his eyes. Not that it helped much. It just meant that instead of seeing nothing but blackness he saw nothing but whiteness which, surprisingly, was worse. ‘Are you all right?’ ‘No.’ ‘Ah.’ Rincewind sat up. He appeared to be on a rock speckled with snow, but it didn’t seem to be everything a rock ought to be. For example, it shouldn’t be moving. Snow blew around him. Twoflower was a few feet away, a look of genuine concern on his face. Rincewind groaned. His bones were very angry at the treatment they had recently received and were queuing up to complain. ‘What now?’ he said. You know when we were flying and I was worried we might hit something in the storm and you said the only thing we could possibly hit at this height was a cloud stuffed with rocks?’ ‘Well?’ ‘How did you know?’ Rincewind looked around, but for all the variety and interest in the scene around him they might as well have been in the inside of a pingpong ball. The rock underneath was – well, rocking. He ran his hands over it, and felt the scoring of chisels. When he put an ear to the cold wet stone he fancied he could hear a dull, slow thumping, like a heartbeat. He crawled forward until he came to an edge, and peered very cautiously over it. At that moment the rock must have been passing over a break in the clouds, because he caught a dim but horribly distant view of jagged-edged mountain peaks. They were a long way down. He gurgled incoherently and inched his way backwards. ‘This is ridiculous,’ he told Twoflower. ‘Rocks don’t fly. They’re noted for not doing it.’ ‘Maybe they would if they could,’ said Twoflower. ‘Perhaps this one just found out how.’ ‘Let’s just hope it doesn’t forget again,’ said Rincewind. He huddled up in his soaking robe and looked glumly at the cloud around him. He supposed there were some people somewhere who had some control over their lives; they got up in the mornings, and went to bed at night in the reasonable certainty of not falling over the edge of the world or being attacked by lunatics or waking up on a rock with ideas above its station. He dimly remembered leading a life like that once. Rincewind sniffed. This rock smelt of frying. The smell seemed to be coming from up ahead, and appealed straight to his stomach. ‘Can you smell anything?’ he said. ‘I think it’s bacon,’ said Twoflower. ‘I hope it’s bacon,’ said Rincewind, ‘because I’m going to eat it.’ He stood up on the trembling stone and tottered forward into the clouds, peering through the wet gloom. At the front or leading edge of the rock a small druid was sitting crosslegged in front of a small fire. A square of oilskin was tied across his head and knotted under his chin. He was poking at a pan of bacon with an ornamental sickle. ‘Um,’ said Rincewind. The druid looked up, and dropped the pan into the fire. He leapt to his feet and gripped the sickle aggressively, or at least as aggressively as anyone can look in a long wet white nightshirt and a dripping headscarf. ‘I warn you, I shall deal harshly with hijackers,’ he said, and sneezed violently. ‘We’ll help,’ said Rincewind, looking longingly at the burning bacon. This seemed to puzzle the druid who, to Rincewind’s mild surprise, was quite young; he supposed here had to be such things as young druids, theoretically, it was just that he had never imagined them. ‘You’re not trying to steal the rock?’ said the druid, lowering the sickle a fraction. ‘I didn’t even know you could steal rocks,’ said Rincewind wearily. ‘Excuse me,’ said Twoflower politely, ‘I think your breakfast is on fire.’ The druid glanced down and flailed ineffectually at the flames. Rincewind hurried forward to help, there was a fair amount of smoke, ash and confusion, and the shared triumph of actually rescuing a few pieces of rather charred bacon did more good than a whole book on diplomacy. ‘How did you get here, actually?’ said the druid. ‘We’re five hundred feet up, unless I’ve got the runes wrong again.’ Rincewind tried not to think about height. ‘We sort of dropped in as we were passing,’ he said. ‘On our way to the ground,’ Twoflower added. ‘Only your rock broke our fall,’ said Rincewind. His back complained. Thanks,’ he added. ‘I thought we’d run into some turbulence a while back,’ said the druid, whose name turned out to be Belafon. That must have been you.’ He shivered. ‘It must be morning by now,’ he said. ‘Sod the rules, I’m taking us up. Hang on.’ ‘What to?’ said Rincewind. ‘Well, just indicate a general unwillingness to fall off,’ said Belafon. He took a large iron pendulum out of his robe and swung it in a series of baffling sweeps over the fire. Clouds whipped around them, there was a horrible feeling of heaviness, and suddenly the rock burst into sunlight. It levelled off a few feet above the clouds, in a cold but bright blue sky. The clouds that had seemed chillingly distant last night and horribly clammy this morning were now a fleecy white carpet, stretching away in all directions; a few mountain peaks stood out like islands. Behind the rock the wind of its passage sculpted the clouds into transient whirls. The rock— It was about thirty feet long and ten feet wide, and blueish. ‘What an amazing panorama,’ said Twoflower, his eyes shining. ‘Um, what’s keeping us up?’ said Rincewind. ‘Persuasion,’ said Belafon, wringing out the hem of his robe. ‘Ah,’ said Rincewind sagely. ‘Keeping them up is easy,’ said the druid, holding up a thumb and squinting down the length of his arm at a distant mountain, The hard part is landing.’ ‘You wouldn’t think so, would you?’ said Twoflower. ‘Persuasion is what keeps the whole universe together,’ said Belafon. ‘It’s no good saying it’s all done by magic.’ Rincewind happened to glance down through the thinning cloud to a snowy landscape a considerable distance below. He knew he was in the presence of a madman, but he was used to that; if listening to this madman meant he stayed up here, he was all ears. Belafon sat down with his feet dangling over the edge of the rock. ‘Look, don’t worry,’ he said. ‘If you keep thinking the rock shouldn’t be flying it might hear you and become persuaded and you will turn out to be right, okay? It’s obvious you aren’t up to date with modern thinking.’ ‘So it would seem,’ said Rincewind weakly. He was trying not to think about rocks on the ground. He was trying to think about rocks swooping like swallows, bounding across landscapes in the sheer joy of levity, zooming skywards in a— He was horribly aware he wasn’t very good at it. The druids of the Disc prided themselves on their forward-looking approach to the discovery of the mysteries of the Universe. Of course, like druids everywhere they believed in the essential unity of all life, the healing ower of plants, the natural rhythm of the seasons and the burning alive of anyone who didn’t approach all this in the right frame of mind, but they had also thought long and hard about the very basis of creation and had formulated the following theory: The universe, they said, depended for its operation on the balance of four forces which they identified as charm, persuasion, uncertainty and bloody-mindedness. Thus it was that the sun and moon orbited the disc because they were persuaded not to fall down, but didn’t actually fly away because of uncertainty. Charm allowed trees to grow and bloody-mindedness kept them up, and so on. Some druids suggested that there were certain flaws in this theory, but senior druids explained very pointedly that there was indeed room for informed argument, the cut and thrust of exciting scientific debate, and basically it lay on top of the next solstice bonfire. ‘Ah, so you’re an astronomer?’ said Twoflower. ‘Oh no,’ said Belafon, as the rock drifted gently around the curve of a mountain, I’m a computer hardware consultant.’ ‘What’s a computer hardware?’ ‘Well, this is,’ said the druid, tapping the rock with a sandalled foot.’Part of one, anyway. It’s a replacement. I’m delivering it. They’re having trouble with the big circles up on the Vortex Plains. So they say, anyway; I wished I had a bronze tore for every user who didn’t read the manual.’ He shrugged. ‘What use is it, then, exactly?’ asked Rincewind. Anything to keep his mind off the drop below. ‘You can use it to – to tell you what time of year it is,’ said Belafon. ‘Ah. You mean if it’s covered in snow then it must be winter?’ ‘Yes. I mean no. I mean, supposing you wanted to know when a particular star is going to rise —‘ ‘Why?’ said Twoflower, radiating polite interest. ‘Well, maybe you want to know when to plant your crops,’ said Belafon, sweating a little, ‘or maybe—‘ ‘I’ll lend you my almanac, if you like,’ said Twoflower. ‘Almanac?’ ‘It’s a book that tells you what day it is,’ said Rincewind wearily. ‘It’d be right up your leyline.’ Belafon stiffened. ‘Book?’ he said. ‘Like, with paper?’ ‘Yes.’ That doesn’t sound very reliable to me,’ said the druid nastily. ‘How can a book know what day it is? Paper can’t count.’ He stamped off to the front of the rock, causing it to wallow alarmingly. Rincewind swallowed hard and beckoned Twoflower closer. ‘Have you ever heard of culture shock?’ he hissed. ‘What’s that?’ ‘It’s what happens when people spend five hundred years trying to get a stone circle to work properly and then someone comes up with a little book with a page for every day and little chatty bits saying things like “Now is a good time to plant broad beans” and “Early to rise, early to bed, makes a man healthy, wealthy and dead,” and do you know what the most important thing to remember about culture shock.’ Rincewind paused for breath, and moved his lips silently trying to remember where the sentence had got to, ‘is?’ he concluded. ‘What?’ ‘Don’t give it to a man flying a thousand ton rock.’ ‘Has it gone?’ Trymon peered cautiously over the battlements of the Tower of Art, the great spire of crumbling masonry that loomed over Unseen University. The cluster of students nd instructors of magic, far below, nodded. ‘Are you sure?’ The bursar cupped his hands and shouted. ‘It broke down the hubward door and escaped an hour ago, sir,’ he yelled. ‘Wrong,’ said Trymon. ‘It left, we escaped. Well, I’ll be getting down, then. Did it get anyone?’ The bursar swallowed. He was not a wizard, but a kind, good-natured man who should not have had to see the things he had witnessed in the past hour. Of course, it wasn’t unknown for small demons, coloured lights and various half-materialised imaginings to wander around the campus, but there had been something about the implacable onslaught of the Luggage that had unnerved him. Trying to stop it would have been like trying to wrestle a glacier. It – it swallowed the Dean of Liberal Studies, sir,’ he shouted. Trymon brightened. ‘It’s an ill wind,’ he murmured. He started down the long spiral staircase. After a while he smiled, a thin, tight smile. The day was definitely improving. There was a lot of organising to do. And if there was something Trymon really liked, it was organising. The rock swooped across the high plains, whipping snow from the drifts a mere few feet below. Belafon scuttled about urgently, smearing a little mistletoe ointment here, chalking a rune there, while Rincewind cowered in terror and exhaustion and Twoflower worried about his Luggage. ‘Up ahead!’ screamed the druid above the noise of the slipstream. ‘Behold, the great computer of the skies!’ Rincewind peered between his fingers. On the distant skyline was an immense construction of grey and black slabs, arranged in concentric circles and mystic avenues, aunt and forbidding against the snow. Surely men couldn’t have moved those nascent mountains – surely a troop of giants had been turned to stone by some . . . ‘It looks like a lot of rocks,’ said Twoflower. Belafon hesitated in mid-gesture. ‘What?’ he said. ‘It’s very nice,’ added the tourist hurriedly. He sought for a word. ‘Ethnic,’ he decided. The druid stiffened. ‘Nice?’ he said. ‘A triumph of the silicon chunk, a miracle of modern masonic technology – nice?’ ‘Oh, yes,’ said Twoflower, to whom sarcasm was merely a seven letter word beginning with S. ‘What does ethnic mean?’ said the druid. ‘It means terribly impressive,’ said Rincewind hurriedly, ‘and we seem to be in danger of landing, if you don’t mind—‘ Belafon turned around, only slightly mollified. He raised his arms wide and shouted a series of untranslatable words, ending with ‘nice!’ in a hurt whisper. The rock slowed, drifted sideways in a billow of snow, and hovered over the circle. Down below a druid waved two bunches of mistletoe in complicated patterns, and Belafon skilfully brought the massive slab to rest across two giant uprights with the faintest of clicks. Rincewind let his breath out in a long sigh. It hurried off to hide somewhere. A ladder banged against the side of the slab and the head of an elderly druid appeared over the edge. He gave the two passengers a puzzled glance, and then looked up at Belafon. ‘About bloody time,’ he said. ‘Seven weeks to Hogswatchnight and it’s gone down on us again.’ ‘Hallo, Zakriah,’ said Belafon. What happened this time?’ ‘It’s all totally fouled up. Today it predicted sunrise three minutes early. Talk about a klutz, boy, this is it.’ Belafon clambered onto the ladder and disappeared from view. The passengers looked at each other, and then tared down into the vast open space between the inner circle of stones. ‘What shall we do now?’ said Twoflower. ‘We could go to sleep?’ suggested Rincewind. Twoflower ignored him, and climbed down the ladder. Around the circle druids were tapping the megaliths with little hammers and listening intently. Several of the huge stones were lying on their sides, and each was surrounded by another crowd of druids who were examining it carefully and arguing amongst themselves. Arcane phrases floated up to where Rincewind sat: ‘It can’t be software incompatibility – the Chant of the Trodden Spiral was designed for concentric rings, idiot . . .’ ‘I say fire it up again and try a simple moon ceremony . . .’ ‘. . . all right, all right, nothing’s wrong with the stones, it’s just that the universe has gone wrong, right? . . .’ Through the mists of his exhausted mind Rincewind remembered the horrible star they’d seen in the sky. Something had gone wrong with the universe last night. How had he come to be back on the Disc? He had a feeling that the answers were somewhere inside his head. And an even more unpleasant feeling began to dawn on him that something else was watching the scene below – watching it from behind his eyes. The Spell had crept from its lair deep in the untrodden dirtroads of his mind, and was sitting bold as brass in his forebrain, watching the passing scene and doing the mental equivalent of eating popcorn. He tried to push it back – and the world vanished . . . He was in darkness; a warm, musty darkness, the darkness of the tomb, the velvet blackness of the mummy case. There was a strong smell of old leather and the sourness of ancient paper. The paper rustled. He felt that the darkness was full of unimaginable horrors – and the trouble with unimaginable horrors was that they were only to easy to imagine . . . ‘Rincewind,’ said a voice. Rincewind had never heard a lizard speak, but if one did it would have a voice like that. ‘Um,’ he said. ‘Yes?’ The voice chuckled – a strange sound, rather papery. ‘You ought to say “Where am I?” ‘ it said. ‘Would I like it if I knew?’ said Rincewind. He stared hard at the darkness. Now that he was accustomed to it, he could see something. Something vague, hardly bright enough to be anything at all, just the merest tracery in the air. Something strangely familiar. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Where am I?’ ‘You’re dreaming.’ ‘Can I wake up now, please?’ ‘No,’ said another voice, as old and dry as the first but still slightly different. ‘We have something very important to tell you,’ said a third voice, if anything more corpse-dry than the others. Rincewind nodded stupidly. In the back of his mind the Spell lurked and peered cautiously over his mental shoulder. ‘You’ve caused us a lot of trouble, young Rincewind,’ the voice went on. ‘All this dropping over the edge of the world with no thought for other people. We had to seriously distort reality, you know.’ ‘Gosh.’ ‘And now you have a very important task ahead of you.’ ‘Oh. Good.’ ‘Many years ago we arranged for one of our number to hide in your head, because we could foresee a time coming when you would need to play a very important role.’ ‘Me? Why?’ ‘You run away a lot,’ said one of the voices. That is good. You are a survivor.’ ‘Survivor? I’ve nearly been killed dozens of times!’ ‘Exactly.’ ‘Oh.’ ‘But try not to fall off the Disc again. We really can’t have that.’ ‘Who are we, exactly?’ said Rincewind. There was a rustling in the darkness. ‘In the beginning was the word,’ said a dry voice right ehind him. ‘It was the Egg,’ corrected another voice. ‘I distinctly remember. The Great Egg of the Universe. Slightly rubbery.’ ‘You’re both wrong, in fact. I’m sure it was the primordial slime.’ A voice by Rincewind’s knee said: ‘No, that came afterwards. There was firmament first. Lots of firmament. Rather sticky, like candyfloss. Very syrupy, in fact—.’ ‘In case anyone’s interested,’ said a crackly voice on Rincewind’s left, ‘you’re all wrong. In the beginning was the Clearing of the Throat—‘ ‘—then the word—‘ ‘Pardon me, the slime—‘ ‘Distinctly rubbery, I thought—‘ There was a pause. Then a voice said carefully, ‘Anyway, whatever it was, we remember it distinctly.’ ‘Quite so.’ ‘Exactly.’ ‘And our task is to see that nothing dreadful happens to it, Rincewind.’ Rincewind squinted into the blackness. ‘Would you kindly explain what you’re talking about?’ There was a papery sigh. ‘So much for metaphor,’ said one of the voices. ‘Look, it is very important you safeguard the Spell in your head and bring it back to us at the right time, you understand, so that when the moment is precisely right we can be said. Do you understand?’ Rincewind thought: we can be said! And it dawned on him what the tracery was, ahead of him. It was writing on a page, seen from underneath. ‘I’m in the Octavo?’ he said. ‘In certain metaphysical respects,’ said one of the voices in offhand tones. It came closer. He could feel the dry rustling right in front of his nose . . . He ran away. The single red dot glowed in its patch of darkness. Trymon, still wearing the ceremonial robes from his inauguration as head of the Order, couldn’t rid himself of the feeling that it had grown slightly while he watched. He turned away from the window with a shudder. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘It’s a star,’ said the Professor of Astrology, ‘I think.’ ‘You think?’ The astrologer winced. They were standing in Unseen University’s observatory, and the tiny ruby pinpoint on the horizon wasn’t glaring at him any worse than his new master. ‘Well, you see, the point is that we’ve always believed stars to be pretty much the same as our sun —‘ ‘You mean balls of fire about a mile across?’ ‘Yes. But this new one is, well—big.’ ‘Bigger than the sun?’ said Trymon. He’d always considered a mile-wide ball of fire quite impressive, although he disapproved of stars on principle. They made the sky look untidy. ‘A lot bigger,’ said the astrologer slowly. ‘Bigger than Great A’Tuin’s head, perhaps?’ The astrologer looked wretched. ‘Bigger than Great A’Tuin and the Disc together,’ he said. ‘We’ve checked,’ he added hurriedly, ‘and we’re quite sure.’ That is big,’ agreed Trymon. The word “huge” comes to mind.’ ‘Massive,’ agreed the astrologer hurriedly. ‘Hmm.’ Trymon paced the broad mosaic floor of the observatory, which was inlaid with the signs of the Disc zodiac. There were sixty-four of them, from Wezen the Double-headed Kangaroo to Gahoolie, the Vase of Tulips (a constellation of great religious significance whose meaning, alas, was now lost). He paused on the blue and gold tilework of Mubbo the Hyaena, and turned suddenly. ‘We’re going to hit it?’ he asked. ‘I am afraid so, sir,’ said the astrologer. ‘Hmm.’ Trymon walked a few paces forward, stroking his beard thoughtfully. He paused on the cusp of Okjock the Salesman and The Celestial Parsnip. ‘I’m not an expert in these matters,’ he said, ‘but I imagine this would not be a good thing?’ ‘No, sir.’ ‘Very hot, stars?’ The astrologer swallowed. ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘We’d be burned up?’ ‘Eventually. Of course, before that there would be discquakes, tidal waves, gravitational disruption and probably the atmosphere would be stripped away.’ ‘Ah. In a word, lack of decent organisation.’ The astrologer hesitated, and gave in. You could say so, sir.’ ‘People would panic?’ ‘Fairly briefly, I’m afraid.’ Hmm,’ said Trymon, who was just passing over The Perhaps Gate and orbiting smoothly towards the Cow of Heaven. He squinted up again at the red gleam on the horizon. He appeared to reach a decision. ‘We can’t find Rincewind,’ he said, ‘and if we can’t find Rincewind we can’t find the eighth spell of the Octavo. But we believe that the Octavo must be read to avert catastrophe – otherwise why did the Creator leave it behind?’ ‘Perhaps He was just forgetful,’ suggested the astrologer. Trymon glared at him. ‘The other Orders are searching all the lands between here and the Hub,’ he continued, counting the points on his fingers, ‘because it seems unreasonable that a man can fly into a cloud and not come out . . .’ ‘Unless it was stuffed with rocks,’ said the astrologer, in a wretched and, as it turned out, entirely unsuccessful attempt to lighten the mood. ‘But come down he must – somewhere. Where? we ask ourselves.’ ‘Where?’ said the astrologer loyally. ‘And immediately a course of action suggests itself to us.’ ‘Ah,’ said the astrologer, running in an attempt to keep up as the wizard stalked across The Two Fat Cousins. ‘And that course is . . .?’ The astrologer looked up into two eyes as grey and bland as steel. ‘Um. We stop looking?’ he ventured. ‘Precisely! We use the gifts the Creator has given us, to whit, we look down and what is it we see?’ The astrologer groaned inwardly. He looked down. ‘Tiles?’ he hazarded. ‘Tiles, yes, which together make up the . . .?’ Trymon looked expectant. ‘Zodiac?’ ventured the astrologer, a desperate man. ‘Right! And therefore all we need do is cast Rincewind’s precise horoscope and we will know exactly where he is!’ The astrologer grinned like a man who, having tap-danced on quicksand, feels the press of solid rock under his feet. ‘I shall need to know his precise place and time of birth,’ he said. ‘Easily done. I copied them out of the University files before I came up here.’ The astrologer looked at the notes, and his forehead wrinkled. He crossed the room and pulled out a wide drawer full of charts. He read the notes again. He picked up a complicated pair of compasses and made some passes across the charts. He picked up a small brass astrolobe and cranked it carefully. He whistled between his teeth. He picked up a piece of chalk and scribbled some numbers on a blackboard. Trymon, meanwhile, had been staring out at the new star. He thought: the legend in the Pyramid of Tsort says that whoever says the Eight Spells together when the Disc is in danger will obtain all that he truly desires. And it will be so soon! And he thought: I remember Rincewind, wasn’t he the cruffy boy who always came bottom of the class when we were training? Not a magical bone in his body. Let me get him in front of me, and we’ll see if we can’t get all eight— The astrologer said ‘Gosh’ under his breath. Trymon spun around. ‘Well?’ ‘Fascinating chart,’ said the astrologer, breathlessly. His forehead wrinkled. ‘Bit strange, really,’ he said. ‘How strange?’ ‘He was born under The Small Boring Group of Faint Stars which, as you know, lies between The Flying Moose and The Knotted String. It is said that even the ancients couldn’t find anything interesting to say about the sign, which—‘ ‘Yes, yes, get on with it,’ said Trymon irritably. ‘It’s the sign traditionally associated with chess board makers, sellers of onions, manufacturers of plaster images of small religious significance, and people allergic to pewter. Not a wizard’s sign at all. And at the time of his birth the shadow of Cori Celesti—‘ ‘I don’t want to know all the mechanical details,’ growled Trymon. ‘Just give me his horoscope.’ The astrologer, who had been rather enjoying himself, sighed and made a few additional calculations. ‘Very well,’he said. ‘It reads as follows: “Today is a good tine for making new friends. A good deed may have unforeseen consequences. Don’t upset any druids. You will soon be going on a very strange journey. Your lucky food is small cucumbers. People pointing knives at you are probably up to no good. PS, we really mean it about druids”.’ Druids?’ said Trymon. ‘I wonder . . .’ ‘Are you all right?’ said Twoflower. Rincewind opened his eyes. The wizard sat up hurriedly and grabbed Twoflower by the shirt. ‘I want to leave here!’ he said urgently. ‘Right now!’ ‘But there’s going to be an ancient and traditional ceremony I’ ‘I don’t care how ancient! I want the feel of honest cobbles under my feet, I want the old familiar smell of cesspits, I want to go where there’s lots of people and fires and roofs and walls and friendly things like that! I want to go home!’ He found that he had this sudden desperate longing for the fuming, smoky streets of Ankh-Morpork, which was always at its best in the spring, when the gummy sheen on the turbid waters of the Ankh River had a special iridescence and the eaves were full of birdsong, or at least birds coughing rhythmically. A tear sprang to his eye as he recalled the subtle play of light on the Temple of Small Gods, a noted local landmark, and a lump came to his throat when he remembered the fried fish stall on the junction of Midden Street and The Street of Cunning Artificers. He thought of the gherkins they sold there, great green things lurking at the bottom of their jar like drowned whales. They called to Rincewind across the miles, promising to introduce him to the pickled eggs in the next jar. He thought of the cosy livery stable lofts and warm gratings where he spent his nights. Foolishly, he had sometimes jibed at this way of life. It seemed incredible now, but he had found it boring. Now he’d had enough. He was going home. Pickled gherkins, I hear you calling . . . He pushed Twoflower aside, gathered his tattered robe around him with great dignity, set his face towards that area of horizon he believed to contain the city of his birth, and with intense determination and considerable absentmindedness stepped right off the top of a thirty-foot trilithon. Some ten minutes later, when a worried and rather contrite Twoflower dug him out of the large snowdrift at the base of the stones, his expression hadn’t changed. Twoflower peered at him. ‘Are you all right?’ he said. ‘How many fingers am I holding up?’ ‘I want to go home!’ ‘Okay.’ ‘No, don’t try and talk me out of it, I’ve had enough, I’d like to say it’s been great fun but I can’t, and – what?’ ‘I said okay,’ said Twoflower. ‘I’d quite like to see Ankh-Morpork again. I expect they’ve rebuilt quite a lot of it by now.’ It should be noted that the last time the two of them had seen the city it was burning quite fiercely, a fact which had a lot to do with Twoflower introducing the concept of fire insurance to a venial but ignorant populace. But devastating fires were a regular feature of Morporkian life and it had always been cheerfully and meticulously rebuilt, using the traditional local materials of tinder-dry wood and thatch waterproofed with tar. ‘Oh,’ said Rincewind, deflating a bit. ‘Oh, right. Right then. Good. Perhaps we’d better be off, then.’ He scrambled up and brushed the snow off himself. ‘Only I think we should wait until morning,’ added Twoflower. ‘Why?’ ‘Well, because it’s freezing cold, we don’t really know where we are, the Luggage has gone missing, it’s getting dark—‘ Rincewind paused. In the deep canyons of his mind he thought he heard the distant rustle of ancient paper. He had a horrible feeling that his dreams were going to be very repetitive from now on, and he had much better things to do than be lectured by a bunch of ancient spells who couldn’t even agree on how the Universe began — A tiny dry voice at the back of his brain said: What things? ‘Oh, shut up,’ he said. ‘I only said it’s freezing cold and—‘ Twoflower began. ‘I didn’t mean you, I meant me.’ ‘What?’ ‘Oh, shut up,’ said Rincewind wearily. ‘I don’t suppose there’s anything to eat around here?’ The giant stones were black and menacing against the dying green light of sunset. The inner circle was full of druids, scurrying around by the light of several bonfires and tuning up all the necessary peripherals of a stone computer, like rams’ skulls on poles topped with mistletoe, banners embroidered with twisted snakes and so on. Beyond the circles of firelight a large number of plains people had gathered; druidic festivals were always popular, especially when things went wrong. Rincewind stared at them. ‘What’s going on?’ ‘Oh, well,’ said Twoflower enthusiastically, ‘apparently there’s this ceremony dating back for thousands of years to celebrate the, um, rebirth of the moon, or possibly the sun. No, I’m pretty certain it’s the moon. Apparently it’s very solemn and beautiful and invested with a quiet dignity.’ Rincewind shivered. He always began to worry when Twoflower started to talk like that. At least he hadn’t said ‘picturesque’ or ‘quaint’ yet; Rincewind had never found a satisfactory translation for those words, but the nearest he had been able to come was ‘trouble’. ‘I wish the Luggage was here,’ said the tourist regretfully. ‘I could use my picture box. It sounds very quaint and picturesque.’ The crowd stirred expectantly. Apparently things were about to start. ‘Look,’ said Rincewind urgently. ‘Druids are priests. You must remember that. Don’t do anything to upset them.’ ‘But—‘ ‘Don’t offer to buy the stones.’ ‘But I-‘ ‘Don’t start talking about quaint native folkways.’ ‘I thought—‘ ‘Really don’t try to sell them insurance, that always upsets them.’ ‘But they’re priests!’ wailed Twoflower. Rincewind paused. ‘Yes,’ he said. That’s the whole point, isn’t it?’ At the far side of the outer circle some sort of procession was forming up. ‘But priests are good kind men,’ said Twoflower. ‘At home they go around with begging bowls. It’s their only possession,’ he added. ‘Ah,’ said Rincewind, not certain he understood. This would be for putting the blood in, right?’ ‘Blood?’ ‘Yes, from sacrifices.’ Rincewind thought about the priests he had known at home. He was, of course, anxious not to make an enemy of any god and had attended any number of temple functions and, on the whole, he thought that the most accurate definition of any priest in the Circle Sea Regions was someone who spent quite a lot of time gory to the armpits. Twoflower looked horrified. ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘Where I come from priests are holy men who have dedicated themselves to lives of poverty, good works and the study of the nature of God.’ Rincewind considered this novel proposition. ‘No sacrifices?’ he said. ‘Absolutely not.’ Rincewind gave up. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘they don’t sound very holy to me.’ There was a loud blarting noise from a band of bronze trumpets. Rincewind looked around. A line of druids marched slowly past, their long sickles hung with sprays of mistletoe. Various junior druids and apprentices followed them, playing a variety of percussion instruments that were traditionally supposed to drive away evil spirits and quite probably succeeded. Torchlight made excitingly dramatic patterns on the stones, which stood ominously against the green-lit sky. Hubwards, the shimmering curtains of the aurora coriolis began to wink and glitter among the stars as a million ice rystals danced in the Disc’s magical field. ‘Belafon explained it all to me,’ whispered Twoflower. We’re going to see a time-honoured ceremony that celebrates the Oneness of Man with the Universe, that was what he said.’ Rincewind looked sourly at the procession. As the druids spread out around a great flat stone that dominated the centre of the circle he couldn’t help noticing the attractive if rather pale young lady in their midst. She wore a long white robe, a gold torc around her neck, and an expression of vague apprehension. ‘Is she a druidess?’ said Twoflower. ‘I don’t think so,’ said Rincewind slowly. The druids began to chant. It was, Rincewind felt, a particularly nasty and rather dull chant which sounded very much as if it was going to build up to an abrupt crescendo. The sight of the young woman lying down on the big stone didn’t do anything to derail his train of thought. ‘I want to stay,’ said Twoflower. ‘I think ceremonies like this hark back to a primitive simplicity which—‘ Yes, yes,’ said Rincewind, ‘but they’re going to sacrifice her, if you must know.’ Twoflower looked at him in astonishment. ‘What, kill her?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Don’t ask me. To make the crops grow or the moon rise or something. Or maybe they’re just keen on killing people. That’s religion for you.’ He became aware of a low humming sound, not so much heard as felt. It seemed to be coming from the stone next to them. Little points of light flickered under its surface, like mica specks. Twoflower was opening and shutting his mouth. ‘Can’t they just use flowers and berries and things?’ he said. ‘Sort of symbolic?’ ‘Nope.’ ‘Has anyone ever tried?’ Rincewind sighed. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘No self-respecting High Priest is going to go through all the business with the trumpets and the processions and the banners and everything, and then shove his knife into a daffodil and a couple of plums. You’ve got to face it, all this stuff about golden boughs and the cycles of nature and stuff just boils down to sex and violence, usually at the same time.’ To his amazement Twoflower’s lip was trembling. Twoflower didn’t just look at the world through rose-tinted spectacles, Rincewind knew – he looked at it through a rose-tinted brain, too, and heard it through rose-tinted ears. The chant was rising inexorably to a crescendo. The head druid was testing the edge of his sickle and all eyes were turned to the finger of stone on the snowy hills beyond the circle where the moon was due to make a guest appearance. ‘It’s no use you—‘ But Rincewind was talking to himself. However, the chilly landscape outside the circle was not entirely devoid of life. For one thing a party of wizards was even now drawing near, alerted by Trymon. But a small and solitary figure was also watching from the cover of a handy fallen stone. One of the Disc’s greatest legends watched the events in the stone circle with considerable interest. He saw the druids circle and chant, saw the chief druid I raise his sickle . . .’ Heard the voice. ‘I say! Excuse me! Can I have a word?’ Rincewind looked around desperately for a way of escape. There wasn’t one. Twoflower was standing by the altar stone with one finger in the air and an attitude of polite determination. Rincewind remembered one day when Twoflower had thought a passing drover was beating his cattle too hard, and the case he had made for decency towards animals had left Rincewind severely trampled and lightly gored. The druids were looking at Twoflower with the kind of expression normally reserved for mad sheep or the sudden appearance of a rain of frogs. Rincewind couldn’t quite hear what Twoflower was saying, but a few phrases like ‘ethnic folkways’ and ‘nuts and flowers’ floated across the hushed circle. Then fingers like a bunch of cheese straws clamped over the wizard’s mouth and an extremely sharp cutting edge pinked his adams apple and a damp voice right by his ear said, ‘Not a shound, or you ish a dead man.’ Rincewind’s eyes swivelled in their sockets as if trying to find a way out. ‘If you don’t want me to say anything, how will you know I understand what you just said?’ he hissed. ‘Shut up and tell me what that other idiot ish doing!’ ‘No, but look, if I’ve got to shut up, how can I—‘ The knife at his throat became a hot streak of pain and Rincewind decided to give logic a miss. ‘His name’s Twoflower. He isn’t from these parts.’ ‘Doeshn’t look like it. Friend of yoursh?’ ‘We’ve got this sort of hate-hate relationship, yes.’ Rincewind couldn’t see his captor, but by the feel of it he had a body made of coathangers. He also smelt strongly of peppermints. ‘He hash got guts, I’ll give him that. Do exshactly what I shay and it ish just poshible he won’t end up with them wrapped around a shtone.’ ‘Urrr.’ ‘They’re not very ecumenical around here, you shee.’ It was at that moment that the moon, in due obedience to the laws of persuasion, rose, although in deference to he laws of computing it wasn’t anywhere near where the stones said it should be. But what was there, peeking through ragged clouds, was a glaring red star. It hung exactly over the circle’s holiest stone, glittering away like the sparkle in the eyesocket of Death. It was sullen and awful and, Rincewind couldn’t help noticing, just a little bit bigger than it was last night. A cry of horror went up from the assembled priests. The crowd on the surrounding banks pressed forward; this looked quite promising. Rincewind felt a knife handle slip into his hand, and the squelchy voice behind him said, ‘You ever done this short of thing before?’ ‘What sort of thing?’ ‘Rushed into a temple, killed the prieshts, shtolen the gold and reshcued the girl.’ ‘No, not in so many words.’ ‘You do it like thish.’ Two inches from Rincewind’s left ear a voice broke into a sound like a baboon with its foot trapped in an echo canyon, and a small but wiry shape rushed past him. By the light of the torches he saw that it was a very old man, the skinny variety that generally gets called ‘spry’, with a totally bald head, a beard almost down to his knees, and a pair of matchstick legs on which varicose veins had traced the street map of quite a large city. Despite the snow he wore nothing more than a studded leather holdall and a pair of boots that could have easily accommodated a second pair of feet. The two druids closest to him exchanged glances and hefted their sickles. There was a brief blur and they collapsed into tight balls of agony, making rattling noises. In the excitement that followed Rincewind sidled along towards the altar stone, holding his knife gingerly so as not to attract any unwelcome comment. In fact no-one was paying a great deal of attention to him; the druids that hadn’t fled the circle, generally the younger and more muscular ones, had congregated around the old man n order to discuss the whole subject of sacrilege as it pertained to stone circles, but judging by the cackling and sounds of gristle he was carrying the debate. Twoflower was watching the fight with interest. Rincewind grabbed him by the shoulder. ‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘Shouldn’t we help?’ ‘I’m sure we’d only get in the way,’ said Rincewind hurriedly. ‘You know what it’s like to have people looking over your shoulder when you’re busy.’ ‘At least we must rescue the young lady,’ said Twoflower firmly. ‘All right, but get a move on!’ Twoflower took the knife and hurried up to the altar stone. After several inept slashes he managed to cut the ropes that bound the girl, who sat up and burst into tears. ‘It’s all right—‘ he began. ‘It bloody well isn’t!’ she snapped, glaring at him through two red-rimmed eyes. Why do people always go and spoil things?’ She blew her nose resentfully on the edge of her robe. Twoflower looked up at Rincewind in embarrassment. ‘Um,’ I don’t think you quite understand,’ he said. ‘I mean, we just saved you from absolutely certain death.’ ‘It’s not easy around here,’ she said. ‘I mean, keeping yourself—‘ she blushed, and twisted the hem of her robe wretchedly. ‘I mean, staying . . . not letting yourself be . . . not losing your qualifications . . .’ ‘Qualifications? said Twoflower, earning the Rincewind Cup for the slowest person on the uptake in the entire multiverse. The girl’s eyes narrowed. ‘I could have been up there with the Moon Goddess by now, drinking mead out of a silver bowl,’ she said petulantly. ‘Eight years of staying home on Saturday nights right down the drain!’ She looked up at Rincewind and scowled. Then he sensed something. Perhaps it was a barely heard footstep behind him, perhaps it was movement reflected n her eyes – but he ducked. Something whistled through the air where his neck had been and glanced off Twoflower’s bald head. Rincewind spun round to see the archdruid readying his sickle for another swing and, in the absence of any hope of running away, lashed out desperately with a foot. It caught the druid squarely on the kneecap. As the man screamed and dropped his weapon there was a nasty little fleshy sound and he fell forward. Behind him the little man with the long beard pulled his sword from the body, wiped it with a handful of snow, and said, ‘My lumbago is giving me gyp. You can carry the treashure.’ ‘Treasure?’ said Rincewind weakly. ‘All the necklashes and shtuff. All the gold collarsh. They’ve got lotsh of them. Thatsh prieshts for you,’ said the old man wetly. ‘Nothing but torc, torc, torc. Who’she the girl?’ ‘She won’t let us rescue her,’ said Rincewind. The girl looked at the old man defiantly through her smudged eyeshadow. ‘Bugger that,’ he said, and with one movement picked her up, staggered a little, screamed at his arthritis and fell over. After a moment he said, from his prone position, ‘Don’t just shtand there, you daft bitcsh – help me up.’ Much to Rincewind’s amazement, and almost certainly to hers as well, she did so. Rincewind, meanwhile, was trying to rouse Twoflower. There was a graze across his temple which didn’t look too deep, but the little man was unconscious with a faintly worried smile plastered across his face. His breathing was shallow and – strange. And he felt light. Not simply underweight, but weightless. The wizard might as well have been holding a shadow. Rincewind remembered that it was said that druids used strange and terrible poisons. Of course, it was often said, usually by the same people, that crooks always had close-set eyes, lightning never struck twice in the same lace and if the gods had wanted men to fly they’d have given them an airline ticket. But something about Twoflower’s lightness frightened Rincewind. Frightened him horribly. He looked up at the girl. She had the old man slung over one shoulder, and gave Rincewind an apologetic half-smile. From somewhere around the small of her back a voice said, ‘Got everything? Letsh get out of here before they come back.’ Rincewind tucked Twoflower under one arm and jogged along after them. It seemed the only thing to do. The old man had a large white horse tethered to a withered tree in a snow-filled gully some way from the circles. It was sleek, glossy and the general effect of a superb battle charger was only very slightly spoiled by the haemorrhoid ring tied to the saddle. ‘Okay, put me down. There’sh a bottle of shome linament shtuff in the shaddle bag, if you wouldn’t mind . . .’ Rincewind propped Twoflower as nicely as possible against the tree, and by moonlight – and, he realised, by the faint red light of the menacing new star – took the first real look at his rescuer. The man had only one eye; the other was covered by a black patch. His thin body was a network of scars and, currently, twanging white-hot with tendonitis. His teeth had obviously decided to quit long ago. ‘Who are you?’ he said. ‘Bethan,’ said the girl, rubbing a handful of nasty-smelling green ointment into the old man’s back. She wore the air of one who, if asked to consider what sort of events might occur after being rescued from virgin sacrifice by a hero with a white charger, would probably not have mentioned linament, but who, now linament was apparently what did happen to you after all, was determined to be good at it. ‘I meant him,’ said Rincewind. One star-bright eye looked up at him. ‘Cohen ish my name, boy.’ Bethan’s hands stopped moving. ‘Cohen?’ she said. ‘Cohen the Barbarian?’ ‘The very shame.’ ‘Hang on, hang on,’ said Rincewind. ‘Cohen’s a great big chap, neck like a bull, got chest muscles like a sack of footballs. I mean, he’s the Disc’s greatest warrior, a legend in his own lifetime. I remember my grandad telling me he saw him . . . my grandad telling me he . . . my grandad . . .’ He faltered under the gimlet gaze. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Oh. Of course. Sorry.’ ‘Yesh,’ said Cohen, and sighed. Thatsh right, boy. I’m a lifetime in my own legend.’ ‘Gosh,’ said Rincewind. ‘How old are you, exactly?’ ‘Eighty-sheven.’ ‘But you were the greatest!’ said Bethan. ‘Bards still sing songs about you.’ Cohen shrugged, and gave a little yelp of pain. ‘I never get any royaltiesh,’ he said. He looked moodily at the snow. That’sh the shaga of my life. Eighty yearsh in the bushiness and what have I got to show for it? Backache, pilesh, bad digeshtion and a hundred different recipesh for shoop. Shoop! I hate shoop!’ Bethan’s forehead wrinkled. ‘Shoop?’ ‘Soup,’ explained Rincewind. Yeah, shoop,’ said Cohen, miserably. ‘It’sh my teeths, you shee. No-one takes you sheriously when you’ve got no teeths, they shay “Shit down by the fire, grandad, and have shome shoo—“ Cohen looked sharply at Rincewind. That’sh a nashty cough you have there, boy.’ Rincewind looked away, unable to look Bethan in the face. Then his heart sank. Twoflower was still leaning against the tree, peacefully unconscious, and looking as reproachful as was possible in the circumstances. Cohen appeared to remember him, too. He got unsteadily to his feet and shuffled over to the tourist. He humbed both eyes open, examined the graze, felt the pulse. ‘He’sh gone,’ he said. ‘Dead?’ said Rincewind, In the debating chamber of his mind a dozen emotions got to their feet and started shouting. Relief was in full spate when Shock cut in on a point of order and then Bewilderment, Terror and Loss started a fight which was ended only when Shame slunk in from next door to see what all the row was about. ‘No,’ said Cohen thoughtfully, ‘not exshactly. Just – gone.’ ‘Gone where?’ ‘I don’t know,’ said Cohen, ‘but I think I know shomeone who might have a map.’ Far out on the snowfield half a dozen pinpoints of red light glowed in the shadows. ‘He’s not far away,’ said the leading wizard, peering into a small crystal sphere. There was general mutter from the ranks behind him which roughly meant that however far away Rincewind was he couldn’t be further than a nice hot bath, a good meal and a warm bed. Then the wizard who was tramping along in the rear stopped and said, ‘Listen!’ They listened. There were the subtle sounds of winter beginning to close its grip on the land, the creak of rocks, the muted scuffling of small creatures in their tunnels under the blanket of snow. In a distant forest a wolf howled, felt embarrassed when no-one joined in, and stopped. There was the silver sleeting sound of moonlight. There was also the wheezing noise of half a dozen wizards trying to breathe quietly. ‘I can’t hear a thing—‘ one began. ‘Ssshh!’ ‘All right, all right—‘ Then they all heard it; a tiny distant crunching, like omething moving very quickly over the snow crust. ‘Wolves?’ said a wizard. They all thought about hundreds of lean, hungry bodies leaping through the night. ‘N-no,’ said the leader. ‘It’s too regular. Perhaps it’s a messenger?’ It was louder now, a crisp rhythm like someone eating celery very fast. ‘I’ll send up a flare,’ said the leader. He picked up a handful of snow, rolled it into a ball, threw it up into the air and ignited it with a stream of octarine fire from his fingertips. There was a brief, fierce blue glare. There was silence. Then another wizard said, ‘You daft bugger, I can’t see a thing now.’ That was the last thing they heard before something fast, hard and noisy cannoned into them out of the darkness and vanished into the night. When they dug one another out of the snow all they could find was a tight pressed trail of little footprints. Hundreds of little footprints, all very close together and heading across the snow as straight as a searchlight. ‘A necromancer!’ said Rincewind. The old woman across the fire shrugged and pulled a pack of greasy cards from some unseen pocket. Despite the deep frost outside, the atmosphere inside the yurt was like a blacksmith’s armpit and the wizard was already sweating heavily. Horse dung made a good fuel, but the Horse People had a lot to learn about air conditioning, starting with what it meant. Bethan leaned sideways. ‘What’s neck romance?’ she whispered. ‘Necromancy. Talking to the dead,’ he explained. ‘Oh,’ she said, vaguely disappointed. They had dined on horse meat, horse cheese, horse black pudding, horse d’oeuvres and a thin beer that Rincewind didn’t want to speculate about. Cohen (who’d ad horse soup) explained that the Horse Tribes of the Hubland steppes were born in the saddle, which Rincewind considered was a gynaecological impossibility, and they were particularly adept at natural magic, since life on the open steppe makes you realise how neatly the sky fits the land all around the edges and this naturally inspires the mind to deep thoughts like ‘Why?’, ‘When?’ and ‘Why don’t we try beef for a change?’ The chieftain’s grandmother nodded at Rincewind and spread the cards in front of her. Rincewind, as it has already been noted, was the worst wizard on the Disc: no other spells would stay in his mind once the Spell had lodged in there, in much the same way that fish don’t hang around in a pike pool. But he still had his pride, and wizards don’t like to see women perform even simple magic. Unseen University had never admitted women, muttering something about problems with the plumbing, but the real reason was an unspoken dread that if women were allowed to mess around with magic they would probably be embarrassingly good at it . . . ‘Anyway, I don’t believe in Caroc cards,’ he muttered, ‘All that stuff about it being the distilled wisdom of the universe is a load of rubbish.’ The first card, smoke-yellowed and age-crinkled, was . . . It should have been The Star. But instead of the familiar round disc with crude little rays, it had become a tiny red dot. The old woman muttered and scratched at the card with a fingernail, then looked sharply at Rincewind. ‘Nothing to do with me,’ he said. She turned up the Importance of Washing the Hands, the Eight of Octograms, the Dome of the Sky, the Pool of Night, the Four of Elephants, the Ace of Turtles, and – Rincewind had been expecting it – Death. And something was wrong with Death, too. It should have been a fairly realistic drawing of Death on his white horse, and indeed He was still there. But the sky was red lit, and coming over a distant hill was a tiny figure. barely visible by the light of the horsefat lamps. Rincewind didn’t have to identify it, because behind it was a box on hundreds of little legs. The Luggage would follow its owner anywhere. Rincewind looked across the tent to Twoflower, a pale shape on a pile of horsehides. ‘He’s really dead?’ he said. Cohen translated for the old woman, who shook her head. She reached down to a small wooden chest beside her and rummaged around in a collection of bags and bottles until she found a tiny green bottle which she tipped into Rincewind’s beer. He looked at it suspiciously. ‘She shays it’s sort of medicine,’ said Cohen. ‘I should drink it if I were you, theshe people get a bit upshet if you don’t accshept hoshpitality.’ ‘It’s not going to blow my head off?’ said Rincewind. ‘She shays it’s esshential you drink it.’ ‘Well, if you’re sure it’s okay. It can’t make the beer taste any worse.’ He took a swig, aware of all eyes on him. ‘Um,’ he said. ‘Actually, it’s not at all ba—‘ Something picked him up and threw him into the air. Except that in another .sense he was still sitting by the fire – he could see himself there, a dwindling figure in the circle of firelight that was rapidly getting smaller. The toy figures around it were looking intently at his body. Except for the old woman. She was looking right up at , him, and grinning. The Circle Sea’s senior wizards were not grinning at all. They were becoming aware that they were confronted with something entirely new and fearsome: a young man on the make. Actually none of them were quite sure how old Trymion really was, but his sparse hair was still black and his skin had a waxy look to it that could be taken, in a poor light, to be the bloom of youth. The six surviving heads of the Eight Orders sat at the long, shiny and new table in what had been Galder Weatherwax’s study and each one wondered precisely what it was about Trymon that made them want to kick him. It wasn’t that he was ambitious and cruel. Cruel men were stupid; they all knew how to use cruel men, and they certainly knew how to bend other men’s ambitions. You didn’t stay an Eighth Level magus for long unless you were adept at a kind of mental judo. It wasn’t that he was bloodthirsty, power-hungry or especially wicked. These things were not necessarily drawbacks in a wizard. The wizards were, on the whole, no more wicked than, say, the committee of the average Rotary Club, and each had risen to pre-eminence in his chosen profession not so much by skill at magic but by never neglecting to capitalise on the weaknesses of opponents. It wasn’t that he was particularly wise. Every wizard considered himself a fairly hot property, wisewise; it went with the job. It wasn’t even that he had charisma. They all knew charisma when they encountered it, and Trymon had all the charisma of a duck egg. That was it, in fact . . . He wasn’t good or evil or cruel or extreme in any way but one, which was that he had elevated greyness to the status of a fine art and cultivated a mind that was as bleak and pitiless and logical as the slopes of Hell. And what was so strange was that each of the wizards, who had in the course of their work encountered many a fire-spitting, bat-winged, tiger-taloned entity in the privacy of a magical octogram, had never before had quite the same uncomfortable feeling as they had when, ten minutes late, Trymon strode into the room. ‘Sorry I’m late, gentlemen,’ he lied, rubbing his hands briskly. ‘So many things to do, so much to organise, I’m ure you know how it is.’ The wizards looked sidelong at one another as Trymon sat down at the head of the table and shuffled busily through some papers. What happened to old Galder’s chair, the one with the lion arms and the chicken feet?’ said Jiglad Wert. It had gone, along with most of the other familiar furniture, and in its place were a number of low leather chairs that appeared to be incredibly comfortable until you’d sat in them for five minutes. ‘That? Oh, I had it burnt,’ said Trymon, not looking up. ‘Burnt? But it was a priceless magical artifact, a genuine—‘ ‘Just a piece of junk, I’m afraid,’ said Trymon, treating him to a fleeting smile. ‘I’m sure real wizards don’t really need that sort of thing, now if I may draw your attention to the business of the day—‘ ‘What’s this paper?’ said Jiglad Wert, of the Hood-winkers, waving the document that had been left in front of him, and waving it all the more forcefully because his own chair, back in his cluttered and comfortable tower, was if anything more ornate than Galder’s had been. ‘It’s an agenda, Jiglad,’ said Trymon, patiently. ‘And what does a gender do?’ ‘It’s just a list of the things we’ve got to discuss. It’s very simple, I’m sorry if you feel that—‘ ‘We’ve never needed one before!’ ‘I think perhaps you have needed one, you just haven’t used one,’ said Trymon, his voice resonant with reasonableness. Wert hesitated. ‘Well, all right,’ he said sullenly, looking around the table for support, ‘but what’s this here where it says—‘ he peered closely at the writing – ‘ “Successor to Greyhald Spold”. It’s going to be old Rhunlet Yard, isn’t it? He’s been waiting for years.’ ‘Yes, but is he sound?’ said Trymon. ‘What?’ I’m sure we all realise the importance of proper leadership,’ said Trymon. ‘Now, Vard is – well, worthy, of course, in his way, but —‘ ‘It’s not our business,’ said one of the other wizards. ‘No, but it could be,’ said Trymon. There was silence. ‘Interfere with the affairs of another order?’ said Wert. ‘Of course not,’ said Trymon. ‘I merely suggest that we could offer . . . advice. But let us discuss this later . . .’ The wizards had never heard of the words ‘power base’, otherwise Trymon would never have been able to get away with all this. But the plain fact was that helping others to achieve power, even to strengthen your own hand, was quite alien to them. As far as they were concerned, every wizard stood alone. Never mind about hostile paranormal entities, an ambitious wizard had quite enough to do fighting his enemies in his own Order. ‘I think we should now consider the matter of Rincewind,’ said Trymon. ‘And the star,’ said Wert. ‘People are noticing, you know.’ ‘Yes, they say we should be doing something,’ said Lumuel Panter, of the Order of Midnight. ‘What, I should like to know?’ ‘Oh, that’s easy,’ said Wert. They say we should read the Octavo. That’s what they always say. Crops bad? Read the Octavo. Cows ill? Read the Octavo. The Spells will make everything all right.’ ‘There could be something in that,’ said Trymon. ‘My, er, late predecessor made quite study of the Octavo.’ ‘We all have,’ said Panter, sharply, ‘but what’s the use? The Eight Spells have to work together. Oh, I agree, if all else fails maybe we should risk it, but the Eight have to be said together or not at all – and one of them is inside this Rincewind’s head.’ ‘And we cannot find him,’ said Trymon. That is the case, isn’t it? I’m sure we’ve all tried, privately.’ The wizards looked at one another, embarrassed. Eventually Wert said. ‘Yes. All right. Cards on the table. I an’t seem to locate him.’ ‘I’ve tried scrying,’ said another. ‘Nothing.’ ‘I’ve sent familiars,’ said a third. The others sat up. If confessing failure was the order of the day, then they were damn well going to make it clear that they had failed heroically. ‘Is that all? I’ve sent demons.’ ‘I’ve looked into the Mirror of Oversight.’ ‘Last night I sought him out in the Runes of M’haw.’ ‘I’d like to make it clear that I tried both the Runes and the Mirror and the entrails of a manicreach.’ ‘I’ve spoken to the beasts of the field and the birds of the Air.’ ‘Any good?’ ‘Nah.’ Well, I’ve questioned the very bones of the country, yea, and the deep stones and the mountains thereof.’ There was a sudden chilly silence. Everyone looked at the wizard who had spoken. It was Ganmack Treehallet, of the Venerable Seers, who shifted uneasily in his seat. ‘Yes, with bells on, I expect,’ said someone. ‘I never said they answered, did I?’ Trymon looked along the table. ‘I’ve sent someone to find him,’ he said. Wert snorted. ‘That didn’t work out so well the last two times, did it?’ ‘That was because we relied on magic, but it is obvious that Rincewind is somehow hidden from magic. But he can’t hide his footprints.’ ‘You’ve set a tracker?’ ‘In a manner of speaking.’ ‘A hero?’ Wert managed to pack a lot of meaning into the one word. In such a tone of voice, in another universe, would a Southerner say ‘damnyankee’. The wizards looked at Trymon, open-mouthed. ‘Yes,’ he said calmly. ‘On whose authority?’ demanded Wert. Trymon turned his grey eyes on him. ‘Mine. I needed no other.’ ‘It’s – it’s highly irregular! Since when have wizards needed to hire heroes to do their work for them?’ ‘Ever since wizards found their magic wouldn’t work,’ said Trymon. ‘A temporary setback, nothing more.’ Trymon shrugged. ‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘but we haven’t the time to find out. Prove me wrong. Find Rincewind by scrying or talking to birds. But as for me, I know I’m meant to be wise. And wise men do what the times demand.’ It is a well known fact that warriors and wizards do not get along, because one side considers the other side to be a collection of bloodthirsty idiots who can’t walk and think at the same time, while the other side is naturally suspicious of a body of men who mumble a lot and wear long dresses. Oh, say the wizards, if we’re going to be like that, then, what about all those studded collars and oiled muscles down at the Young Men’s Pagan Association? To which the heroes reply, that’s a pretty good allegation coming from a bunch of wimpsoes who won’t go near a woman on account, can you believe it, of their mystical power being sort of drained out. Right, say the wizards, that just about does it, you and your leather posing pouches. Oh yeah, say the heroes, why don’t you . . . And so on. This sort of thing has been going on for centuries, and caused a number of major battles which have left large tracts of land uninhabitable because of magical harmonics. In fact, the hero even at this moment galloping towards the Vortex Plains didn’t get involved in this kind of argument, because they didn’t take it seriously W mainly because this particular hero was a heroine. A redheaded one. Now, there is a tendency at a point like this to look over one’s shoulder at the cover artist and start going on at length about leather, thighboots and naked blades. Words like ‘full’, ‘round’ and even ‘pert’ creep into the narrative, until the writer has to go and have a cold hower and a lie down. Which is all rather silly, because any woman setting out to make a living by the sword isn’t about to go around looking like something off the cover of the more advanced kind of lingerie catalogue for the specialised buyer. Oh well, all right. The point that must be made is that although Herrena the Henna-Haired Harridan would look quite stunning after a good bath, a heavy-duty manicure, and the pick of the leather racks in Woo Hun Ling’s Oriental Exotica and Martial Aids on Heroes Street, she was currently quite sensibly dressed in light chain mail, soft boots, and a short sword. All right, maybe the boots were leather. But not black. Riding with her were a number of swarthy men that will certainly be killed before too long anyway, so a description is probably not essential. There was absolutely nothing pert about any of them. Look, they can wear leather if you like. Herrena wasn’t too happy about them, but they were all that was available for hire in Morpork. Many of the citizens were moving out and heading for the hills, out of fear of the new star. But Herrena was heading for the hills for a different reason. Just turnwise and rimwards of the Plains were the bare Trollbone Mountains. Herrena, who had for many years availed herself of the uniquely equal opportunities available to any woman who could make a sword sing, was trusting to her instincts. This Rincewind, as Trymon had described him, was a rat, and rats like cover. Anyway, the mountains were a long way from Trymon and, for all that he was currently her employer, Herrena was very happy about that. There something about his manner that made her fists itch. Rincewind knew he ought to be panicking, but that was difficult because, although he wasn’t aware of it, motions like panic and terror and anger are all to do with stuff sloshing around in glands and all Rincewind’s glands were still in his body. It was difficult to be certain where his real body was, but when he looked down he could see a fine blue line trailing from what for the sake of sanity he would still call his ankle into the blackness around him, and it seemed reasonable to assume that his body was on the other end. It was not a particularly good body, he’d be the first to admit, but one or two bits of it had sentimental value and it dawned on him that if the little blue line snapped he’d have to spend the rest of his li – his existence hanging around ouija boards pretending to be people’s dead aunties and all the other things lost souls do to pass the time. The sheer horror of this so appalled him he hardly felt his feet touch the ground. Some ground, anyway; he decided that it almost certainly wasn’t the ground, which as far as he could remember wasn’t black and didn’t swirl in such a disconcerting way. He took a look around. Sheer sharp mountains speared up around him into a frosty sky hung with cruel stars, stars which appeared on no celestial chart in the multiverse, but right in there amongst them was a malevolent red disc. Rincewind shivered, and looked away. The land ahead of him sloped down sharply, and a dry wind whispered across the frost-cracked rocks. It really did whisper. As grey eddies caught at his robe and tugged at his hair Rincewind thought he could hear voices, faint and far off, saying things like ‘Are you sure those were mushrooms in the stew? I feel a bit —,’ and There’s a lovely view if you lean over this —,’ and ‘Don’t fuss, it’s only a scratch —,’ and Watch where you’re pointing that bow, you nearly—‘ and so on. He stumbled down the slope, with his fingers in his ears, until he saw a sight seen by very few living men. The ground dipped sharply until it became a vast funnel, ully a mile across, into which the whispering wind of the souls of the dead blew with a vast, echoing susurration, as though the Disc itself was breathing. But a narrow spur of rock arched out and over the hole, ending in an outcrop perhaps a hundred feet across. There was a garden up there, with orchards and flowerbeds, and a quite small black cottage. A little path led up to it. Rincewind looked behind him. The shiny blue line was still there. So was the Luggage. It squatted on the path, watching him. Rincewind had never got on with the Luggage, it had always given him the impression that it thoroughly disapproved of him. But just for once it wasn’t glaring at him. It had a rather pathetic look, like a dog that’s just come home after a pleasant roll in the cowpats to find that the family has moved to the next continent. ‘All right,’ said Rincewind. ‘Come on.’ It extended its legs and followed him up the path. Somehow Rincewind had expected the garden on the outcrop to be full of dead flowers, but it was in fact well kept and had obviously been planted by someone with an eye for colour, always provided the colour was deep purple, night black or shroud white. Huge lilies perfumed the air. There was a sundial without a gnomon in the middle of a freshly-scythed lawn. With the Luggage trailing behind him Rincewind crept along a path of marble chippings until he was at the rear of the cottage, and pushed open a door. Four horses looked at him over the top of their nosebags. They were warm and alive, and some of the best kept beasts Rincewind had ever seen. A big white one had a stall all to itself, and a silver and black harness hung over the door. The other three were tethered in front of a hay rack on the opposite wall, as if visitors had just dropped by. They regarded Rincewind with vague animal curiosity. The Luggage bumped into his ankle. He spun around nd hissed, ‘Push off, you!’ The Luggage backed away. It looked abashed. Rincewind tiptoed to the far door and cautiously pushed it open. It gave onto a stone-flagged passageway, which in turn opened onto a wide entrance hall. He crept forward with his back pressed tightly against a wall. Behind him the Luggage rose up on tiptoes and skittered along nervously. The hall itself . . . Well, it wasn’t the fact that it was considerably bigger than the whole cottage had appeared from the outside that worried Rincewind; the way things were these days, he’d have laughed sarcastically if anyone had said you couldn’t get a quart into a pint pot. And it wasn’t the decor, which was Early Crypt and ran heavily to black drapes. It was the clock. It was very big, and occupied a space between two curving wooden staircases covered with carvings of things that normal men only see after a heavy session on something illegal. It had a very long pendulum, and the pendulum swung with a slow tick-tock that set his teeth on edge, because it was the kind of deliberate, annoying ticking that wanted to make it abundantly clear that every tick and every tock was stripping another second off your life. It was the kind of sound that suggested very pointedly that in some hypothetical hourglass, somewhere, another few grains of sand had dropped out from under you. Needless to say, the weight on the pendulum was knife-edged and razor sharp. Something tapped him in the small of the back. He turned angrily. ‘Look, you son of a suitcase, I told you —‘ It wasn’t the Luggage. It was a young woman – silver haired, silver eyed, rather taken aback. ‘Oh,’ said Rincewind. ‘Um. Hallo?’ ‘Are you alive?’ she said. It was the kind of voice associated with beach umbrellas, suntan oil and long cool drinks. ‘Well, I hope so,’ said Rincewind, wondering if his glands were having a good time wherever they were. ‘Sometimes I’m not so sure. What is this place?’ ‘This is the house of Death,’ she said. ‘Ah,’ said Rincewind. He ran a tongue over his dry lips. Well, nice to meet you, I think I ought to be getting along —‘ She clapped her hands. ‘Oh, you mustn’t go!’ she said. We don’t often have living people here. Dead people are so boring, don’t you think?’ ‘Uh, yes,’ Rincewind agreed fervently, eyeing the doorway. ‘Not much conversation, I imagine.’ ‘It’s always “When I was alive — “ and “We really knew how to breathe in my day — “,’ she said, laying a small white hand on his arm and smiling at him. They’re always so set in their ways, too. No fun at all. So formal.’ ‘Stiff?’ suggested Rincewind. She was propelling him towards an archway. ‘Absolutely. What’s your name? My name is Ysabell.’ ‘Um, Rincewind. Excuse me, but if this is the house of Death, what are you doing here? You don’t look dead to me.’ ‘Oh, I live here.’ She looked intently at him. ‘I say, you haven’t come to rescue your lost love, have you? That always annoys daddy, he says it’s a good job he never sleeps because if he did he’d be kept awake by the tramp, tramp, tramp of young heroes coming down here to carry back a lot of silly girls, he says.’ ‘Goes on a lot, does it?’ said Rincewind weakly, as they walked along a black-hung corridor. ‘All the time. I think it’s very romantic. Only when you leave, it’s very important not to look back.’ ‘Why not?’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps the view isn’t very good. Are you a hero, actually?’ ‘Um, no. Not as such. Not at all, really. Even less than that, in fact. I just came to look for a friend of mine,’ he said wretchedly. ‘I suppose you haven’t seen him? Little fat man, talks a lot, wears eyeglasses, funny sort of clothes?’ As he spoke he was aware that he may have missed something vital. He shut his eyes and tried to recall the last few minutes of conversation. Then it hit him like a sandbag. ‘Daddy?’ She looked down demurely. ‘Adopted, actually,’ she said. ‘He found me when I was a little girl, he says. It was all rather sad.’ She brightened. ‘But come and meet him – he’s got his friends in tonight, I’m sure hell be interested to see you. He doesn’t meet many people socially. Nor do I, actually,’ she added. ‘Sorry,’ said Rincewind. ‘Have I got it right? We’re talking about Death, yes? Tall, thin, empty eye-sockets, handy in the scythe department?’ She sighed. ‘Yes. His looks are against him, I’m afraid.’ While it was true that, as has already been indicated, Rincewind was to magic what a bicycle is to a bumblebee, he nevertheless retained one privilege available to practitioners of the art, which was that at the point of death it would be Death himself who turned up to claim him (instead of delegating the job to a lesser mythological anthropomorphic personification, as is usually the case). Owing largely to inefficiency Rincewind had consistently failed to die at the right time, and if there is one thing that Death does not like it is unpunctuality. ‘Look, I expect my friend has just wandered off somewhere,’ he said. ‘He’s always doing that, story of his life, nice to have met you, must be going —‘ But she had already stopped in front of a tall door padded with purple velvet. There were voices on the other side – eldritch voices, the sort of voices that mere typography will remain totally unable to convey until someone can make a linotype machine with echo-reverb and, possibly, a typeface that looks like something said by a slug. This is what the voices were saying: WOULD YOU MIND EXPLAINING THAT AGAIN? Well, if you return anything except a trump, South will be able to get in his two ruffs, losing only one Turtle, one Elephant and one Major Arcana, then —‘ ‘That’s Twoflower!’ hissed Rincewind. ‘I’d know that voice anywhere!’ JUST A MINUTE – PESTILENCE IS SOUTH? ‘Oh, come on, Mort, He explained that. What if Famine had played a – what was it – a trump return!’ It was a breathy, wet voice, practically contagious all by itself. ‘Ah, then you’d only be able to ruff one Turtle instead of two,’ said Twoflower enthusiastically. ‘But if War had chosen a trump lead originally, then the contract would have gone two down?’ ‘Exactly!’ I DIDN’T QUITE FOLLOW THAT. TELL ME ABOUT PSYCHIC BIDS AGAIN, I THOUGHT I WAS GETTING THE HANG OF THAT.It was a heavy, hollow voice, like two large lumps of lead smashing together. ‘That’s when you make a bid primarily to deceive your opponents, but of course it might cause problems for your partner —‘ Twoflower’s voice rambled on in its enthusiastic way. Rincewind looked blankly at Ysabell as words like rebiddable suit’, ‘double finesse’ and ‘grand slam’ floated through the velvet. ‘Do you understand any of that?’ she asked. ‘Not a word,’ he said. ‘It sounds awfully complicated.’ On the other side of the door the heavy voice said: ‘DID YOU SAY HUMANS PLAY THIS FOR FUN?’ ‘Some of them get to be very good at it, yes. I’m only an amateur, I’m afraid.’ BUT THEY ONLY LIVE EIGHTY OR NINETY YEARS! ‘You should know, Mort,’ said a voice that Rincewind hadn’t heard before and certainly never wanted to hear again, especially after dark. ‘It’s certainly very – intriguing.’ DEAL AGAIN AND LET’S SEE IF I’VE GOT THE HANG OF IT. ‘Do you think perhaps we should go in?’ said Ysabell. A voice behind the door said,I BID . . . THE KNAVE OF TERRAPINS. ‘No, sorry, I’m sure you’re wrong, let’s have a look at your —‘ Ysabell pushed the door open. It was, in fact, a rather pleasant study, perhaps a little on the sombre side, possibly created on a bad day by an interior designer who had a headache and a craving for putting large hourglasses on every flat surface and also a lot of large, fat, yellow and extremely runny candles he wanted to get rid of. The Death of the Disc was a traditionalist who prided himself on his personal service and spent most of the time being depressed because this was not appreciated. He would point out that no-one feared death itself, just pain and separation and oblivion, and that it was quite unreasonable to take against someone just because he had empty eye-sockets and a quiet pride in his work. He still used a scythe, he’d point out, while the Deaths of other worlds had long ago invested in combined harvesters. Death sat at one side of a black baize table in the centre of the room, arguing with Famine, War and Pestilence. Twoflower was the only one to look up and notice Rincewind. ‘Hey, how did you get here?’ he said. ‘Well, some say the Creator took a handful – oh, I see, well, it’s hard to explain but I —‘ ‘Have you got the Luggage?’ The wooden box pushed past Rincewind and settled down in front of its owner, who opened its lid and rummaged around inside until he came up with a small, leatherbound book which he handed to War, who was hammering the table with a mailed fist. ‘It’s :Nosehinger on the Laws of Contract:,’ he said. It’s quite good, there’s a lot in it about double finessing and how to —‘ Death snatched the book with a bony hand and flipped through the pages, quite oblivious to the presence of the two men. RIGHT,he said,PESTILENCE, OPEN ANOTHER PACK OF CARDS. I’M GOING TO GET TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS IF IT KILLS ME, FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING OF COURSE. Rincewind grabbed Twoflower and pulled him out of the room: As they jogged down the corridor with the Luggage galloping behind them he said: ‘What was all that about?’ ‘Well, they’ve got lots of time and I thought they might enjoy it,’ panted Twoflower. ‘What, playing with cards?’ ‘It’s a special kind of playing,’ said Twoflower. ‘It’s called—‘ he hesitated. Language wasn’t his strong point. ‘In your language it’s called a thing you put across a river, for example,’ he concluded, ‘I think.’ ‘Aqueduct?’ hazarded Rincewind. ‘Fishing line? Weir? Dam?’ ‘Yes, possibly.’ They reached the hallway, where the big clock still shaved the seconds off the lives of the world. ‘And how long do you think that’ll keep them occupied?’ Twoflower paused. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said thoughtfully. Probably until the last trump – what an amazing clock. . .’ ‘Don’t try to buy it,’ Rincewind advised. ‘I don’t think they’d appreciate it around here.’ ‘Where is here, exactly?’ said Twoflower, beckoning the Luggage and opening its lid. Rincewind looked around. The hall was dark and deserted, its tall narrow windows whorled with ice. He looked down. There was the faint blue line stretching away from his ankle. Now he could see that Twoflower had one too. ‘We’re sort of informally dead,’ he said. It was the best he could manage. ‘Oh.’ Twoflower continued to rummage. ‘Doesn’t that worry you?’ ‘Well, things tend to work out in the end, don’t you think? Anyway, I’m a firm believer in reincarnation. What would you like to come back as?’ ‘I don’t want to go,’ said Rincewind firmly. ‘Come on, let’s get out of – oh, no. Not that.’ Twoflower had produced a box from the depths of the Luggage. It was large and black and had a handle on one side and a little round window in front and a strap so that Twoflower could put it around his neck, which he did. There was a time when Rincewind had quite liked the iconoscope. He believed, against all experience, that the world was fundamentally understandable, and that if he could only equip himself with the right mental toolbox he could take the back off and see how it worked. He was, of course, dead wrong. The iconoscope didn’t take pictures by letting light fall onto specially treated paper, as he had surmised, but by the far simpler method of imprisoning a small demon with a good eye for colour and a speedy hand with a paintbrush. He had been very upset to find that out. ‘You haven’t got time to take pictures!’ he hissed. ‘It won’t take long,’ said Twoflower firmly, and rapped on the side of the box. A tiny door flew open and the imp poked his head out. ‘Bloody hell,’ it said. ‘Where are we?’ ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Twoflower. The clock first, I think.’ The demon squinted. ‘Poor light,’ he said. Three bloody years at f8, if you ask me.’ He slammed the door shut. A second later there was the tiny scraping noise of his stool being dragged up to his easel. Rincewind gritted his teeth. ‘You don’t need to take pictures, you can just remember it!’ he shouted. It’s not the same,’ said Twoflower calmly. ‘It’s better! It’s more real!’ ‘It isn’t really. In years to come, when I’m sitting by the fire —‘ ‘You’ll be sitting by the fire forever if we don’t get out of here!’ ‘Oh, I do hope you’re not going.’ They both turned. Ysabell was standing in the archway, smiling faintly. She held a scythe in one hand, a scythe with a blade of proverbial sharpness. Rincewind tried not to look down at his blue lifeline; a girl holding a scythe shouldn’t smile in that unpleasant, knowing and slightly deranged way. ‘Daddy seems a little preoccupied at the moment but I’m sure he wouldn’t dream of letting you go off just like that,’ she added. ‘Besides, I’d have no-one to talk to.’ ‘Who’s this?’ said Twoflower. ‘She sort of lives here,’ mumbled Rincewind. ‘She’s a sort of girl,’ he added. He grabbed Twoflower’s shoulder and tried to shuffle imperceptibly towards the door into the dark, cold garden. It didn’t work, largely because Twoflower wasn’t the sort of person who went in for nuances of expression and somehow never assumed that anything bad might apply to him. ‘Charmed, I’m sure,’ he said. Very nice place, you have here. Interesting baroque effect with the bones and skulls.’ Ysabell smiled. Rincewind thought: if Death ever does hand over the family business, she’ll be better at it than he is – she’s bonkers. ‘Yes, but we must be going,’ he said. ‘I really won’t hear of it,’ she said. You must stay and tell me all about yourselves. There’s plenty of time and it’s so boring here.’ She darted sideways and swung the scythe at the shining threads. It screamed through the air like a neutered tomcat – and stopped sharply. There was the creak of wood. The Luggage had snapped its lid shut on the blade. Twoflower looked up at Rincewind in astonishment. And the wizard, with great deliberation and a certain amount of satisfaction, hit him smartly on the chin. As the little man fell backwards Rincewind caught him, threw him over a shoulder and ran. Branches whipped at him in the starlit garden, and small, furry and probably horrible things scampered away as he pounded desperately along the faint lifeline that shone eerily on the freezing grass. From the building behind him came a shrill scream of disappointment and rage. He cannoned off a tree and sped on. Somewhere there was a path, he remembered. But in this maze of silver light and shadows, tinted now with red as the terrible new star made its presence felt even in the netherworld, nothing looked right. Anyway, the lifeline appeared to be going in quite the wrong direction. There was the sound of feet behind him. Rincewind wheezed with effort; it sounded like the Luggage, and at the moment he didn’t want to meet the Luggage, because it might have got the wrong idea about him hitting its master, and generally the Luggage bit people it didn’t like. Rincewind had never had the nerve to ask where it was they actually went when the heavy lid slammed shut on them, but they certainly weren’t there when it opened again. In fact he needn’t have worried. The Luggage overtook him easily, its little legs a blur of movement. It seemed to Rincewind to be concentrating very heavily on running, as if it had some inkling of what was coming up behind it and didn’t like the idea at all. Don’t look back, he remembered. The view probably isn’t very nice. The Luggage crashed through a bush and vanished. A moment later Rincewind saw why. It had careened over the edge of the outcrop and was dropping towards the great hole underneath, which he could now see was faintly red lit at the bottom. Stretching from Rincewind, out over the edge of the rocks and down into the hole, were two shimmering blue lines. He paused uncertainly, although that isn’t precisely true because he was totally certain of several things, for example that he didn’t want to jump, and that he certainly didn’t want to face whatever it was coming up behind him, and that in the spirit world Twoflower was quite heavy, and that there were worse things than being dead. ‘Name two,’ he muttered, and jumped. A few seconds later the horsemen arrived and didn’t stop when they reached the edge of the rock but simply rode into the air and reined their horses over nothingness. Death looked down. THAT ALWAYS ANNOYS ME,he said.I MIGHT AS WELL INSTALL A REVOLVING DOOR. ‘Iwonder what they wanted!’ said Pestilence. ‘Search me,’ said War. ‘Nice game, though.’ ‘Right,’ agreed Famine. ‘Compelling, I thought.’ WE’VE GOT TIME FOR ANOTHER FONDLE,said Death. ‘Rubber,’ corrected War. RUBBER WHAT? ‘You call them rubbers,’ said War. RIGHT, RUBBERS,said Death. He looked up at the new star, puzzled as to what it might mean. I THINK WE’VE GOT TIME,he repeated, a trifle uncertainly. Mention has already been made of an attempt to inject a little honesty into reporting on the Disc, and how poets and bards were banned on pain of – well, pain – from going on about babbling brooks and rosy-fingered dawn and could only say, for example, that a face had launched a thousand ships if they were able to produce certified dockyard accounts. And therefore, out of a passing respect for this tradition, it will not be said of Rincewind and Twoflower that they became an ice-blue sinewave arcing through the dark imensions, or that there was a sound like the twanging of a monstrous tusk, or that their lives passed in front of their eyes (Rincewind had in any case seen his past life flash in front of his eyes so many times that he could sleep through the boring bits) or that the universe dropped on them like a large jelly. It will be said, because experiment has proven it to be true, that there was a noise like a wooden ruler being struck heavily with a C sharp tuning fork, possibly B flat, and a sudden sensation of absolute stillness. This was because they were absolutely still, and it was absolutely dark. It occurred to Rincewind that something had gone wrong. Then he saw the faint blue tracery in front of him. He was inside the Octavo again. He wondered what would happen if anyone opened the book; would he and Twoflower appear like a colour plate? Probably not, he decided. The Octavo they were in was something a bit different from the mere book chained to its lectern deep in Unseen University, which was merely a three-dimensional representation of a multidimensional reality, and— Hold on, he thought. I don’t think like this. Who’s thinking for me? ‘Rincewind,’ said a voice like the rustle of old pages. ‘Who? Me?’ ‘Of course you, you daft sod.’ A flicker of defiance flared very briefly in Rincewind’s battered heart. ‘Have you managed to recall how the Universe started yet?’ he said nastily. ‘The Clearing of the Throat, wasn’t it, or the Drawing of the Breath, or the Scratching of the Head and Trying to Remember It, It was On the Tip of the Tongue?’ Another voice, dry as tinder, hissed, ‘You would do well to remember where you are.’ It should be impossible to hiss a sentence with no sibilants in it, but the voice made a very good attempt. ‘Remember where I am? Remember where I am?’ shouted Rincewind. ‘Of course I remember where I am, I’m inside a bloody book talking to a load of voices I can’t see, why do you think I’m screaming?’ ‘I expect you’re wondering why we brought you here again,’ said a voice by his ear. ‘No.’ ‘No?’ ‘What did he say?’ said another disembodied voice. ‘He said no.’ ‘He really said no?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Oh.’ ‘Why?’ ‘This sort of thing happens to me all the time,’ said Rincewind. ‘One minute I’m falling off the world, then I’m inside a book, then I’m on a flying rock, then I’m watching Death learn how to play Weir or Dam or whatever it was, why should I wonder about anything?’ ‘Well, we imagine you will be wondering why we don’t want anyone to say us,’ said the first voice, aware that it was losing the initiative. Rincewind hesitated. The thought had crossed his mind, only very fast and looking nervously from side to side in case it got knocked over. ‘Why should anyone want to say you?’ ‘It’s the star,’ said the spell. ‘The red star. Wizards are already looking for you; when they find you they want to say all eight Spells together to change the future. They think the Disc is going to collide with the star.’ Rincewind thought about this. ‘Is it?’ ‘Not exactly, but in a— what’s that?’ Rincewind looked down. The Luggage padded out of the darkness. There was a long sliver of scytheblade in its lid. ‘It’s just the Luggage,’ he said. ‘But we didn’t summon it here!’ ‘No-one summons it anywhere,’ said Rincewind. ‘It just turns up. Don’t worry about it.’ ‘Oh. What were we talking about?’ ‘This red star thing.’ ‘Right. It’s very important that you —‘ ‘Hallo? Hallo? Anyone out there?’ It was a small and squeaky voice and came from the picture box still slung around Twoflower’s inert neck. The picture imp opened his hatch and squinted up at Rincewind. ‘Where’s this, squire?’ it said. ‘I’m not sure.’ ‘We still dead?’ ‘Maybe.’ ‘Well, let’s hope we go somewhere where we don’t need too much black, because I’ve run out.’ The hatch slammed shut. Rincewind had a fleeting vision of Twoflower handing around his pictures and saying things like ‘This is me being tormented by a million demons’ and ‘This is me with that funny couple we met on the freezing slopes of the Underworld.’ Rincewind wasn’t certain about what happened to you after you really died, the authorities were a little unclear on the subject; a swarthy sailor from the Rimward lands had said that he was confident of going to a paradise where there was sherbet and houris. Rincewind wasn’t certain what a houri was, but after some thought he came to the conclusion that it was a little liquorice tube for sucking up the sherbet. Anyway, sherbet made him sneeze. ‘Now that interruption is over,’ said a dry voice firmly, ‘perhaps we can get on. It is most important that you don’t let the wizards take the spell from you. Terrible things will happen if all eight spells are said too soon.’ ‘I just want to be left in peace,’ said Rincewind. ‘Good, good. We knew we could trust you from the day you first opened the Octavo.’ Rincewind hesitated. ‘Hang on a minute,’ he said. ‘You want me to run around keeping the wizards from getting all the spells together?’ ‘Exactly.’ ‘That’s why one of you got into my head?’ ‘Precisely.’ ‘You totally ruined my life, you know that?’ said Rincewind hotly. ‘I could have really made it as a wizard if you hadn’t decided to use me as a sort of portable spellbook. I can’t remember any other spells, they’re too frightened to stay in the same head as you!’ ‘We’re sorry.’ ‘I just want to go home! I want to go back to where—‘ a trace of moisture appeared in Rincewind’s eye – ‘to where there’s cobbles under your feet and some of the beer isn’t too bad and you can get quite a good piece of fried fish of an evening, with maybe a couple of big green gherkins, and even an eel pie and a dish of whelks, and there’s always a warm stable somewhere to sleep in and in the morning you are always in the same place as you were the night before and there wasn’t all this weather all over the place. I mean, I don’t mind about the magic, I’m probably not, you know, the right sort of material for a wizard, I just want to go home!—‘ ‘But you must—‘ one of the spells began. It was too late. Homesickness, the little elastic band in the subconscious that can wind up a salmon and propel it three thousand miles through strange seas, or send a million lemmings running joyfully back to an ancestral homeland which, owing to a slight kink in the continental drift, isn’t there any more – homesickness rose up inside Rincewind like a late-night prawn biriani, flowed along the tenuous thread linking his tortured soul to his body, dug its heels in and tugged . . . The spells were alone inside their Octavo. Alone, at any rate, apart from the Luggage. They looked at it, not with eyes, but with consciousness as old as the Discworld itself. ‘And you can bugger off too,’ they said. ‘— bad.’ Rincewind knew it was himself speaking, he recognised the voice. For a moment he was looking out through his eyes not in any normal way, but as a spy might peer through the cut-out eyes of a picture. Then he was back. ‘You okay, Rinshwind?’ said Cohen. ‘You looked a bit gone there.’ ‘You did look a bit white,’ agreed Bethan. ‘Like someone had walked over your grave.’ ‘Uh, yes, it was probably me,’ he said. He held up his fingers and counted them. There appeared to be the normal amount. ‘Um, have I moved at all?’ he said. ‘You just looked at the fire as if you had seen a ghost,’ said Bethan. There was a groan behind them. Twoflower was sitting up, holding his head in his hands. His eyes focused on them. His lips moved soundlessly. ‘That was a really strange . . . dream,’ he said. ‘What’s this place? Why am I here?’ ‘Well,’ said Cohen, ‘shome shay the Creator of the Univershe took a handful of clay and —‘ ‘No, I mean here,’ said Twoflower. ‘Is that you, Rincewind?’ ‘Yes,’ said Rincewind, giving it the benefit of the doubt. ‘There was this . . . a clock that . . . and these people who . . .’ said Twoflower. He shook his head. ‘Why does everything smell of horses?’ ‘You’ve been ill,’ said Rincewind. ‘Hallucinating.’ ‘Yes . . . I suppose I was.’ Twoflower looked down at his chest. ‘But in that case, why have I—‘ Rincewind jumped to his feet. ‘Sorry, very close in here, got to have a breath of fresh air,’ he said. He removed the picture box’s strap from Twoflower’s neck, and dashed for the tent flap. ‘I didn’t notice that when he came in,’ said Bethan. Cohen shrugged. Rincewind managed to get a few yards from the yurt efore the ratchet of the picture box began to click. Very slowly, the box extruded the last picture that the imp had taken. Rincewind snatched at it. What it showed would have been quite horrible even in broad daylight. By freezing starlight, tinted red with the fires of the evil new star, it was a lot worse. ‘No,’ said Rincewind softly. ‘No, it wasn’t like that, there was a house, and this girl, and . . .’ ‘You see what you see and I paint what I see,’ said the imp from its hatch. ‘What I see is real. I was bred for it. I only see what’s really there.’ A dark shape crunched over the snowcrust towards Rincewind. It was the Luggage. Rincewind, who normally hated and distrusted it, suddenly felt it was the most refreshingly normal thing he had ever seen. ‘I see you made it, then,’ said Rincewind. The Luggage rattled its lid. ‘Okay, but what did you see?’ said Rincewind. ‘Did you look behind?’ The Luggage said nothing. For a moment they were silent, like two warriors who have fled the field of carnage and have paused for a return of breath and sanity. Then Rincewind said, ‘Come on, there’s a fire inside.’ He reached out to pat the Luggage’s lid. It snapped irritably at him, nearly catching his fingers. Life was back to normal again. The next day dawned bright and clear and cold. The sky became a blue dome stuck on the white sheet of the world, and the whole effect would have been as fresh and clean as a toothpaste advert if it wasn’t for the pink dot on the horizon. ‘You can shee it in daylight now,’ said Cohen. ‘What is it?’ He looked hard at Rincewind, who reddened. ‘Why does everyone look at me?’ he said. ‘I don’t know 107 what it is, maybe it’s a comet or something.’ ‘Will we all be burned up?’ said Bethan. ‘How should I know? I’ve never been hit by a comet before.’ They were riding in single file across the brilliant snow-field. The Horse people, who seemed to hold Cohen in high regard, had given them their mounts and directions to the River Smarl, a hundred miles rimward, where Cohen reckoned Rincewind and Twoflower could find a boat to take them to the Circle Sea. He had announced that he was coming with them, on account of his chilblains. Bethan had promptly announced that she was going to come too, in case Cohen wanted anything rubbed. Rincewind was vaguely aware of some sort of chemistry bubbling away. For one thing, Cohen had made an effort to comb his beard. ‘I think she’s rather taken with you,’ he said. Cohen sighed. If I wash twenty yearsh younger,’ he said wistfully. ‘Yes?’ ‘I’d be shixty-sheven.’ ‘What’s that got to do with it?’ ‘Well – how can I put it? When I wash a young man, carving my name in the world, well, then I liked my women red-haired and fiery.’ ‘Ah.’ ‘And then I grew a little older and for preference I looked for a woman with blonde hair, and the glint of the world in her eye.’ ‘Oh? Yes?’ ‘But then I grew a little older again and I came to see the point of dark women of a sultry nature.’ He paused. Rincewind waited. ‘And?’ he said. ‘Then what? What is it that you look for in a woman now?’ Cohen turned one rheumy blue eye on him. ‘Patience,’ he said. ‘I can’t believe it!’ said a voice behind them. ‘Me riding ith Cohen the Barbarian!’ It was Twoflower. Since early morning he had been like a monkey with the key to the banana plantation after discovering he was breathing the same air as the greatest hero of all time. ‘Is he perhapsh being sharcashtic?’ said Cohen to Rincewind. ‘No. He’s always like that.’ Cohen turned in his saddle. Twoflower beamed at him, and waved proudly. Cohen turned back, and grunted. ‘He’s got eyesh, hashn’t he?’ ‘Yes, but they don’t work like other people’s. Take it from me. I mean – well, you know the Horse people’s yurt, where we were last night?’ ‘Yesh.’ ‘Would you say it was a bit dark and greasy and smelt like a very ill horse?’ ‘Very accurate deshcription, I’d shay.’ ‘He wouldn’t agree. He’d say it was a magnificent barbarian tent, hung with the pelts of the great beasts hunted by the lean-eyed warriors from the edge of civilisation, and smelt of the rare and curious resins plundered from the caravans as they crossed the trackless – well, and so on. I mean it,’ he added. ‘He’sh mad?’ ‘Sort of mad. But mad with lots of money.’ ‘Ah, then he can’t be mad. I’ve been around; if a man hash lotsh of money he’sh just ecshentric.’ Cohen turned in his saddle again. Twoflower was telling Bethan how Cohen had single-handed defeated the snake warriors of the witch lord of S’belinde and stolen the sacred diamond from the giant statue of Offler the Crocodile God. A weird smile formed among the wrinkles of Cohen’s face. ‘I could tell him to shut up, if you like,’ said Rincewind. ‘Would he?’ ‘No, not really.’ ‘Let him babble,’ said Cohen. His hand fell to the handle of his sword, polished smooth by the grip of decades. ‘Anyway, I like his eyes,’ he said. They can see for fifty years.’ A hundred yards behind them, hopping rather awkwardly through the soft snow, came the Luggage. No-one ever asked its opinion about anything. By evening they had come to the edge of the high plains, and rode down through gloomy pine forests that had only been lightly dusted by the snowstorm. It was a landscape of huge cracked rocks, and valleys so narrow and deep that the days only lasted about twenty minutes. A wild, windy country, the sort where you might expect to find — Trollsh,’ said Cohen, sniffing the air. Rincewind stared around him in the red evening light. Suddenly rocks that had seemed perfectly normal looked suspiciously alive. Shadows that he wouldn’t have looked at twice now began to look horribly occupied. ‘I like trolls,’ said Twoflower. ‘No you don’t,’ said Rincewind firmly. ‘You can’t. They’re big and knobbly and they eat people.’ ‘No they don’t,’ said Cohen, sliding awkwardly off his horse and massaging his knees. ‘Well-known mishap-prehenshion, that ish. Trolls never ate anybody.’ ‘No?’ ‘No, they alwaysh spit the bitsh out. Can’t digesht people, see? Your average troll don’t want any more out of life than a nice lump of granite, maybe, with perhapsh a nice slab of limeshtone for aftersh. I heard someone shay it’s becosh they’re a shilicashe – a shillycaysheou – Cohen paused, and wiped his beard, ‘made out of rocks. Rincewind nodded. Trolls were not unknown in Ankh-Morpork, of course, where they often got employment as bodyguards. They tended to be a bit expensive to keep ntil they learned about doors and didn’t simply leave the house by walking aimlessly through the nearest wall. As they gathered firewood Cohen went on, Trollsh teeth, that’sh the thingsh.’ ‘Why?’ said Bethan. ‘Diamonds. Got to be, you shee. Only thing that can shtand the rocksh, and they shtill have to grow a new shet every year.’ ‘Talking of teeth—‘ said Twoflower. ‘Yesh?’ ‘I can’t help noticing —‘ ‘Yesh?’ ‘Oh, nothing,’ said Twoflower. ‘Yesh? Oh. Let’sh get thish fire going before we loshe the light. And then,’ Cohen’s face fell, ‘I supposhe we’d better make some shoop.’ ‘Rincewind’s good at that,’ said Twoflower enthusiastically. ‘He knows all about herbs and roots and things.’ Cohen gave Rincewind a look which suggested that he, Cohen, didn’t believe that. ‘Well, the Horshe people gave us shome horse jerky,’ he said. ‘If you can find shome wild onionsh and stuff, it might make it tashte better.’ ‘But I—‘ Rincewind began, and gave up. Anyway, he reasoned, I know what an onion looks like, it’s a sort of saggy white thing with a green bit sticking out of the top, should be fairly conspicuous. ‘I’ll just go and have a look, shall I?’ he said. ‘Yesh.’ ‘Over there in all that thick, shadowy undergrowth?’ ‘Very good playshe, yesh.’ ‘Where all the deep gullies and things are, you mean?’ ‘Ideal shpot, I’d shay.’ ‘Yes, I thought so,’ said Rincewind bitterly. He set off, wondering how you attracted onions. After all, he thought, although you see them hanging in ropes on market stalls they probably don’t grow like that, perhaps peasants or whatever use onions hounds or something, or ing songs to attract onions. There were a few early stars out as he started to poke aimlessly among the leaves and grass. Luminous fungi, unpleasantly organic and looking like marital aids for gnomes, squished under his feet. Small flying things bit him. Other things, fortunately invisible, hopped or slithered away under the bushes and croaked reproachfully at him. ‘Onions?’ whispered Rincewind. ‘Any onions here?’ ‘There’s a patch of them by that old yew tree,’ said a voice beside him. ‘Ah,’ said Rincewind. ‘Good.’ There was a long silence, except for the buzzing of the mosquitoes around Rincewind’s ears. He was standing perfectly still. He hadn’t even moved his eyes. Eventually he said, ‘Excuse me.’ ‘Yes?’ ‘Which one’s the yew?’ ‘Small gnarly one with the little dark green needles.’ ‘Oh, yes. I see it. Thanks again.’ He didn’t move. Eventually the voice said conversationally, ‘Anything more I can do for you?’ ‘You’re not a tree, are you?’ said Rincewind, still staring straight ahead. ‘Don’t be silly. Trees can’t talk.’ ‘Sorry. It’s just that I’ve been having a bit of difficulty with trees lately, you know how it is.’ ‘Not really. I’m a rock.’ Rincewind’s voice hardly changed. ‘Fine, fine,’ he said slowly. ‘Well, I’ll just be getting those onions, then.’ ‘Enjoy them.’ He walked forward in a careful and dignified fashion, spotted a clump of stringy white things huddling in the undergrowth, uprooted them carefully, and turned around. There was a rock a little way away. But there were rocks everywhere, the very bones of the Disc were near he surface here. He looked hard at the yew tree, just in case it had been speaking. But the yew, being a fairly solitary tree, hadn’t heard about Rincewind the arborial saviour, and in any case was asleep. ‘If that was you, Twoflower, I knew it was you all along,’ said Rincewind. His voice sounded suddenly clear and very alone in the gathering dusk. Rincewind remembered the only fact he knew for sure about trolls, which was that they turned to stone when exposed to sunlight, so that anyone who employed trolls to work during daylight had to spend a fortune in barrier cream. But now that he came to think about it, it didn’t say anywhere what happened to them after the sun had gone down again . . . The last of the daylight trickled out of the landscape. And there suddenly seemed to be a great many rocks about. ‘He’s an awful long time with those onions,’ said Two-flower. ‘Do you think we’d better go and look for him?’ ‘Wishards know how to look after themshelves,’ said Cohen. ‘Don’t worry.’ He winced. Bethan was cutting his toenails. ‘He’s not a terribly good wizard, actually,’ said Twoflower, drawing nearer the fire. ‘I wouldn’t say this to his face, but’ – he leaned towards Cohen – ‘I’ve never actually seen him do any magic.’ ‘Right, let’s have the other one,’ said Bethan. ‘Thish is very kind of you.’ ‘You’d have quite nice feet if only you’d look after them.’ ‘Can’t sheem to bend down like I used to,’ said Cohen, sheepishly. ‘Of courshe, you don’t get to meet many chiropodishts in my line of work. Funny, really. I’ve met any amount of snake prieshts, mad godsh, warlordsh, never any chiropodishts. I shupposhe it wouldn’t look right, really – Cohen Against the Chiropodishts . . .’ ‘Or Cohen And The Chiropractors of Doom,’ suggested Bethan. Cohen cackled. ‘Or Cohen And The Mad Dentists!’ laughed Twoflower. Cohen’s mouth snapped shut. ‘What’sh sho funny about that?’ he asked, and his voice had knuckles in it. ‘Oh, er, well,’ said Twoflower. Tour teeth, you see . . .’ ‘What about them?’ snapped Cohen. Twoflower swallowed. ‘I can’t help noticing that they’re, um, not in the same geographical location as your mouth.’ Cohen glared at him. Then he sagged, and looked very small and old. ‘True, of corsh,’ he muttered. ‘I don’t blame you. It’sh hard to be a hero with no teethsh. It don’t matter what elsh you loosh, you can get by with one eye even, but you show ‘em a mouth full of gumsh and no-one hash any reshpect.’ ‘I do,’ said Bethan loyally. ‘Why don’t you get some more?’said Twoflower brightly. ‘Yesh, well, if I wash a shark or something, yesh, I’d grow shome,’ said Cohen sarcastically. ‘Oh, no, you buy them,’ said Twoflower. ‘Look, I’ll show you – er, Bethan, do you mind looking the other way?’ He waited until she had turned around and then put his hand to his mouth. ‘You shee?’ he said. Bethan heard Cohen gasp. ‘You can take yoursh out?’ ‘Oh yesh. I’ve got sheveral shets. Excushe me—‘ there was a swallowing noise, and then in a more normal voice Twoflower said, ‘It’s very convenient, of course.’ Cohen’s very voice radiated awe, or as much awe as is possible without teeth, which is about the same amount as with teeth but sounds a great deal less impressive. ‘I should think show,’ he said. ‘When they ache, you jusht take them out and let them get on with it, yesh? Teach the little buggersh a lesshon, shee how they like being left to ache all by themshelvesh!’ That’s not quite right,’ said Twoflower carefully. They’re not mine, they just belong to me.’ ‘You put shomeone elshe’s teethsh in your mouth?’ ‘No, someone made them, lots of people wear them where I come from, it’s a—‘ But Twoflower’s lecture on dental appliances went ungiven, because somebody hit him. The Disc’s little moon toiled across the sky. It shone by its own light, owing to the cramped and rather inefficient astronomical arrangements made by the Creator, and was quite crowded with assorted lunar goddesses who were not, at this particular time, paying much attention to what went on in the Disc but were getting up a petition about the Ice Giants. Had they looked down, they would have seen Rincewind talking urgently to a bunch of rocks. Trolls are one of the oldest lifeforms in the multiverse, dating from an early attempt to get the whole life thing on the road without all that squashy protoplasm. Individual trolls live for a long time, hibernating during the summertime and sleeping during the day, since heat affects them and makes them slow. They have a fascinating geology. One could talk about tribology, one could mention the semiconductor effects of impure silicon, one could talk about the giant trolls of prehistory who make up most of the Disc’s major mountain ranges and will cause some real problems if they ever awake, but the plain fact is that without the Disc’s powerful and pervasive magical field trolls would have died out a long time ago. Psychiatry hadn’t been invented on the Disc. No-one had ever shoved an inkblot under Rincewind’s nose to see if he had any loose toys in the attic. So the only way he’d have been able to describe the rocks turning back into rolls was by gabbling vaguely about how pictures suddenly form when you look at the fire, or clouds. One minute there’d be a perfectly ordinary rock, and suddenly a few cracks that had been there all along took on the definite appearance of a mouth or a pointed ear. A moment later, and without anything actually changing at all, a troll would be sitting there, grinning at him with a mouth full of diamonds. They wouldn’t be able to digest me, he told himself. I’d make them awfully ill. It wasn’t much of a comfort. ‘So you’re Rincewind the wizard,’ said the nearest one. It sounded like someone running over gravel. ‘I dunno. I thought you’d be taller.’ ‘Perhaps he’s eroded a bit,’ said another one. ‘The legend is awfully old.’ Rincewind shifted awkwardly. He was pretty certain the rock he was sitting on was changing shape, and a tiny troll – hardly any more than a pebble – was sitting companionably on his foot and watching him with extreme interest. ‘Legend?’ he said. ‘What legend?’ ‘It’s been handed down from mountain to gravel since the sunset[3]of time,’ said the first troll. ‘ “When the red star lights the sky Rincewind the wizard will come looking for onions. Do not bite him. It is very important that you help him stay alive.” ‘ There was a pause. ‘That’s it?’ said Rincewind. ‘Yes,’ said the troll. ‘We’ve always been puzzled about it. Most of our legends are much more exciting. It was more interesting being a rock in the old days.’ ‘It was?’ said Rincewind weakly. ‘Oh yes. No end of fun. Volcanoes all over the place. It really meant something, being a rock then.There was none f this sedimentary nonsense, you were igneous or nothing. Of course, that’s all gone now. People call themselves trolls today, well, sometimes they’re hardly more than slate. Chalk even. I wouldn’t give myself airs if you could use me to draw with, would you?’ ‘No,’ said Rincewind quickly. ‘Absolutely not, no. This, er, this legend thing. It said you shouldn’t bite me?’ ‘That’s right!’ said the little troll on his foot, ‘and it was me who told you where the onions were!’ ‘We’re rather glad you came along,’ said the first troll, which Rincewind couldn’t help noticing was the biggest one there. ‘We’re a bit worried about this new star. What does it mean?’ ‘I don’t know,’ said Rincewind. ‘Everyone seems to think I know about it, but I don’t —‘ ‘It’s not that we would mind being melted down,’ said the big troll. That’s how we all started, anyway. But we thought, maybe, it might mean the end of everything and that doesn’t seem a very good thing.’ ‘It’s getting bigger,’ said another troll. ‘Look at it now. Bigger than last night.’ Rincewind looked. It was definitely bigger than last night. ‘So we thought you might have some suggestions?’ said the head troll, as meekly as it is possible to sound with a voice like a granite gargle. ‘You could jump over the Edge,’ said Rincewind. There must be lots of places in the universe that could do with some extra rocks.’ ‘We’ve heard about that,’ said the troll. ‘We’ve met rocks that tried it. They say you float about for millions of years and then you get very hot and burn away and end up at the bottom of a big hole in the scenery. That doesn’t sound very bright.’ It stood up with a noise like coal rattling down a chute, and stretched its thick, knobbly arms. ‘Well, we’re supposed to help you,’ it said. ‘Anything you want doing?’ ‘I was supposed to be making some soup,’ said Rincewind. He waved the onions vaguely. It was probably not the most heroic or purposeful gesture ever made. ‘Soup?’ said the troll. ‘Is that all?’ ‘Well, maybe some biscuits too.’ The trolls looked at one another, exposing enough mouth jewellery to buy a medium-sized city. Eventually the biggest troll said, ‘Soup it is, then.’ It shrugged grittily. ‘It’s just that we imagined that the legend would, well, be a little more – I don’t know, somehow I thought – still, I expect it doesn’t matter.’ It extended a hand like a bunch of fossil bananas. ‘I’m Kwartz,’ it said. ‘That’s Krysoprase over there, and Breccia, and Jasper, and my wife Beryl – she’s la bit meta-morphic, but who isn’t these days? Jasper, get off his foot.’ Rincewind took the hand gingerly, bracing himself for the crunch of crushed bone. It didn’t come. The troll’s hand was rough and a bit lichenous around the fingernails. ‘I’m sorry,’ said Rincewind. ‘I never really met trolls before.’ ‘We’re a dying race,’ said Kwartz sadly, as the party set off under the stars. ‘Young Jasper’s the only pebble in our tribe. We suffer from philosophy, you know.’ ‘Yes?’ said Rincewind, trying to keep up. The troll band moved very quickly, but also very quietly, big round shapes moving like wraiths through the night. Only the occasional flat squeak of a night creature who hadn’t heard them approaching marked their passage. ‘Oh, yes. Martyrs to it. It comes to all of us in the end. One evening, they say, you start to wake up and then you think “Why bother?” and you just don’t. See those boulders over there?’ Rincewind saw some huge shapes lying in the grass. ‘The one on the end’s my aunt. I don’t know what’s she’s thinking about, but she hasn’t moved for two hundred years.’ ‘Gosh, I’m sorry.’ ‘Oh, it’s no problem with us around to look after them,’ aid Kwartz. ‘Not many humans around here, you see. I know it’s not your fault, but you don’t seem to be able to spot the difference between a thinking troll and an ordinary rock. My great-uncle was actually quarried, you know.’ ‘That’s terrible!’ ‘Yes, one minute he was a troll, the next he was an ornamental fireplace.’ They paused in front of a familiar-looking cliff. The scuffed remains of a fire smouldered in the darkness. ‘It looks like there’s been a fight,’ said Beryl. ‘They’re all gone!’ said Rincewind. He ran to the end of the clearing. ‘The horses, too! Even the Luggage!’ ‘One of them’s leaked,’ said Kwartz, kneeling down. ‘That red watery stuff you have in your insides. Look.’ ‘Blood!’ ‘Is that what it’s called? I’ve never really seen the point of it.’ Rincewind scuttled about in the manner of one totally at his wits’ end, peering behind bushes in case anyone was hiding there. That was why he tripped over a small green bottle. ‘Cohen’s linament!’ he moaned. ‘He never goes anywhere without it!’ ‘Well,’ said Kwartz, ‘you humans have something you can do, I mean like when we slow right down and catch philosophy, only you just fall to bits —‘ ‘Dying, it’s called!’ screamed Rincewind. ‘That’s it. They haven’t done that, because they’re not here.’ ‘Unless they were eaten!’ suggested Jasper excitedly. ‘Hmm,’ said Kwartz, and, ‘Wolves?’ said Rincewind. ‘We flattened all the wolves around here years ago,’ said the troll. ‘Old Grandad did, anyway.’ ‘He didn’t like them?’ ‘No, he just didn’t used to look where he was going. Hmm.’ The trolls looked at the ground again. ‘There’s a trail,’ he said. ‘Quite a lot of horses.’ He ooked up at the nearby hills, where sheer cliffs and dangerous crags loomed over the moonlit forests. ‘Old Grandad lives up there,’ he said quietly. There was something about the way he said it that made Rincewind decide that he didn’t ever want to meet Old Grandad. ‘Dangerous, is he?’ he ventured. ‘He’s very old and big and mean. We haven’t seen him about for years,’ said Kwartz. ‘Centuries,’ corrected Beryl. ‘He’ll squash them all flat!’ added Jasper, jumping up and down on Rincewind’s toes. ‘It just happens sometimes that a really old and big troll will go off by himself into the hills, and – um – the rock takes over, if you follow me.’ ‘No?’ Kwartz sighed. ‘People sometimes act like animals, don’t they? And sometimes a troll will start thinking like a rock, and rocks don’t like people much.’ Breccia, a skinny troll with a sandstone finish, rapped on Kwartz’s shoulder. ‘Are we going to follow them, then?’ he said. ‘The legend says we should help this Rincewind squashy.’ Kwartz stood up, thought for a moment, then picked Rincewind up by the scruff of his neck and with a big gritty movement placed him on his shoulders. ‘We go,’ he said firmly. ‘If we meet Old Grandad I’ll try to explain . . .’ Two miles away a string of horses trotted through the night. Three of them carried captives, expertly gagged and bound. A fourth pulled a rough travois on which the Luggage lay trussed and netted and silent. Herrena softly called the column to a halt and beckoned one of her men to her. ‘Are you quite sure?’ she said. ‘I can’t hear anything.’ ‘I saw troll shapes,’ he said flatly. She looked around. The trees had thinned out here, there was a lot of scree, and ahead of them the track led towards a bald, rocky hill that looked especially unpleasant by red starlight. She was worried about that track. It was extremely old, but something had made it, and trolls took a lot of killing. She sighed. Suddenly it looked as though that secretarial career was not such a bad option, at that. Not for the first time she reflected that there were many drawbacks to being a swordswoman, not least of which was that men didn’t take you seriously until you’d actually killed them, by which time it didn’t really matter anyway. Then there was all the leather, which brought her out in a rash but seemed to be unbreakably traditional. And then there was the ale. It was all right for the likes of Hrun the Barbarian or Cimbar the Assassin to carouse all night in low bars, but Herrena drew the line at it unless they sold proper drinks in small glasses, preferably with a cherry in. As for the toilet facilities . . . But she was too big to be a thief, too honest to be an assassin, too intelligent to be a wife, and too proud to enter the only other female profession generally available. So she’d become a swordswoman and had been a good one, amassing a modest fortune that she was carefully husbanding for a future that she hadn’t quite worked out yet but which would certainly include a bidet if she had anything to say about it. There was a distant sound of splintering timber. Trolls had never seen the point of walking around trees. She looked up at the hill again. Two arms of high ground swept away to right and left, and up ahead was a large outcrop with – she squinted – some caves in it? Troll caves. But maybe a better option than blundering around at night. And come sunup, there’d be no problem. She leaned across to Gancia, leader of the gang of Morpork mercenaries. She wasn’t very happy about him. It was true that he had the muscles of an ox and the tamina of an ox, the trouble was that he seemed to have the brains of an ox. And the viciousness of a ferret. Like most of the lads in downtown Morpork he’d have cheerfully sold his granny for glue, and probably had. ‘We’ll head for the caves and light a big fire in the entrance,’ she said. Trolls don’t like fire.’ He gave her a look which suggested he had his own ideas about who should be giving the orders, but his lips said, ‘You’re the boss.’ ‘Right.’ Herrena looked back at the three captives. That was the box all right – Trymon’s description had been absolutely accurate. But neither of the men looked like a wizard. Not even a failed wizard. ‘Oh, dear,’ said Kwartz. The trolls halted. The night closed in like velvet. An owl hooted eerily – at least Rincewind assumed it was an owl, he was a little hazy on ornithology. Perhaps a nightingale hooted, unless it was a thrush. A bat flittered overhead. He was quite confident about that. He was also very tired and quite bruised. ‘Why oh dear?’ he said. He peered into the gloom. There was a distant speck in the hills that might have been a fire. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘You don’t like fires, do you?’ Kwartz nodded. ‘It destroys the superconductivity of our brains,’ he said, ‘but a fire that small wouldn’t have much effect on Old Grandad.’ Rincewind looked around cautiously, listening for the sound of a rogue troll. He’d seen what normal trolls could do to a forest. They weren’t naturally destructive, they just treated organic matter as a sort of inconvenient fog. ‘Let’s hope he doesn’t find it, then,’ he said fervently. Kwartz sighed. ‘Not much chance of that,’ he said. They’ve lit it in his mouth.’ ‘It’sh a judgeshment on me!’ moaned Cohen. He tugged ineffectually at his bonds. Twoflower peered at him muzzily. Gancia’s slingshot had raised quite a lump on the back of his head and he was a little uncertain about things, starting with his name and working upwards. ‘I should have been lisshening out,’ said Cohen. ‘I should have been paying attenshion and not being shwayed by all this talk about your wosshnarnes, your din-chewers. I mussht be getting shoft.’ He levered himself up by his elbows. Herrena and the rest of the gang were standing around the fire in the cave mouth. The Luggage was still and silent under its net in a corner. ‘There’s something funny about this cave,’ said Bethan. ‘What?’ said Cohen. ‘Well, look at it. Have you ever seen rocks like those before?’ Cohen had to agree that the semi-circle of stones around the cave entrance were unusual; each one was higher than a man, and heavily worn, and surprisingly shiny. There was a matching semi-circle on the ceiling. The whole effect was that of a stone computer built by a druid with a vague idea of geometry and no sense of gravity. ‘Look at the walls, too.’ Cohen squinted at the wall next to him. There were veins of red crystal in it. He couldn’t be quite certain, but it was almost as if little points of light kept flashing on and off deep within the rock itself. It was also extremely drafty. A steady breeze blew out of the black depths of the cave. ‘I’m sure it was blowing the other way when we came in,’ whispered Bethan. ‘What do you think, Twoflower?’ ‘Well, I’m not a cave expert,’ he said, ‘but I was just thinking, that’s a very interesting stalag-thingy hanging from the ceiling up there. Sort of bulbous, isn’t it?’ They looked at it. ‘I can’t quite put my finger on why,’ said Twoflower, ‘but I think it might be a rather good idea to get out of here.’ ‘Oh yesh,’ said Cohen sarcastically, ‘I shupposhe we’d jusht better ashk theesh people to untie ush and let us go, eh?’ Cohen hadn’t spent much time in Twoflower’s company, otherwise he would not have been surprised when the little man nodded brightly and said, in the loud, slow and careful voice he employed as an alternative to actually speaking other people’s languages: ‘Excuse me? Could you please untie us and let us go? It’s rather damp and drafty here. Sorry.’ Bethan looked sidelong at Cohen. ‘Was he supposed to say that?’ ‘It’sh novel, I’ll grant you.’ And, indeed, three people detached themselves from the group around the fire and came towards them. They did not look as if they intended to untie anyone. The two men, in fact, looked the sort of people who, when they see other people tied up, start playing around with knives and making greasy suggestions and leering a lot. Herrena introduced herself by drawing her sword and pointing it at Twoflower’s heart. ‘Which one of you is Rincewind the wizard?’ she said. There were four horses. Is he here?’ ‘Um, I don’t know where he is,’ said Twoflower. ‘He was looking for some onions.’ ‘Then you are his friends and he will come looking for you,’ said Herrena. She glanced at Cohen and Bethan, then looked closely at the Luggage. Trymon had been emphatic that they shouldn’t touch the Luggage. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but Herrena’s curiosity could have massacred a pride of lions. She slit the netting and grasped the lid of the box. Twoflower winced. ‘Locked,’ she said eventually. ‘Where is the key, fat one?’ ‘It – it hasn’t got a key,’ said Twoflower. ‘There is a keyhole,’ she pointed out. ‘Well, yes, but if it wants to stay locked, it stays locked,’ said Twoflower uncomfortably. Herrena was aware of Gancia’s grin. She snarled. ‘I want it open,’ she said. ‘Gancia, see to it.’ She strode back to the fire. Gancia drew a long thin knife and leaned down close to Twoflower’s face. ‘She wants it open,’ he said. He looked up at the other man and grinned. ‘She wants it open, Weems.’ ‘Yah.’ Gancia waved the knife slowly in front of Twoflower’s face. ‘Look,’ said Twoflower patiently, ‘I don’t think you understand. No-one can open the Luggage if it’s feeling in a locked mood.’ ‘Oh yes, I forgot,’ said Gancia thoughtfully. ‘Of course, it’s a magic box, isn’t that right? With little legs, they say. I say, Weems, any legs your side? No?’ He held his knife to Twoflower’s throat. ‘I’m really upset about that,’ he said. ‘So’s Weems. He doesn’t say much but what he does is, he tears bits off people. So open – the – box!’ He turned and planted a kick on the side of the box, leaving a nasty gash in the wood. There was a tiny little click. Gancia grinned. The lid swung up slowly, ponderously. The distant firelight gleamed off gold – lots of gold, in plate, chain, and coin, heavy and glistening in the flickering shadows. ‘All right,’ said Gancia softly. He looked back at the unheeding men around the fire, who seemed to be shouting at someone outside the cave. Then he looked speculatively at Weems. His lips moved soundlessly with the unaccustomed effort of mental arithmetic. He looked down at his knife. Then the floor moved. ‘I heard someone,’ said one of the men. ‘Down there. Among the – uh – rocks.’ Rincewind’s voice floated up out of the darkness. ‘I say,’ he said. ‘Well?’ said Herrena. ‘You’re in great danger!’ shouted Rincewind. ‘You must put the fire out!’ ‘No, no,’ said Herrena. ‘You’ve got it wrong, you’re in great danger. And the fire stays.’ ‘There’s this big old troll —‘ ‘Everyone knows trolls keep away from fire,’ said Herrena. She nodded. A couple of men drew their swords and slipped out into the darkness. ‘Absolutely true!’ shouted Rincewind desperately. ‘Only this specific troll can’t, you see.’ ‘Can’t?’ Herrena hesitated. Something of the terror in Rincewind’s voice hit her. ‘Yes, because, you see, you’ve lit it on his tongue.’ Then the floor moved. Old Grandad awoke very slowly from his centuries-old slumber. He nearly didn’t awake at all, in fact a few decades later none of this could have happened. When a troll gets old and starts to think seriously about the universe it normally finds a quiet spot and gets down to some hard philosophising, and after a while starts to forget about its extremities. It begins to crystallise around the edges until nothing remains except a tiny flicker of life inside quite a large hill with some unusual rock strata. Old Grandad hadn’t quite got that far. He awoke from considering quite a promising line of inquiry about the meaning of truth and found a hot ashy taste in what, after a certain amount of thought, he remembered as being his mouth. He began to get angry. Commands skittered along neural pathways of impure silicon. Deep within his sili-caceous body stone slipped smoothly along special fracture lines. Trees toppled, turf split, as fingers the size of ships unfolded and gripped the ground. Two enormous rock-slides high on his cliff face marked the opening of eyes like great crusted opals. Rincewind couldn’t see all this, of course, since his own eyes were daylight issue only, but he did see the whole dark landscape shake itself slowly and then begin to rise impossibly against the stars. The sun rose. However, the sunlight didn’t. What did happen was that the famous Discworld sunlight, which as has already been indicated travels very slowly through the Disc’s powerful magical field, sloshed gently over the lands around the Rim and began its soft, silent battle against the retreating armies of the night. It poured like molten gold[4]across the sleeping landscape – bright, clean and, above all, slow. Herrena didn’t hesitate. With great presence of mind she ran to the edge of Old Grandad’s bottom lip and jumped, rolling as she hit the earth. The men followed her, cursing as they landed among the debris. Like a fat man trying to do press-ups the old troll pushed himself upwards. This wasn’t apparent from where the prisoners were lying. All they knew was that the floor kept rolling under them and that there was a lot of noise going on, most of it unpleasant. Weems grabbed Gancia’s arm. ‘It’s a herthquake,’ he said. ‘Let’s get out of here!’ ‘Not without that gold,’ said Gancia. ‘What?’ ‘The gold, the gold. Man, we could be as rich as Creosote!’ Weems might have had a room-temperature IQ, but he knew idiocy when he saw it. Gancia’s eyes gleamed more than gold, and he appeared to be staring at Weems’ left ear. Weems looked desperately at the Luggage. It was still open invitingly, which was odd – you’d have thought all this shaking would have slammed the lid shut. ‘We’d never carry it,’ he suggested. ‘It’s too heavy,’ he added. ‘We’ll damn well carry some of it!’ shouted Gancia, and leapt towards the chest as the floor shook again. The lid snapped shut. Gancia vanished. And just in case Weems thought it was accidental the Luggage’s lid snapped open again, just for a second, and a large tongue as red as mahogany licked across broad teeth as white as sycamore. Then it slammed shut again. To Weem’s further horror hundreds of little legs extruded from the underside of the box. It rose very deliberately and, carefully arranging its feet, shuffled around to face him. There was a particularly malevolent look about its keyhole, the sort of look that says ‘Go on – make my day . . .’ He backed away and looked imploringly at Twoflower. ‘I think it might be a good idea if you untied us,’ suggested Twoflower. ‘It’s really quite friendly once it gets to know you.’ Licking his lips nervously, Weems drew his knife. The Luggage gave a warning creak. He slashed through their bonds and stood back quickly. ‘Thank you,’ said Twoflower. ‘I think my back’sh gone again,’ complained Cohen, as Bethan helped him to his feet. ‘What do we do with this man?’ said Bethan. ‘We take hish knife and tell him to bugger off,’ said Cohen. ‘Right?’ ‘Yes, sir! Thank you, sir!’ said Weems, and bolted towards the cavemouth. For a moment he was outlined against the grey pre-dawn sky, and then he vanished. There was a distant cry of ‘aaargh’. The sunlight roared silently across the land like surf. Here and there, where the magic field was slightly weaker, tongues of morning raced ahead of the day, leaving isolated islands of night that contracted and vanished as the bright ocean flowed onwards. The uplands around the Vortex Plains stood out ahead of the advancing tide like a great grey ship. It is possible to stab a troll, but the technique takes practice and no-one ever gets a chance to practise more than once. Herrena’s men saw the trolls loom out of the darkness like very solid ghosts. Blades shattered as they hit silica skins, there were one or two brief, flat screams, and then nothing more but shouts far away in the forest as they put as much distance as they could between themselves and the avenging earth. Rincewind crept out from behind a tree and looked around. He was alone, but the bushes behind him rustled as the trolls lumbered after the gang. He looked up. High above him two great crystalline eyes focussed in atred of everything soft and squelchy and, above all, warm. Rincewind cowered in horror as a hand the size of a house rose, curled into a fist, and dropped towards him. Day came with a silent explosion of light. For a moment the huge terrifying bulk of Old Grandad was a breakwater of shadow as the daylight streamed past. There was a brief grinding noise. There was silence. Several minutes passed. Nothing happened. A few birds started singing. A bumblebee buzzed over the boulder that was Old Grandad’s fist and alighted on a patch of thyme that had grown under a stone fingernail. There was a scuffling down below. Rincewind slid awkwardly out of the narrow gap between the fist and the ground like a snake leaving a burrow. He lay on his back, staring up at the sky past the frozen shape of the troll. It hadn’t changed in any way, apart from the stillness, but already the eye started to play tricks. Last night Rincewind had looked at cracks in stone and seen them become mouths and eyes; now he looked at the great cliff face and saw the features become, like magic, mere blemishes in the rock. ‘Wow!’ he said. That didn’t seem to help. He stood up, dusted himself off, and looked around. Apart from the bumble bee, he was completely alone. After poking around for a bit he found a rock that, from certain angles, looked like Beryl. He was lost and lonely and a long way from home. He — There was a crunch high above him, and shards of rock spattered into the earth. High up on the face of Old Grandad a hole appeared; there was a brief sight of the Luggage’s backside as it struggled to regain its footing, and then Twoflower’s head poked out of the mouth cave. ‘Anyone down there? I say?’ ‘Hey!’ shouted the wizard. ‘Am I glad to see you!’ ‘I don’t know. Are you?’ said Twoflower. ‘Am I what?’ ‘Gosh, there’s a wonderful view from up here!’ It took them half an hour to get down. Fortunately Old Grandad had been quite craggy with plenty of handholds, but his nose would have presented a tricky obstacle if it hadn’t been for the luxuriant oak tree that flourished in one nostril. The Luggage didn’t bother to climb. It just jumped, and bounced its way down with no apparent harm. Cohen sat in the shade, trying to catch his breath and waiting for his sanity to catch up with him. He eyed the Luggage thoughtfully. ‘The horses have all gone,’ said Twoflower. ‘We’ll find ‘em,’ said Cohen. His eyes bored into the Luggage, which began to look embarrassed. ‘They were carrying all our food,’ said Rincewind. ‘Plenty of food in the foreshts.’ ‘I have some nourishing biscuits in the Luggage,’ said Twoflower. ‘Traveller’s Digestives. Always a comfort in a tight spot.’ ‘I’ve tried them,’ said Rincewind. They’ve got a mean edge on them, and —‘ Cohen stood up, wincing. ‘Excushe me,’ he said flatly. ‘There’sh shomething I’ve got to know.’ He walked over to the Luggage and gripped its lid. The box backed away hurriedly, but Cohen stuck out a skinny foot and tripped up half its legs. As it twisted to snap at him he gritted his teeth and heaved, jerking the Luggage onto its curved lid where it rocked angrily like a maddened tortoise. ‘Hey, that’s my Luggage!’ said Twoflower. ‘Why’s he attacking my Luggage?’ ‘I think I know,’ said Bethan quietly. ‘I think it’s because he’s scared of it.’ Twoflower turned to Rincewind, open-mouthed. Rincewind shrugged. ‘Search me,’ he said. ‘I run away from things I’m scared of, myself.’ With a snap of its lid the Luggage jerked into the air and came down running, catching Cohen a crack on the shins with one of its brass corners. As it wheeled around he got a grip on it just long enough to send it galloping full tilt into a rock. ‘Not bad,’ said Rincewind, admiringly. The Luggage staggered back, paused for a moment, then came at Cohen waving its lid menacingly. He jumped and landed on it, with both his hands and feet caught in the gap between the box and the lid. This severely puzzled the Luggage. It was even more astonished when Cohen took a deep breath and heaved, muscles standing out on his skinny arms like a sock full of coconuts. They stood locked there for some time, tendon versus hinge. Occasionally one or other would creak. Bethan elbowed Twoflower in the ribs. ‘Do something,’ she said. ‘Um,’ said Twoflower. ‘Yes. That’s about enough, I think. Put him down, please.’ The Luggage gave a creak of betrayal at the sound of its master’s voice. Its lid flew up with such force that Cohen tumbled backwards, but he scrambled to his feet and flung himself towards the box. Its contents lay open to the skies. Cohen reached inside. The Luggage creaked a bit, but had obviously weighed up the chances of being sent to the top of that Great Wardrobe in the Sky. When Rincewind dared to peek through his fingers Cohen was peering into the Luggage and cursing under his breath. ‘Laundry?’ he shouted. ‘Is that it? Just laundry?’ He was shaking with rage. ‘I think there’s some biscuits too,’ said Twoflower in a small voice. ‘But there wash gold! And I shaw it eat shomebody!’ Cohen looked imploringly at Rincewind. The wizard sighed. ‘Don’t ask me,’ he said. ‘I don’t own the bloody thing.’ ‘I bought it in a shop,’ said Twoflower defensively. ‘I said I wanted a travelling trunk.’ ‘That’s what you got, all right,’ said Rincewind. ‘It’s very loyal,’ said Twoflower. ‘Oh yes,’ agreed Rincewind. ‘If loyalty is what you look for in a suitcase.’ ‘Hold on,’ said Cohen, who had sagged onto a rock. Wash it one of thoshe shopsh – I mean, I bet you hadn’t noticed it before and when you went back again it washn’t there?’ Twoflower brightened. ‘That’s right!’ ‘Shopkeeper a little wizened old guy? Shop full of strange shtuff?’ ‘Exactly! Never could find it again, I thought I must have got the wrong street, nothing but a brick wall where I thought it was, I remember thinking at the time it was rather —‘ Cohen shrugged. ‘One of those shops[5],’ he said. That explainsh it, then.’ He felt his back, and grimaced. ‘Bloody horshe ran off with my linament!’ Rincewind remembered something, and fumbled in the depths of his torn and now very grubby robe. He held up a green bottle. ‘That’sh the shtuff!’ said Cohen. ‘You’re a marvel.’ He ooked sideways at Twoflower. ‘I would have beaten it,’ he said quietly, ‘even if you hadn’t called it off, I would have beaten it in the end.’ ‘That’s right,’ said Bethan. ‘You two can make yourshelf usheful,’ he added. That Luggage broke through a troll tooth to get ush out. That wash diamond. Shee if you can find the bitsh. I’ve had an idea about them.’ As Bethan rolled up her sleeves and uncorked the bottle Rincewind took Twoflower to one side. When they were safely hidden behind a shrub he said, ‘He’s gone barmy.’ ‘That’s Cohen the Barbarian you’re talking about!’ said Twoflower, genuinely shocked. ‘He is the greatest warrior that —‘ ‘Was,’ said Rincewind urgently. ‘All that stuff with the warrior priests and man-eating zombies was years ago. All he’s got now is memories and so many scars you could play noughts-and-crosses on him.’ ‘He is rather more elderly than I imagined, yes,’ said Twoflower. He picked up a fragment of diamond. ‘So we ought to leave them and find our horses and move on,’ said Rincewind. ‘That’s a bit of a mean trick, isn’t it?’ ‘They’ll be all right,’ said Rincewind heartily. ‘The point is, would you feel happy in the company of someone who would attack the Luggage with his bare hands?’ ‘That is a point,’ said Twoflower. ‘They’ll probably be better off without us anyway.’ ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Positive,’ said Rincewind. They found the horses wandering aimlessly in the scrub, breakfasted on badly-dried horse jerky, and set off in what Rincewind believed was the right direction. A few minutes later the Luggage emerged from the bushes and followed them. The sun rose higher in the sky, but still failed to blot out the light of the star. ‘It’s got bigger overnight,’ said Twoflower. ‘Why isn’t anybody doing something?’ ‘Such as what?’ Twoflower thought. ‘Couldn’t somebody tell Great A’Tuin to avoid it?’ he said. ‘Sort of go around it?’ ‘That sort of thing has been tried before,’ said Rincewind. Wizards tried to tune in to Great A’Tuin’s mind.’ ‘It didn’t work?’ ‘Oh, it worked all right,’ said Rincewind. ‘Only . . .’ Only there had been certain unforeseen risks in reading a mind as great as the World Turtle’s, he explained. The wizards had trained up on tortoises and giant sea turtles first, to get the hang of the chelonian frame of mind, but although they knew that Great A’Tuin’s mind would be big they hadn’t realised that it would be slow. ‘There’s a bunch of wizards that have been reading it in shifts for thirty years,’ said Rincewind. ‘All they’ve found out is that Great A’Tuin is looking forward to something.’ ‘What?’ ‘Who knows?’ They rode in silence for a while through a rough country where huge limestone blocks lined the track. Eventually Twoflower said, ‘We ought to go back, you know.’ ‘Look, we’ll reach the Smarl tomorrow,’ said Rincewind. ‘Nothing will happen to them out here, I don’t see why —‘ He was talking to himself. Twoflower had wheeled his horse and was trotting back, demonstrating all the horsemanship of a sack of potatoes. Rincewind looked down. The Luggage regarded him owlishly. ‘What are you looking at?’ said the wizard. ‘He can go back if he wants, why should I bother?’ The Luggage said nothing. ‘Look, he’s not my responsibility,’ said Rincewind. let’s be absolutely clear about that.’ The Luggage said nothing, but louder this time. ‘Go on – follow him. You’re nothing to do with me.’ The Luggage retracted its little legs and settled down on the track. ‘Well, I’m going,’ said Rincewind. ‘I mean it,’ he added. He turned the horse’s head back towards the new horizon, and glanced down. The Luggage sat there. ‘It’s no good trying to appeal to my better nature. You can stay there all day for all I care. I’m just going to ride off, okay?’ He glared at the Luggage. The Luggage looked back. ‘I thought you’d come back,’ said Twoflower. ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ said Rincewind. ‘Shall we talk about something else?’ ‘Yeah, well, discussing how to get these ropes off would be favourite,’ said Rincewind. He wrenched at the bonds around his wrists. ‘I can’t imagine why you’re so important,’ said Herrena. She sat on a rock opposite them, sword across her knees. Most of the gang laying among the rocks high above, watching the road. Rincewind and Twoflower had been a pathetically easy ambush. ‘Weems told me what your box did to Gancia,’ she added. ‘I can’t say that’s a great loss, but I hope it understands that if it comes within a mile of us I will personally cut both your throats, yes?’ Rincewind nodded violently. ‘Good,’ said Herrena. ‘You’re wanted dead or alive, I’m not really bothered which, but some of the lads might want to have a little discussion with you about those trolls. If the sun hadn’t come up when it did—‘ She left the words hanging, and walked away. ‘Well, here’s another fine mess,’ said Rincewind. He had another pull at the ropes that bound him. There was a rock behind him, and if he could bring his wrists up – yes, as he thought, it lacerated him while at the same time eing too blunt to have any effect on the rope. ‘But why us?’ said Twoflower. ‘It’s to do with that star, isn’t it?’ ‘I don’t know anything about the star,’ said Rincewind. ‘I never even attended astrology lessons at the University!’ ‘I expect everything will turn out all right in the end,’ said Twoflower. Rincewind looked at him. Remarks like that always threw him. ‘Do you really believe that?’ he said. ‘I mean, really?’ ‘Well, things generally do work out satisfactorily, when you come to think about it.’ ‘If you think the total disruption of my life for the last year is satisfactory then you might be right. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve nearly been killed —‘ ‘Twenty-seven,’ said Twoflower. ‘What?’ ‘Twenty-seven times,’ said Twoflower helpfully. ‘I worked it out. But you never actually have.’ ‘What? Worked it out?’ said Rincewind, who was beginning to have the familiar feeling that the conversation had been mugged. ‘No. Been killed. Doesn’t that seem a bit suspicious?’ ‘I’ve never objected to it, if that’s what you mean,’ said Rincewind. He glared at his feet. Twoflower was right, of course. The Spell was keeping him alive, it was obvious. No doubt if he jumped over a cliff a passing cloud would cushion his fall. The trouble with that theory, he decided, was that it only worked if he didn’t believe it was true. The moment he thought he was invulnerable he’d be dead. So, on the whole it was wisest not to think about it at all. Anyway, he might be wrong. The only thing he could be certain of was that he was getting a headache. He hoped that the Spell was somewhere in the area of the headache and really suffering. When they rode out of the hollow both Rincewind and Twoflower were sharing a horse with one of their captors. Rincewind perched uncomfortably in front of Weems. who had sprained an ankle and was not in a good mood. Twoflower sat in front of Herrena which, since he was fairly short, meant that at least he kept his ears warm. She rode with a drawn knife and a sharp eye out for any-walking boxes; Herrena hadn’t quite worked out what the Luggage was, but she was bright enough to know that it wouldn’t let Twoflower be killed. After about ten minutes they saw it in the middle of the road. It’s lid lay open invitingly. It was full of gold. ‘Go round it,’ said Herrena. ‘But —‘ ‘It’s a trap.’ ‘That’s right,’ said Weems, white-faced. ‘You take it from me.’ Reluctantly they reined their horses around the glittering temptation and trotted on along the track. Weems glanced back fearfully, dreading to see the chest coming after him. What he saw was almost worse. It had gone. Far off to one side of the path the long grass moved mysteriously and was still. Rincewind wasn’t much of a wizard and even less of a fighter, but he was an expert at cowardice and he knew fear when he smelt it. He said, quietly, ‘It’ll follow you, you know.’ ‘What?’ said Weems, distractedly. He was still peering at the grass. ‘It’s very patient and it never gives up. That’s sapient pearwood you’re dealing with. It’ll let you think it’s forgotten you, then one day you’ll be walking along a dark street and you’ll hear these little footsteps behind you – shlup, shlup, they’ll go, then you’ll start running and they’ll speed up, shlupshlupSHLUP—‘ ‘Shut up!’ shouted Weems. ‘It’s probably already recognised you, so —‘ ‘I said shut up!’ Herrena turned around in her saddle and glared at them. Weems scowled and pulled Rincewind’s ear until it was ight in front his mouth, and said hoarsely, I’m afraid of nothing, understand? This wizard stuff, I spit on it.’ ‘They all say that until they hear the footsteps,’ said Rincewind. He stopped. A knifepoint was pricking his ribs. Nothing happened for the rest of the day but, to Rincewind’s satisfaction and Weems’ mounting paranoia, the Luggage showed itself several times. Here it would be perched incongruously on a crag, there it would be half-hidden in a ditch with moss growing over it. By late afternoon they came to the crest of a hill and looked down on the broad valley of the upper Smarl, the longest river on the Disc. It was already half a mile across, and heavy with the silt that made the lower valley the most fertile area on the continent. A few wisps of early mist wreathed its banks. ‘Shlup,’ said Rincewind. He felt Weems jerk upright in the saddle. ‘Eh?’ ‘Just clearing my throat,’ said Rincewind, and grinned. He had put a lot of thought into that grin. It was the sort of grin people use when they stare at your left ear and tell you in an urgent tone of voice that they are being spied on by secret agents from the next galaxy. It was not a grin to inspire confidence. More horrible grins had probably been seen, but only on the sort of grinner that is orange with black stripes, has a long tail and hangs around in jungles looking for victims to grin at. ‘Wipe that off,’ said Herrena, trotting up. Where the track led down to the river bank there was a crude jetty and a big bronze gong. ‘It’ll summon the ferryman,’ said Herrena. ‘If we cross here we can cut off a big bend in the river. Might even make it to a town tonight.’ Weems looked doubtful. The sun was getting fat and red, and the mists were beginning to thicken. ‘Or maybe you want to spend the night this side of the water?’ Weems picked up the hammer and hit the gong so hard that it spun right around on its hanger and fell off. They waited in silence. Then with a wet clinking sound a chain sprang out of the water and pulled taut against an iron peg set into the bank. Eventually the slow flat shape of the ferry emerged from the mist, its hooded ferryman heaving on a big wheel set in its centre as he winched his way towards the shore. The ferry’s flat bottom grated on the gravel, and the hooded figure leaned against the wheel panting. ‘Two at a time,’ it muttered.’ That’sh all. Jusht two, with horshesh.’ Rincewind swallowed, and tried not to look at Twoflower. The man would probably be grinning and mugging like an idiot. He risked a sideways glance. Twoflower was sitting with his mouth open. ‘You’re not the usual ferryman,’ said Herrena. ‘I’ve been here before, the usual man is a big fellow, sort of —‘ ‘It’sh hish day off.’ ‘Well, okay,’ she said doubtfully. ‘In that case – what’s he laughing at?’ Twoflower’s shoulders were shaking, his face had gone red, and he was emitting muffled snorts. Herrena glared at him, then looked hard at the ferryman. ‘Two of you – grab him!’ There was a pause. Then one of the men said, ‘What, the ferryman?’ ‘Yes!’ ‘Why?’ Herrena looked blank. This sort of thing wasn’t supposed to happen. It was accepted that when someone yelled something like ‘Get him!’ or ‘Guards!’ people jumped to it, they weren’t supposed to sit around discussing things. ‘Because I said so!’ was the best she could manage. The two men nearest to the bowed figure looked at each ther, shrugged, dismounted, and each took a shoulder. The ferryman was about half their size. ‘Like this?’ said one of them. Twoflower was choking for breath. ‘Now I want to see what he’s got under that robe.’ The two men exchanged glances. ‘I’m not sure that—‘ said one. He got no further because a knobbly elbow jerked into his stomach like a piston. His companion looked down incredulously and got the other elbow in the kidneys. Cohen cursed as he struggled to untangle his sword from his robe while hopping crabwise towards Herrena. Rincewind groaned, gritted his teeth, and jerked his head backwards hard. There was a scream from Weems and Rincewind rolled sideways, landed heavily in the mud, scrambled up madly and looked around for somewhere to hide. With a cry of triumph Cohen managed to free his sword and waved it triumphantly, severely wounding a man who had been creeping up behind him. Herrena pushed Twoflower off her horse and fumbled for her own blade. Twoflower tried to stand up and caused the horse of another man to rear, throwing him off and bringing his head down to the right level for Rincewind to kick it as hard as possible. Rincewind would be the first to call himself a rat, but even rats fight in a corner. Weems’ hands dropped onto his shoulder and a fist like a medium-sized rock slammed into his head. As he went down he heard Herrena say, quite quietly, ‘Kill them both. I’ll deal with this old fool.’ ‘Roight!’ said Weems, and turned towards Twoflower with his sword drawn. Rincewind saw him hesitate. There was a moment of silence, and then even Herrena could hear the splashing as the Luggage surged ashore, water pouring from it. Weems stared at it in horror. His sword fell from his hand. He turned and ran into the mists. A moment later he Luggage bounded over Rincewind and followed him. Herrena lunged at Cohen, who parried the thrust and grunted as his arm twinged. The blades clanged wetly, and then Herrena was forced to back away as a cunning upward sweep from Cohen nearly disarmed her. Rincewind staggered towards Twoflower and tugged at him ineffectually. ‘Time to be going,’ he muttered. ‘This is great!’ said Twoflower. ‘Did you see the way he —‘ ‘Yes, yes, come on.’ ‘But I want – I say, well done!’ Herrena’s sword spun out of her hand and stood quivering in the dirt. With a snort of satisfaction Cohen brought his own sword back, went momentarily crosseyed, gave a little yelp of pain, and stood absolutely motionless. Herrena looked at him, puzzled. She made an experimental move in the direction of her own sword and when nothing happened she grasped it, tested its balance, and stared at Cohen. Only his agonised eyes moved to follow her as she circled him cautiously. ‘His back’s gone again!’ whispered Twoflower. ‘What can we do?’ ‘We can see if we can catch the horses?’ ‘Well,’ said Herrena, ‘I don’t know who you are or why you’re here, and there’s nothing personal about this, you understand.’ She raised her sword in both hands. There was a sudden movement in the mists and the dull thud of a heavy piece of wood hitting a head. Herrena looked bewildered for a moment, and then fell forward. Bethan dropped the branch she had been holding and looked at Cohen. Then she grabbed him by the shoulders, stuck her knee in the small of his back, gave a businesslike twist and let him go. An expression of bliss passed across his face. He gave an experimental bend. ‘It’s gone!’ he said. ‘The back! Gone!’ Twoflower turned to Rincewind. ‘My father used to recommend hanging from the top of a door,’ he said conversationally. Weems crept very cautiously through the scrubby, mist-laden trees. The pale damp air muffled all sounds, but he was certain that there had been nothing to hear for the past ten minutes. He turned around very slowly, and then allowed himself the luxury of a long, heartfelt sigh. He stepped back into the cover of the bushes. Something nudged the back of his knees, very gently. Something angular. He looked down. There seemed to be more feet down there than there ought to be. There was a short, sharp snap. The fire was a tiny dot of light in a dark landscape. The moon wasn’t up yet, but the star was a lurking glow on the horizon. ‘It’s circular now,’ said Bethan. ‘It looks like a tiny sun. I’m sure it’s getting hotter, too.’ ‘Don’t,’ said Rincewind. ‘As if I hadn’t got enough to worry about.’ ‘What I don’t understand,’ said Cohen, who was having his back massaged, ‘ish how they captured you without ush hearing it. We wouldn’t have known at all if your Luggage hadn’t kept jumping up and down.’ ‘And whining,’ said Bethan. They all looked at her. ‘Well, it looked as if it was whining,’ she said. ‘I think it’s rather sweet, really.’ Four pairs of eyes turned towards the Luggage, which was squatting on the other side of the fire. It got up, and very pointedly moved back into the shadows. ‘Eashy to feed,’ said Cohen. ‘Hard to lose,’ agreed Rincewind. ‘Loyal,’ suggested Twoflower. ‘Roomy,’ said Cohen. ‘But I wouldn’t say sweet,’ said Rincewind. ‘I shuppose you wouldn’t want to shell it?’ said Cohen. Twoflower shook his head. ‘I don’t think it would understand,’ he said. ‘No, I shupposhe not,’ said Cohen. He sat up, and bit his lip. ‘I wash looking for a preshent for Bethan, you shee. We’re getting married.’ ‘We thought you ought to be the first to know,’ said Bethan, and blushed. Rincewind didn’t catch Twoflower’s eye. ‘Well, that’s very, er —‘ ‘Just as soon as we find a town where there’s a priest,’ said Bethan. ‘I want it done properly.’ ‘That’s very important,’ said Twoflower seriously. ‘If there were more morals about we wouldn’t be crashing into stars.’ They considered this for a moment. Then Twoflower said brightly, ‘This calls for a celebration. I’ve got some biscuits and water, if you’ve still got some of that jerky.’ ‘Oh, good,’ said Rincewind weakly. He beckoned Cohen to one side. With his beard trimmed the old man could easily have passed for seventy on a dark night. ‘This is, uh, serious?’ he said. ‘You’re really going to marry her?’ ‘Share thing. Any objections?’ ‘Well, no, of course not, but – I mean, she’s seventeen and you’re, you’re, how can I put it, you’re of the elderly persuasion.’ ‘Time I shettled down, you mean?’ Rincewind groped for words. ‘You’re seventy years older than her, Cohen. Are you sure that —‘ ‘I have been married before, you know. I’ve got quite a good memory,’ said Cohen reproachfully. ‘No, what I mean is, well, I mean physically, the point is, what about, you know, the age difference and everything, t’s a matter of health, isn’t it, and —‘ ‘Ah,’ said Cohen slowly, ‘I shee what you mean. The strain. I hadn’t looked at it like that.’ ‘No,’ said Rincewind, straightening up. ‘No, well, that’s only to be expected.’ ‘You’ve given me something to think about and no mishtake,’ said Cohen. ‘I hope I haven’t upset anything.’ ‘No, no,’ said Cohen vaguely. ‘Don’t apologishe. You were right to point it out.’ He turned and looked at Bethan, who waved at him, and then he looked up at the star that glared through the mists. Eventually he said, ‘Dangerous times, these.’ ‘That’s a fact.’ ‘Who knows what tomorrow may bring?’ ‘Not me.’ Cohen clapped Rincewind on the shoulder. ‘Shome-timesh we jusht have to take rishks,’ he said. ‘Don’t be offended, but I think we’ll go ahead with the wedding anyway and, well,’ he looked at Bethan and sighed, ‘we’ll just have to hope she’s shtrong enough.’ Around noon the following day they rode into a small, mud-walled city surrounded by fields still lush and green. There seemed to be a lot of traffic going the other way, though. Huge carts rumbled past them. Herds of livestock ambled along the crown of the road. Old ladies stomped past carrying entire households and haystacks on their backs. ‘Plague?’ said Rincewind, stopping a man pushing a handcart full of children. He shook his head. ‘It’s the star, friend,’ he said. ‘Haven’t you seen it in the sky?’ ‘We couldn’t help noticing it, yes.’ They say that it’ll hit us on Hogswatchnight and the seas will boil and the countries of the Disc will be broken nd kings will be brought down and the cities will be as lakes of glass,’ said the man. ‘I’m off to the mountains.’ ‘That’ll help, will it?’ said Rincewind doubtfully. ‘No, but the view will be better.’ Rincewind rode back to the others. ‘Everyone’s worried about the star,’ he said. ‘Apparently there’s hardly anyone left in the cities, they’re all frightened of it.’ ‘I don’t want to worry anyone,’ said Bethan, ‘but hasn’t it struck you as unseasonably hot?’ ‘That’s what I said last night,’ said Twoflower. ‘Very warm, I thought.’ ‘I shuspect it’ll get a lot hotter,’ said Cohen. ‘Let’sh get on into the city.’ They rode through echoing streets that were practically deserted. Cohen kept peering at merchants’ signs until he reined his horse and said, ‘Thish ish what I’ve been looking for. You find a temple and a priesht, I’ll join you shortly.’ ‘A jeweller?’ said Rincewind. ‘It’s a shuprishe.’ ‘I could do with a new dress, too,’ said Bethan. ‘I’ll shteal you one.’ There was something very oppressive about the city, Rincewind decided. There was also something very odd. Almost every door was painted with a large red star. ‘It’s creepy,’ said Bethan. ‘As if people wanted to bring the star here.’ ‘Or keep it away,’ said Twoflower. ‘That won’t work. It’s too big,’ said Rincewind. He saw their faces turned towards him. ‘Well, it stands to reason, doesn’t it?’ he said lamely. ‘No,’ said Bethan. ‘Stars are small lights in the sky,’ said Twoflower. ‘One fell down near my home once – big white thing, size of a house, glowed for weeks before it went out.’ ‘This star is different,’ said a voice. ‘Great A’Tuin has climbed the beach of the universe. This is the great ocean of space.’ ‘How do you know?’ said Twoflower. ‘Know what?’ said Rincewind. ‘What you just said. About beaches and oceans.’ ‘I didn’t say anything!’ ‘Yes you did, you silly man!’ yelled Bethan. ‘We saw your lips going up and down and everything!’ Rincewind shut his eyes. Inside his mind he could feel the Spell scuttling off to hide behind his conscience, and muttering to itself. ‘All right, all right,’ he said. ‘No need to shout. I – I don’t know how I know, I just know —.’ ‘Well, I wish you’d tell us.’ They turned the corner. All the cities around the Circle Sea had a special area set aside for the gods, of which the Disc had an elegant sufficiency. Usually they were crowded and not very attractive from an architectural point of view. The most senior gods, of course, had large and splendid temples, but the trouble was that later gods demanded equality and soon the holy areas were sprawling with lean-to’s, annexes, loft conversions, sub-basements, bijou flatlets, ecclesiastical infilling and trans-temporal timesharing, since no god would dream of living outside the holy quarter or, as it had become, three-eighths. There were usually three hundred different types of incense being burned and the noise was normally at pain threshold because of all the priests vying with each other to call their share of the faithful to prayer. But this street was deathly quiet, that particularly unpleasant quiet that comes when hundreds of frightened and angry people are standing very still. A man at the edge of the crowd turned around and scowled at the newcomers. He had a red star painted on his forehead. ‘What’s—‘ Rincewind began, and stopped as his voice seemed far too loud, ‘what’s this?’ ‘You’re strangers?’ said the man. ‘Actually we know one another quite—‘ Twoflower egan, and fell silent. Bethan pointed up the street. Every temple had a star painted on it. There was a particularly big one daubed across the stone eye outside the temple of Blind Io, leader of the gods. ‘Urgh,’ said Rincewind. ‘Io is going to be really pissed when he sees that. I don’t think we ought to hang around here, friends.’ The crowd was facing a crude platform that had been built in the centre of the wide street. A big banner had been draped across the front of it. ‘I always heard that Blind Io can see everything that happens everywhere,’ said Bethan quietly. ‘Why hasn’t —‘ ‘Quiet!’ said the man beside them. ‘Dahoney speaks!’ A figure had stepped up on the platform, a tall thin man with hair like a dandelion. There was no cheer from the crowd, just a collective sigh. He began to speak. Rincewind listened in mounting horror. Where were the gods? said the man. They had gone. Perhaps they had never been. Who, actually, could remember seeing them? And now the star had been sent — It went on and on, a quiet, clear voice that used words like ‘cleanse’ and ‘scouring’ and ‘purify’ and drilled into the brain like a hot sword. Where were the wizards? Where was magic? Had it ever really worked, or had it all been a dream? Rincewind began to be really afraid that the gods might get to hear about this and be so angry that they’d take it out on anyone who happened to have been around at the time. But somehow even the wrath of the gods would have been better than the sound of that voice. The star was coming, it seemed to say, and its fearful fire could only be averted by – by – Rincewind couldn’t be certain, but he had visions of swords and banners and blank-eyed warriors. The voice didn’t believe in gods, which in Rincewind’s book was fair enough, but it didn’t believe in people either. A tall hooded stranger on Rincewind’s left jostled him. He turned – and looked up into a grinning skuli nder a black hood. Wizards, like cats, can see Death. Compared to the sound of that voice, Death seemed almost pleasant. He leaned against a wall, his scythe propped up beside him. He nodded at Rincewind. ‘Come to gloat?’ whispered Rincewind. Death shrugged. I HAVE COME TO SEE THE FUTURE,he said. ‘This is the future?’ A FUTURE,said Death. ‘It’s horrible,’ said Rincewind. I’M INCLINED TO AGREE,said Death. ‘I would have thought you’d be all for it I’ NOT LIKE THIS. THE DEATH OF THE WARRIOR OR THE OLD MAN OR THE LITTLE CHILD, THIS I UNDERSTAND, AND I TAKE AWAY THE PAIN AND END THE SUFFERING. I DO NOT UNDERSTAND THIS DEATH-OF-THE-MIND. ‘Who are you talking to?’ said Twoflower. Several members of the congregation had turned around and were looking suspiciously at Rincewind. ‘Nobody,’ said Rincewind. ‘Can we go away? I’ve got a headache.’ Now a group of people at the edge of the crowd were muttering and pointing to them. Rincewind grabbed the other two and hurried them around the corner. ‘Mount up and let’s go,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a bad feeling that —‘ A hand landed on his shoulder. He turned around. A pair of cloudy grey eyes set in a round bald head on top of a large muscular body were staring hard at his left ear. The man had a star painted on his forehead. ‘You look like a wizard,’ he said, in a tone of voice that suggested this was very unwise and quite possibly fatal. ‘Who, me? No, I’m – a clerk. Yes. A clerk. That’s right,’ said Rincewind. He gave a little laugh. The man paused, his lips moving soundlessly, as though he was listening to a voice in his head. Several ther star people had joined him. Rincewind’s left ear began to be widely regarded. ‘I think you’re a wizard,’ said the man. ‘Look,’ said Rincewind, ‘if I was a wizard I’d be able to do magic, right? I’d just turn you into something, and I haven’t, so I’m not.’ ‘We killed all our wizards,’ said one of the men. ‘Some ran away, but we killed quite a lot. They waved their hands and nothing came out.’ Rincewind stared at him. ‘And we think you’re a wizard too,’ said the man holding Rincewind in an ever-tightening grip. ‘You’ve got the box on legs and you look like a wizard.’ Rincewind became aware that the three of them and the Luggage had somehow become separated from their horses, and that they were now in a contracting circle of grey-faced, solemn people. Bethan had gone pale. Even Twoflower, whose ability to recognise danger was as good as Rincewind’s ability to fly, was looking worried. Rincewind took a deep breath. He raised his hands in the classic pose he’d learned years before, and rasped, ‘Stand back! Or I’ll fill you full of magic!’ ‘The magic has faded,’ said the man. ‘The star has taken it away. All the false wizards said their funny words and then nothing happened and they looked at their hands in horror and very few of them, in fact, had the sense to run away.’ ‘I mean it!’ said Rincewind. He’s going to kill me, he thought. That’s it. I can’t even bluff any more. No good at magic, no good at bluffing, I’m just a — The Spell stirred in his mind. He felt it trickle into his brain like iced water and brace itself. A cold tingle coursed down his arm. His arm raised of its own volition, and he felt his own mouth opening and shutting and his own tongue moving as a voice that wasn’t his, a voice that sounded old and dry, said syllables that puffed into the air like steam clouds. Octarine fire flashed from under his fingernails. It wrapped itself around the horrified man until he was lost in a cold, spitting cloud that rose above the street, hung there for a long moment, and then exploded into nothingness. There wasn’t even a wisp of greasy smoke. Rincewind stared at his hand in horror. Twoflower and Bethan each grabbed him by an arm and hustled him through the shocked crowd until they reached the open street. There was a painful moment as they each chose to run down a different alley, but they hurried on with Rincewind’s feet barely touching the cobbles. ‘Magic,’ he mumbled excitedly, drunk with power. ‘I did magic . . .’ ‘That’s right,’ said Twoflower soothingly. ‘Would you like me to do a spell?’ said Rincewind. He pointed a finger at a passing dog and said ‘Wheeee!’ It gave him a hurt look. ‘Making your feet run a lot faster’d be favourite,’ said Bethan grimly. ‘Sure!’ slurred Rincewind. ‘Feet! Run faster! Hey, look, they’re doing it!’ ‘They’ve got more sense than you,’ said Bethan. ‘Which way now?’ Twoflower peered at the maze of alleyways around them. There was a lot of shouting going on, some way off. Rincewind lurched 6ut of their grasp, and tottered uncertainly down the nearest alley. ‘I can do it!’ he shouted wildly. ‘Just you all watch out —‘ ‘He’s in shock,’ said Twoflower. ‘Why?’ ‘He’s never done a spell before.’ ‘But he’s a wiizard!’ ‘It’s all a bit complicated,’ said Twoflower, running after Rincewind. ‘Anyway, I’m not sure that was actually him. it certainly didn’t sound like him. Come along, old fellow.’ Rincewind looked at him with wild, unseeing eyes. ‘I’ll turn you into a rosebush,’ he said. ‘Yes, yes, jolly good. Just come along,’ said Twoflower soothingly, pulling gently at his arm. There was a pattering of feet from several alleyways and suddenly a dozen star people were advancing on them. Bethan grabbed Rincewind’s limp hand and held it up threateningly. ‘That’s far enough!’ she screamed. ‘Right!’ shouted Twoflower. ‘We’ve got a wizard and we’re not afraid to use him!’ ‘I mean it!’ screamed Bethan, spinning Rincewind around by his arm, like a capstan. ‘Right! We’re heavily armed! What?’ said Twoflower. ‘I said, where’s the Luggage?’ hissed Bethan behind Rincewind’s back. Twoflower looked around. The Luggage was missing. Rincewind was having the desired effect of the star people, though. As his hand waved vaguely around they treated it like a rotary scythe and tried to hide behind one another. ‘Well, where’s it gone?’ ‘How should I know?’ said Twoflower. ‘It’s your Luggage!’ ‘I often don’t know where my Luggage is, that’s what being a tourist is all about,’ said Twoflower. ‘Anyway, it often wanders off by itself. It’s probably best not to ask why.’ It began to dawn on the mob that nothing was actually happening, and that Rincewind was in no condition to hurl insults, let alone magical fire. They advanced, watching his hands cautiously. Twoflower and Bethan backed away. Twoflower looked around. ‘Bethan?’ ‘What?’ said Bethan, not taking her eyes off the advancing figures. ‘This is a dead end.’ ‘Are you sure?’ ‘I think I know a brick wall when I see one,’ said Twoflower reproachfully. ‘That’s about it, then,’ said Bethan. ‘Do you think perhaps if I explain – ?’ ‘No.’ ‘Oh.’ ‘I don’t think these are the sort of people who listen to explanations,’ Bethan added. Twoflower stared at them. He was, as has been mentioned, usually oblivious to personal danger. Against the whole of human experience Twoflower believed that if only people would talk to each other, have a few drinks, exchange pictures of their grandchildren, maybe take in a show or something, then everything could be sorted out. He also believed that people were basically good but sometimes had their bad days. What was coming down the street was having about the same effect on him as a gorilla in a glass factory. There was the faintest of sounds behind him, not so much a sound in fact as a change in the texture of the air. The faces in front of him gaped open, turned, and disappeared rapidly down the alley. ‘Eh?’ said Bethan, still propping up the now unconscious Rincewind. Twoflower was looking the other way, at a big glass window full of strange wares, and a beaded doorway, and a large sign above it all which now said, after its characters had finished writhing into position: ‘Skillet, Wang, Yrxle!yt, Bunglestiff, Cwmlad and Patel’ ‘Estblshd: various’ ‘PURVEYORS’ The jeweller turned the gold slowly over the tiny anvil, tapping the last strangely-cut diamond into place. ‘From a troll’s tooth, you say?’ he muttered, squinting losely at his work. ‘Yesh,’ said Cohen, ‘and as I shay, you can have all the resht.’ He was fingering a tray of gold rings. ‘Very generous,’ murmured the jeweller, who was dwar-vish and knew a good deal when he saw one. He sighed. ‘Not much work lately?’ said Cohen. He looked out through the tiny window and watched a group of empty-eyed people gathered on the other side of the narrow street. ‘Times are hard, yes.’ ‘Who are all theshe guysh with the starsh painted on?’ said Cohen. The dwarf jeweller didn’t look up. ‘Madmen,’ he said. ‘They say I should do no work because the star comes. I tell them stars have never hurt me, I wish I could say the same about people.’ Cohen nodded thoughtfully as six men detached themselves from the group and came towards the shop. They were carrying an assortment of weapons, and had a driven, determined look about them. ‘Strange,’ said Cohen. ‘I am, as you can see, of the dwarvish persuasion,’ said the jeweller. ‘One of the magical races, it is said. The star people believe that the star will not destroy the Disc if we turn aside from magic. They’re probably going to beat me up a bit. So it goes.’ He held up his latest work in a pair of tweezers. ‘The strangest thing I have ever made,’ he said, ‘but practical, I can see that. What did you say they were called again?’ ‘Din-chewersh,’ said Cohen. He looked at the horseshoe shapes nestling in the wrinkled palm of his hand, then opened his mouth and made a series of painful grunting noises. The door burst open. The men strode in and took up positions around the walls. They were sweating and uncertain, but their leader pushed Cohen aside disdainfully and picked up the dwarf by his shirt. ‘We tole you yesterday, small stuff,’ he said. ‘You go ut feet down or feet up, we don’t mind. So now we gonna get really —.’ Cohen tapped him on the shoulder. The man looked around irritably. ‘What do you want, grandad?’ he snarled. Cohen paused until he had the man’s full attention, and then he smiled. It was a slow, lazy smile, unveiling about 300 carats of mouth jewellery that seemed to light up the room. ‘I will count to three,’ he said, in a friendly tone of voice. ‘One. Two.’ His bony knee came up and buried itself in the man’s groin with a satisfyingly meaty noise, and he half-turned to bring the full force of an elbow into the kidneys as the leader collapsed around his private universe of pain. ‘Three,’ he told the ball of agony on the floor. Cohen had heard of fighting fair, and had long ago decided he wanted no part of it. He looked up at the other men, and flashed his incredible srnile. They ought to have rushed him. Instead one of them, secure in the knowledge that he had a broadsword and Cohen didn’t, sidled crabwise towards him. ‘Oh, no,’ said Cohen, waving his hands. ‘Oh, come on, lad, not like that.’ The man looked sideways at him. ‘Not like what?’ he asked suspiciously. ‘You never held a sword before?’ The man half-turned to his colleagues for reassurance. ‘Not a lot, no,’ he said. ‘Not often.’ He waved his sword menacingly. Cohen shrugged. ‘I may be going to die, but I should hope I could be killed by a man who could hold his sword like a warrior,’ he said. The man looked at his hands. ‘Looks all right,’ he said, doubtfully. ‘Look, lad, I know a little about these things. I mean, come here a minute and – do you mind? – right, your eft hand goes here, around the pommel, and your right hand goes – that’s right, just here — and the blade goes right into your leg.’ As the man screamed and clutched at his foot Cohen kicked his remaining leg away and turned to the room at large. ‘This is getting fiddly,’ he said. Why don’t you rush me?’ ‘That’s right,’ said a voice by his waist. The jeweller had produced a very large and dirty axe, guaranteed to add tetanus to all the other terrors of warfare. The four men gave these odds some consideration, and backed towards the door. ‘And wipe those silly stars off,’ said Cohen. ‘You can tell everyone that Cohen the Barbarian will be very angry if he sees stars like that again, right?’ The door slammed shut. A moment later the axe thumped into it, bounced off, and took a sliver of leather off the toe of Cohen’s sandal. ‘Sorry,’ said the dwarf. ‘It belonged to my grandad. I only use it for splitting firewood.’ Cohen felt his jaw experimentally. The dine chewers seemed to be settling in quite well. ‘If I was you, I’d be getting out of here anyway,’ he said. But the dwarf was already scuttling around the room, tipping trays of precious metal and gems into a leather sack. A roll of tools went into one pocket, a packet of finished jewellery went into another, and with a grunt the dwarf stuck his arms through handles on either side of his little forge and heaved it bodily onto his back. ‘Right,’ he said. I’m ready.’ ‘You’re coming with me?’ ‘As far as the city gates, if you don’t mind,’ he said. ‘You can’t blame me, can you?’ ‘No. But leave the axe behind.’ They stepped out into the afternoon sun and a deserted street. When Cohen opened his mouth little pinpoints of bright light illuminated all the shadows. ‘I’ve got some friends around here to pick up,’ he said, nd added, ‘I hope they’re all right. What’s your name?’ ‘Lackjaw.’ ‘Is there anywhere around here where I can—‘ Cohen paused lovingly, savouring the words – ‘where I can get a steak?’ The star people have closed all the inns. They said it’s wrong to be eating and drinking when —‘ ‘I know, I know,’ said Cohen. ‘I think I’m beginning to get the hang of it. Don’t they approve of anything?’ Lackjaw was lost in thought for a moment. ‘Setting fire to things,’ he said at last. ‘They’re quite good at that. Books and stuff. They have these great big bonfires.’ Cohen was shocked. ‘Bonfires of books?’ ‘Yes. Horrible, isn’t it?’ ‘Right,’ said Cohen. He thought it was appalling. Someone who spent his life living rough under the sky knew the value of a good thick book, which ought to outlast at least a season of cooking fires if you were careful how you tore the pages out. Many a life had been saved on a snowy night by a handful of sodden kindling and a really dry book. If you felt like a smoke and couldn’t find a pipe, a book was your man every time. Cohen realised people wrote things in books. It had always seemed to him to be a frivolous waste of paper. I’m afraid if your friends met them they might be in trouble,’ said Lackjaw sadly as they walked up the street. They turned the corner and saw the bonfire. It was in the middle of the street. A couple of star people were feeding it with books from a nearby house, which had its door smashed in and had been daubed with stars. News of Cohen hadn’t spread too far yet. The book burners took no notice as he wandered up and leaned against the wall. Curly flakes of burnt paper bounced in the hot air and floated away over the rooftops. ‘What are you doing?’ he said. One of the star people, a woman, pushed her hair out of her eyes with a soot-blackened hand, gazed intently t Cohen’s left ear, and said, ‘Ridding the disc of wickedness.’ Two men came out of the building and glared at Cohen, or at least at his ear. Cohen reached out and took the heavy book the woman was carrying. Its cover was crusted with strange red and black stones that spelled out what Cohen was sure was a word. He showed it to Lackjaw. ‘The Necrotelecomnicon,’ said the dwarf. ‘Wizards use it. It’s how to contact the dead, I think.’ ‘That’s wizards for you,’ said Cohen. He felt a page between finger and thumb; it was thin, and quite soft. The rather unpleasant organic-looking writing didn’t worry him at all. Yes, a book like this could be a real friend to a man — ‘Yes? You want something?’ he said to one of the star men, who had gripped his arm. ‘All books of magic must be burned,’ said the man, but a little uncertainly, because something about Cohen’s teeth was giving him a nasty feeling of sanity. ‘Why?’ said Cohen. ‘It has been revealed to us.’ Now Cohen’s smile was as wide as all outdoors, and rather more dangerous. ‘I think we ought to be getting along,’ said Lackjaw nervously. A party of star people had turned into the street behind them. ‘I think I would like to kill someone,’ said Cohen, still smiling. ‘The star directs that the Disc must be cleansed,’ said the man, backing away. ‘Stars can’t talk,’ said Cohen, drawing his sword. ‘If you kill me a thousand will take my place,’ said the man, who was now backed against the wall. ‘Yes,’ said Cohen, in a reasonable tone of voice, ‘but that isn’t the point, is it? The point is, you’ll be dead.’ The man’s adam’s apple began to bob like a yoyo. He squinted down at Cohen’s sword. ‘There is that, yes,’ he conceded. ‘Tell you what – how bout if we put the fire out?’ ‘Good idea,’ said Cohen. Lackjaw tugged at his belt. The other star people were running towards them. There were a lot of them, many of them were armed, and it began to look as though things would become a little more serious. Cohen waved his sword at them defiantly, and turned and ran. Even Lackjaw had difficulty in keeping up. ‘Funny,’ he gasped, as they plunged down another alley, ‘I thought – for a minute – you’d want to stand – and fight them.’ ‘Blow that – for a – lark.’ As they came out into the light at the other end of the alley Cohen flung himself against the wall, drew his sword, stood with his head on one side as he judged the approaching footsteps, and then brought the blade around in a dead flat sweep at stomach height. There was an unpleasant noise and several screams, but by then Cohen was well away up the street, moving in the unusual shambling run that spared his bunions. With Lackjaw pounding along grimly beside him he turned off into an inn painted with red stars, jumped onto a table with only a faint whimper of pain, ran along it – while, with almost perfect choreography, Lackjaw ran straight underneath without ducking – jumped down at the other end, kicked his way through the kitchens, and came out into another alley. They scurried around a few more turnings and piled into a doorway. Cohen clung to the wall and wheezed until the little blue and purple lights went away. ‘Well,’ he panted, ‘what did you get?’ ‘Um, the cruet,’ said Lackjaw. ‘Just that?’ ‘Well, I had to go under the table, didn’t I? You didn’t do so well yourself.’ Cohen looked disdainfully at the small melon he had managed to skewer in his flight. ‘This must be pretty tough here,’ he said, biting through 159 the rind. ‘Want some salt on it?’ said the dwarf. Cohen said nothing. He just stood holding the melon, with his mouth open. Lackjaw looked around. The cul de sac they were in was empty, except for an old box someone had left against a wall. Cohen was staring at it. He handed the melon to the dwarf without looking at him and walked out into the sunlight. Lackjaw watched him creep stealthily around the box, or as stealthily as is possible with joints that creaked like a ship under full sail, and prod it once or twice with his sword, but very gingerly, as if he half-expected it to explode. ‘It’s just a box,’ the dwarf called out. ‘What’s so special about a box?’ Cohen said nothing. He squatted down painfully and peered closely at the lock on the lid. ‘What’s in it?’ said Lackjaw. ‘You wouldn’t want to know,’ said Cohen. ‘Help me up, will you?’ ‘Yes, but this box —‘ ‘This box,’ said Cohen, ‘this box is—‘he waved his arms vaguely. ‘Oblong?’ ‘Eldritch,’ said Cohen mysteriously. ‘Eldritch?’ ‘Yup.’ ‘Oh,’ said the dwarf. They stood looking at the box for a moment. ‘Cohen?’ ‘Yes?’ ‘What does eldritch mean?’ ‘Well, eldritch is—‘ Cohen paused and looked down irritably. ‘Give it a kick and you’ll see.’ Lockjaw’s steel-capped dwarfboot whammed into the side of the box. Cohen flinched. Nothing else happened. ‘I see,’ said the dwarf. ‘Eldritch means wooden?’ ‘No,’ said Cohen. ‘It – it oughtn’t to have done that.’ ‘I see,’ said Lackjaw, who didn’t, and was beginning to wish Cohen hadn’t gone out into all this hot sunlight. ‘It ought to have run away, you think?’ ‘Yes. Or bitten your leg off.’ ‘Ah,’ said the dwarf. He took Cohen gently by the arm. ‘It’s nice and shady over here,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you just have a little —‘ Cohen shook him off. ‘It’s watching that wall,’ he said. ‘Look, that’s why it’s not taking any notice of us. It’s staring at the wall.’ ‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Lackjaw soothingly. ‘Of course it’s watching that wall with its little eyes —‘ ‘Don’t be an idiot, it hasn’t got any eyes,’ snapped Cohen. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ said Lackjaw hurriedly. ‘It’s watching the wall without eyes, sorry.’ ‘I think it’s worried about something,’ said Cohen. ‘Well, it would be, wouldn’t it,’ said Lackjaw. ‘I expect it just wants us to go off somewhere and leave it alone.’ ‘I think it’s very puzzled,’ Cohen added. ‘Yes, it certainly looks puzzled,’ said the dwarf. Cohen glared at him. ‘How can you tell?’ he snapped. It struck Lackjaw that the roles were unfairly reversing. He looked from Cohen to the box, his mouth opening and shutting. ‘How can you tell?’ he said. But Cohen wasn’t listening anyway. He sat down in front of the box, assuming that the bit with the keyhole was the front, and watched it intently. Lackjaw backed away. Funny, said his mind, but the damn thing is looking at me. ‘All right,’ said Cohen, ‘I know you and me don’t see eye to eye, but we’re all trying to find someone we care for, okay?’ ‘I’m—‘ said Lackjaw, and realised that Cohen was talking to the box. ‘So tell me where they’ve gone.’ As Lackjaw looked on in horror the Luggage extended 161 its little legs, braced itself, and ran full tilt at the nearest wall. Clay bricks and dusty mortar exploded around it. Cohen peered through the hole. There was a small grubby storeroom on the other side. The Luggage stood in the middle of the floor, radiating extreme bafflement. ‘Shop!’ said Twoflower. ‘Anyone here?’ said Bethan. ‘Urrgh,’ said Rincewind. ‘I think we ought to sit him down somewhere and get him a glass of water,’ said Twoflower. ‘If there’s one here.’ ‘There’s everything else,’ said Bethan. The room was full of shelves, and the shelves were full of everything. Things that couldn’t be accommodated on them hung in bunches from the dark and shadowy ceiling; boxes and sacks of everything spilled onto the floor. There was no sound from outside. Bethan looked around and found out why. ‘I’ve never seen so much stuff,’ said Twoflower. ‘There’s one thing it’s out of stock of,’ said Bethan, firmly.. ‘How can you tell?’ ‘You just have to look. It’s fresh out of exits.’ Twoflower turned around. Where the door and window had been there were shelves stacked with boxes; they looked as, though they had been there for a long time. Twoflower sat Rincewind down on a rickety chair by the counter and poked doubtfully at the shelves. There were boxes of nails, and hairbrushes. There were bars of soap, faded with age. There was a stack of jars containing deliquescent bath salts, to which someone had fixed a rather sad and jaunty little notice announcing, in the face of all the evidence, that one would make an Ideal Gift. There was also quite a lot of dust. Bethan peered at the shelves on the other wall, and laughed. ‘Would you look at this!’ she said. Twoflower looked. She was holding a – well, it was a little mountain chalet, but with seashells stuck all over it, and then the perpetrator had written ‘A Special Souvenir’ in pokerwork on the roof (which, of course, opened so that cigarettes could be kept in it, and played a tinny little tune). ‘Have you ever seen anything like it?’ she said. Twoflower shook his head. His mouth dropped open. ‘Are you all right?’ said Bethan. ‘I think it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,’ he said. There was a whirring noise overhead. They looked up. A big black globe had lowered itself from the darkness of the ceiling. Little red lights flashed on and off on it, and as they stared it spun around and looked at them with a big glass eye. It was menacing, that eye. It seemed to suggest very emphatically that it was watching something distasteful. ‘Hallo?’ said Twoflower. A head appeared over the edge of the counter. It looked angry. ‘I hope you were intending to pay for that,’ it said nastily. Its expression suggested that it expected Rincewind to say yes, and that it wouldn’t believe him. ‘This?’ said Bethan. ‘I wouldn’t buy this if you threw in a hatful of rubies and —‘ ‘I’ll buy it. How much?’ said Twoflower urgently, reaching into his pockets. His face fell. ‘Actually, I haven’t got any money,’ he said. ‘It’s in my Luggage, but I —‘ There was a snort. The head disappeared from behind the counter, and reappeared from behind a display of toothbrushes. It belonged to a very small man almost hidden behind a green apron. He seemed very upset. ‘No money?’ he said. ‘You come into my shop —‘ ‘We didn’t mean to,’ said Twoflower quickly. ‘We didn’t notice it was there.’ ‘It wasn’t,’ said Bethan firmly. ‘It’s magical, isn’t it?’ The small shopkeeper hesitated. ‘Yes,’ he reluctantly agreed. ‘A bit.’ ‘A bit?’ said Bethan. ‘A bit magical?’ ‘Quite a bit, then,’ he conceded, backing away, and, ‘All right,’ he agreed, as Bethan continued to glare at him. ‘It’s magical. I can’t help it. The bloody door hasn’t been and gone again, has it?’ ‘Yes, and we’re not happy about that thing in the ceiling.’ He looked up, and frowned. Then he disappeared through a little beaded doorway half-hidden among the merchandise. There was a lot of clanking and whirring, and the black globe disappeared into the shadows. It was replaced by, in succession, a bunch of herbs, a mobile advertising something Twoflower had never heard of but which was apparently a bedtime drink, a suit of armour and a stuffed crocodile with a lifelike expression of extreme pain and surprise. The shopkeeper reappeared. ‘Better?’ he demanded. ‘It’s an improvement,’ said Twoflower, doubtfully. ‘I liked the herbs best.’ At this point Rincewind groaned. He was about to wake up. There have been three general theories put forward to explain the phenomenon of the wandering shops or, as they are generically known, tabernae vagantes. The first postulates that many thousands of years ago there evolved somewhere in the multiverse a race whose single talent was to buy cheap and sell dear. Soon they controlled a vast galactic empire or, as they put it, Emporium, and the more advanced members of the species found a way to equip their very shops with unique propulsion units that could break the dark walls of space itself and open up vast new markets. And long after the orlds of the Emporium perished in the heat death of their particular universe, after one last defiant fire sale, the wandering starshops still ply their trade, eating their way through the pages of spacetime like a worm through a three-volume novel. The second is that they are the creation of a sympathetic Fate, charged with the role of supplying exactly the right thing at the right time. The third is that they are simply a very clever way of getting around the various Sunday Closing acts. All these theories, diverse as they are, have two things in common. They explain the observed facts, and they are completely and utterly wrong. Rincewind opened his eyes and lay for a moment looking up at the stuffed reptile. It was not the best thing to see when awakening from troubled dreams . . . Magic! So that’s what it felt like! No wonder wizards didn’t have much truck with sex! Rincewind knew what orgasms were, of course, he’d had a few in his time, sometimes even in company, but nothing in his experience even approximated to that tight, hot moment when every nerve in his body streamed with blue-white fire and raw magic had blazed forth from his fingers. It filled you and lifted you and you surfed down the rising, curling wave of elemental force. No wonder wizards fought for power . . . And so on. The Spell in his head had been doing it, though, not Rincewind. He was really beginning to hate that Spell. He was sure that if it hadn’t frightened away all the other spells he’d tried to learn he could have been a decent wizard in his own right. ‘ Somewhere in Rincewind’s battered soul the worm of rebellion flashed a fang. Right, he thought. You’re going back into the Octavo, first chance I get. He sat up. ‘Where the hell is this?’ he said, grabbing his head to stop it exploding. ‘A shop,’ said Twoflower mournfully. ‘I hope it sells knives because I think I’d like to cut my head off,’ said Rincewind. Something about the expression of the two opposite him sobered him up. ‘That was a joke,’ he said. ‘Mainly a joke, anyway. Why are we in this shop?’ ‘We can’t get out,’ said Bethan. ‘The door’s disappeared,’ added Twoflower helpfully. Rincewind stood up, a little shakily. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘One of those shops?’ ‘All right,’ said the shopkeeper testily. ‘It’s magical, yes, it moves around, yes, no, I’m not telling you why —‘ ‘Can I have a drink of water, please?’ said Rincewind. The shopkeeper looked affronted. ‘First no money, then they want a glass of water,’ he snapped. ‘That’s just about —‘ Bethan snorted and strode across to the little man, who tried to back away. He was too late. She picked him up by his apron straps and glared at him eye to eye. Torn though her dress was, disarrayed though her hair was, she became for a moment the symbol of every woman who has caught a man with his thumb on the scales of life. ‘Time is money,’ she hissed. ‘I’ll give you thirty seconds to get him a glass of water. I think that’s a bargain, don’t you?’ ‘I say,’ Twoflower whispered. ‘She’s a real terror when she’s roused, isn’t she?’ ‘Yes,’ said Rincewind’, without enthusiasm. ‘All right, all right,’ said the shopkeeper, visibly cowed. ‘And then you can let us out,’ Bethan added. ‘That’s fine by me, I wasn’t open for business anyway, I just stopped for a few seconds to get my bearings and you barged in!’ He grumbled off through the bead curtains and returned ith a cup of water. ‘I washed it out special,’ he said, avoiding Bethan’s gaze. Rincewind looked at the liquid in the cup. It had probably been clean before it was poured in, now drinking it would be genocide for thousands of innocent germs. He put it down carefully. ‘Now I’m going to have a good wash!’ stated Bethan, and stalked off through the curtain. The shopkeeper waved a hand vaguely and looked appealingly at Rincewind and Twoflower. ‘She’s not bad,’ said Twoflower. ‘She’s going to marry a friend of ours.’ ‘Does he know?’ ‘Things not so good in the starshop business?’ said Rincewind, as sympathetically as he could manage. The little man shuddered. ‘You wouldn’t believe it,’ he said. ‘I mean, you learn not to expect much, you make a sale here and there, it’s a living, you know what I mean? But these people you’ve got these days, the ones with these star things painted on their faces, well, I hardly have time to open the store and they’re threatening to burn it down. Too magical, they say. So I say, of course magical, what else?’ ‘Are there a lot of them about, then?’ said Rincewind. ‘All over the Disc, friend. Don’t ask me why.’ ‘They believe a star is going to crash into the Disc,’ said Rincewind. ‘Is it?’ ‘Lots of people think so.’ That’s a shame. I’ve done good business here. Too magical, they say! What’s wrong with magic, that’s what I’d like to know?’ ‘What will you do?’ said Twoflower. ‘Oh, go to some other universe, there’s plenty around,’ said the shopkeeper airily. ‘Thanks for telling me about the star, though. Can I drop you off somewhere?’ The Spell gave Rincewind’s mind a kick. “Er, no,’ he said, ‘I think perhaps we’d better stay. To ee it through, you know.’ ‘You’re not worried about this star thing, then?’ ‘The star is life, not death,’ said Riricewind. ‘How’s that?’ ‘How’s what?’ ‘You did it again!’ said Twoflower, pointing an accusing finger. ‘You say things and then don’t know you’ve said them!’ ‘I just said we’d better stay,’ said Rincewind. ‘You said the star was life, not death,’ said Twoflower. ‘Your voice went all crackly and far away. Didn’t it?’ He turned to the shopkeeper for confirmation. ‘That’s true,’ said the little man. ‘I thought his eyes crossed a bit, too.’ ‘It’s the Spell, then,’ said Rincewind. ‘It’s trying to take me over. It knows what’s going to happen, and I think it wants to go to Ankh-Morpork. I want to go too,’ he added defiantly. ‘Can you get us there?’ ‘Is that the big city on the Ankh? Sprawling place, smells of cesspits?’ ‘It has an ancient and honourable history,’ said Rincewind, his voice stiff with injured civic pride. ‘That’s not how you described it to me,’ said Twoflower. ‘You told me it was the only city that actually started out decadent.’ Rincewind looked embarrassed. Yes, but, well, it’s my home, don’t you see?’ ‘No,’ said the shopkeeper, ‘not really. I always say home is where you hang your hat.’ ‘Um, no,’ said Twoflower, always anxious to enlighten. ‘Where you hang your hat is a hatstand. A home is —‘ ‘I’ll just go and see about setting you on your way,’ said the shopkeeper hurriedly, as Bethan came in. He scooted past her. Twoflower followed him. On the other side of the curtain was a room with a small bed, a rather grubby stove, and a three-legged table. Then the shopkeeper did something to the table, here was a noise like a cork coming reluctantly out of a bottle, and the room contained a wall-to-wall universe. ‘Don’t be frightened,’ said the shopkeeper, as stars streamed past. ‘I’m not frightened,’ said Twoflower, his eyes sparkling. ‘Oh,’ said the shopkeeper, slightly annoyed. ‘Anyway, it’s just imagery generated by the shop, it’s not real.’ ‘And you can go anywhere?’ ‘Oh no,’ said the shopkeeper, deeply shocked. ‘There’s all kinds of fail-safes built in, after all, there’d be no point in going somewhere with insufficient per capita disposable income. And there’s got to be a suitable wall, of course. Ah, here we are, this is your universe. Very bijou, I always think. A sort of universette . . .’ Here is the blackness of space, the myriad stars gleaming like diamond dust or, as some people would say, like great balls of exploding hydrogen a very long way off. But then, some people would say anything. A shadow starts to blot out the distant glitter, and it is blacker than space itself. From here it also looks a great deal bigger, because space is not really big, it is simply somewhere to be big in. Planets are big, but planets are meant to be big and there is nothing clever about being the right size. But this shape blotting out the sky like the footfall of God isn’t a planet. It is a turtle, ten thousand miles long from its crater-pocked head to its armoured tail. And Great A’Tuin is huge. Great flippers rise and fall ponderously, warping space into strange shapes. The Discworld slides across the sky like a royal barge. But even Great A’Tuin is struggling now as it leaves the free depths of space and must fight the tormenting pressures of the solar shallows. Magic is weaker here, on the littoral of light. Many more days of his and the Discworld will be stripped away by the pressures of reality. Great A’Tuin knows this, but Great A’Tuin can recall doing all this before, many thousands of years ago. The astrochelonian’s eyes, glowing red in the light of the dwarf star, are not focussed on it but at a little patch of space nearby . . . ‘Yes, but where are we?’ said Twoflower. The shopkeeper, hunched over his table, just shrugged. ‘I don’t think we’re anywhere,’ he said. ‘We’re in a cotangent incongruity, I believe. I could be wrong. The shop generally knows what it’s doing.’ ‘You mean you don’t?’ ‘I pick a bit up, here and there.’ The shopkeeper blew his nose. ‘Sometimes I land on a world where they understand these things.’ He turned a pair of small, sad eyes on Twoflower. ‘You’ve got a kind face, sir. I don’t mind telling you.’ ‘Telling me what?’ ‘It’s no life, you know, minding the Shop. Never settling down, always on the move, never closing.’ Why don’t you stop, then?’ ‘Ah, that’s it, you see, sir—I can’t. I’m under a curse, I am. A terrible thing.’ He blew his nose again. ‘Cursed to run a shop?’ ‘Forever, sir, forever. And never closing! For hundreds of years! There was this sorcerer, you see. I did a terrible thing.’ ‘In a shop?’ said Twoflower. ‘Oh, yes. I can’t remember what it was he wanted, but when he asked for it I – I gave one of those sucking-in noises, you know, like whistling only backwards?’ He demonstrated. Twoflower looked sombre, but he was at heart a kind man and always ready to forgive. ‘I see,’ he said slowly. ‘Even so —‘ ‘That’s not all!’ ‘Oh.’ ‘I told him there was no demand for it!’ ‘After making the sucking noise?’ ‘Yes. I probably grinned, too.’ ‘Oh, dear. You didn’t call him squire, did you?’ ‘I – I may have done.’ ‘Um.’ ‘There’s more.’ ‘Surely not?’ ‘Yes, I said I could order it and he could come back next day.’ ‘That doesn’t sound too bad,’ said Twoflower, who alone of all the people in the multiverse allowed shops to order things for him and didn’t object at all to paying quite large sums of money to reimburse the shopkeeper for the inconvenience of having a bit of stock in his store often for several hours. ‘It was early closing day,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘Oh.’ ‘Yes, and I heard him rattling the doorhandle, I had this sign on the door, you know, it said something like “Closed even for the sale of Necromancer cigarettes,” anyway, I heard him banging and I laughed.’ ‘You laughed?’ ‘Yes. Like this. Hnufhnufhnufblort.’ ‘Probably not a wise thing to do,’ said Twoflower, shaking his head. ‘I know, I know. My father always said, he said, Do not peddle in the affairs of wizards . . . Anyway, I heard him shouting something about never closing again, and a lot of words I couldn’t understand, and then the shop – the shop – the shop came alive.’ ‘And you’ve wandered like this ever since?’ ‘Yes. I suppose one day I might find the sorcerer and perhaps the thing he wanted will be in stock. Until then I must go from place to place —‘ ‘That was a terrible thing to do,’ said Twoflower. The shopkeeper wiped his nose on his apron. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Even so, he shouldn’t have cursed you quite so badly,’ Twoflower added. ‘Oh. Yes, well.’ The shopkeeper straightened his apron and made a brave little attempt to pull himself together. ‘Anyway, this isn’t getting you to Ankh-Morpork, is it?’ ‘Funny thing is,’ said Twoflower, ‘that I bought my Luggage in a shop like this, once. Another shop, I mean.’ ‘Oh yes, there’s several of us,’ said the shopkeeper, turning back to the table, ‘that sorcerer was a very impatient man, I understand.’ ‘Endlessly roaming through the universe,’ mused Twoflower. ‘That’s right. Mind you, there is a saving on the rates.’ ‘Rates?’ ‘Yes, they’re—‘ the shopkeeper paused, and wrinkled his forehead. ‘I can’t quite remember, it was such a long time ago. Rates, rates —‘ ‘Very large mice?’ ‘That’s probably it.’ ‘Hold on – it’s thinking about something,’ said Cohen. Lackjaw looked up wearily. It had been quite nice, sitting here in the shade. He had just worked out that in trying to escape from a city of crazed madmen he had appeared to have allowed one mad man to give him his full attention. He wondered whether he would live to regret this. He earnestly hoped so. ‘Oh yes, it’s definitely thinking,’ he said bitterly. ‘Anyone can see that.’ ‘I think it’s found them.’ ‘Oh, good.’ ‘Hold onto it.’ ‘Are you mad?’ said Lackjaw. ‘I know this thing, trust me. Anyway, would you rather be left with all these star people? They might be interested in having a talk with you.’ Cohen sidled over to the Luggage, and then flung himself astride it. It took no notice. ‘Hurry up,’ he said. ‘I think it’s going to go.’ Lackjaw shrugged, and climbed on gingerly behind Cohen. ‘Oh?’ he said, ‘and how does it g —‘ Ankh-Morpork! Pearl of cities! This is not a completely accurate description, of course – it was not round and shiny – but even its worst enemies would agree that if you had to liken Ankh-Morpork to anything, then it might as well be a piece of rubbish covered with the diseased secretions of a dying mollusc. There have been bigger cities. There have been richer cities. There have certainly been prettier cities. But no city in the multiverse could rival Ankh-Morpork for its smell. The Ancient Ones, who know everything about all the universes and have smelt the smells of Calcutta and !Xrc —! and dauntocum Marsport, have agreed that even these fine examples of nasal poetry are mere limericks when set against the glory of the Ankh-Morpork smell. You can talk about ramps. You can talk about garlic. You can talk about France. Go on. But if you haven’t smelled Ankh-Morpork on a hot day you haven’t smelled anything. The citizens are proud of it. They carry chairs outside to enjoy it on a really good day. They puff out their cheeks and slap their chests and comment cheerfully on its little distinctive nuances. They have even put up a statue to it, to commemorate the time when the troops of a rival state tried to invade by stealth one dark night and managed to get to the top of the walls before, to their horror, their nose plugs gave out. Rich merchants who ave spent many years abroad sent back home for specially-stoppered and sealed bottles of the stuff, which brings tears to their eyes. It has that kind of effect. There is only really one way to describe the effect the smell of Ankh-Morpork has on the visiting nose, and that is by analogy. Take a tartan. Sprinkle it with confetti. Light it with strobe lights. Now take a chameleon. Put the chameleon on the tartan. Watch it closely. See? Which explains why, when the shop finally materialised in Ankh-Morpork, Rincewind sat bolt upright and said ‘We’re here,’ Bethan went pale and Twoflower, who had no sense of smell, said, ‘Really? How can you tell?’ It had been a long afternoon. They had broken into realspace in a number of walls in a variety of cities because, according to the shopkeeper, the Disc’s magical field was playing up and upsetting everything. All the cities were empty of most of their citizens and belonged to roaming gangs of crazed left-ear people. ‘Where do they all come from?’ said Twoflower, as they fled yet another mob. ‘Inside every sane person there’s a madman struggling to get out,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘That’s what I’ve always thought. No one goes mad quicker than a totally sane person.’ ‘That doesn’t make sense,’ said Bethan, ‘or if it makes sense, I don’t like it.’ . The star was bigger than the sun. There would be no night tonight. On the opposite horizon the Disc’s own sunlet was doing its best to set normally, but the general effect of all that red light was to make the city, never particularly beautiful, look like something painted by a fanatical artist after a bad time on the shoe polish. But it was home. Rincewind peered up and down the mpty street and felt almost happy. At the back of his mind the Spell was kicking up a ruckus, but he ignored it. Maybe it was true that magic was getting weaker as the star got nearer, or perhaps he’d had the Spell in his head for so long he had built up some kind of psychic immunity, but he found he could resist it. ‘We’re in the docks,’ he declared. ‘Just smell that sea air!’ ‘Oh,’ said Bethan, leaning against the wall, ‘yes.’ ‘That’s ozone, that is,’ said Rincewind. That’s air with character, is that.’ He breathed deeply. Twoflower turned to the shopkeeper. ‘Well, I hope you find your sorcerer,’ he said. ‘Sorry we didn’t buy anything, but all my money’s in my Luggage, you see.’ The shopkeeper pushed something into his hand. ‘A little gift,’ he said. ‘You’ll need it.’ He darted back into his shop, the bell jangled, the sign saying Call Again Tomorrow For Spoonfetcher’s Leeches, the Little Suckers banged forlornly against the door, and the shop faded into the brickwork as though it had never been. Twoflower reached out gingerly and touched the wall, not quite believing it. ‘What’s in the bag?’ said Rincewind. It was a thick brown paper bag, with string handles. ‘If it sprouts legs I don’t want to know about it,’ said Bethan. Twoflower peered inside, and pulled out the contents. Is that all?’ said Rincewind. ‘A little house with shells on?’ ‘It’s very useful,’ said Twoflower defensively. ‘You can keep cigarettes in it.’ ‘And they’re what you really need, are they?’ said Rincewind. ‘I’d plump for a bottle of really strong sun-tan oil,’ said Bethan. ‘Come on,’ said Rincewind, and set off down the street. The others followed. It occurred to Twoflower that some words of comfort were called for, a little tactful small talk to take Bethan out f herself, as he would put it, and generally cheer her up. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. There’s just a chance that Cohen might still be alive.’ ‘Oh, I expect he’s alive all right,’ she said, stamping along the cobbles as if she nursed a personal grievance against each one of them. ‘You don’t live to be eighty-seven in his job if you go around dying all the time. But he’s not here.’ ‘Nor is my Luggage,’ said Twoflower. ‘Of course, that’s not the same thing.’ ‘Do you think the star is going to hit the Disc?’ ‘No,’ said Twoflower confidently. ‘Why not?’ ‘Because Rincewind doesn’t think so.’ She looked at him in amazement. ‘You see,’ the tourist went on, ‘you know that thing you do with seaweed?’ Bethan, brought up on the Vortex Plains, had only heard of the sea in stories, and had decided she didn’t like it. She looked blank. ‘Eat it?’ ‘No, what you do is, you hang it up outside your door, and it tells you if it’s going to rain.’ Another thing Bethan had learned was that there was no real point in trying to understand anything Twoflower said, and that all anyone could do was run alongside the conversation and hope to jump on as it turned a corner. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘Rincewind is like that, you see.’ ‘Like seaweed.’ ‘Yes. If there was anything at all to be frightened about, he’d be frightened. But he’s not. The star is just about the only thing I’ve ever seen him not frightened of. If he’s not worried, then take it from me, there’s nothing to worry about.’ ‘It’s not going to rain?’ said Bethan. ‘Well, no. Metaphorically speaking.’ ‘Oh.’ Bethan decided not to ask what ‘metaphorically’ meant, in case it was something to do with seaweed. Rincewind turned around. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Not far now.’ ‘Where to?’ said Twoflower. ‘Unseen University, of course.’ ‘Is that wise?’ ‘Probably not, but I’m still going—‘ Rincewind paused, his face a mask of pain. He put his hand to his ears and groaned. ‘Spell giving you trouble?’ ‘Yargh.’ ‘Try humming.’ Rincewind grimaced. ‘I’m going to get rid of this thing,’ he said thickly. ‘It’s going back into the book where it belongs. I want my head back!’ ‘But then—‘ Twoflower began, and stopped. They could all hear it – a distant chanting and the stamping of many feet. ‘Do you think it’s star people?’ said Bethan. It was. The lead marchers came around a corner a hundred yards away, behind a ragged white banner with an eight-pointed star on it. ‘Not just star people,’ said Twoflower. ‘All kinds of people!’ The crowd swept them up in its passage. One moment they were standing in the deserted street, the next they were perforce moving with a tide of humanity that bore them onwards through the city. Torchlight flickered easily on the damp tunnels far under the University as the heads of the eight Orders of wizardry filed onwards. ‘At least it’s cool down here,’ said one. ‘We shouldn’t be down here.’ Trymon, who was leading the party, said nothing. But he was thinking very hard. He was thinking about the ottle of oil in his belt, and the eight keys the wizards carried – eight keys that would fit the eight locks that chained the Octavo to its lectern. He was thinking that old wizards who sense that magic is draining away are preoccupied with their own problems and are perhaps less alert than they should be. He was thinking that within a few minutes the Octavo, the greatest concentration of magic on the Disc, would be under his hands. Despite the coolness of the tunnel he began to sweat. They came to a lead-lined door set in the sheer stone. Trymon took a heavy key – a good, honest iron key, not like the twisted and disconcerting keys that would unlock the Octavo – gave the lock a squirt of oil, inserted the key, turned it. The lock squeaked open protestingly. ‘Are we of one resolve?’ said Trymon. There was a series of vaguely affirmative grunts. He pushed at the door. A warm gale of thick and somehow oily air rolled over them. The air was filled with a high-pitched and unpleasant chittering. Tiny sparks of octarine fire flared off every nose, fingernail and beard. The wizards, their heads bowed against the storm of randomised magic that blew out of the room, pushed forward. Half-formed shapes giggled and fluttered around them as the nightmare inhabitants of the Dungeon Dimensions constantly probed (with things that passed for fingers only because they were at the ends of their arms) for an unguarded entry into the circle of firelight that passed for the universe of reason and order. Even at this bad time for all things magical, even in a room designed to damp down all magical vibrations, the Octavo was still crackling with power. There was no real need for the torches. The Octavo filled the room with a dull, sullen light, which wasn’t strictly light at all but the opposite of light; darkness isn’t the opposite of light, it is simply its absence, and what was radiating from the book was the light that lies on the far side of darkness, the light fantastic. It was a rather disappointing purple colour. As has been noted before, the Octavo was chained to a lectern carved into the shape of something that looked vaguely avian, slightly reptilian and horribly alive. Two glittering eyes regarded the wizards with hooded hatred. ‘I saw it move,’ said one of them. ‘We’re safe so long as we don’t touch the book,’ said Trymon. He pulled a scroll out of his belt and unrolled it. ‘Bring that torch here,’ he said, ‘and put that cigarette out!’ He waited for the explosion of infuriated pride. But none came. Instead, the offending mage removed the dogend from his lips with trembling fingers and ground it into the floor. Trymon exulted. So, he thought, they do what I say. Just for now, maybe – but just for now is enough. He peered at the crabby writing of a wizard long dead. ‘Right,’ he said, let’s see: “To Appease Yt, The Thynge That Ys The Guardian . . .” ‘ The crowd surged over one of the bridges that linked Morpork with Ankh. Below it the river, turgid at the best of times, was a mere trickle which steamed. The bridge shook under their feet rather more than it should. Strange ripples ran across the muddy remains of the river. A few tiles slid off the roof of a nearby house. ‘What was that?’ said Twoflower. Bethan looked behind them, and screamed. The star was rising. As the Disc’s own sun scurried for safety below the horizon the great bloated ball of the star climbed slowly into the sky until the whole of it was several degrees above the edge of the world. They pulled Rincewind into the safety of a doorway. The crowd hardly noticed them, but ran on, terrified as lemmings. ‘The star’s got spots on,’ said Twoflower. ‘No,’ said Rincewind. ‘They’re . . . things. Things going around the star. Like the sun goes around the Disc. But they’re close in, because, because . . .’ he paused. ‘I nearly know!’ ‘Know what?’ ‘I’ve got to get rid of this Spell!’ ‘Which way is the University?’ said Bethan. ‘This way!’ said Rincewind, pointing along the street. ‘It must be very popular. That’s where everyone’s going.’ ‘I wonder why?’ said Twoflower. ‘Somehow,’ said Rincewind, ‘I don’t think it’s to enroll for evening classes.’ In fact Unseen University was under siege, or at least those parts of it that extruded into the usual, everyday dimensions were under siege. The crowds outside its gates were, generally, making one of two demands. They were demanding that either a) the wizards should stop messing about and get rid of the star or, and this was the demand favoured by the star people, that b) they should cease all magic and commit suicide in good order, thus ridding the Disc of the curse of magic and warding off the terrible threat in the sky. The wizards on the other side of the walls had no idea how to do a) and no intention of doing b) and many had in fact plumped for c), which largely consisted of nipping out of hidden side doors and having it away on their toes as far as possible, if not faster. What reliable magic still remained in the University was being channelled into keeping the great gates secure. The wizards were learning that while it was all very fine and impressive to have a set of gates that were locked by magic, it ought to have occurred to the builders to include some sort of emergency back-up device such as, for example, a pair of ordinary, unimpressive stout iron bolts. In the square outside the gates several large bonfires had been lit, for effect as much as anything else, because the heat from the star was scorching. ‘But you can still see the stars,’ said Twoflower, ‘the ther stars, I mean. The little ones. In a black sky.’ Rincewind ignored him. He was looking at the gates. A group of star people and citizens were trying to batter them down. ‘It’s hopeless,’ said Bethan. ‘We’ll never get in. Where are you going?’ ‘For a walk,’ said Rincewind. He was setting off determinedly down a side street. There were one or two freelance rioters here, mostly engaged in wrecking shops. Rincewind took no notice, but followed the wall until it ran parallel to a dark alley that had the usual unfortunate smell of all alleys, everywhere. Then he started looking very closely at the stonework. The wall here was twenty feet high, and topped with cruel metal spikes. ‘I need a knife,’ he said. ‘You’re going to cut your way through?’ said Bethan. ‘Just find me a knife,’ said Rincewind. He started to tap stones. Twoflower and Bethan looked at each other, and shrugged. A few minutes later they returned with a selection of knives, and Twoflower had even managed to find a sword. ‘We just helped ourselves,’ said Bethan. ‘But we left some money,’ said Twoflower. ‘I mean, we would have left some money, if we’d had any —‘ ‘So he insisted on writing a note,’ said Bethan wearily. Twoflower drew himself up to his full height, which was hardly worth it. ‘I see no reason—‘ he began, stiffly. ‘Yes, yes,’ said Bethan, sitting down glumly. ‘I know you don’t. Rincewind, all the shops have been smashed open, there was a whole bunch of people across the street helping themselves to musical instruments, can you believe that?’ ‘Yeah,’ said Rincewind, picking up a knife and testing its blade thoughtfully. ‘Luters, I expect.’ He thrust the blade into the wall, twisted it, and stepped ack as a heavy stone fell out. He looked up, counting under his breath, and levered another stone from its socket. ‘How did you do that?’ said Twoflower. ‘Just give me a leg up, will you?’ said Rincewind. A moment later, his feet wedged into the holes he had created, he was making further steps halfway up the wall. ‘It’s been like this for centuries,’ his voice floated down. ‘Some of the stones haven’t got any mOrtar. Secret entrance, see? Watch out below.’ Another stone cracked into the cobbles. ‘Students made it long ago,’ said Rincewind. ‘Handy way in and out after lights out.’ ‘Ah,’ said Twoflower, ‘I understand. Over the wall and out to brightly-lit tavernas to drink and sing and recite poetry, yes?’ ‘Nearly right except for the singing and the poetry, yes,’ said Rincewind. ‘A couple of these spikes should be loose—‘ There was a clang. ‘There’s not much of a drop this side,’ came his voice after a few seconds. ‘Come on, then. If you’re coming.’ And so it was that Rincewind, Twoflower and Bethan entered Unseen University. Elsewhere on the campus— The eight wizards inserted their keys and, with many a worried glance at one another, turned them. There was a faint little snicking sound as the lock slid open. The Octavo was unchained. A faint octarine light played across its bindings. Trymon reached out and picked it up, and none of the others objected. His arm tingled. He turned towards the door. ‘Now to the Great Hall, brothers,’ he said, ‘if I may lead the way —‘ And there were no objections. He reached the door with the book tucked under his rm. It felt hot, and somehow prickly. At every step he expected a cry, a protest, and none came. He had to use every ounce of control to stop himself from laughing. It was easier than he could have imagined. The others were halfway across the claustrophobic dungeon by the time he was through the door, and perhaps they had noticed something in the set of his shoulders, but it was too late because he had crossed the threshold, gripped the handle, slammed the door, turned the key, smiled the smile. He walked easily back along the corridor, ignoring the enraged screams of the wizards who had just discovered how impossible it is to pass spells in a room built to be impervious to magic. The Octavo squirmed, but Trymon held it tightly. Now he ran, putting out of his mind the horrible sensations under his arm as the book shape-changed into things hairy, skeletal and spiky. His hand went numb. The faint chittering noises he had been hearing grew in volume, and there were other sounds behind them – leering sounds, beckoning sounds, sounds made by the voices of unimaginable horrors that Trymon found it all too easy to imagine. As he ran across the Great Hall and up the main staircase the shadows began to move and reform and close in around him, and he also became aware that something was following, something with skittery legs moving obscenely fast. Ice formed on the walls. Doorways lunged at him as he barrelled past. Underfoot the stairs began to feel just like a tongue . . . Not for nothing had Trymon spent long hours in the University’s curious equivalent of a gymnasium, building up mental muscle. Don’t trust the senses, he knew, because they can be deceived. The stairs are there, somewhere – will them to be there, summon them into being as you climb and, boy, you better get good at it. Because this isn’t all imagination. Great A’Tuin slowed. With flippers the size of continents the skyturtle fought the pull of the star, and waited. There would not be long to wait . . . Rincewind sidled into the Great Hall. There were a few torches burning, and it looked as though it had been set up for some sort of magical work. But the ceremonial candlesticks had been overturned, the complex octograms chalked on the floor were scuffed as if something had danced on them, and the air was full of a smell unpleasant even by Ankh-Morpork’s broad standards. There was a hint of sulphur to it, but that underlay something worse. It smelt like the bottom of a pond. There was a distant crash, and a lot of shouting. ‘Looks like the gates have gone down,’ said Rincewind. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ said Bethan. ‘The cellars are this way,’ said Rincewind, and set off through an arch. ‘Down there!’ ‘Yes. Would you rather stay here?’ He took a torch from its bracket on the wall and started down the steps. After a few flights the walls stopped being panelled and were bare stone. Here and there heavy doors had been propped open. ‘I heard something,’ said Twoflower. Rincewind listened. There did seem to be a noise coming from the depths below. It didn’t sound frightening. It sounded like a lot of people hammering on a door and shouting ‘Oi!’ ‘It’s not those Things from the Dungeon Dimensions you were telling us about, is it?’ said Bethan. They don’t swear like that,’ said Rincewind. ‘Come on.’ They hurried along the dripping passages, following the screamed curses and deep hacking coughs that were somehow reassuring; anything that wheezed like that, the listeners decided, couldn’t possibly represent a danger. At last they came to a door set in an alcove. It looked strong enough to hold back the sea. There was a tiny grille. ‘Hey!’ shouted Rincewind. It wasn’t very useful, but he couldn’t think of anything better. There was a sudden silence. Then a voice from the other side of the door said, very slowly, Who is out there?’ Rincewind recognised that voice. It had jerked him from daydreams into terror on many a hot classroom afternoon, years before. It was Lemuel Panter, who had once made it his personal business to hammer the rudiments of scrying and summoning into young Rincewind’s head. He remembered the eyes like gimlets in a piggy face and the voice saying ‘And now Mister Rincewind will come out here and draw the relevant symbol on the board’ and the million mile walk past the waiting class as he tried desperately to remember what the voice had been droning on about five minutes before. Even now his throat was going dry with terror and randomised guilt. The Dungeon Dimensions just weren’t in it. ‘Please sir, it’s me, sir, Rincewind, sir,’he squeaked. He saw Twoflower and Bethan staring at him, and coughed, ‘Yes,’ he added, in as deep a voice as he could manage. That’s who it is. Rincewind. Right.’ There was a susurration of whispers on the other side of the door. ‘Rincewind?’ ‘Prince who?’ ‘I remember a boy who wasn’t any—‘ ‘The spell, remember?’ ‘Rincewind?’ There was a pause. Then the voice said, ‘I suppose the key isn’t in the lock, is it?’ ‘No,’ said Rincewind. ‘What did he say?’ ‘He said no.’ ‘Typical of the boy.’ ‘Um, who is in there?’ said Rincewind. ‘The Masters of Wizardry,’ said the voice, haughtily. ‘Why?’ There was another pause, and then a conference of embarrassed whispers. ‘We, uh, got locked in,’ said the voice, reluctantly. ‘What, with the Octavo?’ Whisper, whisper. ‘The Octavo, in fact, isn’t in here, in fact,’ said the voice slowly. ‘Oh. But you are?’ said Rincewind, as politely as possible while grinning like a necrophiliac in a morgue. ‘That would appear to be the case.’ ‘Is there anything we can get you?’ said Twoflower anxiously. ‘You could try getting us out.’ ‘Could we pick the lock?’ said Bethan. ‘No use,’ said Rincewind. ‘Totally thief-proof.’ ‘I expect Cohen would have been able to,’ said Bethan loyally. ‘Wherever he’s got to.’ ‘The Luggage would soon smash it down,’ agreed Twoflower. ‘Well, that’s it then,’ said Bethan. ‘Let’s get out into the fresh air. Fresher air, anyway.’ She turned to walk away. ‘Hang on, hang on,’ said Rincewind. That’s just typical, isn’t it? Old Rincewind won’t have any ideas, will he? Oh, no, he’s just a makeweight, he is. Kick him as you pass. Don’t rely on him, he’s —‘ ‘All right,’ said Bethan. ‘Let’s hear it, then.’ ‘— a nonentity, a failure, just a – what?’ ‘How are you going to get the door open?’ said Bethan. Rincewind looked at her with his mouth open. Then he looked at the door. It really was very solid, and the lock had a smug air. But he had got in, once, long ago. Rincewind the student had pushed at the door and it had swung open, and then a moment later the Spell had jumped into his mind and ruined his life. ‘Look,’ said a voice from behind the grille, as kindly as it could manage. ‘Just go and find us a wizard, there’s a good fellow.’ Rincewind took a deep breath. ‘Stand back,’ he rasped. ‘What?’ ‘Find something to hide behind,’ he barked, with his voice shaking only slightly. ‘You too,’ he said to Bethan and Twoflower. ‘But you can’t —‘ ‘I mean it!’ ‘He means it,’ said Twoflower. ‘That little vein on the side of his forehead, you know, when it throbs like that, well —‘ ‘Shut up!’ Rincewind raised one arm uncertainly and pointed it at the door. There was total silence. Oh gods, he thought, what happens now? In the blackness at the back of his mind the Spell shifted uneasily. Rincewind tried to get in tune or whatever with the metal of the lock. If he could sow discord amongst its atoms so that they flew apart — Nothing happened. He swallowed hard, and turned his attention to the wood. It was old and nearly fossilised, and probably wouldn’t burn even if soaked in oil and dropped into a furnace. He tried anyway, explaining to the ancient molecules that they should try to jump up and down to keep warm — In the strained silence of his own mind he glared at the Spell, which looked very sheepish. He considered the air around the door itself, how it might best be twisted into weird shapes so that the door existed in another set of dimensions entirely. The door sat there, defiantly solid. Sweating, his mind beginning the endless walk up to 187 the blackboard in front of the grinning class, he turned desperately to the lock again. It must be made of little bits of metal, not very heavy — From the grille came the faintest of sounds. It was the noise of wizards untensing themselves and shaking their heads. Someone whispered, ‘I told you—‘ There was a tiny grinding noise, and a click. Rincewind’s face was a mask. Perspiration dripped off his chin. There was another click, and the grinding of reluctant spindles. Trymon had oiled the lock, but the oil had been soaked up by the rust and dust of years, and the only way for a wizard to move something by magic, unless he can harness some external movement, is to use the leverage of his mind itself. Rincewind was trying very hard to prevent his brain being pushed out of his ears. The lock rattled. Metal rods flexed in pitted groves, gave in, pushed levers. Levers clicked, notches engaged. There was a long drawn-out grinding noise that left Rincewind on his knees. The door swung open on pained hinges. The wizards sidled out cautiously. Twoflower and Bethan helped Rincewind to his feet. He stood grey-faced and swaying. ‘Not bad,’ said one of the wizards, looking closely at the lock. ‘A little slow, perhaps.’ ‘Never mind that!’ snapped Jiglad Wert. ‘Did you three see anyone on the way down here?’ ‘No,’ said Twoflower. ‘Someone has stolen the Octavo.’ Rincewind’s head jerked up. His eyes focussed. ‘Who?’ ‘Trymon —‘ Rincewind swallowed. ‘Tall man?’ he said. ‘Fair hair, looks a bit like a ferret?’ ‘Now that you mention it —‘ ‘He was in my class,’ said Rincewind. ‘They always said he’d go a long way.’ ‘He’ll go a lot further if he opens the book,’ said one of the wizards, who was hastily rolling a cigarette in shaking fingers. ‘Why?’ said Twoflower. ‘What will happen?’ The wizards looked at one another. ‘It’s an ancient secret, handed down from mage to mage, and we can’t pass it on to knowlessmen,’ said Wert. ‘Oh, go on,’ said Twoflower. ‘Oh well, it probably doesn’t matter any more. One mind can’t hold all the spells. It’ll break down, and leave a hole.’ ‘What? In his head?’ ‘Um. No. In the fabric of the Universe,’ said Wert. ‘He might think he can control it by himself, but —‘ They felt the sound before they heard it. It started off in the stones as a slow vibration, then rose suddenly to a knife-edge whine that bypassed the eardrums and bored straight into the brain. It sounded like a human voice singing, or chanting, or screamfng, but there were deeper and more horrible harmonics. The wizards went pale. Then, as one man, they turned and ran up the steps. There were crowds outside the building. Some people were holding torches, others had stopped in the act of piling kindling around the walls. But everyone was staring up at the Tower of Art. The wizards pushed their way through the unheeding bodies, and turned to look up. The sky was full of moons. Each one was three times bigger than the Disc’s own moon, and each was in shadow except for a pink crescent where it caught the light of the star. But in front of everything the top of the Tower of Art was an incandescent fury. Shapes could be dimly glimpsed within it, but there was nothing reassuring about them. The sound had changed now to the wasplike buzzing, magnified a million times. Some of the wizards sank to their knees. ‘He’s done it,’ said Wert, shaking his head. ‘He’s opened a pathway.’ ‘Are those things demons?’ said Twoflower. ‘Oh, demons,’ said Wert. ‘Demons would be a picnic compared with what’s trying to come through up there.’ ‘They’re worse than anything we can possibly imagine,’ said Panter. ‘I can imagine some pretty bad things,’ said Rincewind. ‘These are worse.’ ‘Oh.’ ‘And what do you propose to do about it?’ said a clear voice. They turned. Bethan was glaring at them, arms folded. ‘Pardon?’ said Wert. ‘You’re wizards, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘Well, get on with it.’ ‘What, tackle that?’ said Rincewind. ‘Know anyone else?’ Wert pushed forward. ‘Madam, I don’t think you quite understand —‘ ‘The Dungeons Dimensions will empty into our Universe, right?’ said Bethan. ‘Well, yes —‘ ‘We’ll all be eaten by things with tentacles for faces, right?’ ‘Nothing so pleasant, but —‘ ‘And you’re just going to let it happen?’ ‘Listen,’ said Rincewind. ‘It’s all over, do you see? You can’t put the spells back in the book, you can’t unsay what’s been said, you can’t —‘ ‘You can try!’ Rincewind sighed, and turned to Twoflower. He wasn’t there. Rincewind’s eyes turned inevitably towards the base of the Tower of Art, and he was just in time to see the tourist’s plump figure, sword inexpertly in hand, as it disappeared into a door. Rincewind’s feet made their own decision and, from the oint of view of his head, got it entirely wrong. The other wizards watched him go. ‘Well?’ said Bethan. ‘He’s going.’ . The wizards tried to avoid one another’s eyes. Eventually Wert said, ‘We could try, I suppose. It doesn’t seem to be spreading.’ ‘But we’ve got hardly any magic to speak of,’ said one of the wizards. ‘Have you got a better idea, then?’ One by one, their ceremonial robes glittering in the weird light, the wizards turned and trudged towards the tower. The tower was hollow inside, with the stone treads of its staircase mortared spiral-fashion into the walls. Twoflower was already several turns up by the time Rincewind caught him. ‘Hold on,’ he said, as cheerfully as he could manage. ‘This sort of thing is a job for the likes of Cohen, not you. No offence.’ ‘Would he do any good?’ Rincewind looked up at the actinic light that lanced down through the distant hole at the top of the staircase. ‘No,’ he admitted. Then I’d be as good as him, wouldn’t I?’ said Twoflower, flourishing his looted sword. Rincewind hopped after him, keeping as close to the wall as possible. ‘You don’t understand!’ he shouted. There’s unimaginable horrors up there!’ ‘You always said I didn’t have any imagination.’ ‘It’s a point, yes,’ Rincewind conceded, ‘but —‘ Twoflower sat down. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I’ve been looking forward to something like this ever since I came here. I mean, this is an adventure, isn’t it? Alone against the gods, that sort of thing?’ Rincewind opened and shut his mouth for a few seconds before the right words managed to come out. ‘Can you use a sword?’ he said weakly. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never tried.’ ‘You’re mad!’ Twoflower looked at him with his head on one side. ‘You’re a fine one to talk,’ he said. ‘I’m here because I don’t know any better, but what about you?’ He pointed downwards, to where the other wizards were toiling up the stairs. ‘What about them?’ Blue light speared down the inside of the tower. There was a peal of thunder. The wizards reached them, coughing horribly and fighting for breath. ‘What’s the plan?’ said Rincewind. ‘There isn’t one,’ said Wert. ‘Right. Fine,’ said Rincewind. ‘I’ll leave you to get on with it, then.’ ‘You’ll come with us,’ said Panter. ‘But I’m not even a proper wizard. You threw me out, remember?’ ‘I can’t think of any student less able,’ said the old wizard, ‘but you’re here, and that’s the only qualification you need. Come on.’ The light flared and went out. The terrible noises died as if strangled. Silence filled the tower; one of those heavy, pressing silences. ‘It’s stopped,’ said Twoflower. Something moved, high up against the circle of red sky. It fell slowly, turning over and over and drifting from side to side. It hit the stairs a turn above them. Rincewind was first to it. It was the Octavo. But it lay on the stone as limp and lifeless as any other book, its pages fluttering in the breeze that blew up the tower. Twoflower panted up behind Rincewind, and looked down. ‘They’re blank,’ he whispered. ‘Every page is completely blank.’ ‘Then he did it,’ said Wert. ‘He’s read the spells. Successfully, too. I wouldn’t have believed it.’ ‘There was all that noise,’ said Rincewind doubtfully. ‘The light, too. Those shapes. That didn’t sound so successful to me.’ ‘Oh, you always get a certain amount of extradimen-sional attention in any great work of magic,’ said Panter dismissively. ‘It impresses people, nothing more.’ ‘It looked like monsters up there,’ said Twoflower, standing closer to Rincewind. ‘Monsters? Show me some monsters!’ said Wert. Instinctively they looked up. There was no sound. Nothing moved against the circle of light. ‘I think we should go up and, er, congratulate him,’ said Wert. ‘Congratulate?’ exploded Rincewind. ‘He stole the Octavo! He locked you up!’ The wizards exchanged knowing looks. ‘Yes, well,’ said one of them. ‘When you’ve advanced in the craft, lad, you’ll know that there are times when the important thing is success.’ ‘It’s getting there that matters,’ said Wert bluntly. ‘Not how you travel.’ They set off up the spiral. Rincewind sat down, scowling at the darkness. He felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Twoflower, who was holding the Octavo. ‘This is no way to treat a book,’ he said. ‘Look, he’s bent the spine right back. People always do that, they’ve got no idea of how to treat them.’ ‘Yah,’ said Rincewind vaguely. ‘Don’t worry,’ said Twoflower. ‘I’m not worried, I’m just angry,’ snapped Rincewind. ‘Give me the bloody thing!’ He snatched the book and snapped it open viciously. He rummaged around in the back of his mind, where the Spell hung out. ‘All right,’ he snarled. You’ve had your fun, you’ve ruined my life, now get back to where you belong!’ ‘But I—‘ protested Twoflower. ‘The Spell, I mean the Spell,’ said Rincewind. ‘Go on, get back on the page!’ He glared at the ancient parchment until his eyes crossed. ‘Then I’ll say you!’ he shouted, his voice echoing up the tower. ‘You can join the rest of them and much good may it do you!’ He shoved the book back into Twoflower’s arms and staggered off up the steps. The wizards had reached the top and disappeared from view. Rincewind climbed after them. ‘Lad, am I?’ he muttered. ‘When I’m advanced in the craft, eh? I just managed to go around with one of the Great Spells in my head for years without going totally insane, didn’t I?’ He considered the last question from all angles. Yes, you did,’ he reassured himself. ‘You didn’t start talking to trees, even when trees started talking to you.’ His head emerged into the sultry air at the top of the tower. He had expected to see fire-blackened stones criss-crossed with talon marks, or perhaps something even worse. Instead he saw the seven senior wizards standing by Trymon, who seemed totally unscathed. He turned and smiled pleasantly at Rincewind. ‘Ah, Rincewind. Come and join us, won’t you?’ So this is it, Rincewind thought. All that drama for nothing. Maybe I really am not cut out to be a wizard, maybe — He looked up and into Trymon’s eyes. Perhaps it was the Spell, in its years of living in Rincewind’s head, that had affected his eyes. Perhaps his time with Twoflower, who only saw things as they ought to be, had taught him to see things as they are. But what was certain was that by far the most difficult thing Rincewind did in his whole life was look at Trymon without running in terror or being very violently sick. The others didn’t seem to have noticed. They also seemed to be standing very still. Trymon had tried to contain the seven Spells in his mind and it had broken, and the Dungeon Dimensions had found their hole, all right. Silly to have imagined that the Things would have come marching out of a sort of rip in the sky, waving mandibles and tentacles. That was old-fashioned stuff, far too risky. Even nameless terrors learned to move with the times. All they really needed to enter was one head. His eyes were empty holes. Knowledge speared into Rincewind’s mind like a knife of ice. The Dungeon Dimensions would be a playgroup compared to what the Things could do in a universe of order. People were craving order, and order they would get – the order of the turning screw, the immutable law of straight lines and numbers. They would beg for the harrow . . . Trymon was looking at him. Something was looking at him. And still the others hadn’t noticed. Could he even explain it? Trymon looked the same as he had always done, except for the eyes, and a slight sheen to his skin. Rincewind stared, and knew that there were far worse things than Evil. All the demons in Hell would torture your very soul, but that was precisely because they valued souls very highly; evil would always try to steal the universe, but at least it considered the universe worth stealing. But the grey world behind those empty eyes would trample and destroy without even according its victims the dignity of hatred. It wouldn’t even notice them. Trymon held out his hand. ‘The eighth spell,’ he said. ‘Give it to me.’ Rincewind backed away. ‘This is disobedience, Rincewind. I am your superior, after all. In fact, I have been voted the supreme head of all the Orders.’ ‘Really?’ said Rincewind hoarsely. He looked at the other wizards. They were immobile, like statues. ‘Oh yes,’ said Trymon pleasantly. ‘Quite without prompting, too. Very democratic.’ ‘I preferred tradition,’ said Rincewind. ‘That way even the dead get the vote.’ ‘You will give me the spell voluntarily,’ said Trymon. ‘Do I have to show you what I will do otherwise? And in the end you will still yield it. You will scream for the opportunity to give it to me.’ If it stops anywhere, it stops here, thought Rincewind. ‘You’ll have to take it,’ he said. 1 won’t give it to you.’ ‘I remember you,’ said Trymon. ‘Not much good as a student, as I recall. You never really trusted magic, you kept on saying there should be a better way to run a universe. Well, you’ll see. I have plans. We can —‘ ‘Not we,’ said Rincewind firmly. ‘Give me the Spell!’ ‘Try and take it,’ said Rincewind, backing away. 1 don’t think you can.’ ‘Oh?’ Rincewind jumped aside as octarine fire flashed from Trymon’s fingers and left a bubbling rock puddle on the stones. He could sense the Spell lurking in the back of his mind. He could sense its fear. In the silent caverns of his head he reached out for it. It retreated in astonishment, like a dog faced with a maddened sheep. He followed, stamping angrily through the disused lots and inner-city disaster areas of his subconscious, until he found it cowering behind a heap of condemned memories. It roared silent defiance at him, but Rincewind wasn’t having any. Is this it? he shouted at it. When it’s time for the showdown, you go and hide? You’re frightened? The Spell said, that’s nonsense, you can’t possibly believe that, I’m one of the Eight Spells. But Rincewind advanced on it angrily, shouting, Maybe, but the fact is I do believe it and you’d better remember whose head you’re in, right? I can believe anything I like in here! Rincewind jumped aside again as another bolt of fire lanced through the hot night. Trymon grinned, and made nother complicated motion with his hands. Pressure gripped Rincewind. Every inch of his skin felt as though it was being used as an anvil. He flopped onto his knees. ‘There are much worse things,’ said Trymon pleasantly. ‘I can make your flesh burn on the bones, or fill your body with ants. I have the power to —‘ ‘I have a sword, you know.’ The voice was squeaky with defiance. Rincewind raised his head. Through a purple haze of pain he saw Twoflower standing behind Trymon, holding a sword in exactly the wrong way. Trymon laughed, and flexed his fingers. For a moment his attention was diverted. Rincewind was angry. He was angry at the Spell, at the world, at the unfairness of everything, at the fact that he hadn’t had much sleep lately, at the fact that he wasn’t thinking quite straight. But most of all he was angry with Trymon, standing there full of the magic Rincewind had always wanted but had never achieved, and doing nothing worthwhile with it. He sprang, striking Trymon in the stomach with his head and flinging his arms around him in desperation. Twoflower was knocked aside as they slid along the stones. Trymon snarled, and got out the first syllable of a spell before Rincewind’s wildly flailing elbow caught him in the neck. A blast of randomised magic singed Rincewind’s hair. Rincewind fought as he always fought, without skill or fairness or tactics but with a great deal of whirlwind effort. The strategy was to prevent an opponent getting enough time to realise that in fact Rincewind wasn’t a very good or strong fighter, and it often worked. It was working now, because Trymon had spent rather too much time reading ancient manuscripts and not getting enough healthy exercise and vitamins. He managed to get several blows in, which Rincewind was far too high on rage to notice, but he only used his hands while Rincewind employed knees, feet and teeth as well. He was, in fact, winning. This came as a shock. It came as more of a shock when, as he knelt on Trymon’s chest hitting him repeatedly about the head, the other man’s face changed. The skin crawled and waved like something seen through a heat haze, and Trymon spoke. ‘Help me!’ For a moment his eyes looked up at Rincewind in fear, pain and entreaty. Then they weren’t eyes at all, but multi-faceted things on a head that could be called a head only by stretching the definition to its limits. Tentacles and saw-edged legs and talons unfolded to rip Rincewind’s rather sparse flesh from his body. Twoflower, the tower and the red sky all vanished. Time ran slowly, and stopped. Rincewind bit hard on a tentacle that was trying to pull his face off. As it uncoiled in agony he thrust out a hand and felt it break something hot and squishy. They were watching. He turned his head, and saw that now he was fighting on the floor of an enormous amphitheatre. On each side tier upon tier of creatures stared down at him, creatures with bodies and faces that appeared to have been made by crossbreeding nightmares. He caught a glimpse of even worse things behind him, huge shadows that stretched into the overcast sky, before the Trymon-monster lunged at him with a barbed sting the size of a spear. Rincewind dodged sideways, and then swung around with both hands clasped together into one fist that caught the thing in the stomach, or possibly the thorax, with a blow that ended in the satisfying crunch of chitin. He plunged forward, fighting now out of terror of what would happen if he stopped. The ghostly arena was full of the cluttering of the Dungeon creatures, a wall of rustling sound that hammered at his ears as he struggled. He imagined that sound filling the Disc, and he flung blow after blow to save the world of men, to preserve the little circle of firelight in the dark night of chaos and to lose the gap through which the nightmare was advancing. But mainly he hit it to stop it hitting back. Claws or talons drew white-hotlines across his back, and something bit his shoulder, but he found a nest of soft tubes among all the hairs and scales and squeezed it hard. An arm barbed with spikes swept him away, and he rolled over in the gritty black dust. Instinctively he curled into a ball, but nothing happened. Instead of the onslaught of fury he expected he opened his eyes to see the creature limping away from him, various liquids leaking from it. It was the first time anything had ever run away from Rincewind. He dived after it, caught a scaly leg, and wrenched. The creature chittered at him and flailed desperately with such appendages as were still working, but Rincewind’s grip was unshakeable. He pulled himself up and planted one last satisfying blow into its remaining eye. It screamed, and ran. And there was only one place for it to run to. The tower and the red sky came back with the click of restored time. As soon as he felt the press of the flagstones under his feet Rincewind flung his weight to one side and rolled on his back with the frantic creature at arms’ length. ‘Now!’ he yelled. ‘Now what?’ said Twoflower. ‘Oh. Yes. Right!’ He swung the sword inexpertly but with some force, missing Rincewind by inches and burying it deeply in the Thing. There was a shrill buzzing, as though he had smashed a wasp’s nest, and the melee of arms and legs and tentacles flailed in agony. It rolled again, screaming and thrashing at the flagstones, and then it was thrashing at nothing at all because it had rolled over the edge of the stairway, taking Rincewind with it. There was a squelching noise as it bounced off a few of the stone steps, and then a distant and disappearing shriek as it tumbled the depth of the tower. Finally there was a dull explosion and a flash of octarine light. Then Twoflower was alone on the top of the tower – alone, that is, except for seven wizards who still seemed to be frozen to the spot. He sat bewildered as seven fireballs rose out of the blackness and plunged into the discarded Octavo, which suddenly looked its old self and far more interesting. ‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘I suppose they’re the Spells.’ ‘Twoflower.’ The voice was hollow and echoing, and just recognisable as Rincewind’s. Twoflower stopped with his hand halfway to the book. ‘Yes?’ he said. ‘Is that – is that you, Rincewind?’ ‘Yes,’ said the voice, resonant with the tones of the grave. ‘And there is something very important I want you to do for me, Twoflower.’ Twofiower looked around. He pulled himself together. So the fate of the Disc would depend on him, after all. ‘I’m ready,’ he said, his voice vibrating with pride. ‘What is it you want me to do?’ ‘First, I want you to listen very carefully,’ said Rincewind’s disembodied voice patiently. ‘I’m listening.’ It’s very important that when I tell you what to do you don’t say “What do you mean?” or argue or anything, understand?’ Twoflower stood to attention. At least, his rnind stood to attention, his body really couldn’t. He stuck out several of his chins. ‘I’m ready,’ he said. ‘Good. Now, what I want you to do is —‘ ‘Yes?’ Rincewind’s voice rose from the depths of the stairwell. ‘I want you to come and help me up before I lose my grip on this stone,’ it said. Twoflower opened his mouth, then shut it quickly. He ran to the square hole and peered down. By the ruddy light of the star he could just make out Rincewind’s eyes looking up at him. Twoflower lay down on his stomach and reached out. Rincewind’s hand gripped his wrist in the sort of grip that told Twoflower that if he, Rincewind, wasn’t pulled up then there was no possible way in which that grip was going to be relaxed. ‘I’m glad you’re alive,’ he said. ‘Good. So am I,’ said Rincewind. He hung around in the darkness for a bit. After the past few minutes it was almost enjoyable, but only almost. ‘Pull me up, then,’ he hinted. ‘I think that might be sort of difficult,’ grunted Twoflower. ‘I don’t actually think I can do it, in fact.’ ‘What are you holding on to, then?’ ‘You.’ ‘I mean besides me.’ ‘What do you mean, besides you?’ said Twoflower. Rincewind said a word. ‘Well, look,’ said Twoflower. The steps go around in a spiral, right? If I sort of swing you and then you let go —‘ ‘If you’re going to suggest I try dropping twenty feet down a pitch dark tower in the hope of hitting a couple of greasy little steps which might not even still be there, you can forget it,’ said Rincewind sharply. ‘There is an alternative, then.’ ‘Out with it, man.’ ‘You could drop five hundred feet down a pitch black tower and hit stones which certainly are there,’ said Twoflower. Dead silence came from below him. Then Rincewind said, accusingly, ‘That was sarcasm.’ ‘I thought it was just stating the obvious.’ Rincewind grunted. ‘I suppose you couldn’t do some magic—‘ Twoflower began. ‘No.’ ‘Just a thought.’ There was a flare of light far below, and a confused shouting, and then more lights, more shouting, and a line f torches starting up the long spiral. ‘There’s some people coming up the stairs,’ said Twoflower, always keen to inform. ‘I hope they’re running,’ said Rincewind. ‘I can’t feel my arm.’ ‘You’re lucky,’ said Twoflower. ‘I can feel mine.’ The leading torch stopped its climb and a voice rang out, filling the hollow tower with indecipherable echoes. ‘I think,’ said Twoflower, aware that he was gradually sliding further over the hole, ‘that was someone telling us to hold on.’ Rincewind said another word. Then he said, in a lower and more urgent tone, ‘Actually, I don’t think I can hang on any longer.’ ‘Try.’ ‘It’s no good, I can feel my hand slipping!’ Twoflower sighed. It was time for harsh measures. ‘All right, then,’ he said. ‘Drop, then. See if I care.’ ‘What?’ said Rincewind, so astonished he forgot to let go. ‘Go on, die. Take the easy way out.’ ‘Easy?’ . ‘All you have to do is plummet screaming through the air and break every bone in your body,’ said Twoflower. ‘Anybody can do it. Go on. I wouldn’t want you to think that perhaps you ought to stay alive because we need you to say the Spells and save the Disc. Oh, no. Who cares if we all get burned up? Go on, just think of yourself. Drop.’ There was a long, embarrassed silence. ‘I don’t know why it is,’ said Rincewind eventually, in a voice rather louder than necessary, ‘but ever since I met you I seem to have spent a lot of time hanging by my fingers over certain depth, have you noticed?’ ‘Death,’ corrected Twoflower. ‘Death what?’ said Rincewind. ‘Certain death,’ said Twoflower helpfully, trying to ignore the slow but inexorable slide of his body across the flagstones. ‘Hanging over certain death. You don’t like heights.’ ‘Heights I don’t mind,’ said Rincewind’s voice from the darkness. ‘Heights I can live with. It’s depths that are occupying my attention at the moment. Do you know what I’m going to do when we get out of this?’ ‘No?’ said Twoflower, wedging his toes into a gap in the flagstones and trying to make himself immobile by sheer force of will. ‘I’m going to build a house in the flattest country I can find and it’s only going to have a ground floor and I’m not even going to wear sandals with thick soles —‘ The leading torch came around the last turn of the spiral and Twoflower looked down on the grinning face of Cohen. Behind him, still hopping awkwardly up the stones, he could make out the reassuring bulk of the Luggage. ‘Everything all right?’ said Cohen. ‘Can I do anything?’ Rincewind took a deep breath. Twoflower recognised the signs. Rincewind was about to say something like, ‘Yes, I’ve got this itch on the back of my neck, you couldn’t scratch it, could you, on your way past?’ or ‘No, I enjoy hanging over bottomless drops’ and he decided he couldn’t possibly face that. He spoke very quickly. ‘Pull Rincewind back onto the stairs,’ he snapped. Rincewind deflated in mid-snarl. Cohen caught him around the waist and jerked him unceremoniously onto the stones. ‘Nasty mess down on the floor down there,’ he said conversationally. ‘Who was it?’ ‘Did it—‘ Rincewind swallowed, ‘did it have – you know – tentacles and things?’ ‘No,’ said Cohen. ‘Just the normal bits. Spread out a bit, of course.’ Rincewind looked at Twoflower, who shook his head. ‘Just a wizard who let things get on top of him,’ he said. Unsteadily, with his arms screaming at him, Rincewind let himself be helped back onto the roof of the tower. ‘How did you get here?’ he added. Cohen pointed to the Luggage, which had trotted over 203 to Twoflower and opened its lid like a dog that knows it’s been bad and is hoping that a quick display of affection may avert the rolled-up newspaper of authority. ‘Bumpy but fast,’ he said admiringly. ‘I’ll tell you this, no-one tries to stop you.’ Rincewind looked up at the sky. It was indeed full of moons, huge cratered discs now ten times bigger than the Disc’s tiny satellite. He looked at them without much interest. He felt washed out and stretched well beyond breaking point, as fragile as ancient elastic. He noticed that Twoflower was trying to set up his picture box. Cohen was looking at the seven senior wizards. ‘Funny place to put statues,’ he said. ‘No-one can see them. Mind you, I can’t say they’re up to much. Very poor work.’ Rincewind staggered across and tapped Wert gingerly on the chest. He was solid stone. This is it, he thought. I just want to go home. Hang on, I am home. More or less. So I just want a good sleep, and perhaps it will all be better in the morning. His gaze fell on the Octavo, which was outlined in tiny flashes of octarine fire. Oh yes, he thought. He picked it up and thumbed idly through its pages. They were thick with complex and swirling script that changed and reformed even as he looked at it. It seemed undecided as to what it should be; one moment it was an orderly, matter-of-fact printing; the next a series of angular runes. Then it would be curly Kythian spellscript. Then it would be pictograms in some ancient, evil and forgotten writing that seemed to consist exclusively of unpleasant reptilian beings doing complicated and painful things to one another . . . The last page was empty. Rincewind sighed, and looked in the back of his mind. The Spell looked back. He had dreamed of this moment, how he would finally evict the Spell and take vacant possession of his own head and learn all those lesser spells which had, up until hen, been too frightened to stay in his mind. Somehow he had expected it to be far more exciting. Instead, in utter exhaustion and in a mood to brook no argument, he stared coldly at the Spell and jerked a metaphorical thumb over his shoulder. You. Out. It looked for a moment as though the Spell was going to argue, but it wisely thought better of it. There was a tingling sensation, a blue flash behind his eyes, and a sudden feeling of emptiness. When he looked down at the page it was full of words. They were runes again. He was glad about that, the reptilian pictures were not only unspeakable but probably unpronounceable too, and reminded him of things he would have great difficulty in forgetting. He looked blankly at the book while Twoflower bustled around unheeded and Cohen tried in vain to lever the rings off the stone wizards. He had to do something, he reminded himself. What was it, now? He opened the book at the first page and began to read, his lips moving and his forefinger tracing the outline of each letter. As he mumbled each word it appeared soundlessly in the air beside him, in bright colours that streamed away in the night wind. He turned over the page. Other people were coming up the steps now – star people, citizens, even some of the Patrician’s personal guard. A couple of star people made a half-hearted attempt to approach Rincewind, who was surrounded now by a rainbow swirl of letters and took absolutely no notice of them, but Cohen drew his sword and looked nonchalantly at them and they thought better of it. Silence spread out from Rincewind’s bent form like ripples in a puddle. It cascaded down the tower and spread out through the milling crowds below, flowed over the walls, gushed darkly through the city, and engulfed the lands beyond. The bulk of the star loomed silently over the Disc. In the sky around it the new moons turned slowly and noiselessly. The only sound was Rincewind’s hoarse whispering as he turned page after page. ‘Isn’t this exciting!’ said Twoflower. Cohen, who was rolling a cigarette from the tarry remnants of its ancestors, looked at him blankly, paper halfway to his lips. ‘Isn’t what exciting?’ he said. ‘All this magic!’ ‘It’s only lights,’ said Cohen critically. ‘He hasn’t even produced doves out of his sleeves.’ ‘Yes, but can’t you sense the occult potentiality?’ said Twoflower. Cohen produced a big yellow match from somewhere in his tobacco bag, looked at Wert for a moment, and with great deliberation struck the match on his fossilised nose. ‘Look,’ he said to Twoflower, as kindly as he could manage. ‘What do you expect? I’ve been around a long time, I’ve seen the whole magical thing, and I can tell you that if you go around with your jaw dropping all the time people hit it. Anyway, wizard’s die just like anyone else when you stick a —‘ There was a loud snap as Rincewind shut the book. He stood up, and looked around. What happened next was this: Nothing. It took a little while for people to realise it. Everyone had ducked instinctively, waiting for the explosion of white light or scintillating fireball or, in the case of Cohen, who had fairly low expectations, a few white pigeons, possibly a slightly crumpled rabbit. It wasn’t even an interesting nothing. Sometimes things can fail to happen in quite impressive ways, but as far as non-events went this one just couldn’t compete. ‘Is that it?’ said Cohen. There was a general muttering from the crowd, and several of the star people were looking angrily at Rincewind. The wizard stared Wearily at Cohen. ‘I suppose so,’ he said. ‘But nothing’s happened.’ Rincewind looked blankly at the Octavo. ‘Maybe it has a subtle effect?’ he said hopefully. ‘After all, we don’t know exactly what is supposed to happen.’ ‘We knew it!’ shouted one of the star people. ‘Magic doesn’t work! It’s all illusion!’ A stone looped over the roof and hit Rincewind on the shoulder. ‘Yeah,’ said another star person. ‘Let’s get him!’ ‘Let’s throw him off the tower!’ ‘Yeah, let’s get him and throw him off the tower!’ The crowd surged forward. Twoflower held up his hands. ‘I’m sure there’s just been a slight mistake—‘ he began, before his legs were kicked from underneath him. ‘Oh bugger,’ said Cohen, dropping his dogend and grinding it under a sandalled foot. He drew his sword and looked around for the Luggage. It hadn’t rushed to Twoflower’s aid. It was standing in front of Rincewind, who was clutching the Octavo to his chest like a hot-water bottle and looking frantic. A star man lunged at him. The Luggage raised its lid threateningly. ‘I know why it hasn’t worked,’ said a voice from the back of the crowd. It was Bethan. ‘Oh yeah?’ said the nearest citizen. ‘And why should we listen to you?’ A mere fraction of a second later Cohen’s sword was pressed against his neck. ‘On the other hand,’ said the man evenly, ‘perhaps we should pay attention to what this young lady has got to say.’ As Cohen swung around slowly with his sword at the ready Bethan stepped forward and pointed to the swirling shapes of the spells, which still hung in the air around Rincewind. ‘That one can’t be right,’ she said, indicating a smudge of dirty brown amidst the pulsing, brightly coloured flares. You must have mispronounced a word. Let’s have a look.’ Rincewind passed her the Octavo without a word. She opened it and peered the pages. ‘What funny writing,’ she said. ‘It keeps changing. What’s that crocodile thing doing to the octopus?’ Rincewind looked over her shoulder and, without thinking, told her. She was silent for a moment. ‘Oh,’ she said levelly. ‘I didn’t know crocodiles could do that.’ ‘It’s just ancient picture writing,’ said Rincewind hurriedly. ‘It’ll change if you wait. The Spells can appear in every known language.’ ‘Can you remember what you said when the wrong colour appeared?’ Rincewind ran a finger down the page. ‘There, I think. Where the two-headed lizard is doing – whatever it’s doing.’ Twoflower appeared at her other shoulder. The Spell flowed into another script. ‘I can’t even pronounce it,’ said Bethan. ‘Squiggle, squiggle, dot, dash.’ ‘That’s Cupumuguk snow runes,’ said Rincewind. ‘I think it should be pronounced “zph”.’ ‘It didn’t work, though. How about “sph”?’ They looked at the word. It remained resolutely off-colour. ‘Or “sff”?’ said Bethan. ‘It might be “tsff”,’ said Rincewind doubtfully. If anything the colour became a dirtier shade of brown. ‘How about “zsff”?’ said Twoflower. ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Rincewind. ‘With snow runes the —‘ Bethan elbowed him in the stomach and pointed. The brown shape in the air was now a brilliant red. The book trembled in her hands. Rincewind grabbed her around the waist, snatched Twoflower by the collar, and jumped backwards. Bethan lost her grip on the Octavo, which tumbled towards the floor. And didn’t reach it. The air around the Octavo glowed. It rose slowly, flapping its pages like wings. Then there was a plangent, sweet twanging noise and it seemed to explode in a complicated silent flower of light which rushed outwards, faded, and was gone. But something was happening much further up in the sky . . . Down in the geological depths of Great A’Tuin’s huge brain new thoughts surged along neural pathways the size of arterial roads. It was impossible for a sky turtle to change its expression, but in some indefinable way its scaly, meteor-pocked face looked quite expectant. It was staring fixedly at the eight spheres endlessly orbiting around the star, on the very beaches of space. The spheres were cracking. Huge segments of rock broke away and began the long spiral down to the star. The sky filled with glittering shards. From the wreakage of one hollow shell a very small sky turtle paddled its way into the red light. It was barely bigger than an asteroid, its shell still shiny with molten yolk. There were four small world-elephant calves on there, too. And on their backs was a discworld, tiny as yet, covered in smoke and volcanoes. Great A’Tuin waited until all eight baby turtles had freed themselves from their shells and were treading space and looking bewildered. Then, carefully, so as not to dislodge anything, the old turtle turned and with considerable relief set out on the long swim to the blessedly cool, bottomless depths of space. The young turtles followed, orbiting their parent. Twoflower stared raptly at the display overhead. He probably had the best view of anyone on the Disc. Then a terrible thought occurred to him. ‘Where’s the picture box?’ he asked urgently. ‘What?’ said Rincewind, eyes fixed on the sky. ‘The picture box,’ said Twoflower. ‘I must get a picture of this!’ ‘Can’t you just remember it?’ said Bethan, not looking at him. ‘I might forget.’ ‘ I won’t ever forget,’ she said. ‘It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.’ ‘Much better than pigeons and billiard balls,’ agreed Cohen. ‘I’ll give you that, Rincewind. How’s it done?’ ‘I dunno,’ said Rincewind. ‘The star’s getting smaller,’ said Bethan. Rincewind was vaguely aware of Twoflower’s voice arguing with the demon who lived in the box and painted the pictures. It was quite a technical argument, about field depths and whether or not the demon still had enough red paint. It should be pointed out that currently Great A’Tuin was very pleased and contented, and feelings like that in a brain the size of several large cities are bound to radiate out. In fact most people on the Disc were currently in a state of mind normally achievable only by a lifetime of dedicated meditation or about thirty seconds of illegal herbage. That’s old Twoflower, Rincewind thought. It’s not that he doesn’t appreciate beauty, he just appreciates it in his own way. I mean, if a poet sees a daffodil he stares at it and writes a long poem about it, but Twoflower wanders off to find a book on botany. And treads on it. It’s right what Cohen said. He just looks at things, but nothing he looks at is ever the same again. Including me, I suspect. The Disc’s own sun rose. The star was already dwindling, and it wasn’t quite so much competition. Good reliable Disc light poured across the enraptured landscape, like a sea of gold. Or, as the more reliable observers generally held, like golden syrup. That is a nice dramatic ending, but life doesn’t work like that and there were other things that had to happen. There was the Octavo, for example. As the sunlight hit it the book snapped shut and started to fall back to the tower. And many of the observers realised that dropping towards them was the single most magical thing on the Discworld. The feeling of bliss and brotherhood evaporated along with the morning dew. Rincewind and Twoflower were elbowed aside as the crowd surged forward, struggling and trying to climb up one another, hands outstretched. The Octavo dropped into the centre of the shouting mass. There was a snap. A decisive snap, the sort of snap made by a lid that doesn’t intend to be opening in a hurry. Rincewind peered between someone’s legs at Twoflower. ‘Do you know what I think’s going to happen?’ he said, grinning. ‘What?’ ‘I think that when you open the Luggage there’s just going to be your laundry in there, that’s what I think.’ ‘Oh dear.’ ‘I think the Octavo knows how to look after itself. Best place for it, really.’ ‘I suppose so. You know, sometimes I get the feeling that the Luggage knows exactly what it’s doing.’ ‘I know what you mean.’ They crawled to the edge of the milling crowd, stood up, dusted themselves off and headed for the steps. No-one paid them any attention. ‘What are they doing now?’ said Twoflower, trying to see over the heads of the throng. ‘It looks as though they’re trying to lever it open,’ said Rincewind. There was a snap and a scream. ‘I think the Luggage rather enjoys the attention,’ said Twoflower, as they began their cautious descent. ‘Yes, it probably does it good to get out and meet people,’ said Rincewind, ‘and now I think it’d do me good to go and order a couple of drinks.’ ‘Good idea,’ said Twoflower. ‘I’ll have a couple of drinks too.’ It was nearly noon when Twoflower awoke. He couldn’t remember why he was in a hayloft, or why he was wearing someone else’s coat, but he did wake up with one idea right in the forefront of his mind. He decided it was vitally important to tell Rincewind about it. He fell out of the hay and landed on the Luggage. ‘Oh, you’re here, are you?’ he said. ‘I hope you’re ashamed of yourself.’ The Luggage looked bewildered. ‘Anyway, I want to comb my hair. Open up,’ said Twoflower. The Luggage obligingly flipped its lid. Twoflower rooted around among the bags and boxes inside until he found a comb and mirror and repaired some of the damage of the night. Then he looked hard at the Luggage. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t like to tell me what you’ve done with the Octavo?’ The Luggage’s expression could only be described as wooden. ‘All right. Come on, then.’ Twoflower stepped out into the sunlight, which was slightly too bright for his current tastes, and wandered aimlessly along the street. Everything seemed fresh and new, even the smells, but there didn’t seem to be many people up yet. It had been a long night. He found Rincewind at the foot of the Tower of Art, upervising a team of workmen who had rigged up a gantry of sorts on the roof and were lowering the stone wizards to the ground. He seemed to be assisted by a monkey, but Twoflower was in no mood to be surprised at anything. ‘Will they be able to be turned back?’ he said. Rincewind looked around. ‘What? Oh, it’s you. No, probably not. I’m afraid they dropped poor old Wert, anyway. Five hundred feet onto cobbles.’ ‘Will you be able to do anything about that?’ ‘Make a nice rockery.’ Rincewind turned and waved at the workmen. ‘You’re very cheerful,’ said Twoflower, a shade reproachfully. ‘Didn’t you go to bed?’ ‘Funny thing, I couldn’t sleep,’ said Rincewind. ‘I came out for a breath of fresh air, and no-one seemed to have any idea what to do, so I just sort of got people together,’ he indicated the librarian, who tried to hold his hand, ‘and started organising things. Nice day, isn’t it? Air like wine.’ ‘Rincewind, I’ve decided that —‘ ‘You know, I think I might re-enroll,’ said Rincewind cheerfully. ‘I think I could really make a go of things this time. I can really see myself getting to grips with magic and graduating really well. They do say if it’s summa cum laude, then the living is easy – .’ ‘Good, because —‘ There’s plenty of room at the top, too, now all the big boys will be doing doorstop duty, and —‘ ‘I’m going home.’ ‘— a sharp lad with a bit of experience of the world could – what?’ ‘Oook?’ ‘I said I’m going home,’ repeated Twoflower, making polite little attempts to shake off the librarian, who was trying to pick lice off him. ‘What home?’ said Rincewind, astonished. ‘Home home. My home. Where I live,’ Twoflower explained sheepishly. ‘Back across the sea. You know. Where I came from. Will you please stop doing that?’ ‘Oh.’ ‘Oook?’ There was a pause. Then Twoflower said, ‘You see, last night it occurred to me, I thought, well, the thing is, all this travelling and seeing things is fine but there’s also a lot of fun to be had from having been. You know, sticking all your pictures in a book and remembering things.’ ‘There is?’ ‘Oook?’ ‘Oh, yes. The important thing about having lots of things to remember is that you’ve got to go somewhere afterwards where you can remember them, you see? You’ve got to stop. You haven’t really been anywhere until you’ve got back home. I think that’s what I mean.’ Rincewind ran the sentence across his mind again. It didn’t seem any better second time around. ‘Oh,’ he said again. Well, good. If that’s the way you look at it. When are you going, then?’ ‘Today, I think. There’s bound to be a ship going part of the way.’ ‘I expect so,’ said Rincewind awkwardly. He looked at his feet. He looked at the sky. He cleared his throat. ‘We’ve been through some times together, eh?’ said Twoflower, nudging him in the ribs. ‘Yeah,’ said Rincewind, contorting his face into something like a grin. ‘You’re not upset, are you?’ ‘Who, me?’ said Rincewind. ‘Gosh, no. Hundred and one things to do.’ That’s all right, then. Listen, let’s go and have breakfast and then we can go down to the docks.’ Rincewind nodded dismally, turned to his assistant, and took a banana out of his pocket. ‘You’ve got the hang of it now, you take over,’ he muttered. ‘Oook.’ In fact there wasn’t any ship going anywhere near the Agatean Empire, but that was an academic point because Twoflower simply counted gold pieces into the hand of the first captain with a halfway clean ship until the man suddenly saw the merits of changing his plans. Rincewind waited on the quayside until Twoflower had finished paying the man about forty times more than his ship was worth. ‘That’s settled, then,’ said Twoflower. ‘He’ll drop me at the Brown Islands and I can easily get a ship from there.’ ‘Great,’ said Rincewind. Twoflower looked thoughtful for a moment. Then he opened the Luggage and pulled out a bag of gold. ‘Have you seen Cohen and Bethan?’ he said. ‘I think they went off to get married,’ said Rincewind. ‘I heard Bethan say it was now or never.’ ‘Well, when you see them give them this,’ said Twoflower, handing him the bag. ‘I know it’s expensive, setting up home for the first time.’ Twoflower had never fully understood the gulf in the exchange rate. The bag could quite easily set Cohen up with a small kingdom. ‘I’ll hand it over first chance I get,’ he said, and to his own surprise realised that he meant it. ‘Good. I’ve thought about something to give you, too.’ ‘Oh, there’s no —‘ Twoflower rummaged in the Luggage and produced a large sack. He began to fill it with clothes and money and the picture box until finally the Luggage was completely empty. The last thing he put in was his souvenir musical cigarette box with the shell-encrusted lid, carefully wrapped in soft paper. ‘It’s all yours,’ he said, shutting the Luggage’s lid. ‘I shan’t really need it any more, and it won’t fit on my wardrobe anyway.’ ‘What?’ ‘Don’t you want it?’ ‘Well, I – of course, but – it’s yours. It follows you, not me.’ ‘Luggage,’ said Twoflower, ‘this is Rincewind. You’re his, right?’ The Luggage slowly extended its legs, turned very deliberately and looked at Rincewind. ‘I don’t think it belongs to anyone but itself, really,’ said Twoflower. ‘Yes,’ said Rincewind uncertainly. ‘Well, that’s about it, then,’ said Twoflower. He held out his hand. ‘Goodbye, Rincewind. I’ll send you a postcard when I get home. Or something.’ ‘Yes. Any time you’re passing, there’s bound to be someone here who knows where I am.’ ‘Yes. Well. That’s it, then.’ ‘That’s it, right enough.’ ‘Right.’ ‘Yep.’ Twoflower walked up the gangplank, which the impatient crew hauled up behind him. The rowing drum started its beat and the ship was propelled slowly out onto the turbid waters of the Ankh, now back to their old level, where it caught the tide and turned towards the open sea. Rincewind watched it until it was a dot. Then he looked down at the Luggage. It stared back at him. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘Go away. I’m giving you to yourself, do you understand?’ He turned his back on it and stalked away. After a few seconds he was aware of the little footsteps behind him. He spun around. ‘I said I don’t want you!’ he snapped, and gave it a kick. The Luggage sagged. Rincewind stalked away. After he had gone a few yards he stopped and listened. There was no sound. When he turned the Luggage was where he had left it. It looked sort of huddled. Rincewind hought for a while. ‘All right, then,’ he said. ‘Come on.’ He turned his back and strode off to the University. After a few minutes the Luggage appeared to make up its mind, extended its legs again and padded after him. It didn’t see that it had a lot of choice. They headed along the quay and into the city, two dots on a dwindling landscape which, as the perspective broadened, included a tiny ship starting out across a wide green sea that was but a part of a bright circling ocean on a cloud-swirled Disc on the back of four giant elephants that themselves stood on the shell of an enormous turtle. Which soon became a glint among the stars, and disappeared. The End [1]They won’t be described, since even the pretty ones looked like the offspring of an octopus and a bicycle. It is well known that things from undesirable universes are always seeking an entrance into this one, which is the psychic equivalent of handy for the buses and closer to the shops. [2]A Thaum is the basic unit of magical strength. It has been universally established as the amount of magic needed to create one small white pigeon or three normal sized billiard balls. [3]An interesting metaphor. To nocturnal trolls, of course, the dawn of time lies in the future. [4]Not precisely, of course. Trees didn’t burst into flame, people didn’t suddenly become very rich and extremely dead, and the seas didn’t flash into steam. A better simile, in fact, would be ‘not like molten gold’. [5]No-one knows why, but all the most truly mysterious and magical items are bought from shops that appear and, after a trading life even briefer than a double-glazing company, vanish like smoke. There had been various attempts to explain this, all of which don’t fully account for the observed facts. These shops turn up anywhere in the universe, and their immediate non-existence in any particular city can normally be deduced from crowds of people wandering the streets clutching defunct magical items, ornate guarantee cards, and looking very suspiciously at brick walls. 
The Folklore of Discworld - Terry Pratchett	----	The Folklore of Discworld THE FOLKLORE OF DISCWORLD Legends, myths and customs from the Discworld with helpful hints from planet Earth Terry Pratchett and Jacqueline Simpson LONDON • TORONTO • SYDNEY • AUCKLAND • JOHANNESBURG This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly. Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781407034249 www.randomhouse.co.uk TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS 61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA A Random House Group Company www.rbooks.co.uk First published in Great Britain in 2008 by Doubleday an imprint of Transworld Publishers Copyright © Terry and Lyn Pratchett and Jacqueline Simpson 2008 Illustrations © Paul Kidby 2008 Terry Pratchett and Jacqueline Simpson have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the authors of this work. Discworld ® is a trademark registered by Terry Pratchett ‘The Ship of Death’ from The Complete poems of D. H. Lawrence reproduced by permission of Pollinger Limited and the Estate of Frieda Lawrence Ravagli. Permission to reprint lines from ‘East Coker II’ in Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot granted by Faber and Faber Ltd. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 9780385611008 This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Addresses for Random House Group Ltd companies outside the UK can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk The Random House Group Ltd Reg. No. 954009 The Random House Group Limited supports The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), the leading international forest-certification organization. All our titles that are printed on Greenpeace-approved FSC-certified paper carry the FSC logo. Our paper procurement policy can be found at www.rbooks.co.uk/environment Typeset in 11/15.5 Sabon by Falcon Oast Graphic Art Ltd. Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 ß1 Contents Cover Title Copyright About the Author Introduction by Terry Pratchett Introduction by Jacqueline Simpson 1 The Cosmos: Gods, Demons and Things 2 Dwarfs 3 The Elves 4 The Nac Mac Feegle 5 Trolls 6 Other Significant Races 7 Beasties 8 The Witches of Lancre 9 The Land of Lancre 10 The Witches of the Chalk 11 The Chalk 12 Heroes! 13 Lore, Legends and Truth 14 More Customs, Nautical Lore and Military Matters 15 Kids’ Stuff … You know, about ’Orrid Murder and Blood 16 Death Bibliography and suggestions for further reading Index Also by Terry Pratchett The Discworld ® series 1. THE COLOUR OF MAGIC 2. THE LIGHT FANTASTIC 3. EQUAL RITES 4. MORT 5. SOURCERY 6. WYRD SISTERS 7. PYRAMIDS 8. GUARDS! GUARDS! 9. ERIC (illustrated by Josh Kirby) 10. MOVING PICTURES 11. REAPER MAN 12. WITCHES ABROAD 13. SMALL GODS 14. LORDS AND LADIES 15. MEN AT ARMS 16. SOUL MUSIC 17. INTERESTING TIMES 18. MASKERADE 19. FEET OF CLAY 20. HOGFATHER 21. JINGO 22. THE LAST CONTINENT 23. CARPE JUGULUM 24. THE FIFTH ELEPHANT 25. THE TRUTH 26. THIEF OF TIME 27. THE LAST HERO (illustrated by Paul Kidby) 28. THE AMAZING MAURICE & HIS EDUCATED RODENTS (for younger readers) 29. NIGHT WATCH 30. THE WEE FREE MEN (for younger readers) 31. MONSTROUS REGIMENT 32. A HAT FULL OF SKY (for younger readers) 33. GOING POSTAL 34. THUD! 35. WINTERSMITH (for younger readers) 36. MAKING MONEY Other books about Discworld THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD (with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen) THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD II: THE GLOBE (with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen) THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD III: DARWIN’S WATCH (with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen) THE NEW DISCWORLD COMPANION (with Stephen Briggs) NANNY OGG’S COOKBOOK (with Stephen Briggs, Tina Hannan and Paul Kidby) THE PRATCHETT PORTFOLIO (with Paul Kidby) THE DISCWORLD ALMANAK (with Bernard Pearson) THE UNSEEN UNIVERSITY CUT-OUT BOOK (with Alan Batley and Bernard Pearson) WHERE’S MY COW? (illustrated by Melvyn Grant) THE ART OF DISCWORLD (with Paul Kidby) THE WIT AND WISDOM OF DISCWORLD (compiled by Stephen Briggs) Discworld maps THE STREETS OF ANKH-MORPORK (with Stephen Briggs) THE DISCWORLD MAPP (with Stephen Briggs) A TOURIST GUIDE TO LANCRE – A DISCWORLD MAPP (with Stephen Briggs, illustrated by Paul Kidby) DEATH’S DOMAIN (with Paul Kidby) A complete list of other books based on the Discworld series – illustrated screenplays, graphic novels, comics and plays, can be found on www.terrypratchett.co.uk. Non-Discworld novels GOOD OMENS (with Neil Gaiman) STRATA THE DARK SIDE OF THE SUN THE UNADULTERATED CAT (illustrated by Gray Jolliffe) Non-Discworld novels for younger readers THE CARPET PEOPLE TRUCKERS DIGGERS WINGS ONLY YOU CAN SAVE MANKIND JOHNNY AND THE DEAD JOHNNY AND THE BOMB NATION THE FOLKLORE OF DISCWORLD Visit www.terrypratchett.co.uk for news and information, to join the forum and to register for updates. www.rbooks.co.uk Introduction by Terry Pratchett A number of things conspired to cause this book to be written. There was the time when I was in a car with several other grownup, literate people and we passed a sign to the village of Great Dunmow, in Essex. I said aloud, ‘Oh, yes. Home of the Dunmow Flitch.’ They had not heard of it, yet for centuries a married man could go to that village on a Whit Monday and claim the prize of a flitch (or side) of bacon if he could swear that he and his wife had not quarrelled, even once, during the past year. And that he had never wished he was a bachelor again. Back in the late fifties and early sixties the Flitch ceremony used to be televised, for heaven’s sake. Not long after this I did a book-signing on the south coast, when I took the opportunity to ask practically every person in the queue to say the magpie rhyme (I was doing research for Carpe Jugulum). Every single one of them recited, with greater or lesser accuracy, the version of the rhyme that used to herald the beginning of the 1960s and 70s children’s TV programme Magpie – ‘One for sorrow, two for joy’. It wasn’t a bad rhyme, but like some cuckoo in the nest it was forcing out all the other versions that had existed around the country (some of which will appear in a later chapter). Then a distinguished-looking lady was in front of me with a book, and I asked her, with some inexpressible hope in my heart, how many versions of the magpie rhyme she knew. After a moment’s thought, she said ‘about nineteen’. And that was how I met Jacqueline Simpson, who has been my friend and occasional consultant on matters of folklore, and once got me along to talk to the British Folklore Society, where I probably upset a few people by saying that I think of folklore in much the same way a carpenter thinks about trees. Some of the things in this book may well be familiar, and you will say ‘but everybody knows this’. But the Discworld series, which on many occasions borrows from folklore and mythology, twisting and tangling it on the way, must be the most annotated series of modern books in existence. And one thing I have learned is this: not many people know the things which everyone knows. But there are some things we shouldn’t forget, and mostly they add up to where we came from and how we got here and the stories we told ourselves on the way. But folklore isn’t only about the past. It grows, flowers and seeds every day, because of our innate desire to control our world by means of satisfying narratives. I used to live a short distance away from a standing stone which, at full moon and/or Midsummer’s Eve, would dance around its field at night, incidentally leaving unguarded a pot of gold which, in theory, was available to anyone who dared to seize it and could run faster than a stone. I went to see it by daylight early on, but for some reason I never found the time to make the short nocturnal journey and check on its dancing abilities. I now realize this was out of fear: I feared that, like so many stones I have met, it would fail to dance. There was a small part of me that wanted the world to be a place where, despite planning officers and EU directives and policemen, a stone might dance. And somewhere there, I think, is the instinct for folklore. There should be a place where a stone dances. For those who feel the same way we have included a short reading list, in theory for those readers who would like to know more, but also because people who love books always want to recommend them to other people at the least excuse. Introduction by Jacqueline Simpson Ah yes, I remember it well, that book-signing on the south coast! A misty, moisty November evening in 1997, a long queue inching its way towards a very impressive black hat, the eager voice demanding, ‘Tell me everything you know about magpies!’ A little ahead of me in the queue, one woman had been explaining to all and sundry as we waited that it was for her nephew, not herself, that she wanted a signed copy of Jingo. She herself never, ever read novels of any kind, let alone fantasy fiction. ‘I only want facts. What’s the point of reading about things that aren’t real? As for a world flying through space on a turtle …’ Her voice died out in a splutter of indignation, and the combined arguments of a dozen Discworld readers couldn’t budge her one inch. I was not surprised to learn what her job was; she was an accountant – which is to say, very nearly an Auditor of Reality. Give her a small grey robe with a cowl, and she would find a perfect niche on the Disc. The truth of the matter is, the Disc is the Earth, but with an extra dimension of reality. On the Discworld, things that on Earth are creatures of the imagination (but sometimes quite powerful, even so) are alive and, in some cases, kicking. Sometimes we recognize them at once (is there anyone who doesn’t know a dragon when they meet one?). Sometimes we simply feel that something is deeply familiar and completely right, but we have no idea why. Hours, days or weeks later, we may find the key, when the rich soil that accumulates at the back of the mind suddenly yields the fruit of memory. Then we realize that the key to the familiarity lies in folklore. Whatever is folklore on Earth finds its mirror in the reality of the Disc. Of course it’s perfectly natural that Mrs Gogol’s house moves about on four large duck feet, because Baba Yaga’s hut spins around on chicken legs in the forests of Russia; of course the Nac Mac Feegle are pictsies, not pixies, because of stories the Scots told about Picts; of course there’s an ancient king sleeping in a cavern deep under a mountain in Lancre, because that’s what King Arthur does in England and Scotland, and the Emperor Barbarossa in Germany. We’ve known about such things for ages, even if we called them fairy tales, myths, and folklore; now that we’re on the Disc, they are real, and we feel quite at home. Well, then, what is the ‘folklore’ of Earth, and more specifically of British tradition? It’s the sum total of all those things people know without ever having been officially taught about them, all those stories and images which drift around with no apparent source, all those funny little customs people follow simply because everyone has always done them (and, usually, it’s fun). If we were bookish children, we may remember precisely when we first discovered some of them. Terry still has the copy of Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable which he bought second-hand when he was twelve years old, and read from end to end (it cost him 10/6 – OK, OK, 50p, about three weeks’ pocket money). I remember the hot summer day I spent sitting against a haystack, aged thirteen, and embarking for the first time on the genuine full-length tales of King Arthur and his knights, as written by Sir Thomas Malory in the 1460s, funny spellings and weird words included. But most people, most of the time, just grow up having always known how and when to touch wood or cross their fingers, and what happens when a princess kisses a frog or a boy pulls a sword from a stone. They take for granted that there will be pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, pumpkins and scary costumes at Halloween, bonfires on Guy Fawkes Night, mince pies at Christmas. (Non-British readers, please adjust to fit your own traditional foods and calendars.) So who are the ‘folk’ who have all this ‘lore’? The answer is, ‘any of us’. It’s a mistake to think that the only folklore worthy of the name is what you get by finding the oldest crone in the dirtiest cottage in the poorest village in the remotest mountain valley, and cross-examining her on her deathbed. Every group and sub-group in society has its jokes, its beliefs, its tales and traditions. At this very moment, there are children in the playground giggling over the latest naughty joke (it may or may not be one their great-grandparents knew too); young mothers who take for granted that little girls must wear pink; college students teaching each other the equivalent of Nanny Ogg’s ‘Hedgehog Song’. And because where there is fun there is also money to be made, there’s a large-scale trade in birthday cards, Easter eggs, Mother’s Day cards, Halloween masks and so forth, which no parent dares ignore. And any town or pub or castle which wants to attract tourists will go looking for colourful local legends and customs to exploit. The days are long gone when scholars insisted that ‘real folklore’ must always be something passed on by word of mouth, not in print. This was never very realistic, at any rate in literate societies, where generations of poets and novelists and dramatists have drawn material from myth and folk tale, twisted and embroidered it, and then handed it on to future readers. And then, maybe, the readers become tellers in their turn, and hand it on again. The Tree of Folklore has no objection whatever to creative carpenters. Stories and beliefs grow and multiply in all the media available, old and new; they are forever feeding on, and then feeding back into, the rich soup of tradition. Take vampires, for instance. How much of ‘what everybody knows who knows anything about vampires’ comes from the basic five-hundred-year-old East European folklore, and how much from novels, films, comics, TV? Specialists can work it out, but does it really matter? Here and now, in the twenty-first century, all vampire lore has blended together into a luscious soup. Folklore may look as if it never changes, but if you keep a watchful eye on it, you will notice some things dying out and others springing up. In Britain nowadays, people do not wear mourning for months on end after a death in the family, but because grief needs an outlet a new custom has appeared out of nowhere and is spreading fast – thirty years ago nobody built roadside memorials of flowers and mementoes at the site of tragic accidents, but now this is felt to be right and proper. Customs also travel from one country to another much faster and more frequently than they once did; since the 1980s Britain has learned from America that if you tie a yellow ribbon to a tree or a fence, this means you’re praying for the safety of some prisoner or kidnap victim who is in the news. In fact, variously coloured ribbons and plastic wrist-bands in support of good causes are popping up all over the place now, in the way that lapel badges used to do, and everyone understands what each one means. On the Discworld, folklore is much more stable. New symbols sometimes arise – the black ribbon recently adopted by reformed vampires, for instance (its Earthly parallel was the blue ribbon of Victorian teetotallers), and the commemorative spray of lilac which Vimes and some others in Ankh-Morpork wear on one day of the year, as explained in Night Watch – but nothing ever seems to be discarded and forgotten. This makes the Discworld a wonderful place in which to rediscover the solidity, the depth which tradition brings to a society, and learn to cherish it. So when Terry invited me to join him in exploring this incredibly rich network of links, I had only one misgiving. Is it wise to explain so much? Might it not be best to let readers enjoy the glimpses and hints and clues half understood, and gradually make their own discoveries? But as Terry has said elsewhere, a conjurer is more entertaining than a wizard because he entertains you twice: once with the trick, and once with the trickery. So now, there’s a drum-roll, the curtains part, and you can watch how the conjurer works … Chapter 1 THE COSMOS: GODS, DEMONS and THINGS VERY VAST IS THE EXPANDING rubber sheet of the space-time continuum. Should we not call it infinite? No, as a matter of fact, we should not, not unless we want to get into an interminable argument with both physicists and philosophers – the kind of argument where people steeple their fingers and say, very slowly, ‘We-ell, it all depends on what you mean by “infinite”.’ And go on saying it, with variations, till the beer runs out. If you are very unlucky, they will explain how infinities come in different sizes. What we can fairly safely say is that there are clumps of matter on that rubber sheet, moving about and organizing themselves into complicated systems. Billions of them. Two of these deserve our close attention. One consists of a rather lumpy and intensely hot spherical core of iron and rock, much of it in a molten state, held together by its own pressure, and wrapped in a thin solid crust. It is whirled through space by the force of gravity. This is the Earth, which is round-like-a-ball. The other is round-like-a-plate, and is moved at a more sedate pace by a team of elephants and a turtle. This is the Discworld. What they have in common is that each carries through the cosmos a cargo of conscious, imaginative – we could even say, charitably, intelligent – living species. Over the many centuries of their existence, these species have generated an accumulation of thoughts, information, emotions, beliefs and imaginings which envelops their world like a mental atmosphere, a noosphere. Within this noosphere patterns have formed, driven by the irresistible force of narrativium, the narrative imperative, the power of story. Some scholars call the patterns motifs, others topoi, others memes. The point is, they’re there, everyone knows them, and they go on and on. More remarkably, some of the strongest can replicate themselves and go drifting off across the multiverse as particles of inspiration, which leads to some truly amazing similarities between the Earth and Discworld. THE ELEPHANTS AND THE TURTLE The absolutely central, incontrovertible fact about the Discworld is that it is a disc. At least, it’s incontrovertible unless you adhere to the Omnian religion, in which case you must controvert it like billy-o. This disc rests upon four gigantic elephants (named Berilia, Tubul, Great T’Phon and Jerakeen), whose bones are living iron, and whose nerves are living gold. These elephants themselves stand upon the shell of the Great A’Tuin, a ten-thousand-mile-long star turtle, which is swimming through space in a purposeful manner. What this purpose may be, is unknown. A child once asked, ‘Why does the Turtle swim?’ A wise man replied, ‘Child, there is no Why. IT … IS … SO.’ And that could be said of many things. On Earth ‘everyone knows’ that people used to believe that their planet was also flat, if they thought about it at all. In fact for several thousand years a growing number of educated people have shared the knowledge that it is a globe. Generally speaking it was wisest not to shout about it in the street, though, because of the unrest this could cause. No doubt scholars in the ancient Hindu India partook of this knowledge, but since truth comes in many forms, the age-old epic poems of India declare the world to be a disc. Further details of Hindu cosmology vary. According to one myth, there are four (or eight) great elephants named the diggaja or digaja, ‘elephants of the directions’, guarding the four (or eight) compass points of this disc, with a type of god called a lokapala riding on the back of each one. But the oldest texts do not claim that they carry the world. According to another myth, however, the world rests on the back of a single elephant, Maha-Padma, and he is standing on a tortoise named Chukwa. Finally, it is said in yet another myth that the god Vishnu once took on the form of a vast tortoise or turtle (krma), so huge that Mount Meru, the sacred central mountain of the world, could rest on his back and be used as a stick to churn the ocean. At some stage, though nobody knows just when, these insights began to blend, with the result that some (but not all) Hindu mythographers now say the world is a disc supported by four elephants supported by a turtle. Variations of the myth spread out from India to other areas of the globe.1 One that has proved particularly popular involves an infinite regression of turtles. It is said that an arrogant Englishman once mocked a Hindu by asking what the turtle stood on; untroubled, the Hindu calmly replied, ‘Ah, Sahib, after that it’s turtles all the way down.’2 Another variation, briefly mentioned in the film A Thief of Baghdad, involves different creatures but is of value because it adds one vital factor, that of movement. It tells how the world rests on seven pillars, carried on the shoulders of a huge genie, who stands on an eagle, which perches on a bull, which stands on a fish – and this fish swims through the seas of eternity. Chinese mythology also knows of an immense cosmic turtle, but with a difference. According to the Chinese, our world is not balanced upon the creature’s back (with or without elephants), but is sloshing about inside it. Its plastron contains the oceans upon which all our continents are floating, and when we look up at the dome of the night sky we are seeing the inside of its vast carapace, studded with innumerable stars. Clearly, fragments of information have drifted through the multiverse and taken root here and there. But the full and glorious Truth is known only on the Discworld. The Turtle Moves! And beyond that Truth lies an even deeper mystery, one hinted at in the legends of the dwarfs – the legend of the Fifth Elephant. For the dwarfs of Uberwald say there was once a fifth elephant supporting the Disc, but it crashed: They say that the fifth elephant came screaming and trumpeting through the atmosphere of the young world all those years ago and landed hard enough to split continents and raise mountains. [The Fifth Elephant] Nobody actually saw or heard this, but the dwarfs say that the vast deposits of iron ore, gold and fat under their mountains are all that remains of the Fifth Elephant. Also that the crash buried thousands of acres of prehistoric sugar cane, creating a mass of dense crystalline sugar which can now be mined. These raw materials form the basis for a flourishing trade in confectionery and in very fine-quality candles, soaps and lamp-oils. The iron, the gold and the fat undoubtedly exist. Yet the legend itself poses great problems. If the Four Elephants mark the four quarters, where did the Fifth stand? Centrally, to form the pattern known as a quincunx? If it slipped and fell from the Turtle’s back, how could it strike the Disc – did it fall upwards? And if so, wouldn’t it strike the underside of the Disc rather than crashing down through the atmosphere? Did it perhaps briefly go into orbit? Dwarfs are a secretive race, so we are unlikely ever to learn the truth of this. Some philosophers in Ephebe, hearing the tale, have concluded that the Fifth Elephant is not a gross material being subject to normal physical laws, but the pure, subtle, ethereal Quintessence of Cosmic Pachydermacy. It is nowhere to be seen because it is present everywhere. Without it, the whole Universe of the Discworld would cease to exist. By a remarkable coincidence, this is exactly how the Earth philosophers of Ancient Greece described their hypothetical Fifth Element – the invisible, impalpable, ethereal Quintessence which provides the essential counterbalance to the four material elements of Earth, Air, Fire and Water, the five together making up their universe. Or it may just be a legend. Legends don’t have to make sense. They just have to be beautiful. Or at least interesting. THE GODS At the last count, the number of major gods known to research theologians on the Discworld was 3,000, and rising. The potential number is unlimited, since at any moment a new one may be called into existence by the mere fact that it has occurred to a human being (or to a member of any other sentient species) to believe he, she or it exists, and to feel an urge to worship him, her or it. The greater the number of devotees, rituals, shrines, temples, sacrifices, and sacred books which develop from this initial urge, the greater the status of the deity. Conversely, of course, since belief is the life-force and nourishment of gods, in the course of time particular gods can and do lose power as the number of their believers drops. Rarely, however, do they dwindle into total insignificance, and any good dramatic miracle quickly restores them to their previous status, as was proved by the events narrated in Small Gods. Two of them, Fate and Luck (The Lady), are almost certainly immune to change – they don’t have temples, but there can hardly be anybody, anywhere in the multiverse, who does not believe in them. In addition, dwarfs have formulated the notion of a Creator quite distinct from any individual gods, whom they call Tak; we shall have more to say on this in the next chapter. Discworld people vary considerably in their attitude to the gods. Certain groups, notably witches, wizards, policemen and dwarfs, ignore them. Not that anybody would actually deny that they exist – it is known that they are quick with a thunderbolt if they detect actual atheism – but it is perfectly possible to get on with one’s life without thinking about them. Similarly, the citizens of Ephebe do not pay very much attention to their numerous divinities. On the other hand, the land of Djelibeybi is swarming with local gods, in whose honour devoted priests carry out an endless round of sacred rituals. In Omnia and Borogravia, every aspect of life is dominated by the very demanding cult of a single god, Om and Nuggan respectively. As for Ankh-Morpork, it is rather a paradox. Street after street has a temple in it, enough of them to suit every ethnic group, yet nobody could call it a pious city, exactly. The citizens seem willing to worship any god at all, provided he or she is good for trade. In that city, we learn (in Making Money), there is even a god-of-the-month club. And a deity currently in the ascendant is Anoia, goddess of Things That Get Stuck in Drawers. That’s life in the big city for you. People will take a chance on heaven, but they would like to get their hands on the corkscrew right now, amen. The major gods, loosely organized into a rather grumpy pantheon, have chosen to make their home on the peak of a truly remarkable mountain, Cori Celesti – a spire of rock and ice, ten miles high, rising above the clouds at the very centre and hub of the Disc. The home itself is of course a vast marble palace, a pile of pillars, pilasters, pinnacles, pyramids, parapets, peristyles, porticos, porches, portals and pavilions, which they have decided to call Dunmanifestin. Gods are not noted for good taste or a sense of the ridiculous, nor indeed, in most cases, for intelligence. If the gods have the ability to look into other dimensions, then they will see some remarkable resemblances to themselves in the cosmic soap operas of Earth. One thing they have apparently taken notice of is fashions in divine accessories and lifestyles – thunderbolts, goat’s feet, a jackal’s head, and so on – whatever. If Zeus and his gang have a Mount Olympus, and Vishnu and his gang have a Mount Meru, they get themselves their Cori Celesti, and it’s higher than the other two put together. This passion for keeping up with the Zeuses means that anyone with a working knowledge of inter-dimensional mythology who drops in at Dunmanifestin will feel quite at home there. The Disc gods will have noticed, too, that all pantheons pass their time in banqueting, and that many also like playing board games. For example, one of the first things the Norse gods did when they had finished creating the cosmos was to settle down for a happy session of hnefatafl, played with pieces made of pure gold. As hnefi is ‘fist’ and tafl is ‘table’ or ‘board’, the name means roughly ‘The Punch-up Board-Game’; it is a bit like draughts but much more like the Discworld game of Thud. It is thought that the run of play determines the destinies of men, gods, giants and the world itself. Apparently the game will be disrupted and the pieces scattered when gods and monsters fight at Ragnarok, the War at the End of the World, also known as the Doom of the Gods and the Twilight of the Gods. Afterwards, according to the Old Icelandic prophetic poem Völuspá, a new world will arise and the surviving younger generation of gods will restore both the cosmic order and the game which expressed it: Then once again in the grass are found Draughtsmen all of gold, The wondrous draughtsmen the gods had owned In the earliest days of old. On Earth, however, not everyone relishes the idea of being a pawn in a game played by gods. The twelfth-century Persian poet Omar Khayyám made a resigned but gloomy comment on life in his Rubâíyát: ’Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays: Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays, And one by one back in the Closet lays. The gods of the Discworld lack the patience and imagination to play chess, draughts, hnefatafl, or even chequers; their idea of amusement is a form of Snakes and Ladders (played with greased rungs), accompanied by heavy betting and a good deal of bluffing and cheating, which brings it nearer to poker. The currency staked is the souls of men. The gaming board is a finely carved map of the Disc, overprinted with squares. Occasionally, the playing pieces represent monsters; more often, they are beautifully detailed models of those human beings who have foolishly done something to get themselves noticed. It is said that these unfortunate mortals sometimes faintly hear, as they hasten to their doom, the rattle of dice in the celestial (skull-shaped) shaker. This is one of the reasons it’s wise to steer clear of the gods, as the wizard Rincewind knows: ‘I don’t like the idea of going anywhere near the gods. We’re like toys to them, you know. And they don’t realize how easily the arms and legs come off.’ [The Last Hero] Or maybe (and even Rincewind in his darkest moments didn’t think of this) they do realize, and find it funny. That at any rate is what Will Shakespeare thought when he wrote King Lear, in one of his darkest moments: As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport. The gods have an age-old feud with the Ice Giants, a species of super-troll the size of large houses, craggy and faceted, and composed entirely of ice which glints green and blue in the light – apart from their small, deep-sunken, coal-black eyes. Just as Zeus and the Olympians defeated the gigantic Titans and imprisoned them inside volcanoes such as Etna (where they still wriggle about, causing eruptions and earthquakes), so Blind Io and the other Discworld gods defeated the Ice Giants and imprisoned them under the eternal ice at the Hub. There is, however, a prophecy. A very Norse-sounding prophecy, a prophecy of End Time doom: At the end of the world they’ll break free at last, and ride out on their dreadful glaciers and regain their ancient domination, crushing out the flames of civilization until the world lies naked and frozen under the terrible cold stars until Time itself freezes over. Or something like that, apparently. [Sourcery] Whether it comes with ice ages, global warming, a nasty bang or a little whimper, the end of a world is never much fun. Blind Io Io is the chief of the gods. He is elderly, white-haired and white-bearded, dressed in a toga and wearing a white blindfold which conceals the blank skin where his eyes should be. Despite this, and despite his name, he sees everything that is going on, since in fact he has a number of detached eyes (several dozen of them) which hover around him and keep a sharp look-out in all directions. His throne too is encrusted with eyes. He is the Supreme Thunderer, having absorbed every other thunder-god on the Disc into himself. However, he keeps a stock of seventy hammers, double-headed axes, and thunderbolts, each of a different design, to blend in with local expectations wherever he may appear. This avoids unnecessary distress to worshippers. At one time he employed a pair of ravens to fly hither and yon and keep him informed of everything going on in the world. In another universe Odin, chief of the Norse gods, had had exactly the same idea; his two ravens were named Memory and Thought. From the god’s point of view, it’s a good plan, efficient and energy-saving. From the ravens’ point of view, regrettably, Io’s free-floating eyeballs were altogether too much of a temptation (Odin’s one eye is firmly fixed in his head, so in his case the problem did not arise) and after some embarrassing scenes Io’s ravens had to be dismissed.3 Earth is well stocked with thunder-gods, including Zeus, Jupiter, Thor, Perkun, Indra and Jehovah. Usually, a thunder-god is also the ruler of his particular pantheon, but Thor is an exception, taking second place to Odin (god of war, magic, death and poetry). Blind Io’s insistence on being the Disc’s only Thunderer is an example of how Discworld gods love to outdo those of Earth in displays of status. It’s the same with his lavish use of detached eyeballs, whereas on the Earth even the mightiest deities are satisfied with only one. These are mostly to be found in Ancient Egypt, where the Eye of a major god such as Ra, Atum, or Horus embodied the concentration of his divine power and could be sent out to act on his behalf. The separated Eye, called the wedjat, was often shown in religious art, and worn as an amulet. It was sometimes identified with the sun or the moon, and sometimes personified as itself a goddess. That’s something Io has not yet thought of. Dagon A very ancient, mysterious and probably unpleasant god, believed to have been once worshipped on the mud-flats where the city of Ankh-Morpork was later built. At least, something happened not so long ago when the late Mr Hong opened a takeaway fish bar on the site of an old temple in Dagon Street, at the time of the full moon – or, some say, of a lunar eclipse. Everybody has heard about it, in general terms, but nobody says just what it was … Traditions of the Earth are fuller. It appears that Dagon was first worshipped there some four thousand years ago by Philistines and Phoenicians in the Middle East; there were temples to him in Gaza and other coastal towns. According to the Bible (1 Samuel 5), his statue stood in a mighty temple at Ashdod, but when the captured Jewish Ark was brought into this temple the statue crashed to the ground and its head and hands broke off, leaving only a stump on the threshold. There is argument among scholars as to what he looked like, and what it was he was god of. The older generation thought his name came from a word for ‘fish’ and that he must have been the god of fishes, shaped like a merman, human above the waist and fishy below. Most poets and occultists agree. More recent scholars say no, the name comes from a word for ‘corn’, and he was a god of farming (no fish tail required). The matter could easily be settled if one could find an old temple of his and set up a bakery in one corner and a fish-and-chip shop in the other, and see what happened. One writer who had no doubts at all on the matter was the American H. P. Lovecraft, whose eerily receptive mind picked up many strange influences from the worlds of gods and demons, and indeed from the dreaded Dungeon Dimensions. In 1917 he published a story, ‘Dagon’, in which a shipwrecked man reaches an unknown land of mud and rocks, newly risen from the ocean floor. There are weird buildings there, with repulsive carvings. Then he sees, emerging from a deep abyss, a vast and loathsome monster with scaly arms, webbed hands and feet, shockingly wide and flabby lips, and bulging, glassy eyes. Though he escapes, he remains haunted by the thought of huge nameless things crawling and floundering at the bottom of the ocean until the day when they will come to destroy mankind: Once I sought out a celebrated ethnologist, and amused him with peculiar questions regarding the ancient Philistine legend of Dagon the Fish-god; but soon perceiving that he was hopelessly conventional, I did not press my enquiries. This may well be significant, since it is strongly suspected on the Discworld that Dagon had some connection with the sunken land of Leshp, which occasionally rises to the surface of the Circle Sea, as described in Jingo. On Leshp, there are fragments of buildings with an uncomfortably non-human look about them, a bodeful atmosphere, and plenty of pretty mosaics showing squid and octopuses. All in all, it seems probable that Dagon is actually one of the Things from the Dungeon Dimensions still lurking on the Disc, like Bel-Shamharoth (see below). Fate This, possibly, is the god most feared and hated by men. He is proverbially stern and implacable. Some Earthbound poets have claimed that he is blind, but this is far from true; anyone who looks into his dark and bottomless eyes will see that they are holes opening on to the blackness of infinite night. He enjoys gambling and chess, largely because when he plays, the roll of the dice is always fixed and there are always two queens on his side of the board – unless, of course, his eternal rival the Lady has a hand in the game, in which case there is a million-to-one chance that somebody might cheat Fate. In the mythologies of the Earth, Fate is sometimes personified as three old women, the Fates – three because triplicity symbolizes power. More often, however, he remains an abstract figure. The gods of Djelibeybi In the river kingdom of Djelibeybi, the national religion has been accreting and fermenting and bubbling away for seven thousand years, during which time nobody ever threw away a god, in case he might come in useful one day. As a result, the gods are far too numerous to list. One might start by mentioning Scrab the Pusher of the Ball of the Sun, Thrrp the Charioteer of the Sun, Jeht the Boatman of the Solar Orb, Vut the Dog-Headed God of Evening, Bunu the Goat-Headed God of Goats, Ket the Ibis-Headed God of Justice, Hat the Vulture-Headed God of Unexpected Guests, Bast the Cat-Headed Goddess of Things Left on the Doorstep or under the Bed … From which, two things are already obvious: they just love fooling around with funny faces, and most of them reckon they can do the top job. They can also be quarrelsome: There was a monstrous splash out in the river. Tzut, the Snake-Headed God of the Upper Djel, surfaced and regarded the assembled priesthood solemnly. Then Fhez, the Crocodile-Headed God of the Lower Djel, erupted beside him and made a spirited attempt at biting his head off. The two submerged in a column of spray and a minor tidal wave. [Pyramids] There are remarkably close and no doubt wholly coincidental similarities here to the pantheon of Ancient Egypt, where many of the deities have the heads of animals or birds, and where it was perfectly possible for several of them to be credited with the same important function. Thus, Amun, Aten, Atum, Ptah, and Ra were each said to have been the creator of the world, and all except Ptah were also sun gods. This does not seem to have caused any quarrels, either among the gods themselves or among their priests. In Egypt, as in Djelibeybi, priests, very much in the way of advanced physicists, took for granted that mutually incompatible statements could still both be true, and that in any case the really important thing was to carry out rituals correctly. The kings of Djelibeybi, also called pharaohs, are regarded as gods even while still alive; the divine part of their souls comes from the sun in the form of a bird – in the case of Teppicymon XXVII, a seagull. Kings have the power (and duty) to make the sun rise every morning, and to make the river Djel flood the land in due season; they do this by carrying out daily rituals as tradition requires. There may be minor supernatural manifestations too – rivers flowing more strongly as a pharaoh passes by, grass and corn springing up in his footsteps, and so on. On the Earth, the pharaohs of Egypt had similar powers and responsibilities. It has to be said that the Egyptian pantheon fits snugly into the Discworld way of thinking with barely more than a few changes of name. At one point the author of Pyramids declared: ‘I bought half a shelf of books on Ancient Egypt, and after a while I decided to make things up, because when you got down to details the real thing was just too weird.’ Herne the Hunted Wherever humans go in for hunting, because they need the meat, or just because it’s such good fun, they tend to create a god (or goddess) of the hunt. They pray, and make offerings. They believe the god (or goddess) will provide a good fat deer or buffalo or wild boar for them, and ensure that they don’t break their necks as they gallop after the deer, or shoot one another by accident, or get gored by the boar. But it never occurs to them that the prey could be praying too, though probably not to the same deity. On the Discworld, where divinities are called into existence by the very fact that someone hopes and believes that they exist, this often urgent prayer is catered for. There, in the mountains and forests of Lancre, lives Herne the Hunted, who is a god of the chase, though not in the usual sense: Herne was the god of the chased and the hunted and all small animals whose ultimate destiny is to be an abrupt damp squeak. He was about three feet high, with rabbit ears and very small horns. But he did have an extremely good turn of speed. [Lords and Ladies] His role as a deity is to hear the occult voice of the prey. He is a good listener, but his success rate at answering prayers is not high. His worshippers, unfortunately, tend to die shortly after calling upon his name. How he got his name is an interesting example of interaction between one universe and another. At any one time there are millions of particles of inspiration and information pulsating through the multiverse, pouring out from the minds of various sentient species. One of the most powerful sources was on Earth, in the creative mind of a human being named William Shakespeare. In the world of Shakespeare’s imagination – to be precise, in his play The Merry Wives of Windsor, written in 1597 – there is a Herne the Hunter. The two heroines of the play decide to make a fool of a man who is pestering them by persuading him to disguise himself as a ghost and meet them at midnight under an oak tree in Windsor Park. Describing this ghost, one says: There is an old tale goes, that Herne the hunter, Sometime a keeper here in Windsor Forest, Doth all the winter time, at still midnight, Walk round about an oak, with great ragg’d horns; And there he blasts the trees, bewitches cattle, And makes the cows yield blood, and shakes a chain In a most hideous and dreadful manner. According to another version of the play, some mothers used Herne as a bogeyman to frighten children: Oft have you heard since Herne the hunter dyed, That women, to affright their little children, Say that he walkes in shape of a great stagge. Shakespeare tells us nothing more about Herne’s life or death, but about two hundred years later, in 1792, a writer called Samuel Ireland says he had heard say that Herne was a gamekeeper who had turned to crime, and who hanged himself on the oak, fearing he was about to lose his job. This fits the traditional belief that suicides haunt the scene of their death. The rattling chain is also standard equipment for a ghost, but the stag’s antlers are not. Perhaps Shakespeare felt they matched the forest setting. Or perhaps he just wanted to get a laugh; Elizabethan audiences thought horns side-splittingly funny, even better than custard pies, and this is a comedy after all. To Shakespeare, Herne was simply an earthbound ghost, for ever walking round and round one particular tree, in the same way as the ghostly kings of Lancre must never move far from the stone walls of their castle. But the job-description ‘hunter’ caught the eye of Jacob Grimm, a German expert on mythology in the early nineteenth century, and started up a whole new train of thought. It reminded him of the Wild Hunt – a horde of phantom riders who, according to European folklore, gallop across the night sky during midwinter storms. Their leader is sometimes said to be a lost soul who is doomed to hunt for ever, sometimes the Devil pursuing the souls of sinners, occasionally a god hunting forest elves. Maybe, said Grimm, Herne had once been a Wild Huntsman, not a common-or-garden gamekeeper’s ghost. This is Grimm’s theory, not Will Shakespeare’s. But people liked the idea, and so on the Earth Herne the Hunter, the stag-headed god of hunting, was born. He has enjoyed a brilliant career, thanks to those fascinating antlers. In the 1930s, people started wondering if he could be connected with various old Celtic gods who had horns or antlers on their heads, especially a Gaulish one to whom sailors raised an altar in Paris early in the first century AD, calling him Cernunnos, ‘Horned One’ (or possibly ‘Old Horny’). Others thought he might even have as his remote ancestor a prehistoric man painted on the wall of a French cave, wearing a skin and antlers. By now, there are many, many people ready to swear that Herne is an age-old god, the lord of wild nature. But there is the truth and, then again, there is The Truth, in the face of which truth can only shrug and grin. According to a popular 1980s British TV series, Robin Hood used to meet a horned man in the forest, and this was none other than Herne. Well, maybe so – provided Robin had an efficient time machine to whisk him forward two or three centuries to Elizabethan times, or backwards to the first century AD to meet up with Cernunnos. And so, while Will Shakespeare lies giggling in his grave, the story goes drifting off across the dimensions, twisting itself into other shapes, and creating Herne the Hunted. Stories and folklore always tangle, and never more than on Discworld. Hoki the Jokester Hoki is a localized nature-god, only to be found in the deep forests of the Ramtops. Sometimes he manifests himself as an oak-tree, sometimes as half a man and half a goat, and pretty well always as a bloody nuisance. He plays the flute, very badly. Hoki has a typically mix-and-don’t-match approach to the business of filching attributes and character traits from the gods of another universe. He admired and copied the shaggy goat-legs and the pipes of Pan, a cheerful, sexy little nature-god living in Arcadia in Ancient Greece. His name, however, he took from that of the Norse Loki, a trickster and trouble-maker, whose most infamous deed was a murder-by-proxy: he caused the death of the popular and handsome young Baldur by getting a blind god to throw a twig of mistletoe at him, supposedly as a joke. Hoki must have got to hear about this, since it is said that he was thrown out of Dunmanifestin for playing ‘the old exploding mistletoe trick’ on Blind Io. The oak-tree manifestation is something Hoki picked up more recently. In some countries of the Earth over the past fifty or sixty years there has been a revival of paganism, and sexy male nature-gods are once again in fashion, including a Green Man who manifests himself as a face sprouting leaves, peering through leaves, or entirely made up of leaves. Sometimes, they are oak leaves. Observing this, Hoki decided to go one better and be the whole tree. The Lady Though everyone believes in her and longs to win her favour, nobody ever calls her by her true name, or tries to summon her, for this would make her vanish. Her eyes are pure green, from edge to edge, and green is her favourite colour. Her realm is that of the throw of the dice, of uncertainty and chance, especially the million-to-one chance. She thwarts the rigid rules of Fate. And on the Earth too, that’s exactly how things are. Except as regards the colour green. That information has not seeped through into our world, where many people regard green as unl— er, quite the opposite. Nuggan Nuggan, the god of Borogravia (and also of paperclips, desk stationery sets, and unnecessary paperwork), is small and podgy, and has the sourest face one could wish never to see, with a fussy little moustache. He has revealed himself unto his faithful people via the holy Book of Nuggan, which – unlike other holy writs – is published in a ring binder, since it is permanently incomplete, especially as regards the List of Abominations. Updates appear regularly as an appendix. At the last count, the things that are Abominations in the eyes of Nuggan included garlic, chocolate, certain mushrooms, dwarfs, cats, babies, shirts with six buttons, cross-dressing, jigsaws, and the colour blue. Nuggan’s temper being notoriously tetchy, Borogravians mostly pray to their ruler, the Duchess Annagovia, whom they call Little Mother, and whose icon is displayed in every house. She herself is never seen, having shut herself away in a castle for years, in mourning for her husband who was gored by a wild boar when hunting, they say. (Another instance of trans-dimensional parallels, since on the Earth Adonis, a human lover of the Greek goddess Aphrodite, met his death in just the same way.) She may possibly be dead. She is (or was) human, of course, yet somehow rather more, as the Ankh-Morpork consul to Zlobenia explained to Commander Vimes: ‘The royal family in Borogravia have always had a quasi-religious status, you see. They’re the head of the church, and the peasants, at least, pray to them in the hope that they’ll put in a good word with Nuggan. They’re like … living saints. Celestial intermediaries. To be honest, that’s how these countries work in any case. If you want something done, you have to know the right people. And I suppose it’s easier to pray to someone in a picture than to a god you can’t see.’ [Monstrous Regiment] According to Commander Vimes, Nuggan has dwindled away to a mere voice, and it is time for the Borogravians to find themselves a new god. The Duchess herself agrees; speaking through her most fervent devotee, she declares: Fight Nuggan, for he is nothing now, nothing but the poisonous echo of your ignorance and pettiness and malicious stupidity. Find yourselves a worthier god. And let … me … go! All those prayers, all those entreaties … to me! Too many hands clasped, that could more gainfully answer your prayers by effort and resolve! A very unusual message for a divinity, or a semi-divinity, to give unto the faithful, in any universe, but it might bear repeating. Offler the Crocodile Offler is a very old god, who first arose from steamy swamps in the hot dark land of Klatch, and finds worshippers anywhere where there is a large river and a warm climate, including Djelibeybi and Ankh-Morpork. He is sometimes known as ‘Offler of the Bird-Haunted Mouth’, because of the flock of brave and holy birds which attend upon him, pecking out those little shreds of meat which are such a nuisance when they get stuck between your fangs. Apart from his crocodile head, he is of normal human shape, though he has occasionally manifested himself with six arms instead of two. He lisps, because of the fangs. His counterpart on the Earth is the Egyptian Sobek, son of the primeval waters, whose name means ‘the Raging One’ and who manifested himself either as an entire crocodile wearing a crown, or as a man with a crocodile head. He lived in the marshes by the Nile, and was ardently worshipped by prudent river fishermen. Nile crocodiles are notoriously savage. Om The Great God Om is the sole god of the land of Omnia, his devotees having zealously exterminated everybody who worshipped any others. By nature he is very liable to outbursts of Wrath, expressed through cursing, trampling of infidels, and smiting with lightning. According to the Omnian priests, he spoke – indeed, he spake – to a series of chosen prophets, dictating to them a vast number of Laws, Precepts and Prohibitions which are enshrined in numerous sacred writings, not to mention some Codicils written on slabs of lead ten feet tall. Sometimes, it is said, Om did his spaking from out of a pillar of flame. Sometimes the chosen prophet sprouted glowing horns, for Holy Horns are Om’s symbol. The priests also claim that Om made the world, and revealed to them that it is not a disc carried by a turtle, but a perfectly smooth ball moving in a perfect circle round the sun, which is another perfectly smooth ball; this has become a vital dogma in the Omnian Church. Actually, Om now denies that he ever said this, or that he made the world – and if he had, he says, he wouldn’t have made it as a ball. Silly idea, a ball. People would fall off. Come to that, Om has only very vague memories of having met any prophets, and doesn’t recognize the things he is supposed to have said to them. Om’s views on these matters are known because he spent three years or so in the world in the form of a tortoise. This was an embarrassing accident. He had meant to manifest himself briefly in some suitably impressive avatar – most likely, a bull – but what he got was a tortoise. Not a vast mountain-bearing tortoise such as the Hindu god Vishnu once chose, but a mere common-or-garden tortoise. And he found he was quite unable to get back to his own shape. This humiliating failure of god-power was due to the fact that hardly any Omnians had real, true, deep-down belief in Om. Possibly, only one. The rest thought they believed in him, but what they really believed in was the terrifying authority of the Omnian Church and its Quisition. As the philosopher Abraxas wrote: Around the Godde there forms a Shelle of prayers and Ceremonies and Buildings and Priestes and Authority, until at Last the Godde Dies. Ande this maye notte be noticed. [Small Gods] To make matters worse, Om-as-tortoise found his physical life in danger. Far too many people he met knew that ‘there’s good eating on one of those’. He was also being hunted by an eagle who had found out that if you carry off a tortoise in your talons and drop it on a rock from a great height, the result is a shattered shell and a rather fiddly meal. If, on the other hand, you drop it on somebody’s head, then you are recreating the Earth legend which claims that the Ancient Greek dramatist Aeschylus was killed when a flying eagle dropped a tortoise on his bald head, mistaking it for a rock. That eagles in some places have learned to drop tortoises in order to crack them open has been attested to by various sources, and our suspension of disbelief in a bird’s ability to target humans in the course of breaking its lunch was occasioned by a Daily Telegraph obituary of Brigadier John Mackenzie. In the Second World War he worked with partisans in the mountains of Greece, and ‘… on one occasion a brigade rifle meeting on a mountain was disrupted when a flock of vultures carrying various small tortoises in their talons decided to drop them on the mountainside to crack their shells. Two soldiers sustained fractured skulls from the tortoises and there were other injuries; the meeting was abandoned.’ Om has been affected by his spell as a humble tortoise. The Omnian Church has now disbanded its Quisition. Divine smitings have become noticeably rare. Om’s devotees grudgingly allow foreigners to worship their own deities without being massacred, and his missionaries simply afflict the infidel with hymns and excruciatingly boring tracts. Clearly, this is all made up and the story has nothing to do with any ‘Earthly’ deity. Valkyries Valkyries form a group of very specialized goddesses honoured by Barbarian Heroes; their name means ‘Choosers of the Slain’. They are found both on the Discworld and in the Nordic and Germanic myths of Earth, where they serve Odin the God of War (also known as Wotan or Woden). They became even better known through a nineteenth-century opera by the German composer Wagner. They are tall, powerfully built women, wearing chain mail and horned helmets, and riding magnificent airborne horses. Since Wagner’s time, a good singing voice is also a requirement for the job, for they ride to a rousing chorus of ‘Hi-jo-to! Ho! Hi-jo-to! Ho!’ The task of a Valkyrie is to hover over battlefields where her chosen Hero is fighting, bringing him good luck for as long as the God of War decrees. Then, when the fated time comes for the Hero to be killed, she swoops down and carries his soul to Odin’s Valhalla, ‘Hall of the Slain’ – or to its Discworld equivalent, the Halls of Blind Io – where he will enjoy a blissful afterlife of quaffing mead and feasting on roast boar. The Valkyries will be on hand to make sure the drinking horns are kept filled. And there is other fun to be had too, as the medieval Icelandic writer Snorri Sturluson explained in his account of heathen Nordic mythology, The Edda, in the 1220s: ‘What sport is there for the Chosen Warriors when they aren’t drinking?’ asked Gangleri the Wanderer. The High One said: ‘Every day, when they have dressed they put on their armour and go out into the open country and have a battle, and they kill one another, every one of them. That is their sport. And when the time for the evening meal comes round, they ride back home to Valhalla and sit down together to drink again.’ It’s a magnificent option, an offer one can’t refuse. But sometimes, sometimes – well, maybe only once in all the centuries of the Discworld, and never on Earth – there come Heroes like Cohen the Barbarian and his Silver Horde, who do refuse it, as is told in The Last Hero. As their confederate Mr Saveloy had once pointed out (in Interesting Times), it does sound like spending forever in a room full of sports masters. And it involves hobnobbing with gods, which isn’t to everyone’s taste. Instead, Cohen and the Horde choose to ride away to the stars. DEMONS OF THE NETHER PIT Demons have existed on the Discworld for as long as the gods, whom in many ways they closely resemble. There are millions of them. They find it very galling that those stuck-up bastards in Dunmanifestin refuse to take them seriously. The demons live in a spacious dimension which is more or less on the same space-time continuum as that of humans, and which they have tastefully decorated in shades of flame and keep heated to roasting point, as tradition requires. It is arranged in eight circles, surrounding a bubbling lake of lava-substitute, from which rise the majestic towers of Pandemonium, the Demon City. Demonic society is strongly hierarchical, murderously competitive, and devoted to tradition. Its higher ranks have added impressive titles to their sonorously supernatural names – Lord Astfgl, Duke Vassenego, Earl Beelzemoth, Duke Drazometh the Putrid. This, incidentally, is equally true on Earth, where the famous grimoire known as the Lemegeton, attributed to King Solomon, is intensely class-conscious. It lists seventy-six aristocratic demons: eighteen kings, twenty-six dukes, fifteen marquises, five earls and twelve presidents, besides various minor groups. Demons take a lively interest in observing human affairs, partly out of curiosity and partly because they do so much admire human ingenuity when it comes to devising ways of hurting one another. Like the gods, they can peer across multidimensional space, and take note of events and ideas on the Earth as well as on the Disc. This is useful to them, since they are about as capable of original thought as a parrot is of original swearwords. Their Infernal Regions would have been pretty bleak without the picturesque notions they pinched from human imaginations. From the Bible they got the idea of a lake of fire, mentioned in the Apocalypse (Book of Revelation); from the medieval Italian poet Dante, the idea that Hell is a deep funnel-shaped pit, with circular terraces running round it – Dante talked of nine circles, but the Discworld demons opted for eight, the preferred magical number in their universe. In Milton’s Paradise Lost, it is said that devils built themselves a palace in Hell by the power of magic and music, and called it Pandemonium: Anon out of the earth a fabric huge Rose like an exhalation, with the sound Of dulcet harmonies and voices sweet – Built like a temple, where pilasters round Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid With golden architrave; nor did it lack Cornice and frieze, with massive sculptures graven; The roof was fretted gold … And so on and so forth – brazen doors, marble pavements, starry lamps, a jewelled throne – the lot. But still, it was just one palace. The Discworld demons can do better than that: their Pandemonium is a whole city. Most demons are rather old-fashioned as regards their personal appearance, liking to look as disgusting as possible. Thus Urglefloggah, Spawn of the Pit and Loathly Guardian of the Dread Portal, who welcomes newcomers to Hell, has various well-fanged mouths and more tentacles than legs, though fewer arms than heads. First impressions are so important. Then there was Quezovercoatl the Feathered Boa, a demon who went off to become a god to the humans of the Tezuman Empire and teach them how to cut the hearts out of one another on top of pyramids. It is thought that he had picked up his ideas from the Aztecs of Mexico, and likewise (more or less) his name. He was half-man, half-chicken, half-jaguar, half-scorpion, and half mad. However, he was also only six inches high, so when forced to manifest himself physically he came to a sad, squishy end. At the time of the events described in Eric, Hell was ruled by a relatively new king named Astfgl, who was determined to modernize everything, including his own appearance. His predecessors had gone in for hoofs and shaggy hind legs, but such things were beneath him. Nor would he ever consider tentacles, or grotesque faces in unseemly places. Instead, he favoured a red silk cloak and gloves, crimson tights, a cowl with two rather sophisticated little horns on it, and a trident. A brief glance at the theatrical archives of Britain had been enough to show him that this is the correct formal dress for a Demon King. Regrettably, whenever he lost his temper his neat costume would get ripped apart in a sudden sprouting of claws and wings. Lord Astfgl also revamped the whole infernal regime to conform to up-to-date business practices. He abolished good traditional tortures such as pushing a rock uphill only for it to roll down again, or having your liver eaten by an eagle every day – both copied from excellent models in Greek myth, the punishments of Sisyphus and Prometheus. Instead, he issued memos, policy statements, and morale-boosting notices to staff. In agonies of outrage and boredom, the lesser demons conferred on him the title of Supreme Life President of Hell and gave him a luxurious but remote office to himself, where he is still happily busy compiling an in-depth analysis of the role, function, priorities and goals of the demon race. After which, the old familiar flames flickered once again. It was for the best (or, technically, for this is Hell, for the worst). It is only a matter of time before he invents the first-ever mission statement, causing his world to end in self-defence. It is a curious fact that demons, powerful though they are in their own dimension, can nevertheless be summoned into the human world and told to make themselves useful. In theory, this requires elaborate magic circles, runes, pentacles (on Earth) or octograms (on the Discworld), plus special robes, wands, knives, swords, candles, talismans, and incense, all of which come expensive. Then there are the chants and invocations, which go on and on and on. Part of a conjuration composed in the 1640s by the learned Elias Ashmole (antiquary, alchemist, astrologer, and founder of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum) runs as follows: I, Elias Ashmole, adjure thee Elaby Gathen, straightly charge and command thee by Tetragrammaton, Emmanuel, messias, sether, panton, cratons, Alpha and Omega, and by all other high and reverend names of Almighty God both effable and ineffable … that thou appear meekly and mildly in this glasse, without doinge hurt or daunger unto me or any other living creature … and truly, without fraud, dissymulation or deceite, resolve and satisfye me in and of all manner of such questions and commands and demandes as I shall either aske, require, desire or demande of thee … Demons love this kind of language. They think it shows proper respect. And so long as you are ceremonially robed and equipped, and chanting jargon by the bucket-load, they manage to forget that what’s actually going on is that they are being ordered about by a human. They are less happy if someone cuts out the frills, as the three witches of Lancre did in an emergency. Being in Nanny Ogg’s washroom at the time, they used a sharp and terrible copper-stick, scattered some rather old washing soda and extremely hard soap flakes, and bound the demon by the names of the bald scrubbing brush of Art and the washboard of Protection. And if the Summoning was unorthodox, the Dismissal was frankly insulting: ‘May I go now?’ ‘Um?’ ‘Please?’ Granny jerked upright again. ‘Oh. Yes. Run along,’ she said distractedly. ‘Thank you.’ The head didn’t move … ‘You wouldn’t mind banishing me, would you?’ said the demon, when no one seemed to be taking the hint. ‘What?’ said Granny, who was thinking again. ‘Only I’d feel better for being properly banished. “Run along” lacks that certain something,’ said the head … ‘Certainly,’ said Magrat. ‘Right. Okay. Um. Begone, foul fiend, unto the blackest pit—’ The head smiled contentedly as the words rolled over it. This was more like it. It melted back into the waters of the copper like candlewax under a flame. Its last contemptuous comment, almost lost in the swirl, was, ‘Run aaaalonggg …’ [Wyrd Sisters] Finally it has to be said that on the Disc there are certain low-grade demons who stay permanently in the human world, working inside pocket watches, picture-making devices, personal disorganizers, and similar contraptions. Some are eager to please, others distinctly surly. The great lords of Hell never, ever, mention this. THINGS FROM THE DUNGEON DIMENSIONS It is well known on the Discworld that Things from the shadowy, chaotic wastelands outside space and time which some call the Dungeon Dimensions are always trying to break through into the little circle of candlelight loosely called ‘the real world’. They prowl round its flimsy stockades, searching for places where the fabric of reality has worn thin. Their shapes are unstable, but nasty, with random combinations of tentacles, talons, mandibles, spindly limbs, and wings; this reflects their sad, mad, incoherent minds. They hoot and howl and buzz, giggle and flutter, and produce a horrible chittering sound. Any large concentration of magic attracts them. They crave the solidity, light, and life of real worlds, and hate all living creatures with a deep and jealous hate; if they did gain a foothold on the Disc they would inevitably drain all life from it. Occasionally some deluded power-seeking magician imagines that he can safely invoke and control them – or manages to trap the even more mysterious parasitic entity known as the hiver, described in A Hatful of Sky. This brings disaster on the magician himself, and on others. More often, someone accidentally creates a point of entry by, for example, conducting a powerful magical or religious ceremony at a spot where the walls between the dimensions are already weak. So far, the breaches in the walls have always been healed and the Things repulsed before too much harm has been done. It appears from the obscure writings of some exceptionally erudite wizards that the Things were once Dark Gods, existing on the Discworld until they were driven out by even more ancient and powerful beings, the Old High Ones. Their names are listed in the utterly forbidden and totally perilous grimoire known as the Necrotelicomnicon or Liber Paginarum Fulvarum (Book of Yellow Pages) compiled by the Klatchian necromancer Achmed the Mad. The first edition of this dread opus is kept in conditions of maximum security in the vaults of Unseen University, and students are only permitted to read tenth- or twelfth-hand copies. Awareness of these occult matters first reached the Earth through the receptive mind of the American writer H. P. Lovecraft, creator of horror fantasies in the 1920s and 30s. He too described monstrous beings from other dimensions forever trying to break through into the normal world; he too wrote of a potently evil book of spells written by a mad Arab, the Necronomicon, which could be used to summon and worship them. Alarmingly, it appears from his writings that these creatures have more than once managed to establish themselves in isolated parts of America. One can only hope he was mistaken, but sometimes one fears he was not. BEL-SHAMHAROTH It is hard to know how to classify this extremely unpleasant entity. On the one hand, it could be argued that he should be considered a god, since he inhabits a black eight-sided temple deep in the forest of Skund, near the Hub. He lurks there under an eight-sided stone slab in a hall with eight walls, reached by eight corridors and lit by the dim, eldritch glow of eight-sided crystals. Whether he currently has any worshippers is a very moot point – those who built the temple died long ago, and people who enter it now have an extremely short life-span. However, the level of belief they experience during the few moments that they are face to face with Bel-Shamharoth is so exceptionally intense that it keeps him in existence. His appearance is totally non-humanoid. He looks rather like a spider, or maybe an octopus or squid, or maybe something altogether more strange; something black, at any rate, that is all suckers and tentacles and mandibles, with a single great glaring eye in the middle. On the other hand, the gods of Cori Celesti have never accepted Bel-Shamharoth as one of their number. The Lady went so far as to say on one occasion that he should never have been spawned, and that she thought all such creatures had died out at the beginning of Time. This seems to imply that he was one of the Old Dark Gods that once existed on the Discworld, and that he managed to remain there when the others were driven out to the Dungeon Dimensions. One of his powers, we are told in Equal Rites, is an ability to enter people’s dreams. Amazingly, this is so strong that he has been able to reveal something of himself even in another universe. His title of ‘Soul-Eater’ is echoed in the mythology of the Ancient Egyptians, who believed that when the dead entered the Afterlife their hearts were weighed against the Ostrich Feather of Truth. If they failed this test, they would be devoured by a hideous monster which crouched beside the scales, called the Eater of Souls. It did not, however, look like Bel-Shamharoth, simply being part lion, part crocodile, and part hippopotamus – no tentacles or suckers whatsoever. Many centuries later, the image of a monstrous tentacular creature stamped itself deeply on the mind of H. P. Lovecraft. He described an incredibly ancient being named Cthulhu, one of the Old Ones who once ruled the Earth, now banished below the ocean bed, but still remembered and worshipped by some. A small stone figurine, of unfathomable antiquity, shows Cthulhu as ‘a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers’. Even more appalling is the Dunwich monster, child of a human mother and Yog-Sothoth, another of the Old Ones; this creature is bigger than a barn, made of what looks like squirming ropes, ‘an octopus, centipede, spidery kind of thing’ with great bulging eyes all over it, and ten or twenty mouths all opening and shutting … Definitely an echo or emanation of Bel-Shamharoth. THE AUDITORS The most deeply negative and destructive forces in the cosmos of the Discworld have no fangs, no tentacles, no red glowing eyes. They look like small grey hooded robes, with nothing whatsoever inside. They are the Auditors of Reality, who see it as their job to make sure that the universe functions smoothly and efficiently, without unpredictable interruptions. Above all, they distrust and reject the notion of individual personality, since they hold that to have a personality means to have a beginning and an end, and hence to forfeit immortality. The way to be immortal, they maintain, is to avoid living. Therefore they operate entirely by consensus, never permitting themselves to show personal tastes, feelings or opinions; if any of them becomes aware of itself as an individual, it self-destructs instantly. They are the enemies of all imagination, creativity and emotion, and hence of life itself. Mercifully, their power on the Discworld has so far been restricted. On Earth, their presence grows daily. 1 And some may be locally grown. Humanity seems predisposed to see the turtle as a massive carrier. 2 Yes, we know that there are several versions of this story! 3 Only to find a job with Miss Treason (see page 228). Mythology loves ravens. Chapter 2 DWARFS IN A MINE, there are many levels. Some, anybody can visit. But lower down, there are hidden galleries, closed-off corridors, places which only the oldest and wisest miners know. And so it is with dwarfs. Pretty well everyone on the Discworld has seen a dwarf, but very, very few really understand what it is like to be a dwarf. What you see is easily told. A dwarf is a smallish humanoid (about four foot tall on average), strongly built, bearded, dressed in layer upon layer of leather, plus chain mail and helmet if circumstances warrant it, and never without an axe. This description applies to both male and female dwarfs, though some close observers have claimed that the beards of the latter are silkier. All dwarfs are tireless, highly skilled workers; their traditional, ancestral occupations are mining and smithing, but they are also excellent engineers, jewellers, printers, and so forth. Thousands of them have migrated to Ankh-Morpork, where they work hard and mostly keep themselves to themselves; some of the young ones, regrettably, like to congregate in dwarf bars where they drink too much, sing interminable songs about gold, and get into fights. These facts find close parallels in the myths and legends of Earth, especially in pre-Christian Scandinavia and the Germanic areas. There, tradition tells of a race of small beings who live inside rocks and under mountains, and are so skilled in metalworking that they make magical weapons and rings for the gods themselves. They are old, wise, and very rich. Female dwarfs are never mentioned (unlike she-elves and giantesses), so one must assume that on our world, as on the Discworld, they looked just like the males and worked at the same crafts. Although in later centuries the names for various types of small supernatural beings have become seriously confused, one can be sure that those that inhabit human mines (as gnomes and kobolds do in Germany, and knockers in Cornwall) and those that work as smiths are kin to the true ancient dwarfs. One need only look at the names, nicknames and patronymics of many Discworld dwarfs to find confirmation of this link with Nordic and Germanic dwarfdom – from their ancient king B’hrian Bloodaxe to the modern Albrecht Albrechtsson or Bjorn Stronginthearm, there are echoes everywhere. Other dwarf names (Ringfounder, Helmcrusher, Hammerhock) allude to battle prowess and craftsmanship. But from time to time, curiously unsuitable ones occur, such as Cheery, Snorey, Dozy, and Bashfull; these must be due to some alien influence, possibly that which affected the Discworld during the time when moving pictures were being made at Holy Wood. It was certainly at that time that some dwarfs first felt an urge to sing the irritating, and previously unknown, Hiho Song (which is utterly undwarfish, since it does not mention gold and is less than an hour long). These are only the upper levels of their culture. To understand the nature of a Discworld dwarf, one must dig much deeper. There, dwarfish identity is not defined by mere genetics and size, but by a whole complex culture of laws, taboos, customs, moral principles and traditional knowledge. It is not precisely a religion, but it is as vital to their sense of selfhood as any religion could be. Height, in Discworld dwarf culture, plays no part in defining a dwarf. Dwarfishness is about what you do, not how high you do it. Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson, for example, happens to have been born of human parents and to be well over six foot tall, but his upbringing has made him socially and spiritually a dwarf. As he explains to Vimes: ‘Adopted by dwarfs, brought up by dwarfs. To dwarfs I’m a dwarf, sir. I can do the rite of k’zakra, I know the secrets of h’ragna, I can ha’lk my g’rakha correctly … I am a dwarf.’ ‘What do those things mean?’ ‘I am not allowed to tell non-dwarfs.’ [The Fifth Elephant] The legal aspects of this culture are known collectively as kruk. Outsiders think of this as ‘mining law’, which is true as far as it goes, but as Carrot explains: ‘It’s a lot more than that. It’s about … how you live. Laws of ownership, marriage laws, inheritance, rules for dealing with disputes of all kinds, that sort of thing. Everything, really.’ Each dwarf mine4 has its own ‘king’ (a title roughly equivalent to ‘chief engineer’), but in disputes where the kruk is unclear the final arbiter is the Low King, whose authority extends over all dwarfish communities. He is chosen by the senior dwarfs, usually from among the leading families, and is crowned sitting upon the Scone of Stone. He must sit on it to give his judgements, as all Low Kings have done ever since the days of King B’hrian Bloodaxe, fifteen hundred years ago. This scone is the supreme example of a traditional dwarf bread – a highly prized product used by dwarfs as a food of last resort, and regarded as utterly inedible by all other races. It also serves as a weapon. Some observers claim to have seen it being fashioned with hammer and anvil. Specimens kept in museums for decades, if not centuries, show little change from the day they were baked. That, however, is not why the Scone is held in deep reverence and guarded with the utmost care. King B’hrian Bloodaxe, fifteen hundred years ago, sat on it while it was still soft, and left his impression upon it. It is now the very seat of majesty, conferring legitimacy on each new ruler. This should not seem surprising to us. Pretty well every country can show at least one rock on to which some ancient hero or holy man has stamped his footprints – or hand-prints, or the mark of his knees, or the hoof-prints of his horse. Many are sites of pilgrimage. Some, in Britain and Ireland, are symbols of authority. One famous Scottish one was the Stone of the Footprints on the island of Islay in the Hebrides, a rock about seven foot square marked with two prints; at his inauguration, each chief of the MacDonalds would set his feet in them and stand there, sword in hand, to take his oath. This showed that he would walk in the ways of justice established by his forebears, and held his power by right. This particular stone, alas, was destroyed some three hundred years ago. The most famous of all inauguration stones is the Stone of Scone, on which generations of medieval kings of Scotland were crowned. Some say it originally came from Ireland, and is identical with the legendary Liafail, which screamed a greeting when a rightful high king of Ireland stood on it; if so, it is at least 2,300 years old. It does not, however, bear any imprints. It was removed from the castle of Scone, near Perth, in 1296 by Edward I of England after his victory over the Scots; for centuries it was kept in Westminster Abbey, built into an ornate wooden throne on which every monarch (including the present Queen) has sat for her or his coronation. In 1950 it was stolen, and recovered a few months later – or was it? Some say what was recovered was only a replica. In any case, real or replica, the Westminster stone was returned to Scotland in 1996, and is now in Edinburgh Castle. Clearly the Stone of Scone and the Scone of Stone echo one another across the multiverse. Curiously, and we advance it with some caution, our world may offer a more direct parallel with the Scone of Stone. In her book Footprints in Stone Janet Bord mentions a local legend that there’s said to be a stone behind the main altar in Reims cathedral with the marks of Christ’s buttocks. He was helping masons build the main doorway, and felt a bit tired. So many comments spring to mind, but the only one we will allow to spring further is that stories of Jesus helping in the construction were endemic during the cathedral-building era, and this one has the feel of a workmen’s legend, especially the sort which would be told to wide-eyed apprentices. Let us return to the Discworld. There, dwarfs are famous workmen. As Captain of the City Watch, Vimes had to learn about the folkways of this important ethnic minority. When one of the city dwarfs was murdered, and later when one who had joined the multiracial City Watch was killed in the course of his duties, Vimes learned a good deal. For one thing, a dead dwarf’s tools are always melted down, however fine they are, since no one else would want to use them: ‘What, use another dwarf’s actual tools?’ Carrot’s mouth twisted in distaste. ‘Oh no, that’s not … right. I mean, they’re … part of him. I mean … someone else using them, after he’s used them all these years, I mean … urrgh!’ [Men at Arms] And a weapon, of the finest quality, will be placed in his grave. Vimes, examining the murdered Bjorn Hammerhock’s workshop, noticed a particularly heavy axe etched with intricate patterns. This, Carrot explains, is a burial weapon: ‘It’s made to be buried with a dwarf. Every dwarf is buried with a weapon. You know? To take with him to … wherever he’s going.’ ‘But it’s fine workmanship! And it’s got an edge like— aargh,’ Vimes sucked his finger, ‘like a razor!’ Carrot looked shocked. ‘Of course. It would be no good facing them with an inferior weapon.’ ‘What them are you talking about?’ ‘Anything bad he encounters on his journey after death,’ said Carrot, a shade awkwardly. This is so essential that Cuddy, the dwarf watchman, flatly refuses to depart into the afterlife because his axe has been shattered in the fall that killed him. He protests to Death that he needs a good weapon: ‘If I’m not going to be properly buried, I ain’t going. My tortured soul will walk the world in torment.’ IT DOESN’T HAVE TO. ‘It can if it wants to,’ snapped the ghost of Cuddy. Many, many human societies in this world have agreed with the dwarfs that the dead should be given their weapons, and anything else they might need on the journey. And archaeologists are very grateful to them – especially to the ones who carefully laid the stuff in the grave, rather than those who tossed it on to a funeral pyre, even if from the ghost’s point of view both methods are equally good. Obviously, archaeologists can’t tell from material remains whether in these old societies the living also felt (as Carrot does) that there’s something disgusting about using weapons and tools that had belonged to the dead, but it would not be surprising if they did. In the modern world, Gypsies traditionally approve of the idea of burning a dead man’s caravan and all its contents, though this means such financial loss to the family that nowadays it is rarely done. So too on the Disc, the Chalkland shepherds burned Granny Aching’s hut after her death, knowing none of them would dare use something she had made so much her own (see A Hatful of Sky). One of us recalls a metalwork shop staffed by very old men. When one of them died, his personal tools were left on the bench where he’d put them, untouched, and were gradually buried under workshop debris. It does not need a fevered imagination to see that in the days when tools were an expensive lifetime investment, shaped over the years to their owner’s hand, there would be a certain unfocused distaste for handling them after a workmate’s death. * Outsiders often assume that because all dwarfs look, dress and behave alike, have masculine names, and refer to one another as ‘he’, they are in fact all male. This is completely untrue – the population, as with other humanoid races, is fifty per cent male and fifty per cent female. But very, very, very few dwarfs would ever admit this statistic in public. And (until very recently) none would let it be publicly known that they themselves belong to the female fifty per cent. Even when outsiders know about this, they underestimate the distress it can cause. When the dwarf Cheery Littlebottom joined the Ankh-Morpork Watch, the werewolf Angua guessed that ‘he’ was really ‘she’, but couldn’t understand why being spotted was so shattering: Cheery sagged on to a seat. ‘How could you tell? Even other dwarfs can’t tell! I’ve been so careful!’ ‘I don’t know why you’re so upset,’ said Angua. ‘I thought dwarfs hardly recognized the difference between male and female, anyway. Look, there’s plenty of women in this town that’d love to do things the dwarf way. I mean, what are the choices they’ve got? Barmaid, seamstress, or somebody’s wife. While you can do anything the men do …’ ‘Provided we do only what the men do,’ said Cheery. Angua paused. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I see. Hah. Yes, I know that tune.’ [Feet of Clay] Encouraged by Angua, Cheery gradually yields to her suppressed longing for a bit of jewellery and a dab of lipstick; eventually and with much nervousness, she dons a mid-calf leather skirt (still keeping helmet, breastplate, and beard, naturally). Some other dwarf watchmen react with horror: ‘That’s … female clothes, isn’t it?’ ‘Well?’ she quavered. ‘So what? I can if I want to.’ ‘That’s … my mother never even … urgh … That’s disgusting! In public too! What happens if kids come in? I can see your ankles!’ As it turns out, other she-dwarfs in Ankh-Morpork soon follow Cheery’s lead and pluck up courage to ‘come out’. But when her duties take her to the old homelands in the mountains, she has to face traditionalists who think it an obscene abomination, a denial of all true dwarfishness, for a female even to admit her gender, let alone to flaunt it by her appearance. The fact that the relatively liberal King Rhys Rhysson accepts her presence, and actually shakes hands with her, is for them a major culture shock. It is fascinating to compare the way Discworld dwarfs view femininity with the rules, taboos and superstitions about women in many Earthly societies, past and present. At first glance, they seem to be opposites. Dwarfs expect females to conceal their gender, to dress exactly like males, to be warriors, miners, blacksmiths and so forth, just like males. On Earth, on the contrary, societies and religions which feel strongly on questions of gender abominate the idea of a woman dressing like a man. They expect her to wear distinctively female clothing, obeying rules as to what is or is not ‘modest’: the most important concerns usually being the length of the skirt and how much of the hair, head and face should be concealed. In extreme cases, women end up looking more like small perambulating tents than human beings. So, although their garb proclaims their gender, at the same time it hides it, as surely as that of a Discworld she-dwarf. As regards work practices, however, Discworld dwarfs are not hampered by the same taboos as Earth’s older traditional societies, where it would be out of the question for a woman to take up man’s work. Even in European countries in recent times, in some ultra-masculine occupations it was believed that the mere presence of a woman brought bad luck. Women were not allowed to go down mines or on board fishing boats – indeed, simply to meet a woman on the road down to the beach would make a fisherman give up his plans for the day and head back home. Behind this, rarely mentioned openly, is a deep-rooted horror of menstruation, regarded as a source of magical harm in primitive societies, and as a pollution in the Bible. Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough gives examples of taboos among the native peoples of Australia, North America and elsewhere: a menstruating woman must not touch a man, or his tools and weapons, or any object he may use, or he will surely die; she must not touch freshly killed meat, or it will go bad; she must not go anywhere near the pastures, or the cows will die. There is a whole list of similar notions in the writings of the Roman naturalist Pliny, who regarded them as proven scientific facts: her touch will turn milk sour, cause plants to wither, blunt razors, cloud mirrors, and so on. Most of them crop up again in relatively modern European folklore. As recently as 1846 Victor Hugo noted that menstruating women were not allowed into parts of the Paris catacombs where mushrooms were grown, as their presence would make the mushrooms rot. And to this day some Orthodox Jews will not shake hands with a gentile woman, for fear she might be having her period (a Jewish woman would know she must keep out of their way at this time). Dwarfs say of themselves that they are not a religious race. True, they have been heard to utter some rather strange words, which may be the names of gods, if they drop something heavy on their toes. They also talk about Agi Hammerthief, a mischievous sort of sprite who hangs about in mines and makes off with the tool you were quite sure you’d put down just there. Sometimes, in a dark tunnel, you can hear his distant laughter. But they don’t count these things as religion; they don’t take them seriously. What dwarfs do take very seriously indeed are the Laws, which were called into existence, at the beginning of time, by Tak. Who Tak was or is, is something they do not discuss, but every dwarf knows the Tale of the Things Tak Wrote: The first thing Tak did, he wrote himself. The second thing Tak did, he wrote the Laws. The third thing Tak did, he wrote the World. The fourth thing Tak did, he wrote a cave. The fifth thing Tak did, he wrote a geode, an egg of stone. [Thud!] When the geode hatched in the twilight of the cave, the First Man and the First Dwarf were born, but only the First Dwarf found the Laws Tak had written. Finally came the First Troll. The conclusion of the Tale was deliberately distorted for thousands of years in order to justify the hatred dwarfs felt for trolls, but the true text has now been recovered. It runs: Then Tak looked upon the stone and it was trying to come alive, and Tak smiled and wrote ‘All things strive’. And for the service the stone had given he fashioned it into the First Troll, and delighted in the life that came unbidden. These are the things that Tak wrote! This, as any Earthbound reader can see, is a philosophically and morally profound Creation Myth, and Tak a more impressive figure than any of the gods on Cori Celesti. We can no longer accept that dwarfs are a non-religious race.5 Yet in some dwarf communities devotion to the Laws spawned an outlook as rigid as the unchanging ritualism in the kingdom of Djelibeybi, though not as cruel as the enforcement of dogma by the Omnians. At the time of the events described in The Fifth Elephant and in Thud! the influence of traditionalist mountain dwarfs, especially those from Schmaltzberg, had grown strong. They held that those who had moved to Ankh-Morpork and other lowland cities were d’rkza, ‘not proper dwarfs’, because they had become lax, they had let the old ways slide. If Albrecht Albrechtsson had become Low King, he would have declared all these city-dwellers d’hrarak, ‘non-dwarfs’; this would have made their marriages and business contracts invalid, and would have meant that old dwarfs would not be allowed to be buried back home. Albrecht did not become Low King, so this did not happen. Instead, traditionalists themselves began coming to Ankh-Morpork, hoping to re-establish orthodoxy by their teaching and example. They are called grags. They are greatly respected by the city dwarfs; they conduct marriages and other necessary ceremonies, give judgement in disputes and advice on problems: Please come and say the death-words over my father … Please advise me on the sale of my shop … Please guide me in my business … I am a long way from the bones of my grandfathers, please help me to stay a dwarf. [Thud!] The grags, or deep-downers, go beyond even the strictest letter of the Laws. They have dug themselves new dwellings under the cellars of existing houses, where they live as much as possible underground; if they do have to come up to the surface, they wear heavy black leather robes and hoods with a mere slit for the eyes, and are carried about in curtained sedan chairs, so as never to commit the crime of seeing daylight. The strictest among them form enclosed communities, and never come out. They send a junior novice, called ‘the daylight face’, to do any errands above ground and to speak with visitors in an antechamber. They claim that everything that happens underground should be governed by kruk, ‘mining law’, not by the laws of Ankh-Morpork. This is something Commander Vimes vigorously rejects; city law, he argues, applies just as much below the city as in the city. It should not be too difficult to find parallels to all this in other universes, including ours. One thinks of fundamentalist movements in various religions, of cultic communities, of the rules of enclosed orders of monks and nuns. Humans and dwarfs think the same way. Regrettably, here there is no Commander Vimes around to put a stop to the endless revival of Koom Valley … 4 Any assembly of dwarfs for a common purpose is technically a ‘mine’, even if it is a boat or a farm. 5 For a given value of ‘non-religious’. Study of the text suggests that Tak, in the dwarfs’ understanding, is both the creator of, and immanent in, the fundamental laws of the universe. There is no act of worship, any more than gravity is worshipped, although it may be argued that living a ‘right life’ is such a thing. Even then the dwarf laws seem open to slow change by long argument. Dwarfs are artisans, after all; tools that don’t work are recast. Chapter 3 THE ELVES IT’S EASY, ALL TOO EASY, for people nowadays to get hold of the wrong end of the stick if you tell them there are ‘elves’ about. And if you say ‘fairies’, that just makes matters worse. People think of tall, shining figures dancing in rings in the moonlight to the loveliest music one could hope to hear; or tiny dainty creatures with butterfly wings, fluttering round flowers. And in a way, some of this is true. For elves do generally choose to appear tall, beautiful and glamorous to humans. Their real appearance is thin, dull, and grey, with triangular faces and big slanty eyes (oddly, they occasionally let themselves be seen like this by the people of our world, who then label them ‘aliens’ and ‘extraterrestrials’, and get very excited). They do sing and dance, and sometimes they laugh a lot, though you would probably not like it if you knew what they are laughing about. And there are indeed little flying ones, though they have more in common with hornets than with butterflies. In truth, elves and fairies are a predatory, cruel, parasitic race, who will use other living beings, and hurt them, because this is fun. They break into a world through those strange places where the barrier between dimensions is just a bit too thin for safety. Places which are like a door, half open. Places where it’s wise to put a marker of some kind – a solitary tree, say, or some standing stones – to warn everybody to keep away. And yet, foolish people will go there. In Lancre, for instance, a group of men in a wood, looking for somewhere private to rehearse a play: ‘Let’s go right,’ said Jason. ‘Nah, it’s all briars and thorns that way.’ ‘All right, then, left then.’ ‘It’s all winding,’ said Weaver. ‘What about the middle road?’ said Carter. Jason peered ahead. There was a middle track, hardly more than an animal path, which wound away under shady trees. Ferns grew thickly alongside it. There was a general green, rich, dark feel to it, suggestive of the word ‘bosky’. His blacksmith’s senses stood up and screamed. ‘Not that way,’ he said. ‘Ah, come on,’ said Weaver. ‘What’s wrong with it?’ ‘Goes up to the Dancers, that path does,’ said Jason. [Lords and Ladies] The blacksmith Jason Ogg knows that the Dancers – a ring of eight stumpy man-sized stones, one of which is The Piper – are to be avoided, though he doesn’t know why. Nor does his conscious mind know why he fears the ferny path; it is his instincts which (as we shall see) have picked up a warning from the lore of another world. These are signs of a gateway, a short cut between dimensions, a place where elves can enter. One clue that elves have broken in, or are just about to, is that crop circles start appearing in cornfields; the growing wheat bends over sharply, breaks, and lies down in a circle. This strange phenomenon has been observed several times in Lancre, and also on the Earth in recent years. Earlier generations on Earth got no such warnings, but then they didn’t need them. They knew for sure that there were elves and fairies lurking in pools and streams, in deep woods and inside mounds and rocks, and sweeping across the sky in the wild winter winds. And they knew that these beings were cold-hearted, revengeful, often cruel, however beautiful their faces and however enchanting their music. Any countryman in Ireland or the Scottish Highlands 150 or 200 years ago would have known of a dozen cases of someone who died, or lost his wits, or became paralysed, or simply was ‘never the same again’ after meeting them. Similarly in England, at an earlier period – in 1684, for instance, a writer named Richard Bovet reported that he knew someone (completely reliable, of course) who knew a man who had once seen fairies holding a market on Blackdown Hill in Somerset and foolishly tried to join them. He felt a sudden pain, and by the time he got home ‘lameness seized him all on one side’ and he remained so, though he survived for many years. We still call such a thing a ‘stroke’, even if we have forgotten who did the striking. And we still say of somebody who seems vague, dim-witted, or slightly crazed that he or she is ‘away with the fairies’. In Eastern Europe, the fear of elves and fairies was still powerful in quite recent years. The American folklorist Gail Kligman, working in Romania in 1975, learned about wondrously beautiful but malevolent fairy maidens called iele, which literally means ‘They’ or ‘Themselves’, since it is dangerous to utter their true name. They live in woods and wild places. They travel by night, singing and dancing, but those who listen to their music or join their dance will regret it – at best, they will be deaf for life, and may well be crippled, or go mad. There is hardly any limit to the sickness and trouble which the iele can inflict on humans, even those who have never offended them. In Russia and other Slavonic lands, there are forest elves who trick travellers into leaving the path to wander helplessly among the trees until they starve to death, and water elves who catch and drown the unwary. Beautiful? Yes, usually. Nice? Never. Wherever elves go they feed on the awe, the terror, the superstition they inspire. They take control of people’s minds. They enslave. When they invaded Lancre, as is told in Lords and Ladies, Granny Weatherwax warned King Verence II: ‘When they get into a world, everyone else is on the bottom. Slaves. Worse than slaves. Worse than animals, even. They take what they want, and they want everything. But worst of all, the worst bit is … they read your mind. They hear what you think, and in self-defence you think what they want. And it’s barred windows at night, and food out for the fairies, and turning around three times before you talks about ’em, and horseshoes over the door.’ Horseshoes are important, and so are the blacksmiths who make them, since almost the only protection humans have against fairies is the power of iron. It is known throughout the multiverse that all creatures of this species fear and detest iron, which causes them intense pain. Various more or less foolish theories have been proposed to account for this. On the Earth, it is often claimed that it shows ‘fairies’ are nothing more than a folk memory of some prehistoric human society which did not have iron weapons, and fled from others who did. But on the Discworld people know the real reason. Elves have a powerful sixth sense based on awareness of magnetic fields, and use it to know precisely where they are, and where and what all other living creatures are. So to them iron is: … the terrible metal that drinks the force and deforms the flux universe like a heavy weight on a rubber sheet and blinds them and deafens them and leaves them rudderless and more alone than most humans could ever be. [Lords and Ladies] The other picture people have of fairies, the picture of their beauty and charm, is partly created by the fairies themselves as they infiltrate the collective memory and imagination of humanity. Nanny Ogg knows this, yet even she finds it hard to keep a clear mind when thinking about elves: People didn’t seem able to remember what it was like with the elves around. Life was certainly more interesting then, but usually because it was shorter. And it was more colourful, if you liked the colour of blood. It got so people didn’t even dare talk openly about the bastards. You said: The Shining Ones. You said: The Fair Folk. And you spat, and touched iron. But generations later, you forgot about the spitting and the iron, and you forgot why you used those names for them, and you remembered only that they were beautiful. Elves! The bastards … and yet … and yet … somehow, yes, they did things to memory. We only remembers that the elves sang [thought Nanny Ogg]. We forgets what it was they were singing about. How completely people forget depends very much on when, where and how they live. In the cities – in London, New York, or Ankh-Morpork – elves and fairies are nothing more than fantasy, just a bit of fun for the kids. But people who live on the land, especially in remote and wild parts of the country, those people know they are real. And they remember that though they might, just occasionally, bring good luck, they are far more likely to inflict diseases, kidnap people, and steal human babies, replacing them with their own sickly and mentally deficient ‘changelings’. Changelings were a particularly sad obsession. A healthy young couple out in the country and in a world without modern medical understanding or any idea of the meaning of the term ‘limited gene pool’, give birth to a child who looks like a little old man, or is beautiful but very backward, or eats incessantly but nevertheless fails to thrive … and the only reason the family can find lies in folklore: ‘the fairies stole our beautiful child and left one of their own.’ A horrible thought, yet not quite so horrible for the parents as one religious alternative: ‘It’s our own fault the baby is like this, it’s a judgement on us for our sins.’ In a disturbing but fascinating paper published in the journal of the Folklore Society in 1988, Susan Shoon Eberley cites many accounts of the appearance and behaviour of changelings as they were described in nineteenth-century sources, and maps them against dozens of childhood disorders which produce children that look and act ‘like the fairies’. The Victorian medical establishment was coming to grips with the idea that these children were victims of disease; but the common people fell back on folk myth, which was reinforced with every case. Folk myth also supplied a cruel remedy. You had to make life so miserable for the changeling that it would flee and the ‘real’ child would miraculously return. Custom handed down various ‘remedies’, including putting the child in a hot oven or leaving it out on the midden all night – child abuse at best, socially condoned infanticide at worst. The wonderful child did not return, but at least there was no longer the inconvenient changeling in the cradle, and everyone nodded and understood … Nanny Ogg, a midwife, knew what she was doing when she took the king of the elves to task in Lords and Ladies. A society does not want elves in the driving seat. Yet by the nineteenth century, in much of Europe, memories were fading, and people spoke of elves and fairies without such fear. Their world was under attack by education and street lights and medicine and technology; the telegraph could beat Puck when it came to putting a girdle round the earth. And thus their decline continued. Though people still told stories about changelings and abductions, on the whole they believed (or half believed, or suspended disbelief) that the Hidden Folk could be good neighbours to humans, and were just mischievous, not truly dangerous. They could lead you astray even in woods which you knew quite well, so that you felt hopelessly lost and would maybe fall into a ditch, but that was just their fun (and in any case it was easier to blame the fairies than the cider). They would do you no harm, provided you were careful not to offend them. The rules were clear: don’t cut down their favourite trees, don’t damage the mounds where they live, don’t build a road across their paths, be careful where you throw dirty water, keep your house clean and your hearth swept in case a fairy comes there in the night. There was even one type, the house-elves, whom humans welcomed. The English called them hobs, pixies or pucks, the Scots brownies, the Scandinavians nisses and tomtes. These would actually live in a farm and bring it luck; they would help with harvesting, tend the animals, even do housework, in exchange for an occasional bowl of milk or porridge – provided nobody spied on them or laughed at them. Russian country folk said there were several on each farm; the most important one lived behind the stove, others guarded the barn, the bath-house, the henhouse, and so on. On the Discworld, only the Wee Free Men have ever done such a favour for humans, and then only once, in the very special circumstances created by their bond with Tiffany Aching. Their reward was Special Sheep Liniment, which smells suspiciously like whisky. Another sign that people in Europe were forgetting the true nature of elves, and no longer took them seriously, is that they so often thought of them as small. The Little People, the Wee Folk. Some people said they were about the size of a rabbit; others, that of a six-year-old child. Some said they were really, really small – like the little farm-elf in Sweden who sweated and panted as he dragged a single ear of wheat into the barn, but went off in a huff when the farmer laughed at him; once he was gone, the farm went to rack and ruin. So he had his revenge. Even so, one can’t be seriously scared of something a few inches high (unless, of course, it is a Nac Mac Feegle). Why did the menace of elves dwindle in this way? How can they have been so reduced? Once again, it was Will Shakespeare’s plays which nudged the human imagination on to a new path. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream he gave elves sweet but silly names: Peaseblossom and Cobweb, Mustardseed and Moth. They were, by his reckoning, just about big enough to kill a red-hipped bumble-bee on top of a thistle. True, he also wrote about Puck, who was bigger and more active and enjoyed playing practical jokes, but there is no real malice or danger in Puck’s tricks. In Romeo and Juliet he described Mab, Queen of the Fairies, who controls people’s dreams, like the Fairy Queen whom Tiffany encounters in The Wee Free Men. But whereas that Queen is terrifying, Queen Mab is a delightful little thing as she drives her tiny, dainty chariot across the bodies of sleeping humans: Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners’ legs; The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers; The traces, of the smallest spider’s web; The collars, of the moonshine’s watery beams; Her whip, of cricket’s bone; the lash, of film; Her waggoner, a small grey-coated gnat … This new image of fairies and their world proved irresistible. From Shakespeare’s time right down to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries it has gone on spreading in literature, painting, children’s books, films, television. So now there are plenty of pretty fairies and quaint little elves on Earth – they make a good story to entertain a child. And so some become Santa’s Little Helpers, and some bring money for a tooth, and there are fairies at the bottom of the garden (it’s not so very, very far away). There’s one who says she’ll die if children don’t clap their hands to prove they believe in her. And for very young children, just to get them properly addicted to tweeness, there are dumpy little baby-fairies in romper suits, with horns, living in a land where it’s all trees and flowers and sunshine. So nice. Such good fun. There is another way in which Earthly folk have tamed the notion of the elf, and this too involves children. Adults who have stopped believing in elves can make damn sure that their children are still scared of them, because that way they’ll stay away from dangerous places, and learn to obey the rules. They turn elves and fairies into Nursery Bogeys: ‘Don’t play in the woods after sunset, the hytersprites will get you’ – ‘Don’t stand at the edge of the pond, Jenny Greenteeth will drag you in and gobble you up’ – ‘Behave yourself while I’m out, remember the tomte who lives under the stairs will be watching you’. Nanny Ogg understands this principle. Consider the copper in her washhouse: The water under the lid was inky black and, according to rumour, bottomless; the Ogg grandchildren were encouraged to believe that monsters from the dawn of time dwelt in its depths, since Nanny believed that a bit of thrilling and pointless terror was an essential ingredient of the magic of childhood. [Wyrd Sisters] But not entirely pointless. After all, a toddler could drown in a copper. However, fashions in child-rearing change. In many parts of the Earth it is now considered quite wicked to deliberately frighten a child, even for its own good, so Nursery Bogeys are an endangered species. Some have reinvented themselves as Funny (but Nice) Fairies in order to survive. In Iceland, children used to be told that in the thirteen nights leading up to Christmas thirteen hideous hobgoblins would come down from the mountains and creep into the house, one by one; they would carry off any child who was naughty, and probably eat it. Nowadays, this simply won’t do. The Thirteen Christmas Lads still look hideous, but that’s just a joke, and nobody is afraid of them. In fact, each of the Lads pops a sweet, or some other little present, under the child’s pillow. Perhaps this delicacy is because we think we know of more complex monsters now? But we always have. The world of the fairy tale is a map of prohibitions: do not open that door/enter that wood … and above all, young lady, don’t talk to the wolf. There have been many theories as to what the true home of the elfin races is like, and where it may be found – if indeed they have a home, for they might simply be alien nomads, creating the illusion of a Fairyland in any territory they invade. The Nac Mac Feegle (who ought to know, as they are fairies of a sort themselves) say that there is an elf-world, but it’s a mere parasite. One of them tells Tiffany Aching: ‘It floats around until it finds a place that’s weak on a world where no one’s payin’ attention, and opens a door. Then the Queen sends in her folk. For the stealin’, ye ken.’ The Wee Free Men is the story of how elves ‘open a door’ between standing stones on the Chalk hills, and how Tiffany crosses into their world to rescue her little brother, kidnapped by the Queen, and also, incidentally, an older boy named Roland. One can’t properly describe this ‘Fairyland’, for it is full of human dreams and nightmares, which keep on changing. But in its true nature, before the illusions begin, it is a cold, snowy land which somehow does not feel like a real place. There is no sun in the sky. The woods are full of dimness and shadows, and no birds sing. Nothing grows older there, because nothing grows at all. Yet the Nac Mac Feegles tell Tiffany that ‘Fairyland’ was not always such a terrible place. It has been ruined by a domestic dispute: ‘It wasnae so bad then. It wasnae perfect, mark you, but the Quin wasnae as cold in them days. The King was still aroound. She was always happy then.’ ‘What happened? Did the King die?’ ‘No. They had words, if ye tak’ my meanin’,’ said Rob. ‘Oh, you mean like an argument—’ ‘A bit, mebbe,’ said Rob. ‘But they was magical words. Forests destroyed, mountains explodin’, a few hundred deaths, that kind of thing. And he went off to his own world. Fairyland was never a picnic, ye ken, even in the old days. But it was fine if you kept alert, an’ there was flowers and burdies and summertime.’ [The Wee Free Men] There are mysteries here. Will Shakespeare must have picked up some echo of them, since his Midsummer Night’s Dream tells of a quarrel between the King and Queen of Fairyland, whom he calls Oberon and Titania, ending in reconciliation. Whether there can be the same happy ending elsewhere in the multiverse remains to be seen. But where, meanwhile, has Oberon’s Discworld counterpart disappeared to? And who is he? The witches of Lancre know the answer. He is the powerful antlered figure who lies in the cavern beneath the barrow known as the Long Man, dreaming the days away in his steam-filled sweat-house. One day, maybe, he will return. Meanwhile (as we learn in Lords and Ladies), he occasionally intervenes to frustrate the plans of his Queen. When Tiffany asks the Nac Mac Feegles what will become of her brother if she can’t rescue him, they explain that he will probably return one day, but … ‘Time passes slower the deeper ye go intae this place. Years pass like days. The Quin’ll get tired o’ the wee lad after a coupla months, mebbe. A coupla months here, ye ken, where time is slow an’ heavy. But when he comes back intae the mortal world, you’ll be an old lady, or mebbe you’ll be deid. So if youse has bairns o’ yer own, you’d better tell them to watch out for a wee sticky kid wanderin’ the hills shoutin’ for sweeties, ’cos that’ll be their Uncle Wentworth. That wouldna be the worst o’ it, neither. Live in dreams for too long and ye go mad, ye can never wake up prop’ly, ye can never get the hang o’ reality again …’ The grim picture of a sunless land where time does not run true matches some accounts in the folklore which took shape before Shakespeare’s influence was felt. Take the story of Thomas the Rhymer, also called Thomas of Erceldoune, a poet and seer who lived on the borders between Scotland and England at the close of the thirteenth century. Some time in the next couple of hundred years, someone wrote a ballad about him (it is still sung today). It tells how Thomas, resting on a hillside near Edinburgh, saw the Queen of Elfland ride by on a milk-white horse with silver bells on its mane; she summoned him to be her harpist, he kissed her and mounted behind her on her horse. O they rade on, and farther on, The steed gaed faster than the wind; Until they reached a desert wide, And living land was left behind. In that desert is a place where three paths meet, just as they do in Lancre. One is a narrow path, thick beset with thorns and briars; this, says the Queen, is the Christian Path of Righteousness. The second is a broad path through flowery meadows, and that’s the Path of Wickedness. As for the third: ‘And see ye not yon bonny road, That winds about the fernie brae? That is the road to fair Elfland, Where thou and I this night maun gae.’ But the bonny road among the ferns isn’t so very bonny after all: O they rade on, and farther on, And they waded rivers abune the knee, And they saw neither sun nor moon, But they heard the roaring of the sea. It was mirk, mirk night, there was nae starlight, They waded thro’ red blude to the knee; For a’ the blude that’s shed on earth Runs through the springs o’ that countrie. Finally they reach a garden, where the Queen gives Thomas an apple as his wages, and with it the unwelcome gift of ‘a tongue that can never lie’. He eats (one should never eat the food in Elfland), And till seven years were gane and past, True Thomas on earth was never seen. It could have been worse. He was away only seven years, after all, and when he returned he became a famous seer and prophet, thanks to his truth-telling tongue. People who are kidnapped by elves can be rescued, but this needs courage and a cool head, as there won’t be a second chance. Sometimes the rescuer has to go deep into Elfland (as Tiffany does). Sometimes, according to our own tales, it is enough to go back a year later to the place where the person was taken – a fairy ring, perhaps, where elves gather to dance, or some crossroads which they pass when they ride out hunting – and wait and watch. When they appear, their human captive will be seen among them. The rescuer must drag him or her out of the dance, or off the horse, and hold on tight, no matter what monsters and terrifying illusions the elves call up. Another method, known in Scotland, is to throw a dagger over the captive’s head. Some would-be rescuers have lost their nerve, but others do not: ‘I remember a folksong about a situation just like this,’ said Magrat. ‘This girl had her fiancé stolen by the Queen of the Elves and she didn’t hang around whining, she jolly well got on her horse and went and rescued him. Well, I’m going to do that too.’ [Lords and Ladies] The song Magrat remembers is known in Scotland as the ballad of Tam Lin. To save him, his lover Janet must pull him off the fairy horse and hold on as he turns into a snake, a deer, and a red-hot iron, before returning to human form. She has the courage, and Tam is free and unharmed. Others were not so lucky. Some never escaped, others fell victim to the distortion of time in Fairyland. An Irish hero, Bran the son of Febal, heard an elf-woman singing and followed her to her magical island in the western seas. He remained there for a year (so he thought), but then he and his companions grew homesick. She told them they were allowed to sail close to the coast of Ireland and speak with anyone standing on dry land, but must not step ashore themselves. And so they anchored in a harbour, and shouted to the men on the beach. Nobody recognized them, though someone remembered that there were old stories about a man called Bran who once, long ago, had sailed into the West. One of Bran’s friends jumped into the water and swam ashore, but as soon as he touched land he crumbled to dust. As for Bran, he put out to sea again, and has never been seen since. And it’s not only bards, seers and heroes – quite ordinary people get taken too. During a wedding dance on a Danish farm the bride went out for a breath of air, and walked as far as a little mound in one of the fields, a mound where elf-folk lived. It had opened up, and elves were dancing there too, and one of them came out and offered her some wine. She drank. She joined in the dancing, just one dance, and then remembered her husband and went home. But the village and the farm looked different; she couldn’t recognize anybody, and nobody recognized her. There was just one old woman who listened to her story and exclaimed, ‘Why, you must be the girl who disappeared a hundred years ago, at my grandfather’s brother’s wedding!’ At these words, the bride’s true age came upon her in an instant, and she fell dead. In tales such as this, told in the European countryside, elves were often lurking in quite normal, familiar places. Just a little mound in a field which you pass every day, nothing particularly eldritch about it, no marker stones to warn you off. It might of course be an ancient burial mound, like the one on the Chalk Downs which the Wee Free Men take as their home, but on the other hand it might be a simple natural hillock. But if you lie down and press your ear to the ground, you hear faint music … Then one day it is standing open, and there They are. They are the Hidden People, the Underground Folk, the Good People, the Good Neighbours. Maybe they’ve come to do you a favour, or to ask for one. There’s no need to be frightened, is there? Is there? Yet long after the ‘enlightened’ and well-educated generations had lost their faith and fear, after the wild elves had been safely reduced to Peaseblossoms, an occasional artist recaptured the older image. The crazed painter Richard Dadd did so in his sinister picture The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke, which he worked on from 1855 to 1864, while living in an asylum. So did the composer Rutland Boughton in the key aria of his opera The Immortal Hour (1914), based on a poem by Fiona Mcleod: How beautiful they are, The lordly ones Who dwell in the hills, In the hollow hills. Their limbs are more white Than shafts of moonshine. They are more fleet Than the north wind. They laugh and are glad And are terrible. When their lances shake and glitter Every green reed quivers. How beautiful they are, How beautiful, The lordly ones In the hollow hills. Beautiful, yes. And terrible. Chapter 4 THE NAC MAC FEEGLE THE WEE FREE MEN, also known as the Nac Mac Feegle (and, sometimes, as ‘the defendants’), are a fiercely independent species, organized into numerous interrelated clans. Outsiders sometimes call them gnomes. To humans, they are one of the most feared of the fairy races – indeed, they can put trolls to flight, and even Nanny Ogg’s cat Greebo retires under the furniture at the sight of them. They have shaggy red hair, and are covered all over with blue tattoos and blue paint, in patterns which indicate their clan. They wear kilts or leather loincloths, use feathers, bones or teeth as decorations, and carry swords almost as large as themselves – though they go in for kicking and head-butting too. They are about six inches tall. Originally, they were denizens of Fairyland, and served its Queen as her wild champion robbers who went raiding on her behalf into every world there is, but all that is over. Why so, is not certain. Some say they were thrown out of Fairyland for being drunk and disorderly, making rude gestures, and using language which would be considered offensive by anybody who could understand it. They themselves say they left in disgust because the Queen was a spiteful tyrant, and ordered them to steal from the poor as well as the rich, ‘But we said it’s no right to steal an ol’ lady’s only pig, or the food frae them as dinnae ha’ enough to eat.’ Whatever the truth of it, they are now out-and-out rebels against any authority whatsoever. Their war-cry is ‘Nac Mac Feegle! The Wee Free Men! Nae king! Nae quin! Nae laird! Nae master! We willna be fooled again!’ They now live in the human territories of the Discworld, but it is hard to say just where they are at any one time. Not only do they stay well hidden, but they often shift from one area to another at high speed, rather like a swarm of locusts, while indulging in their favourite occupations: drinking, stealing, and fighting anything that gets in their way. They get such pleasure from this that they think they’re dead, and gone to heaven, where there’s lovely sunshine (not like the perpetual half-light of Fairyland), good hunting, and plenty of monsters to fight: An amazing world like this couldn’t be open to just anybody, they say. It must be some kind of a heaven or Valhalla, where brave warriors go when they are dead. So, they reason, they have already been alive somewhere else, and then died and were allowed to come [to the Discworld] because they have been so good. [A Hatful of Sky] They don’t mourn much for those that actually get killed while fighting on the Disc: ‘Oh, they’ve gone back to the land o’ the livin’. It’s nae as good as this one, but they’ll bide fine and come back before too long. No sense in grievin’.’ [The Wee Free Men] They do not limit themselves to the Discworld, for, as one of their leaders, Rob Anybody, proudly declares, ‘We’ve been robbin’ an’ runnin’ aroound on all kinds o’ worrlds for a lang time.’ Their running around within a particular world is done normally, with feet (though very, very fast); but their transit from one universe to another is done by magic. They are unwilling to discuss the process, which they call ‘the crawstep’. Those who have seen them actually doing it say they simply thrust out one leg straight ahead of them, wiggle the foot, and are gone. For many centuries, one of their favourite places was an area of the Earth called Scotland. They were already there in the time of the Ancient Romans, who spoke of them as picti, ‘painted men’; Julius Caesar himself records that the tribes of Northern Britain had ‘designs carved into their faces by iron’, a clear reference to tattooing. Needless to say, they refused to submit to the Empire, conducting such a persistent guerrilla war that the Romans gave up hope of conquering Scotland, and the Wee Free Men remained both wee and free. Later generations of Scottish humans were well aware of their presence, and called them Pehts, Pechs, Pechts or Picts. They themselves like the last version best, and have adopted it for their own use, in the form ‘pictsies’. (Be careful, however, never to confuse them with the ‘pixies’ of Devon and Cornwall, since pixies are an altogether inferior race, whom the Feegles despise as ‘wee southron shites’, whatever that means.) Several Scotsmen have described the Pechs, who were somewhat taller than the Discworld clans, but in other respects pretty similar. They were ‘unco wee bodies, but terrible strang’, wrote a certain James Knox in 1831, and lived in underground chambers and burial mounds. Indeed, for generations the Scots took it for granted that any odd stone structures found underground were ‘Picts’ houses’. Robert Chambers, in his Popular Rhymes of Scotland (1870), wrote: ‘Short wee men they were, wi’ red hair, and long arms, and feet sae braid that when it rained they could turn them up owre their heads, and then they served for umbrellas. The Pechs were great builders; they built a’ the auld castles in the kintry.’ This refers to the brochs, a type of ancient round tower, which Scotsmen called ‘Picts’ castles’. Why they built them is a mystery, since they never lived in them; perhaps they had struck some bargain with the local human ruler, broch-building in exchange for hunting rights, or the like. It was said they could raise a broch in a single night, quarrying the stones, forming a long chain from the quarry to the chosen site, flinging the stones from hand to hand, and then piling them into massive walls. This is much the same technique as that of the Feegles when fighting people bigger than themselves; they work in groups, running up one another’s backs to form a pyramid, till the top one is high enough to punch the enemy, or, preferably, to head-butt him. Once he is down, it is all over bar the kicking. Feegles can easily lift things far heavier than themselves; to steal a sheep or cow, for instance, needs only four of them, as Nanny Ogg explains: ‘Four. One under each foot. Seen ’em do it. You see a cow in a field, mindin’ its own business, next minute the grass is rustlin’. Some little bugger shouts “Hup, hup, hup,” and the poor beast goes past, voom! without its legs movin’. Backwards, sometimes. They’re stronger’n cockroaches. You step on a pictsy, you’d better be wearin’ good thick soles.’ [Lords and Ladies] Another clan of Feegles settled in Ireland, where they changed their way of dressing to suit local fashions, but continued to spread undiluted terror. People there were too scared to use their proper name, so they called them ‘the good folk’, hoping they might take the hint. It didn’t work. The poet William Allingham records the lament of some Irish humans: Up the airy mountain, Down the rushy glen, We daren’t go a-hunting For fear of little men. Wee folk, good folk, Trooping all together, Green jacket, red cap, And grey cock’s feather. On the Discworld, Feegles initially took up residence on the high moors of Uberwald, but some came into conflict with vampires who objected to the presence of any others of the ‘old races’. Since vampires can fly and Feegles can’t (except on large birds), the former had an unfair advantage, and the latter decided to move on. They arrived in Lancre, where, in return for timely help given to King Verence, they were granted possession of an island on a lake, with lots of fish around, and the chance of good hunting up the valley, provided they promised not to go cattle-raiding. There are other Feegle clans on the Downland Chalk. One group lives inside the large burial mound of some ancient king, whose bones don’t bother them at all, and whose gold occasionally comes in useful. These particular Feegles are probably unique in that some of them have actually been seen doing chores for a human girl, Tiffany Aching, a young witch whom they greatly respect. In general, however, we must repeat the warning that pictsies are not pixies. As Nanny Ogg has remarked, if you leave a saucer of milk out for them, hoping they’ll do the washing-up while you’re asleep, all that’ll happen is that the ‘little buggers will break into your cottage and steal everything in your drinks cabinet’. Very occasionally, for reasons unknown, an individual Feegle may leave his clan for a while, to get a taste of city life. One such is Wee Mad Arthur, rat-catcher and pest-destroyer in Ankh-Morpork, who plays a crucial role in Feet of Clay. The locals refer to him as a ‘gnome’, but his accent, his strength and his fondness for head-butting all show he is a true Feegle. No one could clear out rats like Wee Mad Arthur. Old and cunning rats that knew all about traps, deadfalls and poison were helpless in the face of his attack, which was where, in fact, he often attacked. The last thing they felt was a hand gripping each of their ears, and the last thing they saw was his forehead, approaching at speed. [Feet of Clay] The same may well be true of the ‘gnome’ Buggy Swires, a recently recruited Corporal in the City Watch, where he is the head (and only member) of the Airborne Section, as mentioned in Monstrous Regiment. He patrols the skies by riding on a large female buzzard named Morag, who was trained by pictsies and is well worth the crate of whisky she cost the Watch. Typical! Shakespeare’s Ariel thought himself a fine fellow because he could fly on a bat’s back, but only a large bird of prey will do for a Feegle. The time that the Feegles or their ancestors spent in Scotland has had a deep influence on them (unless, who knows, it was the other way around). Besides the tattoos and the kilts, they have developed a taste for strong liquor, and even for haggis. Each clan keeps a bard and musician, called a gonnagle, with a repertoire of heroic lays, laments, and martial music played on the mousepipes. Such performers are invaluable in battle, for terrorizing the enemy. When Tiffany Aching and the Feegles of the Chalk are attacked by a pack of fairy grimhounds, the venerable William the gonnagle takes out his pipes: ‘I shall play,’ he announced, as the dogs got close enough for Tiffany to see the drool, ‘that firrrm favourite, “the King Underrr Waterrr”.’ As one pictsie, the Nac Mac Feegles dropped their swords and put their hands over their ears. William put the mouthpiece to his lips, tapped his foot once or twice, and, as a dog gathered itself to leap at Tiffany, began to play … The dog in front of her went cross-eyed and, instead of leaping, tumbled forward. The grimhounds paid no attention to the pictsies. They howled. They spun around. They tried to bite their own tails. They stumbled, and ran into one another. The line of panting death broke into dozens of desperate animals, twisting and writhing and trying to escape from their own skins. [The Wee Free Men] What had happened was that William had played ‘the notes of pain’, pitched too high for human ears, but agonizing to dogs. There is precedent for such skill in our world. According to ballad singers in Shetland, there was once a King Orfeo whose wife had been slain by a dart flung by the King of Fairies. So Orfeo went into Fairyland to win her back. He entered in at a grey stone, and played his pipes at the Fairy Court. First he overwhelmed his hearers with pain, then filled them with joy, and finally played a wild dance tune to make their hearts whole again: An first he played da notes o noy, An dan he played da notes o joy, An dan he played da göd gabber reel Dat meicht ha made a sick hert hale. Naturally, his wife was given back to him. And, unlike the Ancient Greek Orpheus, he did not lose her by looking back. The title of office for a Feegle bard, ‘the gonnagle’, is a touching tribute to the memory of William McGonagall (born 1825), a famously excruciating Scottish poet. He had grasped one basic point about poetry, namely that it should rhyme, eventually, but since he had not the faintest conception of rhythm he was capable of stretching a line of verse like chewing gum. As for his choice of words, the less said the better. His most celebrated production was a lament over the collapse of a railway bridge. It is long, so the first and last verses must suffice: Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay! Alas! I am very sorry to say That many lives have been taken away On the last Sabbath Day of 1879, Which will be remembered for a very long time. … Oh! Ill-fated Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay, I must now conclude my lay By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay That your central girders would not have given way, At least many sensible men do say, Had they been supported on each side with buttresses, At least many sensible men confesses, For the stronger we our houses do build, The less chance we have of being killed. The Feegles of the Chalk have an aspiring young bard who has mastered this style to perfection, and deploys it when they are under attack from vicious little flying fairies, rather like dragonflies. Standing with one hand pressed to his heart and the other outstretched very theatrically, and rolling his eyes, he utters a long-drawn mournful moan, and launches forth. ‘Oooooooooooooiiiiiit is with great lamentation and much worrying dismay,’ the pictsie groaned, ‘that we rrregard the doleful prospect of Fairyland in considerrrable decay …’ In the air, the flying creatures stopped attacking and began to panic. Some of them flew into one another. ‘With quite a large number of drrrrrreadful incidents happening everrry day. Including, I am sorrrry to say, an aerial attack by the otherwise quite attractive fey …’ The flyers screeched. Some crashed into the snow, but the ones still capable of flight swarmed off amongst the trees. ‘Witnessed by all of us at this time, And celebrated in this hasty rhyme,’ he shouted after them. And they were gone. The old bard congratulates the young one: ‘That, lad,’ he said proudly, ‘was some of the worst poetry I have heard for a long time. It was offensive to the ear and a torrrture to the soul. The last couple of lines need some work but ye has the groanin’ off fiiine. A’ in a’, a verrry commendable effort! We’ll make a gonnagle out o’ ye yet!’ [The Wee Free Men] The speech of the Feegles is markedly Scottish, to the point that, though it is not technically a foreign language (unlike, for example, that of dwarfs), most people in Lancre and Ankh-Morpork find it very hard to follow. Yet it’s a good language, as Nanny Ogg says, ‘with a hint of heather and midden in it’. Most of it is a form of Lowlands Scots peppered with Glasgow slang, but there are several words adopted from Gaelic, the Celtic language of the Highlands and Isles, one of which is of considerable folkloric significance. In its original tongue it is Cailleach, pronounced approximately ‘kall-yack’ and meaning ‘old woman, hag’. Like ‘hag’, it often implies magical power, and so can mean ‘witch’. In the Feegle language it has developed two quite different forms. The first, used light-heartedly in ordinary speech, is ‘callyake’. For example, a Feegle who had been startled by Greebo shouted at Nanny Ogg, ‘Ach, hins tak yer scaggie, yer dank owd callyake!’, which appears to mean, ‘Oh, devil take your moggy, you daft old woman!’ But the second form, ‘kelda’, is a title to be used with the deepest respect. Feegles are matriarchal. Each community is ruled by a kelda, who has come from some different clan when young, to choose one of them as her husband and be their Queen and their Wise Woman for the rest of her life. Like a queen bee, she bears an incredible number of offspring, but in her case (unlike the bee’s) all but one or two of them are male. This means that all the men of the clan are either her sons or her husband’s brothers, apart from a few of her own brothers who came with her as bodyguards, and probably the gonnagle, since these travel from clan to clan. Keldas are rather taller than the male Feegles, and very, very fat, looking just like the little figurines of goddesses carved on Earth way back in the times of ice and mammoths. Their word is law, as truly as if they were indeed goddesses. As for the title itself, though centuries of use have worn it down, its origins can still be guessed. It comes from Cailleach Dubh, ‘the Black Hag’, a supernatural figure in Scottish and Irish tradition who shapes the landscape, rules the seasons, protects wild animals, and confers power on favoured humans. The Cailleach Dubh was a true Mother Goddess, and the language of the Feegles honours her memory. And what of their own name? Here again we see the influence of the Scottish and Irish lore they picked up during their stay on the Earth (or vice versa). ‘Mac Feegle’ means ‘Sons of Feegle’, and ‘Feegle’ is clearly a variation of ‘Fingal’, the eighteenth-century Scottish name for a great hunter and warrior hero in Celtic tradition. Tales about him under his older name of Finn or Fionn mac Cumhaill have been popular for over twelve hundred years in Ireland, and almost equally long in Scotland, where he is called Finn MacCool. He was the chieftain of the fianna, a band of wild young men who lived by hunting deer and wild boar, fighting, cattle-raiding and robbing. At times they might take service under some king and fight in his wars; at other times they chose an independent life. All were fearless in confronting any enemy, natural or supernatural. Fionn himself more than once entered some sinister region of the Otherworld and had to fight his way out against great odds. It is very understandable that the race now known as the Nac Mac Feegle should wish to take his name. Chapter 5 TROLLS TROLLS ARE A UNIQUE life-form because their ‘flesh’ is composed of silicon in various complex combinations. At least, so it is said. They look rocky. Lichen grows on their heads. They have carbon as well as silicon in their make-up – in their teeth, which are of diamond – and from time to time, at intervals of many centuries, there appears a King of Trolls who is pure diamond. In one sense, therefore, trolls belong in the mineral kingdom, and exposure to strong sunlight often puts them into a fully stony state until nightfall – although in truth it is heat rather than light that slows down their brains. At the same time, they do have most of the attributes of animal life: they eat and drink (mineral and chemical substances only), walk and talk, are male or female, make love and have children. Their given names are always related to geology – Mica, Bluejohn, Flint, Morraine (or Brick, for one born in the city). They can be killed by force, but do not (as far as is known) ever die a natural death. Instead, after several centuries of active life, a troll withdraws to some remote mountain area and settles down in one spot among the rocks to think long, slow thoughts about nothing in particular. Gradually he becomes more and more rock-like, till he is to all intents and purposes simply a landscape feature. Many have come down from the Ramtop Mountains, which for most of them is their native region, and have come looking for work in towns and cities. Being immensely strong and intimidating, they are welcome wherever a hired fist is needed – as private bodyguards, barmen, bouncers or splatters (who carry out the same duties, but with messier results). One, who has adopted the human name of Big Jim Beef, is employed as a customs officer and frontier guard for the kingdom of Lancre; when not making checks on travellers, he lives under the Troll Bridge. It is not a good idea to mention billygoats in his hearing. Unfortunately, some of the young city-dwelling trolls give themselves unpleasantly thuggish airs; they go in for elaborate body-carving and real skull pendants, and become addicted to various brain-rotting substances (and practically anything can slow down a troll’s brain). The best-known troll is Detritus, who was recruited into the Ankh-Morpork City Watch by Captain Vimes, and has proved a most keen and loyal Sergeant, if a little slow on the uptake. Trolls are not in fact stupid, despite what most people think, but their brains function properly only at low temperatures (because of the silicon), so the warm climate of the valleys and plains makes them very sluggish, especially in the daytime. Detritus now gets some help from a small fan attached to his helmet, but it was only when he was accidentally shut in the refrigerated Pork Futures Warehouse that his true intelligence was revealed – as he gradually froze, he scratched calculations worthy of Einstein all over the iced-up walls. There are hints that trolls have age-old cultural traditions which no outsider knows anything about; there is talk of their history chants and stone music, for instance, and of their Long Dance. They think of Time in a curious though logical way: the future, they say, must be behind you, since you can’t see it, but the past, which you can see in your memory, must be ahead. There is an age-old feud between trolls and dwarfs, possibly arising from the fact that both races live in the same mountain regions, and that dwarfs spend their lives mining and tunnelling through rock – something which trolls find it upsetting to think about. It is even rumoured that dwarfs have occasionally tunnelled into the underside of a particularly stony and immobile troll. Be that as it may, the feud led to the disastrous battle of Koom Valley, said to be the only occasion in military history where each army ambushed the other. It was long ago and far away, but has never been forgotten. Koom Valley has become a myth, a state of mind. Where any dwarf fought any troll, there was Koom Valley. Even if it was a punch-up in a pub, it was Koom Valley. It was part of the mythology of both races, a rallying cry, the ancestral reason why you couldn’t trust those short, bearded / big, rocky bastards. [Thud!] And yet … and yet … if other myths can be trusted, the first man, the first dwarf and the first troll all originated in a single egg of stone, a geode, more than 500,000 years ago, and are therefore, in some sense, brothers. This myth was mentioned above, in the section on dwarfs. Its implications, together with the story of what really happened in Koom Valley, are explored in Thud!. Trolls also have a dislike of druids, who can be found in the small, rainy, mountainous kingdom of Llamedos. There is no mystery about the reason, for the druids of the Disc went around erecting huge stone circles in much the same way as (some folk used to say) British druids did at Stonehenge. Regrettable errors occurred: Any sapient species which spends a lot of time in a stationary, rock-like pose objects to any other species which drags it sixty miles on rollers and buries it up to its knees in a circle. It tends to feel it has cause for disgruntlement. [Soul Music] Even the dragging on rollers is not the worst of it. It is said (as recorded in The Light Fantastic) that one particularly skilled group of druids found a way to quarry huge slabs of high-quality stone and fly them hundreds of miles along ley-lines to the snowy Vortex Plain, where they set them up as an immense construction of concentric circles, towering trilithons, and mystic avenues, to be a great computer of the skies. It proved hopelessly inaccurate. This act of wanton cruelty to minerals made trolls still more bitter towards druids. On Earth, there are two quite different races claiming the name ‘troll’. One lot is to be found in Denmark: these are smallish mischievous goblins with red hair, living inside mounds and hillocks near farmland. They can be disregarded here since, apart from the name, they have nothing in common with Discworld trolls, and seem akin to Feegles. The other ones, however – the huge mountain trolls who live in Iceland and Norway – are remarkably like those of the Discworld, but wilder and more hostile to human beings. They are thought to be the direct descendants of the dangerous Giants of Scandinavian myth, but differ from them in being generally solitary creatures. They are immensely old and strong, and probably not as stupid as humans say they are. They have had a considerable impact on the landscape – quite literally so, since they often quarrel and hurl huge boulders at one another, and never clear the pieces away afterwards. They also send avalanches and rock-falls crashing down on anybody who annoys them by shouting among the mountains. Many of them object to humans building churches in their district, partly because they dislike Christianity itself, and partly because they hate the noise of bells. The troll’s solution is always the same: heave a large rock at it. He always misses. At least, so the stories say, but can we be sure that there are no squashed churches under any of the rocks that litter the landscape? Has anyone checked? There was once a Norwegian troll who tried a different plan. Hearing that St Olaf was trying to build himself a church at Trondheim, he volunteered his services as a stonemason. But this was in fact a plot to kill Olaf. ‘I’ll build your church for you,’ said the troll, ‘but I’ll take the sun and the moon and the heart out of your breast as my fee – unless you can guess my name before the last stone is in place.’ The troll turned out to be not only extremely strong but also a remarkably quick worker, and in no time the walls were done, and the tower was rising fast. But then one night as the saint wandered gloomily along the mountain paths, he heard the voice of a she-troll from inside the rocks, as she sang her little ones to sleep: ‘Hushabye, hushabye, your daddy Finn will soon be home, and he’ll bring you the sun and the moon to play with, and the priest’s heart too.’ Next morning St Olaf strolled up to the church, just as the troll was setting the last course of stones on the tower. ‘Splendid work, Finn,’ said Olaf. Now, it is one of the basic rules of folklore that to know a magical creature’s name gives you the power to destroy him – and another, that somehow or other the secret is sure to get out. So the troll crashed down dead, but Trondheim cathedral is still there. The physiology of Earth’s mountain trolls must be based on silicon, like that of their Discworld counterparts, judging by the way they all too easily turn into large boulders, which in their case are permanent. One variety, the Icelandic Night-troll, hides in caves all day and only comes out at night, because any ray of direct sunlight petrifies it at once. There are several spectacularly tall rocks offshore which are said to be trolls caught unawares by the sunrise while wading out to sea. Naturally, the best defence against a Night-troll is to keep it talking till the sun comes up. There was once an Icelandic girl who had been left at home on Christmas Eve, to look after her baby brother while everyone else went to church. In the middle of the night she heard a deep voice outside the window, serenading her. Fair seems your hand to me, Hard and rough mine must be, Dilly-dilly-do. But she did not look round. Instead, she sang to the baby in the cradle: Dirt it did never sweep, Sleep, little Kari, sleep, Lully-lully-lo. When the troll praised her eyes and her feet, she told the baby that she had never looked on anything evil, never trodden on dirt. And so it went on all night, till dawn broke and the girl sang in triumph: Stand there and turn to stone, So you’ll do harm to none, Lully-lully-lo. And when the family came home from church, they found a huge boulder on the path between the farm buildings, which had certainly not been there the night before. As this tale shows, one difference between the way trolls evolved on Earth and in the Discworld is that the Earth ones can get amorous towards humans, an idea which would never enter the head of a troll on the Disc. Icelandic she-trolls sometimes kidnap a handsome young man to be their mate, or lure him up into their caves by magic chants. There, they do all they can to seduce him, and to persuade him to eat trolls’ food; they rub him with strange ointments, stretch his limbs, and bellow into his ear, to make a troll of him. It is said that men who do not manage to escape gradually do turn into trolls themselves. In the Norwegian legend of Peer Gynt, the King of the Mountain wanted Peer to marry his daughter, who was apparently quite good-looking, whereas it is unlikely that a female Discworld troll would ever appeal to a male human, no matter how cheap the beer and however bad the club lighting. Earthly trolls can, in fact, look like humans and humans can become trolls, and it has been suggested that trolls have their origins in ‘folk memories’ of earlier races (even Neanderthals) who were pushed to the edges of the habitable world by the stumbling advance of civilization, and then into myth and story. This attractive and beguiling idea is very familiar to folklorists as an explanation for ‘fairy’ folk of any sort (who look outlandish and have strange powers), and so we will back tactfully away and leave it to the anthropologists. It’s worth adding that Discworld trolls cannot digest human beings (though they have been known to try), whereas those of Earth find them both tasty and wholesome. In Norway, men have heard she-trolls bellowing to one another among the crags, discussing their cooking: ‘Sister, can I borrow your big pot?’ – ‘What for?’ – ‘Here’s Jon the woodcutter coming up this way, I want to make a stew of him.’ – ‘All right, Sister. When you skim the broth, save some of the fat for me.’ Somehow, bellowing across the landscape that you are waiting in ambush seems so very troll. Trolls were still being talked about in Iceland as late as the nineteenth century. There were certain cliffs where seabirds nested, and it was said that when men went over the edge on ropes to gather eggs or to catch the birds themselves for food, great, grey, shaggy hands carrying very sharp knives would reach out from caves and cut the ropes, and so kill the men who hung there. So then some priest would be sent for to drive the trolls out by going down on a rope and blessing the cliff, while men on the cliff-top sang psalms as loud as they could. The really intelligent priests would bring a hammer, and chip away the sharp ridges on the cliff face as they blessed it – after which, the ropes hardly ever frayed and broke. But there remain a few cliffs which were never blessed, and where egg-gatherers never go, however many birds there may be. This is because once, when a bishop had gone down on a rope and was working his way along the cliff face, a voice from inside the rocks called out: ‘Don’t bless anything more! The wicked do have to have somewhere to live!’ And the bishop, being a fair-minded man, left this place unblessed. GARGOYLES Although gargoyles are very different from a standard troll in size, appearance, habitat and habits, they are in fact a subspecies which has evolved to fit an urban environment. They are, if anything, even more stony; they squat motionless on some rooftop, which they are very reluctant to leave. On the other hand, their digestive system is quite different from that of trolls; they are carnivores, preying on pigeons. Their main occupation is absorbing rainwater from the gutters and ejecting it vigorously, through their gaping jaws, on to the heads of pedestrians below. When they do move, it is in slow, grinding jerks; their mouths are permanently fixed open, making it hard to understand their speech. But their endless patience and keen eyesight make them valuable members of the Watch in Ankh-Morpork, somewhat like CCTV cameras in a modern city on Earth. Gargoyles are also a familiar sight on the roofs of Earth’s medieval churches and castles, where they got their name. It suits them well, for they gurgle, gargle and glug in their gullets, and most of them goggle too. But there are few, if any, stories about them, probably because they are too high up for anyone to see them properly. SEA-TROLLS It should be mentioned that ‘trolls’ of one sort or another apparently exist elsewhere in the multiverse. The wizard Rincewind, in one of his early adventures described in The Colour of Magic, was almost swept over the Edge of the Disc, where an endless cascade of ocean pours away into space. Instead, he crashed into the Circumfence – a single rope, suspended a few feet above the water from occasional wooden posts, and extending for tens of thousands of miles round the rim of the Disc. This particular section was patrolled by a sea-troll, a creature of a pleasantly translucent blue colour, apparently composed of sea-water and very little else. As for size, he gradually swelled as the hours went by, then just as gradually shrank; owing to the strength of the Discworld moon, he was suffering from chronic tides. The sea-troll was not native to the Discworld. He came from a different disc, quite a small one (mostly blue), where the seafolk lived in thriving civilized communities on its three oceans. Unfortunately, he had been blown over the edge in a great storm, fell through outer space (which froze him solid), and eventually landed on the Disc. Curiously, the name of his own world is Bathys, which on Earth is Greek for ‘ocean depths’, and the troll’s personal name is Tethis, remarkably close to that of the Ancient Greek sea-nymph Thetis. Interestingly, the Norwegian artist Theodor Kittelsen, who painted a large number of what we now call fantasy paintings, did several based on trolls, including, in 1887, a fearsome sea-troll. Alas, it is not transparent. Chapter 6 OTHER SIGNIFICANT RACES VAMPIRES THE CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT are an increasing presence in Ankh-Morpork these days, thanks to the efforts of the Uberwald League of Temperance. Sensible vampires have realized that a diet of black pudding and blood sausage and a stake in a growing economy is much to be preferred to just a stake. However, it was not always thus: the vampire – or at least the image of the vampire – has evolved quite markedly over the centuries. Do vampires suck blood? Silly question, nowadays. If there’s one thing everybody knows about vampires, it’s that they suck your blood, leaving you with two neat puncture marks at the base of your neck. Of course, what everyone knows is wrong, and nearly everyone knows it. At least, we think so; the trouble with what everyone knows is that you can never be sure that everyone knows it. But surely everyone knows that vampires, like werewolves, have stepped out of folklore and into popular culture. The movies, of course, were the major influence; in the 1950s and 60s a generation grew up (thanks to Hammer Films) knowing that female vampires always wore underwired nightgowns, and male ones a high-collared black cloak with a red satin lining.6 But it was not always so. In the folklore of the Balkans, Greece, and Central Europe a vampire, also known as a nosferatu, a vrykolakas, or a nachzehrer, was simply an Undead revenant – a corpse that gets out of its grave and wanders about. Some sucked blood, others didn’t. Instead, they might breathe on you and give you plague, cholera or consumption; or sit on your chest and give you nightmares; or strangle you; or beat you black and blue; or simply get into your house and smash the furniture. Subtle and elegant they were not. Their close relative, the draug of medieval Iceland, would break every bone of your body, and of your cattle too. Early European vampires were not aristocrats, but village folk. They did not look like noble gentlemen in black cloaks, or luscious women in low-cut ball gowns. They looked like what they were, corpses. To be precise, corpses that have been buried long enough to begin decaying, but not long enough to turn into nice clean skeletons. When terrified locals dug into the grave of a suspected vampire to destroy him, they would find a body bloated with gases, and therefore plumper and bigger than when alive; the skin taut; the blood no longer congealed, but runny, and often oozing from the mouth or nose; the face puffy and red, or in some cases dusky. If they jabbed a stake or spade into it, nasty reddish liquids gushed out. They might even hear a sort of grunt or squawk as the blow forced the gases out through the windpipe. Who could doubt that this was an Undead? Such a corpse must then be destroyed by burning. If this is too difficult (dead bodies take a lot of burning), at least it can be mutilated or pinned down in some way, so that it will never walk again. Which is where staking comes in, or beheading, or tearing the heart out. Vampires as the Earth knows them now are rather different. They were created by English writers in the Romantic and Victorian periods, and perfected by that most powerful myth-making medium, the cinema. The first was Lord Ruthven in John Polidori’s story ‘The Vampyre’ (1819), an evil blood-sucking deathless aristocrat. Then in 1872 came Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s story about the beautiful young Carmilla, who (like Salacia in Thud! ) assumed she could evade discovery by making anagrams of her name – Millarca, Mircalla. She was gentler than Lord Ruthven, but she too brought death; she was eventually found in a blood-filled coffin, staked, and decapitated. And then, in 1897, Bram Stoker’s Dracula appeared, presenting the sinister but elegantly seductive Count, his female victims, and three erotic female vampires. Stoker stole the Count’s name from the real-life Vlad Dracul, also known as Vlad Tepes the Impaler, one of the great warrior-princes of Romanian history, who in his native country is respectfully remembered as a hero, and is never, never thought of as a vampire. Stoker also adopted many details from East European folklore. For over a hundred years now, the Dracula figure and its variants have been fixed in modern popular mythology – fangs, swirling black cloaks with red linings, brocaded waistcoats, a haughty manner, and an escort of bats, rats, and wolves. On Discworld, the Count de Magpyr is a magnificent example of the aristocratic vampire, sprung from an ancient family whose motto is Carpe Jugulum, ‘Go for the Jugular’. His son Vlad is very much the dandy; his daughter Lacrimosa is a thin girl in a white dress, with very long black hair and far too much eye make-up. Their home is a castle on a crag in Uberwald, complete with sinister ancestral portraits. One of these shows Aunt Carmilla, a far more savage figure than Le Fanu’s heroine of the same name; she used to bathe in the blood of up to two hundred virgins at a time, just as the real-life Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Bathory was rumoured to do. It was a good cosmetic. There is also the portrait of the old Count de Magpyr (father of the present one, and remembered by some as ‘Old Red Eyes’): A bald head. Dark-rimmed, staring eyes. Two teeth like needles, two ears like batwings, fingernails that hadn’t been trimmed for years … That’s something known on this world too. That’s Nosferatu, perhaps the most terrifying vampire in the history of the cinema, as created in 1922. But the current Count de Magpyr is adapting to modern times. To the fury of his servant Igor, whose attitude can be described as more-gothic-than-thou, he and his family wear full evening dress in the evenings only, not all the time, as his father the old Count did; the rest of the time, it’s fancy waistcoats for the men and lacy skirts for the women. In the castle, squeaky door-hinges must now be oiled, guttering candles removed, spiders chased out of the dungeons. There must be no black plumes on the coach or its horses – coaches looking like hearses are not at all cool. The Count’s aim is to train his family, little by little, to overcome all the taboos which limit a vampire’s freedom, and which are only cultural conditioning – a conditioning which, strangely, seems to be much the same on the Discworld and the Earth. He believes that with a little effort and practice, modern vampires could and should learn to drink … wine, go out in sunlight, cross running water, eat garlic-flavoured canapés, bear the touch of holy water, and look at any sacred symbol without wincing. By and large, the plan seems to be succeeding. But they still can’t enter a house unless invited. As was noted above, quite a number of Discworld vampires hope to become integrated into society as a whole, and so have joined the Uberwald League of Temperance; members have forsworn the drinking of human blood – or, as they prefer to call it, ‘the b-word’. They carry their badge, a small twist of shiny black ribbon, and gather regularly in mutual support groups for a nice singsong with cocoa and a bun. One Black Ribboner is Otto Chriek, a brilliant iconographer on the staff of the Ankh-Morpork Times. He dresses as the cinematic stereotype requires, and speaks (when he wants to) with a thick Uberwald accent – deliberately so, to make people laugh. That way, no one fears him, or hates him. Since Otto personally has not overcome his hereditary allergy to strong light, he suffers intensely whenever he has to use a flash, sometimes even crumbling to dust. He carries a card for such emergencies: DO NOT BE ALARMED. The former bearer of this card has suffered a minor accident. You vill need a drop of blood from any species, and a dustpan and brush. [The Truth] If some kind person dribbles a drop or two from, say, a piece of raw steak on to the dust, it mushrooms up into the air, becomes a mass of coloured flecks, and once again is Otto Chriek. From the information so far available, it looks as if all Discworld vampires become such either by their genetics, or by being bitten. Admittedly, one may suspect that the genes of the late Count Notfaroutoe were pretty reluctant to be activated in the unlikely DNA of his only remaining relative, his nephew Arthur Winkings, who was a coming man in the wholesale fruit and vegetable business. And Arthur was even more reluctant to receive them, as we learn in Reaper Man. But that’s how it goes – if you inherit the title and the estates, you get the coffin and the batwings too. Genetics, or a bite. Take your choice. On the Earth, this is true in the literary and cinematic mythology, but in European folklore there are plenty of other reasons why the dead become vampires. They may have lived an evil life, committed suicide, or practised black magic; they may have been conceived in sacrilege, their parents having had sex on a holy day; they may have been born with teeth, or a tail, or two hearts,7 or a caul. In Romania, anyone with red hair and blue eyes is regarded as a potential vampire. In many parts of Europe, a corpse will become a revenant if it is left unburied, or buried secretly without proper rites. If it is laid out at home, it should be in a lighted room, and there should always be somebody keeping watch; no dog or cat should be allowed to jump on to or over it. Break any of these rules, and you will soon have a vampire in the village. And when you do, what do you do about it? As the Quite Reverend Oats, self-appointed Omnian missionary to Lancre, explained to Nanny Ogg, ‘It depends exactly where they’re from, I remember. Uberwald is a very big place. Er, cutting off the head and staking them in the heart is generally efficacious … in Splintz they die if you put a coin in their mouth and cut their head off … in Klotz they die if you stick a lemon in their mouth – after you cut their head off. I believe that in Glitz you have to fill their mouth with salt, hammer a carrot into both ears, and then cut off their head … And in the valley of the Ah they believe it’s best to cut off the head and boil it in vinegar … But in Kashncari they say you should cut off their toes and drive a nail through their neck.’ ‘And cut their head off?’ ‘Apparently you don’t have to.’ [Carpe Jugulum] Decapitation was the folk method in parts of Europe too, especially among Germans and western Slavs, with the addition that the severed head must be placed between the legs of the corpse, behind its buttocks, or below its feet – so that it couldn’t find it and put it back on. The southern Slavs preferred staking the corpse; Greeks cremated it, often cutting the heart out first; Russians would throw it into a lake or river. Danes staked revenants; medieval Icelanders beheaded and/or burned them. There was no need to stick to one method at a time. In Germany, one woman who ‘walked’ was dug up, decapitated, and then reburied at a crossroads with her mouth full of poppy seeds. Another corpse was taken to a border between two districts, cut open, staked through the heart, and beheaded; a stone was put in the mouth, and both body and head were left lying there, for animals to eat. Of course, it was best if you could stop the corpse from leaving its grave at all, by giving it something to do which would keep it there. For example, Oats told Nanny Ogg, you can defeat vampires by stealing their sock: ‘They’re pathologically meticulous, you see. Some of the gypsy tribes in Borogravia say that if you steal their sock and hide it somewhere they’ll spend the rest of eternity looking for it. They can’t abide things to be out of place or missing … They say in some villages that you can even slow them down by throwing poppyseed at them. Then they’ll have a terrible urge to count every seed. Vampires are very anal-retentive, you see?’ Paul Barber, a notable American authority on vampires, has similarly stressed their ‘limited, rigid, and compulsive nature’. This makes it easier to stop them from coming home after burial. For instance, they have to re-enter the house in the same way they left it, so if you lift the coffin out through a window or a hole in the wall, instead of using the door, and then shut the window or refill the hole, they’ll never find the way back. If you bury them face down, when they try to dig themselves out they’ll just go down deeper and deeper. If you put seeds or sand in a vampire’s mouth or coffin, or on the path to the graveyard, this activates his compulsions: ‘he must collect the grains one at a time, and often only one grain per year. This so engages his attention that he is obliged to drop all other pursuits.’ Nets and knitted stockings in the coffin are just as good; he has to unpick them, one knot or stitch per year. As for putting coins, pebbles, dirt or food in the corpse’s mouth, that gives him something satisfying to chew on. So a girl setting out to be a vampire-slayer in Uberwald needs a big sack, to be ready for all possibilities. She must carry a stake and mallet, a spade, and a strong knife; nets, seeds, coins, sand, salt, stones, lemons, garlic, assorted vegetables; thorns and needles to stick in the vampire’s feet to stop him walking, and in his tongue to stop him sucking; a flask of holy water and the sacred symbols of all major gods. But, as Nanny Ogg could tell her, there is a better way. She could simply borrow Greebo the cat, and wait till a very large red-eyed bat comes by. For that would be a flabberghast (‘which is foreign for bat,’ Nanny Ogg explains), and a flabberghast is a shape-shifted vampire. And it would very soon learn the useful truth set down in Witches Abroad: Vampires have risen from the dead, the grave and the crypt, but have never managed it from the cat. BANSHEES These unpleasant (and mercifully rare) creatures, native to the Uberwald mountains, are the only humanoid species on the Discworld that has evolved wings, apart from certain small elves; vampires who fly, such as the Count de Magpyr and his family, simply do so by a form of levitation. However, there may possibly be some remote genetic connection between the two races, since a banshee has two hearts, which, according to some folk traditions, is a characteristic of vampires. No research has been done on this topic, nor is likely to be. A Discworld banshee is about the same size as a man, but far more lightly built, consisting almost entirely of thin bones and very strong sinews, several rows of pointy teeth, and huge claws. At first glance, you would think it is wearing a black leather cloak. This, as you will soon discover, is its wings. And then there is its scream. It was harsh, guttural, it was malice and hunger given a voice. Small huddling shrew-like creatures had once heard sounds like that, circling over the swamps. [Going Postal] It is well known that to hear the banshee’s scream means that you are going to die. With the more civilized banshees, all this means is that they have taken on the job of a death-omen, and will sit screeching on your roof to make sure you get plenty of warning that Death is on his way. Indeed, in Ankh-Morpork there is one solitary and gloomy banshee named Ixolite who suffers from a speech impediment and just writes OoooEeeeOoooEEEeee on a scrap of paper and slips it under your door. But the wild banshees, such as the Mr Gryle described in Going Postal, do the whole job themselves. One minute you hear the scream, next minute there’s a swoop and a pounce and some quite remarkable claws. Over in our own parallel universe, banshees are only to be found in one particular habitat, namely Ireland. The name, if not the species, must have originated there, since bean sí makes good sense in Irish, though it is mere gibberish in Discworld languages. It means ‘woman of the otherworld’ – for in Ireland the creature is invariably female. Her mission is to announce the imminent death of someone in one of the old aristocratic Irish families, by screaming and wailing near their homes. She is more often heard than seen, but when she does let herself be glimpsed it is as an old woman with long, loose white hair which she combs as she wails. Sometimes she is seen crouching by a river, washing a winding-sheet. In some parts of the country she is also known as the badhbh chaointe, pronounced ‘boheenta’ and meaning ‘the keening scaldcrow’, though she does not nowadays actually appear in crow-shape. Though the Irish banshee is no predator, it is best to be wary of offending her. There was once a man who saw a banshee combing her hair on the riverbank at twilight, crept up behind her, and snatched her comb. He ran home with it. That night there were terrifying shrieks all around his house, and something was hammering on his window. So he opened the window just a little way and pushed the comb out, holding it in the big iron tongs from the fireplace. And it was well for him that he did so rather than putting his hand out, for the thing that grabbed the comb grabbed the tongs too and threw them to the ground, all bent and twisted. Such is a banshee’s strength. GOLEMS In all societies there is a good deal of boring, dirty, heavy work which nobody really wants to do, whatever the pay. So what could be better than to find a race of strong, tireless, silent workers to take on these jobs? Especially if they don’t need paying. The historical solution, in Ankh-Morpork, is the golems – large, powerful creatures made of baked clay, roughly humanoid in form but seven or eight foot tall. They need no food or sleep; they can work underwater, or in extremes of heat or cold, or in total darkness; they cannot feel pain or boredom. They can repair themselves, and last for centuries. Their triangular eyes have the faint, dark red glow of a banked fire, and on the rare occasions when they open their mouths you get a brief glimpse of an inferno. According to the original specifications they cannot speak, though they can write; this, however, was changed at the insistence of Commander Vimes, after the events recounted in Feet of Clay. A golem’s head is hollow, and flips open when you press a line across the forehead; inside is a yellowing scroll bearing words in Cenotine, an ancient sacred script, the language of a dead religion. This has to have been written by a priest. Take out the scroll, and the light in the golem’s eyes goes out, and its life (if it can be called life) ceases. Put it back, and it comes ‘alive’ again. When the golem Dorfl is asked to explain itself, it writes on a slate: I am a golem. I was made of clay. My life is the words. By means of words of purpose in my head I acquire life. My life is to work. I obey all commands. I take no rest … Golem must work. Golem must have a master. [Feet of Clay] The written commands in a golem’s head are those which the Cenotine god is said to have given to the first people on earth, after he had baked them out of clay. ‘Thou shalt labour fruitfully all the days of your life’ is one of them, and another is ‘Thou shalt not kill’, and a third ‘Thou shalt be humble’. Not surprisingly, factory owners are prepared to pay a good price for golems. There are stories that sometimes one of them over-does things, being too stupid to stop work unless actually ordered to, so your house gets flooded as it brings pail after pail from the well. This, however, always seems to have happened somewhere else, some good while ago, and can be disregarded. One minor snag is that just occasionally they down tools and go off for a few hours, leaving a message that today is for them a holy day. Apart from that, they are perfect machines for work. Few in Ankh-Morpork remember who first made a golem, or why, or how. Recent archaeological discoveries (described in Making Money) indicate that particularly fine specimens existed in the ancient City of Um, back in the Clay Age some sixty thousand years ago. When Rincewind visited the Counterweight Continent (see Interesting Times) he accidentally roused a vast Red Army of seven thousand terracotta golems, which were standing guard inside the burial mound of some very ancient emperor – but again, nothing is known of their making. To learn more, one must turn to the more recent traditions of Jewish communities in Central and Eastern Europe. For there, by one of those remarkable freaks of cosmic resonance, the story of the making of the golem first appeared in fifteenth-century Germany, and by the seventeenth century had become famous. In Hebrew, the word ‘golem’ means an unshaped lump of matter, an imperfect or incomplete creation. According to legend, various extremely learned and pious rabbis knew how to create a humanoid being out of clay, thanks to the magical power of holy words and letters, especially the four letters forming the Name of God. The act echoed that of God Himself in forming Adam from the dust of the earth, and for that reason most rabbis never put their knowledge into practice, for fear of blasphemy. But a few did, to get themselves a servant, or to get help in times of great danger. The fullest and most famous story is about Judah Loew ben Bazalel, Chief Rabbi of Prague towards the end of the sixteenth century. In 1580 the Jews of Prague were under attack from anti-Semitic fanatics, and Rabbi Loew received a divine message telling him to create a golem for their protection. Four elements would be required: earth, fire, water and air. He went with two disciples to the bank of the River Vltva, and moulded a human form of clay. Then one disciple danced round it seven times from right to left, saying certain words which invoked the element of fire, causing it to glow like red-hot metal. The other disciple danced round it seven times from left to right, saying words to invoke the element of water, and by the time he had finished steam was rising, and the golem’s hair and nails had begun to grow. Finally Rabbi Loew himself danced round seven times, breathed air into the golem’s nostrils, and put a parchment with a word on it into its mouth – or, some say, wrote a word upon its brow. Then the golem came to life and stood up, though it lacked the power of speech. Rabbi Loew said: ‘Your mission is to walk the streets of Prague and keep my people safe from persecution. You will obey my commands, and go wherever I send you – into fire, into water, or down to the floor of the sea.’ What was the word that gave a golem life? Some say it was schem, which means ‘name’, and refers to the Tetragrammaton JHVH, the never-to-be-spoken Holy Name of God. Others say it was emeth, ‘truth’, and that one could destroy the golem by rubbing out the first letter, leaving meth, which means ‘death’. For eventually, all legends agree, something will go wrong, and the golem will have to be ‘killed’. Perhaps it has grown so big and powerful that its maker can no longer control it. Or perhaps he has forgotten to give it its orders for the day, and it has gone berserk through having nothing to do, and is about to devastate the city. In Prague, Rabbi Loew kept his golem till 1593, but then, knowing the danger of persecution had passed, he and his disciples reversed their rituals, reducing it to a mere mass of clay. This they sealed up in the attic of the Synagogue, and Rabbi Loew ordered that nobody was ever to set foot in that attic again. And nobody ever has. Such was the sad destiny of Earth’s golems. In the Discworld, thanks to the ferocious sense of justice of Commander Vimes and the pragmatism of Lord Vetinari, golems are now in process of buying their freedom from their masters, and have acquired speech and independence of thought. The words in their heads are those they have chosen themselves. Still untiring and sternly moral, some have found a role as law enforcers (one instance of this is described in Going Postal). Naturally, this requires a certain modification of one of the basic Laws of Golems, which now runs: ‘You shall not harm a human being, or allow a human being to come to harm – unless ordered to do so by a properly constituted authority.’ As we have said, Lord Vetinari is a pragmatic ruler. That is not the same as nice. WEREWOLVES Wherever wolves are found in the multiverse, there are werewolves too, yet the condition of werewolfery (or lycanthropy, as those of more scientific bent prefer to call it) remains mysterious. What can be the cause? Is it voluntary or involuntary? Is it a magical power, or a form of madness? Are werewolves heroes, victims, or criminals? The clash of theories is obvious on Earth. Several Ancient Greek writers blamed religious cannibalism, allegedly practised in honour of Lycean (i.e. ‘Wolfish’) Zeus in the wild hilly region of Arcadia. According to Pausanias, a Greek geographer writing in AD 166, the first werewolf was a certain King Lycaon of Arcadia, whose very name means ‘wolf’. Lycaon brought a human baby to the altar of Lycean Zeus and sacrificed it and poured out the blood upon the altar, and they say that immediately after the sacrifice he was turned into a wolf. For my own part I believe the tale: it has been handed down among the Arcadians from antiquity, and probability is in its favour. They say that from the time of Lycaon downwards one man has always been turned into a wolf at the festival of Lycean Zeus, but that the transformation is not for life, for if while he is a wolf he abstains from human flesh, in the ninth year afterwards he changes back into a man, but if he has tasted human flesh he remains a beast for ever. About a hundred years earlier, the Roman author Petronius had included a werewolf story, more or less as a joke, in his comic novel Satyricon. To him, it was simply magical shape-shifting: a young soldier deliberately turned into a wolf by taking off his clothes in a graveyard by moonlight and pissing round them, and went off to kill cattle and sheep – but then, like many shape-shifters before and since, he was wounded while in animal form, and so his secret was discovered. In later European folklore, all sorts of explanations were suggested. Some said it was a magic art of warriors, who went into battle as wolves by wearing a wolf’s pelt. Others, that it was due to a spell which a witch could lay on a man by striking him with a wolfskin glove. Others, that it came from accidentally eating a particular magic plant, or bathing in a particular lake. Others, that it was a curse that a child was born with, as a punishment because his parents conceived him on a holy day when sex was not allowed,8 or because his mother used magic to avoid a painful childbirth. Others, that the man had made a deliberate pact with the Devil, and went about murdering people while in his wolf form. In more recent centuries, it has been generally assumed that lycanthropy was a madman’s delusion. Attitudes varied according to the theories – wolf-warriors were admired as heroes, the victims of spells and curses were to be pitied as well as feared, the lunatics were to be locked up, but murderous Satanist werewolves were to be tried and hanged. There are no such crazy notions on the Discworld. There, everybody knows that being a werewolf is just something that you’re born with, something that runs in families. It’s not supernatural, but it’s very, very embarrassing. Especially if you live in a town. Most humans and dwarfs find werewolves both frightening and disgusting, so werewolves do all they can to keep their condition secret, and most of the time they can pass as human. But if when in wolf shape they were to meet real wolves, they could never pass as wolf – the scent is quite different. And for the most part real wolves detest werewolves. So, one way and another, werewolves lead a lonely life. The genetic laws governing Discworld werewolfery are logical, but far more complex than the transformation rules of Earth, since the condition can show itself in different forms. Ludmilla Cake, who is a ‘classic bimorph’ werewolf, is a tall, strong girl for three weeks in every month, though a careful observer might note that her hair is unusually thick and long. In the week of the full moon, however, she becomes a wolf and stays in her room, so as not to upset the neighbours. Sometimes preliminary signs appear a day or two before what her mother coyly refers to as ‘your Time’: Something came in from the back yard. It was clearly, even attractively female in general shape, and wore a perfectly ordinary dress. It was also apparently suffering from a case of superfluous hair that not all the delicate pink razors in the world could erase. Also, teeth and fingernails were being worn long this season. You expected the whole thing to growl, but it spoke in a pleasant and definitely human voice. [Reaper Man] Mrs Cake’s forebears had originally come from the Ramtop Mountains, and she suspected that Ludmilla was a throwback to this distant past; she was pretty sure that her own mother had once alluded circumspectly to a Great-Uncle Erasmus who sometimes had to eat his meals under the table. The exact opposite of a werewolf is a wolfman. For three weeks in every month he is simply a wolf, but as soon as he sees the full moon he stops howling, most of his hair temporarily falls out, and next minute he’s standing up, walking and talking. The problem is, no clothes. So when the full moon is due to rise, a canny wolfman takes care to get back to where he keeps a pair of trousers stashed. It is to be hoped that Lupine the Wolfman and Ludmilla the Werewolf have managed to find happiness together, despite having to pay more attention to the calendar than most couples. Sergeant Angua of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch is different again. Like Ludmilla, she is compelled to become a wolf during the time of the full moon, but in addition she has the power to shape-shift at will, by day or night, at any time of the month. This gift is a great advantage to her in police work; when in wolf form she has a superb sense of smell, thanks to which she can track anyone anywhere and decipher subtle clues at crime scenes. And, as many a villain has found out, it is most disconcerting to chase an attractive and unprotected girl into a dark alley, only to find a pile of discarded clothes and a large she-wolf, teeth bared. However, she has certain weaknesses. For a day or two before her Change she becomes irritable, due to Pre-Lunar Tension. When she is in wolf form the touch of any silver object gives her intense pain, and (like werewolves on the Earth) she is vulnerable to silver bullets. Some strong smells overwhelm her delicate nose, bringing on the equivalent of acute hay fever. Angua’s parents are the extremely aristocratic Baron Guye von Uberwald (also known as Silvertail) and Baroness Serafine von Uberwald (also known as Yellowfang). The Baron spends most of his time in wolf form, to the annoyance of his wife. Angua had a brother named Wolfgang, a magnificently built and very athletic young man, with strongly Nietzschean views, who made a terrifying wolf and would have felt quite at home in the SS. Even his father was afraid of him. But, as she tells Carrot, she also has another brother, Andrei, and she did have a sister named Elsa, till Wolfgang killed her. ‘He said it was an accident. Poor little Elsa. She was a yennork, just like Andrei. That’s a werewolf that doesn’t change, you know? I’m sure I’ve mentioned it. Our family throws them up from time to time. Wolfgang and I were the only classic bimorphs in the litter. Elsa looked human all the time, even at full moon. Andrei was always a wolf.’ ‘You mean you had a human sister and a wolf brother?’ ‘No, Carrot. They were both werewolves. But the, well, the little … switch … inside them didn’t work. They stayed the same shape. In the old days the clan would kill off a yennork quickly, and Wolfgang is a traditionalist when it comes to nastiness. He says they made the blood impure. You see, a yennork would go off and be a human or a wolf but they’d still be carrying the werewolf blood, and then they’d marry and have children … or pups … and, well, that’s where the fairytale monsters come from. People with a bit of wolf, and wolves with that extra capacity for violence that is so very human. But Elsa was harmless. After that, Andrei didn’t wait for it to happen to him. He’s a sheepdog over in Borogravia now. Doing well, I hear. Wins championships.’ [The Fifth Elephant] Not surprisingly, Angua has broken with her family. But the existence of the yennork explains a lot. No doubt the aristocratic werewolves guard their pedigrees carefully, but mistakes will happen, even in the best regulated families. IGORS The Igors are a very numerous humanoid family in the Uberwald region, each of whom is named either Igor or Igorina. They are not, of course, undead, but are usually standing very close to a corpse. They are, in fact, a big nod to the cinematic cliché that whenever there is a brain to be collected or a big crackling switch to be pulled, then there is an Igor, or someone who looks very much like him, ready and willing to do the job. Igors are heavily built, with a strong tendency to lurch and shamble, and they speak with a heavy, spluttering lisp. For generations many of them have gone into service in the households of aristocratic vampires in Uberwald, where it is their pride and joy to ensure that massive doors creak, candles gutter, cobwebs abound, and carriages look as much like hearses as possible. They have a keen appreciation of all the traditional trappings of horror. Sadly, Earthly vampires, unlike those of the Disc, seem never to have employed Igors. As we have pointed out, they did not have many visitors. Another reason why Igors like working for vampires is that their castles usually have large, deep, cool cellars where an Igor can quietly pursue his real interests. The whole clan has a remarkable hereditary skill in surgery, especially transplants and wound repair, including the replacing of severed limbs. This they practise both on themselves and on others. You can always recognize an Igor by his distinctly patchwork look and interestingly individual scar patterns, and maybe an extra thumb or mismatched eyes. In many cases, you could place a ball on the top of his head, and it would not roll off. The Igorinas, on the other hand, use their skill to look absolutely stunning, but always include some fetching little detail – a beautifully curved scar under one eye, a line of decorative stitching round the wrist – to maintain the Family Look. Since Igors hate discarding any body part that could be recycled, an elderly member of the clan will make arrangements for the best bits of himself to be shared out among his kin when the time comes. They have a great fondness for heirlooms; among Igors, ‘he’s got his grandfather’s hands’ is likely to be literally true. There is a tradition among Igors that the ancestor who first learned surgery was working for a mad doctor at the time. A more recent member of the clan, who diversified into extremely delicate clock-making, produced references from a series of employers whose hold on sanity appears to have been shaky – Mad Doctor Scoop, Crazed Baron Haha (crushed by a burning windmill), Thcreaming Doctor Bertherk (died of blood poisoning caused by a dirty pitchfork), and Demented Doctor Wimble, who discovered how to make the perfect clock while working on a scheme to extract sunshine from oranges. This particular Igor has a passion for electricity and thunderstorms, as described in Thief of Time. There are few echoes of the Igors on Earth. And those that there are are only to be found in modern cinema and comic strips, not in age-old folklore. However, they do support the idea that an Igor once worked for a Doctor Frankenstein (who was definitely crazy) on a job which involved a great deal of stitching body parts together and exposing them to lightning. The Doctor wouldn’t have got far without his help. Despite the people they work for, Igors are generally well-intentioned, nay, spiritual beings. Most religions teach that the body is just an outer garment, to be shed in due time, and Igors think, in a provident way, that items with some wear left in them should not be wasted. ZOMBIES It is not strictly accurate to include the Discworld zombies in this chapter, since (unlike werewolves, golems or Igors) they do not constitute a separate race or species. On the contrary, a zombie is simply a human being who obstinately remains sort-of-alive when he has in fact died. He ought to lie a-mouldering in his grave, instead of wandering around looking vaguely grey, with fingers dropping off occasionally. No one knows why some people are natural zombies; it may simply be stubborn bloody-mindedness, an inborn refusal to kowtow to any authority, even that of Death. What Death thinks of this situation has not been recorded. On the Disc, it would seem that zombies keep the personalities they had when alive, more or less intact, with the result that the four we know best are strikingly different. One is Mr Slant, the eminent lawyer who can count most of the upper-class families in Ankh-Morpork among his clients. He is dry-as-dust, in a very literal sense, and though he would never (of course) do anything illegal, it is not wise to cross him. He knows family secrets going back for an uncomfortable number of generations. At the opposite end of the city’s social and political spectrum is Reg Shoe. In life he saw himself as a romantic revolutionary; in death he devotes most of his energies to protesting at society’s unjust prejudice and discrimination towards the Undead. Then there is the old wizard Windle Poons, who finds his time as a zombie considerably more exciting than his actual life had been, as we learn in Reaper Man; in his case, however, it is merely a temporary state – the default setting for someone who happens to die when Death is not around to do whatever it is he does with his scythe. And in distant Genua there is Baron Saturday, a zombie who may be something more than just that. His name and his appearance suggest that he has an Earthly counterpart in the sinister Baron Samedi in Haiti – a being who is not himself a zombie or ghost, but a spirit Lord of the Dead. He is seen at crossroads and in cemeteries, and can be recognized by his black tuxedo, white top hat, dark glasses, and skull-like face. He is greatly feared. Earth’s zombies, who are only to be found in the traditional beliefs of Haiti, are very, very different, despite the identical name, and despite the fact that they too are Undead humans. Their condition is due to the spells of some voodoo sorcerer who has called them from their graves – and who, some say, was responsible for putting them down there in the first place, having sent them into a death-like trance by a secret poison, concocted from the liver of a very rare fish (it appears, from a conversation recorded in Reaper Man, that the wizards of Unseen University have heard rumours about this). When Haitian zombies emerge, their minds and souls have gone; they have become mere robots, incapable of speech, who must serve the sorcerer as his slaves. However, there is one way to rescue a zombie: give him salted food, or salt water to drink, and his soul and his power of speech will be restored. It is said there was once a girl who died and was buried, but she was seen three years later, working very long hours in a boutique; she looked much the same as in the past, except that her neck was twisted – and that was because her coffin had been too small, and they had had to force her head down. But she spoke to nobody, and her eyes had no life in them. Reg Shoe, the tireless revolutionary and champion of the Rights of the Undead, would be unspeakably angry if he knew the plight of the poor, exploited, downtrodden zombies of Haiti. 6 And also that in the inevitable chase scene the coach would always break down in the same place in Black Park, near Pinewood Studios – according to Terry. This may not be strictly true, but it gave him the idea for Don’tgonearthe Castle. 7 As we will see later, two hearts are magical. However, the only known person with two hearts on the planet Earth is Doctor Who. 8 See the section above on vampires, where this same thing is mentioned as one possible cause for the condition. For much of the early history of these creatures (that is, before the days when vampires dressed snappily and werewolves generally managed to keep their trousers on) they were in most cultures pretty much the same thing. Someone who was a werewolf when alive would keep up the bad work by becoming a vampire when dead. Chapter 7 BEASTIES IT IS ONE OF THE MYSTERIES of the multiverse that animals which exist as normal flesh-and-blood creatures in one world are regarded as imaginary, legendary or folkloric in another – and yet, in many cases, the descriptions tally almost perfectly. Whether this is due to the perpetual drifting of particles of knowledge through cosmic space, or whether such species did once inhabit all worlds and have regrettably become extinct in some of them, is a matter of debate. But nobody can deny that the fauna of the Discworld is particularly rich in species which other worlds have dreamed of. Not for nothing does the old song run: All beasts bright and beautiful, All monsters big and small, All things weird and wonderful, The Discworld has them all. DRAGONS On our world, the image of the dragon is so widespread and so deep-rooted that it can truly be said that its origins are lost in those famous mists of time. It’s a persistent image, too. Even after the last land masses had been explored, and map-makers were forced to admit that ‘Here be no dragons’, people still reported seeing sea-serpents, and huge scaly things in lakes. And to this day there are innumerable storytellers and artists, still eagerly creating and re-creating dragons in their works. There must be a powerful flow of draconicons still pouring into the Earth from some other universe. It seems likely that the source is the Discworld, which can boast of two flourishing species and has some awareness of a third. (a) Draco vulgaris Visitors to Ankh-Morpork and other Discworld cities have often commented on the charming fashion for society ladies to wear small, colourful dragons on their shoulders; in the winter months, they are also popular as muffs and foot-warmers. These are miniature specimens of Draco vulgaris, the Common Swamp Dragon, which probably no longer exists in the wild but has been bred in captivity for many generations. The basic type is the Common Smut, familiar to all, from which numerous distinct varieties have been developed; some three dozen are recognized for show purposes (details obtainable from the Cavern Club Exhibitions Committee). Most are of amiable disposition, but it should be noted that the Golden Deceiver retains some characteristics of its wild ancestors; it makes a good watch dragon but should not be allowed near children. To own a pedigree Swamp Dragon is a mark of taste and refinement, but also requires a degree of patience which, alas, all too few would-be owners possess. Where dragons are kept, damage to furniture and clothing is inevitable, and chemical effluvia are frequently emitted which some persons of delicate constitution may find offensive. Most dragons are highly strung, excitable little creatures, so great care must be taken in approaching and handling them, if the owner wishes to avoid scratches, bites, and unsightly loss of hair through sudden flaming at close range. The owner can also expect much expense on vets’ bills, since dragons suffer from a multitude of ills – Slab Throat, Skiplets, The Black Tups, Storge and Staggers, to name but a few (see Diseases of the Dragon, by Sybil Deirdre Olgivanna Ramkin). Their digestive systems are liable to catastrophic malfunctions, notably Blowback, which is invariably fatal. Needless to say, all varieties readily explode under stress. There has been much debate as to how so delicate and vulnerable a species can have evolved and survived. True, their native habitat in the swamps of Genua was fairly inaccessible, and they had no natural predators; the only external danger was from callous young men who had worked out that the simplest way to set yourself up as a hero was (in the words of Sir Samuel Vimes) ‘to come plodding into the swamp to stick a sword into a bag of guts that was only one step away from self-destruction anyway’. Yet their entire metabolism seems radically unsuited to Discworld conditions. Leonard of Quirm has proposed the bold theory that swamp dragons did not originate on the Disc but are descended from the non-discly species Draco nobilis (see below), showing adaptations for a heavy-air environment. The difference in size would thus be an example of evolutionary dwarfism, a process well attested in isolated populations. (b) Draco nobilis Everyone on the Discworld and on Earth has heard of the Noble or Great Dragon – a creature many times larger than the Swamp Dragon, fierce, untameable, with scales and claws and breath like a blast furnace, coiled up in its secret lair on top of a great hoard of gold. In traditional tales, such dragons fed on virgins and could only be slain by heroes (preferably the long-lost heirs of kingdoms), and we shall have more to say on this in a later chapter. But were they myth, or were they real? At the time of the events recounted in Guards! Guards! the most that could be said was that they were a great mystery. Lady Sybil Ramkin knew that they used to turn up from time to time, full of vim and vigour, but had ceased coming. She believed they had migrated to somewhere where gravity wasn’t so strong, where they could fulfil their potential and be all that a dragon should be. Lord Vetinari was positive that they were extinct, despite the fact that something large, hot and angry was incinerating portions of the city. The Unique and Supreme Lodge of the Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night were using rituals to summon and control a Great Dragon. They discovered that if summoning is hard, control is much, much harder. But at least nobody could still argue that Draco nobilis was a myth. Ensuing events confirmed that Draco vulgaris and Draco nobilis are indeed related, but gave no clue as to the latter’s current habitat. The wizard Rincewind claimed to have learned, in the course of a very alarming early experience of his own, that most of the time they do not exist as people generally understand ‘existence’, but only potentially: The true dragon is a creature of such refinement of spirit that they can only take on form in this world if they are conceived by the most skilled imagination. And even then the said imagination must be in some place heavily impregnated with magic, which helps to weaken the walls between the world of the seen and unseen. Then the dragons pop through, as it were, and impress their form upon this world’s possibility matrix. [The Colour of Magic] Some years later, Rincewind revised his views on the mystery in the light of fresh discoveries. When the intrepid voyagers on Leonard of Quirm’s flying machine landed briefly on the Disc’s moon (as recounted in The Last Hero), they found a population of magnificent silver dragons of all sizes, feeding on moon-plants with metallic silver leaves. They were completely unafraid of humans; indeed, the little ones would swarm all over people, like kittens. It is plausible to assume that these superb creatures are a variety of Draco nobilis. How we yearn to know more about them! But it seems the gods have decreed that no more flying machines shall be built. Probably this is for the best. Let the Moon Dragons enjoy their serene life, safe from the deplorable impact of humanity. The true dragon-lover must rejoice for them. (c) Draco maritimus immensis No other dragon species has actually been observed on or near the Disc, but according to Scandinavian mythology there was (or is) a third one on Earth, the aquatic Midgardsorm or Middle-Earth Worm (Draco maritimus immensis). It is written that it lies on the seabed, encircling the whole Earth, where it will remain till the end of the world, when it will emerge, and a particularly stupid Norse god named Thor will clobber it with a hammer. It is some comfort that it is also written that its dying breath will poison him. This myth is hard to believe. The distribution of land masses on the Earth is so untidy that no dragon could encircle the whole planet while lying on the seabed without suffering painful and possibly fatal dislocations of its spine. However, somewhere there exists another universe which was once briefly summoned into a prism by the gifted young wizard Simon, and this one does appear to contain a Middle-Earth Worm. A prism … held another slowly turning disc, surrounded by little stars. But there were no ice walls around this one, just a red-gold thread that turned out on closer inspection to be a snake – a snake big enough to encircle a world. For reasons best known to itself it was biting its own tail. [Equal Rites] This is confirmed by something the sea-troll Tethis told Rincewind (see The Colour of Magic). While tumbling through space after being swept off the edge of his own world, Tethis passed within a few leagues of a world with a strange ring of mountains round it – mountains that turned out to be ‘the biggest dragon you could ever imagine, covered in snow and glaciers and holding its tail in its mouth’. A dim awareness of this universe may explain the Earth myth of Draco maritimus immensis, and also the image of the ouroboros or tail-biting serpent known to alchemists and hermetic philosophers as the symbol of the ever-circling eternity of time and space. THE BASILISK AND THE CHIMERA The basilisk is a particularly dangerous species of serpent, which can kill any other animal merely by glancing at it with its fierce, fell and fiery eyes; its breath destroys all vegetation, so it is necessarily a desert-dweller; its blood is said to be of great value to magicians. On Earth, it was first identified by the Ancient Greeks, who gave it a name meaning ‘little king’, because (as the Roman naturalist Pliny explained) it has a golden mark like a crown on its head. Later, during the Middle Ages of western Europe, people believed that it wore an actual coronet of pure gold, and some described it as a snake with four pairs of legs. They gave it a second name, ‘cockatrice’, and said it was a mortal enemy of crocodiles. They also claimed to know how it is born: when a farmyard cock lives longer than is normal for his species, in the last stage of his life he starts to lay eggs, and if, in the hottest days of summer, some venomous serpent or toad coils itself round such an egg and hatches it, what comes out is the cockatrice or basilisk. It has the head and legs of a cockerel, but its body tapers down to a snake’s tail, ending in a dart. It was much feared for its death-dealing glance, until a method of destroying it was devised. Writing a Historie of Serpents in 1608, the naturalist Edward Topsell mocked the legend: I cannot without laughing remember the old wives’ tales of the vulgar cockatrices that have been in England, for I have often-times heard it confidently related, that once our nation was full of cockatrices, and that a certain man did destroy them by going up and down in glasse, whereby their own shapes were reflected upon their own faces, and so they died. Topsell was wrong to laugh. The method is perfectly valid. It exploits an instinct which can also be seen in young male swamp dragons in the breeding season, when they are so eager to drive off a rival that they will attack their own reflections (as Chubby did in Men at Arms). On the Discworld, the basilisk inhabits the burning deserts of Klatch. On one occasion, as we read in Sourcery, a hungry basilisk which lay panting in the baking shade of a rock, dribbling corrosive yellow slime, heard the thumping of hundreds of little feet. This, the creature thought, must mean that its dinner was on the way. But what was approaching was the wizard Rincewind’s fearsome Luggage, which was in a particularly foul mood because it had become separated from its master and had recently had to fight its way across a river infested with alligators. The basilisk blinked its legendary eyes and uncoiled twenty feet of hungry body, winding out and on to the sand like fluid death. The Luggage staggered to a halt and raised its lid threateningly. The basilisk hissed, but a little uncertainly, because it had never seen a walking box before, and certainly never one with lots of alligator teeth stuck in its lid. There were also scraps of leathery hide adhering to it, as though it had been involved in a fight in a handbag factory, and in a way that the basilisk wouldn’t have been able to describe even if it could talk, it appeared to be glaring. Right, the reptile thought, if that’s the way you want to play it. It turned on the Luggage a stare like a diamond drill, a stare that nipped in via the staree’s eyeballs and flayed the brain from the inside, a stare that tore the frail net curtains on the windows of the soul, a stare that— The basilisk realized something was very wrong. An entirely new and unwelcome sensation started to arise just behind its saucer-shaped eyes. It started small, like the little itch in those few square inches of back that no amount of writhing will allow you to scratch, and grew until it became a second, redhot, internal sun. The basilisk was feeling a terrible, overpowering and irresistible urge to blink … It did something incredibly unwise. It blinked. [Sourcery] The Luggage went on its way, with a few traces of yellow slime rapidly drying on its lid. What a tragic misunderstanding! If only the basilisk had been less hungry that day, and the Luggage less ill-tempered, they would have seen how much they had in common – a domineering gaze, a dislike of alligators and crocodiles, perhaps even a multiplicity of feet, if some pictures of basilisks can be trusted. A beautiful friendship might have been born. But it was not to be. Pursuing its erratic course across the dunes of Klatch, the Luggage next encountered a Chimera, which was sitting on a stone pinnacle the shape and temperature of a firebrick. Before recounting the outcome, it will be useful to see what books from our own world can tell about this monster – legendary here, but real enough on the Discworld. According to John Milton, a chimera is just about the worst thing you could meet on a guided tour of Hell. In Book 2 of his Paradise Lost he lists the horrors in the infernal landscape at some length, and caps them all with the assertion that Hell is a place Where all life dies, death lives, and Nature breeds (Perverse) all monstrous, all prodigious things, Abominable, inutterable, and worse Than fables yet have feigned, or fear conceived, Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimaeras dire. After which it comes as a bit of a let-down to find that, according to Ancient Greek poets, the Chimera was a rather muddled female monster, consisting of a fire-breathing nanny-goat with a lion’s head and a snake’s body. An alternative view, supported by Ancient Greek artists who had to draw the damn thing, was that she had two heads at the front end, one leonine and one capriform, and a long scaly tail at the back end, terminating in a snake’s head. The Greek Chimera’s family was an unpleasant one. Her father Typhon, the god of storms at sea, was nothing but a writhing mass of serpents from the waist down, and had snakes instead of fingers, while his wings darkened the whole sky; her mother was a sea-monster, half woman and half snake, who ate humans raw; her siblings included Cerberus, the three-headed Hound of Hell, and the hundred-headed Hydra. The Greek Chimera did her best to be dire; she tried to look as abominable and inutterable as she could, but the goat component undermined the effect. Her biggest asset was her fiery breath, yet even this turned out to be unhelpful when the hero Bellerophon was sent to kill her, on the orders of an enemy of his, who assumed this was a mission impossible – indeed, fatal. But Bellerophon was as canny as he was good-looking, and devised a cunning plan. Mounted on his good flying horse Pegasus, he swooped over the Chimera, firing arrows at her, and when she opened her lion’s jaws to puff flame at him he dropped a lump of lead down her throat. The heat of her stomach melted the lead, sealing her doom from the inside. The chimera of the Discworld may be related, but separate evolution has brought about several differences, including some unexpected wings. According to Broomfog’s bestiary Anima Unnaturale, It have thee legges of an mermade, the hair of an tortoise, the teeth of an fowel, and the winges of an snake. Of course, I have only my worde for it, the beast having the breathe of an furnace and the temperament of an rubber balloon in a hurricane. [Sourcery] Such was the creature which attacked Rincewind’s Luggage. The chimera’s technique was to swoop low over the prey, lightly boiling it with its fiery breath, and then turn and rend its dinner with its teeth. It managed the fire part but then, at the point where experience told the creature it should be facing a stricken and terrified victim, found itself on the ground in the path of a scorched and furious Luggage. The only thing incandescent about the Luggage was its rage. It had spent several hours with a headache, during which it seemed the whole world had tried to attack it. It had had enough. When it had stamped the unfortunate chimera into a greasy puddle on the sand, it paused for a moment, apparently considering its future … [Sourcery] There is a distinct possibility that the Discworld chimera, always an endangered species, is now extinct. THE SPHINX Though there can be no doubt that Prince Teppic of Djelibeybi once met a Sphinx, there has been much argument over whether the creature is truly part of the Discworld’s fauna. Teppic himself was unclear as to where he was when he encountered it. Space and time had been behaving strangely. A spokesman for Unseen University expressed the view that: The Sphinx is an unreal creature. It exists solely because it has been imagined. It is well known that in an infinite universe anything that can be imagined must exist somewhere, and since many of them are not things that ought to exist in a well-ordered space-time frame they get shoved into a side dimension. [Pyramids] To which Teppic replied that that’s as may be, but he was in no doubt that either he broke into the Sphinx’s dimension or it broke into his, and that what has happened once may happen again. Provisionally, therefore, the Sphinx has been listed as a potential (if unwelcome) denizen of the Discworld. On Earth, its existence is better documented. According to ancient writers, a Sphinx is a creature with the body of a lion or lioness and a human head; one subspecies has wings and human female breasts; another has a serpent’s tail; yet another exists only in the form of conjoined twins. The name means ‘throttler’ in Greek. They were native to Egypt, where they guarded the borders of the kingdom, the entrances to temples, and the approaches to important pyramids and tombs. They were not normally dangerous to humans. Many statues of them were made, and can be seen to this day. The Egyptians themselves had no generic word for sphinxes, each one (and there were hundreds of them) having a name of its own. Tourists visiting the Great Sphinx of Giza should address it, cautiously, as Horemakhet Khepri-Ra-Atum. If they get the pronunciation right, it may choose to reveal some of the hidden treasures which it guards. If they get it wrong, it may choose to reveal its claws. The Great Sphinx of Giza has two aims in its existence. The first is to guard the royal tombs at Memphis, which it has successfully done for some 4,500 years; the second is to keep itself, and the town of Giza, free from drifting sand, because sand makes it ache in all its limbs. This has been a sorry failure. After a mere eleven hundred years it was buried in dunes right up to the neck, until it was dug clear by Prince Thutmose, whom it gratefully made Pharaoh. Other people have had to dig it out again since then, but they don’t now get to be made Pharaoh. In fact, the Great Sphinx seems to have pretty well given up on its sand-repelling duties, allowing Giza to be engulfed, and relying on humans to give it the occasional brush-up. The Arabs say it is sulking because a holy man smashed its nose. According to Greek mythology, the goddess Hera brought a single female sphinx from Egypt to Greece, for vindictive reasons; she must have hoped that, as so often, the introduction of a foreign species would seriously damage the local ecology, but since she neglected to provide it with a mate it did not breed, and the devastation it caused ended with its life. This Greek Sphinx was more active, more malevolent, than her Egyptian relatives. She perched herself on a rock overlooking the main road into Thebes, where she forced every traveller to try to guess her utterly perplexing Riddle: ‘What animal walks on four legs in the morning, two at midday, and three in the evening, and is at its weakest when it has most legs?’ If they couldn’t answer, she throttled them, and ate them. And so it went on, until one day Oedipus came along, and replied, ‘That animal is Man. As a feeble baby, he crawls on all fours; as an adult, he walks upright; as an old man, he uses a stick.’ The Sphinx was so furious that she beat her brains out against the rock. Prince Teppic’s Sphinx, like the Egyptian one, guarded a border – in this case, a fold in the space-time continuum which was a border between dimensions. Like the Greek one, it relied upon The Riddle to provide it with entertainment and with innumerable meals. Now Teppic, despite being a fully qualified Assassin, was not a man of violence, and had a proper concern for wildlife, even in its more alarming forms. He tried polite conversation (‘We’ve got any amount of statues to you at home’), but the Sphinx, though flattered, could not be sidetracked for long, and challenged him with its Riddle. Teppic admitted defeat, so the gloating Sphinx itself gave him the explanation. Now, Teppic had been born into a culture profoundly distrustful of metaphors, symbolism, allegories, and figures of speech of every sort. The people of Djelibeybi took all religious, poetic, and metaphysical statements as literal physical truths; to them, a metaphor was a lie. Furthermore, Teppic had recently visited Ephebe, where he had heard the philosopher Xeno expounding his famous logical proof that if you shoot an arrow at a tortoise you cannot possibly hit it. So Teppic launched an attack, not on the Sphinx, but on its metaphor. Combining the deadly literalism of Djelibeybi with the debating skills and logic of Ephebe, he demanded clarifications. Did all this actually happen in one day, to one individual? Well, no, the Sphinx admitted, it is a figure of speech, but what’s wrong with that? ‘An element of dramatic analogy is present in all riddles,’ it claimed. ‘Yes, but,’ said Teppic, ‘is there internal consistency within the metaphor?’ Step by step, the hapless Sphinx was forced to concede that in an analogy where the human lifespan of seventy years is represented by twenty-four hours, the crawling stage only lasts for about twenty minutes, and can’t be called ‘morning’, as it comes just after midnight. There are other problems too. Since some old folk need no sticks while others use two, would it not be more accurate to say that after supper-time ‘it continues to walk on two legs or with any prosthetic aids of its choice’? When everything had been settled to their mutual satisfaction, the Sphinx repeated its challenge. But of course Prince Teppic already knew the answer. The Sphinx itself had told him, earlier on. He now gave it, and the Sphinx had to let him go free. He got away just in time as an angry bellow erupted behind him, when the Sphinx finally worked out what had happened. Should the creature ever reappear on the Discworld or in our own universe, people will now know how to deal with it. THE PHOENIX Everyone agrees that the phoenix, also known as the firebird, is extremely beautiful, and that it is the rarest bird that has ever existed, or could ever exist, anywhere in the multiverse. It’s said, both on the Discworld and on Earth, that you only get one phoenix at a time, that it lives to be five hundred years old, and that when it feels its death approaching it builds a nest, in which it lays a single egg. Then it bursts into flame and burns itself up, so that the warmth will hatch out the new bird from the ashes. This way of life, and death, makes it extremely useful as an allegory or metaphor. It also makes some people think that it is only a mythical creature. However, there are people in Lancre who, having observed nature closely, think the commonly accepted story cannot be accurate. Both Hodgesaargh the falconer and Granny Weatherwax have found the occasional phoenix feather, a small flickering flame-like thing which nothing can quench. Granny keeps hers in a little glass bottle. One day the other witches are examining it: ‘I saw her pick that thing up years ago,’ said Magrat. ‘It was around this time of year, too. We were walking back through the woods and there was a shooting star and this sort of light fell off it and we went to look and there it was. It looked like a flame but she was able to pick it up.’ ‘Sounds like a firebird feather,’ said Nanny. ‘There used to be old stories about them. They pass through here. But if you touch their feathers you’d better be damn sure of yourself, because the old stories say they burn in the presence of evil—’ ‘Firebird? You mean a phoenix?’ said Agnes. ‘Haven’t seen one go over for years,’ said Nanny. ‘Sometimes you’d see two or three at a time when I was a girl, just lights flying high up in the sky.’ ‘No, no, the phoenix … there’s only one of it, that’s the whole point,’ said Agnes. ‘One of anything’s no bloody use,’ said Nanny. [Carpe Jugulum] On the Discworld, the firebird is said to have its main home in the hot deserts of Klatch, even though its seasonal migrations take it over Lancre. So, the best place to look for its equivalent on Earth would be in the hot deserts of Ancient Egypt. And there, sure enough, it is – not yet called the phoenix, but the Benu Bird. The name probably means ‘rise-and-shine’. According to one Egyptian myth it is the oldest of all creatures; its cry was the first sound ever heard, when it perched, glowing, on the first mound of earth to rise up out of the primeval sea – or, others said, on the first sacred obelisk, the Benben stone at Heliopolis. It was usually described as a heron, or as a huge golden hawk with a heron’s beak. Many generations later, in the fifth century BC, the Greek writer Herodotus visited Heliopolis, where he was told about a marvellous red-gold bird which would come to the temple of the sun there once every five hundred years. He called it ‘phoenix’, meaning that its brilliant colouring was as fine as the richest Phoenician purple dye. This bird, he was told, would arrive carrying an egg which it had formed from the ashes of its parent mixed with myrrh; the next phoenix would be born from this egg. Later writers changed the bird’s homeland from Egypt to Arabia, and gave a different explanation of its death and rebirth. An aged phoenix, they said, would build itself a nest full of spices, and settling there would sing a last sad song. Then it would burst into flame and burn itself to ashes. But from the ashes a new young bird would arise. Thanks to this story, the phoenix is famous in poetry and folklore as a symbol of indestructible life. As Will Shakespeare put it: Thus when The bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix, Her ashes new-create another heir, As much to be admired as she herself. The witches of Lancre would not entirely agree. ‘Bird of wonder’, yes; ‘maiden’, no. For, as Granny Weatherwax pointed out, ‘One of anything ain’t going to last for very long, is it?’ THE SALAMANDER Salamanders are a species of lizard, pinkish in colour, sluggish in behaviour, and in no way dangerous. The only interesting thing about them is that they do not eat in the normal sense of the word; instead, they subsist entirely on the nourishing quality of octarine, the eighth colour in the Discworld’s sunlight, which they absorb through their skins. Since the wavelengths corresponding to the other colours have no food value for them, they store this surplus light in a special sac and discharge it when the sac is full, or when they are alarmed, causing a vivid flash. A cage of salamanders is a very useful piece of equipment for anyone who wants to keep a pictorial record of events (such as Twoflower the tourist, or Otto Chriek the journalistic iconographer), for the flash enables the imp in the picture-box to function even in the dark. On Earth the name was applied, in the days of the Ancient Greeks, to what must be a related species – a lizard that lives in the midst of fire, remaining unharmed because its body is so intensely cold that it extinguishes the flames around it. Centuries later, the alchemist Paracelsus taught that each of the four elements (earth, air, fire and water) had its own elemental spirit, and that of fire was a salamander. These dramatic creatures are now regarded on Earth as mere myths, useful only in poetry and heraldry. Confusingly, however, there are also on that world several species of flesh-and-blood lizards which are called ‘salamanders’. Throwing them into a fire as an experiment is not considered an environmentally friendly act. THE UNICORN This elegant but sometimes ferocious beast is an elvish creature, not native to the Discworld. The one which appeared in Lancre (as told in Lords and Ladies) came from an alternative universe where it was the Elf Queen’s pet; it had crossed accidentally, at one of those places where worlds come too close together, and the wall between them is thinner than one would wish. It could not return. Terrified and enraged, it became a danger – for a large stallion with a twelve-inch razor-sharp horn growing from its forehead is not to be treated lightly. Yet Granny Weatherwax was able to cope. When the unicorn charged at her, she created an invisible wall into which it crashed, and as it writhed on the ground she let down her hair, and broke off a single hair at the root. Granny Weatherwax’s hands made a complicated motion in the air as she made a noose out of something almost too thin to see. She ignored the thrashing horn and dropped it over the unicorn’s neck. Then she pulled. Struggling, its unshod hooves kicking up great clods of mud, the unicorn struggled to its feet. ‘That’ll never hold it,’ said Nanny, sidling around the tree. ‘I could hold it with a cobweb, Gytha Ogg. With a cobweb.’ And so indeed she does, dragging the unicorn to Jason Ogg’s forge, where its hooves are shod – not with iron, of course, since that would kill an elvish animal, but with silver horseshoes made from Granny’s own best tea-set. Her ability to control the beast should not surprise anybody, for, as Nanny Ogg says, there are some things which everybody knows about trapping unicorns – ‘who is qualified to trap ’em is what I’m delicately hintin’ at.’ It takes a maiden to do it, in any universe. And Granny may be old, but she is qualified. Granny emerged from the forge, leading the unicorn … It walked politely alongside the witch until she reached the centre of the square. Then she turned it loose, and gave it a slight slap on the rump. It whinnied softly, turned, and galloped down the street, towards the forest … ‘She’ll never get it back, though she calls for it for a thousand years,’ said Granny, speaking to the world in general … The unicorn reached the forest, and galloped onwards. There are clear affinities here with what people on Earth have long been saying, though, regrettably, in that world the fate of the captured unicorn is more cruel. As early as the seventh century, the Spaniard Isidore of Seville described the unicorn, and how to hunt it: The unicorn is a most savage beast. It has this name because in the middle of its forehead it has a horn, four foot long. And that horn is so sharp and so strong that it knocks down or pierces everything it strikes. This beast often fights against the elephant and pierces him in the belly and throws him to the ground. And the unicorn is so strong that he cannot be taken by the might of hunters. But men who write about the nature of animals say that a maiden is brought where the unicorn may come; and she opens her lap and the unicorn lays his head on it, and abandons all his fierceness, and falls asleep there. And thus the beast is caught, and slain by the huntsmen’s spears. Granny’s device of using a hair as a noose and leash is a remarkable piece of magical skill, and very rare. In Earthly legends one occasionally reads about a maiden tying a defeated dragon with the girdle of her robe and leading it away – St Martha did this, at Tarascon in southern France, and so did the girl St George rescued – but a hair, no. However, a few malevolent hags in the Scottish Highlands did know the trick. If one of these hags found a huntsman sheltering in a mountain bothy, she would kill him, provided she was safe from his dog. So she would ask him to tie the dog up with one of her own long hairs. When she cried, ‘Tighten and choke, hair!’ the dog died. But that is an unpleasant thought. Instead, let us turn to what the poet Alexander Pope has to say about a girl’s charming ringlets: Love in these labyrinths his slaves detains, And mighty hearts are held in slender chains. Fair tresses man’s imperial race ensnare, And beauty draws us with a single hair. THE LUGGAGE Perhaps the strangest of all life-forms on the Disc is the Luggage. It is certainly made of wood, yet its multiple legs and strong aggressive instincts are equally certainly proof that it is no mere plant or plant-product. And very, very certainly it has a mind of its own. ‘Vegetable with animal connections’ is a fair summary. Yet much mystery remains, even after careful study of various Earthly traditions which help to throw light on its possible evolution. On Earth, there was a time when travelling was truly Travelling, not just a matter of hopping on to a jet for a five-day break on the Costa del Sol. People said, ‘I go south in the winter’, meaning they made a habit of spending a couple of months on the Riviera every year; they went off for half their lives to govern a chunk of far-flung Empire; in extreme cases, they went round the world in eighty days. En route, they tended to acquire pterodactyls, mummies, and bits of old temples. So when an English gentleman travelled, a whole host of trunks, crates, chests, portmanteaux, packing cases, suitcases, dressing-cases, shoe-cases, hatboxes, bandboxes, Gladstone bags, carpet bags, and pistol cases travelled with him. Arriving at his destination, he would leave most of them at the quayside or station and enter his hotel with a mere smattering of hand baggage (say, as much as two porters could carry), telling the manager, ‘My luggage will follow’. And so it would, pushed on handcarts, or carried on the backs or heads of porters. But as time rolled on, the race of porters became mysteriously extinct, and evolutionary pressures caused luggage itself to develop mechanisms enabling it to obey its instinct to follow. The first scientific record of this phenomenon was by Terry himself, when he wrote in 1988: Many years ago I saw, in Bath, a very large American lady towing a huge tartan suitcase very fast on little rattly wheels which caught in the pavement cracks and generally gave it a life of its own. At that moment the Luggage was born. Many thanks to that lady … [Dedication of Sourcery] The Discworld environment is hostile to things with little rattly wheels, as we learn in Reaper Man, when it is menaced by an incursion of alien supermarket trolleys. Therefore on the Disc evolution has produced a more elegant solution: the Luggage hurtles across the landscape (and, if need be, through space, time, and dimensions) on several hundred energetic but retractable little legs, always following the person it has adopted as its owner. If that were all, one could reasonably claim to understand the origins and characteristics of the Luggage. But it has more mysterious properties, whose equivalents on Earth are obscure, though not beyond all conjecture. Outwardly it looks like a pirate’s treasure-chest, the kind one expects to find brim full of ill-gotten gold and jewels, but its interior is larger than its exterior, and probably does not occupy the same space-time framework. Sometimes it does indeed contain bags of gold, at other times food and drink, or its owner’s neatly folded clothes, smelling of lavender; but when it is in fighting mode it opens its lid menacingly to reveal rows and rows of large square teeth, as white as bleached sycamore or tombstones, and a red, pulsating, mahogany tongue. It is wholly impervious to magic, being itself made of sapient pearwood from the Counterweight Continent, possibly the most concentrated magical substance on the Disc. When angry (as it so often is) it is a fearsome enemy, as was amply demonstrated during a fight in the Broken Drum. The door burst open. Two trolls hurried through it, slammed it behind them, dropped the heavy bar across it and fled down the stairs. Outside there was a sudden crescendo of running feet. And, for the last time, the door opened. In fact it exploded, the great wooden bar being hurled far across the room and the frame itself giving way. Door and frame landed on a table, which flew into splinters. It was then that the frozen fighters noticed that there was something else in the pile of wood. It was a box, shaking itself madly to rid itself of the smashed timber around it … A raven swooped down from its perch in the rafters and dived at the wizard [Rincewind], talons open and gleaming. It didn’t make it. At about the half-way point the Luggage leapt from its bed of splinters, gaped briefly in mid air, and snapped shut. It landed lightly. Rincewind saw its lid open again, slightly. Just far enough for a tongue, large as a palm leaf, red as mahogany, to lick up a few errant feathers. [The Colour of Magic] It would be reassuring to think that no such devastating piece of carpentry exists, ever has existed, or ever could exist elsewhere in the multiverse. But the myths of olden time and the inspirational insights of modern authors both show that a race of deadly chests has evolved on Earth, with all the destructive power of the Luggage, and none of its usefulness and charm. The first hint of their existence comes from Plutarch, a Greek writer living in Rome who died in AD 126; he visited Egypt, whose ancient religion fascinated him, and wrote a book Concerning Isis and Osiris based on the legends current there in his time. He recounts in detail how the virtuous king Osiris was murdered by his evil brother Seth. Seth secretly obtained the exact measurements of Osiris, and had a magnificent chest made; he then displayed it during a feast, promising to give it to whoever could fit inside it exactly. Many tried, but in vain. Finally Osiris laid himself in the chest, which immediately became a perfect fit for him; Seth promptly bolted it shut, sealed it with lead, and threw it into the Nile. It floated magically for many miles, and when it washed ashore in the Lebanon it grew at once into a marvellous tree, still containing the dead body of Osiris; then it was cut down and made into a pillar in a king’s palace. Isis, wife of Osiris, claimed the pillar and had it opened, revealing the chest/coffin, which held the wonderfully preserved corpse; it thus became the prototype for all Egyptian mummy-cases. Another death-dealing chest is recorded in Norse tradition as the property of the legendary goldsmith Volund (or, in English, Wayland). A cruel king held him captive on an island, forcing him to work at making golden treasures; his sword had been taken from him, and he had been deliberately lamed to prevent any escape. The king had two young sons, who one day went hunting on that island and came to Volund’s forge. There they saw a great chest, and asked Volund for the key. He opened it, and they looked in. It held great evil, but to the boys it seemed filled with gold rings and fine jewels. ‘Come back tomorrow,’ said Volund, ‘and all this will be yours. But tell no one that you are visiting me.’ And so they did, and, as the Old Icelandic poem Völundarkvid–a says: They came to where the great chest stood, Asked Volund for the key; When they looked in, there was revealed Evil and enmity. He struck off the heads of those two boys As they bent down to gaze, And under the pit of the anvil there He buried their bodies. ‘He struck off the heads’ … but how, as he had no sword? One has a nasty suspicion that the chest did the deed itself, using its lid as a weapon. Suspicion also surrounds a tragic event chronicled by Thomas Haynes Bayly in his poem ‘The Mistletoe Bough’ in the 1820s. It was in the times of Merrie England that one of our typical Merrie barons was holding a typically Merrie Christmas dance in his typically Merrie castle, together with his retainers (who all were blithe and gay), his newly married daughter, and the latter’s bridegroom, young Lovell. Seized by a sudden Merrie whim, the bride decided to play hide-and-seek, challenging Lovell to find her secret lurking place. But it all went horribly wrong: They sought her that night! They sought her next day! And they sought her in vain when a week passed away! In the highest – the lowest – the loneliest spot,> Young Lovell sought wildly – but found her not. Many, many years passed by, and then: At length an oak chest, that had long lain hid, Was found in the castle – they raised the lid – And a skeleton form lay mouldering there, In the bridal wreath of that lady fair! Oh! Sad was her fate! In sportive jest She hid from her lord in the old oak chest. It closed with a spring! – and, dreadful doom, The bride lay clasp’d in her living tomb! Sheer accident? The corresponding tragedy in the history of Lancre does indeed seem so, judging by Nanny Ogg’s account: ‘I remember years ago my granny telling me about Queen Amonia, well, I say queen, but she never was queen except for about three hours because of what I’m about to unfold, on account of them playing hide-and-seek at the wedding party and her hiding in a big heavy old chest in some attic and the lid slamming shut and no one finding her for seven months, by which time you could definitely say the wedding cake was getting a bit stale.’ [Lords and Ladies] Yet over in our own world, suspicion lingers. Did the chest Bayly speaks of have some rudimentary capacity for bloody-minded malevolence? And how exactly had it managed to lie hidden while everybody was searching the castle from turret to dungeon? There is a sinister mystery here. A later generation glimpsed what may be a related phenomenon in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island (1883). Jim Hawkins, looking back on the adventure of his boyhood, recalled how it began on the day the ‘brown old seaman with the sabre cut’ arrived, followed by his sea-chest, and took lodgings at the inn which Jim’s parents owned. I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding up to the inn-door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow … I remember him looking round the cove and whistling to himself as he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song he sang so often afterwards:– ‘Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest – Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done for the rest – Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!’ This ill-omened shanty echoes again and again through the story, and is never completed, or explained. Jim writes that ‘At first I had supposed the “dead man’s chest” to be that identical big box of his upstairs in the front room’, the great sea-chest which none of them had ever seen opened. The thought gave him nightmares, as well it might. For how could fifteen men be on one chest? Knowing what we now know of the Luggage, we must query the correctness of the preposition. Not on but in, perhaps? Let us recall Rincewind’s conversation with Conina, on an occasion when the Luggage had just emerged from the Shades with several arrowheads and broken swords sticking in it. She asks him if it is dangerous. ‘There’s two schools of thought about that,’ said Rincewind. ‘There’s some people who say it’s dangerous, and others who say it’s very dangerous. What do you think?’ The Luggage raised its lid a fraction … Conina stared at that lid. It looked very like a mouth. ‘I think I’d vote for “terminally dangerous”,’ she said. ‘It likes crisps,’ volunteered Rincewind, and then added, ‘Well, that’s a bit strong. It eats crisps.’ ‘What about people?’ ‘Oh, and people. About fifteen so far, I think.’ [Sourcery] Fifteen, eh? But it would be unfair to take leave of the Luggage without any mention of the gentler, more domestic side of its nature. During a brief return to its native country, described in Interesting Times, it gallantly rescued a rather charming trunk with inlaid lid and dainty feet (with red toenails) from the unwelcome attentions of three big, coarse cases covered in studded leather. Romance blossomed. Mysterious sounds of sawing and hammering were heard by night on a hillside where pear trees grew. And when the Luggage reappeared it – or shall we say he? – was followed by the dainty-footed Luggage, and then, in descending order of size, four little chests, the smallest being about the size of a lady’s handbag. But the Luggage could not deny its inner calling. After one or two sad backward glances, or what might have been glances if it had had eyes, it cantered away through the dimensions, still following Rincewind. Chapter 8 THE WITCHES OF LANCRE WHY THREE? WHY ‘WYRD’? THE GREATEST CONCENTRATION of natural magical talent in the Discworld is found in the Ramtop Mountains, especially in the small kingdom of Lancre. There have been witches there for generations, remembered to this day with fondness and fear. And still one can hear the age-old rallying call, as an eldritch voice shrieks through a thunderstorm, ‘When shall we three meet again?’ To which, after a pause, another replies in far more ordinary tones, ‘Well, I can do next Tuesday.’ Which is all very well, but it does raise questions. Lancre witches normally work alone, each having her own personal approach to her craft. So why do these particular witches (Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and Magrat Garlick) often meet as a threesome? Why is the first account of their deeds entitled Wyrd Sisters, when they are not sisters? And isn’t wyrd a weird way to spell weird, even if they are weird? As with so many other things, it’s all down to Will Shakespeare. His impact on the universe certainly stretches as far as Lancre. In Will Shakespeare’s Macbeth, there is a trio of secret, black and midnight hags who forgather in a thunderstorm on a blasted heath, boil up unappetizing brews in a cauldron, and utter tricky prophecies which shape the destinies of kings. The stage directions are quite clear as to what they are (‘Thunder and lightning; enter three witches’), and the text is equally clear as to their name. They are the Weird Sisters. That is what Macbeth calls them, and what they call themselves. The Weird Sisters. Being strong individualists, it would never occur to Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and Magrat to give themselves a collective name. But the book does. Being receptive to inspiration, it calls them Wyrd Sisters. That, actually, is how Shakespeare ought to have spelled the name of his own three witches, since it is their true and original title. It doesn’t mean they were peculiar or crazy. It is the Anglo-Saxon wyrd, a word meaning Fate or Destiny, which is now completely forgotten in England, but is still sometimes heard in Scotland, in encouraging remarks such as ‘Weel, laddie, ye maun e’en dree your weird’ (roughly, ‘That’s your bad luck, son, and you’ll just have to put up with it’). Shakespeare’s witches could foretell, and probably direct, your destiny. Shakespeare found their name in the book where he first read about Macbeth’s career, Raphael Holinshed’s History of Scotland (1577). Holinshed was too cautious to commit himself as to what exactly the three women on the heath can have been. He wrote: The common opinion was, that these three women were either the weird sisters, that is (as ye would say) the goddesses of destinie, or else some nymphs or feiries, indued with knowledge of prophecie by their necromanticall science, because euerie thing came to pass as they had spoken. Goddesses, nymphs, fairies, witches, necromancers, prophets? You can take your pick. But there is no doubt that they had power. But why, in both universes, are there precisely three of them? It is of course true that this suits the theatre, as the great playwright Hwel remarks when he looks through a script which, emanating from the mighty power-source of Shakespeare’s mind, has drifted over to the Discworld without too much damage. There were, he had to admit, some nice touches. Three witches was good. Two wouldn’t be enough, four would be too many. They could be meddling with the destinies of mankind and everything. Lots of smoke and green light. You could do a lot with three witches. It was surprising no one had thought of it before. [Wyrd Sisters] But the true reason lies far, far deeper. Three has always been an important number in stories, and in magic. All good things come in threes, and all bad things too. Which is why the Ancient Greeks and Romans spoke of three Fates who held in their hands the thread of each person’s life: Clotho spun it on her distaff, Lachesis measured it, and in due time the dreaded Atropos (‘She who can’t be turned aside’) snipped it with the shears of death. They were usually said to be old women, looking much alike, except that the first two wore white robes and the third, guess who, black. Norsemen too believed in goddesses of destiny, the Norns. According to one poem there were just three, whose names were Urd–r, Verd–andi, and Skuld – meaning ‘what’s-happened-already’, ‘what’s-happening-now’, and ‘what’s-bound-to-happen’. But others said there were many of them, and that they came to every child when it was born, to shape its life. In southern Europe people thought that there were supernatural women who bestowed wishes and gifts on newborn babies. They were a kind of fairy, but it was most unwise to use that word – better to refer tactfully to ‘Ladies from outside’, or ‘Ladies who must not be named’. They were the original fairy godmothers. In Greece and the Balkans, they would arrive on the third night after the birth, and there were three of them. Everyone went to bed early that night, the dogs would be chained up, the door of the house left unlocked. The baby’s cot would be placed near the icon in the main room, and beside it a table with three low stools for the Ladies. There would be a candle burning, and heaps of food – bread and wine, fruit, nuts, honey-cakes. Nobody could enter the room till morning, when the midwives and female relatives would eat up the goodies themselves, for the Ladies had already magically taken what they wanted of them during the night. On one occasion (as recounted in Wyrd Sisters), Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and Magrat saved a baby’s life and appointed themselves his godmothers. In normal circumstances, they would certainly have appreciated a cosy midnight feast, if one had been on offer. But the circumstances were far from normal, and they had to bestow their gifts from a distance. Magrat sighed. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘if we are his godmothers, we ought to have given him three gifts. It’s traditional.’ ‘What are you talking about, girl?’ ‘Three good witches are supposed to give the baby three gifts. You know, like good looks, wisdom and happiness.’ Magrat pressed on defiantly. ‘That’s how it used to be done in the old days.’ ‘Oh, you mean gingerbread cottages and all that,’ said Granny dismissively. ‘Spinning wheels and pumpkins and pricking your finger on rose thorns and similar. I could never be having with all that.’ In the end, however, Granny agreed. Each gave her gift separately, and these gifts shaped the child’s destiny, for, as the Anglo-Saxons used to say, Wyrd bid– swid–ost, ‘Fate is the strongest’, and Wyrd bid– full aræd, ‘Fate is inflexible.’ As a result of this episode and of the events in Witches Abroad, Fairy Godmothers are officially defined in the Discworld Companion as ‘a specialized form of witch with particular responsibility for the life of one individual or a group of individuals’. MAIDEN, MOTHER, CRONE When Magrat got married, she gave up witching for a while. This caused problems for the other two, because not only is three a good number for witches, but it has to be the right sort of three. The right sort of types. Nanny Ogg brooded on the matter: As a witch, she naturally didn’t believe in occult nonsense of any sort. But there were one or two truths down below the bedrock of the soul which had to be faced, and right in among them was this business of, well, the maiden, the mother and the … other one. Of course, it was nothing but an old superstition and belonged to the unenlightened days when ‘maiden’ or ‘mother’ or … the other one … encompassed every woman over the age of twelve or so, except maybe for nine months of her life. Even so … it was an old superstition – older than books, older than writing – and beliefs like that were heavy weights on the rubber sheet of human experience, tending to pull people into their orbits. They needed to be three again. [Maskerade] Nobody would dream of arguing with Nanny on a point like this. The Discworld is about what people believe is true. So if Nanny says it’s a truth down below the bedrock of her soul that three witches must be of different ages, then – on the Discworld – it is. If she says that it’s a superstition older than books, older than writing, then – on the Discworld – it is. But on Earth it’s not. It’s just over one hundred years old, actually. Will Shakespeare’s witches were all the same age. So were the three Fates, the three Norns, the three Graces, the three Mothers in early Britain, the three War Goddesses in Ireland, and other female trios in old mythologies. It was in 1903 that a Cambridge scholar, Jane Ellen Harrison, decided that all the many goddesses in ancient religions could be tidily sorted out into three aspects of one great Earth Goddess: the Maiden, the Mother, and a third she did not name. She was mainly interested in the first two; so was her colleague Sir James Frazer (he of The Golden Bough), who thought they were a mother-and-daughter pair like Demeter and Persephone in Greece. The first writer to pay much attention to the third one was the magician Aleister Crowley, who called her ‘the crone’ and identified her with the sinister Hecate, a Greek goddess of darkness and black magic. He seems to have loathed her. In his novel Moonchild in 1921, he wrote: Artemis [the moon goddess] is unassailable, a being fine and radiant; Hecate is the crone, a woman past all hope of motherhood, her soul black with envy and hatred of happier mortals; the woman in the fullness of life is the sublime Persephone. And then the idea took root in the mind of the poet Robert Graves, and grew into his book The White Goddess (1948), the picture of a lovely, cruel threefold deity who brings both life and death, inspiration and despair. Her third aspect is the crone, the hag, the destroyer, but beyond the pain she represents there is a promise of reward and renewal, so she is not to be seen as evil. This powerful image which Graves created is now firmly imprinted on the minds of modern occultists on Earth, where the trio of identical figures which Shakespeare knew has faded away, morphing into the sharply differentiated group of Maiden, Mother, and Crone. But if Nanny Ogg is right (and she always is) it all began on Discworld way back in the mists of time. There is leakage between universes. So she and Granny Weatherwax had to find some way of setting up a threesome of the right type, to spread the load. They began by recruiting shy young Agnes Nitt (also known, in the recesses of her own mind, as Perdita) to replace Magrat and carry out the traditional tasks of the Maiden, which consist mainly of fetching the tea and getting bullied. But then Magrat had a baby, and so would be qualified to return as Mother. This, however, is Nanny Ogg’s natural role, seeing as she has had fifteen children, and revels in an ever-growing horde of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. In literal years, Nanny belongs to the same generation as Granny, but in these matters it is not literal facts that count. It is no accident that her cottage is called Tir Nani Ogg, which, as Tiffany Aching rightly suspects, means ‘The Land of the Ever-Young’ (Tir nan Og) in the ancient Celtic speech which the Nac Mac Feegles brought to the Discworld – and not, regrettably, ‘Nanny Ogg’s Place’ [Wintersmith]. It is understandable that when it seemed that Granny might be about to withdraw from witching, Nanny disliked the consequences for herself: ‘Can’t say I fancy being a crone. I ain’t the right shape and anyway I don’t know the sound they make.’ So, for the present at least, the threesome is a quartet, and who-stands-for-what still has to be sorted out. Nevertheless, Granny and Nanny have grown into their roles during the course of the series: Nanny is the notionally soft big-hearted one, an expert on midwifery, while Granny is the one you will, with some trepidation, call in when death is in the air. BORROWING IS NOT SHAPE-CHANGING Granny Weatherwax is the most skilful Borrowing Witch in all Lancre. While her body lies cold and rigid in her bed, her mind goes off and borrows the consciousness of any bird or animal she chooses. Steering it gently, she sees with its eyes, feels its pleasures and fears and appetites, absorbs any knowledge it has. In due course she guides it into her bedroom, and quietly slips out of its mind. Then she has a short lie-down, just to get used to the feel of her own body again. And then, since things have to balance, for the next few days she will put out some food for the creature whose mind she entered. She is so skilled that she has even Borrowed a swarm of bees: ‘She’s going to swank about this for weeks,’ said Nanny Ogg. ‘No one’s ever done it with bees. Their mind’s everywhere, see? Not just in one bee. In the whole swarm.’ ‘I done it with beezzz! No one can do it with beezzz, and I done it! You endzzz up with your mind all flying in different directionzzz! You got to be good to do it with beezzz!’ [Lords and Ladies] Which also goes to show that some of what you’ve Borrowed stays with you for a while, such as, in this case, a certain confusion in the vocal cords, plus a need for a bunch of flowers, a pot of honey, and someone to sting. The bees themselves – or the owl, bat, hare, or whatever – remain almost unaware that a human mind has been riding them. At least, that is how it should be. If someone ruthless does it, an Elf Queen for example, she goes through the animal’s mind like a chainsaw, leaving it half crazed. There are dangers, of course. No magical procedure is without risks. A young inexperienced witch with a natural talent can become so intoxicated by the joy of Borrowing that she sinks too deep in, and stays there. So can an old one, come to that. For years Nanny Ogg used to put out lumps of fat and bacon rind for a bluetit that she was sure was old Granny Postalute, who went out Borrowing and never came back. Even Granny Weatherwax knows that she must be careful. It’s addictive, like a drug. There is also the practical problem that someone might mistake your body for a corpse, and pop it into a coffin before you can get back. To avoid this embarrassment, Granny Weatherwax always holds, in her rigid hands, a small card which says I ATE’NT DEAD. Not all Discworld witches are able, or willing, to Borrow, while on Earth the skill is almost unknown. There, one of the very few accounts of what appears to be a Borrowing Witch comes from St Briavels in Gloucestershire, and was reported in the journal Folk-Lore in 1902. There was a girl there who, for some reason, had to share a bed one night with a certain old woman and her daughter. During the night she happened to wake, and was alarmed to feel how very cold the old woman was. She shook her, but in vain. So she then woke the daughter, crying, ‘I do believe your mother’s dead!’ – ‘Dead?’ laughed the daughter. ‘Her bain’t dead, her be out and about now!’ Shape-changing witches, on the other hand, are extremely common in the lore of this world. The difference is that whereas a Borrower sends her separated mind to ‘ride’ in an animal (which has its own real existence, before, during and after the process), the shape-changer changes herself entirely, body and mind together, into the appearance of an animal. There is no real animal there at all, simply the transformed witch. Witches of the Earth could turn into any animal they wanted, but hares seem to have been the favourites, with cats a close second. Being a hare was especially good fun because it gave them the chance to infuriate huntsmen. Stories about this were told throughout Britain well into the twentieth century, for instance one which was collected by members of a local Women’s Institute for their book It Happened in Hampshire (1937): When I was a boy, they did say there was a woman over to Breamore that could turn herself to a hare up there on the Downs. If the dogs did press her too much she could turn herself back again and they wouldn’t see nothing but a woman combing her hair. One day the dogs were after her, just as she was getting near her cottage. She did shoot through the keyhole, but they were after her. The children cried out, ‘Run, Granny, run! or the dogs’ll have ’ee.’ But her was up on the top of the old brick oven so they never had her. Whether ’twas true or whether it wasn’t, that is what I did hear when I was a boy. The witch-hare did not always escape. If the hounds were particularly fast, or if the huntsman was a good shot with a bullet made from a silver sixpence, she might get bitten or shot in the rump as she bolted indoors. And next day everyone would see that she was limping badly. People on the Discworld have heard about this somehow, and those who do not understand Granny Weatherwax sometimes think this is what she gets up to. Thatcher the carter, for instance: ‘Cor, she frightens the life out of me, her. The way she looks right through you. I wouldn’t say a word against her, mark you, a fine figure of a woman, but they do say she creeps around the place o’ nights, as a hare or a bat or something. Changes her shape and all. Not that I believes a word of it, but old Weezen over in Slice told me once he shot a hare in the leg one night and next day she passed him on the lane and said “Ouch” and gave him a right ding across the back of his head.’ [Lords and Ladies] In Equal Rites, there is an argument on this point between Esk, an intelligent little girl, and her brothers Gulta and Cern: ‘They say,’ said Gulta, ‘she can turn herself into a fox. Or anything. A bird, even. Anything. That’s how she always knows what’s going on. They say there’s a whole family over Crack Peak way that can turn themselves into wolves. Because one night someone shot a wolf and next day their auntie was limping with an arrow wound in her leg, and …’ ‘I don’t think people can turn themselves into animals,’ said Esk, slowly. ‘Oh yes, Miss Clever?’ ‘Granny is quite big. If she turned herself into a fox what would happen to all the bits that wouldn’t fit?’ ‘She’d just magic them away,’ said Cern. ‘I don’t think magic works like that,’ said Esk. But occasionally, very occasionally, Granny does shape-shift, or appears to do so. This happened during her confrontation with Archchancellor Cutangle of Unseen University, as described in Equal Rites. The Archchancellor had unwisely hurled white fire at her, and she had deflected it towards the roof. Then: Cutangle vanished. Where he had been standing a huge snake coiled, poised to strike. Granny vanished. Where she had been standing was a large wicker basket. The snake became a giant reptile from the mists of time. The basket became the snow wind of the Ice Giants, coating the struggling monster with ice. The reptile became a sabre-toothed tiger, crouched to spring. The gale became a bubbling tar pit. The tiger managed to become an eagle, stooping. The tar pit became a tufted hood … This is what students of folklore on the Earth have labelled The Transformation Combat. A typical instance would be the battle recorded in the medieval Icelandic Saga of Sturlaug Starfsama, between an Icelandic youth and a Lapland wizard. To the bewilderment of the observers: They set upon one another and fought fiercely, so swiftly that they could not be followed with the eye, but neither managed to wound the other. When men looked again, they had vanished, and in their place were two dogs, biting one another furiously; and when they least expected it, the dogs disappeared too, and they heard a noise going on in the air. They looked up and saw two eagles flying there, and each tore out the other’s feathers with claws and beak so that blood fell onto the earth. The end was that one fell dead to the ground, but the other flew away, and they did not know which one it was. That was a well-matched fight, but sometimes one of the magicians is simply trying to escape. A medieval Welsh tale tells how the witch Ceridwen has spent a year and a day boiling a magic potion. She sets a boy called Gwion to keep the fire going under the cauldron. But the potion splutters, and three scalding drops splash Gwion’s finger, so he automatically sucks it – and all the magic power becomes his. He flees, in the form of a hare. The furious Ceridwen turns into a greyhound. He runs to the river, and changes into a fish. She chases him, as an otter. He becomes a small bird, she a hawk. He becomes a grain of wheat, and she a high-crested black hen – and swallows him. And that, Ceridwen must have thought, was that. But not so. The grain of corn made her pregnant, and the son she bore (who was really Gwion) grew up to be the great seer and poet Taliesin. It is interesting that in her contest with Cutangle, Granny Weatherwax does not counter-attack aggressively, but chooses forms which restrain and control. For the snake, an Indian snake charmer’s basket; for the dinosaur, a coating of ice; for the tiger, sticky tar; for the eagle, a falconer’s hood. Granny is always a careful minimalist in the magic arts. CHANGING THE SHAPES OF OTHERS Throughout the multiverse, there is a persistent story that if you annoy a witch she will utter a curse which turns you into some small and unpleasant animal, probably a frog. And an animal you will be for ever, unless somebody finds a way to break the spell. This idea is common in fairy tales and old ballads, where the witch is quite often the victim’s Wicked Stepmother. In this world, there used to be people who seriously believed that a witch might change you temporarily into a horse, if she wanted to ride to a sabbat. At Pendle in Lancashire in 1633, according to the records of a witch trial there, a young boy accused a neighbour of having done this to him. He later admitted he was lying. The annals of the Discworld record only three clear instances of such a transformation. One occurred when the malicious witch Lilith of Genua turned two coachmen into beetles, and trod on them, as told in Witches Abroad. The second case concerns the talking toad which is the familiar of Miss Perspicacia Tick, a witch of the Chalk Country (see The Wee Free Men); though initially suffering from memory loss, he later recalls that he was once a human lawyer, who foolishly took a witch to court for supplying substandard magic. The third was when Tiffany, under the influence of the hiver, turned a useless wizard, Brian, into a frog, as described in A Hatful of Sky. Admittedly, there have also been one or two occasions when Granny Weatherwax messed with someone’s head, causing him to believe that he was a frog, but she knew the effect would wear off fairly soon. What is far more common on the Disc is the reverse process, where a witch uses her power to transform an animal’s outward appearance (and, to a lesser extent, its behaviour) into that of a human. But here too the result is unstable. The three witches of Lancre encountered some nasty examples of this type of magic when they travelled to Genua (as told in Witches Abroad) – the work of Lilith (real name Lily), whose hobby was to enslave the wills of those around her and force them to re-enact the plots of fairy tales, whether they wanted to or not. She, meanwhile, kept all true power in her own hands, because she was the one in charge of the stories. As part of her plans, she had turned a swamp frog into a prince – but the spell held only during daylight hours, so at night he turned back into his old shape, and had to have a pond in his bedroom. Lilith also turned two snakes into apparent women, to guard the potential heroine of the tale she was concocting, and mice into horses to draw her coach. Faced with this cruelty, Nanny Ogg persuades the other two that it is right to fight fire with fire, using her own beloved one-eyed cat, Greebo, who she thinks is nearly human anyway. ‘And it’ll only be temp’ry, even with the three of us doing it,’ she said. And so the three of them concentrated. Changing the shape of an object is one of the hardest magics there is. But it’s easier if the object is alive. After all, a living thing already knows what shape it is. All you have to do is change its mind. Greebo yawned and stretched. To his amazement he went on stretching. Through the pathways of his feline brain surged a tide of belief. He suddenly believed he was human. He wasn’t simply under the impression he was human; he believed it implicitly. The sheer force of the unshakeable belief flowed out into his morphic field, overriding its objections, rewriting the very blueprint of his self. In his human form, Greebo is a grinning, swaggering, six-foot bully-boy in black leather, with a broken nose, an eye-patch, and an excitingly lascivious smile. He is just as keen on fighting and love-making as when he was in cat-shape. And there can still be claws on his hands, if he so wishes. A few hours later he reverts to his natural felinity, but it turns out that he has been left with a problem seldom encountered by cats. It is one of the laws of magic that no matter how hard a thing is to do, once it has been done it becomes a whole lot easier, and will therefore be done a lot. For the rest of his life, part of Greebo’s soul knows that he has one extra option for use in a fight, and that is: Become Human. He has become a spontaneous shape-changer, even if the effect never lasts long – fortunately for him, and for others. THE DIS-ORGANIZATION OF WITCHES There have been times and places in the multiverse when people got really paranoid about witches. For about three hundred years in most countries of Europe, they felt sure that there was a huge conspiracy of malevolent women, hundreds of whom would gather to hold sabbats where they worshipped the Powers of Evil, plotted magical murder and mayhem, and held unimaginably sexy orgies. German and Swedish witches were said to choose the peak of a bare mountain for these gatherings. In England, early in the twentieth century, one scholar (Margaret Murray) maintained that witches had indeed been members of a real secret society, but that they did no harm – all they were doing was to keep an old religion going, honouring gods and goddesses of earth and moon, of sex and seasons and crops. She claimed that they were tightly organized into covens of thirteen, and had been holding exactly the same ceremonies to mark the seasons on the same dates all over Europe for hundreds of years. Nobody seems to have reminded her that spring in, say, Italy doesn’t come in on the same date as in, say, Sweden, weather being rather more relevant to the idea of a ‘season’ than the mathematics of the calendar. Nowadays, historians and folklorists think Murray’s theory is an elaborate house of cards built up on hardly any evidence at all. On the other hand, a whole new religion called Wicca sprang up in England in the mid twentieth century, based on her ideas. Wiccans worship the powers of nature as personified by a Triple Goddess and a Horned God, and yes, many of them do gather in groups of thirteen. They tend to say that it doesn’t matter too much what the facts of history may have been. What matters is whether their magic works for them. Whatever may or may not have happened on this planet, the true witches of Lancre don’t form covens and secret societies, and they don’t go in for sabbats. They are totally dis-organized, though they do hold periodic competitive Witch Trials, where each can display her skills. Each is an individual, working in her own way, and often alone, though when she grows old she will probably take on a girl and train her (in exchange for a bit of help with the housework), so as to hand over the area to her when she dies. Even those witches who act as a threesome only do so on the understanding that the arrangement is entirely voluntary and non-hierarchical. Except, naturally, that Granny Weatherwax gives the orders, and Magrat makes the tea. Your average witch is not, by nature, a social animal as far as other witches are concerned. There’s a conflict of dominant personalities. There’s a group of ringleaders without a ring. There’s the basic unwritten rule of witchcraft, which is ‘Don’t do what you will, do what I say.’ The natural size of a coven is one. Witches only get together when they can’t avoid it. [Witches Abroad] Yet something of the notion of a coven has leached into the Discworld, particularly affecting the minds of beginners in the craft. In her younger days, Magrat yearned for one: It had seemed such a lovely idea. She’d had great hopes of the coven. She was sure it wasn’t right to be a witch alone, you could get funny ideas. She’d dreamed of wise discussions of natural energies while a huge moon hung in the sky, and then possibly they’d try a few of the old dances described in some of Goodie Whemper’s books. Not actually naked, or skyclad as it was rather delightfully called … that wasn’t absolutely necessary … What she hadn’t expected was a couple of crotchety old women who were barely civil at the best of times and simply didn’t enter into the spirit of things. [Wyrd Sisters] Occasionally, there were Lancre girls who preferred a more intellectual and ritualistic kind of magic, more like wizardry – the kind which involves chalk circles and Cones of Power and candles and Tarot cards, and which promises spectacular displays (on Earth, it’s often called High Magick). Such a girl has had an education. She probably wears a big floppy black hat, and black lace, and lots of occult silver jewellery. She paints her fingernails black. She adopts a new, flamboyant name. Arrogant and domineering, she creates a coven which she runs entirely to suit herself, bullying and mocking her followers. One such girl was Diamanda (real name Lucy Tockley), who thought she could challenge Granny Weatherwax, and became dangerously involved with elves, as is told in Lords and Ladies. THE TOOLS OF THE CRAFT Young witches tend to attach too much importance to their tools. Magrat, for instance, at the start of her career, used to read grimoires, drew sigils on her cottage walls, and owned a fine assortment of wands, robes, crystals, grails, crucibles, magical knives, mystic coloured cords, candles, incense, and occult jewellery, including bracelets bearing the hermetic symbols of a dozen religions. (She would have felt quite at home among the Wiccans and Neo-Pagans of Earth today, in a society where a pentacle is just another ornament; fifty years ago most people would simply think you were Jewish but hadn’t thought to count the points on your star.) But older witches avoid showy items of magical equipment. Crystal balls, for example. Granny Weatherwax loathes crystal balls, especially big expensive quartz ones (‘Never could get the hang of this damn silicon stuff. A bowl of water with a drop of ink in it was good enough when I was a girl’). Instead, both she and Nanny Ogg use old green glass ones, which had once been buoys for fishing nets. Pondering on this fact, young Agnes Nitt sees that there are good historical reasons for it. A glass fishing float, five hundred miles from the sea. An ornament, like a shell. Not a crystal ball. You could use it like a crystal ball, but it wasn’t a crystal ball … and she knew why that was important … Witches hadn’t always been popular. There might even be times – there had been times, long ago – when it was a good idea not to advertise what you were, and that was why all these things on the table didn’t betray their owner at all. There was no need for that any more, there hadn’t been in Lancre for hundreds of years, but some habits get passed down in the blood. In fact things now worked the other way. Being a witch was an honourable trade in the mountains, but only the young ones invested in real crystal balls and coloured knives and dribbly candles. The old ones … they stuck with simple kitchen cutlery, fishing floats, bits of wood, whose very ordinariness subtly advertised their status. Any fool can be a witch with a runic knife, but it took skill to be one with an apple-corer. [Carpe Jugulum] There are practical reasons too. If you believe that a spell will only work if you wear your robes and use the right coloured ink on the right kind of parchment while burning the right kind of incense on the right day of the week, you will be helpless if an emergency arises and you don’t have all your paraphernalia at hand. The three Lancre witches once needed to invoke a demon, but as they were in Nanny Ogg’s washhouse at the time Magrat protested: ‘Oh, but you can’t. Not here. You need a cauldron, and a magic sword. And an octogram. And spices, and all sorts of stuff.’ Granny and Nanny exchanged glances. ‘It’s not her fault,’ said Granny. ‘It’s all them grimmers she was bought.’ She turned to Magrat. ‘You don’t need none of that,’ she said. ‘You need headology.’ She looked around the ancient washroom. ‘You just use whatever you’ve got,’ she said. [Wyrd Sisters] And in fact the demon was successfully summoned by means of a copper, its paddle, a scrubbing brush, a washboard, and a lump of soap. Magrat learned the lesson well, and not long afterwards was able to bring surging life back into the long-dead timbers of a dungeon door, by sheer force of imagination and will, with no artificial aids whatsoever. Yet tools can be very, very useful for impressing the client, especially when combined with a few little white lies. Take healing, for example. Magrat is a good healer because she knows a lot about herbs, but Granny is an even better one because of her skill in stage-management and the use of props. She gives people a bottle of coloured water, tells them they feel better, and they do. As she explains to young Esk: ‘I saved a man’s life once. Special medicine, twice a day. Boiled water with a bit of berry juice in it. Told him I’d bought it from the dwarves. That’s the biggest part of doct’rin, really. Most people’ll get over most things if they put their minds to it, you just have to give them an interest.’ [Equal Rites] Similarly on Earth, the village healers who were known as ‘cunning folk’ or ‘wise women’ knew just how important it was to add a touch of drama. In County Clare in Ireland in the nineteenth century there was a woman called Biddy Early with a great reputation as a healer. She used all sorts of herbal brews, but what impressed people most was the small blue bottle which she kept always at hand, and used as a focus for her Second Sight when she was scrying (which is the same as crystal-gazing, only without the crystal). When a sick person came to consult her she would shake it, stare fixedly into its cloudy depths, and then tell him what ailed him, and what he must do to get well. Some said this bottle had been given to her by fairies. It is said, too, that on her death-bed she made her family swear to throw it into a lake, on pain of some terrible curse if they disobeyed. So they did, but as soon as she was dead they hurried down to the lake to fish it out again – after all, she hadn’t expressly told them not to, had she? But they never found it, and though many people have tried, no one has yet. At least, that is one story; another is that the parish priest threw it into the lake. And there is another, which says that later on, a dark stranger appeared in the village, went to the lake and— But that’s another story, and stories cling to Biddy like iron filings to a magnet. There is a consensus that she was born in County Clare in 1798 and died in Kilbarron, near Feakle, in 1874. In between, she has become folded and moulded by narrativium, and defined by the kind of accounts that begin, ‘I heard tell when I was a boy’. In short, for the purposes of this book, she could be thought of as Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg rolled into one. By all accounts she had a fine grasp of practical psychology as well as some expertise in folk medicine, and was famous for her cures; she was said to have got her powers from the fairies or some similar ‘sponsor’ and probably did nothing to discourage this belief. She liked a drink, too, and when it came to payment she was on the Whiskey and Chickens standard. She must also have liked men, because she had four husbands. Nowadays, if you go looking for ‘Biddy Early’s Cottage’, you will eventually be directed to a lonely, tumbledown building at the far end of a weed-choked path. You will find that others have been there before you, leaving their tokens on windowsill and doorstep – coins, flowers, strips of cloth, candles, beer bottles. She is not forgotten. In fact Biddy Early needs a book of her own, and our bibliography has at least two. OF HATS AND BROOMS There is of course the pointy hat. And the broomstick. Every Discworld witch uses these, and as far as we know they always have. Yet the broomstick is merely a convenience, and the hat is not in itself magical. Its secret – and it is one of the great secrets of witchcraft – lies elsewhere. When Granny challenges clever young Esk to discover it, Esk examines the hat carefully. There was nothing particularly strange about it, except that no one in the village had one like it. But that didn’t make it magical … It was just a typical witch’s hat. Granny always wore it when she went into the village, but in the forest she just wore a leather hood … ‘I think I know,’ she said at last. ‘Out with it, then.’ ‘It’s sort of in two parts.’ ‘Well?’ ‘It’s a witch’s hat because you wear it. But you’re a witch because you wear the hat. Um.’ ‘So –’ prompted Granny. ‘So people see you coming in the hat and the cloak and they know you’re a witch and that’s why your magic works?’ [Equal Rites] On Earth too, some people who practised magic for a living appreciated the value of eye-catching clothes and headgear, though there was no uniform style. There was Mother Redcap, for instance, a fortune-teller in Camden Town in London in the seventeenth century, whose appearance was definitely eccentric. She was strikingly ugly, kept a huge black cat, and always wore the red bonnet which gave her her nickname, plus a grey shawl with strange black patches. From a distance, they looked like flying bats. Then there was Billy Brewer, the most famous fortune-teller and magical healer in nineteenth-century Somerset, who practised in Taunton from the 1840s till his death in 1890 and called himself the Wizard of the West; he went about the streets wearing a long Inverness cloak, a tattered brown wig, and a sombrero, with gold and silver rings glittering on every finger. This did wonders for his reputation. In the matter of pointy hats and broomsticks, it is a curious fact that nowadays, as soon as you say ‘witch’ people just see the hat and the broom, and yet three hundred years ago they were very, very rare. Many people believed that witches could fly through the air, but they were said to do this by riding on all kinds of everyday objects and animals, not just brooms. The fashion for broomsticks began in late medieval France and Flanders, and only started spreading after about 1600; in Germany, cooking sticks were preferred; in Britain, pitchforks and hurdles. In Russian fairy tales, there’s the famous witch Baba Yaga, a child-eating ogress who lives in the forest; she often travels high above the tree-tops, sitting in an iron kettle or a stone mortar. As for the hat, nobody, in all the witch trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, ever stepped into court and said, ‘I know she’s a witch because she wears a pointy hat.’ No paintings, prints or pamphlets of that period show it; if a witch is wearing any headgear at all, it is that of ordinary everyday dress. But then things change. If we look at William Hogarth’s cartoon of 1762 which mocks ‘Credulity, Superstition and Fanaticism’, we can see a preacher brandishing a doll dressed as a witch. She’s an ugly old woman. In a pointy hat. Astride a broom. Something remarkable must have happened, since Hogarth obviously expected everybody to know what his picture meant. And that was only the beginning, because now there are broomsticks, black cloaks and pointy hats in every toyshop in the run-up to Halloween. They are spreading fast, even in countries which had never heard of them fifty years ago. In Sweden, for instance, until quite recently witches wore aprons and head-scarves when they gathered for their annual Great Sabbat (held at Easter), but now it’s cloaks and pointy hats for them too. So what can have happened? There can only be one explanation – this costume was invented on the Discworld and rightfully belongs there, but the image it creates is so powerful that it is seeping out across the multiverse, and before long people will recognize it in every other world there is. SO WHAT DO WITCHES ACTUALLY DO, THEN? Whatever might be the case elsewhere and elsewhen, in Lancre witchcraft is seen as an honourable profession. Witches get respected. They don’t go in for fancy titles, but use good old-fashioned homely names which speak volumes for their solid respectability – Dame this, Old Mother that, Gammer t’other, and of course Granny and Nanny. It is to them that the village turns when a child or a cow falls desperately sick, when a woman is having a difficult labour, when those who are dying cannot actually die. It is then that the witch has to bring help – and take responsibility. Nobody knows this better than Granny Weatherwax. There were stories that were never to be told, the little secret stories enacted in little rooms … They were about those times when medicines didn’t help and headology was at a loss because a mind was a rage of pain in a body that had become its own enemy, when people were simply in a prison made of flesh, and at times like this she could let them go. There was no need for desperate stuff with a pillow, or deliberate mistakes with the medicine. You didn’t push them out of the world, you just stopped the world pulling them back. You just reached in, and … showed them the way … She’d been a witch here all her life. And one of the things a witch did was stand right on the edge, where the decisions had to be made. You made them so that others didn’t have to, so that others could even pretend to themselves that there were no decisions to be made, no little secrets, that things just happened. You never said what you knew. And you didn’t ask for anything in return. [Carpe Jugulum] Well, true enough, you didn’t ask, but, as Nanny Ogg says, ‘There’s ways and ways of not askin’, if you get my meaning. People can be very gen’rous to witches. They do like to see a happy witch.’ And it was indeed amazing how many people would pop round to a witch’s cottage from time to time with a basket of this or a bottle of that, and would volunteer to do a bit of digging, or to check that the chimneys were OK. Magrat once grumbled that Granny Weatherwax hardly ever did ‘real magic’ – ‘What good is being a witch if you don’t do magic? Why doesn’t she use it to help people?’ To which Nanny Ogg replied that it was precisely because she knew how good she would be at it that she didn’t. Nanny meant that magic is power, and where there is power, there is always the temptation to abuse it. Granny steered clear of that temptation, knowing its strength only too well. Moreover, she thought that you could not help people with magic, though you could certainly help them by headology and hard work. All this is very much like what used to go on on Earth up to a hundred years or so ago – maybe even more recently, in some parts. There were women who knew charms and cures, who told fortunes, who acted as midwives and nurses, who knew what counter-spells to use against bewitchment. And men too. You could find them in both villages and towns, and their clients came from miles around. Some openly made a career of it, taking payment in cash for their services, others used Nanny Ogg’s technique (with an edge to it). A Sussex village witch in the 1890s, for example, was described to a folklorist in 1941, in the Sussex County Magazine. Her reputation was very valuable to her. If she stopped a child and said, ‘What a fine crop of plums your mother had down Crabtree Lane, dearie,’ the result would be a basket of the best plums, as otherwise the tree would wither and die. So she kept herself provided with good things. But you had to be careful what you called such people, since on Earth the word ‘witch’ so often meant someone who uses magic to harm, not to help. It was more polite to say ‘wise woman’, ‘white witch’, ‘charmer’, ‘cunning man’, even ‘wizard’ – and latterly a ‘District Nurse’. But shorn of the little nods to superstition, what they had and have in common has been a certain strength of character, practical experience and the ability to take charge of a situation. Yet, in spite of these parallels, there are important differences between magical practitioners in the two universes. The most far-reaching concerns the source of their power. On the Earth it was generally assumed that magic power must originate in some non-human source, and that the witch had received it as a gift or reward, or through some pact or bargain. Those who feared and hated witches accused them of having pledged their souls to devils. Some of the more learned magicians boasted that their knowledge came from angels and spirits. Some Scottish wise women claimed they had been taught charms and remedies by elves, whom they would visit in the hollow hills, or by the dead. In other lands, gods and the spirits of ancestors were the power sources. The witches of Lancre have no such ideas. Their skill and power are their own innate gifts, carefully honed by practice and observation. They have no dealings with the gods or the dead, despise demons, and rightly regard elves as dangerous and evil. Nor do they depend on ‘familiars’ to act on their behalf, as Earthly witches were said to do – these being minor demons, usually in the form of toads, mice, or cats, who were loaned to witches by the Devil and would perform magical tasks in exchange for a few drops of blood. (The cat Greebo is no demon; he is nothing more, and nothing less, than a cat. Miss Tick’s toad appears to have no magical abilities at all; his power of speech is merely the residue of his previous human faculties.) Another major difference is that on the Discworld witches undertake one dangerous duty that ‘our’ witches have no idea of. It is their responsibility to defend their homeland against insidious supernatural invasions. Blatant attacks by Creatures from the Dungeon Dimensions are usually dealt with by the wizards of Unseen University, who can be relied on to recognize a tentacular threat when it turns up on their doorstep, but it takes a witch to fight the more subtle menace of vampires or elves. Their epic struggles on behalf of Lancre are recounted in Lords and Ladies and Carpe Jugulum. Never, in the field of inter-species conflict, was so much owed by so many to so few. But do the people of Lancre appreciate this? Do they, hell! They don’t even notice. Which is perhaps how it should be. WICKED WITCHES The witches of Lancre remember stories about other witches long ago, or maybe not so long ago, whom they disapprove of. Witches who have gone to the bad, who have crossed over to the Dark Side. There is something of the dark in the Weatherwax heredity, and Granny was for a long time worried about her own Nana, Alison Weatherwax, who disappeared in Uberwald and was rumoured to have hobnobbed with vampires. Fortunately, the rumour was false. She didn’t hobnob with them, she staked them. Then there was Black Aliss. Not exactly a bad witch, but so powerful that one couldn’t really tell the difference, and deeply affected by narrative patterns similar to those which the Brothers Grimm recorded on Earth. Magrat asked about her once. ‘She was before your time,’ said Nanny Ogg. ‘Before mine, really. She lived over Skund way. Very powerful witch.’ ‘If you listen to rumour,’ said Granny. ‘She turned a pumpkin into a royal coach once,’ said Nanny. ‘Showy,’ said Granny Weatherwax. ‘That’s no help to anyone, turning up at a ball smelling like a pie. And that business with the glass slipper. Dangerous, to my mind.’ ‘But the biggest thing she ever did,’ said Nanny, ignoring the interruption, ‘was to send a whole palace to sleep for a hundred years until …’ She hesitated. ‘Can’t remember. Was there rose bushes involved, or was it spinning wheels in that one?’ … ‘Why did they call her Black Aliss?’ ‘Fingernails,’ said Granny. ‘And teeth,’ said Nanny Ogg. ‘She had a sweet tooth. Lived in a real gingerbread cottage. Couple of kids shoved her in her own oven at the end. Shocking.’ [Wyrd Sisters] One sign that things weren’t quite right with Black Aliss was that she used to cackle. So one day when Granny Weatherwax uttered a cackle (though she swore it was just a rather rough chuckle), Nanny Ogg warned her: ‘You want to watch out that you don’t end up the same way as she did. She went a bit funny at the finish, you know. Poisoned apples and suchlike.’ [Wyrd Sisters] But Black Aliss wasn’t really bad, not out and out bad. It was just that she got so involved in old stories – those rural myths that happen over and over again and everyone knows about – that they sent her weird in the head, so she lost track of what was real and what wasn’t. ‘I mean, she didn’t ever really eat anyone,’ said Nanny. ‘Well. Not often. I mean, there was talk, but …’ Her name can’t have helped, for names shape people, and this one carries sinister echoes drifting across from the Earth. There, in the city of Leicester, a hideous hag called Black Annis lived in a cave in the Dane Hills, just outside the town. She had a dark blue face, and her nails were long sharp talons. There can be no doubt that she ate people – naughty children mostly, but good ones too if they stayed out late. She would lurk in a tree overhanging the mouth of her cave, ever ready to spring like a wild beast on any stray children passing below; then she would scratch them to death with her claws, suck their blood, and hang up their skins to dry. If memories from Black Annis’s mind had infected Black Aliss, it’s a wonder that she didn’t become far more wicked than she did. Names shape people. When a young witch gives herself a new name, it tells you who and what she wants to be – who and what she will inevitably become. Most times, all it means is a little vanity, a little snobbishness and misplaced romance. If a girl named Violet prefers to be ‘Magenta’, or an Agnes becomes ‘Perdita’, that does no great harm. But if a Lucy turns into a ‘Diamanda’, that shows she’s already a bright, hard little bitch, and intends to become brighter and harder. So what of that most powerful and evil of witches, who began her life in Lancre as plain Lily Weatherwax, but took the name Lilith when she moved to Genua? How did it come into her mind? Surely it must have arrived as a particle of inspiration, originating in a parallel universe. For in Earthly myth and legend ‘Lilith’ is the name of a terrible female demon, noted for pride as well as cruelty. It is said that she was Adam’s first wife, but refused to submit to his authority and fled from Eden into the desert, where she consorted with demons and became a demon herself. Ever since, she has exploited her beauty by seducing sleeping men in their dreams, and satisfied her cruelty by killing women in childbirth and strangling young babies. She feeds on their blood and sucks the marrow from their bones. And so, in her own way, does Lilith of Genua. She takes people’s lives and twists them, sucking away their will-power and personality, forcing them into the patterns of old stories where she, and she alone, is in control. Yet all the time she is enslaving them, she convinces herself that she is the good godmother, the good witch. And if that’s not being a wicked witch, what is? Chapter 9 THE LAND OF LANCRE LANCRE LANDMARKS The Dancers WHEN PEOPLE HAVE LIVED in the same place for generations, they know every inch of the countryside as if it were their own backyard, which it often is. They like things to have reasons, a name, a history, an explanation. Particularly an explanation. Everything inexplicable demands an explanation. Narrativium takes over, the land becomes filled with stories, and the result is a fine crop of folklore. On the Discworld the process is most obvious in Lancre and on the Chalk, though much the same thing would be found in every country if anyone went to look. Of course, there are always people who wouldn’t take a folk tale seriously even if it jumped up and bit them (which, given the power of narrativium, it might quite well do). Consider the case of Eric Wheelbrace, that most resolute and rational of ramblers, now alas missing and presumed dead. Among interesting features noted in his essay ‘Lancre: Gateway to the Ramtops’ (included in A Tourist Guide to Lancre), he briefly mentions the Dancers, a group of standing stones on a small area of moorland about midway between Lancre River and the Ramtops: There are eight of them, in a circle wide enough to throw a stone across. They are reddish, about man height, and barely thicker than a man as well. Local legend has it that they are a gateway into the kingdom of the elves but the truth is likely to be much more prosaic. They are typical of a style of silicon chronograph constructed in the dawn of time by our ignorant forebears. Basically, they are an underused resource, and I for one intend to organize a Lancre Music and Dance Festival next year, based round the stones, which are in a perfect location for that sort of activity. It is my belief that the stories are put about by the locals in order to keep people away, but we will not be deterred. [A Tourist Guide to Lancre] Oh deary, deary me. Eight of them, a magic number. And called The Dancers, too, with a Piper and a Drummer among them. This looks very much like a warning that something eldritch happened there in the olden days, and maybe could happen again. The witches have done their best to make sure everyone avoids the place. Even the more stupid locals have some notion of the dangers: ‘I remember an old story about this place,’ said Baker. ‘Some man went to sleep up here once, when he was out hunting.’ ‘So what? I can do that,’ said Carter. ‘I go to sleep every night, reg’lar.’ ‘Ah, but this man, when he woke up and went home, his wife was carrying on with someone else and all his children had grown up and didn’t know who he was.’ [Lords and Ladies] These weird tricks of time always happen when someone is taken out of their own world into Elfland, as we noted in an earlier chapter. But in what sense are the stones themselves Dancers? Since the locals didn’t tell Wheelbrace, or if they did he wasn’t listening, we must look to the Earth for the explanation, thanks to some of those remarkable parallels and echoes between one universe and another. Stone circles are powerful or, at least, become cloaked in powerful stories. In various parts of England – Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Derbyshire – there are circles of stones known as the Nine Ladies or Nine Maidens or Merry Maidens. There may or may not actually be nine of them (it’s a magical number, like eight is on the Disc), but their story is everywhere the same: there were once some girls who loved dancing so much that they would go off to the hills to dance together whenever they could, even on Sundays when they should have been in church. So one Sunday they were smitten by the Wrath of God, which turned them to stone. No more dancing for them – except maybe for the ones near Okehampton in Devon, where (some people say) they are allowed to take a few steps every day at noon. Sometimes one stone in the circle, or close beside it, is named the Piper or Fiddler; it is said he was playing the music for the girls to dance to, and was smitten too. Back in Lancre, Eric Wheelbrace insisted that there was a right of way across the Dancers, and that he would organize his Festival there. Dismissing local objections as mere superstition, and declaring that a determined rambler will laugh with scorn at threats, he set off to cross the circle one Midsummer Eve. His boots were found frozen solid, in a hedge a mile away. He has presumably now discovered that the Dancers are indeed, as legend claims, ‘a gateway into the kingdom of the elves’, and he may even understand that such gates are meant to be kept shut. That’s why the stones chosen for the job are reddish and magnetic; they contain a good deal of iron, a tried and trusted elf-repellent. The Standing Stone On the crest of a moor in the Ramtops, there is a solitary bluish Standing Stone (well, sometimes there is). It is a painfully shy megalith, so although there is only one of it, nobody has ever been able to count it. If it sees anyone approaching with a calculating look, it shuffles off to hide among the gorse bushes or flops into a peat bog. There are rumours that other huge standing stones on the moor are mobile too, but are too keen on their privacy to let themselves be seen when on the move. The folklore of Earth is, as so often, remarkably close to the facts of the Disc. It is almost commonplace on Earth to be told that at midnight, or at dawn, a particular standing stone will spin round on its base, or dance, or walk down to the river to drink. But if someone tells you about this, do listen carefully – it could be folklore, or it could be a leg-pull. If what he said was, ‘That stone turns round whenever it hears the church clock strike midnight’, he’s speaking a very literal kind of truth, and what you have to ask yourself is, ‘How often does a stone hear a clock?’ Never, actually. That’s the leg-pull. On the other hand, if what he said was, ‘That stone turns round when the church clock strikes midnight’, he’s folk, and that’s lore. As for counting, Earthly megaliths absolutely hate being counted, and will do anything to prevent it. Stonehenge used to be very good at this – a rumour got around that anyone who reckoned up its stones and got the number right would be sure to die. And those who did try got wildly different results. Yet Daniel Defoe, writing in the 1720s, said he had seen them counted four times, and each time the total was 72; the only problem, he thought, was that many were fallen and half buried, so one could not easily tell whether one was seeing two parts of one stone, or two separate stones. In 1740 the antiquary William Stukeley published his count, making it 140 and exclaiming triumphantly, ‘Behold the solution of the mighty problem, the magical spell is broke which has so long perplexed the vulgar.’ Modern archaeologists disagree with them both; having tidied the place up and mapped it, they have settled on 96. In several places where there are ‘countless stones’, people have had the same bright idea: take a basket of loaves, count them, and put one on top of each stone till you have gone all round the ring, then see how many loaves are left, do a simple sum, and, bingo, that’s it. This did work with The Hurlers in Cornwall, but not at Stonehenge, nor yet at Little Kit’s Coty in Kent. There, some say, a baker who tried this trick ended up with more loaves than he started out with; others say he completed his calculations but dropped dead before he could announce the result. Some people might suggest that all you need to do is chalk a number on each stone as you go, but somehow that just doesn’t do the trick, lore-wise. It lacks style. Besides, there’s sure to be Something that comes creeping up behind you to rub the figures out. The Long Man In a valley a few miles from Lancre’s solitary Standing Stone is an even more significant landmark, the Long Man. This name could mislead someone from our world, since here the Long Man is a giant human figure carved into the chalk of a hillside at Wilmington, on the Sussex Downs. Lancre has no chalk, and hence no hill-figures, but it does have plenty of burial mounds (‘barrows’), housing the dead of long-gone generations, and sometimes housing the Wee Free Men as well. Some have partly collapsed, exposing their huge stones to the sky, and attracting folklore of their own. There’s one that’s supposed to be the workplace of an invisible blacksmith; people put a sixpence on the stone and leave a horse there overnight to be shod, just as people of this world used to do at Wayland’s Smithy on the Berkshire Downs. There, this magic worked (or so they say); in Lancre, both coin and horse would be gone by morning, people there having more of a sense of humour. What Lancre calls ‘the Long Man’ is a group of burial mounds close together, two round ones at the foot of a long one. Nanny Ogg says that the first time she saw them from the air she laughed so much she nearly fell off her broomstick. She has also given a pithy description of a much-loved Lancre custom, the Scouring of the Long Man. This takes place about every twenty years in early May, when the men and the married women go up to the Long Man and cut away all the bracken and seedlings which have grown up since the last Scouring. Says Nanny: ‘Unmarried girls ain’t allowed to join in, but it’s amazin’ what a good view you can get from up a tree and if you ain’t got brothers you can get an education there which will prevent surprises later in life. When it’s decently dark there’s a pig roast and then people wander off and make their own entertainment.’ [A Tourist Guide to Lancre] If the memories of Nanny Ogg’s great-grandmother can be trusted, things had been a good deal wilder in the old days, when the menfolk used to go up to the Long Man for strange rites which no woman ever saw (unless, being an Ogg, she hid in the bushes): ‘She said they just used to build sweat lodges and smell like a blacksmith’s armpit and drink scumble and dance around the fire with horns on and piss in the trees any old how. She said it was a bit cissy, to be honest. But I always reckon a man’s got to be a man, even if it is cissy.’ [Lords and Ladies] In Lancre Town, as Eric Wheelbrace notes, one can buy ‘vulgar and inappropriate souvenirs which allegedly depict the Long Man and some of the legends attached to it’. Well, well. There is nothing on the Earth which fully matches the three-dimensional majesty of Lancre’s Long Man, where, as Nanny Ogg puts it, the landscape itself is boasting, ‘I’ve got a great big tonker.’ The poor old Long Man of Wilmington, in fact, has no tonker at all. In Dorset, however, there is the Cerne Abbas Giant, which is the outline of a huge man with an erect penis, carved into the chalk. It requires to be scoured every seven years, to keep it clear of grass and weeds. There is a strong local tradition that couples who want a child but have failed to conceive should visit the Giant and make love at the appropriate spot. We are not certain if an appointment is required. The Scouring of Lancre’s Long Man, though, would seem to have more in common with the periodical Scouring of the White Horse, a magnificent and very ancient figure carved into a hillside near Uffington in Berkshire (see the section on the Chalk). On irregular occasions the Horse was cleaned up, and this became the occasion for a fair and games such as chasing cheeses down a hill, climbing the greasy pole, cudgelling, wrestling and, as the ale and the sun both went down, brawling, drunkenness and, after dark, ‘making your own entertainment’. But there is more to Lancre’s Long Man – much, much more. At the foot of the long mound three large irregular stones form a low cave. One wall has a drawing scratched on it, showing an owl-eyed man wearing an animal skin and horns, who appears to be dancing. A shaman, performing a magical hunting ritual? A god, half human and half beast? A shaman, dressed as this god? Whoever and whatever he is, he has an identical twin brother on Earth, painted several thousand years ago on the wall of the Trois Frères cave in the south of France. Force the stones apart, and the opening reveals steps leading down into the vast underground network of the Lancre Caves. This too is an entrance to an elf world – but this is the other elf world, the one the Queen’s elves don’t talk about, the one which is an integral part of Lancre, not a malevolent, parasitic universe. A spiral path goes further and further down under the Long Man, till one comes to a hot, dark, steamy tent of skins, a shaman’s sweat-lodge. There, sprawled half asleep beside a bowl of red-hot stones, lies the huge figure of the Antlered One, the only god for whom Nanny Ogg has a soft spot. He is the Lord of the Elves, the Queen’s estranged husband; at Nanny’s request, he forces the Queen to give up her attack on Lancre, as described in Lords and Ladies. Will Shakespeare, whose finely tuned mind often unconsciously picked up the particles of information which drift from one universe to another, echoed the strained relations between the Elf Queen and her husband when he described the quarrel of Titania and Oberon in his play A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Yet he had no inkling of the true nature and appearance of the Antlered Elf Lord. In fact, it is less than a hundred years since this image began to coalesce in the imaginations of English witches and pagans. It has been built up out of bits and pieces of various myths, some far older than others – the figure in the Trois Frères cave, the Greek Pan, the Celtic antlered god Cernunnos, the medieval idea that the Devil has bull’s horns and goat’s feet. Plus the fact that horns are a natural, universal symbol of a male animal’s strength and sexuality. Put all this together, and you get what modern witches call The Horned God – the incarnation of maleness, the personification of the ever-renewed vital force of Nature. Some now say he is the oldest god man has created. And on the Discworld, he is real. Sleeping Warriors There are other things too in the labyrinthine Lancre Caves, for these are one of those areas where the normal rules of time and space do not apply. When Nanny Ogg goes there with the dwarf Casanunda, they pass a certain cavern: There were hundreds of dust-covered slabs ranged around the cavern in a spiral; at the centre of the spiral was a huge bell, suspended on a rope that disappeared into the darkness of the ceiling. Just under the hanging bell was one pile of silver coins and one pile of gold coins. ‘Don’t touch the money,’ said Nanny. ‘’Ere, watch this, my dad told me about this, it’s a good trick.’ She reached out and tapped the bell very gently, causing a faint ting. Dust cascaded off the nearest slab. What Casanunda had thought was just a carving sat up, in a creaky way. It was an armed warrior … He focused deepset eyes on Nanny Ogg. ‘What bloody tyme d’you call thys, then?’ ‘Not time yet,’ said Nanny. ‘What did you goe and bang the bell for? I don’t know, I haven’t had a wynke of sleep for two hundred years, some sodde alwayes bangs the bell. Go awaye.’ The warrior lay back. ‘It’s some old king and his warriors,’ whispered Nanny as they hurried away. ‘Some kind of magical sleep, I’m told. Some old wizard did it. They’re supposed to wake up for some final battle when a wolf eats the sun.’ [Lords and Ladies] The legend of the Sleeping Warriors recurs so often that its narrativium drive must be unusually powerful. On the Discworld it has been found in at least three other places, far from Lancre. First, in a huge burial mound on the Counterweight Continent there are seven thousand terracotta warriors, each seven foot tall, who form an invincible Red Army when aroused. Their Earthly counterparts were discovered by archaeologists some years ago, drawn up in military array in pits all round an Emperor’s grave in China; wisely, nobody has yet attempted to arouse them. It is as yet unclear whether the golems who have come to Ankh-Morpork, as is told in Making Money, and who were last seen digging themselves into trenches round the city, will be taking on a similar role. Secondly, inside a hill at Holy Wood, there is a gigantic knight in golden armour lying on a dusty slab in front of a silver screen, and beside him is the gong to wake him. And thirdly, in the limestone caverns under Koom Valley, there is the Kings’ Cave, where Dwarf King and Troll King, encased in stalactites, sit eternally at their game of Thud, as they were when death overtook them: There was the dwarf king, slumped forward across the board, glazed by the eternal drip, his beard now rock and at one with the stone, but the diamond king had remained upright in death, his skin gone cloudy, and you could still see the game in front of him. It was his move; a healthy little stalactite hung from his outstretched hand. [Thud!] Many European traditions tell of an ancient king who lies asleep inside a mountain. Some say he will awake in the hour of his country’s greatest need, and return to save his people; others, that when he wakes it means the End of the World is near. In France, he is Charlemagne; in Britain, King Arthur; in Denmark, Holger Danske; in Germany, the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa (‘Red Beard’). Barbarossa is in Mount Kyffhausen: He sits on a bench at a round stone table, resting his head on his hand, sleeping, nodding his head and blinking his eyes. His beard has grown long – according to some, right through the stone table. But according to others, the beard grows around the table, and when it has encircled it three times it will be the time of his awakening. It has now grown around twice. A shepherd was once led into the mountain by a dwarf. The emperor rose and asked him, ‘Are the ravens still flying round the mountain?’ When the shepherd assured him that they were, he cried, ‘Now I am going to have to sleep for another hundred years.’ [German Legends of the Brothers Grimm (1816), no. 23; transl. Donald Ward, 1981] In Britain, the sleeper is King Arthur. Many people claim to know the very place where he and his knights are lying in some cavern under a hill, with their horses and hounds beside them – inside Alderley Edge in Cheshire, inside Cadbury Hill in Somerset, under Sewingshields Crag in Northumberland, under Richmond Castle in Yorkshire, in the Eildon Hills near Edinburgh. If you can find your way in and reach the place where Arthur sleeps, you may see a pile of gold; you are allowed to take some once, but don’t ever go back to get more. There will certainly be significant objects – maybe a bell, maybe a sheathed sword, a garter, or a horn. There are just two problems: first, you have to know whether you must or must not touch them in order to wake the king (assuming that is what you want to do); and then, you have to keep your nerve. So far, things have never worked out properly. At Richmond Castle, one man who found his way down to the sleepers’ vault saw a sword and a hunting horn. He drew the sword half out of its scabbard, and the sleepers began to stir, but this terrified him so much that he thrust the blade back. An angry voice called out: Thompson, Potter Thompson, If you’d drawn the sword or blown the horn, You’d ha’ been the luckiest man That ever yet was born. The man who got into the vault at Sewingshields did a bit better. He saw a sword, a garter, and a bugle. He drew the sword right out of the scabbard, and Arthur and the knights opened their eyes. Then he cut the garter, and this too was the right thing to do, and they slowly sat up. But then he stopped. The spell took hold again, and the king and his warriors sank back on their couches, but not before Arthur had cursed the man: O woe betide that evil day On which this witless wight was born Who drew the sword, the garter cut, But never blew the bugle horn! The Gnarly Ground Gnarly ground is hard to see, let alone describe. There’s a patch of it on the highest part of the moorlands, beyond the forest and among the mountains. If you look at it in one way, it’s just a pathless stretch of heather and furze, less than a mile across (even if the furze is horribly matted and thorny), and at one point there’s a little stream which has cut a groove among the rocks, scarcely more than a foot deep. You could easily jump it. Yet somebody has laid a broad stone slab across it, as a bridge. Now look at the scene the other way … You see an endless, nasty-looking, desolate expanse; a long, narrow, dizzying bridge spanning a ravine; a raging torrent far below. They say a deer will sometimes run on to gnarly ground if hard-pressed in the hunt, but it has to be pretty desperate. ‘What is gnarly ground?’ said Agnes. ‘There’s a lot of magic in these mountains, right?’ said Nanny. ‘And everyone knows mountains get made when lumps of land bang together, right? Well, when the magic gets trapped you … sort of … get a bit of land where the space is … sort of … scrunched up, right? It’d be quite big if it could, but it’s like a bit of gnarly wood in an ol’ tree. Or a used hanky … all folded up small but still big in a different way.’ [Carpe Jugulum] In Carpe Jugulum, Granny Weatherwax sets out alone to cross the gnarly ground, and the younger witches go after her. Their socks, knitted from Lancre’s toughest, most wiry wool, protect them from the savage spikes of furze. But then comes the gorge, an abyss so deep one can barely see the river below, and a high, slender bridge that shifts and creaks underfoot. And then a cavern, some tunnels, a flash of fire. It is a strange, perilous journey, but not unparalleled. Time and again, in myths and folk tales from all parts of the multiverse, those who take the road to the Otherworld must pass a water barrier by way of a Bridge Perilous. A Scottish ballad describes one leading from Purgatory to Paradise: The brigge was as heigh as a tower, And as scharpe as a rasour, And naru it was also; And the water that ther ran under Brennd of lightning and of thunder, That thought him mikle wo. The closest match for Granny’s journey is the strange medieval funeral chant known as ‘The Lyke-Wake Dirge’, which Yorkshire women sang, as late as the sixteenth century, as they kept watch over a corpse. The tale it tells was already old; it had begun (in so far as such things can be said ever to begin) four hundred years before, as a vision which came to a German monk called Gottskalk in December 1189, as he lay sick of a fever. He saw the souls of the dead gathering on the edge of a great wild heath covered with thorns and furze. There was a tree nearby, its branches loaded with pairs of shoes, but the newly dead soul must cross the thorny ground barefoot – unless, while alive, he or she had given socks and shoes as alms to the poor. And so the Yorkshire women sang: If ever thou gavest hosen or shoon, Every night and all, Sit thee down and put them on, And Christ receive thy soul. If hosen and shoon thou never gave none, Every night and all, The whinnies shall prick thee to the bare bone, And Christ receive thy soul. Having passed over Whinny Moor, the soul comes to The Bridge of Dread, which is ‘no broader than a thread’, and finally to Purgatory Fire. Those who once gave food and drink to the needy will not shrink from its flames; those who never did will be burned to the bare bone. The song stops at this point, but since in Christian belief Purgatory is never a final state, simply the last stage on a sinner’s journey to God in Heaven, we can assume a happy ending. As for Granny Weatherwax, the message she sends the world is, I ATE’NT DEAD YET. BELIEFS OF LANCRE The people of Lancre are, on the whole, remarkably free from irrational beliefs. Things which in another universe would be considered superstitions are plain commonsensical everyday facts in Lancre. People there don’t believe that a horseshoe over the door keeps you safe from elves, they know it, and if you ask them why it works they can explain just why (the magnetic effect of iron disrupts the sixth sense so vital to an elf’s well-being). Beekeepers are careful to tell their bees everything important that concerns the family and household – births, marriages, deaths, a new set of curtains, and suchlike. But that’s not superstition, just the practical observation that if you don’t tell them, they will fly indoors to find out for themselves. Or take the matter of controlling horses. On the Earth, there were farriers and farm workers who had learned the secret magic of the ‘Horseman’s Word’. They could make any horse follow them, or utterly refuse to move on, by whispering it into its ear. To become a Horse Whisperer or Toadman wasn’t easy. In Scotland, you had to be initiated into a secret society and swear blood-curdling oaths. In East Anglia, you had to kill a toad, leave it on an ant-hill for a month till the bones were picked clean, then on the next night of the full moon put the bones in a stream (ignoring the eldritch sounds which would break out just behind you). One single bone would float upstream. Take it home, rub it with oils, grind it to powder. That powder holds the power. In Lancre, the blacksmith and farrier Jason Ogg has no need of all that palaver, but he does have a more immediately practical approach. He can calm the wildest stallion by whispering a definitely non-magical Word in its ear – he simply points out what all those pliers and hammers could be used for, ‘if you don’t stand still right now, you bugger’. Royal Phantoms Curiously, the royal family of Lancre have one strong superstition, though it only affects them once they are dead. They believe that they are bound to the stones of their ancient castle (especially if they happen to have been murdered on the premises), and must haunt it indefinitely. When this happened to King Verence I, he found he disliked most of his fellow-ghosts: Champot was all right, if a bit tiresome. But Verence had backed away at the first sight of the Twins, toddling hand in hand along the midnight corridors, their tiny ghosts a memorial to a deed darker even than the usual run of regicidal unpleasantness. And then there was the Troglodyte Wanderer, a rather faded monkeyman in a furry loincloth who apparently happened to haunt the castle merely because it had been built on his burial mound. For no obvious reason a chariot with a screaming woman in it occasionally rumbled through the laundry room. [Wyrd Sisters] Being not entirely stupid, King Verence found a way of escape. He persuaded Nanny Ogg to help him, pleading, ‘Pray carry a stone out of the palace so’s I can haunt it, good mother, it’s so bloody boring in here.’ So he left the castle, clinging to a bit of rock that Nanny broke off the battlements and put in her apron pocket, and took up residence in her cottage. Unfortunately all the other ghosts came along too, but she got used to them in the end. Magpies Creatures which in other parts of the multiverse are a topic for wild rumour and proliferating legend are regarded in Lancre simply as rare and interesting species. To see the occasional phoenix or unicorn is sometimes a surprise, always a pleasure, but never an omen, either for good or ill. (Details of these and other remarkable fauna are to be found in the chapter on ‘Beasties’.) But there is one exception – magpies are definitely bodeful. The magpies which come down into Lancre from Uberwald are the spies and messengers of a powerful vampire, Count de Magpyr. But even apart from that, magpies are unpopular there for their thieving ways and for being omens. Something chattered at them from a nearby branch … ‘Good morning, Mister Magpie,’ said Agnes automatically. ‘Bugger off, you bastard,’ said Nanny, and reached down for a stick to throw. The bird swooped off to the other side of the clearing. ‘That’s bad luck,’ said Agnes. ‘It will be if I get a chance to aim,’ said Nanny. ‘Can’t stand those maggoty-pies.’ ‘ “One for sorrow”,’ said Agnes, watching the bird hop along a branch. ‘I always take the view there’s prob’ly going to be another one along in a minute,’ said Nanny, dropping the stick. ‘ “Two for joy”?’ said Agnes. ‘It’s “two for mirth”.’ ‘Same thing, I suppose.’ ‘Dunno about that,’ said Nanny. ‘I was joyful when our Jason was born, but I can’t say I was laughin’ at the time.’ Two more magpies landed on the cottage’s antique thatch. ‘That’s “three for a girl—”,’ said Agnes nervously. ‘ “Three for a funeral” is what I learned,’ said Nanny. ‘But there’s lots of magpie rhymes.’ … ‘ “Seven for a secret never to be told”,’ said Agnes. ‘ “Seven’s a devil, his own sel’ ”,’ said Nanny darkly. ‘You’ve got your rhyme, I’ve got mine.’ [Carpe Jugulum] * Things are much the same on the Earth, where magpies (also known as pies, pyats, mags, or maggoty-pies) are sinister and unpopular birds. They are shameless thieves, snatching anything bright and glittery and carrying it off to decorate their extremely untidy and badly built nests – behaviour which earned one of them a vital but non-singing role in Rossini’s opera The Thieving Magpie. It is said they will even fly down into Hell if there is a bag of gold to be found there. They love gossiping, chattering, and causing trouble; they are evil birds who know far more than they ought, always peering about and prying into other people’s business. They have always enjoyed disasters. Even in the days of Noah’s flood, the magpie refused to enter the Ark, preferring to perch on the roof and jabber with glee at the sight of the drowning world. Magpies are so malicious that Spanish peasants say each one has seven bristles from the Devil’s beard among its feathers, and seven bladders of bitter gall in its body. They are the Devil’s spies and messengers. In Russia, too, they are considered the Devil’s forces; there are said to be forty of them perched on fir trees to guard a bog where he sits enthroned on a white rock. Throughout England and Scotland for the past two hundred years and more, there have been rhymes to warn you what to expect if you see magpies flying across your path. However, as Nanny Ogg would certainly point out, they are not very reliable, since they are not the ones the magpies know themselves. There are many versions, all agreeing that a single magpie brings bad luck, but two bring good. With three and four, there is more choice: One for sorrow, Two for joy, Three for a girl, And four for a boy. Or: One for sorrow, Two for mirth, Three for a wedding, Four for a birth. Or on the other hand, in the oldest known version (from Lincolnshire in 1780) it is: Three for a wedding, And four for a death. After which things become more complicated. You can have: Five for silver, six for gold, Seven for a secret never to be told. Or: Five for rich, six for poor, Seven for a witch, I can tell you no more. Or: Five for England, six for France, Seven for a fiddler, eight for a dance. Or: Five for heaven, six for hell, Seven, you’ll see the devil himsel’. To be on the safe side when a magpie crosses your path, and to turn aside the bad luck, you can draw a cross on the ground, or lay two straws or sticks crosswise; or bow to the bird, saying ‘Good day, Mr Magpie!’, or blow a kiss towards it; or recite this charm: I crossed the magpie, and the magpie crossed me; Devil take the magpie, and God save me! CUSTOMS OF LANCRE For some years now, the Ankh-Morpork Folk Dance and Song Society has been compiling an archive of old folk customs and fertility rituals from the countryside around. One summer a lady folklorist arrived on Nanny Ogg’s doorstep, demanding information. ‘Well,’ said Nanny, ‘there’s only one fertility ritual that I knows of and that’s the one that comes nat’rally.’ But the lady said, ‘No, there’s got to be loads of folk stuff hanging on because I am writing a book, and I will give you this handsome silver dollar, my good woman.’ So Nanny Ogg gave her what she reckoned was one dollar’s worth, but no more. This included the Scouring of the Long Man, as described above, and two or three others, which will be found in A Tourist Guide to Lancre: The Seven-Year Flitch. This is an old custom datin’ back to one Miscegenation Carter who left some money in his will to set it up to provide a flitch of bacon for the deservin’ poor. It is held every five years. It is open to any man who has been married for more than seven years to appear before the Flitch Court, which consists of six old married couples, an’ swear that in that time he has never had a cross word with his wife or regretted bein’ married. If he does, he is beaten near senseless with the flitch for lying, but brought round with strong drink and the rest of the day is a fair. So far no man has ever convinced the Court an’ the flitch is the original one, which is as hard as oak now. The Lancre Oozer. The Oozer, attended by people dressed up as his Squeasers, dances from house to house in every village on Old Hogswatch Eve until people gives them money to go somewhere else. It is said that any maiden kissed by the Oozer is sure to be pregnant before the year is out but this is an odds-on bet in these parts anyway. The Slice Mummers’ Play. This is performed on the first Saturday after Marling Day, when the characters of Old Hogfather, Death, Merry Hood and the White Knight perform an age-old ritual tellin’ of the death and resurrection of really bad acting. This is the high spot of the Slice Fair and Revels. There is not a lot to do in Slice. Well, not that isn’t mostly banned everywhere else. The similarities to Earthly customs here are truly astonishing. Anyone who knows anything about English traditions will recognize the name of the Dorset Ooser, a large, heavy wooden head with bull’s horns, goggle eyes, and movable snapping jaws. Folklorists found out about it in 1891, at which time it was kept by a family in Crewkerne, but could get no information on how it was used. It has since disappeared, or perhaps it took a dislike to the folklorists and ran away. Its Discworld counterpart behaves very much like the May Day Obby Oss at Padstow in Cornwall, which dances from house to house through the narrow streets, led by a Teaser, and accompanied by singers and a massed band of accordions and drums. This goes on all day. If the Oss catches a woman, she will be married and/or pregnant within a year. Mumming Plays can be seen in many towns and villages of England, Lowland Scotland, and parts of Ireland around Christmas time (or Easter, in Lancashire). They always involve a lot of shouting of bad verse, two or three fights, a death, and a resurrection brought about by a quack doctor. And then someone takes up a collection from the spectators. Folklorists used to think this was some sort of extremely ancient fertility ritual, but eventually got around to noticing the collection, and the odd fact that performances used to take place outside rich men’s houses, and nowadays at a pub. As for the Seven-Year Flitch, this recalls something which has been going on, off and on, for at least six hundred years at Great Dunmow in Essex. Originally, any man who, having been married for more than a year, could convince the monks at Little Dunmow Priory that he had never once had words with his wife or wished he was single again, would be given a flitch of bacon and carried in procession. Successful claims were few and far between. When the monastery was closed down at the Reformation, successive Lords of the Manor took responsibility for keeping the custom going, and did so till 1751, when they dropped it. Fortunately, in 1854 the bestselling novelist Harrison Ainsworth wrote an enthusiastic description, The Flitch of Bacon, or the Custom of Dunmow (it can still be found). This inspired a revival, which has flourished ever since. Nowadays there is a mock trial, with the wives giving evidence, and the whole thing is treated as a joke. Soul Caking If the lady folklorist from Ankh-Morpork had produced another dollar, she could have learned about the excitements of the Soul Cake Days, which are celebrated in the Ramtops and on the Sto Plains on the first Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday after first half-moon in the month of Sektober. Readers attempting to work out this date should bear in mind that on the Discworld it is extremely dangerous to utter the magic number ‘eight’, or any of its derivatives, in any language. According to the Discworld Almanak, the Soul Cake Days are ‘celebrated by Dwarfs and Men with great fires, much noise, and mysterious customs, too many to catalogue, and some too moist to recommend’. It is known that Morris Dancing is involved; also that dwarfs play at Bobbing for Toffee-Rats on a Stick, and human children go Trickle-Treating. Lady folklorists in Ankh-Morpork assume that this is just a local pronunciation of ‘Treacle-Treating’, meaning that the kids who dress up and go from house to house are hoping to be given treacle gob-stoppers as their treat. Male folklorists hold the opinion (never mentioned in print, or in the hearing of their female colleagues) that the name arose because people who refuse to hand out any treats later find a rather nasty trickle on their doorstep. Lancre children are also given eggs with funny faces on them (Nanny Ogg is a dab hand at painting them). There must be some connection with the Soul Cake Tuesday Duck, a magical creature which lays chocolate eggs for children in Ankh-Morpork, as will be described in a later chapter. And this in turn links up with the fact that the duck-hunting season begins that Tuesday. The good people of Ubergigl (in Uberwald) mark the date by ‘The Running of the Ducks’, when maddened untamed ducks run, more or less, through the streets, pursued by young men who vie with one another to snatch the coveted rosette from the beak of the biggest drake. Perhaps their minds have been affected by some floating awareness of the Running of the Bulls, which is done every July at a fiesta at Pamplona in Spain. All of which is well and good, but does not even begin to explain what souls, and cakes, have to do with it. Here, by remarkable coincidence, English traditions can again cast light on the problem. In the Middle Ages 2 November, All Souls’ Day, was the day when Christians prayed particularly for the souls of the dead, to speed them on their way from Purgatory to Heaven (as is still done in Catholic countries); on this and the preceding days, it was customary for those who could afford it to give away little cakes to the poor, asking them too to pray for the donor’s dead family and friends. Long after the religious purpose had been forgotten, people made fancy cakes at this time of year, and called them ‘soul cakes’; in the nineteenth century in the rural parts of Cheshire and Shropshire, the poorer people went from farm to farm asking for money, food or drink, with the song: Soul, soul, for a souling cake, I pray you, good missis, for a souling cake, Apple or pear, a plum or a cherry, Anything good to make us merry. Up with your kettles and down with your pans, Give us an answer and we’ll be gone. They said they were ‘Going Soul Caking’, but secretly they hoped there’d be some beer to go with the cakes, or, better still, some money. By the end of that century the custom had died out among adults; children, however, were still keeping it up in the 1950s. Though sometimes they forgot about the cakes: Soul, soul, for an apple or two, If you’ve got no apples, pears will do; If you’ve got no pears, ha’pennies will do; If you’ve got no ha’pennies, God bless you. Morris Dancing, Light and Dark There are some things Nanny Ogg took good care not to mention to the lady folklorist from the city – the things she calls the ‘real stuff’, things like the Dark Morris. The lady would be bound to get them all wrong anyway. Now, even ordinary Morris dancing, what we may for convenience call the Light Morris, is a curious thing, both on Earth and on the Disc. A typical dance involves six men in two lines of three, facing each other; they are all dressed alike, usually in white, with coloured baldrics and decorated hats, and possibly with ribbons and rosettes too; they clash sticks in time to the music, miraculously avoiding one another’s fingers by a hair’s breadth, or wave large handkerchiefs, or clap; they have bells strapped to their ankles and knees. There will be one or two reserve dancers in the team, to replace anyone who retires exhausted or injured; a musician playing an accordion, or a fiddle, or in earlier centuries a pipe and tabor; a Fool; and someone to go round taking the collection. On one level it’s a public display of skill, strength, stamina and sheer bloody-mindedness, which some people in Lancre think of as entertainment and others as a form of martial art (especially when sticks and buckets are involved). There is a definite competitive edge to it. You can have events like the Fifteen Mountains All-Comers’ Championships, which the Lancre Morris Men have won no fewer than six times. It gives the teams a chance to dress up and swagger around, to be someone special. In Elizabethan England, the strict Puritans thought the swaggering was much too much fun, both for the dancers and the crowd. In 1583 Philip Stubbes complained furiously in his Anatomie of Abuses that at village festivals there would be Morris Men dressed in ‘green, yellow, or some other light wanton colour’: And as though that were not gaudy enough, I should say, they bedeck themselves with scarfs, ribbons and laces, hanged all over with gold rings, precious stones and other jewels; this done, they tie about either leg twenty or forty bells, with rich handkerchiefs in their hands, and sometimes laid across their shoulders and necks, borrowed for the most part from their pretty Mopsies or loving Betties, for bussing them in the dark … Then march this heathen company towards the church and churchyard, their pipers piping, their drummers thundering, their stumps dancing, their bells jingling, their handkerchiefs fluttering above their heads like mad men, their hobby horses skirmishing among the throng. On a second level – at any rate in England, where it has flourished (off and on) for at least six hundred years – Morris dancing used to be an excellent way for working men in country districts to get free beer and food and some extra cash. They would appear at seasonal festivals such as May Day and Whitsun, and also at whichever date the local fair was held; in winter they would go round performing outside the houses of the wealthy. This was a great asset when times were hard, as they so often were in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Nowadays, Morris teams usually perform outside pubs and in town centres; they still take up a collection, but simply to cover their expenses or for a charity. Some English teams used to go out on tour for several weeks, and even visit towns. At a fair in London in 1823, for example, there was: a group of young rustics attired in garments decorated with numerous bows of ribbon. They had small jingling bells fastened to their knees and ankles. Some waved white handkerchiefs and others wands … keeping time by striking their wands against one another. It was so pleasant, wrote another London eyewitness in 1830, to observe the monotony of some long dull street of dingy houses broken by the simple music of the pipe and tabor, and the ringing of the bells on the legs of the morris-dancers … There seems a patch of old-time merriment in the active motions of the ruddy and sunburnt countrymen. Just how old was the merriment? When and why did it come to be such an essential part of the rose-tinted picture of the happy, simple, country life of Old England? A theory popular in the eighteenth century was that the name ‘Morris’ was a corruption of the Spanish word morisco, ‘Moorish’, and that it was a fashion introduced from Spain in the fourteenth century. This would imply that at first it was danced by the upper classes, not among country folk, and that they called it ‘Moorish’ not just for being foreign, but because it was so wild and energetic, in contrast to the stately dances of the Court. It is a plausible suggestion, but apart from the name itself there is no actual evidence for it. Then, in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a dramatic new theory emerged and became instantly popular and widely accepted. The origins of the Morris, it was claimed, lay in the fertility rituals of prehistoric Europe; the noisy bells, the waving hankies, and aggressive sticks were meant to drive away evil spirits; the high leaps into the air were meant to make the crops grow tall. On this level, the third and for many people the most important one, Morris dancing is an immensely ancient magical rite for the promotion of life. There is no evidence for this either, but as the English scholar Keith Chandler recently wrote, ‘viewing a dance which is supposedly several thousand years old appears to satisfy some indefinable need in the human psyche’. Whether or not this theory holds good on Earth, it is well known to be the truth of the matter on the Disc. There, Morris dancing is done to bring good luck and drive bad things away; there’s nothing like the jangle of little iron bells for getting rid of elves. What’s more, it’s all about the cycles of growth and decay, summer and winter, life and death. It involves the Light Morris, yes, but the Dark Morris too. This is why there’s one village in the Ramtops, the one where they really do know what they are doing, where the Morris Men dance twice, and twice only, in every year (we shall have more to say on this in the next chapter). The first time is at dawn on the first day of spring, and everyone is welcome to watch. But the second time is in autumn, and it’s private. On a certain day when the nights are drawing in, the dancers leave work early and take, from attics and cupboards, the other costume, the black one, and the other bells. And they go by separate ways to a valley among the leafless trees. They don’t speak. There is no music. It’s very hard to imagine what kind there could be. The bells don’t ring. They’re made of octiron, a magic metal. But they’re not, precisely, silent bells. Silence is merely the absence of noise. They make the opposite of noise, a sort of heavily textured silence. And in the cold afternoon, as the light drains from the sky, among the frosty leaves and in the damp air, they dance the other Morris. Because of the balance of things. You’ve got to dance both, they say. Otherwise you can’t dance either. [Reaper Man] This is the Dark Morris Nanny Ogg was keeping quiet about. If it is danced elsewhere in the multiverse – and it surely is – people there are keeping quiet about it too. (Well. Not that quiet. Terry is occasionally informed of a sighting, and once saw it danced in Chicago.) Chapter 10 THE WITCHES OF THE CHALK HOSTILITY TOWARDS WITCHES IN THE LOWLANDS and in the Chalk country, witches do not receive the same respect as in Lancre. There have been times when they were systematically persecuted, even burned, and though that no longer happens many of the Chalk people still distrust them, and are quick to blame them when there is trouble. So witches who go there are wary, and try not to attract attention. They wear ordinary clothes, and disguise their true craft behind a slightly more socially acceptable calling, such as teaching. That is why, when Miss Perspicacia Tick visits the Chalk, or surrounding villages, she wears what looks like a simple black straw hat smothered in paper flowers, but is actually a collapsible stealth model. Press a spring, and it unfolds into the classic pointy shape. Among the paper flowers lurks a talking toad which she refers to as her familiar, though so far it has not displayed any magical powers – unlike the toad-familiars of English witches in Wessex, which are so dangerous that the worst threat their mistress can utter is, ‘I’ll set my toads on ’ee!’ Miss Tick’s equipment too looks far from witchy. She does her scrying by pouring a few drops of ink into rainwater in a cracked saucer which she carries about in one of her many pockets. Also in her pockets are other insignificant objects – twigs, loose beads, string, a reel of cotton, a holed stone, a few feathers, scraps of coloured paper. These she can thread together to make a ‘shamble’, a powerful magic-detector and projector which looks a bit like a particularly complicated cat’s cradle, a bit like a broken set of puppet-strings, and a bit like a very untidy dream-catcher. To do this requires high skill in making string-figures, an art practised in various parts of the multiverse, and often linked to myths and magic. On Earth, Germans call it das Hexenspiel, ‘the Witch’s Game’. A shamble won’t work if you buy it ready-made. You have to make your own, fresh every time, out of whatever there happens to be in your pockets. In the centre you put something alive – an egg, say, or a beetle or small worm – and pull the strings, and as the objects twirl past or even through one another, the device works. In the presence of really powerful magic, it may explode. But if you pull the right bit of string, it all falls apart in a moment and becomes just a small pile of harmless rubbish. Nothing suspicious. Nothing that makes people say ‘witch’. Because once people think you’re a witch, things can go terribly, terribly wrong, as they did for poor old Mrs Snapperly, who died in the snow one winter, but who probably wasn’t a witch at all. As Tiffany Aching tells Miss Tick, Mrs Snapperly used to live alone in a strange cottage in the woods, and had no teeth, and talked to herself. And she had a cat, and she squinted. So when a young boy went riding in those woods one summer day and never came back, people said she’d killed him, and maybe cooked him in her oven too. ‘And so after he vanished they went to her cottage and they looked in the oven and they dug up her garden and they threw stones at her old cat until it died and they turned her out of her cottage and piled up all her old books in the middle of the room and set fire to them and burned the place to the ground and everyone said she was an old witch.’ [The Wee Free Men] To make matters worse, this lost boy was the Baron’s son, and the Baron (whose family had held the Chalk for generations without ever changing their minds about anything) was full of taken-for-granted prejudices. He too blamed Mrs Snapperly, and gave orders that nobody was to have anything to do with her, and that any witch found in the country should be tied up and thrown in a pond. The old woman managed to live through the autumn, begging and stealing food here and there and sleeping where she could, but there came a cold night when no one would open their doors to her, and it snowed, and by morning she was dead. Thankfully, such small rural tragedies are now rare on Discworld, but they were common on Earth until modern times. As late as the 1920s, in one Sussex village there was an old widow called Betsey Shadlow who was forced into isolation by the fears and suspicions of her neighbours. She was a wicked old woman, they said, and had ‘powerful books with a deal of evil written in them’. She lived alone and in poverty, and was crippled with rheumatism, but nobody would help her dig up her potatoes for fear of what she might do to them. When she went to the farm to buy milk, the farmer wouldn’t let her pass the gate in case she bewitched the cows, so she had to stay in the road and yell until somebody heard her. There came a time when people realized that they hadn’t seen her around for a couple of weeks, so the Rector called at her cottage and found her sick in bed, too ill to move. The man who told her story to the Sussex County Magazine in 1943 remembered how it all ended: The workhouse people came next day and took her away. One of the head men stayed behind to sort out her belongings. She hadn’t much furniture, but they found a pile of books. My neighbour, who was very fond of reading and very curious as well, asked the official if he could have them, or at least read them, but we said it wasn’t right, and anyway we didn’t want anyone else learning the secrets and playing us up – Betsey Shadlow was trouble enough – and we asked the workhouse chap to burn them. He looked at them, and said they were rubbish anyway. It’s a strange thing, but when they came to set fire to all the unwanted stuff from the cottage along with those books, we lookers-on saw green flames coming from the fire! The Baron’s notion that the thing to do with witches is to throw them into ponds must be one of those thought-particles drifting through the multiverse and taking root in any suitable mind. It echoes a practice once common in many countries of the Earth, the ‘swimming test’. It began in the Middle Ages as a way of discovering whether someone was or was not a witch, and reached its peak in the first half of the seventeenth century. The suspect would be tied up, hands to feet, and thrown in. It was believed that if she was guilty, water, being a pure and holy element, would reject her, and she would remain floating on the surface; if she was innocent, she would sink – and, hopefully, someone would haul her out before she drowned. Though popular, this was not actually legal, and the vast majority of lawyers and church leaders refused to accept it as evidence in court. One famous writer who did believe in the test was King James VI of Scotland and I of England, who linked it with the idea that witches had rejected the Christian faith in which they had been baptized: So it appears that God hath appointed, for a supernatural sign of the monstrous impiety of witches, that the water shall refuse to receive into her bosom those who have shaken off them the sacred water of baptism and wilfully refused the sacred benefit thereof. There came a time when all laws against witchcraft were dropped, and people could no longer take a woman to court if they thought her spells had harmed them. So, remembering the old ways, village mobs sometimes took matters into their own hands by ‘swimming’ her themselves, not as a test but as a punishment. Even in Victorian England, there were one or two cases where people died of this, by drowning or by pneumonia. In view of the Baron’s decree, it is fortunate that Miss Perspicacia Tick is good at untying knots with her teeth and swimming underwater, and can lurk under the weeds, breathing air through a hollow reed.9 WITCHES HAVE A DUTY As in Lancre, so on the Chalk a witch has a duty to her land and her people. It is because young Tiffany Aching has an instinctive ability to accept responsibility, to cope with threats to herself and others, that she is a natural born witch. As the kelda of the Wee Free Men tells her: ‘Ye’re the hag noo, the witch that guards the edges and the gateways. So wuz yer granny, although she wouldnae ever call hersel’ one.’ Granny Aching had lived and died as a shepherd. The chalk and flint were in her bones, the sky was her hat and the wind her cloak. All spring and summer she stayed out on the hills, sleeping in her old wheeled shepherding hut, which could be dragged across the downs to follow the flocks. Tiffany knew (probably by reading The Goode Childe’s Booke of Faerie Tales) that any old woman who lived in a house that moved about must be at least slightly a witch. She was sure of this, even though she had never heard of Mrs Gogol, the swamp-witch in Genua whose hut paddled along on duck’s feet, let alone Baba Yaga in Russian fairy tales, whose cottage stood on hen’s legs and spun round and round. Granny Aching was a supremely skilful and conscientious shepherd, with all the toil and responsibility this entails. [One would see] Granny Aching’s light, weaving slowly across the downs, on freezing, sparkly nights or in storms like a raging war, saving lambs from the creeping frost or rams from the precipice. She froze and struggled and tramped through the night for idiot sheep that never said thank you and would probably be just as stupid tomorrow, and get into the same trouble again. And she did it because not doing it was unthinkable. [The Wee Free Men] She used no magic, though some shepherds’ tricks look like magic if you don’t know how they’re done. But she had wisdom, and authority, and sometimes anger too; she saw to it that where there was injustice there would be a reckoning, since ‘Them as can do, has to do for them as can’t, and someone has to speak up for them as has no voices.’ Within two or three years of her death, the memory of her had grown into something larger than life, something like a spirit of the downs: There were always buzzards over the Chalk. The shepherds had taken to calling them Granny Aching’s chickens, and some of them called clouds like those up there today ‘Granny’s little lambs’. And Tiffany knew that even her father called the thunder ‘Granny Aching cussin’’. And it was said that some of the shepherds, if wolves were troublesome in the winter, or a prize ewe had got lost, would go to the site of the old hut in the hills and leave an ounce of Jolly Sailor tobacco, just in case … No wonder that when monsters and elves from another world appear in the Chalk country, Tiffany’s first thought is that Granny would have known how to deal with them. But Granny is dead. It is now young Tiffany who must become the witch-as-shepherd, guarding the borders, driving invaders away, keeping an eye on things. She has a duty. BECOMING A WITCH How does a girl become a witch? First, she must have some natural inborn talent, even if she does not yet realize it. Here, heredity can help, and in Tiffany’s case it does; the Achings, like the Weatherwaxes, have witching in their blood. It might also be significant that she is the seventh daughter. On the Earth it certainly would be, for in that universe many a magical healer and fortuneteller has found that being a seventh son (or daughter) is good publicity. But the supreme magical number on the Discworld is eight, not seven, so it is usually the eighth son (or daughter) who is born with power, as we learn in Equal Rites and Sourcery. The really unmistakable sign that Tiffany is destined to be a witch is her name – a sign all the more powerful for being the result of sheer chance (if there is such a thing as chance). In the languages of the Discworld ‘Tiffany’ has no meaning, but the kelda of the Wee Free Men tells her that in their Old Speech (a Celtic tongue, learned in another universe) its true form is Tir-far-Thóinn, meaning ‘Land Under Wave’.10 Chalk hills are land which was once under the waves, land formed from the shells of countless millions of sea creatures. Knowing this, and knowing what her name means, is the core of Tiffany’s power. She saw herself set her boots firmly on the turf, and then … … and then … … and then, like someone rising from the clouds of a sleep, she felt the deep, deep Time below her. She sensed the breath of the downs and the distant roar of ancient, ancient seas trapped in millions of tiny shells. She thought of Granny Aching, under the turf, becoming part of the chalk again, part of the land under wave. She felt as if huge wheels, of time and stars, were turning slowly around her. She opened her eyes and then, somewhere inside, opened her eyes again. She heard the grass growing, and the sound of worms below the turf. She could feel the thousands of little lives around her, smell all the scents on the breeze, and see all the shades of the night … The wheels of stars and years, of space and time, locked into place. She knew exactly where she was, and who she was, and what she was. [The Wee Free Men] However, even if you are born with an aptitude for magic, there are still skills to be learned, and it is not wise to try to learn witching all by yourself. Get one little thing wrong, and you’re stuck among dangers you don’t understand. Even if you make no mistakes, you’ll be desperately lonely. Unless you can meet people of your own sort, you may end up mad – or bad. Things aren’t so bad for boys who are potential wizards, since they can go to Unseen University. Occasionally, in those few times and places in the multiverse where girls have been allowed to study the same things as their brothers, there has been some talk of boarding schools for young witches, and even of co-educational establishments. But on the Disc there is nothing like that. When Miss Tick tells Tiffany that yes, there is indeed such a school – very magical, nowhere else quite like it – this is a trick or test. The true ‘school’, as Tiffany soon understands, is all around you, once you know how to open your eyes and then open them again. As for the detailed skills of the craft, they are passed on from elderly witches to young ones on a one-to-one basis, together with some very necessary guidance and protection. It is Miss Tick’s responsibility, as a secret witch-finder, to pick out girls with talent and make suitable arrangements for them. So when Tiffany was eleven, she left her home in the Chalk country and travelled to the mountains, where she went into service with Miss Level, partly as a maid and partly as an apprentice. She learned about herbs, and broomsticks, and tried patiently to make a shamble. She accompanied Miss Level round the villages and isolated farms doing medicine and midwifery, and learned that though a witch never expects payment and never asks for it, there is a constant interchange of gifts and favours. There was nothing romantic about this work, nothing dramatic, no magic potions to cure the sick in an instant. Witchcraft, said Miss Level, was mostly about helping people by doing quite ordinary things. This has been the task of the true Wise Woman in every universe, and we can assume (though evidence is lacking) that girls who became Wise Women on Earth learned their skills and duties by some similar informal apprenticeship. However, cures and advice are more likely to be accepted if they sound magical, as Tiffany learned. Miss Level had been carefully telling one family that their well was much too close to their privy, so the water was full of tiny, tiny creatures which were making the children sick. They listened politely, but did nothing. Then Granny Weatherwax visited them and told them the illness was caused by goblins who were attracted to the smell of the privy, and that very day the man of the house and his friends began digging a new well at the other end of the garden. A story gets things done. Yet there was part of Tiffany’s mind which hankered for power and drama and picturesque paraphernalia. This is a very common weakness in young witches, and Tiffany meets one group of girls who practise ‘The Higher MagiK’. ‘Magic with a K?’ said Tiffany. ‘MagiKkkk?’ ‘That’s deliberate,’ said Annagramma coldly. ‘If we are to make any progress at all we must distinguish the Higher MagiK from the everyday sort.’ ‘The everyday sort of magic?’ said Tiffany. ‘Exactly. None of that mumbling in hedgerows for us. Proper sacred circles, spells written down. A proper hierarchy, not everyone running around doing whatever they feel like. Real wands, not bits of grubby stick. Professionalism, with respect. Absolutely no warts. That’s the only way forward.’ [A Hatful of Sky] Annagramma has learned this approach from Mrs Letice Earwig, a tall thin witch who wears so much silver that she gleams, uses words like ‘avatar’ and ‘sigil’, and writes books. This has earned her Granny Weatherwax’s heartfelt contempt. ‘That’s just wizard magic with a dress on,’ and ‘She thinks you can become a witch by going shopping,’ are two of Granny’s milder comments. Annagramma runs a coven of young girls, whom she bullies and sneers at, and chivvies through complex ceremonies involving such things as the Wand of Air, the Cauldron of the Sea, the Shriven Chalice, the Circlet of Infinity. They all go in for robes and occult jewellery, and patronize the very expensive shop of Zakzak Stronginthearm, a dwarf craftsman who supplies everything the Higher MagiKkkkian might require: wands of metal or rare woods, elaborately pretty ready-made shambles, crystal balls, luxurious cloaks, star-spangled hats, rings, pendants, your personal grimoire (‘Book of Night’, or ‘Book of Shadows’) bound in heavy leather with an actively rolling eye on the cover. It is really remarkable how similar ideas spring up across the multiverse. On the Earth groups like this have become common over the past hundred years or so. There too, some of them insist on an eccentric spelling for what they do, calling it Magick, to make sure that nobody mistakes it for that boring old-fashioned folk magic. They go in for formal initiations, oaths, grades, and hierarchies, and their founders and leaders (generally men) are notably authoritarian. They take grandiose names for themselves, their organizations, their ritual ceremonies, and the objects used in ritual. And the Zakzaks of our world do very good business. Well, whatever … but one instinctively feels that Granny’s ‘every stick is a wand, every puddle is a crystal ball’ is closer to the truth. Or a truth, at least. ‘SEE ME’ The most remarkable of Tiffany’s abilities was one which she ought really to have mentioned to Miss Tick, but she didn’t, being too young and inexperienced to know how unusual, and how risky, it was. Closing her eyes and concentrating, she would say ‘See me’. Then, reopening her eyes, she would find herself standing a few feet away from herself. She had walked out of her own body, and now her detached self could move around, looking at her physical self from every side. When she had seen all she wanted, she would say ‘See me not’, and the two selves were instantly reunited. As a child, Tiffany simply thought of this as a handy little trick to use if you didn’t have a proper mirror. She had no notion that it is the basis of Borrowing, that supreme skill of great witches. Still less did she suspect that if you just walk out of your body and leave it there, without taking proper precautions, there are creatures only too ready to move in and take control. This ability, or something very like it, has been observed elsewhere in the multiverse, though not under the deliberate control of those who have it. One form is the ‘Near Death Experience’, much discussed nowadays on the Earth. People who are semi-conscious from heart failure or anaesthetic, and almost on the point of death, feel the mind detaching itself from the inert body and floating upwards; they can watch the body from above, and see what is going on around it, but eventually are reunited with it and regain consciousness. Older Earthly sources speak of the soul, rather than the mind, separating itself from the sleeping body and wandering off on its own. According to folk tradition, it is possible for an observer to see this happening, for the soul emerges in visible form, as a small animal, an insect, or a puff of smoke. This is said to have happened once to King Guntram of the Franks, who ruled Burgundy from 561 to 592; the story was written down some two hundred years later. One day, Guntram felt tired while out hunting, and took a nap under a tree, while a courtier kept watch. This man saw that while the king was asleep a little animal slithered out of his mouth and went down to a tiny brook, where it ran to and fro on the bank, looking for a way to cross. Amused at this, the courtier laid his sword across the brook. The little creature crossed at once, and disappeared into a hole on the opposite bank. After a bit, it returned across the sword bridge, and slipped back into the king’s mouth. Then Guntram woke up, and said to his companion, ‘I must tell you what a strange dream I’ve just had. I saw a very large, very wide river, and across it a great iron bridge had been built. I crossed the bridge, and went into a cave in the side of a towering mountain, and it was filled with treasure!’ Then the courtier told the king what had actually happened, and they decided to dig into the bank of the brook, and sure enough, there was a treasure buried there. It is important that no one should touch or shake or shift the unconscious body while its soul is away, because if the soul cannot find its way back, the person will die. MAKING A MYTH OF ONESELF Tiffany’s next post is as apprentice to an extremely odd – nay, terrifying – witch named Miss Eumenides Treason, one hundred and thirteen years old, quite blind, and quite deaf. Yet these disabilities scarcely bother her, because she is skilled at Borrowing and uses the eyes and ears of any nearby animal as if they were her own. On occasion, she even Borrows Tiffany’s eyes, which is rather irritating of her. Whereas Miss Tick is a stealth witch, Miss Treason flaunts witchery in every detail of her lifestyle. All witches like wearing black, but she has gone further; the walls and floors in her cottage are black, and so, of course, are her candles; she keeps black goats and black hens; even cheeses must be coated with black wax. Everything has been carefully crafted to match images stamped deeply into the human psyche by the force of narrativium, since it is her aim to turn herself into a myth, in life and in death. She knows exactly how to do it. Every witch has her particular skill, and Miss Treason’s is to deliver Justice. People would come to her from miles around with disputes about land, or cows, or rent, or legacies, and she would sit in judgement. So, how does the image fit the role? First, blindness. Everyone knows that when Justice is personified she wears a blindfold, and so does Miss Treason – a black one, naturally. So indeed does Blind Io, chief of the gods, who has blank skin where his eyes should be and an impressive number of detached eyeballs floating round him. It is not known whether Miss Treason is deliberately mocking him; it is not impossible, for witches don’t have much respect for gods. What is quite certain is that she strikes terror into the hearts of disputants when she removes the blindfold from her pearly grey eyes and prepares to give judgement, saying: ‘I have heard. Now I shall see. I shall see what is true.’ Her blind eyes seem to look right into the soul. People say if you lie to her, you’ll be dead in a week. Then there is her name, Eumenides, which she must have found in the pages of Chaffinch’s Ancient and Classical Mythology – one of her favourite books, crammed full with bookmarks. On the Earth, in Ancient Greece, this was the polite name for the Erinyes or Avenging Furies, terrifying goddesses whose function was to hound the guilty to death; it literally means ‘Sweet-Tempered Ladies’ and was meant to be flattering to them and reassuring to us, but nobody was ever fooled by that. Her chosen hobby is weaving, which (like the spinning of the Fates) is a traditional metaphor for the way supernatural beings decide human destinies. One tale from the Earth (the medieval Icelandic Njal’s Saga) tells how twelve valkyries were seen setting up a gruesome loom, just before the great Battle of Clontarf between Vikings and Irishmen in 1014. As they worked, they sang: We weave, we weave a web of war. Human guts our warp and weft, Skulls our loom-weights, spears our shuttles, Swords to beat the blood-stained cloth. We decide who lives, who dies. We weave, we weave a web of war. Next, her birds. At the time Tiffany was living with Miss Treason, she kept two ravens, which had once worked for Blind Io; one would sit on each side of her head on a wooden perch which fitted like a yoke across her shoulders. The effect was very witchy, and mythic too; no doubt she had been reading about the Norse god Odin and his ravens Huginn and Muninn (‘Thought’ and ‘Memory’), which perched on his shoulders and told him everything they had seen as they flew round Middle Earth. Before the ravens, she had kept a pet jackdaw. There are no links between jackdaws and Justice, but good precedents for their use as magical familiars. The medieval English chronicler William of Malmesbury wrote in his Gesta Regum Anglorum (1125) of a witch who had lived at Berkeley in Gloucestershire some sixty years before his time, in the year 1063. She was skilled in interpreting omens, and had a tame jackdaw as her very great favourite; one day, the bird chattered more loudly than usual, and she turned pale, knowing this was a warning that her own death was at hand. (A Discworld witch wouldn’t mind knowing this, but the Witch of Berkeley had made a pact with the Devil, so for her it was not good news.) In much more recent times, in the 1960s, to be precise, a well-known witch in the New Forest in Hampshire, Mrs Sybil Leek, would always appear in public with a tame jackdaw called Hotfoot Jackson perching on her shoulder. Very eye-catching, but (like Miss Treason) she did have to put up with mess down the back of her cloak. Myth-making is a communal activity, even if most people involved don’t see that that’s what they’re doing. It’s built up from fears, rumours, thrills and stories, all driven by powerful doses of narrativium. Miss Treason takes a keen interest in the process, since she has a reputation to keep up. She asks Tiffany: ‘Have you heard the stories about me, child?’ … ‘Er, that you have a demon in the cellar?’ Tiffany answered … ‘And you eat spiders? And get visited by kings and princes? And that any flower planted in your garden blooms black?’ ‘Oh, do they say so?’ said Miss Treason, looking delighted. ‘I haven’t heard that last one. How nice. And did you hear that I walk around at night in the dark time of the year and reward those who have been good citizens with a purse of silver? But, if they have been bad, I slit open their bellies with my thumbnail like this?’ Tiffany leaped backwards as a wrinkled hand twisted her round and Miss Treason’s yellow thumbnail scythed past her stomach. The old woman looked terrifying. ‘No! No, I haven’t heard that one,’ she gasped, pressing up against the sink. ‘What? And it was a wonderful story, with real historical antecedents!’ said Miss Treason, her vicious scowl becoming a smile. ‘And the one about me having a cow’s tail?’ ‘A cow’s tail? No!’ ‘Really? How very vexing … I fear the art of story-telling has got into a pretty bad way in these parts. I really shall have to do something.’ [Wintersmith] It is to be hoped that she did, for they are indeed splendid stories, and it would be a great pity if they were forgotten. Their historical antecedents have deep roots in the Scandinavian and German-speaking parts of the Earth. The cow’s tail is characteristic of elf-women in the mountain forests of Norway and Sweden. From in front, they look beautiful, and many a human huntsman or charcoal-burner has been seduced into making love with one of them. But if he gets a glimpse of her back, he will see either that it is hollow, mossy and rotten like an old tree-stump, or that it ends in a long, dirty cow’s tail. If he runs off in horror, she will chase him, and if she catches him she will tear him to bits. They are not to be trifled with, these forest elf-women. As for the stomach-slitting, here Miss Treason is surely thinking of some Discworld equivalent of a famous supernatural hag known as Frau Holle in Germany and Frau Perchte or Frau Berthe in Bavaria, Austria and Switzerland. Stories about her go back at least a thousand years. Some say she lives on a mountain peak, but others say up in the sky; when it snows in the human world everyone knows that she’s shaking out her feather beds until the feathers drift about in the wind. In midwinter, during the Twelve Days of Christmas, she comes to earth and travels round the countryside, checking on whether children have been good and obedient, and whether the village girls have worked hard on the farms, and spun as much flax or wool as they should have done in the course of the year. Then comes Twelfth Night itself, sometimes called Perchtanacht and reckoned to be the last night of the year. At midnight she comes into every house. Those who have been good and done their work properly may find a silver coin in their shoes, or in the milking pail. But as for those who haven’t, she will slit their bellies open, remove the contents, and fill them up with chopped straw, pebbles and dirt. Then she sews them up again, using a ploughshare as a needle and an iron chain as thread. Another notion which Miss Treason picked up from the tales of Earth is that of the External Soul. A good example is the legendary Russian evil wizard Koshchei the Deathless, who placed his Life or Soul in an egg. The egg was inside a duck, and the duck was inside a hare, and the hare was lying in a great hollow log floating in a pond in a forest on an island far, far away from Koshchei’s palace. Miss Treason’s version is less complicated. She wears a heavy iron clock on her belt, and is always winding it up. There is a story in the villages that this clock is her heart, which she has used ever since her first heart died. ‘Miss Treason,’ said Tiffany severely, ‘did you make up the story about your clock?’ ‘Of course I did! And it’s a wonderful bit of folklore, a real corker. Miss Treason and her clockwork heart! Might even become a myth, if I’m lucky. They’ll remember Miss Treason for thousands of years!’ She is brilliant at stage-setting too. Her all-black cottage is thick with cobwebs, though there are no spiders to be seen. The black candles by the loom are set in two skulls, and dribble wax all down them; one skull is carved with the Greek word for ‘guilt’, the other with the Greek for ‘innocence’. This is the kind of thing people expect of her, and it all helps to build her reputation. But the skulls hold a secret. There is a label underneath, and it says: Ghastly Skull No. 1 Price $2.99 The Boffo Novelty and Joke Shop No. 4, Tenth Egg Street, Ankh-Morpork “If it’s a Laugh … it’s a Boffo!” The cobwebs also came from there, and Boffo does masks and warts and green bubbling cauldrons too. So, where is the difference between Miss Treason buying skulls from Boffo’s catalogue and Mrs Earwig buying silver pendants and crystals at Zakzak’s shop? The point is this. Mrs Earwig thinks that power comes from elaborate devices, and to think this is to misunderstand the whole essence of the craft. But Miss Treason knows that you don’t need a wand or a shamble or even a pointy hat to be a witch, but that it helps a witch if she puts on a show. Give people what they expect to see. It’s all a form of ‘headology’, like the hat or Granny Weatherwax’s bottle of coloured water. That way, you get respect. Looking back on her life’s work as death approaches, Miss Treason muses: ‘Oh, my silly people. Anything they don’t understand is magic. They think I can see into their hearts, but no witch can do that. Not without surgery, at least. No magic is needed to read their little minds, though. I’ve known them since they were babes … I see their lies and excuses and fears. They never grow up, not really …’ ‘I’m sure they’ll miss you,’ said Tiffany. ‘Ha! I’m the wicked ol’ witch, girl. They feared me, and did what they were told! They feared joke skulls and silly stories. I chose fear. I knew they’d never love me for telling ’em the truth, so I made certain of their fear. No, they’ll be relieved to hear the witch is dead.’ As a Roman general said long ago, Oderint dum metuant – ‘Let them hate me, so long as they fear me.’ If you want to be remembered for generations in folk tradition, whether as a hero, a saint, or a sage, a good death scene is vitally important. Now, one of the minor benefits of being a witch is that you know, months or even years in advance, exactly when you are going to die, so you can stage-manage the event to perfection. (On Earth, legend says that exceptionally holy people have this privilege too.) Having done all the obvious things (cleaned the cottage, made a will, destroyed any embarrassing old letters or spells still lying around), you can throw a really good ‘going-away party’. This is like a wake, but with yourself as guest of honour, still taking a keen interest. People, especially other witches, come from miles around to enjoy the food (as Nanny Ogg says, you cannot go wrong with a ham roll) and to let it be discreetly known that they have always rather admired your brass candlesticks, or your big carving-dish with the blue-and-gold border. It saves a great deal of squabbling if you, the soon-to-be-late witch, can organize the distribution of these little mementoes yourself. And then, when everyone has gone home and there’s been a few hours of peace and quiet, you just head for the garden, where some helpful neighbour has dug a neat grave (in Miss Treason’s case, it was the Nac Mac Feegles who did the job), climb down into it (watched by an awed but appreciative audience of village folk), lie down carefully, and wait … It is a fine thing to be able to organize your own Rite of Passage, and Miss Treason pulls it off perfectly. And she succeeds in her aim of turning herself into a myth. Within a few weeks of her death, her grave was covered with scraps of paper pegged down with sticks, each bearing a message: ‘Miss Treason please keep my boy Joe save at see.’ ‘Miss treason, I’m goin bald please help.’ ‘Miss Treason, please find our girl Becky what run away I’m sorry.’ Even though there was a new young witch dispensing justice – and quite impressively too, in her own way – people still put their trust and hopes in what they knew. They brought their small prayers to Miss Treason’s grave, just as the shepherds of the Chalk left packets of Jolly Sailor tobacco where Granny Aching’s old shepherding hut used to stand: They didn’t write their petitions down, but they were there, all the same, floating in the air: ‘Granny Aching, who herds the clouds in the blue sky, please watch my sheep. Granny Aching, cure my son. Granny Aching, find my lambs.’ And so a witch, or a shepherdess, can indeed turn into a myth – a local saint – maybe even a goddess. It’s been known before, and it still goes on, and not just on the Discworld. Go visit Biddy Early’s cottage. 9 Regrettably, some things don’t change. Terry recalls a case in the USA some years ago when a somewhat New Age lady got a visit from her local sheriff after a neighbour reported that she was ‘saying spells’ in her garden. She’d been singing a Christian hymn – in Latin. 10 But in the languages of Earth it comes from the same Greek root as ‘epiphany’, meaning ‘revelation of god”. Chapter 11 THE CHALK THE LAND THE REGION KNOWN TO ITS PEOPLE simply as ‘the Chalk’ lies on the Sto Plains about fifty miles from Lancre. It is a land of gentle, rolling, turf-covered hills with occasional patches of woodland, small villages and scattered farmsteads. Above all, it is good land for sheep. No other place on Discworld is so patently a thinly disguised part of Earth. The Tiffany Aching/Wee Free Men books are, whatever other splendid things they may be, a hymn to a time and a landscape. And here it’s found as it was in the time of our great-grandfathers – open country, unfenced, unploughed, turf-covered, a land fit for sheep. Green downlands roll under the hot midsummer sun … the flocks of sheep, moving slowly, drift over the short turf like clouds on a green sky. Here and there sheepdogs speed over the turf like comets. And then, as the eyes pull back, it is a long green mound, lying like a great whale on the world … [The Wee Free Men] In both worlds, these lands are full of memories of distant times: Men had been everywhere on the Chalk. There were stone circles, half fallen down, and burial mounds like green pimples where, it was said, chieftains of the olden days had been buried with their treasure. No one fancied digging into them to find out. There were odd carvings in the chalk, too, which the shepherds sometimes weeded when they were out on the downs with the flocks and there was not a lot to do. The chalk was only a few inches under the turf. Hoofprints could last a season, but the carvings had lasted for thousands of years. They were pictures of horses and giants, but the strange thing was that you couldn’t see them properly from anywhere on the ground. They looked as if they’d been made for viewers in the sky. The oldest and most magical of the carvings on the Chalk is the White Horse, on a steep hillside at the head of a little valley (on Earth, the place is called Uffington, in Berkshire, and it is on the north slopes of the Berkshire Downs). It was cut out of the turf way back in the earliest times, perhaps by the same folk who raised the stone circles and buried their dead in the mounds, and for generation after generation people have kept it clear of grass and weeds. It doesn’t look much like a horse, not unless you look at it in the right way. It’s just lines – long, flowing lines that don’t even join up – but, as Granny Aching told Tiffany’s father when he was only a little boy, ‘’Tain’t what a horse looks like, it’s what a horse be.’ And if the Chalk has a guardian spirit, this is it. The landscape is full of stories. A hill near Tiffany’s home, for instance: There was a flat place at the top where nothing ever grew, and Tiffany knew there was a story that a hero had once fought a dragon up there and its blood had burned the ground where it fell. There was another story that said there was a heap of treasure under the hill, defended by the dragon, and another story that said a king was buried there in armour of solid gold. There were lots of stories about the hill; it was surprising it hadn’t sunk under the weight of them. In our world, there is just such a Dragon Hill, with just such a flat, bare top where a dragon’s blood was spilled – in that case, by St George. It is at Uffington, alongside the White Horse. Elsewhere, on the South Downs, there are many hills and burial mounds in which, according to local tales, there are pots of gold, or dead men lying in their golden armour. Interesting things can be found in or on the Chalk. There are small sharp flint arrowheads, made by men thousands of years before (on the Discworld, though alas not on our Chalk, shepherds still have the skill of chipping flints into very sharp little knives, for their own amusement; it is said that a good flint is sharper than a scalpel). Occasionally, one can pick up a stone with a hole in it; these are called ‘dobby stones’, just as they are in the Yorkshire Dales, and are said to be lucky. Tiffany keeps one in her pocket, though she is unsure what use it is; if she lived in Yorkshire, she would know you can hang them at your door or window to keep evil spirits out, and over your bed to prevent nightmares. She also keeps a fossilized sea urchin, which she once used as part of a shamble; it is the sort which looks like a bun with grooves on it making a five-pointed star, which on the Sussex Downs is called a ‘shepherd’s crown’. It’s said that if you put them on the kitchen windowsill they will keep thunderstorms away and prevent milk from going sour. THE SHEPHERDS’ LIFE Iron-wheeled shepherding huts like the one Granny Aching used were once common all along the South Downs, and indeed in other sheep-rearing regions too. Shepherds lived in them at lambing time, when it was essential to stay near the ewes day and night; they were also used at other times of year, but less regularly. They were sturdy wooden structures, warmed by a small stove, with a chair, a table, a simple bunk bed, and plenty of shelves, boxes and hooks to hold the shepherd’s gear – a horn lantern, crooks, shears, knives, a hay fork, a feeding bottle for sickly lambs and a saucepan to warm the milk for them, tins and bottles of sheep medicines, one or two spare sheep bells, and so on. The huts would be set up close to the lambing-fold; farm horses could draw them from place to place, if need be. The stove made the hut very cosy indeed, though sheep tended to creep under it on cold nights, their stomachs gurgling and rumbling till the dawn – but the shepherd would probably snooze in his chair at busy times, and be too tired to notice. To count their flocks, Discworld shepherds have special words and a special way of reckoning, known only to them (and to the Nac Mac Feegle). It begins with ‘yan tan tethera’ for ‘one two three’, and goes up as far as ‘jiggit’ for twenty. There it stops. The same system was used by English shepherds, and sometimes also by fishermen reckoning their catch and women counting the stitches of their knitting. Bits of it are still remembered by children when they are ‘counting out’ to start a game. The names of the numbers vary a bit, but they are always grouped in fives and make a kind of rhyme; for instance: Yan, tan, tethera, pethera, pimp; Sethera, lethera, hovera, dovera, dick; Yaner-dick, taner-dick, tether-dick, pether-dick, bumfit; Yaner-bumfit, taner-bumfit, tether-bumfit, pether-bumfit, jiggit. Maybe one reason children have remembered this ditty is that some of the words do sound a bit rude. When he reached ‘jiggit’, the shepherd would cut a notch on a stick, or put a stone in his pocket, and start over again. When all the sheep were counted, he would reckon up his notches or stones; suppose there were 123 sheep, this would mean six notches, plus three extra beasts – ‘six score sheep and three’. It sounds cumbersome, but in fact comes easily to any creature that has two hands, with five fingers on each hand. The idea of reckoning by twenties has left traces on the English language even where the special words are not used, as when a psalm says: ‘The days of our age are threescore years and ten, and though men be so strong that they come to fourscore years, yet is their strength but labour and sorrow.’ In French too, the word for ‘eighty’, quatrevingts, means literally ‘four twenties’. Come to that, in English currency there used to be twenty shillings to the pound. At lambing time, shepherds are extremely busy, too busy to come down off the hills. And so they are at sheep-dipping time, sheep-washing time, sheep-shearing time, and in the run-up to sheep fairs. This rather gets in the way of regular religion, and may cause offence to some of the more touchy gods, who dislike being neglected. To make sure there were no unwelcome consequences in the afterlife, precautions were taken at the funerals of Discworld shepherds: Granny Aching had been wrapped in a woollen blanket, with a tuft of raw wool pinned to it. That was a special shepherd thing. It was there to tell any gods who might get involved that the person being buried there was a shepherd, and spent a lot of time on the hills, and what with lambing and one thing and another couldn’t always take much time out for religion, there being no churches or temples up there, and so it was generally hoped that the gods would understand and look kindly on them. [The Wee Free Men] This was done on Earth, too: in some villages of the South Downs up to the 1930s shepherds were buried with a lock of wool in their hands, so that at the Last Judgement they could prove what their work had been, and why they had so often missed church on Sundays. Occasionally, a crook, shears and a sheep-bell were also put in the coffin. It all added up to the same thing: a hope and also perhaps a belief that one Good Shepherd would recognize another. Granny Aching’s grave was dug on the hill, alongside her hut, and after the funeral there was an additional and very unusual ceremony – the hut was burned. There wasn’t any shepherd, anywhere on the Chalk, who would use it after her. This was a mark of respect, almost unparalleled on Earth, where only Gypsies would think of making such a gesture. THE WATCHING OF THE DEAD A newly dead corpse must be carefully prepared, watched over, protected – and treated with caution, for it might become dangerous. People died. It was sad, but they did. What did you do next? People expected the local witch to know. So you washed the body and did a few secret and squelchy things and dressed them in their best clothes and laid them out with bowls of earth and salt beside them (no one knew why you did this bit, but it had always been done) and you put two pennies on their eyes ‘for the ferryman’ and you sat with them the night before they were buried, because they shouldn’t be left alone. Exactly why was never properly explained, although everyone had been told the story of the old man who was slightly less dead than everyone thought and rose up off the spare bed in the middle of the night and got back into bed with his wife. [Wintersmith] Things were done in much the same way on Earth, in the days when people died at home (not in a hospital) and were laid out at home (not in an undertaker’s parlour). Laying out the corpse was both a practical necessity and a social duty; it was a woman’s task, and was often done by the local midwife. It involved washing the body, plugging its orifices, and closing the eyes and mouth – and ensuring that they remained closed, by laying a penny on each eye, and tying up the jaws with a bandage under the chin which was knotted on top of the head. A man would be shaved, a woman would have her hair braided. Then the body would either be dressed in good clothes or wrapped tightly in a winding-sheet, with its legs straightened and tied at the ankles and its arms crossed over the chest. The face would not be covered. That way, everything looked clean and decent when family and neighbours came to ‘view the body’ before it was coffined. These actions were not just practical. Washing the body could be seen as a purification which echoes baptism, like the Catholic custom of sprinkling a corpse with holy water; a Suffolk woman who used to lay out the dead told the social historian Ruth Richardson in 1980 that ‘the washing is so you’re spotless to meet the Lamb of God’. The pennies had once had a mythical meaning too. In England in the seventeenth century, the antiquarian John Aubrey reported that some old-fashioned people still put a coin in the mouth of the dead ‘to give to St Peter’ at the gates of Heaven. Way back in Ancient Greek and Roman times people used to put a coin into the dead person’s mouth ‘to pay the ferryman’; his name was Charon, and he would row the dead across the river Styx, which was the boundary of the Underworld. And so too in the Discworld there is also (sometimes) a Styx to be crossed, and a cowled ferryman to be paid. ‘I have the money,’ Roland repeated. ‘Two pennies is the rate to cross the River of the Dead. It’s an old tradition. Two pennies to put on the eyes of the dead, to pay the ferryman.’ [Wintersmith] Nobody had given Tiffany any explanation for the bowls of salt and earth which she had to set down beside the corpse. In many countries on Earth the same thing was done, and various reasons were offered. The most common was that it prevents the body swelling – which might well work, if the dishes were heavy enough and were laid actually on the chest or belly, as they generally were. As one Welsh woman said, ‘There’s no weight so heavy as salt gets when it is on the dead.’ Other people gave a religious explanation. In Highland Scotland in the mid eighteenth century, people said the earth was an emblem of the corruptible body, and the salt of the immortal spirit. In nineteenth-century Sussex, they said that to sprinkle a good handful of salt over the body would prevent the Devil flying away with it. It is common for salt to be used in religion and magic to drive away evil spirits; this may be because it resists decay – salted meat and fish last much longer. (Western people now, who worry that too much salt is bad for one’s health, might find it hard to believe how important the getting and keeping of salt was to their ancestors.) The unspoken reason behind much of the ritual, on the Disc and on Earth too, is the need to prevent any demons who might be around from getting at the corpse before it is safely buried, and to stop the corpse itself from reviving as a malevolent zombie or vampire. So the dead must never be left alone; someone should sit with them, night and day, and there must always be candles or lamps burning. These keep the evil spirits and ghosts away, and light up the deceased’s journey to the otherworld. And they keep the watcher safe. Because sitting up with the dead is – well, just a little strange. Sometimes the body makes little noises in the night, or moves just a bit, and you have to remind yourself firmly that it’s simply because it’s cooling down. And there are so many stories of worse things. Suppose the candle goes out, and the corpse sits up, saying, ‘Isn’t it fun in the dark?’ They say that happened once in Iceland; luckily the watcher was a strong man, who flung himself on the corpse, forced it on to its back, and held it down till daybreak. Or suppose the Devil gets into the house and tries to carry off the body? Or suppose that, as Petunia tells Tiffany, a thousand vampire demons arrive, each with enormous teeth? (Never chronicled, as far as we know.) All things considered, it’s not surprising that in many parts of the multiverse people prefer to do their corpse-watching in groups and make a proper wake of it, with cards, tobacco, and a nip of whisky to get them through the night. And a prayer or two doesn’t come amiss. AN INCURSION OF MONSTERS All regions of the Discworld are at risk of invasion by predatory races from elsewhere in the multiverse, since one universe quite often collides with another. When this happens, the roaming predators may well find some weak or ‘thin’ place, where people are off their guard, and where they can open a door between the worlds. In the case of the Chalk, as we learn from The Wee Free Men, it is the Queen of the Fairies who finds a way through from her own small and icy world, where nothing grows and no sun shines, and everything has to be stolen from elsewhere. And with her come the monsters. ‘D’you know what’ll be turning up?’ asked Miss Tick. ‘All the things they locked away in those old stories. All those reasons why you shouldn’t stray off the path, or open the forbidden door, or say the wrong word, or spill salt. All the stories that give children nightmares. All the monsters from under the biggest bed in the world.’ The first to arrive is Jenny Greenteeth, erupting out of a shallow stream, and trying to snatch Tiffany’s little brother. She has long skinny arms, a thin face with long sharp teeth, huge eyes, and dripping green hair like waterweed. She is, as Miss Tick explains, nothing more than a Grade One Prohibitory Monster – that is to say, a creature deliberately invented by adults to scare children away from dangerous places. But though the adults don’t believe they’re real, the children do, and so they become real. (This also happens in Ankh-Morpork, as we shall see later.) On Earth too, adults have invented many Prohibitory Monsters (also called Nursery Bogeys), including a Jenny or Ginny Greenteeth who lurks in deep pools of stagnant water, hiding under the duckweed. She was well known in Lancashire, Cheshire and Shropshire. Even in the 1980s, elderly people remembered being warned against her as children. In his Plant Lore (1995) the botanist and folklorist Roy Vickery records what one Merseyside woman told him: ‘As I recall, Ginny only lived in ponds which were covered in a green weed of the type that has tiny leaves, and covers the entire surface of the pond. The theory was that Ginny enticed little children into the pools by making them look like grass and safe to walk upon. As soon as the child stepped on to the green, it of course parted, and the child fell through into Ginny’s clutches and drowned. The green weed then closed over, hiding all traces of the child ever having been there. This last point was the one which really terrified me and kept me well away from ponds. As far as I know Ginny had no known form, due to the fact that she never appeared above the surface of the pond.’ But another Merseyside woman knew exactly what the Jenny Greenteeth who inhabited two pools in Fazakerley looked like: ‘pale green skin, green teeth, very long green locks of hair, long green fingers with long nails, and she was very thin with a pointed chin and very big eyes’. Jenny was not the only creature of this species in England. In Leicester there was a Polly Long Arms hiding in the green murky water of the canal, waiting to drag in any child that came near the edge. The next menacing creature to arrive in the Chalk country is a dark rider, a horseman who has no face – since he has no head to hang a face on. Now, ghosts that appear as headless horsemen are quite common in the Earthly world, but this creature might be something worse than a mere ghost. Especially as it breathes through the windpipe it hasn’t got, making a wheezy whistling noise which one really would rather not be hearing. Earthbound headless horsemen tend to be more spectral. Later, the Queen sends three of her grimhounds – big heavy-built black dogs with orange eyebrows, eyes of red fire, and teeth like razor blades. They are said to haunt churchyards. This would imply a connection with the Church Grim, a sinister animal which, according to Earthly tradition, patrols graveyards and is an omen of death for anyone who sees it. In Britain the Grim is a Black Dog; in Scandinavia, there are also Grims which are lame grey horses, three-legged lambs or black pigs. They are said to be the ghosts of real animals deliberately killed when a churchyard was established and buried on the north side, to be its guardian. If this wasn’t done, people thought that the first person buried there would not enter Heaven but would have to remain on duty as a ghostly sentinel till the end of the world. Most of the Black Dogs of our world are grim creatures, in nature if not in name; some are ghosts (of humans or of dogs), but the majority are demons and devils in animal form. Indeed, the Black Dog or Hell Hound is a universally recognized image of evil in European and American folklore. They are generally large, shaggy creatures with huge fiery eyes (unless they happen to be headless); they may wear collars of flame, or drag heavy clanking chains. However, their eyebrows are never mentioned. Only in the folklore of Estonia is it said that a dog (a real flesh-and-blood one, not a demon) which has patches of different colour on its eyebrows has ‘four eyes’, and can detect and attack beings that are invisible to humans. This would appear to be a good thing. Nevertheless, the principle ‘Never trust a dog with orange eyebrows’, discovered on the Discworld, is so self-evidently true and useful that it will surely spread. FOUND IN A FISH And then there was that odd business with the fish, as told in Wintersmith. You would really think that if someone drops or throws into deep water something small but too heavy to float (a ring, say, or a key), that’s the last he or she will ever see of it. In fact you probably wouldn’t, depending on your childhood reading. You might already know that a powerful narrative drive decrees that it will be swallowed by a fish, and one day that fish will be caught, and when it’s being gutted something glittery will be found in its belly, and will be brought to the very person who lost it in the first place. Which is precisely how Tiffany’s precious silver horse pendant returned to her, although she had thrown it into a river. Here on Earth, such things have been happening, off and on, for many centuries. Polycrates, who ruled in Samos some two-and-a-half thousand years ago, was so rich and had such constant good luck that they say a friend warned him that the gods would soon be jealous, and advised him to create some deliberate bad luck by losing something he really valued. So Polycrates took a magnificent seal-ring, the finest of his jewels, and threw it into the sea. But a few days later someone sent a beautiful big fish as a gift for the king’s table, and in its belly … It was not long before Polycrates was treacherously captured and killed. Or again, in Ireland in St Patrick’s time, there was a robber called Macaldus who tried to trick the saint and make a fool of him, but then repented, and promised to do whatever penance was fitting. St Patrick wrapped a chain round him and padlocked it and threw the key in a river, and then set Macaldus adrift in a small boat, telling him to go wherever God sent him, and to wear the chain until the key was returned to him. The boat floated out to sea, and finally came to the Isle of Man, where Macaldus was taken into the Bishop’s household and led a holy life. One day the Bishop’s cook was puzzled to find a key inside a fish he was cleaning … so Macaldus was able to take the chain off. He eventually became Bishop of Man himself, and is reckoned to be a saint. There was also St Egwin, founder of Evesham Abbey and Bishop of Worcester from 692 till his death in 711. Falsely accused of crimes, he put fetters on his legs, threw the key into the Avon, and set off on pilgrimage to Rome to convince the Pope of his innocence. And there, in the market, he happened to buy a fish … The Pope duly cleared him of all charges and restored him to his diocese. It is particularly striking that the fish which swallowed Tiffany’s pendant should be a pike, for in the Yorkshire town of Pickering people say it got its name because Pendirus, a legendary king of the Britons who is alleged to have reigned there about 270 BC, lost his ring while bathing in the river Costa, but later recovered it from the belly of a pike. Everyone knows pikes will swallow just about anything. So will some people. Nevertheless, there is a comfort in these stories, even for the godless. They suggest a kind of cosmic rightness. And they still turn up, every few years. PS: An odd thing happened to Terry once. He bought a ring in a small shop in Pike Place Market, Seattle. It was slightly over-sized and he soon lost it, and couldn’t find it anywhere. A year later he was back in the city, went to the same shop to buy a replacement, and in reaching into his jacket pocket (a jacket which, of course, he’d worn many times during the year) for some loose change, he put a finger through the very same ring. How could it have been otherwise? Rings try to find their way back to their owner. Someone ought to write a book about it. THE DANCE OF WINTER AND SUMMER It has long been believed, and may very well be true, that the whole multiverse moves in one perpetual dance, though almost all its motions are either too swift or too slow for the human mind to grasp. Whirling electrons, wheeling galaxies, cycles of time, cycles of energy, the pulsations of the blood, angels in the skies or on the head of a pin – all make patterns in the cosmic dance. This is not a matter of couples moving independently (like a waltz), nor of a group simply dancing hand-in-hand in a ring; it involves complicated figures in which dancers change places and partners, advance and retreat, meet and part and meet again. Many poets have written about this. Sir John Davies in his Orchestra (1596) declared that everything in heaven and earth dances: Kind nature first doth cause all things to love, Love makes them dance, and in just order move. And so the sun dances with the earth, flowers with the wind, the tides with the moon: And lo the sea, that fleets about the land And like a girdle clips her solid waist, Music and measure both doth understand; For his great crystal eye is ever cast Up to the moon and on her fixèd fast. And as she danceth in her pallid sphere, So danceth he about his centre here. In John Milton’s Comus (1637), a magician boasts that by dancing while others sleep, he and his companions are echoing the dance of time and nature: We that are of purer fire Imitate the starry choir, Who, in their nightly watchful spheres Lead in swift round the months and years. Oceans and seas, with all their finny drove, Now to the moon in wavering morrice move … Others too have sensed that the Morris has a particular affinity with the cycles of nature. T. S. Eliot wrote in East Coker (1940) of glimpsing ghostly Morris Men round a bonfire on a summer midnight, with their ‘music of the weak pipe and the little drum’, Keeping time, Keeping the rhythm in their dancing As in their living in the living seasons The time of the seasons and the constellations The time of milking and the time of harvest The time of the coupling of man and woman And that of beasts. Feet rising and falling. Eating and drinking. Dung and death. In Wintersmith we learn more about the Dark Morris, first brought to our attention in Reaper Man, when Tiffany is taken one icy midnight to a clearing in a leafless wood, where six men, their faces blacked and wearing black clothes, dance to the powerful beat of a silent drum, while shadowy forms look on. She already knows the white-clad Morris teams that dance on the village green to bring Summer in, but what is this? Unable to resist the beat, she runs forward and jumps into the dance, weaving to and fro in the space where a team’s Fool should go, and becoming aware for a few seconds that someone other than human is dancing with her. What she has seen is part of the never-ending Dance of the Seasons, in which the Wintersmith and the Summer Lady meet and change places in spring and autumn. Explaining this, Miss Treason shows her a picture in Chaffinch’s Ancient and Classical Mythology of a tall, blonde, beautiful Summer, carrying a cornucopia and dancing with old grey Winter, who has icicles in his beard. ‘The year is round! The wheel of the world must spin! That is why up here they dance the Dark Morris, to balance it. They welcome the winter because of the new summer deep inside it!’ The spring and autumn Morris dances are a way of marking the moment when the season of ice and the season of fire meet briefly to exchange their dominion over the world. In our world, other ways have been found of bringing Summer in – a young man dressed in leaves and flowers fights and defeats an older man dressed in furs; girls carry an ugly straw figure called Winter or Death out of the village, tear it to bits or throw it into a river, and come back carrying leafy branches; people bring in the maypole. Frazer’s The Golden Bough has much to say about all this. At the other end of the year, the secrets are better kept, yet even so one can guess that in the season of bonfires and fireworks, nuts and apples, beer, beef, and new wine, there is an underlying celebration that Winter is taking over the power that is rightfully his – for a while. And at midwinter, there is guising, feasting, mummers’ plays, and yes, Morris dancing again. The wheel spins. But Tiffany has made a serious mistake by entering the dance herself. She has taken the place of the Summer Lady, attracting the attention of the Wintersmith, and now is trapped in her role. She is turning into a goddess, or at least an avatar, or an anthropomorphic personification. The first symptom is that she develops ‘Fertile Feet’ – wherever she treads with bare feet, flowers spring up. Even the floorboards in Nanny Ogg’s cottage, being wood, start sprouting leaves. Much the same thing happened to Prince Teppic of Djelibeybi as soon as the spirit of his father, a recently deceased pharaoh, entered into him, as is told in Pyramids. Even on the cobbled streets of Ankh-Morpork grass appeared where he put his feet, and in the bakers’ shops loaves cracked open and grew wheat. On Earth too, avatars of Spring or Summer are, very understandably, credited with the gift of Fertile Feet. In the medieval Welsh tale of ‘Culhwch and Olwen’ in the Mabinogion, it is said of the lovely young heroine that ‘four white trefoils sprang up behind her wherever she went, and for that reason was she called Olwen’ – which means ‘white track’. The Italian painter Botticelli represents Primavera (Spring) as a beautiful woman walking across a flower-filled glade, throwing down more flowers as she goes, which is the closest a painter can get to the idea that they spring up as she passes. And then there are four famous lines from a poem written by Alexander Pope in 1704, when he was only sixteen: Where’er you walk, cool gales shall fan the glade; Trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade; Where’er you tread, the blushing flowers shall rise, And all things flourish where you turn your eyes. The poem is one of a set of four seasonal love-poems, and is entitled ‘Summer’. These particular lines are so famous because Handel set them to music in his opera Semele, as a song addressed by the god Jupiter to the human girl he loves. They are so appropriate to Tiffany’s situation that they cross over into the Discworld and into the mind of the schoolmistressy witch, Miss Tick: ‘The myth of the Summer Lady says that flowers grow wherever she walks,’ said Granny Weatherwax. ‘Where e’er,’ said Miss Tick primly. ‘What?’ snapped Granny, who was now pacing up and down in front of the fire. ‘It’s where e’er she walks, in fact,’ said Miss Tick. ‘It’s more … poetical.’ ‘Hah,’ Granny said. ‘Poetry!’ [Wintersmith] The next sign of Tiffany’s new status is that a Cornucopia (aka Horn of Plenty) crash-lands in the garden. It is a curly shell-like object, of magically variable size, containing every kind of fruit, vegetable and grain – in fact, it turns out, anything and everything one can eat or drink. These things it produces on request, in lavish quantities. It is a definitely mythological object: ‘According to Chaffinch,’ [Tiffany] said, with the Mythology open on her lap … , ‘the god Blind Io created the Cornucopia from a horn of the magical goat Almeg to feed his two children by the Goddess Bisonomy, who was later turned into a shower of oysters by Epidity, god of things shaped like potatoes, after insulting Resonata, goddess of weasels, by throwing a mole at her shadow. It is now the badge of office of the Summer Goddess.’ The corresponding myth in Ancient Greece is not quite so complicated. As a baby, the god Zeus had to be hidden from his murderous father in a cave in Crete, where he fed on the milk of a nanny-goat called Amalthea (unless this was the name of the nymph who owned her). Later, when he became ruler of the gods, he showed his gratitude by placing the goat among the stars as the constellation Capricorn. But first he broke off one of her horns; it became the Cornucopia, which supplies whatever food or drink one desires. This horn later belonged to Demeter, also called Ceres, goddess of the harvest, and was sometimes carried by Flora, the flower goddess, who scattered corn and wine and fruit and flowers from it. Painters and sculptors are very fond of it, it’s such a pretty shape. Tiffany struggles to cope with these rather embarrassing attributes, and the even more embarrassing compliments lavished on her by the Wintersmith. But where, meanwhile, is the real Summer Lady? It turns out that, like many a goddess before her, she is trapped in the Underworld, powerless to return. Without her presence, the Disc will suffer permanent and catastrophic discal cooling, with incalculable environmental repercussions. It is, in short, time for a Hero and a Descent into the Underworld. This Descent is one of the most powerful stories in the multiverse. On Earth, for example, it can be found in one form or another in at least a dozen mythologies from ancient Babylonia onwards. Sometimes it is a god or goddess who descends, sometimes a human. Sometimes the purpose is to gain foreknowledge by questioning the dead; sometimes it is to learn the secret of immortality, or to carry off a magical object; but most often, it is to rescue a captive. There have been missions that were entirely successful, as when Odysseus went down to consult the dead seer Tiresias or when Herakles (Hercules) brought Queen Alkmene back from the dead; and others that failed, most famously when Orpheus lost his beloved Eurydice when they had very nearly reached the land of the living, because he looked back at her. And some myths tell of partial successes – and these, curiously, are linked to the cycle of the seasons, just like the rescue of the Disc’s Summer Lady. The oldest comes from ancient Sumeria, about 2000 BC, and tells how the great goddess Ishtar went into the Underworld, To the Land of No Return, the realm of Ereshkigal, To the house which none leaves who has entered it, To the road from which there is no way back, To the house wherein the entrants are bereft of life, Where dust is their fare and clay their food, Where they see no light, residing in darkness, Where they are clothed like birds, with wings for garments, And where over door and bolt is spread dust. [Ishtar’s Descent, transl. John Gray] She was seeking her human lover Tammuz, who had apparently been kidnapped by Ereshkigal, Queen of the Underworld, and was now among the dead. Ishtar fought Ereshkigal, but was defeated, tortured, and held captive in a corpse-like condition. Without her, there was nothing but famine and sterility on earth, so the High Gods forced Ereshkigal to sprinkle Ishtar with the water of life and let her go free. Tammuz too was revived and freed, but not entirely; every year he died again during the long sterile drought season, and the people wept for him. But then, with the coming of the rains, he returned to life. Similarly in Classical Greece and Rome, myths told how Demeter (Ceres), the goddess of fertile crops and harvest, was distraught with grief when her daughter Persephone (Proserpina) was kidnapped. Neglecting her divine duties, Demeter went searching everywhere for Persephone, until she found her girdle floating in a pool near a great crevice which was known to be an entrance to the Underworld. This remarkably fortuitous clue proved that it was Hades (Pluto), god of death, who had carried her off. Demeter did not descend into the Underworld herself, but appealed to Zeus for justice. Zeus knew that without Demeter’s care all crops would fail, so he decreed that Persephone could return to earth, provided she had eaten nothing while in the realm of Hades. But, alas, she had eaten – a mere trifle, just six pomegranate seeds – but because of this Zeus ruled that she must spend six months of the year in the Underworld, though she could come back to earth for the other six. Which is why there are six months of summer and six of winter. ‘They are ancient stories. They have a life of their own. They long to be repeated. Summer rescued from a cave? Very old,’ said Granny Weatherwax. So Tiffany’s friend Roland de Chumsfanleigh (pronounced Chuffley) makes the Descent, accompanied by Feegles, and passes through a cave into a gloomy land of shadows and mindless people whose memories have been stolen by bogles. There is a dark river and a dark ferryman who as we have seen has to be paid with two pennies from the eyes of the dead, just as in Earthly myth there is the river Styx and Charon the ferryman who takes coins from the mouths of the dead. And then: There was a big pile of bones on the path. They were certainly animal bones, and the rotting collars and lengths of rusted chain were another clue. ‘Three big dogs?’ said Roland. ‘One verrae big dog wi’ three heids,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Verrae popular in underworlds, that breed. Can bite right through a man’s throat. Three times!’ he added, with relish. ‘But put three doggy biscuits in a row on the groound and the puir wee thing sits there strainin’ and whinin’ all day. It’s a wee laff, I’m tellin’ ye!’ In the classical myths of Earth, the representative of this three-headed breed is called Cerberus. It is his task to guard the entrance of the Underworld so that no one alive may enter, nor may any of the dead escape – but his attention can be distracted by throwing him soft cakes sweetened with honey (and, preferably, also laced with poppy juice). He was also once lulled by the music of Orpheus, and once he was overwhelmed by the physical strength of Herakles. But mostly he is just sitting there, on guard. Despite all perils, Roland brings the Summer Lady back to the upper world, and Tiffany finds a way to dismiss the Wintersmith. The Dance of the Seasons resumes, in which Summer and Winter must each die and sleep and wake again, year after year. No one should meddle with it. ‘Here is the heart of the summer,’ hissed the voice of the Summer Lady. ‘Fear me as much as the wintersmith. We are not yours, though you give us shapes and names. Fire and ice we are, in balance. Do not come between us again …’ Chapter 12 HEROES! WE’RE NOT TALKING ABOUT SMALL-H HEROES, here. Given a smidgeon of courage and a suitable crisis, practically anybody could turn out to be a small-h hero. But a capital-h Hero is a star in the firmament of myth and legend, a precious asset to any bard or storyteller who happens to meet him. People hoping for a quiet life are less enthusiastic, since a considerable amount of mayhem erupts wherever a Hero passes, even one who is seeking justice rather than, say, the green eye of the little yellow god. Heroes come in two main types: the Heir to the Kingdom, and the Barbarian. Both are recognizable by certain signs, well known to anyone who knows anything about folklore and the power of narrativium, and abound in the semi-historical legends of many nations. Less common is the First (or Culture) Hero, found on the Discworld and in certain Earthly mythologies. Yet since he is the most ancient of the three, it is only right to begin with him. THE FIRST HERO In the myths and folklore of some lands there are tales of a First Hero who walked the earth at the dawn of time, bringing mankind essential gifts and skills without which society could not survive. Such a hero is more than human, but he is not a god; indeed, he may be acting in defiance of gods who wish to keep men helpless and ignorant. In one way he is the opposite of the Barbarian Hero, since he brings civilization, not mere pillage and carnage; some therefore call him the Culture Hero. His courage is the courage of endurance. On the Disc, the First Hero’s name is Mazda – a remarkable coincidence, since on Earth there is a morally admirable deity called Mazda who is the god of light, truth, and justice in Zoroastrianism, the ancient religion of Persia (Iran). He is the Power of Good, locked in combat with the evil Ahriman, whom he will defeat at the Last Day. The Discworld’s Mazda is not so exalted, but he too worked for good, and suffered for it. Of course, much depends on the point of view, since an unsympathetic mind would say that what he did was theft. He stole fire from the gods. ‘I thought I’d start off with the legend of how Mazda stole fire for mankind in the first place,’ said the minstrel. ‘Nice,’ said Cohen. ‘And then a few verses about what the gods did to him.’ ‘Did to him? Did to him?’ said Cohen. ‘They made him immortal!’ ‘Er … yes. In a way, I suppose.’ ‘What do you mean, “in a way”?’ ‘It’s classical mythology, Cohen,’ said the minstrel. ‘I thought everyone knew. He was chained to a rock for eternity and every day an eagle comes and pecks out his liver.’ ‘I’m not much of a reader,’ said Cohen. ‘Chained to a rock? For a first offence? He’s still there?’ ‘Eternity isn’t finished yet, Cohen.’ ‘He must’ve had a big liver!’ ‘It grows again every night, according to legend,’ said the minstrel. Cohen stared at the distant clouds that hid the snowy top of the mountain. ‘He brought fire to everyone, and the gods did that to him, eh? Well … we’ll have to see about that.’ [The Last Hero] This is indeed, as the minstrel says, a classical myth. In Ancient Greece, it was the story of Prometheus, the benefactor of mankind – maybe even the creator of mankind, for some old writers claimed that he formed the bodies of the first men and women from water and clay, after which the goddess Athene breathed life into them. Whether that is true or not, all agree that he brought them civilization, teaching them the skills he had himself learned from Athene – metal-working, building, mathematics, astronomy, medicine – to the great anger of Zeus, who had intended them to remain ignorant. And then, to cap it all, Prometheus stole fire from the gods. He lit a torch from the chariot of the sun, broke off a smouldering ember, hid it in a hollow stalk of fennel, and so carried it down to the earth as a gift to humanity. Furious, Zeus had Prometheus stripped naked and chained to a rock in the Caucasian mountains. Every day at dawn a monstrous bird, part griffin and part vulture, would fly down and tear his body open, pecking out and eating his liver; every night, as he lay freezing, his liver would grow again, ready for the dawn. Yet he knew he would be released one day. And so it was. When Prometheus had spent a thousand years fettered to the rock (or, some say, ten thousand), Herakles, a hero of the wild and monster-slaying type, persuaded Zeus to let him shoot the griffin-vulture through the heart and set Prometheus free. The Barbarian Hero came to the rescue of the Culture Hero, on Earth as on the Disc. THE ROYAL HEIR The people of Ankh-Morpork know all about heirs who arrive incognito to claim their rightful kingdom and turn out to be ideal rulers, brave, wise and just: The throne had been empty for more than two thousand years, since the death of the last of the line of the kings of Ankh. Legend said that one day the city would have a king again, and went on with various comments about magic swords, strawberry birthmarks, and all the other things that legends gabble on about in these circumstances. [Sourcery] What is more, pretty well all of them know the rumour that such an heir is currently living in the city, as a mere watchman. And they can put a name to him: Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson (a conspiracy to groom Nobby Nobbs for the role failed utterly). In fact, the only person who seems unaware of the rumour is Carrot himself. He is a foundling; he has a strong sword, well-used, though quite unmagical and lacking any mysterious inscriptions; he has an oddly shaped birthmark, rather like a crown. But still he resists the pressures of narrativium, and goes around ignoring his manifest destiny in a most irritating manner. Perhaps there have been Carrots on Earth, but if so, their strategy has been so successful that nobody has ever heard of them. In that universe, the nearest thing to Carrot’s attitude is the naïve simplicity of the teenage Arthur. As is well known, he had no idea he was a dead king’s son, and was simply acting as squire to his elder foster-brother Sir Kay. Kay needed a replacement sword to use in a tournament, and sent Arthur to find one. Arthur wandered off into a churchyard, where he noticed something which he thought would come in useful. As Malory writes in his Morte D’Arthur: there was seen in the churchyard … a great stone four square, like unto a marble stone, and in the midst thereof was like an anvil of steel a foot on high, and therein stuck a fair sword naked by the point, and letters there were written in gold about the sword that said thus:– Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil, is rightwise king born of all England. Without bothering to read the inscription, Arthur casually pulled the sword out and took it to Kay. When people realized where it had come from, and also that when it was put back nobody but Arthur could get it to move at all, he was acknowledged to be the Long-Lost Heir. One might easily assume that this was the famed Excalibur which Arthur always bore in battle, but Malory says not – according to his account, the sword drawn from the stone was broken two or three years later in a duel between Arthur and Pellinore, but Merlin promised to find him another: So they rode till they came to a lake, the which was a fair water and broad, and in the midst of the lake Arthur was ’ware of an arm clothed in white samite, that held a fair sword in that hand. Lo! said Merlin, yonder is that sword that I spake of. With that they saw a damosel going upon the lake. What damosel is that? said Arthur. That is the Lady of the Lake, said Merlin … speak ye fair to her that she will give you that sword … And so they went into the ship, and when they came to the sword that the hand held, Sir Arthur took it up by the handles, and took it with him, and the arm and the hand went under the water. This is the true Excalibur, the one which the dying Arthur ordered Sir Bedivere to throw into a lake: Then Sir Bedivere [took up the sword and] went to the water side; and there he bound the girdle about the hilts, and then he threw the sword as far into the water as he might; and there came an arm and an hand above the water and met it, and caught it, and so shook it thrice and brandished, and then vanished away the hand with the sword in the water. Whether King Arthur ever really died is a mystery. True, there was a tomb for him in the medieval Glastonbury Abbey, but it was a fake, and rumours abounded. As Malory wrote: Some men say in many parts of England that King Arthur is not dead, but had by the will of Our Lord Jesu into another place, and men say that he shall come again, and he shall win the Holy Cross. I will not say it shall be so, but rather I will say, here in this world he changed his life. But many men say that there is written upon his tomb this verse: Hic jacet Arthurus, Rex quondam Rexque futurus[‘Here lies Arthur, former King and future King’]. This is no longer the tale of a Lost Heir. This is a Hero of another sort: the Sleeping King under the Mountain, the King who will come back from ‘another place’ to save his people and achieve heroic feats – a tale we have met already in Lancre and elsewhere. It is a powerful narrative pattern, widely scattered through the multiverse as a consolation and a source of inspiration and hope. THE BARBARIAN HERO There was no mistaking that shape. The wide chest, the neck like a tree trunk, the surprisingly small head under its wild thatch of black hair looking like a tomato on a coffin … Hrun was one of the Discworld’s more durable heroes: a fighter of dragons, a despoiler of temples, a hired sword, the kingpost of every street brawl. He could even speak words of more than two syllables, given time and maybe a hint or two. [The Colour of Magic] Hrun dresses only in a leopard-skin loincloth and numerous gold arm-bands and anklets. It goes without saying that he is totally fearless and unimaginative, while being at the same time as alert to any danger as a cat and as lithe as a panther. His life is one long string of adventures, which don’t surprise him in the least: ‘Oh,’ said Hrun, ‘I expect in a minute this dungeon door will be flung back and I’ll be dragged off to some sort of temple arena where I’ll fight maybe a couple of giant spiders and an eight-foot slave from the jungles of Klatch and then I’ll rescue some kind of princess from the altar and then kill off a few guards or whatever and then this girl will show me a secret passage out of the palace and we’ll liberate a couple of horses and escape with the treasure.’ Hrun leaned back on his hands and looked up at the ceiling, whistling tunelessly. ‘All that?’ said Twoflower. ‘Usually.’ Earth too knows heroes of this type, notably Conan the Barbarian from Cimmeria, whose many adventures as pirate, mercenary, and eventual war-lord and emperor were chronicled in America in the 1930s by the fantasy writer Robert E. Howard and others. An admirer wrote: ‘Conan is a true hero of Valhalla, battling and suffering great wounds by day, carousing and wenching by night, and plunging into fresh adventures tomorrow.’ Besides ordinary human enemies, he is forever attacking, or being attacked by, evil lords, sorcerers, witch-queens, magical monsters, dark gods. An indestructible stone toad-thing as bulky as a buffalo, with seven green-glowing eyes, crouching on an altar in a temple of lustreless black stone whose geometry obeys no human laws, is just the kind of thing he would meet. He always wins. A Barbarian Hero, like his Kingly counterpart, often possesses a remarkable sword. Hrun’s is called Kring, and he stole it from the impregnable palace of the Archimandrite of B’Ituni. It is forged from black meteoric iron, with highly ornate runes on the blade and rubies on the pommel. Not only does Kring have a name of its own, it has a soul; it talks incessantly in a voice like a claw being scraped across glass, and it has a very irritating personality. In the course of its multidimensional existence it has of course starred in numerous battles, and at one point belonged to a pasha who used it to cut silk handkerchiefs in mid-air; on the other hand, it once spent two hundred years at the bottom of a lake, which was not really fun. Can this possibly mean that Kring has existed on Earth too – that Kring and Excalibur are aspects of a single entity? And is that why Kring remarks, when stuck in a tree branch, that ‘it could have been worse, it could have been an anvil’? Come to think of it, even the tree could be significant. The Volsungs, a family of Norse and Germanic heroes, had as their heirloom a sword which came to them by way of a test very like Arthur’s. Odin, the God of War, had driven it up to the hilt into a tree-trunk, challenging kings and warriors to pull it out: ‘Whoso draweth this sword from this tree shall have the same as a gift from me, and shall find in good sooth that never bare he better sword in hand than this.’ Sigmund the Volsung was the only one who could draw it out, and it served him well until in his last battle it broke against the spear-shaft of Odin himself. But when Sigmund’s son grew up (he is called Sigurd in Iceland, and Siegfried in Germany), he reforged the blade that was broken, naming it Gram, and became an even greater hero than his father had been. Perhaps this too is something Kring knows about. Many heroes undertake adventures just for the fun of it, while others (young Nijel in Sourcery, for instance) see themselves as ruled by a special kind of destiny called a ‘geas’. This is a form of the Irish word geis, and has nothing at all to do with large, waddling, grey or white birds. It means an obligation, enforced by magical penalties, to do or not to do some particular thing. A hero may be born with a geis (or more than one), or someone may lay it on him. Either way, it usually spells trouble, especially if he gets into a situation where two of his geissa clash. One great Irish warrior, Cú Chulainn, was trapped in this way. He was under two obligations: one was never to eat dog’s flesh, which seems simple enough, but the other was never to refuse an offer of food and hospitality. So when an enemy, knowing this, invited him to a meal of dog-stew he was forced to break either one rule or the other, and was doomed. Nijel, luckily, has no such dilemma. The greatest by far of the Discworld’s Barbarian Heroes is Cohen. Anything others have done, he has done better, faster, more often. He is the bravest, the most famous. He has been an Emperor in the Counterweight Continent, and during this phase of his career was respectfully referred to as Genghis Cohen. There is just one small problem – he is now somewhere around ninety years old. Most of the friends and foes of his younger days are dead. His surviving companions are now known as the Silver Horde. Like him, they suffer a variety of age-related afflictions (piles, deafness, toothlessness, stiff joints), and like him they will never cease to be Heroes. And yet, in the long run, what does the life of a Hero amount to? Standing on a mountain peak, Cohen surveys the kingdoms of the world as he sets out on his last and greatest enterprise, accompanied by the Silver Horde and a very puzzled minstrel. ‘I bin to everywhere I can see,’ said Cohen, looking around. ‘Been there, done that … been there again, done it twice … nowhere left where I ain’t been.’ The minstrel looked him up and down, and a kind of understanding dawned. I know why you are doing this now, he thought. Thank goodness for a classical education. Now, what was the quote? ‘ “And Carelinus wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer”,’ he said. ‘Who’s that bloke? You mentioned him before,’ said Cohen. ‘You haven’t heard of the Emperor Carelinus?’ ‘Nope.’ ‘But he was the greatest conqueror that ever lived! His empire spanned the entire Disc! … Well, when he got as far as the coast of Muntab, it was said that he stood on the shore and wept. Some philosopher told him there were more worlds out there somewhere, and that he’d never be able to conquer them. Er … that reminded me a bit of you.’ Cohen strolled along in silence for a moment. ‘Yeah,’ he said at last. ‘Yeah, I can see how that could be. Only not as cissy, obviously.’ [The Last Hero] And later, trying to explain why he and his companions mean to blow up the mountain of the gods, though they themselves will be killed doing it, Cohen remembers the rage and frustration of Carelinus that the unjust gods have granted such short lives to men: ‘I ain’t much good with words, but … I reckon we’re doing this ’cos we are goin’ to die, d’yer see? And ’cos some bloke got to the edge of the world somewhere and saw all them other worlds out there and burst into tears ’cos there was only one lifetime. So much universe, and so little time. And that’s not right.’ Carelinus, the mighty conqueror of distant kingdoms, has a counterpart in the history of Ancient Greece. His name was Alexander the Great, and there are strange similarities in the careers of these two great men. The Knotty Problem, for one. Carelinus once came to the Temple of Offler in Tsort, where there was a huge, complicated knot tying two beams together, and it was said that whoever untied it would reign over the whole continent; Carelinus simply sliced right through it with his sword, and went on to build a huge empire. Was this cheating? Cohen thinks it wasn’t: ‘It wasn’t cheating, because it was a good story. I can just imagine it, too. A load of whey-faced priests and suchlike standin’ around and thinkin’, “That’s cheatin’, but he’s got a really big sword so I won’t be the first to point this out, plus this damn great army is just outside.” ’ Amazingly, exactly the same thing happened to Alexander. As a young general, he led his army into the town of Gordium (near modern Ankara, in Turkey), where there was an ancient ox-cart which their first king had dedicated to Zeus after tying up its axle tree with a weirdly knotted rope. It was prophesied that anyone who could untie it would rule all Asia, but nobody had managed it in over a hundred years. Alexander tried, failed, and then drew his sword and cut it. That night there was a terrible thunderstorm. The priests of Zeus wisely decided this showed the approval of the gods. Another story told of him (if properly understood) shows that he felt just the same way as Carelinus and Cohen did about the limits of his achievements. It is popularly said that Alexander, at the height of his power, stood on the shores of the Indian Ocean and ‘wept to think that there were no worlds left for him to conquer’. Like so much that is popularly said, this is nonsense; it is a medieval legend, not to be found in any ancient source. Alexander was no fool. He knew perfectly well that though he had conquered Afghanistan, reached the borders of Kashmir, and then marched down the Indus Valley to the sea, there remained many more kingdoms in Asia and India which he had not defeated. Come to that, there were large tracts of Europe itself, to the north and west of Greece, where his armies had never set foot. No way could he have thought there was nothing left for him to conquer. This medieval legend distorts an older and more subtle anecdote, which is to be found in the Ancient Greek author Plutarch – not in his full-scale Life of Alexander, but in an essay ‘On Contentment of the Mind’ in his collection of Moralia. Among the members of Alexander’s court was a philosopher named Anaxarchus, who by pure reasoning achieved a remarkably modern understanding of the nature of the multiverse. According to Plutarch, ‘Alexander wept when he heard Anaxarchus speak about the infinite number of worlds in the universe. One of Alexander’s friends asked him what was the matter, and he replied: “There are so many worlds, and I have not yet conquered even one.” ’ Cohen is not alone in sharing the frustration of Carelinus and Alexander. So, in a different way, does the normally cheerful tourist Twoflower, standing at the rim of the Disc and staring out at the stars. ‘Sometimes I think a man could wander across the disc all his life and not see all there is to see,’ said Twoflower. ‘And now it seems there are lots of other worlds as well. When I think I might die without seeing a hundredth of all there is to see it makes me feel,’ he paused, then added, ‘well, humble, I suppose. And very angry, of course.’ [The Colour of Magic] It is also intriguing to note how Fortune (Lady Luck) decided the fate of both Alexander and Cohen by a throw of the dice. Writers in Antiquity and in the Middle Ages argued about the influence of Fortune on the life of Alexander – he had been amazingly successful as a conqueror and ruler, yet he was only 33 when he unexpectedly died, struck down by sickness or, some believed, treacherously poisoned. So was Fortune on Alexander’s side or not? Did he owe his achievements to her, or to his own virtues? Did she turn against him in the end? In Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the Monk is certain that she did. He laments over the long list of great men who first enjoyed Fortune’s favours, but whom she then betrayed. One of them is Alexander, at one time ‘the heir of her honour’, till she destroyed him in a game of dice where she magically transformed his winning throw, a six, into the lowest possible one. O worthy, noble Alexander, O alas That you should ever fall in such a case! Poisoned by people of your own you were. Your six did Fortune change into an ace, And yet she never wept for you one tear. In the Discworld, Cohen accepts a challenge to roll dice against the harsh god Fate (not against Fortune, the Lady). Fate throws a six, and tells Cohen that to win he must throw a seven – though the die is a perfectly normal one with only the regulation six sides. ‘So … seven and I win,’ said Cohen. ‘It comes down showin’ seven and I win, right?’ ‘Yes. Of course,’ said Fate. ‘Sounds like a million-to-one chance to me,’ said Cohen. He tossed the die high in the air, and it slowed as it rose, tumbling glacially with a noise like the swish of windmill blades. It reached the top of its arc and began to fall. Cohen was staring fixedly at it, absolutely still. Then his sword was out of its scabbard and it whirled around in a complex curve. There was a snick and a green flash in the middle of the air and … … two halves of an ivory cube bounced across the table. One landed showing the six. The other landed showing the one. [The Last Hero] The situation is not without precedent on the Discworld (a five thrown by the Lady turns into a seven in The Colour of Magic), or even in our own world, where it is said that King Olaf of Norway played dice against the King of Sweden for a disputed island, and won when his die accidentally split in half, one face showing the six and the other the one. Nevertheless Fate accuses Cohen of cheating, and would have reneged on the bargain if the Lady – whom none of the gods ever opposes – had not intervened on Cohen’s behalf. But Cohen does not appreciate the favour. ‘And who are you?’ snapped Cohen, still red with rage. ‘I? I … am the million-to-one chance,’ she said. ‘Yeah?’ said Cohen, less impressed than the minstrel thought he ought to be. ‘And who are all the other chances?’ ‘I am those, also.’ Cohen sniffed. ‘Then you ain’t no lady.’ ‘Er, that’s not really—’ the minstrel began. ‘Oh, that wasn’t what I was supposed to say, was it?’ said Cohen. ‘I was supposed to say, “Ooh, ta, missus, much obliged”? Well, I ain’t. They say fortune favours the brave, but I say I’ve seen too many brave men walkin’ into battles they never walked out of. The hell with all of it.’ [The Last Hero] Nothing, not even a marvel that has saved his own life, can persuade Cohen to give up his fury at the injustice of old age and inevitable death. Those who want a happy ending every time had better steer clear of epic poetry and heroic sagas, for the wages of heroism is death. True, there are a few legendary heroes who vanish into fairyland, but the great majority die by violence, and their deaths are at least as memorable as their lives. Some fall in battle against overwhelming odds, as did Charlemagne’s noble warriors Roland and Oliver facing a Saracen army at Roncevalles; some, like the Irish Cú Chulainn and the Danish Hrolf Kraki, die because the enemy host is strengthened by the spells of evil magicians and malevolent deities; some are murdered by the treachery of trusted relatives or comrades, as were Sigurd the Dragon-Slayer and Robin Hood. On the other hand, death is what offers a Hero the finest chance to display his mettle. An Anglo-Saxon poet put these words into the mouth of an ageing English warrior facing certain defeat and death in battle against Vikings at Maldon in Essex in 991: Our minds shall mount higher, our hearts beat harder, Our spirits grow stronger, as strength dwindles. Always at the last there is the burial mound, the funeral pyre, the death ship – which may be set on fire, or simply pushed out to sea, as was done for Scyld Scefing, a legendary Danish king: The prince’s ship with curving prow, Glinting with hoar-frost, eager to leave, Lay in the harbour. They laid their dear lord, Their ring-giver, in the ship’s bosom, beside the mast, And treasures too, from far-off lands. High over his head a banner hung, Gold embroidered. They let the waters bear him away, Trusted him to the ocean. Sad were their hearts. [Beowulf] Or, as Cohen puts it, remembering one of his old comrades, ‘Where would he have been if we weren’t there to give him a proper funeral, eh? A great big bonfire, that’s the funeral of a hero. And everyone else said it was a waste of a good boat!’ [The Last Hero] And where was the boat heading? Well, there was always the possibility of Valhalla or the Elysian Fields or the Happy Isles, but ancient epics and sagas have little to say on this point. What mattered far more was that the hero should be remembered. It was said of Sigurd that ‘his name will last as long as the world endures’, and the same was – or should be – true of every hero. As the Old Icelandic poem Hávamál puts it, Cattle die, kinsmen die, And each man too shall die. I know one thing that never dies, A dead man’s reputation. An eye-catching grave is useful publicity too; not for nothing did Beowulf’s people cover his ashes with a large mound, high on a headland where every passing ship would see it. But the centuries roll on, and memories fade. We can make a fair guess at who lies in the royal barrow at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, but there are dozens upon dozens of mounds along the South Downs and on Salisbury Plain that were raised for men whose names and deeds are now utterly forgotten. Which is wrong. Which is why Cohen is found one day sitting on an ancient burial mound and refusing to come back into camp for dinner, because he ‘hadn’t finished’. ‘Finished what, old friend?’ ‘Rememb’rin’,’ said Cohen. ‘Remembering who?’ ‘The hero who was buried here, all right?’ ‘Who was he?’ ‘Dunno.’ ‘What were his people?’ ‘Search me,’ said Cohen. ‘Did he do any mighty deeds?’ ‘Couldn’t say.’ ‘Then why—?’ ‘Someone’s got to remember the poor bugger!’ ‘You don’t know anything about him!’ ‘I can still remember him!’ [The Last Hero] Time also creates a problem for the rare hero who does not die young. Is it fitting for him to settle down quietly, while Old Age, the enemy he can never conquer or outwit, advances steadily upon him? Is he to lie in his bed, old and sick, meekly waiting for death – a straw death, as Vikings would mockingly call it? Of course, Fate might send him, even in old age, the chance of a last good fight; Beowulf had been a king for fifty years when he went to face the dragon. But if not … well, it is in the nature of heroes to rage against the dying of the light. In history, one of the great medieval warlords of Asia was the Mongolian Timur-I-Lenk, called Tamerlane by westerners, who was descended on his mother’s side from Genghis Khan. His empire was centred in Samarkand, and stretched from Turkey to the Ganges valley and the borders of China; he died a natural death in 1405 at the age of seventy-two, while making plans to invade China itself. According to legend, as told by the Elizabethan playwright Marlowe (who called him Tamburlaine), on his deathbed he declared war on the gods for striking him down: What daring god torments my body thus, And seeks to conquer mighty Tamburlaine? Shall sickness prove me now to be a man, That have been termed the terror of the world? Techelles and the rest, come, take your swords, And threaten him whose hand afflicts my soul. Come, let us march against the powers of heaven, And set black banners in the firmament, To signify the slaughter of the gods. He may not have been the only one who refused to go quietly. Odysseus may have done the same, though less fiercely. In Homer’s Odyssey we hear how this resourceful hero, whose cleverness led to the Greek victory in the Trojan War, eventually got home to his island kingdom of Ithaca after ten years of struggling against monsters, enchantments, and shipwrecks. And there Homer leaves him, happily reunited with his wife Penelope, to grow old in peace. But did he? A thousand years later Dante (who, like all Italians, called him Ulysses) thought his story ended differently. The bonds of family and homeland could not overcome his passion to learn more about the world. So he set sail with a small band of his faithful comrades, all grown old, urging them on towards the lands beyond the sun; men were not made to live like brutes, he said, but to pursue knowledge and excellence. They sailed through the straits of Gibraltar and out into the deep ocean, past the equator, and far southwards, till they saw a towering mountain – which, though they did not know it, was the Mount of Purgatory crowned with the Earthly Paradise. But there came a whirlwind from this unknown land, and spun their ship three times round, and sank it. And thus ended the life of Ulysses. In Victorian times, Tennyson took up the theme. In his poem ‘Ulysses’ the aged hero looks back on a life spent ‘always roaming with a hungry heart’, and resolves never to pause, never to make an end, but still To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. He gathers his former comrades, urging them to defy the years and the approach of death, and join him on a last voyage into the unknown: For my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down; It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are: One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. Cohen and the Silver Horde would have understood. Chapter 13 LORE, LEGENDS and TRUTH THE FOUNDATION LEGENDS ANY SELF-RESPECTING CITY has to have a legend about its own foundation. Ankh-Morpork, as is right and proper for the oldest and greatest city on the Disc, has two. The first is the official one. According to this, there were once two orphaned brothers, mere babies, who had been left on the shores of the Ankh to die. There they were found by a she-hippopotamus, who suckled them. When they grew up, they decided to build themselves a home, and so founded what must at the time have been a very small city indeed. In memory of this, the shield on the coat of arms of Ankh-Morpork has as its supporters deux Hippopotâmes Royales Bâillant, un enchainé, un couronné au cou. Which, stripped of its aristocratic herald-speak, means two royal hippos yawning, one wearing a chain and the other with a crown round its neck. The conventions of heraldry do not permit the sex of the beasts to be clearly indicated, but in view of the tale we can safely state that at least one of them is female. The legend is also commemorated by eight hippo statues on the city’s Brass Bridge, facing out to sea. It is said that if danger ever threatens the city they will run away. Some people have expressed doubts over this ancient and uplifting tradition. Why and how, they ask, would a she-hippo suckle human babies? And how could they thrive on this eccentric diet? Did they but know it, these doubters could find a tale on Earth proving that such things are perfectly possible. It tells of twins, Romulus and Remus, who were the sons of Mars the God of War and a human princess. Their evil great-uncle, having just usurped his brother’s throne, seized the boys and threw them into the Tiber, for fear they might grow up to challenge him.11 But the river washed them safely to the bank, where a she-wolf fed them with her milk until a kindly shepherd found them. Later, they built the city of Rome. Considering what wolves normally eat, this tale is even more wondrous than that of the hippo, but the Romans had no difficulty in believing it. And, naturally, making a statue about it. The second legend is not told quite so often by the citizens of Ankh-Morpork, but is surprisingly widespread in other towns. It is said that way back in the fogs of time there was once a great flood sent by the gods, and that a group of wise men survived by building a huge boat into which they crammed two of every type of animal then existing on the Disc. After a few weeks the combined manure was beginning to weigh the boat low in the water, so – the story runs – they tipped it over the side and called the heap Ankh-Morpork. Anybody who doubts the truth of this should go and stand on one of the bridges over the Ankh, preferably on a warm day, and breathe deep. SUNKEN CITIES AND VANISHING ISLANDS There is also the legend of the Lost City, the City-before-the-City. It is not an uncommon tale – indeed, there are variants in all the cities of the Sto Plains – but hardly anyone takes it seriously. There had been a city once, in the mists of pre-history – bigger than Ankh-Morpork, if that were possible. And the inhabitants had done something, some sort of unspeakable crime not just against Mankind or the gods but against the very nature of the universe itself, which had been so dreadful that it had sunk beneath the sea one stormy night. Only a few people had survived to carry to the barbarian peoples in the less advanced parts of the Disc all the arts and crafts of civilization. [Moving Pictures] According to the dreaded grimoire Necrotelecomnicon, there had been a hill at the edge of the city: … and in that hill, it is said, a Door out of the World was found, and people of the City watched what was Seen therein, knowing not that Dread waited between the universes … for Others found the gate of the Holy Wood and fell upon the world, and in one nighte All Manner of Madnesse befell, and Chaos prevailed, and the Citie sank beneath the Sea, and all became one with the fishes and the lobsters, save for a few who fled. The hill is still there, on a lonely stretch of coast about thirty miles from Ankh-Morpork. It is not very high, yet high enough to be visible for miles, standing out from the wind-blown sand dunes all around. It is covered with wretched scrubby trees. People call it Holy Wood. And they say that if you stand on the beach at Holy Wood on a stormy night, you can still hear the bells of old temples ringing under the sea. The events chronicled in Moving Pictures would suggest that there is after all rather more than a grain of truth in these old tales. There are many, many legends about sunken cities on Earth, where islands bob up and down like the chorus in HMS Pinafore. The oldest on record was told by the Greek philosopher Plato about 2,400 years ago, and according to him it was true, and had happened some 9,000 years before that. And it was not just one city that had sunk, but the whole large island of Atlantis – rich, civilized, with many mighty cities, harbours and palaces. There, men had at first been wise and virtuous, but in time they became obsessed with wealth and power, so the gods destroyed their land in a single day and night. There occurred portentous earthquakes and floods, and one grievous day and night befell them when the whole body of warriors was swallowed up by the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner was swallowed up by the sea and vanished; wherefore also the ocean at that spot has now become impassable and unsearchable, being blocked up by the shoal of mud which the island created as it settled down. [Plato, Timaeus, transl. R. G. Bury] Plato does not mention any door or gate, for the large-scale destruction he describes must have involved some great natural disaster – an earthquake, a volcanic eruption, a tsunami – and was the direct work of the gods. There are other, more recent traditions along the sea-coasts of western Europe telling of lands and towns submerged by the foolish or treacherous act of someone who opened a sluice gate. In Wales, for instance, they talk of the lost land of Cantre’r Gwaelod under the waters of Cardigan Bay – forty miles long by twenty wide it was, with sixteen fine towns on it. There was a great dyke protecting it from the sea, but Seithenhin, the keeper of the dyke, was a drunkard, and one night forgot to close the sluice gates. The way others tell it, Seithenhin was lord of the land, and it was his daughter who let in the sea, curses upon her! Or it was God’s doing, because Seithenhin was a proud and presumptuous ruler. Whatever, you can still see the pebble ridge which was once the protecting wall; you can still hear bells ringing underwater. Then there is the Breton tale of the drowning of Kêr-Is. This, they say, was a magnificent city built on land reclaimed from the sea in what is now the Bay of Douarnenez in Brittany, and ruled by a King Grallon or Gradlon. He himself was a virtuous man, but his courtiers and subjects were drunken and debauched, though a holy man warned them that there would be a reckoning: After happiness, grief! Anyone who eats the meat of the fish, By the fish he will be eaten. And anyone who swallows will be swallowed. And anyone who drinks wine and mead Will drink water like a fish; And anyone who doesn’t know will learn. [Livaden Geris, transl. James Doan] Yet the king let the revellers go on feasting, while he took himself quietly to bed. Now, the king had a daughter named Dahut, and she had a lover (some say he was the Devil himself, but they always say that sort of thing) who coaxed her into stealing the golden key which her father wore on a chain round his neck as he slept. This was the key to the gate in the dykes protecting the city from the sea. They were opened, and the ocean swept in and submerged everything; only Grallon himself escaped, thanks to the saint’s warning and to his fine horse. Dahut tried to mount behind him, but the saint miraculously appeared and struck her with his crozier, so that she fell into the raging waters and drowned. As for the sunken city, its buildings can sometimes be glimpsed when the sea is calm and clear, and its bells are heard ringing. Legend loves the sound of sunken bells. In Cornwall, tradition tells of the lost land of Lyonesse, which once stretched all the way from Land’s End to the Scilly Isles, though no one now remembers just why it sank. The strange rocky outcrop of St Michael’s Mount overlooks Mount’s Bay, where the lost land once began and where one can still, at very low tides, find fossilized bits of wood from the trees which once grew there. In the Cornish language, four hundred years ago, the Mount was called Carrack Looz en Cooz, ‘The Grey Rock in the Wood’. The drowned forest was important, once. Maybe it was a Holy Wood. Such legends have always been particularly popular among fishermen. They are the ones who, peering down through unusually clear water, sometimes glimpse curious structures that look more like streets and ruined buildings than simple rocks; they are the ones whose nets sometimes snag on underwater obstacles where, according to their charts, no obstacles should be. Oddly, the fishermen of Ankh-Morpork do not have such legends. So it came as a total surprise to Solid Jackson and his son, out fishing by night in the middle of the Circle Sea, when a sound came from below the surface, the sound of a bell or gong slowly swinging … followed by a weathercock … a tower … a surge of huge, weed-encrusted buildings … a whole malevolent-looking city on an oozy, weedy island rising up out of the sea. They had discovered the Lost Island and City of Leshp. They did not like it. In fact, it gave them the willies. Partly, this was because of the smell of sulphur and rotting seaweed. Partly, because of nasty little ripples and soft splashing noises in the dark pools that lingered in the deeper cellars. But mainly it was because of the city itself. There were some buildings which looked more or less as human buildings should, with pillars and arches and steps and suchlike, and nice tiled floors with patterns of shells and squid and octopuses. But besides these, there were the remains of massive structures which had nothing to do with human architecture. It came as a relief when the island, after a few weeks, settled back down on to the seabed. Some faint awareness of these events, chronicled in Jingo, may have reached parts of the Earth. There is talk there of a ‘Green Land of Enchantment’ which occasionally rises to the surface in the Bristol Channel, and then vanishes again. A certain Captain Jones had a curious experience in the 1890s which was reported in the Pembroke County Guardian: Once when trending up the Bristol Channel and passing Grassholm Island, in what he had always known as deep water, he was surprised to see to windward of him a large tract of land covered with a beautiful green meadow. It was not, however, above water, but just a few feet below, say two or three, so that the grass waved and swam about as the ripple flowed over it, in a way quite delightful to the eye, so that as one watched it made one feel quite drowsy. ‘You know,’ he continued, ‘I have heard old people say there is a floating island off there, that sometimes rises to the surface, or nearly, and then sinks down again fathoms deep, so that no one sees it for years, and when nobody expects it comes up again for a while. How it may be, I do not know, but that is what they say.’ There are similar tales of intermittent islands off the coasts of Norway and Ireland. If you want to make them stay permanently above water (since they offer good grazing), the thing to do is to throw a knife, or a burning torch, or a lit tobacco-pipe on to them before they can sink again, but this is very hard to achieve. The largest and loveliest Norwegian one is called Utrøst, inhabited by kindly beings; it only becomes visible to humans if their lives are in deadly danger, when its harbour offers them safety. Those who shelter there will have good luck all their lives. These are nice islands, of course, even if they are imaginary. One that was undoubtedly real and very Leshpian in its effects appeared in July 1831. It was a pumice island, and it rose to the surface off the coast of Sicily, due to volcanic action. A British fleet landed on it and claimed it for Britain, naming it Graham Island, but the Italians also claimed it, naming it Ferdinandea. The French and Spaniards showed interest too. The ensuing diplomatic dispute was still not settled when the island sank back into the sea in December of the same year, which was rather a shame, but averted a possible war. Finally, it should be noted that an island which pops up and then sinks again is, as Leonard of Quirm remarked, rather like a certain type of folklore current among sailors on the Discworld: ‘It puts me in mind,’ said Leonard, ‘of those nautical stories of giant turtles that sleep on the surface, thus causing sailors to think they are an island. Of course, you don’t get giant turtles that small.’ [Jingo] In our world, in the absence of any turtles larger than, say, a decent-sized dining-table, traditional nautical lore warns instead of the risks involved in landing on a really, really big fish or whale which happens to be dozing on the surface. In particular, it is very unwise to light a small fire and start cooking breakfast. St Brendan the Navigator, who was Abbot of Clonfert in Ireland in the sixth century, is said to have done just that while sailing far out in the Atlantic. Suddenly what he’d thought was an island began to twitch, and then to sink. Brendan and his crew were lucky to get back to their ship in time. Exactly the same thing happened to Sindbad the Sailor on his first voyage in the Indian Ocean, as is told in The Thousand and One Nights. The ship came to a little island which seemed as fair as the Garden of Eden, where the passengers disembarked; some wandered off to explore, while others busied themselves cooking, eating and drinking. While we were thus engaged we suddenly heard the captain cry out to us from the ship: ‘All aboard, quickly! Abandon everything and run for your lives! The mercy of Allah be upon you, for this is no island but a gigantic whale floating on the bosom of the sea, on whose back the sands have settled and trees have grown since the world was young! When you lit the fire it felt the heat and stirred. Make haste, I say; for soon the whale will plunge into the sea and you will all be lost!’ [transl. N. J. Dawood] According to the poet Milton, the enormous creature is none other than Leviathan, mentioned in the Bible – … that sea-beast Leviathan, which God of all his works Created hugest that swim the Ocean stream. Him, haply slumbering on the Norway foam, The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff, Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell, With fixèd anchor in his scaly rind Moors by his side under the lee, while night Invests the sea, and wishèd morn delays. Atlantic, Indian Ocean, seas off Norway … the monster (or the story) certainly does get around. In Cambridge University Library and in the British Library there are manuscripts of a Latin Bestiary (that is, a Book of Beasts) dating from the early twelfth century. It includes a section about the sea-monster which gets mistaken for an island, beginning thus: There is an ocean monster which is called an aspido delone in Greek. On the other hand, it is called an aspido testudo in Latin. It is also called a Whale … This animal lifts its back out of the open sea above the watery waves … [transl. T. H. White] Testudo is Latin for ‘tortoise’. Delone makes no sense, and must be a mistake for chelone, which is indeed a Greek word, meaning ‘turtle’. Why on earth should English monks a thousand years ago get the traditional whale mixed up with tortoises and turtles? Some echo from the Discworld, maybe? As for aspido, this must refer to a snake of some sort, so it would seem that the Sea Serpent has somehow got into the mix. It makes a good yarn even better. KINGS AND HEROES A certain legendary glow surrounds the (rather vague) memory of the Kings of Ankh, a dynasty which came to an end some 2,000 years ago. They are said to have been thoroughly wise, just, charismatic, and so on, plus being of course extremely powerful. As for the later Kings of Ankh-Morpork, they are remembered in many a merry anecdote, for recurrent lunacy, sadistic cruelty, and general bloody-mindedness. (These anecdotes, being factually accurate, do not count as folklore.) If a ruler made himself too disagreeable to the rest of the aristocracy, the Guild of Assassins would eventually be contacted, and he would be discreetly inhumed. Curiously, this tactful and civilized procedure is seen by some as the survival of something extremely archaic: There was a tradition once, far back in the past, called the King of the Bean. A special dish was served to all the men of the clan on a certain day of the year. It contained one small hard-baked bean, and whoever got the bean was, possibly after some dental attention, hailed as King. It was quite an inexpensive system and it worked well, possibly because the clever little bald men who actually ran things and paid some attention to possible candidates were experts at palming a bean into the right bowl. And while the crops ripened and the tribe thrived and the land was fertile, the King thrived too. But when, in the fullness of time, crops failed and the ice came back and animals were inexplicably barren, the clever little bald men sharpened their long knives, which were mostly used for cutting mistletoe. And on the due night, one of them went into his cave and carefully baked one small bean. Of course, that was before people were civilized. These days, no one has to eat beans. [Night Watch] That, at any rate, is a theory of kingship put forward by speculative folklorists in Ankh-Morpork, and enthusiastically adopted by people who feel tradition must always be bloodthirsty, or about sex, or (preferably) both. Naturally, when dealing with such a remote period one can’t expect to find documentary evidence to back up one’s hypothesis (cave-dwelling clans don’t keep diaries or committee minutes). But Quoth the Raven, who is a member of an occult species with links to the gods and therefore knows what he’s talking about, does mention a midwinter custom, thousands of years ago, which sounds rather similar. It involved some poor bugger finding a special bean in his food at the Hogswatch feast. It made him king, but also meant he’d be killed off a few days later. A merry reign, but a short one. (We have more to say about this in the section on the Hogfather.) To return to the early kings of Ankh. Theirs was a Golden Age, from which little remains – some well-built ancient sewers, a few ruined walls, a worm-eaten throne, and, if legend can be believed, a very special Sword. Nobody has set eyes on it for centuries, and many think it must be lost. And yet, there are always rumours. Although they are so proud of being modern and living in an Age of Reason, the citizens of Ankh-Morpork have surprisingly romantic imaginations. Their minds are littered with mangled myths and fragmented fairy tales. Deep down, they feel sure that one day a long-lost heir will turn up, brandishing the Sword and displaying a birthmark, to claim the throne. He will right all wrongs, and the Golden Age will return. Since the rules of fairytale narrative are known to every child in the multiverse (even in worlds where the books of Grimm and Andersen are not to be found), the people of Ankh-Morpork naturally assume that the heir will have begun life as a humble swine-herd, and/or revived a princess who has been asleep for a hundred years, and/or proved how royal he is by sleeping on a huge pile of mattresses and a few very small peas. His hands will have sensational, but highly specialized, healing powers, though there appears to be some uncertainty about what exactly it is that he cures. Some citizens think a true king can cure baldness by his touch, while the aristocratic Lord Rust mentions dandruff, and scrofula, a disease of the throat glands. On Earth, it was definitely scrofula, which was therefore known as ‘king’s evil’. Several kings of England, from the time of Edward the Confessor to the end of the Stuart dynasty, made a point of ceremonially touching sufferers; so did the kings of France. Best of all, if the heir to a kingdom encounters a dragon he will most certainly slay it. As Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler says to the sceptical Vimes: ‘You’ve got no romance in your soul, Captain. When a stranger comes into the city under the thrall of the dragon and challenges it with a glittery sword, weeell, there’s only one outcome, ain’t there? It’s probably destiny.’ [Guards! Guards!] In the same way, people know just how things will go if a dragon appears. It will fly around, flaming and ravening; it will want a pile of gold to sleep on; it will expect people to give it virgins to eat, chained to rocks; it will speak, quite likely in riddles; but, it will have one vulnerable spot, which a good archer can hit as it flies overhead. That’s what always happened in the old stories, and so that’s what will happen again. These expectations are moulded by all the dragon-lore which has been drifting from one universe to another from the dawn of time. There is no mythology in any world which doesn’t have dragons in it, together with gods or heroes to kill them. The tales known in Ankh-Morpork are just as famous on Earth. There, it was the Ancient Greek hero Perseus who was the first to rescue a virgin who had been left chained to a rock for a dragon to eat; her name was Andromeda. Later, St George did the same, though he, being a Saint, didn’t marry the girl. Several great warriors of Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian legend – Beowulf, for instance, and the two Volsung heroes, Sigmund and Sigurd (whom Germans call Siegfried) – slew dragons which lay on hoards of treasure. One of these, the one named Fafnir which Sigurd killed, did indeed speak, and could ask and answer riddles. As for the one vulnerable spot, this is sometimes on the belly, as it was with Fafnir, and with Smaug in the tale of Bilbo the hobbit. More often, it is when a dragon opens his mouth that he becomes vulnerable to a well-aimed spear or arrow going down his gullet and into his vitals; this technique was pioneered by the Babylonian god Marduk, who destroyed the primeval dragoness Tiamat by hurling deadly winds down her throat. And then there is the sad case of the Yorkshire Dragon of Wantley, whom More of More Hall kicked in the arsehole with a spiked boot: ‘Murder, murder!’ the dragon cried, ‘Alack, alack for grief! Had you but missed that place, you could Have done me no mischief!’ Then his head he shaked, trembled and quaked, And down he laid and cried; First on one knee then on back tumbled he, So groaned, kicked, shat, and died.12 SOME MORE LEGENDS Many town-dwellers have, lurking in the corners of their minds, various half-remembered tales and no-longer-properly-believed beliefs which pop up again in the right circumstances. The tale of the shifting shop, for instance: Glod looked up at a blank wall. ‘I knew it!’ he said. ‘Didn’t I say? Magic! How many times have we heard this story? There’s a mysterious shop no one’s ever seen before, and someone goes in and buys some rusty old curio, and it turns out to—’ ‘Glod—’ ‘—some kind of talisman or a bottle full of genie, and then when there’s trouble they go back and the shop—’ ‘Glod—?’ ‘—has mysteriously disappeared and gone back to whatever dimension it came from— yes, what is it?’ ‘You’re on the wrong side of the road. It’s over here.’ [Soul Music] But in fact Glod was right. This shop was magic, and contained, among other things, a flute which you mustn’t blow unless you want to be knee-deep in rats, a trumpet which can make the world end and the sky fall down, and a gong which can make seven hundred and seventy-seven skeletal warriors spring up out of the earth. Two out of the three would work on Earth too. Not the gong, since according to Greek myth, the correct way to make warriors spring up out of the earth is to sow the ground with dragon’s teeth, as the heroes Cadmus and Jason did. But the Bible does mention a Last Trump with which, according to prophecy, an angel will announce that Doomsday has come; and the flute is clearly a pair to the fife with which the Pied Piper of Hamlin summoned rats. The Hamlin story is a fine example of the weird power of narrativium. It seems reasonably certain that something did happen in the German town of Hamlin in 1284, something involving a stranger and the children of the town, and that everyone found it very upsetting. There are sober, reliable chronicles, written less than a hundred years after the event, which declare that someone marched into the town on 26 June in 1284 and marched away with 130 of its children. But they do not say anything about rats, or a pipe, or curiously coloured clothes. In fact, there’s no magic involved at all. He marches in, he marches away, taking the children … that’s all there is to it, at first. But that won’t do. Surely, people thought, something so terrible as the loss of all those children must have more to it than that. It must be due to sorcery, or a punishment for some sin – or both. Now, it was widely believed throughout Europe that some men had an uncanny power over snakes, or rats, or mice; they would summon the vermin by playing on a flute or pipe, and then lead them into deep water or order them to leap into a bonfire, and so destroy them all. Perhaps a man who could lure rats could also lure children? Could one of these legendary ratcatchers have come to Hamlin in great-great-grandfather’s time? Could something have angered him? Maybe the townsfolk tried to cheat him of his pay, and he took his revenge? And so the story of the Pied Piper was born. Back in 1284, people said, the town had been overrun with rats, until a stranger arrived, proclaiming himself a ratcatcher. He was dressed in a multi-coloured coat and carried a small fife, so they called him the Pied Piper, and promised him a great deal of money if he would help them. As soon as he started playing rats came running out of every house, and followed him as he marched out of town. He led them down to the river Weser and waded in; they followed, and drowned. But then the citizens regretted having promised so much money, so they made excuses not to pay, and he went off in a furious rage. On 26 June he returned, this time dressed as a hunter. Again he played his fife, but this time it was children who came running to him, and he led them out of the town, where they disappeared with him into a cave in a mountain, and were never seen again – though some said they came out alive, hundreds of miles away, in Transylvania. By the middle of the sixteenth century this had become the official explanation. The Mayor had the entire story illustrated in stained-glass windows in the main church; a new city gate erected in 1556 carried an inscription stating that it was put up ‘272 years after the sorcerer abducted 130 children’; another inscription on the City Hall commemorated ‘130 children lost by a piper inside a mountain’. Of course, there are always some people who prefer a rational explanation to a magical one. With the Hamlin story, it’s not difficult to think of something that could fit, and many modern commentators have offered suggestions. There were wars going on in thirteenth-century Germany, so maybe a recruiting sergeant passed through the town and led away 130 young men, and maybe they were all killed in battle. Or maybe the date is wrong, and the story really recalls how friars came preaching wild sermons to get youngsters to join the so-called Children’s Crusade to Jerusalem in 1212; they never got there, and those who did not die on the road ended up as slaves. Or maybe it refers to the forced emigration of local families to colonize new territories far away. For example, Bishop Bruno of Olmütz recruited families from Lower Saxony to build up a German population in his diocese in Bohemia; a comparison of city records in Hamlin and Olmütz reveals a startling agreement in the family names in each place, which bears out the rumour that the lost children of Hamlin reappeared safe and sound in Transylvania. Be that as it may, it’s the rats, the pipe, and the pied coat that we remember now. And only a beastly spoilsport would point out that rats can swim. As for drums … There was even an Ankh-Morpork legend, wasn’t there, about some old drum in the Palace or somewhere that was supposed to bang itself if an enemy fleet was seen sailing up the Ankh? The legend had died out in recent centuries, partly because this was the Age of Reason and also because no enemy fleet could sail up the Ankh without a gang of men with shovels going in front. [Soul Music] There is a curiously close parallel here with the patriotic English legend of Drake’s Drum. After the great Elizabethan seaman Sir Francis Drake died off Panama in 1595 a drum painted with his coat of arms was brought back to his home at Buckland Abbey in Devon, and is still kept there. It is traditionally believed to have come from the ship on which he had once sailed round the world. In 1895, for the three-hundredth anniversary of the hero’s death, Sir Henry Newbolt wrote a vigorous poem telling how Drake on his deathbed promised that if the drum was struck when England was in danger, he would return to save the country once again, as he had done when the Spanish Armada came. Drake he was a Devon man an’ ruled the Devon seas, (Capten, art tha sleepin’ there below?) Rovin’ tho’ his death fell, he went wi’ heart at ease, An’ dreamin’ arl the time o’ Plymouth Hoe. ‘Take my drum to England, hang et by the shore, Strike et when your powder’s runnin’ low; If the Dons sight Devon, I’ll quit the port o’ Heaven, An’ drum them up the Channel, as we drummed them long ago.’ In 1916, when England was at war, a poet named Alfred Noyes gave this story an even stronger patriotic twist. Writing an article in The Times about submarine warfare, he declared that Devon fishermen believed that the drum had sounded of its own accord in times of crisis, and that Drake would always hear and answer its call. It had been heard when Nelson’s fleet went to meet the French at Trafalgar, and again in that very year of 1916 before the naval battle of Jutland in the North Sea. And this, the fishermen said, showed that Drake had returned to inspire Nelson and Admiral Jellicoe and guide them to victory. Whether Noyes really had heard Devon fishermen saying this, or whether he made it up himself, hardly matters. It’s folklore now. And now people say Drake’s drum was heard in 1940 at the evacuation of Dunkirk. The citizens of Ankh-Morpork show in their legends an appreciation of virtue which is rarely evident in their lives. They can in fact be downright sentimental. Take the story of the famous dog Gaspode – not to be confused with the mangy, flea-ridden speaking cur of the same name, who was simply called after him. The reason the famous Gaspode is famous is his devotion to his master. ‘It was years and years ago. There was this ole bloke in Ankh who snuffed it, and he belonged to one of them religions where they bury you after you’re dead, an’ they did, and he had this ole dog—’ ‘Called Gaspode?’ ‘Yeah, an’ this ole dog had been his only companion, and after they buried the man he lay down on his grave, and howled and howled for a couple of weeks. Growled at everybody who came near. An’ then died.’ [Moving Pictures] Strangely, there are two cities on Earth – Edinburgh and Tokyo – where almost the same story is told, the main difference being that the dog survives for many years, fed by passers-by, though still faithfully grieving. In Edinburgh, this model of doggy devotion is a terrier called Greyfriars Bobby, after the graveyard where his master, a night-watchman called John Gray, was buried in 1858, and where there is now a statue of him (the dog, that is, not John Gray). He lived on for fourteen years; some say he spent all day at his master’s grave, but others say he was regularly fed in a nearby restaurant. When he died, a place was found for him near the entrance of Greyfriars Kirkyard, though not actually in consecrated ground. The stone is inscribed: ‘Let his loyalty and devotion be a lesson to us all.’ In Tokyo, the faithful dog, named Hachi-koh, used to go daily to Shibuya Station to meet his master, a professor, when he got off the train on his return from work. The professor died in 1925, but the dog lived on for ten years more, loyally meeting the train every day at the usual time, and resisting all attempts to re-home him. A statue of him was set up in the station even in his lifetime, and a special section of the concourse was set aside as his home; his stuffed body is now in the Natural Science Museum in Tokyo, and his statue is always garlanded with flowers on the anniversary of his death. What Gaspode – the modern, mangy, flea-bitten Gaspode – would make of these stories is not hard to guess, considering his cynical ideas about his famous namesake: ‘That’s very sad,’ said Victor. ‘Yeah. Everyone says it demonstrates a dog’s innocent and undyin’ love for ’is master,’ said Gaspode, spitting the words out as if they were ashes. ‘You don’t believe that, then?’ ‘Not really. I b’lieve any bloody dog will stay still an’ howl when you’ve just lowered the gravestone on his tail,’ said Gaspode. The modern Gaspode takes good care to keep his skills hidden, which is relatively easy since most people refuse to believe that any dog can talk. Even so, rumours get around. William de Worde, editor of the Ankh-Morpork Times, who is professionally inclined to scepticism, struggles (in vain) against that strange phenomenon, the urban myth: A couple of months ago someone had tried to hand William the old story of there being a dog in the city that could talk. It was the third time this year. William had explained that it was an urban myth. It was always the friend of a friend who had heard the talk, and it was never anyone who had seen the dog … There seemed to be no stopping that kind of story. People swore there was some long-lost heir to the throne of Ankh living incognito in the town. William certainly recognized wishful thinking when he heard it. [The Truth] Alas for William, who has chosen the wrong city in which to be an enlightened thinker … Meanwhile, other people, even more cynical, know how to take a legend and turn it into a nice little earner. One is the con-man known as the Amazing Maurice (who may in fact, according to rumour, be a remarkably cunning cat). He travels from town to town with his gang of Educated Rodents, who infiltrate the buildings. A musical confederate then undertakes, for a good fee, to summon them with his magic pipe and lead them all far, far away. It has always worked. Here, we know this as a rather inverted version of the Pied Piper story. TREACLE MINES Embedded in place-names, lurking like hidden diamonds, are precious traces of past history and traditions. There is, for example, a street in Ankh-Morpork called Treacle Mine Road, running from Misbegot Bridge to Easy Street. It takes its name from the treacle mines which used to be worked in this area, which are ancient, very ancient indeed. The deepest levels contain the remnants of pig-treacle measures that are estimated to be 500,000 years old, intermingled with basalt slabs carved with archaic trollish pictograms. The mines were abandoned many years ago, and most people believe that this was because they were exhausted. However, when some deep-down dwarfs (grags) bought property on that street and began mining below it, for reasons of their own (as told in Thud!), they reopened old tunnels and galleries, and their bores struck some residue of deep treacle. Up in the mountains, on the borders of Uberwald, there are still very productive treacle mines, enabling the dwarfs of that region to make a handsome profit exporting both raw pig-treacle and luscious treacle-based confectionery to the cities of the plain. Far away in the hot and swampy realm of Genua, there are lakes of liquid treacle fermenting happily only a little way underground, and occasionally bursting out under pressure to create springs of rum. Near Quirm, there are toffee beds. The origin of all this succulence goes back to the Dawn of Time, when the Fifth Elephant collided with the Disc with so great an impact that thousands of acres of prehistoric wild sugar cane was buried under massive landslides, and compacted into a dense crystalline mass. Those who study the effects of cosmic resonance in the space-time continuum of the multiverse often cite the Treacle Mine Phenomenon with amazement and awe, for it has been shown without doubt that these mines, which are a plain fact of geography on the Disc, have insinuated themselves into the folklore of a world where they do not actually exist, and never have done. In England, there are at least thirty villages reputed to have a secret treacle mine tucked away somewhere on their territory. Even more astonishing, there is one place, the village of Patcham in East Sussex, where people have a fairly accurate idea of how the treacle was formed (allowing for the fact that this world sadly lacks any cosmic elephants). A Mrs Austen told the West Sussex Gazette in 1973 the tale she knew, and had passed on to her children: Millions of years ago, when England was a tropical country, before the Ice Age, sugar cane grew here. Year after year it grew, ripened and rotted unharvested, the molasses draining away down into the folds of the hills, where it accumulated above an impermeable layer of clay. The centuries passed, the colder weather came, and sugar cane no longer grew on the Downs, but the underground layer of treacle lay patiently waiting until in 1871 Peter Jones, a scientist who had long suspected its existence, sank the first shaft. The ensuing treacle gusher spouted for three days, covering the countryside for several miles around with a fine rain of treacle, until it was at last brought under control. Elsewhere, other explanations are offered. At Chobham in Surrey, military incompetence is alleged to be the cause. It is said that soldiers who encamped on Chobham Common before setting out to the Crimean War (others say, American troops stationed nearby during the First World War) buried vast stockpiles of supplies, including drums of treacle and molasses, and forgot to remove them when they left. The drums corroded, and a subterranean reservoir of treacle was formed. Other places do not attempt to account for the origin of the precious substance, but tell ingenious tales about its discovery and use. The mine at Jarvis Brook near Crowborough (Sussex) was supposedly begun by the Romans, who carved the solid treacle rock into jewellery, but never found out how sweet it was; this was discovered accidentally when a medieval baby prince was visibly soothed by sucking his mother’s necklace. At Sabden (Lancashire) it is claimed that boggarts (a species of goblin) are employed in the mine to lick up any spilt treacle; cards and souvenirs about the mine are sold to tourists. Yet, sad to say, the people who tell these tales do not take them seriously. It is all a poker-faced joke, a hoax, a leg-pull, used by the locals to hoax gullible outsiders, by parents to entertain their children, by older children to make fools of young ones. While all the time, did they but know it, the remains of a real treacle mine lie below the streets of Ankh-Morpork. WIZARDRY AND CEREMONIAL MAGIC Any comment upon wizardry in a book with ‘Folklore’ in the title will have to be made very quietly, since there is nothing that infuriates a scholar more than to be mistaken for a member of the folk, after he has spent all his waking hours for the past fifty years with his nose in a book (mealtimes partially excepted). Naturally, he may have come across the odd scrap of folklore in the course of his reading, but he will make it very plain that he does not believe it. Arch-chancellor Ridcully, for example, has heard of the kind of monster called a Sciopod by Ancient Greeks and a Uniped in Latin: a humanoid with only a single leg and foot, this being so huge that if it lies on its back and sticks its leg in the air, the foot makes an excellent sunshade. But he thinks it’s just something travel writers invented. ‘They always make up that sort of thing. Otherwise it’s too boring. It’s no good coming home and just saying you were shipwrecked for two years and ate winkles, is it? You have to put in a lot of daft stuff about men who go around on one big foot and the Land of Giant Plum Puddings and nursery rubbish like that.’ [The Last Continent] Magic as actually practised by wizards generally consists of transformation spells, the skilled hurling of fireballs, the creation of illusions, and the occasional summoning of demons or, in extreme cases, of Death himself. These things are done as rarely as possible. But the theory underpinning these few simple acts is immense, and subdivided into innumerable branches – divination, theurgy, runes ancient and modern, cabbalistic rites, gramarye, knowledge of amulets and talismans, magianism, thaumatology, astrology, morbid spellbinding, sortilege, invisible writing – and so on and so forth. Not necromancy, however; this is frowned upon, and has been replaced by a far more acceptable Department of Post-Mortem Communications. The very heart and soul of Unseen University is its Library. With over 90,000 volumes of grimoires and magical texts, it is by far the largest concentration of magical scholarship anywhere in the multiverse, and so dangerous that most of the books have to be chained up. Folklore? Oral tradition? Old wives’ tales? Tchah! It is an insult to the grand intellectual achievements of wizardry to think their work has anything in common with the foolish ways of the peasantry. No doubt the famous and learned occultists of medieval and Renaissance Europe – such men as Albertus Magnus in the thirteenth century, or Paracelsus, Cornelius Agrippa, and Dr John Dee in the sixteenth – would have been just as dismissive. They wrote books which straddled the ill-defined boundaries between magic, science and philosophy – massive, expensive tomes in Latin, the international language of the wise. Albertus, for instance, wrote a treatise on the practical procedures of alchemy, and was also reputed to be the author of a much simpler Book of Secrets which described the magical properties of stones, herbs, and beasts. For example: If thou wilt know whether thy wife be chaste or no. Take the stone which is called Magnet, in Englishe the Loadstone. It is of a sadde blew colour, and it is found in the sea of Inde, and sometime in part of Almaine. Lay this stone under the head of a wife. And if she be chaste, she will embrace her husband. If she be not chaste, she will fall forth of her bed … If thou wilt Overcome thine Enemies. Take the stone which is called Draconites, from the dragon’s head. And if the stone bee drawne out from him alive it is good against all poisons, and he that beareth it on his left arme shall overcome all his enemies … The Marygold. The vertue of this herbe is marvellous for if it be gathered, the Sunne being in the Signe Leo in August, and wrapped in the leafe of a Lawrell, or May tree, and a wolf’s tooth added thereto, no man shall be able to speake one word against the bearer thereof, but only words of peace. If anything bee stolen, and the bearer of the things before named shall lay them under his head in the night, he shall see the theefe in a vision. And so on. It must remain one of the mysteries of trans-dimensional correspondence whether this Albertus Magnus of medieval Europe has any connection with Alberto Malich, the exceptionally powerful wizard who founded Unseen University some two thousand years ago, and disappeared while performing the Rite of AshkEnte backwards. He had intended to achieve immortality, and so he did, in a way. He now exists (one can’t quite say ‘lives’) as cook, valet and gardener in the House of Death, which suits him nicely. On Earth, grimoires were often attributed to prestigious figures from legendary times, such as King Solomon the Wise and Hermes Trismegistus. As time went on, the practice of magic slid down the social scale; by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries cheap, simple books of spells and conjurations were selling in thousands to village cunning men and wise women, and to ordinary households. In Germany, there was The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses; in France, Le grand Albert and Le petit Albert, Le dragon rouge, La poule noire, and the splendidly named Abracadabra monumentissima diabolica. Intellectual wizardry was being drawn into the vast melting-pot of folk tradition. This has not happened in Ankh-Morpork, nor is it likely to, so long as the Librarian has an ook to say in the matter. Nevertheless, far outside the hallowed walls of Unseen University, lurking in shadowy and insalubrious back-alleys and keeping out of sight of qualified wizards, are magical practitioners of a lower sort. Their ambitions are great; their skills are not. They know far less than they suppose. They band together in secret societies with imposing titles, and attach vast importance to ritual, ceremony, and magical tools. They are led by pompous, bullying men, calling themselves Supreme Grand Masters. Such are, for instance, the Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night, guardians of the sacred knowledge since a time no man may wot of. Such groups would be just as indignant as the academic wizards at the notion that what they were doing had anything in common with folk magic. No, their Grand Master had been taught profound secrets from the Heart of Being while undergoing tuition from Hidden Venerable Sages on a distant mountain. Furthermore, the Sages had given him a book of ancient wisdom … actually, he had arranged for it to be stolen from the Unseen University Library, but no matter, it was a Book. And it was ancient. But it would be a mistake to think that everyone in Ankh-Morpork has such a highbrow approach to magic. There are people who need no books, no apparatus, no complex rituals – people with a natural inborn talent for the occult, like the redoubtable medium Mrs Evadne Cake, noted for her precognition and her numerous spirit contacts. In some ways she is very like a witch, and every community needs its witch. Even in Unseen University itself the housekeeper, Mrs Whitlow, dabbles in the occult. She loves trying to peer into the future, and owns a crystal ball which she keeps under a sort of pink frilly tea cosy, several sets of divinatory cards, a pink velvet bag of rune stones, an ouija board, and special dried monkey turds which can be thrown in such a way as to reveal all the secrets of the universe. Granny Weatherwax, for purposes of her own, offered Mrs Whitlow her services as a reader of tealeaves. No doubt she had her own opinion of such amateurish goings-on, but she kept it to herself. SATOR SQUARE Most of those who walk through the streets of Ankh-Morpork never pause to wonder why the square in front of Unseen University is named Sator Square. There is indeed a reason, though you have to search the annals of a different universe to discover it: on Earth, Sator Square is the most famous of all magic squares. But it’s no use looking for it on the street map of any city, for it is not that sort of square. It is a palindromic word square. These are talismans, difficult to invent, but very powerful. You have to choose a group of words which can be laid out as a square of letters and which (this is the hard bit) will remain the same whether you read it downwards, upwards, from the left or from the right. Most of them are mere gibberish, but the Sator formula does make sense, of a sort. It goes: S A T O R A R E P O T E N E T O P E R A R O T A S Four out of the five are normal Latin words, meaning ‘the sower holds the works [and] the wheels’, but arepo is either pure nonsense or the mysterious, mystical name of the mysterious, mystical Sower who controls the Wheels (of Fate? Of the heavenly spheres?). The earliest known example of the square is in one of the houses of Pompeii, buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79; another early one was found scratched on wall plaster in a Roman villa at Cirencester in Gloucestershire. At these dates, both homes could have belonged to Christian families, and the square could have served as a coded signal of their faith. It can hardly be a coincidence that its letters can be unpacked to reveal the first words of the Our Father (Pater noster) twice over, plus A and O twice. The latter could mean Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, which is a title of Christ in the Apocalypse, the Bible’s Book of Revelation. What’s more, the whole thing can be laid out as a cross, thus: The Sator-Arepo Square was known all over medieval Europe, and in some countries (Russia, America and Germany, for example) was still being used in folk magic right up to modern times, almost two thousand years after it was invented. People said it would put out a fire, if you wrote it on a piece of wood and threw the wood into the flames; if you cut it into dough, baked it, and swallowed it, it would cure the bite of a mad dog; in the United States in the nineteenth century, a cheap book of spells recommended it as a fire precaution, a detector of witches, a protection against disease, and good for the cows. Some echo of all this must surely have filtered through to the wizards of Unseen University, but whether they actually use word squares themselves remains unknown. THE BLACK SCHOOL For centuries, Earth has known rumours of a Black School where magic was taught, though none quite matches the venerable antiquity of the Disc’s Unseen University, now some two thousand years old. The only possible contenders would be certain secret academies where (if we can believe the rather unreliable Roman author Pomponius Mela in the first century AD) druids trained pupils for twenty years on end ‘in sequestered and remote places, whether in a cave or in secluded groves’. Once real universities became established in the Middle Ages, there soon grew up the legend of their secret counterpart, a college called the Black School where one could learn all the occult arts. It was deep underground, windowless, and pitch dark. Nobody ever saw the Teacher, for that was the Devil himself. Students never went outside. Every evening, they would say aloud what they wanted to learn, and by next morning the right books would have appeared magically on their desks, written in fiery letters that glowed in the dark; or the information would be written in fire upon the walls. And when the course of studies ended, the students would rush to escape through the single door, for it was known that the Devil would take the hindmost – unless he was cunning enough to trick him into seizing his cloak, or his shadow, instead. And where was this wondrous Black School? Usually it was said to be in one of the great medieval universities, but not of course in one’s own country. The learned French scholar and scientist Gerbert d’Aurillac (946–1003), who became Pope Sylvester II, was rumoured to have studied magic at the Islamic university in Cordoba, Spain. The Icelander Sæmundur the Learned (1056–1133) was said to have attended a Black School somewhere in France. In Romania, folk tradition tells of an underground academy called Scholomance, near Sibiu in the mountains of Transylvania (Bram Stoker had heard of this). Others have talked of a Black School in Paris, Padua, Salamanca, Prague, or Wittenburg (Faust studied there). Probably students at Wittenburg and Prague whispered about the fearful occult activities at Oxford and Cambridge. An aside: It has been suggested by the learned science fiction writer Isaac Asimov that the general western antipathy towards witches is at least partly to do with teeth and beards. The hypothesis runs like this: until the advent of modern dentistry, people who lived to a great age tended to lose their teeth – to get gummy, in fact. For the old widow, perhaps with no family to care for her, that added another problem. She looked like a crone, with the lower part of the face dished in and the nose appearing to hook. Of course, the same thing happened to the old men, but they could grow long white beards to hide the wrinkles behind, and looked as wise as an Old Testament prophet. Wise wizard, wicked witch … what a difference a razor makes. 11 Tyrants insist on doing this, despite the fact that it never works. 12 It’s the little details that charm. Chapter 14 MORE CUSTOMS, NAUTICAL LORE and MILITARY MATTERS THERE IS A WIDESPREAD FEELING among folklorists that city-dwellers do not have customs. Maybe there had been some in the very old days, when the city was little more than a collection of villages, but they are long forgotten now. Of course there are various civic and academic occasions which require serious-minded men to process through the streets in outdated ceremonial robes and plumed helmets, but these aren’t proper folk customs. They are all too obviously well organized and official. They are not archaic and bloodthirsty, nor, on the other hand, do they involve jolly yokels and winsome maidens prancing around with many a merry fol-de-rol. Folklore collectors therefore feel free to ignore them. However, there comes a time in the history of most cities when somebody says, ‘We really ought to have a few customs. They could do wonders for the tourist trade.’ Books are consulted. Ideas from elsewhere are forcibly uprooted and shamelessly reworked to fit their new environment. And lo! Suddenly, there are Morris dancers everywhere, and age-old traditions spring up overnight like mushrooms. This is beginning to happen in Ankh-Morpork. There is a team of folk dancers who have revived the Morris – probably more than one, since Morris dancing is essentially a competitive pastime, sometimes quite dangerously so. Nobby Nobbs is known to be a participant. There are also enthusiastic and delightfully melodious wassailers, who put in weeks of practice before setting out to spread seasonal cheer through the streets of Ankh-Morpork at Hogswatch. The custom was referred to by Anaglypta Huggs, organizer of the best and most select group of the city’s singers, as an occasion for fellowship and good cheer … The singers were halfway down Park Lane now, and halfway through ‘The Red Rosy Hen greets the Dawn of the Day’ in marvellous harmony. Their collecting tins were already full of donations for the poor of the city, or at least those sections of the poor who in Mrs Huggs’ opinion were suitably picturesque and not too smelly and could be relied upon to say thank you … In fact the hen is not the bird traditionally associated with heralding a new sunrise, but Mrs Huggs, while collecting many old folk songs for posterity, had taken care to rewrite them where necessary to avoid, as she put it, ‘offending those of a refined disposition with unwarranted coarseness’. Much to her surprise, people often couldn’t spot the unwarranted coarseness until it had been pointed out to them. Sometimes a chicken is nothing but a bird. [Hogfather] Thanks to the humorous workings of narrative necessity, these well-bred singers, so beautifully free from anything that could distress either the musical ear or the moral susceptibilities of their audience, find themselves face to face with what may well be the last vestige of pure, raw wassailing in the city, the makers of the Rough Music of Time – Foul Ole Ron and the Canting Crew of deranged beggars, singing and swearing at the tops of their voices, and banging saucepans together. The beggars are not well versed in folkloric theory, but they do know this is the sort of thing one does at midwinter, and have good reason to believe that if you make enough din people will give you money to stop. Those who have looked into the history of folklore of western Europe over the last couple of hundred years will notice some quite astonishing similarities to this situation. There too, some genteel Victorian collectors, while professing their deep love of tradition, took for granted that it must be stripped of all coarseness and daintily repackaged. There too, some customs slipped down the social scale till they were little more than a way for the poorest of the working class (or even beggars) to extract a little beer-money from their betters at festive seasons. And there too, these same customs might be rediscovered, imitated, revived and updated by later and more sophisticated generations. As soon as people begin to notice a custom (as opposed to just doing it), they start wondering where, when and why it began. They weave wonderful theories. But this is futile, since folklore is almost always unaccountable: Very few people do know how Tradition is supposed to go. There’s a certain mysterious ridiculousness about it by its very nature – once there was a reason why you had to carry a posy of primroses on Soul Cake Tuesday, but now you did it because that’s what was Done. [Jingo] The ceremony still carries on, of course. If you left off traditions because you didn’t know why they started you’d be no better than a foreigner. [Hogfather] In both worlds, old customs discarded by adults are often kept going for a few generations by children. According to the Bursar, when he was a boy there was a custom on Soul Cake Tuesday that children would roll boiled eggs down the Tump, a large steep hill on the outskirts of the city. Naturally, nobody can say what the point of it is, apart from the fairly obvious fact that it is fun, and that the eggs are nice to eat, even if they are a bit cracked and muddy. As Nanny Ogg would say, with surprising Biblical insight, ‘We all have to eat a peck of dirt before we die.’ Since children in Lancre and other rural areas also get given eggs on this date, as we mentioned earlier, there is every reason to think the custom is genuinely folksy – possibly even mythic, if the Soul Cake Duck is involved. If so, it would have begun as something serious, to be done by adults. There are some people, including the compiler of The Discworld Almanak, who claim that the duck plays a major role in primeval mythology: Curiously written out of early legends of the creation of the Universe is the Great Duck, from whose single egg the whole of Creation was hatched. However, truth will out, and it is now known that, from the outside, infinity is duck-egg blue. It turns out that this was written in haste by a member of the Almanak staff to justify an error elsewhere in the book, but there once were similar myths scattered throughout our own world (in ancient Egypt, Finland, India, Greece and Persia, for example), telling how the universe was hatched from an egg laid by some Great Bird, often a duck or goose. And that, in a roundabout sort of way, might explain those chocolate eggs people buy at Easter, without quite knowing why. Folk custom also explains why one occasionally sees visitors to Ankh-Morpork leaning over the Brass Bridge in a meaningful manner. They are acting upon an old superstition that if you throw a coin into the Ankh you’ll be sure to return to the city – or is it if you just throw up into the Ankh? Probably it is a coin after all, since a remarkable number of supposedly rational species in various worlds feel compelled to toss coins into rivers, fountains, wishing-wells, and even oddly shaped cascades in airport terminals, in a vague expectation of good luck and wishes fulfilled. Why? Well, in the case of airports it is a convenient way of getting rid of small change you won’t need in Sydney while at the same time getting a small smug feeling of having done some good, but in the other cases? What mechanism is operating here, in the twenty-first century? On the Discworld, though, they know why. The Lady is a real presence. * Unseen University has a whole clutch of traditional ceremonies and festivals of its own, carried out with unfailing regularity. These of course have nothing whatever to do with anything or anybody beyond the University’s walls. They are ‘gown’, not ‘town’, and emphatically not ‘folk’. Those which involve processing through the public streets do so as a way of inspiring due respect in the uncultured masses. A prime example is the Convivium, when the Archchancellor, Council, and entire senior staff proceed ceremonially from the University to the Opera House, where new graduates are awarded their degrees in the presence of the Patrician. The procession then returns, rather more quickly, for a large banquet. But one ceremony which has a certain impact on the townsfolk is the Beating of the Bounds every 22 Grune. This involves a choir, all able-bodied members of staff, and a gaggle of students retracing the exact route of the boundaries of the University, as originally laid down centuries ago. They walk through or if necessary climb over any buildings that have since been built across the route, while ceremonially striking members of the public with live ferrets (in memory, for reasons unknown, of a long-ago Archchancellor Buckleby). Any red-headed men encountered are seized by several strong young men and given a ‘plunking’; this tradition has, most unusually – and subsequent to an incident which left three wizards hanging precariously from a gutter – been amended to read ‘any red-headed men except of course Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson of the Watch’. After the progress, the entire membership of the University heads back to the Great Hall for a huge breakfast at which duck must be served. [The Discworld Companion] Why red-heads? In Ankh-Morpork the reason, if there ever was one, is forgotten. On Earth, folklore asserts that red hair was the mark of Judas, and is found in descendants of Jews and of Viking raiders. They were distrusted, though there is no record of people plunking them. In Britain and Europe, processions to Beat the Bounds (also known as Rogation Processions) were mainly found in country districts, where priests led the people round the parish boundaries, blessing the fields and praying for a good harvest. The custom was legally useful too; when local administration was organized by parishes, it was important that everyone knew just where one parish ended and another began. That way, taxes and tithes could be fairly assessed, and if a penniless beggar dropped dead on the road one knew whose job it was to bury him. Boundary markers on walls, stones or trees were inspected, renewed if necessary, and ritually ‘beaten’ with rods. Sometimes boys were upended and beaten too, to make sure the next generation remembered everything quite clearly. The custom does not often survive in towns, but in Oxford on Ascension Day two parishes still provide a spectacle remarkably similar to what can be seen in Ankh-Morpork (but without the ferrets, alas). In the words of folklorist Steve Roud: The boundary markers in Oxford can be set into walls, high or low, or even into the floor, and can be down narrow alleyways, in basements, and behind or inside buildings. The routes take in the college buildings within the parish as well as shops and pubs, much to the surprise of people they meet on the way. They stop for refreshments at various locations, and at one point students throw coins and sweets for the choristers to scramble for. [The English Year (2006)] In Ankh-Morpork there are also traditional student activities, notably the dreaded Rag Week, which has all the normal perils of student humour with the additional seasoning of magic. Prudent citizens take evasive action, but the event is welcomed by the landlords of the Mended Drum, the Bunch of Grapes, and other hostelries, since much alcohol is traditionally consumed. The even more dreaded mass football match is now discontinued. This used to involve teams of fifty students apiece from the University itself and from each of the Guild Colleges attempting to kick or carry a football from the outskirts of the Shades to the Tower of Art. Goals were scored by kicking the ball through the door (or more often the window) of landmarks along the way, most of them having names like the Mended Drum, the Bunch of Grapes, etc. The scoring team had then to be bought drinks by the other teams. Much alcohol was traditionally consumed. There were occasions when the match went on for a month. Something very similar used to happen on Earth, and in some cases still does. For, just as there is a whole area of folklore that concerns singing very loudly until being given money to stop, or at least to go away and infest some other street, so there is an area chock-full of folk games that consist of two sides trying to get a ball (or similar token) into an opposing goal by means of, apparently, a bout of allin wrestling. In many towns of Britain, some five or six hundred years ago, the streets would periodically be jammed tight with a heaving mass of young men shoving, kicking and head-butting one another. If you watched long enough, you would probably work out that it was not a fight after all, but some kind of game played between two teams. Somewhere down out of sight there would be a ball being kicked or carried, for this was the true, the original, form of British football. No rules worth mentioning, no limit on the number of men crazy enough to play for one team or the other. No goal posts either; the ‘goals’ would be at opposite ends of the town, at least a mile apart, and might just as likely be ponds or streams as buildings. It was a wild, violent type of game, and might very well last all day. In Derby in 1829 a writer explained how it was done: The game commences in the market-place, where the partisans of each parish are drawn up on each side, and about noon, a large ball is tossed up in the midst of them. This is seized on by some of the strongest and most active men. The rest of the players immediately close in upon them, and a solid mass is formed. It then becomes the object of each party to impel the crowd towards their own particular goal. The struggle to obtain the ball, which is carried in the arms of those who have possessed themselves of it, is violent … It would be difficult to give an adequate idea of this ruthless sport. A Frenchman passing through Derby remarked that if Englishmen called this playing, it would be impossible to say what they called fighting. If you asked the players what the point was, they’d probably tell you it celebrated the defeat of some Scotsmen (or Englishmen, or Vikings, according to taste), whose heads were then kicked round the battlefield. The tough young fellows who played it absolutely loved it. Others were less enthusiastic. People got injured, as the respectable citizens of Chester complained in the 1530s, ‘some having their bodies bruised or crushed, some their arms, heads or legs broken, and some otherwise maimed or in peril of their lives’. Worse still, windows got broken, which was expensive. The town authorities stopped the Chester game in 1539, but in some other places people were more stubborn; in Derby it took soldiers, special constables, and the reading of the Riot Act to finally subdue the footballers in 1849. Some towns kept their mass football till late in the nineteenth century. Indeed, there are a few places where it is still vigorously played. It can be seen at Alnwick in Northumberland and Ashbourne in Derbyshire every Shrove Tuesday, and at Kirkwall in Orkney at the New Year. The ‘Haxey Hood Game’ at Haxey in Lincolnshire every January is similar, though it is surrounded by more ceremonial, and though the object tussled over is not a ball but a roll of leather, like a truncheon. Allegedly, this represents the hood of a long-ago medieval lady which blew off, causing twelve or thirteen labourers to go chasing after it. Who knows, but for that unthinking piece of gallantry we might now be watching Association Archery on Saturday afternoons. GHOST SHIPS In Small Gods there’s a description of a shipwreck. When the captain cries, ‘We’ll have to abandon ship!’ Death replies, NO. WE WILL TAKE IT WITH US. IT IS A NICE SHIP. And so, though the ship has been completely smashed up and everyone aboard is drowned, it seems to become whole again (in a way) and sails away, grey and slightly transparent, through darkness and silence, bearing the ghosts of men and of rats. Sailors on Earth also find it perfectly natural that a ship can become a ghost, since before it sank it had been a living creature, with a soul of its own – a ‘she’, in fact, not an ‘it’. She’s got a name, hasn’t she? And wasn’t she christened, just like a human being, with somebody blessing her and smashing a bottle of champagne over her? In French fishing villages, there would be a full-scale religious ceremony for a new boat, with a godfather and godmother, and a priest to sprinkle holy water; everyone was given blessed bread, including the boat herself – scraps of the bread would be put into holes in the mast. Many also thought that a ship had a guardian spirit. Some said it lived in the figurehead. Others, from Ancient Egypt to modern China and the Mediterranean, have painted huge eyes on the prow; these are the eyes of its guardian, to bring luck, to see the way ahead, and to outstare any evil spirits. The Swedes have a different notion; they say that when boat-builders cut a tree down to make the keel, the tree’s guardian gnome follows it, and becomes the boat’s luck-bringer. Ships and death go well together. Vikings thought a dead man should sail in his own boat to the land of the dead. So some of them buried or burned the man and the boat together; others lit a pyre for the corpse on board a ship, which was then set drifting out to sea; others marked the site of the man’s grave by an oval of standing stones, forming the outline of a boat. An English poet, D. H. Lawrence, wrote in the 1920s of ‘The Ship of Death’: We are dying, we are dying, so all we can do is now to be willing to die, and to build the ship of death to carry the soul on its longest journey. A little ship, with oars and food and little dishes, and all accoutrements fitting and ready for the departing soul. There are also the phantom ships doomed to sail the seas of Earth for ever, because of some crime or sin committed on board, or because of the tragic circumstances in which they sank. To see one is an omen of disaster, or at least of very bad weather. You can recognize them because they are sailing at full speed against the wind, or when there is no wind at all. Often they have no crew; if there is one, they are skeletons. They never reach a port; they never answer when hailed. There is at least one, at Porthcurno in Cornwall, which has been seen to sail straight for the shore at dusk, rise up into the air, and go on sailing across dry land. The most famous of the phantom ships is the Flying Dutchman. She haunts the seas around the Cape of Good Hope, because her captain blasphemously swore he would round the Cape, despite a gale, even if it took him till Doomsday. In Britain, several ghost ships haunt the Solway Firth, as a result of crimes. Two were pirate vessels; one was deliberately wrecked by a jealous murderer as it carried a bridal party; one was a slave trader, homeward bound, whose rich but godless captain refused to go ashore to attend church on Christmas Day. There is also the Lady Lovibund, which is supposed to appear on 13 February once every fifty years, heading for the Goodwin Sands (in the Channel, off Deal), because the first mate deliberately ran it aground there, being driven crazy with jealousy because he was in love with the captain’s newly wedded bride. This is said to have happened in 1748, and some people claim the spectral ship was sighted at fifty-year intervals up to and including 1948. Oddly, when boatloads of journalists went looking for it in 1998, it failed to appear. The derelict ghost ships in Going Postal are real, or rather, the way they hang suspended in the depths of the sea was once thought to be a real scientific possibility. But the wonderful image of skeletons crewing rotting hulks faded in the light of deep oceanic research in the nineteenth century. Until then, it was quite respectable to assume that water, like air, got denser with depth, and that a stricken ship would sink only until it encountered water at a density slightly higher than its own, where it might then drift on the interface until it rotted. In fact water does not compress like air, which is why fish at the bottom of the sea don’t have to drill holes in it. When you sink, you sink. FEMALE SOLDIERS Folk songs, most notably ‘Sweet Polly Oliver’, keep alive the theme of the cross-dressing girl who goes off to war in men’s attire: As sweet Polly Oliver lay musing in bed, A sudden strange fancy came into her head: ‘Nor father nor mother shall make me false prove, I’ll ’list for a soldier and follow my love.’ So early next morning she softly arose, And dressed herself up in her dead brother’s clothes. She cut her hair close, and she stained her face brown, And went for a soldier to fair London Town. The songs were based on fact, and Monstrous Regiment was only an exaggeration for comic effect – very little which is said in that book about the girls’ cross-dressing experiences was made up. There are plenty of references to such women in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries13 (up to 1,400 of them in the American Civil War, it has been suggested, but 500 or fewer seems more acceptable). They made the decision out of love, for adventure, or from a desire to escape from a burdensome life. They came to light as a result of falling in love, betraying themselves by lack of acting skill, or being wounded somewhere that obliged the surgeon to remove the patient’s trousers; or, quite often, by proudly admitting it much later on. When some of them were grandmothers. Obviously, we will never know about ones who didn’t own up. The subject is a fascinating one, and well documented. We give a couple of titles in the bibliography, but there are many more. What is interesting is how easily women could get away with it (after the not-really-serious were weeded out very early on). The Pollys often did well, acting as spies, where their wonderful skill at dressing up as women was a great help, and even getting promoted. There is a whole slew of explanations as to how they kept their secret while living with hundreds of men, and some of these turn up in Monstrous Regiment. For instance, in an age long before unisex fashions, trousers meant ‘man’ and skirts meant ‘woman’. Trousers plus high-pitched voice meant ‘young man’. People didn’t expect anything else, and saw what they expected to see. Many Pollys joined up as boys, and if the lad was a little shy, no one thought that odd. People did not often see one another naked, and the surgeon amputating a foot might only roll the trouser leg above the knee. But the big reason is that, if they are determined and careful, women can easily fool men. However, there was one thing, according to accounts, that many of them just could not manage. It was swearing. Many could not bring themselves to cuss, and found the ripe language of their comrades hard to bear, let alone imitate. So … a bit of a change there, at least! 13 Indeed, more or less throughout recorded history, but this is when it happened in a major way. Chapter 15 KIDS’ STUFF … YOU KNOW, ABOUT ’ORRID MURDER and BLOOD THERE ARE MANY LINKS between folklore and the mental world of children, but they do not always follow the paths one might expect. Theoreticians in the Ankh-Morpork Folklore Society (and indeed in similar institutions here) love to think that some age-old memory, preferably of something quite horrible, lurks in the background of the simplest rhyme or game. They claim, for example, that when children shape big fat figures out of piled-up snow and push in lumps of coal as eyes, these are ‘obvious survivals’ of primitive idols representing the dreaded Ice Giants with their tiny, deep-set black eyes who, according to mythology, will one day overwhelm the world. Of course, the children say they just do it for fun – they would, wouldn’t they? But a theoretical folklorist rarely if ever takes note of what the folk themselves have to say. It stands to reason that he or she is far better equipped than they are to roll back the mists of time. And in two shakes of a duck’s tail, the theory is accepted as a proven fact. If the moving pictures enterprise once begun at Holy Wood had succeeded, by now every audience in Ankh-Morpork would know that when a film-maker shows a brief shot of a snowman he means everyone to shudder at this sinister symbol of ecological doom and the imminent End of the World. Meanwhile, the kids go on throwing snowballs and lumps of coal around, regardless. In our Earthly culture, many parents and teachers worry whether fairy tales and nursery rhymes and children’s games and customs are respectable, morally and educationally sound, and fully in accord with health and safety regulations. Judging from existing records, few adults on the Disc are bothered by these issues. There, at least in the poorer parts of Ankh-Morpork, children freely play brutal and unhygienic street games, hallowed by long tradition. These include Dead Rat Conkers and Tiddley-Rat, though a recent observer has noted that Turd Races in the gutter appear to have died out, despite an attempt to take them upmarket with the name Poosticks. Hopscotch too is popular, especially a variation which Captain Vimes played in childhood, in which you kicked the least popular kid from one square to another, singing ‘William Scuggins is a bastard’ – actions and words which do not figure in handbooks designed for games teachers. Throughout the multiverse, parents have repeatedly discovered the useful fact that the best way to control a child is by working on its imagination to create a gruesome anthropomorphic personification: ‘Don’t you dare play in the cornfield! If you do, the Corn Mother will come with her long iron teeth and her long iron claws, and tear you to bits’ – ‘Behave yourselves while I’m out. Remember that Rawhead-and-Bloody-Bones is watching you!’ Used in moderation, these Frighteners and Prohibitory Monsters have a great deal to recommend them. If Nanny Ogg’s grandchildren believe there’s a demon inside the copper in her wash-house,14 and if country children everywhere are scared of deep pools because there’s something down there with green eyes and big teeth just longing to pull them in, a lot of nasty accidents will be avoided. But there are snags, particularly on Discworld. Even though the adults don’t believe the Frighteners are real, the children do, and the high magic quotient built into the very fabric of the Disc ensures that whatever is powerfully believed in will, very shortly, exist. (‘If only people would think before they invent monsters,’ sighed Miss Tick, the teacher-witch of the Chalk country.) The problem seems to be at its worst in cities. True, there are fewer natural dangers there, but semi-sadistic adults still enjoy inducing irrational fears, as Susan Sto-Helit found when she became a governess in Ankh-Morpork. Since she was one of the rare adults capable of seeing the resulting monsters, she knew how to deal with them: One of the many terrors conjured up by the previous governess’s happy way with children had been the bears that waited around in the street to eat you if you stood on the cracks [in the pavement]. Susan had taken to carrying the poker under her respectable coat. One wallop generally did the trick. The bears were amazed that anyone else saw them … The previous governess had used various monsters and bogeymen as a form of discipline. There was always something waiting to eat or carry off bad boys and girls for crimes like stuttering or defiantly and aggravatingly persisting in writing with their left hand. There was always a Scissor Man waiting for a little girl who sucked her thumb, always a bogeyman in the cellar. Of such bricks is the innocence of childhood constructed. [Hogfather] It is impossible to describe what bogeymen look like, since they are skilled shape-shifters and mould their appearance to match whatever horrors they find lurking in their child-victim’s subconscious. But one can say how to get rid of them – at any rate, on the Discworld. They are terrified of blankets, especially those with blue fluffy bunnies on. Even a small square of blanket fabric drives them off. Which stands to reason, for if you can protect yourself from a bogeyman by hiding your head under the blanket, how much more effective it will be to drop a blanket on his head! Most of the Frighteners exist on Earth too. A poem by A. A. Milne tells how Pavement Bears lurked in the streets of London in the 1930s; sensible children watched their feet as they walked, taking care to tread only on the square paving stones, never on the cracks between them. The Earthly Scissor Man, a monstrous tailor, was first described in nineteenth-century Germany by Heinrich Hoffman in Struwwelpeter, a book of verses known in English as Shock-Headed Peter. There, he is a tailor, a ‘great, long, red-legged Scissor Man’. One day Mama said, ‘Conrad dear, I must go out and leave you here. But mind now, Conrad, what I say, Don’t suck your thumb while I’m away. The great tall tailor always comes To little boys that suck their thumbs; And ere they dream what he’s about, He takes his great sharp scissors out, And cuts their thumbs clean off, and then, You know, they never grow again.’ On the Discworld, he looks different: When Susan turned to go up the stairs the Scissor Man was there. It wasn’t man-shaped. It was something like an ostrich, and something like a lizard on its hind legs, but almost entirely like something made out of blades. Every time it moved a thousand blades went snip, snip. Its long silver neck curved and a head made of shears stared down at her. ‘You’re not looking for me,’ she said. ‘You’re not my nightmare.’ [Hogfather] Then there’s the Sandman. He sweeps right across the world at the speed of dark, just as dusk falls, and gets inside every house where there are children. It’s up to him to make sure that they go up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire the very minute they’re told, and get straight into bed and go straight off to sleep, no fooling about. If the mother is kind-hearted and modern in her views, she will say he does this by sprinkling magic sand which makes them so sleepy that they can’t keep their eyes open. Those who are less soppy know that the bag of sand he carries is small, but heavy, and he doesn’t bother to take any out before he swings it against the child’s skull. These days, on our world, he has been ‘dwindled’; mums all have the same idea of a nice Sandman. But go back a couple of hundred years, to a time when people really knew how to keep children in a constant wholesome state of terror, and listen to what a nanny says in a story by another German author, E. T. A. Hoffman: ‘Oh, the Sandman is a wicked man, who comes to little children when they won’t go to bed, and throws handfuls of sand in their eyes, so they jump out of their heads all bloody; and he puts them in a bag and takes them to the half-moon as food for his little ones; and they sit there in the nest and have hooked beaks like owls, to pick at the eyes of naughty little boys and girls.’ The magic of childhood is not what it was. Thankfully, not all Anthropomorphic and Theriomorphic Personifications are so sinister. Jack Frost, an elderly man who draws ferns and paisley patterns on window panes at night, has no dealings with children at all. The Soul Cake Duck lays chocolate eggs for them, in gardens, on the Tuesday of the Soul Cake Days in the month of Sektober; she hides them well (but not too well), so that the kiddies can have fun hunting for them. In spite of her name, she does not lay cakes. Her equivalent on Earth is the German and Swiss Easter Hare, who has been laying eggs for children to find since the sixteenth century. Nowadays he is known in Britain and America under the name of the Easter Bunny – a terrible come-down. At first the Hare only laid real eggs, often brightly painted; more recently he has been producing chocolate ones. German and Swiss children enjoy building little nests of moss and flowers and hay, ready for the Hare to use. Just how a hare – and a male hare at that – can lay chocolate eggs will be no mystery to anyone who has noticed certain little brown oval objects in the corner of the rabbit hutch. Then there are the ever-welcome tooth fairies. Everybody knows what they do – when a child loses a tooth, he or she must slip it under the pillow, and a tooth fairy will come in the night to take it away, leaving at least half an Ankh-Morpork dollar as payment. Despite the name, they do not belong to the same species as elves, or even gnomes. They are human-sized, rather plain and dumpy, and none too bright. Fairies aren’t necessarily little twinkly creatures. It’s purely a job description, and the commonest ones aren’t even visible. A fairy is simply any creature currently employed under supernatural laws to take things away or, as in the case of the Verruca Gnome, to bring things. [Hogfather] Tooth fairies are to be found chiefly in towns (there are at least half a dozen in Ankh-Morpork alone), and then only in moderately well-off homes. This is probably due to socio-economic factors, since it is generally supposed that the coins the fairy brings have been recycled (by bogeymen) after being lost in the very same house. You won’t find many coins under the furniture of a cottage in Lancre, where the basic unit of currency is the chicken. Nor, come to that, in the poor quarters of Ankh-Morpork, in a place like Cockbill Street. Pennies were precious in Cockbill Street; if you had any spare ones you put them by to get you a decent funeral; you didn’t lose them under the settee, because you didn’t have one. The Tooth Fairy rarely visits Cockbill Street. Actually, it is wrong to speak of The Tooth Fairy, as if there was only one of her. The mistake originated in America somewhere around 1960, and has mysteriously leapt across the dimensions in an attempt to gain a footing in the Discworld. Fortunately, in Ankh-Morpork Violet Bottler and her fellow workers are united in loyalty to one another and to their weekly wage, insisting that they are all, each and every one of them, tooth fairies. In Britain, it is certain that fairies (in the plural) have been collecting children’s shed milk teeth from under pillows for about a hundred years, leaving money in exchange. What happened earlier is a mystery. Victorian folklore books do not mention tooth fairies, but this is probably because the collectors spent their time hunting for excitingly unusual customs and beliefs; it did not occur to them that the everyday stuff in their own homes was interesting too. Nowadays, owing to pervasive American influence, British children believe in one single Tooth Fairy. She is immensely popular. Even dentists talk about her, and keep a stock of dinky little envelopes with her picture on, so that when children have a tooth professionally extracted, they can take it home and pop it under the pillow just the same. So, how long have tooth fairies been around? There is one small scrap of evidence that in seventeenth-century England elves and fairies were already busy collecting pretty little items in the human world and carting them off to fairyland to decorate their dwellings – which answers the question, ‘What exactly do the fairies do with the teeth?’ This evidence comes in the poem ‘Oberon’s Palace’ by Robert Herrick, number 444 in his book Hesperides (1648). The poem describes a charming little cave or grotto where Oberon the Fairy King goes to make love to Queen Mab. They are very small fairies, possibly the same species as are often mistaken for wasps on the Disc. The cave walls are decorated with bits of peacock feathers, fish scales, blue snake skins, dewdrops etc. The floor is a mosaic of plum-tree gum, dice, brown toadstones, human fingernails, warts, and the teeth of squirrels and children ‘lately shed’. These bits and pieces, says Herrick, are ‘brought hither by the Elves’. They are not following quite the same procedure as a modern tooth fairy, since they don’t leave money, but they’re well on the way. There is another way of dealing with shed teeth, and this too goes back to the seventeenth century. Children would just rub the tooth with salt and throw it in the fire. This was still done in some homes in the 1950s, especially in the north of England, sometimes with a verse: Fire, fire, burn a bone, God send me a tooth again, A straight one, a strong one, A white shiny bright one. In many parts of Europe, especially Germany and Russia, it wasn’t fairies that took the teeth, but mice or rats. And what they gave in exchange was not a coin, but lovely new teeth to grow in place of the old – teeth as strong, sharp and well shaped as their own. So children would shove the tooth as far as they could down a mousehole, with some suitable rhyme: Mousey, mousey, mousey, Here’s my tooth of bone, Mousey, bring a new tooth, A tooth as hard as stone. Tooth Mice didn’t care whether a home was rich or poor, and they were one hundred per cent reliable. No child who put a tooth in a mousehole ever failed to find a new one growing through its gums. Unfortunately, the same magic law of like-to-like meant that if people were careless about shed teeth, the unlucky child could end up with something very ugly indeed. According to the folklorist Charlotte Latham, writing in 1878 about superstitions she had noted in Sussex ten years earlier: A servant girl said children’s cast teeth must never be thrown away, because if an animal found and gnawed them, the new tooth would grow just like that animal’s. ‘Look at old Master Simmons,’ she said, ‘with that gurt big pig’s tooth in his upper jaw. He allus says ’twas his mam’s fault, she having dropped one of his baby teeth in the hog’s trough, accidental like.’ Poor Master Simmons! If he had lived on the Disc, people would have told him how lucky he was to look just like the Hogfather, whose teeth are remarkably tusk-like. But there is an older, darker reason why shed teeth must either be entirely destroyed by fire, or be hidden somewhere where nobody can ever lay hands on them. It has to do with power, and control, and magic – a magic so old and so simple it’s hardly magic at all. In our world, this is explained by Sir James Frazer in his famous work The Golden Bough: The most familiar example of Contagious Magic is the magical sympathy which is supposed to exist between a man and any severed portion of his person, such as his hair or nails; so that whoever gets possession of human hair or nails may work his will, at any distance, upon the person from whom they were cut. This superstition is worldwide. Exactly the same principle works on the Discworld, as the assassin Teatime knows only too well, especially as regards teeth. So does Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully, who remarks, with reference to his own toenails, ‘You can’t be too careful. Get hold of something like someone’s nail clippings and you’ve got ’em under your control. That’s real old magic. Dawn of time stuff.’ [Hogfather] HOGSWATCH In the bleak midwinter, frosty winds make moan. People, on the other hand, make as much loud and cheerful noise as they can: People have always had the urge to sing and clang things at the dark stub of the year, when all sorts of psychic nastiness has taken advantage of the long grey days and the deep shadows to lurk and breed. Lately people in Ankh-Morpork’s better districts had taken to singing harmoniously, which rather lost the effect. Those who really understood just clanged something and shouted. [Hogfather] They also gather to eat and drink and dance, to light bonfires, and to give one another presents. This happens in many parts of the multiverse, provided the climate is suitable. Obviously, you’ve got to have a midwinter before you can have a midwinter festival, so there’s no point looking for one in hot regions like Djelibeybi or the Rimward hinterland of Klatch, but wherever there’s a cold dark season you can find something pretty much like Hogswatchnight. It’s a way of telling the Sun what you expect of him – ‘Rise and shine, Sun, start to grow strong again, drive back the Ice Giants, bring us the warmth of Spring.’ The Sun needs a little encouragement, whatever astronomers may say. The Disc is a lucky world in that the sensible arrangement of its sun, its disc, and its supporting elephants has ensured that the dates of its solstices can be easily observed without any need for complicated maths – unlike Earth, where the hours of sunrise and sunset stay apparently the same for three or four days around midsummer and midwinter, giving rise to muddled arguments over whether Midsummer Day is 21 June or 24 June, and why the Romans chose 25 December rather than the 21st as the Feast of the Unconquered Sun. It is also lucky for the inhabitants of Lancre, Ankh-Morpork and the Sto Plains that some sensible ruler in ancient times decided that the night of the winter solstice, Hogswatchnight, would also count as New Year’s Eve. Would that all calendars were as simple and rational! As a result, it is both the time of the darkest shadows, and the time when all the old year’s occult rubbish has piled up and must be cleared away, and the time for the largest, loudest feast of the year. The name ‘Hogswatch’ makes perfectly good sense for the Discworld, where the festive fare at midwinter is centred on pig-meat in one form or another – roast boar, pork joints, pork pies, sausages, hams, pigs’ heads, black puddings – and where the Hogfather, the seasonal gift-bringer, gallops across the skies in a sledge drawn by wild boars. This is a world where pigs (at least, certain special pigs on a certain special night) can and do fly. Oddly, in Scotland and northern England there is a rather similar-sounding name for New Year’s Eve, Hogmanay – a word which has been known since the sixteenth century, but which nobody has managed to explain. Moreover, British Methodists call Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve the Watch Nights, and hold midnight services. There are parts of Europe (notably Romania, Serbia, Sweden and Norway) where roast pig or a pig’s head is the thing to eat at Christmas. All this surely proves that echoes of the great Discworld festival drifted across the dimensions and became fruitfully confused in receptive Earthly minds. Be that as it may, there is a good practical reason why midwinter feasting is so lavish – it’s the season for a mass slaughter of livestock. Why use up large amounts of fodder keeping all your animals alive through the winter? Come the spring, a single young healthy bull, ram and boar will be enough to service all your cows, ewes and sows. So, kill off the surplus males, and for once everyone can eat as much fresh meat as they like, and then salt or smoke the rest, and with luck they’ll have enough to last all winter. Farmers have been doing this for thousands of years. The people who built Stonehenge, about 2500 BC, left enormous piles of half-eaten bones littering a village some two miles away – bones of cattle, and many, many pigs. The pigs’ teeth show they were young beasts, killed at about nine months old, just right for the winter solstice. And there were so many bones that people must have been gathering from miles around for this annual feast. Whatever its name may have been, it was the Hogswatch of its time. Very likely, it went on for more than just one night and day. There’s not much work needed on farms at midwinter, so why not spread the fun out for as long as possible? Many peoples have had this idea. The Ancient Romans managed to turn most of December into one long festive season. First came the Saturnalia, a period of five or six days of revelry beginning on 17 December and honouring Saturn, god of new-sown crops. Shops were closed, work was forbidden (except cooking and baking), people gave one another presents, and everyone was expected to be full of jests and japes and jollity. There were parties, at which men drew lots to see who would preside as ‘king’ of the feast; his word was law, and he could order the guests to do all kinds of ridiculous things – dance naked, for instance, or pick up the flute-girl and carry her three times round the room. Often, social distinctions were turned topsy-turvy: slaves sat at table and gorged, while their masters waited on them. We suspect that the slaves were magnanimous in office, though; tomorrow the masters would be the masters again. Then came the Feast of the Unconquered Sun on the 25th, a relatively sober affair. And then the wild three-day celebration of the Kalends, beginning on New Year’s Day, 1 January. All Romans, rich or poor, ate and drank the best they could afford. Adults gave one another presents yet again (children are not mentioned). Houses were decked inside and out with evergreens – holly, ivy, laurel, branches of conifers, whatever was still alive and green in the dead season. There were torches and lamps everywhere. People hardly went to bed, but roamed the streets disguised in masks and weird costumes of animal skins. A great deal of wine was consumed. So powerful were these traditions that when the Roman Empire became Christian most of its midwinter customs were adapted so as to fit in with the new religion. Christ’s birth was being celebrated on 25 December in Rome as early as the year 354, while in 567 a Church Council at Tours laid down that the whole period of twelve days from 25 December to 6 January (feast of the Epiphany) would be one long festal cycle, during which all but the most essential work must cease. And so the Twelve Days of Christmas were born. There are echoes of all this on the Disc. There are songs about what gifts one’s true love sends on the Twelve Days of Hogswatch, involving partridges and pear trees, and others about the rising of the sun and the running of the deer. Homes are decorated with special Hogswatch trees, not to mention holly, ivy, mistletoe. The mistletoe is felt, obscurely, to be especially significant, even in Unseen University, where there can be no question of anyone kissing anyone: ‘Well, er … it’s … well, it’s symbolic, Archchancellor.’ ‘Ah?’ The Senior Wrangler felt that something more was expected. He groped around in the dusty attics of his education. ‘Of … the leaves, d’y’see … they’re symbolic of … of green, d’y’see, whereas the berries, in fact, yes, the berries symbolize … symbolize white. Yes. White and green. Very … symbolic.’ He waited. He was not, unfortunately, disappointed. ‘What of?’ ‘I’m not sure that there has to be an of,’ he said. ‘Ah? So,’ said the Archchancellor, thoughtfully, ‘it could be said that the white and green symbolize a small parasitic plant?’ ‘Yes indeed,’ said the Senior Wrangler. ‘So mistletoe, in fact, symbolizes mistletoe?’ ‘Exactly, Archchancellor,’ said the Senior Wrangler, who was now just hanging on. ‘Funny thing, that,’ said Ridcully, in the same thoughtful tone of voice. ‘That statement is either so deep that it would take a lifetime to fully comprehend every particle of its meaning, or it is a load of absolute tosh. Which is it, I wonder?’ [Hogfather] Not tosh, probably. Plants which insist on staying green, and even bearing white berries or red berries, when others are bare and dry are, in their own way, as unconquered as the midwinter sun. They are life, and they refuse to die. Unseen University observes another age-old custom at Hogswatch, the appointment of a Boy Archchancellor. A first-year student is selected to be the Archchancellor for a whole day, from dawn till dusk. During this period he can exert the full powers of that office, and there are many tales of japes played on senior members of the College Council. Yet inevitably, inexorably, dusk will come. For this reason the student selected for the honour is usually the most unpopular boy in the University, and his life expectancy the following day is brief. On Earth too there are traces of this urge to turn normal authority upside down during midwinter and New Year celebrations. At the Roman Saturnalia, as we have said, slaves feasted while masters acted as servants. In medieval France, low-ranking clergy sometimes took charge of the services in cathedrals on New Year’s Day or Twelfth Day and turned them into a Feast of Fools or Asses’ Feast. Their leader would call himself ‘bishop’ or ‘pope’ for the day. Theologians in Paris in 1445 complained that these clerical revellers came into church dressed up in ridiculous costumes and masks, pretending to be women and minstrels; they ran up and down the aisles, leaping and dancing; worse still, they sat round the altar eating black puddings, gambling, and singing wanton songs, and then went out into the streets to entertain the crowds with their foolery. There was another medieval ‘reversal ritual’ known in towns all over western Europe, but this one was absolutely respectable, well controlled, and full of charm – the custom of the Boy Bishop. Either on 6 December, the feast of St Nicholas (the patron saint of children), or on 28 December, the feast of the Holy Innocents (the babies Herod killed), the choirboys had a day off, and chose one of their number to be the Boy Bishop. He held office until Twelfth Night. Dressed in full episcopal robes, he could sit in the bishop’s throne and preside at certain services, while the rest of the boys also wore fine robes and sat in the chapter stalls; the real bishop (if present) and the other higher clergy had to go and sit in the choir-stalls. The custom was especially popular in England, where it spread to abbeys, some Oxford and Cambridge colleges, and many wealthy parish churches. Henry VIII forbade it, but it survived (or was revived) in some places. It is still done in Hereford Cathedral, where the Boy Bishop preaches a sermon on St Nicholas’s Day. Meanwhile, out in the countryside, people have their own little ways, as Albert explains when Death talks about the ‘real meaning’ of Hogswatch: ‘What, you mean that the pigs and cattle have all been slaughtered and with any luck everyone’s got enough food for the winter?’ WELL, WHEN I SAY THE REAL MEANING— ‘Some wretched devil’s had his head chopped off in a wood somewhere ’cos he found a bean in his dinner and now the summer’s going to come back?’ NOT EXACTLY THAT, BUT— ‘Oh, you mean that they’ve chased down some poor beast and shot arrows up into their apple trees and now the shadows are going to go away?’ THAT IS DEFINITELY A MEANING, BUT I— ‘Ah, then you’re talking about the one where they light a bloody big bonfire to give the sun a hint and tell it to stop lurking under the horizon and do a proper day’s work?’ YOU’RE NOT HELPING, ALBERT. ‘Well, they’re all the real meanings that I know.’ It is amazing how much of all this used to happen in our world too, in the days when farming was farming, and no one had invented Health and Safety Regulations and Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Bonfires blazed; burning barrels and cartwheels were rolled down steep hills into watching crowds; men ran through the streets carrying barrels of flaming tar on their heads. In regions where cider apples were grown, villagers would come at midwinter to ‘wassail’ the trees. This meant they would beat the trunks with sticks, fire guns up into the branches, pour ale over the roots, yell, howl, and blow horns. And they told the trees what was expected of them: Here stands a jolly good old apple tree. Stand fast, root; bear well, top. Every little bough, bear an apple now; Every little twig, Bear an apple big! Hats full, caps full, Three-bushel-sacks full! Whoop, whoop, holloa! Blow, blow the horns! The trees had better take notice, or else … Apple-tree, apple-tree, Bear good fruit, Or down with your top And up with your root! As for ‘chasing down some poor beast’, there was plenty of that too. In the nineteenth century, bricklayers from Sussex towns would get a day off at the end of November, and go in gangs to the nearest woods armed with short, heavy sticks which they would hurl at squirrels and any other small animals they saw. If they did manage to hit a squirrel, they took it home to eat. Foxes, on the other hand, are quite inedible. Which has never discouraged generations of English from going fox-hunting on 26 December, a date called Boxing Day or St Stephen’s Day. Then there was the very curious custom of hunting the wren, which was once widespread in England, France, the Isle of Man, Wales, and especially in Ireland; it happened on St Stephen’s Day, or Christmas Day, or Twelfth Day. One would hardly think this tiny bird worth hunting, even though it is nicknamed ‘king of the birds’. What makes it odder still is that on any other date it would be extremely wicked to kill one, a crime which only the lowest coward would stoop to, and which would bring terrible bad luck. But on the right day, a dead wren was the luckiest thing in the world. The young men who had hunted and killed it would make a big display of it. Some fastened it to a long pole, with its wings extended; others hung it by the legs between two crossed hoops garlanded with greenery; others carried it on a little bier decorated with ribbons. Then they formed a procession and solemnly carried it from house to house, chanting: We hunted the wren for Robin the Bobbin, We hunted the wren for Jack the Can, We hunted the wren for Robin the Bobbin, We hunted the wren for everyone. and: The wren, the wren, the king of the birds, On Stephen’s Day was caught in the furze. Although he is little, his family’s great, I pray you, good lady, give us a treat. Those who did give the ‘wren-boys’ money or a drink would get one of the wren’s feathers to keep for luck, and as a charm against shipwreck. What can all this mean? Was it just a way of getting beer and money? Or a joke (for the humans, if not for the bird), making fun of upper-class huntsmen who are so proud of trophies? Or was it a survival of some incredibly ancient magic ritual involving the sacrifice of a sacred animal at midwinter? On the Discworld, there’s no doubt at all, as Quoth the Raven explains: ‘Blood on the snow, making the sun come up. Starts off with animal sacrifice, y’know, hunt some big hairy animal to death, that kind of stuff. You know there’s some people up on the Ramtops who kill a wren at Hogswatch and walk around from house to house singing about it? With a whack-fol-oh-diddle-dildo. Very folkloric, very myffic.’ ‘A wren? Why?’ ‘I dunno. Maybe someone said, hey, how’d you like to hunt this evil bustard of an eagle with his big sharp beak and great ripping talons, sort of thing, or how about instead you hunt this wren, which is basically about the size of a pea and goes “twit”? Go on, you choose.’ But killing a bird or beast, however sacred, is not half as impressive as killing a human, especially an important one, especially a king. The Raven says that once, long ago, that’s what used to happen, up to a point – the king was not a real king, presumably because real kings don’t take kindly to being killed off after just one year on the throne, and have bodyguards to see no one tries it. ‘Then they start this business where some poor bugger finds a special bean in his tucker, oho, everyone says, you’re king, mate, and he thinks “This is a bit of all right” only next thing he’s legging it over the snow with a dozen other buggers chasing him with holy sickles so’s the earth’ll come to life again and all this snow’ll go away.’ This is a very remarkable piece of information, which probably explains what happened when Sir James Frazer, that most famous of Victorian speculative folklorists, turned his attention to a cheerful, innocent little Christmas custom, and came up with a splendidly melodramatic theory. In England and France, from Tudor times onwards, people used to round off the Twelve Days of Christmas with a lavish party on Twelfth Night. There was a big, rich cake. In that cake was a bean. Whoever got the slice with the bean in it would be ‘King of the Bean’ for the rest of the day, and would preside at the celebrations. It was simply a bit of fun – no violence, no sinister implications. But Frazer decided that it was really the survival of a bloodthirsty primitive ritual, long, long ago, in which the King of the Bean had been put to death when the revels were over. He had no shred of evidence, just a powerful hunch that mock kings must somehow also be sacred sacrificial victims. In the light of what we now know to be the case on the Discworld, it seems certain that Frazer’s mind had been invaded by some drifting inspiration from that distant universe.15 Way back in the early centuries of the Disc’s existence, the Hogfather had been a sacred victim, hunted and slaughtered in animal or human form so that the sun would rise and the snows melt. He had been the boar, the wren, the Bean King. But times change, and old gods must find new jobs. Nowadays, the Hogfather is the Midwinter Visitor, the Gift-Bringer, and Hogswatch is meant to be, on the whole, just for kids. Toys, stockings on the end of the bed, crackers and puddings, holly and cards, jolly little figures of elves and fairies. But he still lives in a Castle of Bone, far away in the icy regions near the Hub. People still make offerings to him, of a sort – the glass of sherry and the pork pie left on the mantelpiece, the carrots for the boars that pull his sledge. His colours are red and white, even if nobody now thinks about blood on the snow. And he is, still, just a little scary, even when he is handing out toys in a sparkly grotto in Crumley’s Emporium: HAPPY HOGSWATCH AND BE GOOD. I WILL KNOW IF YOU’RE GOOD OR BAD, YOU KNOW. HO. HO. HO. ‘Well, you brought some magic into that little life,’ said Albert. IT’S THE EXPRESSION ON THEIR LITTLE FACES I LIKE, said the Hogfather. ‘You mean sort of fear and awe and not knowing whether to laugh or cry or wet their pants?’ YES. NOW THAT IS WHAT I CALL BELIEF. The Hogfather’s duties include moral judgement. Has the child been good or bad, naughty or nice? A good little boy gets, say, a model Klatchian war chariot with real spinning sword blades. A bad little boy traditionally gets nothing but a bag of smelly old bones, though modern and enlightened parents are beginning to back off from this practice, on the grounds that (a) it causes a nasty complex, and (b) you really do not want to be woken up by all this weeping and wailing at six in the morning. On Earth, supernatural midwinter visitors have been around in Europe for centuries. They are a very mixed lot – saints and angels and even the Child Jesus on the one hand, hags and goblins and mock-terrible monsters on the other – and they turn up on various dates from November through to Twelfth Night. One of the first to arrive is St Martin (11 November), who comes to Antwerp, Ypres, and other Flemish towns. He wears a red cloak, and rides a white horse. Children hang up stockings stuffed with hay in their bedrooms; by morning the hay has disappeared, replaced by apples, nuts, and little cakes shaped like horseshoes. That’s assuming the children have been good, naturally; if they haven’t, all they find is a cane to beat them. Then there is St Nicholas, patron saint of children, who brings them gifts either on the eve of his own feast day (6 December) or on Christmas Eve. He is famous in Holland and Belgium, and in the Catholic parts of Germany, Switzerland and Austria. He comes in the night riding a white horse (or donkey); he is dressed as a bishop in red robes embroidered with gold, and has a fine white beard. Children put out hay and carrots for his steed, and a glass of schnapps for his servant who carries the bag of presents, whose name is Scruffy Johnny, or Black Peter. Often there is someone else with them – the hideous Krampus or Klaubauf, a shaggy monster with horns, black face, fiery eyes, and chains that clank as he moves. Children who know their catechism will be rewarded with sweets; those who don’t had better look out, for Krampus and Black Peter both carry a stick to beat them. The Protestant parts of Germany disapproved of saints, so St Nicholas is not mentioned there. Instead, it is the Christ Child, imagined as a radiantly lovely little boy, who comes at midnight on Christmas Eve to bless the good children and leave presents for them. However, it wouldn’t do for things to be all sweetness and light. So in north Germany there is also Knecht Ruprecht, a weird figure dressed in skins or straw; if children have been good and can sing a hymn nicely, he rewards them with apples and gingerbread from his wallet, but if they can’t he beats them with a bag of soot and ashes. In some parts people call him Rough Klas or Ashy Klas; since ‘Klas’ is short for ‘Nicholas’, they must think he is an avatar of the saint. Nowadays, the mood has changed. It is not now thought to be good for little children to be scared out of their wits, even if it does make them behave themselves. So in the course of the twentieth century some of the worst bogey-figures have reinvented themselves as comic and kindly. Take the Icelandic Gryla, for example, who has been around for some seven hundred years. She is a huge ugly she-troll with fifteen tails, carrying a sheepskin sack and accompanied by her thirteen sons, the Christmas Lads, who are smaller but equally ugly. Until fairly recently, the whole point about Gryla was that she was hunting for naughty children, to carry them off in that sack, and eat them; a fine old tradition with the smack of authenticity. Now she brings sweets and goodies in the sack, and the thirteen Lads slip into a child’s room, one by one, during the thirteen nights before Christmas, to pop something nice under the pillow … They still look like goblins, though. The best-known of all the gift-bringers on Earth, and most like the Hogfather, is the one whom some call Father Christmas and others Santa Claus and others Le Père Noël. He has been around for over 600 years, and is now stronger than ever. The myth just grows and grows and grows, since it is powered by money. When first glimpsed, in England at the end of the Middle Ages, he had nothing to do with children, and little to do with gifts. He wasn’t even necessarily called Father Christmas, but could be ‘Captain Christmas’, ‘Prince Christmas’, or ‘Sir Christmas’. His job was to personify all the joys of eating, drinking and general jollity. In the 1460s the rector of Plymtree in Devonshire wrote a lively carol about Sir Christmas singing ‘Nowell, Nowell!’ outside the door, and urging everybody to drink as much as possible: Buvez bien par toute la compagnie, Make good cheer and be right merry! He was still at it in the early seventeenth century (in spite of Puritan disapproval), when he was featured in Ben Jonson’s play Christmas his Masque (1616), coming on stage followed by his equally jolly sons, whose names were Misrule, Carol, Mince Pie, Pots-and-Pan, New Year Gift, Mumming, Wassail, and Baby Cake. He wore doublet and hose and a high-crowned hat with a brooch, and had a long thin beard. It was Charles Dickens who gave the finest account of a personified Christmas Spirit who embodies the joys of food and drink, in his A Christmas Carol (1843). He told how Scrooge came face to face with a ‘jolly Giant, glorious to see’, in a room thickly hung with holly, ivy and mistletoe, and piled high with food: Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkey, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince pies, plum puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that made the chamber dim with their delicious steam. This Spirit looks like a younger version of Father Christmas, or indeed of the Hogfather. Like them, he wears a long simple robe, trimmed with white fur, but in his case it is green, not red, and has no hood; he has long curly brown hair, and is wearing a wreath of holly set with icicles. And though he takes Scrooge on a visionary journey through the night, wandering invisibly from house to house to watch the celebrations, he does not bring presents for the kiddies. Even so, the idea of Father Christmas as a gift-bringer started infiltrating Victorian Britain, probably from Germany. He became quite a familiar figure – an old man, bearded, trudging through the snow with his sack of presents, dressed in a long hooded gown which was often, but by no means always, red. He did not have a companion to beat or threaten naughty children, as his Continental kinsmen had. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, something quite extraordinary had been happening. The Dutch settlers in New Amsterdam (later renamed New York) had kept up the tradition that St Nicholas would come in the night of 5/6 December to pop presents in the shoes or stockings of sleeping children, just as he did in their old homeland. In 1809 the very popular writer Washington Irving drew attention to this, but transferred the idea to Christmas Eve. And then in 1822, suddenly, inexplicably, inspiration gripped a clergyman and professor of Hebrew and Oriental Languages called Clement Clark Moore, and he wrote a little poem for his children. He called it ‘A Visit from St Nicholas’, but most people now think of the first line, not the title: ’Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house … Moore probably disapproved of saints, and even bishops, since his Nicholas is not a bishop in full regalia on a white horse, but a fat little gnome, hurtling through the sky in a miniature sleigh drawn by eight tiny reindeer. (Why reindeer? Nobody knows. There are no reindeer in Holland.) He comes and goes by way of the chimney. He carries a sack of presents. As for his appearance: He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot, And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot … His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow; The stump of his pipe he held hard in his teeth, And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath; He had a broad face and a little round belly, That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly. Before too long, the folk imagination got to work. Bishops were forgotten, and the gift-bringer’s name was shortened to Santa Claus. In the 1860s the artist Thomas Nash began drawing him. Nash dropped the furs, preferring the typical Dutch costume of a belted jacket, blue breeches, and a flat sailor’s cap. But by the end of the nineteenth century red became the standard colour (with or without white trimmings), and the cap became a red one, long and floppy. In the twentieth, Santa Claus acquired a team of elves as little helpers, and a home near the North Pole. This American Santa Claus arrived in England in 1854, by way of a fictional story by Susan and Ann Warner, ‘The Christmas Stocking’. Little by little he became popular, and he and the native Father Christmas blended together, sometimes using one name, sometimes the other; sometimes in a long robe, sometimes in a jacket. And now the combined figure is spreading all over the world. This extraordinary history shows beyond doubt that a truly powerful idea bounces to and fro across space and time, from mind to mind and from one universe to another. In a way, both Santa and the Hogfather are communal ‘Shakespearean’ creations. As we point out elsewhere, Will would happily drag some fragments of myth and folklore together and weld them into something new in such a way that the end result suits our sense of narrative grammar. Did people in northern Europe make sacrifices at the winter solstice? Yes. Human? Could be, long, long ago, to the extent that as a species we have occasionally indulged in human sacrifice, but later the most likely sacrifice would have been a horse or a farm animal. And the King of the Bean? A good story, which satisfies our desire for a thrilling narrative, but almost certainly untrue. The evolution of the proto Hogfather? Indeed, the person seen by Susan going through his different personifications does add up to the ‘festive spirit’. And the suggestion that, via some deep visceral means, the colours of the said spirit have become the colours of blood on snow? That’s a happy coincidence, and a good story, but it’s not folklore! One final thing. The Coca-Cola company is often credited with the ‘modern’ look of Father Christmas, but it is much truer to say that it popularized, over much of the world, one ‘look’ among many that already existed. Exposure wins. (For example, as Terry mentions in his introduction, the ‘magpie rhyme’ that introduced the ITV children’s series in the late 1960s and the 1970s almost certainly did a lot to wipe out the existing regional variations of the rhyme.) But across the Channel, at least, older avatars often appear alongside, or even instead of, the red and white demigod of Christmas expenditure. HO. HO. HO! 14 In this particular case, the demonic warning might well be justified. 15 Both the authors discovered Frazer in their teens and were bowled over, as probably most readers are, but became more sceptical later on. Folklorists have learned to be careful; if it looks like a jolly good story, it may very well be one. Chapter 16 DEATH DEATH MAY WELL BE THE ONLY SUPERNATURAL entity (strictly speaking, an anthropomorphic personification) which is known and acknowledged throughout the entire multiverse. His arrival is quite, quite certain – and yet, most people secretly hope that for them and their friends it will be indefinitely delayed, and his actual manifestation generally comes as a surprise. On the Discworld only wizards and witches can foresee his arrival; on Earth, only exceptionally holy men and women. Some people try to bargain with him, staking lives on the outcome of a game of chess or cards. This rarely succeeds, though Granny Weatherwax did once win against him at Cripple Mr Onion (of course, he knew she would). Others try to run away. This is quite hopeless, since Death keeps an appointments diary, and knows precisely where and when he is scheduled to find them. A story is told about this on our world. It is part of the age-old traditions of Muslim lands, and reached English-speaking countries in the 1930s through a play by Somerset Maugham and a novel by John O’Hara. It tells of a servant who was buying food for his master’s household in the street market in Baghdad one morning when someone jostled him, and he turned to find himself face to face with Death, who made an abrupt gesture. Terrified, the servant ran home, begged his master for the loan of a horse, and galloped off to Samarra, which is about 75 miles away. The master then went to the market-place himself, and there he too saw Death. ‘Why did you raise your hand to threaten my servant?’ said he. ‘That was no threat,’ answered Death, ‘only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him here in Baghdad, for I have an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.’ Something similar happened once on the Disc, as we learn from The Colour of Magic, when Rincewind jostled a tall dark figure in the bazaar of Ankh-Morpork, and was told I WAS EXPECTING TO MEET THEE IN PSEPHOPOLOLIS. Actually, it turned out to be a misunderstanding. On both the Disc and the Earth Death manifests himself to humans and humanoid races (e.g. dwarfs) as a very tall human skeleton, every bone pleasantly polished, with remote but piercing points of blue light in his eye sockets. His deep resonant voice has been compared to many things of a funereal nature, such as the clang of the leaden doors of a crypt when slammed deep underground, yet no comparison really does it justice. He wears a hooded robe woven of absolute darkness. Normally he carries a scythe, but also owns a sword for use on kings; both weapons have shimmering semi-transparent ice-blue blades, for separating souls from bodies. There is usually an hourglass hidden in the folds of his robe; this is a lifetimer, which measures the life-span of the person he is about to visit. On Earth there are some countries in whose languages ‘death’ is a feminine word (la mort, morte, muerta). This has no effect at all on the manifested appearance of Death in those lands. In any case, it takes a calm, well-trained eye to tell a male from a female skeleton, and black hooded robes are unisex attire. There was a time when Death thought it polite to appear in whatever form the client expected – at least, for human clients; what shape he assumes when manifesting himself to, say, a sea anemone, a mayfly, or a nettle is beyond conjecture. However, he discovered that most people have no clear expectations at all, probably because in their hearts they never really believe they will die. And those who do think they know what they will see have some pretty strange ideas. For example, King Teppicymon XXVII, Pharaoh of Djelibeybi, found that the hooded robe lacked a certain something: ‘I understood that Death came as a three-headed giant scarab beetle,’ said the king. Death shrugged. WELL, NOW YOU KNOW. ‘What’s that thing in your hand?’ THIS? IT’S A SCYTHE. ‘Strange-looking object, isn’t it?’ said the pharaoh. ‘I thought Death carried the Flail of Mercy and the Reaping Hook of Justice.’ Death appeared to think about this. WHAT IN? he said. ‘Pardon?’ ARE WE STILL TALKING ABOUT A GIANT BEETLE? ‘Ah. In his mandibles, I suppose. But I think he’s got arms in one of the frescoes in the palace. Seems a bit silly, really, now I come to tell someone. I mean, a giant beetle with arms. And the head of an ibis, I seem to recall.’ [Pyramids] There have been times and places on Earth where Death would have found it just as tricky to fit in with his local image. For the Ancient Egyptians, he would have had to appear as Anubis, a man with the head of a jackal or wild dog; for certain South American peoples, as a cross between a jaguar and an eagle; for some Hindus, as the ferocious many-armed goddess Kali, adorned with garlands of skulls. So he decided to stick to what he liked best, using the costume and attributes he had been gradually collecting over the past 2,000 years or so. His starting-point was the Bible, specifically the sixth chapter of the Apocalypse (or Book of Revelation), which speaks of a ‘rider on a pale horse’ whose name was Death, wearing a crown, and flourishing a sword. The same passage mentions three other riders as his companions, War, Famine, and Pestilence. On the Discworld too, in suitable circumstances, he teams up with them and they appear together as the Four Horsemen of the Apocralypse, as a sure sign that the world is just about to end – probably. Some of their doings on the Disc are recorded in The Light Fantastic, Sourcery, Interesting Times, and Thief of Time; and on Earth in Good Omens. Death liked the idea of a horse, and got himself a handsome white steed named Binky, who is real flesh-and-blood, though capable of galloping in the air and across the dimensions as well as on land. He did briefly experiment with skeletal horses, but found bits kept dropping off; and fiery horses, which tended to burn down the stable. Binky is far more practical, and more reliable. He is well fed and well groomed (Death strongly disapproves of artists who represent the Pale Horse as a mangy, starving creature). From time to time he requires new horseshoes, and on these occasions Death takes him to the best farrier on the Disc, Jason Ogg of Lancre. Jason’s gift as a craftsman is that he can shoe anything, anything, that anyone brings him – a horse, a goose, a unicorn, an ant. But the price to be paid for the gift is that he must shoe anything anyone brings. So on certain nights, when he hears a certain knock and a certain voice, he does as his father and grandfather did before him: he puts on a blindfold, and shoes what must from the feel of it be the finest horse in the world – and certainly the most docile. As far as is known, Death has not made similar arrangements on Earth. But apparently the Devil did, once. It’s said that there was once a blacksmith at Keenthorne in Shropshire who was so proud of his skill that he boasted that ‘if the Devil himself came to his forge he would shoe his horse for him, aye, and shoe him to rights too!’ And then, one dark midnight, a traveller on a great black horse arrived, demanding that it be shod – and the smith noted with horror that the rider himself had a hoof. The smith ran off in a panic and roused the parson, begging him for help. The parson answered that he must fulfil his boast, but should accept no payment, for that would be selling himself to the Devil. So the smith did shoe the Devil’s horse, most efficiently, but though the Devil repeatedly offered him good payment, he would take nothing. The Devil and his horse vanished in a flash of fire. To return to Death. In the course of the Middle Ages he became dissatisfied with the idea of himself as the crowned and sword-wielding Rider of the Pale Horse. He disliked the idea of kingship, even though it appealed to many artists and poets – to Milton, for example, who in Paradise Lost describes Death as a dark, faceless but menacing shadow: What seemed his head The likeness of a kingly crown had on. On one occasion on the Discworld, Death (who at the time had become more or less human and was calling himself Bill Door) encountered an entity which had taken on his role, and had adopted much the same wraith-like manifestation as Milton described. This filled him with fury: The new Death raised his cowl. There was no face there. There was not even a skull. Smoke curled formlessly between the robe and a golden crown. Bill Door raised himself on his elbows. A CROWN? His voice shook with rage. I NEVER WORE A CROWN! You never wanted to rule. [Reaper Man] And so Death went looking for another image from our world. He decided he liked the look of Old Father Time, an old man carrying a scythe and an hourglass. This figure had evolved out of a god called Cronus in Ancient Greece and Saturn in Rome, who carried a sickle or a scythe because he was a god of agriculture, and an hourglass because he had also become the god of Time (this happened because ‘Cronus’ sounds almost exactly like chronos, meaning ‘time’ in Greek). Now, harvesting and death are two faces of the same thing, depending on the point of view. If you are the farmer reaping corn or grass, you’re looking ahead to the bread, the beer, the hay for the cattle, and you go home for a cheery Harvest Supper with plenty of drink and a hey-nonny-no, and maybe a barn dance. But if you are the plant being reaped, what you’re going through is death. Seeing the sense in this, Death copied the scythe and hourglass of Cronus, and adopted the title of the Grim Reaper. It was, after all, his job to separate the wheat-germ of the soul from the chaff of the mortal body. Both the Rider and the Reaper were thought of, at first, as having the normal body of a living man. However, the European Middle Ages had a rather morbid interest in physical decay, so for a while Death adopted the appearance of a rotting corpse, with split belly, peeling skin, and crawling worms, wearing (if anything) a shroud. Many medieval painters and sculptors showed him in this form. Then, little by little, he changed over to something more hygienic – just clean, gleaming bones. His new idea of himself as a Skeleton Reaper seeped into the minds of Italian artists during the fourteenth century. He can be seen in this guise, for example, on early packs of Tarot cards (he is Number 13 among the Greater Trumps, which accounts for a lot). Then, soon after 1400, painters in the Netherlands who had to do the illustrations for manuscripts of the Apocalypse got the message, and started drawing the Rider on the Pale Horse as a skeleton too. At first they kept the sword (after all, that’s what the Book said), but by the end of the century woodcuts in German Bibles were giving him the scythe instead. And that, give or take a black cloak and hood, is how Death still usually chooses to be seen: a skeleton on a white horse, with a scythe and an hourglass. He allows himself one touch of luxury – the robe is fastened with a silver brooch engraved with an omega, which is the last letter of the Greek alphabet and so very definitely signals The End. Also, it’s a pretty shape. It was also towards the end of the European Middle Ages that Death learned how to dance. He is famed for it. Any dance, every dance – square dances, round dances, reels, the polka, the mazurka, the waltz, the tango, the Quirmish bull-dance (oh-lay!): A high-speed fusillade of hollow snapping noises suddenly kept time with the music. ‘Who’s playing the maracas?’ Death grinned. ‘MARACAS? I DON’T NEED … MARACAS.’ [Reaper Man] That was on the Disc. He can be just as energetic on Earth too, judging by old prints of skeletons wildly leaping about, and by a story told in Sussex in the 1860s, as recorded by Charlotte Latham: There stood upon the Downs close to Broadwater an old oak tree, and people said that always on Midsummer Eve, just at midnight, a number of skeletons started up from its roots and, joining hands, danced round it till cock-crow, then as suddenly sank down again. They said several persons had actually seen this dance of death; one young man in particular, having been detained by business at Findon till very late, and forgetting that it was Midsummer Eve, had been frightened out of his very senses by seeing the dead men caper to the rattling of their own bones. On other occasions, his dancing is sedate and courtly. In Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Dance of Death was often painted on the walls of cemeteries and churches; it showed a line of men and skeletons, hand in hand, pacing along in a slow and stately chain-dance. In England there was a famous mural in the cloister of London’s Old St Paul’s Cathedral (the one that burned down in the Great Fire of 1666), and there is still a set of carvings on the ceiling of Roslyn Chapel near Edinburgh. The Dance was also painted in the margins of prayer books, and acted out in religious pageants. Nowadays, it is best remembered as the closing shot of Ingmar Bergman’s film The Seventh Seal. On the Discworld, Death has often tried to act in human ways as a relief from his unremitting memory of both past and future, but he rarely gets much satisfaction from it. Fishing, gambling, getting drunk and joining the Klatchian Foreign Legion in order to forget have not really worked for him. His greatest success was his spell as a farm labourer (harvesting a speciality), as described in Reaper Man; he also on one occasion enjoyed riding a rather special motorbike: There were two small cart-wheels, one behind the other, with a saddle in between them. In front of the saddle was a pipe with a complicated double curve in it, so that someone sitting in the saddle would be able to get a grip. The rest was junk. Bones and tree branches and a jackdaw’s bouquet of gewgaws. A horse’s skull was strapped over the front wheel, and feathers and beads hung from every point. [Soul Music] Death is clearly the patron saint of album covers. And in some cultures a saint is just what he is – or rather she is: Santa Muerte, a (female) folk saint. Devotees say she is an offshoot of the Catholic Church; the Church dismisses them as a cult. The case continues, but one follower delivered a quote with a near Discworld pragmatism: ‘It’s better to make her your friend.’16 Sainted or otherwise, Death is attracted to Mexico, where he takes part in all kinds of human activities, expertly and with great enjoyment. This is especially obvious around the time of the Day of the Dead (1 and 2 November). At this season, streets and shops are full of cheerful images of male and female Deaths not just dancing but playing all kinds of musical instruments, flirting, fighting, drinking, showing off their fine clothes, working at any and every trade. Nothing, in short, could be more alive than Death, in Mexico. And what of the dead themselves, on the Discworld? What happens when Death comes to them? Well, that usually seems to be up to them. The only group who had no say in the matter were the luckless pharaohs of Djelibeybi, mummified and immured in pyramids which were supposed to ensure a blissful afterlife but which simply imprisoned them inside a time-distortion. After centuries of excruciating boredom, they broke free and passed over into Death’s world (with great relief, and forming an orderly queue). It is not known whether the Ancient Egyptian pyramids had the same unwelcome side-effect on their pharaohs. On Earth, according to the myths of Ancient Greece, the gods would occasionally, as a mark of great favour, take someone newly dead and turn him or her into stars. The hero Perseus is a constellation now, as is Andromeda, the girl he rescued from a sea-monster, and indeed Cetus the monster too. So is Orion the hunter, lover of at least two goddesses; so is Amalthea the Goat, who became the constellation Capricorn. Some people on the Disc are aware of this possibility, though as far as is known the Disc gods have never actually done it – Cohen and his Horde rode for the stars because they wanted to, and gods had nothing to do with it. In any case, becoming a constellation is not a permanent solution: Mrs McGarry looked up at the stars. ‘In the olden days,’ she said, ‘when a hero had been really heroic, the gods would put them up in the stars.’ THE HEAVENS CHANGE, said Death. WHAT TODAY LOOKS LIKE A MIGHTY HUNTER MAY LOOK LIKE A TEACUP IN A HUNDRED YEARS’ TIME. [The Last Hero] There are a few who, when Death comes to them, refuse to move on, preferring to become ghosts – certain kings of Lancre who haunt their ancestral castle, for example, and dwarfs who may choose to walk the earth in torment if they have not been buried with their finest weapons. According to the myths and folklore of our world, such situations are pretty common here; people linger as ghosts because they have not been properly buried, or have been particularly wicked, or have died by violence, or are looking for money they buried, or simply can’t bear to leave home. But nobody, in any universe, can match the obstinacy of the political activist Reg Shoe, who insists on remaining a zombie in order to campaign for the rights of the dead and the undead. The normal course of events is that Death escorts those who die to the edge of a vast desert of black sand under a brilliant starry sky, where he informs them that what they do next, or what happens to them next, is not his responsibility – for in the universe of the Discworld Death is never the supreme reality. It appears that no two people have the same experience, since it will accurately reflect the beliefs and personality of each one. In Small Gods, for instance, five deaths are described. One, a sea-captain who believes that the souls of sailors become friendly porpoises (in British lore, it would be seagulls), sails away in search of paradise in a ghostly ship (for ships too have a soul), with a ghostly crew, and ghostly rats, and an escort of ghostly porpoises. The second and third are soldiers – Fri’it, an Omnian general who secretly disbelieves the hell-fire doctrines of that church, and Ichlos, a private who has never given much thought to religion. Both remember a childhood song: You have to walk a lonesome desert, You have to walk it all alone … Fri’it asks Death: ‘What is at the end of the desert?’ and is told, JUDGEMENT. The memory stole over him: a desert is what you think it is. And now, you can think clearly … There were no lies here. All fancies fled away. That’s what happened in all deserts. It was just you, and what you believed. What have I always believed? That on the whole, and by and large, if a man lived properly, not according to what any priests said, but according to what seemed decent and honest inside, then it would, at the end, more or less, turn out all right. You couldn’t get that on a banner. But the desert looked better already. Fri’it set out. It is the same for Ichlos, though he puts it more simply: ‘My mum told me about this,’ he said. ‘When you’re dead, you have to walk a desert. And you see everything properly, she said. And remember everything right.’ Death studiously did nothing to indicate his feelings either way. ‘Might meet a few friends on the way, eh?’ said the soldier. POSSIBLY. Ichlos set out. On the whole, he thought, it could have been worse. The next who dies is Vorbis, the single-minded, pitiless, utterly unshakable Omnian Exquisitor. When he sees the desert, his certainties drain away. Though he has taken for granted that there would indeed be a Judgement according to the rules of his religion (and that he would do very well in it), all he can feel is the echo of his own thoughts, and when he looks inside himself all he can see is the horror of what he has done, and the terror of emptiness and solitude. The last to die is the compassionate monk Brutha. He too follows Death to the black sand under the starry sky. ‘Ah. There really is a desert. Does everyone get this?’ said Brutha. WHO KNOWS? ‘And what is at the end of the desert?’ JUDGEMENT. Brutha considered this. ‘Which end?’ Death grinned and stepped aside. It’s only natural to want to know what lies at the far end of the desert. But this, as Tiffany told the hiver in A Hatful of Sky, is something no words can describe, which is why you have to cross the desert to find out. But before you can even begin, there is something important to be done. You must face and accept Judgement, the Judgement you pass on yourself in the light of clear self-knowledge and accurate memory. And that, as Brutha guessed, begins as soon as you die, at this end of the desert. And then Brutha sees Vorbis, hunched on the sand, too paralysed with fear to have even started the journey. ‘But Vorbis died a hundred years ago!’ YES. HE HAD TO WALK IT ALL ALONE. ALL ALONE WITH HIMSELF. IF HE DARED. ‘He’s been here for a hundred years?’ POSSIBLY NOT. TIME IS DIFFERENT HERE. IT IS … MORE PERSONAL. ‘Ah. You mean a hundred years can pass like a few seconds?’ A HUNDRED YEARS CAN PASS LIKE INFINITY. Whereupon Brutha, true to his own nature, offers companionship to Vorbis, and they set out to cross the desert together. It may come as a surprise to those whose notion of Christian teaching about the afterlife is based on, say, the famous hell-fire sermon in James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, that what is described in Discworld terms in Small Gods is pretty well what many modern theologians say – at any rate, as regards Brutha, Vorbis, and Fri’it, though maybe not the ship’s captain. Such teachers say that a lifetime’s daily choices determine what we are at the moment of death, and that God’s ‘Judgement’ consists in letting us see, accurately and fully, what we have chosen to become. He does not hurl punishments; those who suffer, like Vorbis, do so because they have imprisoned themselves in their own evil. It is to be hoped that every Vorbis finds a compassionate Brutha. The same point emerges from the post-mortem experience of the brutal, murderous, but mentally subnormal thug Mr Tulip (in The Truth). Death makes him see the value of the many lives he had destroyed, and once he understands the truth about himself he is filled with huge remorse and passes his own judgement on himself, saying he wishes he could go back in time to kill himself before he could do such harm, but as that’s impossible he wants to spend the rest of his afterlife feeling ‘really sorry’. As Death notes, Tulip has ‘something in him that could be better’, given enough time. His purgatory is not harsh. Since he has been taught to expect reincarnation, reincarnation is what he gets, in a form agreeable to the best part of him, his love of good craftsmanship and beautiful antiques. He becomes a woodworm in a fine old desk. However, there is nothing good in the other thug, Mr Pin, who puts his trust in a lucky potato and whose remorse is simply pretence. He too reincarnates, but the outcome will not be pleasant. He becomes a potato, and is fried, since ‘Reincarnation enjoys a joke as much as the next philosophical hypothesis.’ But to Death, a nature like Mr Pin’s is no joke. Death sighed deeply. WHO KNOWS WHAT EVIL LURKS IN THE HEART OF MEN? The Death of Rats looked up. SQUEAK, he said. Death waved a hand dismissively. WELL, YES, OBVIOUSLY ME, he said. I JUST WONDERED IF THERE WAS ANYONE ELSE. [The Truth] One who may have answers to the questions that trouble Death’s lonely mind – questions about goodness and evil, and justice – is Azrael, his Lord. On Earth, ‘Azrael’ is the name given in the traditions of Islam to the Angel of Death, whose name is nowhere mentioned in the Bible itself. Muslims say he is one of the great Archangels, equal to Michael, Raphael or Gabriel in rank, and greater than them in wisdom. His name is Arabic, and means ‘Help of God’. But the nature of Azrael is best seen on the Discworld. He is known there as the Great Attractor, the Death of the Whole Multiverse, the Beginning and End of Time. He is so vast that he can only be measured in terms of the speed of light, and whole galaxies are lost in his eyes. Our Death, the Death who harvests all lives on Earth and on the Discworld, is only a little Death, and Azrael is his Lord. And at the end of all stories, Azrael, who knows the secret, thinks: I REMEMBER WHEN ALL THIS WILL BE AGAIN. [Reaper Man] 16 Perhaps she recalled the words of St Francis: ‘By your holy death, help us to live each day as our last and to welcome sister Death.’ Bibliography and suggestions for further reading Barber, Paul. Vampires, Burial and Death: Folklore and Reality (Yale University Press, 1988. ISBN 0-300-04126-8 hardback, 0-300-04859-9 paperback) Briggs, Katharine M. A Dictionary of Fairies, Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies and Other Supernatural Creatures (Penguin Books, 1977. ISBN 0-14-00-4753-0 paperback) Briggs, Katharine M. The Vanishing People: A Study of Traditional Fairy Beliefs (Batsford, 1978. ISBN 0-7134-1240-2 hardback) Davies, Owen. A People Bewitched: Witchcraft and Magic in Nineteenth-Century Somerset (Bruton, 1999. ISBN 0-9536390-0-2) Frazer, Sir James G. The Golden Bough: Abridged Edition (Macmillan & Co., 1922, frequently reprinted) Lenihan, Edmund. In Search of Biddy Early (Mercier Press, 1987; paperback 1995) MacManus, Dermot. The Middle Kingdom; the Faerie World of Ireland (London: Max Parrish & Co., 1959. Paperback edition: Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe & Co., 1973. ISBN 0-900675-82-9) Maxwell-Stuart, P. G. Witchcraft: A History (Tempus Publishing, 2000. ISBN 0-7524-2305-3 paperback) Miles, Clement A. Christmas Customs and Traditions: Their History and Significance (1912; reprinted by Dover Books, New York, 1976. ISBN 0-486-23354-5) Roud, Steve. The Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland (Penguin Books, 2003. ISBN 0-141-00673-0) Roud, Steve. The English Year: A Month-by-Month Guide to the Nation’s Customs and Festivals (Penguin Books, 2006. ISBN 0-140-51554-2) Russell, Jeffrey B. A History of Witchcraft (Thames and Hudson, 1980. ISBN 0-500-27242-5 paperback) Ryan, M. Biddy Early: The Wise Woman of Clare (Mercier Press, 2000) Silver, Carole G. Strange and Secret Peoples: Fairies and Victorian Consciousness (Oxford University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-19-512199-6) Simpson, Jacqueline. British Dragons (Batsford, 1980. ISBN 0-7134-2559-0 hardback. Wordsworth paperback, 2001. ISBN 1-84022-507-6) Simpson, Jacqueline, and Steve Roud. A Dictionary of English Folklore (Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-19-2100019-x hardback, 0-19-860766-0 paperback) Westwood, Jennifer, and Jacqueline Simpson. The Lore of the Land: A Guide to England’s Legends (Penguin Books, 2005. ISBN 0-141-00711-7 hardback, 0-141-02103-9 paperback) Wills, Barclay. Shepherds of Sussex, 1938. Yeats, W. B. Fairy and Folk Tales of Ireland (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe Ltd, 1973; paperback Pan Books, 1979. ISBN 0-330-25769-2) Originally published as two books, 1888 and 1892. Not folklore but never mind Blanton, De Anne, and Lauren M. Cook. They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American Civil War (Louisiana State University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-8071-2806-6) Dekker, Rudolf M., and Lotte C. Van De Pol. The Tradition of Female Transvestism in Early Modern Europe (Palgrave MacMillan, 1997. ISBN13 978-0312173340) And for those who want to go further Burn, Lucilla. Greek Myths (British Museum Publications, 1990. ISBN 0714-120-618) Evans, George Ewart. The Horse in the Furrow (Faber and Faber, 1960; paperback Faber and Faber, 1971. ISBN 0-571-08164-9) Hart, George. Egyptian Myths (British Museum Publications, 1990. ISBN 0714-120-642) Hughes, Thomas. The Scouring of the White Horse (1859; reprint Alan Sutton, 1989. ISBN 0-86299-563-9) Judge, Roy. The Jack in the Green (D. S. Brewer, 1979; revised edn FLS Books, The Folklore Society, 2000. ISBN 0-903515-20-2) Opie, Iona and Peter. The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (Oxford University Press, 1959. ISBN13 978-0940322691) Opie, Iona and Peter. Children’s Games in Street and Playground (Oxford University Press, 1969. ISBN13 978-0192814890) Page, R. I. Norse Myths (British Museum Publications, 1990. ISBN 0714-120-626) Pegg, Bob. Rites and Riots: Folk Customs of Britain and Europe (Blandford Press, 1981. ISBN 0-7137-0997-9) Philip, Neil. The Penguin Book of English Folktales (Penguin Books, 1992. ISBN 0-14-013976-1) Philip, Neil. The Penguin Book of Scottish Folktales (Penguin Books, 1994. ISBN13 978-0140139778) Quiller-Couch, Arthur. The Oxford Book of Ballads (Clarendon Press, 1910, many reprints) Thomas, Keith. Religion and the Decline of Magic (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971. ISBN 0-297-00220-1) Wilson, Stephen. The Magical Universe: Everyday Ritual and Magic in Pre-Modern Europe (Hambledon and London, 2000. ISBN 1-85285-251-8) We have put in a couple of the pioneering regional studies, as they give a taste of the whole range of folklore in a community (tales, beliefs, customs, sayings etc.). The hyphen isn’t a mistyping, that was the way the word was spelled then: Burne, Charlotte. Shropshire Folk-Lore A Sheaf of Gleanings (London, 1883) Leather, Ella Mary. The Folk-Lore of Hereford (London, 1912) Index Abraxas, on the Quisition, (i) Aching, Granny, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Aching, Tiffany, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix) abilities, (i), (ii) and Dance of the Seasons, (i) ties with the Chalk, (i), (ii) training as witch, (i) Achmed the Mad, (i) afterlife as constellation, (i) Christian teaching about, (i) for dwarfs, (i) for Heroes, (i), (ii) for Nac Mac Feegle, (i) Hell, (i) in Ancient Egypt, (i) individuals’ experience after death, (i) journey to, (i), (ii), (iii) Judgement in, (i) Agi Hammerthief, (i) Ainsworth, Harrison, (i) Albert (Alberto Malich), (i) on Hogswatch, (i) Albertus Magnus, (i); Book of Secrets, (ii) Alexander the Great, (i) Aliss, Black, (i) alligators, (i), (ii); see also crocodiles Allingham, William, (iii) Amalthea the Goat (Capricorn), (i), (ii) America, North: traditions in, xiv, (i), (ii), (iii) among native peoples, (i) Easter Bunny, (i) Santa Claus, (i) Tooth Fairy, (i) See also H. P. Lovecraft American Civil War, women soldiers in, (i) Amonia, Queen, (i) Andromeda, (i), (ii) Angua, Sergeant, (i), (ii) Ankh, kings of, (i) Ankh-Morpork banshees in, (i) City Watch, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) customs of, (i), (ii) dragons as pets, fashion for, (i) dwarfs in, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) foundation legends, (i) golems in, (i), (ii) Nac Mac Feegle in, (i) religion in, (i), (ii) royal heir to, (i), (ii) secret societies in, (i) treacle mines, (i), (ii) trolls in, (i) vampires in, (i) See also Unseen University Ankh-Morpork Folk Dance and Song Society, (i) Ankh-Morpork Folklore Society, (i) Annagovia, Duchess of Borogravia, (i) Annis, Black, (i) Anoia, goddess of Things That Get Stuck in Drawers, (i) Anybody, Rob, (i) Apocalypse, the, (i) Apocralypse, Four Horsemen of the, (i) Arthur, King, xii, (i), (ii) Arthur, Wee Mad, (i) Ashmole, Elias, (i) Asimov, Isaac, (i) Assassins, Guild of, (i) Astfgl, Lord, (i) Athene, (i) Atlantis, (i) Aubrey, John, (i) Auditors, the, (i) Azrael, (i) Aztecs, the, (i) Baba Yaga, xii, (i), (ii) banshees, (i) Barber, Paul, (i) basilisk, (i) Bathory, Countess Elizabeth, (i) Bayly, Thomas Haynes, (i), (ii) bean, conferring kingship, (i), (ii), (iii) Bears, Pavement, (i) Beating of the Bounds, (i) bees, (i), (ii) Bellerophon, (i) Bel-Shamharoth, (i) Beowulf, (i), (ii), (iii) Bergman, Ingmar: The Seventh Seal, (i) B’hrian Bloodaxe, (i), (ii) Bible, the, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii) Binky, (i) Black School, (i) bogeymen, (i), (ii) books, magical, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi) Bord, Janet, (i) Borogravia, (i), (ii) Borrowing, (i), (ii), (iii) Botticelli, (i) Boughton, Rutland: The Immortal Hour, (i) Bovet, Richard, (i) Bran, (i) bread, dwarf, (i) Brendan the Navigator, St, (i) Brewer, Billy (Wizard of the West), (i) British Folklore Society, x brochs, (i) Broomfog: Anima Unnaturale, (i) broomsticks, (i) Brutha, (i) Caesar, C. Julius, (i) Cailleach Dubh, (i) Cake, Mrs Evadne, (i), (ii) Cake, Ludmilla, (i) Cantre’r Gwaelod, (i) Carelinus, Emperor, (i) Carmilla, (i) Carmilla, Aunt, (i) Cenotine script, (i) Cerberus, (i), (ii) Ceres, see Demeter Ceridwen, (i) Cerne Abbas Giant, (i) Cernunnos, (i), (ii), (iii) Chaffinch’s Ancient and Classical Mythology, (i), (ii), (iii) Chalk, the, (i) Nac Mac Feegle, (i) shepherds, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) watching of the dead, (i) White Horse, (i) witches in, (i) Chambers, Robert, (i) Chandler, Keith, (i) changelings, (i) Charon, (i), (ii) Chaucer, Geoffrey: Canterbury Tales, (i) chests, wooden, deadly, (i); see also Luggage children and Pied Piper, (i) Christmas gift-bringers for, (i) customs kept by, (i), (ii), (iii) fairy tales for, (i), (ii) games, (i), (ii) Hogswatch and, (i) see also changelings, Nursery Bogeys, Prohibitory Monsters, tooth fairy Chimera, the, (i) Chriek, Otto, (i), (ii) Christ, buttocks of, (i) Christ Child, (i), (ii) Christmas traditions and observance, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii) Boy Bishop, (i) gift-bringers, (i) hunting the wren, (i) King of the Bean, (i), (ii) Santa Claus/Father Christmas, (i) cinema, influence of, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii) Coca-Cola company, (i) cockatrice, see basilisk Cohen the Barbarian, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) Conan the Barbarian, (i) Cori Celesti, (i), (ii) Cornucopia, (i) crocodiles and basilisk, (i), (ii) crocodile gods, (i) Cronus, (i) crop circles, (i) Crowley, Aleister, (i); Moonchild, (ii) Cthulhu, (i) Cú Chulainn, (i), (ii) Cutangle, Archchancellor, (i) Dadd, Richard: Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke, (i) Dagon, (i) Dahut, (i) dance, cosmic, (i); Dance of the Seasons, (ii); see also Death, Morris dancing Dante, (iii), (iv) Davies, Sir John: Orchestra, (i) Death (anthropomorphic personification), (i) appearance and attributes, (i) appointments with, (i) bargains with, (i) dancing ability, (i) dealings with clients, (i), (ii) horse of, (i) House of, (i) on Discworld, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x) on Earth, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi) see also afterlife de Chumsfanleigh, Roland, (i), (ii), (iii) Defoe, Daniel, (i) de Magpyr family, (i), (ii), (iii) Demeter (Ceres), (i), (ii) Demons, (i), (ii), (iii) relationship with humans, (i), (ii) Detritus, (i) Devil, the, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix) de Worde, William, (i) Dickens, Charles: A Christmas Carol, (i) Djelibeybi gods, (i), (ii), (iii) pharaohs, (i), (ii) portrayal of Death, (i) Sphinx, (i), (ii) dobby stones, (i) dogs Black Dogs, (i) devotion to master, (i) grimhounds, (i) three-headed, (i) see also Cerberus, Gaspode Dorfl, (i) Dracula, (i) dragons, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Common Swamp Dragon (Draco vulgaris), (i), (ii) Draco maritimus immensis (Middle-Earth Worm), (i) Draco nobilis, (i) hold on Earthly imagination, (i), (ii), (iii) Moon Dragons, (i) teeth, producing warriors, (i) Drake’s Drum, (i) draug, (i) dress, traditional for women, (i), (ii) of Christmas gift-bringer, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) of demons, (i) of dwarfs, (i), (ii), (iii) of Nac Mac Feegle, (i), (ii), (iii) of Valkyries, (i) of vampires, (i), (ii) of witches, (i) druids, (i), (ii) ducks, (i) Running of the Ducks (Ubergigl), (i) Soul Cake Tuesday Duck, (i), (ii), (iii) Dungeon Dimensions, the, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) Dunmanifestin, (i) Dunmow Flitch, ix, (i) Dunwich monster, the, (i) dwarfs, (i), (ii) and religion, (i) associated with mines and metalworking, (i), (ii) culture and law, (i), (ii) females, (i), (ii) feud with trolls, (i), (ii) funerary customs, (i) grags, (i) legends among, (i), (ii), (iii) names, (i) Early, Biddy, (i), (ii) Earwig, Mrs Letice, (i), (ii) Eberley, Susan Shoon, 60 Edda, The, (i) eggs cosmic, (i) Easter, (i), (ii) on Soul Cake Tuesday, (i), (ii), (iii) repository for soul, (i) Egwin, St, (i) Egypt, Ancient gods, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) myths: of Afterlife, (i); of Benu Bird (phoenix), (ii); of Osiris, (iii) sphinxes, (i) eight, magical number on Discworld, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) elephants in Hindu cosmology, (i) supporting the Disc, (i); Fifth Elephant, (ii) Eliot, T. S.: East Coker, (i) elves, (i), (ii), (iii) abductions by, (i), (ii) and changelings, (i) and Santa Claus, (i) as Nursery Bogeys, (i) decline on Earth, (i), (ii) glamour, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) hatred of iron, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) home of (Elfland/Fairyland), (i) house-elves, (i) king, (i), (ii), (iii) malevolence to humans, (i), (ii) precursors of tooth fairy, (i) see also Fairy Queen Ephebe attitude to gods, (i) philosophical ideas in, (i), (ii) Ereshkigal, (i) Esk (Escarina Smith), (i), (ii) eyes, detached, (i) fairies, see elves, gnomes, godmothers, Nac Mac Feegle, pixies, tooth fairy Fairyland, nature of, (i) Fairy (or Elf) Queen, the, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii); see also Mab Fate, (viii), (ix), (x), (xi) Fates, the, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Father Christmas, (i), (ii) Feegles, see Nac Mac Feegle femininity, attitudes to among dwarfs, (i) in Earthly societies, (i) Fertile Feet, (i) Finn MacCool (Fingal), (i) firebird, see phoenix fish, lost items discovered in, (i) fishermen, beliefs and customs among, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi) flabberghast, 106 Flying Dutchman, (i) folklore children and, (i), (ii) in cities, (i) nature of, x, xii–xiv, (i) origin in ‘folk memory’, (i), (ii) patterns of, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii); see also narrativium folklorists, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii) theories of, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix) football, (i) Frankenstein, Doctor, (i) Frazer, Sir James, (i); The Golden Bough, (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) Frederick Barbarossa, Emperor, xii, (i) Frighteners, see Nursery Bogeys, Prohibitory Monsters Fri’it, (i), (ii) funerary customs in Djelibeybi, (i) in the Chalk country, (i) laying out and watch-night, (i), (ii) of dwarfs, (i) of Gypsies, (i), (ii) of Heroes, (i) of Igors, (i) of shepherds, (i) of Vikings, (i) of witches, (i) on Earth, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) games children’s, (i), (ii) of the gods, (i), (ii), (iii) Thud, (i), (ii) See also football gargoyles, (i) Garlick, Magrat, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x) Gaspode (the famous one), (i) Gaspode (the modern one), (i), (ii) George, St, (i), (ii) German folk traditions, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii) ghosts, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) ghost ships, (i), (ii) Giza, Great Sphinx of, (i) gnomes, (i), (ii) Verruca Gnome, (i) See also Nac Mac Feegle, tooth fairy goblins, (i), (ii) godmothers, fairy, (i), (ii) gods, (i) adherence to fashion, (i), (ii) and First Hero, (i) and the seasons, (i) ban flying machines, (i) belief in, (i) Cenotine god, (i) Christian God, (i) Dark Gods, (i), (ii) dwarfs and, (i) horned gods, (i), (ii), (iii) lokapala, (iv) love of board games, (i), (ii) mass destruction by, (i), (ii) shepherds and, (i) triple goddess, (i), (ii) See also Agi Hammerthief, Summer Lady, Tak, Wintersmith and entries for individual gods Gogol, Mrs, xii, (i) gold attraction for magpies, (i) importance to dwarfs, (i) of sleeping warriors, (i), (ii) golems, (i) ancient Discworld specimens, (i), (ii) appearance and composition, (i) given life by written words, (i), (ii) in Jewish tradition, (i) need for master, (i), (ii) gonnagles, see under Nac Mac Feegle Gottskalk, (i) Grallon, King, (i) Graves, Robert: The White Goddess, (i) Great A’Tuin, (i), (ii); see also turtles Great Dunmow, Essex, ix Greebo, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Greece, Ancient funeral customs, (i) gods, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi) heroes, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii) myths: of Atlantis, (i); of basilisk, (ii); of Chimera, (iii); of constellations, (iv); of Cornucopia, (v); of Hell and Underworld, (vi), (vii), (viii); of Prometheus, (ix); of salamander, (x); of sphinx, (xi), (xii); of werewolves, (xiii) philosophical ideas in, (i) green, as lucky colour, (i) Green Man, (i) Greyfriars Bobby, (i) Grimm, Brothers, (i), (ii); Jacob, (iii) Gryla, (i) Gryle, Mr, (i) Gwion (Taliesin), (i) Guntram, King of the Franks, (i) Gynt, Peer, (i) Gypsies funerary customs, (i), (ii) Hachi-koh, (i) hair, used as snare, (i), (ii) Haiti, zombies in, (i) Halloween, (i) Hammer Films, (i) Handel, George Frideric: Semele, (i) hare Easter Hare, (i) favoured shape for witches, (i) Harrison, Jane Ellen, (i) hats, witches’, (i), (ii), (iii) Hávamál (poem), (i) Hawkins, Jim, (i) Haxey Hood Game, (i) Hecate, (i) Hell, (i), (ii) Herakles (Hercules), (i), (ii), (iii) Herne the Hunted, (i) Herne the Hunter, (i) Herodotus, (i) Heroes, (i) and Descent to Underworld, (i) and dragons, (i) and gods, (i), (ii), (iii) attitudes to death, (i) Barbarian, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) First Hero, (i) Heir to the Kingdom, (i), (ii), (iii) of Ancient Greece, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii) Herrick, Robert: ‘Oberon’s Palace’, (i) Hiho Song, the, (i) hippopotamus: in Ankh-Morpork legend, (i) hiver, the, (i) hnefatafl (board game), (i), (ii) Hodgesaargh, (i) Hoffman, E. T. A., (i) Hoffman, Heinrich: Struwwelpeter, (i) Hogarth, William, (i) Hogfather, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi) Hogmanay, (i); see also New Year Hogswatch traditions, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Hoki the Jokester, (i) Holinshed, Raphael, (i) Holland, and St Nicholas tradition, (i), (ii) Holle, Frau (Frau Perchte/Berthe), (i) Holy Wood, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Homer: Odyssey, (i) horns as comic symbols, (i) Holy Horns (symbol of Om), (i) horned gods, (i), (ii), (iii) Horn of Plenty, (i) of elf king, (i), (ii) Horseman’s Word, (i) horseshoes, protection against elves, (i), (ii) Howard, Robert E., (i) Hrun, (i) Hugo, Victor, (i) Hwel, (i) Hydra, the, (i) Ice Giants, (i), (ii) Iceland, see Norse legend, Scandinavian folklore Ichlos, (i), (ii) iele, (i) Igor (de Magpyr servant), (i) Igors, (i) appearance, (i) heirlooms among, (i) interest in surgery, (i) Io, Blind, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) Ireland, Samuel, (i) Irish legend banshees, (i) Cailleach Dubh, (i) fairies in, (i), (ii) Fionn mac Cumhaill, (i) geissa, (i) Liafail, the, (i) iron, used against elves and fairies, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) Ironfoundersson, Captain Carrot, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Irving, Washington, (i) Ishtar, (i) Ishtar’s Descent, (i) Isidore of Seville, (i) Isis, (i) islands, intermittent, (i) Ixolite, (i) jackdaws, (i) Jack Frost, (i) James VI and I, King, (i) Jenny Greenteeth, (i), (ii) Jones, Captain, (i) Jonson, Ben: Christmas his Masque, (i) Joyce, James: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, (i) Kali, (i) keldas, see under Nac Mac Feegle Kêr-Is, (i) Kittelsen, Theodor, (i) Klatch, (i) Kligman, Gail, (i) knockers, (i) Knox, James, (i) kobolds, (i) Koom Valley: battle of, (i), (ii); Kings’ Cave, (iii) kruk (dwarf ‘mining law’), (i), (ii) Lady, The, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii) Lancre, (i), (ii) beliefs, (i) customs of, (i), (ii), (iii) elves in, (i), (ii), (iii) gnarly ground, (i) Lancre Caves, (i), (ii) Long Man, (i) Nac Mac Feegle in, (i), (ii) standing stones, (i) witches of, (i); see also under individual names Latham, Charlotte, (i), (ii) Lawrence, D. H.: ‘The Ship of Death’, (i) Leek, Mrs Sybil, (i) Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan, (i) Lemegeton, (i) Leonard of Quirm, (i), (ii), (iii) Leshp, (i), (ii) Level, Miss, (i) on witchcraft, (i) Leviathan, (i) Liber Paginarum Fulvarum, (ii) Librarian, the, (i) Lilith (demon), (i) Lilith (Lily Weatherwax), (i), (ii) Littlebottom, Cheery, (i) Loew ben Bazalel, Rabbi Judah, (i) Loki, (i) Long Man (Lancre), (i) Long Man of Wilmington, (i), (ii) Lovecraft, H. P., (i), (ii), (iii); ‘Dagon’, (iv) Low King, (i), (ii) Luck see The Lady Luggage, the, (i), (ii), (iii) antecedents in Earthly luggage, (i) Lycaeon, King of Arcadia, (i) lycanthropy, see werewolves ‘Lyke-Wake Dirge’, (i) Lyonesse, (i) Mab, Queen, (i), 337 Mabinogion, (ii) Macaldus, (i) McGonagall, William, (i) Mcleod, Fiona, (i) Magpie (TV programme), ix, (i) magpies, (i) magpie rhyme, ix, (i), (ii) Malich, Alberto, see Albert Malory, Sir Thomas: Morte d’Arthur, (i) Marlowe, Christopher, (i) Martha, St, (i) Martin, St, (i) Maugham, Somerset, (i) Maurice, the Amazing, (i) Mazda (First Hero), (i) Mazda (Zoroastrian god), (i) menstruation, (i) Mexico, and Death, (i) mice, and milk teeth, (i) Middle-Earth Worm (Midgardsorm), (i) midwinter festival, (i); see also Christmas, Hogswatch, New Year, Saturnalia Milne, A. A., (i) Milton, John, (i); Comus, (ii); Paradise Lost, (iii), (iv), (v) mining law (of dwarfs), see kruk mistletoe, (i), (ii) ‘Mistletoe Bough, The’, (i) moon dragons on, (i) effect on werewolves, (i) Moore, Clement Clark: ‘A Visit from St Nicholas’, (i) Morris dancing, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Dark Morris, (i), (ii), (iii) mumming plays, (i) Murray, Margaret, (i) myth-making process, (i), (ii), (iii) nachzehrer, (i) Nac Mac Feegle, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii) attitude to authority, (i), (ii) belief in afterlife, (i) clan structure, (i), (ii) crawstep, (i) fighting techniques, (i), (ii), (iii) gonnagles, (i) in Ireland, (i) in Scotland, (i), (ii), (iii) keldas, (i) on Discworld, (i) physical characteristics, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) speech, (i) use of birds, (i) names influence of, (i) knowledge of conferring power, (i) not to be spoken, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) use in magic, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) narrativium, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii) Nash, Thomas, (i) nature gods, (i) near death experience, (i) Necronomicon, (i) Necrotelecomnicon, (i), (ii) Newbolt, Sir Henry, (i) New Year traditions and observance, (i), (ii), (iii) Nicholas, St, (i), (ii), (iii) Nijel the Destroyer, (i) Nitt, Agnes, (i), (ii) Njal’s Saga, (i) Nobbs, Nobby, (i), (ii) Norns, the, (i), (ii) Norse legend, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) dwarfs in, (i) Giants, (i) Midgardsorm (Middle-Earth Worm), (i) Norns, (i), (ii) Volund’s chest, (i) See also Scandinavian folklore Norway, see Scandinavian folklore nosferatu, (i) Nosferatu, (i) Notfaroutoe, Count (Arthur Winkings), (i) Noyes, Alfred, (i) Nuggan, (i), (ii) Nursery Bogeys, (i), (ii), (iii); see also Prohibitory Monsters Oats, Quite Reverend Mightily: on vampires, (i), (ii) Obby Oss (Padstow), (i) Oberon, (i), (ii), (iii) occult equipment, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) octarine, (i) Odin, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Odysseus (Ulysses), (i), (ii) Oedipus, (i) Offler, (i) Ogg, Gytha (Nanny), (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv) on Borrowing, (i) on elves, (i), (ii), (iii) on folk customs, (i) on gnarly ground, (i) on Long Man, (i) on Nac Mac Feegle, (i), (ii), (iii) on phoenix, (i) on vampires, (i) on witchery, (i) Tir Nani Ogg, (i) Ogg, Jason, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) O’Hara, John, (i) Olaf, King, (i) Olaf, St, (i) Olwen, (i) Om, the Great God, (i) Omnianism, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) Omar Khayyám, Rubâíyát, (i) Ooser, Dorset, (i) Oozer, Lancre, (i) Orfeo, King, (i) Orpheus, (i), (ii), (iii) Osiris, (i) ouroboros, (i) Pan, (i), (ii) Pandemonium, (i), (ii) Paracelsus, (i), (ii) Patrick, St, (i) Pausanias, (i) Pechs, see Picts Pegasus, (i) Perdita, see Agnes Nitt Persephone, (i), (ii) Perseus, (i), (ii) Petronius: Satyricon, (i) phoenix, (i), (ii) Pickering, naming of, (i) Picts, xii, (i) pictsies, see Nac Mac Feegle Pied Piper, (i), (ii) pigs, and winter festivals, (i); see also Hogfather Pin, Mr, (i) pixies, (i), (ii) Plato, (i), (ii) Pliny, (i), (ii) Plutarch, (i), (ii) Polidori, John, (i) Polycrates of Samos, (i) Pomponius Mela, (i) Poons, Windle, (i) Pope, Alexander, (i), (ii) Prague, golem of, (i) Prohibitory Monsters, (i), (ii) See also Nursery Bogeys Prometheus, (i), (ii) Puck, (i), (ii) pyramids, (i) Quezovercoatl the Feathered Boa, (i) Quintessence, as fifth element, (i) Quisition, Omnian, (i), (ii) Quoth the Raven, (i) on Hogswatch hunts, (i) Ragnarok, (i) Ramkin, Lady Sybil, (i), (ii) rats, and Pied Piper, (i); Educated Rodents, (i) ravens serving gods, (i), (ii) See also Quoth Redcap, Mother, (i) reindeer, and Santa Claus, (i) ribbons, as symbols, xiv black, for reformed vampires, xiv, (i) yellow, xiv Richardson, Ruth, (i) Ridcully, Archchancellor Mustrum, (i), (ii), (iii) Rincewind, (i), (ii), (iii) on dragons, (i) on the gods, (i) on the Luggage, (i) Robin Hood, (i), (ii) Roland and Oliver, (i) Romania, (i) Black School in, (i) fairies in, (i) vampires in, (i) Vlad Dracul, (i) Romans, Ancient, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii) midwinter festivals, (i), (ii) Romulus and Remus, (i) Russian folklore, (i), (ii), (iii) Baba Yaga, xii, (i), (ii) elves in, (i), (ii) Koshchei the Deathless, (i) magpies in, (i) Ruthven, Lord, (i), (ii) Saga of Sturlaug Starfsama, (i) sailors’ tales, (i), (ii), (iii) salamanders, (i) salt, use of against evil spirits, (i) in laying out corpses, (i) on shed milk teeth, (i) Samedi, Baron, (i) Sandman, (i) Santa Claus, (i), (ii) sapient pearwood, (i) Sator Square, (i) Saturday, Baron, (i) Saturn, (i), (ii) Saturnalia, (i), (ii) Scandinavian folklore, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) draug, (i) farm-elves, (i) forest elf-women, (i) Grims, (i) island of Utrøst, (i) Thirteen Christmas Lads, (i), (ii) trolls, (i), (ii) witches, (i), (ii) See also Norse legend Scissor Man, (i), (ii) Scone of Stone, (i), (ii) Scotland elves in, (i), (ii), (iii) hags, (i), (ii), (iii) Hogmanay, (i) Nac Mac Feegle and, (i), (ii), (iii) Seithenhin, (i) Seth, (i) Seven-Year Flitch (Lancre), (i), (ii) Shadlow, Betsey, (i) Shakespeare, William, (i), (ii), (iii) A Midsummer Night’s Dream, (i), (ii), (iii) and fairies, (i), (ii), (iii) and Herne the Hunter, (i), (ii) and witches, (i), (ii) King Lear, (i) Macbeth, (i) on phoenix, (i) Romeo and Juliet, (i) The Merry Wives of Windsor, (i) shambles, (i) shape-shifting by Greebo, (i) by vampires, (i) by witches, (i) Transformation Combat, (i) See also Borrowing, werewolves shepherds, (i) and Granny Aching, (i), (ii), (iii) counting system, (i) funeral customs, (i) ships, (i) Shoe, Reg, (i), (ii), (iii) shop, shifting, (i) Sigmund the Volsung, (i), (ii) Sigurd (Siegfried), (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) silver: effect on werewolves, (i); to shoe unicorn, (ii) Silver Horde, the, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Simon (student wizard), (i) Sindbad the Sailor, (i) Slant, Mr, (i) sleeping warriors, xii, (i), (ii) smiths blacksmiths, (i), (ii), (iii) dwarfs as, (i), (ii) see also Jason Ogg, Volund Snorri Sturluson, (i) Solomon, King, (i), (ii) soul, external, (i) soul, separation from living body, (i); see also Borrowing soul cake, (i) Soul Cake Days, (i), (ii) Soul Cake Tuesday Duck, (i), (ii), (iii) Snapperly, Mrs, (i) Sphinx, the, (i) standing stones, (i) Dancers, the, (i), (ii) dancing, x, (i) reluctance to be counted, (i) Standing Stone (Lancre), (i) stone circles, (i), (ii), (iii) stepmothers, wicked, (i) Stevenson, Robert Louis: Treasure Island, (i) Sto Helit, Susan, (i), (ii), (iii) Stoker, Bram, (i), (ii) Stonehenge, (i), (ii), (iii) Stone of Scone, (i) Stone of the Footprints, Islay, (i) Stubbes, Philip: Anatomie of Abuses, (i) Stukeley, William, (i) suicide haunting as result of, (i) Summer Lady, (i) summoning of Death, (i); Rite of AshkEnte, (ii) of demons, (i), (ii), (iii) of Things from the Dungeon Dimensions, (i) sunken cities, (i) ‘Sweet Polly Oliver’, (i) Swires, Buggy, (i) swords Excalibur, (i), (ii) Gram, (i) Kring, (i) of barbarian heroes, (i) of Death, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) of lost heirs, (i), (ii) Tak, (i), (ii) Taliesin, (i) Tam Lin, (i) Tammuz, (i) Tarot, (i) Tennyson, Alfred, Lord: ‘Ulysses’, (i) Teppic, Prince (Teppicymon XXVIII) and Fertile Feet, (i) and Sphinx, (i), (ii) Teppicymon XXVII, (i), (ii), (iii) Tethis (sea-troll), (i), (ii) Thief of Baghdad, A, (i) Things from the Dungeon Dimensions, (i) Thomas the Rhymer, (i) Thor, (i), (ii) three, importance of number: Fates, (i), (ii); goddesses, (iii); paths, (iv), (v); witches, (vi) Thud (board game), (i), (ii) thunder gods, (i) Thutmose, Prince, (i) Tick, Miss Perspicacia, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii) Time, Old Father, (i) Timur-I-Lenk (Tamurlane), (i) Tir nan Og, (i) tooth fairy, (i), (ii) Topsell, Edward: Historie of Serpents, (i) tortoises, (i) and eagles, (i) Great God Om as, (i) in Hindu cosmology, (i) treacle mines, (i) Treason, Miss Eumenides, (i) Trickle-Treating, (i) Troll Bridge (Lancre), (i) trolls, (i) created by Tak, (i) cultural tradition, (i) death, (i) Diamond King, (i), (ii) dislike of druids, (i) feud with dwarfs, (i), (ii) gargoyles, (i) hostility to churches and Christians, (i), (ii) in Scandinavia, (i) intelligence, (i) names, (i) Night-trolls, (i) physical nature and appearance, (i), (ii), (iii) sea-trolls, (i) traditional occupations, (i) Tulip, Mr, (i) turtles in Chinese mythology, (i) in Discworld cosmology, (i), (ii), (iii) in Hindu cosmology, (i) mistaken for islands, (i), (ii) Twoflower, (i), (ii) Typhon, (i) Uberwald Igors in, (i) legend of Fifth Elephant, (i), (ii) treacle mines, (i) Uffington: Dragon Hill, (i); White Horse, (ii), (iii) Ulysses, see Odysseus Undead, see vampires, zombies Underworld, Descent into, (i) unicorns, (i), (ii) Unseen University, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi) ceremonies and customs, (i), (ii) Library, (i), (ii) Urglefloggah, (i) Valhalla, (i), (ii), (iii) Valkyries, (i), (ii) vampires, xiii, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) allergies and taboos, (i) and Igors, (i), (ii) appearance and dress, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) blood-sucking, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) causes of vampirism, (i) changes in image of, (i) in European folklore, (i), (ii), (iii) integration with modern society, (i) methods to defeat or kill, (i), (ii) social status, (i) Uberwald League of Temperance, (i) ‘Vampyre, The’ (Polidori), (i) Verence I, King, (i) Vetinari, Havelock, Lord, (i), (ii) Vickery, Roy: Plant Lore, (i) Vimes, Commander Sir Samuel, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii) Vishnu, (i) as tortoise, (i), (ii) Vlad the Impaler, (i) Volund, (i) Völundarkvia (poem), (i) Völuspá (poem), (i) von Uberwald family, (i); see also Angua Vorbis, (i), (ii) vrykolakas, (i) Wagner, Richard, (i) Warner, Susan and Ann: ‘The Christmas Stocking’, (i) wassailing, (i), (ii) Wayland, see Volund Wayland’s Smithy, (i) weapons of dwarfs, (i), (ii), (iii) of thunder-god, (i) Weatherwax, Alison, (i) Weatherwax, Esmerelda (Granny), (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii) and Borrowing, (i) and Death, (i) and healing, (i), (ii), (iii) and phoenix, (i), (ii) and shape-changing, (i), (ii), (iii) and unicorn, (i) attitude to magic, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) on elves, (i) Weatherwax, Lily, see Lilith Wee Free Men, see Nac Mac Feegle werewolves, (i) in classical tradition, (i) in European folklore, (i) monthly cycle of, (i) on Discworld, (i) unpopularity of, (i) yennorks, (i) See also wolfmen Wheelbrace, Eric, (i), (ii) Wicca, (i), (ii) Wild Hunt, (i) William of Malmesbury: Gesta Regum Anglorum, (i) William the gonnagle, (i) Wintersmith, (i) wise women, see witches witches and familiars, (i), (ii), (iii) and summoning of demons, (i), (ii) as healers, (i), (ii), (iii) Borrowing, (i), (ii), (iii) covens and sabbats, (i), (ii), (iii) hostility to, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) in Lancre, (i) in the Chalk country, (i) shape-changing by, (i) swimming of, (i) training, (i), (ii), (iii) wicked, (i) Witch Trials, (i) See also entries for individuals wizards, (i), (ii) and books, (i) and folklore, (i) Black School for, (i) See also Unseen University wolfmen, (i) women restrictions on, (i) soldiers, (i) thought to bring bad luck, (i) wren, hunted at Christmas/Hogswatch, (i) Xeno, (i) yennorks, (i) Yog-Sothoth, (i) Zeus, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi); Lycean Zeus, (i) zombies, (i), (ii), (iii) in Haiti, (i) on Discworld, (i) Table of Contents Cover Title Copyright Contents About the Author Introduction by Terry Pratchett Introduction by Jacqueline Simpson 1 The Cosmos: Gods, Demons and Things 2 Dwarfs 3 The Elves 4 The Nac Mac Feegle 5 Trolls 6 Other Significant Races 7 Beasties 8 The Witches of Lancre 9 The Land of Lancre 10 The Witches of the Chalk 11 The Chalk 12 Heroes! 13 Lore, Legends and Truth 14 More Customs, Nautical Lore and Military Matters 15 Kids’ Stuff . . . You know, about ’Orrid Murder and Blood 16 Death Bibliography and suggestions for further reading Index 
The Wee Free Men (ta1) - Terry Pratchett	----	The Wee Free Men THE WEE FREE MEN BY TERRY PRATCHETT A DISWORLD NOVEL Chapter 1 A Clang Well Done Some things start before other things. It was a summer shower but didn’t appear to know it, and it was pouring rain as fast as a winter storm. Miss Perspicacia Tick sat in what little shelter a raggedy hedge could give her and explored the universe. She didn’t notice the rain. Witches dried out quickly. The exploring of the universe was being done with a couple of twigs tied together with string, a stone with a hole in it, an egg, one of Miss Tick’s stockings which also had a hole in it, a pin, a piece of paper and a tiny stub of pencil. Unlike wizards, witches learn to make do with a little. The items had been tied and twisted together to make a . . . device. It moved oddly when she prodded it. One of the sticks seemed to pass right through the egg, for example, and came out the other side without leaving a mark. ‘Yes,’ she said quietly, as rain poured off the rim of her hat. There it is. A definite ripple in the walls of the world. Very worrying. There’s probably another world making contact. That’s never good. I ought to go there. But . . . according to my left elbow, there’s a witch there already . . .’ ‘She’ll sort it out, then,’ said a small and, for now, mysterious voice from somewhere near her feet. ‘No, it can’t be right. That’s chalk country over that way,’ said Miss Tick. ‘You can’t grow a good witch on chalk. The stuff’s barely harder than clay. You need good hard rock to grow a witch, believe me.’ Miss Tick shook her head, sending raindrops flying. ‘But my elbows are generally very reliable.’* ‘Why talk about it? Let’s go and see,’ said the voice. ‘We’re not doing very well around here, are we?’ That was true. The lowlands weren’t good to witches. Miss Tick was making pennies by doing bits of medicine and misfortune-telling, † and slept in barns most nights. She’d twice been thrown in ponds. ‘I can’t barge in,’ she said. ‘Not on another witch’s territory. That never, ever works. But . . .’ she paused, ‘witches don’t just turn up out of nowhere. Let’s have a look . . .’ * People say things like ‘listen to your heart’, but witches learn to listen to other things too. It’s amazing what your kidneys can tell you. † Ordinary fortune-tellers tell you what you want to happen; witches tell you what’s going to happen whether you want it to or not. Strangely enough, witches tend to be more accurate but less popular. She pulled a cracked saucer out of her pocket, and tipped into it the rainwater that had collected on her hat. Then she took a bottle of ink out of another pocket and poured in just enough to turn the water black. She cupped it in her hands to keep the raindrops out, and listened to her eyes. Tiffany Aching was lying on her stomach by the river, tickling trout. She liked to hear them laugh. It came up in bubbles. A little way away, where the river bank became a sort of pebble beach, her brother Wentworth was messing around with a stick, and almost certainly making himself sticky. Anything could make Wentworth sticky. Washed and dried and left in the middle of a clean floor for five minutes, Wentworth would be sticky. It didn’t seem to come from anywhere. He just got sticky. But he was an easy child to mind, provided you stopped him eating frogs. There was a small part of Tiffany’s brain that wasn’t too certain about the name Tiffany. She was nine years old and felt that Tiffany was going to be a hard name to live up to. Besides, she’d decided only last week that she wanted to be a witch when she grew up, and she was certain Tiffany just wouldn’t work. People would laugh. Another and larger part of Tiffany’s brain was thinking of the word ‘susurrus’. It was a word that not many people have thought about, ever. As her fingers rubbed the trout under its chin she rolled the word round and round in her head. Susurrus . . . according to her grandmother’s dictionary, it meant ‘a low soft sound, as of whispering or muttering’. Tiffany liked the taste of the word. It made her think of mysterious people in long cloaks whispering important secrets behind a door: susurrususssurrusss . . . She’d read the dictionary all the way through. No one told her you weren’t supposed to. As she thought this, she realized that the happy trout had swum away. But something else was in the water, only a few inches from her face. It was a round basket, no bigger than half a coconut shell, coated with something to block up the holes and make it float. A little man, only six inches high, was standing up in it. He had a mass of untidy red hair, into which a few feathers, beads and bits of cloth had been woven. He had a red beard, which was pretty much as bad as the hair. The rest of him that wasn’t covered with blue tattoos was covered with a tiny kilt. And he was waving a fist at her, and shouting: ‘Crivens! Gang awa’ oot o’ here, ye daft wee ninny! ‘Ware the green heid!’ And with that he pulled at a piece of string that was hanging over the side of his boat and a second red-headed man surfaced, gulping air. ‘Nae time for fishin’!’ said the first man, hauling him aboard. The green heid’s coming!’ ‘Crivens!’ said the swimmer, water pouring off him. ‘Let’s offski!’ And with that he grabbed one very small oar and, with rapid back and forth movements, made the basket speed away. ‘Excuse me!’ Tiffany shouted. ‘Are you fairies?’ But there was no answer. The little round boat had disappeared in the reeds. Probably not, Tiffany decided. Then, to her dark delight, there was a susurrus. There was no wind, but the leaves on the alder bushes by the river bank began to shake and rustle. So did the reeds. They didn’t bend, they just blurred. Everything blurred, as if something had picked up the world and was shaking it. The air fizzed. People whispered behind closed doors . . . The water began to bubble, just under the bank. It wasn’t very deep here - it would only have reached Tiffany’s knees if she’d paddled - but it was suddenly darker and greener and, somehow, much deeper . . . She took a couple of steps backwards just before long skinny arms fountained out of the water and clawed madly at the bank where she had been. For a moment she saw a thin face with long sharp teeth, huge round eyes and dripping green hair like water-weed, and then the thing plunged back into the depths. By the time the water closed over it Tiffany was already running along the bank to the little beach where Wentworth was making frog pies. She snatched up the child just as a stream of bubbles came around the curve in the bank. Once again the water boiled, the green-haired creature shot up, and the long arms clawed at the mud. Then it screamed, and dropped back into the water. ‘I wanna go-a toy-lut!’ screamed Wentworth. Tiffany ignored him. She was watching the river with a thoughtful expression. I’m not scared at all, she thought. How strange. I ought to be scared, but I’m just angry. I mean, I can feel the scared, like a red-hot ball, but the angry isn’t letting it out. . . ‘Wenny wanna wanna wanna go-a toy-lut!’ Wentworth shrieked. ‘Go on, then.’ said Tiffany, absent-mindedly. The ripples were still sloshing against the bank. There was no point in telling anyone about this. Everyone would just say ‘What an imagination the child has’ if they were feeling in a good mood, or ‘Don’t tell stories!’ if they weren’t. She was still very angry. How dare a monster turn up in the river? Especially one so . . . so . . . ridiculous! Who did it think she was? This is Tiffany, walking back home. Start with the boots. They are big and heavy boots, much repaired by her father and they’d belonged to various sisters before her; she wore several pairs of socks to keep them on. They are big. Tiffany sometimes feels she is nothing more than a way of moving boots around. Then there is the dress. It has been owned by many sisters before her and has been taken up, taken out, taken down and taken in by her mother so many times that it really ought to have been taken away. But Tiffany rather likes it. It comes down to her ankles and, whatever colour it had been to start with, is now a milky blue which is, incidentally, exactly the same colour as the butterflies skittering beside the path. Then there is Tiffany’s face. Light pink, with brown eyes, and brown hair. Nothing special. Her head might strike anyone watching - in a saucer of black water, for example - as being just slightly too big for the rest of her, but perhaps she’d grow into it. And then go further up, and further, until the track becomes a ribbon and Tiffany and her brother two little dots, and there is her country . . . They call it the Chalk. Green downlands roll under the hot midsummer sun. From up here, the flocks of sheep, moving slowly, drift over the short turf like clouds on a green sky. Here and there sheepdogs speed over the turf like comets. And then, as the eyes pull back, it is a long green mound, lying like a great whale on the world . . . . . . surrounded by the inky rainwater in the saucer. Miss Tick looked up. ‘That little creature in the boat was a Nac Mac Feegle!’ she said. The most feared of all the fairy races! Even trolls run away from the Wee Free Men! And one of them warned her!’ ‘She’s the witch, then, is she?’ said the voice. ‘At that age? Impossible!’ said Miss Tick. There’s been no one to teach her! There’re no witches on the Chalk! It’s too soft. And yet. . . she wasn’t scared . . .’ The rain had stopped. Miss Tick looked up at the Chalk, rising above the low, wrung-out clouds. It was about five miles away. ‘This child needs watching,’ she said. ‘But chalk’s too soft to grow a witch on . . .’ Only the mountains were higher than the Chalk. They stood sharp and purple and grey, streaming long trails of snow from their tops even in summer. ‘Brides o’ the sky’, Granny Aching had called them once, and it was so rare that she ever said anything at all, let alone anything that wasn’t to do with sheep, that Tiffany had remembered it. Besides, it was exactly right. That’s what the mountains looked like in the winter, when they were all in white and the snow streams blew like veils. Granny used old words, and came out with odd, old sayings. She didn’t call the downland the Chalk, she called it ‘the wold’. Up on the wold the wind blows cold, Tiffany had thought, and the word had stuck that way. She arrived at the farm. People tended to leave Tiffany alone. There was nothing particularly cruel or unpleasant about this, but the farm was big and everyone had their jobs to do, and she did hers very well and so she became, in a way, invisible. She was the dairymaid, and good at it. She made better butter than her mother did, and people commented about how good she was with cheese. It was a talent. Sometimes, when the wandering teachers came to the village, she went and got a bit of education. But mostly she worked in the dairy, which was dark and cool. She enjoyed it. It meant she was doing something for the farm. It was actually called the Home Farm. Her father rented it from the Baron, who owned the land, but there had been Achings farming it for hundreds of years and so, her father said (quietly, sometimes, after he’d had a beer in the evenings), as far as the land knew, it was owned by the Achings. Tiffany’s mother used to tell him not to speak like that, although the Baron was always very respectful to Mr Aching since Granny had died two years ago, calling him the finest shepherd in these hills, and was generally held by the people in the village to be not too bad these days. It paid to be respectful, said Tiffany’s mother, and the poor man had sorrows of his own. But sometimes her father insisted that there had been Achings (or Akins, or Archens, or Akens, or Akenns - spelling had been optional) mentioned in old documents about the area for hundreds and hundreds of years. They had these hills in their bones, he said, and they’d always been shepherds. Tiffany felt quite proud of this, in an odd way, because it might also be nice to be proud of the fact that your ancestors moved around a bit, too, or occasionally tried new things. But you’ve got to be proud of something. And for as long as she could remember she’d heard her father, an otherwise quiet, slow man, make the Joke, the one that must have been handed down from Aching to Aching for hundreds of years. He’d say, ‘Another day of work and I’m still Aching’, or ‘I get up Aching and I go to bed Aching’, or even ‘I’m Aching all over’. They weren’t particularly funny after about the third time, but she’d miss it if he didn’t say at least one of them every week. They didn’t have to be funny, they were father jokes. Anyway, however they were spelled, all her ancestors had been Aching to stay, not Aching to leave. There was no one around in the kitchen. Her mother had probably gone up to the shearing pens with a bite of lunch for the men, who were shearing this week. Her sisters Hannah and Fastidia were up there too, rolling fleeces and paying attention to some of the younger men. They were always quite keen to work during shearing. Near the big black stove was the shelf that was still called Granny Aching’s Library by her mother, who liked the idea of having a library. Everyone else called it Granny’s Shelf. It was a small shelf, since the books were wedged between a jar of crystallized ginger and the china shepherdess that Tiffany had won at a fair when she was six. There were only five books if you didn’t include the big farm diary, which in Tiffany’s view didn’t count as a real book because you had to write it yourself. There was the dictionary. There was the Almanack, which got changed every year. And next to that was Diseases of the Sheep, which was fat with the bookmarks that her grandmother had put there. Granny Aching had been an expert on sheep, even though she called them ‘just bags of bones, eyeballs and teeth, lookin’ for new ways to die’. Other shepherds would walk miles to get her to come and cure their beasts of ailments. They said she had the Touch, although she just said that the best medicine for sheep or man was a dose of turpentine, a good cussin’ and a kick. Bits of paper with Granny’s own recipes for sheep cures stuck out all over the book. Mostly they involved turpentine, but some included cussin’. Next to the book on sheep was a thin little volume called Flowers of the Chalk. The turf of the downs was full of tiny, intricate flowers, like cowslips and harebells, and even smaller ones that somehow survived the grazing. On the Chalk, flowers had to be tough and cunning to survive the sheep and the winter blizzards. Someone had coloured in the pictures of the flowers, a long time ago. On the flyleaf of the book was written in neat handwriting ‘Sarah Grizzel’, which had been Granny’s name before she was married. She probably thought that Aching was at least better than Grizzel. And finally there was The Goode Childe’s Booke of Faerie Tales, so old that it belonged to an age when there were far more ‘e’s around. Tiffany stood on a chair and took it down. She turned the pages until she found the one she was looking for, and stared at it for a while. Then she put the book back, replaced the chair, and opened the crockery cupboard. She found a soup plate, went over to a drawer, took out the tape measure her mother used for dressmaking, and measured the plate. ‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘Eight inches. Why didn’t they just say!’ She unhooked the largest frying pan, the one that could cook breakfast for half a dozen people all at once, and took some sweets from the jar on the dresser and put them in an old paper bag. Then, to Wentworth’s sullen bewilderment, she took him by a sticky hand and headed back down towards the stream. Things still looked very normal down there, but she was not going to let that fool her. All the trout had fled and the birds weren’t singing. She found a place on the river bank with the right-sized bush. Then she hammered a piece of wood into the ground as hard as she could, close to the edge of the water, and tied the bag of sweets to it. ‘Sweeties, Wentworth,’ she shouted. She gripped the frying pan and stepped smartly behind the bush. Wentworth trotted over to the sweets and tried to pick up the bag. It wouldn’t move. ‘I wanna go-a toy-lut!’ he yelled, because it was a threat that usually worked. His fat fingers scrabbled at the knots. Tiffany watched the water carefully. Was it getting darker? Was it getting greener? Was that just water-weed down there? Were those bubbles just a trout, laughing? No. She ran out of her hiding place with the frying pan swinging like a bat. The screaming monster, leaping out of the water, met the frying pan coming the other way with a clang. It was a good clang, with the oiyoiyoioioioioioi-nnnnnggggggg that is the mark of a clang well done. The creature hung there for a moment, a few teeth and bits of green weed splashing into the water, then slid down slowly and sank with some massive bubbles. The water cleared and was once again the same old river, shallow and icy cold and floored with pebbles. ‘Wanna wanna sweeties,' screamed Wentworth, who never noticed anything else in the presence of sweets. Tiffany undid the string and gave them to him. He ate them far too quickly, as he always did with sweets. She waited until he was sick, and then went back home in a thoughtful state of mind. In the reeds, quite low down, small voices whispered: ‘Crivens, Wee Bobby, didyer no’ see that? ‘Aye. We’d better offski an’ tell the Big Man we’ve found the hag.’ Miss Tick was running up the dusty road. Witches don’t like to be seen running. It looks unprofessional. It’s also not done to be seen carrying things, and she had her tent on her back. She was also trailing clouds of steam. Witches dry out from the inside. ‘It had all those teeth!’ said the mystery voice, this time from her hat. ‘I know!’ snapped Miss Tick. ‘And she just hauled off and hit it!’ ‘Yes. I know.’ ‘Just like that!’ ‘Yes. Very impressive,’ said Miss Tick. She was getting out of breath. Besides, they were already on the lower slopes of the downs now, and she wasn’t good on chalk. A wandering witch likes firm ground under her, not a rock so soft you could cut it with a knife. ‘Impressive?’ said the voice. ‘She used her brother as bait!’ ‘Amazing, wasn’t it?’ said Miss Tick. ‘Such quick thinking . . . oh, no . . .’ She stopped running, and leaned against a field wall as a wave of dizziness hit her. ‘What’s happening? What’s happening?’ said the voice from the hat. ‘I nearly fell off!’ ‘It’s this wretched chalk! I can feel it already! I can do magic on honest soil, and rock is always fine, and I’m not too bad on clay, even . . . but chalk’s neither one thing nor the other! I’m very sensitive to geology, you know.’ ‘What are you trying to tell me?’ said the voice. ‘Chalk . . . is a hungry soil. I don’t really have much power on chalk.’ The owner of the voice, who was hidden, said: ‘Are you going to fall over?’ ‘No, no! It’s just the magic that doesn’t work . . .’ Miss Tick did not look like a witch. Most witches don’t, at least the ones who wander from place to place. Looking like a witch can be dangerous when you walk among the uneducated. And for that reason she didn’t wear any occult jewellery, or have a glowing magical knife or a silver goblet with a pattern of skulls all round it, or carry a broomstick with sparks coming out of it, all of which are tiny hints that there may be a witch around. Her pockets never carried anything more magical than a few twigs, maybe a piece of string, a coin or two and, of course, a lucky charm. Everyone in the country carried lucky charms, and Miss Tick had worked out that if you didn’t have one people would suspect that you were a witch. You had to be a bit cunning to be a witch. Miss Tick did have a pointy hat, but it was a stealth hat and only pointed when she wanted it to. The only thing in her bag that might have made anyone suspicious was a very small, grubby booklet entitled ‘An Introduction to Escapology’, by The Great Williamson. If one of the risks of your job is being thrown into a pond with your hands tied together, then the ability to swim thirty yards under water, fully clothed, plus the ability to lurk under the weeds breathing air through a hollow reed counts as nothing if you aren’t also amazingly good with knots. ‘You can’t do magic here?’ said the voice in the hat. ‘No, I can’t,’ said Miss Tick. She looked up at the sounds of jingling. A strange procession was coming up the white road. It was mostly made up of donkeys pulling small carts with brightly painted covers on them. People walked alongside the carts, dusty to the waist. They were mostly men, they wore bright robes - or robes, at least, that had been bright before being trailed through mud and dust for years - and every one of them wore a strange black square hat. Miss Tick smiled. They looked like tinkers, but there wasn’t one amongst them, she knew, who could mend a kettle. What they did was sell invisible things. And after they’d sold what they had, they still had it. They sold what everyone needed but often didn’t want. They sold the key to the universe to people who didn’t even know it was locked. ‘I can’t do,’ said Miss Tick, straightening up. ‘But I can teach!’ Tiffany worked for the rest of the morning in the dairy. There was cheese that needed doing. There was bread and jam for lunch. Her mother said: ‘The teachers are coming to town today. You can go, if you’ve done your chores.’ Tiffany agreed that, yes, there were one or two things she’d quite like to know more about. ‘Then you can have half a dozen carrots and an egg. I dare say they could do with an egg, poor things,’ said her mother. Tiffany took them with her after lunch, and went to get an egg’s worth of education. Most boys in the village grew up to do the same jobs as their fathers or, at least, some other job somewhere in the village where someone’s father would teach them as they went along. The girls were expected to grow up to be somebody’s wife. They were also expected to be able to read and write, those being considered soft indoor jobs that were too fiddly for the boys. However, everyone also felt that there were a few other things that even the boys ought to know, to stop them wasting time wondering about details like ‘What’s on the other side of the mountains?’ and ‘How come rain falls out of the sky?’ Every family in the village bought a copy of the Almanack every year, and a sort of education came from that. It was big and thick and printed somewhere far off, and it had lots of details about things like phases of the moon and the right time to plant beans. It also contained a few prophecies about the coming year, and mentioned faraway places with names like Klatch and Hersheba. Tiffany had seen a picture of Klatch in the Almanack. It showed a camel standing in a desert. She’d only found out what both those things were because her mother had told her. And that was Klatch, a camel in a desert. She’d wondered if there wasn’t a bit more to it, but it seemed that ‘Klatch = camel, desert’ was all anyone knew. And that was the trouble. If you didn’t find some way of stopping it, people would go on asking questions. The teachers were useful there. Bands of them wandered through the mountains, along with the tinkers, portable blacksmiths, miracle medicine men, cloth pedlars, fortune-tellers and all the other travellers who sold things people didn’t need every day but occasionally found useful. They went from village to village delivering short lessons on many subjects. They kept apart from the other travellers, and were quite mysterious in their ragged robes and strange square hats. They used long words, like ‘corrugated iron’. They lived rough lives, surviving on what food they could earn from giving lessons to anyone who would listen. When no one would listen, they lived on baked hedgehog. They went to sleep under the stars, which the maths teachers would count, the astronomy teachers would measure and the literature teachers would name. The geography teachers got lost in the woods and fell into bear traps. People were usually quite pleased to see them. They taught children enough to shut them up, which was the main thing after all. But they always had to be driven out of the villages by nightfall in case they stole chickens. Today the brightly coloured little booths and tents were pitched in a field just outside the village. Behind them small square areas had been fenced off with high canvas walls and were patrolled by apprentice teachers looking for anyone trying to overhear Education without paying. The first tent Tiffany saw had a sign which said: Jograffy! Jograffy! Jograffy! For today only: all major land masses and oceans PLUS everything you need to know about glassiers! One penny or All Major Vejtables Acsepted! Tiffany had read enough to know that, while he might be a whiz at major land masses, this particular teacher could have done with some help from the man running the stall next door: The Wonders of Punctuation and Spelling 1-Absolute Certainty about the Comma 2 – I before E Completely Sorted Out 3 – The Mystery of the Semi-Colon Revealed 4 – See the Ampersand (Small extra charge) 5 – Fun with Brackets Will accept vegetables, eggs and clean used clothing The next stall along was decorated with scenes out of history, generally of kings cutting one another’s heads off and similar interesting highlights. The teacher in front was dressed in ragged red robes, with rabbitskin trimmings, and wore an old top hat with flags stuck in it. He had a small megaphone which he aimed at Tiffany. ‘The Death of Kings Through the Ages?’ he said. ‘Very educational, lots of blood!’ ‘Not really,’ said Tiffany. ‘Oh, you’ve got to know where you’ve come from, miss,’ said the teacher. ‘Otherwise how will you know where you’re going?’ ‘I come from a long line of Aching people,’ said Tiffany. ‘And I think I’m moving on.’ She found what she was looking for at a booth hung with pictures of animals including, she was pleased to see, a camel. The sign said: Useful Creatures. Today: Our Friend the Hedgehog. She wondered how useful the thing in the river had been, but this looked like the only place to find out. A few children were waiting on the benches inside the booth for the lesson to begin, but the teacher was still standing out in front, in the hope of filling up the empty spaces. ‘Hello, little girl,’ he said, which was only his first big mistake. ‘I’m sure you want to know all about hedgehogs, eh?’ ‘I did this one last summer,’ said Tiffany. The man looked closer, and his grin faded. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘I remember. You asked all those . . . little questions.’ ‘I would like a question answered today,’ said Tiffany. ‘Provided it’s not the one about how you get baby hedgehogs,’ said the man. ‘No,’ said Tiffany, patiently. ‘It’s about zoology.’ ‘Zoology, eh? That’s a big word, isn’t it.’ ‘No, actually it isn’t,’ said Tiffany. ‘Patronizing is a big word. Zoology is really quite short.’ The teacher’s eyes narrowed further. Children like Tiffany were bad news. ‘I can see you’re a clever one,’ he said. ‘But I don’t know any teachers of zoology in these parts. Vetin’ry, yes, but not zoology. Any particular animal?’ ‘Jenny Green-Teeth. A water-dwelling monster with big teeth and claws and eyes like soup plates,’ said Tiffany. ‘What size of soup plates? Do you mean big soup plates, a whole full portion bowl with maybe some biscuits, possibly even a bread roll, or do you mean the little cup you might get if, for example, you just ordered soup and a salad?’ The size of soup plates that are eight inches across,’ said Tiffany, who’d never ordered soup and a salad anywhere in her life. ‘I checked.’ ‘Hmm, that is a puzzler,’ said the teacher. ‘Don’t think I know that one. It’s certainly not useful, I know that. It sounds made-up to me.’ ‘Yes, that’s what I thought,’ said Tiffany. ‘But I’d still like to know more about it.’ ‘Well, you could try her. She’s new.’ The teacher jerked his thumb towards a little tent at the end of the row. It was black and quite shabby. There weren’t any posters, and absolutely no exclamation marks. ‘What does she teach?’ she asked. ‘Couldn’t say,’ said the teacher. ‘She says it’s thinking, but I don’t know how you teach that. That’ll be one carrot, thank you.’ When she went closer Tiffany saw a small notice pinned to the outside of the tent. It said, in letters which whispered rather than shouted: I CAN TEACH YOU A LESSON YOU WON’T FORGET IN A HURRY Chapter 2 Miss Tick Tiffany read the sign and smiled. ‘Aha,’ she said. There was nothing to knock on, so she added ‘Knock, knock’ in a louder voice. A woman’s voice from within said: ‘Who’s there?’ “Tiffany,’ said Tiffany. ‘Tiffany who?’ said the voice. ‘Tiffany who isn’t trying to make a joke.’ ‘Ah. That sounds promising. Come in.’ She pushed aside the flap. It was dark inside the tent, as well as stuffy and hot. A skinny figure sat behind a small table. She had a very sharp, thin nose and was wearing a large black straw hat with paper flowers on it. It was completely unsuitable for a face like that. ‘Are you a witch?’ said Tiffany. ‘I don’t mind if you are.' ‘What a strange question to spring on someone,’ said the woman, looking slightly shocked. ‘Your baron bans witches in this country, you know that, and the first thing you say to me is “Are you a witch?” 'Why would I be a witch?’ ‘Well, you’re wearing all black,’ said Tiffany. ‘Anyone can wear black,’ said the woman. ‘That doesn’t mean a thing.’ ‘And you’re wearing a straw hat with flowers in it,’ Tiffany went on. ‘Aha!’ said the woman. ‘That proves it, then. Witches wear tall pointy hats. Everyone knows that, foolish child.’ ‘Yes, but witches are also very clever,’ said Tiffany calmly. There was something about the twinkle in the woman’s eyes that told her to carry on. ‘They sneak about. Probably they often don’t look like witches. And a witch coming here would know about the Baron and so she’d wear the kind of hat that everyone knows witches don’t wear.’ The woman stared at her. That was an incredible feat of reasoning,’ she said at last. ‘You’d make a good witch-finder. You know they used to set fire to witches? Whatever kind of hat I’ve got on, you’d say it proves I’m a witch, yes?’ ‘Well, the frog sitting on your hat is a bit of a clue, too,’ said Tiffany. ‘I’m a toad, actually,’ said the creature, which had been peering at Tiffany from between the paper flowers. ‘You’re very yellow for a toad.’ ‘I’ve been a bit ill,’ said the toad. ‘And you talk,’ said Tiffany. ‘You only have my word for it,’ said the toad, disappearing into the paper flowers. ‘You can’t prove anything.’ ‘You don’t have matches on you, do you?’ said the woman to Tiffany. ‘No.’ ‘Fine, fine. Just checking.’ Again, there was a pause while the woman gave Tiffany a long stare, as if making up her mind about something. ‘My name,’ she said at last, ‘is Miss Tick. And I am a witch. It’s a good name for a witch, of course.’ ‘You mean blood-sucking parasite?’ said Tiffany, wrinkling her forehead. ‘I’m sorry?’ said Miss Tick, coldly. ‘Ticks,’ said Tiffany. ‘Sheep get them. But if you use turpentine—’ ‘I meant that it sounds like “mystic”,’ said Miss Tick. ‘Oh, you mean a pune, or play on words,’ said Tiffany.* ‘In that case it would be even better if you were Miss Teak, a hard foreign wood, because that would sound like “mystique”, or you could be Miss Take, which would—’ * Tiffany had read lots of words in the dictionary that she’d never heard spoken, so she had to guess at how they were pronounced. ‘I can see we’re going to get along like a house on fire,’ said Miss Tick. There may be no survivors.’ ‘You really are a witch?’ ‘Oh, pur-lease,’ said Miss Tick. ‘Yes, yes, I am a witch. I have a talking animal, a tendency to correct other people’s pronunciation - it’s pun, by the way, not “pune” - and a fascination for poking my nose into other people’s affairs and, yes, a pointy hat.’ ‘Can I operate the spring now?’ said the toad. ‘Yes,’ said Miss Tick, her eyes still on Tiffany. ‘You can operate the spring.’ ‘I like operating the spring,’ said the toad, crawling around to the back of the hat. There was a click, and a slow thwap-thwap noise, and the centre of the hat rose slowly and jerkily up out of the paper flowers, which fell away. ‘Er . . .’ said Tiffany. ‘You have a question?’ said Miss Tick. With a last thwop, the top of the hat made a perfect point. ‘How do you know I won’t run away right now and tell the Baron?’ said Tiffany. ‘Because you haven’t the slightest desire to do so,’ said Miss Tick. ‘You’re absolutely fascinated. You want to be a witch, am I right? You probably want to fly on a broomstick, yes?’ ‘Oh, yes!’ She’d often dreamed of flying. Miss Tick’s next words brought her down to earth. ‘Really? You like having to wear really, really thick pants? Believe me, if I’ve got to fly I wear two pairs of woollen ones and a canvas pair on the outside which, I may tell you, are not very feminine no matter how much lace you sew on. It can get cold up there. People forget that. And then there’s the bristles. Don’t ask me about the bristles. I will not talk about the bristles.’ ‘But can’t you use a keeping-warm spell?’ said Tiffany. ‘I could. But a witch doesn’t do that sort of thing. Once you use magic to keep yourself warm, then you’ll start using it for other things.’ ‘But isn’t that what a witch is supposed to—’ Tiffany began. ‘Once you learn about magic, I mean really learn about magic, learn everything you can learn about magic, then you’ve got the most important lesson still to learn,’ said Miss Tick. ‘What’s that?’ ‘Not to use it. Witches don’t use magic unless they really have to. It’s hard work and difficult to control. We do other things. A witch pays attention to everything that’s going on. A witch uses her head. A witch is sure of herself. A witch always has a piece of string—’ ‘I always do have a piece of string!’ said Tiffany. ‘It’s always handy!’ ‘Good. Although there’s more to witchcraft than string. A witch delights in small details. A witch sees through things and round things. A witch sees further than most. A witch sees things from the other side. A witch knows where she is, and when she is. A witch would see Jenny Green-Teeth,’ she added. ‘What happened?’ ‘How did you know I saw Jenny Green-Teeth?’ ‘I’m a witch. Guess,’ said Miss Tick. Tiffany looked around the tent. There wasn’t much to see, even now that her eyes were getting accustomed to the gloom. The sounds of the outside world filtered through the heavy material. ‘I think—’ ‘Yes?’ said the witch. ‘I think you heard me telling the teacher.’ ‘Correct. I just used my ears,’ said Miss Tick, saying nothing at all about saucers of ink. Tell me about this monster with eyes the size of the kind of soup plates that are eight inches across. Where do soup plates come into it?’ ‘The monster is mentioned in a book of stories I’ve got,’ explained Tiffany. ‘It said Jenny Green-Teeth has eyes the size of soup plates. There’s a picture, but it’s not a good one. So I measured a soup plate, so I could be exact.’ Miss Tick put her chin on her hand and gave Tiffany an odd sort of smile. ‘That was all right, wasn’t it?’ said Tiffany. ‘What? Oh, yes. Yes. Um . . . yes. Very . . . exact. Go on.’ Tiffany told her about the fight with Jenny, although she didn’t mention Wentworth in case Miss Tick got funny about it. Miss Tick listened carefully. ‘Why the frying pan?’ she said. ‘You could’ve found a stick.’ ‘A frying pan just seemed a better idea,’ said Tiffany. ‘Hah! It was. Jenny would’ve eaten you up if you’d used a stick. A frying pan is made of iron. Creatures of that kidney can’t stand iron.’ ‘But it’s a monster out of a storybook!’ said Tiffany. ‘What’s it doing turning up in our little river?’ Miss Tick stared at Tiffany for a while, and then said: ‘Why do you want to be a witch, Tiffany?’ It had started with The Goode Childe’s Booke of Faerie Tales . Actually, it had probably started with a lot of things, but the stories most of all. Her mother had read them to her when she was little, and then she’d read them to herself. And all the stories had, somewhere, the witch. The wicked old witch. And Tiffany had thought: Where’s the evidence? The stories never said why she was wicked. It was enough to be an old woman, enough to be all alone, enough to look strange because you had no teeth. It was enough to be called a witch. If it came to that, the book never gave you the evidence of anything. It talked about ‘a handsome prince’ . . . was he really, or was it just because he was a prince that people called him handsome? As for ‘a girl who was as beautiful as the day was long’ . . . well, which day? In midwinter it hardly ever got light! The stories didn’t want you to think, they just wanted you to believe what you were told . . . And you were told that the old witch lived all by herself in a strange cottage made of gingerbread or which ran around on giant hen’s feet, and talked to animals, and could do magic. Tiffany only ever knew one old woman who lived all alone in a strange cottage . . . Well, no. That wasn’t quite true. But she had only ever known one old woman who lived in a strange house that moved about, and that was Granny Aching. And she could do magic, sheep magic, and she talked to animals and there was nothing wicked about her. That proved you couldn’t believe the stories. And there had been the other old woman, the one who everyone said was a witch. And what had happened to her had made Tiffany very . . . thoughtful. Anyway, she preferred the witches to the smug handsome princes and especially to the stupid smirking princesses, who didn’t have the sense of a beetle. They had lovely golden hair, too, and Tiffany didn’t. Her hair was brown, plain brown. Her mother called it chestnut, or sometimes auburn, but Tiffany knew it was brown, brown, brown, just like her eyes. Brown as earth. And did the book have any adventures for people who had brown eyes and brown hair? No, no, no . . . it was the blond people with blue eyes and the redheads with green eyes who got the stories. If you had brown hair you were probably just a servant or a woodcutter or something. Or a dairymaid. Well, that was not going to happen, even if she was good at cheese. She couldn’t be the prince, and she’d never be a princess, and she didn’t want to be a woodcutter, so she’d be the witch and know things, just like Granny Aching— ‘Who was Granny Aching?’ said a voice. Who was Granny Aching? People would start asking that now. And the answer was: what Granny Aching was, was there. She was always there. It seemed that the lives of all the Achings revolved around Granny Aching. Down in the village decisions were made, things were done, life went on in the knowledge that in her old wheeled shepherding hut on the hills Granny Aching was there, watching. And she was the silence of the hills. Perhaps that’s why she liked Tiffany, in her awkward, hesitant way. Her older sisters chattered, and Granny didn’t like noise. Tiffany didn’t make noise when she was up at the hut. She just loved being there. She’d watch the buzzards, and listen to the noise of the silence. It did have a noise, up there. Sounds, voices, animal noises floating up onto the downs, somehow made the silence deep and complex. And Granny Aching wrapped this silence around herself and made room inside it for Tiffany. It was always too busy on the farm. There were a lot of people with a lot to do. There wasn’t enough time for silence. There wasn’t time for listening. But Granny Aching was silent and listened all the time. ‘What?’ said Tiffany, blinking. ‘You just said “Granny Aching listened to me all the time”,’ said Miss Tick. Tiffany swallowed. ‘I think my grandmother was slightly a witch,’ she said, with a touch of pride. ‘Really? How do you know?’ ‘Well, witches can curse people, right?’ said Tiffany. ‘So it is said,’ said Miss Tick, diplomatically. ‘Well, my father said Granny Aching cussed the sky blue,’ said Tiffany. Miss Tick coughed. ‘Well, cussing, now, cussing isn’t like genuine cursing. Cussing’s more like dang and botheration and darned and drat, you know? Cursing is more on the lines of “I hope your nose explodes and your ears go flying away.”‘ ‘I think Granny’s cussing was a bit more than that,’ said Tiffany, in a very definite voice. ‘And she talked to her dogs.’ ‘And what kind of things did she say to them?’ said Miss Tick. ‘Oh, things like come by and away to me and that’ll do,’ said Tiffany. They always did what she told them.’ ‘But those are just sheepdog commands,’ said Miss Tick, dismissively. That’s not exactly witchcraft.’ ‘Well, that still makes them familiars, doesn’t it?’ Tiffany retorted, feeling annoyed. ‘Witches have animals they can talk to, called familiars. Like your toad there.’ ‘I’m not familiar,’ said a voice from among the paper flowers. ‘I’m just slightly presumptuous.’ ‘And she knew about all kinds of herbs,’ Tiffany persisted. Granny Aching was going to be a witch even if Tiffany had to argue all day. ‘She could cure anything. My father said she could make a shepherd’s pie stand up and baa.' Tiffany lowered her voice. ‘She could bring lambs back to life . . .’ You hardly ever saw Granny Aching indoors in the spring and summer. She spent most of the year sleeping in the old wheeled hut, which could be dragged across the downs after the flocks. But the first time Tiffany could remember seeing the old woman in the farmhouse, she was kneeling in front of the fire, putting a dead lamb in the big black oven. Tiffany had screamed and screamed. And Granny had gently picked her up, a little awkwardly, and sat her on her lap and shushed her and called her ‘my little jiggit’, while on the floor her sheepdogs, Thunder and Lightning, watched her in doggish amazement. Granny wasn’t particularly at home around children, because they didn’t baa. When Tiffany had stopped crying out of sheer lack of breath, Granny had put her down on the rug and opened the oven, and Tiffany had watched the lamb come alive again. When Tiffany got a little older, she found out that ‘jiggit’ meant twenty in the Van Tan Tethera, the ancient counting language of the shepherds. The older people still used it when they were counting things they thought of as special. She was Granny Aching’s twentieth grandchild. And when she was older she also understood all about the warming oven, which never got more than, well, warm. Her mother would let the bread dough rise in it, and Ratbag the cat would sleep in it, sometimes on the dough. It was just the place to revive a weak lamb that had been born on a snowy night and was near death from the cold. That was how it worked. No magic at all. But that time it had been magic. And it didn’t stop being magic just because you found out how it was done. ‘Good, but still not exactly witchcraft,’ said Miss Tick, breaking the spell again. ‘Anyway, you don’t have to have a witch ancestor to be a witch. It helps, of course, because of heredity.' ‘You mean like having talents?’ said Tiffany, wrinkling her brow. ‘Partly, I suppose,’ said Miss Tick. ‘But I was thinking of pointy hats, for example. If you have a grandmother who can pass on her pointy hat to you, that saves a great deal of expense. They are incredibly hard to come by, especially ones strong enough to withstand falling farmhouses. Did Mrs Aching have anything like that?’ ‘I don’t think so,’ said Tiffany. ‘She hardly ever wore a hat except in the very cold weather. She wore an old grain sack as a sort of hood. Um . . . does that count?’ For the first time, Miss Tick looked a little less flinty. ‘Possibly, possibly,’ she said. ‘Do you have any brothers and sisters, Tiffany?’ ‘I have six sisters,’ said Tiffany. I’m the youngest. Most of them don’t live with us now.’ ‘And then you weren’t the baby any more because you had a dear little brother,’ said Miss Tick. The only boy, too. That must have been a nice surprise.’ Suddenly, Tiffany found Miss Tick’s faint smile slightly annoying. ‘How do you know about my brother?’ she said. The smile faded. Miss Tick thought: This child is sharp. ‘Just a guess,’ she said. No one likes admitting to spying. ‘Are you using persykology on me?’ said Tiffany hotly. ‘I think you mean psychology,’ said Miss Tick. ‘Whatever,’ said Tiffany. ‘You think I don’t like him because my parents make a fuss of him and spoil him, yes?’ ‘Well, it did cross my mind,’ said Miss Tick, and gave up worrying about the spying. She was a witch, and that was all there was to it. ‘I think it was the bit when you used him as bait for a slathering monster that gave me a hint,’ she added. ‘He’s just a nuisance!’ said Tiffany. ‘He takes up my time and I’m always having to look after him and he always wants sweets. Anyway,’ she continued, ‘I had to think fast.’ ‘Quite so,’ said Miss Tick. ‘Granny Aching would have done something about monsters in our river,’ said Tiffany, ignoring that. ‘Even if they are out of books.’ And she’d have done something about what happened to old Mrs Snapperly, she added to herself. She’d have spoken up, and people would have listened . . . They always listened when Granny spoke up. Speak up for those who don’t have voices, she always said. ‘Good,’ said Miss Tick. ‘So she should. Witches deal with things. You said the river was very shallow where Jenny leaped up? And the world looked blurred and shaky? Was there a susurrus?’ Tiffany beamed. ‘Yes, there certainly was!’ ‘Ah. Something bad is happening.’ Tiffany looked worried. ‘Can I stop it?’ ‘And now I’m slightly impressed,’ said Miss Tick. ‘You said, “Can I stop it?”, not “Can anyone stop it?” or “Can we stop it?” That’s good. You accept responsibility. That’s a good start. And you keep a cool head. But, no, you can’t stop it.’ ‘I walloped Jenny Green-Teeth!’ ‘Lucky hit,’ said Miss Tick. There may be worse than her on the way, believe me. I believe an incursion of major proportions is going to start here and, clever though you are, my girl, you have as much chance as one of your lambs on a snowy night. You keep clear. I’ll try to fetch help.’ ‘What, from the Baron?’ ‘Good gracious, no. He’d be no use at all.’ ‘But he protects us,’ said Tiffany. That’s what my mother says.’ ‘Does he?’ said Miss Tick. ‘Who from? I mean, from whom?’ ‘Well, from, you know . . . attack, I suppose. From other barons, my father says.’ ‘Has he got a big army?’ ‘Well, er, he’s got Sergeant Roberts, and Kevin and Neville and Trevor,’ said Tiffany. ‘We all know them. They mostly guard the castle.’ ‘Any of them got magical powers?’ said Miss Tick. ‘I saw Neville do card tricks once,’ said Tiffany. ‘A wow at parties, but probably not much use even against something like Jenny,’ said Miss Tick. ‘Are there no oth— Are there no witches here at all?’ Tiffany hesitated. ‘There was old Mrs Snapperly,' she said. Oh, yes. She’d lived all alone in a strange cottage all right. . . ‘Good name,’ said Miss Tick. ‘Can’t say I’ve heard it before, though. Where is she?’ ‘She died in the snow last winter,’ said Tiffany, slowly. ‘And now tell me what you’re not telling me,’ said Miss Tick, sharp as a knife. ‘Er . . . she was begging, people think, but no one opened their doors to her and, er . . . it was a cold night, and . . . she died.’ ‘And she was a witch, was she?’ ‘Everyone said she was a witch,’ said Tiffany. She really did not want to talk about this. No one in the villages around here wanted to talk about it. No one went near the ruins of the cottage in the woods, either. ‘You don’t think so?’ ‘Um . . .’ Tiffany squirmed. ‘You see . . . the Baron had a son called Roland. He was only twelve, I think. And he went riding in the woods by himself last summer and his dogs came back without him.’ ‘Mrs Snapperly lived in those woods?’ said Miss Tick. ‘Yes.’ ‘And people think she killed him?’ said Miss Tick. She sighed. They probably think she cooked him in the oven, or something.’ ‘They never actually said,’ said Tiffany. ‘But I think it was something like that, yes.’ ‘And did his horse turn up?’ said Miss Tick. ‘No,’ said Tiffany. ‘And that was strange, because if it’d turned up anywhere along the hills the people would have noticed it . . .’ Miss Tick folded her hands, sniffed, and smiled a smile with no humour in it at all. ‘Easily explained,' she said. ‘Mrs Snapperly must have had a really big oven, eh?’ ‘No, it was really quite small,’ said Tiffany. ‘Only ten inches deep.’ ‘I bet Mrs Snapperly had no teeth and talked to herself, right?’ said Miss Tick. ‘Yes. And she had a cat. And a squint,’ said Tiffany. And it all came out in a rush: ‘And so after he vanished they went to her cottage and they looked in the oven and they dug up her garden and they threw stones at her old cat until it died and they turned her out of her cottage and piled up all her old books in the middle of the room and set fire to them and burned the place to the ground and everyone said she was an old witch.’ ‘They burned the books,’ said Miss Tick, in a flat voice. ‘Because they said they had old writing in them,’ said Tiffany. ‘And pictures of stars.’ ‘And when you went to look, did they?’ said Miss Tick. Tiffany suddenly felt cold. ‘How did you know?’ she said. ‘I’m good at listening. Well, did they?’ Tiffany sighed. ‘Yes, I went to the cottage next day and some of the pages, you know, had kind of floated up in the heat. And I found a part of one, and it had all old lettering and gold and blue edging. And I buried her cat.’ ‘You buried the cat?’ ‘Yes! Someone had to!’ said Tiffany hotly. ‘And you measured the oven,’ said Miss Tick. ‘I know you did, because you just told me what size it was.’ And you measure soup plates, Miss Tick added to herself. What have I found here? ‘Well, yes. I did. I mean . . . it was tiny! And if she could magic away a boy and a whole horse, why didn’t she magic away the men who came for her? It didn’t make any sense—!’ Miss Tick waved her into silence. ‘And then what happened?’ ‘Then the Baron said no one was to have anything to do with her,’ said Tiffany. ‘He said any witches found in the country would be tied up and thrown in the pond. Er, you could be in danger,’ she added, uncertainly. ‘I can untie knots with my teeth and I have a Gold Swimming Certificate from the Quirm College for Young Ladies,’ said Miss Tick. ‘All that practice at jumping into the swimming pool with my clothes on was time well spent.’ She leaned forward. ‘Let me guess what happened to Mrs Snapperly,’ she said. ‘She lived from the summer until the snow, right? She stole food from barns and probably women gave her food at the back door if the men weren’t around? I expect the bigger boys threw things at her if they saw her.’ ‘How do you know all this?’ said Tiffany. ‘It doesn’t take a huge leap of imagination, believe me,’ said Miss Tick. ‘And she wasn’t a witch, was she?’ ‘I think she was just a sick old lady who was no use to anyone and smelled a bit and looked odd because she had no teeth,’ said Tiffany. ‘She just looked like a witch in a story. Anyone with half a mind could see that.’ Miss Tick sighed. ‘Yes. But sometimes it’s so hard to find half a mind when you need one.’ ‘Can’t you teach me what I need to know to be a witch?’ said Tiffany. ‘Tell me why you still want to be a witch, bearing in mind what happened to Mrs Snapperly?’ ‘So that sort of thing doesn’t happen again,’ said Tiffany. She even buried the old witch’s cat, thought Miss Tick. What kind of child is this? ‘Good answer. You might make a decent witch one day,’ she said. ‘But I don’t teach people to be witches. I teach people about witches. Witches learn in a special school. I just show them the way, if they’re any good. All witches have special interests, and I like children.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because they’re much easier to fit in the oven,’ said Miss Tick. But Tiffany wasn’t frightened, just annoyed. ‘That was a nasty thing to say,’ she said. ‘Well, witches don’t have to be nice,’ said Miss Tick, pulling a large black bag from under the table. ‘I’m glad to see you pay attention.’ ‘There really is a school for witches?’ said Tiffany. ‘In a manner of speaking, yes,’ said Miss Tick. ‘Where?’ ‘Very close.’ ‘It is magical?’ ‘Very magical.’ ‘A wonderful place?’ ‘There’s nowhere quite like it.’ ‘Can I go there by magic? Does, like, a unicorn turn up to carry me there or something?’ ‘Why should it? A unicorn is nothing more than a big horse that comes to a point, anyway. Nothing to get so excited about,’ said Miss Tick. ‘And that will be one egg, please.’ ‘Exactly where can I find the school?’ said Tiffany, handing over the egg. ‘Aha. A root vegetable question, I think,’ said Miss Tick. ‘Two carrots, please.' Tiffany handed them over. ‘Thank you. Ready? To find the school for witches, go to a high place near here, climb to the top, open your eyes . . .' Miss Tick hesitated. ‘Yes?’ ‘. . . and then open your eyes again.' ‘But—’ Tiffany began. ‘Got any more eggs?’ ‘No, but—’ ‘No more education, then. But I have a question to ask you.' ‘Got any eggs?’ said Tiffany, instantly. ‘Hah! Did you see anything else by the river, Tiffany?’ Silence suddenly filled the tent. The sound of bad spelling and erratic geography filtered through from outside as Tiffany and Miss Tick stared into one another’s eyes. ‘No,' lied Tiffany. ‘Are you sure?’ said Miss Tick. ‘Yes.' They continued the staring match. But Tiffany could outstare a cat. ‘I see,’ said Miss Tick, looking away. ‘Very well. In that case, please tell me . . . when you stopped outside my tent just now you said “Aha” in what I considered to be a smug tone of voice. Were you thinking, This is a strange little black tent with a mysterious little sign on the door, so going inside could be the start of an adventure, or were you thinking, This could be the tent of some wicked witch like they thought Mrs Snapperly was, who’ll put some horrible spell on me as soon as I go in? It’s all right, you can stop staring now. Your eyes are watering.’ ‘I thought both those things,’ said Tiffany, blinking. ‘But you came in anyway. Why?’ ‘To find out.’ ‘Good answer. Witches are naturally nosy,’ said Miss Tick, standing up. ‘Well, I must go. I hope we shall meet again. I will give you some free advice, though.’ ‘Will it cost me anything?’ ‘What? I just said it was free!’ said Miss Tick. ‘Yes, but my father said that free advice often turns out to be expensive,’ said Tiffany. Miss Tick sniffed. ‘You could say this advice is priceless,’ she said. ‘Are you listening?’ ‘Yes,’ said Tiffany. ‘Good. Now . . . if you trust in yourself . . .’ ‘Yes?’ ‘. . . and believe in your dreams . . .' ‘Yes?’ ‘. . . and follow your star . . .’ Miss Tick went on. ‘Yes?’ ‘. . . you’ll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy. Goodbye.’ The tent seemed to grow darker. It was time to leave. Tiffany found herself back in the square where the other teachers were taking down their stalls. She didn’t look round. She knew enough not to look around. Either the tent would still be there, which would be a disappointment, or it would have mysteriously disappeared, and that would be worrying. She headed home, and wondered if she should have mentioned the little red-haired men. She hadn’t for a whole lot of reasons. She wasn’t sure, now, that she’d really seen them; she had a feeling that they wouldn’t have wanted her to; and it was nice to have something Miss Tick didn’t know. Yes. That was the best part. Miss Tick was a bit too clever, in Tiffany’s opinion. On the way home she climbed to the top of Arken Hill, which was just outside the village. It wasn’t very big, not even as high as the downs above the farm and certainly nothing like as high as the mountains. The hill was more . . . homely. There was a flat place at the top where nothing ever grew, and Tiffany knew there was a story that a hero had once fought a dragon up there and its blood had burned the ground where it fell. There was another story that said there was a heap of treasure under the hill, defended by the dragon, and another story that said a king was buried there in armour of solid gold. There were lots of stories about the hill; it was surprising it hadn’t sunk under the weight of them. Tiffany stood on the bare soil and looked at the view. She could see the village and the river and Home Farm, and the Baron’s castle and, beyond the fields she knew, she could see grey woods and heathlands. She closed her eyes and opened them again. And blinked, and opened them again. There was no magic door, no hidden building revealed, no strange signs. For a moment, though, the air buzzed, and smelled of snow. When she got home she looked up ‘incursion’ in the dictionary. It meant ‘invasion’. An incursion of major proportions, Miss Tick had said. And, now, little unseen eyes watched Tiffany from the top of the shelf. . . Chapter 3 Hunt The Hag Miss Tick removed her hat, reached inside and pulled a piece of string. With little clicks and flapping noises the hat took up the shape of a rather elderly straw hat. She picked up the paper flowers from the ground and stuck them on, carefully. Then she said: ‘Phew!’ ‘You can’t just let the kid go like that,’ said the toad, who was sitting on the table. ‘Like what?’ ‘She’s clearly got First Sight and Second Thoughts. That’s a powerful combination.’ ‘She’s a little know-it-all,’ said Miss Tick. ‘Right. Just like you. She’s impressed you, right? I know she did because you were quite nasty to her, and you always do that to people who impress you.’ ‘Do you want to be turned into a frog?’ ‘Well, now, let me see . . .’ said the toad sarcastically. ‘Better skin, better legs, likelihood of being kissed by a princess one hundred per cent improved . . . why, yes. Whenever you’re ready, madam.’ ‘There’re worse things than being a toad,’ said Miss Tick darkly. “Try it some time,’ said the toad. ‘Anyway, I rather liked her.’ ‘So did I,’ said Miss Tick, briskly. ‘She hears about an old lady dying because these idiots thought she was a witch, and she decides to become a witch so that they don’t try that again. A monster roars up out of her river and she bashes it with a frying pan! Have you ever heard the saying “The land finds its witch”? It’s happened here, I’ll bet. But a chalk witch? Witches like granite and basalt, hard rock all the way down! Do you know what chalk is?’ ‘You’re going to tell me,’ said the toad. ‘It’s the shells of billions and billions of tiny, helpless little sea creatures that died millions of years ago,’ said Miss Tick. ‘It’s . . . tiny, tiny bones. Soft. Soggy. Damp. Even limestone is better than that. But . . . she’s grown up on chalk and she is hard, and sharp, too. She’s a born witch. On chalk! Which is impossible!’ ‘She bashed Jenny!’ said the toad. The girl has got talent!’ ‘Maybe, but she needs more than that. Jenny isn’t clever,’ said Miss Tick. ‘She’s only a Grade One Prohibitory Monster. And she was probably bewildered to find herself in a stream, when her natural home is in stagnant water. There’ll be much, much worse than her.’ ‘What do you mean, “a Grade One Prohibitory Monster”?’ asked the toad. ‘I’ve never heard her called that.’ ‘I am a teacher as well as a witch,’ said Miss Tick, adjusting her hat carefully. Therefore I make lists. I make assessments. I write things down in a neat, firm hand with pens of two colours. Jenny is one of a number of creatures invented by adults to scare children away from dangerous places.’ She sighed. ‘If only people would think before they make up monsters.’ ‘You ought to stay and help her,’ said the toad. ‘I’ve got practically no power here,’ said Miss Tick. ‘I told you. It’s the chalk. And remember the redheaded men. A Nac Mac Feegle spoke to her! Warned her! I’ve never seen one in my life! If she’s got them on her side, who knows what she can do?’ She picked up the toad. ‘D’you know what’ll be turning up?’ she continued. ‘All the things they locked away in those old stories. All those reasons why you shouldn’t stray off the path, or open the forbidden door, or say the wrong word, or spill the salt. All the stories that gave children nightmares. All the monsters from under the biggest bed in the world. Somewhere, all stories are real and all dreams come true. And they’ll come true here if they’re not stopped. If it wasn’t for the Nac Mac Feegle I’d be really worried. As it is, I’m going to try and get some help. That’s going to take me at least two days without a broomstick!’ ‘It’s unfair to leave her alone with them,’ said the toad. ‘She won’t be alone,’ said Miss Tick. ‘She’ll have you.’ ‘Oh,’ said the toad. Tiffany shared a bedroom with Fastidia and Hannah. She woke up when she heard them come to bed, and lay in the dark until she heard their breathing settle down and they started to dream of young sheep shearers with their shirts off. Outside, summer lightning flashed around the hills, and there was a rumble of thunder . . . Thunder and Lightning. She knew them as dogs before she knew them as the sound and light of a storm. Granny always had her sheepdogs with her, indoors and out. One moment they would be black and white streaks across the distant turf and then they were suddenly there, panting, eyes never leaving Granny’s face. Half the dogs on the hills were Lightning’s puppies, trained by Granny Aching. Tiffany had gone with the family to the big Sheepdog Trials. Every shepherd on the Chalk went to them, and the very best entered the arena to show how well they could work their dogs. The dogs would round up sheep, separate them, drive them into the pens - or sometimes run off, or snap at one another, because even the best dog can have a bad day. But Granny never entered with Thunder and Lightning. She’d lean on the fence with the dogs lying in front of her, watching the show intently and puffing her foul pipe. And Tiffany’s father had said that, after each shepherd had worked his dogs, the judges would look nervously across at Granny Aching to see what she thought. In fact all the shepherds watched her. Granny never, ever entered the arena because she was the Trials. If Granny thought you were a good shepherd - if she nodded at you when you walked out of the arena, if she puffed at her pipe and said ‘that’ll do’ - you walked like a giant for a day, you owned the Chalk . . . When she was small and up on the wold with Granny, Thunder and Lightning would baby-sit Tiffany, lying attentively a few feet away as she played. And she’d been so proud when Granny had let her use them to round up a flock. She’d run about excitedly in all directions shouting ‘Come by!’ and ‘There!’ and ‘Walk up!’ and, glory be, the dogs had worked perfectly. She knew now that they’d have worked perfectly whatever she’d shouted. Granny was just sitting there, smoking her pipe, and by now the dogs could read her mind. They only ever took orders from Granny Aching . . . The storm died down after a while and there was the gentle sound of rain. At some point Ratbag the cat pushed open the door and jumped onto the bed. He was big to start with, but Ratbag flowed. He was so fat that, on any reasonably flat surface, he gradually spread out in a great puddle of fur. He hated Tiffany, but would never let personal feelings get in the way of a warm place to sleep. She must have slept, because she woke up when she heard the voices. They seemed very close but, somehow, very small. ‘Crivens! It’s a’ vena well sayin’ “find the hag”, but what should we be lookin ‘for, can ye tell me that? All these bigjobs look just the same tae me!’ ‘Not-totally-wee Geordie doon at thefishin’ said she was a big, big girl!’ ‘A great help that is, I dinnae think! They ‘re all big, big girls!’ ‘Ye pair a dafties! Everyone knows a hag wears a pointy bonnet!’ ‘So they canna be a hag if they’re sleepin’, then?’ ‘Hello?’ whispered Tiffany. There was silence, embroidered with the breathing of her sisters. But in a way Tiffany couldn’t quite describe, it was the silence of people trying hard not to make any noise. She leaned down and looked under the bed. There was nothing there but the guzunder. The little man in the river had talked just like that. She lay back in the moonlight, listening until her ears ached. Then she wondered what the school for witches would be like and why she hadn’t seen it yet. She knew every inch of the country for two miles around. She liked the river best, with the backwaters where striped pike sunbathed just above the weeds and the banks where kingfishers nested. There was a heronry a mile or so upriver and she liked to creep up on the birds when they came down here to fish in the reeds, because there’s nothing funnier than a heron trying to get airborne in a hurry . . . She drifted off to sleep again, thinking about the land around the farm. She knew all of it. There were no secret places that she didn’t know about. But maybe there were magical doors. That’s what she’d make, if she had a magical school. There should be secret doorways everywhere, even hundreds of miles away. Look at a special rock by, say, moonlight, and there would be yet another door. But the school, now, the school. There would be lessons in broomstick riding and how to sharpen your hat to a point, and magical meals, and lots of new friends. ‘Is the bairn asleep?’ ‘Aye, I canna’ hear her movin’.’ Tiffany opened her eyes in the darkness. The voices under the bed had a slightly echoey edge. Thank goodness the guzunder was nice and clean. ‘Right, let’s get oot o’ this wee pot, then.’ The voices moved off across the room. Tiffany’s ears tried to swivel to follow them. ‘Hey, see here, it’s a hoose! See, with wee chairies and things!’ They’ve found the doll’s house, Tiffany thought. It was quite a large one, made by Mr Block the farm carpenter when Tiffany’s oldest sister, who already had two babies of her own now, was a little girl. It wasn’t the most fragile of items. Mr Block did not go in for delicate work. But over the years the girls had decorated it with bits of material and some rough and ready furniture. By the sound of it the owners of the voices thought it was a palace. ‘Hey, hey, hey, we’re in the cushy stuff noo! There’s a beid in this room. Wi’ pillows!’ ‘Keep it doon, we don’t want any o’ them to wake up!’ ‘Crivens, I’m as quiet as a wee moose! Aargh! There’s sojers!’ ‘Whut d’ye mean, sojers?’ ‘There’s redcoats in the room!’ They’ve found the toy soldiers, thought Tiffany, trying not to breathe loudly. Strictly speaking, they had no place in the doll’s house, but Wentworth wasn’t old enough for them and so they’d got used as innocent bystanders back in those days when Tiffany had made tea parties for her dolls. Well, what passed for dolls. Such toys as there were in the farmhouse had to be tough to survive intact through the generations and didn’t always manage it. Last time Tiffany had tried to arrange a party, the guests had been a rag doll with no head, two wooden soldiers and three-quarters of a small teddy bear. Thuds and bangs came from the direction of the doll’s house. 'I got one! Hey, pal, can yer mammie sew? Stitch this! Aargh! He’s got a held on him like a tree!’ ‘Crivens! There’s a body here wi’ no held at a’ I’ ‘Aye, nae wonder, ‘cos here’s a bear! Feel ma boot, ye washoon!’ It seemed to Tiffany that although the owners of the three voices were fighting things that couldn’t possibly fight back, including a teddy bear with only one leg, the fight still wasn’t going all one way. ‘I got ‘im! I got ‘im! I got ‘im! Yer gonna get a gummer, yer wee hard disease!’ ‘Someone bit ma leg! Someone bit ma leg!’ ‘Come here! Ach, yerfightin’ yersels, ye eejits! Ah ‘m fed up wi’ the pair a yees!’ Tiffany felt Ratbag stir. He might be fat and lazy, but he was lightning fast when it came to leaping on small creatures. She couldn’t let him get the . . . whatever they were, however bad they sounded. She coughed loudly. ‘See?’ said a voice from the doll’s house. ‘Yer woked them up! Ah ‘m offski!’ Silence fell again and this time, Tiffany decided after a while, it was the silence of no one there rather than the silence of people being incredibly quiet. Ratbag went back to sleep, twitching occasionally as he disembowelled something in his fat cat dreams. Tiffany waited a little while and then got out of bed and crept towards the bedroom door, avoiding the two squeaky floorboards. She went downstairs in the dark, found a chair by moonlight, fished the book of Faerie Tales off Granny’s shelf, then lifted the latch on the back door and stepped out into the warm midsummer night. There was a lot of mist around, but a few stars were visible overhead and there was a gibbous moon in the sky. Tiffany knew it was gibbous because she’d read in the Almanack that ‘gibbous’ meant what the moon looked like when it was just a bit fatter than half full, and so she made a point of paying attention to it around those times just so that she could say to herself: ‘Ah, I see the moon’s very gibbous tonight . . .’ It’s possible that this tells you more about Tiffany than she would want you to know. Against the rising moon the downs were a black wall that filled half the sky. For a moment she looked for the light of Granny Aching’s lantern . . . Granny never lost a lamb. That was one of Tiffany’s first memories: of being held by her mother at the window one frosty night in early spring, with a million brilliant stars glinting over the mountains and, on the darkness of the downs, the one yellow star in the constellation of Granny Aching, zigzagging through the night. She wouldn’t go to bed while a lamb was lost, however bad the weather. . . There was only one place where it was possible for someone in a large family to be private, and that was in the privy. It was a three-holer, and it was where everyone went if they wanted to be alone for a while. There was a candle in there, and last year’s Almanack hanging on a string. The printers knew their readership, and printed the Almanack on soft thin paper. Tiffany lit the candle, made herself comfortable, and looked at the book of Faerie Tales. The moon gibbous’d at her through the crescent-shaped hole cut in the door. She’d never really liked the book. It seemed to her that it tried to tell her what to do and what to think. Don’t stray from the path, don’t open that door, but hate the wicked witch because she is wicked. Oh, and believe that shoe size is a good way of choosing a wife. A lot of the stories were highly suspicious, in her opinion. There was the one that ended when the two good children pushed the wicked witch into her own oven. Tiffany had worried about that after all that trouble with Mrs Snapperly. Stories like this stopped people thinking properly, she was sure. She’d read that one and thought, Excuse me? No one has an oven big enough to get a whole person in, and what made the children think they could just walk around eating people’s houses in any case? And why does some boy too stupid to know a cow is worth a lot more than five beans have the right to murder a giant and steal all his gold? Not to mention commit an act of ecological vandalism? And some girl who can’t tell the difference between a wolf and her grandmother must either have been as dense as teak or come from an extremely ugly family. The stories weren‘t real. But Mrs Snapperly had died because of stories. She flicked past page after page, looking for the right pictures. Because, although the stories made her angry, the pictures, ah, the pictures were the most beautiful things she’d ever seen. She turned a page and there it was. Most of the pictures of fairies were not very impressive. Frankly, they looked like a small girls’ ballet class that’d just had to run through a bramble patch. But this one . . . was different. The colours were strange, and there were no shadows. Giant grasses and daisies grew everywhere, so the fairies must have been quite small, but they looked big. They looked like rather strange humans. They certainly didn’t look much like fairies. Hardly any of them had wings. They were odd shapes, in fact. In fact, some of them looked like monsters. The girls in the tutus wouldn’t have stood much chance. And the odd thing was that, alone of all the pictures in the book, this one looked as if it had been done by an artist who had painted what was in front of him. The other pictures, the ballet girls and the romper-suit babies, had a made-up, syrupy look. This one didn’t. This one said that the artist had been there . . . . . . at least in his head, Tiffany thought. She concentrated on the bottom left-hand corner, and there it was. She’d seen it before, but you had to know where to look. It was definitely a little red-haired man, naked except for a kilt and a skinny waistcoat, scowling out of the picture. He looked very angry. And . . . Tiffany moved the candle to see more clearly . . . he was definitely making a gesture with his hand. Even if you didn’t know it was a rude one, it was easy to guess. She heard voices. She pushed the door open with her foot to hear them better, because a witch always listens to other people’s conversations. The sound was coming from the other side of the hedge, where there was a field that should have been full of nothing but sheep, waiting to go to market. Sheep are not known for their conversation. She snuck out carefully in the misty dawn and found a small gap that had been made by rabbits, which just gave her a good enough view. There was a ram grazing near the hedge and the conversation was coming from it or, rather, somewhere in the long grass underneath it. There seemed to be at least four speakers, who sounded bad-tempered. ‘Crivens! We wanna coo beastie, no’ a ship beastie!’ ‘Ach, one’s as goo’ as t’other! C’mon, lads, a’ grab a holt o’ aleg!’ ‘Aye, all the coos are inna shed, we tak’ what we can!’ ‘Keep it doon, keep it doon, will ya!’ ‘Ach, who’s listnin’? OK, lads - yan . . . tan . . . teth ‘ra!’ The sheep rose a little in the air, and bleated in alarm as it started to go across the field backwards. Tiffany thought she saw a hint of red hair in the grass around its legs, but that vanished as the ram was carried away into the mist. She pushed her way through the hedge, ignoring the twigs that scratched at her. Granny Aching wouldn’t have let anyone get away with stealing a sheep, even if they were invisible. But the mist was thick and, now, Tiffany heard noises from the henhouse. The disappearing-backwards sheep could wait. Now the hens needed her. A fox had got in twice in the last two weeks and the hens that hadn’t been taken were barely laying. Tiffany ran through the garden, catching her nightdress on pea sticks and gooseberry bushes, and flung open the henhouse door. There were no flying feathers, and nothing like the panic a fox would cause. But the chickens were clucking excitedly and Prunes, the cockerel, was strutting nervously up and down. One of the hens looked a bit embarrassed. Tiffany lifted it up quickly. There were two tiny blue, red-haired men underneath. They were each holding an egg, clasped in their arms. They looked up with very guilty expressions. ‘Ach, no!’ said one. ‘It’s the bairn! She’s the hag. . .’ ‘You’re stealing our eggs,’ said Tiffany. ‘How dare you! And I’m not a hag!’ The little men looked at one another, and then at the eggs. ‘Whut eiggs?’ said one. ‘The eggs you are holding,’ said Tiffany, meaningfully. ‘Whut? Oh, these? These are eiggs, are they?’ said the one who’d spoken first, looking at the eggs as if he’d never seen them before. There’s a thing. And there was us thinking they was, er, stones.’ ‘Stones,’ said the other one nervously. ‘We crawled under yon chookie for a wee bitty warmth,’ said the first one. ‘And there was all these things, we thought they was stones, which was why the puir fowl was clucking all the time . . .’ ‘Clucking,’ said the second one, nodding vigorously. ‘. . . so we took pity on the puir thing and—’ ‘Put. . . the . . . eggs . . . back,’ said Tiffany, slowly. The one who hadn’t been doing much talking nudged the other one. ‘Best do as she says,’ it said. ‘It’s a’ gang agley. Ye canna cross an Aching an’ this one’s a hag. She dinged Jenny an’ no one ha’ ever done that afore.’ ‘Aye, I didnae think o’ that.’ Both of the tiny men put the eggs back very carefully. One of them even breathed on the shell of his and made a show of polishing it with the ragged hem of his kilt. ‘No harm done, mistress,’ he said. He looked at the other man. And then they vanished. But there was a suspicion of a red blur in the air and some straw by the henhouse door flew up in the air. ‘And I’m a miss!’ shouted Tiffany. She lowered the hen back onto the eggs, and went to the door. ‘And I’m not a hag! Are you fairies of some sort? And what about our ship - I mean, sheep?’ she added. There was no answer but a clanking of buckets near the house, which meant that other people were getting up. She rescued the Faerie Tales, blew out the candle and made her way into the house. Her mother was lighting the fire and asked what she was doing up, and she said that she’d heard a commotion in the henhouse and had gone out to see if it was the fox again. That wasn’t a lie. In fact, it was completely true, even if it wasn’t exactly accurate. Tiffany was on the whole quite a truthful person, but it seemed to her that there were times when things didn’t divide easily into ‘true’ and ‘false’, but instead could be ‘things that people needed to know at the moment’ and ‘things that they didn’t need to know at the moment’. Besides, she wasn’t sure what she knew at the moment. There was porridge for breakfast. She ate it hurriedly, meaning to get back out into the paddock and see about that sheep. There might be tracks in the grass, or something . . . She looked up, not knowing why. Ratbag had been asleep in front of the oven. Now he was sitting up, alert. Tiffany felt a prickling on the back of her neck, and tried to see what the cat was looking at. On the dresser was a row of blue and white jars which weren’t very useful for anything. They’d been left to her mother by an elderly aunt, and she was proud of them because they looked nice but were completely useless. There was little room on the farm for useless things that looked nice, so they were treasured. Ratbag was watching the lid of one of them. It was rising very slowly, and under it was a hint of red hair and two beady, staring eyes. It lowered again when Tiffany gave it a long stare. A moment later she heard a faint rattle and, when she looked up, the pot was wobbling back and forth and there was a little cloud of dust rising along the top of the dresser. Ratbag was looking around in bewilderment. They certainly were very fast. She ran out into the paddock and looked around. The mist was off the grass now, and skylarks were rising on the downs. ‘If that sheep doesn’t come back this minute,’ she shouted at the sky, ‘there will be a reckoning!’ The sound bounced off the hills. And then she heard, very faint but close by, the sound of small voices: ‘Whut did the hag say?’ said the first voice. ‘She said there’d be a reck’ning!’ ‘Oh, waily, waily, waily! We’re in trouble noo!’ Tiffany looked around, face red with anger. ‘We have a duty,’ she said, to the air and the grass. It was something Granny Aching had said once, when Tiffany had been crying about a lamb. She had an old-fashioned way of speaking, and had said: ‘We are as gods to the beasts o’ the field, my jiggit. We order the time o’ their birth and the time o’ their death. Between times, we ha’ a duty.’ ‘We have a duty,’ Tiffany repeated, more softly. She glared around the field. ‘I know you can hear me, whoever you are. If that sheep doesn’t come back, there will be . . . trouble . . . The larks sang over the sheepfolds, making the silence deeper. Tiffany had to do the chores before she had any more time to herself. That meant feeding the chickens and collecting the eggs, and feeling slightly proud of the fact that there were two more than there might otherwise have been. It meant fetching six buckets of water from the well and filling the log basket by the stove, but she put those jobs off because she didn’t like doing them much. She did quite like churning butter, though. It gave her time to think. When I’m a witch with a pointy hat and a broomstick, she thought as she pumped the handle, I’ll wave my hand and the butter will come just like that. And any little red-headed devils that even think about taking our beasts will be— There was a slopping sound behind her, where she’d lined up the six buckets to take to the well. One of them was now full of water, which was still sloshing backwards and forwards. She went back to the churning as if nothing had happened but stopped after a while and went over to the flour bin. She took a small handful of flour and dusted it over the doorstep, and then went back to the churning. A few minutes later there was another watery sound behind her. When she turned round there was, yes, another full bucket. And in the flour on the stone doorstep were just two lines of little footprints, one leading out of the dairy and one coming back. It was all Tiffany could do to lift one of the heavy wooden buckets when it was full. So, she thought, they are immensely strong as well as being incredibly fast. I’m really being very calm about this. She looked up at the big wooden beams that ran across the room, and a little dust fell down, as if something had quickly moved out of the way. I think I ought to put a stop to this right now, she thought. On the other hand, there’s no harm in waiting until all the buckets are filled up. ‘And then I’ll have to fill the log box in the scullery,’ she said aloud. Well, it was worth a try. She went back to the churning, and didn’t bother to turn her head when she heard four more sloshes behind her. Nor did she look round when she heard little whooshwhoosh noises and the clatter of logs in the box. She only turned to see when the noise stopped. The log box was full up to the ceiling, and all the buckets were full. The patch of flour was a mass of footprints. She stopped churning. She had a feeling that eyes were watching her, a lot of eyes. ‘Er . . . thank you,’ she said. No, that wasn’t right. She sounded nervous. She let go of the butter paddle and stood up, trying to look as fierce as possible. ‘And what about our sheep?’ she said. I won’t believe you’re really sorry until I see the sheep come back!’ There was a bleating from the paddock. She ran out to the bottom of the garden and looked through the hedge. The sheep was coming back, backwards and at high speed. It jerked to a halt a little way from the hedge and dropped down as the little men let it go. One of the red-headed men appeared for a moment on its head. He huffed on a horn, polished it with his kilt, and vanished in a blur. Tiffany walked back to the dairy looking thoughtful. Oh, and when she got back the butter had been churned. Not just churned, in fact, but patted into a dozen fat golden oblongs on the marble she used when she did it. There was even a sprig of parsley on each one. Are they brownies? she wondered. According to the Faerie Tales, brownies hung around the house doing chores in exchange for a saucer of milk. But in the picture they’d been cheery little creatures with long pointy hoods. The red-haired men didn’t look as if they’d ever drunk milk in their lives, but perhaps it was worth a try. ‘Well,’ she said aloud, still aware of the hidden watchers. That’ll do. Thank you. I’m glad you’re sorry for what you did.’ She took one of the cat’s saucers from the pile by the sink, washed it carefully, filled it with milk from today’s churn, then put it down on the floor and stood back. ‘Are you brownies?’ she said. The air blurred. Milk splashed across the floor and the saucer spun round and round. ‘I’ll take that as a no, then,’ said Tiffany. ‘So what are you?’ There were unlimited supplies of no answer at all. She lay down and looked under the sink, and then peered behind the cheese shelves. She stared up into the dark, spidery shadows of the room. It felt empty. And she thought: I think I need a whole egg’s worth of education, in a hurry . . . Tiffany had walked along the steep track from the farm down into the village hundreds of times. It was less than half a mile long, and over the centuries the carts had worn it down so that it was more like a gully in the chalk and ran like a milky stream in wet weather. She was halfway down when the susurrus started. The hedges rustled without a wind. The skylarks stopped singing and, while she hadn’t really noticed their song, their silence was a shock. Nothing’s louder than the end of a song that’s always been there. When she looked up at the sky it was like looking through a diamond. It sparkled, and the air went cold so quickly that it was like stepping into an icy bath. Then there was snow under foot, snow on the hedges. And the sound of hooves. They were in the field beside her. A horse was galloping through the snow, behind the hedge that was now, suddenly, just a wall of white. The hoofbeats stopped. There was a moment of silence and then a horse landed in the lane, skidding on the snow. It pulled itself upright, and the rider turned it to face Tiffany. The rider himself couldn’t face Tiffany. He had no face. He had no head to hang it on. She ran. Her boots slipped on the snow as she moved, but suddenly her mind was cold as the ice. She had two legs, slipping on ice. A horse had twice as many legs to slip. She’d seen horses try to tackle this hill in icy weather. She had a chance. She heard a breathy, whistling noise behind her, and a whinny from the horse. She risked a glance. The horse was coming after her, but slowly, half walking and half sliding. Steam poured off it. About halfway down the slope the lane passed under an arch of trees, looking like crashed clouds now under their weight of snow. And beyond them, Tiffany knew, the lane flattened out. The headless man would catch her on the flat. She didn’t know what would happen after that, but she was sure it would be unpleasantly short. Flakes of snow dropped on her as she passed under the trees, and she decided to make a run for it. She might reach the village. She was good at running. But if she got there, then what? She’d never reach a door in time. And people would shout, and run about. The dark horseman didn’t look like someone who’d take much notice of that. No, she had to deal with it. If only she’d brought the frying pan. ‘Here, wee hag! Stannit ye still, right noo!’ She stared up. A tiny blue man had poked his head up out of the snow on top of the hedge. ‘There’s a headless horseman after me!’ she shouted. ‘He’ll no make it, hinny. Stand ye still! Look him in the eye!’ ‘He hasn’t got any eyes!’ ‘Crivens! Are ye a hag or no’? Look him in the eyes he hasnae got!’ The blue man disappeared into the snow. Tiffany turned round. The horseman was trotting under the trees now, the horse more certain as the ground levelled. He had a sword in his hand, and he was looking at her, with the eyes he didn’t have. There was the breathy noise again, not good to hear. The little men are watching me, she thought. I can’t run. Granny Aching wouldn’t have run from a thing with no head. She folded her arms and glared. The horseman stopped, as if puzzled, and then urged the horse forward. A blue and red shape, larger than the other little men, dropped out of the trees. He landed on the horse’s forehead, between its eyes, and grabbed an ear in both hands. Tiffany heard the man shout: ‘Here’s a face full o’ dandruff for ye, yer bogle, courtesy of Big Yan!’ and then the man hit the horse between the eyes with his head. To her amazement the horse staggered sideways. ‘Aw right?’ shouted the tiny fighter. ‘Big toughie, is ye? Once more wi’ feelin’!’ This time the horse danced uneasily the other way, and then its back legs slid from under it and it collapsed in the snow. Little blue men erupted from the hedge. The horseman, trying to get to his feet, disappeared under a blue and red storm of screaming creatures— And vanished. The snow vanished. The horse vanished. The blue men, for a moment, were in a pile on the hot, dusty road. One of them said, ‘Aw, crivens! I kicked meself in me own heid!’ And then they, too, vanished, but for a moment Tiffany saw blue and red blurs disappearing into the hedge. Then the skylarks were back. The hedges were green and full of flowers. Not a twig was broken, not a flower disturbed. The sky was blue, with no flashes of diamond. Tiffany looked down. On the toes of her boots, snow was melting. She was, strangely, glad about that. It meant that what had just happened was magical, not madness. Because, if she closed her eyes, she could still hear the wheezy breathing of the headless man. What she needed right now was people, and ordinary things happening. But more than anything else, she wanted answers. Actually, what she wanted more than anything else was not to hear the wheezy breathing when she shut her eyes . . . The tents had gone. Except for a few pieces of broken chalk, apple cores, some stamped-down grass and, alas, a few chicken feathers, there was nothing at all to show that the teachers had ever been there. A small voice said, 'Psst!’ She looked down. A toad crept out from under a dock leaf. ‘Miss Tick said you’d be back,’ it said. ‘I expect there’re some things you need to know, right?’ ‘Everything,’ said Tiffany. ‘We’re swamped with tiny men! I can’t understand half of what they say! They keep calling me a hag!’ ‘Ah, yes,’ said the toad. ‘You’ve got Nac Mac Feegles!’ ‘It snowed, and then it hadn’t! I was chased by a horseman with no head.' And one of the . . . what did you say they were?’ ‘Nac Mac Feegles,’ said the toad. ‘Also known as pictsies. They call themselves the Wee Free Men.’ ‘Well, one of them head-butted the horse! It fell over! It was a huge horse, too!’ ‘Ah, that sounds like a Feegle,’ said the toad. ‘I gave them some milk and they tipped it over!’ ‘You gave the Nac Mac Feegles milk!' ‘Well, you said they’re pixies!’ ‘Not pixies, pictsies. They certainly don’t drink milk!’ ‘Are they from the same place as Jenny?’ Tiffany demanded. ‘No. They’re rebels,’ said the toad. ‘Rebels? Against who?’ ‘Everyone. Anything,’ said the toad. ‘Now pick me up.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because there’s a woman at the well over there giving you a funny look. Put me in your apron pocket, for goodness’ sake.’ Tiffany snatched up the toad, and smiled at the woman. ‘I’m making a collection of pressed toads,’ she said. ‘That’s nice, dear,’ said the woman, and hurried away. ‘That wasn’t very funny,’ said the toad from her apron. ‘People don’t listen anyway,’ said Tiffany. She sat down under a tree and took the toad out of her pocket. ‘The Feegles tried to steal some of our eggs and one of our sheep,’ she said. ‘But I got them back.’ ‘You got something back from the Nac Mac Feegle?’ said the toad. ‘Were they ill?’ ‘No. They were a bit. . . well, sweet, actually. They even did the chores for me.’ ‘The Feegle did chores!’ said the toad. They never do chores! They’re not helpful at all!’ ‘And then there was the headless horseman!’ said Tiffany. ‘He had no head!’ ‘Well, that is the major job qualification,’ said the toad. ‘What’s going on, toad?’ said Tiffany. ‘Is it the Feegles who are invading?’ The toad looked a bit shifty. ‘Miss Tick doesn’t really want you to handle this,’ it said. ‘She’ll be back soon with help . . .' ‘Is she going to be in time?’ Tiffany demanded. ‘I don’t know. Probably. But you shouldn’t—’ ‘I want to know what is happening!’ ‘She’s gone to get some other witches,’ said the toad. ‘Uh . . . she doesn’t think you should—’ ‘You’d better tell me what you know, toad,’ said Tiffany. ‘Miss Tick isn’t here. I am.’ ‘Another world is colliding with this one,’ said the toad. There. Happy now? That’s what Miss Tick thinks. But it’s happening faster than she expected. All the monsters are coming back.’ ‘Why?’ ‘There’s no one to stop them.’ There was silence for a moment. ‘There’s me,’ said Tiffany. Chapter 4 The Wee Free Men Nothing happened on the way back to the farm. The sky stayed blue, none of the sheep in the home paddocks appeared to be travelling backwards very fast, and an air of hot emptiness lay over everything. Ratbag was on the path leading up to the back door, and he had something trapped in his paws. As soon as he saw Tiffany he picked it up and exited around the corner of the house at high speed, legs spinning in the high-speed slink of a guilty cat. Tiffany was too good a shot with a clod of earth. But at least there wasn’t something red and blue in his mouth. ‘Look at him,’ she said. ‘Great cowardly blob! I really wish I could stop him catching baby birds, it’s so sad!’ ‘You haven’t got a hat you can wear, have you?’ said the toad, from her apron pocket. ‘I hate not being able to see.’ They went into the dairy, which Tiffany normally had to herself for most of the day. In the bushes by the door there was a muffled conversation. It went like this: ‘Whut did the wee hag say?’ ‘She said she wants yon cat to stop scraffin’ the puir wee burdies.’ ‘Is that a’? Crivens! Nae problemo!’ Tiffany put the toad on the table as carefully as possible. ‘What do you eat?’ she said. It was polite to offer guests food, she knew. ‘I’ve got used to slugs and worms and stuff,’ said the toad. ‘It wasn’t easy. Don’t worry if you don’t have any. I expect you weren’t expecting a toad to drop in.’ ‘How about some milk?’ ‘You’re very kind.’ Tiffany fetched some, and poured it into a saucer. She watched while the toad crawled in. ‘Were you a handsome prince?’ she asked. ‘Yeah, right, maybe,’ said the toad, dribbling milk. ‘So why did Miss Tick put a spell on you?’ ‘Her? Huh, she couldn’t do that,’ said the toad. ‘It’s serious magic, turning someone into a toad but leaving them thinking they’re human. No, it was a fairy godmother. Never cross a woman with a star on a stick, young lady. They’ve got a mean streak.’ ‘Why did she do it?’ The toad looked embarrassed. ‘I don’t know,’ it said. ‘It’s all a bit . . . foggy. I just know I’ve been a person. At least, I think I know. It gives me the willies. Sometimes I wake up in the night and I think, was I ever really human? Or was I just a toad that got on her nerves and she made me think I was human once? That’d be a real torture, right? Supposing there’s nothing for me to turn back into?’ The toad turned worried yellow eyes on her. ‘After all, it can’t be very hard to mess with a toad’s head, yeah? It must be much simpler that turning, oh, a one-hundred-and-sixty-pound human into eight ounces of toad, yes? After all, where’s the rest of the mass going to go, I ask myself? Is it just sort of, you know, left over? Very worrying. I mean, I’ve got one or two memories of being a human, of course, but what’s a memory? Just a thought in your brain. You can’t be sure it’s real. Honestly, on nights when I’ve eaten a bad slug I wake up screaming, except all that comes out is a croak. Thank you for the milk, it was very nice.’ Tiffany stared in silence at the toad. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘magic is a lot more complicated than I thought.’ ‘Flappitty-flappitty flap! Cheep, cheep! Ach, poor wee me, cheepitty-cheep!’ Tiffany ran over to the window. There was a Feegle on the path. It had made itself some crude wings out of a piece of rag, and a kind of beaky cap out of straw, and was wobbling around in a circle like a wounded bird. ‘Ach, cheepitty-cheep! Fluttery-flutter! I certainly hope dere’s no’ a pussycat aroound! Ach, dearie me!’ it yelled. And down the path Ratbag, arch-enemy of all baby birds, slunk closer, dribbling. As Tiffany opened her mouth to yell, he leaped and landed with all four feet on the little man. Or at least where the little man had been, because he had somersaulted in mid-air and was now right in front of Ratbag’s face and had grabbed a cat ear with each hand. ‘Ach, see you, pussycat, scunner that y’are!’ he yelled. ‘Here’s a giftie from the t’ wee burdies, yah schemie!’ He butted the cat hard on the nose. Ratbag spun in the air and landed on his back with his eyes crossed. He squinted in cold terror as the little man leaned down at him and shouted, ‘CHEEP!’ Then he levitated in the way that cats do and became a ginger streak, rocketing down the path, through the open door and shooting past Tiffany to hide under the sink. The Feegle looked up, grinning, and saw Tiffany. ‘Please don’t go—’ she began quickly, but he went, in a blur. Tiffany’s mother was hurrying down the path. Tiffany picked up the toad and put it back in her apron pocket just in time. ‘Where’s Wentworth? Is he here?’ her mother asked urgently. ‘Did he come back? Answer me!’ ‘Didn’t he go up to the shearing with you, Mum?’ said Tiffany, suddenly nervous. She could feel the panic pouring off her mother like smoke. ‘We can’t find him!’ There was a wild look in her mother’s eyes. ‘I only turned my back for a minute! Are you sure you haven’t seen him?’ ‘But he couldn’t come all the way back here—’ ‘Go and look in the house! Go on!’ Mrs Aching hurried away. Hastily, Tiffany put the toad on the floor and chivvied him under the sink. She heard him croak and Ratbag, mad with fear and bewilderment, came out from under the sink in a whirl of legs and rocketed out of the door. She stood up. Her first, shameful thought was: He wanted to go up to watch the shearing. How could he get lost? He went with Mum and Hannah and Fastidia! And how closely would Fastidia and Hannah watch him with all those young men up there? She tried to pretend she hadn’t thought that, but she was treacherously good at spotting when she was lying. That’s the trouble with a brain: it thinks more than you sometimes want it to. But he’s never interested in moving far away from people! It’s half a mile up to the shearing pens! And he doesn’t move that fast. After a few feet he flops down and demands sweets! But it would be a bit more peaceful around here if he did get lost. . . There it went again, a nasty, shameful thought which she tried to drown out by getting busy. But first she took some sweets out of the jar, as bait, and rustled the bag as she ran from room to room. She heard boots in the yard as some of the men came down from the shearing sheds, but got on with looking under beds and in cupboards, even ones so high that a toddler couldn’t possibly reach them, and then looked again under beds that she’d already looked under, because it was that kind of search. It was the kind of search where you go and look in the attic, even though the door is always locked. After a few minutes there were two or three voices outside, calling for Wentworth, and she heard her father say, “Try down by the river!’ . . . and that meant he was frantic too, because Wentworth would never walk that far without a bribe. He was not a child who was happy away from sweets. It’s your fault. The thought felt like a piece of ice in her mind. It’s your fault because you didn’t love him very much. He turned up and you weren’t the youngest any more, and you had to have him trailing around after you, and you kept wishing, didn’t you?, that he’d go away. ‘That’s not true!’ Tiffany whispered to herself. ‘I . . . quite liked him . . .’ Not very much, admittedly. Not all the time. He didn’t know how to play properly, and he never did what he was told. You thought it would be better if he did get lost. Anyway, she added in her head, you can’t love people all the time when they have a permanently runny nose. And anyway . . . I wonder . . . ‘I wish I could find my brother,’ she said aloud. This seemed to have no effect. But the house was full of people, opening and shutting doors and calling out and getting in one another’s way, and the . . . Feegles were shy, despite many of them having faces like a hatful of knuckles. Don’t wish, Miss Tick had said. Do things. She went downstairs. Even some of the women who’d been packing fleeces up at the shearing had come down. They were clustered around her mother, who was sitting at the table, crying. No one noticed Tiffany. That often happened. She slipped into the dairy, closed the door carefully behind her, and leaned down to peer under the sink. The door burst open again and her father ran in. He stopped. Tiffany looked up guiltily. ‘He can’t be under there, girl!’ her father said. ‘Well, er . . .’ said Tiffany. ‘Did you look upstairs?’ ‘Even the attic, Dad—’ ‘Well—’ her father looked panicky and impatient at the same time - ‘go and . . . do something!’ ‘Yes, Dad.’ When the door had shut Tiffany peered under the sink again. ‘Are you there, toad?’ ‘Very poor pickings under here,’ the toad answered, crawling out. ‘You keep it very clean. Not even a spider.’ ‘This is urgent!’ snapped Tiffany. ‘My little brother has gone missing. In broad daylight! Up on the downs, where you can see for miles!’ ‘Oh, croap,’ said the toad. ‘Pardon?’ said Tiffany. ‘Er, that was, er, swearing in Toad,’ said the toad. ‘Sorry, but—’ ‘Has what’s going on got something to do with magic?’ said Tiffany. ‘It has, hasn’t it. . . ?’ ‘I hope it hasn’t,’ said the toad, ‘but I think it has.’ ‘Have those little men stolen Wentworth?’ ‘Who, the Feegles? They don’t steal children!’ There was something in the way the toad said it. They don’t steal. . . ‘Do you know who has taken my brother, then?’ Tiffany demanded. ‘No. But. . . they might,’ said the toad. ‘Look, Miss Tick told me that you were not to—’ ‘My brother has been stolen,’ said Tiffany sharply. ‘Are you going to tell me not to do anything about it?’ ‘No, but—’ ‘Good! Where are the Feegles now?’ ‘Lying low, I expect. The place is full of people searching, after all, but—’ ‘How can I bring them back? I need them!’ ‘Um, Miss Tick said—’ ‘How can I bring them back?' ‘Er . . . you want to bring them back, then?’ said the toad, looking mournful. ‘Yes!’ ‘It’s just that’s something not many people have ever wanted to do,’ said the toad. They’re not like brownies. If you get Nac Mac Feegles in the house, it’s usually best to move away.’ He sighed. Tell me, is your father a drinking man?’ ‘He has a beer sometimes,’ said Tiffany. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ ‘Only beer?’ ‘Well, I’m not supposed to know about what my father calls the Special Sheep Liniment,’ said Tiffany. ‘Granny Aching used to make it in the old cowshed.’ ‘Strong stuff, is it?’ ‘It dissolves spoons,’ said Tiffany. ‘It’s for special occasions. Father says it’s not for women because it puts hairs on your chest.’ ‘Then if you want to be sure of finding the Nac Mac Feegles, go and fetch some,’ said the toad. ‘It will work, believe me.’ Five minutes later Tiffany was ready. Few things are hidden from a quiet child with good eyesight, and she knew where the bottles were stored and she had one now. The cork was hammered in over a piece of rag, but it was old and she was able to lever it out with the tip of a knife. The fumes made her eyes water. She went to pour some of the golden-brown liquid into a saucer— ‘No! We’ll be trampled to death if you do that,’ said the toad. ‘Just leave the cork off.’ Fumes rose from the top of the bottle, wavering like the air over rocks on a hot day. She felt it - a sensation, in the dim, cool room, of riveted attention. She sat down on a milking stool and said, ‘All right, you can come out now.’ There were hundreds. They rose up from behind buckets. They lowered themselves on string from the ceiling beams. They sidled sheepishly from behind the cheese racks. They crept out from under the sink. They came out of places where you’d think a man with hair like an orange gone nova couldn’t possibly hide. They were all about six inches tall and mostly coloured blue, although it was hard to know if that was the actual colour of their skins or just the dye from their tattoos, which covered every inch that wasn’t covered with red hair. They wore short kilts, and some wore other bits of clothing too, like skinny waistcoats. A few of them wore rabbit or rat skulls on their heads, as a sort of helmet. And every single one of them carried, slung across his back, a sword nearly as big as he was. However, what Tiffany noticed more than anything else was that they were scared of her. Mostly they were looking at their own feet, which was no errand for the faint-hearted because their feet were large, dirty and half tied up with animal skins to make very bad shoes. None of them wanted to look her in the eye. ‘You were the people who filled the water buckets?’ she said. There was a lot of foot shuffling and coughing and a chorus of ‘Ayes’. ‘And the wood box?’ There were more ‘Ayes’. Tiffany glared at them. ‘And what about the sheep?’ This time they all looked down. ‘Why did you steal the sheep?’ There was a lot of muttering and nudging and then one of the tiny men removed his rabbit skull helmet and twiddled it nervously in his hands. ‘We wuz hungerin’, mistress,’ he muttered. ‘But when we kenned it was thine, we did put the beastie back in the fold.’ They looked so crestfallen that Tiffany took pity on them. ‘I expect you wouldn’t have stolen it if you weren’t so hungry, then,’ she said. There were several hundred astonished looks. ‘Oh, we would, mistress,’ said the helmet-twiddler. ‘You would?’ Tiffany sounded so surprised that the twiddler looked around at his colleagues for support. They all nodded. ‘Yes, mistress. We have tae. We are a famously stealin’ folk. Aren’t we, lads? Whut’s it we’re famous for?’ ‘Stealin’!’ shouted the blue men. ‘And what else, lads?’ ‘Fightin’!’ ‘And what else?’ ‘Drinkin’!’ ‘And what else?’ There was a certain amount of thought about this, but they all reached the same conclusion. ‘Drinkin’ and fightin’!’ ‘And there was summat else,’ muttered the twiddler. ‘Ach, yes. Tell the hag, lads!’ ‘Stealin’ an’ drinkin’ an’ fightin’!’ shouted the blue men cheerfully. ‘Tell the wee hag who we are, lads,’ said the helmet-twiddler. There was the scrape of many small swords being drawn and thrust into the air. ‘Nac Mac Feegle! The Wee Free Men! Nae king! Nae quin! Nae laird! Nae master! We willna’ befooled again!’ Tiffany stared at them. They were all watching her to see what she was going to do next, and the longer she said nothing, the more worried they became. They lowered their swords, looking embarrassed. ‘But we wouldna’ dare deny a powerful hag, except mebbe for strong drink,’ said the twiddler, his helmet spinning desperately in his hands and his eyes on the bottle of Special Sheep Liniment. ‘Will ye no’ help us?’ ‘Help you?’ said Tiffany. ‘I want you to help me! Someone has taken my brother in broad daylight.’ ‘Oh waily, waily waily!’ said the helmet-twiddler. ‘She’s come, then. She’s come a-fetchin’. We’re too late! It’s the Quin!’ ‘There was only one of them!’ said Tiffany. ‘They mean the Queen,’ said the toad. The Queen of the—’ ‘Hush yer gob!’ shouted the helmet-twiddler, but his voice was lost in the wails and groans of the Nac Mac Feegles. They were pulling at their hair and stamping on the ground and shouting ‘Alackaday!’ and ‘Waily waily waily!’ and the toad was arguing with the helmet-twiddler and everyone was getting louder to make themselves heard— Tiffany stood up. ‘Everybody shut up right now!’ she said. Silence fell, except for a few sniffs and faint ‘wailys’ from the back. ‘We wuz only dreeing our weird, mistress,’ said the helmet-twiddler, almost crouching in fear. ‘But not in here!’ snapped Tiffany, shaking with anger. This is a dairy! I have to keep it clean!’ ‘Er . . . dreeing your weird means “facing your fate”,’ said the toad. “Cuz if the Quin is here then it means our kelda is weakenin’ fast,’ said the helmet-twiddler. ‘An’ we’ll ha’ naeone tae look after us.’ To look after us, thought Tiffany. Hundreds of tough little men who could each win the Worst Broken Nose Contest need someone to look after them? She took a deep breath. ‘My mother’s in the house crying,’ she said, ‘and . . .’ I don’t know how to comfort her, she added to herself. I’m no good at this sort of thing, I never know what I should be saying. Out loud she said: ‘And she wants him back. Er. A lot.’ She added, hating to say it: ‘He’s her favourite.’ She pointed to the helmet-twiddler, who backed away. ‘First of all,’ she said, ‘I can’t keep thinking of you as the helmet-twiddler, so what is your name?’ A gasp went up from the Nac Mac Feegles, and Tiffany heard one of them murmur, ‘Aye, she’s the hag, sure enough. That’s a hag’s question!’ The helmet-twiddler looked around at them as if seeking help. ‘We dinnae give oor names,’ he muttered. But another Feegle, somewhere safe at the back, said, ‘Wheest! You cannae refuse a hag!’ The little man looked up, very worried. ‘I’m the Big Man o’ the clan, mistress,’ he said. ‘An’ my name it is . . .’ he swallowed, ‘Rob Anybody Feegle, mistress. But I beg ye not to use it agin me!’ The toad was ready for this. ‘They think names have magic in them,’ he murmured. ‘They don’t tell them to people in case they are written down.’ ‘Aye, an’ put upon comp-li-cated documents,’ said a Feegle. ‘An’ summonses and such things,’ said another. ‘Or “Wanted” posters!’ said another. ‘Aye, an’ bills an’ affidavits,’ said another. ‘Writs of distrainment, even!’ The Feegles looked around in panic at the very thought of written-down things. ‘They think written words are even more powerful,’ whispered the toad. ‘They think all writing is magic. Words worry them. See their swords? They glow blue in the presence of lawyers.’ ‘All right,’ said Tiffany. ‘We’re getting somewhere. I promise not to write his name down. Now tell me about this Queen who’s taken Wentworth. Queen of what?’ ‘Canna say it aloud, mistress,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘She hears her name wherever it’s said, and she comes callin’.’ ‘Actually, that’s true,’ said the toad. ‘You do not want to meet her, ever.’ ‘She’s bad?’ ‘Worse. Just call her the Queen.’ ‘Aye, the Quin,’ said Rob Anybody. He looked at Tiffany with bright, worried eyes. ‘Ye dinnae ken o’ the Quin? An’ you the wean o’ Granny Aching, who had these hills in her bones? Ye dinnae ken the ways? She did not show ye the ways? Ye’re no’ a hag? How can this be? Ye slammered Jenny Green-Teeth and stared the Heidless Horseman in the eyes he hasnae got, and you dinnae ken?’ Tiffany gave him a brittle smile, and then whispered to the toad, ‘Who’s Ken? And what about his dinner? And what’s a wean of Granny Aching?’ ‘As far as I can make out,’ said the toad, ‘they’re amazed that you don’t know about the Queen and . . . er, the magical ways, what with you being a child of Granny Aching and standing up to the monsters. “Ken” means “know”.’ ‘And his dinner?’ ‘Forget about his dinner for now,’ said the toad. They thought Granny Aching told you her magic. Hold me up to your ear, will you?’ Tiffany did so, and the toad whispered, ‘Best not to disappoint them, eh?’ She swallowed. ‘But she never told me about any magic—’ she began. And stopped. It was true. Granny Aching hadn’t told her about any magic. But she showed people magic every day. . . . There was the time when the Baron’s champion hound was caught killing sheep. It was a hunting dog, after all, but it had got out onto the downs and, because sheep run, it had chased. . . The Baron knew the penalty for sheep-worrying. There were laws on the Chalk, so old that no one remembered who made them, and everyone knew this one: sheep-killing dogs were killed. But this dog was worth five hundred gold dollars, and so - the story went - the Baron sent his servant up onto the downs to Granny’s hut on wheels. She was sitting on the step, smoking her pipe and watching the flocks. The man rode up on his horse and didn’t bother to dismount. That was not a good thing to do if you wanted Granny Aching to be your friend. Iron-shod hooves cut the turf. She didn’t like that. He said: ‘The Baron commands that you find a way to save his dog, Mistress Aching. In return, he will give you a hundred silver dollars.’ Granny had smiled at the horizon, puffed at her pipe for a -while, and replied: ‘A man who takes arms against his lord, that man is hanged. A starving man who steals his lord’s sheep, that man is hanged. A dog that kills sheep, that dog is put to death. Those laws are on these hills and these hills are in my bones. What is a baron, that the law be brake for him?’ She went back to staring at the sheep. ‘The Baron owns this country,’ said the servant. ‘It is his law.’ The look Granny Aching gave him turned the man’s hair white. That was the story, anyway. But all stones about Granny Aching had a bit of fairy tale about them. ‘If it is, as ye say, his law, then let him break it and see how things may then be,’ she said. A few hours later the Baron sent his bailiff, who was far more important but had known Granny Aching for longer. He said: ‘Mrs Aching, the Baron requests that you use your influence to save his dog. He will happily give you fifty gold dollars to help ease this difficult situation. I am sure you can see how this will benefit everyone concerned.’ Granny smoked her pipe and stared at the new lambs and said: ‘Ye speak for your master, your master speaks for his dog. Who speaks for the hills? Where is the Baron, that the law be brake for him?’ They said that when the Baron was told this he went very quiet. But although he was pompous, and often unreasonable, and far too haughty, he was not stupid. In the evening he walked up to the hut and sat down on the turf nearby. After a while, Granny Aching said: ‘Can I help you, my lord?’ ‘Granny Aching, I plead for the life of my dog,’ said the Baron. ‘Bring ye siller? Bring ye gilt?’ said Granny Aching. ‘No silver. No gold,’ said the Baron. ‘Good. A law that is brake by siller or gilt is no worthwhile law. And so, my lord?’ ‘I plead. Granny Aching.’ ‘Ye try to break the law with a word?’ ‘That’s right, Granny Aching.’ Granny Aching, the story went, stared at the sunset for a while and then said: ‘Then be down at the little old stone barn at dawn tomorrow and we ‘II see if an old dog can learn new tricks. There will be a reckoning. Good night to you.’ Most of the village was hanging around the old stone barn the next morning. Granny arrived with one of the smaller farm wagons. It held a ewe with her new-born lamb. She put them in the barn. Some of the men turned up with the dog. It was nervy and snappy, having spent the night chained up in a shed, and kept trying to bite the men who were holding it by two leather straps. It was hairy. It had fangs. The Baron rode up with the bailiff. Granny Aching nodded at them and opened the barn door. ‘You’re putting the dog into the barn with a sheep, Mrs Aching?’ said the bailiff. ‘Do you want it to choke to death on lamb?’ This didn’t get much of a laugh. No one really liked the bailiff. ‘We shall see,’ said Granny. The men dragged the dog to the doorway, threw it inside the barn and slammed the door quickly. People rushed to the little windows. There was the bleating of the lamb, a growl from the dog, and then a baa from the lamb’s mother. But this wasn’t the normal baa of a sheep. It had an edge to it. Something hit the door and it bounced on its hinges. Inside, the dog yelped. Granny Aching picked up Tiffany and held her up to a window. The shaken dog was trying to get to its feet, but it didn‘t manage it before the ewe charged it again, seventy pounds of enraged sheep slamming into it like a battering ram. Granny lowered Tiffany again and lit her pipe. She puffed it peacefully as the building behind her shook and the dog yelped and whimpered. After a couple of minutes she nodded at the men. They opened the door. The dog came out limping on three legs, but it hadn’t managed to get more than a few feet before the ewe shot out behind it and butted it so hard that it rolled over. It lay still. Perhaps it had learned what would happen if it tried to get up again. Granny Aching had nodded to the men, who grabbed the sheep and dragged it back into the barn. The Baron had been watching with his mouth open. ‘He killed a wild boar last year!’ he said. ‘What did you do to him?’ ‘He’ll mend,’ said Granny Aching, carefully ignoring the question. ‘ ‘Tis mostly his pride that’s hurt. But he won’t look at a sheep again, you have my thumb on that.’ And she licked her right thumb and held it out. After a moment’s hesitation, the Baron licked his thumb, reached down and pressed it against hers. Everyone knew what it meant. On the Chalk, a thumb bargain was unbreakable. ‘For you, at a word, the law was brake,’ said Granny Aching. ‘Will ye mind that, ye who sit in judgement? Will yer remember this day? Ye’ll have cause to.’ The Baron nodded to her. ‘That’ll do,’ said Granny Aching, and their thumbs parted. Next day the Baron technically did give Granny Aching gold, but it was only the gold-coloured foil on an ounce of Jolly Sailor, the cheap and horrible pipe tobacco that was the only one Granny Aching would ever smoke. She was always in a bad mood if the pedlars were late and she’d run out. You couldn’t bribe Granny Aching for all the gold in the world, but you could definitely attract her attention with an ounce of Jolly Sailor. Things were a lot easier after that, The bailiff was a little less unpleasant when rents were late, the Baron was a little more polite to people, and Tiffany’s father said one night after two beers that the Baron had been shown what happens when sheep rise up, and things might be different one day, and her mother hissed at him not to talk like that because you never knew who was listening. And, one day. Tiffany heard him telling her mother, quietly: “Twas an old shepherds’ trick, that’s all. An old ewe will fight like a lion for her lamb, we all know that.’ That was how it worked. No magic at all. But that time it had been magic. And it didn’t stop being magic just because you found out how it was done . . . The Nac Mac Feegles were watching Tiffany carefully, with occasional longing glances at the bottle of Special Sheep Liniment. I haven’t even found the witches’ school, she thought. I don’t know a single spell. I don’t even have a pointy hat. My talents are an instinct for making cheese and not running around panicking when things go wrong. Oh, and I’ve got a toad. And I don’t understand half of what these little men are saying. But they know who’s taken my brother. Somehow I don’t think the Baron would have a clue how to deal with this. I don’t, either, but I think I can be clueless in more sensible ways. ‘I . . . remember a lot of things about Granny Aching,’ she said. ‘What do you want me to do?’ ‘The kelda sent us,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘She sensed the Quin comin’. She kenned there wuz going to be trouble. She tole us, it’s gonna be bad, find the new hag who’s kin to Granny Aching, she’ll ken what to do.’ Tiffany looked at the hundreds of expectant faces. Some of the Feegles had feathers in their hair, and necklaces of mole teeth. You couldn’t tell someone with half his face dyed dark blue and a sword as big as he was that you weren’t really a witch. You couldn’t disappoint someone like that. ‘And will you help me get my brother back?’ she said. The Feegles’ expressions didn’t change. She tried again. ‘Can you help me steal my brother back from the Quin?’ Hundred of small yet ugly faces brightened up considerably. ‘Ach, noo yer talkin’ oour language,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Not . . . quite,’ said Tiffany. ‘Can you all just wait a moment? I’ll just pack some things,’ she said, trying to sound as if she knew what she was doing. She put the cork back on the bottle of Special Sheep Liniment. The Nac Mac Feegles sighed. She darted back into the kitchen, found a sack, took some bandages and ointments out of the medicine box, added the bottle of Special Sheep Liniment because her father said it always did him good and, as an afterthought, added the book Diseases of the Sheep and picked up the frying pan. Both might come in useful. The little men were nowhere to be seen when she went back into the dairy. She knew she ought to tell her parents what was happening. But it wouldn’t work. It would be ‘telling stories’. Anyway, with any luck she could get Wentworth back before she was even missed. But, just in case . . . She kept a diary in the dairy. Cheese needed to be kept track of, and she always wrote down details of the amount of butter she’d made and how much milk she’d been using. She turned to a fresh page, picked up her pencil and, with her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth, began to write. The Nac Mac Feegles gradually reappeared. They didn’t obviously step out from behind things, and they certainly didn’t pop magically into existence. They appeared in the same way that faces appear in clouds and fires; they seemed to turn up if you just looked hard enough and wanted to see them. They watched the moving pencil in awe, and she could hear them murmuring. ‘Look at that writin’ stick noo, will ye, bobbin’ along. That’s hag business.’ ‘Ach, she has the kennin’ o’ the writin’, sure enough.’ ‘But you’ll no’ write doon oour names, eh, mistress?’ ‘Aye, a body can be put in the pris’n if they have written evidence.’ Tiffany stopped writing and read the note: Dear Mum and Dad, I have gone to look for Wentworth. I am perfectly probably quite safe, because I am with some friends acquaintances people who knew Granny, ps the cheeses on rack three will need turning tomorrow if I’m not back. Love, Tiffany Tiffany looked up at Rob Anybody, who had shinned up the table leg and was watching the pencil intently, in case it wrote something dangerous. ‘You could have just come and asked me right at the start,’ she said. ‘We dinnae ken it was thee we were lookin’ for, mistress. Lots of bigjob women walkin’ aroond this farm. We didnae ken it was thee until you caught Daft Wullie.’ It might not be, thought Tiffany. ‘Yes, but stealing the sheep and the eggs, there was no need for that,’ she said sternly. ‘But they wasnae nailed doon, mistress,’ said Rob Anybody, as if that was an excuse. ‘You can’t nail down an egg!’ snapped Tiffany. ‘Ach, well, you’d have the kennin’ of wise stuff like that, mistress,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘I see you’s done wi’ the writin’, so we’d best be goin’. Ye hae a besom?’ ‘Broomstick,' murmured the toad. ‘Er, no,’ said Tiffany. The important thing about magic,’ she added, haughtily, ‘is to know when not to use it.’ ‘Fair enough,’ said Rob Anybody, sliding back down the table leg. ‘Come here, Daft Wullie.’ One of the Feegles that looked very much like that morning’s egg-thief came and stood by Rob Anybody, and they both bent over slightly. ‘If you’d care to step on us, mistress,’ said Rob Anybody. Before Tiffany could open her mouth, the toad said out of the corner of its mouth, and being a toad that means quite a lot of comer, ‘One Feegle can lift a grown man. You couldn’t squash one if you tried.’ ‘I don’t want to try!’ Tiffany very cautiously raised a big boot. Daft Wullie ran underneath it, and she felt the boot being pushed upwards. She might as well have trodden on a brick. ‘Now t’other wee bootie,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘I’ll fall over!’ ‘Nae, we’re good at this.’ And then Tiffany was standing up on two pictsies. She felt them moving backwards and forwards underneath her, keeping her balanced. She felt quite secure, though. It was just like wearing really thick soles. ‘Let’s gae,’ said Rob Anybody, down below. ‘An’ don’t worry about yon pussycat scraffin’ the wee burdies. Some of the lads is stayin’ behind to mind things!’ Ratbag crept along a branch. He wasn’t a cat who was good at changing the ways he thought. But he was good at finding nests. He’d heard the cheeping from the other end of the garden and even from the bottom of the tree he’d been able to see three little yellow beaks in the nest. Now he advanced, dribbling. Nearly there . . . Three Nac Mac Feegles pulled off their straw beaks and grinned happily at him. ‘Hello, Mister Pussycat,’ said one of them. ‘Ye dinnae learn, do ye? CHEEP!’ Chapter 5 The Green Sea Tiffany flew a few inches above the ground, standing still. Wind rushed around her as the Feegles sped out of the farmyard’s top gate and onto the turf of the downs . . . This is the girl, flying. At the moment there’s a toad on her head, holding onto her hair. Pull back, and here is the long green whaleback of the downs. Now she’s a pale blue dot against the endless grass, mowed by the sheep to the length of a carpet. But the green sea isn’t unbroken. Here and there, humans have been. Last year Tiffany had spent three carrots and an apple on half an hour of geology, although she’d been refunded a carrot after explaining to the teacher that ‘Geology’ shouldn’t be spelled on his sign as ‘G oily G’. He said that the chalk had been formed under water millions of years before from tiny seashells. That made sense to Tiffany. Sometimes you found little fossils in the chalk. But the teacher didn’t know much about the flint. You found flints, harder than steel, in chalk, the softest of rocks. Sometimes the shepherds chipped the flints, one flint against another, into knives. Not even the best steel knives could take an edge as sharp as flint. And men in what was called on the Chalk ‘the olden days’ had dug pits for it. They were still there, deep holes in the rolling green, filled with thickets of thorn and brambles. Huge, knobbly flints still turned up in the village gardens, too. Sometimes they were larger than a man’s head. They often looked like heads, too. They were so melted and twisted and curved that you could look at a flint and see almost anything - a face, a strange animal, a sea monster. Sometimes the more interesting ones would be put on garden walls, for show. The old people called those ‘calkins’, which meant ‘chalk children’. They’d always seemed . . . odd to Tiffany, as if the stone was striving to become alive. Some flints looked like bits of meat, or bones, or something off a butcher’s slab, hi the dark, under the sea, it looked as though the chalk had been trying to make the shapes of living creatures. There weren’t just the chalk pits. Men had been everywhere on the Chalk. There were stone circles, half fallen down, and burial mounds like green pimples where, it was said, chieftains of the olden days had been buried with their treasure. No one fancied digging into them to find out. There were odd carvings in the chalk, too, which the shepherds sometimes weeded when they were out on the downs with the flocks and there was not a lot to do. The chalk was only a few inches under the turf. Hoofprints could last a season, but the carvings had lasted for thousands of years. They were pictures of horses and giants, but the strange thing was that you couldn’t see them properly from anywhere on the ground. They looked as if they’d been made for viewers in the sky. And then there were the weird places, like Old Man’s Forge, which was just four big flat rocks placed so they made a kind of half-buried hut in the side of a mound. It was only a few feet deep. It didn’t look anything special, but if you shouted your name into it, it was several seconds before the echo came back. There were signs of people everywhere. The Chalk had been important. Tiffany left the shearing sheds way behind. No one was watching. Sheared sheep took no notice at all of a girl moving without her feet touching the ground. The lowlands dropped away behind her and now she was properly on the downs. Only the occasional baa of a sheep or scream of a buzzard disturbed a busy silence, made up of bee buzzes and breezes and the sound of a ton of grass growing every minute. On either side of Tiffany the Nac Mac Feegles ran in a spread- out ragged line, staring grimly ahead. They passed some of the mounds without stopping, and ran up and down the sides of shallow valleys without a pause. And it was then that Tiffany saw a landmark ahead. It was a small flock of sheep. There were only a few, freshly sheared, but there were always a handful of sheep at this place now. Strays would turn up there, and lambs would find their way to it when they’d lost their mothers. This was a magic place. There wasn’t much to see now, just the iron wheels sinking into the turf and the potbellied stove with its short chimney . . . On the day Granny Aching died, the men had cut and lifted the turf around the hut and stacked it neatly some way away. Then they’d dug a deep hole in the chalk, six feet deep and six feet long, lifting out the chalk in great damp blocks. Thunder and Lightning had watched them carefully. They didn’t whine or bark. They seemed more interested than upset. Granny Aching had been wrapped in a woollen blanket, with a tuft of raw wool pinned to it. That was a special shepherd thing. It was there to tell any gods who might get involved that the person being buried there was a shepherd, and spent a lot of time on the hills, and what with lambing and one thing and another couldn’t always take much time out for religion, there being no churches or temples up there, and therefore it was generally hoped that the gods would understand and look kindly on them. Granny Aching, it had to be said, had never been seen to pray to anyone or anything in her life, and it was agreed by all that, even now, she wouldn’t have any time for a god who didn’t understand that lambing came first. The chalk had been put back over her and Granny Aching, who always said that the hills were in her bones, now had her bones in the hills. Then they burned the hut. That wasn’t usual, but her father had said that there wasn’t a shepherd anywhere on the Chalk who’d use it now. Thunder and Lightning wouldn’t come when he called, and he knew better than to be angry, so they were left sitting quite contentedly by the glowing embers of the hut. Next day, when the ashes were cold and blowing across the raw chalk, everyone went up onto the downs and with very great care put the turf back, so all that was left to see were the iron wheels on their axles, and the pot-bellied stove. At which point - so everyone said - the two sheepdogs had looked up, their ears pricking, and had trotted away over the turf and were never seen again. The pictsies carrying her slowed down gently, and Tiffany flailed her arms as they dropped her onto the grass. The sheep lumbered away slowly, then stopped and turned to watch her. ‘Why’re we stopping? Why’re we stopping here? We’ve got to catch her!’ ‘Got to wait for Hamish, mistress,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Why? Who’s Hamish?’ ‘He might have the knowin’ of where the Quin went with your wee laddie,’ said Rob Anybody soothingly. ‘We cannae just rush in, ye ken.’ A big, bearded Feegle raised his hand. ‘Point o’ order, Big Man. Ye can just rush in. We always just rush in.’ ‘Aye, Big Yan, point well made. But ye gotta know where ye’re just gonna rush in. Ye cannae just rush in anywhere. It looks bad, havin’ to rush oout again straight awa’.’ Tiffany saw that all the Feegles were staring intently upwards, and paying her no attention at all. Angry and puzzled, she sat down on one of the rusty wheels and looked at the sky. It was better than looking around. There was Granny Aching’s grave somewhere around here, although you couldn’t find it now, not precisely. The turf had healed. There were a few little clouds above her and nothing else at all, except the distant circling dots of the buzzards. There were always buzzards over the Chalk. The shepherds had taken to calling them Granny Aching’s chickens, and some of them called clouds like those up there today ‘Granny’s little lambs’. And Tiffany knew that even her father called the thunder ‘Granny Aching cussin”. And it was said that some of the shepherds, if wolves were troublesome in the winter, or a prize ewe had got lost, would go to the site of the old hut in the hills and leave an ounce of Jolly Sailor tobacco, just in case . . . Tiffany hesitated. Then she shut her eyes. I want that to be true, she whispered to herself. I want to know that other people think she hasn’t really gone, too. She looked under the wide rusted rim of the wheels and shivered. There was a brightly coloured little packet there. She picked it up. It looked quite fresh, so it had probably been there for only a few days. There was the Jolly Sailor on the front, with his big grin and big yellow rain hat and big beard, with big blue waves crashing behind him. Tiffany had learned about the sea from the Jolly Sailor wrappings. She’d heard it was big, and roared. There was a tower in the sea, which was a lighthouse that carried a big light on it at night to stop boats crashing into the rocks. In the pictures the beam of the lighthouse was a brilliant white. She knew about it so well she’d dreamed about it, and had woken up with the roar of the sea in her ears. She’d heard one of her uncles say that if you looked at the tobacco label upside down then part of the hat and the sailor’s ear and a bit of his collar made up a picture of a woman with no clothes on, but Tiffany had never been able to make it out and couldn’t see what the point would be in any case. She carefully pulled the label off the packet, and sniffed at it. It smelled of Granny. She felt her eyes begin to fill with tears. She’d never cried for Granny Aching before, never. She’d cried for dead lambs and cut fingers and for not getting her own way, but never for Granny. It hadn’t seemed right. And I’m not crying now, she thought, carefully putting the label in her apron pocket. Not for Granny being dead . . . It was the smell. Granny Aching smelled of sheep, turpentine and Jolly Sailor tobacco. The three smells mixed together and became one smell which was, to Tiffany, the smell of the Chalk. It followed Granny Aching like a cloud, and it meant warmth, and silence, and a space around which the whole world revolved . . . A shadow passed overhead. A buzzard was diving down from the sky towards the Nac Mac Feegle. She leaped up and waved her arms. ‘Run away! Duck! It’ll kill you!’ They turned and looked at her for a moment as though she’d gone mad. ‘Dinnae fash yersel’, mistress,’ said Rob Anybody. The bird curved up at the bottom of its dive and as it climbed again a dot dropped from it. As it fell it seemed to grow two wings and start to spin like a sycamore bract, which slowed down the fall somewhat. It was a pictsie, still spinning madly when he hit the turf a few feet away, where he fell over. He got up, swearing loudly, and fell over again. The swearing continued. ‘A good landin’, Hamish,’ said Rob Anybody. The spinnin’ certainly slows ye doon. Ye didnae drill right into the ground this time hardly at al’.’ Hamish got up more slowly this time, and managed to stay upright. He had a pair of goggles over his eyes. ‘I dinna think I can tak’ much more o’ this,’ he said, trying to untie a couple of thin bits of wood from his arms. ‘I feel like a fairy wi’ the wings on.’ ‘How can you survive that?’ Tiffany asked. The very small pilot tried to look her up and down, but only managed to look her up and further up. ‘Who’s the wee bigjob who knows sich a lot about aviation?’ he said. Rob Anybody coughed. ‘She’s the hag, Hamish. Spawn o’ Granny Aching.’ Hamish’s expression changed to a look of terror. ‘I didnae mean to speak out o’ turn, mistress,’ he said, backing away. ‘O’ course, a hag’d have the knowing of anythin’. But ‘tis nae as bad as it looks, mistress. I allus make sure I lands on my he id.’ ‘Aye, we’re very resilient in the heid department,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Have you seen a woman with a small boy?’ Tiffany demanded. She hadn’t much liked ‘spawn’. Hamish gave Rob Anybody a panicky look, and Rob nodded. ‘Aye, I did,’ said Hamish. ‘Onna black horse. Riding up from the lowlan’s goin’ hell for—’ ‘We dinnae use bad language in front o’ a hag!’ Rob Anybody thundered. ‘Begging your pardon, mistress. She was ridin’ heck for leather,’ said Hamish, looking more sheepish than the sheep. ‘But she kenned I was spyin’ her and called up a mist. She’s gone to the other side, but I dinnae ken where.’ “Tis a perilous place, the other side,’ said Rob Anybody, slowly. ‘Evil things there. A cold place. Not a place to tak’ a wee babbie.’ It was hot on the downs, but Tiffany felt a chill. However bad it is, she thought, I’m going to have to go there. I know it. I don’t have a choice. ‘The other side?’ she said. ‘Aye. The magic world,’ said Rob Anybody. There’s . . . bad things there.’ ‘Monsters?’ said Tiffany. ‘As bad as ye can think of,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Exactly as bad as ye can think of.’ Tiffany swallowed hard, and closed her eyes. ‘Worse than Jenny? Worse than the headless horseman?’ she said. ‘Oh, aye. They were wee pussycats compared to the scunners over there. ‘Tis an ill-fared country that’s come callin’, mistress. Tis a land where dreams come true. That’s the Quin’s world.’ ‘Well, that doesn’t sound too—’ Tiffany began. Then she remembered some of the dreams she’d had, the ones where you were so glad to wake up . . . ‘We’re not talking about nice dreams, are we?’ she said. Rob Anybody shook his head. ‘Nay, mistress. The other kind.’ And me with my frying pan and Diseases of the Sheep, thought Tiffany. And she had a mental picture of Wentworth among horrible monsters. They probably wouldn’t have any sweeties at all. She sighed. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘how do I get there?’ ‘Ye dinnae ken the way?’ said Rob Anybody. It wasn’t what she’d been expecting. What she had been expecting was more like ‘Ach, ye cannae do that, a wee lass like you, oh dearie us no!’ She wasn’t so much expecting that as hoping it, in fact. But, instead, they were acting as if it were a perfectly reasonable idea— ‘No!’ she said. ‘I don’t dinnae any ken at all! I haven’t done this before! Please help me!’ ‘That’s true, Rob,’ said a Feegle. ‘She’s new to the haggin’. Tak’ her to the kelda.’ ‘Not e’en Granny Aching ever went to see the kelda in her ain cave!’ snapped Rob Anybody. ‘It’s no a—’ ‘Quiet!’ hissed Tiffany. ‘Can’t you hear that?’ The Feegles looked around. ‘Hear what?’ said Hamish. ‘It’s a susurration!’ It felt as though the turf was trembling. The sky looked as though Tiffany was inside a diamond. And there was the smell of snow. Hamish pulled a pipe out of his waistcoat and blew it. Tiffany couldn’t hear anything, but there was a scream from high above. ‘I’ll let ye know what’s happenin’!’ cried the pictsie, and started to run across the turf. As he ran, he raised his arms over his head. He was moving fast by then but the buzzard sped down and across the turf even faster and plucked him neatly into the air. As it beat at the air to rise again, Tiffany saw Hamish climbing up through the feathers. The other Feegles had formed a circle around Tiffany, and this time they’d drawn their swords. ‘Whut’s the plan, Rob?’ said one of them. ‘OK, lads, this is what we’ll do. As soon as we see somethin’, we’ll attack it. Right?’ This caused a cheer. ‘Ach, ‘tis a good plan,’ said Daft Wullie. Snow formed on the ground. It didn’t fall, it . . . did the opposite of melting, rising up fast until the Nac Mac Feegles were waist deep, and then up to their necks. Some of the smaller ones began to disappear, and there was muffled cursing from under the snow. And then the dogs appeared, lumbering towards Tiffany with a nasty purpose. They were big, black and heavily built, with orange eyebrows, and she could hear the growling from here. She plunged her hand into her apron pocket and pulled out the toad. It blinked in the sharp light. ‘Wazzup?’ Tiffany turned him round to face the things. ‘What are these?’ she said. ‘Oh, doak! Grimhounds! Bad! Eyes of fire and teeth of razor blades!’ ‘What should I do about them?’ ‘Not be here?’ ‘Thank you! You’ve been very helpful!’ Tiffany dropped him back into her pocket and pulled her frying pan out of her sack. It wasn’t going to be good enough, she knew that. The black dogs were big, and their eyes were flames, and when they opened their mouths to snarl she could see the light glint on steel. She’d never been afraid of dogs, but these dogs weren’t from anywhere outside of a nightmare. There were three of them, but they circled so that no matter how she turned she could only see two at once. She knew it would be the one behind her that attacked first. ‘Tell me something more about them!’ she said, turning the other way to the circle so that she could watch all three. ‘Said to haunt graveyards!’ said a voice from her apron. ‘Why is there snow on the ground?’ This has become the Queen’s land. It’s always winter there! When she puts out her power, it comes here too!’ But Tiffany could see green some way off, beyond the circle of snow. Think, think . . . The Queen’s country. A magical place where there really were monsters. Anything you could dream of in nightmares. Dogs with eyes of flame and teeth of razors, yes. You didn’t get them in the real world, they wouldn’t work . . . They were drooling now, red tongues hanging out, enjoying her fear. And part of Tiffany thought: It’s amazing their teeth don’t rust — —and took charge of her legs. She dived between two of the dogs and ran towards the distant green. There was a growl of triumph behind her and she heard the crunch of paws on snow. The green didn’t seem to be getting nearer. She heard yells from the pictsies and a snarl that turned into a wail, but there was something behind her as she jumped over the last of the snow and rolled on the warm turf. A grimhound leaped after her. She jerked herself away as it snapped, but it was already in trouble. No eyes of fire, no teeth of razors. Not here, not in the real world, on the home turf. It was blind here and blood was already dripping from its mouth. You shouldn’t jump with a mouthful of razors. . . Tiffany almost felt sorry for it as it whined in pain, but the snow was creeping towards her and she hit the dog with the frying pan. It went down heavily, and lay still. There was a fight going on back in the snow. It was flying up like a mist, but she could see two dark shapes in the middle, spinning around and snapping. She banged on the pan and shouted, and a grimhound sprang from the whirling snow and landed in front of her, a Feegle hanging from each ear. The snow flowed towards Tiffany. She backed away, watching the advancing, snarling dog. She held the pan like a bat. ‘Come on,’ she whispered. ‘Jump!’ The eyes flamed at her, and then the dog looked down at the snow. And vanished. The snow sank into the ground. The light changed. Tiffany and the Wee Free Men were alone on the downs. Feegles were picking themselves up around her. ‘Are you fine, mistress?’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Yes!’ said Tiffany. ‘It’s easy! If you get them off the snow they’re just dogs!’ ‘We’d best move on. We lost some of the lads.’ The excitement drained away. ‘You mean they’re dead?’ Tiffany whispered. The sun was shining brightly again, the skylarks were back . . . and people were dead. ‘Ach, no,’ said Rob. ‘We’re the ones who’s deid. Did ye not know that?’ Chapter 6 The Shepherdess ‘You’re dead?’ said Tiffany. She looked around. Feegles were picking themselves up and grumbling, but no one was going ‘Waily waily waily.’ And Rob Anybody wasn’t making any sense at all. ‘Well, if you think you’re dead, then what are they?’ she went on, pointing to a couple of small bodies. ‘Oh, they’ve gone back to the land o’ the livin’,’ said Rob Anybody cheerfully. ‘It’s nae as good as this one, but they’ll bide fine and come back before too long. No sense in grievin’.’ The Achings were not very religious, but Tiffany thought she knew how things ought to go, and they started out with the idea that you were alive and not dead yet. ‘But you are alive!’ she said. ‘Ach, no, mistress,’ said Rob, helping another pictsie to his feet. ‘We wuz alive. And we wuz good boys back in the land o’ the livin’, and so when we died there we wuz borned into this place.’ ‘You mean . . . you think . . . that you sort of died somewhere else and then came here?’ said Tiffany. ‘You mean this is like . . . heaven?’ ‘Aye! Just as advertised!’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Lovely sunshine, good huntin’, nice pretty flowers and wee burdies goin’ cheep.’ ‘Aye, and then there’s the fightin’,’ said another Feegle. And then they all joined in. ‘An’ the stealin’!’ ‘An’ the drinkin’ an’ fightin’!’ ‘An’ the kebabs!’ said Daft Wullie. ‘But there’s bad things here!’ said Tiffany. There’s monsters!’ ‘Aye,’ said Rob, beaming happily. ‘Grand, isn’t it? Every thin’ laid on, even things to fight!’ ‘But we live here!’ said Tiffany. ‘Ach, well, mebbe all you humans wuz good in the Last World, too,’ said Rob Anybody generously. ‘I’ll just round up the lads, mistress.’ Tiffany reached into her apron and pulled out the toad as Rob walked away. ‘Oh. We survived,’ it said. ‘Amazing. There are very definite grounds for an action against the owner of those dogs, by the way.’ ‘What?’ said Tiffany, frowning. ‘What are you talking about?’ ‘I. . . I. . . don’t know,’ said the toad. ‘The thought just popped into my head. Perhaps I knew something about dogs when I was human?’ ‘Listen, the Feegles think they’re in heaven! They think they died and came here!’ ‘And?’ said the toad. ‘Well, that can’t be right! You’re supposed to be alive here and then die and end up in some heaven somewhere else!’ ‘Well, that’s just saying the same thing in a different way, isn’t it? Anyway, lots of warrior tribes think that when they die they go to a heavenly land somewhere,’ said the toad. ‘You know, where they can drink and fight and feast for ever? So maybe this is theirs.’ ‘But this is a real place!’ ‘So? It’s what they believe. Besides, they’re only small. Maybe the universe is a bit crowded and they have to put heavens anywhere there’s room? I’m a toad, so you’ll appreciate that I’m having to guess a lot here. Maybe they’re just wrong. Maybe you’re just wrong. Maybe I’m just wrong.’ A small foot kicked Tiffany on the boot. ‘We’d be best be moving on, mistress,’ said Rob Anybody. He had a dead Feegle over his shoulder. Quite a few of the others were carrying bodies, too. ‘Er . . . are you going to bury them?’ said Tiffany. ‘Aye, they dinnae need these ol’ bodies noo an’ it’s no’ tidy to leave ‘em lyin’ aboot,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Besides, if the bigjobs find little wee skulls and bones aroound they’ll start to wonder, and we don’t want anyone pokin’ aboot. Savin’ your presence, mistress,’ he added. ‘No, that’s very, er . . . practical thinking,’ said Tiffany, giving up. The Feegle pointed to a distant mound with a thicket of thorn trees growing on it. A lot of the mounds had thickets on them. The trees took advantage of the deeper soil. It was said to be unlucky to cut them down. ‘It’s nae very far noo,’ he said. ‘You live in one of the mounds?’ Tiffany asked. ‘I thought they were, you know, the graves of ancient chieftains?’ ‘Ach, aye, there’s some oF dead kingie in the chamber next door but he’s nae trouble,’ said Rob. ‘Dinnae fret, there’s nae skelingtons or any such in oour bit. It’s quite roomy, we’ve done it up a treat.’ Tiffany looked up at the endless blue sky over the endlessly green downland. It was all so peaceful again, a world away from headless men and big savage dogs. What if I hadn’t taken Wentworth down to the river? she thought. What would I be doing now? Getting on with the cheese, I suppose . . . I never knew about all this. I never knew I lived in heaven, even if it’s only heaven to a clan of little blue men. I didn’t know about people who flew on buzzards. I never killed monsters before. ‘Where do they come from?’ she said. ‘What’s the name of the place the monsters come from?’ ‘Ach, ye prob’ly ken the place well,’ said Rob Anybody. As they grew nearer the mound, Tiffany thought she could smell smoke in the air. ‘Do I?’ she said. ‘Aye. But it’s a no’ a name I’ll say in open air. It’s a name to be whispered in a safe place. I’ll not say it under this sky.’ It was too big to be a rabbit hole and badgers didn’t live up here, but the entrance to the mound was tucked amongst the thorn roots and no one would have thought it was anything but the home of some kind of an animal. Tiffany was slim, but even so she had to take off her apron and crawl on her stomach under the thorns to reach it. And it still needed several Feegles to push her through. At least it didn’t smell bad and, once you were through the hole, it opened up a lot. Really, the entrance was just a disguise. Underneath, the space was the size of quite a large room, open in the centre but with Feegle-sized galleries around the walls from floor to ceiling. They were crowded with pictsies of all sizes, washing clothes, arguing, sewing and, here and there, fighting, and doing everything as loudly as possible. Some had hair and beards tinged with white. Much younger ones, only a few inches tall, were running around with no clothes on, and yelling at one another at the tops of their little voices. After a couple of years of helping to bring up Wentworth, Tiffany knew what that was all about. There were no girls, though. No Wee Free Women. No . . . there was one. The squabbling, bustling crowds parted to let her through. She came up to Tiffany’s ankle. She was prettier than the male Feegles, although the world was full of things prettier than, say, Daft Wullie. But, like them, she had red hair and an expression of determination. She curtsied, then said, ‘Are ye the bigjob hag, mistress?’ Tiffany looked around. She was the only person in the cavern who was over seven inches tall. ‘Er, yes,’ she said. ‘Er . . . more or less. Yes.’ ‘I am Fion. The kelda says to tell you the wee boy will come to nae harm yet.’ ‘She’s found him?’ said Tiffany quickly. ‘Where is he?’ ‘Nae, nae, but the kelda knows the way of the Quin. She didnae want you to fash yersel’ on that score.’ ‘But she stole him!’ ‘Aye. ‘Tis comp-li-cat-ed. Rest a wee while. The kelda will see you presently. She is . . . not strong now.’ Fion turned round with a swirl of skirts, strode back across the chalk floor as if she was a queen herself, and disappeared behind a large round stone that leaned against the far wall. Tiffany, without looking down, carefully lifted the toad out of her pocket and held it close to her lips. ‘Am I fashing myself?’ she whispered. ‘No, not really,’ said the toad. ‘You would tell me if I was, wouldn’t you?’ said Tiffany urgently. ‘It’d be terrible if everyone could see I was fashing and I didn’t know.’ ‘You haven’t a clue what it means, have you . . . ?’ said the toad. ‘Not exactly, no.’ ‘She just doesn’t want you to get upset, that’s all.’ ‘Yes, I thought it was probably something like that,’ lied Tiffany. ‘Can you sit on my shoulder? I think I might need some help here.’ The ranks of the Nac Mac Feegle were watching her with interest, but at the moment it appeared that she had nothing to do but hurry up and wait. She sat down carefully, drumming her fingers on her knees. ‘Whut d’ye think of the wee place, eh?’ said a voice from below. ‘It’s great, yeah?’ She looked down. Rob Anybody Feegle and a few of the pictsies she’d already met were lurking there, watching her nervously. ‘Very . . . cosy,’ said Tiffany, because that was better than saying ‘How sooty’ or ‘How delightfully noisy’. She added: ‘Do you cook for all of you on that little fire?’ The big space in the centre held a small fire, under a hole in the roof which let the smoke get lost in the bushes above and in return brought in a little extra light. ‘Aye, mistress,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘The small stuff, bunnies an’ that,’ added Daft Wullie. The big stuff we roasts in the chalk pi— mmph mmph . . .’ ‘Sorry, what was that?’ said Tiffany. ‘What?’ said Rob Anybody innocently, his hand firmly over the mouth of the struggling Wullie. ‘What was Wullie saying about roasting “big stuff”?’ Tiffany demanded. ‘You roast “big stuff in the chalk pit? Is this the kind of big stuff that goes “baa”? Because that’s the only big stuff you’ll find in these hills!’ She kneeled down on the grimy floor and brought her face to within an inch of Rob Anybody’s face, which was grinning madly and sweating. ‘Is it?’ ‘Ach . . . ah . . . weel . . . in a manner o’ speakin’ ‘It is?’ ‘ ‘Tis not thine, mistress!’ shrieked Rob Anybody. ‘We ne’er took an Aching ship wi’out the leave o’ Granny!’ ‘Granny Aching let you have sheep?’ ‘Aye, she did, did, did that! As p-payment!’ ‘Payment? For what?’ ‘No Aching ship ever got caught by wolves!’ Rob Anybody gabbled. ‘No foxes took an Aching lamb, right? Nor no lamb e’er had its een pecked out by corbies, not wi’ Hamish up in the sky!’ Tiffany looked sideways at the toad. ‘Crows,’ said the toad. ‘They sometimes peck out the eyes of—’ ‘Yes, yes, I know what they do,’ said Tiffany. She calmed down a little. ‘Oh. I see. You kept away the crows and wolves and foxes for Granny, yes?’ ‘Aye, mistress! No’ just kept ‘em awa’, neither!’ said Rob Anybody triumphantly. There’s good eatin’ on a wolf.’ ‘Aye, they kebabs up a treat, but they’re no’ as good as a ship, tho . . . mmph mmph . . .’ Wullie managed, before a hand was clamped over his mouth again. ‘From a hag ye only tak’ what ye’s given,’ said Rob Anybody, holding his struggling brother firmly. ‘Since she’s gone, though, weel . . . we tak’ the odd old ewe that would’ve deid anywa’, but ne’er one wi’ the Aching mark, on my honour.’ ‘On your honour as a drunken rowdy thief?’ said Tiffany. Rob Anybody beamed. ‘Aye!’ he said. ‘An’ I got a lot of good big reputation to protect there! That’s the truth o’ it, mistress. We keeps an eye on the ships of the hills, in mem’ry o’ Granny Aching, an’ in return we tak’ what is hardly worth a thing.’ ‘And the baccy too, o’ course . . . mmph mmph . . .’ and then, once again, Daft Wullie was struggling to breathe. Tiffany took a deep breath, not a wise move in a Feegle colony. Rob Anybody’s nervous grin made him look like a pumpkin man faced with a big spoon. ‘You take the tobacco? hissed Tiffany. “The tobacco the shepherds leave for . . . my grandmother? ‘Ach, I forgot about that,’ squeaked Rob Anybody. ‘But we allus wait a few days in case she comes to collect it hersel’. Ye can ne’er tell wi’ a hag, after all. And we do mind the ships, mistress. And she wouldna grudge us, mistress! Many’s a night she’d share a pipe wi’ the kelda outside o’ her house on the wheelies! She’d not be one to let good baccy get all rainy! Please, mistress!’ Tiffany felt intensely angry, and what made it worse was that she was angry with herself. ‘When we find lost lambs and suchlike we drives ‘em here for when the shepherds come lookin’ ’ Rob Anybody added anxiously. What did I think happened? Tiffany thought. Did I think she’d come back for a packet of Jolly Sailor? Did I think she was still somehow walking the hills, looking after the sheep? Did I think she . . . was still here, watching for lost lambs? Yes! I want that to be true. I don’t want to think she’s just . . . gone. Someone like Granny Aching can’t just. . . not be there any more. And I want her back so much, because she didn’t know how to talk to me and I was too scared to talk to her, and so we never talked and we turned silence into something to share. I know nothing about her. Just some books, and some stories she tried to tell me, and things I didn’t understand, and I remember big red soft hands and that smell. I never knew who she really was. I mean, she must have been nine too, once. She was Sarah Grizzel. She got married and had children, two of them in the shepherding hut. She must’ve done all sorts of things I don’t know about. And into Tiffany’s mind, as it always did sooner or later, came the figure of the blue and white china shepherdess, swirling in red mists of shame . . . Tiffany’s father took her to the fair at the town of Yelp one day not long before her seventh birthday, when the farm had some rams to sell. That was a ten-mile journey, the furthest she’d ever been. It was off the Chalk. Everything looked different. There were far more fenced fields and lots of cows and the buildings had tiled roofs instead of thatch. She considered that this was foreign travel. Granny Aching had never been there, said her father on the way. She hated leaving the Chalk, he said. She said it made her dizzy. It was a great day. Tiffany was sick on candyfloss, had her fortune told by a little old lady who said that many, many men would want to marry her, and won the shepherdess, which was made of china painted in white and blue. She was the star prize on the hoop-la stall but Tiffany’s father had said that it was all cheating, because the base was so wide that not one throw in a million could ever drop the hoop right over it. She’d thrown the ring any old how, and it had been the one in a million. The stallholder hadn’t been very happy about it landing over the shepherdess rather than the gimcrack rubbish on the rest of the stall. He handed it over when her father spoke sharply to him, though, and she’d hugged it all the way home on the cart, while the stars came out. Next morning she’d proudly presented it to Granny Aching. The old woman had taken it very carefully in her wrinkled hands and stared at it for some time. Tiffany was sure, now, that it had been a cruel thing to do. Granny Aching had probably never heard of shepherdesses. People who cared for sheep on the Chalk were all called shepherds, and that was all there was to it. And this beautiful creature was as much unlike Granny Aching as anything could be. The china shepherdess had an old-fashioned long dress, with the bulgy bits at the side that made it look as though she had saddlebags in her knickers. There were blue ribbons all over the dress, and all over the rather showy straw bonnet, and on the shepherd’s crook, which was a lot more curly than any crook Tiffany had ever seen. There were even blue bows on the dainty foot poking out from the frilly hem of her dress. This wasn’t a shepherdess who’d ever worn big old boots stuffed with wool, and tramped the hills in the howling wind with the sleet being driven along like nails. She’d never tried in that dress to pull out a ram who’d got his horns tangled in a thorn patch. This wasn’t a shepherdess who’d kept up with the champion shearer for seven hours, sheep for sheep, until the air was hazy with grease and wool and blue with cussing, and the champion gave up because he couldn’t cuss sheep as well as Granny Aching. No self-respecting sheepdog would ever ‘come by’ or ‘walk up’ for a simpering girl with saddlebags in her pants. It was a lovely thing but it was a joke of a shepherdess, made by someone who’d probably never seen a sheep up close. What had Granny Aching thought about it? Tiffany couldn’t guess. She’d seemed happy, because it’s the job of grandmothers to be happy when grandchildren give them things. She’d put it up on her shelf, and then taken Tiffany on her knee and called her ‘my little jiggit’ in a nervous sort of way, which she did when she was trying to be grandmotherly. Sometimes, in the rare times Granny was down at the farm, Tiffany would see her take down the statue and stare at it. But if she saw Tiffany watching she’d put it back quickly, and pretend she’d meant to pick up the sheep book. Perhaps, Tiffany thought wretchedly, the old lady had seen it as a sort of insult. Perhaps she thought she was being told that this was what a shepherdess should look like. She shouldn’t be an old lady in a muddy dress and big boots, with an old sack around her shoulders to keep the rain off. A shepherdess should sparkle like a starry night. Tiffany hadn’t meant to, she’d never meant to, but perhaps she had been telling Granny that she wasn’t . . . right. And then a few months after that Granny had died, and in the years since then everything had gone wrong. Wentworth had been born, and then the Baron’s son had vanished, and then there had been that bad winter when Mrs Snapperly died in the snow. Tiffany kept worrying about the statue. She couldn’t talk about it. Everyone else was busy, or not interested. Everyone was edgy. They’d have said that worrying about a silly statue was . . . silly. Several times she nearly smashed the shepherdess, but she didn’t because people would notice. She wouldn’t have given something as wrong as that to Granny Aching now, of course. She’d grown up. She remembered that the old lady would smile oddly, sometimes, when she looked at the statue. If only she’d said something. But Granny liked silence. And now it turned out that she’d made friends with a lot of little blue men, who walked the hills looking after the sheep, because they liked her, too. Tiffany blinked. It made a kind of sense. In memory of Granny Aching, the men left the tobacco. And in memory of Granny Aching, the Nac Mac Feegle minded the sheep. It all worked, even if it wasn’t magic. But it took Granny away. ‘Daft Wullie?’ she said, staring hard at the struggling pictsie and trying not to cry. ‘Mmph?’ ‘Is it true what Rob Anybody told me?’ ‘Mmph!’ Daft Wullie’s eyebrows went up and down furiously. ‘Mr Feegle, you can please take your hand away from his mouth,’ said Tiffany. Daft Wullie was released. Rob Anybody had looked worried, but Daft Wullie was terrified. He dragged his bonnet off and stood holding it in his hands, as if it was some kind of shield. ‘Is all that true, Daft Wullie?’ said Tiffany. ‘Oh waily waily—’ ‘Just a simple yes or— A simple aye or nay, please.’ ‘Aye! It is!’ blurted out Daft Wullie. ‘Oh waily waily—’ ‘Yes, thank you,’ said Tiffany, sniffing and trying to blink the tears away. ‘All right. I understand.’ The Feegles eyed her cautiously. ‘Ye’re nae gonna get nasty aboot it?’ said Rob Anybody. ‘No. It all. . . works.’ She heard it echo around the cavern, the sound of hundreds of little men sighing with relief. ‘She dinnae turn me intae a pismire!’ said Daft Wullie, grinning happily at the rest of the pictsies. ‘Hey, lads, I talked wi’ the hag and she dinnae e’en look at me crosswise! She smiled at me!’ He beamed at Tiffany and went on: ‘An’ d’ye ken, mistress, that if’n you hold the baccy label upside-doon then part o’ the sailor’s bonnet and his ear became a lady wi’ nae mmph mmph . . .’ ‘Ach, there I goes again, accidentally nearly throttlin’ ye,’ said Rob Anybody, his hand clamping over Wullie’s mouth. Tiffany opened her mouth, but stopped when her ears tickled strangely. In the roof of the cave, several bats woke up and hastily flew out of the smoke hole. Some of the Feegles were busy on the far side of the chamber. What Tiffany had thought was a strange round stone was being rolled aside, revealing a large hole. Now her ears squelched and felt as though all the wax was running out. The Feegles were forming up in two rows, leading to the hole. Tiffany prodded the toad. ‘Do I want to know what a pismire is?’ she whispered. ‘It’s an ant,’ said the toad. ‘Oh? I’m . . . slightly surprised. And this sort of high-pitched noise?’ ‘I’m a toad. We’re not good at ears. But it’s probably him over there.’ There was a Feegle walking out of the hole from which came, now that Tiffany’s eyes had become accustomed to the gloom, a faint golden light. The newcomer’s hair was white instead of red and, while he was tall for a pictsie, he was as skinny as a twig. He was holding some sort of fat skin bag, bristling with pipes. ‘Now there’s a sight I don’t reckon many humans have seen and lived,’ said the toad. ‘He’s playing the mousepipes!’ They make my ears tingle!’ Tiffany tried to ignore the two little ears still on the bag of pipes. ‘High-pitched, see?’ said the toad. ‘Of course, the pictsies hear sounds differently than humans do. He’s probably their battle poet, too.’ ‘You mean he makes up heroic songs about famous battles?’ ‘No, no. He recites poems that frighten the enemy. Remember how important words are to the Nac Mac Feegle? Well, when a well-trained gonnagle starts to recite, the enemy’s ears explode. Ah, it looks as though they’re ready for you . . .’ In fact Rob Anybody was tapping politely on Tiffany’s toecap. ‘The kelda will see you now, mistress,’ he said. The piper had stopped playing and was standing respectfully beside the hole. Tiffany felt hundreds of bright little eyes watching her. ‘Special Sheep Liniment,’ whispered the toad. ‘Pardon?’ ‘Take it in with us,’ the toad said insistently. ‘It’d be a good gift!’ The pictsies watched her carefully as she lay down again and crawled through the hole behind the stone, the toad hanging on tightly. As she got closer she realized that what she’d thought was a stone was an old round shield, green-blue and corroded with age. The hole it had covered was indeed wide enough for her to go through, but she had to leave her legs outside because it was impossible to get all of her into the room beyond. One reason was the bed, small though it was, which held the kelda. The other reason was that what the room was mostly full of, piled up around the walls and spilling across the floor, was gold. Chapter 7 First Sight And Second Thoughts Glint, glisten, glitter, gleam . . . Tiffany thought a lot about words, in the long hours of churning butter. ‘Onomatopoeic’, she’d discovered in the dictionary, meant words that sounded like the noise of the thing they were describing, like ‘cuckoo’. But she thought there should be a word meaning ‘a word that sounds like the noise a thing would make if that thing made a noise even though, actually, it doesn’t, but would if it did’. Glint, for example. If light made a noise as it reflected off a distant window, it’d go ‘glint!’ And the light of tinsel, all those little glints chiming together, would make a noise like ‘glitterglitter’. ‘Gleam’ was a clean, smooth noise from a surface that intended to shine all day. And ‘glisten’ was the soft, almost greasy sound of something rich and oily. The little cave contained all of these at once. There was only one candle, which smelled of sheep fat, but gold plates and cups gleamed, glistened, glinted and glittered the light back and forth until the one little flame filled the air with a light that even smelled expensive. The gold surrounded the bed of the kelda, who was sitting up against a pile of pillows. She was much, much fatter than the male pictsies; she looked as if she’d been made of round balls of slightly squashy dough, and was the colour of chestnuts. Her eyes were closed as Tiffany slid in, but they flicked open the moment she’d stopped pulling herself forward. They were the sharpest eyes she’d ever seen, much sharper even than Miss Tick’s. ‘So-o . . . you’ll be Sarah Aching’s wee girl?’ said the kelda. ‘Yes. I mean, aye,’ said Tiffany. It wasn’t very comfortable lying on her stomach. ‘And you’re the kelda?’ ‘Aye. I mean, yes,’ said the kelda, and the round face became a mass of lines as the kelda smiled. ‘What was your name, now?’ “Tiffany, er, Kelda.’ Fion had turned up from some other part of the cave and was sitting down on a stool by the bed, watching Tiffany intently with a disapproving expression. ‘A good name. In our tongue you’d be Tir-far-thoinn, Land Under Wave,’ said the kelda. It sounded like ‘Tiffan’. ‘I don’t think anyone meant to name—’ ‘Ach, what people mean to do and what is done are two different things,’ said the kelda. Her little eyes shone. ‘Your wee brother is . . . safe, child. Ye could say he’s safer where he is noo than he has ever been. No mortal ills can touch him. The Quin would-nae harm a hair o’ his heid. And there’s the evil o’ it. Help me up here, girl.’ Fion leaped up immediately and helped the kelda struggle up higher amongst her cushions. ‘Where wuz I?’ the kelda continued. ‘Ah, the wee laddie. Aye, ye could say he bides well where he is, in the Quin’s own country. But I daresay there’s a mother grievin’?’ ‘And his father, too,’ said Tiffany. ‘An’ his wee sister?’ said the kelda. Tiffany felt the words ‘Yes, of course’ trot automatically onto her tongue. She also knew that it would be very stupid to let them go any further. The little old woman’s dark eyes were seeing right into her head. ‘Aye, you’re a born hag, right enough,’ said the kelda, holding her gaze. ‘Ye’ve got that little bitty bit inside o’ you that holds on, right? The bitty bit that watches the rest o’ ye. ‘Tis the First Sight and Second Thoughts ye have, and ‘tis a wee gift an’ a big curse to ye. You see and hear what others canna’, the world opens up its secrets to ye, but ye ‘re always like the person at the party with the wee drink in the corner who cannae join in. There’s a little bitty bit inside ye that willnae melt and flow. Ye ‘re Sarah Aching’s line, right enough. The lads fetched the right one.’ Tiffany didn’t know what to say to that, so she didn’t say anything. The kelda watched her, eyes twinkling, until Tiffany felt awkward. ‘Why would the Queen take my brother?’ she asked eventually. ‘And why is she after me?’ ‘Ye think she is?’ ‘Well, yes, actually! I mean, Jenny might have been a coincidence, but the horseman? And the grimhounds? And taking Wentworth?’ ‘She’s bending her mind to ye,’ said the kelda. ‘When she does, something of her world passes into this one. Mebbe she just wants to test you.’ ‘Test me? ’ ‘T o see how good you are. Ye’re the hag noo, the witch that guards the edges and the gateways. So wuz yer granny, although she wouldnae ever call hersel’ one. And so wuz I until noo, and I’ll pass the duty to ye. She’ll ha’ to get past ye, if she wants this land. Ye have the First Sight and the Second Thoughts, just like yer granny. That’s rare in a bigjob.’ ‘Don’t you mean second sight?’ Tiffany queried. ‘Like people who can see ghosts and stuff?’ ‘Ach, no. That’s typical bigjob thinking. First Sight is when you can see what’s really there, not what your heid tells you ought to be there. Ye saw Jenny, ye saw the horseman, ye saw them as real thingies. Second sight is dull sight, it’s seeing only what you expect to see. Most bigjobs ha’ that. Listen to me, because I’m fadin’ noo and there’s a lot ye dinnae ken. Ye think this is the only world? That is a good thought for sheep and mortals who dinnae open their eyes. Because in truth there are more worlds than stars in the sky. Understand? They are everywhere, big and small, close as your skin. They are everywhere. Some ye can see an’ some ye cannae but there are doors, Tiffan. They might be a hill or a tree or a stone or a turn in the road or they might e’en be a thought in yer heid, but they are there, all aroound ye. You’ll have to learn to see ‘em, because you walk amongst them and dinnae know it. And some of them . . . is poisonous.’ The kelda stared at Tiffany for a moment and then continued: ‘Ye asked why the Quin should take your boy? The Quin likes children. She has none o’ her own. She dotes on them. She’ll give the wee boy everything he wants, too. Only what he wants.’ ‘He only wants sweets!’ said Tiffany. ‘Is that so? An’ did ye gi’ them to him?’ said the kelda, as if she was looking into Tiffany’s mind. ‘But what he needs is love an’ care an’ teachin’ an’ people sayin’ “no” to him sometimes an’ things o’ that nature. He needs to be growed up strong. He willnae get that fra’ the Quin. He’ll get sweeties. For ever.’ Tiffany wished the kelda would stop looking at her like that. ‘But I see he has a sister willin’ to take any pains to bring him back,’ said the little old woman, taking her eyes away from Tiffany. ‘What a lucky wee boy he is, to be so fortunate. Ye ken how to be strong, do ye?’ ‘Yes, I think so.’ ‘Good. D’ye ken how to be weak? Can ye bow to the gale, can ye bend to the storm?’ The kelda smiled again. ‘Nay, ye neednae answer that. The wee burdie always has tae leap from the nest to see if it can fly. Anyway, ye have the feel o’ Sarah Aching about ye, and no word e’en o’ mine could turn her once she had set her mind to something. Ye’re no’ a woman yet, and that’s no bad thing, because where ye’ll be goin’ is easy for children, hard for adults.’ ‘The world of the Queen?’ ventured Tiffany, trying to keep up. ‘Aye. I can feel it noo, lyin’ over this one like a fog, as far awa’ as the other side o’ a mirror. I’m weakenin’, Tiffan. I cannae defend this place. So here is my bargain, child. I’ll point ye towards the Quin an’, in return, ye’ll tak’ over as kelda.’ That surprised Fion as much as Tiffany. Her head shot up sharply and her mouth opened, but the kelda had raised a wrinkled hand. ‘When ye are a kelda somewhere, my girl, ye’ll expect people to do your biddin’. So dinnae give me the argument. That’s my offer, Tiffan. Ye won’t get a better.’ ‘But she cannae—’ Fion began. ‘Can she not?’ said the kelda. ‘She’s nae a pictsie, Mother!’ ‘She’s a bit on the large side, aye,’ said the kelda. ‘Dinnae fret, Tiffan. It willnae be for long. I just need ye to mind things for a wee while. Mind the land like yer granny did, and mind my boys. Then when yer wee boy is back home, Hamish’ll fly up to the mountains and let it be known that the Chalk Hill clan has want o’ a kelda. We’ve got a good place here, and the girls’ll come flockin’. What d’ye say?’ ‘She disnae know our ways!’ Fion protested. ‘Ye’re overtired, Mother! ‘Aye, I am,’ said the kelda. ‘But a daughter cannae run her mother’s clan, ye know that. Ye’re a dutiful girl, Fion, but it’s time ye were pickin’ your bodyguard and going awa’ seeking a clan of your own. Ye cannae stay here.’ The kelda looked up at Tiffany again. ‘Will ye, Tiffan?’ She held up a thumb the size of a match head and waited. ‘What will I have to do?’ said Tiffany. ‘The thinkin’,’ said the kelda, still holding up her thumb. ‘My lads are good lads, there’s none braver. But they think their heids is most useful as weapons. That’s lads for ye. We pictsies aren’t like you big folk, ye ken. Ye have many sisters? Fion here has none. She’s my only daughter. A kelda might be blessed wi’ only one daughter in her whole life, but she’ll have hundreds and hundreds o’ sons.’ ‘They are all your sons?’ said Tiffany, aghast. ‘Oh aye,’ said the kelda, smiling. ‘Except for a few o’ my brothers who travelled here with me when I came to be kelda. Oh, dinna look so astonished. The bairns are really wee when they’re borned, like little peas in a pod. And they grow up fast.’ She sighed. ‘But sometimes I think all the brains is saved for the daughters. They’re good boys, but they’re no’ great thinkers. You’ll have to help them help ye.’ ‘Mother, she cannae carry oot the duties o’ a kelda!’ Fion protested. ‘I don’t see why not, if they’re explained to me,’ said Tiffany. ‘Oh, do you not?’ said Fion sharply. ‘Weel, that’s gonna be most interesting.’ ‘I recall Sarah Aching talkin’ aboot ye,’ said the kelda. ‘She said ye were a strange wee one, always watchin’ and listenin’. She said ye had a heid full o’ words that ye ne’er spoke aloud. She wondered what’d become o’ ye. Time for ye to find out, aye?’ Aware of Fion glaring at her, and maybe because of Fion glaring at her, Tiffany licked her thumb and touched it gently against the kelda’s tiny thumb. ‘It is done, then,’ said the kelda. She lay back suddenly, and just as suddenly seemed to shrink. There were more lines in her face now. ‘Never let it be said I left my sons wi’oot a kelda to mind them,’ she muttered. ‘Now I can go back to the Last World. Tiffan is the kelda for now, Fion. In her hoose, ye’ll do what she says.’ Fion looked down at her feet. Tiffany could see that she was angry. The kelda sagged. She beckoned Tiffany closer, and in a weaker voice said: ‘There. ‘Tis done. And now for my part o’ the bargain. Listen. Find . . . the place where the time disnae fit. There’s the way in. It’ll shine out to ye. Bring him back to ease yer puir mother’s heart and mebbe also your ain head—’ Her voice faltered, and Fion leaned quickly towards the bed. The kelda sniffed. She opened one eye. ‘Not quite yet,’ she murmured to Fion. ‘Do I smell a wee drop of Special Sheep Liniment on yez, Kelda?’ Tiffany looked puzzled for a moment and then said: ‘Oh, me. Oh. Yes. Er . . . here . . .’ The kelda struggled to sit up again. The best thing humans ever made,’ she said. ‘I’ll just have a large wee drop, Fion.’ ‘It puts hairs on your chest,’ Tiffany warned. ‘Ach, weel, for a drop of Sarah Aching’s Special Sheep Liniment I’ll risk a curl or two,’ said the old kelda. She took from Fion a leather cup about the size of a thimble, and held it up. ‘I dinnae think it would be good for ye, Mother,’ said Fion. ‘I’ll be the judge o’ that at this time,’ said the kelda. ‘One drop afore I go, please, Kelda Tiffan.’ Tiffany tipped the bottle slightly. The kelda shook the cup irritably. ‘It was a larger drop I had in mind, Kelda,’ she said. ‘A kelda has a generous heart.’ She took something too small to be a gulp but too large to be a sip. ‘Aye, it’s a lang time since I tasted this brose,’ she said. ‘Your granny and I used to ha’ a sip or two in front o’ the fire on cold nights . . .’ Tiffany saw it clearly in her head, Granny Aching and this little fat woman, sitting around the potbellied stove in the hut on wheels, while the sheep grazed under the stars . . . ‘Ah, ye can see it,’ said the kelda. ‘I can feel yer eyes on me. That’s the First Sight workin’.’ She lowered the cup. ‘Fion, go and fetch Rob Anybody and William the gonnagle.’ ‘The bigjob is blockin’ the hole,’ said Fion sulkily. ‘I dare say there’s room to wriggle past,’ said the old kelda in the kind of calm voice that said a stormy voice could follow if people didn’t do what they were told. With a smouldering glance at Tiffany, Fion squeezed past. ‘Ye ken anyone who keeps bees?’ said the kelda. When Tiffany nodded the little old woman went on, Then you’ll know why we dinnae have many daughters. You cannae ha’ two quins in one hive wi’oot a big fight. Fion must take her pick o’ them that will follow her and seek a clan that needs a kelda. That is our way. She thinks there’s another way, as gels sometimes do. Be careful o’ her.’ Tiffany felt something move past her, and Rob Anybody and the bard came into the room. There was more rustling and whispering, too. An unofficial audience was gathering outside. When things had settled down a little, the old kelda said: ‘It is a bad thing for a clan to be left wi’oot a kelda to watch o’er it e’en for an hour. So Tiffan will be your kelda until a new one can be fetched.’ There was a murmur beside and behind Tiffany. The old kelda looked at William the gonnagle. ‘Am I right that this has been done before?’ she said. ‘Aye. The songs say twice before,’ said William. He frowned, and added: ‘Or you could say it was three times if you include the time when the Quin was—’ He was drowned out by the cry that went up behind Tiffany: ‘Nae quin! Nae king! Nae laird! Nae master! We willna’ be fooled again!’ The old kelda raised a hand. Tiffan is the spawn of Granny Aching,’ she said. ‘Ye all ken of her.’ ‘Aye, and ye saw the wee hag stare the heidless horseman in the eyes he hasnae got,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Not many people can do that!’ ‘And I have been your kelda for seventy years and my words cannae be gainsaid,’ said the old kelda. ‘So the choice is made. I tell ye, too, that ye’ll help her steal back her wee baby brother. That is the fate I lay on you all in memory of me and Sarah Aching.’ She lay back in her bed, and in a quieter voice added, ‘An’ now I would have the gonnagle play The Bonny Flowers, and hope to see yez all again in the Last World. To Tiffan, I say, be wary.’ The kelda took a deep breath. ‘Somewhere, a’ stories are real, a’ songs are true . . .’ The old kelda fell silent. William the gonnagle inflated the bag of his mousepipes and blew into one of the tubes. Tiffany felt the bubbling in her ears of music too high-pitched to hear. After a few moments Fion leaned over the bed to look at her mother, then started to cry. Rob Anybody turned and looked up at Tiffany, his eyes running with tears. ‘Could I just ask ye to go out intae the big chamber, Kelda?’ he said,quietly. ‘We ha’ things to do, ye ken how it is . . .’ Tiffany nodded and, with great care, feeling pictsies scuttle out of her way, backed out of the room. She found a corner where she didn’t seem to be in anyone’s way and sat there with her back to the wall. She’d expected a lot of ‘waily waily waily’ but it seemed the death of the kelda was too serious for that. Some Feegles were crying, and some were staring at nothing and, as the news spread, the tiered hall filled up with a wretched, sobbing silence . . . . . . the hills had been silent on the day Granny Aching died. Someone went up every day with fresh bread and milk and scraps for the dogs. It didn’t need to be quite so often, but Tiffany had heard her parents talking and her father had said, ‘We ought to keep an eye on Mam now.’ Today had been Tiffany’s turn, but she’d never thought of it as a chore. She liked the journey. But she‘d noticed the silence. It was no longer the silence of many little noises, but a dome of quiet all around the hut. She knew then, even before she went in at the open door and found Granny lying on the narrow bed. She’d felt coldness spread though her. It even had a sound - it was like a thin, sharp musical note. It had a voice, too. Her own voice. It was saying: It’s too late, tears are no good, no time to say anything, there are things to be done . . . And . . . then she fed the dogs, who were waiting patiently for their breakfast. It would have helped if they’d done something soppy, like whine or lick Granny’s face, but they hadn’t. And still Tiffany heard the voice in her mind: No tears, don’t cry. Don’t cry for Granny Aching. Now, in her head, she watched the slightly smaller Tiffany move around the hut like a little puppet. . . She’d tidied up the shed. Besides the bed and the stove there really wasn’t much there. There was the clothes sack and the big water barrel and the food box, and that was it. Oh, stuff to do with sheep was all over the place - pots and bottles and sacks and knives and shears - but there was nothing there that said a person lived here, unless you counted the hundreds of blue and yellow Jolly Sailor wrappers pinned on one wall. She’d taken one of them down - it was still underneath her mattress at home - and she remembered the Story. It was very unusual for Granny Aching to say more than a sentence. She used words as if they cost money. But there’d been one day when she’d taken food up to the hut, and Granny had told her a story. A sort of a story. She’d unwrapped the tobacco, and looked at the wrapper, and then looked at Tiffany with that slightly puzzled look she used, and said: ‘I must’ve looked at a thousand o’ these things, and I never once saw his bo-ut.’ That was how she pronounced ‘boat’. Of course Tiffany had rushed to have a look at this label, but she couldn’t see any boat, any more than she could see the naked lady. ‘That’s ‘cos the bo-ut is just where you can’t see it,’ Granny had said. ‘He’s got a bo-ut for chasin’ the great white whale fish on the salt sea. He’s always chasing it, all round the world. It’s called Mopey. It’s a beast like a big cliff of chalk, I heard tell In a book.’ ‘Why’s he chasing it?’ Tiffany had asked. ‘To catch it,’ Granny had said. ‘But he never will, the reason being, the world is round like a big plate and so is the sea and so they ‘re chasing one another, so it is almost like he is chasing hisself. Ye never want to go to sea, jiggit. That’s where worse things happen. Everyone says that. You stop along here, where’s the hills is in yer bones.’ And that was it. It was one of the very few times Granny Aching had ever said anything to Tiffany that wasn’t, in some way, about sheep. It was the only time she ever acknowledged that there was a world beyond the Chalk. Tiffany used to dream about the Jolly Sailor chasing the whale fish in his boat. And sometimes the whale fish would chase her, but the Jolly Sailor always arrived in his mighty ship just in time and their chase would start again. Sometimes she’d run to the lighthouse, and wake up just as the door swung open. She’d never seen the sea, but one of the neighbours had an old picture on the wall that showed a lot of men clinging to a raft in what looked like a huge lake full of waves. She hadn’t been able to see the lighthouse at all. And Tiffany had sat by the narrow bed and thought about Granny Aching, and about the little girl Sarah Grizzel very carefully painting the flowers in the book, and about the world losing its centre. She missed the silence. What there was now wasn’t the same kind of silence there had been before. Granny’s silence was warm, and brought you inside. Granny Aching might sometimes have had trouble remembering the difference between children and lambs, but in her silence you were welcome and belonged. All you had to bring was a silence of your own. Tiffany wished that she’d had a chance to say sorry about the shepherdess. Then she’d gone home and told everyone that Granny was dead. She was seven, and the world had ended. Someone was tapping politely on her boot. She opened her eyes and saw the toad. It was holding a small rock in its mouth. It spat it out. ‘Sorry about that,’ it said. I’d have used my arms but we’re a very soggy species.’ ‘What am I supposed to do?’ said Tiffany. ‘Well, if you hit your head on this low ceiling you would have a definite claim for damages,’ said the toad. ‘Er . . . did I just say that?’ ‘Yes, and I hope you wish you hadn’t,’ said Tiffany. ‘Why did you say it?’ ‘I don’t know, I don’t know,’ moaned the toad. ‘Sorry, what were we talking about?’ ‘I meant, what do the pictsies want me to do now?’ ‘Oh, I don’t think it works like that,’ said the toad. ‘You’re the kelda. You say what’s to be done.’ ‘Why can’t Fion be kelda? She’s a pictsie!’ ‘Can’t help you there,’ said the toad. ‘Can I be of serrrvice?’ said a voice by Tiffany’s ear. She turned her head and saw, on one of the galleries that ran around the cave, William the gonnagle. Up close, he was noticeably different from the other Feegles. His hair was neater, and plaited into one pigtail. He didn’t have as many tattoos. He spoke differently too, more clearly and slowly than the others, sounding his Rs like a drumroll. ‘Er, yes,’ said Tiffany. ‘Why can’t Fion be kelda here?’ William nodded. ‘A good question,’ he said politely. ‘But, ye ken, a kelda cannot wed her brrrrotherrrr. She must go to a new clan and wed a warrrrior there.’ ‘Well, why couldn’t that warrior come here?’ ‘Because the Feegles here would not know him. They’d have no rrrrespect for him.’ William made ‘respect’ sound like an avalanche. ‘Oh. Well . . . what was that about the Queen? You were going to say something and they stopped you.’ William looked embarrassed. ‘I don’t think I can tell you aboout — ‘ ‘I am the temporary kelda,’ said Tiffany, stiffly. ‘Aye. Well . . . there was a time when we lived in the Queen’s world and served her, before she grew so cold. But she tricked us, and we rrrrebelled. It was a dark time. She does not like us. And that is all I will say,’ William added. Tiffany watched Feegles going in and out of the kelda ‘s chamber. Something was going on in there. ‘They’re burying her in the other part of the mound,’ said William, without being asked. ‘Wi’ the other keldas o’ this clan.’ ‘I thought they would be more . . . noisy,’ said Tiffany. ‘She was their motherrr,’ said William. They do not want to shout. Their hearts are too full for worrrrds. In time we will hold a wake to help her back to the land o’ the living, and that’ll be a loud one, I can promise ye. We’ll dance the FiveHundredAndTwelvesome Reel to the tune o’ “The Devil Among The Lawyers” and eat and drink, and I dare say my nephews will ha’ headaches the size o’ a sheep.’ The old Feegle smiled briefly. ‘But, for now, each Feegle remembers her in silence. We dinnae mourn like ye do, ye ken. We mourn for them that has tae stay behind.’ ‘Was she your mother too?’ said Tiffany quietly. ‘Nay. She was my sister. Did she no’ tell ye that when a kelda goes to a new clan she takes a few o’ her brothers with her? To be alone amongst strangers would be too much for a heart to bear.’ The gonnagle sighed. ‘Of course, in time, after the kelda weds, the clan is full of her sons and is no’ so lonely for her.’ ‘It must be for you, though,’ said Tiffany. ‘You’re a quick one, I’ll grant ye that,’ said William. ‘I am the last o’ those who came. When this is o’er I’ll seek the leave of the next kelda to return to my ain folk in the mountains. This is a fiiine fat country and this is a fiiine bonny clan my nephews have, but I would like to die in the heather where I was borrrned. If you will excuse me, Kelda.’ He walked away and was lost in the shadows of the mound. Tiffany suddenly wanted to go home. Perhaps it was just William’s sadness, but now she felt shut up in the mound. ‘I’ve got to get out of here,’ she muttered. ‘Good idea,’ said the toad. ‘You’ve got to find the place where the time is different, for one thing.’ ‘But how can I do that?’ wailed Tiffany. ‘You can’t see time!’ She stuck her arms through the entrance hole and pulled herself up into the fresh air . . . There was a big old clock in the farmhouse, and the time on it got set once a week. That is, when her father went to the market in Creel Springs he made a note of the position of the hands on the big clock there, and when he got home he moved the hands on their clock to the same position. It was really just for show, anyway. Everyone took their time from the sun, and the sun couldn’t go wrong. Now Tiffany lay amongst the trunks of the old thorn bushes, whose leaves rustled continuously in the breeze. The mound was like a little island in the endless turf; late primroses and even a few ragged foxgloves grew up here in the shelter of the thorn roots. Her apron lay beside her where she had left it earlier. ‘She could have just told me where to look,’ she said. ‘But she didn’t know where it would be,’ said the toad. ‘She just knew the signs to look for.’ Tiffany rolled over carefully and stared up at the sky between the low branches. It’ll shine out, the kelda had said . . . ‘I think I ought to talk to Hamish,’ she said. ‘Right ye are, mistress,’ said a voice by her ear. She turned her head. ‘How long have you been there?’ she said. ‘A’ the time, mistress,’ said the pictsie. Others poked their heads around the trees and out from under leaves. There were at least twenty on the mound. ‘You’ve been watching me all the time?’ ‘Aye, mistress. ‘Tis oour task to watch o’er our kelda. I’m up here most o’ the time anyway, because I’m studying to become a gonnagle.’ The young Feegle flourished a set of mousepipes. ‘An’ they willnae let me play doon there on account o’ them sayin’ my playin’ sounds like a spider tryin’ to fart through its ears, mistress.’ ‘But what happens if I want to spend a— have a— go to the— What happens if I say I don’t want you to guard me?’ ‘If it’s a wee call o’ nature ye’re talkin’ aboout, mistress, the cludgie is o’er there in the chalk pit. Yell just sing oot to us where ye’re goin’ and no one’ll go peeking, yell have oour word on it,’ said the attendant Feegle. Tiffany glared at him as he stood in the primroses, beaming with pride and anxious duty. He was younger than most of them, without as many scars and lumps. Even his nose wasn’t broken. ‘What’s your name, pictsie?’ she said. ‘No’-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock, mistress. There’s no’ that many Feegle names, ye ken, so we ha’ to share.’ ‘Well, Not-as-big-as-Little-Jock—’ Tiffany began. ‘That’d be Medium-Sized Jock, mistress,’ said Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock. ‘Well, Not-as-big-as-Medium- Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock, I can—’ ‘That’s No’-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock, mistress,’ said Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock. ‘Ye were one jock short,’ he added helpfully. ‘You wouldn’t be happier with, say, Henry?’ said Tiffany, helplessly. ‘Ach, nay, mistress.’ Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock wrinkled his face. There’s nay history tae the name, ye ken. But there have been a number o’ brave warriors called No’-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock. Why ‘tis nearly as famous a name as Wee Jock itself! An’, o’ course, should Wee Jock hisself be taken back to the Last World then I’ll get the name o’ Wee Jock, which isnae to say that I mislike the name o’ No’-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock, ye ken. There’s been many a fine story o’ the exploits o’ No’-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock,’ the pictsie added, looking so earnest that Tiffany didn’t have the heart to say that they must have been very long stories. Instead she said: ‘Well, er, please, I want to talk to Hamish the aviator.’ ‘Nae problem,’ said Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock. ‘He’s up there right noo.’ He vanished. A moment later Tiffany heard - or, rather, felt with her ears - the bubbling sensation of a Feegle whistle. Tiffany pulled Diseases of the Sheep, which was now looking very battered, out of her apron. There was a blank page at the back. She tore it out, feeling like a criminal for doing so, and took out her pencil. Dear Mum and Dad, How are you, I am well. Wentworth is also well but I have to go and fetch him from the Qu where he is staying. Hop to be back soon. Tiffany PS I hope the cheese is all right. She was just considering this when she heard a rush of wings overhead. There was a whirring noise, a moment of silence and then a small, weary and rather muffled voice said: ‘Ach, cravens.’ She looked out onto the turf. The body of Hamish was upside down a few feet away. His arms with their twirlers were still outstretched.* * No words could describe what a Feegle in a kilt looks like upside down, so they won’t try. It took some time to get him out. If he landed headfirst and spinning, Tiffany was told, he had to be unscrewed in the opposite direction so that his ears didn’t come off. When he was upright and swaying unsteadily, Tiffany said: ‘Can you wrap this letter in a stone and drop it in front of the farmhouse where people will see it?’ ‘Aye, mistress.’ ‘And . . . er . . . does it hurt when you land headfirst like that?’ ‘Nay, mistress, but it is awfu’ embarrassing.’ ‘Then there’s a sort of toy we used to make that might help you,’ said Tiffany. ‘You make a kind of. . . bag of air—’ ‘Bag o’ air?’ said the aviator, looking puzzled. ‘Well, you know how things like shirts billow out on a washing line when it’s windy? Well, you just make a cloth bag and tie some strings to it and a stone to the strings, and when you throw it up the bag fills with air and the stone floats down.’ Hamish stared at her. ‘Do you understand me?’ said Tiffany. ‘Oh, aye. I wuz just waitin’ to see if you wuz goin’ to tell me anything else,’ said Hamish politely. ‘Do you think you could, er, borrow some fine cloth?’ ‘Nay, mistress, but I ken well where I can steal some,’ said Hamish. Tiffany decided not to comment on this. She said: ‘Where was the Queen when the mist came down?’ Hamish pointed. ‘Aboot a half mile yonder, mistress.’ In the distance Tiffany could see some more mounds, and a few stones from the old days. Trilithons, they were called, which just meant ‘three stones’. The only stones found naturally on the downs were flints, which were never very big. But the stones of the trilithons had been dragged from at least ten miles away, and were stacked like a child stacks toy bricks. Here and there the big stones had been stood in circles; sometimes one stone had been placed all alone. It must have taken a lot of people a long time to do all that. Some people said there’d been human sacrifices up there. Some said they were part of some old religion. Some said they marked ancient graves. Some said they were a warning: avoid this place. Tiffany hadn’t. She’d been there with her sisters a few times, as a dare, just in case there were any skulls. But the mounds around the stones were thousands of years old. All that you found there now were rabbit holes. ‘Anything else, mistress?’ said Hamish politely. ‘Nay? Then I’ll just be goin’. . .’ He raised his arms over his head and started to run across the turf. Tiffany jumped as the buzzard skimmed down a few yards away from her and snatched him back up into the sky. ‘How can a man six inches high train a bird like that?’ she asked as the buzzard circled again for height. ‘Ach, all it takes is a wee drop o’ kindness, mistress,’ said Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock -but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock. ‘Really?’ ‘Aye, an’ a big dollop o’ cruelty,’ Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized- Jock-but-bigger- than-Wee- Jock-Jock went on. ‘Hamish trains ‘em by runnin’ aroound in a rabbit skin until a bird pounces on him.’ ‘That sounds awful!’ said Tiffany. ‘Ach, he’s not too nasty aboot it. He just knocks them out wi’ his heid, and then he’s got a special oil he makes which he blows up their beak,’ Not-as-big -as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock went on. ‘When they wakes up, they thinks he’s their mammy and’ll do his biddin’.’ The buzzard was already a distant speck. ‘He hardly seems to spend any time on the ground!’ said Tiffany. ‘Oh, aye. He sleeps in the buzzard’s nest at night, mistress. He says it’s wunnerfully warm. An’ he spends all his time in the air,’ Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock added. ‘He’s ne’er happy unless he’s got the wind under his kilt.’ ‘And the birds don’t mind?’ ‘Ach, no, mistress. All the birds and beasts up here know it’s good luck to be friends wi’ the Nac Mac Feegle, mistress.’ ‘They do?’ ‘Well, to tell ye the truth, mistress, it’s more that they know it’s unlucky not to be friends wi’ the Nac Mac Feegle.’ Tiffany looked at the sun. It was only a few hours away from setting. ‘I must find the way in,’ she said. ‘Look, Not-as-small-as—’ ‘No’-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock, mistress,’ said the pictsie, patiently. ‘Yes, yes, thank you. Where is Rob Anybody? Where is everybody, in fact?’ The young pictsie looked a bit embarrassed. ‘There’s a bit o’ a debate goin’ on down below, mistress,’ he said. ‘Well, we have got to find my brother, OK? I am the kelda in this vicinity, yes?’ ‘It’s a wee bit more comp-li-cat-ed than that, mistress. They’re, er, discussin’ ye . . .’ ‘Discussing what about me?’ Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock looked as if he really didn’t want to be standing there. ‘Um, they’re discussing . . . er . . . they . . .’ Tiffany gave up. The pictsie was blushing. Since he was blue to begin with, this turned him an unpleasant violet colour. ‘I’ll go back down the hole. Give my boots a push, will you, please?’ She slid down the dry dirt and Feegles scattered in the cave below as she landed. When her eyes got accustomed to the gloom once more she saw that the galleries were crowded with pictsies again. Some of them were in the middle of washing, and many of them had, for some reason, smoothed down their red hair with grease. They all started at her as if caught in the act of something dreadful. ‘We ought to be going if we’re to follow the Queen,’ she said, looking down at Rob Anybody, who’d been washing his face in a basin made of half a walnut shell. Water dripped off his beard, which he’d plaited up. There were three plaits in his long hair now, too. If he turned suddenly he could probably whip somebody to death. ‘Ach, weel,’ he said, ‘there’s a wee matter we got tae sort oout, Kelda.’ He twiddled the tiny facecloth in his hands. When Rob Anybody twiddled, he was worried. ‘Yes?’ said Tiffany. ‘Er . . . will ye no’ ha’ a cup o’ tea?’ said Rob Anybody, and a pictsie staggered forward with a big gold cup that, once, must have been made for a king. Tiffany took it. She was thirsty, after all. There was a sigh from the crowd when she sipped the tea. It was actually quite good. ‘We stole a bag o’ it fra’ a pedlar who was asleep down by the high road,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Good stuff, eh?’ He patted down his hair with his wet hands. Tiffany’s cup stopped halfway to her lips. Perhaps the pictsies didn’t realize how loudly they whispered, because her ear was on a level with a conversation. ‘Ach, she’s a bit on the big side, no offence to her.’ ‘Aye, but a kelda has to be big, ye ken, to have lots of wee babbies.’ ‘Aye, fair enough, big wimmin is a’ very well, but if a laddie was to try tae cuddle this one he’d had tae leave a chalk mark to show where he left off yesterday.’ ‘An’ she’s a bit young.’ ‘She neednae have any babbies yet, then. Or mebbe not too many at a time, say. Nae more than ten, mebbe.’ ‘Crivens, lads, what’re ye talkin’ aboout? ‘Tis Rob Anybody she ‘II choose anyway. Ye can see the big man’s poor wee knees knocking fra’ here!’ Tiffany lived on a farm. Any little beliefs that babies are delivered by storks or found under bushes tend to get sorted out early on if you live on a farm, especially when a cow is having a difficult calving in the middle of the night. And she’d helped with the lambing, when small hands could be very useful in difficult cases. She knew all about the bags of red chalk the rams had strapped to their chests, and why you knew later on that the ewes with the red smudges on their backs were going to be mothers in the spring. It’s amazing what a child who is quiet and observant can learn, and this includes things people don’t think she is old enough to know. Her eye spotted Fion, on the other side of the hall. She was smiling in a worrying way. ‘What’s happening, Rob Anybody?’ she said, laying the words down carefully. ‘Ah, weel . . . it’s the clan rules, ye ken,’ said the Feegle, awkwardly. ‘Ye being the new kelda an’, an’, weel, we’re bound to ask ye, see, nae matter what we feel, we gotta ask ye mutter mutter mutter He stepped back quickly. ‘I didn’t quite catch that,’ said Tiffany. ‘We’ve scrubbed up nice, ye ken,’ Rob Anybody said. ‘Some o’ the lads actually had a bath in the dewpond, e’en though ‘tis only May, and Big Yan washed under his arms for the first time ever, and Daft Wullie has picked ye a bonny bunch of flowers.’ Daft Wullie stepped forward, swollen with nervous pride, and thrust the aforesaid bouquet into the air. They probably had been nice flowers, but he didn’t have much idea of what a bunch was or how you picked one. Stems and leaves and dropping petals stuck out of his fist in all directions. ‘Very nice,’ said Tiffany, taking another sip of the tea. ‘Guid, guid,’ said Rob Anybody, wiping his forehead. ‘So mebbe you’d like tae tell us mutter mutter mutter . . .’ ‘They want to know which one of them you’re going to marry,’ said Fion loudly. ‘It’s the rules. Ye have to choose, or quit as kelda. Ye have to choose yer man an’ name the day.’ ‘Aye,’ said Rob Anybody, not meeting Tiffany’s eye. Tiffany held the cup perfectly steady, but only because suddenly she couldn’t move a muscle. She was thinking: Aaargh! This is not happening to me! I can’t— He couldn’t— We wouldn’t— They’re not even— This is ridiculous! Run away! But she was aware of hundreds of nervous faces in the shadows. How you deal with this is going to be important, said her Second Thoughts. They’re all watching you. And Fion wants to see what you’ll do. You really didn’t ought to dislike a girl four feet shorter than you, but you do. ‘Well, this is very unexpected,’ she said, forcing herself to smile. ‘A big honour, of course.’ ‘Aye, aye,’ said Rob Anybody, looking at the floor. ‘And there’s so many of you it’d be so hard to choose,’ Tiffany went on, still smiling. And her Second Thoughts said: He’s not happy about it either! ‘Aye, it will that,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘I’d just like to have a little fresh air while I think about it,’ said Tiffany, and didn’t let the smile fade until she was out on the mound again. She crouched down and peered among the primrose leaves. Toad!’ she yelled. The toad crawled out, chewing something. ‘Hm?’ it said. ‘They want to marry me!’ ‘Mm phmm ffm mm?’ ‘What are you eating?’ The toad swallowed. ‘A very undernourished slug,’ it said. ‘I said they want to marry me!’ ‘And?’ ‘And? Well, just— Just think!’ ‘Oh, right, yeah, the height thing,’ said the toad. ‘It might not seem much now, but when you’re five feet seven he’ll still be six inches high—’ ‘Don’t laugh at me! I’m the kelda!’ ‘Well, of course, that’s the point, isn’t it,’ said the toad. ‘As far as they’re concerned, there’s rules. The new kelda marries the warrior of her choice and settles down and has lots and lots of Feegles. It’d be a terrible insult to refuse—’ ‘I am not going to marry a Feegle! I can’t have hundreds of babies! Tell me what to do!’ ‘Me? Tell the kelda what to do? I wouldn’t dare,’ said the toad. ‘And I don’t like being shouted at. Even toads have their pride, you know.’ It crawled back into the leaves. Tiffany took a deep breath, ready to shout, and then closed her mouth. The old kelda must’ve known about this, she thought. So . . . she must have thought I’d be able to deal with it. It’s just the rules, and they didn’t know what to do about them. None of them wanted to marry a big girl like her, even if none of them would admit it. It was just the rules. There must be a way round it. There had to be. But she had to accept a husband and she had to name the day. They’d told her that. She stared at the thorn trees for a moment. Hmm, she thought. She slid back down the hole. The pictsies were waiting nervously, every scarred and bearded face watching hers. ‘I accept you, Rob Anybody,’ she said. Rob Anybody’s face became a mask of terror. She heard him mutter, ‘Aw crivens!’ in a tiny voice. ‘But of course, it’s the bride who names the day, isn’t it?’ said Tiffany cheerfully. ‘Everyone knows that.’ ‘Aye,’ Rob Anybody quavered. That’s the tradition, right enough.’ ‘Then I shall.’ Tiffany took a deep breath. ‘At the end of the world is a great big mountain of granite rock a mile high,’ she said. ‘And every year, a tiny bird flies all the way to the rock and wipes its beak on it. Well, when the little bird has worn the mountain down to the size of a grain of sand . . . that’s the day I’ll marry you, Rob Anybody Feegle!’ Rob Anybody’s terror turned to outright panic, but then he hesitated and, very slowly, started to grin. ‘Aye, guid idea,’ he said slowly. ‘It doesnae do tae rush these things.’ ‘Absolutely,’ said Tiffany. ‘And that’d gi’ us time tae sort oout the guest list an a’ that,’ the pictsie went on. ‘That’s right.’ ‘Plus there’s a’ that business wi’ the wedding dress and buckets o’ flowers and a’ that kind of stuff,’ said Rob Anybody, looking more cheerful by the second. That sort o’ thing can tak’ for ever, ye ken.’ ‘Oh yes,’ said Tiffany. ‘But she’s really just said no!’ Fion burst out. ‘It’d take millions of years for the bird to—’ ‘She said aye!’ Rob Anybody shouted. ‘Ye al’ heard her, lads! An’ she’s named the day! That’s the rules!’ ‘Nae problem aboot the mountain, neither,’ said Daft Wullie, still holding out the flowers. ‘Just ye tell us where it is and I reckon we could ha’ it doon a lot faster than any wee burdie—’ ‘It’s got to be the bird!’ yelled Rob Anybody desperately. ‘OK? The wee burdie! Nae more arguin’! Anyone feelin’ like arguin’ will feel ma boot! Some o’ us ha’ got a wee laddie to steal back fra’ the Quin!’ He drew his sword and waved it in the air. ‘Who’s coming wi’ me?’ That seemed to work. The Nac Mac Feegle liked clear goals. Hundreds of swords and battleaxes, and one bunch of battered flowers in the case of Daft Wullie, were thrust into the air and the war cry of the Nac Mac Feegle echoed around the chamber. The period of time it takes a pictsie to go from normal to mad fighting mood is so tiny it can’t be measured on the smallest clock. Unfortunately, since the pictsies were very individualistic, each one had his own cry and Tiffany could only make out a few over the din: ‘They can tak’ oour lives but they cannae tak’ oour troousers!’ ‘Bang went saxpence!’ ‘Ye’II tak’ the high road an’ I’ll tak’yer wallet!’ ‘There can only be one t’ousand!’ ‘Ach, stick it up yer trakkans!’ . . . but the voices gradually came together in one roar that shook the walls: ‘Nae king! Nae quin! Nae laird! Nae master! We willnae be fooled again!’ This died away, a cloud of dust dropped from the roof, and there was silence. ‘Let’s gae!’ cried Rob Anybody. As one Feegle, the pictsies swarmed down the galleries and across the floor and up the slope to the hole. In a few seconds the chamber was empty, except for the gonnagle and Fion. ‘Where have they gone?’ said Tiffany. ‘Ach, they just go,’ said Fion, shrugging. ‘I’m going tae stay here and look after the fire. Someone ought to act like a proper kelda.’ She glared at Tiffany. ‘I do hope you find a clan for yourself soon, Fion,’ said Tiffany, sweetly. The pictsie scowled at her. ‘They’ll run arroound for a while, mebbe stun a few bunnies and fall over a few times,’ said William. They’ll slow down when they find oout they don’t ken what they’re supposed to do yet.’ ‘Do they always just run off like this?’ said Tiffany. ‘Ach, well, Rob Anybody disnae want too much talk about marryin’,’ said William, grinning. ‘Yes, we have a lot in common in that respect,’ said Tiffany. She pulled herself out of the hole, and found the toad waiting for her. ‘I listened in,’ it said. ‘Well done. Very clever. Very diplomatic.’ Tiffany looked around. There were a few hours to sunset, but the shadows were already lengthening. ‘We’d better be going,’ she said, tying on her apron. ‘And you’re coming, toad.’ ‘Well, I don’t know much about how to get into—’ the toad began, trying to back away. But toads can’t back up easily, and Tiffany grabbed it and put it in her apron pocket. She headed for the mounds and stones. My brother will never grow up, she thought, as she ran across the turf. That’s what the old lady said. How does that work? What kind of a place is it where you never grow up? The mounds got nearer. She saw William and Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock running along beside her, but there was no sign of the rest of the Nac Mac Feegle. And then she was among the mounds. Her sisters had told her that there were more dead kings buried under there, but it had never frightened her. Nothing on the downs had ever frightened her. But it was cold here. She’d never noticed that before. Find a place where the time doesn’t fit. Well, the mounds were history. So were the old stones. Did they fit here? Well, yes, they belonged to the past, but they’d ridden on the hills for thousands of years. They’d grown old here. They were part of the landscape. The low sun made the shadows lengthen. That was when the Chalk revealed its secrets. At some places, when the light was right, you could see the edges of old fields and tracks. The shadows showed up what brilliant noonlight couldn’t see. Tiffany had made up ‘noonlight’. She couldn’t even see hoofprints. She wandered around the trilithons, which looked a bit like huge stone doorways, but even when she tried walking through them both ways nothing happened. This wasn’t according to plan. There should have been a magic door. She was sure of that. A bubbling feeling in her ear suggested that someone was playing the mousepipes. She looked around, and saw William the gonnagle standing on a fallen stone. His cheeks were bulging and so was the bag of the mousepipes. She waved at him. ‘Can you see anything?’ she called. William took the pipe out of his mouth and the bubbling stopped. ‘Oh, aye,’ he said. ‘The way to the Queen’s land?’ ‘Oh, aye.’ ‘Well, would you care to tell me?’ ‘I dinnae need to tell a kelda,’ said William. ‘A kelda would see the clear way hersel’.’ ‘But you could tell me!’ ‘Aye, and you coulda said “please”,’ said William. ‘I’m ninety-six years old. I’m nae a dolly in yer dolly hoose. Yer granny was a fiiine wuman, but I’ll no’ be ordered about by a wee chit of a girl.’ Tiffany stared for a moment and then lifted the toad out of her apron pocket. ‘Chit?’ she said. ‘It means something very small,’ said the toad. ‘Trust me.’ ‘He’s calling me small—!’ ‘I’m biggerrr on the inside!’ said William. ‘And I dare say your da’ wouldnae be happy if a big giant of a wee girl came stampin’ aroound ordering him aboout!’ ‘The old kelda ordered people about!’ said Tiffany. ‘Aye! Because she’d earned rrrespect!’ The gonnagle’s voice seemed to echo around the stones. ‘Please, I don’t know what to do!’ wailed Tiffany. William stared at her. ‘Ach, weel, yer no’ doin’ too badly so far,’ he said, hi a nicer tone of voice. ‘Ye got Rob Anybody out of marryin’ ye wi’oout breakin’ the rules, and ye’re a game lass, I’ll gi’ ye that. Ye’ll find the way if ye tak’ yer time. Just don’t stamp yer foot and expect the world to do yer biddin’. All ye’re doing is shoutin’ for sweeties, yer ken. Use yer eyes. Use yer heid.’ He put the pipe back in his mouth, puffed his cheeks until the skin bag was full, and made Tiffany’s ears bubble again. ‘What about you, toad?’ said Tiffany, looking into the apron pocket. ‘You’re on your own, I’m afraid,’ said the toad. ‘Whoever I used to be, I didn’t know much about finding invisible doors. And I resent being press-ganged, too, I may say.’ ‘But. . . I don’t know what to do! Is there a magic word I should say?’ ‘I don’t know, is there a magic word you should say?’ said the toad, and turned over. Tiffany was aware that the Nac Mac Feegle were turning up. They had a nasty habit of being really quiet when they wanted to. Oh, no, she thought. They think I know what to do! This isn’t fair! I’ve not got any training for this. I haven’t been to the witch school! I can’t even find that! The opening must be somewhere around here and there must be dues but I don’t know what they are! They’re watching me to see if I’m any good. And I’m good at cheese, and that’s all. But a witch Deals With Things . . . She put the toad back in her pocket and felt the weight of the book Diseases of the Sheep. When she pulled it out, she heard a sigh go up from the assembled pictsies. They think words are magical. . . She opened the book at random, and frowned. ‘Cloggets,’ she said aloud. Around her, the pictsies nodded their heads and nudged one another. ‘Cloggets are a trembling of the greebs in hoggets,’ she read, ‘which can lead to inflammation of the lower pasks. If untreated, it may lead to the more serious condition of Sloke. Recommended treatment is daily dosing with turpentine until there is no longer either any trembling, or turpentine, or sheep.’ She risked looking up. Feegles were watching her from every stone and mound. They looked impressed. However, the words in Diseases of the Sheep cut no ice with magic doorways. ‘Scrabbity,’ read Tiffany. There was a ripple of anticipation. ‘Scrabbity is a flaky skin condition, particularly around the lollets. Turpentine is a useful remedy—’ And then she saw, out of the corner of her eye, the teddy bear. It was very small, and the kind of red you don’t quite get in nature. Tiffany knew what it was. Wentworth loved the teddy-bear sweets. They tasted like glue mixed with sugar and were made of 100% Artificial Additives. ‘Ah,’ she said aloud. ‘My brother was certainly brought here.’ This caused a stir. She walked forward, reading aloud about Garget of the Nostrils and the Staggers but keeping an eye on the ground. And there was another teddy-bear sweet, green this time and quite hard to see against the turf. O-K, Tiffany thought. There was one of the three-stone arches a little way away; two big stones with another one laid across the top of them. She’d walked through it before, and nothing had happened, But nothing should happen, she thought. You can’t leave a doorway into your world that anyone can walk through, otherwise people would wander in and out by accident. You’d have to know it was there. Perhaps that’s the only way it would work. Fine. Then I’ll believe that this is the entrance. She stepped through, and saw an astonishing sight: green grass, blue sky becoming pink around the setting sun, a few little white clouds late for bed, and a general warm, honey-coloured look to everything. It was amazing that there could be a sight like this. The fact that Tiffany had seen it nearly every day of her life didn’t make it any less fantastic. As a bonus, you didn’t even have to look through any kind of stone arch to see it. You could see it by standing practically anywhere. Except . . . . . . something was wrong. Tiffany walked through the arch several times, and still wasn’t quite sure. She held up a hand at arm’s length, trying to measure the sun’s height against the horizon. And then she saw the bird. It was a swallow, hunting flies, and a swoop took it behind the stones. The effect was . . . odd, and almost upsetting. It passed behind the stone and she felt her eyes move to follow the swoop . . . but it was late. There was a moment when the swallow should have appeared, and it didn’t. Then it passed across the gap and for a moment was on both sides of the other stone at the same time. Seeing it made Tiffany feel that her eyeballs had been pulled out and turned round. Look for a place where the time doesn’t fit. . . The world seen through that gap is at least one second behind the time here,’ she said, trying to sound as certain as possible. ‘I thi— I know this is the entrance.’ There was some whooping and clapping from the Nac Mac Feegles, and they surged across the turf towards her. ‘That was great, al’ that reading’ ye did!’ said Rob Anybody. I didnae understand a single word o’ it!’ ‘Aye, it must be powerful language if you cannae make oout what the heel it’s goin’ on aboot!’ said another pictsie. ‘Ye definitely ha’ got the makin’s of a kelda, mistress,’ said Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock. ‘Aye!’ said Daft Wullie. ‘It was smashin’ the way you spotted them sweeties and didnae let on! We didnae think you’d see the wee green one, too!’ The rest of the pictsies stopped cheering and glared at him. ‘What did I say? What did I say?’ he said. Tiffany sagged. ‘You all knew that was the way through, didn’t you?’ she said. ‘Oh, aye,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘We ken that kind of stuff. We used tae live in the Quin’s country, ye ken, but we rebelled against her evil rule—’ ‘An’ we did that, an’ then she threw us oout on account o’ bein’ drunk an’ stearin’ and fightin’ al’ the time,’ said Daft Wullie. ‘It wasnae like that at all’ roared Rob Anybody. ‘And you were waiting to see if I could find the way, right?’ said Tiffany, before a fight could start. ‘Aye. Ye did well, lassie.’ Tiffany shook her head. ‘No, I didn’t,’ she said. ‘I didn’t do any real magic. I don’t know how. I just looked at things and worked them out. It was cheating, really.’ The pictsies looked at one another. ‘Ah, weel,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘What’s magic, eh? Just wavin’ a stick an’ sayin’ a few wee magical words. An’ what’s so clever aboot that, eh? But lookin’ at things, really lookin’ at ‘em, and then workin’ ‘em oout, now, that’s a real skill.’ ‘Aye, it is,’ said William the gonnagle, to Tiffany’s surprise. ‘Ye used yer eyes and used yer heid. That’s what a real hag does. The magicking is just there for advertisin’.’ ‘Oh,’ said Tiffany, cheering up. ‘Really? Well, then . . . there’s our door, everyone!’ ‘Right,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Now show us the way through.’ Tiffany hesitated and then thought: I can feel myself thinking. I’m watching the way I’m thinking. And what am I thinking? I’m thinking: I walked through this arch before, and nothing happened. But I wasn’t looking then. I wasn’t thinking, either. Not properly. The world I can see through the arch isn’t actually real. It just looks as though it is. It’s a sort of . . . magical picture, put there to disguise the entrance. And if you don’t pay attention, well, you just walk in and out of it and you don’t realize it. Aha . . . She walked through the arch. Nothing happened. The Nac Mac Feegles watched her solemnly. O-K, she thought. I’m still being fooled, aren’t I. . .? She stood in front of the stones, and stretched out her hand on either side of her, and shut her eyes. Very slowly she stepped forward . . . Something crunched under her boots, but she didn’t open her eyes until she couldn’t feel the stones any more. When she did open them . . . . . . it was a black and white landscape. Chapter 8 Land Of Winter ‘Aye, she’s got First Sight, sure enough,’ said William’s voice behind Tiffany as she stared into the world of the Queen. ‘She’s seein’ what’s really there.’ Snow stretched away under a sky so dirty white that Tiffany might have been standing inside a ping-pong ball. Only black trunks and scribbly branches of the trees, here and there, told her where the land stopped and the sky began . . . . . . those, and of course, the hoofprints. They stretched away towards a forest of black trees, boughed with snow. The cold was like little needles all over her skin. She looked down, and saw the Nac Mac Feegles pouring through the gate, waist deep in the snow. They spread out, without speaking. Some of them had drawn their swords. They weren’t laughing and joking now. They were watchful. ‘Right, then,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Well done. You wait here for us and we’ll get your wee brother back, nae problemo—’ ‘I’m coming too!’ snapped Tiffany. ‘Nay, the kelda disnae—’ ‘This one dis!’ said Tiffany, shivering. ‘I mean doesl He’s my brother. And where are we?’ Rob Anybody glanced up at the pale sky. There was no sun anywhere. ‘Ye’re here noo,’ he said, ‘so mebbe there’s nae harm in tellin’ ye. This is what ye call Fairyland.’ ‘Fairyland? No, it’s not! I’ve seen pictures! Fairyland is . . . is all trees and flowers and sunshine and, and tinklyness! Dumpy little babies in romper suits with horns! People with wings! Er . . . and weird people! I’ve seen pictures!’ ‘It isnae always like this,’ said Rob Anybody, shortly. ‘An’ ye cannae come wi’ us because ye ha’ nae weapon, mistress.’ ‘What happened to my frying pan?’ said Tiffany. Something bumped against her heels. She looked around and saw Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock hold up the pan triumphantly. ‘OK, ye have the pan,’ said Rob Anybody, ‘but what ye need here is a sword of thunderbolt iron. That’s like the, you know, official weapon for invadin’ Fairyland.’ ‘I know how to use the use the pan,’ said Tiffany. ‘And I’m—’ ‘Incomin’!’ yelled Daft Wullie. Tiffany saw a line of black dots in the distance, and felt someone climb up her back and stand on her head. ‘It’s the black dogs,’ Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock announced. ‘Dozens o’ ‘em, big man.’ ‘We’ll never outrun the dogs!’ Tiffany cried, grabbing her pan. ‘Dinnae need to,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘We got the gonnagle wi’ us this time. Ye might like to stick yer fingers in yer ears, though.’ William, with his eyes fixed on the approaching pack, was unscrewing some of the pipes from the mousepipes and putting them in a bag he carried hanging from his shoulder. The dogs were much closer now. Tiffany could see the razor teeth and the burning eyes. Slowly, William took out some much shorter, smaller pipes that had a silvery look them, and screwed them in place. He had the look of someone who wasn’t going to rush. Tiffany gripped the handle of her pan. The dogs weren’t barking. It would have been slightly less scary if they were. William swung the mousepipes under his arm and blew into one until the bag bulged. ‘I shall play,’ he announced, as the dogs got close enough for Tiffany to see the drool, ‘that firrrrm favourite, “The King Underrrr Waterrrr”.’ As one pictsie, the Nac Mac Feegles dropped their swords and put their hands over their ears. William put the mouthpiece to his lips, tapped his foot once or twice and, as a dog gathered itself to leap at Tiffany, began to play. A lot of things happened at more or less the same time. All Tiffany’s teeth started to buzz. The pan vibrated in her hands and dropped onto the snow. The dog in front of her went cross-eyed and, instead of leaping, tumbled forward. The grimhounds paid no attention to the pictsies. They howled. They spun around. They tried to bite their own tails. They stumbled, and ran into one another. The line of panting death broke into dozens of desperate animals, twisting and writhing and trying to escape from their own skins. The snow was melting in a circle around William, whose cheeks were red with effort. Steam was rising. He took the pipe from his mouth. The grimhounds, struggling in the slush, raised their heads. And then, as one dog, they put their tails between their legs and ran like greyhounds back across the snow. ‘Weel, they ken we’re here noo,’ said Rob Anybody, wiping tears from his eyes. ‘Ot aggened?’ said Tiffany, touching her teeth to check that they were all still there. ‘He played the notes o’ pain,’ Rob Anybody explained. ‘Ye cannae hear ‘em ‘cos they’re pitched so high, but the doggies can. Hurts ‘em in their heids. Now we’d better get movin’ before she sends somethin’ else.’ ‘The Queen sent them? But they’re like something out of nightmares!’ said Tiffany. ‘Oh aye,’ said Rob Anybody. That’s where she got them.’ Tiffany looked at William the gonnagle. He was calmly replacing the pipes. He saw her staring at him, looked up, and winked. ‘The Nac Mac Feegle tak’ music verrrrrra’ seriously,’ he said. And then he nodded at the snow near Tiffany’s foot. There was a sugary yellow teddy bear in the snow, made of 100% Artificial Additives. And the snow, all round Tiffany, was melting away. Two pictsies carried Tiffany easily. She skimmed across the snow, the clan running beside her. No sun in the sky. Even on the dullest days, you could generally see where the sun was, but not here. And there was something else that was strange, something she couldn’t quite give a name to. This didn’t feel like a real place. She didn’t know why she felt that, but something was wrong with the horizon. It looked close enough to touch, which was silly. And things were not. . . finished. Like the trees in the forest they were heading towards, for example. A tree is a tree, she thought. Close up or far away, it’s a tree. It has bark and branches and roots. And you know they’re there, even if the tree is so far away that it’s a blob. The trees here, though, were different. She had a strong feeling that they were blobs, and were growing the roots and twigs and other details as she got closer, as if they were thinking, ‘Quick, someone’s coming! Look real!’ It was like being in a painting where the artist hadn’t bothered much with the things in the distance, but had quickly rushed a bit of realness anywhere you were looking. The air was cold and dead, like the air in old cellars. The light grew dimmer as they reached the forest. In between the trees it became blue and eerie. No birds, she thought. ‘Stop,’ she said. The pictsies lowered her to the ground, but Rob Anybody said: ‘We shouldnae hang aroound here too long. Heids up, lads.’ Tiffany lifted out the toad. It blinked at the snow. ‘Oh, shoap,’ it muttered. This is not good. I should be hibernating.’ ‘Why is everything so . . . strange?’ ‘Can’t help you there,’ said the toad. ‘I just see snow, I just see ice, I just see freezing to death. I’m listening to my inner toad here.’ ‘It’s not that cold!’ ‘Feels cold . . . to . . . me . . .’ The toad shut its eyes. Tiffany sighed, and lowered it into her pocket. ‘I’ll tell ye where ye are,’ said Rob Anybody, his eyes still scanning the blue shadows. ‘Ye ken them wee bitty bugs that clings onto the sheeps and suck themsel’ full o’ blood and then drop off again? This whole world is like one o’ them.’ ‘You mean like a, a tick? A parasite? A vampire?’ ‘Oh, aye. It floats aroound until it finds a place that’s weak on a world where no one’s payin’ attention, and opens a door. Then the Quin sends in her folk. For the stealin’, ye ken. Raidin’ o’ barns, rustlin’ of cattle—’ ‘We use’ to like stealin’ the coo beasties,’ said Daft Wullie. ‘Wullie,’ said Rob Anybody, pointing his sword, ‘you ken I said there wuz times you should think before opening yer big fat gob?’ ‘Aye, Rob.’ ‘Weel, that wuz one o’ them times.’ Rob turned and looked up at Tiffany rather bashfully. ‘Aye, we wuz wild champion robbers for the Quin,’ he said. ‘People wouldnae e’en go a-huntin’ for fear o’ little men. But ‘twas ne’er enough for her. She always wanted more. But we said it’s no’ right to steal an ol’ lady’s only pig, or the food from them as dinnae ha’ enough to eat. A Feegle has nae worries about stealin’ a golden cup from a rich bigjob, ye ken, but takin’ awa’ the—’ - cup an old man kept his false teeth in made them feel ashamed, they said. The Nac Mac Feegle would fight and steal, certainly, but who wanted to fight the weak and steal from the poor? Tiffany listened, at the end of the shadowy wood, to the story of a little world where nothing grew, where no sun shone, and where everything had to come from somewhere else. It was a world that took, and gave nothing back except fear. It raided - and people learned to stay in bed when they heard strange noises at night, because if anyone gave her trouble the Queen could control their dreams. Tiffany couldn’t quite pick up how she did this, but that’s where things like the grimhounds and the headless horseman came from. These dreams were . . . more real. The Queen could take dreams and make them more . . . solid. You could step inside them and vanish. And you didn’t wake up before the monsters caught up with you . . . The Queen’s people wouldn’t just take food. They’d take people, too— ‘- like pipers,’ said William the gonnagle. ‘Fairies can’t make music, ye ken. She’ll steal a man awa’ for the music he makes.’ ‘And she takes children,’ said Tiffany. ‘Aye. Your wee brother’s not the first,’ said Rob Anybody. There’s no’ a lot of fun and laughter here, ye ken. She thinks she’s good wi’ children.’ ‘The old kelda said she wouldn’t harm him,’ said Tiffany. That’s true, isn’t it?’ You could read the Nac Mac Feegle like a book. And it would be a big, simple book with pictures of Spot the Dog and a Big Red Ball and one or two short sentences on each page. What they were thinking turned up right there on their faces and, now, they were all wearing a look that said: Crivens, I hope she disnae ask us the question we dinnae wantae answer . . . ‘That is true, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Oh, aye,’ said Rob Anybody, slowly. ‘She didnae lie to ye there. The Quin’ll try to be kind to him, but she disnae know how. She’s an elf. They’re no’ very good at thinking of other people.’ ‘What will happen to him if we don’t get him back?’ Again, there was that ‘we dinnae like the way this is going’ look. ‘I said—’ Tiffany repeated. ‘I darrresay she’ll send him back, in due time,’ said William. ‘An’ he willnae be any olderr. Nothing grows old here. Nothing grows. Nothing at all.’ ‘So he’ll be all right?’ Rob Anybody made a noise in his throat. It sounded like a voice that was trying to say ‘aye’ but was being argued with by a brain that knew the answer was ‘no’. ‘Tell me what you’re not telling me,’ said Tiffany. Daft Wullie was the first to speak. That’s a lot o’ stuff,’ he said. ‘For example, the meltin’ point o’ lead is—’ “Time passes slower the deeper you go intae this place,’ said Rob Anybody quickly. ‘Years pass like days. The Quin’ll get tired o’ the wee lad after a coupla months, mebbe. A coupla months here, ye ken, where the time is slow an’ heavy. But when he comes back into the mortal world, you’ll be an old lady, or mebbe you’ll be deid. So if youse has bairns o’ yer own, you’d better tell them to watch out for a wee sticky kid wanderin’ the hills shoutin’ for sweeties, ‘cos that’ll be their Uncle Wentworth. That wouldna be the worst o’ it, neither. Live in dreams for too long and ye go mad, ye can never wake up prop’ly, ye can never get the hang o’ reality again.’ Tiffany stared at him. ‘It’s happened before,’ said William. ‘I will get him back,’ said Tiffany quietly. ‘We doon’t doubt it,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘An’ wheree’er ye go, we’ll come with ye. The Nac Mac Feegle are afeared o’ nothing!’ A cheer went up, but it seemed to Tiffany that the blue shadows sucked all the sound away. ‘Aye, nothin’ exceptin’ lawyers mmph mmph,' Daft Wullie tried to say, before Rob managed to shut him up. Tiffany turned back to the line of hoofprints, and began to walk. The snow squeaked unpleasantly underfoot. She went a little way, watching the trees get realer as she approached them, and then looked around. All the Nac Mac Feegles were creeping along behind her. Rob Anybody gave her a cheery nod. And all her footprints had become holes in the snow, with grass showing through. The trees began to annoy her. The way things changed was more frightening than any monster. You could hit a monster, but you couldn’t hit a forest. And she wanted to hit something. She stopped and scraped some snow away from the base of a tree and, just for a moment, there was nothing but greyness where it had been. As she watched, the bark grew down to where the snow was. Then it just stayed there, pretending it had been there all the time. It was a lot more worrying than the grimhounds. They were just monsters. They could be beaten. This was . . . frightening . . . She was second thinking again. She felt the fear grow, she felt her stomach become a red-hot lump, she felt her elbows begin to sweat. But it was . . . not connected. She watched herself being frightened, and that meant that there was still this part of herself, the watching part, that wasn’t. The trouble was, it was being carried on legs that were. It had to be very careful. And that was where it went wrong. Fear gripped her, all at once. She was in a strange world, with monsters, being followed by hundreds of little blue thieves. And . . . Black dogs. Headless horsemen. Monsters in the river. Sheep whizzing backwards across fields. Voices under the bed . . . The terror took her. But, because she was Tiffany, she ran towards it, raising the pan. She had to get through the forest, find the Queen, get her brother, leave this place! Somewhere behind her, voices started to shout — She woke up. There was no snow, but there was the whiteness of the bedsheet and the plaster ceiling of her bedroom. She stared at it for a while, then leaned down and peered under the bed. There was nothing there but the guzunder. When she flung open the door of the doll’s house, there was no one inside but the two toy soldiers and the teddy bear and the headless dolly. The walls were solid. The floor creaked like it always did. Her slippers were the same as they always were: old, comfortable and with all the pink fluff worn off. She stood in the middle of the floor and said, very quietly, ‘Is there anybody there?’ Sheep baa’d on the distant hillside, but they probably hadn’t heard her. The door squeaked open and the cat Ratbag came in. He rubbed up against her legs, purring like a distant thunderstorm, and then went and curled up on her bed. Tiffany got dressed thoughtfully, daring the room to do something strange. When she got downstairs, breakfast was cooking. Her mother was busy at the sink. Tiffany darted out through the scullery and into the dairy. She scrambled on hands and knees around the floor, peering under the sink and behind cupboards. ‘You can come out now, honestly,’ she said. No one came. She was alone in the room. She’d often been alone in the room, and had enjoyed it. It was almost her private territory. But now, somehow, it was too empty, too clean . . . When she wandered back into the kitchen her mother was still standing by the sink, washing dishes, but a plate of steaming porridge had been put down in the one set place on the table. ‘I’ll make some more butter today,’ said Tiffany carefully, sitting down. ‘I might as well while we’re getting all this milk.’ Her mother nodded, and put a plate on the draining board beside the sink. ‘I haven’t done anything wrong, have I?’ said Tiffany. Her mother shook her head. Tiffany sighed. ‘And then she woke up and it was all a dream.’ It was just about the worst ending you could have to any story. But it had all seemed so real. She could remember the smoky smell in the pictsies’ cave, and the way . . . who was it? . . . oh, yes, he’d been called Rob Anybody . . . the way Rob Anybody had always been so nervous about talking to her. It was strange, she thought, that Ratbag had rubbed up against her. He’d sleep on her bed if he could get away with it, but during the day he kept well out of Tiffany’s way. How odd . . . There was a rattling noise near the mantelpiece. The china shepherdess on Granny’s shelf was moving sideways of its own accord and, as Tiffany watched with her porridge spoon halfway to her mouth, it slid off and smashed on the floor. The rattling went on. Now it was coming from the big oven. She should see the door actually shaking on the hinges. She turned to her mother, and saw her put another plate down by the sink. But it wasn’t being held in a hand . . . The oven door burst open and slid across the floor. ‘Dinnae eat the porridge!’ Nac Mac Feegles spilled out into the room, hundreds of them, pouring across the tiles. The walls were shifting. The floor moved. And now the thing turning round at the sink was not even human but just. . . stuff, no more human than a gingerbread man, grey as old dough, changing shape as it lumbered towards Tiffany. The pictsies surged past her in a flurry of snow. She looked up at the thing’s tiny black eyes. The scream came from somewhere deep inside. There was no Second Thought, no first thought, just a scream. It seemed to spread out as it left Tiffany’s mouth until it became a black tunnel in front of her, and as she fell into it she heard, in the commotion behind her: ‘Who d’yer think ye’re lookin’ at, pal? Crivens, but ye’re gonna get sich a kickin’!’ Tiffany opened her eyes. She was lying on damp ground in the snowy, gloomy wood. Pictsies were watching her carefully but, she saw, there were others behind them staring outwards, into the gloom amongst the tree trunks. There was . . . stuff in the trees. Lumps of stuff. It was grey, and hung there like old cloth. She turned her head and saw William standing beside her, looking at her with concern. ‘That was a dream, wasn’t it. . . ?’ she said. ‘Weel noo,’ said William, ‘it was, and therrre again, it wasnae . . .’ Tiffany sat up suddenly, causing the pictsies to leap back. ‘But that. . . thing was in it, and then you all came out of the oven!’ she said. ‘You were in my dream! What is— was that creature?’ William the gonnagle stared at her as if trying to make up his mind. ‘That was what we call a drome,’ he said. ‘Nothing here really belongs here, remember? Everything is a reflection from outside, or something kidnapped from another worrrld, or mebbe something the Quin has made outa magic. It was hidin’ in the trees, and ye was goin’ so fast ye didnae see it. Ye ken spiders?’ ‘Of course!’ ‘Well, spiders spin webs. Dromes spin dreams. It’s easy in this place. The world you come from is nearly real. This place is nearly unreal, so it’s almost a dream anywa’. And the drome makes a dream for ye, wi’ a trap in it. If ye eats anythin’ in the dream, ye’ll never wanta’ leave it.’ He looked as though Tiffany should have been impressed. ‘What’s in it for the drome?’ she asked. ‘It likes watchin’ dreams. It has fun watching ye ha’ fun. An’ it’ll watch ye eatin’ dream food, until ye starve to death. Then the drome’ll eat ye. Not right away, o’ course. It’ll wait until ye’ve gone a wee bit runny, because it hasnae teeth.’ ‘So how can anyone get out?’ ‘The best way is to find the drome,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘It’ll be in the dream with you, in disguise. Then ye just gives it a good kickin’.’ ‘By kicking you mean—?’ ‘Choppin’ its heid off generally works.’ Now, Tiffany thought, I am impressed. I wish I wasn’t. ‘And this is Fairyland?’ she said. ‘Aye. Ye could say it’s the bit the tourists dinnae see,’ said William. ‘An’ ye did well. Ye were fightin’ it. Ye knew it wasnae right.’ Tiffany remembered the friendly cat, and the falling shepherdess. She’d been trying to send messages to herself. She should have listened. ‘Thank you for coming after me,’ she said, meekly. ‘How did you do it?’ ‘Ach, we can generally find a way intae anywhere, even a dream,’ said William, smiling. ‘We’re a stealin’ folk, after all.’ A piece of the drome fell out of the tree and flopped onto the snow. ‘One of them won’t get me again!’ said Tiffany. ‘Aye. I believe you. Ye have murrrder in yer eyes,’ said William, with a touch of admiration. ‘If I was a drome I’d be pretty fearful noo, if I had a brain. There’ll be more of them, mark you, and some of ‘em are cunning. The Quin uses ‘em as guards.’ ‘I won’t be fooled!’ Tiffany remembered the horror of the moment when the thing had lumbered around changing shape. It was worse because it was in her house, her place. She’d felt real terror as the big shapeless thing crashed across the kitchen, but the anger had been there too. It was invading her place. The thing wasn’t just trying to kill her, it was insulting her . . . William was watching her. ‘Aye, ye’re lookin’ mighty fierce,’ he said. ‘Ye must love your wee brother to face a’ these monsters for him . . .’ And Tiffany couldn’t stop her thoughts. I don’t love him. I know I don’t. He’s just so . . . sticky, and can’t keep up, and I have to spend too much time looking after him, and he’s always screaming for things. I can’t talk to him. He just wants all the time. But her Second Thinking said: He’s mine. My place, my home, my brother! How dare anything touch what’s mine! She’d been brought up not to be selfish. She knew she wasn’t, not in the way people meant. She tried to think of other people. She never took the last slice of bread. This was a different feeling. She wasn’t being brave or noble or kind. She was doing this because it had to be done, because there was no way that she could not do it. She thought of: . . . Granny Aching’s light, weaving slowly across the downs, on freezing, sparkly nights or in storms like a raging war, saving lambs from the creeping frost or rams from the precipice. She froze and struggled and tramped through the night for idiot sheep that never said thank you and would probably be just as stupid tomorrow, and get into the same trouble again. And she did it because not doing it was unthinkable. There had been the time when they met the pedlar and the donkey in the lane. It was a small donkey and could hardly be seen under the pack he‘d piled on it. And he was thrashing it because it had fallen over. Tiffany had cried to see that, and Granny had looked at her and then said something to Thunder and Lightning. . . The pedlar had stopped when he heard the growling. The sheepdogs had taken up position on either side of the man, so that he couldn’t quite see them both at once. He raised his stick as if to hit Lightning, and Thunder’s growl grew louder. ‘I’d advise ye not to do that,’ said Granny. He wasn’t a stupid man. The eyes of the dogs were like steel balls. He lowered his arm. ‘Now throw down the stick,’ said Granny. The man did so, dropping it into the dust as though it had suddenly grown red-hot. Granny Aching walked forward and picked it up. Tiffany remembered that it was a willow twig, long and whippy. Suddenly, so fast that her hand was a blur, Granny sliced it across the man’s face twice, leaving two long red marks. He began to move and some desperate thought must have saved him, because now the dogs were almost frantic for the command to leap. ‘Hurts, don’t it,’ said Granny, pleasantly. ‘Now, I knows who you are, and I reckon you knows who I am. You sell pots and pans and they ain’t bad, as I recall But if I put out the word you’ll have no business in my hills. Be told. Better to feed your beast than whip it. You hear me?’ With his eyes shut and his hands shaking, the man nodded. ‘That’ll do,’ said Granny Aching, and instantly the dogs became, once more, two ordinary sheepdogs, who came and sat either side of her with their tongues hanging out. Tiffany watched the man unpack some of the load and strap it to his own back and then, with great care, urge the donkey on along the road. Granny watched him go while filling her pipe with Jolly Sailor. Then, as she lit it, she said, as if the thought had just occurred to her: ‘Them as can do, has to do for them as can’t. And someone has to speak up for them as has no voices.’ Tiffany thought: Is this what being a witch is? It wasn’t what I expected! When do the good bits happen? She stood up. ‘Let’s keep going,’ she said. ‘Aren’t ye tired?’ said Rob. ‘We’re going to keep going!’ ‘Aye? Weel, she’s probably headed for her place beyond the wood. If we dinnae carry ye, it’ll tak’ aboout a coupla hours—’ ‘I’ll walk!’ The memory of the huge dead face of the drome was trying to come back into her mind, but fury gave it no space. ‘Where’s the frying pan? Thank you! Let’s go!’ She set off through the strange trees. The hoof-prints almost glowed in the gloom. Here and there other tracks crossed them, tracks that could have been birds’ feet, rough round footprints that could have been made by anything, squiggly lines that a snake might make, if there were such things as snow snakes. The pictsies were running in line with her on either side. Even with the edge of the fury dying away, it was hard looking at things here without her head aching. Things that seemed far off got closer too quickly, trees changed shape as she passed them . . . Almost unreal, William had said. Nearly a dream. The world didn’t have enough reality in it for distances and shapes to work probably. Once again the magic artist was painting madly. If she looked hard at a tree it changed, and became more tree-like and less like something drawn by Wentworth with his eyes shut. This is a made-up world, Tiffany thought. Almost like a story. The trees don’t have to be very detailed because who looks at trees in a story? She stopped in a small clearing, and stared hard at a tree. It seemed to know it was being watched. It became more real. The bark roughened, and proper twigs grew on the end of the branches. The snow was melting around her feet, too. Although ‘melting’ was the wrong word. It was just disappearing, leaving leaves and grass. If I was a world that didn’t have enough reality to go around, Tiffany thought, then snow would be quite handy. It doesn’t take a lot of effort. It’s just white stuff. Everything looks white and simple. But I can make it complicated. I’m more real than this place. She heard a buzzing overhead, and looked up. And suddenly the air was filling with small people, smaller than a Feegle, with wings like dragonflies. There was a golden glow around them. Tiffany, entranced, reached out a hand— At the same moment what felt like the entire clan of Nac Mac Feegle landed on her back and sent her sliding into a snowdrift. When she struggled out, the clearing was a battlefield. The pictsies were jumping and slashing at the flying creatures which were buzzing around them like wasps. As she stared two of them dived onto Rob Anybody and lifted him off his feet by his hair. He rose in the air, yelling and struggling. Tiffany leaped up and grabbed him around the waist, flailing at the creatures with her other hand. They let go of the pictsie and dodged easily, zipping through the air as fast as hummingbirds. One of them bit her on the finger before buzzing away. Somewhere a voice went: ‘Ooooooooooooo-eeerrrrrr . . .’ Rob struggled in Tiffany’s grip. ‘Quick, put me doon!’ he yelled. There’s gonna be poetry!’ Chapter 9 Lost Boys The moan rolled around the clearing, as mournful as a month of Mondays. ‘. . . rrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaoooooooo. . .’ It sounded like some animal in terrible pain. But it was, in fact, Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock, who was standing on a snowdrift with one hand pressed to his heart and the other outstretched, very theatrically. He was rolling his eyes, too. ‘. . . oooooooooooooooooooooo . . .’ ‘Ach, the muse is a terrible thing to have happen to ye,’ said Rob Anybody, putting his hands over his ears. ‘. . . oooooiiiiiit is with grreat lamentation and much worrying dismay,’ the pictsie groaned, ‘that we rrregard the doleful prospect of Fairyland in considerrrable decay . . .’ In the air, the flying creatures stopped attacking and began to panic. Some of them flew into one another. ‘With quite a large number of drrrrrrreadful incidents happening everrry day,’ Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock recited. ‘Including, I am sorrrry to say, an aerial attack by the otherwise quite attractive fey . . .’ The flyers screeched. Some crashed into the snow, but the ones still capable of flight swarmed off amongst the trees. ‘Witnessed by all of us at this time, And celebrated in this hasty rhyme!’ Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock shouted after them. And they were gone. Feegles were picking themselves up off the ground. Some were bleeding’ where the fairies had bitten them. Several were lying curled up and groaning. Tiffany looked at her own finger. The bite of the fairy had left two tiny holes. ‘It isnae too bad,’ Rob Anybody shouted up from below. ‘No one taken by them, just a few cases where the lads didnae put their hands o’er their ears in time.’ ‘Are they all right?’ ‘Oh, they’ll be fine wi’ counsellin’.’ On the mound of snow, William clapped Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock on the shoulder in a friendly way. ‘That, lad,’ he said proudly, ‘was some of the worst poetry I have heard for a long time. It was offensive to the ear and a torrrture to the soul. The last couple of lines need some work but ye has the groanin’ off fiiine. A in a’, a verrry commendable effort! We’ll make a gonnagle out of ye’ yet!’ Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock blushed happily. In Fairyland words really have power, Tiffany thought. And I am more real. I’ll remember that. The pictsies assembled into battle order again, although it was pretty disorderly, and set off. Tiffany didn’t rush too far ahead this time. ‘That’s yer little people wi’ wings,’ said Rob, as Tiffany sucked at her finger. ‘Are ye happier now?’ ‘Why were they trying to carry you away?’ ‘Ach, they carries their victims off to their nest, where their young ones—’ ‘Stop!’ said Tiffany. This is going to be horrible, right?’ ‘Oh, aye. Gruesome,’ said Rob, grinning. ‘And you used to live here?’ ‘Ah, but it wasnae so bad then. It wasnae perfect, mark you, but the Quin wasnae as cold in them days. The King was still aroound. She was always happy then.’ ‘What happened? Did the King die?’ ‘No. They had words, if ye tak’ my meanin’,’ said Rob. ‘Oh, you mean like an argument—’ ‘A bit, mebbe,’ said Rob. ‘But they was magical words. Forests destroyed, mountains explodin’, a few hundred deaths, that kind of thing. And he went off to his own world. Fairyland was never a picnic, ye ken, even in the old days. But it was fine if you kept alert, an’ there was flowers and burdies and summertime. Now there’s the dromes and the hounds and the stinging fey and such stuff creepin’ in from their own worlds, and the whole place has gone doon the lawy.’ Things taken from their own worlds, thought Tiffany, as she tramped through the snow. Worlds all squashed together like peas in a sack, or hidden inside one another like bubbles inside other bubbles. She had a picture in her head of things creeping out of their own world and into another, in the same way that mice invaded the larder. Only, there were worse things than mice. What would a drome do if it got into our world? You’d never know it was there. It’d sit in the corner and you’d never see it, because it wouldn’t let you. And it’d change the way you saw the world, give you nightmares, make you want to die . . . Her Second Thoughts added: I wonder how many have got in already and we don’t know? And I’m in Fairyland, where dreams can hurt. Somewhere all stories are real, all songs are true. I thought that was a strange thing for the kelda to say . . . Tiffany’s Second Thoughts said: Hang on, was that a First Thought? And Tiffany thought: No, that was a Third Thought. I’m thinking about how I think about what I’m thinking. At least, I think so. Her Second Thoughts said: Let’s all calm down, please, because this is quite a small head. The forest went on. Or perhaps it was a small forest and, somehow, moved around them as they walked. This was Fairyland, after all. You couldn’t trust it. And the snow still vanished where Tiffany walked, and she only had to look at a tree for it to smarten up and make an effort to look like a real tree. The Queen is . . . well, a queen, Tiffany thought. She’s got a world of her own. She could do anything with it. And all she does is steal things, mess up people’s lives . . . There was the thud of hoofbeats in the distance. It’s her! What shall I do? What shall I say? The Nac Mac Feegles leaped behind the trees. ‘Come away oot o’ the path!’ hissed Rob Anybody. ‘She might still have him!’ said Tiffany, gripping the pan handle nervously and staring at the blue shadows between the trees. ‘So? We’ll find a wa’ to steal him! She’s the Quin\ Ye cannae beat the Quin face to face!’ The hoofbeats were louder, and now it sounded as though there was more than one animal. A stag appeared through the trees, steam pouring off it. It stared at Tiffany with wild red eyes and then, bunching up, leaped over her. She smelled the stink of it as she ducked, she felt its sweat on her neck. It was a real animal. You couldn’t imagine a reek like that. And here came the dogs— The first one she caught with the edge of the pan, bowling it over. The other turned to snap at her, then looked down in amazement as pictsies erupted from the snow under each paw. It was hard to bite anyone when all four of your feet were moving away in different directions, and then other pictsies landed on its head and biting anything ever again soon became . . . impossible. The Nac Mac Feegle hated grimhounds. Tiffany looked up at a white horse. That was real, too, as far as she could tell. And there was a boy on it. ‘Who are you?’ he said. He made it sound like ‘What sort of thing are you?’ ‘Who are you?’ said Tiffany, pushing her hair out of her eyes. It was the best she could do right now. ‘This is my forest,’ said the boy. ‘I command you to do what I say!’ Tiffany peered at him. The dull, second-hand light of Fairyland was not very good, but the more she looked, the more certain she was. ‘Your name is Roland, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘You will not speak to me like that!’ ‘Yes, it is. You’re the Baron’s son!’ ‘I demand that you stop talking!’ The boy’s expression was strange now, creased up and pink, as if he was trying not to cry. He raised his hand with a riding whip in it— There was a very faint ‘thwap’. Tiffany glanced down. The Nac Mac Feegles had formed a pile under the horse’s belly and one of them, climbing up on their shoulders, had just cut through the saddle girth. She held up a hand quickly. ‘Stand still!’ she shouted, trying to sound commanding. ‘If you move you’ll fall off your horse!’ ‘Is that a spell? Are you a witch?’ The boy dropped the whip and pulled a long dagger from his belt. ‘Death to witches!’ He urged the horse forward with a jerk and then there was one of those long moments, a moment when the whole universe said ‘uh-oh’, and, still holding the dagger, the boy swivelled around the horse and landed in the snow. Tiffany knew what would happen next. Rob Anybody’s voice echoed among the trees: ‘You’re in trouble noo, pal! Get him!’ ‘No!’ Tiffany yelled. ‘Get away from him!’ The boy scrambled backwards, staring at Tiffany in horror. ‘I do know you,’ she said. ‘Your name is Roland. You’re the Baron’s son. They said you’d died in the forest—’ ‘You mustn’t talk about that!’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Bad things happen!’ ‘They’re already happening,’ said Tiffany. ‘Look, I’m here to rescue my—’ But the boy had got to his feet and was running back through the forest. He turned and shouted, ‘Get away from me!’ Tiffany ran after him, jumping over snow-covered logs, and saw him ahead, dodging from tree to tree. Then he paused, and looked back. She ran up to him saying, ‘I know how to get you out — ‘ - and danced. She was holding the hand of a parrot, or at least someone with the head of a parrot. Her feet moved under her, perfectly. They twirled her around, and this time her hand was caught by a peacock, or at least someone with the head of a peacock. She glanced over his shoulder and saw that she was now in a room, no, a ballroom full of masked people, dancing. Ah, she thought. Another dream. I should have looked where I was going . . . The music was strange. There was a kind of rhythm to it, but it sounded muffled and odd, as if it was being played backwards, underwater, by musicians who’d never seen their instruments before. And she hoped the dancers were wearing masks. She realized she was looking through the eyeholes of one, and wondered what she was. She was also wearing a long dress, which glittered. O-K, she thought carefully. There was a drome there, and I didn’t stop to look. And now I’m in a dream. But it’s not mine. It must make use of what it finds in your head, and I’ve never been to anything like this . . . ‘Fwa waa fwah waa wha?’ said the peacock. The voice was like the music. It sounded almost like a voice, but it wasn’t. ‘Oh, yes,’ said Tiffany. ‘Fine.’ ‘Fwaa?’ ‘Oh. Er . . . wuff fawf fwaff?’ This seemed to work. The peacock-headed dancer bobbed a little bow, said, ‘Mwa waf waf sadly, and wandered off. Somewhere in here is the drome, said Tiffany to herself. And it must be a pretty good one. This is a big dream. Little things were wrong, though. There were hundreds of people in the room, but the ones in the distance, although they were moving about in quite a natural way, seemed the same as the trees - blobs and swirls of colour. You had to look hard to notice this, though. First Sight, Tiffany thought. People in brilliant costumes and still more masks walked arm in arm past her, as if she were just another guest. Those that weren’t joining the new dance were heading for the long tables at one side of the hall, which were piled with food. Tiffany had only seen such food in pictures. People didn’t starve on the farm, but even when food was plentiful, at Hogswatch or after harvest, it never looked like this. The farm food was mostly shades of white or brown. It was never pink and blue, and never wobbled. There were things on sticks, and things that gleamed and glistened in bowls. Nothing was simple. Everything had cream on it, or chocolate whirls, or thousands of little coloured balls. Everything was spun or glazed or added to or mixed up. This wasn’t food; it was what food became if it had been good and had gone to food heaven. It wasn’t just for eating, it was for show. It was piled up against mounds of greenery and enormous arrangements of flowers. Here and there huge transparent carvings were landmarks in this landscape of food. Tiffany reached up and touched a glittering cockerel. It was ice, damp under her fingertips. There were others, too . . . a jolly fat man, a bowl of fruits all carved in ice, a swan . . . Tiffany was, for a moment, tempted. It seemed a very long time since she had eaten anything. But the food was too obviously not food at all. It was bait. It was supposed to say: Hello, little kiddie. Eat me. I’m getting the hang of this, thought Tiffany. Good job the creature didn’t think of cheese— — and there was cheese. Suddenly, cheese had always been there. She’d seen pictures of lots of different cheeses in the Almanack. She was good at cheese and had always wondered what the others tasted like. They were faraway cheeses with strange sounding names, cheeses like Treble Wibbley, Waney Tastey, Old Argg, Red Runny and the legendary Lancre Blue, which had to be nailed to the table to stop it attacking other cheeses. Just a taste wouldn’t hurt, surely. It wasn’t the same as eating, was it? After all, she was in control, wasn’t she? She’d seen right through the dream straight away, hadn’t she? So it couldn’t have any effect, could it? And . . . well, cheese was hardly temptation for anyone . . . OK, the drome must’ve put the cheese in as soon as she’d thought of it, but . . . She was already holding the cheese knife. She didn’t quite remember picking it up. A drop of cold water landed on her hand. It made her glance up at the nearest glittering ice carving. Now it was a shepherdess, with a saddlebag dress and a big bonnet. Tiffany was sure it had been a swan when she’d looked at it before. The anger came back. She’d nearly been fooled! She looked at the cheese knife. ‘Be a sword,’ she said. After all, the drome was making her dream, but she was doing the dreaming. She was real. Part of her wasn’t asleep. There was a clang. ‘Correction,’ said Tiffany. ‘Be a sword that isn’t so heavy.’ And this time she got something she could actually hold. There was a rustling in the greenery and a red-haired face poked out. ‘Psst,’ it whispered. ‘Dinnae eat the canapes!’ ‘You’re a bit late!’ ‘Ach, weel, it’s a cunnin’ ol’ drome ye’re dealin’ with here,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘The dream wouldnae let us in unless we wuz properly dressed . . .’ He stepped out, looking very sheepish in a black suit with a bow tie. There was more rustling and other pictsies pushed their way out of the greenery. They looked a bit like redheaded penguins. ‘Properly dressed?’ said Tiffany. ‘Aye,’ said Daft Wullie, who had a piece of lettuce on his head. ‘An’ these troosers are a wee bit chafin’ around the nethers, I don’t mind tellin’ ye.’ ‘Have ye spotted the creature yet?’ said Rob Anybody. ‘No! It’s so crowded!’ ‘We’ll help ye look,’ said Rob Anybody. The thing cannae hide if ye’re right up close. Be careful, mind you! If it thinks ye’re gonna whap it one, there’s nae tellin’ what it’ll try! Spread oot, lads, and pretend ye’re enjoying the cailey.’ ‘Whut? D’ye mean get drunk an’ fight an’ that?’ said Daft Wullie. ‘Crivens, ye wouldna’ believe it,’ said Rob Anybody, rolling his eyes. ‘Nae, ye pudden’! This is a posh party, ye ken? That means ye mak’ small talk an’ mingle!’ ‘Ach, I’m a famous mingler! They won’t even know we’re here!’ said Daft Wullie. ‘C’mon!’ Even in a dream, even at a posh ball, the Nac Mac Feegle knew how to behave. You charged in madly, and you screamed . . . politely. ‘Lovely weather for the time o’ year, is it not, ye wee scunner!’ ‘Hey, jimmy, ha’ ye no got a pommes frites for an ol’ pal?’ ‘The band is playin’ divinely, I dinnae think!’ ‘Make my caviar deep-fried, willy a?’ There was something wrong with the crowd. No one was panicking or trying to run away, which was certainly the right response to an invasion of Feegles. Tiffany set off again through the crowd. The masked people at the party paid her no attention, either. And that’s because they’re background people, she thought, just like the background trees. She walked along the room to a pair of double doors, and pulled them open. There was nothing but blackness beyond it. So . . . the only way out was to find the drome. She hadn’t really expected anything else. It could be anywhere. It could be behind a mask, it could be a table. It could be anything. Tiffany stared at the crowd. And it was then she saw Roland. He was sitting at a table by himself. It was spread with food, and he had a spoon in his hand. She ran over and knocked it onto the floor. ‘Haven’t you got any sense at all?’ she said, pulling him upright. ‘Do you want to stay here for ever?’ And then she felt the movement behind her. Later on, she was sure she hadn’t heard anything. She’d just known. It was a dream, after all. She glanced around, and there was the drome. It was almost hidden behind a pillar. Roland just stared at her. ‘Are you all right?’ said Tiffany desperately, trying to shake him. ‘Have you eaten anything?’ ‘Fwa fwa faff,’ murmured the boy. Tiffany turned back to the drome. It was moving towards her, but very slowly, trying to stay in the shadows. It looked like a little snowman made of dirty snow. The music was getting louder. The candles were getting brighter. Out on the huge dance floor, the animal-headed couples whirled faster and faster. And the floor shook. The dream was in trouble. The Nac Mac Feegles were running to her from every part of the floor, trying to be heard above the din. The drome was lurching towards her, podgy white fingers grasping the air. ‘First Sight,’ breathed Tiffany. She cut Roland’s head off. The snow had melted all across the clearing, and the trees looked real and properly tree-like. In front of Tiffany, the drome fell backwards. She was holding the old frying pan in her hand, but it had cut beautifully. Odd things, dreams. She turned and faced Roland, who was staring at her with a face so pale he might as well have been a drome. ‘It was frightened,’ she said. ‘It wanted me to attack you instead. It tried to look like you and made you look like a drome. But it didn’t know how to speak. You do.’ ‘You might have killed me!’ he said hoarsely. ‘No,’ said Tiffany. ‘I just explained. Please don’t run away. Have you seen a baby boy here?’ Roland’s face wrinkled. ‘What?’ he said. The Queen took him,’ said Tiffany. ‘I’m going to fetch him home. I’ll take you too, if you like.’ ‘You’ll never get away,’ whispered Roland. ‘I got in, didn’t I?’ ‘Getting in is easy. No one gets out!’ ‘I mean to find a way,’ said Tiffany, trying to sound a lot more confident than she felt. ‘She won’t let you!’ Roland started to back away again. ‘Please don’t be so . . . so stupid,’ said Tiffany. ‘I’m going to find the Queen and get my brother back, whatever you say. Understand? I’ve got this far. And I’ve got help, you know.’ ‘Where?’ said Roland. Tiffany looked around. There was no sign of the Nac Mac Feegles. ‘They always turn up,’ she said. ‘Just when I need them.’ It struck her that there was suddenly something very . . . empty about the forest. It seemed colder, too. ‘They’ll be here any minute,’ she added, hopefully. ‘They got trapped in the dream,’ said Roland flatly. ‘They can’t have. I killed the drome!’ ‘It’s more complicated than that,’ said the boy. ‘You don’t know what it’s like here. There’s dreams inside dreams. There’s . . . other things that live inside dreams, horrible things. You never know if you’ve really woken up. And the Queen controls them all. They’re fairy people, anyway. You can’t trust them. You can’t trust anyone. I don’t trust you. You’re probably just another dream.’ He turned his back and walked away, following the line of hoofprints. Tiffany hesitated. The only other real person was going away, leaving her here with nothing but the trees, and the shadows. And, of course, anything horrible that was running towards her through them . . . ‘Er . . .’ she said. ‘Hello? Rob Anybody? William? Daft Wullie?’ There was no reply. There wasn’t even an echo. She was alone, apart from her heartbeats. Well, of course she’d fought things and won, hadn’t she? But the Nac Mac Feegles had been there and, somehow, that’d made it easy. They never gave up, they’d attack absolutely anything and they didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘fear’. Tiffany, who had read her way through the dictionary, had a Second Thought there. Tear’ was only one of thousands of words the pictsies probably didn’t know the meaning of. Unfortunately, she did know what it meant. And the taste and feel of fear, too. She felt it now. She gripped the pan. It didn’t seem quite such a good weapon any more. The cold blue shadows between the trees seemed to be spreading out. They were darkest ahead of her, where the hoofprints led. Strangely enough the wood behind her seemed almost light and inviting. Someone doesn’t want me to go on, she thought. That was . . . quite encouraging. But the twilight was misty and shimmered unpleasantly. Anything could be waiting. She was waiting, too. She realized that she was waiting for the Nac Mac Feegles, hoping against hope that she’d hear a sudden cry, even of ‘Crivens!’ (She was sure it was a swear word.) She pulled out the toad, which lay snoring on the palm of her hand, and gave it a prod. ‘Whp?’ it croaked. I’m stuck in a wood of evil dreams and I’m all alone and I think it’s getting darker,’ said Tiffany. ‘What should I do?’ The toad opened one bleary eye and said: ‘Leave.’ ‘That is not a lot of help!’ ‘Best advice there is,’ said the toad. ‘Now put me back, the cold makes me lethargic.’ Reluctantly, Tiffany put the creature back in her apron pocket, and her hand touched Diseases of the Sheep. She pulled it out and opened it at random. There was a cure for the Steams, but it had been crossed out in pencil. Written in the margin, in Granny Aching’s big, round, careful handwriting was: This dunt work. One desert Spoonful of terpentine do. Tiffany closed the book with care, and put it back gently so as not to disturb the sleeping toad. Then, gripping the pan’s handle tightly, she stepped into the long blue shadows. How do you get shadows when there’s no sun in the sky? she thought, because it was better to think about things like this than all the other, much worse things that were on her mind. But these shadows didn’t need light to create them. They crawled around on the snow of their own accord, and backed away when she walked towards them. That, at least, was a relief. They piled up behind her. They were following her. She turned and stamped her foot a few times and they scurried off behind the trees, but she knew they were flowing back when she wasn’t looking. She saw a drome in the distance ahead of her, standing half-hidden behind a tree. She screamed at it and waved the pan threateningly, and it lumbered off quickly. When she looked round she saw two more behind her, a long way back. The track led uphill a little, into what looked like a much thicker mist. It glowed faintly. She headed for it. There was no other way to go. When she reached the top of the rise, she looked down into a shallow valley. There were four dromes in it - big ones, bigger than any she’d seen so far. They were sitting down in a square, their dumpy legs stretched out in front of them. Each one had a gold collar around its neck, attached to a chain. ‘Tame ones?’ Tiffany wondered, aloud. ‘But—’ . . . who could put a collar around the neck of a drome? Only someone who could dream as well as they could. We tamed the sheepdogs to help us herd sheep, she thought. The Queen uses dromes to herd dreams. . . In the centre of the square formed by the dromes the air was full of mist. The hooftracks, and the tracks of Roland, led down past the tame dromes and into the cloud. Tiffany spun round. The shadows darted back. There was nothing else nearby. No birds sang, nothing moved in the woods. But she could make out three more dromes now, their big round soggy faces peering at her around tree trunks. She was being herded now. At a time like this it would be nice to have someone around to say something like ‘No! It’s too dangerous! Don’t do it!’ Unfortunately, there wasn’t. She was going to commit an act of extreme bravery and no one would know if it all went wrong. That was frightening, but also . . . annoying. That was it . . . annoying. This place annoyed her. It was all stupid and strange. It was the same feeling she’d had when Jenny had leaped out of the river. Out of her river. And the Queen had taken her brother. Maybe it was selfish to think like that, but anger was better than fear. Fear was a damp cold mess, but anger had an edge. She could use it. They were herding her! Like a - a sheep! Well, an angry sheep could send a vicious dog away, whimpering. So . . . Four big dromes, sitting in a square. It was going to be a big dream . . . Raising the pan to shoulder height, to swipe at anything that came near, and suppressing a dreadful urge to go to the toilet, Tiffany walked slowly down the slope, across the snow, through the mist. . . . and into summer. Chapter Ten Master Stroke The heat struck like a blowlamp, so sharp and sudden that she gasped. She’d had sunstroke once, up on the downs, when she’d gone without a bonnet. And this was like that; the world around her was in worrying shades of dull green, yellow and purple, without shadows. The air was so full of heat that she felt she could squeeze smoke out of it. She was in . . . reeds, they looked like, much taller than her. . . . with sunflowers growing in them, except. . . . . . the sunflowers were white . . . . . . because they weren Y, in fact, sunflowers at all. They were daisies. She knew it. She’d stared at them dozens of times, in that strange picture in the Faerie Tales. They were daisies, and these weren’t giant reeds around her, they were blades of grass and she was very, very small. She was in the weird picture. The picture was the dream, or the dream was the picture. Which way round didn’t matter, because she was right in the middle of it. If you fell off a cliff, it wouldn’t matter if the ground was rushing up or you were rushing down. You were in trouble either way. Somewhere in the distance there was a loud crack! and a ragged cheer. Someone clapped and said, in a sleepy sort of voice, ‘Well done. Good man. Ver’ well done . . .’ With some effort, Tiffany pushed her way between the blades of grass. On a flat rock, a man was cracking nuts half as big as he was, with a two-handed hammer. He was being watched by a crowd of people. Tiffany used the word ‘people’ because she couldn’t think of anything else that was suitable, but it was stretching the word a bit to make it fit all the . . . people. They were different sizes, for one thing. Some of the men were taller than her, even if you allowed for the fact that everyone was shorter than the grass. But others were tiny. Some of them had faces that you wouldn’t look at twice. Others had faces that no one would want to look at even once. This is a dream, after all, Tiffany told herself. It doesn’t have to make sense, or be nice. It’s a dream, not a daydream. People who say things like ‘may all your dreams come true’ should try living in one for five minutes. She stepped out into the bright, stiflingly hot clearing just as the man raised his hammer again, and said, ‘Excuse me?’ ‘Yes?’ he said. ‘Is there a Queen around here?’ said Tiffany. The man wiped his forehead, and nodded towards the other side of the clearing. ‘Her Majesty has gone to her bower,’ he said. ‘That being a nook or resting place?’ said Tiffany. The man nodded and said, ‘Correct again, Miss Tiffany.’ Don’t ask how he knows your name, Tiffany told herself. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and because she had been brought up to be polite she added, ‘Best of luck with the nut-cracking.’ ‘This one’s the toughest yet,’ said the man. Tiffany walked off, trying to look as if this collection of strange nearly-people was just another crowd. Probably the scariest ones were the Big Women, two of them. Big women were valued on the Chalk. Farmers liked big wives. Farm work was hard and there was no call for a wife who couldn’t carry a couple of piglets or a bale of hay. But these two could have carried a horse each. They stared haughtily at her as she walked past. They had tiny, stupid little wings on their backs. ‘Nice day for watching nuts being cracked!’ said Tiffany cheerfully, as she went past. Their huge pale faces wrinkled, as if they were trying to work out what she was. Sitting down near them, watching the nut-cracker with an expression of concern, was a little man with a large head, a fringe of white beard and pointy ears. He was wearing very old-fashioned clothes, and his eyes followed Tiffany as she went past. ‘Good morning,’ she said. ‘Sneebs!’ he said, and in her head appeared the words: ‘Get away from here!’ ‘Excuse me?’ she said. ‘Sneebs!’ said the man, wringing his hands. And the words appeared, floating in her brain: ‘It’s terribly dangerous!’ He waved a pale hand, as if to brush her away. Shaking her head, Tiffany walked on. There were lords and ladies, people in fine clothes and even a few shepherds. But some of them had a pieced-together look. They looked, in fact, like a picture book back in her bedroom. It was made of thick card, worn raggedy-edged by generations of Aching children. Each page showed a character, and each was cut into four strips that could be turned over independently. The point of the whole thing was that a bored child could turn over parts of the pages and change the way the characters were dressed. You could end up with a soldier’s head on a baker’s chest wearing a maid’s dress and a farmer’s big boots. Tiffany had never been bored enough. She considered that even things that spend their whole lives hanging from the underside of branches would never be bored enough to spend more than five seconds with that book. The people around her looked either as though they’d been taken from that book, or had dressed for a fancy-dress party in the dark. One of two of them nodded to her as she passed, but didn’t seem surprised to see her. She ducked under a round leaf much bigger than she was and took out the toad again. ‘Whap? It’s su” cooold,’ said the toad, hunching down on her hand. ‘Cold? The air’s baking!’ ‘There’s just snow,’ said the toad. ‘Put me back, I’m freezing!’ Just a minute, thought Tiffany. ‘Do toads dream?’ she said. ‘No!’ ‘Oh . . . so it’s not really hot?’ ‘No! You just think it is!’ ‘Psst,’ said a voice. Tiffany put the toad away and wondered if she dared to turn her head. ‘It’s me!’ said the voice. Tiffany turned towards a clump of daisies twice the height of a man. That’s not a lot of help . . .’ ‘Are you mad?’ said the daisies. ‘I’m looking for my brother,’ said Tiffany sharply. ‘The horrible child who screams for sweeties all the time?’ The daisy stems parted and the boy Roland darted out and joined her under the leaf. ‘Yes,’ she said, edging away, and feeling that only a sister has a right to call even a brother like Wentworth ‘horrible’. ‘And threatens to go to the toilet if he’s left alone?’ said Roland. ‘Yes! Where is he?’ ‘That’s your brother? The one who’s permanently sticky?’ ‘I told you!’ ‘And you really want him back?’ ‘Yes!’ ‘Why?’ He’s my brother, Tiffany thought. What’s ‘why?’ got to do with it? ‘Because he’s my brother! Now tell me where he is?’ ‘Are you sure you can get out of here?’ said Roland. ‘Of course,’ Tiffany lied. ‘And you can take me with you?’ ‘Yes.’ Well, she hoped so. ‘All right. I’ll let you do that,’ said Roland, relaxing. ‘Oh, you’ll let me, will you?’ said Tiffany. ‘Look, I didn’t know what you were, all right?’ said Roland. There’s always weird things in the forest. Lost people, bits of dreams that’re still lying around . . . you have to be careful. But if you really know the way, then I ought to get back before my father worries too much.’ Tiffany felt the Second Thoughts starting. They said: Don’t change your expression. Just. . . check . . . ‘How long have you been here?’ she asked carefully. ‘Exactly?’ ‘Well, the light doesn’t really change much,’ said the boy. ‘It feels like I’ve been here . . . oh, hours. Maybe a day . . .’ Tiffany tried hard not to let her face give anything away, but it didn’t work. Roland’s eyes narrowed. ‘I have, haven’t I?’ he said. ‘Er . . . why do you ask?’ said Tiffany, desperately. ‘Because in a way it . . . feels like . . . longer. I’ve only been hungry two or three times, and been to the . . . you know . . . twice, so it can’t be very long. But I’ve done all kinds of things . . . it’s been a busy day . . .’ His voice trailed off. ‘Um. You’re right,’ said Tiffany. “Time goes slowly here. It’s been . . . a bit longer . . .’ ‘A hundred years? Don’t tell me it’s a hundred years! Something magical has happened and it’s a hundred years, yes?’ ‘What? No! Um . . . nearly a year.’ The boy’s reaction was surprising. This time he looked really frightened. ‘Oh, no! That’s worse than a hundred years!’ ‘How?’ said Tiffany, bewildered. ‘If it was a hundred years I wouldn’t get a thrashing when I got home!’ Hmm, thought Tiffany. ‘I don’t think that’s going to happen,’ she said aloud. ‘Your father has been very miserable. Besides, it’s not your fault you were stolen by the Queen—’ She hesitated, because this time it was his expression that gave it all away. ‘Was it?’ ‘Well, there was this fine lady on a horse with bells all over its harness and she galloped past me when I was out hunting and she was laughing, so of course I spurred my horse and chased after her and . . .’ He fell silent. ‘That probably wasn’t a good decision,’ said Tiffany. ‘It’s not . . . bad here,’ said Roland. ‘It just keeps . . . changing. There’s . . . doorways everywhere. I mean entrances into other . . . places. . .’ His voice tailed off. ‘You’d better start at the beginning,’ said Tiffany. ‘It was great at first,’ said Roland. ‘I thought it was, you know, an adventure? She fed me sweetmeats—’ ‘What are they, exactly?’ said Tiffany. Her dictionary hadn’t included that one. ‘Are they like sweetbreads?’ ‘I don’t know. What are sweetbreads?’ ‘The pancreas or thymus gland of a cow,’ said Tiffany. ‘Not a very good name, I think.’ Roland’s face went red with the effort of thought. These were more like nougat.’ ‘Right. Go on,’ said Tiffany. ‘And then she told me to sing and dance and skip and play,’ said Roland. ‘She said that’s what children were supposed to do.’ ‘Did you?’ ‘Would you? I’d feel like an idiot. I’m twelve, you know.’ Roland hesitated. ‘In fact, if what you say is true, I’m thirteen now, right?’ ‘Why did she want you to skip and play?’ said Tiffany, instead of saying, ‘No, you’re still twelve and act like you’re eight.’ ‘She just said that’s what children do,’ said Roland. Tiffany wondered about this. As far as she could see, children mostly argued, shouted, ran around very fast, laughed loudly, picked their noses, got dirty and sulked. Any seen dancing and skipping and singing had probably been stung by a wasp. ‘Strange,’ she said. ‘And then when I wouldn’t she gave me more sweets.’ ‘More nougat?’ ‘Sugar plums,’ said Roland. They’re, like, plums. You know? With sugar on? She’s always trying to feed me sugar! She thinks I like it!’ A small bell rang in Tiffany’s memory. ‘You don’t think she’s trying to feed you up before she bakes you in an oven and eats you, do you?’ ‘Of course not. Only wicked witches do that.’ Tiffany’s eyes narrowed. ‘Oh yes,’ she said carefully. ‘I forgot. So you’ve been living on sweeties?’ ‘No, I know how to hunt! Real animals get in here. I don’t know how. Sneebs thinks they find the doorways in by accident. And then they starve to death, because it’s always winter here. Sometimes the Queen sends out robbing parties if a door opens into an interesting world, too. This whole place is like . . . a pirate ship.’ ‘Yes, or a sheep tick,’ said Tiffany, thinking aloud. ‘What’re they?’ ‘They’re insects that bite sheep and suck blood and don’t drop off until they’re full,’ said Tiffany. ‘Yuck. I suppose that’s the kind of thing peasants have to know about,’ said Roland. ‘I’m glad I don’t. I’ve seen through the doorways to one or two worlds. They wouldn’t let me out, though. We got potatoes from one, and fish from another. I think they frighten people into giving them stuff. Oh, and there was the world where the dromes come from. They laughed about that and said if I wanted to go in there I was welcome. I didn’t! It’s all red, like a sunset. A great huge sun on the horizon, and a red sea that hardly moves, and red rocks, and long shadows. And those horrible creatures sitting on the rocks, living off crabs and spidery things and little scribbity creatures. It was awful. There was this sort of ring of little claws and shells and bones around every one of them.’ ‘Who are they?’ said Tiffany, who had noted the word ‘peasants’. ‘What do you mean?’ ‘You keep talking about “they”,’ said Tiffany. ‘Who do you mean? The people out there?’ ‘Those? Most of them aren’t even real,’ said Roland. ‘I mean the elves. The fairies. That’s who she’s Queen of. Didn’t you know?’ ‘I thought they were small!’ ‘I think they can be any size they like,’ said Roland. They’re not. . . exactly real. They’re like . . . dreams of themselves. They can be as thin as air or solid as a rock. Sneebs says.’ ‘Sneebs?’ said Tiffany. ‘Oh . . . the little man that just says sneebs but real words turn up in your head?’ ‘Yes, that’s him. He’s been here for years. That’s how I knew about the time being wrong. Sneebs got back to his own world once, and it was all different. He was so miserable he found another doorway and came straight back.’ ‘He came back?’ said Tiffany, astonished. ‘He said it was better to belong where you don’t belong than not to belong where you used to belong, remembering when you used to belong there,’ said Roland. ‘At least, I think that’s what he said. He said it’s not too bad here if you keep out of the Queen’s way. He says you can learn a lot.’ Tiffany looked back at the hunched figure of Sneebs, who was still watching the nutcracking. He didn’t look as though he was learning anything. He just looked like someone who’d been frightened for so long it had become part of his life, like freckles. ‘But you mustn’t make the Queen angry,’ said Roland. ‘I’ve seen what happens to people who make her angry. She sets the Bumble-Bee women on them.’ ‘Are you talking about those huge women with the tiny wings?’ ‘Yes! They’ve vicious. And if the Queen gets really angry with someone, she just stares at them, and . . . they change.’ ‘What into?’ ‘Other things. I don’t want to have to draw you a picture.’ Roland shuddered. ‘And if I did, I’d need a lot of red and purple crayons. Then they get dragged off and left for the dromes.’ He shook his head. ‘Listen, dreams are real here. Really real. When you’re inside them you’re not . . . exactly here. The nightmares are real, too. You can die.’ This doesn’t feel real, Tiffany told herself. This feels like a dream. I could almost wake up from it. I must always remember what’s real. She looked down at her faded blue dress, with the bad stitching around the hem caused by it being let out and taken in as its various owners had grown. That was real. And she was real. Cheese was real. Somewhere not far away was a world of green turf under a blue sky, and that was real. The Nac Mac Feegle were real, and once again she wished they were here. There was something about the way they shouted ‘Crivens!’ and attacked everything in sight that was so very comforting. Roland was probably real. Almost everything else was really a dream, in a robber world that lived off the real worlds and where time nearly stood still and horrible things could happen at any moment. I don’t want to know anything more about it, she decided. I just want to get my brother and go home, while I’m still angry. Because when I stop being angry, that’ll be the time to get frightened again, and I’ll be really frightened this time. Too frightened to think. As frightened as Sneebs. And I must think . . . ‘The first dream I fell into was like one of mine.’ she said. ‘I’ve had dreams where I wake up and I’m still asleep. But the ballroom, I’ve never—’ ‘Oh, that was one of mine,’ said Roland. ‘From when I was young. I woke up one night and went down to the big hall and there were all these people with masks on, dancing. It was just so . . . bright.’ He looked wistful for a moment. That was when my mother was still alive.’ ‘This one’s a picture from a book I’ve got,’ said Tiffany. ‘She must have got that from me—’ ‘No, she often uses it,’ said Roland. ‘She likes it. She picks up dreams from everywhere. She collects them.’ Tiffany stood up, and picked up the frying pan again. ‘I’m going to see the Queen,’ she said. ‘Don’t,’ said Roland. ‘You’re the only other real person here except Sneebs, and he’s not very good company.’ ‘I’m going to get my brother and go home,’ said Tiffany flatly. ‘I’m not going to come with you, then,’ said Roland. ‘I don’t want to see what she turns you into.’ Tiffany stepped out into the heavy, shadowless light, and followed the path up the slope. Giant grasses arched overhead. Here and there more strangely dressed, strangely shaped people turned to watch her, but then acted as though she was just a passing wanderer, of no interest whatsoever. She glanced behind her. In the distance the nutcracker had found a bigger hammer, and was getting ready to strike. ‘Wanna wanna wanna sweetie!’ Tiffany’s head shot round like a weathercock in a tornado. She ran along the path, head down, ready to swing the pan at anything that stood in her way, and burst through a clump of grass into a space lined with daisies. It could well have been a bower. She didn’t bother to check. Wentworth was sitting on a large, flat stone, surrounded by sweets. Many of them were bigger than he was. Smaller ones were in piles, large ones lay like logs. And they were in every colour sweets can be, such as Not-Really-Raspberry Red, Fake-Lemon Yellow, Curiously-Chemical Orange, Some-Kind-of-Acidy Green and Who-Knows-What Blue. Tears were falling off his chin in blobs. Since they were landing amongst the sweets, serious stickiness was already taking place. Wentworth howled. His mouth was a big red tunnel with the wobbly thing that no one knows the name of bouncing up and down in the back of his throat. He only stopped crying when it was time either to breathe in or die, and even then it was only for one huge sucking moment before the howl came back again. Tiffany knew what the problem was immediately. She’d seen it before, at birthday parties. Her brother was suffering from tragic sweet deprivation. Yes, he was surrounded by sweets. But the moment he took any sweet at all, said his sugar-addled brain, that meant he was not taking all the rest. And there were so many sweets he’d never be able to eat them all. It was too much to cope with. The only solution was to burst into tears. The only solution at home was to put a bucket over his head until he calmed down, and take almost all the sweets away. He could deal with a few handfuls at a time. Tiffany dropped the pan and swept him up in her arms. ‘It’s Tiffy,’ she whispered. ‘And we’re going home.’ And this is where I meet the Queen, she thought. But there was no scream of rage, no explosion of magic . . . nothing. There was just the buzz of bees in the distance, and the sound of wind in the grass, and the gulping of Wentworth, who was too shocked to cry. She could see now that the far side of the bower contained a couch of leaves, surrounded by hanging flowers. But there was no one there. ‘That’s because I’m behind you,’ said the voice of the Queen in her ear. Tiffany turned round quickly. There was no one there. ‘Still behind you,’ said the Queen. This is my world, child. You’ll never be as fast as me, or as clever as me. Why are you trying to take my boy away?’ ‘He isn’t yours! He’s ours!’ said Tiffany. ‘You never loved him. You have a heart like a little snowball. I can see it.’ Tiffany’s forehead wrinkled. ‘Love?’ she said. ‘What’s that got to do with it? He’s my brother! My brother!’ ‘Yes, that’s a very witchy thing, isn’t it,’ said the voice of the Queen. ‘Selfishness. Mine, mine, mine. All a witch cares about is what’s hers.’ ‘You stole him!’ ‘Stole? You mean you thought you owned him?’ Tiffany’s Second Thoughts said: She’s finding your weaknesses. Don’t listen to her. ‘Ah, you have Second Thoughts,’ said the Queen. ‘I expect you think that makes you very witchy, do you?’ ‘Why won’t you let me see you?’ said Tiffany. ‘Are you frightened?’ ‘Frightened?’ said the voice of the Queen. ‘Of something like you?’ And the Queen was there, in front of her. She was much taller than Tiffany, but just as slim; her hair was long and black, her face pale, her lips cherry red, her dress black and white and red. And it was all, very slightly, wrong. Tiffany’s Second Thoughts said: It’s because she’s perfect. Completely perfect. Like a doll. No one real is as perfect as that. ‘That’s not you,’ said Tiffany, with absolute certainty. That’s just your dream of you. That’s not you at all.’ The Queen’s smile disappeared for a moment and came back all edgy and brittle. ‘Such rudeness, and you hardly know me,’ she said, sitting down on the leafy seat. She patted the space beside her. ‘Do sit down,’ she said. ‘Standing there like that is so confrontational. I will put your bad manners down to simple disorientation.’ She gave Tiffany a beautiful smile. Look at the way her eyes move, said Tiffany’s Second Thoughts. I don’t think she’s using them to see you with. They’re just beautiful ornaments. ‘You have invaded my home, killed some of my creatures and generally acted in a mean and despicable way,’ said the Queen. This offends me. However, I understand that you have been badly led by disruptive elements—’ ‘You stole my brother,’ said Tiffany, holding Wentworth tightly. ‘You steal all sorts of things.’ But her voice sounded weak and tinny in her ears. ‘He was wandering around lost,’ said the Queen calmly. ‘I brought him home and comforted him.’ And what there was about the Queen’s voice was this: it said, in a friendly, understanding way, that she was right and you were wrong. And this wasn’t your fault, exactly. It was probably the fault of your parents, or your food, or something so terrible you’ve completely forgotten about it. It wasn’t your fault, the Queen understood, because you were a nice person. It was just such a terrible thing that all these bad influences had made you make the wrong choices. If only you’d admit that, Tiffany, then the world would be a much happier place— - this cold place, guarded by monsters, in a world where nothing grows older, or up, said her Second Thoughts. A world with the Queen in charge of everything. Don’t listen. She managed to take a step backwards. ‘Am I a monster?’ said the Queen. ‘All I wanted was a little bit of company—’ And Tiffany’s Second Thoughts, quite swamped by the Queen’s wonderful voice, said: Miss Female Robinson . . . She’d come to work as a maid at one of the farms many years ago. They said that she’d been brought up in a Home for the Destitute in Yelp. They said she’d been born there after her mother had arrived during a terrible storm and the master had written in his big black diary: ‘To Miss Robinson, female infant’, and her young mother hadn’t been very bright and was dying in any case and had thought that was the baby’s name. After all, it had been written down in an official book. Miss Robinson was quite old now, never said much, never ate much, but you never saw her not doing something. No one could scrub a floor like Miss Female Infant Robinson. She had a thin, wispy face with a pointed red nose, and thin, pale hands with red knuckles, which were always busy. Miss Robinson worked hard. Tiffany hadn’t understood a lot of what was going on when the crime happened. The women talked about it in twos and threes at garden gates, their arms folded, and they’d stop and look indignant if a man walked past. She picked up bits of conversation, though sometimes they seemed to be in a kind of code, like: ‘Never really had anyone of her own, poor old soul. Wasn’t her fault she was skinnier’n a rake,’ and ‘They say that when they found her she was cuddling it and said it was hers,’ and ‘The house was full of baby clothes she’d knitted!’ That last one had puzzled Tiffany at the time, because it was said in the same tone of voice that someone’d use to say ‘And the house was full of human skulls!’ But they all agreed on one thing: We can’t have this. A crime’s a crime. The Baron’s got to be told. Miss Robinson had stolen a baby, Punctuality Riddle, who had been much loved by his young parents even though they’d named him ‘Punctuality’ (reasoning that if children could be named after virtues like Patience, Faith and Prudence, what was wrong with a little good timekeeping?). He’d been left in his crib in the yard, and had vanished. And there had been all the usual searchings and weepings, and then someone had mentioned that Miss Robinson had been taking home extra milk. . . It was kidnapping. There weren’t many fences on the Chalk, and very few doors with locks. Theft of all kinds was taken very seriously. If you couldn’t turn your back on what was yours for five minutes, where would it all end? The law’s the law. A crime’s a crime. . . Tiffany had overheard bits of arguments all over the village, but the same phrases cropped up over and over again. Poor thing never meant no harm. She was a hard worker, never complained. She’s not right in the head. The law’s the law. A crime’s a crime. And so the Baron was told, and he held a court in the Great Hall, and everyone who wasn’t wanted up on the hills turned up, including Mr and Mrs Riddle, she looking worried, he looking determined, and Miss Robinson, who just stared at the ground with her red knuckly hands on her knees. It was hardly a trial. Miss Robinson was confused about what she was guilty of, and it seemed to Tiffany that so was everyone else. They weren’t certain why they were there, and they’d come to find out, The Baron had been uneasy, too. The law was clear. Theft was a dreadful crime, and stealing a human being was much worse. There was a prison in Yelp, right beside the Home for the Destitute; some said there was even a connecting door. That was where thieves went. And the Baron wasn’t a big thinker. His family had held the Chalk by not changing their mind about anything for hundreds of years. He sat and listened and drummed his fingers on the table and looked at people’s faces and acted like a man sitting on a very hot chair. Tiffany was in the front row. She was there when the man started to give his verdict, ‘um ‘ing and ‘ah ‘ing, trying not to say the words he knew he’d have to say, when the door at the back of the hall opened and the sheepdogs Thunder and Lightning trotted in. They came down the aisle between the rows of benches and sat down in front of the Baron, looking bright-eyed and alert. Only Tiffany craned to see back up the aisle. The doors were still slightly ajar. They were far too heavy even for a strong dog to push them open. And she could just make out someone looking through the crack. The Baron stopped, and stared. He, too, looked at the other end of the hall. And then, after a few moments, he pushed the law book aside and said: ‘Perhaps we should do this a different way . . .’ And there was a different way, involving people paying a little more attention to Miss Robinson. It wasn’t perfect, and not everyone was happy, but it worked. Tiffany smelled the scent of Jolly Sailor outside the hall when the meeting was over, and thought about the Baron’s dog. ‘Remember this day,’ Granny Aching had said, and, ‘Ye’II have cause to.’ Barons needed reminding . . . ‘Who will speak up for you?’ Tiffany said aloud. ‘Speak up for me?’ answered the Queen, her fine eyebrows arching. And Tiffany’s Third Thoughts said: Watch her face when she is worried. ‘There isn’t anyone, is there?’ said Tiffany, backing away. ‘Is there anyone you’ve been kind to? Anyone who’ll say you’re not just a thief and a bully? Because that’s what you are. You’ve got a . . . you’re like the dromes, you’ve just got one trick . . .’ And there it was. Now she could see what her Third Thoughts had spotted. The Queen’s face flickered for a moment. ‘And that’s not your body,’ said Tiffany, plunging on. ‘That’s just what you want people to see. It’s not real. It’s just like everything else here, it’s hollow and empty—’ The Queen ran forward and slapped her much harder than a dream should be able to. Tiffany landed in the moss and Wentworth rolled away, yelling, ‘Wanna go-a toy-hit!’ Good, said Tiffany’s Third Thoughts. ‘Good?’ said Tiffany aloud. ‘Good?’ said the Queen. Yes, said the Third Thoughts, because she doesn’t know you can have Third Thoughts and your hand is only a few inches from the frying pan and things like her hate iron, don’t they? She’s angry. Now make her furious, so that she doesn’t think. Hurt her. ‘You just live here in a land full of winter and all you do is dream of summers,’ said Tiffany. ‘No wonder the King went away.’ The Queen stood still for a moment, like the beautiful statue she so much resembled. Again, the walking dream flickered and Tiffany thought she saw . . . something. It was not much bigger than her, and almost human, and a little shabby and, just for a moment, shocked. Then the Queen was back, tall and angry, and she drew a deep breath— Tiffany grabbed the pan and swung it as she rolled onto her feet. It hit the tall figure only a glancing blow, but the Queen wavered like air over a hot road, and screamed. Tiffany didn’t wait to see what else was going to happen. She grabbed her brother again, and ran away, down through the grass, past the strange figures looking round at the sound of the Queen’s anger. Now shadows moved in the shadowless grasses. Some of the people - the joke people, the ones that looked like a flaps-on-the-pages picture book -changed shape and started to move after Tiffany and her screaming brother. There was a booming noise on the other side of the clearing. The two huge creatures that Roland had called the Bumble-Bee women were rising off the ground, their tiny wings blurring with the effort. Somebody grabbed her and pulled her into the grasses. It was Roland. ‘Can you get out now?’ he demanded, his face red. ‘Er . . .’ Tiffany began. ‘Then we’d better just run,’ he said. ‘Give me your hand. Come on!’ ‘Do you know a way out?’ Tiffany panted, as they dashed through giant daisies. ‘No,’ Roland panted back. ‘There isn’t one. You saw . . . the dromes outside . . . this is a really strong dream. . .’ ‘Then why are we running?’ ‘To keep out . . . of her way. If you . . . hide long enough . . . Sneebs says she . . . forgets . . .’ I don’t think she’s going to forget me very quickly, Tiffany thought. Roland had stopped, but she pulled her hand away and ran onward, with Wentworth clinging to her in silent amazement. ‘Where are you going?’ shouted Roland behind her. ‘I really want to keep out of her way!’ ‘Come back! You’re running right back!’ ‘No I’m not! I’m running in a straight line!’ ‘This is a dream!’ Roland shouted, but it was louder now because he was catching her up. ‘You’re running right around—’ Tiffany burst into a clearing . . . . . . the clearing. The Bumble-Bee women landed on either side of her, and the Queen stepped forward. ‘You know,’ said the Queen, ‘I really expected better of you, Tiffany. Now, give me back the boy, and I shall decide what to do next.’ ‘It’s not a big dream,’ mumbled Roland behind her. ‘If you go too far you end up coming back—’ ‘I could make a dream for you that’s even smaller than you are,’ said the Queen, pleasantly. That can be quite painful!’ The colours were brighter. And sounds were louder. Tiffany could smell something, too, and what was strange about that was that up until now there had been no smells. It was a sharp, bitter smell that you never forgot. It was the smell of snow. And underneath the insect buzzings in the grass, she heard the faintest of voices. ‘Crivens! I cannae find the way oot!’ Chapter 11 Awakening On the other side of the clearing, where the nut-cracking man had been at work, was the last nut, half as high as Tiffany. And it was rocking gently. The cracker took a swipe at it with the hammer, and it rolled out of the way. See what’s really there . . . said Tiffany to herself, and laughed. The Queen gave her a puzzled look. ‘You find this funny?’ she demanded. ‘What’s funny about this? What is amusing about this situation?’ ‘I just had a funny thought,’ said Tiffany. The Queen glared, as people without a sense of humour do when they’re confronted with a smile. You’re not very clever, thought Tiffany. You’ve never needed to be. You can get what you want just by dreaming it. You believe in your dreams, so you never have to think. She turned and whispered to Roland, ‘Crack the nut! Don’t worry about what I do, crack the nut!’ The boy looked at her blankly. ‘What did you say to him?’ snapped the Queen. ‘I said goodbye,’ said Tiffany, holding on tightly to her brother. ‘I’m not handing my brother over, no matter what you do!’ ‘Do you know what colour your insides are?’ said the Queen. Tiffany shook her head mutely. ‘Well, now you’ll find out,’ said the Queen, smiling sweetly. ‘You’re not powerful enough to do anything like that,’ said Tiffany. ‘You know, you are right,’ said the Queen. That kind of physical magic is, indeed, very hard. But I can make you think I’ve done the most . . . terrible things. And that, little girl, is all I need to do. Would you like to beg for mercy now? You may not be able to later.’ Tiffany paused. ‘No-o,’ she said at last. ‘I don’t think I will.’ The Queen leaned down. Her grey eyes filled Tiffany’s world. ‘People here will remember this for a long time,’ she said. ‘I hope so,’ said Tiffany. ‘Crack . . . the . . . nut.’ For a moment the Queen looked puzzled again. She was not good at dealing with sudden changes. ‘What?’ ‘Eh? Oh . . . right,’ muttered Roland. ‘What did you say to him?’ the Queen demanded, as the boy ran towards the hammer man. Tiffany kicked her on the leg. It wasn’t a witch thing. It was so nine years old, and she wished she could have thought of something better. On the other hand, she had hard boots and it was a good kick. The Queen shook her. ‘Why did you do that?’ she said. ‘Why won’t you do what I say? Everyone could be so happy if only they’d do what I say!’ Tiffany stared at the woman’s face. The eyes were grey now, but the pupils were like silver mirrors. I know what you are, said her Third Thoughts. You’re something that’s never learned anything. You don’t know anything about people. You’re just . . . a child that’s got old. ‘Want a sweetie?’ she whispered. There was a shout behind her. She twisted in the Queen’s grip, and saw Roland fighting for the hammer. As she watched he turned desperately and raised the heavy thing over his head, knocking over the elf behind him. The Queen pulled her round savagely as the hammer fell. ‘Sweetie?’ she hissed. ‘I’ll show you swe—’ ‘Crivens! It’s the Quin! An’ she’s got oour kelda, the ol’ topher!’ ‘Nae quinl Nae laird! Wee Free Men!’ ‘I could murrrder a kebab!’ ‘Get her!’ Tiffany might have been the only person, in all the worlds that there are, to be happy to hear the sound of the Nac Mac Feegle. They poured out of the smashed nut. Some were still wearing bow ties. Some were back in their kilts. But they were all in a fighting mood and, to save time, were fighting with one another to get up to speed. The clearing . . . cleared. Real or dreams, the people could see trouble when it rolled towards them in a roaring, cursing, red and blue tide. Tiffany ducked out of the Queen’s grasp and, still holding Wentworth, hurried into the grasses to watch. Big Yan ran past, carrying a struggling full-sized elf over his head. Then he stopped suddenly, and tossed it high over the clearing. ‘An’ away he goes, right on his heidY he yelled, then turned and ran back into the battle. The Nac Mac Feegles couldn’t be trodden on, or squeezed. They worked in groups, running up one another’s backs to get high enough to punch an elf or, for preference, bash it with their heads. And once anyone was down, it was all over bar the kicking. There was some method in the way the Nac Mac Feegle fought. For example, they always chose the biggest opponent because, as Rob Anybody said later, ‘It makes them easier to hit, ye ken.’ And they simply didn’t stop. It was that which wore people down. It was like being attacked by wasps with fists. It took them a little while to realize that they’d run out of people to fight. They carried on fighting one another for a bit anyway, since they’d come all this way, and then settled down and began to go through the pockets of the fallen in case there was any loose change. Tiffany stood up. ‘Ach, weel, no’ a bad job tho’ I says it mysel’,’ said Rob Anybody, looking around. ‘A very neat fight an’ we dinnae e’en ha’ to resort to usin’ poetry.’ ‘How did you get into the nut?’ said Tiffany. ‘I mean, it was . . . a nut!’ ‘Only way we could find in,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘It’s got to be a way that fits. ‘Tis difficult work, navigatin’ in dreams.’ ‘Especially when ye’re a wee bittie pished,’ said Daft Wullie, grinning broadly. ‘What? You’ve been . . . drinking?’ said Tiffany. ‘I’ve been facing the Queen and you’ve been in a pub?’ ‘Ach, no!’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Ye ken that dream wi’ the big party? When you had the pretty frock an’ a’? We got stuck in it.’ ‘But I killed the drome!’ Rob looked a little shifty. ‘Weeeel,’ he said, ‘we didnae get oout as easily as you. It took us a wee while.’ ‘Until we finished all the drink,’ said Daft Wullie, helpfully. Rob glared at him. ‘Ye didnae ha’ to put it like that!’ he snapped. ‘You mean the dream keeps on going?’ said Tiffany. ‘If you’re thirsty enough,’ said Daft Wullie. ‘An’ it wasnae just the drink, there was cana-pays as well.’ ‘But I thought if you ate or drank in a dream you stayed there!’ said Tiffany. ‘Aye, for most creatures,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Not for us, though. Hooses, banks, dreams, ‘tis a’ the same to us. There’s nothing we cannae get in or oot of.’ ‘Except maybe pubs,’ said Big Yan. ‘Oh, aye,’ said Rob Anybody cheerfully. ‘Gettin’ oot o’ pubs sometimes causes us a cerrrtain amount o’ difficulty, I’ll grant ye that.’ ‘And where did the Queen go?’ Tiffany demanded. ‘Ach, she did an off ski as soon as we arrived,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘An’ so should we, lady, afore the dream changes.’ He nodded at Wentworth. ‘Is this the wee bairn? Ach, what a noseful o’ bogeys!’ ‘Wanna sweetie!’ shouted Wentworth, on automatic sweetie pilot. ‘Weeel, ye cannae ha’ none!’ shouted Rob Anybody. ‘An’ stop snivellin’ and come awa’ wi’ us and stop bein’ a burden to your wee sister!’ Tiffany opened her mouth to protest, and shut it again when Wentworth, after a moment of shock, chuckled. ‘Funny!’ he said. ‘Wee man! Weewee man!’ ‘Oh dear,’ said Tiffany. ‘You’ve got him started now.’ But she was very surprised, none the less. Wentworth never showed this much interest in anyone who wasn’t a jelly baby. ‘Rob, we’ve got a real one here,’ a pictsie called out. To her horror, Tiffany saw that several of the Nac Mac Feegles were holding up Roland’s unconscious head. He was full-length on the ground. ‘Ah, that was the laddie who wuz rude to ye,’ said Rob. ‘An’ he tried to hit Big Yan with a hammer, too. That wasnae a clever thing to try. What shall we do with him?’ The grasses trembled. The light was fading from the sky. The air was growing colder, too. ‘We can’t leave him here!’ said Tiffany. ‘OK, we’ll drag him along,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Let’s move right noo!’ ‘Weewee man! Weewee man!’ shouted Wentworth gleefully. ‘He’ll be like this all day, I’m afraid,’ said Tiffany. ‘Sorry.’ ‘Run for the door,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Can ye no’ see the door?’ Tiffany looked around desperately. The wind was bitter now. ‘See the door!’ Rob Anybody commanded. She blinked, and spun round. ‘Er . . . er. . .’ she said. The sense of a world beneath that had come to her when she was frightened of the Queen did not turn up so easily now. She tried to concentrate. The smell of snow . . . It was ridiculous to talk about the smell of snow. It was just pure frozen water. But Tiffany always knew, when she woke up, if it had snowed in the night. Snow had a smell like the taste of tin. Tin did have a taste, although admittedly it tasted like the smell of snow. She thought she heard her brain creak with the effort of thinking. If she was in a dream, she had to wake up. But it was no use running. Dreams were full of running. But there was one direction that looked . . . thin, and white. She shut her eyes, and thought about snow, crisp and white as fresh bedsheets. She concentrated on the feel of it under her feet. All she had to do was wake up . . . She was standing in snow. ‘Right,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘I got out!’ said Tiffany. ‘Ach, sometimes the door’s in yer ain heid,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Noo let’s move!’ Tiffany felt herself being lifted into the air. Nearby, a snoring Roland rose up on dozens of small blue legs as the Feegles got underneath him. ‘Nae stoppin’ until we get right oout o’ here!’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Feegles wha hae!’ They skimmed over the snow, with parties of Feegles running on ahead. After a minute or two Tiffany looked behind them, and saw the blue shadows spreading. They were getting darker, too. ‘Rob—’ she said. ‘Aye, I ken,’ said Rob. ‘Run, lads!’ ‘They’re moving fast, Rob!’ ‘I ken that, too!’ Snow stung Tiffany’s face. Trees blurred with the speed. The forest sped past. But the shadows were spreading across the path ahead and every time the party ran through them they seemed to have a certain solidity, like fog. Now the shadows behind were night-black in the middle. But the pictsies had passed the last tree, and the snowfields stretched ahead. They stopped, so quickly that Tiffany almost toppled into the snow. ‘What’s happened?’ ‘Where’s all oour old footprints gone?’ said Daft Wullie. They wuz there a moment ago! Which way noo?’ The trampled track that had led them on like a line had vanished. Rob Anybody spun round and looked back at the forest. Darkness curled above it like smoke, spreading along the horizon. ‘She’s sendin’ nightmares after us,’ he growled. This is gonna be a toughie, lads.’ Tiffany saw shapes in the spreading night. She hugged Wentworth tightly. ‘Nightmares,’ repeated Rob Anybody, turning to her. ‘Ye wouldnae want to know about them. We’ll hold ‘em off. Ye must mak’ a run for it. Get awa’ wi’ ye, noo!’ ‘I’ve got nowhere to run to!’ said Tiffany. She heard a high-pitched noise, a sort of chitter-ing, insect noise, coming from the forest. The pictsies had drawn together. Usually they grinned like anything if they thought a fight was coming up, but this time they looked deadly serious. ‘Ach, she’s a bad loser, the Quin,’ said Rob. Tiffany turned to look at the horizon behind her. The boiling blackness was there, too, a ring that was closing in from all sides. Doors everywhere, she thought. The old kelda said there’s doors everywhere. I must find a door. But there’s just snow and a few trees. . . The pictsies drew their swords. ‘What, er, kind of nightmares are coming?’ said Tiffany. ‘Ach, long-leggity things with muckle legs and huge teeth, and flappy wings and a hundred eyes, that kinda stuff,’ said Daft Wullie. ‘Aye, and wuss than that,’ said Rob Anybody, staring at the speeding dark. ‘What’s worse than that?’ said Tiffany. ‘Normal stuff gone wrong,’ said Rob. Tiffany looked blank for a moment, and then shuddered. Oh yes, she knew about those nightmares. They didn’t happen often, but they were horrible when they did. She’d woken up once shaking at the thought of Granny Aching’s boots, which had been chasing her, and another time it was a box of sugar. Anything could be a nightmare. She could put up with monsters. But she didn’t want to face mad boots. ‘Er . . . I have an idea,’ she said. ‘So do I,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Dinnae be here, that’s my idea!’ ‘There’s a clump of trees over there,’ said Tiffany. ‘So what?’ said Rob. He was staring at the line of nightmares. Things were visible in it, now - teeth, claws, eyes, ribs. From the way he was glaring it was obvious that, whatever happened later, the first few monsters were going to face a serious problem. If they had faces, anyway. ‘Can you fight nightmares?’ said Tiffany. The chittering noise was getting a lot louder. ‘There’s no’ a thing we cannae fight,’ growled Big Yan. ‘If it’s got a heid, we can gi’ it a faceful o’ dandruff. If it disnae have a heid, it’s due a good kickin’!’ Tiffany stared at the onrushing . . . things. ‘Some of them have got more than one head!’ she said. ‘It’s oour lucky day, then,’ said Daft Wullie. The pictsies shifted their weight, ready to fight. ‘Piper,’ said Rob Anybody to William the gonnagle, ‘play us a lament. We’ll fight to the sound of the mousepipes—’ ‘No!’ said Tiffany. ‘I’m not standing for this! The way to fight nightmares is to wake up! I am your kelda! This is an order! We’re heading for those trees right now! Do what I say!’ ‘Weewee man!’ yelled Wentworth. The pictsies glanced at the trees, and then at Tiffany. ‘Do it!’ she yelled, so loudly that some of them flinched. ‘Right now! Do what I tell you! There’s a better way!’ ‘Ye cannae cross a hag, Rob,’ muttered William. ‘I’m going to get you home!’ snapped Tiffany. I hope, she added to herself. But she’d seen a small, round, pale face staring at them around a tree trunk. There was a drome in those trees. ‘Ach, aye, but—’ Rob Anybody glanced past Tiffany and added: ‘Aw no, look at that. . .’ There was a pale dot in front of the racing line of monstrousness. Sneebs was making a break for it. His arms pumped like pistons. His little legs seemed to spin. His cheeks were like balloons. The tide of nightmares rolled over him and kept coming. Rob sheathed his sword. ‘Ye heard oour kelda, lads!’ he shouted. ‘Grab her! We’rrre offski!’ Tiffany was lifted up. Feegles raised the unconscious Roland. And everyone ran for the trees. Tiffany pulled her hand out of her apron pocket, and opened up the crumpled wrapper of Jolly Sailor tobacco. It was something to focus on, to remind her of a dream . . . People said you could see the sea from the very top of the downs, but Tiffany had stared hard on a fine winter’s day, when the air was clear, and seen nothing but the hazy blue of distance. But the sea on the Jolly Sailor packet was deep blue, with white crests on the waves. It was the sea, for Tiffany. It had looked like a small drome in the trees. That meant it wasn’t very powerful. She hoped so. She had to hope so . . . The trees got closer. So did the ring of nightmares. Some of the sounds were horrible, of cracking bones and crushing rocks and stinging insects and screaming cats, getting nearer and nearer and nearer— Chapter 12 Jolly Sailor - there was sand around her, and white waves crashing, and water draining off the shingle and sounding like an old woman sucking a hard mint. ‘Crivens! Where are we noo?’ said Daft Wullie. ‘Aye, and why’re we all lookin’ like yellow mushrooms?’ Rob Anybody added. Tiffany looked down, and giggled. Every pictsie was wearing a Jolly Sailor outfit, with an oilskin coat and a huge yellow oilskin rain hat that covered most of their faces. They started to wander about, bumping into one another. My dream! Tiffany thought. The drome uses what it can find in your head . . . but this is my dream. I can use it. Wentworth had gone quiet. He was staring at the waves. There was a boat pulled up on the shingle. As one pictsie, or small yellow mushroom, the Nac Mac Feegles were flocking towards it and clambering up the sides. ‘What are you doing?’ said Tiffany. ‘Best if we wuz leavin’,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘It’s a good dream ye’ve found us, but we cannae stay here.’ ‘But we should be safe here!’ ‘Ach, the Quin finds a way in everywhere,’ said Rob, as a hundred pictsies raised an oar. ‘Dinnae fash yersel’, we know all about boats. Did ye no’ see Not-totally-wee Georgie pike fishin’ wi’ Wee Bobby in the stream the other day? We is no strangers to the piscatorial an’ nautical arts, ye ken.’ And they did indeed seem to know about boats. The oars were heaved into the rowlocks, and a party of Feegles pushed it down the stones and into the waves. ‘Now you just hand us the wee bairn,’ shouted Rob Anybody from the stern. Uncertainly, her feet slipping on the wet stones, Tiffany waded through the cold water and handed Wentworth over. He seemed to think it was very funny. ‘Weewee mens!’ he yelled, as they lowered him into the boat. It was his only joke, so he wasn’t going to stop. ‘Aye, that’s right,’ said Rob Anybody, tucking him under the seat. ‘Noo just you bide there like a good boy and no yellin’ for sweeties or Uncle Rob’ll gi’ ye a skelpin’ across the earhole, OK?’ Wentworth chuckled. Tiffany ran back up the beach and hauled Roland to his feet. He opened his eyes and looked blearily at her. ‘W’a’s happening?’ he said. ‘I had this strange drea—’ and then he shut his eyes again, and sagged. ‘Get in the boat!’ Tiffany shouted, dragging him across the shingle. ‘Crivens, are we takin’ this wee streak o’ useless-ness?’ said Rob, grabbing Roland’s trousers and heaving him aboard. ‘Of course!’ Tiffany hauled herself in afterwards, and landed in the bottom of the boat as a wave took it. The oars creaked and splashed, and the boat jerked forward. It jolted once or twice as more waves hit it, and then began to plunge across the sea. The pictsies were strong, after all. Even though each oar was a battleground as pictsies hung from it, or piled up on one another’s shoulders or just heaved anything they could grasp, both oars were almost bending as they were dragged through the water. Tiffany picked herself up, and tried to ignore the sudden uncertain feeling in her stomach. ‘Head for the lighthouse!’ she said. ‘Aye, I ken that,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘It’s the only place there is! And the Quin disnae like light.’ He grinned. ‘It’s a good dream, lady. Have ye no’ looked at the sky?’ ‘It’s just a blue sky,’ said Tiffany. ‘It’s no’ exactly a sky,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Look behind ye.’ Tiffany turned. It was a blue sky. Very blue. But above the retreating beach, halfway up the sky, was a band of yellow. It looked a long way away, and hundreds of miles across. And in the middle of it, looming over the world as big as a galaxy and grey-blue with distance, was a lifebelt. On it, but spelled backwards in letters larger than the moon, were the words: R O L I A S Y L L O J ‘We are in the label?’ said Tiffany. ‘Oh, aye,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘But the sea feels . . . real. It’s salty and wet and cold. It’s not like paint! I didn’t dream it salty or so cold!’ ‘Nae kiddin’? Then it’s a picture on the outside, and it’s real on the inside.’ Rob nodded. ‘Ye ken, we’ve been robbin’ an’ runnin’ aroound on all kinds o’ worlds for a lang time, and I’ll tell ye this: the universe is a lot more comp-li-cated than it looks from the ooutside.’ Tiffany took the grubby label out of her pocket and stared at it again. There was the lifebelt, and the lighthouse. But the Jolly Sailor himself wasn’t there. What was there, so tiny as to be little bigger than a dot on the printed sea, was a tiny rowing boat. She looked up. There were storm clouds in the sky, in front of the huge, hazy lifebelt. They were long and ragged, curling as they came. ‘It didnae take her long to find a way in,’ muttered William. ‘No,’ said Tiffany, ‘but this is my dream. I know how it goes. Keep rowing!’ Tangling and tumbling, some of the clouds passed overhead and then swooped towards the sea. They vanished beneath the waves like a waterspout in reverse. It began to rain hard, so hard that a haze of mist rose over the sea. ‘Is that it?’ Tiffany wondered. ‘Is that all she can do?’ ‘I doot it,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Bend them oars, lads!’ The boat shot forward, bouncing through the rain from wavetop to wave top. But, against all normal rules, it was now trying to go uphill. The water was mounding up and up, and the boat washed backwards in the streaming surf. Something was rising. Something white was pushing the seas aside. Great waterfalls poured off the shining dome that climbed towards the storm sky. It rose higher, and still there was more. And, eventually, there was an eye. It was tiny compared to the mountainous head above it, and it rolled in its socket and focused on the tiny boat. ‘Now, that’s a heid that be a day’s work e’en for Big Yan,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘I reckon we’d have to come back tomorrow! Row, boys!’ ‘It’s a dream of mine,’ said Tiffany, as calmly as she could manage. ‘It’s the whale fish.’ I never dreamed the smell, though, she added to herself. But here it is, a huge, solid, world-filling smell of salt and water and fish and ooze— ‘Whut does it eat?’ Daft Wullie asked. ‘Ah, I know that,’ said Tiffany, as the boat rocked on the swell. ‘Whales aren’t dangerous, because they just eat very small things . . .’ ‘Row like the blazes, lads!’ Rob Anybody yelled. ‘How d’ye ken it only eats wee stuff?’ said Daft Wullie as the whale fish’s mouth began to open. ‘I paid a whole cucumber once for a lesson on Beasts of the Deep,’ said Tiffany, as a wave washed over them. ‘Whales don’t even have proper teeth!’ There was a creaking sound and a gust of fishy halitosis about the size of a typhoon, and the view was full of enormous, pointy teeth. ‘Aye?’ said Wullie. ‘Weel, no offence meant, but I dinnae think this beastie went to the same school as ye!’ The surge of water was pushing them away. And Tiffany could see the whole of the head now and, in a way she couldn’t possibly describe, the whale looked like the Queen. The Queen was there, somewhere. The anger came back. ‘This is my dream,’ she shouted at the sky. I’ve dreamed it dozens of times! You’re not allowed in here! And whales don’t eat people! Everyone who isn’t very stupid knows that!’ A tail the size of a field rose and slapped down on the sea. The whale shot forward. Rob Anybody threw off his yellow hat and drew his sword. ‘Ach, weel, we tried,’ he said. ‘This wee beastie’s gonna get the worst belly ache there ever wuz!’ ‘Aye, we’ll cut oour way out!’ shouted Daft Wullie. ‘No, keep rowing!’ said Tiffany. ‘It’s ne’er been said that the Nac Mac Feegle turned their back on a foe!’ Rob yelled. ‘But you’re rowing facing backwards!’ Tiffany pointed out. The pictsie looked crestfallen. ‘Oh, aye, I hadnae thought o’ it like that,’ he said, sitting down again. ‘Just row!’ Tiffany insisted. ‘We’re nearly at the lighthouse!’ Grumbling, because even if they were facing the right way they were still going the wrong way, the pictsies hauled on the oars. ‘That’s a great big heid he’s got there, ye ken,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘How big would you say that heid is, gonnagle?’ ‘Ach, I’d say it’s verrra big, Rob,’ said William, who was with the team on the other oar. ‘Indeed, I might commit myself to sayin’ it’s enorrrrmous.’ ‘Ye’d go as far as that, would ye?’ ‘Oh, aye. Enorrrrmous is fully justified . . .’ It’s nearly on us, Tiffany thought. This has got to work. It’s my dream. Any moment. Any moment now . . . ‘An’ how near us would you say it is, then?’ asked Rob conversationally, as the boat wallowed and jerked just ahead of the whale. ‘That’s a verrra good question, Rob,’ said William. ‘And I’d answer it by sayin’ it’s verrra close indeed.’ Any moment now, thought Tiffany. I know Miss Tick said you shouldn’t believe in your dreams, but she meant you shouldn’t just hope. Er . . . any moment now, I . . . hope. He’s never missed . . . ‘In fact I’d go so farrr as to say exceedingly close—’ William began. Tiffany swallowed, and hoped that the whale wouldn’t. There was only about thirty yards of water between the teeth and the boat. And then it was filled with a wooden wall that blurred as it went past, making a zipzipzip noise. Tiffany looked up, her mouth open. White sails flashed across the storm clouds, pouring rain like waterfalls. She looked up at rigging and ropes and sailors lined up on the spars, and cheered. And then the stern of the Jolly Sailor’s ship was disappearing into the rain and mist, but not before Tiffany saw the big bearded figure at the wheel, dressed in yellow oilskins. He turned and waved just once, before the ship vanished into the murk. She managed to stand up again, as the boat rocked in the swell, and yelled at the towering whale: ‘You’ve got to chase him! That’s how it has to work! You chase him, he chases you! Granny Aching said so! You can’t not do it and still be the whale fish! This is my dream! My rules! I’ve had more practice at it than you!’ ‘Big fishy!’ yelled Wentworth. That was more surprising than the whale. Tiffany stared at her little brother as the boat rocked again. ‘Big fishy!’ said Wentworth again. ‘That’s right!’ Tiffany said, delighted. ‘Big fishy! And what makes it particularly interesting it that a whale isn’t a fish! It is in fact a mammal, just like a cow!’ Did you just say that? said her Second Thoughts, as all the pictises stared at her and the boat spun in the surf. The first time he’s ever said anything that wasn’t about sweeties or weewee and you just corrected him? Tiffany looked at the whale. It was having trouble. But it was the whale, the whale she’d dreamed about many times after Granny Aching had told her that story, and not even the Queen could control a story like that. It turned reluctantly in the water and dived in the wake of the Jolly Sailor’s ship. ‘Big fishy gone!’ said Wentworth. ‘No, it’s a mammal—’ Tiffany’s mouth said, before she could stop it. The pictsies were still staring at her. ‘It’s just that he ought to get it right,’ she mumbled, ashamed of herself. ‘It’s a mistake lots of people make . . .’ You’re going to turn into somebody like Miss Tick, said her Second Thoughts. Do you really want that? ‘Yes,’ said a voice, and Tiffany realized that it was hers again. The anger rose up, joyfully. ‘Yes! I’m me, I am careful and logical and I look up things I don’t understand! When I hear people use the wrong words I get edgy! I am good with cheese. I read books fast! I think! And I always have a piece of string! That’s the kind of person I am!’ She stopped. Even Wentworth was staring at her now. He blinked. ‘Big water cow gone . . .’ he suggested, meekly. ‘That’s right! Good boy!’ said Tiffany. ‘When we get home you can have one sweet!’ She saw the massed ranks of the Nac Mac Feegles still looking at her with worried expressions. ‘Is it OK wi’ you if we get on?’ said Rob Anybody, holding up a nervous hand. ‘Before yon whale fi— Before yon whale cow comes back?’ Tiffany looked past them. The lighthouse wasn’t far. A little jetty stretched out from its tiny island. ‘Yes, please. Er . . . thank you,’ she said, calming down a bit. The ship and the whale had vanished into the rain and the sea was merely lapping at the shore. A drome was sitting on the rocks with its pale, fat legs sticking out in front of it. It was staring out to sea and didn’t appear to notice the approaching boat. It thinks it’s home, Tiffany thought. I’ve given it a dream it likes. Pictsies poured onto the jetty and tied up the boat. ‘OK, we’re here,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘We’ll just chop yon creature’s heid off and we’ll be right oout o’ here . . .’ ‘Don’t!’ said Tiffany. ‘But it—’ ‘Leave it alone. Just. . . leave it alone, all right? It’s not interested.’ And it knows about sea, she added to herself. It’s probably homesick for the sea. That’s why it’s such a real dream. I’d have never have got it right by myself. A crab crawled out of the surf by the drome’s feet, and settled down to dream crab dreams. It looks as though a drome can get lost in its own dream, she thought. I wonder if it’ll ever wake up? She turned to the Nac Mac Feegles. ‘In my dream I always wake up when I reach the lighthouse,’ she said. The pictsies looked up at the red and white tower and, as one Feegle, drew their swords. ‘We dinnae trust the Quin,’ said Rob. ‘She’ll let ye think ye’re safe, and just when ye’ve dropped your guard she’ll leap oout. She’ll be waitin’ behind the door, ye can bet on it. Ye’ll let us go in first.’ It was an instruction, not a question. Tiffany nodded, and watched the Nac Mac Feegles swarm over the rocks towards the tower. Alone on the jetty, except for Wentworth and the unconscious Roland, she lifted the toad out of her pocket. It opened its yellow eyes and stared at the sea. ‘Either I’m dreaming, or I’m on a beach,’ it said. ‘And toads don’t dream.’ ‘In my dream they can,’ said Tiffany. ‘And this is my dream.’ ‘Then it is an extremely dangerous one!’ said the toad ungratefully. ‘No, it’s lovely,’ said Tiffany. ‘It’s wonderful. Look at the way the light dances on the waves.’ ‘Where are the notices warning people they could drown?’ complained the toad. ‘No lifebelts or shark nets. Oh, dear. Do I see a qualified lifeguard? I think not. Supposing someone was to — ‘ ‘It’s a beach,’ said Tiffany. ‘Why are you talking like this?’ ‘I - I don’t know,’ said the toad. ‘Can you put me down, please? I feel a headache coming on.’ Tiffany put it down and it shuffled into some seaweed. After a while she heard it eating something. The sea was calm. It was peaceful. It was exactly the moment anyone sensible should distrust. But nothing happened. It was followed by nothing else happening. Wentworth picked up a pebble from the shingle and put it in his mouth, on the basis that anything might be a sweetie. Then, suddenly, there were noises from the lighthouse. Tiffany heard muffled shouts, and thuds, and once or twice the sound of breaking glass. At one point there was a noise like something heavy falling down a long spiral staircase and hitting every step on the way. The door opened. The Nac Mac Feegles came out. They looked satisfied. ‘Nae problemo,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘No one there.’ ‘But there was a lot of noise!’ ‘Oh, aye. We had to make sure,’ said Daft Wullie. ‘Wee wee men!’ shouted Wentworth. ‘I’ll wake up when I go through the door,’ said Tiffany, pulling Roland out of the boat. ‘I always have. It must work. This is my dream.’ She hauled the boy upright and turned to the nearest Feegle. ‘Can you bring Wentworth?’ ‘Aye.’ ‘And you won’t get lost or, or drunk or anything?’ Rob Anybody looked offended. ‘We ne’er get lost!’ he said. ‘We always ken where we are! It’s just sometimes mebbe we aren’t sure where everything else is, but it’s no’ our fault if everything else gets lost! The Nac Mac Feegle are never lost!’ ‘What about drunk?’ said Tiffany, dragging Roland towards the lighthouse. ‘We’ve ne’er been lost in oour lives! Is that no’ the case, lads?’ said Rob Anybody. There was a murmur of resentful agreement. The words “lost” and “Nac Mac Feegle” shouldnae turn up in the same sen-tence!’ ‘And drunk?’ said Tiffany again, laying Roland down on the shingle. ‘Gettin’ lost is something that happens to other people!’ declared Rob Anybody. ‘I want to make that point perrrfectly clear!’ ‘Well, at least there shouldn’t have been anything to drink in a lighthouse,’ said Tiffany. She laughed. ‘Unless you drank the lamp oil, and no one would dare do that!’ The pictsies suddenly fell silent. ‘What would that be, then?’ said Daft Wullie, in a slow, careful voice. ‘Would it be the stuff in a kind o’ big bottle kind o’ thingie?’ ‘Wi’ a wee skull and crossbones on it?’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Yes, probably, and it’s horrible stuff,’ said Tiffany. ‘It’d make you terribly ill if you drank it.’ ‘Really?’ said Rob Anybody, thoughtfully. That’s verra . . . interesting. What sort o’ ill would that be, kind o’ thing?’ ‘I think you’d probably die,’ said Tiffany. ‘We’re already dead,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Well, you’d be very, very sick, then,’ said Tiffany. She gave him a strong look. ‘It’s inflammable, too. It’s a good job you didn’t drink it, isn’t it. . .’ Daft Wullie belched loudly. There was a strong smell of paraffin. ‘Aye,’ he said. Tiffany went and fetched Wentworth. Behind her, she heard some muffled whispering as the pictsies went into a huddle. ‘I told yez the wee skull on it meant we shouldnae touch it!’ ‘Big Yan said that showed it wuz strong stuff! An’ things ha’ come to a pretty pass, ye ken, if people are going to leave stuff like that aroound where innocent people could accidentally smash the door doon and lever the bars aside and take the big chain off’f the cupboard and pick the lock and drink it!’ ‘What’s inflammable mean?’ ‘It means it catches fire!’ ‘OK, OK, dinnae panic. No belchin’, and none ofyouse is to tak’ a leak anywhere near any naked flames, OK? And act nat’ral.’ Tiffany smiled to herself. Pictsies seemed very hard to kill. Perhaps believing you were already dead made you immune. She turned and looked towards the lighthouse door. She had never actually seen it opened in her dream. She’d always thought that the lighthouse was full of light, on the basis that on the farm the cowshed was full of cows and the woodshed was full of wood. ‘All right, all right,’ she said, looking down at Rob Anybody. ‘I’m going to carry Roland, and I want you to bring Wentworth.’ ‘Don’t you want to carry the wee lad?’ said Rob. ‘Weewee man!’ shouted Wentworth. ‘You bring him,’ said Tiffany shortly. She meant: I’m not sure this is going to work, and he might be safer with you than with me. I hope I’m going to wake up in my bedroom. Waking up in my bedroom would be nice . . . Of course, if everyone else wakes up there, too, there might be some difficult questions asked, but anything’s better than the Queen— There was a rushing, rattling noise behind her. She turned, and saw the sea disappearing, very quickly. It was pulling back down the shore. As she watched, rocks and clumps of seaweed rose above the surf and then were suddenly high and dry. ‘Ah,’ she said, after a moment. ‘It’s all right. I know what this is. It’s the tide. The sea does this. It goes in and out every day.’ ‘Aye?’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Amazin’. It looks like it’s pourin’ awa’ though a hole . . .’ About fifty yards away the last rivulets of sea water were disappearing over an edge, and some of the pictsies were already heading towards it. Tiffany suddenly had a moment of something that wasn’t exactly panic. It was a lot slower and nastier than panic. It began with just a nagging little doubt, that said: isn’t the tide a bit slower? The teacher (Wonders of the Nattral Wurld, One Apple) hadn’t gone into much detail. But there were fish flapping on the exposed sea bed, and surely the fish in the sea didn’t die every day? ‘Er, I think we’d better be careful. . .’ she said, trailing after Rob Anybody. ‘Why? It’s nae as though the water’s risin’,’ he said. ‘When does the tide come back?’ ‘Urn, not for hours, I think,’ said Tiffany, feeling the slow, nasty panic getting bigger. ‘But I’m not sure this—’ ‘Tons o’ time, then,’ said Rob Anybody. They’d reached the edge, where the rest of the pictsies were lined up. A little bit of water still trickled over their feet, pouring down into the gulf beyond. It was like looking down into a valley. At the far side, miles and miles away, the retreating sea was just a gleaming line. Below them, though, were the shipwrecks. There were a lot of them. Galleons and schooners and clippers, masts broken, rigging hanging, hulls breached, lay strewn across the puddles in what had been the bay. The Nac Mac Feegles, as one pictsie, sighed happily. ‘Sunken treasure!’ ‘Aye! Gold!’ ‘Bullion!’ ‘Jools!’ ‘What makes you think they’ve got treasure in?’ said Tiffany. The Nac Mac Feegles looked amazed, as if she’d suggested that rocks could fly. ‘There’s got to be treasure in ‘em,’ said Daft Wullie. ‘Otherwise what’s the point of lettin’ ‘em sink?’ ‘That’s right,’ said Rob Anybody. There’s got t’be gold in sunken ships, otherwise it wouldnae be worth fighting all them sharkies and octopussies and stuff. Stealin’ treasure fra’ the ocean’s bed, that’s aboout the biggest, best thievin’ ever!’ And now what Tiffany felt was real, honest panic. ‘That’s a lighthouse!’ she said, pointing. ‘Can you see it? A lighthouse so ships don’t run into the rocks! Right? Understand? This is a trap made just for you! The Queen’s still around!’ ‘Mebbe just can we go down and look inside one wee ship?’ said Rob Anybody, meekly. ‘No! Because—’ Tiffany looked up. A gleam had caught her eye. ‘Because . . . the sea . . . is . . . coming . . . back . . .’ she said. What looked like a cloud on the horizon was getting bigger, and glittering as it came. Tiffany could already hear the roar. She ran back up the beach and got her hands under Roland’s armpits, so that she could drag him to the lighthouse. She looked back, and the pictsies were still watching the huge, surging wave. And there was Wentworth, watching the wave happily, and bending down slightly so that, if they stood on tiptoe, he could hold hands with two Feegles. The image branded itself on her eyes. The little boy, and the pictsies, all with their backs to her, and all staring with interest at the rushing, glittering, sky-filling wall of water. ‘Come on!’ Tiffany yelled. ‘I was wrong, this isn’t the tide, this is the Queen—’ Sunken ships were lifted up and spun around in the hissing mountain of surf. ‘Come on!’ Tiffany managed to haul Roland across her shoulder and, staggering across the rocks, made it to the lighthouse door as the water crashed behind her— — for a moment the world was full of white light— — and snow squeaked underfoot. It was the silent, cold land of the Queen. There was no one around and nothing to see except snow and, in the distance, the forest. Black clouds hovered over it. Ahead of her, and only just visible, was a picture in the air. It showed some turf, and a few stones, lit with moonlight. It was the other side of the door back home. She turned round desperately. ‘Please!’ she shouted. It wasn’t a request to anyone special. She just needed to shout. ‘Rob? William? Wullie? Wentworth? Away towards the forest there was the barking of the grimhounds. ‘Got to get out,’ muttered Tiffany. ‘Got to get away . . .’ She grabbed Roland by the collar and dragged him towards the door. At least he slid better on snow. No one and nothing tried to stop her. The snow spilled a little way through the doorway between the stones and onto the turf, but the air was warm and alive with night-time insect noises. Under a real moon, under a real sky, she pulled the boy over to a fallen stone and sat him up against it. She sat down next to him, exhausted to the bone, and tried to get her breath back. Her dress was soaked, and smelled of the sea. She could hear her own thoughts, a long way off: They could still be alive. It was a dream, after all. There must be a way back. All I have to do is find it. I’ve got to go back in there. The dogs sounded very loud . . . She stood up again, although what she really wanted to do was sleep. The three stones of the door were a black shape against the stars. And as she watched, they fell down. The one on the left slipped over, slowly, and the other two ended up leaning against it. She ran over and hauled at the tons of stone. She prodded the air around them in case the doorway was still there. She squinted madly, trying to see it. Tiffany stood under the stars, alone, and tried not to cry. ‘What a shame,’ said the Queen. ‘You’ve let everybody down, haven’t you . . .?’ Chapter 13 Land Under Wave The Queen walked over the turf towards Tiffany. Where she’d trodden, frost gleamed for a moment. The little part of Tiffany that was still thinking thought: That grass will be dead in the morning. She’s killing my turf. The whole of life is but a dream, when you come to think of it,’ said the Queen in the same infuriat-ingly calm, pleasant voice. She sat down on the fallen stones. ‘You humans are such dreamers. You dream that you’re clever. You dream that you’re important. You dream that you’re special. You know, you’re almost better than dromes. You’re certainly more imaginative. I have to thank you.’ ‘What for?’ said Tiffany, looking at her boots. Terror clamped her body in red-hot wires. There wasn’t anywhere to run to. ‘I never realized how wonderful your world is,’ said the Queen. ‘I mean, the dromes . . . well, they’re not much more than a kind of walking sponge, really. Their world is ancient. It’s nearly dead. They’re not really creative any more. With a little help from me, your people could be a lot better. Because, you see, you dream all the time. You, especially, dream all the time. Your picture of the world is a landscape with you in the middle of it, isn’t it? Wonderful. Look at you, in that rather horrible dress and those clumpy boots. You dreamed you could invade my world with a frying pan. You had this dream about Brave Girl Rescuing Little Brother. You thought you were the heroine of a story. And then you left him behind. You know, I think being hit by a billion tons of sea water must be like having a mountain of iron drop on your head, don’t you?’ Tiffany couldn’t think. Her head was full of hot, pink fog. It hadn’t worked. Her Third Thoughts were somewhere in the fog, trying to make themselves heard. ‘Got Roland out,’ she muttered, still staring at her boots. ‘But he’s not yours,’ said the Queen. ‘He is, let us face it, a rather stupid boy with a big red face and brains made of pork, just like his father. You left your little brother behind with a bunch of little thieves and you rescued a spoiled little fool.’ There was no time! shrieked the Third Thoughts. You wouldn’t have got to him and got back to the lighthouse! You nearly didn’t get away as it was! You got Roland out! It was the logical thing to do! You don’t have to be guilty about it! What’s better, to try to save your brother and be brave, courageous, stupid and dead, or save the boy and be brave, courageous, sensible and alive? But something kept saying that stupid and dead would have been more . . . right. Something kept saying: Would you say to Mum that you could see there wasn’t time to rescue your brother so you rescued someone else instead? Would she be pleased that you’d worked that out? Being right doesn’t always work. It’s the Queen! yelled the Third Thoughts. It’s her voice! It’s like hypnotism! You’ve got to stop listening! ‘I expect it’s not your fault you’re so cold and heartless,’ said the Queen. ‘It’s probably all to do with your parents. They probably never gave you enough time. And having Wentworth was a very cruel thing to do, they really should have been more careful. And they let you read too many words. It can’t be good for a young brain, knowing words like paradigm and eschatological. It leads to behaviour such as using your own brother as monster bait.’ The Queen sighed. ‘Sadly, that kind of thing happens all the time. I think you should be proud of not being worse than just deeply introverted and socially maladjusted.’ She walked around Tiffany. ‘It’s so sad,’ she continued. ‘You dream that you are strong, sensible, logical . . . the kind of person who always has a bit of string. But that’s just your excuse for not being really, properly human. You’re just a brain, no heart at all. You didn’t even cry when Granny Aching died. You think too much, and now your precious thinking has let you down. Well, I think it’s best if I just kill you, don’t you?’ Find a stone! the Third Thoughts screamed. Hit her! Tiffany was aware of other figures in the gloom. There were some of the people from the summer pictures, but there were also dromes and the headless horseman and the Bumble-Bee women. Around her, frost crept over the ground. ‘I think we’ll like it here,’ said the Queen. Tiffany felt the cold creeping up her legs. Her Third Thoughts, hoarse with effort, shouted: Do something! She should have been better organized, she thought dully. She shouldn’t have relied on dreams. Or . . . perhaps I should have been a real human being. More . . . feeling. But I couldn’t help not crying! It just . . . wouldn’t come! And how can I stop thinking? And thinking about thinking? And even thinking about thinking about thinking? She saw the smile in the Queen’s eyes, and thought: Which one of all those people doing all that thinking is me? Is there really any me at all? Clouds poured across the sky like a stain. They covered the stars. They were the inky clouds from the frozen world, the clouds of nightmare. It began to rain, rain with ice in it. It hit the turf like bullets, turning it into chalky mud. The wind howled like a pack of grimhounds. Tiffany managed to take a step forward. The mud sucked at her boots. ‘A bit of spirit at last?’ said the Queen, stepping back. Tiffany tried another step, but things were not working any more. She was too cold and too tired. She could feel her self disappearing, getting lost. . . ‘So sad, to end like this,’ said the Queen. Tiffany fell forward, into the freezing mud. The rain grew harder, stinging like needles, hammering on her head and running like icy tears down her cheeks. It struck so hard it left her breathless. She felt the cold drawing all the heat out of her. And that was the only sensation left, apart from a musical note. It sounded like the smell of snow, or the sparkle of frost. It was high and thin and drawn out. She couldn’t feel the ground under her and there was nothing to see, not even the stars. The clouds had covered everything. She was so cold she couldn’t feel the cold any more, or her fingers. A thought managed to trickle through her freezing mind. Is there any me at all? Or do my thoughts just dream of me? The blackness grew deeper. Night was never as black as this, and winter never as cold. It was colder than the deep winters when the snow came down and Granny Aching would plod from snowdrift to snowdrift, looking for warm bodies. The sheep could survive the snow if the shepherd had some wits, Granny used to say. The snow kept the cold away, the sheep surviving in warm hollows under roofs of snow while a bitter wind blew harmlessly over them. But this was as cold as those days when even the snow couldn’t fall, and the wind was pure cold itself, blowing ice crystals across the turf. Those were the killer days in early spring, when the lambing had begun and winter came howling down one more time . . . There was darkness everywhere, bitter and starless. There was a speck of light, a long way off. One star. Low down. Moving . . . It got bigger in the stormy night. It zigzagged as it came. Silence covered Tiffany, and drew her into itself. The silence smelled of sheep, and turpentine, and tobaccco. And then . . . came movement, as if she was falling through the ground, very fast. And gentle warmth, and, just for a moment, the sound of waves. And her own voice, inside her head. This land is in my bones. Land under wave. Whiteness. It tumbled through the warm, heavy darkness around her, something like snow but as fine as dust. It piled up somewhere below her, because she could see a faint whiteness. A creature like an ice-cream cone with lots of tentacles shot past her and jetted away. I’m underwater, thought Tiffany. I remember. . . This is the million-year rain under the sea, this is the new land being born underneath an ocean. It’s not a dream. It’s . . . a memory. The land under wave. Millions and millions of tiny shells . . . This land was alive. All the time there was the warm, comforting smell of the shepherding hut, and the feeling of being held in invisible hands. The whiteness below her rose up and over her head, but it didn’t seem uncomfortable. It was like being in a mist. Now I’m inside the chalk, like a flint, like a calkin . . . She wasn’t sure how long she spent in the warm deep water, or if indeed any time really had passed, or if the millions of years went past in a second, but she felt movement again, and a sense of rising. More memories poured into her mind. There’s always been someone watching the borders. They didn’t decide to. It was decided for them. Someone has to care. Sometimes, they have to fight. Someone has to speak for that which has no voice . . . She opened her eyes. She was still lying in the mud, and the Queen was laughing at her and, overhead, the storm still raged. But she felt warm. In fact, she felt hot, red-hot with anger . . . anger at the bruised turf, anger at her own stupidity, anger at this beautiful creature whose only talent was control. This . . . creature was trying to take her world. All witches are selfish, the Queen had said. But Tiffany’s Third Thoughts said: Then turn selfishness into a weapon! Make all things yours! Make other lives and dreams and hopes yours! Protect them! Save them! Bring them into the sheepfold! Walk the gale for them! Keep away the wolf! My dreams! My brother! My family! My land! My world! How dare you try to take these things, because they are mine! I have a duty! The anger overflowed. She stood up clenched her fists and screamed at the storm, putting into the scream all the rage that was inside her. Lightning struck the ground on either side of her. li did so twice. And it stayed there, crackling, and two dogs formed. Steam rose from their coats, and blue light sparked from their ears as they shook themselves. They looked attentively at Tiffany. The Queen gasped, and vanished. ‘Come by, Lightning!’ shouted Tiffany. ‘Away to me, Thunder!’ And she remembered the time when she’d run across the downs, falling over, shouting all the wrong things, while the two dogs had done exactly what needed to be done . . . Two streaks of black and white sped away across the turf and up towards the clouds. They herded the storm. Clouds panicked and scattered, but always there was a comet streaking across the sky and they were turned. Monstrous shapes writhed and screamed in the boiling sky, but Thunder and Lightning had worked many flocks; there was an occasional snap of lightning-sparked teeth, and a wail. Tiffany stared upwards, rain pouring off her face, and shouted commands that no dog could possibly have heard. Jostling and rumbling and screaming, the storm rolled off the hills and away towards the mountains, where there were deep canyons that could pen it. Out of breath, glowing with triumph, Tiffany watched until the dogs came back and settled, once again, on the turf. And then she remembered something else: it didn’t matter what orders she gave those dogs. They were not her dogs. They were working dogs. Thunder and Lightning didn’t take orders from a little girl. And the dogs weren’t looking at her. They were looking just behind her. She’d have turned if someone had told her a horrible monster was behind her. She’d have turned if they’d said it had a thousand teeth. She didn’t want to turn round now. Forcing herself was the hardest thing she’d ever done. She was not afraid of what she might see. She was terribly, mortally frightened, afraid to the centre of her bones of what she might not see. She shut her eyes while her cowardly boots shuffled her round and then, after a deep breath, she opened them again. There was a gust of Jolly Sailor tobacco, and sheep, and turpentine. Sparkling in the dark, light glittering off the white shepherdess dress and every blue ribbon and silver buckle of it, was Granny Aching, smiling hugely, glowing with pride. In one hand she held the huge ornamental crook, hung with blue bows. She pirouetted slowly, and Tiffany saw that while she was a brilliant, glowing shepherdess from hat to hem, she still had her huge old boots on. Granny Aching took her pipe out of her mouth, and gave Tiffany the little nod that was, from her, a round of applause. And then - she wasn’t. Real starlit darkness covered the turf, and the night-time sounds filled the air. Tiffany didn’t know if what had just happened was a dream or had happened somewhere that wasn’t quite here or had only happened in her head. It didn’t matter. It had happened. And now— ‘But I’m still here,’ said the Queen, stepping in front of her. ‘Perhaps it was all a dream. Perhaps you have gone a little mad, because you are after all a very strange child. Perhaps you had help. How good are you? Do you really think that you can face me alone? I can make you think whatever I please—’ ‘Crivens!’ ‘Oh no, not them,’ said the Queen, throwing up her hands. It wasn’t just the Nac Mac Feegles, but also Wentworth, a strong smell of seaweed, a lot of water and a dead shark. They appeared in mid-air and landed in a heap between Tiffany and the Queen. But a pictsie was always ready for a fight, and they bounced, rolled and came up drawing their swords and shaking sea water out of their hair. ‘Oh, ‘tis you, izzut?’ said Rob Anybody, glaring up at the Queen. ‘Face to face wi’ ye at last, ye bloustie ol’ callyack that ye are! Ye canna’ come here, unnerstand? Be off wi’ ye! Are ye goin’ to go quietly?’ The Queen stamped heavily on him. When she took her foot away, only the top of his head was visible above the turf. ‘Well, are ye?’ he said, pulling himself out as if nothing had happened. ‘I don’t wantae havtae lose my temper wi’ ye! An’ it’s no good sendin’ your pets against us, ‘cos you ken we can take ‘em tae the cleaners!’ He turned to Tiffany, who hadn’t moved. ‘You just leave this tae us, Kelda. Us an’ the Quin, we go way back!’ The Queen snapped her fingers. ‘Always leaping into things you don’t understand,’ she hissed. ‘Well, can you face these?’ Every Nac Mac Feegle sword suddenly glowed blue. Back in the crowd of eerily lit pictsies a voice that sounded very much like that of Daft Wullie said: ‘Ach, we’re in real trouble noo . . .’ Three figures had appeared in the air, a little way away. The middle one, Tiffany saw, had a long red gown, a strange long wig and black tights with buckles on his shoes. The others were just ordinary men, it seemed, in ordinary grey suits. ‘Oh, ye are a harrrrrd wumman, Quin,’ said William the gonnagle, ‘to set the lawyers ontae us . . .’ ‘See the one on the left there,’ whimpered a pictsie. ‘See, he’s got a briefcase! It’s a briefcasel Oh, waily, waily, a briefcase, waily . . .’ Reluctantly, a step at a time, pressing together in terror, the Nac Mac Feegles began to back away. ‘Oh, waily waily, he’s snappin’ the clasps,’ groaned Daft Wullie. ‘Oh, waily waily waily, ‘tis the sound o’ Doom when a lawyer does that!’ ‘Mister Rob Anybody Feegle and sundry others?’ said one of the figures in a voice of dread. ‘There’s naebody here o’ that name!’ shouted Rob Anybody. ‘We dinnae know anythin’!’ ‘We have heard a list of criminal and civil charges totalling nineteen thousand, seven hundred and sixty-three separate offences—’ ‘We wasnae there!’ yelled Rob Anybody desperately. ‘Isn’t that right, lads?’ ‘- including more than two thousand cases of Making an Affray, Causing a Public Nuisance, Being Found Drunk, Being Found Very Drunk, Using Offensive Language (taking into account ninety-seven counts of Using Language That Was Probably Offensive If Anyone Else Could Understand It), Committing a Breach of the Peace, Malicious Lingering—’ ‘It’s mistaken identity!’ shouted Rob Anybody. ‘It’s no’ oour fault! We wuz only standing there an’ someone else did it and ran awa’!’ ‘- Grand Theft, Petty Theft, Burglary, Housebreaking, Loitering With Intent To Commit a Felony—’ ‘We wuz misunderstood when we was wee bairns!’ yelled Rob Anybody. ‘Ye’re only pickin’ on us cuz we’re blue! We always get blamed for every thin’! The polis hate us! We wasnae even in the country!’ But, to groans from the cowering pictsies, one of the lawyers produced a big roll of paper from his briefcase. He cleared his throat and read out: ‘Angus, Big; Angus, No’-As-Big-As-Big-Angus; Angus, Wee; Archie, Big; Archie, One-Eyed; Archie, Wee Mad—’ ‘They’ve got oour names!’ sobbed Daft Wullie. They’ve got oour names\ It’s the pris’n hoose for us!’ ‘Objection! I move for a writ of Habeas Corpus,’ said a small voice. ‘And enter a plea of Vis-nefaciem capite repletam, without prejudice.’ There was absolute silence for a moment. Rob Anybody turned to look at the frightened Nac Mac Feegles and said: ‘OK, OK, which of youse said that?’ The toad crawled out of the crowd, and sighed. ‘It suddenly all came back to me,’ it said. ‘I remember what I was now. The legal language brought it all back. I’m a toad now but. . .’ it swallowed, ‘once I was a lawyer. And this, people, is illegal. These charges are a complete tissue of lies based on hearsay evidence.’ It raised yellow eyes towards the Queen’s lawyers. ‘I further move that the case is adjourned sine die on the basis of Potest-ne mater tua suere, amice.’ The lawyers had pulled large books out of nowhere and were thumbing through them hastily. ‘We’re not familiar with counsel’s terminology,’ said one of them. ‘Hey, they’re sweatin’,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘You mean we can have lawyers on oour side as well?’ ‘Yes, of course,’ said the toad. ‘You can have defence lawyers.’ ‘Defence?’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Are you tellin’ me we could get awa’ wi’ it ‘cos of a tishoo o’ lies?’ ‘Certainly,’ said the toad. ‘And with all the treasure you’ve stolen you can pay enough to be very innocent indeed. My fee will be—’ It gulped as a dozen glowing swords were swung towards him. ‘I’ve just remembered why that fairy godmother turned me into a toad,’ it said. ‘So, in the circumstances, I’ll take this case pro bono publico.’ The swords didn’t move. ‘That means for free,’ it added. ‘Oh, right, we like the sound o’ that,’ said Rob Anybody, to the sound of swords being sheathed. ‘How come ye’re a lawyer an’ a toad?’ ‘Oh, well, it was just bit of an argument,’ said the toad. ‘A fairy godmother gave my client three wishes - the usual health, wealth and happiness package -and when my client woke up one wet morning and didn’t feel particularly happy she got me to bring an action for breach of contract. It was a definite first in the history of fairy godmothering. Unfortunately, as it turned out, so was turning the client into a small hand mirror and her lawyer, as you see before you, into a toad. I think the worst part was when the judge applauded. That was hurtful, in my opinion.’ ‘But ye can still remember all that legal stuff? Quid,’ said Rob Anybody. He glared at the other lawyers. ‘Hey, youse scunners, we got a cheap lawyer and we no’ afraid tae use him wi’ prejudice!’ The other lawyers were pulling more and more paperwork out of the air now. They looked worried, and a little frightened. Rob Anybody’s eyes gleamed as he watched them. ‘What does all that Viznee-facey-em stuff mean, my learned friend?’ he said. ‘Vis-ne faciem capite repletam,’ said the toad. ‘It was the best I could do in a hurry, but it means, approximately,’ he gave a little cough, ‘ “would you like a face which is full of head?”‘ ‘And tae think we didnae know legal talkin’ was that simple,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘We could all be lawyers, lads, if we knew the fancy words! Let’s get them!’ The Nac Mac Feegle could change mood in a moment, especially at the sound of a battle cry. They raised their swords in the air. ‘Twelve hundred angry men!’ they shouted . ‘Nae more courtroom drama!’ ‘We ha’ the law on oour side!’ ‘The law’s made to tak’ care o’ raskills!’ ‘No,’ said the Queen, and waved her hand. Lawyers and pictsies faded away. There was just her and Tiffany, facing one another on the turf at dawn, the wind hissing around the stones. ‘What have you done with them?’ Tiffany shouted. ‘Oh, they’re around . . . somewhere,’ said the Queen airily. ‘It’s all dreams, anyway. And dreams within dreams. You can’t rely on anything, little girl. Nothing is real. Nothing lasts. Everything goes. All you can do is learn to dream. And it’s too late for that. And I. . . I have had longer to learn.’ Tiffany wasn’t sure which of her thoughts was operating now. She was tired. She felt as though she was watching herself from above and a little behind. She saw herself set her boots firmly on the turf, and then . . . . . . and then . . . . . . and then, like someone rising from the clouds of a sleep, she felt the deep, deep Time below her. She sensed the breath of the downs and the distant roar of ancient, ancient seas trapped in millions of tiny shells. She thought of Granny Aching, under the turf, becoming part of the chalk again, part of the land under wave. She felt as if huge wheels, of time and stars, were turning slowly around her. She opened her eyes and then, somewhere inside, opened her eyes again. She heard the grass growing, and the sound of worms below the turf. She could feel the thousands of little lives around her, smell all the scents on the breeze, and see all the shades of the night. . . The wheels of stars and years, of space and time, locked into place. She knew exactly where she was, and who she was, and what she was. She swung a hand. The Queen tried to stop her, but she might as well have tried to stop a wheel of years. Tiffany’s hand caught her face and knocked her off her feet. ‘I never cried for Granny because there was no need to,’ she said. ‘She has never left me!’ She leaned down, and centuries bent with her. ‘The secret is not to dream,’ she whispered. ‘The secret is to wake up. Waking up is harder. I have woken up and I am real. I know where I come from and I know where I’m going. You cannot fool me any more. Or touch me. Or anything that is mine.’ I’ll never be like this again, she thought, as she saw the terror in the Queen’s face. I’ll never again feel as tall as the sky and as old as the hills and as strong as the sea. I’ve been given something for a while, and the price of it is that I have to give it back. And the reward is giving it back, too. No human could live like this. You could spend a day looking at a flower to see how wonderful it is, and that wouldn’t get the milking done. No wonder we dream our way through our lives. To be awake, and see it all as it really is . . . no one could stand that for long. She took a deep breath, and picked the Queen up. She was aware of things happening, of dreams roaring around her, but they didn’t affect her. She was real and she was awake, more awake than she’d ever been. She had to concentrate even to think against the storm of sensations pouring into her mind. The Queen was as light as a baby and changed shape madly in Tiffany’s arms - into monsters and mixed-up beasts, things with claws and tentacles. But, at last, she was small and grey, like a monkey, with a large head and big eyes and a little downy chest that went up and down as she panted. She reached the stones. The arch still stood. It was never down, Tiffany thought. She had no strength, no magic, just one trick. The worst one. ‘Stay away from here,’ said Tiffany, stepping though the stone doorway. ‘Never come back. Never touch what is mine.’ And then, because the thing was so weak and baby-like, she added: ‘But I hope there’s someone who’ll cry for you. I hope the King comes back.’ ‘You pity me?’ growled the thing that had been the Queen. ‘Yes. A bit,’ said Tiffany. Like Miss Robinson, she thought. She put the creature down. It scampered across the snow, turned, and became the beautiful Queen again. ‘You won’t win,’ the Queen said. ‘There’s always a way in. People dream.’ ‘Sometimes we waken,’ said Tiffany. ‘Don’t come back . . . or there will be a reckoning . . .’ She concentrated, and now the stones framed nothing more - or less - than the country beyond. I shall have to find a way of sealing that, said her Third Thoughts. Or her twentieth thoughts, perhaps. Her head was full of thoughts. She managed to walk a little way and then sat down, hugging her knees. Imagine getting stuck like this, she thought. You’d have to wear earplugs and noseplugs and a big black hood over your head, and still you’d see and hear too much . . . She closed her eyes, and closed her eyes again. She felt it all draining away. It was like falling asleep, sliding from that strange wide-awakeness into just normal, everyday . . . well, being awake. It felt as if everything was blurred and muffled. This is how we always feel, she thought. We sleepwalk through our lives, because how could we live if we were always that awake— Someone tapped her on the boot. Chapter 14 Small Like Oak Trees ‘Hey, where did you get to?’ shouted Rob Anybody, glaring up at her. ‘One minute we was just aboout to give them lawyers a good legal seein’-to, next minute you and the Quin wuz gone!’ Dreams within dreams, Tiffany thought, holding her head. But they were over, and you couldn’t look at the Nac Mac Feegle and not know what was real. ‘It’s over,’ she said. ‘Didja kill her?’ ‘No.’ ‘She’ll be back then,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘She’s awfu’ stupid, that one. Clever with the dreaming, I’ll grant ye, but not a brain in her heid.’ Tiffany nodded. The blurred feeling was going. The moment of wide-awakeness had faded like a dream. But I must remember that it wasn’t a dream. ‘How did you get away from the huge wave?’ she asked. ‘Ach, we’re fast movers,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘An’ it was a strong lighthoose. O’ course, the water came up pretty high.’ ‘A few sharks were involved, that kind of thing,’ said Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock. ‘Oh, aye, a few sharkies,’ said Rob Anybody, shrugging. ‘And one o’ them octopussies—’ ‘It was a giant squid,’ said William the gonnagle. ‘Aye, well, it was a kebab pretty quickly,’ said Daft Wullie. ‘Ha’ a heidful o’ held, you wee weewee!’ shouted Wentworth, overcome with wit. William coughed politely. ‘And the big wave threw up a lot of sunken vessels full o’ trrrreasure,’ he said. ‘We stopped off for a wee pillage . . .’ The Nac Mac Feegles held up wonderful jewels and big gold coins. ‘But that’s just dream treasure, surely?’ said Tiffany. ‘Fairy gold! It’ll turn into rubbish in the morning!’ ‘Aye?’ said Rob Anybody. He glanced at the horizon. ‘OK, ye heard the kelda, lads! We got mebbe half an hour to sell it to someone! Permission to go offski?’ he added to Tiffany. ‘Er . . . oh, yes. Fine. Thank you—’ They were gone, in a split-second blur of blue and red. But William the gonnagle remained for a moment. He bowed to Tiffany. ‘Ye didnae do at all badly,’ he said. ‘We’re proud o’ ye. So would yer grrranny be. Remember that. Ye are not unloved.’ Then he vanished too. There was a groan from Roland, lying on the turf. He began to move. ‘Weewee men all gone,’ said Wentworth, sadly, in the silence that followed. ‘Crivens all gone.’ ‘What were they?’ muttered Roland, sitting up and holding his head. ‘It’s all a bit complicated,’ said Tiffany. ‘Er . . . do you remember much?’ ‘It all seems like . . . a dream . . .’ said Roland. ‘I remember . . . the sea, and we were running, and I cracked a nut which was full of those little men, and I was hunting in this huge forest with shadows—’ ‘Dreams can be very funny things,’ said Tiffany carefully. She went to stand up and thought: I must wait here a while. I don’t know why I know, I just know. Perhaps I knew and have forgotten. But I must wait for something . . . ‘Can you walk down to the village?’ she said. ‘Oh, yes. I think so. But what did—?’ ‘Then will you take Wentworth with you, please? I’d like to . . . rest for a while.’ ‘Are you sure?’ said Roland, looking concerned. ‘Yes. I won’t be long. Please? You can drop him off at the farm. Tell my parents I’ll be down soon. Tell them I’m fine.’ ‘Weewee men,’ said Wentworth. ‘Crivens! Want bed.’ Roland was still looking uncertain. ‘Off you go!’ Tiffany commanded, and waved him away. When the two of them had disappeared below the brow of the hill, with several backward glances, she sat down between the four iron wheels and hugged her knees. Far off, she could see the mound of the Nac Mac Feegle. Already, they were a slightly puzzling memory, and she’d seen them only a few minutes ago. But when they’d gone, they left the impression of never having been there. She could go to the mound and see if she could find the big hole. But supposing it wasn’t there? Or supposing it was, but all there was down there were rabbits? No, it’s all true, she said to herself. I must remember that, too. A buzzard screamed in the dawn greyness. She looked up as it circled into sunlight, and a tiny dot detached itself from the bird. That was far too high up even for a pictsie to stand the fall. Tiffany scrambled to her feet as Hamish tumbled through the sky. And then - something ballooned above him and the fall became just a gentle floating, like thistledown. The bulging shape above Hamish was Y-shaped. As it got bigger, the shape become more precise, more . . . familiar. He landed, and a pair of Tiffany’s pants, the long-legged ones with the rosebud pattern, settled down on top of him. ‘That was great,’ he said, pushing his way through the folds of fabric. ‘Nae more landin’ on my heid for me!’ ‘They’re my best pants,’ said Tiffany, wearily. ‘You stole them off our clothes line, didn’t you . . . ?’ ‘Oh aye. Nice and clean,’ said Hamish. ‘I had to cut the lace off ‘cuz it got in the way, but I put it by and ye could easily sew it on again.’ He gave Tiffany the big grin of someone who, for once, has not dived heavily into the ground. She sighed. She’d liked the lace. She didn’t have many things that weren’t necessary. ‘I think you’d better keep them,’ she said. ‘Aye, I will, then,’ said Hamish. ‘Noo, what wuz it. . . ? Oh, yes. Ye have visitors comin’. I spotted them out over the valley. Look up there.’ There were two other things up there, bigger than a buzzard, so high that they were already in full sunlight. Tiffany watched as they circled lower. They were broomsticks. I knew I had to wait! Tiffany thought. Her ears bubbled. She turned and saw Hamish running across the grass. As she looked, the buzzard picked him up and sped onwards. She wondered if he was frightened or, at least, didn’t want to meet . . . whoever was coming The broomsticks descended. The lowest one had two figures on it. As it landed, Tiffany saw that one of them was Miss Tick, clinging anxiously onto a smaller figure who’d been doing the steering. She half climbed off, half fell off, and tottered over to Tiffany. ‘You wouldn’t believe the time I’ve had,’ she said. ‘It was just a nightmare! We flew through the storm! Are you all right?’ ‘Er . . . yes . . .’ ‘What happened?’ Tiffany looked at her. How did you begin to answer something like that? ‘The Queen’s gone,’ she said. That seemed to cover it. ‘What? The Queen has gone? Oh . . . er . . . these ladies are Mrs Ogg—’ ‘Mornin’,’ said the broomstick’s other occupant, who was pulling at her long black dress, from under the folds of which came the sounds of twanging elastic. The wind up there blows where it likes, I don’t mind telling you!’ She was a short fat lady with a cheerful face like an apple that has been stored too long; all the wrinkles moved into different positions when she smiled. ‘And this,’ said Miss Tick, ‘is Miss—’ ‘Mistress,’snapped the other witch, dismounting. ‘I’m so sorry, Mistress Weatherwax,’ said Miss Tick. ‘Very, very good witches,’ she whispered to Tiffany. ‘I was very lucky to find them. They respect witches up in the mountains.’ Tiffany was impressed that anyone could make Miss Tick flustered, but the other witch seemed to do it just by standing there. She was tall - except, Tiffany realized, she wasn’t that tall, but she stood tall, which could easily fool you if you weren’t paying attention - and like the other witch wore a rather shabby black dress. She had an elderly, thin face that gave nothing away. Piercing blue eyes looked Tiffany up and down, from head to toe. ‘You’ve got good boots,’ said the witch. ‘Tell Mistress Weatherwax what happened—’ Miss Tick began. But the witch held up a hand and Miss Tick stopped talking immediately. Tiffany was even more impressed now. Mistress Weatherwax gave Tiffany a look that went right through her head and about five miles out the other side. Then she walked over to the stones, and waved one hand. It was an odd movement, a kind of wriggle in the air, but for a moment it left a glowing line. There was a noise, a chord, as though all sorts of sounds were happening at the same time. It snapped into silence. ‘Jolly Sailor tobacco?’ said the witch. ‘Yes,’ said Tiffany. The witch waved a hand again. There was another sharp, complicated noise. Mistress Weatherwax turned suddenly and stared at the distant pimple that was the pictsie mound. ‘Nac Mac Feegle? Kelda? she demanded. ‘Er, yes. Only temporary,’ said Tiffany. ‘Hmmph,’ said Mistress Weatherwax. Wave. Sound. ‘Frying pan? ‘Yes. It’s got lost, though.’ ‘Hmm.’ Wave. Sound. It was as if the woman was extracting her history from the air. ‘Filled buckets? ‘And they filled up the log box, too,’ said Tiffany. Wave. Sound. ‘I see. Special Sheep Liniment?’ ‘Yes, my father says it puts—’ Wave. Sound. ‘Ah. Land of snow.’ Wave. Sound. ‘A queen.’ Wave. Sound. ‘Fighting.’ Wave, sound. ‘On the sea?’ Wave, sound, wave, sound . . . Mistress Weatherwax stared at the flashing air, looking at pictures only she could see. Mrs Ogg sat down beside Tiffany, her little legs going up in the air as she made herself comfortable. ‘I’ve tried Jolly Sailor,’ she said. ‘Smells like toe-nails, don’t it?’ ‘Yes, it does!’ said Tiffany, gratefully. ‘To be a kelda of the Nac Mac Feegle, you have to marry one of ‘em, don’t you?’ said Mrs Ogg, innocently. ‘Ah, yes, but I found a way round that,’ said Tiffany. She told her. Mrs Ogg laughed. It was a sociable kind of laugh, the sort of laugh that makes you comfortable. The noise and flashing stopped. Mistress Weatherwax stood staring at nothing for a moment, and then said: ‘You beat the Queen, at the end. But you had help, I think.’ ‘Yes, I did,’ said Tiffany. ‘And that was—?’ ‘I don’t ask you your business,’ said Tiffany, before she even realized she was going to say it. Miss Tick gasped. Mrs Ogg’s eyes twinkled, and she looked from Tiffany to Mistress Weatherwax like someone watching a tennis match. “Tiffany, Mistress Weatherwax is the most famous witch in all—’ Miss Tick began severely, but the witch waved a hand at her again. I really must learn how to do that, Tiffany thought. Then Mistress Weatherwax took off her pointed hat and bowed to Tiffany. ‘Well said,’ she said, straightening up and staring directly at Tiffany ‘I didn’t have no right to ask you. This is your country, we’re here by your leave. I show you respect as you in turn will respect me.’ The air seemed to freeze for a moment and the skies to darken. Then Mistress Weatherwax went on, as if the moment of thunder hadn’t happened: ‘But if one day you care to tell me more, I should be grateful to hear about it,’ she said, in a conversational voice. ‘And them creatures that look like they’re made of dough, I should like to know more about them, too. Never run across them before. And your grandmother sounds the kind of person I would have liked to meet.’ She straightened up. ‘In the meantime, we’d better see if there’s anything left you can still be taught.’ ‘Is this where I learn about the witches’ school?’ said Tiffany. There was a moment of silence. ‘Witches’ school?’ said Mistress Weatherwax. ‘Um,’ said Miss Tick. ‘You were being metapahorrical, weren’t you?’ said Tiffany. ‘Metapahorrical?’ said Mrs Ogg, wrinkling her forehead. ‘She means metaphorical,’ mumbled Miss Tick. ‘It’s like stories,’ said Tiffany. ‘It’s all right. I worked it out. This is the school, isn’t it? The magic place? The world. Here. And you don’t realize it until you look. Do you know the pictsies think this world is heaven? We just don’t look. You can’t give lessons on witchcraft. Not properly. It’s all about how you are . . . you, I suppose.’ ‘Nicely said,’ said Mistress Weatherwax. ‘You’re sharp. But there’s magic, too. You’ll pick that up. It don’t take much intelligence, otherwise wizards wouldn’t be able to do it.’ ‘You’ll need a job, too,’ said Mrs Ogg. There’s no money in witchcraft. Can’t do magic for yourself, see? Cast-iron rule.’ ‘I make good cheese,’ said Tiffany. ‘Cheese, eh?’ said Mistress Weatherwax. ‘Hmm. Yes. Cheese is good. But do you know anything about medicines? Midwifery? That’s a good portable skill.’ ‘Well, I’ve helped deliver difficult lambs,’ said Tiffany. ‘And I saw my brother being born. They didn’t bother to turn me out. It didn’t look too difficult. But I think cheese is probably easier, and less noisy.’ ‘Cheese is good,’ Mistress Weatherwax repeated, nodding. ‘Cheese is alive.’ ‘And what do you really do?’ said Tiffany. The thin witch hesitated for a moment, and then: ‘We look to . . . the edges,’ said Mistress Weatherwax. ‘There’re a lot of edges, more than people know. Between life and death, this world and the next, night and day, right and wrong . . . an’ they need watchin’. We watch ‘em, we guard the sum of things. And we never ask for any reward. That’s important.’ ‘People give us stuff, mind you. People can be very gen’rous to witches,’ said Mrs Ogg, happily. ‘On bakin’ days in our village, sometimes I can’t move for cake. There’s ways and ways of not askin’, if you get my meaning. People like to see a happy witch.’ ‘But down here people think witches are bad!’ said Tiffany, and her Second Thoughts added: Remember how rarely Granny Aching ever had to buy her own tobacco? ‘It’s amazin’ what people can get used to,’ said Mrs Ogg. ‘You just have to start slow.’ ‘And we have to hurry,’ said Mistress Weatherwax. There’s a man riding up here on a farm horse. Fair hair, red face—’ ‘It sounds like my father!’ ‘Well, he’s making the poor thing gallop,’ said Mistress Weatherwax. ‘Quick, now. You want to learn the skills? When can you leave home?’ ‘Pardon?’ said Tiffany. ‘Don’t the girls here go off to work as maids and things?’ said Mrs Ogg. ‘Oh, yes. When they’re a bit older than me.’ ‘Well, when you’re a bit older than you. Miss Tick here will come and find you,’ said Mistress Weatherwax. Miss Tick nodded. ‘There’re elderly witches up in the mountains who’ll pass on what they know in exchange for a bit of help around the cottage. This place will be watched over while you’re gone, you may depend on it. In the meantime you’ll get three meals a day, your own bed, use of broomstick . . . that’s the way we do it. All right?’ ‘Yes,’ said Tiffany, grinning happily. The wonderful moment was passing too quickly for all the questions she wanted to ask. ‘Yes! But, er . . .’ ‘Yes?’ said Mrs Ogg. ‘I don’t have to dance around with no clothes on or anything like that, do I? Only I heard rumours—’ Mistress Weatherwax rolled her eyes. Mrs Ogg grinned cheerfully. ‘Well, that procedure does have something to recommend it—’ she began. ‘No, you don’t have to!’ snapped Mistress Weatherwax. ‘No cottage made of sweets, no cackling and no dancing!’ ‘Unless you want to,’ said Mrs Ogg, standing up. ‘There’s no harm in an occasional cackle, if the mood takes you that way. I’d teach you a good one right now, but we really ought to be going.’ ‘But . . . but how did you manage it?’ said Miss Tick to Tiffany. This is all chalk! You’ve become a witch on chalk? How?’ ‘That’s all you know, Perspicacia Tick,’ said Mistress Weatherwax. The bones of the hills is flint. It’s hard and sharp and useful. King of stones.’ She picked up her broomstick, and turned back to Tiffany. ‘Will you get into trouble, do you think?’ she said. ‘I might do,’ said Tiffany. ‘Do you want any help?’ ‘If it’s my trouble, I’ll get out of it,’ said Tiffany. She wanted to say: Yes, yes! I’m going to need help! I don’t know what’s going to happen when my father gets here! The Baron’s probably got really angry! But I don’t want them to think I can’t deal with my own problems! I ought to be able to cope! ‘That’s right,’ said Mistress Weatherwax. Tiffany wondered if the witch could read minds. ‘Minds? No,’ said Mistress Weatherwax, climbing onto her broomstick. ‘Faces, yes. Come here, young lady.’ Tiffany obeyed. ‘The thing about witchcraft,’ said Mistress Weatherwax, ‘is that it’s not like school at all. First you get the test, and then afterwards you spend years findin’ out how you passed it. It’s a bit like life in that respect.’ She reached out and gently raised Tiffany’s chin so that she could look into her face. ‘I see you opened your eyes,’ she said. ‘Yes.’ ‘Good. Many people never do. Times ahead might be a little tricky, even so. You’ll need this.’ She stretched out a hand and made a circle in the air around Tiffany’s hair, then brought her hand up over the head while making little movements with her forefinger. Tiffany raised her hands to her head. For a moment she thought there was nothing there, and then they touched . . . something. It was more like a sensation in the air; if you weren’t expecting it to be there, your fingers passed straight through. ‘Is it really there?’ she said. ‘Who knows?’ said the witch. ‘It’s virtually a pointy hat. No one else will know it’s there. It might be a comfort.’ ‘You mean it just exists in my head?’ said Tiffany. ‘You’ve got lots of things in your head. That doesn’t mean they aren’t real. Best not to ask me too many questions.’ ‘What happened to the toad?’ said Miss Tick, who did ask questions. ‘It’s gone to live with the Wee Free Men,’ said Tiffany. ‘It turned out it used to be a lawyer.’ ‘You’ve given a clan of the Nac Mac Feegle their own lawyer?’ said Mrs Ogg. That’ll make the world tremble. Still, I always say the occasional tremble does you good.’ ‘Come, sisters, we must away,’ said Miss Tick, who had climbed on the other broomstick behind Mrs Ogg. ‘There’s no need for that sort of talk,’ said Mrs Ogg. That’s theatre talk, that is. Cheerio, Tiff. We’ll see you again.’ Her stick rose gently in the air. From the stick of Mistress Weatherwax, though, there was merely a sad little noise, like the thwop of Miss Tick’s hat point. The broomstick went kshugagugah. Mistress Weatherwax sighed. ‘It’s them dwarfs,’ she said. They say they’ve repaired it, oh yes, and it starts first time in their workshop—’ They heard the sound of distant hooves. With surprising speed, Mistress Weatherwax swung herself off the stick, grabbed it firmly in both hands, and ran away across the turf, skirts billowing behind her. She was a speck in the distance when Tiffany’s father came over the brow of the hill on one of the farm horses. He hadn’t even stopped to put the leather shoes on it; great slices of earth flew up as hooves the size of large soup plates,* each one shod with iron, bit into the turf. Probably about eleven inches across. Tiffany didn’t measure them this time. Tiffany heard a faint kshugagugahvwwoooom behind her as he leaped off the horse. She was surprised to see him laughing and crying at the same time. It was all a bit of a dream. Tiffany found that a very useful thing to say. It’s hard to remember, it was all a bit of a dream. It was all a bit of a dream, I can’t be certain. The overjoyed Baron, however, was very certain. Obviously this - this Queen woman, whoever she was, had been stealing children but Roland had beaten her, oh yes, and helped these two young children to get back as well. Her mother had insisted on Tiffany going to bed, even though it was broad daylight. Actually, she didn’t mind. She was tired, and lay under the covers in that nice pink world halfway between asleep and awake. She heard the Baron and her father talking downstairs. She heard the story being woven between them as they tried to make sense of it all. Obviously the girl had been very brave (this was the Baron speaking) but, well, she was nine, wasn’t she? And didn’t even know how to use a sword! Whereas Roland had fencing lessons at his school. . . And so it went on. There were other things she heard her parents discussing later, when the Baron had gone. There was the way Ratbag now lived on the roof, for example. Tiffany lay in bed and smelled the ointment her mother had rubbed into her temples. Tiffany must have got hit on the head, she’d said, because of the way she kept on touching it. So . . . Roland with the beefy face was the hero, was he? And she was just like the stupid princess who broke her ankle and fainted all the time? That was completely unfair! She reached out to the little table beside her bed where she’d put the invisible hat. Her mother had put down a cup of broth right through it, but it was still there. Tiffany’s fingers felt, very faintly, the roughness of the brim. We never ask for any reward, she thought. Besides, it was her secret, all of it. No one else knew about the Wee Free Men. Admittedly Wentworth had taken to running through the house with a tablecloth round his waist shouting, ‘Weewee mens! I’ll scone you in the boot!’ but Mrs Aching was still so glad to see him back, and so happy that he was talking about things other than sweets, that she wasn’t paying too much attention to what he was talking about. No, she couldn’t tell anyone. They’d never believe her, and suppose that they did, and went up and poked around in the pictsies’ mound? She couldn’t let that happen. What would Granny Aching have done? Granny Aching would have said nothing. Granny Aching often said nothing. She just smiled to herself, and puffed on her pipe, and waited until the right time . . . Tiffany smiled to herself. She slept, and didn’t dream. And a day went past. And another day. On the third day, it rained. Tiffany went into the kitchen when no one was about and took down the china shepherdess from the shelf. She put it in a sack, then slipped out of the house and ran up onto the downs. The worst of the weather was going either side of the Chalk, which cut through the clouds like the prow of a ship. But when Tiffany reached the spot where an old stove and four iron wheels stood out of the grass, and cut a square of turf, and carefully chipped out a hole for the china shepherdess, and then put the turf back. . . it was raining hard enough to soak it in and give it a chance of surviving. It seemed the right thing to do. And she was sure she caught a whiff of tobacco. Then she went to the pictsies’ mound. She’d worried about that. She knew they were there, didn’t she? So, somehow, going to check that they were there would be . . . sort of. . . showing that she doubted if they would be, wouldn’t it? They were busy people. They had lots to do. They had the old kelda to mourn. They were probably very busy. That’s what she told herself. It wasn’t because she kept wondering if there really might be nothing down the hole but rabbits. It wasn’t that at all. She was the kelda. She had a duty. She heard music. She heard voices. And then sudden silence as she peered into the gloom. She carefully took a bottle of Special Sheep Liniment out of her sack and let it slide into darkness. Tiffany walked away, and heard the faint music start up again. She did wave at a buzzard, circling lazily under the clouds, and she was sure a tiny dot waved back. On the fourth day, Tiffany made butter, and did her chores. She did have help. ‘And now I want you to go and feed the chickens,’ she said to Wentworth. ‘What is it I want you to do?’ ‘Fee’ the cluck-clucks,’ said Wentworth. ‘Chickens,’ said Tiffany, severely. ‘Chickens,’ said Wentworth obediently. ‘And wipe your nose not on your sleeve! I gave you a handkerchief. And on the way back see if you can carry a whole log, will you?’ ‘Ach, cravens,’ muttered Wentworth. ‘And what is it we don’t say?’ said Tiffany. ‘We don’t say the—’ ‘- the crivens word,’ Wentworth muttered. ‘And we don’t say it in front of—’ ‘- in fron’ of Mummy,’ said Wentworth. ‘Good. And then when I’ve finished we’ll have time to go down to the river.’ Wentworth brightened up. ‘Weewee mens?’ he said. Tiffany didn’t reply immediately. Tiffany hadn’t seen a single Feegle since she’d been home. ‘There might be,’ she said. ‘But they’re probably very busy. They’ve got to find another kelda, and . . . well, they’re very busy. I expect.’ ‘Weewee men say hit you in the head, fishface!’ said Wentworth happily. ‘We’ll see,’ said Tiffany, feeling like a parent. ‘Now please go and feed the chickens and get the eggs.’ When he’d wandered away, carrying the egg basket in both hands, Tiffany turned out some butter onto the marble slab and picked up the paddles to pat it into, well, a pat of butter. Then she’d stamp it with one of the wooden stamps. People appreciated a little picture on their butter. As she began to shape the butter she was aware of a shadow in the doorway, and turned. It was Roland. He looked at her, his face even redder than usual. He was twiddling his very expensive hat nervously, just like Rob Anybody did. ‘Yes?’ she said. ‘Look, about. . . well, about all that. . . about Roland began. ‘Yes?’ ‘Look, I didn’t— I mean, I didn’t lie to anyone or anything,’ he blurted out. ‘But my father just sort of assumed I’d been a hero and he just wouldn’t listen to anything I said even after I told him how . . . how . . .’ ‘- helpful I’d been?’ said Tiffany. ‘Yes . . . I mean, no! He said, he said, he said it was lucky for you I was there, he said—’ ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Tiffany, picking up the butter paddles again. ‘And he just kept telling everyone how brave I’d been and—’ ‘I said it doesn’t matter,’ said Tiffany. The little paddles went patpatpat on the fresh butter. Roland’s mouth opened and shut for a moment. ‘You mean you don’t mind?’ he said at last. ‘No. I don’t mind,’ said Tiffany. ‘But it’s not fair!’ ‘We’re the only ones who know the truth,’ said Tiffany. Patapatpat. Roland stared at the fat, rich butter as she calmly patted it into shape. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Er . . . you won’t tell anyone, will you? I mean, you’ve got every right to, but—’ Patapatapat. . . ‘No one would believe me,’ said Tiffany. ‘I did try,’ said Roland. ‘Honestly. I really did.’ I expect you did, Tiffany thought. But you’re not very clever and the Baron certainly is a man without First Sight. He sees the world the way he wants to see it. ‘One day you’ll be Baron, won’t you?’ she said. ‘Well, yes. One day. But look, are you really a witch?’ ‘When you’re Baron you’ll be good at it, I expect?’ said Tiffany, turning the butter around. ‘Fair and generous and decent? You’ll pay good wages and look after the old people? You wouldn’t let people turn an old lady out of her house?’ ‘Well, I hope I—’ Tiffany turned to face him, a butter paddle in each hand. ‘Because I’ll be there, you see. You’ll look up and see my eye on you. I’ll be there on the edge of the crowd. All the time. I’ll be watching everything, because I come from a long line of Aching people and this is my land. But you can be the Baron for us and I hope you’re a good one. If you are not . . . there will be a reckoning.’ ‘Look, I know you were . . . were . . .’ Roland began, going red in the face. ‘Very helpful?’ said Tiffany. ‘. . . but you can’t talk to me like that, you know!’ Tiffany was sure she heard, up in the roof and on the very edge of hearing, someone say: ‘Ach, crivens, what a wee snotter . . .’ She shut her eyes for a moment, and then, heart pounding, pointed a butter paddle at one of the empty buckets. ‘Bucket, fill yourself!’ she commanded. It blurred, and then sloshed. Water dripped down the side. Roland stared at it. Tiffany gave him one of her sweetest smiles, which could be quite scary. ‘You won’t tell anyone, will you?’ she said. He turned to her, face pale. ‘No one would believe me . . .’ he stammered. ‘Aye,’ said Tiffany. ‘So we understand one another. Isn’t that nice? And now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got to finish this and make a start on some cheese.’ ‘Cheese? But you . . . you could do anything you wanted!’ Roland burst out. ‘And right now I want to make cheese,’ said Tiffany calmly. ‘Go away.’ ‘My father owns this farm!’ said Roland, and then realized he’d said that out loud. There were two little but strangely loud clicks as Tiffany put down the butter paddles and turned round. ‘That was a very brave thing you just said,’ she said, ‘but I expect you’re sorry you said it, now that you’ve had a really good think?’ Roland, who had shut his eyes, nodded his head. ‘Good,’ said Tiffany. Today I’m making cheese. Tomorrow I may do something else. And in a while, maybe, I won’t be here and you’ll wonder: Where is she? But part of me will always be here, always. I’ll always be thinking about this place. I’ll have it in my eye. And I will be back. Now, go away!’ He turned and ran. After his footsteps had died away Tiffany said: ‘All right, who’s there?’ ‘It’s me, mistress. No’-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock, mistress.’ The pictsie appeared from behind the bucket, and added: ‘Rob Anybody said we should come tae keep an eye on ye for a wee while, and tae thank ye for the offerin’.’ It’s still magic even if you know how it’s done, Tiffany thought. ‘Only watch me in the dairy, then,’ she said. ‘No spying!’ ‘Ach, no, mistress,’ said Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock nervously. Then he grinned. ‘Fion’s goin’ off to be the kelda for a clan over near Copperhead Mountain,’ he said, ‘an’ she’s asked me to go along as the gonnagle!’ ‘Congratulations!’ ‘Aye, and William says I should be fine if I just work on the mousepipes,’ said the pictsie. ‘And . . . er . . .’ ‘Yes?’ said Tiffany. ‘Er . . . Hamish says there’s a girl in the Long Lake clan who’s looking to become a kelda . . . er . . . it’s a fine clan she’s from . . . er . . .’ The pictsie was going violet with embarrassment. ‘Good,’ said Tiffany. ‘If I was Rob Anybody, I’d invite her over right away.’ ‘You dinnae mind?’ said Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock hopefully. ‘Not at all,’ said Tiffany. She did a little bit, she had to admit to herself, but it was a bit she could put away on a shelf in her head somewhere. ‘That’s grand!’ said the pictsie. The lads were a bit worried, ye ken. I’ll run up an’ tell them.’ He lowered his voice. ‘An’ would ye like me to run after that big heap o’ jobbies that just left and see that he falls off his horse again?’ ‘No!’ said Tiffany hurriedly. ‘No. Don’t. No.’ She picked up the butter paddles. ‘You leave him to me,’ she added, smiling. ‘You can leave everything to me.’ When she was alone again she finished the butter . . . patapatapat. . . She paused, put the paddles down, and with the tip of a very clean finger, drew a curved line in the surface, with another curved line just touching it, so that together they looked like a wave. She traced a third, flat curve under it, which was the Chalk. Land Under Wave. She quickly smoothed the butter again and picked up the stamp she’d made yesterday; she’d carved it carefully out of a piece of apple wood that Mr Block the carpenter had given her. She stamped it onto the butter, and took it off carefully. There, glistening on the oily, rich yellow surface, was a gibbous moon and, sailing in front of the moon, a witch on a broomstick. She smiled again, and it was Granny Aching’s smile. Things would be different one day. But you had to start small, like oak trees. Then she made cheese . . . . . . in the dairy, on the farm, and the fields unrolling, and becoming the downlands sleeping under the hot midsummer sun, where the flocks of sheep, moving slowly, drift over the short turf like clouds on a green sky, and here and there sheepdogs speed over the grass like shooting stars. For ever and ever, wold without end. Author’s Note The painting that Tiffany ‘enters’ in this book really exists. It’s called The Fairy Fellers’ Master-Stroke, by Richard Dadd, and is in the Tate Gallery in London. It is only about 21 inches by 15 inches. It took the artist nine years to complete, in the middle of the nineteenth century. I cannot think of a more famous ‘fairy’ painting. It is, indeed, very strange. Summer heat leaks out of it. What people ‘know’ about Richard Dadd is that ‘he went mad, killed his father, was locked up in a lunatic asylum for the rest of his life and painted a weird picture’. Crudely, that’s all true, but it’s a dreadful summary of the life of a skilled and talented artist who developed a serious mental illness. A Nac Mac Feegle does not appear anywhere in the painting, but I suppose it’s always possible that one was removed for making an obscene gesture. It’s the sort of thing they’d do. Oh, and the tradition of burying a shepherd with a piece of raw wool in the coffin was true, too. Even gods understand that a shepherd can’t neglect the sheep. A god who didn’t understand would not be worth believing in. There is no such word as ‘noonlight’, but it would be nice if there was. 
The Fifth Elephant - Terry Pratchett	----	The Fifth Elephant The Fifth Elephant A Discworld Novell by Terry Pratchett They say the world is flat and supported on the back of four elephants who themselves stand on the back of a giant turtle. They say that the elephants, being such huge beasts, have bones of rock and iron, and nerves of gold for better conductivity over long distances. They say that the fifth elephant came scream-ing and trumpeting through the atmosphere of the young world all those years ago and landed hard enough to split continents and raise mountains. No one actually saw it land, which raised the interesting philosophical question: when millions of tons of angry elephant come spinning through the sky, and there is no one to hear it, does it - philosophically speaking - make a noise? And if there was no one to see it hit, did it actually hit? *Not rock and iron in their dead form, as they are now, but living rock and iron. The dwarfs have quite an inventive mythology about minerals. In other words, wasn't it just a story for children, to explain away some interesting natural occurrences? As for the dwarfs, whose legend it is, and who mine a lot deeper than other people, they say that there is a grain of truth in it. On a clear day, from the right vantage point on the Ramtops, a watcher could see a very long way across the plains. If it was high summer, they could count the columns of dust as the ox trains plodded on, at a top speed of two miles an hour, each pair pulling a train of two wagons carrying four tons apiece. Things took a long time to get anywhere, but when they did, there was certainly a lot of them. To the cities of the Circle Sea they carried raw material, and sometimes people who were off to seek their fortune and a fistful of diamonds. To the mountains they brought manufactured goods, rare things from across the oceans, and people who had found wisdom and a few scars. There was usually a day's travelling between each convoy. They turned the landscape into an unrolled time machine. On a clear day you could see last Tuesday. Heliographs twinkled in the distant air as the columns flashed messages back and forth, about bandit presence,- cargoes and the best place to get double egg, treble chips and a steak that overhung the plate all round. Lots of people travelled on the carts. It was cheap, it beat walking, and you got there eventually. Some people travelled for free. The driver of one wagon was having problems with his team. They were skittish. He'd expect this in the mountains, where all sorts of wild creatures might regard the oxen as a travelling meal, but here there was nothing more dangerous than cabbages. Behind him, down in a narrow space between the loads of cut lumber, something slept. It was just another day in Ankh-Morpork . . . Sergeant Colon balanced on a shaky ladder at one end of the Brass Bridge, one of the city's busiest thoroughfares. He clung by one hand to the tall pole with the box on top of it, and with the other he held up a home-made picture book to the slot in the front of the box. 'And this is another sort of cart,' he said. 'Got it?' "s,' said a very small voice from within the box. 'O-kay,' said Colon, apparently satisfied. He dropped the book and pointed down the length of the bridge. 'Now, you see those two markers what has been painted across the cobbles?'„ , 'And they mean . . . ?' 'If-a-cart-g's-tween-dem-in-less'na-minute-'s- goin-too-fas',' the little voice parroted. 'Well done. And then you . . .?' 'Painta-pic-cher.' 'Taking care to show . . . ?' 'Driver's-face-or-cart-licence.' 'And if it's night-time you. . . ?' 'Use- der-sal'mander-to-make-it-bright . . .' 'Well done, Rodney. And one of us will come along every day and collect your pictures. Got everything you want?' 'What's that, sergeant?' Colon looked down at the very large, brown, upturned face, and smiled. 'Afternoon, All,' he said, climbing ponderously down the ladder. 'What you're looking at, Mister Jolson, is the modern Watch for the new millenienienum . . . num.' "s a bit big, Fred,' said All Jolson, looking at it critically. 'I've seen lots of smaller ones.' 'Watch as in City Watch, All.' 'Ah, right.' 'Anyone goes too fast around here and Lord Vetinari'll be looking at his picture next morning. The iconographs do not lie, All.' 'Right, Fred. 'cos they're too stupid.' 'His lordship's got fed up with carts speeding over the bridge, see, and asked us to do something about it. I'm Head of Traffic now, you know.' 'Is that good, Fred?' 'I should just think so!' said Sergeant Colon expansively. 'It's up to me to keep the, er, arteries of the city from clogging up, leadin' to a complete breakdown of commerce and ruination for us all. Most vital job there is, you could say.' 'And it's just you doing it, is it?' 'Well, mainly. Mainly. Corporal Nobbs and the other lads help, of course.' All Jolson scratched his nose. 'It was on a similar subject that I wanted to talk to you, Fred,' he said. 'No problem, All.' 'Something very odd's turned up outside my restaurant, Fred.' Sergeant Colon followed the huge man around the corner. Fred usually liked All's company because, next to All, he was very skinny indeed. All Jolson was a man who'd show up on an atlas and change the orbit of small planets. Paving stones cracked under his feet. He combined in one body - and there was plenty of room left over - Ankh-Morpork's best chef and its keenest eater, a circumstance made in mashed potato heaven. Sergeant Colon couldn't remember what the man's real first name had been; he'd picked up the nickname by general acclaim, since no one seeing him in the street for the first time could believe that it was all Jolson. There was a big cart on Broad Way. Other traffic was backed up trying to manoeuvre around it. 'Had my meat delivered at lunchtime, Fred, and when my carter came out . . .' All Jolson pointed to the large triangular construction locked around one wheel of the cart. It was made of oak and steel, with yellow paint sloshed over it. Fred tapped it carefully. 'I can see where your problem is, right here,' he said. 'So how long was your carter in there?' 'Well. I gave him lunch...' 'And very good lunches you do, All, I've always said. What was the special today?' 'Smitten steak with cream sauce and slumpie, and black death meringue to follow,' said All Jolson. There was a moment of silence as they both pictured this meal. Fred Colon gave a little sigh. 'Butter on the slumpie?' 'You wouldn't insult me by suggesting I'd leave it off, would you?' 'A man could linger a long time over a meal like that,' said Fred. 'The trouble is, the Patrician, All, gets very short about carts parking on the street for more than ten minutes. He reckons that's a sort of crime.' 'Taking ten minutes to eat one of my lunches isn't a crime, Fred, it's a tragedy,' said All. 'It says here "City Watch - $15 removal", Fred. That's a couple of days' profits, Fred.' 'Thing is,' said Fred Colon, 'it'll be paperwork, see? I can't just wave that away. I only wish I could. There's all them counterfoils on the spike in my office. If it was me running the Watch, of course . . . but my hands are tied, see . . .' The two men stood some way apart, hands in pockets, apparently paying little attention to one another. Sergeant Colon began to whistle under his breath. 'I know a thing or two,' said All, carefully. 'People think waiters ain't got ears.' 'I know lots of stuff, All,' said Colon, jingling his pocket change. Both men stared at the sky for a while. 'I may have some honey ice cream left over from yesterday-' Sergeant Colon looked down at the cart. 'Here, Mister Jolson,' he said, in a voice of absolute surprise. 'Some complete bastard's put some sort of clamp on your wheel! Well, we'll soon see about that.' Colon pulled a couple of round, white-painted paddles from his belt, sighted on the Watch House semaphore tower peeking over the top of the old lemonade factory, waited until the watching gargoyle signalled him, and with a certain amount of verve and flair ripped off an impression of a man with stiff arms playing two games of table tennis at once. 'The team'll be along any minute - ah, watch this. . .' A little further along the street two trolls were carefully clamping a hay wagon. After a minute or two one of them happened to glance at the Watch House tower, nudged his colleague, produced two bats of his own and, with rather less elan than Sergeant Colon, sent a signal. When it was answered the trolls looked around, spotted Colon and lumbered towards him. 'Ta-da!' said Colon proudly. 'Amazing, this new technology,' said All Jolson admiringly. 'And they must've been, what, forty or fifty yards away?' "s'right, All. In the old days I'd've had to blow a whistle. And they'll arrive here knowin' it was me who wanted 'em, too.' 'Instead of having to look and see it was you,' said Jolson. 'Well, yeah,' said Colon, aware that what had transpired might not be the brightest ray of light in the new dawn of the communications revolution. 'Of course, it'd have worked just as well if they'd been streets away. On the other side of the city, even. And if I told the gargoyle to, as we say, "put" it on the "big" tower over on the Tump they'd have got it in Sto Lat within minutes, see?' 'And that's twenty miles.' 'At least.' 'Amazing, Fred.' 'Time moves on, All,' said Colon, as the trolls reached them. 'Constable Chert, who told you to clamp my friend's cart?' he demanded. 'Well, sarge, dis morning you said we was to clamp every-' 'Not this cart,' said Colon. 'Unlock it right now, and we'll say no more about it, eh?' Constable Chert seemed to reach the conclusion that he wasn't being paid to think, and this was just as well because Sergeant Colon did not believe trolls gave value for money in that department. 'If you say so, sarge . . .' 'While you're doing that, me and All here will have a little chat, right, All?' said Fred Colon. 'That's right, Fred.' 'Well, I say chat, but I'll be mostly listenin', on account of having my mouth full.' Snow cascaded from the fir branches. The man forced his way through, stood fighting for breath for a moment, and then set off across the clearing at a fast trot. Across the valley he heard the first blast on the horn. He had an hour, then, if he could trust them. He might not make it to the tower, but there were other ways out. He had plans. He could outwit them. Keep off the snow as much as you can, double back, make use of the streams . . . It was possible, it had been done before. He was sure of that. A few miles away sleek bodies set out through the forest. The hunt was on. Elsewhere in Ankh-Morpork, the Fools' Guild was on fire. This was a problem, because the Guild's fire brigade consisted largely of clowns. And this was a problem because if you show a clown a bucket of water and a ladder he knows only one way to act. Years of training take over. It's something in the red nose speaking to him. He can't help himself. Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch leaned against a wall and watched the show. 'We really must put that proposal for a civic fire service to the Patrician again,' he said. Across the street a clown picked up a ladder, turned, knocked the clown behind him into a bucket of water, then turned again to see what the commotion was, thus sending his rising victim into the bucket again with a surprising parping noise. The crowd watched silently. If it was funny, clowns wouldn't be doing it. 'The Guilds are all very much against it,' said Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson, his second in command, as the clown with the ladder had a bucket of water poured down his trousers. 'They say it'd be trespass.' The fire had taken hold in a first-floor room. 'If we let it burn it'd be a blow for entertainment in this city,' said Carrot earnestly. Vimes looked sideways at him. That was a true Carrot comment. It sounded as innocent as hell, but you could take it a different way. 'It certainly would,' he said. 'Nevertheless, I suppose we'd better do something.' He stepped forward and cupped his hands. 'All right, this is the Watch! Bucket chain!' he shouted. 'Aw, mustwe?' said someone in the crowd. 'Yes, you must,' said Captain Carrot. 'Come on, everyone, if we form two lines we'll have this done in no time at all! What d'you say, eh? It might even be fun!' And they did it, Vimes noted. Carrot treated everyone as if they were jolly good chaps and somehow, in some inexplicable way, they couldn't resist the urge not to prove him wrong. And to the disappointment of the crowd the fire was soon put out, once the clowns were disarmed and led away by kind people. Carrot reappeared, wiping his forehead, as Vimes lit a cigar. 'Apparently the fire-eater was sick,' he said. 'It's just possible we might never be forgiven,' said Vimes as they set off on patrol again. 'Oh, no . . . what now?' Carrot was staring upwards, towards the nearest clacks tower. 'Riot in Cable Street,' he said. 'It's All Officers, sir.' They broke into a run.. You always did for an All Officers. The people in trouble might well be you. There were more dwarfs on the streets as they got nearer, and Vimes recognized the signs. The dwarfs all wore preoccupied looks and were walking in the same direction. 'It's over,' he said, as they rounded a corner. 'You can tell by the sudden increase of suspiciously innocent bystanders.' Whatever else the emergency had been, it had been a big one. The street was strewn with debris, and a fair amount of dwarfs. Vimes slowed down. 'Third time this week,' he said. 'What's got into them?' 'Hard to say, sir,' said Carrot. Vimes shot him a glance. Carrot had been raised by dwarfs. He also, if he could possibly avoid it, never told a lie. 'That isn't the same as 1 don't know, is it?' he said. The captain looked awkward. 'I think it's . . . sort of political,' he said. Vimes noted a throwing axe buried in a wall. 'Yes, I can see that,' he said. Someone was coming along the street, and was probably the reason why the riot had broken up. Lance-Constable Bluejohn was the biggest troll Vimes had ever met. He loomed. He was so big that he didn't stand out in a crowd because he was the crowd; people failed to see him because he was in the way. And, like many overgrown people, he was instinctively gentle and rather shy and inclined to let others tell him what to do. If fate had led him to join a gang, he'd be the muscle. In the Watch, he was the riot shield. Other watchmen were peering around him. 'Looks like it started in Gimlet's Delicatessen,' said Vimes, as the rest of the Watch moved in. 'Get a statement off Gimlet.' 'Not a good idea, sir,' said Carrot firmly. 'He didn't see anything.' 'How do you know he didn't see anything? You haven't asked him.' 'I know, sir. He didn't see anything. He didn't hear anything, either.' 'With a mob trashing his restaurant and scrapping in the street outside?' 'That's right, sir.' 'Ah. I get it. There's none so deaf as those that won't hear, are you saying?' 'Something like that, sir, yes. Look, it's all over, sir. I don't think anyone's seriously hurt. It'll be for the best, sir. Please?' 'Is this one of those private dwarf things, captain?' 'Yes, sir-' 'Well, this is Ankh-Morpork, captain, not some mine in the mountains, and it's my job to keep the peace, and this, captain, doesn't look like it. What're people going to say about rioting in the streets?' 'They'll say it's another day in the life of the big city, sir,' said Carrot woodenly. 'Yes, I suppose they would, at that. However-' Vimes picked up a groaning dwarf. 'Who did this?' he demanded. 'I'm not in the mood for being messed around. Come on, I want a name!' 'Agi Hammerthief,' muttered the dwarf, struggling. 'All right,' said Vimes, letting him go. 'Write that down, Carrot.' 'No, sir,' said Carrot. 'Excuse me?' 'There is no Agi Hammerthief in the city, sir.' 'You know every dwarf?' 'A lot of them, sir. But Agi Hammerthief is only found down mines, sir. He's a sort of mischievous spirit, sir. For example, "Put it where Agi puts the coal," sir, means-' 'Yes, I can guess,' said Vimes. 'You're telling me that that dwarf just said this riot was started by Sweet Fanny Adams?' The dwarf had disappeared smartly around a corner. 'More or less, sir. Excuse me a moment, sir.' Carrot stepped across the street, pulling two white-painted paddles out of his belt. 'I'll just get a line of sight on a tower,' he said. 'I'd better send a clacks.' ,Why?, 'Well, we've kept the Patrician waiting, sir, so it'd be good manners to let him know we're late.' Vimes pulled out his watch and stared at it. It was turning out to be one of those days . . . the sort that you got every day. It is in the nature of the universe that the person who always keeps you waiting ten minutes will, on the day you are ten minutes tardy, have been ready ten minutes early and will make a point of not mentioning this. 'Sorry we're late, sir,' said Vimes as they entered the Oblong Office. 'Oh, are you late?' said Lord Vetinari, looking up from his paperwork. 'I really hadn't noticed. Nothing serious, I trust.' 'The Fools' Guild caught fire, sir,' said Carrot. 'Many casualties?' 'No, sir.' 'Well, that is a blessing,' said Lord Vetinari carefully. He put down his pen. 'Now . . . what do we have to discuss . . . ?' He pulled another document towards him and read it swiftly. 'Ah . . . I see that the new traffic division is having the desired effect.' He indicated a large pile of paper. 'I am getting any amount of complaints from the Carters' and Drovers' Guild. Well done. Do pass on my thanks to Sergeant Colon and his team.' 'I will, sir.' 'I see in one day they clamped seventeen carts, ten horses, eighteen oxen and one duck.' 'It was parked illegally, sir.' 'Indeed. However, a strange pattern seems to emerge.' 'Sir?' 'Many of the carters say that they were not in fact parked but had merely halted while an extremely old and extremely ugly lady crossed the road extremely slowly.' 'That's their story, sir.' 'They know she was an old lady by her constant litany on the lines of "Oh deary me, my poor old feet," and similar expressions.' 'Certainly sounds like an old lady to me, sir,' said Vimes, his face wooden. 'Quite so. What is rather strange is that several of them then report seeing the old lady subsequently legging it away along an alley rather fast. I'd discount this, of course, were it not for the fact that the lady has apparently been seen crossing another street, very slowly, some distance away shortly afterwards. Something of a mystery, Vimes.' Vimes put his hand over his eyes. 'It's one I intend to solve quite quickly, sir.' The Patrician nodded and made a short note on the list in front of him. As he went to move it aside he uncovered a much grubbier, much-folded scrap of paper. He picked up two letter knives and, using them fastidiously, unfolded the paper and inched it across the desk towards Vimes. 'Do you know anything about this?' he said. Vimes read, in large, round, crayoned letters: 'DeEr Cur, The CruELt to HOMLIss DoGs In thIs CITY Is A DIssGrays, WaT arE The WaTCH Do Ing A BouT ITZ SiNeD The LeAK AgyANsct CrUle T To DoGs.' 'Not a thing,' he said. 'My clerks say that one like it is pushed under the door most nights,' said the Patrician. 'Apparently no one is seen.' 'Do you want me to investigate?' said Vimes. 'It shouldn't be hard to find someone in this city who dribbles when he writes and spells even worse than Carrot.' 'Thank you, sir,' said Carrot. 'None of the guards report noticing anyone,' said the Patrician. 'Is there any group in AnkhMorpork particularly interested in the welfare of dogs?' 'I doubt it, sir.' 'Then I shall ignore it pro tem,' said Vetinari. He let the soggy letter splash into the wastepaper basket. 'On to more pressing matters,' he said briskly. 'Now, then . . . What do you know about Bonk?' Vimes stared. There was a polite cough from Carrot. 'The river or the town, sir?' he said. The Patrician smiled. 'Ah, captain, you have long ago ceased to surprise me. Yes, I was referring to the town.' 'It's one of the major towns in Uberwald, sir,' said Carrot. 'Exports: precious metals, leather, timber and of course fat from the deep fat mines at Schmaltzberg-' 'There's a place called Bonk?' said Vimes, still marvelling at the speed with which they'd got here from a damp letter about dogs. 'Strictly speaking, sir, it's more correctly pronounced Beyonk,' said Carrot. 'Even so-' 'And in Beyonk, sir, "Morpork" sounds exactly like their word for an item of ladies' underwear,' said Carrot. 'There's only so many syllables in the world, when you think about it.' 'How do you know all this stuff, Carrot?' 'Oh, you pick it up, sir. Here and there.' 'Really? So exactly which item of-' 'Something extremely important will be taking place there in a few weeks,' said Lord Vetinari. 'Something which, I have to add, is vital to the future prosperity of Ankh-Morpork.' 'The crowning of the Low King,' said Carrot. Vimes stared from him to the Patrician, and back again. 'Is there some kind of circular that goes around which doesn't get as far as me?' he said. 'The dwarf community has been talking about little else for months, sir.' 'Really?' said Vimes. 'You mean the riots? Those fights every night in the dwarf bars?' 'Captain Carrot is correct, Vimes. It will be a grand occasion, attended by representatives of many governments. And from various Uberwald principalities, of course, because the Low King only rules those areas of Uberwald that are below ground. His favour is valuable. Borogravia and Genua will be there, without a doubt, and probably even Klatch.' 'Klatch? But they're even further from Uberwald than we are! What are they bothering to go for?' He paused for a moment and then added: 'Hah. I'm being stupid. Where's the money?' 'I beg your pardon, commander?' 'That's what my old sergeant used to say when he was puzzled, sir. Find out where the money is and you've got it half solved.' Vetinari stood up and walked over to the big window, with his back to them. 'A large country, Uberwald,' he said, apparently addressing the glass. 'Dark. Mysterious. Ancient. . .' 'Huge untapped reserves of coal and iron ore,' said Carrot. 'And fat, of course. The best candles, lamp oils and soap come ultimately from the Schmaltzberg deposits.' 'Why? We've got our own slaughterhouse, haven't we?' 'Ankh-Morpork uses a great many candles, sir.' 'It certainly doesn't use much soap,' said Vimes. 'There are so many uses for fats and tallows, sir. We couldn't possibly supply ourselves.' 'Ah,' said Vimes. The Patrician sighed. 'Obviously I hope that we may strengthen our trading links with the various nations within Uberwald,' he said. 'The situation there is volatile in the extreme. Do you know much about Uberwald, Commander Vimes?' Vimes, whose knowledge of geography was microscopically detailed within five miles of Ankh-Morpork and merely microscopic beyond that, nodded uncertainly. 'Only that it's not really a country,' said Vetinari. 'It's-' 'It's rather more what you get before you get countries,' said Carrot. 'It's mainly fortified towns and fiefdoms with no real boundaries and lots of forest in between. There's always some sort of feud going on. There's no law apart from whatever the local lords enforce, and banditry of all kinds is rife.' 'So unlike the home life of our own dear city,' said Vimes, not quite under his breath. The Patrician gave him an impassive glance. 'In Uberwald the dwarfs and trolls haven't settled their old grievances,' Carrot continued, 'there are large areas controlled by feudal vampire or werewolf clans, and there are also tracts with much higher than normal background magic. It is a chaotic place, indeed, and you'd hardly think you were in the Century of the Fruitbat. It is to be hoped that things will improve, however, and Uberwald will, happily, be joining the community of nations.' Vimes and Vetinari exchanged looks. Sometimes Carrot sounded like a civics essay written by a stunned choirboy. 'Well put,' said the Patrician at last. 'But until that joysome day Uberwald remains a mystery inside a riddle wrapped in an enigma.' 'Let me see if I've got this right,' said Vimes. 'Uberwald is like this big suet pudding that everyone's suddenly noticed, and now with this coronation as an excuse we've all got to rush there with knife, fork and spoon to shovel as much on our plates as possible?' 'Your grasp of political reality is masterly, Vimes. You lack only the appropriate vocabulary. Ankh-Morpork must send a representative, obviously. An ambassador, as it were.' 'You're not suggesting I should go to this affair, are you?' said Vimes. 'Oh, I couldn't send the Commander of the City Watch,' said Lord Vetinari. 'Most of the Uberwald countries have no concept of a modern civil peacekeeping authority.' Vimes relaxed. 'I'm sending the Duke of Ankh instead.' Vimes sat bolt upright. 'They are mostly feudal systems,' Vetinari went on. 'They set great store by rank-' 'I'm not being ordered to go to Uberwald!' 'Ordered, your grace?' Vetinari looked shocked and concerned. 'Good heavens, I must have misunderstood Lady Sybil . . . She told me yesterday that a holiday a long way from Ankh-Morpork would do you the world of good.. .' 'You spoke to Sybil?' 'At the reception for the new President of the Tailors' Guild, yes. I believe you left early. You were called away. Some emergency, I understand. Lady Sybil happened to mention how you seemed to be, as she put it, constantly on the job, and one thing led to another. Oh dear, I do hope I haven't caused some marital misunderstanding. . .' 'I can't leave the city now of all times!' said Vimes desperately. 'There's so much to do!' 'That is exactly why Sybil says you ought to leave the city,' said Vetinari. 'But there's the new training school-' 'Ticking over nicely now, sir,' said Carrot. 'The whole carrier-pigeon network is a complete mess-' 'More or less sorted out, sir, now we've changed their feed. Besides, the clacks seems to be functioning very well.' ' 'We've got to get the River Watch set up-' 'Can't do much for a week or two, sir, until we've dredged up the boat.' 'The drains at the Chitterling Street station are-' 'I've got the plumbers working on it, sir.' Vimes knew that he had lost. He had lost as soon as Sybil was involved, because she was always a reliable siege engine against the walls of his defences. But there was such a thing as going down fighting. 'You knowI'm no good at diplomatic talk,' he said. 'On the contrary, Vimes, you appear to have amazed the diplomatic corps here in AnkhMorpork,' said Lord Vetinari. 'They're not used to plain speech. It confuses them. What was it you said to the Istanzian ambassador last month?' He riffled through the papers on his desk. 'Let me see, the complaint is here somewhere . . . Oh, yes, on the matter of military incursions across the Slipnir river, you indicated that further transgressions would involve him, personally, that is to say the ambassador, and I quote "going home in an ambulance".' 'I'm sorry about that, sir, but it had been a long day and he was really getting on my-' 'Since when their armed forces have pulled back so far that they are nearly in the next country,' said Lord Vetinari, moving the paper aside. 'I have to say that your observation complied only with the general thrust of my view in this matter but was, at least, succinct. Apparently you also looked at the ambassador in a very threatening way.' 'It was only the way I usually look.' 'To be sure. Happily, in Uberwald you will only need to look friendly.' 'Ah, but you don't want me saying things like "How about selling us all your fat really cheap?" do you?' said Vimes desperately. 'You will not be required to do any negotiating, Vimes. That will be dealt with by one of my clerks, who will set up the temporary embassy and discuss such matters with his opposite numbers among the courts of Uberwald. All clerks speak the same language. You will simply be as ducal as you can. And, of course, you will take a retinue. A staff,' Vetinari added, seeing Vimes's blank look. He sighed. 'People to go with you. I suggest Sergeant Angua, Sergeant Detritus, and Corporal Littlebottom.' 'Ah,' said Carrot, nodding encouragingly. 'Sorry?' said Vimes. 'I think there must have been a whole piece of conversation just then that I must have missed.' 'A werewolf, a troll and a dwarf,' said Carrot. 'Ethnic minorities, sir.' '. . . but in Uberwald they are ethnic majorities,' said Lord Vetinari. 'All three officers come from there originally, I believe. Their presence will speak volumes.' 'So far it hasn't sent me a postcard,' said Vimes. 'I'd rather take-' 'Sir, it will show people in Uberwald that Ankh-Morpork is a multicultural society, you see?' said Carrot. 'Oh, I see. "People like us". People you can do business with,' said Vimes glumly. y 'Sometimes,' Vetinari said testily, 'it really does seem to me that the culture of cynicism in the . Watch is . . . is. . .' 'Insufficient?' said Vimes. There was silence. - 'All right,' he sighed, 'I'd better go off and polish . the knobs on my coronet, hadn't I . . .?' €` 'The ducal coronet, if I remember my heraldry, does not have knobs on. It is decidedly . . . spiky,' said the Patrician, pushing across the desk a small pile of papers topped by a gold-edged invitation card. 'Good. I will have a . . . a clacks sent immediately. You will be more fully briefed later. Do y - give my regards to the Duchess. And now, please do not let me detain you further. . .' 'He always says that,' muttered Vimes as the two men hurried down the stairs. 'He knows I don't like being married to a duchess.' 'I thought you and Lady Sybil-' 'Oh, being married to Sybil is fine, fine,' said Vimes hurriedly. 'It's just the duchess bit I don't like. Where is everyone tonight?' 'Corporal Littlebottom's on pigeon duty, Detritus is on night patrol with Swires, and Angua's on special duty in the Shades, sir. You remember? With Nobby?' 'Oh gods, yes. Well, when they come in tomorrow you'd better get them to report to me. i= Incidentally, get that bloody wig off Nobby and hide it, will you?' Vimes leafed through the paperwork. 'I've never heard of the Low King of the dwarfs. I thought that "king" in dwarfish just meant a sort of senior engineer.' 'Ah, well, the Low King is rather special,' said Carrot. ,Why?, 'Well, it all starts with the Scone of Stone, sir.' 'The what?' 'Would you mind a little detour on the way back to the Yard, sir? It'll make things clearer.' The young woman stood on a corner in the Shades. Her general stance indicated that she was, in the specialized patois of the area, a ladyin-waiting. To be more precise, a lady-in-waiting for Mr Right, or at least Mr Right Amount. She idly swung her handbag. This was a very recognizable signal, for anyone with the brains of a pigeon. A member of the Thieves' Guild would have passed carefully by on the other side of the lane, giving her nothing more than a gentlemanly and above all nonaggressive nod. Even the less-polite freelance thieves who lurked in this area would have thought twice before eyeing the handbag. The Seamstresses' Guild operated a very swift and non-reversible kind of justice. The skinny body of Done It Duncan, however, did not have the brains of a pigeon. The little man had been watching the bag like a cat for fully five minutes, and now the very thought of its contents had hypnotized him. He could practically taste the money. He rose on his toes, lowered his head, dashed out of the alley, grabbed the bag and got several inches before the world exploded behind him and he ended up flat in the mud. Something right by his ear started to drool. And there was a long, very long-drawn-out growl, not changing in tone at all, just unrolling a deep promise of what would happen if he tried to move. He heard footsteps, and out of the corner of his eyes saw a swirl of lace. 'Oh, Done It,' said a voice. 'Bag-snatching? That's a bit low, isn't it? Even for you. You could've got really hurt. It's only Duncan, miss. He'll be no trouble. You can let him up.' The weight was removed from Duncan's back. He heard something pad off into the gloom of an alley. 'I done it, I done it!' said the little thief desperately as Corporal Nobbs helped him to his feet. 'Yes, I know you did, I saw you,' said Nobby. 'And you know what'd happen to you if the Thieves' Guild spotted you? You'd be dead in the river with no time off for good behaviour.' 'They hate me 'cos I'm so good,' said Duncan through his matted beard. "ere, you know the robbery at All Jolson's last month? I done that.' 'That's right, Duncan. You done that.' 'An' that haul at the gold vaults last week, I done that too. It wasn't Coalface and his boys.' 'No, it was you, wasn't it, Duncan?' 'An' that job at the goldsmith's that everyone says Crunchie Ron done-' 'You done it, did you?' "s'right,' said Duncan. 'And it was you what stole fire from the gods, too, wasn't it, Duncan?' said Nobby, grinning evilly under his wig. 'Yeah, that was me.' Duncan nodded. He sniffed. 'I was a bit younger then, of course.' He peered shortsightedly at Nobby Nobbs. 'Why've you got a dress on, Nobby?' 'It's hush-hush, Duncan.' 'Ah, right.' Duncan shifted uneasily. 'You couldn't spare me a bob or two, could you, Nobby? I ain't eaten for two days.' Small coins gleamed in the dark. 'Now push off,' said Corporal Nobbs. 'Thanks, Nobby. You got any unsolved crimes, you know where to find me.' Duncan lurched off into the night. Sergeant Angua appeared behind Nobby, buck- ling on her breastplate. - 'Poor old devil,' she said. 'He was a good thief in his day,' said Nobby, taking a notebook out of his handbag and jotting down a few lines. 'Kind of you to help him,' said Angua. 'Werl, I can get the money back out of petty cash,' said Nobby. 'An' now we know who did the bullion job, don't we? That'll be a feather in my cap with Mister Vimes.' 'Bonnet, Nobby.' 'What?' 'Your bonnet, Nobby. It's got a rather fetching band of flowers around it.' 'Oh . . . yeah. . .' 'It's not that I'm complaining,' said Angua, 'but when we were assigned this job I thought it was me who was going to be the decoy and you who was going to be the back-up, Nobby.' 'Yeah, but what with you bein' . . .' Nobby's expression creased as he edged his way into unfamiliar linguistic territory, '... mor phor . . . log . . . is . . : ally gifted. . .' 'A werewolf, Nobby. I know the word.' 'Right . . . well, obviously, you'd be a lot better at lurkin', an' . . . an' obviously it's not right, women havin' to act as decoys in police work. . .' Angua hesitated, as she so often did when attempting to talk to Nobby on difficult matters, and waved her hands in front of her as if trying to shape the invisible dough of her thoughts. 'It's just that . . . I mean, people might . . .' she began. 'I mean . . . well, you know what people call men who wear wigs and gowns, don't you?' 'Yes, miss.' 'You do?' 'Yes, miss. Lawyers, miss.' 'Good. Yes. Good,' said Angua slowly. 'Now try another one . . .' 'Er . . . actors, miss?' Angua gave up. 'You look good in taffeta, Nobby,' she said. 'You don't think it makes me look too fat?' Angua sniffed. 'Oh, no . . .' she said quietly. 'I thought I'd better put scent on for verysillymitude,' said Nobby quickly. 'What? Oh . . .' Angua shook her head, took another breath. 'I can smell . . . some . . . thing . . . else. . .' 'That's surprising, 'cos this stuff's a bit on the pungent side and frankly I don't think lily of the valley is supposed to smell like this . . .' 'It's not perfume.' ' . . but the lavender stuff they had you could clean brass with. . .' 'Can you get back to the Chitterling station by yourself, Nobby?' said Angua. Despite her rising panic, she mentally added: after all, what could happen? 1 mean, really? 'Yes, miss.' 'There's something I'd better . . . sort out.' Angua hurried away, the new scent filling her nostrils. It would have to be powerful to combat Eau de Nobbs, and it was. Oh, it was. Not here, she thought. Not now. Not him. The running man swung along a branch wet with snow, and managed at last to lower himself on to a branch belonging to the next tree. That took him a long way from the stream. How good was their sense of smell? Pretty damn good, he knew. But this good? He'd got out of the stream on to another overhanging branch. If they followed the banks, and they'd be bright enough to do that, they'd surely never know he'd left the stream. There was a howl, away to the left. He headed right, into the gloom of the forest. Vimes heard Carrot scrabble around in the gloom, and the sound of a key in the lock. 'I thought the Campaign for Equal Heights was running this place now,' he said. 'It's so hard to find volunteers,' said Carrot, ushering him through the low door and lighting a candle. 'I come in every day just to keep an eye on things, but no one else seems very interested.' 'I can't imagine why,' said Vimes, looking around the Dwarf Bread Museum. The one positive thing you could say about the bread products around him was that they were probably as edible now as they had been on the day they were baked. 'Forged' was a better term. Dwarf bread was made as a meal of last resort and also as a weapon and a currency. Dwarfs were not, as far as Vimes knew, religious in any way, but the way they thought about bread came close. There was a tinkle and a scrabbling noise somewhere in the gloom. 'Rats,' said Carrot. 'They never stop trying to eat dwarf bread, poor things. Ah, here we are. The Scone of Stone. A replica, of course.' Vimes stared at the misshapen thing on its dusty display stand. It was vaguely scone-like, but only if someone pointed this out to you beforehand. Otherwise, the term 'a lump of rock' was pretty accurate. It was about the size, and shape, of a well sat-on cushion. There were a few fossilized currants visible. 'My wife rests her feet on something like that when she's had a long day,' he said. 'It's fifteen hundred years old,' said Carrot, with something like awe in his voice. 'I thought this was the replica.' 'Well, yes . . . but it's a replica of a very important thing, sir,' said Carrot. Vimes sniffed. The air had a certain pungent quality. 'Smells strongly of cats in here, doesn't it?' 'I'm afraid they get in after the rats, sir. A rat who's nibbled on dwarf bread tends not to be able to run very fast.' Vimes lit a cigar. Carrot gave it a look of uncertain disapproval. 'We do thank people for not smoking in here, sir,' he said. 'Why? You don't know they're not going to,' said Vimes. He leaned against the display cabinet. 'All right, captain. Why am I really going to . . . Bonk? I don't know a lot about diplomacy, but I do know it's never just about one thing. What's the Low King? Why're our dwarfs scrapping?' 'Well, sir . . . Have you heard of kruk?' 'Dwarf mining law?' said Vimes. 'Well done, sir. But it's a lot more than that. It's about . . . how you live. Laws of ownership, marriage laws, inheritance, rules for dealing with disputes of all kinds, that sort of thing. Everything, really. And the Low King . . . well, you could call him the final court of appeal. He's advised, of course, but he's got the last word. Still with me?' 'Makes sense so far.' 'And he is crowned on the Scone of Stone and sits on it to* give his judgements because all the Low Kings have done that ever since B'hrian Bloodaxe, fifteen hundred years ago. It . . . gives authority.' Vimes nodded dourly. That made sense, too. You did something because it had always been done, and the explanation was 'But we've always done it this way.' A million dead people can't have been wrong, can they? 'Does he get elected, or born or what?' he said. 'I suppose you could say he's elected,' said Carrot. 'But really a lot of senior dwarfs arrange it among themselves. After listening to other dwarfs, of course. Taking soundings, it's called. Traditionally he's from one of the big families. But . . . er. . .' 'Yes?' 'Things are a little different this year. Tempers are a bit . . . stretched.' Ah, thought Vimes. 'Wrong dwarf won?' he said. 'Some dwarfs would say so. But it's more that the whole process has been called into question,' said Carrot. 'By the dwarfs in the biggest dwarf city outside Uberwald.' 'Don't tell me, that must be that place Hubwards of-' 'It's Ankh-Morpork, sir.' 'What? We're not a dwarf city!' 'Fifty thousand dwarfs now, sir.' 'Really?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Are you sure?' 'Yes, sir.' Of course he is, Vimes thought. He probably knows them all by name. 'You have to understand, sir, that there's a sort of big debate going on,' said Carrot. 'On how you define a dwarf.' 'Well, some people might say that they're called dwarfs because-' 'No, sir. Not size. Nobby Nobbs is shorter than many dwarfs, and we don't call him a dwarf.' 'We don't call him a human, either,' said Vimes. 'And, of course, I am also a dwarf.' 'You know, Carrot, I keep meaning to talk to you about that-' 'Adopted by dwarfs, brought up by dwarfs. To dwarfs I'm a dwarf, sir. I can do the rite of k'zakra, I know the secrets of h'ragna, I can ha'1k my g'rakha correctly . . . I am a dwarf.' 'What do those things mean?' 'I'm not allowed to tell non-dwarfs.' Carrot tactfully tried to stand out of the way of the cigar smoke. 'Unfortunately, some of the mountain dwarfs think that dwarfs who've moved away aren't proper dwarfs either. But this time the kingship has been swung by the views of the Ankh-Morpork dwarfs, and a lot of dwarfs back home don't like it. There's been a lot of bad feeling all round. Families falling out, that sort of thing. Much pulling of beards.' 'Really?' Vimes tried not to smile. 'It's not funny if you're a dwarf.' 'Sorry.' 'And I'm afraid this new Low King is only going to make matters worse, although of course I wish him well.' 'Tough, is he?' 'Er, I think you can assume, sir, that any dwarf who rises sufficiently in dwarf society to even be considered as a candidate for the kingship did not get there by singing the hi-ho song and bandaging wounded animals in the forest. But by dwarf standards, King Rhys Rhysson is a modern thinker, although I hear he doesn't like AnkhMorpork very much.' 'Sounds like a very clear thinker, too.' 'Anyway, this has upset a lot of the more, er, traditional mountain dwarfs who thought the next king would be Albrecht Albrechtson.' 'Who is not a modern thinker?' 'He thinks even coming up above ground is dangerously non-dwarfish.' Vimes sighed. 'Well, I can see there's a problem, Carrot, but the thing about this problem, the key point, is that it's not mine. Or yours, dwarf or not.' He tapped the Scone's case. 'Replica, eh?' he said. 'Sure it's not the real one?' 'Sir! There is only one real Scone. We call it the "thing and the whole of the thing".' 'Well, if it's a good replica, who'd know?' 'Any dwarf would, sir,' 'Only joking.' There was a hamlet down there, where two rivers met. There would be boats. This was working. The slopes behind him were white and free of dark shapes. No matter how good they were, let them try to outswim a boat... Hard-packed snow crunched under his feet. He staggered past the few rough hovels, saw the jetty, saw the boats, fought with the frozen rope that moored the nearest one, grabbed an oar and pushed himself out into the current. There was still no movement on the hills. Now, at last, he could take stock. It was a bigger boat than one man could handle, but all he had to do was fend off the banks. That'd do for tonight. In the morning he could leave it somewhere, perhaps ask someone to get a message through to the tower, and then he'd buy a horse and... Behind him, under the tarpaulin in the bows, something started to growl. They really were very clever. In a castle not far away the vampire Lady Margolotta sat quietly, leafing through Twurp's Peerage. It wasn't a very good reference book for the countries on this side of the Ramtops, where the standard work was The Almanac de Gothick, in which she herself occupied almost four pages,* but if you needed to know who thought they were who in Ankh-Morpork it was invaluable. Her copy was now bristling with bookmarks. She sighed and pushed it away. Beside her was a fluted glass containing a red liquid. She took a sip and made a face. Then she stared at the candlelight, and tried to think like Lord Vetinari. How much did he suspect? How much news got back? The clacks tower had only been up for a month, and it was being roundly denounced *Vampires evolve tong names. It's something to do to pass the long years. throughout Bonk as an intrusion. But it seemed to be doing a good if stealthy local traffic. Who would he send? His choice would tell her everything, she was sure. Someone like Lord Rust or Lord Selachii . . . ? Well, she'd think a lot less of him. From all that she had heard, and Lady Margolotta heard a lot of things, the Ankh-Morpork diplomatic corps as a whole could not find its backside with a map. Of course, it was good business for a diplomat to appear stupid, right up to the moment where he'd stolen your socks, but Lady Margolotta had met some of Ankh-Morpork's finest and no one could act that well. The growing howling outside began to get on her nerves. She rang for her butler. 'Yeth, mithtreth?' said Igor, materializing out of the shadows. 'Go and tell the children of the night to make vonderful music somevhere else, Vill you? I have a headache.' 'Indeed, mithtreth.' Lady Margolotta yawned. It had been a long night. She'd think better after a good day's sleep. As she went to blow out the candle she glanced again at the book. There was a marker in the Vs. But ... surely even the Patrician couldn't know that much . . . She hesitated and then pulled the bellrope above the coffin. Igor reappeared, in the way of Igors. 'Those keen young men at the clacks tower Vill be avake, von't they?' 'Yeth, mithtreth.' 'Send a clacks to our agent asking for everything about Commander Vimes of the Vatch, vill you?' 'Ith he a diplomat, mithtreth?' Lady Margolotta lay back. 'No, Igor. He's the reason for diplomats. Close the lid, vill you?' Sam Vimes could parallel-process. Most husbands can. They learn to follow their own line of thought while at the same time listening to what their wives say. And the listening is important, because at any time they could be challenged and must be ready to quote the last sentence in full. A vital additional skill is being able to scan the dialogue for telltale phrases, such as 'and they can deliver it tomorrow' or 'so I've invited them for dinner' or 'they can do it in blue, really quite cheaply'. Lady Sybil was aware of this. Sam could coherently carry an entire conversation while thinking about something completely different. 'I'll tell Willikins to pack winter clothes,' she said, watching him. 'It'll be pretty cold up there at this time of year.' 'Yes. That's a good idea.' Vimes continued to stare at a point just above the fireplace. 'We'll have to host a party ourselves, I expect, so we ought to take a cartload of typical AnkhMorpork food. Show the flag, you know. Do you think I should take a cook along?' 'Yes, dear. That would be a good idea. No one outside the city knows how to make a knuckle sandwich properly.' Sybil was impressed. Ears operating entirely on automatic had nevertheless triggered the mouth into making a small but pertinent contribution. She said, 'Do you think we ought to take the alligator with us?' 'Yes, that might be advisable.' She watched his face. Small furrows formed on Vimes's brow as the ears nudged the brain. He blinked. 'What alligator?' 'You were miles away, Sam. In Uberwald, I expect.' 'Sorry.' 'Is there a problem?' 'Why's he sending me, Sybil?' 'I'm sure Havelock shares with me a conviction that you have hidden depths, Sam.' Vimes sank gloomily into his armchair. It was, he felt, a persistent flaw in his wife's otherwise practical and sensible character that she believed, against all evidence, that he was a man of many talents. He knew he had hidden depths. There was nothing in them that he'd like to see float to the surface. They contained things that should be left to lie. There was also a nagging worry that he couldn't quite pin down. Had he been able to, he might have expressed it like this: policemen didn't go on holiday. Where you got policemen, as Lord Vetinari was wont to remark, you got crime. So if he went to Bonk, however you pronounced the damn place, there would be a crime. It was something the world always laid on for policemen. 'It'll be nice to see Serafine again,' said Sybil. 'Yes, indeed,' said Vimes. In Bonk he would not, officially, be a policeman. He did not like this at all. He liked this even less than all the other things. On the few occasions he'd been outside AnkhMorpork and its surrounding fiefdom he'd either been going to other local cities where the AnkhMorpork badge carried some weight or he had been in hot pursuit, that most ancient and honourable of police procedures. From the way Carrot talked, in Bonk his badge would merely figure as extra roughage on someone's menu. His brow wrinkled again. 'Serafine?' 'Lady Serafine von Uberwald,' said Sybil. 'Sergeant Angua's mother? You remember me telling you last year? We were at finishing school together. Of course, we all knew she was a werewolf, but nobody would ever dream of talking about that sort of thing in those days. Well, you just didn't. There was all that business over the ski instructor, of course, but I'm certain in my own mind that he must have fallen down some crevasse or other. She married the Baron, and they live just outside Beyonk. I write to her with a little news every Hogswatch. A very old Werewolf family.' 'A good pedigree,' said Vimes absently. 'You know you wouldn't like Angua to hear you say that, Sam. Don't worry so. You'll have a chance to relax, I'm sure. It'll be good for you.' 'Yes, dear.' 'It'll be like a second honeymoon,' said Sybil. 'Yes indeed,' said Vimes, remembering that what with one thing and another they'd never really had a first one. 'On that, er, subject,' said Sybil, a little more hesitantly, 'you remember I told you I was going to see old Mrs Content?' 'Oh, yes, how is she?' Vimes was staring at the fireplace again. It wasn't just old schoolfriends. Sometimes it seemed Sybil kept in touch with anyone she'd ever met. Her Hogswatch card list ran to a second volume. 'Quite well, I believe. Anyway, she agrees that-' There was a knocking at the door. She sighed. 'It's Willikins' evening off,' she said. 'You'd better answer it, Sam. I know you want to.' 'I've told them not to disturb me unless it's serious,' said Vimes, getting up. 'Yes, but you think all crime is serious, Sam.' Carrot was on the doorstep. 'It's a bit ... political, sir,' he said. 'What's so political at a quarter to ten at night, captain?' 'The Dwarf Bread Museum's been broken into, sir,' said Carrot. Vimes looked into Carrot's honest blue eyes. 'A thought occurs to me, captain,' he said slowly. 'And the thought is: a certain item has gone missing.' 'That's right, sir.' 'And it's the replica Scone.' 'Yes, sir. Either they broke in just after we left, or,' Carrot licked his lips nervously, 'they were hiding while we were there.' 'Not rats, then.' 'No, sir. Sorry, sir.' Vimes fastened his cloak and took his helmet off its peg. 'So someone has stolen a replica of the Scone of Stone a few weeks before the real one is due to be used in a very important ceremony,' he said. 'I find this intriguing.' 'That's what I thought too, sir.' Vimes sighed. 'I hate the political ones.' When they'd gone, Lady Sybil sat for a while staring at her hands. Then she took a lamp into the library and pulled down a slim volume bound in white leather on which had been embossed in gold the words 'Our Wedding'. It had been a strange event. Ankh-Morpork's high society - so high that it's stinking, Sam always said - had turned up, mostly out of curiosity. She was Ankh-Morpork's most eligible spinster, who'd never thought she'd be married, and he was 'a mere captain of the guard who tended to annoy a lot of people. And here were the iconographs of the event. There she was, looking rather more expansive than radiant, and there Sam was, scowling at the viewer with his hair hastily smoothed down. There was Sergeant Colon with his chest inflated so much his feet had almost left the ground, and Nobby grinning widely or perhaps just making a face; it was so hard to tell with Nobby. Sybil turned over the pages with care. She had put a sheet of tissue between each one to protect them. In many ways, she told herself, she was very lucky. She was proud of Sam. He worked hard for a lot of people. He cared about people who weren't important. He always had far more to cope with than was good for him. He was the most civilized man she'd ever met. Not a gentleman, thank goodness, but a gentle man. She never really knew what it was he did. Oh, she knew what the job was, but by all accounts he didn't spend much time behind his desk. When he eventually came to bed, he tended to drop his clothes straight into the laundry basket, so she'd only hear later from the laundry girl about the bloodstains and the mud. There were rumours of chases over rooftops, hand-to-hand and knee-togroin fights with men who had names like Harry 'The Boltcutter' Weems . . . There was a Sam Vimes she knew, who went out and came home again, and out there was another Sam Vimes who hardly belonged to her and lived in the same world as all those men with the dreadful names. Sybil Ramkin had been brought up to be thrifty, thoughtful, genteel in an outdoor sort of way, and to think kindly of people. She looked at the pictures again, in the silence of the house. Then she blew her nose loudly and went off to do the packing and other sensible things. Corporal Cheery Littlebottom pronounced her name 'Cheri'. She was a she, and therefore a rare bloom in Ankh-Morpork. It wasn't that dwarfs weren't interested in sex. They saw the vital need for fresh dwarfs to- leave their goods to and continue the mining work after they had gone. It was simply that they also saw no point in distinguishing between the sexes anywhere but in private. There was no such thing as a dwarfish female pronoun or, once the children were on solids, any such thing as women's work. Then Cheery Littlebottom had arrived in Ankh-Morpork and had seen that there were men out there who did not wear chain-mail or leather underwear*, but did wear interesting colours and exciting make-up, and these men were called 'women'.t And in the little bullet head the thought had arisen: 'Why not me?' Now she was being denounced in cellars and dwarf bars across the city, as the first dwarf in Ankh-Morpork to wear a skirt. It was hardwearing brown leather and as objectively erotic as a piece of wood but, as some older dwarfs would point out, somewhere under there were his knees.$ Worse, they were now finding that among their sons were some - they choked on the word -'daughters'. Cheery was only the frothy bit on the tip of the wave. Some younger dwarfs were shyly wearing eyeshadow and declaring that, as a matter of fact, they didn't like beer. A current was running through dwarf society. Dwarf society was not against a few wellthrown rocks in the direction of those bobbing on the current, but Captain Carrot had put the word *At least, of the sort she normally wore. tAnd, just lately, Corporal Nobbs. $They couldn't bring themselves to utter the word 'her'. on the street that this would be assault on an officer, a subject on which the Watch held views, and however short the miscreants their feet really would not touch the ground. Cheery had retained her beard and round iron helmet, of course. It was one thing to declare that you were female, but quite unthinkable to declare that you weren't a dwarf. ' 'Open and shut case, sir,' she said when she saw Vimes come in. 'They opened the window in the back room to get in, a very neat job, and didn't shut the front door after they left. Smashed the Scone's case. There's the glass all round the stand. Didn't take anything else that I can see. Left a lot of footprints in the dust. I took a few pictures, but they're scuffed up and weren't much good in the first place. That's about it, really.' 'No dropped fag-ends, wallets or bits of paper with an address on them?' said Vimes. 'No, sir. They were inconsiderate thieves.' 'They certainly were,' said Carrot grimly. 'A question that springs to mind,' said Vimes, 'is: why does it reek even worse of cat's piss now?' 'It is rather sharp, isn't it?' said Cheery. 'With a hint of sulphur, too. Constable Ping said it was like this when he arrived, but there's no cat prints.' Vimes crouched down and looked at the broken glass. 'How did we find out about this?' he said, prodding a few fragments. 'Constable Ping heard the tinkle, sir. He went round the back and saw the window was open. Then the crooks got out through the front door.' 'Sorry about that, sir,' said Ping, stepping forward and saluting. He was a cautious-looking young man who appeared permanently poised to answer a question. 'We all make mistakes,' said Vimes. 'You heard glass break?' 'Yessir. And someone swore.' 'Really? What did they say 'Er. . . "Bugger", sir.' 'And you went around the back and saw the broken window and you . . . ?' 'I called out, "Is there anyone there?" sir.' 'Really? And what would you have done if a voice had said "No"? No, don't answer that. What happened next?' 'Er . . . I heard a lot more glass break and when I got round to the front the door was open and they were gone. So I legged it back to the Yard and told Captain Carrot, sir, knowing he sets a lot of store by this place.' 'Thank you . . . Ping, is it?' 'Yessir.' Entirely unasked, but obviously prepared to answer, Ping said, 'It's a dialect word meaning "watermeadow", sir.' 'Off you go, then.' The lance-constable visibly sagged with relief, and left. Vimes let his mind unfocus a little. He enjoyed moments like these, the little bowl of time when the crime lay before him and he believed that the world was capable of being solved. This was the time you really looked to see what was there, and sometimes the things that weren't there were the most interesting things of all. The Scone had been kept on a plinth about three feet high, inside a case made of five sheets of glass forming a box that was screwed down on the plinth. 'They smashed the glass by accident,' he said eventually. 'Really, sir?' 'Look here, see?' Vimes pointed to three loose screws, neatly lined up. 'They were trying to take the box apart carefully. It must have slipped.' 'But what's the point?' said Carrot. 'It's just a replica, sir! Even if you could find a buyer, it's not worth more than a few dollars.' 'If it's a good one you could swap it with the real thing,' said Vimes. 'Well, yes, I suppose you could try,' said Carrot. 'There would be a bit of a problem, though.' 'What is it?' 'Dwarfs aren't stupid, sir. The replica has got a big cross carved into the underside. And it's only made of plaster in any case.' 'Oh.' 'But it was a good idea, sir,' Carrot said encouragingly. 'You weren't to know.' 'I wonder if the thieves knew.' 'Even if they didn't, they wouldn't have a hope of getting away with it, sir.' 'The real Scone is very well guarded,' said Cheery. 'It's very rare that most dwarfs get a chance to see it.' 'And other people would notice if you had a great lump of rock up your jumper,' said Vimes, more or less to himself. 'So, this was a stupid crime. But it doesn't feel stupid. I mean, why go to all this trouble? The lock on that door is a joke. You could kick it right out of the woodwork. If I was going to pinch this thing, I could be in here and out again before the glass had stopped tinkling. What would be the point of being quiet at this time of night?' The dwarf had been rummaging under a nearby display cabinet. She drew her hand out. Drying blood glistened on the blade of a screwdriver. 'See?' said Vimes. 'Something slipped, and someone cut their hand. What's the point of all this, Carrot? Cat's piss and sulphur and screwdrivers . . . I hate it when you get too many clues. It makes it so damn hard to solve anything.' He threw the screwdriver down. By sheer luck it hit the floorboards tip first and stood there shuddering. 'I'm going home,' he said. 'We'll find out what this is all about when it starts to smell.' Vimes spent the following morning trying to learn about two foreign countries. One of them turned out to be called Ankh-Morpork. Uberwald was easy. It was five or six times bigger than the whole of the Sto Plains, and stretched all the way up to the Hub. It was so thickly forested, so creased by little mountain ranges and beset by rivers, that it was largely unmapped. It was mostly unexplored, too.* The *At least by proper explorers. Just living there doesn't count. people who lived there had other things on their minds, and the people from outside who came to explore went into the forests and never came out again. And for centuries no one had bothered about the place. You couldn't sell things to people hidden by too many trees. It was probably the coach road that had changed everything, a few years back, when they drove it all the way through to Genua. A road is built to follow. Mountain people had always gravitated to the plains, and in recent years Uberwald folk had joined them. The news got back home: there's money to be made in AnkhMorpork, bring the kids. You don't need to bring the garlic, though, because all the vampires work down at the kosher butchers'. And if you're pushed in Ankh-Morpork, you're allowed to push back. No one cares enough about you to want to kill you. Vimes could just about tell the difference between the Uberwald dwarfs and the ones from Copperhead, who were shorter, noisier and rather more at home among humans. The Uberwald dwarfs were quiet, tended to scuttle around corners, and often didn't speak Morporkian. In some of the alleys off Treacle Mine Road you could believe you were in another country. But they were what every copper desires in a citizen. They were no trouble. They mostly had jobs working for one another, they paid their taxes rather more readily than humans did, although to be honest there were small piles of mouse droppings that yielded more money than most Ankh-Morpork citizens, and generally any problems they had they sorted out amongst themselves. If such people ever come to the attention of the police, it's usually only as a chalk outline. It turned out, though, that within the community, behind the grubby facades of all those tenements and workshops in Cable Street and Whalebone Lane, there were vendettas and feuds that, had their origins in two adjoining mine shafts five hundred miles away and a thousand years ago. There were pubs you only drank in if you were from a particular mountain. There were streets you didn't walk down if your clan mined a particular lode. The way you wore your helmet, the way you parted your beard spoke complicated volumes to other dwarfs. They didn't even hand a piece of paper to Vimes. 'Then there's the way you krazak your G'ardrgh,' said Corporal Littlebottom. 'I won't even ask,' said Vimes. 'I'm afraid I can't explain in any case,' said Cheery. 'Have I got a Gaadrerghuh?' said Vimes. Cheery winced at the mispronunciation. 'Yes, sir. Everyone has. But only a dwarf can krazak his properly,' she said. 'Or hers,' she added. Vimes sighed and looked down at the pages of scrawl in his notebook under the heading 'Uberwald'. He wasn't-strictly aware of it, but he treated even geography as if he was investigating a crime ('Did you see who carved out the valley? Would you recognize that glacier if you saw it again?'). 'I'm going to make a lot of mistakes, Cheery,' he said. 'I shouldn't worry about that, sir. Humans always do. But most dwarfs can spot if you're trying not to make them.' 'Are you sure you don't mind coming?' 'Got to face it sooner or later, sir.' Vimes shook his head sadly. 'I don't get it, Cheery. There's all this fuss about a female dwarf trying to act like, like-' 'A lady, sir?' 'Right, and yet no one says anything about Carrot being called a dwarf, but he's a human-' 'No, sir. Like he says, he's a dwarf. He was adopted by dwarfs, he's performed the Y grad, he observes the j'kargra insofar as that's possible in a city. He's a dwarf.' 'He's six foot high!' 'He's a tall dwarf, sir. We don't mind if he wants to be a human as well. Not even the drudak'ak would have a problem with that.' 'I'm running out of throat sweets here, Cheery. What was that?' 'Look, sir, most of the dwarfs here are . . . well, I suppose you'd call them liberal, sir. They're mainly from the mountains behind Copperhead, you know? They get along with humans. Some of them even acknowledge that . . . they've got daughters, sir. But some of the more . . . oldfashioned . . . Uberwald dwarfs haven't got out so much. They act as if B'hrian Bloodaxe was still alive. That's why we call them drudak'ak.' Vimes had a go, but he knew that to really speak dwarfish you needed a lifetime's study and, if at all possible, a serious throat infection. '"above ground" . . . "they negatively" . . .' he faltered. "'They do not get out in the fresh air enough,"' Cheery supplied. 'Ah, right. And everyone thought the new king was going to be one of these?' 'They say Albrecht's never seen sunlight in his life. His clan never goes above ground in daylight. Everyone was certain it'd be him.' And as it turned out it wasn't, thought Vimes. Some of the Uberwald dwarfs hadn't supported him. And the world had moved on. There were plenty of dwarfs around now who had been born in Ankh-Morpork. Their kids went around with their helmets on back to front and spoke dwarfish only at home. Many of them wouldn't know a pick-axe if you hit them with it.* They weren't about to be told how to run their lives by an old dwarf sitting on a stale bun under some distant mountain. He tapped his pencil on his notebook thoughtfully. And because of this, he thought, dwarfs are punching one another on my streets. 'I've seen more of those dwarf sedan chair things around lately,' he said. 'You know, the ones carried by a couple of trolls. They have thick leather curtains . . .' 'Drudak'ak,'said Cheery. 'Very . . . traditional dwarfs. If they have to go out in daylight, they don't look at it.' 'I don't recall them a year ago.' *At least, if you hit them hard enough. Cheery shrugged. 'There's lots of dwarfs here now, sir. The drudak'ak feel they're among dwarfs now. They don't have to deal with humans for anything.' 'They don't like us?' 'They won't even talk to a human. They're fairly choosy about talking to most dwarfs, to tell you the truth.' 'That's daft!' said Vimes. 'How do they get food? You can't live on fungi! How do they trade ore, dam streams, get wood for shoring up their shafts?' 'Well, either other dwarfs are paid to do it or humans are employed,' said Cheery. 'They can afford it. They're very good miners. Well, they own very good mines, in any case.' 'Sounds to me they're a bunch of-' Vimes stopped himself. He was aware that a wise man should always respect the folkways of others, to use Carrot's happy phrase, but Vimes often had difficulty with this idea. For one thing, there were people in the world whose folkways consisted of gutting other people like clams and this was not a'procedure that commanded, in Vimes, any kind of respect at all. 'I'm not thinking diplomatically, am I?' he said. Cheery watched him with a carefully blank expression. 'Oh, I don't know about that, sir,' she said. 'You didn't actually finish the sentence. And, well, a lot of dwarfs respect them. You know . . . feel better for seeing them.' Vimes looked puzzled. Then understanding dawned. 'Oh, I get it,' he said. 'I bet they say things like "Thank goodness people are keeping up the old ways," eh?' 'That's right, sir. I suppose that inside every dwarf in Ankh-Morpork is a little part of him - or her - that knows real dwarfs live underground.' Vimes doodled on his notepad. 'Back home,' he thought. Carrot had innocently talked about dwarfs 'back home'. To all dwarfs far, away, the mountains were 'back home'. It was funny how people were people everywhere you went, even if the people concerned weren't the people the people who made up the phrase 'people are people everywhere' had traditionally thought of as people. And even if you weren't virtuous, as you had been brought up to understand the term, you did like to see virtue in other people, provided it did not cost you anything. 'Why have these d'r . . . these traditional dwarfs come here, though? Ankh-Morpork's full of humans. They must have their work cut out avoiding humans.' 'They're . . . needed, sir. Dwarf law is complicated, and there's often disputes. And they conduct marriages and that sort of thing.' 'You make them sound more like priests.' 'Dwarfs aren't religious, sir.' 'Of course. Oh, well. Thank you, corporal. Off you go. Any fallout from last night? No sulphurous incontinent cats have come forward to confess?' 'No, sir. The Campaign for Equal Heights has put out a pamphlet saying it was another example of the second-class treatment of dwarfs in the city, but it was the same one they always put out. You know, the one with blanks to fill in the details.' 'Nothing changes, Cheery. See you tomorrow morning, then. Send Detritus up.' Why him? Ankh-Morpork was lousy with diplomats. It was practically what the upper classes were for, and it was easy for them because half the foreign bigwigs they'd meet were old chums they'd played Wet Towel Tag with back at school. They tended to be on first-name terms, even with people whose names were Ahmed or Fong. They knew which forks to use. They hunted, shot and fished. They moved in circles that more or less overlapped the circles of their foreign hosts, and were a long way from the rather grubby circles that people like Vimes went around in every working day. They knew all the right nods and winks. What chance had he got against a tie and a crest? Vetinari was throwing him amongst the wolves. And the dwarfs. And the vampires. Vimes shuddered. And Vetinari never did anything without a reason. 'Come in, Detritus.' It always amazed Sergeant Detritus that Vimes knew he was at the door. Vimes had never mentioned that the office wall creaked and bent inwards as the big troll made his way along the corridor. 'You want to see me, sir.' 'Yes. Sit down, man. It's this Uberwald business.' 'Yessir.' 'How do you feel about visiting the old country?' Detritus's face remained impassive, as it always did when he was waiting patiently for things to make sense. 'Uberwald, I mean,' Vimes prompted. 'Dunno, sir. I was just a pebble when we left dere. Dad wanted a better life in der big city.' 'There'll be a lot of dwarfs, Detritus.' Vimes didn't bother to mention vampires and werewolves. Either of those who attacked a troll was making the last big mistake of its career in any case. Detritus carried a 2,OOOlb-draw crossbow as a hand weapon. 'Days Okay, sir. I'm very modern 'bout dwarfs.' 'These might be a bit old-fashioned about you, though.' 'Dem deep-down dwarfs?' 'That's right.' 'I heard about dem.' 'There's still wars with trolls up near the Hub, I hear. Tact and diplomacy will be called for.' 'You have come to der right troll for dat, sir,' said Detritus. 'You did push that man through that wall last week, Detritus.' 'It was done with tact, sir. Quite a fin wall.' Vimes let it go at that. The man in question had just laid out three watchmen with a club, which Detritus had broken in one hand before selecting the suitably tactful wall. 'See you tomorrow, then. Best dress armour, remember. Send Angua now, please.' 'She's not here, sir.' 'Blast. Put out some messages for her, will you?' . Igor lurched through the castle corridors, dragging one foot after the other in the approved fashion. He was Igor, son of Igor, nephew of several Igors, brother of Igors and cousin of more Igors than he could remember without checking up in his diary. Igors did not change a winning formula.* And, as a clan, Igors liked working for vampires. Vampires kept regular hours, were generally polite to their servants and, an important extra, didn't require much work in the bedmaking and cookery department, and tended to have cool, roomy cellars where an Igor could pursue his true calling. This more than made up for those occasions when you had to sweep up their ashes. He entered Lady Margolotta's crypt and knocked politely on the coffin lid. It moved aside a fraction. 'Yes?' 'Thorry to wake you in the middle of the afternoon, your ladythip, but you did thay-' 'All right. And-?' 'It's going to be Vimeth, ladythip.' A dainty hand came out of the partly opened coffin and punched the air. 'Yes!' *Especially if it was green, and bubbled. 'Meth, ladythip.' 'Veil, veil. Samuel Vimes. Poor devil. Do the doggies know?' Igor nodded. 'The Baron'th Igor wath altho collecting a methage, ladythip.' 'And the dwarfs?' 'It ith an official appointment, ladythip. Everyone knowth. Hith Grathe the Duke of Ankh-Morpork, Thir Thamuel Vimeth, Commander of the Ankh-Morpork Thity Watch.' 'Then the midden has hit the windmill, Igor.' 'Very well put, ladythip. No one liketh a thort thower of thit.' 'I imagine, Igor, that he'll leave them behind.' Let us consider a castle from the point of view of its furniture. This one has chairs, yes, but they don't look very lived in. There is a huge sofa near the fire, and that is ragged with use, but other furnishings look as if they're there merely for show. There is a long oak table, well polished and looking curiously unused for such an old piece of furniture. Possibly the reason for this is that. on the floor around it are a large number of white earthenware bowls. One of them has 'Father' written on it. The Baroness Serafine von Uberwald slammed shut Twurp's Peerage, irritably. 'The man is a . . . a nothing,' she said. 'A paper man. A man of straw. An insult.' `The name Vimes goes back a long time,' said Wolfgang von Uberwald, who was doing one-handed press-ups in front of the fire. 'So does the name Smith. What of it?' Wolf changed to the other hand, in mid-air. He was naked. He liked his muscles to get an airing. They shone. Someone with an anatomical chart could have picked out every one. They might also have remarked on the unusual way his blond hair grew not only on his head but down and across his shoulders as well. 'He is a duke, Mother.' 'Hah! Ankh-Morpork hasn't even got a king!' '. . . nineteen, twenty . . . I hear stories about that, Mother . . .' 'Oh, stories. Sybil writes silly little letters to me every year! Sam this, Sam that. Of course, she had to be grateful for what she could get, but . . . the man is just a thief-taker, after all. I shall refuse to see him.' 'You will not do that, Mother,' Wolf grunted. 'That would be . . . twenty-nine, thirty . . . dangerous. What do you tell Lady Sybil about us?' 'Nothing! I don't write back, of course. A rather sad and foolish woman.' 'And she still writes every year? . . . thirty-six, thirty-seven . . .' 'Yes. Four pages, usually. And that tells you everything about her you need to know. Where is your father?' A flap in the bottom of a nearby door swung back and a large, heavy-set wolf trotted in. It glanced around the room and then shook itself vigorously. The Baroness bridled. 'Guye! You know what I said! It's after six! Change when you come in from the garden!' The wolf gave her a look and strolled behind a massive oak screen at the far end of the room. There was a . . . noise, soft and rather strange, not so much an actual sound as a change in the texture of the air. The Baron walked around from behind the screen, doing up the cord of a tattered dressing gown. The Baroness sniffed. 'At least your father wears clothes,' she said. 'Clothes are unhealthy, Mother,' said Wolf calmly. 'Nakedness is purity.' The Baron sat down. He was a large, red-faced man, insofar as a face could be seen under the beard, hair, moustache and eyebrows, which were engaged in a bitter four-way war over the remaining areas of bare skin. 'Well?' he growled. 'Vimes the thief-taker from Ankh-Morpork is going to be the alleged ambassador!' snapped the Baroness. 'Dwarfs?' 'Of course they'll be told.' The Baron sat staring at nothing, with the same expression Detritus used when a new thought was being assembled. 'Bad?' he ventured, at last. 'Guye, I've told you about this a thousand times!' said the Baroness. 'You're spending far too much time changed! You know what you're like afterwards. Supposing we had official visitors?' 'Bite 'em!' 'You see? Go on off to bed and don't come down until you're fit to be human!' 'Vimes could ruin everything, Father,' said Wolfgang. He was now doing handstands, using one hand. 'Guye! Down!' The Baron stopped trying to scratch his ear with his leg. 'Do?' he said. Wolfgang's gleaming body dipped a moment as he changed hands again. 'City life makes men weak. Vimes will be fun. They do say he likes running, though.' He gave a little laugh. 'We shall have to see how fast he is.' 'His wife says he's very soft-hearted- Guye! Don't you dare do that! If you're going to do that sort of thing do it upstairs!' The Baron looked only moderately ashamed, but readjusted his clothing anyway. 'Bandits!' he said. 'Yes, they could be a problem at this time of year,' said Wolfgang. 'At least a dozen,' said the Baroness. 'Yes, that should-' Wolf grunted, upside down. 'No, Mother. You are being stupid. His coach must get here safely. You understand? When he is here . . . that is a different matter.' The Baron's massive eyebrows tangled with a thought. 'Plan! King!' 'Exactly.' The Baroness sighed. 'I don't trust that little dwarf.' Wolf somersaulted on to his feet. 'No. But trustworthy or not, he's all we've got. Vimes must get here, with his soft heart. He may even be useful. Perhaps we should . . . assist matters.' 'Why?' snapped the Baroness. 'Let AnkhMorpork look after their own!' There was a knock on the door while Vimes was having breakfast. Willikins ushered in a small thin man in neat but threadbare black clothes, whose overlarge head gave him the appearance of a lolly nearing the last suck. He carried a black bowler hat the way a soldier carries his helmet, and walked like a man who had something wrong with his knees. 'I am so sorry to disturb your grace . . .' Vimes laid down his knife. He'd been peeling an orange. Sybil insisted he eat fruit. 'Not your grace,' he said. 'Just Vimes. Sir Samuel, if you must. Are you Vetinari's man?' 'Inigo Skimmer, sir. Mhm-mhm. I am to travel with you to Uberwald.' 'Ah, you're the clerk who's going to do all the whispering and winking while I hand around the cucumber sandwiches, are you?' 'I will try to be of service, sir, although I'm not much of a winker. Mhm-mhm.' 'Would you like some breakfast?' 'I ate already, sir. Mhm-mhm.' Vimes looked the clerk up and down. It wasn't so mush that his head was big, it was simply that someone appeared to have squeezed the bottom half of it and forced everything up into the top. He was going bald, too, and had carefully teased the remaining strands of hair across the pink dome. It was hard to tell his age. He could be twenty-five and a big worrier, or a fresh-faced forty. Vimes inclined to the former - the man had the look of someone who had spent his life watching the world over the top of a book. And there was that . . . well, was it a nervous laugh? A giggle? An unfortunate way of clearing his throat? And that strange way he walked . . . 'Not even some toast? A piece of fruit? These oranges are fresh from Klatch, I really can recommend them.' Vimes tossed one at the man. It bounced off his arm, and Skimmer took a step backwards, mildly appalled at the upper class's habit of fruithurling. 'Are you all right, sir? Mhm-mhm?' 'Sorry about that,' said Vimes. 'I was carried away by fruit.' He laid aside his napkin and got up from the table, putting his arm around Skimmer's shoulders. 'I'll just take you into the Mildly Yellow drawing room where you can wait,' he said, walking him towards the door and patting him on the arm in a friendly way. 'The coaches are loaded up. Sybil is re-grouting the bathroom, learning Ancient Klatchian and doing all those other little last-minute things women always do. You're with us in the big coach.' Skimmer recoiled. 'Oh, I couldn't do that, sir! I'll travel with your retinue. Mhm-mhm. Mhmmhm.' 'If you mean Cheery and Detritus, they're in there with us,' said Vimes, noting the look of horror deepen slightly. 'You need four for a decent game of cards and the road's as boring as hell for most of the way.' 'And, er, your servants?' 'Willikins and the cook and Sybil's maid are in the other coach.' 'Oh.' Vimes smiled inwardly. He remembered the saying from his childhood: too poor to paint, but too proud to whitewash . . . 'Bit of a tough choice, is it?' he said. 'I'll tell you what, you can come in our coach but we'll give you a hard seat and patronize you from time to time, how about that?' 'I am afraid you are making a mockery of me, Sir Samuel. Mhm-mhm.' 'No, but I may be assisting. And now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to nip down to the Yard to sort out a few last-minute things . . .' A quarter of an hour later Vimes walked into the charge room at the Yard. Sergeant Stronginthearm looked up, saluted, and then ducked to avoid the orange that was tossed at his head. 'Sir?' he said, bewildered. 'Just testing, Stronginthearm.' 'Did I pass, sir?' 'Oh, yes. Keep the orange. It's full of vitamins.' 'My mother always told me those things could kill you, sir:' Carrot was waiting patiently in Vimes's office. Vimes shook his head. He knew all the places to tread in the corridor and he knew he didn't make a sound, and he'd never once .caught Carrot reading his paperwork, not even upside down. Just once it'd be nice to catch him out at something. If the man was any straighter you could use him as a plank. Carrot stood up and saluted: 'Yes, yes, we haven't got a lot of time for that now,' said Vimes, sitting behind his desk. 'Anything new overnight?' 'An unattributed murder, sir. A tradesman called Wallace Sonky. Found in one of his own vats with his throat cut. No Guild seal or note or anything. We're treating it as suspicious.' 'Yes, I think that sounds fairly suspicious,' said Vimes. Ùnless he has a record as a very careless shaver. What kind of vat?' 'Er, rubber, sir.' 'Rubber comes in vats? Wouldn't he bounce out?' 'No, sir. It's a liquid in the vat, sir. He makes rubber . . . things.' 'Hang on, I remember seeing something once . . . Don't they make things by dipping them in the rubber? You make, sort of, the right shapes and dip them in to get gloves, boots . . . that sort of thing?' 'Er, that, er, sort of thing, sir.' Something about Carrot's uneasy manner got through to Vimes. And the little file at the back of his brain eventually waved a card. 'Sonky, Sonky .. . Carrot, we're not talking about Sonky as in "a packet of Sonkies", are we?' Now Carrot was bright red with embarrassment. 'Yes, sir!' 'My gods, what was he dipping in the vat?' 'He'd been thrown in, sir. Apparently.' 'But he's practically a national hero!' 'Sir?' 'Captain, the housing shortage in AnkhMorpork would be a good deal worse if it wasn't for old man Sonky and his penny-a-packet preventatives. Who'd want to do away with him?' 'People do have Views, sir,' said Carrot coldly. Yes, you do, don't you? Vimes thought. Dwarfs don't hold with that sort of thing. 'Well, put some men on it. Anything else?' 'A Carter assaulted Constable Swires last night for clamping his cart.' 'Assault?' 'Tried to stamp on him, sir.' Vimes had a mental picture of Constable Swires, a gnome six inches tall but a mile high in pent-up aggression. 'How is he?' 'Well, the man can speak, but it'll be a little while before he can climb back on a cart again. Apart from that, it's all run-of-the-mill stuff.' 'Nothing more about the Scone theft?' 'Not really. Lots of accusations in the dwarf community, but no one really knows anything. Like you say, sir, we'll probably know more when it goes bad.' 'Any word on the street?' 'Yes, sir. It's "Halt", sir. Sergeant Colon painted it at the top of Lower Broadway. The carters are a lot more careful now. Of course, someone has to shovel the manure off every hour or so.' 'This whole traffic thing is not making us very popular, captain.' 'No, sir. But we aren't popular anyway. And at least it's bringing in money for the city treasury. Er . . . there is another thing, sir.' 'Yes?' 'Have you seen Sergeant Angua, sir?' 'Me? No. I was expecting her to be here.' Then Vimes noticed just the very edge of concern in Carrot's voice. 'Something wrong?' 'She didn't turn up for duty last night. It wasn't full moon, so it's a bit . . . odd. Nobby said she was rather concerned about something when they were on duty the other day.' Vimes nodded. Of course, most people were concerned about something if they were on duty with Nobby. They tended to look at clocks a lot. 'Have you been to her lodgings?' 'Her bed hadn't been slept in,' said Carrot. 'Or her basket, either,' he added. 'Well, I can't help you there, Carrot. She's your girlfriend.' 'She's been a bit worried about the future, I think,' said Carrot. 'Um, you . . . she . . . the, er, werewolf thing?' Vimes stopped, acutely embarrassed. 'It preys on her mind,' said Carrot. 'Perhaps she's just gone somewhere to think about things.' Like how on earth could she go out with a young man who, magnificent though he was, blushed at the idea of a packet of Sonkies. 'That's what I hope, sir,' Carrot said. 'She does that sometimes. It's really quite stressful, being a werewolf in a big city. I know we'd have heardif she'd run into any trouble-' There was the sound of a harness outside, and the rattle of a coach. Vimes was relieved. Seeing Carrot worried was so unusual that it had the shock of the unfamiliar. 'Well, we'll have to go without her,' he said. 'I want to be kept in touch about everything, captain. A fake Scone going missing a week or two before a big dwarf coronation- That sounds like another shoe is about to drop and it might just hit me. And while you're about it, put the word out that I'm to be sent anything about Sonky, will you? I don't like mysteries. The clacks do a skeleton service as far as Uberwald now, don't they?' Carrot brightened up. 'It's wonderful, sir, isn't it? In a few months they say we'll be able to send messages all the way from Ankh-Morpork to Genua in less than a day!' 'Yes indeed. I wonder if by then we'll have anything sensible to say to each other.' Lord Vetinari stood at his window watching the semaphore tower on the other side of the river. All eight of the big shutters facing him were blinking furiously - black, white, white, black, white . . . Information was flying into the air. Twenty miles behind him, on another tower in Sto Lat. someone was looking through a telescope and shouting out numbers. How quickly the future comes upon us, he thought. He always suspected the poetic description of Time like an ever-rolling stream. Time, in his experience, moved more like rocks . . . sliding, pressing, building up force underground and then, with one jerk that shakes the crockery, a whole field of turnips mysteriously slips sideways by six feet. Semaphore had been around for centuries, and everyone knew that knowledge had a value, and everyone knew that exporting goods was a way of making money. And then, suddenly, someone realized how much money you could make by exporting to Genua by tomorrow things known in Ankh-Morpork today. And some bright young man in the Street of Cunning Artificers had been unusually cunning. Knowledge, information, power, words . . . flying through the air, invisible . . . And suddenly the world was tap-dancing on quicksand. In that case, the prize went to the best dancer. Lord Vetinari turned away, took some papers from a desk drawer, walked to a wall, touched a certain area, and stepped quickly through the hidden door that noiselessly swung open. Beyond was a corridor, lit by borrowed light from high windows and paved with small flagstones. He walked forward, hesitated, said 'No, this is Tuesday,' and moved his descending foot so that it landed on a stone that in every respect appeared to be exactly the same as its fellows.* *Except that the ones around it were not good stones to tread on if it was a Tuesday. Anyone overhearing his progress along the passages and stairs might have caught muttered phrases on the lines of 'The moon is waxing . . .' and 'Yes, it is before noon.' A really keen listener would have heard the faint whirring and ticking inside the walls. A really keen and paranoid listener would have reflected that anything Lord Vetinari said aloud even while he was alone might not be totally worth believing. Not, certainly, if your life depended on it. Eventually he reached a door, which he unlocked. There was a large attic room beyond, suddenly airy and bright and cheerful with sunlight from the windows in the roof. It seemed to be a cross between a workshop and a storeroom. Several bird skeletons hung from the ceiling and there were a few other bones on the worktables, along with coils of wire and metal springs and tubes of paint and more tools, many of them probably unique, than you normally saw in any one place. Only a narrow bed, wedged between a thing like a loom with wings and a large bronze statue, suggested that someone actually lived here. They were clearly someone who was obsessively interested in everything. What interested Lord Vetinari right now was the device. all by itself on a table in the middle of the room. It looked like a collection of copper balls balanced on one another. Steam was hissing gently from a few rivets, and occasionally the device went blup 'Your lordship!' Vetinari looked around. A hand was waving desperately at him from behind an upturned bench. And something made him look up, as well. The ceiling above him was crusted with some brownish substance, which hung from it like stalactites. Blup With quite surprising speed the Patrician was behind the bench. Leonard of Quirm smiled at him from underneath his home-made protective helmet. 'I doapologize,' he said. 'I'm afraid I wasn't expecting anyone to come in. I'm sure it will work this time, however.' Blup 'What is it?' said Vetinari. Blup 'I'm not quite sure, but I hope it's a-' And then it was, suddenly, too noisy to talk. Leonard of Quirm never dreamed that he was a prisoner. If anything, he was grateful to Vetinari for giving him this airy work space, and regular meals, and laundry, and protecting him from those people who for some reason always wanted to take his perfectly innocent inventions, designed for the betterment of mankind, and use them for despicable purposes. It was amazing how many of them there were - both the people and the inventions. It was as if all the genius of a civilization had funnelled into one head which was, therefore, in a constant state of highly inventive spin. Vetinari often speculated upon the fate of mankind should Leonard keep his mind on one thing for more than an hour or so. The rushing noise died away. Blup. Leonard peered cautiously over the bench and smiled broadly. 'Ali! Happily, we appear to have achieved coffee,' he said. 'Coffee?' Leonard walked over to the table and pulled a small lever on the device. A light . brown foam cascaded into a waiting cup with a noise like a clogged drain. 'Differentcoffee,' he said. 'Very fast coffee. I rather think you will like it. I'm calling this the Very-Fast-Coffee machine.' 'And that's today's invention, is it?' said Vetinari. 'Well, yes. It would have been a scale model of a device for reaching the moon and other celestial bodies, but I was thirsty.' 'How fortunate.' Lord Vetinari carefully removed an experimental pedal-powered shoepolishing machine from a chair and sat down. 'And I've brought you some more little ... messages.' Leonard almost clapped his hands. 'Oh, good! And I've finished the other ones you gave me last night.' Lord Vetinari carefully removed a moustache of frothy coffee from his upper lip. 'I beg your-? All of them? You broke the cyphers on all those messages from Uberwald?' 'Oh, they were quite easy after I'd finished the new device,' said Leonard, rummaging through the piles of paper on a bench and handing the Patrician several closely written sheets. 'But once you realize that there are only a limited number of birth dates a_ person can have, and that people do tend to think the same way, cyphers are really not very hard.' 'You mentioned a new device?' said the Patrician. 'Oh, yes. The . . . thingy. It's all very crude at the moment, but it suffices for these simple codes.' Leonard pulled a sheet off something vaguely rectangular. It seemed to Vetinari to be all wooden wheels and long thin spars which, he saw when he moved closer, were inscribed thickly with letters and numbers. A number of the wheels were not round but oval or heartshaped or some other curious curve. When Leonard turned a handle, the whole thing moved with a complex oiliness quite disquieting in something merely mechanical. 'And what are you calling it?' 'Oh, you know me and names, my lord. I think of it as the Engine for the Neutralizing of Information by the Generation of Miasmic Alphabets, but I appreciate that it does not exactly roll off the tongue. Er . . .' 'Yes, Leonard?' 'Er . . . it's not . . . wrong, is it - reading other people's messages?' Vetinari sighed. The worried man in front of him, who was so considerate of life that he carefully dusted around spiders, had once invented a device that fired lead pellets with tremendous speed and force. He thought it would be useful against dangerous animals. He'd designed a thing that could destroy whole mountains. He thought it would be useful in the mining industries. Here was a man who, in his tea break, would doodle an instrument for unthinkable mass destruction in the blank spaces around an exquisite drawing of the fragile beauty of the human smile. With a list of numbered parts. And if you taxed him with it he'd say: ah, but such a thing would make war completely impossible, you see? Because no one would dare use it. Leonard brightened up as a thought apparently struck him. 'But, on the other hand, the more we know about one another the more we will learn to understand. Now, you asked me to construct some more cyphers for you. I'm sorry, my lord, but I must have misunderstood your requirements. What was wrong with the first ones I did?' Vetinari sighed. 'I'm afraid they were unbreakable, Leonard.' 'But surely-' 'It's hard to explain,' said Vetinari, aware that what to him were the lucid waters of politics were so much mud to Leonard. 'These new ones you have are . . . merely devilishly difficult?' 'You specified fiendishly, sir,' said Leonard, looking worried. 'Oh, yes.' 'There does not appear to be a common standard for fiends, my lord, but I did some research in the more accessible occult texts and I believe these cyphers will be considered "difficult" by more than 96 per cent of fiends.' 'Good.' 'They may perhaps verge on the diabolically difficult in places-' 'That is not a problem. I shall use them forthwith.' Leonard still seemed to have something on his mind. 'It would be so easy to make them archdemonically diff-' 'But these will suffice, Leonard,' said Vetinari. 'My lord,' Leonard almost wailed, 'I really cannot guarantee that sufficiently clever people will be unable to read your messages!' 'Good.' 'But, my lord, they will know what you are thinking!' Vetinari patted him on the shoulder. 'No, Leonard. They will merely know what is in my messages.' 'I really do not understand, my lord.' 'No, but on the other hand I cannot make exploding coffee. What would the world be like if we were all alike?' Leonard's face clouded for a moment. 'I'm not sure,' he said, 'but if you'd like me to work on the problem I may be able to devise a-' 'It was merely a figure of speech, Leonard.' Vetinari shook his head ruefully. It often seemed to him that Leonard, who had pushed intellect into hitherto undiscovered uplands, had discovered there large and specialized pockets of stupidity. What would be the point of cyphering messages that very clever enemies couldn't break? You'd end up not knowing what they thought you thought they were thinking . . . 'There was one rather strange message from Uberwald, my lord,' said Leonard. 'Yesterday morning.' 'Strange?' 'It was not cyphered.' 'Not at all? I thought everyone used codes.' 'Oh, the sender and recipient are code names, but the message is quite plain. It was a request for information about Commander Vimes, of whom you have often spoken.' Lord Vetinari went quite still. 'The return message was mostly clear, too. A certain amount of . . . gossip.' 'All about Vimes? Yesterday morning? Before I-?' 'My lord?' 'Tell me,' said the Patrician. 'This message from Uberwald. It yields no clue at all to the sender?' Sometimes, like a ray of light through clouds, Leonard could be quite perceptive. 'You think you might know the originator, my lord?' 'Oh, in my younger days I spent some time in Uberwald,' said the Patrician. 'In those days rich young men from Ankh-Morpork used to go on what we called the Grand Sneer, visiting farflung countries and cities in order to see at first hand how inferior they were. Or so it seemed, at any rate. Oh, yes. I spent some time in Uberwald.' It was not often that Leonard of Quirm paid attention to what people around him were doing, but he saw the faraway look in Lord Vetinari's eye. 'You have fond memories, my lord?' he ventured. 'Hmm? Oh, she was a very . . . unusual lady but, alas, rather older than me,' said Vetinari. 'Much older, I have to say. But it was a long time ago. Life teaches us its small lessons and we move on.' There was that distant look again. 'Well, well, well . . .' 'And no doubt the lady is now dead,' said Leonard. He was not much good at this sort of conversation. 'Oh, I very much doubt that,' said Vetinari. 'I have no doubt she thrives.' He smiled. The world was becoming more ... interesting. 'Tell me, Leonard,' he said. 'Has it ever occurred to you that one day wars will be fought with brains?' Leonard picked up his coffee cup. 'Oh dear. Won't that be rather messy?' he said. Vetinari sighed again. 'Not perhaps as messy as the other sort,' he said, trying the coffee. It really was rather good. The ducal coach rolled past the last of the outlying buildings and on to the vast, flat Sto Plains. Cheery and Detritus had tactfully decided to ride on the top for the morning, leaving the Duke and Duchess alone inside. Skimmer was indulging in some uneasy class solidarity and riding with the servants for a while. 'Angua seems to have gone into hiding,' said Vimes, watching the cabbage fields pass by. 'Poor girl,' said Sybil. 'The city's not really the place for her.' 'Well, you couldn't winkle Carrot out of it with a big pin,' said Vimes. 'And that's the problem, I suppose.' 'Part of the problem,' said Sybil. Vimes nodded. The other part, which no one talked about, was children. Sometimes it seemed to Vimes that everyone knew that Carrot was the true heir to the redundant throne of the city. It just so happened that he didn't want to be. He wanted to be a copper, and everyone went along with the idea. But kingship was a bit like a grand piano -you could put a cover over it, but you could still see what shape it was underneath. Vimes wasn't sure what you got if a human and a werewolf had kids. Possibly you just got someone who had to shave twice a day around full moon and occasionally felt like chasing carts. And when you remembered what some of the city's rulers had been like, a known werewolf as ruler ought to hold no terrors. It was the buggers who looked human all the time that were the problem. That was just his view, though. Other people might see things differently. No wonder she'd gone off to think about things. He realized he was looking, unseeing, out of the window. To take his mind off this he opened the package of papers that Skimmer had handed him just as he got on the coach. It was called 'briefing material'. The man seemed to be an expert on Uberwald, and Vimes wondered how many other clerks there were in the Patrician's palace, beavering away, becoming experts. He settled down glumly and began to read. The first page showed the crest of the Unholy Empire that had once ruled most of the huge country. Vimes couldn't recall much about it, except that one of the emperors once had a man's hat nailed to his head for a joke. Uberwald seemed to be a big, cold, depressing place, so perhaps people would do anything for a laugh. The crest was altogether too florid for Vimes's taste, and was dominated by a double-headed bat. The first document was entitled: The Fatbearing Strata of the Schmaltzberg Region ('the Land of the Fifth Elephant'). He knew the legend, of course. There had once been five elephants, not four, standing on the back of Great A'Tuin, but one had lost its footing or had been shaken loose and had drifted off into a curved orbit before eventually crashing down, a billion tons of enraged pachyderm, with a force that had rocked the entire world and split it up into the continents people know today. The rocks that fell back had , covered and compressed the corpse and the rest, after millennia of under- ground cooking and rendering, was fat history. According to legend, gold and iron and all the other metals were also part of the carcase. After all, an elephant big enough to support the world on its back wasn't going to have ordinary bones, was it? - The notes in front of him were a little more believable, talking about some unknown catastrophe that had killed millions of the mammoths, bison, and giant shrews and then covered them over, pretty much like the Fifth Elephant in the story. There were notes about old troll sagas and legends of the dwarfs. Possibly ice had been involved. Or a flood. In the case of the trolls, who were believed to be the first species in the world, maybe they'd been there and seen the elephant trumpeting across the sky. The result, anyway, was the same. Everyone well, everyone except Vimes - knew the best fat came from the Schmaltzberg wells and mines. It made the whitest, brightest candles, the creamiest soap, the hottest, cleanest lamp oil. The yellow tallow from Ankh-Morpork's boilers didn't come close. Vimes didn't see the point. Gold . . . now that was important. People died for it. And iron Ankh-Morpork needed iron. Timber, too. Stone, even. Silver, now, was very . . . He flicked back to a page headed 'Natural Resources', and under 'Silver' read: 'Silver has not been mined in Uberwald since the Diet of Bugs in Am 1880, and the possession of the metal is technically illegal.' There was no explanation. He made a note to ask Inigo. After all, where you got werewolves, didn't you need silver? And things must have been pretty bad if everyone had to eat insects. Anyway, silver was useful, too, but fat was just . . . fat. It was like biscuits, or tea, or sugar. It was just something that turned up in the cupboard. There was no style to it, no romance. It was stuff in tubs. A note was clipped to the next page. He read: 'The Fifth Elephant as a metaphor also appears in the Uberwald languages. Depending on context it can mean "a thing that does not exist" (as we would say, "Klatchian mist"), "a thing that is other than it seems" and "a thing that, while unseen, controls events" (in the same way that we would use the term eminence grise).' I wouldn't, thought Vimes. I don't use words like that. 'Constable Shoe,' said Constable Shoe, when the door of the bootmaker's factory was opened. 'Homicide.' 'You come 'bout Mister Sonky?' said the troll who'd opened the door. Warm damp air blew out into the street, smelling of incontinent cats and sulphur. 'I meant I'm a zombie,' said Reg Shoe. 'I find that telling people right away saves embarrassing misunderstandings later on. But coincidentally, yes, we've come about the alleged deceased.' 'We?' said the troll, making no comment about Reg's grey skin and stitch marks. 'Doon here, bigjobs!' The troll looked down, not a usual direction in Ankh-Morpork, where people preferred not to see what they were standing in. 'Oh,' he said, and took a few steps backwards. Some people said that gnomes were no more belligerent than any other race, and this was true. However, the belligerence was compressed down into a body six inches high and, like many things when they are compressed, had an inclination to explode. Constable Swires had been on the force only for a few months, but news had gone around and already he inspired respect, or at least the bladder-trembling terror that can pass for respect on these occasions. 'Don't just stand there gawpin', where's yon stiff?' said Swires, striding into the factory. 'We put him in der cellar,' said the troll. 'And now we got half a ton of liquid rubber runnin' to waste. He'd be livid 'bout that . . . if he was alive, o'course.' 'Why's it wasted?' said Reg. 'Gone all thick and manky, hasn't it? I'm gonna have to dump it later on, and days not easy. We was supposed to be dippin' a load of Ribbed Magical Delights today, too, but all der ladies felt faint when I hauls him outa der vat and dey went off home.' Reg Shoe looked shocked. He was not, for various reasons, a patron of Mr Sonky's wares, romance not being a regular feature of the life of the dead, but surely the world of the living had some standards, didn't it? 'You employ ladies here?' he said. The troll looked surprised. 'Yeah. Sure. It's good steady work. Dey're good workers, too. Always laughing and tellin' jokes while dey're doin' der dippin' and packin', 'specially when we're doin' der Big Boys.' The troll sniffed. 'Pers'nally, I don't unnerstan' der jokes.' 'Them Big Boys are bloody good value for a penny,' said Buggy Swires. Reg Shoe stared at his tiny partner. There was just no way that he was going to ask the question. But Swires must have seen his expression. 'After a bit of work wi' yon scissors, ye won't find a better mackintosh in the whole city,' said the gnome, and laughed nastily. Constable Shoe sighed. He knew that Mr Vimes had an unofficial policy of getting ethnic minorities into the Watch,* but he wasn't sure this was wise in the case of gnomes, even though there was, admittedly, no ethnic group that was more minor. They had an inbuilt resistance to rules. This didn't just apply to the law, but to all the invisible rules that most people obeyed unthinkingly, like 'Do not attempt to eat this giraffe' or 'Do not headbutt people in the ankle just because they won't give you a chip'. It was best to think of Constable Swires simply as a small independent weapon. 'You'd better show us the d- the person who is currently vitally challenged,' he said. They were led downstairs. What was hanging from a beam there would have frightened the life out of anyone who wasn't already a zombie. 'Sorry 'bout dat,' said the troll, pulling it down and tossing it into a corner, where it coiled into a rubbery heap. 'What d'heel wazzit?' said Constable Swires. 'We had to pull der rubber off'f him,' said the troll. 'Sets quick, see? Once you get it out in der air.' 'Hey, that's a' biggest Sonky I ever saw,' chuckled Buggy. 'A whole-body Sonky! Reckon that's the way he wanted to go?' Reg looked at the corpse. He didn't mind being sent out on murders, even messy ones. The way he saw it, dying was really just a career change. Been there, done that, worn the shroud . . . And *As a member of the dead community Reg Shoe naturally thought of himself as an ethnic majority. then you got over it and got on with your life. Of course, he knew that many people didn't, for some reason, but he thought of them as not prepared to make the effort. There was a ragged wound in the neck. 'Any next of kin?' he said. 'He got a brother in Uberwald. We've sent word,' the troll added. 'On der clacks. It cost twenty dollars! Dat's murder!' 'Can you think of any reason why someone would kill him?' The troll scratched his head. 'Well, 'cos dey wanted him dead, I reckon. Dat's a good reason.' 'And why would anyone want him dead, do you think?' Reg Shoe could be very, very patient. 'Has there been any trouble?' 'Business ain't been so good, I know dat.' 'Really? I'd have thought you'd be coining money here.' 'Oh, yeah, days what you'd fink, but not everyfing people calls a Sonky is made by us, see? It's to do wid us becomin" - the troll's face screwed up with cerebral effort - 'jer-nair-rick. Lots of other buggers are jumpin' up and down on der bandwagon, and dey got better plant and new ideas like makin' 'em in cheese-and-onion flavour an' wid bells on an' stuff like dat. Mister Sonky won't have nothin' to do wid dat kind of frog and days been costin' us sales.' 'I can see this would worry him,' said Reg, in a keep-on-talking tone of voice. 'He's been locking himself in his office a lot.' 'Oh? Why's that?' said Reg. 'He's der boss. You don't ask der boss. But he did say dat dere was a special job comin' up and data put us back on our feets.' 'Really?' said Reg, making a mental note. 'What kind of job?' 'Dunno. You don't-' '-ask the boss,' said Reg. 'Right. I suppose no one saw the murder, did they?' Once again the troll screwed up its enormous face in thought. 'Der murderer, yeah, an' prob'ly Mister Sonky.' 'Was there a third party?' 'I dunno, I never get invited to dem frogs.' 'Apart from Mister Sonky and the murderer,' said Shoe, still as patient as the grave, 'was there anyone else here last night?' 'Dunno,' said the troll. 'Thank you, you've been very helpful,' said Shoe. 'We'll have a look around, if you don't mind.' 'Sure.' The troll went back to his vat. Reg Shoe hadn't expected to find anything and was not disappointed. But he was thorough. Zombies usually are. Mr Vimes had told him never to get too excited about clues, because clues could lead you a dismal dance. They could become a habit. You ended up finding a wooden leg, a silk slipper and a feather at the scene of a crime and constructing an elegant theory involving a one-legged ballet dancer and a production of Chicken Lake. The door to the office was open. It was hard to tell if anything had been disturbed; Shoe got the impression that the mess was normal. A desk was awash with paperwork, Mr Sonky having followed the usual 'put it down somewhere' method of filing. A bench was covered with samples of rubber, bits of sacking, large bottles of chemicals and some wooden moulds that Reg refrained from looking at too closely. `Did you hear Corporal Littlebottom talking about that museum theft when we came on duty today, Buggy?' he said, opening a jar of yellow powder and sniffing it. No. 'I did,' said Reg. He put the lid on the sulphur again and sniffed the air of the factory. It smelled of liquid rubber, which is very much like the smell of incontinent cats. Ànd some things stick in the mind,' he said. 'Special job, eh?' It was Constable Visit -The-Infidel-WithExplanatory-Pamphlets's week as Communications Officer, which largely meant looking after the pigeons and keeping an eye on the clacks, with of course the assistance of Constable Downspout. Constable Downspout was a gargoyle. When it came to staring fixedly at one thing you couldn't beat a gargoyle. The gargoyles were getting a lot of employment in the clacks industry. Constable Visit quite enjoyed the pigeons. He sang them hymns. They listened to short homilies, cocking their heads from side to side. After all, he reasoned, had not Bishop Horn preached to the molluscs of the sea? And there was no record of them actually listening, whereas he was certain that the pigeons were taking it in. And they seemed to be interested in his pamphlets on the virtues of Omnianism, admittedly as nesting material at the moment, but this was certainly a good start. A pigeon fluttered in as he was scraping the perches. 'Ah, Zebedinah,' he said, lifting her up and removing the message capsule from her leg. 'Well done. This is from Constable Shoe. And you shall have some corn, provided locally by Josiah Frument and Sons, Seed Merchants, but ultimately by the grace of Om.' There was a whirr of wings and another pigeon settled on the perch. Constable Visit recognized it as Wilhelmina, one of Sergeant Angua's pigeons. He removed the message capsule. The thin paper inside was tightly folded and on it someone had written 'Cpt. Carrot, Personal.' He hesitated, then put the message from Reg Shoe into the pneumatic tube and heard the whoosh of the suction as it headed off to the main office. The other one, he decided, required a more careful delivery. Carrot was working in Vimes's office but, Visit noticed, not at the Commander's desk. Instead he'd set up a folding table in the corner. The tottering piles of paperwork on the desk were slightly less alpine than yesterday. There were even occasional patches of desktop. 'Personal message for you, captain.' 'Thank you.' Ànd Constable Shoe wants a sergeant down at Sonky's boot factory.' 'Did you send the message down to the office?' 'Yes, sir. The pneumatic tube is very useful,' Visit added dutifully. 'Commander Vimes isn't very keen on it but I'm sure it will eventually save us time,' said Carrot. He unfolded the note. Visit watched him. Carrot's lips moved slightly as he read. 'Where did the pigeon come from?' he said at last, screwing up the note. 'It looks pretty worn out, sir. Not from inside the city, I'm sure.' 'Ah. Right. Thank you.' 'Bad news, sir?' Visit angled. 'Just news, constable. Don't let me detain you.' 'Right, sir.' When the disappointed Visit had gone, Carrot went and looked out of the window. There was a typical Ankh-Morpork street scene outside, although people were trying to separate them. After a few minutes he went back to his table, wrote a short note, put it into one of the little carriers and sent it away with a hiss of air. A few minutes later Sergeant Colon came panting along the corridor. Carrot was very keen on modernizing the Watch, and in some strange way sending a message via the tube was so much more modern than simply opening the door and shouting, which is what Mr Vimes did. Carrot gave Colon a bright smile. 'Ah, Fred. Everything going well?' 'Yessir?' said Fred Colon uncertainly. 'Good. I'm off to see the Patrician, Fred. As senior sergeant you are in charge of the Watch until Mister Vimes gets back.' 'Yessir. Er ... until you get back, you mean . . .' 'I shall not be coming back, Fred. I am resigning.' The Patrician looked at the badge on his desk. '. . . and well-trained men,' Carrot was saying, somewhere in front of him. 'After all, a few years ago there were only four of us in the Watch. Now it's functioning just like a machine.' 'Yes, although bits of it do go boing occasionally,' said Lord Vetinari, still staring at the badge. 'Could I invite you to reconsider, captain?' 'I've reconsidered several times, sir. And it's not-captain, sir.' 'The Watch needs you, Mister Ironfoundersson.' 'The Watch is bigger than one man, sir,' said Carrot, still looking straight ahead. 'I'm not sure if it's bigger than Sergeant Colon, though.' 'People get mistaken about old Fred, sir. He's a man with a solid bottom to his character.' 'He's got a solid bottom to his bottom, ca- Mister Ironfoundersson.' 'I mean he doesn't flap in an emergency, sir.' 'He doesn't do anything in an emergency,' said the Patrician. 'Except possibly hide. I might go so far as to say that the man appears to consist of an emergency in his own right.' 'My mind is made up, sir.' Lord Vetinari sighed, sat back and stared up at the ceiling for a moment. 'Then all I can do is thank you for your services, captain, and wish you good luck in your future endeavour. Do you have enough money?' 'I've saved quite a lot, sir.' 'Nevertheless, it is a long way to Uberwald.' There was silence. 'Sir?' 'Yes?' 'How did you know?' 'Oh, people measured it years ago. Surveyors and so forth.' 'Sir!' Vetinari sighed. 'I think the term is . . . deduction. Be that as it may - captain - I am choosing to believe that you are merely taking an extended leave of absence. I understand that you've never taken a holiday while you've been here. I'm sure you're owed a few weeks.' Carrot said nothing. 'And if I was you, I'd begin my search for Sergeant Angua at the Shambling Gate,' Vetinari added. After a while Carrot said quietly: 'Is that as a result of information received, my lord?' Vetinari smiled a thin little smile. 'No. But Uberwald is going through some troubling times, and of course she is from one of the aristocratic families. I surmise that she has been called away. Beyond that, I cannot be of much help. You will have to follow, as. they say, your nose.' 'No, I think I can find a much more reliable nose than mine,' said Carrot. 'Good.' Lord Vetinari went back to his desk and sat down. 'I wish you well in your search. Nevertheless, I'm sure we'll be seeing you again. A lot of people here depend on you.' 'Yes, sir.' 'Good day to you.' When Carrot had gone, Lord Vetinari got up and walked across to the other side of the room, where a map of Uberwald was unrolled on a table. It was quite old, but in recent years any mapmakers who had wandered off the beaten track in that country had spent all their time trying to find it again. There were a few rivers, their courses mostly guesswork, and the occasional town or at least the name of a town, probably put in to save the cartographer the embarrassment of filling his chart with, as they said in the trade, MMB U.* The door opened and Vetinari's head clerk, Drumknott, eased his way in with the silence of a feather falling in a cathedral. 'A somewhat unexpected development, my lord,' he said quietly. 'An uncharacteristic one, certainly,' said Vetinari. 'Do you wish me to send a clacks to Vimes, sir? He could be back in a day or so.' Vetinari was looking intently at the blind, blank map. It was, he felt, very much like the future; a few things were outlined, there were some rough guesses, but everything else was waiting to be created . . . *Miles and Miles of Bloody Uberwald. 'Hmm?' he said. 'Do you wish me to recall Vimes, sir?' 'Good heavens, no. Vimes in Uberwald will be more amusing than an amorous armadillo in a bowling alley. And who else could I send? Only Vimes could go to Uberwald.' 'But surely this is an emergency, sir?' 'Hmm?' 'What else are we to call it, sir, when a young man of such promise throws away his career for the pursuit of a girl?' The Patrician stroked his beard and smiled at something. There was a line across the map: the progress of the semaphore towers. It was mathematically straight, a statement of intellect in the crowding darkness of miles and miles of bloody Uberwald. 'Possibly, a bonus,' he said. 'Uberwald has much to teach us. Fetch me the papers on the werewolf clans, will you? Oh, and although I swore I would never ever do this, please prepare a message for Sergeant Colon, too. Promotion, alas, beckons.' A grubby cloth cap lay on the pavement. On the pavement beside the cap someone had written in damp chalk: Plese HeIP This LiTTle doGGie. Beside it sat a small dog. It was not cut out by nature to be a friendly little waggy-tailed dog, but it was making the effort. Whenever someone walked by it sat up on its hind legs and whined pitifully. Something landed in the cap. It was a washer. The charitable pedestrian had gone only a few steps further along the road when he heard: 'And I hope your legs fall off, mister.' The man turned. The dog was watching- him intently. 'Woof?' it said. He looked puzzled, shrugged, and then turned and walked on. 'Yeah, bloody woof woof,' said the strange voice, as he was about to turn the corner. A hand reached down and picked up the dog by the scruff of its neck. 'Hello, Gaspode. I believe I've solved a little mystery.' 'Oh, no . . .' the dog moaned. 'That's not being a good dog, Gaspode,' said Carrot, lifting the dog so they could meet eye to eye. 'All right, all right, put me down, will you? This hurts, you know.' 'I need your help, Gaspode.' 'Not me. I don't help the Watch. Nothing personal, but it doesn't do anything for my street cred.' 'I'm not talking about helping the Watch, Gaspode. This is personal. I need your nose.' Carrot lowered the dog to the pavement and rubbed his hand on his shirt. 'Unfortunately, this means I need the rest of you as well, although of course I am aware that under that itchy exterior beats a heart of gold.' 'Really,' said Gaspode. 'Nothing good starts with "I need your help."' 'It's Angua.' 'Oh dear.' 'I want you to track her.' 'Huh, not many dogs could track a werewolf, mister. They're cunning.' 'Go to the best, I always say,' said Carrot. 'Finest nose known to man or beast,' said Gaspode, wrinkling it. 'Where's she gone, then?' 'To Uberwald, I think.' Carrot moved fast. Gaspode's flight was hindered by the hand gripping his tail. 'That's hundreds of miles away! And dog miles is seven times longer! Not a chance!' 'Oh? All right, then. Silly of me to suggest it,' said Carrot, letting go. 'You're right. It's ridiculous.' Gaspode turned, suddenly full of suspicion. 'No, I didn't say it was ridiculous,' he said. 'I just said it was hundreds of miles away. . .' 'Yes, but you said you had no chance.' 'No, I said that you had no chance of getting me to do it.' 'Yes, but winter's coming on and, as you say, a werewolf is very hard to track and on top of that Angua's a copper. She'll work out that I'd use you, so she'll be covering her trail.' Gaspode whined. 'Look, mister, respect is hard to earn in this dog's town. If I'm not smelled around the lamp-posts for a couple of weeks my stock is definitely in the gutter, right?' 'Yes, yes, I understand. I'll make some other arrangements. Nervous Nigel's still around, isn't he?' 'What? That spaniel? He couldn't smell his own bottom if you put it in front of him!' 'They say he's pretty good, nasally.' 'And he widdles every time anyone looks at him!' snapped Gaspode. 'I heard he can smell a dead rat two miles away.' 'Yeah? Well, I can smell what colour it is!' Carrot sighed. 'Well, I've got no choice, I'm afraid. You can't do it, so I'll-' 'I didn't say-' Gaspode stopped, and then went on, 'I'm going to do it, aren't I? I'm bloody well going to do it. You're going to trick me or blackmail me or whatever it takes, aren't you...?' 'Yes. How do you manage to write, Gaspode?' 'I holds the chalk in me mouth. Easy.' 'You're a smart dog. I've always said so. The world's only talking dog, too.' 'Lower your voice, lower your voice!' said Gaspode, looking around. 'Here, Uberwald's wolf country, isn't it?' 'Oh, yes.' 'I could've bin a wolf, you know. With diff'rent parents, of course.' Gaspode sniffed and looked furtively up and down the street again. 'Steak?' 'Every night.' 'Right.' Sergeant Colon was a picture of misery drawn on a lumpy pavement in bad crayon on a wet day. He sat on a chair and occasionally glanced at the message that had just been delivered, as if hoping that the words would somehow fade away. 'Bloody hell, Nobby,' he moaned. 'There, there, Fred,' said Nobby, currently a vision in organdie. 'I can't be promoted! I'm not an officer! I am base, common and popular!' 'I've always said that about you, Fred. You got common off to a treat.' 'But it's writ down, Nobby! Look, his lordship's signed it!' 'We-ell, the way I see it, you've got three choices,' said Nobby. 'Yeah?' 'You can go and tell him you're not doing it...' The panic in Colon's face was replaced by glazed grey terror. 'Thank you very much, Nobby,' he said bitterly. 'Let me know if you've got any more suggestions like that, 'cos I'll need to go and change my underwear.' 'Or you could accept it and make such a cockup of it that he takes it away from you . . .' 'You're doing this on purpose, Nobby!' 'Might be worth a try, Fred.' 'Yeah, but the thing about cock-ups, Nobby, is that it's hard for you to be, you know, precise. You might think you're making a little cock-up and then it blows up in your face and it turns out to be in fact a big cock-up, and in those circumstances, Nobby, I'm sort of worried that what his lordship might take away from me wouldn't just be the job. I hope I don't have to draw you a picture.' 'Good point, Fred.' 'What I'm saying is, cock-ups is like . . . well, cock-ups is . . . well, the thing about cock-ups is you never know what size they're going to be.' 'Well, Fred, the third choice is you putting up with it.' 'That's not helpful, Nobby.' 'It'll only be for a couple of weeks, then Mister Vimes'll be back.' 'Yeah, but supposing he isn't? Nasty place, Uberwald. I heard where it's a misery wrapped in a enema. That doesn't sound too good. You can fall down things. Then I'm stuck, right? I don't know how to do officering.' 'No oneknows how to do officering, Fred. That's why they're officers. If they knew anything, they'd be sergeants.' Now Colon's face screwed up again in desperate thought. As a lifelong uniformed man, a three-striped peg that had found a three-striped hole very early in its career, he subscribed automatically and unthinkingly to the belief that officers as a class could not put their own trousers on without a map. He conscientiously excluded Vimes and Carrot from the list, elevating them to the rank of honorary sergeant. Nobby was watching him with an expression of combined concern, friendliness and predatory intent. 'What shall I do, Nobby?' 'Well, "captain",' said Nobby, and then he gave a little cough, 'what officers mainly have to do, as you know, is sign things-' The door was knocked on and opened at the same time by a flustered constable. 'Sarge, Constable Shoe says he really does need an officer down at Sonky's factory.' 'What, the rubber wally man?' said Colon. 'Right. An officer. Right. We'll be along.' 'And that's Captain Colon,' said Nobby quickly. 'Er . . . er . . . yes, and that's Captain Colon, thank you very much,' said Colon, adding as his resolve stiffened, 'and I'll thank you not to forget it!' The constable stared at them, and then stopped trying to understand. 'And there's a troll downstairs who insists on speaking to whoever's in charge-' 'Can't Stronginthearm deal with it?' 'Er ... is Sergeant Stronginthearm still a sergeant?' said the constable. 'Yes!' 'Even unconscious?' 'What?' 'He's flat on the floor right now, sar- captain.' 'What's the troll want?' 'Right now he wants to kill someone, but mainly I think he wants someone to take the clamp off'f his foot.' Gaspode ran up and down, nose barely an inch from the ground. Carrot waited, holding his horse. It was a good one. Carrot hadn't spent a lot of his wages, up until now. Finally the dog sat down and looked depressed. 'So tell me about this wonderful nose the, Patrician has got, then,' he said. 'Not a trace?' 'You'd better get Vetinari down here, if he's so good,' said Gaspode. 'What's the point of starting here? Worst place in the whole city! It's the gate to the cattle market, am I right? Trying not to smell stuff is the trick here, is the point I'm makin'. There's ground-in stink. If you wanted to get on the trail of somebody, this is the last place I'd start.' 'Very good point,' said Carrot carefully. 'So, what's the strongest smell heading Hubwards?' 'Dung carts, o'course. Yesterday. Always a big clear-out of the pens first thing Friday morning.' 'You can follow the smell?' Gaspode rolled his eyes. 'With my head in a bucket.' 'Good. Let's go.' 'So,' said Gaspode, as they began to leave the gate's bustle behind, 'we're chasing this girl, right?' 'Yes.' 'Just you?' 'Yes.' 'Not like with dogs, then, where there might be twenty or thirty?' No. 'So we're not looking at a bucket of cold water here?' No. Constable Shoe saluted, but a little testily. He'd been waiting rather a long time. 'Afternoon, sergeant-' 'That's captain,' said Captain Colon. 'See the pip on my shoulder, Reg?' Reg looked closely. 'I thought it was bird doings, Barge.' 'That's captain,' said Colon automatically. 'It's only chalk now because I ain't got time to get it done properly,' he said. 'So don't be cheeky.' 'What's up with Nobby?' said Reg. _ Corporal Nobbs was holding a damp cloth over one eye. 'Bit of a contry tomps with an illegally parked troll,' said Captain Colon. 'Shows what kind of troll he was, striking a lady,' muttered Nobby. 'But you ain't a lady, Nobby. You're just wearing your traffic-calming disguise.' 'He wasn't to know.' 'You'd got your helmet on. Anyway, you shouldn't have clamped him.' 'He was parked, Fred.' 'He'd been knocked down by a cart,' said Captain Colon. 'And that's captain.' 'Well, they always have excuses,' said Nobby sullenly. 'You'd better show us the corpus, Reg,' said Colon. The body in the cellar was duly inspected. '. . . and I remember Cheery saying there was a smell of cat's pee and sulphur at the Dwarf Bread Museum,' said Reg. 'Certainly hangs about,' said Colon. 'You wouldn't have blocked sinuses if you worked here for a day.' 'And I thought, "I wonder if someone'd tried to make a mould of the replica Scone", sir,' said Reg. 'Now that is clever,' said Fred Colon. 'You'd get the real one back then, wouldn't you?' 'Er, no, Barge- captain. But you'd get a copy of the. replica.' 'Would that be legal?' 'Can't say, sir. I wouldn't think so. It wouldn't fool a dwarf for five minutes.' 'Then who'd want to kill him?' 'A father of thirteen kids, maybe?' said Nobby. 'Haha.' 'Nobby, will you stop pinching the merchandise?' said Colon. 'And don't argue, I just saw you put a couple of dozen in your handbag.' 'Dat don't matter,' rumbled the troll. 'Mister Sonky always said dey was free to the Watch.' 'That was very . . . civic of him,' said Captain Colon. 'Yeah, he said der last frog we wanted was more bloody coppers around the city.' A pigeon chose that diplomatic moment to flutter into the factory and land on Colon's shoulder, where it promoted him. Colon reached up, removed the message capsule and unfolded the contents. 'It's from Visit,' he said. 'There's a Clue, he says.' 'What to?' said Nobby. 'Not to anything, Nobby. Just a Clue.' He took off his helmet and wiped his brow. This was what he'd hoped to avoid. In his heart of battered hearts, he suspected that Vimes and Carrot were good at putting clues next to other clues and thinking about them. That was their talent. He had others . . . well, he was good with people, and he had a shiny breastplate, and he could sergeant in his sleep 'All right, write up your report,' he said. 'Well done. We're going back to the Yard. 'I can see this is going to get on top of me,' said Colon, as they walked away. 'There's paperwork, too. You know me and paperwork, Nobby.' 'You're a very thorough reader, that's all, Fred,' said Nobby. 'I've seen you take ages over just one page. Digesting it magisterially, I thought.' Colon brightened a little. 'Yes, that's what I do,' he said. 'Even if it's only the menu down at the Klatchian Take-Away, I've seen you staring at one line for a minute at a time.' 'Well, obviously you can't let people put one over on you,' said Colon, sticking out his chest, or at least sticking it further up. 'What you need is an aide de camp,' said Nobby, lifting his dress to step over a puddle. 'I do?' 'Oh, yes. 'Cos of you being a figurehead and setting an example to your men,' said Nobby. 'Ah. Right. Yes,' said Colon, grasping the idea with relief. 'A man can't be expected to do all that and read long words, am I right?' 'Exactly. And, of course, we're down one sergeant at the Yard now,' said Nobby. 'Good point, Nobby. It's going to be busy.' They walked on for a while. 'You could promote someone,' Nobby prompted. 'Could I?' 'What good's being the boss if you can't?' 'That's true. And it's sort of an emergency. Hmm . . . any thoughts, Nobby?' Nobby sighed inwardly. A penny could drop through wet cement faster than it could drop for Fred Colon. 'A name springs to mind,' he said. 'Ah, right. Yes. Reg Shoe, right? Good at writing, a keen thinker, and of course he's cool headed,' said Colon. 'Icy, practically.' 'But a bit on the dead side,' said Nobby. 'Yes, I suppose that counts against him.' 'And he goes to pieces unpredictably,' said Nobby. 'That's true,' said Captain Colon. 'No one likes shaking hands and ending up with more fingers than they started with.' 'So p'raps it might be best to consider someone who has been unreasonably overlooked,' said Nobby, going for broke. 'Someone whose face dunt fit, p'raps. Someone whose experience in the Watch genially and in Traffic in particular could be of great service to the city if people wouldn't go on about one or two lapses which didn't happen in any case.' The dawn of intelligence rose across the vistas of Colon's face. 'Ah,' he said. 'I see. Well, why didn't you come right out with that at the start, Nobby?' 'Well, it's your decision, Fred ... I mean, captain,' said Nobby earnestly. 'But s'posing Mister Vimes doesn't agree? He'll be back in a couple of weeks.' 'That'll be long enough,' said Nobby. 'And you don't mind?' 'Me? Mind? Not me. You know me, Fred, always ready to do my bit.' 'Nobby?' 'Yes, Fred?' 'The dress . . .' 'Yes, Fred?' 'I thought we weren't doing the . . . traffic calming any more?' 'Yes, Fred. But I thought I'd keep it on ready to swing into action just in case you decided that we should.' A chilly wind blew across the cabbage fields. To Gaspode it brought, besides the overpowering fumes of the cabbage and the dark red smell of the dung carts, hints of pine, mountains, snow, sweat and stale cigar smoke. The last came from the cart men's habit of smoking large, cheap cigars. They kept the flies off. It was better than vision. The world of smell stretched before Gaspode. 'My paws hurt,' he said. 'There's a good dog,' said Carrot. The road forked. Gaspode stopped and snuffled around. 'Well, here's an int'resting frog,' he said. 'Some of the dung's jumped down off'f the cart and headed away across the fields here. You were right.' 'Can you smell water anywhere around?' said Carrot, scanning the flat plain. Gaspode's mottled nose wrinkled up in effort. 'Pond,' he said. 'Not very big. 'bout a mile away.' 'She'll be heading towards it. Very meticulous about cleanliness, Angua. That's not usual in werewolves.' 'Never been one for water myself,' said Gaspode. 'Is that a fact?' 'Here, no need for that! I had a B-A-T-H once, you know, it's not as if I don't know what it's like.' The pond was in a clump of wind-blown trees. Dry grass rustled in the breeze. A single coot scuttled into the reeds as Carrot and Gaspode approached. 'Yeah, here we are,' said Gaspode. 'A lot of muck goes in, and' - he sniffed at the stirred-up mud - 'er, yeah, she comes out. Um.' 'Is there a problem?' said Carrot. 'What? Oh, no. Clear scent. Headin' for the mountains, just like you said. Um.' Gaspode sat down and scratched himself with a hind leg. 'There's a problem, isn't there . . . ?' said Carrot. 'Well, supposin' there was something really bad that you wouldn't really want to know, and I knew what it was . . . How'd you feel about me tellin' you? I mean, some peopled rather not know. It's a pers'nal thing.' 'Gaspode!' 'She's not alone. There's another wolf.' 'Ah.' Carrot's mild, uninformative smile did not change. 'Er, of the male persuasion,' said Gaspode. 'A boy wolf. Er. Very much so.' 'Thank you, Gaspode.' 'Extremely male. Um. In a very def'nite way. Unmistakably.' 'Yes, I think I understand.' 'And this is just words. In smell, it's a lot more, well, emphatic.' 'Thank you for that, Gaspode. And they're heading. . .' 'Still straight for the mountains, boss,' said Gaspode, as kindly as he could. He wasn't certain of all the details of human sexual relationships, and the ones he was certain of he still couldn't quite believe, but he knew that they were a lot more complicated than those enjoyed by the doggy fraternity. 'This smell. . .' 'The extremely male one I was talkin' about?' 'The very one, yes,' said Carrot levelly. 'You could still smell it if you were on the horse, could you?' 'I could smell it with my nose in a sack of onions.' 'Good. Because I think we should move a little faster now.' 'Yes, I thought you'd think that.' Constable Visit saluted when Nobby and Colon entered Pseudopolis Yard. 'I thought you ought to know about this right away, sir,' he said, flourishing a square of paper. 'I just got it off Rodney.' 'Who?' 'The imp on the bridge, sir. He paints pictures of carts going too fast? No one had been feeding him,' Visit added, in a mildly accusing tone. 'Oh. Someone speeding,' said Colon. 'So?' He looked again. 'That's one of those sedan chairs the deep-down dwarfs use, isn't it? Them trolls must've been moving!' 'It was just after the Scone was stolen,' said Visit. 'Rodney writes the time in the corner, see? A bit odd, I thought. Like a kind of getaway vehicle, sir?' 'What'd a dwarf want to steal a worthless lump of rock for?' said Colon. 'Especially them dark dwarfs. They give me the creeps in those stupid clothes they wear.' Angry silence rang like a dropped girder in a temple. There were three dwarfs in the room. 'You two! You ought to be out on patrol!' barked Sergeant Stronginthearm. 'I've got business down at Chitterling Street!' All three dwarfs marched out, somehow contriving even to walk angrily. 'Well, what was that about?' said Fred Colon. 'Bit touchy, aren't they? Mister Vimes says that sort of thing all the time and no one minds.' 'Yes, but that's because he's Sam Vimes,' said Nobby. 'Oh? And are you inferring I'm not?' said Captain Colon. 'Well, yes, Fred. You're Fred Colon,' said Nobby patiently. 'Oh, I am, am I?' 'Yes, Captain Colon.' 'And they'd better bloody remember it!' Colon snapped. 'I'm not a soft touch, me. I'm not going to take insubordination like that! I've always said Vimes was a bit too soft on those dwarfs! They gets the same pay as us and they're only half the size!' 'Yes, yes,' said Nobby, waving his hands placatingly in a desperate attempt to calm things down. 'But, Fred, trolls are twice as big as us and they get paid the same, so it-' 'But they've only got a quarter of the brains, so it's just the same, like I said-' The noise they heard was long and drawn out and menacing. It was the sound of LanceConstable Bluejohn's chair being pushed back. The floor creaked as he shambled past Colon, removed his helmet from its peg with one enormous hand and headed for the door. "m goin' on patrol,' he mumbled. 'You're not on patrol for another hour,' said Constable Visit. "m goin' now,' said Bluejohn. The room was darkened for a moment as he eclipsed the doorway, and then he was gone. 'Why's everyone so tetchy all of a sudden?' said Colon. The remaining constables tried not to catch his eye. 'Did I hear someone snigger?' he demanded. 'I didn't hear anyone snigger, Barge,' said Nobby. 'Oh? Oh? You think I'm a sergeant, do you, Corporal Nobbs?' 'No, Fred, I- Oh, gawds. . .' 'I can see things have got pretty slack around here,' said Captain Colon, an evil little gleam in his eye. 'I bet you were all thinking, oh, it's only fat old Fred Colon, it's all going to be gravy from now on, eh?' 'Oh, Fred, no one thinks you're old- Oh, gawds . . .' 'Just fat, eh?' Fred glowered around the room. Suddenly, and against all previous evidence, everyone was vitally interested in their paperwork. 'Right! Well, from now on things are going to be different,' said Captain Colon. 'Oh, yes. I'm on to all your little tricks- Who said that?' 'Said what, captain?' said Nobby, who'd also heard the little whispered 'We learned 'em all from you, sarge,' but at this moment would eat live coals rather than admit it. 'Someone said something blotto voice,' said Captain Colon. 'I'm sure they didn't, captain,' said Nobby. 'And I won't be eyeballed like that, neither!' 'No one's looking at you!' wailed Nobby. 'Aha, you think I don't know that one?' Colon shouted. 'There's plenty of ways to eyeball someone without lookin' at 'em, corporal. That man over there is earlobing me!' 'I think Constable Ping is just really interested in the report he's writing, Fre- sar- captain.' Colon's ruffled feathers settled a little. 'Well, all right. And now I'm going up to my office, all right? There'll be some changes around here. And someone bring rile a cup of tea.' They watched him go up the stairs, enter the office and slam the door. 'Well, the-' Constable Ping began, but Nobby, who had a lot more experience of the Colon personality, waved one hand frantically for silence while he held the other one to his ear, very theatrically. Then they all heard the door click open again, quietly. 'A change is as good as a rest, I suppose,' said Constable Ping. 'As the prophet Ossory says, better an ox in the potters' fields of Hersheba than a sandal in the wine presses of Gash,' said Constable Visit. 'Yeah, so I've heard,' said Nobby. 'Well, I'll just make him his tea. Everyone feels better after a cup of tea.' A couple of minutes later the constables heard Colon shouting, even through the door. 'What is wrong with this mug, corporal?!' 'Nothing, sa- sir. It's yer mug. You always have your tea in it.' 'Ah, but, you see, it is a sergeants mug, corporal. And what is it that officers drink out of?' 'Well, Carrot and Mister Vimes have got their own mugs-' 'No, they may choose to drink out of mugs, corporal, but Watch regulations say officers have a cup and saucer. Says so right here, regulation 301, sub-section c. Do you understand me?' 'I don't think we've got any-' 'You know where the petty cash is. Usually you're the only person that does. You're dismissed, corporal.' Nobby came down the stairs white-faced, holding the offending receptacle. The door opened again. 'And none of you are to gob in it, neither!' shouted Colon. 'I know that one! And it's to be stirred with a spoon, understand? I know that one, too.' The door slammed. Constable Visit took the mug from Nobby's shaking hand and patted him on the shoulder. 'Chalky the troll does some very good seconds, I understand-' he began. The door opened. 'Bloody china, too!' The door slammed. 'Anyone seen the petty cash lately?' said Constable Ping. Nobby reached mournfully into his pocket and pulled out some dollars. He handed them to Visit. 'Better go to that posh shop in Kings Way,' he said. 'Get one of those cups and saucers thin enough to see through. You know, with gold around the rim.' He looked around the other constables. 'What're you lot doing here? You won't catch many criminals in here!' 'Does the petty cash count, Nobby?' said Ping. 'Don't you Nobby me, Ping! You just get out there! And the rest of you!' Days rolled by. More accurately, they rattled by. It was a comfortable coach, as coaches went, and as coaches on this road went over continual potholes, it swayed and rocked like a cradle. Initially, the motion was soothing. After a day or two it palled. So did the scenery. Vimes stared glumly out of the window. There was another clacks tower on the horizon. They were putting them near the. road, he recalled, even though that wasn't the direct route. Only a fool would build them across the badlands. You had to remember, sometimes, that within a few hundred miles of Ankh-Morpork there were still trolls who hadn't caught on to the fact that humans weren't digestible. Besides, most of the settlements were near the road. The new Guild must be coining money. Even from here he could see the scaffolding, as workers feverishly attached still more gantries and paddles to the main tower. The whole thing would likely be matchsticks after the next hurricane, but by then the owners would probably have earned enough to build another five. Or fifty. It had all happened so fast. Who'd have believed it? But all the components had been there for years. Semaphore was ancient - a century ago the Watch had used a few towers to relay messages to patrolling officers. And gargoyles had nothing to do all day but sit and watch things, and usually were too unimaginative to make mistakes. What had happened was that people thought differently about news now. Once upon a time they'd have used something like this to relay information about troop movements and the death of kings. True, those were things that people needed to know, but they didn't need to know them every day. No, what they needed to know every day were things like How much are cattle selling for in Ankh-Morpork today? Because if they weren't fetching much maybe it was better to drive them to Quirm instead. People needed to know these little things. Lots and lots of little things. Little things like Did my ship get there safely? That's why the Guild was driving hell-bent across the mountains on to Genua, four thousand miles away. It took many months for a ship to round Cape Terror. How much, exactly, would a trader pay to know, within a day, when it had arrived? And how much the cargo was worth? Had it been sold? Was there credit to the trader's name in Ankh-Morpork? Coining money? Oh, yes! And it had caught on as fast as every other craze did in the big city. It seemed as though everybody who could put together a pole, a couple of gargoyles and some second-hand windmill machinery was in on the business. You couldn't go out to dinner these days without seeing people nip out of the restaurant every five minutes to check that there weren't any messages for them on the nearest pole. As for those who cut out the middleman and signalled directly to their friends across a crowded room, causing mild contusions to those nearby . . . Vimes shook his head. That was messages without meaning: telepathy without brains. But it had been good, hadn't it, last week? When Don't Know Jack had pinched that silver in Sto Lat and then galloped at speed to the sanctuary of the Shades in Ankh-Morpork? And Sergeant Edge of the Sto Lat Watch, who'd trained under Vimes, had put a message on the clacks which arrived on Vimes's desk more than an hour before Jack sauntered through the city gates and into the waiting embrace of Sergeant Detritus? Legally it had been a bit tricky, since the offence hadn't been committed on AnkhMorpork soil and a semaphore message did not, strictly speaking, come under the heading of 'hot pursuit', but Jack had kindly solved that one by taking a wild swing at the troll, resulting in his arrest for Assault on a Watch Officer and treatment for a broken wrist . . . There was a gentle snore from Lady Sybil. A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores. Inigo Skimmer was hunched in a corner, reading a book. Vimes watched him for some time. 'I'm just going up top for some air,' he said at last, opening the door. The clattering of the wheels filled the tiny, hot space, and dust blew in. 'Your grace-' Inigo began, standing up. Vimes, already clambering up the side of the coach, stuck his head back in. 'You're not making any friends with that attitude,' he said, and kicked the door shut with his foot. Cheery and Detritus had made themselves comfortable on the roof. It was a lot less stuffy and at least there was a view, if vegetables were your idea of a panorama. Vimes worked himself into a niche between two bundles and leaned towards Cheery. 'You know about the clacks, right?' he said. 'Well, sort of, sir. . .' 'Good.' Vimes passed her a piece of paper. 'There's bound to be a tower near where we stop tonight. Cypher this and send it to the Watch, will you? They ought to be able to turn it around in an hour, if they ask the right people. Tell them to try Washable Topsy, she does the laundry there. Or Gilbert Gilbert; he always seems to know what's going on.' Cheery readthe message, and then stared at Vimes. 'Are you sure, sir?' she said. 'Maybe. Make sure you send the description. Names don't mean much.' 'May I ask what makes you think-' 'His walk. And he didn't catch an orange,' said Vimes. 'Mhm. Mhm.' Constable Visit was cleaning out the old pigeon loft when the message arrived on the clacks. He was spending more and more time with the pigeons these days . It wasn't a popular job, so no one had tried to take it away from him, and at least up here the shouts and door-slammings were muffled. The perches gleamed. Constable Visit enjoyed his job. He didn't have many friends in the city. Truth to tell, he didn't have many friends in the Watch, either. But at least there were people to talk to, and he was making headway with the religious instruction of the pigeons. But now there was this . . . It was addressed to Captain Carrot. That meant it probably ought to be delivered to Captain Colon now, and personally, because Captain Colon thought that people were spying on his messages sent via the suction tube. Constable Visit had been fairly safe until now. Omnians were good at not questioning orders, even ones that made no sense. Visit instinctively respected authority, no matter how crazy, because he'd been brought up properly. And he had plenty of time to keep his armour bright. Brightly polished armour had suddenly become very important in the Watch, for some reason. Even so, going into Colon's office needed all the courage that the legendary Bishop Horn had shown when entering the city of the Oolites, and everyone knew what they did to strangers. Visit climbed down from the loft and made his nervous way to the main building, taking care to walk smartly. The main office was more or less empty. There seemed to be fewer watchmen around these days. Usually people preferred to loaf indoors in this chilly weather, but suddenly everyone was keen to be out of Captain Colon's view. Visit went up to the office and knocked on the door. He knocked again. When there was no reply he pushed open the door, walked carefully over to the sparkling clean desk, and went to tuck the message flimsy under the ink bottle in case it blew away 'Aha!' The ink soared up as Visit's hand jerked. He had a vision of the blue-black shower passing his eye, and heard the splat as it hit something behind him. He turned like an automaton, to see a Captain Colon who would have, been white-faced if it wasn't for the ink. 'I see,'said Colon. 'Assault on a superior officer, eh?' 'It was an accident, captain!' 'Oh, was it? And why, pray, were you sneaking into my office?' 'I didn't think you were in here, captain!' Visit gabbled. ,jai, ' S orry?' 'Sneaking a look at my private papers, eh?' 'No, captain!' Visit rallied a little bit. 'Why were you standing behind the door, captain?' 'Oh? I'm not allowed to stand behind my own door, is that it?' It was then that Constable Visit made his next mistake. He tried to smile. 'Well, it is a bit odd, sir-' 'Are you suggesting there is anything odd about me, constable?' said Captain Colon. 'Is there anything about me that you finds funny?' Visit stared at the mottled face speckled with ink. 'Not a thing, sir.' 'You've been working acceptably, constable,' said Colon, standing slightly too close to Visit, 'and therefore I don't intend to be harsh with you. No one could call me an unfair man. You is demoted to lance-constable, understand? Your pay will be adjusted and backdated to the beginning of the month.' Visit saluted. It was probably the only way to get out of there alive. One of Colon's eyes was twitching. 'However, you could redeem yourself,' said Colon, 'if you was to tell me who has been stealing, I said stealing, the sugar lumps.' 'Sir?' 'I knowsthere was forty-three last night. I counted 'em very thoroughly. There's fortyone this morning, constable. And they're locked in the desk. Can you explain that?' If Visit had been suicidal and honest, he would have said: well, captain, while of course I think you have many worthy qualities, I have known you count your fingers twice arid come up with different answers. 'Er . . . mice?' he said weakly. 'Hah! Off you go, lance-constable, and just you think about what I said!' When the dejected Visit had gone, Captain Colon sat down at his big, clean desk. The little flickering part of his brain that was still sparking coherent thought through the fog of mind-numbing terror that filled Colon's head was telling him that he was so far out of his depth that the fish had lights on their noses. Yes,he did have a clean desk. But that was because he was throwing all the paperwork away. It wasn't that he was illiterate, but Fred Colon did need a bit of a think and a run-up to tackle anything much longer than a list and he tended to get lost in any word that had more than three syllables. He was, in fact, functionally literate. That is, he thought of reading and writing like he thought about boots - you needed them, but they weren't supposed to be fun, and you got suspicious about people who got a kick out of them. Of course, Mr Vimes had kept his desk piled high with paperwork, but it occurred to Colon that maybe Vimes and Carrot between them had developed a way of keeping just ahead of the piles, by knowing what was important and what wasn't. To Colon, it was all gut-wrenchingly mysterious. There were complaints and memos and invitations, and letters requesting 'a few minutes of your time' and forms to fill in, and reports to read, and sentences containing words like 'iniquitous' and 'immediate action', and they tottered in his mind like a great big wave, poised to fall on him. The sane core of Colon was wondering if the purpose of officers wasn't to stand between the sergeants and all this sh- this slush, so that they could get on with sergeanting. Captain Colon took a deep, wobbly breath. On the other hand, if people were nicking the sugar lumps, no wonder things weren't working properly! Get the sugar lumps right, and everything else would work out! That made sense! He turned and his eye caught the huge accusing heap of paperwork in the corner. And the empty fireplace, too. That was what officering was all about, wasn't it? Making decisions! Lance-Constable Visit walked dejectedly back down to the main office, which had filled up for a Watch change. Everyone was clustered around one of the desks on which lay, looking slightly muddy, the Scone of Stone. 'Constable Thighbiter found it in Zephire Street, just lying there,' said Sergeant Stronginthearm. 'The thief must've got scared.' 'A long way from the museum, though,' said Reg Shoe. 'Why lug it all the way across the city and leave it in a posh part of town where someone's bound to trip over it?' 'Oh, woe is me, for I am undone,' said Constable Visit, who felt he was playing a poor second fiddle to what he would call, if he had no use for his legs, a pagan image. 'Could be draughty,' said Corporal Nobbs, a man of little sympathy. 'I mean I have been reduced to lanceconstable,' said Visit: 'What? Why?' said Sergeant Stronginthearm. 'I'm . . . not sure,' said Visit. 'That just about does it!' said the dwarf. 'He sacked three of the officers up at Dolly Sisters yesterday. Well, I'm not waiting for it to happen to me. I'm off to Sto Lat. They're always looking for trained watchmen. I'm a sergeant. I could name my price.' 'But, look, Vimesy used to say that sort of thing too. I heard him,' said Nobby. 'Yeah, but that was different.' 'How?' 'Thatwas Mister Vimes,' said Stronginthearm. 'Remember that riot in Easy Street last year? Bloke came after me with a club when I was on the ground, and Mister Vimes caught it on his arm and punched the man right in the head.' 'Yeah,' said Constable Hacknee, another dwarf. 'When your back's against the wall, Mister Vimes is right behind you.' 'But old Fred . . . you all know old Fred Colon, boys,' Nobby wheedled, taking a kettle off the office stove and pouring the boiling water into a teapot. 'He knows coppering inside and out.' 'His kind of coppering, yeah,' said Hacknee. 'I mean, he's been a copper longer than anyone in the Watch,' said Nobby. One of the dwarfs said something in dwarfish. There were a few smiles from the shorter watchmen. 'What was that?' said Nobby. 'Well, roughly translated,' said Stronginthearm, "'My bum has been a bum for a very long time but I don't have to listen to anything it says."' 'He fined me half a dollar for mumping,' said Hacknee. 'Fred Colon! He practically goes on patrol with a shopping bag! And all I had was a free pint at the Bunch of Grapes and I found out that Posh Wally is suddenly flashing a lot of money lately. That's worth knowing. I remember going out on patrol with Fred Colon when I started and you could practically see him tucking his napkin under his chin whenever we walked past a cafe. "Oh, no, Sergeant Colon, wouldn't dream of seeing you pay." They used to lay the table when they saw him turn the corner.' 'Everyone does it,' said Stronginthearm. 'Captain Carrot never did,' said Nobby. 'Captain Carrot was . . . special.' 'But what am I supposed to do with this?' said Visit, waving the ink-speckled message. 'Mister Vimes wants some information urgently, he says!' Stronginthearm took the paper and read it. 'Well, this shouldn't be hard,' he said. 'Old Wussie Staid in Kicklebury Street was a janitor there for years and he owes me a favour.' 'If we're going to send a clacks to Mister Vimes then we ought to tell him about the Scone and Sonky,' said Reg Shoe. 'You know he left a message about that. I've done a report.' 'Why? He's hundreds of miles away.' 'I'd just feel happier if he knew,' said Reg. "cos it worries me.' 'What good will it do sending it to him, then?' 'Because then it'll worry him, and I can stop worrying,' said Reg. 'Corporal Nobbs!' 'He listens at the door, I'll swear he does,' said Stronginthearm. 'I'm off.' 'Coming, captain!' shouted Nobby. He pulled open the bottom drawer of his battered and stained desk and took out a packet of chocolate biscuits, some of which he arranged daintily on a plate. 'Does me no good at all to see you acting like this,' Stronginthearm went on, winking at the other dwarfs. 'You've got it in you to be a really bad copper, Nobby. Breaks my heart to see you throwin' it all away to become a really bad waitress.' 'Ha ha ha,' said Nobby. 'Just you wait, that's all I'm saying.' He raised his voice. 'Coming right now, captain!' There was a sharp smell of burned paper in the captain's room when Nobby entered. 'Nothing cheers up the day like a good fire, I always say,' he said, putting the tray on the desk. But Captain Colon wasn't paying any attention. He'd removed the sugar bowl from the locked drawer of his desk and had laid the cubes out in rows. 'Do you see anything wrong with these lumps, corporal?' he said quietly. 'Well, they're a bit manky where you've been handling them every-' 'There's thirty-seven, corporal.' 'Sorry about that, captain.' 'Visit must've pinched them when he was in here. He must've used some fancy foreign trick. They can do that, you know. Climb ropes and disappear up the top of 'em, that sort of thing.' 'Did he have a rope?' said Nobby. 'Are you making fun of me, corporal?' Nobby saluted. 'Nossir! Maybe it was a invisible one, sir. After all, if they can disappear up a rope, they can make the rope disappear, too. Obviously.' 'Good thinking, corporal.' 'On the subject of thinking, sir,' said Nobby, plunging in, 'have you had time in your busy schedule to give some thought to the promotion of the new sergeant?' 'I have, as a matter of fact, put that very thing in hand, corporal.' 'Good, sir.' 'I've borne in mind everything you said, and the choice was starin' me in the face.' 'Yessir!' said Nobby, sticking out his chest and saluting. 'I just hope it don't cause loss of morals. It can do that, when people are promoted. So if there's any trouble like that, I want the sugar-stealing person reported to me right away, understand?' 'Yessir!' Nobby's feet had almost left the ground. 'And I shall rely on you, corporal, to let me know if Sergeant Flint has any trouble.' 'Sergeant Flint,' said Nobby, in a little voice. 'I know he's a troll, but I won't have it said I'm an unfair man.' `Sergeant Flint.' 'I knows I can rely on you, corporal.' 'SergeantFlint.' 'That will be all. I've got to go and see his lordship in an hour and I want some time to think. That's what my job is, thinking.' 'Sergeant Flint.' 'Yes. I should go and report to him if I was you.' White chicken feathers were scattered across the field. The farmer stood at the door of his henhouse, shaking his head. He glanced up as a horseman approached. 'Good morrow, sir! Are you experiencing trouble?' The farmer opened his mouth for a witty or at least snappy response, but something stopped him. Perhaps it was the sword the horseman had slung across his back. Perhaps it was the man's faint smile. The smile was somehow more frightening. 'Er, somethin's been at my fowls,' he ventured. 'Fox, I reckon.' 'Wolf, I suspect,' said the rider. The man opened his mouth to say, 'Don't be daft, we don't get wolves down here this time of the year,' but again the confident smile made him hesitate. 'Got many hens, did they?' 'Six,' said the farmer. 'And they got in by. . .' 'Well, that's the strange th- Here, keep that dog away!' A small mongrel had leapt down from the saddle and was sniffing around the henhouses. 'He won't be any trouble,' said the rider. 'I shouldn't push your luck, mate, he's in a funny mood,' said a voice behind the farmer. He turned around quickly. The dog looked up at him innocently. Everyone knew that dogs didn't talk. 'Woof? Bark? Whine?' it said. 'He's highly trained,' said the rider. 'Yeah, right,' said the voice behind the farmer. He felt an overpowering desire to see the back of the horseman. The smile was getting on his nerves, and now he was hearing things. 'I can't see how they got in,' he said. 'The door's latched . . .' 'And wolves don't usually leave payment, right?' said the rider. 'How the hell did you know that?' 'Well, several reasons, sir, but I couldn't help noticing that you clenched your fist tightly as soon as you heard me, and I surmise therefore that you found - let me see - three dollars left in the chicken house. Three dollars would buy six fine birds in Ankh-Morpork.' The man opened his fist, wordlessly. The coins glinted in the sunlight. 'But . . . but I sells 'em at the gate for tenpence!' he wailed. 'They only had to arsk!' 'Probably didn't want to bother you,' said the horseman. 'Since I am here, sir, I would be grateful if you could sell me a chicken-' Behind the farmer the dog said, 'Woof woof!' '-two chickens, and I will not trespass further upon your time.' 'Woof woof woof.' 'Threechickens,' said the rider wearily. 'And if you have them dressed and cooked while I tend to my horse I will gladly pay a dollar each.' 'Woof, woof.' 'Without garlic or any seasoning on two of the chickens, please,' said the rider. The farmer nodded wordlessly. A dollar a chicken wasn't chickenfeed. You didn't turn up your nose at an offer like that. But most importantly, you didn't disobey a man with that faint little smile on his face. It didn't seem to move or change. As smiles went, you wanted this one to go as far away as possible. He hurried off to the yard that held his best fowls, reached down to select the fattest . . . and paused. A man who was mad enough to pay a dollar for a ,good chicken might be quite content with just a reasonable chicken, after all. He stood up. 'Only the best, mister.' He spun around. There was no one except the little scruffy dog, which had followed him and was now raising a cloud of dust as it scratched itself. 'Woof?' it said. He threw a stone at it and it trotted off. Then he selected three of the very best chickens. Carrot was lying down under a tree, trying to make his head comfortable on a saddlebag. 'Did you see where she'd almost rubbed out her footprints in the dust?' said Gaspode. 'Yes,' said Carrot, closing his eyes. 'Does she always pay for chickens?' 'Yes.' ,Whys, Carrot turned over. 'Because animals don't.' Gaspode looked at the back of Carrot's head. On the whole he enjoyed the unusual gift of speech, but something about the reddening of Carrot's ears told him that this was the time to employ the even rarer gift of silence. He settled down in the pose he almost unconsciously categorized as Faithful Companion Keeping Watch, got bored, scratched himself absentmindedly, curled up in the pose- known as Faithful Companion Curled Up With His Nose Pressed On His Bottom*, and fell asleep. He awoke shortly afterwards to the sound of voices. There was also a faint smell of roast chicken coming from the direction of the farmhouse. Gaspode rolled over and saw the farmer talking to another man on a cart. He listened for a moment and then sat up, locked in a metaphysical conundrum. Finally he woke Carrot by licking his ear. *One that no other creature in the world would ever adopt. 'Fzwl . . . What?' 'You got to promise to collect the roast chicken first, all right?' said Gaspode urgently. 'What?' Carrot sat up. 'Get the chickens and then we gotta go, right? You gotta promise.' 'All right, all right, I promise. What's happening?' 'You ever heard of a town called Scant Cullot?' 'I think it's about ten miles from here.' 'One of Mister Farmer's neighbours has just told him that they've caught a wolf there.' 'Killed it?' 'No, no, no, but the wolf-hunters . . . there's wolf-hunters in these parts, see, 'cos of the sheep up on the hills and . . they have to train their dogs first remember you promised about the chickens!' At precisely eleven o'clock there was a smart rap on Lord Vetinari's door. The Patrician gave the woodwork a puzzled frown. At last he said: 'Come.' Fred Colon entered with difficulty. Vetinari watched him for a few moments until pity overcame even him. 'Acting captain, it is not necessary to remain to attention at all times,' he said kindly. 'You are allowed to unbend enough for the satisfactory manipulation of a doorknob.' 'Yes, sah!' Lord Vetinari raised a hand to his ear protectively. 'You may be seated.' 'Yes, sah!' 'You may be quieter, too.' 'Yes, sah!' Lord Vetinari retreated to the protection of his desk. 'May I commend you on the gleam of your armour, acting captain-' 'Spit and polish, sah! No substitute for it, sah!' Sweat was streaming down Colon's face. 'Oh, good. Clearly you have been purchasing extra supplies of spit. Now then, let me see . . .' Lord Vetinari drew a sheet of paper from one of the small stacks in front of him. 'Now then, acti-' 'Sah!' 'To be sure. I have here another complaint of over-enthusiastic clamping. I'm sure you know to what I refer.' 'It was causing serious traffic congestion, sah!' 'Quite so. It is well known for it. But it is, in fact, the opera house.' 'Sah!' 'The owner feels that big yellow clamps at each corner detract from what I might call the tone of the building. And, of course, they do prevent him from driving it away.' 'Sah!' 'Indeed. I think that this is a case where discretion might be advisable, acting captain!' 'Got to make an example to the others, sah!' 'Ah. Yes.' The Patrician held another piece of paper delicately between thumb and forefinger, as though it was some rare and strange creature. 'The others being . . . let me see if I can recall, some things do stick in the mind so . . . ah, yes . . . three other buildings, six fountains, three statues and the gibbet in Nonesuch Street. Oh, and my own palace.' 'I fully understand you're parked on business, sah!' Lord Vetinari paused. He found it difficult to talk to Frederick Colon. He dealt on a daily basis with people who treated conversation as a complex game, and with Colon he had to keep on adjusting his mind in case he overshot. 'Pursuing the business of your recent career with, I have to admit, some considerable and growing fascination, I am moved to ask you why the Watch now appears to have a staff of twenty.' 'Sah?' 'You had around sixty a little while ago, I'm sure.' Colon mopped his face. 'Cutting out the dead wood, sah! Making the Watch leaner an' fitter, sah!' 'I see. The number of internal disciplinary charges you have laid against your men' - and here the Patrician picked up a much thicker document - 'seems somewhat excessive. I see no fewer than one hundred and seventy-three offences of eyeballing, earlobing and nostrilling, for example.' 'Sah!' 'Nostrilling, acting captain?' 'Sah!' 'Oh. And I see, ah yes, one charge of "making his arm fall off in an insubordinate way" laid against Constable Shoe. Commander Vimes has always given me glowing reports about this officer.' Ole's a nasty piece of work, sah! You can't trust the dead ones!' 'Nor, it would seem, most of the live ones.' 'Sah1' Colon leaned forward, his face twisted in a ghastly grimace of conspiratoriality. 'Between you and me, sir, Commander Vimes was a good deal too soft on them. He let them get away with too much. No sugar is safe, sah!' Vetinari's eyes narrowed, but the telescopes on Planet Colon were far too unsophisticated to detect his mood. 'I certainly recall him mentioning a couple of officers whose time-keeping, demeanour, and all-round uselessness were a dreadful example to the rest of the men,' said the Patrician. 'There's my point,' said Colon triumphantly. 'One bad apple ruins the whole barrel!' 'I think there's only a basket now,' said the Patrician. 'A punnet, possibly.' 'Don't you worry about a thing, your lordship! I'll turn things around. I'll soon get them smartened up!' 'I am sure you have it in you to surprise me even further,' said Vetinari, leaning back. 'I shall definitely keep my eye on you as the man to watch. And now, acting- captain, do you have anything else to report?' 'All nice and quiet, sah!' 'I would that it was,' said Vetinari. 'I was just wondering if there was anything going on involving any person in this city called' - he looked down at another sheet of paper -'Sonky?' Captain Colon almost swallowed his tongue. 'Minor matter, sah!' he managed. 'So, Sonky is alive?' 'Er . . . found dead, sah!' 'Murdered?' 'Sah!' 'Dear me. Many people would not consider that a minor matter, acting captain. Sonky, for one.' 'Well, sah, not everyone agrees with what he does, sah.' 'Are we by any chance talking about Wallace Sonky? The manufacturer of rubber goods?' 'Sah!' 'Boots and gloves seem non-controversial to me, acting captain.'. 'It's, er, the other stuff, sah!' Colon coughed nervously. 'He makes them rubber wallies, sah.' 'Ah. The preventatives.' 'Lot of people don't agree with that sort of thing, sah.' 'So I understand.' Colon drew himself up to attention again. 'Not natural, in my view, sah. Not in favour of unnatural things.' Vetinari looked perplexed. 'You mean, you eat your meat raw and sleep in a tree?' 'Sah?' 'Oh, nothing, nothing. Someone in Uberwald seems to be taking an interest in him lately. And now he's dead. I would not dream of telling the Watch their job, of course.' He watched Colon carefully to see if this had sunk in. 'I said that it is entirely up to you to choose what to investigate in this bustling city,' he prompted. Colon was lost in unfamiliar country without a map. 'Thank you, sah!' he barked. Vetinari sighed. 'And now, acting captain, I'm sure there's much that needs your attention.' 'Sah! I've got plans to-' 'I meant, do not let me detain you.' 'Oh, that's all right, sir, I've got plenty of time-' 'Goodbye;Acting Captain Colon.' Out in the anteroom Fred Colon stood very still for a while, until his heartbeat wound down from a whine to at least a purr. It had, on the whole, gone quite well. Very well. Amazingly well, really. His lordship had practically taken him into his confidence. He'd called him 'a man to watch'. Fred wondered why he'd been so scared of officering all these years. There was nothing to it, really, once you got the bull between your teeth. If only he'd started years ago! Of course, he wouldn't hear a word said about Mr Vimes, who should certainly be looking after himself in those dangerous foreign parts . . . but, well, Fred Colon had been a sergeant when Sam Vimes was a rookie, hadn't he? It was only his nat'ral deference that'd held him back all these years. When Sam Vimes came back, and with the Patrician there to put in a good word for him, Fred Colon would definitely be on the promotion ladder. Only to full captain, of course, he thought as he strutted down the stairs - with great care, because strutting is usually impossible while walking downwards. He wouldn't want to outrank Captain Carrot. That would be . . . wrong. This fact shows that, however crazed with power someone may be, a tiny instinct for selfpreservation always remains. He got the chickens first,thought Gaspode, winding his way through the legs of the crowd. Amazin'. They hadn't stopped to eat them, though. Gaspode had been stuffed into the other saddlebag and would not like to have to go through ten miles like that again, especially so close to the smell of roast chicken. It looked as though there was a market going on, and the wolf-baiting had been saved as a sort of closing ceremony. Hurdles had been arranged in a rough circle. Men were holding the collars of dogs - big, heavy, unpleasant-looking dogs, which were already wild with excitement and deranged stupidity. There was a coop by the hurdles. Gaspode made his way to it and peered through the wooden bars at the heap of matted grey fur in the shadows. 'Looks like you're in a spot of strife, friend,' he said. Contrary to legend - and there are so many legends about wolves, although mostly they are legends about the way men think about wolves - a trapped wolf is more likely to whine and fawn than go wild with rage. But this one must have felt it had nothing to lose. Foam-flecked jaws snapped at the bars. 'Where's the rest of your pack, then?' said Gaspode. 'No pack, shorty!' 'Ah. A lone wolf, eh?' The worst kind, Gaspode thought. 'Roast chicken isn't worth this,' he muttered. Out loud, he growled, 'You seen any other wolves around here?' 'Yes!' 'Good. You want to get out of here alive?' 'I'll kill them a111' 'Right, right, but there's dozens of 'em, see. You won't stand a chance. They'll tear you to bits. Dogs're a lot nastier than wolves.' In the shade the eyes narrowed. 'Why're you telling me, dog?' "cos I'm here to help you, see? You do what I tell you, you could be out of here in half an hour. Otherwise you're a rug on someone's floor tomorrow. Your choice. O'course, there might not be enough of you left to make a rug.' The wolf listened to the baying of the dogs. There was no mistaking their intent. 'What did you have in mind?' it said. A few minutes later the crowd was gently nudged aside as Carrot edged his horse towards the pen. The hubbub died. A sword on a horse always commands respect; the rider is often a mere courtesy detail, but in this case it was not so. The Watch had put the final swell and polish on Carrot's muscles. And there was that faint smile. It was the sort you backed away from. 'Good day. Who is in charge here?' he said. There was a certain amount of comparison of status, and a man cautiously raised his hand. 'I'm the deputy mayor, y'honour,' he said. 'And what is this event?' 'We'm about to bait a wolf, y'honour.' 'Really? I myself own a wolfhound of unusual strength and prowess. May I test it against the creature?' There was more mumbling among the bystanders, the general consensus being: why not? Anyway, there was that smile . . . 'Go ahead, y'honour,' said the deputy mayor. Carrot stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled. The townspeople watched in astonishment as Gaspode walked out from between their legs and sat down. Then the laughter started. It died away after a while, because the faint smile didn't. 'Is there a problem?' said Carrot. 'It'll get torn limb from limb!' 'Well? Do you care what happens to a wolf?' Laughter broke out again. The deputy mayor had a feeling he was being got at. 'It's your dog, mister,' he said, shrugging. The little dog barked. 'And to make it interesting we'll wager a pound of steak,' said Carrot. The dog barked again. 'Two pounds of steak,' Carrot corrected himself. 'Oh, I reckon it's going to be interesting enough as it is,' said the deputy mayor. The smile was beginning to prey on his nerves. 'All right, boys, fetch the wolf!' The creature was dragged into the ring of hurdles, slavering and snarling. 'No, don't tie it up,' said Carrot, as a man went to wrap the halter around a post. 'It'll get away if we don't.' 'It won't have a chance, believe me.' They looked at the smile, dragged the muzzle from the wolf and leapt to safety. 'Now, just in case you were havin' second thoughts about our agreement,' said Gaspode to the wolf, 'I suggest you look at the face of the bloke on the horse, right?' The wolf glanced up. It saw the wolverine smile on the face of the rider. Gaspode barked. The wolf yelped and rolled over. The crowd waited. And then 'Is that it?' 'Yes, that's how it normally goes,' said Carrot. 'It's a special bark, you see. All the blood in the victim congeals in an instant, out of sheer terror.' 'It hasn't even worried the body!' 'What,' said Carrot, 'would be the point of that?' He got down from the horse, pushed his way into the ring, picked up the body of the wolf and flung it across the saddle. 'It grunted! I heard it-' someone began. 'That was probably air being expressed from the corpse,' said Carrot. The smile still hadn't gone, and at that point it suggested very subtly that Carrot had heard the last gasp of hundreds of corpses. 'Yeah, that's right,' said a voice in the crowd. 'Everyone knows that. And now what about the steak for the brave little doggie?' The people looked around to see who had said this. None of them looked down, because dogs can't talk. 'We can forgo the steak,' said Carrot, mounting up. 'No, w- No you can't,' said the voice. 'A deal's a deal. Who was risking their life here, that's what I'd like to know.' . 'Come, Gaspode,' said Carrot. Whining and grumbling, the little dog emerged from the crowd and trailed after the horse. It wasn't until they were at the edge of the town square that one of the people said, 'Oi, what the hell happened there?' and the spell broke. But by then both horse and dog were travelling really, really fast. Vimes hated and despised the privileges of rank, but they had this to be said for them: at least they meant that you could hate and despise them in comfort. Willikins would arrive at an inn an hour before Vimes's coach and, with an arrogance that Vimes would never dare employ, take over several rooms and install Vimes's own cook in the kitchen. Vimes complained about this to Inigo. 'But you see, your grace, you're not here as an individual but as Ankh-Morpork. When people look at you, they see the city, mhm, mhm.' 'They do? Should I stop washing?' 'That is very droll, sir. But you see, sir, you and the city are one. Mhm, mhm. If you are insulted, Ankh-Morpork is insulted. If you befriend, Ankh-Morpork befriends.' 'Really? What happens when I go to the lavatory?' `That's up to you, sir. Mmhm, mmph.' At breakfast next morning Vimes sliced the top off a boiled egg, thinking: this is Ankh-Morpork slicing the top off a boiled egg. If I cut my toast into soldiers we're probably at war. Corporal Littlebottom entered carefully and saluted. 'Your message came back, sir,' she said, handing him a scrap of paper. 'From Sergeant Stronginthearm. I've deciphered it for you. Er . . . the Scone from the Museum's been found, sir.' 'Well, that's the other shoe dropped,' said Vimes. 'I was worried there for a moment.' 'Er, in fact Constable Shoe is bothered about it,' said Cheery. 'It's 'a bit hard to follow what he says, but he seems to think someone made a copy of it.' 'What, a fake of a fake? What good's that?' 'I really couldn't say, sir. Your other ... surmise was correct.' Vimes glanced at the paper. 'Hah. Thanks, Cheery. We'll be down shortly.' 'You're humming, Sam,' said Sybil, after a while. 'That means something awful is going to happen to somebody.' 'Wonderful thing, technology,' said Vimes, buttering a slice of toast. 'I can see it has its uses.' 'And when you grin in that shiny sort of way it means that someone's playing silly buggers and doesn't know you've just thrown a six.' 'I don't know what you mean, dear. It's probably the country air agreeing with me.' Lady Sybil put down her teacup. 'Sam?' 'Yes, dear?' 'This is probably not the best time to mention it, but you know I told you I went to see old Mrs Content? Well, she says-' There was another knock at the door. Lady Sybil sighed. This time it was Inigo who entered. 'We should be leaving, your grace, if you don't mind. I would like us to be at Slake by lunchtime and through the pass at Wilinus before dark, mhm, mhm.' 'Do we have to rush so?' sighed Sybil. 'The pass is . . . slightly dangerous,' said Inigo. 'Somewhat lawless. Mhm, mhm.' 'Only somewhat?' said Vimes. 'I will just feel happier when it is behind us,' said Inigo. 'It would be a good idea if the second coach follows, us closely and your men stay alert, your grace.' 'They teach you tactics in Lord Vetinari's political office, do they, Inigo?' said Vimes. 'Just common sense, mhm, mhm, sir.' 'Why don't we wait until tomorrow before attempting the pass?' 'With respect, your grace, I suggest not. For one thing, the weather is worsening. And I'm sure we're being watched. We must demonstrate that there is no yellow in the Ankh-Morpork flag, mhm, mhm.' 'There is,' said Vimes. 'It's on the owl and the collars of the hippos.' 'I mean,' said Inigo, 'that the colours of AnkhMorpork do not run.' 'Only since we got the new dyes,' said Vimes. 'All right, all right. I know what you mean. But, look, I'm not risking the servants if there's any danger. And there's to be no arguing, understand? They can stay here and take the mail coach tomorrow. No one attacks the mail coaches any more.' 'I suggest Lady Sybil remains here too, sir. Mhm.' 'Absolutely not,' said Sybil. 'I wouldn't hear of it! If it's not too dangerous for Sam, it's not too dangerous for me.' 'I wouldn't argue with her if I was you,' said Vimes to Inigo. 'I really wouldn't.' The wolf was not very happy about being tethered to a tree but, as Gaspode said, never trust nobody. They'd paused a while in a wood about five miles from the town. It'd be a brief stop, Carrot had said. Some of the people in the square looked the sort who treasured their lack of a sense of humour. After some barking and growling Gaspode said, 'You got to understand that matey here is pers'nally non gratis in local wolf society, being a bit of, ahaha, lone wolf . . .' 'Yes?' Carrot was taking the roast chickens out of their sack. Gaspode's eyes fixed on them. 'But he hears the howlin' at night.' 'Ah, wolves communicate?' 'Basic'ly your wolf howl is just another way of pissin' against a tree to say it's your damn tree, but there's always bits of news, too. Something pasty's happenin' in Uberwald. He doesn't know what.' Gaspode lowered his voice. 'Between you and me, our friend here was well behind the door when the brains was handed out. If wolves was people, he'd be like Foul Ole Ron.' 'What's his name?' said Carrot thoughtfully. Gaspode gave Carrot a Look. Who cared what a wolf was called? 'Wolf names is difficult,' he said. 'More like a description, see? It's not like callin' yourself Mr Snuggles or Bonzo, you understand. . .' 'Yes, I know. So what is his name?' 'You want to know what his name is, then?' 'Yes, Gaspode.' 'So, in fact, it's the name of this wolf you want to know?' 'That is correct.' Gaspode shifted uneasily. 'Arsehole,' he said. 'Oh.' To the dog's frank astonishment, Carrot blushed. 'That's basic'ly a summary, but it's a pretty good translation,' he said. 'I wouldn't have mentioned it, but you did ask. . .' Gaspode stopped and whined for a moment, trying to convey the message that he was losing his voice due to lack of chicken. 'Er, there's been a lot on the howl about Angua,' he went on, when Carrot seemed unable to take the hint. 'Er, they think she's bad news.' 'Why? She's travelling as a wolf, after all.' 'Wolves hate werewolves.' 'What? That can't be right! When she's wolf-shaped she's just like a wolf!' 'So? When she's human-shaped she's just like a human. And what's that got to do with anything? Humans don't like werewolves. Wolves don't like werewolves. People don't like wolves that can think like people, an' people don't like people who can act like wolves. Which just shows you that people are the same everywhere,' said Gaspode. He assessed this sentence and added, 'Even when they're wolves.' 'I never thought of it like that.' 'And she smells wrong. Wolves are very sensitive to that sort of thing.' 'Tell me more about the howl.' 'Oh, it's like the clacky thing. News gets spread for hundreds of miles.' 'Do the howls ... mention her ... companion?' 'No, If you like, I'll ask Ars-' 'I'd prefer a different name, if it's all the same to you,' said Carrot. 'Words like that aren't clever.' Gaspode rolled his eyes. 'There's nothing wrong with the word among us pedestically gifted species,' he said. 'We're very smelloriented.' He sighed. 'How about "bum"? In the sense of, er, migratory worker? He's a freelance chicken -throttler, style of frog?' He turned to the wolf and spoke in canine. 'Now then, Bum, this human is insane and believe me I know a mad human when I see one. He's frothing at the mouth inside and he'll rip your hide off and nail it to a tree if you aren't straight with us, understand? . . . well, they were the same, right? Everyone knew that. So-oo, said a treacherous inner voice, maybe it wasn't exactly Gaspode and Carrot in trouble. Maybe it was only Carrot. Yeah, right on, brothers! Let us join together in wild runs in the moonlight! But first, let us eat this monkey! On the other paw . . . He'd got hard pad, soft pad, the swinge, licky end, scroff, mange and something rather strange on the back of his neck that he couldn't quite reach. Gaspode somehow couldn't imagine the wolves saying Hey, he's one of us! Besides, while he'd begged, fought, tricked and stolen, he'd never actually been a Bad Dog. You needed to be a moderately good theological disputant to accept this, especially since a fair number of sausages and prime cuts had disappeared from butchers' slabs in a blur of grey and a lingering odour of lavatory carpet, but nevertheless Gaspode was clear in his own mind that he'd never crossed the boundary from merely being a Naughty Boy. He'd never bitten a hand that fed him.* He'd never done It on the carpet. He'd never shirked a Duty. It was a bugger, but there you were. It was a dog thing. He whined when the ring of dark shapes closed in. Eyes gleamed. He whined again, and then growled as unseen fanged death surrounded him. *After all, this made it so much harder for the hand to feed you tomorrow. This was clearly impressing no one, not even Gaspode. He wagged his tail nervously. 'Just passin' through!' he said in a strangulatedly cheerful voice. 'No trouble to anyone!' There was a definite feeling that the shadows beyond the snowflakes were getting more crowded. 'So, have you had your holidays yet?' he squeaked. This also did not appear to be well received. Well, this was it, then. Famous Last Stand. Plucky Dog Defends His Master. What a Good Dog. Shame there'd be no one left to tell anyone... He barked, 'Mine! Mine!' and leapt snarling towards the nearest shape. A huge paw swatted him out of the air and then pinned him down, spreadeagled, in the snow. He looked up past white fangs and a long muzzle into eyes that seemed familiar. 'Hmine,'growled the wolf. It was Angua. The coaches slowed to a walk on a road that was rough with potholes under the unbroken snow, every one a wheel-breaking trap in the dark. Vimes nodded to himself when he saw lights flickering beside the road a few miles into the pass. On either side, old landslides had formed banks of scree, down which the forests had spilled. He dropped quietly off the back of the coach and vanished into the shadows. The leading coach stopped at a log which had been dropped across the road. There was some movement, and then the driver swung himself down into the mud and set off at a dead run back down the pass. Figures moved out of the trees. One of them stopped at the door of the first coach and tried the handle. For a moment the world held its breath. The figures must have sensed it, because the man was already leaping aside when there was a click and the whole door and its surrounding frame blew outwards in a cloud of splinters. The thing about fires, Vimes had once observed, was that only an idiot got between them and a troll holding a 2,OOOlb crossbow. All Hell hadn't been let loose. It was merely Detritus. But from a few feet away you couldn't tell the difference. Another figure reached for the door of the second coach just before Vimes fired out of the darkness and hit his shoulder with a butcher's sound. Then Inigo dived out through the window, rolled with unclerk-like grace as he hit the ground, rose in front of one of the bandits and brought his hand around, edge first, on the man's neck. Vimes had seen this trick before. Usually it just made people angry. Occasionally it managed an incapacitating blow. He'd never seen it remove a head. 'Everybody stop!' Sybil was pushed out of the coach. Behind her a man stepped out. He was holding a crossbow. 'Your Grace Vimes!' he shouted. The word bounced back and forth between the cliffs. 'I know you're here, Your Grace Vimes! And here is your lady! And there are many of us! Come out, Your Grace Vimes!' Flakes of snow hissed over the fires. There was a whisper in the air followed by a second smack of steel into muscle. One of the hooded figures collapsed into the mud, clutching at its leg. Inigo got slowly to his feet. The man holding the crossbow appeared not to notice. 'It is like chess, Your Grace Vimes! We have disarmed the troll and the dwarf! And I have the queen! And if you shoot at me can you be sure I won't have time to fire?' Firelight glowed on the twisted trees bordering the road. Several seconds passed. Then the sound of Vimes's crossbow landing in the circle of light was very loud. 'Well done, Your Grace Vimes! And now yourself, if you please!' Inigo made out the shape that appeared at the very edge of the light, with both hands up. 'Are you all right, Sybil?' said Vimes. 'A bit cold, Sam.' 'You're not hurt?' 'No, Sam.' 'Keep your hands where I can see them, Your Grace Vimes!' 'And are you going to promise me you'll let her go?' said Vimes. A flame flickered near Vimes's face, a bright pool in the darkness, as he lit a cigar. 'Now, Your Grace Vimes , whyever should I do that? But I am sure Ankh-Morpork will pay a lot for you!' 'Ah. I thought so,' said Vimes. He shook the match out, and the cigar end glowed for a moment. 'Sybil?' 'Yes, Sam?' 'Duck.' There was a second filled only with the indrawing of breath, and then as Lady Sybil dived forward Vimes's hand came around from behind him in an arc, there was a silken sound, and the man's head was flung back. Inigo leapt and caught the man's crossbow as it was dropped, then rolled and came up firing. Another figure staggered. Vimes was aware of a commotion elsewhere as he grabbed Sybil and helped her back into the coach. Inigo had vanished, but a scream in the dark didn't sound like anyone Vimes knew. And then . . . only the hiss of snow in the fire. 'I . . . think they're gone, sir,' said Cheery's voice. 'Not as fast as us! Detritus?' 'Sir?' 'Are you Okay?' 'Feelin' very tactful, sir.' 'You two take that coach, I'll take this, and let's get the hell out of here, shall we?' 'Where's Mister Skimmer?' said Sybil. There was another scream from the woods. 'Forget him!' 'But he's-' 'Forget him!' The snow was falling thicker as they climbed the pass. The deep snow dragged at the wheels, and all Vimes could see were the darker shapes of the horses against the whiteness. Then the clouds parted briefly and he wished they hadn't, because here they revealed that the darkness on the left of him was no longer rock but a sheer drop. At the top of the pass the lights of an inn glowed out on to the thickening snow. Vimes drove the carriage into the yard. 'Detritus?' 'Sir?' 'I'll watch our backs. Make sure this place is Okay, will you?' 'Yessir.' The troll jumped down, slotting a fresh bundle of arrows into the Piecemaker. Vimes spotted his intention just in time. 'Just knock, sergeant.' 'Right you are', sir.' The troll knocked and entered. The buzz of sound from inside suddenly ceased. Vimes heard, muffled by the door, 'Der Duke of AnkhMorpork is coming in. Anyone have a problem wid dis? Just say der word.' And in the background, the little humming, singing noise the Piecemaker made under tension. Vimes helped Sybil down from the coach. 'How do you feel now?' he said. She smiled faintly. 'I think this dress will have to go for dusters,' she said. She smiled a little more when she saw his expression. 'I knew you'd come up with something, Sam. You go all slow and cold and that means something really dreadful's going to happen. I wasn't frightened.' 'Really? I was scared shi- stiff,' said Vimes. 'What happened to Mister Skimmer? I remember him rummaging in his case and cursing-' 'I suspect Inigo Skimmer is alive and well,' said Vimes grimly. 'Which is more than can be said for those around him.' There was silence in the main room of the inn. A man and a woman, presumably the landlord and his wife, were standing flat against the back of the bar. The dozen or so other occupants lined the walls, hands in the air. Beer dribbled from a couple of spilled mugs. 'Everyt'ing normal an' peaceful,' said Detritus, turning round. Vimes realized that everyone was staring at him. He looked down. His shirt was torn. Mud and blood caked his clothes. Melted snow dripped off him. In his right hand, unregarded, he was still holding his crossbow. 'Bit of trouble on the road,' he said. 'Er, you know how it is.' No one moved. 'Oh, good gods. Detritus, put that damn thing down, will you?' 'Right, sir.' The troll lowered his crossbow. Two dozen people all began to breathe again. Then the skinny woman stepped around from behind the bar, nodded at Vimes, carefully took Lady Sybil's hand from his, and pointed towards the wide wooden stairs. The black look she gave Vimes puzzled him. Only then did he realize that Lady Sybil was shaking. Tears were running down her face. 'And, er, my wife is a bit shaken up,' he said weakly. 'Corporal Littlebottom!' he yelled, to cover his confusion. Cheery stepped through the doorway. 'Go with Lady Syb-' He stopped because of the rising hubbub. One or two people pointed. Someone laughed. Cheery stopped, looking down. 'What's up?' Vimes hissed. 'Er, it's me, sir. Ankh-Morpork dwarf fashions haven't really caught on here, sir,' said Cheery. 'The skirt?' said Vimes. 'Yes, sir.' Vimes looked around at the faces. They seemed more shocked than angry, although he spotted a couple of dwarfs in one corner who were definitely unhappy. 'Go with Lady Sybil,' he repeated. 'It might not be a very good id-' Cheery began. 'Gods damn it!' shouted Vimes, unable to stop himself. The crowd went silent. A ragged bloodstained madman holding a crossbow can command a rapt audience. Then he shuddered. What he wanted now was a bed, but what he wanted, before bed, more than anything, was a drink. And he couldn't have one. He'd learned that long ago. One drink was one too many. 'All right, tell me,' he said. 'All dwarfs are men, sir,' said Cheery. 'I mean . . . traditionally. That's how everyone thinks of it up here.' 'Well, stand outside the door, or . . . or shut your eyes or something, Okay?' Vimes lifted Lady Sybil's chin. 'Are you all right, dear?' he said. 'Sorry to let you down, Sam,' she whispered. 'It was just so awful.' Vimes, designed by Nature to be one of those men unable to kiss their own wives in public, patted her helplessly on the shoulder. She thought she'd let him down. It was unbearable. 'You just . . . I mean, Cheery will . . . and I'll . . . sort things out and be along right away,' he said. 'We'll get a good bedroom, I suspect.' She nodded, still looking down. 'And . .. I'm just going out for some fresh air.' Vimes stepped outside. The snow had stopped for now. The moon was half hidden by clouds and the air smelled of frost. When the figure dropped down from the eaves it was amazed at the way Vimes spun and rushed it bodily against the wall. Vimes looked through a red mist at the moonlit face of Inigo Skimmer. 'I'll damn well-' he began. 'Look down, your grace,' said Skimmer. 'Mhm, mhm.' Vimes-realized he could feel the faintest prick of a knife blade on his stomach. 'Look down further,' he said. Inigo looked down. He swallowed. Vimes had a knife, too. 'You really are no gentleman, then,' he said. 'Make a sudden move and neither are you,' said Vimes. 'And now it appears that we have reached what Sergeant Colon persists in referring to as an imp arse.' 'I assure you I will not kill you,' said Inigo. 'I knowthat,' said Vimes. 'But will you try?' 'No. I'm here for your protection, mhm, mhm.' 'Vetinari sent you, did he?' 'You know we never divulge the name of-' 'That's true. You people are very honourable,' Vimes spat the word, 'in that respect.' Both men relaxed a little. 'You left me alone surrounded by enemies,' said Inigo, but without much accusation in his tone. 'Why should I care what happens to a bunch of bandits?' said Vimes. 'You're an assassin.' 'How did you find out? Mmph?' 'A copper watches the way people walk. The Klatchians say a man's leg is his second face, did you know that? And that little clerky, I'm-soharmless walk of yours is too good to be true.' 'You mean that just from my walk you-' 'No. You didn't catch the orange,' said Vimes. 'Come now-' 'No, people either catch or flinch. You saw it wasn't a danger. And when I took your arm I felt metal under your clothes. Then I just sent a clacks back with your description.' He let go of Inigo and walked over to the coach, leaving his back exposed. He took something down from the box and came back and waved it at the man. 'I know this is yours,' he said. 'I pinched it out of your luggage. If I ever catch anyone with one of these in Ankh-Morpork I will make their life a complete misery as only a copper knows how. Is that understood?' 'If you ever catch anyone with one of these in Ankh-Morpork, your grace, mhm, they will still be lucky that the Assassins' Guild didn't find them first, mmph. They are on our forbidden list within the city. But we're a long way from AnkhMorpork now. Mmph, mmph.' Vimes turned the thing over and over in his hands. It looked vaguely like a long-handled hammer, or perhaps a strangely made telescope. What it was, basically, was a spring. That's all a crossbow was, after all. 'It's a devil to load,' he said. 'I nearly ruptured myself cocking it against a rock. You'd only get one shot.' 'But it's the shot no one expects, mhm, mhm.' Vimes nodded. You could even conceal this thing down your pants, although the thought of all that coiled power so close would require nerves of steel and other parts of steel, too, if it came to it. 'This is not a weapon. This is for killing people,' he said. 'Uh, most weapons are,' said Inigo. 'No, they're not. They're so you don't have to kill people. They're for . . . for having. For being seen. For warning. This isn't one of those. It's for hiding away until you bring it out and kill people in the dark. And where's that other thing?' 'Your grace?' 'The palm dagger. Don't try to lie to me.' Inigo shrugged. The movement shot something silver out of his sleeve; it was a carefully shaped blade, padded on one side, which slid along the edge of his hand. There was a click from somewhere inside his jacket. 'Good gods,' breathed Vimes. 'Do you know how often people have tried to assassinate me, man?' 'Yes, your grace. Nine times. The Guild has set your fee at .$600,000. The last time an approach was made no Guild member volunteered. Mhm, mhm.' 'Hah!' 'Incidentally, and very informally of course, we would appreciate knowing the whereabouts of the body of the Honourable Eustace BassinglyGore, mhm, mhm.' Vimes scratched his nose. 'Was he the one who tried to poison my shaving cream?' 'Yes, your grace.' 'Well, unless his body is an extremely strong swimmer, it's still on a ship bound for Ghat via Cape Terror,' said Vimes. 'I paid the captain a thousand dollars not to take the chains off before Zambingo, too. That'll give it a nice long walk home through the jungles of Klatch where I'm sure its knowledge of rare poisons will come in very handy, although not as handy perhaps as a knowledge of antidotes.' 'A thousand dollars!' 'Well, he had twelve hundred dollars on him. I donated the rest to the Sunshine Sanctuary for Sick Dragons. I got a receipt, by the way. You chaps are keen on receipts, I think.' 'You stole his money? Mhm, mhm.' Vimes took a deep breath. His voice, when it emerged, was flat calm. 'I wasn't going to waste any of my own. And he had just tried to kill me. Think of it as an investment, for the good of his health. Of course, if in due course he cares to come and see me, I shall make sure he gets what's coming to him.' 'I'm . . . astounded, your grace. Mhm, mhm. Bassingly-Gore was an extremely competent swordsman.' 'Really? I generally never wait to find out about that sort of thing.' Inigo smiled his thin little smile. 'And two months ago Sir Richard Liddleley was found tied to a fountain in Sator Square, painted pink and with a flag stuck-' 'I was feeling generous,' said Vimes. 'I'm sorry, I don't play your games.' 'Assassination is not a game, your grace.' 'It is the way you people play it.' 'There have to be rules. Otherwise there would just be anarchy. Mhm, mhm. You have your code and we have ours.' 'And you've been sent here to protect me?' 'I have other skills, but . . . yes.' 'What makes you think I'll need you?' 'Well, your grace, here they don't have rules. Mhm, mhm.' 'I've spent most of my life dealing with people who don't have rules!' 'Yes, of course. But when you kill them, they don't get up again.' 'I've never killed anyone!' said Vimes. 'You shot that bandit in the throat.' 'I was aiming for the shoulder.' 'Yes, the thing does pull to the left,' said Inigo. 'You mean that you have never tried to kill anyone. I have, on the other hand. And here hesitation may not be an option. Mmph.' 'I didn't hesitate!' Inigo sighed. 'In the Guild, your grace, we don't . . . grandstand.' 'Grandstand?' 'That business with the cigar. . .' 'You mean, when I shut my eyes and they had to look at a flame in the darkness?' 'Ah. . .' Inigo hesitated. 'But they might have shot you there and then.' 'No. I wasn't a threat. And you heard his voice. I hear that sort of voice a lot. He's not going to shoot people too soon and spoil the fun. I can assume that you have not got a contract on me?' 'That is correct.' 'And you'd still swear to that?' 'On my honour as an assassin.' 'Yes,' said Vimes. 'That's where I hit a difficulty, of course. And, I don't know how to put this, Inigo, but you don't act like a typical assassin. Lord this, Sir that . . . The Guild is the school for gentlemen but you - and gods know I don't mean any offence here - are not exactly-' Inigo touched his forelock. 'Scholarship boy, sir,' he said. My gods yes, thought Vimes. You can find your average, amateur killers on every street. They're mostly deranged or drunk or some poor woman who's had a hard day and the husband has raised his hand once too often and suddenly twenty years of frustration takes over. Killing a stranger without malice or satisfaction, other than the craftsman's pride in a job well done, is such a rare talent that armies spend months trying to instil it into their young soldiers. Most people will shy away from killing people they haven't been introduced to. The Guild had to have one or two people like Inigo. Didn't some philosophical bastard once say that a government needed butchers as well as shepherds? He indicated the little crossbow. 'All right, take it,' he said. 'But you can put the word about that if I ever, ever see one on the street the owner will find it put where the sun does not shine.' 'Ah,' said Inigo, 'that's the amusingly named place in Lancre, isn't it? It's only about fifty miles from here, I believe. Mhm, mhm.' 'Rest assured that I can find a short-cut.' Gaspode tried blowing in Carrot's ear again. 'Time to wake up,' he growled. Carrot opened his eyes, blinked the snow out of them, and then tried to move. 'You just lie still, right?' said Gaspode. 'If it helps, try thinking of them as a very heavy eiderdown.' Carrot struggled feebly. The wolves piled on top of him shifted position. 'Warming you up a treat,' said Gaspode, grinning nervously. 'A wolf blanket, - see? O'course, you're going to be a bit whiffy for a while, but better to be itchy than dead, eh?' He scratched an ear industriously with a hind leg. One of the wolves growled at him. 'Sorry. Grub'll be up in a moment.' 'Food?'muttered Carrot. Angua appeared in Carrot's vision, dressed in a leather shirt and leggings. She stood looking down at him, hands on her hips. To Gaspode's amazement, Carrot actually managed to push himself up on his elbows, dislodging several wolves. 'You were tracking us?' he said. 'No, they were,' said Angua. 'They thought you were a bloody fool. I heard it on the howl. And they were right! You haven't eaten anything for three days! And up here winter doesn't drop a few hints over a month or so. It turns up in one night! Why were you so stupid?' Gaspode looked around the clearing. Angua had rekindled the fire. Gaspode wouldn't have believed it if he hadn't seen it, but actual wolves had dragged in actual fallen wood for her. And then another had turned up with a small deer, still fat after the autumn. He dribbled at the smell of it roasting. Something human and complicated was going on between Carrot and Angua. It sounded like an argument but it didn't smell like one. Anyway, recent events all made perfect sense to Gaspode. The female ran away and the male chased her. That's how it went. Actually, it was usually about twenty males of all sizes, but obviously, Gaspode conceded, things were a bit different for humans. Pretty soon, he reckoned, Carrot would notice the big male wolf sitting by the fire. And then the fur would fly. Humans, eh? Gaspode wasn't sure of his own ancestry. There was some terrier, and a touch of spaniel, and probably someone's leg, and an awful lot of mongrel. But he took it as an article of faith that there was in all dogs a tiny bit of wolf, and his was urgently sending messages that the wolf by the fire was one you didn't even stare directly at. It wasn't that the wolf was obviously vicious. He didn't need to be. Even sitting still he radiated the assurance of competent power. Gaspode was, if not the victor, then at least the survivor of many a street fight, and as such would not have gone against this animal even if backed up by a couple of lions and a man with an axe. Instead he sidled over to a female wolf who was watching the fire haughtily. 'Yo, bitch,' he said. 'Votvas zat?' Gaspode reconsidered his strategy. 'Hi, foxy . . . er . . . wolf lady,' he tried. A certain lowering of the temperature suggested that this one hadn't worked either. "ullo, miss,' he said hopefully. Her muzzle turned to point at him. Her eyes narrowed. 'Vot har you?' Ice slithered off every syllable. 'Gaspode's the name,' barked Gaspode, with insane cheerfulness. "m a dog. That's a kind of wolf, sort of thing. So, what's your name, then?' 'Go avay.' 'No offence meant. 'ere, I heard tell wolves mate for life, right?' 'Vell?' 'Wish 1 could.' Gaspode froze as the she-wolf's muzzle snapped an inch from his nose. 'Ver I come from ve eat things like you,' she said. 'Fair enough, fair enough,' muttered Gaspode, backing away. 'I don't know, you try to be friendly and this is what you get . . .' Nearer the fire the humans were getting complicated. Gaspode slunk back and lay down. 'You could have told me,' Carrot was saying. 'It would've taken too long. You always want to understand things. Anyway, it's none of your business. This is family.' Carrot waved a hand towards the wolf. 'He's a relative?' he said. 'No. He's a . . . friend.' Gaspode's ears waggled. He thought: whoops. 'He's very big for a wolf,' said Carrot slowly, as if filing new information. 'He's a very big wolf,' said Angua, shrugging. 'Another werewolf?' 'No.' 'Just a wolf?' 'Yes,' said Angua sarcastically. 'Just a wolf.' 'And his name is . . . ?' 'He would not object to being called Gavin.' 'Gavin?' 'He once ate someone called Gavin.' 'What, all of him?' 'Of course not. Just enough to make certain that the man set no more wolf traps.' Angua smiled. 'Gavin is . . . quite unusual.' Carrot looked at the wolf and smiled. He picked up a piece of wood and tossed it gently towards him. The wolf snapped it, dog-like, out of the air. 'I'm sure we'll be friends,' he said. Angua sighed. 'Wait.' Gaspode, the unheeded spectator, watched as Gavin, without taking his eyes off Carrot, very slowly bit the wood in two. 'Carrot?' said Angua sweetly. 'Don't do that again. Gavin isn't even in the same clan as these wolves, and he took over the pack without any-one even whining. He's not a dog. And he's a killer, Carrot. Oh, don't look like that. I don't mean he pounces on wandering kids or eats up the odd grandmother. I mean that if he thinks a human ought to die, that human is dead. He will always, always fight. He's very uncomplicated like that.' 'He's an old friend?' said Carrot. 'Yes.' 'A . . . friend.' 'Yes.' Angua rolled her eyes and said, in a voice of sing-song sarcasm, 'I was out in the woods one day and I fell into some old pit trap under the snow and some wolves found me and would have killed me but Gavin turned up and faced them down. Don't ask me why. People do things sometimes. So do wolves. End of story.' 'Gaspode said wolves and werewolves don't get on,' said Carrot patiently. 'He's right. If Gavin wasn't here they'd have torn me to pieces. I can look like a wolf but I'm not a wolf. I'm a werewolf! I'm not a human, either. I'm a werewolf! Get it? You know some of the remarks people make? Well, wolves don't make remarks. They go for the throat. Wolves have got a very good sense of smell. You can't fool it. I can pass for human, but I can't pass for wolf.' 'I never thought of it like that. I mean, you would just think that wolves and werewolves-' 'That's how it is,' sighed Angua. 'You said this was family,' said Carrot, as if working down a mental checklist. 'I meant it's personal. Gavin came all the way into Ankh-Morpork to warn me. He even slept on the timber wagons during the day so that he'd keep moving. Can you imagine how much nerve that took? It's got nothing to do with the Watch. It's got nothing to do with you.' Carrot looked around. The snow was falling again, turning into rain above the fire. 'I'm here now.' 'Go away. Please. I can sort this out.' 'And then you'll come back to Ankh-Morpork? Afterwards?' 'I. . .' Angua hesitated. 'I think I should stay' said Carrot. 'Look, the city needs you,' said Angua. 'You know Vimes relies on-' 'I've resigned.' For a moment Gaspode thought he could hear the sound of every settling snowflake. 'Not really?' 'Yes.' 'And what did old Stoneface say?' 'Er, nothing. He'd already left for Uberwald.' 'Vimes iscoming to Uberwald?' 'Yes. For the coronation.' 'He's got mixed up in this?' said Angua. 'Mixed up in what?' 'Oh, my family's been . . . stupid. I'm not quite sure I know everything, but the wolves are worried. When werewolves make trouble, it's the real wolves that always suffer. People'll kill anything with fur.' Angua stared at the fire for a moment and then said, with forced brightness, 'So who's been left in charge?' 'I don't know. Fred Colon's got seniority.' 'Ha, yes. In his nightmares.' Angua hesitated. 'You really left?' 'Yes.' 'Oh.' Gaspode listened to some more snowflakes. 'Well, you won't get far by yourselves now,' said Angua, standing up. 'Rest for another hour. And then we'll be going through the deep forest. Not too much snow there yet. We've got a lot of ground to cover. I hope you can keep up.' At breakfast early next morning Vimes noticed that the other guests were keeping so far away from him that they were holding on to the walls. 'The men who went out came back around midnight, sir,' said Cheery quietly. 'Did they catch anyone?' 'Um . . . sort of, sir. They found seven dead bodies.' 'Seven?' 'They think some others might have got away where there's a path up the rocks.' 'But, seven? Detritus got one, and . . . I got one, and a couple were wounded, and Inigo got . . . one . . .' Vimes's voice tailed off. He stared at Inigo Skimmer, who was sitting on the other side of the room at a crowded public table. The places around Vimes and Lady Sybil were deserted; Sybil had put it down to deference. The little man was eating soup in a little neat self-contained world among the waving arms and intrusive elbows. He'd even tucked a napkin under his chin. 'They were ... very dead, sir,' Cheery whispered. 'Well, that was ... interesting,' said Sybil, wiping her mouth delicately. 'I've never had soup with sausages in it for breakfast before. What is it called, Cheery?' 'Fatsup, your ladyship,' said Cheery. 'It means "fat soup". We're close to the Schmaltzberg fat layers now, and, well, it's nourishing and keeps out the cold.' 'How very interesting.' Lady Sybil looked at her husband. He hadn't taken his eyes off Inigo. The door opened and Detritus ducked inside, banging snow off his knuckles. 'It's not too bad,' he said. 'Dey say it'd be a good idea to make an early start, sir.' 'I bet they do,' said Vimes, and thought: they don't want someone like me hanging around. There's no knowing who'll die next. Several faces he vaguely recalled from last night were missing now. Presumably some travellers had started off even earlier, which meant that the news was probably running ahead of him. He'd staggered in, covered in blood and mud, carrying a crossbow and, d'you know, when they went back to look there were seven dead men. By the time that sort of story had gone ten miles he'd be carrying an axe as well, and make that thirty dead men and a dog. The diplomatic career had certainly got off to a good start, eh? As they got into the coach he saw the little dart stuck in the door jamb. It was metallic, with metal fins, and overall had a look of speed, as if, when you touched it, you'd burn your fingers. He walked around to the back of -the coach. There was another, much larger arrow high in the woodwork. 'They tried to catch up with you on the upgrade,' said Inigo, behind him. 'You killed them.' 'Some got away.' 'I'm surprised.' 'I've only got one pair of hands, your grace.' Vimes glanced up at the inn sign. Crudely painted on the boards was a large red head, complete with trunk and tusks. 'This is the Inn of the Fifth Elephant,' said Inigo. 'You left the law behind when we passed Lancre, your grace. Here it's the lore. What you keep is what you can. What's yours is what you fight for. The fittest survive.' 'Ankh-Morpork is pretty lawless too, Mister Skimmer.' 'Ankh-Morpork has many laws. It's just that people don't obey them. And that, your grace, is quite a different bowl of fat, mmhm, mmph.' They set off in convoy. Detritus sat on the roof of the leading coach, which lacked a door and most of one side. The view was flat and white, a featureless expanse of snow. After a while they passed a clacks tower. Burn marks on one side of the stone base suggested that someone had thought that no news was good news, but the semaphore shutters, were clacking and twinkling in the light. 'The whole world is watching,' said Vimes. 'But it's never cared,' said Skimmer. 'Up until now. And now it wants to rip the top off the country and take what's underneath, mmph, mmhm.' Ah, thought Vimes, our killer clerk does have more than one emotion. 'Ankh-Morpork has always tried to get on well with other nations,' said Sybil. 'Well, these days, at least.' 'I don't think we exactly try, dear,' said Vimes. 'It's just that we found that- Why're we stopping?' He pulled down the window. 'What's happening, sergeant?' 'Waiting for dese dwarfs, sir,' the troll called down. Several hundred dwarfs, four abreast, were trotting across the white plain towards them. There was, Vimes thought, something very determined about them. 'Detritus?' 'Yessir?' 'Try not to look too troll-like, will you?' 'Tryin' like hell, sir.' The column was abreast of them before someone barked the command to halt. A dwarf detached himself from the rest and walked over to the coach. 'Ta grdzk?!'he bellowed. 'Would you like me to take care of this, your grace?' said Inigo. 'I'm the damn ambassador,' said Vimes. He stepped down. 'Good morning, dwarf[indicating miscreant], 1 am Overseer Vimes of the Look.' Lady Sybil heard Inigo give a little groan. 'Krz? Gr'dazak yad?' 'Hang on, hang on, I know this one . . . 1 am sure you are a dwarf of no convictions. Let us shake our business, dwarf [indicating miscreant].' 'Yes, that will just about do it, I think,' said Inigo. 'Mmph, mmhm.' The senior dwarf had gone red in those areas of his face that could be seen behind the hair. The rest of the squad were taking a renewed interest in the coach. The leader took a deep breath. 'D'kraha?' Cheery dropped down from the coach. Her leather skirt flapped in the wind. As one dwarf, the column swivelled to stare at her. Their leader went pop-eyed. 'B'dan? K'raa! D'kraga "ka'ak "!' Vimes saw the expression that appeared on Cheery's small round face. Above him there was a clunk as Detritus rested the loaded Piecemaker on the edge of the coach. 'I know dat word he said to her,' he announced to the world. 'It is not a good word. I do not want to hear dat word again.' 'Well, this is all very jolly, mmph, mmhm,' said Inigo, getting down. 'And now if everyone will just relax for a moment we might get out of here alive, mmph.' Vimes reached up and carefully pushed the end of Detritus's crossbow towards a less threatening direction. Inigo talked very fast in what seemed to Vimes to be a torrent of perfect dwarfish, although he was sure he heard the occasional 'mmph'. He opened his leather case and produced a couple of documents fixed with big waxy seals. These were inspected with considerable suspicion. The dwarf pointed at Cheery and Detritus. Inigo flapped a hand impatiently, the universal symbol for dismissing that which was not important. More papers were examined. Eventually, with more universal body language meaning 'I could do something bad to you but right now it's just too much bother,' the dwarf waved Inigo away, gave Vimes a look that suggested that, against all physical evidence, Vimes was beneath him, and strode back to his troops. An order was barked. The dwarfs set off again, leaving the road and heading off towards the forest. 'Well, that all seems sorted out,' said Inigo, getting back into the coach. 'Miss Littlebottom was a bit of a sticking point, but a dwarf does respect very complicated documents. Something's up. He wouldn't say what it was. He wanted to search the coach.' 'The hell with that. What for?' 'Who knows? I persuaded him that we have diplomatic immunity.' 'And what did you tell him about me?' 'I tried to convince him that you were a bloody idiot, your grace. Mmph, mmhm.' 'Oh, really?' Vimes heard Lady Sybil repress a laugh. 'It was necessary, believe me. Street dwarfish wasn't a good idea, your grace. But when I pointed out that you were an aristocrat, he-' 'I am not an- Well, I'm not really a-' 'Yes, your grace. But if you'll be advised by me, a lot of diplomacy lies in appearing to be a lot more stupid than you are. You've made a good start, your grace. And now I think we'd better be moving, mmhm.' 'I'm glad to see you're being less deferential, Inigo,' said Vimes as they got under way again. 'Oh well, your grace, I've got to know you better now.' Gaspode had confused recollections of the rest of that night. The pack moved fast, and he realized that most of them were running ahead of Carrot, to flatten down the snow. It wasn't flat enough for Gaspode. Eventually a wolf picked him up by the scruff of the neck and carried him bodily, while making muffled comments about the foul taste. The snow stopped after a while and there was a slip of moonlight behind the clouds. And all around, near and far, was the howl. Occasionally the pack would stop, in a clearing or on the crisp white brow of a hill, and join in. Gaspode limped to Angua while the cries went up around them. 'What's this for?' he said. 'Polities,' said Angua. 'Negotiation. We're crossing territories.' Gaspode glanced at Gavin. He hadn't joined in the howl, but sat a little way off, regally dividing his attention between Carrot and the pack. 'Hehas to ask permission?' he said. 'He has to make sure they'll let me through.' 'Oh. That's giving him problems?' 'None that he can't bite through.' 'Oh. Er, is the howl saying anything about me?' "'Small, horrible, smelly dog."' 'Ah, right.' They set off again a few minutes later, down a long snow-crusted slope in the moonlight towards the forest, and Gaspode saw shadows angling fast across the snowfield towards them. For a moment he was flanked by two packs, the old and the new, and then their original escort dropped away. So we've got a new honour guard, he thought, as he ran in the centre of a wall of blurred grey legs. Wolves we haven't met before. I just hope the howl added 'doesn't taste nice'. Then Carrot fell over in the snow. It was a moment before he pushed himself up again. The wolves circled uncertainly, occasionally glancing at Gavin. Gaspode caught up with Carrot, jumping awkwardly through the snow. 'You all right?' 'Hard ... to ... run. . 'I don't want to, you know, worry you or anything,' whined Gaspode, 'but we're not exactly among friends here, know what I mean? Our Gavin isn't going to win the prize for the wolf with the waggiest tail anywhere.' 'When did he last sleep?' Angua demanded, pushing her way through the wolves. 'Dunno, really,' said Gaspode. 'We've been moving pretty fast the last few days.' 'No sleep, no food and no proper clothing,' snarled Angua. 'Idiot!' There was growling and whining from some of the wolves around Gavin. Gaspode sat down by Carrot's head and watched as Angua . . . argued. He couldn't speak pure wolf and, besides, gesture and body language played a far greater part than it did in canine. But you didn't have to be bright to see that things weren't going well. There was def'nitely a lot of Atmosphere in the atmosphere. And Gaspode had a feeling that, if things went all pear-shaped in a hurry, one small dog had all the survival chances of a chocolate kettle on a very hot stove. There was a lot of whining and growling. One wolf -Gaspode mentally named him Awkward was not happy. It looked as though a number of wolves were agreeing with him. One of them bared its teeth at Angua. Then Gavin stood up. He shook some snowflakes off his coat, looked around in an offhand fashion, and padded towards Awkward. Gaspode felt every hair on his body stand on end. The other wolves crouched back. Gavin ignored them. When he was a few feet away from Awkward he put his head on one side and said, 'Hrurrrm?' It was almost a pleasant noise. But right down inside Gaspode's bones it bounced a harmonic which said: at this point, we could go two ways. There is the easy way, and that is very easy. You'll never know about the hard way. Awkward held eye-contact for a while, and then looked down. Gavin snarled something. Half a dozen of the wolves, led by Angua, loped off towards the forest. They returned twenty minutes later. Angua was human again - at least, Gaspode corrected himself, human shaped - and the wolves were harnessed to a big dog sled. 'Borrowed it from a man in the village over the hill,' she said, as it slid to a halt by Carrot. 'Nice of him,' said Gaspode, and decided not to pursue the subject. 'I'm surprised to see wolves in harness, though.' 'Well, this was the easy way,' said Angua. It's odd, Gaspode mused, as he lay in the sled alongside the slumbering Carrot. He was so int'rested when Bum talked about the howl and how it could send messages right up into the mountains. If I was a suspicious dog, I'd wonder if he knew that she'd come back for him if he was really in trouble, if he decided to gamble everything on it . . . He poked his head out from under the blanket. Snow stung his eyes. Running alongside the sled, only a few feet away from Carrot and glowing silver in the moonlight, was Gavin. This is me, thought Gaspode; stuck between the humans and the wolves. It's a dog's life. This is the life, thought Acting Captain Colon. Hardly any paperwork was coming up here now, and by dint of much effort he'd entirely cleared the backlog. It was a lot quieter, too. When Vimes was here - and Fred Colon suddenly found himself thinking the word 'Vimes' without prefixing it with 'Mister' - the main office was full of so much noise and bustle you could hardly hear yourself speak. Completely inefficient, that was. How could anyone hope to get anything done? He counted the sugar again. Twenty-nine. But he'd had two in his tea, so that was all right. Toughness was paying off. Colon went and opened his door a fraction so that he could just see down into the office. It was amazing how you could catch them out that way. Quiet. And neat, too. Every desk was clear. Much better than the mess you used to get. He went back to the desk and counted the sugar lumps. There were twenty-seven. Ah-ha! Someone was trying to drive him mad. Well, two could play at that game. He counted the lumps again. There were twenty-six, and there was a knock at the door. This caused it to swing inwards, and Colon to jump up in evil triumph. 'Ah -ha! Burst in on me, eh? Oh . . .' The 'oh' was because the knocker was Constable Dorfl, the golem. He was taller than the doorway and strong enough to tear a troll in half; he'd never done this, since he was an intensely moral being, but not even Colon was going to pick an argument with someone who had glowing red holes where his eyes should be. Ordinary golems would riot harm a human because they had magic words in their head that ordered them not to. Dorfl had no magic words but he didn't harm people because he'd decided that it wasn't moral. This left the worrying possibility that, given enough provocation, he might think again. Beside the golem was Constable Shoe, saluting smartly. 'We've come to pick up the wages chitty, sir,' he said. 'The what?' 'The wages chitty, sir. The monthly chitty, sir. And then we take it to the Palace and bring back the wages, sir.' 'I don't know anything about that!' 'I put it on your desk yesterday, sir. Signed by Lord Vetinari, sir.' Colon couldn't hide the flicker in his eyes. The black ash in the fireplace was, by now, overflowing. Shoe followed his gaze. 'I haven't seen any such thing,' said Colon, while the colour drained from his face like a sucked ice-lolly. 'I'm sure I did, sir,' said Constable Shoe. 'I wouldn't forget a thing like that, sir. In fact, I distinctly remember saying to Constable Visit, "Washpot, I'm just going to take this-"' 'Look, you can see I'm a busy man!' snapped Colon. 'Get one of the sergeants to sort it out!' 'There's no sergeants left except Sergeant Flint, sir, and he spends all his time going round asking people what he should be doing,' said Constable Shoe. 'Anyway, sir, it's the senior officer who must sign the chitty-' Colon stood up, leaning on his knuckles, and shouted, 'Oh, I "must", must I? That's a nerve and no mistake! "Must", eh? Most of you lot are lucky anyone even gives you a job! Bunch of zombies and loonies and lawn ornaments and rocks! I've had it up to here with you!' Shoe leaned back out of range of the spittle. 'Then I'm afraid I must take this up with the Guild of Watchmen, sir,' he said. 'Guild of Watchmen? Hah! And since when has there been a Guild of Watchmen?' 'Dunno. What's the time now?' said Corporal Nobbs, ambling into the room. 'Got to be a couple of hours, at least. Morning, captain.' 'What are you doing here, Nobby?' 'That's Mister Nobbs to you, captain. And I'm President of the Guild of Watchmen, since you ask.' 'There's no such bloody thing!' 'All legit, captain. Registered at the Palace and everything. Amazin' how people rushed to join, too.' He pulled out his grubby notebook. 'Got a few matters to take up with you, if you have a moment. Well, I say a few-' 'I'm not putting up with this!' bellowed Colon, his face crimson. 'This is high treason! You're all sacked! You're all-' 'We're all on strike,' said Nobby calmly. 'You can't go on strike while I'm sacking you!' 'Our strike headquarters are in the back room of the Bucket in Gleam Street,' said Nobby. 'Here, that's my boozer! I forbid you to go on strike in my own pub!' 'We'll be there when you wish to talk terms. Come, brothers. We are now officially in a dispute situation.' They marched out. 'Don't bother to come back!' Colon shouted after them. Bonk wasn't what Vimes had expected. In fact he'd find it hard to say what he had expected, except that this wasn't it. It occupied a narrow valley with a white-water river winding through it. There were city walls. They were not like those of Ankh-Morpork, which had become at first a barrier to expansion and then a source of masonry for it. These had an inside and an outside. There were castles on the hills. There were castles on most hills in these parts. And there were high gates across the road. Detritus thumped on the side of the coach. Vimes stuck his head out. 'Dere's guys in der road,' said the troll. 'Dey got halibuts.' Vimes looked out of the windows. There were half a dozen guards, and they did indeed have halberds. 'What are they after?' he said. 'I expect they'll also want to see our papers and make a search of the coaches,' said Inigo. 'Papers are one thing,' said Vimes, getting out of the coach, 'but no one is rummaging in our stuff. I know that trick. They're not looking for anything, they just want to show us who's boss. You come along and do the translating.' He added, 'Don't worry, I'll be diplomatic.' The two men barring the way did have helmets and they were holding weapons, but their uniforms did not conform to normal uniformity. No guards, Vimes thought, should be dressed in red, blue and yellow. People would be able to see them coming. Vimes liked a uniform you could lurk in. He pulled out his badge and held it up, advanc-ing with an ingratiating smile. 'Just repeat this, Mister Skimmer.' Vimes raised his voice. 'Hello, fellow officer, as you can see I am Commander V-' A blade swung around. If Vimes hadn't stopped he'd have walked into it. Inigo stepped forward, leather case already open, one hand holding several impressive pieces of paper, mouth already framing some suitable sentences. A guard took one of the pieces of paper and stared at it. 'This is a studied insult,' said Inigo, contriving to speak out of the corner of his mouth while maintaining a smile. 'Someone wishes to .see how you react, mmph, mmhm.' 'Them?' 'No. We're being watched.' The paper was handed back. There was a terse conversation. 'The captain of the guard says there are special circumstances and he will search the coaches,' said Inigo. 'No,' said Vimes, taking in the expression on the captain's white face. 'I know when people are playing silly buggers, 'cos I've done it myself.' He pointed to the door of his coach. 'See this?' he said. 'Tell him this is an Ankh-Morpork crest. And this is an Ankh-Morpork coach, property of Ankh-Morpork. If they lay hands on it, that will constitute an act of war against Ankh-Morpork. Tell him that.' He saw the man lick his lips nervously as Inigo translated. Poor sod, he thought. He didn't ask for this. He was probably expecting a quiet day on the gate. But someone gave him some orders. Inigo said, 'He says he's very sorry, but those are his instructions, and he quite understands if his grace wishes to make a complaint at the highest level, mmph, mmhm.' A guard turned the handle of the coach door. Vimes slammed it shut. 'Tell him the war will start right now,' he said. -'And then it'll work its way up.' 'Your grace!' The guards looked at Detritus. It was quite hard to hold the Piecemaker nonchalantly, and he wasn't even making the attempt. Vimes maintained eye-contact with the captain of the guard. If the man had any sense, he'd realize that if Detritus fired the thing it'd kill them all, besides sending the coach backwards at high speed. Please just let him have the sense to know when to fold, he prayed. In the corner of his ear he could hear the guards whispering to one another. He caught the word 'Wilinus'. The captain stepped back and saluted. 'He apologizes for any inconvenience and hopes you will enjoy your stay in his beautiful city,' said Inigo. 'He particularly hopes you will visit the Chocolate Museum in Prince Vodorny Square, where his sister works.' Vimes saluted. 'Tell him I think he is an officer with a great future,' he said. 'A future which, I trust, is going to very soon include opening the damn gates.' The captain had nodded to the men before Inigo was halfway through the translation. Aha... 'And ask him his name,' he said. The man was bright enough not to respond until this had been translated. 'Captain Tantony,' Inigo said. 'I shall remember it,' said Vimes. 'Oh, and tell him he has a fly on his nose.' Tantony won a prize. His eyes barely flickered. Vimes grinned. As for the town itself . . . it was just a town. Roofs were steeper than in Ankh-Morpork, some maniac with a fretsaw had been allowed to amuse himself on the wooden architecture, and there was more paint than you saw back home. Not that this told you anything; many a rich man had become rich by, metaphorically, not painting his house. The coaches bowled over the cobbles. Not the right sort of cobbles, of course. Vimes knew that. The coach stopped again. Vimes stuck his head out -of the window. Two rather scruffier guards had barred the road this time. 'Ah, I recognize this one,' said Vimes grimly. 'I reckon that this time we've just met Colonesque and Nobbski.' He stepped out and walked up to them. 'Well?' The fatter of the two hesitated, and then held out his hand. 'Pisspot,' he said. 'Inigo?' said Vimes quietly, without turning his head. 'Ah,' said Inigo, after some muttered exchanges. 'Now the problem seems to be Sergeant Detritus. No trolls are allowed in this part of town during the hours of daylight, apparently, without a passport signed by their . . . owner. Uh . . . in Bonk the only trolls allowed are prisoners of war. They have to carry identification.' 'Detritus is a citizen of Ankh-Morpork and my sergeant,' said Vimes. 'However, he is a troll. Perhaps in the interests of diplomacy you could write a short-' 'Do 1 need a pisspot?' 'A passport . . . No, your grace.' 'Then he doesn't either.' 'Nevertheless, your grace-' 'There is no nevertheless.' 'But it may be advisable to-' 'There's no advisable either.' A few other guards had drifted over. Vimes was aware of watching eyes. 'He could be ejected by force,' said Inigo. 'Now there's an experiment I wouldn't want to miss,' said Vimes. Detritus made a rumbling noise. 'I don't mind goin' back if-' 'Shut up, sergeant. You're a free troll. That's an order.' Vimes permitted himself another brief scan of the growing, silent crowd. And he saw the fear in the eyes of the men with the halberds. They did not want to be doing this, any more than the captain had. 'I'll tell you what, Inigo,' he said. 'Tell the guards that the Ambassador from Ankh-Morpork commends them for their diligence, congratulates them on their dress sense and will see that their instruction is obeyed forthwith. That should do it, shouldn't it?' 'Certainly, your grace.' 'And now turn the coach around, Detritus. Coming, Inigo?' Inigo's expression changed rapidly. 'We passed an inn about ten miles back,' Vimes went on. 'Ought to make it by dark, do you think?' 'But you can't go, your grace!' Vimes turned, very slowly. 'Would you repeat that, Mister Skimmer?' 'I mean-' 'We are leaving, Mister Skimmer. What you do, of course, is up to you.' He sat down inside the coach. Opposite him Sybil made a fist and said, 'Well done!' 'Sorry, dear,' said Vimes, as the coach turned. 'It didn't look a very good inn.' 'Serves them right, the little bullies,' said Sybil. 'You showed them.' Vimes glanced out and saw, at the edge of the crowd, a black coach with dark windows. He could make out a figure in the gloom within. The luckless guards were looking at it, as if for instructions. It Waved a gloved hand languidly. He started counting under his breath. After eleven seconds Inigo trotted alongside the coach and jumped on to the running board. 'Your grace, apparently the guards acted quite without authority and will be punished-' 'No, they didn't. I was looking at 'em. They'd been given an order,' said Vimes. 'Nevertheless, diplomatically it would be a good idea to accept the explan-' 'So that the poor buggers can be hung up by their thumbs?' said Vimes. 'No. Just you go back and tell whoever's giving the orders that all our people can go anywhere they like in this city, d'you see, whatever shape they are.' 'I don't think you can actually demand that, sir-' 'Those lads had old Burleigh Fr Stronginthearm weapons, Mister Skimmer. Made in AnkhMorpork. So did the men on the gate. Trade, Mister Skimmer. Isn't that part of what diplomacy is all about? You go back and talk to whoever's in the black carriage, and then you'd better get them to lend you a horse, because I reckon we'll have gone a little way by then.' 'You could perhaps wait-' . 'Wouldn't dream of it.' In fact the coach was outside the gates of the town before Skimmer caught up with it again. 'There will not be a problem with either of your requests,' he panted, and for a moment there appeared to be a touch of admiration in his expression. 'Good man. Tell Detritus to turn round again, will you?' 'You're grinning, Sam,' said Sybil as Vimes sat back. 'I was just thinking that I could take to the diplomatic life,' said Vimes. 'There is something else,' said Inigo, getting into the coach. 'There's some ... historical artefact owned by the dwarfs, and there's a rumour-' 'How long ago was the Scone of Stone stolen?' Inigo's mouth stayed open. Then he shut it and his eyes narrowed. 'How in the world did you know that, your grace? Mmph?' 'By the pricking of my thumbs,' said Vimes, his face carefully blank. 'I've got very odd thumbs, when it comes to pricking.' 'Really?' 'Oh, yes.' Dogs had a much easier sex life than humans, Gaspode decided. That was something to look forward to, if he ever managed to have one. It wasn't going to start here, that was definite. The female wolves snapped at him if he came too close, and they weren't just warnings, either. He was having to be very careful where he trod. The really odd thing about human sex, though, was the way it went on even when people were fully clothed and sitting on opposite sides of a fire. It was in the things they said and did not say, the way they looked at one another and looked away. The packs had changed again overnight. The mountains were higher, the snow was crisper. Most of the wolves were sitting at some distance from the fire Carrot had made - just enough distance, in fact, to establish that they were proud, wild creatures who didn't have to rely on this sort of thing, but close enough to get the benefit. And then there was Gavin, sitting a little way off, turning to look from one to the other. 'Gavin's people hate my family,' Angua was saying. 'I told you, it's always wolves who suffer when werewolves get too powerful. Werewolves are smarter at escaping from hunters. That's why wolves much prefer vampires. Vampires leave them alone. Werewolves sometimes hunt wolves.' 'I'm surprised,' said Carrot. Angua shrugged. 'Why? They hunt humans, don't they? We're not nice people, Carrot. We're all pretty dreadful. But my brother Wolfgang is something special. Father's frightened of him and so's Mother if she'd only admit it, but she thinks he'll make the clan powerful so she indulges him. He drove my other brother away and he killed my sister.' 'How-?' 'He said it was an accident. Poor little Elsa. She was a yennork, just like Andrei. That's a werewolf that doesn't change, you know? I'm sure I've mentioned it. Our family throws them up from time to time. Wolfgang and I were the only classic bi-morphs in the litter. Elsa looked human all the time, even at full moon. Andrei was always a wolf.' 'You mean you had a human sister and a wolf brother?' 'No, Carrot. They were both werewolves. But the, well, the little . . . switch . . . inside them didn't work. Do you understand? They stayed the same shape. In the old days the clan would kill off a yennork quickly, and Wolfgang is a traditionalist when it comes to nastiness. He says they made the blood impure. You see, a yennork would go off and be a human or be a wolf but they'd still be carrying the werewolf blood, and then they'd marry and have children . . . or pups . . . and, well, that's where the fairytale monsters come from. People with a bit of wolf and wolves with that extra capacity for violence that is so very human.' She sighed and glanced momentarily at Gavin. 'But Elsa was harmless. After that, Andrei didn't wait for it to happen to him. He's a sheepdog over in Borogravia now. Doing well, I hear. Wins championships,' she added sourly. She poked the fire aimlessly. 'Wolfgang's got to be stopped. He's plotting something with some of the dwarfs. They meet in the forest, Gavin says.' 'He sounds very well informed for a wolf,' said Carrot. Angua almost snarled at him. 'He's not stupid, you know. He can understand more than eight hundred words. A lot of humans get by on less! And he's got a sense of smell that's almost as good as mine! The wolves see everything. The werewolves are out all the time now. They're chasing people down. The game, we call it. The wolves get the blame. It looks like they're breaking the arrangement. And there's been these meetings, right out in the forest where they think no one will see them. Some dwarfs have got some sort of nasty scheme by the sound of it. They asked Wolfgang for help! That's like asking a vulture to pick your teeth.' 'What can you do?' said Carrot. 'If even your parents can't control him-' 'We used to fight when we were younger. "Rough and tumble", he'd call it. But I could send him off howling. Wolfgang hates to think there's anyone who can beat him, so I don't think he'll relish the thought of me turning up. He's got plans. This part of Uberwald has always, well, worked because no one was too powerful, but if the dwarfs start squabbling amongst themselves then Wolfgang's the lad to take advantage, with his stupid uniforms and his stupid flag.' 'I don't think I want to see you fighting, though.' 'Then you can look the other way! I didn't ask you to follow me! Do you think I'm proud of this? I've got a brother who's a sheepdog!' 'A champion sheepdog,' said Carrot earnestly. Gaspode watched Angua's expression. It was one you'd never get on a dog. 'You mean that,' she said at last. 'You actually mean that, don't you? You really do. And if you'd met him it wouldn't worry you, would it? To you everyone's a person. I have to sleep in a dog basket seven nights a month and that doesn't worry you either, does it?' 'No. You know it doesn't.' . 'It should do! Don't ask me why, but it should do! You're so . . . unthinkingly nice about it! And sooner or later a girl can have too much nice!' 'I don't try to be nice.' 'I know. I know. I just wish you'd . . . oh, I don't know . . . complain a bit. Well, not exactly complain. Just sigh, or something.' ,Why?, 'Because . . . because it'd make me feel better! Oh, it's too hard to explain. It's probably a werewolf thing.' 'I'm sorry-' 'And don't be sorry all the time, either!' Gaspode curled up so close to the fire that he steamed. Dogs had it a lot better, he decided. The building that was to be the embassy was set back from the road in a quiet side street. They rattled under an arch into a small rear courtyard containing some stables. It reminded Vimes of a large coaching inn. 'It's really only a consulate at the moment,' said Inigo, leafing through his papers. 'We should be met by . . . ah, yes, Wando Sleeps. Been here for several years, mhm.' Behind the coaches a pair of gates swung shut. There was the sound of heavy bolts shooting home. Vimes stared at the apparition that came limping back towards the coach door. 'He looks it,' he said. 'Oh, I don't think this is-' 'Good evening, marthterth, mithtreth. . .' said the figure. 'Welcome to Ankh-Morpork. I'm Igor.' 'Igor who?' said Inigo. 'Jutht Igor, thur. Alwayth . . . jutht Igor,' said Igor calmly, unfolding the step. 'I'm the odd-job man.' 'You don't say?' said Vimes, mesmerized. 'Have you had a terrible accident?' said Lady Sybil. 'I did thpill tea down my thirt thith morning,' said Igor. 'Kind of you to notith.' 'Where's Mister Sleeps?' said Inigo. 'I'm afraid Marthter Thleepth ith nowhere to be found. I wath rather hoping you would know what'd happened to him.' 'Us?' said Inigo. 'Mmhm, mmph! We assumed he was here!' 'He left rather urgently two weekth ago,' said Igor. 'He did not vouchthafe to me where he wath going. Do go inthide, and I will thee to the baggage.' Vimes glanced up. A little bit of snow was falling now, but there was enough light to see that above them, across the whole courtyard, was an iron mesh. With the bolted doors and the walls of the building all around, they were in a cage. 'Jutht a little leftover from the old dayth,' said Igor cheerfully. 'Nothing to worry about, thur.' 'What a fine figure of a man,' said Sybil weakly, as they stepped inside. 'More than one man, by the look of him.' 'Sam!' 'Sorry. I'm sure his heart's in the right place.' 'Good.' 'Or someone's heart, anyway.' 'Sam, really!' 'All right, all right, but you must admit he does look a bit . . . odd.' 'None of us can help the way we're made, Sam.' 'He looks as if he tried- Good grief . . .' 'Oh, dear,' said Lady Sybil. Vimes was not against hunting, if only because Ankh-Morpork seldom offered any better game than the large rats you got along the waterfront. But the sight of the walls of the new embassy might have been enough to make the keenest hunter take a step back and cry, 'Oh, I say, hold on...' The previous occupant had been keen on hunting, shooting and fishing and, to have covered every single wall with the resultant trophies, he must have been doing all three at the same time. Hundreds of glass eyes, obscenely alive in the light of the fire in the huge hearth, stared down at Vimes. 'It's just like my grandfather's study,' said Lady Sybil. 'There was a stag's head in there that used to frighten the life out of me.' 'There's just about everything here. Oh, no . . .' 'My gods,' whispered Lady Sybil. Vimes looked around desperately. Detritus was just entering, carrying some of the trunks. 'Stand in front of it,' Vimes hissed. 'I'm not that tall, Sam! Or that wide!' The troll looked up at them, then at the trophies, and then grinned. It's colder up here, Vimes thought. He's quicker on the uptake.* Even Nobby won't play poker with him in the winter. Damn! 'Something wrong?' said Detritus. Vimes sighed. What was the point? He'd spot it sooner or later. 'I'm sorry about this, Detritus,' he said, standing aside. Detritus looked at the horrible trophy and nodded. 'Yeah, dere used to be a lot of dat sort of fing in der old days,' he said calmly, putting down the luggage. 'Dey wouldn't be de real diamond teef, o'course. Dey'd take dem out and put bigger glass ones in.' 'You don't mind?' said Lady Sybil. 'It's a troll's head! Someone actually mounted a troll's head and put it on the wall!' 'Ain't mine,' said Detritus. 'But it's so horrible!' Detritus stood in thought for a moment and then opened the stained wooden box that contained all he had felt it necessary to bring. *Detritus's silicon-based brain was, as with most trolls, highly sensitive to changes in temperature. When the thermometer was very low he could be dangerously intellectual. 'Dis is der old country, after all,' he said. 'So if it'd make you feel better. . .' He pulled out a smaller box and rummaged among what appeared to be bits of rock and cloth until he found something yellowy-brown and round, like a shallow cup. 'Should've bunged it away,' he said, 'but it's all I got to remember my old granny by. She kept fings in it.' 'It's a bit of human skull, isn't it?' said Vimes at last. 'Yep.' 'Whose?' 'Anyone ask dat troll dere his name?' said Detritus, and the glint in his voice had a brittle edge to it for a moment. Then he carefully put the bowl away. 'T'ings were diff'rent in dem days. Now you don't chop our heads off an' we don't make drums outa your skin. Everyt'ing is hunky-dory. Dat's all we have to know.' He picked up the boxes again and followed Lady Sybil towards the staircase. Vimes took another look at the trophy head. The teeth were longer, far longer than they'd be on a real troll. A hunter'd have to be very brave and very lucky to go up against a fighting troll and survive. It'd be so much easier to go after an old one and later replace the ground-down stumps with sparkly fangs. My gods, the things we do . . . 'Igor?' he said, as the odd-job man lurched past under the weight of two more bags. 'Meth, your exthellenthy?' 'I'm an excellency?' said Vimes to Inigo. 'Yes, your grace.' 'And still my grace as well?' 'Yes, your grace. You are His Grace His Excellency the Duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes, your grace.' 'Hang on, hang on. His Grace cancels out the Sir, I know that. It's like having an ace in poker.' 'Strictly speaking this is true, your grace, but great store is set by titles here and it is best to play with a full deck, mmph.' 'I was once blackboard monitor at school,' said Vimes sharply. 'For a whole term. Would that help? Dame Venting said no one could clean a blackboard like me.' 'A useful fact, your grace, which may possibly be helpful in the event of a tie-break, mmph, mmhm,' said Inigo, his face carefully blank. 'We Igorth have alwayth preferred marthter,' said Igor. 'What wath it you were requiring?' Vimes gestured towards the heads that covered every wall. 'I want them taken down as soon as possible. I can do this, can't I, Mister Skimmer?' 'You are the ambassador, sir. Mmph, mmhm.' 'Well, they're coming down. All of them.' Igor gave the camphor-smelling multitude a worried look. 'Even the thordfith?' 'Even the swordfish,' said Vimes firmly. 'And the thnow leopardth?' 'Both of them, yes.' 'What about the troll?' 'Especiallythe troll. See to it.' Igor could have been said to have looked as if his world had fallen down around his ears were it not for the fact that he already looked as if this had happened. 'What do you want to do with them, marthter?' 'That's up to you. Throw them in the river, maybe. Ask Detritus about the troll . . . Maybe it should be buried or something. Is there any supper?' 'There'th fresh walago*, noggit, thclott, thwinefleth and thauthageth,' said Igor, still clearly upset about the trophies. 'I'll thop tomorrow, if her ladythip giveth me inthtructionth.' 'Is swineflesh the same as pork?' said Vimes. People in drought-stricken areas would have paid good money to have Igor pronounce 'sausages'. 'Yes,' said Inigo. 'And what's in the sausages?' 'Er . . . meat?' said Igor, looking as though he was ready to run. 'Good. We'll give them a try.' Vimes went upstairs and followed the sound of conversation until he reached a bedroom, where Sybil was laying clothes on a bed the size of a small country. Cheery was assisting her. The walls were carved panels of wood. The bed was carved panels of wood. And the mad fretworker had been hard at work here, too. Only A kind of pastry made from curtains. Buckwheat dumplings stuffed with stuff. Bpread made from parsnips, and widely considered to be much tastier than the dull wheat kind. the floors weren't wood; they were stone, and radiated cold. 'It's a bit like the inside of a cuckoo clock, isn't it?' said Sybil. 'Cheery has volunteered to be my lady's maid for now.' Cheery saluted. 'Why not?' said Vimes. After a day like this, a lady's maid with a long flowing beard seemed perfectly normal. 'The floors are a bit chilly, though. Tomorrow I'll measure up for some carpets,' said Sybil firmly. 'I know we won't be here long, but we ought to leave something for the next people.' 'Yes, dear. That would be a good idea.' 'There's a bathroom through there,' said Sybil, nodding. 'There's hot springs near here, apparently. They pipe them in. You'll feel better for a hot bath.' Ten minutes later Vimes was happy to agree. The water was a funny colour and smelled a little of what he would politely call bad eggs, but it was good and hot and he could feel it drawing the tension out of his muscles. The distressing scent of second-hand baked beans sloshed around him as he lay back. At the other end of the huge bath the lump of pumice stone that he'd been using to rasp the dead skin off his feet banged against the side. Vimes watched it, unseeing, while he filed the thoughts of the day. Things were starting to smell, just like the bathwater. The Scone of Stone had been stolen, had it? Now there was a coincidence. It had been a complete shot in the dark. But lately he was on the lucky side when it came to nocturnal targets. Someone had pinched the replica Scone, and now the real one had gone missing, and someone in Ankh-Morpork who was good at making rubber moulds had been found dead. You didn't need the brains of Detritus in a snowdrift to suspect a connection. A recollection nagged at him. Someone had said something and he'd thought it odd at the time but then something else had happened and it had gone out of his mind. Something about . . . a welcome to Bonk. Only . . . Well, he was here. No doubt about that. Absolute confirmation of the fact was brought forth half an hour later, at supper. Vimes cut into a sausage and stared. 'What is in these? All this . . . pink stuff?' he demanded. 'Er, that's meat, your grace,' said Inigo, on the other side of the table. 'Well, where's the texture? Where's the white bits and the yellow bits and those green bits you always hope are herbs?' 'To a connoisseur here, your grace, an AnkhMorpork sausage would not be considered a sausage, mmph, mmhm.' 'Oh, really? So what would he call it?' 'A loaf, your grace. Or possibly a log. Here, a butcher can be hanged if his sausages are not all meat, and at that it must be from a named domesticated animal, and I perhaps should add that by named I do not mean that it should have been called "Spot" or "Ginger", mmm mmhm. I'm sure that if your grace would prefer the more genuine Ankh-Morpork taste, Igor could make up some side dishes of stale bread and sawdust.' 'Thank you for that patriotic comment,' said Vimes. 'However, these are . . . Okay, I suppose. They just came as a bit of a shock, that's all. No!' He put his hand over his mug to prevent Igor from filling it with beer. 'Ith there thomething wrong, marthter?' 'Just water, please,' said Vimes. 'No beer.' 'The marthter doth not drink . . . beer?' 'No. And perhaps in a mug without a face on it?' He took another look at the stein. 'Why's it got a lid, by the way? Are you afraid of the rain getting in?' 'I've never been quite certain of that one,' said Inigo, as Igor shuffled off. 'From observation, though, I believe the purpose of the stein is to stop the beer being spilled while using the mug to conduct the singing, mmm, mhm.' 'Ah, the old quaffing problem,' said Vimes. 'What a clever idea.' Sybil patted him on the knee. 'You're not in Ankh-Morpork any more, dear,' she said. 'Now we're alone; your grace,' said Inigo, leaning closer, 'I'm very worried about Mister Sleeps. The acting consul, you remember? He seems to have vanished, mmm, mhm. Some of his personal items have gone, too.' 'Holiday?' 'Not at a time like this, sir! And-' There was a thud of wood against wood as Igor re-entered, pointedly carrying a stepladder. Inigo sat back. Vimes found that he was yawning. 'We'd better talk about that in the morning,' he said, as the ladder was dragged towards the horrible hunting trophies. 'It's been a long day, what with one thing and another.' 'Of course, your grace.' The bed's mattress was so soft that Vimes sank into it nervously, afraid it might close over the top of his head. That was just as well, because the pillow was . . . well, everyone knew a pillow was a sack full of feathers, didn't they? Not an apprentice eiderdown like this thing. 'Just fold it up, Sam,' said Sybil, from the depths of the mattress. 'G'night.' 'G'night.' 'Sam . . . ?' There was a snore from Sam Vimes. Sybil sighed and turned over. Vimes awoke a few times, to the sound of thuds from downstairs. 'Snow leopards,' he muttered, and drifted away again. There was a louder crash. 'Moose,' murmured Lady Sybil. 'Elk?' mumbled Vimes. 'Def'nitely moose.' Some time later there was a muffled scream, a thud, and a sound very much like the sound made when a huge wooden ruler is held against a desk and twanged. 'Swordfish,' said Sam and Sybil together, and went back to sleep. 'You should present your credentials to the rulers of Bonk,' said Inigo in the morning. Vimes was looking out of the window. Two guards in the rainbow-coloured uniforms were standing stiffly to attention outside the embassy. 'What're they doing here?' he said. 'Guarding,' said Inigo. 'Guarding who from what?' 'Just generally guarding, mmph. I suppose it's thought that guards give such a finished look to an important building.' 'What was that you said about credentials?' 'They're just formal letters from Lord Vetinari, confirming your appointment. Mmph, mmm . . . the lore is a little complex, but at the moment the order of precedence is the future Low King, the Lady Margolotta and the Baron von Uberwald. Each, of course, will pretend that you are not calling on the other two. It's called the arrangement. It's an awkward system but it keeps the peace.' 'If I understood your briefing,' said Vimes, still watching the guards, 'in the days of imperial Uberwald the whole bloody show was run by the werewolves and the vampires and everyone else was lunch.' 'Somewhat simplistic but broadly true, mhm,' said Inigo, brushing some dust off Vimes's shoulder. 'And then it all broke up and the dwarfs became powerful because there's dwarfs from one end of Uberwald to the other and they all keep in touch. . .' 'Their system certainly survives political upheaval, yes.' 'And then . . . what was it? A diet of beetles?' 'The Diet of Bugs, mmm. "Diet" being an Uberwaldean word for "meeting", and Bugs being an important town further upriver, famous for its pastries made from flax. Everyone came to an . . . arrangement. No one would wage war on any of the others, and everyone could live in peace. No garlic to be grown, no silver to be mined. And the werewolves and vampires promised that those things wouldn't be needed. Mmm, mmm.' 'Seems a bit trusting,' said Vimes. 'It appears to have worked, mhm.' 'What did the humans think about it all?' 'Well, humans have always been a bit of background noise in the history of Uberwald, your grace.' 'It must be a bit dull for the undead, though.' 'Oh, the bright ones know the old days can't come back.' 'Ah, well, that's always the trick, isn't it? Finding the bright ones?' Vimes put on his helmet. 'And what're the dwarfs like?' 'The future Low King is considered pretty clever, your grace. Mhm.' 'How does he stand on Ankh-Morpork?' 'He can take Ankh-Morpork or leave it alone, your grace. On balance, I believe he doesn't much like us.' 'I thought it was Albrecht who didn't like us?' 'No, your grace. Albrecht is the one who would be happy to see Ankh-Morpork burned to the ground. Rhys merely wishes we didn't exist.' 'I thought he was one of the good guys!' 'Your grace, I did hear you express some negative sentiments about Ankh-Morpork on the way here, mhm, mhm.' 'Yes, but I live there! I'm allowed to! That's patriotic!' 'Across the whole of the world, your grace, there inexplicably appear to be definitions of, mmph, mmhm, "good guy" which do not automatically mean "likes Ankh-Morpork". You will find out, I daresay. The other two are a lot easier to .deal with. It may have been the Lady Margolotta who tried the little trick with the guards last night. She was the one who got me to bring you back, anyway. She has invited you for drinks.' 'Oh.' 'She's a vampire, mmm, mmm.' 'What?' Inigo sighed. 'Your grace, I thought you understood. Vampires are simply part of Uberwald. This is where they belong. I'm afraid this is something you will have to come to terms with. I understand that now they ... obtain blood by arrangement. Some people are ... impressed by a title, your grace.' 'Good grief.' 'Quite so. In any case, you will be safe. Remember your diplomatic immunity, mmm, mhm.' 'I didn't quite see that working in the Wilinus Pass the other day.' 'Oh, they were common bandits.' 'Really? Has your man Sleeps turned up? Haven't you taken this to the Watch here?' 'There's no Watch here, as you understand the term. You saw them. They're . . . gate guards, enforcers for the city rulers, mhm, mmm, not officers of the law. But enquiries are being made.' 'Does Sybil come with me for this bit?' said Vimes, and thought: we were guards like that, not so long ago . . . 'It is usually done by the new ambassador and his guards.' 'Well, Detritus is staying here to keep an eye on her, all right? She said this morning she really thinks this place would be better for some decent. carpet, and there's no stopping her when she's in a tape-measure mood. I'll take Cheery and one of the lads from outside, for the look of the thing. I assume you're coming?' 'I won't be required, sir. Mmm. The new coachman knows the way. Morporkian is the diplomatic language, after all, and . . . I shall be making enquiries.' 'Delicate ones?' 'Indeed, your grace.' 'If he's been killed won't that be an act of war?' 'Yes and no, your grace.' 'What? Sleeps was- is our man!' Inigo looked awkward. 'It would depend on . .. exactly where he was and what he was doing. . .' Vimes gave him a blank look, and then the penny dropped and operated his brain. 'Spying?' - 'Acquiring information. Everyone does it, mmm, mhm.' 'Yes, but if you find a diplomat going too far you just send him home with a sharp note, don't you?' 'Around the Circle Sea, your grace, that is the case. Here they may have a different approach.' 'Something rather sharper than a note?' 'Exactly. Mmm.' One of the guards was Captain Tantony. There was some minor difficulty, but the argument that, since he was guarding Vimes, he might as well be where Vimes was, eventually carried some weight. Tantony had the look of an agonizingly logical man. He kept giving Vimes curious looks as the coach rattled out of the town. Beside him sat Cheery with her legs dangling. Vimes noticed, although it was not the kind of thing he generally made a habit of noticing, that the shape of her breastplate had been subtly altered, probably by the same armourer that Angua went to, to indicate that the chest underneath it was not quite the same shape of chest that you got under the armour of, say, Corporal Nobbs, although of course probably no one had a chest the same shape as that of Corporal Nobbs. She was wearing her high-heeled iron boots, too. 'Look, you don't have to come,' he said out loud. 'Yes, I do.' 'I mean I could go and get Detritus instead. Although I suppose there'd be even more upshot if I took a troll into a dwarf mine. I mean, rather than a . . . a . . .' 'Girl,' said Cheery helpfully. 'Er, yes.' Vimes felt the coach slow to a halt, even though they hadn't left the town yet, and he looked out. In front of them, across a small square, was a fort of sorts, but with much larger gates than you'd expect for its size. As Vimes stared at them they were swung open from within. Inside was a slope. All the fort consisted of were four walls around a large, sloping tunnel. 'The dwarfs live underneath the town?' he said, as the light from outside was gradually replaced by the infrequent glow of torches. But they clearly showed the coach was rattling past a long, long line of stationary carts. The pools of light revealed horses, and drivers talking in groups. 'Under quite a lot of Uberwald,' said Cheery. 'This is just the nearest entrance, sir. We'll probably have to stop in a minute because the horses don't like- Ah.' The coach stopped again, and the coachman banged on the side to indicate that this was the end of the line. The queue of carts wound off down another tunnel, but the coach had stopped in a small cave with a big door. A couple of dwarfs were waiting there. They had axes slung across their backs, although by dwarf standards this counted merely as 'politely dressed' rather than 'heavily armed'. Their attitude, however, was in the international language of people guarding gates everywhere. 'Commander Sam Vimes, Ankh-Morpork Ci- Ambassador from Ankh-Morpork,' said Vimes, handing one of them his papers. At least it was not hard to assume a lofty air with dwarfs. To his surprise, the document was read thoroughly, one dwarf looking over the other one's shoulder and pointing out interesting sub clauses. The official seal was carefully examined. One guard pointed to Cheery. 'Kra'k?' 'My official guard,' said Vimes. 'Included in "associated members of staff" on page two,' he added helpfully. 'Mhust searhch thy coash,' said the guard. 'No. Diplomatic immunity,' said Vimes. 'Tell 'em, Cheery.' They listened to Cheery's urgent dwarfish. Then the other guard, whose face had indicated that there was something on his mind and it was jumping up and down, nudged his companion and pulled him aside. There was a torrent of whispers. Vimes couldn't understand, but he caught the word 'Wilinus'. And, shortly afterwards, the word 'hr grag', dwarfish for 'thirty'. 'Oh gods,' he said. 'And a dog?' 'Good guess, sir,' said Cheery. The document was handed back hurriedly. Vimes could read the body language, even written smaller than usual: there was probably an expensive problem here, so the guards were inclined to leave it to someone who earned more money than them. One of them pulled a bellrope by the door. After some time the door slid open, revealing a small room. 'We have to go in, sir,' said Cheery. 'But there's no other doors!' 'It's all right, sir.' Vimes stepped inside. The dwarfs slid the door back, leaving them in the room, which was lit by a single candle. 'Some kind of waiting room?' said Vimes. Somewhere far off something went clonk. The floor trembled for a moment and then Vimes had an uneasy sensation of movement. 'The room moves?' he said. 'Yes, sir. Several hundred feet down, probably. I think it's all done by counterweights.' They stood silently, unsure of what to say, as walls around them creaked and groaned. Then there was a rattle, a passing sensation of weight, and the room stopped moving. 'Wherever we're headed, keep your ears open,' said Vimes. 'Something's going on, I can feel it.' The door slid back. Vimes looked out on to the night sky, underground. The stars were all around him . . . below him . . . 'I think we went down too far,' he said. And then his brain made sense of what his eyes had seen. The moving room had brought them out somewhere on the side of a huge cave. He was looking at a thousand points of candlelight, spread out on the cavern floor and in other galleries. Now that he could grasp the scale of things, he realized that many of them were moving. The air was full of one huge sound made up of thousands of voices, echoed and re-echoed. Occasionally a shout or a laugh would stand out, but mostly it was just an endless sea of sound, beating on the shores of the eardrum. 'I thought you people lived in little mines,' said Vimes. 'Well, 1 thought humans lived in little cottages, sir,' said Cheery, taking a candle from a large rack beside the door and lighting it. 'And then I saw Ankh-Morpork.' There was something recognizable about the way the lights were moving. A whole constellation of them was heading in towards one invisible wall, where reflected light now indicated, very faintly, the mouth of a large tunnel. In front of it was a row of lights. Think of it as a lot of people heading for something that one row of people was . . . guarding. 'People down there aren't happy,' said Vimes. 'That looks like a mob to me. Look, you can tell by the way they move.' 'Commander Vimes?' He turned. In the gloom he could make out several dwarfs, each with a candle fixed to his helmet. In front of them was, presumably, another dwarf. He'd seen dwarfs like this in Ankh-Morpork, but always scurrying away. This was a deep-down dwarf. The robe it was wearing was made of overlapping leather plates. Instead of the small round iron helmet which Vimes had always thought dwarfs were born with, it had a pointed leather hat with more leather flaps all round it. The one at the front had been tied up, to allow the wearer to look out at the world, or at least that part of it that was underground. The general effect was of a mobile cone. 'Er, yes, that's me,' said Vimes. 'Welcome to Schmaltzberg, your excellency. I am the King's jar'ahk'haga, which in your language you would call-' But Vimes's lips had been moving fast as he tried to translate. 'Ideas . . . taster?' he said. 'Hah! That would be a way of putting it, yes. My name is Dee. Would you care to follow me? This should not take long.' The figure swept away. One of the other dwarfs prodded Vimes very gently, indicating that he should follow. The sound from far below redoubled. Someone was yelling. 'Is there a problem?' said Vimes, catching up with the fast-moving Dee. 'We have no problems.' Ah, he's already lied to me, thought Vimes. We're being diplomatic. Vimes trailed after the dwarf through more caves. Or tunnels . . . it was hard to tell, because in the darkness Vimes could only rely on a sense of the space around him. Occasionally they passed the lighted entrance to another cave or tunnel. Several guards, with candles on their helmets, stood at each one. The well-honed copper's radar was beeping at him continuously. Something bad was going on. He could smell the tension, the sense of quiet panic. The air was thick with it. Occasionally other dwarfs scuttled past, distracted, on some mission. Something very bad. People didn't know what to do next, so they were trying to do every-thing. And, in the middle of this, important officers had to stop what they were doing because some idiot from some distant city had to hand over a piece of paper. Eventually a door opened in the darkness. It led into a large, roughly oblong cave that, with its book-lined walls and paper-strewn tables, had the look of an office about it. 'Do be seated, commander.' A match burst into life. One candle was lit, all lost and alone in the dark. 'We try to make guests feel welcome,' said Dee, scuttling behind his desk. He pulled off his pointed hat and, to Vimes's amazement, put on a pair of thick smoked glasses. 'You had papers?' he said. Vimes handed them over. 'It says here "His Grace",' the dwarf said, after reading them for a while. 'Yes, that's me.' 'And there's a sir.' 'That's me, too.' 'And an excellency.' "fraid so.' Vimes narrowed his eyes. 'I was blackboard monitor for a while, too.' There was the sound of angry voices from behind a door at the far end of the room. 'What does a blackboard monitor do?' said Dee, raising his voice. 'What? Er, I had to clean the blackboard after lessons.' The dwarf nodded. The voices grew louder, more intense. Dwarfish was such a good language to be annoyed in. 'Erasing the teachings when they were learned!' said Dee, shouting to be heard. 'Er, yes!' 'A task given only to the trustworthy!' 'Could be, yes!' Dee folded up the letter and handed it back, glancing briefly at Cheery. 'Well, these seem to be in order,' he said. 'Would you care for a drink before you go?' 'Sorry? I thought I had to present myself to your king.' The swearing from the other side of the door was threatening to burn through the woodwork. 'Oh, that won't be necessary' said Dee. 'At the moment he should. not be bothered with-' '-trivial matters?' said Vimes. 'I thought it was how the thing ought to be done. I thought dwarfs always did the thing that ought to be done.' 'At the moment it . . . would not be advisable,' said Dee, raising his voice again over the noise. 'I'm sure you understand.' 'Let's assume I'm very stupid,' said Vimes. 'I assure you, your excellency, that what I see the King sees, and what I hear the King hears.' 'That's certainly true at the moment, isn't it?' Dee drummed his fingers on his desk. 'Your excellency, I have spent only long enough in your . . . city to gain a general insight into your ways, but I might feel you are making fun of me.' 'May I speak freely?' 'From what I have heard of you, your monitor-ship, you usually do.' 'Have you found the Scone of Stone yet?' The expression on Dee's face told Vimes that he had scored. And that, almost certainly, the next thing the dwarf said would be another lie. 'What a strange and untruthful thing to say! There is no possibility that the Scone could have been stolen! This has been firmly declared! This is not a lie we wish to hear repeated!' 'You told me I-' Vimes tried. By the sound of it, there was . a fight going on behind the door now. 'The Scone will be seen by all at the coronation! This is not a matter for Ankh-Morpork or anyone else! I protest at this intrusion into our private affairs!' 'I merely-' 'Nor do we have to show the Scone to any pry-ing troublemaker! It is a sacred trust and well guarded!' Vimes kept quiet. Dee was better than Done It Duncan. 'Every person leaving the Scone Cave is care-fully watched! The Scone cannot be removed! It is perfectly safe!' Dee was shouting now. 'Ah, I understand,' said Vimes quietly. 'Good!' 'So, you haven'tfound it yet, then.' Dee opened his mouth, shut it again, and then slumped back in his seat. 'I think, your grace, that you had better-' The door at the other end of the room rolled back. Another dwarf, cone-shaped in his robes, stamped out, stopped, glared around him, went back through the door again, shouted some after-thoughts to whoever was beyond, and then made to head out of the room. He was brought up short when he almost walked into Vimes. The dwarf tilted its head to look up at him. There was no real face there, just the suggestion of the glint of angry eyes between the leather flaps. 'Arnak-Morporak?' 'Yes.' Vimes didn't understand the words that followed, but the nasty tone was unmistakable. The important thing was to keep smiling. That was the diplomatic way. 'Why, thank you,' he said. 'And may I say it-' There was a grunt from the dwarf. He'd seen Cheery. 'Ha'ak!'he shouted. Vimes heard a gasp. There were other dwarfs clustered around the doorway. Then he glanced down at Cheery. Her eyes were shut. She was trembling. 'Who is this dwarf?' he said to Dee. 'This is Albrecht Albrechtson,' said the Ideas Taster. 'The runner-up?' 'Yes,' said Dee hoarsely. 'Then can you tell the creature that if he uses that word again in the presence of myself or any of my staff there will be, as we diplomats say, repercussions. Wrap that up in diplomacy and give it to him, will you?' The corners of Vimes's ears picked up a suggestion that not every dwarf listening was ignorant of the language. A couple of dwarfs were already heading purposefully towards them. Dee babbled a stream of hysterical dwarfish, just as the other dwarfs caught up with the gaping Albrecht and led him quietly but firmly away, but not before one of them had whispered something to the Ideas Taster. 'The, er, the King wishes to see you,' he mumbled. Vimes looked towards the doorway. More dwarfs were hurrying through it now. Some of them were dressed in what Vimes thought of as 'normal' dwarf clothing, others in the heavy black leathers of the deep-down clans. All of them glared at him as they went past. Then there was just empty floor, all the way to the door. 'Do you come too?' he said. 'Not unless he asks for me,' said Dee. 'I wish you luck, your monitorship.' Beyond the door was a room of bookshelves, stretching up, stretching away. Here and there a candle merely changed the density of the darkness. There were lots of them, though, punctuating the distance. Vimes wondered how big this room must be 'In here is a record of every marriage, every birth, every death, every movement of a dwarf from one mine to another, the succession of the king of each mine, every dwarf's progress through k'zakra, mining claims, the history of famous axes . . . and other matters of note,' said a voice behind him. 'And perhaps most importantly, every decision made under dwarf law for fifteen hundred years is written down in this room, look you.' Vimes turned. A dwarf, short even by dwarf standards, was standing behind him. He seemed to be expecting a reply. 'Er, every decision?' 'Oh, yes.' 'Er, were they all good?' said Vimes. 'The important thing is that they were all made,' said the King. 'Thank you, young . . . dwarf, you may straighten up.' Cheery was bowing. 'Sorry, should I be doing that?' said Vimes. 'You're . . . not the King, are you?' 'Not yet.' 'I, I'm, I'm sorry, I was expecting someone more, er . . .' 'Do go on.' '. . . someone more . . . kingly.' The Low King sighed. 'I meant . .. I mean, you look just like an ordinary dwarf,' said Vimes weakly. This time the King smiled. He was slightly shorter than average for dwarfs, and dressed in the usual almost-uniform of leather and home-forged chain-mail. He looked old, but dwarfs started looking old around the age of five years and were still looking old three hundred years later, and he had that musical cadence to his speech that Vimes associated with Llamedos. If he'd asked Vimes to pass the ketchup in Gimlet's Whole Food Delicatessen, Vimes wouldn't have given him a second look. 'This diplomacy business,' said the King, 'Are you getting the hang of it, do you think?' 'It doesn't come easy, I must admit . . . er, your majesty.' 'I believe you have been, until now, a watchman in Ankh-Morpork?' 'Er, yes.' 'And you had a famous ancestor, I believe, who was a regicide?' Here it comes, thought Vimes. 'Yers, Stoneface Vimes,' he said, as levelly as possible. 'I've always thought that was a bit unfair, though. It was only one king. It wasn't as if it was a hobby.' 'But you don't like kings,' said the dwarf. 'I don't meet many, sir,' said Vimes, hoping that this would pass for a diplomatic answer. It seemed to satisfy the King. 'I went to Ankh-Morpork once, when I was a young dwarf,' he said, walking towards a long table piled high with scrolls. 'Er, really?' 'Lawn ornament, they called me. And . . . what was it . . . ah, yes . . . shortarse. Some children threw stones at me.' 'I'm sorry.' 'I expect you'll tell me that sort of thing doesn't happen any more.' 'It doesn't happen as much. But you always get idiots who don't move with the times.' The King 'gave Vimes a piercing glance. 'Indeed. The times . . . But now they're always Ankh-Morpork's times, see?' 'I'm sorry?' 'When people say "We must move with the times," they really mean "You must do it my way." And there are some who would say that Ankh-Morpork is . . . a kind of vampire. It bites, and what it bites it turns into copies of itself. It sucks, too. It seems all our best go to AnkhMorpork, where they live in squalor. You leave us dry.' Vimes was at a loss. It was clear that the little figure now sitting at the long table was a lot brighter than he was, although right now he felt as dim as a penny candle in any case. It was also clear that the King hadn't slept for quite some time. He decided to go for honesty. 'Can't really answer that, sir,' he said, adopting a variant on his talking-to -Vetinari approach. 'But...' 'Yes?' 'I'd wonder . . . you know, if I was a king . . . I'd wonder why people were happier living in squalor in Ankh-Morpork than staying back home . . . sir.' 'Ah. You're telling me how I should think, now?' 'No, sir. Just how I think. There's dwarf bars all over Ankh-Morpork, and they've got mining tools wired to the wall, and there's dwarfs in 'em every night quaffing beer and singing sad songs about how they wish they were back in the mountains digging for gold. But if you said to them, fine, the gate's open, off you go and send us a postcard, they'd say, "Oh, well, yeah I'd love to, but we've just got the new workshop finished . . . Maybe next year we'll go to Uberwald."' 'They come back to the mountains to die,' said the King. 'They live in Ankh-Morpork.' 'Why is this, do you think?' 'I couldn't say. Because no one tells them how to, I suppose.' 'And now you want our gold and iron,' said the King. 'Is there nothing we can keep?' 'Don't know about that either, sir. I wasn't trained for this job.' The King muttered something under his breath. Then, much louder, he said, 'I can offer you no favours, your excellency. These are diffi-cult times, see.' 'But my real job is finding things out,' said Vimes, 'If there is anything that I could do to-' The King thrust the papers at Vimes. 'Your letters of accreditation, your excellency. Their contents have been noted!' And that shuts me up, Vimes thought. 'I would ask you one thing, though,' the King went on. 'Yes, sir?' 'Reallythirty men and a dog?' 'No. There were only seven men. I killed one of them because I had to.' 'How did the others die?' 'Er, victims of circumstance, sir.' 'Well, then . . . your secret is safe with me. Good morning, Miss Littlebottom.' Cheery looked stunned. The King gave her a brief smile. 'Ah, the rights of the individual, a famous Ankh-Morpork invention, or so they say. Thank you, Dee, his excellency was just leaving. You may send in the Copperhead delegation.' As Vimes was ushered out he saw another party of dwarfs assembled in the anteroom. One or two of them nodded at him as they were herded in. Dee turned back to Vimes. 'I hope you didn't tire his majesty.' 'Someone else has already been doing that, bythe look of it.' 'These are sleepless times,' said the Ideas Taster. 'Scone turned up yet?' said Vimes innocently. 'Your excellency, if you persist in this attitude a complaint will go to your Lord Vetinari!' 'He does so look forward to them. Was it this way out?' It was the last word said until Vimes and his guards were back in the coach and the doors to daylight were opening ahead of them. Out of the corner of his- eye Vimes saw that Cheery was shaking. 'Certainly hits you, doesn't it, the cold air after the warmth underground. . .' he ventured. Cheery grinned in relief. 'Yes, it does,' she said. 'Seemed quite a decent sort,' said Vimes. 'What was that he muttered when I said I hadn't been trained?' 'He said, "Who has?", sir.' 'It sounded like it. All that arguing . . . it's not a case of sitting on the throne and saying, "Do this, do that," then.' 'Dwarfs are very argumentative, sir. Of course, many wouldn't agree. But none of the big dwarf clans are happy about this. You know how it is the Copperheads didn't want Albrecht, and the Schmaltzbergers wouldn't support anyone called Glodson, the Ankh-Morpork dwarfs were split both ways, and Rhys comes from a little coalmining clan near Llamedos that isn't important enough to be on anyone's side . . .' 'You mean he didn't get to be king because everyone liked him but because no one disliked him enough?' 'That's right, sir.' Vimes glanced at the crumpled letters that the King had thrust into his hand. By daylight he could see the faint scribble on one corner. There were just two words. MIDNIGHT, SEE? Humming to himself, he tore the piece of paper off and rolled it into a ball. 'And now for the damn vampire,' he said. 'Don't worry, sir,' said Cheery. 'What's the worst she can do? Bite your head off?' 'Thank you for that, corporal. Tell me . . . those robes some of the dwarfs were wearing. I know they wear them on the surface so they're not polluted by the nasty sunlight, but why wear . them down there?' 'It's traditional, sir. Er, they were worn by the . . . well, it's what you'd call the knockermen, sir.' 'What did they do?' 'Well, you know about firedamp? It's a gas you get in mines sometimes. It explodes.' Vimes saw the images in his mind as Cheery explained . . . The miners would clear the area, if they were lucky. And the knockerman would go in wearing layer after layer of chain-mail and leather, carrying his sack of wicker globes stuffed with rags and oil. And his long pole. And his slingshot. Down in the mines, all alone, he'd hear the knockers. Agi Hammerthief and all the other things that made noises, deep under the earth. There could be no light, because light would mean sudden, roaring death. The knockerman would feel his way through the utter dark, far below the surface. There was a type of cricket that lived in the mines. It chirruped loudly in the presence of firedamp. The knockerman would have one in a box, tied to his hat. When it sang, a knockerman who was either very confident or extremely suicidal would step back, light the torch on the end of his pole and thrust it ahead of him. The more careful knockerman would step back rather more, and slingshot a ball of burning rags into the unseen death. Either way, he'd trust in his thick leather clothes to protect him from the worst of the blast. Initially the dangerous trade did not run in families, because who'd marry a knockerman? They were dead dwarfs walking. But sometimes a young dwarf would ask to become one; his family would be proud, wave him goodbye, and then speak of him as if he was dead, because that made it easier. Sometimes, though, knockermen came back. And the ones that survived went on to survive again, because surviving is a matter of practice. And sometimes they would talk a little of what they heard, all alone in the deep mines . . . the tap-tapping of dead dwarfs trying to get back into the world, the distant laughter of Agi Hammerthief, the heartbeat of the turtle that carried the world. Knockermen became kings. Vimes, listening with his mouth open, wondered why the hell it was that dwarfs believed that they had no religion and no priests. Being a dwarf was a religion. People went into the dark for the good of the clan, and heard things, and were changed, and came back to tell... And then, fifty years ago, a dwarf tinkering in Ankh-Morpork had found that if you put a simple .fine mesh over your lantern flame it'd burn blue in the presence of the gas but wouldn't explode. It was a discovery of immense value to the good of dwarfkind and, as so often happens with such discoveries, almost immediately led to a war. 'And afterwards there were two kinds of dwarf,' said Cheery sadly. 'There's the Copperheads, who all use the lamp and the patent gas exploder, and the Schmaltzbergers, who stick to the old ways. Of course we're all dwarfs,' she said, 'but relations are rather . . . strained.' 'I bet they are.' 'Oh, no, all dwarfs recognize the need for the Low King, it's just that . . .' ' . . they don't quite see why knockermen are still so powerful?' 'It's all very sad,' said Cheery. 'Did I tell you my brother Snorey went off to be a knockerman?' 'I don't think so.' 'He died in an explosion somewhere under Borogravia. But he was doing what he wanted to do.' After a moment she added, conscientiously, 'Well, up to the moment when the blast hit him. After that, I don't think so.' Now the coach was rumbling up the mountain on one side of the town. Vimes looked down at the little round helmet beside him. Funny how you think you know about people, he thought. The wheels clattered over the wood of a drawbridge. As castles went, this one looked as though it could be taken by a small squad of not very efficient soldiers. Its builder had not been thinking about fortifications. He'd been influenced by fairytales and possibly by some of the more ornamental sorts of cake. It was a castle for looking at. For defence, putting a blanket over your head might be marginally safer. The coach stopped in the courtyard. To Vimes's amazement, a familiar figure in a shabby black coat came shuffling up to open the door. 'Igor?' 'Yeth, marthter?' 'What the hell are you doing here?' 'Er, I'm opening thith here door, marthter,' said Igor. 'But why aren't you-?' Then it stole over Vimes that Igor was different. This Igor had both eyes the same colour, and some of his scars were in different places. 'Sorry,' he mumbled. 'I thought you were Igor.' 'Oh, you mean my couthin Igor,' said Igor. 'He workth down at the embathy. How'th he getting on?' 'Er, he's looking . . . well,' said Vimes. 'Pretty . . . well. Yes.' 'Did he mention how Igor'th getting on, thur?' said Igor, shambling away so fast that Vimes had to run to keep up. 'Only none of uth have heard from him, not even Igor, who'th alwayth been very clothe.' 'I'm sorry? Is your whole family called Igor?' 'Oh, yeth, thur. It avoidth confuthion.' 'It does?' 'Yeth, thur. Anyone who ith anyone in Uberwald wouldn't dream of employing any other thervant but an Igor. Ah, here we are, thur. The mithtreth ith exthpecting you.' They'd walked under an arch and Igor was opening a door with far more studs in it than was respectable. This led to a hallway. 'Are you sure you want to come?' said Vimes to Cheery. 'She is a vampire.' 'Vampires don't worry me, sir.' 'Lucky for you,' said Vimes. He glanced at the silent Tantony. The man was looking strained. 'Tell our friend here he won't be needed and he's to wait for us in the coach, the lucky devil,' he said. 'But don't translate that last bit.' Igor opened an inner door as Tantony almost ran out of the hall. 'Hith grathe hith exthellenthy-' 'Ah, Sir Samuel,' said Lady Margolotta. 'Do come in. I know you don't like being your grace. Isn't this tiresome? But it has to be done, doesn't it?' It wasn't what he'd expected. Vampires weren't supposed to wear pearls, or jumpers in pink. In Vimes's world they didn't wear sensible flat shoes, either. Or have a sitting room in which every conceivable piece of furniture was upholstered in chintz. Lady Margolotta looked like someone's mother, although possibly someone who'd had an expensive education and a pony called Fidget. She moved like someone who had grown used to her body and, in general, looked like what Vimes had heard described as 'a woman of a certain age'. He'd never been quite certain what age that was. But . . . things weren't quite right. There were bats embroidered on the pink jumper, and the pattern on the furniture had a sort of . . . bat look. The little dog with a bow round its neck, lying curled on a cushion, looked more like a rat than a dog. Vimes was less certain about that one, though; dogs of that nature tended to look a bit rat-like in any case. The effect was as if someone had read the music but had never heard it played. He realized she was politely waiting for him and bowed, stiffly. 'Oh, don't bother with that, please,' said Lady Margolotta. 'Do take a seat.' She walked over to a cabinet and opened it. 'Do you fancy a Bull's Blood?' 'Is that the drink with the vodka? Because-' 'No,' said Lady Margolotta quietly. 'This, I am afraid, is the other kind. Still, ve have that in common, don't ve? Neither of us drinks ... alcohol. I believe you ver an alcoholic, Sir Samuel.' 'No,' said Vimes, completely taken aback. 'I was a drunk. You have to be richer than I was to be an alcoholic.' 'Ah, vell said. I have lemonade, if you vish. And Miss Littlebottom? Ve don't have beer, you'll be pleased to hear.' Cheery looked at Vimes in amazement. 'Er, perhaps a sherry?' she said. 'Certainly. You may leave us, Igor. Isn't he a treasure?' she added as Igor retired. 'He certainly looks as though he's just been dug up,' said Vimes. This was not going according to his mental script. 'Oh, all Igors look like that. He's been in the family for almost two hundred years. Most of him, anyway.' 'Really?' 'Extremely popular vith the young ladies, for some reason. All Igors are. I've found it best not to speculate vhy.' Lady Margolotta gave Vimes a bright smile. 'yell, here's to your stay, Sir Samuel.' 'You-know a lot about me,' said Vimes weakly. 'Most of it good, I assure you,' she said. 'Although you're inclined. to forget your papervork, you get exasperated easily, you are far too sentimental, you regret your own lack of education and distrust erudition in others, you are immensely proud of your city and you vonder if you may be a class traitor. My . . . friends in Ankh-Morpork were unable to find out anything very bad and, believe me, they are pretty good at that sort of thing. And you loathe vampires.' '1-' 'Quite understandable. Ve're dreadful people, by and large.' 'But you-' 'I try to look on the bright side,' said Lady Margolotta. 'But, anyvay - how did you like the King?' 'He's very . . . quiet,' said Vimes the diplomat. 'Try cunning. He vill have found out a lot more about you than you did about him, I'm sure. Vould you like a biscuit? I don't eat them myself, of course, but there's a little man down in the town who does vonderful chocolate. Igor?' 'Yeth, mithtreth,' said Igor. Vimes nearly sprayed his lemonade across the room. 'He was out of the room!' he said. 'I saw him go! I heard the door shut!' 'Igor has strange vays. Do give Sir Samuel a napkin, Igor.' 'You said the King was cunning,' said Vimes, mopping lemonade off his breeches. Igor put down a plate of biscuits and shuffled out of the room. 'Did I? No, I don't think I could possibly have said that. It's not the diplomatic thing to say,' said Lady Margolotta smoothly. 'I'm sure ve all support the new Low King, the choice of dvarfdom in general, even if they thought they ver getting a traditionalist and got an unknown quantity.' 'Did you just say that last bit?' said Vimes, awash on a sea of diplomacy and damp trousers. 'Absolutely not. You know their Scone of Stone has been stolen?' 'They say it hasn't,' said Vimes. 'Do you believe them?' No. 'The coronation cannot go ahead vithout it, did you know that?' 'We'll have to wait until they bake another one?' said Vimes. 'No. There vill be no more Low Kings,' said Lady Margolotta. 'Legitimacy, you see. The Scone represents continuity all the vay to B'hrian Bloodaxe. They say he sat on it while it is still soft and left his impression, as it were.' 'You mean kingship has passed from bubackside to backside?' 'Humans believe in crowns, don't they?' 'Yes, but at least they're at the other end!' 'Thrones, then.' Lady Margolotta sighed. 'People set such store by strange things. Crowns. Relics. Garlic. Anyway, there vill be a civil var over the leadership which Albrecht will surely vin, and he'll cease all trading with AnkhMorpork. Did you know that? He thinks the place is evil.' 'I knowit is,' said Vimes. 'And I live there.' 'I've heard that he plans to declare all dwarfs there d'hrarak,' the vampire went on. Vimes heard Cheery gasp. 'It means "not dwarfs".' 'That's very big of him,' said Vimes. 'I shouldn't think our lads'll worry about that.' 'Um,' said Cheery. 'Quite so. The young lady looks vorried, and you'd do vell to listen to her, Sir Samuel.' 'Excuse me,' said Vimes, 'but what is all this to you?' 'You really don't drink at all, Sir Samuel?' No. 'Not even vun?' 'No,' said Vimes, more sharply. 'You'd know that if you knew anything about-' 'Yet you keep half a bottle in your bottom drawer as a sort of permanent test,' said Lady Margolotta. 'Now that, Sir Samuel, suggests a man who vears his hair shirts on the inside.' 'I want to know who's been saying all this!' Lady Margolotta sighed. Vimes got the impression that he'd failed another test. 'I am rich, Sir Samuel. Vampires tend to be. Didn't you know? Lord Vetinari, I know, believes that information is currency. But everyvun knows that currency has alvays been information. Money doesn't need to talk, it merely has to listen.' She stopped and sat watching Vimes, as if she'd suddenly decided to listen. Vimes moved uncomfortably under the steady gaze. 'How is Havelock Vetinari?' she said. 'The Patrician? Oh . . . fine.' 'He must be quite old now.' 'I've never really been certain how old he is,' said Vimes. 'About my age, I suppose.' Then she stood up suddenly. 'This has been an interesting meeting, Sir Samuel. I trust Lady Sybil is vell?' 'Er, yes.' 'Good. I am so glad. Ve vill meet again, I am sure. Igor vill see you out. My regards to the Baron, vhen you see him. Pat him on the head for me:' 'What the hell was that all about, Cheery?' said Vimes, as the coach set off down the hill again. 'Which bit, sir?' 'Practically all of it, really. Why should AnkhMorpork dwarfs object if someone says they're not dwarfs? They know they're dwarfs.' 'They won't be subject to dwarf law, sir.' 'I didn't know they were.' 'I mean, it's like . . . how you live your life, sir. Marriages, burials, that sort of thing. Marriages won't be legal. Old dwarfs won't be allowed to be buried back home. And that'd be terrible. Every dwarf dreams of going back home when he's old and starting up a little mine.' 'Every dwarf? Even the ones who were born in Ankh-Morpork?' 'Home can mean all sorts of things, sir,' said Cheery. 'There's other things, too. Contracts won't be valid. Dwarfs like good solid rules, sir.' 'We've got laws in Ankh-Morpork, too. More or less.' 'Between themselves dwarfs prefer to use their own, sir.' 'I bet the Copperhead dwarfs won't like it if that happens.' 'Yes, sir. There'll be a split. And another war.' She sighed. 'But why was she going on about drink?' 'I don't know, sir.' 'I don't like 'em. Never have done, never will.' 'Yes, sir.' 'Did you see that rat?' 'Yes, sir.' 'I think she was laughing at me.' The coach rolled through the streets of Bonk once more. 'How big a war?' 'A worse one than the one fifty years ago, I expect,' said Cheery. 'I don't recall people talking about that one,' said Vimes. 'Most humans didn't know about it,' said Cheery. 'It mostly took place underground. Undermining passages and digging invasion tunnels and so on. Perhaps a few houses fell into mysterious holes and people didn't get their coal, but that was about it.' 'You mean dwarfs just try to collapse mines on other dwarfs?' 'Oh, yes.' 'I thought you were all law-abiding?' 'Oh, yes, sir. Very law-abiding. Just not very merciful.' Ye gods, thought Vimes, as the coach rolled over the bridge in the centre of the town, I haven't been sent to a coronation. I've been sent to a war that hasn't started yet. He glanced up. Tantony was watching him intently, but looked away quickly. Lady Margolotta watched the coach until it reached the gates of the town. She stood back a little from the window. There was a slight overcast, but habits of preservation died hard. 'Vhat a very angry man, Igor.' 'Yeth, mithtreth.' 'You can see it piling up behind his patience. I vonder how far he can be pushed?' 'I've brought the hearthe around, mithtreth.' 'Oh, is it that late? We'd better be going, then. Everyvun feels despondent if I miss a meeting, you know.' The castle on the other side of the valley was much more rugged than Lady Margolotta's confectionery item. Even so, the gates were wide open and didn't look as though they were often closed. The main door was tall and heavy-looking. The only thing that suggested it hadn't been ordered from the standard castle catalogue was the smaller, narrow door, a few feet high, set into it. 'What's that for?' said Vimes. 'Even a dwarf would bump their head.' 'I suppose it depends on what shape you are when you go in,' said Cheery darkly. The main door opened as soon as Vimes had laid his hand on the wolf's-head knocker. But he was ready this time. . 'Good morning, Igor,' he said. 'Good day, your exthellenthy,' said Igor, bowing. 'Igor and Igor send their regards, Igor.' 'Thank you, your exthellenthy. Thinthe you mention it, could I put a parthel on your coach for Igor?' 'You mean the Igor at the embassy?' 'That'th who I thaid, thur,' said Igor patiently. 'He athked me if I could lend him a hand.' 'Yes, no problem there.' 'Good. It'th well wrapped up and the ithe will keep it nithe and freth. Would you thtep thith way? The marthter ith changing at the moment.' Igor shambled into a wide hall, one side of which was mostly fireplace, and bowed out. 'Did he say what I thought he said?' said Vimes. 'About the hand and ice?' 'It's not what it sounds like, sir,' said Cheery. 'I hope so. My gods, look at that damned thing!' A huge red flag hung from the rafters. In the middle of it was a black wolf's head, its mouth full of stylized flashes of lightning. 'Their new flag, I think,' said Cheery. 'I thought it was just a crest with the doubledheaded bat?' 'Perhaps they thought it was time for a change, sir-' 'Ah, your excellency! Isn't Sybil with you?' The woman who had entered was Angua, but padded somewhat with years. She was wearing a long, loose green gown, very old fashioned by Ankh-Morpork standards, although there are some styles that never go out of date on the right figure. She was brushing her hair as she walked across the floor. 'Er, she's staying at the embassy today. We had rather a difficult journey. You would be the Baroness Serafine von Uberwald?' 'And you're Sam Vimes. Sybil's letters are all about you. The Baron won't be long. We were out hunting and lost track of time.' 'I expect it's a lot of work, seeing to the horses,' said Vimes politely. Serafine's smile went strange for a moment. 'Hah. Yes,' she said. 'Can I get Igor to fetch you a drink?' 'No, thank you.' She sat down on one of the overstuffed chairs and beamed at him. 'You've met the new king, your excellency?' 'This morning.' 'I believe he's having trouble.' 'What makes you think that?' said Vimes. Serafine looked startled. 'I thought everyone knew?' 'Well, I've hardly been here five minutes,' said Vimes. 'I probably don't count as everyone.' Now, he was pleased to note, she looked puzzled. 'We . . . just heard there was some problem,' she said. 'Oh, well ... a new king, a coronation to organize . . . A few problems are bound to occur,' he said. Well, he thought, so this is diplomacy. It's like lying, only to a better class of people. 'Yes. Of course.' 'Angua is well,' said Vimes. 'Are you sure you won't have a drink?' said Serafine quickly, standing up. 'Ah, here is my husband-' The Baron entered the room like a whirlwind that had swept up several dogs. They bounded ahead of him and danced around him. 'Hello! Hello!' he boomed. Vimes looked at an enormous man - not fat, not tall, just built to perhaps one-tenth over scale. He didn't so much have a face with a beard as a beard with, peeking over the top in that narrow gap between the moustache and the eyebrows, small remnants of face. He bore down on Vimes in a cloud of leaping bodies, hair and a smell of old carpets. Vimes was ready for the handshake when it came, but even so had to grimace as his bones were ground together. 'Good of you to come, hey? Heard so much about you!' But not enough,Vimes thought. He wondered if he'd ever have the use of his hand again. It was still being gripped. The dogs had transferred their attention to him. He was being sniffed. 'Greatest respect for Ankh-Morpork, hey?' said the Baron. 'Er . . . good,' said Vimes. Blood was getting no further than his wrist. 'Have seat!' the Baron barked. Vimes had been trying to avoid the word, but that was exactly how the man spoke - in short, sharp sentences, every one an exclamation. He was herded towards a chair. Then the Baron let go of his hand and flung himself on to the huge carpet, the excited dogs piling on top of him. Serafine made a noise somewhere between a growl and the 'Tch!' of wifely disapproval. Obediently the Baron pushed the dogs aside and flung himself into a chair. 'You'll have to take us as you find us,' said Serafine, smiling with her mouth alone. 'This has always been a very informal household.' 'It's a very nice place,' said Vimes weakly, staring around the enormous room. Trophy heads lined the walls, but at least there were no trolls. No weapons, either. There were no spears, no rusty old swords, not even a broken bow, which was practically against the law of castle furnishing. He stared at the wall again, and then at the carving over the fireplace. And then his gaze travelled down. One of the dogs, and Vimes had to be clear about this - he was using the term dogs merely because they were indoors and that was a place where the word wolf was not usually encountered - was watching him. He'd never seen such an appraising look on a creature's face. It was weighing him up. There was something familiar about the pale gold hair that was a sort of mane. In fact it looked quite like Angua, but heavier set. And there was another difference, which was small yet horribly significant. Like Angua, it had this sense of movement stilled; but whereas Angua always looked as if she was poised to flee, this one looked poised to leap. 'The embassy is to your liking? We owned it, you know, before we sold it to Lord V . . . Ve . . .' 'Vetinari,' said Vimes, reluctantly taking his eyes off the wolf. 'Of course, your people made a lot of changes,' she went on. 'We've made a few more,' said Vimes, recalling all those patches of shiny woodwork where the hunting trophies had been removed. 'I must say I was really impressed with the bathroo- I'm sorry?' There had been almost a yelp from the Baron. Serafine was glaring at her husband. 'Yes,' she said sharply, 'I gather interesting things have been done.' 'You're so lucky to have the thermal springs,' said Vimes. And this was diplomacy too, he thought, when you let your mouth chatter away while you watched people's eyes. It's just like being a copper. 'Sybil wants to go to take the waters at Bad Heisses Bad-' Behind him he heard a faint growl from the Baron and saw the look of annoyance flash across Serafine's face. 'I'm saying the wrong thing?' he said innocently. 'My-husband is a little unwell at the moment,' said Serafine, in the special wife voice which Vimes recognized as meaning 'He think's he's fine right now but just you wait until I get him alone.' 'I suppose I'd better present my credentials,' said Vimes, pulling out the letter. Serafine reached across quickly and took it from his hand. 'I shall read it,' she said, smiling sweetly. 'Of course, it's a mere formality. Everyone's heard of Commander Vimes. I mean no offence, of course, but we were a little surprised when the Patrician-' 'Lord Vetinari,' said Vimes helpfully, putting a slight stress on the first syllable and hearing the growl on cue. 'Yes, indeed . . . said that you would be coming. We were expecting one of the more . . . experienced . . . diplomats.' 'Oh, I can hand around the thin cucumber sandwiches like anything,' said Vimes. 'And if you want little golden balls of chocolate piled up in a heap, I'm your man.' She gave him a slow, blank stare. 'Your pardon, your excellency,' she said. 'Morporkian is not my first .language and I fear we may have inadvertently misled one another. I gather that you are, in real life, a policeman?' 'In real life, yes,' said Vimes. 'We've always been against a police force in Bonk,' said the Baroness. 'We feel it interferes with the liberties of the individual.' 'Well, I have certainly heard that argument advanced,' said Vimes. 'Of course, it depends on whether the individual you are thinking of is yourself or the one climbing out of the bathroom' - he noted the grimace -'window with the family silver in a sack.' 'Happily, security has never been a problem for us,' said Serafine. 'I'm not surprised,' said Vimes. 'I mean . . . because of all the walls and gates and things.' 'I do hope you will bring Sybil to the reception this evening. But I see that we are keeping you, and I know you must have much to do. Igor will show you out.' 'Yeth, mithtreth,' said Igor, behind Vimes. Vimes could feel the river of fury building up behind the levees of his mind. 'I'll tell Sergeant Angua you asked after her,' he said, standing up. 'Indeed,' said Serafine. 'But right now I'm looking forward to a really relaxing bath,' said Vimes, and watched with satisfaction as both the Baron and his wife flinched. 'Good day to you.' Cheery marched along beside him across the hallway. 'Don't say a word until we're out of here,' hissed Vimes. 'Sir?' 'Because I want to get out of here,' said Vimes. Several of the dogs had followed them out. They weren't growling, they hadn't bared their teeth, but they were carrying themselves with rather more purpose than Vimes had come to associate with groin-sniffers in general. 'I've put the parthel in the coach, your exthellenthy' said Igor, opening the coach door and knuckling his forehead. 'I'll be sure to give it to Igor,' said Vimes. 'Oh, not to Igor, thur. Thith ith for Igor.' 'Oh, right.' Vimes looked out of the windows as the horses trotted away. The golden-haired wolf had come to the steps and was watching him leave. He sat back as the coach rumbled out of the castle and closed his eyes. Cheery was wise enough to remain silent. 'No weapons on the walls, did you notice?' he said, after a while. His eyes were still shut, as if he was looking at a picture on the back of them. 'Most castles like that have the things hanging all over the place.' 'Well, they are werewolves, sir.' 'Does Angua ever talk about her parents?' 'No, sir.' 'They didn't want to talk about her, that's certain.' Vimes opened his eyes. 'Dwarfs?' he said. 'I've always got on with dwarfs. And werewolves . . . well, never had a problem with werewolves. So why is the only person who hasn't tried to blow me out this morning the blood-sucking vampire?' 'I don't know, sir.' 'Big fireplace they had.' 'Werewolves like to sleep in front of the fire at night, sir,' said Cheery. 'The Baron certainly didn't seem comfortable in a chair, I spotted that. And what was the motto carved into that great big mantelpiece? "Homini. . ."' "'Homo Homini Lupus",sir,' said Cheery. 'It means "Every man is a wolf to another man".' 'Hah! Why haven't I promoted you, Cheery?' 'Because I get embarrassed about shouting at other people, sir. Sir, did you notice the strange thing about the trophies they had on the wall?' Vimes shut his eyes again. 'Stag, bears, some kind of mountain lion . . . What're you asking me, corporal?' 'And did you notice something just below them?' 'Let's see . . . I think there was just space below them.' 'Yes, sir. With three hooks in it. You could just make them out.' Vimes hesitated. 'Do you mean,' he said carefully, 'three hooks that might have had trophies hanging from them until they were removed?' 'Very much that sort of hook, sir, yes. Only perhaps the heads haven't been hung up yet.' 'Trolls' heads?' 'Who knows, sir?' The coach entered the town. 'Cheery, have you still got that silver chainmail vest you used to have?' 'Er, no, sir. I stopped wearing it because it seemed a bit disloyal to Angua, sir. Why?' 'Just a passing thought. Oh, ye gods, is that Igor's parcel under the seat?' 'I think so, sir. But look, I know about Igors. If that's a real hand, the original owner hasn't got a use for it, believe me.' 'What? He cuts bits off dead people?' 'Better than live people, sir.' 'You know what I mean!' 'Sir, it's considered good manners, if one of the Igors has helped you, to put it in your will that they can help themselves to any . . . parts that might help someone else. They never ask for any money. People just carry little cards. They're very respected in Uberwald. Very good men with a scalpel and a needle. It's a kind of vocation, really.' 'But they're covered in scars and stitches!' 'They won't do to anyone else what they're not prepared to try on themselves.' Vimes decided to explore the full horror of this. It took his mind off the missing trophies. 'Are there any . . . Igorinas? Igorettes?' 'Well, any Igor is considered a good catch for a young lady. . .' 'He is?' 'And their daughters tend to be very attractive.' 'Eyes at the same height, that sort of thing?' 'Oh, yes.' But the door, when it was finally opened in response to impatient knocking, revealed not the switchback features of Igor but the business end of Detritus's crossbow, which was marginally worse. 'It's us, sergeant,' said Vimes. The crossbow was removed, and the door opened further. 'Sorry, sir, but you said I was to be on guard,' said Detritus. 'There's no need to-' 'Igor's been hurt, sir.' Igor was sitting in the huge kitchen, a bandage round his head. Lady Sybil was fussing over him. 'I went to look for him a couple of hours ago and there he was, flat on the snow,' she said. She leaned closer to Sam Vimes. 'He doesn't remember very much.' 'Can you recall what you were doing, old chap?' said Vimes, sitting down. Igor gave him a bleary look. 'Well, thur, I went out to unpack the foodthtuffth from the other coach, and I'd jutht got hold of thomething and then all the lightth went out, thur. I reckon I mutht've thlipped.' 'Or someone hit you?' Igor shrugged. For a moment both of his shoulders were at the same level. 'There's nothing on the coach worth stealing!' said Lady Sybil. 'Not unless someone was dying for a knuckle sandwich,' said Vimes. 'Was anything taken?' 'I checked everyt'ing against der list her ladyship gave me, sir,' said Detritus, meeting Vimes's gaze. 'Dere wasn't anyfing missing, sir.' 'I'll just go and take a look for myself,' said Vimes. When they were outside he walked over to the coach and looked at the snow around it. The cobbles were visible here and there. Then he looked up at the grating. 'All right, Detritus,' he said. 'Talk to me.' 'Just a feelin', sir,' rumbled the troll. 'I know "fick" is my middle name. . .' 'I didn't know you had a first name, sergeant.' 'I don't fink dis was one of dem accidents dat happens by accident.' 'He might have fallen off the coach when he was unloading it,' said Vimes. 'An' I might be the Fairy Clinkerbell, sir.' Vimes was impressed. This was lowtemperature thinking from Detritus. 'Der street doors is open,' said Detritus. 'I reckon Igor disturbed someone who was pinchin' stuff.' 'But you said nothing was missing.' 'Maybe der thief took fright, sir.' 'What, at seeing Igor? Could be . . .' Vimes looked at the bags and boxes. Then he looked again. Things had been thrown down any old how. That wasn't how you unpacked a coach, unless you were looking for something in a real hurry. Who'd go to these lengths to steal food? 'Nothing was missing. . .' He rubbed his chin. 'Who packed the coach, Detritus?' 'Dunno, sir. I fink her ladyship just ordered a lot of stuff.' 'And we left in a bit of a rush, too . . .' Vimes stopped. Best to leave it there. He had an idea but, well, where was the evidence? You could say: nothing that should have been there was missing, so what must have been taken was something that shouldn't have been there. No. For now, it was just something to remember. They walked into the hall, and Vimes's eye fell on a pile of cards on a table by the door. 'Der's been a lot of visitors,' said Detritus. Vimes took a handful of cards. Some of them had gold edging. 'Dem diplomatics all want you to come for drinky-poos an' stories about chickens,' the troll added helpfully. 'Cocktails, I think you'll find,' said Vimes, reading through the pasteboards. 'Hmm, Klatch . . . Muntab . . . Genua . . . Lancre . . . L ancre? It's a kingdom you could spit across! They've got an embassy here?' 'No, sir, mostly dey've got a letterbox.' 'Will we all fit in?' 'Dey've rented a house for der coronation, sir.' Vimes dropped the invitations back on to the table. 'I don't think I can face any of this stuff,' he said. 'A man can only drink so much fruit juice and listen to so many bad jokes. Where's the nearest clacks tower, Detritus?' 'About fifteen miles Hubwards, sir.' 'I'd like to find out what's going on back home. I think that this afternoon Lady Sybil and I will have a nice quiet ride in the country. It'll take her mind off things.' And then he thought, I'll wait until midnight, see? And it's still only lunchtime. In the end Vimes took Igor as driver and guide, and the guards Tantony and the one he would forever think of as Colonesque. Skimmer still hadn't returned from whatever nefarious expedition was occupying his time, and Vimes was damned if he'd leave the embassy unguarded. Yet another word for diplomat, Vimes mused, was 'spy'. The only difference was that the host government knew who you were. The game was to outwit them, presumably. The sun was warm, the breeze was cold, the mountain air made every peak look as if Vimes could reach out and touch it. Outside the town snow-covered vineyards and farms clung to slopes that in Ankh-Morpork would be called walls, but after a while the pine forests closed in. Here and there, at a curve in the road, the river was visible far below. Up on the box Igor was crooning a lament. 'He told me Igors heal very fast,' said Lady Sybil. 'They'd have to.' 'Mister Skimmer said they're very gifted surgeons, Sam.' 'Except cosmetically, perhaps.' The coach slowed. 'Do you come up here a lot, Igor?' said Vimes. 'Mithter Thleep uthed to have me drive over onthe a week to collect methageth, marthter.' 'I'd have thought it'd be easier to have a pickup tower in Bonk.' 'The counthil are dead againtht it, thur.' 'And you?' 'I am very modern in my outlook, thur.' The tower loomed quite close now. The first twenty feet or so were of stone with narrow, barred windows. Then there was a broad platform from which the main tower grew. It was a sensible arrangement. An enemy would find it hard to break in or set fire to it, there was enough storage room inside to see out a siege, and the enemy would be aware that the lads inside would have signalled for help thirty seconds after the attack began. The company had money. They were like the coaching agents in that respect. If a tower went out of action, someone would be along to ask expensive questions. There was no law here; the kind of people who'd turn up would be inclined to leave a message to the world that towers were not to be touched. Everyone should know this, and therefore it was odd to see that the big signal arms were stationary. The hairs rose on Vimes's neck. 'Stay in the carriage, Sybil,' he said. 'Is there something wrong?' 'I'm not sure,' said Vimes, who was sure. He stepped down and nodded to Igor. 'I'm going to have a look inside,' he said. 'If there is any . . . trouble, you're to get Lady Sybil back to the embassy, all right?' Vimes leaned back into the coach and, trying not to look at Sybil, lifted up one of the seats and pulled out the sword he had hidden there. 'Sam!' she said accusingly. 'Sorry, dear. I thought I ought to carry a spare.' There was a bellpull by the door of the tower. Vimes tugged at it and heard a clang somewhere above. When nothing else happened he tried the door. It swung open. 'Hello?' There was silence. 'This is the Wa-' Vimes stopped. It wasn't the Watch, was it? Not out here. The badge didn't work. He was just an inquisitive trespassing bastard. 'Anyone there?' The room was piled high with sacks, boxes and barrels. A wooden stairway led up to the next floor. Vimes climbed up into a combined bedroom and mess room; there were only two bunks, their covers pulled back. A chair was on the floor. A meal was on the table, knife and fork laid down carefully. On the stove something had boiled dry in an iron pot. Vimes opened the firebox door, and there was a whoomph as the inrushing air rekindled the charred wood. And, from above, the chink of metal. He looked at the ladder and trapdoor to the next floor. Anyone climbing it would be presenting their head at a convenient height for a blade or a boot 'Tricky, isn't it, your grace?' said someone above him. 'You'd better come up.Mmm, mmhm.' 'Inigo?' 'It's safe enough, your grace. There's only me here. Mmm.' 'That counts as safe, does it?' Vimes climbed the ladder. Inigo was sitting at a table, leafing through a stack of papers. 'Where's the crew?' 'That, your grace,' said Inigo, 'is one of the mysteries, mmm, mmm.' 'And the others are-?' Inigo nodded towards the steps leading upwards. 'See for yourself.' The controls for -the arms had been comprehensively smashed. Laths and bits of wire dangled forlornly from their complex framework. 'Several hours of repair work for skilled men, I'd say,' said Inigo, as Vimes returned. 'What happened here, Inigo?' 'I would say the men who lived here were forced to leave, mmph, mmhm. In some disorder.' 'But it's a fortified tower!' 'So? They have to cut firewood. Oh, the company has rules, and then they put three young men in some lonely tower for weeks at a time and they expect them to act like clockwork people. See the trapdoor up to the controls? That should be locked at all times. Now you, your grace, and myself as well, because we are . . . are-' 'Bastards?' Vimes supplied. 'Well, yes . . . mmm . . . we'd have devised a system that meant the clacks couldn't even be operated unless the trapdoor was shut, wouldn't we?' 'Something like that, yes.' 'And we'd have written into the rules that the presence of any visitor in the tower would, mmhm, be automatically transmitted to the neighbouring towers, too.' 'Probably. That'd be a start.' 'As it is, I suspect that any harmless-looking visitor with a nice fresh apple pie for the lads would be warmly welcomed,' sighed Inigo. 'They do two-month shifts. Nothing to look at but trees, mmm.' 'No blood, not much sign of a struggle,' said Vimes. 'Have you checked outside?' 'There should be a horse in the stable. It's gone. We're more or less on rock here. There's wolf tracks, but there's wolf tracks everywhere around here. And the wind's blown the snow. They've . . . gone, your grace.' 'Are you sure the men let someone in through the door?' Vimes said. 'Anyone who could land on the platform could be in one of these windows in an instant.' 'A vampire, mmm?' 'It's a thought, isn't it?' 'There's no blood around . . .' 'It's a shame to waste good food,' said Vimes. 'Think of those poor starving children in Muntab. What are these?' He pulled a box from under the lower bunk. Inside it were several tubes, about a foot long, open at one end. "Badger & Normal, Ankh-Morpork',' he read aloud. "'Mortar Flare (Red). Light Fuse. Do Not Place In Mouth." It's a firework, Mister Skimmer. I've seen them on ships.' 'Ah, there was something. . .' Inigo leafed through the book on the table. 'They could send up an emergency flare if there was a big problem. Yes, the tower nearest Ankh-Morpork will send out a couple of men, and a bigger squad comes up from the depot down on the plains. They take a downed tower very seriously.' 'Yes, well, it could cost them money,' said Vimes, peering into the mouth of the mortar. 'We need this tower working, Inigo. I don't like being stuck out here.' 'The roads aren't too bad yet. They could be here by tomorrow evening. I'm sure you shouldn't do that, sir!' Vimes had pulled the mortar out of its tube. He looked at Inigo quizzically., 'They won't go off until you light the charge in the base,' he said. 'They're safe. And they'd make a stupid weapon, 'cos you can't aim them worth a damn and they're only made of cardboard in any case. Come on, let's get it on to the roof.' 'Not until dark, your grace, mmm. That way two or three towers on each side will see it, not just the closest.' 'But if the closest towers are watching they'll certainly see-' 'We don't know that there is anyone there to watch, sir. Perhaps what happened here has happened there too? Mmm?' 'Good grief! You don't think-' 'No, I don't think, sir, I'm a civil servant. I advise other people, mmm, mmph. Then they think. My advice is that an hour or two won't hurt, sir. My advice is that you return with Lady Sybil now, sir. I will send up a flare as soon as it's dark and make my way back to the embassy.' 'Hold on, I am Commander in-' 'Not here, your grace. Remember? Here you are a civilian in the way, mmhm, mmm. I'll be safe enough-' 'The crew weren't.' 'They weren't me, mmhm, mmhm. For the sake of Lady Sybil, your grace, I advise you to leave now.' Vimes hesitated, hating the fact that Inigo was not only right but was, despite his claim to mindlessness, doing the thinking that he should be doing. He was supposed to be out for an afternoon's drive with his wife, for heaven's sake. 'Well, all right. Just one thing, though. Why are you here?' 'The last time Sleeps was seen he was on his way up here with a message.' 'Ah. And am I right in thinking that your Mister Sleeps was not exactly the kind of diplomat that hands around the cucumber sandwiches?' Inigo smiled thinly. 'That's right, sir. He was . . . the other sort. Mmm.' 'Your sort.' 'Mmm. And now go, your grace. The sun will be setting soon. Mmm, mmm.' Corporal Nobbs, President and Convenor of the Guild of Watchmen, surveyed his troops. 'All right, one more time,' he said.'Whadda we want?' The strike meeting had been going on for some time, and it had been going on in a bar. The watchmen were already a little forgetful. Constable Ping raised his hand. 'Er . . . a proper grievance procedure, a complaints committee, an overhaul of the promotion procedures . . . er. . .' '-better crockery in the canteen,' someone supplied. '-freedom from unwarranted accusations of sucrose theft-' said someone else. '-no more than seven days straight on nights-' '-an increase in the boots allowance-' '-at least three afternoons off for grandmothers' funerals per year-' '-not having to pay for our own pigeon feed-' '-another drink.' This last demand met with general approval. Constable Shoe got to his feet. He was still, in his spare time, organizer of the Campaign for Dead Rights, and he knew how this sort of thing went. 'No, no, no, no, no,' he said. 'You've got to get it a lot simpler than that. It's got to have bounce. And rhythm. Like "Whadda we want?Dum-deedum-dee.When do we want it? Now!" See? You need one simple demand. Let's try it again.Whadda we want?' The watchmen looked at one another, no one quite wanting to be the first. 'Another drink?' someone volunteered. 'Yeah!' said someone at the back. 'When do we want it? NOW!' 'Well, that one seems to have worked,' said Nobby as the policemen crowded round the bar. 'What else are we going to need, Reg?' 'Signs for the picket,' said Constable Shoe. 'We've got to picket?' 'Oh, yes.' 'In that case,' said Nobby firmly, 'we've got to have a big metal drum to burn old scrap wood in, while we're pickin' at it.' 'Why?' said Reg. 'You gotto stand around warmin' your hands over a big drum,' said Nobby. 'That's how people know you're an official picket and not a bunch of bums.' 'But we are a bunch of bums, Nobby. People think we are, anyway.' 'All right, but let's be warm ones.' The sun was a finger's width above the Rim when Vimes's coach set off from the tower. Igor whipped the horses up. Vimes looked out of the window at the road's edge, a few feet away and several hundred feet above the river. 'Why so fast?' he shouted. 'Got to be home by thunthet!' Igor shouted. 'It'th tradithional.' The big red sun was moving through bars of cloud. 'Oh, let him, dear, if it gives the poor soul pleasure,' said Lady Sybil, shutting the window. 'Now, Sam, what happened at the tower?' 'I don't really want to worry you, Sybil.' 'Well, now that you've got me really worried, you may as well tell me. All right?' Vimes gave in and explained the little that he knew. 'Someone's killed them?' 'Possibly.' 'The same people that ambushed us back in that gorge?' 'I don't think so.' 'This isn't turning out to be much of a holiday Sam.' 'It's being unable to do anything that makes me sick,' said Vimes. 'Back in Ankh-Morpork . . . well, I'd have leads, contacts, some kind of a map. Everyone here is, well, hiding something, I think. The new king thinks I'm a fool, the werewolves treated me as if I was something the cat dragged in. The only person who's been halfway civil was a vampire!' 'Not the cat,' said Sybil. 'What?' said Vimes, mystified. 'Werewolves hate cats,' said Sybil. 'I distinctly remember that. Definitely not cat people.' 'Hah. No. Dog people. They don't like words like bath or vet, either. I reckon if you threw a stick at the Baron he'd leap out of his chair to catch it-' 'I suppose I ought to tell you about the carpets,' said Sybil, as the coach rocked around a corner. 'What, isn't he house-trained?' 'I meant the carpets in the embassy. You know I said I'd measure up for them? Well, the measurements aren't right on the first floor. . .' 'I don't want to sound impatient, dear, but is this a carpet moment?' 'Sam?' 'Yes,, dear?' 'Just stop thinking like a husband and start listening like a . . . a copper, will you?' Vimes marched into the embassy and summoned Detritus and Cheery. 'You two are coming with us to the ball tonight,' he said. 'It'll be posh. Have you got anything to wear apart from your uniform, sergeant?' 'No, sir.' 'Well, go and see Igor. There's a good man with a needle if I ever saw one. How about you, Cheery?' 'I do, er, have a gown,' said Cheery, looking down shyly. 'You do?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Oh. Well. Good. I'm putting the two of you on the embassy staff, too. Cheery, you're . . . you're Military Attache.' 'Oh,' said Detritus, disappointed. 'And, Detritus, you're Cultural Attache.' The troll brightened up considerably. 'You will not regret dis, sir!' 'I'm sure I won't,' said Vimes. 'Right now, I'd like you to come with me.' 'Is dis a cultural matter, sir?' 'Broadly. Perhaps.' Vimes led the troll and Sybil up the stairs and into the office, where he stopped in front of a wall. 'This one?' he said. 'Yes,' said his wife. 'It's hard to notice until you measure the rooms, but that wall really is rather thick-' Vimes ran his hands along the panelling, looking for anything that might go 'click'. Then he stood back. 'Give me your crossbow, sergeant.' 'Here we are, sir.' Vimes staggered under its weight but managed to get it pointed at the wall. 'Is this wise, Sam?' said Sybil. Vimes stood back to take aim, and the floorboard moved under his heel. A panel in the wall swung gently. 'You scared der hell out of it, sir,' said Detritus loyally. Vimes carefully handed the crossbow back and tried to look as though he'd meant things to happen this way. He'd expected a secret passage. But this was a tiny workroom. There were jars on shelves labelled 'New Suet Strata, Area 21', 'Grade A Fat, the Big Hole'. There were lumps of crumbling rock, with neat cardboard tags attached to them saying things like 'Level #3, Shaft 9, Double-Pick Mine'. There was a set of drawers. One of them was full of make-up, including a selection of moustaches. Wordlessly, Vimes opened one of a stack of notebooks. The first pages had a pencil-drawn streetmap of Bonk, with red lines threading through it. 'Good grief, look at this,' he breathed, flicking onwards. 'Maps. Drawings. There's pages of stuff about the assaying of fat deposits. Huh, says here "The new suets, while initially promising, are now suspected of having high levels of BCBs and are likely to be soon exhausted." And here it says "A werewolf putsch is clearly planned in the chaos following the loss of the Scone . . . K. reports that many of the younger werewolves now follow W., who has changed the nature of the game . . ." This stuff . . . this stuff is spying. 1 wondered how Vetinari always seems to know so much!' 'Did you think it came to him in dreams, dear?' 'But there's loads of details here . .. notes about people, lots of figures about dwarf mining production, political rumours . . . I didn't know we did this sort of thing!' 'You use spies all the time, dear,' said Sybil. 'I do not!' 'Well, what about people like Foul Ole Ron and No Way Jose and Cumbling Michael?' 'That is not spying, that is not spying! That's just "information received". We couldn't do the job if we didn't know what's happening on the street!' 'Well, perhaps Havelock just thinks in terms of . . . a bigger street, dear.' 'There's loads more of this muck. Look. Sketches, more bits of ore . . . What the hell's this?' It was oblong, and about the size of a cigarette packet. There was a round glass disc on one face, and a couple of levers on one side. Vimes pushed one of them. A tiny hatch opened and the smallest head that he'd ever seen that could speak said, ''s?' 'I know dat!' said Detritus. 'Days a nano-imp! Dey cost over a hundred dollars! Dey're really small!' 'No one's bloody fed me for a fortnight!' the imp squeaked. 'It's an iconograph small enough to fit in a pocket,' said Vimes. 'Something for a spy . . . It's as bad as Inigo's damn one-shot crossbow. And look . . .' Steps led downwards. He took them carefully and swung open the little door at the end. Wet heat slapped into him. 'Pass me down a candle, will you, dear?' he said. And by its light he looked out into a long dank tunnel. Crusted pipes, leaking steam at every joint, lined the far wall. 'A way in and out where no one will see him, too,' he said. 'What a dirty world we live in.. .' The clouds had covered the sky and the wind was whipping thick snowflakes around the tower when Inigo finished setting up the red mortar on the platform below the big square shutters. He lit a couple of matches but the wind streamed them out before he could even cup his hands around them. 'Damn. Mhm, mmm.' He slid down the ladder and into the warmth of the tower. It'd be better to spend the night here, he thought, as he rummaged in drawers. The night didn't hold many terrors for him, but this storm had the feel of another big snow and the mountain roads would soon be treacherous. Finally an idea struck him, and he opened the door of the stove and pulled out a smouldering log with the tongs. It burst into flame when he carried it out at the top of the tower, and he directed it into the touch hole at the base of the tube. The mortar fired with a 'phut' that was lost in the wind. The flare itself tumbled invisibly up into the snow and then, a few seconds later, exploded a hundred feet overhead, casting a brief red glare over the forests. Inigo had just got back into the room when there was a knock at the door, down on the ground. He paused. There was a window and hatch at this level; the designers of the tower had at least known that it would be a good idea to be able to look down and see who was a-knocking. There was no one there. When he'd climbed back into the room the knock came again. He hadn't locked the door after Vimes went. A bit late to regret that now, he realized. But Inigo Skimmer had trained in an academy that made the School of Hard Knocks look like a sandpit. He lit a candle and crept down the ladder in the darkness, shadows fleeing and dancing among the stacks of provisions. With the candle set down on a box, he pulled the one-shot crossbow from inside his coat and, with an effort, cocked it against the wall. Then he flexed his left arm and felt the palm dagger ease itself into position. He clicked his heels in a certain way and sensed the tiny blades slide out from the toes. And Inigo settled down to wait. Behind him something blew the candle out. As he turned, and the crossbow's one bolt whirred into darkness, and the palm dagger scythed at nothing, it occurred to Inigo Skimmer that you could knock on either side of a door. They really were very clever . . . 'Mhm, m-' Cheery twirled, or at least attempted to. It was not a movement that came naturally to dwarfs. 'You look very . . . nice,' said Lady Sybil. 'It goes all the way to the ground, too. I don't think anyone could possibly complain.' Unless they were remotely fashion conscious, she had to admit. The problem was that the . . . well, she had to think of them as the new dwarf women, hadn't quite settled on a look. Lady Sybil herself usually wore ballgowns of a light blue, a colour often chosen by ladies of a certain age and girth to combine the maximum of quiet style with the minimum of visibility. But dwarf girls had heard about sequins. They seemed to have decided in their bones that if they were going to overturn thousands of years of subterranean tradition they weren't going to go through all that for no damn twinset and pearls. 'And red is good,' said Lady Sybil sincerely. 'Red is a very nice colour. It's a nice red dress. Er. And the feathers. Er. The bag to carry your axe, er-' 'Not glittery enough?' said Cheery. 'No! No . . . if I was going to carry a large axe on my back to a diplomatic function I think I'd want it glittery too. Er. It is such a very large axe, of course,' she finished lamely. 'You think perhaps a smaller one might be better? For evening wear?' 'That would be a start, yes.' 'Perhaps with a few rubies set in the handle?' 'Yes,' said Lady Sybil weakly. 'Why not, after all?' 'What about me, ladyship?' Detritus rumbled. Igor had certainly risen to the occasion, applying to a number of suits found in the embassy wardrobes the same pioneering surgical skills that he used on unfortunate loggers and other people who may have strayed too close to a bandsaw. It had taken him just ninety minutes to construct something around Detritus. It was definitely evening dress. You couldn't get away with it in daylight. The troll looked like a wall with a bow tie. 'How does it all feel?' said Lady Sybil, playing for safety. 'It are rather tight around der- What's dis bit called?' 'I really have no idea,' said Lady Sybil. 'It makes me lurch a bit,' said Detritus. 'But I feel very diplomatic.' 'Not the crossbow, however,' said Lady Sybil. 'Shegot her axe,' said Detritus accusingly. 'Dwarf axes are accepted as a cultural weapon,' said Lady Sybil. 'I don't know the etiquette here, but I suppose you could get away with a club.' After all, she added to herself, it's not as though anyone would try to take it off you. 'Der crossbow ain't cultural?' 'I'm afraid not.' 'I could put, like, glitter on it.' 'Not enough, I'm afraid- Oh, Sam. . .' 'Yes, dear?' said Vimes, coming down the stairs. 'That's just your Watch dress uniforml What about your ducal regalia?' 'Can't find it anywhere,' said Vimes innocently. 'I think the bag must have fallen off the coach in the pass, dear. But I've got a helmet with feathers in it and Igor's buffed up the breastplate until he could see his face in it, although I'm not sure why.' He quailed at her expression. 'Duke is a military term, dear. No soldier would ever go to war in tights. Not if he thought he might be taken prisoner.' 'I find this highly suspicious, Sam.' 'Detritus will back me up on this,' said Vimes. 'Days right, sir,' the troll rumbled. 'You distinctly said to say dat ' 'Anyway, we'd better be goi- Good grief, is that Cheery?' 'Yes, sir,' said Cheery nervously. Well, thought Vimes, she comes from a family where people go off in strange clothes. to face explosions far away from the sun. 'Very nice,' he said. Lamps were lit all along the tunnel to what Vimes had come to think of as Downtown Bonk. Dwarf guards waved the coach through after a mere glance at the Ankh-Morpork crest. The ones around the giant elevator were more uncertain. But Sam Vimes had learned a lot from watching Lady Sybil. She didn't mean to act like that, but she'd been born to it, into a class that had always behaved this way: you went through the world as if there was no possibility that anyone would stop you or question you, and most of the time that's exactly what didn't happen. There were others in the elevator as it rumbled downwards. Mostly they were diplomats that Vimes didn't recognize, but there was also, now, in a roped-off corner, a quartet of dwarf musicians playing pleasant yet slightly annoying music that ate its way into Vimes's head as the interminable descent went on. When the doors opened he heard Sybil gasp. 'I thought you said it was like a starry night down here, Sam!' 'Er, they've certainly turned the wick up . . .' Candles by the thousand burned in brackets all around the walls of the huge cavern, but it was the chandeliers that caught the eye. There were scores of them, each at least four storeys high. Vimes, always ready to look for the wires behind the smoke and mirrors, made out the dwarfs working inside the gantries and the baskets of fresh candles being lowered through holes in the ceiling. If the Fifth Elephant wasn't a myth, at least one whole toe must be being burned tonight. 'Your grace!' Dee was advancing through the crowds. ,Ah, Ideas Taster,' said Vimes as the dwarf approached, 'do allow me to introduce you to the Duchess of Ankh . . . Lady Sybil.' 'Uh . . . er . . . yes . . . indeed . . . so delighted to make your acquaintance,' Dee- murmured, caught off guard by the charm offensive. 'But, er. ..' Sybil had picked up the code. Vimes loathed the word 'Duchess', so if he was using it then he wanted her to out-dutch everyone. She enveloped Dee's pointy head in delighted Duchessness. 'Mister Dee, Sam has told me so much about you!' she trilled. 'I understand you're quite the right-hand man-' '-dwarf-' hissed Vimes. '-dwarf to his majesty! Please, you must tell me how you have achieved such a delightful lighting effect here!' 'Er, lots of candles,' Dee muttered, glaring at Vimes. 'I think Dee wishes to discuss some political matters with me, dear,' said Vimes smoothly, putting his hand on the dwarf's shoulder. 'If you'll just take the others down, I'll join you shortly, I'm sure.' And he knew that no power in the world was going to prevent Sybil sweeping on down to the reception. That woman could sweep. Things stayed swept after she'd gone past. 'You brought a troll, you brought a troll!' muttered Dee. 'And he's an Ankh-Morpork citizen, remember,' said Vimes. 'Covered by diplomatic immunity and a rather bad suit.' 'Even so-' 'There is no "even so",' said Vimes. 'We are at war with the trolls!' 'Well, that's what diplomacy is all about, isn't it?' said Vimes. 'A way to stop being at war? Anyway, I understand it's been going on for five hundred years, so obviously no one is trying very hard.' 'There will be complaints at the very highest level!' Vimes sighed. 'More?' he said. 'Some are saying Ankh-Morpork is deliberately flaunting its wickedness before the King!' 'The King?' said Vimes pleasantly. 'He's not exactly King yet, is he? Not until the coronation, which involves a certain . . . object . . .' 'Yes, but of course that is a mere formality.' Vimes moved closer. 'But it isn't, is it?' he said quietly. 'It is the thing and the whole of the thing. Without the magic, there is no king. Just someone like you, unaccountably giving orders.' 'Someone called Vimes teaches me about royalty?' said Dee miserably. 'And without the thing, all the bets are off,' said Vimes. 'There will be a war. Explosions underground.' There was a tinny little- sound as he took out his watch and opened it. 'My word, it's midnight,' he said. 'Follow me,' Dee muttered. 'Am I being taken to see something?' said Vimes. 'No, your excellency. You are being taken to see where something is not.' 'Ah. Then I want to bring Corporal Littlebottom.' 'That?Absolutely not! That would be a desecration of-' 'No, it wouldn't,' said Vimes. 'And the reason is, she won't come with us because we're not going, are we? You're certainly not taking the representative of a potentially hostile power into your confidence and revealing that your house of cards is missing a card on the bottom layer, are you? Of course not. We are not having this conversation. For the next hour or so we'll be nibbling titbits in this room. I haven't even just said this, and you didn't hear me. But Corporal Littlebottom is the best scene-of-crime officer I've got, and so I want her to come along with us.' 'You've made your point, your excellency. Graphically, as always. Fetch her, then.' Vimes found Cheery standing back to back, or at least back to knees, with Detritus. They were surrounded by a ring of the curious. Whenever Detritus raised his hand to sip his drink the nearby dwarfs jumped back hurriedly. 'Where are we going, sir?' 'Nowhere.' 'Ah. That sort of place.' 'But things are looking up,' said Vimes. 'Dee has discovered a new pronoun, even if he does spit it.' 'Sam!' said Lady Sybil, advancing through the throng, 'they're going to perform Bloodaxe and Ironhammer! Isn't that wonderful?' 'Er. ..' 'It's an opera, sir,' Cheery whispered. 'Part of the Koboldean Cycle. It's history. Every dwarf knows it by heart. It's about how we got laws, and kings . . . and the Scone, sir.' 'I sang the part of Ironhammer when we did it at finishing school,' said Lady Sybil. 'Not the full five-week version, of course. It'll be marvellous to see it done here. It's really one of the great romances of history.' 'Romances?' said Vimes. 'Like . . . a love story?' 'Yes. Of course.' 'Bloodaxe and Ironhammer were both . . . er . . . weren't both . . .' Vimes began. 'They were both dwarfs, sir,' said Cheery. 'Ah. Of course.' Vimes gave up. All dwarfs were dwarfs. If you tried to understand their world from a human point of view it all went wrong. 'Do, er, enjoy it, dear. I've got to . . . The King wants me to . . . I'll just be somewhere else for a while. Politics. . .' He hurried away, with Cheery trailing behind him. Dee led the way through dark tunnels. When the opera began it was a whisper far away, like the sea in an ancient shell. Eventually they stopped at the edge of a canal, its waters lapping at the darkness. A small boat was tethered there, with a waiting guard. Dee urged them into it. 'It is important that you understand what you are seeing, your grace,' said Dee. 'Practically nothing,' said Vimes. 'And I thought I had good night vision.' There was a clink in the gloom, and then a lamp was lit. The guard was punting the boat under an arch and into a small lake. Apart from the tunnel entrance, the walls rose up sheer. 'Are we at the bottom of a well?' said Vimes. 'That is quite a good way of describing it.' Dee fished under his seat. He produced a curved metal horn and blew one note which echoed up the rock walls. After a few seconds another note floated down from the top. There was a clanking, as of heavy, ancient chains. 'This is quite a short lift compared to some up in the mountains,' said Dee, as an iron plate ground across the entrance, sealing it. 'There's one half a mile high that will take a string of barges.' Water boiled beside the boat. Vimes saw the walls begin to sink. 'This is the only way to the Scone,' said Dee behind him. Now the boat was rocking in the bubbling water and the walls were blurred. 'Water is diverted into reservoirs up near the peaks. Then it is simply a matter of opening and closing sluices, you see?' 'Yes,' mumbled Vimes, experiencing vertigo and seasickness in one tight green package. The walls slowed. The boat stopped shaking. The water lifted them smoothly over the lip of the well and into a little channel, where there was a dock. 'Any guards below?' Vimes managed, stepping out on to the blessedly solid stone. 'There are usually four,' said Dee. 'For tonight I . . . arranged matters. The guards understand. No one is proud of this. I must tell you, I disapprove most strongly of this enterprise.' Vimes looked around the new cave. A couple of dwarfs were standing on a lip of stone that overlooked what was now a placid pool. By the look of it, they were the ones who operated the machinery. 'Shall we proceed?' said the dwarf. There was a passage leading off the cave, which rapidly narrowed. Vimes had to bend almost double along one length. At one point metal plates clanked under his feet, and he felt them shift slightly. Then he was standing almost upright again, passing under another arch, and there . . . Either the dwarfs had cut into a huge geode or they had with great care lined this small cave with quartz crystals until every surface reflected the light of the two small candles that stood on pillars in the middle of the sandy floor. The effect dazzled even Vimes after the darkness of the tunnels. 'Behold,' said Dee gloomily, 'where the Scone should be.' A round flat stone, midway between the candles and only a few inches high, clearly held nothing. Behind it water bubbled up in a natural basin and split into two streams that flowed around the stone and disappeared again into another stone funnel. 'All right,' said Vimes. 'Tell me everything.' 'It was reported missing three days ago,' said Dee. 'Dozy Longfinger found it gone when he went in to replace the candles.' 'And his job is. . .' 'Captain of the Candles.' Ah. 'It's a very responsible position.' 'I've seen the chandeliers. And how often does he go in there?' 'He went in there every day.' 'Went?' 'He no longer holds the position.' 'Because he's a prime suspect?' said Vimes. 'Because he's dead.' 'And how did that happen?' said Vimes, slowly and deliberately. 'He . . . took his own life. We're certain of this because we had to break down the door of his cave. He'd been Captain of the Candles for sixty years. I think he couldn't bear the thought of suspicion falling on him.' 'To me he does sound a likely suspect.' 'He did not steal the Scone. We know that much.' 'But the robes you people wear could hide practically anything. Was he searched?' 'Certainly not! But . . . I'll demonstrate,' said Dee. He walked off along the narrow, metalfloored corridor. 'Can you see me, your excellency?' 'Yes, of course.' The floor rattled as Dee came back. 'Now this time I'll carry something . . . Your helmet, if you please? Just for the demonstration.' Vimes handed it to him. The Ideas Taster walked back down the corridor. When he was halfway a gong boomed and two metal grilles dropped down out of the ceiling. A few seconds after that guards appeared at the far grille, peering in suspiciously. Dee said a few words to them. The faces vanished. After a while the grilles rose slowly. 'The mechanism is complex and quite old, but we keep it in good working order,' he said, handing Vimes his helmet. 'If you weigh more going out than going in, the guards will want to know why. It's unavoidable, it is still accurate to within a few ounces, and does not violate privacy. The only way to beat it would be to fly. Can thieves fly, your excellency?' 'Depends on which sort,' said Vimes absently. 'Who else goes in there?' 'Once every six days the chamber is inspected by myself and two guards. The last inspection was five days ago.' 'Does anyone else go in there?' said Vimes. He noticed that Cheery had picked up a handful of the off-white sand that formed the floor of the Scone Cave and was letting it run between her fingers. 'Not lately. When the new king is crowned, of course, the Scone will often be brought forth for ceremonial purposes.' 'Do you only get that white sand in here?' 'Yes. Is that important?' Vimes saw Cheery nod. 'I'm not . . . sure,' he said. 'Tell me, what intrinsic value has the Scone?' 'Intrinsic? It's priceless!' 'I know it's valuable as a symbol, but what is its value in itself?' 'Priceless!' 'I'm trying to work out why a thief might want to steal it,' said Vimes, as patiently as he could. Cheery had lifted up the flat round stone and was looking underneath it. Vimes pursed his lips. 'What is . . . she doing?' said Dee. The pronoun dripped with distaste. 'Corporal Littlebottom is looking for clues,' said Vimes. 'They are what we call signs, which may help us. It's a skill.' 'Would this letter speed your search?' said Dee. 'It has writing on it. That is what we call . . . signs, which may help you.' Vimes looked at the proffered paper. It was brown and quite stiff, and covered in runes. 'I, er, can't read those,' he said. 'It's a skill,' said Dee solemnly. 'I can, sir,' said Cheery. 'Allow me?' She took the paper and read it. 'Er, it appears to be a ransom note, sir. From . . . the Sons of Agi Hammerthief. They say they have the Scone and will . . . They say they'll destroy it, sir.' 'Where's the money?' said Vimes. 'They say Rhys must renounce all claim to be Low King,' said Dee..'There are no other conditions. The note turned up on my desk. But everyone puts paperwork on my desk these days.' 'Who are the Sons of Agi Hammerthief?' said Vimes, looking at Dee. 'And why didn't you tell me about this before?' 'We don't know. It's just a made-up name. Some malcontents, we assume. And I was told you would ask me questions.' 'But this isn't a real crime any more, is it?' said Vimes. 'This is politics. Why can't the King just renounce all claim, get the Scone back, and then say he had his fingers crossed? If it's done under duress-' 'We take our ceremonies seriously, your excellency. If Rhys renounces the throne, he cannot change his mind next day. If he allows the Scone to be destroyed, then the kingship has no legitimacy and there will-' '-be trouble,' said Vimes. And it'll spread to Ankh-Morpork, he added to himself. At the moment it's only riots. 'Who'll become King if he abdicates?' 'Albrecht Albrechtson, as everyone knows.' 'And that will be trouble, too,' said Vimes. 'Civil war, from what I hear.' 'The King says,' said Dee quietly, 'that he is minded to step down nevertheless. Better any king than chaos. Dwarfs do not like chaos.' 'It's going to be chaos either way, though,' said Vimes. 'There've been rebellions against kings before. Dwarfdom survives. The Crown continues. The lore abides. The Scone remains. There is . . . a sanity to come back to.' Oh, my gods, thought Vimes. Thousands of dwarfs die but that's all right if a lump of rock survives. 'I'm not a policeman here. What can I do?' 'This hasn't happened!' shrieked Dee, his nerve cracking. 'But everyone knows that foreigners from Ankh-Morpork do not mind their own business!' 'Ah, you mean . . . given that you don't want people to know about this . . . it would look bad if you appeared to be too excited, but you can't be blamed if a stupid flatfoot pokes his nose into things?' Dee waved his hands in the air. 'This wasn't my idea!' 'Look, the security you've got here would disgrace a children's piggybank. I can think of two or three ways of getting the Scone out of here. What about the secret passage into this room?' 'I know of no secret passage into this room!' 'Oh, good. At least we've ruled out something. Go and wait by the boat. Corporal Littlebottom and I have to talk about some things.' Dee left reluctantly. Vimes waited until the dwarf was visible in the glow of the candles beyond the weighbridge. 'What a mess,' he said. 'Locked-room mysteries are even worse when they leave the room unlocked.' 'You're thinking that Dozy might have worn bags of sand under his robes, aren't you, sir?' said Cheery. No, thought Vimes, I wasn't. But now I know how a dwarf would solve this. 'Possibly,' he said aloud. 'Grubby white sand can't be uncommon. You'd add a bit of sand every day, yes? Just enough not to trigger the scales. Finally you've got . . . How much does the Scone weigh?' 'About sixteen pounds, sir.' 'All right. Dump the sand on the floor, shove the Scone under your robes, and . . . it might just work.' 'Risky, sir.' 'But no one thinks anyone is really going to try to steal the Scone. Would you try to tell me that four guards sitting in that little guardhouse on a twelve-hour shift will be alert all the time? That's enough for a hand of poker!' 'I suppose they rely on the fact that they know when a boat comes up, sir.' 'Right. Big mistake. And you know what? I bet that when a boat's just gone down that's the time they're least alert. Cheery, if a human could get in here they could get into the Scone Cave. They'd have to be nimble and a good swimmer, but they could do it.' 'The guards on the gates were pretty keen, sir.' 'Well, yes. Guards always are, just after a theft. Smart as foxes and sharp as knives, just in case anyone wonders if it was them who dropped off to sleep at the wrong time. I'm a copper, Cheery. I know how dull guarding can be. Especially when you know that no one is ever going to steal what you're guarding.' He scuffed the sand with his boot. 'They were looking hard at every cart that went in or out this morning. But that was because the Scone had been stolen. It's at times like this you get very official, very efficient and very pointless activity. Don't try to tell me that last week they opened every barrel and prodded every load of hay. Even the stuff coming in? Can you see Dee? Is he looking at me?' Cheery peered around Vimes. 'No, sir.' 'Good.' Vimes walked over to the tunnel, pressed his back against a wall, took a deep breath and walked his legs up the opposite wall. Then he eased his way out over the plates of the weighbridge, inched along with feet and shoulderblades and, wincing at every protest from his knees, eventually dropped down. He walked across to Dee, who was talking to the guards. 'How did-' 'Never. mind,' said Vimes. 'Let's just say I'm longer than a dwarf, shall we?' 'Have you solved it?' 'No. But I have an idea.' 'Really? Already?' said Dee. 'And what is that?' 'I'm still working it out,' said Vimes. 'But it's lucky the King told you to ask me, Dee. One thing I have found out is that no dwarf will give you the right answer.' The opera was near the end as Vimes slipped into the seat beside Sybil. 'Have I missed anything?' he said. 'It's very good. Where have you been?' 'You wouldn't believe me.' He stared, unseeing, at the stage. A couple of dwarfs were engaged in a very careful mock battle. All right, then. If it was politics it was . . . well, politics. There was nothing he could do about politics. So, think about it as a crime . . . What was the simple solution? Best to start with the first rule of policing: suspect the victim. Vimes wasn't quite sure who the victim was here, though. So suspect the witness. That was another good rule. That meant the late Dozy. He could have walked out with the Scone days before he 'discovered' the loss. He could have done just about anything. The way the thing was guarded was a joke. Nobby and Colon could have done it better. Much better, he corrected himself, because they had devious little minds and that was what made them coppers. The guards of the Scone were honourable dwarfs, the last people you wanted to entrust with anything. You wanted sneaky people for a job like this. But it made no sense. He'd be the prime suspect. Vimes wasn't well up on dwarf law, but he figured there was not a huge friendly future in store for a prime suspect, especially if no other solution was forthcoming. Maybe he'd snapped after sixty years of changing candles? That didn't sound right. Anyone who could put up with a job like that for ten years would probably run in their groove for the rest of eternity. Anyway, Dozy had now gone to the great big goldmine in the sky or deep underground or whatever it was dwarfs believed in. He wasn't going to be answering any questions. He could solve this, Vimes told himself. Everything he needed was there, if only he asked the right questions and thought the right way. But his Vimish instincts were trying to tell him something else. This was a crime - if holding a piece of property to ransom was technically a crime - but it wasn't the crime. There was another crime here. He knew it in the same way that a fisherman spots the shoal by the ripple on the water. The fight on stage continued. It was slowed by the need to stop after every gingerly exchanged axe blow for a song, probably about gold. 'Er, what's this all about?' he said. 'It's nearly over,' whispered Sybil. 'They've only performed the bit concerning the baking of the Scone, really, but at least they've included the Ransom Aria. Ironhammer escapes from prison with the help of Skalt, steals the truth that Agi has hidden, conceals it by baking it into the Scone, and persuades the guards around Bloodaxe's camp to let him pass. The dwarfs believe that truth was once a, a thing . . . a sort of ultimate rare metal, really, and the last bit of it is inside the Scone. And the .guards can't resist, because of the sheer power of it. The song is about how love, like truth, will always reveal itself, just as the grain of truth inside the Scone makes the whole thing true. It's actually one of the finest pieces of music in the world. Gold is hardly mentioned at all.' Vimes stared. He got lost in any song more complex than the sort with titles like 'Where Has All The Custard Gone (Jelly's Just Not The Same)?' 'Bloodaxe and Ironhammer,' he muttered, aware that dwarfs around them were giving him annoyed looks. 'Which one was-' 'Cheery told you. They were both dwarfs,' said Sybil sharply. 'Ah,' said Vimes glumly. He was always a little out of his depth in these matters. There were men, and there were women. He was clear on that. Sam Vimes was an uncomplicated man when it came to what poets called 'the lists of love'.* In some parts of the Shades, he knew, people adopted a more pickand-mix approach. Vimes looked upon this as he looked upon a distant country; he'd never been there, and it wasn't his problem. It amazed him what people got up to when they had time on their hands. He just found it hard to imagine a world without a map. It wasn't that the dwarfs ignored sex, it really didn't seem important to them. If humans thought the same way, his job would be a lot simpler. There seemed to be a deathbed scene now. It was a little hard for Vimes, with his shaky command of , Ankh-Morpork street dwarfish, to follow what was going on. Someone was dying, and someone else was very sorry about it. Both the main singers had beards you could hide a chicken in. They weren't bothering to act, apart from infrequently waving an arm in the direction of the other singer. But there were sobs all around him, and occasionally the trumpeting of a blown nose. Even Sybil's lower lip was trembling. It's just a song, he wanted to say. It's not real. Crime and streets and chases . . . they're real. A song won't get you out of a tight corner. Try *He'd noticed that sex bore some resemblance to cookery: it fascinated people, they sometimes bought books full of complicated recipes and interesting pictures, and sometimes when they were really hungry they created vast banquets in their imagination - but at the end of the day they'd settle quite happily for egg and chips. If it was well done and maybe had a slice of tomato. waving a large bun at an armed guard in AnkhMorpork and see how far it gets you . . . He shouldered his way through the throng after the performance, which from the humans present had received the usual warm reception that such things always got from people who hadn't really understood what was going on but rather felt that they should have done. Dee was talking to a black-clad, heavily built young man who looked vaguely familiar to Vimes. Vimes must have looked familiar to him as well because he gave him a nod just short of offensiveness. 'Ah, your grace Vimes,' he said. 'And did you enjoy the opera?' 'Especially the bit about the gold,' said Vimes. 'And you are-?' The man clicked his heels.'Wolf von Uberwald!' Something went 'bing' in Vimes's head. And his eyes picked up details - the slight lengthening of the incisors, the way the blond hair was so thick around the collar 'Angua's brother?' he said. 'Yes, your grace.' 'Wolf the wolf, eh?' 'Thank you, your grace,' said Wolf solemnly. 'That is very funny. Indeed, yes! It is quite some time since I heard that one! Your Ankh-Morpork sense of humour!' 'But you're wearing silver on your ... uniform. Those . . . insignias. Wolf heads biting the lightning . . .' Wolf shrugged. 'Ah, the kind of thing a policeman would notice. But they are nickel!' 'I don't recognize the regiment.' 'We are more of a . . . movement,' said Wolf. The stance was Angua's, too. It was the poised, fight-or-flight look, as if the whole body was a spring eager to unwind and 'flight' wasn't an option. People in the presence of Angua when she was in a bad mood tended to turn up their collars without quite knowing why. But the eyes were different. They weren't like Angua's. They weren't even like the eyes of a wolf. No animal had eyes like that, but Vimes saw them occasionally in some of Ankh-Morpork's less salubrious drinking establishments, where if you were lucky you'd get out the door before the drink turned you blind. Colon called that sort of person a 'bottle covey', Nobby preferred 'soddin' nutter' but whatever the name Vimes recognized a headbutting, eye-gouging, down-and-dirty bastard when he saw one. In a fight you'd have no alternative but to lay him out or cut him down, because otherwise he'd do his very best to kill you. Most bar fighters wouldn't usually go that far, because killing a copper was known to be bad news for the murderer and anyone else who knew him, but your true nutter wouldn't worry about that because, while he was fighting, his brain was somewhere else. Wolf smiled. 'There is a problem, your grace?' 'What? No. Just . . . thinking. I feel I've met you before . . . ?' 'You called on my father this morning.' 'Ah, yes.' 'We don't always change for visitors, your grace,' said Wolf. There was an orange light in his eyes now. Until then Vimes had thought that 'glowing eyes' was just a figure of speech. 'If you'll excuse me, I do need to talk to the Ideas Taster for a moment,' said Vimes. 'Politics.' Dee followed him into a quiet spot. 'Yes?' 'Did Dozy go to the Scone Cave at the same time every day?' 'I believe so. It depended on his other duties.' 'So he didn't go in at the same time every day. Right. When does the guard change?' 'At each three o'clock.' 'Did he go in before the guards change or afterwards?' 'That would depend on-' 'Oh dear. Don't the guards write anything down?' Dee stared at Vimes. 'Are you saying he could have gone in twice in one day?' 'Very good. But I'm saying someone might have. A dwarf comes up in a boat alone, carrying a couple of candles. Would the guards take that much interest? And if another dwarf carrying a couple of candles came up an hour or so later, when the new guards were there . . . well, is there any real risk? Even if our faker was noticed he'd just have to mutter something about . . . oh, bad candles or something. Damp wicks. Anything.' Dee looked distant. 'It's still a great risk,' he said at last. 'If our thief was keeping an eye on the guard changes, and knew where the real Dozy was, it'd be worth it, wouldn't it? For the Scone?' Dee shuddered and then nodded. 'In the morning the guards will be closely questioned,' he said. 'By me.' 'Why?' 'Because I know what kind of questions get answers. We'll set up an office here. We'll find out the movements of everyone and talk to all the guards, Okay? Even the ones on the gates. We'll find out who went in and out.' 'You already think you know something.' 'Let's say some ideas are forming, shall we?' 'I will . . . see to matters.' Vimes straightened up and walked back to Lady Sybil, who stood like an island in a sea of dwarfs. She was talking animatedly to several of them who Vimes vaguely recognized as performers in the opera. 'What have you been up to, Sam?' she said. 'Politics, I'm afraid,' said Vimes. 'And trusting my instincts. Can you tell me who's watching. us?' 'Oh, it's that game, is it?' said Sybil. She smiled happily, and in the tones of someone chatting about inconsequential things said, 'Practically everyone. But if I was handing out prizes I'd choose the rather sad lady in the little group just off to your left. She's got fangs, Sam. And pearls, too. They don't exactly accessorize.' 'Can you see Wolfgang?' 'Er, no, not now you come to mention it. That's odd. He was around a moment ago. Have you been upsetting people?' 'I think I may let people upset themselves,' said Vimes. 'Good for you. You do that so well.' Vimes half turned, like someone just taking in the view. In amongst the human guests the dwarfs moved and clustered. Five or six would come together and talk animatedly. Then one would drift away and join another group. He might be replaced. And sometimes an entire group would spread out like the debris of an explosion, each member heading towards another group. Vimes got the impression that there was a kind of structure behind all this, some slow, purposeful dance of information. Mineshaft meetings, he thought. Small groups, because there wouldn't be room for more. And you don't talk too loudly. And then when the group decides, every member is an ambassador for that decision. The word spreads out in circles. It's like running a society on formal gossip. It occurred to him that it was also a way in which two plus two could be debated and weighed and considered and discussed until it became four-and-a-bit, or possibly an egg.* Occasionally a dwarf would stop and stare before hurrying away. 'We're supposed to go in for supper, dear,' said Sybil, indicating the general drift towards a brightly lit cave. *Vimes had once discussed the Ephebian idea of 'democracy' with Carrot, and had been rather interested in the idea that everyonet had a vote until he found out that while he, Vimes, would have a vote, there was no way in the rules that anyone could prevent Nobby Nobbs from having one as well. Vimes could see the flaw there straight away. *Apart from the women, children, slaves, idiots and people who weren't really our kind of people. 'Oh dear. Quaffing, do you think? Rats on sticks? Where's Detritus?' 'Over there, talking to the cultural attache from Genua. That's the man with the glazed expression.' As they got closer Vimes heard Detritus's voice in full expansive explanation: '-and den der's dis big room wid all seats in it, wid red walls and dem big gold babies climbin' up der pillar, only don't worry, 'cos dey're not real gold babies, dey're only made of plaster or somethin' . . .' There was a pause as Detritus considered matters. 'An' also I don't reckon it's real gold, neither, 'cos some bugger'd have pinched it if it was . . . and in front of der stage der's dis big pit where all der musicians sits. And days about it for dat room. In der next room der's all dese marble pillars, an' on der floor dey got red carpeting-' 'Detritus?' said Lady Sybil. 'I do hope you're not monopolizing this gentleman.' 'No, I bin tellin' him all about der culture we got in Ankh-Morpork,' said Detritus airily. 'I know just about every inch of der op'ra house.' 'Yes,' said the cultural attache in a stunned voice. 'And I must say I'm particularly interested in visiting the art gallery and seeing' - he shuddered - "'der picture of dis woman, I don't reckon der artist knew how to do a smile prop'ly, but der frame's got to be worth a bob or two." It sounds like the experience of a lifetime. Good evening to you.' 'You know, I don't fink he knows a lot of culture,' said Detritus as the man strode away. 'Do you think people will miss us if we slip away?' said Vimes, looking around. 'It's been a long day and I want to think about things-' 'Sam, you are the ambassador, and AnkhMorpork is a world power,' said Sybil. 'We can't just sneak off! People will comment.' Vimes groaned. So Inigo was right: when Vimes sneezes, Ankh-Morpork blows its nose. 'Your excellency?' He looked down at two dwarfs. 'The Low King will see you now,' said one of them. 'Er. ..' 'We will have to be officially .presented,' Lady Sybil hissed. 'What, even Detritus?' 'Yes!' 'But he's a troll!' It had seemed amusing at the time. Vimes was aware of a drift in the crowds across the floor of the huge cave. There was a certain movement to them, a flow in the current of people towards one end of the cave. There was really no option but to join it. The Low King was on a small throne under one of the chandeliers. There was a metal canopy over it, already encrusted with marvellous stalactites of wax. Around him, watching the crowd, were four dwarfs, tall for dwarfs, and looking rather menacing in their dark glasses. Each one was holding an axe. They spent all their time staring hard at people. The King was talking to the Genuan ambassador. Vimes looked sideways at Cheery and Detritus. Suddenly, bringing them here wasn't such a good idea. In his official robes the King looked a lot more . . . distant, and a lot harder to please. Hang on, he told himself. They are AnkhMorpork citizens. They're not doing anything wrong. And then he argued: they're not doing anything wrong in Ankh-Morpork. The line moved along. Their party was almost in the presence. The armed dwarfs were all watching Detritus now, and holding their axes in a slightly less relaxed way. Detritus appeared not to notice. 'Dis place is even more cult'ral than the op'ra house,' he said, gazing around respectfully. 'Dem chandeliers must weigh a ton.' He reached up and rubbed his head, and then inspected his fingers. Vimes glanced up. Something warm, like a buttered raindrop, hit his cheek. As he brushed it away he saw the shadows move . . . Things happened with treacle slowness. He saw it as if he was watching himself from a little way away. He saw himself push Cheery and Sybil roughly, heard himself shout something, and watched himself dive towards the King, snatching the dwarf up as an axe clanged into his backplate. Then he was rolling, with the angry dwarf in his arms, and the chandelier was halfway through its fall, candle flames streaming, and there was Detritus, raising his hands with a calculating look on his face . . . There was a moment of stillness and silence as the troll caught the descending mountain of light. And then physics returned, in an exploding cloud of dwarfs, debris, molten wax and tumbling, flaring candles. Vimes woke up in darkness. He blinked and touched his eyes to make sure that they were open. Then he sat up and his head thumped against stone, and then there was light, vicious yellow and purple lights, filling his life very suddenly. He lay back until they went away. He took a personal itinerary. His cloak, helmet, sword and armour had all gone. He was left in his shirt and breeches, and while this place was not freezing it had a clamminess that was already working its way through to his bones. Right . . . He wasn't sure how long it took him to get a feel for the cell, but a feel it was. He moved by inches, waving his arms ahead of him like a man practising a very slow martial art against the darkness. Even then the senses became unreliable in the total black. He followed the wall carefully, followed another wall, followed a wall which yielded, under his fingertips, the outline of a small door with a handle, and found the wall which had the stone slab against it on which he'd awoken. What made this all the harder was having to do it with his head sunk against his chest. Vimes wasn't a very tall man. If he had been, he'd probably have cracked his skull when he woke up. Without any other aids to rely on, he walked the length of the walls using his copper's pace. He knew exactly how long it took him, swinging his legs easily, to walk across the Brass Bridge back home. A little bit of muzzy mental arithmetic was needed, but eventually he decided that the room was ten feet square. One thing that Vimes did not do was shout 'Help! Help!' He was in a cell. Someone had put him in a cell. It was reasonable to assume, therefore, that whoever had done this wasn't interested in his opinions. He groped his way to the stone slab again and lay down. As he did so something rattled. His patted his pockets and brought out what felt and sounded very much like a box of matches. There were only three left. So . . . resources: the clothes he stood up in and a few matches. Now to work out what the hell was going on. He remembered seeing the chandelier. He thought he remembered seeing Detritus actually catch the thing. And there had been a lot of screaming and shouting and running around, while in his arms the King had sworn at Vimes as only a dwarf could swear. Then someone had hit him. There was also an ache across his back where an axe had been turned aside by his armour. He felt a twitch of national pride at that thought. Ankh-Morpork armour had stood up to the blow! Admittedly it was probably made in Ankh-Morpork by dwarfs from Uberwald, using steel smelted from Uberwald iron, but it damn well was Ankh-Morpork armour, just the same. There was a pillow on the slab, made in Uberwald. As Vimes turned his head the pillow went, very faintly, clink. This was a sound he didn't associate with feathers. In the darkness he picked up the sack and, after resorting to his teeth, managed to rip a hole in the heavy material. If what he drew out had ever been part of a bird, it wasn't one Vimes would like to meet. It felt very much like Inigo's one-shot. A finger inserted very gingerly into the end told Vimes that it was loaded, too. Just one shot, he remembered. But it was one people didn't know you had . . . On the other hand, the Tooth Fairy probably wasn't responsible for putting it in the pillow, unless she'd been having to face some particularly difficult children lately. He slipped it back into the bag when he became aware of a light. It was the faintest glow, showing that the door contained a barred window and that there were shadowy figures on the other side of it. 'Are you awake, your grace? This is very unfortunate.' 'Dee?' 'Yes.' 'And you've come to tell me this has all been some terrible mistake?' 'Alas, no. I am convinced of your innocence, of course.' 'Really? Me too,' growled Vimes. 'In fact I'm so convinced of my innocence I don't even know what it is I'm innocent of! Let me out or-' '- or you will stay in, I am afraid,' said Dee. 'It is a very strong door. You are not in Ankh-Morpork, your grace. I will of course communicate your predicament to your Lord Vetinari as soon as possible, but I understand that the message tower has been badly damaged-' 'My predicament is that you've locked me up! Why? I saved your king, didn't I?' 'There is . . . conflict.' 'Someone let that chandelier down!' 'Yes, indeed. A member of your staff, it appears.' 'You know that can't be true! Detritus and Littlebottom were with me when-' 'Mister Skimmer was on your staff?' 'He . . . Yes, but . . . I . . . he wouldn't-' 'I believe you have such a thing in Ankh-Morpork as the Guild of Assassins?' said Dee calmly. 'Correct me if I am wrong.' 'He was up at the tower!' 'The damaged tower?' 'It was damaged before he-' Vimes stopped. 'Why would he smash up one of the towers?' 'I did not say he would,' said Dee. The flat calm was still there. 'And then, your grace, it has been suggested that you gave a signal just before the thing came down...' 'What?' 'A hand to the cheek, or something. It has been suggested that you anticipated the event.' 'The thing was swaying! Look, let me talk to Skimmer!' 'Do you have supernatural powers, your grace?' Vimes hesitated. 'He's dead?' 'We believe he became entangled in the winch mechanism in the process of releasing the chandelier. Three dwarfs were dead around him.' 'He wouldn't-' Vimes stopped again. Of course he wouldn't. It's just that he's a member of this Guild we have, and you certainly know that, don't you-Dee must have seen his expression. 'Quite so, quite so. Everything will be investigated thoroughly. The innocent have nothing to fear.' The news that they have nothing to fear is guaranteed to strike terror into the hearts of innocents everywhere. 'What have you done with Sybil?' 'Done, your grace? Why nothing. We are not barbarians. We have heard nothing but good reports of your wife. She is upset, of course.' Vimesgroaned. 'And Detritus and Littlebottom?' 'Well, of course they were under your command, your grace. And one is a troll and the other is . . . dangerously different. And that is why, and precisely for that reason, they are under house arrest in your own embassy. We do respect the traditions of diplomacy and we will not have it said that we have acted out of malice.' Dee sighed. 'And then, of course, there is the other matter-' 'Are you going to accuse me of stealing the Scone, too?' 'You laid hands on the King.' Vimes stared. 'Huh? A ton of candlestick was about to fall on him!' 'This has been pointed out-' 'And I'm imprisoned for saving him from an assassination attempt I planned?' 'Are you?' 'No! Look, the thing was coming down, what else should I have done? Tugged at the carpet and tried to drag him away?' 'Yes, yes, I understand. But precedent in this area is very clear. In 1345, when the king at the time fell into a lake, not one member of his staff dared touch him because of the ruling, and the subsequent finding was that they had acted correctly. It is forbidden to touch the King. I have of course explained to the conclave that this is not the Ankh-Morpork way, but this is not AnkhMorpork.' 'I don't need everyone reminding me about that!' 'You will remain . . . our guest while investigations continue. Food and drink will be brought to you.' 'And light?' 'Of course. Excuse our lack of consideration. Stand back from the door, please. The guards with me are armed and they are . . . uncomplicated people.' The grille on the door was swung back. A glowing cage was put on the ledge. 'What's this? A sick glow-worm?' 'It is a kind of beetle, yes. You'll find that it will very soon seem quite bright. We are very accustomed to darkness.' 'Look,' said Vimes, as the grille was shut again, 'you know this is ridiculous! I don't know what the position is with Mister Skimmer, but I damn well intend to find out! And there's the Scone theft, I'm pretty certain I'm close to working that out, too. If you let me return to the embassy where else could I go?' 'We would not wish to find out. You may just feel that life would be more pleasant in AnkhMorpork.' 'Really? And how would we get there?' 'You may have friends in unexpected places.' Vimes thought of the evil little weapon in the pillow. 'You will not be badly treated. This is our way' said Dee. 'I will return when I have news.' 'Hey-' But Dee was a retreating shape in the crepuscular, almost-not-there light. In Vimes's cell the glow beetle was doing its best. All it managed to achieve, though, was to turn the darkness into a variety of green shadows. You could find your way around without walking into walls, but that was about the extent of it. One shot, which they didn't know you had. That'd probably get him out of the door. Into a corridor. Underground. Full of dwarfs. On the other hand, it was amazing how the evidence could stack up against you when people wanted it to. Anyway, Vimes was an ambassador! What had happened to diplomatic immunity? But that was hard to argue when you were faced with uncomplicated people with weaponry; there was a risk that they'd experiment to see if it was true. One shot they didn't expect . . . Some time later there was a rattling of keys and the door was pulled open. Vimes could make out the shape of two dwarfs. One was holding an axe, the other was bearing a tray. The dwarf with the axe motioned Vimes to step back. An axe wasn't a good idea, Vimes considered. It was always the weapon of choice amongst dwarfs, but it wasn't sensible in a confined space. He raised his hands and, as the other dwarf walked cautiously over to the stone slab, let them move towards the back of his neck. These dwarfs were nervous of him. Perhaps they didn't see humans very often. They'd remember this one. 'Want to see a trick?' said Vimes. 'Grz'dak?' 'Watch this,' said Vimes, and brought his hands around and shut his eyes just before the match flared. He heard the axe drop as its owner tried to cover his face. That was an unexpected bonus, but there wasn't time to thank the god of desperate men. Vimes plunged forward, kicked as hard as he could, and heard an 'oof' of expelled breath. Then he leapt into the patch of darkness that contained the other dwarf, found a head, spun around and rammed it into an unseen wall. The first dwarf was trying to get to his feet. Vimes fumbled for him in the gloom, pulled him up by his jerkin and rasped: 'Someone left me a weapon. They wanted me to kill you. Remember that. I could have killed you.' He punched the dwarf in the stomach. This was no time to play by the Marquis of Fantailler rules.* Then he turned, snatched the little cage containing the light beetle and headed for the door. There was a feeling of passageway, stretching off in both directions. Vimes paused for just long enough to sense the draught on his face and headed that way. Another glow beetle was hanging in a cage a little distance off. It illuminated, if such a bright word could be used for a light that merely made the darkness less black, a huge circular opening in which a fan turned lazily. The blades were so slow that Vimes was able to step between them, into the velvet cavern beyond. Someone really wants me dead, he thought, as he inched his way along the nearest invisible wall with his face to the draught. One shot they weren't expecting . . . but someone was expecting it, weren't they? *The Marquis of Fantailler got into many fights in his youth, most of them as a result of being known as the Marquis of Fantailler, and wrote a set of rules for what he termed 'the noble art of fisticuffs', which mostly consisted of a list of places where people weren't allowed to hit him. Many people were impressed with his work and later stood with noble chest out-thrust and fists balled in a spirit of manly aggression against people who hadn't read the Marquis's book but did know how to knock people senseless with a chair. The last words of a surprisingly large number of people were 'Stuff the bloody Marquis of Fantailler-' If you want to get a prisoner out of the clink, then you give him a key, or a file. You don't give him a weapon. A key might get him out; a weapon would get him killed. He stopped, one foot over emptiness. The glow beetle revealed a hole in the floor. It had the huge suckingness of depth. Then he gripped the beetle's cage between his teeth, took a few steps back and completely misjudged the distance. He hit the other side of the hole with every rib, both arms flat on the floor beyond. A bit of Ankh-Morpork sense of humour hissed between his teeth. He scrabbled his way on to the cave floor and got his breath back. Then he took the one-shot out of his pocket, fired it into the floor, tossed it into the hole - it clattered and echoed for some time - and moved on, keeping his face towards the cold air. This wasn't a tunnel any more. It was the bottom of a shaft. But the green glow lit up something heaped in the middle. Vimes picked up a handful of snow and, when he looked up, a flake melted on his face. He grinned in the dark. The beetle light just caught the edge of the spiral stairs fixed to the rock. 'Stairs' turned out to be a generous description. When the shaft had been cut, the dwarfs had made holes in the stone and hammered thick baulks of timber into them. He tried one or two. They seemed sturdy enough. With care, he'd be able to scramble . . . He was a long way up before one log snapped. He flung out his hands and caught the next one, his grip slipping on the wet wood. The glow beetle disappeared downwards and Vimes, swinging back and forth from his precarious handhold, watched the circle of dim green light dwindle to a dot and vanish. Then the realization crept over him that there was no way he would be able to pull himself up. His fingers were numb, but the rest of his entire life consisted of the amount of time they could maintain a grip on the clammy step above him. Call it a minute, perhaps. There were a lot of things that could profitably be done in a minute, but most of them couldn't be done with no hands while hanging in darkness over a long drop. He lost his grip. A moment later he smacked into the spiral of logs one turn below, which parted company with the wall. Man and timber fell one more turn. Vimes landed with a rib-bending thump across one step, while those around it gave way. Rocking gently on the one tough log, he listened to the thuds and booms as the fallen timber continued to the bottom of the shaft. ' !' Vimes had intended to swear, but the fall had knocked the breath out of him. He hung like a folded pair of old trousers. It had been a long time since he'd slept. Whatever he'd been doing on the slab it hadn't been sleep. Normal sleep didn't leave your mouth feeling as though glue had been poured into it. And only this morning the new ambassador for Ankh-Morpork had strolled out to present his credentials. Only this evening Ankh-Morpork's commander of police had set out to solve a simple little theft. And now he was dangling halfway up a freezing shaft, with a few inches of old and unreliable wood between him and a brief trip to the next world. All he could hope for was that his whole life wasn't going to pass before his eyes. There were some bits of it he didn't want to remember. 'Ah . . . Sir Samuel. Bad luck. You vere doing so vell.' He opened his eyes. A faint purple light just above him illuminated the form of the Lady Margolotta. She was sitting on empty space. 'Can I give you a lift?' she said. Vimes shook his head muzzily. 'If it makes you feel any better, I really don't like doing this,' said the vampire. 'It's so . . . expected of vun. Oh dear. That rotten old log doesn't look very-' The log snapped. Vimes landed spreadeagled on the turn below, but only for a moment. Several stairs broke and dropped him a further flight. This time he caught hold of one and was, once again, dangling. Lady Margolotta descended regally. Far below, the broken wood boomed. 'Now, in theory this might be an almost survivable vay of getting back down,' said the vampire. 'Unfortunately, I fear that the descending logs have smashed many of the vuns below.' Vimes shifted. His handhold seemed secure. It might just be possible to pull himself up . . . 'I knew you were behind this,' he muttered, trying to will some life into his shoulder muscles. 'No, you didn't. You knew that the Scone wasn't stolen, though.' Vimes stared at the serenely floating shape. 'The dwarfs wouldn't think that-' he began. The log under him gave the little nasty movement that announces to any luckless passengers that it is about to land. Lady Margolotta drifted closer. 'I know you hate vampires,' she said. 'It's quite usual, for your personality type. It's the . . . penetrative aspect. But if I vas you, right now, I'd ask myself . . . do I hate them with all my life?' She held out a hand. 'Just one bite'll end all my troubles, eh?' Vimes snarled. 'Vun bite vould be vun too many, Sam Vimes.' The wood cracked. She grabbed his wrist. If he'd thought about it at all, Vimes would have expected to be dangling from a vampire now. Instead, he was simply floating. 'Don't think of letting go,' said Margolotta as they rose gently up the shaft. 'One bite would be one too many?'said Vimes. He recognized -the mangled mantra. 'You're a . . . a teetotaller?' 'Almost four years now.' 'No blood at all?' 'Oh, yes. Animal. It's rather kinder to them than slaughter, don't you think? Of course, it makes them docile, but frankly a cow is unlikely ever to vin the Thinker of the Year avard. I'm on a vagon, Mister Vimes.' 'Thewagon. We call it the wagon,' said Vimes weakly. 'And . . . that replaces human blood?' 'Like lemonade replaces whisky. Believe me. However, the intelligent mind can find a . . . substitute.' The sides of the shaft dropped away and they were in clear, freezing air, which knifed through Vimes's shirt. They drifted sideways a little, and then Vimes was dropped into kneedeep snow. 'Vun of the better things about our dwarfs is that they don't often try something new and they never let go of anything old,' said the vampire, hovering over the snow. 'You weren't hard to find.' 'Where am I?' Vimes looked around at rocks and trees mounded in snow. 'In the mountains, quite a long way viddershins of the town, Mister Vimes. Goodbye.' 'You're going to leave me here?' 'I'm sorry? You were the one who escaped. I am certainly not here. Me, a vampire, interfering in the affairs of the dwarfs? Unthinkable! But let us just say . . . I like people to have an even chance.' 'It's freezing! I haven't even got a coat! What is it you want?' 'You have freedom, Mister Vimes. Isn't that what everyvun wants? Isn't it supposed to give you a lovely warm glow?' Lady Margolotta disappeared into the snow. Vimes shivered. He hadn't realized how warm it had been underground. Or what time it was. There was a dim, a very dim light. Was this just after sunset? Was it almost dawn? The flakes were piling up on his damp clothes, driven by the wind. Freedom could get you killed. Shelter . . . that was essential. The time of day and a precise location were no use to the dead. They always knew what time it was and where they were. He moved away from the open shaft and staggered into the trees, where the snow was less deep. It gave off a light, fainter than a sick beetle, as if snow somehow absorbed it from the air as it fell. Vimes wasn't good at forests. They were things you saw on the horizon. If he'd thought about them at all he'd imagined a lot of trees, standing like poles, brown at the bottom, bushy and green at the top. Here there were humps, and bumps, and dark branches weighted and creaking under the snow. It fell around him with a hiss. Occasionally lumps of the stuff would slide from somewhere above, and there would be another shower of frigid crystals as a branch sprang back. There was a track of sorts, or at least a wider, smoother expanse of snow. Vimes followed it, on the basis that there was no more sensible choice. The warm glow of freedom lasted only so long. Vimes had city eyes. He'd watched coppers develop them. A trainee copper who glanced once at a street was just learning, and if he didn't learn quicker he'd become highly experienced at dying. One who'd been on the streets for a while paid attention, took in details, noted shadows, saw background and foreground and the people who were trying not to be in either. Angua looked at streets like that. She worked at it. The long-term coppers, like even Nobby when he was on a good day, glanced once at a street and that was enough, because they'd seen everything. Maybe there were .. . country eyes. Forest eyes. Vimes saw trees, mounds, snow and not much else. The wind was getting up. It began to howl among the trees. Now the snow stung. Trees. Branches. Snow. Vimes kicked a mound beside the track. Snow slid off dark pine needles. He dropped to his hands and knees and pushed forward. Ah... It was still cold, and there was some snow on the dead needles, but the weighted branches had spread around the trunk like a tent. He pulled himself in, congratulating himself. It was windless here and, contrary to all common sense, the blanket of snow above him seemed to make it warmer. It even smelled warm . . . sort of . . . animal . . . Three wolves, lying lazily around the trunk of the tree, were watching him with interest. Vimes added metaphorical freezing to the other sort. The animals didn't seem frightened. Wolves l And that was about it. It made as much sense to say: snow! Or: wind! Right now, those were more certain killers. He had heard somewhere that wolves wouldn't attack you if you faced them down. The trouble was that he was going to sleep soon. He could feel it creeping over him. He wasn't thinking right, and every muscle ached. Outside, the wind moaned. And His Grace the Duke of Ankh fell asleep. He awoke with a snort and, to his surprise, all his arms and legs as well. A drop of chilled water, melted from the roof just above by the heat of his body, ran down his neck. His muscles didn't hurt any more. He couldn't feel most of them. And the wolves had gone. There was trampled snow at the far end of the makeshift lair, and light so bright that he groaned. It turned out to be daylight, from a bright sky bluer than any Vimes had seen, so blue that it seemed to shade into purple at the zenith. He stepped out into a sugar-frosted world, crunchy and glittering. Wolf tracks led away between the trees. It occurred to Vimes that following them would not be a life-enhancing move; perhaps last night had been understood as time out, but today was a new day and probably the search was on for breakfast. The sun felt warm, the air was cold, his breath hung in front of him. There should be people around, shouldn't there? Vimes was hazy on rural issues, but weren't there supposed to be charcoal burners, woodcutters and . . . he tried to think . . . little girls taking goodies to granny? The stories Vimes had learned as a kid suggested that all forests were full of bustle, activity and the occasional scream. But this place was silent. He set off in a direction that appeared to head downwards, on general principles. Food was the important thing. He'd still got a couple of matches and he could probably make a fire if he had to be out here mother night, but it was a long time since the canapes at the reception. This is Ankh-Morpork, trudging over and through the snow . . . After half an hour he reached the bottom of a shallow valley, where a stream splashed between encroaching banks of ice. It steamed. The water was warm to the touch. He followed the banks for some way. They were criss-crossed with animal tracks. Here and there the water pooled in deep hollows that smelled of rotten eggs. Around them the leafless bushes were heavy with ice, where the steam had frozen. Food could wait. Vimes stripped off his clothes and stepped into one of the deeper pools, yelping at the heat, and then lay back. Didn't they do something like this up in Nothingfjord? He'd heard stories. They had hot steamy baths and then ran around in the snow hitting one another with birch logs, didn't they? Or something. There was nothing really daft that some foreigner wouldn't do somewhere. Gods, it felt good. Hot water was civilization. Vimes could feel the stiffness in his muscles melting away in the warmth. After a moment or two he splashed over to the bank and rummaged through his clothes until he found a flattened cigar packet containing a couple of things that, after the events of the past twenty-four hours, looked like fossilized twigs. He had two matches. Well, the hell with it. Anyone could light a fire with one match. He lay back in the water. That was a good decision. He could feel himself coming back together again, pulled into shape by the heat within and without 'Ah. Your grace. . .' Wolf von Uberwald was sitting on the opposite bank. He was stark naked. A little vapour rose off him, as if he'd just been exerting himself. Muscles gleamed as though they'd been oiled. They probably had been. 'A run in the snow is such a thing, is it not?' said Wolf pleasantly. 'You are certainly learning the ways of Uberwald, your grace. Lady Sybil is alive and well and free to go back to your city when the passes are cleared. I know you would wish to hear that.' Other figures were approaching through the trees, men and women, all of them as unselfconsciously naked as Wolf. Vimes realized he was a dead man bathing. He could see it in Wolf's eyes. 'Nothing like a hot dip before breakfast,' he said. 'Ah, yes. We also have not, as yet, breakfasted,' said Wolf. He stood up, stretched, and cleared the pool from a standing start. Vimes's breeches were picked up and examined. 'I threw Inigo's damn thing away,' said Vimes. 'I don't think a friend put it there.' 'It is all a great game, your grace,' said Wolf. 'Do not reproach yourself! The strongest survive, which is as it should be!' 'Dee planned this, did he?' Wolf laughed. 'The dear little Dee? Oh, he had a plan. It was a good little plan, although a touch insane. Happily, it will no longer be required!' 'You want the dwarfs to go to war?' 'Strength is good,' said Wolf, folding Vimes's clothes neatly. 'But like some other good things, it only remains good if it is not possessed by too many people.' He tossed the clothes as far as he could. 'What is it you want me to say, your grace?' Wolf continued. 'Something like "You are going to die anyway so I might as well tell you," perhaps?' 'Well, it'd be a help,' said Vimes. 'You aregoing to die anyway.' Wolf smiled. 'Why don't you tell me?' Talking gained time. Maybe those woodcutters and charcoal burners would be along at any minute. If they hadn't brought their axes everyone was going to be in big trouble. 'I'm . . . pretty sure why the replica Scone was stolen in Ankh-Morpork,' said Vimes. 'I've just got the inkling of an idea that a copy was made of it, which was smuggled here on one of our coaches. Diplomats don't get searched.' 'Well done!' 'Shame Igor came to unload when one of your boys was there, wasn't it?' 'Oh, it's hard to hurt an Igor!' 'You don't care, do you?' said Vimes. 'A bunch of dwarfs want Albrecht on the thro- the Scone because they want to hang on to that old-time certainty, and you just want dwarfs fighting. And old Albrecht wouldn't even get the right Scone back!' 'Let us say that just now we find our interests converge, shall we?' said Wolf. Out of the corner of his eye Vimes saw the other werewolves spreading out around the pool. 'And now you've set me up,' he said. 'Pretty amateurishly, I'd say. But impressive, because Dee couldn't have had much time after he thought I was getting close. It would have worked, too. People aren't good eye-witnesses. I know. They believe what they want to see and what people told them they saw. It was a nice touch giving me that damn one-shot. He really must have hoped I'd kill to escape-' 'Is it not time you got out of that . . . pool?' said Wolfgang. 'You mean bath?' said Vimes. Yes, there was a wince. Vimes registered it. Oh, you're walking upright and talking, my lad, and you look strong as an ox - but something between a human and a wolf has a bit of dog in them, doesn't it? 'We have an ancient custom here,' said Wolf, looking away. 'And it is a good one. Anyone can challenge us. It's a little . . . chase. The great game! A competition, if you like. If they outrun us they win four hundred crowns. That is a very good sum! A man may start a small business with it. Of course, as I can see you realize, if they don't outrun us the question of money does not arise!' 'Does anyone ever win?' said Vimes. Come on, woodcutters, the people need wood! 'Sometimes. If they train well and know the country! Many a successful man in Bonk owes his start in life to our little custom. In your case, we'll give you, oh, an hour's lead. For the sport of it!' He pointed. 'Bonk is five miles in that direction. The lore says that you must not enter a dwelling until you get there.' 'And if I don't run?' 'Then it will be a really short event! We do not like Ankh-Morpork. We do not want you here!' 'That's odd,' said Vimes. Wolf's broad brow wrinkled. 'Your meaning?' 'Oh, it's just that everywhere I go in Ankh-Morpork I seem to bump into people who come from Uberwald, you see. Dwarfs, trolls, humans. All beavering away quite happily and writing letters home saying, come on, it's great here -they don't eat you alive for a dollar.' Wolf's lip curled, revealing a glint of incisor. Vimes had seen that look on Angua's face.. It meant she was having a bad hair ,day. And a werewolf can have a bad hair day all over. He pushed his luck. It was clearly too weak to move by itself. 'Angua's getting on well-' 'Vimes! Mister Civilized! Ankh-Morpork! You will run!' Hoping that his legs would support him, Vimes climbed out on the snow of the bank, as slowly as he dared. There was laughter from the were-wolves. 'You go into the water wearing clothes?' Vimes looked down at his streaming legs. 'You've never seen drawers before?' he said. Wolf's lip curled again. He glanced triumphantly at the others. 'Behold . . . civilization!' he said. Vimes, puffed life into his cigar and looked around the frozen woodland with as much hauteur as he could muster. 'Four hundred crowns, did you say?' he said. 'Yes!' Vimes sneered at the forest again. 'What is that in Ankh-Morpork dollars, do you know? About a dollar fifty?' 'The question will not arise!' Wolf bellowed. 'Well, I don't want to have to spend it all here-' 'Run!' 'In the circumstances, then, I won't ask if you have the money on you.' Vimes walked away from the werewolves, glad that they couldn't see his face and very much aware that the skin on his back wanted to crawl around to his front. He kept moving calmly, his wet drawers begin-ning to crackle in the frosty air, until he was certain he was out of sight of the pack. So, let's see . . . they've got better strength than you, they know the country, and if they're as good as Angua they could track a fart through a skunk's breakfast, and your legs hurt already. So what are the pluses here? Well, you've made Wolf really angry. Vimes broke into a run. Not much of a plus there, then, all things con-sidered. Vimes broke into a faster run. Off in the distance, wolves began to howl. There is a saying: it won't get better if you picket. Corporal Nobbs or, rather, Guild President C. W. St J. Nobbs, reflected on this. A little early snow was fizzling in the air over the metal drum which, in approved strike fashion, was glowing red-hot in front of the Watch House. A main problem, as he saw it, was that there was something philosophically wrong with picketing a building that no one except a watchman wanted to enter in any case. It is impossible to keep people out of something that they don't want to go into. It can't be done. The chant hadn't worked. An old lady had given him a penny. 'Colon, Colon, Colon! Out! Out! Out!' shouted Reg Shoe happily, waving his placard. 'That doesn't sound right, Reg,' said Nobby. 'Sounds like surgery.' He looked at the other placards. Dorfl was holding a large, closely worded text, detailing their grievances in full, with references to Watch procedures and citing a number of philosophical texts. Constable Visit's sandwich-board, on the other hand, proclaimed: 'What Profiteth it a Kingdom if the Oxen be Deflated? Riddles 11, v3.' Somehow, these cogent arguments did not seem to be bringing the city to its knees. He turned at the sound of a coach pulling up and looked up at a door which had a crest consisting mainly of-a black shield. And above that, looking out of the window, was the face of Lord Vetinari. 'Ah, none other than Corporal Nobbs,' said Lord Vetinari. At this point Nobby would have given quite a lot to be anyone other than Corporal Nobbs. He wasn't sure whether, as a striker, he should salute. He saluted anyway, on the basis that a salute was seldom out of place. 'I gather you have withdrawn your labour,' Lord Vetinari went on. 'In your case, I am sure this presented a good deal of difficulty.' Nobby wasn't certain about that sentence, but the Patrician seemed quite amiable. 'Can't stand by when the security of the city's concerned, sir,' he said, oozing affronted loyalty from every unblocked pore. Lord Vetinari paused long enough for the peaceful, everyday sounds of a city apparently on the brink of catastrophe to filter into Nobby's consciousness. 'Well, of course I wouldn't dream of interfering,' he said at last. 'This is Guild business. I'm sure his grace will understand fully when he returns.' He banged on the side of the coach. 'Drive on.' And the coach was gone. A thought that had been nudging Nobby for some time chose this moment to besiege him once again. Mister Vimes is going to gospare. He's going to go mental. Lord Vetinari sat back in his seat, smiling to himself. 'Er, did you mean that, sir?' said the clerk Drumknott, who was sitting opposite. 'Certainly. Make a note to have the kitchen send them down cocoa and buns around three o'clock. Anonymously, of course. It's been a crime-free day, Drurnknott. Very unusual. Even the Thieves' Guild is lying low.' 'Yes, my lord. I can't imagine why. When the cat's away. . .' 'Yes, Drumknott, but mice are happily unencumbered by apprehensions of the future. Humans, on the other hand, are. And they know that Vimes is going to be back in a week or so, Drumknott. And Vimes will not be happy. Indeed, he will not. And when a commander of the Watch is unhappy, he tends to spread it around with a big shovel.' He smiled again. 'This is the time for sensible men to be honest, Drumknott. I only hope Colon is stupid enough to let it continue.' The snow fell faster. 'How beautiful the snow is, sisters . . .' Three women sat at the window of their lonely house, looking out at the white Uberwald winter. 'And how cold the vind is,' said the second sister. The third sister, who was the youngest, sighed. 'Why do we always talk about the weather?' 'What else is there?' 'Well, it's either freezing cold or baking. I mean, that's it, really.' 'That is how things are in Mother Uberwald,' said the oldest sister, slowly and sternly. 'The vind and the snow and the boiling heat of summer . . .' 'You know, I bet if we cut down the cherry orchard we could put in a roller-skating rink-' No. 'How about a conservatory? We could grow pineapples.' No. 'If we moved to Bonk we could get a big apartment for the cost of this place-' 'This is our home, Irina,' said the oldest sister. 'Ah, a home of lost illusions and thwarted hopes . . .' 'We could go out dancing and everything.' 'I remember when we lived in Bonk,' said the middle sister dreamily. 'Things vere better then.' 'Things vere alvays better then,' said the oldest sister. The youngest sister sighed and looked out of the window. She gasped. 'There's a man running through the cherry orchard!' 'A man? Vot could he possibly vant?' The youngest sister strained to see. 'It looks like he wants . . . a pair of trousers . . .' 'Ah,' said the middle sister dreamily. 'Trousers ver better then.' The hurrying pack stopped in a chilly blue valley when the howling filled the air. Angua loped back to the sledge, lifted out her bag of clothes with her jaws, glanced at Carrot and disappeared among the drifts. A few moments later she walked back again, doing up her shirt. 'Wolfgang's got some .poor devil playing the game,' she said. 'I'm going to put a stop to it. It was bad enough that Father kept the tradition going, but at least he played fair. Wolfgang cheats. They never win.' 'Is this the game you told me about?' 'That's right. But Father played by the rules. If the runner was bright and nimble he got four hundred crowns and Father had him to dinner at the castle.' 'If he lost, then your father had him for dinner out in the woods.' 'Thank you for reminding me.' 'I was trying not to be nice.' 'You may have an undiscovered natural talent,' said Angua. 'But no one had to run, is my point. I won't apologize. I've been a copper in AnkhMorpork, remember. City motto: You May Not Get Killed.' 'Actually, it's-' 'Carrot! I know. And our family motto is Homo Homini Lupus. "A man is a wolf to other men"! How stupid. Do you think they mean that men are shy and retiring and loyal and kill only to eat? Of course not! They mean that men act like men towards other men, and the worse they are the more they think they'd really like being wolves! Humans hate werewolves because they see the wolf in us, but wolves hate us because they see the human inside - and I don't blame them!' Vimes veered away from the farmhouse and sprinted towards the nearby barn. There had to be something in there. Even a couple of sacks would do. The chafing qualities of frozen underwear can be seriously underestimated. He'd been running for half an hour. Well, for twenty-five minutes, really. The other five had been spent limping, wheezing, clutching at his chest and wondering how you knew if you were having a heart attack. The inside of the barn was . . . barn-like. There were stacks of hay, dusty farm implements . . . and a couple of threadbare sacks hanging on a nail. He snatched one, gratefully. Behind him the door creaked open. He spun round, clutching the sack to him, and saw three very sombrely dressed women watching him carefully. One of them was holding a kitchen knife in a trembling hand, 'Have you come here to ravish us?' she said. 'Madam! I'm being pursued by werewolves!' The three looked at one another. To Vimes the sack suddenly seemed far too small. 'Er, vill that take you all day?' said one of the women. Vimes held the sack more tightly. 'Ladies! Please! I need trousers!' 'Ve can see that.' 'And a weapon, and boots if you've got them! Please?' They went into another huddle. 'We have the gloomy and purposeless trousers of Uncle Vanya,' said one, doubtfully. 'He seldom wore them,' said another. 'And I have an axe in my linen cupboard,' said the youngest. She looked guiltily at the other two. 'Look, just in case I ever needed it, all right? I wasn't going to chop anything down.' 'I would be so grateful,' said Vimes. He took in the good but old clothes, the faded gentility, and played the only card in his hand. 'I am His Grace the Duke of Ankh, although I appreciate this fact is not evident at the-' There was a three-fold sigh. 'Ankh-Morpork!' 'You haf a magnificent opera house and many fine galleries.' 'Such vonderful avenues!' 'A veritable heaven of culture and sophistication and unattached men of quality!' 'Er, I said Ankh-Morpork,' said Vimes. 'With an A and an M.' 'Ve have always dreamed of going there.' 'I'll have three coach tickets sent along immediately I get home,' said Vimes, his mind's ear hearing the crunch of speeding paws over snow. 'But, dear ladies, if you could fetch me those things-' They hurried away, but the youngest lingered by the door. 'Do you have long cold winters in AnkhMorpork?' she said. 'Just muck and slush, usually.' 'Any cherry orchards?' 'I don't think we have any, I'm afraid.' She punched the air. 'Yesss!' A few minutes later Vimes was alone in the barn, wearing a pair of ancient black trousers that he'd tied at the waist with rope, and holding an axe that was surprisingly sharp. He had five minutes, perhaps. Wolves probably didn't stop to worry about heart attacks. There was no point in simply running. They could run faster. He needed to stay near civilization and its hallmarks, like trousers. Maybe time was on Vimes's side. Angua was never very talkative about her world, but she had said that, in either shape, a werewolf slowly lost some of the skills of the other shape. After several hours on two legs her sense of smell dropped from uncanny to merely good. And after too long as a wolf . . . it was like being drunk, as far as Vimes understood it; a little inner part of you was still trying to give instructions, but the rest of you was acting stupid. The human part started to lose control. He looked around the barn again. There was a ladder to an upper gallery. He climbed it and looked out of a glassless window across a snowy meadow. There was a river in the distance, and what looked very much like a boathouse. Now, how would a werewolf think? The werewolves slowed as they reached the building. Their leader glanced at a lieutenant and nodded. It loped off in the direction of the boathouse. The others followed Wolf inside. The last became human for a moment to pull the doors shut and drop the bar across. Wolf stopped near the centre of the barn. Hay had been scattered over the floor in great fluffy piles. He scraped gently with a paw, and wisps fell away from a rope that was stretched taut. Wolf took a deep breath. The other werewolves, sensing what was going to happen, looked away. There was a moment of struggling shapelessness, and then he was rising slowly on two feet, blinking in the dawn of humanity. That's interesting, thought Vimes, up on the gallery. For a second or two after changing, they're not entirely up on current events . . . 'Oh, your grace,' said Wolf, looking around. 'A trap? How very . . . civilized.' He caught sight of Vimes, who was standing on the higher floor, by the window. 'What was it supposed to do, your grace?' Vimes reached down to the oil lamp. 'It was supposed to be a decoy,' he said. He hurled the lamp down on to the dry hay and flicked his cigar after it. Then he grabbed the axe and climbed through the window just as the spilled oil went whump. Vimes dropped into the deep snow and ran towards the boathouse. There were other tracks leading to it, not human. When he reached the door he swung wildly at the darkness just inside, and his reward was a cut-off yelp. The skiff that was housed in the tumbledown shed was a quarter full of dark water, but he didn't dare .think about bailing yet. He grabbed the dusty oars and rowed with considerable effort and not much speed out on to the river. He groaned. Wolf was trotting across the snow, with the rest of the pack behind him. They all seemed to be there. Wolf cupped his hands. 'Very civilized, your grace! But, you see, when you set fire to a barn full of wolves, they panic, your grace! But when they're werewolves, one of them just opens the door! You cannot kill werewolves, Mister Vimes!' 'Tell that to the one in the boathouse!' Vimes shouted, as the current took the boat. Wolf looked into the shadows for a moment and then cupped his hands again. 'He will recover, Mister Vimes!' Vimes swore under his breath, because despite all his hopes a couple of werewolves had plunged into the water upstream and were swimming strongly towards the opposite bank. But that was a doggy thing, wasn't it? Leap joyfully into the water outdoors, but fight like hell against a tub. Wolfgang had started to trot along the bank. The ones in the water emerged on the far bank. Now they were keeping pace with the boat on both sides. But the current was carrying it along faster now. Vimes started to bail with both hands. 'You can't outrun the river, Wolf!' he shouted. 'We don' have to, Mister Vimes! That is not the question! The question is, can you outswim the waterfall? See you later, Civilized!' Vimes looked around. In the distance the river had a foreshortened look. When he concentrated, the inner ear of terror could hear a distant roaring. He snatched the oars again and tried to row upstream and, yes, it was possible to make headway against the current. But he couldn't keep rowing faster than wolves could run, and taking on two at once on the shore, when they were ready and waiting for him, was not an option. If he went over the falls now, he might get to the bottom before they did. That wasn't a good sentence, however he tried it. He took his hands off the oars and pulled in the mooring rope. If I make a couple of loops, he thought, I can strap the axe on to my back-He had a mental picture of what could happen to a man who plunged into the cauldron below a waterfall with a sharp piece of metal attached to his body-GOOD MORNING. Vimes blinked. A tall dark robed figure was now sitting in the boat. 'Are you Death?' IT'S THE SCYTHE, ISN'T IT? PEOPLE ALWAYS NOTICE THE SCYTHE. 'I'm going to die?' POSSIBLY. 'Possibly? You turn up when people are possibly going to die?' OH, YES. IT'S QUITE THE NEW THING. IT'S BECAUSE OF THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE. 'What's that?' I'M NOT SURE. 'That's very helpful.' I THINK IT MEANS PEOPLE MAY OR MAY NOT DIE. I HAVE TO SAY IT'S PLAYING HOB WITH MY SCHEDULE, BUT I TRY TO KEEP UP WITH MODERN THOUGHT. The roar was a lot louder now. Vimes lay back in the boat and gripped the sides. I'm talking to Death, he thought, to take my mind off things. 'Didn't I see you last month? I was chasing Bigger-than-Small-Dave Dave along Peach Pie Street and I fell off that ledge?' THAT IS CORRECT. 'But I landed on that cart. I didn't die!' BUT YOU MIGHTHAVE DONE. 'But I thought we all had some kind of hour-glass thing that said when we're going to die?' Now the roar was almost physical. Vimes redoubled his grip on the boat. OH, YES. You Do, said Death. 'But we might not?' NO. YOU WILL. THERE IS NO DOUBT ABOUT THAT. 'But you said-' YES, IT IS A BIT HARD TO UNDERSTAND, ISN'T IT? APPARENTLY THERE'S THIS THING CALLED THE TROUSERS OF TIME, WHICH IS QUITE ODD, BECAUSE TIME CERTAINLY DOESN'T- The boat went over the waterfall. Vimes had a thunderous sensation of pound-ing, thudding water, followed by the echoing ringing in his ears as he hit the pool below. He fought his way to what passed for the surface and felt the current take him, slam him into a rock and then roll him away in the white water. He flailed blindly and caught another rock, his body swinging around into a pool of comparative calm. As he fought for breath he saw a grey shape leaping from stone to stone and then another dose of hell was unleashed as it landed, snarling, beside him. He grabbed it desperately and hung on as it struggled to bite him. A paw flailed to gain pur-chase on the slippery stone and then, in sudden difficulties, responding automatically ... it changed . . . It was as if the wolf shape became small and a man shape became bigger, in the same space, at the same time, with a moment of horrible dis-tortion as the two forms passed through one another. And then there was that moment he'd noticed before, a second of confusion-It was just long enough to ram the man's head against the rock with every ounce of strength he could scrape together. Vimes thought he heard a crack. Then he pushed himself back out into the current and let it carry him on, while he simply struggled to stay near the surface. There was blood in the water. He'd never killed someone with his bare hands before. Truth to tell, he'd never deliberately killed at all. There had been deaths, because when people are rolling down a roof and trying to strangle one another it's sheer luck who is on top when they hit the ground. But that was different. He went to bed every night believing that. His teeth were chattering and the bright sun made his eyes ache, but he felt . . . good. He wanted to beat his chest and scream, in fact. They'd been trying to kill him! Make them stay wolves, said a little inner voice. The more time they spent on four legs the less bright they'd become. A deeper voice, red and raw, from much, much further inside, said, Kill 'em all! The rage was boiling up now, fighting against the chill. His feet touched bottom. The river was broadening here, into something wide enough to be called a lake. A wide ledge of ice had crept out from the bank, covered here and there with blown snow. Fog drifted across it, fog with a sulphurous smell. There were still cliffs on the far side of the river. A solitary werewolf, companion to the one now drifting on the current, was watching him from the nearest bank. Clouds were sliding across the sun and snow was falling again, in large, raggedy flakes. Vimes waded to the rim of ice and tried to pull himself up out of the water, but it creaked ominously under his weight and cracks zigzagged across its surface. The wolf came closer, moving with caution. Vimes made another desperate attempt, a slab of ice came free and tipped up, and he disappeared under the water. The creature waited a few moments and then inched further out over the ice, growling as fine cracks spread out like stars under its paws. A shadow moved in the shallow water below it. There was an explosion of water and breath as Vimes broke through the ice under the werewolf, grabbed it around the waist and fell back. A claw ripped along Vimes's side, but he gripped as hard as he could with arms and legs as they rolled under the ice. It was a desperate test of lung capacity, he knew. But he wasn't the one who'd just had the air squeezed out of him. He held on, while the water clanged in his ears and the thing scrabbled and scratched at him and then, when there was nothing else left but to let go or drown, he punched his way up to the air. Nothing lashed at him. He cracked his way through the ice to the bank, dropped on his hands and knees and threw up. Howling started, all around the mountains. Vimes looked up. Blood was coursing down his arms. The air stank of rotten eggs. And there, high on a hill a mile or so off, was the clacks tower . . . . with its stone walls and door that could be bolted . . . He stumbled forward. The snow underfoot was already giving way to coarse grass and moss. The air was hotter now, but it was the clammy heat of a fever. And he looked around and realized where he was. There was bare dirt and rock in front of him, but here and there parts of it were moving and going 'blup'. Everywhere he looked there were fat geysers. Rings of ancient, congealed yellow fat, so old and rancid that even Sam Vimes wouldn't dip his toast in it unless he was really hungry, encircled sizzling little pools. There were even black floating bits, which on second glance turned out to be insects that were slow learners in a hot fat situation. Vimes recalled something Igor had said. Sometimes dwarfs working the high strata, where the fat had congealed into a kind of tallow millennia ago, found strange ancient animals, perfectly preserved but fried to a crisp. Probably . . . Vimes found himself laughing out of sheer exhaustion ... probably battered to death. Mwahahaa. The snow was falling heavily now, making the fat pools spit. He sagged to his knees. He ached all over. It wasn't just that his brain was writing cheques that his body couldn't cash. It had gone beyond that. Now his feet were borrowing money that his legs hadn't got, and his back muscles were looking for loose change under the sofa cushions. And still nothing was coming up behind him. Surely they must've crossed the river by now? Then he saw one. He could have sworn it hadn't been there a moment ago. Another one trotted out from behind a nearby snowdrift. They sat watching him. 'Come on, then!' Vimes yelled. 'What are you waiting for?' The pools of fat hissed and bubbled around Vimes. It was warm here, though. If they weren't going to move, then neither was he. He focused on a tree on the edge of the fat geysers. It looked barely alive, with greasy splashes on the end of the longer branches, but it also looked climbable. He concentrated on it, tried to estimate the distance and the speed he might be capable of. The werewolves turned to look at it, too. Another one had entered the clearing at a different point. There were three watching him now. They weren't going to run until he did, he realized. Otherwise it wouldn't be fun. He shrugged, turned away from the tree . . . and then turned back and ran. By the time he was halfway there he was afraid his heart was going to climb up his throat, but he ran on, jumped awkwardly, caught a low branch, slipped, struggled gasping to his feet, grabbed the branch again and managed to pull himself up, expecting at every second the first tiny puncture as teeth broke his skin. He rocked on the greasy wood. The were-wolves hadn't moved, but they were watching him with interest. 'You bastards,' Vimes growled. They got up and picked their way carefully towards the tree, without hurrying. Vimes climbed a little further up. 'Ankh-Morpork! Mister Civilized! Where are your weapons now, Ankh-Morpork?' It was Wolfgang's voice. Vimes peered around the snowdrifts, which were already filling up with violet shadows as the afternoon died. 'I got two of you!' he shouted. 'Yes, they will have big headaches later on! We are werewolves, Ankh-Morpork! Quite hard to stop!' 'You said that you-' 'Your Mister Sleeps could run much faster than you, Ankh-Morpork!' 'Fast enough?' 'No! And the man with the little black hat could fight better than you, too!' 'Well enough?' 'No!' shouted Wolfgang cheerfully. Vimes growled. Even assassins didn't deserve that kind of death. 'It'll be sunset soon!' he shouted. 'Yes! I lied about the sunset!' 'Well, wake me up at dawn, then. I could do with the sleep!' 'You will freeze to death, Civilized Man!' 'Good!' Vimes looked around at the other trees. Even if he could jump to one, they were all conifers, painful to land in and easy to fall out of. 'Ah, this must be the famous Ankh-Morpork sense of humour, yes?' 'No, that was just irony,' Vimes shouted, still looking for an arboreal escape route. 'You'll know when we've got on to the famous Ankh-Morpork sense of humour when I start talking about breasts and farting, you smug bastard!' So, what were his options? Well, he could stay in the tree and die, or run for it and die. Of the two, dying in one piece seemed better. YOU'RE DOING VERY WELL FOR A MAN OF YOUR AGE. Death was sitting on a higher branch of the tree. 'Are you following me or what?' ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH THE WORDS 'DEATH WAS HIS CONSTANT COMPANION'? 'But I don't usually see you!' POSSIBLY YOU ARE IN A STATE OF HEIGHTENED AWARE-NESS CAUSED BY LACK OF FOOD, SLEEP AND BLOOD? 'Are you going to help me?' WELL . . . YES. ' When?' ER, WHEN THE PAIN IS TOO MUCH TO BEAR. Death hesitated, and then went on. EVEN AS I SAY IT I REALIZE THAT THIS ISN'T THE ANSWER YOU WERE LOOK-ING FOR, HOWEVER. The sun was near the horizon now, getting big and red. Racing the sun . . . That was another Uberwald sport, wasn't it? Be home safe before the sun sets. Half a mile or more, through deep snow on rising ground. Someone was climbing up the tree. He felt it shake. He looked down. In the cold blue gloom a naked man was quietly pulling himself from branch to branch. Vimes was enraged. They weren't supposed to do this! There was a grunt from below as the climber slipped and recovered on the greasy wood. HOW ARE YOU FEELING, IN YOURSELF? 'Shut up! Even if you are a hallucination!' There must be something about werewolves he could use. You have a second's grace when they are changing shape, but they knew he knew that . . . No weapons. That's what he'd noticed in the castle. You always got weapons in castles. Spears, battleaxes, ridiculous suits of armour, huge old swords . . . Even the vampires had a few rapiers on the walls. That was because, sometimes, even vampires had to use a weapon. Werewolves didn't. Even Angua hesitated before reaching for a sword. To a werewolf a physical weapon would always be the second choice. Vimes locked his legs together and swung around the branch as the werewolf came up. He caught it a blow on the ear and, as it looked up, managed another blow right on the nose. It gave him a ringing slap and that would have ended it, except that it also pulled itself a little further up the tree and brought itself within the range of the Vimes Elbow. It justified the capital letter. It had triumphed in a number of street fights. Vimes had learned early on in his career that the graveyards were full of people who'd read the Marquis of Fantailler. The whole idea of fighting was to stop the other bloke hitting you as soon as possible. It wasn't to earn marks. Vimes had often fought in circumstances where being able to use the hands freely was a luxury, but it was amazing how a well-placed elbow could make a point, possibly assisted by a knee. He drove it into the werewolf's throat and was rewarded with a horrible noise. Then he grabbed a handful of hair and pulled, let go and slammed the palm of his hand into its face in a mad attempt to prevent it having a second to think. He couldn't allow that - he could see the size of the man's muscles. The werewolf reacted instead. There was that sudden moment of morphological inexactitude. A nose turned into a muzzle while Vimes's fist was en route, but when the wolf opened its mouth to lunge at him two things occurred to it. One was that it was high in a tree, not a tenable position for a shape designed for fast-paced living on the ground. The other was gravity. 'Down there it's the lore,' Vimes panted, as its paws scrabbled for purchase on the greasy branch. 'But up here it's me.' He reached up, grabbed the branch above him, and kicked down with his feet. There was yelp, and another yelp as the wolf slid and hit the next branch down. About halfway towards the ground it tried to change back again, combining in one falling shape all the qualities of something not good at staying in trees with something not good at landing on the ground. 'Gotcha!' screamed Vimes. In the forest all around a howling went up. The branch he was clinging to snapped. For a moment he hung by the gloomy trousers of Uncle Vanya, caught on a snag, and then their ancient fabric ripped off him and he dropped. His progress was a little faster, since the falling werewolf had removed a lot of branches on the way down, but the landing was softer because the werewolf was just getting to its feet. Vimes's flailing hand grabbed a broken branch. A weapon. Thought more or less stopped when his fingers closed. Whatever replaced it in the pathways of his brain was gushing up from somewhere else, thousands of years old. The werewolf struggled up and turned on him. The branch caught it across the side of the head. Steam rose off Sir Samuel Vimes as he lurched forward, snarling incoherently. He smacked the club down again. He roared. There were no words there. It was a sound from before words. If there was any meaning in it at all it was a lament that he couldn't cause enough pain . . . The wolf whined, stumbled, rolled over . . . and changed. The human extended a bleeding hand towards him in supplication. 'Ple-ease . . .' Vimes hesitated, club raised. The red rage drained away. He was on a freezing hillside against a cold sunset, and they'd left him alone, and he might just make it to the tower . . . In one movement, changing from man to wolf as it moved, the werewolf sprang. Vimes went backwards into the snow. He could feel the breath and the blood, but not the pain No talons ripped, no teeth tore. And the weight was lifted. Hands pulled the body off him. 'Bit of a close one there, sir,' said a voice cheerfully. 'Best not to give them any quarter, really.' There was a spear right through the werewolf. 'Carrot?' 'We'll get a fire going. It's easy if you dip the wood in the fat springs first.' 'Carrot?' 'I shouldn't think you've eaten. There's not much game this close to the town, but we've still got some-' 'Carrot?' 'Er, yes, sir?' 'What the hell are you doing here?' 'It's all a bit complicated, sir. Here, let me help you up-' Vimes shook him off as he tried to help him to his feet. 'I got this far, thank you, I think I'm capable of standing up,' he said, and forced his legs to support him. 'You seem to have lost your trousers, sir.' 'Yes, it's the famous Ankh-Morpork sense of humour,' growled Vimes. 'Only . . . Angua will be back soon, and . . . and. . .' 'Sergeant Angua's family, captain, are in the habit of running around the woods in the snow stark bol-stark naked!' 'Yes, sir, but . . . I mean . . . you know . . . it's not really . . .' 'I'll give you five minutes to find a clothes shop, shall I? Otherwise- Look, where the hell are all the werewolves, eh? I was expecting to drop into a heap of snarling jaws, and now you're here, thank you very much, and there's no werewolves!' 'Gavin's people chased them away, sir. You must've heard the howl go up.' 'Gavin's people, eh? Well, that's good! That's very good! I'm pleased about that! Well done, Gavin! Now, who the hell is Gavin?' A howl went up from a distant hill. 'That's Gavin,' said Carrot. 'A wolf? Gavin's a wolf? I've been saved from werewolves by wolves?' 'It's all right, sir. When you think about it, it's not really any different from being saved from werewolves by people.' 'When I think about it, I think perhaps I was better off lying down,' said Vimes weakly. 'Let's get to the sleigh, sir. I was trying to say we have got your clothes. That's how Angua tracked you.' Ten minutes later Vimes was sitting in front of a fire with a blanket around him, and the world seemed to make a little more sense. A slice of venison was going down well, and Vimes was far too hungry to bother much that the butcher appeared to have used his teeth. 'The wolves spy on the werewolves?' he said. 'Sort of, sir. Gavin keeps an eye on things for Angua. They're . . . old friends.' The moment of silence went on just slightly too long. 'He sounds like a very bright wolf,' said Vimes, in the absence of anything more diplomatic to say. 'More than that. Angua thinks he might be part werewolf, from way back.' 'Can that happen?' 'She says so. Did I tell you that he came all the way into Ankh-Morpork? A big city? Can you imagine what that must have been like?' Vimes turned at a faint sound behind him. A large wolf was standing at the edge of the firelight. It was looking at him intently. It wasn't just the look of an animal sizing him up on the level of food/threat/thing. Behind that stare wheels were turning. And there was a small but rather proud mongrel at his side, scratching furiously. 'Is that Gaspode?' said Vimes. 'The dog that's always hanging around the Watch House?' 'Yes, he . . . helped me get here,' said Carrot. 'I just don't want to ask,' said Vimes. 'Any minute now a door's going to open in a tree and Fred and Nobby are going to step out, am I right?' 'I hope not, sir.' Gavin lay down a short distance from the fire and started watching Carrot. 'Captain?' said Vimes. 'Yes, sir?' 'You'll notice I haven't pressed you on why you're here as well as Angua.' 'Yes, sir.' 'Well?' said Vimes. And now he thought he recognized the look on Gavin's face, even though it was on a face of an unusual shape. It was the look you got on the face of a gentleman lounging on a corner by a bank, watching the comings and goings, seeing how the place worked. 'I was admiring your diplomacy, sir.' 'Hmm? What?' said Vimes, still staring at the wolf. 'I appreciated the way you were avoiding asking questions, sir.' Angua walked into the firelight. Vimes saw her glance around the circle and squat down on the snow exactly halfway between Carrot and Gavin. 'They're miles away now. Oh, hello, Mister Vimes.' There was some more silence. 'Is anyone going to tell me something?' said Vimes. 'My family are trying to upset the coronation,' said Angua. 'They're working with some dwarfs that don't want- that want to keep Uberwald separate.' 'I think I've worked that one out. Running for your life through a freezing cold forest gives you a bit of an insight.' 'I have to tell you, sir, my brother killed the clacks signallers. His scent's all over the place up there.' Gavin made a noise in his throat. 'And another man that Gavin didn't recognize, except that he spent a lot of time hiding in the forest and watching our castle.' 'I think that might have been a man called Sleeps. One of our . . . agents,' said Vimes. 'He did well. He managed to get to a boat a few miles downriver. Unfortunately there was a werewolf waiting in it.' 'It was a waterfall that did for me,' said Vimes. 'Permission to speak honestly, sir?' said Angua. 'Don't you always?' 'They could have got you any time they liked, sir. Really they could. They wanted you to get as far as the tower before they really attacked. I expect Wolfgang thought that'd be nicely symbolic or something.' 'I got three of them!' 'Yes, sir. But you wouldn't have been able to get three of them all at once. Wolfgang was having some fun. That's how he's always played the game. He's good at thinking ahead. He likes ambushes. He likes some poor soul to get within a few yards of the finish before he leaps out on them.' Angua sighed. 'Look, sir, I don't want there to be trouble-' 'He's been killing people!' 'Yes, sir. But my mother's just a rather ignorant snob and my father's half-gone now. He spends so much time as a wolf he hardly knows how to act human any more. They don't live in the real world. They really think Uberwald can stay the same. There isn't a lot up here, really, but it's ours. Wolfgang's a murderous idiot who thinks that werewolves were born to rule. The trouble is, sir, he hasn't broken the lore.' 'Oh, ye gods!' 'I bet he could find plenty of witnesses to say that he gave everyone the start the lore requires. That's the rules of the game.' 'And meddling with the dwarfs' affairs? He's stolen the Scone or swapped it or . . . something, I haven't worked it all out yet, but one poor dwarf's already dead because of it! Cheery and Detritus are under arrest! Inigo is dead! Sybil's locked up somewhere! And you're saying it's all Okay?' 'Things are different here, sir,' said Carrot. 'It wasn't until ten years ago that they replaced trial by ordeal here with trial by lawyer, and that was only because they found that lawyers were nastier.' 'I've got to get back to Bonk. If they've harmed Sybil I don't care what the damn lore is.' 'Mister Vimes! You look done in as it is!' said Carrot. 'I'll keep going. Come on. Get some of the wolves to pull the sleigh-' 'You don't get them to, sir. You ask Gavin if they will,' said Carrot. 'Oh. Er, can you explain the situation to him?' I'm standing in the cold in the middle of a forest, thought Vimes a moment later, watching a quite handsome young woman growling a conversation with a wolf who is watching her. This does not often happen. Not in Ankh-Morpork, anyway. It's probably a daily occurrence up here. Eventually six wolves allowed themselves to be harnessed, and Vimes was carried up the hill to the road. 'Stop!' 'Sir?' said Carrot. 'I want a weapon! There's got to be something in the tower I can use!' 'Sir, you can use my sword! And there's the. . . hunting spears.' 'You know what you can do with the hunting spears!' Vimes kicked the door at the base of the tower. Fresh snow had blown in, smoothing the edges of wolf and human tracks. He felt drunk. Bits of his brain were going on and off. His eyeballs felt as though they were lined with towelling. His legs seemed only vaguely under his control. Surely the signallers must've had something? Even the sacks and barrels had gone. Well, there were plenty of peasants in the hills, and winter was coming on, and the men who'd been here certainly had no further use for the food. Even Vimes wouldn't call that theft. He climbed up to the next floor. The thrifty people of the forest had been up here, too. But they hadn't taken the bloodstains off the floor, or Inigo's little round hat which inexplicably was wedged into the wooden wall. He pulled it out and saw where the thin felt on the brim had been pushed back to reveal the razor-sharp edge. An assassin's hat, he thought. And then, no, not an assassin's hat. He remembered the street fights he'd seen when he was a kid, among the hard-drinking men who thought that even bareknuckle fighting was posh. Some of them would sew a razorblade into the brim of their cap, for a bit of help in a melee. This was the hat of a man who was always looking for that extra edge. It hadn't worked here. He dropped it on the floor and his eye caught, in the gloom, the box of mortars. Even that had been ransacked, but the tubes had simply been scattered across the floor. The gods alone knew what the scavengers thought they were. He put them back in their box. Inigo was right about them, at least. A weapon so inaccurate that it probably couldn't hit a barn wall from inside the barn was no good as a weapon. But other things had been scattered around, too. The men who'd been living rough here had left a few personal items. Pictures had been thumbtacked to the wall. There was a diary, a pipe, someone's shaving gear. Boxes had been tipped out on the floor . . . 'We'd better be getting on, sir,' said Carrot from the ladder. They'd been killed. They'd been sent racing off into the dark with monsters at their heels, and then some blank-faced peasants who'd done nothing to help had come in here and picked over the little things they'd left behind. Damn it! Vimes growled and swept everything into a box and dragged it over to the ladder. 'We'll drop this lot off at the embassy,' he said. 'I'm not leaving anything here for scavengers. Don't think about arguing with me.' 'Wouldn't dream of it, sir. Wouldn't. dream of it.' Vimes paused. 'Carrot? That wolf and Angua. . .' He stopped. How the hell did you continue a sentence like that? 'They're old friends, sir.' 'They are?'. There was nothing but the usual completely open honesty anywhere in Carrot's expression. 'Oh ... we ... that's good, then,' Vimes finished. A minute later they were on their way again. Angua was running as a wolf far ahead of the sleigh, alongside Gavin. Gaspode had curled up under the blankets. And here I am again, thought Vimes, racing the sunset. Heavens know why. I'm in the company of a werewolf and a wolf that looks worse, and sitting in a sleigh drawn by wolves which I can't steer. Try looking that one up in the manual. He dozed among the blankets, half-open eyes watching the disc of the sun flickering between pine trees. How could you steal the Scone from its cave? He'd said there were dozens of ways and there were, but they were all risky. They all depended too much on luck and sleepy guards. And this didn't feel like a crime that was going to rely on luck. It had to work. The Scone wasn't important. It was important that the dwarfs ended in disarray - no king, violent arguments and fighting in the dark. And it would stay dark in Uberwald, too. And it seemed to be important that the King was blamed. After all, he was the one who'd lost the Scone. Whatever the plan was, it had to be done quickly. Well, the clacks would have been useful. What had Wolfgang said? 'Those clever men in Ankh-Morpork'? Not dwarfs, but men. Rubber Sonky, floating in his vat . . . You dipped in a wooden hand, and out of the vat you got a glove. Hand in glove . . . It isn't where you put it, it's where people think it is. That's what matters. That's the magic. He remembered the very first thought he'd had when he'd seen Cheery staring at the floor of the Scone's cave, and the little policemen in Vimes's head started to clamour. 'What, sir?' said Carrot. 'Hmm?' Vimes forced open his eyes. 'You just shouted, sir.' 'What did I shout?' 'You shouted, "The bloody thing was never bloody stolen!" sir.' 'The bastards! I knew I nearly had it! It all fits together if you don't think like a dwarf! Let's make sure Sybil is all right and then, captain, we're going to-' 'Prod buttock, sir?' 'Right!' 'Only one thing, sir. . .' 'What?' 'You are an escaped criminal, aren't you?' For a moment there was only the sound of the runners skimming over the snow. 'We-ell,' said Vimes, 'this isn't Ankh-Morpork, I know. Everyone keeps telling me. But, captain, wherever you are, wherever you go, watchmen are always watchmen.' A solitary light burned in the window. Captain Colon sat by the candle, staring at nothing. Regulations called for the Watch House to be manned at all hours, and that's what he was doing. The floorboards in the room below creaked into a new position. For many months now they'd been walked on around the clock, because the main office never had fewer than half a dozen people in it. Chairs, too, accustomed 'to being warmed continuously by a relay of bottoms, groaned gently as they cooled. There was only one thought buzzing around Fred Colon's head. Mister Vimes is going to go completely bursar. He's going to go totally Librarian-poo. His hand went down to the desk and came back automatically, while he looked straight ahead. There was the crunch of a sugar lump being eaten. . Snow was falling again. The watchman that Vimes had named Colonesque was leaning in his box by the Hubward gate of Bonk. He'd perfected the art, and it was an art form, of going to sleep upright with his eyes open. It was one of the things you learned on endless nights. A female voice by his ear said, 'Now, there are two ways this could go.' His position didn't change. He continued to stare straight ahead. 'You haven't seen anything. That's the truth, isn't it? Just nod.' He nodded, once. 'Good man. You didn't hear me arrive, did you? Just nod.' Nod. 'So you won't know when I've gone, am I right? Just nod.' Nod. 'You don't want any trouble. Just nod.' Nod. 'They don't pay you enough for this. Just nod.' This time the nod was quite emphatic. 'You get more than your fair share of night watches as it is; anyway.' Colonesque's jaw dropped. Whoever was standing in the shadows was clearly reading his mind. 'Good man. You just stand here, then, and make sure no one steals the gate.' Colonesque took care to continue to stare straight ahead. He heard the thud and creak of the gate being opened and closed. It occurred to him that the speaker had not in fact mentioned what the other way was, and he was quite relieved about that. 'What was the other way?' said Vimes as they hurried through the snow. 'We'd go and look for another way in,' said Angua. There were few people on the streets, which were whitening with the new snow again except where wisps of steam escaped from the occasional grating. In Uberwald, it seemed, sunset made its own curfew. This was just as well, because Gavin was growling continuously under his breath. Carrot came back from the next corner. 'There's dwarfs on guard all round the embassy,' he said. 'They don't look open to negotiation, sir.' Vimes looked down. They were standing on a grating. Captain Tantony of the Bonk Watch was not happy with this duty. He'd been at the opera last night, and later on he'd thought he saw things happening in a way which, the burgomaster had instructed him, hadn't happened. Of course, the thing to do was obey orders. You were safe if you obeyed orders. Everyone in the watch knew that. But these didn't feel like safe orders. He'd heard they did things differently in AnkhMorpork. Milord Vimes would arrest anyone, they said. Tantony had set up a desk in the embassy's hall so that he could keep an eye on the main doors. He'd taken some pains to position his men around the inside of the building; he didn't trust the dwarfs on guard outside. They'd said they'd got orders to kill Vimes on sight, and that didn't make any sense. There had to be some sort of a trial, didn't there? There was a faint noise from upstairs. He stood up carefully and reached for his crossbow. 'Corporal Svetlz?' There was another little sound. Tantony went to the bottom of the stairs. Vimes appeared at the top of them. There was blood on his shirt, and crusted on the side of his face. To the captain's horror he began to walk down the steps. 'I will shoot you!' 'That's the order, is it?' said Vimes. 'Yes! Stop there!' 'But if I'm going to be shot anyway there's no point in stopping, is there?' said Vimes. 'I don't think you're the kind to do that, captain. You've got a brain.' Vimes steadied himself on the banister rail. 'Shouldn't you have called for the rest of the guards by now, by the way?' 'I tell you to stop!' 'You know who I am. If you're going to fire that damn thing, do it now. But first, I suggest it would be a really good career move to tug the bellpull over there. What's the worst that would happen? You've still got the bow pointed at me. There's something you really ought to know.' Tantony gave him a suspicious look but took a few steps sideways and tugged the rope. Igor stepped out from behind a pillar. 'Yeth, marthter?' 'Tell this young man where he is, will you?' 'He'th in Ankh-Morpork, marthter,' said Igor calmly. 'See?' said Vimes. 'And don't glare at Igor like that. I missed it when he welcomed me here, but it's true. This is an embassy, my son,' he went on, walking forwards again, 'and that means it's officially on the soil of the home country. Welcome to Ankh-Morpork. There's thousands of Uberwald people living in our city. You don't want to go starting a war, do you?' 'But . . . but . . . they said . . . my orders . . . you are a criminal!' 'The word is accused, captain. We don't kill people in Ankh-Morpork just because they're accused. Well, not on purpose. And not because someone tells us to.' Vimes took the crossbow out of Tantony's unresisting hands and fired it into the ceiling. 'Now send your men away,' he said. 'I'm in Ankh-Morpork?' said the captain. Even in his current state Vimes thought he recognized the harmonics. 'That's right,' he said, putting an arm around him. 'A city which, incidentally, always has a job in the Watch for a young man of ability-' Tantony's body stiffened. He pushed Vimes's arm away. 'You insult me, milord. This is my country!' 'Ah.' Vimes was . aware of Carrot and Angua watching from the landing. 'But I will not see it dishonoured, either,' said the captain. 'This isn't right. I saw what happened last night. You swept up the King and your troll caught the chandelier! And then they said you'd tried to kill the King and you'd killed dwarfs when you escaped. . .' 'Are you in charge of the Watch here?' 'No. That's the job of the burgomaster.' 'And who gives him his orders?' 'Everyone,' said Tantony bitterly. Vimes nodded. Been there, he thought. Been there, done that, bought the doublet . . . 'Are you going to stop me taking my people out of here?' 'How can you do that? The dwarfs surround us!, 'We're going to use . . . diplomatic channels. Just show me where everyone is, and we'll be off. If it's any help I can hit you over the head and tie you up. . .' 'That will not be required. The dwarf and the troll are in the cellar. Her ladyship is . . . I assume she's wherever the Baron took her.' Vimes felt the little trickle of superheated ice down his spine. 'Took her?' he said hoarsely. 'Well, yes.' Tantony stepped back from Vimes's expression. 'She knew the Baroness, sir! She said they were old friends! She said they could sort it all out! And then . . .' Tantony's voice became a mumble, seared into silence by the look on Vimes's face. When Vimes spoke, it was in a monotone as threatening as a spear. 'You are standing there in your shiny breastplate and your silly helmet and your sword without a single notch in the blade and your stupid trousers and you are telling me that you let my wife be taken away by werewolves?' Tantony took a step backwards. 'It was the Baron-' 'And you don't argue with barons. Right. You don't argue with anyone. Do you know what? I'm ashamed, ashamed to think that something like you is called a watchman. Now give me those keys.' The man had gone red. 'You've obeyed any orders,' said Vimes. 'Don't . . . even . . . think . . . about . . . disobeying . . . that . . . one.' Carrot reached the bottom of the stairs and put a hand on Vimes's shoulder. 'Steady, Mister Vimes.' Tantony looked from - one to the other and made a life decision. 'I hope you . . . find your lady, milord.' He produced a bunch of keys and handed them over. 'I really do.' Vimes, still fighting for breath, wordlessly passed the keys to Carrot. 'Let them out,' he said. 'Are you going to the werewolves' castle?' Tantony panted. 'Yes.' 'You won't stand a chance, milord. They do as they please.' 'Then they've got to be stopped.' 'You can't. The old one understood the rules, but Wolfgang, he doesn't obey anything!' 'All the more reason to stop him, then. Ah, Detritus.' The troll saluted. 'You've got your bow, I see. Treated you well, did they?' 'Dey called me a ficko troll,' said Detritus darkly. 'One of dem kicked me inna rocks.' 'Was it this one?' , , No. 'But he is their captain,' said Vimes, stepping away from Tantony. 'Sergeant, I order you: shoot him down.' In one movement the troll had the crossbow balanced on his shoulder and was sighting along the massive package of arrows. Tantony went pale. 'Well, go on,' said Vimes. 'It was an order, sergeant.' Detritus lowered the bow. 'I ain't dat fick, sir.' 'I gave you an order!' 'Den you can do wid dat order what Boulder der Lintel did wid his bag of gravel, sir! Wid respect, o'course.' Vimes walked across and patted the shaking Tantony on his shoulder. 'Just making a point,' he said. 'However,' said-Detritus, 'if you can find der man dat kicked me inna rocks, I should be happy to give him a flick around der earhole. I know which one it was. He's der one walkin' wid der limp.' Lady Sybil drank her wine carefully. It didn't taste very nice. In fact, quite a lot of things weren't very nice. Shewasn't a good cook. She'd never been taught proper cookery; at her school it had always been assumed that other people would be doing the cooking and that in any case it would be for fifty people using at least four types of fork. Such dishes as she had mastered were dainty things on doilies. But she cooked for Sam because she vaguely felt that a wife ought to and, besides, he was an eater who entirely matched her kitchen skills. He liked burnt sausages and fried eggs that went boing when you tried to stick a fork in them. If you gave him caviare, he'd want it in batter. He was an easy man to feed, if you always kept some lard in the house. But the food here tasted as though it had been cooked by someone who had never even tried before. She'd seen the kitchens, when Serafine had given her the little tour, and they'd just about do for a cottage. The game larders, on the other hand, were the size of barns. She'd never seen so many dead things hanging up. It was just that she was certain that venison shouldn't be served boiled, with potatoes that were crunchy. If they were potatoes, of course. Potatoes weren't usually grey. Even Sam, who liked the black lumpy bits you got in some mashed potatoes, would have commented. But Sybil had been brought up properly; if you can't find something nice to say about the food, find something else to be nice about. 'These are . . . really very interesting plates,' she said dutifully. 'Er, are you sure there's been no more news?' She tried to avoid watching the Baron. He was ignoring Sybil and his wife, and was prodding the meat around on his plate as if he'd forgotten what a knife and fork were for. 'Wolfgang and his friends are still out searching,' said Serafine. 'But this is terrible weather for a man to be on the run.' 'He is not on the run!' snapped Sybil. 'Sam is not guilty of anything!' 'Of course, of course. All the evidence is circumstantial. Of course,' said the Baroness soothingly. 'Now, I suggest that as soon as they have the passes clear, you and the, er, the staff get back to the safety of Ankh-Morpork before the real winter hits. We know the country, my dear. If your husband is alive, we can soon do something about it.' 'I will not have him shamed like this! You saw him save the King!' 'I'm sure he did, Sybil. I'm afraid I was talking to my husband at the time, but I don't disbelieve you for a minute. Is it true that he killed all those men in the Wilinus Pass?' 'What? But they were bandits!' At the other end of the table the Baron had picked up a lump of meat and was trying to tear it apart with his teeth. 'Well, of course. Yes. Of course.' Sybil pinched the bridge of her nose. Most of her would not have considered Sam Vimes guilty of murder, actual murder, even on the evidence of three gods and a message written on the sky. But stories did get back to her, in a roundabout way. Sam got wound up about things. Sometimes he unwound all at once. There'd been that bad business with that little girl and those men over at Dolly Sisters, and when Sam had broken into the men's lodging he found one of them had stolen one of her shoes, and she'd heard Detritus say that if he hadn't been there only Sam would have walked out of the room alive. She shook her head. 'I really would like a bath,' she said. There was a clatter from the other end of the table. 'Dear, you will have to eat your dinner in the changing room,' said the Baroness, without looking round. She flashed Lady Sybil a brief, brittle smile. 'We do not, in fact, have a . . . have such a, a device in the castle.' A thought occurred to her. 'We use the hot springs. So much more hygienic.' 'Out in the forest?' 'Oh, it's quite close. And a quick run around in the snow really tones up the body.' 'I think perhaps I'll have a lie-down instead,' said Lady Sybil firmly. 'But thank you all the same.' She made her way to the musty bedroom, fuming in a ladylike way. She couldn't-bring herself to like Serafine, and this was shocking, because Lady Sybil even liked Nobby Nobbs, and that took breeding. But the werewolf scraped across her nerves like a file. She remembered that she'd never liked her at school, either. Among the other unwanted baggage that had been heaped on the young Sybil to hamper her progress through life was the injunction to be pleasant to people and say helpful things. People took this to mean that she didn't think. She'd hated the way Serafine had talked about dwarfs. She'd called them 'sub-human'. Well, obviously most of them lived underground, but Sybil rather liked dwarfs. And Serafine spoke of trolls as if they were things. Sybil hadn't met many trolls, but the ones she knew seemed to spend their lives raising their children and looking for the next dollar just like everyone else. Worst of all, Serafine simply assumed that Sybil would naturally agree with her stupid opinions because she was a Lady. Sybil Ramkin had not had an education in these things, moral philosophy not having featured much in a curriculum that was heavy on flower-arranging, but she had a shrewd idea that in any possible debate the right side was where Serafine wasn't. She'd only ever written all those letters to her because it was what you did. You always wrote letters to old friends, even if you weren't very friendly with them. She sat on the bed and stared at the wall until the shouting started, and when the shouting started she knew Sam was alive and well, because only Sam made people that angry. She heard the key click in the lock. Sybil rebelled. She was large and she was kind. She hadn't enjoyed school much. A society of girls is not a good one in which to be large and kind, because people are inclined to interpret that as 'stupid' and, worse, 'deaf'. Lady Sybil looked out of the window. She was two floors up. There were bars across it, but they'd been designed to keep something out; from the inside they could be lifted out of their slots. And there were musty but heavy sheets and blankets on the bed. None of this might have suggested very much to the average person, but life in a rather strict school for well brought-up young ladies can give someone a real insight into the tricks of escapology. Five minutes after the key had turned there was only one bar in the window and it was jerking and creaking in the stonework, suggesting that quite a heavy weight was on the sheets that had been neatly knotted around it. Torches streamed along the castle walls. The ghastly red and black flag snapped in the wind. Vimes looked over the side of the badge. The water was a long way down, and pure white even before it reached the waterfall. Forward and back were the only possible directions here. He reviewed his troops. Unfortunately this did not take long. Even a policeman could count up to five. Then there was Gavin and his wolves, who were lurking in the trees. And finally, very definitely finally, there was Gaspode, the Corporal Nobbs of the canine world, who'd attached himself to the group uninvited. What else was on his side? Well, the enemy preferred not to use weapons. This bonus evaporated somewhat when you remembered that they had, at will, some very nasty teeth and claws. He sighed and turned to Angua. 'I know this is your family,' he said. 'I won't blame you if you hang back.' 'We'll see, sir, shall we?' 'How are we going to get in, sir?' said Carrot. 'How would you go about it, Carrot?' 'Well, I'd start by knocking, sir.' 'Really? Sergeant Detritus. Forward, please.' 'Sir!' 'Blow the bloody doors off!' 'Yessir!' Vines turned back to Carrot as the troll gazed thoughtfully at the door and began making extra turns on his crossbow's winch, grunting as the springs fought back. Their fight was unsuccessful. 'This isn't Ankh-Morpork, see?' said Vines. Detritus hoisted the bow on to his shoulders and took a step forward. There was a thunk. Vines didn't see the bundle of arrows leave the bow. They were probably already fragments by the time they'd gone a few feet. Halfway towards the doors the expanding cloud of splinters exploded into flame from the air friction. What hit the doors was a fireball as angry and unstoppable as the Fifth Elephant and travelling at an appreciable fraction of local lightspeed. 'My gods; Detritus,' muttered Vines as the thunder died away. 'That's not a crossbow, that's a national emergency.' A few bits of charred door crashed on to the cobbles. 'The wolves won't come in, Mister Vines,' said Angua. 'Gavin will follow me, but they won't come, not even for him.' 'Why not?' 'Because they're wolves, sir. They don't feel at home in houses.' The only sound was the squeak-squeak of Detritus winding up his bow again. 'The hell with it,' said Vines, drawing his sword and stepping forward. Lady Sybil untucked her dress from her underwear and stepped carefully across the little courtyard. She was somewhere around the rear of the castle, as far as she could make out. She flattened herself as best she could against the wall when she heard a sound, and tightened her grip on one of the iron bars that had formerly graced the window. A large wolf came around the corner, holding a bone in its mouth. It did not look as if it was expecting her, and it certainly wasn't expecting the iron bar. 'Oh, I'm terribly sorry,' said Sybil automatically as it folded up on to the cobbles. There was an explosion on the other side of the castle. That sounded like Sam. 'Do you think they heard us, sir?' said Carrot. 'Captain, people in Ankh-Morpork probably heard us. So where are all the werewolves?' Angua pushed forward. 'This way,' she said. She led them up a flight of low steps and tried one of the doors to the keep. It swung back slowly. There were torches in the hall, too. 'They'll leave us somewhere to run,' she said. 'We always leave people somewhere to run.' A pair of smaller doors at the far end of the hall were pushed open. No handles, Vines noted. Paws can't use handles. Wolfgang stepped in. A couple of dozen werewolves escorted him, fanning out around the room and sitting down . . . sprawling down and then watching the intruders with keen interest. 'Ah, Civilized!' said Wolfgang cheerfully. 'You won the game! Would you like another go? When people have a second game we give them a handicap! We bite one of their legs off! Good joke, hey?' 'I think I prefer the Ankh-Morpork sense of humour,' said Vimes. 'Where's my wife, you bastard?' He could still hear the sound of Detritus winding. That was the trouble with the big bow. It was only a quick-fire weapon by geological standards. 'And Delphine! Look at what the dog dragged in!' said Wolfgang, ignoring Vimes. He stepped forward. Vimes heard a growl begin in Angua's throat, a sound which would cause instant obedience in many of Ankh-Morpork's criminal population when they encountered it in a dark alley. There was a deeper rumble from Gavin. Wolfgang stopped. 'You haven't got the brains for this, Wolfie,' said Angua. 'And you couldn't plot your way out of a wet paper bag. Where's Mother?' She looked around at the lolling werewolves. 'Hello, Uncle Ulf . . . Aunt Hilda . . . Magweri . . . Nancy . . . Unity . . . The pack's all here, then? Except for Father, who I expect is off rolling in something. What a family-' 'I want these disgusting people out of here right away,' said the Baroness, stepping into the hall. She glared at Detritus. 'How dare you bring a troll into this house!' 'O-kay, it's all wound up,' said Detritus cheerfully, hoisting the humming bow on to his shoulder. 'Where should I fire it, Mister Vimes?' 'Good grief, not in here! This is an enclosed building!' 'Only until I pull dis trigger, sir.' 'How very civilized,' said the Baroness. 'How very Ankh-Morpork. You think you merely have to threaten and the lesser races back down, eh?' 'Have you seen your gates lately?' said Vimes. 'We're werewolves!' snapped the Baroness - and it was a snap, the words sharp and clipped as though they were barked. 'Stupid toys like that don't frighten us.' 'But it'll slow you down for a while. Now bring out Lady Sybil!' 'Lady Sybil is resting. You are in no position to make demands, Mister Vimes. We are not the criminals here.' As Vimes's mouth dropped open she went on: 'The game is not against the lore. It has been played for a thousand years. And what else is it that you think we have done? Stolen the dwarfs' pet rock? We-' 'You knowit wasn't stolen,' said Vimes. 'And I know-' 'You knownothing! You suspect everything. You have that kind of mind.' 'Your son said-' 'My son unfortunately has honed to perfection every muscle in his body except the ones for thinking with,' said the Baroness. 'In civilized Ankh-Morpork I daresay you can barge into people's houses and stamp around, but here in our barbaric backwater the lore requires something beyond mere assertion.' 'I can smell the fear,' said Angua. 'It's pouring off you, Mother.' 'Sam?' They looked up. Lady Sybil was standing at the top of some stone stairs leading to a lower floor, looking bewildered and angry. She was holding an iron bar with a bend in it. ' Sybil!' 'Shetold me you were on the run and they were all trying to save you, but that wasn't right, was it?' It's a terrible thing to admit to yourself, but when the shoulderblades are pressed firmly against the brickwork then any weapon will do, and right now Vimes saw Sybil loaded and ready to fire. She got on with people. Practically from the moment she'd been able to talk she'd been taught how to listen. And when Sybil listened to people she made them feel good about themselves. It was probably something to do with being a . . . a big girl. She tried to make herself seem small, and by default that made those around her feel bigger. She got on with people almost as well as Carrot did. No wonder even the dwarfs liked her. She had pages to herself in Twurp's Peerage, huge ancestral anchors biting into the past, and dwarfs also respected someone who knew their great-great-great-grandfather's full name. And Sybil couldn't lie, you could see her redden when she tried it. Sybil was a rock. She made Detritus look like a sponge. 'We've been having a lovely run in the woods, dear,' he said. 'Now please come here, because I think we're going to see the King. And I'm going to tell him everything. I've worked it out at last.' 'The dwarfs will kill you,' said the Baroness. 'I can probably outrun a dwarf,' said Vimes. 'And now we're leaving. Angua?' Angua hadn't moved. Her eyes were still fixed on her mother, and she was still growling. Vimes recognized the signs. You spotted them in the bars of Ankh-Morpork every Saturday night. Hackles rose, and people climbed up them, and then all that was needed was for someone to break a bottle. Or blink. 'We are leaving, Angua,' he repeated. The other werewolves were standing up and stretching. Carrot reached out and took her arm. She turned, snarling. It was over in a fraction of a second, and in reality her head had hardly moved before she got a grip on herself. 'Sor thiz iz the boy?' said the Baroness, her voice slurring. 'You betrrray yourrr people for thizz?' Her ears were lengthening, Vimes was sure. The muscles in her face were moving strangely, too. 'And what else hass Ankh-Morrporrk taught you?' Angua shuddered. 'Self-control,' she muttered. 'Let's go, Mister Vimes.' The werewolves closed in as they backed towards the steps. 'Don't turn your back,' said Angua levelly. 'Don't run.' 'Don't need telling,' said Vimes. He was watching Wolfgang, who was moving obliquely across the floor, his eyes fixed on the retreating party. They'll have to bunch up to follow us through the doorway, he thought. He glanced at Detritus. The giant crossbow was weaving back and forth as the troll tried to keep all the wolves in the field of fire. 'Fire it,' said Angua. 'But they're your family!' said Sybil. 'They'll heal soon enough, believe me!' 'Detritus, don't shoot unless you have to,' Vimes ordered, as they headed towards the drawbridge. 'He has to now,' said Angua. 'Sooner or later Wolfgang will leap, and the others will take-' 'There's something you ought to know, sir,' said Cheery. 'You really ought to know it, sir. It's really important.' Vimes looked across the drawbridge. Figures massed in the dark: Torchlight glinted off armour and weaponry, blocking the way. 'Well, things couldn't get any worse,' he said. 'Oh, they could if there were snakes on here with us,' said Lady Sybil. Carrot turned at the sound of Vimes's snort of laughter. 'Sir?' 'Oh, nothing, captain. Keep your eyes on the bastards, will you? We can deal with the soldiers later.' 'Just say the word, sir,' said Detritus. 'You arrre trrapped now,' snarled the Baroness. 'Watchman! Do yourr duty!' A figure was walking across the bridge, carrying a torch. Captain Tantony reached Vimes and glared at him. 'Stand aside, sir,' he said. 'Stand aside, or by gods, ambassador or not, I'll arrest you!' Their eyes met. Then Vimes looked away. 'Let's let him through,' he said. 'The man's decided he's got a duty to do.' Tantony nodded slightly and then marched on across the bridge until he was a few feet from the Baroness. He saluted. 'Take these people away!' she said. 'Lady Serafine von Uberwald?' said Tantony woodenly. 'You knowwho I am, man!' 'I wish to talk to you concerning certain charges made in my presence.' Vimes closed his eyes. Oh, you poor dumb idiot . . . I didn't mean you to actually 'You what?'said the Baroness. 'It has been alleged, my lady, that a member or members of your family have been involved in a conspiracy to-' 'How darrre you!' screamed Serafine. And Wolfgang leapt, and the future became a series of flickering images. In mid-air he changed into a wolf. Vimes grabbed the bottom of Detritus's bow and forced it upwards at the same time as the troll pulled the trigger. Carrot was running before Wolfgang landed on Captain Tantony's chest. The sound of the bow echoed around the castle, above the noise of a thousand whirring fragments scything through the sky. Carrot reached Wolfgang in a flat dive. He hit the wolf with his shoulder, and the two of them were bowled over. Then, like some moving magic lantern show coming back up to speed, the scene exploded. Carrot got to his feet and It must be because we're abroad, thought Vimes. He's trying to do things properly. He'd squared up to the werewolf, fists balled, a stance taken straight from Fig. l of The Noble Art of Fisticuffs, which looked impressive right up to the point when your opponent broke your nose with a quart mug. Carrot had a punch like an iron bar, and he landed a couple of heavy blows on Wolfgang as he got up. The werewolf seemed more puzzled than hurt. Then he changed shape, caught a fist in both hands and gripped it hard. To Vimes's horror he stepped forward, without apparent effort, forcing Carrot back. 'Don't try anything, Angua,' said Wolf, grinning happily. 'Or else I'll break his arm. Oh, perhaps I'll break his arm anyway! Yes!' Vimes even heard the crack. Carrot went white. Someone holding a broken arm has all the control they need. Another idiot, thought Vimes. When they're down you don't let them get back up! Damn the Marquis of Fantailler! Policing by consent was a good theory, but you had to get your opponent to lie still first. 'Ah! And he has other bones!' said Wolfgang, pushing Carrot away. He glanced towards Angua. 'Get back, get back. Or I'll hurt him some more! No, I shall hurt him some more anyway!' Then Carrot kicked him in the stomach. Wolfgang went over backwards, but turned this into a backflip and a mid-air spin. He landed lightly, leapt back at the astonished Carrot and punched him twice in the chest. The blows sounded like shovels hitting wet concrete. Wolfgang grabbed the falling man, lifted him over his head with one hand and hurled him down on to the bridge in front of Angua. 'Civilized man!' he shouted. 'Here he is, sister!' Vimes heard a sound down beside him. Gavin was watching intently, making urgent little noises in his throat. A tiny part of Vimes, the little rock-hard core of cynicism, thought: all right for you, then. Steam was rising off Wolfgang. He shone in the torchlight. The blond hair across his shoulders gleamed like a slipped halo. Angua knelt down by the body, face impassive. Vimes had been expecting a scream of rage. He heard her crying. Beside Vimes, Gavin whined. Vimes stared down at the wolf. He looked at Angua trying to lift Carrot, and then he looked at Wolfgang. And then back again. 'Anyone else?' said Wolfgang, dancing back and forth on the boards. 'How about you, Civilized?' 'Sam!' hissed Sybil. 'You can't-' Vimes drew his sword. It wouldn't make any difference now. Wolfgang wasn't playing now, he wasn't punching and running away. Those arms could push a fist through Vimes's ribcage and out the other side A blur went past at shoulder height. Gavin struck Wolfgang in the throat, knocking him over. They rolled across the bridge, Wolfgang changing back to wolf shape to lock jaw against jaw. They broke, circled, and went for one another again. Dreamlike, Vimes heard a small voice say: 'He wouldn't last five minutes back home fightin' like that. The silly bugger's gonna get creamed, fightin' like that! Stuff the Marquis of flamin' Fantailler!' Gaspode was sitting bolt upright, stubby tail vibrating. 'The daftie! This is how you win a dogfight!' As the wolves rolled over and over, Wolfgang tearing at Gavin's belly, Gaspode arrived growling and yapping and launched himself in the general direction of the werewolf's hindquarters. There was a yip. Gaspode's growls became somewhat muffled. Wolfgang leapt vertically. Gavin sprang. The three hit the parapet of the bridge together, knocked the crumbling stones aside, hung for a moment in a snarling ball, and then dropped down into the roaring whiteness of the river. The whole of it, from the moment Tantony had crossed the bridge, had taken much less than a minute. The Baroness was staring down into the gorge. Keeping his eye on her, Vimes spoke to Detritus. 'Are you sure you're werewolf-proof, sergeant?' 'Pretty much, sir. Anyway, I got the bow wound up again.' 'Go into the castle and fetch the resident Igor, then,' said Vimes calmly. 'If anyone even tries to stop you, shoot them. And shoot anyone standing near them.' 'No problem about dat, sir.' 'We're not at home to Mister Reasonable, sergeant.' 'I do not hear him knockin', sir.' 'Go to it, then. Sergeant Angua?' She did not look up. 'Sergeant Angua!' Now she looked up. 'How can you be so . . . so cool?' she snarled. 'He's hurt.' 'I know. Go and talk to those watchmen hanging around on the other end of the bridge. They look scared. I don't want any accidents. We're going to need them. Cheery, cover Carrot and the lad with something. Keep them warm.' I wish there was something to keep me warm, he thought. The thoughts came slowly, like drips of freezing water. He felt that ice would crackle off him if he moved, that frost would sparkle in his footsteps, that his mind was full of crisp snow. 'And now, madam,' he said, turning back to the Baroness, 'you will give me the Scone of Stone.' 'He'll be back!' hissed the Baroness. 'That fall was nothing! And he'll find you.' 'For the last time . . . the stone of the dwarfs. The wolves are waiting out there. The dwarfs are waiting down in the city. Give me the stone, and we all might survive. This is diplomacy. Don't let me try anything else.' 'I have only to say the word-' Angua began to growl. Sybil strode towards the Baroness and grabbed her. 'You never answered a single letter! All those years I wrote to you!' The Baroness stared at her in amazement, as people so often did when struck with Sybil's sharp non sequiturs. 'If you know we've got the Scone,' she said to Vimes, 'then you know it's not the real one. And much good may it do the dwarfs!' 'Yes, you had it made in Ankh-Morpork. Made in Ankh-Morpork! They should have stamped it on the bottom. But someone killed the man who did it. That's murder. It's against the law.' Vimes nodded at the Baroness. 'It's a thing we have.' Gaspode dragged himself out of the water and stood; shivering, on the shingle. Every single part of him felt bruised. There was a nasty ringing noise in his ears. Blood dripped down one leg. The last few minutes had been a little hazy, but he did recall they'd involved a lot of water that had hit him like hammers. He shook himself. His coat jangled where the water was already freezing. Out of habit, he walked over to the nearest tree and, wincing, raised a leg. EXCUSE ME. A busy, reflective silence followed. 'That was not a good thing you just did,' said Gaspode. I'M SORRY. PERHAPS THIS IS NOT THE RIGHT MOMENT. 'Not for me, no. You may have caused some physical damage here.' IT'S HARD TO KNOW WHAT TO SAY. 'Trees don't normally talk back, is my point.' Gaspode sighed. 'So what happens now?' I BEG YOUR PARDON? 'I'm dead, right?' NO. NO ONE IS MORE SURPRISED THAN ME, I MAY SAY, BUT YOUR TIME DOES NOT APPEAR TO BE NOW. Death pulled out an hourglass, held it up against the cold stars for a moment, and stalked away along the riverbank. "scuse me, there's no chance of a lift, is there?' said Gaspode, struggling after him. NONE WHATSOEVER. 'Only, being a short dog in deep snow is not good for the of wossnames, if you get my-' Death had stopped at a little bay. An indistinct shape lay in a few inches of water. 'Oh,' said Gaspode. Death leaned down. There was a flash of blue and then he vanished. Gaspode shivered. He paddled into the water and nudged Gavin's sodden fur with his nose. 'Shouldn't be like this,' he whined. 'If you was a human, they'd put you in a big boat on the tide and set fire to it, an' everyone'd see. Shouldn't just be you an' me down here in the cold.' There was something that had to be done, too. He knew it in his bones. He crawled back to the bank and pulled himself up on to the trunk of a fallen willow. He cleared his throat. Then he howled. It started badly, hesitantly, but it picked up and got stronger, richer . . . and when he paused for breath the howl went on and on, passing from throat to throat across the forest. The sound wrapped him as he slid off the log and struggled on towards higher ground. It lifted him over the deeper snow. It wound around the trees, a plaiting of many voices becoming something with a life of its own. He remembered thinking: maybe it'll even get as far as AnkhMorpork. Maybe it'll get much further than that. Vimes was impressed by the Baroness. She fought back in a corner. 'I know nothing about any deaths-' A howl came up from the forest. How many wolves were there? You never saw them and then, when they cried out, it sounded as though there was one behind every tree. This one went on and on - it sounded like a cry thrown into a lake of air, the ripples spreading out across the mountains. Angua threw her head back and screamed. Then, breath hissing between her teeth, she advanced on the Baroness, fingers flexing. 'Give him ... the damn stone,' she hissed. 'Will any . . . of . . . you . . . face me? Now? Then give him the stone!' 'What theemth to be the trouble?' Igor lurched through the stricken gates, trailed by Detritus. He caught sight of the two bodies and hurried over, like a very large spider. 'Fetch the stone,' growled Angua. 'And then . . . we . . . will leave. I can smell it. Or do you want me to take it?' Serafine glared at her, then turned on her heel and ran back into the ruins of the castle. The other werewolves shrank back from Angua as if her stare was a whip. 'If you can't help these men,' said Vimes to the kneeling Igor, 'your future does not look good.' Igor nodded. 'Thith one,' he said, indicating Tantony, 'fleth woundth, I can thtitch him up a treat, no problem. Thith one,' he tapped Carrot, '. . . nasty break on the arm.' He glanced up. 'Marthter Wolfgang been playing again?' 'Can you make him well?' snapped Vimes. 'No, it'th hith lucky day,' said Igor. 'I can make him better. I've got thome kidneyth jutht in, a lovely little pair, belonged to young Mithter Crapanthy, hardly touched a drop of thtrong licker, thame about the avalanche . . .' 'Does he need them?' said Angua. 'No, but you thould never mith an opportunity to improve yourthelf, I alwayth thay.' Igor- grinned. It was a strange sight. The scars crawled around his face like caterpillars. 'Just see to the arm,' said Vimes firmly. The Baroness reappeared, flanked by several werewolves. They also backed away as Angua spun around. 'Take it,' said Serafine. 'Take the wretched thing. It's a fake. No crime has been committed!' 'I'm a policeman,' said Vimes. 'I can always find a crime.' The sleigh slid under its own weight down the track towards Bonk, the town's watchmen running alongside it and giving it the occasional push. With their captain down they were lost and bewildered and in no mood to take orders from Vimes, but they did what Angua commanded because Angua was of the class that traditionally gave them orders. The two casualties were bedded down on blankets. 'Angua?' said Vimes. 'Yes, sir?' 'There's wolves keeping pace with us. I can see them running between the trees.' 'I know.' 'Are they on our side?' 'Let's just say they're not on anyone else's side yet, shall we? They don't like me much, but they know . . . Gavin did, and right now that's what's important. Some of them are out looking for my brother.' 'Would he have survived that? It was a long way down.' 'Well, it wasn't fire or silver. There's nothing but white water for miles. It probably hurt a lot, but we heal amazingly well, sir.' 'Look, I'm sorry that-' 'No, Mister Vimes, you're not. You shouldn't be. Carrot just didn't understand what Wolfgang is like. You can't beat something like him in a fair fight. I know he's family, but . . . personal is not the same as important. Carrot always said that.' 'Says that,' said Lady Sybil sharply. 'Yes.' Carrot opened his eyes. 'What . . . happened back there?' he said. 'Wolfgang hit you,' said Angua. She wiped his brow. 'What with?' Carrot tried to push himself upwards, winced and fell back. 'What have I always told you about the Marquis of Fantailler?' said Vimes. 'Sorry, sir.' Something bright rose from the distant forests. It vanished, and then a green light expanded into existence. A moment later came the pop of the flare. 'The signallers have got to the tower,' said Vimes. 'Can't this damn thing go any faster?' said Angua. 'I mean, we can contact Ankh-Morpork,' said Vimes. After everything, he felt curiously cheered by this. It was as if a special human howl had gone up. He wasn't floundering around loose now. He was floundering on the end of a very long line. That made all the difference. It was a small public room over a shop in Bonk and, since it belonged to everybody, it looked as though it didn't belong to anyone. There was dust in the corners, and the chairs that were currently arranged in a ragged circle had been chosen for their ability to be stacked neatly rather than sat on comfortably. Lady Margolotta smiled at the assembled vampires. She liked these meetings. The rest of the group were a pretty mixed bunch, and she wondered what their motives were. But perhaps they at least shared one conviction - that what you were made as wasn't what you had to be or what you might become . . . And the trick was to start small. Suck, but don't impale. Little steps. And then you found that what you really wanted was power, and there were much politer ways of getting it. And then you realized that power was a bauble. Any thug had power. The true prize was control. Lord Vetinari knew that. When heavy weights were balanced on the scales, the trick was to know where to place your thumb. And all control started with the self. She stood up. They watched her with slightly worried yet friendly faces. 'My name, in the short form, is Lady Margolotta Amaya Katerina Assumpta Crassina von Uberwald, and I am a vampire . . .' They chorused: 'Hello, Lady Margolotta Amaya Katerina Assumpta Crassina von Uberwald!' 'It has been almost four years now,' said Lady Margolotta, 'and I am still taking vun night at a time. Vun neck would always be vun too many. But . . . there are compensations . . .' There were no guards on the gate of Bonk, but there was a cluster of dwarfs outside the embassy as the sleigh slid to a halt. The wolves in the traces jerked nervously and whined at Angua. 'I'll have to let them go,' she said, getting out. 'They've only come this far because they're frightened of me . . .' Vimes wasn't surprised. At the moment, anything would be frightened of Angua. Even so, a squad of dwarfs was hurrying to the sledge. It'd take them a few seconds to get a grip on things, Vimes realized. There were uptown guards here, and an Igor, and a werewolf. They'd be puzzled as well as suspicious. That should give him a tiny crack to lever open. And, ashamed as he was to say it, an arrogant bastard always had the edge. He glared at the lead dwarf. 'What is your name?' he demanded. 'You are under-' 'You know the Scone of Stone was stolen?' 'You . . . what?' Vimes reached round and pulled a sack out of the sleigh. 'Bring those torches closer!' he shouted, and because he delivered the command in a tone that said there was no doubt that it'd be obeyed, it was obeyed. I've got twenty seconds, he thought, and then the magic goes away. 'Now look at this,' he said, lifting the thing out of the sack. Several dwarfs fell to their knees. The murmuring spread out. Another howl, another rumour . . . In his current state he could see, in his mind's bloodshot eye, the towers in the night, clicking and clacking, delivering to Genua exactly the message that had been sent from AnkhMorpork. 'I want to take this to the King,' he said in the hushed silence. 'We willtake it-' the dwarf began, moving forward. Vimes stepped aside. 'Good evenin', boys,' said Detritus, standing up in the sleigh. The tortured noises the bow's springs were making under their preternatural stress sounded like some metal animal in extreme pain. The dwarf was a couple of feet away from several dozen arrow points. 'On the other hand,' said Vimes, 'we could continue talking. You look like a dwarf who likes to talk.' The dwarf nodded. 'First of all, is there any reason why the two wounded men I have here couldn't be taken inside before they die of their wounds?' The bow twitched in Detritus's hands. The dwarf nodded. 'They can go inside and be treated?' said Vimes. The dwarf nodded again, still looking into a bundle of arrows bigger than his head. 'Capital. See how we get on when we simply talk? And now I suggest that you arrest me.' 'You wantme to arrest you?' 'Yes. And Lady Sybil. We place ourselves under your personal jurisdiction.' 'That's right,' said Sybil. 'I demand to be arrested.' She drew herself up and out, righteous indignation radiating like a bonfire, causing the dwarfs to back away from what was clearly an unexploded bosom. 'And since the arrest of its ambassador will certainly cause ... difficulties with AnkhMorpork,' Vimes went on, 'I strongly suggest you take us directly to the King.' By blessed chance, the distant tower sent up another flare. Green light illuminated the snows for a moment. 'What's that mean?' said the dwarf captain. 'It means that Ankh-Morpork knows what's going on,' said Vimes, praying that it did. 'And I don't reckon you want to be the dwarf who started the war.' The dwarf spoke to the dwarf beside him. A third dwarf joined them. Vimes couldn't follow the hurried conversation, but right behind him Cheery whispered: 'It's a bit beyond him. He doesn't want anything to happen to the Scone.' 'Good.' The dwarf turned back to Vimes. 'What about the troll?' 'Oh, Detritus will stay in the embassy,' said Vimes. This seemed to lighten the tone of the debate somewhat, but it still appeared to be heavy going. 'What's happening now?' whispered Vimes. 'There's no precedent for anything like this,' muttered Cheery. 'You're supposed to be an assassin, but you've come back to see the King and you've got the Scone-' 'No precedent?' said Sybil. 'Yes there bloody well is, pardon my Klatchian . . .' She took a deep breath and began to sing. 'Oh,' said Cheery, shocked. 'What?' said Vimes. The dwarfs were staring at Lady Sybil as she changed up through the gears into full, operatic voice. For an amateur soprano she had an impressive delivery and range, a touch too wobbly for the professional stage but exactly the kind of high coloratura to impress the dwarfs. Snow slid off roofs. Icicles vibrated. Good grief, thought Vimes, impressed. With a spiky corset and a hat with wings on it she could be ferrying dead warriors off a battlefield . . . 'It's Ironhammer's "Ransom" song,' said Cheery. 'Every dwarf knows it! Er, it doesn't translate well, but. . . "I come now to ransom my love, I bring a gift of great wealth, none but the King can have power over me now, standing in my way is against all the laws of the world, the value of truth is greater than gold" . . . er, there's always been some debate about that last line, sir, but it's generally considered acceptable if it's a really big truth-' Vimes looked at the dwarfs. They were fascinated, and one or two of them were mouthing along to the words. 'Is it going to work?' he whispered. 'It's hard to think of a bigger precedent than this, sir. I mean, it's the song of songs! The ultimate appeal! It's built into dwarf law, almost! They can't refuse. It'd be . . . not being a dwarf, sir!' As Vimes watched, one dwarf pulled a fine chain-mail handkerchief out of his pocket and blew his nose with a wet, jingling noise. Several others were in tears. When the last note died away there was silence, and then the sudden thunder of axes banging on shields. 'It's all right!' said Cheery. 'They're clapping!' Sybil, panting with the effort, turned to her husband. She gleamed in the torchlight. 'Do you think that was all right?' she said. 'By the sound of it, you're an honorary dwarf,' said Vimes. He held out his arm. 'Shall we go?' News was going on ahead. Dwarfs were pouring out of the entrance to Downtown when the Duke and Duchess arrived. There were dwarfs behind them now. They were being swept along. And all the time, hands reached out to touch the Scone as it passed. Dwarfs crowded into the elevator with them. Down below, the roar of conversation stopped abruptly as Vimes stepped out and raised the Scone above his head. Then the rock echoed and re-echoed to one enormous cheer. They can't even see it, thought Vimes. To most of them it's a tiny white dot. And that was what the plotters had known, wasn't it? You don't have to steal something to hold it hostage. 'They are to be arrested!' Dee was hurrying forward, with more guards behind him. 'Again?' said Vimes. He kept the Scone aloft. 'You attempted to kill the King! You escaped from your cell!' 'That's something about which we could hear more evidence,' said Vimes, as calmly as he could. The Scone was heavy. 'You can't keep people in the dark all the time, Dee.' 'You shall certainly not see the King!' 'Then I will drop the Scone!' 'Do so! It won't-' Vimes heard the gasp of the ,dwarfs behind him. ,'It won't what?' he said quietly. 'It won't matter? But this is the Scone!' One of the dwarfs that had accompanied them from the embassy shouted something, and several others took it up. 'Precedent is on your side,' Cheery translated. 'They say they can always kill you after you've seen the King.' 'Well, not exactly what I was hoping, but it'll have to do.' Vimes looked at Dee again. 'You said you wanted me to find the thing, didn't you? And now, how fitting that I return it to its rightful owner. . .' 'You . . . the King is . . . You may give it to me,' said Dee, pulling himself up to the height of Vimes's chest. 'Absolutely not!' snapped Lady Sybil. 'When Ironhammer returned the Scone to Bloodaxe, would he have given it to Slogram?' There was a general chorus of dissent. 'Of course not,' said Dee, 'Slogram was a trait-' He stopped. 'I think,' said Vimes, 'that we had better see the King, don't you?' 'You can't demand that!' Vimes indicated the press of dwarfs behind them. 'You're going to be amazed at how difficult it's going to be for you, explaining that to them,' he said. It took half an hour to see the King. He had to be roused. He had to dress. Kings don't hurry. In the meantime, Vimes and Sybil sat in an anteroom on chairs too small for them, surrounded by dwarfs who weren't themselves sure if they were a prisoner escort or an honour guard. Other dwarfs were peering around the doorway; Vimes could hear the buzz of excited conversation. They weren't wasting much time looking at him. Their gaze always fell on the Scone that he held in his lap. It was clear that most of them hadn't even seen it before. You poor little sods, he thought. This is what you all believe in, and before the day's out you're going to be told it's just a bad fake. You'll see it's a forgery. And that about wraps it up for your little world, doesn't it? I set out to solve a crime and I'm going to end up committing a bigger one. I'm going to be lucky to get out of here alive, aren't I? A door was rolled open. A couple of what Vimes thought of as the heavy dwarfs stepped through and gave everyone the official, professional look which said that for your comfort and convenience we have decided not to kill you right at this very moment. The King entered, rubbing his hands. 'Ah, your excellency,' he said, pronouncing the word as a statement of fact rather than a welcome. 'I see you have something that belongs to us.' Dee detached himself from the crowd at the door. 'I must make a serious accusation, sire!' he said. 'Really? Bring these people into the law room. Under guard, of course.' He swept away. Vimes looked at Sybil and shrugged. They followed the King, leaving the hubbub of the main cavern behind. Once again Vimes was in the room with too many shelves and too few candles. The King sat down. 'Is the Scone heavy, your excellency?' 'Yes!' 'It is weighted with history, see? Put it down on the table with extreme care, please. And . . . Dee?' 'That . . . thing,' said Dee, pointing a finger, 'that thing is . . . a fake, a copy. A forgery! Made in Ankh-Morpork! Part of a plot which, I am sure can be proven, involves milord Vimes! It is not the Scone!' The King lifted a candle a little closer to the Scone and gave it a critical look from several angles. 'I have seen the Scone many times before,' he said at last, 'and I would say that this appears to be the true thing and the whole of the thing.' 'Sire, I demand- that is, I advise you to demand a closer inspection, sire.' 'Really?' said the King mildly. 'Well, I am not an expert, see? But we are fortunate, are we not, that Albrecht Albrechtson is here for the coronation? All of dwarfdom knows, I think, that he is the authority on the Scone and its history. Have him summoned. I daresay he is close at hand. I should think just about everyone is on the other side of that door now.' 'Indeed, sire.' The look of triumph on Dee's face as he swept past Vimes was almost obscene. 'I think we're going to need another song to get us out of this one, dear,' murmured Vimes. 'I'm afraid I can only remember that one, Sam. The others were mainly about gold.' Dee returned with Albrecht and a following of other senior and somewhat magisterial dwarfs. 'Ah, Albrecht,' said the King. 'Do you see this on the table? It is claimed that this is not the true thing and the whole of the thing. Your opinion is sought, please.' The King nodded at Vimes. 'My friend understands Morporkian, your excellency. He just chooses not to pollute the air by speaking it. Just his way, see?' Albrecht glared at Vimes and then stepped up to the table. He looked at the Scone from several angles. He moved the candles and leaned down so that he could inspect the crust closely. He took a knife from his belt, tapped the Scone with it and listened with ferocious care to the note produced. He turned the Scone over. He sniffed at it. He stood back, his face screwed up in a scowl, and then said, 'H gradz?' The dwarfs muttered among themselves, and then, one by one, nodded. To Vimes's horror, Albrecht chipped a tiny piece from the Scone and put it in his mouth. Plaster, thought Vimes. Fresh plaster from Ankh-Morpork. And Dee will talk his way out of it Albrecht spat the piece out into his hand and looked up at the ceiling for a moment. While he chewed. Then he and the King exchanged a long, thoughtful stare. 'P'akga,'said Albrecht at last, 'a p'akaga-ad . . .' Behind the outbreak of murmuring Vimes heard Cheery translate: "'It is the thing, and the whole of-"' 'Yes, yes,' said Vimes. And he thought: by gods, we're good. Ankh-Morpork, I'm proud of you. When we make a forgery it's better than the real damn thing. Unless . . . unless I've missed something . . . 'Thank you, gentlemen,' said the King. He waved a hand. The dwarfs filed out, reluctantly, with many backward glances at Vimes. 'Dee? Please fetch my axe from my chamber, will you?' the King said. 'Yourself, please. I don't want anyone else to handle it. Your excellency, you and your lady will remain here. Your . . . dwarf must leave, however. The guards are to be posted on the door. Dee?' The Ideas Taster hadn't moved. 'Dee?' 'Wh . . . Yes, sire?' 'You do what I tell you!' 'Sire, this man's ancestor once killed a king!' 'I daresay the family have got it out of their system! Now do as I say!' The dwarf hurried away, turning to stare at Vimes for a moment as he left the cave. The King sat back. 'Sit down, your monitorship. And your lady, too.' He put one elbow on the arm of the chair and cupped his chin on his hand. 'And now, Mister Vimes, tell me the truth. Tell me everything. Tell me the truth that is more valuable than small amounts of gold.' 'I'm not sure I know it any more,' said Vimes. 'Ah. A good start,' said the King. 'Tell me what you suspect, then.' 'Sire, I'd swear that thing is as fake as a tin shilling.' 'Oh. Really?' 'The real Scone wasn't stolen, it was destroyed. I reckon it was smashed and ground up and mixed with the sand in its cave. You see, sire, if people see that something's gone, and then you turn up with something that looks like it, they'll think "This must be it, it must be, because it isn't where we thought it was." People are like that. Something disappears and something very much like it turns up somewhere else and they think it must somehow have got from one place to the other. . .' Vimes pinched his nose. 'I'm sorry, I haven't had much sleep. . .' 'You are doing very well for a sleepwalking man.' 'The ... thief was working with the werewolves, I think. They were behind the "Sons of Agi Hammerthief" business. They were going to blackmail you off the throne. Well, you know that. To keep Uberwald in the dark. If you didn't. step down there'd be a war, and if you did Albrecht would get the fake Scone.' 'What else do you think you know?' 'Well, the fake was made in Ankh-Morpork. We're good at making things. I think someone had the maker killed, but I can't find out more until I get back. I will find out.' 'You make things very well in your city, then, to fool Albrecht. How do you think that was done?' 'You want the truth, sire?' 'By all means.' 'Is it possible that Albrecht was involved? Find out where the money is, my old sergeant used to say.' 'Hah. Who was it said, "Where there are policemen, you find crimes"?' 'Er, me, sir, but-' 'Let us find out. Dee should have had time to think. Ah. . .' The door opened. The Ideas Taster stepped through, carrying a dwarfish axe. It was a mining axe, with a pick point on one side, in order to go prospecting, and a real axe blade on the other, in case anyone tried to stop you. 'Call the guards in, Dee,' said the King. 'And his excellency's young dwarf. These things should be seen, see.' Oh, good grief, thought Vimes, watching Dee's face as the others shuffled in. There must be a manual. Every copper knows how this goes. You let 'em know you know they've done something wrong, but you don't tell 'em what it is and you certainly don't tell 'em how much you know, and you keep 'em off balance, and you just talk quietly and 'Place your hands upon the Scone, Dee.' Dee spun around. 'Sire?' 'Place your hands upon the Scone. Do as I say. Do it now.' -you keep the threat in view but you never refer to it, oh no. Because there's nothing you can do to them that their imagination isn't already doing to themselves. And you keep it up until they break, or in the case of my old dame school, until they feel their boots get damp. And it doesn't even leave a mark. 'Tell me about the death of Lorigfinger, the candle captain,' said the King, after Dee, with a look of hollow apprehension, had touched the Scone. The words rushed out. 'Oh, as I told you, sire, he-' 'If you do not keep your hands pressed upon the Scone, Dee, I will see to it that they are fixed there. Tell me again.' 'I . . . he . . . took his own life, sire. Out of shame.' The King picked up his axe and turned it so that the long point faced outwards. 'Tell me again.' Now Vimes could hear Dee's breathing, short and fast. 'He took his own life, sire!' The King smiled at Vimes. 'There's an old superstition, your excellency, that since the Scone contains a grain of truth it will glow red hot if a lie is told by anyone touching it. Of course, in these more modern times, I shouldn't think anyone believes it.' He turned to Dee. 'Tell me again,' he whispered. As the axe moved slightly the reflected light of the candles flashed along the blade. 'He took his own life! He did!' 'Oh, yes. You said. Thank you,' said the King. 'And do you recall, Dee, when Slogram sent false word of Bloodaxe's death in battle to Ironhammer, causing Ironhammer to take his own life in grief, where was the guilt?' 'It was Slogram's, sir,' said Dee promptly. Vimes suspected the answer had come straight from some rote-remembered teaching. 'Yes.' The King let the word hang in the air for a while, and then went on: 'And who gave the order to kill the craftsman in AnkhMorpork?' 'Sire?' said Dee. 'Who gave the order to kill the craftsman in Ankh-Morpork?' The King's tone did not change. It was the same comfortable, sing-song voice. He sounded as though he would carry on asking the question for ever. 'I know nothing about-' 'Guards, press his hands firmly against the Scone.' They stepped forward. Each one took an arm. 'Again, Dee. Who gave the order?' Dee writhed as if his hands were burning. 'I . . . I...' Vimes could see the skin whiten on the dwarf's hands as he strained to lift them from the stone. But it's a fake. I'd swear he destroyed the real one, so he knows it's a fake, surely? It's just a lump of plaster, probably still damp in the middle! Vimes tried to think. The original Scone had been in the cave, hadn't it? Was it? If it wasn't, where had it been? The werewolves thought they had a fake, and it certainly hadn't left his sight since. He tried to think through the fog of fatigue. He'd half wondered, once, whether the original Scone had been the one in the Dwarf Bread Museum. That would have been the way to keep it safe. No one would try to steal something that everyone knew was a fake. The whole thug was the Fifth Elephant, nothing was what it seemed, it was all a fog. Which one was real? 'Who gave the order, Dee?' said the King. 'Not me! I said they must take all necessary steps to preserve secrecy!' 'To whom did you say this?' 'I can give you names!' 'Later, you will. I promise you, boyo,' said the King. 'And the werewolves?' 'The Baroness suggested it! That is true!' 'Uberwald for the werewolves. Ah, yes. . . "joy through strength". I expect they promised you all sorts of things. You may take your hands off the Scone. I do not wish to distress you further. But why? My predecessors spoke highly of you, you are a dwarf of power and influence . . . and then you let yourself become a paw of the werewolves. Why?' 'Why should they be allowed to get away with it?' Dee snapped, his voice breaking with the strain. The King looked across at Vimes. 'Oh, I suspect the werewolves will regret that they-' he began. 'Not them! The ... ones in Ankh-Morpork! Wearing make-up and dresses and ... and abominable things!' Dee pointed a finger at Cheery. 'Ha'ak! How can you even look at it! You let her,' and Vimes had seldom heard a word sprayed with so much venom, 'her flaunt herself, here! And it's happening everywhere because people have not been firm, not obeyed, have let the old ways slide! Everywhere there are reports. They're eating away at everything dwarfish with their . . . their soft clothes and paint and beastly ways. How can you be King and allow this? Everywhere they are doing it and you do nothing! Why should they be allowed to do this?' Now Dee was sobbing. '1 can't!' Vimes saw that Cheery, to his amazement, was blinking back tears. 'I see,' said the King. 'Well, I suppose that is an explanation.' He nodded to the guards. 'Take . . . her away. Some things must wait a day or two.' Cheery saluted, suddenly. 'Permission to go with her, sire?' 'What on earth for, young . . . young dwarf?' 'I expect she'd like someone to talk to, sire. I know I would.' 'Indeed? I see your commander has no objection. Off you go, then.' The King leaned back when the guards had left with their prisoner and the prisoner's new counsellor. 'Well,your excellency?' 'This is the real Scone?' 'You are not certain?' 'Dee was!' 'Dee . . . is in a difficult state of mind.' The King looked at the ceiling. 'I think I will tell you this because, your excellency, I really do not want you going through the rest of your time here asking silly questions. Yes, this is the true Scone.' 'But how could-' 'Wait! So was the one that is, yes, ground to dust in the cave by Dee in her . . . madness,' the King went on. 'So were the . . . let me see . . . five before that. Still untouched by time after fifteen hundred years? What romantics we dwarfs are! Even the very best dwarf bread crumbles after a few hundred.' 'Fakes?' said Vimes. 'They were all fakes?' Suddenly the King was holding his mining axe again. 'This, milord, is my family's axe. We have owned it for almost nine hundred years, see. Of course, sometimes it needed a new blade. And sometimes it has required a new handle, new designs on the metalwork, a little refreshing of the ornamentation . . . but is this not the ninehundred-year-old axe of my family? And because it has changed gently over time, it is still a pretty good axe, y'know. Pretty good. Will you tell me this is a fake too?' He sat back again. Vimes remembered the look on Albrecht's face. 'He knew.' 'Oh, yes. A number of . . . more senior dwarfs know. The knowledge runs in families. The first Scone crumbled after three hundred years when the king of the time touched it. My ancestor was a guard who witnessed it, see. He got accelerated promotion, you could say. I'm sure you understand me. After that, we were a little more prepared. We would have been looking for a new one in fifty years or so in any case. I'm glad one was made in the large dwarf city of AnkhMorpork, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it turns out to be an excellent keeper. Look, they've even got the currants right, see?' 'But Albrecht could have exposed you!' 'Exposed what? He is not King, but I will be very surprised if one of his family is not King again, in the fullness of time. What goes around comes around, as the Igors say.' The King leaned forward. 'You have been labouring under a misapprehension; I reckon. You think that because Albrecht dislikes Ankh-Morpork and has . . . oldfashioned ideas, he is a bad dwarf. But I have known him for two hundred years. He is honest and honourable . . . more so than me, that I'm sure of. Five hundred years ago he would have made a fine king. Today, perhaps not. Perhaps . . . hah . . . the axe of my ancestors needs a different handle. But now I am King and he accepts that with all his heart because if he did not, he'd think he wasn't a dwarf, see? Of course he will now oppose me at every turn. Being Low King was never an easy job. But, to use one of your metaphors, we are all floating in the same boat. We may certainly try to push one another over the side, but only a maniac like Dee would make a hole in the bottom.' 'Corporal Littlebottom thought there'd be a war-' said Vimes weakly. 'Well, there are always hotheads. But while we argue about who steers the boat, we don't deny that it's an important voyage. I see you are tired. Let your good lady take you home. But as a nightcap . . . What is it, your excellency, that Ankh-Morpork wants?' 'Ankh-Morpork wants the names of the murderers,' mumbled Vimes. 'No, that is what Commander Vimes wants. What is it that Ankh-Morpork wants? Gold? So often it is gold. Or iron, perhaps? You use a lot of iron.' Vimes blinked. His brain had finally given up. There was nothing left any more. He wasn't certain he could even stand up. He remembered a word. 'Fat,' he said blankly. 'Aha. The Fifth Elephant. Are you sure? There's some good iron now. Iron makes you strong. Fat only makes you slippery.' 'Fat,' parroted Vimes, feeling the darkness closing in. 'Lots of fat.' 'Well, certainly. The price is ten Ankh-Morpork cents a barrel but, your excellency, since I have come to know you, I feel that perhaps-' 'Five cents a barrel for grade-one highrendered, three cents for grade two, ten cents per barrel for heavy tallow, safe and delivered to Ankh-Morpork,' said Sybil. 'And all from the Schmaltzberg Bend levels and measured on the Ironcrust scale. I have some doubt about the long-term quality of the Big Tusk wells.' Vimes tried to focus on his wife. She seemed, inexplicably, a long way away. 'Wha'?' 'Er, I caught up with some reading when I was in the embassy, Sam. Those notebooks. Sorry.' 'Would you beggar us, madam?' said the King, throwing up his hands. 'We may be flexible on delivery,' said Lady Sybil. , 'Klatch would pay at least nine for grade one,' said the King. 'But the Klatchian ambassador isn't sitting here,' said Sybil. The King smiled. 'Or married to you, my lady, much to his loss. Six, five and fifteen.' 'Six, dropping to five after twenty thousand, three and half across the board for grade two. I can give you thirteen on tallow.' 'Acceptable, but give me fourteen on white tallow and I'll allow seven on the new pale suets we're finding. They're making an acceptable candle, look you.' 'Six, I'm afraid. You haven't plumbed the full extent of those deposits, and I think it may be reasonable to expect high levels of scrattle and BCBs in the lower layers. Besides, I think your forecasts about the amount of those deposits are erring on the optimistic side.' 'Wha' BCBs?' murmured Vimes. 'Burnt crunchy bits,' said Sybil. 'Mostly unbelievably huge and ancient animals, deep fried.' 'You astonish me, Lady Sybil,' said the King. 'I did not know you were trained in fat extraction.' 'Cooking Sam's breakfasts is an education in itself, your majesty.' 'Oh, well, far be it for a mere king to argue. Six, then. Price to remain stable for two years-' The King saw Sybil's mouth open. 'All right, all right, three years. I'm not an unreasonable king.' 'Prices on the dock?' 'How can I refuse?' 'Agreed, then.' 'The paperwork will be with you in the morning. And now we really must go our separate ways,' said the King. 'I can see his excellency has had a long day. Ankh-Morpork will be swimming in fat. I can't imagine what you'll use it all for.' 'Make light,' said Vimes, and, as darkness fell at last, fell forward gently into the welcoming arms of sleep. Sam Vimes awoke to the smell of hot fat. Softness enveloped him. It practically imprisoned him. For a moment he thought it was snow, except that snow wasn't usually this warm. Finally, he identified it as the cloud-like softness of the mattress on the ambassadorial bed. He let his attention drift back to the fat smell. It had .. . overtones. There was a definite burnt component. Since Sam Vimes's spectrum of gastronomic delight mainly ranged from 'well fried' to 'caramelized', it was decidedly promising. He shifted position and regretted it immediately. Every muscle in his body squealed in protest. He lay still and waited for the fire in his back to die down. Bits and pieces of the previous two days assembled themselves in his head. Once or twice he winced. Had he really gone through the ice like that? Was it Sam Vimes who'd stepped up to fight the werewolf, despite the fact that the thing was strong enough to bend a sword in a circle? And had Sybil won a lot of fat off the King? And . . . Well, here he was in a nice warm bed and by the smell of it there was breakfast on the way. Another piece of recollection floated into place.. Vimes groaned and forced his legs out of the bed. No, Wolfgang couldn't have survived that, surely. Naked, he staggered into the bathroom and spun the huge taps. Hot pungent water gushed out. A minute later he was lying full length again. It was rather too hot, but he could remember the snows, and maybe from now on he could never be hot enough. Some of the pain washed away. Someone rapped on the door. 'It's me, Sam.' 'Sybil?' She came in, carrying a couple of very large towels and some fresh clothes. 'Good to see you up again. Igor's frying sausages. He doesn't like doing it. He thinks they should be boiled. And he's doing slumpie and fikkun haddock and Distressed Pudding. I didn't want the food to go to waste, you see. I don't think I want to stay for the rest of the celebrations.' 'I know what you mean. How's Carrot?' 'Well, he says he doesn't want sausages.' 'What? He's al- He's up?' 'Sitting up, at least. Igor's a marvel. Angua said it was a bad break but he's just got some sort of device that . . . well, Carrot's not even got a sling on now!' 'Sounds a useful man to have around,' said Vimes, pulling on his civilized trousers. 'Angua says Igor's got an icehouse in the cellars and there's frozen jars of, of . . . well, let's just say he suggested that you might like liver and onions for breakfast and I said no.' 'I like liver and onions,' said Vimes. He thought about it. 'Up until now, anyway.' 'I think the King wants us to go as well. In a polite way. A lot of very respectful dwarfs came round here with paperwork first thing this morning.' Vimes nodded grimly. It made sense. If he was King he'd want Vimes out of here too. Here's some grateful thanks, a nice trading agreement, terribly sorry to see you go, do call again, only not too soon . . . Breakfast was everything he'd dreamed of. Then he went to see the invalid. Carrot was pale, grey under the eyes, but smiling. He was sitting up in bed, drinking fatsup. 'Hello, Mister Vimes! We won, then?' 'Didn't Angua tell you?' 'She went off with the wolves when I was asleep, Lady Sybil said.' Vimes recounted the events of the night as best he could. Afterwards, Carrot said, 'Gavin was a very noble creature. I'm sorry he's dead. I'm sure we'd have got on well.' You mean every word of it, Vimes thought. I know you do. But it works out all right for you, doesn't it? It always does. If it had been the other way about, if it had been Gavin that attacked Wolf first, then -I know it would have been you that went over the falls with the bastard. But it wasn't you, was it? If you were dice, you'd always roll sixes. And the dice don't roll themselves. If it wasn't against everything he wanted to be true about the world, Vimes might just then have believed in destiny controlling people. And gods help the other people who were around when a big destiny was alive in the world, bending every poor bugger around itself . . . Out loud, he said, 'Poor old Gaspode went over too.' 'How? What was he doing?' 'Er, you could say he had our lad's full attention. A real streetfighter.' 'Poor little soul. He was a good dog at heart.' And once again words that would have sounded trite and wrong on anyone else's lips were redeemed by the way Carrot said them. 'And what about Tantony?' said Vimes. 'Left this morning, Lady Sybil said.' 'Good grief! And Wolfgang played noughts and crosses on his chest!' 'Igor's a dab hand with a needle, sir.' Afterwards, a thoughtful Sam Vimes stepped out into the coach yard. An Igor was already loading the luggage. 'Er, which one are you?' said Vimes. 'Igor, marthter.' 'Ah. Right. And, er, are you happy here, Igor? We could do with a . . . man of your talents in the Watch, and no mistake.' Igor looked down from the top of the coach: 'In Ankh-Morpork, marthter? My word. Everyone wantth to go to Ankh-Morpork, marthter. It'th a very tempting offer. But I know where my duty lieth, your exthellenthy. I mutht get the plathe ready for the next exthellenthy.' 'Oh, surely-' 'However, fortuitouthly my nephew Igor ith looking for a pothition, marthter. He thould do well in Ankh-Morpork. He'th rather too modern for Uberwald, that'th for thure!' 'Good lad, is he?' 'Hith heart'th in the right plathe. I know that for thertain, thur.' 'Er, good. Well, get a message to him, then. We're leaving as soon as we can.' 'He will be tho exthited, thur! I've heard that in Ankh-Morpork bodieth jutht lie around in the thtreetth for anyone to take away!' 'It's not quite as bad as that, Igor.' 'Ithn't it? Oh well, you can't have everything. I'll tell him directly.' Igor lurched off in a sort of high-speed totter. I wonder why they all walk like that, thought Vimes. They must have one leg shorter than the other. Either that or they're not good at choosing boots. He sat down on the steps to the house and fished out a cigar. So that was it, then. Bloody politics again. It was always bloody politics, or bloody diplomatics. Bloody lies in smart clothing. Once you got off the streets criminals just flowed through your fingers. The King and Lady Margolotta and Vetinari . . . they always looked at some sort of big picture. Vimes knew he was, and always would be, a little picture man. Dee was useful, so she'd probably get, oh, a few days breaking bread or whatever it was they gave you here for being naughty. After all, all she'd destroyed was a fake, wasn't it? Was it? But she'd thought she was committing a much bigger crime. That ought to mean something, in Sam Vimes's personal gallery of little pictures. And the Baroness was as guilty as hell. People had died. As for Wolfgang . . . well, some people were just built guilty. It was as simple as that. Anything they did became a crime, simply because it was them doing it. He blew out a stream of smoke. People like that shouldn't be allowed to simply die their way out of things. But . . . he hadn't, had he? The wolves had gone a long way down the river, Sybil had said, on both banks. There wasn't a sniff of him. Further down was a mass of rapids and another fall. What couldn't kill him would certainly make him wish it could. If he'd gone downstream. But upstream there was nothing but wild water, too, right up to the town. No, he couldn't . . . surely no one could swim up a waterfall . . . A chilly little feeling began at the back of Vimes's neck. But any sensible person would get right out of the country, wouldn't they? The wolves were looking for him, Tantony wouldn't remember him fondly and if Vimes judged the King correctly then the dwarfs would have some dark little revenge in store, too. The trouble was that, if you formed a picture in your mind of a sensible person, and tried to superimpose it on a picture of Wolfgang, you couldn't get them to meet anywhere. There was an old saying, wasn't there: as a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly. Well, that got Wolfgang coming and going. Vimes stood up and turned around carefully. There was no one there. Sounds came in from the street gateway - people laughing, the sound of a harness, the clank of a shovel clearing up last night's snow. He sidled into the embassy, his back to the wall, and groped his way towards the stairs, peering into every doorway. He ran across the expanse of the hallway, did a tumbling roll, and ended up against the far wall. 'Is there anything wrong, sir?' said Cheery. She was watching him from the top of the stairs. 'Er, have you seen anything odd?' said Vimes, dusting himself off self-consciously. 'And I realize that we're talking about a house with Igor in it.' 'Could you give me a hint, sir?' 'Wolfgang, godsdammit!' 'But he's dead, sir. Isn't he?' 'Not dead enough!' 'Er, what do you want me to do?' 'Where's Detritus?' 'Polishing his helmet, sir!' said Cheery, on the point of panic. 'What the hell is he wasting time with that for?' 'Er, er, because we're supposed to leave for the coronation in ten minutes, sir?' 'Oh, yes . . .' 'Lady Sybil told me to come and find you. In a very distinct tone of voice, sir.' At that point Lady Sybil's voice boomed along the corridor. 'Sam Vimes! You come here!' 'That one, sir,' Cheery added helpfully. Vimes trailed into the bedroom. Sybil was wearing another blue dress, a tiara and a firm expression. 'Is it a posh do?' said Vimes. 'I thought if I put on a clean shirt-' 'Your official dress uniform is in the dressing room,' said Sybil. 'It was rather a long day yesterday-' 'This is a coronation, Samuel Vimes. It is not a come-as-you-are! Go and get dressed, quickly. Including, and I don't want to have to say this twice, the helmet with the feathers.' 'But not the red tights,' said Vimes, hoping against hope. 'Please?' 'The red tights, Sam, go without saying.' 'They go at the knees,' said Vimes, but it was the grumble of the defeated. 'I'll ring for Igor to come and help you.' 'Things will have come to a pretty pass when I can't put my own tights on, dear, thank you.' Vimes dressed hurriedly, listening for ... anything. Some creak in the wrong place, perhaps. At least this was a Watch uniform, even if it did have buckled shoes. It included a sword. The duking outfit didn't allow for one, which had always struck Vimes as amazingly stupid. You got made a duke for being a fighter, and then they gave you nothing to fight with. There was a tinkle of glass back in the bedroom, and Lady Sybil was astonished to see her husband enter at a run with his sword raised. 'I dropped the top of a scent bottle, Sam! What's up with you? Even Angua says he's probably miles away and in no shape to cause trouble! Why're you so nervy?' Vimes put down the sword and tried to relax. 'Because our Wolfgang's a damn bottle covey, dear. I know the sort. Any normal person, they crawl off if they get a beating. Or they have the sense to stay down, at least. But sometimes you get one who just won't let go. Eight-stone weaklings who'll try to headbutt Detritus. Evil little bantamweight bastards who'll bust a bottle on the bar and try to attack five watchmen all at once. You know what I mean? Idiots who'll go on fighting long after they should stop. The only way to put 'em down is to put 'em out.' 'I think I recognize the type, yes,' said Lady Sybil, with an irony that failed to register with Sam Vimes until some days later. She picked some lint off his cloak. 'He's going to be back. I can feel it in my water,' mumbled Vimes. 'Sam?' 'Yes?' 'Can I have your attention for a couple of minutes? Wolfgang is Angua's problem, not yours. I really need to talk to you very quietly for a little while without you running off after werewolves.' She said it as if this was a minor character flaw, like a tendency to leave his boots where people could trip over them. 'Er, they run after me,' he pointed out. 'But there's always people being found dead or trying to kill you-' 'I don't ask them to, dear.' 'Sam, I'm going to have a baby.' Vimes's head was full of werewolves and his automatic husbandly circuitry cut in ready to respond with 'Yes, dear,' or 'Choose any colour you like,' or 'I'll get someone to sort it out.' Fortunately his brain itself had its own sense of self-preservation and, not wishing to be inside a skull that was stowed in by a bedside lamp, rewrote Sybil's words in white-hot fire across his inner eyeball and then went and hid. That's why the response came out as a weak 'What? How?' 'The normal way, I hope.' Vimes sat down on the bed. 'And . . . not right now?' 'I very much doubt it. But Mrs Content says it's definite, and she's been a midwife for fifty years.' 'Oh.' Some more brain functions crept back. 'Good. That's . . . good.' 'It'll probably take a while to sink in.' 'Yes.' Another neuron lit up. 'Er, everything will be all right, will it?' 'What do you mean?' 'Er, you're rather, you're not as . . . you . . .' 'Sam, my family have been bred for breeding. It's an aristocratic tradition. Of course everything will be all right.' 'Oh. Good.' Vimes sat and stared. His head felt like some vast sea that had just been parted by a prophet. Where there should have been activity there was just bare sand and the occasional floundering fish. But huge steep waves were tottering on either side, and in a minute they would crash down and cause cities to flood a hundred miles away. More glass tinkled, somewhere downstairs. 'Sam, Igor's probably just dropped something,' said Sybil, seeing his expression. 'That's all. Probably just knocked over a glass.' There was a snarl and a scream, abruptly cut off. Vimes leapt off the bed. 'Lock the door after me and push the bed against it!' He paused for a moment in the doorway. 'Without straining yourself!' he added, and ran for the stairs. Wolfgang was trotting across the hall. He was different this time. Wolf ears sprouted from a head that was still human. His hair had grown around him like a mane. Patches of fur were tufted on his skin, and were mostly streaked with blood. The rest of him . . . was having trouble deciding what it was. One arm was trying to be a paw. Vimes reached for his sword and remembered that it was back on the bed. He rummaged in his pockets. He knew the other thing was here, he remembered picking it up off the dressing table . . . His fingers closed on his badge. He held it out. 'Stop! In the name of the law!' Wolfgang looked up at him, one eye glowing yellow. The other was a mess. 'Hello, Civilized,' he growled. 'You wait for me, hey?' He ducked into the corridor that led to the room where Carrot lay. Vimes tried to catch him up, saw claw-tipped fingers curl around the door and haul it out of its frame. Carrot was reaching for his sword And then Wolfgang was flying backwards under the full weight of Angua. They landed back in the hall, a rolling ball of fur, claws and teeth. When werewolf fights werewolf, there are advantages to either shape. It's an eternal struggle to get a position where hands beat claws. And body shapes have lives of their own, a dangerous attribute if it is allowed to act unchecked. A cat's instinct is to jump on something that moves, but this is not a correct action if what is moving has a fizzing fuse. The mind has to fight its own body for control and the other body for survival. Mix this together, and the noise suggests that there are four creatures in the whirling ball of rage. And each one of them has brought several friends. And none of them like any of the others. A shadow made Vimes spin around. Detritus, in shining armour, was aiming the _ Piecemaker over the banister. 'Sergeant! No! You'll hit Angua too!' 'Not a problem, sir,' said Detritus, "cos it won't kill 'em, so all we have to do, see, is sort out der bits dat are Wolfgang an' belt him over der head when he gets himself back together-' 'If you fire that in here his bits will be mixed up with our bits and there won't be big bits! Put the damn thing down!' Wolfgang couldn't control his shape well, Vimes saw. He couldn't quite manage to be full wolf or full human, and Angua was making the most of that. She was ducking, weaving . . . biting. But even if you put him down you couldn't put him out. 'Mister Vimes!' Now it was Cheery, beckoning urgently from the passage that led to the kitchen. 'You ought to come here right now!' She was white-faced. Vimes nudged Detritus. 'If they separate, just grab him, right? Just try to hold him still!' Igor was lying in the kitchen surrounded by broken, glass. Wolfgang must have landed on him and taken out his perpetual anger on a soft target. The patchwork man was bleeding heavily and lay like a doll that had been flung hard against a wall. 'Marthter,' he groaned. 'Can you do anything for him, Cheery?' 'I wouldn't know where to start, sir!' 'Marthter, you got to remember thith, right?' Igor groaned. 'Er, yes . . . what?' 'You got to get me into the ithehouthe downthtairth and let Igor know, underthtand?' 'Which Igor?' said Vimes desperately. 'Any Igor!' Igor clutched at Vimes's sleeve. 'Me heart'th had it, but me liver'th right ath ninepenthe, tell him! Nothing wrong with my brain that a good bolt of lightnin' won't thort out. Igor can have me right hand, he'th got a cuthtomer waiting. There'th yearth of good thervithe left in my lower intethtine. Left eye not up to much, but I darethay thome poor thoul can find a uthe for it. The right knee ith nearly new. Old M'th Prodzky down the road would value my hip jointth, tell him. Got all that?' 'Yes, yes, I think so.' 'Right. Remember ... What goeth around, cometh around. . .' Igor sank down. 'He's gone, sir,' said Cheery. But he'll soon be up and on someone else's feet, Vimes thought. He didn't say it aloud. Cheery was soft hearted. Instead he said, 'Can you get him into his icehouse? By the sound of it Angua's winning-' He ran back into the hall. It was a wreck. As he arrived Angua managed to get a headlock on Wolfgang and ran him into a wooden pillar. He staggered, and she spun and scythed his legs from under him with a kick. I taught her that, Vimes thought, as her brother landed heavily. Some of that dirty fighting - that's Ankh-Morpork fighting, that is. But Wolfgang was up again like a rubber ball and somersaulting over her head. That brought him to the front door. He smashed it open with a blow and leapt out into the street. And . . . that was it. A room full of debris, snowflakes blowing in, and Angua sobbing on the floor. He picked her up. She was bleeding in a dozen places. That was as much of a diagnosis as Sam Vimes, not used these days to surveying naked young women at close quarters, thought he could decently attempt. 'It's all right, he's gone,' he said, because he had to say something. 'It's not all right! He'll lie low for a while and then he'll be back! I know him! It won't matter where we go! You've seen him! He'll just track us down and follow us and then he'll kill Carrot!' 'Why?' 'Because Carrot's mine!' Sybil advanced down the stairs, carrying Vimes's crossbow. 'Oh, you poor thing,' she said. 'Come here, let's find something to cover you up. Sam, isn't there something you can do?' Vimes stared at her. Built into Sybil's expression was the unquestioning assumption that he could do something. An hour ago he'd been having breakfast. Ten minutes ago he'd been putting on this stupid uniform. In a real room, with his wife. And it had been a real world, with a real future. And suddenly the dark was back, spattered with red rage. And if he gave in to it he'd lose. That was the beast screaming, inside, and Wolfgang was a better beast. Vimes knew he didn't have the knack, the mindless, driving nastiness; sooner or later his brain would start operating, and kill him. Perhaps, said his brain, you start by using me... 'Ye-es,' he said. 'Yes, I think there is something I can do . . .' Fire and silver, thought Vimes. Well, silver's in pretty short supply in Uberwald. 'You want I should come?' said Detritus,, who could pick up signals. 'No, I think . . . I think I want to make an arrest. I don't want to start a war. Anyway, you need to wait here in case he doubles back. But you could lend me your penknife.' Vimes found a sheet in one of the broken boxes and tore off a long strip. Then he took his crossbow from his wife. 'You see, now he's committed a crime in AnkhMorpork,' he said. 'That makes him mine.' 'Sam, we're not-' 'You know, everyone kept telling me I wasn't in Ankh-Morpork so often that I believed it. But this embassy is Ankh-Morpork and, right now,' he hefted the bow, 'I am the law.' 'Sam?' 'Yes, dear?' 'I know that look. Don't hurt anyone else, will you?' 'Don't worry, dear. I'm going to be civilized about it.' There was a cluster of dwarfs in the street outside, surrounding one lying on the snow in a pool of blood. 'Which way?' said Vimes, and if they didn't understand his words they understood the question. Several of them pointed along the street. As he walked Vimes cradled the crossbow and lit a thin cigar. Now this he understood. He was never at ease with politics, where good and bad were just, apparently, two ways of looking at the same thing or, at least, were described like that by the people who were on the side Vimes thought of as 'bad'. It was all too complicated and, where it was complicated, it meant that someone was trying to fool you. But on the street, in hot pursuit, it was all so clear. Someone was going to be still standing at the end of the chase, and all you had to concentrate on was making sure it was you. On a street corner a cart had overturned and its driver was kneeling by a horse that had been ripped open. 'Which way?' The man pointed. The new street was wider, busier, and there were a number of elegant coaches moving slowly through the crowds. Of course . . . the coronation. But that belonged to the world of the Duke of Ankh and, right now, he wasn't here. There was only Sam Vimes, who didn't much like coronations. There were screams up ahead, and the flow of people was suddenly against Vimes, so that he appeared to be heading up-stream, like a salmon. The street opened into a large square. People were running now, which suggested to Vimes that he was still moving in the right direction. It was pretty clear that you'd find Wolfgang somewhere no one else wanted to be. There was a flurry of movement on one side of him and a squad of the town guard trotted past. They halted. One of them walked back. It was Tantony. He looked Vimes up and down. 'I have you to thank for last night?' he said. There were fresh scars on his face, but they were already healing. We've got to get an Igor, Vimes reminded himself. 'Yes,' said Vimes. 'The good bits and the bad bits.' 'And you see what happens when you stand up to a werewolf?' Vimes opened his mouth to say, 'Is that a uniform you're wearing, captain, or is it fancy dress?' but stopped himself in time. 'No, it's what happens when you're fool enough to stand up to a werewolf with no back-up and no firepower,' he said. 'I'm sorry, but we all have to learn that lesson. Integrity makes very poor armour.' The man reddened. 'What is your business here?' he said. 'Our hairy friend just murdered someone in the embassy, which is-' 'Yes, yes, Ankh-Morpork territory. But this isn't! I am the watchman here!' 'I'm in hot pursuit, captain. Ah. I see you know the term?' 'I . . . I . . . that doesn't apply!' 'Really? Every copper knows about the rule of hot pursuit. You can chase the suspect over your legal boundary if you're in hot pursuit. Of course, there may be a bit of legal argy-bargy once he's cauyht, but we can save that for later.' 'I intend to arrest him myself for crimes committed today!' 'You're too young to die. Besides, I saw him first. Tell you what . . . After he's killed me you can have a go. Fair enough?' He looked Tantony in the eye. 'Now get out of the way.' 'You know I could have you arrested.' 'Probably, but until now I'd got you down as an intelligent man.' Tantony nodded, and proved Vimes right. 'All right. How may we be of assistance?' 'By keeping out of the way. Oh, and scraping up my remains if this doesn't work.' Vimes felt the man's stare on the back of his neck as he set off again. There was a statue in the middle of the square. It was of the Fifth Elephant. Some ancient craftsman had tried to achieve in bronze and stone the moment when the allegorical animal had thundered down out of the sky and gifted the country its incredible mineral wealth. Around it were idealized and rather heavy-set figures of dwarfs and men, holding hammers and swords, and striking noble attitudes; they probably represented Truth, Industry, Justice and Mother's Home-Made Fat Pancakes for all Vimes knew, but he felt truly far from home in a country where, apparently, no one wrote graffiti on public statues. A man was sprawled on the cobbles, with a woman kneeling beside him. She looked tearfully at Vimes and said something in Uberwaldean. All he could do was nod. Wolfgang jumped down from a perch on top of the statue to Bad Sculpting and landed a few yards away, grinning. 'Mister Civilized! You want another game?' 'You see this badge I'm holding up?' said Vimes. 'It's a very small one!' 'But you see it?' 'Yes, I see your little badge!' Wolfgang started to move sideways, arms hanging loosely by his sides. 'And I'm armed. Did you hear me tell you I'm armed?' 'With that silly bow?' 'But you just heard me say I'm armed, yes?' said Vimes, loudly, turning to face the moving werewolf. He puffed on his cigar, letting a glow build up. 'Yes! Is this what you call civilized?' Vimes grinned. 'Yes, this is how we do it.' 'My way is better!' 'And now you're under arrest,' said Vimes. 'Come along and make no fuss and we'll tie you securely and hand you over to whatever passes for justice around here. I realize this may be difficult.' 'Hah! Your Ankh-Morpork sense of humour!' 'Yes, any minute now I'll drop my trousers. So, you're resisting arrest?' 'Why these stupid questions?' Now Wolfgang was almost dancing. 'Are you resisting arrest?' 'Yes indeed! Oh yes! Good joke!' 'Look at me laughing.' Vimes tossed the crossbow aside and swung a tube out from under his cloak. It was made of cardboard and a red cone protruded from one end. 'A stupid silly firework!' shouted Wolfgang, and charged. 'Could be,' said Vimes. He didn't bother to aim. These things were never designed for accuracy or speed. He simply removed his cigar from his mouth and, as Wolfgang ran towards him, pressed it into the fuse hole. The mortar jerked as the charge went off and its payload came tumbling out slowly and trailing smoke in a lazy spiral. It looked like the stupidest weapon since the toffee spear. Wolfgang danced back and forth under it, grinning,, and as it passed several feet over his head he leapt up gracefully and caught it in his mouth. And then it exploded. The flares were made to be seen twenty miles away. Even with his eyes tightly shut, Vimes saw the glare through his lids. When the body had stopped rolling, Vimes looked around the square. People were watching from the coaches. The crowds were silent. There were a lot of things he could say. 'Son of a bitch!' would have been a good one. Or he could say, 'Welcome to civilization!' He could have said, 'Laugh this one off!' He might have said, 'Fetch!' But he didn't, because if he had said any of those things then he'd have known that what he had just done was murder. He turned away, tossed the empty mortar over his shoulder and muttered, 'The hell with it.' At times like this teetotalism bit down hard. Tantony was watching. 'Don't say a word out -of place,' said Vimes, without altering his stride. 'Just don't.' 'I thought those things shot very fast . . .' 'I cut down the charge,' said Vimes, tossing Detritus's penknife in the air and catching it again. 'I didn't want to hurt anyone.' 'I heard you warn him that you were armed. I heard him twice resist arrest. I heard everything. I heard everything you wanted me to hear.' 'Yes.' 'Of course, he might not have known that law.' 'Oh, really? Well, I didn't know it was legal in these parts to chase some poor sod across the country and maul him to death and, do you know, that didn't stop anyone.' Vimes shook his head. 'And don't give me that pained look. Oh, yes . . . now you can say I did it wrong, you can say I ought to have handled it differently. That sort of thing is easy to say afterwards. I'll say it myself, maybe.' In the middle of every night, he added to himself, after I've woken up seeing those mad eyes. 'But you wanted him stopped as much as I did. Oh yes, you did. But you couldn't, because you didn't have the means, and I did, because I could. And you've got the luxury of judging me because you're still alive. And that's the truth of it, all wrapped up. Lucky one for you, eh?' The crowds parted ahead of Vimes. He could hear whispers around him. 'On the other hand,' said Tantony, distantly, as if he hadn't heard what Vimes had just said, 'you did only fire that thing to warn him. . .' 'Huh?' 'Clearly youwere not to know that he would automatically try to catch the . . . explosive,' said Tantony, and it seemed to Vimes that he was rehearsing the line. 'The . . . dog-like qualities of a werewolf would hardly have occurred to a man from the big city.' Vimes held his gaze for a moment, and then patted him on the shoulder. 'Hold on to that thought,' he said. A coach pulled to a halt beside him as he continued on his way. It slid to a stop so silently - not a jingle of harness, not a clop of horseshoe - that Vimes jumped sideways out of shock. The horses were black, with black plumes on their heads. The coach was a hearse, the traditional long glass windows now filled with smoked black glass. There was no driver; the reins were simply loosely knotted on a brass railing. A door swung open. A veiled figure leaned out. 'Your excellency? Do let me give you a lift back to the embassy. You look so tired.' 'No, thank you,' said Vimes grimly. 'I apologize for the emphasis on black,' said Lady Margolotta. 'It is rather expected of one on these occasions, I'm afraid-' Vimes swung himself up and into the carriage with furious speed. 'You tell me,' he growled, waving a finger under her nose, 'how anyone can swim up a vertical waterfall? I was prepared to believe anything about that bastard, but even he. couldn't have managed that.' 'Certainly that is a puzzle,' said the vampire calmly, as the driverless coach moved on. 'Superhuman strength, possibly?' 'And now he's gone and that's one up for the vampires, eh?' 'I vould like to think that it's going to be a blessing for the whole country.' Lady Margolotta leaned back. Her rat with the bow round its neck watched Vimes suspiciously from its pink cushion. 'Wolfgang vas a sadistic murderer, a throwback who frightened even his own family. Delphine . . . sorry, Angua . . . vill have some peace of mind. An intelligent young lady, I've alvays thought. Leaving here vas the best thing she ever did. The darkness vill be a little less frightening. The vorld will be a better place.' 'And I've handed you Uberwald?' said Vimes. 'Don't be stupid. Uberwald is huge. This is one small part of it. And now it's going to change. You have been a breath of fresh air.' Lady Margolotta drew a long holder from her bag and inserted a black cigarette. It lit itself. 'Like you, I have found consolation in a . . . different vice,' she said. 'Black Scopani. They grow the tobacco in total darkness. Do try some. You could waterproof roofs with it. I believe Igor makes cigars by rolling the leaves between his thighs.' She blew out a stream of smoke. 'Or someone's thighs, anyvay. Of course, I am sorry for the Baroness. It must be so hard for a verevolf, realizing that she's raised a monster. As for the Baron, give him a bone and he's happy for hours.' Another stream of smoke. 'Do look after Angua. Happy Families is not a popular game among the undead.' 'You helped him come back! Just like you did for me!' 'Oh, he'd have come back anyvay, in time. Some time when you weren't expecting him. He'd track Angua like a wolverine. Best that things ended today.' She gave him an appraising look through the smoke. 'You're good at anger, your grace. You save it up for when you need it.' 'You couldn't have known I'd beat him. You left me in the snow. I wasn't even armed!' 'Havelock Vetinari would not have sent a fool to Uberwald.' More smoke, which writhed in the air. 'At least, not a stupid fool.' Vimes's eyes narrowed. 'You've met him, haven't you?' 'Yes.' 'And taught him all he knows, right?' She blew smoke down her nostrils and gave him a radiant smile. 'I'm sorry? You think 1 taught him? My dear sir . . . As for vhat I've got out of all this . . . vell, a little breathing space. A little influence. Politics is more interesting than blood, your grace. And much more fun. Beware the reformed vampire, sir - the craving for blood is only a craving, and with care it can be diverted along different channels. Uberwald is going to need politicians. Ah, I believe ve are here,' she added, although Vimes could.have sworn that she hadn't so much as glanced out of the window. The door opened. 'If my Igor's still there, do tell him I vill see him Downtown. So nice to have met you. I'm sure ve shall meet again. And do please present my fondest regards to Lord Vetinari.' The door shut behind Vimes. The coach moved off. He swore, under his breath. The hall of the embassy was full of Igors. Several of them touched their forelocks, or at least the line of stitch marks, when they saw him. They were carrying heavy metal containers of varying sizes, on which frost crystals were forming. 'What's this?' he said. 'Igor's funeral?' Then it sank in. 'Oh, my gods . . . with party loot bags? Everyone gets something to take home?' 'You could thay that, thur, you could call it that,' said an Igor. 'But we think that putting bodieth in the ground ith rather gruethome. All thothe wormth and thingth.' He tapped the tin box under his arm. 'Thith way, he'll be mothtly up and about again in no time,' he added brightly. 'Reincarnation on the instalment plan, eh?' said Vimes weakly. 'Motht amuthing, thur,' said the Igor gravely. 'But it'th amathing what people need. Heartth, liverth, handth ... we keep a litht, thur, of detherving catheth. By tonight there will be thome very lucky people in thethe partly' 'And these parts in some very lucky people?' 'Well done, thur. I can thee you are a wit. And one day thome poor thoul will have a really nathty brain injury, and' - he tapped the chilly box again -'what goeth around cometh around.' He nodded at Cheery, and at Vimes. 'I mutht be going now, thur. Tho much to do, you know how it ith.' 'I can imagine,' said Vimes. He thought: the axe of my grandfather. You change the bits around, but there'll always be an Igor. 'They're really rather selfless people, sir,' said Cheery, when the last Igor had lurched off. 'They do a lot of good work. Er, they even took his suit and his boots because they'll be useful to someone.' 'I know, I know. But-' 'I know what you mean, sir. Everyone's in the drawing room. Lady Sybil said you'd be back. She said anyone with that look in their eye comes back.' 'We're all going to the coronation. Might as well see this through. Is that what you'll be wearing, Cheery?' 'Yes, sir.' 'But it's just ... ordinary dwarf clothes. Trousers and everything.' 'Yes, sir.' 'But Sybil said you'd got a fetching little green number and a helmet with a feather in it.' 'Yes, sir.' 'You're free to wear whatever you want, you know that.' 'Yes, sir. And then I thought about Dee. And I watched the King when he was talking to you, and . . . well, I can wear what I like, sir. That's the point. I don't have to wear that dress and I shouldn't wear it just because other people don't want me to. Besides, it made me look like a rather stupid lettuce.' 'That's all a bit complicated for me, Cheery.' 'It's probably a dwarf thing, sir.' Vimes pushed open the doors to the drawing room. 'It's over,' he said. 'Did you hurt anyone else?' said Sybil. 'Only Wolfgang.' 'He'll be back,' said Angua. No. 'You killed him?' 'No. I put him down. I see you're up, captain.' Carrot got to his feet, awkwardly, and saluted. 'Sorry I haven't been much use, sir.' 'You just chose the wrong time to fight fair. Are you well enough to come?' 'Er, Angua and I want to stay here, if it's all right with you, sir. We've got things to talk about.And, er . . . do.' It was the first coronation Vimes had attended. He'd expected it to be ... stranger, touched somehow by glory. Instead it was dull, but at least it was big dull, dullness distilled and cultivated over thousands of years until it had developed an impressive shine, as even grime will if you polish it long enough. It was dull hammered into the shape and form of ceremony. It had also been timed to test the capacity of the average bladder. A number of dwarfs read passages from ancient scrolls. There were what sounded like excerpts from the Koboldean Saga, and Vimes wondered desperately if they were in for another opera, but they were over after a mere hour. There were more readings from different dwarfs. At one point the King, who had been standing alone in the centre of a circle of candlelight, was presented with a leather bag, a small mining axe and a ruby. Vimes didn't catch the meaning of any of this, but by the sounds it was clear that each item was of huge and satisfying significance to the thousands who were standing behind him. Thousands? No, there must be tens of thousands, he thought. The bowl of the cavern was full of tier upon tier of dwarfs. Maybe a hundred thousand . . . . . . and he was in the front row. No one had said anything. The four of them had simply been led there and left, although the murmurings suggested that the presence of Detritus was causing considerable attention. Senior, long-bearded and richly clothed dwarfs were all around them. Someone was being taught something. Vimes wondered who the lesson was directed at. Finally, the Scone was brought in, small and dull and yet carried by twenty-four dwarfs on a large bier. It was laid, reverentially, on a stool. He could sense the change in the air of the huge cavern, and once again he thought: there's no magic, you poor devils, there's no history. I'll bet my wages the damn thing was moulded with rubber from a vat that had last been used in the preparation of Sonky's Eversure Dependables, and there's your holy relic for you . . . There weremore readings, much shorter this time. Then the dwarfs who had been participating in the endless and baffling hours withdrew from the centre of the cavern, leaving the King looking as small and alone as the Scone itself. He stared around him and, although it was surely impossible for him to have seen Vimes among the thousands in the gloom, it did seem that his gaze rested on the Ankh-Morpork party for a fraction of a second. The King sat down. A sigh began. It grew louder and louder, a hurricane made up of the breath of a nation. It echoed back and forth among the rocks until it drowned out all other sounds. Vimes had half expected the Scone to explode, or crumble, or flash red-hot. Which was stupid, said a dwindling part of himself - it was a fake, a nonsense, something made in Ankh-Morpork for money, something that had already cost lives. It was not, it could not be real. But in the roaring air he knew that it was, for all who needed to believe, and in a belief so strong that truth was not the same as fact . . . he knew that for now, and yesterday, and tomorrow, both the thing, and the whole of the thing. Angua noticed that Carrot was walking better even as they reached the forest below the falls, and the shovel over his shoulder hardly burdened him at all. There were wolf prints all over the snow. 'They won't have stayed,' she said, as they walked between the trees. 'They felt things keenly when he died but . . . wolves look to the future. They don't try to remember things.' 'They're lucky,' said Carrot. 'They're realistic. It's just that the future con-tains the next meal and the next danger. Is your arm all right?' 'It feels as good as new.' They found the freezing mass of fur lying at the water's edge. Carrot pulled it out of the water, scraped off the snow higher up the shingle, and started to dig. After a while he took off his shirt. The bruises were already fading. Angua sat and looked over the water, listening to the thud of the spade and the occasional grunt when Carrot hit a tree root. Then she heard the soft slither of something being pulled over snow, a pause, and then the sound of sand and stones being shovelled into a hole. 'Do you want to say a few words?' said Carrot. 'You heard the howl last night. That's how wolves do it,' said Angua, still looking out across the water. 'There aren't any other words.' 'Perhaps just a moment's silence, then-' She spun round. 'Carrot! Don't you remember last night? Didn't you wonder what I might become? Didn't you worry about the future?' No. 'Why the hell not?' 'It hasn't happened yet. Shall we get back? It'll be dark soon.' 'And tomorrow?' 'I'd like you to come back to Ankh-Morpork.' 'Why? There's nothing for me there.' Carrot patted the soil over the grave. 'Is there anything left for you here?' he said. 'Besides, I-' Don't you dare say the words, Angua thought. Not at a time like this. And then they both became aware of the wolves. They were creeping through the trees, darker shadows in the evening light. 'They're hunting,' said Angua, grabbing Carrot's arm. 'Oh, don't worry. They don't attack human beings for no reason.' 'Carrot?' 'Yes?' The wolves were closing in. '1'm not human!' 'But last night-' 'That was different. They remembered Gavin. Now I'm just a werewolf to them. . .' She watched him turn to look at the advancing wolves. The hairs were up on their backs. They were growling. They moved with the strange sidle of those whose hatred could just manage to overcome their fear. And at any moment that balance in one of them was going to tip all the way, and then it would be all over. There was a leap, and it was Carrot who made it. He grabbed the lead wolf by its neck and tail and held on as it struggled and snapped. Its frantic efforts to escape resulted only in it running in a circle with Carrot in the middle, the other wolves backing away from the whirl of grey. Then, as it stumbled, he bit it on the back of the neck. It screamed. Carrot let go and stood up. He looked at the circle of wolves. They shied away. from his gaze. 'Hmmm?' he said. The wolf on the ground whined and got to its feet awkwardly. 'Hmmm?' It tucked its tail between its legs and backed off, but it still seemed to be attached to Carrot by an invisible lead. 'Angua?' said Carrot, still watching it carefully. 'Yes?' 'Can you speak wolf? I mean, in this shape?' 'A bit. Look, how did you know what to do?' 'Oh, I've watched animals,' said Carrot, as if that was an explanation. 'Please tell them- . . . tell them if they go away now I won't harm them.' She managed to bark out the words. It had all changed, in such a tiny handful of seconds. Now Carrot wrote the script. 'And now tell them that although I'm going away I may be back. What's the name of this one?' He nodded at the cowering wolf. 'That's Eats Wrong Meat,' Angua whispered. 'He was . . . he's the leader now Gavin's gone.' 'Then tell them that I'm quite happy that he should go on leading. Tell them all that.' They watched her intently. She knew what they were thinking. He'd beaten the leader. It was all Sorted Out. Wolves did not have a lot of mental space for uncertainty. Doubt was a luxury for species that did not live one meal away from starvation. They still had a Gavin-shaped hole in their minds and Carrot had stepped into it. Of course, it wouldn't last long. But it didn't need to. He always, always finds a way in, she thought. He doesn't think about it, he doesn't plot, he simply slides in. I saved him because he couldn't save himself, and Gavin saved him because . . . because . . . because he had some reason . . . and I'm almost, almost certain that Carrot doesn't know how he manages to wrap the world around him. Almost certain. He's good and kind and born to be a king of the ancient sort that wore oak leaves and ruled from a seat under a tree, and though he tries hard he never had a cynical thought. I'm almost certain. 'Let's go now,' said Carrot. 'The coronation will be over soon, and I don't want Mister Vimes to worry.' 'Carrot! I've got to know something.' 'Yes?' 'That might happen to me. Have you ever thought about that? He was my brother, after all. Being two things at the same time, and never quite being one . . . we're not the most stable of creatures.' 'Gold and muck come 'out of the same shaft,' said Carrot. 'That's just a dwarf saying!' 'It's true, though. You're not him.' 'Well, if it happened . . . if it did . . . would you do what Vimes did? Carrot? Would it be you who picked up a weapon and came after me? I know you won't lie. I've got to know. Would it be you?' A little snow slid down from the trees. The wolves watched. Carrot looked up for a moment at the grey sky and then nodded. 'Yes.' She sighed. 'Promise?' she said. Vimes was surprised at how quickly the coron-ation became a working day. There was a flourish of echoing horns, a general flow of the crowd and, gradually, a queue in front of the King. 'They haven't even given him time to get comfy!' said Lady Sybil as they headed towards the exit. 'Our kings are . . . working kings,' said Cheery, and Vimes detected the pride in her voice. 'But now is the time when the King awards favours.' A dwarf caught up with Vimes and tugged his cloak respectfully. 'The King wishes to see you now, your ex-cellency,' he said. 'There's an almighty queue!' 'Nevertheless,' the dwarf gave a polite cough, 'the King wishes to see you now. All of you.' They were led to the front of the queue. Vimes felt many eyes boring into the small of his back. The King dismissed the previous supplicant with a regal nod as the Ankh-Morpork party was deftly inserted at the top of the line, supplanting a dwarf whose beard went down to his knees. The King looked at them for a moment, and then the internal filing system threw up a card. 'Ah, it's yourselves, good as new,' he said. 'Now, what was it I was going to do? Oh, I remember . . . Lady Sybil?' She curtsied. 'Classically, we give rings at this time,' said the King. 'Between ourselves, many dwarfs consider this a bit . . . well, bath salts, see. But I believe they are still welcome and so this, Lady Sybil, is, perhaps, a token of things to come.' It was a thin silver ring. Vimes was taken aback at this parsimony, but Sybil could accept a bunch of dead rats graciously. 'Oh, how wond-' 'We normally give gold,' the King went on. 'Very popular, and of course you can sing about it. But this has . . . rarity value, see. It is the first silver that has been mined in Uberwald in hundreds of years.' 'I thought there was a rule that-' Vimes began. 'I ordered the mines re-opened last night,' said the King pleasantly. 'It seemed an auspicious time. We shall soon have ore for sale, your excellency, but if Lady Sybil doesn't get involved in the negotiations and bankrupt us, I for one shall be very grateful,' the King added. 'Miss Littlebottom, I see, has not graced us with a sartorial extravaganza today?' Cheery stared. 'You're not wearing a dress,' said the King. 'No, sire.' 'Although I do note a few unobtrusive touches of mascara and lipstick.' 'Yes, sire,' squeaked Cheery, on the point of death through shock. 'There's nice. Do be sure to let me know the name of your dressmaker,' the King went on. 'I may have some custom for her in the fullness of time. I've thought long and hard-' Vimes blinked. Cheery had gone pale. Had anyone else heard that? Had he? Sybil nudged him in the ribs. 'Your mouth's open, Sam,' she whispered. So he had heard it . . . He heard the King's voice again. '-and a bag of gold is always acceptable.' Cheery was still staring. Vimes shook her gently by the shoulder. 'Th-thank you, sire.' The King held out his hand. Vimes wobbled Cheery again. Completely hypnotized, she extended her hand. The King took it and shook it. Shocked whispers were spreading behind Vimes. The King had shaken the hand of a selfdeclared female . . . 'And that leaves . . . Detritus,' said the King. 'What a dwarf should give a troll is of course a bit of a puzzle, but it occurs to me that what I should give you is what I would give a dwarf. A bag of gold, then, for whatever purpose you choose to use it, and-' He stood up. He held out his hand. Dwarfs and trolls were still fighting in the further regions of Uberwald, Vimes knew. Elsewhere, there was at best the sort of peace you got when both sides were busy re-arming. The whispering stopped. Silence spread out in a widening circle, all across the floor of the cave. Detritus blinked. Then he took the hand very carefully, trying not to crush it. The whispering started again. And this time, Vimes knew, it'd go for miles. It occurred to him that in two handshakes the white-bearded elderly dwarf had done more than a dozen devious plots could have achieved. By the time those ripples reached the edge of Uberwald they would be tidal waves. Thirty men and a dog would be nothing by comparison. 'Hmm?' 'I said, what can a king give a Vimes?' said the King. 'Er, nothing, I think,' said Vimes absently. Two handshakes! And very quietly, smiling, the King had turned the customs of the dwarfs upside down. And so gently, too, that they'd spend years arguing about it . . . 'Sam!' snapped Sybil. 'Well, then, I shall give something to your descendants,' said the King, apparently unperturbed. A long flat box was brought to him. He opened it to reveal a dwarf axe, the new metal glinting on its nest of black cloth. 'This will become, in time, the axe of someone's grandfather,' said the King. 'And no doubt over the years it will need a new handle or a new blade and over the centuries the shape will change in line with fashion, but it will always be, in every detail and respect, the axe I give you today. And because it'll change with the times it'll always be sharp. There's a grain of truth in that, see. So nice to have met you. Do enjoy your journey home, your excellency.' The four were silent in the coach back to the embassy. Then Cheery said, 'The King said-' 'I heard,' said Vimes. 'That was as good as saying that he is a sh-' 'Things are going to change,' said Lady Sybil. 'That's what the King was saying.' 'I never shook hands wid no king before,' said Detritus. 'No dwarf, either, come to dat.' 'You shook hands with me once,' said Cheery. 'Watchmen don't count,' said Detritus firmly. 'Watchmen is watchmen.' 'I wonder if it'll change anything?' said Lady Sybil. Vimes stared out of the window. It'd probably make people feel good, he thought. But trolls and dwarfs had been fighting for centuries. Ending that sort of thing took more than a handshake. It was just a symbol. On the other hand . . . the world wasn't moved by heroes or villains or even by policemen. It might as well be moved by symbols. All he knew was that you couldn't hope to try for the big stuff, like world peace and happiness, but you might just about be able to achieve some tiny deed that'd .make the world, in a small way, a better place. Like shooting someone. 'I forgot to say that I thought it was very kind of you, Cheery,' said Lady Sybil, 'yesterday, when you comforted Dee.' 'She would have had me killed by the werewolves,' said Vimes. He felt this was a point worth making. 'Yes, of course. But . . . it was kind, anyway,' said Sybil. Cheery looked at her feet, avoiding Lady Sybil's gaze. Then she coughed nervously and pulled a small piece of paper out of her sleeve, which she handed wordlessly to Vimes. He unfolded it. 'She gave you these names?' he said. 'Some of these are very senior dwarfs in AnkhMorpork . . .' 'Yes, sir,' said Cheery. She coughed again. 'I knew she wanted someone to talk to, and, er, I suggested a few things she might like to talk about. Sorry, Lady Sybil. It's very hard to stop being a copper.' 'I Worked that one out a long time ago,' said Sybil. 'You know,' said Vimes, to break the silence, 'if we leave at first light tomorrow, we could be through the pass before sundown.' And it was a comfortable night, somewhere in the depths of the feather mattress. Vimes awoke a couple of times and thought he could hear voices. Then he sank back into the softness and dreamt of warm snow. He was shaken awake by Detritus. 'It's gettin' light, sir.' Mm. 'And dere's a Igor an' a . . . a young man out in der hall,' said Detritus. 'He got a big jar full of noses and a rabbit covered in ears.' Vimes tried to get back to sleep. Then he sat bolt upright. 'What?' 'It's all covered in ears, sir.' 'You mean one of those rabbits with big floppy ears?' 'You better come and see dis rabbit,' sniffed the troll. Vimes left Sybil wallowing in sleep, pulled on his dressing gown and pattered barefoot down to the freezing hall. An Igor was waiting anxiously in the middle of the floor. Vimes was getting the hang of Igorrecognition,* and this was a new one. He was with a much younger . . . er . . . man, probably barely out of his teens, at least in places, but already the scars and stitching indicated that relentless urge towards self-improvement that was the hallmark of a good Igor. They just never seemed to be able to get the eyes level. 'Your exthellenthy?' 'You're . . . Igor, right?' 'Amathing gueth, thur. We haven't met before, but I work for Doctor Thaumic on the other thide of the mountain, and thith ith my thon, Igor.' He smacked the young man around the back of his head. 'Thay hello to hith grathe, Igor!' 'I don't believe in the peerage,' said young Igor, sulkily. 'Nor shall I call any man marthter.' 'Thee?' said his father. 'Thorry about thith, your grathe, but thith ith the younger generation for you. I hope you can find a job for him in the big thity, 'coth he'th totally unemployable in Uberwald. But he'th a very good thurgeon, even if - he doeth have funny ideath. He'th got hith grandfather'th handth, you know.' 'I can see the scars,' said Vimes. 'Lucky little devil, they thould have been mine *The key was in the pattern of scars. by rightth, but he wath old enough to go into the lottery.' 'You wantto join the Watch, Igor?' said Vimes. 'Yes, sir. I believe Ankh-Morpork is where the future lies, thur.' His father leaned closer to Vimes. 'We don't menthion hith thlight thpeech impediment, marthter,' he whispered. 'Of courthe, it countth againtht him here, you know, in the Igor buthineth, but I'm thure people will be kind to him in Ankh-Morpork.' 'Yes, indeed,' said Vimes, removing his handkerchief and absentmindedly dabbing his ear. 'And, er . . . this rabbit?' 'He's Eerie, thur,' said young Igor. 'Good name. Good name. Is that why he's got human ears all over his back?' 'Early experiment, thur.' 'And, er, the noses?' There were about a dozen of them in a large screwtop pickle jar. And they were . . . just noses. Not cut off anyone, as far as Vimes could see. They had little legs and were jumping hopefully up and down against the glass, like puppies in a pet shop window. He thought he could hear faint 'wheel' noises. 'The wave of the future, thur,' said young Igor. 'I grow them in special vats. I can do eyes and fingers, too!' 'But they've got little legs!' 'Oh, they wither off in a few hours after they're attached, thur. And they want to be useful, my little noses. Bio-artificing for the next century, thur. None of that outmoded cutting up of old bodies-' His father smacked his head again. 'You thee? You thee? Where'th the point in that? Wathtrel! I hope you can do thomething with him, marthter, becauthe I've jutht about given up! Not worth breaking down for thpareth, ath we thay!' Vimes sighed. Still, losing small extremities was a daily hazard in the Watch and the lad was, after all, an Igor. It wasn't as if there were any normal people in the Watch. He could afford to put up with a nose-breeder in exchange for surgery that didn't involve screaming and buckets of boiling pitch. He indicated a box beside the young man. It was growling and rocking from side to side. 'You haven't got a dog too, have you?' he said, trying to make it sound like a joke. 'That's my tomatoes,' said young Igor. 'A triumph of modern igoring. They grow enormously.' 'Only becauthe they vithiouthly attack all other vegetableth!' said his father. 'But I'll thay thith for the lad, marthter, I've never known anyone like him for really tiny thtitching.' 'All right, all right, he sounds the man I'm looking for,' said Vimes. 'Or close, at least. Take a seat, young man. I just hope there's going to be room in the coaches . . .' The door to the yard swung open, blowing in a few snowflakes and Carrot, who stamped his feet. 'A bit of snow overnight but the road looks open,' he said. 'They say there's a really big one due tonight, though, so we- Oh, good morning, sir.' 'You're fit enough to travel?'. said Vimes. 'We both are,' said Angua. She crossed the hall and stood next to Carrot. Once again Vimes was aware of a lot of words that he hadn't heard. A wise man didn't make enquiries at a time like this. Besides, Vimes could feel the cold coming up through his feet. He reached a decision. 'Give me your notebook, captain,' he said. They watched him scribble a few lines. 'Stop at the clacks tower and send a message on to the Yard,' he said, handing it back to Carrot. 'Tell them you're on the way. Take young Igor here with you and get him settled in, Okay? And make a report to his lordship.' 'Er, you're not coming?' said Carrot. 'Her ladyship and I will take the other coach,' said Vimes. 'Or buy a sleigh. Very comfy things, sleighs. And we'll, we'll just take it a little easier. We'll see the sights. We'll dawdle along the way. Understand?' He saw Angua smile and wondered if Sybil had confided in her. 'Absolutely, sir,' said Carrot. 'Oh, and, er, go along to Burleigh Fr Stronginthearm's, order a couple of dozen of everything off the top of their small arms catalogue, and get them on to the next mail coach due to Bonk for the personal attention of Captain Tantony.' 'The mail coach rate will be very expensive, sir . . .' Carrot began. 'I didn't want you to tell me that, captain. I wanted you to say, "Yes, sir."' 'Yes, sir.' 'And ask at the gate about . . . three gloomy biddies who live in a big house near here. It's got a cherry orchard. Find out the address and when you get back send them three coach tickets to Ankh-Morpork.' 'Right, sir.' 'Well done. Travel safely. I'll see you in a week. Or two. Three at the outside. All right?' A few minutes later he stood shivering on the steps, watching the coach disappear into the crisp morning. He felt a pang of guilt, but it was only a little pang. He gave every day to the Watch and it was time, he thought, for it to give him a week. Or two. Three at the outside. In fact, he realized, as pangs. went it was barely a ping which was, he recalled, a dialect word for watermeadow. Right now he could see a future, which was more than he'd ever had before. He locked the door and went back to bed. On a clear day, from the right vantage point on the Ramtops, a watcher could see a very long way across the plains. The dwarfs had harnessed mountain streams and built a staircase of locks that rose a mile up from the rolling grasslands, for the use of which they charged not just a pretty penny but a very handsome dollar. Barges were always ascending or descending, making their way down to the river Smarl and the cities of the plain. They carried coal, iron, fireclay, pig treacle* and fat, the dull ingredients of the pudding of civilization. In the sharp, thin air they took several days to get out of sight. On a clear day, you could see next Wednesday. The captain of one of the barges waiting for the top lock went to tip the dregs of his teapot over the side and saw a small dog sitting on the snowy bank. It sat up and begged, hopefully. He turned to go back into the cabin when he thought: what a nice little doggie. It was such a clear thought that it almost seemed to him that he had heard it, but he looked around and there was no one else near him. And dogs certainly couldn't talk. He heard himself think: 'This little doggie would be very useful keepin' down rats that might attack the cargo, sort of frog.' It must have been his thought, he decided. There was no one else nearby, and everyone knew dogs didn't talk. He said aloud, 'But rats don't eat coal, do they?' He thought, clear as day: 'Ah, well, you never know when they might try, right? Anyway, it's such a sweet-looking little doggie that's been strugglin' for days through deep snow, huh, not that anyone cares.' *The treacle mines below Ankh-Morpork had long been exhausted, leaving only a street name to remember them by. But the collision with the Fifth Elephant had buried thousands of acres of prehistoric sugarcane around the borders of Uberwald and the resulting dense crystalline sugar was the foundation of a large mining, confectionery and dentistry industry. The bargeman gave up. There's only so long you can argue with yourself. Ten minutes later the barge was on the long drop to the plains, with a small dog sitting at the prow, enjoying the breeze. On the whole, thought Gaspode, it was always best to look to the future. Nobby Nobbs had made himself a shelter up against the wall of the Watch House, and was gloomily warming his hands when a shadow loomed over him. 'What are you doing, Nobby?' said Carrot. 'Huh? Captain?' 'There's no one on the gates, there's no one on patrol. Didn't anyone get my message? What's happening?' Nobby licked his lips. 'We-ell,' he said. 'There isn't . .. . well, there isn't a Watch at the moment. Not per say.' He flinched. He saw Angua behind Carrot. 'Er, Mister Vimes with you at all?' 'What is happening, Nobby?' 'Well, you see . . . Fred kind of . . . and then he got all sort of . . . then next thing you know he was setting for to . . . and then we . . . and then he wouldn't come out . . . and then we . . . and he nailed up the door . . . and Mrs Fred came and shouted at him through the letterbox . . . and most of the lads have gone off and got other jobs . . . and now there's just me and Dorfl and Reg and Washpot, and we come here turn and turn about and we shove food through the letterbox for him . . . and . . . that's it, reelly . . .' 'Can we have that again with the gaps filled in?' said Carrot. This took considerably longer. There were still gaps. Carrot forced them open. 'I see,'he said at last. 'Mister Vimes is going to go spare, isn't he?' said Nobby miserably. 'I wouldn't worry about Mister Vimes,' said Angua. 'Not at the moment.' Carrot was looking up at the front door. It was thick oak. There were bars at all the windows. 'Go and fetch Constable Dorfl, Nobby,' he said. Ten minutes later the Watch House had a new doorway. Carrot stepped over the wreckage and led the way upstairs. Fred Colon was hunched in the chair, staring fixedly at one solitary sugar lump. 'Be careful,' whispered Angua. 'He might be in a rather fragile mental state.' 'That's very likely,' said Carrot. He leaned down and whispered: 'Fred?' 'Mm?' murmured Colon. 'On your feet, sergeant! Am 1 'urtin' you? 1 ought to be, I'm standin' on your beard! You've got five minutes to wash and shave and be back here with shinin' mornin' face! On your feet! To the washroom! Abou-ut turn! At the double! One-two-one-two!' It seemed to Angua that no part of Fred Colon above the neck, except maybe for his ears, was involved in what happened next. Fred Colon rose at attention, executed a thudding about-turn and doubled out of the door. Carrot spun around towards Nobby. 'You too, corporal!' Nobby, trembling with shock, saluted with both hands at once and ran after Colon. Carrot went over to the fireplace and poked at the ashes. 'Oh dear,' he said. 'All burnt?' said Angua. 'I'm afraid so.' 'Some of those heaps were like old friends.' 'Well, we'll find out if we've missed anything important when it starts to smell,' said Carrot. Nobby and Colon appeared again, breathless and pink. There were a few bits of tissue stuck on Colon's face where the shaving had been too enthusiastic, but he was nevertheless looking better. He was a sergeant again. Someone was giving him orders. His brain was moving. The world was the right side up once more. 'Fred?' said Carrot. 'Yessir?' 'You've got a bit of bird doings on your shoulder.' 'I'll see to that right now, sir!' said Nobby, leaping sideways. He dragged a handkerchief from his pocket, spat on it, and rubbed hurriedly at Colon's temporary pip. 'All gone now, Fred!' he said. 'Well done,' said Carrot. He got up and went over to the window. It did not, in fact, offer much in the way of a view. But he looked out of it as if he could see to the end of the world. Colon and Nobby shifted uneasily. Right now they did not like the sound of silence. When Carrot did speak they blinked as if struck in the face by a cold flannel. 'What I believe there has been here,' he said, 'is a confused situation.' 'That's right, that's right,' said Nobby quickly. 'We was very confused. Fred?' He jabbed Fred Colon with his elbow, waking him from a reverie of terror. 'Uh? Oh. Right. Oh, yeah. Confusion,' he mumbled. 'And I'm afraid I know where the blame ultimately lies,' Carrot went on, still apparently engrossed in the spectacle of a man sweeping the Opera House steps. In the silence Nobby's lips moved in prayer. Only the whites of Fred Colon's eyes could be seen. 'It was my fault,' said Carrot. 'I blame myself: Mister Vimes left me in charge, and I rushed off with no thought of my duty and put everyone in an impossible position.' Fred and Nobby were both wearing the same expression. It was the face of a man who has seen the light at the end of the tunnel and it has turned out to be the twinkle of the Fairy of Hope. 'I feel almost embarrassed to ask you two to get me out of this pit I have dug for myself,' said Carrot. 'I can't imagine what Mister Vimes is going to say.' The light at the end of the tunnel winked out for Fred and Nobby. They could imagine what Mister Vimes would say. 'However,' said Carrot. He returned to the desk and pulled open the bottom drawer, extracting a few grubby pages that were clipped together. They waited. 'However,each of these men took the King's Shilling and swore an oath to defend the King's Peace,' said Carrot, tapping the paper. 'An oath, in fact, to the King.' 'Yeah, but that was only- Aargh!' said Fred Colon. 'Sorry, sir,' said Nobby. 'I inadvertently trod heavily on Fred's toe while standing to attention.' There was a long-drawn-out silken sound. Carrot was drawing his sword from its sheath. He laid it on the desk. Nobby and Colon leaned away from its accusatory point. 'They are all good lads,' said Carrot softly. 'I'm sure if the two of you call on each and every one of them and explain the situation, they will see where their duty lies. Tell them . . . tell them there is always an easy way, if you know where to look. And then we can get on with our jobs, and when Mister Vimes returns from his well-earned holiday the somewhat confused events of the past will be merely-' 'Confusin'?' suggested Nobby, hopefully. 'Exactly,' said Carrot. 'But I'm glad to see you made so much headway with the paperwork, Fred.' Colon stood nailed to the spot until Nobby, saluting desperately with the other hand, dragged him out of the office. Angua could hear them arguing all the way down the stairs. Carrot stood up, dusted off the chair and placed it carefully under the desk. 'Well, we're home,' he said. 'Yes,' said Angua, and she thought: you do know how to do nasty, don't you? But you use it like a claw; it slides out when you need it, and when you don't there's no sign that it's there. He reached over and took her hand. 'Wolves never look back,' he whispered. THE END Do you want to know more about the Discworld ? 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Wintersmith (ta3) - Terry Pratchett	----	Wintersmith TERRY PRATCHETT Wintersmith Contents Introduction A Feegle Glossary Chapter One The Big Snow Chapter Two Miss Treason Chapter Three The Secret of Boffo Chapter Four Snowflakes Chapter Five Miss Treason’s Big Day Chapter Six Feet and Sprouts Chapter Seven On with the Dance Chapter Eight The Horn of Plenty Chapter Nine Green Shoots Chapter Ten Going Home Chapter Eleven Even Turquoise Chapter Twelve The Pike Chapter Thirteen The Crown of Ice Author’s Note About the Author Other Books by Terry Pratchett The Discworld Series Credits Copyright About the Publisher Introduction A Feegle Glossary, adjusted for those of a delicate disposition (A Work in Progress by Miss Perspicacia Tick) Bigjobs: Human beings. Big Man: Chief of the clan (usually the husband of the kelda). Blethers: Rubbish, nonsense. Boggin’: To be desperate, as in “I’m boggin’ for a cup of tea.” Bunty: A weak person. Cack yer kecks: Er, to put it delicately…to be very, very frightened. As it were. Carlin: Old woman. Cludgie: The privy. Crivens!: A general exclamation that can mean anything from “My goodness!” to “I’ve just lost my temper and there is going to be trouble.” Dree your/my/his/her weird: Face the fate that is in store for you/me/him/her. Een: Eyes. Eldritch: Weird, strange. Sometimes means oblong, too, for some reason. Fash: Worry, upset. Geas: A very important obligation, backed up by tradition and magic. Not a bird. Gonnagle: The bard of the clan, skilled in musical instruments, poems, stories, and songs. Hag: A witch of any age. Hag o’ hags: A very important witch. Hagging/Haggling: Anything a witch does. Hiddlins: Secrets. Kelda: The female head of the clan, and eventually the mother of most of it. Feegle babies are very small, and a kelda will have hundreds in her lifetime. Lang syne: Long ago. Last World: The Feegles believe that they are dead. This world is so nice, they argue, that they must have been really good in a past life and then died and ended up here. Appearing to die here means merely going back to the Last World, which they believe is rather dull. Mudlin: Useless person. Pished: I am assured that this means “tired.” Schemie: An unpleasant person. Scuggan: A really unpleasant person. Scunner: A generally unpleasant person. Ships: Woolly things that eat grass and go baa. Easily confused with the other kind. Spavie: See Mudlin. Special Sheep Liniment: Probably moonshine whisky, I am very sorry to say. No one knows what it’d do to sheep, but it is said that a drop of it is good for shepherds on a cold winter’s night and for Feegles at any time at all. Do not try to make this at home. Spog: A leather pouch, worn on the front of his belt, where a Feegle keeps his valuables and uneaten food, interesting insects, useful bits of twig, lucky dirt, and so on. It is not a good idea to fish around in a spog. Steamie: Found only in the big Feegle mounds in the mountains, where there’s enough water to allow regular bathing; it’s a kind of sauna. Feegles on the Chalk tend to rely on the fact that you can get only so much dirt on you before it starts to fall off of its own accord. Waily: A general cry of despair. CHAPTER ONE The Big Snow W hen the storm came, it hit the hills like a hammer. No sky should hold as much snow as this, and because no sky could, the snow fell, fell in a wall of white. There was a small hill of snow where there had been, a few hours ago, a little cluster of thorn trees on an ancient mound. This time last year there had been a few early primroses; now there was just snow. Part of the snow moved. A piece about the size of an apple rose up, with smoke pouring out around it. A hand no larger than a rabbit’s paw waved the smoke away. A very small but very angry blue face, with the lump of snow still balanced on top of it, looked out at the sudden white wilderness. “Ach, crivens!” it grumbled. “Will ye no’ look at this? ’Tis the work o’ the Wintersmith! Noo there’s a scunner that willna tak’ ‘no’ fra’ an answer!” Other lumps of snow were pushed up. More heads peered out. “Oh waily, waily, waily!” said one of them. “He’s found the big wee hag again!” The first head turned toward this head, and said, “Daft Wullie?” “Yes, Rob?” “Did I no’ tell ye to lay off that waily business?” “Aye, Rob, ye did that,” said the head addressed as Daft Wullie. “So why did ye just do it?” “Sorry, Rob. It kinda bursted oot.” “It’s so dispiritin’.” “Sorry, Rob.” Rob Anybody sighed. “But I fear ye’re right, Wullie. He’s come for the big wee hag, right enough. Who’s watchin’ over her doon at the farm?” “Wee Dangerous Spike, Rob.” Rob looked up at clouds so full of snow that they sagged in the middle. “Okay,” he said, and sighed again. “It’s time fra’ the Hero.” He ducked out of sight, the plug of snow dropping neatly back into place, and slid down into the heart of the Feegle mound. It was quite big inside. A human could just about stand up in the middle, but would then bend double with coughing because the middle was where there was a hole to let smoke out. All around the inner wall were tiers of galleries, and every one of them was packed with Feegles. Usually the place was awash with noise, but now it was frighteningly quiet. Rob Anybody walked across the floor to the fire, where his wife, Jeannie, was waiting. She stood straight and proud, like a kelda should, but close up it seemed to him that she had been crying. He put his arm around her. “All right, ye probably ken what’s happenin’,” he told the blue-and-red audience looking down on him. “This is nae common storm. The Wintersmith has found the big wee hag—noo then, settle doon!” He waited until the shouting and sword rattling had died down, then went on: “We canna fight the Wintersmith for her! That’s her road! We canna walk it for her! But the hag o’ hags has set us on another path! It’s a dark one, and dangerous!” A cheer went up. Feegles liked the idea of this, at least. “Right!” said Rob, satisfied. “Ah’m awa’ tae fetch the Hero!” There was a lot of laughter at this, and Big Yan, the tallest of the Feegles, shouted, “It’s tae soon. We’ve only had time tae gie him a couple o’ heroing lessons! He’s still nae more than a big streak o’ nothin’!” “He’ll be a Hero for the big wee hag and that’s an end o’ it,” said Rob sharply. “Noo, off ye go, the whole boilin’ o’ ye! Tae the chalk pit! Dig me a path tae the Underworld!” It had to be the Wintersmith, Tiffany Aching told herself, standing in front of her father in the freezing farmhouse. She could feel it out there. This wasn’t normal weather even for midwinter, and this was springtime. It was a challenge. Or perhaps it was just a game. It was hard to tell, with the Wintersmith. Only it can’t be a game because the lambs are dying. I’m only just thirteen, and my father, and a lot of other people older than me, want me to do something. And I can’t. The Wintersmith has found me again. He is here now, and I’m too weak. It would be easier if they were bullying me, but no, they’re begging. My father’s face is gray with worry and he’s begging. My father is begging me. Oh no, he’s taking his hat off. He’s taking off his hat to speak to me! They think magic comes free when I snap my fingers. But if I can’t do this for them, now, what good am I? I can’t let them see I’m afraid. Witches aren’t allowed to be afraid. And this is my fault. I: I started all this. I must finish it. Mr. Aching cleared his throat. “…And, er, if you could…er, magic it away, uh, or something? For us…?” Everything in the room was gray, because the light from the windows was coming through snow. No one had wasted time digging the horrible stuff away from the houses. Every person who could hold a shovel was needed elsewhere, and still there were not enough of them. As it was, most people had been up all night, walking the flocks of yearlings, trying to keep the new lambs safe…in the dark, in the snow…. Her snow. It was a message to her. A challenge. A summons. “All right,” she said. “I’ll see what I can do.” “Good girl,” said her father, grinning with relief. No, not a good girl, thought Tiffany. I brought this on us. “You’ll have to make a big fire, up by the sheds,” she said aloud. “I mean a big fire, do you understand? Make it out of anything that will burn, and you must keep it going. It’ll keep trying to go out, but you must keep it going. Keep piling on the fuel, whatever happens. The fire must not go out! ” She made sure that the “not!” was loud and frightening. She didn’t want people’s minds to wander. She put on the heavy brown woollen cloak that Miss Treason had made for her and grabbed the black pointy hat that hung on the back of the farmhouse door. There was a sort of communal grunt from the people who’d crowded into the kitchen, and some of them backed away. We want a witch now, we need a witch now, but—we’ll back away now, too. That was the magic of the pointy hat. It was what Miss Treason called “Boffo.” Tiffany Aching stepped out into the narrow corridor that had been cut through the snow-filled farmyard where the drifts were more than twice the height of a man. At least the deep snow kept off the worst of the wind, which was made of knives. A track had been cleared all the way to the paddock, but it had been heavy going. When there are fifteen feet of snow everywhere, how can you clear it? Where can you clear it to? She waited by the cart sheds while the men hacked and scraped at the snowbanks. They were tired to the bone by now; they’d been digging for hours. The important thing was— But there were lots of important things. It was important to look calm and confident, it was important to keep your mind clear, it was important not to show how pants-wettingly scared you were…. She held out a hand, caught a snowflake, and took a good look at it. It wasn’t one of the normal ones, oh no. It was one of his special snowflakes. That was nasty. He was taunting her. Now she could hate him. She’d never hated him before. But he was killing the lambs. She shivered and pulled the cloak around her. “This I choose to do,” she croaked, her breath leaving little clouds in the air. She cleared her throat and started again. “This I choose to do. If there is a price, this I choose to pay. If it is my death, then I choose to die. Where this takes me, there I choose to go. I choose. This I choose to do.” It wasn’t a spell, except in her own head, but if you couldn’t make spells work in your own head, you couldn’t make them work at all. Tiffany wrapped her cloak around her against the clawing wind and watched dully as the men brought straw and wood. The fire started slowly, as if frightened to show enthusiasm. She’d done this before, hadn’t she? Dozens of times. The trick was not that hard when you got the feel of it, but she’d done it with time to get her mind right, and anyway, she’d never done it with anything more than a kitchen fire to warm her freezing feet. In theory it should be just as easy with a big fire and a field of snow, right? Right? The fire began to roar up. Her father put his hand on her shoulder. Tiffany jumped. She’d forgotten how quietly he could move. “What was that about choosing?” he said. She’d forgotten what good hearing he had, too. “It’s a…witch thing,” she answered, trying not to look at his face. “So that if this…doesn’t work, it’s no one’s fault but mine.” And this is my fault, she added to herself. It’s unfair, but no one said it wasn’t going to be. Her father’s hand caught her chin and gently turned her head around. How soft his hands are, Tiffany thought. Big man’s hands but soft as a baby’s, because of the grease on the sheep’s fleeces. “We shouldn’t have asked you, should we…” he said. Yes, you should have asked me, Tiffany thought. The lambs are dying under the dreadful snow. And I should have said no, I should have said I’m not that good yet. But the lambs are dying under the dreadful snow! There will be other lambs, said her Second Thoughts. But these aren’t those lambs, are they? These are the lambs that are dying, here and now. And they’re dying because I listened to my feet and dared to dance with the Wintersmith. “I can do it,” she said. Her father held her chin and stared into her eyes. “Are you sure, jiggit?” he asked. It was the nickname her grandmother had had for her—Granny Aching, who never lost a lamb to the dreadful snow. He’d never used it before. Why had it risen up in his mind now? “Yes!” She pushed his hand away, and broke his gaze before she could burst into tears. “I…haven’t told your mother this yet,” said her father very slowly, as if the words required enormous care, “but I can’t find your brother. I think he was trying to help. Abe Swindell said he saw him with his little shovel. Er…I’m sure he’s all right, but…keep an eye open for him, will you? He’s got his red coat on.” His face, with no expression at all, was heartbreaking to see. Little Wentworth, nearly seven years old, always running after the men, always wanting to be one of them, always trying to help…how easily a small body could get overlooked…. The snow was still coming fast. The horribly wrong snowflakes were white on her father’s shoulders. It’s these little things you remember when the bottom falls out of the world, and you’re falling— That wasn’t just unfair; that was…cruel. Remember the hat you wear! Remember the job that is in front of you! Balance! Balance is the thing. Hold balance in the center, hold the balance…. Tiffany extended her numb hands to the fire, to draw out the warmth. “Remember, don’t let the fire go out,” she said. “I’ve got men bringing up wood from all over,” said her father. “I told ’em to bring all the coal from the forge, too. It won’t run out of feeding, I promise you!” The flame danced and curved toward Tiffany’s hands. The trick was, the trick, the trick…was to fold the heat somewhere close, draw it with you and…balance. Forget everything else! “I’ll come with—” her father began. “No! Watch the fire!” Tiffany shouted, too loud, frantic with fear. “You will do what I say!” I am not your daughter today! her mind screamed. I am your witch! I will protect you! She turned before he could see her face and ran through the flakes, along the track that had been cut toward the lower paddocks. The snow had been trodden down into a lumpy, hummocky path, made slippery with fresh snow. Exhausted men with shovels pressed themselves into the snowbanks on either side rather than get in her way. She reached the wider area where other shepherds were digging into the wall of snow. It tumbled in lumps around them. “Stop! Get back!” her voice shouted, while her mind wept. The men obeyed quickly. The mouth that had given that order had a pointy hat above it. You didn’t argue with that. Remember the heat, the heat, remember the heat, balance, balance… This was witching cut to the bone. No toys, no wands, no Boffo, no headology, no tricks. All that mattered was how good you were. But sometimes you had to trick yourself. She wasn’t the Summer Lady and she wasn’t Granny Weatherwax. She needed to give herself all the help she could. She pulled the little silver horse out of her pocket. It was greasy and stained, and she’d meant to clean it, but there had been no time, no time…. Like a knight putting on his helmet, she fastened the silver chain around her neck. She should have practiced more. She should have listened to people. She should have listened to herself. She took a deep breath and held out her hands on either side of her, palms up. On her right hand a white scar glowed. “Thunder on my right hand,” she said. “Lightning in my left hand. Fire behind me. Frost in front of me.” She stepped forward until she was only a few inches away from the snowbank. She could feel its coldness already pulling the heat out of her. Well, so be it. She took a few deep breaths. This I choose to do…. “Frost to fire,” she whispered. In the yard, the fire went white and roared like a furnace. The snow wall spluttered and then exploded into steam, sending chunks of snow into the air. Tiffany walked forward slowly. Snow pulled back from her hands like mist at sunrise. It melted in the heat of her, becoming a tunnel in the deep drift, fleeing from her, writhing around her in clouds of cold fog. Yes! She smiled desperately. It was true. If you had the perfect center, if you got your mind right, you could balance. In the middle of the seesaw is a place that never moves…. Her boots squelched over warm water. There was fresh green grass under the snow, because the awful storm had been so late in the year. She walked on, heading to where the lambing pens were buried. Her father stared at the fire. It was burning white-hot, like a furnace, eating through the wood as if driven by a gale. It was collapsing into ashes in front of his eyes…. Water was pouring around Tiffany’s boots now. Yes! But don’t think about it! Hold the balance! More heat! Frost to fire! There was a bleat. Sheep could live under the snow, at least for a while. But as Granny Aching used to say, when the gods made sheep, they must’ve left their brains in their other coat. In a panic, and sheep were always just an inch from panicking, they’d trample their own lambs. Now ewes and lambs appeared, steaming and bewildered as the snow melted around them, as if they were sculptures left behind. Tiffany moved on, staring straight ahead of her, only just aware of the excited cries of the men behind her. They were following her, pulling the ewes free, cradling the lambs…. Her father yelled at the other men. Some of them were hacking at a farm cart, throwing the wood down into the white-hot flames. Others were dragging furniture up from the house. Wheels, tables, straw bales, chairs—the fire took everything, gulped it down, and roared for more. And there wasn’t any more. No red coat. No red coat! Balance, balance. Tiffany waded on, water and sheep pouring past her. The tunnel ceiling fell in a splashing and slithering of slush. She ignored it. Fresh snowflakes fell down through the hole and boiled in the air above her head. She ignored that, too. And then, ahead of her…a glimpse of red. Frost to fire! The snow fled, and there he was. She picked him up, held him close, sent some of her heat into him, felt him stir, whispered: “It weighed at least forty pounds! At least forty pounds!” Wentworth coughed and opened his eyes. Tears falling like melting snow, she ran over to a shepherd and thrust the boy into his arms. “Take him to his mother! Do it now! ” The man grabbed the boy and ran, frightened of her fierceness. Today she was their witch! Tiffany turned back. There were more lambs to be saved. Her father’s coat landed on the starving flames, glowed for a moment, then fell into gray ashes. The other men were ready; they grabbed the man as he went to jump after it and pulled him back, kicking and shouting. The flint cobbles had melted like butter. They spluttered for a moment, then froze. The fire went out. Tiffany Aching looked up, into the eyes of the Wintersmith. And up on the roof of the cart shed, the small voice belonging to Wee Dangerous Spike said, “Ach, crivens!” All this hasn’t happened yet. It might not happen at all. The future is always a bit wobbly. Any little thing, like the fall of a snowflake or the dropping of the wrong kind of spoon, can send it spinning off along a new path. Or perhaps not. Where it all began was last autumn, on the day with a cat in it…. CHAPTER TWO Miss Treason T his is Tiffany Aching, riding a broomstick through the mountain forests a hundred miles away. It’s a very old broomstick, and she’s flying it just above the ground; it’s got two smaller broomsticks stuck on the back like training wheels, to stop it from tipping over. It belongs, appropriately, to a very old witch called Miss Treason, who’s even worse at flying than Tiffany and is 113 years old. Tiffany is slightly more than one hundred years younger than that, taller than she was even a month ago, and not as certain of anything at all as she was a year ago. She is training to be a witch. Witches usually wear black, but as far as she could tell, the only reason that witches wore black was that they’d always worn black. This did not seem a good enough reason, so she tended to wear blue or green. She didn’t laugh with scorn at finery because she’d never seen any. You couldn’t escape the pointy hat, though. There was nothing magical about a pointy hat except that it said that the woman underneath it was a witch. People paid attention to a pointy hat. Even so, it was hard to be a witch in the village where you’d grown up. It was hard to be a witch to people who knew you as “Joe Aching’s girl” and had seen you running around with only your undershirt on when you were two years old. Going away had helped. Most people Tiffany knew hadn’t been more than ten miles away from the spot where they were born, so if you’d gone to mysterious foreign parts, that made you a bit mysterious, too. You came back slightly different. A witch needed to be different. Witching was turning out to be mostly hard work and really short on magic of the zap!-glingle-glingle-glingle variety. There was no school and nothing that was exactly like a lesson. But it wasn’t wise to try to learn witching all by yourself, especially if you had a natural talent. If you got it wrong, you could go from ignorant to cackling in a week…. When you got right down to it, it was all about cackling. No one ever talked about this, though. Witches said things like “You can never be too old, too skinny, or too warty,” but they never mentioned the cackling. Not properly. They watched out for it, though, all the time. It was all too easy to become a cackler. Most witches lived by themselves (cat optional) and might go for weeks without ever seeing another witch. In those times when people hated witches, they were often accused of talking to their cats. Of course they talked to their cats. After three weeks without an intelligent conversation that wasn’t about cows, you’d talk to the wall. And that was an early sign of cackling. “Cackling,” to a witch, didn’t just mean nasty laughter. It meant your mind drifting away from its anchor. It meant you losing your grip. It meant loneliness and hard work and responsibility and other people’s problems driving you crazy a little bit at a time, each bit so small that you’d hardly notice it, until you thought that it was normal to stop washing and wear a kettle on your head. It meant you thinking that the fact you knew more than anyone else in your village made you better than them. It meant thinking that right and wrong were negotiable. And, in the end, it meant you “going to the dark,” as the witches said. That was a bad road. At the end of that road were poisoned spinning wheels and gingerbread cottages. What stopped this was the habit of visiting. Witches visited other witches all the time, sometimes traveling quite a long way for a cup of tea and a bun. Partly this was for gossip, of course, because witches love gossip, especially if it’s more exciting than truthful. But mostly it was to keep an eye on one another. Today Tiffany was visiting Granny Weatherwax, who was in the opinion of most witches (including Granny herself) the most powerful witch in the mountains. It was all very polite. No one said, “Not gone bats, then?” or “Certainly not! I’m as sharp as a spoon!” They didn’t need to. They understood what it was all about, so they talked of other things. But when she was in a mood, Granny Weatherwax could be hard work. She sat silently in her rocking chair. Some people are good at talking, but Granny Weatherwax was good at silence. She could sit so quiet and still that she faded. You forgot she was there. The room became empty. It upset people. It was probably meant to. But Tiffany had learned silence too, from Granny Aching, her real grandmother. Now she was learning that if you made yourself really quiet, you could become almost invisible. Granny Weatherwax was an expert. Tiffany thought of it as the I’m-not-here spell, if it was a spell. She reasoned that everyone had something inside them that told the world they were there. That was why you could often sense when someone was behind you, even if they were making no sound at all. You were receiving their I-am-here signal. Some people had a very strong one. They were the people who got served first in shops. Granny Weatherwax had an I-am-here signal that bounced off the mountains when she wanted it to; when she walked into a forest, all the wolves and bears ran out the other side. She could turn it off, too. She was doing that now. Tiffany was having to concentrate to see her. Most of her mind was telling her that there was no one there at all. Well, she thought, that’s about enough of that. She coughed. Suddenly Granny Weatherwax had always been there. “Miss Treason is very well,” said Tiffany. “A fine woman,” said Granny. “Oh, yes.” “She has her funny ways,” said Tiffany. “We’re none of us perfect,” said Granny. “She’s trying some new eyes,” said Tiffany. “That’s good.” “They’re a couple of ravens….” “It’s just as well,” said Granny. “Better than the mouse she usually uses,” said Tiffany. “I expect they are.” There was a bit more of this, until Tiffany began to get annoyed at doing all the work. There was such a thing as common politeness, after all. Oh well, she knew what to do about it now. “Mrs. Earwig’s written another book,” she said. “I heard,” said Granny. The shadows in the room maybe grew a little darker. Well, that explained the sulk. Even thinking about Mrs. Earwig made Granny Weatherwax angry. Mrs. Earwig was all wrong to Granny Weatherwax. She wasn’t born locally, which was almost a crime to begin with. She wrote books, and Granny Weatherwax didn’t trust books. And Mrs. Earwig (pronounced “Ah-wij,” at least by Mrs. Earwig) believed in shiny wands and magical amulets and mystic runes and the power of the stars, while Granny Weatherwax believed in cups of tea, dry biscuits, washing every morning in cold water, and, well, she believed mostly in Granny Weatherwax. Mrs. Earwig was popular among the younger witches, because if you did witchcraft her way, you could wear so much jewelry that you could barely walk. Granny Weatherwax wasn’t popular with anyone much— —except when they needed her. When Death was standing by the cradle or the axe slipped in the woods and blood was soaking into the moss, you sent someone hurrying to the cold, gnarly little cottage in the clearing. When all hope was gone, you called for Granny Weatherwax, because she was the best. And she always came. Always. But popular? No. Need is not the same as like. Granny Weatherwax was for when things were serious. Tiffany did like her, though, in an odd kind of way. She thought Granny Weatherwax liked her, too. She let Tiffany call her Granny to her face, when all the other young witches had to call her Mistress Weatherwax. Sometimes Tiffany thought that if you were friendly to Granny Weatherwax, she tested you to see how friendly you would stay. Everything about Granny Weatherwax was a test. “The new book is called First Flights in Witchcraft,” she went on, watching the old witch carefully. Granny Weatherwax smiled. That is, her mouth went up at the corners. “Hah!” she said. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: You can’t learn witchin’ from books. Letice Earwig thinks you can become a witch by goin’ shoppin’.” She gave Tiffany a piercing look, as if she were making up her mind about something. Then she said: “An’ I’ll wager she don’t know how to do this.” She picked up her cup of hot tea, curling her hand around it. Then she reached out with her other hand and took Tiffany’s hand. “Ready?” said Granny. “For wha—” Tiffany began, and then she felt her hand get hot. The heat spread up her arm, warming it to the bone. “Feelin’ it?” “Yes!” The warmth died away. And Granny Weatherwax, still watching Tiffany’s face, turned the teacup upside down. The tea dropped out in one lump. It was frozen solid. Tiffany was old enough not to say, “How did you do that?” Granny Weatherwax didn’t answer silly questions or, for that matter, many questions at all. “You moved the heat,” Tiffany said. “You took the heat out of the tea and moved it through you to me, yes?” “Yes, but it never touched me,” said Granny triumphantly. “It’s all about balance, do you see? Balance is the trick. Keep the balance and—” She stopped. “You’ve ridden on a seesaw? One end goes up, one end goes down. But the bit in the middle, right in the middle, that stays where it is. Upness and downness go right through it. Don’t matter how high or low the ends go, it keeps the balance.” She sniffed. “Magic is mostly movin’ stuff around.” “Can I learn that?” “I daresay. It’s not hard, if you get your mind right.” “Can you teach me?” “I just have. I showed you.” “No, Granny, you just showed me how to do it, not… how to do it!” “Can’t tell you that. I know how I do it. How you do it’ll be different. You’ve just got to get your mind right.” “How do I do that?” “How should I know? It’s your mind,” snapped Granny. “Put the kettle on again, will you? My tea’s gone cold.” There was something almost spiteful about all this, but that was Granny. She took the view that if you were capable of learning, you’d work it out. There was no point in making it easy for people. Life wasn’t easy, she said. “An’ I see you’re still wearing that trinket,” said Granny. She didn’t like trinkets, a word she used to mean anything metal a witch wore that wasn’t there to hold up, shut, or fasten. That was “shoppin’.” Tiffany touched the little silver horse she wore around her neck. It was small and simple, and it meant a lot to her. “Yes,” she said calmly. “I still am.” “What have you got in that basket?” Granny said now, which was unusually rude. Tiffany’s basket was on the table. It had a present in it, of course. Everyone knew you took a small present along when you went visiting, but the person you were visiting was supposed to be surprised when you gave it to her, and say things like “Oooh, you shouldn’t have.” “I brought you something,” said Tiffany, swinging the big black kettle onto the fire. “You’ve got no call to be bringing me presents, I’m sure,” said Granny sternly. “Yes, well,” said Tiffany, and left it at that. She heard Granny lift the lid of the basket. There was a kitten in it. “Her mother is Pinky, the Widow Cable’s cat,” said Tiffany, to fill the silence. “You shouldn’t have,” growled the voice of Granny Weatherwax. “It was no trouble.” Tiffany smiled at the fire. “I can’t be havin’ with cats.” “She’ll keep the mice down,” said Tiffany, still not turning around. “Don’t have mice.” Nothing for them to eat, thought Tiffany. Aloud, she said, “Mrs. Earwig’s got six big black cats.” In the basket, the white kitten would be staring up at Granny Weatherwax with the sad, shocked expression of all kittens. You test me, I test you, Tiffany thought. “I don’t know what I shall do with it, I’m sure. It’ll have to sleep in the goat shed,” said Granny Weatherwax. Most witches had goats. The kitten rubbed against Granny’s hand and went meep. When Tiffany left, later on, Granny Weatherwax said good-bye at the door and very carefully shut the kitten outside. Tiffany went across the clearing to where she’d tied up Miss Treason’s broomstick. But she didn’t get on, not yet. She stepped back up against a holly bush, and went quiet until she wasn’t there anymore, until everything about her said: I’m not here. Everyone could see pictures in the fire and in clouds. You just turned that the other way around. You turned off that bit of yourself that said you were there. You dissolved. Anyone looking at you would find you very hard to see. Your face became a bit of leaf and shadow, your body a piece of tree and bush. The other person’s mind would fill in the gaps. Looking like just another piece of holly bush, she watched the door. The wind had got up, warm but worrisome, shaking the yellow and red leaves off the sycamore trees and whirring them around the clearing. The kitten tried to bat a few of them out of the air and then sat there, making sad little mewling noises. Any minute now, Granny Weatherwax would think Tiffany had gone and would open the door and— “Forgot something?” said Granny by her ear. She was the bush. “Er…it’s very sweet. I just thought you might, you know, grow to like it,” said Tiffany, but she was thinking: Well, she could have got here if she ran, but why didn’t I see her? Can you run and hide at the same time? “Never you mind about me, my girl,” said the witch. “You run along back to Miss Treason and give her my best wishes, right now. But”—and her voice softened a little—“that was good hiding you did just then. There’s many as would not have seen you. Why, I hardly heard your hair growin’!” When Tiffany’s stick had left the clearing, and Granny Weatherwax had satisfied herself in other little ways that she had really gone, she went back inside, carefully ignoring the kitten again. After a few minutes, the door creaked open a little. It may have been just a draft. The kitten trotted inside…. All witches were a bit odd. Tiffany had got used to odd, so that odd seemed quite normal. There was Miss Level, for example, who had two bodies, although one of them was imaginary. Mistress Pullunder, who bred pedigreed earthworms and gave them all names…well, she was hardly odd at all, just a bit peculiar, and anyway earthworms were quite interesting in a basically uninteresting kind of way. And there had been Old Mother Dismass, who suffered from bouts of temporal confusion, which can be quite strange when it happens to a witch; her mouth never moved in time with her words, and sometimes her footsteps came down the stairs ten minutes before she did. But when it came to odd, Miss Treason didn’t just take the cake, but a packet of biscuits too, with sprinkles on the top, and also a candle. Where to start, when things were wall-to-wall odd…. Miss Eumenides Treason had gone blind when she was sixty years old. To most people that would have been a misfortune, but Miss Treason was skilled at Borrowing, a particular witch talent. She could use the eyes of animals, reading what they saw right out of their minds. She’d gone deaf when she was seventy-five, but she’d got the hang of it by now and used any ears she could find running around. When Tiffany had first gone to stay with her, Miss Treason had used a mouse for seeing and hearing, because her old jackdaw had died. It was a bit worrying to see an old woman striding around the cottage with a mouse in her outstretched hand, and very worrying if you said something and the mouse was swung around to face you. It was amazing how creepy a little pink wriggly nose could be. The new ravens were a lot better. Somebody in one of the local villages had made the old woman a perch that fitted across her shoulders, one bird on either side, and with her long white hair the effect was very, well, witchy, although a bit messy down the back of her cloak by the end of the day. Then there was her clock. It was heavy and made of rusty iron by someone who was more blacksmith than watchmaker, which was why it went clonk-clank instead of tick-tock. She wore it on her belt and could tell the time by feeling the stubby little hands. There was a story in the villages that the clock was Miss Treason’s heart, which she’d used ever since her first heart died. But there were lots of stories about Miss Treason. You had to have a high threshold for odd to put up with her. It was traditional that young witches traveled around and stayed with older witches to learn from a lot of experts in exchange for what Miss Tick the witch finder called “some help with the chores,” which meant “doing all the chores.” Mostly, they left Miss Treason’s after one night. Tiffany had stuck it out for three months so far. Oh, and sometimes, when she was looking for a pair of eyes to look through, Miss Treason would creep into yours. It was a strange prickly sensation, like having someone invisible looking over your shoulder. Yes…perhaps Miss Treason didn’t just take the cake, a packet of biscuits with sprinkles on the top, and a candle, but also the trifle, the sandwiches, and a man who made amusing balloon animals afterward. She was weaving at her loom when Tiffany came in. Two beaks turned to face her. “Ah, child,” said Miss Treason in a thin, cracked voice. “You have had a good day.” “Yes, Miss Treason,” said Tiffany obediently. “You have seen the girl Weatherwax and she is well.” Click-clack went the loom. Clonk-clank went the clock. “Quite well,” said Tiffany. Miss Treason didn’t ask questions. She just told you the answers. “The girl Weatherwax,” Tiffany thought, as she started to get their supper. But Miss Treason was very old. And very scary. It was a fact. You couldn’t deny it. She didn’t have a hooked nose and she did have all her teeth, even if they were yellow, but after that she was a picture-book wicked witch. And her knees clicked when she walked. And she walked very fast, with the help of two sticks, scuttling around like a big spider. That was another strange thing: The cottage was full of cobwebs, which Miss Treason ordered Tiffany never to touch, but you never saw a spider. There was the thing about black, too. Most witches liked black, but Miss Treason even had black goats and black chickens. The walls were black. The floor was black. If you dropped a stick of licorice, you’d never find it again. And, to Tiffany’s dismay, she had to make her cheeses black, which meant painting the cheeses with shiny black wax. Tiffany was an excellent cheesemaker and it did keep them moist, but Tiffany distrusted black cheeses. They always looked as though they were plotting something. And Miss Treason didn’t seem to need sleep. She hadn’t got much use for night and day now. When the ravens went to bed, she’d summon up an owl and weave by owl sight. An owl was particularly good, she said, because it’d keep turning its head to watch the shuttle of the loom. Click-clack went the loom, and clonk-clank went the clock, right back at it. Miss Treason, with her billowing black cloak and bandaged eyes and wild white hair… Miss Treason with her two sticks, wandering the cottage and garden in the dark and frosty night, smelling the memory of flowers…. All witches had some particular skill, and Miss Treason delivered Justice. People would come from miles around to bring her their problems: I know it’s my cow but he says it’s his! She says it’s her land but my father left it to me! …and Miss Treason would sit at the click-clack ing loom with her back to the room full of anxious people. The loom worried them. They watched it as though they were afraid of it, and the ravens watched them. They would stutter out their cases, um-ing and ah-ing, while the loom rattled away in the flickering candlelight. Oh, yes…the candlelight… The candleholders were two skulls. One had the word ENOCHI carved on it; the other had the word ATHOOTITA. (The words meant “GUILT” and “INNOCENCE.” Tiffany wished she didn’t know that. There was no way that a girl brought up on the Chalk should know that, because the words were in a foreign language, and an ancient one, too. She knew them because of Dr. Sensibility Bustle, D. M. Phil., B. El L., Patricius Professor of Magic at Unseen University, who was in her head. (Well, a tiny part of him, at least. (A couple of summers ago she had been taken over by a hiver, a…thing that had been collecting minds for millions of years. Tiffany managed to get it out of her head, but a few fragments had stayed tangled up in her brain. One of these was a tiny lump of ego and a mix of memories that were what remained of the late Dr. Bustle. He wasn’t much trouble, but if she looked at anything in a foreign language, she could read it—or, rather, hear Dr. Bustle’s reedy voice translating it for her. That seemed to be about all that was left of him, but she tried to avoid getting undressed in front of a mirror.) The candles had dripped wax all over the skulls, and people would keep glancing at them the whole time they were in the room. And then, when all the words had been said, the loom would stop with a shock of sudden silence, and Miss Treason would turn around in her big heavy chair, which had wheels on it, and remove the black blindfold from her pearly gray eyes and say: “I have heard. Now I shall see. I shall see what is true.” Some people would actually run away at this point, when she stared at them in the light from the skulls. Those eyes that could not see your face could somehow see your mind. When Miss Treason was looking right through you, you could only be truthful or very, very stupid. So no one ever argued with Miss Treason. Witches were not allowed to be paid for using their talents, but everyone who came to have a dispute settled by Miss Treason brought her a present, usually food but sometimes clean used clothing, if it was black, or a pair of old boots if they were her size. If Miss Treason gave judgment against you, it was really not a good idea (everyone said) to ask for your present back, as being turned into something small and sticky often offends. They said if you lied to Miss Treason, you would die horribly within a week. They said that kings and princes came to see Miss Treason at night, asking questions about great affairs of state. They said that in her cellar was a heap of gold, guarded by a demon with skin like fire and three heads that would attack anyone it saw and eat their noses. Tiffany suspected that at least two of these beliefs were wrong. She knew the third one wasn’t true, because one day she’d gone down into the cellar (with a bucket of water and a poker, just in case), and there was nothing there but piles of potatoes and carrots. And a mouse, watching her carefully. Tiffany wasn’t scared, much. For one thing, unless the demon was good at disguising itself as a potato, it probably didn’t exist. And another thing was that although Miss Treason looked bad and sounded bad and smelled like old locked wardrobes, she didn’t feel bad. First Sight and Second Thoughts, that’s what a witch had to rely on: First Sight to see what’s really there, and Second Thoughts to watch the First Thoughts to check that they were thinking right. Then there were the Third Thoughts, which Tiffany had never heard discussed and therefore kept quiet about; they were odd, seemed to think for themselves, and didn’t turn up very often. And they were telling her that there was more to Miss Treason than met the eye. And then one day, when she was dusting, Tiffany knocked over the skull called Enochi. …and suddenly Tiffany knew a lot more about Miss Treason than Miss Treason probably wanted anyone to know. Tonight, as they were eating their stew (with black beans), Miss Treason said, “The wind is rising. We must go soon. I would not trust the stick above the trees on a night like this. There may be strange creatures about.” “Go? We’re going out?” Tiffany asked. They never went out in the evenings, which was why the evenings always felt a hundred years long. “Indeed we are. They will be dancing tonight.” “Who will?” “The ravens will not be able to see and the owl will get confused,” Miss Treason went on. “I will need to use your eyes.” “Who will be dancing, Miss Treason?” said Tiffany. She liked dancing, but no one seemed to dance up here. “It is not far, but there will be a storm.” So that was that; Miss Treason wasn’t going to tell. But it sounded interesting. Besides, it would probably be an education to see anyone Miss Treason thought was strange. Of course, it did mean Miss Treason would put her pointy hat on. Tiffany hated this bit. She’d have to stand in front of Miss Treason and stare at her, and feel the little tingle in her eyes as the ancient witch used her as a kind of mirror. The wind was roaring in the woods like a big dark animal by the time they’d finished supper. It barged the door out of Tiffany’s hands when she opened it and blew around the room, making the cords hum on the loom. “Are you sure about this, Miss Treason?” she said, trying to push the door shut. “Don’t you say that to me! You will not say that to me! The dance must be witnessed! I have never missed the dance!” Miss Treason looked nervous and edgy. “We must go! And you must wear black.” “Miss Treason, you know I don’t wear black,” said Tiffany. “Tonight is a night for black. You will wear my second-best cloak.” She said it with a witch’s firmness, as if the idea of anyone disobeying had never crossed her mind. She was 113 years old. She’d had a lot of practice. Tiffany didn’t argue. It isn’t that I have anything against black, Tiffany thought as she fetched the second-best cloak, but it’s just not me. When people say witches wear black, they actually mean that old ladies wear black. Anyway, it’s not as if I’m wearing pink or something…. After that she had to wrap Miss Treason’s clock in pieces of blanket, so that the clonk-clank became clonk-clank. There was no question of leaving it behind. Miss Treason always kept the clock close to her. While Tiffany got herself ready, the old woman wound the clock up with a horrible graunching noise. She was always winding it up; sometimes she stopped to do it in the middle of a judgment, with a room full of horrified people. There was no rain yet, but when they set out the air was full of twigs and flying leaves. Miss Treason sat sidesaddle on the broom, hanging on for dear life, while Tiffany walked along towing it by means of a piece of clothesline. The sunset sky was still red, and a gibbous moon was high, but the clouds were being whipped across it, filling the woods with moving shadows. Branches knocked together, and Tiffany heard the creak and crash as, somewhere in the dark, one fell to the ground. “Are we going to the villages?” Tiffany yelled above the din. “No! Take the path through the forest!” shouted Miss Treason. Ah, thought Tiffany, is this the famous “dancing around without your drawers on” that I’ve heard so much about? Actually, not very much about, because as soon as anyone mentions it, someone else tells them to shut up, so I really haven’t heard much about it at all, but haven’t heard in a very meaningful way. It was something people thought witches did, but witches didn’t think they did it. Tiffany had to admit she could see why. Even hot summer nights weren’t all that warm, and there were always hedgehogs and thistles to worry about. Besides, you just couldn’t imagine someone like Granny Weatherwax dancing around without—Well, you just couldn’t imagine it, because if you did, it would make your head explode. The wind died down as she took the forest track, still towing the floating Miss Treason. But the wind had brought cold air with it and then left it behind. Tiffany was glad of the cloak, even if it was black. She trudged on, taking different tracks when Miss Treason told her to, until she saw firelight through the trees, in a little dip in the land. “Stop here and help me down, girl,” said the old witch. “And listen carefully. There are rules. One, you will not talk; two, you will look only at the dancers; three, you will not move until the dance is finished. I will not tell you twice!” “Yes, Miss Treason. It’s very cold up here.” “And will get colder.” They headed for the distant light. What good is a dance you can only watch? Tiffany wondered. It didn’t sound like much fun. “It isn’t meant to be fun,” said Miss Treason. Shadows moved across the firelight, and Tiffany heard the sound of men’s voices. Then, as they reached the edge of the sunken ground, someone threw water over the fire. There was a hiss, and a cloud of smoke and steam rose among the trees. It happened in a moment and left a shock behind. The only thing that had seemed alive here had died. Dry fallen leaves crunched under her feet. The moon, in a sky swept clean now of clouds, made little silver shapes on the forest floor. It was some time before Tiffany realized that there were six men standing in the middle of the clearing. They must have been wearing black; against the moonlight they looked like man-shaped holes into nothing. They were in two lines of three, facing each other, but were so still that after a while Tiffany wondered if she was imagining them. There was the thud of a drumbeat: bom… bom… bom. It went on for half a minute or so, and then stopped. But in the silence of the cold woods the beat went on inside Tiffany’s head, and perhaps that wasn’t the only head it thundered in, because the men were gently nodding their heads, to keep the beat. They began to dance. The only noise was of their boots hitting the ground as the shadow men wove in and out. But then Tiffany, her head full of the silent drum, heard another sound. Her foot was tapping, all by itself. She’d heard this beat before; she’d seen men dancing like this. But it had been on warm days in bright sunshine. They’d worn little bells on their clothes. “This is a Morris dance!” she said, not quite under her breath. “Shush!” hissed Miss Treason. “But this isn’t the right—” “Be silent!” Blushing and angry in the dark, Tiffany took her eyes off the dancers and defiantly looked around the clearing. There were other shadows crowding in, human or at least human shaped, but she couldn’t see them clearly and maybe that was just as well. It was getting colder, she was sure. White frost was crackling across the leaves. The beat went on. But it seemed to Tiffany that it wasn’t alone now, but had picked up other beats, and echoes from inside her head. Miss Treason could shush all she liked. It was a Morris dance. But it was out of time! The Morris men came to the village sometime in May. You could never be sure when, because they had to call at lots of villages along the Chalk, and every village had a pub, which slowed them down. They carried sticks and wore white clothes with bells on them, to stop them from creeping up on people. No one likes an unexpected Morris dancer. Tiffany would wait outside the village with the other children and dance behind them all the way in. And then they used to dance on the village green to the beat of a drum, banging their sticks together in the air, and then everyone would go to the pub and summer would come. Tiffany hadn’t been able to work out how that last bit happened. The dancers danced, and then summer came—that was all anybody seemed to know. Her father said that there had once been a year when the dancers hadn’t turned up, and a cold wet spring had turned into a chilly autumn, with the months between being filled with mists and rain and frosts in August. The sound of the drums filled her head now, making her feel dizzy. They were wrong; there was something wrong— And then she remembered the seventh dancer, the one they called the Fool. He was generally a small man, wearing a battered top hat and bright rags sewn all over his clothes. Mostly he wandered around holding out the hat and grinning at people until they gave him money for beer. But sometimes he’d put the hat down and whirl off into the dancers. You’d expect there to be a massive collision of arms and legs, but it never happened. Jumping and twirling among the sweating men, he always managed to be where the other dancers weren’t. The world was moving around her. She blinked. The drums in her head were like thunder now, and there was one beat as deep as oceans. Miss Treason was forgotten. So was the strange, mysterious crowd. Now there was only the dance itself. It twisted in the air like a living thing. But there was a space in it, moving around. It was where she should be, she knew it. Miss Treason had said no, but that had been a long time ago and how could Miss Treason understand? What could she know? When did she last dance? The dance was in Tiffany’s bones now, calling to her. Six dancers were not enough! She ran forward and jumped into the dance. The eyes of the dancing men glared at her as she skipped and danced between them, always being where they weren’t. The drums had her feet, and they went where the beat sent them. And then……there was someone else there. It was like the feeling of someone behind her—but it was also the feeling of someone in front of her, and beside her, and above her, and below her, all at once. The dancers froze, but the world spun. The men were just black shadows, darker outlines in the darkness. The drumbeats stopped, and there was one long moment as Tiffany turned gently and silently, arms out, feet not touching the ground, her face turned toward stars that were as cold as ice and sharp as needles. It felt…wonderful. A voice said: “Who Are You?” It had an echo, or perhaps two people had said it at almost the same time. The beat came back, suddenly, and six men crashed into her. A few hours later, in the small town of Dogbend, down on the plains, the citizens threw a witch into the river with her arms and legs tied together. This sort of thing never happened in the mountains, where witches had respect, but down on the wide plains there were still people dumb enough to believe the nastier stories. Besides, there wasn’t much to do in the evenings. However, it probably wasn’t often that the witch was given a cup of tea and some biscuits before her ducking. It had happened here because the people of Dogbend Did It By The Book. The book was called: Magavenatio Obtusis.* The townspeople didn’t know how the book had arrived. It had just turned up one day, on a shelf in one of the shops. They knew how to read, of course. You had to have a certain amount of reading and writing to get on in the world, even in Dogbend. But they didn’t trust books much, or the kind of people who read them. This one, though, was a book on how to deal with witches. It looked pretty authoritative, too, without too many long (and therefore untrustworthy) words, like “marmalade.” At last, they told one another, this is what we need. This is a sensible book. Okay, it isn’t what you’d expect, but remember that witch last year? We ducked her in the river and then tried to burn her alive? Only she was too soggy, and got away? Let’s not go through that again! They paid particular attention to this bit: It is very important, having caught your witch, not to harm her in any way (yet!). On no account set fire to her! This is an error beginners often fall into. It just makes the witch mad and she comes back even stronger. As everyone knows, the other way to get rid of a witch is to throw her into a river or pond. This is the best plan: First, imprison her overnight in a moderately warm room and give her as much soup as she asks for. Carrot-and-lentil might do, but for best results we recommend leek-and-potato made with a good beef stock. This has been proven to seriously harm her magical powers. Do not give her tomato soup—it will make her very powerful. To be on the safe side, put a silver coin in each of her boots. She will not be able to pull the coins out because they will burn her fingers. Provide her with warm blankets and a pillow. This will trick her into going to sleep. Lock the door and see that no one enters. About one hour before dawn, go into the room. Now you might think the way to do this would be to rush in shouting. NOTHING COULD BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH. Tiptoe in gently, leave a cup of tea by the sleeping witch, tiptoe back to the doorway, and cough quietly. This is important. If awakened suddenly, she could get very nasty indeed. Some authorities recommend chocolate biscuits with the tea, others say that ginger biscuits will be enough. If you value your life, do not give her plain biscuits, because sparks will fly out of her ears. When she awakes, recite this powerful mystic rune, which will stop her from turning into a swarm of bees and flying away: ITI SAPIT EYI MA NASS. When she has finished the tea and biscuits, tie her hands and feet in front of her with rope using No. 1 Bosun’s knots and throw her in the water. IMPORTANT SAFETY NOTE: Do this before it starts getting light. Do not stay to watch! Of course, this time some people did. And what they saw was the witch sinking and not coming up again, while her wicked pointy hat floated away. Then they went home for breakfast. In this particular river, nothing much happened for several minutes more. Then the pointy hat started to move toward a thick patch of reeds. It stopped there, and rose very slowly. A pair of eyes peered out from underneath the brim…. When she was sure that there was no one about, Miss Perspicacia Tick, teacher and witch finder, crawled up the bank on her stomach and then legged it away at high speed into the woods just as the sun came up. She’d left a bag with a clean dress and some fresh underwear stuck in a badger’s sett, along with a box of matches (she never carried matches in her pocket if there was a danger of being caught, in case it gave people ideas). Well, she thought, as she dried out in front of a fire, things could have been worse. Thank goodness the village still had someone left who could read, or else she would have been in a pretty pickle. Maybe it was a good idea that she’d had the book printed in big letters. It was in fact Miss Tick who had written Witch Hunting for Dumb People, and she made sure that copies of it found their way into those areas where people still believed that witches should be burned or drowned. Since the only witch ever likely to pass through these days was Miss Tick herself, it meant that if things did go wrong, she’d get a good night’s sleep and a decent meal before being thrown into the water. The water was no problem at all to Miss Tick, who had been to the Quirm College for Young Ladies, where you had to have an icy dip every morning to build Moral Fiber. And a No. 1 Bosun’s knot was very easy to undo with your teeth, even underwater. Oh, yes, she thought, as she emptied her boots, and she’d got two silver sixpences, too. Really, the people of the village of Dogbend were getting very stupid indeed. Of course, that’s what happened when you got rid of your witches. A witch was just someone who knew a bit more than you did. That’s what the name meant. And some people didn’t like anyone who knew more than they did, so these days the wandering teachers and the traveling librarians steered clear of the place. The way things were going, if the people of Dogbend wanted to throw stones at anyone who knew more than them, they’d soon have to throw them at the pigs. The place was a mess. Unfortunately there was a girl aged eight there who was definitely showing promise, and Miss Tick dropped in sometimes to keep an eye on her. Not as a witch, obviously, because although she liked a cold dip in the morning, you could have too much of a good thing. She disguised herself as a humble apple seller, or a fortune-teller. (Witches don’t usually do fortune-telling, because if they did, they’d be too good at it. People don’t want to know what’s really going to happen, only that it’s going to be nice. But witches don’t add sugar.) Unfortunately the spring on Miss Tick’s stealth hat had gone wrong while she was walking down the main street and the point had popped up. Even Miss Tick hadn’t been able to talk her way out of that one. Oh well, she’d have to make other arrangements now. Witch finding was always dangerous. You had to do it, though. A witch growing up all alone was a sad and dangerous child…. She stopped, and stared at the fire. Why had she just thought about Tiffany Aching? Why now? Working quickly, she emptied her pockets and started a shamble. Shambles worked. That was about all you could say about them for certain. You made them out of some string and a couple of sticks and anything you had in your pocket at the time. They were a witch’s equivalent of those knives with fifteen blades and three screwdrivers and a tiny magnifying glass and a thing for extracting earwax from chickens. You couldn’t even say precisely what they did, although Miss Tick thought they were a way of finding out what things the hidden bits of your own mind somehow knew. You had to make a shamble from scratch every time, and only from things in your pockets. There was no harm in having interesting things in your pockets, though, just in case. After less than a minute Miss Tick had crafted a shamble out of: One twelve-inch ruler One bootlace One piece of secondhand string Some black thread One pencil One pencil sharpener A small stone with a hole in it A matchbox containing a mealworm called Roger, along with a scrap of bread for him to eat, because every shamble must contain something living About half a packet of Mrs. Sheergold’s Lubricated Throat Lozenges A button It looked like a cat’s cradle, or maybe the tangled strings of a very strange puppet. Miss Tick stared at it, waiting for it to read her. Then the ruler swung around, the throat sweets exploded in a little cloud of red dust, the pencil shot away and stuck in Miss Tick’s hat, and the ruler was covered in frost. That was not supposed to happen. Miss Treason sat downstairs in her cottage and watched Tiffany sleeping in the low bedroom above her. She did this through a mouse, which was sitting on the tarnished brass bedstead. Beyond the gray windows (Miss Treason hadn’t bothered to clean them for fifty-three years, and Tiffany hadn’t been able to shift all the dirt), the wind howled among the trees, even though it was mid-afternoon. He’s looking for her, she thought as she fed a piece of ancient cheese to another mouse on her lap. But he won’t find her. She is safe here. Then the mouse looked up from the cheese. It had heard something. “I told yez! She’s here somewhere, fellas!” “I dinna see why we canna just talk tae the ol’ hag. We get along fine wi’ hags.” “Mebbe, but this one is a terrrrrible piece o’ work. They say she’s got a fearsome demon in her tattie cellar.” Miss Treason looked puzzled. “Them?” she whispered to herself. The voices were coming from beneath the floor. She sent the mouse scurrying across the boards and into a hole. “I dinna want to disappoint ye, but we’s in a cellar right here, and it’s full o’ tatties.” After a while a voice said: “So where izzit?” “Mebbe it’s got the day off?” “What’s a demon need a day off for?” “Tae gae an’ see its ol’ mam an’ dad, mebbe?” “Oh, aye? Demons have mams, do they?” “Crivens! Will ye lot stop arguin’! She might hear us!” “Nae, she’s blind as a bat and deaf as a post, they say.” Mice have very good hearing. Miss Treason smiled as the hurrying mouse came out in the rough old stone wall of the cellar, near the floor. She looked through its eyes. It could see quite well in the gloom, too. A small group of little men was creeping across the floor. Their skins were blue and covered with tattoos and dirt. They all wore very grubby kilts, and each one had a sword, as big as he was, strapped to his back. And they all had red hair, a real orange-red, with scruffy pigtails. One of them wore a rabbit skull as a helmet. It would have been more scary if it hadn’t kept sliding over his eyes. In the room above, Miss Treason smiled again. So they’d heard of Miss Treason? But they hadn’t heard enough. As the four little men squirmed through an old rat hole to get out of the cellar, they were watched by two more mice, three different beetles, and a moth. They tiptoed carefully across the floor, past an old witch who was clearly asleep—right up until she banged on the arms of her chair and bellowed: “Jings! I see you there, ye wee schemies!” The Feegles reacted in instant panic, colliding with one another in shock and awe. “I dinna remember tellin’ ye tae move!” shouted Miss Treason, grinning horribly. “Oh, waily, waily, waily! She’s got the knowin’ o’ the speakin’!” someone sobbed. “Ye’re Nac Mac Feegles, right? But I dinna ken the clan markin’s. Calm doon, I ain’t gonna deep-fry ye. You! What’s your name?” “Ah’m Rob Anybody, Big Man o’ the Chalk Hill clan,” said the one with the rabbit-skull helmet. “And—” “Aye? Big Man, are ye? Then ye’ll do me the courtesy an’ tak’ off yon bony bonnet ere ye speak tae me!” said Miss Treason, enjoying herself no end. “An’ stannit up straight! I will have nae slouchin’ in this hoose!” Instantly all four Feegles stood to rigid attention. “Right!” said Miss Treason. “An’ who are the rest o’ yez?” “This is my brother Daft Wullie, miss,” said Rob Anybody, shaking the shoulder of the Feegle who was an instant wailer. He was staring in horror at Enochi and Athootita. “An’ the other two of you…I mean, twa’ o’ ye?” said Miss Treason. “You, there. I mean ye. Ye have the mousepipes. Are ye a gonnagle?” “Aye, mistress,” said a Feegle who looked neater and cleaner than the others, although it had to be said that there were things living under old logs that were cleaner and neater than Daft Wullie. “And your name is…?” “Awf’ly Wee Billy Bigchin, mistress.” “You’re staring hard at me, Awf’ly Wee Billy Bigchin,” said Miss Treason. “Are ye afraid?” “No, mistress. I wuz admirin’ ye. It does my heart good tae see a witch so…witchy.” “It does, does it?” said Miss Treason suspiciously. “Are ye sure ye’re no’ afraid o’ me, Mr. Billy Bigchin?” “No, mistress. But I will be if it makes ye happy,” said Billy carefully. “Hah!” said Miss Treason. “Well, I see we have—hae a clever one here. Who is your big friend, Mr. Billy?” Billy elbowed Big Yan in the ribs. Despite his size, which for a Feegle was huge, he was looking very nervous. Like a lot of people with big muscles, he got edgy about people who were strong in other ways. “He’s Big Yan, mistress,” Billy Bigchin supplied, while Big Yan stared at his feet. “I see he’s got a necklace o’ big teeth,” said Miss Treason. “Human teeth?” “Aye, mistress. Four, mistress. One for every man he’s knocked out.” “Are you talking about human men?” asked Miss Treason in astonishment. “Aye, mistress,” said Billy. “Mostly he drops on ’em heidfirst oot o’ a tree. He has a verra tough heid,” he added, in case this wasn’t clear. Miss Treason sat back. “And now you will kindly explain why ye were creepin’ aboot here in my hoose,” she said. “Come along, now!” There was a tiny, tiny pause before Rob Anybody said happily, “Oh, weel, that’s easy. We wuz huntin’ the haggis.” “No, you weren’t,” said Miss Treason sharply, “because a haggis is a pudding of sheep’s offal and meat, well spiced and cooked in a sheep’s stomach.” “Ah, that is only when ye canna find the real thing, mistress,” said Rob Anybody carefully. “’Tis no’ a patch on the real thing. Oh, a canny beast is the haggis, which makes its burrows in tattie cellars….” “And that’s the truth? You were hunting the haggis? Is it, Daft Wullie?” said Miss Treason, her voice suddenly sharp. All eyes, including a pair belonging to an earwig, turned to the luckless Wullie. “Er…aye…oooh…aarg…waily, waily, waily!” moaned Daft Wullie, and dropped to his knees. “Please dinna do somethin’ horrible tae me, mistress!” he begged. “Yon earwiggy is givin’ me a dreadful look!” “Very well, we shall start again,” said Miss Treason. She reached up and tore off her blindfold. The Feegles stepped back as she touched the skulls on either side of her. “I do not need eyes to smell a lie when it comes calling,” she said. “Tell me why you are here. Tell me…again.” Rob Anybody hesitated for a moment. This was, in the circumstances, very brave of him. Then he said: “’Tis aboot the big wee hag, mistress, we came.” “The big wee—Oh, you mean Tiffany?” “Aye!” “We is under one o’ them big birds,” said Daft Wullie, keeping his eyes averted from the witch’s blind stare. “He means a geas, mistress,” said Rob Anybody, glaring at his brother. “It’s like a—” “—a tremendous obligation that you cannot disobey,” said Miss Treason. “I ken what a geas is. But why?” Miss Treason had heard a lot of things in 113 years, but now she listened in astonishment to a story about a human girl who had, for a few days at least, been the kelda of a clan of Nac Mac Feegles. And if you were their kelda, even for a few days, they’d watch over you…forever. “An’ she’s the hag o’ our hills,” said Billy Bigchin. “She cares for them, keeps them safe. But…” He hesitated, and Rob Anybody continued: “Our kelda is havin’ dreams. Dreams o’ the future. Dreams o’ the hills all froze an’ everyone deid an’ the big wee hag wearin’ a crown o’ ice!” “My goodness!” “Aye, an’ there wuz more!” said Billy, throwing out his arms. “She saw a green tree growin’ in a land o’ ice! She saw a ring o’ iron! She saw a man with a nail in his heart! She saw a plague o’ chickens an’ a cheese that walks like a man!” There was silence, and then Miss Treason said: “The first two, the tree and the ring, no problem there, good occult symbolism. The nail, too, very metaphorical. I’m a bit doubtful about the cheese—could she mean Horace?—and the chickens…I’m not sure you can have a plague of chickens, can you?” “Jeannie wuz verra firm about them,” said Rob Anybody. “She’s dreamed many strange and worryin’ things, so we thought we might just see how the big wee hag wuz gettin’ along.” Miss Treason’s various eyes stared at him. Rob Anybody stared back with an expression of ferocious honesty, and did not flinch. “This seems an honorable enterprise,” she said. “Why start by lying?” “Oh, the lie wuz goin’ tae be a lot more interestin’,” said Rob Anybody. “The truth of the matter seems quite interesting to me,” said Miss Treason. “Mebbe, but I wuz plannin’ on puttin’ in giants an’ pirates an’ magic weasels,” Rob declared. “Real value for the money!” “Oh well,” said Miss Treason. “When Miss Tick brought Tiffany to me, she did say she was guarded by strange powers.” “Aye,” said Rob Anybody proudly. “That’d be us, right enough.” “But Miss Tick is a rather bossy woman,” said Miss Treason. “I am sorry to say I didn’t listen much to what she said. She is always telling me that these girls are really keen to learn, but mostly they are just flibbertigibbets who want to be a witch to impress the young men, and they run away after a few days. This one doesn’t, oh no! She runs toward things! Did you know she tried to dance with the Wintersmith?!” “Aye. We ken. We were there,” said Rob Anybody. “You were?” “Aye. We followed yez.” “No one saw you there. I would have known if they did,” Miss Treason said. “Aye? Weel, we’re good at no one seein’ us,” said Rob Anybody, smiling. “It’s amazin’, the people who dinna see us.” “She actually tried to dance with the Wintersmith,” Miss Treason repeated. “I told her not to.” “Ach, people’re always tellin’ us not tae do things,” said Rob Anybody. “That’s how we ken what’s the most interestin’ things tae do!” Miss Treason stared at him with the eyes of one mouse, two ravens, several moths, and an earwig. “Indeed,” she said, and sighed. “Yes. The trouble with being this old, you know, is that being young is so far away from me now that it seems sometimes that it happened to someone else. A long life is not what it’s cracked up to be, that is a fact. It—” “The Wintersmith is seekin’ for the big wee hag, mistress,” said Rob Anybody. “We saw her dancin’ wi’ the Wintersmith. Now he is seekin’ her. We can hear him in the howl o’ the wind.” “I know,” said Miss Treason. She stopped, and listened for a moment. “The wind has dropped,” she stated. “He’s found her.” She snatched up her walking sticks and scuttled toward the stairs, going up them with amazing speed. Feegles swarmed past her into the bedroom, where Tiffany lay on a narrow bed. A candle burned in a saucer at each corner of the room. “But how has he found her?” Miss Treason demanded. “I had her hidden! You, blue men, fetch wood now!” She glared at them. “I said fetch—” She heard a couple of thumps. Dust was settling. The Feegles were watching Miss Treason expectantly. And sticks, a lot of sticks, were piled in the tiny bedroom fireplace. “Ye did well,” she said. “An’ not tae soon!” Snowflakes were drifting down the chimney. Miss Treason crossed her walking sticks in front of her and stamped her foot hard. “Wood burn, fire blaze!” she shouted. The wood in the grate burst into flame. But now frost was forming on the window, ferny white tendrils snapping across the glass with a crackling sound. “I am not putting up with this at my age!” said the witch. Tiffany opened her eyes, and said: “What’s happening?” CHAPTER THREE The Secret of Boffo I t is not good, being in a sandwich of bewildered dancers. They were heavy men. Tiffany was Aching all over. She was covered in bruises, including one the shape of a boot that she wasn’t going to show to anyone. Feegles filled every flat surface in Miss Treason’s weaving room. She was working at her loom with her back to the room because, she said, this helped her think; but since she was Miss Treason, her position didn’t matter much. There were plenty of eyes and ears she could use, after all. The fire burned hot, and there were candles everywhere. Black ones, of course. Tiffany was angry. Miss Treason hadn’t shouted, hadn’t even raised her voice. She’d just sighed and said “foolish child,” which was a whole lot worse, mostly because that’s just what Tiffany knew she’d been. One of the dancers had helped bring her back to the cottage. She couldn’t remember anything about that at all. A witch didn’t do things because they seemed a good idea at the time! That was practically cackling! You had to deal every day with people who were foolish and lazy and untruthful and downright unpleasant, and you could certainly end up thinking that the world would be considerably improved if you gave them a slap. But you didn’t because, as Miss Tick had once explained: a) it would make the world a better place for only a very short time; b) it would then make the world a slightly worse place; and c) you’re not supposed to be as stupid as they are. Her feet had moved, and she’d listened to them. She ought to have been listening to her head. Now she had to sit by Miss Treason’s fire with a tin hot-water bottle on her lap and a shawl around her. “So the Wintersmith is a kind of god?” she said. “That kind o’ thing, yes,” said Billy Bigchin. “But not the prayin’-to kinda god. He just…makes winters. It’s his job, ye ken.” “He’s an elemental,” said Miss Treason from her loom. “Aye,” said Rob Anybody. “Gods, elementals, demons, spirits…sometimes it’s hard to tell ’em apart wi’oot a map.” “And the dance is to welcome winter?” said Tiffany. “That doesn’t make sense! The Morris dance is to welcome the coming of the summer, yes, that’s—” “Are you an infant?” said Miss Treason. “The year is round! The wheel of the world must spin! That is why up here they dance the Dark Morris, to balance it. They welcome the winter because of the new summer deep inside it!” Click-clack went the loom. Miss Treason was weaving a new cloth, of brown wool. “Well, all right,” said Tiffany. “We welcomed it…him. That doesn’t mean he’s supposed to come looking for me!” “Why did you join the dance?” Miss Treason demanded. “Er…There was a space, and—” “Yes. A space. A space not intended for you. Not for you, foolish child. You danced with him, and now he wants to meet such a bold girl. I have never heard of such a thing! I want you to fetch the third book from the right on the second shelf from the top of my bookcase.” She handed Tiffany a heavy black key. “Can you manage to do even that?” Witches didn’t need to slap the stupid, not when they had a sharp tongue that was always ready. Miss Treason also had several shelves of books, which was unusual for one of the older witches. The shelves were high up, the books looked big and heavy, and up until now Miss Treason had forbidden Tiffany to dust them, let alone unlock the big black iron band that secured them to the shelves. People who came here always gave them a nervous look. Books were dangerous. Tiffany unlocked the bands and wiped away the dust. Ah…the books were, like Miss Treason, not everything they seemed. They looked like magic books, but they had names like An Encyclopaedia of Soup. There was a dictionary. Next to it the book Miss Treason had asked for was covered in cobwebs. Still blushing with shame and anger, Tiffany got the book down, fighting to get it free of the webs. Some of them went pling! as they snapped, and dust fell off the top of the pages. When she opened it, it smelled old and parchmenty, like Miss Treason. The title, in gold lettering that had almost rubbed away, was Chaffinch’s Ancient and Classical Mythology. It was full of bookmarks. “Pages eighteen and nineteen,” said Miss Treason, her head not moving. Tiffany turned to them. “‘The Dacne of the Sneasos’?” she said. “Is that supposed to be ‘The Dance of the Seasons’?” “Regrettably, the artist, Don Weizen de Yoyo, whose famous masterpiece that was, did not have the same talent with letters as he had with painting,” said Miss Treason. “They worried him, for some reason. I notice you mention the words before the pictures. You are a bookish child.” The picture was…strange. It showed two figures. Tiffany hadn’t seen masquerade costumes. There wasn’t the money at home for that sort of thing. But she’d read about them, and this was pretty much what she’d imagined. The page showed a man and a woman—or, at least, things that looked like a man and a woman. The woman was labeled “Summer” and was tall and blond and beautiful, and therefore to the short, brown-haired Tiffany was a figure of immediate distrust. She was carrying what looked like a big basket shaped like a shell, which was full of fruit. The man, “Winter,” was old and bent and gray. Icicles glittered on his beard. “Ach, that’s wha’ the Wintersmith would look like, sure enough,” said Rob Anybody, strolling across the page. “Ol’ Frosty.” “Him?” said Tiffany. “That’s the Wintersmith? He looks a hundred years old!” “A youngster, eh?” said Miss Treason nastily. “Dinna let him kiss ye, or yer nose might turn blue and fall off!” said Daft Wullie cheerfully. “Daft Wullie, don’t you dare say things like that!” said Tiffany. “I wuz just tryin’ to lighten the mood, ye ken,” said Wullie, looking sheepish. “That’s an artist’s impression, of course,” said Miss Treason. “What does that mean?” said Tiffany, staring at the picture. It was wrong. She knew it. This wasn’t what he was like at all…. “It means he made it up,” said Billy Bigchin. “He wouldna ha’ seen him, noo, would he? No one’s seen the Wintersmith.” “Yet!” said Daft Wullie. “Wullie,” said Rob Anybody, turning to his brother, “ye ken I told ye aboot makin’ tactful remarks?” “Aye, Rob, I ken weel,” said Wullie obediently. “What ye just said wuz not one o’ them,” said Rob. Wullie hung his head. “Sorry, Rob.” Tiffany clenched her fists. “I didn’t mean all this to happen!” Miss Treason turned her chair with some solemnity. “Then what did you mean? Will you tell me? Did you dance out of youth’s inclination to disobey old age? To mean is to think. Did you think at all? Others have joined in the dance before now. Children, drunkards, youths for a silly bet…nothing happened. The spring and autumn dances are…just an old tradition, most people would say. Just a way of marking when ice and fire exchange their dominion over the world. Some of us think we know better. We think something happens. For you, the dance became real, and something has happened. And now the Wintersmith is seeking you.” “Why?” Tiffany managed. “I don’t know. When you were dancing, did you see anything? Hear anything?” How could you describe the feeling of being everywhere and everything? Tiffany wondered. She didn’t try. “I…thought I heard a voice, or maybe two voices,” she mumbled. “Er, they asked me who I was.” “Int-ter-rest-ting,” said Miss Treason. “Two voices? I will consider the implications. What I can’t understand is how he found you. I will think about that. In the meantime, I expect it would be a good idea to wear warm clothing.” “Aye,” said Rob Anybody, “the Wintersmith canna abide the heat. Oh, I’ll be forgettin’ my ain heid next! We brought a wee letter from that hollow tree down in the forest. Gi’ it to the big wee hag, Wullie. We picked it up on the way past.” “A letter?” said Tiffany, as the loom clacked behind her and Daft Wullie began to pull a grubby, rolled-up envelope from his spog. “It’s from that wee heap o’ jobbies at the castle back hame,” Rob went on, as his brother hauled. “He says he bides fine and hopes ye do likewise, an’ he’s lookin’ forward to you bein’ back hame soon, an’ there’s lots o’ stuff about how the ships are doin’ an’ suchlike, no’ verra interestin’ in ma opinion, an’ he’s writ S. W. A. L. K. on the bottom, but we havena worked out what that means yet.” “You read my letter?” said Tiffany in horror. “Oh, aye,” said Rob with pride. “Nae problem. Billy Bigchin here gave me a wee hint with some o’ the longer words, but it was mostly me, aye.” He beamed, but the grin faded as he watched Tiffany’s expression. “Ach, I ken you’re a wee bitty upset that we opened yon envelope thingy,” he explained. “But that’s okay, ’cuz we glued it up again wi’ slug. Ye wouldna ever know it’d been read.” He coughed, because Tiffany was still glaring at him. All women were a bit scary to the Feegles, and witches were the worst. At last, when he was really nervous, Tiffany said: “How did you know where that letter would be?” She glanced sideways at Daft Wullie. He was chewing the edge of his kilt. He only ever did this when he was frightened. “Er…would you accept a wee bittie lie?” Rob said. “No!” “It’s interestin’. There’s dragons an’ unicorns in it—” “No. I want the truth!” “Ach, it’s so boring. We go to the Baron’s castle an’ read the letters ye sent him, an’, an’ ye said the postman knows to leave letters tae you in the hollow tree by the waterfall,” said Rob. If the Wintersmith had got into the cottage, the air couldn’t have been any colder. “He keeps the letters fra’ ye in a box under his—” Rob began, and then shut his eyes as Tiffany’s patience parted with a twang even louder than Miss Treason’s strange cobwebs. “Don’t you know it’s wrong to read other people’s letters?” she demanded. “Er…” Rob Anybody began. “And you broke into the Baron’s cast—” “Ah, ah, ah, no, no, no!” said Rob, jumping up and down. “Ye canna get us on that one! We just walked in through one of them little wee slits for the firin’ o’ the arrows—” “And then you read my personal letters sent personally to Roland?” said Tiffany. “They were personal!” “Oh, aye,” said Rob Anybody. “But dinna fash yersel’—we willna tell anyone what was in ’em.” “We ne’er tell a soul what’s in yer diary, after all,” said Daft Wullie. “Not e’en the bits wi’ the flowers ye draw aroound them.” Miss Treason is grinning to herself behind me, Tiffany thought. I just know she is. But she’d run out of nasty tones of voice. You did that after talking to the Feegles for any length of time. You were their Kelda, her Second Thoughts reminded her. They think they have a solemn duty to protect you. It doesn’t matter what you think. They’re going to make your life sooo complicated. “Don’t read my letters,” she said, “and don’t read my diary, either.” “Okay,” said Rob Anybody. “Promise?” “Oh, aye.” “But you promised last time!” “Oh, aye.” “Cross your heart and hope to die?” “Oh, aye, nae problemo.” “And that’s the promise of an untrustworthy, lying, stealing Feegle, is it?” said Miss Treason. “Because ye believe ye’re deid already, do ye no’? That’s what ye people think, right?” “Oh, aye, mistress,” said Rob Anybody. “Thank ye for drawin’ ma attention tae that.” “In fact, Rob Anybody, ye ha’ nae intention o’ keepin’ any promise at all!” “Aye, mistress,” said Rob proudly. “Not puir wee weak promises like that. Becuz, ye see, ’tis oor solemn destiny to guard the big wee hag. We mus’ lay doon oor lives for her if it comes to it.” “How can ye do that when ye’re deid already?” said Miss Treason sharply. “That’s a bit o’ a puzzler, right enough,” said Rob, “so probably we’ll lay doon the lives o’ any scunners who do wrong by her.” Tiffany gave up and sighed. “I’m almost thirteen,” she said. “I can look after myself.” “Hark at Miss Self-Reliant,” said Miss Treason, but not in a particularly nasty way. “Against the Wintersmith?” “What does he want?” said Tiffany. “I told you. Perhaps he wants to find out what kind of girl was so forward as to dance with him?” said Miss Treason. “It was my feet! I said I didn’t mean to!” Miss Treason turned around in her chair. How many eyes is she using? Tiffany’s Second Thoughts wondered. The Feegles? The ravens? The mice? All of them? How many of me is she seeing? Is she watching me with mice, or insects with dozens of glittery eyes? “Oh, that’s all right then,” said Miss Treason. “Once again, you didn’t mean it. A witch takes responsibility! Have you learned nothing, child?” Child. That was a terrible thing to say to anyone who was almost thirteen. Tiffany felt herself going red again. The horrible hotness spread inside her head. That was why she walked across the room, opened the front door, and stepped outside. A fluffy snow was falling, very gently. When Tiffany looked into the pale-gray sky, she saw the flakes drifting down in soft, feathery clusters; it was the kind of snow that people back home on the Chalk called “Granny Aching shearing her sheep.” Tiffany felt the flakes melting on her hair as she walked away from the cottage. Miss Treason was shouting from the doorway, but she walked on, letting the snow cool her blushes. Of course this is stupid, she told herself. But being a witch is stupid. Why do we do it? It’s hard work for not much reward. What’s a good day for Miss Treason? When someone brings her a secondhand pair of old boots that fit properly! What does she know about anything? Where is the Wintersmith, then? Is he here? I’ve only got Miss Treason’s word for it! That and a made-up picture in a book! “Wintersmith!” she shouted. You could hear the snow falling. It made a strange little noise, like a faint, cold sizzle. “Wintersmith!” There was no reply. Well, what had she expected? A big booming voice? Mr. Spiky the icicle man? There was nothing but the softness of white snow falling patiently among dark trees. She felt a bit silly now, but satisfied, too. This was what a witch did! She faced what she was afraid of, and then it held no more fear! She was good at this! She turned—and saw the Wintersmith. Remember this, said her Third Thoughts, cutting in. Every little detail is important. The Wintersmith was……nothing. But the snow outlined him. It flowed around him in lines, as if traveling on an invisible skin. He was just a shape, and nothing more, except perhaps for two tiny pale purple-gray dots in the air, where you might expect to find eyes. Tiffany stood still, her mind frozen, her body waiting to be told what to do. The hand made of falling snow was reaching toward her now, but very slowly, as you would reach out toward an animal you do not want to frighten. There was…something, some strange sense of things unsaid because there was no voice to say them, a sense of striving, as if the thing were putting heart and soul into this moment, even if it did not know the meaning of heart or soul. The hand stopped about a foot away from her. It was formed into a fist, and now it turned over and the fingers opened. Something gleamed. It was the white horse, made of silver, on a fine silver chain. Tiffany’s hand flew to her throat. But she’d had it on last night! Before she went…to…watch…the…dance…. It must have come off! And he’d found it! That’s interesting, said her Third Thoughts that busied themselves with the world in their own way. You can’t see what’s hidden inside an invisible fist. How does that work? And why are those little purple-gray blurs in the air where you’d expect to find eyes? Why aren’t they invisible? That’s Third Thoughts for you. When a huge rock is going to land on your head, they’re the thoughts that think: Is that an igneous rock, such as granite, or is it sandstone? That part of Tiffany’s brain that was a little less precise at the moment watched the silver horse dangle on its chain. Her First Thought was: Take it. Her Second Thought was: Don’t take it. It’s a trap. Her Third Thought was: Really don’t take it. It will be colder than you can imagine. And then the rest of her overruled the Thoughts entirely and said: Take it. It’s part of who you are. Take it. When you hold it, you think of home. Take it! She held out her right hand. The horse dropped into it. Instinctively she closed her fingers over it. It was indeed colder than she could have imagined, and it burned. She screamed. The Wintersmith’s snowy outline became a flurry of flakes. The snow around her feet erupted with a cry of “Crivens!” as a mass of Feegles grabbed her feet and carried her, upright, across the clearing and back in through the cottage’s doorway. Tiffany forced her hand open and, with trembling fingers, pulled the silver horse off her palm. It left a perfect print, a white horse on pink flesh. It wasn’t a burn, it was a…freeze. Miss Treason’s chair rumbled around on its wheels. “Come here, child,” she ordered. Still clasping her hand, trying to force back the tears, Tiffany walked over to her. “Stand right here by my chair, this instant!” Tiffany did so. This was no time to be disobedient. “I wish to look in your ear,” said Miss Treason. “Brush your hair aside.” Tiffany held back her hair, and winced when she heard the tickle of mouse whiskers. Then the creature was taken away. “Ah, I am surprised,” said Miss Treason. “I can see nothing.” “Er…what were you expecting to see?” Tiffany ventured. “Daylight!” snapped Miss Treason, so loudly that the mouse scuttled away. “Have you no brains at all, child?” “Ah dunno if anyone is interested,” said Rob Anybody, “but I think yon Wintersmith has offskied. An’ it’s stopped snowin’.” No one was listening. When witches row, they concentrate. “It was mine!” “A trinket!” “No!” “O’ course, this may not be the best time tae tell ye…” Rob went on, miserably. “You think you need it to be a witch?” “Yes!” “A witch needs no devices!” “You’ve used shambles!” “Used, yes! Don’t need. Not need!” “Ah mean, it’s quite meltin’ awa—” Rob said, smiling nervously. Anger grabbed Tiffany’s tongue. How dare this stupid old crone talk about not needing things! “Boffo!” she shouted. “Boffo, Boffo, Boffo!” Silence slammed down. After a while Miss Treason looked past Tiffany and said: “Ye wee Feegle schemies! Get oot o’ here right noo! Ah’ll ken it if ye don’t! This is hag business!” The room filled with a sort of whooshing noise, and the door to the kitchen slammed shut. “So,” said Miss Treason, “you know about Boffo, do you?” “Yes,” said Tiffany, breathing heavily. “I do.” “Very well. And have you told anyone—?” Miss Treason paused and raised a finger to her lips. Then she banged a stick on the floor. “Ah said get oot, ye scunners! Off intae the woods w’ ye! Check that he’s really gang awa’! I’ll see yer guilt through yer own een if ye defy me!” From below there was the sound of a lot of potatoes rumbling as the Feegles scrambled out through the little ventilation grill. “Now they’ve gone,” said Miss Treason. “They’ll stay gone, too. Boffo will see to that.” Somehow, in the space of a few seconds, Miss Treason had become more human and a lot less scary. Well…slightly less scary. “How did you find out? Did you go looking for it? Did you go prowling and rummaging?” said Miss Treason. “No! I’m not like that! I found out by accident one day when you were having a nap!” Tiffany rubbed her hand. “Does that hurt a lot?” said Miss Treason, leaning forward. She might be blind, but—like all the senior witches who knew what they were doing—she noticed everything. “No, not now. It did, though. Look, I—” “Then you will learn to listen! Do you think the Wintersmith has gone?” “He just seemed to vanish—I mean, vanish even more. I think he just wanted to give me back my necklace.” “Do you think that is the sort of thing the spirit of Winter, who commands the blizzard and the frost, would really do?” “I don’t know, Miss Treason! He’s the only one I’ve met!” “You danced with him.” “I didn’t know I was going to!” “Nevertheless.” Tiffany waited, and then said: “Nevertheless what?” “Just general neverthelessness. The little horse led him to you. But he’s not here now—you’re right about that. I’d know if he was.” Tiffany walked up to the front door, hesitated for just a moment, and then opened it and went out into the clearing. There was a bit of snow here and there, but the day was turning into just another one of those gray-skyed winter days. I’d know if he was, too, she thought. And he isn’t. And her Second Thoughts said: Oh? How do you know? “We’ve both touched the horse,” she said under her breath. She looked around at the empty branches and the sleeping trees, fiddling with the silver chain in her hand. The forests were curling in on themselves, ready for the winter. He’s out there, but not close. He must be very busy, with a whole winter to make…. She said, “Thank you!” automatically, because her mother had always said that politeness costs nothing, and went back in. It was very hot inside now, but Miss Treason always had a huge log pile built by the Secret of Boffo. The local woodcutters always kept the pile high. A chilly witch might get nasty. “I should like a cup of black tea,” said the old woman as Tiffany walked in, looking thoughtful. She waited until Tiffany was washing out the cup, then said: “Have you heard the stories about me, child?” The voice was kindly. There had been shouts, there had been things said that might have been better put, there had been temper and defiance. But they were there together, with nowhere else to go. The quiet voice was a peace offering, and Tiffany was glad of it. “Er, that you have a demon in the cellar?” Tiffany answered, her mind still full of puzzles. “And you eat spiders? And get visited by kings and princes? And that any flower planted in your garden blooms black?” “Oh, do they say so?” said Miss Treason, looking delighted. “I haven’t heard that last one. How nice. And did you hear that I walk around at night in the dark time of the year and reward those who have been good citizens with a purse of silver? But if they have been bad, I slit open their bellies with my thumbnail like this?” Tiffany leaped backward as a wrinkled hand twisted her around and Miss Treason’s yellow thumbnail scythed past her stomach. The old woman looked terrifying. “No! No, I haven’t heard that one!” she gasped, pressing up against the sink. “What? And it was a wonderful story, with real historical antecedents!” said Miss Treason, her vicious scowl becoming a smile. “And the one about me having a cow’s tail?” “A cow’s tail? No!” “Really? How very vexing,” said Miss Treason, lowering her finger. “I fear the art of storytelling has got into a pretty bad way in these parts. I really shall have to do something.” “This is just another kind of Boffo, right?” said Tiffany. She wasn’t totally sure. Miss Treason had looked pretty scary with that thumbnail. No wonder girls left so quickly. “Ah, you do have a brain, after all. Of course it is. Boffo, yes. A good name for it. Boffo, indeed. The art of expectations. Show people what they want to see, show ’em what they think should be there. I have a reputation to keep up, after all.” Boffo, Tiffany thought. Boffo, Boffo, Boffo. She went over to the skulls, picked one up, and read the label underneath, just like she’d done a month ago: Ghastly Skull No. 1 Price $2.99 The Boffo Novelty & Joke Shop No. 4, Tenth Egg Street, Ankh-Morpork “If it’s a laugh…it’s a Boffo!” “Very lifelike, aren’t they,” said Miss Treason, clicking back to her chair, “if you can say that about a skull, of course! The shop sold a wonderful machine for making spiderwebs. You poured in this sticky stuff, d’you see, and with practice quite good webs could be made. Can’t abide creepy-crawlies, but of course I’ve got to have the webs. Did you notice the dead flies?” “Yes,” said Tiffany, glancing up. “They’re raisins. I thought you had vegetarian spiders.” “Well done. Nothing wrong with your eyes, at least. I got my hat from there, too. ‘Wicked Old Witch Number Three, A Must for Scary Parties,’ I think it was. I’ve still got their catalogue somewhere, if you’re interested.” “Do all witches buy from Boffo?” asked Tiffany. “Only me, at least around here. Oh, and I believe Old Mistress Breathless over in Two Falls used to buy warts from there.” “But…why?” said Tiffany. “She couldn’t grow them. Just couldn’t grow them at all, poor woman. Tried everything. Face like a baby’s bottom, her whole life.” “No, I meant, why do you want to seem so”—Tiffany hesitated, and went on—“awful?” “I have my reasons,” said Miss Treason. “But you don’t do those things the stories say you do, do you? Kings and princes don’t come to consult you, do they?” “No, but they might,” said Miss Treason stoutly. “If they got lost, for example. Oh, I know all about those stories. I made up most of them!” “You made up stories about yourself?” “Oh, yes. Of course. Why not? I couldn’t leave something as important as that to amateurs.” “But people say you can see a man’s soul!” Miss Treason chuckled. “Yes. Didn’t make that one up! But I’ll tell you, for some of my parishioners I’d need a magnifying glass! I see what they see, I hear with their ears. I knew their fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers. I know the rumors and the secrets and the stories and the truths. And I am Justice to them, and I am fair. Look at me. See me.” Tiffany looked—and looked past the black cloak and the skulls and the rubber cobwebs and the black flowers and the blindfold and the stories, and saw a little deaf and blind old lady. Boffo made the difference…not just the silly party stuff, but Boffo-thinking—the rumors and the stories. Miss Treason had power because people thought she did. It was like the standard witch’s hat. But Miss Treason was taking Boffo much, much further. “A witch needs no devices, Miss Treason,” Tiffany said. “Don’t get smart with me, child. Didn’t the girl Weatherwax tell you all this? Oh, yes, you don’t need a wand or a shamble or even a pointy hat to be a witch. But it helps a witch to put on a show! People expect it. They’ll believe in you. I didn’t get where I am today by wearing a woolly bobble hat and a gingham apron! I look the part. I—” There was a crash from outside, in the direction of the dairy. “Our little blue friends?” said Miss Treason, raising her eyebrows. “No, they’re absolutely forbidden to go into any dairy I work in,” Tiffany began, heading for the door. “Oh dear, I hope it’s not Horace—” “I told you he’d be nothing but trouble, did I not?” Miss Treason shouted as Tiffany hurried away. It was Horace. He’d squeezed out of his cage again. He could make himself quite runny when he wanted to. There was a broken butter dish on the floor, but although it had been full of butter, there was none there now. There was just a greasy patch. And, from the darkness under the sink, there came a sort of high-speed grumbling noise, a kind of mnnamnamnam…. “Oh, you’re after butter now, are you, Horace?” said Tiffany, picking up the dairy broom. “That’s practically cannibalism, you know.” Still, it was better than mice, she had to admit. Finding little piles of mouse bones on the floor was a bit distressing. Even Miss Treason had not been able to work that one out. A mouse she happened to be looking through would be trying to get at the cheeses and then it would all go dark. That was because Horace was a cheese. Tiffany knew that Lancre Blue cheeses were always a bit on the lively side, and sometimes had to be nailed down, but…well, she was highly skilled at cheese making, even though she said it herself, and Horace was definitely a champion. The famous blue streaks that gave the variety its wonderful color were really pretty, although Tiffany wasn’t sure they should glow in the dark. She prodded the shadows with the end of the broom. There was a crack, and when she pulled the stick out again, two inches were missing from the end. Then there was a ptooi! noise and the missing piece of handle bounced off the wall on the other side of the room. “No more milk for you, then,” said Tiffany, straightening up, and she thought: He came to give me the horse back. The Wintersmith did that. Um… That is quite…impressive, when you think about it. I mean, he’s got to organize avalanches and gales and come up with new shapes for snowflakes and everything, but he spared a bit of time just to come and give me my necklace back. Um… And he just stood there. And then he just vanished—I mean vanished even more. Um… She left Horace muttering under the sink and made tea for Miss Treason, who was back at her weaving. Then she quietly went up to her room. Tiffany’s diary was three inches thick. Annagramma, another local trainee witch and one of her friends (more or less), said that she should really call it her Book of Shadows and write it on vellum using one of the special magical inks sold at Zakzak Stronginthearm’s Magical Emporium at Popular Prices—at least, prices that were popular with Zakzak. Tiffany couldn’t afford one. You could only trade witchcraft—you weren’t supposed to sell it. Miss Treason didn’t mind her selling cheeses, but even so paper was expensive up here, and the wandering peddlers never had very much to sell. They usually had an ounce or two of green copperas, though, which could make a decent ink if you mixed it with crushed oak galls or green walnut shells. The diary was now as thick as a brick with extra pages Tiffany had glued in. She’d worked out that she could make it last two more years if she wrote small. On the leather cover she had, with a hot skewer, drawn the words “Feegles Keep Out!!” It had never worked. They looked upon that sort of thing as an invitation. She wrote parts of the diary in code these days. Reading didn’t come naturally to the Chalk Hill Feegles, so surely they’d never get the hang of a code. She looked around carefully, in any case, and unlocked the huge padlock that secured a chain around the book. She turned to today’s date, dipped her pen in the ink, and wrote: “Met t*.” Yes, a snowflake would be a good code for the Wintersmith. He just stood there, she thought. And he ran away because I screamed. Which was a good thing, obviously. Um… But…I wish I hadn’t screamed. She opened her hand. The image of the horse was still there, as white as chalk, but there was no pain at all. Tiffany gave a little shiver and pulled herself together. So? She had met the spirit of Winter. She was a witch. It was the sort of thing that sometimes happened. He’d politely given her back what was hers, and then he’d gone. There was no call to get soppy about it. There were things to do. Then she wrote: “Ltr frm R.” She very carefully opened the letter from Roland, which was easy because slug slime isn’t much of a glue. With any luck she could even reuse the envelope. She hunched over the letter so that no one could read it over her shoulder. Finally she said: “Miss Treason, will you get out of my face, please? I need to use my eyeballs privately.” There was a pause and then a mutter from downstairs, and the tickling behind her eyes went away. It was always…good to get a letter from Roland. Yes, they were often about the sheep, and other things of the Chalk, and sometimes there’d be a dried flower inside, a harebell or a cowslip. Granny Aching wouldn’t have approved of that; she always said that if the hills had wanted people to pick the flowers, they would have grown more of them. The letters always made her homesick. One day Miss Treason had said, “This young man who writes to you…is he your beau?” and Tiffany had changed the subject until she had time to look up the word in the dictionary and then more time to stop blushing. Roland was…well, the thing about Roland was…the main thing about…well, the point was…he was there. Okay, when she’d first really met him, he had been a rather useless, rather stupid lump, but what could you expect? He’d been the prisoner of the Queen of the Elves for a year, to start with, fat as butter and half crazy on sugar and despair. Besides, he’d been brought up by a couple of haughty aunts, his father—the Baron—being mostly more interested in horses and dogs. He’d more and less changed since then: more thoughtful, less rowdy, more serious, less stupid. He’d also had to wear glasses, the first ever seen on the Chalk. And he had a library! More than a hundred books! Actually, it belonged to the castle, but no one else seemed interested in it. Some of the books were huge and ancient, with wooden covers and huge black letters and colored pictures of strange animals and far-off places. There was Waspmire’s Book of Unusual Days, Crumberry’s Why Things Are Not Otherwise, and all but one volume of the Ominous Encyclopaedia. Roland had been astonished to find that she could read foreign words, and she’d been careful not to tell him it was all done with the help of what remained of Dr. Bustle. The thing was…the fact was…well, who else had they got? Roland couldn’t, just couldn’t have friends among the village kids, what with him being the son of the Baron and everything. But Tiffany had the pointy hat now, and that counted for something. The people of the Chalk didn’t like witches much, but she was Granny Aching’s granddaughter, right? No tellin’ what she’d learned from the ol’ girl, up at the shepherding hut. And they do say she showed those witches up in the mountains what witchin’s all about, eh? Remember the lambing last year? She prit near brought dead lambs back to life just by lookin’ at ’em! And she’s an Aching, and they’ve got these hills in their bones. She’s all right. She’s ours, see? And that was fine, except that she didn’t have any old friends anymore. Kids back home who’d been friendly were now…respectful, because of the hat. There was a kind of wall, as if she’d grown up and they hadn’t. What could they talk about? She’d been to places they couldn’t even imagine. Most of them hadn’t even been to Twoshirts, which was only half a day away. And this didn’t worry them at all. They were going to do the jobs their fathers did, or raise children like their mothers did. And that was fine, Tiffany added hurriedly to herself. But they hadn’t decided. It was just happening to them, and they didn’t notice. It was the same up in the mountains. The only people of her own age she could actually talk to were other witches-in-training like Annagramma and the rest of the girls. It was useless trying to have a real conversation with people in the villages, especially the boys. They just looked down and mumbled and shuffled their feet, like people at home when they had to talk to the Baron. Actually, Roland did that too, and he went red every time she looked at him. Whenever she visited the castle, or walked on the hills with him, the air was full of complicated silences…just like it had been with the Wintersmith. She read the letter carefully, trying to ignore the grubby Feegle fingerprints all over it. He’d been kind enough to include several spare sheets of paper. She smoothed one out, very carefully, stared at the wall for a while, and then began to write. Down in the scullery,* Horace the cheese had come out from behind the slop bucket. Now he was in front of the back door. If a cheese ever looked thoughtful, Horace looked thoughtful now. In the tiny village of Twoshirts, the driver of the mail coach was having a bit of a problem. A lot of mail from the countryside around Twoshirts ended up at the souvenir shop there, which also acted as the post office. Usually the driver just picked up the mailbag, but today there was a difficulty. He frantically turned over the pages of the book of Post Office Regulations. Miss Tick tapped her foot. This was getting on his nerves. “Ah, ah, ah,” said the coachman triumphantly. “Says here no animals, birds, dragons, or fish!” “And which one of them do you think I am?” asked Miss Tick icily. “Ah, well, right, well, human is kind of like animal, right? I mean, look at monkeys, right?” “I have no wish to look at monkeys,” said Miss Tick. “I have seen the sort of things they do.” The coachman clearly spotted that this was a road not to go down, and turned the pages furiously. Then he beamed. “Ah, ah, ah!” he said. “How much do you weigh, miss?” “Two ounces,” said Miss Tick. “Which by chance is the maximum weight of a letter that can be sent to the Lancre and Near Hinterland area for ten pence.” She pointed to the two stamps gummed to her lapel. “I have already purchased my stamps.” “You never weigh two ounces!” said the coachman. “You’re a hundred and twenty pounds at least!” Miss Tick sighed. She’d wanted to avoid this, but Twoshirts wasn’t Dogbend, after all. It lived on the highway, it watched the world go past. She reached up and pressed the button that worked her hat. “Would you like me to forget you just said that?” she asked. “Why?” said the coachman. There was a pause while Miss Tick stared blankly at him. Then she turned her eyes upward. “Excuse me,” she said. “This is always happening, I’m afraid. It’s the duckings, you know. The spring rusts.” She reached up and banged the side of the hat. The hidden pointy bit shot up, scattering paper flowers. The coachman’s eyes followed it. “Oh,” he said. And the thing about pointy hats was this: The person under one was definitely a witch or a wizard. Oh, someone who wasn’t could probably get a pointy hat and go out wearing it, and they’d be fine right up until the moment when they met a real pointy-hat owner. Wizards and witches don’t like impostors. They also don’t like being kept waiting. “How much do I weigh now, pray?” she asked. “Two ounces!” said the coachman quickly. Miss Tick smiled. “Yes. And not one scruple more! A scruple being, of course, a weight of twenty grains, or one twenty-fourth of an ounce. I am in fact…unscrupulous!” She waited to see if this extremely teachery joke was going to get a smile but didn’t mind when it didn’t. Miss Tick rather liked being smarter than other people. She got on the coach. As the coach climbed up into the mountains, snow started to fall. Miss Tick, who knew that no two snowflakes are alike, didn’t pay them any attention. If she had done so, she’d have felt slightly less smart. Tiffany slept. A fire glowed in the bedroom grate. Downstairs, Miss Treason’s loom wove its way through the night…. Small blue figures crept across the bedroom floor and, by forming a Feegle pyramid, reached the top of the little table Tiffany used as a desk. Tiffany turned over in bed and made a little snfgl noise. The Feegles froze, just for a moment, and then the bedroom door swung gently shut behind them. A blue blur raised a trail of dust on the narrow stairs, across the loom-room floor, out into the scullery, and through a strange cheese-shaped hole in the outside door. From then on it was a trail of disturbed leaves leading deep into the woods, where a small fire burned. It lit the faces of a horde of Feegles, although it may not have wanted to. The blur stopped and became about six Feegles, two of them carrying Tiffany’s diary. They laid it down carefully. “We’re well oot o’ that hoose,” said Big Yan. “Dija see dem bigjob skulls? There’s a hag ye wouldna want tae cross in a hurry!” “Ach, I see she’s got one o’ they paddly locks again,” said Daft Wullie, walking around the diary. “Rob, I canna help thinkin’ that it’s no’ right tae read this,” said Billy Bigchin, as Rob put his arm into the keyhole. “It’s pers’nal!” “She’s oor hag. What’s pers’nal tae her is pers’nal tae us,” said Rob matter-of-factly, fishing around inside the lock. “Besides, she must want someone tae read it, ’cuz she wrote things doon. Nae point in writin’ stuff doon if ye dinna want it read! It’s a sheer waste o’ pencil!” “Mebbe she wanted tae read it hersel’,” said Billy doubtfully. “Oh, aye? Why’d she want tae do that?” said Rob scornfully. “She already kens what’s in it. An’ Jeannie wants tae know what she’s thinkin’ aboot the Baron’s lad.” There was a click, and the padlock opened. The assembled Feeglehood watched carefully. Rob turned the rustling pages and grinned. “Ach, she’s writ here: Oh, the dear Feegles ha’ turned up again, ” he said. This met with general applause. “Ach, what a kind girl she is tae write that,” said Billy Bigchin. “Can I see?” He read: Oh dear, the Feegles have turned up again. “ Ah,” he said. Billy Bigchin had come with Jeannie all the way from the Long Lake clan. The clan there was more at home with the reading and writing, and since he was the gonnagle, he was expected to be good at both. The Chalk Hill Feegles, on the other hand, were more at home with the drinkin’, stealin’, and fightin’, and Rob Anybody was good at all three. But he’d learned to read and write because Jeannie had asked him to. He did them with a lot more optimism than accuracy, Billy knew. When he was faced with a long sentence, he tended to work out a few words and then have a great big guess. “The art o’ readin’ is all aboot understandin’ whut the wurds is tryin’ tae say, right?” said Rob. “Aye, mebbe,” said Big Yan, “but is there any wurd there tae tell us that the big wee hag is sweet on that heap o’ jobbies doon in the stone castle?” “Ye ha’ a verra ro-mantic nature,” said Rob. “And the answer is: I canna tell. They writes some bits o’ their letters in them wee codies. That’s a terrible thing tae do to a reader. It’s hard enough readin’ the normal words, wi’oot somebody jumblin’ them all up.” “It’ll be a baaaad look-oot fra’ us all if the big wee hag starts mindin’ boys instead o’ gettin’ the knowin’ o’ the hagglin’,” said Big Yan. “Aye, but the boy willna be interested in marryin’,” said Slightly Mad Angus. “He might be one day,” said Billy Bigchin, who’d made a hobby of watching humans. “Most bigjob men get married.” “They do?” said a Feegle in astonishment. “Oh, aye.” “They want tae get married?” “A lot o’ them do, aye,” said Billy. “So there’s nae more drinkin’, stealin’, an’ fightin’?” “Hey, ah’m still allowed some drinkin’ an’ stealin’ an’ fightin’!” said Rob Anybody. “Aye, Rob, but we canna help noticin’ ye also have tae do the Explainin’, too,” said Daft Wullie. There was a general nodding from the crowd. To Feegles, Explaining was a dark art. It was just so hard. “Like, when we come back from drinkin’, stealin’, an’ fightin’, Jeannie gives ye the Pursin’ o’ the Lips,” Daft Wullie went on. A moan went up from all the Feegles: “Ooooh, save us from the Pursin’ o’ the Lips!” “An’ there’s the Foldin’ o’ the Arms,” said Wullie, because he was even scaring himself. “Oooooh, waily, waily, waily, the Foldin’ o’ the Arms!” the Feegles cried, tearing at their hair. “Not tae mention the Tappin’ o’ the Feets….” Wullie stopped, not wanting to mention the Tappin’ o’ the Feets. “Aargh! Oooooh! No’ the Tappin’ o’ the Feets!” Some of the Feegles started to bang their heads on trees. “Aye, aye, aye, BUT,” said Rob Anybody desperately, “what youse dinna ken is that this is part o’ the hiddlins o’ husbandry.” Feegles looked at one another. There was silence except for the creak of a small tree as it fell over. “We never heard o’ any sich thing, Rob,” said Big Yan. “Well, an’ ah’m no’ surprised! Who’d tell ye? Ye ain’t married! Ye dinna get the po-et-ic symmi-tree o’ the whole thing. Gather roound ’til I tell ye….” Rob looked around to see if anyone apart from about five hundred Feegles was watching him, and went on: “See…first ye get the drinkin’ an’ the fightin’ an’ the stealin’, okay. An’ when you get back tae the mound, it’s time for the Tappin’ o’ the Feets—” “Ooooooo!” “—an’ the Foldin’ o’ the Arms—” “Aaaargh!” “—an’, o’ course, the Pursin’ o’ the Lips an’ will ye scunners knock it off wi’ the groanin’ before I starts bangin’ heids together! Right? ” All the Feegles fell silent, except for one: “Oh, waily, waily, waily! Ohhhhhhh! Aaarrgh! The Pursin’…o’…the…” He stopped and looked around in embarrassment. “Daft Wullie?” said Rob Anybody with icy patience. “Aye, Rob?” “Ye ken I told yez there wuz times ye should listen to whut I was sayin’?” “Aye, Rob?” “That wuz one o’ them times.” Daft Wullie hung his head. “Sorry, Rob.” “Aye! Now, where wuz I…Oh, aye…we get the lips an’ the arms an’ the feets, okay? An’ then—” “It’s time for the Explainin’!” said Daft Wullie. “Aye!” snapped Rob Anybody. “Any one o’ youse mudlins want to be the one who dares tae do the Explainin’?” He looked around. The Feegles shuffled backward. “Wi’ the kelda a-pursin’ an’ a-foldin’ an’ a-tappin’,” Rob went on in a voice of Doom, “an’ that look in her bonny eye that says: ‘This Explanation had better be really guid’? Well? Do ye?” By now Feegles were crying and chewing the edges of their kilts in terror. “No, Rob,” they murmured. “No, aye!” said Rob Anybody triumphantly. “Ye wouldna! That’s because you don’t have the knowin’ o’ the husbandry!” “I heard Jeannie say ye come up with Explanations no other Feegle in all the world would try,” said Daft Wullie admiringly. “Aye, that’s quite likely,” said Rob, swelling with pride. “An’ Feegles has got a fine tradition o’ huge Explanations!” “She said some of your Explainin’ is so long an’ twisty, by the time ye’ve got to the end, she canna recall how they started,” Daft Wullie went on. “It’s a nat’ral gift—I wouldna wanta boast,” said Rob, waving his hand modestly. “I can’t see bigjobs bein’ good at Explainin’,” said Big Yan. “They’re verra slow thinkers.” “They still get wed, though,” said Billy Bigchin. “Aye, and yon boy in the big castle is bein’ too friendly wi’ the big wee hag,” said Big Yan. “His da is gettin’ old an’ sick, and soon yon boy will own a big stone castle an’ the wee bittie papers that says that he owns the hills.” “Jeannie’s afeared that if he’s got the wee bittie papers that says he owns the hills,” Billy Bigchin continued, “he might go daft and think they belong to him. An’ we know where that’ll lead, right?” “Aye,” said Big Yan. “Plowin’.” It was a dreaded word. The old Baron had once planned to plow a few of the flatter areas of the Chalk, because wheat was fetching high prices and there was no money in sheep, but Granny Aching had been alive then and had changed his mind for him. But some pastures around the Chalk were being plowed up already. There was money in wheat. The Feegles took it for granted that Roland would take to the plow, too. Wasn’t he brought up by a couple of vain, scheming, and unpleasant aunts? “I dinna trust him,” said Slightly Mad Angus. “He reads books an’ such. He disna care aboot the land.” “Aye,” said Daft Wullie, “but if he wuz wed tae the big wee hag, he’d no’ think o’ the plow, ’cuz the big wee hag would soon gi’e him the Pursin’ o’ the Arms—” “It’s the Foldin’ o’ the Arms!” snapped Rob Anybody. All the Feegles looked around fearfully. “Ooooooh, not the Foldin’ o’ th—” “Shut up!” Rob yelled. “Ah’m ashamed o’ yez! It’s up tae the big wee hag tae marry who she wants tae! Is that no’ so, gonnagle?” “Hmm?” said Billy, looking upward. He caught a snowflake. “I said the big wee hag can wed who she wants, right?” Billy was staring at the snowflake. “Billy?” said Rob. “What?” he said, as if waking up. “Oh…yes. Do ye think she wants tae marry the Wintersmith?” “The Wintersmith?” said Rob. “He canna marry anyone. He’s like a spirit—there’s nothin’ tae him!” “She danced with him. We saw her,” said Billy, catching another flake and inspecting it. “Just girlish high spirits! Anyway, why should the big wee hag think anything o’ the Wintersmith?” “I have reason tae believe,” said the gonnagle slowly, as more flakes danced down, “that the Wintersmith is thinkin’ a lot aboot the big wee hag….” CHAPTER FOUR Snowflakes T hey say that there can never be two snowflakes that are exactly alike, but has anyone checked lately? Snow fell gently in the darkness. It piled up on rooftops, it kissed its way between the branches of trees, it settled on the forest floor with a gentle sizzle and smelled sharply of tin. Granny Weatherwax always checked the snow. She stood at her doorway, with the candlelight streaming out around her, and caught flakes on the back of a shovel. The white kitten watched the snowflakes. That’s all it did. It didn’t bat them with a paw, it just watched, very intently, each flake spiral down until it landed. Then the kitten would watch it some more, until it was sure the entertainment was over, before it looked up and selected another flake. It was called You, as in “You! Stop that!” and “You! Get off there!” When it came to names, Granny Weatherwax didn’t do fancy. Granny looked at the snowflakes and smiled in her not-exactly-nice way. “Come back in, You,” she said, and shut the door. Miss Tick was shivering by the fire. It wasn’t very big—just big enough. However, there was the smell of bacon and pease pudding coming from a small pot on the embers, and beside the small pot was a much larger one from which came the smell of chicken. Miss Tick didn’t often get chicken, so she lived in hope. It had to be said that Granny Weatherwax and Miss Tick did not get on well with each other. Senior witches often don’t. You could tell that they didn’t by the way they were extremely polite all the time. “The snow is early this year, Mistress Weatherwax,” said Miss Tick. “Indeed it is, Miss Tick,” said Granny Weatherwax. “And so…interesting. Have you looked at it?” “I’ve seen snow before, Mistress Weatherwax,” said Miss Tick. “It was snowing all the way up here. I had to help push the mail coach! I saw altogether too much snow! But what are we going to do about Tiffany Aching?” “Nothing, Miss Tick. More tea?” “She is rather our responsibility.” “No. She’s hers, first and last. She’s a witch. She danced the Winter Dance. I saw her do it.” “I’m sure she didn’t mean to,” said Miss Tick. “How can you dance and not mean it?” “She’s young. The excitement probably ran away with her feet. She didn’t know what was going on.” “She should have found out,” said Granny Weatherwax. “She should have listened.” “I’m sure you always did what you were told when you were almost thirteen, Mistress Weatherwax,” said Miss Tick with just a hint of sarcasm. Granny Weatherwax stared at the wall for a moment. “No,” she said. “I made mistakes. But I didn’t make excuses.” “I thought you wanted to help the child?” “I’ll help her to help herself. That is my way. She’s danced into the oldest Story there is, and the only way out is through the other end. The only way, Miss Tick.” Miss Tick sighed. Stories, she thought. Granny Weatherwax believes the world is all about stories. Oh well, we all have our funny little ways. Except me, obviously. “Of course. It’s just that she’s so…normal,” Miss Tick said aloud. “When you consider what she’s done, I mean. And she thinks so much. And now that she’s come to the attention of the Wintersmith, well…” “She fascinates him,” said Granny Weatherwax. “That’s going to be a big problem.” “Which she will have to solve.” “And if she can’t?” “Then she’s not Tiffany Aching,” said Granny Weatherwax firmly. “Ah, yes, she’s in the Story now, but she don’t know it! Look at the snow, Miss Tick. They say that no two snowflakes are alike. How could they know something like that? Oh, they thinks they’re so smart! I’ve always wanted to catch ’em out. An’ I have done! Go outside now, and look at the snow. Look at the snow, Miss Tick! Every flake the same!” Tiffany heard the knocking and opened the tiny bedroom window with difficulty. Snow had built up on the sill, soft and fluffy. “We didna want tae wake ye,” said Rob Anybody, “but Awf’ly Wee Billy said you ought tae see this.” Tiffany yawned. “What am I looking for?” she muttered. “Catch some o’ yon flakes,” said Rob. “No, not on yer hand—they’ll melt tae soon.” In the gloom Tiffany felt around for her diary. It wasn’t there. She looked on the floor, in case she’d knocked it off. Then a match flared as Rob Anybody lit a candle, and there was the diary, looking as though it had always been there but, she noticed, also being suspiciously cold to the touch. Rob looked innocent, a sure sign of guilt. Tiffany saved the questions for later and poked the diary out of the window. Flakes settled on it, and she lifted it closer to her eyes. “They look just like any ordin—” she began, and then stopped, and then said, “Oh, no…this must be a trick!” “Aye? Well, ye could call it that,” said Rob. “But it’s his trick, ye ken.” Tiffany stared at falling flakes drifting in the light of the candle. Every one of them was Tiffany Aching. A little, frozen, sparkling Tiffany Aching. Downstairs, Miss Treason burst out laughing. The doorknob on the door to the tower bedroom was rattled angrily. Roland de Chumsfanleigh (pronounced Chuffley; it wasn’t his fault) carefully paid it no attention. “What are you doing in there, child?” said a muffled voice peevishly. “Nothing, Aunt Danuta,” said Roland, without turning around from his desk. One of the advantages of living in a castle was that rooms were easy to lock; his door had three iron locks and two bolts that were as thick as his arm. “Your father is calling out for you, you know!” said another voice, with even more peeve. “He whispers, Aunt Araminta,” Roland said calmly, carefully writing an address on an envelope. “He only cries out when you set the doctors on him.” “It’s for his own good!” “He cries out,” Roland repeated, and then licked the flap on the envelope. Aunt Araminta rattled the doorknob again. “You are a very ungrateful child! You will starve, you know! We will get the guards to batter this door down!” Roland sighed. The castle had been built by people who did not like to have their doors battered down, and anyone trying to do that here would have to carry the battering ram up a narrow spiral staircase with no room at the top to turn around, and then find a way to knock down a door four planks thick and made of oak timbers so ancient, it was like iron. One man could defend this room for months, if he had provisions. He heard some more grumbling outside and then the echo of the aunts’ shoes as they went down the tower. Then he heard them screaming at the guards again. It wouldn’t do them much good. Sergeant Roberts and his guards* were edgy about taking orders from the aunts. Everyone knew, though, that if the Baron died before the boy was twenty-one, the aunts would legally run the estate until he was. And while the Baron was very ill, he was not dead. It was not a happy time to be a disobedient guard, but the sergeant and his men survived the anger of the aunts by being, when their orders justified it, deaf, stupid, forgetful, confused, ill, lost, or—in the case of Kevin—foreign. For now, Roland kept his excursions for the small hours, when no one was around and he could pillage the kitchen. That’s when he went in to see his father. The doctors kept the old man dosed with something, but Roland held his hand for a while for the comfort that it gave. If he found jars of wasps or leeches, he threw them into the moat. He stared at the envelope. Perhaps he ought to tell Tiffany about this, but he didn’t like to think about it. It would worry her and she might try to rescue him again, and that wouldn’t be right. This was something he had to face. Besides, he wasn’t locked in. They were locked out. While he held the tower, there was a place where they couldn’t poke and pry and steal. He’d got what was left of the silver candlesticks under his bed, along with what remained of the antique silver cutlery (“gone to be valued,” they’d said) and his mother’s jewel box. He’d been a bit late finding that; it was missing her wedding ring and the silver-and-garnet necklace his grandmother had left to her. But tomorrow he’d get up early and ride over to Twoshirts with the letter. He liked writing them. They turned the world into a nicer place, because you didn’t have to include the bad bits. Roland sighed. It would have been nice to tell Tiffany that in the library he’d found a book called Sieges and Survival by the famous general Callus Tacticus (who invented “tactics,” which was interesting). Who’d have thought such an ancient book could be so useful? The general had been very firm about having provisions, so Roland had plenty of small potatoes, large sausages, and heavy dwarf bread, which was handy to drop on people. He glanced across the room, where there was a portrait of his mother that he had carried up from the cellar where they had left it (“waiting to be cleaned,” they said). Right beside it, if you knew what you were looking for, an area of wall about the size of a small door looked lighter than the rest of the stones. The candlestick next to it looked slightly lopsided, too. There were lots of advantages to living in a castle. Outside, it began to snow. The Nac Mac Feegles peered out at the fluffy flakes from the thatch of Miss Treason’s cottage. By the light that managed to leak out from the grubby windows below, they watched the tiny Tiffanys whirl past. “Say it wi’ snowflakes,” said Big Yan. “Hah!” Daft Wullie snatched a spiraling flake. “Ye gotta admit he’s done the wee pointy hat really well,” he said. “He must like the big wee hag a lot.” “It disna make any sense!” said Rob Anybody. “He’s the Winter! He’s all the snow an’ ice an’ storms an’ frosts. She’s just a wee big girl! Ye canna say that’s an ideal match! Whut do ye say, Billy? Billy?” The gonnagle was chewing the end of his mousepipes while staring at the flakes with a faraway look in his eyes. But somehow Rob’s voice broke into his thoughts, because he said: “Whut does he ken aboot people? He’s no’ as alive as a wee insect, yet he’s as powerful as the sea. An’ he’s sweet on the big wee hag. Why? Whut can she be tae him? Whut will he do next? I tell ye this: Snowflakes is just the beginning. We must watch oot, Rob. This may become verra bad….” Up in the mountains, 990,393,072,007 Tiffany Achings landed lightly on the old packed snow on a ridge and began an avalanche that carried away more than a hundred trees and a hunting lodge. This wasn’t Tiffany’s fault. It wasn’t her fault that people slipped on packed layers of her, or couldn’t open the door because she was piled up outside it, or got hit by handfuls of her thrown by small children. Most of her had melted by breakfast time the next day, and besides, no one noticed anything strange except witches who don’t take people’s word for things, and a lot of kids no one listened to. Even so, Tiffany woke up feeling very embarrassed. Miss Treason didn’t help at all. “At least he likes you,” she said while she ferociously wound up her clock. “I wouldn’t know about that, Miss Treason,” said Tiffany, really not wanting this conversation at all. She was washing the dishes at the sink, her back to the old woman, and she was glad that Miss Treason could not see her face—and, if it came to it, that she couldn’t see Miss Treason’s face, either. “What will your young man say about it, I wonder?” “What young man is that, Miss Treason?” said Tiffany, as stonily as she could manage. “He writes you letters, girl!” And I expect you read them with my eyes, Tiffany thought. “Roland? He’s just a friend…sort of,” she said. “A sort of friend?” I’m not going into this, Tiffany thought. I bet she’s grinning. It’s not her business, anyway. “Yes,” she said, “that’s right, Miss Treason. A sort of friend.” There was a long silence, which Tiffany used to scrub out the bottom of an iron saucepan. “It is important to have friends,” said Miss Treason, in a voice that was somehow smaller than it had been. It sounded as though Tiffany had won. “When you have finished, dear, please be kind enough to fetch me my shamble bag.” Tiffany did so, and hurried off into the dairy. It was always good to get in there. It reminded her of home, and she could think better. She— There was a cheese-shaped hole in the bottom of the door, but Horace was back in his broken cage, making a very faint mnmnmnmn noise that may have been cheese snores. She left him alone and dealt with the morning’s milk. At least it wasn’t snowing. She felt herself blushing, and tried to stop herself from even thinking about it. And there was going to be a coven meeting tonight. Would the other girls know? Hah! Of course they would. Witches paid attention to snow, especially if it was going to be embarrassing for somebody. “Tiffany? I wish to speak with you,” Miss Treason called out. Miss Treason had hardly ever called her Tiffany before. It was quite worrying to hear her say the name. Miss Treason was holding up a shamble. Her seeing-eye mouse was dangling awkwardly among the bits of bone and ribbon. “This is so inconvenient,” she said, and raised her voice. “Ach, ye mudlins! C’mon oot! I ken ye’re there! I can see ye lookin’ at me!” Feegle heads appeared from behind very nearly everything. “Good! Tiffany Aching, sit down!” Tiffany sat down quickly. “At a time like this, too,” said Miss Treason, laying down the shamble. “This is so inconvenient. But there is no doubt.” She paused for a moment and said: “I will die the day after tomorrow. On Friday, just before half past six in the morning.” It was an impressive statement, and did not deserve this reply: “Oh, that’s a shame, tae be missin’ the weekend like that,” said Rob Anybody. “Are ye goin’ somewhere nice?” “But…but…you can’t die!” Tiffany burst out. “You’re a hundred and thirteen years old, Miss Treason!” “You know, that is very probably the reason, child,” said Miss Treason calmly. “Didn’t anyone tell you that witches have forewarning when they’re going to die? Anyway, I like a good funeral.” “Oh aye, ye canna beat a good wake,” said Rob Anybody. “Wi’ lots o’ boozin’ an’ dancin’ an’ greetin’ an feastin’ an’ boozin’.” “There may be some sweet sherry,” said Miss Treason. “As for feasting, I always say you cannot go far wrong with a ham roll.” “But you can’t just—” Tiffany began, and stopped as Miss Treason turned her head fast, like a chicken does. “—leave you like this?” she said. “Is that what you were going to say?” “Er, no,” Tiffany lied. “You’ll have to move in with someone else, of course,” said Miss Treason. “You’re not really senior enough to take on a cottage, not when there’s older girls waiting—” “You know I don’t want to spend my life in the mountains, Miss Treason,” Tiffany said quickly. “Oh yes, Miss Tick did tell me,” said the old witch. “You want to go back to your little chalk hills.” “They’re not little!” Tiffany snapped, louder than she’d meant to. “Yes, this has been a bit of a trying time all around,” said Miss Treason very calmly. “I shall write some letters, which you will take down to the village, and then you shall have your afternoon off. We shall hold the funeral tomorrow afternoon.” “Sorry? You mean before you die?” said Tiffany. “Why, of course! I don’t see why I shouldn’t have some fun!” “Good thinkin’!” said Rob Anybody. “That’s the kind o’ sensible detail people usually fails tae consider.” “We call it a going-away party,” said Miss Treason. “Just for witches, of course. Other people tend to get a bit nervous—I can’t think why. And on the bright side, we’ve got that splendid ham that Mr. Armbinder gave us last week for settling the ownership of the chestnut tree, and I’d love to try it.” An hour later Tiffany set out, with her pockets full of notes to butchers and bakers and farmers in the local villages. She was a bit surprised at the reception she got. They seemed to think it was all a joke. “Miss Treason’s not going to go dying at her time of life,” said a butcher, weighing out sausages. “I heard that Death’s come for her before and she slammed the door on him!” “Thirteen dozen sausages, please,” said Tiffany. “Cooked and delivered.” “Are you sure she’s going to die?” said the butcher, uncertainty clouding his face. “No. But she is,” said Tiffany. And the baker said, “Don’t you know about that clock of hers? She had it made when her heart died. It’s like a clockwork heart, see?” “Really?” said Tiffany. “So if her heart died, and she had a new one made of clockwork, how did she stay alive while the new heart was being made?” “Oh, that’d be by magic, obviously,” said the baker. “But a heart pumps blood, and Miss Treason’s clock is outside her body,” Tiffany pointed out. “There’s no…tubes….” “It pumps the blood by magic,” said the baker, speaking slowly. He gave her an odd look. “How can you be a witch if you don’t know this stuff?” It was the same everywhere else. It was as if the idea of there being no Miss Treason was the wrong shape to put in anyone’s head. She was 113 years old, and they argued that it was practically unheard of for anyone to die aged 113. It was a joke, they said, or she’d got a scroll signed in blood that meant she’d live forever, or you’d have to steal her clock before she’d die, or every time the Grim Reaper came for her she lied about her name or sent him to another person, or maybe she was just feeling a bit unwell…. By the time Tiffany was finished, she was wondering if it really was going to happen. Yet Miss Treason had seemed so certain. And if you were 113, the amazing thing wasn’t that you were going to die tomorrow but that you were still alive today. With her head full of gloomy thoughts, she set out to the coven meeting. Once or twice she thought she could feel Feegles watching her. She never knew how she could feel this; it was a talent you learned. And you learned to put up with it, most of the time. All the other young witches were there by the time she arrived, and they had even got a fire lit. Some people think that “coven” is a word for a group of witches, and it’s true that’s what the dictionary says. But the real word for a group of witches is an “argument.” In any case, most of the witches Tiffany had met never used the word. Mrs. Earwig did, though, almost all the time. She was tall and thin and rather chilly, and wore silver spectacles on a little chain, and used words like “avatar” and “sigil.” And Annagramma, who ran the coven because she’d invented it and had the tallest hat and sharpest voice, was her star pupil (and her only one). Granny Weatherwax always said that what Mrs. Earwig did was wizard magic with a dress on, and Annagramma certainly dragged a lot of books and wands along to the meetings. Mostly, the girls did a few ceremonies to keep her quiet, because for them the real purpose of the coven was to see friends, even if they were friends simply because they were, really, the only people you could talk to freely because they had the same problems and would understand what you were moaning about. They always met out in the woods, even in the snow. There was always enough wood lying around for a fire, and they all dressed up warm as a matter of course. Even in the summer, comfort on a broomstick at any height meant more layers of underclothing than anyone would dare guess at, and sometimes a couple of hot-water bottles held on with string. At the moment three small fireballs circled the fire. Annagramma had made them. You could slay enemies with them, she’d said. They made the others uneasy. It was wizard magic, showy and dangerous. Witches preferred to cut enemies dead with a look. There was no sense in killing your enemy. How would she know you’d won? Dimity Hubbub had brought a huge tray of inside-out cake. It was just the thing to put a coating on your ribs against the cold. Tiffany said: “Miss Treason told me she’s going to die on Friday morning. She said she just knows.” “That’s a shame,” said Annagramma in a that’s-not-really-a-shame tone of voice. “She was very old, though.” “She still is,” said Tiffany. “Um, it’s called The Call,” said Petulia Gristle. “Old witches know when they’re going to die. No one knows how it works. They just do.” “Has she still got those skulls?” said Lucy Warbeck, who had her hair piled up on her head with a knife and fork stuck in it. “I couldn’t stand them. They seemed to be, like, looking at me all the time!” “It was her using me as a mirror that made me leave,” said Lulu Darling. “Does she still do that?” Tiffany sighed. “Yes.” “I said flatly that I wouldn’t go,” said Gertruder Tiring, poking the fire. “Did you know that if you leave a witch without permission, no other witch will take you on, but if you leave Miss Treason even after only one night, no one says anything about it and they just find you another place?” “Mrs. Earwig says things like skulls and ravens is going far too far,” said Annagramma. “Everyone around there is literally frightened out of their lives!” “Um, what’s going to happen to you?” said Petulia to Tiffany. “I don’t know. I suppose I’ll go somewhere else.” “Poor you,” said Annagramma. “Miss Treason didn’t say who’ll take over the cottage, by any chance?” she added, as if she’d only just thought of the question. The sound that followed was the silence made by half a dozen pairs of ears listening so hard they were nearly creaking. There were not a lot of young witches coming up, it was true, but witches lived a long time, and getting your own cottage was the prize. That’s when you started getting respect. “No,” said Tiffany. “Not even a hint?” “No.” “She didn’t say it was going to be you, did she?” said Annagramma sharply. Her voice could be really annoying. It could make “hello” sound like an accusation. “No!” “Anyway, you’re too young.” “Actually, there’s no, you know, actual age limit,” said Lucy Warbeck. “Nothing written down, anyway.” “How do you know that?” Annagramma snapped. “I asked Old Mrs. Pewmire,” said Lucy. Annagramma’s eyes narrowed. “You asked her? Why?” Lucy rolled her eyes. “Because I wanted to know, that’s all. Look, everyone knows you’re the oldest and the…you know, most trained. Of course you’ll get the cottage.” “Yes,” said Annagramma, watching Tiffany. “Of course.” “That’s, um, sorted out, then,” said Petulia, more loudly than necessary. “Did you have a lot of snow last night? Old Mother Blackcap said it was unusual.” Tiffany thought: Oh dear, here we go…. “We often get it this early up here,” said Lucy. “I thought it was a bit fluffier than usual,” said Petulia. “Quite pretty, if you like that sort of thing.” “It was just snow,” said Annagramma. “Hey, did any of you hear what happened to the new girl who started with Miss Tumult? Ran away screaming after an hour?” She smiled, not very sympathetically. “Um, was it the frog?” Petulia asked. “No, not the frog. She didn’t mind the frog. It was Unlucky Charlie.” “He can be scary,” Lucy agreed. And that was it, Tiffany realized, as the gossip ran on. Someone who was practically a kind of god had made billions of snowflakes that looked like her—and they hadn’t noticed!…which was a good thing, obviously… Of course it was. The last thing she wanted was teasing and stupid questions, of course. Well, of course… …but…well…it would have been nice if they’d known, if they’d said “Wow,” if they’d been jealous or frightened or impressed. And she couldn’t tell them, or at least she couldn’t tell Annagramma, who’d make a joke of it and almost but not exactly say that she was making it up. The Wintersmith had visited her and been…impressed. It was a bit sad if the only people who knew about this were Miss Treason and hundreds of Feegles, especially since—she shuddered—by Friday morning it would only be known by hundreds of little blue men. To put it another way: If she didn’t tell someone else who was at least the same size as her and alive, she would burst. So she told Petulia, on the way home. They had to go the same way, and they both flew so slowly that at night it was easier to walk, since you didn’t hit so many trees. Petulia was plump and reliable and already the best pig witch in the mountains, a fact that means a lot where every family owns a pig. And Miss Treason had said that soon the boys would be running after her, because a girl who knows her pigs would never want for a husband. The only problem with Petulia was that she always agreed with you and always said what she thought you wanted to hear. But Tiffany was a bit cruel and just told her all the facts. She got a few wows, which she was pleased with. After a while Petulia said: “That must have been very, um, interesting.” And that was Petulia for you. “What shall I do?” “Um…do you need to do anything?” said Petulia. “Well, sooner or later people are going to notice that all snowflakes are shaped like me!” “Um, are you worried that they won’t?” said Petulia, so innocently that Tiffany laughed. “But I’ve got this feeling that it’s not going to stop with snowflakes! I mean, he is everything to do with wintertime!” “And he ran away when you screamed…” said Petulia thoughtfully. “That’s right.” “And then he did something sort of…silly.” “What?” “The snowflakes,” said Petulia helpfully. “Well, I wouldn’t say that, exactly,” said Tiffany, a bit hurt. “Not exactly silly.” “Then it’s all obvious,” said Petulia. “He’s a boy.” “What?” “A boy. You know what they are?” said Petulia. “Blush, grunt, mumble, wibble? They’re pretty much all the same.” “But he’s millions of years old and he acts like he’s never seen a girl before!” “Um, I don’t know. Has he ever seen a girl before?” “He must have! What about Summer?” said Tiffany. “She’s a girl. Well, a woman. According to a book I’ve seen, anyway.” “I suppose all you can do is wait to see what he does next, then. Sorry. I’ve never had snowflakes made in my honor…. Er, we’re here….” They’d reached the clearing where Miss Treason lived, and Petulia began to look a bit nervous. “Um…all these stories about her…” she said, looking at the cottage. “Are you all right there?” “Was one of them about what she can do with her thumbnail?” asked Tiffany. “Yes!” said Petulia, shuddering. “She made that one up. Don’t tell anyone, though.” “Why would anyone make up a story like that about themselves?” Tiffany hesitated. Pigs couldn’t be fooled by Boffo, so Petulia hadn’t run across it. And she was amazingly honest, which Tiffany was coming to learn was a bit of a drawback in a witch. It wasn’t that witches were actually dishonest, but they were careful about what kind of truth they told. “I don’t know,” she lied. “Anyway, you have to cut through quite a lot of a person before anything falls out. And skin is quite tough. I don’t think it’s possible.” Petulia looked alarmed. “You tried?” “I practiced with my thumbnail on a big ham this morning, if that’s what you mean,” said Tiffany. You have to check things, she thought. I heard the story that Miss Treason has wolf’s teeth, and people tell that to one another even though they’ve seen her. “Um…I’ll come and help tomorrow, of course,” said Petulia, nervously looking at Tiffany’s hands in case there were going to be any more thumbnail experiments. “Going-away parties can be quite jolly, really. But, um, if I was you, I’d tell Mr. Wintersmith to go away. That’s what I did when Davey Lummock started getting, um, too romantic. And I told him that I was, um, walking out with Makky Weaver— don’t tell the others!” “Isn’t he the one who talks about pigs all the time?” “Well, pigs are very interesting,” said Petulia reproachfully. “And his father, um, has got the biggest pig-breeding farm in the mountains.” “That’s something worth thinking about, definitely,” said Tiffany. “Ouch.” “What happened?” said Petulia. “Oh, nothing. My hand really twinged there for a moment.” Tiffany rubbed it. “Part of the healing, I suppose. See you tomorrow.” Tiffany went indoors. Petulia carried on through the forest. From up near the roof came the sounds of a conversation. “Didja hear what the fat girl said?” “Aye, but pigs are no’ that interestin’.” “Oh, I dinna ken aboot that. A verra useful animal is the pig. You can eat every part o’ it, ye ken, except for the squeal.” “Ach, ye’re wrong there. Ye can use the squeal.” “Dinna be daft!” “Aye, ye can so! Ye make up a pie crust, right, an’ ye put in a lot o’ ham, right, an’ then ye catch the squeal, put the top on the pie before he can escape, right, an’ bung it straight in the oven.” “I ne’er heard o’ such a thing as that!” “Have ye no’? It’s called squeal-and-ham pie.” “There’s nae such thing!” “Why not? There’s bubble-and-squeak, right? An’ a squeak is wee compared tae a squeal. I reckon you could—” “If youse mudlins dinna listen, I’ll put ye inna pie!” yelled Rob Anybody. The Feegles muttered into silence And on the other side of the clearing the Wintersmith watched with purple-gray eyes. He watched until a candle was lit in an upstairs room, and watched the orange glow until it went out. Then, walking unsteadily on new legs, he went toward the flower patch where, in the summer, roses had grown. If you went to Zakzak Stronginthearm’s Magical Emporium, you’d see crystal balls of all sizes but more or less only one price, which was A Great Deal Of Money. Since most witches, and particularly the good ones, had Not Much Money At All, they made use of other things, like the glass floats off old fishing nets or a saucer of black ink. There was a puddle of black ink on Granny Weatherwax’s table now. It had been in the saucer, but things had wobbled a bit when Granny and Miss Tick had banged their heads together trying to look in the saucer at the same time. “Did you hear that?” said Granny Weatherwax. “Petulia Gristle asked the important question, and she just didn’t think about it!” “I’m sorry to say I missed it too,” said Miss Tick. You, the white kitten, jumped up onto the table, walked carefully through the puddle of ink, and dropped into Miss Tick’s lap. “Stop that, You,” said Granny Weatherwax in a vague sort of way, as Miss Tick stared down at her dress. “It hardly shows up,” said Miss Tick, but in fact four perfect cat footprints were very clear. Witches’ dresses start out black but soon fade to shades of gray because of frequent washings or, in the case of Miss Tick, regular dips in various ponds and streams. They got threadbare and ragged, too, and their owners liked that. It showed you were a working witch, not a witch for show. Four black kitten footprints in the middle of your dress suggested you were a bit wussy, though. She lowered the cat to the floor, where it trotted over to Granny Weatherwax, rubbed up against her, and tried to meep more chicken into existence. “What was the important thing?” said Miss Tick. “I’m asking you as one witch to another, Perspicacia Tick: Has the Wintersmith ever met a girl?” “Well,” said Miss Tick, “I suppose the classic representation of Summer might be called a—” “But do they ever meet?” asked Granny Weatherwax. “In the Dance, I suppose. Just for a moment,” said Miss Tick. “And at that moment, that very moment, in dances Tiffany Aching,” said Granny Weatherwax. “A witch who won’t wear black. No, it’s blue and green for her, like green grass under a blue sky. She calls to the strength of her hills, all the time. An’ they calls to her! Hills that was once alive, Miss Tick! They feels the rhythm of the Dance, an’ so in her bones does she, if she did but know it. And this shapes her life, even here! She could not help but tap her feet! The land taps its feet to the Dance of the Seasons!” “But she—” Miss Tick began, because no teacher likes to hear anyone else talk for very long. “What happened in that moment?” Granny Weatherwax went on, unstoppably. “Summer, Winter, and Tiffany. One spinning moment! And then they part. Who knows what got tangled? Suddenly, the Wintersmith is acting so stupid, he might even be a wee bit…human?” “What has she got herself into?” said Miss Tick. “The Dance, Miss Tick. The Dance that never ends. An’ she can’t change the steps, not yet. She has to dance to his tune for a while.” “She’s going to be in a lot of danger,” Miss Tick said. “She has the strength of her hills,” said Granny. “Soft hills, though,” said Miss Tick. “Easily worn down.” “But the heart of the chalk is flint, remember. It cuts sharper than any knife.” “Snow can cover the hills,” said Miss Tick. “Not forever.” “It did once,” said Miss Tick, fed up with playing games. “For thousands of years, at least. An age of ice. Great beasts wallowed and sneezed across the world.” “That’s as may be,” said Granny Weatherwax, a glint in her eye. “O’ course, I wasn’t around then. In the meantime, we must watch our girl.” Miss Tick sipped her tea. Staying with Granny Weatherwax was a bit of a trial. Last night’s pot of chicken scraps had turned out to be not for her but for You. The witches had good thick pease pudding and bacon soup without—and this was important—the bacon. Granny kept a big lump of fat bacon on a string and had taken it out, carefully dried it, and put it away for another day. Despite her hunger, Miss Tick was impressed. Granny could shave the skin off a second. “I hear that Miss Treason has heard her Call,” she said. “Yes. Funeral tomorrow,” said Granny Weatherwax. “That’s a difficult steading* over there,” said Miss Tick. “They’ve had Miss Treason for a long, long time. It’ll be a tricky task for a new witch.” “She’ll be a difficult…act to follow, indeed,” said Granny Weatherwax. “Act?” said Miss Tick. “I meant life, of course,” said Granny Weatherwax. “Whom will you put in there?” asked Miss Tick, because she liked to be first with the news. She also made a point of saying “whom” whenever she could. She felt it was more literate. “Miss Tick, that is not up to me,” said Granny sharply. “We have no leaders in witchcraft, you know that.” “Oh indeed,” said Miss Tick, who also knew that the leader the witches did not have was Granny Weatherwax. “But I know that Mrs. Earwig will be proposing young Annagramma, and Mrs. Earwig has quite a few followers these days. It’s probably those books she writes. She makes witchcraft sound exciting.” “You know I don’t like witches who try to impose their will on others,” said Granny Weatherwax. “Quite,” said Miss Tick, trying not to laugh. “I shall, however, drop a name into the conversation,” said Granny Weatherwax. With a clang, I expect, thought Miss Tick. “Petulia Gristle has shaped up very well,” she said. “A good all-around witch.” “Yes, but mostly all around pigs,” said Granny Weatherwax. “I was thinking about Tiffany Aching.” “What?” said Miss Tick. “Don’t you think that child has enough to cope with?” Granny Weatherwax smiled briefly. “Well, Miss Tick, you know what they say: If you want something done, give it to someone who’s busy! And young Tiffany might be very busy soon,” she added. “Why do you say that?” said Miss Tick. “Hmm. Well, I can’t be sure, but I will be very interested to see what happens to her feet….” Tiffany didn’t sleep much on the night before the funeral. Miss Treason’s loom had clicked and clacked all through the night, because she had an order for bedsheets she wanted to complete. It was just getting light when Tiffany gave up and got up, in that order. At least she could get the goats mucked out and milked before she tackled the other chores. There was snow, and a bitter wind was blowing it across the ground. It wasn’t until she was carting a barrowload of muck to the compost heap, which was steaming gently in the gray light, that she heard the tinkling. It sounded a bit like the wind chimes Miss Pullunder had around her cottage, only they were tuned to a note that was uncomfortable for demons. It was coming from the place where the rose bed was in summer. It grew fine, old roses, full of scent and so red they were nearly, yes, black. The roses were blooming again. But they— “How do you like them, sheep girl?” said a voice. It didn’t arrive in her head, it wasn’t her thoughts, any of them, and Dr. Bustle didn’t wake up until at least ten. It was her own voice, from her own lips. But she hadn’t thought it, and she hadn’t meant to say it. Now she was running back to the cottage. She hadn’t decided to do that either, but her legs had taken over. It wasn’t fear, not exactly; it was just that she very much wanted to be somewhere other than in the garden with the sun not up and the snow blowing and filling the air with ice crystals as fine as fog. She ran through the scullery door and collided with a dark figure, which said, “Um, sorry,” and therefore was Petulia. She was the kind of person who apologized if you trod on her foot. Right now there was no sight more welcome. “Sorry, I was called out to deal with a difficult cow and, um, it wasn’t worth going back to bed,” Petulia said, and then added: “Are you all right? You don’t look it!” “I heard a voice in my mouth!” said Tiffany. Petulia gave her an odd look and might just have stepped an inch or so backward. “You mean in your head?” she asked. “No! I can deal with those! My mouth said words all by itself! And come and see what’s grown in the rose garden! You won’t believe it!” There were roses. They were made of ice so thin that, if you breathed on them, they melted away and left nothing but the dead stalks they’d grown on. And there were dozens of them, waving in the wind. “Even the heat of my hand near them makes them drip,” said Petulia. “Do you think it’s your Wintersmith?” “He’s not mine! And I can’t think of any other way they’d turn up!” “And you think he, um, spoke to you?” said Petulia, plucking another rose. Ice particles slid off her hat every time she moved. “No! It was me! I mean, my voice! But it didn’t sound like him. I mean, like I think he’d sound! It was a bit snide, like Annagramma when she’s in a mood! But it was my voice!” “How do you think he’d sound?” said Petulia. The wind gusted across the clearing, making the pine trees shake and roar. “…Tiffany…be mine…” After a little while Petulia coughed and said: “Um, was it just me, or did that sound like—?” “Not just you,” whispered Tiffany, standing very still. “Ah,” said Petulia, in a voice as bright and brittle as a rose of ice. “Well, I think we should get indoors now, yes? Um, and get all the fires lit and some tea made, yes? And then start getting things ready, because quite soon a lot of people will be turning up.” A minute later they were in the cottage, with the doors bolted and every candle spluttering into life. They didn’t talk about the wind or the roses. What would be the point? Besides, there was a job to be done. Work, that’s what helps. Work, and think and talk later, don’t gabble now like frightened ducks. They even managed to get another layer of grime off the windows. All through the morning people arrived from the village with the things Miss Treason had ordered. People were walking across the clearing. The sun was out, even if it was as pale as a poached egg. The world was belonging to…normality. Tiffany caught herself wondering if she was wrong about things. Were there roses? There were none now; the fragile petals had not survived even the dawn’s weak light. Had the wind spoken? Then she met Petulia’s gaze. Yes, it had happened. But for now there was a funeral to feed. The girls had already got to work on the ham rolls, with three sorts of mustard, but however far wrong you couldn’t go with a ham roll, if that was all you were giving seventy or eighty hungry witches, you were going all the way past Wrong and were heading into Absolute Party Disaster. So barrows were arriving with loaves and roasts of beef, and jars of pickled cucumbers so big that they looked like drowned whales. Witches are very keen on pickles, as a rule, but the food they like best is free food. Yes, that’s the diet for your working witch: lots of food that someone else is paying for, and so much of it that there is enough to shove in your pockets for later. As it turned out, Miss Treason wasn’t paying for it either. No one would take any money. They wouldn’t leave, either, but hung about by the back door looking worried until they could have a word with Tiffany. The conversation, when she could spare the time from slicing and spreading, would go something like this: “She’s not really dying, is she?” “Yes. At around half past six tomorrow morning.” “But she’s very old!” “Yes. I think that’s sort of why, you see.” “But what will we do without her?” “I don’t know. What did you do before she was here?” “She was always here! She knew everything! Who’s going to tell us what to do now?” And then they’d say: “It’s not going to be you, is it?” and give her a Look that said: We hope not. You don’t even wear a black dress. After a while Tiffany got fed up with this and in a very sharp voice asked the next person, a woman delivering six cooked chickens: “What about all those stories about her slitting open bad people’s bellies with her thumbnail, then?” “Er, well, yes, but it was never anyone we knew,” said the woman virtuously. “And the demon in the cellar?” “So they say. O’ course, I never saw it pers’nally.” The woman gave Tiffany a worried look. “It is down there, isn’t it?” You want it to be, Tiffany thought. You actually want there to be a monster in the cellar! But as far as Tiffany knew, what was in the cellar this morning was a lot of snoring Feegles who had been boozin’. If you put a lot of Feegles in a desert, within twenty minutes they’d find a bottle of something dreadful to drink. “Believe me, madam, you wouldn’t want to wake what’s down there now,” she said, giving the woman a worried smile. The woman seemed satisfied with that but suddenly looked concerned again. “And the spiders? She really eats spiders?” she asked. “Well, there’s lots of webs,” said Tiffany, “but you never see a spider!” “Ah, right,” said the woman, as if she’d been let into a big secret. “Say what you like, Miss Treason’s been a real witch. With skulls! I expect you have to polish ’em, eh? Ha! She could spit your eye out as soon as look at you!” “She never did, though,” said a man delivering a huge tray of sausages. “Not to anyone local, anyway.” “That’s true,” the woman admitted reluctantly. “She was very gracious in that respect.” “Ah, she was a proper old-time witch, Miss Treason,” said the sausage man. “Many a man has widdled in his boots when she’s turned the sharp side of her tongue on him. You know that weaving she’s always doing? She weaves your name into the loom, that’s what she does! And if you tell her a lie, your thread breaks and you drop down dead on the spot!” “Yes, that happens all the time,” said Tiffany, thinking: This is amazing! Boffo has a life of its own! “Well, we don’t get witches like her these days,” said a man delivering four dozen eggs. “These days it’s all airy-fairy and dancin’ around without your drawers on.” They all looked inquiringly at Tiffany. “It’s wintertime,” she said coldly. “And I’ve got to get on with my work. The witches will be here soon. Thank you very much.” While they were putting the eggs on to boil, she told Petulia about it. It didn’t come as a surprise. “Um, they’re proud of her,” Petulia said. “I’ve heard them boasting about her up at the pig market in Lancre.” “They boast?” “Oh, yes. Like: You think old Mistress Weatherwax is tough? Ours has got skulls! And a demon! She’s gonna live forever ’cuz she’s got a clockwork heart she winds up every day! And she eats spiders, sure of it! How d’you like them poisoned apples, huh?” Boffo works all by itself, Tiffany thought, once you get it started. Our Baron is bigger than your Baron, our witch is witchier than your witch…. CHAPTER FIVE Miss Treason’s Big Day T he witches started arriving around four o’clock, and Tiffany went out into the clearing to do air traffic control. Annagramma arrived by herself, looking very pale and wearing more occult jewelry than you could imagine. And there was a difficult moment when Mrs. Earwig and Granny Weatherwax arrived at the same time, and circled in a ballet of careful politeness as each waited for the other to land. In the end, Tiffany directed them into different corners of the clearing and hurried away. There was no sign of the Wintersmith, and she was sure she’d know if he was near. He’d gone far away, she hoped, arranging a gale or conducting a blizzard. The memory of that voice in her mouth remained, awkward and worrying. Like an oyster dealing with a piece of grit, Tiffany coated it with people and hard work. Now the day was just another pale, dry, early winter’s day. Apart from the food, nothing else at the funeral had been arranged. Witches arrange themselves. Miss Treason sat in her big chair, greeting old friends and old enemies alike.* The cottage was far too small for them all, so they spilled out into the garden in gossiping groups, like a flock of old crows or, possibly, chickens. Tiffany didn’t have much time to talk, because she was kept too busy carrying trays. But something was going on, she could tell. Witches would pause and turn to watch her as she staggered past, and then turn back to their group and the level of hubbub in the group would rise a bit. Groups would come together and separate again. Tiffany recognized this. The witches were making a Decision. Lucy Warbeck sidled up to her while she was bringing out a tray of tea, and whispered, as if it were a guilty secret: “Mistress Weatherwax has suggested you, Tiff.” “No!” “It’s true! They’re talking about it! Annagramma’s having a fit!” “Are you sure?” “Positive! Best of luck!” “But I don’t want the—” Tiffany pushed the tray into Lucy’s arms. “Look, can you take that around for me, please? They’ll just grab as you go past. I’ve got to get the, er, put the things in, er…got things to do….” She hurried down the steps to the cellar, which was suspiciously empty of Feegles, and leaned against the wall. Granny Weatherwax must be cackling, rules or no rules! But her Second Thoughts crept up to whisper: You could do it, though. She may be right. Annagramma annoys people. She talks to them as if they are children. She’s interested in magic (sorry, magik with a “K”), but people get on her nerves. She’ll make a mess of it, you know she will. She just happens to be tall and wears lots of occult jewelry and looks impressive in a pointy hat. Why would Granny suggest Tiffany? Oh, she was good. She knew she was good. But didn’t everyone know she didn’t want to spend her life up here? Well, it had to be Annagramma, didn’t it? Witches tended to be cautious and traditional, and she was the oldest of the coven. Okay, a lot of witches didn’t like Mrs. Earwig, but Granny Weatherwax didn’t exactly have many friends either. She went back upstairs before she could be missed, and tried to be inconspicuous as she sidled through the crowd. She saw Mrs. Earwig and Annagramma as the center of one group; the girl looked worried, and hurried over when she caught sight of Tiffany. She was red in the face. “Have you heard anything?” she demanded. “What? No!” said Tiffany, starting to pile up used plates. “You’re trying to take the cottage away from me, aren’t you?” Annagramma was nearly crying. “Don’t be silly! Me? I don’t want a cottage at all!” “So you say. But some of them are saying you should get it! Miss Level and Miss Pullunder have spoken up for you!” “What? I couldn’t possibly follow Miss Treason!” “Well, of course that’s what Mrs. Earwig is telling everyone,” said Annagramma, settling down a bit. “Completely unacceptable, she says.” I took the hiver through the Dark Door, Tiffany thought, as she viciously scraped food scraps into the garden for the birds. The White Horse came out of the hill for me. I got my brother and Roland back from the Queen of the Elves. And I danced with the Wintersmith, who turned me into ten billion snowflakes. No, I don’t want to be in a cottage in these damp woods, I don’t want to be a kind of slave to people who can’t be bothered to think for themselves, I don’t want to wear midnight and make people afraid of me. There is no name for what I want to be. But I was old enough to do all those things, and I was acceptable. But she said: “I don’t know what this is about!” At which point she felt someone looking at her, and she knew, if she turned around, that it would be Granny Weatherwax. Her Third Thoughts—the ones that paid attention out of the corner of her ear and the edge of her eye all the time—told her: Something is going on. All you can do about it is be yourself. Don’t look around. “You’re really not interested?” said Annagramma uncertainly. “I’ve come up here to learn witching,” said Tiffany stiffly. “And then I’m going to go home. But…are you sure you want the cottage?” “Well, of course! Every witch wants a cottage!” “But they’ve had years and years of Miss Treason,” Tiffany pointed out. “Then they’ll just have to get used to me,” said Annagramma. “I expect they’ll be pretty glad to see the back of skulls and cobwebs and being frightened! I know she’s got the local people really scared of her.” “Ah,” said Tiffany. “I’ll be a new broom,” said Annagramma. “Frankly, Tiffany, after that old woman, just about anyone would be popular.” “Er, yes…” said Tiffany. “Tell me, Annagramma, have you ever worked with any other witch?” “No, I’ve always been with Mrs. Earwig. I’m her first pupil, you know,” Annagramma added proudly. “She’s very exclusive.” “And she doesn’t go around the villages much, does she?” said Tiffany. “No. She concentrates on the Higher Magik.” Annagramma wasn’t particularly observant and was very vain, even by the standard of witches, but now she looked a little less confident. “Well, someone has to. We can’t all tramp around bandaging cut fingers, you know,” she added. “Is there a problem?” “Hmm? Oh, no. I’m sure you’ll get on well,” said Tiffany. “Er…I know my way around the place, so if you need any help, just ask.” “Oh, I’m sure I’ll get things sorted out to my liking,” said Annagramma, whose boundless self-confidence couldn’t stay squashed for long. “I’d better go. By the way, it looks as though the food is running low.” She swept away. The big vats on the trestle table just inside the door were indeed looking a bit empty. Tiffany saw one witch stuff four hard-boiled eggs into her pocket. “Good afternoon, Miss Tick,” she said loudly. “Ah, Tiffany,” said Miss Tick smoothly, turning around without the least sign of embarrassment. “Miss Treason has just been telling us how well you have been doing here.” “Thank you, Miss Tick.” “She says that you have a fine eye for hidden detail,” Miss Tick went on. Like the labels on skulls, Tiffany thought. “Miss Tick,” she said, “do you know anything about people wanting me to take over the cottage?” “Oh, that’s all been decided,” said Miss Tick. “There was some suggestion that it should be you, since you’re already here, but really, you are still young, and Annagramma has had much more experience. I’m sorry, but—” “That’s not fair, Miss Tick,” said Tiffany. “Now, now, Tiffany, that’s not the sort of thing a witch says—” Miss Tick began. “I don’t mean not fair to me, I mean unfair to Annagramma. She’s going to make a mess of it, isn’t she?” Just for the skin of a moment Miss Tick looked guilty. It really was a very short space of time indeed, but Tiffany spotted it. “Mrs. Earwig is certain that Annagramma will do a very good job,” said Miss Tick. “Are you?” “Remember whom you are talking to, please!” “I’m talking to you, Miss Tick! This is…wrong!” Tiffany’s eyes blazed. She saw movement out of the corner of her eye. An entire plate of sausages was moving across the white cloth at very high speed. “And that is stealing,” she growled, leaping after it. She chased after the dish as, skimming a few inches above the ground, it rounded the cottage and disappeared behind the goat shed. She plunged after it. There were several plates lying on the leaves behind the shed. There were potatoes, oozing butter, and a dozen ham rolls, and a pile of boiled eggs, and two cooked chickens. Everything except the sausages in the dish, which was now stationary, had a gnawed look. There was absolutely no sign of the Feegles. That was how she could tell they were there. They always hid from her when they knew she was angry. Well, this time she was really angry. Not at the Feegles (much), although the stupid hiding trick got on her nerves, but at Miss Tick and Granny Weatherwax and Annagramma and Miss Treason (for dying), and the Wintersmith himself (for a lot of reasons she hadn’t had time to sort out yet). She stepped back and went quiet. There was always a feeling of sinking slowly and peacefully, but this time it was like a dive into darkness. When she opened her eyes, it felt as if she were looking through windows into a huge hall. Sound seemed to be coming from a long way away, and there was an itching between her eyes. Feegles appeared, from under leaves, behind twigs, even from under plates. Their voices sounded as though they were underwater. “Ach, crivens! She’s done some big hagglin’ on us!” “She’s ne’er done that before!” Hah, I’m hiding from you, thought Tiffany. Bit of a change, eh? Hmm, I wonder if I can move. She took a step sideways. The Feegles didn’t seem to see it. “She’s gonna jump oot on us any moment! Ooohhh, waily—” Ha! If I could walk up to Granny Weatherwax like this, she’d have to be so impressed— The itch on Tiffany’s nose was getting worse, and there was a feeling that was similar to, but fortunately not yet the same as, the need to visit the privy. It meant: Something is going to happen soon, so it would be a good idea to be ready for it. The sound of the voices began to get clearer, and little blue and purple spots ran across her vision. And then there was something that, if it had made a noise, would have gone wwwhamp! It was like the popping you got in your ears after a high broomstick flight. She reappeared in the middle of the Feegles, causing immediate panic. “Stop stealing the funeral meats right now, you wee scuggers!” she shouted. The Feegles stopped and stared at her. Then Rob Anybody said: “Socks wi’oot feets?” There was one of those moments—you got a lot of them around the Feegles—when the world seems to have got tangled up and it is so important to unravel the knot before you can go any further. “What are you talking about?” asked Tiffany. “Scuggers,” said Rob Anybody. “They’re like socks wi’oot feets in ’em. For keepin’ yer legs warm, ye ken?” “You mean like legwarmers?” said Tiffany. “Aye, aye, that would be a verra guid name for ’em, it bein’ what they do,” said Rob. “In point o’ fact, mebbe the term ye meant to use wuz ‘thievin’ scunners,’ which means—” “—us,” said Daft Wullie helpfully. “Oh. Yes. Thank you,” said Tiffany quietly. She folded her arms and then shouted, “Right, you thieving scunners! How dare you steal Miss Treason’s funeral meats!” “Oh, waily waily, it’s the Foldin’ o’ the Arms, the Foooldin’ o’ the Aaaarmss!” cried Daft Wullie, dropping to the ground and trying to cover himself with leaves. Around him Feegles started to wail and cower, and Big Yan began to bang his head on the rear wall of the dairy. “Now then, ye must all stay calm!” yelled Rob Anybody, turning around and waving his hands desperately at his brothers. “There’s the Pursin’ o’ the Lips!” a Feegle shouted, pointing a shaking finger at Tiffany’s face. “She’s got the knowin’ o’ the Pursin’ o’ the Lips! ’Tis Doom come upon us a’!” The Feegles tried to run, but since they were panicking again, they mostly collided with one another. “I’m waiting for an explanation!” said Tiffany. The Feegles froze, and every face turned toward Rob Anybody. “An Explanation?” he said, shifting uneasily. “Oh, aye. An Explanation. Nae problemo. An Explanation. Er…what kind would you like?” “What kind? I just want the truth!” “Aye? Oh. The truth? Are you sure?” Rob ventured rather nervously. “I can do much more interestin’ Explanations than that—” “Out with it!” snapped Tiffany, tapping her foot. “Ach, crivens, the Tappin’ o’ the Feets has started!” moaned Daft Wullie. “There’s gonna be witherin’ scoldin’ at any moment!” And that was it. Tiffany burst out laughing. You couldn’t look at a bunch of frightened Nac Mac Feegles and not laugh. They were so bad at it. One sharp word and they were like a basket of scared puppies, only smellier. Rob Anybody gave her a lopsided grin. “Weel, all the big hags is doin’ it too,” he said. “The wee fat one’s thieved fifteen ham rolls!” he added admiringly. “That’d be Nanny Ogg,” said Tiffany. “Yes, she always carries a string bag up her knicker leg.” “Ach, this is no’ a proper wake,” said Rob Anybody. “There should be singin’ an’ boozin’ an’ the flexin’ o’ the knees, no’ all this standin’ aroond gossipin’.” “Well, gossiping’s part of witchcraft,” said Tiffany. “They’re checking to see if they’ve gone batty yet. What is the flexin’ o’ the knees?” “The dancin’, ye ken,” said Rob. “The jigs an’ reels. ’Tis no’ a good wake unless the hands is flingin’ an’ the feets is twinklin’ an’ the knees is flexin’ an’ the kilts is flyin’.” Tiffany had never seen the Feegles dance, but she had heard them. It sounded like warfare, which was probably how it ended up. The flyin’ o’ the kilts sounded a bit worrying, though, and reminded her of a question she had never quite dared to ask up until now. “Tell me…is there anything worn under the kilt?” From the way the Feegles went quiet again, she got the feeling that this was not a question they liked being asked. Rob Anybody narrowed his eyes. The Feegles held their breath. “Not necessarily,” he said. At last the funeral was over, possibly because there was nothing left to eat and drink. Many of the departing witches were carrying small packages. That was another tradition. A lot of things in the cottage were the property of the cottage, and would pass on to the next witch, but everything else got passed on to the soon-to-be-late witch’s friends. Since the old witch would be alive when this happened, it saved squabbling. That was the thing about witches. They were, according to Granny Weatherwax, “people what looks up.” She didn’t explain. She seldom explained. She didn’t mean people who looked at the sky; everyone did that. She probably meant that they looked up above the everyday chores and wondered, “What’s all this about? How does it work? What should I do? What am I for?” And possibly even: “Is there anything worn under the kilt?” Perhaps that was why odd, in a witch, was normal… …but they’d squabble like polecats over a silver spoon that wasn’t even silver. As it was, several were waiting impatiently by the sink for Tiffany to wash some big dishes that Miss Treason had promised to them, and which had held the funeral roast potatoes and sausage rolls. At least there was no problem with leftovers. Nanny Ogg, a witch who’d invented Leftover Sandwiches Soup, was waiting in the scullery with her big string bag and a bigger grin. “We were going to have the rest and potatoes for supper,” said Tiffany angrily, but with a certain amount of interest. She’d met Nanny Ogg before and quite liked her, but Miss Treason had said, darkly, that Nanny Ogg was “a disgusting old baggage.” That sort of comment attracts your attention. “Fair enough,” said Nanny Ogg as Tiffany placed her hand on the meat. “You did a good job here today, Tiff. People notice that.” She was gone before Tiffany could recover. One of them had very nearly said thank you! Amazing! Petulia helped her bring the big table indoors and finish the tidying up. She hesitated, though, before she left. “Um…you will be all right, will you?” she said. “It’s all a bit…strange.” “We’re supposed to be no strangers to strangeness,” said Tiffany primly. “Anyway, you’ve sat up with the dead and dying, haven’t you?” “Oh, yes. Mostly pigs, though. Some humans. Um…I don’t mind staying, if you like,” Petulia added in a leaving-as-soon-as-possible voice. “Thank you. But after all, what’s the worst that can happen?” Petulia stared at her and then said, “Well, let me think…a thousand vampire demons, each one with enormous—” “I’ll be fine,” said Tiffany quickly. “Don’t you worry at all. Good night.” Tiffany shut the door and then leaned on it with her hand over her mouth until she heard the gate click. She counted to ten to make sure that Petulia had got some distance and then risked taking her hand away. By then the scream that had been patiently waiting to come out had dwindled to something like “Unk!” This was going to be a very strange night. People died. It was sad, but they did. What did you do next? People expected the local witch to know. So you washed the body and did a few secret and squelchy things and dressed them in their best clothes and laid them out with bowls of earth and salt beside them (no one knew why you did this bit, not even Miss Treason, but it had always been done) and you put two pennies on their eyes “for the ferryman” and you sat with them the night before they were buried, because they shouldn’t be left alone. Exactly why was never properly explained, although everyone got told the story of the old man who was slightly less dead than everybody thought and got up off the spare bed in the middle of the night and got back into bed with his wife. The real reason was probably a lot darker than that. The start and finish of things was always dangerous, lives most of all. But Miss Treason was a wicked ol’ witch. Who knew what might happen? Hang on, Tiffany told herself; don’t you believe the Boffo. She’s really just a clever old lady with a catalogue! In the other room Miss Treason’s loom stopped. It often did. But this evening the sudden silence it made was louder than usual. Miss Treason called out: “What do we have in the larder that needs eating up?” Yes, this is going to be a very odd night, Tiffany told herself. Miss Treason went to bed early. It was the first time Tiffany had ever known her not to sleep in a chair. She’d put on a long white nightdress, too, the first time Tiffany had seen her not in black. There was a lot still to do. It was traditional that the cottage should be left sparkling clean for the next witch, and although it was hard to make black sparkle, Tiffany did her best. Actually, the cottage was always pretty clean, but Tiffany scraped and scrubbed and polished because it put off the moment when she’d have to go and talk to Miss Treason. She even took down the fake spiderwebs and threw them on the fire, where they burned with a nasty blue flame. She wasn’t sure what to do with the skulls. Finally, she wrote down everything she could remember about the local villages: when babies were due, who was very ill and what with, who was feuding, who was “difficult,” and just about every other local detail she thought might be helpful to Annagramma. Anything to just put off the moment…. At last there was nothing for it but to climb the narrow stairs and say: “Is everything all right, Miss Treason?” The old woman was sitting up in bed, scribbling. The ravens were perched on the bedposts. “I’m just writing a few thank-you letters,” she said. “Some of those ladies today came quite a long way and will be having a chilly ride back.” “‘Thank you for coming to my funeral’ letters?” asked Tiffany weakly. “Indeed. And they’re not often written, you may be sure of that. You know the girl Annagramma Hawkin will be the new witch here? I am sure she would like you to stay on. At least for a while.” “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” said Tiffany. “Quite,” said Miss Treason smiling. “I suspect the girl Weatherwax has arrangements in mind. It will be interesting to see how Mrs. Earwig’s brand of witchcraft suits my silly people, although it may be best to observe events from behind a rock. Or, in my case, under it.” She put the letters aside, and both the ravens turned to look at Tiffany. “You have been here with me only three months.” “That’s right, Miss Treason.” “We have not talked, woman to woman. I should have taught you more.” “I’ve learned a lot, Miss Treason.” And that was true. “You have a young man, Tiffany. He sends you letters and packages. You go into Lancre Town every week to send letters to him. I fear you live not where you love.” Tiffany said nothing. They’d been through this before. Roland seemed to fascinate Miss Treason. “I was always too busy to pay attention to young men,” said Miss Treason. “They were always for later and then later was too late. Pay attention to your young man.” “Erm…I did say he’s not actually my—” Tiffany began, feeling herself start to blush. “But do not become a strumpet like Mrs. Ogg,” said Miss Treason. “I’m not very musical,” said Tiffany uncertainly. Miss Treason laughed. “You have a dictionary, I believe,” she said. “A strange but useful thing for a girl to have.” “Yes, Miss Treason.” “On my bookshelf you will find a rather larger dictionary. An Unexpurgated Dictionary. A useful thing for a young woman to have. You may take it, and one other book. The others will remain with the cottage. You may also have my broomstick. Everything else, of course, belongs to the cottage.” “Thank you very much, Miss Treason. I’d like to take that book about mythology.” “Ah, yes. Chaffinch. A very good choice. It has been a great help to me and will, I suspect, be of particular assistance to you. The loom must stay, of course. Annagramma Hawkin will find it useful.” Tiffany doubted this. Annagramma wasn’t very practical at all. But it was probably not the time to say so. Miss Treason leaned back against the cushions. “They think you wove names into your cloth,” said Tiffany. “That? Oh, it’s true. There’s nothing magical about it. It’s a very old trick. Any weaver can do it. You won’t be able to read it, though, without knowing how it was done.” Miss Treason sighed. “Oh, my silly people. Anything they don’t understand is magic. They think I can see into their hearts, but no witch can do that. Not without surgery, at least. No magic is needed to read their little minds, though. I’ve known them since they were babes. I remember when their grandparents were babes! They think they’re so grown-up! But they’re still no better than babies in the sandpit, squabbling over mud pies. I see their lies and excuses and fears. They never grow up, not really. They never look up and open their eyes. They stay children their whole lives.” “I’m sure they’ll miss you,” said Tiffany. “Ha! I’m the wicked ol’ witch, girl. They feared me, and did what they were told! They feared joke skulls and silly stories. I chose fear. I knew they’d never love me for telling ’em the truth, so I made certain of their fear. No, they’ll be relieved to hear the witch is dead. And now I shall tell you something vitally important. It is the secret of my long life.” Ah, thought Tiffany, and she leaned forward. “The important thing,” said Miss Treason, “is to stay the passage of the wind. You should avoid rumbustious fruits and vegetables. Beans are the worst, take it from me.” “I don’t think I understand—” Tiffany began. “Try not to fart, in a nutshell.” “In a nutshell I imagine it would be pretty unpleasant!” said Tiffany nervously. She couldn’t believe she was being told this. “This is no joking matter,” said Miss Treason. “The human body only has so much air in it. You have to make it last. One plate of beans can take a year off your life. I have avoided rumbustiousness all my days. I am an old person and that means what I say is wisdom!” She gave the bewildered Tiffany a stern look. “Do you understand, child?” Tiffany’s mind raced. Everything is a test! “No,” she said. “I’m not a child and that’s nonsense, not wisdom!” The stern look cracked into a smile. “Yes,” said Miss Treason. “Total gibberish. But you’ve got to admit it’s a corker, all the same, right? You definitely believed it, just for a moment? The villagers did last year. You should have seen the way they walked about for a few weeks! The strained looks on their faces quite cheered me up! How are things with the Wintersmith? All gone quiet, has it?” The question was like a sharp knife in a slice of cake, and arrived so suddenly that Tiffany gasped. “I woke up early and wondered where you were,” said Miss Treason. It was so easy to forget that she used other people’s ears and eyes all the time, in an absentminded sort of way. “Did you see the roses?” asked Tiffany. She hadn’t felt the telltale tickle, but she hadn’t exactly had much time for anything but worry. “Yes. Fine things,” said Miss Treason. “I wish I could help you, Tiffany, but I’m going to be otherwise occupied. And romance is an area where I cannot offer much advice.” “Romance?” said Tiffany, shocked. “The girl Weatherwax and Miss Tick will have to guide you,” Miss Treason went on. “I must say, though, that I suspect that neither of them has jousted much in the lists of love.” “Lists of love?” said Tiffany. It was getting worse! “Can you play poker?” Miss Treason asked. “Pardon?” “Poker. The card game. Or Cripple Mr. Onion? Chase My Neighbor Up the Passage? You must have sat up with the dead and dying before?” “Well, yes. But I’ve never played cards with them! Anyway, I don’t know how to play!” “I’ll teach you. There’s a pack of cards in the bottom drawer of the dresser. Go and fetch them.” “Is this like gambling? My father said that people shouldn’t gamble.” Miss Treason nodded. “Good advice, my dear. Don’t worry. The way I play poker isn’t like gambling at all….” When Tiffany awoke with a jolt, playing cards sliding off her dress and onto the floor, the cold gray light of morning filled the room. She peered at Miss Treason, who was snoring like a pig. What was the time? It was six at least! What should she do? Nothing. There was nothing to do. She picked up the Ace of Wands and stared at it. So that was poker, was it? Well, she hadn’t been too bad at it, once she’d worked out that it was all about making your face tell lies. For most of the time the cards were just something to do with your hands. Miss Treason slept on. Tiffany wondered if she should get some breakfast, but it seemed such a— “The ancient kings of Djelibeybi, who are buried in pyramids,” said Miss Treason from the bed, “used to believe that they could take things with them into the next world. Such things as gold and precious stones and even slaves. On that basis, please make me a ham sandwich.” “Er…you mean…?” Tiffany began. “The journey after death is quite a long one,” said Miss Treason, sitting up. “I may get hungry.” “But you’ll just be a soul!” “Well, perhaps a ham sandwich has a soul, too,” said Miss Treason, as she swung her skinny legs out of the bed. “I’m not sure about the mustard, but it’s worth a try. Hold still there!” This was because she had picked up her hairbrush and was using Tiffany as a mirror. The fiercely concentrated glare a few inches away was as much as Tiffany could bear on a morning like this. “Thank you—you may go and make the sandwich,” said Miss Treason, laying the brush aside. “I will now get dressed.” Tiffany hurried out and washed her face in the basin in her room; she always did that after the eyeballing, but she’d never plucked up the courage to object, and now certainly wasn’t the time to start. As she dried her face, she thought she heard a muffled sound outside and went over to the window. There was frost on— Oh, no…oh…no…no! He was at it again! The frost ferns spelled the word “Tiffany.” Over and over. She grabbed a rag and wiped them off, but the ice only formed again, thicker. She hurried downstairs. The ferns were all over the windows, and when she tried to wipe them off, the rag froze to the glass. It creaked when she pulled at it. Her name, all over the window. Over all the windows. Maybe over all the windows in all the mountains. Everywhere. He’d come back. That was dreadful! But also, just a bit…cool…. She didn’t think the word, because as far as Tiffany knew the word meant “slightly cold.” But she thought the thought, even so. It was a hot little thought. “In my day young men would just carve the girl’s initials on a tree,” said Miss Treason, coming down the stairs one careful step at a time. Too late, Tiffany felt the tickle behind her eyes. “It’s not funny, Miss Treason! What shall I do?” “I don’t know. If possible, be yourself.” Miss Treason bent down creakily and opened her hand. The seeing-eye mouse hopped down onto the floor, turned, and stared at her with tiny black eyes for a moment. She prodded it with a finger. “Go on, off you go. Thank you,” she said, and then it scuttled off to a hole. Tiffany helped her upright, and the old witch said: “You’re starting to snivel, aren’t you.” “Well, it’s all a bit—” Tiffany began. The little mouse had looked so lost and forlorn. “Don’t cry,” said Miss Treason. “Living this long’s not as wonderful as people think. I mean, you get the same amount of youth as everyone else, but a great big extra helping of being very old and deaf and creaky. Now, blow your nose and help me on with the ravens’ perch.” “He might still be out there…” Tiffany mumbled, as she eased the perch onto the thin shoulders. Then she rubbed at the window again and saw shapes and movement. “Oh…they came…” she said. “What?” said Miss Treason. She stopped. “There’s lots of people out there!” “Er…yes,” said Tiffany. “What do you know about this, my girl?” “Well, you see, they kept asking when—” “Fetch my skulls! They mustn’t see me without my skulls! How does my hair look?” said Miss Treason, frantically winding up her clock. “It looks nice—” “Nice? Nice? Are you mad? Mess it up this minute!” Miss Treason demanded. “And fetch my most raggedy cloak! This one’s far too clean! Move yourself, child!” It took several minutes to get Miss Treason ready, and a lot of the time was spent convincing her that taking the skulls out in daylight might be dangerous, in case they got dropped and someone saw the labels. Then Tiffany opened the door. A murmur of conversation crashed into silence. There were people in a crowd all around the door. As Miss Treason stepped forward, it parted to leave a clear path. To her horror, Tiffany saw a dug grave on the other side of the clearing. She hadn’t expected that. She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but a dug grave wasn’t it. “Who dug—?” “Our blue friends,” said Miss Treason. “I asked them to.” And then the crowd started to cheer. Women hurried forward with big bunches of yew, holly, and mistletoe, the only green things growing. People were laughing. People were crying. They clustered around the witch, forcing Tiffany out to the edge of the crowd. She went quiet and listened. “We don’t know what we’ll do without you, Miss Treason.”—“I don’t think we’ll get another witch as good as you, Miss Treason!”—“We never thought you’d go, Miss Treason. You brought my ol’ granddad into the world.”— Walking into the grave, Tiffany thought. Well, that’s style. That is…solid gold Boffo. They’ll remember that for the rest of their lives— “In that case you shall keep all the puppies but one—” Miss Treason had stopped to organize the crowd. “The custom is to give that one to the owner of the dog. You should have kept the bitch in, after all, and minded your fences. And your question, Mister Blinkhorn?” Tiffany stood up straight. They were bothering her! Even this morning! But she…wanted to be bothered. Being bothered was her life. “Miss Treason!” she snapped, pushing her way through the mob. “Remember you have an appointment!” It wasn’t the best thing to say, but a lot better than: “You said you were going to die in about five minutes’ time!” Miss Treason turned and looked uncertain for a moment. “Oh, yes,” she said. “Yes, indeed. We had better get on.” Then, still talking to Mr. Blinkhorn about some complex problem concerning a fallen tree and someone’s shed, and with the rest of the crowd trailing after her, she let Tiffany walk her gently to the graveside. “Well, at least you’ve got a happy ending, Miss Treason,” Tiffany whispered. It was a silly thing to say and deserved what it got. “We make happy endings, child, day to day. But you see, for the witch there are no happy endings. There are just endings. And here we are….” Best not to think, thought Tiffany. Best not to think you’re climbing down an actual ladder into an actual grave. Try not to think about helping Miss Treason down the ladder onto the leaves that are piled up at one end. Do not let yourself know you’re standing in a grave. Down here, the horrible clock seemed to clank even louder: clonk-clank, clonk-clank…. Miss Treason trod the leaves down a bit and said cheerfully, “Yes, I can see myself being quite comfortable here. Listen, child, I told you about the books, did I not? And there is a small gift for you under my chair. Yes, this seems adequate. Oh, I forgot…” Clonk-clank, clonk-clank …went the clock, sounding much louder down there. Miss Treason stood on tiptoe and poked her head over the edge of the hole. “Mr. Easy! You owe two months’ rent to the Widow Langley! Understand? Mr. Plenty, the pig belongs to Mrs. Frumment, and if you don’t give it back to her, I shall come back and groan under your window! Mistress Fullsome, the Dogelley family have had Right of Passage over the Turnwise pasture since even I cannot remember, and you must…you must…” Clon…k. There was a moment, one long moment, when the sudden silence of the clock not ticking anymore filled the clearing like thunder. Slowly Miss Treason sagged down onto the leaves. It took a few dreadful seconds for her brain to start working, and then Tiffany screamed at the people clustered above: “Go back, all of you! Give her some air!” She knelt down as they backed hurriedly away. The smell of the raw soil was sharp in the air. At least Miss Treason seemed to have died with her eyes shut. Not everyone did. Tiffany hated having to shut them for people; it was like killing them all over again. “Miss Treason?” she whispered. That was the first test. There were a lot of them, and you had to do them all: speak to them, raise an arm, check the pulses including the one behind the ear, check for breath with a mirror…and she’d always been so nervous about getting them wrong that the first time she’d had to go out to deal with someone who looked dead—a young man who’d been in a horrible sawmill accident—she’d done every single test, even though she’d had to go and find his head. There were no mirrors in Miss Treason’s cottage. In that case she— —should think! This is Miss Treason here! And I heard her wind her clock up only a few minutes ago! She smiled. “Miss Treason!” she said, very close to the woman’s ear. “I know you’re in there!” And that’s when the morning, which had been sad, weird, odd, and horrible, became…Boffo all the way. Miss Treason smiled. “Have they gone?” she inquired. “Miss Treason!” said Tiffany sternly. “That was a terrible thing to do!” “I stopped my clock with my thumbnail,” said Miss Treason proudly. “Couldn’t disappoint them, eh? Had to give ’em a show!” “Miss Treason,” said Tiffany severely, “did you make up the story about your clock?” “Of course I did! And it’s a wonderful bit of folklore, a real corker. Miss Treason and her clockwork heart! Might even become a myth, if I’m lucky. They’ll remember Miss Treason for thousands of years!” Miss Treason closed her eyes again. “I’ll certainly remember you, Miss Treason,” said Tiffany. “I will really, because—” The world had gone gray, and was getting grayer. And Miss Treason had gone very still. “Miss Treason?” said Tiffany, nudging her. “Miss Treason?” MISS EUMENIDES TREASON, AGED ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN? Tiffany heard the voice inside her head. It didn’t seem to have come through her ears. And she’d heard it before, making her quite unusual. Most people hear the voice of Death only once. Miss Treason stood up, without the creak of even one bone. And she looked just like Miss Treason, solid and smiling. What now lay on the dead leaves was, in this strange light, just a shadow. But a very tall dark figure was standing beside her. It was Death himself. Tiffany had seen him before, in his own land beyond the Dark Door, but you didn’t need to have met him before to know who he was. The scythe, the long hooded robe, and of course the bundle of hourglasses were all clues. “Where are your manners, child?” said Miss Treason. Tiffany looked up and said: “Good morning.” GOOD MORNING, TIFFANY ACHING, AGED THIRTEEN, said Death in his no-voice. I SEE YOU ARE IN GOOD HEALTH. “A little curtsy would be in order too,” said Miss Treason. To Death? thought Tiffany. Granny Aching wouldn’t have liked that. Never bend the knee to tyrants, she would say. AT LAST, MISS EUMENIDES TREASON, WE MUST WALK TOGETHER. Death took her gently by the arm. “Hey, wait a minute!” said Tiffany. “Miss Treason is one hundred and thirteen!” “Er…I adjusted it slightly for professional reasons,” said Miss Treason. “One hundred and eleven sounds so…adolescent.” As if to hide her ghostly embarrassment, she plunged her hand into her pocket and pulled out the spirit of the ham sandwich. “Ah, it worked,” she said. “I know I—where has the mustard gone?” MUSTARD IS ALWAYS TRICKY, said Death as they began to fade. “No mustard? What about pickled onions?” PICKLES OF ALL SORTS DON’T SEEM TO MAKE IT. I’M SORRY. Behind them, the outline of a door appeared. “No relishes in the next world? That’s dreadful! What about chutneys?” said the vanishing Miss Treason. THERE’S JAM. JAM WORKS. “Jam? Jam! With ham?” And they were gone. The light went back to normal. Sound came back. Time came back. Once again the thing to do was not to think too deeply, just keep her thoughts nice and level and focused on what she had to do. Watched by the people still hovering around the clearing, Tiffany went and got some blankets, bundling them up so that when she carried them back to the grave, no one would notice that the two Boffo skulls and the spiderweb-making machine were tucked inside. Then with Miss Treason and the secret of Boffo safely tucked away, she filled in the grave, and at this point a couple of men ran and helped her—right until there came, from under the soil: Clonk-clank. Clonk. The men froze. So did Tiffany, but her Third Thoughts cut in with: Don’t worry! Remember, she stopped it! A falling stone or something must have started it going again! She relaxed and said sweetly: “That was probably just her saying good-bye.” The rest of the soil got shoveled in really quickly. And now I’m part of the Boffo, Tiffany thought, as the people hurried back to their villages. But Miss Treason worked very hard for them. She deserves to be a myth, if that’s what she wants. And I’ll bet, I’ll bet that on dark nights they’ll hear her…. But now there was nothing but the wind in the trees. She stared at the grave. Someone should say something. Well? She was the witch, after all. There wasn’t much religion on the Chalk or in the mountains. The Omnians came and had a prayer meeting about once a year, and sometimes a priest from the Nine Day Wonderers or the See of Little Faith or the Church of Small Gods would come by on a donkey. People went to listen, if a priest sounded interesting or went red and shouted, and they sang the songs if they had a good tune. And then they went home again. “We are small people,” her father had said. “It ain’t wise to come to the attention of the gods.” Tiffany remembered the words he had said over the grave of Granny Aching, what seemed like a lifetime ago. On the summer turf of the downlands, with the buzzards screaming in the sky, they had seemed to be all there was to say. So she said them now: “If any ground is Consecrate, this ground is. If any day is Holy, it is this day.” She saw a movement, and then Billy Bigchin, the gonnagle, scrambled onto the turned earth of the grave. He gave Tiffany a solemn look, then unslung his mousepipes and began to play. Humans could not hear the mousepipes very well because the notes were too high, but Tiffany could feel them in her head. A gonnagle could put many things into his music, and she felt sunsets, and autumns, and the mist on hills and the smell of roses so red they were nearly black…. When he had finished, the gonnagle stood in silence for a moment, looked at Tiffany again, then vanished. Tiffany sat on a stump and cried a bit, because it needed to be done. Then she went and milked the goats, because someone had to do that, too. CHAPTER SIX Feet and Sprouts I n the cottage, the beds were airing, the floors had been swept, and the log basket was full. On the kitchen table the inventory was laid out: so many spoons, so many pans, so many dishes, all lined up in the dingy light. Tiffany packed some of the cheeses, though. She’d made them, after all. The loom was silent in its room; it looked like the bones of some dead animal, but under the big chair was the package Miss Treason had mentioned, wrapped in black paper. Inside it was a cloak woven of brown wool so dark that it was almost black. It looked warm. That was it, then. Time to go. If she lay down and put her ear to a mousehole, she could hear widespread snoring coming from the cellar. The Feegles believed that after a really good funeral, everyone should be lying down. It wasn’t a good idea to wake them. They’d find her. They always did. Was that everything? Oh, no, not quite. She took down the Unexpurgated Dictionary and Chaffinch’s Mythology, with the “Dacne of the Sneasos” in it, and went to tuck them into a bag under the cheeses. As she did so, the pages flipped like cards and several things dropped out onto the stone floor. Some of them were faded old letters, which she tucked back inside for now. There was also the Boffo catalogue. The cover had a grinning clown on it, and the words: The Boffo Novelty & Joke Company!!!!! Guffaws, Jokes, Chuckles, Japes Galore!!! IF IT’S A LAUGH, IT’S A BOFFO!!! Be the Life of the Party with our Novelty Gift Pack!!! Special Offer This Month: Half Price off Red Noses!!! Yes, you could spend years trying to be a witch, or you could spend a lot of money with Mr. Boffo and be one as soon as the postman arrived. Fascinated, Tiffany turned the pages. There were skulls (Glow in the Dark, $8 Extra) and fake ears and pages of hilarious noses (Ghastly Dangling Booger free on noses over $5) and masks, as Boffo would say, Galore!!! Mask No. 19, for example, was: Wicked Witch De-Luxe, with Mad Greasy Hair, Rotting Teeth, and Hairy Warts (supplied loose, stick them where you like!!!). Miss Treason had obviously stopped short of buying one of these, possibly because the nose looked like a carrot but probably because the skin was bright green. She could also have bought Scary Witch Hands ($8 a pair, with green skin and black fingernails) and Smelly Witch Feet ($9). Tiffany tucked the catalogue back into the book. She couldn’t leave it for Annagramma to find, or the secret of Miss Treason’s Boffo would be out. And that was it: one life, ended and neatly tidied away. One cottage, clean and empty. One girl, wondering what was going to happen next. “Arrangements” would be made. Clonk-clank. She didn’t move, didn’t look around. I’m not going to be Boffo’d, she told herself. There’s an explanation for that noise that has nothing to do with Miss Treason. Let’s see…I cleaned the fireplace, right? And I leaned the poker next to it. But unless you get it just right, it always falls over sooner or later in a sneaky kind of way. That’s it. When I turn and look behind me, I’ll see that the poker has fallen over and is lying in the grate and therefore the noise wasn’t caused by any kind of ghostly clock at all. She turned around slowly. The poker was lying in the grate. And now, she thought, it would be a good idea to go outside into the fresh air. It’s a bit sad and stuffy in here. That’s why I want to go out, because it’s sad and stuffy. It’s not at all because I’m afraid of any imaginary noises. I’m not superstitious. I’m a witch. Witches aren’t superstitious. We are what people are superstitious of. I just don’t want to stay. I felt safe here when she was alive—it was like sheltering under a huge tree—but I don’t think it is safe anymore. If the Wintersmith makes the trees shout my name, well, I’ll cover my ears. The house feels like it’s dying and I’m going outside. There was no point in locking the door. The local people were nervous enough about going inside even when Miss Treason was alive. They certainly wouldn’t set foot inside now, not until another witch had made the place her own. A weak, runny-egg kind of sun was showing through the clouds, and the wind had blown the frost away. But a brief autumn turned to winter quickly up here; from now on there would always be the smell of snow in the air. Up in the mountains the winter never ended. Even in the summer, the water in the streams was ice cold from the melting snow. Tiffany sat down on the old stump with her ancient suitcase and a sack and waited for the Arrangements. Annagramma would be here pretty soon, you could bet on that. The cottage already looked abandoned. It seemed like— It was her birthday. The thought pushed itself to the front. Yes, it would be today. Death had got it right. The one big day in the year that was totally hers, and she had forgotten about it in all the excitement, and now it was already two thirds over. Had she ever told Petulia and the others when her birthday was? She couldn’t remember. Thirteen years old. But she’d been thinking of herself as “nearly thirteen” for months now. Pretty soon she’d be “nearly fourteen.” She was just about to enjoy a bit of self-pity when there was a stealthy rustling behind her. She turned so quickly that Horace the cheese leaped backward. “Oh, it’s you,” said Tiffany. “Where have you been, you naughty bo—cheese? I was worried sick!” Horace looked ashamed, but it was quite hard to see how he managed it. “Are you going to come with me?” she asked. Horace was immediately surrounded by a feeling of yesness. “All right. You must get in the sack.” Tiffany opened it, but Horace backed away. “Well, if you are going to be a naughty chee—” she began, and stopped. Her hand was itching. She looked up…at the Wintersmith. It had to be him. At first he was just swirling snow in the air, but as he strode across the clearing, he seemed to come together, become human, become a young man with a cloak billowing out behind him and snow on his hair and shoulders. He wasn’t transparent this time, not entirely, but something like ripples ran across him, and Tiffany thought she could see the trees behind him, like shadows. She took a few hurried steps backward, but the Wintersmith was crossing the dead grass with the speed of a skater. She could turn and run, but that would mean she was, well, turning and running, and why should she do that? She hadn’t been the one scribbling on people’s windows! What should she say, what should she say? “Now, I really appreciated you finding my necklace,” she said, backing away again. “And the snowflakes and roses were really very…it was very sweet. But…I don’t think that we…well, you’re made of cold and I’m not…I’m a human, made of…human stuff.” “You must be her,” said the Wintersmith. “You were in the Dance! And now you are here, in my winter.” The voice wasn’t right. It sounded…fake, somehow, as if the Wintersmith had been taught to say the sound of words without understanding what they were. “I’m a her,” she said uncertainly. “I don’t know about ‘must be.’ Er…please, I’m really sorry about the dance, I didn’t mean to, it just seemed so…” He’s still got the same purple-gray eyes, she noticed. Purple-gray, in a face sculpted from freezing fog. A handsome face, too. “Look, I never meant to make you think—” she began. “Meant?” said the Wintersmith, looking astonished. “But we don’t mean. We are!” “What do you…mean?” “Crivens!” “Oh, no…” muttered Tiffany as Feegles erupted from the grass. The Feegles didn’t know the meaning of the word “fear.” Sometimes Tiffany wished they’d read a dictionary. They fought like tigers, they fought like demons, they fought like giants. What they didn’t do was fight like something with more than a spoonful of brain. They attacked the Wintersmith with swords, heads, and feet, and the fact that everything went through him as if he were a shadow didn’t seem to bother them. If a Feegle aimed a boot at a misty leg and ended up kicking himself in his own head, then it had been a good result. The Wintersmith ignored them, like a man paying no attention to butterflies. “Where is your power? Why are you dressed like this?” the Wintersmith demanded. “This is not as it should be!” He stepped forward and grabbed Tiffany’s wrist hard, much harder than a ghostly hand should be able to do. “It is wrong!” he shouted. Above the clearing the clouds were moving fast. Tiffany tried to pull away. “Let me go!” “You are her!” the Wintersmith shouted, pulling her toward him. Tiffany hadn’t known where the shout came from, but the slap came from her hand, thinking for itself. It caught the figure on the cheek so hard that for a moment the face blurred, as if she’d smeared a painting. “Don’t come near me! Don’t touch me!” she screamed. There was a flicker behind the Wintersmith. Tiffany couldn’t see it clearly because of the icy haze and her own anger and terror, but something blurred and dark was moving toward them across the clearing, wavering and distorted like a figure seen through ice. It loomed behind the transparent figure for one dark moment, and then became Granny Weatherwax, in the same space as the Wintersmith…inside him. He screamed for a second, and exploded into a mist. Granny stumbled forward, blinking. “Urrrgh. It’ll take a while to get the taste of that out of my head,” she said. “Shut your mouth, girl—something might fly into it.” Tiffany shut her mouth. Something might fly into it. “What…what did you do to him?” she managed. “It!” snapped Granny, rubbing her forehead. “It’s an it, not a he! An it that thinks it’s a he! Now give me your necklace!” “What! But it’s mine!” “Do you think I want an argument?” Granny Weatherwax demanded. “Does it say on my face I want an argument? Give it to me now! Don’t you dare defy me!” “I won’t just—” Granny Weatherwax lowered her voice and, in a piercing hiss much worse than a scream, said: “It’s how it finds you. Do you want it to find you again? It’s just a fog now. How solid do you think it will become?” Tiffany thought about that strange face, not moving like a real one should, and that strange voice, putting words together as if they were bricks…. She undid the little silver clasp and held up the necklace. It’s just Boffo, she told herself. Every stick is a wand, every puddle is a crystal ball. This is just a…a thing. I don’t need it to be me. Yes, I do. “You must give it to me,” said Granny softly. “I can’t take it.” She held out her hand, palm up. Tiffany dropped the horse into it and tried not to see Granny Weatherwax’s fingers as a closing claw. “Very well,” said Granny, satisfied. “Now we must go.” “You were watching me,” said Tiffany sullenly. “All morning. You could have seen me if you’d thought to look,” said Granny. “But you didn’t do a bad job at the burial, I’ll say that.” “I did a good job!” “That’s what I said.” “No,” said Tiffany, still trembling. “You didn’t.” “I’ve never held with skulls and suchlike,” said Granny, ignoring this. “Artificial ones, at any rate. But Miss Treason—” She stopped, and Tiffany saw her stare at the treetops. “Is that him again?” she asked. “No,” said Granny, as if this were something to be disappointed about. “No, that’s young Miss Hawkin. And Mrs. Letice Earwig. Didn’t hang about, I see. And Miss Treason hardly cooled down.” She sniffed. “Some people might have had the common decency not to snatch.” The two broomsticks landed a little way off. Annagramma looked nervous. Mrs. Earwig looked like she always did: tall, pale, very well dressed, wearing lots of occult jewelry and an expression that said you were slightly annoying her but she was being gracious enough not to let it show. And she always looked at Tiffany, when she ever bothered to look at her at all, as if Tiffany were some kind of strange creature that she didn’t quite understand. Mrs. Earwig was always polite to Granny, in a formal and chilly way. It made Granny Weatherwax mad, but that was the way of witches. When they really disliked one another, they were as polite as duchesses. As the other two approached, Granny bowed low and removed her hat. Mrs. Earwig did the same thing, only the bow was a little lower. Tiffany saw Granny glance up and then bow lower still, by about an inch. Mrs. Earwig managed to go half an inch farther down. Tiffany and Annagramma exchanged a hopeless glance over the straining backs. Sometimes this sort of thing could go on for hours. Granny Weatherwax gave a grunt and straightened up. So did Mrs. Earwig, red in the face. “Blessin’s be upon our meetin’,” said Granny in a calm voice. Tiffany winced. This was a declaration of hostilities. Yelling and prodding with the fingers was perfectly ordinary witch arguing, but speaking carefully and calmly was open warfare. “How kind of you to greet us,” said Mrs. Earwig. “I hopes I sees you in good health?” “I keep well, Miss Weatherwax.” Annagramma shut her eyes. That was a kick in the stomach, by witch standards. “It’s Mistress Weatherwax, Mrs. Earwig,” said Granny. “As I believes you know?” “Why, yes. Of course it is. I am so sorry.” These vicious blows having been exchanged, Granny went on: “I trust Miss Hawkin will find everything to her likin’.” “I’m sure that—” Mrs. Earwig stared at Tiffany, her face a question. “Tiffany,” said Tiffany helpfully. “Tiffany. Of course. What a lovely name…. I’m sure that Tiffany has done her very best,” said Mrs. Earwig. “However, we shall shrive and consecrate the cottage, in case of…influences.” I already scrubbed and scrubbed everything! Tiffany thought. “Influences?” said Granny Weatherwax. Even the Wintersmith could not have managed a voice so icy. “And disquieting vibrations,” said Mrs. Earwig. “Oh, I know about those,” said Tiffany. “It’s the loose floorboard in the kitchen. If you tread on it, it makes the dresser wobble.” “There has been talk of a demon,” said Mrs. Earwig, gravely ignoring this. “And…skulls.” “But—” Tiffany began, and Granny’s hand squeezed her shoulder so hard she stopped. “Deary, deary me,” said Granny, still holding on tightly. “Skulls, eh?” “There are some very disturbing stories,” said Mrs. Earwig, watching Tiffany. “Of the darkest nature, Mistress Weatherwax. I feel that the people in this steading have been very badly served, indeed. Dark forces have been unleashed.” Tiffany wanted to yell: No! It was all stories! It was all Boffo! She watched over them! She stopped their stupid arguments, she remembered their laws, she scolded their silliness! She couldn’t do that if she was just a frail old lady! She had to be a myth! But Granny’s grip kept her silent. “Strange forces are certainly at work,” said Granny Weatherwax. “I wish you well in your endeavors, Mrs. Earwig. If you will excuse me?” “Of course, Mis—tress Weatherwax. May good stars attend you.” “May the road slow down to meet your feet,” said Granny. She stopped gripping Tiffany so hard but nevertheless almost dragged her around the side of the cottage. The late Miss Treason’s broomstick was leaning against the wall. “Tie your stuff on quickly!” she commanded. “We must move!” “Is he going to come back?” asked Tiffany, struggling to tie the sack and old suitcase onto the bristles. “Not yet. Not soon, I think. But it will be looking for you. And it will be stronger. Dangerous to you, I believe, and those around you! You have such a lot to learn! You have such a lot to do!” “I thanked him! I tried to be nice to him! Why is he still interested in me?” “Because of the Dance,” said Granny. “I’m sorry about that!” “Not good enough. What does a storm know of sorrow? You must make amends. Did you really think that space was left there for you? Oh, this is so tangled! How are your feet?” Tiffany, angry and bewildered, stopped with one leg half over the stick. “My feet? What about my feet?” “Do they itch? What happens when you take your boots off?” “Nothing! I just see my socks! What have my feet got to do with anything?” “We shall find out,” said Granny, infuriatingly. “Now, come along.” Tiffany tried to get the stick to rise, but it barely cleared the dead grass. She looked around. The bristles were covered with Nac Mac Feegles. “Dinna mind us,” said Rob Anybody. “We’ll hold on tight!” “An’ dinna make it too bumpy, ’cuz I feel like the top o’ mah heid’s come off,” said Daft Wullie. “Do we get meals on this flight?” said Big Yan. “I’m fair boggin’ for a wee drink.” “I can’t take you all!” said Tiffany. “I don’t even know where I’m going!” Granny Weatherwax glared at the Feegles. “You’ll have to walk. We’re travelin’ to Lancre Town. The address is Tir Nani Ogg, The Square.” “Tir Nani Ogg,” said Tiffany. “Isn’t that—?” “It means Nanny Ogg’s Place,” said Granny, as Feegles dropped off the broomstick. “You’ll be safe there. Well, more or less. But we must make a stop on the way. We must put that necklace as far away from you as we can. And I know how to do that! Oh, yes!” The Nac Mac Feegle jogged through the afternoon woods. Local wildlife had found out about Feegles, so the fluffy woodland creatures had all dived for their burrows or climbed high into the trees, but after a while Big Yan called a halt and said: “There’s somethin’ trackin’ us!” “Don’t be daft,” said Rob Anybody. “There’s nothin’ left in these woods that’s mad enough tae hunt Feegles!” “I know what I’m sensin’,” said Big Yan stubbornly. “I can feel it in my watter. There’s somethin’ creepin’ up on us right noo!” “Weel, I’m not one tae argue wi’ a man’s watter,” said Rob wearily. “Okay, lads, spread oot inna big circle!” Swords drawn, the Feegles spread out, but after a few minutes there was a general muttering. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear. A few birds sang, at a safe distance. Peace and quiet, unusual in the vicinity of Feegles, was everywhere. “Sorry, Big Yan, but I’m thinkin’ yer watter is no’ on the button this time,” said Rob Anybody. It was at this point that Horace the cheese dropped from a branch onto his head. A lot of water flowed under the big bridge at Lancre, but from up here you could barely see it because of the spray coming from the waterfalls a little farther on, spray that hovered in the freezing air. There was white water all through the deep gorge, and then the river leaped the waterfall like a salmon and hit the plains below like a thunderstorm. From the base of the falls you could follow the river all the way past the Chalk, but it moved in wide, lazy curves, and it was quicker to fly in a straight line. Tiffany had flown up it just once, when Miss Level had first brought her into the mountains. Since then she’d always taken the long way down, cruising just above the zigzagging coach road. Flying out over the edge of that furious torrent into a sudden drop full of cold damp air and then pointing the stick almost straight down was pretty high on her list of things she never intended to do, ever. Now Granny Weatherwax stood on the bridge, the silver horse in her hand. “It’s the only way,” she said. “It’ll end up at the bottom of the deep sea. Let the Wintersmith look for you there!” Tiffany nodded. She wasn’t crying, which is not the same as, well, not crying. People walked around not crying all the time and didn’t think about it at all. But now, she did. She thought: I’m not crying…. It made sense. Of course it made sense. It was all Boffo! Every stick is a wand, every puddle is a crystal ball. No thing had any power that you didn’t put there. Shambles and skulls and wands were like…shovels and knives and spectacles. They were like…levers. With a lever you could lift a big rock, but the lever didn’t do any work. “It has to be your choice,” said Granny. “I can’t make it for you. But it’s a small thing, and while you have it, it will be dangerous.” “You know, I don’t think he wanted to hurt me. He was just upset,” said Tiffany. “Really? Do you want to meet it upset again?” Tiffany thought about that strange face. There had been the shape of a human there—more or less—but it was as if the Wintersmith had heard of the idea of being human but hadn’t found out how to do it yet. “You think he’ll harm other people?” she asked. “He is the Winter, child. It’s not all pretty snowflakes, is it?” Tiffany held out her hand. “Give it back to me, please.” Granny handed it over with a shrug. It lay in Tiffany’s hand, on the strange white scar. It was the first thing she had ever been given that wasn’t useful, that wasn’t supposed to do something. I don’t need this, she thought. My power comes from the Chalk. But is that what life’s going to be like? Nothing that you don’t need? “We should tie it to something that’s light,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice. “Otherwise it will get caught on the bottom.” After some rooting around in the grass near the bridge, she found a stick and wrapped the silver chain around it. It was noon. Tiffany had invented the word noonlight because she liked the sound of it. Anyone could be a witch at midnight, she’d thought, but you’d have to be really good to be a witch by noonlight. Good at being a witch, anyway, she thought now as she walked back onto the bridge. Not good at being a happy person. She threw the necklace off the bridge. She didn’t make a big thing of it. It would have been nice to say that the silver horse glittered in the light, seemed to hang in the air for a moment before falling the long fall. Perhaps it did, but Tiffany didn’t look. “Good,” said Granny Weatherwax. “Is it all over now?” said Tiffany. “No! You danced into a story, girl, one that tells itself to the world every year. It’s the Story about ice and fire, Summer and Winter. You’ve made it wrong. You’ve got to stay to the end and make sure it turns out right. The horse is just buyin’ you time, that’s all.” “How much time?” “I don’t know. This hasn’t happened before. Time to think, at least. How are your feet?” The Wintersmith was moving through the world without, in any human sense, moving at all. Wherever winter was, he was too. He was trying to think. He’d never had to do this before, and it hurt. Up until now humans had just been parts of the world that moved around in strange ways and lit fires. Now he was spinning himself a mind, and everything was new. A human…made of human stuff…that was what she had said. Human stuff. He had to make himself of human stuff for the beloved. In the chill of morgues and the wreckage of ships, the Wintersmith rode the air searching for human stuff. And what was it? Dirt and water, mostly. Leave a human long enough and even the water would go, and there would be nothing but a few handfuls of dust that blew away in the wind. So, since water did not think, all the work was being done by the dust. The Wintersmith was logical, because ice was logical. Water was logical. Wind was logical. There were rules. So what a human was all about was…the right kind of dust! And, while he was searching for it, he could show her how strong he was. That evening Tiffany sat on the edge of her new bed, the clouds of sleep rising in her brain like thunderheads, and yawned and stared at her feet. They were pink, and had five toes each. They were pretty good feet, considering. Normally when people met you, they’d say things like “How are you?” Nanny Ogg had just said: “Come on in. How’s your feet?” Suddenly everyone was interested in her feet. Of course, feet were important, but what did people expect to happen to them? She swung them back and forth on the ends of her legs. They didn’t do anything strange, so she got into bed. She hadn’t slept properly for two nights. She hadn’t really understood that until she’d reached Tir Nani Ogg, when her brain had started to spin of its own accord. She’d talked to Mrs. Ogg, but it was hard to remember what about. Voices had banged in her ears. Now, at last, she had nothing to do but sleep. It was a good bed, the best she’d ever slept in. It was the best room she’d ever been in, although she’d been too tired to explore it. Witches didn’t go in much for comfort, especially in spare bedrooms, but Tiffany had grown up on an ancient bed where the springs went gloing every time she moved, and with care she could get them to play a tune. This mattress was thick and yielding. She sank into it as if it were very soft, very warm, very slow quicksand. The trouble is, you can shut your eyes but you can’t shut your mind. As she lay in the dark, it squiggled pictures inside her head, of clocks that went clonk-clank, of snowflakes shaped like her, of Miss Treason striding through the nighttime forest, seeking bad people with her yellow thumbnail ready. Myth Treason… She drifted through these scrambled memories into dull whiteness. But it got brighter, and took on detail, little areas of black and gray. They began to move gently from side to side…. Tiffany opened her eyes, and everything became clear. She was standing on a…a boat, no, a big sailing ship. There was snow on the decks, and icicles hung from the rigging. It was sailing in the washing-up-water light of dawn, on a silent gray sea full of floating ice and clouds of fog. The rigging creaked, the wind sighed in the sails. There was no one to be seen. “Ah. This appears to be a dream. Let me out, please,” said a familiar voice. “Who are you?” said Tiffany. “You. Cough, please.” Tiffany thought: Well, if this is a dream…and she coughed. A figure grew up out of the snow on the deck. It was her, and she was looking around thoughtfully. “Are you me too?” Tiffany asked. Strangely, here on the freezing deck, it didn’t seem that, well, strange. “Hmm. Oh, yes,” said the other Tiffany, still staring intently at things. “I’m your Third Thoughts. Remember? The part of you that never stops thinking? The bit that notices little details? It’s good to be out in fresh air. Hmm.” “Is there something wrong?” “Well, this clearly appears to be a dream. If you would care to look, you’ll see that the steersman in yellow oilskins up there at the wheel is the Jolly Sailor off the wrappers of the tobacco that Granny Aching used to smoke. He always comes into our mind when we think about the sea, yes?” Tiffany looked up at the bearded figure, who gave her a cheerful wave. “Yes, that’s certainly him!” she said. “But I don’t think this is our dream, exactly,” said the Third Thoughts. “It’s too…real.” Tiffany reached down and picked up a handful of snow. “Feels real,” she said. “Feels cold.” She made a snowball and threw it at herself. “I really wish I wouldn’t do that,” said the other Tiffany, brushing the snow off her shoulder. “But you see what I mean? Dreams are never as…nondreamlike as this.” “I know what I mean,” said Tiffany. “I think they’re going to be real, and then something weird turns up.” “Exactly. I don’t like it all. If this is a dream, then something horrible is going to happen….” They looked ahead of the ship. There was a dismal, dirty bank of fog there, spreading out across the sea. “There’s something in the fog!” said the Tiffanys together. They turned and scurried up the ladder to the man at the wheel. “Keep away from the fog! Please don’t go near it!” Tiffany shouted. The Jolly Sailor took his pipe out of his mouth and looked puzzled. “A Good Smoke in Any Weather?” he said to Tiffany. “What?” “It’s all he can say!” said her Third Thoughts, grabbing the wheel. “Remember? That’s what he says on the label!” The Jolly Sailor pushed her away gently. “A Good Smoke in Any Weather,” he said soothingly. “In Any Weather.” “Look, we only want to—” Tiffany began, but her Third Thoughts, without a word, put a hand on her head and turned her around. Something was coming out of the fog. It was an iceberg, a large one, at least five times as high as the ship, as majestic as a swan. It was so big that it was causing its own weather. It seemed to be moving slowly; there was white water around its base. Snow fell around it. Streamers of fog trailed behind it. The Jolly Sailor’s pipe dropped out of his mouth as he stared. “A Good Smoke!” he swore. The iceberg was Tiffany. It was a Tiffany hundreds of feet high, formed of glittering green ice, but it was still a Tiffany. There were seabirds perched on her head. “It can’t be the Wintersmith doing this!” said Tiffany. “I threw the horse away!” She cupped her hands to her mouth and shouted: “I THREW THE HORSE AWAY!” Her voice echoed off the looming ice figure. A few birds took off from the huge cold head, screaming. Behind Tiffany, the ship’s wheel spun. The Jolly Sailor stamped a foot and pointed to the white sails above them. “A Good Smoke in Any Weather!” he commanded. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean!” said Tiffany desperately. The man pointed to the sails and made frantic pulling motions with his hands. “A Good Smoke!” “Sorry, I just can’t understand you!” The sailor snorted and ran off toward a rope, which he hauled on in a great hurry. “It’s gotten weird,” said her Third Thoughts quietly. “Well, yes, I should think a huge iceberg shaped like me is a—” “No, that’s just strange. This is weird,” said her Third Thoughts. “We’ve got passengers. Look.” She pointed. Down on the main deck there was a row of hatches with big iron grids on them; Tiffany hadn’t noticed them before. Hands, hundreds of them, pale as roots under a log, groping and waving, were thrusting through the grids. “Passengers?” Tiffany whispered in horror. “Oh, no…” And then the screaming started. It would have been better, but not a lot better, if it had been cries of “Help! and “Save us,” but instead it was just screaming and wailing, just the sounds of people in pain and fear— No! “Come back inside my head,” she said grimly. “It’s too distracting to have you running around outside. Right now.” “I’ll walk in from behind you,” said her Third Thoughts. “Then it won’t seem so—” Tiffany felt a twinge of pain, and a change in her mind, and thought: Well, I suppose it could have been a lot messier. Okay. Let me think. Let all of me think. She watched the desperate hands, waving like weeds underwater, and thought: I’m in something like a dream, but I don’t think it’s mine. I’m on a ship, and we’re going to get killed by an iceberg that’s a giant figure of me. I think I liked it better when I was snowflakes…. Whose dream is this? “What is this about, Wintersmith?” she asked, and her Third Thoughts, back where they should be, commented: It’s amazing, you can even see your own breath in the air. “Is this a warning?” Tiffany shouted. “What do you want?” You for my bride, said the Wintersmith. The words just arrived in her memory. Tiffany’s shoulders sank. You know this isn’t real, said her Third Thoughts. But it may be the shadow of something real…. I shouldn’t have let Granny Weatherwax send Rob Anybody away like that— “Crivens! Shiver me timber!” shouted a voice behind her. And then there was the usual clamor: “It’s ‘timbers,’ ye dafty!” “Aye? But I can only find one!” “Splice the big plank! Daft Wullie’s just walked intae the watter!” “The big puddin’! I told him, just the one eye patch!” “With a yo hoho and a ho yoyo—” Feegles erupted from the cabin behind Tiffany, and Rob Anybody stopped in front of her as the rest streamed past. He saluted. “Sorry we’re a wee bittie late, but we had to find the black patches,” he said. “There’s sich a thing as style, ye ken.” Tiffany was speechless, but only for a moment. She pointed. “We’ve got to stop this ship from hitting that iceberg!” “Just that? Nae problemo!” Rob looked past her to the looming ice giantess and grinned. “He’s got yer nose just right, eh?” “Just stop it! Please?” Tiffany pleaded. “Aye-aye! C’mon, lads!” Watching the Feegles working was like watching ants, except that ants didn’t wear kilts and shout “Crivens!” all the time. Maybe it was because they could make one word do so much work that they seemed to have no problem at all with the Jolly Sailor’s orders. They swarmed across the deck. Mysterious ropes were pulled. Sails moved and billowed to a chorus of “A Good Smoke!” and “Crivens!” Now the Wintersmith wants to marry me, Tiffany thought. Oh, dear. She’d sometimes wondered if she’d get married one day, but she was definite that now was too soon for “one day.” Yes, her mother had been married when she was still fourteen, but that was the sort of thing that happened in the olden days. There were a lot of things to be done before Tiffany ever got married, she was very clear about that. Besides, when you thought about it…yuk. He wasn’t even a person. He’d be too— Thud! went the wind in the sails. The ship creaked and leaned over, and everyone was shouting at her. Mostly they shouted, “The wheel! Grab the wheel right noo!” although there was also a desperate “A Good Smoke in Any Weather!” in there too. Tiffany turned to see the wheel spinning in a blur. She made a snatch at it and got thumped across the fingers by the spokes, but there was a length of rope coiled nearby and she managed to lasso the wheel with a loop and jerk it to a halt without sliding along the deck too much. Then she grabbed the wheel and tried to turn it the other way. It was like pushing a house, but it did move, very slowly at first and then faster as she put her back into it. The ship came around. She could feel it moving, beginning to head a little bit away from the iceberg, not directly for it. Good! Things were going right at last! She spun the wheel some more, and now the huge cold wall was sliding past, filling the air with mist. Everything was going to be all right after— The ship hit the iceberg. It started with a simple crack! as a spar caught on an outcrop, but then others smashed as the ship scraped along the side of the ice. Then there were some sharp splintering noises as the ship ground onward, and bits of plank shot up on columns of foaming water. The top of a mast broke off, dragging sails and rigging with it. A lump of ice smashed onto the deck a few feet away from Tiffany, showering her with needles. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to go!” she panted, hanging on to the wheel. Marry me, said the Wintersmith. Churning white water roared across the foundering ship. Tiffany held on for a moment longer; then the cold surf covered her…except that it was suddenly not cold, but warm. But it was still stopping her from breathing. In the darkness she tried to fight her way to the surface, until the blackness was suddenly pulled aside, her eyes filled with light, and a voice said: “I’m sure these mattresses are far too soft, but you can’t tell Mrs. Ogg a thing.” Tiffany blinked. She was in bed, and a skinny woman with worried hair and a rather red nose was standing by it. “You were tossing and turning like a mad thing,” the woman said, putting a steaming mug on the small table by the bed. “One day someone will suffikate, mark my words.” Tiffany blinked again. I’m supposed to think: Oh, it was just a dream. But it wasn’t just a dream. Not my dream. “What time is it?” she managed. “About seven,” said the woman. “Seven!” Tiffany pushed the sheets back. “I’ve got to get up! Mrs. Ogg will be wanting her breakfast!” “I shouldn’t think so. I took it to her in bed not ten minutes ago,” said the woman, giving Tiffany a Look. “And I’m off home.” She sniffed. “Drink your tea before it gets cold.” And with that she marched toward the door. “Is Mrs. Ogg ill?” asked Tiffany, looking everywhere for her socks. She’d never heard of anyone who wasn’t really old or very ill having a meal in bed. “Ill? I don’t think she’s had a day’s illness in her life,” said the woman, managing to suggest that in her opinion this was unfair. She shut the door. Even the bedroom floor was smooth—not made smooth by centuries of feet that had worn down the planks and taken all the splinters out, but because someone had sanded and varnished it. Tiffany’s bare feet stuck to it slightly. There was no dust to be seen, no spiderwebs anywhere. The room was bright and fresh and exactly unlike any room in a witch’s cottage ought to be. “I’m going to get dressed,” she said to the air. “Are there any Feegles in here?” “Ach, no,” said a voice from under the bed. There was some frantic whispering and the voice said: “That is tae say, there’s hardly any o’ us here at a’.” “Then shut your eyes,” said Tiffany. She got dressed, taking occasional sips of the tea as she did so. Tea brought to your bedside when you weren’t ill? That sort of thing happened to kings and queens! And then she noticed the bruise on her fingers. It didn’t hurt at all, but the skin was blue where the ship’s wheel had hit it. Right… “Feegles?” she said. “Crivens, ye’ll nae be foolin’ us a second time,” said the voice from under the bed. “Get out here where I can see you, Daft Wullie!” Tiffany commanded. “It’s real hagglin’, miss, the way ye always ken it’s me.” After some more urgent whispering, Daft Wullie—for it was indeed he—trooped out with two more Feegles and Horace the cheese. Tiffany stared. All right, he was a blue cheese, so he was about the same color as a Feegle. And he acted like a Feegle, no doubt about that. Why, though, had he got a grubby strip of Feegle tartan around him? “He kinda found us,” said Daft Wullie, putting his arm around as much of Horace as was possible. “Can I keep him? He understands evera word I say!” “That’s amazing, because I don’t,” said Tiffany. “Look, were we in a shipwreck last night?” “Oh, aye. Sorta.” “Sort of? Was it real or wasn’t it?” “Oh, aye,” said the Feegle nervously. “Which?” Tiffany insisted. “Kinda real, and kinda not real, in a real unreal sorta way,” said Daft Wullie, squirming a bit. “I don’t have the knowin’ o’ the right wurdies….” “Are all you Feegles okay?” “Oh aye, miss,” said Daft Wullie, brightening up. “Nae problemo. It wuz only a dream ship on a dream sea, after a’.” “And a dream iceberg?” said Tiffany. “Ach, no. The iceberg was real, mistress.” “I thought so! Are you sure?” “Aye. We’re good at the knowin’ o’ stuff like that,” said Daft Wullie. “That’s so, eh, lads?” The other two Feegles, in total awe of being in the presence of the big wee hag without the safety of hundreds of brothers around them, nodded at Tiffany and then tried to shuffle behind each other. “A real iceberg shaped like me is floating around on the sea?” said Tiffany in horror. “Getting in the way of shipping?” “Aye. Could be,” said Daft Wullie. “I’m going to get into so much trouble!” said Tiffany, standing up. There was a snapping noise, and the end of one of the floorboards leaped out of the floor and hung there, bouncing up and down with a rocking-chair noise. It had ripped out two long nails. “And now this,” said Tiffany weakly. But the Feegles and Horace had vanished. Behind Tiffany someone laughed, although it was maybe more of a chuckle, deep and real and with just a hint that maybe someone had told a rude joke. “Those little devils can’t half run, eh?” said Nanny Ogg, ambling into the room. “Now then, Tiff, I wants you to turn around slowly and go and sit on your bed with your feet off the ground. Can you do that?” “Of course, Mrs. Ogg,” said Tiffany. “Look, I’m sorry about—” “Poo, what’s a floorboard more or less?” said Nanny Ogg. “I’m much more worried about Esme Weatherwax. She said there might be something like this! Ha, she was right and Miss Tick was wrong! There’ll be no living with her after this! She’ll have her nose so far in the air, her feet won’t touch the ground!” With a spioioioiiing! sound, another floorboard sprang up. “And it might be a good idea if yours didn’t either, miss,” Nanny Ogg added. “I’ll be back in half a tick.” That turned out to be the same length of time as twenty-seven seconds, when Nanny returned carrying a pair of violently pink slippers with bunny rabbits on them. “My second-best pair,” she said as, behind her, a board went plunk! and hurled four big nails into the far wall. The boards that had already sprung up were beginning to sprout what looked a lot like leaves. They were thin and weedy, but leaves were what they were. “Is it me doing this?” asked Tiffany nervously. “I daresay Esme will want to tell you all about it herself,” said Nanny, helping Tiffany’s feet into the slippers. “But what you’ve got here, miss, is a bad case of Ped Fecundis.” In the back of Tiffany’s memory Dr. Sensibility Bustle, D. M. Phil., B. El L., stirred in his sleep for a moment and took care of the translation. “Fertile Feet?” said Tiffany. “Well done! I didn’t expect anything to happen to floorboards, mind you, but it makes sense, when you think about it. They’re made of wood, after all, so they’re tryin’ to grow.” “Mrs. Ogg?” said Tiffany. “Yes?” “Please? I haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about! I keep my feet very clean! And I think I’m a giant iceberg!” Nanny Ogg gave her a slow, kind look. Tiffany stared into dark, twinkling eyes. Don’t try to trick her or hold anything back from those eyes, said her Third Thoughts. Everyone says she’s been Granny Weatherwax’s best friend since they were girls. And that means that under all those wrinkles must be nerves of steel. “Kettle’s on downstairs,” said Nanny brightly. “Why don’t you come down and tell me all about it?” Tiffany had looked up “strumpet” in the Unexpurgated Dictionary, and found it meant “a woman who is no better than she should be” and “a lady of easy virtue.” This, she decided after some working out, meant that Mrs. Gytha Ogg, known as Nanny, was a very respectable person. She found virtue easy, for one thing. And if she was no better than she should be, then she was just as good as she ought to be. She had a feeling that Miss Treason hadn’t meant this, but you couldn’t argue with logic. Nanny Ogg was good at listening, at least. She listened like a great big ear, and before Tiffany realized it, she was telling her everything. Everything. Nanny sat on the opposite side of the big kitchen table, puffing gently at a pipe with a hedgehog carved on it. Sometimes she’d ask a little question, like “Why was that?” or “And then what happened?” and off they’d go again. Nanny’s friendly little smile could drag out of you things you didn’t know you knew. While they talked, Tiffany’s Third Thoughts scanned the room out of the corners of her eyes. It was wonderfully clean and bright, and there were ornaments everywhere—cheap, jolly ones, the sort that have things like “To the World’s Best Mum” on them. And where there weren’t ornaments, there were pictures of babies and children and families. Tiffany had thought that only grand folk lived in homes like this. There were oil lamps! There was a bath, made of tin, hanging conveniently on a hook outside the privy! There was a pump actually indoors! But Nanny ambled around in her rather worn black dress, not grand at all. From the best chair in the room of ornaments, a large gray cat watched Tiffany with a half-open eye that glinted with absolute evil. Nanny had referred to him as “Greebo…don’t mind him, he’s just a big old softie,” which Tiffany knew enough to interpret as “he’ll have his claws in your leg if you go anywhere near him.” Tiffany talked as she hadn’t talked to anyone before. It must be a kind of magic, her Third Thoughts concluded. Witches soon picked up ways of controlling people with their voices, but Nanny Ogg listened at you. “This lad Roland who is not your young man,” said Nanny, when Tiffany had paused for breath. “Thinking of marrying him, are you?” Don’t lie, her Third Thoughts insisted. “I…well, your mind comes up with all kinds of things when you’re not paying attention, doesn’t it?” said Tiffany. “It’s not like thinking. Anyway, all the other boys I’ve met just stare at their stupid feet! Petulia says it’s because of the hat.” “Well, taking it off helps,” said Nanny Ogg. “Mind you, so did a low-cut bodice, when I was a girl. Stopped ’em lookin’ at their stupid feet, I don’t mind telling you!” Tiffany saw the dark eyes locked onto her. She burst out laughing. Mrs. Ogg’s face broke into a huge grin that should have been locked up for the sake of public decency, and for some reason Tiffany felt a lot better. She’d passed some kind of test. “Mind you, that probably wouldn’t work with the Wintersmith, of course,” said Nanny, and the gloom came down again. “I didn’t mind the snowflakes,” said Tiffany. “But the iceberg—I think that was a bit much.” “Showing off in front of the girls,” said Nanny, puffing at her hedgehog pipe. “Yes, they do that.” “But he can kill people!” “He’s Winter. It’s what he does. But I reckon he’s in a bit of a tizzy because he’s never been in love with a human before.” “In love?” “Well, he probably thinks he is.” Once again the eyes watched her carefully. “He’s an elemental, and they’re simple, really,” Nanny Ogg went on. “But he’s trying to be human. And that’s complicated. We’re packed with stuff he doesn’t understand—can’t understand, really. Anger, for example. A blizzard is never angry. The storm don’t hate the people who die in it. The wind is never cruel. But the more he thinks about you, the more he’s having to deal with feelings like this, and there’s none can teach him. He’s not very clever. He’s never had to be. And the interesting thing is that you are changin’ too—” There was a knocking at the door. Nanny Ogg got up and opened it. Granny Weatherwax was there, with Miss Tick peering over her shoulder. “Blessings be upon this house,” said Granny, but in a voice that suggested that if blessings needed to be taken away, she could do that, too. “Quite probably,” said Nanny Ogg. “It’s Ped Fecundis, then?” Granny nodded at Tiffany. “Looks like a bad case. The floorboards started growing after she walked over them in bare feet.” “Ha! Have you given her anything for it?” said Granny. “I prescribed a pair of slippers.” “I really don’t see how avatarization could be taking place, not when we’re talking about elementals, it makes no—” Miss Tick began. “Do stop wittering, Miss Tick,” said Granny Weatherwax. “I notices you witter when things goes wrong, and it is not being a help.” “I don’t want to worry the child, that’s all,” said Miss Tick. She took Tiffany’s hand, patted it, and said, “Don’t you worry, Tiffany, we’ll—” “She’s a witch,” said Granny sternly. “We just have to tell her the truth.” “You think I’m turning into a…a goddess?” said Tiffany. It was worth it to see their faces. The only mouth not in an O was the one belonging to Granny Weatherwax, which was smirking. She looked like someone whose dog has just done a rather good trick. “How did you work that out?” Granny asked. Dr. Bustle had a guess: Avatar, an incarnation of a god. But I’m not going to tell you that, Tiffany thought. “Well, am I?” she said. “Yes,” said Granny Weatherwax. “The Wintersmith thinks you are…oh, she’s got a lot of names. The Lady of the Flowers is a nice one. Or the Summer Lady. She makes the summertime, just like he makes the winter. He thinks you’re her.” “All right,” said Tiffany. “But we know he’s wrong, don’t we?” “Er…not quite as wrong as we’d like,” said Miss Tick. Most of the Feegles had camped out in Nanny Ogg’s barn, where they were holding a council of war, except that it was about something that isn’t quite the same thing. “What we’ve got here,” Rob Anybody pronounced, “is a case o’ Romance.” “What’s that, Rob?” asked a Feegle. “Aye, is it like how wee babbies are made?” asked Daft Wullie. “Ye told about that last year. It wuz verra interestin’, although a bit far-fetched tae my mind.” “No’ exactly,” said Rob Anybody. “An’ it’s kinda hard tae describe. But I reckon yon Wintersmith wants to romance the big wee hag and she disna ken what tae do aboot it.” “So it is like how babbies are made?” said Daft Wullie. “No, ’cuz even beasties know that but only people know aboot Romancin’,” said Rob. “When a bull coo meets a lady coo, he disna have tae say, ‘My heart goes bang-bang-bang when I see your wee face,’ ’cuz it’s kinda built intae their heads. People have it more difficult. Romancin’ is verra important, ye ken. Basically it’s a way the boy can get close to the girl wi’oot her attackin’ him and scratchin’ his eyes oot.” “I dinna see how we can teach her any o’ that stuff,” said Slightly Mad Angus. “The big wee hag reads books,” said Rob Anybody. “When she sees a book she just canna help herself. An’ I,” he added proudly, “have a Plan.” The Feegles relaxed. They always felt happier when Rob had a Plan, especially since most plans of his boiled down to screaming and rushing at something. “Tell us aboot the Plan, Rob,” said Big Yan. “Ah’m glad ye asked me,” said Rob. “The Plan is: We’ll find her a book aboot Romancin’.” “An’ how will we find this book, Rob?” asked Billy Bigchin uncertainly. He was a loyal gonnagle, but he was also bright enough to get nervous whenever Rob Anybody had a Plan. Rob Anybody airily waved a hand. “Ach,” he said, “we ken this trick! A’ we need is a big hat an’ coat an’ a coat hanger an’ a broom handle!” “Oh aye?” said Big Yan. “Well, I’m not bein’ doon in the knee again!” With witches everything is a test. That’s why they tested Tiffany’s feet. I bet that I’m the only person in the world about to do this, she thought as she lowered both her feet into a tray of soil that Nanny had hastily shoveled up. Granny Weatherwax and Miss Tick were both sitting on bare wooden chairs, despite the fact that the gray cat Greebo was occupying the whole of one big saggy armchair. You didn’t want to wake up Greebo when he wanted to sleep. “Can you feel anything?” asked Miss Tick. “It’s a bit cold, that’s all—oh…something’s happening….” Green shoots appeared around her feet, and grew quickly. Then they went white at the base and gently pushed Tiffany’s feet aside as they began to swell. “Onions?” said Granny Weatherwax scornfully. “Well, they were the only seeds I could find quickly,” said Nanny Ogg, poking at the glistening white bulbs. “Good size. Well done, Tiff.” Granny looked shocked. “You’re not going to eat those, are you, Gytha?” she said accusingly. “You are, aren’t you? You’re going to eat them!” Nanny Ogg, standing up with a bunch of onions in each pudgy hand, looked guilty, but only for a moment. “Why not?” she said stoutly. “Fresh vegetables are not to be sneezed at in the winter. And anyway, her feet are nice and clean.” “It’s not seemly,” said Miss Tick. “It didn’t hurt,” said Tiffany. “All I had to do was put my feet on the tray for a moment.” “Yes, she says it didn’t hurt,” Nanny Ogg insisted. “Now, I think I might have some old carrot seeds in the kitchen drawer—” She saw the expressions on the faces of the others. “All right, all right, then. There’s no need to look like that,” she said. “I was just tryin’ to point out the silver lining, that’s all.” “Someone please tell me what is happening to me?” Tiffany wailed. “Miss Tick is going to give you the answer in some long words,” said Granny. “But they boils down to this: It’s the Story happening. It’s making you fit into itself.” Tiffany tried not to look like someone who didn’t understand a word that she had just heard. “I could do with a little bit of the fine detail, I think,” she said. “I think I’ll get some tea brewed,” said Nanny Ogg. CHAPTER SEVEN On with the Dance T he Wintersmith and the Summer Lady…danced. The dance never ended. Winter never dies. Not as people die. It hangs on in late frost and the smell of autumn in a summer evening, and in the heat it flees to the mountains. Summer never dies. It sinks into the ground; in the depths, winter buds form in sheltered places and white shoots creep under dead leaves. Some of it flees into the deepest, hottest deserts, where there is a summer that never ends. To animals they were just the weather, just part of everything. But humans arose and gave them names, just as people filled the starry sky with heroes and monsters, because this turned them into stories. And humans loved stories, because once you’d turned things into stories, you could change the stories. And there was the problem, right there. Now the Lady and the Wintersmith danced around the year, changing places in the spring and autumn, and it had worked for thousands of years, right up until the time a girl couldn’t control her feet and had arrived in the dance at exactly the wrong time. But the Story had life, too. It was like a play now. It would roll on around the year, and if one of the players wasn’t the real actress but just some girl who’d wandered onto the stage, well, that was too bad. She’d have to wear the costume and speak the lines and hope that there was going to be a happy ending. Change the Story, even if you don’t mean to, and the Story changes you. Miss Tick used a lot more words than this, like “anthropomorphic personification,” but this was what ended up in Tiffany’s head. “So…I’m not a goddess?” she said. “Oh, I wish I had a blackboard.” Miss Tick sighed. “They really don’t survive the water, though, and of course the chalks get so soggy—” “What we think happened in the Dance,” Granny Weatherwax began in a loud voice, “is that you and the Summer Lady got…mixed up.” “Mixed up?” “You may have some of her talents. The myth of the Summer Lady says that flowers grow wherever she walks,” said Granny Weatherwax. “Where e’er,” said Miss Tick primly. “What?” snapped Granny, who was now pacing up and down in front of the fire. “It’s ‘where e’er she walks,’ in fact,” said Miss Tick. “It’s more…poetical.” “Hah,” Granny said. “Poetry!” Am I going to get into trouble about this? Tiffany wondered. “And what about the real Summer Lady? Is she going to be angry?” she asked. Granny Weatherwax stopped pacing and looked at Miss Tick, who said: “Ah, yes…er…we are exploring every possibility—” “That means we don’t know,” said Granny. “That’s the truth of it. This is about gods, see? But yes, since you ask, they can be a bit touchy.” “I didn’t see her in the dance,” said Tiffany. “Did you see the Wintersmith?” “Well…no,” said Tiffany. How could she describe that wonderful, endless, golden, spinning moment? It went beyond bodies and thoughts. But it had sounded as though two people had said: “Who are you?” She pulled her boots back on. “Er…where is she now?” she asked as she tied the laces. Perhaps she’d have to run. “She’s probably gone back underground for the winter. The Summer Lady doesn’t walk above ground in winter.” “Up until now,” said Nanny Ogg cheerfully. She seemed to be enjoying this. “Aah, Mrs. Ogg has put her finger on the other problem,” said Miss Tick. “The, er, Wintersmith and the Summer Lady are, uh, that is, they’ve never—” She looked imploringly at Nanny Ogg. “They’ve never met except in the Dance,” said Nanny. “But now here you are, and you feel like the Summer Lady to him, walking around as bold as brass in the wintertime, so you might be…how shall I put it…?” “…exciting his romantic propensities,” said Miss Tick quickly. “I wasn’t going to describe it quite like that,” said Nanny Ogg. “Yes, I suspects you weren’t!” said Granny. “I suspects you was going to use Language!” Tiffany definitely heard the capital “L,” which entirely suggested that the language she was thinking of was not to be uttered in polite company. Nanny stood up and tried to look haughty, which is hard to do when you have a face like a happy apple. “I was actually going to draw Tiff’s attention to this,” she said, taking an ornament off the crowded mantelpiece. It was a little house. Tiffany had glanced at it before; it had two little doorways at the front and, at the moment, a tiny little wooden man with a top hat. “It’s called a weather house,” Nanny said, handing it to Tiffany. “I don’t know how it works—there’s a bit of special string or something—but there’s a little wooden man who comes out if it’s going to rain and a little wooden woman who comes out when it’s going to be sunny. But they’re on a little pivoty thing, see? They can never be out at the same time, see? Never. An’ I can’t help wonderin’, when the weather’s changin’, if the little man sees the little woman out of the corner of his eye and wonders—” “Is this about sex?” asked Tiffany. Miss Tick looked at the ceiling. Granny Weatherwax cleared her throat. Nanny gave a huge laugh that would have embarrassed even the little wooden man. “Sex?” she said. “Between Summer and Winter? Now there’s a thought.” “Don’t…think…it,” said Granny Weatherwax sternly. She turned to Tiffany. “He’s fascinated by you, that’s what it is. And we don’t know how much of the Summer Lady’s power is in you. She might be quite weak. You’ll have to be a summer in winter until winter ends,” she added flatly. “That’s justice. No excuses. You made a choice. You get what you chose.” “Couldn’t I just go and find her and say I’m sorry—?” Tiffany began. “No. The old gods ain’t big on ‘sorry,’” said Granny, pacing up and down again. “They know it’s just a word.” “You know what I think?” said Nanny. “I think she’s watchin’ you, Tiff. She’s sayin’ to herself, ‘Who’s this hoity-toity young madam steppin’ into my shoes? Well, let’s make her walk a mile in ’em and see how she likes it!’” “Mrs. Ogg may have something there,” said Miss Tick, who was leafing through Chaffinch’s Mythology. “The gods expect you to pay for your mistakes.” Nanny Ogg patted Tiffany’s hand. “If she wants to see what you can do, show her what you can do, Tiff, eh? That’s the way! Surprise her!” “You mean the Summer Lady?” said Tiffany. Nanny winked. “Oh, and the Summer Lady, too!” There was what sounded very much like the start of a laugh from Miss Tick before Granny Weatherwax glared at her. Tiffany sighed. It was all very well to talk about choices, but she had no choice here. “All right. What else can I expect apart from…well, the feet?” “I’m, er, checking,” said Miss Tick, still thumbing through the book. “Ah…it says here that she was, I mean is, fairer than all the stars in heaven….” They all looked at Tiffany. “You could try doing something with your hair,” said Nanny Ogg after a while. “Like what?” said Tiffany. “Like anything, really.” “Apart from the feet and doing something with my hair,” said Tiffany sharply, “is there anything else?” “Says here, quoting a very old manuscript: ‘She waketh the grasses in Aprill and filleth the beehives with honey swete,’” Miss Tick reported. “How do I do that?” “I don’t know, but I suspect that happens anyway,” said Miss Tick. “And the Summer Lady gets the credit?” “I think she just has to exist for it to happen, really,” said Miss Tick. “Anything else?” “Er, yes. You have to make sure the winter ends,” said Miss Tick. “And, of course, deal with the Wintersmith.” “And how do I do that?” “We think that you just have to…be there,” said Granny Weatherwax. “Or perhaps you’ll know what to do when the time comes.” Meep. “Be where?” said Tiffany. “Everywhere. Anywhere.” “Granny, your hat squeaked,” said Tiffany. “It went meep!” “No it didn’t,” Granny said sharply. “It did, you know,” said Nanny Ogg. “I heard it too.” Granny Weatherwax grunted and pulled off her hat. The white kitten, curled around her tight bun of hair, blinked in the light. “I can’t help it,” Granny muttered. “If I leave the dratted thing alone, it goes under the dresser and cries and cries.” She looked around at the others as if daring them to say anything. “Anyway,” she added, “it keeps m’ head warm.” On his chair, the yellow slit of Greebo’s left eye opened lazily. “Get down, You,” said Granny, lifting the kitten off her head and putting it on the floor. “I daresay Mrs. Ogg has got some milk in the kitchen.” “Not much,” said Nanny. “I’ll swear something’s been drinking it!” Greebo’s eye opened all the way, and he began to growl softly. “You sure you know what you’re doing, Esme?” said Nanny Ogg, reaching for a cushion to throw. “He’s very protective of his territory.” You the kitten sat on the floor and washed her ears. Then, as Greebo got to his feet, she fixed him with an innocent little stare and took a flying leap onto his nose, landing on it with all her claws out. “So is she,” said Granny Weatherwax, as Greebo erupted from the chair and hurtled around the room before disappearing into the kitchen. There was a crash of saucepans followed by the groioioioing of a saucepan lid spinning into silence on the floor. The kitten padded back into the room, hopped into the empty chair, and curled up. “He brought in half a wolf last week,” said Nanny Ogg. “You haven’t been hexperimenting* on that poor kitten, have you?” “I wouldn’t dream of such a thing,” said Granny. “She just knows her own mind, that’s all.” She turned to Tiffany. “I don’t reckon the Wintersmith will be worrying about you too much for a while,” she said. “The big winter weather will be on us soon. That’ll keep him busy. In the meantime, Mrs. Ogg will teach you…things she knows.” And Tiffany thought: I wonder how embarrassing this is going to be. Deep in the snow, in the middle of a windswept moorland, a small band of traveling librarians sat around their cooling stove and wondered what to burn next. Tiffany had never been able to find out much about the librarians. They were a bit like the wandering priests and teachers who went even into the smallest, loneliest villages to deliver those things—prayers, medicine, facts—that people could do without for weeks at a time but sometimes needed a lot of all at once. The librarians would loan you a book for a penny, although they often would take food or good secondhand clothes. If you gave them a book, you got ten free loans. Sometimes you’d see two or three of their wagons parked in some clearing and could smell the glues they boiled up to repair the oldest books. Some of the books they loaned were so old that the printing had been worn gray by the pressure of people’s eyeballs reading it. The librarians were mysterious. It was said they could tell what book you needed just by looking at you, and they could take your voice away with a word. But here they were searching the shelves for T. H. Mouse-holder’s famous book Survival in the Snow. Things were getting desperate. The oxen that pulled the wagon had broken their tethers and run off in the blizzard, the stove was nearly out, and worst of all, they were down to their last candles, which meant that soon they would not be able to read books. “It says here in K. Pierpoint Poundsworth’s Among the Snow Weasels that the members of the ill-fated expedition to Whale Bay survived by making soup of their own toes,” said Deputy Librarian Grizzler. “That’s interesting,” said Senior Librarian Swinsley, who was rummaging on the shelf below. “Is there a recipe?” “No, but there may be something in Superflua Raven’s book Cooking in Dire Straits. That’s where we got yesterday’s recipe for Nourishing Boiled Socks Surprise—” There was a thunderous knocking at the door. It was a two-part door that allowed only the top half to be opened, so that a ledge on the bottom half could be a sort of small desk for stamping books. Snow came through the crack as the knocking continued. “I hope that’s not the wolves again,” said Mr. Grizzler. “I got no sleep at all last night!” “Do they knock? We could check in The Habits of Wolves by Captain W. E. Lightly,” said Senior Librarian Swinsley, “or perhaps you could just open the door? Quickly! The candles are going out!” Grizzler opened the top half of the door. There was a tall figure on the steps, hard to see in the fitful, cloud-strained moonlight. “Ah’m lookin’ for Romance,” it rumbled. The Deputy Librarian thought for a moment, and then said, “Isn’t it a bit chilly out there?” “Aren’t ye the people wi’ all dem books?” the figure demanded. “Yes, indeed…oh, Romance! Yes, certainly!” said Mr. Swinsley, looking relieved. “In that case, I think you’ll want Miss Jenkins. Forward please, Miss Jenkins.” “It looks like youse is freezin’ in there,” said the figure. “Dem’s icicles hanging from der ceilin’.” “Yes. However, we have managed to keep them off the books,” said Mr. Swinsley. “Ah, Miss Jenkins. The, er, gentleman is looking for Romance. Your department, I think.” “Yes, sir,” said Miss Jenkins. “What kind of romance were you looking for?” “Oh, one wi’ a cover on, ye ken, and wi’ pages wi’ all wurdies on ’em,” said the figure. Miss Jenkins, who was used to this sort of thing, disappeared into the gloom at the other end of the wagon. “Dese scunners are total loonies!” said a new voice. It appeared to come from somewhere on the person of the dark book borrower, but much lower than the head. “Pardon?” said Mr. Swinsley. “Ach, nae problemo,” said the figure quickly. “Ah’m sufferin’ from a grumblin’ knee, ’tis an old trouble—” “Why don’t they be burnin’ all dem books, eh?” the unseen knee grumbled. “Sorry aboot this, ye know how knees can let a man doon in public, I’m a martyr to dis one,” said the stranger. “I know how it is. My elbow acts up in wet weather,” said Mr. Swinsley. There was some sort of fight going on in the nether regions of the stranger, who was shaking like a puppet. “That will be one penny,” Miss Jenkins said. “And I will need your name and address.” The dark figure shuddered. “Oh, I—we ne’er give out oor name an’ address!” it said quickly. “It is against oor religion, ye ken. Er…I dinna wanta be a knee aboot this, but why is ye all here freezin’ tae death?” “Our oxen wandered off, and alas, the snow’s too deep to walk through,” said Mr. Swinsley. “Aye. But youse got a stove an’ all them dry ol’ books,” said the dark figure. “Yes, we know,” said the librarian, looking puzzled. There was the kind of wretched pause you get when two people aren’t going to understand each other’s point of view at all. Then: “Tell ye what, me an’—ma knee—will go an’ fetch yer cows for ye, eh?” said the mysterious figure. “Got tae be worth a penny, eh? Big Yan, you’ll feel the rough side o’ my hand in a minit!” The figure dropped out of sight. Snow flew up in the moonlight. For a moment it sounded as if a scuffle were going on, and then a sound like “Crivens!” disappearing into the distance. The librarians were about to shut the door when they heard the terrified bellows of the oxen, getting louder very quickly. Two curling waves of snow came across the glittering moors. The creatures rode them like surfers, yelling at the moon. The snow settled down a few feet away from the wagon. There was a blue-and-red blur in the air, and the romantic book was whisked away. But what was really odd, the librarians agreed, was that when the oxen had come speeding toward them, they had appeared to be traveling backward. It was hard to be embarrassed by Nanny Ogg, because her laugh drove embarrassment away. She wasn’t embarrassed about anything. Today Tiffany, with extra pairs of socks on to avoid unfortunate floral incidents, went with her “around the houses,” as it was known to witches. “You did this for Miss Treason?” asked Nanny as they stepped out. There were big fat clouds massing around the mountains; there would be a lot more snow tonight. “Oh yes. And for Miss Level and Miss Pullunder.” “Enjoyed it, did you?” said Nanny, wrapping her cloak around her. “Sometimes. I mean, I know why we do it, but sometimes you get fed up with people being stupid. I quite like doing the medicine stuff.” “Good with the herbs, are you?” “No. I’m very good with the herbs.” “Oh, there’s a bit of swank, eh?” said Nanny. “If I didn’t know I was good with herbs, I’d be stupid, Mrs. Ogg.” “That’s right. Good. It’s good to be good at something. Now, our next little favor is—” —giving an old lady a bath, as much as was possible with a couple of tin basins and some washcloths. And that was witchcraft. Then they looked in on a woman who’d just had a baby, and that was witchcraft, and a man with a very nasty leg injury that Nanny Ogg said was doing very well, and that was witchcraft too, and then in an out-of-the-way group of huddled little cottages, they climbed the cramped wooden stairs to a tiny little bedroom where an old man shot at them with a crossbow. “You old devil, ain’t you dead yet?” said Nanny. “You’re looking well! I swear, the man with the scythe must’ve forgotten where you live!” “I’m a-waitin’ for him, Mrs. Ogg!” said the old man cheerfully. “If I’m gonna go, I’ll take ’im with me!” “This is my girl Tiff. She’s learnin’ the witchin’,” said Nanny, raising her voice. “This is Mr. Hogparsley, Tiff…Tiff?” She snapped her fingers in front of Tiffany’s eyes. “Huh?” said Tiffany. She was still staring in horror. The twang of the bow as Nanny opened the door had been bad enough, but for a fraction of a second, she would have sworn that an arrow had gone right through Nanny Ogg and stuck in the door frame. “Shame on you for firing at a young lady, Bill,” said Nanny severely, plumping up his pillows. “And Mrs. Dowser says you’ve been shootin’ at her when she comes up to see you,” she added, putting her basket down by the bed. “That’s no way to treat a respectable woman who brings you your meals, is it? For shame!” “Sorry, Nanny,” muttered Mr. Hogparsley. “It’s just that she’s skinny as a rake and wears black. ’Tis an easy mistake to make in poor light.” “Mr. Hogparsley here is lying in wait for Death, Tiff,” said Nanny. “Mistress Weatherwax helped you make the special traps and arrows, ain’t that right, Bill?” “Traps?” whispered Tiffany. Nanny just nudged her and pointed down. The floorboards were covered in ferociously spiked mantraps. They were all drawn in charcoal. “I said isn’t that right, Bill?” Nanny repeated, raising her voice. “She helped you with the traps!” “She did that!” said Mr. Hogparsley. “Hah! I wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side o’ her!” “Right, so no shootin’ arrows at anyone except Death, right? Otherwise Mistress Weatherwax won’t make you any more,” said Nanny, putting a bottle on the old wooden box that was Mr. Hogparsley’s bedside table. “Here’s some of your jollop, freshly mixed up. Where did she tell you to keep the pain?” “It’s sitting up here on my shoulder, missus, being no trouble.” Nanny touched the shoulder, and seemed to think for a moment. “It’s a brown and white squiggle? Sort of oblong?” “That’s right, missus,” said Mr. Hogparsley, pulling at the cork on the bottle. “It wiggles away there and I laughs at it.” The cork popped out. Suddenly, the room smelled of apples. “It’s gettin’ big,” said Nanny. “Mistress Weatherwax will be along tonight to take it away.” “Right you are, missus,” said the old man, filling a mug to the brim. “Try not to shoot her, all right? It only makes her mad.” It was snowing again when they stepped out of the cottage, big feathery flakes that meant business. “I reckon that’s it for today,” Nanny announced. “I’ve got things to see to over in Slice, but we’ll take the stick tomorrow.” “That arrow he fired at us—” said Tiffany. “Imaginary,” said Nanny Ogg, smiling. “It looked real for a moment!” Nanny Ogg chuckled. “It’s amazing what Esme Weatherwax can make people imagine!” “Like traps for Death?” “Oh, yes. Well, it gives the old boy an interest in life. He’s on his way to the Door. But at least Esme’s seen to it that there’s no pain.” “Because it’s floating over his shoulder?” said Tiffany. “Yep. She put it just outside his body for him, so it don’t hurt,” said Nanny, the snow crunching under her feet. “I didn’t know you could do that!” “I can do it for small stuff, toothaches and the like. Esme’s the champion for it, though. We’re none of us too proud to call her in. Y’know, she’s very good at people. Funny, really, ’cuz she doesn’t like ’em much.” Tiffany glanced at the sky, and Nanny was the kind of inconvenient person who notices everything. “Wondering if lover boy is goin’ to drop in?” she said with a big grin. “Nanny! Really!” “But you are, aren’t you?” said Nanny, who knew no shame. “O’ course, he’s always around, when you think about it. You’re walking through him, you feel him on your skin, you stamp him off your boots when you go indoors—” “Just don’t talk like that, please?” said Tiffany. “Besides, what’s time to an elemental?” Nanny chattered. “And I suppose snowflakes don’t just make themselves, especially when you’ve got to get the arms and legs right….” She’s looking at me out of the corner of her eye to see if I’m going red, Tiffany thought. I know it. Then Nanny nudged her in the ribs and laughed one of her laughs that would make a rock blush. “Good for you!” she said. “I’ve had a few boyfriends myself that I’d have loved to stamp off my boots!” Tiffany was just getting ready for bed that night when she found a book under her pillow. The title, in fiery red letters, was Passion’s Plaything by Marjory J. Boddice, and in smaller print were the words: Gods and Men said their love was not to be, but they would not listen!! A tortured tale of a tempestuous romance by the author of Sundered Hearts !!! The cover showed, up close, a young woman with dark hair and clothes that were a bit on the skimpy side in Tiffany’s opinion, both hair and clothes blowing in the wind. She looked desperately determined, and also a bit chilly. A young man on a horse was watching her some distance away. It appeared that a thunderstorm was blowing up. Strange. There was a library stamp inside, and Nanny didn’t use the library. Well, it wouldn’t hurt to read a bit before blowing the candle out. Tiffany turned to page one. And then to page two. When she got to page nineteen she went and fetched the Unexpurgated Dictionary. She had older sisters and she knew some of this, she told herself. But Marjory J. Boddice had got some things laughably wrong. Girls on the Chalk didn’t often run away from a young man who was rich enough to own his own horse—or not for long and not without giving him a chance to catch up. And Megs, the heroine of the book, clearly didn’t know a thing about farming. No young man would be interested in a woman who couldn’t dose a cow or carry a piglet. What kind of help would she be around the place? Standing around with lips like cherries wouldn’t get the cows milked or the sheep sheared! And that was another thing. Did Marjory J. Boddice know anything about sheep? This was a sheep farm in the summertime, wasn’t it? So when did they shear the sheep? The second most important occasion in a sheep farm’s year and it wasn’t worth mentioning? Of course, they might have a breed like Habbakuk Polls or Lowland Cobbleworths that didn’t need shearing, but these were rare and any sensible author would surely have mentioned it. And the scene in chapter five, where Megs left the sheep to fend for themselves while she went gathering nuts with Roger…well, how stupid was that? They could have wandered anywhere, and they were really stupid to think they’d find nuts in June. She read on a bit further, and thought: Oh. I see. Hmm. Hah. Not nuts at all, then. On the Chalk, that sort of thing was called “looking for cuckoo nests.” She stopped there to go downstairs to fetch a fresh candle, got back into bed, let her feet warm up again, and went on reading. Should Megs marry sulky dark-eyed William, who already owned two and a half cows, or should she be swayed by Roger, who called her “my proud beauty” but was clearly a bad man because he rode a black stallion and had a mustache? Why did she think she had to marry either of them? Tiffany wondered. Anyway, she spent too much time leaning meaningfully against things and pouting. Wasn’t anyone doing any work? And if she always dressed like that, she’d catch a chill. It was amazing what those men put up with. But it made you think. She blew out the candle and sank gently under the eiderdown, which was as white as snow. Snow covered the Chalk. It fell around the sheep, making them look a dirty yellow. It covered the stars but glowed by its own light. It stuck to the windows of the cottages, blotting out the orange candlelight. But it would never cover the castle. The castle stood on a mound a little way from the village, a tower of stone ruling all those thatched homes. They looked as if they had grown from the land, but the castle nailed it down. It said: I Own. In his room, Roland wrote carefully. He ignored the hammering from outside. Annagramma, Petulia, Miss Treason—Tiffany’s letters were full of faraway people with strange-sounding names. Sometimes he tried to imagine them, and wondered if she was making them up. The whole witchcraft business seemed…well, not as advertised. It seemed like— “Do you hear this, you wicked boy?” Aunt Danuta sounded triumphant. “Now it’s barred from this side too! Hah! This is for your own good, you know. You will stay in there until you are ready to apologize!” —like hard work, to be honest. Worthy, though, visiting the sick and everything, but very busy and not very magical. He’d heard of “dancing around without your drawers on” and tried his best not to imagine it, but in any case there didn’t seem to be anything like that. Even broomstick rides sounded— “And we know about your secret passage now, oh yes! It’s being walled up! No more thumbing your nose at people who are doing their very best for you!” —dull. He paused for a moment, staring blankly at the carefully stacked piles of loaves and sausages beside his bed. I ought to get some onions tonight, he thought. General Tacticus says they are unsurpassable for the proper operation of the digestive system if you can’t find fresh fruit. What to write, what to write…yes! He’d tell her about the party. He’d only gone because his father, in one of his good moments, had asked him to. It was important to keep in with the neighbors but not with the relatives! It’d been quite nice to get out, and he’d been able to leave his horse at Mr. Gamely’s stable, where the aunts wouldn’t think of looking for it. Yes…she’d enjoy hearing about the party. The aunts were shouting again, about locking the door to his father’s room. And they were blocking the secret passage. That meant that all he was left with was the loose stone that came out behind the tapestry in the next room, the wobbly flagstone that could let him drop down into the room below, and, of course, the chain outside the window that let him climb all the way down to the ground. And on his desk, on top of General Tacticus’s book, was a complete set of shiny new castle keys. He’d got Mr. Gamely to make them for him. The blacksmith was a thoughtful man who could see the sense in being friendly to the next Baron. He could come and go as he liked, whatever they did. They could bully his father, they could shout all they pleased, but they would never own him. You could learn a lot from books. The Wintersmith was learning. It was a hard, slow task when you had to make your brain out of ice. But he had learned about snowmen. They were built by the smaller kinds of humans. That was interesting. Apart from the ones in pointy hats, the bigger humans didn’t seem to hear him. They knew invisible creatures didn’t speak to them out of the air. The small ones, though, hadn’t found out what was impossible. In the big city was a big snowman. Actually, it would be more honest to call it a slushman. Technically it was snow, but by the time it had spiraled down through the big city’s fogs, smogs, and smokes, it was already a sort of yellowish gray, and then most of what ended up on the pavement was what had been thrown up from the gutter by cart wheels. It was, at best, a mostly snowman. But three grubby children were building it anyway, because building something that you could call a snowman was what you did. Even if it was yellow. They’d done their best with what they could find and had given him two horse droppings for eyes and a dead rat for a nose. At which point the snowman spoke to them, in their heads. Small humans, why do you do that? The boy who might have been the older boy looked at the girl who might have been the older girl. “I’ll tell you I heard that if you say you heard it too,” he said. The girl was still young enough not to think “snowmen can’t talk” when one of them had just spoken to her, so she said to it: “You have to put them in to make you a snowman, mister.” Does that make me human? “No, ’cuz…” She hesitated. “You ain’t got innards,” said the third and smallest child, who might have been the younger boy or the younger girl, but who was spherical with so many layers of clothing that it was quite impossible to tell. It did have a pink woolly hat with a bobble on it, but that didn’t mean anything. Someone did care about it, though, because they’d embroidered “R” and “L” on its mittens, “F” and “B” on the front and back of its coat, “T” on top of the bobble hat, and probably “U” on the underside of its rubber boots. That meant that while you couldn’t know what it was, you could be certain it was the right way up and which way it was facing. A cart went by, throwing up another wave of slush. Innards? said the secret voice of the snowman. Made of special dust, yes! But what dust? “Iron,” said the possibly older boy promptly. “Enough iron to make a nail.” “Oh, yeah, that’s right, that’s how it goes,” said the possibly older girl. “We used to skip to it. Er…‘Iron enough to make a nail…Water enough to drown a cow—’” “A dog,” said the possibly older boy. “It’s ‘Water enough to drown a dog, Sulfur enough to stop the fleas.’ It’s ‘Poison enough to kill a cow.’” What is this? the Wintersmith asked. “It’s…like…an old song,” said the possibly older boy. “More like a sort of poem. Everyone knows it,” said the possibly older girl. “’S called ‘These Are the Things That Make a Man,’” said the child who was the right way up. Tell me the rest of it, the Wintersmith demanded, and on the freezing pavement they did, as much as they knew. When they’d finished, the possibly older boy said hopefully, “Is there any chance you can take us flying?” No, said the Wintersmith. I have things to find! Things that make a man! One afternoon, when the sky was growing cold, there was a frantic knocking on Nanny’s door. It turned out to be caused by Annagramma, who almost fell into the room. She looked terrible, and her teeth were chattering. Nanny and Tiffany stood her by the fire, but she started talking before her teeth had warmed up. “Skkkkulls!” she managed. Oh dear, thought Tiffany. “What about them?” she said, as Nanny Ogg hurried in from the kitchen with a hot drink. “Mmmmmiss Trrreason’s Skkkkulls!” “Yes? What about them?” Annagramma took a swig from the mug. “What did you do with them?” she gasped, cocoa dribbling down her chin. “Buried them.” “Oh, no! Why?” “They were skulls. You can’t just leave skulls lying about!” Annagramma looked around wildly. “Can you lend me a shovel, then?” “Annagramma! You can’t dig up Miss Treason’s grave!” “But I need some skulls!” Annagramma insisted. “The people there—well, it’s like the olden days! I whitewashed that place with my own hands! Have you any idea how long it takes to whitewash over black? They complained! They won’t have anything to do with crystal therapy, they just frown and say Miss Treason gave them sticky black medicine that tasted horrible but worked! And they keep on asking me to sort out stupid little problems, and I don’t have a clue what they’re about. And this morning there was this old man who’s dead and I’ve got to lay him out and sit up with him tonight. Well, I mean, that’s so…yuk….” Tiffany glanced at Nanny Ogg, who was sitting in her chair and puffing gently on her pipe. Her eyes were gleaming. When she saw Tiffany’s expression, she winked and said: “I’ll leave you girls to have a little chat, shall I?” “Yes, please, Nanny. And please don’t listen at the door.” “To a private conversation? The very idea!” said Nanny, and went into the kitchen. “Will she listen?” whispered Annagramma. “I’ll just die if Mistress Weatherwax finds out.” Tiffany sighed. Did Annagramma know anything? “Of course she’ll listen,” she said. “She’s a witch.” “But she said she wouldn’t!” “She’ll listen, but she’ll pretend she hasn’t and she won’t tell anyone,” said Tiffany. “It’s her cottage, after all.” Annagramma looked desperate. “And on Tuesday I’ve probably got to go and deliver a baby out in some valley somewhere! An old woman came and gabbled at me about it!” “That’ll be Mrs. Owslick,” said Tiffany. “I did leave some notes, you know. Didn’t you read them?” “I think perhaps Mrs. Earwig tidied them away,” Annagramma said. “You should have looked at them! It took me an hour to write them all down!” said Tiffany reproachfully. “Three pieces of paper! Look, calm down, will you? Didn’t you learn anything about midwifery?” “Mrs. Earwig said giving birth is a natural action and nature should be allowed to take its course,” said Annagramma, and Tiffany was sure she heard a snort from behind the kitchen door. “I know a soothing chant, though.” “Well, I expect that will be a help,” said Tiffany weakly. “Mrs. Earwig said the village women know what to do,” said Annagramma hopefully. “She says to trust in their peasant wisdom.” “Well, Mrs. Obble was the old woman who called, and she has just got simple peasant ignorance,” said Tiffany. “She puts leaf mold on wounds if you don’t watch her. Look, just because a woman’s got no teeth doesn’t mean she’s wise. It might just mean she’s been stupid for a very long time. Don’t let her anywhere near Mrs. Owslick until after the baby. It’s not going to be an easy birth as it is.” “Well, I know plenty of spells that will help—” “No! No magic! Only to take away pain! Surely you know that?” “Yes, but Mrs. Earwig says—” “Why don’t you go and ask Mrs. Earwig to help you then?” Annagramma stared at Tiffany. That sentence had come out a bit louder than intended. And then Annagramma’s face slid into what she probably thought was a friendly expression. It made her look slightly mad. “Hey, I’ve got a great idea!” she said, as bright as a crystal that was about to shatter. “Why don’t you come back to the cottage and work for me?” “No. I’ve got other work to do.” “But you’re so good at the messy stuff, Tiffany,” said Annagramma in a syrupy voice. “It seems to come naturally to you.” “I started at the lambing when I was small, that’s why. Small hands can get inside and untangle things.” And now Annagramma had that hunted look she got when she was dealing with anything she didn’t immediately understand. “Inside the sheep? You mean up its…” “Yes. Of course.” “Untangle things?” “Sometimes the lambs try to get born backward,” said Tiffany. “Backward,” muttered Annagramma weakly. “And it can be worse if there’s twins.” “Twins…” Then Annagramma said, as if spotting the flaw: “But look, I’ve seen lots of pictures of shepherds and sheep and there’s never anything like that. I thought it was all just…standing around and watching the sheep eat grass.” There were times when you could feel that the world would be a better place if Annagramma got the occasional slap around the ear. The silly unthinking insults, her huge lack of interest in anyone other than herself, the way she treated everyone as if they were slightly deaf and a bit stupid…it could make your blood boil. But you put up with it because every once in a while you saw through it all. Inside there was this worried, frantic little face watching the world like a bunny watching a fox, and screaming at it in the hope that it would go away and not hurt her. And a meeting of witches, who were supposed to be clever, had handed her this steading that would be a hard job for anyone. It didn’t make sense. No, it didn’t make sense. “It only happens when there’s a difficult lambing,” said Tiffany, while her mind raced. “And that means it’s out in the dark and the cold and the rain. Artists never seem to be around then. It’s amazing.” “Why are you looking at me like that?” said Annagramma. “Like I’m not here!” Tiffany blinked. All right, she thought, how am I supposed to deal with this? “Look, I’ll come and help you with the laying out,” she said, as calmly as she could manage. “And I expect I can help with Mrs. Owslick. Or ask Petulia. She’s good. But you’ll have to do the watching by yourself.” “Sitting up all night with a dead person?” said Annagramma, and shivered. “You can take a book to read,” said Tiffany. “I suppose I could draw a circle of protection around the chair…” Annagramma muttered. “No,” said Tiffany. “No magic. Mrs. Earwig must have told you this?” “But a circle of protection—” “It draws attention. Something might turn up to see why it’s there. Don’t worry, it’s just to make the old people happy.” “Er…when you say that something might turn up…” Annagramma began. Tiffany sighed. “All right, I’ll sit up with you, just this once,” she said. Annagramma beamed. “And as for skulls,” said Tiffany, “just wait a moment.” She went upstairs and got the Boffo catalogue, which she’d hidden in her old suitcase. She came back with it carefully rolled up and handed it over. “Don’t look at it now,” she said. “Wait until you’re alone. You might find it gives you ideas. Okay? I’ll come and meet you around seven tonight.” When Annagramma had gone, Tiffany sat and counted under her breath. When she’d got to five, Nanny Ogg came and vigorously dusted a few ornaments before saying: “Oh, has your little friend gone?” “Do you think I’m being silly?” said Tiffany. Nanny stopped pretending to do housework. “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, not havin’ listened,” she said, “but if I had been listenin’, I’d think you won’t get any thanks, that’s what I’d think.” “Granny shouldn’t have meddled,” said Tiffany. “Shouldn’t have, eh?” said Nanny, her face blank. “I’m not stupid, Nanny,” said Tiffany. “I’ve worked it out.” “Worked it out, have you? There’s a clever girl,” said Nanny Ogg, sitting down in her chair. “And what is it you’ve worked out then?” This was going to get difficult. Nanny was usually cheerful all the time. When she went solemn, like she was now, it could make you nervous. But Tiffany pressed on. “I couldn’t take on a cottage,” she said. “Oh, I can do most of the everyday stuff, but you need to be older to run a steading. There’s things people won’t tell you if you’re thirteen, hat or not. But Granny put it about that she was suggesting me, and so everyone saw it as a contest between me and Annagramma, right? And they chose her because she’s older and sounds really competent. And now it’s all falling apart. It’s not her fault she was taught magic instead of witchcraft. Granny just wants her to fail so that everyone will know that Mrs. Earwig is a bad teacher. And I don’t think that’s good.” “I wouldn’t be too quick to decide what it is Esme Weatherwax wants, if I was you,” said Nanny Ogg. “I won’t say a word, mind you. You go off and help your friend if you want, but you’ve still got to work for me, okay? That’s only fair. How’s the feet?” “They feel fine, Nanny. Thank you for asking.” More than a hundred miles away, Mr. Fusel Johnson knew nothing about Tiffany, Nanny Ogg, or indeed anything very much except for clocks and watches, which he made for a living. He also knew how to lime-wash a kitchen, which was an easy and cheap way to get a nice white look even if the stuff was a bit runny. And therefore he had no idea why several handfuls of the white powder fountained up out of the mixing bowl before he could add the water, hung in the air for a moment like a ghost, and vanished up the chimney. In the end he put it down to too many trolls moving into the area. This wasn’t very logical, but such beliefs generally aren’t. And the Wintersmith thought: Lime enough to make a man! That night Tiffany sat up with Annagramma and old Mr. Tissot, except that he was lying down because he was dead. Tiffany had never liked watching over the dead. It wasn’t exactly something you could like. It was always a relief when the sky turned gray and the birds started to sing. Sometimes, in the night, Mr. Tissot made little noises. Except, of course, it wasn’t Mr. Tissot, who’d met Death hours ago. It was just the body he’d left behind, and the sounds it made were really no different from the noises made by an old house as it cooled down. It was important to remember these things around two o’clock in the morning. Vitally important, when the candle flickered. Annagramma snored. No one with a nose that small should be able to make a snore that loud. It was like ripping planks. Whatever evil spirits might be around on this night, that sound would probably scare them away. It wasn’t the gnh gnh gnh part that was so bad, and Tiffany could live with the bloooooorrrrt! It was the gap between them, after the gnh gnh gnh had wound up but before the long letdown of the bloooooorrrrt! that really got on her nerves. It was never the same length twice. Sometimes there was gnh gnh gnh bloooooorrrrt! , one right after the other, and then there might be such a huge gap after gnh gnh gnh that Tiffany found herself holding her breath while she waited for the bloooooorrrrt! It wouldn’t have been so bad if Annagramma had stuck to one length of pause. Sometimes she stopped altogether, and there was blessed silence until a festival of bloorts began, usually with a faint mni mni lip-smacking sound as Annagramma shifted position in her chair. Where are you, Flower Lady? What are you? You should be sleeping! The voice was so faint that Tiffany might not have heard it at all if she hadn’t been all tensed up waiting for the next gnh gnh gnh. And here it came— Gnh gnh gnh! Let me show you my world, Flower Lady. Let me show you all the colors of ice! BLOOOOOORRRRT! About three quarters of Tiffany thought: Oh, no! Will he find me if I reply? No. If he could find me, he’d be here. My hand isn’t itching. The other quarter thought: A god or godlike being is talking to me and I could really do without the snoring, Annagramma, thank you so much. Gnh gnh gnh! “I said I was sorry,” she whispered into the dancing candlelight. “I saw the iceberg. It was very…er…nice of you.” I have made many more. BLOOOOOORRRRT! Many more icebergs, thought Tiffany. Great big freezing, floating mountains that look like me, dragging fog banks and snowstorms behind them. I wonder how many ships will run into them. “You shouldn’t have gone to all that trouble,” she whispered. Now I am growing stronger! I am listening and learning! I am understanding humans! Outside the cottage window a thrush began to sing. Tiffany blew out the candle, and gray light crept into the room. Listening and learning…how could a blizzard understand things? Tiffany, Flower Lady! I am making myself a man! There was a complicated grunting as Annagramma’s gnh gnh gnh and bloooooorrrrt! ran into each other and she woke up. “Ah,” she said, stretching her arms and yawning. She looked around. “Well, that seemed to go well.” Tiffany stared at the wall. What did he mean, making himself a man? Surely he— “You didn’t fall asleep, did you, Tiffany?” said Annagramma in what she probably thought was a playful voice. “Not even for one tiny little second?” “What?” said Tiffany, glaring at the wall. “Oh…no. I didn’t!” People were moving around downstairs. After a little while there was a creaking on the stairs and the low door was pushed open. A middle-aged man, looking sheepishly at the floor, uttered, “Mam says would you ladies like some breakfast?” “Oh, no, we couldn’t possibly take what little you have—” Annagramma began. “Yes, please, we will be grateful,” said Tiffany, louder and quicker. The man nodded, and shut the door. “Oh, how could you say that?” said Annagramma, as his footsteps creaked down. “These are poor people! I thought you would—” “Shut up, will you?” snapped Tiffany. “Just shut up and wake up! These are real people! They’re not some kind of, of, of idea! We will go down there and we will eat breakfast and we’ll say how good it is and then we will thank them and they will thank us and we will go! And that will mean everyone has done the right thing by custom, and that will be what’s important to them. Besides, they don’t think they’re poor, because everyone around here is poor! But they’re not so poor they can’t afford to do the right things! That would be poor!” Annagramma was staring at her with her mouth open. “Be careful what you say next,” said Tiffany, breathing heavily. “In fact, don’t say anything.” Breakfast was ham and eggs. It was eaten in polite silence. After that, in the same silence except that it was outdoors, they flew back to what people would probably always think of as Miss Treason’s cottage. There was a small boy loitering outside. As soon as they landed, he blurted out, “Mrs. Obble says the baby’s on the way an’ she said you’d give me a penny for goin’.” “You have got a bag, haven’t you?” said Tiffany, turning to Annagramma. “Yes, er, lots.” “I mean a call-out bag. You know, you keep it by the door with everything in it that you’ll need if…” Tiffany saw the terrified look on the girl’s face. “Okay, so you haven’t got a bag. We’ll just have to do the best we can. Give him a penny and let’s go.” “Can we get anyone to help if it goes wrong?” Annagramma asked as they left the ground. “We are the help,” said Tiffany simply. “And since this is your steading, I’m giving you the really tough job—” —which was keeping Mrs. Obble occupied. Mrs. Obble wasn’t a witch, although most people thought she was. She looked like one—that is, she looked like someone who’d bought everything in the Boffo catalogue on the day of the Special Offer on Hairy Warts—and she was mildly crazy and should not have been allowed within a mile of any mother who was going to have her first baby, since she would very conscientiously tell them (or cackle at them, anyway) about all the things that could go wrong in a way that made it sound as if they would all go wrong. She wasn’t a bad nurse, though, once you stopped her from putting a leaf-mold poultice on everything. Things went noisily and with a certain amount of fuss, but nothing like Mrs. Obble had predicted, and the result was a baby boy, who was not a bouncing baby but only because Tiffany caught him; Annagramma didn’t know how to hold babies. She did look good in a pointy hat, though, and since she was clearly older than Tiffany and did hardly any of the work, the other women assumed she was in charge. Tiffany left her holding the baby (the right way up, this time) and looking proud, and began the long flight back through the woods to Tir Nani Ogg. It was a crisp evening, but there was a bit of wind that blew stinging snow crystals off the trees. It was an exhausting journey and very, very cold. He can’t know where I am, she repeated to herself as she flew back in the dusk. And he’s not very clever. Winter has to end sometime, right? Er…how? said her Second Thoughts. Miss Tick said you just have to be there, but surely you have to do something else? I suppose I’ll have to walk around with my shoes off, Tiffany thought. Everywhere? her Second Thoughts wondered, as she swerved between the trees. It’s probably like being a queen, her Third Thoughts said. She just has to sit in a palace and maybe do a bit of driving around in a big coach and waving, and all over a huge kingdom monarching is going on. But as she avoided more trees, she also tried to avoid the little scurrying thought that was trying to creep into her mind: Sooner or later, one way or the other, he will find you…and how can he make himself a man? Assistant Postmaster Groat did not believe in doctors. They made you ill, he thought. So he put sulfur in his socks every morning and he was proud to say that he had never had a day’s illness in his life. This may have been because not many people cared to come very close to him, because of the smell. Something did, though. A gale roared into his post office when he was opening the door one morning and blew his socks clean off.* And no one heard the Wintersmith say: “Sulfur enough to make a man!” Nanny Ogg was sitting by the fire when Tiffany came in, stamping snow off her boots. “You look frozen all through,” Nanny said. “You need a glass of hot milk with a drop of brandy in it, that’s what you need.” “Ooh, yyess…” Tiffany managed through chattering teeth. “Get me one too, then, will you?” said Nanny. “Only joking. You get warmed up; I’ll see to the drink.” Tiffany’s feet felt like blocks of ice. She knelt by the fire and stretched out her hand to the stockpot on its big black hook. It bubbled all the time. Get your mind right, and balance. Reach out and cup your hands around it, and concentrate, concentrate, on your freezing boots. After a while her toes felt warm and then— “Ow!” Tiffany pulled her hands away and sucked at her fingers. “Didn’t have your mind right,” said Nanny Ogg from the doorway. “Well, you know, that’s just a bit difficult when you’ve had a long day and you didn’t sleep much and the Wintersmith is looking for you,” snapped Tiffany. “The fire doesn’t care,” said Nanny, shrugging. “Hot milk coming up.” Things were a little better when Tiffany had warmed up. She wondered how much brandy Nanny had added to the milk. Nanny had done one for herself, with probably some milk added to the brandy. “Isn’t this nice and cozy,” said Nanny after a while. “Is this going to be the talk about sex?” said Tiffany. “Did anyone say there was going to be one?” said Nanny innocently. “I kind of got the feeling,” said Tiffany. “And I know where babies come from, Mrs. Ogg.” “I should hope so.” “I know how they get there, too. I live on a farm and I’ve got a lot of older sisters.” “Ah, right,” said Nanny. “Well, I see you’re pretty well prepared for life, then. Not much left for me to tell you, I expect. And I’ve never had a god pay any attention to me, as far as I can recall. Flattered, are you?” “No!” Tiffany looked into Nanny’s smile. “Well, a bit,” she admitted. “And frightened of him?” “Yes.” “Well, the poor thing hasn’t quite got it right yet. He started off so well, with the ice roses and everything, and then he wanted to show you his muscles. Typical. But you shouldn’t be frightened of him. He should be frightened of you.” “Why? Because I’m pretending to be the flower woman?” “Because you’re a girl! It’s a poor lookout if a bright girl can’t wind a boy around her little finger. He’s smitten with you. You could make his life a misery with a word. Why, when I was a girl, a young man nearly threw himself off the Lancre Bridge because I spurned his advances!” “He did? What happened?” “I unspurned ’em. Well, he looked so pretty standing there, and I thought, that’s a good-looking bum on him if ever I saw one.” Nanny sat back. “And think about poor ol’ Greebo. He’ll fight anything. But Esme’s little white kitten leaped straight at him, and now the poor dear won’t come into this room without peering around the door to check that she’s not here. You should see his poor little face when he does, too. It’s all wrinkled up. O’ course, he could tear her into bits with one claw, but he can’t now ’cuz she’s fixed his head.” “You’re not saying I should try to tear the Wintersmith’s face off, are you?” “No, no, you don’t have to be as blunt as that. Give him a little hope. Be kind but firm—” “He wants to marry me!” “Good.” “Good?” “That means he wants to stay friendly. Don’t say no, don’t say yes. Act like a queen. He’s got to learn to show you some respect. What are you doing?” “Writing this down,” said Tiffany, scribbling in her diary. “You don’t need to write it down, love,” said Nanny. “It’s written down in you somewhere. On a page you haven’t read yet, I reckon. Which reminds me, these came when you were out.” Nanny fished down among the seat cushions and pulled out a couple of envelopes. “My boy Shawn is the postman, so he knew you’d moved.” Tiffany nearly snatched them out of her hand. Two letters! “Like him, do you? Your young man in the castle?” said Nanny. “He’s a friend who writes to me,” said Tiffany haughtily. “That’s right, that’s just the look and voice you need for dealing with the Wintersmith!” said Nanny, looking delighted. “Who does he think he is, daring to talk to you? That’s the way!” “I shall read them in my room,” said Tiffany. Nanny nodded. “One of the girls did us a lovely casserole,” she said (famously, Nanny never remembered the names of her daughters-in-law). “Yours is in the oven. I’m off to the pub. Early start tomorrow!” Alone in her room, Tiffany read the first letter. To the unaided eye, not much happened on the Chalk. It had avoided History. It was a place of small things. Tiffany enjoyed reading about them. The second letter seemed to be much the same as the first one—until the bit about the ball. He’d gone to a ball! It was at the house of Lord Diver, who was a neighbor! He’d danced with his daughter, who was called Iodine because Lord Diver thought that was a nice name for a girl! They’d had three dances!! And ice cream!! Iodine had shown him her watercolors!!! How could he sit there and write such things?!!! Tiffany’s eyes moved on, over the everyday news like the bad weather and what had happened to old Aggie’s leg, but the words didn’t enter her head because it was on fire. Who did he think he was, dancing with another girl? You danced with the Wintersmith, her Third Thoughts said. All right, but what about the watercolors? The Wintersmith showed you the snowflakes, said her Third Thoughts. But I was just being polite! Perhaps he was just being polite, too. All right, but I know those aunts, Tiffany thought furiously. They’ve never liked me, because I’m only a farm girl! And Lord Diver’s very rich and his daughter is his only child! They’re scheming! How could he sit there and write as if eating ice cream with another girl was a perfectly normal thing to do! That was as bad as—well, something pretty bad, at least! As for looking at her watercolors… He’s just a boy you happen to write to, said her Third Thoughts. Yes, well… Yes, well…what? her Third Thoughts persisted. They were getting on Tiffany’s nerves. Your own brains ought to have the decency to be on your side! Just “Yes, well…” okay? she thought angrily. You’re not being very sensible about this. Oh, really? Well, I’ve been sensible all day! I’ve been sensible for years! I think I’m owed five minutes of being really unreasonably angry, don’t you? There’s some casserole downstairs, and you haven’t eaten since breakfast, said her Third Thoughts. You’ll feel better after you’ve eaten something. How can I eat stew when people are looking at watercolors? How dare he look at watercolors! But her Third Thoughts were right—not that this made things any better. If you’re going to be angry and miserable, you might as well be so on a full stomach. She went downstairs and found the casserole in the oven. It smelled good. Nothing but the best for dear ol’ Mum. She opened the cutlery drawer for a spoon. The drawer stuck. She rattled it, pulled at it, and swore a few times, but it stayed stuck. “Oh, yes, go ahead,” said a voice behind her. “See how much help that is. Don’t be sensible and stick your hand under the top and carefully free up the stuck item. Oh no. Rattle and curse, that’s the way!” Tiffany turned. There was a skinny, tired-looking woman standing by the kitchen table. She seemed to be wearing a sheet draped around her and was smoking a cigarette. Tiffany had never seen a woman smoke a cigarette before, but especially never a cigarette that burned with a fat red flame and gave off sparks. “Who are you, and what are you doing in Mrs. Ogg’s kitchen?” Tiffany said sharply. This time it was the woman who looked surprised. “You can hear me?” she said. “And see me?” “Yes!” Tiffany snarled. “And this is a food preparation area, you know!” “You’re not supposed to be able to see me!” “Well, I’m looking at you!” “Hold on a minute,” said the woman, frowning at Tiffany. “You’re not just a human, are you…?” She squinted oddly for a moment and then said, “Oh, you’re her. Am I right? The new Summer?” “Never mind me, who are you?” said Tiffany. “And it was only one dance!” “Anoia, Goddess of Things That Get Stuck in Drawers,” said the woman. “Pleased to meet you.” She took another puff at the flaming cigarette, and there were more sparks. Some of them dropped on the floor but didn’t seem to do any damage. “There’s a goddess just for that?” said Tiffany. “Well, I find lost corkscrews and things that roll under furniture,” said Anoia offhandedly. “Sometimes things that get lost under sofa cushions, too. They want me to do stuck zippers, and I’m thinking about that. But mostly I manifest whensoever people rattle stuck drawers and call upon the gods.” She puffed on her cigarette. “Got any tea?” “But I didn’t call on anyone!” “You did,” said Anoia, blowing more sparks. “You cussed. Sooner or later, every curse is a prayer.” She waved the hand that wasn’t holding the cigarette and something in the drawer went pling. “It’ll be all right now. It was the egg slicer. Everyone has one, and no one knows why. Did anyone in the world ever knowingly go out one day and buy an egg slicer? I don’t think so.” Tiffany tried the drawer. It slid out easily. “About that tea?” said Anoia, sitting down. Tiffany put the kettle on. “You know about me?” she asked. “Oh, yes,” said Anoia. “It’s been quite some time since a god fell in love with a mortal. Everyone wants to see how it turns out.” “Fell in love?” “Oh, yes.” “And you mean the gods are watching?” “Well, of course,” said Anoia. “Most of the big ones don’t do anything else these days! But I’m supposed to do zippers, oh yes, and my hands get very stiff in this weather!” Tiffany glanced at the ceiling, which was now full of smoke. “They’re watching all the time?” she said, aghast. “I heard you’re getting more interest than the war in Klatchistan, and that was pretty popular,” said Anoia, holding out her red hands. “Look, chilblains. Not that they care, of course.” “Even when I’m having a…wash?” said Tiffany. The goddess laughed nastily. “Yes. And they can see in the dark, too. Best not to think about it.” Tiffany looked up at the ceiling again. She had been hoping for a bath tonight. “I’ll try not to,” she said darkly, and added: “Is it…hard, being a goddess?” “It has its good days,” said Anoia. She stood with her cigarette arm cupped at the elbow by her other hand, holding the flaming, sparking thing close to her face. Now she took a sharp pull, raised her head, and blew a cloud of smoke out to join the smog on the ceiling. Sparks fell out of it like rain. “I haven’t been doing drawers long. I used to be a volcano goddess.” “Really?” said Tiffany. “I’d never have guessed.” “Oh, yes. It was good work, apart from the screaming,” said Anoia, and then added in a bitter tone of voice: “Ha! And the god of storms was always raining on my lava. That’s men for you, dear. They rain on your lava.” “And look at watercolors,” said Tiffany. Anoia’s eyes narrowed. “Someone else’s watercolors?” “Yes!” “Men! They’re all the same,” said Anoia. “Take my advice, dear, and show Mr. Wintersmith the door. He’s only an elemental, after all.” Tiffany glanced at the door. “Give him the boot, dear, send him packing and change the locks. Let’s have summer all year round like the hot countries do. Grapes all over the place, eh? Coconuts on every tree! Hah, when I was in the volcano game, I couldn’t move for mangoes. Kiss good-bye to snow and fog and slush. Have you got the thingy yet?” “The thingy?” said Tiffany, looking worried. “It’ll turn up, I daresay,” said Anoia. “I hear it can be a bit tricky to—Oops, I hear rattling, must fly, don’t worry, I won’t tell him where you are—” She vanished. So did the smoke. Not knowing what else to do, Tiffany ladled out a plate of hearty meat and vegetables and ate it. So…she could see gods now? And they knew about her? And everyone wanted to give her advice. It was not a good idea to come to the attention of those in high places, her father had said. But it was impressive. In love with her, eh? And telling everyone? But he was really an elemental, not a proper god at all. All he knew was how to move wind and water around! Even so…huh. Some people have elementals running after them! Oh yes! How about that? If people were stupid enough to dance around with girls who painted watercolors to lead honest men to their Doom, well, she could be haughty to people who were almost gods. She ought to mention that in a letter, except that of course she wasn’t going to be writing to him now. Hah! And a few miles away Old Mother Blackcap, who made her own soap out of animal fat and potash made, indeed, from plant ashes, felt a bar of soap snatched from her hand just as she was about to boil some sheets. The tub of water froze solid, too. Being a witch, she immediately said: “There’s a strange thief about!” And the Wintersmith said: “Potash enough to make a man!” CHAPTER EIGHT The Horn of Plenty T hat night, after Nanny Ogg had gone to bed, Tiffany did have the bath she’d been looking forward to. This was not something to be taken lightly. First, the tin bath had to be fetched from its hook on the back of the privy, which was at the bottom of the garden, and dragged through the dark, freezing night to a place of honor in front of the fire. Then kettles had to be heated over the fire and on the black kitchen stove, and getting even six inches of warm water was an effort. Afterward, the water all had to be scooped out and into the sink and the bath moved into a corner, ready to be taken outside in the morning. When you had to do all that, you might as well scrub every inch. Tiffany did one extra thing: She wrote PRIVATE!! on a piece of cardboard and wedged it in the hanging lamp in the center of the room so that it could be read only from above. She wasn’t sure it would put off any inquisitive gods, but she felt better for doing it. That night she slept without dreaming. In the morning snow had put a fresh coating on the drifts, and a couple of Nanny Ogg’s grandchildren were building her a snowman on the lawn. They came in after a while and demanded a carrot for the nose and two lumps of coal for the eyes. Nanny took her to the isolated village of Slice, where people were always glad and surprised to see someone they weren’t related to. Nanny Ogg ambled from cottage to cottage along the paths cut in the snow, drinking enough cups of tea to float an elephant and doing witchcraft in small ways. Mostly it seemed to just consist of gossip, but once you got the hang of it, you could hear the magic happening. Nanny Ogg changed the way people thought, even if it was only for a few minutes. She left people thinking they were slightly better people. They weren’t, but as Nanny said, it gave them something to live up to. Then there was another night without dreams, but Tiffany woke up with a snap at half past five, feeling…odd. She rubbed the frost off the window and saw the snowman by moonlight. Why do we do it? she wondered. As soon as there’s snow, we build snowmen. We do worship the Wintersmith, in a way. We make the snow human…. We give him coal eyes and a carrot nose to bring him alive. Oh, and I see the children gave him a scarf. That’s what a snowman needs, a scarf to keep him warm…. She went down into the silent kitchen, and for want of anything else to do she scrubbed the table. Doing something with her hands helped her think. Something had changed, and it was her. She’d been worrying about what he would do and what he would think, as if she were just a leaf being blown about by the wind. She dreaded hearing his voice in her head, where he had no right to be. Well, not now. Not anymore. He ought to be worried about her. Yes, she’d made a mistake. Yes, it was her fault. But she wasn’t going to be bullied. You couldn’t let boys go around raining on your lava and ogling other people’s watercolors. Find the story, Granny Weatherwax always said. She believed that the world was full of story shapes. If you let them, they controlled you. But if you studied them, if you found out about them…you could use them, you could change them…. Miss Treason had known all about stories, yes? She’d spun them like a spiderweb, to give herself power. And they worked because people wanted to believe them. And Nanny Ogg told a story, too. Fat, jolly Nanny Ogg, who liked a drink (and another drink, thank you kindly) and was everyone’s favorite grandmother…but those twinkling little eyes could bore into your head and read all your secrets. Even Granny Aching had a story. She’d lived in the old shepherding hut, high on the hills, listening to the wind blowing over the turf. She was mysterious, alone—and the stories floated up and gathered around her, all those stories about her finding lost lambs even though she was dead, all those stories about her, still, watching over people…. People wanted the world to be a story, because stories had to sound right and they had to make sense. People wanted the world to make sense. Well, her story wasn’t going to be the story of a little girl who got pushed around. There was no sense in that. Except…he’s not actually bad. The gods in the Mythology, they seemed to get the hang of being human—a bit too human, sometimes—but how could a snowstorm or a gale ever find out? He was dangerous and scary—but you couldn’t help feeling sorry for him…. Someone hammered on Nanny Ogg’s back door. It turned out to be a tall figure in black. “Wrong house,” said Tiffany. “No one here is even a bit sick.” A hand raised the black hood, and from its depths a voice hissed: “It’s me, Annagramma! Is she in?” “Mrs. Ogg’s not up yet,” said Tiffany. “Good. Can I come in?” At the kitchen table, over a cup of warming tea, Annagramma revealed all. Life in the woods was not going well. “Two men came to see me about some stupid cow they both think they own!” she said. “That’ll be Joe Broomsocket and Shifty Adams. I left you a note about them, too,” said Tiffany. “Whenever one or other of them gets drunk, they argue about that cow.” “What am I supposed to do about it?” “Nod and smile. Wait until the cow dies, Miss Treason always said. Or one of the men,” said Tiffany. “It’s the only way.” “And a woman came to see me with a sick pig!” “What did you do about it?” “I told her I don’t do pigs! But she burst into tears, so I tried Bangle’s Universal Nostrum on it.” “You used that on a pig?” said Tiffany, shocked. “Well, the pig witch uses magic, so I don’t see why—” Annagramma began defensively. “She knows what works!” said Tiffany. “It was perfectly all right when I got it down out of the tree! She didn’t have to make all that fuss! I’m sure the bristles will grow back! In time!” “It wasn’t a spotted pig, was it? And a woman with a squint?” Tiffany asked. “Yes! I think so! Does it matter?” “Mrs. Stumper is very attached to that pig,” said Tiffany reproachfully. “She brings him up to the cottage about once a week. It’s usually just an upset stomach. She feeds him too much.” “Really? Then I won’t open the door to her next time,” said Annagramma firmly. “No, let her in. Really, it’s all because she’s lonely and wants to chat.” “Well, I should think I’ve got better things to do with my time than listen to an old lady who just wants to talk,” said Annagramma indignantly. Tiffany looked at her. Where did you start, apart from banging the girl’s head on the table until the brain started working? “Listen very carefully,” she said. “I mean to her, not just to me. You’ve got no better use of your time than to listen to old ladies who want to talk. Everyone tells things to witches. So listen to everyone and don’t say much and think about what they say and how they say it and watch their eyes…. It becomes like a big jigsaw puzzle, but you’re the only one who can see all the pieces. You’ll know what they want you to know, and what they don’t want you to know, and even what they think no one knows. That’s why we go around the houses. That’s why you will go around the houses, until you’re part of their lives.” “All this just to get some power over a crowd of farmers and peasants?” Tiffany spun around and kicked a chair so hard that it broke a leg. Annagramma backed away quickly. “What did you do that for?” “You’re clever—you guess!” “Oh, I forgot…your father is a shepherd…” “Good! You remembered!” Tiffany hesitated. Certainty was pouring into her brain, courtesy of her Third Thoughts. Suddenly she knew Annagramma. “And your father?” she asked. “What?” Annagramma instinctively drew herself up. “Oh, he owns several farms—” “Liar!” “Well, perhaps I should say he is a farmer—” the girl began, nervousness beginning to show. “Liar!” Annagramma backed away. “How dare you talk to me like—” “How dare you not tell me the truth!” In the pause that opened, Tiffany heard everything—the faint crackle of wood in the stove, the sound of mice in the cellar, her own breathing roaring like the sea in a cave…. “He works for a farmer, all right?” said Annagramma quickly, and then looked shocked at her own words. “We don’t have any land, we don’t even own the cottage. There’s the truth, if you want it. Happy now?” “No. But thank you,” said Tiffany. “Are you going to tell the others?” “No. It doesn’t matter. But Granny Weatherwax wants you to make a mess of all this, do you understand? She’s got nothing against you…” Tiffany hesitated, then went on, “I mean, nothing more than she has against everyone. She just wants people to see that Mrs. Earwig’s style of witchcraft doesn’t work. This is just like her! She’s not said a word against you, she’s just let you have exactly what you wanted. It’s like a story. Everyone knows that if you get exactly what you wish for, it all goes bad. And you wished for a cottage. And you’re going to mess it up.” “I just need another day or two to get the hang—” “Why? You’re a witch with a cottage. You’re supposed to be able to deal with it! Why take it on if you couldn’t do it?” You’re supposed to be able to deal with it, sheep girl! Why take it on if you couldn’t do it? “So you’re not going to help me?” Annagramma glared at Tiffany, and then her expression, most unusually, softened a bit and she said, “Are you all right?” Tiffany blinked. It’s horrible to have your own voice echo back at you from the other side of your mind. “Look, I haven’t got time,” she said weakly. “Maybe the others can…help out?” “I don’t want them to know!” Panic cut curves on Annagramma’s face. She can do magic, Tiffany thought. She’s just not good at witchcraft. She’ll make a mess of it. She’ll make a mess of people. She gave in. “All right, I can probably spare some time. There’s not many chores to do at Tir Nani Ogg. And I’ll explain things to the others. They’ll have to know. They’ll probably help. You learn fast—you could pick up the basic stuff in a week or so.” Tiffany watched Annagramma’s face. She was actually thinking about it! If she were drowning and you threw her a rope, she’d complain if it was the wrong color…. “Well, if they are just helping me…” Annagramma said, brightening up. You could almost admire the girl for the way she could rearrange the real world in her head. Another story, thought Tiffany; it’s all about Annagramma. “Yes, we’ll be helping you.” She sighed. “Perhaps we could even tell people that you girls are coming to me to learn things?” said Annagramma hopefully. People said that you should always count up to ten before losing your temper. But if it was Annagramma you were dealing with, you had to know some bigger numbers, like perhaps a million. “No,” said Tiffany, “I don’t think we’ll do that. You are the one doing the learning.” Annagramma opened her mouth to argue, saw the look on Tiffany’s face, and decided not to. “Er, yes,” she said. “Of course. Er…thank you.” That was a surprise. “They probably will help,” said Tiffany. “It won’t look good if one of us fails.” To her amazement, the girl really was crying. “It’s just that I didn’t really think they were my friends….” “I don’t like her,” said Petulia, who was knee-deep in pigs. “She calls me the pig witch.” “Well, you are a pig witch,” said Tiffany, who was standing outside the pigpen. The big shed was full of pigs. The noise was nearly as bad as the smell. Fine snow, like dust, was falling outside. “Yes, but when she says it, there’s a good deal too much pig and not enough witch,” said Petulia. “Every time she opens her mouth, I think I’ve done something wrong.” She waved a hand in a pig’s face and muttered a few words. The animal’s eyes crossed and it opened its mouth. It got a large dose of green liquid from a bottle. “We can’t just leave her to struggle,” said Tiffany. “People might get hurt.” “Well, that wouldn’t be our fault, would it?” said Petulia, dosing another pig. She cupped her hands and shouted over the din to a man at the other end of the pens: “Fred, this lot’s done!” Then she climbed out of the pen, and Tiffany saw that she’d got her dress tucked up to her waist and was wearing a pair of heavy leather britches under it. “They’re making a real fuss this morning,” she said. “Sounds like they’re getting a bit frisky.” “Frisky?” said Tiffany. “Oh…yes.” “Listen, you can hear the boars yelling in their shed,” said Petulia. “They can smell the spring.” “But it’s not even Hogswatch yet!” “It’s the day after tomorrow. Anyway the springtime sleeps under the snow, my dad always says,” said Petulia, washing her hands in a bucket. No ums, said Tiffany’s Third Thoughts. When she’s working, Petulia never says “um.” She’s certain of things when she’s working. She stands up straight. She’s in charge. “Look, it will be our fault if we can see something wrong and don’t do anything about it,” said Tiffany. “Oh, Annagramma again,” said Petulia. She shrugged. “Look, I can go over there maybe once a week after Hogswatch and show her some of the basic stuff. Will that make you happy?” “I’m sure she’ll be grateful.” “I’m sure she won’t be. Have you asked any of the others?” “No. I thought that if they knew you’d agreed, they probably would, too,” said Tiffany. “Hah! Well, I suppose that at least we can say we tried. You know, I used to think Annagramma was really clever because she knew a lot of words and could do sparkly spells? But show her a sick pig and she’s useless!” Tiffany told her about Mrs. Stumper’s pig and Petulia looked shocked. “We can’t have that sort of thing,” she said. “In a tree? Perhaps I’ll try to drop in this afternoon then.” She hesitated. “You know Granny Weatherwax won’t be happy about this? Do we want to be caught between her and Mrs. Earwig?” “Are we doing the right thing or not?” said Tiffany. “Anyway, what’s the worst she could do to us?” Petulia gave a short laugh with no humor in it at all. “Well,” she said, “first, she could make our—” “She won’t.” “I wish I was as sure as you,” said Petulia. “All right, then. For Mrs. Stumper’s pig.” Tiffany flew above the treetops, and the occasional high twig brushed against her boots. There was just enough winter sunshine to make the snow crisp and glittery, like a frosted cake. It had been a busy morning. The coven hadn’t been very interested in helping Annagramma. The coven itself seemed a long time ago. It had been a busy winter. “All we did was muck about while Annagramma bossed us around,” Dimity Hubbub had said, while grinding minerals and very carefully tipping them, a bit at a time, into a tiny pot being heated by a candle. “I’m too busy to mess around with magic. It never did anything useful. You know her trouble? She thinks you can be a witch by buying enough things.” “She just needs to learn how to deal with people,” said Tiffany. At this point, the pot exploded. “Well, I think we can safely say that wasn’t your everyday toothache cure,” said Dimity, picking bits of pot out of her hair. “All right, I can spare the odd day, if Petulia’s doing it. But it won’t do much good.” Lucy Warbeck was lying full length and fully clothed in a tin bath full of water when Tiffany came by. Her head was all the way under the surface, but when she saw Tiffany peering in, she held up a sign saying I’M NOT DROWNING! Miss Tick had said she would make a good witch finder, so she was training hard. “I don’t see why we should help Annagramma,” she said as Tiffany helped her get dry. “She just likes putting people down with that sarcastic voice of hers. Anyway, what’s it to you? You know she doesn’t like you.” “I thought we’ve always got on…more or less,” said Tiffany. “Really? You can do stuff she can’t even attempt! Like that thing where you go invisible…you do it and you make it look easy! But you come along to the meetings and act like the rest of us and help clear up afterward, and that drives her mad!” “Look, I don’t understand what you’re going on about.” Lucy picked up another towel. “She can’t stand the idea that someone’s better than her but doesn’t crow about it.” “Why should I do that?” said Tiffany, bewildered. “Because that’s what she’d do, if she was you,” said Lucy, carefully pushing the knife and fork back into her piled-up hair.* “She thinks you’re laughing at her. And now, oh my word, she’s got to depend on you. You might as well have pushed pins up her nose.” But Petulia had signed up, and so Lucy and the rest of them did, too. Petulia had become the big success story since she’d won the Witch Trials with her famous Pig Trick two years ago. She’d been laughed at—well, by Annagramma, and everyone else had sort of grinned awkwardly—but she’d stuck to what she was good at and people were saying that she’d got skills with animals that even Granny Weatherwax couldn’t match. She’d got solid respect, too. People didn’t understand a lot of what witches did, but anyone who could get a sick cow back on its feet…well, that person was someone you looked up to. So for the whole coven, after Hogswatch, it was going to be All About Annagramma time. Tiffany flew back toward Tir Nani Ogg with her head spinning. She’d never thought anyone could be envious of her. Okay, she’d picked up one or two things, but anyone could do them. You just had to be able to switch yourself off. She’d sat on the sand of the desert behind the Door, she’d faced dogs with razor teeth…they were not things she wanted to remember. And on top of all that, there was the Wintersmith. He couldn’t find her without the horse, everyone was sure of that. He could speak in her head, and she could speak to him, but that was a kind of magic and didn’t have anything to do with maps. He’d been quiet for a while. He was probably building icebergs. She landed the broomstick on a small bald hill among the trees. There was no cottage to be seen. She climbed off the stick but held on to it, just in case. The stars were coming out. The Wintersmith liked clear nights. They were colder. And the words came. They were her words in her voice and she knew what they meant, but they had a sort of echo. “Wintersmith! I command you!” As she blinked at the high-toned way the words had sounded, the reply came back. The voice was all around her. Who commands the Wintersmith? “I am the Summer Lady.” Well, she thought, I’m a sort of stand-in. Then why do you hide from me? “I fear your ice. I fear your chill. I run from your avalanches. I hide from your storms.” Ah, right. This is goddess talk. Live with me in my world of ice! “How dare you order me! Don’t you dare to order me!” But you chose to dwell in my winter…. The Wintersmith sounded uncertain. “I go where I please. I make my own way. I seek the leave of no man. In your country you will honor me—or there will be a reckoning!” And that bit is mine, Tiffany thought, pleased to get a word in. There was a long silence, filled with uncertainty and puzzlement. Then the Wintersmith said: How may I serve you, my lady? “No more icebergs looking like me. I don’t want to be a face that sinks a thousand ships.” And the frost? May we share the frosts? And the snowflakes? “Not the frosts. You must not write my name on windows. That can only lead to trouble.” But I may be permitted to honor you in snowflakes? “Er…” Tiffany stopped. Goddesses shouldn’t say “er,” she was sure of that. “Snowflakes will be…acceptable,” she said. After all, she thought, it’s not as though they have my name on them. I mean, most people won’t notice, and if they do they won’t know it’s me. Then there will be snowflakes, my lady, until the time we dance again. And we will, for I am making myself a man! The voice of the Wintersmith…went. Tiffany was alone again among the trees. Except…she wasn’t. “I know you’re still there,” she said, her breath leaving a sparkle in the air. “You are, aren’t you? I can feel you. You’re not my thoughts. I’m not imagining you. The Wintersmith has gone. You can speak with my mouth. Who are you?” The wind made snow fall from the trees nearby. The stars twinkled. Nothing else moved. “You are there,” said Tiffany. “You’ve put thoughts in my head. You’ve even made my own voice speak to me. That’s not going to happen again. Now that I know the feeling, I can keep you out. If you have anything to say to me, say it now. When I leave here, I will shut my mind to you. I will not let—” How does it feel to be so helpless, sheep girl? “You are Summer, aren’t you?” said Tiffany. And you are like a little girl dressing in her mother’s clothes, little feet in big shoes, dress trailing in the dirt. The world will freeze because of a silly child— Tiffany did—something that it would be impossible for her to describe, and the voice ended up like a distant insect. It was lonely on the hill, and cold. And all you could do was keep going. You could scream, cry, and stamp your feet, but apart from making you feel warmer, it wouldn’t do any good. You could say it was unfair, and that was true, but the universe didn’t care because it didn’t know what “fair” meant. That was the big problem about being a witch. It was up to you. It was always up to you. Hogswatch came, with more snow and some presents. Nothing from home, even though some coaches were getting through. She told herself there was probably a good reason, and tried to believe it. It was the shortest day of the year, which was convenient because it fitted neatly with the longest night. This was the heart of winter, but Tiffany didn’t expect the present that arrived the next day. It had been snowing hard, but the evening sky was pink and blue and freezing. It came out of the pink evening sky with a whistling noise and landed in Nanny Ogg’s garden, throwing up a shower of dirt and leaving a big hole. “Well, that’s good-bye to the cabbages,” said Nanny, looking out the window. Steam was rising from the hole when they went outside, and there was a strong smell of sprouts. Tiffany peered through the steam. Dirt and stalks covered the thing, but she could make out something rounded. She let herself slide farther into the hole, right down amid the mud and steam and the mysterious thing. It wasn’t very hot now, and as she scraped stuff away, she began to have a nasty feeling that she knew what it was. It was, she was sure, the “thingy” that Anoia had talked about. It looked mysterious enough. And as it emerged from the mud, she knew she’d seen it before. “Are you all right down there? I can’t see you for all this steam!” Nanny Ogg called. By the sound of it, the neighbors had come running; there was some excited chattering. Tiffany quickly scraped mud and mashed cabbages over the arrival and called up, “I think this might explode. Tell everyone to get indoors! And then reach down and grab my hand, will you?” There was some shouting above her and the sound of running feet. Nanny Ogg’s hand appeared, waving around in the fog, and between them they got Tiffany out of the hole. “Shall we hide under the kitchen table?” said Nanny as Tiffany tried to brush mud and cabbage off her dress. Then Nanny winked. “If it is going to explode?” Her son Shawn came around the house with a bucket of water in each hand and stopped, looking disappointed that there was nothing to do with them. “What was it, Mum?” he panted. Nanny looked at Tiffany, who said: “Er…a giant rock fell out of the sky.” “Giant rocks can’t stay up in the sky, miss!” said Shawn. “I expect that’s why this one fell down, lad,” said Nanny briskly. “If you want to do something useful, you can stand guard and make sure nobody comes near it.” “What shall I do if it explodes, Mum?” “Come and tell me, will you?” said Nanny. She hurried Tiffany into the cottage, shut the door behind them, and said: “I’m a dreadful ol’ liar, Tiff, and it takes one to know one. What’s down there?” “Well, I don’t think it’s going to explode,” said Tiffany. “And if it did, I think the worse that’d happen is that we’d be covered in coleslaw. I think it’s the Cornucopia.” There was the sound of voices outside and the door was flung open. “Blessings be upon this house,” said Granny Weatherwax, stamping snow off her boots. “Your boy said I shouldn’t come in, but I think he was wrong. I came as quick as I could. What’s happened?” “We’ve got cornucopias,” said Nanny Ogg, “whatever they are.” It was later that evening. They’d waited until it was dark before pulling the Cornucopia out of the hole. It was a lot lighter than Tiffany had expected; in fact it had an air about it of something very, very heavy which, for reasons of its own, had become light just for a while. Now it was on the kitchen table, wiped clean of mud and cabbages. Tiffany thought it looked vaguely alive. It was warm to the touch and seemed to vibrate slightly under her fingers. “According to Chaffinch,” she said, with the Mythology open on her lap, “the god Blind Io created the Cornucopia from a horn of the magical goat Almeg to feed his two children by the Goddess Bisonomy, who was later turned into a shower of oysters by Epidity, God of Things Shaped like Potatoes, after insulting Resonata, Goddess of Weasels, by throwing a mole at her shadow. It is now the badge of office of the summer goddess.” “I always said there used to be far too much of that sort of thing in the old days,” said Granny Weatherwax. The witches stared at the thing. It did look a bit like a goat horn, but much larger. “How does it work?” said Nanny Ogg. She stuck her head inside it and shouted “Hello!” Helloes came back, echoing for a long time, as if they had gone much farther than you would expect them to. “Looks like a great big seashell to me,” was the opinion of Granny Weatherwax. The kitten You padded around the giant thing, sniffing daintily at it. (Greebo was hiding behind the saucepans on the top shelf. Tiffany checked.) “I don’t think anyone knows,” she said. “But the other name for it is The Horn of Plenty.” “A horn? Can you play a tune on it?” asked Nanny. “I don’t think so,” said Tiffany. “It contains…er…things.” “What sort of things?” said Granny Weatherwax. “Well, technically…everything,” said Tiffany. “Everything that grows.” She showed them the picture in the book. All sorts of fruits, vegetables, and grain were spilling from the Cornucopia’s wide mouth. “Mostly fruit, though,” said Nanny. “Not many carrots, but I suppose they’re up in the pointy end. They’d fit better there.” “Typical artist,” said Granny. “He just painted the showy stuff in the front. Too proud to paint an honest potato!” She poked at the page with an accusing finger. “And what about these cherubs? We’re not going to get them too, are we? I don’t like to see little babies flying through the air.” “They turn up a lot in old paintings,” said Nanny Ogg. “They put them in to show it’s Art and not just naughty pictures of ladies with not many clothes on.” “Well, they’re not fooling me,” said Granny Weatherwax. “Go on, Tiff, give it a go,” said Nanny Ogg, walking around the table. “I don’t know how!” said Tiffany. “There aren’t any instructions!” And then, too late, Granny shouted: “You! Come out of there!” But with a flick of her tail the white kitten trotted inside. They banged on the horn. They held it upside down and shook it. They tried shouting down it. They put a saucer of milk in front of it and waited. The kitten didn’t return. Then Nanny Ogg prodded gently inside the Cornucopia with a mop, which to no one’s great surprise went farther inside the Cornucopia than there was Cornucopia on the outside. “She’ll come out when she’s hungry,” she said reassuringly. “Not if she finds something to eat in there,” said Granny Weatherwax, peering into the dark. “I shouldn’t think she’ll find cat food,” said Tiffany, examining the picture closely. “There may be milk, though.” “You! Come out of there this minute!” Granny commanded in a voice fit to shake mountains. There was a distant meep. “Perhaps she’s got stuck?” said Nanny. “I mean, it’s like a spiral, growing smaller at the end, right? Cats ain’t very big at goin’ backward.” Tiffany saw the look on Granny’s face and sighed. “Feegles?” she said to the room in general. “I know there are some of you in this room. Come out, please!” Feegles appeared from behind every ornament. Tiffany tapped the Cornucopia. “Can you get a little kitten out of here?” she asked. “Just that? Aye, nae problemo,” said Rob Anybody. “I wuz hopin’ it was gonna be something difficult!” The Nac Mac Feegles disappeared into the Horn at a trot. Their voices died away. The witches waited. They waited some more. And some more. “Feegles!” shouted Tiffany into the hole. She thought she heard a very distant, very faint “Crivens!” “If it can produce grain, they might have found beer in there,” said Tiffany. “And that means they’ll only run out when the beer runs out too!” “Cats can’t feed on beer!” snapped Granny Weatherwax. “Well, I’m fed up with waiting,” said Nanny. “Look, there’s a little hole in the pointy end, too. I’m going to blow into it!” She tried to, at least. Her cheeks went big and red and her eyes bulged, and it was pretty clear that if the horn didn’t blow, then she would—at which point, the horn gave up. There was a distant and unmistakably curly rumbling noise, which got louder and louder. “I can’t see anything yet,” said Granny, looking into the wide mouth of the horn. Tiffany pulled her away just as You galloped out of the Cornucopia with her tail straight out and her ears flattened. She skidded across the table, leaped onto Granny Weatherwax’s dress, scrambled onto her shoulder, and turned and spat defiance. With a cry of “Crivvvvvvvvens!” Feegles poured out of the horn. “Behind the sofa, everyone!” yelled Nanny. “Run!” Now the rumble was like thunder. It grew and grew and then— —stopped. In the silence, three pointy hats rose from behind the sofa. Small blue faces rose from behind everything. Then there was a noise very similar to pwat! and something small and wizened rolled out of the mouth of the Horn and dropped onto the floor. It was a very dried-up pineapple. Granny Weatherwax brushed some dust off her dress. “You’d better learn to use this,” she said to Tiffany. “How?” “Don’t you have any idea?” “No!” “Well, it’s turned up for you, madam, and it’s dangerous!” Tiffany gingerly picked up the Cornucopia, and again there was that definite feeling of some hugely heavy thing pretending, very successfully, to be light. “Maybe it needs some magic word,” suggested Nanny Ogg. “Or there’s somewhere special that you press….” As Tiffany turned it in the light, something gleamed for a moment. “Hold on, these look like words,” she said. She read: All that you desire, I give upon a name, murmured the memory of Dr. Bustle. The next line said: I grow, I shrink, Dr. Bustle translated. “I think I might have an idea,” she said, and in memory of Miss Treason she declared: “Ham sandwich!” Nothing happened. Then Dr. Bustle lazily translated, and Tiffany said: With a fwlap a ham sandwich sailed out of the mouth of the Cornucopia and was expertly caught by Nanny, who bit into it. “Not bad at all!” she announced. “Try a few more.” said Tiffany, and there was the kind of sound you get when you disturb a cave full of bats. “Stop!” she yelled, but nothing stopped. Then Dr. Bustle whispered and she shouted: There were a…lot of sandwiches. The pile reached the ceiling, in fact. Only the tip of Nanny Ogg’s hat was visible, but there were some muffled noises farther down the heap. An arm thrust out, and Nanny Ogg forced her way through the wall of bread and sliced pig, chewing thoughtfully. “No mustard, I notice. Hmm. Well, we can see that everyone around here has a good supper tonight,” she said. “And I can see I’m going to have to make an awful lot of soup, too. Best not to try it again in here, though, all right?” “I don’t like it at all,” snapped Granny Weatherwax. “Where does all that stuff come from, eh? Magic food never fed anyone properly!” “It’s not magic, it’s a god thing,” said Nanny Ogg. “Like manners from heaven, that sort of stuff. I expect it’s made out of raw firmament.” In fact it’s merely a living metaphor for the boundless fecundity of the natural world, whispered Dr. Bustle in Tiffany’s head. “You don’t get manners from heaven,” said Granny. “This was in foreign parts, a long time ago,” said Nanny, turning to Tiffany. “If I was you, dear, I’d take it out into the woods tomorrow and see what it can do. Although, if you don’t mind, I could really do with some fresh grapes right now.” “Gytha Ogg, you can’t use the Cornucopia of the Gods as a…a larder!” said Granny. “The feet business was bad enough!” “But it is one,” said Nanny Ogg innocently. “It’s the larder. It’s, like, everything waiting to grow next spring.” Tiffany put it down very carefully. There was something…alive about the Cornucopia. She wasn’t at all sure that it was just some magical tool. It seemed to be listening. As it touched the tabletop, it began to shrink until it was the size of a small vase. “’Scuse me?” said Rob Anybody. “But does it do beer?” “Beer?” said Tiffany, without thinking. There was a trickling noise. All eyes turned to look at the vase. Brown liquid was foaming over the lip. Then all the eyes turned to Granny Weatherwax, who shrugged. “Don’t look at me,” she said sourly. “You’re going to drink it anyway!” It is alive, Tiffany thought, as Nanny Ogg hurried off to find some more mugs. It learns. It’s learned my language…. Around midnight, Tiffany woke up because a white chicken was standing on her chest. She pushed it off and reached down for her slippers, and found only chickens. When she got the candle alight, she saw half a dozen chickens on the end of the bed. The floor was covered in chickens. So were the stairs. So was every room down below. In the kitchen, chickens had overflowed into the sink. They weren’t making much noise, just the occasional werk a chicken makes when it’s a bit uncertain about things, which is more or less all the time. The chickens were shuffling along patiently to make room. Werk. They were doing this because the Cornucopia, now grown just a bit bigger than a full-grown chicken, was gently firing out a chicken every eight seconds. Werk. As Tiffany watched, another one landed on the mountain of ham sandwiches. Werk. Marooned on top of the Cornucopia was You, looking very puzzled. Werk. And in the middle of the floor Granny Weatherwax snored gently in the big armchair, surrounded by fascinated hens. Werk. Apart from the snoring, the chorus of werk s, and the rustle of shuffling chickens, it was all very peaceful in the candlelight. Werk. Tiffany glared at the kitten. She rubbed up against things when she wanted to be fed, didn’t she? Werk. And made meep noises? Werk. And the Cornucopia could work out languages, couldn’t it? Werk. Now she whispered: “No more chickens,” and after a few seconds the flow of chickens ceased. Werk. But she couldn’t really leave it like that. She shook Granny by the shoulder and, as the old woman awoke, she said: “The good news is a lot of the ham sandwiches have gone…er….” Werk. CHAPTER NINE Green Shoots I t was much colder the next morning, a numb dull coldness that could practically freeze the flames on a fire. Tiffany let the broomstick settle between the trees a little way from Nanny Ogg’s cottage. The snow hadn’t drifted much here, but it came up to her knees, and cold had put a crispness on it that crackled like a stale loaf when Tiffany trod it. In theory she was out in the woods to get the hang of the Cornucopia, but really she was there to keep it out of the way. Nanny Ogg hadn’t been too upset about the chickens. After all, she now owned five hundred hens, which were currently standing around in her shed going werk. But the floors were a mess, there were chicken doo-dahs even on the banisters, and as Granny had pointed out (in a whisper), supposing someone had said “sharks”? The Cornucopia lay on her lap while she sat on a stump among snow-covered trees. Once the forest had been pretty. Now it was hateful. Dark trunks against snowdrifts, a striped world of black and white, bars against the light. She longed for horizons. Funny…the Cornucopia was always very slightly warm, even out here, and seemed to know in advance what size it ought to be. “I grow, I shrink,” thought Tiffany. And I’m feeling pretty small. What next? What now? She’d kept hoping that the…the power would drop on her, just like the Cornucopia had done. It hadn’t. There was life under the snow. She felt it in her fingertips. Somewhere down there, out of reach, was the real Summer. Using the Cornucopia as a scoop, she scraped away at the snow until she reached dead leaves. There was life down there in the white webs of fungi and pale, new roots. A half-frozen worm crawled slowly away and burrowed under a leaf skeleton, fine as lace. Beside it was an acorn. The woods weren’t silent. They were holding their breath. They were all waiting for her, and she didn’t know what to do. I’m not the Summer Lady, she told herself. I can never be her. I’m in her shoes, but I can never be her. I might be able to make a few flowers grow, but I can never be her. She’ll walk across the world and oceans of sap will rise in these dead trees and a million tons of grass will grow in a second. Can I do that? No. I’m a stupid child with a handful of tricks, that’s all. I’m just Tiffany Aching, and I’m aching to go home. Feeling guilty about the worm, she breathed some warm air on the soil and then pushed the leaves back to cover it. As she did so, there was a wet little sound, like the snapping of a frog’s fingers, and the acorn split. A white shoot escaped from it and grew more than half an inch as she watched it. Hurriedly she made a hole in the mold with her fingers, pushed the acorn in, and patted the soil back again. Someone was watching her. She stood up and turned around quickly. There was no one to be seen, but that didn’t mean a thing. “I know you’re there!” she said, still turning around. “Whoever you are!” Her voice echoed among the black trees. Even to her it sounded thin and scared. She found herself raising the Cornucopia. “Show yourself,” she quavered, “or—” What? she wondered. I’ll fill you full of fruit? Some snow fell off a tree with a thump, making her jump and then feel even more foolish. Now she was flinching at the fall of a handful of snowflakes! A witch ought never to be frightened in the darkest forest, Granny Weatherwax had once told her, because she should be sure in her soul that the most terrifying thing in the forest was her. She raised the Cornucopia and said, half-heartedly: “Strawberry….” Something shot out of the Cornucopia with a pfut and made a red stain on a tree twenty feet away. Tiffany didn’t bother to check; it always delivered what you asked for. Which was more than she could say for herself. And on top of everything else, it was her day to visit Annagramma. Tiffany sighed deeply. She’d probably get that wrong too. Slowly, astride her broomstick, she disappeared among the trees. After a minute or two, a green shoot thrust up from the patch of soil that she had breathed on, grew to a height of about six inches, and put out two green leaves. Footsteps approached. They were not as crunchy as footsteps on frozen snow usually are. There was a crunch now, though, of someone kneeling on the frosted leaves. A pair of skinny but powerful hands gently dragged and sculpted the snow and leaves together to make a tall, thin wall around the shoot, enclosing it and protecting it from the wind like a soldier in a castle. A small white kitten tried to nuzzle at it and was carefully lifted out of the way. Then Granny Weatherwax walked back into the woods, leaving no footprints. You never teach anyone else everything you know. Days went by. Annagramma learned, but it was a struggle. It was hard to teach someone who wouldn’t admit that there was anything she didn’t know, so there were conversations like this: “You know how to prepare placebo root, do you?” “Of course. Everyone knows that.” And this was not the time to say, “Okay then, show me,” because she’d mess around for a while and then say she had a headache. This was the time to say, “Good, watch me to see if I’m doing it right,” and then do it perfectly. And you’d add things like: “As you know, Granny Weatherwax says that practically anything works instead of placebo root, but it’s best to use the real thing if you can get it. If prepared in syrup, it’s an amazing remedy for minor illnesses, but of course you already know this.” And Annagramma would say: “Of course.” A week later, in the forests, it was so cold some older trees exploded in the night. They hadn’t seen that for a long time, the older people said. It happened when the sap froze, then tried to expand. Annagramma was as vain as a canary in a room full of mirrors and panicked instantly when faced with anything she didn’t know, but she was sharp at picking things up, and very good at appearing to know more than she really did, which is a valuable talent for a witch. Once, Tiffany noticed the Boffo catalogue open on the table with some things circled. She asked no questions. She was too busy. A week after that, wells froze. Tiffany went around the villages with Annagramma a few times and knew that she would make it, eventually. She’d got built-in Boffo. She was tall and arrogant and acted as if she knew everything even when she didn’t have a clue. That would get her a long way. People listened to her. They needed to. There were no roads open now; between cottages, people had cut tunnels full of cold blue light. Anything that needed to be moved was moved by broomstick. That included old people. They were lifted, bedclothes, walking sticks, and all, and moved into other houses. People packed together stayed warmer, and could pass the time by reminding one another that, however cold this was, it wasn’t as cold as the cold you got when they were young. After a while, they stopped saying that. Sometimes it would thaw, just a little, and then freeze again. That fringed every roof with icicles. At the next thaw, they stabbed the ground like daggers. Tiffany didn’t sleep; at least, she didn’t go to bed. None of the witches did. The snow got trampled down into ice that was like rock, so a few carts could be moved about, but there still weren’t enough witches to go around or enough hours in the day. There weren’t enough hours in the day and the night put together. Petulia had fallen asleep on her stick and ended up in a tree two miles away. Tiffany slid off once and landed in a snowdrift. Wolves entered the tunnels. They were weak with hunger, and desperate. Granny Weatherwax put a stop to them and never told anyone how she’d done it. The cold was like being punched, over and over again, day and night. All over the snow were little dark dots that were dead birds, frozen out of the air. Other birds had found the tunnels and filled them with twittering, and people fed them scraps because they brought a false hope of spring to the world… …because there was food. Oh, yes, there was food. The Cornucopia ran day and night. And Tiffany thought: I should have said no to snowflakes…. There was a shack, old and abandoned. And there was, in the rotted planks, a nail. If the Wintersmith had had fingers, they would have been shaking. This was the last thing! There had been so much to learn! It had been so hard, so hard! Who would have thought a man was made of stuff like chalk and soot and gases and poisons and metals? But now ice formed under the rusty nail, and the wood groaned and squeaked as the ice grew and forced it out. It spun gently in the air, and the voice of the Wintersmith could be heard in the wind that froze the treetops: “IRON ENOUGH TO MAKE A MAN!” High up in the mountains the snow exploded. It mounded up into the air as if dolphins were playing under it, shapes forming and disappearing…. Then, as suddenly as it had risen, the snow settled again. But now there was a horse there, white as snow, and on its back a rider, glittering with frost. If the greatest sculptor the world had ever known had been told to build a snowman, this is what it would have looked like. Something was still going on. The shape of the horse and man still crawled with movement as they grew more and more lifelike. Details settled. Colors crept in, always pale, never bright. And there was a horse, and there was a rider, shining in the comfortless light of the midwinter sun. The Wintersmith extended a hand and flexed his fingers. Color is, after all, merely a matter of reflection; the fingers took on the color of flesh. The Wintersmith spoke. That is, there were a variety of noises, from the roar of a gale to the rattle of the sucking of the surf on a pebble shore after a wrecking storm at sea. Somewhere among them all was a tone that seemed right. He repeated it, stretched it, stirred it around, and turned it into speech, playing with it until it sounded right. He said: “Tasbnlerizwip? Ggokyziofvva? Wiswip? Nananana…Nyip…nap…Ah…. Ah! It is to speak!” The Wintersmith threw back his head and sang the overture to Überwald Winter by the composer Wotua Doinov. He’d overheard it once when driving a roaring gale around the rooftops of an opera house, and had been astonished to find that a human being, nothing more really than a bag of dirty water on legs, could have such a wonderful understanding of snow. “SNOVA POXOLODALO!” he sang to the freezing sky. The only slight error the Wintersmith made, as his horse trotted through the pine trees, was in singing the instruments as well as the voices. He sang, in fact, the whole thing, and rode like a traveling orchestra, making the sounds of the singers, the drums, and the rest of the orchestra all at once. To smell the trees! To feel the pull of the ground! To be solid! To feel the darkness behind your eyes and know it was you! To be—and know yourself to be—a man! He had never felt like this before. It was exhilarating. There was so much of…of everything, coming at him from every direction. The thing with the ground, for example. It tugged, all the time. Standing upright took a lot of thinking about. And the birds! The Wintersmith had always seen them as nothing more than impurities in the air, interfering with the flow of the weather, but now they were living things just like him. And they played with the tug of the wind, and owned the sky. The Wintersmith had never seen before, never felt before, never heard before. You could not do those things unless you were…apart, in the dark behind the eyes. Before, he hadn’t been apart; he’d been a part, a part of the whole universe of tug and pressure, sound and light, flowing, dancing. He’d run storms against mountains forever, but he’d never known what a mountain was until today. The dark behind the eyes…what a precious thing. It gave you your…you-ness. Your hand, with those laughable waggly things on it, gave you touch; the holes on either side of your head let in sound; the holes at the front let in the wonderful smell. How clever of holes to know what to do! It was amazing! When you were an elemental, everything happened all together, inside and outside, in one big…thing. Thing. That was a useful word…thing. Thing was anything the Wintersmith couldn’t describe. Everything was…things, and they were exciting. It was good to be a man! Oh, he was mostly made of dirty ice, but that was just better-organized dirty water, after all. Yes, he was human. It was so easy. It was just a matter of organizing things. He had senses, he could move among humans, he could…search. That was how to search for humans. You became one! It was so hard to do it as an elemental; it was hard even to recognize a human in the churning thing-ness of the physical world. But a human could talk to other humans with the holes for the sound. He could talk to them and they would not suspect! And now that he was human, there would be no going back. King Winter! All he needed was a queen. Tiffany woke up because someone was shaking her. “Tiffany!” She’d gone to sleep in Nanny Ogg’s cottage with her head against the Cornucopia. From somewhere close there was a strange pif noise, like a dry drip. Pale-blue snowlight filled the room. As she opened her eyes, Granny Weatherwax was gently pushing her back into her chair. “You’ve been sleeping since nine o’clock, my girl,” she said. “Time to go home, I think.” Tiffany looked around. “I am here, aren’t I?” she said, feeling dizzy. “No, this is Nanny Ogg’s house. And this is a bowl of soup—” Tiffany woke up. There was a blurry bowl of soup in front of her. It looked…familiar. “When did you last sleep in a bed?” said a wavering, shadowy figure. Tiffany yawned. “What day is this?” “Tuesday,” said Granny Weatherwax. “Mmm…what’s a Tuesday?” Tiffany woke up for the third time and was grabbed and pulled upright. “There,” said the voice of Granny Weatherwax. “This time stay awake. Drink soup. Get warm. You need to go home.” This time Tiffany’s stomach took control of a hand and a spoon and, by degrees, Tiffany warmed up. Granny Weatherwax sat opposite, the kitten You on her lap, watching Tiffany until the soup was gone. “I expected too much from you,” she said. “I’d hoped that as the days grew longer, you’d find more power. That ain’t no fault of yours.” The pif noises were getting more frequent. Tiffany looked down and saw barley dripping out of the Cornucopia. The number of grains increased even as she watched. “You set it on barley before you fell asleep,” said Granny. “It slows right down when you’re tired. Just as well, really, otherwise we’d have been eaten alive by chickens.” “It’s about the only thing I’ve got right,” said Tiffany. “Oh, I don’t know. Annagramma Hawkin seems to be showing promise. Lucky in her friends, from what I hears.” If Miss Treason had tried to play poker against Granny Weatherwax’s face, she would have lost. The patter of the new grains suddenly became much louder in the silence. “Look, I—” Tiffany began. Granny sniffed. “I’m sure no one has to explain themselves to me,” she said virtuously. “Will you promise me that you’ll go home? A couple of coaches got through this morning, and I hear it’s not too bad yet, down on the plains. You go back to your Chalk country. You’re the only witch they’ve got.” Tiffany sighed. She did want to go home, more than anything. But it would be like running away. “It might be like running to,” said Granny, picking up her old habit of replying to something that hadn’t actually been said. “I’ll go tomorrow then,” said Tiffany. “Good.” Granny stood up. “Come with me. I wants to show you something.” Tiffany followed her through a snow tunnel that came out near the edge of the forest. The snow had been packed down here by people dragging firewood home, and once you got a little way from the edge of the forest, the drifts weren’t too bad; a lot of snow hung in the trees, filling the air with cold blue shadows. “What are we looking for?” asked Tiffany. Granny Weatherwax pointed. There was a splash of green in the white and gray. It was young leaves on an oak sapling a couple of feet high. When Tiffany crunched her way through the snow crust and reached out to touch it, the air felt warm. “Do you know how you managed that?” asked Granny. “No!” “Me neither. I couldn’t do it. You did, girl. Tiffany Aching.” “It’s just one tree,” said Tiffany. “Ah, well. You have to start small, with oak trees.” They stared in silence at the tree for a few moments. The green seemed to reflect off the snow around it. Winter stole color, but the tree glowed. “And now we’ve all got things to do,” said Granny, breaking the spell. “You, I believe, would normally be heading for Miss Treason’s old place about now. I’d expect no less of you….” There was a coaching inn. It was busy, even at this time in the morning. The Fast Mail coach had made a quick stop for fresh horses after the long haul into the mountains, and another one, bound for down on the plains, was waiting for the passengers. The breath of horses filled the air with steam. Drivers stamped their feet. Sacks and packages were being loaded. Men bustled around with nosebags. Some bandy-legged men just hung around, smoking and gossiping. In fifteen minutes the inn’s yard would be empty again, but for now everyone was too busy to pay much attention to one more stranger. Afterward they all told different stories, contradicting one another at the tops of their voices. Probably the most accurate account came from Miss Dymphnia Stoot, the innkeeper’s daughter, who was helping her father serve breakfast: “Well, he, like, came in, and right there I could see he was odd. He walked funny, you know, lifting his legs like a trotting horse does. Also, he was kind of like shiny. But we get all sorts here, and it does not pay to make pers’nal remarks. We had a bunch of werewolves in here last week and they were just like you and me except we had to put their plates on the floor…. All right, yes, this man…well, he sat down at a table and said: ‘I am a human just like you!’ He came out with it, just like that! “Of course, no one else paid attention, but I told him I was glad to hear it and what did he want to eat, because the sausages was particular fine this morning, and he said he could only eat cold food, which was funny ’cuz everyone was grumbling about how cold it was in the room now, and it’s not like there wasn’t a big fire burning. Anyway…actually we did have some cold sausage left in the pantry and they were a bit on the turn, if you know what I mean, so I gave them to him, and he chewed one for a bit and then he says, with his mouth full if you please, ‘This is not what I expected. What do I do now?’ and I said you swallow and he said, ‘Swallow?’ and I said, yes, you swallow it down into your stomach, right, and he said, spraying bits of sausage all over the place, ‘Oh, a hollow bit!’ and sort of like wavers and then he says, ‘Ah, I am a human. I have successfully eaten human sausages!’ and I said there was no need to be like that, they were made of mostly pig, same as always. “Then he says what is he supposed to do with them now and I says it’s not my place to tell him and that will be two pennies please and he puts down a gold coin so I curtsy because, well, you never know. Then he says, ‘I am a human just like you. Where are the pointy humans who fly through the sky?’ which was a funny way of putting it to my mind, but I told him if it was witches he wanted, there was plenty of ’em over the Lancre Bridge, and he said, ‘Name of Treason?’ and I said I heard she was dead but with witches who can say. And off he went. All the time he had this, like, smile, all shiny and a bit worrying. Something wrong with his clothes, too, like they were stuck to him or something. But you can’t be too choosy in this business. We had some trolls in here yesterday. They can’t eat our food, you know, being kind of like walking rocks, but we gave them a slap-up meal of broken cups and grease. But he was a rum ’un. The place got a lot warmer after he left, too.” Expect no less of you… The words kept Tiffany warm as she flew over the trees. The fire in her head burned with pride but contained one or two big crackly logs of anger. Granny had known! Had she planned it? Because it looked good, didn’t it? All the witches would know. Mrs. Earwig’s pupil couldn’t cope, but Tiffany Aching organized all the other girls to help out and didn’t tell anyone. Of course, among witches, not telling anyone was a sure way of getting things found out. Witches were very good at listening to what you weren’t saying. So Annagramma held on to her cottage, and Mrs. Earwig was embarrassed and Granny would be smug. All that work and rushing around, to let Granny feel smug. Well, and for Mrs. Stumper’s pig and everyone else, of course. That made it complicated. If you could, you did what needed to be done. Poking your nose in was basic witchcraft. She knew it. Granny knew she knew it. So Tiffany had scurried around like a little clockwork mouse…. There would be a reckoning! The clearing was full of snow in great icy drifts, but a path had been worn to the cottage, she was pleased to see. There was something new. There were people standing by Miss Treason’s grave, and some of the snow had been scraped off. Oh no, Tiffany thought as she circled down, please say she hasn’t gone looking for the skulls! It turned out to be, in some ways, worse. She recognized the people around the grave. They were villagers, and they gave Tiffany the defiant, worried stares of people scared half to death by the small but possibly angry pointy hat in front of them. And there was something about the very deliberate way they weren’t looking at the mound that instantly drew her attention to it. It was covered in little torn scraps of paper, pinned down with sticks. They fluttered in the wind. She snatched up a couple: Miss Treason please keep my boy Joe save at see. Miss treason, Im goin bald pleas help. Miss Treason, please find our Girl Becky what run away Im sorry. There were more. And just as she was about to speak sharply to the villagers for still bothering Miss Treason, she remembered the packets of Jolly Sailor tobacco that the shepherds even now left on the turf where the old shepherding hut had been. They didn’t write their petitions down, but they were there all the same, floating in the air: “Granny Aching, who herds the clouds in the blue sky, please watch my sheep.” “Granny Aching, cure my son.” “Granny Aching, find my lambs.” They were the prayers of small people, too afraid to bother the gods in their high places. They trusted in what they knew. They weren’t right or wrong. They were just…hopeful. Well, Miss Treason, she thought, you’re a myth now, as sure as anything. You might even make it to goddess. It’s not much fun, I can tell you. “And has Becky been found?” she said, turning to the people. A man avoided her gaze as he said: “I reckon Miss Treason’ll understand why the girl won’t be wantin’ to come home anytime soon.” Oh, thought Tiffany, one of those reasons. “Any news of the boy, then?” she said. “Ah, that one worked,” said a woman. “His mum got a letter yesterday sayin’ he’d been in a dreadful shipwreck but was picked up alive, which only goes to show.” Tiffany didn’t ask what it was that it went to show. It was enough that it had gone to show it. “Well, that’s good,” she said. “But lots of poor seamen got drownded,” the woman went on. “They hit an iceberg in the fog. A big floating mountain of ice shaped like a woman, they said. What d’you think of that?” “I expect if they’d been at sea long enough, anything would look like a woman, eh?” said the man, and chuckled. The women gave him a Look. “He didn’t say who she—if she looked like, you know…anyone?” said Tiffany, trying to sound nonchalant. “Depends where they were looking—” the man began cheerfully. “You ought to wash your brain out with soap and water,” said the woman, prodding him sharply in the chest. “Er, no, miss,” he said, looking down at his feet. “He just said her head was all covered with seagull—poo, miss.” This time, Tiffany tried not to sound relieved. She looked down at the fluttering bits of paper on the grave and back to the woman, who was trying to hide what might be a fresh request behind her back. “Do you believe in this stuff, Mrs. Carter?” The woman suddenly looked flustered. “Oh no, miss, of course not. But it’s just that…well, you know….” It makes you feel better, thought Tiffany. It’s something you can do when there’s nothing more to be done. And who knows, it might work. Yes, I know. It’s— Her hand itched. And now she realized that it had been itching for a while. “Oh yes?” she said under her breath. “You dare?” “Are you all right, miss?” said the man. Tiffany ignored him. A rider was approaching and snow followed after him, spreading and widening behind him like a cloak, soundless as a wish, thick as fog. Without taking her eyes off him, Tiffany reached into her pocket and gripped the tiny Cornucopia. Hah! She walked forward. The Wintersmith dismounted from his snow-white horse when it had drawn level with the old cottage. Tiffany stopped about twenty feet away, her heart pounding. “My lady,” said the Wintersmith, and bowed. He looked…better, and older. “I warn you! I’ve got a Cornucopia and I’m not afraid to use it!” said Tiffany. But she hesitated. He did look almost human, except for that fixed, strange grin. “How did you find me?” she said. “For you I have learned,” said the figure. “I learned how to search. I am human!” Really? But his mouth doesn’t look right, said her Third Thoughts. It’s pale inside, like snow. That’s not a boy there. It just thinks it is. One big pumpkin, her Second Thoughts urged. They get really hard at this time of year. Shoot him now! Tiffany herself, the one on the outside, the one who could feel the air on her face, thought: I can’t just do that! All he’s doing is standing there talking. All this is my fault! He wants never-ending winter, said her Third Thoughts. Everyone you know will die! She was sure the eyes of the Wintersmith could see right into her mind. The summer kills the winter, the Third Thoughts insisted. That’s how it works! But not like this, Tiffany thought. I know it’s not supposed to be like this! It feels wrong. It’s not the right…story. The king of winter can’t be killed by a flying pumpkin! The Wintersmith was watching her carefully. Thousands of Tiffany-shaped flakes were falling around him. “We will finish the Dance now?” he said. “I am human, just like you!” He held out a hand. “Do you know what human is?” said Tiffany. “Yes! Easy! Iron enough to make a nail!” said the Wintersmith promptly. He beamed, as if he’d done a trick successfully. “And now, please, we dance….” He took a step forward. Tiffany backed away. If you dance now, her Third Thoughts warned, that will be the end of it. You’ll be believing in yourself and trusting in your star, and big twinkly things thousands of miles up in the sky don’t care if they twinkle on everlasting snow. “I’m…not ready,” Tiffany said, hardly above a whisper. “But time is passing,” said the Wintersmith. “I am human, I know these things. Are you not a goddess in human form?” The eyes bored into her. No, I’m not, she thought. I’ll always be just…Tiffany Aching. The Wintersmith drew closer, his hand still outstretched. “Time to dance, Lady. Time to finish the Dance.” Thoughts leaked out away from Tiffany’s grasp. The eyes of the Wintersmith filled her mind with nothing but whiteness, like a field of pure snow…. “Aaaiiiiieeeee!” The door of old Miss Treason’s cottage flew open and…something came out, staggering through the snow. It was a witch. You could not mistake it. She—it was probably a she, but some things are so horrible that worrying about how to address a letter to them is silly—had a hat with a point that curled like a snake. It was on top of dripping strands of mad, greasy hair, which were perched on a nightmare of a face. It was green, like the hands that waved black fingernails that were really terrible claws. Tiffany stared. The Wintersmith stared. The people stared. As the horrible screaming, lurching thing drew nearer, the details got clearer, like the brown rotting teeth and the warts. Lots of warts. Even the warts on the warts had warts. Annagramma had sent off for everything. Part of Tiffany wanted to laugh, even now, but the Wintersmith snatched at her hand— —and the witch grabbed his shoulder. “Don’t you take hold of her like that! How dare you! I’m a witch, you know!” Annagramma’s voice wasn’t easy on the ear at the best of times, but when she was frightened or angry, it had a whine that bored right into the head. “Let go of her, I say,” screamed Annagramma. The Wintersmith looked stunned. Having to listen to Annagramma in a rage was hard for someone who hadn’t had ears for very long. “Let her go,” she yelled. Then she threw a fireball. She missed. Possibly she meant to. A ball of flaming gas whizzing nearby usually makes most people stop what they are doing. But most people don’t melt. The Wintersmith’s leg dropped off. Later, on the journey through the blizzard, Tiffany wondered how the Wintersmith worked. He was made of snow, but he could make it walk and talk. That must mean he had to think about it all the time. He had to. Humans didn’t have to think about their bodies all the time, because their bodies knew what to do. But snow doesn’t even know how to stand up straight. Annagramma was glaring at him as if he’d done something really annoying. He looked around, as if puzzled, cracks appearing across his chest, and then he was just crumbling snow, collapsing into glittery crystals. The snow began to pour down now, as if the clouds were being squeezed. Annagramma pulled the mask to one side and stared first at the heap and then at Tiffany. “All right,” she said, “what just happened? Was he supposed to do that?” “I was coming to see you and…that’s the Wintersmith!” was all that Tiffany could manage at that point. “You mean like…the Wintersmith?” said Annagramma. “Isn’t he just a story? What is he after you for?” she added accusingly. “It’s…he…I…” Tiffany began, but there was nowhere to start. “He’s real! I’ve got to get away from him!” she said. “I’ve got to get away! It takes too long to explain!” For a horrible moment she thought Annagramma was still going to demand the whole story, but she reached out and grabbed Tiffany’s hand with a black rubber claw. “Then get out of here right now! Oh, no, you’ve still got Miss Treason’s old broom? Totally useless! Use mine!” She dragged Tiffany toward the cottage, as the snowflakes thickened. “‘Iron enough to make a nail’!” said Tiffany, trying to keep up. She couldn’t think of anything else to say, and it was suddenly very important. “He thought he was human—” “I’ve only knocked over his snowman, you fool. He’ll be back!” “Yes, but iron enough, you see, to—” A green hand slapped her face, but this hurt less than it might because of the rubber. “Don’t babble! I thought you were clever! I really don’t know what this is about, but if I had that thing after me, I wouldn’t stand around babbling!” Annagramma pulled across the Wicked Witch De-Luxe Mask With Free Dangling Booger, adjusted the hang of the booger, and turned to the villagers, who’d been rooted to the spot all this time. “What are you all staring at? Haven’t you ever seen a witch before?” she shouted. “Go back home! Oh, and I’ll be down tomorrow with some physic for your little boy, Mrs. Carter!” They stared at the green face, the rotted teeth, the stinking hair, and the huge booger, made in fact of glass, and fled. Still drunk with terror and relief, Tiffany rocked gently, muttering “Iron enough to make a nail!” until Annagramma shook her. The thick flakes were dropping so fast that it was hard to see her face. “Tiffany, broomstick. Broomstick fly,” said Annagramma. “Fly a long way! Do you hear me! Somewhere safe!” “But he…the poor thing thinks that…” “Yes, yes, I’m sure it’s all very important,” said Annagramma, dragging her toward the cottage wall, where her broomstick leaned. She half pushed, half lifted Tiffany onto it and looked up. Snow was pouring out of the sky like a waterfall now. “He’s coming back!” she snapped, and said a few words under her breath. The broomstick shot straight up and disappeared into the fading, snow-filled light. CHAPTER TEN Going Home G ranny Weatherwax looked up from the saucer of ink, in which a tiny Tiffany was disappearing into the whiteness of the blizzard. She was smiling, but with Granny Weatherwax this did not necessarily mean that something nice was happening. “We could ha’ taken him doon easy,” said Rob Anybody reproachfully. “Ye should ha’ let us.” “Perhaps. Or perhaps he’d have frozen you solid?” said Granny. “Besides, there’s a bigger task ahead of the Nac Mac Feegles. Your big wee hag needs you to do two things. One of them is hard, the other one is very hard.” The Feegles cheered up when they heard this. They were everywhere in Mrs. Ogg’s kitchen. Some were perched on Nanny Ogg herself, and Miss Tick looked very uncomfortable surrounded by them. Unlike Miss Tick, Feegles rarely had an opportunity for a bath. “Firstly,” said Granny, “she will need you to go into the…Underworld, to fetch the Summer Lady.” The significant pause did not seem to bother the Feegles at all. “Oh aye, we can do that,” said Rob Anybody. “We can get into anywhere. An’ that’s the verra hard bit, is it?” “And out again?” said Granny. “Oh, aye,” said Rob firmly. “Mostly we get thrown oot!” “The very hard part,” said Granny, “will be finding a Hero.” “That’s no’ hard,” said Rob. “We’re a’ heroes here!” A cheer went up. “Really?” said Granny. “Are you frightened to go into the Underworld, Rob Anybody?” “Me? No!” Rob Anybody looked around at his brothers and grinned hugely. “Spell the word ‘marmalade,’ then.” Granny Weatherwax pushed a pencil across Nanny Ogg’s table and sat back in her chair. “Go on. Right now. And no one is to help you!” Rob backed away. Granny Weatherwax was the hag o’ all hags—he knew that. There was no telling what she might do to an errant Feegle. He picked up the pencil nervously, and placed the pointy end against the wood of the table. Other Feegles clustered around, but under Granny’s frown no one dared to even cheer him on. Rob stared upward, his lips moving and sweat beading his forehead. “Mmmmaa…” he said. “One,” said Granny. Rob blinked. “Hey? Who’s countin’?” he protested. “Me,” said Granny. The kitten You leaped onto her lap and curled up. “Crivens, ye never said there wuz gonna be countin’!” “Didn’t I? The rules can change at any time! Two!” Rob scribbled a passable M, hesitated, and then drew an R just as Granny said “Three!” “There’s gonna have tae be a ‘A’ in there, Rob,” said Billy Bigchin. He looked up defiantly at Granny and added: “I heard tell the rules can change at any time, right?” “Certainly. Five!” Rob scratched in an A and added another M in a burst of creativity. “Six and a half,” said Granny, calmly stroking the kitten. “Whut? Ach, crivens,” muttered Rob, and wiped a sweaty hand on his kilt. Then he gripped the pencil again and drew an L. It had a rather wavy foot because the pencil skidded out of his hands and the point broke. He growled and drew his sword. “Eight,” said Granny. Wood shavings flew as Rob hacked a rather ragged fresh point out of the pencil. “Nine.” An A and a D were scribbled by a Rob, whose eyes were now bulging and whose cheeks were red. “Ten.” Rob stood to attention, looking mostly nervous but slightly proud, beside MRAMLAD. The Feegles cheered, and those nearest to him fanned him with their kilts. “Eleven!” “Whut? Crivens!” Rob scurried back to the end of the word and plonked down a small e. “Twelve!” “Ye can count all ye want tae, mistress,” said Rob, flinging down the pencil, “but that’s all the marmalade there is!” This got another cheer. “An heroic effort, Mr. Anybody,” said Granny. “The first thing a hero must conquer is his fear, and when it comes to fightin’, the Nac Mac Feegles don’t know the meanin’ of the word.” “Aye, true enough,” Rob grunted. “We dinna ken the meanin’ o’ thousands o’ wurds!” “Can you fight a dragon?” “Oh, aye, bring it on!” He was still angry about the marmalade. “Run up a high mountain?” “Nae problemo!” “Read a book to the very end to save your big wee hag?” “Oh, aye.” Rob stopped. He looked cornered. He licked his lips. “How many o’ them pagey things would that be?” he said hoarsely. “Hundreds,” said Granny. “Wi’ wurds on both sides?” “Yes, indeed. In quite small writing!” Rob crouched. He always did that when he was cornered, the better to come up fighting. The mass of Feegles held their breath. “I’ll do it!” he announced grimly, clenching his fists. “Good,” said Granny. “Of course you would. That would be heroic—for you. But someone must go into the Underworld to find the real Summer Lady. That is a Story. It has happened before. It works. And he must do it in fear and terror like a real Hero should, because a lot of the monsters he must overcome are the ones in his head, the ones he brings in with him. It’s time for spring, and winter and its snow is still with us, so you must find him now. You’ve got to find him and set his feet on the path. The Path That Goes Down, Rob Anybody.” “Aye, we ken that path,” said Rob. “His name is Roland,” said Granny. “I reckon you should leave as soon as it is light.” The broomstick barreled through the black blizzard. Sticks usually went where the witches wanted them to go, and Tiffany lay along the broom, tried not to freeze to death, and hoped it was taking her home. She couldn’t see anything except darkness and rushing snow that stung her eyes, so she lay with the hat pulled down to streamline the stick. Even so, snowflakes struck her like stones and piled up on the stick. She had to flail around every few minutes to stop things from icing up. She did hear the roar of the falls below and felt the sudden depth of air as the stick glided out over the plains and began to sink. She felt cold to the bone. She couldn’t fight the Wintersmith, not like Annagramma could. Oh, she could plan to do it, and go to bed determined, but when she saw him… … iron enough to make a nail…. The words hung around in her head as the stick flew on and she remembered the old rhyme she’d heard years ago, when the wandering teachers came to the village. Everyone seemed to know it: Iron enough to make a nail, Lime enough to paint a wall, Water enough to drown a dog, Sulfur enough to stop the fleas, Poison enough to kill a cow, Potash enough to wash a shirt, Gold enough to buy a bean, Silver enough to coat a pin, Lead enough to ballast a bird, Phosphor enough to light the town, And on, and on… It was a kind of nonsense, the sort that you never remember being taught but always seem to have known. Girls skipped to it, kids dib-dibbed it to see who was O-U-T out. And then one day a traveling teacher, who like all the others would teach for eggs, fresh vegetables, and clean used clothing, found he got more to eat by teaching things that were interesting rather than useful. He talked about how some wizards had once, using very skillful magic, worked out exactly what a human being was made of. It was mostly water, but there were iron and brimstone and soot and a pinch of just about everything else, even a tiny amount of gold, but all cooked up together somehow. It made as much sense to Tiffany as anything else did. But she was certain of this: If you took all that stuff and put it in a big bowl, it wouldn’t turn into a human no matter how much you shouted at it. You couldn’t make a picture by pouring a lot of paint into a bucket. If you were human, you knew that. The Wintersmith wasn’t. The Wintersmith didn’t…. He didn’t know how the song ended, either. The words went around and around her mind as the borrowed broom plunged onward. At one point Dr. Bustle turned up, with his reedy, self-satisfied voice, and gave her a lecture on the Lesser Elements and how, indeed, humans were made up of nearly all of them but also contained a lot of narrativium, the basic element of stories, which you could detect only by watching the way all the others behaved…. You run, you flee. How do you like this, sheep girl? You stole him from me. Is he all that you hoped for? The voice came out of the air right beside her. “I don’t care who you are,” muttered Tiffany, too cold to think straight. “Go away….” Hours went by. The air down here was a bit warmer, and the snow not so fierce, but the cold still got through, no matter how much clothing you wore. Tiffany fought to stay awake. Some witches could sleep on a broomstick, but she didn’t dare try in case she dreamed she was falling and woke up to find that it was true but soon wouldn’t be. But now there were lights below, fitful and yellow. It was probably the inn at Twoshirts, an important navigation point. Witches never stayed at inns if they could help it, because in some areas that could be dangerous, and in any case most of them inconveniently required you to pay them money. But Mrs. Umbridge, who ran the souvenir shop opposite the inn, had an old barn around the back and was what Miss Tick called FTW, or Friendly To Witches. There was even a witch sign, scratched on the barn wall where no one who wasn’t looking for it would find it: a spoon, a pointy hat, and one big schoolmistressy checkmark. A pile of straw had never seemed more wonderful, and inside two minutes Tiffany was inside the straw. At the other end of the little barn Mrs. Umbridge’s pair of cows kept the air warm and smelling of fermented grass. It was a dark sleep. She dreamed of Annagramma taking off the De-Luxe Mask and revealing her face, and then taking her face off to show Granny Weatherwax’s face underneath…. And then: Was it worth a dance, sheep girl? You have taken my power and I am weak. The world will become frost. Was it worth a dance? She sat up in the pitch-black barn and thought she saw a writhing glow in the air, like a snake. Then she fell back into the darkness and dreamed of the Wintersmith’s eyes. CHAPTER ELEVEN Even Turquoise C lang-clonk! Tiffany sat bolt upright, straw tumbling off her. But it was only the sound of a handle clanging on the side of a metal pail. Mrs. Umbridge was milking her cows. Pale daylight shone through the cracks in the walls. She looked up when she heard Tiffany. “Ah, I thought one of my ladies must’ve arrived in the night,” she said. “Want some breakfast, dear?” “Please!” Tiffany helped the old woman with her buckets, helped make some butter, patted her very old dog, had beans on toast, and then— “I think I’ve got something here for you,” said Mrs. Umbridge, heading for the little counter that was Twoshirts’s entire post office. “Now where did I—oh yes….” She handed Tiffany a small bundle of letters and a flat parcel, all held together by an elastic band and covered with dog hairs. She went on talking, but Tiffany barely noticed. There was something about how the carter had broken his leg, poor man, or maybe it was his horse that had broken a leg, poor creature, and one of the blizzards had brought down a lot of trees onto the track, and then the snow had set in so cruelly, dear, that not even a man on foot could get through, and so what with one thing and another the mail to and from the Chalk had been delayed and really there was hardly any of it anyway— All this was a kind of background buzzing to Tiffany, because the letters were all addressed to her—three from Roland and one from her mother—and so was the parcel. It had a businesslike air, and when opened revealed a sleek black box, which itself opened to reveal— Tiffany had never seen a box of watercolor paints before. She hadn’t known that so many colors existed in one place. “Oh, a paint box,” said Mrs. Umbridge, looking over her shoulder. “That’s nice. I had one when I was a girl. Ah, and it’s got turquoise in it. That’s very expensive, turquoise. That’s from your young man, is it?” she added, because old women like to know everything, or a little bit more. Tiffany cleared her throat. In her letters she’d kept right off the whole painful subject of painting. He must have thought she’d like to try it. The colors in her hands gleamed like a trapped rainbow. “It’s a lovely morning,” she said, “and I think I’d better go home….” On the chilly river just above the thundering Lancre Falls, a tree trunk was moored. Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg stood on a huge, water-worn stone in the middle of the torrent and watched it. The log was covered in Feegles. They all looked cheerful. Admittedly, certain death awaited them, but it did not involve—and this is important—having to spell anything. “You know, no man has ever gone over these falls and lived to tell the tale,” said Nanny. “Mr. Parkinson did,” said Granny. “Don’t you remember? Three years ago?” “Ah, yes, he lived, certainly, but he was left with a very bad stutter,” said Nanny Ogg. “But he wrote it down,” said Granny. “He called it ‘My Fall Over the Falls.’ It was quite interestin’.” “No one actually told a tale,” said Nanny. “That is my point.” “Aye, weel, we’re as light as wee feathers,” said Big Yan. “An’ the wind blowin’ through the kilt keeps a man well aloft, ye ken.” “I’m sure that’s a sight to see,” said Nanny Ogg. “Are ye all ready?” said Rob Anybody. “Fine! Would ye be so good as to untie yon rope, Mrs. Ogg?” Nanny Ogg undid the knot and gave the log a shove with her foot. It drifted a little way and then got caught by the current. “‘Row, Row, Row Yer Boat’?” Daft Wullie suggested. “Whut aboot it?” said Rob Anybody as the log began to speed up. “Why don’t we all sing it?” said Daft Wullie. The walls of the canyon were closing in fast now. “Okay,” said Rob. “After all, it is a pleasin’ naut-ickal ditty. And Wullie, ye’re tae keep yon cheese away fra’ me. I dinna like the way it’s lookin’ at me.” “It hasna got any eyes, Rob,” said Wullie meekly, holding on to Horace. “Aye, that’s whut I mean,” said Rob sourly. “Horace didna mean tae try an’ eat ye, Rob,” said Daft Wullie meekly. “An’ ye wuz sae nice an’ clean when he spat ye oot.” “An’ hoo come ye ken whut name a cheese has?” Rob demanded, as white water began to splash over the log. “He told me, Rob.” “Aye?” said Rob, and shrugged. “Oh, okay. I wouldna argue wi’ a cheese.” Bits of ice were bobbing on the river. Nanny Ogg pointed them out to Granny Weatherwax. “All this snow is making the ice rivers move again,” she said. “I know.” “I hope you can trust the stories, Esme,” said Nanny. “They are ancient stories. They have a life of their own. They long to be repeated. Summer rescued from a cave? Very old,” said Granny Weatherwax. “The Wintersmith will chase our girl, though.” Granny watched the Feegles’ log drift around the bend. “Yes, he will,” she said. “And, you know, I almost feel sorry for him.” And so the Feegles sailed home. Apart from Billy Bigchin they couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, but that minor problem was dwarfed by the major problem, which was that they didn’t bother with the idea of singing at the same pitch, or speed, or even with the same words. Also, minor fights soon broke out, as always happened even when Feegles were having fun, and so the sound that echoed among the rocks as the log sped toward the lip of the waterfall went something like: “Rowaarghgently boat ouchgentlydoon boat boat boatiddley boat stream boatlymerrily boatarrgh…CRIVENnnnnns!” And with its cargo of Feegles, the log tipped and disappeared, along with the accompanying song, into the mists. Tiffany flew over the long whaleback of the Chalk. It was a white whale now, but the snow didn’t look too deep here. The bitter winds that blew the snow onto the downs also blew it away. There were no trees and few walls to make it drift. As she drew nearer to home, she looked down onto the lower, sheltered fields. The lambing pens were already being set up. There was a lot of snow for this time of year—and whose fault was that?—but the ewes were on their own timetable, snow or not. Shepherds knew how bitter the weather could be at lambing; winter never gave in without a fight. She landed in the farmyard and said a few words to the broomstick. It wasn’t hers, after all. It rose again and shot off back to the mountains. A stick can always find its way home, if you know the trick. There were reunions, lots of laughter, a few tears, a general claiming that she had grown like a beanstalk and was already as tall as her mother and all the other things that get said at a time like this. Apart from the tiny Cornucopia in her pocket, she’d left everything behind—her diary, her clothes, everything. It didn’t matter. She hadn’t run away, she’d run to, and here she was, waiting for herself. She could feel her own ground under her boots again. She hung the pointy hat behind the door and went and helped the men setting up the pens. It was a good day. A bit of sun had managed to leak through the murk. Against the whiteness of the snow all colors seemed bright, as if the fact that they were here gave them some special brilliance. Old harnesses on the stable wall gleamed like silver; even the browns and grays that might once have appeared so drab seemed, now, to have a life of their own. She got out the box of paints and some precious paper and tried to paint what she was seeing, and there was a kind of magic there, too. It was all about light and dark. If you could get down on paper the shadow and the shine, the shape that any creature left in the world, then you could get the thing itself. She’d only ever drawn with colored chalks before. Paint was so much better. It was a good day. It was a day just for her. She could feel bits of herself opening up and coming out of hiding again. Tomorrow there would be the chores, and people very nervously coming up to the farm for the help of a witch. If the pain was strong enough, no one worried that the witch who was making it go away was someone you last remembered being two years old and running around with only her undershirt on. Tomorrow…might become anything. But today the winter world was full of color. CHAPTER TWELVE The Pike T here was talk of strangeness all across the plains. There was the rowing boat belonging to the old man who lived in a shack just below the waterfall. It rowed itself away so fast, people said, that it skipped over the water like a dragonfly—but there was no one inside it. It was found tied up at Twoshirts, where the river ran under the coach road. But then the overnight mail coach that had been waiting outside the inn ran away by itself, with all the mailbags left behind. The coachman borrowed a horse to give chase and found the coach in the shadow of the Chalk with all the doors open and one horse missing. The horse was returned a couple of days later by a well-dressed young man who said he’d found it wandering. Surprisingly, then, it looked well fed and groomed. Very, very thick would be the best way to describe the walls of the castle. There were no guards at night, because they locked up at eight o’clock and went home. Instead, there was Old Robbins, who’d once been a guard and was now officially the night watchman, but everyone knew he fell asleep in front of the fire by nine. He had an old trumpet that he was supposed to blow if there was an attack, although no one was entirely sure what this would achieve. Roland slept in the Heron Tower because it was up a long flight of steps that his aunts didn’t much like climbing. It also had very, very thick walls, and this is just as well, because at eleven o’clock someone stuck a trumpet against his ear and blew on it hard. He leaped out of bed, got caught in the eiderdown, slipped on a mat that covered the freezing stone floor, banged his head on a cupboard, and managed to light a candle with the third desperately struck match. On the little table by his bed was a pair of huge bellows with Old Robbins’s trumpet stuck in the business end. The room was empty, except for the shadows. “I’ve got a sword, you know,” he said. “And I know how to use it!” “Ach, ye’re deid already,” said a voice from the ceiling. “Chopped tae tiny wee pieces in yer bed while ye snored like a hog. Only jokin’, ye ken. None of us mean ye any harm.” There was some hurried whispering in the darkness of the rafters, and then the voice continued: “Wee correction there, most o’ us dinna mean ye any harm. But dinna fash yersel’ aboot Big Yan, he disna like anybody verra much.” “Who are you?” “Aye, there ye go again, gettin’ it all wrong,” said the voice conversationally. “I’m up here an’ heavily armed, ye ken, while ye’re doon there in yer wee nightie, makin’ a bonny target, an’ ye think ye are the one who asks the questions. So ye know how to fight, do ye?” “Yes!” “So you’ll fight monsters tae save the big wee hag? Will ye?” “The big wee hag?” “That’s Tiffany tae ye.” “You mean Tiffany Aching? What’s happened to her?” “You’ll be ready for when she needs ye?” “Yes! Of course! Who are you?” “And ye know how tae fight?” “I’ve read the Manual of Swordsmanship all the way through!” After a few seconds the voice from the high shadows said: “Ah, I think I’ve put ma finger on a wee flaw in this plan….” There was an armory across the castle courtyard. It wasn’t much of one. There was a suit of armor made of various nonmatching pieces, a few swords, a battle-axe that no one had ever been able to lift, and a chain-mail suit that appeared to have been attacked by extremely strong moths. And there were some wooden dummies on big springs for sword practice. Right now the Feegles were watching Roland attack one with a great deal of enthusiasm. “Ach weel,” said Big Yan despondently as Roland leaped about. “If he never meets anythin’ other than bits o’wood that dinna fight back, he might be okay.” “He’s willin’,” Rob Anybody pointed out as Roland put his foot against the dummy and tried to tug the sword point out of it. “Oh, aye.” Big Yan looked glum. “He’s got a bonny action, ye must admit,” said Rob. Roland succeeded in pulling the sword out of the dummy, which sprang back on its ancient spring and hit him on the head. Blinking a little, the boy looked down at the Feegles. He remembered them from the time he was rescued from the Queen of the Elves. No one who met the Nac Mac Feegles ever forgot them, even if they tried hard. But it was all vague. He’d been near crazy part of the time, and unconscious, and had seen so many strange things that it was hard to know what was real and what wasn’t. Now he knew: They were real. Who’d make up a thing like this? Okay, one of them was a cheese that rolled around of its own accord, but nobody was perfect. “What am I going to have to do, Mr. Anybody?” he asked. Rob Anybody had been worried about this bit. Words like “Underworld” can give people the wrong idea. “Ye must rescue a…lady,” he said. “Not the big wee hag. Another…lady. We can take ye to the place where she bides. It’s like…undergroound, ye ken. She’s like…sleepin’. An’ all ye ha’ tae do is bring her up tae the surface, kind o’ thing.” “Oh, you mean like Orpheo rescuing Euniphon from the Underworld?” said Roland. Rob Anybody just stared. “It’s a myth from Ephebe,” Roland went on. “It’s supposed to be a love story, but it’s really a metaphor for the annual return of summer. There’s a lot of versions of that story.” They still stared. Feegles have very worrying stares. They’re even worse than chickens in that respect.* “A metaphor is a kind o’ lie to help people understand what’s true,” said Billy Bigchin, but this didn’t help much. “And he won her freedom by playing beautiful music,” Roland added. “I think he played a lute. Or maybe it was a lyre.” “Ach, weel, that’ll suit us fine,” said Daft Wullie. “We’re experts at lootin’ an’ then lyin’ aboot it.” “They’re musical instruments,” said Billy Bigchin. He looked up at Roland. “Can ye play one, mister?” “My aunts have a piano,” said Roland doubtfully. “But I’ll get into real trouble if anything happens to it. They’ll tear the walls down.” “Swords it is, then,” said Rob Anybody reluctantly. “Ha’ ye never fought against a real person, mister?” “No. I wanted to practice with the guards, but my aunts won’t let them.” “But ye have used a sword before?” Roland looked embarrassed. “Not lately. Not as such. Er…not at all, in fact. My aunts say—” “So how d’ye practice?” asked Rob in horror. “Well, there’s a big mirror in my room, you see, and I can practice…the…actual…” Roland began, stopping when he saw their expressions. “Sorry,” he added. “I don’t think I’m the type you’re looking for….” “Oh, I wouldna say that,” said Rob Anybody wearily. “Accordin’ tae the hag o’ hags, ye’re just the laddie. Ye just need someone tae fight with….” Big Yan, always suspicious, looked at his brother and followed his gaze to the battered suit of armor. “Oh aye?” he growled. “Weel, Ah’m no’ gonna be a knee!” The next day was a good day, right up to the point where it became a tight little bowl of terror. Tiffany got up early and lit the fires. When her mother came down, she was scrubbing the kitchen floor, very hard. “Er…aren’t you supposed to do that sort of thing by magic, dear?” said her mother, who’d never really got the hang of what witchcraft was all about. “No, Mum, I’m supposed not to,” said Tiffany, still scrubbing. “But can’t you just wave your hand and make all the dirt fly away, then?” “The trouble is getting the magic to understand what dirt is,” said Tiffany, scrubbing hard at a stain. “I heard of a witch over in Escrow who got it wrong and ended up losing the entire floor and her sandals and nearly a toe.” Mrs. Aching backed away. “I thought you just had to wave your hands about,” she mumbled nervously. “That works,” said Tiffany, “but only if you wave them about on the floor with a scrubbing brush.” She finished the floor. She cleaned under the sink. She opened all the cupboards, cleaned them out, and put everything back. She cleaned the table, and then turned it over and cleaned it underneath. She even washed the bottoms of the legs, where they touched the floor. It was then that Mrs. Aching went and found things to do somewhere, because this was clearly not just about good housekeeping. It wasn’t. As Granny Weatherwax once said, if you wanted to walk around with your head in the air, then you needed to have both feet on the ground. Scrubbing floors, cutting wood, washing clothes, making cheese—these things grounded you, taught you what was real. You could set a small part of your mind to them, giving your thoughts time to line up and settle down. Was she safe here from the Wintersmith? Was here safe from the Wintersmith? Sooner or later she’d have to face him again—a snowman who thought he was human and had the power of the avalanche. Magic could only slow him down for a while, and make him angry. No ordinary weapon would work, and she didn’t have many extraordinary ones. Annagramma had gone for him in a rage! Tiffany wished she could be that angry. She’d have to go back and thank her, too. Annagramma was going to be all right, at least. People had seen her turn into a screaming, green-skinned monster. They could respect a witch like that. Once you got respect, you’d got everything. She’d have to try to see Roland, too. She didn’t know what to say. That was kind of all right, because he wouldn’t know what to say, either. They could spend whole afternoons together, not knowing what to say. He was probably in the castle right now. As she cleaned under the seat of a chair, she wondered what he was doing. There was a hammering on the door of the armory. That was the aunts for you. The door was four thicknesses of oak and iron, but they banged on it anyway. “We will not tolerate this waywardness!” said Aunt Danuta. There was a crash from the other side of the door. “Are you fighting in there?” “No, I’m writing a flute sonata!” shouted Roland. Something heavy hit the door. Aunt Danuta pulled herself together. She looked like Miss Tick in general outline, but with the eyes of the perpetually offended and the mouth of an instant complainer. “If you don’t do as you’re told, I will tell your father—” she began, and stopped when the door was yanked open. Roland had a cut on his arm, his face was red, sweat was dripping off his chin, and he was panting. He raised his sword in a trembling hand. Behind him, on the other side of the gray room, was a suit of very battered armor. It turned its helmet to look at the aunts. This made a squeaking noise. “If you dare disturb my father,” Roland said as they stared at it, “I shall tell him about the money that’s being taken out of the big chest in the strong room. Don’t lie!” For a moment—a blink would have missed it—Aunt Danuta’s face had guilt written on it, but it vanished with speed. “How dare you! Your dear mother—” “Is dead!” shouted Roland, and slammed the door. The helmet’s visor was pushed up and half a dozen Feegles peered out. “Crivens, what a pair of ol’ corbies,” said Big Yan. “My aunts,” said Roland darkly. “What’s a corbie?” “It’s like a big ol’ crow that hangs around waitin’ for someone tae die,” said Billy Bigchin. “Ah, then you’ve met them before,” said Roland with a glint in his eye. “Let’s have another go, shall we? I think I’m getting the hang of it.” There was a grumble of protests from every part of the armor, but Rob Anybody shouted it down. “All right! We’ll gi’e the lad one more chance,” he said. “Get tae yer posts!” There were clangs and much swearing as the Feegles climbed around inside the suit, but after a few seconds the armor seemed to pull itself together. It picked up a sword and lumbered toward Roland, who could hear the muffled orders coming from inside. The sword swung, but in one quick movement he deflected it, stepped sideways, swung his own sword in a blur, and chopped the suit in half with a clang that echoed around the castle. The top part hit the wall. The bottom half just rocked, still standing. After a few seconds, a lot of small heads slowly rose above the iron trousers. “Was that supposed to happen?” Roland said. “Is everyone, er…whole?” A quick count revealed that there were indeed no half Feegles, although there was a lot of bruising and Daft Wullie had lost his spog. A lot of Feegles were walking in circles and banging at their ears with their hands, though. It had been a very loud clang. “No’ a bad effort, that time,” said Rob Anybody vaguely. “Ye seem tae be gettin’ the knowin’ o’ the fightin’.” “It definitely seemed better, didn’t it,” said Roland, looking proud. “Shall I have another go?” “No! I mean…no,” said Rob. “No, I reckon that’s enough for today, eh?” Roland glanced up at the little barred window, high in the wall. “Yes, I’d better go and see my father,” he said, and the glow in his face faded. “It’s well past lunchtime. If I don’t see him every day, he forgets who I am.” When the boy had gone, the Feegles looked at one another. “That lad is no’ havin’ an easy life right noo,” said Rob Anybody. “You’ve got tae admit he’s gettin’ better,” said Billy Bigchin. “Oh, aye, I’ll warrant he’s no’ such a bunty as I thought, but that sword is far tae heavy for him, an’ it’ll take weeks tae get him any guid,” said Big Yan. “Ha’ we got weeks, Rob?” Rob Anybody shrugged. “Who can tell?” he said. “He’s gonna be the Hero, come whut may. The big wee hag’ll meet the Wintersmith soon enough. She canna fight that. It’s like the hag o’ hags sez: Ye canna fight a story as old as that. It’ll find a way.” He cupped his hands. “C’mon lads, away tae the mound. We’ll come back tonight. Mebbe ye can’t make a Hero all in one go.” Tiffany’s little brother was old enough to want to be considered older still, which is a dangerous ambition on a busy working farm, where there are big-hoofed horses and sheep dips and a hundred and one other places where a small person might not be noticed until it’s too late. But most of all he liked water. When you couldn’t find him, he was usually down by the river, fishing. He loved the river, which was a bit surprising since a huge green monster had once leaped out of it to eat him. However, Tiffany had hit it in the mouth with an iron frying pan. Since he’d been eating sweets at the time, Wentworth’s only comment afterward had been, “Tiffy hit fish go bang.” But he did seem to be growing up as a skilled angler. He was fishing this afternoon. He’d found the knack of knowing where the monsters were. The really big pike lurked in the deep, black holes, thinking slow hungry thoughts until Wentworth’s silver lure dropped almost into their mouths. When Tiffany went to call him in, she met him staggering up the path, much disheveled, and carrying a fish that looked as if it weighed at least half as much as he did. “It’s the big one!” he shouted as soon as he saw her. “Abe reckoned it was tucked in under the fallen willow, you know? He said they’ll snap at anything this time of year! It pulled me over, but I held on! Must weigh at least thirty pounds!” About twenty, thought Tiffany, but fish are always much heavier to the man who catches them. “Well done. But come on in, it’s going to freeze,” she said. “Can I have it for supper? It took ages to get in the net! It’s at least thirty-five pounds!” Wentworth said, struggling under the load. Tiffany knew better than to offer to carry it. That would be an insult. “No, it has to be cleaned and soaked for a day, and Mum’s done stew for tonight. But I’ll cook it for you tomorrow with ginger sauce.” “And there’ll be enough for everyone,” said Wentworth happily, “because it weighs at least forty pounds!” “Easily,” Tiffany agreed. And that night, after the fish had been duly admired by everyone and found to weigh twenty-three pounds with Tiffany’s hand on the scales helping it along a bit, she went into the scullery and cleaned the fish, which was a nice way of talking about pulling out or cutting off everything that you shouldn’t eat, which if Tiffany had her way meant the whole fish. She didn’t much like pike, but a witch should never turn up her nose at food, especially free food, and at least a good sauce would stop it tasting of pike. Then, as she was tipping the innards into the pig bucket, she saw the glint of silver. Well, you couldn’t exactly blame Wentworth for being too excited to extract the lure. She reached down and pulled out, covered with slime and scales but very recognizably itself, the silver horse. There should have been a roll of thunder. There was just Wentworth, in the next room, telling for the tenth time about the heroic capture of the monster fish. There should have been a rush of wind. Barely a draft disturbed the candles. But he knew she’d touched it. She felt his shock. She went to the door. As she opened it, a few snowflakes fell, but as if suddenly happy to have an audience, more began to pour down until—with no sound but a hiss—the night turned white. She held out her hand to catch some flakes and looked at them very closely. Little icy Tiffanys melted away. Oh, yes. He had found her. Her mind went cold, but crystal wheels of thought spun fast. She could take a horse?…No, she’d not get far on a night like this. She should’ve kept that broomstick! She shouldn’t have danced. There was nowhere to run to. She’d have to face him again, and face him here, and stop him dead. In the mountains, with their black forests, endless winter was hard to imagine. It was easier here, and because it was easier it was worse, because he was bringing winter into her heart. She could feel it growing colder. But the snow was inches deep already, in this short time. She was a shepherd’s daughter before she was a witch, and at this time, in this place, there were more immediate things to do. She went into the golden warmth and light of the kitchen and said: “Dad, we must see to the flock.” CHAPTER THIRTEEN The Crown of Ice T hat was then. This is now. “Ach, crivens,” moaned Wee Dangerous Spike, on the roof of the cart shed. The fire went out. The snow that had filled the sky began to thin. Wee Dangerous Spike heard a scream high overhead and knew exactly what to do. He raised his arms in the air and shut his eyes just as the buzzard swooped out of the white sky and snatched him up. He liked this bit. When he opened his eyes, the world was swinging beneath him and a voice nearby said, “Get up here quick, laddie!” He grabbed the thin leather harness above him and pulled, and the talons gently released their grip. Then, hand over hand in the wind of the flight, he dragged himself across the bird’s feathers until he could grab the belt of Hamish the aviator. “Rob says ye’re old enough tae come doon intae the Underworld,” said Hamish over his shoulder. “Rob’s gone tae fetch the Hero. Ye are a lucky wee laddie!” The bird banked. Below, the snow…fled. There was no more melting, it simply drew back from the lambing pen like the tide going out or a deep breath being taken, with no more sound than a sigh. Morag skimmed over the lambing field, where men were looking around in puzzlement. “One deid ship and a dozen deid lambs,” said Hamish, “but no big wee hag! He’s taken her.” “Where to?” Hamish steered Morag up in a big wide circle. Around the farm the snow had stopped falling. But up on the downs it was still dropping like hammers. And then it took a shape. “Up there,” he said. All right, I’m alive. I’m pretty sure about that. Yes. And I can feel the cold all around me, but I don’t feel cold, which would be pretty hard to explain to anyone else. And I can’t move. Not at all. White all around me. And inside my head, all white. Who am I? I can remember the name Tiffany. I hope that was me. White all around me. That happened before. It was a kind of dream or memory or something else I don’t have a word for. And all around me, whiteness falling. And building up around me, and lifting me up. It was…the chalk lands being built, silently, under ancient seas. That’s what my name means. It means Land Under Wave. And, like a wave, color came flooding back into her mind. It was mostly the redness of rage. How dare he! To kill the lambs! Granny Aching wouldn’t have allowed that. She never lost a lamb. She could bring them back to life. I should never have left here in the first place, Tiffany thought. Perhaps I should have stayed and tried to learn things by myself. But if I hadn’t gone, would I still be me? Know what I know? Would I have been as strong as my grandmother, or would I just be a cackler? Well, I’ll be strong now. When the killing weather was blind nature, you could only cuss; but if it was walking about on two legs…then it was war. And there would be a reckoning! She tried to move, and now the whiteness gave way. It felt like hard snow, but it wasn’t cold to her touch; it fell away, leaving a hole. A smooth, slightly transparent floor stretched away in front of her. There were big pillars rising up to a ceiling that was hidden by some sort of fog. There were walls made of the same stuff as the floor. They looked like ice—she could even see little bubbles inside them—but were no more than cool when she touched them. It was a very large room. There was no furniture of any sort. It was just the sort of room a king would build to say “Look, I can afford to waste all this space!” Her footsteps echoed as she explored. No, not even a chair. And how comfortable would it be if she found one? She did, eventually, find a staircase that went up (unless, of course, you started at the top). It led to another hall that at least had furniture. They were the sort of couches that rich ladies were supposed to lounge on, looking tired but beautiful. Oh, and there were urns, quite big urns, and statues, too, all in the same warm ice. The statues showed athletes and gods, very much like the pictures in Chaffinch’s Mythology, doing ancient things like hurling javelins or killing huge snakes with their bare hands. They didn’t have a stitch of clothing between them, but all the men wore fig leaves, which Tiffany, in a spirit of enquiry, found would not come off. And there was a fire. The first strange thing about it was that the logs were also of the same ice. The other strange thing was that the flames were blue—and cold. This level had tall pointed windows, but they began a long way from the floor and showed nothing but the sky, where the pale sun was a ghost among the clouds. Another staircase, very grand this time, led up to yet another floor with more statues and couches and urns. Who could live in a place like this? Someone who didn’t need to eat or sleep, that’s who. Someone who didn’t need to be comfortable. “Wintersmith!” Her voice bounced from wall to wall, sending back “ITH…Ith…ith…” until it died away. Another staircase, then, and this time there was something new. On a plinth, where there might have been a statue, was a crown. It floated in the air a few feet above the base, turning gently, and glittered with frost. A little bit farther on was another statue, smaller than most, but around this one, blue and green and gold lights danced and shimmered. They looked just like the Hublights that could sometimes be seen in the depths of winter floating over the mountains at the center of the world. Some people thought they were alive. The statue was the same height as Tiffany. “Wintersmith!” There was still no reply. A nice palace with no kitchen, no bed…. He didn’t need to eat or sleep, so who was it for? She knew the answer already: me. She reached out to touch the dancing lights, and they swarmed up her arm and spread across her body, making a dress that glittered like moonlight on snowfields. She was shocked, then angry. Then she wished she had a mirror, felt guilty about that, and went back to being angry again, and resolved that if by chance she did find a mirror, the only reason she’d look in it would be to check how angry she was. After searching for a while, she found a mirror, which was nothing more than a wall of ice of such a dark green that it was almost black. She did look angry. And immensely, beautifully sparkly. There were little glints of gold on the blue and green, just like there were in the sky on wintry nights. “Wintersmith!” He must be watching her. He could be anywhere. “All right! I’m here! You know that!” “Yes. I do,” said the Wintersmith behind her. Tiffany spun around and slapped him across the face, then slapped him again with her other hand. It was like hitting rock. He was learning very quickly now. “That’s for the lambs,” she said, trying to shake some life back into her fingers. “How dare you! You didn’t have to!” He looked much more human. Either he was wearing real clothes or he had worked hard on making them look real. He’d actually managed to look…well, handsome. Not cold anymore, just…cool. He’s nothing but a snowman, her Second Thoughts protested. Remember that. He’s just too smart to have coal for eyes or a carrot for a nose. “Ouch,” said the Wintersmith, as if he’d just remembered to say it. “I demand that you let me go!” Tiffany snapped. “Right now!” That’s right, her Second Thoughts said. You want him to end up cowering behind the saucepans on top of the kitchen dresser. As it were… “At this moment,” said the Wintersmith very calmly, “I am a gale wrecking ships a thousand miles away. I am freezing water pipes in a snowbound town. I am freezing the sweat on a dying man, lost in a terrible blizzard. I creep silently under doors. I hang from gutters. I stroke the fur of the sleeping bear, deep in her cave, and course in the blood of the fishes under the ice.” “I don’t care!” said Tiffany. “I don’t want to be here! And you shouldn’t be here either!” “Child, will you walk with me?” said the Wintersmith. “I will not harm you. You are safe here.” “What from?” said Tiffany, and then, because too much time around Miss Tick does something to your conversation, even in times of stress, she changed this to: “From what?” “Death,” said the Wintersmith. “Here you will never die.” At the back of the Feegles’ chalk pit, more chalk had been carved out of the wall to make a tunnel about five feet high and perhaps as long. In front of it stood Roland de Chumsfanleigh (it wasn’t his fault). His ancestors had been knights, and they had come to own the Chalk by killing the kings who thought they did. Swords, that’s what it had all been about. Swords and cutting off heads. That was how you got land in the old days, and then the rules were changed so that you didn’t need a sword to own land anymore, you just needed the right piece of paper. But his ancestors had still hung on to their swords, just in case people thought that the whole thing with the bits of paper was unfair, it being a fact that you can’t please everybody. He’d always wanted to be good with a sword, and it had come as a shock to find they were so heavy. He was great at air sword. In front of a mirror he could fence against his reflection and win nearly all the time. Real swords didn’t allow that. You tried to swing them and they ended up swinging you. He’d realized that maybe he was more cut out for bits of paper. Besides, he needed glasses, which could be a bit tricky under a helmet, especially if someone was hitting you with a sword. He wore a helmet now, and held a sword that was—although he wouldn’t admit it—far too heavy for him. He was also wearing a suit of chain mail that made it very hard to walk. The Feegles had done their best to make it fit, but the crotch hung down to his knees and flapped amusingly when he moved. I’m not a hero, he thought. I’ve got a sword, which I need two hands to lift, and I’ve got a shield that is also really heavy, and I’ve got a horse with curtains around it that I’ve had to leave at home (and my aunts will go mad when they go into the drawing room), but inside I’m a kid who would quite like to know where the privy is…. But she rescued me from the Queen of the Elves. If she hadn’t, I’d still be a stupid kid instead of…um…a young man hoping he isn’t too stupid. The Nac Mac Feegles had exploded back into his room, fighting their way through the storm that had arrived overnight, and now, they said, it was time for him to be a Hero for Tiffany…. Well, he would be. He was sure of that. Fairly sure. But right now the scenery wasn’t what he’d expected. “You know, this doesn’t look like the entrance to the Underworld,” he said. “Ach, any cave can be the way in,” said Rob Anybody, who was sitting on Roland’s helmet. “But ye must ha’ the knowin’ o’ the crawstep. Okay, Big Yan, ye go first….” Big Yan strutted up to the chalk hole. He stuck out his arms behind him, bent at the elbows. He leaned backward, sticking out one leg to keep his balance. Then he wiggled the foot in the air a few times, leaned forward, and vanished as soon as the foot touched the ground. Rob Anybody banged on Roland’s helmet with his fist. “Okay, big Hero,” he shouted. “Off ye go!” There was no way out. Tiffany didn’t even know if there was a way in. “If you were the Summer Lady, then we would dance,” said the Wintersmith. “But I know now that you are not her, even though you seem to be. But for the sake of you I am now human, and I must have company.” Tiffany’s racing mind showed her pictures: the sprouting acorn, the fertile feet, the Cornucopia. I’m just enough of a goddess to fool a few floorboards and an acorn and a handful of seeds, she thought. I’m just like him. Iron enough to make a nail doesn’t make a snowman human, and a couple of oak leaves don’t make me a goddess. “Come,” said the Wintersmith, “let me show you my world. Our world.” When Roland opened his eyes, all he could see were shadows. Not shadows of things—just shadows, drifting like cobwebs. “I was expecting somewhere…hotter,” he said, trying to keep the relief out of his voice. Around him, Feegles popped out of nowhere. “Ah, you’re thinkin’ o’ hells,” said Rob Anybody. “They tends to be on the toasty side, it’s true. Underworlds are more o’ the gloomy sort. It’s where folks end up when they’s lost, ye ken.” “What? You mean if it’s a dark night and you take the wrong turning—” “Ach, no! Like mebbe deid when they shouldn’t be an’ there’s nae place for ’em tae go, or they fall doon a gap in the worlds an’ dinna ken the way. Some o’ them don’t even ken where they are, poor souls. There’s an awful lot o’ that kind o’ thing. There’s no’ a lot o’ laughs in a underworld. This one used tae be called Limbo, ye ken, ’cuz the door was verra low. Looks like it’s gone way downhill since we wuz last here.” He raised his voice. “An’ a big hand, lads, for young Wee Dangerous Spike, oot wi’ us for the first time!” There was a ragged cheer, and Wee Dangerous Spike waved his sword. Roland pushed his way through the shadows, which actually offered some resistance. The very air was gray down here. Sometimes he heard groans, or someone coughing in the distance…and then there were footsteps, shuffling toward him. He drew his sword and peered through the gloom. Shadows parted and a very old woman in tattered, threadbare clothes shuffled past, dragging a large cardboard box behind her. It bounced awkwardly as she tugged at it. She didn’t even glance at Roland. He lowered the sword. “I thought there’d be monsters,” he said as the old woman disappeared into the gloom. “Aye,” said Rob Anybody grimly. “There are. Think o’ somethin’ solid, will ye?” “Something solid?!” “I’m nae jokin’! Think o’ a nice big mountain, or a hammer! Whatever ye do, dinna wish or regret or hope!” Roland closed his eyes and then reached up to touch them. “I can still see! But my eyes are shut!” “Aye! And ye’ll see more wi’ yer een shut. Look aroond ye, if ye dare!” Roland, his eyes shut, took a few steps forward and looked around. Nothing seemed to have changed. Perhaps things were slightly more gloomy. And then he saw it—a flash of bright orange, a line in the dark that came and went. “What was that?” he asked. “We dinna ken whut they call themselves. We call ’em bogles,” said Rob. “They are flashes of light?” “Ach, that one was a long way away,” said Rob. “If ye want tae see one close up, it’s standin’ right beside ye….” Roland spun around. “Ah, ye see, ye made a classic mistake right there,” said Rob, conversationally. “Ye opened yer eyes!” Roland shut his eyes. The bogle was standing six inches away from him. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t scream. Hundreds of Feegles were watching him, he knew. At first he thought: It’s a skeleton. When it flashed again, it looked like a bird, a tall bird like a heron. Then it was a stick figure, like a kid would draw. Over and over again it scribbled itself against the darkness in thin, burning lines. It scribbled itself a mouth and leaned forward for a moment, showing hundreds of needle teeth. Then it vanished. There was a murmur from the Feegles. “Aye, ye done weel,” said Rob Anybody. “Ye stared it in the mouth and ye didna take so much as a step back.” “Mr. Anybody, I was too scared to run,” Roland muttered. Rob Anybody leaned down until he was level with the boy’s ear. “Aye,” he whispered, “I ken that well enough! There be a lot o’ men who became heroes ’cuz they wuz too scared tae run! But ye didna yell nor cack yer kecks, an’ that’s good. There’ll be more o’ them as we go on. Dinna let them intae yer heid! Keep ’em oot!” “Why, what do they—? No, don’t tell me!” said Roland. He walked on through the shadows, blinking so he wouldn’t miss anything. The old woman had gone, but the gloom began to fill up with people. Mostly they stood by themselves, or sat on chairs. Some wandered around quietly. They passed a man in ancient clothing who was staring at his own hand as though he were seeing it for the first time. There was a woman swaying gently and singing a nonsense song in a quiet, little-girl voice. She gave Roland a strange, mad smile as he walked past. Right behind her stood a bogle. “All right,” said Roland grimly. “Now tell me what they do.” “They eat yer memories,” said Rob Anybody. “Yer thoughts is real tae them. Wishes an’ hope are like food! They’re vermin, really. This is whut happens when these places are no’ looked after.” “And how can I kill them?” “Oh, that was a verra nasty voice ye just used. Hark at the big wee hero! Dinna bother aboot them, laddie. They won’t attack ye yet, and we’ve got a job tae do.” “I hate this place!” “Aye, hells is a lot more lively,” said Rob Anybody. “Slow doon now—we’re at the river.” A river ran through the Underworld. It was as dark as the soil, and lapped at its banks in a slow, oily way. “Ah, I think I’ve heard of this,” said Roland. “There’s a ferryman, right?” YES. He was there, suddenly, standing in a long, low boat. He was all in black, of course in black, with a deep hood that entirely concealed his face and gave a definite feeling that this was just as well. “Hi, pal,” said Rob Anybody cheerfully. “How’re ye doin’?” OH NO, NOT YOU PEOPLE AGAIN, said the dark figure in a voice that was not so much heard as felt. I THOUGHT YOU WERE BANNED. “Just a wee misunderstandin’, ye ken,” said Rob, sliding down Roland’s armor. “Ye have tae let us in, ’cuz we’s deid already.” The figure extended an arm. The black robe fell away, and what pointed at Roland looked, to him, very much like a bony finger. BUT HE MUST PAY THE FERRYMAN, he said accusingly, in a voice of crypts and graveyards. “Not until I’m on the other side,” Roland said firmly. “Oh, c’mon!” said Daft Wullie to the ferryman. “Ye can see he’s a Hero! If ye canna trust a Hero, who can ye trust?” The cowl regarded Roland for what seemed like a hundred years. OH, VERY WELL THEN. The Feegles swarmed aboard the rotting boat with their usual enthusiasm and cries of “Crivens!” “Where’s the booze on this cruise?” and “We’re right oot in the Styx noo!” and Roland climbed in with care, watching the ferryman suspiciously. The figure pulled on the big oar, and they set off with a creak and then, regrettably, and to the ferryman’s disgust, to the sound of singing. More or less singing, that is, at every possible speed and tempo and with no regard at all for the tune: “Row row yer row boat boat boaty boat down boat stream boat merrily stream like a bird on the boa—” WILL YOU SHUT UP? “—bonny boat row stream stream boat boat row yer boat down the merrily stream row merrily merrily boat—” THIS IS HARDLY APPROPRIATE! “Down the boat boat down the merrily stream stream stream merrily merrily merrily merrily merrily merrily boat!” “Mr. Anybody?” said Roland as they glided jerkily along. “Aye?” “Why am I sitting next to a blue cheese with a bit of tartan wrapped around it?” “Ah, that’d be Horace,” said Rob Anybody. “He’s Daft Wullie’s pal. He’s no’ bein’ a nuisance, is he?” “No. But he’s trying to sing!” “Aye, all blue cheeses hum a bit.” “Mnamnam mnam mnamnam,” sang Horace. The boat bumped against the far bank, and the ferryman stepped ashore quickly. Rob Anybody scrambled up Roland’s ragged chain-mail sleeve and whispered: “When I gi’e ye the word, run for it!” “But I can pay the ferryman. I have the money,” said Roland, patting his pocket. “You whut?” said the Feegle, as if this were some strange and dangerous idea. “I have the money,” Roland repeated. “Two pennies is the rate to cross the River of the Dead. It’s an old tradition. Two pennies to put on the eyes of the dead, to pay the ferryman.” “Whut a clever man ye are, to be sure,” said Rob as Roland dropped two copper coins into the ferryman’s bony hand. “An’ did ye no’ think tae bring four pennies?” “The book just said the dead take two,” said Roland. “Aye, mebbe they do,” Rob agreed, “but that’s ’cuz the deid dinna expect tae be comin’ back!” Roland looked back across the dark river. Flashes of orange light were thick on the bank they’d left. “Mr. Anybody, I was once a prisoner of the Queen of Fairyland.” “Aye, I ken that.” “It was for a year in this world, but it only seemed like a few days there…except that the weeks passed like centuries. It was so…dull, I could hardly remember anything after a while. Not my name, not the feel of sunshine, not the taste of real food.” “Aye, we ken that—we helped tae rescue ye. Ye niver say thanks, but ye wuz oot o’ yer skull the whole time, so we didna take offense.” “Then allow me to thank you now, Mr. Anybody.” “Dinna mention it. Anytime. Happy tae oblige.” “She had pets that fed you dreams until you died of hunger. I hate things that try to take away what you are. I want to kill those things, Mr. Anybody. I want to kill all of them. When you take away memories, you take away the person. Everything they are.” “’Tis a fine ambition ye’ve got there,” said Rob. “But we ha’ got a wee job tae do, ye ken. Aw crivens, this is whut happens when things get sloppy an’ bogles take over.” There was a big pile of bones on the path. They were certainly animal bones, and the rotting collars and lengths of rusted chain were another clue. “Three big dogs?” said Roland. “One verra big dog wi’ three heads,” said Rob Anybody. “Verra popular in underworlds, that breed. Can bite right through a man’s throat. Three times!” he added with relish. “But put three doggy biscuits in a row on the groond, an’ the puir wee thing sits there strainin’ an’ whinin’ all day. It’s a wee laff, I’m tellin’ ye!” He kicked at the bones. “Aye, time wuz when places like this had some pers’nality. Look, see what they’ve done here, too.” Farther along the path was what was probably a demon. It had a horrible face, with so many fangs that some of them must have been just for show. There were wings, too, but they couldn’t possibly have lifted it. It had found a piece of mirror, and every few seconds it took a peep into it and shuddered. “Mr. Anybody,” said Roland, “is there anything down here that this sword I’m carrying could kill?” “Ah, no. No’ kill,” said Rob Anybody. “No’ bogles. No’ as such. It’s no’ a magic sword, see?” “Then why am I dragging it along?” “’Cuz ye are a Hero. Who ever heard o’a Hero wi’oot a sword?” Roland tugged the sword out of its scabbard. It was heavy and not at all like the flying, darting silver thing that he’d imagined in front of the mirror. It was more like a metal club with an edge. He gripped it in both hands and managed to hurl it out into the middle of the slow, dark river. Just before it hit the water, a white arm rose and caught it. The hand waved the sword a couple of times and then disappeared with it under the water. “Was that supposed to happen?” he asked. “A man throwin’ his sword awa’?” yelled Rob. “No! Ye’re no’ supposed tae bung a guid sword intae the drinkie!” “No, I mean the hand,” said Roland. “It just—” “Ach, they turn up sometimes.” Rob Anybody waved a hand as if midstream underwater sword jugglers were an everyday occurrence. “But ye’ve got no weapon noo!” “You said swords can’t hurt bogles!” “Aye, but it’s the look o’ the thing, okay?” said Rob, hurrying on. “But not having a sword should make me more heroic, right?” said Roland, as the rest of the Feegles trotted after them. “Technic’ly, aye,” said Rob Anybody reluctantly. “But mebbe also more deid.” “Besides, I have a Plan,” said Roland. “Ye have a Plan?” said Rob. “Yes. I mean aye.” “Writted doon?” “I’ve only just thought of—” Roland stopped. The ever-shifting shadows had parted, and a big cave lay ahead. In the center of it, surrounding what looked like a rock slab, was a dim yellow glow. There was a small figure lying on the slab. “Here we are,” said Rob Anybody. “That wasna so bad, aye?” Roland blinked. Hundreds of bogles were clustered around the slab, but at a distance, as if they were not keen on going any closer. “I can see…someone lying down,” he said. “That’s Summer herself,” said Rob. “We have tae be canny aboot this.” “Canny?” “Like…careful,” said Rob helpfully. “Goddesses can be a wee bit tricky. Verra image conscious.” “Don’t we just…you know, grab her and run?” said Roland. “Oh, aye, we’ll end up doin’ somethin’ like that,” said Rob. “But you, mister, will have tae be the one tae kiss her first. You okay wi’ that?” Roland looked a bit strained, but he said: “Yes…er, fine.” “The ladies expect it, ye ken,” Rob went on. “And then we run for it?” said Roland hopefully. “Aye, ’cuz probably that’s when the bogles will try an’ stop us gettin’ awa.’ It’s people leavin’ that they don’t like. Off ye go, laddie.” I’ve got a Plan, thought Roland, walking toward the slab. And I’ll concentrate on it so that I don’t think about the fact that I’m walking through a crowd of scribbly monsters that are only there if I blink and my eyes are watering. What’s in my head is real to them, right? I’m going to blink, I’m going to blink, I’m going to… …blink. It was over in a moment, but the shudder went on for a lot longer. They had been everywhere, and every toothy mouth was looking at him. It should not be possible to look with teeth. He ran forward, eyes streaming with the effort of not closing, and looked down at the figure lying in the yellow glow. It was female, it was breathing, it was asleep, and it looked like Tiffany Aching. From the top of the ice palace Tiffany could see for miles, and they were miles of snow. Only on the Chalk was there any sign of green. It was an island. “You see how I learn?” said the Wintersmith. “The Chalk is yours. So there summer will come, and you will be happy. And you will be my bride and I will be happy. And everything will be happy. Happiness is when things are correct. Now I am human, I understand these things.” Don’t scream, don’t shout, said her Third Thoughts. Don’t freeze up, either. “Oh…I see,” she said. “And the rest of the world will stay in winter?” “No, there are some latitudes that never feel my frost,” said the Wintersmith. “But the mountains, the plains as far as the circle sea…oh, yes.” “Millions of people will die!” “But only once, you see. That is what makes it wonderful. And after that, no more death!” And Tiffany saw it, like a Hogswatch card: birds frozen to their twigs, horses and cows standing still in the fields, frozen grass like daggers, no smoke from any chimney; a world without death because there was nothing left to die, and everything glittering like tinsel. She nodded carefully. “Very…sensible,” she said. “But it would be a shame if nothing moved at all.” “That would be easy. Snow people,” said the Wintersmith. “I can make them human!” “Iron enough to make a nail?” said Tiffany. “Yes! It is easy. I have eaten sausage! And I can think! I never thought before. I was a part. Now I am apart. Only when you are apart do you know who you are.” “You made me roses of ice,” said Tiffany. “Yes! Already I was becoming!” But the roses melted at dawn, Tiffany added to herself, and glanced at the pale-yellow sun. It had just enough strength to make the Wintersmith sparkle. He does think like a human, she thought, looking into the odd smile. He thinks like a human who’s never met another human. He’s cackling. He’s so mad, he will never understand how mad he is. He just doesn’t have a clue what “human” means, he doesn’t know what horrors he’s planning, he just doesn’t…understand. And he’s so happy he’s almost sweet…. Rob Anybody banged on Roland’s helmet. “Get on wi’ it, laddie,” he demanded. Roland stared at the glowing figure. “This can’t be Tiffany!” “Ach, she’s a goddess, she can look like anythin’,” said Rob Anybody. “Just a wee peck on the cheek, okay? Dinna get enthusiastic, we havena got all day. A wee peck an’ we’re offski.” Something butted Roland on the ankle. It was a blue cheese. “Dinna fash yerself aboot Horace—he just wants ye tae do the right thing,” said the mad Feegle whom Roland had come to know as Daft Wullie. He went closer, with the glow crackling around him, because no man wants to be a coward in front of a cheese. “This is kind of…embarrassing,” he said. “Crivens, get on wi’ it, will ye?” Roland leaned forward and pecked the sleeping cheek. The sleeper opened her eyes, and he took a step back very quickly. “That’s not Tiffany Aching!” he said, and blinked. Bogles were as thick around him as grass stems. “Now take her by the hand an’ run,” said Rob Anybody. “The bogles will turn nasty when they see we’re leavin’.” He banged cheerfully on the side of the helmet and added: “But that’s okay, right? ’Cuz ye have a Plan!” “I hope I’ve got it right, though,” said Roland. “My aunts say I’m too clever by half.” “Glad tae hear it,” said Rob Anybody, “’cuz that’s much better than bein’ too stupid by three quarters! Now grab the lady an’ run!” Roland tried to avoid the stare of the girl as he took her hand and pulled her gently off the slab. She said something in a language he couldn’t understand, except that it sounded as though there were a question mark on the end of it. “I’m here to rescue you,” he said. She looked at him with the golden eyes of a snake. “The sheep girl is in trouble,” she said, in a voice full of unpleasant echoes and hisses. “So sad, so sad.” “Well, er, we’d better run,” he managed, “whoever you are….” The not-Tiffany gave him a smile. It was an uncomfortable one, with a bit of a smirk in it. They ran. “How do you fight the bogles?” he panted when the Feegle army jogged through the caves. “Ach, they dinna like the taste o’ us overmuch,” said Rob Anybody as the shadows parted. “It may be ’cuz we think aboot the drinkin’ a lot—it makes ’em squiffy. Keep movin’!” And it was at this point that the bogles struck, although that was hardly the right word. It was more like running into a wall of whispers. Nothing grabbed; there were no claws. If thousands of tiny weak things like shrimps or flies were trying to stop someone, this would be how it felt. But the ferryman was waiting. He raised a hand as Roland staggered toward the boat. THAT WILL BE SIX PENNIES, he said. “Six?” said Roland. “Ah, we wasna doon here more’n two hour, an’ bang went sixpence!” said Daft Wullie. ONE ONE-DAY ROUND TRIP, ONE ONE-WAY, said the ferryman. “I don’t have that much!” Roland shouted. He was beginning to feel little tugs in his head now. Thoughts had to push hard to get as far as his mouth. “Leave this tae me,” said Rob Anybody. He turned to look down on his fellow Feegles and banged on Roland’s helmet for silence. “Okay, lads,” he announced. “We’re no’ leavin’!” WHAT? said the ferryman. OH NO, YOU LEAVE! I’M NOT HAVING YOU DOWN HERE AGAIN! WE’RE STILL FINDING THE BOTTLES FROM LAST TIME! COME ON, GET ON THE BOAT THIS MINUTE! “Crivens, we canna do that, pal,” said Rob Anybody. “We’re under a geas to help this lad, ye ken. Where he disna go, we dinna go!” PEOPLE ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO WANT TO STAY HERE! snapped the ferryman. “Ach, we’ll soon ha’ the old place jumpin’ again,” said Rob Anybody, grinning. The ferryman drummed his fingers on the pole. They made a clicking sound, like dice. OH, ALL RIGHT THEN. BUT—AND I WANT TO BE CLEAR ON THIS—THERE IS TO BE NO SINGING! Roland dragged the girl onto the boat. The bogles kept clear of that, at least, but as the ferryman pushed away from the shore, Big Yan kicked Roland on the boot and pointed upward. Scribbles of orange light, hundreds of them, were moving across the roof of the cavern. There were more of them on the opposite shore. “How’s the Plan goin’, Mister Hero?” asked Rob Anybody quietly as he climbed down from the boy’s helmet. “I’m waiting for the opportune moment,” said Roland haughtily. He turned to look at the not-Tiffany. “I’m here to get you out,” he said, trying not to look directly at her eyes. “You?” said the not-Tiffany, as if the idea were amusing. “Well, us,” Roland corrected himself. “Everything is—” There was a bump as the boat grounded on the farther shore, where the bogles were as thick as standing corn. “Off ye go, then,” said Big Yan. Roland pulled the not-Tiffany along the path for a few steps, and stopped. When he blinked, the path ahead was a writhing orange mass. He could feel the little pulls on him, no stronger than a breeze. But they were in his brain, too. Cold, and nibbling. This was stupid. It couldn’t work. He wouldn’t be able to do it. He wasn’t any good at this sort of thing. He was wayward and inconsiderate and disobedient, just like his…aunts…said. Behind him, Daft Wullie shouted, in his cheerful way, “Make yer aunties proud of ye!” Roland half turned, suddenly angry. “My aunts? Let me tell you about my aunts—” “No time, laddie!” shouted Rob Anybody. “Get on wi’ it!” Roland looked around, his mind on fire. Our memories are real, he thought. And I will not stand for this! He turned to the not-Tiffany and said: “Don’t be afraid.” Then he held out his left hand and whispered, under his breath: “I remember…a sword….” When he shut his eyes, there it was—so light he could barely feel it, so thin he could hardly see it, a line in the air that was made up mostly of sharpness. He’d killed a thousand enemies with it, in the mirror. It was never too heavy, it moved like part of him, and here it was. A weapon that chopped away everything that clung and lied and stole. “Mebbe ye can make a Hero all in one go,” said Rob Anybody thoughtfully, as bogles scribbled themselves into existence and died. He turned to Daft Wullie. “Daft Wullie?” he said. “Can ye bring to mind when it was I told ye that sometimes ye say exactly the right thing?” Daft Wullie looked baffled. “Noo that ye mention it, Rob, I dinna recall ye ever sayin’ that, ever.” “Aye?” said Rob. “Weel, if I had done, just now would ha’ been one o’ those times.” Daft Wullie looked worried. “That’s all right though, aye? I said somethin’ right?” “Aye. Ye did, Daft Wullie. A First. I’m proud o’ ye,” said Rob. Daft Wullie’s face split in an enormous grin. “Crivens! Hey, lads, I said—” “But dinna get carried awa’,” Rob added. As Roland swung the airy blade, the bogles parted like spiderwebs. There were more, always more, but the silver line always found them, cutting him free. They backed away, tried new shapes, recoiled from the heat of the anger in his head. The sword hummed. Bogles curled around the blade and squealed, and sizzled into nothingness on the floor— —and someone was banging on his helmet. They’d been doing so for quite a while. “Huh?” he said, opening his eyes. “Ye’ve run oot,” said Rob Anybody. His chest heaving, Roland looked around. Eyes open or shut, the caves were empty of orange streaks. The not-Tiffany was watching him with a strange smile on her face. “Either we get oot noo,” said Rob, “or ye can hang aroond and wait for some more, mebbe?” “An’ here they come,” said Billy Bigchin. He pointed across the river. A pure mass of orange was pouring into the cave, so many bogles that there was no space between them. Roland hesitated, still fighting for breath. “I’ll tell ye whut,” said Rob Anybody soothingly. “If ye are a guid boy an’ rescue the lady, we’ll bring ye doon here another time, wi’ some sandwiches so’s we can make a day o’ it.” Roland blinked. “Er, yes,” he said. “Um…sorry. I don’t know what happened just then….” “Offski time!” yelled Big Yan. Roland grabbed the hand of the not-Tiffany. “An’ don’t look back until we’re well oot o’ here,” said Rob Anybody. “It’s kind of traditional.” On the top of the tower, the ice crown appeared in the Wintersmith’s pale hands. It shone more than diamonds could, even in the pale sunlight. It was purest ice, without bubbles, lines, or flaw. “I made this for you,” he said. “The Summer Lady will never wear it,” he added sadly. It fit perfectly. It didn’t feel cold. He stepped back. “And now it is done,” said the Wintersmith. “There is something I have to do, too,” said Tiffany. “But first there’s something I have to know. You found the things that make a man?” “Yes!” “How did you find out what they were?” The Wintersmith proudly told her about the children, while Tiffany breathed carefully, forcing herself to relax. His logic was very…logical. After all, if a carrot and two pieces of coal can make a heap of snow a snowman, then a big bucket of salts and gases and metal should certainly make him a human. It made…sense. At least, sense to the Wintersmith. “But, you see, you need to know the whole song,” said Tiffany. “It is mostly only about what humans are made of. It isn’t about what humans are.” “There were some things that I could not find,” said the Wintersmith. “They made no sense. They had no substance.” “Yes,” said Tiffany, nodding sadly. “The last three lines, I expect, which are the whole point. I’m really sorry about that.” “But I will find them,” said the Wintersmith. “I will!” “I hope you do, one day,” said Tiffany. “Now, have you ever heard of Boffo?” “What is this Boffo? It was not in the song!” said the Wintersmith, looking uneasy. “Oh, Boffo is how humans change the world by fooling themselves,” said Tiffany. “It’s wonderful. And Boffo says that things have no power that humans don’t put there. You can make things magical, but you can’t magically make a human out of things. It’s just a nail in your heart. Only a nail.” And the time has come and I know what to do, she thought dreamily. I know how the Story has to end. I must end it in the right kind of way. She pulled the Wintersmith toward her and saw the look of astonishment on his face. She felt light-headed, as though her feet weren’t touching the floor. The world became…simpler. It was a tunnel, leading to the future. There was nothing to see but the Wintersmith’s cold face, nothing to hear but her own breathing, nothing to feel but the warmth of the sun on her hair. It wasn’t the fiery globe of summer, but it was still much bigger than any bonfire could ever be. Where this takes me, there I choose to go, she told herself, letting the warmth pour into her. I choose. This I choose to do. And I’m going to have to stand on tiptoe, she added. Thunder on my right hand. Lightning in my left hand. Fire above me…. “Please,” she said, “take the winter away. Go back to your mountains. Please.” Frost in front of me…. “No. I am Winter. I cannot be anything else.” “Then you cannot be human,” said Tiffany. “The last three lines are: ‘Strength enough to build a home, Time enough to hold a child, Love enough to break a heart.’” Balance…and it came quickly, out of nowhere, lifting her up inside. The center of the seesaw does not move. It feels neither upness nor downness. It is balanced. Balance…and his lips were like blue ice. She’d cry, later, for the Wintersmith who wanted to be human. Balance…and the old kelda had once told her: “There’s a little bitty bit inside ye that willna melt and flow.” Time to thaw. She shut her eyes and kissed the Wintersmith… …and drew down the sun. Frost to fire. The entire top of the ice palace melted in a flash of white light that cast shadows on walls a hundred miles away. A pillar of steam roared up, stitched with lightning, and spread out above the world like an umbrella, covering the sun. Then it began to fall back as a soft, warm rain that punched little wormholes in the snow. Tiffany, her head usually so full of thoughts, hadn’t got a thought to spare. She lay on a slab of ice in the soft rain and listened to the palace collapse around her. There are times when everything that you can do has been done and there’s nothing for it now but to curl up and wait for the thunder to die down. There was something else in the air, too, a golden glint that vanished when she tried to look at it and then turned up again in the corner of her eye. The palace was melting like a waterfall. The slab she lay on half slid and half floated down a staircase that was turning into a river. Above her, huge pillars fell but went from ice to a gush of warm water in midair, so that what crashed down was spray. Good-bye to the glittering crown, Tiffany thought with a touch of regret. Good-bye to the dress made of dancing light, and good-bye to the ice roses and the snowflakes. Such a shame. Such a shame. And then there was grass under her, and so much water pouring past her that it was a case of get up or drown. She managed to get to her knees, at least, and waited until it was possible to stand up without being knocked over. “You have something of mine, child,” said a voice behind her. She turned, and golden light rushed into a shape. It was her own shape, but her eyes were… odd, like a snake’s. Right here and now, with the roaring of the heat of the sun still filling her ears, this didn’t seem very amazing. Slowly, Tiffany took the Cornucopia out of her pocket and handed it over. “You are the Summer Lady, aren’t you?” she asked. “And you are the sheep-girl who would be me?” There was a hiss to the words. “I didn’t want to be!” said Tiffany hurriedly. “Why do you look like me?” The Summer Lady sat down on the turf. It is very strange to watch yourself, and Tiffany noticed she had a small mole on the back of her neck. “It’s called resonance,” she said. “Do you know what that is?” “It means ‘vibrating with,’” said Tiffany. “How does a sheep-girl know that?” “I have a dictionary,” said Tiffany. “And I’m a witch, thank you.” “Well, while you were picking up things from me, I’ve been picking up things from you, clever sheep-witch,” said the Summer Lady. She was beginning to remind Tiffany a lot of Annagramma. That was actually a relief. She didn’t sound wise, or nice…she was just another person, who happened to be very powerful but not frighteningly smart and was, frankly, a bit annoying. “What’s your real shape?” Tiffany asked. “The shape of heat on a road, the shape of the smell of apples.” Nice reply, Tiffany thought, but not helpful, as such. Tiffany sat down next to the goddess. “Am I in trouble?” she asked. “Because of what you did to the Wintersmith? No. He has to die every year, as do I. We die, and sleep and wake. Besides…you were entertaining.” “Oh? I was entertaining, was I?” said Tiffany, her eyes narrowing. “What is it you want?” asked the Summer Lady. Yes, thought Tiffany, just like Annagramma. Wouldn’t spot a hint a mile high. “Want?” said Tiffany. “Nothing. Just the summer, thank you.” The Summer Lady looked puzzled. “But humans always want something from gods.” “But witches don’t accept payment. Green grass and blue skies will do.” “What? You’ll get those anyway!” The Summer Lady sounded both confused and angry, and Tiffany was quite happy about this, in a small and spiteful way. “Good,” she said. “You saved the world from the Wintersmith!” “Actually, I saved it from a silly girl, Miss Summer. I put right what I put wrong.” “One simple mistake? You’d be a silly girl not to accept a reward.” “I’d be a sensible young woman to refuse one,” said Tiffany, and it felt good to say that. “Winter is over. I know. I’ve seen it through. Where it took me, there I chose to go. I chose when I danced with the Wintersmith.” The Summer Lady stood up. “Remarkable,” she said. “And strange. And now we part. But first, some more things must be taken. Stand up, young woman.” Tiffany did so, and when she looked into the face of Summer, golden eyes became pits that drew her in. And then the summer filled her up. It must have been for only a few seconds, but inside them it went on for much longer. She felt what it was like to be the breeze through green corn on a spring day, to ripen an apple, to make the salmon leap the rapids—the sensations came all at once and merged into one great big, glistening, golden-yellow feeling of summer… …that grew hotter. Now the sun turned red in a burning sky. Tiffany drifted through air like warm oil into the searing calm of deep deserts, where even camels die. There was no living thing. Nothing moved except ash. She drifted down a dried-up riverbed, with pure white animal bones on the banks. There was no mud, not one drop of moisture in this oven of a land. This was a river of stones—agates banded like a cat’s eye, garnets lying loose, thunder eggs with their rings of color, stones of brown, orange, creamy white, some with black veins, all polished by the heat. “Here is the heart of the summer,” hissed the voice of the Summer Lady. “Fear me as much as the Wintersmith. We are not yours, though you give us shapes and names. Fire and ice we are, in balance. Do not come between us again….” And now, at last, there was movement. From out of gaps between the stones they came like stones brought alive: bronze and red, umber and yellow, black and white, with harlequin patterns and deadly gleaming scales. The snakes tested the boiling air with their forked tongues and hissed triumphantly. The vision vanished. The world came back. The water had poured away. The everlasting wind had teased the fogs and steams into long streamers of cloud, but the unconquered sun was finding its way through. And, as always happens, and happens far too soon, the strange and wonderful becomes a memory and a memory becomes a dream. Tomorrow it’s gone. Tiffany walked across the grass where the palace had been. There were a few pieces of ice left, but they would be gone in an hour. There were the clouds, but clouds drifted away. The normal world pressed in on her, with its dull little songs. She was walking on a stage after the play was over, and who now could say it had ever happened? Something sizzled on the grass. Tiffany reached down and picked up a piece of metal. It was still warm with the last of the heat that had twisted it out of shape, but you could see that it had once been a nail. No, I won’t take a gift to make the giver feel better, she thought. Why should I? I’ll find my own gifts. I was…“entertaining” to her, that’s all. But him—he made me roses and icebergs and frost and never understood…. She turned suddenly at the sound of voices. The Feegles came bounding over the slope of the downs, at a speed just fast enough for a human to keep up. And Roland was keeping up, panting a little, his overlarge chain mail making him run like a duck. She laughed. Two weeks later Tiffany went back to Lancre. Roland took her as far as Twoshirts, and the pointy hat took her the rest of the way. That was a bit of luck. The driver remembered Miss Tick, and since there was a spare space on the roof of the coach, he wasn’t prepared to go through all that again. The roads were flooded, the ditches gurgled, the swollen rivers sucked at the bridges. First she visited Nanny Ogg, who had to be told everything. That saved some time, because once you’ve told Nanny Ogg, you’ve more or less told everyone else. When she heard exactly what Tiffany had done to the Wintersmith, she laughed and laughed. Tiffany borrowed Nanny’s broomstick and flew slowly across the forests to Miss Treason’s cottage. Things were going on. In the clearing, several men were digging the vegetable area, and lots of people were hanging around the door, so she landed back in the woods, shoved the broom into a rabbit hole and her hat under a bush, and walked back on foot. Stuck in a birch tree where the track entered the clearing was…a doll, maybe, made out of lots of twigs bound together. It was new, and a bit worrying. That was probably the idea. No one saw her raise the catch on the scullery door or slip inside the cottage. She leaned against the kitchen wall and went quiet. From the next room came the unmistakable voice of Annagramma at her most typically Annagrammatical. “—only a tree, do you understand? Cut it up and share the wood. Agreed? And now shake hands. Go on. I mean it. Properly, or else I’ll get angry! Good. That feels better, doesn’t it? Let’s have no more of this silliness—” After ten minutes of listening to people being scolded, grumbled at, and generally prodded, Tiffany crept out again, cut through the woods, and walked into the clearing via the track. There was a woman hurrying toward her, but she stopped when Tiffany said: “Excuse me, is there a witch near here?” “Ooooh, yes,” said the woman, and gave Tiffany a hard stare. “You’re not from around here, are you?” “No,” said Tiffany, and thought: I lived here for months, Mrs. Carter, and I saw you most days. But I always wore the hat. People always talk to the hat. Without the hat, I’m in disguise. “Well, there’s Miss Hawkin,” said Mrs. Carter, as if reluctant to give away a secret. “Be careful, though.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “She turns into a terrible monster when she’s angry! I’ve seen her! She’s all right with us, of course,” she added. “Lots of young witches have been coming to learn things from her!” “Gosh, she must be good!” “She’s amazing,” Mrs. Carter went on. “She’d only been here five minutes and she seemed to know all about us!” “Amazing,” said Tiffany. You’d think that somebody wrote it all down. Twice. But that wouldn’t be interesting enough, would it? And who would believe that a real witch bought her face from Boffo? “And she’s got a cauldron that bubbles green,” Mrs. Carter said with great pride. “All down the sides. That’s proper witching, that is.” “It sounds like it,” said Tiffany. No witch she’d met had done anything with a cauldron apart from make stew, but somehow people believed in their hearts that a witch’s cauldron should bubble green. And that must be why Mr. Boffo sold Item #61 Bubbling Green Cauldron Kit, $14, extra sachets of Green, $1 each. Well, it worked. It probably shouldn’t, but people were people. She didn’t think Annagramma would be particularly interested in a visit right now, especially from someone who’d read all the way through the Boffo catalogue, so she retrieved her broom and headed on to Granny Weatherwax’s cottage. There was a chicken run out in the back garden now. It had been carefully woven out of pliable hazel, and contented werk s were coming from the other side. Granny Weatherwax was coming out of the back door. She looked at Tiffany as if the girl had just come back from a ten-minute stroll. “I’ve got business down in the town right now,” she said. “It wouldn’t worry me if you came, too.” That was, from Granny, as good as a brass band and an illuminated scroll of welcome. Tiffany fell in alongside her as she strode off along the track. “I hope I find you well, Mistress Weatherwax?” she said, hurrying to keep up. “I’m still here after another winter, that’s all I know,” said Granny. “You look well, girl.” “Oh, yes.” “We saw the steam from up here,” said Granny. Tiffany said nothing. That was it? Well, yes. From Granny, that would be it. After a while Granny said: “Come back to see your young friends, eh?” Tiffany took a deep breath. She’d been through this in her head dozens of times: what she would say, what Granny would say, what she would shout, what Granny would shout… “You planned it, didn’t you?” she said. “If you’d suggested one of the others, they’d probably have got the cottage, so you suggested me. And you knew, you just knew that I’d help her. And it’s all worked out, hasn’t it? I bet every witch in the mountains knows what happened by now. I bet Mrs. Earwig is seething. And the best bit is, no one got hurt. Annagramma’s picked up where Miss Treason left off, all the villagers are happy, and you’ve won! Oh, I expect you’ll say it was to keep me busy and teach me important things and keep my mind off the Wintersmith, but you still won!” Granny Weatherwax walked on calmly. Then she said: “I see you got your little trinket back.” It was like having a bolt of lightning and then not getting any thunder, or throwing a pebble into a pool and not getting a splash. “What? Oh. The horse. Yes! Look, I—” “What kind of fish?” “Er…pike,” said Tiffany. “Ah? Some likes ’em, but they are too muddy for my taste.” And that was it. Against Granny’s calm she had nowhere to go. She could nag, she could whine, and it wouldn’t make any difference. Tiffany consoled herself with the fact that at least Granny knew that she knew. It wasn’t much, but it was all she was going to get. “And the horse ain’t the only trinket I see,” Granny continued. “Magick, is it?” She always stuck a K on the end of any magic she disapproved of. Tiffany glanced down at the ring on her finger. It had a dull shine. It’d never rust while she wore it, the blacksmith had told her, because of the oils in her skin. He’d even taken the time to cut little snowflakes in it with a tiny chisel. “It’s just a ring I had made out of a nail,” she said. “Iron enough to make a ring,” said Granny, and Tiffany stopped dead. Did she really get into people’s minds? It had to be something like that. “And why did you decide you wanted a ring?” said Granny. For all sorts of reasons that never quite managed to be clear in Tiffany’s head, she knew. All she could think of to say was: “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” She waited for the explosion. “Then it probably was,” said Granny mildly. She stopped, pointed away from the path—in the direction of the town and Nanny Ogg’s house—and said: “I put the fence around it. It’s got other things protectin’ it, you may be sure of that, but some beasts is just too stupid to scare.” It was the oak tree sapling, already five feet high. A fence of poles and woven branches surrounded it. “Growing fast, for oak,” said Granny. “I’m keeping an eye on it. But come on, I don’t want to miss it.” She set off again, covering the ground fast. Bewildered, Tiffany ran after her. “Miss what?” she panted. “The dance, of course!” “Isn’t it too early for that?” “Not up here. They starts up here!” Granny hurried along little paths and behind gardens and came out into the town square, which was thronged with people. Small stalls had been set up. A lot of people were standing around in the slightly hopeless why-are-we-here? way of crowds who’re doing what their hearts want to do but their heads feel embarrassed about, but at least there were hot things on sticks to eat. There were lots of white chickens, too. Very good eggs, Nanny had said, so it would have been a shame to kill them. Granny walked to the front of the crowd. There was no need to push people out of the way. They just moved sideways, without noticing. They’d arrived just in time. Children came running along the road to the bridge, only just ahead of the dancers who, as they trudged along, seemed like quite homely and ordinary men—men Tiffany’d seen often, working in forges or driving carts. They all wore white clothes, or at least clothes that had been white once, and like the audience they looked a bit sheepish, their expressions suggesting that this was all just a bit of fun, really, not to be taken seriously. They were even waving to people in the crowd. Tiffany looked around and saw Miss Tick, and Nanny, and even Mrs. Earwig…nearly every witch she knew. Oh, and there was Annagramma, minus Mr. Boffo’s little devices, and looking very proud. It wasn’t like this last autumn, she thought. It was dark and quiet and solemn and hidden, everything that this isn’t. Who watched it from the shadows? Who is watching now from the light? Who is here in secret? A drummer and a man with an accordion pushed their way through the crowd, along with the local pub owner carrying eight pints of beer on a tray (because no grown man is going to dance in front of his friends with ribbons around his hat and bells on his trousers without the clear prospect of a large drink). When the noise had died down a bit, the drummer beat the drum a few times and the accordionist played a long-drawn-out chord, the legal signal that a Morris dance is about to begin, and people who hang around after this have only got themselves to blame. The two-man band struck up. The men, in two lines of three facing each other, counted the beat and then leaped…. Tiffany turned to Granny as twelve hobnailed boots crashed to the ground, throwing up sparks. “Tell me how to take away pain,” she said, above the noise of the dance. Crash! “It’s hard,” said Granny, not taking her eyes off the dancers. Crash went the boots again. “You can move it out of the body?” Crash! “Sometimes. Or hide it. Or make a cage for it and carry it away. And all of it’s dangerous, and it will kill you if you don’t respect it, young woman. It is all price and no profit. You are asking me to tell you how to put your hand in the lion’s mouth.” Crash! “I must know, to help the Baron. It’s bad. There is a lot I have to do.” “This you choose to do?” said Granny, still watching. “Yes!” Crash! “This is your Baron who doesn’t like witches?” said Granny, her gaze going from face to face in the crowd. “But who does like witches until they need one, Mistress Weatherwax?” said Tiffany sweetly. Crash! “This is a reckoning, Mistress Weatherwax,” Tiffany added. After all, once you’ve kissed the Wintersmith, you’re in the mood to dare. And Granny Weatherwax smiled, as if she’d done all that was expected of her. “Ha! Is it now?” she said. “Very well. Come and see me again before you go, and we’ll see what you may take back with you. And I hopes you can close the doors you are opening. Now watch the people! Sometimes you see her!” Tiffany paid attention to the dance. The Fool had turned up without her noticing, wandering around collecting money in his greasy top hat. If a girl looked as though she’d squeal if he kissed her, he gave her a kiss. And sometimes, without any warning, he’d spring off into the dance, spinning through the men with never a foot in the wrong place. Then Tiffany saw it. The eyes of a woman on the other side of the dance flashed gold, just for a moment. Once she’d seen it, she saw it again—in the eyes of a boy, a girl, the man holding the beer, moving around to watch the Fool— “Summer’s here!” said Tiffany, and realized that she was tapping her foot to the beat; she realized it because a heavier boot had just trodden on it and pinned it gently but firmly to the ground. Beside it, You looked up at her in blue-eyed innocence that became, for the briefest fragment of a second, the lazy golden eyes of a snake. “She’s meant to be,” said Granny Weatherwax, removing her boot. “A few coppers for luck, miss?” said a voice close by, and there was the sound of money being shaken in an ancient hat. Tiffany turned and looked into purple-gray eyes. The face around them was lined and tanned and grinning. He had a gold earring. “A copper or two from the lovely lady?” he wheedled. “Silver or gold, maybe?” Sometimes, Tiffany thought, you just know how it all should go…. “Iron?” she said, taking the ring off her finger and dropping it into the hat. The Fool picked it out, delicately, and flipped it into the air. Tiffany’s eye followed it, but somehow it wasn’t in the air anymore but was glistening on the man’s finger. “Iron’s enough,” he said, and gave her a sudden kiss on the cheek. It was only slightly chilly. The galleries inside the Feegle mound were crowded but hushed. This was important. The honor of the clan was at stake here. In the middle was a large book, taller than Rob and filled with colorful pictures. It was quite muddy from its journey down into the mound. Rob had been challenged. For years he’d thought himself to be a hero, and then the hag o’ hags had said he wasna, no’ really. Weel, you couldn’t argue wi’ the hag o’ hags, but he wuz goin’ to rise tae the challenge, oh aye, so he wuz, or his name wasna Rob Anybody. “Where’s mah coo?” he read. “Is that mah coo? It gaes cluck! It is a…a…chicken! It is no’ mah coo! An’ then there’s this wee paintin’ o’ a couple o’ chickens. That’s another page, right?” “It is indeed, Rob,” said Billy Bigchin. There was a cheer from the assembled Feegles as Rob ran around the book, waving his hands in the air. “An’ this one is a lot harder than Abker, right?” he said, when he’d done the circuit. “That one was easy! An’ a very predictable plot. Whoever writted that book didna stretch himself, in ma opinion.” “You mean The ABC?” said Billy Bigchin. “Aye.” Rob Anybody jumped up and down and punched the air a few times. “Got somethin’ a wee bit tougher?” The gonnagle looked at the stack of battered books the Feegles had, in various ways, collected. “Somethin’ I can get ma teeth intae,” Rob added. “A big book.” “Well, this one’s called Principles of Modern Accountancy,” said Billy doubtfully. “An’ is that a big heroic book to read?” said Rob, running on the spot. “Aye. Probably, but—” Rob Anybody held up a hand for silence and looked across at Jeannie, who had a crowd of little Feegles surrounding her. She was smiling at him, and his sons were staring at their father in silent astonishment. One day, Rob thought, they’ll be able to walk up to even the longest words and give them a good kicking. Not even commas and those tricksie semicolonses will stop them! He had to be a hero. “Ah’m feelin’ guid about this readin’,” said Rob Anybody. “Bring it on!” And he read Principles of Modern Accountancy all morning, but just to make it interesting, he put lots of dragons in it. Author’s Note T he Morris dance… …is traditionally danced on May 1, to welcome in the summer. Its history is a bit confused, possibly because it’s often danced near pubs, but it is now the English folk dance. The dancers usually wear white, and have bells sewn on their clothes. It is danced by both men and women, and is certainly now danced in the United States too. I know this because I saw the Dark Morris danced in a bookshop in Chicago some years ago. I’d invented the Dark Morris for another book called Reaper Man (at least I think I invented it), and a Morris team (officially known as a side) turned up in all black, just for me. They danced it in silence and perfect time, without the music and bells of the “summer” dance. It was beautifully done. But it was also a bit creepy. So it might not be a good idea to try it at home…. About the Author TERRY PRATCHETT is one of the world’s most popular writers. His first short story was published when he was 13, and his first book was published when he was 23. Mr. Pratchett’s novels have been translated into over two dozen languages, and have sold more than 45 million copies. He received Britain’s highest honor for a children’s book, the Carnegie Medal, for THE AMAZING MAURICE AND HIS EDUCATED RODENTS. Mr. Pratchett has one grown daughter and lives in England with his wife and several cats. www.terrypratchettbooks.com For exclusive information on your favorite authors and artists, visit www.authortracker.com. ALSO BY TERRY PRATCHETT The Carpet People The Dark Side of the Sun Strata THE BROMELIAD TRILOGY: Truckers Diggers Wings THE JOHNNY MAXWELL TRILOGY: Only You Can Save Mankind Johnny and the Dead Johnny and the Bomb The Unadulterated Cat ( illustrated by Gray Jolliffe) Good Omens ( with Neil Gaiman) THE DISCWORLD SERIES The Color of Magic The Light Fantastic Equal Rites Mort Sourcery Wyrd Sisters Pyramids Guards! Guards! Eric Moving Pictures Reaper Man Witches Abroad Small Gods Lords and Ladies Men at Arms Soul Music Feet of Clay Interesting Times Maskerade Hogfather Jingo The Last Continent Carpe Jugulum The Fifth Elephant The Truth Thief of Time The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents Night Watch The Wee Free Men Monstrous Regiment A Hat Full of Sky Going Postal Thud! Where’s My Cow? ( illustrated by Melvyn Grant) The Last Hero: A Discworld Fable ( illustrated by Paul Kidby) The Art of Discworld ( illustrated by Paul Kidby) Credits Jacket art © 2006 by Bill Mayer Jacket design by Christopher Stengel Copyright Wintersmith Copyright © 2006 by Terry and Lyn Pratchett All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. Microsoft Reader September 2006 ISBN 0-06-128578-1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pratchett, Terry. Wintersmith / Terry Pratchett.—1st ed. p. cm. Summary: When witch-in-training Tiffany Aching accidentally interrupts the Dance of the Seasons and awakens the interest of the elemental spirit of Winter, she requires the help of the six-inch-high, sword-wielding, sheep-stealing Wee Free Men to put the seasons aright. ISBN-10: 0-06-089031-2 (trade)—ISBN-13: 978-0-06-089031-5 (trade) ISBN-10: 0-06-089032-0 (lib. bdg.)—ISBN-13: 978-0-06-089032-2 (lib. bdg.) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 About the Publisher Australia HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd. 25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321) Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au Canada HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 55 Avenue Road, Suite 2900 Toronto, ON, M5R, 3L2, Canada http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca New Zealand HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited P. O. 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The Wit & Wisdom of Discworld - Terry Pratchett	----	The Wit & Wisdom of Discworld This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly. Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781407035505 www.randomhouse.co.uk TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS 61-63 Road, London W5 5SA A Random House Group Company www.rbooks.co.uk First published in Great Britain in 2007 by Doubleday an imprint of Transworld Publishers Copyright © Terry and Lyn Pratchett and Stephen Briggs 2007 Terry Pratchett has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work. Discworld ® is a trademark registered by Terry Pratchett A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 9780385611770 This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Quotations from the first twenty-one Discworld novels and The Last Hero reproduced by kind permission of Victor Gollancz Ltd. Quotations from The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, The Wee Free Men, A Hat Full of Sky and Wintersmith reproduced by kind permission of Random House Children’s Books. Addresses for Random House Group Ltd companies outside the UK can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk The Random House Group Ltd Reg. No. 954009 The Random House Group Ltd makes every effort to ensure that the papers used in its books are made from trees that have been legally sourced from well-managed and credibly certified forests. Our paper procurement policy can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk/paper.htm Design by Julia Lloyd Typeset in Century Schoolbook Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Mackays, Chatham ME5 8TD 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 CONTENTS Cover Title Copyright Indroduction THROUGH THE WARDROBE INTO DISCWORLD  1 THE COLOUR OF MAGIC  2 THE LIGHT FANTASTIC  3 EQUAL RITES  4 MORT  5 SOURCERY  6 WYRD SISTERS  7 PYRAMIDS  8 GUARDS! GUARDS!  9 ERIC 10 MOVING PICTURES 11 REAPER MAN 12 WITCHES ABROAD 13 SMALL GODS 14 LORDS AND LADIES 15 MEN AT ARMS 16 SOUL MUSIC 17 INTERESTING TIMES 18 MASKERADE 19 FEET OF CLAY 20 HOGFATHER 21 JINGO 22 THE LAST CONTINENT 23 CARPE JUGULUM 24 THE FIFTH ELEPHANT 26 THE TRUTH 26 THIEF OF TIME 27 THE LAST HERO 28 NIGHT WATCH 29 THE AMAZING MAURICE AND HIS EDUCATED RODENTS 30 THE WEE FREE MEN 31 MONSTROUS REGIMENT 32 A HAT FULL OF SKY 33 GOING POSTAL 34 THUD! 35 WINTERSMITH 36 MAKING MONEY Index BOOKS BY TERRY PRATCHETT FOR YOUNGER READERS THE BROMELIAD TRILOGY (containing Truckers, Diggers and Wings) TRUCKERS DIGGERS WINGS THE CARPET PEOPLE ONLY YOU CAN SAVE MANKIND JOHNNY AND THE DEAD JOHNNY AND THE BOMB THE JOHNNY MAXWELL TRILOGY (containing Only You Can Save Mankind, Johnny and the Dead and Johnny and the Bomb) JOHNNY AND THE DEAD playscript (adapted by Stephen Briggs) DISCWORLD FOR YOUNGER READERS THE AMAZING MAURICE AND HIS EDUCATED RODENTS THE AMAZING MAURICE AND HIS EDUCATED RODENTS playscript (adapted by Stephen Briggs) THE WEE FREE MEN A HAT FULL OF SKY WINTERSMITH FOR ADULTS OF ALL AGES THE DISCWORLD® SERIES THE COLOUR OF MAGIC THE LIGHT FANTASTIC EQUAL RITES MORT SOURCERY WYRD SISTERS PYRAMIDS GUARDS! GUARDS! ERIC MOVING PICTURES REAPER MAN WITCHES ABROAD SMALL GODS LORDS AND LADIES MEN AT ARMS SOUL MUSIC INTERESTING TIMES MASKERADE FEET OF CLAY HOGFATHER JINGO THE LAST CONTINENT CARPE JUGULUM THE FIFTH ELEPHANT THE TRUTH THIEF OF TIME NIGHT WATCH MONSTROUS REGIMENT GOING POSTAL THUD! MAKING MONEY THE COLOUR OF MAGIC – GRAPHIC NOVEL THE LIGHT FANTASTIC – GRAPHIC NOVEL MORT: A DISCWORLD BIG COMIC (illustrated by Graham Higgins) GUARDS! GUARDS!: A DISCWORLD BIG COMIC (adapted by Stephen Briggs, illustrated by Graham Higgins) SOUL MUSIC: THE ILLUSTRATED SCREENPLAY WYRD SISTERS: THE ILLUSTRATED SCREENPLAY MORT – THE PLAY (adapted by Stephen Briggs) WYRD SISTERS – THE PLAY (adapted by Stephen Briggs) GUARDS! GUARDS! – THE PLAY (adapted by Stephen Briggs) MEN AT ARMS – THE PLAY (adapted by Stephen Briggs) MASKERADE (adapted for the stage by Stephen Briggs) CARPE JUGULUM (adapted for the stage by Stephen Briggs) LORDS AND LADIES (adapted for the stage by Irana Brown) INTERESTING TIMES (adapted for the stage by Stephen Briggs) THE FIFTH ELEPHANT (adapted for the stage by Stephen Briggs) THE TRUTH (adapted for the stage by Stephen Briggs) THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD (with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen) THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD II: THE GLOBE (with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen) THE DISCWORLD COMPANION (with Stephen Briggs) THE STREETS OF ANKH-MORPORK (with Stephen Briggs) THE DISCWORLD MAPP (with Stephen Briggs) A TOURIST GUIDE TO LANCRE – A DISCWORLD MAPP (with Stephen Briggs and Paul Kidby) DEATH’S DOMAIN (with Paul Kidby) NANNY OGG’S COOKBOOK (with Stephen Briggs, Tina Hannan and Paul Kidby) THE PRATCHETT PORTFOLIO (with Paul Kidby) THE LAST HERO (with Paul Kidby) THE CELEBRATED DISCWORLD ALMANAK (with Bernard Pearson) THE ART OF DISCWORLD (with Paul Kidby) WHERE’S MY COW? THE UNSEEN UNIVERSITY CUT-OUT BOOK (with Bernard Pearson) GOOD OMENS (with Neil Gaiman) STRATA THE DARK SIDE OF THE SUN THE UNADULTERATED CAT (cartoons by Gray Jolliffe)   also available in audio/CD published by Victor Gollancz published by Samuel French published by Methuen Drama published by Ebury Press published by Oxford University Press THROUGH THE WARDROBE INTO DISCWORLD IT WAS THE WIT OF TERRY PRATCHETT THAT FIRST ATTRACTED ME to the books, and which then led to my pushing past the fur coats and finding myself in his magical world - thankfully devoid of Turkish delight and talking beavers. One of the big questions about Discworld for a newcomer is ‘Where do I start?’ This is a tricky one. For every diehard fan of Rincewind there’s an advocate for Small Gods. For everyone who loves the ‘Witch’ or ‘City Watch’ books, there is another who prefers the ‘one theme’ books, such as Soul Music and Moving Pictures. I, as it happens, kicked off with Mort. Terry writes fantasy - but his books are grounded firmly in reality. They contain heroes (not many), cowards, villains, bigots, crooks, the strong-willed and the weak-willed. Sometimes they are human. A lot of the time they are not. The series extends across many genres and deals with real issues. But Terry uses his wit to sharpen his pen; the humour in the books can be dark, and it can be so corny you may groan out loud as you read him on the train. In producing this book, I have not tried to extract every single gag and witty exchange from the series. There are too many, and to do that, I might just as well have tied a set of the novels up with string and added a tag: ‘The Complete Wit of Pratchett’. What I have done is re-read every book in the canon, and pull out the extracts that appealed to me. Sometimes they’ll be a page long, sometimes they’ll be a single line of text. Sometimes a really good gag has been omitted because it needs the buildup that the novel can give but which would take too long to set up in a book of quotations. Here and there, I’ve had to change the odd word, or omit the occasional phrase, to help the quotation work outside its context in the novel. The extracts are presented book by book, in the order in which they were published. Each book’s section starts with the cover blurb (which in most cases was written by Terry), to give you the same sort of idea of the novel’s plot as you’d get if you were browsing the shelves of your local bookstore. IT’S A BIG BOOK DO I HAVE TO READ IT ALL AT ONCE? Don’t panic: you don’t need to sit and read this book section by section, from cover to cover. This is more of a ‘dip into’ book. If you’re new to Terry’s novels, this cornucopia of snippets may inspire you to go out and buy and read one - or more - of them. Oh, and the maps, diaries, audio books, scarf… As for you keen Discworld readers, what I hope is that, as you browse through this book - by torchlight under the covers last thing at night, smeared with sun lotion on a beach in Greece, on a long coach trip, sat on the privy - you’ll find some of your favourite pieces from the Discworld canon. I haven’t had the luxury of doing my research in any of these exotic locations - but I enjoyed the opportunity to wander once more through the roughly four million words which currently make up the series … around twice the complete wordage of the Bible and all Shakespeare’s plays. Stephen Briggs   www.stephenbriggs.com / www.studiotheatreclub.com     ON a world supported on the back of a giant turtle (sex (sex unknown), a gleeful, explosive, wickedly eccentric expedition sets out. There’s an avaricious but inept wizard [Rincewind], a naive tourist [Twoflower] whose luggage moves on hundreds of dear little legs, dragons who only exist if you believe in them, and of course The Edge of the planet… How it all began: In a distant and second-hand set of dimensions, in an astral plane that was never meant to fly, the curling star-mists waver and part… * There was the theory that A’ Tuin had come from nowhere and would continue at a uniform crawl, or steady gait, into nowhere, for all time. This theory was popular among academics. An alternative, favoured by those of a religious persuasion, was that A’ ‘Tuin was crawling from the Birthplace to the Time of Mating, as were all the stars in the sky which were, obviously, also carried by giant turtles. When they arrived they would briefly and passionately mate, for the first and only time, and from that fiery union new turtles would be born to carry a new pattern of worlds. This was known as the Big Bang hypothesis. * The twin city of Ankh-Morpork, foremost of all the cities bounding the Circle Sea, was as a matter of course the home of a large number of gangs, thieves’ guilds, syndicates and similar organizations. This was one of the reasons for its wealth. * The stranger smiled widely and fumbled yet again in the pouch. This time his hand came out holding a large gold coin. It was in fact slightly larger than an 8,000-dollar Ankhian crown and the design on it was unfamiliar, but it spoke inside Hugh’s mind in a language he understood perfectly. My current owner, it said, is in need of succour and assistance; why not give it to him, so you and me can go off somewhere and enjoy ourselves? * If complete and utter chaos was lightning, then he’d be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting ‘All gods are bastards’. Tourist, Rincewind had decided, Meant ‘idiot’. At about this time a hitherto unsuccessful fortune-teller living on the other side of the block chanced to glance into her scrying bowl, gave a small scream and, within the hour, had sold her jewellery, various magical accoutrements, most of her clothes and almost all her other possessions that could not be conveniently carried on the fastest horse she could buy. The fact that later on, when herhouse collapsed in flames, she herself died in a freak landslide in the Morpork Mountains, proves that Death, too, has a sense of humour. * The Patrician of Ankh-Morpork smiled, but with his mouth only. * ‘I’m sure you won’t dream of trying to escape from your obligations by fleeing the city …’ ‘I assure you the thought never even crossed my mind, lord.’ ‘Indeed? Then if I were you I’d sue my face for slander.’ * ‘Ah, Gorphal,’ said the Patrician pleasantly. ‘Come in. Sit down. Can I press you to a candied starfish?’ ‘I am yours to command, master,’ said the old man calmly. ‘Save, perhaps, in the matter of preserved echinoderms.’ * There are said to be some mystic rivers - one drop of which can steal a man’s life away. After its turbid passage through the twin cities the Ankh could have been one of them. * That’s what’s so stupid about the whole magic thing … You spend twenty years learning the spell that makes nude virgins appear in your bedroom, and then you’re so poisoned by quicksilver fumes and half-blind from reading old grimoires that you can’t remember what happens next. * Death, on Discworld, is a character in his own right, and throughout the series is recognizable by always speaking IN BLOCK CAPITALS. Death, insofar as it was possible in a face with no movable features, looked surprised. RLNCEWLND? … WHY ARE YOU HERE? ‘Urn, why not?’ said Rincewind. I WAS SURPRISED THAT YOU JOSTLED ME, RINCEWIND. FOR I HAVE AN APPOINTMENT WITH THEE THIS VERY NIGHT. ‘Oh no, not—’ OF COURSE, WHAT’S SO BLOODY VEXING ABOUT THE WHOLE BUSINESS IS THAT I WAS EXPECTING TO MEET THEE IN PSEUDOPOLIS. ‘But that’s five hundred miles away!’ YOU DON’T HAVE TO TELL ME, THE WHOLE SYSTEM’S GOT SCREWED UP AGAIN. I CAN SEE THAT. * I’LL GET YOU YET, CULLY, said Death, in a voice like the slamming of leaden coffin lids. * Death sat in His garden, running a whetstone along the edge of His scythe. It was already so sharp that any passing breeze that blew across it was sliced smoothly into two puzzled zephyrs. * ‘Run away and leave Hrun with that thing?’ Twoflower said. Rincewind looked blank. ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘It’s his job.’ ‘But it’ll kill him!’ ‘It could be worse,’ said Rincewind. ‘What?’ ‘It could be us,’ Rincewind pointed out logically. * ‘We’ve strayed into a zone with a high magical index,’ Rincewind said. ‘Don’t ask me how. Once upon a time a really powerful magic field must have been generated here, and we’re feeling the after-effects.’ ‘Precisely’ said a passing bush. * ‘You don’t understand!’ screamed the tourist, above the terrible noise of the wingbeats. ‘All my life I’ve wanted to see dragons!’ ‘From the inside?’ shouted Rincewind. * ‘You’re your own worst enemy, Rincewind,’ said the sword. Rincewind looked up at grinning men. ‘Bet?’ he said wearily. * ‘Well,’ said the voice. ‘You see, one of the disadvantages of being dead is that one is released as it were from the bonds of time and therefore I can see everything that has happened or will happen, all at the same time except that of course I now know that Time does not, for all practical purposes, exist.’ ‘That doesn’t sound like a disadvantage,’ said Twoflower. You don’t think so? Imagine every moment being at one and the same time a distant memory and a nasty surprise and you’ll see what I mean.’ I’d rather be a slave than a corpse. Plants on the Disc, while including the categories known commonly as annuals, … and perennials, … also included a few rare reannuals which, because of an unusual four-dimensional twist in their genes, could be planted this year to come up last year. The vul nut vine was particularly exceptional in that it could flourish as many as eight years prior to its seed actually being sown. Vul nut wine was reputed to give certain drinkers an insight into the future which was, from the nut’s point of view, the past. Strange but true. * ‘We know all about you, Rincewind the magician. You are a man of great cunning and artifice. You laugh in house collapsed in flames, she herself died in a freak landslide in the Morpork Mountains, proves that Death, too, has a sense of humour. * The Patrician of Ankh-Morpork smiled, but with his mouth only. * ‘I’m sure you won’t dream of trying to escape from your obligations by fleeing the city …’ ‘I assure you the thought never even crossed my mind, lord.’ ‘Indeed? Then if I were you I’d sue my face for slander.’ * ‘Ah, Gorphal,’ said the Patrician pleasantly. ‘Come in. Sit down. Can I press you to a candied starfish?’ ‘I am yours to command, master,’ said the old man calmly. ‘Save, perhaps, in the matter of preserved echinoderms.’ * There are said to be some mystic rivers - one drop of which can steal a man’s life away. After its turbid passage through the twin cities the Ankh could have been one of them. * That’s what’s so stupid about the whole magic thing … You spend twenty years learning the spell that makes nude virgins appear in your bedroom, and then you’re so poisoned by quicksilver fumes and half-blind from reading old grimoires that you can’t remember what happens next. * Death, on Discworld, is a character in his own right, and throughout the series is recognizable by always speaking IN BLOCK CAPITALS. Death, insofar as it was possible in a face with no movable features, looked surprised. RLNCEWLND? … WHY ARE YOU HERE? ‘Um, why not?’ said Rincewind. I WAS SURPRISED THAT YOU JOSTLED ME, RINCEWIND. FOR I HAVE AN APPOINTMENT WITH THEE THIS VERY NIGHT. ‘Oh no, not—’ OF COURSE, WHAT’S SO BLOODY VEXING ABOUT THE WHOLE BUSINESS IS THAT I WAS EXPECTING TO MEET THEE IN pSEUDOPOLIS. ‘But that’s five hundred miles away!’ YOU DON’T HAVE TO TELL ME, THE WHOLE SYSTEM’S GOT SCREWED UP AGAIN. I CAN SEE THAT. * I’LL GET YOU YET, CULLY, said Death, in a voice like the slamming of leaden coffin lids. * Death sat in His garden, running a whetstone along the edge of His scythe. It was already so sharp that any passing breeze that blew across it was sliced smoothly into two puzzled zephyrs.   AS it moves towards a seemingly inevitable collision with a malevolent red star, the Discworld has only one possible saviour. Unfortunately, this happens to be the singularly inept and cowardly wizard called Rincewind, who was last seen falling off the edge of the world … It is said that someone at a party once asked the famous philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle ‘Why are you here?’ and the reply took three years. * Cori Celesti, upon whose utter peak the world’s quarrelsome and somewhat bourgeois gods lived in a palace of marble, alabaster and uncut moquette three-piece suites they had chosen to call Dunmanifestin. It was always a considerable annoyance to any Disc citizen with pretensions to culture that they were ruled by gods whose idea of an uplifting artistic experience was a musical doorbell. * Trymon didn’t smile often enough, and he liked figures and the sort of organization charts that show lots of squares with arrows pointing to other squares. In short, he was the sort of man who could use the word ‘personnel’ and mean it. * ‘Do you think there’s anything to eat in this forest?’ ‘Yes,’ said the wizard bitterly, ‘us.’ * ‘[There are] some big mushrooms … Can you eat them?’ Rincewind looked at them cautiously. ‘No, no good to eat at all.’ ‘Why?’ called Twoflower. ‘Are the gills the wrong shade of yellow?’ ‘No, not really …’ ‘I expect the stems haven’t got the right kind of fluting, then.’ ‘They look okay, actually.’ ‘The cap, then, I expect the cap is the wrong colour,’ said Twoflower. ‘Not sure about that.’ ‘Well then, why can’t you eat them?’ Rincewind coughed. ‘It’s the little doors and windows,’ he said wretchedly, ‘it’s a dead giveaway’ * He moved in a way that suggested he was attempting the world speed record for the nonchalant walk. * ‘I said I hope it is a good party,’ said Galder, loudly. AT THE MOMENT IT IS, said Death levelly. I THINK IT MIGHT GO DOWNHILL VERY QUICKLY AT MIDNIGHT. ‘Why?’ THAT’S WHEN THEY THINK I’LL BE TAKING MY MASK OFF. He vanished, leaving only a cocktail stick and a short paper streamer behind. * When the first explorers from the warm lands around the Circle Sea travelled into the chilly hinterland they filled in the blank spaces on their maps by grabbing the nearest native, pointing at some distant landmark, speaking very clearly in a loud voice, and writing down whatever the bemused man told them. Thus were immortalized in generations of atlases such geographical oddities as Just A Mountain, I Don’t Know, What? and, of course, Your Finger You Fool. * Cohen the Barbarian enters the Discworld canon: The barbarian chieftain said: ‘What then are the greatest things that a man may find in life?’ The man on his right spoke thus: ‘The crisp horizon of the steppe, the wind in your hair, a fresh horse under you.’ The man on his left said: ‘The cry of the white eagle in the heights, the fall of snow in the forest, a true arrow in your bow.’ The chieftain nodded, and said: ‘Surely it is the sight of your enemy slain, the humiliation of his tribe and the lamentation of his women.’ Then the chieftain turned respectfully to his guest, and said: ‘But our guest, whose name is legend, must tell us truly: what is it that a man may call the greatest things in life?’ The warriors leaned closer. This should be worth hearing. The guest thought long and hard and then said, with deliberation: ‘Hot water, good dentishtry and shoft lavatory paper.’ * [He was] a very old man, the skinny variety that generally gets called ‘spry’, with a totally bald head, a beard almost down to his knees, and a pair of matchstick legs on which varicose veins had traced the street map of quite a large city … * ‘When I was a young man, carving my name in the world, well, then I liked my women red-haired and fiery’ ‘Ah.’ ‘And then I grew a little older and for preference I looked for a woman with blonde hair and the glint of the world in her eye.’ ‘Oh? Yes?’ ‘But then I grew a little older again and I came to see the point of dark women of a sultry nature.’ He paused. Rincewind waited. ‘And?’ he said. ‘Then what? What is it that you look for in a woman now?’ Cohen turned one rheumy blue eye on him. ‘Patience,’ he said. * Cohen [had] .. . spent his life living rough under the sky [and] knew the value of a good thick book, which ought to outlast at least a season of cooking fires if you were careful how you tore the pages out. Many a life had been saved on a snowy night by a handful of sodden kindling and a really dry book. If you felt like a smoke and couldn’t find a pipe, a book was your man every time. Cohen realized people wrote things in books. It had always seemed to him to be a frivolous waste of paper. * ‘If you kill me a thousand will take my place,’ said the man, who was now backed against the wall. ‘Yes,’ said Cohen, in a reasonable tone of voice, ‘but that isn’t the point, is it? The point is, you’ll be dead.’ * Greyhald Spold, currently the oldest wizard on the Disc and determined to keep it that way, has been very busy. The servants have been dismissed. The doorways have been sealed with a paste made from powdered mayflies, and protective octograms have been drawn on the windows. Rare and rather smelly oils have been poured in complex patterns on the floor; in the very centre of the room is the eightfold octogram of Withholding, surrounded by red and green candles. And in the centre of that is a box, lined with red silk and yet more protective amulets. Because Greyhald Spold knows that Death is looking for him, and has spent many years designing an impregnable hiding place. He has just set the complicated clockwork of the lock and shut the lid, lying back in the knowledge that here at last is the perfect defence against the most ultimate of all his enemies, although as yet he has not considered the important part that airholes must play in an enterprise of this kind. And right beside him, very close to his ear, a voice has just said: DARK IN HERE, ISN’T IT? * Seven league boots are a tricksy form of magic at best, and the utmost caution must be taken in using a means of transport which, when all is said and done, relies for its effectiveness on trying to put one foot twenty-one miles in front of the other. Cohen had heard of fighting fair, and had long ago decided he wanted no part of it. Twoflower didn’t just look at the world through rose-tinted spectacles, Rincewind knew – he looked at it through a rose-tinted brain, too, and heard it through rose-tinted ears. * There was no real point in trying to understand anything Twoflower said, and all anyone could do was run alongside the conversation and hope to jump on as it turned a corner. ‘His name’s Twoflower. He isn’t from these parts.’ ‘Doeshn’t look like it. Friend of yoursh?’ ‘We’ve got this sort of hate-hate relationship, yes.’ That’s old Twoflower, Rincewind thought. It’s not that he doesn’t appreciate beauty, he just appreciates it in his own way. I mean, if a poet sees a daffodil he stares at it and writes a long poem about it, but Twoflower wanders off to find a book on botany. And treads on it. * Then they all heard it; a tiny distant crunching, like something moving very quickly over the snow crust. … It was louder now, a crisp rhythm like someone eating celery very fast. * Rincewind was to magic what a bicycle is to a bumblebee. * Trolls were not unknown in Ankh-Morpork, of course, where they often got employment as bodyguards. They tended to be a bit expensive to keep until they learned about doors and didn’t simply leave the house by walking aimlessly through the nearest wall. * There were many drawbacks to being a swordswoman, not least of which was that men didn’t take you seriously until you’d actually killed them, by which time it didn’t really matter anyway. * ‘It’s the star, friend,’ the man said. ‘Haven’t you seen it in the sky?’ ‘We couldn’t help noticing it, yes.’ ‘They say that it’ll hit us on Hogswatchnight and the seas will boil and the countries of the Disc will be broken and kings will be brought down and the cities will be as lakes of glass,’ said the man. ‘I’m off to the mountains.’ ‘That’ll help, will it?’ said Rincewind. ‘No, but the view will be better.’ * Ankh-Morpork! Pearl of cities! This is not a completely accurate description, of course - it was not round and shiny - but even its worst enemies would agree that if you had to liken Ankh-Morpork to anything, then it might as well be a piece of rubbish covered with the diseased secretions of a dying mollusc. * There have been bigger cities. There have been richer cities. There have certainly been prettier cities. But no city in the multiverse could rival Ankh-Morpork for its smell. * Ankh-Morpork, largest city in the lands around the Circle Sea, slept. That statement is not really true. On the one hand, those parts of the city which normally concerned themselves with, for example, selling vegetables, shoeing horses, carving exquisite small jade ornaments, changing money and making tables, on the whole, slept. Unless they had insomnia. Or had got up in the night as it might be, to go to the lavatory. On the other hand, many of the less law-abiding citizens were wide awake and, for instance, climbing through windows that didn’t belong to them, slitting throats, mugging one another, listening to loud music in smoky cellars and generally having a lot more fun. But most of the animals were asleep, except for the rats. And the bats, too, of course. As far as the insects were concerned … The point is that descriptive writing is very rarely entirely accurate and during the reign of Olaf Quimby II as Patrician of Ankh some legislation was passed in a determined attempt to put a stop to this sort of thing and introduce some honesty into reporting. Thus, if a legend said of a notable hero that ‘all men spoke of his prowess’ any bard who valued his life would add hastily ‘except for a couple of people in his home village who thought he was a liar, and quite a lot of other people who had never really heard of him’. Poetic simile was strictly limited to statements like ‘his mighty steed was as fleet as the wind on a fairly calm day, say about Force Three’, and any loose talk about a beloved having a face that launched a thousand ships would have to be backed by evidence that the object of desire did indeed look like a bottle of champagne. Quimby was eventually killed by a disgruntled poet during an experiment conducted in the palace grounds to prove the disputed accuracy of the proverb ‘The pen is mightier than the sword’, and in his memory it was amended to include the phrase ‘only if the sword is very small and the pen is very sharp’. Unseen University had never admitted women, muttering something about problems with the plumbing, but the real reason was an unspoken dread that if women were allowed to mess around with magic they would probably be embarrassingly good at it… The Octavo filled the room with a dull, sullen light, which wasn’t strictly light at all but the opposite of light; darkness isn’t the opposite of light, it is simply its absence, and what was radiating from the book was the light that lies on the far side of darkness, the light fantastic. It was a rather disappointing purple colour. * It looked the sort of book described in library catalogues as ‘slightly foxed’, although it would be more honest to admit that it looked as though it had been badgered, wolved and possibly beared as well. * ‘All the shops have been smashed open, there was a whole bunch of people across the street helping themselves to musical instruments, can you believe that?’ ‘Yeah,’ said Rincewind. ‘Luters, I expect.’ ‘You know, I think I might re-enroll,’ said Rincewind cheerfully. ‘I think I could really make a go of things this time. I can really see myself getting to grips with magic and graduating really well. They do say if it’s summa cum laude, then the living is easy—’ A Thaum is the basic unit of magical strength. It has been universally established as the amount of magic needed to create one small white pigeon or three normal-sized billiard balls.   THE last thing the wizard Drum Billet did, before Death laid a bony band on his shoulder, was to pass on his staff of power to the eighth son of an eighth son. Unfortunately for his colleagues in the chauvinistic (not to say misogynistic) world of magic, he failed to check on the new-born baby’s sex… The Discworld is … … as round and flat as a geological pizza, although without the anchovies. * He came walking through the thunderstorm and you could tell he was a wizard, partly because of the long cloak and carven staff but mainly because the raindrops were stopping several feet from his head, and steaming. * There was a village tucked in a narrow valley between steep woods. It wasn’t a large village, and wouldn’t have shown up on a map of the mountains. It barely showed up on a map of the village. * Often there is no more than a little plaque to reveal that, against all gynaecological probability, someone very famous was born halfway up a wall. * Granny Weatherwax was a witch. That was quite acceptable in the Ramtops, and no one had a bad word to say about witches. At least, not if he wanted to wake up in the morning the same shape as he went to bed. * Granny had heard that broomsticks were once again very much the fashion among younger witches, but she didn’t hold with it. There was no way a body could look respectable while hurtling through the air aboard a household implement. Besides, it looked decidedly draughty. * Although she was aware that somewhere under her complicated strata of vests and petticoats there was some skin, that didn’t mean to say she approved of it. * The old woman had a flat, measured way of speaking sometimes. It was the kind of voice the Creator had probably used. Whether there was magic in it, or just headology it ruled out any possibility of argument. It made it clear that whatever it was talking about was exactly how things should be. * The witch’s cottage consisted of so many extensions and lean-tos that it was difficult to see what the original building had looked like, or even if there had ever been one. * Front doors in Bad Ass were used only by brides and corpses, and Granny had always avoided becoming either. * Granny had a philosophical objection to reading, but she’d be the last to say that books, especially books with nice thin pages, didn’t have their uses. * ‘Do you know how wizards like to be buried?’ ‘Yes!’ ‘Well, how?’ Granny Weatherwax paused at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Reluctantly’ * Esk felt that bravery was called for, but on a night like this bravery lasted only as long as a candle stayed alight. * Everyone knew there were wolves in the mountains, but they seldom came near the village - the modern wolves were the offspring of ancestors that had survived because they had learned that human meat had sharp edges. * ‘But,’ Smith said, ‘if it’s wizard magic she’s got, learning witchery won’t be any good, will it? You said they’re different.’ ‘They’re both magic. If you can’t learn to ride an elephant, you can at least learn to ride a horse.’ ‘What’s an elephant?’ ‘A kind of badger,’ said Granny. She hadn’t maintained forest-credibility for forty years by ever admitting ignorance. * Granny grinned. ‘That’s one form of magic, of course.’ ‘What, just knowing things?’ ‘Knowing things that other people don’t know.’ * ‘Hoki’s a nature god,’ Granny said. ‘Sometimes he manifests himself as an oak tree, or half a man and half a goat, but mainly I see him in his aspect as a bloody nuisance.’ * A boxful of marzipan ducks on a nearby stall came to life and whirred past the stallholder to land, quacking happily, in the river (where, by dawn, they had all melted: that’s natural selection for you). No one can out-stare a witch, ’cept a goat, of course. Granny meanwhile, was two streets away. She was also, by the standards of other people, lost. She would not see it like that. She knew where she was, it was just that everywhere else didn’t. * He had the kind of real deep tan that rich people spend ages trying to achieve with expensive holidays andbits of tinfoil, when really all you need to do to obtain one is work your arse off in the open air every day. * A person ignorant of the possibility of failure can be a halfbrick in the path of the bicycle of history. If women were as good as men they’d be a lot better! The air around them reeked of incense and grain and spices and beer, but mainly of the sort of smell that was caused by a high water-table, thousands of people, and a robust approach to drainage. * The Shades: an ancient part of the city whose inhabitants were largely nocturnal and never enquired about one another’s business because curiosity not only killed the cat but threw it in the river with weights tied to its feet. * The lodgings were on the top floor next to the well-guarded premises of a respectable dealer in stolen property because, as Granny had heard, good fences make good neighbours. * At some time in the recent past someone had decided to brighten the ancient corridors of the University by painting them, having some vague notion that Learning Should Be Fun. It hadn’t worked. It’s a fact known throughout the universes that no matter how carefully the colours are chosen, institutional decor ends up as either vomit green, unmentionable brown, nicotine yellow or surgical appliance pink. By some little understood process of sympathetic resonance, corridors painted in those colours always smell slightly of boiled cabbage - even if no cabbage is ever cooked in the vicinity. * It wasn’t that Granny could make herself invisible, it was just that she had this talent for being able to fade into the foreground so that she wasn’t noticed. * Books tend to react with one another, creating randomized magic with a mind of its own … One such accident had turned the librarian into an ape, since when he had resisted all attempts to turn him back, explaining in sign language that life as an orang-utan was considerably better than life as a human being, because all the big philosophical questions resolved themselves into wondering where the next banana was coming from. Anyway, long arms and prehensile feet were ideal for dealing with high shelves. * ‘You’re wizards!’ Esk screamed. ‘Bloody well wizz!’ * Cutangle stood with legs planted wide apart, arms akimbo and stomach giving an impression of a beginners’ ski slope, the whole of him therefore adopting a pose usually associated with Henry VIII but with an option on Henry IX and X as well. * ‘Million-to-one chances,’ Granny said, ‘crop up nine times out often.’ * She hit one, which had a face like a small family of squid, and it deflated into a pile of twitching bones and bits of fur and odd ends of tentacle, very much like a Greek meal. * But this was a storm of the Circle Sea plains, and its main ambition was to hit the ground with as much rain as possible. It was the kind of storm that suggests that the whole sky has swallowed a diuretic. The thunder and lightning hung around in the background, supplying a sort of chorus, but the rain was the star of the show. It tap-danced across the land. * ‘I was born up in the mountains. I get seasick on damp grass, if you must know.’ * ‘You can’t cross the same river twice, I always say,’ [said Granny.] Cutangle gave this some thought. ‘I think you’re wrong there,’ he said. ‘I must have crossed the same river, oh, thousands of times.’ ‘Ah, but it wasn’t the same river.’ ‘It wasn’t?’ ‘No.’ Cutangle shrugged. ‘It looked like the same bloody river.’ * … the endless rooftops of the University, which by comparison made Gormenghast look like a tool-shed on a railway allotment… * One thing the water couldn’t do was gurgle out of the ornamental gargoyles ranged around the roofs. This was because the gargoyles wandered off and sheltered in the attics at the first sign of rain. They held that just because you were ugly it didn’t mean you were stupid. * ‘I don’t think there’s ever been a lady wizard before,’ said Cutangle. ‘I rather think it might be against the lore.’   DEATH comes to us all. When he came to Mort, he offered him a job. After being assured that being dead was not compulsory, Mort accepted. However, he soon found out that romantic longings did not mix easily with the responsibilities of being Death’s apprentice… Reannuals are plants that grow backwards in time. You sow the seeds this year and they grow last year. A farmer who neglects to sow ordinary seeds only loses the crop, whereas anyone who forgets to sow seeds of a crop that has already been harvested twelve months before risks disturbing the entire fabric of causality, not to mention acute embarrassment. * Then there was the puzzle of why the sun came out during the day, instead of at night when the light would come in useful. * THANK YOU, BOY, said the skull. WHAT IS YOUR NAME? ‘Uh,’ said Mort, ‘Mortimer … sir. They call me Mort.’ WHAT A COINCIDENCE. * ‘I suppose we were all young once.’ Death considered this. No, he said, I DON’T THINK SO. * Death leaned over the saddle and looked down at the kingdoms of the world. I DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU, he said, BUT I COULD MURDER A CURRY. * ‘Sir?’ YES? ‘What’s a curry?’ The blue fires flared deep in the eyes of Death. HAVE YOU EVER BITTEN A RED-HOT ICE CUBE? ‘No, sir,’ said Mort. CURRY’S LIKE THAT. * Ankh-Morpork is as full of life as an old cheese on a hot day, as loud as a curse in a cathedral, as bright as an oil slick, as colourful as a bruise and as full of activity, industry, bustle and sheer exuberant busyness as a dead dog on a termite mound. * ‘What are we going to do now?’ BUY YOU SOME NEW CLOTHES. ‘These were new today’ REALLY? IT CERTAINLY ADDS A NEW TERROR TO POVERTY. * They turned into a wider street leading into a more affluent part of the city (the torches were closer together and the middens further apart). * Although the Death of the Discworld is, in his own words, an ANTHROPOMORPHIC personification, he long ago gave up using the traditional skeletal horses, because of the bother of having to stop all the time to wire bits back on. * Death was standing behind a lectern, poring over a map. YOU HAVEN’T HEARD OF THE BAY OF MANTE, HAVE YOU? he said. ‘No, sir,’ said Mort. FAMOUS SHIPWRECK THERE. ‘Was there?’ THERE WILL BE, said Death, IF I CAN FIND THE DAMN PLACE. * Albert grunted. ‘Do you know what happens to lads who ask too many questions?’ Mort thought for a moment. ‘No,’ he said eventually, ‘what?’ There was silence. Then Albert straightened up and said, ‘Damned if I know. Probably they get answers, and serve ‘em right.’ * Mort remembered the woodcut in his grandmother’s almanack, between the page on planting times and the phases of the moon section, showing Dethe thee Great Levyller Comes To Alle Menne. He’d stared at it hundreds of times when learning his letters. It wouldn’t have been half so impressive if it had been generally known that the flame-breathing horse the spectre rode was called Binky * WHY IS THERE A CHERRY ON A STICK IN THIS DRINK? … IT’S NOT AS IF IT DOES ANYTHING FOR THE FLAVOUR. WHY DOES ANYONE TAKE A PERFECTLY GOOD DRINK AND THEN PUT IN A CHERRY ON A POLE? … TAKE THESE THINGS, NOW, said Death, fingering a passing canape. I MEAN, MUSHROOMS YES, CHICKEN YES, CREAM YES, I’VE NOTHING AGAINST ANY OF THEM, BUT WHY IN THE NAME OF SANITY MINCE THEM ALL UP AND PUT THEM IN LITTLE PASTRY CASES? … THAT’S MORTALS FOR YOU, Death continued. THEY’VE ONLY GOT A FEW YEARS IN THIS WORLD AND THEY SPEND THEM ALL IN MAKING THINGS COMPLICATED FOR THEMSELVES. FASCINATING. * ‘He doesn’t look a bad king,’ said Mort. ‘Why would anyone want to kill him?’ SEE THE MAN NEXT TO HIM? WITH THE LITTLE MOUSTACHE AND THE GRIN LIKE A LIZARD? … HIS COUSIN, THE DUKE OF STO HELIT. NOT THE NICEST OF PEOPLE, said Death. A HANDY MAN WITH A BOTTLE OF POISON. FIFTH IN LINE TO THE THRONE LAST YEAR, NOW SECOND IN LINE. BLT OF A SOCIAL CLIMBER, YOU MIGHT SAY. ‘My granny says that dying is like going to sleep,’ Mort added, a shade hopefully. I WOULDN’T KNOW. I HAVE DONE NEITHER. This part of Ankh-Morpork was known as The Shades, an inner-city area sorely in need either of governmental help or, for preference, a flamethrower. It couldn’t be called squalid because that would be stretching the word to breaking point. It was beyond squalor and out the other side, where by a sort of Einsteinian reversal it achieved a magnificent horribleness that it wore like an architectural award. It was noisy and sultry and smelled like a cowshed floor. * Even before it entered the city [the River Ankh] was slow and heavy with the silt of the plains, and by the time it got to The Shades even an agnostic could have walked across it. It was hard to drown in the Ankh, but easy to suffocate. * ‘Why do you trouble Igneous Cutwell, Holder of the Eight Keys, Traveller in the Dungeon Dimensions, Supreme Mage of—’ ‘Excuse me,’ said Mort, ‘are you really?’ ‘Really what?’ ‘Master of the thingy, Lord High Wossname of the Sacred Dungeons?’ ‘In a figurative sense.’ ‘What does that mean?’ ‘Well, it means no,’ said Cutwell. * ‘Is it possible to walk through walls?’ said Mort desperately. ‘Using magic?’ ‘Um,’ said Mort, ‘I don’t think so.’ ‘Then pick very thin walls,’ said Cutwell. ‘What time’s sunset around here?’ ‘We normally manage to fit it in between night and day.’ He felt as if he’d been shipwrecked on the Titanic but in the nick of time had been rescued. By the Lusitania. * ‘… and the princesses were beautiful as the day is long and so noble they, they could pee through a dozen mattresses—’ ‘What?’ Albert hesitated. ‘Something like that, anyway’ * She looked around slowly and met the impertinent gaze of the doorknocker. It waggled its metal eyebrows at her and spoke indistinctly through its wrought-iron ring. ‘I am Princess Keli, heir to the throne of Sto Lat,’ she said haughtily … ‘And I don’t talk to door furniture.’ ‘Fwell, I’m just a doorknocker and I can talk to fwhoever I please,’ said the gargoyle pleasantly. ‘And I can ftell you the fmaster iff having a trying day and duff fnot fwant to be disturbed. But you could ftry to use the magic word,’ it added. ‘Coming from an attractiff fwoman it works nine times out of eight.’ ‘Magic word? What’s the magic word?’ The knocker perceptibly sneered. ‘Haff you been taught nothing, miss?’ She drew herself up to her full height, which wasn’t really worth the effort. ‘I have been educated,’ she informed it with icy precision, ‘by some of the finest scholars in the land.’ The doorknocker did not appear to be impressed. ‘Iff they didn’t teach you the magic word,’ it said calmly, ‘they couldn’t haff fbeen all that fine.’ Keli reached out, grabbed the heavy ring, and pounded it on the door. The knocker leered at her. ‘Ftreat me rough,’ it lisped. ‘That’f the way I like it!’ ‘You’re disgusting!’ ‘Yeff. Ooo, that waff nife, do it again …’ The door opened a crack. There was a shadowy glimpse of curly hair. ‘Madam, I said we’re cl—’ Keli sagged. ‘Please help me,’ she said. ‘Please!’ ‘See?’ said the doorknocker triumphantly. ‘Sooner or later everyone remembers the magic word!’ * ‘The first thing you learn when you enroll at Unseen University, I’m afraid, is that people don’t pay much attention to that sort of thing. It’s what their minds tell them that’s important.’ … ‘Actually it’s not the first thing you learn when you enroll,’ he added. ‘I mean, you learn where the lavatories are and all that sort of thing before that. But after all that, it’s the first thing.’ * Keli drummed her fingers on the table, or tried to. It turned out to be difficult. She stared down in vague horror. Cutwell hurried forward and wiped the table with his sleeve. ‘Sorry’ he muttered, T had treacle sandwiches for supper last night.’ * You can tell from the following exchange that these two are made for each other. ‘I don’t want to get married to anyone yet,’ Mort added. ‘And certainly not to you, no offence meant.’ ‘I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on the Disc,’ Ysabell said sweetly. At least I don’t look like I’ve been eating doughnuts in a wardrobe for years,’ he said, as they stepped out on to Death’s black lawn. At least I walk as if my legs only had one knee each,’ she said. ‘My eyes aren’t two juugly poached eggs.’ Ysabell nodded. ‘On the other hand, my ears don’t look like something growing on a dead tree. What does juugly mean?’ ‘You know, eggs like Albert does them.’ ‘With the white all sticky and runny and full of slimy bits?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘A good word,’ she conceded thoughtfully. ‘But my hair, I put it to you, doesn’t look like something you clean a privy with.’ ‘Certainly but neither does mine look like a wet hedgehog.’ ‘Pray note that my chest does not appear to be a toast rack in a wet paper bag.’ Mort glanced sideways at the top of Ysabell’s dress, which contained enough puppy fat for two litters of Rottweilers, and forbore to comment. ‘My eyebrows don’t look like a pair of mating caterpillars,’ he hazarded. ‘True. But my legs, I suggest, could at least stop a pig in a passageway’ ‘Sorry—?’ ‘They’re not bandy’ she explained. ‘Ah.’ ‘Enough?’ she said. ‘Just about.’ ‘Good. Obviously we shouldn’t get married, if only for the sake of the children.’ * History unravels gently, like an old sweater. It has been patched and darned many times, reknitted to suit different people, shoved in a box under the sink of censorship to be cut up for the dusters of propaganda, yet it always - eventually - manages to spring back into its old familiar shape. History has a habit of changing the people who think they are changing it. History always has a few tricks up its frayed sleeve. It’s been around a long time. ‘Would you like a strawberry?’ Mort glanced at the small wooden punnet in the wizard’s hands. ‘In mid-winter?’ ‘Actually they’re sprouts with a dash of enchantment.’ ‘They taste like strawberries?’ Cutwell sighed. ‘No, like sprouts.’ ‘I shall die nobly, like Queen Ezeriel,’ [said Keli.] Mort’s forehead wrinkled. History was a closed book to him. ‘Who’s she?’ ‘She lived in Klatch and she had a lot of lovers and she sat on a snake,’ said Cutwell. ‘She meant to! She was crossed in love!’ ‘All I can remember was that she used to take baths in asses’ milk. Funny thing, history,’ said Cutwell reflectively. ‘You become a queen, reign for thirty years, make laws, declare war on people and then the only thing you get remembered for is that you smelled like yoghurt and were bitten in the—’ * The most famous inn on Discworld used to be called the Broken Drum (Broken Drum -You Can’t Beat It!). Renamed after a particularly bad fire. The Mended Drum in Filigree Street, foremost of the city’s taverns. It was famed not for its beer, which looked like maiden’s water and tasted like battery acid, but for its clientele. It was said that if you sat long enough in the Drum, then sooner or later every major hero on the Disc would steal your horse. * Ysabell was heavily into frills. Even the dressing table seemed to be wearing a petticoat. The whole room wasn’t so much furnished as lingeried. * Mort is reading from a very old book in the Library of Death: ‘… turnered hys hand, butt was sorelie vexed that alle menne at laste comme to nort, viz. Deathe, and vowed hymme to seke Imortalitie yn his pride … It’s written in Old,’ he said. ‘Before they invented spelling.’ * Death visits a job centre: ‘It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever,’ Keeble said. ‘Have you thought of going into teaching?’ Death’s face was a mask of terror. Well, it was always a mask of terror, but this time he meant it to be. They opened the ledger. They looked at it for a long time. Then Mort said, ‘What do all those symbols mean?’ ‘Sodomy non sapiens,’ said Albert under his breath. ‘What does that mean?’ ‘Means I’m buggered if I know.’ Harga’s House of Ribs down by the docks is probably not numbered among the city’s leading eateries, catering as it does for the type of beefy clientele that prefers quantity and breaks up the tables if it doesn’t get it. They don’t go in for the fancy or exotic, but stick to conventional food like flightless bird embryos, minced organs in intestine skins, slices of hog flesh and burnt ground grass seeds dipped in animal fats; or, as it is known in their patois, egg, soss and bacon and a fried slice. * ‘Rincewind!’ bawled Albert. ‘Take this thing away and dispose of it.’ The toad crawled into Rincewind’s hand and gave him an apologetic look. ‘That’s the last time that bloody landlord gives any lip to a wizard,’ said Albert with smug satisfaction. ‘It seems I turn my back for a few hundred years and suddenly people in this town are encouraged to think they can talk back to wizards, eh?’ As the bursar of this university I must say that we’ve always encouraged a good neighbour policy with respect to the community’ mumbled a wizard, trying to avoid Albert’s gimlet stare. ‘You spineless maggots! I didn’t found this university so you could lend people the bloody lawnmower!’ * The Rite of AshkEnte, quite simply, summons and binds Death. Students of the occult will be aware that it can be performed with a simple incantation, three small bits of wood and 4cc of mouse blood, but no wizard worth his pointy hat would dream of doing anything so unimpressive; they knew in their hearts that if a spell didn’t involve big yellow candles, lots of rare incense, circles drawn on the floor with eight different colours of chalk and a few cauldrons around the place then it simply wasn’t worth contemplating. * The wizards have escaped unscathed from an encounter with their long-dead founder, whose statue had hitherto graced the campus. ‘I propose here and now we replace the statue [said the bursar]. And to make sure no students deface it in any way I suggest we then erect it in the deepest cellar. ‘And then lock the door,’ he added. Several wizards began to cheer up. ‘And throw away the key?’ said Rincewind. ‘And weld the door,’ the bursar said. ‘And then brick up the doorway’ There was a round of applause. ‘And throw away the bricklayer!’ chortled Rincewind, who felt he was getting the hang of this. The bursar scowled at him. ‘No need to get carried away’ he said. * The princess sprang to her feet and launched herself at her uncle, but Cutwell grabbed her. ‘No,’ he said, quietly. ‘This isn’t the kind of man who ties you up in a cellar with just enough time for the mice to eat your ropes before the flood-waters rise. This is the kind of man who just kills you here and now.’ * ‘It’s not that I mind being a duke,’ said Mort. ‘It’s being married to a duchess that comes as a shock.’ I WASN’T CUT OUT TO BE A FATHER, AND CERTAINLY NOT A GRANDAD. I HAVEN’T GOT THE RIGHT KIND OF KNEES. The Disc’s greatest lovers were undoubtedly Mellius and Gretelina, whose pure, passionate and soul-searing affair would have scorched the pages of History if they had not, because of some unexplained quirk of fate, been born two hundred years apart on different continents. * Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote.   THERE was an eighth son of an eighth son. He was, naturally, a wizard. And there it should have ended. However (for reasons we’d better not go into), he had seven sons. And then he had an eighth son … a wizard squared … a source of magic… a Souircerer. Far below, the sea sucked on the shingle as noisily as an old man with one tooth who had been given a gob-stopper. * ‘Children are our hope for the future.’ THERE IS NO HOPE FOR THE FUTURE, said Death. ‘What does it contain, then?’ ME. ‘Besides you I mean!’ Death gave him a puzzled look. I’M SORRY? * ‘What is there in this world that makes living worth while?’ Death thought about it. CATS, he said eventually, CATS ARE NICE. * There was no analogy for the way in which Great A ‘Tuin the world turtle moved against the galactic night. When you are ten thousand miles long, your shell pocked with meteor craters and frosted with comet ice, there is absolutely nothing you can realistically be like except yourself. So Great A’Tuin swam slowly through the interstellar deeps like the largest turtle there has ever been, carrying on its carapace the four huge elephants that bore on their backs the vast, glittering waterfall-fringed circle of the Discworld, which exists either because of some impossible blip on the curve of probability or because the gods enjoy a joke as much as anyone. * Spring had come to Ankh-Morpork. It wasn’t immediately apparent, but there were signs that were obvious to the cognoscenti. For example, the scum on the River Ankh, that great wide slow waterway that served the double city as reservoir, sewer and frequent morgue, had turned a particularly iridescent green. The city’s drunken rooftops sprouted mattresses and bolsters as the winter bedding was put out to air in the weak sunshine, and in the depths of musty cellars the beams twisted and groaned when their dry sap responded to the ancient call of root and forest. Birds nested among the gutters and eaves of Unseen University, although it was noticeable that however great the pressure on the nesting sites they never, ever, made nests in the invitingly open mouths of the gargoyles that lined the rooftops, much to the gargoyles’ disappointment. * Books of magic have a sort of life of their own. Some have altogether too much; for example, the first edition of the Necrotelicomnicon has to be kept between iron plates, the True Arte of Levitatione has spent the last one hundred and fifty years up in the rafters, and Ge Fordge’s Compenydyum of Sex Majick is kept in a vat of ice in a room all by itself and there’s a strict rule that it can only be read by wizards who are over eighty and, if possible, dead. * In most old libraries the books are chained to the shelves to prevent them being damaged by people. In the Library of Unseen University, of course, it’s more or less the other way about. The Librarian ambled back down the aisles. He had a face that only a lorry tyre could love. There are eight levels of wizardry on the Disc; after sixteen years Rincewind has failed to achieve even level one. In fact it is the considered opinion of some of his tutors that he is incapable even of achieving level zero, which most normal people are born at; to put it another way, it has been suggested that when Rincewind dies the average occult ability of the human race will actually go up by a fraction. * On top of the wardrobe, wrapped in scraps of yellowing paper and old dust sheets, was a large brass-bound chest. It went by the name of the Luggage. Why it consented to be owned by Rincewind was something only the Luggage knew, and it wasn’t telling, but probably no other item in the entire chronicle of travel accessories had quite such a history of mystery and grievous bodily harm. It had been described as half suitcase, half homicidal maniac. It had many unusual qualities … but currently there was only one that set it apart from any other brass-bound chest. It was snoring, with a sound like someone very slowly sawing a log. * The Luggage might be magical. It might be terrible. But in its enigmatic soul it was kin to every other piece of luggage throughout the multiverse, and preferred to spend its winters hibernating on top of a wardrobe. * But it wasn’t the sight of the cockroaches that was so upsetting. It was the fact that they were marching in step, a hundred abreast … There was something particularly unpleasant about the sound of billions of very small feet hitting the stones in perfect time. Rincewind stepped gingerly over the marching column … The Luggage, of course, followed them with a noise like someone tap-dancing over a bag of crisps. * There was a lot of beer about. Here and there red-faced wizards were happily singing ancient drinking songs which involved a lot of knee-slapping and cries of ‘Ho!’ The only possible excuse for this sort of thing is that wizards are celibate, and have to find their amusement where they can. * The higher levels of wizardry are a perilous place. Every wizard is trying to dislodge the wizards above him while stamping on the fingers of those below; to say that wizards are healthily competitive by nature is like saying that piranhas are naturally a little peckish. * One of Rincewind’s tutors had said of him that ‘to call his understanding of magical theory abysmal is to leave no suitable word to describe his grasp of its practice’. * The reason that wizards didn’t rule the Disc was quite simple. Hand any two wizards a piece of rope and they would instinctively pull in opposite directions. Something about their genetics or their training left them with an attitude towards mutual cooperation that made an old bull elephant with terminal toothache look like a worker ant. * The last thing Rincewind saw before he was dragged away was the Librarian. Despite looking like a hairy rubber sack full of water, the orang-utan had the weight and reach of any man in the room and was currently sitting on a guard’s shoulders and trying, with reasonable success, to unscrew his head. * ‘I said come on,’ she repeated. ‘What are you afraid of?’ Rincewind took a deep breath. ‘Murderers, muggers, thieves, assassins, pickpockets, cutpurses, reevers, snigsmen, rapists and robbers,’ he said. Down these mean streets a man must walk, he thought. And along some of them he will break into a run. It might be thought that the Mended Drum was a seedy disreputable tavern. In fact it was a reputable disreputable tavern. Its customers had a certain rough-hewn respectability -they might murder each other in an easygoing way, as between equals, but they didn’t do it vindictively. A child could go in for a glass of lemonade and be certain of getting nothing worse than a clip round the ear when his mother heard his expanded vocabulary. On quiet nights, and when he was certain the Librarian wasn’t going to come in, the landlord was even known to put bowls of peanuts on the bar. * ‘Is he a fair and just ruler?’ ‘I would say that he is unfair and unjust, but scrupulously even-handed. He is unfair and unjust to everyone, without fear or favour.’ * The current Patrician, head of the extremely rich and powerful Vetinari family, was thin, tall and apparently as cold-blooded as a dead penguin. Just by looking at him you could tell he was the sort of man you’d expect to keep awhite cat, and caress it idly while sentencing people to death in a piranha tank; and you’d hazard for good measure that he probably collected rare thin porcelain, turning it over and over in his blue-white fingers while distant screams echoed from the depths of the dungeons. You wouldn’t put it past him to use the word ‘exquisite’ and have thin lips. He looked the kind of person who, when they blink, you mark it off on the calendar. Practically none of this was in fact the case, although he did have a small and exceedingly elderly wire-haired terrier called Wuffles that smelled badly and wheezed at people. It was said to be the only thing in the entire world he truly cared about. He did of course sometimes have people horribly tortured to death, but this was considered to be perfectly acceptable behaviour for a civic ruler and generally approved of by the overwhelming majority of citizens. The people of Ankh are of a practical persuasion, and felt that the Patrician’s edict forbidding all street theatre and mime artists made up for a lot of things. He didn’t administer a reign of terror, just the occasional light shower. * ‘I can’t swim,’ [said Rincewind.] ‘What, not a stroke?’ ‘About how deep is the sea here, would you say? Approximately?’ he said. About a dozen fathoms, I believe.’ ‘Then I could probably swim about a dozen fathoms, whatever they are.’ * Abrim laughed. It wasn’t a nice sound. It sounded as though he had had laughter explained to him, probably slowly and repeatedly, but had never heard anyone actually do it. * ‘They’ll throw you into a seraglio!’ Conina shrugged. ‘Could be worse.’ ‘But it’s got all these spikes and when they shut the door—’ hazarded Rincewind. ‘That’s not a seraglio. That’s an Iron Maiden. Don’t you know what a seraglio is?’ ‘Um …’ She told him. He went crimson. * It was said that everything in Ankh-Morpork was for sale except for the beer and the women, both of which one merely hired. * Of course, Ankh-Morpork’s citizens had always claimed that the river water was incredibly pure in any case. Any water that had passed through so many kidneys, they reasoned, had to be very pure indeed. * The shape of DNA, it is popularly said, owes its discovery to the chance sight of a spiral staircase when the scientist’s mind was just at the right receptive temperature. Had he used the lift, the whole science of genetics might have been a good deal different.† * In the bathtub of history the truth is harder to hold than the soap, and much more difficult to find … * ‘Death walks abroad,’ added Nijel helpfully. ‘Abroad I don’t mind,’ said Rincewind. ‘They’re all foreigners. It’s Death walking around here I’m not looking forward to.’ * ‘If we get a chance,’ whispered Rincewind to Nijel, ‘we run, right?’ ‘Where to?’ ‘From,’ said Rincewind, ‘the important word is from.’ * Nijel was one of those people who, if you say ‘don’t look now’, would immediately swivel his head like an owl on a turntable. These are the same people who, when you point out, say, an unusual crocus just beside them, turn round aimlessly and put their foot down with a sad little squashy noise. If they were lost in a trackless desert you could find them by putting down, somewhere on the sand, something small and fragile like a valuable old mug that had been in your family for generations, and then hurrying back as soon as you heard the crash. * Rincewind tries to explain a wizard’s inbuilt desire to construct a tower: ‘Wizards always used to build a tower around themselves, like those … what do you call those things you find at the bottom of rivers?’ ‘Frogs.’ ‘Stones.’ ‘Unsuccessful gangsters.’ ‘Caddis flies is what I meant,’ said Rincewind. * Rincewind wasn’t very good at precognition; in fact he could barely see into the present. * There came a thunderous knock at the door. There is a mantra to be said on these occasions. It doesn’t matter if the door is a tent flap, a scrap of hide on a wind-blown yurt, three inches of solid oak with great iron nails in or a rectangle of chipboard with mahogany veneer, a small light over it made of horrible bits of coloured glass and a bellpush that plays a choice of twenty popular melodies that no music lover would want to listen to even after five years’ sensory deprivation. One wizard turned to another and duly said: ‘I wonder who that can be at this time of night?’ * The astro-philosophers of Krull once succeeded in proving conclusively that all places are one place and that the distance between them is an illusion, and this news was an embarrassment to all thinking philosophers because it did not explain, among other things, signposts. After years of wrangling the whole thing was then turned over to Ly Tin Wheedle, arguably the Disc’s greatest philosopher, who after some thought proclaimed that although it was indeed true that all places were one place, that place was very large. * The Four Horsemen of the Disc’s Apocralypse have had three of their horses stolen while they were in an inn. WEIGHT DOESN’T COME INTO IT. MY STEED HAS CARRIED ARMIES. MY STEED HAS CARRIED CITIES. YEA, HE HATH CARRIED ALL THINGS IN THEIR DUE TIME, said Death. BUT HE’S NOT GOING TO CARRY YOU THREE. ‘Why not?’ IT’S A MATTER OF THE LOOK OF THE THING. ‘It’s going to look pretty good, then, isn’t it,’ said War testily, ‘the One Horseman and Three Pedestrians of the Apocralypse.’ * ‘If we’re going to die anyway, I’d rather die like this. Heroically,’ [said Nijel.] ‘Is it heroic to die like this?’ said Conina. ‘I think it is,’ he said, ‘and when it comes to dying, there’s only one opinion that matters.’ †Although, possibly, quicker. And only licensed to carry fourteen people.   WITCHES are not by nature gregarious, and they certainly don’t have leaders. Granny Weatherwax was the most highly regarded of the leaders they didn’t have. But even she found that meddling in royal politics was a lot more difficult than certain playwrights would have you believe… Granny Weatherwax paused with a second scone halfway to her mouth. ‘Something comes,’ she said. ‘Can you tell by the pricking of your thumbs?’ said Magrat earnestly. Magrat had learned a lot about witchcraft from books. ‘The pricking of my ears,’ said Granny. * ‘I didn’t become a soldier for this. Not to go round killing people.’ * ‘If I was you, I’d become a sailor,’ said Granny thoughtfully. ‘Yes, a nautical career. I should start as soon as possible. Now, in fact. Run off, man. Run off to sea where there are no tracks. You will have a long and successful life, I promise.’ She looked thoughtful for a moment, and added, ‘At least, longer than it’s likely to be if you hang around here.’ * Lancre Castle was built on an outcrop of rock by an architect who had heard about Gormenghast but hadn’t got the budget. He’d done his best, though, with a tiny confection of cut-price turrets, bargain basements, buttresses, crenellations, gargoyles, towers, courtyards, keeps and dungeons; in fact, just about everything a castle needs except maybe reasonable foundations and the kind of mortar that doesn’t wash away in a light shower. * ‘There is a knocking without,’ the porter said. ‘Without what?’ said the Fool. ‘Without the door, idiot.’ The Fool gave him a worried look. ‘A knocking without a door?’ he said suspiciously. ‘This isn’t some kind of Zen, is it?’ * ‘How many times have you thrown a magic ring into the deepest depths of the ocean and then, when you get home and have a nice bit of turbot for your tea, there it is?’ They considered this in silence. ‘Never,’ said Granny irritably. ‘And nor have you.’ * It was one of the few sorrows of Granny Weatherwax’s life that, despite all her efforts, she’d arrived at the peak of her career with a complexion like a rosy apple and all her teeth. No amount of charms could persuade a wart to take root on her handsome if slightly equine features, and vast intakes of sugar only served to give her boundless energy. * Granny explains her view on the proposition that replicas can be more convincing than the real thing: ‘Things that try to look like things often do look more like things than things.’ The best you could say for Magrat was that she was decently plain and well-scrubbed and as flat-chested as an ironing board with a couple of peas on it. * The duke has sent some guards to arrest a witch. They come back empty-handed. ‘Admit it - she offered you hedonistic and licentious pleasures known only to those who dabble in the carnal arts, didn’t she?’ ‘No, sir. She offered me a bun.’ ‘A bun?’ ‘Yes, sir. It had currants in it.’ Felmet sat absolutely still while he fought for internal peace. Finally, all he could manage was, ‘And what did your men do about this?’ ‘They had a bun too, sir. All except young Roger, who isn’t allowed fruit, sir, on account of his trouble. He had a biscuit, sir.’ * ‘Fool?’ ‘Marry, sir—’ said the Fool nervously. ‘I am already extremely married. Advise me, my Fool.’ ‘I’ faith, nuncle—’ said the Fool. ‘Nor am I thy nuncle. I feel sure I would have remembered,’ said Lord Felmet, leaning down until the prow of his nose was a few inches from the Fool’s stricken face. ‘If you preface your next remark with nuncle, i’ faith or marry, it will go hard with you.’ ‘How do you feel about Prithee?’ The duke knew when to allow some slack. ‘Prithee I can live with,’ he said. ‘So can you.’ * Magrat tried. Every morning her hair was long, thick and blond, but by the evening it had always returned to its normal worried frizz. To ameliorate the effect she had tried to plait violets and cowslips in it. The result was not all she had hoped. It gave the impression that a window box had fallen on her head. * The Fool fumbled in his sleeve and produced a rather soiled red and yellow handkerchief embroidered with bells. The duke took it with an expression of pathetic gratitude and blew his nose. Then he held it away from him and gazed at it with demented suspicion. ‘Is this a dagger I see before me?’ he mumbled. ‘Um. No, my lord. It’s my handkerchief, you see. You can sort of tell the difference if you look closely. It doesn’t have as many sharp edges.’ * On the crest of the moor … was a standing stone … The stone was about the same height as a tall man, and made of a bluish tinted rock. It was considered intensely magical because, although there was only one of it, no one had ever been able to count it. * Granny, Nanny and Magrat have summoned a demon. ‘Who’re you?’ said Granny, bluntly. ‘My name is unpronounceable in your tongue, woman,’ it said. ‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ warned Granny. ‘Very well. My name is WxrtHltl-jwlpklz,’ said the demon smugly. ‘We haven’t got time to bandy legs with you all night,’ said Granny. Magrat blurted out, ‘You know the Fool, who lives up at the castle?’ … ‘It’s a steady job,’ said Nanny. ‘I’ll grant you that.’ ‘Huh,’ said Granny. ‘A man who tinkles all day. No kind of husband for anyone, I’d say’ * Nanny Ogg was also out early. She hadn’t been able to get any sleep anyway, and besides, she was worried about Greebo. Greebo was one of her few blind spots. While intellectually she would concede that he was indeed a fat, cunning, evil-smelling multiple rapist, she nevertheless instinctively pictured him as the small fluffy kitten he had been decades before. The fact that he had once chased a female wolf up a tree and seriously surprised a she-bear who had been innocently digging for roots didn’t stop her worrying that something bad might happen to him. It was generally considered by everyone else in the kingdom that the only thing that might slow Greebo down was a direct meteorite strike. * The books said that the old-time witches had sometimes danced in their shifts. Magrat had wondered about how you danced in shifts. Perhaps there wasn’t room for them all to dance at once, she’d thought. * Nanny Ogg is being held captive in a torture chamber. The duchess leaned forward until her big red face was inches away from Nanny’s nose. ‘This insouciance gives you pleasure,’ she hissed, ‘but soon you will laugh on the other side of your face!’ ‘It’s only got this side,’ said Nanny. The duchess fingered a tray of implements lovingly. ‘We shall see,’ she said, picking up a pair of pliers. * ‘It’s gone too far this time,’ said a peasant. ‘All this burning and taxing and now this. I blame you witches. It’s got to stop. I know my rights.’ ‘What rights are they?’ said Granny. ‘Dunnage, cowhage-in-ordinary, badinage, leftovers, scrommidge, clary and spunt,’ said the peasant promptly. ‘And acornage, every other year, and the right to keep two-thirds of a goat on the common. Until he set fire to it. It was a bloody good goat, too.’ * Hour gongs were being struck all across the city and nightwatchmen were proclaiming that it was indeed midnight and also that, in the face of all the evidence, all was well. Many of them got as far as the end of the sentence before being mugged. * The River Ankh, the cloaca of half a continent, was already pretty wide and silt laden when it reached the city’s outskirts. By the time it left it didn’t so much flow as exude. Owing to the accretion of the mud of centuries the bed of the river was in fact higher than some of the low lying areas and now, with the snow melt swelling the flow, many of the low-rent districts on the Morpork side were flooded, if you can use that word for a liquid you could pick up in a net. * ‘You know, Hwel, I reckon responsible behaviour is something to get when you grow older. Like varicose veins.’ * Vitoller shifted uneasily. ‘I already owe Chrystophrase the Troll more than I should.’ ‘He’s the one that has people’s limbs torn off!’ said Tomjon. ‘How much do you owe him?’ said Hwel. ‘An arm and a leg.’ * The dwarf playwright Hwel is leaving actor-manager Vitoller’s company. ‘I’ll miss you, laddie. I don’t mind telling you. You’ve been like a son to me. How old are you, exactly? I never did know.’ ‘A hundred and two.’ You’ve been like a father to me, then,’ Vitoller said. * ‘When’s this play going to be, then?’ Magrat said, moving closer. ‘Marry, I’m sure I’m not allowed to tell you,’ said the Fool. ‘The duke said to me, he said, don’t tell the witches that it’s tomorrow night.’ ‘I shouldn’t, then,’ agreed Magrat. ‘At eight o’clock.’ ‘I see.’ ‘But meet for sherry beforehand at seven-thirty, i’faith.’ * Nanny … leaned towards the empty seat. ‘Walnut?’ ‘No, thank you,’ said King Verence [a ghost], waving a spectral hand. ‘They go right through me, you know.’   BEING trained by the Assassins’ Guild in Ankfe-Morpork did not fit Teppic for the task assigned to him by fate. He inherited the throne of the desert kingdom of Djelibeybi rather earlier than he expected (his father wasn’t too happy about it either), but that was only the beginning of his problems… All assassins had a full-length mirror in their rooms, because it would be a terrible insult to anyone to kill them when you were badly dressed. * He … had also heard that only one student in fifteen actually became an assassin. He wasn’t entirely certain what happened to the other fourteen, but he was pretty sure that if you were a poor student in a school for assassins they did a bit more than throw the chalk at you, and that the school dinners had an extra dimension of uncertainty. * Djelibeybi really was a small, self-centred kingdom. Even its plagues were half-hearted. All self-respecting river kingdoms have vast supernatural plagues, but the best the Old Kingdom had been able to achieve in the last hundred years was the Plague of Frog.† * It was said that life was cheap in Ankh-Morpork. This was, of course, completely wrong. Life was often very expensive; you could get death for free. * ‘What’s your name, kiddo?’ Teppic drew himself up. ‘Kiddo? I’ll have you know the blood of pharaohs runs in my veins!’ The other boy looked at him unabashed, with his head on one side and a faint smile on his face. ‘Would you like it to stay there?’ he said. [My mother] died when I was young … She went for a moonlight swim in what turned out to be a crocodile. … Ptraci, his favourite handmaiden. She was special. Her singing always cheered him up. Life seemed so much brighter when she stopped. * The Ankh … drained the huge silty plains all the way to the Ramtop mountains, and by the time it had passed through Ankh-Morpork, pop. one million, it could only be called a liquid because it moved faster than the land around it; being sick in it would probably make it, on average, marginally cleaner. * One of the two legends about the founding of Ankh-Morpork relates that the two orphaned brothers who built the city were in fact found and suckled by a hippopotamus. The other legend, not normally recounted by the citizens, is that at an even earlier time a group of wise men survived a flood sent by the gods by building a huge boat, and on this boat they took two of every type of animal then existing on the Disc. After some weeks the combined manure was beginning to weigh the boat low in the water so – the story runs – they tipped it over the side, and called it Ankh-Morpork. * ‘Cats are sacred,’ said Dios. ‘Long-legged cats with silver fur and disdainful expressions are, maybe,’ said Teppic. ‘I’m sure sacred cats don’t leave dead ibises under the bed. And I’m certain that sacred cats that live surrounded by endless sand don’t come indoors and do it in the king’s sandals, Dios.’ * Descendants! The gods had seen fit to give him one son who charged you for the amount of breath expended in saying ‘Good morning’, and another one who worshipped geometry and stayed up all night designing aqueducts. You scrimped and saved to send them to the best schools, and then they went and paid you back by getting educated. * ‘Why are you here?’ The man hung his head. T spoke blasphemy against the king.’ ‘How did you do that?’ ‘I dropped a rock on my foot. Now my tongue is to be torn out.’ The dark figure nodded sympathetically. A priest heard you, did he?’ he said. ‘No. I told a priest. Such words should not go unpunished,’ said the man virtuously. The old king told me once that the gods gave people a sense of humour to make up for giving them sex. It’s a fact as immutable as the Third Law of Sod that there is no such thing as a good Grand Vizier. A predilection to cackle and plot is apparently part of the job spec. * ‘Would your sire still be honouring us with the capping-out ceremony? There’s drinks,’ Ptaclusp stuttered. ‘And a silver trowel that you can take away with you. Everyone shouts hurrah and throws their hats in the air.’ ‘Certainly’ said Dios. ‘It will be an honour.’ ‘And for us too, your sire,’ said Ptaclusp loyally. ‘I meant for you,’ said the high priest. * Pyramids are dams in the stream of time. Correctly shaped and orientated, with the proper paracosmic measurements correctly plumbed in, the temporal potential of the great mass of stone can be diverted to accelerate or reverse time over a very small area, in the same way that a hydraulic ram can be induced to pump water against the flow. The original builders, who were of course ancients and therefore wise, knew this very well and the whole point of a correctly built pyramid was to achieve absolute null time in the central chamber so that a dying king, tucked up there, would indeed live forever - or at least, never actually die. The time that should have passed in the chamber was stored in the bulk of the pyramid and allowed to flare off once every twenty-four hours. After a few aeons people forgot this and thought you could achieve the same effect by a) ritual b) pickling people and c) storing their soft inner bits in jars. This seldom works. He … liked my singing. Everyone else said it sounded like a flock of vultures who’ve just found a dead donkey. He knew about tortoises. They could be called a lot of things - vegetarians, patient, thoughtful, even extremely diligent and persistent sex-maniacs -but never, up until now, fast. Fast was a word particularly associated with tortoises because they were not it. * The fastest insect is the .303 bookworm. It evolved in magical libraries, where it is necessary to eat extremely quickly to avoid being affected by the thaumic radiations. An adult .303 bookworm can eat through a shelf of books so fast that it ricochets off the wall. * Kings who hadn’t got a kingdom any more were not likely to be very popular in neighbouring countries. There had been one or two like that in Ankh-Morpork - deposed royalty, who had fled their suddenly dangerous kingdoms … carrying nothing but the clothes they stood up in and a few wagonloads of jewels. The city, of course, welcomed anyone -regardless of race, colour, class or creed - who had spending money in incredible amounts, but nevertheless the inhumation of surplus monarchs was a regular source of work for the Assassins’ Guild. There was always someone back home who wanted to be certain that deposed monarchs stayed that way. It was usually a case of heir today, gone tomorrow. The Ephebians made wine out of anything they could put in a bucket, and ate anything that couldn’t climb out of one. He pushed the food around on his plate. Some of it pushed back. ‘The diameter divides into the circumference, you know. It ought to be three times. But does it? No. Three point one four one and lots of other figures. There’s no end to the buggers … It tells me that the Creator used the wrong kind of circles.’ * Someone was just putting a torch to the lighthouse, which was one of the More Than Seven Wonders of the World and had been built to a design by Pthagonal using the Golden Rule and the Five Aesthetic Principles. Unfortunately it had then been built in the wrong place because putting it in the right place would have spoiled the look of the harbour, but it was generally agreed by mariners to be a very beautiful lighthouse and something to look at while they were waiting to be towed off the rocks. * Ptraci didn’t just derail the train of thought, she ripped up the rails, burned the stations and melted the bridges for scrap. * It was another nice day in the high desert. It was always a nice day, if by nice you meant an air temperature like an oven and sand you could roast chestnuts on. * It is now known to science that there are many more dimensions than the classical four. Scientists say that these don’t normally impinge on the world because the extra dimensions are very small and curve in on themselves, and that since reality is fractal most of it is tucked inside itself. This means either that the universe is more full of wonders than we can hope to understand or, more probably, that scientists make things up as they go along. * Teppic takes a novel approach to the age-old Riddle of the Sphinx: ‘What goes on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening?’ said the Sphinx smugly. Teppic considered this. ‘That’s a tough one,’ he said, eventually. ‘You’ll never get it.’ ‘You’re right.’ Teppic stared at the claws. ‘The answer is: “A Man”,’ said the Sphinx. ‘What do you mean, a man?’ ‘It’s easy’ said the Sphinx. ‘A baby crawls in the morning, stands on both legs at noon, and at evening an old man walks with a stick. Good, isn’t it?’ Teppic bit his lip. ‘We’re talking about one day here?’ he said doubt-fully. There was a long, embarrassing silence. ‘It’s a wossname, a figure of speech,’ said the Sphinx irritably. ‘Nothing wrong with the riddle. Damn good riddle. Had that riddle for fifty years, sphinx and cub.’ It thought about this. ‘Chick,’ it corrected. ‘It’s a good riddle,’ Teppic said soothingly. ‘But is there internal consistency within the metaphor? Let’s say for example that the average life expectancy is seventy years, okay?’ ‘Okay’ said the Sphinx, in the uncertain tones of someone who has let the salesman in and is now regretfully contemplating a future in which they are undoubtedly going to buy life insurance. ‘Right. Good. So noon would be age 35, am I right? Now considering that most children can toddle at a year or so, the four legs reference is really unsuitable, wouldn’t you agree? I mean, most of the morning is spent on two legs. According to your analogy … only about twenty minutes immediately after 00.00 hours, half an hour tops, is spent on four legs. Am I right? Be fair.’ ‘Well—’ said the Sphinx. ‘By the same token you wouldn’t be using a stick by six p.m. because you’d be only, er, 52,’ said Teppic, scribbling furiously. ‘In fact you wouldn’t really be looking at any kind of walking aid until at least half past nine, I think … I’m sorry, it’s basically okay, but it doesn’t work … You just need to alter it a bit, that’s all.’ ‘Okay’ it said doubtfully. ‘I suppose I could ask: What is it that walks on four legs—’ ‘Metaphorically speaking,’ said Teppic. ‘Four legs, metaphorically speaking,’ the Sphinx agreed, ‘for about—’ ‘Twenty minutes, I think we agreed.’ ‘—okay, fine, twenty minutes in the morning, on two legs—’ ‘But I think calling it “in the morning” is stretching it a bit,’ said Teppic. ‘It’s just after midnight. I mean, technically it’s the morning, but in a very real sense it’s still last night . .. Let’s just see where we’ve got to, shall we? What, metaphorically speaking, walks on four legs just after midnight, on two legs for most of the day—’ ‘—barring accidents,’ said the Sphinx, pathetically eager to show that it was making a contribution. ‘Fine, on two legs barring accidents, until at least suppertime, when it walks with three legs—’ ‘I’ve known people use two walking sticks,’ said the Sphinx helpfully. ‘Okay How about: when it continues to walk on two legs or with any prosthetic aids of its choice?’ The Sphinx gave this some consideration. ‘Ye-ess,’ it said gravely. ‘That seems to fit all eventualities.’ * The city of the dead lay before Teppic. After Ankh-Morpork, which was almost its direct opposite (in Ankh, even the bedding was alive) it was probably the biggest city on the Disc. † It was quite a big frog, however, and got into the air ducts and kept everyone awake for weeks.   THIS is where the dragons went. They lie … not dead, not asleep, but… dormant. And although the space they occupy isn’t like normal space, nevertheless they are packed in tightly. They could put you in mind of a can of sardines, if you thought sardines were huge and scaly. And presumably, somewhere, there’s a key… The Library was the greatest assemblage of magical texts anywhere in the multiverse. Thousands of volumes of occult lore weighted its shelves. It was said that, since vast amounts of magic can seriously distort the mundane world, the Library did not obey the normal rules of space and time. It was said that it went on forever. It was said that you could wander for days among the distant shelves, and that there were lost tribes of research students somewhere in there. Wise students in search of more distant volumes took care to leave chalk marks on the shelves as they roamed deeper into the fusty darkness, and told friends to come looking for them if they weren’t back by supper. * Not many people these days remarked upon the fact that the Librarian was an ape. The change had been brought about by a magical accident, always a possibility where so many powerful books are kept together, and he was considered to have got off lightly. After all, he was still basically the same shape. And he had been allowed to keep his job, which he was rather good at, although ‘allowed’ is not really the right word. It was the way he could roll his upper lip back to reveal more incredibly yellow teeth than any other mouth the University Council had ever seen before that somehow made sure the matter was never really raised. * The figure rapped a complex code on the dark woodwork. A tiny barred hatch opened and one suspicious eye peered out. ‘ “The significant owl hoots in the night,”‘ said the visitor, trying to wring the rainwater out of its robe. ‘ “Yet many grey lords go sadly to the masterless men,”‘ intoned a voice on the other side of the grille. ‘ “Hooray, hooray for the spinster’s sister’s daughter,”‘ countered the dripping figure. ‘ “To the axeman, all supplicants are the same height.” ‘ ‘ “Yet verily, the rose is within the thorn.”‘ ‘ “The good mother makes bean soup for the errant boy,”‘ said the voice behind the door. There was a pause, broken only by the sound of the rain. Then the visitor said, ‘What?’ ‘ “The good mother makes bean soup for the errant boy.” ‘ There was another, longer pause. Then the damp figure said, ‘Are you sure the ill-built tower doesn’t tremble mightily at a butterfly’s passage?’ ‘Nope. Bean soup it is. I’m sorry.’ ‘What about the cagéd whale?’ said the soaking visitor, trying to squeeze into what little shelter the dread portal offered. ‘What about it?’ ‘It should know nothing of the mighty deeps, if you must know.’ ‘Oh, the caged whale. You want the Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night. Three doors down.’ * The Supreme Grand Master rapped his gavel for attention. ‘I call the Unique and Supreme Lodge of the Elucidated Brethren to order,’ he intoned. ‘Is the Door of Knowledge sealed fast against heretics and knowlessmen?’ ‘Stuck solid,’ said Brother Doorkeeper. ‘It’s the damp. I’ll bring my plane in next week, soon have it—’ ‘All right, all right,’ said the Supreme Grand Master testily. ‘Just a yes would have done.’ * Minor thief Zebbo Mooty has just been incinerated by a dragon. ‘Do you know, a fortune-teller once told me I’d die in my bed, surrounded by grieving great-grandchildren,’ said Mooty. ‘What do you think of that, eh?’ I THINK SHE WAS WRONG. * The Patrician nodded. ‘I shall deal with the matter momentarily,’ he said. It was a good word. It always made people hesitate. They were never quite sure whether he meant he’d deal with it now, or just deal with it briefly. And no one ever dared ask. * You came to [the Patrician] with a perfectly reasonable complaint. Next thing you knew, you were shuffling out backwards, bowing and scraping, relieved simply to be getting away. You had to hand it to the Patrician, he admitted grudgingly. If you didn’t, he sent men to come and take it away. The Patrician gave him a sweet smile. ‘Thank you for coming to see me.Don’t hesitate th4 leave.’ The Watch hadn’t liked it, but the plain fact was that the thieves were far better at controlling crime than the Watch had ever been. After all, the Watch had to work twice as hard to cut crime just a little, whereas all the Thieves’ Guild had to do was to work less. * The only reason you couldn’t say that Nobby was close to the animal kingdom was that the animal kingdom would get up and walk away. * Nobby was a small, bandy-legged man, with a certain resemblance to a chimpanzee who never got invited to tea parties. * Sergeant Colon owed thirty years of happy marriage to the fact that Mrs Colon worked all day and Sergeant Colon worked all night. They communicated by means of notes. He got her tea ready before he left at night, she left his breakfast nice and hot in the oven in the mornings. They had three grown-up children, all born, Vimes had assumed, as a result of extremely persuasive handwriting. * You could describe Sergeant Colon like this: he was the sort of man who, if he took up a military career, would automatically gravitate to the post of sergeant. You couldn’t imagine him ever being a corporal. Or, for that matter, a captain. If he didn’t take up a military career, then he looked cut out for something like, perhaps, a sausage butcher; some job where a big red face and a tendency to sweat even in frosty weather were practically part of the specification. * Every town in the multiverse has a part that is something like Ankh-Morpork’s Shades. It’s a sort of black hole of bred-in-the-brickwork lawlessness. Put it like this: even the criminals were afraid to walk the streets. * You need a special kind of mind to rule a city like Ankh-Morpork, and Lord Vetinari had it. But then, he was a special kind of person. You had to get up very early in the morning to get the better of the Patrician; in fact, it was wiser not to go to bed at all. But he was popular, in a way. Under his hand, for the first time in a thousand years, Ankh-Morpork operated. It might not be fair or just or particularly democratic, but it worked. It was said that he would tolerate absolutely anything apart from anything that threatened the city† … Ankh-Morpork! Brawling city of a hundred thousand souls! And, as the Patrician privately observed, ten times that number of actual people. From a high point of vantage, Ankh-Morpork looked as though someone had tried to achieve in stone and wood an effect normally associated with the pavements outside all-night takeaways. * The Librarian rolled his eyes. It was strange, he felt, that so-called intelligent dogs, horses and dolphins never had any difficulty indicating to humans the vital news of the moment, e.g., that the three children were lost in the cave, or the train was about to take the line leading to the bridge that had been washed away or similar, while he, only a handful of chromosomes away from wearing a vest, found it difficult to persuade the average human to come in out of the rain. * ‘A book has been taken. A book has been taken? You summoned the Watch,’ Carrot drew himself up proudly, ‘because someone’s taken a book? You think that’s worse than murder?’ The Librarian gave him the kind of look other people would reserve for people who said things like ‘What’s so bad about genocide?’ * Jimkin Bearhugger’s Old Selected Dragon’s Blood Whiskey. Cheap and powerful, you could light fires with it, you could clean spoons. You didn’t have to drink much of it to be drunk, which was just as well. * It was the usual Ankh-Morpork mob in times of crisis; half of them were here to complain, a quarter of them were here to watch the other half, and the remainder were here to rob, importune or sell hot-dogs to the rest. * Vimes looked into the grinning, cadaverous face of Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, purveyor of absolutely anything that could be sold hurriedly from an open suitcase in a busy street and was guaranteed to have fallen off the back of an oxcart. * Anti-dragon cream. Personal guarantee: if you’re incinerated you get your money back, no quibble.’ ‘What you’re saying,’ said Vimes slowly, ‘if I understand the wording correctly, is that if I am baked alive by the dragon you’ll return the money?’ ‘Upon personal application,’ said Cut-Me-Own-Throat. * Vimes’d had a look at Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler’s dragon detectors, which consisted solely of a piece of wood on a metal stick. When the stick was burned through, you’d found your dragon. Like a lot of Cut-Me-Own-Throat’s devices, it was completely efficient in its own special way while at the same time being totally useless. * Ankh-Morpork did not have many hospitals. All the Guilds maintained their own sanitariums, but by and large medical assistance was nonexistent and people had to die inefficiently, without the aid of doctors. It was generally thought that the existence of cures encouraged slackness and was in any case probably against Nature’s way. It was a plate stacked high with bacon, fried potatoes and eggs. Vimes could hear his arteries panic just bh4 looking at it. Captain Vimes limped forward from the shadows. A small and extremely frightened golden dragon was clamped firmly under one arm. His other hand held it by the tail. The rioters watched it, hypnotized. ‘Now I know what you’re thinking,’ Vimes went on, softly. ‘You’re wondering, after all this excitement, has it got enough flame left? And, y’know, I ain’t so sure myself…’ He leaned forward, sighting between the dragon’s ears, and his voice buzzed like a knife blade: ‘What you’ve got to ask yourself is: Am I feeling lucky?’ * Vimes gave his men his usual look of resigned dismay. ‘My squad,’ he mumbled. ‘Fine body of men,’ said Lady Ramkin. ‘The good old rank and file, eh?’ ‘The rank, anyway’ said Vimes. * It is difficult for an orang-utan to stand to attention. Its body can master the general idea, but its skin can’t. The Librarian was doing his best, however, standing in a sort of respectful heap at the end of the line and maintaining the kind of complex salute you can only achieve with a four-foot arm. * ‘Do you think picking someone up by their ankles and bouncing their head on the floor comes under the heading of Striking a Superior Officer?’ said Carrot. * ‘Ah, pageantry’ said the monarchist, pointing with his pipe. ‘Very important. Lots of spectacles.’ ‘What, free?’ said Throat. ‘We-ell, I think maybe you have to pay for the frames,’ said the monarchist. * Books bend space and time. One reason the owners of those aforesaid little rambling, poky second-hand bookshops always seem slightly unearthly is that many of them really are, having strayed into this world after taking a wrong turning in their own bookshops in worlds where it is considered commendable business practice to wear carpet slippers all the time and open your shop only when you feel like it. You stray into L-space at your peril. * The truth is that even big collections of ordinary books distort space, as can readily be proved by anyone who has been around a really old-fashioned second-hand bookshop, one of those that look as though they were designed by M. Escher on a bad day and have more staircases than storeys and those rows of shelves which end in little doors that are surely too small for a full-sized human to enter. The relevant equation is: Knowledge = power = energy = matter = mass; a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read. * People were stupid, sometimes. They thought the Library was a dangerous place because of all the magical books, which was true enough, but what made it really one of the most dangerous places there could ever be was the simple fact that it was a library. Energy equals matter … Matter equals mass. And mass distorts space. It distorts it into polyfractal L-space. So, while the Dewey system has its fine points, when you’re setting out to look something up in the multidimensional folds of L-space what you really need is a ball of string. * The three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are: 1) Silence; 2) Books must be returned no later than the last date shown; and 3) Do not interfere with the nature of causality. * The Summoning of Dragons. Single copy, first edition, slightly foxed and extremely dragoned. * Vimes strolled along for breakfast at Harga’s House of Ribs. Normally the only decoration in there was on Sham Harga’s vest and the food was good solid stuff for a cold morning, all calories and fat and protein and maybe a vitamin crying softly because it was all alone. * Time could bifurcate, like a pair of trousers. You could end up in the wrong leg, living a life that was actually happening in the other leg, talking to people who weren’t in your leg, walking into walls that weren’t there any more. Life could be horrible in the wrong trouser of Time. * ‘Never build a dungeon you wouldn’t be happy to spend the night in yourself,’ said the Patrician. * Vimes landed in damp straw and also in pitch darkness. Never trust any ruler who puts his faith in tunnels and bunkers and escape routes. The chances are that his hearh4 isn’t in the job. Eventually Great A ‘Tuin would reach the end of the universe. Eventually the stars would go out. Eventually Nobby might have a bath, although that would probably involve a radical rethinking of the nature of Time. * ‘Oh, you think you’re so clever, so in-control, so swave, just because I’ve got a sword and you haven’t!’ * The Patrician steepled his hands and looked at Vimes over the top of them. ‘Let me give you some advice, Captain,’ he said. ‘It may help you make some sense of the world. I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are the good people and the bad people. You’re wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides’ He waved his thin hand towards the city and walked over to the window. ‘A great rolling sea of evil. Shallower in some places, of course, but deeper, oh, so much deeper in others. But people like you put together little rafts of rules and vaguely good intentions and say, this is the opposite, this will triumph in the end. Amazing. Down there,’ he said, ‘are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any iniquity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathsomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don’t say no. I’m sorry if this offends you,’ he added, patting the captain’s shoulder, ‘but you fellows really need us. We’re the only ones who know how to make things work. You see, the only thing the good people are good at is overthrowing the bad people. And you’re good at that, I’ll grant you. But the trouble is that it’s the only thing you’re good at. One day it’s the ringing of the bells and the casting down of the evil tyrant, and the next it’s everyone sitting around complaining that ever since the tyrant was overthrown no one’s been taking out the trash. Because the bad people know how to plan. It’s part of the specification, you might say. Every evil tyrant has a plan to rule the world. The good people don’t seem to have the knack.’ † And mime artists. It was a strange aversion, but there you are. Anyone in baggy trousers and a white face who tried to ply their art anywhere within Ankh’s crumbling walls would very quickly find themselves in a scorpion pit, on one wall of which was painted the advice: Learn The Words.   ERIC Discworld’s only demonology backer. Pity he’s not very good at it. All he wants is his three wishes granted. Nothing fancy – to be immortal, rule the world, have the most beautiful woman in the world fall madly in love with him, the usual stuff. But instead of a tractable demon, he calls tip Rincewind, probably the most incompetent wizard in the Universe, and the extremely in tractable and hostile form of travel accessory known as the Luggage. With them on his side, Eric’s in for a ride through space and time that is bound to make him wish (quite fervently) again – this time that he’d never been born. Like all beekeepers, Death wore a veil. It wasn’t that he had anything to sting, but sometimes a bee would get inside his skull and buzz around and give him a headache. No enemies had ever taken Ankh-Morpork. Well, technically they had, quite often; the city welcomed free-spending barbarian invaders, but somehow the puzzled raiders always found, after a few days, that they didn’t own their own horses any more, and within a couple of months they were just another minority group with its own graffiti and food shops. * ‘All right. I give in. We will try the Rite of AshkEnte.’ The Rite of AshkEnte is the most serious ritual eight wizards can undertake. It summons Death … It took place in the mid-night in the University’s Great Hall, in a welter of incense, candlesticks, runic inscriptions and magic circles, none of which was strictly necessary but which made the wizards feel better. Magic flared, the chants were chanted, the invocations were truly invoked. The wizards stared into the magic octogram, which remained empty. After a while the circle of robed figures began to mutter amongst themselves. ‘We must have done something wrong.’ ‘Oook.’ ‘Maybe He is out.’ ‘Or busy …’ ‘Do you think we could give up and go back to bed?’ WHO ARE WE WAITING FOR, EXACTLY? * Rincewind wanted to say: Look, what you should do is stop all this messing around with chemicals in dark rooms and have a shave, a haircut, a bath, make that two baths, buy yourself a new wardrobe and get out of an evening and then - but he’d have to be honest, because even washed, shaved and soaked in body splash Thursley wasn’t going to win any prizes - and then you could have your face slapped by any woman of your choice. I mean, it wouldn’t be much, but it would be body contact. * If there is one thing a wizard would trade his grandmother for, it is power. But .. . any wizard bright enough to survive for five minutes was also bright enough to realize that if there was any power in demonology then it lay with the demons. Using it for your own purposes would be like trying to beat mice to death with a rattlesnake. * Lord Astfgl’s patience, which in any case had the tensile strength of putty, snapped at this point. * Rincewind tried some. It was a bowl of cereal, nuts, and dried fruit. He didn’t have any quarrel with any of that. It was just that somewhere in the preparation something had apparently done to these innocent ingredients what it takes a million gravities to do to a neutron star. If you died of eating this sort of thing they wouldn’t have to bury you, they would just need to drop you somewhere where the ground was soft. * Pre-eminent amongst Rincewind’s talents was his skill in running away, which over the years he had elevated to the status of a genuinely pure science; it didn’t matter if you were fleeing from or to, so long as you were fleeing. It was flight alone that counted. I run, therefore I am; more correctly, I run, therefore with any luck I’ll still be. But he was also skilled in languages and in practical geography. He could shout ‘help!’ in fourteen languages and scream for mercy in a further twelve. * The Tezuman Empire in the jungle valleys of central Klatch is known for its organic market gardens, its exquisite craftsmanship in obsidian, feathers and jade, and its mass human sacrifices in honour of Quezovercoatl, the Feathered Boa, god of mass human sacrifices. As they said, you always knew where you stood with Quezovercoatl. It was generally with a lot of people on top of a great stepped pyramid with someone in an elegant feathered headdress chipping an exquisite obsidian knife for your very own personal use. ‘Why do you keep saying wossname?’ said Rincewind. ‘Limited wossname. Doodah. Thingy. You know. It’s got words in it,’ said the parrot. ‘Dictionary?’ said Rincewind. ‘It’s their god Quezovercoatl. Half man, half chicken, half jaguar, half serpent, half scorpion and half mad.’ * Rincewind and companions have been tied up and left. ‘In fact,’ said da Quirm, ‘I think—’ He rolled from side to side experimentally, tugging at the vines which were holding him down. ‘Yes, I think when they did these ropes up – yes, definitely, they—’ ‘What? What?’ said Rincewind. ‘Yes, definitely’ said da Quirm. ‘I’m absolutely sure about it. They did them up very tightly and professionally. Not an inch of give in them anywhere.’ * They were discussing strategy when Rincewind arrived. The consensus seemed to be that if really large numbers of men were sent to storm the mountain, then enough might survive the rocks to take the citadel. This is essentially the basis of all military thinking. * ‘It’s probably some kind of magic, or something,’ Rincewind said. ‘There’s no air. That’s why there’s no sound. All the little bits of air sort of knock together, like marbles. That’s how you get sound, you know.’ ‘Is it? Gosh.’ ‘So we’re surrounded by absolutely nothing,’ said Rincewind. ‘Total nothing.’ He hesitated. ‘There’s a word for it,’ he said. ‘It’s what you get when there’s nothing left and everything’s been used up.’ ‘Yes. I think it’s called the bill,’ said Eric. * Hell, it has been suggested, is other people. This has always come as a bit of a surprise to many working demons, who had always thought hell was sticking sharp things into people and pushing them into lakes of blood and so on. This is because demons, like most people, have failed to distinguish between the body and the soul. The fact was that, as droves of demon kings had noticed, there was a limit to what you could do to a soul with, e.g., red-hot tweezers, because even fairly evil and corrupt souls were bright enough to realize that since they didn’t have the concomitant body and nerve endings attached to them there was no real reason, other than force of habit, why they should suffer excruciating agony. So they didn’t. Demons went on doing it anyway, because numb and mindless stupidity is part of what being a demon is all about, but since no one was suffering they didn’t enjoy it much either and the whole thing was pointless. Centuries and centuries of pointlessness. * Astfgl had achieved in hell a particularly high brand of boredom which is like the boredom you get which a) is costing you money, and b) is taking place while you should be having a nice time. * The speaker was Duke Vassenego, one of the oldest demons. How old, no one knew. But if he didn’t actually invent original sin, at least he made one of the first copies. * Rincewind looked down at the broad steps they were climbing. They were something of a novelty; each one was built out of large stone letters. The one he was just stepping on to, for example, read: I Meant It For The Best. The next one was: I Thought You’d Like It. Eric was standing on: For The Sake Of The Children. ‘Weird, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Why do it like this?’ ‘I think they’re meant to be good intentions,’ said Rincewind. This was a road to hell, and demons were, after all, traditionalists. Old Tom was the single cracked bronze bell in the University bell tower. The clapper dropped out shortly after it was cast, but the bell still tolled out some tremendously sonorous silences every hour.   THE alchemists of the Discworld have discovered the magic of the silver screen. But wheat is the dark secret of Holy Wood kill? It’s tip to Victor Tugelbend (‘Can’t sing. Can’t dance. Can handle a sword a little’) and Theda Withel (‘I come from a little town you’ve probably never heard of) to find out… This is space. It’s sometimes called the final frontier. (Except that of course you can’t have & final frontier, because there’d be nothing for it to be a frontier to, but as frontiers go, it’s pretty penultimate …) * The Discworld is as unreal as it is possible to be while still being just real enough to exist. * There’s a saying that there’s a saying that all roads lead to Ankh-Morpork. And it’s wrong. All roads lead away from Ankh-Morpork, but sometimes people just walk along them the wrong way. Meat pies! Hot sausages! Inna bun! So freshthe pig hasn’t noticed they’re gone! Unseen University had had many different kinds of Archchancellor over the years. Big ones, small ones, cunning ones, slightly insane ones, extremely insane ones - they’d come, they’d served, in some cases not long enough for anyone to be able to complete the official painting to be hung in the Great Hall, and they’d died. The senior wizard in a world of magic had the same prospects of long-term employment as a pogo stick tester in a minefield. * The name might change occasionally, but what did matter was that there always was an Archchancellor … At the time, it had seemed a really good idea to elect an Archchancellor who hadn’t set foot in the University in forty years. A search of the records turned up Ridcully the Brown. He looked ideal … A messenger had been sent. Ridcully the Brown had sighed, cursed a bit, found his staff in the kitchen garden where it had been supporting a scarecrow, and had set out. Within twelve hours of arriving, Ridcully had installed a pack of hunting dragons in the butlers’ pantry, fired his dreadful crossbow at the ravens on the ancient Tower of Art, drunk a dozen bottles of red wine, and rolled off to bed at two in the morning singing a song with words in it that some of the older and more forgetful wizards had to look up. And then he got up at five o’clock to go duck hunting down in the marshes on the estuary. And came back complaining that there wasn’t a good trout fishin’ river for miles. (You couldn’t fish in the river Ankh; you had to jump up and down on the hooks even to make them sink.) And he ordered beer with his breakfast. And told jokes. On the other hand, at least he didn’t interfere with the actual running of the University. Ridcully the Brown wasn’t the least interested in running anything except maybe a string of hounds. If you couldn’t shoot arrows at it, hunt it or hook it, he couldn’t see much point in it. * A full moon glided above the smoke and fumes of Ankh-Morpork, thankful that several thousand miles of sky lay between it and them. The Alchemists’ Guildhall was new. It was always new. It had been explosively demolished and rebuilt four times in the last two years, on the last occasion without a lecture and demonstration room in the hope that this might be a helpful move. By and large, the only skill the alchemists of Ankh-Morpork had discovered so far was the ability to turn gold into less gold. * The Patrician’s stare had him pinned. It was a good stare, and one of the things it was good at was making people go on talking when they thought they had finished. * ‘Well, what you do is, you take some corn, and you put it in, say, a Number 3 crucible, with some cooking oil, you see, and then you put a plate or something on top of it, and when you heat it up it goes bang, I mean, not seriously bang, and when it’s stopped banging you take the plate off and it’s metamorphosed into these, er, things … If you put butter and salt on it, it tastes like salty butter … I just call it banged grains.’ * When you became a wizard you were expected to stop shaving and grow a beard like a gorse bush. Very senior wizards looked capable of straining nourishment out of the air via their moustaches, like whales. * Victor eyed the glistening tubes in the tray around Dibbler’s neck. They smelled appetizing. They always did. And then you bit into them, and learned once again that Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler could find a use for bits of an animal that the animal didn’t know it had got. Dibbler had worked out that with enough fried onions and mustard people would eat anything. * Most people think in curves and zigzags. For example, they start from a thought like: I wonder how I can become very rich, and then proceed along an uncertain course which includes thoughts like: I wonder what’s for supper, and: I wonder who I know who can lend me five dollars? Whereas Throat was one of those people who could identify the thought at the other end of the process, in this case I am now very rich, draw a line between the two, and then think his way along it, slowly and patiently, until he got to the other end. Not that it worked. There was always, he found, some small but vital flaw in the process. It generally involved a strange reluctance on the part of people to buy what he had to sell. * ‘Mr Dibbler can even sell sausages to people that have bought them off him before … And a man who could sell Mr Dibbler’s sausages twice could sell anything.’ * There was a dog sitting by his feet. It was small, bow-legged and wiry, and basically grey but with patches of brown, white and black in outlying areas … It looked up slowly, and said ‘Woof?’ Victor poked an exploratory finger in his ear. It must have been a trick of an echo, or something. It wasn’t that the dog had gone ‘woof!’, although that was practically unique in itself; most dogs in the universe never went ‘woof!’, they had complicated barks like ‘whuuugh!’ and ‘hwhoouf!’. No, it was that it hadn’t in fact barked at all. It had said ‘woof. ‘Could have bin worse, mister. I could have said “miaow”.’ He was aware of a strange smell. It was hard to place, but could perhaps have been a very old and slightly damp nursery rug. ‘Woof bloody woof,’ said Gaspode the Wonder Dog. Dibbler gave Gaspode a long, slow stare, which was like challenging a centipede to an arse-kicking contest. Gaspode could outstare a mirror. * ‘I never had a chance, you know. I mean, look at the start I had in life. Frone inna river inna sack. An actual sack. Dear little puppy dog opens his eyes, looks out in wonder at the world, style offing, he’s in this sack.’ The tears dripped off his nose. ‘For two weeks I thought the brick was my mother.’ … ‘Just my luck they threw me in the Ankh,’ Gaspode went on. ‘Any other river, I’d have drowned and gone to doggy heaven.’ * Victor was aware of a cold sensation against his leg. It was as though a half-melted ice cube was soaking through his trousers. He tried to ignore it, but it had a definite unig-norable quality. He looked down. ‘ ’scuse me,’ said Gaspode. * Mrs Marietta Cosmopilite of 3 Quirm Street, Ankh-Morpork, believed the world was round, that a sprig of garlic in her underwear drawer kept away vampires, that it did you good to get out and have a laugh occasionally, that there was niceness in everyone if you only knew where to look, and that three horrible little dwarfs peered in at her undressing every night.† * ‘Well, of course,’ said Silverfish, ‘a lot of very talented people want to be in moving pictures. Can you sing?’ ‘A bit. In the bath. But not very well,’ Victor conceded. ‘Can you dance?’ ‘No.’ ‘Swords? Do you know how to handle a sword?’ A little,’ said Victor. ‘I see,’ said Silverfish gloomily. ‘Can’t sing. Can’t dance. Can handle a sword a little.’ You would have to go a long way to find air that was realer than Ankh-Morpork air. You could tell just by breathing it that other people had been doing the same thing for thousands of years. ‘I don’t understand her,’ he said. ‘Yesterday she was quite normal, today it’s all gone to her head.’ ‘Bitches!’ said Gaspode, sympathetically. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t go that far,’ said Victor. ‘She’s just aloof ‘Loofs!’ said Gaspode. * The Necrotelicomnicon was written by a Klatchian necromancer known to the world as Achmed the Mad, although he preferred to be called Achmed the I Just Get These Headaches. It contained forbidden knowledge. Well, not actually forbidden. No one had ever gone so far as forbidding it. Apart from anything else, in order to forbid it you’d have to know what it was, which was forbidden. But it definitely contained the sort of information which, once you knew it, you wished you didn’t. ‘Come on,’ said Gaspode. ‘It’s not right, you being alone in a lady’s boodwah.’ ‘I’m not alone,’ Victor said. ‘She’s with me.’ ‘That’s the point,’ said Gaspode. ‘Did I hear things, or can that little dog speak?’ said Dibbler. ‘He says he can’t,’ said Victor. Dibbler hesitated. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I suppose he should know.’ * The universe contains any amount of horrible ways to be woken up, such as the noise of the mob breaking down the front door, the scream of fire engines, or the realization that today is the Monday which on Friday night was a comfortably long way off. A dog’s wet nose is not strictly speaking the worst of the bunch, but it has its own peculiar dreadfulness which connoisseurs of the ghastly and dog owners everywhere have come to know and dread. It’s like having a small piece of defrosting liver pressed lovingly against you. * As the magic of the movies infects everyone, there are spillages from our own roundworld. ‘I don’t know what it’s called, but we’re doing one about going to see a wizard. Something about following a yellow sick toad,’ a man in one half of a lion suit explained to a companion in the queue. * A Man and A Woman Aflame With Passione in A Citie Riven by Sivil War! Brother against brother! Women in crinoline dresses slapping people’s faces! A mighty dynasty brought low! A great city aflame! All it needed was a title. Something with a ring to it. Something that people would remember. Something – Dibbler scratched his chin with the pen – that said that the affairs of ordinary people were so much chaff in the great storms of history. Storms, that was it. Good imagery, a storm. You got thunder. Lightning. Rain. Wind. Wind. That was it! He crawled up to the top of the sheet and, with great care, wrote: BLOWN AWAY. * Soll was standing over the artist who lettered the cards … The lettering artist tugged at his sleeve. ‘I was just wondering, Mr Soll, what you wanted me to put in the big scene now—’ ‘Don’t worry me now, man!’ ‘But if you could just give me an idea—’ Soll firmly unhooked the man’s hand from his sleeve. ‘Frankly’ he said, ‘I don’t give a damn,’ and he strode off towards the set. The artist was left alone. He picked up his paintbrush. His lips moved silently, shaping themselves around the words. Then he said, ‘Hmm. Nice one.’ * According to the history books, the decisive battle that ended the Ankh-Morpork Civil War was fought between two handfuls of bone-weary men in a swamp early one misty morning and, although one side claimed victory, ended with a practical score of Humans 0, ravens 1,000, which is the case with most battles. * The real city had been burned down many times in its long history - out of revenge, or carelessness, or spite, or even just for the insurance. Most of the big stone buildings that actually made it a city, as opposed simply to a load of hovels all in one place, survived them intact and many people considered that a good fire every hundred years or so was essential to the health of the city since it helped to keep down the rats, roaches, fleas and, of course, people not rich enough to live in stone houses. Inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened. There’s a bar like it in every town. It’s dimly lit and the drinkers, although they talk, don’t address their words to one another and they don’t listen, either. They just talk the hurt inside. It’s a bar for the derelict and the unlucky and all of those people who have been temporarily flagged off the racetrack of life and into the pits. * Yetis are a high-altitude species of troll, and quite unaware that eating people is out of fashion. Their view is: if it moves, eat it. If it doesn’t, then wait for it to move. And then eat it. * An inviolable rule about buildings for the showing of moving pictures, applicable throughout the multi-verse, is that the ghastliness of the architecture around the back is inversely proportional to the glori-ousness of the architecture in the front. At the front: pillars, arches, gold leaf, lights. At the back: weird ducts, mysterious prolapses of pipework, blank walls, fetid alleys. And the window to the lavatories. * ‘Fascinating,’ said the Patrician. He had not got where he was today by bothering how things worked. It was how people worked that intrigued him. * “Twas beauty killed the beast,’ said the Dean, who liked to say things like that. ‘No it wasn’t,’ said the Chair. ‘It was it splatting into the ground like that.’ All dwarfs have beards and wear many layers of clothing. Their courtships are largely concerned with finding out, in delicate and circumspect ways, what sex the other dwarf is. The flooded stairs lay in front of them. ‘Can you swim?’ said Victor. ‘Not very well,’ said Ginger. ‘Me neither,’ he said … ‘Still,’ he said, taking her hand. ‘We could look on this as a great opportunity to improve really quickly.’ †She was right about that, but only by coincidence.   DEATH is missing – presumed … er… gone. Which leads to the kind of chaos you always get when an important public service is withdrawn. Meanwhile, on a little farm, far, far away, a tall dark stranger is turning out to be really good with a scythe. There’s a harvest to be gathered in … Not a muscle moved on Death’s face, because he hadn’t got any. The shortest-lived creatures on the Disc were mayflies, which barely make it through twenty-four hours. Two of the oldest zigzagged aimlessly over the waters of a trout stream, discussing history with some younger members of the evening hatching. ‘You don’t get the kind of sun now that you used to get,’ said one of them. ‘You’re right there. We had proper sun in the good old hours. It were all yellow. None of this red stuff.’ ‘It were higher, too.’ ‘It was. You’re right.’ ‘And nymphs and larvae showed you a bit of respect.’ ‘They did. They did,’ said the other mayfly vehemently. ‘I reckon, if mayflies these hours behaved a bit better, we’d still be having proper sun.’ The younger mayflies listened politely. ‘I remember,’ said one of the oldest mayflies, ‘when all this was fields, as far as you could see.’ The younger mayflies looked around. ‘It’s still fields,’ one of them ventured, after a polite interval. ‘I remember when it was better fields,’ said the old mayfly sharply. ‘Yeah,’ said his colleague. ‘And there was a cow.’ ‘That’s right! You’re right! I remember that cow! Stood right over there for, oh, forty, fifty minutes. It was brown, as I recall.’ You don’t get cows like that these hours.’ … ‘What were we doing before we were talking about the sun?’ ‘Zigzagging aimlessly over the water,’ said one of the young flies. This was a fair bet in any case. ‘No, before that.’ ‘Er … you were telling us about the Great Trout.’ ‘Ah. Yes. Right. The Trout. Well, you see, if you’ve been a good mayfly, zigzagging up and down properly—’ ‘—taking heed of your elders and betters—’ ‘—then eventually the Great Trout—’ Clop Clop ‘Yes?’ said one of the younger mayflies. There was no reply. ‘The Great Trout what?’ said another mayfly, nervously. They looked down at a series of expanding concentric rings on the water. ‘The holy sign!’ said a mayfly. ‘I remember being told about that! A Great Circle in the water! Thus shall be the sign of the Great Trout!’ * Whereas the oldest things on the Discworld were the famous Counting Pines. The six Counting Pines in this clump were listening to the oldest, whose gnarled trunk declared it to be thirty-one thousand, seven hundred and thirty-four years old. The conversation took seventeen years, but has been speeded up. ‘I remember when all this wasn’t fields.’ ‘What was it, then?’ said the nearest pine. ‘Ice. If you can call it ice. We had proper glaciers in those days. Not like the ice you get now, here one season and gone the next. It hung around for ages.’ ‘Wow. That was a sharp one.’ ‘What was?’ ‘That winter just then.’ ‘Call that a winter? When I was a sapling we had winters—’ Then the tree vanished. After a shocked pause for a couple of years, one of the clump said: ‘He just went! Just like that! One day he was here, next he was gone!’ Since the trees were unable even to sense any event that took place in less than a day, they never heard the sound of axes. * Death’s pale horse’s name was Binky He was a real horse. Death had tried fiery steeds and skeletal horses in the past, and found them impractical, especially the fiery ones, which tended to set light to their own bedding and stand in the middle of it looking embarrassed. Killing off a wizard of a higher grade was a recognized way of getting advancement in the orders. Wizards don’t believe in gods in the same way that most people don’t find it necessary to believe in, say, tables. They know they’re there, they know they’re there for a purpose, they’d probably agree that they have a place in a well-organized universe, but they wouldn’t see the point of believing, of going around saying, ‘O great table, without whom we are as naught’. Anyway, either the gods are there whether you believe or not, or they exist only as a function of the belief, so either way you might as well ignore the whole business and, as it were, eat off your knees. * The Bursar … didn’t eat much, but lived on his nerves. He was certain he was anorectic, because every time he looked in a mirror he saw a fat man. It was the Archchancellor, standing behind him and shouting at him. * Mustrum Ridcully was, depending on your point of view, either the worst or the best Archchancellor that Unseen University had had for a hundred years. There was too much of him, for one thing. It wasn’t that he was particularly big, it was just that he had the kind of huge personality that fits any available space. He’d get roaring drunk at supper and that was fine and acceptable wizardly behaviour. But then he’d go back to his room and play darts all night and leave at five in the morning to go duck hunting. He shouted at people. He tried to jolly them along. And he hardly ever wore proper robes. He’d persuaded Mrs Whitlow, the University’s dreaded housekeeper, to make him a sort of baggy trouser suit in garish blue and red; twice a day the wizards stood in bemusement and watched him jog purposefully around the University buildings, his pointy wizarding hat tied firmly on his head with string. He’d shout cheerfully up at them, because fundamental to the make-up of people like Mustrum Ridcully is an iron belief that everyone else would like it, too, if only they tried it. * Intellectually, Ridcully maintained his position for two reasons. One was that he never, ever, changed his mind about anything. The other was that it took him several minutes to understand any new idea put to him, and this is a very valuable trait in a leader, because anything anyone is still trying to explain to you after two minutes is probably important and anything they give up after a mere minute or so is almost certainly something they shouldn’t have been bothering you with in the first place. * Although not common on the Discworld there are, indeed, such things as anti-crimes, in accordance with the fundamental law that everything in the multiverse has an opposite. They are, obviously, rare. Merely giving someone something is not the opposite of robbery; to be an anti-crime, it has to be done in such a way as to cause outrage and/or humiliation to the victim. So there is breaking-and-decorating, proffering-with-embarrassment (as in most retirement presentations) and whitemailing (as in threatening to reveal to his enemies a mobster’s secret donations, for example, to charity). Anti-crimes have never really caught on. * For more than a century Windle Poons had lived inside the walls of Unseen University. In terms of accumulated years, he may have lived a long time. In terms of experience, he was about thirteen. * The Shades was the oldest part of the city. If you could do a sort of relief map of sinfulness, wickedness and all-round immorality, rather like those representations of the gravitational field around a Black Hole, then even in Ankh-Morpork The Shades would be represented by a shaft. * ‘If anyone’s going to bury a wizard at a crossroads with a stake hammered through him, then wizards ought to do it. After all, we’re his friends.’ * Mustrum Ridcully, Archchancellor of Unseen University, was a shameless autocondimentor.† * ‘All right, you fellows,’ Ridcully said. ‘No magic at Table, you know the rules. Who’s playing silly buggers?’ The other senior wizards stared at him. ‘I, I, I don’t think we can play it any more,’ said the Bursar, ‘I, I, I think we lost some of the pieces …’ * The relationship between the University and the Patrician, absolute ruler and nearly benevolent dictator of Ankh-Morpork, was a complex and subtle one. The wizards held that, as servants of a higher truth, they were not subject to the mundane laws of the city. The Patrician said that, indeed, this was the case, but they would bloody well pay their taxes like everyone else. The wizards said that, as followers of the light of wisdom, they owed allegiance to no mortal man. The Patrician said that this may well be true but they also owed a city tax of two hundred dollars per head per annum, payable quarterly. The wizards said that the University stood on magical ground and was therefore exempt from taxation and anyway you couldn’t put a tax on knowledge. The Patrician said you could. It was two hundred dollars per capita; if per capita was a problem, decapita could be arranged. The wizards said that the University had never paid taxes to the civil authority. The Patrician said he was not proposing to remain civil for long. The wizards said, what about easy terms? The Patrician said he was talking about easy terms. They wouldn’t want to know about the hard terms. The wizards said that there was a ruler back in, oh, it would be the Century of the Dragonfly, who had tried to tell the University what to do. The Patrician could come and have a look at him if he liked. The Patrician said that he would. He truly would. In the end it was agreed that while the wizards of course paid no taxes, they would nevertheless make an entirely voluntary donation of, oh, let’s say two hundred dollars per head, without prejudice, mutatis mutandis, no strings attached, to be used strictly for non-militaristic and environmentally acceptable purposes. Thin, pale, and clad all in dusty black, the Patrician always put Ridcully in mind of a predatory flamingo, if you could find a flamingo that was black and had the patience of a rock. People get exactly the wrong idea about belief. They think it works back to front. They think the sequence is, first object, then belief. In fact, it works the other way. Belief sloshes around in the firmament like lumps of clay spiralling into a potter’s wheel. That’s how gods get created, for example. They clearly must be created by their own believers, because a brief resume of the lives of most gods suggests that their origins certainly couldn’t be divine. They tend to do exactly the things people would do if only they could, especially when it comes to nymphs, golden showers, and the smiting of your enemies. * ‘And you’re a vampire too, Countess Notfaroutoe?’ Windle Poons enquired politely. The Countess smiled. ‘My vord, yes,’ she said. ‘By marriage,’ said Arthur. ‘Can you do that? I thought you had to be bitten,’ said Windle. ‘I don’t see why I should have to go around biting my wife after thirty years of marriage, and that’s flat,’ said the Count. * ‘This vampiring’s not all it’s cracked up to be, you know. Can’t go out in daylight, can’t eat garlic, can’t have a decent shave—’ ‘Why can’t you have a—’ Windle began. ‘Can’t use a mirror,’ said Arthur. * ‘By the way, Sister Drull is a ghoul. If she offers you any of her meat patties, don’t accept.’ ‘Oh, dear,’ Windle said. ‘You mean she makes them out of human flesh?’ ‘What? Oh. No. She just can’t cook very well.’ * SOMETIMES PEOPLE CHALLENGE ME TO A GAME. FOR THEIR LIVES, YOU KNOW, [said Death.] ‘Do they ever win?’ NO. LAST YEAR SOMEONE GOT THREE STREETS AND ALL THE UTILITIES. ‘What? What sort of game is that?’ I DON’T RECALL. ‘EXCLUSIVE POSSESSION’, I THINK. I WAS THE BOOT. * A compost heap comes to life and threatens a group of wizards: The heap swivelled and lunged towards the Bursar. The wizards backed away. ‘It can’t be intelligent, can it?’ said the Bursar. ‘All it’s doing is moving around slowly and eating things,’ said the Dean. ‘Put a pointy hat on it and it’d be a faculty member,’ said the Archchancellor. * Miss Flitworth had said that before they could start a graveyard in these parts they’d had to hit someone over the head with the shovel. * People have believed for hundreds of years that newts in a well mean that the water’s fresh and drinkable, and in all that time never asked themselves whether the newts got out to go to the lavatory. * The ability of skinny old ladies to carry huge loads is phenomenal. Studies have shown that an ant can carry one hundred times its own weight, but there is no known limit to the lifting power of the average tiny eighty-year-old Spanish peasant grandmother. ‘Why are you called One Man Bucket?’ in my tribe we’re traditionally named after the first thing the mother sees when she looks out of the teepee after the birth. it’s short for One-Man-Pouring-a-Bucket-of-Water-over-Two-Dogs. ‘That’s pretty unfortunate,’ said Windle. it’s not too bad, said One-Man-Bucket. it was my twin brother you had to feel sorry for. she looked out ten seconds before me to give him his name. ‘Don’t tell me, let me guess,’ Windle said. ‘Two-Dogs-Fighting?’ Two-Dogs-Fighting? Two-Dogs-Fighting? said One-Man-Bucket. wow, he’d have given his right arm to be called Two-Dogs-Fighting. In the Ramtop village where they dance the real Morris dance, for example, they believe that no one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away - until the clock he wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone’s life, they say, is only the core of their actual existence. ‘Who’s playing the maracas?’ Death grinned. MARACAS? I DON’T NEED … MARACAS. In the village in the Ramtops where they understand what the Morris dance is all about, they dance it just once, at dawn, on the first day of spring. They don’t dance it after that, all through the summer. After all, what would be the point? What use would it be? But on a certain day when the nights are drawing in, the dancers leave work early and take, from attics and cupboards, the other costume, the black one, and the other bells. And they go by separate ways to a valley among the leafless trees. They don’t speak. There is no music. It’s very hard to imagine what kind there could be. The bells don’t ring. They’re made of octiron, a magic metal. But they’re not, precisely, silent bells. Silence is merely the absence of noise. They make the opposite of noise, a sort of heavily textured silence. And in the cold afternoon, as the light drains from the sky, among the frosty leaves and in the damp air, they dance the other Morris. Because of the balance of things. You’ve got to dance both, they say. Otherwise you can’t dance either. †Someone who will put certainly salt and probably pepper on any meal you put in front of them whatever it is and regardless of how much it’s got on it already and regardless of how it tastes. Behavioural psychiatrists working for fast-food outlets around the universe have saved billions of whatever the local currency is by noting the autocondimenting phenomenon and advising their employers to leave seasoning out in the first place. This is really true.   IT seemed an easy job … After all, how difficult could it be make sure that a servant girl doesn’t marry a prince? But for the witches Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and Magrat Sarlick, travelling to the distant city of Genua, things are never that simple… Servant girls have to marry the Prince. That’s what life is all about. You can’t fight a Happy Ending. At least, tip Until now… Just superstition. But a superstition doesn’t have to be wrong. * Bad spelling can be lethal. For example, the greedy Seriph of Al-Ybi was once cursed by a badly educated deity and for some days everything he touched turned to Glod, which happened to be the name of a small dwarf from a mountain community hundreds of miles away who found himself magically dragged to the kingdom and relentlessly duplicated. Some two thousand Glods later the spell wore off. These days, the people of Al-Ybi are renowned for being unusually short and bad-tempered. * She had buried three husbands, and at least two of them had been already dead. Never trust a dog with orange eyebrows. Artists and writers have always had a rather exaggerated idea about what goes on at a witches’ sabbat. This comes from spending too much time in small rooms with the curtains drawn, instead of getting out in the healthy fresh air. For example, there’s the dancing around naked. In the average temperate climate there are very few nights when anyone would dance around at midnight with no clothes on, quite apart from the question of stones, thistles, and sudden hedge-hogs. Then there’s all that business with goat-headed gods. Most witches don’t believe in gods. They know that the gods exist, of course. They even deal with them occasionally. But they don’t believe in them. They know them too well. It would be like believing in the postman. And there’s the food and drink -the bits of reptile and so on. In fact, witches don’t go for that sort of thing. The worst you can say about the eating habits of the older type of witch is that they tend to like ginger biscuits dipped in tea with so much sugar in it that the spoon won’t move and will drink it out of the saucer if they think it’s too hot. And do so with appreciative noises more generally associated with the cheaper type of plumbing system. Legs of toad and so on might be better than this. Then there’s the mystic ointments. By sheer luck, the artists and writers are on firmer ground here. Most witches are elderly, which is when ointments start to have an attraction, and at least two of those present tonight were wearing Granny Weatherwax’s famous goose-grease-and-sage chest liniment. This didn’t make you fly and see visions, but it did prevent colds, if only because the distressing smell that developed around about the second week kept everyone else so far away you couldn’t catch anything from them. And finally there’s sabbats themselves. Your average witch is not, by nature, a social animal as far as other witches are concerned. There’s a conflict of dominant personalities. There’s a group of ringleaders without a ring. The natural size of a coven is one. ‘I can’t be having with foreign parts,’ said Granny Weather wax. ‘You’ve been to Ankh-Morpork,’ said Nanny mildly. ‘That’s foreign.’ ‘No it’s not. It’s just a long way off Magrat would be the first to admit that she had an open mind. It was as open as a field, as open as the sky. No mind could be more open without special surgical implements. And she was always waiting for something to fill it up. * ‘I used to come over here quite often to look at Desiderata’s books,’ Magrat confessed. ‘And … and she liked to cook foreign food and no one else round here would eat it, so I’d come up to keep her company’ ‘Ah-ha! Curryin’ favour!’ snapped Granny. * Magrat has adopted trousers as practical wear for travelling by broomstick. ‘I don’t ‘old with it,’ said Granny. ‘Everyone can see her legs.’ ‘No they can’t,’ said Nanny. ‘The reason being, the material is in the way’ Yes, but they can see where her legs are,’ said Granny Weatherwax. ‘That’s silly. That’s like saying everyone’s naked under their clothes,’ said Magrat. ‘Magrat Garlick, may you be forgiven,’ said Granny Weatherwax. ‘Well, it’s true!’ ‘I’m not,’ said Granny flatly, ‘I got three vests on.’ * To the rest of the world he was an enormous tomcat, a parcel of incredibly indestructible life forces in a skin that looked less like a fur than a piece of bread that had been left in a damp place for a fortnight. Ferocious dogs would whine and hide under the stairs when Greebo sauntered down the street. Foxes kept away from the village. Wolves made a detour. ‘He’s an old softie really,’ said Nanny. * Above the noise of the river they could all hear, now, the steady slosh-slosh of another craft heading towards them. ‘Someone’s following us!’ hissed Magrat. Two pale glows appeared at the edge of the lamplight. Eventually they turned out to be the eyes of a small grey creature, vaguely froglike, paddling towards them on a log. It reached the boat. Long clammy fingers grabbed the side, and a lugubrious face rose level with Nanny Ogg’s. ‘ ’ullo,’ it said. ‘It’sss my birthday.’ All three of them stared at it for a while. Then Granny Weatherwax picked up an oar and hit it firmly over the head. There was a splash, and a distant cursing. ‘Horrible little bugger,’ said Granny, as they rowed on. ‘Looked like a troublemaker to me.’ * ‘Blessings be on this house,’ Granny said, perfunctorily. It was always a good opening remark for a witch. It concentrated people’s minds on what other things might be on this house. * Sometimes Magrat really wondered about the others’ commitment to witchcraft. Half the time they didn’t seem to bother. Take medicine, for example … Granny just gave people a bottle of coloured water and told them they felt a lot better. And what was so annoying was that they often did. Where was the witchcraft in that? * Granny Weatherwax waking up was quite an impressive sight, and one not seen by many people. Most people, on waking up, accelerate through a quick panicky pre-consciousness check-up: who am I, where am I, who is he/she, good god, why am I cuddling a policeman’s helmet, what happened last nightl And this is because people are riddled by Doubt. Granny Weatherwax went straight from fast asleep to instant operation on all six cylinders. She never needed to find herself because she always knew who was doing the looking. Vampires have risen from the dead, the grave and the crypt, but have never managed it from the cat. Nanny Ogg sent a number of cards home to her family, not a single one of which got back before she did. This is traditional, and happens everywhere in the universe. * In a quiet little inn in a tiny country Granny Weatherwax sat and regarded the food with deep suspicion. ‘Good simple home cooking,’ said Granny. ‘That’s all I require. I just want simple food. Not all grease and stuff. It comes to something when you complain about something in your lettuce and it turns out to be what you ordered.’ Knowing how stories work is almost all the battle. For example, when an obvious innocent sits down with three experienced card sharpers and says ‘How do you play this game, then?’, someone is about to be shaken down until their teeth fall out. The dwarf bread was brought out for inspection. But it was miraculous, the dwarf bread. No one ever went hungry when they had some dwarf bread to avoid. You only had to look at it for a moment, and instantly you could think of dozens of things you’d rather eat. Your boots, for example. Mountains. Raw sheep. Your own foot. * There were only six suits of chain mail in the whole of Lancre, made on the basis of one-size-doesn’t-quite-fit-all. * ‘When did you last have a bath, Esme?’ ‘What do you mean, last? Baths is unhygienic,’ Granny declared. ‘You know I’ve never agreed with baths. Sittin’ around in your own dirt like that.’ ‘What do you do, then?’ said Magrat. ‘I just washes,’ said Granny. ‘All the bits. You know. As and when they becomes available.’ * Granny Weatherwax had never turned anyone into a frog. The way she saw it, there was a technically less cruel but cheaper and much more satisfying thing you could do. You could leave them human and make them think they were a frog, which also provided much innocent entertainment for passers-by. * ‘I don’t mind criticism,’ said Granny. ‘You know me. I’ve never been one to take offence at criticism. No one could say I’m the sort to take offence at criticism—’ ‘Not twice, anyway’ said Nanny. * People like Nanny Ogg turn up everywhere. It’s as if there’s some special morphic generator dedicated to the production of old women who like a laugh and aren’t averse to the odd pint, especially of some drink normally sold in very small glasses. You find them all over the place, often in pairs.† * Nanny Ogg quite liked cooking, provided there were other people around to do things like chop up the vegetables and wash the dishes afterwards. * ‘That’s the trouble with second sight,’ Desiderata said. ‘You can see what’s happenin’, but you don’t know what it means. I’ve seen the future. There’s a coach made out of a pumpkin. And that’s impossible. And there’s coachmen made out of mice, which is unlikely. And there’s a clock striking midnight, and something about a glass slipper. And it’s all going to happen. Because that’s how stories have to work.’ * But then Granny and Nanny have to try to stop the story from happening. ‘It’s no good, you know [said Lily Weatherwax]. You can’t stop this sort of thing. It has the momentum of inevitability. You can’t spoil a good story. I should know.’ She handed the slipper to the Prince, but without taking her eyes off Granny. ‘It’ll fit her,’ she said. Two of the courtiers held Magrat’s leg as the Prince wrestled the slipper past her protesting toes. ‘There,’ said Lily, still without looking down. ‘And do stop trying that hedge-witch hypnotism on me, Esme.’ ‘It fits,’ said the Prince, but in a doubtful tone of voice. ‘Yes, anything would fit,’ said a cheerful voice from somewhere towards the back of the crowd, ‘if you were allowed to put two pairs of hairy socks on first.’ Lily looked down. Then she looked at Magrat’s mask. She reached out and pulled it off. ‘Wrong girl,’ said Lily. ‘But it still doesn’t matter, Esme, because it is the right slipper. So all we have to do is find the girl whose foot it fits—’ There was a commotion at the back of the crowd. Courtiers parted, revealing Nanny Ogg. ‘If it’s a five-and-a-half narrow fit, I’m your man,’ she said. ‘Just let me get these boots off…’ ‘I wasn’t referring to you, old woman,’ said Lily coldly. ‘Oh, yes you was,’ said Nanny. ‘We know how this bit goes, see. The Prince goes all round the city with the slipper, trying to find the girl whose foot fits. That’s what you was plannin’. So I can save you a bit of trouble, how about it?’ There was a flicker of uncertainty in Lily’s expression. ‘A girl,’ she said, ‘of marriageable age.’ ‘No problem there,’ said Nanny cheerfully … Nanny grabbed the slipper out of the Prince’s hands and, before anyone else could move, slid it on to her foot. Then she waggled the foot in the air. It was a perfect fit. ‘There!’ she said. ‘See? You could have wasted the whole day’ ‘Especially because there must be hundreds of five-and-a-half—’ ‘– narrow fit –’ ‘—narrow fit wearers in a city this size,’ Granny went on. ‘Unless, of course, you happened to sort of go to the right house right at the start. If you had, you know, a lucky guess?’ ‘But that’d be cheatin’,’ said Nanny. She nudged the Prince. ‘I’d just like to add,’ she said, ‘that I don’t mind doin’ all the waving and opening things and other royal stuff, but I draw the line at sleepin’ in the same bed as sunny jim here.’ ‘Because he doesn’t sleep in a bed,’ said Granny. ‘No, he sleeps in a pond,’ said Nanny. ‘Because he’s a frog,’ said Granny. ‘This is Greebo. Between you and me, he’s a fiend from hell.’ ‘Well, he’s a cat,’ said Mrs Gogol. ‘It’s only to be expected.’ No one knew better than Granny Weatherwax that hats were important. They weren’t just clothing. Hats defined the head. They defined who you were. No one had ever heard of a wizard without a pointy hat - at least, no wizard worth speaking of. And you certainly never heard of a witch without one … It wasn’t the wearing of the hats that counted so much as having one to wear. Every trade, every craft had its hat. That’s why kings had hats. Take the crown off a king and all you had was someone good at having a weak chin and waving to people. Hats had power. Hats were important. * ‘You always used to say I was wanton, when we was younger,’ said Nanny. ‘You was, of course,’ said Granny. ‘But you never used magic for it, did you?’ ‘Din’t have to,’ said Nanny happily. ‘An off-the-shoulder dress did the trick most of the time.’ ‘Right off the shoulder and on to the grass, as I recall,’ said Granny. * Every established kitchen has one ancient knife, its handle worn thin, its blade curved like a banana, and so inexplicably sharp that reaching into the drawer at night is like bobbing for apples in a piranha tank. * ‘Look at the three of you,’ Lily said. ‘The maiden, the mother and the crone.’ ‘Who are you calling a maiden?’ said Nanny Ogg. ‘Who are you calling a mother?’ said Magrat. Granny Weatherwax glowered briefly like the person who has discovered that there is only one straw left and everyone else has drawn a long one. * ‘Don’t you talk to me about progress. Progress just means bad things happen faster.’ * ‘How come you’re in the palace guard, Casanunda? All the rest of ‘em are six foot tall and you’re – of the shorter persuasion.’ ‘I lied about my height, Mrs Ogg.’ * ‘I don’t want to hurt you, Mistress Weatherwax,’ said Mrs Gogol. ‘That’s good,’ said Granny. ‘I don’t want you to hurt me either.’ † Always in front of you in any queue, for a start.   IN the beginning was the Word. And the Word was: ‘Hey, you!’ For Brutha the novice is the Chosen One. He wants peace and justice and brotherly love. He also wants the Inquisition to stop torturing bin? now, please… Brother Preptil, the master of the music, had described Brutha’s voice as putting im in mind of a disappointed vulture arriving too late at the dead donkey. * There was something creepy about that boy [Brutha], Nhumrod thought. It was the way he looked at you when you were talking, as if he was listening. * ‘It’s a big bull,’ said the tortoise. ‘The very likeness of the Great God Om in one of his worldly incarnations!’ said Brutha proudly. ‘And you say you’re him? ‘I haven’t been well lately,’ said the tortoise. * ‘How should I know? I don’t know!’ lied the tortoise. ‘But you … you’re omnicognizant,’ said Brutha. ‘That doesn’t mean I know everything.’ Brutha bit his lip. ‘Um. Yes. It does.’ * Everyone in the city knew Cut-Me-Own-Hand-Off Dhblah, purveyor of suspiciously new holy relics, suspiciously old rancid sweetmeats on a stick, gritty figs, and long-past-their--sell-by dates. * ‘I – I do not know how to ride, my lord,’ said Brutha. ‘Any man can get on a mule,’ said Vorbis. ‘Often many times in a short distance.’ * It was a small mule and Brutha had long legs; if he’d made the effort he could have remained standing and let the mule trot out from underneath. ‘My grandmother used to give me a thrashing every morning because I would certainly do something to deserve it during the day’ said Brutha. If you spend your whole time thinking about the universe, you tend to forget the less important bits of it. Like your pants. * People think that professional soldiers think a lot about fighting, but serious professional soldiers think a lot more about food and a warm place to sleep, because these are two things that are generally hard to get, whereas fighting tends to turn up all the time. * Humans! They lived in a world where the grass continued to be green and the sun rose every day and flowers regularly turned into fruit, and what impressed them? Weeping statues. And wine made out of water! A mere quantum-mechanistic tunnel effect, that’d happen anyway if you were prepared to wait zillions of years. As if the turning of sunlight into wine, by means of vines and grapes and time and enzymes, wasn’t a thousand times more impressive and happened all the time … * No other library anywhere, for example, has a whole gallery of unwritten books - books that would have been written if the author hadn’t been eaten by an alligator around chapter 1, and so on. Atlases of imaginary places. Dictionaries of illusory words. Spotters’ guides to invisible things. Wild thesauri in the Lost Reading Room. A library so big that it distorts reality and has opened gateways to all other libraries, everywhere and everywhen … * ‘Prince Lasgere of Tsort asked me how he could become learned, especially since he hadn’t got any time for this reading business. I said to him, “There is no royal road to learning, sire,” and he said to me, “Bloody well build one or I shall have your legs chopped off. Use as many slaves as you like.” A refreshingly direct approach, I always thought. Not a man to mince words. People, yes. But not words.’ * Gods are not very introspective. It has never been a survival trait. The ability to cajole, threaten and terrify has always worked well enough. When you can flatten entire cities at a whim, a tendency towards quiet reflection and seeing-things-from-the-other-fellow’s-point-of-view is seldom necessary. Which had led, across the multi-verse, to men and women of tremendous brilliance and empathy devoting their entire lives to the service of deities who couldn’t beat them at a quiet game of dominoes. For example, Sister Sestina of Quirm defied the wrath of a local king and walked unharmed across a bed of coals and propounded a philosophy of sensible ethics on behalf of a goddess whose only real interest was in hairstyles, and Brother Zephilite of Klatch left his vast estates and his family and spent his life ministering to the sick and poor on behalf of the invisible god F’rum, generally considered unable, should he have a backside, to find it with both hands, should he have hands. Gods never need to be very bright when there are humans around to be it for them. * Mountains rise and fall, and under them the Turtle swims onward. Men live and die, and the Turtle Moves. Empires grow and crumble, and the Turtle Moves. Gods come and go, and still the Turtle Moves. The Turtle Moves. * Words are the litmus paper of the mind. If you find yourself in the power of someone who will use the word ‘commence’ in cold blood, go somewhere else very quickly. But if they say ‘Enter,’ don’t stop to pack.   THE Fairies are back - but this time they don’t just want youir teeth… Granny Weatherwax and her tiny coven are tip against real elves. It’s Midsummer Night. No time for dreaming… With full supporting cast of dwarfs, wizards, trolls, Morris dancers and one orang-utan. And lots of hey-nonny-nonny and blood all over the place. Nanny Ogg never did any housework herself, but she was the cause of housework in other people. * Lancre was so small that you couldn’t lie down without a passport. * WILLIAM SCROPE. ‘Yes?’ IF YOU WOULD PLEASE STEP THIS WAY. ‘Are you a hunter?’ I LIKE TO THINK I AM A PICKER-UP OF UNCONSIDERED TRIFLES. Death grinned hopefully. Scrope’s post-physical brow furrowed. ‘What? Like … sherry, custard … that sort of thing?’ * ‘Someone got killed up here.’ ‘Oh, no,’ moaned Nanny Ogg. ‘A tall man. He had one leg longer’n the other. And a beard. He was probably a hunter.’ ‘How’d you know all that?’ ‘I just trod on ’im.’ * ‘Hope Magrat does all right as queen,’ said Nanny. ‘We taught her everything she knows,’ said Granny Weatherwax. ‘Yeah,’ said Nanny Ogg. ‘D’you think … maybe … ?’ ‘What?’ ‘D’you think maybe we ought to have taught her everything we know?’ * The thing about the Librarian was that no one noticed he was an orangutan any more, unless a visitor to the University happened to point it out. In which case someone would say, ‘Oh, yes. Some kind of magical accident, wasn’t it? Pretty sure it was something like that. One minute human, next minute an ape. Funny thing, really … can’t remember what he looked like before. I mean, he must have been human, I suppose. Always thought of him as an ape, really. It’s more him.’ * Magrat normally wore a simple dress with not much underneath it except Magrat. * Nanny subtly breaks the news of a death: ‘Well, now,’ said Nanny, ‘you know the widow Scrope, lives over in Slice?’ Quarney’s mouth opened. ‘She’s not a widow,’ he said. ‘She—’ ‘Bet you half a dollar?’ said Nanny. * Esme’s skill at Borrowing unnerved Nanny Ogg. It was all very well entering the minds of animals and such, but too many witches had never come back. For several years Nanny had put out lumps of fat and bacon rind for a bluetit that she was sure was old Granny Postalute, who’d gone out Borrowing one day and never came back. * Granny Weatherwax had a feeling she was going to die. This was beginning to get on her nerves. * ‘I do apologize for this,’ said the very small highwayman. ‘I find myself a little short.’ * The dwarf bowed and produced a slip of pasteboard from one grubby but lace-clad sleeve. ‘My card,’ he said. It read: ‘Are you really an outrageous liar?’ ‘No.’ ‘Why are you trying to rob coaches, then?’ ‘I am afraid I was waylaid by bandits.’ ‘But it says here,’ said Ridcully ‘that you are a finest swordsman.’ ‘I was outnumbered.’ ‘How many of them were there?’ ‘Three million.’ * ‘You know,’ said Ponder, ‘this reminds me of that famous logical puzzle … There was this man, right, who had to choose between going through two doors, apparently, and the guard on one door always told the truth and the guard on the other door always told a lie, and the thing was, behind one door was certain death, and behind the other door was freedom, and he didn’t know which guard was which, and he could only ask them one question and so: what did he ask?’ ‘Hang on,’ said Casanunda, ‘I think I’ve worked it out. One question, right?’ ‘Yes,’ said Ponder, relieved. ‘And he can ask either guard?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Oh, right. Well, in that case he goes up to the smallest guard and says, “Tell me which is the door to freedom if you don’t want to see the colour of your kidneys and incidentally I’m walking through it behind you, so if you’re trying for the Mr Clever Award just remember who’s going through it first” ‘ ‘No, no, no!’ ‘Sounds logical to me,’ said Ridcully. ‘Very good thinking.’ ‘But you haven’t got a weapon!’ Yes I have. I wrested it from the guard while he was considering the question,’ said Casanunda. * Ponder Stibbons tries to explain parallel universes to Ridcully: ‘Parallel universes, I said. Universes where things didn’t happen like—’ He hesitated. ‘Well, you know that girl?’ ‘What girl?’ ‘The girl you wanted to marry?’ ‘How’d you know that?’ ‘You were talking about her just after lunch.’ ‘Was I? More fool me. Well, what about her?’ ‘Well … in a way, you did marry her,’ said Ponder. Ridcully shook his head. ‘Nope. Pretty certain I didn’t. You remember that sort of thing.’ ‘Ah, but not in this universe—’ ‘You suggestin’ I nipped into some other universe to get married?’ said Ridcully. ‘No! I mean, you got married in that universe and not in this universe,’ said Ponder. ‘Did I? What? A proper ceremony and everything?’ Yes!’ ‘Hmm.’ Ridcully stroked his beard. ‘You sure?’ ‘Certain, Archchancellor.’ ‘My word! I never knew that.’ Ponder felt he was getting somewhere. ‘So—’ Yes?’ ‘Why don’t I remember it?’ Ponder had been ready for this. ‘Because the you in the other universe is different from the you here,’ he said. ‘It was a different you that got married. He’s probably settled down somewhere. He’s probably a great-grandad by now.’ ‘He never writes, I know that,’ said Ridcully. ‘And the bastard never invited me to the wedding.’ ‘Who?’ ‘Him.’ ‘But he’s you!’ ‘Is he? Huh! You’d think I’d think of me, wouldn’t you? What a bastard!’ It wasn’t that Ridcully was stupid. Truly stupid wizards have the life expectancy of a glass hammer. He had quite a powerful intellect, but it was powerful like a locomotive, and ran on rails and was therefore almost impossible to steer. Shawn took a deep breath and leaned over the battlements. ‘Halt! Who Goes There?’ he said. ‘It’s me, Shawn. Your mum.’ ‘Oh, hello, Mum. Hello, Mistress Weatherwax.’ ‘Let us in, there’s a good boy.’ ‘Friend or Foe?’ ‘What?’ ‘It’s what I’ve got to say, Mum. It’s official. And then you’ve got to say Friend.’ ‘I’m your mum.’ You’ve got to do it properly, Mum,’ said Shawn, ‘otherwise what’s the point?’ ‘It’s going to be Foe in a minute, my lad.’ ‘Oooaaaww, Mum!’ ‘Oh, all right. Friend, then.’ ‘Yes, but you could just be saying that—’ * A witch’s cottage is a very specific architectural item. It is not exactly built, but put together over the years as the areas of repair join up, like a sock made entirely of darns. The chimney twists like a corkscrew. The roof is thatch so old that small but flourishing trees are growing in it, the floors are switchbacks, it creaks at night like a tea clipper in a gale. If at least two walls aren’t shored up with balks of timber then it’s not a true witch’s cottage at all, but merely the home of some daft old bat who reads tea leaves and talks to her cat. * The bandit chief knocked on the coach door. The window slid down. ‘I wouldn’t like you to think of this as a robbery,’ he said. ‘I’d like you to think of it more as a colourful anecdote you might enjoy telling your grandchildren about.’ A wizard’s staff poked out. The chieftain saw the knob on the end. ‘Now, then,’ he said, pleasantly. ‘I know the rules. Wizards aren’t allowed to use magic against civilians except in genuine life-threatening situa—’ There was a burst of octarine light. ‘Actually, it’s not a rule,’ said Ridcully ‘It’s more a guideline.’ * ‘I thought that sort of thing was, you know,’ the king grinned sickly, ‘folklore?’ ‘Of course it’s folklore, you stupid man!’ ‘I do happen to be king, you know,’ said Verence reproachfully. ‘You stupid king, your majesty.’ ‘Thank you.’ ‘Elves are beautiful. They’ve got style. Beauty. Grace. That’s what matters. If cats looked like frogs we’d realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are. Style. That’s what people remember.’ ‘Nanny, would you like to be a bridesmaid?’ ‘Not really, dear. Bit old for that sort of thing.’ Nanny hovered. ‘There isn’t anything you need to ask me, though, is there?’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘What with your mum being dead and you having no female relatives and everything …’ Magrat still looked puzzled. ‘After the wedding, is what I’m hinting about,’ said Nanny. ‘Oh, that. No, most of that’s being done by a caterer.’ * It wasn’t that Nanny Ogg sang badly. It was just that she could hit notes which, when amplified by a tin bath half full of water, ceased to be sound and became some sort of invasive presence. There had been plenty of singers whose high notes could smash a glass, but Nanny’s high C could clean it. * ‘Swish city bastards.’ ‘They don’t know what it’s like to be up to the armpit in a cow’s backside on a snowy night. Hah!’ ‘And there ain’t one of ‘em that— what’re you talking about? You ain’t got a cow.’ ‘No, but I know what it’s like.’ * ‘What do we do with the mail?’ said Ridcully ‘I take the palace stuff, and we generally leave the sack hanging up on a nail outside the tavern so that people can help themselves,’ said Shawn. ‘Isn’t that dangerous?’ said Ponder. ‘Don’t think so. It’s a strong nail,’ said Shawn. * ‘I remember years ago my granny telling me about Queen Amonia, well, I say queen, but she never was queen except for about three hours because of what I’m about to unfold, on account of them playing hide-and-seek at the wedding party and her hiding in a big heavy old chest in some attic and the lid slamming shut and no one finding her for seven months, by which time you could definitely say the wedding cake was getting a bit stale.’ ‘That’s the thing about witchcraft,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t exactly keep you young, but you do stay old for longer.’ Nanny said, ‘Funny to think of our Magrat being married and everything.’ ‘What do you mean, everything?’ ‘Well, you know - married,’ said Nanny. ‘I gave her a few tips. Always wear something in bed. Keeps a man interested.’ ‘You always wore your hat.’ ‘Right.’ * ‘What was that dance your Jason and his men did when they’d got drunk?’ said Granny. ‘It’s the Lancre Stick and Bucket Dance, Esme.’ ‘It’s legal, is it?’ ‘Technically they shouldn’t do it when there’s women present,’ said Nanny. ‘Otherwise it’s sexual morrisment.’ * The Monks of Cool, whose tiny and exclusive monastery is hidden in a really cool and laid-back valley in the lower Ramtops, have a passing-out test for a novice. He is taken into a room full of all types of clothing and asked: Yo, my son, which of these is the most stylish thing to wear? And the correct answer is: Hey, whatever I select.   BE a MAN in the City Watch! The City Watch needs MEN!’ But what it’s got includes Corporal Carrot (technically a dwarf), Lance-Constable Detritus (a troll), Lance-Constable Angua (a woman … most of tbe time) and Corporal Nobbs (disqualified from the human race for shoving). And they need all the help they can get. Because they’ve only got twenty-four hours to clean tip the town and this is Ankh-Morpork we’re talking about… ‘Sergeant Colon,’ said Angua. ‘He was the fat one, yes?’ ‘That’s right.’ ‘Why has he got a pet monkey?’ ‘Ah,’ said Carrot. ‘I think it is Corporal Nobbs to whom you refer …’ * ‘Who was that man with the granite face I saw in the Watch House?’ said Angua. ‘That was Detritus the troll,’ said Carrot. ‘No, that man,’ said Angua, learning as had so many others that Carrot tended to have a bit of trouble with metaphors. ‘Face like thu— face like someone very disgruntled.’ ‘Oh, that was Captain Vimes. But he’s never been gruntled, I think’ * Vimes’s meeting with the Patrician ended as all such meetings did, with the guest going away in possession of an unfocused yet nagging suspicion that he’d only just escaped with his life. * Sybil Ramkin lived in the kind of poverty that was only available to the very rich, a poverty approached from the other side. Women who were merely well-off saved up and bought dresses made of silk edged with lace and pearls, but Lady Ramkin was so rich she could afford to stomp around the place in rubber boots and a tweed skirt that had belonged to her mother. She was so rich she could afford to live on biscuits and cheese sandwiches. She was so rich she lived in three rooms in a thirty-four-roomed mansion; the rest of them were full of very expensive and very old furniture, covered in dust sheets. * The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of okay for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness. * The natural condition of the common swamp dragon is to be chronically ill, and the natural state of an unhealthy dragon is to be laminated across the walls, floor and ceiling of whatever room it is in. A swamp dragon is a badly run, dangerously unstable chemical factory one step from disaster. One quite small step. It has been speculated that its habit of exploding violently when angry, excited, frightened or merely plain bored is a developed survival trait† to discourage predators. Eat dragons, it proclaims, and you’ll have a case of indigestion to which the term ‘blast radius’ will be appropriate. * To understand why dwarfs and trolls don’t like each other you have to go back a long way. They get along like chalk and cheese. Very like chalk and cheese, really. One is organic, the other isn’t, and also smells a bit cheesy. Dwarfs make a living by smashing up rocks with valuable minerals in them and the silicon-based lifeform known as trolls are, basically, rocks with valuable minerals in them. * Carrot often struck people as simple. And he was. Where people went wrong was thinking that simple meant the same thing as stupid. Carrot was not stupid. He was direct, and honest, and good-natured and honourable in all his dealings. In Ankh-Morpork this would normally have added up to ‘stupid’ in any case and would have given him the survival quotient of a jellyfish in a blast furnace, but there were a couple of other factors. One was a punch that even trolls had learned to respect. The other was that Carrot was genuinely, almost supernaturally, likeable. He got on well with people, even while arresting them. He had an exceptional memory for names. Vimes would be the first to admit that he wasn’t a good copper, but he’d probably be spared the chore because lots of other people would happily admit it for him. There were such things as dwarf gods. Dwarfs were not a naturally religious species, but in a world where pit props could crack without warning and pockets of fire damp could suddenly explode they’d seen the need for gods as the sort of supernatural equivalent of a hard hat. Besides, when you hit your thumb with an eight-pound hammer it’s nice to be able to blaspheme. It takes a very special and strong-minded kind of atheist to jump up and down with their hand clasped under their other armpit and shout, ‘Oh, random-fluctuations-in-the-space-time-con-tinuum!’ or ‘Aaargh, primitive-and-outmoded-concept on a crutch!’ No clowns were funny. That was the whole purpose of a clown. People laughed at clowns, but only out of nervousness. The point of clowns was that, after watching them, anything else that happened seemed enjoyable. It was nice to know there was someone worse off than you. Three and a half minutes after waking up, Captain Samuel Vimes, Night Watch, staggered up the last few steps on to the roof of the city’s opera house, gasped for breath and threw up allegro ma non troppo. * He didn’t know much about gargoyles. Carrot had said something once about how marvellous it was, an urban troll species that had evolved a symbiotic relationship with gutters, and he had admired the way they funnelled run-off water into their ears and out through fine sieves in their mouths. You didn’t get many birds nesting on buildings colonized by gargoyles. * Vimes snorted. I grew up here, he thought, and when I walk down the street everyone says, ‘Who’s that glum bugger?’ Carrot’s been here a few months and everyone knows him. And he knows everyone. Everyone likes him. I’d be annoyed about that, if only he wasn’t so likeable. * ‘I’d like a couple of eggs,’ said Vimes, ‘with the yolks real hard but the whites so runny that they drip like treacle. And I want bacon, that special bacon all covered with bony nodules and dangling bits of fat. And a slice of fried bread. The kind that makes your arteries go clang just by looking at it.’ ‘Tough order,’ said Harga. ‘You managed it yesterday.’ * Probably no other world in the multiverse has warehouses for things which only exist in potentia, but the pork futures warehouse in Ankh-Morpork is a product of the Patrician’s rules about baseless metaphors, the literal-mindedness of citizens who assume that everything must exist somewhere, and the general thinness of the fabric of reality around Ankh, which is so thin that it’s as thin as a very thin thing. The net result is that trading in pork futures - in pork that doesn’t exist yet - led to the building of the warehouse to store it in until it does. * C. M. O. T. Dibbler had a number of bad points, but species prejudice was not one of them. He liked anyone who had money, regardless of the colour and shape of the hand that was proffering it. For Dibbler believed in a world where a sapient creature could walk tall, breathe free, pursue life, liberty and happiness, and step out towards the bright new dawn. If they could be persuaded to gobble something off Dibbler’s hot-food tray at the same time, this was all to the good. * Leonard of Quirm was not all that old. He was one of those people who started looking venerable around the age of thirty, and would probably still look about the same at the age of ninety. He wasn’t exactly bald, either. His head had just grown up through his hair, rising like a mighty rock dome through heavy forest. * ‘This city is full of clever men,’ said the Patrician …’They never think. They do things like open the Three Jolly Luck Take-Away Fish Bar on the site of the old temple in Dagon Street on the night of the winter solstice when it also happens to be a full moon.’ * ‘Captain Vimes?’ said Carrot, waving a hand in front of his eyes. There was no response. ‘How much has he had?’ ‘Two nips of whiskey, that’s all.’ ‘That shouldn’t do this to him, even on an empty stomach,’ said Carrot. Angua pointed at the neck of a bottle protruding from Vimes’s pocket. ‘I don’t think he’s been drinking on an empty stomach,’ she said. ‘I think he put some alcohol in it first.’ * ‘Oh, no,’ said Sergeant Colon. ‘He’s had a whole bottle!’ Angua picked out the bottle and looked at the label. ‘C. M. O. T Dibbler’s Genuine Authentic Soggy Mountain Dew,’ she read. ‘He’s going to die! It says, “One hundred and fifty per cent proof”!’ ‘Nah, that’s just old Dibbler’s advertising,’ said Nobby. ‘It ain’t got no proof. Just circumstantial evidence.’ * ‘He only drinks when he gets depressed,’ said Carrot. ‘Why does he get depressed?’ ‘Sometimes it’s because he hasn’t had a drink.’ * ‘I appear … to be losing a lot of blood,’ said Lord Vetinari. ‘Who would have thought you had it in you,’ said Vimes, with the frankness of those probably about to die. ‘Captain QuirkeT said Carrot. ‘But he’s … not a good choice.’ ‘Mayonnaise Quirke, we used to call him,’ said Colon. ‘He’s a pillock.’ ‘Don’t tell me,’ said Angua. ‘He’s rich, thick and oily, yes?’ ‘And smells faintly of eggs,’ said Carrot. It’s generally very quiet in the Unseen University library. There’s perhaps the shuffling of feet as wizards wander between the shelves, the occasional hacking cough to disturb the academic silence, and every once in a while a dying scream as an unwary student fails to treat an old magical book with the caution it deserves. * Carrot could lead armies, Angua thought. Some people have inspired whole countries to great deeds because of the power of their vision. And so could he. Not because he dreams about marching hordes, or world domination, or an empire of a thousand years. Just because he thinks that everyone’s really decent underneath and would get along just fine if only they made the effort, and he believes that so strongly it burns like a flame which is bigger than he is. He’s got a dream and we’re all part of it, so that it shapes the world around him. And the weird thing is that no one wants to disappoint him. It’d be like kicking the biggest puppy in the universe. It’s a kind of magic. * ‘Captain Vimes always told me, sir, that there’s big crimes and little crimes. Sometimes the little crimes look big and the big crimes you can hardly see, but the crucial thing is to decide which is which.’ * Foul Ole Ron was a Beggars’ Guild member in good standing. He was a Mutterer, and a good one. He would walk behind people muttering in his own private language until they gave him money not to. People thought he was mad, but this was not, technically, the case. It was just that he was in touch with reality on the cosmic level, and had a bit of trouble focusing on things smaller, like other people, walls and soap (although on very small things, such as coins, his eyesight was Grade A). ‘You can really talk?’ said Carrot. Gaspode rolled his eyes. ‘ ’Course not,’ he said. ‘Who are you?’ said the Patrician. ‘Corporal Nobbs, sir!’ said Nobby, saluting. ‘Do we employ you?’ ‘Yessir!’ ‘Ah. You’re the dwarf, are you?’ ‘Nosir. That was the late Cuddy, sir! I’m one of the human beings, sir!’ You’re not employed as the result of any … special hiring procedures?’ ‘Nosir,’ said Nobby, proudly. ‘My word.’ * The Patrician steepled his fingers and looked at Carrot over the top of them. It was a mannerism that had unnerved many. † From the point of view of the species as a whole. Not from the point of view of the dragon now landing in small pieces around the landscape.   OTHER children got given xylophones. Susan just had to ask her grandfather to take his vest off. Yes. There’s a Death in the family. It’s hard to grow up normally when Grandfather rides a white horse and wields a scythe - especially when you have to take over the family business, and everyone mistakes you for the Tooth Fairy. And especially when you have to face the new and addictive music that has entered the Discworld. It’s lawless. It changes people. It’s called Music With Rocks In. It’s got a beat and you can dance to it, but… It’s alive. And it won’t fade away. It was raining in the small, mountainous country of Llamedos. It was always raining in Llamedos. Rain was the country’s main export. It had rain mines. People came to Ankh-Morpork to seek their fortune. Unfortunately, other people sought it too. Lord Vetinari had encouraged the growth of the Guilds. They were the big wheels on which the clockwork of a well-regulated city ran. A drop of oil here … a spoke inserted there, of course … and by and large it all worked. * It looked the kind of musical instrument emporium which doubles as a pawnshop, since every musician has at some time in his life to hand over his instrument if he wants to eat and sleep indoors. * ‘We haven’t even practised together properly,’ said Imp. ‘We’ll practise as we go along,’ said Glod. ‘Welcome to the world of professional musicianship.’ * The raven had grown up in the forever-crumbling, ivy-clad Tower of Art, overlooking Unseen University in far Ankh-Morpork … The wizard who thought he owned him called him Quoth. * There is a type of girl who, while incapable of cleaning her bedroom even at knifepoint, will fight for the privilege of being allowed to spend the day shovelling manure in a stable. * Quirm wasn’t a night town. People who came to Quirm looking for a good time went somewhere else. Quirm was so respectable that even dogs asked permission before going to the lavatory. * ‘Ride the horse.’ ‘Where to?’ ‘That’s for me not to know and you to find out.’ * CURRY GARDENS Curry with Vegetable … … . . 8p Curry with Meat … … … . . 10p Curry with Named Meat … . . 15p * Albert was bent over the stove. ‘Morning,’ he said. ‘You want fried bread with your sausages?’ Susan looked at the mess sizzling in the huge frying pan. It wasn’t a sight to be seen on an empty stomach, although it could probably cause one. Albert could make an egg wish it had never been laid. * The Mended Drum had traditionally gone in for, well, traditional pub games, such as dominoes, darts and Stabbing People In The Back And Taking All Their Money. * ‘Why’d you want to come here?’ she said. ‘This is a battlefield, isn’t it?’ said the raven patiently. ‘You’ve got to have ravens afterwards.’ Its freewheeling eyes swivelled in its head. ‘Carrion regardless, as you might say.’ * Death decides to join the Klatchian Foreign Legion. He arrives at one of their forts and knocks: IS THIS THE KLATCHIAN FOREIGN LEGION? The face of the little man on the other side of the door went blank. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘you’ve got me there. Hang on a moment.’ The hatch shut. There was a whispered discussion on the other side of the door. The hatch opened. ‘Yes, it appears we are the . .. the … what was that again? Right, got it … the Klatchian Foreign Legion. Yes. What was it you were wanting?’ I WISH TO JOIN. ‘Join? Join what?’ THE KLATCHIAN FOREIGN LEGION. ‘Where’s that?’ There was some more whispering. ‘Oh. Right. Sorry. Yes. That’s us.’ The doors swung open. The visitor strode in. A legionary with corporal’s stripes on his arm walked up to him. You’ll have to report to …’ his eyes glazed a little, ‘… you know … big man, three stripes … on the tip of my tongue a moment ago …’ SERGEANT? ‘Right,’ said the corporal, with relief. ‘What’s your name, soldier?’ ER… You don’t have to say, actually. That’s what the … the …’ KLATCHIAN FOREIGN LEGION? ‘… what it’s all about. People join to … to … with your mind, you know, when you can’t… things that happened …’ FORGET? ‘Right. I’m …’ The man’s face went blank. ‘Wait a minute, would you?’ He looked down at his sleeve. ‘Corporal …’ he said. He hesitated, looking worried. Then an idea struck him and he pulled at the collar of his vest and twisted his neck until he could squint, with considerable difficulty, at the label thus revealed. ‘Corporal … Medium? Does that sound right?’ I DON’T THINK SO. ‘Corporal … Hand Wash Only?’ PROBABLY NOT. ‘Corporal … Cotton?’ IT’S A POSSIBILITY. ‘Right. Well, welcome to the … er …’ KLATCHIAN FOREIGN LEGION … ‘Right. The pay is three dollars a week and all the sand you can eat.’ * The tradition of promotion in the University by filling dead men’s shoes, sometimes by firstly ensuring the death of the man in those shoes, had lately ceased. This was largely because of Ridcully himself, who was big and kept himself in trim and, as three late-night aspirants to the Archchancellorship had found, also had very good hearing. They had been variously hung out of the window by their ankles, knocked unconscious with a shovel, and had their arm broken in two places. Besides, Ridcully was known to sleep with two loaded crossbows by his bed. He was a kind man and probably wouldn’t shoot you in both ears. * There was an Ankh-Morpork legend about some old drum in the Palace that was supposed to bang itself if an enemy fleet was seen sailing up the Ankh. The legend had died out in recent centuries, partly because this was the Age of Reason and also because no enemy fleet could sail up the Ankh without a gang of men with shovels going in front. * Unseen University was used to eccentricity among the faculty. After all, humans derive their notions of what it means to be a normal human being by constant reference to the humans around them, and when those humans are other wizards the spiral can only wiggle downwards. The Librarian was an orang-utan, and no one thought that was at all odd. The Reader in Esoteric Studies spent so much time reading in what the Bursar referred to as ‘the smallest room’ that he was generally referred to as the Reader in The Lavatory, even on official documents.† The Bursar himself in any normal society would have been considered more unglued than a used stamp in a downpour. The Archchancellor, who regularly used the long gallery above the Great Hall for archery practice and had accidentally shot the Bursar twice, thought the whole faculty was as crazy as loons, whatever a loon was. ‘Not enough fresh air,’ he’d say. ‘Too much sittin’ around indoors. Rots the brain.’ More often he’d say, ‘Duck!’ * Leonard of Quirm: skilled artist and certified genius with a mind that wandered so much it came back with souvenirs. Leonard’s books were full of sketches - of kittens, of the way water flows, of the wives of influential Ankh-Morporkian merchants whose portraits had provided his means of making a living. But Leonard had been a genius and was deeply sensitive to the wonders of the world, so the margins were full of detailed doodles of whatever was on his mind at that moment - vast water-powered engines for bringing down city walls on the heads of the enemy, new types of siege guns for pumping flaming oil over the enemy, gunpowder rockets that showered the enemy with burning phosphorus, and other manufactures of the Age of Reason. * ‘Proper footwear for a wizard is pointy shoes or good stout boots,’ said Ridcully. ‘When one’s footwear turns creepy, something’s amiss.’ ‘It’s crêpe,’ said the Dean. ‘It’s got a little pointy thingy over the—’ Ridcully breathed heavily. ‘When your boots change by themselves—’ he growled. ‘There’s magic afoot?’ * Susan … it wasn’t a good name, was it? It wasn’t a truly bad name, it wasn’t like poor Iodine in the fourth form, or Nigella, a name which means ‘oops, we wanted a boy’. But it was dull. Susan. Sue. Good old Sue. It was a name that made sandwiches, kept its head in difficult circumstances and could reliably look after other people’s children. It was a name used by no queens or goddesses anywhere. And you couldn’t do much even with the spelling. You could turn it into Suzi, and it sounded as though you danced on tables for a living. You could put in a Z and a couple of Ns and an E, but it still looked like a name with extensions built on. It was as bad as Sara, a name that cried out for a prosthetic H. Dwarfs respected learning, provided they didn’t have to experience it. The Patrician leaned back in an attitude that suggested attentive listening. He was extremely good at listening. He created a kind of mental suction. People told him things just to avoid the silence. * ‘mumblemumblemumble,’ said the Dean defiantly, a rebel without a pause. * Chrysoprase had been a very quick learner when he arrived in Ankh-Morpork. He began with an important lesson: hitting people was thuggery. Paying other people to do the hitting on your behalf was good business. * There is something very sad about an empty dressing room. It’s like a discarded pair of underpants, which it resembles in a number of respects. It’s seen a lot of activity. It may even have witnessed excitement and a whole gamut of human passions. And now there’s nothing much left but a faint smell. * Foul Ole Ron was a physical schizophrenic. There was Foul Ole Ron, and there was the smell of Foul Ole Ron, which had obviously developed over the years to such an extent that it had a distinct personality. Anyone could have a smell that lingered long after they’d gone somewhere else, but the smell of Foul Ole Ron could actually arrive somewhere several minutes before he did, in order to spread out and get comfortable before he arrived. It had evolved into something so striking that it was no longer perceived with the nose, which shut down instantly in self-defence; people could tell that Foul Ole Ron was approaching by the way their ear wax started to melt. * ‘Ah, Drumknott,’ said Lord Vetinari, ‘just go and tell the head of the Musicians’ Guild he wants a word with me, will you?’ * Glod the dwarf looked up at a blank wall. ‘I knew it!’ he said. ‘Didn’t I say? Magic! How many times have we heard this story? There’s a mysterious shop no one’s ever seen before, and someone goes in and buys some rusty old curio, and it turns out to—’ ‘Glod—’ ‘—be some kind of talisman or a bottle full of genie, and then when there’s trouble they go back and the shop—’ ‘Glod—?’ ‘—has mysteriously disappeared and gone back to whatever dimension it came from— yes, what is it?’ ‘You’re on the wrong side of the road. It’s over here.’ * Senior wizards developed a distinctive 50” waist, 25” leg shape that suggested someone who sat on a wall and required royal assistance to be put together again. * The Patrician was a pragmatist. He never tried to fix things that worked. Things that didn’t work, however, got broken. * The question seldom addressed is where Medusa had snakes. Underarm hair is an even more embarrassing problem when it keeps biting the top of the deodorant bottle. * According to rural legend - at least in those areas where pigs are a vital part of the household economy - the Hogfather is a winter myth figure who, on Hogswatchnight, gallops from house to house on a crude sledge drawn by four tusked wild boars to deliver presents of sausages, black puddings, pork scratchings and ham to all children who have been good. He says ‘Ho ho ho’ a lot. Children who have been bad get a bag full of bloody bones (it’s these little details which tell you it’s a tale for the little folk). There is a song about him. It begins: You’d Better Watch Out.. . The Hogfather is said to have originated in the legend of a local king who, one winter’s night, happened to be passing, or so he said, the home of three young women and heard them sobbing because they had no food to celebrate the midwinter feast. He took pity on them and threw a packet of sausages through the window.† * Rats had featured largely in the history of Ankh-Morpork. Shortly before the Patrician came to power there was a terrible plague of rats. The city council countered it by offering twenty pence for every rat tail. This did, for a week or two, reduce the number of rats - and then people were suddenly queuing up with tails, the city treasury was being drained, and no one seemed to be doing much work. And there still seemed to be a lot of rats around. Lord Vetinari had listened carefully while the problem was explained, and had solved the thing with one memorable phrase which said a lot about him, about the folly of bounty offers, and about the natural instinct of Ankh-Morporkians in any situation involving money: ‘Tax the rat farms.’ Old shoes always turn up in the bottom of every wardrobe. If a mermaid had a wardrobe old shoes would turn up in the bottom of it. † The Reader had a theory that all the really good books in any building - at least, all the really funny ones - gravitate to a pile in the privy but no one ever has time to read all of them, or even knows how they came to be there. X The ones with cartoons about cows and dogs. And captions like: ‘As soon as he saw the duck, Elmer knew it was going to be a bad day.’ † Badly concussing one of them, but there’s no point in spoiling a good legend.   MIGHTY battles! Revolution! Death! War! (and his sons Terror and Panic, and daughter Glancy). The oldest and most inscrutable empire on the Discworld is in turmoil, brought about by the revolutionary treatise What I Did On My Holidays. Workers are uniting, with nothing to lose but their water buffaloes. War (and Clancy) are spreading throughout the ancient cities. And all that stands in the way of terrible doom for everyone is: Rincewind the Wizzard, who can’t even spell the word ‘wizard’… Cohen the barbarian hero, five foot tall in his surgical sandals, who has a lifetime’s experience of not dying… … and a very special butterfly. It was, as always, a matter of protocol … Lord Vetinari, as supreme ruler of Ankh-Morpork, could in theory summon the Archchancellor of Unseen University to his presence and, indeed, have him executed if he failed to obey. On the other hand Mustrum Ridcully, as head of the college of wizards, had made it clear in polite but firm ways that he could turn him into a small amphibian and, indeed, start jumping around the room on a pogo stick. Alcohol bridged the diplomatic gap nicely. Sometimes Lord Vetinari invited the Archchancellor to the Palace for a convivial drink. And of course the Archchancellor went, because it would be bad manners not to. And everyone understood the position, and everyone was on their best behaviour, and thus civil unrest and slime on the carpet were averted. * Many things went on at Unseen University and, regrettably, teaching had to be one of them. The faculty had long ago confronted this fact and had perfected various devices for avoiding it. But this was perfectly all right because, to be fair, so had the students. The system worked quite well and, as happens in such cases, had taken on the status of a tradition. Lectures clearly took place, because they were down there on the timetable in black and white. The fact that no one attended was an irrelevant detail. It was occasionally maintained that this meant that the lectures did not in fact happen at all, but no one ever attended them to find out if this was true. Anyway, it was argued that lectures had taken place in essence, so that was all right, too. And therefore education at the University mostly worked by the age-old method of putting a lot of young people in the vicinity of a lot of books and hoping that something would pass from one to the other, while the actual young people put themselves in the vicinity of inns and taverns for exactly the same reason. * ‘Round everyone up. My study. Ten minutes,’ said Ridcully. He was a great believer in this approach. A less direct Archchancellor would have wandered around looking for everyone. His policy was to find one person and make their life difficult until everything happened the way he wanted it to. * ‘Oh, no,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, pushing his chair back. ‘Not that. That’s meddling with things you don’t understand.’ ‘Well we are wizards,’ said Ridcully. ‘We’re supposed to meddle with things we don’t understand. If we hung around waitin’ till we understood things we’d never get anything done.’ * Lord Hong had risen to the leadership of one of the most influential families in the Empire by relentless application, total focusing of his mental powers, and six well-executed deaths. The last one had been that of his father, who’d died happy in the knowledge that his son was maintaining an old family tradition. The senior families venerated their ancestors, and saw no harm in prematurely adding to their number. * ‘Comrades, we must strike at the very heart of the rottenness. We must storm the Winter Palace!’ ‘Excuse me, but it is June.’ ‘Then we can storm the Summer Palace!’ * Lord Hong was playing chess, against himself. It was the only way he could find an opponent of his calibre but, currently, things were stalemated because both sides were adopting a defensive strategy which was, admittedly, brilliant. * There was this to be said about Cohen. If there was no reason for him to kill you, such as you having any large amount of treasure or being between him and somewhere he wanted to get to, then he was good company. * ‘You know their big dish down on the coast?’ [said Cohen.] ‘No.’ ‘Pig’s ear soup. Now, what’s that tell you about a place, eh?’ Rincewind shrugged. ‘Very provident people?’ ‘Some other bugger pinches the pig … There’s men here who can push a wheelbarrow for thirty miles on a bowl of millet with a bit of scum in it. What does that tell you? It tells me someone’s porking all the beef * Self-doubt was not something regularly entertained within the Cohen cranium. When you’re trying to carry a struggling temple maiden and a sack of looted temple goods in one hand and fight off half a dozen angry priests with the other there is little time for reflection. Natural selection saw to it that professional heroes who at a crucial moment tended to ask themselves questions like ‘What is my purpose in life?’ very quickly lacked both. * Cohen’s father had taken him to a mountain top, when he was no more than a lad, and explained to him the hero’s creed and told him that there was no greater joy than to die in battle. Cohen had seen the flaw in this straight away, and a lifetime’s experience had reinforced his belief that in fact a greater joy was to kill the other bugger in battle and end up sitting on a heap of gold higher than your horse. * ‘We are a travelling theatre,’ she said. ‘It is convenient. Noh actors are allowed to move around.’ ‘Aren’t they?’ said Rincewind. ‘You do not understand. We are Noh actors.’ ‘Oh, you weren’t too bad.’ * Merchants always had money. But it seemed wrong to think of it as belonging to them; it belonged to whoever took it off them. Merchants didn’t actually own it, they were just looking after it until it was needed. * The Silver Horde were honest (from their specialized point of view) and decent (from their specialized point of view) and saw the world as hugely simple. They stole from rich merchants and temples and kings. They didn’t steal from poor people; this was not because there was anything virtuous about poor people, it was simply because poor people had no money. And although they didn’t set out to give the money away to the poor, that was nevertheless what they did (if you accepted that the poor consisted of innkeepers, ladies of negotiable virtue, pickpockets, gamblers and general hangers-on), because although they would go to great lengths to steal money they then had as much control over it as a man trying to herd cats. It was there to be spent and lost. So they kept the money in circulation, always a praiseworthy thing in any society. * Eventually an officious voice said, ‘What do you have to say for yourself, miserable louse?’ ‘Well, I—’ ‘Silence!’ Ah. So it was going to be that kind of interview. * Six Beneficent Winds had the same sense of humour as a chicken casserole. True, he played the accordion for amusement, and disliked cats intensely, and had a habit of dabbing his upper lip with his napkin after his tea ceremony in a way that had made Mrs Beneficent Winds commit murder in her mind on a regular basis over the years. And he kept his money in a small leather shovel purse, and counted it out very thoroughly whenever he made a purchase, especially if there was a queue behind him. * Rincewind and Twoflower lay in their separate cells and talked about the good old days. At least, Twoflower talked about the good old days. Rincewind worked at a crack in the stone with a piece of straw, it being all he had to hand. It would take several thousand years to make any kind of impression, but that was no reason to give up … A little piece of mortar fell away. Not bad for ten minutes’ work, thought Rincewind. Come the next Ice Age, we’re out of here … * ‘But there are causes worth dying for,’ said Butterfly. ‘No, there aren’t! Because you’ve only got one life but you can pick up another five causes on any street corner!’ ‘Good grief, how can you live with a philosophy like that?’ Rincewind took a deep breath. ‘Continuously!’ ‘Luck is my middle name,’ said Rincewind, indistinctly. ‘Mind you, my first name is Bad.’ It was something about Cohen. Maybe it was what they called charisma. It overpowered even his normal smell of a goat that had just eaten curried asparagus. * There was muttering from the Horde. ‘Bruce the Hoon never went in the back way’ ‘Shut up.’ ‘Never one for back gates, Bruce the Hoon.’ ‘Shut up.’ ‘When Bruce the Hoon attacked Al Khali, he did it right at the main guard tower, with a thousand screaming men on very small horses.’ ‘Yeah, but… last I saw of Bruce the Hoon, his head was on a spike.’ ‘All right, I’ll grant you that. But at least it was over the main gate. I mean, at least he got in.’ ‘His head did.’ * ‘Who’re you?’ said Cohen. He drew his sword. ‘I need to know so’s it can be put on your gravestone—’ * ‘They want to parley’ said Six Beneficent Winds. ‘Why don’t we just invite them to dinner and massacre them all when they’re drunk?’ ‘You heard the man. There’s seven hundred thousand of them.’ ‘Ah? So it’d have to be something simple with pasta, then.’ * The Four Horsemen whose Ride presages the end of the world are known to be Death, War, Famine and Pestilence. But even less significant events have their own Horsemen. For example, the Four Horsemen of the Common Cold are Sniffles, Chesty, Nostril and Lack of Tissues; the Four Horsemen whose appearance foreshadows any public holiday are Storm, Gales, Sleet and Contra-flow. * Lord Hong looked at himself in the mirror. He’d gone to great lengths to achieve this. He had used several agents, none of whom knew the whole plan. But the Ankh-Morpork tailor had been good at his work and the measurements had been followed exactly. From pointy boots to hose to doublet, cloak and hat with a feather in it, Lord Hong knew he was a perfect Ankh-Morpork gentleman. The cloak was lined with silk. He’d walk through the city on that first great day and the people would be silent when they saw their natural leader. It never crossed his mind that anyone would say, ‘ ‘Ere, wot a toff! ‘Eave ‘arf a brick at ‘im!’ * ‘You sound a very educated man for a barbarian,’ said Rincewind. ‘I didn’t start out a barbarian. I used to be a school teacher. But I decided to give it up and make a living by the sword.’ ‘After being a teacher all your life?’ ‘It did mean a change of perspective, yes.’ ‘But … well … surely … the privation, the terrible hazards, the daily risk of death …’ Mr Saveloy brightened up. ‘Oh, you’ve been a teacher, have you?’ * ‘There’s a lot of waiting in warfare,’ said Boy Willie. ‘Ah, yes,’ said Mr Saveloy. ‘I’ve heard people say that. They say there’s long periods of boredom followed by short periods of excitement.’ ‘Not really’ said Cohen. ‘It’s more like short periods of waiting followed by long periods of being dead.’ * There were a large number of ranks in the armies of the Empire, and many of them were untranslatable. Three Pink Pig and Five White Fang were, loosely speaking, privates, and not just because they were pale, vulnerable and inclined to curl up and hide when danger threatened. * Pushing their way angrily through the soldiers came an altogether different breed of warrior. They were taller, and heavier armoured, with splendid helmets and moustaches that looked like a declaration of war in themselves. ‘Wassat?’ said Cohen. ‘He’s a samurai,’ said Mr Saveloy. One samurai glared at Cohen. He pulled a scrap of silk out of his armour and tossed it into the air. His other hand grabbed the hilt of his long, thin sword … There was hardly even a hiss, but three shreds of silk tumbled gently to the ground. ‘Get back, Teach,’ said Cohen slowly. ‘I reckon this one’s mine. Got another hanky? Thanks.’ The samurai looked at Cohen’s sword. It was long, heavy and had so many notches it could have been used as a saw. ‘You’ll never do it,’ he said. ‘With that sword? Never.’ Cohen blew his nose noisily. ‘You say?’ he said. ‘Watch this.’ The handkerchief soared into the air. Cohen gripped his sword … He’d beheaded three upward-staring samurai before the handkerchief started to tumble. ‘And the message is,’ said Cohen, ‘either fight or muck about, it’s up to you.’ * Golem … They were usually just figures made out of clay and animated with some suitable spell or prayer. They pottered about doing simple odd jobs. The problem was not putting them to work but stopping them from working; if you set a golem to digging the garden and then forgot about it, you’d come back to find it’d planted a row of beans 1500 miles long. Woolly Thinking. Which is like Fuzzy Logic, only less so.   THE Opera House, Ankb-Morpork… … a huge, rambling building, where masked figures and hooded shadows do wicked deeds in the wings… where dying the death on stage is a little bit more than just a metaphor… where innocent young sopranos are lured to their destiny by an evil mastermind in a hideously deformed evening dress… Where… … there’s a couple of old ladies in pointy hats eating peanuts in the gods and looking tip at the big chandelier and saying things like: ‘There’s an accident waiting to happen if ever I saw one.’ Yes … Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, the Discworld’s greatest witches, are back for an innocent night out at the opera. So there’s going to be trouble (but nevertheless a good evening’s entertainment with murders you can really hum …) Black Aliss; pushed into her own stove by a couple of kids, and everyone said it was a damn’ good thing, even if it took a whole week to clean the oven. They said weapons couldn’t pierce her. Swords bounced off her skin. And she turned people into gingerbread and had a house made of frogs. * She stopped. At least, most of Agnes stopped. There was a lot of Agnes. It took some time for outlying regions to come to rest. * Agnes had woken up one morning with the horrible realization that she’d been saddled with a lovely personality. It was the lack of choice that rankled. No one had asked her, before she was born, whether she wanted a lovely personality or whether she’d prefer, say, a miserable personality but a body that could take size 9 in dresses. Instead, people would take pains to tell her that beauty was only skin-deep, as if a man ever fell for an attractive pair of kidneys. * People were generally glad to see Nanny Ogg. She was good at making them feel at home in their own home. * Lancre had always bred strong, capable women. A Lancre farmer needed a wife who’d think nothing of beating a wolf to death with her apron when she went out to get some firewood. And, while kissing initially seemed to have more charms than cookery, a stolid Lancre lad looking for a bride would bear in mind his father’s advice that kisses eventually lost their fire but cookery tended to get even better over the years, and direct his courting to those families that clearly showed a tradition of enjoying their food. * Granny is always there for the difficult times. ‘Maybe you could … help us?’ ‘What’s wrong?’ ‘It’s my boy …’ Granny opened the door further and saw the woman standing behind Mr Slot. One look at her face was enough. There was a bundle in her arms. Granny stepped back. ‘Bring him in and let me have a look at him.’ She took the baby from the woman, sat down on the room’s one chair, and pulled back the blanket. ‘Hmm,’ said Granny, after a while. ‘There’s a curse on this house, that’s what it is,’ said Slot. ‘My best cow’s been taken mortally sick, too.’ ‘Oh? You have a cowshed?’ said Granny. ‘Very good place for a sickroom, a cowshed. It’s the warmth. You better show me where it is.’ You want to take the boy down there?’ ‘Right now.’ The man looked at his wife, and shrugged. ‘Well, I’m sure you know your business best,’ he said. ‘It’s this way’ He led the witches down some back stairs and across a yard and into the fetid sweet air of the byre. A cow was stretched out on the straw. It rolled an eye madly as they entered, and tried to moo. Granny took in the scene and stood looking thoughtful for a moment. Then she said, ‘This will do.’ ‘What do you need?’ said Slot. ‘All I shall require is a candle,’ said Granny. ‘A new one, for preference.’ ‘That’s all?’ ‘And some matches,’ said Granny. A pack of cards might be useful, too.’ The child was brought down in a blanket and made as comfortable as possible. ‘You just leave me in here tonight. And no one is to come in, right? No matter what.’ The mother gave a worried curtsey. ‘But I thought I might look in about midn—’ ‘No one. Now, off you go.’ Granny closed the door. She spent some time arranging boxes and barrels so that she had a crude table and something to sit on. The air was warm and smelled of bovine flatulence. Periodically she checked the health of both patients, although there was little enough to check. She waited a little longer and then lit the candle. Its cheery flame gave the place a warm and comforting glow. After some immeasurable piece of time the flame flickered. It would have passed unnoticed by anyone who hadn’t been concentrating on it for some while. She took a deep breath and— ‘Good morning,’ said Granny Weatherwax. GOOD MORNING, said a voice by her ear. Granny breathed out, slowly. ‘Come and sit where I can see you. That’s good manners. And let me tell you right now that I ain’t at all afraid of you.’ The tall, black-robed figure walked across the floor and sat down on a handy barrel, leaning its scythe against the wall. Then it pushed back its hood. Granny folded her arms and stared calmly at the visitor, meeting his gaze eye-to-socket. Death leaned forward. The candlelight raised new shadows on his skull. COURAGE IS EASY BY CANDLELIGHT. YOUR FAITH, I SUSPECT, IS IN THE FLAME. Granny leaned forward, and blew out the candle. Then she folded her arms again and stared fiercely ahead of her. After some length of time a voice said, All right, you’ve made your point. Granny lit a match. Its flare illuminated the skull opposite, which hadn’t moved. ‘Fair enough,’ she said, as she relit the candle. ‘We don’t want to be sitting here all night, do we? How many have you come for?’ ONE. ‘The cow?’ Death shook his head. ‘It could be the cow.’ NO. THAT WOULD BE CHANGING HISTORY. ‘History is about things changing.’ NO. Granny sat back. ‘Then I challenge you to a game. That’s traditional. That’s allowed.’ Death was silent for a moment. THIS IS TRUE. ‘Good.’ HOWEVER … YOU UNDERSTAND THAT TO WIN ALL YOU MUST GAMBLE ALL? ‘Double or quits? Yes, I know.’ BUT NOT CHESS. ‘Can’t abide chess.’ OR CRIPPLE MR ONION. I’VE NEVER BEEN ABLE TO UNDERSTAND THE RULES. ‘Very well. How about one hand of poker? Five cards each, no draws? Sudden death, as they say’ Death thought about this, too. YOU KNOW THIS FAMILY? No. THEN WHY? ‘Are we talking or are we playing?’ OH, VERY WELL. Granny picked up the pack of cards and shuffled it, not looking at her hands, and smiling at Death all the time. She dealt five cards each. Granny looked at her cards, and threw them down. FOUR QUEENS. HMM. THAT IS VERY HIGH. Death looked down at his cards, and then up into Granny’s steady, blue-eyed gaze. Neither moved for some time. Then Death laid the hand on the table. I LOSE, he said. All I HAVE IS FOUR ONES. He looked back into Granny’s eyes for a moment. There was a blue glow in the depth of his eye-sockets. Maybe, for the merest fraction of a second, barely noticeable even to the closest observation, one winked off. Granny nodded, and extended a hand. She prided herself on the ability to judge people by their gaze and their handshake, which in this case was a rather chilly one. ‘Take the cow,’ she said. IT IS A VALUABLE CREATURE. ‘Who knows what the child will become?’ Death stood up, and reached for his scythe. He said, OW. ‘Ah, yes. I couldn’t help noticing,’ said Granny Weatherwax, as the tension drained out of the atmosphere, ‘that you seem to be sparing that arm.’ OH, YOU KNOW HOW IT IS. REPETITIVE ACTIONS AND SO ON … ‘It could get serious if you left it.’ HOW SERIOUS? ‘Want me to have a look?’ WOULD YOU MIND? IT CERTAINLY ACHES ON COLD NIGHTS. Granny’s hands touched smooth bone. She felt, thought, gripped, twisted … There was a click. OW. ‘Now try it above the shoulder.’ ER. HMM. YES. IT DOES SEEM CONSIDERABLY MORE FREE. YES, INDEED. MY WORD, YES. THANK YOU VERY MUCH. Death walked away. A moment later there was a faint gasp from the cow. That and a slight sagging of the skin were all that apparently marked the transition from living animal to cooling meat. Granny picked up the baby and laid a hand on its forehead. ‘Fever’s gone,’ she said. MISTRESS WEATHERWAX? said Death from the doorway. ‘Yes, sir?’ I HAVE TO KNOW. WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF I HAD NOT … LOST? ‘At the cards, you mean?’ YES. WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE? Granny laid the baby down carefully on the straw, and smiled. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘for a start … I’d have broken your bloody arm.’ * ‘So you’ll go and see Mr Goatberger and have this stopped, right?’ Yes, Esme.’ ‘And I’ll come with you to make sure you do.’ Yes, Esme.’ ‘And we’ll talk to the man about your money’ ‘Yes, Esme.’ ‘And we might just drop in on young Agnes to make sure she’s all right.’ ‘Yes, Esme.’ ‘But we’ll do it diplomatic like. We don’t want people thinkin’ we’re pokin’ our noses in.’ ‘Yes, Esme.’ ‘No one could say I interfere where I’m not wanted. You won’t find anyone callin’ me a busybody’ Yes, Esme.’ ‘That was, “Yes, Esme, you won’t find anyone callin’ you a busybody”, was it?’ ‘Oh, yes, Esme.’ You sure about that?’ Yes, Esme.’ ‘Good.’ ‘It’s too draughty on broomsticks this time of year, Esme. The breeze gets into places I wouldn’t dream of talking about.’ ‘Really? Can’t imagine where those’d be, then.’ She looked around with a wide, friendly grin at the occupants of the coach. ‘Morning,’ she said, delving into the sack. ‘I’m Gytha Ogg, I’ve got fifteen children, this is my friend Esme Weatherwax, we’re going to Ankh-Morpork, would anyone like an egg sandwich? I’ve brung plenty. The cat’s been sleepin’ on them but they’re fine, look, they bend back all right. No? Please yourself, I’m sure. Let’s see what else we’ve got … ah, has anybody got an opener for a bottle of beer?’ A man in the corner indicated that he might have such a thing. ‘Fine,’ said Nanny Ogg. ‘Anyone got something to drink a bottle of beer out of?’ Another man nodded hopefully. ‘Good,’ said Nanny Ogg. ‘Now, has anybody got a bottle of beer?’ Ahahahahaha! Ahahahaha! Aahahaha! BEWARE!!!!! Yrs sincerely, The Opera Ghost ‘What sort of person,’ said Salzella, ‘sits down and writes a maniacal laugh? And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head. Opera can do that to a man.’ Most people in Lancre, as the saying goes, went to bed with the chickens and got up with the cows.† * ‘I grew up in Rookery Yard in The Shades. They’re in Ankh-Morpork,’ said Henry. ‘It was a terrible rough place. There were only three ways out. You could sing your way out or you could fight your way out.’ ‘What was the third way?’ said Nanny. ‘Oh, you could go down that little alleyway into Shamlegger Street and then cut down into Treacle Mine Road,’ said Henry. ‘But no one ever amounted to anything who went that way’ * You … you do know what kind of place this is, do you, Esme?’ said Nanny Ogg. ‘Oh, yes,’ said Granny, calmly. Nanny’s patience gave out. ‘It’s a house of ill repute, is what it is!’ ‘On the contrary’ said Granny. ‘I believe people speak very highly of it.’ * ‘I’m Mrs Ogg,’ said Nanny Ogg. The man looked her up and down. ‘Oh yes? Can you identify yourself?’ ‘Certainly I’d know me anywhere.’ * ‘Honestly, Salzella .. . what is the difference between opera and madness?’ ‘Is this a trick question?’ * The Opera House was that most efficiently multifunctional of building designs. It was a cube. But the architect had suddenly realized late in the day that there ought to be some sort of decoration, and had shoved it on hurriedly, in a riot of friezes, pillars, corybants and curly bits. Gargoyles had colonized the higher reaches. The effect, seen from the front, was of a huge wall of tortured stone. Round the back, of course, there was the usual drab mess of windows, pipes and damp stone walls. One of the rules of a certain type of public architecture is that it only happens at the front. * ‘Well, basically there are two sorts of opera,’ said Nanny, who also had the true witch’s ability to be confidently expert on the basis of no experience whatsoever. ‘There’s your heavy opera, where basically people sing foreign and it goes like “Oh oh oh, I am dyin’, oh, I am dyin’, oh, oh, oh, that’s what I’m doin’”, and there’s your light opera, where they sing in foreign and it basically goes “Beer! Beer! Beer! Beer! I like to drink lots of beer!”, although sometimes they drink champagne instead. That’s basically all of opera, reely’ * Someone tapped Granny Weatherwax on her shoulder. ‘Madam, kindly remove your hat.’ Nanny Ogg choked on her peppermint. Granny Weatherwax turned to the red-faced gentleman behind her. ‘You do know what a woman in a pointy hat is, don’t you?’ she said. ‘Yes, madam. A woman in a pointy hat is sitting in front of me.’ * People didn’t take any notice of little old ladies who looked as though they fitted in, and Nanny Ogg could fit in faster than a dead chicken in a maggot factory. Nanny had a mind like a buzzsaw behind a face like an elderly apple. This was Ankh-Morpork’s most prestigious dress shop, and one way of telling was the apparent absence of anything so crass as merchandise. The occasional carefully placed piece of expensive material merely hinted at the possibilities available. This was not a shop where things were bought. This was an emporium where you had a cup of coffee and a chat. Possibly, as a result of that muted conversation, four or five yards of exquisite fabric would change ownership in some ethereal way, and yet nothing so crass as trade would have taken place. There was a crash from the direction of the kitchen, although it was really more of a crashendo—the long-drawn-out clatter that begins when a pile of plates begins to slip, continues when someone tries to grab at them, develops a desperate counter-theme when the person realizes they don’t have three hands, and ends with the roinroin-roin of the one miraculously intact plate spinning round and round on the floor. ‘Everyone acts as if it’s only the music that matters! The plots don’t make sense! Half the stories rely on people not recognizing their servants or wives because they’ve got a tiny mask on! Large ladies play the part of consumptive girls! No one can act properly! There should be a sign on the door saying “Leave your common sense here”! If it wasn’t for the music the whole thing would be ridiculous!’ * ‘Madam has marvellous hair,’ said the hairdresser. ‘What is the secret?’ ‘You’ve got to make sure there’s no newts in the water,’ said Granny. * The hulking figure seated at the organ turned around and gave her a friendly grin, which was much wider than the average grin. Its owner was covered in red hair and, while shortchanged in the leg department, had obviously been first in the queue when the arm counter opened. And had also been given a special free offer of lip. * Nanny didn’t so much enter places as insinuate herself; she had unconsciously taken a natural talent for liking people and developed it into an occult science. * ‘And what can I get you, officers?’ she said. ‘Officers? Us? What makes you think we’re watchmen?’ ‘He’s got a helmet on,’ Nanny pointed out. ‘Milit’ry chic,’ Nobby said. ‘It’s just a fashion accessory. Actually, we are gentlemen of means and have nothing to do with the City Watch whatsoever.’ ‘Well, gentlemen, would you like some wine?’ ‘Not while we on duty, t’anks,’ said the troll. * Granny Weatherwax could be nasty, but then nastiness was always in the window: you were aware that it might turn up on the menu. Sharpness from Nanny Ogg, though, was like being bitten by a big friendly dog. It was all the worse for being unexpected. ‘What about the show? We can’t just stop! You never stop the show, not even if someone dies!’ ‘Oh, we have stopped when people died …’ ‘Yes, but only as long as it took to get the body off-stage!’ * ‘Corporal Nobbs has got some papers to prove he’s a human being.’ ‘Forged?’ ‘I don’t think so.’ † Er. That is to say, they went to bed at the same time as the chickens went to bed, and got up at the same time as the cows got up. Loosely worded sayings can really cause misunderstandings.   HERE’S a werewolf with Pre-Lunar Tension in Ankfe-Morpork. And a dwarf with attitude and a golem who’s begun to think for itself. But for Commander Vimes, Head of Ankh-Morpork City Watch, that’s only the start… There’s treason in the air. A crime has happened. He’s not only got to find out whodunit, but howdunit too. He’s not even sure what they dum. But as soon as he knows what the questions are, he’s going to want some answers. ‘Your sedan chair is outside, sir.’ It had been a wedding present from the Patrician. Lord Vetinari knew that Vimes loved walking the streets of the city, and so it was very typical of the man that he presented him with something that did not allow him to do so. It was waiting outside. The two bearers straightened up expectantly. Vimes looked at the front man and motioned with a thumb to the chair’s door. ‘Get in,’ he commanded. ‘But sir—’ ‘It’s a nice morning,’ said Vimes, taking off his coat. ‘I’ll drive myself * Through werewolf eyes the world was different. For one thing, it was in black-and-white. At least, that small part of it which as a human she’d thought of as ‘vision’ was monochrome - but who cared that vision had to take a back seat when smell drove instead, laughing and sticking its arm out of the window and making rude gestures at all the other senses? * She kept telling herself she had it under control and she did, in a way. She prowled the city on moonlit nights and, okay, there was the occasional chicken, but she always remembered where she’d been and went round next day to shove some money under the door. It was hard to be a vegetarian who had to pick bits of meat out of her teeth in the morning. It was easy to be a vegetarian by day. It was preventing yourself from becoming a humanitarian at night that took the real effort. * Vimes has some problems with his imp-driven personal organizer: ‘Memo: See Corporal Nobbs re timekeeping; also re Earldom.’ ‘Got it,’ said the imp. ‘Would you like to be reminded of this at any particular time?’ ‘I think I’ll write it in my notebook, if you don’t mind,’ said Vimes. ‘Oh, well, if you prefer, I can recognize handwriting,’ said the imp proudly. ‘I’m quite advanced.’ Vimes pulled out his notebook and held it up. ‘Like this?’ he said. The imp squinted for a moment. ‘Yep,’ it said. ‘That’s handwriting, sure enough. Curly bits, spiky bits, all joined together. Yep. Handwriting. I’d recognize it anywhere.’ * Mr Raddley drew himself up. ‘We want to take Father Tubelcek away to bury him,’ he said. Detritus turned to Cheery Littlebottom. ‘You done everyt’ing you need?’ ‘I suppose so …’ ‘He dead?’ ‘Oh, yes.’ ‘He gonna get any better?’ ‘Better than dead? I doubt it.’ ‘Okay den you people can take him away’ The Patrician is taken unwell and receives a visit from horse doctor Doughnut Jimmy. ‘Commander Vimes is right. It could be arsenic,’ Cheery said. ‘It looks like arsenic poisoning to me. Look at his colour.’ ‘Nasty stuff,’ said Doughnut Jimmy. ‘Has he been eating his bedding?’ ‘All the sheets seem to be here, so I suppose the answer is no.’ ‘How’s he pissing?’ ‘Er. The usual way, I assume.’ ‘Walk him round a bit on the loose rein,’ Doughnut said. The Patrician opened his eyes. ‘You are a doctor, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘Well, yeah … I have a lot of patients,’ he said. ‘Indeed? I have very little,’ said the Patrician. ‘Do you remember your father, Nobby?’ ‘Old Sconner, sir? Not much, sir. Never used to see him much except when the milit’ry police used to come for to drag him outa the attic’ Vimes waved a hand vaguely. ‘He didn’t … leave you anything? Or anything?’ ‘Coupla scars, sir. And this trick elbow of mine. It aches sometimes, when the weather changes. And this, o’ course …’ The corporal pulled out a leather thong that hung around his neck. There was a gold ring on it. ‘He left it to me when he was on his deathbed,’ said Nobby. ‘Well, when I say “left it” …’ ‘Did he say anything?’ ‘Well, yeah, he did say “Give it back, you little bugger!”, sir.’ * Cheery is new to the Watch and has gone out on an official visit with Angua. ‘You can knock.’ ‘Me? They won’t take any notice of me!’ said Cheery. You show them your badge and tell them you’re the Watch.’ ‘They’ll ignore me! They’ll laugh at me!’ ‘You’re going to have to do it sooner or later. Go on.’ The door was opened by a stout man … A dwarf voice in the region of his navel said, ‘We’re the Watch, right? Oh, yes! And if you don’t let us in we’ll have your guts for starters!’ ‘Good try’ murmured Angua. * ‘I’ve got a lot to learn, I can see,’ said Cheery. ‘I never thought you had to carry bits of blanket, for a start!’ ‘It’s special equipment if you’re dealing with the undead.’ ‘Well, I knew about garlic and vampires. Anything holy works on vampires. What else works on werewolves?’ ‘A gin and tonic’s always welcome,’ said Angua distantly. * The tincture of night began to suffuse the soup of the afternoon. Lord Vetinari considered the sentence, and found it good. He liked ‘tincture’ particularly. Tincture. Tincture. It was a distinguished word, and pleasantly countered by the flatness of ‘soup’. The soup of the afternoon. Yes. In which may well be found the croutons of teatime. * ‘I have to admit,’ said Mrs Palm, ‘that under Vetinari it has certainly been safer to walk the streets—’ ‘You should know, madam,’ said Mr Sock. Mrs Palm gave him an icy look. There were a few sniggers. ‘I meant that a modest payment to the Thieves’ Guild is all that is required for perfect safety’ she finished. ‘And, indeed, a man may visit a house of ill—’ ‘Negotiable hospitality’ said Mrs Palm quickly. ‘Indeed, and be quite confident of not waking up stripped stark naked and beaten black and blue,’ said Sock. ‘Unless his tastes run that way’ said Mrs Palm. ‘We aim to give satisfaction. Very accurately, if required.’ ‘Life has certainly been more reliable under Vetinari,’ said Mr Potts of the Bakers’ Guild. ‘He does have all street-theatre players and mime artists thrown into the scorpion pit,’ said Mr Boggis of the Thieves’ Guild. ‘True. But let’s not forget that he has his bad points too.’ ‘What’s this?’ ‘A Klatchian Hots without anchovies,’ said Vimes, lifting the cover. ‘We got it from Ron’s Pizza Hovel round the corner.’ ‘Has someone already eaten this, Vimes?’ ‘No, sir. That’s just how they chop up the food.’ ‘Oh, I see. I thought perhaps the food-tasters were getting over-enthusiastic,’ said the Patrician. ‘My word. What a treat I have to look forward to.’ ‘I think he’s got a sort of soft spot for the Patrician, in his way. He once said that if anyone was going to kill Vetinari he’d like it to be him.’ * ‘I’ve been running around looking for damn Clues instead of just thinking for five minutes!’ said Vimes. ‘What is it I’m always telling you?’ ‘Never trust anybody, sir?’ ‘No, not that.’ ‘Everyone’s guilty of something, sir?’ ‘Not that, either.’ ‘Just because someone’s a member of an ethnic minority doesn’t mean they’re not a nasty small-minded little jerk, sir?’ ‘N— When did I say that?’ ‘Last week, sir. After we’d had that visit from the Campaign for Equal Heights, sir.’ * Angua thinks Carrot is about to propose. ‘Hello, Angua!’ said Carrot cheerfully. ‘I was just coming to see you.’ He took off his helmet, and smoothed back his hair. ‘Er …’ he began. ‘I know what you’re going to ask,’ said Angua. ‘You do?’ ‘I know you’ve been thinking about it. You knew I was wondering about going.’ ‘It was obvious, was it?’ ‘And the answer’s no. I wish it could be yes.’ Carrot looked astonished. ‘It never occurred to me that you’d say no,’ he said. ‘I mean, why should you?’ ‘Good grief, you amaze me,’ she said. ‘You really do.’ ‘I thought it’d be something you’d want to do,’ said Carrot. He sighed. ‘Oh, well… it doesn’t matter, really’ Angua felt that a leg had been kicked away. ‘It doesn’t matter?’ she said. ‘I mean, yes, it’d have been nice, but I won’t lose any sleep over it.’ You won’t?’ ‘Well, no. Obviously not. You’ve got other things you want to do. That’s fine. I just thought you might enjoy it. I’ll do it by myself ‘What? How can…?’ Angua stopped. ‘What are you talking about, Carrot?’ ‘The Dwarf Bread Museum. I promised Mr Hopkinson’s sister that I’d tidy it up. I just thought it might cheer you up, but I appreciate that bread isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.’ Detritus was particularly good when it came to asking questions. He had three basic ones. They were the direct (‘Did you do it?’), the persistent (‘Are you sure it wasn’t you what done it?’) and the subtle (‘It was you what done it, wasn’t it?’). Although they were not the most cunning questions ever devised, Detritus’s talent was to go on patiently asking them for hours on end, until he got the right answer, which was generally something like: Yes! Yes! I did it! I did it! Now please tell me what it was I did!’ It is a pervasive and beguiling myth that the people who design instruments of death end up being killed by them. There is almost no foundation in fact. Colonel Shrapnel wasn’t blown up, M. Guillotin died with his head on, Colonel Gatling wasn’t shot. If it hadn’t been for the murder of cosh and blackjack maker Sir William Blunt-Instrument in an alleyway, the rumour would never have got started. The Ankh-Morpork view of crime and punishment was that the penalty for the first offence should prevent the possibility of a second offence.   IT’S the night before Hogswatch. And it’s too quiet. Where is the big jolly fat man? Why is Death creeping down chimneys and trying to say Ho Ho Ho? The darkest night of the year is getting a lot darker… Susan the gothic governess has got to sort it out by morning, otherwise there won’t be a morning. Ever again… The 20th Discworld novel is a festive feast of darkness and Death (but with jolly robins and tinsel too). As they say: You’d better watch out… Everything starts somewhere, although many physicists disagree. * The senior wizards of Unseen University stood and looked at the door. There was no doubt that whoever had shut it wanted it to stay shut. Dozens of nails secured it to the door frame. Planks had been nailed right across. And finally it had, up until this morning, been hidden by a bookcase that had been put in front of it. ‘And there’s the sign, Ridcully’ said the Dean. ‘You have read it, I assume. You know? The sign which says “Do not, under any circumstances, open this door”?’ ‘Of course I’ve read it,’ said Ridcully. ‘Why d’yer think I want it opened?’ * Lord Downey was an assassin. Or, rather, an Assassin. The capital letter was important. It separated those curs who went around murdering people for money from the gentlemen who were occasionally consulted by other gentlemen who wished to have removed, for a consideration, any inconvenient razorblades from the candyfloss of life. * The members of the Guild of Assassins considered themselves cultured men who enjoyed good music and food and literature. And they knew the value of human life. To a penny, in many cases. * It was a quiet day for Susan, although on the way to the park Gawain trod on a crack in the pavement. On purpose. ‘Gawain?’ she said, eyeing a nervous bear who had suddenly spotted her and was now trying to edge away nonchalantly. Yes?’ You meant to tread on that crack so that I’d have to thump some poor creature whose only fault is wanting to tear you limb from limb.’ ‘I was just skipping—’ ‘Quite. Real children don’t go hop-pity-skip unless they are on drugs.’ He grinned at her. ‘If I catch you being twee again I will knot your arms behind your head,’ said Susan levelly * Susan reads a bedtime story: ‘… and then Jack chopped down the beanstalk, adding murder and ecological vandalism to the theft, enticement and trespass charges already mentioned, but he got away with it and lived happily ever after without so much as a guilty twinge about what he had done. Which proves that you can be excused just about anything if you’re a hero, because no one asks inconvenient questions.’ * Death in person did not turn up upon the cessation of every life. It was not necessary. Governments govern, but prime ministers and presidents do not personally turn up in people’s homes to tell them how to run their lives, because of the mortal danger this would present. There are laws instead. * It was the night before Hogswatch. All through the house … … one creature stirred. It was a mouse. And someone, in the face of all appropriateness, had baited a trap. Although, because it was the festive season, they’d used a piece of pork crackling. The smell of it had been driving the mouse mad all day but now, with no one about, it was prepared to risk it. The mouse didn’t know it was a trap. Mice aren’t good at passing on information. Young mice aren’t taken up to famous trap sites and told, ‘This is where your Uncle Arthur passed away’ All it knew was that, what the hey here was something to eat. On a wooden board with some wire round it. A brief scurry later and its jaw had closed on the rind. Or, rather, passed through it. The mouse looked around at what was now lying under the big spring, and thought, ‘Oops …’ Then its gaze went up to the black-clad figure that had faded into view by the wainscoting. ‘Squeak?’ it asked. SQUEAK, said the Death of Rats. ‘Never say die, master. That’s our motto, eh?’ said Albert. I CAN’T SAY IT’S EVER REALLY BEEN MINE. In Biers, unless you weren’t choosy, it paid to order a drink that was transparent because Igor also had undirected ideas about what you could stick on the end of a cocktail stick. If you saw something spherical and green, you just had to hope that it was an olive. * ‘Did you check the list?’ YES. TWICE. ARE YOU SURE THAT’S ENOUGH? ‘Definitely’ COULDN’T REALLY MAKE HEAD OR TAIL OF IT, TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH. HOW CAN I TELL IF HE’S BEEN NAUGHTY OR NICE, FOR EXAMPLE? ‘Oh, well … I don’t know … Has he hung his clothes up, that sort of thing …’ AND IF HE HAS BEEN GOOD I may give him this KLATCHIAN WAR CHARIOT WITH REAL SPINNING SWORD BLADES? ‘That’s right.’ AND IF HE’S BEEN BAD? Albert scratched his head. ‘When I was a lad, you got a bag of bones, ‘s’mazing how kids got better behaved towards the end of the year.’ OH DEAR. AND NOW? Albert held a package up to his ear and rustled it. ‘Sounds like socks.’ SOCKS. ‘Could be a woolly vest.’ SERVE HIM RIGHT, IF I MAY VENTURE TO EXPRESS AN OPINION… * The guard was cowering behind an overturned cabinet. He cringed back as Teatime stepped over it. ‘What’re you doing here?’ he shouted. ‘Who are you?’ ‘Ah, I’m glad you asked. I’m your worst nightmare!’ said Teatime cheerfully. The man shuddered. ‘You mean … the one with the giant cabbage and the sort of whirring knife thing?’ ‘Sorry?’ Teatime looked momentarily nonplussed. ‘Then you’re the one about where I’m falling, only instead of ground underneath it’s all—’ ‘No, in fact I’m—’ The guard sagged. ‘Awww, not the one where there’s all this kind of, you know, mud and then everything goes blue—’ ‘No, I’m—’ ‘Oh, shit, then you’re the one where there’s this door only there’s no floor beyond it and then there’s these claws—’ ‘No,’ said Teatime. ‘Not that one.’ He withdrew a dagger from his sleeve. ‘I’m the one where this man comes out of nowhere and kills you stone dead.’ The guard grinned with relief. ‘Oh, that one,’ he said. ‘But that one’s not very—’ * The snow had done what even wizards and the Watch couldn’t do, which was clean up Ankh-Morpork. It hadn’t had time to get dirty. In the morning it’d probably look as though the city had been covered in coffee meringue, but for now it mounded the bushes and trees in pure white. * Susan had never been able to see the attraction in cats. They were owned by the kind of people who liked puddings. There were actual people in the world whose idea of heaven would be a chocolate cat. * The late (or at least severely delayed) Bergholt Stuttley Johnson was generally recognized as the worst inventor in the world, yet in a very specialized sense. Merely bad inventors made things that failed to operate. He wasn’t among these small fry. Any fool could make something that did absolutely nothing when you pressed the button. He scorned such fumble-fingered amateurs. Everything he built worked. It just didn’t do what it said on the box. If you wanted a small ground-to-air missile, you asked Johnson to design an ornamental fountain. It amounted to pretty much the same thing. But this never discouraged him, or the morbid curiosity of his clients. Music, landscape gardening, architecture - there was no start to his talents. * Johnson’s inventiveness didn’t just push the edge of the envelope but often went across the room and out through the wall of the sorting office. * ‘Amazin’,’ said Ridcully ‘This thing’s a kind of big artificial brain, then?’ ‘You could think of it like that,’ said Ponder, carefully. ‘Of course, Hex doesn’t actually think. Not as such. It just appears to be thinking.’ ‘Ah. Like the Dean,’ said Ridcully. ‘Any chance of fitting a brain like this into the Dean’s head?’ ‘It does weigh ten tons, Archchancellor.’ Ah. Really? Oh. Quite a large crowbar would be in order, then.’ * ‘I … think my name is Bilious. I’m the … I’m the oh God of Hangovers.’ ‘I’ve never heard of a God of Hangovers …’ ‘You’ve heard of Bibulous, the God of Wine?’ ‘Oh, yes.’ ‘Big fat man, wears vine leaves round his head, always pictured with a glass in his hand … Ow. Well, you know why he’s so cheerful? Him and his big face? It’s because he knows he’s going to feel good in the morning! It’s because it’s me that—’ ‘—gets the hangovers?’ said Susan. ‘I don’t even drink!’ Bilious swayed. ‘You know when people say “I had fifteen lagers last night and when I woke up my head was clear as a bell”?’ ‘Oh, yes.’ ‘Bastards! That’s because I was the one who woke up groaning in a pile of recycled chilli. Just once, I mean just once, I’d like to open my eyes in the morning without my head sticking to something.’ * ‘How do we usually test stuff?’ ‘Generally we ask for student volunteers,’ said the Dean. ‘What happens if we don’t get any?’ ‘We give it to them anyway’ ‘Isn’t that a bit unethical?’ ‘Not if we don’t tell them, Archchancellor.’ * ‘I am not losing my hair!’ snapped the Dean. ‘It is just very finely spaced.’ ‘Half on your head and half on your hairbrush,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. ‘No sense in bein’ bashful about goin’ bald,’ said Ridcully evenly. ‘Anyway, you know what they say about bald men, Dean.’ ‘Yes, they say, “Look at him, he’s got no hair.’” * At the far end of the corridor was one of the very tall, very thin windows. It looked out on to the black gardens. Black bushes, black grass, black trees. Skeletal fish cruising in the black waters of a pool, under black water lilies. There was colour, in a sense, but it was the kind of colour you’d get if you could shine a beam of black through a prism. There were hints of tints, here and there a black you might persuade yourself was a very deep purple or a midnight blue. But it was basically black, under a black sky, because this was the world belonging to Death and that was all there was to it. * ‘Just shut up, will you?’ Ridcully said. ‘It’s Hogswatch! That’s not the time for silly arguments, all right?’ ‘Oh, yes it is,’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies glumly. ‘It’s exactly the time for silly arguments. In our family we were lucky to get through dinner without a reprise of What A Shame Henry Didn’t Go Into Business With Our Ron. Or Why Hasn’t Anyone Taught Those Kids To Use A Knife? That was another favourite.’ ‘And the sulks,’ said Ponder Stibbons. ‘Oh, the sulks,’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. ‘Not a proper Hogswatch without everyone sitting staring at different walls.’ ‘The games were worse,’ said Ponder. ‘Worse than the kids hitting one another with their toys, do you think? Not a proper Hogswatch afternoon without wheels and bits of broken dolly everywhere and everyone whining. Assault and battery included.’ ‘We had a game called Hunt the Slipper,’ said Ponder. ‘Someone hid a slipper. And then we had to find it. And then we had a row.’ ‘And then later on someone’ll suggest a board game,’ said Ponder. ‘That’s right. Where no one exactly remembers all the rules.’ ‘Which doesn’t stop someone suggesting that you play for pennies.’ ‘And five minutes later there’s two people not speaking to one another for the rest of their lives because of tuppence.’ ‘And some horrible little kid—’ ‘I know, I know! Some little kid who’s been allowed to stay up wins everyone’s money by being a nasty little cut-throat swot!’ ‘And don’t forget the presents,’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, as if reading off some internal list of gloom. ‘How … how full of potential they seem in all that paper, how pregnant with possibilities … and then you open them and basically the wrapping paper was more interesting and you have to say “How thoughtful, that will come in handy!” It’s not better to give than to receive, in my opinion, it’s just less embarrassing.’ ‘I’ve worked out,’ said the Senior Wrangler, ‘that over the years I have been a net exporter of Hogswatch presents—’ ‘Oh, everyone is,’ said the Chair. ‘You spend a fortune on other people and what you get when all the paper is cleared away is one slipper that’s the wrong colour and a book about ear wax.’ * ‘You didn’t get that stuff out of the sack! Not cigars and peaches in brandy and grub with fancy foreign names!’ YES, IT CAME OUT OF THE SACK. Albert gave him a suspicious look. ‘But you put it in the sack in the first place, didn’t you?’ No. You did, didn’t you?’ Albert stated. No. You put all those things in the sack.’ No. You got them from somewhere and put them in the sack.’ No. You did put them in the sack, didn’t you?’ No. You put them in the sack.’ YES. * ‘They’re title deeds,’ said Medium Dave. ‘And they’re better than money’ ‘Paper’s better’n money?’ said Catseye. ‘If we steal them, do they become ours?’ said Chickenwire. ‘Is that a trick question?’ said Catseye, smirking. ‘I know people say I’d kill them as soon as look at them,’ whispered Teatime. ‘And in fact I’d much rather kill you than look at you, Mr Lilywhite.’ ‘And what’ll you do when he comes after you?’ ‘He can’t look everywhere.’ Medium Dave shook his head. You only had to look into Teatime’s mismatched eyes to know one thing, which was this: that if Teatime wanted to find you he would not look everywhere. He’d look in only one place, which would be the place where you were hiding. ‘They’ve piled the teeth up in a magic circle downstairs,’ said Susan. Violet’s eyes and mouth formed three Os. It was like looking at a pink bowling ball. ‘What for?’ ‘I think they’re using them to control the children. By magic’ Violet’s mouth opened wider. ‘That’s horrid.’ Horrible, thought Susan. The word is ‘horrible’. ‘Horrid’ is a childish word selected to impress nearby males with one’s fragility, if I’m any judge. It is said that the prospect of hanging concentrates the mind wonderfully, but it was Valium compared to being watched by Mister Teatime. * ‘I could certainly run a marvellous university here if only we didn’t have to have these damn students underfoot all the time.’ * ‘All right,’ said Susan. ‘I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need … fantasies to make life bearable.’ REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE. ‘Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—’ YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES. ‘So we can believe the big ones?’ YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING. ‘They’re not the same at all!’ YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET— Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME … SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED. Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—’ MY POINT EXACTLY. * Death fumbled inside his robe. I HAVE MADE THIS FOR YOU. Susan reached out and took a square of damp cardboard. Water dripped off the bottom. Somewhere in the middle, a few brown feathers seemed to have been glued on. ‘Thank you. Er … what is it?’ ALBERT SAID THERE OUGHT TO BE SNOW ON IT, BUT IT APPEARS TO HAVE MELTED, said Death. IT IS, OF COURSE, A HOGSWATCH CARD. ‘Oh …’ THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN A ROBIN ON IT AS WELL, BUT I HAD CONSIDERABLE DIFFICULTY IN GETTING IT TO STAY ON. ‘Ah …’ IT WAS NOT AT ALL CO-OPERATIVE. ‘Really … ?’ IT DID NOT SEEM TO GET INTO THE HOGSWATCH SPIRIT AT ALL.   DISGWORLD goes to war, with armies of sardines, warriors, fishermen, squid and at least one very camp follower. As two armies march, Commander Vimes of Ankfe-Morpork City Watch faces Unpleasant foes who are out to get Mm … and that’s just the people on his side. The enemy might be even worse. Jingo makes the World Cup look like a friendly five-a-side. As every student of exploration knows, the prize goes not to the explorer who first sets foot upon the virgin soil but to the one who gets that foot home first. If it is still attached to his leg, this is a bonus. * Detritus’s intelligence wasn’t too bad for a troll, falling somewhere between a cuttlefish and a line-dancer. * Lord Vetinari looked attentive, because he’d always found that listening keenly to people tended to put them off. ‘Oh, history,’ said Lord Selachii. That’s all in the past!’ ‘Gentlemen, please,’ said the Patrician. ‘Let’s have no fighting, please. This is, after all, a council of war’ * ‘A Klatchian bigwig is coming here?’ said Vimes. ‘No one told me!’ ‘Strange as it may seem, Sir Samuel, I am occasionally capable of governing this city for minutes at a time without seeking your advice and guidance.’ * ‘My mum’s uncle was a sailor,’ said Nobby. ‘But after the big plague he got press-ganged. Bunch of farmers got him drunk, he woke up next morning tied to a plough.’ * Sergeant Colon had had a broad education. He’d been to the School of My Dad Always Said, the College of It Stands to Reason, and was now a postgraduate student at the University of What Some Bloke In the Pub Told Me. * Technically they were all in uniform, too, except that mostly they weren’t wearing the same uniform as anyone else. Everyone had just been sent down to the armoury to collect whatever fitted, and the result was a walking historical exhibit: Funny-Shaped Helmets Through the Ages. * ‘Dad?’ ‘Yes, lad?’ ‘Who was Mr Hong?’ ‘How should I know?’ ‘Only, when we was all heading back for the boats one of the other men said, “We all know what happened to Mr Hong when he opened the Three Jolly Luck Take-Away Fish Bar on the site of the old fish-god temple in Dagon Street on the night of the full moon, don’t we … ?” Well, I don’t know.’ ‘Ah …’ Solid Jackson hesitated. Still, Les was a big lad now … ‘He … closed up and left in a bit of a hurry, lad. So quick he had to leave some things behind.’ ‘Like what?’ ‘If you must know … half an ear-hole and one kidney’ * A few moments later Sergeant Colon walked carefully down to the main office. He toyed with some paper for a while and then said: ‘You don’t mind what people call you, do you, Nobby?’ ‘I’d be minding the whole time if I minded that, sarge,’ said Corporal Nobbs cheerfully. ‘Right. Right! And I don’t mind what people call me, neither’ Colon scratched his head. ‘Don’t make sense, really. I reckon Sir Sam is missing too much sleep.’ ‘He’s a very busy man, Fred.’ ‘Trying to do everything, that’s his trouble. And … Nobby?’ ‘Yes?’ ‘It’s Sergeant Colon, thanks.’ * There was sherry. There was always sherry at these occasions. Sam Vimes had heard they made sherry by letting wine go rotten. He couldn’t see the point of sherry. * Vimes stood up. ‘You know what I always say’ he said. Carrot removed his helmet and polished it with his sleeve. Yes, sir. “Everyone’s guilty of something, especially the ones that aren’t,” sir’ ‘No, not that one …’ ‘Er … “Always take into consideration the fact that you might be dead wrong,” sir?’ ‘No, nor that one either’ ‘Er … “How come Nobby ever got a job as a watchman?”, sir? You say that a lot.’ ‘No! I meant “Always act stupid,” Carrot.’ ‘Ah, right, sir. From now on I shall remember that you always said that, sir’ * ‘Colon and Nobbs are investigating this?’ said the Patrician. ‘Really?’ ‘Yes, sir’ ‘If I were to ask you why, you’d pretend not to understand?’ Vimes let his forehead wrinkle in honest perplexity. ‘Sir?’ ‘If you say “Sir?” again in that stupid voice, Vimes, I swear there will be trouble.’ ‘They’re good men, sir’ ‘However, some people might consider them to be unimaginative, stolid and … how can I put this? … possessed of an inbuilt disposition to accept the first explanation that presents itself and then bunk off somewhere for a quiet smoke? A certain lack of imagination? An ability to get out of their depth on a wet pavement?’ * Vetinari peered at a small heap of bent and twisted metal. ‘What was it, Leonard?’ he said. ‘An experimental device for turning chemical energy into rotary motion,’ said Leonard. ‘The problem, you see, is getting the little pellets of black powder into the combustion chamber at exactly the right speed and one at a time. If two ignite together, well, what we have is the external combustion engine.’ ‘And, er, what would be the purpose of it?’ said the Patrician. ‘I believe it could replace the horse,’ said Leonard proudly. They looked at the stricken thing. ‘One of the advantages of horses that people often point out,’ said Vetinari, after some thought, ‘is that they very seldom explode.’ * Leonard’s incredible brain sizzled away alarmingly, an overloaded chip pan on the Stove of Life. It was impossible to know what he would think of next, because he was constantly reprogrammed by the whole universe. The sight of a waterfall or a soaring bird would send him spinning down some new path of practical speculation that invariably ended in a heap of wire and springs and a cry of ‘I think I know what I did wrong.’ He’d been a member of most of the craft guilds in the city but had been thrown out for getting impossibly high marks in the exams or, in some cases, correcting the questions. It was said that he’d accidentally blown up the Alchemists’ Guild using nothing more than a glass of water, a spoonful of acid, two lengths of wire and a ping-pong ball. * Nobby and Colon go on a call - in plain clothes: ‘Come on, open up! Watch business!’ Corporal Nobbs pulled at Sergeant Colon’s sleeve and whispered in his ear. ‘Not Watch business!’ said Colon, pounding the door again. ‘Nothing to do with the Watch at all! We are just civilians, all right?’ The door opened a crack. ‘Are you the Watch?’ said a voice. ‘No! I think I just made that clear—’ ‘Piss off, copper!’ The door slammed. ‘You sure this is the right place, sarge?’ ‘Don’t call me sarge when we’re in plain clothes!’ ‘Right you are, Fred.’ ‘That’s—’ Colon hesitated in an agony of status. ‘Well, that’s Frederick to you, Nobby’ ‘Right, Frederick. And that’s Cecil, thank you.’ ‘Cecil?’ ‘That is my name,’ said Nobby coldly. ‘Have it your way’ said Colon. ‘Just remember who’s the superior civilian around here, all right?’ He hammered on the door again. ‘We hear you’ve got a room to let, missus!’ he yelled. ‘Brilliant, Frederick,’ said Nobby. ‘That was bloody brilliant!’ ‘Well, I am the sergeant, right?’ Colon whispered. ‘No.’ ‘Er … yeah … right … well, just you remember that, right?’ * ‘Sam?’ Vimes looked up from his reading. ‘Your soup will be cold,’ said Lady Sybil from the far end of the table. ‘You’ve been holding that spoonful in the air for the last five minutes by the clock.’ ‘Sorry dear.’ Belatedly, his nuptial radar detected a certain chilliness from the far side of the cruet. ‘Is, er, there something wrong, dear?’ he said. ‘Can you remember when we last had dinner together, Sam?’ ‘Tuesday, wasn’t it?’ ‘That was the Guild of Merchants’ annual dinner, Sam.’ Vimes’s brow wrinkled. ‘But you were there too, weren’t you?’ * Ankh-Morpork no longer had a fire brigade. The citizens had a rather disturbingly direct way of thinking at times, and it did not take long for people to see the rather obvious flaw in paying a group of people by the number of fires they put out. The penny really dropped shortly after Charcoal Tuesday. Since then they had relied on the good old principle of enlightened self-interest. People living close to a burning building did their best to douse the fire, because the thatch they saved might be their own. ‘Mr Vimes saved the day!’ said Sergeant Colon excitedly. ‘Just went straight in and saved everyone, in the finest tradition of the Watch!’ ‘Fred?’ said Vimes, wearily. Yessir?’ ‘Fred, the finest tradition of the Watch is having a quiet smoke somewhere out of the wind at 3 a.m. Let’s not get carried away, eh?’ Colon rummaged in a pocket and produced a very small book, which he held up for inspection. ‘This belonged to my great-grandad,’ he said. ‘He was in the scrap we had against Pseudopolis and my great-gran gave him this book of prayers for soldiers, ‘cos you need all the prayers you can get, believe you me, and he stuck it in the top pocket of his jerkin, ‘cos he couldn’t afford armour, and next day in battle - whoosh, this arrow came out of nowhere, wham, straight into this book and it went all the way through to the last page before stopping, look. You can see the hole.’ ‘Pretty miraculous,’ Carrot agreed. ‘Yeah, it was, I s’pose,’ said the sergeant. He looked ruefully at the battered volume. ‘Shame about the other seventeen arrows, really.’ Another little memory burst open as silently as a mouse passing wind in a hurricane. ‘He is a D’reg!’ ‘Dreg?’ said Angua. ‘A warlike desert tribe,’ said Carrot. ‘Very fierce. Honourable, though. They say that if a D’reg is your friend he’s your friend for the rest of your life.’ ‘And if he’s not your friend?’ ‘That’s about five seconds.’ * ‘Everything’s gone all to pot these days.’ ‘Not like when we were kids, sarge.’ ‘Not like when we were kids indeed, Nobby’ ‘People trusted one another in them days, didn’t they, sarge?’ ‘People trusted one another, Nobby.’ Yes, sarge. I know. And people didn’t have to lock their doors, did they?’ ‘That’s right, Nobby. And people were always ready to help. They were always in and out of one another’s houses.’ “sright, sarge,’ said Nobby vehemently. ‘I know no one ever locked their houses down our street.’ ‘That’s what I’m talking about. That’s my point.’ ‘It was ‘cos the bastards even used to steal the locks.’ Colon considered the truth of this. Yes, but at least it was each other’s stuff they were nicking, Nobby’ * Lord Rust’s expression would have preserved meat for a year. ‘You, Vimes, certainly are no knight. Before a knight is created he must spend a night’s vigil watching his armour—’ ‘Practically every night of my life,’ said Vimes. ‘A man doesn’t keep an eye on his armour round here, that man’s got no armour in the morning.’ ‘In prayer,’ said Rust sharply. ‘That’s me,’ said Vimes. ‘Not a night has gone by without me thinking, “Ye gods, I hope I get through this alive.”‘ ‘—and he must have proved himself on the field of combat. Against other trained men, Vimes. Not vermin and thugs.’ Vimes started to undo the strap of his helmet. ‘Well, this isn’t the best of moments, my lord, but if someone’ll hold your coat I can spare you five minutes …’ * ‘It is always useful to face an enemy who is prepared to die for his country. This means that both you and he have exactly the same aim in mind.’ * The Engravers’ Guild was against printing. There was something pure, they said, about an engraved page of text. It was there, whole, unsullied. Their members could do very fine work at very reasonable rates. Allowing unskilled people to bash lumps of type together showed a disrespect for words and no good would come of it. The only attempt ever to set up a printing press in Ankh-Morpork had ended in a mysterious fire and the death by suicide of the luckless printer. Everyone knew it was suicide because he’d left a note. The fact that this had been engraved on the head of a pin was considered an irrelevant detail. * 71-hour Ahmed was not superstitious. He was substitious, which put him in a minority among humans. He didn’t believe in the things everyone believed in but which nevertheless weren’t true. He believed instead in the things that were true in which no one else believed. There are many such substi-tions, ranging from ‘It’ll get better if you don’t pick at it’ all the way up to ‘Sometimes things just happen.’ ‘So what’re you going to do when we catch the other ship?’ ‘Er …’ Vimes hadn’t given this a lot of thought. But he recalled a very bad woodcut he’d once seen in a book about pirates. ‘We’ll swing across on to them with our cutlasses in our teeth?’ he said. ‘Really?’ said Jenkins. ‘That’s good. I haven’t seen that done in years. Only ever seen it done once, in fact.’ ‘Oh, yes?’ ‘Yes, this lad’d seen the idea in a book and he swung across into the other ship’s rigging with his cutlass clenched, as you say, between his teeth.’ ‘Yes?’ ‘Topless Harry, we wrote on his coffin.’ Angua was aware that she had a slight advantage over male werewolves in that naked women caused fewer complaints, although the downside was that they got some pressing invitations. Some kind of covering was essential, for modesty and the prevention of inconvenient bouncing, which was why fashioning impromptu clothes out of anything to hand was a lesser-known werewolf skill. * ‘It’s the waiting that’s the worst part,’ said his sergeant, next to him. ‘It might be the worst part,’ said the commander. ‘Or, there again, the bit where they suddenly rise out of the desert and cut you in half might be the worst part.’ * Lord Vetinari helped him up. ‘Our very lives depend on your appearing to be a stupid fat idiot,’ he hissed, putting Colon’s fez back on his head. ‘I ain’t very good at acting, sir—’ ‘Good!’ * ‘Your predecessor, Lord Snapcase, now he was mental. But, like I’ve always said, people know where they stand with Lord Vetinari…’ ‘Well done.’ ‘They might not like where they’re standing of course …’   IT’S the Discworld’s last continent and it’s going to die in a few days, except… Who is this hero striding across the red desert? Sheep shearer, beer drinker, bush ranger, and someone who’ll even eat a Meat Pie Floater when he’s sober. A man in a hat whose Luggage follows him on little legs. Yes, it’s Rincewind, the inept wizard who can’t even spell wizard. He’s the only hero left. Still… no worries, eh? There are some people who have a legend that the whole universe is carried in a leather bag by an old man. Other people say: hold on, if he’s carrying the entire universe in a sack, right, that means he’s carrying himself and the sack inside the sack, because the universe contains everything. Including him. And the sack, of course. Which contains him and the sack already. As it were. To which the reply is: well? All tribal myths are true, for a given value of ‘true’. * The Ceremony of the Keys went on every night in every season. Mere ice, wind and snow had never stopped it. You couldn’t stop Tradition. You could only add to it. McAbre, Head Bledlow, with his two escorts, reached the shadows by the main gate. The bledlow on duty was waiting for them. ‘Halt! Who Goes There?’ he shouted. McAbre saluted. The Arch-chancellor’s Keys!’ ‘Pass, The Archchancellor’s Keys!’ The Head Bledlow took a step forward, extended both arms in front of him with his palms bent back towards him, and patted his chest at the place where some bledlow long buried had once had two breast pockets. Pat, pat. Then he extended his arms by his sides and stiffly patted the sides of his jacket. Pat, pat. ‘Damn! Could Have Sworn I Had Them A Moment Ago!’ he bellowed, enunciating each word with a sort of bulldog carefulness. The gatekeeper saluted. McAbre saluted. ‘Have You Looked In All Your Pockets?’ McAbre saluted. The gatekeeper saluted. ‘I Think I Must Have Left Them On The Dresser. It’s Always The Same, Isn’t It?’ ‘You Should Remember Where You Put Them Down!’ ‘Hang On, Perhaps They’re In My Other Jacket!’ The young bledlow who was this week’s Keeper of the Other Jacket stepped forward. Each man saluted the other two. The youngest cleared his throat and managed to say: ‘No, I Looked In … There This … Morning!’ McAbre gave him a slight nod to acknowledge a difficult job done well, and patted his pockets again. ‘Hold On, Stone The Crows, They Were In This Pocket After All! What A Muggins I Am!’ ‘Don’t Worry, I Do The Same Myself!’ ‘Is My Face Red! Forget My Own Head Next! … Here’s The Keys, Then!’ said McAbre. ‘Much Obliged!’ … ‘All Safe And Secure!’ shouted the gatekeeper, handing the keys back. ‘Gods Bless All Present!’ ‘Careful Where You Put Them This Time. Ha! Ha! Ha!’ ‘Ho! Ho! Ho!’ yelled McAbre. He saluted stiffly, went About Turn with a large amount of foot stamping and, the ancient exchange completed, marched back to the bledlows’ lodge. * Light travels slowly on the Disc and is slightly heavy, with a tendency to pile up against high mountain ranges. Research wizards have speculated that there is another, much speedier type of light which allows the slower light to be seen, but since this moves too fast to see they have been unable to find a use for it. * Ponder Stibbons was one of those unfortunate people cursed with the belief that if only he found out enough things about the universe it would all, somehow, make sense. The goal is the Theory of Everything, but Ponder would settle for the Theory of Something and, late at night, he despaired of even a Theory of Anything. * Any true wizard, faced with a sign like ‘Do not open this door. Really. We mean it. We’re not kidding. Opening this door will mean the end of the universe,’ would automatically open the door in order to see what all the fuss was about. * ‘Hah, I remember when I was a student,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. ‘Old “Bogeyboy” Swallett took us on an expedition to find the Lost Reading Room. Three weeks we were wandering around. Had to eat our own boots.’ ‘Did you find it?’ said the Dean. ‘No, but we found the remains of the previous year’s expedition.’ ‘What did you do?’ ‘We ate their boots, too.’ * ‘We’re a university! We have to have a library!’ said Ridcully ‘What sort of people would we be if we didn’t go into the Library?’ ‘Students,’ said the Senior Wrangler morosely. … a man whose ability to find water was limited to checking if his feet were wet… Ridcully was good at doing without other people’s sleep. * Unseen University was much bigger on the inside. Thousands of years as the leading establishment of practical magic in a world where dimensions were largely a matter of chance in any case had left it bulging in places where it shouldn’t have places. There were rooms containing rooms which, if you entered them, turned out to contain the room you’d started with, which can be a problem if you are in a conga line. * Rincewind had always been happy to think of himself as a racist. The One Hundred Metres, the Mile, the Marathon - he’d run them all. Later, when he’d learned with some surprise what the word actually meant, he’d been equally certain he wasn’t one. He was a person who divided the world quite simply into people who were trying to kill him and people who weren’t. * ‘When you’ve been a wizard as long as I have, my boy [said the Senior Wrangler], you’ll learn that as soon as you find anything that offers amazing possibilities for the improvement of the human condition it’s best to put the lid back on and pretend it never happened.’ * Droit de mortis: broadly speaking, the acceleration of a wizard through the ranks of wizardry by killing off more senior wizards. It is a practice currently in abeyance, since a few enthusiastic attempts to remove Mustrum Ridcully resulted in one wizard being unable to hear properly for two weeks. Ridcully felt that there was indeed room at the top, and he was occupying all of it. * It is a simple universal law. People always expect to use a holiday in the sun as an opportunity to read those books they’ve always meant to read, but an alchemical combination of sun, quartz crystals and coconut oil will somehow metamorphose any improving book into a rather thicker one with a name containing at least one Greek word or letter (The Gamma Imperative, The Delta Season, The Alpha Project and, in the more extreme cases, even The Mu Kau Pi Caper). Sometimes a hammer and sickle turn up on the cover. This is probably caused by sunspot activity, since they are invariably the wrong way round. * Any seasoned traveller soon learns to avoid anything wished on them as a ‘regional speciality’, because all the term means is that the dish is so unpleasant the people living everywhere else will bite off their own legs rather than eat it. But hosts still press it upon distant guests anyway: ‘Go on, have the dog’s head stuffed with macerated cabbage and pork noses - it’s a regional speciality.’ * The University’s housekeeper [it had been unkindly said] had a face full of chins; there was a glossiness about her that put some people in mind of a candle that had been kept in the warm for too long. There wasn’t anything approaching a straight line anywhere on Mrs Whitlow, until she found that something hadn’t been dusted properly, when you could use her lips as a ruler. * The wizards were civilized men of considerable education and culture. When faced with being inadvertently marooned on a desert island they understood immediately that the first thing to do was place the blame. * ‘Remember what we’d say in those days?’ said the Senior Wrangler. ‘ “Never trust a wizard over sixty-five”? Whatever happened?’ ‘We got past the age of sixty-five, Senior Wrangler.’ * The Bursar was, as he would probably be the first to admit, not the most mentally stable of people. He would probably be the first to admit that he was a tea-strainer. * Once a moderately jolly wizard camped by a dried-up waterhole under the shade of a tree that he was completely unable to identify. And he swore as he hacked and hacked at a can of beer, saying, ‘What kind of idiots put beer in tins?’ * Beer! It was only water, really, with stuff in it. Wasn’t it? And most of what was in it was yeast, which was practically a medicine and definitely a food. In fact, when you thought about it, beer was only a kind of runny bread. * ‘Is it true that your life passes before your eyes before you die?’ YES. ‘Ghastly thought, really’ Rince-wind shuddered. ‘Oh, gods, I’ve just had another one. Suppose I am just about to die and this is my whole life passing in front of my eyes?’ I THINK PERHAPS YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND. PEOPLE’S WHOLE LIVES DO PASS IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES BEFORE THEY DIE. THE PROCESS IS CALLED ‘LIVING’.   MIGHTILY Oats has not picked a good time to be a priest. He thought he’d come to Lancre for a simple ceremony. Now lie’s caught tip in a war between vampires and witches. There’s Voting Agnes, who is really in two minds about everything. Magrat, who is trying to combine witchcraft and nappies, Nanny Ogg … and Granny Weatherwax, who is big trouble. And the vampires are intelligent. They’ve got style and fancy waistcoats. They’re out of the casket, and want a bite of the future. Mightily Oats knows he has a prayer, but he wishes he had an axe. In Lancre the only truly flat places were tables and the top of some people’s heads. * Those who are inclined to casual cruelty say that inside a fat girl is a thin girl and a lot of chocolate. * Agnes thought that a dumpy girl should not wear a tall hat, especially with black. It made her look as though someone had dropped a liquorice-flavoured ice-cream cone. * The Lancrastian idea of posh sanitation was a non-slippery path to the privy and a mail-order catalogue with really soft pages. * Sometimes witches have to be the ones that make the difficult decisions for people. Life and death. Choosing between saving a mother or her new-born son. ‘You got to come to Mrs Ivy and her baby missus!’ ‘I thought old Mrs Patternoster was seeing to her,’ said Granny, ramming her hatpins into place with the urgency of a warrior preparing for sudden battle. ‘She says it’s all gone wrong miss!’ … Slice was perched along the sides of a cleft in the mountains that couldn’t be dignified by the name of valley. In the moonlight Granny saw the pale upturned face waiting in the shadows of the garden as she came in to land. ‘Evening, Mr Ivy’ she said, leaping off. ‘Upstairs, is she?’ ‘In the barn,’ said Ivy flatly. ‘The cow kicked her … hard.’ Granny’s expression stayed impassive. ‘We shall see,’ she said, ‘what may be done.’ In the barn, one look at Mrs Patternoster’s face told her how little that might now be. ‘It’s bad,’ she whispered, as Granny looked at the moaning figure on the straw. ‘I reckon we’ll lose both of them … or maybe just one …’ There was, if you were listening for it, just the suggestion of a question in that sentence. Granny focused her mind. ‘It’s a boy’ she said. Mrs Patternoster didn’t bother to wonder how Granny knew, but her expression indicated that a little more weight had been added to a burden. ‘I’d better go and put it to John Ivy, then,’ she said. She’d barely moved before Granny Weatherwax’s hand locked on her arm. ‘He’s no part in this,’ she said. ‘But after all, he is the—’ ‘He’s no part in this.’ Mrs Patternoster looked into the blue stare and knew two things. One was that Mr Ivy had no part in this, and the other was that anything that happened in this barn was never, ever, going to be mentioned again. ‘I think I can bring ‘em to mind,’ said Granny, letting go and rolling up her sleeves. ‘Pleasant couple, as I recall. He’s a good husband, by all accounts.’ She poured warm water from its jug into the bowl that the midwife had set up on a manger. Mrs Patternoster nodded. ‘Of course, it’s difficult for a man working these steep lands alone,’ Granny went on, washing her hands. Mrs Patternoster nodded again, mournfully. ‘Well, I reckon you should take him into the cottage, Mrs Patternoster, and make him a cup of tea,’ Granny commanded. ‘You can tell him I’m doing all I can.’ This time the midwife nodded gratefully. When she had fled, Granny laid a hand on Mrs Ivy’s damp forehead. ‘Well now, Florence Ivy,’ she said, ‘let us see what might be done. But first of all … no pain …’ INDEED. Granny didn’t bother to turn round. ‘I thought you’d be here,’ she said, as she knelt down in the straw. WHERE ELSE? said Death. ‘Do you know who you’re here for?’ THAT IS NOT MY CHOICE. ON THE VERY EDGE YOU WILL ALWAYS FIND SOME UNCERTAINTY. Granny felt the words in her head for several seconds, like little melting cubes of ice. On the very, very edge, then, there had to be … judgement. ‘There’s too much damage here,’ she said, at last. ‘Too much.’ A few minutes later she felt the life stream past her. Death had the decency to leave without a word. When Mrs Patternoster tremulously knocked on the door and pushed it open, Granny was in the cow’s stall. The midwife saw her stand up, holding a piece of thorn. ‘Been in the beast’s leg all day’ she said. ‘No wonder it was fretful. Try and make sure he doesn’t kill the cow, you understand? They’ll need it.’ Mrs Patternoster glanced down at the rolled-up blanket in the straw. Granny had tactfully placed it out of sight of Mrs Ivy, who was sleeping now. ‘I’ll tell him,’ said Granny, brushing off her dress. ‘As for her, well, she’s strong and young and you know what to do. You keep an eye on her, and me or Nanny Ogg will drop in when we can.’ It was doubtful that anyone in Slice would defy Granny Weatherwax, but Granny saw the faintest grey shadow of disapproval in the midwife’s expression. ‘You still reckon I should’ve asked Mr Ivy?’ she said. ‘That’s what I would have done …’ the woman mumbled. ‘You don’t like him? You think he’s a bad man?’ said Granny, adjusting her hatpins. ‘No!’ ‘Then what’s he ever done to me, that I should hurt him so?’ * The people of Lancre wouldn’t dream of living in anything other than a monarchy. They’d done so for thousands of years and knew that it worked. But they’d also found that it didn’t do to pay too much attention to what the King wanted, because there was bound to be another king along in forty years or so and he’d be certain to want something different and so they’d have gone to all that trouble for nothing. In the meantime, his job as they saw it was to mostly stay in the palace, practise the waving, have enough sense to face the right way on coins and let them get on with the ploughing, sowing, growing and harvesting. It was, as they saw it, a social contract. They did what they always did, and he let them. * ‘I used to know an Igor from Uberwald,’ said Nanny. ‘Walked with a limp. One eye a bit higher than the other. Had the same manner of … speaking. Very good at brain juggling, too.’ ‘That thoundth like my Uncle Igor,’ said Igor. ‘He worked for the mad doctor at Blinz. Ha, an’ he wath a proper mad doctor, too, not like the mad doctorth you get thethe dayth. And the thervantth? Even worthe. No pride thethe dayth.’ He tapped the brandy flask for emphasis. ‘When Uncle Igor wath thent out for a ge-niuth’th brain, that’th what you damn well got. There wath none of thith fumble-finger thtuff and then pinching a brain out of the “Really Inthane” jar and hopin’ no one’d notithe. They alwayth do, anyway’ Nanny took a step back. The only sensible way to hold a conversation with an Igor was when you had an umbrella. * Not many people ever tasted Nanny Ogg’s home-made brandy; it was technically impossible. Once it encountered the warmth of the human mouth it immediately turned into fumes. You drank it via your sinuses. * ‘The trouble is that people always think of vampires in terms of their diet,’ said the Count, as Nanny hurried away. ‘It’s really rather insulting. You eat animal flesh and vegetables, but it hardly defines you, does it?’ * ‘How does Perdita work, then?’ said Nanny. Agnes sighed. ‘Look, you know the part of you that wants to do all the things you don’t dare do, and thinks the thoughts you don’t dare think?’ Nanny’s face stayed blank. Agnes floundered. ‘Like … maybe … rip off all your clothes and run naked in the rain?’ she hazarded. ‘Oh, yes. Right,’ said Nanny. ‘Well … I suppose Perdita is that part of me.’ ‘Really? I’ve always been that part of me,’ said Nanny. ‘The important thing is to remember where you left your clothes.’ * ‘People have quite the wrong idea about vampires, you see. Are we fiendish killers?’ He beamed at them. ‘Well, yes, of course we are. But only when necessary’ * They were listening quite contentedly to the worst music since Shawn Ogg’s bagpipes had been dropped down the stairs. * They watched the servant limp off. The Count shook his head. ‘He’ll never retire,’ said Vlad. ‘He’ll never take a hint.’ ‘And it’s so old fashioned having a servant called Igor,’ said the Countess. ‘He really is too much.’ ‘Look, it’s simple,’ said Lacrimosa. ‘Just take him down to the cellars, slam him in the Iron Maiden, stretch him on the rack over a fire for a day or two, and then slice him thinly from the feet upwards, so he can watch. You’ll be doing him a kindness, really’ ‘I suppose it’s the best way’ said the Count sadly. * There was more to Mr Oats than met the eye. There had to be. * Books that were all about the world tended to be written by people who knew all about books rather than all about the world. * ‘Look, you said you’ve studied vampires, didn’t you? What’s good for vampires?’ Oats thought for a moment. ‘Er … a nice dry coffin, er, plenty of fresh blood, er, overcast skies …’ His voice trailed off when he saw her expression. ‘Ah … well, it depends exactly where they’re from, I remember. Uberwald is a very big place. Er, cutting off the head and staking them in the heart is generally efficacious.’ ‘But that works on everyone,’ said Nanny. * ‘You don’t know what he’s like,’ said Agnes. ‘He looks at me as if he’s undressing me with his eyes.’ ‘Eyes is allowed,’ said Nanny. * Agnes’s arm whirled. The holy water spiralled out of the bottle and hit Vlad full in the chest. He threw his arms wide and screamed as water cascaded down and poured into his shoes. ‘Look at this waistcoat! Will you look at this waistcoat? Do you know what water does to silk? You just never get it out! No matter what you do, there’s always a mark.’ * Few birds could sit more meekly than the Lancre wowhawk, or lappet-faced worrier, a carnivore permanently on the lookout for the vegetarian option. The Count blew a smoke ring. ‘Good evening,’ he said, as it drifted away. ‘You must be the mob.’ ‘May I introduce you to Sergeant Kraput, and this gentleman here picking his teeth with his knife is Corporal Svitz. They and their men will be going on duty in, oh, about an hour. Purely for reasons of security, you understand.’ ‘An’ then we’ll gut yer like a clam and stuff yer with straw,’ said Corporal Svitz. ‘Ah. This is technical military language of which I know little,’ said the Count. ‘I do so hope there is no unpleasantness.’ ‘I don’t,’ said Sergeant Kraput. ‘What scamps they are,’ said the Count. * ‘It’th a pleathure to be commanded in a clear, firm authoritative voithe, mithtreth,’ said Igor, lurching over to the bridles. ‘None of thith “Would you mind …” rubbith. An Igor liketh to know where he thtandth.’ ‘Slightly lopsidedly?’ said Magrat. * ‘The Prophet Brutha said that Om helps those who help one another.’ ‘And does he?’ ‘To be honest, there are a number of opinions of what was meant.’ ‘How many?’ ‘About one hundred and sixty, since the Schism of 10.30 a.m., February 23. That was when the Re-United Free Chelonianists (Hubwards Convocation) schismed from the Re-United Free Chelonianists (Rimwards Convocation). It was rather serious.’ ‘Blood spilled?’ said Agnes. She wasn’t really interested, but it took her mind off whatever might be waking up in a minute. ‘No, but there were fisticuffs and a deacon had ink spilled on him.’ * ‘The Omnians used to burn witches …’ ‘They never did,’ said Granny. ‘I’m afraid I have to admit that the records show—’ ‘They never burned witches,’ said Granny. ‘Probably they burned some old ladies who spoke up or couldn’t run away. I wouldn’t look for witches bein’ burned,’ she added, shifting position. ‘I might look for witches doin’ the burning, though. We ain’t all nice.’ * ‘There is a very interesting debate raging at the moment [among Omnians] about the nature of sin, for example.’ ‘And what do they think? Against it, are they?’ [said Granny] ‘It’s not as simple as that. It’s not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of grey’ ‘There’s no greys, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.’ ‘It’s a lot more complicated than that—’ ‘No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.’ ‘Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes—’ ‘But they starts with thinking about people as things …’ * Scraps tried to lick Igor. He was a dog with a lot of lick to share. ‘Thcrapth, play dead,’ said Igor. The dog dropped and rolled over with his legs in the air. ‘Thee?’ said Igor. ‘He rememberth!’ * Agnes indicated the headless vampire. ‘Er … is that one Vlad?’ she said. ‘We can check. Piotr, show her the head.’ A young man obediently went to the fireplace, pulled on a glove, lifted the lid of a big saucepan and held up a head by its hair. ‘That’s not Vlad,’ said Agnes, swallowing. No, said Perdita, Vlad was taller. * The Countess clutched his arm. ‘Oh, this does so remind me of our honeymoon,’ she said. ‘Don’t you remember those wonderful nights in Grjsknvij?’ ‘Oh, fresh morning of the world indeed,’ said the Count solemnly. ‘Such romance … and we met such lovely people, too. Do you remember Mr and Mrs Harker?’ ‘Very fondly. I recall they lasted nearly all week.’ * Vampires are not naturally co-operative creatures. It’s not in their nature. Every other vampire is a rival for the next meal. In fact, the ideal situation for a vampire is a world in which every other vampire has been killed off and no one seriously believes in vampires any more.   SAM Vimes is a man on the run. Yesterday he was a Me, a chief of police and the ambassador to the mysterious, fat-rich country of Uberwald. Now he has nothing but his native wit and the gloomy trousers of Uncle Vanya (don’t ask). It’s snowing. It’s freezing. And if he can’t make it through the forest to civilization there’s going to be a terrible war. But there are monsters on his trail. They’re bright. They’re fast. They’re werewolves - and they’re catching tip. Starring dwarfs, diplomacy, intrigue and big lamps of fat. All Jolson was a man who’d show up on an atlas and change the orbit of small planets. Paving stones cracked under his feet. He combined in one body – and there was plenty of room left over – Ankh-Morpork’s best chef and its keenest eater, a circumstance made in mashed potato heaven. He’d picked up the nickname by general acclaim, since no one seeing him in the street for the first time could believe that it was all Jolson. * It is in the nature of the universe that the person who always keeps you waiting ten minutes will, on the day you are ten minutes tardy, have been ready ten minutes early and will make a point of not mentioning this. * Uberwald was so thickly forested, so creased by little mountain ranges and beset by rivers, that it was largely unmapped. It was mostly unexplored, too. (At least by proper explorers. Just living there doesn’t count.) ‘I could’ve bin a wolf, you know,’ said Gaspode. ‘With diff’rent parents, of course.’ ‘Someone said something blotto voice,’ said Captain Colon. ‘I’m sure they didn’t, captain,’ said Nobby. ‘And I won’t be eyeballed like that, neither!’ ‘No one’s looking at you!’ wailed Nobby. ‘Aha, you think I don’t know that one?’ Colon shouted. ‘There’s plenty of ways to eyeball someone without lookin’ at ‘em, corporal. That man over there is earlobing me!’ * Gaspode settled down in the pose he almost unconsciously categorized as Faithful Companion Keeping Watch, got bored, scratched himself absent-mindedly, curled up in the pose known as Faithful Companion Curled Up With His Nose Pressed On His Bottom, and fell asleep. * Lord Vetinari paused. He found it difficult to talk to Frederick Colon. He dealt on a daily basis with people who treated conversation as a complex game, and with Colon he had to keep on adjusting his mind in case he overshot. * Gaspode wasn’t sure of his own ancestry. There was some terrier, and a touch of spaniel, and probably someone’s leg, and an awful lot of mongrel. * ‘I believe you were an alcoholic, Sir Samuel.’ ‘No,’ said Vimes. ‘I was a drunk. You have to be richer than I was to be an alcoholic’ ‘Everyone’s heard of Commander Vimes. I mean no offence, of course, but we were a little surprised when the Patrician said that you would be coming. We were expecting one of the more … experienced … diplomats.’ ‘Oh, I can hand around the thin cucumber sandwiches like anything,’ said Vimes. ‘And if you want little golden balls of chocolate piled up in a heap, I’m your man.’ * ‘Igors heal very fast,’ said Lady Sybil. ‘They’d have to.’ ‘Mister Skimmer said they’re very gifted surgeons, Sam.’ ‘Except cosmetically, perhaps.’ * ‘This stuff … this stuff is spying. I wondered how Vetinari always seems to know so much!’ ‘Did you think it came to him in dreams, dear?’ ‘But there’s loads of details here … I didn’t know we did this sort of thing!’ ‘You use spies all the time, dear,’ said Sybil. ‘I do not!’ ‘Well, what about people like Foul Ole Ron and No Way Jose and Cumbling Michael?’ ‘That is not spying, that is not spying! That’s just “information received”. We couldn’t do the job if we didn’t know what’s happening on the street!’ ‘Well, perhaps Havelock just thinks in terms of … a bigger street, dear.’ * Vimes had once discussed the Ephebian idea of ‘democracy’ with Carrot, and had been rather interested in the idea that everyone had a vote until he found out that while he, Vimes, would have a vote, there was no way in the rules that anyone could prevent Nobby Nobbs from having one as well. Vimes could see the flaw there straight away. * The Marquis of Fantailler got into many fights in his youth, most of them as a result of being known as the Marquis of Fantailler, and wrote a set of rules for what he termed ‘the noble art of fisticuffs’, which mostly consisted of a list of places where people weren’t allowed to hit him. Many people were impressed with his work and later stood with noble chest out-thrust and fists balled in a spirit of manly aggression against people who hadn’t read the Marquis’s book but did know how to knock people senseless with a chair. The last words of a surprisingly large number of people were ‘Stuff the bloody Marquis of Fantailler—’ * Vimes is being pursued through an unfriendly landscape. So, what were his options? Well, he could stay in the tree and die, or run for it and die. Of the two, dying in one piece seemed better. YOU’RE DOING VERY WELL FOR A MAN OF YOUR AGE. Death was sitting on a higher branch of the tree. ‘Are you following me or what?’ ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH THE WORDS ‘DEATH WAS HIS CONSTANT COMPANION’? Lady Sybil wasn’t a good cook. She’d never been taught proper cookery; at her school it had always been assumed that other people would be doing the cooking and that in any case it would be for fifty people using at least four types of fork.   WILLIAM just wants to get at the truth. Unfortunately, everyone else wants to get at William. And it’s only the third edition… William de Worde is the accidental editor of the Discworld’s first newspaper. Now he must cope with the traditional perils of a journalist’s life - people who want him dead, a recovering vampire with a suicidal fascination for flash photography, some more people who want him dead in a different way and, worst of all, the man who keeps begging him to publish pictures of his humorously shaped potatoes. The rumour spread through the city like wildfire (which had quite often spread through Ankh-Morpork since its citizens had learned the words ‘fire insurance’). * Selling hot sausages from a tray was by way of being the ground state of Dibbler’s existence, from which he constantly sought to extricate himself and back to which he constantly returned when his latest venture went all runny. Which was a shame, because Dibbler was an extremely good hot sausage salesman. He had to be, given the nature of his sausages. * As for Mr Pin and Mr Tulip, all that need be known about them at this point is that they are the kind of people who call you ‘friend’. People like that aren’t friendly. ‘You know I’ve always wanted a paperless office—’ ‘Yes, Archchancellor, that’s why you hide it all in cupboards and throw it out of the window at night.’ There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: ‘What’s up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don’t think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass!’ * Hugglestones was a boarding school so bleak and spartan that only the upper classes would dream of sending their sons there. It was a granite building on a rain-soaked moor, and its stated purpose was to make men from boys. The policy employed involved a certain amount of wastage, and consisted of very simple and violent games in the healthy outdoor sleet. The small, slow, fat or merely unpopular were mown down, as nature intended. * ‘Ah,’ said Mr Pin. ‘Right. You are concerned citizens.’ He knew about concerned citizens. Wherever they were, they all spoke the same private language, where ‘traditional values’ meant ‘hang someone’. * ‘Clear my appointments this morning, will you? I will see the Guild of Towncriers at nine o’clock and the Guild of Engravers at ten past.’ ‘I wasn’t aware they had appointments, sir.’ ‘They will have,’ said Lord Vetinari. * ‘I am looking for Mister William der Worde,’ rumbled a voice. ‘That’s me,’ said William. ‘Der Patrician will see you now,’ said the troll. ‘I don’t have an appointment with Lord Vetinari!’ ‘Ah, well,’ said the troll, ‘you’d be amazed at how many people has appointments wid der Patrician an’ dey don’t know it.’ * Dibbler opened the special section of his tray, the high-class one that contained sausages whose contents were 1) meat, 2) from a known four-footed creature, 3) probably land-dwelling. * ‘ … a naked man, hotly pursued by Members of the Watch, burst through the Window and ran around the Room, causing much Disarray of the Tarts before being Apprehended by the Trifles.’ An innocent young reporter writes. * William wondered why he always disliked people who said ‘no offence meant’. Maybe it was because they found it easier to say ‘no offence meant’ than actually refrain from giving offence. * William felt predisposed to like Vimes, if only because of the type of enemies he made, but as far as he could see everything about the man could be prefaced by the word ‘badly’, as in -spoken, -educated and -in need of a drink. * ‘Ah, just the man I was looking for!’ said William. ‘Am I?’ wheezed Nobbs, smoke curling out of his ears. ‘Yes, I’ve been talking to Commander Vimes, and now I would like to see the room where the crime was committed.’ William had great hopes of that sentence. It seemed to contain the words ‘and he gave me permission to’ without actually doing so. * One of the strange things about eating at Mrs Arcanum’s was that you got more leftovers than you got original meals. That is, there were far more meals made up from what were traditionally considered the prudently usable remains of earlier meals – stews, bubble-and-squeak, curry – than there were meals at which those remains could have originated. The curry was particularly strange, since Mrs Arcanum considered foreign parts only marginally less unspeakable than private parts and therefore added the curious yellow curry powder with a very small spoon, lest everyone should suddenly tear their clothes off and do foreign things. The main ingredients appeared to be swede and gritty rainwater tasting sultanas and the remains of some cold mutton. * The best way to describe Mr Windling would be like this: you are at a meeting. You’d like to be away early. So would everyone else. There really isn’t very much to discuss, anyway. And just as everyone can see Any Other Business coming over the horizon and is already putting their papers neatly together, a voice says ‘If I can raise a minor matter, Mr Chairman …’ and with a horrible wooden feeling in your stomach you know, now, that the evening will go on for twice as long with much referring back to the minutes of earlier meetings. The man who has just said that, and is now sitting there with a smug smile of dedication to the committee process, is as near Mr Windling as makes no difference. And something that distinguishes the Mr Windlings of the universe is the term ‘in my humble opinion’, which they think adds weight to their statements rather than indicating, in reality, ‘these are the mean little views of someone with the social grace of duckweed’. * Classically, very few people have considered that cleanliness is next to godliness, apart from in a very sternly abridged dictionary. A rank loincloth and hair in an advanced state of matted entanglement have generally been the badges of office of prophets whose injunction to disdain earthly things starts with soap. * ‘You don’t think a dress like this would be a bit … forward, do you?’ said Sacharissa, holding the dress against herself. Rocky looked worried. You’re quite a lot forward already’ he opined. Sacharissa’s knowledge of vintages extended just as far as knowing that Chateau Maison was a very popular wine. Sacharissa pulled a brown leather wallet out of the jacket. ‘Any clue to who he is?’ said William. ‘Er … there’s something done on the leather in pokerwork,’ said Sacharissa. ‘What does it say?’ ‘ “Not A Very Nice Person At All”,’ she read. ‘I wonder what kind of person would put that on a wallet?’ ‘Someone who wasn’t a very nice person,’ said William. Death sighed and shook his head. WHO KNOWS WHAT EVIL LURKS IN THE HEART OF MEN? The Death of Rats looked up. SQUEAK, he said. Death waved a hand dismissively WELL, YES, OBVIOUSLY ME, he said. I JUST WONDERED IF THERE WAS ANYONE ELSE. * ‘Oh, I see,’ said Lord Vetinari. ‘You mean you should be free to print what you like?’ ‘Well … broadly, yes, sir.’ ‘Because that’s in the public interest?’ ‘I think so, sir.’ ‘Stories about man-eating goldfish and people’s husbands disappearing in big silver dishes?’ ‘No, sir. That’s what the public is interested in. We do the other stuff, sir.’ ‘Amusingly shaped vegetables?’ ‘Well, a bit of that, sir. Sacharissa calls them human interest stories.’ ‘About vegetables and animals?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘So … we have what the people are interested in, and human interest stories, which is what humans are interested in, and the public interest, which no one is interested in.’ ‘Except the public, sir,’ said William, trying to keep up. ‘Which isn’t the same as people and humans?’ ‘I think it’s more complicated than that, sir.’ ‘Obviously Do you mean that the public is a different thing from the people you just see walking about the place? The public thinks big, sensible, measured thoughts while people run around doing silly things?’ ‘I think so. I may have to work on that idea too, I admit.’ * ‘I’m sure we can pull together, sir.’ Lord Vetinari raised his eyebrows. ‘Oh, I do hope not, I really do hope not. Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions.’ He smiled. ‘It’s the only way to make progress.’ * You think that’s really true?’ William said. Sacharissa shrugged. ‘Really true? Who knows? This is a newspaper, isn’t it? It just has to be true until tomorrow.’   TIME is a resource. Everyone knows it has to be managed. And on Discworld that is the job of the Monks of History, who store it and pump it from the places where it’s wasted (like Underwater – how much time does a codfish need?) to places like cities, where there’s never enough time. But the construction of the world’s first truly accurate clock starts a race against, well, time for Lu-Tze and his apprentice Lobsang Ludd. Because it will stop time. And that will only be the start of everyone’s problems. Complete with a full supporting cast of heroes and villains, yetis, martial artists and Ronnie, the fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse (who left before they became famous). ‘She has told me everything,’ said Wen. ‘I know that time was made for men, not the other way round. I have learned how to shape it and bend it. I know how to make a moment last for ever, because it already has. And I can teach these skills even to you, Clodpool. I have heard the heartbeat of the universe. I know the answers to many questions. Ask me.’ The apprentice gave him a bleary look. ‘Er … what does master want for breakfast?’ he said. Wen looked down from their camp and across the snowfields and purple mountains to the golden daylight creating the world, and mused upon certain aspects of humanity. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘One of the difficult ones.’ * This is the desk of a professional. It is clear that their job is their life. There are … human touches, but these are the human touches that strict usage allows in a chilly world of duty and routine. Mostly they’re on the only piece of real colour in this picture of blacks and greys. It’s a coffee mug. Someone somewhere wanted to make it & jolly mug. It bears a rather unconvincing picture of a teddy bear, and the legend ‘To The World’s Greatest Grandad’ and the slight change in the style of lettering on the word ‘Grandad’ makes it clear that this has come from one of those stalls that have hundreds of mugs like this, declaring that they’re for the world’s greatest Grandad/Dad/Mum/Granny/Uncle/ Aunt/Blank. Only someone whose life contains very little else, one feels, would treasure a piece of gimcrackery like this. * They were not lifeforms. They were … non-lifeforms. They were the observers of the operation of the universe, its clerks, its auditors. They saw to it that things spun and rocks fell. And they believed that for a thing to exist it had to have a position in time and space. Humanity had arrived as a nasty shock. Humanity practically was things that didn’t have a position in time and space, such as imagination, pity, hope, history and belief. Take those away and all you had was an ape that fell out of trees a lot. Intelligent life was, therefore, an anomaly. It made the filing untidy. The Auditors hated things like that. * Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. Therefore, he understood, there is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he said, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it. * Lobsang heard the dojo master say: ‘Dojo! What is Rule One?’ ‘Do not act incautiously when confronting little bald wrinkly smiling men!’ * If children were weapons, Jason would have been banned by international treaty. Jason had doting parents and an attention span of minus several seconds, except when it came to inventive cruelty to small furry animals, when he could be quite patient. Jason kicked, punched, bit and spat. His artwork had even frightened the life out of Miss Smith, who could generally find something nice to say about any child. He was definitely a boy with special needs. In the view of the staffroom, these began with an exorcism. Madam Frout had stooped to listening at the keyhole. She had heard Jason’s first tantrum of the day, and then silence. She couldn’t quite make out what Miss Susan said next. When she found an excuse to venture into the classroom half an hour later, Jason was helping two little girls to make a cardboard rabbit. Later his parents said they were amazed at the change, although apparently now he would only go to sleep with the light on. * ‘What precisely was it you wanted, madam?’ she said. ‘It’s just that I’ve left the class doing algebra, and they get restless when they’ve finished.’ ‘Algebra?’ said Madam Frout, perforce staring at her own bosom, which no one else had ever done. ‘But that’s far too difficult for seven-year-olds!’ ‘Yes, but I didn’t tell them that and so far they haven’t found out,’ said Susan. The class had built a full-size white horse out of cardboard boxes, during which time they’d learned a lot about horses and Susan learned about Jason’s remarkably accurate powers of observation. She’d had to take the cardboard tube away from him and explain that this was a polite horse. The Stationery Cupboard! That was one of the great battlegrounds of classroom history, that and the playhouse. But the ownership of the playhouse usually sorted itself out without Susan’s intervention, so that all she had to do was be ready with ointment, a nose-blow and mild sympathy for the losers, whereas the Stationery Cupboard was a war of attrition. It contained pots of powder paint and reams of paper and boxes of crayons and more idiosyncratic items like a spare pair of pants for Billy, who did his best. It also contained The Scissors, which under classroom rules were treated as some kind of Doomsday Machine, and, of course, the boxes of stars. The only people allowed in the cupboard were Susan and, usually, Vincent. Despite everything Susan had tried, short of actual deception, he was always the official ‘best at everything’ and won the coveted honour every day, which was to go into the Stationery Cupboard and fetch the pencils and hand them out. For the rest of the class, and especially Jason, the Stationery Cupboard was some mystic magic realm to be entered whenever possible. Honestly, thought Susan, once you learn the arts of defending the Stationery Cupboard, outwitting Jason and keeping the class pet alive until the end of term, you’ve mastered at least half of teaching. * According to the Second Scroll of Wen the Eternally Surprised, Wen the Eternally Surprised sawed the first Procrastinator from the trunk of a wamwam tree, carved certain symbols on it, fitted it with a bronze spindle and summoned the apprentice, Clodpool. ‘Ah. Very nice, master,’ said Clodpool. ‘A prayer wheel, yes?’ ‘No, this is nothing like as complex,’ said Wen. ‘It merely stores and moves time.’ ‘That simple, eh?’ ‘And now I shall test it,’ said Wen. He gave it a half-turn with his hand. ‘Ah. Very nice, master,’ said Clodpool. ‘A prayer wheel, yes?’ ‘No, this is nothing like as complex,’ said Wen. ‘It merely stores and moves time.’ ‘That simple, eh?’ ‘And now I shall test it,’ said Wen. He moved it a little less this time. ‘That simple, eh?’ ‘And now I shall test it,’ said Wen. * Lu-Tze bent down, picked up a fallen cork helmet, and solemnly handed it to Lobsang. ‘Health and safety at work,’ he said. ‘Very important.’ ‘Will it protect me?’ said Lobsang, putting it on. ‘Not really. But when they find your head, it may be recognizable.’ * ‘All roads lead to Ankh-Morpork.’ ‘I thought all roads led away from Ankh-Morpork.’ ‘Not the way we’re going.’ * Now the cold crept in, slowly, like a sadist’s knife. Lu-Tze strode on ahead, seemingly oblivious of it. Lu-Tze, it was said, would walk for miles during weather when the clouds themselves would freeze and crash out of the sky. Cold did not affect him, they said. ‘Sweeper!’ Lu-Tze stopped and turned. ‘Yes, lad?’ ‘I don’t know how you can stand this cold!’ ‘Ah, you don’t know the secret?’ ‘Is it the Way of Mrs Cosmopilite that gives you such power?’ Lu-Tze hitched up his robe and did a little dance in the snow, revealing skinny legs encased in thick, yellowing tubes. ‘Very good, very good,’ he said. ‘She still sends me these double-knit combinations, silk on the inside, then three layers of wool, reinforced gussets and a couple of handy trapdoors. Very reasonably priced at six dollars a pair because I’m an old customer. For it is written, “Wrap up warm or you’ll catch your death.”’ * The Auditors hated questions. They hated them almost as much as they hated decisions, and they hated decisions almost as much as they hated the idea of the individual personality. But what they hated most was things moving around randomly. * The apprentice Clodpool, in a rebellious mood, approached Wen and spake thusly: ‘Master, what is the difference between a humanistic, monastic system of belief in which wisdom is sought by means of an apparently nonsensical system of questions and answers, and a lot of mystic gibberish made up on the spur of the moment?’ Wen considered this for some time, and at last said: ‘A fish!’ And Clodpool went away, satisfied. * The Code of the Igors was very strict. Never Contradict: it was no part of an Igor’s job to say things like ‘No, thur, that’th an artery’ The marthter was always right. Never Complain: an Igor would never say ‘But that’th a thouthand mileth away!’ Never Make Personal Remarks: no Igor would dream of saying anything like ‘I thould have thomething done about that laugh, if I wath you.’ And never, ever Ask Questions. Admittedly, Igor knew, that meant never ask BIG questions. ‘Would thur like a cup of tea around now?’ was fine, but ‘What do you need a hundred virginth for?’ or ‘Where do you ecthpect me to find a brain at thith time of night?’ was not. * Death found Pestilence in a hospice in Llamedos. Pestilence liked hospitals. There was always something for him to do. Currently he was trying to remove the ‘Now Wash Your Hands’ sign over a cracked basin. * And what is this ? ‘It is a cat. It arrived. It does not appear to wish to depart.’ And the reason for its presence? ‘It appears to tolerate the company of humans, asking nothing in return but food, water, shelter and comfort.’ * ‘Look at the bird.’ It was perched on a branch by a fork in the tree, next to what looked like a birdhouse. ‘Looks like some kind of old box to me,’ said Lobsang. He squinted to see better. ‘Is it an old … clock?’ he added. ‘Look at what the bird is nibbling,’ suggested Lu-Tze. ‘Well, it looks like … a crude gearwheel? But why—’ ‘Well spotted. That, lad, is a clock cuckoo. A young one, by the look of it, trying to build a nest that’ll attract a mate. Not much chance of that … See? It’s got the numerals all wrong and it’s stuck the hands on crooked.’ ‘A bird that builds clocks? I thought a cuckoo clock was a clock with a mechanical cuckoo that came out when—’ ‘And where do you think people got such a strange idea from?’ ‘But that’s some kind of miracle!’ ‘Why?’ said Lu-Tze. ‘They barely go for more than half an hour, they keep lousy time and the poor dumb males go frantic trying to keep them wound.’ * Of the very worst words that can be heard by anyone high in the air, the pair known as ‘Oh-oh’ possibly combine the maximum of bowel-knotting terror with the minimum wastage of breath. * ‘We’re having rabbit,’ Mrs War said. ‘I’m sure I can make it stretch to three.’ War’s big red face wrinkled. ‘Do I like rabbit?’ ‘Yes, dear.’ ‘I thought I liked beef.’ ‘No, dear. Beef gives you wind.’ ‘Oh.’ War sighed. ‘Any chance of onions?’ ‘You don’t like onions, dear.’ ‘I don’t?’ ‘Because of your stomach, dear.’ ‘Oh.’ War smiled awkwardly at Death. ‘It’s rabbit,’ he said. Despite himself, Death was fascinated. He had never come across the idea of keeping your memory inside someone else’s head. ‘Perhaps I would like a beer?’ War ventured. ‘You don’t like beer, dear.’ ‘I don’t?’ ‘No, it brings on your trouble.’ ‘Ah. Uh, how do I feel about brandy?’ ‘You don’t like brandy, dear. You like your special oat drink with the vitamins.’ ‘Oh, yes,’ said War mournfully. ‘I’d forgotten I liked that.’ * ‘The poet Hoha once dreamed he was a butterfly, and then he awoke and said, “Am I a man who dreamed he was a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming he is a man?”‘ said Lobsang. ‘Really?’ said Susan briskly. ‘And which was he?’ ‘What? Well … who knows?’ ‘How did he write his poems?’ said Susan. ‘With a brush, of course.’ ‘He didn’t flap around making information-rich patterns in the air or laying eggs on cabbage leaves?’ ‘No one ever mentioned it.’ ‘Then he was probably a man.’ Lu-Tze had long considered that everything happens for a reason, except possibly football. Ankh-Morpork had not had a king for many centuries, but palaces tend to survive. A city might not need a king, but it can always use big rooms and some handy large walls, long after the monarchy is but a memory and the building is renamed the Glorious Memorial to the People’s Industry. * Wienrich and Boettcher were foreigners, and according to Ankh-Morpork’s Guild of Confectioners they did not understand the peculiarities of the city’s tastebuds. Ankh-Morpork people, said the Guild, were hearty, no-nonsense folk who did not want chocolate that was stuffed with cocoa liquor, and were certainly not like effete la-di-dah foreigners who wanted cream in everything. In fact they actually preferred chocolate made mostly from milk, sugar, suet, hooves, lips, miscellaneous squeezings, rat droppings, plaster, flies, tallow, bits of tree, hair, lint, spiders and powdered cocoa husks. This meant that according to the food standards of the great chocolate centres in Borogravia and Quirm, Ankh-Morpork chocolate was formally classed as ‘cheese’ and only escaped, through being the wrong colour, being defined as ‘tile grout’. * The Quirm College for Young Ladies had been very advanced in that respect, and its teachers took the view that a girl who couldn’t swim two lengths of the pool with her clothes on wasn’t making an effort. Her one chocolate today and it was damn artificial damn pink-and-white damn sickly damn stupid nougat! Well, no one could be expected to believe that counted.† The yeti of the Ramtops, where the Discworld’s magical field is so intense that it is part of the very landscape, are one of the few creatures to utilize control of personal time for genetic advantage. The result is a kind of physical premonition – you find out what is going to happen next by allowing it to happen. Faced with danger, or any kind of task that involves risk of death, a yeti will save its life up to that point and then proceed with all due caution, yet in the comfortable knowledge that, should everything go pancake-shaped, it will wake up at the point where it saved itself with, and this is the important part, knowledge of the events which have just happened but which will not now happen because it’s not going to be such a damn fool next time. This is not quite the paradox it appears because, after it has taken place, it hasn’t happened. All that actually remains is a memory in the yeti’s head, which merely turns out to be a remarkably accurate premonition. The little eddies in time caused by all this are just lost in the noise of all the kinks, dips and knots put in time by every other living creature. * Susan returned to the classroom and spent the rest of the day performing small miracles, which included removing the glue from Richenda’s hair, emptying the wee out of Billy’s shoes and treating the class to a short visit to the continent of Fourecks. † This is true. A chocolate you did not want to eat does not count as chocolate. This discovery is from the same branch of culinary physics that determined that food eaten while walking contains no calories.   HE’S been a legend in his own lifetime. He can remember the great days of high adventure. He can remember when a hero didn’t have to worry about fences and lawyers and civilization. He can remember when people didn’t tell you off for killing dragons. But he can’t always remember, these days, where he put his teeth… He’s really not happy about that bit. So now, with his ancient sword and his new walking stick and Ms old friends – and they’re very old friends – Cohen the Barbarian is going on one final quest. It’s been a good life. He’s going to Climb the highest mountain in the Discworld and meet his gods. He doesn’t like the way they let men grow old and die. It’s time, in fact, to give something back. The last hero in the world is going to return what the first hero stole. With a vengeance. That’ll mean the end of the world, if no one stops him in time. Someone is going to try. So who knows who the last hero really is? The place where the story happened was a world on the back of four elephants perched on the shell of a giant turtle. That’s the advantage of space. It’s big enough to hold practically anything, and so, eventually, it does. * People think that it is strange to have a turtle ten thousand miles long and an elephant more than two thousand miles tall, which just shows that the human brain is ill-adapted for thinking and was probably originally designed for cooling the blood. It believes mere size is amazing. There’s nothing amazing about size. Turtles are amazing, and elephants are quite astonishing. The fact that there’s a big turtle is far less amazing than the fact that there is a turtle anywhere. * ‘Ah, well, life goes on,’ people say when someone dies. But from the point of view of the person who has just died, it doesn’t. It’s the universe that goes on. Just as the deceased was getting the hang of everything it’s all whisked away, by illness or accident or, in one case, a cucumber. Why this has to be is one of the imponderables of life, in the face of which people either start to pray … or become really, really angry. * The wizards, once they understood the urgency of a problem, and then had lunch, and argued about the pudding, could actually work quite fast. Their method of finding a solution was by creative hubbub. If the question was, ‘What is the best spell for turning a book of poetry into a frog?’, then the one thing they would not do was look in any book with a title like Major Amphibian Spells in a Literary Environment: A Comparison. That would, somehow, be cheating. They would argue about it instead, standing around a blackboard, seizing the chalk from one another and rubbing out bits of what the current chalk-holder was writing before he’d finished the other end of the sentence. Somehow, though, it all seemed to work. * The gods play games with the fate of men. Not complex ones, obviously, because gods lack patience. Cheating is part of the rules. And gods play hard. To lose all believers is, for a god, the end. But a believer who survives the game gains honour and extra belief. Who wins with the most believers, lives. Believers can include other gods, of course. Gods believe in belief. * Lord Vetinari, despite his education, had a mind like an engineer. If you wished to open something, you found the appropriate spot and applied the minimum amount of force necessary to achieve your end. Possibly the spot was between a couple of ribs and the force was applied via a dagger, or between two warring countries and applied via an army, but the important thing was to find that one weak spot which would be the key to everything. * The dungeons of the Palace held a number of felons imprisoned ‘at his lordship’s pleasure’, and since Lord Vetinari was seldom very pleased they were generally in for the long haul. * Leonard of Quirm was so absent-mindedly clever that he could paint pictures that didn’t just follow you around the room but went home with you and did the washing-up. * ‘So how come you left the Evil Dark Lord business, Harry?’ said Cohen. ‘Werl, you know how it is these days,’ said Evil Harry Dread. The Horde nodded. They knew how it was these days. ‘People these days, when they’re attacking your Dark Evil Tower, the first thing they do is block up your escape tunnel,’ said Evil Harry. ‘Bastards!’ said Cohen. ‘You’ve got to let the Dark Lord escape. Everyone knows that.’ ‘That’s right,’ said Caleb. ‘Got to leave yourself some work for tomorrow.’ * ‘Anyone heard of Ning the Uncompassionate?’ ‘Sort of,’ said Boy Willie. ‘I killed him.’ ‘You couldn’t have done! What was it he always said? “I shall revert to this vicinity!”‘ ‘Sort of hard to do that,’ said Boy Willie, pulling out a pipe and beginning to fill it with tobacco, ‘when your head’s nailed to a tree.’ * ‘How about Pamdar the Witch Queen?’ said Evil Harry. ‘Now there was—’ ‘Retired,’ said Cohen. ‘She’d never retire!’ ‘Got married,’ Cohen insisted. ‘But she was a devil woman!’ ‘We all get older, Harry. She runs a shop now. Pam’s Pantry. Makes marmalade,’ said Cohen. ‘What? She used to queen it in a throne on top of a pile of skulls!’ ‘I didn’t say it was very good marmalade.’ * Hughnon Ridcully, Chief Priest of Blind Io, shared many of the characteristics of his brother Mustrum. He also saw his job as being, essentially, one of organizer. There were plenty of people who were good at the actual believing, and he left them to it. It took a lot more than prayer to make sure the laundry got done and the building was kept in repair. * There were so many gods now … at least two thousand. Many were, of course, still very small. But you had to watch them. Gods were very much a fashion thing. Look at Om, now. One minute he was a bloodthirsty little deity in some mad hot country and then suddenly he was one of the top gods. It had all been done by not answering prayers, but doing so in a sort of dynamic way that left open the possibility that one day he might and then there’d be fireworks. * And then, of course, you had your real newcomers like Aniger, Goddess of Squashed Animals. Who would have thought that better roads and faster carts would have led to that? But gods grew bigger when called upon at need, and enough minds had cried out, ‘Oh god, what was that I hit?’ * Death tries to come to grips with Schroedinger’s Cat: In the study of his dark house on the edge of Time, Death looked at the wooden box. PERHAPS I SHALL TRY ONE MORE TIME, he said. He reached down and lifted up a small kitten, patted it on the head, lowered it gently into the box, and closed the lid. THE CAT DIES WHEN THE AIR RUNS OUT? ‘I suppose it might, sir,’ said Albert, his manservant. ‘But I don’t reckon that’s the point. If I understand it right, you don’t know if the cat’s dead or alive until you look at it.’ THINGS WILL HAVE COME TO A PRETTY PASS, ALBERT, IF I DID NOT KNOW WHETHER A THING WAS DEAD OR ALIVE WITHOUT HAVING TO GO AND LOOK. ‘Er … the way the theory goes, sir, it’s the act of lookin’ that determines if it’s alive or not.’ Death looked hurt. ARE YOU SUGGESTING I WILL KILL THE CAT JUST BY LOOKING AT IT? ‘It’s not quite like that, sir.’ I MEAN, IT’S NOT AS IF I MAKE FACES OR ANYTHING. ‘To be honest with you, sir, I don’t think even the wizards understand the uncertainty business,’ said Albert. Death opened the box and took out the kitten. It stared at him with the normal mad amazement of kittens everywhere. I DON’T HOLD WITH CRUELTY TO CATS, said Death, putting it gently on the floor. ‘Some people say you achieve immortality through your children,’ said the minstrel. ‘Yeah?’ said Cohen. ‘Name one of your great-grandads, then.’ Discworld briefly discovers space travel, and Carrot, Rincewind and Leonard of Quirm look down on the Disc from its moon: You know, I’m not sure I ever really believed it before,’ said Carrot. ‘You know … about the turtle and the elephants and everything. Seeing it all like this makes me feel very … very …’ ‘Scared?’ suggested Rincewind. ‘No.’ ‘Upset?’ ‘No.’ ‘Easily intimidated?’ ‘No.’ Beyond the Rimfall, the continents of the world were coming into view under swirls of white cloud. You know .. . from up here … you can’t see the boundaries between nations,’ said Carrot, almost wistfully. ‘Is that a problem?’ said Leonard. ‘Possibly something could be done.’ ‘Maybe huge, really huge buildings in lines, along the frontiers,’ said Rincewind. ‘Or … or very wide roads. You could paint them different colours to save confusion.’ ‘Should aerial travel become widespread,’ said Leonard, ‘it would be a useful idea to grow forests in the shape of the name of the country, or of other areas of note. I will bear this in mind.’ ‘I wasn’t actually sugges—’ Carrot began. And then he stopped, and just sighed. * On the veldt of Howondaland live the N’tuitif people, the only tribe in the world to have no imagination whatsoever. For example, their story about the thunder runs something like this: ‘Thunder is a loud noise in the sky, resulting from the disturbance of the air masses by the passage of lightning.’ And their legend ‘How the Giraffe Got His Long Neck’ runs: ‘In the old days the ancestors of Old Man Giraffe had slightly longer necks than other grassland creatures, and the access to the high leaves was so advantageous that it was mostly long-necked giraffes that survived, passing on the long neck in their blood just as a man might inherit his grandfather’s spear. Some say, however, that it is all a lot more complicated and this explanation only applies to the shorter neck of the okapi. And so it is.’ The N’tuitif are a peaceful people, and have been hunted almost to extinction by neighbouring tribes, who have lots of imagination, and therefore plenty of gods, superstitions and ideas about how much better life would be if they had a bigger hunting ground. Of the events on the moon that day, the N’tuitif said: ‘The moon was brightly lit and from it rose another light which then split into three lights and faded. We do not know why this happened. It was just a thing.’ They were then wiped out by a nearby tribe who knew that the lights had been a signal from the god Ukli to expand the hunting ground a bit more. However, they were soon defeated entirely by a tribe who knew that the lights were their ancestors, who lived in the moon, and who were urging them to kill all non-believers in the goddess Glipzo. Three years later they in turn were killed by a rock falling from the sky, as a result of a star exploding a billion years ago. What goes around, comes around. If not examined too closely, it passes for justice. * Few religions are definite about the size of Heaven, but on the planet Earth the Book of Revelation (ch. XXI, v.16) gives it as a cube 12,000 furlongs on a side. This is somewhat less than 500,000,000,000,000,000,000 cubic feet. Even allowing that the Heavenly Host and other essential services take up at least two thirds of this space, this leaves about one million cubic feet of space for each human occupant – assuming that every creature that could be called ‘human’ is allowed in, and that the human race eventually totals a thousand times the number of humans alive up until now. This is such a generous amount of space that it suggests that room has also been provided for some alien races or – a happy thought – that pets are allowed. * Many of the things built by the architect and freelance designer Bergholt Stuttley (‘Bloody Stupid’) Johnson were recorded in Ankh-Morpork, often on the line where it says ‘Cause of Death’. He was, people agreed, a genius, at least if you defined the word broadly. Certainly no one else in the world could make an explosive mixture out of common sand and water. A good designer, he always said, should be capable of anything. And, indeed, he was.   TRUTH! Justice! Freedom! And a Hard-boiled Egg! Commander 8am Vimes of the Ankfe-Morpork City Watch bad it all. But now he’s back in his own rough, tough past without even the clothes he was standing tip in when the lightning struck. Living in the past is hard. Dying in the past is incredibly easy. But he must survive, because he has a job to do. He must track down a murderer, teach his younger self how to be a good copper and change the outcome of a bloody rebellion. There’s a problem: if he wins, he’s got no wife, no child, no future. A Discworld Tale of One City, with a full chorus of street Urchins, ladies of negotiable affection, rebels, secret policemen and other children of the revolution. Plain old Sam Vimes had ended up with a dress uniform that at least looked as though its owner was male. But the helmet had gold decoration, and the bespoke armourers had made a new, gleaming breastplate with useless gold ornamentation on it. Sam Vimes felt like a class traitor every time he wore it. He hated being thought of as one of those people that wore stupid ornamental armour. It was gilt by association. * ‘If I had a dollar for every copper’s funeral I’ve attended up here,’ said Colon, ‘I’d have … nineteen dollars and fifty pence.’ ‘Fifty pence?’ said Nobby. ‘That was when Corporal Hildebiddle woke up just in time and banged on the lid,’ said Colon. Privilege just means ‘private law’. Two types of people laugh at the law: those that break it and those that make it. Sweeper took a deep, long breath. ‘I like building gardens,’ he said. ‘Life should be a garden.’ Vimes stared blankly at what was in front of them. ‘Okay’ he said. ‘The gravel and rocks, yes, I can see that. Shame about all the rubbish. It always turns up, doesn’t it…’ ‘Yes,’ said Lu-Tze. ‘It’s part of the pattern.’ ‘What? The old cigarette packet?’ ‘Certainly. That invokes the element of air,’ said Sweeper. ‘And the cat doings?’ ‘To remind us that disharmony, like a cat, gets everywhere.’ ‘The cabbage stalks? The used sonky?’† ‘At our peril we forget the role of the organic in the total harmony. What arrives seemingly by chance in the pattern is part of a higher organization that we can only dimly comprehend. This is a very important fact, and has a bearing on your case.’ ‘And the beer bottle?’ For the first time since Vimes had met him, the monk frowned. ‘Y’know, some bugger always tosses one over the wall on his way back from the pub on Friday nights. If it wasn’t forbidden to do that kind of thing, he’d feel the flat of my hand and no mistake.’ ‘It’s not part of the higher organization?’ ‘Possibly. Who cares?’ * The Night Watch. They were in the Night Watch because they were too scruffy, ugly, incompetent, awkwardly shaped or bloody-minded for the Day Watch. They were honest, in that special policeman sense of the word. That is, they didn’t steal things too heavy to carry. And they had the morale of damp gingerbread. * ‘A copper doesn’t keep flapping his lip. He doesn’t let on what he knows. He doesn’t say what he’s thinking. No. He watches and listens and he learns and he bides his time. His mind works like mad but his face is a blank. Until he’s ready’ * Dr Lawn opened his back door and Vimes brushed past, the body over his shoulders. ‘You minister to all sorts, right?’ said Vimes. ‘Within reason, but—’ ‘This one’s an Unmentionable,’ said Vimes. ‘Tried to kill me. Needs some medicine.’ ‘Why’s he unconscious?’ said the doctor. ‘Didn’t want to take his medicine.’ * Apart from the curfew and manning the gates, the Night Watch didn’t do a lot. This was partly because they were incompetent, and partly because no one expected them to be anything else. They walked the streets, slowly, giving anyone dangerous enough time to saunter away or melt into the shadows, and then rang the bell to announce to a sleeping world, or at any rate a world that had been asleep, the fact that all was, despite appearances, well. They also rounded up the quieter sort of drunk and the more docile kinds of stray cattle. ‘What’re you going to charge our man with, sarge?’ said Sam. ‘Attempted assault on a copper. You saw the knives.’ You did kick him, though.’ ‘Right, I forgot. We’ll do him for resisting arrest, too.’ Dr Lawn put the tweezers down and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘That’s it,’ he said, wearily. ‘A bit of stitching and he’ll be fine.’ ‘And there’s some others I need you to take a look at,’ said Vimes. ‘You know, that comes as no surprise,’ said the doctor. ‘One’s got a lot of holes in his feet, one dropped through the privy roof and has got a twisted leg, and one’s dead.’ ‘I don’t think I can do much about the dead one,’ said the doctor. ‘How do you know he’s dead? I realize that I may regret asking that question.’ ‘He’s got a broken neck from falling off a roof and I reckon he fell off because he got a steel crossbow bolt in his brain.’ ‘Ah. That sounds like dead, if you want my medical opinion. Did you do it?’ ‘No!’ ‘Well, you’re a busy man, sergeant. You can’t be everywhere.’ * ‘I understand, Havelock, that you scored zero in your examination for stealthy movement.’ ‘May I ask how you found that out, madam?’ ‘Oh, one hears things,’ Madam said lightly. ‘Well, it was true,’ said the Assassin. ‘And why was this?’ ‘The examiner thought I’d used trickery, madam.’ ‘And did you?’ ‘Of course. I thought that was the idea.’ ‘And you never attended his lessons, he said.’ ‘Oh, I did. Religiously’ ‘He says he never saw you at any of them.’ Havelock smiled. ‘And your point, madam, is … ?’ * Vimes turned his back and faced the crowd. He said, ‘Anything’s a weapon, used right. Your bell is a club. Anything that pokes the other man hard enough to give you more time is a good thing. Never, ever threaten anyone with your sword unless you really mean it, because if he calls your bluff you suddenly don’t have many choices and they’re all the wrong ones. Don’t be frightened to use what you learned when you were kids. We don’t get marks for playing fair. And for close-up fighting, as your senior sergeant I explicitly forbid you to investigate the range of coshes, blackjacks and brass knuckles sold by Mrs Goodbody at No. 8 Easy Street, at a range of prices to suit all pockets, and should any of you approach me privately I absolutely will not demonstrate a variety of specialist blows suitable for these useful yet tricky instruments.’ * Sometimes the principles behind a glorious revolution don’t stand much close examination. ‘I’ve got a question,’ said someone in the crowd of onlookers. ‘Harry Supple’s my name. Got a shoe shop in New Cobblers …’ ‘Yes, comrade Supple?’ ‘It says here in article seven of this here list—’ Mr Supple ploughed on. ‘—People’s Declaration of the Glorious Twenty-fourth of May’ said Reg. ‘Yeah, yeah, right … well, it says we’ll seize hold of the means of production, sort of thing, so what I want to know is, how does that work out regarding my shoe shop? I mean, I’m in it anyway, right? It’s not like there’s room for more’n me and my lad Garbut and maybe one customer.’ ‘Ah, but after the revolution all property will be held in common by the people … er … that is, it’ll belong to you but also to everyone else, you see?’ Comrade Supple looked puzzled. ‘But I’ll be the one making the shoes?’ ‘Of course. But everything will belong to the people.’ ‘So … who’s going to pay for the shoes?’ said Mr Supple. ‘Everyone will pay a reasonable price for their shoes and you won’t be guilty of living off the sweat of the common worker,’ said Reg, shortly. ‘Now, if we—’ ‘You mean the cows?’ said Supple. ‘What?’ ‘Well, there’s only the cows, and the lads at the tannery, and frankly all they do is stand in a field all day, well, not the tannery boys, obviously, but—’ ‘Look,’ said Reg. ‘Everything will belong to the people and everyone will be better off. Do you understand?’ The shoemaker’s frown grew deeper. He wasn’t certain if he was part of the people. * The major was not a fool, even though he looked like one. He was idealistic, and thought of his men as ‘jolly good chaps’ despite the occasional evidence to the contrary, and on the whole did the best he could with the moderate intelligence at his disposal. When he was a boy he’d read books about great military campaigns, and visited the museums and looked with patriotic pride at the paintings of famous cavalry charges, last stands and glorious victories. It had come as rather a shock, when he later began to participate in some of these, to find that the painters had unaccountably left out the intestines. Perhaps they just weren’t very good at them. * ‘What’s it look like to you, Tom?’ said the major. ‘We’ve lost nearly eighty men,’ said the captain. ‘What? That’s terrible!’ ‘Oh, about sixty of them are deserters, as far as I can see. As for the rest, well, as far as I can see only six or seven of them went down to definite enemy action. Three men got stabbed in alleyways, for example.’ ‘Sounds like enemy action to me.’ Yes, Clive. But you were born in Quirm. Getting murdered in alleyways is just part of life in the big city’ * ‘Tom?’ Yes, Clive?’ ‘Have you ever sung the national anthem?’ ‘Oh, lots of times, sir.’ ‘I don’t mean officially.’ ‘You mean just to show I’m patriotic? Good gods, no. That would be a rather odd thing to do,’ said the captain. ‘And how about the flag?’ ‘Well, obviously I salute it every day, sir.’ ‘But you don’t wave it, at all?’ the major enquired. ‘I think I waved a paper one a few times when I was a little boy. Patrician’s birthday or something. We stood in the streets as he rode by and we shouted “Hurrah!” ‘ ‘Never since then?’ ‘Well, no, Clive,’ said the captain, looking embarrassed. ‘I’d be very worried if I saw a man singing the national anthem and waving the flag, sir. It’s really a thing foreigners do.’ ‘Really? Why?’ ‘We don’t need to show we’re patriotic, sir. I mean, this is Ankh-Morpork. We don’t have to make a big fuss about being the best, sir. We just know.’ * ‘It’s called Victory Stew, sergeant,’ said Dibbler. ‘Tuppence a bowl or I’ll cut my throat, eh?’ ‘Close enough,’ said Vimes, and looked at the strange (and, what was worse, occasionally hauntingly familiar) lumps seething in the scum. ‘What’s in it?’ ‘It’s stew,’ explained Dibbler. ‘Strong enough to put hairs on your chest.’ ‘Yes, I can see that some of those bits of meat have got bristles on them already’ said Vimes. * There were rules. When you had a Guild of Assassins, there had to be rules which everyone knew and were never, ever broken. An Assassin, a real Assassin, had to look like one – black clothes, hood, boots and all. If they could wear any clothes, any disguise, then what could anyone do but spend all day sitting in a small room with a loaded crossbow pointed at the door? And they couldn’t kill a man incapable of defending himself (although a man worth more than AM$10,000 a year was considered automatically capable of defending himself or at least of employing people to do it for him). And they had to give the target a chance. † Named after Wallace Sonky, a man without whose experiments with thin rubber pressure on the housing in Ankh-Morpork would have been a good deal more pressing.   IMAGINE a million clever rats. Rats that don’t run. Rats that fight… Maurice, a scruffy tomcat with an eye for the main chance, has the perfect fiddle going. He has a stupid-looking kid for a piper, and he has his very own plague of rats – rats who are strangely educated, so Maurice can no longer think of them as ‘lunch’. And everyone knows the stories about rats and pipers – and is giving him lots of money… Until they try the trick in the far-flung town of Bad Blintz, and the nice little con suddenly goes down the drain. Someone there is playing a different tune. A dark, shadowy tune. Something very, very bad is waiting in the cellars. The rats must learn a new word. Evil. Everyone needs their little dreams. If you knew what it was that people really, really wanted, you very nearly controlled them. Cats are good at steering people. A miaow here, a purr there, a little gentle pressure with a claw … Cats didn’t have to think. They just had to know what they wanted. Humans had to do the thinking. That’s what they were for. * Everyone knew about plagues of rats. There were famous stories about the rat pipers, who made their living going from town to town getting rid of plagues of rats. And that, really, was it. You didn’t need many rats for a plague, not if they knew their business. One rat, popping up here and there, squeaking loudly, taking a bath in the fresh cream and widdling in the flour,could be a plague all by himself. After a few days of this, it was amazing how glad people were to see the stupid-looking kid with his magical rat pipe. And they were amazed when rats poured out of every hole to follow him out of the town. They were so amazed that they didn’t bother much about the fact that there were only a few hundred rats. They’d have been really amazed if they’d ever found out that the rats and the piper met up with a cat somewhere in the bushes out of town, and solemnly counted out the money. * There were three loud knocks from below. They were repeated. And then they were repeated again. Finally, Malicia’s voice said: ‘Are you two up there or not?’ Keith crawled out of the hay and looked down. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you hear the secret knock?’ said Malicia, staring up at him in annoyance. ‘It didn’t sound like a secret knock,’ said Maurice. ‘It is a secret knock!’ Malicia snapped. ‘I know about these things! And you’re supposed to give the secret knock in return!’ ‘But if it’s just someone knocking on the door in, you know, general high spirits, and we knock back, what are they going to think is up here?’ said Maurice. ‘An extremely heavy beetle?’ Malicia went uncharacteristically silent for a moment. Then she said: ‘Good point, good point. I know, I’ll shout “It’s me, Malicia!” and then give the secret knock, and that way you’ll know it’s me and you can give the secret knock back. Okay?’ ‘Why don’t we just say “Hello, we’re up here”?’ said Keith innocently. Malicia sighed. ‘Don’t you have any sense of drama?’ Cat singing consists of standing two inches in front of other cats and screaming at them until they give in. ‘Never rush, never run. We don’t want to be like the first mouse, eh?’ ‘No, Darktan,’ the rats chorused dutifully. ‘We don’t want to be like the first mouse!’ ‘Right! What mouse do we want to be like?’ ‘The second mouse, Darktan!’ said the rats, who’d had this lesson dinned into them many times. ‘Right! And why do we want to be like the second mouse?’ ‘Because the second mouse gets the cheese, Darktan!’ ‘Good!’ said Darktan. A young rat was holding up its paw. ‘Yes?’ ‘Er … can I ask a question, sir?’ ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Er … you said the second mouse gets the cheese, sir? But … doesn’t the first mouse get something, sir?’ Darktan stared at the young rat. ‘I can see you’re going to be a valuable addition to the squad.’ He raised his voice. ‘Squad! What does the first mouse get?’ The roar of voices made dust fall down from the ceiling. ‘The Trap!’ * ‘You were stolen away at birth, I expect [said Malicia]. You probably are the rightful king of some country, but they found someone who looked like you and did a swap. You were probably found on a doorstep.’ ‘I was, yes,’ said Keith. ‘See? I’m always right!’ ‘What were you doing on a doorstep?’ said Maurice. ‘I don’t know. Gurgling, I expect,’ said Keith. ‘There was a magic sword or a crown in the basket with you, probably. And you’ve got a mysterious tattoo or a strange-shaped birthmark, too,’ said Malicia. ‘I don’t think so. No one ever mentioned them,’ said Keith. ‘There was just me and a blanket. And a note.’ ‘A note? But that’s important!’ ‘It said “19 pints and a Strawberry Yoghurt”,’ said Keith. * ‘Well, you probably won’t be surprised to know that I’ve got two dreadful step-sisters,’ said Malicia. ‘And I have to do all the chores!’ ‘Gosh, really,’ said Maurice. ‘Well, most of the chores,’ said Malicia, as if revealing an unfortunate fact. ‘Some of them, definitely. I have to clean up my own room, you know! And it’s extremely untidy!’ ‘Gosh, really.’ ‘And it’s very nearly the smallest bedroom. There’re practically no cupboards and I’m running out of bookshelf space!’ ‘Gosh, really.’ ‘And people are incredibly cruel to me. You will note that we’re here in a kitchen. And I’m the mayor’s daughter. Should the daughter of a mayor be expected to wash up at least once a week? I think not!’ ‘Gosh, really.’ ‘And will you just look at these torn and bedraggled clothes I have to wear?’ Maurice looked. As far as he could tell, Malicia’s dress was pretty much like any other dress. ‘Here, just here,’ said Malicia, pointing to a place on the hem which, to Maurice, looked no different from the rest of the dress. ‘I had to sew that back myself, you know?’ * Keith grabbed the back edge of the dresser with both hands, and braced one foot against the wall, and heaved. Slowly, like a mighty forest tree, the dresser pitched forward. The crockery started to fall out as it tipped, plate slipping off plate in one glorious chaotic deal from a very expensive pack of cards. Even so, some of them survived the fall on to the floor, and so did some of the cups and saucers as the cupboard opened and added to the fun, but that didn’t made any difference because then the huge, heavy woodwork thundered down on top of them. One miraculously whole plate rolled past Keith, spinning round and round and getting lower on the floor with the groiyuoiyoi-yooooinnnnggg sound you always get in these distressing circumstances. * ‘Do you know what an aglet is?’ Aglet? Aglet? What’s an aglet got to do with anything?’ snapped Malicia. ‘It’s those little metal bits on the end of shoelaces,’ said Maurice. ‘How come a cat knows a word like that?’ said the girl. ‘Everyone’s got to know something,’ said Maurice. * ‘They’ll tell my father I’ve been telling stories and I’ll get locked out of my room again.’ ‘You get locked out of your room as a punishment?’ said Maurice. ‘Yes. It means I can’t get at my books. I’m rather a special person, as you may have guessed,’ said Malicia, proudly. OF COURSE THERE ARE NO CAT GODS.THAT WOULD BE TOO MUCH LIKE … WORK. ‘When I woke up there was a rat dancing on my dressing-table,’ said Corporal Knopf. ‘Tapitty, tapitty, tap.’ ‘That’s odd,’ said Sergeant Doppelpunkt, giving his corporal a strange look. ‘And it was humming “There’s no Business like Show Business”. I call that more than just “odd”!’ ‘No, I meant it’s odd you’ve got a dressing-table. I mean, you’re not even married.’ * “scuse me, ‘scuse me,’ said a voice from beside him. He looked down at a dirty, half-scorched cat, which grinned at him. ‘Did that cat just speak?’ said the mayor. Maurice looked around. ‘Which one?’ he said. ‘You! Did you just talk?’ ‘Would you feel better if I said no?’ said Maurice. * ‘Look, there’s two types of people in the world.’ said Malicia. ‘There are those who have got the plot, and those that haven’t.’ ‘The world hasn’t got a plot,’ said Maurice. ‘Things just … happen, one after another.’ ‘Only if you think of it like that,’ said Malicia, far too smugly in Maurice’s opinion. ‘There’s always a plot. You just have to know where to look.’ She paused for a moment and then said, ‘Look! That’s the word! There’ll be a secret passage, of course! Everyone look for the entrance to the secret passage!’ ‘Er … how will we know it’s the entrance to a secret passage?’ said Keith, looking even more bewildered than normal. ‘What does a secret passage look like?’ ‘It won’t look like one, of course!’ ‘Oh, well, in that case I can see dozens of secret passages,’ said Maurice. ‘Doors, windows, that calendar from the Acme Poison Company, that cupboard over there, that rat hole, that desk, that—’ You’re just being sarcastic,’ said Malicia, lifting up the calendar and sternly inspecting the wall behind it. ‘Actually, I was just being flippant,’ said Maurice. ‘But I can do sarcastic if you like.’ Keith stared at the long bench which was in front of a window frosted with ancient cobwebs. ‘You might try to be some help,’ said Malicia, tapping the walls. ‘I don’t know how to look for something that doesn’t look like the thing I’m looking for,’ said Keith. Malicia stood back and brushed her hair out of her eyes. ‘This isn’t working,’ she said. ‘I suppose there might not be a secret passage?’ said Maurice. ‘I know it’s a rather daring idea, but perhaps this is just an ordinary shed?’ Even Maurice leaned back a little from the force of Malicia’s stare. ‘There has to be a secret passage,’ she said. ‘Otherwise there’s no point.’ She snapped her fingers. ‘Of course! We’re doing it wrong! Everyone knows you never find the secret passage by looking for it! It’s when you give up and lean against the wall that you inadvertently operate the secret switch!’ Maurice looked at Keith for help. He was a human, after all. He should know how to deal with something like Malicia. But Keith was just wandering around the shed, staring at things. Malicia leaned against the wall with incredible nonchalance. There was not a click. A panel in the floor did not slide back. ‘Probably the wrong place,’ she said. ‘I’ll just rest my arm innocently on this coat hook.’ A sudden door in the wall completely failed to happen. ‘Of course, it’d help if there was an ornate candlestick,’ said Malicia. ‘They’re always a sure-fire secret passage lever. Every adventurer knows that.’ ‘There isn’t a candlestick,’ said Maurice. ‘I know. Some people totally fail to have any idea of how to design a proper secret passage,’ said Malicia. She leaned against another piece of wall, which had no effect whatsoever. ‘I don’t think you’ll find it that way’ said Keith, who was carefully examining a trap. ‘Oh? Won’t I?’ said Malicia. ‘Well, at least I’m being constructive about things! Where would you look, if you’re such an expert?’ ‘Why is there a rat hole in a ratcatchers’ shed?’ said Keith. ‘It smells of dead rats and wet dogs and poison. I wouldn’t come near this place if I was a rat.’ ‘Ye-es,’ said Malicia. ‘That usually works, in stories. It’s often the stupid person who comes up with the good idea by accident.’ She crouched down and peered into the hole. ‘There’s a sort of little lever,’ she said. ‘I’ll just give it a little push …’ There was a clonk under the floor, part of it swung back, and Keith dropped out of sight. ‘Oh, yes,’ said Malicia. ‘I thought something like that would probably happen …’ * ‘Now I want to ask you a question,’ said Darktan. ‘You’ve been the leader for … how long?’ ‘Ten years,’ said the mayor. ‘Isn’t it hard?’ ‘Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Everyone argues with me all the time,’ said the mayor. ‘Although I must say I’m expecting a little less arguing if all this works. But it’s not an easy job.’ ‘It’s ridiculous to have to shout all the time just to get things done,’ said Darktan. ‘That’s right,’ said the mayor. ‘And everyone expects you to decide things,’ said Darktan. ‘True.’ ‘The last leader gave me some advice just before he died, and do you know what it was? “Don’t eat the green wobbly bit”!’ ‘Good advice?’ said the mayor. ‘Yes,’ said Darktan. ‘But all he had to do was be big and tough and fight all the other rats that wanted to be leader.’ ‘It’s a bit like that with the council,’ said the mayor. ‘What?’ said Darktan. ‘You bite them in the neck?’ ‘Not yet,’ said the mayor. ‘But it’s a thought, I must say’ ‘It’s just all a lot more complicated than I ever thought it would be!’ said Darktan, bewildered. ‘Because after you’ve learned to shout you have to learn not to!’ ‘Right again,’ said the mayor. ‘That’s how it works … See the river? See the Houses? See the people in the streets? I have to make it all work. Well, not the river, obviously, that works by itself. And every year it turns out that I haven’t upset enough people for them to choose anyone else as mayor. So I have to do it again. It’s a lot more complicated than I ever thought it would be.’ ‘What, for you too? But you’re a human!’ said Darktan in astonishment. ‘Hah! You think that makes it easier? I thought rats were wild and free!’ ‘Hah!’ said Darktan. They stared out of the window. ‘It’s just like I always tell my daughter,’ said the man. ‘Stories are just stories. Life is complicated enough as it is. We have to plan for the real world. There’s no room for the fantastic’ ‘Exactly’ said the rat. The thing about stories is that you have to pick the ones that last.   THERE’S trouble on the Aching farm - nightmares spreading down from the hills. And now Tiffany Aching’s little brother has been stolen by the Queen of the Fairies (although Tiffany doesn’t think this is entirely a bad thing). Tiffany’s got to get him back. To help her, she has a weapon (a frying pan), her granny’s magic book (well, Diseases of the Sheep, actually) and— ‘Crivens! Whut aboot us, ye daftie!’ —oh, yes. She’s also got the Nac Mac Feegle, the Wee Free Men, the fightin’, thievin’, tiny blue-skinned pictsies who were thrown out of Fairyland for being Drunk and Disorderly… Ordinary fortune-tellers tell you what you want to happen; witches tell you what’s going to happen whether you want it to or not. Strangely enough, witches tend to be more accurate but less popular. * There was a small part of Tiffany’s brain that wasn’t too certain about the name Tiffany. She was nine years old and felt that Tiffany was going to be a hard name to live up to. Besides, she’d decided only last week that she wanted to be a witch when she grew up, and she was certain Tiffany just wouldn’t work. People would laugh. * The teachers were useful. They went from village to village delivering short lessons on many subjects. They kept apart from the other travellers, and were quite mysterious in their ragged robes and strange square hats. They used long words, like ‘corrugated iron’. They lived rough lives, surviving on what food they could earn from giving lessons to anyone who would listen. When no one would listen, they lived on baked hedgehog. They went to sleep under the stars, which the maths teachers would count, the astronomy teachers would measure and the literature teachers would name. The geography teachers got lost in the woods and fell into bear traps. * ‘I would like a question answered today’ said Tiffany. ‘It’s about zoology.’ ‘Zoology, eh? That’s a big word, isn’t it.’ ‘No, actually it isn’t,’ said Tiffany. ‘Patronizing is a big word. Zoology is really quite short.’ * ‘Are you a witch?’ said Tiffany. ‘I don’t mind if you are.’ ‘What a strange question to spring on someone,’ said the woman. ‘Why would I be a witch?’ ‘You’re wearing a straw hat with flowers in it.’ ‘Aha!’ said the woman. ‘That proves it, then. Witches wear tall pointy hats. Everyone knows that, foolish child.’ ‘Yes, but witches are also very clever,’ said Tiffany calmly. ‘They sneak about. Probably they often don’t look like witches. And a witch coming here would know about the Baron and so she’d wear the kind of hat that everyone knows witches don’t wear.’ ‘That was an incredible feat of reasoning,’ the woman said at last. ‘Whatever kind of hat I’ve got on, you’d say it proves I’m a witch, yes?’ ‘Well, the frog sitting on your hat is a bit of a clue, too,’ said Tiffany. ‘I’m a toad, actually’ said the creature, which had been peering at Tiffany from between the paper flowers. You’re very yellow for a toad.’ ‘I’ve been a bit ill,’ said the toad. ‘And you talk,’ said Tiffany. You only have my word for it,’ said the toad, disappearing into the paper flowers. ‘You can’t prove anything.’ * ‘Witches have animals they can talk to, called familiars. Like your toad there.’ ‘I’m not familiar,’ said a voice from among the paper flowers. ‘I’m just slightly presumptuous.’ * ‘If you have a grandmother who can pass on her pointy hat to you, that saves a great deal of expense. They are incredibly hard to come by, especially ones strong enough to withstand falling farmhouses.’ * ‘You might make a decent witch one day’ she said. ‘But I don’t teach people to be witches. They learn in a special school. I just show them the way, if they’re any good. All witches have special interests, and I like children.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because they’re much easier to fit in the oven,’ said Miss Tick. * ‘I will give you some free advice.’ ‘Will it cost me anything?’ ‘You could say it is priceless. Are you listening?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Good. Now … if you trust in yourself …’ Yes?’ ‘… and believe in your dreams …’ Yes?’ ‘… and follow your star …’ Yes?’ ‘… you’ll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy’ * A lot of the stories were highly suspicious, in her opinion. There was the one that ended when the two good children pushed the wicked witch into her own oven. Tiffany had worried about that after all that trouble with Mrs Snapperly Stories like this stopped people thinking properly, she was sure. She’d read that one and thought, Excuse me? No one has an oven big enough to get a whole person in, and what made the children think they could just walk around eating people’s houses in any case? And why does some boy too stupid to know a cow is worth a lot more than five beans have the right to murder a giant and steal all his gold? Not to mention commit an act of ecological vandalism? And some girl who can’t tell the difference between a wolf and her grandmother must either have been as dense as teak or come from an extremely ugly family. * They were all about six inches tall and mostly coloured blue, although it was hard to know if that was the actual colour of their skins or just the dye from their tattoos, which covered every inch that wasn’t covered with red hair. They wore short kilts, and some wore other bits of clothing too, like skinny waistcoats. A few of them wore rabbit or rat skulls on their heads, as a sort of helmet. And every single one of them carried, slung across his back, a sword nearly as big as he was. ‘Whut’s the plan, Rob?’ said one of them. ‘Okay lads, this is what we’ll do. As soon as we see somethin’, we’ll attack it. Right?’ This caused a cheer. Ach, ‘tis a good plan,’ said Daft Wullie. Glint, glisten, glitter, gleam … Tiffany thought a lot about words. ‘Onomatopoeic’, she’d discovered in the dictionary, meant words that sounded like the noise of the thing they were describing, like ‘cuckoo’. But she thought there should be a word meaning ‘a word that sounds like the noise a thing would make if that thing made a noise even though, actually, it doesn’t, but would if it did’. Glint, for example. If light made a noise as it reflected off a distant window, it’d go ‘glint!’ And the light of tinsel, all those little glints chiming together, would make a noise like ‘glitterglitter’. ‘Gleam’ was a clean, smooth noise from a surface that intended to shine all day. And ‘glisten’ was the soft, almost greasy sound of something rich and oily. * ‘What’s your name, pictsie?’ she said. ‘No’-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock, mistress. There’s no’ that many Feegle names, ye ken, so we ha’ to share.’ ‘Well, Not-as-big-as-Little-Jock—’ Tiffany began. ‘That’d be Medium-Sized Jock, mistress,’ said Not-as-big-as-Medium -Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock. ‘Well, Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock, I can—’ ‘That’s No’-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock, mistress,’ said Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock. ‘Ye were one jock short,’ he added helpfully. * There was some method in the way the Nac Mac Feegle fought. For example, they always chose the biggest opponent because, as Rob Anybody said later, ‘It makes them easier to hit, ye ken’. And they simply didn’t stop. It was that which wore people down. It was like being attacked by wasps with fists. * ‘The thing about witchcraft,’ said Mistress Weatherwax, ‘is that it’s not like school at all. First you get the test, and then afterwards you spend years findin’ out how you passed it. It’s a bit like life in that respect.’ * ‘And what do you really do?’ said Tiffany. ‘We look to … the edges,’ said Mistress Weatherwax. There’re a lot of edges, more than people know. Between life and death, this world and the next, night and day, right and wrong … an’ they need watchin’. We watch ‘em, we guard the sum of things. And we never ask for any reward. That’s important.’ * ‘Hooses, banks, dreams, ‘tis a’ the same to us,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘There’s nothing we cannae get in or oot of.’ ‘Except maybe pubs,’ said Big Yan. ‘Oh, aye,’ said Rob Anybody cheerfully. ‘Gettin’ oot o’ pubs sometimes causes us a cerrrtain amount o’ difficulty, I’ll grant ye that.’ IT began as a sudden strange fancy… Polly Perks had to become a boy in a tarry. Slitting off her hair and wearing trousers was easy. Learning to fart and belch in public and walk like an ape took more time… And now she’s enlisted in the army, and is searching for her lost brother. But there’s a war on. There’s always a war on. And Polly and her fellow recruits are suddenly in the thick of it, without any training, and the enemy is hunting them. All they have on their side is the most artful sergeant in the army and a vampire with a lust for coffee. Well … they have the Secret. And as they take the war to the heart of the enemy, they have to Use all the resources of… the Monstrous Regiment. And then there was the young male walk. At least women swung only their hips. Young men swung everything, from the shoulders down. You have to try to occupy a lot of space. It makes you look bigger, like a tomcat fluffing his tail. The boys tried to walk big in self-defence against all those other big boys out there. I’m bad, I’m fierce, I’m cool, I’d like a pint of shandy and me mam wants me home by nine … * Polly reached the troll bridge, which crossed the river in a narrow gorge. It cost one penny to cross, or one hundred gold pieces if you had a billygoat. Trolls might not be quick thinkers but they don’t forget in a hurry, either. * ‘Ever eaten scubbo? No? Nothing like a bowl of scubbo when you’re hungry. You can put anything in scubbo. Pork, beef, mutton, rabbit, chicken, duck … anything. Even rats, if you’ve got ‘em. It’s food for the marching man, scubbo. Got some on the boil right now. You can have some of that, if you like.’ The squad brightened up. ‘Thoundth good,’ said Igor. ‘What’th in it?’ ‘Boiling water,’ said the corporal. ‘It’s what we call “blind scubbo”.’ * You could try scrounging something at the inn.’ ‘Scrounge?’ said Polly. Yeah. Scrounge. Scrounge, nick, have a lend of, borrow, thieve, lift, acquire, purrrr-loin. That’s what you’ll learn, if you’re gonna survive this war.’ ‘We have to steal our food?’ said Maladict. ‘No, you can starve if that takes your fancy’ said the corporal. ‘I’ve starved a few times. There’s no future in it. Ate a man’s leg when we were snowed up in the Ibblestarn campaign but, fair’s fair, he ate mine.’ * Lieutenant Blouse was standing in the middle of the floor in his breeches and shirtsleeves, holding a sabre. Polly was no expert in these matters, but she thought she recognized the stylish, flamboyant pose as the one beginners tend to use just before they’re stabbed through the heart by a more experienced fighter. * ‘These are tricky times, sergeant. Command has never been so burdensome. The great General Tacticus says that in dangerous times the commander must be like the eagle and see the whole, and yet still be like the hawk and see every detail.’ Yessir,’ said Jackrum. ‘And if he acts like a common tit, sir, he can hang upside down all day and eat fat bacon.’ * A woman always has half an onion left over, no matter what the size of the onion, the dish or the woman. * Jackrum stepped back. ‘We are heading for the front, lads. The war. And in a nasty war, where’s the best place to be? Apart from on the moon, o’ course? No one?’ Slowly, Jade raised a hand. ‘Go on, then,’ said the sergeant. ‘In the army, sarge,’ said the troll. ‘ ‘cos …’ She began to count on her fingers. ‘One, you got weapons an’ armour an’ dat. Two, you are surrounded by other armed men. Er … Many, youse gettin’ paid and gettin’ better grub than the people in Civilian Street. Er … Lots, if’n you gives up, you getting taken pris’ner and dere’s rules about that like Not Kicking Pris’ners Inna Head and stuff, ‘cos if you kick their pris’ners inna head they’ll kick your pris’ners inna head so dat’s, like, you’re kickin’ your own head, but dere’s no rule say you can’t kick enemy civilians inna head. There’s other stuff too, but I ran outa numbers.’ * ‘You know what most of the milit’ry training is, Perks?’ Jackrum went on. ‘It’s to turn you into a man who will, on the word of command, stick his blade into some poor sod just like him who happens to be wearing the wrong uniform. He’s like you, you’re like him. He doesn’t really want to kill you, you don’t really want to kill him. But if you don’t kill him first, he’ll kill you. That’s the start and finish of it. It don’t come easy without trainin’.’ * Polly wondered if Jackrum ever slept. She did a spell of guard duty, and he stepped out from behind her with ‘Guess who, Perks! You’re on lookout. You should see the dreadful enemy before they see you. What’re the four Ss?’ ‘Shape, shadow, silhouette and shine, sarge!’ said Polly, snapping to attention. That caused a moment’s pause from the sergeant before he said: ‘Just knew that, did yer?’ ‘Nosir! A little bird told me when we changed guard, sir! Said you’d asked him, sir!’ ‘Oh, so Jackrum’s little lads are gangin’ up on their kindly ol’ sergeant, are they?’ said Jackrum. ‘Nosir. Sharing information important to the squad in a vital survival situation, sarge!’ ‘But I see you’re not standing in a bleedin’ shadow, Perks, nor have you done anything to change your bleedin’ shape, you’re silhouetted against the bleedin’ light and your sabre’s shining like a diamond in a chimney-sweep’s bleedin’ ear’ole! Explain!’ ‘It’s because of the one C, sarge!’ said Polly, still staring straight ahead. ‘And that is?’ ‘Colour, sarge! I’m wearing bleedin’ red and white in a bleedin’ grey forest, sarge!’ She risked a sideways glance. In Jackrum’s little piggy eyes there gleamed a gleam. It was the one you got when he was secretly pleased. ‘Ashamed of your lovely, lovely uniform, Perks?’ he said. ‘Don’t want to be seen dead in it, sarge,’ said Polly. * ‘General Tacticus said the fate of a battle may depend upon the actions of one man in the right place, sergeant,’ said Blouse, calmly. ‘And having a lot more soldiers than the other bugger, sir,’ Jackrum insisted. * ‘Is that rum, sarge?’ said Polly. ‘Well done, my little bar steward. And wouldn’t it be nice if it was rum, upon my word. Or whisky or gin or brandy. But this don’t have none of those fancy names. This is the genuine stingo, this is. Pure hangman.’ ‘Hangman?’ said Shufti. ‘One drop and you’re dead,’ said Polly. * ‘All right,’ Polly whispered. ‘Remember, no swearing. No weapons, either. Anyone brought a weapon?’ There was a shaking of heads. ‘Did you bring a weapon, Tonk— Magda?’ ‘No, Polly’ ‘No item of any sort with a certain weapon-like quality?’ Polly insisted. ‘No, Polly’ said Tonker demurely. ‘Anything, perhaps, with an edge?’ ‘Oh, you mean this?’ ‘Yes, Magda.’ ‘Well, a woman can carry a knife, can’t she?’ ‘It’s a sabre, Magda. You’re trying to hide it, but it’s a sabre.’ ‘But I’m only using it like a knife, Polly’ ‘It’s three feet long, Magda.’ ‘Size isn’t important, Polly’ ‘No one believes that. Leave it behind a tree, please.’   It is an established fact that, despite everything society can do, girls of seven are magnetically attracted to the colour pink. ‘Sir, you know you said you were going to steal a gate key off a guard and break his neck?’ said Polly. ‘Indeed.’ ‘Do you know how to break a man’s neck, sir?’ ‘I read a book on martial arts, Perks.’ ‘But you haven’t actually done it, sir?’ ‘Well, no! I was at HQ, and you are not allowed to practise on real people, Perks.’ ‘Look, sir, I’m just a … what is your name, please?’ ‘Sam Vimes. Special envoy, which is kind of like an ambassador but without the little gold chocolates.’ * Trying to break into a fortified and heavily guarded keep, the male Lieutenant Blouse comes up with a cunning plan, which he explains to one of his soldiers, who (unknown to him) is really female. This is the Inexorable Law of Comic Cross-Dressing: ‘Astonishingly enough, Perks,’ said Blouse, ‘in your boyish enthusiasm you have given me a very interesting idea … because, of course, we only need one “washerwoman” to get us inside, do we not? And if one thinks “outside of the box”, the “woman” does not in fact need to be a woman!’ Blouse beamed. Polly allowed her brow to wrinkle in honest puzzlement. ‘Doesn’t she, sir?’ she said. ‘I don’t think I quite understand, sir.’ ‘“She”, could be a man! One of us! In disguise.’ ‘I’ll go,’ said Polly quietly. ‘Really private. It would simply not work,’ said Blouse. ‘Oh, you’re brave, certainly, but what makes you think you stand a chance of passing yourself off as a woman?’ ‘Well, sir … what?’ Blouse shook his head. ‘No, they would see through you in a flash. You are a fine bunch of lads, but there is only one man here who’d stand a chance of getting away with it. Manickle?’ ‘Yessir?’ said Shufti, rigid with instant panic. ‘Can you find me a dress, do you think?’ ‘Sir, are you telling us … you’re going to try to get in dressed as a woman?’ ‘Well, I’m clearly the only one who’s had any practice,’ said Blouse, rubbing his hands together. ‘At my old school we were in and out of skirts all the time.’ He looked around at the circle of absolutely expressionless faces. ‘Theatricals, you see?’ he said brightly. ‘No gels at our boarding school, of course. But we didn’t let that stop us. Why, my Lady Spritely in A Comedy of Cuckolds is still talked about. No, if we need a woman, I’m your man.’   ELEYEN-year-old Tiffany Aching wants to be a real witch. But a real witch doesn’t casually step out of her body, leaving it empty. Tiffany does - and there’s something just waiting for a handy body to take over. Something ancient and horrible, which can’t die. Now Tiffany’s got to learn to be a real witch really quickly, with the help of arch-witch Mistress Weatherwax and the truly amazing Miss Level. ‘Crivens! And us!’ Oh, yes. And the Nac Mac Feegle - the rowdiest, toughest, smelliest bunch of fairies ever to be thrown out of Fairyland for having been drunk at two in the afternoon. They’ll fight anything … The Nac Mac Feegle are the most dangerous of the fairy races, particularly when drunk. They love drinking, fighting and stealing, and will in fact steal anything that is not nailed down. If it is nailed down, they will steal the nails as well. * The origin of the Nac Mac Feegle is lost in the famous Mists of Time. They say that they were thrown out of Fairyland by the Queen of the Fairies because they objected to her spiteful and tyrannical rule. Others say they were just thrown out for being drunk. * Little is known about their religion, if any, save for one fact: they think they are dead. They like our world, with its sunshine and mountains and blue skies and things to fight. An amazing world like this couldn’t be open to just anybody, they say. It must be some kind of a heaven or Valhalla, where brave warriors go when they are dead. So, they reason, they have already been alive somewhere else, and then died and were allowed to come here because they have been so good. This is a quite incorrect and fanciful notion because, as we know, the truth is exactly the other way around. * The new boots were all wrong. They were stiff and shiny. Shiny boots! That was disgraceful. Clean boots, that was different. There was nothing wrong with putting a bit of a polish on boots to keep the wet out. But boots had to work for a living. They shouldn’t shine. Witches were a bit like cats.. They didn’t much like one another’s company, but they did like to know where all the other witches were, just in case they needed them. People in the chalk country didn’t trust witches. They thought they danced around on moonlit nights without their drawers on. (Tiffany had made enquiries about this, and had been slightly relieved to find out that you didn’t have to do this to be a witch. You could if you wanted to, but only if you were certain where all the nettles, thistles and hedgehogs were.) * If there’s one thing a Feegle likes more than a party, it’s a bigger party, and if there’s anything better than a bigger party, it’s a bigger party with someone else paying for the drink. * If you want to upset a witch you don’t have to mess around with charms and spells, you just have to put her in a room with a picture that’s hung slightly crooked and watch her squirm. * Rob Anybody had mastered the first two rules of writing, as he understood them. 1) Steal some paper. 2) Steal a pencil. Unfortunately there was more to it than that. * Twoshirts was just a bend in the road, with a name. There was nothing there but an inn for the coaches, a blacksmith’s shop, and a small store with the word SOUVENIRS written optimistically on a scrap of cardboard in the window. And that was it. Around the place, separated by fields and scraps of woodland, were the houses of people for whom Twoshirts was, presumably, the big city. Every world is full of places like Twoshirts. They are places for people to come from, not go to. * The wood was about half an hour’s walk away. It was nothing special, as woods go, being mostly full-grown beech, although once you know that beech drips unpleasant poisons on the ground beneath it to keep it clear it’s not quite the timber you thought it was. * First Thoughts are the everyday thoughts. Everyone has those. Second Thoughts are the thoughts you think about the way you think. People who enjoy thinking have those. Third Thoughts are thoughts that watch the world and think all by themselves. They’re rare, and often troublesome. Listening to them is part of witchcraft. * She had a dobby stone, which was supposed to be lucky because it had a hole in it. (She’d been told that when she was seven, and had picked it up. She couldn’t quite see how the hole made it lucky, but since it had spent a lot of time in her pocket, and then safe and sound in the box, it probably was more fortunate than most stones, which got kicked around and run over by carts and so on.) * Every kitchen drawer Tiffany had ever seen might have been meant to be neat but over the years had been crammed with things that didn’t quite fit, like big ladles and bent bottle openers, which meant that they always stuck unless you knew the trick of opening them. * ‘Have you ever been to a circus?’ Once, Tiffany admitted. It hadn’t been much fun. Things that try too hard to be funny often aren’t. There had been a moth-eaten lion with practically no teeth, a tight-rope walker who was never more than a few feet above the ground, and a knife-thrower who threw a lot of knives at an elderly woman in pink tights on a big spinning wooden disc and completely failed to hit her every time. The only real amusement was afterwards, when a cart ran over the clown. * ‘He’s always talking about … his funeral.’ ‘Well, it’s important to him. Sometimes old people are like that. They’d hate people to think that they were too poor to pay for their own funeral. Mr Weavall’d die of shame if he couldn’t pay for his own funeral.’ * ‘We do what can be done,’ said Miss Level. ‘Mistress Weatherwax said you’ve got to learn that witchcraft is mostly about doing quite ordinary things.’ ‘And you have to do what she says?’ said Tiffany. ‘I listen to her advice,’ said Miss Level, coldly. ‘Mistress Weatherwax is the head witch, then, is she?’ ‘Oh no!’ said Miss Level, looking shocked. ‘Witches are all equal. We don’t have things like head witches. That’s quite against the spirit of witchcraft.’ ‘Oh, I see,’ said Tiffany. ‘Besides,’ Miss Level added, ‘Mistress Weatherwax would never allow that sort of thing.’ * Tiffany couldn’t help noticing that Petulia had jewellery everywhere; later she found that it was hard to be around Petulia for any length of time without having to unhook a bangle from a necklace or, once, an earring from an ankle bracelet (nobody ever found out how that one happened). Petulia couldn’t resist occult jewellery. Most of the stuff was to magically protect her from things, but she hadn’t found anything to protect her from looking a bit silly. * You had to remember that pictsies weren’t brownies. In theory, brownies would do the housework for you if you left them a saucer of milk. The Nac Mac Feegle … wouldn’t. * In truth, most witches could get through their whole life without having to do serious, undeniable magic (making shambles and curse-nets and dreamcatchers didn’t really count, being rather more like arts-and-crafts, and most of the rest of it was practical medicine, common sense and the ability to look stern in a pointy hat). But being a witch and wearing the big black hat was like being a policeman. People saw the uniform, not you. When the mad axeman was running down the street you weren’t allowed to back away muttering ‘Could you find someone else? Actually, I mostly just do, you know, stray dogs and road safety …’ You were there, you had the hat, you did the job. That was a basic rule of witchery: It’s up to you. * ‘How many fingers am I holdin’ up?’ he said. ‘Five,’ whispered Miss Level. ‘Am I? Ah, well, ye could be right, ye’d have the knowin’ o’ the countin’,’ said Rob. * The Feegle way of reading: ‘Worrds,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Yes, they say—’ Billy began. ‘I ken weel what they say!’ snapped Rob Anybody. ‘I ha’ the knowin’ of the readin’! They say—’ He looked up again. ‘OK, they say … that’s the snake, an’ that’s the kinda like a gate letter, an’ the comb on its side, two o’ that, an’ the fat man standin’ still, an’ the snake again, and then there’s whut we calls a “space” and then there’s the letter like a saw’s teeth, and two o’ the letters that’s roound like the sun, and the letter that’s a man sittin’ doon, and onna next line we ha’ … the man wi’ his arms oot, and the letter that’s you, an’ ha, the fat man again but noo he’s walkin’, an’ next he’s standin’ still again, an’ next is the comb, an’ the up-an’-doon ziggy-zaggy letter, and the man’s got his arms oot, and then there’s me, and that ziggy-zaggy and we end the line with the comb again … an’ on the next line we starts wi’ the bendy hook, that’s the letter roound as the sun, them’s twa men sittin’ doon, there’s the letter reaching ooot tae the sky, then there’s a space ‘cos there’s nae letter, then there’s the snaky again, an’ the letter like a hoose frame, and then there’s the letter that’s me, aye, an’ another fella sitting doon, an’ another big roound letter, and, ha, oor ol’ friend, the fat man walkin’! The End!’ He stood back, hands on hips, and demanded: ‘There! Is that readin’ I just did, or wuz it no’?’ (And the words were: SHEEP’S WOOL, TURPENTINE, JOLLY SAILOR.) * Everyone in the mountains had heard of Mistress Weatherwax. If you didn’t have respect, she said, you didn’t have anything. They were treated like royalty -not the sort who get dragged off to be beheaded or have something nasty done with a red-hot poker, but the other sort, when people walk away dazed saying, ‘She actually said hello to me, very graciously! I will never wash my hand again!’ * ‘Let’s get moving.’ ‘We haven’t even had anything to eat!’ said Tiffany, running after her. ‘I had a lot of voles last night,’ said Mistress Weatherwax over her shoulder. ‘Yes, but you didn’t actually eat them, did you?’ said Tiffany. ‘It was the owl that actually ate them.’ ‘Technic’ly yes,’ Mistress Weatherwax admitted. ‘But if you think you’ve been eating voles all night you’d be amazed how much you don’t want to eat anything next morning.’ For an old woman Mistress Weatherwax could move quite fast. She strode over the moors as if distance was a personal insult. There were no judges, and no prizes. The Witch Trials weren’t like that, as Petulia had said. The point was to show what you could do, to show what you’d become, so that people would go away thinking things like ‘That Caramella Bottlethwaite, she’s coming along nicely’. It wasn’t a competition, honestly. No one won. And if you believed that you’d believe that the moon is pushed around the sky by a goblin called Wilberforce. * ‘If you don’t know when to be a human being, you don’t know when to be a witch. And if you’re too afraid of goin’ astray, you won’t go anywhere.’ * ‘I’m clever enough to know how you manage not to think of a pink rhinoceros if someone says “pink rhinoceros”,’ she managed to say aloud. ‘Ah, that’s deep magic, that is,’ said Granny Weatherwax. ‘No. It’s not. You don’t know what a rhinoceros looks like, do you?’ Sunlight filled the clearing as the old witch laughed, as clear as a downland stream. ‘That’s right!’ she said.   MOIST von Lipwig is a con artist on … … an and a fraud and a man faced with a life choice: be hanged, or put Ankh-Morpork’s ailing postal service back on its feet. It’s a tough decision. But he’s got to see that the mail gets through, come rain, hail, sleet, dog the Post Office Workers’ Friendly and Benevolent Society, the evil chairman of the Grand Trunk Semaphore Company, and a midnight killer killer. Getting a date with Adora Belle Dearheart would be nice, too. They say that the prospect of being hanged in the morning concentrates a man’s mind wonderfully; unfortunately, what the mind inevitably concentrates on is that it is in a body that, in the morning, is going to be hanged. * ‘I’d get some rest if I was you, sir, ‘cos we’re hanging you in half an hour,’ said Mr Wilkinson. ‘Hey, don’t I get breakfast?’ ‘Breakfast isn’t until seven o’clock, sir.’ * ‘I’m offering you a job, Mr Lipwig, that of Postmaster General of the Ankh-Morpork Post Office. The job, Mr Lipwig, involves the refurbishment and running of the city’s postal service, preparation of the international packets, maintenance of Post Office property, et cetera, et cetera—’ ‘If you stick a broom up my arse I could probably sweep the floor, too,’ said Moist. Lord Vetinari gave him a long, long look. ‘Well, if you wish,’ he said, and turned to a hovering clerk. ‘Drumknott, does the housekeeper have a store cupboard on this floor, do you know?’ * ‘I believe in freedom, Mr Lipwig. Not many people do, although they will of course protest otherwise. And no practical definition of freedom would be complete without the freedom to take the consequences. Indeed, it is the freedom upon which all the others are based.’ * The world was blessedly free of honest men, and wonderfully full of people who believed they could tell the difference between an honest man and a crook. He had a beard of the short bristled type that suggested that its owner had been interrupted halfway through eating a hedgehog. A large black and white cat had walked into the room. ‘That’s Mr Tiddles, sir,’ said Groat. ‘Tiddles?’ said Moist. ‘You mean that really is a cat’s name? I thought it was just a joke.’ ‘Not so much a name, sir, more of a description,’ said Groat. * Before you could sell glass as diamonds you had to make people really want to see diamonds. That was the trick, the trick of all tricks. You changed the way people saw the world. You let them see it the way they wanted it to be … * Being an absolute ruler today was not as simple as people thought. At least, it was not simple if your ambitions included being an absolute ruler tomorrow. There were subtleties. Oh, you could order men to smash down doors and drag people off to dungeons without trial, but too much of that sort of thing lacked style and anyway was bad for business, habit-forming and very, very dangerous for your health. A thinking tyrant, it seemed to Vetinari, had a much harder job than a ruler raised to power by some idiot vote-yourself-rich system like democracy. At least they could tell the people he was their fault. * ‘Looks like you’re genuine after all, then,’ the old man said. ‘One of the dark clerks wouldn’t have [done] that. We thought you was one of his lordship’s special gentlemen, see. No offence, but you’ve got a bit more colour than the average penpusher.’ ‘Dark clerks?’ said Moist, and then recollection dawned. ‘Oh … do you mean those stocky little men in black suits and bowler hats?’ ‘The very same. Scholarship boys at the Assassins’ Guild, some of ‘em. I heard that they can do some nasty things when they’ve a mind.’ ‘I thought you called them pen-pushers?’ Yeah, but I didn’t say where, hee-hee.’ * Mr Pump, a golem, points out to conman Moist von Lipwig the downstream consequences of what had seemed to Moist to be harmless scams to separate fools from their money: You can’t just go around killing people!’ shouted Moist. ‘Why Not? You Do.’ ‘What? I do not! Who told you that?’ ‘I Worked It Out. You Have Killed Two Point Three Three Eight People,’ said the golem calmly. ‘I have never laid a finger on anyone in my life, Mr Pump. I may be -all the things you know I am, but I am not a killer! I have never so much as drawn a sword!’ ‘No, You Have Not. But You Have Stolen, Embezzled, Defrauded And Swindled Without Discrimination, Mr Lipvig. You Have Ruined Businesses And Destroyed Jobs. When Banks Fail, It Is Seldom Bankers Who Starve. Your Actions Have Taken Money From Those Who Had Little Enough To Begin With. In A Myriad Small Ways You Have Hastened The Deaths Of Many. You Do Not Know Them. You Did Not See Them Bleed. But You Snatched Bread From Their Mouths And Tore Clothes From Their Backs. For Sport, Mr Lipvig. For Sport. For The Joy Of The Game.’ Moist’s mouth had dropped open. It shut. It opened again. It shut again. You can never find repartee when you need it. ‘I Have Read The Details Of Your Many Crimes, Mr Lipvig. You Took From Others Because You Were Clever And They Were Stupid.’ ‘Hold on, most of the time they thought they were swindling me!’ ‘You Set Out To Trap Them, Mr Lipvig.’ People in Ankh-Morpork always paid attention to people on rooftops, in case there was a chance of an interesting suicide. By law and tradition the great Library of Unseen University is open to the public, although they aren’t allowed as far as the magical shelves. They don’t realize this, however, since the rules of time and space are twisted inside the Library and so hundreds of miles of shelving can easily be concealed inside a space roughly the thickness of paint. People flock in, nevertheless, in search of answers to those questions only librarians are considered to be able to answer, such as ‘Is this the laundry?’ ‘How do you spell surreptitious?’ and, on a regular basis: ‘Do you have a book I remember reading once? It had a red cover and it turned out they were twins.’ * The hub or nerve centre of the coach business was a big shed next to the stable. It smelled - no, it stank - no, it fugged of horses, leather, veterinary medicine, bad coal, brandy and cheap cigars. That’s what a fug was. You could have cut cubes out of the air and sold it for cheap building material. * Ankh-Morpork was a lot more civilized these days. Between them the Watch and the Guilds had settled things down enough to ensure that actually being attacked while going about your lawful business in Ankh-Morpork was now merely a possibility instead of, as it once was, a matter of course. And the streets were so clean now that you could sometimes even see the street. * The Mended Drum could be depended upon. If someone didn’t come out of the door backwards and fall down in the street just as you passed, then there was something wrong with the world. * Stanley took down, from the shelf, the Book of Regulations. He turned the pages methodically until he came to the bookmark he’d put in a minute ago, on the page What To Do In Case Of Fire. So far he’d done 1: Upon Discovery of the Fire, Remain Calm. Now he came to 2: Shout ‘Fire!’ in a Loud, Clear Voice. ‘Fire!’ he shouted, and then ticked off 2 with his pencil. Next was: 3: Endeavour to Extinguish Fire If Possible. Stanley went to the door and opened it. Flames and smoke billowed in. He stared at them for a moment, shook his head, and shut the door. Paragraph 4 said: If Trapped by Fire, Endeavour to Escape. Do Not Open Doors If Warm. Do Not Use Stairs If Burning. If No Exit Presents Itself Remain Calm and Await a) Rescue or b) Death. This seemed to cover it. * … Anoia, a minor goddess of Things That Stick In Drawers. Often, but not uniquely, a ladle, but sometimes a metal spatula or, rarely, a mechanical egg-whisk that nobody in the house admits to ever buying. The desperate mad rattling and cries of ‘How can it close on the damn thing but not open with it? Who bought this? Do we ever use it?’ is as praise unto Anoia. She also eats corkscrews. * Ankh-Morpork never slept; the city never did more than doze, and would wake up around 3 a.m. for a glass of water. Ridcully practised the First Available Surface method of filing. ‘Was there something else, Mr Stibbons?’ Ponder looked at his clipboard. ‘There’s a polite letter from Lord Vetinari asking on behalf of the city whether the University might consider including in its intake, oh, twenty-five per cent of less able students, sir?’ ‘Can’t have a bunch of grocers and butchers telling a university how to run itself, Stibbons!’ Ridcully said firmly. ‘Thank them for their interest and tell them we’ll continue to take one hundred per cent of complete and utter dullards, as usual. Take ‘em in dull, turn ‘em out sparklin’, that’s always been the UU way!’ * If there’s one thing a wizard hates, it’s having to wait while the person in front of them is in two minds about coleslaw. It’s a salad bar, they say, it’s got the kind of stuff salad bars have, if it was surprising it wouldn’t be a salad bar, you’re not here to look at it. What do you expect to find? Rhino chunks? Pickled coelacanth? The Lecturer in Recent Runes ladled more bacon bits into his salad bowl, having artfully constructed buttresses of celery and breastworks of cabbage to increase its depth five times. * ‘The Grand Trunk will remain closed in the interim,’ said Lord Vetinari. ‘It’s private property!’ Greenham burst out. ‘Tyrant, remember,’ said Vetinari. See a pin and pick it up, and all day long you’ll have a pin.   KOOM Valley? That was where the trolls ambushed the dwarfs, or the dwarfs ambushed the trolls. It was far away. It was a long time ago. But if he doesn’t solve the murder of just one dwarf, Commander Sam? Vimes of Ankfe-Morpork City Watch is going to see it fought again, right outside his office. With his beloved Watch crumbling around him and war-drums sounding, he rnust unravel every clue, outwit every assassin and brave any darkness to find the solution. And darkness is following him. Oh … and at six o’clock every day, without fail, with no excuses, he rnust go home to read Where’s My Cow?, with all the right farmyard noises, to his little boy. There are some things you have to do. Vimes is chatting to his butler: ‘Tell me, Willikins, did you fight much when you were a kid? Were you in a gang or anything?’ ‘I was privileged to belong to the Shamlegger Street Rude Boys, sir,’ said the butler. ‘Really?’ said Vimes, genuinely impressed. ‘They were pretty tough nuts, as I recall.’ ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Willikins smoothly. ‘I pride myself I used to give somewhat more than I got if we needed to discuss the vexed area of turf issues with the young men from Rope Street. Stevedore’s hooks were their weapon of choice, as I recall.’ ‘And yours … ?’ said Vimes, agog. ‘A cap-brim sewn with sharpened pennies, sir.’ ‘Ye gods, man! You could put someone’s eye out with something like that.’ ‘With care, sir, yes,’ said Willikins, meticulously folding a towel. * Vimes knew all the arguments for having different species in the Watch. They were good arguments. Some of the arguments against them were bad arguments. There were trolls in the Watch, plenty of dwarfs, one werewolf, three golems, an Igor and, not least, Corporal Nobbst† … * Fred Colon was not the greatest gift to policing. He was slow, stolid and not very imaginative. But he’d plodded his way around the streets for so long that he’d left a groove and somewhere inside that stupid fat head was something very smart, which sniffed the wind and heard the buzz and read the writing on the wall, admittedly doing the last bit with its lips moving. * To look at Fred Colon, you’d see a man who might well, if he fell over a cliff, have to stop and ask directions on the way down. * ‘… that girl you’re going out with … She’s nearly six feet tall and she’s got a bosom like … well, she’s a big girl, Nobby’ Fred Colon was at a loss. ‘She told me, Nobby, that she’s been Miss May on the centrefold of Girls, Giggles and Garters] Well, I mean …!’ ‘What do you mean, sarge? Anyway, she wasn’t just Miss May, she was the first week in June as well,’ Nobby pointed out. ‘It was the only way they had room.’ ‘Err, well, I ask you,’ Fred floundered, ‘is a girl who displays her body for money the right kind of wife for a copper? Ask yourself that!’ Nobby’s face wrinkled up in deep thought. ‘Is this a trick question, sarge?’ he said, at last. * Corporal Nobbs attends a burglary at the Royal Art Museum. ‘Hey, this must be a clue, sarge!’ said Nobby. ‘Look, someone dumped a load of stinking ol’ rubbish here!’ ‘Don’t touch that, please!’ said Sir Reynold, rushing over. ‘That’s Don’t Talk to Me About Mondays! It’s Daniellarina Pouter’s most controversial hwork!’ ‘It’s only a lot of old rubbish,’ Nobby protested, backing away. ‘Art is greater than the sum of its mere mechanical components, corporal,’ said the curator. ‘What about this one, then?’ said Nobby, pointing to the adjacent plinth. ‘It’s just a big stake with a nail in it! Is this art, too?’ ‘Freedom? If it hwas ever on the market, it hwould probableah fetch thirty thousand dollars,’ said Sir Reynold. ‘For a bit of wood with a nail in it?’ said Fred Colon. ‘Who did it?’ ‘After he viewed Don’t Talk to Me About Mondays! Lord Vetinari graciously had Ms Pouter nailed to the stake by her ear,’ said Sir Reynold. ‘However, she did manage to pull free during the afternoon.’ ‘I bet she was mad!’ said Nobby. ‘Not after she hwon several awards for it. I believe she’s planning to nail herself to several other things. It could be a very exciting exhibition.’ * Colon knew in his heart that spinning upside down around a pole wearing a costume you could floss with definitely was not Art, and being painted lying on a bed wearing nothing but a smile and a small bunch of grapes was good solid Art, but putting your finger on why this was the case was a bit tricky. * ‘Dave said the government hushed it up.’ ‘Yeah, but your mate Dave says the government always hushes things up, Nobby’ said Fred. ‘Well, they do.’ ‘Except he always gets to hear about ‘em, and he never gets hushed up,’ said Fred. ‘I know you like to point the finger of scoff, sarge, but there’s a lot goes on that we don’t know about.’ ‘Like what, exactly?’ Colon retorted. ‘Name me one thing that’s going on that you don’t know about.’ * ‘Don’t try to put me at my ease,’ said Vimes. ‘It makes me nervous when people do that.’ * Coppers stayed alive by trickery. That’s how it worked. You had your Watch Houses with the big blue lights outside, and you made certain there were always burly watchmen visible in the big public places, and you swanked around like you owned the place. But you didn’t own it. It was all smoke and mirrors. You magicked a little policeman into everyone’s head. You relied on people giving in, knowing the rules. But in truth a hundred well-armed people could wipe out the Watch, if they knew what they were doing. Once some madman finds out that a copper taken unawares dies just like anyone else, the spell is broken. * Ankh-Morpork was built on Ankh-Morpork. Everyone knew that. They had been building with stone here ten thousand years ago. As the annual flooding of the Ankh brought more silt, so the city had risen on its walls until attics had become cellars. Even at basement level today, it was always said, a man with a pickaxe and a good sense of direction could cross the city by knocking his way through underground walls, provided he could also breathe mud. * Blackboard monitor. Well, he had been, in that little street school more than forty-five years ago. Mum had insisted. Gods knew where she’d sprung the penny a day it cost, although most of the time Dame Slightly had been happy to accept payment in old clothes and firewood. Numbers, letters, weights, measures; it was not what you’d call a rich curriculum. Vimes had attended for nine months or so, until the streets demanded he learn much harder and sharper lessons. But, for a while, he’d been trusted to hand out the slates and clean the blackboard. Oh, the heady, strutting power of it, when you’re six years old! * Vimes carefully lifted the top of the bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich, and smiled inwardly. Good old Cheery. She knew what a Vimes BLT was all about. It was about having to lift up quite a lot of crispy bacon before you found the miserable skulking vegetables. You might never notice them at all. A young man of godlike proportions† was standing in the doorway. Vimes takes parental duty seriously … He’d be home in time. Would a minute have mattered? No, probably not, although Young Sam appeared to have a very accurate internal clock. Possibly even two minutes would be okay. Three minutes, even. You could go to five, perhaps. But that was just it. If you could go to five minutes then you’d go to ten, then half an hour, a couple of hours … and not see your son all evening. So that was that. Six o’clock, prompt. Every day. Read to Young Sam. No excuses. He’d promised himself that. No excuses. No excuses at all. Once you had a good excuse, you opened the door to bad excuses. * and the book he reads … It was called Where’s My Cow? The unidentified complainant had lost their cow. That was the story, really. Page one started promisingly: Where’s my cow? Is that my cow? It goes, ‘Baa!’ It is a sheep! That’s not my cow! Then the author began to get to grips with their material: Where’s my cow? Is that my cow? It goes, ‘Neigh!’ It is a horse! That’s not my cow! At this point the author had reached an agony of creation and was writing from the racked depths of their soul. Where’s my cow? Is that my cow? It goes, ‘Hruuugh!’ It is a hippopotamus! That’s not my cow! (Rest assured: the cow is found.) * ‘When did you last eat?’ said Sybil. ‘I had a lettuce, tomato and bacon sandwich, dear,’ Vimes said, endeavouring by tone of voice to suggest that the bacon had been a mere condiment rather than a slab barely covered by the bread. ‘I expect you jolly well did,’ said Sybil, rather more accurately conveying the fact that she didn’t believe a word of it. Tomato ketchup is not a vegetable. ‘What’s the password?’ Vimes said quickly. The shadowy figure, who was cloaked and hooded, hesitated. ‘Pathword? Ecthcuthe me, I’ve got it written down thomewhere—’ ‘Okay, Igor, come on in,’ said Carrot. ‘How did you know it wath me, thur?’ said Igor. * ‘I’m going to have a look for Angua,’ said Carrot. ‘She hasn’t slept in her bed.’ ‘But at this time of the month—’ ‘I know, sir. She hasn’t slept in her basket, either.’ * Vetinari drummed his fingers on the table. ‘What would you do if I asked you an outright question, Vimes?’ ‘I’d tell you a downright lie, sir’ ‘Then I will not do so,’ said Vetinari, smiling faintly. ‘Thank you, sir. Nor will I.’ * ‘We need to talk to you,’ said Carrot. ‘Do you want a lawyer?’ ‘No, I ate already’ ‘You eat lawyers?’ said Carrot. Brick gave him an empty stare until sufficient brain cells had been mustered. ‘What d’y’call dem fings, dey kinda crumble when you eat dem?’ he ventured. Carrot looked at Detritus and Angua, to see if there was going to be any help there. ‘Could be lawyers,’ he conceded. ‘Dey go soggy if you dips ‘em in somefing,’ said Brick. ‘More likely to be biscuits, then?’ Carrot suggested. * There was an old military saying that Fred Colon used to describe total bewilderment and confusion. An individual in that state, according to Fred, ‘couldn’t tell if it was arsehole or breakfast time’. * The plain fact was that while Tawneee had a body that every other woman should hate her for, she was actually very likeable. This was because she had the self-esteem of a caterpillar and, as you found out in any kind of conversation with her, about the same amount of brain. Perhaps it all balanced out, perhaps some kindly god had said to her: ‘Sorry, kid, you are going to be thicker than a yard of lard, but the good news is, that’s not going to matter’ * ‘It’s the jerk syndrome. It means … sometimes a woman is so beautiful that any man with half a brain isn’t going to think of asking her out, okay? Because it’s obvious that she’s far too grand for the likes of him. Are you with me?’ ‘I think so.’ ‘Well, that’s Tawneee. And, for the purposes of this explanation, Nobby has not got half a brain. He’s so used to women saying no when he asks them out that he’s not afraid of being blown out. So he asks her, because he figures, why not? And she, who by now thinks there’s something wrong with her, is so grateful she says okay’ * ‘Needs eating up.’ That was a phrase of Sybil’s that got to Vimes. She’d announce at lunch: ‘We must have the pork tonight, it needs eating up.’ Vimes never had an actual problem with this, because he’d been raised to eat what was put in front of him, and do it quickly, too, before someone else snatched it away. He was just puzzled at the suggestion that he was there to do the food a favour. * When did Lord Vetinari sleep? Presumably the man must get his head down at some point, Vimes reasoned. Everyone slept. Catnaps could get you by for a while, but sooner or later you need a solid eight hours, right? It was almost midnight, and there was Vetinari at his desk, fresh as a daisy and chilly as morning dew. * Mustrum Ridcully was capable of enormous powers of concentration when absolutely no alternative presented itself. * ‘This is all rather fun,’ said Sybil, as the coaches headed out of the city. ‘Do you remember when we last went on holiday, Sam?’ ‘That wasn’t really a holiday, dear,’ said Vimes. ‘Well, it was very interesting, all the same,’ said Sybil. ‘Yes, dear. Werewolves tried to eat me.’ * Historical Re-creation. With people dressing up and running around with blunt weapons, and people selling hot dogs, and the girls all miserable because they can only dress up as wenches, wenching being the only job available to women in the olden days. † This was a bit of a slur on Nobby, Vimes had to admit. Nobby was human, just like many other officers. It was just that he was the only one who had to carry a certificate to prove it. † The better class of gods, anyway. Not the ones with the tentacles, obviously   TIFFANY Aching put one foot wrong, made one little mistake … And now the spirit of winter is in lo love with her her. He give her roses and iceber icebergs, says it with avalanches and showers her with snowflakes – which is tough when you’re thirteen, but also just a little bit … cool. And just because the Wintersmith wants to marry you is no excuse for neglecting the chores. So she must look after Miss Treason, who’s 113 and has far too many eyes, learn the secret of Boffo, catch Horace the cheese, stop Annagramm Hawkin from becoming an embarrassment to all witches, avoid Nanny Ogg giving her a lecture on sex, stop the gods from seeing her in the bath— ‘Crivens!’ —oh, yes, and be helped by the Nac Mac Feegles, whether she wants it or not. It’s unfair, but as Granny Weatherwax says, no one ever said it was going to be fair. And if Tiffany doesn’t work it all out, there will never be another springtime … When the gods made sheep they must’ve left their brains in their other coat. ‘Cackling’, to a witch, didn’t just mean nasty laughter. It meant your mind drifting away from its anchor. It meant you losing your grip. It meant loneliness and hard work and responsibility and other people’s problems driving you crazy a little bit at a time, each bit so small that you’d hardly notice it, until you thought that it was normal to stop washing and wear a kettle on your head. It meant you thinking that the fact you knew more than anyone else in your village made you better than them. It meant thinking that right and wrong were negotiable. And, in the end, it meant you ‘going to the dark’, as the witches said. That was a bad road. At the end of that road were poisoned spinning-wheels and gingerbread cottages. * Everyone had something inside them that told the world they were there. That was why you could often sense when someone was behind you, even if they were making no sound at all. You were receiving their ‘I am here!’ signal. Some people had a very strong one. They were the people who got served first in shops. Granny Weatherwax had an ‘I am here’ signal that bounced off the mountains when she wanted it to; when she walked into a forest, all the wolves and bears ran out the other side. * Mrs Earwig was all wrong to Granny Weatherwax. She wasn’t born locally, which was almost a crime to begin with. She wrote books, and Granny Weatherwax didn’t trust books. And Mrs Earwig believed in shiny wands and magical amulets and mystic runes and the power of the stars, while Granny Weatherwax believed in cups of tea, dry biscuits, washing every morning in cold water and, well, she believed mostly in Granny Weatherwax. * Most witches liked black, but Miss Treason even had black goats and black chickens. The walls were black. The floor was black. If you dropped a stick of liquorice, you’d never find it again. And, to Tiffany’s dismay, she had to make her cheeses black, which meant painting the cheeses with shiny black wax. It did keep them moist, but Tiffany distrusted black cheeses. They always looked as though they were plotting something. * ‘Gods, elementals, demons, spirits … sometimes it’s hard to tell ‘em apart wi’oot a map.’ * You could hear the snow falling. It made a strange little noise, like a faint, cold sizzle. * The Chalk Hill Feegles were more at home with the drinkin’, stealin’ and fightin’, and Rob Anybody was good at all three. But he’d learned to read and write because Jeannie had asked him to. He did them with a lot more optimism than accuracy. When he was faced with a long sentence he tended to work out a few words and then have a great big guess. * The white kitten watched the snowflakes. It was called You, as in ‘You! Stop that!’ and ‘You! Get off there!’ When it came to names, Granny Weatherwax didn’t do fancy. * ‘The important thing,’ said Miss Treason, ‘is to stay the passage of the wind. You should avoid rumbustious fruits and vegetables. Beans are the worst, take it from me.’ ‘I don’t think I understand—’ Tiffany began. ‘Try not to fart, in a nutshell.’ ‘In a nutshell I imagine it would be pretty unpleasant!’ said Tiffany, nervously. * The Feegles didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘fear’. Sometimes Tiffany wished they’d read a dictionary. They fought like tigers, they fought like demons, they fought like giants. What they didn’t do was fight like something with more than a spoonful of brain. * Nanny Ogg was good at listening, at least. She listened like a great big ear, and before Tiffany realized it she was telling her everything. Everything. Nanny sat on the opposite side of the big kitchen table, puffing gently at a pipe with a hedgehog carved on it. Sometimes she’d ask a little question, like ‘Why was that?’ or ‘And then what happened?’ and off they’d go again. Nanny’s friendly little smile could drag out of you things you didn’t know you knew. * From the best chair in the room of ornaments, a large grey cat watched Tiffany with a half-open eye that glinted with absolute evil. Nanny had referred to him as ‘Greebo … don’t mind him, he’s just a big old softie,’ which Tiffany knew enough to interpret as ‘He’ll have his claws in your leg if you go anywhere near him.’ It was hard to be embarrassed by Nanny Ogg, because her laugh drove it away She wasn’t embarrassed about anything. She opened the cutlery drawer for a spoon. It stuck. She rattled it, pulled at it and swore a few times, but it stayed stuck. ‘Oh, yes, go ahead,’ said a voice behind her. ‘See how much help that is. Don’t be sensible and stick your hand under the top and carefully free up the stuck item. Oh no. Rattle and curse, that’s the way!’ Tiffany turned. There was a skinny, tired-looking woman standing by the kitchen table. She seemed to be wearing a sheet draped around her and was smoking a cigarette. Tiffany had never seen a woman smoke a cigarette before, but especially never a cigarette that burned with a fat red flame and gave off sparks. ‘Who are you?’ she said sharply. ‘Anoia, Goddess of Things That Get Stuck In Drawers,’ said the woman. ‘Pleased to meet you.’ ‘There’s a goddess just for that?’ said Tiffany. ‘Well, I find lost corkscrews and things that roll under furniture,’ said Anoia, off-handedly ‘They want me to do stuck zips, and I’m thinking about that. But mostly I manifest whensoever people rattle stuck drawers and call upon the gods.’ She puffed on her cigarette. ‘Got any tea?’ ‘But I didn’t call on anyone!’ ‘You did,’ said Anoia. ‘You cussed. Sooner or later, every curse is a prayer.’ She waved the hand that wasn’t holding the cigarette and something in the drawer went pling. ‘It’ll be all right now. It was the fish slice. Everyone has one, and no one knows why. Did anyone in the world ever knowingly go out one day and buy a fish slice? I don’t think so.’ Annagramma was as vain as a canary in a room full of mirrors. Roland tugged the sword out of its scabbard. It was heavy and not at all like the flying, darting silver thing that he’d imagined. It was more like a metal club with an edge. He gripped it in both hands and managed to hurl it out into the middle of the slow, dark river. Just before it hit the water a white arm rose and caught it. The hand waved the sword a couple of times, and then disappeared with it under the water. ‘Was that supposed to happen?’ he said. ‘A man throwin’ his sword awa’?’ yelled Rob. ‘No! Ye’re no’ supposed tae bung a guid sword intae the drinkie!’ ‘No, I mean the hand,’ said Roland. ‘It just—’ ‘Ach, they turn up sometimes.’ Rob Anybody waved a hand as if midstream underwater sword jugglers were an everyday occurrence. * When the noise had died down a bit the drummer beat the drum a few times and the accordionist played a long drawn-out chord, the legal signal that a Morris Dance is about to begin, and people who hang around have only got themselves to blame.   IT’S an offer y you can’t refuse. Who would not wish to be the man in charge of Ankh-Morpork’s Royal Mint and the bank next door? It’s a job for life. But, as former conman Moist von Lipwig is learning, life is not necessarily for long. The Chief Cashier is almost certainly a vampire. There’s something nameless in the cellar (and the cellar itself is pretty nameless), and it turns out that the Royal Mint runs at a loss. A three-hundred-year-old wizar is after his girlfriend, he’s about to be exposed as a fraud, but the Assassins’ Guild might get him first. In fact, lots of people want him dead. Oh. And every day he has to take the Chairman for walkies. Everywhere he look looks he’s making enemies. What he should be doing is … Making Money! The Guild of Thieves paid a twenty-dollar bounty fee for a non-accredited thief brought in alive, and there were oh, so many ways of still being alive when you were dragged in and poured out on the floor. * ‘You Have An Appointment Now With Lord Vetinari,’ said the golem. ‘I’m sure I don’t.’ ‘There Are Two Guards Outside Who Are Sure You Do.’ * Lord Vetinari lifted an eyebrow with the care of one who, having found a piece of caterpillar in his salad, raises the rest of the lettuce. * ‘[The bank] was built as a temple, but never used as one.’ ‘Really?’ said Moist. ‘Which god?’ ‘None, as it turned out. One of the kings of Ankh commanded it to be built about nine hundred years ago,’ said Bent. ‘I suppose it was a case of speculative building. That is to say, he had no god in mind.’ ‘He hoped one would turn up?’ ‘Exactly sir.’ ‘Like bluetits?’ said Moist, peering around. ‘This place was a kind of celestial bird box?’ * ‘It costs more than a penny to make a penny’ Moist murmured. ‘Is it just me, or is that wrong?’ ‘But, you see, once you have made it, a penny keeps on being a penny’ said Mr Bent. ‘That’s the magic of it.’ ‘It is?’ said Moist. ‘Look, it’s a copper disc. What do you expect it to become?’ ‘In the course of a year, just about everything,’ said Mr Bent, smoothly. ‘It becomes some apples, part of a cart, a pair of shoelaces, some hay, an hour’s occupancy of a theatre seat. It may even become a stamp and send a letter, Mr Lipwig. It might be spent three hundred times and yet - and this is the good part - it is still one penny, ready and willing to be spent again. It is not an apple, which will go bad. Its worth is fixed and stable. It is not consumed.’ * Mr Fusspot was the smallest and ugliest dog Moist had ever seen. It reminded him of those goldfish with the huge bulging eyes that look as though they are about to explode. Its nose, on the other hand, looked stoved in. It wheezed, and its legs were so bandy that it must sometimes trip over its own feet. The dog gave a little yappy bark and then covered Moist’s face in all that was best in dog slobber. * ‘I don’t really understand how banks work.’ ‘How do you think they work?’ ‘Well, you take rich people’s money and lend it to suitable people at interest, and give as little as possible of the interest back.’ ‘Yes, and what is a suitable person?’ ‘Someone who can prove they don’t need the money?’ * ‘Old money’ meant that it had been made so long ago that the black deeds which had originally filled the coffers were now historically irrelevant. Funny, that: a brigand for a father was something you kept quiet about, but a slave-taking pirate for a great-great-great-grandfather was something to boast of over the port. Time turned the evil bastards into rogues, and rogue was a word with a twinkle in its eye and nothing to be ashamed of. * ‘I did not become ruler of Ankh-Morpork by understanding the city. Like banking, the city is depressingly easy to understand. I have remained ruler by getting the city to understand me.’ The city bleeds, Mr Lipwig, and you are the clot I need.. The lady in the boardroom was certainly an attractive woman, but since she worked for the Times Moist felt unable to award her total ladylike status. Ladies didn’t fiendishly quote exactly what you said but didn’t exactly mean, or hit you around the ear with unexpectedly difficult questions. Well, come to think of it, they did, quite often, but she got paid for it. * ‘The world is full of things worth more than gold. But we dig the damn stuff up and then bury it in a different hole. Where’s the sense in that? What are we, magpies? Good heavens, potatoes are worth more than gold!’ ‘Surely not!’ ‘If you were shipwrecked on a desert island, what would you prefer, a bag of potatoes or a bag of gold?’ ‘Yes, but a desert island isn’t Ankh-Morpork!’ ‘And that proves gold is only valuable because we agree it is, right? It’s just a dream. But a potato is always worth a potato, anywhere. A knob of butter and a pinch of salt and you’ve got a meal, anywhere. Bury gold in the ground and you’ll be worrying about thieves for ever. Bury a potato and in due season you could be looking at a dividend of a thousand per cent.’ * ‘Vetinari has a dog?’ ‘Had. Wuffles. Died some time ago. There’s a little grave in the Palace grounds. He goes there alone once a week and puts a dog biscuit on it.’ ‘Vetinari does that?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Vetinari the cool, heartless, calculating tyrant?’ ‘Indeed.’ * Don’t let me detain you. What a wonderful phrase Vetinari had devised. The jangling double meaning set up undercurrents of uneasiness in the most innocent of minds. The man had found ways of bloodless tyranny that put the rack to shame. * Stamp collecting! It had started on day one, and then ballooned like some huge … thing, running on strange, mad rules. Was there any other field where flaws made things worth more? Would you buy a suit just because one arm was shorter than the other? Or because a bit of spare cloth was still attached? * Claud Maximillian Overton Transpire Dibbler, a name bigger than the man himself. Everyone knew C. M. O. T Dibbler. He sold pies and sausages off a tray, usually to people who were the worse for drink who then became the worse for pies. * Moist had eaten the odd pork pie and occasional sausage in a bun and that very fact interested him. There was something about the stuff that drove you back for more. There had to be some secret ingredient, or maybe the brain just didn’t believe what the taste buds told it, and wanted to feel once again that flood of hot, greasy, not entirely organic, slightly crunchy substances surfing across the tongue. So you bought another one. And, it had to be said, there were times when a Dibbler sausage in a bun was just what you wanted. Sad, yet true. Everyone had moments like that. Life brought you so low that for a vital few seconds that charivari of strange greases and worrying textures was your only friend in all the world. * The Watch armour fitted like a glove. He’d have preferred it to fit like a helmet and breastplate. It was common knowledge that the Watch’s approach to uniforms was one-size-doesn’t-exactly-fit-anybody and that Commander Vimes disapproved of armour that didn’t have that kicked-by-trolls look. He liked it to make it clear that it had been doing its job. ‘I’m an Igor, thur. We don’t athk quethtionth.’ ‘Really? Why not?’ ‘I don’t know, thur. I didn’t athk.’ Students, eh? Love ’em or hate ’em, you’re not allowed to hit ’em with a shovel. ‘I’m afraid I have to close the office now, reverend.’ The voice of Ms Houser broke into Cribbins’s dreams … Ms Houser was standing there, not gloriously naked and pink as so recently featured in the reverie, but in a plain brown coat and an unsuitable hat with feathers in it. * Talking to the Watch was like tap-dancing on a landslide. If you were nimble you could stay upright, but you couldn’t steer and there were no brakes and you just knew that it was going to end in a certain amount of fuss. * The price of a good woman was proverbially above rubies, so a bad one was presumably a lot more. * He slapped Hubert twice across the face and pulled a jar out of his pocket. ‘Mr Hubert? How many fingerth am I holding up?’ Hubert slowly focused. ‘Thirteen?’ he quavered. Igor relaxed, and dropped the jar back into his pocket. ‘Jutht in time. Well done, thur!’ * All heads turned. A path [in the crowd] cleared itself for Lord Vetinari; paths do for men known to have dungeons in their basements. * ‘The law must be obeyed, Miss Dearheart [said Lord Vetinari]. Even tyrants have to obey the law.’ He paused, looking thoughtful, and continued: ‘No, I tell a lie, tyrants do not have to obey the law, obviously, but they do have to observe the niceties. At least, I do.’ * It was 6 a.m., and the fog seemed glued to the windows, so thick that it should have contained croutons. * ‘Is he allowed to do that?’ ‘I think that comes under the rule of Quia Ego Sic Dico.’ ‘Yes, what does that mean?’ ‘ “Because I say so”, I think.’ ‘That doesn’t sound like much of a rule!’ ‘Actually it’s the only one he needs.’ * ‘Every problem is an opportunity,’ said Moist. ‘Well, if you upset Vetinari again you will have a wonderful opportunity to never have to buy a hat.’ ‘No, I think he likes a little opposition.’ ‘And are you any good at knowing how much?’ ‘No. It’s what I enjoy. You get a wonderful view from the point of no return.’ * Moist von Lipwig quizzes staff at the bank about the cost of making money: ‘So how do you get paid?’ There was a moment’s silence, and then Mr Shady said, like a man talking to a child: ‘This is a mint, sir.’ ‘You make your own wages? Well, at least you’re in a profitable business,’ said Moist cheerfully. ‘I mean, you must be making money hand over fist!’ ‘We manage to break even, sir, yes,’ said Shady, as if it was a close-run thing. ‘Break even? You’re a mint!’ said Moist. ‘How can you not make a profit by making money?’ ‘Overheads, sir. There’s overheads wherever you look.’ ‘Even underfoot?’ ‘There too, sir,’ said Shady. ‘It’s ruinous, sir, it really is. Y’see, it costs a ha’penny to make a farthin’ an’ nearly a penny to make a ha’penny. A penny comes in at a penny far-thin’. Sixpences costs tuppence farthin’, so we’re in pocket there. Half a dollar costs seven pence. And it’s only sixpence to make a dollar, a definite improvement, but that’s ‘cos we does ‘em here. The real buggers are the mites, ‘cos they’re worth half a farthin’ but cost sixpence ‘cos it’s fiddly work, bein’ so small and havin’ that hole in the middle. The thru-penny bit, sir, we’ve only got a couple of people makin’ those, a lot of work which runs out at seven pence. And don’t ask me about the tuppenny piece!’ ‘What about the tuppenny piece?’ ‘I’m glad you asked me that, sir. Fine work, sir, tots up to seven and one-sixteenth pence.’ INDEX A absentmindedness, 111, 225 Aching, Tiffany, 247-50, 259-63, 283-6 advertising of moving pictures, 85-6 of whiskey, 128 Albert, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39, 133-4, 168-9,172, 226 alchemists, 82 Angua, Sergeant, 125, 128, 129, 159, 160, 161, 162, 181 as werewolf, 159, 161, 183, 279 Ankh (river), 14, 35, 43, 47, 54, 57, 82, 84, 135 Ankh-Morpork, 22, 23, 33, 43, 47, 57, 62, 67, 81, 82, 84, 127-8, 169, 207, 215, 218, 270, 277 and barbarian invaders, 75 as haven for deposed royalty, 60 crime in, 13, 29, 54, 66, 67, 136-7, 163, 234, 269 economic activity in, 13, 47, 127-8, 133, 136-7 fire brigade, 180 founding of, 58 gangs in, 275 government, 40, 67 guilds, 57, 66, 68, 133, 161, 182, 235, 269 289 history 23, 86, 135, 138 medicine in, 68-9 Opera House, 154 patriotism in, 235 populace, 46, 67, 68, 138, 180, 181, 218, 269 Post Office, 267 smell of, 23, 29 See also Ankh, Harga’s House of Ribs, Mended Drum, Shades, Unseen University, Vetinari, Watch anti-crimes, 93 Anybody, Rob, 249-50, 260, 262, 284, 286 architecture, 51, 59, 60, 87 120, 154 See also Johnson armaments, as product of Age of Reason, 136 inventors of, 163, 169-70 art Colon on, 276 modern, 276 AshkEnte, Rite of, 39, 75 assassination for career advancement, 34, 81, 92, 135, 142, 189 of surplus monarchs, 60 assassins, 57, 167, 235 Assassins’ Guild School, 57, 233, 268 astrophysics, 13 A’Tuin, Great, 13, 43, 71, 113 Auditors, the, 213, 216 autocondimenting, 94 B balance, need for, 97 baldness, 128, 171 banking, 291-2 baths: Granny Weatherwax on, 104 beards, 82, 267 beer, 45, 47, 82, 190 bees, 75 belief, 95, 173 in gods, 92, 95, 101, 224, 227-8 power of, 129 beliefs, questionable popular, 84, 96, 126, 163, 224, 226, 260, 267 See also superstition Bent, Mr, 291 Biers, 168 blasphemy, 58, 127 Blouse, Lieutenant, 253, 255 books Cohen on, 20 crimes against, Librarian on, 68 Granny Weatherwax on, 27, 283 holiday reading, 189 impractical ideas from, 182, 196, 203 Leonard of Quirm’s, 136 magical, 24, 43-4, 65, 85, 129 magic generated by, 29, 70 Necrotelicomiiicon, the, 85 Octavo, the, 24 Post Office Regulations, 270 prayer book as protection in battle, 180-1 Reader in The Lavatory’s theory about, 135 unwritten, 112 Where’s My Cow?, 278 See also Library, L-space bookworm, .303, 59 boots crêpe soles, 136 Tiffany Aching on, 259 Vimes on, 125 boredom, of Hell, 77 bravery, 28 Broken Drum see Mended Drum broomsticks, 27, 102, 152 Brutha, 111, 197 Bursar, the (Unseen University), 39, 93, 94, 96, 135, 190 business management, 19 C cabbage, boiled, 29 Campaign for Equal Heights, 162 Carrot, see Ironfoundersson cats, 120, 217, 239, 240, 242, 259, 284 and vampires, 103 Death’s fondness for, 43, 226 Mr Tiddles, 267 sacred, 58 Susan on, 169 See also Greebo, Maurice chance, million-to-one, 30 charisma, 144 children and Hogswatch, 138, 168-9, 171-2 as posterity, 43, 226 capabilities of, 214 normal behaviour of, 167 special needs, 214 children’s stories, 138, 167 Tiffany Aching on, 248 Where’s My Cow?, 278 chocolate, 193, 202, 219, 256 in Ankh-Morpork, 218 circus, 260-1 clerks, dark, 268 cliché, inevitability of, 48, 137, 241 clock cuckoos, 217 Clodpool, 213, 215, 216 clowns, 127, 261 Cohen the Barbarian, 20-1, 142-6, 225, 226 and women, 20 fighting technique, 21, 144, 145-6 on the greatest things in life, 20, 142-3 on the value of books, 20 Colon, Sergeant Frederick, 128, 129, 180-1, 231, 276, 279 and marriage, 67 appearance, 67, 125 mental powers, 177, 178, 183, 201, 275 on Art, 275 on protocol, 178, 179-80, 201 policing abilities, 178, 179-80, 275 Cool, Monks of, 122 conspiracy theory, 276 Cori Celesti, 19 Cosmopilite, Mrs Marietta, 84 Way of Mrs Cosmopilite, the, 216 Counting Pines, 92 crime Mr Pump on, 268-9 punishment for, 163 Vimes on, 129 See also Ankh-Morpork, anti-crimes Cripslock, Sacharissa, 209, 210, 290 D dancing in witchcraft, 53, 259 Lancre Stick and Bucket Dance, 122 Morris dance, 97, 286 Darktan (rat), 240, 243-4 Dean, the (Unseen University), 87, 96, 136, 167, 170, 171, 188 death, being dead, 15, 21, 34, 48, 57, 66, 97, 168, 190, 224, 267 at the opera, 156 beliefs of Nac Mac Feegle, 259 for Counting Pines, 92 for mayflies, 91-2 gloriousness of, 142-3 in a worthy cause, 21, 144, 182 pyramids as mechanism to prevent, 59 Death, 14-15, 21, 33-4, 38-40, 43, 48, 66, 75, 91, 97, 150-2, 168-9, 172-4, 190, 194, 203, 209-10, 216 and cats, 43, 226 as family man, 40, 174, 213 as Hogfather, 168-9, 172 as partygoer, 19, 34 evidence of sense of humour, 13-14, 117 games with, 96, 151-2 horse of, 33, 34, 48, 92 house of, 171, 213 in the Klatchian Foreign Legion, 134-5 on curry, 33 on human behaviour, 34, 173 Death of Rats, 168, 209-10 decor, institutional, 29 democracy, 40, 202 demons, 53, 75, 77, 78 Duke Vassenego, 77 Lord Astfgl, 76, 77 Detritus, Sergeant, 125, 159-60, 162, 177 de Worde, William, 207-10 Dhblah, Cut-Me-Own-Hand-Off, 111 Dibbler, C. M. O. T., 68, 82-6, 128, 207, 208, 235, 293 Djelibeybi, 57 dobby stone, 260 dogs, 101 Mr Fusspot, 291 noses, as wake-up call, 85 Scraps, 198 Wuffles, 46, 292-3 See also Gaspode Doughnut Jimmy, 160 dragons, 15 anti-dragon devices, 68 swamp dragons, 69, 126 D’reg tribe, 181 dungeons, 71, 225, 292 attempted escape from, 142-3 Dunmanifestin, 19 dwarf bread, 104, 162 dwarfs, 87, 126-7, 136 and trolls, 126 Giamo Casanunda, 107, 118 Hwel, 54 See also Littlebottom E education at Assassins’ Guild School, 57, 233 at Dame Slightly’s, 277 at Quirm College for Young Ladies, 218 at Unseen University, 141, 270-1 boarding-school, 207 broad, of Sergeant Colon, 177 downside to, 36, 58 for witches, 248 provided by Susan, 167, 214-15 See also learning, teachers Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night, 65,66 elves, 120 evolution, results of, 28, 59, 126 explorers, 19-20, 177, 188, 201 F familiars, witches’, 248 fighting fair Assassins’ code, 235 Cohen on, 21, 145-6, 225 Marquis of Fantailler’s rules, 203 Vimes on, 233 Flitworth, Miss, 96 flow charts, 19 food army rations, 253 at Harga’s House of Ribs, 38, 70, 127 at Mrs Arcanum’s, 208-9 autocondimenting of, 94 banged grains, 82 BLT, 277, 278 canapés, Death on, 34 C. M. O. T. Dibbler’s specialities, 81, 82-3, 207, 208, 235, 293 currant buns, 52 curry, 33, 102, 133, 208-9 eggs, juugly 37 Ephebian, 60 foreign, Granny Weatherwax on, 104 Greek, 30 healthiness of, Lady Sybil on, 278; Mrs War on, 217; Vimes on, 69, 278 in Agatean Empire, Cohen on, 142 muesli, 76 mushrooms, edibility of, 19 needing eating up, 279-80 pizza, 161 pork products and the Hogfather, 138 regional specialities, dangers of, 189 rumbustious, Miss Treason on, 284 salad bar, 271 strawberries, midwinter, 37 Fool, the, see Verence II Four Horsemen, the, 48, 144-5 See also Death, Pestilence, War funerals, 231, 261 G games at Hogswatch, 171 Exclusive Possession, 96 hide-and-seek, dangers of, 121 played by gods, 224 pub games, 134 gargoyles, 30, 43, 127 doorknocker, 35-6 Garlick, Magrat, 51–1, 102-7, 117, 120-1, 197 Gaspode the Wonder Dog, 83-5, 129, 201 genocide, result of religious conviction, 227-8 geography, 19-20, 27, 76, 117, 133, 193, 201, 260 geometry, 60 gods, 19, 28, 95, 112-13, 170, 224, 225, 227-8, 242, 277, 279, 283, 284, 291 Anoia, 270, 285 dwarfs and, 126-7 fashion in, 226 Hoki, 28 Om, 111, 226 Quezovercoatl, 76 witches and, 101 wizards and, 92 Gogol, Mrs, 106, 107 gold standard, Moist von Lipwig on, 292 golems, 146 Mr Pump, 268-9 Great Trout, the, 91-2 Greebo, 53, 102-3, 106, 285 Grim, Malicia, 239-43 H hair Dean on hair loss, 171 Granny Weatherwax on hair care, 155 problem, 137 Hangovers, oh God of, 170 Harga’s House of Ribs, 38, 70, 127 hats Agnes on, 193 importance of, 106, 154, 215, 248 Tiffany Aching on, 247, 261 Heaven, size of, 218 Hell, 77, 78 highway robbery, unsuccessful, 118, 120 history historical anecdote, 23, 37-8, 121, 138 Historical Re-creation, 280 Lord Selachii on, 177 nature of, 37-8 of Ankh-Morpork, 86 See also legends Hogfather, the, 138 Hogswatch, 138, 168 Death’s Hogswatch card, 174 UU faculty on, 171-2 holiday postcards, 103-4 Hong, Lord, 142, 145 Hong, Mr, 177-8 Howler, Stanley, 270 I Igors, 195, 196, 197, 198, 202, 278, 293, 294 Code of the Igors, 216 imagination, as human characteristic, 213, 227-8 intellectual powers Colon’s, 178, 183, 201, 275 compensations for lack of, 279 Detritus’s, 177 Leonard’s, 135-6, 179 Ridcully’s, 93, 119, 280 intentions, good, 71, 78 Ironfoundersson, Captain Carrot, 125, 128, 129, 181, 278-9 and Angua, 162 as policeman, 68, 69, 178, 279 character, 126, 127 leadership qualities, 129 on Discworld from space, 226-7 on gargoyles, 127 J Jackrum, Sergeant, 253-5 Johnson, Bergholt Stuttley (‘Bloody Stupid’), 169-70, 228 Jolson, All, 201 K Keith, 239-43 Keli, Princess, 35-6, 37, 39 kitchen drawers, 260 Anoia, goddess responsible for, 270, 285 Klatchian Foreign Legion, 134-5 knowledge, power of, 28 L Lancre, 117, 153, 193 Castle, 51 mail delivery, 121 military capacity, 104 monarchy, 195 women, 149 Lasgere of Tsort, Prince, 112 Lawn, Dr Mossy, 232-3 leadership among witches, 102, 261, 262 dressing for, 145 effective, 71-2, 93, 129 problems of, 243-4, 268 learning dwarfs on, 136 royal road to, 112 legends, Discworld, 135, 138, 187, 227 Leonard of Quirm, 128, 135-6, 179, 225, 226-7 military nature of inventions, 136 Librarian, the (Unseen University), 29-30, 44, 45, 46, 65, 69, 117, 135 as organist, 155 regard for books, 68 Library, the (Unseen University), 44, 65. 68, 70, 112, 129, 188, 269 light, nature of, 188 Lilywhite, Medium Dave, 172-3 Lipwig, Moist von, 267-9, 291-95 listening, art of, 111, 136, 177, 284 Littlebottom, Corporal Cheery, 159-61 Llamedos, 133 L-space, 70 Ludd, Lobsang, 214, 215-16, 217, 218 Luggage, the, 44 Lu-Tze (Sweeper), 215-16, 217, 218, 231-2 Ly Tin Wheedle, 19, 48 M magic long-term effects, 15, 219 magic word, the, 36 nature of, 28 occult jewellery, 261 of standing stone, 52-3 Rite of AshkEnte, 39, 75 rules of, 120 unit of measure, 24 usefulness of (or otherwise), 14, 21 witchcraft, 121, 248, 250, 261, 283 marriage, 39, 67 choice of partner, 36-7, 53, 149, 275 Nanny Ogg on, 120-1 vampirism by, 95 Maurice, 239-43 mayflies, 91-2 medical care, 68-9, 160, 232-3 See also Igors, Weatherwax Medusa, 137 Mended Drum, the, 38, 46, 134, 270 mental instability, instances of, 52, 85, 129, 135, 153, 190, 201, 283 metaphor extended, 13, 21, 22, 24, 29, 37, 47, 60, 119, 161, 170 inherent inaccuracy of, 22, 23, 35, 61-2, 277 trouble with, 125, 127-8, 153, 169 military strategy, 77 General Tacticus on, 255 of Bruce the Hoon, 144 military training, 253-5 mime artists, 67 money and banking, 291 circulation of, 143 language of, 13 old, 290 worth of, 291 Morris dance, 97, 122, 286 Mort, 33-9 musicians, 133 N Nac Mac Feegle, the, 248-50, 259, 261, 284 and drink, 249-50, 259 and fighting, 249, 259, 284 See also Anybody names, as matter for remark, 16, 19-20, 34, 53, 96, 133, 136, 201, 247, 267, 284 in Klatchian Foreign Legion, 134-5 in the Nac Mac Feegle, 249 natural selection, 28, 142, 207 natural world unpleasant aspects of, 96, 260 wonders of, 112, 224 newts, 96, 155 New York Second, 122 Nijel, 47, 48 Nitt, Agnes, 149, 193, 195-6, 198 Nobbs, Corporal Nobby, 71, 128, 160, 177,231 acquires girlfriend (Tawneee), 275, 279 and Colon, 178, 179, 180, 181, 201, 275, 276 species questioned, 66, 67, 125, 130, 156 Noh theatre, 143 nostalgia, manifestations of, 91-2, 143, 181, 188 N’tuitif tribe, 227 nudity, 27, 102, 195-6, 294 and Art, 276 as part of witchcraft, 101, 259 magazine centrefold, 275 nude virgins, wizards’ desire for, 14 occupational hazard for werewolves, 183 O Oats, Mightily, 196 Ogg, Mrs Gytha (Nanny), 53, 54, 102-7, 117, 119-22, 152-6, 195-6, 285 ability to fit in, 149, 152-3, 154, 155 and domestic skills, 105, 117 and drink, 105, 153, 195 and family, 103-4, 119-20 and Granny Weatherwax, 102, 104, 106-7, 117, 152, 153 and Greebo, 53, 102-3, 285 and sex, 106-7, 121 listening skills, 285 marriage guidance, 120-1 singing voice, 121 Ogg, Shawn, 119-20, 121, 196 old age, 20, 86, 93-4, 96, 105, 121, 190, 225, 261 Omnianism, 197-8 One-Man-Bucket, 96 opera, 155 effect of, 153, 154 Nanny Ogg on, 154 opposites, theory of anti-crime, 93 Morris dance, 97 substition, 182 orang-utan see Librarian P parallel universes, 118-19 passwords, difficulties with, 65, 119-20, 239-40, 278 Patrician, the, see Vetinari Perks, Polly, 253-5 personality lovely, 149 objectionable, 143, 209, 214 Pestilence, 216 philosophy, 19, 30, 48, 111, 144, 207, 213,216 pictsies, see Nac Mac Feegle pins, 271 potatoes, value of, 292 predictions of the future shortcomings of, 13-14, 16, 66, 105, 247 unpleasant, 16, 22, 43, 51 printing, Engravers’ Guild on, 182 problem-solving, classic dilemmas revisited: poet and butterfly, 218 riddle of the Sphinx, 61-2 Schroedinger’s cat, 226 truth-telling and lying guards, 118 protocol, importance of observing, 120, 178, 179-80 Ptraci, 57, 59, 60 punctuation, as warning of madness, 153 pyramids, 59 Q Quia Ego Sic Dico, rule of, 294 Quirke, Captain ‘Mayonnaise’, 128-9 Quirm, 133 Quoth (raven), 133, 134 R Ramkin, Lady Sybil, see Vimes rats, plagues of, 138, 239 of the Tribe, 240, 242 See also Darktan reannual plants, 15, 33 religion among dwarfs, 126-7 among mayflies, 91-2 among Nac Mac Feegle, 259 as cause of war, 227-8 misdirecting effects of, 112-13 organized religion: endemic faults in, 197-8; priestly role in, 225 See also belief, gods respectability, measure of, 133 revolutionary spirit, 71-2, 142, 144, 233-4 See also death in a worthy cause Ridcully Hughnon, 225 Ridcully, Archchancellor Mustrum, 94, 95, 118, 171, 188 and paperwork, 207, 270 and Vetinari, 141 heartiness and sporting interests, 81-2, 93, 135 intellectual powers, 93, 119, 280 leadership qualities, 93, 141, 188, 189 on dangers of the unknown, 141, 167 on parallel universes, 118-19 on students, 170, 173, 270-1 on the faculty, 96, 135, 170 Rincewind, 13-16, 19-22, 24, 39, 44-8, 75-8, 142-5, 226-7 and magic, 22, 24, 44, 45 cowardice of, 15, 16, 45, 144 encounters with Death, 14, 190 instinct for survival, 14, 15, 76, 143-4 justified pessimism, 15, 143-4 on position in food chain, 19 on running, 45, 47, 76, 189 on Twoflower the tourist, 13, 21, 22 on wizards, 47-8 Ron, Foul Ole, 129, 137 S safety drill, rats’, 240 science and scientists, 47, 60-1, 167, 188 See also Igors self-doubt, lack of in Cohen, 142 in Granny Weatherwax, 103 seven-league boots, 21 sex Cohen on, 20 dwarfs’ delicacy about, 87 houses of ill repute/negotiable affection, 153, 161 humour as compensation for, 58 Nanny Ogg and, 106-7, 120-1 sexual morrisment, 122 wizards’ difficulty with, 14, 43-4, 45, 75 Shades, the, 29, 34-5, 67, 94, 153 sherry, Vimes on, 178 shops effect of revolution on, 233-4 for haute couture, 154-5 for musical instruments, 133 magic, 137 Silver Horde, the, 143-6, 225 attitude to money, 143 simile, choice examples of, 13, 14, 22, 27, 30, 33, 35, 37, 43, 75, 81, 111, 137, 154, 181, 209, 275, 286, 291, 294 sin nature of, 197-8 original, 77 unoriginal, 71 singing voice of Brutha, 111 of cats, 240 of Nanny Ogg, 121 of Ptraci, 57, 59 of Victor Tugelbend, 84 Six Beneficent Winds, 143, 144 Smith, Eskarina, 28, 30 snow, 169, 284 soldiers advantages enjoyed by, 254 Agatean, 145-6 in Klatchian Foreign Legion, 134-5 on battle experience, 183, 234 priorities of, 51, 112 uniform, 177, 254 spectacle, importance of, 69 spelling, effects of, 136 importance of, 101, 167 invention of, 38 Sphinx, the, 61-2 stamp collecting, 293 Stationery Cupboard, the, 214-15 Stibbons, Ponder, 118-19, 170, 171-2 188, 270 Sto Helit, Susan, 133-4, 136, 167, 169, 173, 174, 214-15, 218 stories, power of, 48, 104, 105-6, 240-1, 242-3, 244 storm, 30 stupidity in wizards, 119 not determined by appearance, 30 of demons, 77 of gods, 112-13 of sheep, 283 simple differentiated from stupid, 126 style, importance of, 120, 122 superstition, 101, 227 substition, 182 See also beliefs survival traits among gods, 112 among professional heroes, 142-3 among swamp dragons, 126 among yetis, 219 in Ankh-Morpork, 126, 218 See also evolution, Cohen, Rincewind T Tacticus, General, 253, 255 tan, how to, 28-9 Tawneee, 275, 279 taxes, 94-5 teachers, peripatetic, 247 teaching, as profession, 38, 145 Susan’s approach to, 214-15 Teatime, Jonathan, 169, 172-3 Teppic (Pteppicymon XXVIII), 57, 58, 61-2 Thieves’ Guild, 66, 291 thinking cats and, 239 failure to think, 128 styles of, 83, 170, 224-5, 242 Thoughts, First, Second and Third, 260 Thursley Eric, 75, 77, 78 time control of, 59, 213, 215, 219 nature of, 70, 71, 213 trousers of, 70 tortoises, 59 trolls, 22 and dwarfs, 126 Chrysoprase, 136-7 debt collection methods, 54 Jade, 254 troll bridge, 253 See also Detritus, gargoyles trousers Granny Weatherwax on, 102 of Time, 70 truth, slipperiness of, 47, 187, 210 Tugelbend, Victor, 82-5, 87 Twoflower, 15, 16, 19, 21-2, 143 Twoshirts, 260 U Uberwald, 195, 196, 201 Überwald, Delphine Angua von, see Angua universal laws, 29, 58, 104, 138, 189, 201 253 255 Unseen University, 29, 30, 36, 39, 81, 93, 187-90 and women, 23 Archchancellorship, 81, 135 Ceremony of the Keys, 187-8 compost heap, 96 eccentricity in, 135 faculty members: Chair of Indefinite Studies, 87, 171-2; Lecturer in Recent Runes, 141, 171, 188, 271; Reader in Esoteric Studies, 135; Senior Wrangler, 172, 188, 189, 190 Hex, 170 housekeeper (Mrs Whitlow), 93, 189-90 Old Tom, 78 relations with Patrician, 141, 270-1 students, 141, 170, 173, 188, 270-1 tax status, 94-5 teaching at, 141 Tower of Art, 133 See also Bursar, Dean, Librarian, Library, Ridcully, Rincewind, Stibbons, wizards V vampires, 95, 103, 160-1, 195-8 Count and Countess Notfaroutoe, 95 Count de Magpyr, 195-8 Countess de Magpyr, 196, 198 Vlad de Magpyr, 196, 198 Verence II (formerly the Fool), 51-4, 120 Vetinari, Havelock, Lord (Patrician of Ankh-Morpork), 46, 66, 87, 95, 130, 160, 161, 177, 178, 179, 202, 224-5, 280, 291-95 andVimes, 71-2, 159, 161, 177, 178, 279 appointments to see, 137, 207-8, 291 art criticism, 276 as pet-owner, 46, 292-3 as student, 233 characteristic gestures, 14, 130, 291 choice of vocabulary, 66, 161, 293 diplomacy, 141 Guilds’ opinion of, 161 interview techniques, 14, 66, 82, 125, 136, 177, 201, 267 on citizens’ shortcomings, 128 on dungeons, 71 on freedom, 210, 267 on mime artists, 67 on pizza, 161 on public interest and the free press, 210 on the nature of evil, 71-2 political acumen, 138, 268 principles of government, 46, 67, 71-2, 133, 137, 210, 292 tyranny in practice, 94-5, 137, 225, 268, 271, 293, 294, 295 villainy, types of, 39 inherent in Grand Vizier, 58 Vimes, Sir Samuel, 67-71, 125-30, 159-62, 178, 180-3, 202-3, 231-3, 235, 275-80 and alcohol, 128, 202 and personal organizer, 159 and Vetinari, 159, 161, 177, 178, 279 blackboard monitor, 277 dictums of, 161-2, 178 family life, 180, 277-8 knighthood, 181-2 on democracy, 202 on diplomacy, 202, 256 on policing, 233, 276-7 on sherry, 178 on socio-economic unfairness, 125 taste in boots, 125 taste in food, 69, 127, 277, 278 taste in uniform, 231, 293 Vetinari on, 71-2 William de Worde on, 208 Vimes, Lady Sybil (nee Ramkin), 69, 125, 180, 202, 203, 278, 279, 280 vocabulary dangerous, 113, 207, 217 objectionable, 173, 208, 209 Tiffany Aching on, 247, 249 See also punctuation, spelling, Vetinari vote, the, 40, 202 W war, 177, 182 Cohen on, 145 paintings of, 234 results of, 86, 134 War, 48, 217 War, Mrs, 217 Watch, the, 66, 69, 155-6, 269, 275, 276-7, 294 Night Watch, 232 procedural techniques, 159-60, 162, 178, 179-80, 202, 231, 233, 279 traditions of, 180 uniform, 293 See also Angua, Colon, Detritus, Ironfoundersson, Nobbs, Vimes wealth accumulation of, 125 measures of, 33, 125, 193, 202 See also money Weatherwax, Mistress Esmerelda (Granny), 27-30, 51, 53, 101-7, 117, 118, 119, 149-56, 197-8, 262, 263, 283-4 Borrowing 117-18, 262 encounters with Death, 150-2, 193-4 healing skills, 101-2, 103, 149-52, 193-4 infallibility of, 27, 28 on baths, 104 on books, 27, 283 on hair care, 155 on hats, 106, 154 on imitations, 51 on nudity, 27, 102 on progress, 107 on sin, 197-8 on things foreign, 102, 104 on witches, 250, 263 use (or not) of witchcraft, 27, 29, 51, 104, 261, 262 Weatherwax, Lily, 105-6, 107 Wen the Eternally Surprised, 213, 215, 216 werewolves, 159, 183 See also Angua whale, caged, 65 whiskey: Bearhugger’s, 68; C. M. O. T. Dibbler’s, 128 Willikins, 275 witches black (Black Aliss), 149, 248, 283 cackling, 283 Miss Level, 261, 262 Miss Perspicacia Tick, 247-8 Miss Treason, 284 Mrs Earwig, 283 Omnians and, 197 respect commanded by, 27, 103, 262 sabbats, 101-2 suspicion and hostility towards, 52, 149, 247, 248 Tiffany Aching on, 247-8, 259 use of Borrowing, 117-18 use of magic, 261 witch’s cottage, 27, 120 Witch Trials, 263 See also Aching, Garlick, magic, Nitt, Gytha Ogg, Weatherwax wizards, 27, 45, 82, 92, 137, 188, 190, 224 and demons, 75 and food, 96, 224, 271 and gods, 92 and the Patrician, 94-5, 141 appearance of, 27, 137 attachment to life, 21, 28 competitiveness of, 45, 92 Cutangle, 30 Esk on, 30 fondness for occult display, 39, 75 Greyhald Spold, 21 Igneous Cutwell, 35, 36, 37-8, 39 research, 188 Ridcully on, 141 robes, 93 Windle Poons, 93-4, 95, 96 See also Unseen University women abilities, 29 as ladies, 290 at disadvantage in careers, 22 Cohen on, 20 in Historical Re-creation, 280 jerk syndrome in, 279 price of, 294 universal laws relating to, 253, 255 wizards’ opinion of, 23, 30 wossname, 76 writing and reading, knowledge of, 159, 260, 262, 284 Y yetis, 87, 219 Ysabell, 36-7, 38 Z Zen, 51, 219 
The Last Continent - Terry Pratchett	----	The Last Continent Discworld is a world and a mirror of worlds. This is not a book about Australia. No, it's about somewhere entirley different which just happens to be, here and there, a bit . . . Australian. Still . . . no worries, right? Against the stars a turtle passes, carrying four elephants on its shell. Both turtle and elephants are bigger than people might expect, but out between the stars the difference between huge and tiny is, comparatively speaking, very small. But this turtle and these elephants are, by turtle and elephant standards, big. They carry the Discworld, with its vast lands, cloudscapes, and oceans. People don't live on the Disc any more than, in less hand-crafted parts of the multiverse, they live on balls. Oh, planets may be the place where their body eats its tea, but they live elsewhere, in worlds of their own which orbit very handily around the centre of their heads. When gods get together they tell the story of one particular planet whose inhabitants watched, with mild interest, huge continent-wrecking slabs of ice slap into another world which was, in astronomical terms, right next door – and then did nothing about it because that sort of thing only happens in Outer Space. An intelligent species would at least have found someone to complain to. Anyway, no one seriously believes in that story, because a race quite that stupid would never even have discovered slood.[1] People believe in all sorts of other things, though. For example, there are some people who have a legend that the whole universe is carried in a leather bag by an old man. They're right, too. Other people say: hold on, if he's carrying the entire universe in a sack, right, that means he's carrying himself and the sack inside the sack, because the universe contains everything. Including him. And the sack, of course. Which contains him and the sack already. As it were. To which the reply is: well? All tribal myths are true, for a given value of 'true'. It is a general test of the omnipotence of a god that they can see the fall of a tiny bird. But only one god makes notes, and a few adjustments, so that next time it can fall faster and further. We may find out why. We might find out why mankind is here, although that is more complicated and begs the question 'Where else should we be?' It would be terrible to think that some impatient deity might part the clouds and say, 'Damn, are you lot still here? I thought you discovered slood ten thousand years ago! I've got ten trillion tons of ice arriving on Monday!' We may even find out why the duck-billed platypus.[2] Snow, thick and wet, tumbled on to the lawns and roofs of Unseen University, the Discworld's premier college of magic. It was sticky snow, which made the place look like some sort of expensive yet tasteless ornament, and it caked around the boots of McAbre, the Head Bledlow, as he trudged through the cold, wild night. Two other bledlows[3]stepped out of the lee of a buttress and fell in behind him on a solemn march towards the main gates. It was an old custom, centuries old, and in the summer a few tourists would hang around to watch it, but the Ceremony of the Keys went on every night in every season. Mere ice, wind and snow had never stopped it. Bledlows in times gone past had clambered over tentacled monstrosities to do the Ceremony; they'd waded through floodwater, flailed with their bowler hats at errant pigeons, harpies and dragons, and ignored mere faculty members who'd thrown open their bedroom windows and screamed imprecations on the lines of 'Stop that damn racket, will you? What's the point!' They'd never stopped, or even thought of stopping. You couldn't stop Tradition. You could only add to it. The three men reached the shadows by the main gate, almost blotted out in the whirling snow. The bledlow on duty was waiting for them. 'Halt! Who Goes There?' he shouted. McAbre saluted. The Archchancellor's Keys!' 'Pass, The Archchancellor's Keys!' The Head Bledlow took a step forward, extended both arms in front of him with his palms bent back towards him, and patted his chest at the place where some bledlow long buried had once had two breast pockets. Pat, pat. Then he extended his arms by his sides and stiffly patted the sides of his jacket. Pat, pat. 'Damn! Could Have Sworn I Had Them A Moment Ago!' he bellowed, enunciating each word with a sort of bulldog carefulness. The gatekeeper saluted. McAbre saluted. 'Have You Looked In All Your Pockets?' McAbre saluted. The gatekeeper saluted. A small pyramid of snow was building up on his bowler hat. 'I Think I Must Have Left Them On The Dresser. It's Always The Same, Isn't It?' 'You Should Remember Where You Put Them Down.!' 'Hang On, Perhaps They're In My Other Jacket!' The young bledlow who was this week's Keeper of the Other Jacket stepped forward. Each man saluted the other two. The youngest cleared his throat and managed to say: 'No, I Looked In . . . There This . . . Morning!' McAbre gave him a slight nod to acknowledge a difficult job done well, and patted his pockets again. 'Hold On, Stone The Crows, They Were In This Pocket After All! What A Muggins I Am!' 'Don't Worry, I Do The Same Myself!' 'Is My Face Red! Forget My Own Head Next!' Somewhere in the darkness a window creaked up. 'Er, excuse me, gentlemen—' 'Here's The Keys, Then!' said McAbre, raising his voice. 'Much Obliged!' 'I wonder if you could—' the querulous voice went on, apologizing for even thinking of complaining. 'All Safe And Secure!' shouted the gatekeeper, handing the keys back. '—perhaps keep it down a little—' 'Gods Bless All Present!' screamed McAbre, veins standing out on his thick crimson neck. 'Careful Where You Put Them This Time. Ha! Ha! Ha!' 'Ho! Ho! Ho!' yelled McAbre, beside himself with fury. He saluted stiffly, went About Turn with an unnecessarily large amount of foot stamping and, the ancient exchange completed, marched back to the bledlows' lodge muttering under his breath. The window of the University's little sanatorium shut again. That man really makes me want to swear,' said the Bursar. He fumbled in his pocket and produced his little green box of dried frog pills, spilling a few as he fumbled with the lid. I've sent him no end of memos. He says it's traditional but, I don't know, he's so . . . boisterous about it . . .' He blew his nose. 'How's he doing?' 'Not good,' said the Dean. The Librarian was very, very ill. Snow plastered itself against the closed window. There was a heap of blankets in front of the roaring fire. Occasionally it shuddered a bit. The wizards watched it with concern. The Lecturer in Recent Runes was feverishly turning over the pages of a book. 'I mean, how do we know if it's old age or not?' he said. 'What's old age for an orang-utan? And he's a wizard. And he spends all his time in the Library. All that magic radiation the whole time. Somehow the flu is attacking his morphic field, but it could be caused by anything.' The Librarian sneezed. And changed shape. The wizards looked sadly at what appeared very much like a comfortable armchair which someone had, for some reason, upholstered in red fur. 'What can we do for him?' said Ponder Stibbons, the Faculty's youngest member. 'He might feel happier with some cushions,' said Ridcully. 'Slightly bad taste, Archchancellor, I feel.' 'What? Everyone likes some comfy cushions when they're feeling a little under the weather, don't they?' said the man to whom sickness was a mystery. 'He was a table this morning. Mahogany, I believe. He seems to be able to retain his colour, at least.' The Lecturer in Recent Runes closed the book with a sigh. 'He's certainly lost control of his morphic function,' he said. 'It's not surprising, I suppose. Once it's been changed, it'll change again much more easily, I'm afraid. A well known fact.' He looked at the Archchancellor's frozen grin and sighed. Mustrum Ridcully was notorious for not trying to understand things if there was anyone around to do it for him. 'It's quite hard to change the shape of a living thing but once it's been done it's a lot easier to do it next time,' he translated. 'Say again?' 'He was a human before he was an ape, Archchancellor. Remember?' 'Oh. Yes,' said Ridcully. Tunny, really, the way you get used to things. Apes and humans are related, accordin' to young Ponder here.' The other wizards looked blank. Ponder screwed up his face. 'He's been showing me some of the invisible writings,' said Ridcully. Tascinatin' stuff.' The other wizards scowled at Ponder Stibbons, as you would at a man who'd been caught smoking in a firework factory. So now they knew who to blame. As usual . . . 'Is that entirely wise, sir?' said the Dean. 'Well, I do happen to be the Archchancellor in these parts, Dean,' said Ridcully calmly. 'A blindly obvious fact, Archchancellor,' said the Dean. You could have cut cheese with his tone. 'Must take an interest. Morale, you know,' said Ridcully. 'My door is always open. I see myself as a member of the team.' Ponder winced again. 'I don't think I'm related to any apes,' said the Senior Wrangler thoughtfully. 'I mean, I'd know, wouldn't I? I'd get invited to their weddings and so on. My parents would have said something like, "Don't worry about Uncle Charlie, he's supposed to smell like that," wouldn't they? And there'd be portraits in—' The chair sneezed. There was an unpleasant moment of morphic uncertainty, and then the Librarian was sprawling in his old shape again. The wizards watched him carefully to see what'd happen next. It was hard to remember the time when the Librarian had been a human being. Certainly no one could remember what he'd looked like, or even what his name had been. A magical explosion, always a possibility in somewhere like the Library where so many unstable books of magic are pressed dangerously together, had introduced him to unexpected apehood years before. Since then he'd never looked back, and often hadn't looked down either. His big hairy shape, swinging by one arm from a top shelf while he rearranged books with his feet, had become a popular one among the whole University body; his devotion to duty had been an example to everyone. Archchancellor Ridcully, into whose head that last sentence had treacherously arranged itself, realized that he was unconsciously drafting an obituary. 'Anyone called in a doctor?' he said. 'We got Doughnut Jimmy[4]here this afternoon,' said the Dean. 'He tried to take his temperature but I'm afraid the Librarian bit him.' 'He bit him? With a thermometer in his mouth?' 'Ah. Not exactly. There, in fact, you have rather discovered the reason for his biting.' There was a moment of solemn silence. The Senior Wrangler picked up a limp black-leather paw and patted it vaguely. 'Does that book say if monkeys have pulses?' he said. 'Is his nose supposed to be cold, or what?' There was a little sound, such as might be made by half a dozen people all sharply drawing in their breath at once. The other wizards began to edge away from their Senior Wrangler. There was, for a few seconds, no other sound but the crackling of the fire and the howl of the wind outside. The wizards shuffled back. The Senior Wrangler, in the astonished tones of someone still possessing all known limbs, very slowly took off his pointy hat. This was something a wizard would normally do only in the most sombre of circumstances. Well, that's it, then,' he said. 'Poor chap's on his way home. Back to the big desert in the sky.' 'Er. rainforest, possibly,' said Ponder Stibbons. 'Maybe Mrs Whitlow could make him some hot nourishing soup?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. Archchancellor Ridcully thought about the housekeeper's hot nourishing soup. 'Kill or cure, I suppose,' he murmured. He patted the Librarian carefully. 'Buck up, old chap,' he said. 'Soon have you back on your feet and continuing to make a valued contribution.' 'Knuckles,' said the Dean helpfully. 'Say again?' 'Knuckles, rather than feet.' 'Castors,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'Bad taste, that man,' said the Archchancellor. They wandered out of the room. From the corridor came their retreating voices: 'Looked very pale around the antimacassar, I thought.' 'Surely there's some sort of a cure?' 'The old place won't be the same without him.' 'Definitely one of a kind.' When they'd gone the Librarian reached up cautiously, pulled a piece of blanket over his head, cuddled his hot-water bottle and sneezed. Now there were two hot-water bottles, one of them a lot bigger than the other and with a teddy bear cover in red fur. Light travels slowly on the Disc and is slightly heavy, with a tendency to pile up against high mountain ranges. Research wizards have speculated that there is another, much speedier type of light which allows the slower light to be seen, but since this moves too fast to see they have been unable to find a use for it. This does mean that, despite the Disc being flat, everywhere does not experience the same time at, (or want of a better term, the same time. When it was so late at night in Ankh-Morpork that it was early in the morning, elsewhere it was . . . . . . but there were no hours here. There was dawn and dusk, morning and afternoon, and presumably there was midnight and midday, but mainly there was heat. And redness. Something as artificial and human as an hour wouldn't last five minutes here. It would be dried out and shrivelled up in seconds. Above all, there was silence. It was not the chilly, bleak silence of endless space, but the burning organic silence you get when, across a thousand miles of shimmering red horizons, everything is too tired to make a sound. But, as the ear of observation panned across the desert, it picked up something like a chant, a reedy little litany that beat against the all-embracing silence like a fly bumping against the windowpane of the universe. The rather breathless chanter was lost to view because he was standing in a hole dug in the red earth; occasionally some earth was thrown up on the heap behind him. A stained and battered pointy hat bobbed about in time with the tuneless tune. The word 'Wizzard' had, perhaps, once been embroidered on it in sequins. They had fallen off, but the word was still there in brighter red where the hat's original colour showed through. Several dozen small flies orbited it. The words went something like this: 'Grubs! That's what we're going to eat! That's why they call it grub! And what're we doing to get the grub? Why, we're grubbing for it! Hooray!' Another shovelful of earth arced on to the heap, and the voice said, rather more quietly: 1 wonder if you can eat flies?' They say the heat and the flies here can drive a man insane. But you don't have to believe that, and nor does that bright mauve elephant that just cycled past. Strangely enough, the madman in the hole was the only person currently on the continent who might throw any kind of light on a small drama being enacted a thousand miles away and several metres below, where the opal miner known only to his mates as Strewth was about to make the most valuable yet dangerous discovery of his career. Strewth's pick knocked aside the rock and dust of millennia, and something gleamed in the candlelight. It was green, like frosty green fire. Carefully, his mind suddenly as frozen as the light under his fingers, he picked away at the loose rock. The opal picked up and reflected more and more light on to his face as the debris fell away. There seemed to be no end to the glow. Finally, he let his breath out in one go. 'Strewth!' If he'd found a little piece of green opal, say about the size of a bean, he'd have called his mates over and they'd have knocked off for a few beers. A piece the size of his fist would have had him pounding the floor. But with this . . . He was still standing there, brushing it gently with his fingers, when the other miners noticed the light and hurried over. At least . . . they started out hurrying. As they came closer, they slowed to a kind of reverential walk. No one said anything for a moment. The green light shone on their faces. Then one of the men whispered: 'Good on yer, Strewth.' There isn't enough money in all the world, mate.' 'Watch out, it might just be a glaze . . .' 'Still worth a mint. Go on, Strewth . . . get it out.' They watched like cats as the pick pried loose more and more rock, and found an edge. And another edge. Now Strewth's fingers began to shake. 'Careful, mate . . . there's a side of it . . .' The men took a step back as the last of the obscuring earth was knocked away. The thing was oblong, although the bottom edge was a confusion of twisted opal and dirt. Strewth reversed his pick and laid the wooden handle against the glowing crystal. 'Strewth, it's no good,' he said. 'I just gots to know . . .' He tapped the rock. It echoed. 'Can't be hollow, can it?' said one of the miners. 'Never heard of that.' Strewth picked up a crowbar. 'Right! Let's—' There was a faint plink. A large piece of opal broke away near the bottom. It turned out to be no thicker than a plate. It revealed a couple of toes, which moved very slowly inside their iridescent shell. 'Oh, strewth,' said a miner, as they backed further away. 'It's alive.' Ponder knew he should never have let Ridcully look at the invisible writings. Wasn't it a basic principle never to let your employer know what it is you actually do all day? But no matter what precautions you took, sooner or later the boss was bound to come in and poke around and say things like, 'Is this where you work, then?' and 'I thought I sent a memo out about people bringing in potted plants,' and 'What d'you call that thing with the keyboard?' And this had been particularly problematical for Ponder, because reading the invisible writings was a delicate and meticulous job, suited to the kind of temperament that follows Grand Prix Continental Drift and keeps bonsai mountains as a hobby or even drives a Volvo. It needed painstaking care. It needed a mind that could enjoy doing jigsaw puzzles in a dark room. It did not need Mustrum Ridcully. The hypothesis behind invisible writings was laughably complicated. All books are tenuously connected through L-space and, therefore, the content of any book ever written or yet to be written may, in the right circumstances, be deduced from a sufficiently close study of books already in existence. Future books exist in potentia, as it were, in the same way that a sufficiently detailed study of a handful of primal ooze will eventually hint at the future existence of prawn crackers. But the primitive techniques used hitherto, based on ancient spells like Weezencake's Unreliable Algorithm, had meant that it took years to put together even the ghost of a page of an unwritten book. It was Ponder's particular genius that he had found a way around this by considering the phrase, 'How do you know it's not possible until you've tried?' And experiments with Hex, the University's thinking engine, had found that, indeed, many things are not impossible until they have been tried. Like a busy government which only passes expensive laws prohibiting some new and interesting thing when people have actually found a way of doing it, the universe relied a great deal on things not being tried at all. When something is tried, Ponder found, it often does turn out to be impossible very quickly, but takes a little while for this to really be the case[5]– in effect, for the overworked laws of causality to hurry to the scene and pretend it has been impossible all along. Using Hex to remake the attempt in minutely different ways at very high speed had resulted in a high success rate, and he was now assembling whole paragraphs in a matter of hours. 'It's like a conjurin' trick, then,' Ridcully had said. 'You're pullin' the tablecloth away before all the crockery has time to remember to fall over.' And Ponder had winced and said, 'Yes, exactly like that, Archchancellor. Well done.' And that had led to all the trouble with How to Dynamically Manage People for Dynamic Results in a Caring Empowering Way in Quite a Short Time Dynamically. Ponder didn't know when this book would be written, or even in which world it might be published, but it was obviously going to be popular because random trawls in the depths of L-space often turned up fragments. Perhaps it wasn't even just one book. And the fragments had been on Ponder's desk when Ridcully had been poking around. Unfortunately, like many people who are instinctively bad at something, the Archchancellor prided himself on how good at it he was. Ridcully was to management what King Herod was to the Bethlehem Playgroup Association. His mental approach to it could be visualized as a sort of business flowchart with, at the top, a circle entitled 'Me, who does the telling' and, connected below it by a line, a large circle entitled 'Everyone else'. Until now this had worked quite well, because, although Ridcully was an impossible manager, the University was impossible to manage and so everything worked seamlessly. And it would have continued to do so if he hadn't suddenly started to see the point in preparing career development packages and, worst of all, job descriptions. As the Lecturer in Recent Runes put it: 'He called me in and asked me what I did, exactly. Have you ever heard of such a thing? What sort of question is that? This is a university!' 'He asked me whether I had any personal worries,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'I don't see why I have to stand for that sort of thing.' 'And did you see that sign on his desk?' the Dean had said. 'You mean the one that says, "The Buck Starts Here"?' 'No, the other one. The one which says, "When You're Up to Your Ass in Alligators, Today Is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life."' 'And that means . . .?' 'I don't think it's supposed to mean anything. I think it's just supposed to be.' 'Be what?' 'Pro-active, I think. It's a word he's using a lot.' 'What does that mean?' 'Well . . . in favour of activity, I suppose.' 'Really? Dangerous. In my experience, inactivity sees you through.' Altogether, it was not a happy university at the moment, and mealtimes were the worst. Ponder tended to be isolated at one end of the High Table as the unwilling architect of this sudden tendency on the part of the Archchancellor to try to Weld Them Into A Lean Mean Team. The wizards had no intention of being lean, but were getting as mean as anything. On top of that, Ridcully's sudden interest in taking an interest meant that Ponder had to explain something about his own current project, and one aspect of Ridcully that had not changed was his horrible habit of, Ponder suspected, deliberately misunderstanding things. Ponder had long been struck by the fact that the Librarian, an ape – at least generally an ape, although this evening he seemed to have settled on being a small table set with a red-furred tea service – was, well, so human shaped. In fact, so many things were pretty much the same shape. Nearly everything you met was really a sort of complicated tube with two eyes and four arms or legs or wings. Oh, or they were fish. Or insects. All right, spiders as well. And a few odd things like starfish and whelks. But still there was a remarkably unimaginative range of designs. Where were the six-armed, six-eyed monkeys pinwheeling through the jungle canopy? Oh, yes, octopussies too, but that was the point, they were really only a kind of underwater spider . . . Ponder had poked around among the University's more or less abandoned Museum of Quite Unusual Things, and noticed something rather odd. Whoever had designed the skeletons of creatures had even less imagination than whoever had done the outsides. At least the outside-designer had tried a few novelties in the spots, wool and stripes department, but the bone-builder had generally just put a skull on a ribcage, shoved a pelvis in further along, stuck on some arms and legs and had the rest of the day off. Some ribcages were longer, some legs were shorter, some hands became wings, but they all seemed to be based on one design, one size stretched or shrunk to fit all. Not to his very great surprise, Ponder seemed to be the only one around who found this at all interesting. He'd point out to people that fish were amazingly fish-shaped, and they'd look at him as if he'd gone mad. Palaeontology and archaeology and other skulduggery were not subjects that interested wizards. Things are buried for a reason, they considered. There's no point in wondering what it was. Don't go digging things up in case they won't let you bury them again. The most coherent theory was one he recalled from his nurse when he was small. Monkeys, she'd averred, were bad little boys who hadn't come in when called, and seals were bad little boys who'd lazed around on the beach instead of attending to their lessons. She hadn't said that bird were bad little boys who'd gone too close to the cliff edge, and in any case jellyfish would be more likely, but Ponder couldn't help thinking that, harmlessly insane though the woman had been, she might have had just the glimmerings of a point . . . He was spending most nights now watching Hex trawl the invisible writings for any hints. In theory, because of the nature of L-space, absolutely everything was available to him, but that only meant that it was more or less impossible to find whatever it was you were looking for, which is the purpose of computers. Ponder Stibbons was one of those unfortunate people cursed with the belief that if only he found out enough things about the universe it would all. somehow, make sense. The goal is the Theory of Everything, but Ponder would settle for the Theory of Something and, late at night, when Hex appeared to be sulking, he despaired of even a Theory of Anything. And it might have surprised Ponder to learn that the senior wizards had come to approve of Hex, despite all the comments on the lines of 'In my day we used to do our own thinking.' Wizardry was traditionally competitive, and, while UU was currently going through an extended period of peace and quiet, with none of the informal murders that had once made it such a terminally exciting place, a senior wizard always distrusted a young man who was going places since traditionally his route might be via your jugular. Therefore there's something comforting in knowing that some of the best brains in the University, who a generation ago would be coming up with some really exciting plans involving trick floorboards and exploding wallpaper, were spending all night in the High Energy Magic Building, trying to teach Hex to sing 'Lydia the Tattooed Lady', exulting at getting a machine to do after six hours' work something that any human off the street would do for tuppence, then sending out for banana-and-sushi pizza and falling asleep at the keyboard. Their seniors called it technomancy, and slept a little easier in their beds in the knowledge that Ponder and his students weren't sleeping in theirs. Ponder must have nodded off, because he was awakened just before 2 a.m. by a scream and realized he was face down in half of his supper. He pulled a piece of banana-flavoured mackerel off his cheek, left Hex quietly clicking through its routine and followed the noises. The commotion led him to the hall in front of the big doors leading to the Library. The Bursar was lying on the floor, being fanned with the Senior Wrangler's hat. 'As far as we can gather, Archchancellor,' said the Dean, 'the poor chap couldn't sleep and came down for a book—' Ponder looked at the Library doors. A big strip of black and yellow tape had been stuck across them, along with a sign saying: Danger, Do Notte Enter in Any Circumstances. It was now hanging off, and the doors were ajar. This was no surprise. Any true wizard, faced with a sign like 'Do not open this door. Really. We mean it. We're not kidding. Opening this door will mean the end of the universe,' would automatically open the door in order to see what all the fuss was about. This made signs rather a waste of time, but at least it meant that when you handed what was left of the wizard to his grieving relatives you could say, as they grasped the jar, 'We told him not to.' There was silence from the darkness on the other side of the doorway. Ridcully extended a finger and pushed one door slightly. Behind it something made a fluttering noise and the doors were slammed shut. The wizards jumped back. 'Don't risk it, Archchancellor!' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'I tried to go in earlier and the whole section of Critical Essays had gone critical!' Blue light flickered under the doors. Elsewhere, someone might have said, 'It's just books! Books aren't dangerous!' But even ordinary books are dangerous, and not only the ones like Make Gelignite the Professional Way. A man sits in some museum somewhere and writes a harmless book about political economy and suddenly thousands of people who haven't even read it are dying because the ones who did haven't got the joke. Knowledge is dangerous, which is why governments often clamp down on people who can think thoughts above a certain calibre. And the Unseen University Library was a magical library, built on a very thin patch of space-time. There were books on distant shelves that hadn't been written yet, books that never would be written. At least, not here. It had a circumference of a few hundred yards, but there was no known limit to its radius. And in a magical library the books leak, and learn from one another . . . They've started attacking anyone who goes in,' moaned the Dean. 'No one can control them when the Librarian's not here!' 'But we're a university! We have to have a library!' said Ridcully. 'It adds tone. What sort of people would we be if we didn't go into the Library?' 'Students,' said the Senior Wrangler morosely. 'Hah, I remember when I was a student,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'Old "Bogeyboy" Swallett took us on an expedition to find the Lost Reading Room. Three weeks we were wandering around. Had to eat our own boots.' 'Did you find it?' said the Dean. 'No, but we found the remains of the previous year's expedition.' 'What did you do?' 'We ate their boots, too.' From beyond the door came a flapping, as of leather covers. There's some pretty vicious grimoires in there,' said the Senior Wrangler. They can take a man's arm right off.' 'Yes, but at least they don't know about doorhandles,' said the Dean. They do if there's a book in there somewhere called Doorknobs for Beginners ,' said the Senior Wrangler. They read each other.' The Archchancellor glanced at Ponder. There likely to be a book like that in there, Stibbons?' 'According to L-space theory, it's practically certain, sir.' As one man, the wizards backed away from the doors. 'We can't let this nonsense go on,' said Ridcully. 'We've got to cure the Librarian. It's a magical illness, so we ought to be able to cook up a magical cure, oughtn't we?' That would be exceedingly dangerous, Archchancellor,' said the Dean. 'His whole system is a mess of conflicting magical influences. There's no knowing what adding more magic would do. He's already got a freewheeling temporal gland.[6]Any more magic and . . . well, I don't know what'll happen.' 'We'll find out,' said Ridcully brusquely. 'We need to be able to go into the Library. We'd be doing this for the college, Dean. And Unseen University is bigger than one man—' '—ape—' '—thank you, ape, and we must always remember that "I" is the smallest letter in the alphabet.' There was another thud from beyond the doors. 'Actually,' said the Senior Wrangler, 'I think you'll find that, depending on the font, "c" or even "u" are, in fact, even smaller. Well, shorter, anyw—' 'Of course,' Ridcully went on, ignoring this as part of the University's usual background logic, 'I suppose I could appoint another librarian . . . got to be a senior chap who knows his way around . . . hmm . . . now let me see, do any names spring to mind? Dean?' 'All right, all rightl' said the Dean. 'Have it your own way. As usual.' 'Er . . . we can't do it, sir,' Ponder ventured. 'Oh?' said Ridcully. 'Volunteering for a bit of bookshelf tidying yourself, are you?' 'I mean we really can't use magic to change him, sir. There's a huge problem in the way.' There are no problems, Mister Stibbons, there are only opportunities.' 'Yes, sir. And the opportunity here is to find out the Librarian's name.' There was a buzz of agreement from the other wizards. The lad's right,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'Can't magic a wizard without knowing his name. Basic rule.' 'Well, we call him the Librarian,' said Ridcully. 'Everyone calls him the Librarian. Won't that do?' That's just a job description, sir.' Ridcully looked at his wizards. 'One of us must know his name, surely? Good grief, I should hope we at least know our colleagues' names. Isn't that so . . .' He looked at the Dean, hesitated, and then said, 'Dean?' 'He's been an ape for quite a while . . . Archchancellor,' said the Dean. 'Most of his original colleagues have . . . passed on. Gone to the great Big Dinner in the Sky. We were going through one of those periods of droit de mortis.[7]' 'Yes, but he's got to be in the records somewhere.' The wizards thought about the great cliffs of stacked paper that constituted the University's records. The archivist has never found him,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'Who's the archivist?' 'The Librarian, Archchancellor.' Then at least he ought to be in the Year Book for the year he graduated.' 'It's a very funny thing,' said the Dean, 'but a freak accident appears to have happened to every single copy of the Year Book for that year.' Ridcully noted his wooden expression. 'Would it be an accident like a particular page being torn out leaving only a lingering bananary aroma?' 'Lucky guess, Archchancellor.' Ridcully scratched his chin. 'A pattern emerges,' he said. 'You see, he's always been dead set against anyone finding out his name,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'He's afraid we'll try to turn him back into a human.' He looked meaningfully at the Dean, who put on an offended expression. 'Some people have been going around saying that an ape as Librarian is unsuitable.' 'I merely expressed the view that it is against the traditions of the University—' the Dean began. 'Which consist largely of niggling, big dinners and shouting damnfool things about keys in the middle of the night,' said Ridcully. 'So I don't think we—' The expressions on the faces of the other wizards made him turn around. The Librarian had entered the hall. He walked very slowly, because of the amount of clothing he'd put on; the sheer volume of coats and sweaters meant that his arms, instead of being used as extra feet, were sticking out very nearly horizontally on either side of his body. But the most horrifying aspect of the shuffling apparition was the red woolly bat. It was jolly. It had a bobble on it. It had been knitted by Mrs Whitlow, who was technically an extremely good needlewoman, but if she had a fault it lay in failing to take into account the precise dimensions of the intended recipient. Several wizards had on occasion been presented with one of her creations, which often assumed they had three ankles or a neck two metres across. Most of the things were surreptitiously given away to charitable institutions. You can say this about Ankh-Morpork – no matter how misshapen a garment, there will always be someone somewhere it would fit. Mrs Whitlow's mistake here was the assumption that the Librarian, for whom she had considerable respect, would like a red bobble hat with side flaps that tied under his chin. Given that this would technically require that they be tied under his groin, he'd opted to let them flap loose. He turned a sad face towards the wizards as he stopped outside the Library door. He reached for the handle. He said, in a very weak voice, ' 'k,' and then sneezed. The pile of clothing settled. When the wizards pulled it away, they found underneath a very large, thick book bound in hairy red leather. 'Says Ook on the cover,' said the Senior Wrangler after a while, in a rather strained voice. 'Does it say who it's by?' said the Dean. 'Bad taste, that man.' 'I meant that maybe it'd be his real name.' 'Can we look inside?' said the Chair oi Indefinite Studies. 'There may be an index.' 'Any volunteers to look inside the Librarian?' said Ridcully. 'Don't all shout.' 'The morphic instability responds to the environment,' said Ponder. 'Isn't that interesting? He's near the Library, so it turns him into a book. Sort of . . . protective camouflage, you could say. It's as if he evolves to fit in with—' 'Thank you, Mister Stibbons. And is there a point to this?' 'Well, I assume we can look inside,' said Ponder. 'A book is meant to be opened. There's even a black leather bookmark, see?' 'Oh, that's a bookmark, is it?' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, who had been watching it nervously. Ponder touched the book. It was warm. And it opened easily enough. Every page was covered with 'ook'. 'Good dialogue, but the plot is a little dull.' 'Dean! I'd be obliged if you'd take this seriously, please!' said Ridcully. He tapped his foot once or twice. 'Anyone got any more ideas?' The wizards stared at one another and shrugged. 'I suppose . . ,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'Yes, Runes . . . Arnold, isn't it?' 'No, Archchancellor . . .' 'Well, out with it anyway.' 'I suppose . . . I know this sounds ridiculous, but . . .' 'Go on, man. We're almost all agog.' 'I suppose there's always . . . Rincewind.' Ridcully stared at him for a moment. 'Skinny fella? Scruffy beard? Bloody useless wizard? Got that box on legs thingy?' 'That's right, Archchancellor. Well done. Er . . . he was the Deputy Librarian for a while, as I expect you remember.' 'Not really, but do go on,' he said. 'In fact he was here when the Librarian . . . became the Librarian. And I remember once, when we were watching the Librarian stamping four books all at the same time, he said, "Amazing, really, when you think he was born in Ankh-Morpork." I'm sure if anyone knows the name of the Librarian it's Rincewind.' 'Well, go and fetch him, then! I suppose you do know where he is, do you?' 'Technically, yes, Archchancellor,' said Ponder quickly. 'But we're not sure quite where the place where he is is, if you follow me.' Ridcully gave him another stare. 'You see, we think he's on EcksEcksEcksEcks, Archchancellor,' said Ponder. 'EcksEcks—' '—EcksEcks, Archchancellor.' 'I thought no one knew where that place was,' said Ridcully. 'Exactly,Archchancellor,' said Ponder. Sometimes you had to turn facts in several directions until you found the right way to fit them into Ridcully's head.[8] 'What's he doing there?' 'We don't really know, Archchancellor. If you remember, we believe he ended up there after that Agatean business . . .' 'What did he want to go there for?' 'I don't think he exactly wanted to,' said Ponder. 'Er . . . we sent him. It was a trivial error in bi-locational thaumaturgy that anyone could make.' 'But you made it, as I recall,' said Ridcully, whose memory could spring nasty surprises like that. 'I am a member of the team, sir,' said Ponder, pointedly. 'Well, if he doesn't want to be there, and we need him here, let's bring him b—' The rest of the sentence was drowned out not by a noise but by a sort of bloom of quietness, which rolled over the wizards and was so oppressive and soft that they couldn't even hear their own heartbeats. Old Tom, the University's magical and tongueless bell, tolled out 2 a.m. by striking the silences. 'Er—' said Ponder. 'It's not as simple as that.' Ridcully blinked. 'Why not?' he said. 'Bring him back by magic. We sent him there, we can bring him back.' 'Er . . . it'd take months to set it up properly, if you want him back right here,' said Ponder. 'If we get it wrong he'll end up arriving in a circle fifty feet wide.' That's not a problem, is it? If we keep out of it he can land anywhere.' 'I don't think you quite understand, sir. The signal to noise ratio of any thaumic transfer over an uncertain distance, coupled with the Disc's own spin, will almost certainly result in a practical averaging of the arriving subject over an area of a couple of thousand square feet at least, sir.' 'Say again?' Ponder took a deep breath. 'I mean he'll end up arriving as a circle. Fifty feet wide.' 'Ah. So he probably wouldn't be very good in the Library after that, then.' 'Only as a very large bookmark, sir.' 'All right, then, it's down to sheer geography. Who've we got who knows anything about geography?' The miners emerged from the vertical shaft like ants leaving a burning nest. There were thumps and thuds from below, and at one point Strewth's hat shot up into the air, turned over a few times and dropped back. There was silence for a while and then, bits cracking off it like errant pieces of shell on a newly hatched chick, the thing pulled itself out of the shaft and . . . . . . looked around it. The miners, crouched behind various bushes and sheds, were quite certain of this, even though the monster had no visible eyes. It turned, its hundreds of little legs moving rather stiffly, as if they'd spent too much time buried in the ground. Then, weaving slightly, it set off. And far away in the shimmering red desert, the man in the pointy hat climbed carefully out of his hole. He held in both hands a bowl made of bark. It contained . . . lots of vitamins, valuable protein and essential fats. See? No mention of wriggling at all. A fire was smouldering a little way away. He put the bowl down carefully and picked up a large stick, stood quietly for a moment and then suddenly began to hop around the fire, smacking the ground with the stick and shouting, 'Hah!' When the ground had been subdued to his apparent satisfaction he whacked at the bushes as if they had personally offended him, and bashed a couple of trees as well. Finally he advanced on a couple of flat rocks, lifted up each one in turn, averted his eyes, shouted, 'Hah!' again and flailed blindly at the ground beneath. The landscape having been acceptably pacified, he sat down to eat his supper before it escaped. It tasted a little like chicken. When you are hungry enough, practically anything can. And eyes watched him from the nearby water-hole. They were not the tiny eyes of the swarming beetles and tadpoles that made a careful examination of every handful he drank a vital gastronomic precaution. These were far older eyes, and currently without any physical component. For weeks a man whose ability to find water was limited to checking if his feet were wet had survived in this oven-ready country by falling into waterholes. A man who thought of spiders as harmless little creatures had experienced only a couple of nasty shocks when, by now, this approach should have left him with arms the size of beer barrels that glowed in the dark. The man had even hit the seashore once and paddled in a little way to look at the pretty blue jellyfish, and it was all the watcher could do to see that he got a mere light sting which ceased to be agonizing after only a few days. The waterhole bubbled and the ground trembled as if, despite the cloudless sky, there was a storm somewhere. Now it was three o'clock in the morning. Ridcully was good at doing without other people's sleep. Unseen University was much bigger on the inside. Thousands of years as the leading establishment of practical magic in a world where dimensions were largely a matter of chance in any case had left it bulging in places where it shouldn't have places. There were rooms containing rooms which, if you entered them, turned out to contain the room you'd started with, which can be a problem if you are in a conga line. And because it was so big it could afford to have an almost unlimited number of staff on the premises. Tenure was automatic or, more accurately, non-existent. You found an empty room, turned up for meals as usual, and generally no one noticed, although if you were unfortunate you might attract students. And if you looked hard enough in some of the outlying regions of the University, you could find an expert on anything. You could even find an expert on finding an expert. The Professor of Recondite Architecture and Origami Map Folding had been woken up. been introduced to the Archchancellor, who had never set eyes on him before, and had produced a map of the University which would probably be accurate for the next few days and looked rather like a chrysanthemum in the act of exploding. Finally, the wizards reached a door and Ridcully glared at the brass plate on it as if it had just been cheeky to him. ' "Egregious Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography",' he said. 'This looks like the one.' 'We must have walked miles ,' said the Dean, leaning against the wall. 'I don't recognize any of this.' Ridcully glanced around. The walls were stone but had at some time been painted in that very special institutional green that you get when an almost-finished cup of coffee is left standing for a couple of weeks. There was a board covered in balding and darker green felt on which had been optimistically thumbtacked the word 'Notices'. But from the looks of it there had never been any notices and never would be, ever. There was a smell of ancient dinners. Ridcully shrugged, and knocked on the door. 'I don't remember him,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'I think I do,' said the Dean. 'Not a very promising boy. Had ears. Don't often see him around, though. Always has a suntan. Odd, that.' 'He's on the staff. If anyone knows anything about geography, he's our man.' Ridcully knocked again. 'Perhaps he's out,' said the Dean. That's where you mostly get geography, outside.' Ridcully pointed to a little wooden device by the door. There was one outside every wizard's study. It consisted of a little sliding panel in a frame. Currently it was revealing the word 'IN' and, presumably, was covering the word 'OUT', although you could never be sure with some wizards.[9] The Dean tried to slide the panel. It refused to budge. 'He must come out sometimes ,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Besides, sensible men should be in bed at three a.m.' 'Yes, indeed,' said the Dean meaningfully. Ridcully thumped on the door. 'I demand that you open up!' he shouted. 1 am the Master of this College!' The door moved under the blow, but not very much. It was blocked by what turned out to be, after some strenuous shoving by all the wizards, an enormous pile of paperwork. The Dean picked up a yellowing piece of paper. This is the memo saying I've been appointed as Dean!' he said. 'That was years ago!' 'Surely he must come out somet—' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Oh dear . . .' The same thought had occurred to the other wizards, too. 'Remember poor old Wally Sluwer?' murmured the Chair of Indefinite Studies, looking around in some trepidation. 'Three years of tutorials post mortem.' 'Well, the students did say he was a bit quiet,' said Ridcully. He sniffed. 'Doesn't smell bad in here. Quite fresh, really. Pleasantly salty. Aha . . .' There was bright light under a door at the other end of the crowded and dusty room, and the wizards could hear a gentle splashing. 'Bath night. Good man,' said Ridcully. 'Well, we don't have to disturb him.' He peered at the titles of the books that lined the room. 'Bound to be a lot about EcksEcksEcksEcks somewhere here,' he added, pulling out a volume at random. 'Come along. One man, one book each.' 'Can we at least send out for some breakfast?' grumbled the Dean. 'Far too early for breakfast,' said Ridcully. 'Well, some supper, then?' Too late for supper.' The Chair of Indefinite Studies took in the rest of the room. A lizard scuttled across the wall and disappeared. 'Bit of a mess in here, isn't there?' he said, glaring at the place where the lizard had been. 'Everything's very dusty. What's in all those boxes?' 'Says "Rocks" on this side,' said the Dean. 'Makes sense. If you're going to study the outdoors, do it in the warm.' 'But what about all the fishing nets and coconuts?' The Dean had to agree the point. The study was a mess, even by the extremely expansive standards of wizardry. Boxes of dusty rocks occupied the little space that wasn't covered with books and paper. They had been variously labelled, with inscriptions like 'Rocks from Lower Down', 'Other Rocks', 'Curious Rocks' and 'Probably Not Rocks'. Further boxes, to Ponder's rising interest, were marked 'Remarkable Bones', 'Bones' and 'Dull Bones'. 'One of those people who pokes his nose where it doesn't belong, I fancy,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, and sniffed. He sniffed again, and looked down at the book he'd picked at random. 'This is a pressed squid collection,' he said. 'Oh, is it any good? I used to collect starfish when I was a boy,' said Ponder. The Lecturer in Recent Runes shut the book and frowned at him over the top of it. 'I daresay you did, young man. And old fossils too, I expect.' 'I always thought that old fossils might have a lot to teach us,' said Ponder. 'Perhaps I was wrong,' he added darkly. 'Well, I for one have never believed all that business about dead animals turning into stone,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'It's against all reason. What's in it for them?' 'So how do you explain fossils, then?' said Ponder. 'Ah, you see, I don't,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, with a triumphant smile. 'It saves so much trouble in the long run. How do skinless sausages hold together, Mister Stibbons?' 'What? Eh? How should I know something like that?' 'Really? You don't know that but you think you're entirely qualified to know how the whole universe was put together, do you? Anyway, you don't have to explain fossils. They're there. Why try to turn everything into a big mystery? If you go around asking questions the whole time you'll never get anything done.' 'Well, what are we put here for?' said Ponder. There you go again,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'Says here it's girt by sea,' said the Senior Wrangler. He looked up at their stares. This continent EcksEcksEcksEcks,' he added, pointing at a page. 'Says here "Little is known about it save that it is girt by sea." ' 'I'm glad to see someone has their mind on the task in hand,' said Ridcully. 'You two get on with some studyin', please. Right, then, Senior Wrangler . . . girt by sea, is it?' 'Apparently.' 'Well . . . it would be, wouldn't it,' said Ridcully. 'Anything else?' 'I used to know a Gert,' said the Bursar. The terror of the Library had sent his somewhat erratic sanity on a downward slide into the calm pink douds again. 'Not . . . very much,' said the Senior Wrangler, flicking through the pages. 'Sir Roderick Purdeigh spent many years looking for the alleged continent and was very emphatic that it didn't exist.' 'Quite a jolly gel. Gertrude Plusher, I think her name was. Face like a brick.' 'Yes, but he once got lost in his own bedroom,' said the Dean, thumbing through another book. 'They found him in the wardrobe.' 'I wonder if it's the same Gert?' said the Bursar. 'Could be, Bursar,' said Ridcully. He nodded at the other wizards. 'No one's to let him have any sugar or fruit.' For a while there was no sound but the splash of water behind the door, the turning of pages and the Bursar's randomized humming. 'According to this note in Wasport's Lives of the Very Dull People,' said the Senior Wrangler, squinting at the tiny script, 'he met an old fisherman who said in that country the bark fell off the trees in the winter and the leaves stayed on.' 'Yes, but they always make up that sort of thing,' said Ridcully. 'Otherwise it's too boring. It's no good coming home and just saying you were shipwrecked for two years and ate winkles, is it? You have to put in a lot of daft stuff about men who go around on one big foot and The Land of Giant Plum Puddings and nursery rubbish like that.' 'My word!' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, who had been engrossed in a volume at the other end of the table. 'It says here that the people on the island of Slakki wear no clothes at all and the women are of unsurpassed beauty.' 'That sounds quite dreadful,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies primly. There are several woodcuts.' 'I'm sure none of us wish to know that,' said Ridcully. He looked around at the rest of the wizards and repeated, in a louder voice, 'I said I'm sure none of us wish to know that. Dean? Come right back here and pick up your chair!' There's a mention of EcksEcksEcksEcks in Wrencher's Snakes of All Nations,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. It says the continent has very lew poisonous snakes . . . Oh, there's a footnote.' His finger went down the page. 'It says, "Most of ihem have been killed by the spiders." How very odd.' 'Oh,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'It also says here that " The denizens of Purdee Island also existeth inne a State of Nature" ' – he struggled with the ancient handwriting – ' " yette is in Fine Healthe & of Good Bearing & Stature & is Trulee a . . . knobbly Savage. . ." ' 'Let me have a look at that,' said Ridcully. The book was passed down the table. The Arch-chancellor scowled. 'It's written "knoble",' he said. 'Noble savage. Means you . . . act like a gentleman, don'tcherknow . . .' 'What . . . go fox-hunting, bow to ladies, don't pay your tailor . . . That sort of thing?' 'Shouldn't think that chap owes his tailor very much,' said Ridcully, looking at the accompanying illustration. 'All right, chaps, let's see what else we can find . . .' 'He's having rather a long bath, isn't he?' said the Dean, after a while. 'I mean, I like to be as well scrubbed as the next man, but we're talking serious prunes here.' 'Sounds like he's sloshing about,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Sounds like the seaside,' said the Bursar happily. 'Try to keep up, will you, Bursar?' said Ridcully wearily. 'Actually . . .' said the Senior Wrangler, 'there is a certain seagully component, now that you mention it . . .' Ridcully stood up, strode over to the bathroom door and held up his fist to knock. 'I am the Archchancellor,' he grumbled, lowering it. 'I can open any doors I damn well please.' And he turned the handle. 'There,' he said, as the door swung back. 'See. gentlemen? A perfectly ordinary bathroom. Stone bath, brass taps, bath cap, humorous scrubbin' brush in the shape of a duck . . . a perfectly ordinary bathroom. It is not, let me make myself quite clear, some kind of tropical beach. It doesn't look remotely like a tropical beach.' He pointed out of the bathroom's open window, to where waves lapped languorously against a tree-fringed strand under a brilliant blue sky. The bathroom curtains flapped on a warm breeze. 'That'sa tropical beach,' he said. 'See? No similarity at all.' After his nourishing meal that contained masses of essential vitamins and minerals and unfortunately quite a lot of taste as well, the man with 'Wizzard' on his hat settled down for some housekeeping, or as much as was possible in the absence of a house. It consisted of chipping away at a piece of wood with a stone axe. He appeared to be making a very short plank, and the speed with which he was working suggested that he'd done this before. A cockatoo settled in the tree above him to watch. Rincewind glared at it suspiciously. When the plank had apparently been smoothed to his satisfaction he stood on it with one foot and, swaying, drew around the foot with a piece of charcoal from the fire. He did the same with the other foot, and then settled down to hack at the wood again. The watcher in the waterhole realized that the man was making two foot-shaped boards. Rincewind took a length of twine from his pocket. He'd found a particular creeper which, if you carefully peeled the bark off, would give you a terrible spotted rash. What he'd actually been looking for was a creeper which, if you carefully peeled off the bark, would give you a serviceable twine, and it had taken several more goes and various different rashes to find out which one this was. If you made a hole in the soles and fed a loop of twine through it, into which a toe could be inserted, you ended up with some Ur-footwear. It made you shuffle like the Ascent of Man but, nevertheless, had some unexpected benefits. First, the steady flop-flop as you walked made you sound like two people to any dangerous creatures you were about to encounter, which, in Rincewind's recent experience, was any creature at all. Second, although they were impossible to run in they were easy to run out of, so that you were a smoking dot on the burning horizon while the enraged caterpillar or beetle was still looking at your shoes and wondering where the other person was. He'd had to run away a lot. Every night he made a new pair of thonged sandals, and every day he left them somewhere in the desert. When he'd finished them to his satisfaction he took a roll of thin bark from his pocket. Attached to it by a length of twine was a very precious small stub of pencil. He'd decided to keep a journal in the hope that this might help. He looked at the recent entries. Probably Tuesday:hot, flies. Dinner: honey ants. Attacked by honey ants. Fell into waterhole. Wednesday, with any luck:hot, flies. Dinner: either bush raisins or kangaroo droppings. Chased by hunters, don't know why. Fell into waterhole. Thursday (could be):hot, flies. Dinner: blue-tongued lizard. Savaged by blue-tongued lizard. Chased by different hunters. Fell off cliff, bounced into tree, pissed on by small grey incontinent teddy bear, landed in a waterhole. Friday:hot, flies. Dinner: some kind of roots which tasted like sick. This saved time. Saturday:hotter than yesterday, extra flies. V. thirsty. Sunday:hot. Delirious with thirst and flies. Nothing but nothing as far as the eye can see, with bushes in it. Decided to die, collapsed, fell down sand dune into waterhole. He wrote very carefully and as small as possible: 'Monday:hot, flies. Dinner: moth grubs.' He stared at the writing. It said it all, really. Why didn't people here like him? He'd meet some small tribe, everything'd be friendly, he'd pick up a few tips, get to know a few names, he'd build up a vocabulary, enough to chat about ordinary everyday things like the weather – and then suddenly they'd be chasing him away. After all, everyone talked about the weather, didn't they? Rincewind had always been happy to think of himself as a racist. The One Hundred Metres, the Mile, the Marathon – he'd run them all. Later, when he'd learned with some surprise what the word actually meant, he'd been equally certain he wasn't one. He was a person who divided the world quite simply into people who were trying to kill him and people who weren't. That didn't leave much room for fine details like what colour anyone was. But he'd be sitting by the campfire, trying out a simple conversation, and suddenly people would get upset over nothing at all and drive him off. You didn't expect people to get nasty just because you'd said something like, 'My word, when did it last rain here?' did you? Rincewind sighed, picked up his stick, beat the hell out of a patch of ground, lay down and went to sleep. Occasionally he screamed under his breath and his legs made running motions, which just showed that he was dreaming. The waterhole rippled. It wasn't large, a mere puddle deep in a bush-filled gully between some rocks, and the liquid it contained could only be called water because geographers refuse to countenance words like 'souphole'. Nevertheless it rippled, as though something had dropped into the centre. And what was odd about the ripples was that they didn't stop when they reached the edge of the water but continued outwards over the land as expanding circles of dim white light. When they reached Rincewind they broke up and flowed around him, so that now he was the centre of concentric lines of white dots, like strings of pearls. The waterhole erupted. Something climbed up into the air and sped away across the night. It zigzagged from rock to mountain to water-hole. And as the eye of observation rises, the travelling streak briefly illuminates other dim lines, hanging above the ground like smoke, so from above the whole land appears to have a circulatory system, or nerves . . . A thousand miles from the sleeping wizard the line struck ground again, emerged in a cave, and passed across the walls like a searchlight. It hovered in front of a huge, pointed rock for a moment and then, as if reaching a decision, shot up again into the sky. The continent rolled below it as it returned. The light hit the waterhole without a splash but, once again, three or four ripples in something spread oui across the turbid water and the surrounding sand. Night rolled in again. But there was a distant thumping under the ground. Bushes trembled. In the trees, birds awoke and flew away. After a while, on a rock face near the waterhole, pale white lines began to form a picture. Rincewind had attracted the attention of at least one other watcher apart from whatever it was that dwelt in the waterhole. Death had taken to keeping Rincewind's lifetimer on a special shelf in his study, in much the way that a zoologist would want to keep an eye on a particularly intriguing specimen. The lifetimers of most people were the classic shape that Death thought was right and proper for the task. They appeared to be large eggtimers, although, since the sands they measured were the living seconds of someone's life, all the eggs were in one basket. Rincewind's hourglass looked like something created by a glassblower who'd had the hiccups in a time machine. According to the amount of actual sand it contained – and Death was pretty good at making this kind of estimate – he should have died long ago. But strange curves and bends and extrusions of glass had developed over the years, and quite often the sand was flowing backwards, or diagonally. Clearly, Rincewind had been hit by so much magic, had been thrust reluctantly through time and space so often that he'd nearly bumped into himself coming the other way, that the precise end of his life was now as hard to find as the starting point on a roll of really sticky transparent tape. Death was familiar with the concept of the eternal, ever-renewed hero, the champion with a thousand faces. He'd refrained from commenting. He met heroes frequently, generally surrounded by, and this was important, the dead bodies of very nearly all their enemies and saying, 'Vot the hell shust happened?' Whether there was some arrangement that allowed them to come back again afterwards was not something he would be drawn on. But he pondered whether, if this creature did exist, it was somehow balanced by the eternal coward. The hero with a thousand retreating backs, perhaps. Many cultures had a legend of an undying hero who would one day rise again, so perhaps the balance of nature called for one who wouldn't. Whatever the ultimate truth of the matter, the fact now was that Death did not have the slightest idea of when Rincewind was going to die. This was very vexing to a creature who prided himself on his punctuality. Death glided across the velvet emptiness of his study until he reached the model of the Discworld, if indeed it was a model. Eyeless sockets looked down. SHOW,he said. The precious metals and stones faded. Death saw ocean currents, deserts, forests, drifting cloudscapes like albino buffalo herds . . . SHOW. The eye of observation curved and dived into the living map, and a reddish splash grew in an expanse of turbulent sea. Ancient mountain ranges slipped past, deserts of rock and sand glided away. SHOW. Death watched the sleeping figure of Rincewind. Occasionally its legs would jerk. HMM. Death felt something crawling up the back of his robe, pause for a minute on his shoulder, and leap. A small rodent skeleton in a black robe landed in the middle of the image and started flailing madly at it with his tiny scythe, squeaking excitedly. Death picked up the Death of Rats by his cowl and held him up for inspection. NO, WE DON'T DO IT THAT WAY. The Death of Rats struggled madly.SQUEAK? BECAUSE IT'S AGAINST THE RULES,said Death.NATURE MUST TAKE ITS COURSE. He glanced down at the image again as if a thought had struck him, and lowered the Death of Rats to the floor. Then he went to the wall and pulled a cord. Far away, a bell tolled. After a while an elderly man entered, carrying a tray. 'Sorry about that, master. I was cleaning the bath.' I BEG YOUR PARDON, ALBERT? 'I mean, that's why I was late with your tea, sir,' said Albert. THAT IS OF NO CONSEQUENCE. TELL ME, WHAT DO YOU KNOW OF THIS PLACE? Death's finger tapped the red continent. His manservant looked closely. 'Oh, there,' he said. ' "Terror Incognita" we called it when I was alive, master. Never went there myself. It's the currents, you know. Many a poor sailorman has washed up on them fatal shores rather than get carried right over the Rim, and regretted it, I expect. Dry as a statue's ti— Very dry, master, or so they say. And hotter'n a demon's joe— Very hot, too. But you must've been there yourself?' OH, YES. BUT YOU KNOW HOW IT IS WHEN YOU'RE THERE ON BUSINESS AND THERE'S HARDLY ANY TIME TO SEE THE COUNTRY . . . Death pointed to the great spiral of clouds that turned slowly around the continent, like jackals warily circling a dying lion which looked done for but which might yet be capable of one last bite. VERY STRANGE,he said.A PERMANENT ANTI-CYCLONE. AND INSIDE, A HUGE, CALM LAND, THAT NEVER SEES A STORM. AND NEVER HAS A DROP OF RAIN. 'Good place for a holiday, then.' COME WITH ME. The two of them, trailed by the Death of Rats, walked into Death's huge library. There were clouds here, up near the ceiling. Death held out a hand,I WANT,he said,A BOOK ABOUT THE DANGEROUS CREATURES OF FOURECKS— Albert looked up and dived for cover, receiving only mild bruising because he had the foresight to curl into a ball. After a while Death, his voice a little muffled, said:ALBERT, I WOULD BE SO GRATEFUL IF YOU COULD GIVE ME A HAND HERE. Albert scrambled up and pulled at some of the huge volumes, finally dislodging enough of them to allow his master to clamber free. HMM. . . Death picked up a book at random and read the cover. DANGEROUS MAMMALS, REPTILES, AMPHIBIANS, BIRDS, FISH, JELLYFISH, INSECTS, SPIDERS, CRUSTACEANS, GRASSES, TREES, MOSSES, AND LICHENS OF TERROR INCOGNITA,he read. His gaze moved down the spine.VOLUME 29C,he added.OH. PART THREE, I SEE. He glanced up at the listening shelves.POSSIBLY IT WOULD BE SIMPLER IF I ASKED FOR A LIST OF THE HARMLESS CREATURES OF THE AFORESAID CONTINENT? They waited. IT WOULD APPEAR THAT— 'No, wait, master. Here it comes.' Albert pointed to something white zigzagging lazily through the air. Finally Death reached up and caught the single sheet of paper. He read it carefully and then turned it over briefly just in case anything was written on the other side. 'May I?' said Albert. Death handed him the paper. ' "Some of the sheep," ' Albert read aloud. 'Oh, well. Maybe a week at the seaside'd be better, then.' WHAT AN INTRIGUING PLACE,said Death.SADDLE UP THE HORSE, ALBERT. I FEEL SURE I'M GOING TO BE NEEDED. SQUEAK,said the Death of Rats. PARDON? 'He said, "No worries," master,' said Albert. I CAN'T IMAGINE WHY. Four huge blooms of silence rolled over the city as Old Tom so emphatically did not strike the hour. Several servants rumbled a trolley along the corridor. The Archchancellor had given in. An early breakfast was on the way. Ridcully lowered his tape measure. 'Let's try that again, shall we?' he said. He stepped out of the window and picked a seashell out of the sand. It was warm from the sun. Then he pulled himself back into the bathroom and walked around to a door beside the window. It led to a dank, moss-grown light well, which allowed second-hand and grubby daylight into these dismal floors. Even the snow hadn't managed to get more than a brushing of flakes down this far. The window on this side glimmered in the light from the doorway like a pool of very black oil. 'Okay, Dean,' he said. Tush your staff through. Now waggle it about.' The wizards looked at the gently rippling surface. There should have been several feet of solid wood sticking out of it. 'Well, well, well,' said the Archchancellor, going back in out of the cold air. 'Do you know, I've never actually seen one of these?' 'Anyone remember Archchancellor Bewdley's boots?' said the Senior Wrangler, helping himself to some cold mutton from the trolley. 'He made a mistake and got one of the things opened up in the left boot. Very tricky. You can't go walking around with one foot in another dimension.' 'Well, no . . .' said Ridcully, staring at the tropical scene and tapping his chin thoughtfully with the seashell. 'Can't see what you're treading in, for one thing,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'One opened up in one of the cellars once, all by itself,' said the Dean. 'Just a round black hole. Anything you put in it just disappeared. So old Archchancellor Weatherwax had a privy built over it.' 'Very sensible idea,' said Ridcully, still looking thoughtful. 'We thought so too, until we found the other one that had opened in the attic. Turned out to be the other side of the same hole. I'm sure I don't need to draw you a picture.' 'I've never heard of these!' said Ponder Stibbons. The possibilities are amazing!' 'Everyone says that when they first hear about them,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'But when you've been a wizard as long as I have, my boy, you'll learn that as soon as you find anything that offers amazing possibilities for the improvement of the human condition it's best to put the lid back on and pretend it never happened.' 'But if you could get one to open above another you could drop something through the bottom hole and it'd come out of the top hole and fall through the bottom hole again . . . It'd reach meteoritic speed and the amount of power you could generate would be—' That's pretty much what happened between the attic and the cellar,' said the Dean, taking a cold chicken leg. 'Thank goodness for air friction, that's all I'll say.' Ponder waved his hand gingerly through the window and felt the sun's heat. 'And no one's ever studied them?' he said. The Senior Wrangler shrugged. 'Studied what? They're just holes. You get a lot of magic in one place, it kind of drops through the world like a hot steel ball through pork dripping. If it comes to the edge of something, it kind of fills it in.' 'Stress points in the space-time continuinuin-uum . . .' said Ponder. 'There must be hundreds of uses—' 'Hah, yes, no wonder our Egregious Professor is always so suntanned,' said the Dean. 'I feel he's been cheating. Geography should be hard to get to. It shouldn't be in your windowbox, is what I'm saying. You shouldn't get at it just by sneaking out of the University.' 'Well, he hasn't, really, has he?' said the Senior Wrangler. 'He's really just extended his study a bit.' 'Do you think that is EcksEcksEcksEcks, by any chance?' said the Dean. 'It certainly looks foreign.' 'Well, there is sea,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'But would you say that it looks as if it is actually girting?' 'It's just . . . you know . . . sloshing.' 'One would somehow imagine that sea that was girting something would look more, well . . . defiant,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'You know? Thundering waves and so on. Definitely sending a message to outsiders that it was girting this coast and they'd better be jolly respectful.' 'Perhaps we could go right through and investigate,' said Ponder. 'Something dreadful'll happen if we do,' said the Senior Wrangler gloomily. 'It hasn't happened to the Bursar,' said Ridcully. The wizards crowded around. There was a figure standing in the surf. Its robe was rolled up above the knees. A few birds wheeled overhead. Palm trees waved in the background. 'My word, he must have snuck out while we weren't looking,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Bursaar!' Ridcully yelled. The figure didn't look round. 'I don't want to, you know, make trouble,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, looking wistfully at the sundrenched beach, 'but it's freezing cold in my bedroom and last night there was frost on my eiderdown. I don't see any harm in a quick stroll in the warm.' 'We're here to help the Librarian!' snapped Ridcully. Faint snores were coming from the volume entitled Ook. 'My point exactly. The poor chap'd be a lot happier in those trees there.' 'You mean we could wedge him in the branches?' said the Archchancellor. 'He's still The Story of Ook.' 'You know what I mean, Mustrum. A day at the seaside for him would be better than a . . . a day at the seaside, as it were. Let's get out there, I'm freezing.' 'Are you mad? There could be terrible monsters! Look at the poor chap standing there in the surf! That sea's probably teeming with—' 'Sharks,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Right!' said Ridcully. 'And—' 'Barracudas,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Marlins. Swordfish. Looks like somewhere out near the Rim to me. Fishermen say there's fish there that'd take your arm off.' 'Right,' said Ridcully. 'Right . . .' There was a small but significant change in his tone. Everyone knew about the stuffed fish on his walls. Archchancellor Ridcully would hunt anything. The only cockerel still crowing within two hundred yards of the University these days stood under a cart to do it. 'And that jungle,' said the Senior Wrangler, sniffing. 'Looks pretty damn dangerous to me. Could be anything in it. Fatal. Could be tigers and gorillas and elephants and pineapples. I wouldn't go near it. I'm with you, Archchancellor. Better to freeze here than look some rabid man-eater in the eye.' Ridcully's own eyes were burning bright. He stroked his beard thoughtfully. 'Tigers, eh?' he said. Then his expression changed. 'Pineapples? 'Deadly,' said the Senior Wrangler firmly. 'One of them got my aunt. We couldn't get it off her. I told her that's not the way you're supposed to eat them, but would she listen?' The Dean looked sidelong at his Archchancellor. It was the glance of a man who also didn't want another night in a frigid bedroom and had suddenly worked out where the levers were. 'That gets my vote, Mustrum,' he said. 'Catch me going through some hole in space on to some warm beach with a sea teeming with huge fish and a jungle full of hunting trophies.' He yawned like a bad poker player. 'No, it's me for my nice freezing bed, I don't know about you. Archchancellor?' 'I think—' Ridcully began. 'Yes?' 'Clams,' said the Senior Wrangler, shaking his head. 'Looks just the beach for the devils. You just ask my cousin. You'll have to find a good medium first, though. They shouldn't ooze green, I said. They shouldn't bubble, I told him. But would he listen?' The Archchancellor was currently amongst those who wouldn't. 'You think that taking him out there would be just the thing for the Librarian, do you?' he said. 'Just the tonic for the poor old chap, an hour or two under that sun?' 'But I expect we ought to be ready to protect him, eh, Archchancellor?' the Dean said, innocently. 'Why, yes, I really hadn't thought of that,' said Ridcully. 'Hmm, yes. Important point. Better get them to bring down my 500-pound crossbow with the armour-piercing arrows and my home taxidermy outfit. And all ten fishing rods. And all four tackle boxes. And the big set of scales.' 'Good thinking, Archchancellor,' said the Dean. 'He may want to take a swim when he's feeling better.' 'In that case,' said Ponder, 'I think I'll get my thaumodalite and my notebooks. It's vital to work out where we are. It could be EcksEcksEcksEcks, I suppose. It looks very foreign.' 'I suppose I'd better fetch my reptile press and my herbarium,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, who had got there eventually. 'Much may be learned from the plants here, I'll wager.' 'I shall certainly endeavour to make a study of any primitive grass-skirted peoples hereabouts,' added the Dean, with a lawnmower look in his eyes. 'What about you, Runes?' said Ridcully. 'Me? Oh, er . . .' The Lecturer in Recent Runes looked wildly at his colleagues, who were nodding frantically at him. 'Er . . . this would be a good time to catch up on my reading, obviously.' 'Right,' said Ridcully. 'Because we are not, and I want to make this very clear, we are not doing this in order to enjoy ourselves, is that understood?' 'What about the Senior Wrangler?' said the Dean nastily. 'Me? Enjoy it? There might even be prawns out there,' said the Senior Wrangler miserably. Ridcully hesitated. The other wizards shrugged when he glanced at them. 'Look, old chap,' he said eventually, 'I think I understood about the clams, and I've got a sort of mental picture about your granny and the pineapple—' '—my aunt—' '—your aunt and the pineapple, but . . . What's deadly about prawns?' 'Hah, see how you like a crate of them dropping off the crane on to your head,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'My uncle didn't, I can tell you!' 'Okay, I think I understand. Important safety tip, everyone,' said Ridcully. 'Avoid all crates. Understood? But we are not here on some kind of holiday! Do you all understand me?' 'Absolutely,' said the wizards in unison. They all understood him. Rincewind awoke with a scream, to get it over with. Thenhe saw the man watching him. He was sitting cross-legged against the dawn. He was black. Not brown, or blue-black, but black as space. This place baked people. Rincewind pulled himself up and thought about reaching for his stick. And then he thought again. The man had a couple of spears stuck in the ground, and people here were good at spears, because if you didn't get efficient at hitting the things that moved fast you had to eat the things that moved slowly. He was also holding a boomerang, and it wasn't one of those toy ones that came back. This was one of the big, heavy, gently curved sort that didn't come back because it was sticking in something's ribcage. You could laugh at the idea of wooden weapons until you saw the kind of wood that grew here. It had been painted with stripes of all colours, but it still looked like a business item. Rincewind tried to seem harmless. It required little in the way of acting. The watcher regarded him in that sucking silence that you just have to fill. And Rincewind came from a culture where, if there was nothing to say, you said something. 'Er . . .' said Rincewind. 'Me . . . big-fella . . . fella . . . belong . . . damn, what's the—' He gave up, and glanced at the blue sky. 'Turned out nice again,' he said. The man seemed to sigh, stuck the boomerang into the strip of animal skin that was his belt and, in fact, the whole of his wardrobe, and stood up. Then he picked up a leathery sack, slung it over one shoulder, took the spears and, without a backward glance, ambled off around a rock. This might have struck anyone else as rude, but Rincewind was always happy to see any heavily armed person walking away. He rubbed his eyes and contemplated the dismal task of subduing breakfast. 'You want some grub?' The voice was almost a whisper. Rincewind looked around. A little way off was the hole from which last night's supper had been dug. Apart from that, there was nothing all the way to the infinite horizon but scrubby bushes and hot red rocks. 'I think I dug up most of them,' he said, weakly. 'Nah, mate. I got to tell you the secret of findin' tucker in the bush. There's always a beaut feed if you know where to look, mate.' 'How come you're speaking my language, mystery voice?' said Rincewind. 'I ain't,' said the voice. 'You're listenin' to mine. Got to feed you up proper. Gonna sing you into a real bush-tucker finder, true.' 'Lovely grub,' said Rincewind. 'Just you stand there and don't move.' It sounded as though the unseen voice then began to chant very quietly through an unseen nose. Rincewind was, after all, a wizard. Not a good one, but he was sensitive to magic. And the chant was doing strange things. The hairs on the back of his hands tried to crawl up his arms, and the back of his neck began to sweat. His ears popped and, very gently, the landscape began to spin around him. He looked down at the ground. There were his feet. Almost certainly his feet. And they were standing on the red earth and not moving at all. Things were moving round him. He wasn't dizzy but, by the look of it, the landscape was. The chanting stopped. There was a sort of echo, which seemed to happen inside his head, as if the words had been merely the shadow of something more important. Rincewind shut his eyes for a while, and then opened them again. 'Er . . . fine,' he said. 'Very . . . catchy.' He couldn't see the speaker, so he spoke with that careful politeness you reserve for someone armed who is probably standing behind you. He turned. 'I expect you . . . er . . . had to go somewhere, did you?' he said, to the empty air. 'Er . . . hello?' Even the insects had gone quiet. 'Er . . . you haven't noticed a box walking around on legs, have you? By any chance?' He tried to see if anyone could possibly be hiding behind a bush. It's not important, it's just that it's got my clean underwear in it.' The boundless silence made an eloquent statement about the universe's views on clean underwear. 'So . . . er . . . I'm going to know how to find food in the bush, right?' he ventured. He glared at the nearest trees. They didn't look any more fruitful than before. He shrugged. 'What a strange person.' He edged over to a flat stone and, with a stick raised in case of resistance from anything below, pulled it up. There was a chicken sandwich underneath. It tasted rather like chicken. A little way away, behind the rocks near the waterhole, a drawing faded into the stone. This was another desert, elsewhere. No matter where you were, this place would always be elsewhere. It was one of those places further than any conceivable journey, but possibly as close as the far side of a mirror, or just a breath away. There was no sun in the sky here, unless the whole sky was sun – it glowed yellow. The desert underfoot was still red sand, but hot enough to burn. A crude drawing of a man appeared on a rock. Gradually, layer by layer, it got more complex, as if the unseen hand was trying to draw bones and organs and a nervous system and a soul. And he stepped on to the sand and put down his bag which, here, seemed a lot heavier. He stretched his arms and cracked his knuckles. At least here he could talk normally. He daren't raise his voice down there in the shadow world, lest he raise mountains as well. He said a word which, on the other side of the rock, would have shaken trees and created meadows. It meant, in the true language of things which the old man spoke, something like: Trickster. A creature like him appears in many belief systems, although the jolly name can be misleading. Tricksters have that robust sense of humour that puts a landmine under a seat cushion for a bit of a laugh. A black and white bird appeared, and perched on his head. 'You know what to do,' said the old man. 'Him? What a wonga,' said the bird. 'I've been lookin' at him. He's not even heroic. He's just in the right place at the right time.' The old man indicated that this was maybe the definition of a hero. 'All right, but why not go and get the thing yerself?' said the bird. 'You've gotta have heroes,' said the old man. 'And I suppose I'll have to help,' said the bird. It sniffed, which is quite hard to do through a beak. 'Yep. Off you go.' The bird shrugged, which is easy to do if you have wings, and flew down off the old man's head. It didn't land on the rock but flew into it; for a moment there was a drawing of a bird, and then it faded. Creators aren't gods. They make places, which is quite hard. It's men that make gods. This explains a lot. The old man sat down and waited. Confront a wizard with the concept of a bathing suit and he'll start to get nervous. Why does it have to be so skimpy? he'll ask. Where can I put the gold embroidery? How can you have any kind of costume without at least forty useful pockets? And occult symbols made out of sequins? There appears to be no place for them. And where, when you get right down to it, are the lapels? There is also the concept of acreage. It is vitally important that as large an amount of wizard as possible is covered, so that timid people and horses are not frightened. There may be strapping young wizards with copper-coloured skins and muscles as solid as a plank, but not after sixty years of UU dinners. It gives senior wizards what they think is called gravitas but is more accurately called gravity. Also, it takes heavy machinery to part a wizard from his pointy hat. The Chair of Indefinite Studies looked sidelong at the Dean. They both wore a variety of garments, in which red and white stripes predominated. 'Last one into the water's a man standing all by himself on the beach!' he shouted.[10] Out on a point of rock, surf washing over his bare feet, Mustrum Ridcully lit his pipe and cast a line on the end of which was such a fearsome array of spinners and weights that any fish it didn't hook it might successfully bludgeon. The change of scenery seemed to be working on the Librarian. Within a few minutes of being laid in the sunlight he'd sneezed himself back into his old shape, and he now sat on the beach with a blanket around him and a fern leaf on his head. It was, indeed, a lovely day. It was warm, the sea murmured beautifully, the wind whispered in the trees. The Librarian knew he ought to be feeling better, but, instead, he was beginning to feel extremely uneasy. He stared around him. The Lecturer in Recent Runes had gone to sleep with his book carefully shading his eyes. It had originally been entitled Principles of Thaumic Propagation but, because of the action of the sunlight and some specialized high-frequency vibrations from the sand granules on the beach, the words on the cover now read The Omega Conspiracy. [11] In the middle distance was the window. It hung in the air, a simple square into a shadowy room. The Archchancellor hadn't trusted the window catch and had propped up the window with a piece of wood. A warning label pinned to it showed that some thought had gone into the wording: 'Do not remove this wood. Not even to see what happens. IMPORTANT!' There appeared to be some forest behind the beach which rose a little way up the side of a small yet quite pointy mountain, certainly not tall enough to have snow on it. Some of the trees lining the beach looked hauntingly familiar, and spoke to the Librarian of home. This was strange, because he had been born in Moon Pond Lane, Ankh-Morpork, next to the saddle-makers. But they spoke to the home in his bones. He had an urge to climb . . . But there was something wrong with the trees. He looked down at the pretty shells on the beach. There was something wrong with them, too. Creepily, worryingly wrong. A few birds wheeled overhead, and they were wrong. They were the right shape, as far as he knew, and they seemed to be making the right noises. But they were still wrong. Oh, dear . . . He tried to stop the sneeze as it gathered nasal momentum, but this is impossible for anyone who wants to continue to go through life with their eardrums. There was a snort, a clattering sound, and the Librarian changed into something suitable for the beach. It is often said about desert environments that there is in fact a lot of nutritious food around, if only you know what to look for. Rincewind mused on this as he pulled a plate of chocolate-covered sponge cakes from their burrow. They had dried coconut flakes on them. He turned the plate cautiously. Well, you couldn't argue with it. He was finding food in the desert. In fact, he was even finding dessert in the desert. Perhaps it was some special talent hitherto udiscovered by the kind people who had occasionally shared their food with him in the last few months. They hadn't eaten this sort of thing. They'd ground up seeds and dug up skinny yams and eaten things with more eyeballs than the Watch had found after that business with Medley the Medical Kleptomaniac. So something was going right for him. Out here in the red-hot wilderness something wanted him to stay alive. This was a worrying thought. No one ever wanted him alive for something nice. This was Rincewind after several months: his wizardly robe was quite short now. Bits had been torn off or used as string or, after some particularly resistant hors d'oeuvres, as bandages. It showed his knees, and wizards are nowhere near championship standard at knees. They tend to appear, as the book might put it, a knobbly savage. But he'd kept his hat. He'd woven a new wide brim for it, and he'd had to restore the crown once or twice with fresh bits of robe, and most of the sequins had been replaced with bits of shell stitched on with grass, but it was still his hat, the same old hat. A wizard without a hat was just a sad man with a suspicious taste in clothes. A wizard without a hat wasn't anyone. Although this particular wizard had a hat, he didn't have keen enough eyes to see the drawing appear on a red rock half hidden in the scrub. It started off like a bird. Then, without at any time being other than smears of ochre and charcoal that had been there for years, it began to change shape . . . He set off towards the distant mountains. They'd been in view for several days. He hadn't the faintest idea if they represented a sensible direction but at least they were one. The ground shivered underfoot. It had been doing that once or twice a day for a while, and that was another odd thing, because this didn't look like volcano country. This was the kind of country where, if you watched a large cliff for a few hundred years, you might see a rock drop off and you'd talk about it for ages. Everything about it said that it had got over all the more energetic geological exercises a long time ago and was a nice quiet country which, in other circumstances, a man might be at home in. He became aware after a while that a kangaroo was watching him from the top of a small rock. He'd seen the things before, bounding away through the bushes. They didn't usually hang around when there were humans about. This one was stalking him. They were vegetarian, weren't they? It wasn't as though he was wearing green. Finally it sprang out of the bushes and landed in front of him. It brushed one ear with a paw, and gave Rincewind a meaningful look. It brushed the other ear with the other paw, and wrinkled its nose. 'Yes, fine, good,' said Rincewind. He started to edge away, and then stopped. After all, it was just a big . . . well, rabbit, with a long tail and the kind of feet you normally see associated with red noses and baggy pants. 'I'm not frightened of you,' he said. 'Why should I be frightened of you?' 'Well,' said the kangaroo, 'I could kick your stomach out through your neck.' 'Ah. You can talk?' 'You're a quick one,' said the kangaroo. It rubbed an ear again. 'Something wrong?' said Rincewind. 'No, that's the kangaroo language. I'm trying it out.' 'What, one scratch for "yes", one for "no"? That sort of thing?' The kangaroo scratched an ear, and then remembered itself. 'Yep,' it said. It wrinkled its nose. 'And that wrinkling?' said Rincewind. 'Oh, that means "Come quick, someone's fallen down a deep hole," ' said the kangaroo. 'That one gets used a lot?' 'You'd be amazed.' 'And . . . what's kangaroo for "You are needed for a quest of the utmost importance"?' said Rincewind, with guileful innocence. 'You know, it's funny you should ask that—' The sandals barely moved. Rincewind rose from them like a man leaving the starting blocks, and when he landed his feet were already making running movements in the air. After a while the kangaroo came alongside and accompanied him in a series of easy bounds. 'Why are you running away without even listening to what I have to say?' 'I've had long experience of being me,' panted Rincewind. 'I know what's going to happen. I'm going to be dragged into things that shouldn't concern me. And you're just a hallucination caused by rich food on an empty stomach, so don't you try to stop me!' 'Stop you?' said the kangaroo. 'When you're heading in the right direction?' Rincewind tried to slow down, but his method of running was very efficiently based on the idea that stopping was the last thing he'd do. Legs still moving, he ran out over the empty air and plunged into the void. The kangaroo looked down and, with a certain amount of satisfaction, wrinkled its nose. 'Archchancellor!' Ridcully awoke, and sat up. The Lecturer in Recent Runes was hurrying up, out of breath. The Bursar and I went for a walk along the beach,' he said. 'And can you guess where we ended up?' 'In Kiddling Street, Quirm,' said Ridcully tartly, brushing an exploring beetle off his beard. 'That little bit by the teashop, with the trees in it.' That's astonishing, Archchancellor. Because, you know, in fact, we didn't. We wound up back here. We're on a tiny island. Were you having a rest?' 'A few moments' cogitating,' said Ridcully. 'Any idea where we are yet, Mister Stibbons?' Ponder looked up from his notebook. 'I won't be able to work that out precisely until sundown, sir. But I think we're pretty close to the Rim.' 'And I think we found where the Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography has been camping, said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. He rummaged in a deep pocket. There was a camp, and a fireplace. Bamboo furniture and whatnot. Socks on a washing line. And this.' He pulled out the remains of a small notebook. It was standard UU issue. Ridcully would never let anyone have a new one until they'd filled up every page on both sides. 'It was just lying there,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'I'm afraid ants have been eating it.' Ridcully flicked it open and read the first page. ' "Some interesting observations on Mono Island," ' he said. ' "A most singular place." ' He flicked through the rest of the book. 'Just a list of plants and fishes,' he said. 'Doesn't look all that special to me, but then I ain't a geography man. Why's he callin' it Mono Island?' 'It means One Island,' said Ponder. 'Well, you've just told me it is one island,' said Ridcully. 'Anyway, I can see several more out there. Severe lack of imagination, I suggest.' He tucked the notebook into his robe. 'Right, then. No sign of the chap himself?' 'Strangely, no.' 'Probably went swimming and was eaten by a pineapple,' said Ridcully. 'How's the Librarian doing, Mister Stibbons? Comfortable, is he?' 'You should know, sir,' said Ponder. 'You've been sitting on him for three-quarters of an hour.' Ridcully looked down at the deckchair. It was covered with red fur. 'This is—?' 'Yes, sir.' 'I thought perhaps our geography man had brought it with him.' 'Not, er, with the black toenails, sir.' Ridcully peered further. 'Should I get up, do you think?' 'Well, he is a deckchair, sir. So being sat on is a perfectly normal activity for him, I suppose.' 'We must find a cure, Stibbons. This is too strange—' 'Coo-ee, gentlemen!' There was activity in front of the window. It centred around a vision in pink, although admittedly the sort of vision associated with the more erratic kind of hallucinogen. In theory there is no dignified way for a lady of a certain age to climb through a window, but nevertheless this one was attempting it. In fact she moved with more than dignity, which is something that is given away free with kings and bishops; what she had was respectability, which is home-made out of cast iron. However, at some point she would have to show a bit of ankle, and she was wedged awkwardly on the sill while trying to prevent this from happening. The Senior Wrangler coughed. If he had been wearing a tie he would have straightened it. 'Ah,' said Ridcully. 'The inestimable Mrs Whitlow. Someone go and give her a hand, Stibbons.' 'I'll help,' said the Senior Wrangler, just a little faster than he meant.[12] The University's housekeeper turned and spoke to someone unseen beyond the window and then turned back, her shouting-at-subordinates expression briefly visible before i: was eclipsed by her much sunnier talking-to-wiz-ards one. The Chair of Indefinite Studies had once upset the Senior Wrangler by saying that the housekeeper had a face full of chins, but there was a glossiness about her that put some people in mind of a candle that had been kept in the warm for too long. There wasn't anything approaching a straight line anywhere on Mrs Whitlow, until she found that something hadn't been dusted properly, when you could use her lips as a ruler. Most of the Faculty walked in dread of her. She had strange powers that they couldn't quite get a grip on, like the ability to get the beds made and the windows washed. A wizard who could wield a staff crackling with power against dreadful monsters from some ghastly region was nevertheless quite capable of picking up a feather duster by the wrong end and seriously injuring himself with it. At Mrs Whitlow's whim people's clothes got washed and socks got darned.[13]If anyone annoyed her, they found their study spring-cleaned more often than was good for them, and since to a wizard his room is as personal an item as his trouser pockets this was a terrible vengeance. 'Ai just thought you gentlemen would like a morning snack,' she said, as the wizards helped her down. 'So Ai took the liberty of getting the gels to put together a cold collation. Ai'll just go and fetch it . . .' The Archchancellor stood up hastily. 'Well done, Mrs Whitlow.' 'Er . . . a morning snack?' said the Senior Wrangler. 'It looks like mid-afternoon to me . . .' His tone made it clear that if Mrs Whitlow wanted it to be the morning, he wasn't going to cause any trouble. 'Speed of light crossing the Disc,' said Ponder. 'We are close to the Rim, I'm sure. I'm trying to remember how you tell the time by looking at the sun.' 'I should leave it for a while,' said the Senior Wrangler, squinting under his hand. 'It's too bright to see the numbers at the moment.' Ridcully nodded happily. I'm sure we could all do with a snack,' he said. 'Something suitable for the beach, perhaps.' 'Cold pork and mustard,' said the Dean, waking up. 'Possibly some beer,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'And have we got any of those pies, you know, the ones with the egg inside them?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'Although I must say I've always thought that it was rather cruel to the chicken—' There was a soft little sound, very similar to the one you get, aged around seven, when you stick your finger in your mouth and flick it out again quickly and think it is incredibly funny. Ponder turned his head, dreading the sight he was about to see. Mrs Whitlow had a tray of cutlery in one hand and was prodding ineffectually at the air with the stick that she held in the other. 'Ai only moved it to get things through,' she said. 'Now Ai can't seem to quate find where the silly thing is supposed to go.' Where there had been a dark rectangle opening into the geographer's dingy study, there was now only waving palms and sunlit sand. Strictly speaking, it could be said to be an improvement. It depended on your point of view. Rincewind surfaced, gasping for breath. He'd fallen into a waterhole. It was in . . . well, it looked as though once there had been a cave, and the roof had collapsed. There was a big circle of blue right above him. Rocks had fallen down here, and sand had blown in, and seeds had taken root. Cool, damp and green . . . the place was a little oasis, tucked away from the sun and the wind. He pulled himself out of the water and looked around while he drained off. Vines had grown among the rocks. A few small trees had managed to take root in the crack. There was even a little bit of a beach. By the look of the stains on the rocks, the water had once been a lot higher. And there . . . Rincewind sighed. Wasn't that just typical? You got some quiet little beauty spot miles from anywhere, and there was always some graffiti artist ready to spoil it. It was like that time when he was hiding out in the Morpork Mountains, and right in the back of one of the deepest caves some vandal had drawn loads of stupid bulls and antelopes. Rincewind had been so disgusted he'd wiped them off. And they'd left lots of old bones and junk lying around. Some people had no idea how to behave. Here, they'd covered the rock walls with drawings in white, red and black. Animals again, Rincewind noticed. They didn't even look particularly realistic. He stopped, water dripping off him, in front of one. Someone had probably wanted to draw a kangaroo. There were the ears and the tail and the clown feet. But they looked alien, and there were so many lines and cross-hatchings that the figure seemed . . . odd. It looked as though the artist hadn't just wanted to draw a kangaroo from the outside but had wanted to show the inside as well, and then had wanted to show the kangaroo last year and today and next week and also what it was thinking, all at the same time, and had set out to do the whole thing with some ochre and a stick of charcoal. It seemed to move in his head. He blinked, but it still hurt. His eyes seemed to want to wander off in different directions. Rincewind hurried further along the cave, ignoring the rest of the paintings. The piled rubble of the collapsed ceiling reached nearly to the surface, but there was space on the other side, going on into darkness. It looked as though he was in a piece of tunnel that had collapsed. 'You walked right past it,' said the kangaroo. He turned. It was standing on the little beach. 'I didn't see you get down here,' said Rincewind. 'How did you get down here?' 'Come on, I've got to show you something. You can call me Scrappy, if you like.' 'Why?' 'We're mates, ain't we? I'm here to help you.' 'Oh, dear.' 'Can't make it alone across this land, mate. How d'you think you've survived so far? Water's bloody hard to find out here these days.' 'Oh, I don't know, I just keep falling into—' Rincewind stopped. 'Yeah,' said the kangaroo. 'Strike you as odd, does it?' 'I thought I was just naturally lucky,' said Rincewind. He thought about what he'd just said. 'I must have been crazy.' There weren't even flies down here. There was the occasional faint ripple on the water, and that wasn't comforting, since there wasn't apparently anything to stir the surface. Up above, the sun was torching the ground and the flies swarmed like, well, flies. 'Why isn't there anyone else here?' he said. 'Come and see,' said the kangaroo. Rincewind raised his hands and backed away. 'Are we talking teeth and stings and fangs?' 'Just look at that painting there, mate.' 'What, the one of the kangaroo?' 'Which one's that, mate?' Rincewind looked along the wall. The kangaroo picture wasn't where he remembered it. 'I could've sworn—' 'That'sthe one I want you to look at, over there.' Rincewind looked at the stone. What it showed, outlined in red ochre, were dozens of hands. He sighed. 'Oh, right,' he said, wearily. 'I see the problem. Exactly the same thing happens to me.' 'What're you talking about, mister?' 'It's just the same with me when I try to take snaps with an iconograph,' said Rincewind. 'You set up a nice picture, the demon paints away, and when you look at it, whoops, you had your thumb in the way. I must have got a dozen pictures of my thumb. No, I can see your lad there, doing his painting, in a bit of a hurry, got his brush all ready then, splosh, he'd forgotten to take his hand off the—' 'No. It's the painting underneath I'm talking about, mister.' Rincewind looked closer. There were fainter lines there, which you'd think were just flaws in the rock if you weren't looking. Rincewind squinted. Other lines seemed to fit . . . Yes, someone had painted figures . . . They were . . . He blew away some sand. Yes, they were . . . . . . curiously familiar . . . 'Yes,' said Scrappy, his voice apparently coming from a distance. 'Look a bit like you, don't they . . .?' 'But they're—' he began. He straightened up. 'How long have these paintings been here?' 'Well, lessee,' said the kangaroo. 'Out of the sun and the weather, nothing to disturb 'em . . . Twenty thousand years?' 'That's not right!' 'Nah, true, prob'ly thirty thousand, in a nice sheltered spot like this.' 'But these are . . . That's my . . .' 'O' course, when I say thirty thousand years,' said the kangaroo, 'I mean it depends how you look at it. Even them hand paintings on the top've been there five thousand years, see. And those faint ones . . . Oh, yes, got to be pretty old, tens of thousands of years, except—' 'Except what?' They weren't here last week, mate.' 'You're saying they've been here for ages . . . but not for very long?' 'See? I knew you was clever.' 'And now you're going to tell me what the hell you're talking about?' 'Right.' 'Excuse me, I'll just find something to eat.' Rincewind lifted up a rock. There were a couple of jam sandwiches underneath. The wizards were civilized men of considerable education and culture. When faced with being inadvertently marooned on a desert island they understood immediately that the first thing to do was place the blame. 'It really was very clear!' shouted Ridcully, waving his hand frantically in the air at the place where the window had been. 'And I put a sign on it!' 'Yes, but you've got a "Do Not Disturb" sign nailed to your study door,' said the Senior Wrangler, 'and you still expect Mrs Whitlow to bring you your tea in the mornings!' 'Gentlemen, please!' said Ponder Stibbons. 'We've got to sort some things out right now!' 'Yes indeed!' roared the Dean. 'And it was his fault! The sign wasn't large enough!' 'I mean we have to—' 'There are ladies present!' snapped the Senior Wrangler. 'Lady.'Mrs Whitlow uttered the word carefully and with deliberation, like a gambler putting down a winning hand. She stood primly watching them. Her expression said: I'm not worried, because with all these wizards around nothing bad can happen. The wizards adjusted their attitudes. 'Ai do apologize if Ai've done something wrong,' she said. 'Oh, not, not wrong,' said Ridcully quickly. 'Not exactly wrong. As such.' 'Anyone could have done it,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'I could hardly read the lettering myself.' 'And, taking the broad view, it's certainly better to be stuck out here in the fresh air and sunshine than in that stuffy study,' Ridcully went on. 'That's quite a broad view, sir,' said Ponder doubtfully. 'And we'll be back home in two shakes of a lamb's tail,' said Ridcully, beaming. 'Unfortunately, this doesn't look a very agricultural sort of—' Ponder began. 'Figure of speech, Mister Stibbons, figure of speech.' The sun's going down, sir,' Ponder persisted. 'Which means it'll be night time soon.' Ridcully looked nervously at Mrs Whitlow, and then at the sun. 'Is there a problem?' said Mrs Whitlow. 'Oh, good heavens, no!' said Ridcully hastily. 'Ai notice the little hole in the wall doesn't seem to have come back,' said Mrs Whitlow. 'We, er—' 'It's a little prank, is it?' the housekeeper went on. 'Ai'm sure you gentlemen will have your fun, and no mistake.' 'Yes, that's—' 'But Ai should be grateful if you would send me back now, Archchancellor. We're doing the laundry this afternoon, and Ai'm afraid we're having a lot of trouble with the Dean's sheets.' The Dean suddenly knew how a mosquito feels in the beam of a searchlight. 'We'll sort this out directly, never fear, Mrs Whitlow,' said Ridcully, not taking his eyes off the wretched Dean. 'In the meantime, why don't you take a seat and enjoy the rather wonderful sheets, I mean sunshine?' There was a clack as the deckchair folded itself up. Then it sneezed. 'Ah, back with us again, Librarian,' Ridcully went on, as the orang-utan sprawled in the sand. 'Help him up, please, Mister Stibbons. A word to the rest of you, please. If you'll excuse us a moment, Mrs Whitlow? Faculty meeting . . .' The wizards went into a huddle. 'It was tomato sauce, all right?' said the Dean hurriedly. 'I just happened to be having a snack in bed and you know how that stuff stains!' 'I'm sure we're not at all interested in the state of your sheets, Dean,' said Ridcully. 'No, indeed,' said the Senior Wrangler brightly. 'Not us,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, slapping the Dean on the back. 'We have to get back,' said Ridcully. 'We can't spend the night alone with Mrs Whitlow. It wouldn't be decent.' 'I don't see why anyone should make a fuss about a bit of tomato sauce. I at least cleaned all the beans off—' 'Well, we're not actually alone, are we? Not as such,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'I mean, there's seven of us, not including the Librarian.' 'Yes, but we're all alone together,' said Ridcully urgently. 'There could be Talk.' 'What about?' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, who sometimes lagged behind. 'Youknow,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'Seven men and one woman . . . It doesn't bear thinking about . . .' 'Well, I for one will certainly veto any suggestion about ordering another six women,' said the Chair firmly. 'Perhaps the hole will open again?' said the Senior Wrangler. 'I doubt it,' said Ridcully. 'Ponder says that our coming through probably altered the thaumo-static balance. What do you think, Dean?' 'Just tomato sauce,' said the Dean. 'It could have happened to anyone.' 'I meant about our being marooned on this island,' said Ridcully. 'Any ideas, anyone? We must tackle this as a team.' 'What shall we tell Mrs Whitlow?' whispered the Senior Wrangler. 'She thinks this is a prank.' 'Senior Wrangler, we are elderly, wise and experienced wizards,' said Ridcully. 'Students are prankers.' 'Pranksters, possibly,' mumbled Ponder Stibbons. 'Whatever. We do not indulge in pranks.' 'With us it's a fully fledged gold-embossed cock-up or nothing,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'I don't see why people are making such a fuss about a bit of tomato sauce that hardly even shows up,' muttered the Dean. 'No one brought any suitable spells?' said Ridcully. 'At four in the morning? For the beach?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'Of course not.' Then we shall have to fall back on our own resources. There's bound to be a ship along sooner or later. The point is, gentlemen,' he added, 'that we are the product of a university education. I'm quite sure primitive people have no difficulties surviving in a place like this, and think of all the things we have that our rude forefathers lacked.' 'Mrs Whitlow, for a start,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'She wouldn't put up with rudeness of any sort,' the Senior Wrangler agreed. 'Do you know anything about boats, Dean? I believe you got a Brown for rowing when you were slimmer,' said Ridcully. 'Please note that this question did not raise the matter of sheets in any way.' 'Well, indeed, boat-building is not a difficult task,' said the Dean, surfacing. 'Even primitive people can build boats, and we are civilized men, after all.' Then you're head of the Boat-Building Committee,' said Ridcully. 'Senior Wrangler can help you. The rest of you fellows had better see if there's any fresh water. And food. Knock down a few coconuts. That sort of thing.' 'And what will you do, Archchancellor?' said the Senior Wrangler nastily. 'I shall be the Protein Acquisition Committee,' said Ridcully, waving his fishing rod. 'You going to stand here and fish again? What good's that going to do?' 'It might result in a fish dinner, Senior Wrangler.' 'Has anyone got any tobacco?' said the Dean. 'I'm dying for a smoke.' The wizards went off about their tasks, complaining and blaming one another. And just inside the forest, in the leafy debris, roots unfolded and a number of very small plants began to grow like hell . . . 'This is the last continent,' said Scrappy. 'It was . . . put together last, and . . . differently.' 'Looks pretty old to me,' said Rincewind. 'Ancient. Those hills look as old as the hills.' 'They were made thirty thousand years old,' said the kangaroo. 'Come on! They look millions of years old!' 'Yep. Thirty thousand years ago they were made a million years ago. Time here is,' the kangaroo shrugged, 'not the same. It was . . . glued together differently, right?' 'Search me,' said Rincewind. 'I'm a man sitting here listening to a kangaroo. I'm not arguing.' 'I'm trying to find words you might understand,' said the kangaroo reproachfully. 'Good, keep going, you'll get there. Want a jam sandwich? It's gooseberry.' 'No. Strictly herbivore, mate. Listen—' 'Unusual, gooseberry jam. I mean, you don't often see it. Raspberry and strawberry, yes, even blackcurrant. I shouldn't think more than one jar of jam in a hundred is gooseberry. Sorry, do go on.' 'You're taking this seriously, are you?' 'Am I smiling?' 'Have you ever noticed how time goes slower in big spaces?' The sandwich stopped halfway to Rincewind's mouth. 'Actually, that is true. But it only seems slower.' 'So? When this place was made there wasn't much space and time left over to work with, see? He had to bodge them together to make them work harder. Time happens to space and space happens to time—' 'You know, I think there could be plum in it, too?' said Rincewind, with his mouth full. 'And maybe some rhubarb. You'd be amazed how often they do that sort of thing. You know, stuff cheaper fruit in. I met this man in an inn once, he worked for a jam-maker in Ankh-Morpork, and he said they put in any old rubbish and some red dye, and I said what about the raspberry pips, and he said they make them out of wood. Wood! He said they'd got a machine for stamping 'em out. Can you believe that?' 'Will you stop talking about jam and be sensible for a moment!' Rincewind lowered the sandwich. 'Good grief, I hope not,' he said. 'I'm sitting in a cave in a country where everything bites you and it never rains and I'm talking, no offence, to a herbivore that smells of a carpet in a house where there are a lot of excitable puppies, and I've suddenly got this talent for finding jam sandwiches and inexplicable fairy cakes in unexpected places, and I've been shown something very odd in a picture on some old cave wall, and suddenly said kangaroo tells me time and space are all wrong and wants me to be sensible? What, when you get right down to it, is in it for me?' 'Look, this place wasn't finished, right? It wasn't fitted in . . . turned around . . .' The kangaroo looked at Rincewind as if reading his mind, which was the case. 'You know like with a jigsaw puzzle? The last piece is the right shape but you have to turn it round to fit? Right? Now think of the piece as a bloody big continent that's got to be turned around through about nine dimensions and you're home and . . .' 'Dry?' said Rincewind. 'Bloody right!' 'Er . . . I know this may seem like a foolish question,' said Rincewind, trying to dislodge a gooseberry pip from a tooth cavity, 'but why me?' 'It's your fault. You arrived here and suddenly things had always been wrong.' Rincewind looked back towards the wall. The earth trembled again. 'Can you hop that past me again?' he said. 'Something went wrong in the past.' The kangaroo looked at Rincewind's blank, jam-smeared expression, and tried again. 'Your arrival caused a wrong note,' it ventured. 'What in?' The creature waved a paw vaguely. 'All this,' it said. 'You could call it a bloody multi-dimensional knuckle of localized phase space, or maybe you could just call it the song.' Rincewind shrugged. 'I don't mind putting my hand up to killing a few spiders,' he said. 'But it was me or them. I mean some of those come at you at head height—' 'You changed history.' 'Oh, come on, a few spiders don't make that much difference, some of them were using their webs as trampolines, it was a case of "boing" and next moment—' 'No, not history from now on, history that's already happened,' said the kangaroo. 'I've changed things that already happened long ago?' 'Right.' 'By arriving here I changed what's already happened!' 'Yep. Look, time isn't as straightforward as you think—' 'I never thought it was,' said Rincewind. 'And I've been round it a few times . . .' The kangaroo waved a paw expansively. 'It's not just that things in the future can affect things in the past,' he said. 'Things that didn't happen but might have happened can . . . affect things that really happened. Even things that happened and shouldn't have happened and were removed still have, oh, call 'em shadows in time, things left over which interfere with what's going on. Between you and me,' it went on, waggling its ears, 'it's all just held together by spit now. No one's ever got round to tidying it up. I'm always amazed when tomorrow follows today, and that's the truth.' 'Me too,' said Rincewind. 'Oh, me too.' 'Still, no worries, eh?' 'I think I'll lay off the jam,' said Rincewind. He put the sandwich down. 'Why me?' The kangaroo scratched its nose, ' 's got to be someone,' it said. 'And what'm I supposed to do?' said Rincewind. 'Wind it into the world.' 'There's a key?' 'Might be. Depends.' Rincewind turned and looked at the rock pictures again, the pictures that hadn't been there a few weeks ago and then suddenly had always been there. Figures holding long sticks. Figures in long robes. The artist had done a pretty good job of drawing something quite unfamiliar. And in case there was any doubt, you only had to look at what was on their heads. 'Yeah. We call them The Pointy-Heads,' said the kangaroo. 'He's started catching fish,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'That means he'll come over all smug and start asking what plans we've got for making a boat at any minute, you know what he's like.' The Dean looked at some sketches he'd made on a rock. 'How hard can it be to build a boat?' he said. 'People with bones in their noses build boats. And we are the end product of thousands of years of enlightenment. Building a boat is not beyond men like us, Senior Wrangler.' 'Quite, Dean.' 'All we have to do is search this island until we find a book with a title like Practical Boat-building for Beginners.' 'Exactly. It'll be plain sailing after that, Dean. Ahaha.' He glanced up, and swallowed hard. Mrs Whitlow was sitting on a log in the shade, fanning herself with a large leaf. The sight stirred things in the Senior Wrangler. He was not at all sure what they were, but little details like the way something creaked when she moved twanged bits of the Senior Wrangler as well. 'You all right, Senior Wrangler? You look as if the heat is getting to you.' 'Just a little . . . warm, Dean.' The Dean looked past him as he loosened his collar. 'Well, they haven't been long,' he said. The other wizards were walking down the beach. One advantage of a long wizarding robe is that it can be held like an apron, and the Chair of Indefinite Studies was bulging at the front even more than usual. 'Found anything to eat?' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Er . . . yes.' 'Fruit and nuts, I suppose,' grumbled the Dean. 'Er . . . yes, and then again, no,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'Um . . . it's rather odd . . .' The Chair of Indefinite Studies let his burden spill out on to the sand. There were coconuts, other nuts of various sizes, and assorted hairy or knobbly vegetable things. 'All rather primitive,' said the Dean. 'And probably poisonous.' 'Well, the Bursar's been eating things like there's no tomorrow,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. The Bursar burped happily. 'That doesn't mean there will be,' said the Dean. 'What's up with you fellows? You keep looking at one another.' 'Er . . . we've tasted a few things too, Dean,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'Ah, I see the gatherers have returned!' roared Ridcully happily, walking towards them. He waved three fish on a string. 'Anything resembling potatoes in there, chaps?' 'You're not going to believe any of this,' mumbled the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'You're going to accuse us of trickery.' 'What are you talking about?' said the Dean. 'They don't look very tricky to me.' The Chair of Indefinite Studies gave a sigh. 'Have a coconut,' he said. 'Do they go off bang or something?' 'No, nothing like that at all.' The Dean picked up a nut, gave it a suspicious look, and banged it on a stone. It fell into two exact halves. There was no milk to spill out. Inside the husk was a brown inner shell, full of soft white fibres. Ridcully picked up a bit of it and sniffed. 'I don't believe this,' he said. 'That's not natural.' 'So?' said the Dean. 'It's a coconut full of coconut. What's odd about that?' The Archchancellor broke off a piece of the shell and handed it over. It was soft and slightly crumbly. The Dean tasted it. 'Chocolate?' he said. Ridcully nodded. 'Dairy milk, by the taste of it. With a creamy coconut filling.' That's nod poffible,' said the Dean, his cheeks bulging. 'Spit it out, then.' 'I think I might perhaps try a little more,' said the Dean, swallowing. 'In a spirit of enquiry, you understand.' The Senior Wrangler picked up a knobbly bluish nut about the size of a fist and tapped it experimentally. It shattered but was held together because of the gooey contents. The smell was very familiar. A careful taste confirmed it. The wizards regarded the nut's innards in shocked silence. 'It's even got the blue veins,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Yes, we know, we tried one,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies weakly. 'And, after all, there is such a thing as a bread fruit—' 'I've heard of it,' said Ridcully. 'And I might believe there's such a thing as a nat'rally chocolate-covered coconut, because chocolate's a kind of potato—' 'A bean, possibly,' said Ponder Stibbons. 'Whatever. But I damn well don't believe there's such a thing as a mature Lancre Blue runny cheese nut!' He prodded the thing. 'But nature does come up with some very funny coincidences, Archchancellor,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'Why, I myself, as a child, once dug up a carrot which, ahaha, most amusingly looked just like a man with a—' 'Er . . .' said the Dean. It was only a little sound, but it had a certain portentous quality. They turned to look at him. He'd been peeling away the yellowing husk from something like a small bean pod. What he now held— 'Hah, yes, good joke,' said Ridcully. 'They certainly don't grow on—' 'I didn't do anything! Look, it's still got bits of pith and stuff on it!' said the Dean, waving the thing wildly. Ridcully took it, sniffed it, held it up to his ear and shook it, and then said quietly: 'Show me where you found it, will you?' The bush was in a small clearing. Dozens of the little green shoots hung down between its tiny leaves. Each was tipped by a flower, but the flowers were curling up and falling off. The crop was ripe. Multi-coloured beetles zoomed away from the bush as the Dean selected a pod and peeled it open, revealing a slightly damp white cylinder. He examined it for a few seconds, then put one end in his mouth, took a box of matches from a pocket in his hat, and lit up. 'Quite a smooth smoke,' he said. His hand shook slightly as he took the cigarette out of his mouth and blew a smoke ring. 'Cork filter, too,' he said. 'Er . . . well, both tobacco and cork are naturally occurring vegetable products,' quavered the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'Chair?' said Ridcully. 'Yes, Archchancellor?' 'Shut up, will you?' 'Yes, Archchancellor.' Ponder Stibbons broke open a cork tip. There was a tiny ring of what well might have been— 'Seeds,' he said. 'But that can't be right, because—' The Dean, wreathed in blue smoke, had been staring at the nearby vines. 'Has it occurred to anyone else that those pods are remarkably rectangular?' he said. 'Go for it, Dean,' said Ridcully. A brown outer husk was pulled aside. 'Ah,' said the Dean. 'Biscuits. Just the thing with cheese.' 'Er . . ,' said Ponder. He pointed. Just beyond the bush a couple of boots lay on the ground. Rincewind ran his fingers over the cave wall. The ground shook again. 'What's causing that?' he said. 'Oh, some people say it's an earthquake, some say it's the country drying up, others say it's a giant snake rushing through the ground,' said Scrappy. 'Which is it?' The wrong sort of question.' They definitely looked like wizards, thought Rincewind. They had that basic cone shape familiar to anyone who had been to Unseen University. They were holding staffs. Even with the crude materials available to them the ancient artists had managed to portray the knobs on the ends. But UU hadn't even existed thirty thousand years ago . . . Then he noticed, for the first time, the drawing right at the end of the cave. There were a lot of the ochre handprints on top of it, almost – and the thought expanded in his mind in a sneaky way -as though someone had thought that they could hold it down on to the rock, prevent it – this was a silly thought, he knew – prevent it from getting out. He brushed away some dust. 'Oh, no,' he mumbled. It was an oblong box. The artist hadn't got the hang of conventional perspective, but there was no doubt that he'd tried to paint hundreds of little legs. 'That's my Luggage!' 'Always the same, right?' said Scrappy, behind him. 'You arrive okay and your luggage ends up somewhere else.' Thousands of years in the past?' 'Could be a valuable antique.' 'It's got my clothes in it!' 'They'll probably be back in style, then.' 'You don't understand! It's a magical box! It's supposed to end up where I am!' 'It probably is where you are. Just not when.' 'What? Oh.' 'I told you time and space were all stirred up, didn't I? You wait till you're on your journey. There's places where there's several times happening at once and places where there's hardly any time at all, and times when there's hardly any place. You've got to sort it out, right?' 'What, like shuffling cards?' said Rincewind. He made a mental note about 'on your journey'. 'Yep.' That's impossible!' 'Y'know, I'd have said so too. But you will do it. Now, you'll have to concentrate about this bit, right?' Scrappy took a deep breath. 'I know you're going to do it because you've already done it.' Rincewind put his head in his hands. 'I told you about time and space here being mixed up,' said the kangaroo. 'I've already saved the country, have I?' 'Yep.' 'Oh, good. Well, that wasn't so difficult. I don't want much – a medal, perhaps, the grateful thanks of the population, maybe a small pension and a ticket home . . .' He looked up. 'I'm not going to get any of that, though, am I?' 'No, because—' '—I haven't already done it yet ?' 'Exactly! You're getting the hang of it! You have to go and do what we know you're going to do because you've already done it. In fact, if you hadn't done it already I wouldn't be here to make sure it gets done. So you'd better do it.' 'Facing terrible dangers?' The kangaroo waved a paw. 'Slightly terrible,' it said. 'And go for many miles over parched and trackless terrain?' 'Well, yeah. We haven't got any of the other sort.' Rincewind brightened up slightly. 'And I'll meet comrades whose strengths and skills will be a great help to me?' 'Don't bet on it.' 'Any chance of a magic sword?' 'What would you do with a magic sword?' 'Fair enough. Fair enough. Forget the magic sword. But I've got to have something. Cloak of invisibility, potion of strength, something like that . . .' That stuff's for people who know how to use them, mister. You'll have to rely on your native wit.' 'I've got nothing? What sort of quest is that? Can't you give me any hints?' 'You may have to drink some beer,' said the kangaroo. It cringed back for a moment, as if confident of facing a storm of objections. Rincewind said: 'Oh. Right. Well, I know how to do that. What direction am I supposed to go?' 'Oh, you'll find it.' 'And when I get to where I'm going, what am I supposed to do?' 'It'll . . . be obvious, right?' 'And how will I know I've done it?' 'The Wet will come back.' 'The wet what?' 'It'll rain.' 'I thought it never rained here,' said Rincewind. 'See? I knew you were smart.' The sun was setting. The rocks around the edge of the cave glowed red. Rincewind stared at them for a while, and reached a brave decision. 'I'm not the man to shirk when the fate of whole countries is in the balance,' he said. 'I will make a start at dawn to complete this task which I have already completed, by hoki, or my name isn't Rincewand!' 'Rincewind,' said the kangaroo. 'Indeed!' 'Well said, mate. Then I should get some sleep, if I were you. Could be a busy day tomorrow.' 'I've not been found wanting when duty calls,' said Rincewind. He reached into a hollow log and, after some rummaging around, pulled out a plate of egg and chips. 'See you at dawn, then.' Ten minutes later he stretched out on the sand with the log as his pillow, and looked up at the purple sky. Already a few stars were coming out. Now, there was something . . . Oh, yes. The kangaroo was lying down on the other side of the waterhole. Rincewind raised his head. 'You said something about when "he" created this place, and you talked about "him" . . .' 'Yep.' 'Only . . . I'm pretty sure I've met the Creator. Short bloke. Does all his own snowflakes.' 'Yeah? And when did you meet him?' 'When he was making the world, as a matter of fact.' Rincewind decided to refrain from mentioning that he'd dropped a sandwich into a rockpool at the time. People don't like to hear that they may have evolved from somebody's lunch. 'I get around quite a lot,' he added. 'Are you coming the raw prawn?' 'What? Oh, no. Certainly not. Coming a raw prawn? Not me. That's something I never do. Or even cooked prawns. Or crustaceans of any sort, especially in rockpools. Not me. Er . . . what was it that you actually meant?' 'Well, he didn't create this place,' said Scrappy, ignoring him. 'This was done after.' 'Can that happen?' 'Why not?' 'Well, it's not like, you know, building on over the stables, is it?' said Rincewind. 'Someone just wanders along when a world's all finished and slings down an extra continent?' 'Happens all the time, mate,' said Scrappy. 'Bloody hell, yeah. Why not, anyway? If other creators go around leaving ruddy great empty oceans, someone's bound to fill 'em up, right? Does a world good, too, having a fresh look, new ideas, new ways.' Rincewind stared up at the stars. He had a mental vision of someone walking from world to world, sneaking in extra lands when no one was looking. 'Yes indeed,' he said. 'I for one would not have thought of making all the snakes deadly, and all the spiders deadlier than the snakes. And putting pockets on everything? Great idea.' 'There you go, then,' said Scrappy. He was hardly visible now, as the dark filled up the cave. 'Made a lot of them, has he?' 'Yep.' 'Why?' 'So's maybe at least one of them won't get mucked up. Always puts kangaroos on 'em, too. Sort of a signature, you might say.' 'Does this Creator have a name?' 'Nope. He's just the man who carries the sack that contains the whole universe.' 'A leather sack?' 'Sounds like him,' the kangaroo agreed. The whole universe in one small sack?' 'Yep.' Rincewind settled back. 'I'm glad I'm not religious,' he said. 'It must be very complicated.' After another five minutes he began to snore. After half an hour he moved his head slightly. The kangaroo didn't seem to be around. With almost super-Rincewind speed he was upright and scrambling up the fallen rocks, over the lip of the cave and into the dark oven of the night. He sighted on a random star and got into his stride, ignoring the bushes that lashed at his bare legs. Hah! He Was not going to be found wanting when duty called. He did not intend to be found at all. In the cave the water in the pool rippled under the starlight, the expanding circles lapping against the sand. On the wall was an ancient drawing of a kangaroo, in white and red and yellow. The artist had tried to achieve on stone what might better have been attempted with eight dimensions and a large particle accelerator; he'd tried to include not just the kangaroo now but also the kangaroo in the past, and the kangaroo in the future and, in short, not what the kangaroo looked like but what the kangaroo was. Among other things, as it faded, it was grinning. Among the complexities that made up the intelligent biped known to the rest of the world as Mrs Whitlow was this: there was no such thing as an informal meal in Mrs Whitlow's world. If Mrs Whitlow made sandwiches even just for herself she would put a sprig of parsley on the top. She placed a napkin on her lap to drink a cup of tea. If the table could have a vase of flowers and a placemat with a tasteful view of something nice, so much the better. It was unthinkable that she should eat a meal balanced on her knees. In fact it was unthinkable to think of Mrs Whitlow as having knees, although the Senior Wrangler had to fan himself with his hat occasionally. So the beach had been scoured to find enough bits of driftwood to make a very rough table, and some suitable rocks to use as seats. The Senior Wrangler dusted one off with his hat. 'There we are, Mrs Whitlow . . .' The housekeeper frowned. 'Ai'm really sure it's Not Done for the staff to eat with the gentlemen,' she said. 'Be our guest, Mrs Whitlow,' said Ridcully. 'Ai really can't. It does not Do to get ideas above one's station,' said Mrs Whitlow. 'Ai would never be able to look you in the face again, sir. Ai hope Ai know my Place.' Ridcully looked blank for a moment, and then said quietly: 'Faculty meeting, gentlemen?' The wizards went into another huddle a little way along the beach. 'What are we supposed to do about that?' 'I think it's very commendable of her. Her world is Below Stairs, after all.' 'Yes, very well, but it's not as if there're any stairs on this island.' 'Could we build some?' 'We can't let the poor woman sit off by herself somewhere, that is my point.' 'We spent ages on that table!' 'And did you notice something about the driftwood, Archchancellor?' 'Looked like perfectly ordinary wood to me, Stibbons. Branches, treetrunks and whatnot.' That's the strange thing, sir, because—' 'It's very simple, Ridcully. I hope that, as gentlemen, we know how to treat a woman—' 'Lady.' 'Let me just say that was unnecessarily sarcastic, Dean,' said Ridcully. 'Very well. If the Prophet Ossory won't go to the mountain, the mountain must go to the Prophet Ossory. As they say in Klatch.' He paused. He knew his wizards. 'I believe, in fact, that it's in Omnia that—' Ponder began. Ridcully waved a hand. 'Something like that, anyway.' And that is why Mrs Whitlow dined alone at the table, while the wizards sat around the fire a little way away, except that very frequently one of them would lumber over to offer her some choice bit of nature's bounty. It was obvious that starvation would not be a problem on this island, although dyspepsia and gout might be. Fish was the main course. Frenzied searching had failed to locate a steak bush so far but had found, in addition to numerous more conventional fruits, a pasta bush, a sort of squash that contained something very much like custard and, to Ridcully's disgust, a pineapple-like plant the fruit of which was, when the husk had been stripped away, a large plum pudding. 'Obviously it's not really a plum pudding,' he protested. 'We just think it's like a plum pudding because it tastes exactly like a . . . plum pudding . . .' His voice trailed off. 'It's got plums and currants in it,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Pass the custard squash, will you?' 'My point is that we only think they look like currants and plums—' 'No, we also think they taste like currants and plums,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Look, Archchancellor, there's no mystery. Obviously wizards have been here before. This is the result of perfectly ordinary magic. Perhaps our lost geographer did a bit of experimenting. Or it's sourcery, perhaps. Some of the things that got created in the old days, well, a cigarette bush is very small beer by comparison, eh?' 'Talking of small beer . . .' said the Dean, waving his hand, 'pass me the rum, will you?' 'Mrs Whitlow doesn't approve of strong liquor,' said the Senior Wrangler. The Dean glanced at the housekeeper, who was daintily eating a banana, a feat which is quite hard to do. He put down the coconut shell. 'Well, she . . . I am . . . I don't see . . . well, damn it all, that's all I've got to say.' 'Or bad language,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'I vote we take some of those bees back with us,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'Marvellous little creatures. No footling around being content with making boring honey. You just reach up and pick one of these handy little wax containers and bob's your uncle.' 'She takes all the peel off slowly before she eats it. Oh, dear . . .' 'Are you all right, Senior Wrangler? Is the heat getting to you?' 'What? Eh? Hmm? Oh, nothing. Yes. Bees. Wonderful things.' They glanced up at a couple of the bees, who were busying themselves around a flowering bush in the last of the light. They were leaving little black smoke trails. 'Shooting around like little rockets,' said the Archchancellor. 'Amazing.' 'I'm still worried about those boots,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'You'd think the man had been pulled right out of them.' It's a tiny island, man,' said Ridcully. 'All we've seen is birds, a few little squeaky things and a load of insects. You don't get big fierce animals on islands you can practically throw a stone across. He must've just . . . felt a bit carefree. It's a bit hot for boots here, anyway.' 'So why haven't we seen him?' 'Hah! He's probably lying low,' said the Dean. 'Ashamed to face us. Keeping a nice sunny island in your study is against University rules.' 'Is it?' said Ponder. 'I've never seen it mentioned. How long has it been a rule?' 'Ever since I've had to sleep in a freezing bedroom,' said the Dean, darkly. 'Pass the bread-and-butter-pudding fruit, will you?' 'Ook,' said the Librarian. 'Ah, nice to see you your old shape, old chap,' said Ridcully. 'Try and keep it up for longer this time, eh?' 'Ook.' The Librarian was sitting behind a pile of fruit. Normally he wouldn't question such a perfect piece of positioning, but now even the bananas were bothering him. There was the same sensation of wrongness. There were long yellow ones, and stubby ones, and red ones, and fat brown ones— He stared at the remains of the fish. There was a big silver one, and a fat red one, and a small grey one, and a flat one a bit like a plaice— 'Obviously some sourcerer landed here and wanted to make the place more homely,' the Senior Wrangler was saying, but he sounded far off. The Librarian was counting. The plum-pudding plant, the custard-squash vine, the chocolate coconut— He turned his head to look at the trees. And now he knew what he was looking for, he couldn't see it anywhere. The Senior Wrangler stopped talking as the ape scrambled to his knuckles and sped back to the high-tide line. The wizards watched in silence as he scrabbled through the heaped-up seashells. He came back with a double handful, which he dropped triumphantly in front of the Arch-chancellor. 'Ook!' 'What's that, old chap?' 'Ook!' 'Yes, very pretty, but what's—' 'OOK!' The Librarian seemed to remember what kind of intellects he was dealing with. He held up a finger and looked at Ridcully enquiringly. 'Ook?' 'Still not quite with you—' Two fingers went up. 'Ook ook?' 'Not sure I fully—' 'Ook ook ook!' Ponder Stibbons looked at the three fingers now raised. 'I think he's counting, sir.' The Librarian handed him a banana. 'Ah, the old "How Many Fingers Am I Holding Up?" game,' said the Dean. 'But usually we all have to have a bit more to drink first—' The Librarian waved his hand at the fish, at the meal, at the shells and at the background of trees. One finger stabbed at the sky. 'Ook!' 'It's all one to you?' said Ridcully. 'It's one big place? It's one to remember?' The Librarian opened his mouth again, and then sneezed. A very large red seashell lay on the sand. 'Oh, dear,' said Ponder Stibbons. 'That's interesting,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'He's turned into quite a good specimen of the giant conch. You can get a marvellous sound out of one of them if you blow in the pointy end . . .' 'Volunteers?' said the Dean, almost under his breath. 'Oh, dear,' said Ponder again. 'What's up with you?' said the Dean. 'There's only one,' said Ponder. 'That's what he was trying to tell us.' 'One what?' said Ridcully. 'Of everything, sir. There's only one of everything.' It was, he thought later, a good dramatic line. People ought to have looked at one another in growing and horrified realization and said things like, 'By George, you know, he's right!' But these were wizards, capable of thinking very big thoughts in very small chunks. 'Don't be daft, man,' said Ridcully. There's millions of the damn shells, for a start.' 'Yes,sir, but look, they're all different, sir. All the trees we found . . . there was only one of each sort, sir. Lots of banana trees, but they all produce different types of bananas. There was only one cigarette tree, wasn't there?' 'Lots of bees, though,' said Ridcully. 'But only one swarm,' said Ponder. 'Millionsof beetles,' said the Dean. 'I don't think I've seen two alike, sir.' 'Well, that's interesting ,' said Ridcully, 'but I don't see—' 'One of anything doesn't work, sir,' said Ponder. 'It can't breed.' 'Yes, but they're only trees, Stibbons.' 'Trees need males and females too, sir.' 'They do?' 'Yes, sir. Sometimes they're different bits of the same tree, sir.' 'What?You sure?' 'Yes, sir. My uncle grew nuts, sir.' 'Keep it down, boy, keep it down! Mrs Whitlow might hear you!' Ponder was taken aback. 'What, sir? But . . . well . . . she is Mrs Whitlow, sir . . .' 'What's that got to do with the price of feet?' 'I mean . . . presumably there was a Mr Whitlow, sir?' Ridcully's face went wooden for a moment and his lips moved as he tried out various responses. Finally he settled, weakly, for: 'That's as maybe, but it all sounds pretty mucky to me.' 'I'm afraid that's nature for you, sir.' 'I used to like walking through the woods on a nice spring morning, Stibbons. You mean to say the trees were at it like knives the whole time?' Ponder's horticultural knowledge found itself a little exhausted at this point. He tried to remember what he could about his uncle, who'd spent most of his life up a ladder. 'I, er, think camel-hair brushes are sometimes involved—' he began, but Ridcully's expression told him that this wasn't a welcome fact, so he went on, 'Anyway, sir, ones don't work. And there's another thing, sir. Who smokes the ciga rettes? I mean, if the bush just hopes that butts are going to be dropped around the place, who does it think is going to smoke them?' 'What?' Ponder sighed. The point about fruit, sir, is that it's a kind of lure. A bird'll eat the fruit and then, er, drop the seeds somewhere. It's the way the plant spreads its seeds around. But we've only seen birds and a few lizards on this island, so how—' 'Ah, I see what you mean,' said Ridcully. 'You're thinking: what kind of bird stops flyin' around for a quick smoke?' 'A puffin,' said the Bursar. 'Glad to see you're still with us, Bursar,' said Ridcully, without looking round. 'Birds don't smoke, sir. You've got to ask yourself what's in it for the bush, you see? If there were people here, well, I suppose you might get a sort of nicotine tree eventually, because they'd smoke the cigarettes – I mean,' he corrected himself, because he prided himself on his logical thought, 'these things that look like cigarettes, and stub them out around the place, thus spreading the seeds which are in the filter. Some seeds need heat to germinate, sir. But if there aren't any people, the bush doesn't make any sense.' 'We'repeople,' said the Dean. 'And I like a smoke after supper. Everyone knows that.' 'Yes, but with respect, sir, we've only been here a couple of hours and I doubt whether the news has spread all the way to small islands,' said Ponder patiently, and with, as it turned out, one hundred per cent inaccuracy. That's probably not long enough for one to evolve.' 'Are you tellin' me', said Ridcully, like a man with something on his mind, 'that you think when you eat an apple you're helping it to . . .' He stopped. 'It was bad enough about the trees.' He sniffed. 'I shall stick to eating fish. At least they make their own arrangements. At a decent distance, I understand. And you know what I think about evolution, Mister Stibbons. If it happens, and frankly I've always considered it a bit of a fairy story, it has to happen fast. Look at lemmings, for one thing.' 'Lemmings, sir?' 'Right. The little blighters keep chargin' over cliffs, right? And how many have ever changed into birds on the way down, eh? Eh?' 'Well, none, of cou—' 'There's my point,' said Ridcully triumphantly. 'And it's no good one of them on the way down thinking, "Hey, maybe I should waggle my claws a bit," is it? No, what it ought to do is decide really positively about growing some real wings.' 'What, in a couple of seconds? While they're plunging towards the rocks?' 'Best time.' 'But lemmings don't just turn into birds, sir!' 'Lucky for them if they could, though, eh?' There was a roar, far off in the little jungle. It sounded rather like a foghorn. 'Are you sure there aren't any dangerous creatures on this island?' said the Dean. 'I think I saw some prawns,' said the Senior Wrangler nervously. 'No, the Archchancellor was right, it's far too small,' said Ponder, trying to dismiss the thought of flying lemmings. 'It couldn't possibly support anything that could hurt us, sir. After all, what would it eat?' Now they could all hear something crashing through the trees. 'Us?' said the Dean hesitantly. A creature blundered out on to the sunset sands. It was large and seemed to be mainly head – one huge, reptilian head that looked almost as big as the body below it. It walked on two long hind legs. There was a tail, but given the amount of teeth now showing at the other end the wizards weren't inclined to take in too much additional detail. The creature sniffed the air and roared again. 'Ah,' said Ridcully. 'The solution to the mystery of the disappearing geographer, I suspect. Well done, Senior Wrangler.' 'I think I'll just—' the Dean began. 'Stay still, sir!' hissed Ponder. 'A lot of reptiles can't see you if you don't move!' 'I can assure you, at the speed I intend nothing is going to see me . . .' The monster turned its head this way and that, and began to lumber forward. 'Can't see things that don't move?' said the Archchancellor. 'You mean we just have to wait for it to walk into a tree?' 'Mrs Whitlow's still sitting there!' said the Senior Wrangler. She was in fact spreading some runny cheese on a biscuit in a ladylike fashion. 'I don't think she's seen it!' Ridcully rolled up his sleeve. 'I think a round of fireballs, gentlemen,' he said. 'Hold on,' said Ponder. This may be an endangered species.' 'So is Mrs Whitlow.' 'But do we have the right to wipe out what—' 'Absolutely,' said Ridcully. 'If its creator had meant it to survive he would have given it a fireproof skin. That's your evolution for you, Stibbons.' 'But perhaps we ought to study it . . .?' The thing was beginning to get up speed now. It was amazing how fast it could move, considering how big it was. 'Er . . .' said Ponder nervously. Ridcully raised his arm. The creature stopped, jerked into the air, and then went flat, like a rubber ball that had been stepped on, and indeed when it sprang back into shape it was with a noise akin to the sound made when a bad conjuror is having trouble twisting the back legs on to the balloon animal. Insofar as it had an expression at all, it looked more astonished than hurt. Little flashes of lightning crackled around it. It went flat again, rolled up into a cylinder, twisted into a range of interesting but probably painful shapes, shrank to a ball the size of a grapefruit and then, with a final and rather sad little noise that might well have been spelled prarp, dropped back on to the sand. 'Now that was pretty good,' said Ridcully. 'Which of you fellows did that?' The wizards looked at one another. 'Not us,' said the Dean. 'It was going to be fireballs all the way.' Ridcully nudged Ponder. 'Go on, then,' he said. 'Study it.' 'Er . . .' Ponder looked at the bewildered creature on the sand. 'Er . . . the subject appears to have turned into a large chicken.' 'Good, well done,' said Ridcully, as if to wrap things up. 'Shame to waste this fireball, then.' He hurled it. It was a road. At least, it was a long flat piece of desert with wheel ruts in it. Rincewind stared at it. A road. Roads went somewhere. Sooner or later they went everywhere. And when you got there, you generally found walls, buildings, harbours . . . boats. And incidentally a shortage of talking kangaroos. That was practically one of the hallmarks of civilization. It wasn't that he was against anyone saving the world, or whatever subset of it apparently wanted saving. He just felt that it didn't need saving by him. Which way to go? He picked a direction at random and jogged along for a while, as the sun came up. After a while there was a cloud of dust in the dawn, coming closer. Rincewind stood hopefully by the track. What eventually appeared at the inverted apex of the cloud was a cart, pulled by a string of horses. The horses were black. So was the cart. And it didn't seem to be slowing down. Rincewind waved his hat in the air, just as the horses came past. After a while the dust settled. He got back on to his feet and walked unsteadily through the bushes until he found the cart where it had come to rest. The horses watched him warily. It wasn't a huge cart to be pulled by eight horses, but both they and the cart were covered with so much wood, leather and metal they probably didn't have much energy to spare. Spikes and studs covered every surface. The reins led not to the usual seat, but into holes in the front of the cart itself. This was roofed over with more wood and ironmongery – bits of old stove, hammered-out body armour, saucepan lids, and tin cans that had been stamped flat and nailed on. Above the slot where the reins went in was something like a piece of bent stovepipe, poking through the cart's roof. It had a watchful look. 'Er . . . hello?' said Rincewind. 'Sorry if I scared your horses . . .' In the absence of any reply he climbed up an armoured wheel and looked at the top of the cart. There was a round lid that had been pushed open. Rincewind didn't even consider looking inside. That'd mean his head would be outlined against the sky, a sure way of getting your body outlined against the dirt. A twig cracked behind him. He sighed, and got down slowly, taking great care not to turn around. 'I surrender totally,' he said, raising his hands. That's right,' said a level voice. 'This is a crossbow, mate. Let's have a look at your ugly mug.' Rincewind turned. There was no one behind him. Then he looked down. The crossbow was almost vertical. If it were fired, the bolt would go right up his nose. 'A dwarf?' he said. 'You've got something against dwarfs?' 'Who, me? No! Some of my best friends would be dwarfs. If I had any friends, I mean. Er. I'm Rincewind.' 'Yeah? Well, I'm short-tempered,' said the dwarf. 'Most people call me Mad.' 'Just "Mad"? That's an . . . unusual name.' 'It ain't a name.' Rincewind stared. There was no doubt that his captor was a dwarf. He didn't have the traditional beard or iron helmet, but there were other little ways that you could tell. There was the chin that you could break coconuts on, the fixed expression of ferocity, and the certain bullet-headedness that meant its owner could go through walls face first. And, of course, if all else failed, the fact that the top of it was about level with Rincewind's stomach was a clue. Mad wore a leather suit but, like the cart, it had metal riveted on to it wherever possible. Where there weren't rivets there was weaponry. The word 'friend' jumped into the forefront of Rincewind's brain. There are many reasons for being friends with someone. The fact that he's pointing a deadly weapon at you is among the top four. 'Good description,' said Rincewind. 'Easy to remember.' The dwarf cocked his head on one side and listened. 'Blast, they're catching me up.' He looked back up at Rincewind and said, 'Can you fire a crossbow?' in a way that indicated that answering 'no' was a good way to contract immediate sinus trouble. 'Absolutely,' said Rincewind. 'Get on the cart, then. Y'know, I've been travellin' this road for years and this is the first time anyone's ever dared to hitch a lift?' 'Amazing,' said Rincewind. There was not much room under the hatch, and most of it was taken up by more weapons. Mad pushed Rincewind aside, grasped the reins, peered into the periscope stovepipe and urged the horses into motion. Bushes scraped against the wheels and the horses dragged back on to the track and began to get up speed. 'Beaut, aren't they?' said Mad. 'They can outrun anything, even with the armour.' 'This is certainly a very . . . original cart,' said Rincewind. 'Got a few modifications of my own,' said Mad. He grinned evilly. 'You a wizard, mister?' 'Broadly speaking, yes.' 'Any good?' Mad was loading another crossbow. Rincewind hesitated. 'No,' he said. 'Lucky for you,' said Mad. 'I'd have killed you if you were. Can't stand wizards. Bunch of wowsers, right?' He grasped the handles of the bent stovepipe and swivelled it around. 'Here they come,' he muttered. Rincewind peered over the top of Mad's head. There was a piece of mirror in the bend of the pipe. It showed the road behind, and half a dozen dots under another cloud of red dust. 'Road gang,' said Mad. 'After my cargo. Steal anything, they will. All bastards are bastards, but some bastards is bastards.' He pulled a handful of nosebags from under the seat. 'Right, you get up on top with a couple of crossbows, and I'll fix the supercharger.' 'What? You want me to start shooting at people?' 'You want me to start shooting at people?' said Mad, pushing him up the ladder. Rincewind crawled out on to the top of the cart. It was swaying and bouncing. Red dust choked him and the wind tried to blow his robe over his head. He hated weapons, and not just because they'd so often been aimed at him. You got into more trouble if you had a weapon. People shot you instantly if they thought you were going to shoot them. But if you were unarmed, they often stopped to talk. Admittedly, they tended to say things like, 'You'll never guess what we're going to do to you, pal,' but that took time. And Rincewind could do a lot with a few seconds. He could use them to live longer in. The dots in the distance were other carts, designed for speed rather than cargo. Some had four wheels, some had two. One had . . . just one, a huge one between narrow shafts, with a tiny saddle on top. The rider looked as though he'd bought his clothes in the scrapmetal yards of three continents and, where they wouldn't fit, had strapped on a chicken. But not one as big as the chicken pulling his wheel. It was bigger than Rincewind and most of what wasn't leg was neck. It was covering the ground as fast as a horse. 'What the hell's that?' he yelled. 'Emu!' shouted Mad, who was now hanging among the harnesses. 'Try and pick it off, they're a good feed!' The cart jolted. Rincewind's hat whirled away into the dust. 'Now I've lost my hat!' 'Good! Bloody awful hat!' An arrow twanged off a metal plate by Rincewind's foot. 'And they're shooting at me!' A cart rattled out of the dust. The man beside the driver whirled something around his head. A grapnel bit into the woodwork by Rincewind's other foot and ripped off a metal plate. 'And they're—' he began. 'You've got a bow, right?' yelled Mad, who was balancing on the back of one of the horses. 'And find something to hold onta, they're gonna go at any minute—' The cart had been moving at the gallop, but now it suddenly shot forward and almost jolted Rincewind right off. Smoke poured out of the axles. The landscape blurred. 'What the hell is that?' 'Supercharger!' shouted Mad, pulling himself on to the cart inches from the frantically pounding hooves. 'Secret recipe! Now hold 'em off, right, 'cos someone's gotta steer!' The emu emerged from the dust cloud with a few of the faster carts rattling behind it. An arrow buried itself in the cart right between Rincewind's legs. He flung himself flat on the swaying roof, held out the crossbow, shut his eyes and fired. In accordance with ancient narrative practice, the shot ricocheted off someone's helmet and brought down an innocent bird some distance away, whose only role was to expire with a suitably humorous squawk. The man driving the emu drew alongside. From under a familiar hat with 'Wizzard' dimly visible in the grime he gave Rincewind a grin. Every tooth had been sharpened to a point, and the front six had 'Mother' engraved on them. 'G'day!' he shouted cheerfully. 'Hand over your cargo and I promise you that you won't be killed all in one go.' That's my hat! Give me back my hat!' 'You're a wizard, are you?' The man stood up on the saddle, balancing easily as the wheel bounced over the sand. He waved his hands over his head. 'Look at me, mates! I'm a bloody wizard! Magic, magic, magic!' A very heavy arrow, trailing a rope, smashed into the back of the cart and stuck fast. There was a cheer from the riders. 'You give me back my hat or there'll be trouble!' 'Oh, there's gonna be trouble anyway,' said the rider, aiming his crossbow. Tell you what, why not turn me into somethin' bad? Oh, I'm all afrai—' His face went green. He pitched backwards. The crossbow bolt hit the driver of the cart beside him, which veered wildly into the path of another, which swerved and crashed into a camel. That meant the carts behind were suddenly faced with a pile-up which, together with the absence of brakes on any vehicle, immediately got bigger. Part of it was kicking people as well. Rincewind, hands over his head, watched until the last wheel had rolled away, and then walked unsteadily along the swaying cart to where Mad was leaning on the reins. 'Er, I think you can slow down now, Mr Mad,' he ventured. 'Yeah? Killed 'em all, didja?' 'Er . . . not all of them. Some of them just ran away.' 'You kiddin' me?' The dwarf looked round. 'Stone me, you ain't! Here, pull that lever as hard as you can!' He waved at a long metal rod beside Rincewind, who tugged it obediently. Metal screamed as the brakes locked against the wheels. 'Why're they going so fast?' 'It's a mixture of oats and lizard glands!' shouted Mad, against the red-hot squealing. 'Gives 'em a big jolt!' The cart had to circle for a few minutes until the adrenalin wore off, and then they went back along the track to look at the wreckage. Mad swore again. 'What happened!' 'He shouldn't've stolen my hat,' Rincewind mumbled. The dwarf jumped down and kicked a broken cartwheel. 'You did this to people because they stole your hat? What do you do if they spit in your eye, blow up the country?' ' 's my hat,' said Rincewind sullenly. He wasn't at all sure what had happened. He wasn't any good at magic, that he knew. The only curses of his that stood a chance of working were on the lines of 'May you get rained on at some time in your life,' and 'May you lose some small item despite the fact that you put it there only a moment ago.' Going pale green . . . he looked down . . . oh, yes, and slightly yellow in blotches, now . . . was not the usual effect. Mad wandered purposefully among the wreckage. He picked up a few weapons and tossed them aside. 'Want the camel?' he said. The creature was standing a little way off, eyeing him suspiciously. It looked quite unscathed, having been the cause of considerable scathe in other people. 'I'd really rather stick my foot in a bacon slicer,' said Rincewind. 'Sure? Well, hitch it onta the cart, it'll fetch a good price in Dijabringabeeralong,' said Mad. He looked at a home-made repeating crossbow, grunted and tossed it aside. Then he looked at another cart and his face brightened. 'Ah! Now we're cooking with charcoal!' he said. 'It's our lucky day, mate!' 'Oh. A bag of hay,' said Rincewind. 'Give us a hand to get it on the wagon, willya?' said Mad, unbolting the rear of his own cart. 'What's so special about hay?' The cart opened. It was full of hay. 'Life or death out here, mate. There's people'd slit yew from here to breakfast for a bale of hay. Man without hay is a man without a horse, and out here a man without a horse is a corpse.' 'Sorry? I went through all that for a load of hay?' Mad waggled his eyebrows conspiratorially. 'And two sacks of oats in the secret compartment, mate.' He slapped Rincewind on the back. 'An' to think I thought yew was some back-stabbin' drongo I ort to toss over the rail! Turns out you're as mad as me!' There are times when it does not pay to declare one's sanity, and Rincewind realized that he'd be mad to do so now. Anyway, he could talk to kangaroos and find cheese and chutney rolls in the desert. There were times when you had to look wobbly facts in the face. 'Mental as anything,' he said, with what he hoped was disarming modesty. 'Good bloke! Let's load up their weapons and grub and get goin'!' 'What do we want their weapons for?' 'Fetch a good price.' 'And what about the bodies?' 'Nah, worthless.' While Mad was nailing salvaged bits of scrap metal to his cart, Rincewind sidled over to the green and yellow corpse . . . and, oh yes, large black areas now . . . and, using a stick, levered his hat from its head. A small eight-legged ball of angry black fur sprang out and locked its fangs on to the stick, which began to smoulder. He put it down very carefully, grabbed the hat and ran. Ponder sighed. 'I wasn't questioning your authority, Arch-chancellor,' he said. 'I just feel that if a huge monster evolves into a chicken right in front of you, the considered response should not be to eat the chicken.' The Archchancellor licked his fingers. 'What would you have done, then?' he said. 'Well . . . studied it,' said Ponder. 'So did we. Post-mortem examination,' said the Dean. 'Minutely,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, happily. He belched. 'Pardon me, Mrs Whitlow. Will you have a little more br . . .' He caught Ridcully's steely glance, and went on, '. . . front part of the chicken, Mrs Whitlow?' 'And we've discovered that it'll no longer be any menace to visiting wizards,' said Ridcully. 'It's just that I think proper research should involve more than having a look to see if you can find a sage-and-onion bush,' said Ponder. 'You saw how quickly it changed, didn't you?' 'Well?' said the Dean. That can't be natural.' 'You'rethe one who says things naturally change into other things, Mister Stibbons.' 'But not that fast!' 'Have you ever seen any of this evolution happening?' 'Well, of course not, no one has ever—' 'There you are, then,' said Ridcully, in a closing-the-argument voice. That might be the normal speed. As I said, it makes perfect sense. There's no point in turning into a bird a bit at a time, is there? A feather here, a beak there . . . You'd see some damn stupid creatures wandering around, eh?' The other wizards laughed. 'Our monster probably simply thought, Oh, there's too many of them, perhaps I'd better turn into something they'd like.' 'Enjoy,' said the Dean. 'Sensible survival strategy,' said Ridcully. 'Up to a point.' Ponder rolled his eyes. These things always sounded fine when he worked them out in his head. He'd read some of the old books, and sit and think for ages, and a little theory would put itself together in his head in a row of little shiny blocks, and then when he let it out it'd run straight into the Faculty and one of them, one of them, would always ask some bloody stupid question which he couldn't quite answer at the moment. How could you ever make any progress against minds like that? If some god somewhere had said, 'Let there be light,' they'd be the ones to say things like 'Why? The darkness has always been good enough for us.' Old men, that was the trouble. Ponder was not totally enthusiastic about the old traditions, because he was well into his twenties and in a moderately important position and therefore, to some of the mere striplings in the University, a target. Or would have been, if they weren't getting that boiled eyeball feeling by sitting up all night tinkering with Hex. He wasn't interested in promotion, anyway. He'd just be happy if people listened for five minutes, instead of saying, 'Well done, Mister Stibbons, but we tried that once and it doesn't work,' or, 'We probably haven't got the funding,' or, worst of all, 'You don't get proper fill-in-nouns these days – remember old "nickname" ancient-wizard-who-died-fifty-years-ago-who-Ponder-wouldn't-possibly-be-able-to-remember? Now there was a chap who knew his fill-in-nouns.' Above Ponder, he felt, were a lot of dead men's shoes. And they had living men's feet in them, and were stamping down hard. They never bothered to learn anything, they never bothered to remember anything apart from how much better things used to be, they bickered like a lot of children and the only one who ever said anything sensible said it in orang-utan. He prodded the fire viciously. The wizards had made Mrs Whitlow a polite crude hut out of branches and big woven leaves. She bade them goodnight and demurely pulled some leaves across the entrance behind her. 'A very respectable lady, Mrs Whitlow,' said Ridcully. 'I think I'll turn in myself, too.' There were already one or two sets of snores building up around the fire. 'I think someone ought to stand guard,' said Ponder. 'Good man,' muttered Ridcully, turning over. Ponder gritted his teeth and turned to the Librarian, who was temporarily back in the land of the bipedal and was sitting gloomily wrapped in a blanket. 'At least I expect this is a home from home for you, eh, sir?' The Librarian shook his head. 'Would you be interested in hearing what else is odd about this place?' said Ponder. 'Ook?' 'The driftwood. No one listens to me, but it's important. We must have dragged loads of stuff for the fire, and it's all natural timber, do you notice that? No bits of plank, no old crates, no tatty old sandals. Just . . . ordinary wood.' 'Ook?' 'That means we must be a long way off the normal shipping . . . oh, no . . . don't . . .' The Librarian wrinkled his nose desperately. 'Quickly! Concentrate on having arms and legs! I mean living ones!' The Librarian nodded miserably, and sneezed. 'Awk?' he said, when his shape had settled down again. 'Well,' said Ponder sadly. 'At least you're animate. Possibly rather large for a penguin, though. I think it's your body's survival strategy. It keeps trying to find a stable shape that works.' 'Awk?' 'Funny it can't seem to do anything about the red hair . . .' The Librarian glared at him, shuffled a little way along the beach, and sagged into a heap. Ponder looked around the fire. He seemed to be the man on watch, if only because no one else intended to do it. Well, wasn't that a surprise. Things twittered in the trees. Phosphorescence glimmered on the sea. The stars were coming out. He looked up at the stars. At least you could depend— And, suddenly, he saw what else was wrong. 'Archchancellor!' So how long have you been mad? No, not a good start, really . . . It was quite hard to know how to open the conversation. 'So . . . I didn't expect dwarfs here,' Rincewind said. 'Oh, the family blew in from NoThingfjord when I was a kid,' said Mad. 'Meant to go down the coast a bit, storm got up, next thing we're shipwrecked and up to our knees in parrots. Best thing that could've happened. Back there I'd be down some freezing cold mine picking bits of rock out of the walls but, over here, a dwarf can stand tall.' 'Really,' said Rincewind, his face carefully blank. 'But not too bloody tall!' Mad went on. 'Certainly not.' 'So we settled down, and now my dad's got a chain of bakeries in Bugarup.' 'Dwarf bread?' said Rincewind. 'Too right! That's what kept us going across thousands of miles of shark-infested ocean,' said Mad. 'If we hadn't had that sack of dwarf bread we'd—' '—never have been able to club the sharks to death?' said Rincewind. 'Ah, you're a man who knows your breads.' 'Big place, Bugarup? Has it got a harbour?' 'People say so. Never been back there. I like the outdoor life.' The ground trembled. The trees by the track shook, even though there was no wind. 'Sounds like a storm,' said Rincewind. 'What's one of them?' 'You know,' said Rincewind. 'Rain.' 'Aw, strain the flaming cows, you don't believe all that stuff, do you? My granddad used to go on about that when he'd been at the beer. It's just an old story. Water falling out of the sky? Do me a favour!' 'It never does that here?' 'Course not!' 'Happens quite a lot where I come from,' said Rincewind. 'Yeah? How's it get up into the sky, then? Water's heavy.' 'Oh, it . . . it . . . I think the sun sucks it up. Or something.' 'How?' 'I don't know. It just happens.' 'And then it drops out of the sky?' 'Yes!' 'For free?' 'Haven't you ever seen rain?' 'Look, everyone knows all the water's deep underground. That's only sense. It's heavy stuff, it leaks down. I never seen it floating around in the air, mate.' 'Well, how do you think it got on the ground in the first place?' Mad looked astonished. 'How do mountains get on the ground?' he said. 'What? They're just there!' 'Oh, so they don't drop out of the sky?' 'Of course not! They're much heavier than air!' 'And water isn't? I've got a coupla drums of it under the cart and you'd sweat to lift 'em.' 'Aren't there any rivers here?' 'Coursewe've got rivers! This country's got everything, mate!' 'Well, how do you think the water gets into them?' Mad looked genuinely puzzled. 'What'd we want water in the rivers for? What'd it do?' 'Flow out to sea—' 'Bloody waste! That's what you let it do where you come from, is it?' 'You don't let it, it . . . happens . . . it's what rivers do!' Mad gave Rincewind a long hard look. 'Yep. And they call me mad,' he said. Rincewind gave up. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. But the ground shook again. Archchancellor Ridcully glared at the sky as if it was doing this to upset him personally. 'What, not one?' he said. Technically, not a single familiar constellation,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies frantically. 'We've counted three thousand, one hundred and ninety-one constellations that could be called the Triangle, for example, but the Dean says some of them don't count because they use the same stars—' There's not a single star I recognize,' said the Senior Wrangler. Ridcully waved his hands in the air. They change a bit all the time,' he said. The Turtle swims through space and—' 'Not this fast!' said the Dean. The dishevelled wizards looked up at the rapidly crowding night. Discworld constellations changed frequently as the world moved through the void, which meant that astrology was cutting-edge research rather than, as elsewhere, a clever way of avoiding a proper job. It was amazing how human traits and affairs could so reliably and continuously be guided by a succession of big balls of plasma billions of miles away, most of whom have never even heard of humanity. 'We're marooned on some other world!' moaned the Senior Wrangler. 'Er . . . I don't think so,' said Ponder. 'You've got a better suggestion, I suppose?' 'Er . . . you see that big patch of stars over there?' The wizards looked at the large cluster twinkling near the horizon. 'Very pretty,' said Ridcully. 'Well?' 'I think it's what we call the Small Boring Group of Faint Stars. It's about the right shape,' said Ponder. 'And I know what you're going to say, sir, you're going to say, "But they're just a blob in the sky, not a patch on the blobs we used to get," sir, but, you see, that's what they might have looked like when Great A'Tuin was much closer to them, thousands of years ago. In other words, sir,' Ponder drew a deep breath, in dread of everything that was to come, 'I think we've travelled backwards in time. For thousands of years.' And that was the other side of the odd thing about wizards. While they were quite capable of spending half an hour arguing that it could not possibly be Tuesday, they'd take the outrageous in their pointy-shoed stride. The Senior Wrangler even looked relieved. 'Oh, is that it?' he said. 'Bound to happen eventually,' said the Dean. 'It's not written down anywhere that these holes connect to the same time, after all.' 'Going to make gettin' back a bit tricky,' said Ridcully. 'Er . . .' Ponder began. 'It might not be so simple as that, Archchancellor.' 'You mean as simple as finding a way to move through time and space?' 'I mean there might not be any there to go back to ,' said Ponder. He shut his eyes. This was going to be difficult, he knew it. 'Of course there is,' said Ridcully. 'We were there only this morn— Only yesterday. That is to say, yesterday thousands of years in the future, naturally.' 'But if we're not careful we might alter the future, you see,' said Ponder. The mere presence of us in the past might alter the future. We might already have altered history. It's vital that I tell you this.' 'He's got a point, Ridcully,' said the Dean. 'Was there any of that rum left, by the way?' 'Well, there isn't any history happening here,' said Ridcully. 'It's just an odd little island.' 'I'm afraid tiny actions anywhere in the world may have huge ramifications, sir,' said Ponder. 'We certainly don't want any ramifications. Well, what's your point? What do you advise?' It had been going so well. They almost seemed up to speed. This may have been what caused Ponder to act like the man who, having so far fallen a hundred feet without any harm, believes that the last few inches to the ground will be a mere formality. 'To use the classic metaphor, the important thing is not to kill your own grandfather,' he said, and smacked into the bedrock. 'What the hell would I want to do that for?' said Ridcully. 'I quite liked the old boy.' 'No, of course, I mean accidentally,' said Ponder. 'But in any case—' 'Really? Well, as you know, I accidentally kill people every day,' said Ridcully. 'Anyway, I don't see him around—' 'It's just an illustration, sir. The problem is cause and effect, and the point is—' The point, Mister Stibbons, is that you suddenly seem to think everyone comes over all fratricidal when they go back in time. Now, if I'd met my grandfather I'd buy him a drink and tell him not to assume that snakes won't bite if you shout at them in a loud voice, information which he might come to thank me for in later life.' 'Why?' said Ponder. 'Because he would have some later life,' said Ridcully. 'No, sir, no! That'd be worse than shooting him!' 'It would?' 'Yes, sir!' 'I think there may be one or two steps in your logic that I have failed to grasp, Mister Stibbons,' said the Archchancellor coldly. 'I suppose you're not intending to shoot your own grandfather, by any chance?' 'Of course not!' snapped Ponder. 'I don't even know what he looked like. He died before I was born.' 'Ah- hah!' 'I didn't mean—' 'Look, we're a lot further back in time than that,' said the Dean. 'Thousands of years, he says. No one's grandfather is alive.' 'That's a lucky escape for Mister Stibbons senior, then,' said Ridcully. 'No,sir,' said Ponder. 'Please! What I was trying to get across, sir, is that anything you do in the past changes the future. The tiniest little actions can have huge consequences. You might . . . tread on an ant now and it might entirely prevent someone from being born in the future!' 'Really?' said Ridcully. 'Yes, sir!' Ridcully brightened up. That's not a bad wheeze. There's one or two people history could do without. Any idea how we can find the right ants?' 'No, sir!' Ponder struggled to find a crack in his Archchancellor's brain into which could be inserted the crowbar of understanding, and for a few vain seconds thought he had found one. 'Because . . . the ant you tread on might be your own, sir!' 'You mean . . . I might tread on an ant and this'd affect history and I wouldn't be born?' 'Yes! Yes! That's it! That's right, sir!' 'How?' Ridcully looked puzzled. 'I'm not descended from ants.' 'Because . . .' Ponder felt the sea of mutual incomprehension rising around him, but he refused to drown. 'Well . . . er . . . well, supposing it . . . bit a man's horse, and he fell off, and he was carrying a very important message, and because he didn't get there in time there was a terrible battle, and one of your ancestors got killed – no, sorry, I mean didn't get killed—' 'How did this ant get across the sea?' said Ridcully. 'Clung to a piece of driftwood,' said the Dean promptly. 'It's amazing what can get even on to remote islands by clinging to driftwood, insects, lizards, even small mammals.' 'And then got up the beach and all the way to this battle?' said Ridcully. 'Bird's leg,' said the Dean. 'Read it in a book. Even fish eggs get transported from pond to pond on a bird's leg.' 'Pretty determined ant, then, really,' said Ridcully, stroking his beard. 'Still, I must admit stranger things have happened.' 'Practically every day,' said the Senior Wrangler. Ponder beamed. They had successfully negotiated an extended metaphor. 'Only one thing I don't understand, though,' Ridcully added. 'Who'll tread on the ant? 'What?' 'Well, it's obvious, isn't it?' said the Archchancellor. 'If I tread on this ant, then I won't exist. But if I don't exist, then I can't have done it, so I won't, so I will. See?' He prodded Ponder with a large, good-natured finger. 'You've got some brains, Mister Stibbons, but sometimes I wonder if you really try to apply logical thought to the subject in hand. Things that happen stay happened. It stands to reason. Oh, don't look so downcast,' he said, mistaking – possibly innocently – Ponder's expression of futile rage for shameful dismay. 'If you get stuck with any of this compl'cated stuff, my door's always open.[14]I am your Archchancellor, after all.' 'Excuse me, can we tread on ants or not?' said the Senior Wrangler peevishly. 'If you like.' Ridcully swelled with generosity. 'Because, in fact, history already depends on your treading on any ants that you happen to step on. Any ants you tread on, you've already trodden on, so if you do it again it'll be for the first time, because you're doing it now because you did it then. Which is also now.' 'Really?' 'Yes indeed.' 'So we should have worn bigger boots?' said the Bursar. 'Try to keep up, Bursar.' Ridcully stretched and yawned. 'Well, that seems to be it,' he said. 'Let's try to get back to sleep, shall we? It's been rather a long day.' Someone was keeping up. After the wizards got back to sleep, a faint light, like burning marsh gas, circled over them. He was an omnipresent god, although only in a small area. And he was omnicognizant, but just enough to know that while he did indeed know everything it wasn't the whole Everything, just the part of it that applied to his island. Damn! He'd told himself the cigarette tree would cause trouble. He should have stopped it the moment it started growing. He'd never meant it to get out of hand like this. Of course, it had been a shame about the other . . . pointy creature, but it hadn't been his fault, had it? Everything had to eat. Some of the things that were turning up on the island were surprising even him. And some of them never stayed stable for five minutes together. Even so, he allowed himself a little smirk of pride. Two hours between the one called the Dean dying for a smoke and the bush evolving, growing and fruiting its first nicotine-laden crop. That was evolution in action. Trouble was, now they'd start poking around and asking questions. The god, almost alone among gods, thought questions were a good thing. He was in fact committed to people questioning assumptions, throwing aside old superstitions, breaking the shackles of irrational prejudice and, in short, exercising the brains their god had given them, except of course they hadn't been given them by any god, lord knows, so what they really ought to do was exercise those brains developed over millennia in response to the external stimuli and the need to control those hands with their opposable thumbs, another damn good idea that he was very proud of. Or would have been, of course, if he existed. However, there were limits. Freethinkers were fine people, but they shouldn't go around thinking just anything. The light vanished and reappeared, still circling, in the sacred cave on the mountain. Technically, he knew, it wasn't in fact sacred, since you needed believers to make a place sacred and this god didn't actually want believers. Usually, a god with no believers was as powerful as a feather in a hurricane, but for some reason he'd not been able to fathom he was able to function quite happily without them. It may have been because he believed so fervently in himself. Well, obviously not in himself, because belief in gods was irrational. But he did believe in what he did. He considered, rather guiltily, making a few more thunder lizards in the hope that they might eat the intruders before they got too nosey, but then dismissed the thought as being unworthy of a modern, forward-thinking deity. There were racks and racks of seeds in this part of the cave. He selected one from among the pumpkin family, and picked up his tools. These were unique. Absolutely no one else in the world had a screwdriver that small. A green shoot speared up from the forest litter in response to the first light of dawn, unfolded into two leaves, and went on growing. Down among the rich compost of fallen leaves, white shoots writhed like worms. This was no time for half-measures. Somewhere far down, a questing tap root found water. After a few minutes, the bushes around the by now large and moving plant began to wilt. The lead shoot dragged itself onwards, towards the sea. Tendrils just behind the advancing stem wound around handy branches. Larger trees were used as support, bushes were uprooted and tossed aside and a tap root sprouted to take possession of the newly vacated hole. The god hadn't had much time for sophistication. The plant's instructions had been put together from bits and pieces lying around, things he knew would work. At last the first shoot crossed the beach and reached the sea. Roots drove into the sand, leaves unfolded, and the plant sprouted one solitary female flower. Small male ones had already opened along the stem. The god hadn't programmed this bit. The whole problem with evolution, he'd told himself, was that it wouldn't obey orders. Sometimes, matter thinks for itself. A thin prehensile tendril bunched itself for a moment, then sprang up and lassoed a passing moth. It curved back, dipped the terrified insect waist deep in the pollen of a male flower, then coiled back with whiplash speed and slam-dunked it into the embracing petals of the female. A few seconds later the flower dropped off and the small green ball below it began to swell, just as the horizon began to blush with the dawn. Argo nauticae uniquo was ready to produce its first, and only, fruit. There was a huge windmill, squeaking around on top of a metal tower. A sign attached to the tower read: 'Dijabringabeeralong: Check your Weapons.' 'Yep, still got all mine, no worries,' said Mad, urging the horses forward. They crossed a wooden bridge, although Rincewind couldn't see why anyone had bothered to build it. It seemed a lot of effort just to cross a stretch of dry sand. 'Sand?' said Mad. 'That's the Lassitude River, that is!' And, indeed, a small boat went past. It was being towed by a camel and was making quite good time on its four wide wheels. 'A boat,' said Rincewind. 'Never seen one before?' 'Not one being pedalled, no,' said Rincewind, as a tiny canoe went past. 'They'd hoist the sail if the wind was right.' 'But . . . this might sound a strange question . . . Why is it a boat shape?' 'It's the shape boats are.' 'Oh, right. I thought it'd be a good reason like that. How did the camels get here?' They cling to driftwood, people say. The currents wash a lot of stuff up, down on the coast.' Dijabringabeeralong was coming into view. It was just as well there had been the sign, otherwise they might have ridden through it without noticing. The architecture was what is known professionally as 'vernacular', a word used in another field to mean 'swearing' and this was quite appropriate. But then, Rincewind thought, it's as hot as hell and it never rains – all you need a house for is to mark some kind of boundary between inside and outside. 'You said this was a big town,' he said. 'It's got a whole street. And a pub.' 'Oh, that's a street, is it? And that logpile is a pub?' 'You'll like it. It's run by Crocodile.' 'Why do they call him Crocodile?' A night sleeping on the sand hadn't helped the Faculty very much. And the Archchancellor didn't help even more. He was an early-morning man as well as being, most unfairly, a late-night man. Sometimes he went from one to the other without sleeping in between. 'Wake up, you fellows! Who's game for a brisk trot around the island? There'll be a small prize for the winner, eh?' 'Oh, my gods,' moaned the Dean, rolling over. 'He's doing press-ups.' 'I certainly wouldn't want anyone to think I'm advocating a return to the bad old days,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, trying to dislodge some sand from his ear, 'but once upon a time we used to kill wizards like him.' 'Yes, but we also used to kill wizards like us, Chair,' said the Dean. 'Remember what we'd say in those days?' said the Senior Wrangler. ' "Never trust a wizard over sixty-five"? Whatever happened?' 'We got past the age of sixty-five, Senior Wrangler.' 'Ah, yes. And it turned out that we were trustworthy after all.' 'Good thing we found out in time, eh?' 'There's a crab climbing that tree,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, who was lying on his back and staring straight upwards. 'An actual crab.' 'Yes,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'They're called Tree-climbing Crabs.' 'Why?' 'I had this book when I was a little lad,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'It was about this man who was shipwrecked on an island such as this and he thought he was all alone and then one day he found a footprint in the sand. There was a woodcut,' he added. 'One footprint?' said the Dean, sitting up, clutching his head. 'Well . . . yes, and when he saw it he knew that he—' '—was alone on an island with a crazed one-legged long-jump champion?' said the Dean. He was feeling testy. 'Well, obviously he found some other footprints later on . . .' 'I wish I was on a desert island all alone,' said the Senior Wrangler gloomily, watching Ridcully running on the spot. 'Is it just me,' the Dean asked, 'or are we marooned thousands of miles and thousands of years from home?' 'Yes.' 'I thought so. Is there any breakfast?' 'Stibbons found some soft-boiled eggs.' 'What a useful young man he is,' the Dean groaned. 'Where did he find them?' 'On a tree.' Bits of last night came back to the Dean. 'A soft-boiled-egg tree?' 'Yes,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Nicely runny. They're quite good with breadfruit soldiers.' 'You'll be telling me next he found a spoon tree . . .' 'Of course not.' 'Good.' 'It's a bush.' The Senior Wrangler held up a small wooden spoon. It had a few small leaves still attached to it. 'A bush that fruits spoons . . .' 'Young Stibbons said it makes perfect sense, Dean. After all, he said, we'd picked them because they're useful, and then spoons are always getting lost. Then he burst into tears.' 'He's got a point, though. Honestly, this place is like Big Rock Candy Mountain.' 'I vote we leave it as soon as possible,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'We'd better have a serious look at this boat idea today. I don't want to meet another of those horrible lizards.' 'One of everything, remember?' 'Then probably there's a worse one.' 'Building some sort of boat can't be very hard,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'Even quite primitive people manage it.' 'Now look,' snapped the Dean, 'we've searched everywhere for a decent library on this island. There simply isn't one! It's ridiculous. How is any-one supposed to get anything done?' 'I suppose . . . we could . . . try things?' said the Senior Wrangler. 'You know . . . see what floats, that sort of thing.' 'Oh, well, if you want to be crude about it . . .' The Chair of Indefinite Studies looked at the Dean's lace and decided it was time to lighten the atmosphere. 'I was, aha, just wondering,' he said, 'as a little mental exercise . . . if you were marooned on a desert island, eh, Dean . . . what kind of music would you like to listen to, eh?' The Dean's face clouded further. 'I think, Chair, that I would like to listen to the music in the Ankh-Morpork Opera House.' 'Ah. Oh? Yes. Well . . . very . . . very . . . very direct thinking there, Dean.' Rincewind grinned glassily. 'So . . . you're a crocodile, then.' 'Thif worrying you?' said the barman. 'No! No! Don't they call you anything else, though?' 'Well . . . there'f a nickname they gave me . . .' 'Oh, yes?' 'Yeah. Crocodile Crocodile. But in here moft people call me Dongo.' 'And . . . er . . . this stuff? What do you call this?' 'We call it beer,' said the crocodile. 'What do you call it?' The barman wore a grubby shirt and a pair of shorts, and until he'd seen a pair of shorts tailored for someone with very short legs and a very long tail Rincewind hadn't realized what a difficult job tailoring must be. Rincewind held the beer glass up to the light. And that was the point. You could see light all the way through it. Clear beer. Ankh-Morpork beer was technically ale, that is to say, gravy made from hops. It had texture. It had flavour, even if you didn't always want to know what of. It had body. It had dregs. You could eat the last half-inch of it with a spoon. This stuff was thin and sparkly and looked as though someone had already drunk it. Tasted all right, though. Didn't sit on your stomach the way the beer at home did. Weak stuff, of course, but it never did to insult someone else's beer. 'Pretty good,' he said. 'Where'd you blow in from?' 'Er . . . I floated here on a piece of driftwood.' 'Was there room with all the camels?' 'Er . . . yes.' 'Good on yer.' Rincewind needed a map. Not a geographical map, although one of those would be a help, but one that showed him where his head was at. You didn't usually get crocodiles serving behind a bar, but everyone else in this cavern of a place seemed to think it was perfectly normal. Mind you, the people in the bar included three sheep in overalls and a couple of kangaroos playing darts. And they weren't exactly sheep. They looked more like, well . . . human sheep. Sticking-out ears, white curls, a definite sheepish look, but standing upright, with hands. And he was pretty sure that there was no way you could get a cross between a human and a sheep. If there was, people would definitely have found out by now, especially in the more isolated rural districts. Something similar had happened with the kangaroos. There were the pointy ears and they definitely had snouts, but now they were leaning on the bar drinking this thin, strange beer. One of them was wearing a stained vest with the legend 'Wagga Hay – it's the Rye Grass!' just visible under the dirt. In short, Rincewind had the feeling he wasn't looking at animals at all. He took another sip of the beer. He couldn't raise the subject with Crocodile Dongo. There was a philosophical wrongness about drawing a crocodile's attention to the fact that there were a couple of kangaroos in the bar. 'Youse wanta nother beer?' said Dongo. 'Yeah, right,' said Rincewind. He looked at the sign on the beer pump. It was a picture of a grinning kangaroo. The label said: Roo Beer. He raised his eyes to a torn poster on the wall. It also advertised Roo Beer. There was the same kangaroo, holding a pint of said beer and wearing the same knowing grin. It looked familiar, for some reason. 1 can't help nossisting . . .' He tried again. 'I can't help noticing', he said, 'that some people in this barrardifferentshap from other p'ple.' 'Well, old Hollowlog Joe over there'f put on a bit of weight lately,' said Dongo, polishing a glass. Rincewind looked down at his legs. 'Whose legsare dese?' 'You okay, mifter?' 'Prob'ly been bitten by so'thing,' said Rincewind. A sudden urgent need gripped him. 'It'f out the back,' said Dongo. 'Out back in the outback,' said Rincewind, staggering forward. 'Hahahaha—' He walked into an iron pillar, which picked him up in a fist and held him at arm's length. He looked along the arm to a large angry face and an expression that said a lot of beer was looking for a fight and the rest of the body was happy to go along with it. Rincewind was muzzily aware that in his case a lot of beer wanted to run away. And at a time like this, it's always the beer talking. 'I bin lisnin' to you. Where're you from, mister?' said the giant's beer. 'Ankh-M'pork . . .' At a time like this, why lie? The bar went quiet. 'An' you're gonna come here and make a lot of cracks about us all drinkin' beer and fightin' and talkin' funny, right?' Some of Rincewind's beer said, 'No worries.' His captor pulled him so they were face to face. Rincewind had never seen such a huge nose. 'An' I expect you don't even know that we happen to produce some partic'ly fine wines, our Chardonnays bein' 'specially worthy of attention and compet'tively priced, not to mention the rich, firmly structur'd Rusted Dunny Valley Semillons, which are a tangily refreshin' discovery for the connesewer . . . yew bastard? 'Jolly good, I'll have a pint of Chardonnay, please.' 'You takin' the piss?' 'No, I'd like to leave it here—' 'How about you putting my mate down?' said a voice. Mad was in the doorway. There was a general scuffle to get out of the way. 'Oh, you looking for a fight too, stubby?' Rincewind was dropped as the huge creature turned to face the dwarf, fists clenching. 'I don't look for them. I just walk into pubs and there they are,' said Mad, pulling out a knife. 'Now, you going to leave him alone, Wally?' 'You call that a knife?' The giant unsheathed one that'd be called a sword if it had been held in a normal-sized hand. 'This is what I call a knife!' Mad looked at it. Then he reached his hand around behind his back, and it came back holding something. 'Really? No worries. This', he said, 'is what I call a crossbow.' 'It's a log,' said Ridcully, inspecting the boat-building committee's work to date. 'Rather more than a log—' the Dean began. 'Oh, you've made a mast and tied the Bursar's bathrobe to it, I can see that. It's a log, Dean. There's roots on one end and bits of branch at the other. You haven't even hollowed it out. It's a log.' 'It took us all hours ,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'And it does float,' the Dean pointed out. 'I think the term is more like wallows,' said Ridcully. 'And we'd all get on it, would we?' 'This is the one-man version,' said the Dean. 'We thought we'd test it out and then try it with a lot of them together . . .' 'Like a raft, you mean?' 'I suppose so,' said the Dean, with considerable reluctance. He would have preferred a more dynamic name for it. 'Obviously these things take time.' The Archchancellor nodded. He was impressed, in a strange way. The wizards had succeeded in recapitulating, in a mere day, a technological development that had probably taken mankind several hundred years. They might be up to coracles by Tuesday. 'Which of you is going to test it?' he said. 'We thought perhaps the Bursar could assist at this point in the development programme.' 'Volunteered, has he?' 'We're sure he will.' In fact the Bursar was some distance away, wandering aimlessly but happily through the beetle-filled jungle. The Bursar was, as he would probably be the first to admit, not the most mentally stable of people. He would probably be the first to admit that he was a tea-strainer. But he was, as it were, only insane on the outside. He'd never been very interested in magic as a boy, but he had been good at numbers, and even somewhere like Unseen University needed someone who could add up. And he had indeed survived many otherwise exciting years by locking himself in a room somewhere and conscientiously adding up, while some very serious division and subtraction was going on outside. Those were still the days when magical assassination was still a preferred and legal route to high office, but he'd been quite safe because no one had wanted to be a bursar. Then Mustrum Ridcully had been appointed, and he'd put a stop to the whole business by being unkillable and had been, in his own strange way, a modernizer. And the senior wizards had gone along with him because he tended to shout at them if they didn't and it was, after some exhilarating times in the University's history, something of a relief to enjoy your dinner without having to watch someone else eat a bit of it first or having to check your shape the moment you got out of bed. But it was hell for the Bursar. Everything about Mustrum Ridcully rasped across his nerves. If people were food, the Bursar would have been one of life's lightly poached eggs, but Mustrum Ridcully was a rich suet pudding with garlic gravy. He spoke as loudly as most people shouted. He stamped instead of walking. He roared around the place, and lost important bits of paper which he then denied he'd ever seen, and shot his crossbow at the wall when he was bored. He was aggressively cheerful. Never sick himself, he tended to the belief that sickness in other people was caused by sloppy thinking. And he had no sense of humour. And he told jokes. It was odd that this affected the Bursar so much, since he did not have a sense of humour either. He was proud of it. He was not the kind of man to laugh. But he did know, in a mechanical sort of way, how jokes were supposed to go. Ridcully told jokes like a bullfrog did accountancy. They never added up. So the Bursar found it much more satisfying to live inside his own head, where he didn't have to listen and where there were clouds and flowers. Even so, something must have filtered in from the world outside, because occasionally he'd jump up and down on an ant, just in case he was supposed to. Part of him rather hoped that one of the ants was, in some unimaginably distant way, related to Mustrum Ridcully. It was while he was thus engaged in changing the future that he noticed what looked like a very thick green hosepipe on the ground. 'Hmm?' It was slightly transparent and seemed to be pulsating rhythmically. When he put his ear to it he heard a sound like gloop. Mildly deranged though he was, the Bursar had the true wizard's instinct to amble aimlessly into dangerous places, so he followed the throbbing stem. Rincewind awoke, because sleep was so hard with someone kicking him in the ribs. 'Wzt?' 'You want I should pour a bucket of water on yez?' Rincewind recognized the chatty tones. His eyes unglued. 'Oh, not you! You're a figment of my imagination!' 'I should kick you in the ribs again, then?' said Scrappy. Rincewind pulled himself upright. It was dawn, and he was lying in some bushes out behind the pub. Memory played its silent movie across the tattered sheets of his eyelids. 'There was a fight . . . Mad shot that . . . that . . . shot him with a crossbow!' 'Only through the foot so's he'd stand still to be hit. Wombats can't hold their drink, that's their trouble.' More recollections flickered across the smoky darkness of Rincewind's brain. 'That's right, there were animals drinking in there!' 'Yes and no,' said the kangaroo. 'I tried to explain . . .' 'I'm all ears,' said Rincewind. His eyes glazed for a moment. 'No, I'm not, I'm all bladder. Back in a minute.' The buzz of flies and a sort of universal smell drew Rincewind into a nearby hut. Some people would have liked to think of it as 'the bathroom', although not after going inside. He came out again, hopping up and down urgently. 'Er . . . there's a great big spider on the toilet seat . . .' 'What're you gonna do, wait till it's finished? Fan it with yer hat!' It was odd, Rincewind thought as he shooed the spider out, that a human being would, er, use the bathroom behind a bush in the middle of a thousand miles of howling wilderness but would fight for a dunny if there was one available. 'And stay out,' he muttered, when he was confident the spider was out of earshot. But the human brain often feels incapable of concentrating on the job in hand, and Rincewind found his gaze wandering. And here, as in private places everywhere, men had found the urge to draw on the walls. Perhaps it was the way the light hit the ancient woodwork, but under the usual minutiae from people who needed people, and drawings done from overheated hope rather than memory, was a deeply scored drawing of men in pointy hats. He sidled out thoughtfully and edged away through the bushes. 'No worries,' said the kangaroo, so close to his ear that Rincewind was quite pleased that he'd already relieved himself. 'I don't believe it!' 'You'll see them everywhere. They're built in. They find their way into people's thoughts. You can't outrun your destiny, mate.' Rincewind didn't even bother to argue. 'You're going to have to sort this out,' said Scrappy. 'You're the cause.' 'I'm not! Things happen to me, not the other way around!' 'I could disembowel you with a kick, you know. Would you like to see?' 'Er . . . no.' 'Haven't you noticed that by running away you end up in more trouble?' 'Yes, but, you see, you can run away from that, too,' said Rincewind. 'That's the beauty of the system. Dead is only for once, but running away is for ever.' 'Ah, but it is said that a coward dies a thousand deaths, while a hero dies only one.' 'Yes, but it's the important one.' 'Aren't you ashamed?' 'No. I'm going home. I'm going to find this city called Bugarup, find a boat, and go home.' 'Bugarup?' 'Don't tell me the place doesn't exist.' 'Oh, no. It's a big place. And that's where you're going?' 'And don't try to stop me!' 'I can see you've made up your mind,' said Scrappy. 'Read my lips!' 'Your moustache is in the way.' 'Read my beard, then!' The kangaroo shrugged. 'In that case, I've got no choice but to carry on helping you, I suppose.' Rincewind drew himself up. 'I'll find my own way,' he said. 'You don't know the way.' 'I'll ask someone!' 'What about food? You'll starve.' 'Ahah, that's where you're wrong!' Rincewind snapped. 'I've got this amazing power. Watch!' He lifted up a nearby stone, extracted what was underneath, and flourished it. 'See? Impressed, eh?' 'Very.' 'Ahah!' Scrappy nodded. Tve never seen anyone do that with a scorpion before.' The god was sitting high up in a tree working on a particularly promising beetle when the Bursar ambled past far below. Well, at last. One of them had found it! The god had spent some time watching the wizards' attempts at boat-building, although he had been unable to fathom out what it was they were trying to do. As far as he could tell, they were showing some interest in the fact that wood floated. Well, it did float, didn't it? He threw the beetle into the air. It hummed into life at the top of the arc and flew away, a smear of iridescence among the treetops. The god drifted out of his tree and followed the Bursar. The god hadn't made up his mind about these creatures yet, but the island was, unfortunately and against all his careful planning, throwing up all sorts of odd things. These were obviously social creatures, with some of the individuals designed for specific tasks. The hairy red one was designed for climbing trees, and the dreamy ant-stamping one for walking into them. Possibly the reasons for this would become apparent. 'Ah, Bursar!' said the Dean heartily. 'How would you like a brief trip around the lagoon?' The Bursar looked at the soaking log and sought for words. Sometimes, when he really needed to, it was possible to get Mr Brain and Mr Mouth all lined up together. 'I had a boat once,' he said. 'Well done! And here's another one, just for—' 'It was green.' 'Really? Well, we can—' 'I've found another green boat,' said the Bursar. 'It's floating in the water.' 'Yes, yes, I'm sure you have,' said Ridcully kindly. 'A big boat with lots of sails, I expect. Now then, Dean—' 'Just one sail,' said the Bursar. 'And a bare naked lady on the front.' Hovering immanently, the god cursed. He'd never intended the figurehead. Sometimes, he really wanted to just break down and cry. 'Bare naked lady?' said the Dean. 'Settle down, Dean,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'He's probably just had too many dried frog pills.' 'It's going up and down in the water,' said the Bursar. 'Up and down, up and down.' The Dean looked at their own creation. Contrary to all expectations, it did not go up and down in the water. It stayed exactly where it was and the water went up and down over it. This is an island,' he said. 'I suppose someone could have sailed here, couldn't they? What kind of bare naked lady? A dusky one?' 'Really, Dean!' 'Spirit of enquiry, Senior Wrangler. Important bio-geographical information.' The Bursar waited until his brain came around again. 'Green,' he volunteered. 'That is not a natural colour for a human being, clothed or not,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'She might be seasick,' said the Dean. There was only the vaguest of wistful longings in his head, but he did not want to let go of it. 'Going up and down,' said the Bursar. 'I suppose we could have a look,' said the Dean. 'What about Mrs Whitlow? She hasn't been out of her hut yet.' 'She can come too if she likes,' said the Dean. 'I don't think we can expect Mrs Whitlow to go looking at a bare naked lady, even if this one is green,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Why not? She must have seen at least one. Not green, of course.' The Senior Wrangler drew himself up. 'There's no call for that sort of imputation,' he said. 'What? Well, obviously she—' The Dean stopped. The big leaves on Mrs Whitlow's hut were pushed aside, and she emerged. It was probably the flower in her hair. That was certainly the crowning glory. But she'd also done things to her dress. There was, for a start, less of it. Since the word is derived from an island that did not exist on the Discworld, the wizards had never heard of a bikini. In any case, what Mrs Whitlow had sewn together out of her dress was a lot more substantial than a bikini. It was more a newzealand - two quite large respectable halves separated by a narrow channel. She'd also tied some of the spare cloth around her waist, sarong style. In short, it was a very proper item of clothing. But it looked as if it wasn't. It was as if Mrs Whitlow was wearing a figleaf six feet square. It was still just a figleaf. 'Ai thought this might be a leetle more suitable for the heat,' she said. 'Of course, Ai wouldn't dream of wearing it in the University, but since we appear to be here for a little while Ai remembered a picture Ai saw of Queen Zazumba of Sumtri. Is there anywhere Ai could have a bath, do you think?' 'Mwaaa,' said the Senior Wrangler. The Dean coughed. 'There's a little pool in the jungle.' 'With waterlilies in it,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'Pink ones.' 'Mwaaa,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'And there's a waterfall,' said the Dean. 'Mwaaa.' 'And a soap bush, as a matter of fact.' They watched her walk away. 'Up and down, up and down,' said the Bursar. 'A fine figure of a woman,' said Ridcully. 'She walks differently without her shoes on, doesn't she? Are you all right, Senior Wrangler?' 'Mwaa?' 'O think the heat's getting to you. You've gone very red.' I'm a mwaa . . . I'm . . . gosh, it is hot, isn t it . . .? I think perhaps I should have a dip too . . .' 'In the lagoon,' said Ridcully, meaningfully. 'Oh, the salt's very bad for the skin, Archchancellor.' 'Quite so. Nevertheless. Or you can go looking for the pool when Mrs Whitlow comes back.' 'I find it rather insulting, Archchancellor, that you should appear to think that—' 'Well done,' said Ridcully. 'Now, shall we go and look at this boat?' Half an hour later all the wizards were assembled on the opposite shore. It was green. And it bobbed up and down. It was clearly a ship, but built perhaps by someone who'd had a very detailed book of ship-building which nevertheless didn't have any pictures in it. There was a blurriness of the detail. The figurehead, for example, was certainly vaguely female, although to the Dean's disappointment it had the same detail as a half-sucked jellybaby. It put the Senior Wrangler in mind of Mrs Whitlow, although currently rocks, trees, clouds and coconuts also reminded him of Mrs Whitlow. And then there was the sail. It was, without a shadow of a doubt, a leaf. And once you realized that it was a leaf, then a certain marrow or pumpkin quality about the rest of the vessel began to creep over you. Ponder coughed. There are some plants which rely for propagation on floating seeds,' he said, in a small voice. 'The common coconut, for example, has . . .' 'Does it have a figurehead?' said Ridcully. 'Er, one variety of mangrove fruit has a sort of keel which . . .' 'And a sail with what looks very much like rigging?' said Ridcully. 'Er . . . no . . .' 'And what are those flowers on the top?' Ridcully demanded. Where a crow's nest would be was a cluster of trumpet-shaped flowers, like green daffodils. 'Who cares?' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'It's a ship, even if it is a giant pumpkin, and it looks as though there's room for all of us.' He brightened up. 'Even if it is a bit of a squash,' he added. 'It has appeared very fortuitously,' said Ridcully. 'I wonder why?' 'I said, "Even if it is a bit of a squash," ' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'Because, a squash, you see, is another name for—' 'Yes, I know,' said Ridcully, looking thoughtfully at the bobbing vessel. 'I was only attempting to—' 'Thank you for sharing, Chair.' 'Actually it does look pretty roomy,' said the Dean, ignoring the Chair's pained expression. 'I vote we load up with provisions and go.' 'Where to?' said Ridcully. 'Somewhere where fearsome reptiles don't suddenly turn into birds!' the Dean snapped. 'You'd prefer it the other way around?' said Ridcully. He started to wade out into the water until, armpit deep, he was able to bang on the side of the hull with his staff. 'I think you are being a little obtuse, Mustrum,' said the Dean. 'Really? How many types of carnivorous plants are there, Mister Stibbons?' 'Dozens, sir.' 'And they eat prey up to—?' 'No upper limit in the case of the Sapu tree of Sumtri, sir. The Sledgehammer Plant of Bhangbhangduc takes the occasional human victim who doesn't see the mallet hidden in the greenery. There's quite a few that can take anything up to rat size. The Pyramid Strangler Vine really only preys on other more stupid plants, but—' 'I just think that there's something very odd about a boat-shaped plant turning up just when we want a boat,' said Ridcully. 'I mean, chocolate coconuts, yes, and even filter-tipped cigarettes, but a boat with a figurehead?' 'It's not a proper boat without a figurehead,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Yes, but how does it know that?' said Ridcully, wading ashore again. 'Well, I'm not falling for it. I want to know what's going on here.' 'Damn!' They all heard the voice – thin, reedy and petulant. It came from everywhere around them. Small soft white lights appeared in the air, spun around one another with increasing speed, and then imploded. The god blinked, and rocked back and forth as he tried to steady himself. 'Oh, my goodness,' he said. 'What do I look like?' He held up a hand in front of his face and flexed his fingers experimentally. 'Ah.' The hand patted his face, his bald head, and lingered for a moment on the long white beard. He seemed puzzled. 'What's this?' he said. 'Er . . . a beard?' said Ponder. The god looked down at his long white robe. 'Oh. Patriarchality? Oh, well . . . let me see, now . . .' He seemed to pull himself together, focused his gaze on Ridcully, and his huge white eyebrows met like angry caterpillars. 'Begone from This Place Or I Will Smite Thee!' he commanded. 'Why?' The god looked taken aback. 'Why? You can't ask why in this situation!' 'Why not?' The god looked slightly panicky. 'Because . . . Thou Must Go from This Place Lest I Visit Thee with Boils!' 'Really? Most people would bring a bottle of wine,' said Ridcully. The god hesitated. 'What?' he said. 'Or cake,' said the Dean. 'Cake is a good present if you're visiting someone.' 'It depends on what kind of cake,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Sponge cake, I've always thought, is a bit of an insult. Something with a bit of marzipan is to be preferred.' 'Begone from this place lest I visit you with cake?' said the god. 'It's better than boils,' said Ridcully. 'Provided it's not sponge,' said the Senior Wrangler. The problem faced by the god was that, while he had never encountered wizards before, the wizards had in their student days met, more or less on a weekly basis, things that threatened them horribly as a matter of course. Boils didn't hold much of a menace when rogue demons had wanted to rip your head off and do terrible things down the hole. 'Listen,' said the god, 'I happen to be the god in these parts, do you understand? I am, in fact, omnipotent!' 'I'd prefer that, what is it, you know, the cake with the pink and yellow squares—'muttered the Senior Wrangler, because wizards tend to follow a thought all the way through. 'You're a bit small, then,' said the Dean. 'And the sugary marzipan on the outside, marvellous stuff . . .' The god finally realized what else had been bothering him. Scale was always tricky in these matters. Being three feet high was not adding anything to his authority. 'Damn!' he said again. 'Why am I so small?' 'Size isn't everything,' said Ridcully. 'People always smirk when they say that. I can't think why.' 'You're absolutely right!' snapped the god, as if Ridcully had triggered an entirely new train of thought. 'Look at amoebas, except that of course you can't because they're so small. Adaptable, efficient and practically immortal. Wonderful things, amoebas.' His little eyes misted over. 'Best day's work I ever did.' 'Excuse me, sir, but exactly what kind of god are you?' said Ponder. 'And is there cake or not?' said the Senior Wrangler. The god glared up at him. 'I beg your pardon?' he said. 'I meant, what is it that you're the god of?' said Ponder. 'I said, what about this cake you're supposed to have?' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Senior Wrangler?' 'Yes, Archchancellor?' 'Cake is not the issue here.' 'But he said—' 'Your comments have been taken on board, Senior Wrangler. And they will be thrown over the side as soon as we leave harbour. Do continue, god, please.' For a moment the god looked in a thunderbolt mood, and then sagged. He sat down on a rock. 'All that smiting talk doesn't really work, does it?' he said gloomily. 'You don't have to be nice about it. I could tell. I could give you boils, you understand, it's just that I can't really see the point. They clear up after a while, anyway. And it is rather bullying people, isn't it? To tell you the truth, I'm something of an atheist.' 'Sorry?' said Ridcully. 'You are an atheist god?' The god looked at their expressions. 'Yes, I know,' he said. 'It's a bit of a bottomer, isn't it?' He stroked his long white beard. 'Why exactly have I got this?' 'You didn't shave this morning?' said Ridcully. 'I mean, I simply tried to appear in front of you in a form that you recognize as godly,' said the god. 'A long beard and a nightshirt seem to be the thing, although the facial hair is a little puzzling.' 'It's a sign of wisdom,' said Ridcully. 'Said to be,' said Ponder, who'd never been able to grow one. 'Wisdom: insight, acumen, learning,' said the god thoughtfully. 'Ah. The length of the hair improves the operation of the cognitive functions? Some sort of cooling arrangement, perhaps?' 'Never really thought about it,' said Ridcully. The beard gets longer as more wisdom is acquired?' said the god. 'I'm not sure it's actually a case of cause and effect,' Ponder ventured. 'I'm afraid I don't get about as much as I should,' said the god sadly. To be frank, I find religion rather offensive.' He heaved a big sigh and seemed to look even smaller. 'Honest, I really do try but there are some days when life just gets me down . . . Oh, excuse me, liquid seems to be running out of my breathing tubes . . .' 'Would you like to blow your nose?' said Ponder. The god looked panicky. 'Where to?' 'I mean, you sort of hold . . . Look, here's my handkerchief, you just sort of put it over your nose and sort of . . . well, snuffle into it.' 'Snuffle,' said the god. 'Interesting. And what a curiously white leaf.' 'No, it's a cotton handkerchief,' said Ponder. 'It's . . . made.' He stopped there. He knew that handkerchiefs were made, and cotton was involved, and he had some vague recollection of looms and things, but when you got right down to it you obtained handkerchiefs by going into a shop and saying, 'I'd like a dozen of the reinforced white ones, please, and how much do you charge for embroidering initials in the corners?' 'You mean . . . created?' said the god, suddenly very suspicious. 'Are you gods too?' Beside his foot a small shoot pushed through the sand and began to grow rapidly. 'No, no,' said Ponder. 'Er . . . you just take some cotton and . . . hammer it flat, I think . . . and you get handkerchiefs.' 'Oh, then you're tool-using creatures,' said the god, relaxing a little. The shoot near his foot was already a plant now, and putting out leaves and a flowerbud. He blew his nose loudly. The wizards drew closer. They were not, of course, afraid of gods, but gods tended to have uncertain tempers and a wise man kept away from them. However, it's hard to be frightened of someone who's having a good blow. 'You're really the god in these parts?' said Ridcully. The god sighed. 'Yes,' he said. 'I thought it would be so easy, you know. Just one small island. I could start all over again. Do it properly. But it's all going completely wrong.' Beside him the little plant opened a nondescript yellow flower. 'Start all over again?' 'Yes. You know . . . godliness.' The god waved a hand in the direction of the Hub. 'I used to work over there,' he said. 'Basic general godding. You know, making people out of clay, old toenails, and so on? And then sitting on mountaintops and casting thunderbolts and all the rest of it. Although,' he leaned forward and lowered his voice, 'very few gods can actually do that, you know.' 'Really?' said Ridcully, fascinated. 'Very hard thing to steer, lightning. Mostly we waited until a thunderbolt happened to hit some poor soul and then spake in a voice of thunder and said it was his fault for being a sinner. I mean, they were bound to have done something, weren't they?' The god blew his nose again. 'Quite depressing, really. Anyway . . . I suppose the rot set in when I tried to see if it was possible to breed a more inflammable cow.' He looked at the questioning expressions. 'Burnt offerings, you see. Cows don't actually burn all that well. They're naturally rather soggy creatures and frankly everyone was running out of wood.' They carried on staring at him. He tried again. 'I really couldn't see the point of the whole business, to tell you the truth. Shouting, smiting, getting angry all the time . . . don't think anyone was getting anything out of it, really. But the worst part . . . You know the worst part? The worst part was that if you actually stopped the smiting, people wandered off and worshipped someone else. Hard to believe, isn't it? They'd say things like, "Things were a lot better when there was more smiting," and, "If there was more smiting, it'd be a lot safer to walk the streets." Especially since all that'd really happened was that some poor shepherd who just happened to be in the wrong place during a thunderstorm had caught a stray bolt. And then the priests would say, "Well, we all know about shepherds, don't we, and now the gods are angry and we could do with a much bigger temple, thank you." ' 'Typical priestly behaviour,' sniffed the Dean. 'But they often believed it!' the god almost wailed. 'It was really so depressing. I think that before we made humanity, we broke the mould. There'd be a bad weather front, a few silly shepherds would happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and next thing you know it was standing room only on the sacrificial stones and you couldn't see for the smoke.' He had another good blow on a piece of Ponder's handkerchief that had so far remained dry. 'I mean, I tried. God knows I tried, and since that's me, I know what I'm talking about. "Thou Shall Lie Down Flat in Thundery Weather," I said. "Thou Shalt Site the Midden a Long Way from the Well," I said. I even told them, "Thou Shalt Really Try to Get Along with One Another."' 'Did it work?' 'I can't say for sure. Everyone was slaughtered by the followers of the god in the next valley who told them to kill everyone who didn't believe in him. Ghastly fellow, I'm afraid.' 'And the flaming cows?' said Ridcully. 'The what?' said the god, sunk in misery. 'The more inflammable cow,' said Ponder. 'Oh, yes. Another good idea that didn't work. I just thought, you know, that if you could find the bit in, say, an oak tree which says "Be inflammable" and glue it into the bit of the cow which says "Be soggy" it'd save a lot of trouble. Unfortunately, that produced a sort of bush that made distressing noises and squirted milk, but I could see the principle was sound. And frankly, since my believers were all dead or living in the next valley by then I thought, to hell with it all, I'd come back here and get to grips with it and do it all more sensibly.' He brightened up a bit. 'You know, it's amazing what you get if you break even the common cow down into very small bits.' 'Soup,' said Ridcully. 'Because, sooner or later, everything is just a set of instructions,' the god went on, apparently not listening. 'That's just what I've always said!' said Ponder. 'Have you?' said the god, peering at him. 'Well, anyway . . . that's how it all began. I thought it would be a much better idea to create creatures that could change their own instructions when they needed to, you see . . .' 'Oh, you mean evolution,' said Ponder Stibbons. 'Do I?' The god looked thoughtful. ' "Changing over time . . ." Yes, that's actually quite a good word, isn't it? Evolution. Yes, I suppose that's what I do. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be working properly.' Beside him, there was a pop. The little plant had fruited. Its pod had sprung open and there appeared to be, bunched up like a chrysanthemum, a fresh white hankie. 'You see?' he said. 'That's the sort of thing I'm up against. Everything is so completely selfish about it.' He took the handkerchief in an absent-minded way, blew his nose on it, crumpled it up, and dropped it on the ground. 'I'm sorry about the boat,' he continued. 'It was a bit of a rush job, you see. I just didn't want anyone upsetting everything, but I really don't believe in smiting, so I thought that since you wanted to leave here I should help you do so as soon as possible. I think I did rather a good job, in the circumstances. It'll find new land automatically, I think. So why didn't you go?' 'The bare naked lady on the front was a bit of a giveaway,' said Ridcully. 'The what?' The god peered in the direction of the boat. 'These eyes are not particularly efficient . . . Oh, dear, yes. The figure. Morphic bloody resonance again. Will you stop doing that!' The handkerchief plant had just put forth another fruit. The god narrowed his eyes, pointed his finger and incinerated it. As one man the wizards stepped back. 'I stop concentrating for five minutes and everything loses any sense of discipline,' said the god. 'Everything wants to make itself damn useful! I can't think why!' 'Sorry? Am I getting this right? You're a god of evolution!' said Ponder. 'Er . . . is that wrong?' said the god anxiously. 'But it's been happening for ages, sir!' 'Has it? But I only started a few years ago! Do you mean someone else is doing it?' 'I'm afraid so, sir,' said Ponder. 'People breed dogs for fierceness and racehorses for speed and . . . well, even my uncle can do amazing things with his nuts, sir—' 'And everyone knows that you can cross a river with a bridge, ahaha,' said Ridcully. 'Can you?' said the god of evolution seriously. 'I'd have thought that you simply get some very soggy wood. Oh dear.' Ridcully winked at Ponder Stibbons. Gods were often not good at humour, and this one was even worse than Ridcully. 'We're back in time, Mister Stibbons,' he said. 'It may not have happened already yet, eh?' 'Oh. Yes,' said Ponder. 'Anyway, two gods of evolution wouldn't be a bad thing, would they?' said Ridcully. 'Makes it a lot more interestin'. The one who's best at it would win.' The god stared at him with his mouth open. Then he shut it just enough to mouth Ridcully's words to himself, snapped his fingers, and vanished in a puff of little white lights. 'Nowyou've done it,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'No cake for you ,' said the Bursar. 'All I said was the one who's best at it would win,' said Ridcully. 'Actually, he didn't look upset,' said Ponder. 'He looked as if he'd suddenly realized something.' Ridcully looked up at the small mountain in the centre of the island, and appeared to reach a decision. 'All right, we'll leave,' he said. The reason this island's so odd is that some rather daft god is messing around with it. That's a pretty good explanation as far as I'm concerned.' 'But, sir—' Ponder began. 'See that little vine just by the Senior Wrangler there? It's only been growing for the last ten minutes,' said the Dean. It looked like a small cucumber vine, except that the fruits were yellow and oblong. 'Pass me your penknife, Mister Stibbons,' said Ridcully. Ridcully sliced the fruit in half. It wasn't fully ripe yet, but the pattern of pink and yellow squares was clearly visible, surrounded by a layer of something sticky and sweet. 'But I only thought about that cake ten minutes ago!' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Seems perfectly logical to me,' said Ridcully, 'I mean, here we are, wizards, we move about, we want to leave the island . . . What will we take with us? Anyone?' 'Food, obviously,' said Ponder. 'But—' 'Right! If I was a vegetable, I'd want to make myself useful in a hurry, yes? No good hanging around for a thousand years just growing bigger seeds! No fear! All those other plants might come up with a better idea in the meantime! No, you see an opportunity and you go for it! There might not be another boat along for years!' 'Millennia,' said the Dean. 'Even longer,' Ridcully agreed. 'Survival of the fastest, eh? So I suggest we load up and go, gentlemen.' 'What, just like that?' said Ponder. 'Certainly. Why not?' 'But . . . but . . . but think of the things we could learn here!' said Ponder. 'The possibilities are breathtaking! At last there's a god who's actually got the right idea! At last we can get some answers to all the important questions! We could . . . we can . . . Look, we can't just go. I mean, not go! I mean . . . we're wizards, aren't we?' He was aware that he had their full attention, something that wizards did not often give. Usually they defined 'listening' as a period in which you worked out what you were going to say next. It was disconcerting. Then the spell broke. The Senior Wrangler shook his head. 'Curious way of looking at things,' he said, turning away. 'So . . . I vote we take plenty of those cheese nuts, Archchancellor.' 'Good provisioning is the essence of successful exploration,' said the Dean. 'Quite a roomy vessel, too, so we needn't stint.' Ridcully pulled himself aboard via a trailing tendril, and sniffed. 'Smells rather like pumpkin,' he said. 'Always liked pumpkin. A very versatile vegetable.' Ponder put a hand over his eyes. 'Oh, really?' he said, wearily. 'A group of Unseen University wizards are seriously considering putting to sea on an edible boat?' 'Fried, boiled, a good base for a soup stock and, of course, excellent in pies,' said the Archchancellor happily. 'Also the seeds are a tasty snack.' 'Good with butter,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'I suppose there isn't a butter plant anywhere, is there?' 'There will be soon,' said the Dean. 'Give us a hand up, will you, Archchancellor?' Ponder exploded. 'I don't believe this!' he said. 'You're turning your back on an astonishing god-given opportunity—' 'Absolutely, Mister Stibbons,' said Ridcully, from above. 'No offence meant, of course, but if the choice is a trip on the briny deep or staying on a small island with someone trying to create a more inflammable cow then you can call me Salty Sam.' 'Is this the poop deck?' said the Dean. 'I hope not,' said Ridcully briskly. 'You see, Stibbons—' 'Are you sure?' said the Dean. 'I'm sure, Dean. You see, Stibbons, when you've had a little more experience in these matters you'll learn that there's nothing more dangerous than a god with too much time on his hands—' 'Except an enraged mother bear,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'No, they're far more dangerous.' 'Not when they're really close.' 'If it was the poop deck, how would we know?' said the Dean. Ponder shook his head. There were times when the desire to climb the thaumaturgical ladder was seriously blunted, and one of them was when you saw what was on top. 'I . . . I just don't know what to say,' he said. 'I am frankly astonished.' 'Well done, lad. So run along and get some bananas, will you? Green ones will keep better. And don't look so upset. When it comes to gods, I have to say, you can give me one of the make-out-of-clay-and-smite-'em brigade any day of the week. That's the kind of god you can deal with.' 'The practically human sort,' said the Dean. 'Exactly.' 'Call me overly picky,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, 'but I'd prefer not to be around a god who might suddenly decide I'd run faster with three extra legs.' 'Exactly. Is there something wrong, Stibbons? Oh, he's gone. Oh well, no doubt he'll be back. And . . . Dean?' 'Yes, Archchancellor?' 'I can't help thinking you're working up to some sort of horrible joke about a poop deck. I'd prefer not, if it's all the same to you.' 'You all right, mate?' No one in the world had ever been so pleased to see Crocodile Crocodile before. Rincewind let himself be pulled upright. His hand, against all expectation, was not blue and three times its normal size. That bloody kangaroo . . .' he muttered, using the hand to wave away the eternal flies. 'What kangaroo waf that, mate?' said the crocodile, helping him back towards the pub. Rincewind looked around. There were just the normal components of the local scenery – dry-looking bushes, red dirt and a million circling flies. The one I was talking to just now.' 'I was juft fweeping up and I faw you dancing around yellin',' said Crocodile. 1 didn't fee no kangaroo.' 'It's probably a magic kangaroo,' said Rincewind wearily. 'Oh, right, a magic kangaroo,' said Crocodile. 'No worrieth. I think maybe I'd better make you up the cure for drinking too much beer, mate.' 'What's the cure?' 'More beer.' 'How much beer did I have last night, then?' 'Oh, about twenty pinth.' 'Don't be silly, no one can even hold that much beer!' 'Oh, you didn't hang on to much of it at all, mate. No worrieth. We like a man who can't hold hif beer.' In the fetid fleapit of Rincewind's brain the projectionist of memory put on reel two. Recollection began to flicker. He shuddered. 'Was I . . . singing a song?' he said. Too right. You kept pointing to the Roo Beer pofter and finging . . .' Crocodile's huge jaws moved as he tried to remember, ' "Tie my kangaroo up." Bloody good fong.' 'And then I . . .?' Then you loft all your money playing Two Up with Daggy's shearing gang.' 'That's . . . I . . . there were these two coins, and the bloke'd toss them in the air, and you . . . had to bet on how they'd come down . . .' 'Right. And you kept bettin' they wouldn't come down at all. Paid it was bound to happen iooner or later. You got good odds, though.' 'I lost all the money Mad gave me?' 'Yep.' 'How was I paying for my beer, then?' 'Oh, the blokes were queueing up to buy it for you. They faid you were better than a day at the races.' 'And then I . . . there was something about sheep . . .' He looked horrified. 'Oh, no . . .' 'Oh, yeah. You faid, "Ftrain the fraying crones, a dollar a time for giving fheep a haircut? I could do a beaut foft job like that with my eyes fhut, too right no flaming worries by half bonza fhoot through ye gods this if good beer . . ." ' 'Oh, gods. Did anyone hit me?' 'Nah, mate, they reckoned you were a good sport, 'specially when you wagered five hundred fquids that you could beat their best man at shearin'.' 'I couldn't've done that, I'm not a betting man!' 'Well, I am, and if you've been fhootin' a line I wouldn't give tuppence for your chances, Rinfo.' 'Rinso?' said Rincewind weakly. He looked at his beerglass. 'What's in this stuff?' 'Your mate Mad faid you were this big wizard and could kill people just by pointing at 'em and shoutin',' said Crocodile. 'I wouldn't mind feein' that.' Rincewind looked up desperately and his eye caught the Roo Beer poster. It showed some of the damn silly trees they had here, and the arid red earth and – nothing else. 'Huh?' 'What's that?' said Crocodile. 'What happened to the kangaroo?' Rincewind said hoarsely. 'What kangaroo?' 'There was a kangaroo on that poster last night . . . wasn't there?' Crocodile peered at the poster. 'I'm better at smell,' he admitted at last. 'But I got to admit, it smells like it's gorn.' 'Something very strange is going on here,' said Rincewind. 'This is a very strange country.' 'We've got an opera house,' Crocodile volunteered. 'That's cultcher.' 'And ninety-three words for being sick?' 'Yeah, well, we're a very . . . vocal people.' 'Did I really bet five hundred . . . What was it?' 'Squids.' '. . . squids I haven't got?' 'Yup.' 'So I'll probably get killed if I lose, right?' 'No worries.' 'I wish people'd stop saying that—' He caught sight of the poster again. 'That kangaroo's back!' Crocodile turned around awkwardly, walked up to the poster and sniffed. 'Could be,' he said cautiously. 'And it's facing the wrong way!' 'Take it easy, mate!' said Crocodile Dongo, looking concerned. Rincewind shuddered. 'You're right,' he said. 'It's the heat and the flies getting to me. It must be.' Dongo poured him another beer. 'Ah well, beer's good for the heat,' he said. 'Can't do any-thin' about the bloody flies, though.' Rincewind started to nod, and stopped. He removed his hat and looked at it critically. Then he waved a hand up and down in front of his face, temporarily dislodging a few flies. Finally, he looked thoughtfully at a row of bottles. 'Got any string?' he said. After a few experiments, and some mild concussion, Dongo advanced the opinion that it'd be better with just the corks. The Luggage was lost. Usually, it could find its way anywhere in time and space, but trying to do that now was like a man trying to keep his footing on two moving walkways heading in opposite directions, and it simply couldn't cope. It knew it had been stuck underground for a long time, but it also knew that it had been stuck underground for about five minutes. The Luggage had no brain as such, even though an outsider might well get the impression that it could think. What it did do was react, in quite complex ways, to its environment. Usually this involved finding something to kick, as is the case with most sapient creatures. Currently it was ambling along a dusty track. Occasionally its lid would snap at flies, but without much enthusiasm. Its opal coating glowed in the sunlight. 'Oaaw! Isn't that pretty!' Fetch it here, you two!' It paid no attention to the brightly coloured cart that stopped a little way along the track. It was possibly aware at some level that people had got out and were staring at it, but it didn't resist when they appeared to reach a decision and lifted it on to the cart. It didn't know where it had to go, and since it also didn't know where this cart was going perhaps it would take it there. It waited a decent while after it had been put down, and then took in its surroundings. It had been stacked up by a lot of other boxes and suitcases, which was comforting. After five minutes spent being underground for millions of years the Luggage felt that it was due some quality time. And it didn't even resist when someone opened its lid and filled it up with shoes. Quite large shoes, the Luggage noticed, and many of them with interesting heels and inventive ways with silk and sequins. They were clearly ladies' shoes. That was good, the Luggage thought (or emoted, or reacted). Ladies tended to lead quieter lives. The purple cart rumbled off. Painted crudely on the back were the words: Petunia, The Desert Princess. Rincewind looked hard at the shears that the head shearer was waving. They looked sharp. 'You know what we do to people who go back on a bet round here?' said Daggy, the gang boss. 'Er . . . but I was drunk.' 'So were we. So what?' Rincewind looked out across the sheep pens. He knew what sheep were, of course, and had come into contact with them on many occasions, although normally in the company of mixed vegetables. He'd even had a toy stuffed lamb as a child. But there is something hugely unlovable about sheep, a kind of mad, eye-rolling brainless-ness smelling of damp wool and panic. Many religions extol the virtues of the meek, but Rincewind had never trusted them. The meek could turn very nasty at times. On the other hand . . . they were covered in wool, and the shears looked pretty keen. How hard could it be? His radar told him that trying and failing was probably a lot less of a crime than not trying at all. 'Can I have a trial run?' he said. A sheep was dragged out of the pens and flung down in front of him. Rincewind gave Daggy what he hoped was the smile of one craftsman to another, but smiling at Daggy was like throwing meringues against a cliff. 'Er, can I have a chair and a towel and two mirrors and a comb?' he said. Daggy's look of intense suspicion deepened. 'What's this? What d'you want all that for?' 'Got to do it properly, haven't I?' Away out of sight at the back of the shearing shed, on the sun-bleached boards, the outline of a kangaroo began to form. And then, the white lines drifting across the wood like wisps of cloud across a clear sky, it began to change shape . . . Rincewind hadn't had a proper haircut in a long time, but he knew how it was done. 'So . . . have you had your holidays this year, then?' he said, clipping away. 'Mnaaarrrhh!' 'What about this weather, eh?' Rincewind said, desperately. 'Mnaaarrrhh!' The sheep wasn't even trying to struggle. It was an old one, with fewer teeth than feet, and even in the very limited depths of its extremely shallow mind it knew that this wasn't how shearing was supposed to go. Shearing was supposed to be a brief struggle followed by glorious cool freedom back in the paddock. It wasn't supposed to include searching questions about what it thought of this weather or enquiries as to whether it required something for the weekend, especially since the sheep had no concept of the connotations of the term 'weekend' or, if it came to that, of the word 'something' either. People weren't supposed to splash lavender water in its ear. The shearers watched in silence. There was quite a crowd of them, because they'd gone and fetched everyone else on the station. They knew in their souls that here was something to tell their grandchildren. Rincewind stood back, looked critically at his handiwork, and then showed the sheep the back of its head in the mirror, at which point the creature cracked, managed to get its feet under it and made a run for the paddock. 'Hey, wait till I take the curlers out!' Rincewind shouted after it. He became aware of the shearers watching him. Finally one of them said, in a stunned voice, That's sheep-shearing where yew come from, is it?' 'Er . . . what did you think?' said Rincewind. 'It's a bit slow, innit?' 'How fast was I supposed to go?' 'Weell, Daggy here once did nearly fifty in an hour. That's what you've got to beat, see? None of that fancy rubbish. Just short back, front, top and sides.' 'Mind yew,' said one of the shearers, wistfully, 'that was a beautiful lookin' sheep.' There was an outbreak of bleating from the sheep corrals. 'Ready to give it a real go, Rinso?' said Daggy. 'Ye gawds, what's that?' said one of his mates. The fence shattered. A ram stood in the gap, shaking its head to dislodge bits of post from its horns. Steam rose from its nostrils. Most of the things Rincewind had associated with sheep, apart from the gravy and mint sauce, had to do with . . . sheepishness. But this was a ram, and the word association was suddenly . . . rampage. It pawed the ground. It was a lot bigger than the average sheep. In fact, it seemed to fill Rincewind's entire future. 'That's not one of mine!' said the flock's owner. Daggy placed his shears in Rincewind's other hand and patted him on the back. 'This one's yours, mate,' he said, and backed away. 'You're here to show us how it's done, eh, mate?' Rincewind looked down at his feet. They weren't moving. They remained firmly fixed to the ground. The ram advanced, snorting and looking Rincewind in the bloodshot eye. 'Okay,' it whispered, when it was very close. 'You just make with the shears and the sheep'll do the rest. No worries.' 'Is that you?' said Rincewind, glancing at the distant ring of watchers. 'Hah, good one. Ready? They'll do what I do. They're like sheep, okay?' The shearers watched as wool fell like rain. That's somethin' you don't often see,' said one of them. Them standin' on their heads like that . . .' The cartwheels is good,' said another shearer, lighting his pipe. 'I mean, for sheep.' Rincewind just hung on to the shears. They had a life of their own. The sheep flung themselves against the clippers as if in a real hurry to get into something more comfortable. Fleeces curled around his ankles, then around his knees, rose above his waist . . . and then the shears were slicing the air, and sizzling as they cooled down. Several dozen dazed sheep were watching him very suspiciously. So were the sheep-shearers. 'Er . . . have we started the competition yet?' he said. 'You just sheared thirty sheep in two minutes!' roared Daggy. 'Is that good?' 'Good? No one takes two minutes for thirty sheep.' 'Well, I'm sorry, but I can't go any faster.' The shearers went into a huddle. Rincewind looked around for the ram, but it didn't seem to be there any more. Finally, something seemed to have been settled. The shearers approached him in the cautious, oblique way of men trying to hang back and walk forward at the same time. Daggy stepped forward, but only comparatively; in fact, his mates had all, without discussion, taken one step backwards in the choreography of caution. 'G'day!' he said nervously. Rincewind gave him a friendly wave, and it was only halfway through when he remembered that he was still holding the shears. Daggy hadn't forgotten about them. 'Er . . . we ain't got five hundred squids till we get paid—' Rincewind wasn't certain how to deal with this. 'No worries,' he said. This covered most things. '. . . so if yew're gonna be around . . .' 'I just want to get to Bugarup as soon as possible,' said Rincewind. Daggy kept smiling but turned around and went into another huddle with the rest of the shearers. Then he turned back. '. . . maybe we could sell a few things . . .' 'I'm not bothered about the money, actually,' said Rincewind loudly. 'Just point me in the direction of Bugarup. No worries.' 'Yew don't want the money?' 'No worries.' There was another huddle. Rincewind heard hissed comments of 'Get him outta here right now.' Daggy turned back. 'I got a horse you can have,' he said. 'It's worth a squid or two.' 'No worries.' 'And then you'll be able to ride away . . .?' 'She'll be right. No worries.' It was an amazing phrase. It was practically magical all by itself. It just . . . made things better. A shark's got your leg? No worries. You've been stung by a jellyfish? No worries! You're dead? She'll be right! No worries! Oddly enough, it seemed to work. 'No worries,' he said again. 'Got to be worth a squid or two, that horse,' Daggy said again. 'Practically a bloody racehorse.' There was some sniggering from the crowd. 'No worries?' said Rincewind. Daggy looked for a moment as if he was entertaining the suggestion that maybe the horse was worth more than five hundred squid, but Rincewind was still dreamily holding on to the shears and he thought better of it. 'Get you to Bugarup in no time, that horse,' he said. 'No worries.' A couple of minutes later it was obvious even to Rincewind's inexperienced eye that while you could race this horse, it wouldn't be sensible to race it against other horses. At least, ones that were alive. It was brown, stubby, mostly a thatch of mane, with hooves the size of soup bowls, and it had the shortest legs Rincewind had ever seen on anything with a saddle. The only way you could fall off would be to dig a hole in the ground first. It looked ideal. It was Rincewind's kind of horse. 'No worries,' he said. 'Actually . . . one small worry.' He dropped the shears. The shearers took a step back. Rincewind went over to the corral and looked down at the ground, which was churned from the hoofprints of the sheep. Then he looked at the back of the shearing shed. For a moment he was sure there was the outline of a kangaroo . . . The shearers approached him cautiously as he banged on the sun-bleached planks, shouting, 'I know you're in there!' . 'Er, that's what we call wood,' said Daggy. 'Woo-od,' he added, for the hard-of-thinking. 'Made into a wa-all.' 'Did you see a kangaroo walk into this wall?' Rincewind demanded. Daggy's wide brow furrowed a little. He took off his hat and wiped his head with his arm. He looked at the disappearing horse, and then at the sheds, and then at the other men. Several times he started to speak, shut his mouth before he could get the first word out, and glared around him again. 'Yew all know I've had it for bloody ages, right?' he demanded. ' 's right.' 'Ages.' 'Won it off'f a bloke.' 'Right. Yeah. Right. You must've done.' Mrs Whitlow sat on a rock, combing her hair. A bush had sprouted several twigs with rows of blunt, closely set thorns just when she needed them. Large, pink and very clean, she relaxed by the water like an amplified siren. Birds sang in the trees. Sparkling beetles hummed to and fro across the water. If the Senior Wrangler had been present someone could have scraped him up and carried him away in a bucket. Mrs Whitlow did not feel in any danger. The wizards were around, after all. She was mildly worried that the maids would be getting lazy since she wasn't there, but she could look forward to making their lives a living hell when she got back. The possibility of not getting back never entered her head. A lot of things never entered Mrs Whitlow's head. She'd decided a long time ago that the world was a lot nicer that way. She had a very straightforward view of foreign parts, or at least those more distant than her sister's house in Quirm where she spent a week's holiday every year. They were inhabited by people who were more to be pitied than blamed because, really, they were like children.[15]And they acted like savages. [16] On the other hand, the scenery was nice and the weather was warm and nothing smelled very bad. She was definitely feeling the benefit, as she'd put it. Not to put too fine a point on it, Mrs Whitlow had left her corsets off. The thing that the Senior Wrangler insisted on calling the 'melon boat' was, even the Dean admitted, very impressive. There was a big space below deck, dark and veined and lined with curved black boards, very like giant sunflower seeds. 'Boat seeds,' said the Archchancellor. 'Probably make good ballast. Senior Wrangler, don't eat the wall, please.' 'I thought perhaps we could do with more cabin space,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Cabins possibly, staterooms no,' said Ridcully, heaving himself back on to the deck. 'Avast shipmate!' shouted the Dean, throwing a bunch of bananas on to the boat and climbing up behind them. 'Quite so. How do we sail this vegetable, Dean?' 'Oh, Ponder Stibbons knows all about that sort of thing.' 'And where is he?' 'Didn't he go off to fetch some bananas?' They looked down at the beach, where the Bursar was stockpiling seaweed. 'He did seem a bit . . . upset,' said Ridcully. 'Can't imagine why.' Ridcully glanced up at the central mountain, glowing in the afternoon sun. 'I suppose he wouldn't have done anything stupid, would he?' he said. 'Archchancellor, Ponder Stibbons is a fully trained wizard!' said the Dean. 'Thank you for that very concise and definite answer, Dean,' said Ridcully. He leaned down into the cabin. 'Senior Wrangler! We're going to look for Stibbons. And we ought to go and fetch Mrs Whitlow, too.' There was a shriek from below. 'Mrs Whitlow! How could we have forgotten her!' 'In your case, only by having a cold bath, Senior Wrangler.' As horses went, this one went slowly. It moved in a stolid, I-can-do-this-all-day manner that clearly said the only way you get me to go faster will be to push me off a cliff. It had a curious gait, somewhere faster than a trot but slower than a canter. The effect was a jolting slightly out of synchronization with the moment of inertia in any known human organ, causing everything inside Rincewind to bounce off everything else. Also, if he forgot for a second and lowered his legs, Snowy went on without him, and this meant that he had to run ahead and stand there like a croquet hoop until he caught him up. But Snowy didn't bite, buck, roll over or gallop insanely away, which were the traits Rincewind had hitherto associated with horses. When Rincewind stopped for the night the horse wandered off a little way and ate a bush covered with leaves the thickness, smell and apparent edibility of linoleum. He camped beside what he had heard called a 'billybong', which was just an expanse of churned earth with a tiny puddle of water welling up in the middle. Little green and blue birds were clustered around it, cheeping happily in the late afternoon light. They scattered when Rincewind lay down to drink, and scolded him from the trees. When he sat up, one of them landed on his finger. 'Who's a pretty boy, then?' said Rincewind. The noise stopped. Up on the branches the birds looked at one another. There wasn't much room in their heads for a new idea, but one had just turned up. The sun dropped towards the horizon. Rince-wind poked very cautiously inside a hollow log and found a ham sandwich and a plate of cocktail sausages. Up in the trees the budgerigars were in a huddle. One of them said, very quietly, 'Wh . . .?' Rincewind lay back. Even the flies were merely annoying. Things began to sizzle in the bushes. Snowy went and drank from the tiny pool with a noise like an inefficient suction pump trying to deal with an unlucky turtle. It was, nevertheless, very peaceful. Rincewind sat bolt upright. He knew what was about to happen when things were peaceful. Up in the darkening branches a bird muttered, '. . . pre'y b'y . . .?' He relaxed, but only a little. '. . . 'sa prit' b'y . . .?' Suddenly the birds stopped. A branch creaked. The drop-bear . . . dropped. It was a close relative of the koala, although this doesn't mean very much. After all, the closest relative of the common elephant is about the size and shape of a rabbit. The drop-bear's most notable feature was its posterior, thick and heavily-padded to provide the maximum shock to the victim with the minimum shock to the bear. The initial blow rendered the prey unconscious, and then the bears could gather round to feed. It was a magnificent method of killing, since in other respects the bears were not very well built to be serious predators, and it was therefore particularly unfortunate for this bear that it chose, on this night, to drop on a man who might well have had 'Victim' written all over him but also had 'Wizzard' written on his hat, and that this hat, most significantly, came to a point. Rincewind lumbered to his feet and ran into a few trees while he tried, with both hands on the brim, to lift his hat off his head. He managed it at last, stared in horror at the bear and its peculiarly confused expression, and shook it off and into the bushes. There were thumps around him as more bears, disoriented by this turn of events, hit the ground and bounced wildly. In the trees the budgerigars woke up and, the simple message by now having had time to work its way into their brain cells, shrieked, 'Who's a pri'y boy, den?' A madly tumbling bear whirled past Rincewind's face. Rincewind turned and ran towards Snowy, landing astride the horse's back, or where its back would have been had it been taller. Snowy obediently broke into his arrhythmical trot and headed into the darkness. Rincewind looked down, swore and ran after his horse. He held on tight as Snowy ran on like some small engine, leaving the bouncing bears behind, and didn't slow down until he was well away along the track and among bushes that were shorter than he was. Then he slid off. What a bloody country! There was a flurry of wings in the night and suddenly the bush was full of little birds. 'Wh'sa pri' boyden?' Rincewind waved his hat at them and screamed a little, just to relieve his feelings. It didn't work. The budgerigars thought this was some sort of entertainment. 'Bug'roff!' they twittered. Rincewind gave up, stamped on the ground a few times, and tried to sleep. When he awoke, it was to a sound very much like a donkey being sawn in half. It was a kind of rhythmic scream of pain, anguished and forlorn, setting the teeth of the world on edge. Rincewind raised his head cautiously over the scrub. A windmill was spinning in the breeze, turning this way and that as stray gusts batted its tail fin. Rincewind was seeing more of these, dotted across the landscape, and thought: If all the water's underground, that's a good idea . . . There was a mob of sheep hanging around the base of this one. They didn't back off, but watched him carefully as he approached. He saw why. The trough below the pump was empty. The fan was spinning, grinding out its mournful squeak, but no water was coming out of the pipe. The thirsty sheep looked up at him. 'Er . . . don't look at me,' he mumbled. I'm a wizard. We're not supposed to be good at machinery.' No, but we are supposed to be good at magic, said an accusing voice in his head. 'Maybe I can see if something's come loose, though. Or something,' he muttered. Impelled by the vaguely accusing woolly stares, he clambered up the rickety tower and tried to look efficient. There didn't seem to be anything wrong, except that the metallic groaning was getting louder. 'Can't see any—' Something that had finally been tortured beyond endurance broke, somewhere down in the tower. It shook, and the windmill spun free, dragging a broken rod which smashed heavily on the windmill's casing with every revolution. Rincewind half fell, half slid back down to the ground. 'Seems to be a bit of a technical fault,' he mumbled. A lump of cast iron smashed into the sand by his feet. 'Probably needs to be seen to by a qualified artificer. Probably invalidates the warranty if I mess around—' A cracking noise from overhead made him dive for cover, which in this case was a rather surprised sheep. When the racket had died away the windmill's fan was bowling over through the scrub. As for the rest of it, if there had ever been any user-serviceable parts inside they very clearly weren't in there any more. Rincewind took off his hat to mop his brow, but he wasn't quick enough. A pink tongue rasped across his forehead like damp sandpaper. 'Ow! Good grief! You lot really are thirsty, aren't you . . .?' He pulled the hat back on, right down to his ears just to be on the safe side. 1 could do with a drink myself, to tell the truth . . .' He managed, after pushing a few sheep aside, to find a piece of broken windmill. Wading with some difficulty through the press of silent bodies, he made his way to an area that was a little lower than the surrounding scrub, and contained a couple of trees whose leaves looked slightly fresher than the rest. 'Ow! G'd gr'f!' chattered the birds around him. Two or three feet should do it, he thought as he shovelled the red soil aside. Amazing, really, all this water underground when it never rained at all. The whole place must be floating on water. At three feet down the soil was barely damp. He sighed, and kept going. He was more than chest deep before a trickle oozed out between his toes. The sheep fought for the damp soil as he threw it up to the surface. As he watched, the puddle sank into the ground. 'Hey, comeback!' 'H'y, c'm bik!' screamed the birds in the bushes. 'Shut up!' 'Sh'tupl Wh'spr'boyden?' He flailed at the ground with his makeshift shovel in an effort to catch up, and overtook the descending water after another few inches. He splashed on until he was knee deep, dragged his hat through the muddy liquid, pulled himself out of the hole and ran, water dribbling over his feet, until he could tip it into the trough. The sheep clustered around it, struggling silently to get at the film of moisture. Rincewind got two more hatfuls before the water sank out of sight. He wrenched the ladder off the stricken windmill, threw it down the hole and jumped in after it. Damp soil fountained out as he dug, and each dripping lump attracted a mass of flies and small birds as soon as it hit the ground. He managed another dozen or so hatfuls before the hole was deeper than the ladder. By now some cattle had lumbered up to the trough as well, and it was impossible to see the water for heads. The sound was that of a straw investigating the suds of the biggest milkshake in the world. Rincewind took a final look down the hole, and as he did so the last drop of water winked out of sight. 'Weird country,' he muttered. He wandered over to where Snowy was standing patiently in the sparse shade of a bush. 'You're not thirsty?' he said. Snowy snorted and shook his mane. 'Oh, well. Maybe you've got a bit of camel in you. You certainly can't be all horse, I know that.' Snowy moved aimlessly sideways and trod on Rincewind's foot. By noon the track crossed another one, which was much wider. Hoofprints and wheel ruts suggested that it got a lot of traffic. Rincewind brightened up, and followed it through thickening trees, glad of the shade. He passed another groaning windmill surrounded by a cluster of patiently waiting cattle. There were more bushes and the land was rising into ancient, crumbling hills of orange rock. At least it gets the wind up here, he thought. Ye gods, is a drop of rain too much to ask? You can't never have any rain. Everywhere gets rained on sometimes. It has to drop out of the sky in order to get underground in the first place, doesn't it? He stopped when he heard the sound of many hoofbeats on the track behind him. A mob of riderless horses appeared round the bend at full gallop. As they swept past Rincewind he saw one horse out in front of the others, built on the sleekest lines he'd ever seen, a horse that moved as though it had a special arrangement with gravity. The pack divided and flowed around Rincewind as if he were a rock in a stream. Then they were just a disappearing noise in a cloud of red dust. Snowy's nostrils flared, and the jolting increased as he speeded up. 'Oh, yes?' said Rincewind. 'Not a chance, mate. You can't play with the big boys. No worries.' The cloud of dust had barely settled before there were more hoofbeats and a bunch of horsemen came around the curve. They galloped past without taking any notice of Rincewind, but a rider at the rear slowed down. 'You seen a mob of horses go by, mate?' 'Yes, mate. No worries, no worries, no worries.' 'A big brown colt leadin' 'em?' 'Yes, mate. No worries, no worries.' 'Old Remorse says he'll give a hundred squids to the man who catches him! No chance of that, it's canyon country ahead!' 'No worries?' 'What's that you're riding, an ironing board?' 'Er, excuse me,' Rincewind began, as the man set off in pursuit, 'but is this the right road to Bugar—?' The dust swirled across the road. 'What happened to the well known Ecksian reputation for good-hearted friendliness, eh?' shouted Rincewind to empty air. He heard shouts and the cracking of whips from the trees on the high slopes as he wound into the hills. At one point the wild horses burst out on to the track again, not even noticing him in their flight, and this time Snowy ambled off the track and followed the trail of broken bushes. Rincewind had learned that hauling on the reins only had the effect of making his arms ache. The only way to stop the little horse when he didn't want to be stopped was probably to get off, run ahead, and dig a trench in front of him. Once again the riders came up behind Rincewind and thudded past, foam streaming from the horses' mouths. 'Excuse me. Am I on the right road for—?' And they were gone. He caught up with them ten minutes later in a thicket of mountain ash, milling around uncertainly while their leader shouted at them. 'I say, can anyone tell me—' he ventured. Then he saw why they had stopped. They'd run out of forwards. The ground fell away into a canyon, a few patches of grass and a handful of bushes clinging to the very nearly sheer drop. Snowy's nostrils flared and, without even pausing, he continued down the slope. He should have skidded, Rincewind saw. In fact he should have dropped. The slope was almost vertical. Even mountain goats would only try it roped together. Stones bounced around him and a few of the larger ones managed to hit him on the back of the neck, but Snowy trotted downwards at the same deceptive speed that he used on the flat. Rincewind settled for hanging on and screaming. Halfway down, he saw the wild herd gallop along the canyon, skid around a rock and disappear between the cliffs. Snowy reached the bottom in a shower of pebbles and paused for a moment. Rincewind risked opening an eye. The little horse's nostrils flared again as it looked down the narrow canyon. It stamped a hoof uncertainly. Then it looked at the vertiginous far wall, only a few metres away. 'Oh, no,' moaned Rincewind. 'Please, no . . .' He tried to untangle his legs but they had met right under the horse's stomach and twisted their ankles together. He must be able to do something to gravity, he told himself, as Snowy trotted up the cliff as though it wasn't a wall but merely a sort of vertical floor. The corks on his hat brim banged against his nose. And ahead . . . above . . . was an overhang . . . 'No, please, no, please don't . . .' He shut his eyes. He felt Snowy draw to a halt. and breathed a sigh of relief. He risked a look down, and the huge hooves were indeed standing on solid, flat rock. There were no corks hanging in front of Rincewind's hat. In dread and slowly mounting terror, he turned his eyes to what they'd always thought of as upwards. There was solid rock above him, as well. Only it was a long way up, or down. And the corks were all hanging upwards, or downwards. Snowy was standing on the underside of the overhang, apparently enjoying the view. He flared his nostrils again, and shook his mane. He'll fall off, Rincewind thought. Any minute now he'll realize he's upside down and he'll fall off and from this height a horse'll splat. On top of me. Snowy appeared to reach a decision, and set off again, around the curve of the overhang. The corks swung back and hit Rincewind in the face but, hey, all the trees had the green bits pointing up, except that they were the grey bits. Rincewind looked across the chasm at the horsemen. 'G'day!' he said, waving his hat in the air as Snowy set off again. 'I think I'm about to have a technicolour snake!' he added, and threw up. ' 'ere, mistah?' someone shouted back. 'Yes?' 'That was a chunder!' 'Right! No worries!' It turned out that this piece of land was only a narrow spur between canyons. Another sheer drop loomed up, or down. But to Rincewind's relief the horse turned aside at the brink and trotted along the edge. 'Oh, no, please . . .' A tree had fallen down and bridged the gulf. It was very narrow, but Snowy wheeled on to it without slowing. Both ends of the tree drummed up and down on the lip of the cliff. Pebbles began to fall away. Snowy bounced across the gap like a small ball and stepped off on the far side just before the treetrunk teetered and dropped on to the rocks. 'Please, no . . .' There wasn't a cliff here, just a long slope of loose rocks. Snowy landed among them, and flared his nostrils as the entire slope of scree began to move. Rincewind saw the herd gallop past in the narrow canyon bottom, far below. Large rocks bounded alongside him as the horse continued down in his own personal landslide. One or two jumped and bounced ahead, smashing on to the canyon floor just behind the last of the herd. Numb with fear and the shaking, Rincewind looked further along the canyon. It was blind. The end was another cliff . . . Stone piled into stone, building a rough wall across the canyon floor. As the last boulder slammed into place Snowy landed on top of it, almost daintily. He looked down at the penned herd, milling in confusion, and flared his nostrils. Rincewind was pretty sure horses couldn't snigger, but this one radiated an air of sniggerruity. It was ten minutes later that the horsemen rode up. By then the herd was almost docile. They looked at the horses. They looked at Rincewind, who grinned horribly and said, 'No worries.' Very slowly, he didn't fall off Snowy. He simply swivelled sideways, with his feet still twisted together, until his head banged gently on the ground. That was bloody great riding, mate!' 'Could someone separate my ankles, please? I fear they may have fused together.' A couple of the riders dismounted and, after some effort, pulled him free. The leader looked down at him. 'Name your price for that little battler, mate!' said Remorse. 'Er . . . three . . . er . . . squids?' said Rincewind, muzzily. 'What? For a wiry little devil like that? He's got to be worth a coupla hundred at least!' 'Three squids is all I've got . . .' 'I reckon a few of them rocks hit him on the head,' said one of the stockmen who were holding Rincewind up. 'I mean I'll buy him off'f you, mister,' said Remorse, patiently. 'Tell you what – two hundred squids, a bag of tucker and we'll set you right on the road to . . . Where was it he wanted to go, Clancy?' 'Bugarup,' murmured Rincewind. 'Oh, you don't wanna go to Bugarup,' said Remorse. 'Nothing in Bugarup but a bunch of wowsers and pooftahs.' ' 's okay, I like parrots,' mumbled Rincewind, who was just hoping that they would let him go so that he could hold on to the ground again. 'Er . . . what's Ecksian for going mad with terrified fatigue and collapsing in a boneless heap?' The men looked at one another. 'Isn't that "snagged as a wombat's tonker"?' 'No, no, no, that's when you chuck a twister, isn't it?' said Clancy. 'What? Strewth, no. Chucking a twister's when . . . when you . . . yeah, it's when you . . . yeah, it's when your nose . . . Hang on, that's "bend a smartie" . . .' 'Er—' said Rincewind, clutching his head. 'What? "Bend a smartie" is when your ears get blocked underwater.' Clancy looked uncertain, and then seemed to reach a decision. 'Yeah, that's right!' 'Nah, that's "gonging like a possum's armpit", mate.' 'Excuse me—' said Rincewind. 'That ain't right. "Gonging like a possum's armpit" is when you crack a crusty. When your ears are stuffed like a Mudjee's kettle after a week of Fridays, that's "stuck up like Morgan's mule".' 'No, you're referrin' to "happier than Morgan's mule in a choccy patch"—' 'You mean "as fast as Morgan's mule after it ate Ma's crow pie".' 'How fast was that? Exactly?' said Rincewind. They all stared at him. Taster'n an eel in a snakepit, mate!' said Clancy. 'Don't you understand plain language?' 'Yeah,' said one of the men, 'he might be a fancy rider but I reckon he's dumber than a—' 'Don't anyone say anything!'shouted Rincewind. 'I'm feeling a lot better, all right? Just . . . all right, all right?' He straightened his ragged robe and adjusted his hat. 'Now, if you could just set me on the right road to Bugarup, I will not trespass further on your time. You may keep Snowy. He can bed down on a ceiling somewhere.' 'Oh, no, mister,' said Remorse. He reached into a shirt pocket, pulled out a bundle of notes and licked his thumb to count off twenty. 'I always pays me debts. You want to stay with us a while first? We could use another rider and it's tough going on the road by yourself. There's bush rangers about.' Rincewind rubbed his head again. Now that his various bodily organs had wobbled their way back into their approximate positions he could get back to general low-key generalized dread. They won't have to worry about me,' he mumbled. 'I promise not to light fires or feed the animals. Well, I say promise - most of the time they're trying to feed off me.' Remorse shrugged. 'Just so long as there's no more of those damn dropping bears,' said Rincewind. The men laughed. 'Drop-bears? Who's been feedin' you a line about drop-bears?' 'What do you mean?' 'There's no such thing as drop-bears! Someone must've seen you coming, mate!' 'Huh? They've got . . . they went,' Rincewind waved his arm, 'boing . . . all over the place . . . great big teeth . . .' 'I reckon he madder'n Morgan's mule, mate!' said Clancy. The group went silent. 'How mad is that, then?' said Rincewind. Clancy leaned on his saddle and looked nervously at the other men. He licked his lips. 'Well, it's . . .' 'Yes?' 'Well, it's . . . it's . . .' His face twisted up. 'It's . . .' 'Ver'. . .?' Rincewind hinted. 'Ver' . . .' Clancy mumbled, clutching the syllable like a lifeline. 'Hmm?' 'Ver . . . ry . . .' 'Keep going, keep going . . .' 'Ver . . . ry . . . mad?' said Clancy. 'Well done! See? So much easier,' said Rincewind. 'Someone mentioned something about food?' Remorse nodded to one of the men, who handed Rincewind a sack. 'There's beer and veggies and stuff and, 'cos you're a good sport, we're giving you a tin of jam, too.' 'Gooseberry?' 'Yep.' 'And I'm wondering about your hat,' said Remorse. 'Why's there all corks round it?' 'Knocks the flies out,' said Rincewind. 'That works, does it?' 'Course not,' said Clancy. 'If'n it does, some-one'd have thought of it by now.' 'Yes. Me,' said Rincewind. 'No worries.' 'Makes you look a bit of a drongo, mate,' said Clancy. 'Oh, good,' said Rincewind. 'Which way's Bugarup?' 'Just turn left at the bottom of the canyon, mate.' 'That's all?' 'You can ask again when you meet the bush rangers.' 'They've got some sort of cabin or station, have they?' 'They've . . . Well, just remember they'll find you if you get lost.' 'Really? Oh, well, I suppose that's part of their job. Good day to you.' 'G'day.' 'No worries.' The men watched Rincewind until he was out of sight. 'Didn't seem very bothered, did he?' 'He's a bit gujeroo, if you ask me.' 'Clancy?' 'Yes, boss?' 'You made that one up, didn't you . . .?' 'Well . . .' 'You bloody did, Clancy.' Clancy looked embarrassed, but then rallied. 'All right, then,' he said hotly. 'What about that one you used yesterday, "as busy as a one-armed carpenter in Smackaroo"?' 'What about it?' 'I looked it up in the atlas and there's no such place, boss.' 'There damn well is!' There isn't. Anyway, no one'd employ a one-armed carpenter, would they? So he wouldn't be busy, would he?' 'Listen, Clancy—' 'He'd go fishing or something, wouldn't he?' 'Clancy, we're supposed to be carving a new language out of the wilderness here—' 'Probably'd need someone to help him bait the line, but—' 'Clancy, will you shut up and go and get the horses?' It took twenty minutes to roll enough of the rocks away, and five minutes after that Clancy reported back. 'Can't find the little bastard, boss. And we looked underneath all the others.' 'It couldn't have got past us!' 'Yes it could, boss. You saw it goin' up those cliffs. Probably miles away by now. You want I should go after that bloke?' Remorse thought about it, and spat. 'No, we got the colt back. That's worth the money.' He stared reflectively down the canyon. 'You all right, boss?' 'Clancy, after we get back to the station, go on into town and call in at the Pastoral Hotel and bring back as many corks as they've got, willya?' Think it'll work, boss? He was as weird as . . .' Clancy was pulled up by the look in his boss's eye. 'He was pretty weird,' he said. 'Weird, yeah. But smart, too. No flies on him.' Behind them, ifi the jumble of rocks and bushes at the end of the canyon, a drawing of a small horse became a drawing of a kangaroo and then faded into the stone. The worst thing about losing your temper with Mustrum Ridcully was that he never noticed when you did. Wizards, when faced with danger, would immediately stop and argue amongst themselves about exactly what kind of danger it was. By the time everyone in the party understood, either it had become the sort of danger where your options are so very, very clear that you instantly take one of them or die, or it had got bored and gone away. Even danger has its pride. When he was a boy, Ponder Stibbons had imagined that wizards would be powerful demi-gods able to change the whole world at the flick of a finger, and then he'd grown up and found that they were tiresome old men who worried about the state of their feet and, in harm's way, would even bicker about the origin of the phrase 'in harm's way'. It had never struck him that evolution works in all kinds of ways. There were still quite deep scars in old buildings that showed what happened when you had the other kind of wizard. His footsteps took him, almost without his being aware, along the gently winding path up the mountain. Strange creatures peered at him from the undergrowth on either side. Some of them looked like— Wizards think in terms of books, and, now, one crept out from the shelves of Ponder's memory. It had been given to him when he was small. In fact, he'd still got it somewhere, filed away in a cardboard box. [17] It had consisted of lots of small pages on a central spiral. Each one showed the head, body or tail of some bird, fish or animal. It was possible for the sufficiently bored to shuffle and turn them so that you got, say, a creature with the head of a horse, the body of a beetle and the tail of a fish. The cover promised 'hours of fun' although, after the first three minutes, you couldn't help wondering what kind of person could make that kind of fun last for hours, and whether suffocating him as kindly as possible now would save the Serial Crimes Squad a lot of trouble in years to come. Ponder, however, had hours of fun. Some of the creat— things in the undergrowth looked like the pages of that book. There were birds with beaks as long as their bodies. There were spiders the size of hands. Here and there the air shimmered like water. It resisted very gently as Ponder tried to walk through it, and then let him pass, but the birds and insects didn't seem inclined to follow him. There were beetles everywhere. Eventually, by easy stages, the winding path reached the top of the mountain. There was a tiny valley there, just below the peak. At the far end was a large cave mouth, lit by a blue glow within. A large beetle sang past Ponder's ear. The cave mouth opened into a cavern, filled with misty blue fog. There was a suggestion of complex shadows. And there were sounds -whistles, little zipping noises, the occasional thud or clang that suggested work going on somewhere in the mist. Ponder brushed aside a beetle that had landed on his cheek and stared at the shape right in front of him. It was the front half of an elephant. The other half of the elephant, balancing against all probability on the two legs at the rear end, stood a few yards away. In between was . . . the rest of the elephant. Ponder Stibbons told himself that if you cut an elephant in half and scooped out the middle, what you would get would be . . . well, mess. There wasn't much mess here. Pink and purple tubes had uncoiled neatly on to a workbench. A small stepladder led up into another complexity of tubes and bulky organs. There was a general feel of methodical work in progress. This wasn't the horror of an elephant in an explosive death. This was an elephant under construction. Little clouds of white light spiralled in from all corners of the cavern, spun for a moment, and became the god of evolution, who was standing on the stepladder. He blinked at Ponder. 'Oh, it's you,' he said. 'One of the pointy creatures. Can you tell me what happens when I do this?' He reached inside the echoing depths of the front half. The elephant's ears flapped. 'The ears flapped,' squeaked Ponder. The god emerged, beaming. 'It's amazing how difficult that is to achieve,' he said. 'Anyway . . . what do you think of it?' Ponder swallowed. 'It's . . . very good,' he managed. He took a step back, bumped into something, and turned and looked into the gaping maw of a very large shark. It was in the middle of another . . . well, he had to think of it as a sort of biological scaffolding. It rolled an eye at him. Behind it, a much bigger whale was being assembled. 'It is, isn't it?' said the god. Ponder tried to concentrate on the elephant. 'Although—' he said. 'Yes?' 'Are you sure about the wheels?' The god looked concerned. 'You think they're too small? Not quite suitable for the veldt?' 'Er, probably not . . .' 'It's very hard to design an organic wheel, you know,' said the god reproachfully. 'They're little masterpieces.' 'You don't think just, you know, moving the legs about would be simpler?' 'Oh, we'd never get anywhere if I just copied earlier ideas,' said the god. 'Diversify and fill all niches, that's the ticket.' 'But is lying on your side in a mud hole with your wheels spinning a very important niche?' said Ponder. The god looked at him, and then stared glumly at the half-completed elephant. 'Perhaps if I made the tyres bigger?' he said, hopefully yet in a hopeless voice. 'I don't think so,' said Ponder. 'Oh, you're probably right.' The little god's hands twitched. 'I don't know, I do try to diversify, but sometimes it's so difficult . . .' Suddenly he ran across the crowded cave towards a huge pair of doors at the far end, and flung them open. 'I'm sorry, but I just have to do one,' said the god. 'They calm me down, you know.' Ponder caught up. The cave beyond the doors was bigger than this one, and brilliantly lit. The air was full of small, bright things, hovering in their millions like beads on invisible strings. 'Beetles?' said Ponder. There's nothing like a beetle when you're feeling depressed!' said the god. He'd stopped by a large metal desk and was feverishly opening drawers and pulling out boxes. 'Can you pass me that box of antennae? It's just on the shelf there. Oh yes, you can't beat a beetle when you're feeling down. Sometimes I think it's what it's all about, you know.' 'What all?' said Ponder. The god swept an arm in an expansive gesture. 'Everything,' he said cheerfully. 'The whole thing. Trees, grass, flowers . . . What did you think it was all for?' 'Well, I didn't think it was for beetles,' said Ponder. 'What about, well, what about the elephant, for a start?' The god already had a half-finished beetle in one hand. It was green. 'Dung,' he said triumphantly. No head, when screwed on to a body, ought to make a sound like a cork being pushed into a bottle, but the beetle's did in the hands of the god. 'What?' said Ponder. That's rather a lot of trouble to go to just for dung, isn't it?' 'That's ecology for you, I'm afraid,' said the god. 'No, no, that can't be right, surely?' said Ponder. 'What about the higher lifeforms?' 'Higher?' said the god. 'You mean like . . . birds?' 'No, I mean like—' Ponder hesitated. The god had seemed remarkably incurious about the wizards, possibly because of their lack of resemblance to beetles, but he could see a certain amount of theological unpleasantness ahead. 'Like . . . apes,' he said. 'Apes? Oh, very amusing, certainly, and obviously the beetles have to have something to entertain them, but . . .' The god looked at him, and a celestial penny seemed to drop. 'Oh dear, you don't think they're the purpose of the whole business, do you?' 'I'd rather assumed—' 'Dear me, the purpose of the whole business, you see, is in fact to be the whole business. Although,' he sniffed, 'if we can do it all with beetles I shan't complain.' 'But surely the purpose of— I mean, wouldn't it be nice if you ended up with some creature that started to think about the universe—?' 'Good gravy, I don't want anything poking around!' said the god testily. 'There's enough patches and stitches in it as it is without some dever devil trying to find more, I can assure you. No, the gods on the mainland have got that right at least. Intelligence is like legs – too many and you trip yourself up. Six is about the right number, in my view.' 'But surely, ultimately, one creature might—' The god let go of his latest creation. It whirred up and along the rows and rows of beetles and slotted itself in between two that were almost, but not exactly, quite like it. 'Worked that one out, have you?' he said. 'Well, of course you're right. I can see you have quite an efficient brain— Damn.' There was a little sparkle in the air and a bird appeared alongside the god. It was clearly alive but entirely stationary, hanging in frozen flight. A flickering blue glow hovered around it. The god sighed, reached into a pocket and pulled out the most complex-looking tool Ponder had ever seen. The bits that you could see suggested that there were other, even stranger bits that you couldn't and that this was probably just as well. 'However,' he said, slicing the bird's beak off, the blue glow simply closing over the hole, 'if I'm going to get any serious work done I'm really going to have to find some way of organizing the whole business. All I'm faced with these days is bills.' 'Yes, it must be quite expens—' 'Big bills, short bills, bills for winkling insects out of bark, bills for cracking nuts, bills for eating fruit,' the god went on. 'They're supposed to do their own evolving. I mean, that's the whole point. I shouldn't have to be running around all the time.' The god waved his hand in the air and a sort of display stand of beaks appeared beside him. He selected one that, to Ponder, hardly looked any different from the one he'd removed, and used the tool to attach it to the hanging bird. The blue glow covered it for a moment, and then the bird vanished. In the moment that it disappeared, Ponder thought he saw its wings begin to move. And in that moment he knew that, despite the apparent beetle fixation, here was where he'd always wanted to be, at the cutting edge of the envelope in the fast lane of the state of the art. He'd become a wizard because he'd thought that wizards knew how the universe worked, and Unseen University had turned out to be stifling. Take that business with the tame lightning. It had demonstrably worked. He made the Bursar's hair stand on end and sparks crackle out of his finger, and that was by using only one cat and a couple of amber rods. His perfectly reasonable plan to use several thousand cats tied to a huge wheel that would rotate against hundreds of rods had been vetoed on the ridiculous grounds that it would be too noisy. His carefully worked out scheme to split the thaum, and thus provide end-less supplies of cheap clean magic, had been quite unfairly sat upon because it was felt that it might make the place untidy. And that was even after he had presented figures to prove that the chances of the process completely destroying the entire world were no greater than being knocked down while crossing the street, and it wasn't his fault he said this just before the six-cart pile-up outside the University. Herewas a chance to do something that made sense. Besides, he thought he could see where the god was going wrong. 'Excuse me,' he said, 'but do you need an assistant?' 'Frankly, the whole thing is getting out of hand,' said the god, who was a wizard-class non-listener. 'It's really getting to the point where I need an—' 'I say, this is a pretty amazing place!' Ponder rolled his eyes. You could say that for wizards. When they walked into a place that was pretty amazing, they'd tell you. Loudly. 'Ah,' said the god, turning around, 'this is the rest of your . . . swarm, isn't it?' 'I'd better go and stop them,' said Ponder as the wizards fanned out like small boys in an amusement arcade, ready to press anything in case there was a free game left. 'They poke things and then say, "What does this do?" ' 'Don't they ask what things do before they poke them?' 'No, they say you'll never find out if you don't give them a poke,' said Ponder darkly. 'Then why do they ask?' 'They just do. And they bite things and then say, "I wonder if this is poisonous," with their mouths full. And you know the really annoying thing? It never is.' 'How odd. Laughing in the face of danger is not a survival strategy,' said the god. 'Oh, they don't laugh,' said Ponder gloomily. They say things like, "You call that dangerous? It's not a patch on the kind of danger you used to get when we were lads, eh, Senior Wrangler, what what? Remember when old 'Windows' McPlunder . . ." ' He shrugged. 'When old "Windows" McPlunder what?' said the god. 'I don't know! Sometimes I think they make up the names! Dean, I really don't think you should do that!' The Dean turned away from the shark, whose teeth he'd been examining. 'Why not, Stibbons?' he said. Behind him, the jaw snapped shut. Only the Archchancellor's legs were visible in the exploded elephant. There were muffled noises from inside the whale; they sounded very much ike the Lecturer in Recent Runes saying, 'Look at what happens when I twist this bit . . . See, that purple bit wobbles.' 'Amazin' piece of work,' said Ridcully, emerging from the elephant. 'Very good wheels. You paint these bits before assembly, do you?' 'It's not a kit, sir,' said Ponder, taking a kidney out of his hands and wedging it back in. It's a real dephant under construction!' 'Oh.' 'Being made, sir,' said Ponder, since Ridcully didn't seem to have got the message. 'Which is not usual.' 'Ah. How are they normally made, then?' 'By other elephants, sir.' 'Oh, yes . . .' 'Really? Are they?' said the god. 'How? Those minks are pretty nimble, even if I say so myself, but not really very good for delicate work.' 'Oh, not made like that, sir, obviously. By . . . you know . . . sex . . .' said Ponder, feeling a blush start. 'Sex?' Then Ponder thought: Mono Island. Oh dear . . . 'Er . . . males and females . . .' he ventured. 'What are they, then?' said the god. The wizards paused. 'Do go on, Mister Stibbons,' said the Arch-chancellor. 'We're all ears. Especially the elephant.' 'Well . . .' Ponder knew he was going red. 'Er . . . well, how do you get flowers and things at the moment?' 'I make them,' said the god. 'And then I keep an eye on them and see how they function and then when they wear out I make an improved version based on experimental results.' He frowned. 'Although the plants seem to be acting very oddly these days. What's the point of these seeds they keep making? I try to discourage it but they don't seem to listen.' 'I think . . . er . . . they're trying to invent sex, sir,' said Ponder. 'Er . . . sex is how you can . . . they can . . . creatures can . . . they can make the next . . . creatures.' 'You mean . . . elephants can make more elephants?' 'Yes, sir.' 'My word! Really?' 'Oh, yes.' 'How do they go about that? Calibrating the ear-waggling is particularly time-consuming. Do they use special tools?' Ponder saw that the Dean was staring straight up at the ceiling, while the other wizards were also finding something apparently fascinating to look at that meant they could avoid one another's gaze. 'Um, in a way,' said Ponder. He knew that a sticky patch lay ahead and decided to give up. 'But really I don't know much about—' 'And workshops, presumably,' said the god. He took a book from his pocket and a pencil from behind his ear. 'Do you mind if I make notes?' 'They . . . er . . . the female . . .' Ponder tried. 'Female,' said the god obediently, writing this down. 'Well, she . . . one popular way . . . she . . . sort of makes the next one . . . inside her.' The god stopped writing. 'Now I know that's not right,' he said. 'You can't make an elephant inside an elephant—' 'Er . . . a smaller version . . .' 'Ah, once again I have to point out the flaw. After a few such constructions you'd end up with an elephant the size of a rabbit.' 'Er, it gets bigger later . . .' 'Really? How?' 'It sort of . . . builds itself . . . er . . . from the inside . . .' 'And the other one, the one that is not the, uh, female? What is its part in all this? Is your colleague ill?' The Senior Wrangler hammered the Dean hard on the back. 'It's all right,' squeaked the Dean, '. . . often have . . . these . . . coughing fits . . .' The god scribbled industriously for a few seconds, and then stopped and chewed the end of his pencil thoughtfully. 'And all this, er, this sex is done by unskilled labour?' he said. 'Oh, yes.' 'No quality control of any description?' 'Er, no.' 'How does your species go about it?' said the god. He looked questioningly at Ponder. 'It . . . er . . . we . . . er . . .' Ponder stuttered. 'We avoid it,' said Ridcully. 'Nasty cough you've got there, Dean.' 'Really?' said the god. 'That's very interesting. What do you do instead? Split down the middle? That works beautifully for amoebas, but giraffes find it extremely difficult, I do know that.' 'What? No, we concentrate on higher things,' said Ridcully. 'And take cold baths, healthy morning runs, that sort of thing.' 'My goodness, I'd better make a note of that,' said the god, patting his robe. 'How does the process work, exactly? Do the females accompany you? These higher things . . . How high, precisely? This is a very interesting concept. Presumably extra orifices are required?' 'What? Pardon?' said Ponder. 'Getting creatures to make themselves, eh? I thought this whole seed business was just high spirits but, yes, I can see that it would save a lot of work, a lot of work. Of course, there'd have to be some extra effort at the design stage, certainly, but afterwards I suppose it'd practically run itself The god's hand blurred as he wrote, and he went on, 'Hmm, drives and imperatives, they're going to be vital . . . er . . . How does it work with, say, trees?' 'You just need Ponder's uncle and a paintbrush,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Sir!' said Ponder hotly. The god gave them both a look of intelligent bewilderment, like a man who had just heard a joke told in a completely foreign language and isn't sure if the speaker has got to the punchline yet. Then he shrugged. The only thing I think I don't quite understand', he said, 'is why any creature would want to spend time on all this . . .' he peered at his notes, 'this sex, when they could be enjoying themselves . . . Oh dear, your associate seems to be choking this time, I'm afraid . . .' 'Dean!' shouted Ridcully. 'I can't help noticing', said the god, 'that when sex is being discussed your faces redden and you tend to shift uneasily from one foot to the other. Is this some sort of signal?' 'Erm . . .' 'If you could just tell me how it all works . . .' Embarrassment filled the air, huge and pink. If it were rock, you could have carved great hidden rose-red cities in it. Ridcully smiled a petrified smile. 'Excuse us,' he said. 'Faculty meeting, gentlemen?' Ponder watched the wizards go into a huddle. He could hear a few phrases above the susurration. '. . . my father said, but of course I didn't believe . . . never raised its ugly head . . . Dean, will you shut up? We can't very well . . . cold showers, really Ridcully turned back and flashed the stony smile again. 'Sex is, er, not something we talk about,' he said. 'Much,' said the Dean. 'Oh, I see,' said the god. 'Well, a practical demonstration would be so much more compre-hendable.' 'Er, we weren't, er . . . planning a . . .' 'Coo-eee! There you are, gentlemen!' Mrs Whitlow entered the cave. The wizards went suddenly quiet, sensing in their wizardry minds that the introduction of Mrs Whitlow at this point was an electric fire in the swimming pool of life. 'Oh, another one of you,' said the god brightly. He focused. 'Or a different species, perhaps?' Ponder felt that he had to say something. Mrs Whitlow was giving him a Look. 'Mrs, er, Whitlow is, er, a lady,' he said. 'Ah, I shall make a note of it,' said the god. 'And what sort of thing do they do?' They're, um, the same species as, er, us,' said Ponder, miserably. 'Um . . . the . . . um . . .' 'Weaker sex,' Ridcully supplied. 'Sorry, you've lost me there,' said the god. 'Er . . . she's, um, er, a . . . of the female persuasion,' said Ponder. The god smiled happily. 'Oh, how very convenient,' he said. 'Excuse me,' said Mrs Whitlow, in as sharp a tone as she cared to use around the wizards, 'but will someone introduce this gentleman to me?' 'Oh, yes, of course,' said Ridcully. 'Do excuse me. God, this is Mrs Whitlow. Mrs Whitlow, this is God. A god. God of this island, in fact. Uh . . .' 'Charmed, Ai'm sure,' said Mrs Whitlow. In Mrs Whitlow's book, gods were socially very acceptable, at least if they had proper human heads and wore clothes; they rated above High Priests and occupied the same level as Dukes. 'Should Ai kneel?' she said. 'Mwaaa,' whimpered the Senior Wrangler. 'Genuflection of any sort is not required,' said the god. 'He means no,' said Ponder. 'Oh, as you wish,' said Mrs Whitlow. She extended a hand. The god grasped it and waggled her thumb backwards and forwards. 'Verypractical,' he said. 'Opposable, I see. I think I should make a note of this. Do you brachi-ate? Are you bipedal by habit? Oh, I notice your eyebrows go up, too. Is this a signal of some sort? I also note that you are a different shape from the others and don't have a beard. I assume that means you are less wise?' Ponder saw Mrs Whitlow's eyes narrow and her nostrils flare. 'Is there some sort of problem, sirs?' she said. 'Ai followed your footprints to that funny boat, and this was the only other path, so—' 'We were discussing sex,' said the god enthusiastically. 'It sounds very exciting, don't you think?' The wizards held their breath. This was going to make the Dean's sheets look very minor. 'It's not a subject on which Ai would venture an opinion,' said Mrs Whitlow carefully. 'Mwaa,' squeaked the Senior Wrangler. 'No one seems to want to tell me,' said the god irritably. A spark leapt from his fingers and blew a very small crater in the floor, and that seemed to shock him as much as it did the wizards. 'Oh dear, what can you think of me? I'm so sorry!' he said. 'I'm afraid it's a sort of natural reaction if I get a bit, you know . . . testy.' Everyone looked at the crater. The rock bubbled gently by Fender's feet. He didn't dare move his sandal, just in case he fainted. 'That was just . . . testy, was it?' said Ridcully. 'Well, it may have been more . . . vexed, I suppose,' said the god. 'I can't really help it, it's a god-given reflex. I'm afraid as a . . . well, species, we're not good with, you know, defiance. I'm so sorry. So sorry.' He blew his nose, and sat down on a half-finished panda. 'Oh, dear. There I go again . . .' A tiny bolt of lightning flashed off his thumb and exploded. 'I hope it's not going to be the city of Quint all over again. Of course, you know what happened there . . .' 'I've never heard of the city of Quint,' said Ponder. 'Yes, I suppose you wouldn't have,' said the god. 'That's the whole point, really. It wasn't much of a city. It was mostly made of mud. Well, I say mud. Afterwards, of course, it was mainly ceramics.' He turned a wretched face to them. 'You know those days you get when you just snap at everyone?' Out of the corner of his eye Ponder had noticed that the wizards, in a rare show of unanimity, were shuffling sideways, very slowly, towards the door. A much bigger thunderbolt blew a hole in the floor near the cave entrance. 'Oh dear, where can I put my face?' said the god. 'It's all subconscious, I'm afraid.' 'Could you get treatment for premature incineration?' 'Dean! This is not the time!' 'Sorry, Archchancellor.' 'If only they hadn't turned up their noses at my inflammable cows,' said the god, sparks fizzing off his beard. 'All right, I would agree that on hot days, in certain rare circumstances, they would spontaneously combust and burn down the village, but is that any excuse for ingratitude?' Mrs Whitlow had been giving the god a long, cool stare. 'What exactly is it you wish to know?' she said. 'Huh?' said Ridcully. 'Well, Ai mean no offence, but Ai for one would like to get out of here without mai hair on fire,' said the housekeeper. The god looked up. This male and female concept seems really rather promising,' he said, sniffing. 'But no one seems to want to go into detail . . .' 'Oh, that,' said Mrs Whitlow. She glanced at the wizards, and then gently pulled the god to his feet. 'If you will excuse me for one moment, gentlemen . . .' The wizards watched them in even more shock than had attended the lightning display, and then the Chair of Indefinite Studies pulled his hat over his eyes. 'I daren't look,' he said, and added, 'What are they doing?' 'Er . . . just talking . . .' said Ponder. 'Talking?' 'And she's . . . sort of . . . waving her hands about.' 'Mwaa!' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Quick, someone, give him some air,' said Ridcully. 'Now she's laughing, isn't she?' Both the housekeeper and the god looked around at the wizards. Mrs Whitlow nodded her head as if to reassure him that what she'd just told him was true, and they both laughed. 'Thatlooked more like a snigger,' said the Dean severely. 'I'm not sure I actually approve of this,' said Ridcully, haughtily. 'Gods and mortal women, you know. You hear stories.' 'Gods turning themselves into bulls,' said the Dean. 'Swans, too,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'Showers of gold,' said the Dean. 'Yes,' said the Chair. He paused for a second. 'You know, I've often wondered about that one—' 'What's she describing now?' 'I think I'd rather not know, quite frankly.' 'Oh, look, someone please do something for the Senior Wrangler, will you?' said Ridcully. 'Loosen his clothing or something!' They heard the god shout, 'It what?' Mrs Whitlow glanced around at the wizards and appeared to lower her voice. 'Did anyone ever meet Mr Whitlow?' said the Archchancellor. 'Well . . . no,' said the Dean. 'Not that I remember. I suppose we've all assumed that he's dead.' 'Anyone know what he died of?' Ridcully went on. 'Ah, quieten down . . . they're coming back . . .' The god nodded cheerfully at them as he approached. 'Well, that's all sorted out,' he said, rubbing his hands together. 'I can't wait to see how it works in practice. You know, if I'd sat here for a hundred years I'd never have . . . well, really, no one could serious believe . . . I mean . . .' He started to chuckle at their frozen faces. 'That bit where he . . . and then she . . . Really, I'm amazed that anyone stops laughing long enough to . . . Still, I can see how it could work, and it certainly opens the door to some very interesting possibilities indeed . . .' Mrs Whitlow was looking intently at the ceiling. There was perhaps just a hint in her stance and the way her rather expressive bosom moved that she was trying not to laugh. It was disconcerting. Mrs Whitlow never usually laughed at anything. 'Ah? Oh?' said Ridcully, edging towards the door. 'Really? Well done, then. So, I expect you don't need us any more, eh? Only we've got a boat to catch . . .' 'Yes, certainly, don't let me hold you up,' said the god, waving a hand vaguely. 'You know, the more I think about it, the more I can see that "sex" will solve practically all my problems.' 'Not everyone can say that,' said Ridcully gravely. 'Are you, er . . . joining us, Mrs, er, Whitlow?' 'Certainly, Archchancellor.' 'Er . . . jolly good. Well done. Ahem. And you, of course, Mister Stibbons . . .' The god had wandered over to a workbench and was rummaging in boxes. The air glittered. Ponder looked up at the whale. It was clearly alive but . . . not at the moment. His gaze swept across the elephant-under-construction and past mysteriously organic-looking gantries, where shimmering blue light surrounded shapes as yet unrecognized, although one did appear to contain half a cow. He carefully removed an exploring beetle from his ear. The point was, if he left now he'd always wonder . . . 'I think I'd like to stay,' he said. 'Good . . . er . . .' said the god, without looking around. 'Man,' said Ponder. 'Good man,' said the god. 'Are you sure?' said Ridcully. 'I don't think I've ever had a holiday,' said Ponder. 'I'd like to apply for time off to do research, sir.' 'But we're lost in the past, man!' 'Basic research, then,' said Ponder firmly. 'There's just so much to learn here, sir!' 'Really?' 'You've only got to look around, sir!' 'Well, I suppose I can't stop you if your mind's made up,' said the Archchancellor. 'We'll have to dock your pay, of course.' 'I don't think I've ever been paid, sir,' said Ponder. The Dean nudged Ridcully and whispered in his car. 'And we need to know how the boat works,' Ridcully went on. 'What? Oh, it shouldn't be a problem,' said the god, looking up from his bench. 'It'll find somewhere with a different biogeographical signature, you see. It's all automatic. No sense in coming back to where you started from!' He waved a beetle leg in the air. There's a new continent going up turn wise of here. The boat'll probably head straight for a landmass that size.' 'New?' said Ridcully. 'Oh, yes. I've never been interested in that sort of thing myself, but you can hear the construction noises all night. It's certainly causing a mess.' 'Stibbons, are you sure you want to stay?' the Dean demanded. 'Er, yes . . .' 'I''m sure Mister Stibbons will uphold the fine traditions of the University!' said Ridcully heartily. Ponder, who knew all about the traditions of the University, nodded very slightly. His heart was pounding. He hadn't even felt like this when he'd first worked out how to program Hex. At last he'd found his proper place in the world. The future beckoned. Dawn was breaking when the wizards ambled back down the mountain. 'Not a bad god, I thought,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'As gods go.' 'That was good coffee he made us,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'And didn't he grow the bush fast, once we explained what coffee was,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. They strolled on. Mrs Whitlow was walking some way ahead, humming to herself. The wizards took care to remain at a respectful distance. They were aware that in some kind of obscure way she'd won, although they hadn't a clue what the game was. 'Funny of young Ponder to want to stay,' said the Senior Wrangler, desperately trying to think of anything except a vision in pink. 'The god seemed happy about it,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'He did say that designing sex was going to involve redesigning practically everything else.' 'I used to make snakes out of clay when I was a little boy,' said the Bursar happily. 'Well done, Bursar.' 'Doing the feet was the hard part.' 'I can't help thinking, though, that we may have . . . tinkered with the past, Archchancellor,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'I don't see how,' said Ridcully. 'After all, the past happened before we got here.' 'Yes, but now we're here, we've changed it.' 'Then we changed it before.' And that, they felt, pretty well summed it up. It is very easy to get ridiculously confused about the tenses of time travel, but most things can be resolved by a sufficiently large ego. 'It's jolly impressive to think that a University man will be helping to create a whole new approach to designing lifeforms,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'Indeed, yes,' said the Dean. 'Who says education is a bad thing, eh?' 'I can't imagine,' said Ridcully. 'Who?' 'Well, if they did, we could point to Ponder Stibbons and say, look at him, worked hard at his studies, paid attention to his tutors, and now he's sitting on the right hand of a god.' 'Won't that make it rather difficult for—' the Lecturer in Recent Runes began, but the Dean got there first. 'That means on the right-hand side of the god, Runes,' he said. 'Which, I suspect, makes him an angel. Technically.' 'Surely not. He's scared of heights. Anyway, he's made of flesh and blood, and I'm sure angels have to be made of . . . light or something. He could be a saint, though, I suppose.' 'Can he do miracles, then?' 'I'm not sure. When we left they were talking about redesigning male baboons' behinds to make them more attractive.' The wizards thought about this for a while. 'That'd be a miracle in my book, certainly,' said Ridcully. 'Can't say that's how I'd choose to spend an afternoon, though,' said the Senior Wrangler, in a thoughtful voice. 'According to the god it's all to do with making creatures want to have . . . to engage in . . . to get to grips with making a new generation, when they could otherwise be spending their time in more . . . profitable activity. Apparently, a lot of animals will need a complete rebuild.' 'From the bottom up. Ahaha.' 'Thank you for your contribution, Dean.' 'So exactly how does it work, then?' said the Senior Wrangler. 'A female baboon sees a male baboon and says, "My word, that's a very colourful bottom and no mistake, let us engage in . . . nuptial activity"?' 'I must say I've often wondered about that sort of thing myself,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. Take frogs. Now, if I was a lady frog looking for a husband, I'd want to know about, well, size of legs, competence at catching flies—' 'Length of tongue,' said Ridcully. 'Dean, will you please take something for that cough?' 'Quite so,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'Has he got a good pond, and so on. I can't say I'd base my choice on his ability to inflate his throat to the same size as his stomach and go rabbit, rabbit.' 'I believe it's ribbit, ribbit, Runes.' 'Are you sure?' 'I believe so, yes.' 'Which ones go rabbit, rabbit, then?' 'Rabbits, I believe.' 'Oh. Yes. Constantly, as I recall.' 'I've always thought sex was really a rather tasteless way of ensuring the continuity of the species,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, as they reached the beach. 'I'm sure there could be something better. It's all very . . . old-fashioned, to my mind. And far too energetic.' 'Well, I'm generally in agreement, but what would you suggest instead?' said Ridcully. 'Bridge,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies firmly. 'Really? Bridge?' 'You mean the game with cards?' said the Dean. 'I don't see why not. It can be extremely exciting, very sociable, and requires no special equipment.' 'But you do need four people,' Ridcully pointed out. 'Ah, yes. I had not considered that. Yes, I can see that there could be problems. All right, then. How about . . . croquet? You can do that with two. Indeed, I've often enjoyed a quiet knockabout all by myself.' Ridcully let a little more space come between him and the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'I fail to see how it could be utilized for the purpose of procreation,' he said carefully. 'Recreation, yes, I'll grant you that. But not procreation. I mean, how would it work?' 'He'sthe god,' sniffed the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'He's supposed to sort out the details, isn't he?' 'But you think women would really decide to spend their life with a man just because he can swing a big mallet?' said the Dean. 'I suppose, when you come to think about it, that's no more ridic—' Ridcully began, and then stopped. 'I think we should leave this subject,' he said. 'I played croquet with him only last week,' hissed the Dean to Ridcully, as the Chair wandered off. 'I shan't be happy now until I've had a good bath!' 'We'll lock up his mallets when we get back, depend upon it,' Ridcully whispered. 'He's got books and books about croquet in his room, did you know that? Some of them have got coloured illustrations!' 'What of?' 'Famous croquet strokes,' said the Dean. 'I think we ought to take his mallet away.' 'Close to what I was thinking, Dean. Close,' said Ridcully. Once a moderately jolly wizard camped by a dried-up waterhole under the shade of a tree that he was completely unable to identify. And he swore as he hacked and hacked at a can of beer, saying, 'What kind of idiots put beer in tins?' By the time he managed to make a hole with a sharp stone the beer came out as high-speed froth, but he fielded as much as he could. Apart from the beer, though, things were looking up. He'd checked the trees for drop-bears and, best of all, there was no sign of Scrappy. He managed to pierce another tin, more carefully this time, and sucked thoughtfully at the contents. What a country! Nothing was exactly what it turned out to be, even the sparrows talked, or at least tried to say, 'Who's a pretty boy, then?' and it never ever rained. And all the water hid underground, so they had to pump it out with windmills. He'd passed another one as he left the canyon country. This one was still managing a trickle of water, but it had dried up to an occasional drip even as he watched it. Damn! He should've picked up some water to take away while he was there. He looked at the food in the sack. There was a loaf of bread the size and weight of a cannonball, and some vegetables. But at least they were recognizable vegetables. There was even a potato. He held it up against the sunset. Rincewind had eaten in many countries on the Disc, and sometimes he'd been able to complete an entire meal before having to run away. And they'd always lacked something. Oh, people did great things with spices and olives and yams and rice and whatnot, but what he'd come to crave was the humble potato. Time was when a plate of mash or chips would have been his for the asking. All he'd needed to do was wander down to the kitchens and ask. Food was always available for the asking at Unseen University, you could say that for the place, even if you said it with your mouth full. And, ridiculous though it sounded now, he'd hardly ever done that. The dish of potatoes'd come past at mealtimes and he'd probably have a spoonful but, sometimes, he wouldn't! He'd . . . let . . . the . . . dish . . . go . . . by. He'd have rice instead. Rice! All very nutritious in its way, but basically only grown where potatoes would've floated to the surface. He'd remember those times, sometimes, usually in his sleep, and wake up shouting, 'Will you pass the potatoes, please!' Sometimes he remembered the melted butter. Those were the bad days. He placed the potato reverentially on the ground and tipped out the rest of the bag. There was an onion and some carrots. A tin of . . . tea. by the smell of it, and a little box of salt. A flash of inspiration struck him with all the force and brilliance that ideas have when they're travelling through beer. Soup! Nutritious and simple! You just boiled everything up! And, yes, he could use one of the empty beer tins, and make a fire, and chop up the vegetables, and the damp patch over there suggested there was water . . . He walked unsteadily over to have a look. There was a circular depression in the ground that looked as though it might have been some sort of pond once, and there was the usual cluster of slightly healthier than usual trees which you got in such places, but there was no sign of any water and he was too tired to dig. Then another insight struck him at the speed of beer. Beer! It was only water, really, with stuff in it. Wasn't it? And most of what was in it was yeast, which was practically a medicine and definitely a food. In fact, when you thought about it beer was only a kind of runny bread, in fact, it 'd be better to use some of the beer in the soup! Beer soup! A few brain cells registered their doubt, but the rest of them grabbed them by the collar and said hoarsely, people cooked chicken in wine, didn't they? It took him some time to hack one end off a tin, but eventually he had it standing in the fire with the chopped-up vegetables floating in the froth. A few more doubts assailed him at this point, but they were elbowed aside, especially when the smell that floated up made his mouth water and he'd opened another tin of beer as a pre-prandial appetizer. After a while he poked the vegetables with a stick. They were still pretty hard, even though a lot of the beer seemed to have boiled away. Was there something else he hadn't done? Salt! Yes, that was it! Salt, marvellous stuff. He'd read where you went totally up the pole if you didn't have any salt for a couple of weeks. That was probably why he was feeling so odd at the moment. He fumbled for the salt box and dropped a pinch in the tin. It was a medicinal herb, salt. Good for wounds, wasn't it? And back in the really old days, hadn't soldiers been paid in salt? Wasn't that where the word salary came from? Must ve been good, then. You went on a forced march all week, building your road as you went, then you fought the maddened blue-painted tribesmen of the Vexatii, and you force-marched all the way back home, and on Friday the centurion would turn up with a big sack and say, 'Well done, lads! Here's some salt!' It was amazing how well his mind was working. He peered at the salt box again, shrugged, and tipped it all in. When you thought about it like that, salt must really be an amazing food. And he hadn't had any for weeks, so that was probably why his eyesight was acting up and he couldn't feel his legs. He topped up the beer, too. He lay back with his head on a rock. Keep out of trouble and don't get involved, that was the important thing. Look at those stars up there, with nothing to do all the time but sit there and shine. No one ever told them what to do, the lucky bastards . . . He woke up shivering. Something horrible had crawled into his mouth, and it was no great relief to find out that it was his tongue. It was chilly, and the horizon suggested dawn. There was also a pathetic sucking noise. Some sheep had invaded his camp during the night. One of them was trying to get its mouth around an empty beer tin. It stopped when it saw that he had woken up, and backed away a bit, but not too far, while fixing him with the penetrating gaze of a domesticated animal reminding its domesticator that they had a deal. His head ached. There had to be some water somewhere. He lurched to his feet and blinked at the horizon. There were . . . windmills and things, weren't there? He remembered the stricken windmills from yesterday. Well, there was bound to be some water around, no matter what anyone said. Ye gods, he was thirsty. His gummed-up gaze fell upon last night's magnificent experiment in cookery. Yeasty vegetable soup, what a wonderful idea. Exactly the sort of idea that sounds really good around one o'clock in the morning when you've had too much to drink. Now he remembered, with a shudder, some of the great wheezes he'd had on similar occasions. Spaghetti and custard, that'd been a good one. Deep-fried peas, that'd been another triumph. And then there'd been the time when it had seemed a really good idea to eat some flour and yeast and then drink some warm water, because he'd run out of bread and after all that was what the stomach saw, wasn't it? The thing about late-night cookery was that it made sense at the time. It always had some logic behind it. It just wasn't the kind of logic you'd use around midday. Still, he'd have to eat something and the dark brown goo that half filled the tin was the only available food in this vicinity that didn't have at least six legs. He didn't even think about eating mutton. You couldn't, when it was looking at you so pathetically. He poked the goo with the stick. It gripped the wood like glue. 'Gerroff!' A blob eventually came loose. Rincewind tasted it, gingerly. It was just possible that if you mixed yeasty beer and vegetables together you'd get— No, what you got was salty-tasting beery brown gunk. Odd, though . . . It was kind of horrible, but nevertheless Rincewind found himself having another taste. Oh, gods. Now he was really thirsty. He picked up the tin and staggered off towards some trees. That's where you found water . . . you looked at where the trees were and, tired or not, you dug down. It took him half an hour to squash an empty beer tin and use it to dig a hole waist deep. His toes felt damp. Another half an hour took him to shoulder depth and a pair of wet ankles. Say what you like – that brown muck was good stuff. It was the runny equivalent of dwarf bread. You didn't really believe what your mouth said you'd just tasted, so you had some more. Probably full of nourishing vitamins and minerals. Most things you couldn't believe the taste of generally were . . . By the time he raised his head he was surrounded by sheep, eyeing him cautiously in between longing glances into the damp depths. 'It's no good you lot looking at me like that,' he said. They paid no attention. They carried on looking at him. 'It's not my fault,' Rincewind muttered. 'I don't care what any kangaroo says. I just arrived here. I'm not responsible for the weather, for heaven's sake.' They went on looking. He cracked. Practically anyone will crack before a sheep cracks. A sheep hasn't got much that's crackable. 'Oh, hell, maybe I can rig up some kind of bucket and pulley arrangement,' he said. 'It's not as though I've got any appointments today.' He was digging a bit further, in the hope of getting deep enough before the water ran away completely, when he heard someone whistling. He looked up, through the legs of the sheep. A man was creeping down across the dried-up waterhole, whistling tunelessly between his teeth. He'd failed to notice Rincewind because his gaze was fixed so intently on the milling sheep. He dropped the pack he'd been carrying, pulled out a sack, sidled towards a sheep all by itself, and leapt. It barely had time to bleat. As he was stuffing it into the sack a voice said: That probably belongs to someone, you know.' The man looked around hurriedly. The voice was coming from a group of sheep. 'I reckon you could get into serious trouble, stealing sheep. You'll regret it later on, I'm sure. Probably someone really cares about that sheep. Come on, let it go.' The man stared around wildly. 'I mean, think about it,' the voice went on. 'You've got this nice country here, parrots and everything, and you're going to spoil it all by stealing someone's sheep that they've worked so hard to grow. I bet you wouldn't like to be remembered as a sheep-stealer— Oh.' The man had dropped the sack and was running away very fast. 'Well, you didn't have to waltz off like that, I was only trying to appeal to your better nature!' said Rincewind, pulling himself up out of the hole. He cupped his hands. 'And you've forgotten your camping stuff!' he shouted, after the disappearing dust. The sack baa-ed. Rincewind picked it up, and a noise behind him made him look round. There was another man watching him from the back of a horse. He was glaring. Behind him were three men wearing identical helmets and jerkins and humourless expressions that had 'watchman' written all over them in slow handwriting. And all three were pointing crossbows at him. That bottomless feeling that he had once again wandered into something that didn't concern him and was going to find it hard to wander out again grew within Rincewind. He tried to smile. 'G'day!' he said. 'No worries, eh? I must say I'm really glad to see you drongos and no two ways about it!' Ponder Stibbons cleared his throat. 'Where would you like me to start?' he said. 'I could probably finish off the elephant . . .' 'How are you at slime?' Ponder hadn't considered a future as a slime designer, but everyone had to start somewhere. 'Fine,' he said. Tine.' 'Of course, slime just splits down the middle,' said the god, as they walked along rows of glowing, life-filled cubes while beetles sizzled overhead. 'Not a lot of future in that, really. It works all right for lower lifeforms but, frankly, it's a bit embarrassing for the more complicated creatures and positively lethal for horses. No, sex is going to be very, very useful, Ponder. It'll keep everything on its toes. And that will give us time to work on the big project.' Ponder sighed. Ah . . . he knew there had to be a big project. The big project. A god wasn't going to do all this sort of thing just to make life better for inflammable cows. 'Could I help with that?' he said. 'I'm sure I could make a contribution.' 'Really? I thought perhaps animals and birds would be more up your . . . up your . . .' The god waved his hands vaguely. 'Up whatever you walk on. Where you live.' 'Well, yes, but they're a bit limited, aren't they?' said Ponder. The god beamed. There's nothing like being near a happy god. It's like giving your brain a hot bath. 'Exactly!' he said. 'Limited! The very word! Each one stuck in some desert or jungle or mountain, relying on one or two foods, at the mercy of every vagary of the universe and wiped out by the merest change of climate. What a terrible waste!' 'That's right!' said Ponder. 'What you need is a creature that is resourceful and adaptable, am I right?' 'Oh, very well put, Ponder! I can see you've turned up at just the right time!' A pair of huge doors swung open in front of them, revealing a circular room with a shallow pyramid of steps in the centre. At the summit was another cloud of blue mist, in which occasional lights flared and died. The future unrolled in front of Ponder Stibbons. His eyes were so bright that his glasses steamed, that he could probably scorch holes in thin paper. Oh, right . . . what more could any natural philosopher dream of? He'd got the theories, now he could do the practice. And this time it'd be done properly. To hell with messing up the future! That's what the future was for. Oh, he'd been against it, that was true, but it'd been . . . well, when someone else was thinking of doing it. But now he'd got the ear of a god, and maybe some intelligence could be applied to the task of creating intelligence. For a start, it ought to be possible to put together the human brain so that long beards weren't associated with wisdom, which would instead be seen to reside in those who were young and skinny and required glasses for close work. 'And . . . you've finished this?' he said, as they climbed the steps. 'Broadly, yes,' said the god. 'My greatest achievement. Frankly, it makes the elephants look very flimsy by comparison. But there's plenty of fine detail left to do, if you think you're up to it.' 'It'd be an honour,' said Ponder. The blue mist was right in front of him. By the look of the sparks, something very important was happening in there. 'Do you give them any instructions before you let them out?' he said, his breathing shallow. 'A few simple ones,' said the god. He waved a wrinkled hand, and the glowing ball began to contract. 'Mostly they work things out themselves.' 'Of course, of course,' said Ponder. 'And I suppose if they go wrong we could always put them right with a few commandments.' 'Not really necessary,' said the god, as the blue ball vanished and revealed the pinnacle of creation. 'I find very simple instructions are quite sufficient. You know . . . "Head for dark places," that sort of thing. There! Isn't it perfect? What a piece of work! The sun will burn out, the seas will dry up, but this chap will be there, you mark my— Hello? Ponder?' The Dean wet a finger and held it up. 'We have the wind on our starboard beam,' he said. 'That's good, is it?' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Could be, could be. Let's hope it can take us to this continent he mentioned. I'm getting nervous of islands.' Ridcully finished hacking through the stem of the boat and threw it overboard. At the top of the green mast the trumpet-like blooms appeared to tremble in the wind. The leaf sail creaked slowly into a different position. 'I'd say this was a miracle of nature', said the Dean, 'if we hadn't just met the person who did it. Rather spoils it, that.' While wizards were not generally adventurous, they did understand that a vital part of any great undertaking is the securing of adequate provisions, which is why the boat was noticeably heavier in the water. The Dean selected a natural cigar, lit it, and made a face. 'Not the best,' he said. 'Rather green.' 'We'll just have to rough it,' said Ridcully. 'What are you doing, Senior Wrangler?' 'Just preparing a little tray for Mrs Whitlow. A few choice things.' The wizards glanced towards the crude awning they'd erected towards the prow. It wasn't that she'd actually asked for it. It was simply that she'd made some remark about how hot the sun was, as anyone might, and suddenly wizards were getting in each other's way as they vied with one another to cut poles and weave palm leaves. Perhaps never has so much intellectual effort gone into building a sunshade, which might have accounted for the wobble. 'I thought it was my turn to do that,' said the Dean, coldly. 'No, Dean, you took her the fruit drink, if you remember,' said the Senior Wrangler, cutting a cheese nut into dainty segments. 'That was just one small drink!' the Dean snapped. 'You're doing a whole tray. Look, you've even done a flower arrangement in a coconut shell!' 'Mrs Whitlow likes that sort of thing,' said the Senior Wrangler calmly. 'But she did say it was still a bit warm, so possibly you can fan her with a palm leaf while I peel these grapes for her.' 'Once again it is left to me to point out the elementary unfairness,' said the Dean. 'Merely waving a leaf is a very menial activity compared to removing grape skins, and I happen to outrank you. Senior Wrangler.' 'Indeed, Dean? And exactly how do you work that out?' 'It's not my opinion, man, it's written into the Faculty structure!' 'Of where, precisely?' 'Have you gone totally Bursar? Unseen University, of course!' 'And where is that, exactly?' said the Senior Wrangler, carefully arranging some lilies in a pleasing design. 'Ye gods, man, it's . . . it's . . .' The Dean flapped a hand in the direction of the horizon, and his voice trailed off as certain facts of time and space bore in on him. 'I'll leave you to work it out, shall I?' said the Senior Wrangler, getting off his knees and raising the tray reverentially. 'I'll help!' shouted the Dean, lumbering to his feet. 'It's very light, I assure you—' 'No, no, I can't let you do it all by yourself!' Each holding the tray with one hand, and trying to push the other man away with the spare hand, they lurched forward, leaving a trail of spilt coconut milk and petals. Ridcully rolled his eyes. It must be the heat, he thought. He turned to the Chair of Indefinite Studies, who was trying to tie a short log to a long stick with a piece of creeper. 'I was just thinking', he said, 'that everyone's gone a little bit mad except me and you . . . Er, what are you doing there?' 'I was just wondering whether Mrs Whitlow might like a game of croquet,' said the Chair. He waggled his eyebrows conspiratorially. The Archchancellor sighed and wandered off along the deck. The Librarian had gone back to being a deckchair as a suitable mode for shipboard life, and the Bursar had gone to sleep on him. The big leaf moved slightly. Ridcully got the feeling that the green trumpets on the mast were sniffing. The wizards were already a little way from shore, but he saw the column of dust come down the track. It stopped at the beach and became a dot, which plunged into the sea. The sail creaked again, and flapped as the wind grew. 'Ahoy there!' shouted Ridcully. The distant figure waved for a moment and then continued swimming. Ridcully filled his pipe and watched with interest as Ponder Stibbons caught up with the boat. 'Very well swum, if I may say so,' he said. 'Permission to come aboard, sir?' said Ponder, treading water. 'Could you throw down a creeper?' 'Why, certainly.' The Archchancellor puffed his pipe as the wizard climbed aboard. 'Possibly a record time over that distance, Mister Stibbons.' 'Thank you, sir,' said Ponder, dripping water on the deck. 'And may I congratulate you on being properly dressed. You are wearing your pointy hat, which is the sine qua non of a wizard in public.' 'Thank you, sir.' 'It is a good hat.' 'Thank you, sir.' They say a wizard without his hat is undressed, Mister Stibbons.' 'So I have heard, sir.' 'But in your case, I must point out, you are with your hat but you are still, in a very real sense, undressed.' 'I thought the robe would slow me down, sir.' 'And, while it is good to see you, Stibbons, albeit rather more of you than I would usually care to contemplate, I am moved to ask why you are, in fact, here.' 'I suddenly felt it would be unfair to deprive the University of my services, sir.' 'Really? A sudden rush of nostalgia for the old alma mater, eh?' 'You could say that, sir.' Ridcully's eyes twinkled behind the smoke and, not for the first time, Ponder suspected that the man was sometimes rather cleverer than he appeared. It would not be hard. The Archchancellor shrugged, removed his pipe, and poked around inside it to remove a particularly obstructive clinker. 'The Senior Wrangler's bathing costume is around somewhere,' he said. 'I should put it on, if I were you. I suspect that offending Mrs Whitlow at the moment will get you hanged. All right? And if there is anything you want to talk about, my door is always open.' 'Thank you, sir.' 'Right now, of course, I don't have a door.' 'Thank you, sir.' 'Imagine it as being open, nevertheless.' 'Thank you, sir.' After all, Ponder thought as he slipped gratefully away, the wizards of UU were merely crazy. Not even the Bursar was insane. Even now, if he closed his eyes, he could still see the God of Evolution beaming so happily as the cockroach stirred. Rincewind rattled the bars. 'Don't I get a trial?' he shouted. After a while a warder wandered along the corridor. 'Wha'd'yew want a trial for, mister?' 'What? Well, call me Mister Silly, but it might just prove that I wasn't trying to steal the damn sheep, mightn't it?' said Rincewind. 'I was in fact rescuing it. If only you people would track down the thief, he'd tell you!' The warder leaned against the wall and stuck his hands in his belt. 'Yeah, well, it's a funny thing,' he said, 'but. y'know, we searched and searched and put up notices and everything but, funny thing, yew'll never believe this, the bastard hasn't had the decency to come forward? Makes yew despair of human nature, eh?' 'So what's going to happen to me?' The warder scratched his nose. 'Gonna hang you by the neck until you're dead, mate. Tomorrow morno.' 'You couldn't perhaps just hang me by the neck until I'm sorry?' 'No, mate. Got to be dead.' 'Good grief, it was only a sheep when all's said and done!' The warder grinned widely. 'Ah, a lot of men have gone to the gallows sayin' that in the past,' he said, ' 's'matterofact, you're the first sheep-stealer we've had here for years. All our big heroes have been sheep-stealers. You're gonna get a big crowd.' 'Baah!' 'Maybe a flock, too,' said the warder. 'That's another thing,' said Rincewind. 'Why's this sheep in my cell?' 'Evidence, mate.' Rincewind looked down at the sheep. 'Oh. Well, no worries, then.' The warder wandered off. Rincewind sat down on the bunk. Well, he could look on the bright side, couldn't he? This was civilization. He hadn't seen much of it, what with being tied across the back of a horse and everything, but what he'd been able to see was full of ruts and hoofprints and smelled pretty bad, which civilization often does. They were going to hang him in the morning. This building was the first one made of stone he'd seen in this country. They had watchmen, even. They were going to hang him in the morning. There were the sounds of carts and people filtering in through the high window. They were going to hang him in the morning. He gazed around the cell. It looked as though whoever'd built it had unaccountably forgotten to include any useful trapdoors. Trapdoors . . . Now there was a word he shouldn't think about. He'd been in nastier places than this. Much, much nastier. And that made it worse, because he'd been up against nasty, weird and magical things which suddenly seemed a lot easier to contemplate than the fact that he was held in some stone box and in the morning some perfectly nice people who he might quite like if he met them in a bar were going to march him out and make him stand on a really unsafe floor in a very tight collar. 'Baah!' 'Shut up.' 'Baah?' 'Couldn't you have had a bath, or a dip or something? It's a bit agricultural in here.' The wall, now his eyes had become accustomed to the gloom, was covered with scrawls, and in particular those little wicket gate tallies drawn by prisoners who were counting the days. They were going to hang him in the morning, so that was one chore he wouldn't have to . . . Shut up, shut up. Now he came to look closer, most of the counts went up to one. He lay back with his eyes closed. Of course he'd get rescued, he'd always got rescued. Although, come to think of it, always in circumstances that put him in such a lot more danger than a prison cell usually held. Well, he'd been in enough cells. There were ways to handle these things. The important thing was to be direct. He got up and banged on the bars until the warder sauntered along the corridor. 'Yes, mate?' 'I just want to get things sorted out,' said Rincewind. 'It's not as though I've got time to waste, okay?' 'Yep?' 'Is there any chance that you're going to fall asleep in a chair opposite this cell with your keys fully exposed on a table in front of you?' They looked at the empty corridor. 'I'd have to get someone to help me bring a table down here,' said the warder doubtfully. 'Can't see it happening, mister. Sorry.' 'Right. Okay.' Rincewind thought for a moment. 'All right . . . Is my dinner likely to be brought in by a young lady carrying, and this is important, carrying a tray covered with a cloth?' 'No, 'cos I do the cooking.' 'Right.' 'Bread and water is what I'm good at.' 'Right, just checking.' ' 'ere, that sticky brown stuff they brought in with you is top stuff on bread, mister.' 'Be my guest.' 'I can feel the vitamins and minerals doing me a power of good.' 'No worries. Now . . . ah, yes. Laundry. Are there any big laundry baskets around, which will happily get tipped down a chute to the outside world?' 'Sorry, mister. There's an old washerwoman comes in to collect it.' 'Really?' Rincewind brightened. 'Ah, a washerwoman. Big lady, bulky dress, possibly wears a hood which can be pulled down to cover a lot of her face?' 'Yep, pretty much.' 'Well then, is she due in—?' 'She's my mum,' said the warder. 'Right, fine . . .' They looked at one another. 'I reckon that about covers it, then,' said Rincewind. 'I hope you didn't mind me asking.' 'Bless yew, no! No worries! Happy to help. Worked out what yew're gonna say on the gallows, have yer? Only some of the ballad-writers want to know, if yew wouldn't mind.' 'Ballads?' 'Oh, yeah. There's three so far and I reckon there'll be ten by tomorra.' Rincewind rolled his eyes. 'How many of them have put "too-ra-la, too-ra-la addity" in the chorus?' he asked. 'All of them.' 'Oh, gods . . .' 'And yew wouldn't mind changin' your name. would yew? Only they're sayin' "Rincewind" is a bit tricky to turn a line on. "Concernin' of a bush ranger, Rincewind was his name . . ." 's got the wrong sort of sound . . .' 'Well, I'm sorry. Perhaps you'd better let me go, then?' 'Ha, nice one. Now, if you want my advice, you'll keep it short when yew're up on the gallows,' said the warder. 'The best Famous Last Words are the shortest. Something simple gen'rally works best. Go easy on the swearin'.' 'Look, all I did was steal a sheep! And I didn't even do that! What's everyone so excited about?' said Rincewind desperately. 'Oh, very notorious crime, sheep-stealing,' said the warder cheerfully. 'Strikes a chord. Little man battlin' against the forces of brutal authority. People like that. You'll be remembered in song 'n' story, 'specially if yew come up with some good Last Words, like I said.' The warder hitched up his belt. 'To tell you the truth, a lot of people these days haven't even seen a bloody sheep, but hearing that someone's stolen one makes 'em feel proper Ecksians. It even does me good to have a proper criminal in the cells for once, instead of all these bloody politicians.' Rincewind sat down on the bunk again, with his head in his hands. 'O' course, a famous escape is nearly as good as gettin' hanged,' said the warder, in the manner of someone trying to keep up someone else's spirits. 'Really,' said Rincewind. 'Yew ain't asked if the little grille in the floor there leads into the sewers,' the warder prompted. Rincewind peered between his fingers. 'Does it?' 'We ain't got any sewers.' 'Thank you. You've been very helpful.' The warden strolled off again, whistling. Rincewind lay back on the bunk and closed his eyes again. 'Baah!' 'Shut up.' ' 'scuse me, mister . . .' Rincewind groaned and sat up again. This time the voice was coming from the high, small, barred window. 'Yes, what is it?' 'Yew know when you was caught?' 'Well? What about it?' 'Er . . . what kind of a tree were you under?' Rincewind looked up at the narrow square of blue the prisoner calls the sky. 'What kind of question is that to ask me?' 'It's for the ballad, see? Only it'd help if it was a name with three syllables . . .' 'How do I know? I didn't stop for a bit of botany!' 'All right, all right, fair enough,' said the hidden speaker. 'But would you mind telling me what you was doing just before you stole the sheep?' 'I didn't steal the sheep!' 'Right, right, okay . . . What was you doing just before you didn't steal the sheep . . .?' 'I don't know, I can't remember!' 'Were you boiling your billy, by any chance?' 'I'm not admitting to that! The way you people talk, that could mean anything!' 'Means cookin' something up in a tin.' 'Oh. Well, yes, I had been doing that, as it happens.' 'Good on yer!' Rincewind thought he heard the sound of scribbling. 'Shame you didn't die at the end, but you're gonna get hung so that's all right. Got a beaut tune for this one, you just can't stop whistling it . . . Well, of course you will, no worries.' 'Thank you for that.' 'Reckon you might be as famous as Tinhead Ned, mate.' 'Really.' Rincewind went and lay down on his bunk again. 'Yeah. They used to lock him up in that very cell you're in now, in fact. And he always escaped. No one knows how, 'cos that's a bloody good lock and he didn't bend any bars. He said they'd never build a jail that could hold him.' 'Thin fellow, was he?' 'Nope.' 'So he had a key or something.' 'Nope. Got to go now, mate. Oh, yeah, I remember. Er, do you think your ghost will be heard if people pass by the billybong, or not?' 'What?' 'It'd be helpful if it did. Makes a good last verse. Top stuff.' 'I don't know!' 'We-ell, I'll say it will, shall I? No one's gonna go back and check.' 'Don't let me stand in your way, then.' 'Bonza. I'll get these songsheets printed up in time for the hanging, don't you worry about that.' 'I won't.' Rincewind lay back. Tinhead Ned again. That was just a joke, he could spot it. It was some kind of torture, telling him that anyone had ever escaped from a cell like this. They wanted him to run around rattling bars and things, but even he could see they were well set in and very heavy and the lock was bigger than his head. He was just lying back on the bunk again when the warder turned up. There were a couple of men with him. Rincewind was pretty sure there weren't any trolls here, because it was probably too hot for them and anyway there wouldn't be enough room for them on the driftwood, what with all those camels, but these men definitely had the heavy-set look of men who occupy the kind of job where the entrance examination is 'What is your name?' and they scrape through on the third try. The warder was wearing a big grin and carrying a tray. 'Got some dinnah for you,' he said. 'I won't tell you anything, no matter how much you feed me,' Rincewind warned. 'You'll like this,' the warder urged, pushing the tray forward. There was a covered bowl on it. 'I done it special for you. It's a regional speciality mate.' 'I thought you said bread and water's what you're good at.' 'Well, yeah . . . but I had a bash at this anyway . . .' Rincewind watched gloomily as the warder lifted the cover.[18] It looked fairly inoffensive, but they often did. It looked, in fact, like— 'Pea soup?' he said. 'Yep.' 'The leguminous vegetable? Comes in pods?' 'Yep.' 'I thought I'd better check that point.' 'No worries.' Rincewind looked down at the knobbly green surface. Was it just possible that someone had invented a regional speciality you could eat? And then something rose out of the depths. For a moment Rincewind thought it was a very small shark. It bobbed to the surface and then settled back down, while the soup slopped over it. 'What was that?' 'Meat pie floater,' said the warder. 'Meat pie floating in pea soup. Best bloody supper on earth, mate.' 'Ah, supper,' said Rincewind, as realization dawned. 'This is another one of those late-night, after-the-pub foods, right? And what kind of meat is in it? No, forget I asked, it's a stupid question. I know this sort of food. If you have to ask "What kind of meat is in it?" you're too sober. Ever tried spaghetti and custard?' 'Can you sprinkle coconut on top of it?' 'Probably.' 'Thanks, mate, I'll surely give it a go,' said the warder. 'Got some other good news for you, too.' 'You're letting me out?' 'Oh, you wouldn't want that, a hard-bitten larrikin like yourself. Nah, Greg and Vince here will be coming back later to put you in irons.' He stepped aside. The wall-shaped men were holding a length of chain, several shackles and a small but very, very heavy-looking ball. Rincewind sighed. One door closes, he thought, and another door slams shut. 'This is good, is it?' he said. 'Oh, yew'll get an extra verse for that, for sure,' said the warder. 'No one's been hung in irons since Tinhead Ned.' 'I thought there wasn't a prison cell that could hold him,' said Rincewind. 'Oh, he could get out of 'em,' said the warder. 'He just couldn't run very far.' Rincewind eyed the metal ball. 'Oh, gods . . .' 'Vince says how much do you weigh, 'cos he has to add the chains to your weight to get the drop right,' said the warder. 'Does that matter?' said Rincewind in a hollow voice. 'I mean, I die anyway, don't I?' 'Yeah, no worries there, but if he gets it wrong, see, you either end up with a neck six feet long or, you'll laugh about this, your head flies off like a perishin' cork!' 'Oh, good.' 'With Larrikin Larry we had to search the roof all arvo!' 'Marvellous. All arvo, eh?' said Rincewind. 'Well, you won't have that problem with me. I shall be elsewhere when I'm being hanged.' 'That's what we like to hear!' said the warder, punching him jovially in the elbow. 'A battler to the end, eh?' There was a rumbling from Mt Vince. 'And Vince says he'll be very privileged if you'd care to spit in his eye when he puts the rope aroun' your neck,' the warder went on. 'That'll be something to show his grandchildren—' 'Will you all please go away!' Rincewind shouted. 'Ah, you'll be wanting some time to plot your getaway,' said the warder knowingly. 'No worries. We'll be leavin' you alone, then.' 'Thank you.' 'Until about five a.m.' 'Good,' said Rincewind gloomily. 'Got any requests for your last breakfast?' 'Something that takes a really really long time to prepare?' said Rincewind. 'That's the spirit!' 'Go away!' 'No worries.' The men walked off, but the warder strolled back after a while as if he had something on his mind. 'There is something that you ought to know about the hanging, though,' he said. 'Might brighten up your night.' 'Yes?' 'We've got a special humanitarian tradition if the trapdoor sticks three times.' 'Yes?' 'Sounds a bit odd, but it's happened once or twice, believe it or not.' A tiny green shoot rose from the blackened branches of hope. 'And what's the tradition?' said Rincewind. 'It's on account of it being heartless to have a man standing there more than three times, knowing that at any second his—' 'Yes, yes—' '—and then all his—' 'Yes—' '—and the worst part to my mind is where your—' 'Yes, I understand! And so . . . after the third time . . .?' 'He's allowed back into his cell while we get a carpenter in to repair the trapdoor,' said the warder. 'We even give him his dinner, if it's gone on a long time.' 'And?' 'Well, when the carpenter's given it a good test, then we take him out again and hang him.' He saw Rincewind's expression. 'No need to look like that, 's better than having to stand around in the cold all morning, isn't it? That wouldn't be nice.' When he'd gone, Rincewind sat and stared at the wall. 'Baa!' 'Shut up.' So it was down to this, then. One brief night left, and then, if these clowns had anything to do with it, happy people would be wandering the streets to see where his head had come down. There was no justice! G'DAY, MATE. 'Oh, no. Please.' I JUST THOUGHT I SHOULD ENTER INTO THE SPIRIT OF THE THING. A VERY CONVIVIAL PEOPLE, AREN'T THEY?said Death. He was sitting beside Rincewind. 'You just can't wait, can you?' said Rincewind bitterly. NO WORRIES. 'So this is really it, then. I was supposed to have saved this country, you know. And I'm going to really die.' OH, YES. THIS IS CERTAIN, I'M AFRAID. 'It's the stupidity of it that gets me. I mean, think of all the times I've nearly died in the past. I could've been flamed by dragons, right? Or eaten by huge things with tentacles. Or even had every single particle of my body fly off in a different direction.' YOU HAVE CERTAINLY HAD AN INTERESTING LIFE. 'Is it true that your life passes before your eyes before you die?' YES. 'Ghastly thought, really,' Rincewind shuddered. 'Oh, gods, I've just had another one. Suppose I am just about to die and this is my whole life passing in front of my eyes?' I THINK PERHAPS YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND. PEOPLE'S WHOLE LIVES DO PASS IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES BEFORE THEY DIE. THE PROCESS IS CALLED 'LIVING'. WOULD YOU LIKE A PRAWN? Rincewind looked down at the bucket on Death's lap. 'No, thank you. I really don't think so. They can be pretty deadly. And I must say it's a bit much of you to come here and gloat and eat prawns at me.' I BEG YOUR PARDON? 'Just because I'm being hanged in the morning, I mean.' ARE YOU? THEN I SHALL LOOK FORWARD TO HEARING HOW YOU ESCAPED. I'M DUE TO MEET A MAN IN . . . IN . . .Death's eyesockets glowed as he interrogated his memory.AH, YES . . . INSIDE A CROCODILE. SEVERAL HUNDRED MILES AWAY, I BELIEVE. 'What? Then why are you here?' OH, I THOUGHT YOU MIGHT LIKE TO SEE A FRIENDLY FACE. AND NOW I THINK I HAD BETTER BE GOING.Death stood up.VERY PLEASANT CITY IN MANY RESPECTS. TRY TO SEE THE OPERA HOUSE WHILE YOU'RE HERE. 'Hang on . . . I mean, hold on, you told me I was certainly going to die!' EVERYONE IS. EVENTUALLY. The wall opened and closed around Death as if it wasn't there, which was, from his lengthy perspective, quite true. 'But how? I can't walk through—' Rincewind began. He sat down again. The sheep cowered in the corner. Rincewind looked at the untouched meat pie floater and gave the pie a prod. It sank slowly beneath the vivid green soup. The sounds of the city filtered in. After a while the pie rose again like a forgotten continent, sending a very small wave slopping against the edge of the bowl. Rincewind lay back on the thin blanket and stared at the ceiling. Someone had even been writing on that, too. In fact . . . Gdy Mat. Look at the hinjis. Ned. Slowly, as if being raised by invisible strings, Rincewind turned and looked at the door. The hinges were massive. They weren't screwed into the doorframe so that some clever prisoner might unscrew them. They were huge iron hooks, hammered into the stone itself, so that two heavy rings welded on to the door could drop right down on them. What was the man talking about? He walked over and examined the lock closely. It drove a huge metal rod into the frame on its side and looked quite unpickable. Rincewind stared at the door for some time. Then he rubbed his hands together and, gritting his teeth, tried to lift the door on the hinge side. Yes, there was just enough play . . . It was possible to lift the rings off the spikes. Then, if you pulled slightly and took a knee-wobbling step this way, you could yank the lock's rod out of its hole and the entire door into the cell. And then a man could walk through and carefully rehang the door again and quietly wander away. And that, Rincewind thought as he carefully manoeuvred the door back on to the hinges, was exactly what a stupid person would do. At moments like this cowardice was an exact science. There were times that called for mindless, terror-filled panic, and times that called for measured, considered, thoughtful panic. Right now he was in a place of safety. It was, admittedly, the death cell, but the point was that it was perhaps the one place in this country where nothing bad was going to happen for a little while. The Ecksians didn't look like the kind of people who went in for torture, although it was always possible they might make him eat some more of their food. So, for the moment, he had time. Time to plan ahead, to consider his next move, to apply his intellect to the problem at hand. He stared at the wall for a moment, and then stood up and gripped the bars. Right. That seemed to be about long enough. Now to run like hell. The green deck of the melon boat had been divided into a male and female section, for the sake of decency. This meant that most of the deck was occupied by Mrs Whitlow, who spent a lot of the time sunbathing behind a screen. Her privacy was assured by the wizards themselves, since at least three of them would probably kill any of the others who ventured within ten feet of the palm leaves. There was definitely what Ponder's aunt, who'd raised him, would have called An Atmosphere. 'I still think I ought to climb the mast,' he protested. 'Ah! A peeping torn, eh?' snarled the Senior Wrangler. 'No, I just think it would be a good idea to see where the boat is going,' said Ponder. There're some big black clouds ahead.' 'Good, we could do with the rain,' snapped the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'In which case, I shall be honoured to make Mrs Whitlow a suitable shelter,' said the Dean. Ponder walked back to the stern, where the Archchancellor was gloomily fishing. 'Honestly, you'd think Mrs Whitlow was the only woman in the world,' he said. 'Do you think she might be?' said Ridcully. Ponder's mind raced, and hit some horrible speed bumps in his imagination. 'Surely not, sir!' he said. 'We don't know, Ponder. Still, look on the bright side. We may all be drowned.' 'Er . . . sir? Have you looked at the horizon?' The everlasting storm was seven thousand miles long but only a mile wide, a great turning, boiling mass of enraged air circling the last continent like a family of foxes circling a henhouse. The clouds were mounded up all the way to the edge of the atmosphere – and they were ancient clouds now, clouds that had rolled around their tortured circuit for years, building up personality and hatred and, above all, voltage. It was not a storm, it was a battle. Mere gales, a few hundred miles long, fought amongst themselves within the cloud wall. Lightning forked from thunderhead to thunderhead, rain fell and flashed into steam half a mile from the ground. The air glowed. And below, emerging from the ocean of potentiality in a rainstorm so thunderous that it was no more than a descending sea, rose the last continent. On the wall of the deserted cell in Bugarup Gaol, among the scratches and stick drawings and tallies of a man's last few days, a drawing of a sheep became a drawing of a kangaroo and then faded completely into the stone. 'So?' said the Dean. 'We're in for a bit of a blow?' The grey line filled the immediate future like a dental appointment. 'I think it might be a lot worse,' said Ponder. 'Well, let's steer somewhere else, then.' 'There's no rudder, sir. And we don't know where anywhere else is. And we're low on water anyway.' 'Don't they say that a big bank of cloud means there's land ahead?' said the Dean. 'Bloody big land, then. EcksEcksEcksEcks, do you think?' 'I hope so, sir.' Above Ponder, the sail flapped and billowed. 'Wind's freshening, sir. I think the storm's sucking the air towards it. And . . . there's something else, I think. I wish I hadn't left my thaumometer on the beach, sir, because I think there's a very high level of background magic in this area.' 'What makes you say this, boy?' said the Dean. 'Well, for one thing everyone seems to be getting a bit tense, and wizards tend to get stro— to get touchy in the presence of large amounts of magic,' said Ponder. 'But my suspicions were first aroused when the Bursar developed planets.' There were two of them, orbiting his head at a height of a few inches. As was so often the case with magical phenomena, they possessed virtual unreality and passed unscathed through him and one another. They were slightly transparent. 'Oh dear, Mugroop's Syndrome,' said Ridcully. 'Cerebral manifestation. Better than a canary down a coalmine, a sign like that.' A little sub-routine in Ponder's head began a short countdown. 'Remember old "Dicky" Bird?' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'He—' 'Three! No, I don't, as a matter of fact. Do tell!' Ponder heard himself bark, louder than he would have done even if he had meant to vocalize his thoughts. 'Indeed I shall, Mister Stibbons,' said the Chair calmly. 'He was very susceptible to high magical fields, and if his mind wandered, as it might do when he was dozing off, sometimes around his head there'd be, hehehe, there'd be these little—' 'Yes, certainly,' said Ponder, quickly. 'We'll have to be very careful to keep an eye open for unusual behaviour.' 'Among wizards?' said Ridcully. 'Mister Stibbons, unusual behaviour is perfectly ordinary for wizards.' 'People acting out of character, then!' Ponder shouted. Talking sense for two minutes together, perhaps! Acting like normal civilized people instead of a herd of self-regarding village idiots!' 'Stibbons, it's not like you to take that tone,' said Ridcully. 'That's what I mean!' 'Now then, Mustrum, go easy on him, we're all under a lot of stress,' said the Dean. 'Now he's doing it!' Ponder yelled, pointing a shaking finger. The Dean is normally never nice! Now he's being aggressively reasonable!' Historians have pointed out that it is in times of plenty that people feel like going to war. In times of famine they're simply trying to find enough to eat. When they've just enough to go round they tend to be polite. But when a banquet is spread before them, it's time to argue over the place settings.[19] And Unseen University, as even wizards realized at somewhere just below the top level of their minds, existed not to further magic but, in a very creative way, to suppress it. The world had seen what happened when wizards got their hands on enormous amounts of magical power. It had happened a long time ago and there were still some areas where you didn't go, if you wanted to walk out on the same kind of feet that you'd had when you went in. Once upon a time the plural of 'wizard' was 'war'. But the great, open ingenious purpose of UU was to be the weight on the arm of magic, causing it to swing with grave majesty like a pendulum rather than spin with deadly purpose like a morn-ingstar. Instead of hurling fireballs at one another from fortified towers the wizards learned to snipe at their colleagues over the interpretation of Faculty Council minutes, and long ago were amazed to find that they got just as much vicious fun out of it. They consumed big dinners, and after a really good meal and a fine cigar even the most rabid Dark Lord is inclined to put his feet up and feel amicable towards the world, especially if it's offering him another brandy. And slowly, and by degrees, they absorbed the most important magical power of all, which is the one that persuades you to stop using all the others. The trouble is that it's easy to abstain from sweets when you're not standing knee deep in treacle and it's raining sugar. There does indeed seem to be a certain . . . tang in the air,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. Magic tastes like tin. 'Hold on a moment,' said Ridcully. He reached up, pulled open one of the many drawers in his wizarding hat, and removed a cube of greenish glass. 'Here we are,' he said, handing it to Ponder. Ponder took the thaumometer and peered into it. 'Never used it myself,' Ridcully said. 'Wetting a finger and holding it up has always been good enough for me.' 'It's not working!' said Ponder, tapping the thaumometer as the ship rocked under them. The needle's . . . Oow!' He dropped the cube, which was molten by the time it hit the deck. 'That's impossible!' he said. These things are good up to a million thaums!' Ridcully licked his finger and held it up. It sprouted a halo of purple and octarine. 'Yep, that's about right,' he said. 'There's not that much magic anywhere any more!' shouted Ponder. There was a gale behind the boat now. Ahead, the wall of storm was widening and seemed to be a lot blacker. 'How much magic does it take to create a continent?' said Ridcully. They looked up at the clouds. And further up. 'We'd better batten down the hatches,' said the Dean. 'We don't have any hatches.' 'Batten down Mrs Whitlow at least. Get the Bursar and the Librarian somewhere safe—' They hit the storm. Rincewind dropped into an alley and reflected that he'd been in far worse prisons. The Ecksians were a friendly lot, when not drunk or trying to kill you or both. What Rincewind looked for in a good gaol were guards who, instead of ruining everyone's night by prowling around the corridors, got together in one room with a few tins and a pack of cards and relaxed. It made it so much more . . . friendly. And, of course, easier to walk past. He turned – and there was the kangaroo, huge and bright and outlined against the sky. Rincewind shrank back for a moment and then realized that it was nothing but an advertising sign on the roof of a building some way off and further down the hill. Someone had rigged up lamps and mirrors below it. It had a hat on, with some stupid holes for its cars to stick out, and it wore a vest as well, but it was certainly the kangaroo. No other kangaroo could possibly smirk like that. And it was holding a tin of beer. 'Where did you drift in from, curly?' said a voice behind him. It was a very familiar voice. It had a sort of complaining wheedle in it. It was a voice that kept looking out of the corners of its eyes and was always ready to dodge. It was a voice you could have used to open a bottle of whine. He turned. And the figure in front of him, except for a few details, was as familiar as the voice. 'You can't be called Dibbler,' said Rincewind. 'Why not?' 'Because— Well, how did you get here?' 'What? I just came up Berk Street,' said the figure. It had a large hat, and large shorts, and large boots, but in every other respect it was the double of the man who, in Ankh-Morpork, was always there after the pubs shut to sell you one of his very special meat pies. Rincewind had a theory that there was a Dibbler everywhere. Suspended from the neck of this one was a tray. On the front of the tray was written 'Dibbler's Cafe de Feet.' 'I reckoned I'd better get up to the gaol early for a good pitch,' said Dibbler. 'Always gives the crowd an appetite, a good hanging. Can I interest you in anything, mate?' Rincewind looked at the end of the alley. The streets were quite busy. As he watched, a couple of guards strolled by. 'Such as what?' he said suspiciously, drawing back into the shadows. 'Got some good broadsheet ballads about the notorious outlaw they're gonna top . . .?' 'No, thank you.' 'Souvenir piece of the rope they're gonna hang him with? Authentic!' Rincewind looked at the short length of thick string being dangled hopefully in front of him. 'Some people might say that had a hint of clothesline about it,' he said. Dibbler gave the string a look of extreme interest. 'Obviously we had to unravel it a bit, mate,' he said. 'And some people might pick holes in the suggestion that you could, philosophically speaking, sell lengths of the rope before the hanging?' Dibbler paused, his smile not moving. Then he said, 'It's the rope, right? Three-quarter-inch hemp, the usual stuff. Authentic. Probably even from the same ropemaker. Come on, all I'm looking for here is a fair go. Probably it's a pure fluke this ain't the actual bit that's gonna go round his neck—' 'That's only half an inch thick. Look, I can see the label, it says "Hill's Clothesline Co".' 'Does it?' Once again Dibbler appeared to be looking at his product for the first time. But the traditions of the Dibbler clan would never let a mere disastrous fact get in the way of a spiel. 'It's still rope,' he averred. 'Authentic rope. No? No worries. How about some authentic native art?' He rummaged in his crowded tray and held up a square of cardboard. Rincewind gave it an appraising look. He'd seen something like this out in the red country, although he'd not been certain that it was art in the way Ankh-Morpork understood it. It was more like a map, a history book and a menu all rolled together. Back home, people tied a knot in their handkerchief to remind them of things. Out in the hot country there weren't any handkerchiefs, so people tied a knot in their thoughts. They didn't paint very many pictures of a string of sausages. ' 's called Sausage and Chips Dreaming,' said Dibbler. 'I don't think I've seen one like that,' said Rincewind. 'Not with the sauce bottle in it as well.' 'So what?' said Dibbler. 'Still native. Genuine picture of traditional city tucker, done by a native. A fair go, that's all I ask.' 'Ah, suddenly I think I understand. The native in this case, perhaps, being you?' said Rincewind. 'Yep. Authentic. You arguing?' 'Oh, come on.' 'What? I was born over there in Treacle Street, Bludgeree, and so was my dad. And my granddad. And his dad. I didn't just step off the driftwood like some people I might mention.' His ratty little face darkened. 'Coming over here, taking our jobs . . . What about the little man, eh? All I'm askin' for is a fair go.' For a moment Rincewind contemplated handing himself over to the Watch. 'Nice to hear someone siding with the rights of the indigenous population,' he muttered, checking the street again. 'Indigenous? What do they know about a day's work? Nah, they can go back where they came from too,' said Dibbler. 'They don't want to work.' 'Good thing for you, though, I can see that,' said Rincewind. 'Otherwise they'd be taking your job, right?' The way I see it, I'm more indigenous than them,' said Fair Go, pointing an indignant thumb at himself. 'I earned my indigenuity, I did.' Rincewind sighed. Logic could take you only so far. then you had to get out and hop. 'A fair go, that's what you want,' he said. 'Am I right?' 'Yep!' 'So . . . is there anyone who you don't want to go back where they came from?' Fair Go Dibbler gave this some deep consideration. 'Well, me, obviously,' he said. 'And my mate Duncan, 'cos Duncan's me mate. And Mrs Dibbler, of course. And some of the blokes down at the fish and chip shop. Lots of people, really.' 'Well, I'll tell you what,' said Rincewind. 'I definitely want to go back where I came from.' 'Good on yer!' 'Your socio-political analysis is certainly work-ing on me.' 'Beaut!' 'And maybe you can show me how? Like, where the docks are?' 'Well, I would,' said Dibbler, obviously torn. 'Only there's going to be this hanging in a few hours and I want to get the meat pies warmed up.' As a matter of fact, I heard the hanging had been cancelled,' said Rincewind, conspiratorially. 'The bloke escaped.' 'Never!' 'He certainly did!' said Rincewind. Tm not pulling your raw prawn.' 'Did he have any last words?' ' "Goodbye," I think.' 'You mean he wasn't in a famous last-stand shoot-out with the Watch?' 'Apparently not.' 'What kind of escape is that?' said Fair Go. 'That's no way to behave. I didn't have to come up here, I gave up a good spot at the Galah for this, 's not a good hanging without a meat pie.' He leaned closer and gave a furtive look both ways before continuing: 'Say what you like, the Galah's good for business. Their money's the same as anyone else's, that's what I say.' 'Well . . . yes. Obviously. Otherwise it'd be . . . different money,' said Rincewind. 'So, since your night's ruined, why not just show me where the docks are?' There was still some uncertainty in Dibbler's stance. Rincewind swallowed. He'd faced spiders, angry men with spears and bears that dropped on you out of trees, but now the continent was presenting him with its most dangerous challenge. Tell you what,' he said, 'I'll . . . I'll even . . . buy . . . something off you?' The rope?' 'Not the rope. Not the rope. Um . . . I know this may seem a somewhat esoteric question, but what's in the meat pies?' 'Meat.' 'And what kind of meat?' 'Ah, you want one of the gourmet meat pies, then?' 'Oh, I see. That's where you say what's in them?' 'Yup.' 'Before or after the customers have bitten into them?' 'Are you suggesting that my pies ain't right?' 'Let us say I'm inching my way to the possibility that they might be, shall we? All right, I'll try a gourmet pie.' 'Good on yer.' Dibbler removed a pie from the little heated section of his tray. 'Now . . . what's the meat? Cat?' 'Do you mind? Mutton's cheaper'n cat,' said Dibbler, upending the pie into a dish. 'Well, that's—' Rincewind's face screwed up. 'Oh, no, you're pouring pea soup all over it too. Why does everyone always pour pea soup over it!' 'No worries, mate. Puts a lining on your stomach,' said Dibbler, producing a red bottle. 'And what's that?' 'The cut de grass, mate.' 'You're tipping a meat pie into a dish of pea soup and now you want me to eat it with . . . with tomato sauce on it?' 'Pretty colours, ain't they?' said Fair Go, handing Rincewind a spoon. Rincewind prodded the pie. It rebounded gently off the side of the dish. Well, now . . . He'd eaten Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler's sausages-in-a-bun, and Disembowel-Meself-Honourably Dibhala's funny-coloured antique eggs. And he'd survived, although there had been a few minutes when he'd hoped he wouldn't. He'd eaten Al-Jiblah's highly suspicious cous-cous, drunk the terrible yak-butter tea made by May-I-Never-Achieve-Enlightenment Dhiblang, forced down the topless, bottomless smorgasbord of Dib Diblossonson and tried not to chew the lumps of unmentionable blubber purveyed by May-I-Be-Kicked-In-My-Own-Ice-Hole Dibooki (his stomach heaved at the memory of that – after all, it was one thing to butcher dead beached whales and quite another just to leave them there until they exploded into bite sized chunks of their own accord). As for the green beer made by Swallow-Me-Own-Blowdart Dlang-Dlang . . . He'd drunk and eaten all these things. Everywhere in the world, someone turned up out of some strange primal mould to sell him a really dreadful regional delicacy. And this was just a pie, after all. How bad could it be? No, put it another way . . . How much worse could it be? He swallowed a mouthful. 'Good, eh?' said Fair Go. 'My gods,' said Rincewind. 'They're not just any mushy peas,' said Fair Go, slightly disconcerted by the fact that Rincewind was staring wildly at nothing. 'They're mushed by a champion pea musher.' 'Good grief . . .' said Rincewind. 'Are you all right, mister?' 'It's . . . everything I expected . . .' said Rincewind. 'Now, mister, it ain't that bad—' 'You're certainly a Dibbler.' 'What kind of thing is that to say?' 'You put pies upside down in runny peas and then put sauce on them. Someone actually sat down one day, after midnight if I'm any judge, and thought that would be a good idea. No one will ever believe this one.' Rincewind looked at the submerged pie. That's going to make the story about the land of the giant walking plum puddings look very tame, I don't mind telling you. No wonder you people drink so much beer . . .'[20] He stepped out into the flickering lamplight of :he street, shaking his head. 'You actually eat the pies here,' he said mournfully, and looked up into the face of the warder. There were several watchmen behind him. 'That's him!' Rincewind nodded cheerfully. 'G'day!' he said. Two little thuds were his home-made sandals bouncing on the street. The sea steamed and crackling balls of lightning zipped across its surface like drops of water on a hotplate. The waves were too big to be waves, but about the right size for mountains. Ponder looked up from the deck only once, just as the boat began to slide down a trough that gaped like a canyon. Next to him, and gripping his leg, the Dean groaned. 'You know about this sort of thing, Ponder,' he growled, as they hit the trough and then began the stomach-twisting climb to the next crest. 'Are we going to die?' 'I . . . don't think so, Dean . . .' 'Pity Rincewind heard whistles blowing behind him by the time he reached the corner, but he never let that sort of thing worry him. This was a city! Cities were so much easier. He was a creature of cities. There were so many places to— Whistles started blowing up ahead as well. The crowds were thicker here, and most people were heading in the same direction. But Rincewind liked crowds to run through. As the pursued, he had novelty on his side and could shoulder his way past the unsuspecting, who then turned around and milled about and complained and were definitely not in the right frame of mind to greet the people following him. Rincewind could run through a crowd like a ball on a bagatelle board, and always got an extra go. Downhill was best. That's where they generally put docks, so as to have them close to the water. Dodging and ducking across the streets brought him, suddenly, to the waterside. There were a few boats there. They were on the small side for a stowaway, but— There were running footsteps in the dark! These watchmen were too good! This wasn't how it was supposed to go! They weren't supposed to double-back. They weren't supposed to think. He ran in the only direction left, along the waterfront. There was a building there. At least, it . . . well, it had to be a building. No one could have left an open box of tissues that big. Rincewind felt that a building should be a box with a pointed lid on it, basically, and it should be the approximate colour of whatever the local mud was. On the other hand, as the philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle once remarked, it is never wise to object to the decor of a hidey-hole. He bounded up the steps and circled around the strange white building. It seemed to be some kind of music hall. Opera, by the sound of it, although it was a damn funny place to sing opera, you couldn't imagine ladies with horns in a building that looked about to set sail, but no time to wonder about that, there was a door with some rubbish bins outside it and here was the door open . . . 'You from the agency, mate?' Rincewind peered into the steam. 'An' I hope you can do puddings, 'cos cheffy's banging his head on the wall,' went on a figure emerging from the wisps. It was wearing a tall white hat. 'No worries,' said Rincewind, hopefully. 'Ah, this is a kitchen, is it?' 'You pullin' my leg?' 'Only I thought it was some kind of opera house or something—' 'Best bloody opera house in the world, mate. Come on, this way . . .' It wasn't a very big kitchen and, like most of the ones Rincewind had been in, it was full of men working very hard at cross purposes. 'The boss upstairs only decided to throw a big dinner for the prima donna,' said the cook, forcing his way through the throng. 'And all of a sudden Charley sees the pudding staring him in the face.' 'Ah, right,' said Rincewind, on the basis that sooner or later he'd be given a clue. 'Boss says, you can do the pudding for her, Charley.' 'Just like that, eh?' 'He sez, it ought to be the best one yet, Charley.' 'No worries?' 'He sez, the great Nunco invented the Strawberry Sackville for Dame Wendy Sackville, and the famous chef Imposo created the Apple Glazier for Dame Margyreen Glazier, and your own father, Charley, honoured Dame Janeen Ormulu with the Orange Ormulu and tonight, Charley, it's your big chance.' The cook shook his head as he reached a table where a small man in a white uniform was sobbing uncontrollably into his hands. There was a stack of empty beer cans in front of him. 'Poor bastard's been on the beer ever since, and we thought we'd better get someone in. I'm a steak and prawns man, myself.' 'So, you want me to make a pudding? Named after an opera singer?' said Rincewind. 'That's the tradition, is it?' 'Yeah, and you'd better not let Charley down, mate. It's not his fault.' 'Oh, well . . .' Rincewind thought about puddings. Basically it was just fruit and cream and custard, wasn't it? And cakes and stuff. He couldn't see where the problem lay. 'No worries,' he said. 'I think I can knock up something right away.' The kitchen became silent as the scurrying cooks stopped to watch him. 'First,' said Rincewind, 'what fruit have we got?' 'Peaches was all we could find at this time of night.' 'No worries. And we've got some cream?' 'Yep. Of course.' 'Fine, fine. Then all I need to know is the name of the lady in question . . .' He felt the silence open up. 'She's a beaut singer, mind you,' said a cook, in a defensive tone of voice. 'Good. And her name?' said Rincewind. 'Er . . . that's the trouble, see,' said another cook. 'Why?' Ponder opened his eyes. The water was calm, or at least calmer than it had been. There were even patches of blue sky above, although cloud banks were criss-crossing the air as if each were in possession of its own bag of wind. His mouth tasted as though he'd been sucking a tin spoon. Around him, some of the wizards managed to push themselves to their knees. The Dean frowned, removed his hat, and pulled out a small crab. ' 's a good boat,' he murmured. The green mast stem still stood, although the leaf sail looked ragged. Nevertheless, the boat was tacking nicely against the wind off— —the continent. It was a red wall, glowing under the thunder light. Ridcully got uncertainly to his feet and pointed to it. 'Not far now!' he said. The Dean actually growled. 'I've just about had enough of that insufferable cheerfulness,' he said. 'So just shut up, will you?' 'Enough of that. I am your Archchancellor, Dean,' said Ridcully. 'Well, let's just talk about that, shall we?' said the Dean, and Ponder saw the nasty gleam in his eye. 'This is hardly the time, Dean!' 'Exactly on what basis are you giving orders. Ridcully? You're the Archchancellor of what, precisely? Unseen University doesn't even exist! Tell him, Senior Wrangler!' 'I don't have to if I don't want to,' sniffed the Senior Wrangler. 'What? What?' snapped the Dean. 'I don't believe I have to take orders from you, Dean!' When the Bursar climbed up on deck a minute later the boat was already rocking. It was hard to say how many factions there were, since a wizard is capable of being a faction all by himself, but there were broadly two sides, both liaisons being as stable as an egg on a seesaw. What amazed Ponder Stibbons, when he thought about it later, was that no one had yet resorted to using magic. The wizards had spent a lot of time in an atmosphere where a cutting remark did more damage than a magic sword and, for sheer malign pleasure, a well structured memo could do more real damage than a fireball every time. Besides, no one had their staff, and no one had any spells handy, and in those circumstances it's easier to hit someone, although in the case of wizards non-magical fighting usually means flailing ineffectually at the opponent while trying to keep out of his way. The Bursar's fixed smile faded a little. 'I got three per cent more than you in my finals!' 'Oh, and how do you know that, Dean?' 'I looked up the paper when you were appointed Archchancellor!' 'What? After forty years?' 'An examination is an examination!' 'Er . . .' the Bursar began. 'Ye gods, that's petty! That's just the sort of thing I'd expect from a student who even had a separate pen for red ink!' 'Hah! At least I didn't spend all my time drinking and betting and staying out at all hours!' 'Hah! I bloody well did, yes, and I learned the ways of the world and I still got nearly as many marks as you in spite of a prize-winning hangover, you puffed-up barrel of lard!' 'Oh? Oh? It's personal remarks now, is it?' 'Absolutely, Two-chairs! Let's have some personal remarks! We always said that walking behind you made people seasick!' 'I wonder if at this point . . .' said the Bursar. The air crackled around the wizards. A wizard in a foul temper attracts magic like overripe fruit gets flies. 'You think I'd make a better Archchancellor, don't you, Bursar?' said the Dean. The Bursar blinked his watery eyes. 'I, er, the two of you . . . er . . . many good points . . . er . . . perhaps this is the time to, er, make a common cause . . .' They spent just a moment considering this. 'Well said,' said the Dean. 'Got a point,' said Ridcully. 'Because, you know, I've never liked the Lecturer in Recent Runes very much . . .' 'Smirks all the time,' Ridcully agreed. 'Not a member of the team.' 'Oh, really?' The Lecturer in Recent Runes put on a particularly evil smirk. 'At least I got higher marks than you and am noticeably thinner than the Dean! Although a great many things are! Tell them, Stibbons!' That's Mister Stibbons, fatman!' Ponder heard the voice. He knew it was his. He felt as though he was hypnotized. He could stop any time he liked, it was just that he didn't quite feel like it. 'Could I just, er, say . . .' the Bursar tried. 'Shut up, Bursar!' roared Ridcully. 'Sorry, sorry. Sorry . . .' Ridcully waved a finger at the Dean. 'Now you listen to me . . .' A crimson spark leapt off his hand, left a trail of smoke past the Dean's ear, and hit the mast, which exploded. The Dean took a deep breath, and when the Dean took a deep breath appreciably less air was left in the atmosphere. It was let out with a roar. ' You dare fire magic at me?' Ridcully was staring at his hand. 'But I. . . I. . .' Ponder finally managed to force the words out between teeth that were trying to clamp together. 'Er agic's egecting ug!' 'What? What are you gurgling about, man?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'I'll show you magic, you pompous clown!' screamed the Dean, raising both hands. 'It's the magic talking!' Ponder managed, grabbing one arm. 'You don't want to blow the Archchancellor to little pieces, Dean!' 'Yes, I damn well do!' 'Excuse me, Ai don't wish to intrude . . .' Mrs Whitlow's head appeared at the hatchway. 'What is it, Mrs Whitlow?' yelled Ponder, as a blast from the Dean's hand sizzled over his head. 'Ai know you are engaged on University business, but should there be all these cracks? The water is coming in.' Ponder looked down. The deck creaked under his feet. 'We're sinking . . .' he said. 'You stupid old—' He bit down on the words. 'The boat is cracking up as fast as we are! Look, it's going yellow!' The green was leaching from the deck like sunlight from a stormy sky. 'It's his fault!' the Dean screamed. Ponder raced to the side. There were crackling noises all around him. The important thing was to settle his mind and be calm and, possibly, think of nice things like blue skies and kittens. Preferably ones which weren't about to drown. 'Listen,' he said, 'if we don't sink our differences they'll sink us, understand? The boat's . . . ripening or something. And we're a long way from land, do you understand! And there could be sharks down there.' He looked down. He looked up. 'There's sharks down there!'he shouted. The boat tilted as the wizards joined him. 'Arethey sharks, do you think?' said Ridcully. 'Could be tuna,' said the Dean. Behind them the remains of the sail fell away. 'How can you reliably tell the difference?' said the Senior Wrangler. 'You could count their teeth on the way down,' sighed Ponder. But at least no one was throwing magic around any more. You could take the wizards out of Unseen University, but you couldn't take the University out of the wizards. The boat listed still further as Mrs Whitlow looked over the side. 'What happens if we fall in the water?' she said. 'We must devise a plan,' said Ridcully. 'Dean, form a working party to consider our survival in unknown, shark-infested waters, will you?' 'Should we swim for the shore?' said Mrs Whitlow. 'Ai was good at swimming as a gel.' Ridcully gave her a warm smile. 'All in good time, Mrs Whitlow,' he said. 'But your suggestion has been taken aboard.' 'It's going to be the only thing that is, in a minute,' said Ponder. 'And what exactly will your role be, Arch-chancellor?' the Dean snarled. 'I have defined your objectives,' said Ridcully. 'It is up to you to consider the options.' 'In that case,' said the Dean, 'I move that we abandon ship.' 'What for?' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. The sharks?' That is a secondary problem,' said the Dean. That's right,' said Ponder, 'we can always vote to abandon shark.' The ship lurched suddenly. The Senior Wrangler struck a heroic pose. 'I will save you, Mrs Whitlow!' he cried, and swept her off her feet. Or, at least, made the effort. But the Senior Wrangler was lightly built for a wizard and Mrs Whitlow was a fine figure of a woman and, furthermore, the wizard's grip was limited by the fact that there were very few areas of Mrs Whitlow that he dared actually touch. He did his best with some outlying regions and managed to lift her slightly. All this did was transfer the entire weight of wizard and housekeeper to the Senior Wrangler's quite small feet, which went through the deck like a steel bar. The boat, dry as tinder now, soft as wood punk, fell apart very gently. The water was extremely cold. Spray filled the air as they struggled. A piece of wreckage hit Ponder on the head and pushed him under, into a blue world where his ears went gloing-gloing. When he struggled to the surface again this noise turned out to be an argument. Once again, the sheer magic of Unseen University triumphed. When treading water in a circle of sharks, a wizard will always consider other wizards to be the most immediate danger. 'Don't blame me! He was . . . well, I think he was asleep!' 'You think?' 'He was a mattress. A red one!' 'He's the only Librarian we've got! How could you be so thoughtless!' shouted Ridcully. He took a deep breath, and dived. 'Abandon sea!' shouted the Bursar cheerfully. Ponder shuddered as something big and black and streamlined rose out of the water in from of him. It sank back into the foam and flopped over. Other shapes were bobbing to the surface all around the frantically treading wizards. The Dean tapped one. 'Well, these sharks don't seem anything like as dangerous as I expected,' he said. They're the seeds out of the boat!' said Ponder. 'Get on top of them, quickly!' He was sure that something had brushed his leg. In those circumstances, a man finds unexpected agility. Even the Dean managed to get aboard a board, after a revolving, foamy period when man and seed fought for supremacy. Ridcully surfaced in a shower of spray. 'It's no good!' he spluttered. 'I went down as far as I could. There's no sign of him!' Try and get on a seed, Archchancellor, do,' said the Senior Wrangler. Ridcully flailed at a passing shark. They won't attack you if you make a lot of noise and splash around,' he said. 'I thought that's when they will attack you, sir,' Ponder called out. 'Ah, an interesting practical experiment,' said the Dean, craning to watch. Ridcully hauled himself on to one of the seeds. What a mess. I suppose we can float to land, though,' he said. 'Er . . . where's Mrs Whitlow, gentlemen?' They looked around. 'Oh, no . . .' the Senior Wrangler moaned. 'She's swimming for the shore . . .' They followed his gaze, and could just see a hairdo moving jerkily yet determinedly towards the shore in what Ridcully would probably have referred to as a chest stroke. 'I don't call that very practical,' said the Dean. 'What about the sharks?' 'Well, they're swimming around under us, in fact,' said the Senior Wrangler, as the seeds rocked. Ponder looked down. 'They appear to be leaving now that we're not dangling our legs in the water,' he said. They're heading . . . for the shore, too. ' 'Well, she knew the risks when she got the job,' said the Dean. 'What?' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Are you saying that before you apply for the job of housekeeper of a university you should seriously consider being eaten by sharks on the shores of some mysterious continent thousands of years before you are born?' 'She didn't ask many questions at the interview, I know that.' 'Actually, we are worrying unduly,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'Sharks have a very undeserved reputation as man-eaters. There is not a single authenticated case of a shark attacking anyone, despite what you may have heard. They are sophisticated and peaceful creatures with a rich family life and, far from being ominous harbingers of doom, have reputedly even befriended the occasional lost traveller. As hunters they are of course very efficient, and a full-grown shark can bring down even a moose with . . . er . . .' He looked at their faces. 'Er . . . I think I might perhaps have got them confused with wolves,' he mumbled. 'I have, haven't I?' They nodded, in unison. 'Er . . . sharks are the other ones, aren't they?' he went on. 'The vicious and merciless killers of the sea that don't even stop to chew?' They nodded again. 'Oh dear. Where can I put my face . . .?' 'Some distance from a shark,' said Ridcully briskly. 'Come on, gentlemen. That's our housekeeper! Do you wish to make your own beds in future? Fireballs again, I think.' 'She's gone too far away—' A red shape rocketed out of the sea beside Ridcully, curled through the air and slid below the surface again like a razorblade cutting into silk. 'What was that? Who of you did that?' he said. A bow wave ripped its way to the cluster of triangular fins like a bowling ball heading down an alley. Then the water erupted. 'Ye gods, look at the way it's going at those sharks!' 'Is it a monster?' 'It's a dolphin, surely . . .' 'With red hair?' 'Surely it's not—' A stricken shark barrelled past the Senior Wrangler. Behind it the water exploded again into the big red grin of the only dolphin ever to have a leathery face and orange hair all over its body. 'Eek?' said the Librarian. 'Well done, old chap!' shouted Ridcully across the water. 'I said you wouldn't let us down!' 'No, actually you didn't, sir, you said you thought—' Ponder began. 'Good choice of shape, too,' Ridcully continued loudly. 'Now, if you can sort of nudge us all together, then perhaps you could push us towards the shore? Are we all still here? Where's the Bursar?' The Bursar was a small dot away on the right, paddling dreamily along. 'Well, he'll get there,' said Ridcully. 'Come on, let's get on to dry land.' 'That sea,' said the Senior Wrangler nervously, staring ahead as the seeds were jockeyed towards the shore like a string of overloaded barges, 'that sea . . . Does it look as though it's girting to you?' 'Certainly a very big sea,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'You know, I don't think it's just the rain that's making the roaring. There may be a spot of surf.' 'A few waves won't do us any harm,' said Ridcully. 'At least water is soft.' Ponder felt the board underneath him rise and fall as a long swell passed. An odd shape for a seed, he had to admit. Of course, nature paid a lot of attention to seeds, equipping them with little wings and sails and flotation chambers and other devices necessary to give them an edge over all the other seeds. These were just flattish versions of the Librarian's current shape, which was obviously intended for moving through water very fast. 'Er . . .' he said, to the universe in general. It meant: I wonder if we've really thought about this. 'Can't see any rocks ahead,' the Dean observed. 'Girting,' mused the Senior Wrangler, as if the word was nagging at him. That's a very definite sort of word, isn't it? Has a certain martial sort of sound.' It occurred to Ponder that water is not exactly soft. He'd never been much of a one for sports when he was a boy, but he remembered playing with the other local lads and joining in all their games, such as Push Poncy Stibbons Into the Nettles or Tie Up Stibbo and Go Home for Tea, and there had been the time at the old swimming hole when they'd thrown him in off the top of the cliff. And it had hurt. The flotilla gradually caught up with Mrs Whitlow, who was holding on to a floating tree and treading water. The tree already had its fair share of occupants – birds, lizards and, for some reason, a small camel trying to make itself comfortable in the branches. The swell was heavier now. There was a deep, continuous booming underlying the noise of the rain. 'Ah, Mrs Whitlow,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'And what a nice tree. Even got leaves on, look.' 'We've come to save you,' said the Dean, in the face of the evidence. 'I think it might be a good idea if Mrs Whitlow hung on to a seed,' said Ponder. 'I really think that really might be a really good idea. I think the waves might be . . . slightly big . . .' 'Girting,' said the Senior Wrangler, morosely. He looked towards the beach, and it wasn't ahead of them any more. It was down there. It was at the bottom of a green hill. And the green was made of water. And, for some reason, it was getting taller. 'Look,' said Rincewind. 'Why can't you tell me her name? Presumably lots of people know it. I mean, it must be put on the posters and so on. It's only a name, isn't it? I don't see the problem.' The cooks looked at one another. Then one coughed and said, 'She's . . . her name's . . . Dame Nellie . . . Butt.' 'But what?' 'Her name is Butt.' Rincewind's lips moved silently. 'Oh,' he said. The cooks nodded. 'Has Charley drunk all the beer, do you think?' Rincewind said, sitting down. 'Maybe we can find some bananas, Ron,' said another cook. Rincewind's eyes unfocused and his lips moved again. 'Did you tell Charley that?' he said at last. 'Yep. Just before he broke down.' There was the sound of running feet outside. One of the cooks looked out of the window. 'It's just the Watch. Probably after some poor bastard . . .' Rincewind moved back slightly so that he was not obvious from the window. Ron shuffled his feet. 'I reckon if we went and saw Idle Ahmed and got him to open up his shop we might get some—' 'Strawberries?' said Rincewind. The cooks shuddered. There was another sob from Charley. 'All his life he's been waiting for this,' said a cook. 'I call it bloody unfair. Remember when that little soprano left to marry that drover? He was miserable all week.' 'Yeah. Lisa Delight,' said Ron. 'A bit wobbly in mid-range but definitely showin' promise.' 'He was really pinning his hopes on her. He said a name like that'd even work with rhubarb.' Charley howled. 'I think . . .' said Rincewind, slowly and thoughtfully. 'Yes?' 'I think I can see a way.' 'You can?' Even Charley raised his head. 'Well, you know how it is, the outsider sees most of the game . . . Let's go with the peaches, the cream, a bit of ice cream if you can make it, maybe a dash of brandy . . . Let's see, now . . .' 'Coconut flakes?' said Charley, looking up. 'Yes, why not?' 'Er . . . some tomato sauce, maybe?' 'I think not.' 'You'd better get a move on, they're halfway through the last act,' said Ron. 'She'll be right,' said Rincewind. 'Okay . . . halve the peaches, put them in a bowl with the other things, and then add the brandy and voila.' 'That some kind of foreign stuff?' said Charley. 'I don't think we've got any of that wollah.' 'Just add twice as much brandy, then,' said Rincewind. 'And there it is.' 'Yeah, but what's it called?' said Ron. 'I'm coming to that,' said Rincewind. 'Bowl, please, Charley. Thank you.' He held it aloft. 'Gentlemen . . . I give you . . . the Peach Nellie.' A saucepan bubbled on a stove. Apart from that insistent little noise, and the distant strains of the opera, the room fell silent. 'What do you think?' said Rincewind brightly. 'It's . . . different. . ,' said Charley. 'I'll grant you that.' 'But it's not exactly commemorative, is it?' said Ron. 'The world is full of Nellies.' 'On the other hand, would you prefer it if everyone remembered the alternative?' said Rincewind. 'Do you want to be associated in any way with the Peach Bu—' There was a howl as Charley burst into tears again. 'Put like that, it doesn't sound too bad,' said Ron. 'Peach Nellie . . . yeah.' 'You could use bananas,' said Rincewind. Ron's lips moved silently. 'Nah,' he said. 'Let's go with the peaches.' Rincewind brushed himself off. 'Glad to be of service,' he said. 'Tell me. How many ways are there out of here?' 'Busy night for everyone, what with the Galah and everything,' said Ron. 'Not my taste, of course, but it does bring in the visitors.' 'Yeah, and the hanging in the morning,' said Charley. 'I was planning to miss that,' said Rincewind. 'Now, if you'll just—' 'I for one hope he escapes,' said Charley. 'I'm with you on that,' said Rincewind. Heavy boots walked past the door and stopped. He could hear distant voices. They say he fought a dozen policemen,' said Ron. 'Three,' said Rincewind. 'It was three. I heard. Someone told me. Not a dozen. Three.' 'Oh, gotta be more than three, gotta be a lot more than three for a bold bush ranger like that one. Rinso, they call him.' 'I heard where this bloke arrived from Dijabringabeeralong and said Rinso sheared a hundred sheep in five minutes.' 'I don't believe that,' said Rincewind. 'They say he's a wizard but that can't be true 'cos you never catch one of them doin' a proper job of work.' 'Well, in fact—' 'All right, but a bloke who works up at the gaol says he'd got this strange brown stuff which gives him enormous strength!' 'It was only beer soup!' shouted Rincewind. 'I mean,' he added, 'that's what I heard.' Ron gave him a lopsided look. 'You look a bit like a wizard,' he said. Someone knocked heavily on the door. 'You're wearing those dresses they wear,' Ron went on, without taking his eyes off Rincewind. 'Go and open the door, Sid.' Rincewind backed away, reached behind him to a table laden with knives, and found his fingers closing on a handle. Yes, he hated the idea of weapons. They always, always, upped the ante. But they did impress people. The door opened. Several men peered in, and one of them was the gaoler. 'That's him!' 'I warn you, I'm a desperate man,' Rincewind said, bringing his hand around. Most of the cooks dived for cover. 'That's a ladle, mate,' said a watchman, kindly. 'But bloody plucky, all the same. Good on yer. What do you think, Charley?' 'I reckon it's never going to be said that a bold larrikin like him was run to earth in a kitchen of mine,' said Charley. He picked up a cleaver in one hand and the dish of Peach Nellie in the other. 'You nip out the other door, Rinso, and we'll talk to these policemen.' 'Suits us,' said the watchman, ' 's not a proper last stand, just having a punch-up in a kitchen . . . We'll give you a count to ten, all right?' Once again Rincewind felt that he hadn't been given the same script as everyone else. 'You mean you've got me cornered and you aren't going to arrest me?' he said. 'We-ell, it wouldn't look good in the ballad, would it?' said the guard. 'You've got to think about these things.' He leaned on the doorway. 'Now, there's the old Post Office in Grurt Street. I reckon a man could hold out for two, maybe three days there, no worries. Then you could run out, we shoot you full of arrows, you utter some famous last words . . . kids'll be learnin' about you in school in a hundred years' time, I'll bet. And look at yourself, willya?' He stepped forward, ignoring the deadly ladle, and prodded Rincewind's robe. 'How many arrows is that going to stop, eh?' 'You're all mad!' Charley shook his head. 'Everyone likes a battler, mister. That's the Ecksian way. Go down fighting, that's the ticket.' 'We heard about you takin' on that road gang,' said the guard. 'Bloody good job. Man who'd do a job like that ain't gonna be hanged, he gonna want to make a famous last stand.' The men had all entered the kitchen now. The doorway was clear. 'Has anyone ever had a Famous Last Run?' said Rincewind. 'No. What's one of them?' 'G'day!' As he sped away along the darkened waterfront he heard the shout behind him. That's the ticket! We'll count to ten!' He glanced up as he ran and saw that the big sign over the brewery seemed to be dark. And then he realized that something was hopping along just behind him. 'Oh, no! Not you!' 'G'day,' said Scrappy, drawing level. 'Look at the mess you've got me into!' 'Mess? You were gonna be hanged! Now you're enjoying the healthy fresh air in a god's own country!' 'And I'm going to be shot full of arrows!' 'So? You can dodge arrows. This place needs a hero. Champion shearer, road warrior, bush ranger, sheep-stealer, horse rider . . . all you need now is to be good at some damn silly bat and ball game that no one's invented yet and maybe build a few tall buildings with borrowed money and you'd have a full house. They ain't gonna kill you in a hurry.' 'That's not much comfort! Anyway, I didn't do any of that stuff— Well, I mean I did, but—' 'It's what people think that matters. Now they believe you waltzed out of a locked cell.' 'All I did was—' 'Doesn't matter! The number of gaolers who want to shake you by the hand, well, I reckon they wouldn't get around to hanging you by lunchtime!' 'Listen, you giant jumping rat, I've made it to the docks, okay? I can outrun them! I can lie low! I know how to stow away, throw up, get discovered, be thrown over the side, stay afloat for two days by clinging on to an old barrel and eating plankton sieved through my beard, carefully negotiate the treacherous coral reef surrounding an atoll and survive by eating yams!' That's a very special talent you got there,' said the kangaroo, bounding over a ship's hawser. 'How many Ecksian ships have you ever seen in Ankh-Morpork? Busiest port in the world, ain't it?' Rincewind slowed. 'Well . . .' 'It's the currents, mate. Get more'n ten miles off'f the coast here and there ain't one captain in a hundred who can stop his ship going right over the Rim. They stick very close inshore.' Rincewind stopped. 'You mean this whole place is a prison!' 'Yep. But the Ecksians say this is the best bloody place in the world, so there's no point in going anywhere else anyway.' There were shouts behind him. The guards here didn't take so long counting to ten as most guards did. 'What're you going to do now?' said Rincewind. The kangaroo had gone. He ducked down a side street and found his way completely blocked. Carts filled the street from edge to edge. Gaily decorated carts. Rincewind paused. He had always been the foremost exponent of the from rather than the to of running. He could have written 'The From of Running'. But just occasionally a certain subtle sense told him that the to was important. For one thing, a lot of the people standing and chatting around the carts were wearing leather. You could make a lot of arguments in favour of leather. It was long-lasting, practical and hard-wearing. People like Cohen the Barbarian found it so hard-wearing and long-lasting that their old loincloths had to be removed by a blacksmith. But the people here didn't look as if these were the qualities that they'd been looking for in the boutique. They'd asked questions like: How many studs has it got? How shiny is it? Has it got holes cut out in unusual places? But still, one of the most basic rules for survival on any planet is never to upset someone wearing black leather.[21]Rincewind sidled politely past them, giving them a friendly nod and a wave whenever he saw one looking in his direction. For some reason, this caused more of them to take an interest in him. There were groups of ladies, too, and there was no doubt that if EcksEcksEcksEcks was where a man could stand tall, so could a woman. Some of them were nevertheless very pretty, in an overstated kind of way, although the occasional moustache looked out of place, but Rincewind had been to foreign parts and knew that things could be a bit lush in the more rural regions. There were more sequins than you usually saw. More feathers, too. Then it dawned on him in a great rush of relief. 'Oh, this is a carnival, right?' he said aloud. This is the Galah they keep talking about.' 'Pardon you?' said a lady in a spangly blue dress, who was changing the wheel on a large purple cart. 'These are carnival floats, aren't they?' said Rincewind. The woman gritted her teeth, rammed the new wheel into place and then released the axle. The can bounced down on to the cobbles. 'Damn, I think I broke a nail on that,' she said. She glanced at Rincewind. 'Yeah, this is the carnival. That dress has seen better days, hasn't it? Nice moustache, shame about the beard. It'd look good with a tint.' Rincewind glanced back down the street. The floats and the press of people were hiding him from view, but this wouldn't last long. 'Er . . . could you help me, madam?' he said. 'Er . . . the Watch are after me.' They can be so tiresome like that.' There was a misunderstanding over a sheep.' There so often is, mate.' She looked Rincewind up and down. 'You don't look like a country boy, I must say.' 'Me? I get nervous when I see a blade of grass, miss.' She stared at him. 'You . . . haven't been here very long, have you, Mister . . .?' 'Rincewind, ma'am.' 'Well, get on the cart, Mister Rincewind. My name's Letitia.' She held out a rather large hand. He shook it, and then tried surreptitiously to massage some blood back into his fingers as he scrambled up. The purple cart had been decorated with huge swathes of pink and lavender, and what looked like roses made out of paper. Boxes, also covered in cloth, had been set up in the centre to give a sort of raised dais. 'What d'you think?' said Letitia. The girls worked all arvo.' The scheme was a bit too feminine for Rincewind's taste, but he'd been brought up to be polite. He snuggled down, as far out of view as possible. 'Very nice,' he said. 'Very gay.' 'Glad you think so.' Up ahead somewhere a band started to play. There was a stirring as people got on to the floats or formed up to march. A couple of women climbed up into the purple cart, all sequins and long gloves, and stared at Rincewind. 'What the—' one began. 'Darleen – we have to talk,' said Letitia, from the front of the cart. Rincewind watched them go into a huddle. Occasionally one of them would raise her head and give him an odd look, as if she was reassuring herself that he was here. Fine big girls they had here, though. He wondered where they got their shoes from. Rincewind was not intensively familiar with women. Quite a lot of his life that hadn't been spent at high speed had been passed within the walls of Unseen University, where women were broadly put in the same category as wallpaper or musical instruments – interesting in their way, and no doubt a small but important part of the proper structure of civilization but not, when you got right down to it, essential. On these occasions when he had spent some time in the intimate company of a woman, it was generally when she was trying to either cut his head off or persuade him to a course of action that would probably get someone else to do it. When a came to women he was not, as it were, capable of much fine-tuning. A few neglected instincts were telling him that something was out of place, but he couldn't work out what it was. The one addressed as Darleen strode down the can with a decisive and rather aggressive air. Rincewind pulled his hat off respectfully. 'Are you coming the raw prawn?' she demanded. 'Me? Certainly not, miss. No prawns at all. If I can just lie low until we're a few streets away, that's all I ask—' 'You know what this is, don't you?' 'Yes, miss. The carnival.' Rincewind swallowed. 'No worries there. Everyone likes dressing up, don't they?' 'But are you tellin' me you really think . . . I mean we . . . What are you staring at my hair for?' 'Er . . . I was wondering how you get it so sparkly. Are you on the stage at all?' 'We're moving, girls,' Letitia called back. 'Remember . . . pretty smiles. Leave him alone, Darleen, you don't know where he's been.' The third woman, the one the others had called Neilette, was watching him curiously, and Rincewind felt that there was something not right about her. Her hair wasn't drab, but it certainly appeared to be when compared with that of her colleagues. She didn't seem to have enough make-up. She seemed, in short, slightly out of place. Then he caught sight of a watchman ahead, and flung himself below the edge of the cart. A gap in the boards gave him a view, as the cart turned the corner, of the waiting crowds. He'd been to quite a number of carnivals, although not usually on purpose. He'd even attended Fat Lunchtime in Genua, generally regarded as the biggest in the world, although he vaguely recalled that he'd been hanging upside down under one of the floats in order to escape pursuers, but right now he couldn't quite remember why he'd been chased and it was never wise to stop and ask. Although Rincewind had covered quite a lot of the Disc in his life, most of his recollections were like that – a blur. Not through forgetfulness, but because of speed. This looked like the usual audience. A real carnival procession should only take place after the pubs have been open for a good long time. It adds to the spontaneity. There were cheers, whistles, jeers and catcalls. Up ahead, people were blowing horns. Dancers whirled past Rincewind's peephole. He sat back and pulled a swathe of taffeta over his head. This sort of thing always took up a lot of Watch time, what with pickpockets and so on. He'd wait until they were in whatever bit of wasteground these things always ended up in, and drop quietly out of sight. He glanced down. These ladies were certainly into shoes in a big way. They had hundreds. Hundreds of shoes, all lined up, peeking out from under a heap of women's clothing. Rincewind looked away. There was probably something morally wrong about staring at women's clothes without women in them. His head turned back and looked at the shoes again. He was sure that several of them had moved— A bottle shattered near his head. Glass showered around him. Up above, Darleen uttered a word he'd never have expected on the lips of a lady. Rincewind raised his head cautiously and another bottle bounced off his hat. 'Some hoonies having a bit of fun,' said Darleen, through gritted teeth. There's always some joker— oh really?' 'Give us a kiss, mister?' said a young man who'd leapt on to the edge of the cart, waving a beer can happily. Rincewind had seen some serious fighters in action, but no one had ever swung a punch like Darleen. Her eyes narrowed, her fist seemed to travel in a complete circle, it met the man's chin about halfway round and when he disappeared from the wizard's view he was still rising. 'Will you look at that?' Darleen demanded, waving her hand at Rincewind. 'Ripped! These evening gloves cost a fortune, the bastard!' A beer can sailed past her ear. 'Didja see who threw that? Didja? I saw yer, yer mazza! I'll stick my hand down yer throat and pull yer trousers up!' The crowd roared their appreciation and derision at the same time. Rincewind caught sight of watchmen's helmets heading purposefully towards them. 'Er . . .' he said. 'Hey, that's him! That's Rinso the bush ranger!' someone yelled, pointing. 'It wasn't bushes, it was just a sheep!' Rincewind wondered who'd said that, and realized it was him. And there was no escape. And the watchmen were looking up at him. And there was really no escape. The street was packed. There was another fight further up the procession. There were no nearby alleyways, the fugitive's friend. And the watchmen were fighting their way through the throng, with great difficulty. And the crowd were having the time of their lives. And the huge kangaroo beer sign gleamed overhead. This was it, then. Time for a Famous Last Stand. 'What?' he said aloud. 'It's never time for a Famous Last Stand!' He turned to Letitia. 'I should just like to thank you for trying to help me,' he said. 'It's a pleasure to meet some real ladies for once.' They looked at one another. 'The pleasure's all ours,' said Letitia. 'Such a change to meet a real gentleman, isn't it, girls?' Darken kicked a fishnet leg at a man trying to climb on the cart, causing with a stiletto heel what bromide in your tea is reputed to take several weeks to achieve. 'Too bloody true,' she said. Rincewind leapt from the cart, landed on someone's shoulder, jumped again very briefly on to someone's head. It worked. Provided you kept moving, it really worked. A few hands grabbed at him and one or two cans were thrown, but there were also plenty of cries of 'Good on yer!' and That's the way!' At last there was an alley. He jumped down from the last obliging shoulder and changed leg gear, and then found that the best way to describe the alley was as a cul-de-sac. The worst way was as an alley with three or four watchmen in it, who'd ducked in for a smoke. They gave him that look of harassed policemen everywhere which said that, as an unwelcome intruder into their brief smoko, he was definitely going to be guilty of something. And then light dawned in the face of their sergeant. 'That's him!' Out in the street people started yelling and screaming. These were not the beery shouts of the carnival. People were in real pain out there. They were also pressing in so tightly that there was no way out. 'I can explain everything,' said Rincewind, half aware of the growing noise. 'Well . . . most things. Some things, certainly. A few things. Look, about this sheep—' Something brilliant passed over his head and landed on the cobbles between him and the guards. It looked rather like a table wearing an evening dress, and it had hundreds of little feet. They were wearing high heels. Rincewind rolled into a ball and put his hands over his head, trying to block his ears until the noise had died away. At the very edge of the sea, the surf bubbled and sucked at the sand. As the wavelet drew back it flowed around the splintered bulk of a tree. The drifting wood's cargo of crabs and sand fleas waited for their moment and slid off cautiously, scuttling ashore ahead of the next wave. The rain banged into the beach, running in miniature canyons of crumbling sand on its way to the sea. The crabs surged across these like a homesteaders' stampede, rushing to mark out territory on the endless, virgin beach. They followed the salty tideline of weed and shells, scrambling over one another in their search for a space where a crab can proudly stand sideways and start a new life and eat the heady sand of freedom. A few of them investigated a grey, sodden pointy hat that was tangled in seaweed, and then ran on to a more promising heap of soaked cloth which offered even more interesting holes and crevices. One of them tried to climb into Ponder Stibbons's nose, and was snorted out again. Ponder opened an eye. When he moved his head, the water filling his ears made a ringing noise. The history of the last few minutes was complicated. He could remember rushing along a tube of green water, if such a thing were possible, and there had been several periods where the air and the sea and Ponder himself had been very closely entwined. Now he felt as though someone had. with great precision, hit every part of his body with a hammer. 'Get off, will you!' Ponder reached up and pulled another crab out of his ear, and realized that he had lost his glasses. They were probably rolling at the bottom of the sea by now, frightening lobsters. So here he was, on an alien shore, and he'd be able to see everything really clearly provided everything was meant to be a blur. 'Am I dead this time?' It was the Dean's voice, from a little further away along the beach. 'No, you're still alive, sir,' said Ponder. 'Damn. Are you sure?' There were other groans as bits of tidal debris turned out to be wizards mixed with seaweed. 'Are we all here?' said Ridcully, trying to get to his feet. 'I'm sure I'm not,' moaned the Dean. 'I don't see . . . Mrs Whitlow,' said Ridcully. 'Or the Bursar . . .' Ponder sat up. 'There's . . . oh, dear . . . well, there's the Bursar . . .' Out at sea a huge wave was building up. It towered higher and higher. And the Bursar was on top of it. 'Bursar!' Ridcully screamed. The distant figure stood up on the seed and waved. 'He's standing up,' said Ridcully. 'Is he supposed to stand up on those things? He's not supposed to stand up, is he? I'm sure he shouldn't be standing up. YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO STAND UP, BURSAAAR! How . . . That's not supposed to happen, is it?' The wave curled, but the Bursar seemed to be skimming down the side of it, skidding along the huge green wet wall like a man on one ski. Ridcully turned to the other wizards. 'He can't do that, can he? He's walking up and down on it. Can he do that? The wave's curling over and he's just sliding gently along the . . . Oh, no . . .' The foaming crest curled over the speeding wizard. 'That's it, then,' said Ridcully. 'Er . . . no . . .' said Ponder. The Bursar reappeared further along the beach, expelled from the collapsing tube of water like an arrow from a bow. The wave crashed over behind him, striking the shore as if it had just offended it. The seed changed direction, cruised gently over the backwash and crunched to a halt on the sand. The Bursar stepped off. 'Hooray,' he said. 'My feet are wet. What a nice forest. Time for tea.' He picked up the seed and rammed it point first in the sand. Then he wandered away up the beach. 'How did he do that?' said Ridcully. 'I mean, the man's crazier than a ferret! Damn good Bursar, of course.' 'Possibly the lack of mental balance means there's nothing to impede physical stability?' said Ponder wearily. 'You think so?' 'Not really, sir. I just said it for something to say.' Ponder tried to massage some life back into his legs, and started to count under his breath. 'Is there anything to eat here?' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'Four,' said Ponder. 'I beg your pardon?' 'What? Oh, it was just some counting I was doing, sir. No, sir. There's probably fish and lobsters in the sea, but the land looks pretty bare to me.' It did. Reddish sand stretched away through the greyish drizzle to bluish mountains. The only greenishness was the Dean's face and, suddenly, the shoots winding out of the Bursar's surfing seed. Leaves unfolded in the rain, tiny flowers opened with little plopping noises. 'Well, at least we'll have another boat,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'I doubt it, sir,' said Ponder. The god wasn't very good at breeding things.' And, indeed, the swelling fruit was not looking very boat-shaped. 'You know, I still think it would help if we thought of all this as a valuable opportunity,' said Ridcully. That's true,' said the Dean, sitting up. 'It's not many times in your life you get the chance to die of hunger on some bleak continent thousands of years before you're born. We should make the most of it.' 'I meant that pitting ourselves against the dements will bring out the best in us and forge us into a go-getting and hard-hitting team,' said Ridcully. This view got no takers. 'I'm sure there must be something to eat,' mumbled the Chair of Indefinite Studies, looking around aimlessly. 'There usually is.' 'After all, nothing is beyond men like us,' said Ridcully. 'That's true,' said Ponder. 'Oh gods, yes. That's true.' 'And at least a wizard can always make a decent fire.' Ponder's eyes opened wide. He rose in one movement aimed at Ridcully, but was still airborne when the Archchancellor tossed a small fireball at a heap of driftwood. By the time the glowing ball was halfway to the wood Ponder had hit Ridcully in the back, so that both of them were sprawled on the wet sand when the world went whooph. When they looked up the heap of driftwood was a blackened crater. 'Well, thank you,' said the Dean, behind them. 'I feel lovely and dry now, and I never did like my eyebrows all that much.' 'High thaumic field, sir,' Ponder panted. 'I did say.' Ridcully stared at his hands. 'I was going to light my pipe with one . . .' he muttered. He held the hand away from him. 'It was only a Number Ten,' he said. The Dean stood up, brushing away some tufts of burnt beard. 'I'm not sure I believe what I just saw,' he said, and pointed a finger at a nearby rock. 'No, sir, I don't think you—' Most of the rock was lifted off the ground and Sanded a hundred yards away. The rest of it sizzled in a red-hot puddle. 'Can I have a go?' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Sir, I really think—' 'Oh, well done, Senior Wrangler,' said the Dean, as another rock fractured into fragments. 'Ye gods, you were right, Stibbons,' said Ridcully. 'The magic field here is hugeV 'Yes, sir, but I really don't think we should be using it, sir!' Ponder shrieked. 'We're wizards, young man. Using magic is what wizarding is all about.' 'No, sir! Not using magic is what wizarding is all about!' Ridcully hesitated. This is fossil magic, sir!' said Ponder, speaking fast. 'It's what's being used to create this place! We could do untold damage if we're not careful!' 'All right, all right, no one do anything for a moment,' said Ridcully. 'Now . . . what are you talking about, Mister Stibbons?' 'I don't think the place is properly, well, finished, sir. I mean, there're no plants or animals, are there?' 'Nonsense. I saw a camel a little while ago.' 'Yes, sir, but that came with us. And there's seaweed and crabs on the beach and they got washed up too. But where are the trees and bushes and grasses?' 'Interesting,' said Ridcully. 'Place is as bald as a baby's bottom.' 'Still under construction, sir. The god did say it was being built.' 'Unbelievable, really,' said Ridcully. 'A whole continent being created out of nothing?' 'Exactly, sir.' 'Gazillions of thaums of magic pouring into the world.' 'You've got it, sir.' 'Whole mountains and cliffs and beaches where once there was nothing, style of thing.' That's right, sir.' 'Bit of a miracle, you could say.' 'I certainly would, sir.' 'Unimaginably vast amounts of magic doing their stuff.' 'Astonishing, sir.' 'So I expect no one will miss a little bit, eh?' 'No!That's not how it works, sir! If we use it, it's like . . . like treading on ants, sir! This isn't like . . . finding an old staff in a cupboard and using up the magic that's left. This is the real primal energy! Anything we do might well have an effect.' The Dean tapped him on the shoulder. 'Then here we are, young Stibbons, stuck on this forsaken shore. What do you suggest? We're thousands of years from home. Perhaps we should just sit and wait? That Rincewind fellow's bound to be along in a few millennia?' 'Er, Dean . . .' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Yes?' 'Are you standing behind Stibbons there, or are you sitting on this rock over here?' The Dean looked at himself, sitting on the rock. 'Oh, blast,' he muttered. Temporal discontinuity again.' 'Again?' said Ponder. 'We had a patch of it in Room 5b once,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Ridiculous. You had to cough before you went in, in case you were already there. Anyway, you shouldn't be surprised, young man. Enough magic distorts all physical la—' The Senior Wrangler vanished, leaving only a pile of clothes. 'Took a while to take hold,' said Ridcully. 'I remember when—' His voice suddenly rose in pitch. Ponder spun around and saw a small heap of clothing with a pointed hat on top of it. He raised the hat gingerly. A pink face under a mop of curls looked up at him. 'Bugger!' squeaked Ridcully. 'How old am I, mister?' 'Er . . . you look about six, sir,' said Ponder. His back twinged. The small worried face crinkled up. 'I want my mum!' The little nose sniffed. 'Was that me who just said that?' 'Er, yes . . .' 'You can keep on top of it if you concentrate,' the Archchancellor squeaked. 'It resets the tempor— I wanna sweetie! – it resets the temporal gl— I wanna sweetie, oh, you wait till I get me home, I'll give me such a smack – it resets the body's clo— where's Mr Pootle? – it resets the body's clock – wanna wanna Mr Pootle! – don't worry, I think I've got the hang of it—' The wail behind Ponder made him turn around. There were more piles of clothing where the wizards had been. He pulled aside the Dean's hat just as a faint bloop suggested that Mustrum Ridcully had managed to regain full possession of his years again. 'That the Dean, Stibbons?' 'Could be, sir. Er . . . some of them have gone, sir!' Ridcully looked unflustered. 'Temporal gland acting up in the high field,' he said. 'Probably decided that since it's thousands of years ago they're not here. Don't worry, they'll come back when it works it out . . .' Ponder suddenly felt breathless. 'And . . . hwee . . . think this one's the Lecturer in Recent Runes . . . hwee . . . of course . . . hwee . . . all babies look the . . . hwee . . . same.' There was another wail from under the Senior Wrangler's hat. 'Bit of a . . . hwee . . . kindergarten here, sir,' Ponder wheezed. His back creaked when he tried to stand upright. 'Oh, they'll probably come back if they don't get fed,' said Ridcully. 'It's you that'll be the problem, lad. I mean, sir.' Ponder held his hands up in front of him. He could see the veins through the pale skin. He could nearly see the bones. Around him the piles of clothing rose again as the wizards clambered back to their proper age. 'How . . . old . . . hwee . . . I . . . ha . . . look?' he panted. 'Like someone who shouldn't . . . hwee . . . start reading a long book?' 'A long sentence,' said Ridcully cheerfully, holding him up. 'How old do you feel? In yourself?' 'I . . . hwee . . . ought to feel . . . hwee . . . about twenty-four, sir,' Ponder groaned. 'I actually . . . hwee . . . feel like a twenty-four-year-old who has been hit by eighty years travelling at . . . hwee . . . high speed.' 'Hold on to that thought. Your temporal gland knows how old you are.' Ponder tried to concentrate, but it was hard. Pan of him wanted to go to sleep. Part of him wanted to say, 'Hah, you call this a temporal disturbance? You should've seen the temporal disturbances we will have been used to be going to get in my day.' A pressing part of him was threatening that if he didn't find a toilet it would make its own arrangements. 'You've kept your hair,' said the Senior Wrangler, encouragingly. Ponder heard himself say, 'Remember old "Cruddy" Trusset? Now there was a wizard who had . . . good . . . hair . . .' He tried to get a grip. 'He's still alive, isn't he?' he wheezed. 'He's the same age as me. Oh, no . . . now I'm remembering only yesterday as if it was . . . hwee . . . seventy years ago!' 'You can get over it,' said Ridcully. 'You've got to make it clear you're not accepting it, you see. The important thing is not to panic.' 'I am panicking,' squeaked Ponder. 'I'm just doing it very slowly! Why've I got this horrible feeling that I'm . . . hwee . . . falling forward all the . . . hwee . . . time?' 'Oh, that's just apprehensions of mortality,' said Ridcully. 'Everyone gets that.' 'And . . . hwee . . . now I think my memory's going . . .' 'What makes you think that?' 'Think what? Speak up, you . . . hwee . . . man . . .' Something exploded somewhere behind Ponder's eyeballs and lifted him off the ground. For a moment he felt he had jumped into icy water. The blood flowed back to his hands. 'Well done, lad,' said Ridcully. 'Your hair's going brown again, too.' 'Ow . . .' Ponder slumped to his knees. 'It was like wearing a lead suit! I never want to go through that again!' 'Suicide's your best bet, then,' said Ridcully. 'Is this going to happen again?' 'Probably. At least once, anyway.' Ponder got to his feet with a steely look in his eyes. 'Then let's find whoever's building this place and ask them to send us home,' he growled. 'They might not want to listen,' said Ridcully. 'Deities can be touchy.' Ponder shook his sleeves to leave his hands free. For a wizard, this was equivalent to checking the functioning of a pump-action shotgun. 'Then we'll insist,' he said. 'Really, Stibbons? What about protection of the magical ecology?' Ponder turned on him a look that would have opened a strongroom. Ridcully was in his seventies and spry even for wizards, who tended to live well into their second century if they survived their first fifty years. Ponder wasn't sure how old he'd been, but he'd definitely thought he could hear a blade being sharpened. It was one thing to know you were on a journey, and quite, quite another to see your destination on the horizon. 'It can get stuffed,' he said.[22] 'Well thought out, Mister Stibbons! I can see we'll make a wizard of you yet. Ah, the Dean's . . . oh . . .' The Dean's clothes billowed up but did not, as it were, inflate to their old size. The hat in particular was big enough to rock on the Dean's ears, which were redder and stuck out more than Ponder remembered. Ridcully raised the hat. 'Push off, granddad,' said the Dean. 'Ah,' said the Archchancellor. Thirteen years old, I'd say. Which explains a lot. Well, Dean, help us with the others, will you?' 'Why should I?' The adolescent Dean cracked his knuckles. 'Hah! I'm young again and soon you'll be dead ! I've got my whole life ahead of me!' 'Firstly, you'll spend it here, and secondly, Dean, you think it's going to be jolly good fun being the Dean in a thirteen-year-old body, don't you, but within a minute or two you'll start forgetting it all, you see? The old temporal gland can't allow you to remember being fourteen when you're not even thirteen yet, you follow me? You'd know this stuff, Dean, if you weren't forgetting. You'll have to go through it all over again. Dean . . . ah . . .' The brain has far less control over the body than the body does over the brain. And adolescence is not a good time. Nor is old age, for that matter, but at least the spots have cleared up, some of the more troublesome glands have settled down and you're allowed to take a nap in the afternoons and twinkle at young women. In any case, the Dean's body hadn't experienced too much old age yet, whereas every junior spot, ache and twinge was firmly embossed on the morphic memory. Once, it decided, was enough. The Dean expanded. Ponder noticed that his head in particular swelled up to fit his ears. The Dean rubbed his spot-free face. 'Five minutes wouldn't have been bad,' he complained. 'What was that all about?' 'Temporal uncertainty,' said Ridcully. 'You've seen it before, didn't you realize? What were you thinking of?' 'Sex.' 'Oh, yes, of course . . . silly of me, really.' Ridcully looked along the deserted beach. 'Mister Stibbons thinks we can—' he began. 'Ye gods! There are people here!' A young woman was walking towards them. Swaying, anyway. 'My word,' said the Dean. 'I suppose this isn't Slakki, by any chance?' 'I thought they wore grass skirts . . .' said Ridcully. 'What's she wearing, Stibbons?' 'A sarong.' 'Looks right enough to me, haha,' said the Dean. 'Certainly makes a man wish he was fifty years younger,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'Five minutes younger would do for me,' said the Dean. 'Incidentally, did any of you notice that rather clever inadvertent joke just then? Stibbons said it was "a sarong" and I—' 'What's that she's carrying?' said Ridcully. '—no, listen, you see, I misheard him, in fact, and I—' 'Looks like . . . coconuts . . .' said Ponder, shading his eyes. 'This is a bit more like it,' said the Senior Wrangler. '—because actually I thought he said, "It's wrong," you see—' 'Certainly a coconut,' said Ridcully. 'I'm not complaining, of course, but aren't these sultry maids generally black-haired? Red doesn't seem very typical.' '—so I said—' 'I suppose you'd get coconuts here?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'They float, don't they?' '—and, listen, when Stibbons said "sarong", I thought he—' 'Something familiar about her,' Ridcully mused. 'Did you see that nut in the Museum of Quite Unusual Things?' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Called the coco-de-mer and . . .' he permitted himself '. . . ha, very curious shape, you know, you'll never guess who it used to put me in mind of . . .' 'It can't be Mrs Whitlow, can it?' said Ponder. 'As a matter of fact, I must admit that it—' 'Well, I thought it was mildly amusing, anyway,' said the Dean. 'It is Mrs Whitlow,' said Ridcully. 'More of a nut, really, but—' It dawned on the Senior Wrangler that the sky was a different colour on his personal planet. He turned around, looked, said, 'Mwaaa . . .' and fell gently to the sand. 'Ai don't quate know what's happened to Mister Librarian,' said Mrs Whitlow, in a voice that made the Senior Wrangler twitch even in his swoon. The coconut opened its eyes. It looked as if it had just seen something truly horrific, but this is a normal expression for baby orang-utans and in any case it was looking at the Dean. 'Eek!' it said. Ridcully coughed. 'Well, at least he's the right shape,' he said. 'And, er, you, Mrs Whitlow? How do you feel?' 'Mwaa . . .' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Very well indeed, thank you,' said Mrs Whitlow. This country agrees with me. I don't know whether it was the swim, but Ai haven't felt quate so buoyant in years. But Ai looked around and there was this dear little ape just sitting there.' 'Ponder, would you mind just throwing the Senior Wrangler in the sea for a moment?' said Ridcully. 'Nowhere too deep. Don't worry if it steams.' He took Mrs Whitlow's spare hand. 'I don't want to worry you, dear Mrs Whitlow,' he said, 'but I think something is shortly going to come as a big shock to you. First of all, and please don't misunderstand me, it might be a good idea to loosen your clothing.' He swallowed. 'Slightly.' The Bursar had experienced some changes of age as he wandered through the wet but barren land, but to a man capable of being a vase of flowers for an entire afternoon this was barely a mild distraction. What had caught his eye was a fire. It was burning bits of driftwood, and the flames were edged with blue from the salt. Close to it was a sack made of some sort of animal skins. The damp earth beside the Bursar stirred and a tree erupted, growing so fast that the rain steamed off the unfolding leaves. This did not surprise him. Few things did. Besides, he'd never seen a tree growing before, so he did not know how fast it was supposed to go. Then several more trees exploded around him. One grew so fast that it went all the way from sapling to half-rotten trunk in a few seconds. And it seemed to the Bursar that there were other people here. He couldn't see them or hear them, but something in his bones sensed them. However, the Bursar was also quite accustomed to the presence of people who couldn't be seen or heard by anyone else, and had spent many a pleasant hour in conversation with historical figures and, sometimes, the wall. All in all the Bursar was, depending on your outlook, the most or least suitable person to encounter deity on a first-hand basis. An old man walked around a rock and was halfway to the fire before he noticed the wizard. Like Rincewind, the Bursar had no room in his head for racism. As a skin colour black came as quite a relief compared to some of the colours he'd seen, although he'd never seen anyone quite so black as the man now staring at him. At least, the Bursar assumed he was staring. The eyes were so deep set that he couldn't be sure. The Bursar, who had been properly brought up. said, 'Hooray, there's a rosebush?' The old man gave him a rather puzzled nod. He walked over to the dead tree and pulled off a branch, which he pushed into the fire. Then he sat down and watched it as though watching wood char was the most engrossing thing in the world. The Bursar sat down on a rock and waited. If the game was patience, then two could play at it. The old man kept glancing up at him. The Bursar kept smiling. Once or twice he gave the man a little wave. Finally the burning branch was pulled out of the fire. The old man picked up the leather sack in his other hand and walked off among the rocks. The Bursar followed him. There was an overhang here under a small cliff, shielding a stretch of vertical rock from the rain. It was the kind of tempting surface that would, in Ankh-Morpork, have already been covered so thickly with so many posters, signs and graffiti that if you'd removed the wall the general accretion would still have stood up. Someone had drawn a tree. It was the simplest drawing of a tree the Bursar had ever seen since he'd been old enough to read books that weren't mainly pictures, but it was also in some strange way the most accurate. It was simple because something complex had been rolled up small; as if someone had drawn trees, and started with the normal green cloud on a stick, and refined it, and refined it some more, and looked for the little twists in a line that said tree and refined those until there was just one line that said TREE. And now when you looked at it you could hear the wind in the branches. The old man reached down beside him and took up a flat stone with some white paste on it. He drew another line on the rock, slightly like a flattened V, and smeared it with mud. The Bursar burst out laughing as the wings emerged from the painting and whirred past him. And again he was aware of a strange effect in the air. It reminded him of . . . yes . . . old 'Rubber' Houser, that was his name, dead now, of course, but remembered by many of his contemporaries as the inventor of the Graphical Device. The Bursar had joined the University when likely wizards started their training early, somewhere after the point where they learned to walk but before they started to push over girls in the playground. The writing of lines in detention class was a familiar punishment and the Bursar, like everyone else, toyed with the usual practice of tying several pens to a ruler in a group attempt to write lines in threes. But Houser, a reflective sort of boy, had scrounged some bits of wood and stripped a mattress of its springs and devised the four-, sixteen- and eventually the thirty-two-line writing machine. It had got so popular that boys were actually breaking rules in order to have a go on it, at threepence a time to use it and a penny to help wind it up. Of course, more time was spent setting it up than was ever saved by using it, but this is the case in many similar fields and is a sign of Progress. The experiments tragically came to an end when someone opened a door at the wrong moment and the entire pent-up force of Houser's experimental prototype 256-line machine propelled him backwards out of a fourth-floor window. Except for the absence of screams, the hand tracing its infinitely simple lines on the rock brought back memories of Houser. There was a sense of something small being done that was making something happen that was huge. He sat and watched. It was, he remembered later whenever he was in a state to remember anything, one of the happiest times of his life. When Rincewind lifted his head a watchman's helmet was spinning gently on the ground. To his amazement the men themselves were still there, although they were lying around in various attitudes of unconsciousness or at least, if they had sense, feigned unconsciousness. The Luggage had a cat's tendency to lose interest in things that didn't fight back even after you'd kicked them a few times. Shoes littered the ground, too. The Luggage was limping around in a circle. Rincewind sighed, and stood up. Take the shoes off. They don't suit you,' he said. The Luggage stood still for a moment, and then the rest of the shoes clattered against the wall. 'And the dress. What would those nice ladies think if they saw you dressing up like this?' The Luggage shrugged off the few sequinned tatters that remained. 'Turn around, I want to see your handles. No, I said turn around. Turn around properly, please. Ah, I thought so . . . I said turn around. Those earrings . . . they don't do anything for you at all, you know.' He leaned closer. Is that a stud? Have you had your lid pierced?' The Luggage backed away. Its manner indicated very clearly that while it might give in on the shoes, the dress and even the earrings, the battle over the stud would go to the finish. 'Well . . . all right. Now give me my clean underwear, you could make shelves out of the stuff I'm wearing.' The Luggage opened its lid. 'Good, now I— Is that my underwear? Would I be seen dead in something like that? Yes, as a matter of fact I suspect I would. My underwear, please. It's got my name inside, although I must admit I can't quite remember why I thought that was necessary.' The lid shut. The lid opened. 'Thank you.' It was no use wondering how it was done, or for that matter why the laundry returned freshly ironed. The watchmen were still very wisely remaining unconscious, but out of habit Rincewind went behind a stack of old boxes to change. He was the sort of person who'd go behind a tree to change if he was on a desert island all alone. 'You noticed something odd about this alley?' he said, over the top of the boxes. 'There're no drainpipes. There're no gutters. They've never heard of rain here. I suppose you are the Luggage, aren't you, and not some kangaroo in disguise? Why am I asking? Ye gods, these feel good. Right, let's go—' The Luggage opened its lid again, and a young woman looked up at Rincewind. 'Who are—? Oh, you're the blind man,' she said. 'I beg your pardon?' 'Sorry . . . Darleen said you must be blind. Well, actually she said you must be bloody blind. Can you give me a hand out?' It dawned on Rincewind that the girl clambering out of the Luggage was Neilette, the third member of Letitia's crew and the one who'd seemed quite plain compared to the others and certainly a lot less . . . well, noisy wasn't quite the word. Probably the word was 'expansive'. They filled the space around them to capacity. Take Darleen, a lady he'd last seen holding a man daintily by the collar so that she could punch him in the face. When she walked into a room, there'd be no one in it unaware that she had done so. Neilette was just . . . ordinary. She brushed some dirt off her dress, and sighed. 'I could see there was going to be another fight so I hid in Trunkie,' she said. 'Trunkie, eh?' said Rincewind. The Luggage had the decency to look embarrassed. 'Sooner or later there's always a fight where Darleen goes,' said Neilette. 'You'd be amazed the things she can do with a stiletto heel.' 'I think I've seen one of them,' said Rincewind. 'Don't tell me the others. Um, can I help you? Only me and Trunkie here' – he gave the Luggage a kick – 'were heading off, weren't we, Trunkie?' 'Oh, don't kick her, she's been so useful,' said Neilette. 'Really?' said Rincewind. The Luggage turned around slowly so that he couldn't see the expression on its lock. 'Oh, yes. I reckon the miners in Cangoolie would've . . . been very unpleasant to Letitia if Trunkie hadn't stepped in.' 'Stepped on, I expect.' 'How did you know that?' 'Oh, the L—Trunkie is mine. We got separated.' Neilette tried to arrange her hair. 'It's all right for the others,' she said. 'They just have to change wigs. Beer might be a good shampoo, but not when it's still in the tinnie.' She sighed. 'Oh, well. I suppose I'll have to find a way home, now.' 'Where do you live?' 'Worralorrasurfa. It's Rimwards.' She sighed again. 'Back to life in the banana-bending factory. So much for showbusiness!' Then she burst into tears and sat down heavily on the Luggage. Rincewind didn't know whether he should go into the 'pat, pat, there, there' routine. If she was like Darleen, he might lose an arm. He made what he hoped was a soothing yet non-aggressive mumble. 'I mean, I know I can't sing very well and I can't dance but, frankly, neither can Letitia and Darleen. When Darleen sings "Prancing Queen" you could slice bread with it. Not that they've been unkind,' she added quickly, polite even in the throes of woe, 'but really there's got to be more to life than getting beer thrown at you every night and being chased out of town.' Rincewind felt confident enough to venture a 'there, there'. He didn't risk a 'pat, pat'. 'Really I only did it because of Noelene dropping out,' Neilette sobbed. 'And I'm about the same height and Letitia couldn't find anyone else in time and I needed the money and she said it would be okay provided people didn't notice my hands were so small . . .' 'Noelene being—?' 'My brother. I told him, trying for the surf championship is fine, and ballgowns are fine, but both together? I don't think so. Did you know what a nasty rash you can get from being rolled across coral? And next morning Letitia had this tour organized and, well, it seemed a good idea at the time.' 'Noelene . . .' Rincewind mused. That's an unusual name for a . . .' 'Darleen said you wouldn't understand.' Neilette stared into the middle distance. 'I think my brother worked in the factory too long,' she mused. 'He always was very impressionable. Anyway, I—' 'Oh, I get it, he's a female impersonator,' said Rincewind. 'Oh, I know about those. Old pantomime tradition. A couple of balloons, a straw wig and a few grubby jokes. Why, when I was a student, at Hogswatch parties old Farter Carter and Really Pants would put on a turn where—' He was aware that she was giving him one of those long, slow looks. Tell me,' she said. 'Do you get about much?' 'You'd be amazed,' said Rincewind. 'And you meet all kinds of people?' 'Generally the nastier kind, I have to admit.' 'Well, some men . . .' Neilette stopped. 'Really Pants? That was someone's name?' 'Not exactly. He was called Ronald Pants, so of course when anyone heard that they said—' 'Oh, is that all?' said Neilette. She stood up and blew her nose. 'I told the others I'd leave when we got to the Galah, so they'll understand. Being a . . . female impersonator is no job for a woman, which is what I am, incidentally. I'd hoped it was obvious, but in your case I thought I'd better mention it. Can you get us out of here, Trunkie?' The Luggage wandered over to the wall at the end of the alley and kicked it until there was a decent-sized hole. On the way back it clogged a watchman who was unwise enough to stir. 'Er, I call him the Luggage,' said Rincewind helplessly. 'Really? We call her Trunkie.' The wall opened up into a dark room. Crates were packed against the walls, covered with cobwebs. 'Oh, we're in the old brewery,' said Neilette. 'Well, the new one, really. Let's find a door.' 'Good idea,' said Rincewind, eyeing the spider-webs. 'New brewery? Looks pretty old to me . . .' Neilette rattled a door. 'Locked,' she said. 'Come on, we'll find another one. Look, it's the new brewery because we built it to replace the one over the river. But it never worked. The beer went flat, or something. They all said it was haunted. Everyone knows that, don't they? We went back to the old brewery. My dad lost nearly all his money.' 'Why?' 'He owned it. Just about broke his heart, that did. He left it to me,' she tried another door, 'because, well, he never got on with Noelene, what with the, well, you know, or rather, obviously you don't . . . but it ruined the business, really. And Roo Beer used to be the best there was.' 'Can't you sell it? The site, I mean.' 'Here? A place where beer goes flat within five seconds? Can't give it away.' Rincewind peered up at the big metal vats. 'Perhaps it was built on some old religious site,' he said. That sort of thing can happen, you know. Back home there was this fish restaurant that got built on a—' Neilette rattled another unbudging door. That's what everyone thought,' she said. 'But apparently Dad asked all the local tribes and they said it wasn't. They said it wasn't any kind of sacred site. They said it was an unsacred site. Some chief went to prison to see the prime minister and said, 'Mate, your mob can dig it all up and drop it over the edge of the world, no worries." ' 'Why did he have to go to prison?' 'We put all our politicians in prison as soon as they're elected. Don't you?' 'Why?' It saves time.' She tried an unrelenting handle. 'Damn! And the windows are too high . . .' The ground trembled. Metal jangled, somewhere in the darkness. Dust moved in strange little waves across the floor. 'Oh, not again ,' said Neilette. Now not only the dust moved. Tiny shapes scuttled across it, flowed around Rincewind's feet and sped under the locked door. The spiders are leaving!' said Neilette. 'Fine by me!' said Rincewind. This time the tremor made the wall creak. 'It's never been this bad,' Neilette muttered. 'Find a ladder, we'll give the windows a go.' Above them a ladder parted company from the wall and folded itself into a metal puzzle on the floor. This may not seem a good time to ask,' said Rincewind, 'but are you a kangaroo, by any chance?' Far above them metal creaked and went on creaking, in a long-drawn wail of inorganic pain. Rincewind looked up, and saw the dome of the brewery gently dissolve into a hundred falling pieces of glass. And, dropping through the middle of it, some of its lamps still burning, the grinning shape of the Roo Beer kangaroo. 'Trunkie! Open up!' Neilette yelled. 'No—' Rincewind began, but she grabbed him and dragged him and in front of him was an opening lid . . . The world went dark. There was wood underneath him. He tapped it. very carefully. And wood in front of him. And w— 'Excuse me.' 'We're inside the Luggage?' 'Why not? That's how we got out of Cangoolie last week! Y'know, I think it may be a magic box.' 'Do you know some of the things that have been inside it?' 'Letitia kept her gin in it, I know that.' Rincewind felt upwards, gingerly. Maybe the Luggage had more than one inside. He'd suspected as much. Maybe it was like one of those conjuror's boxes where, after you'd put a penny in, the drawer miraculously slid around and it had gone. Rincewind had been given one of those as a toy when he was a kid. He'd lost almost two dollars before he gave up and threw the thing away . . . His fingers touched what might have been a lid, and he pushed upwards. They were still in the brewery. This came as some relief, considering where you might end up if you got into the Luggage. There was still the bowel-disturbing rumble, punctuated by clangs and tinkles as bits of rusted metal crashed down with lethal intent. The big kangaroo sign was well alight. In the smoke that rose from it were some pointy hats. That is, the curls swirling and billowing around holes in the air looked very much like the three-dimensional silhouettes of a group of wizards. Rincewind stepped out of the Luggage. 'Oh, no, no, no,' he mumbled. 'I only got here a couple of months ago. It's not my fault!' They look like ghosts,' said Neilette. 'Do you know them?' 'No! But they're all mixed up with these earthquakes! And something called The Wet, whatever that was!' That's just some old story, isn't it? Anyway, Mister Wizard, it might have escaped your notice that the place is filling up with smoke! Which way did we come in?' Rincewind looked around desperately. Smoke obscured everything. 'Has this place got cellars?' he said. 'Yeah! I used to play Mothers and Mothers with Noelene in them when we were kids. Look for hatches in the floor!' And it was three minutes later that the ancient wooden hatchcover in the alley finally gave way under the Luggage's insistent pounding. Several rats poured out, followed by Rincewind and Neilette. No one paid them any attention. A column of smoke was rising over the city. Watchmen and citizens were already forming a bucket chain and men with a battering ram were trying to break open the brewery's main doors. 'We're well out of that,' Rincewind observed. 'Oh, boy, yes.' 'Hey, what's going on? Where's the bloody water gone?' The cry came from a man working the handle of a pump out on the street, just as the pump gave a groan and the handle went limp. A watchman grabbed his arm. 'There's another one in the yard over there! Gei a wiggle on, mate!' A couple of men tried the other pump. It made a choking noise, spat out a few drops of water and some damp rust, and gave up. Rincewind swallowed. 'I think the water's gone,' he said, flatly. 'What do you mean, gone?' said Neilette. There's always water. Huge great seas of it underground!' 'Yes, but . . . it doesn't get filled up much, does it? It doesn't rain here.' 'There you go aga—' She stopped. 'What's it you know? You're looking shifty, Mister Wizard.' Rincewind stared glumly up at the tower of smoke. There were twirling, tumbling sparks in it, rising in the heat and showering down over the city. Everything will be bone dry, he thought. It doesn't rain here. It— Hang on . . . 'How do you know I'm a wizard?' he said. 'It's written on your hat,' she said. 'Badly.' 'You know what a wizard is? This is a serious question. I'm not pushing a prawn.' 'Everyone knows what a wizard is! We've got a university full of the useless mongrels!' 'And you can show me where this is, can you?' 'Find it yourself!' She tried to stride off through the milling crowd. He ran after her. 'Please don't go! I need someone like you! As an interpreter!' 'What do you mean? We speak the same language!' 'Really? Stubbies here are really short shorts or small beer bottles. How often do newcomers confuse the two?' Neilette actually smiled. 'Not more than once.' 'Just take me to this university of yours, will you?' said Rincewind. 'I think I can feel a Famous Last Stand coming on.' There was a brief scream of metal overhead and a windmill fan crashed down into the street. 'And we'd better be quick,' he added. 'Otherwise all there'll be to drink is beer.' The Bursar laughed again as a series of little charcoal dots extended their legs, formed up and marched down the stone and across the sand in front of him. Behind him the trees were already loud with birdsong— And then, sadly, with wizards as well. He could hear the voices in the distance and, while wizards are always questioning the universe, they mainly direct the questions at other wizards and don't bother to listen to the answers. '— certainly saw no trees when we arrived.' 'Probably we didn 't see them because of the rain, and the Senior Wrangler didn't see them because of Mrs Whitlow. And get a grip onyourself, will you, Dean? I'm sure you 're getting young again! No one's impressed!' 'I think I must just be naturally youthful. Archchancellor.' 'Nothing to be proud of there! And please, someone, stop the Senior Wrangler getting a grip on hims— Oh, looks like someone's had a picnic The painter seemed engrossed in his work, and paid them no attention at all. 'I'm sure the Bursar went this way—' A little red mud coloured a complex curve and there, as if it had always been there, was a creature with the body of a giant rabbit, the expression of a camel and a tail that a lizard would be proud of. The wizards appeared around the rock just in time to see it scratch its ears. 'Ye gods, what's that?' 'Some sort of rat?' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'Hey, look, Bursar's found one of the locals The Dean ambled across to the painter, who was watching the wizards with his mouth open. 'Good morning, fellow. What's that thing called?' The painter followed the pointing finger. 'Kangaroo?' he said. The voice was a whisper, on the very cusp of hearing, but the ground trembled. 'Kangaroo, eh?' That might not be what it's called, sir,' said Ponder. 'He might just be saying, "I don't know." ' 'Can't see why not. He looks the sort of chap you find in this sort of place,' said the Dean. 'Deep tan. Shortage of trousers. The sort of fellow who'd know what the wildlife is called, certainly.' 'He just drew it,' said the Bursar. 'Oh, did he? Very good artists, some of these chaps.' 'He's not Rincewind, is he?' said Ridcully, who seldom bothered to remember faces. 'I know he's a bit on the dark side, but a few months in the sun'd bake anyone.' The other wizards drew together and looked around for any nearby sign of mobile rectangu-larity. 'No hat,' said Ponder, and that was that. The Dean peered at the rock wall. 'Quite good drawings for native art,' he said. 'Interesting . . . lines.' The Bursar nodded. As far as he could see, the drawings were simply alive. They might be coloured earth on rock, but they were as alive as the kangaroo that'd just hopped away. The old man was drawing a snake now. One wiggly line. 'I remember seeing some of these palaces the Tezumen built in the jungle,' said the Dean, watching him. 'Not an ounce of mortar in the whole place and the stones fit together so well you couldn't stick a knife between them. Hah, they were about the only things the Tezumen didn 't stick a knife between,' he added. 'Odd people, really. Very big on wholesale human sacrifice and cocoa. Not an obvious combination, to my mind. Kill fifty thousand people and then relax with a nice cup of hot chocolate. Excuse me, I used to be quite good at this.' To the horror even of Ridcully the Dean took the piece of frayed twig out of the painter's hand and dabbed it gently on the rock. 'See? A dot for the eye,' said the Dean, handing it back. The painter gave him a sort of smile. That is, he showed his teeth. Like many other beings on astral planes of all kinds, he was puzzled by the wizards. They were people with the family-sized self-confidence that seems to be able to get away with anything. They generated an unconscious field which said that of course they should be there, but no one was to worry or fuss around tidying up the place on their account and just get on with what they were doing. The more impressionable victims were left with the feeling that they had clipboards and were awarding marks. Behind the Dean a snake wriggled away. 'Anyone feel anything odd?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'My fingers tingled. Did any of you do any magic just then?' The Dean picked up a burnt wig. The painter's mouth dropped open as the wizard drew a scratching line on the stone. 'I think you might be offending him,' said Ponder. 'Nonsense! A good artist is always prepared to learn,' said the Dean. 'Interesting thing, these fellows never seem to get the idea of perspective—' The Bursar thought, or received the thought: that's because perspective is a lie. If I know a pond is round then why should I draw it oval? I will draw it round because round is true. Why should my brush lie to you just because my eye lies to me? It sounded like quite an angry thought. 'What's that you're drawing, Dean?' said the Senior Wrangler. 'What does it look like? A bird, of course.' The voice in the Bursar's head thought: but a bird must fly. Where are the wings? This one's standing on the ground. You don't see the wings,' said the Dean, and then looked puzzled at having answered a question no one had asked. 'Blast! You know, it's harder than it looks, drawing on a rock . . .' I always see the wings, thought the voice in the Bursar's head. The Bursar fumbled for his dried frog pill bottle. The voices were never usually this precise. 'Very flat bird,' said Ridcully. 'Come on, Dean, our friend here isn't very happy. Let's go and work out a really good boat spell . . .' 'Looks more like a weasel to me,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'You've got the tail wrong.' 'The stick slipped.' 'A duck's fatter than that,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'You shouldn't try to show off. Dean. When was the last time you saw a duck that didn't have peas round it?' 'Last week, actually!' 'Yes, we had crispy duck. With plum sauce, I now recall. Here, let me have a go . . .' 'Now you've given it three legs!' 'I did ask for the stick! You snatched it away!' 'Now look,' said Ridcully. 'I'm a man who knows his ducks, and what you've got there is laughable. Give me that . . . thank you. You do a beak like this 'That's on the wrong end and it's too big.' 'You think that's a beak?' 'Look, all three of you are barking up the wrong tree here. Give me that stick . . .' 'Ah, but, you see, ducks don't bark! Hah! There's no need to snatch like that—' Unseen University was built of stone – so built out of stone that in fact there were many places where it was hard to tell where wild rock ended and domesticated stone began. It was hard to imagine what else you could build a university out of. If Rincewind had set out to list possible materials he wouldn't have included corrugated iron sheets. In response to some sort of wizardly ancestral memory, though, the sheets around the gates had been quite expertly bent and hammered into the shape of a stone arch. Over it, burned into the thin metal, were the words: NULLUS ANXIETAS. 'I shouldn't be surprised, should I?' he said. 'No worries.' The gates, which were also made of corrugated iron nailed to bits of wood by a man using secondhand nails, were firmly shut. A crowd of people were hammering on them. 'Looks like a lot of other people have the same idea,' said Neilette. 'There'll be another way in,' said Rincewind, walking away. 'There'll be an alley . . . Ah, there it is. Now, these aren't stone walls, so there won't be removable bricks, which means . . .' He prodded at the tin sheets, and one of them wobbled. 'Ah, yes. A loose sheet which swings aside so you can get back in after hours.' 'How did you know that?' 'This is a university, isn't it? Come on.' A message had been chalked beside the loose sheet. ' "Nulli Sheilae sanguineae," 'Rincewind read aloud. 'But your name's not Sheila, so we're probably okay.' 'If it means what I think it means, it means they don't allow women,' said Neilette. 'You should've brought Darleen.' 'Sorry?' 'Forget I mentioned it.' Somewhat to Rincewind's surprise there was a short, pleasant lawn on the other side of the fence, illuminated by the light from a large low building. All the buildings were low but had big wide roofs, giving the effect you might get if someone stepped on a lot of square mushrooms. If they had been painted, it had been an historical event, probably coming somewhere between Fire and the Invention of the Wheel. There was a tower. It was about twenty feet high. 'I don't call this much of a university,' said Rincewind. He allowed himself a touch of smugness. 'Twenty feet high? I could pi— I could spit from the top of it. Oh well . . .' He made for the doorway, just as the light grew a lot brighter and was tinted with octarine, the eighth colour that was intimately associated with magic. The doors themselves were shut fast. He banged on them, making them rattle. 'Fraternal greetings, brothers!' he shouted. 'I bring you— Good grie—' The world simply changed. One moment he was standing in front of a rusting door and the next he was in a circle with half a dozen wizards watching him. He caught his balance. 'Well, full marks for effort,' he managed. 'Where I come from, and you can call me Mister Boring if you like, we just open the door.' 'Stone the crows, but we're getting good at this,' said a wizard. And they were wizards. Rincewind was in no doubt of it. They had proper pointy hats, although the brims were larger than anything he'd seen without flying buttresses. Their robes weren't much more than waist length, and below them they wore shorts, long grey socks, and big leather sandals. A lot of this was not the typical wizarding outfit as he'd grown up to understand it, but they were still wizards. They had that unmistakable hot-air-balloon-about-to-take-off look. The apparent leader of the group nodded at Rincewind. 'Good evening, Mister Boring. I must say you got here a lot quicker than we expected.' Rincewind felt intuitively that saying 'I was just outside the door' was not a good idea. 'Er, I had an assisted passage,' he said. 'He doesn't look very demonic,' said a wizard. 'Remember that last one we called up? Six eyes and three—' The really good ones can disguise themselves, Dean.' 'Then this one must be a bloody genius, Archchancellor.' Thank you very much,' said Rincewind. The Archchancellor nodded at him. He was, of course, elderly, with a face that looked as though it had been screwed up and then smoothed out, and a short, greying beard. There was something oddly familiar that Rincewind couldn't quite place. 'We've called you up, Boring,' said the man, 'because we want to know what's happened to the water.' It's all gone, has it?' said Rincewind. 'Thought so.' 'It can't go' said the Dean. 'It's water. There's always water, if you go down deep enough.' 'But if we go any deeper we're going to give an elephant a bloody nasty shock,' said the Archchancellor. 'So we—' There was a clang as the doors hit the floor. The wizards backed away. 'What the hell's that?' said one of them. 'Oh, that's my Luggage,' said Rincewind. 'It's made out of—' 'Not the box on legs! Isn't that a woman?' 'Don't ask him, he's not very quick at that sort of thing,' said Neilette, stepping in behind the Luggage. 'Sorry, but Trunkie got impatient.' 'We can't have women in the University!' shouted the Dean. 'They'll want to drink sherry!' 'No worries,' said the Archchancellor, waving a hand irritably. 'What's happened to the water. Boring?' 'It's all been used up, I suppose,' said Rincewind. 'So how can we get some more?' 'Why does everyone ask me? Don't you have some rainmaking spells or something?' 'There's that word again,' said the Dean. 'Water sprinkling out of the sky, eh? I'll believe that when I see it!' 'We tried making one of these – what were they called? Big white bags of water? The things some of the sailors say they see in the sky?' 'Clouds.' 'Right. They don't stay up, Boring. We threw one off the tower last week and it hit the Dean.' 'I've never believed those old stories,' said the Dean. 'And I reckon you mongrels waited till I was walking past.' 'You don't have to make them, they just happen,' said Rincewind. 'Look, I don't know how to make it rain. I thought any halfway decent wizard knew how to do a rainmaking spell,' he added, as someone who wouldn't know where to start. 'Really?' said the Archchancellor, with dangerous brightness. 'No offence meant,' said Rincewind hurriedly. 'I'm sure this is a very good university, considering. Obviously it's not a real one, but it's amazingly good in the circumstances.' 'What's wrong with it?' said the Archchancellor. 'Well . . . your tower's a little bit on the small side, isn't it? I mean, even compared to the buildings around here? Not that there's—' 'I think we ought to show Mister Boring our tower,' said the Archchancellor. 'I don't think he's taking us seriously.' 'I've seen it,' said Rincewind. 'From the top?' 'No, obviously not from the top—' 'We haven't got time for this, Archchancellor,' said a small wizard. 'Let's send this wozza back to Hell and find something better.' 'Excuse me?' said Rincewind. 'By "Hell" do you mean some hot red place?' 'Yes!' 'Really? How do Ecksians know when they've got there? The beer's warmer?' 'No more arguing. This one turned up very fast when we did the summoning, so this is the one we need,' said the Archchancellor. 'Come along, Boring. This won't take a minute.' Ponder shook his head and wandered over to the fire. Mrs Whitlow was sitting demurely on a rock. In front of her, getting as close to the fire as possible, was the Librarian. He was still extremely small. Maybe his temporal gland had to take longer to work itself out, Ponder thought. 'What are the gentlemen doing?' said Mrs Whitlow. She had to raise her voice above the argument, but Mrs Whitlow would still have said. 'Is there some difficulty?' if she saw the wizards out on the lawn throwing fireballs at the monsters from the Dungeon Dimensions. She liked to be told these things. They've found a man drawing the most alive- looking pictures I've ever seen,' said Ponder. 'So now they're trying to teach him Art. By committee.' 'The gentlemen always take an interest,' said Mrs Whitlow. They always interfere,' said Ponder. 'I don't know what it is about wizards, they can't just watch. So far they're arguing about how to draw a duck and frankly I don't think a duck has four legs, which is what it's got so far. Honestly, Mrs Whitlow, they're like kittens in a feather-plucking shed . . . What's that?' The Librarian had tipped up the leather bag lying by the fire and was testing the contents for taste, in the way of young mammals everywhere. He picked up a flat, bent piece of wood, painted in lines of many colours – far more pigments than the old man had been using to paint, and Ponder wondered why. He tested it for palatability, banged it on the ground in a vaguely hopeful way, and threw it away. Then he pulled out a flat oval of wood on a piece of string, and tried chewing the string. 'Is that a yo-yo?' said Mrs Whitlow. 'We used to call them bullroarers when I was a kid,' said Ponder. 'You whirl it around over your head to make a funny noise.' He waved his hand vaguely in the air. 'Eeek?' 'Ooh, isn't that sweet? He's trying to do what you do!' The Librarian tried to whirl the string, wrapped it round his face and hit himself on the back of the head. 'Oh, the poor little thing! Take it off him, Mister Stibbons, do.' The Librarian bared some small fangs as Ponder unwound the string. 'I hope he's going to grow up soon,' he said. 'Otherwise the Library will be filled up with cardboard books about bunnies It really was a very stubby tower. The base was stonework, but about halfway the builders had got fed up and resorted to rusted tin sheets nailed on to a wooden framework. One rickety ladder led up. 'Very impressive,' sighed Rincewind. 'The view's even better from the top. Go on up.' The ladder shook under Rincewind's weight until he pulled himself up on to the planks, where he lay down and panted. Must be the beer and the excitement, he told himself. One short ladder shouldn't do this to me. 'Bracing air up here, isn't it?' said the Archchancellor, walking to the edge and waving a hand towards the city. 'Oh, certainly,' said Rincewind, tottering towards the corrugated battlements. 'Why, I expect you can see all the way to the gr— Aaargh!' The Archchancellor grabbed him and pulled him back. 'That's— It's—' Rincewind gasped. 'Want to go back down again?' Rincewind glared at the wizard and inched his way carefully back to the stairs. He looked down, ready at an instant's notice to draw his head back, and carefully counted the steps. Then he walked back gingerly to the parapet and risked looking over the edge. There was the fiery speck of the burning brewery. There was Bugarup, and its harbour . . . Rincewind raised his gaze. There was the red desert, glittering under the moonlight. 'How high is this?' he croaked. 'On the outside? About half a mile, we think,' said the Archchancellor. 'And on the inside?' 'You climbed it. Two storeys.' 'You're trying to tell me you've got a tower that's taller at the top than it is at the bottom?' 'Good, isn't it?' said the Archchancellor happily. 'That's . . . very clever,' said Rincewind. 'We're a clever country—' 'Rincewind!' The voice came from below. Rincewind looked very carefully down the steps. It was one of the wizards. 'Yes?' he said. 'Not you,' snapped the wizard. 'I want the Archchancellor!' 'I'm Rincewind,' said Rincewind. The Archchancellor tapped him on the shoulder. That's a coincidence,' he said. 'So am I.' Ponder very carefully handed the bullroarer back to the little Librarian. There, you can have it,' he said. 'I'm giving it to you and, in return, perhaps you can take your teeth out of my leg.' From the other side of the rock came the voice of reason: There's no need to fight, gentlemen. Let's vote on it: now, all those who think a duck has webbed feet, raise your hands . . .' The Librarian swung the thing a few more times. 'Doesn't seem to be a very good one,' said Ponder. 'Not much of a noise . . . honestly, how much longer are they going to be?' . . . whum . . . 'Eek!' 'Yes, yes, very good . . .' . . . whum . . . whum . . . whUUMMMMM . . . Ponder looked up as yellow light spread across the plain. There was a circle of blue sky opening above. The rain was stopping. 'Eek?' It occurred to Ponder to wonder what a little old man was doing painting pictures in a bare landscape on a whole new continent . . . And then there was darkness. The old man smiled with something like satisfaction, and turned away from the drawing he'd just completed. It had a lot of pointy hats in it, and it had faded right into the rock. And he was as happy as anything, and had drawn all the spiders and several possums before he found out what was missing. He never even knew about the very strange and unhappy duck-billed creature that slid silently into the river a little way off. 'Got to be at least some kind of cousins,' said the Archchancellor. 'It's not a common name. Have another beer.' 'I had a look through the Unseen records once,' said Rincewind morosely. They never had a Rincewind before.' He upended the can of beer and finished the dregs. 'Never had a relative before, come to that. Never ever.' He pulled the top off another can. 'No one to do all those little things relatives are s'posed to do, like . . . like . . . like send you some horrible cardigan at Hogswatch, stuff like that.' 'You got a first name? Mine's Bill.' ' 's a good name, Bill Rincewind. Dunno if I've even got a first name.' 'What do people usually call you, mate?' 'Well, they usually say, "Stop him!"' said Rincewind, and took a deep draught of beer. 'Of course, that's just a nickname. When they want to be formal they shout "Don't let him get away!"' He squinted at the can. ' 's much better than that other stuff,' he said. 'What's this say? "Funnelweb"? 's a funny name for a beer.' 'You're reading the list of ingredients,' said Bill. 'Really?' mumbled Rincewind. 'Where was I?' 'Pointy hats. Water running out. Talking kangaroos. Pictures coming alive.' 'That's right,' said the Dean. 'If that's what you're like sober, we want to see what effect the beer has.' 'Y'see, when the sun's up,' said Archchancellor Bill, 'I've got to go down to the prison and see the prime minister and explain why we don't know what's happened to the water. Anything you can do to assist would be very useful. Give him another tinnie, Dean. People're already banging on the gates. Once the beer runs out, we're in strife.' Rincewind felt that he was in a warm amber haze. He was among wizards. You could tell by the way they bickered all the time. And, somehow, the beer made it easier to think. A wizard leaned over his shoulder and put an open book in front of him. 'This is a copy of a cave painting from Cangoolie,' he said. 'We've often wondered what the blobs are above the figures . . .' 'That's rain,' said Rincewind, after a glance. 'You mentioned this before,' said Bill. 'Little drops of water flying through the air, right?' 'Dropping,' Rincewind corrected him. 'And it doesn't hurt?' 'Nope.' 'Water's heavy. Can't say the idea of big white bags of the stuff floating around over our heads appeals.' Rincewind had never studied meteorology, although he had been an end-user all his life. He waved his hands vaguely. 'They're like . . . steam,' he said, and hiccuped. ' 's right. Lovely fluffy steam.' 'They're boiling?' 'No, no. Nono. Ver' cold, clouds. Sometimes they come down ver' low, they even touch the ground.' The wizards looked at one another. 'Y'know, we're making some bloody good beer these days,' said Bill. 'Clouds sound bloody dangerous to me,' said the Dean. 'We don't want them knocking over trees and buildings, do we?' 'Ah, but. But. They're soft, see? Like smoke.' 'But you said they weren't hot!' Rincewind suddenly saw the perfect explanation. 'Have you ever huffed on a cold mirror?' he said, beaming. 'Not on a regular basis, but I know what you mean.' 'Well, basically, that's clouds! Can I have another beer? It's amazing, it doesn't feem to have any essect on me, no matter how much I dnirk. Helps me think clearerer.' Archchancellor Rincewind drummed his fingers on the table. 'You and this rain stuff – you've got to be connected, yes? We've run out of water and you turn up . . .' Rincewind burped. 'Got to put something right, too,' he said. 'Pointy hats, all floating in the air . . .' 'Where did you last see them?' 'In the brewery with no beer in it. Said it's haunted, haha. Pointy hat haunting, hahah . . .' Bill stared at him. 'Right,' he said. He looked at the forlorn figure of his distant cousin, now very close up. 'Let's get down there.' He glanced at Rincewind again and seemed to think for a moment. 'And we'll take some beer,' he added. Ponder Stibbons tried to think, but his thoughts seemed to be going very slowly. Everything was dark and he couldn't move but, somehow, it wasn't too bad. It felt like those treasured moments in bed when you're just awake enough to know that you're still nicely asleep. It's amazing how time passes. There was a huge bucket chain now, stretching all the way from the harbour to the brewery. Despite the tangily refreshing oak spiciness of their Chardonnays, the Ecksians weren't the kind of people to let a brewery burn. It didn't matter that there was no beer in it. There was a principle at stake. The wizards marched through the crowd to a chorus of mutters and the occasional jeer from someone safely tucked away at the back. Smoke and steam came out of the main doorway, which had been burst open by a battering ram. Archchancellor Rincewind stepped inside, dragging his happily smiling relative with him. The smouldering Roo Beer sign, reduced to a metal skeleton, still lay in the middle of the floor. 'He kept waving at it and going on about points hats,' Neilette volunteered. 'Test it for magic, Dean,' said Archchancellor Rincewind. The Dean waved a hand. Sparks flew up. 'Nothing there,' he said. 'I said we—' For a moment some pointed shapes hung in the air, and then vanished. 'That's not magic,' said one of the wizards. That's ghosts.' 'Everyone knows this place is haunted. Evil spirits, they say.' 'Should've stuck to beer,' said Archchancellor Rincewind. Neilette pointed to the trapdoor. 'But it doesn't go anywhere,' she said. 'There's a hatch to the outside and some storerooms and that's about it.' The wizards looked down. Below was utter darkness. Something small skittered away on what sounded very much like more than four legs. There was the smell of very old, very stale beer. 'No worries,' said Rincewind, waving a tin expansively. 'I'll go down first, shall I?' This was fun. There was a rusted ladder bolted to the wall below him. It creaked under his weight, and gave way when he was a few feet from the cellar floor, dropping him on to the stones. The wizards heard him laugh. Then he called up: 'Do any of you know someone called Dibbler?' 'What – old Fair Go?' said Bill. ' 's right. He'll be outside selling stuff to the crowd, right?' 'Very likely.' 'Can someone go and get me one of his floating meat pies with extra tomato sauce? I could really do with one.' The Dean looked at Archchancellor Rincewind. 'How much beer did he drink?' 'Three or four tinnies. He must be allergic, poor bastard.' 'I reckon I could even eat two,' Rincewind called up. ''Two? 'No worries. Anyone got a torch? It's dark down here.' 'Do you want the gourmet pies or the ordinary?' said the Dean. 'Oh, the ordinary will do me. No swank, eh?' 'Poor bastard,' said Bill, and sorted through his small change. It was indeed dark in the cellars, but enough dim light filtered through the trapdoor for Rincewind to make out huge pipes in the gloom. It was obvious that some time after the brewery had been closed, but before people had got around to securely locking every entrance, the cellars had been employed by young people as such places are when you live with your parents, the house is too small, and no one has got around to inventing the motorcar. In short, they'd written on the walls. Rincewind could make out careful inscriptions telling posterity that, for example, B. Smoth Is A Pozza. While he didn't know what a pozza was, he was quite, quite sure that B. Smoth didn't want to be called one. It was amazing how slang seemed to radiate its meaning even in another language. There was a thump behind him as the Luggage landed on the stone floor. 'Me old mate Trunkie,' said Rincewind. 'No worries!' Another ladder was eased down and the wizards, with some care, joined him. Arch-chancellor Rincewind was holding a staff with a glowing end. 'Found anything?' he said. 'Well, yes. I wouldn't shake hands with anyone called B. Smoth,' said Rincewind. 'Oh, the Dean's not a bad bloke when you get to know him—What's up?' Rincewind pointed to the far end of the room. 'There, on a door, someone had drawn some pointy hats, in red. They glistened in the light. 'My word. Blood,' said Rincewind. His cousin ran a finger over it. 'It's ochre,' he said. 'Clay . . .' The door led to another cellar. There were a few empty barrels, some broken crates, and nothing else except musty darkness. Dust whirled up on the floor from the draught of their movement, in a series of tiny, inverted whirlwinds. Pointy hats again. 'Hmm, solid walls all round,' said Bill. 'Better pick a direction, mate.' Rincewind had a drink, shut his eyes and pointed a finger at random. 'That way!' The Luggage plunged forward and struck the brickwork, which fell away to reveal a dark space beyond. Rincewind stuck his head through. All the builders had done was wall up and square off a part of a cave. From the feel of the air, it was quite a large one. Neilette and the wizards climbed through behind him. 'I'm sure this place wasn't here when the brewery was built!' said Neilette. 'It's big,' said the Dean. 'How'd it get made?' 'Water,' said Rincewind. 'You what? Water makes great big holes in rock?' 'Yes. Don't ask me why— What was that?' 'What?' 'Did you hear something?' 'You said, "What was that?"' Rincewind sighed. The cold air was sobering him up. 'You really are wizards, aren't you?' he said. 'Real honest-to-goodness wizards. You've got hats that're more brim than point, the whole university's made of tin, you've got a tiny tower which is, I must admit, good grief, a lot taller on the outside, but you're wizards all right, and will you now, please, shut up?' In the silence there was, very faintly, a plink. Rincewind stared into the depths of the cave. The light from the staffs only made them worse. It cast shadows. Darkness was just darkness, but anything could be hiding in shadows. These caves must've been explored,' he said. It was a hope rather than a statement. History here was rather a rubbery thing. 'Never heard of 'em,' said the Dean. 'Points again, look,' said Bill, as they advanced. 'Just stalactites and stalagmites,' said Rincewind. 'I don't know how it works, but water drips on stuff and leaves piles of stuff. Takes thousands of years. Perfectly ordinary.' 'Is this the same kind of water that floats through the sky and gouges out big caves in rocks?' said the Dean. 'Er . . . yes . . . er, obviously,' said Rincewind. 'It's good luck for us we only have the drinking and washing sort, then.' 'Had,' said Rincewind. There were hurrying feet behind them and a junior wizard ran up, holding a plate covered with a lid. 'Got the last one!' he said. 'It's a gourmet pie, too.' He lifted the lid. Rincewind stared, and swallowed. 'Oh dear . . .' 'What's up?' 'Have you got some more of that beer? I think I might be losing . . . concentration . . .' His cousin stepped forward, ripping the top off a can of Funnel web. 'Cartwright, you cover that pie up and keep it warm. Rincewind, you drink this.' They watched him drain the tin. 'Right, mate,' said the Archchancellor. 'How about a nice meat pie upside down in a big bowl of mushy green peas covered with tomato sauce?' He looked at the colour change on Rincewind's face, and nodded. 'You need another tin,' he said firmly. They watched him drink this. 'Okay,' said the Archchancellor after a while. 'Now, Rincewind, how about a nice one of Fair Go's pie floaters, eh? Meat pie in pea soup and tomato sauce?' Rincewind's face twitched a bit as amber blessings shut down vital protective systems. 'Sounds . . . good,' he said. 'Maybe with some coconut on the top?' The wizards relaxed. 'So now we know,' said Archchancellor Rincewind. 'We've got to keep you just drunk enough so that Dibbler's pies sound tasty, but not so drunk that it causes lasting brain damage.' 'That's a very narrow window we've got there,' said the Dean. Bill looked up at the roof, where the shadows danced among the stalactites, unless they were stalagmites. 'This is right under the city,' he said. 'How come we've never heard of it?' 'Good question,' said the Dean. The men who built the cellar must've seen it.' Rincewind tried to think. 'It wasn't here then,' he said. 'You said these stalag things took thousands of—' 'They probably weren't here last month but now they've been here for thousands of years.' said Rincewind. He hiccuped. 'It's like your tower,' he said. Taller onna outside.' 'Huh?' 'Prob'ly only works here,' said Rincewind. The more geography you've got, the less hist'ry, ever notice that? More space, less time. I bet it only took a second or two for this place to be here for thousands of years, see? Shorter on the outside. Makes serfect pense.' 'I don't think I've drunk enough beer to understand that,' said the Dean. Something nudged him in the back of the legs. He looked down at the Luggage. It was one of its habits to come up so close behind people that, when they looked down, they felt seriously over-feeted. 'Or this,' he added. The wizards grew quieter as Rincewind led them onward. He wasn't sure who was leading him. Still, no worries. Contrary to the usual procedures it began to grow lighter, although the proliferation of luminous fungi or iridescent crystals in deep caves where the torchlessly improvident hero needs to see is one of the most obvious intrusions of narrative causality into the physical universe. In this case, the rocks were glowing, not from some mysterious inner light but simply as though the sun were shining on them, just after dawn. There are other imperatives that operate on the human brain. One says: the bigger the space, the softer the voice, and refers to the natural tendency to speak very, very quietly when stepping into somewhere huge. So when Archchancellor Rincewind stepped out into the big cave he said, 'Strewth, it's bloody big!' in a low whisper. The Dean, however, shouted, 'Coo-eee!' because there's always one. Stalactites crowded the cave here, too, and in the very centre a gigantic stalactite had almost touched its mirror-image stalagmite. The air was chokingly hot. 'This isn't right—' said Rincewind. Plink. They spotted the source of the noise eventually. A tiny trickle was making its way down the side of the stalactite and forming droplets that fell a few feet to the stalagmite. Another drop formed while they watched, and hung there. One of the wizards clambered up the dry slope and peered at it. 'It's not moving,' he said. 'The trickle's drying up. I think . . . it's evaporating.' The Archchancellor turned to Rincewind. 'Well, we've followed you this far, mate,' he said. 'What now?' 'I think I could do with another b—' 'There's none left, mate.' Rincewind looked desperately around the cave, and then at the huge translucent mass of limestone in front of him. It was definitely pointy. It was also in the centre of the cave. It had a certain inevitability about it. Odd, really, that something like this would form down here, shining away like a pearl in an oyster. The ground trembled again. Up there, people would already be getting thirsty, cursing the windmills as only an Ecksian could curse. The water was gone and that was very bad, and when the beer ran out people would really get angry . . . The wizards were all waiting for him to do something. All right, start with the rock. What did he know about rocks and caves in these parts? There was a curious freedom at a time like this. He was going to be in real trouble whatever he did, so he might as well give this a try . . . 'I need some paint,' he said. 'What for?' 'For what I need,' said Rincewind. 'There's young Salid,' said the Dean. 'He's a bit of an arty blager. Let's go and kick his door down.' 'And bring some more beer!' Rincewind called after them. Neilette patted Rincewind on the shoulder. 'Are you going to do some magic?' she said. 'I don't know if it counts as magic here,' said Rincewind. 'If it doesn't work, stand well back.' 'Is it going to be dangerous, then?' 'No, I might have to start running without looking where I'm going. But . . . this rock's warm. Have you noticed?' She touched it. 'I see what you mean . . .' 'I was just thinking . . . Supposing someone was in a country who shouldn't be there? What would it do?' 'Oh, the Watch would catch him, I expect.' 'No, no, not the people. What would the land do? I think I need another drink, it made more sense then . . .' 'Okay, here we are, we couldn't find much, but there's some whitewash and some red paint and a tin of stuff which might be black paint or it could be tar oil.' The wizards hurried up. 'Not much in the way of brushes, though.' Rincewind picked up a brush that looked as though it had once been used to whitewash a very rough wall and then to clean the teeth of some large creature, possibly a crocodile. He'd never been any good at art, and this is a distinction quite hard to achieve in many education systems. Basic artistic skills and a familiarity with occult calligraphy are part of a wizard's early training, yet in Rincewind's fingers chalk broke and pencils shattered. It was probably due to a deep distrust of getting things down on paper when they were doing all right where they were. Neilette handed him a tin of Funnelweb. Rincewind drank deeply and then dipped the brush in what might have been black paint and essayed a few upturned Vs on the rock, and some circles under the lines, with three dots in a V and a friendly little curve in each one. He took another deep draught of the beer and saw what he was doing wrong. It was no good trying to be strictly true to life here; what he had to go for was an impression. He sloshed wildly at the stone, humming madly under his breath. 'Anyone guess what it is yet?' he said, over his shoulder. 'Looks a bit modern to me,' said the Dean. But Rincewind was into the swing of it now. Any fool could just copy what he saw, except possibly Rincewind, but surely the whole point was to try to paint a picture that moved, that definitely expressed the, the, the— Definitely expressed it, anyway. You went the way the paint and the colour wanted you to go. 'You know,' said Neilette, 'the way the light falls on it and everything . . . it could be a group of wizards . . .' Rincewind half closed his eyes. Perhaps it was the way that the shadows moved, but he had to admit he'd done a really good job. He slapped some more paint on. 'Looks like they're almost coming out of the stone,' said someone behind him, but the voice sounded muffled. He felt as though he was falling into a hole. He'd had the sensation before, although usually it was when he was falling into a hole. The walls were fuzzy, as though they were streaking past him at a tremendous rate. The ground shook. 'Are we moving?' he said. 'Feels like it, doesn't it?' said Archchancellor Rincewind. 'But we're standing still!' 'Moving while standing still,' muttered Rincewind, and giggled. 'That's a good one!' He squinted happily at the beer can. 'Y'know,' he said, 'I can't stomach more than a pint or two of the ale we have at home but this stuff is like drinking lemonade! Has anyone got that meat pie—' As loudly as a thunderstorm under the bed but as softly as two souffles colliding, past and present ran into one another. They contained a lot of people. 'What's this?' 'Dean?' 'Yes?' 'You're not the Dean!' 'How dare you say that! Who are you!' 'Ook!' 'Stone the cows, there's a monkey in here!' 'No! No! I didn't say that! He said that!' 'Archchancellor?' 'Yes?' 'Yes?' 'What? How many of you are there?' The darkness became a deep purple, shading to violet. 'Will you all stop shouting and listen to me!' To Rincewind's amazement, they did. 'Look, the walls are getting closer! This place is trying not to exist!' And, having done his duty to the community, he turned and ran over the shaking rock floor. After a couple of seconds the Luggage passed him, which was always a bad sign. He heard the voices behind him. Wizards had a hard job accepting the term 'clear and present danger'. They liked the kind you could argue about. But there is something about a rapidly descending ceiling that intrudes into the awareness of even the most quarrelsome. 'I'll save you, Mrs Whitlow!' 'Up the tunnel!' 'How fast are those walls closing in, would you say?' 'Shut up and run!' Now Rincewind was passed by a large red, furry kangaroo. The Librarian's erratic morphism, having briefly turned him into a red stalactite as an obviously successful shape for surviving in caves, had finally taken on board the fact that it would make for a terminally lengthy survival in a cave that was rapidly getting smaller, and had flipped into a local morphic field built for speed. Man, Luggage and kangaroo piled through the hole into the cellar and ended in a heap against the opposite side. There was a rumbling behind them and wizards and women were fired out into the cellar with some speed, several of them landing on Rincewind. Behind the wall, the rock groaned and creaked, expelling these alien things in what, Rincewind thought, was a geological chunder. Something flew out of the hole and hit him on the ear, but this was only a minor problem compared to the meat pie, which came out trailing mushy peas and tomato sauce and hit him in the mouth. It wasn't, actually, all that bad. The ability to ask questions like 'Where am I and who is the "I" that is asking?' is one of the things that distinguishes mankind from, say, cuttlefish.[23]The wizards from Unseen University, being perhaps the intellectual cream or certainly the cerebral yoghurt of their generation, passed through this stage within minutes. Wizards are very adept at certain ideas. One minute you're arguing over the shape of a duck's head and the next there are people telling you you've been inside a rock for thousands of years because time goes slower on the inside. This presents no great problem for a man who has found his way to the lavatory at Unseen University.[24] There were more important questions as they sat round the table in BU. 'Is there anything to eat?' said Ridcully. 'It's the middle of the night, sir.' 'You mean we missed dinner?' 'Thousands of years of dinners, Archchancellor.' 'Really? Better start catching up, then, Mister Stibbons. Still . . . nice little place you've got here . . . archchancellor.' Ridcully pronounced the word very carefully in order to accentuate the lower case 'a'. Archchancellor Rincewind gave him a fraternal nod. 'Thank you.' 'For a colony, of course. I daresay you do your best.' 'Why, thank you, Mustrum. I'd be happy to show you our tower later on.' 'It does look rather small.' 'So people say.' 'Rincewind, Rincewind . . . name rings a faint bell . . .' said Ridcully. 'We came looking for Rincewind, Archchancellor,' said Ponder, patiently. 'Is he? Done well for himself, then. Fresh air made a man of him, I see.' 'No, sir. Ours is the skinny one with the bad beard and the floppy hat, sir. You remember? The one sitting over there.' Rincewind raised a hand diffidently. 'Er. Me,' he said. Ridcully sniffed. 'Fair enough. What's that thing you're playing with, man?' Rincewind held up the bullroarer. 'It came with you out of the cave,' he said. 'What were you doing with it?' 'Oh, some toy the Librarian found,' said Ponder. 'All sorted out, then,' said Ridcully. 'I say, this beer's good, isn't it? Very drinkable. Yes, I'm sure there's a lot we can learn from one another, archchancellor. You from us rather more than us from you, of course. Perhaps we could set up a student exchange, that sort of thing?' 'Good idea.' 'You can have six of mine in exchange for a decent lawnmower. Ours has broken.' 'The Arch— the arch chancellor is trying to say that getting back might be rather hard, sir,' said Ponder. 'Apparently things ought to have changed now we're here. But they haven't.' 'Your Rincewind seemed to think that bringing you blokes here would make it rain,' said Bill. 'But it hasn't.' . . . whumm . . . 'Oh, do stop playing with that thing, Rincewind,' said Ridcully. 'Well . . . Bill, it's obvious, isn't it? As more experienced wizards than you, we naturally know plenty of ways of making it rain. No problem there.' . . . whumm . . . 'Look, lad, take that thing outside, will you?' The Librarian was sitting at the top of the tin tower, with a leaf over his head. 'Something odd, see?' said Rincewind, dangling the bullroarer from its string. 'I've only got to wiggle my hand a bit and it swings right round.' '. . . ook . . .' The Librarian sneezed. '. . . awk . . .' 'Er . . . now you're some sort of large bird . . .' said Rincewind. 'You are in a bad way, aren't you? Still, once I tell them your name . . .' The Librarian changed shape and moved fast. There was a very short period of time in which a lot happened. 'Ah,' said Rincewind calmly when it seemed to be over. 'Well, let us start with what we know. I can't see. The reason I can't see is that my robe is hanging over my eyes. From this I can deduce that I am upside down. You are gripping my ankles. Correction, one ankle, so obviously you are holding me upside down. We are at the top of the tower. This means . . .' He fell silent. 'All right, let's start again,' he said. 'Let's start by me not telling anyone your name.' The Librarian let go. Rincewind dropped a few inches on to the planks of the tower. 'You know, that was a really mean trick you just did,' he said. 'Ook.' 'We'll say no more about it, shall we?' Rincewind looked up at the big, empty sky. It ought to be raining. He'd done everything he was supposed to do, hadn't he? And all that had happened was that the Faculty of UU was down there being condescending about everything. It wasn't even as if they could do a rainmaking spell. For one of those to work you needed some rain around to start with. In fact, it was prudent to make sure that some heavy-looking clouds were being blown in your direction. And if it wasn't raining then probably those terrible currents they talked about were still around, too. It wasn't a bad country. They were big on hats. They were big on big hats. He could save up and buy a farm on the Never-Never and watch sheep. After all, they fed themselves and they made more sheep. All you had to do was pick the wool off occasionally. The Luggage'd probably settle down to being a sheepdog. Except . . . that there wasn't any more water. No more sheep, no more farms. Mad, and Crocodile Crocodile, the lovely ladies Darleen and Letitia, Remorse and his horses, all those people who'd shown him how to find the things you could eat without throwing up too often . . . all drying up, and blowing away . . . Him, too. G'DAY. 'Ook?' 'Oh, no . . .' Rincewind moaned. THROAT A BIT PARCHED? 'Look, you're not supposed to—' IT'S ALL RIGHT, I HAVE AN APPOINTMENT DOWN IN THE CITY. THERE'S BEEN A FIGHT OVER THE LAST BOTTLE OF BEER. HOWEVER, LET ME ASSURE YOU OF MY PERSONAL ATTENTION AT ALL TIMES. 'Well, thank you. When it's time to stop living, I will certainly make Death my number one choice!' Death faded. 'The cheek of him, turning up like that! We're not dead yet,' shouted Rincewind to the burning sky. 'There's lots we could do! If we could get to the Hub we could cut loose a big iceberg and tow it here and that'd give us plenty of water . . . if we could get to the Hub! Where there's hope there's life, I'll have you know! I'll find a way! Somewhere there's a way of making rain!' Death had gone. Rincewind swung the bullroarer menacingly. 'And don't come back!' 'Ook!' The Librarian gripped Rincewind's arm, and sniffed the air. Then Rincewind caught the smell too. Rincewind spoke a fairly primitive language, and it had no word for 'that smell you get after rain' other than 'that smell you get after rain'. Anyone trying to describe the smell would have to flounder among words like moisture, heat, vapour and, with a following wind, exhalation. Nevertheless, there was the smell you get after rain. In this burning land, it was like a brief jewel in the air. Rincewind whirled the piece of wood again. It made noise out of all proportion to the movement, and there was that smell again. He turned it over. It was still just a wooden oval. There weren't any markings on it. He gripped the end of the string and whirled the thing experimentally a few more times. 'Did you notice that when it did this—' he began. It wouldn't stop. He couldn't lower his arm. 'Er . . . I think it wants to be spun,' he said. 'Ook!' 'You think I should?' 'Ook!' 'That's very helpful. Oooh—' The Librarian ducked. Rincewind spun. He couldn't see the wood now because the string was getting longer with each turn. A blur curved through the air some way from the tower, getting further away with each spin. The sound of it was a long-drawn-out drone. When it was well out over the city it exploded in a thunderclap. But something still whirled on the end of the line, like a tight silver cloud, throwing out a trail of white particles that made a spiral that sped out wider and wider. The Librarian was flat on his face with his hands over his head. Air roared up the side of the tower, carrying dust, wind, heat and budgerigars. Rincewind's robe flapped around his chin. Letting go was unthinkable. He wasn't even sure if he could, until it wanted him to. Thin as smoke now, the spiral drifted out into the heat haze. (. . . and out over the red desert and the unheeding kangaroos, and as the tail of it flew out over the coast and into the wall of storms the warring airs melted peacefully together . . . the clouds stopped their stately spin around the last continent, boiled up in confusion and thunderheads, reversed their direction and began to fall inwards . . .) And the string whipped out of Rincewind's hand, stinging his fingers. The bullroarer flew away, and he didn't see it fall. This may have been because he was still pirouetting, but at last gravity overcame momentum and he fell full length on the boards. 'I think my feet have caught fire,' he muttered. The dead heat hung on the land like a shroud. Clancy the stockman wiped the sweat off his brow very thoroughly, and wrung out the rag into an empty jam tin. The way things were going, he'd be glad of it. Then, carrying the tin with care, he climbed back down the windmill's ladder. 'The bore's fine, boss, there's just no bloody water,' he said. Remorse shook his head. 'Look at them horses,' he said. 'Look at the way they're lying down, willya? That's not good. This is it, Clancy. We've battled through thick and thin, and this is too thick altogether by half. We may as well cut their poor bloody throats for the meat that's on 'em—' A gust of wind took his hat off for him, and blew a lash of scent across the wilted mulga bushes. A horse raised his head. Clouds were pouring across the sky, rolling and boiling across each other like waves on a beach, so black that in the middle they were blue, lit by occasional flashes. 'What the hell's that?' said Clancy. The horse stood up awkwardly and stumbled to the rusted trough under the windmill. Under the clouds, dragging across the land, the air shimmered silver. Something hit Remorse's head. He looked down. Something went 'plut' in the red dust by his boot, leaving a little crater. That is water, Clancy,' he said. 'It's bloody water dropping out of the bloody sky!' They stared at one another with their mouths open as, around them, the storm hit and the animals stirred and the red dust turned into mud which spattered them up to their waists. This was no ordinary rainstorm. This was The Wet. As Clancy said later, the second best bloody thing that happened that day was that they were near high ground. The best bloody thing was that, with all the corks on their hats, they were able to find the bloody things later on. There'd been debate about having this year's regatta in Dijabringabeeralong, given the drought. But it was a tradition. A lot of people came into town for it. Besides, the organizers had discussed it long and hard all the previous evening in the bar of the Pastoral Hotel and had concluded that, no worries, she'll be right. There were classes for boats pulled by camels, boats optimistically propelled by sails and, a high spot of the event, skiffs propelled by the simple expedient of the crew cutting the bottoms out, gripping the sides and running like hell. It always got a good laugh. It was while two teams were trotting upriver in the semi-final that the spectators noticed the black cloud pouring over Semaphore Hill like boiling jam. 'Bushfire,' said someone. 'Bushfire'd be white. Come on . . .' That was the thing about fire. If you saw one, everyone went to put it out. Fire spread like wildfire. But as they turned away there was a scream from the riverbed. The teams rounded the bend neck and neck, carrying their boats at a record-breaking speed. They reached the slipway, collided in their efforts to get up it, made it to the top locked together, and collapsed in splinters and screams. 'Stop the regatta!' panted one of the coxes. The river . . . the river . . .' But by then everyone could see it. Around the bend, travelling slowly because it was pushing in front of it a huge logjam of bushes, carts, rocks and trees, was the flood. It thundered past and the mobile dam slid on. scything the river bottom free of all obstruction. Behind it foaming water filled the river from bank to bank. They cancelled the regatta. A river full of water made a mockery of the whole idea. The university's gates had burst open and now the angry mob was in the grounds and hammering on the walls. Above the din, the wizards searched feverishly through the books. 'Well, have you got something like Maxwell's Impressive Separator?' said Ridcully. 'What's that do?' said Archchancellor Rincewind. 'Unmixes two things, like . . . sugar and sand, for example. Uses nanny's demons.' 'Nano-demons, possibly,' murmured Ponder wearily. 'Oh, like Bonza Charlie's Beaut Sieve? Yeah, we've got that.' 'Ah, parallel evolution. Fine. Dig it out, man.' Archchancellor Rincewind nodded at one of the wizards, and then broke into a grin. 'Are you thinking about it working on salt?' he said. 'Exactly! One spell, one bucket of seawater, no more problem . . .' 'Er, that's not exactly true,' said Ponder Stibbons. 'Sounds perfect to me, man!' 'It takes a great deal of magic, sir. And the demons take about a fortnight per pint, sir.' 'Ah. A significant point, Mister Stibbons.' 'Yes, sir.' 'However, just because it wouldn't work does not mean it was a bad idea – I wish they'd stop that shouting!' The shouting outside stopped. 'Perhaps they heard you, sir,' said Ponder. Pang. Pang, pang. . . 'Are they throwing stuff on to the roof?' said Archchancellor Rincewind. 'No, that's probably just rain,' said Ridcully. 'Now, I suppose you've tried evaporating—' He realized that no one was listening. Everyone was looking up. Now the individual thuds had merged into a steady hammering and from outside came the sound of wild cheering. The wizards struggled in the doorway and finally fought their way outside, where water was pouring off the roof in a solid sheet and cutting a channel in the lawn. Archchancellor Rincewind stopped abruptly and reached out to the water like a man not sure if the stove is hot. 'Out of the sky?' he said. He pushed his way out through the liquid curtain. Then he took off his hat and held it upside down to catch the rain. The crowd had filled the university grounds and spilled out into the surrounding streets. Every face was turned upwards. 'And those dark things?' Archchancellor Rincewind called out. 'They are the clouds, archchancellor.' 'There's a hell of a lot of them!' There were. They piled up over the tower in an enormous, spreading black thunderhead. A couple of people looked down long enough to see the group of soaked wizards, and there were some cheers. And suddenly they were the new centre of attention, and being picked up and carried shoulder high. 'They think we did it!' shouted Archchancellor Rincewind, as he was borne aloft. 'Who's to say we didn't?' shouted Ridcully, tapping the side of his nose conspiratorially. 'Er . . .' someone began. Ridcully didn't even look round. 'Shut up, Mister Stibbons,' he said. 'Shutting up, sir.' 'Can you hear that thunder?' said Ridcully, as a rumble rolled across the city. 'We'd better take cover . . .' The clouds above the tower were rising like water against a dam. Ponder said afterwards the fact that the BU tower was very short and extremely tall at the same time might have been the problem, since the storm was trying to go around it, over it and through it, all at the same time. From the ground the clouds seemed to open up slowly, leaving a glowing, spreading chimney filled with the blue haze of electrical discharges . . . . . . and pounced. One solid blue bolt hit the tower at every height all at once, which is technically impossible. Pieces of wood and corrugated iron roared into the air and rained down across the city. Then there was just a sizzling, and the rushing of the rain. The crowd stood up again, cautiously, but the fireworks were over. 'And that's what we call lightning,' said Ridcully. Archchancellor Rincewind got up and tried to brush mud off his robe, then found out why you cannot do this. 'It's not usually as big as that, though,' Ridcully went on. 'Oh. Good.' There was a clank from the steaming debris where the tower had stood, and a sheet of metal was pushed aside. Slowly, with much mutual aid and many false starts, two blackened figures emerged. One of them was still wearing a hat, which was on fire although the rain was putting out the flames. Leaning against one another, weaving from side to side, they approached the wizards. One of them said, 'Ook,' very quietly and fell backwards. The other one looked Wearily at the two archchancellors, and saluted. This caused a spark to leap from its fingers and burn its ear. 'Er, Rincewind,' it said. 'And what have you been up to while we've been doing all this hard work, pray?' said Ridcully. Rincewind looked around, very slowly. Occasional little blue streaks crackled in his beard. 'Well, that all seemed to go pretty well, really. All things considered,' he said, and fell full length into a puddle. It rained. After that, it rained. Then it rained some more. The clouds were stacked like impatient charter flights over the coast, low on fuel, jockeying for position, and raining. Above all, raining. Floodwater roared down the rocks and scoured out the ancient muddy waterholes. A species of tiny shrimps whose world for thousands of years had been one small hole under a stone were picked up and carried wholesale into a lake that was spreading faster than a man could run. There had been fewer than a thousand of them. There were a lot more next day. Even if the shrimps had been able to count how many, they were far too busy to bother. In the new estuaries, rich in sudden silt and unexpected food, a few fish began the experiment of a salt-free diet. The mangroves started their stop-motion conquests of the new mudbanks. It went on raining. Then it rained some more. After that, it rained. It was some days later. The ship rose and fell gently by the dock. The water around it was red with suspended silt in which a few leaves and twigs floated. 'A week or two to NoThingfjord and we're practically home,' said Ridcully. 'Practically on the same continent, anyway,' said the Dean. 'Quite an int'resting long vacation, really,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'Probably the longest ever,' said Ponder. 'Did Mrs Whitlow like her stateroom?' 'I for one will quite enjoy bunking down in the hold,' said the Senior Wrangler loyally. 'The bilges, actually,' said Ponder. 'The hold's full. Of opals, beer, sheep, wool and bananas.' 'Where's the Librarian?' said Ridcully. 'In the hold, sir.' 'Yes, I suppose it was silly of me to ask. Still, nice to see him his old self again.' 'I think it may have been the lightning, sir. He's certainly very lively now.' And Rincewind sat on the Luggage, down on the dock. Somehow, he felt, something should be happening. The worst time in your life was when nothing much was going on, because that meant that something bad was about to hit you. For some strange reason. He could be back in the University Library in a month or so, and then ho! for a life of stacking books. One dull day after another, with occasional periods of boredom. He could hardly wait. Every minute not being a minute wasted was, well, a minute wasted. Excitement? That could happen to other people. He'd watched the merchants loading the ship. It was pretty low in the water, because there would be so many Ecksian things the rest of the world wanted. Of course, it'd come back light, because it was hard to think of any bloody thing it could bloody import that was better than any bloody thing in EcksEcksEcksEcks. There were even a few more passengers willing to see the world, and most of them were young. 'Hey, aren't you one of the foreign wizards?' The speaker was a young man carrying a very large knapsack topped by a bedroll. He seemed to be the impromptu leader of a small group of similarly overloaded people, with wide, open faces and slightly worried expressions. 'You can tell, can't you?' said Rincewind. 'Er . . . you wanted something?' 'D'yew think we can buy a cart in this place NoThingfjord?' 'Yes, I should think so.' 'Only me and Clive and Shirl and Gerleen were thinkin' of picking one up and driving to—' He looked around. 'Ankh-Morpork,' said Shirl. 'Right, and then selling it, and gettin' a job for a while, having a look round, y'know . . . for a while. That'd be right?' Rincewind glanced at the others trooping up the gangplank. Since the invention of the dung beetle, which had in fact happened not too far away, it was probable that no creature had ever carried so much weight. 'I can see it catching on,' he said. 'No worries!' 'But . . . er . . .' 'Yes, mate?' 'Do you mind not humming that tune? It was only a sheep, and I didn't even steal it . . .' Someone tapped him on the shoulder. It was Neilette. Letitia and Darleen were standing behind her, grinning. It was ten in the morning. They were wearing sequinned evening gowns. 'Budge up,' she said, and settled down beside him. 'We just thought . . . well, we've come to say, you know, thanks and everything. Letitia and Darleen are coming in with me and we're going to open up the brewery again.' Rincewind glanced up at the ladies. 'I've had enough beer thrown at me, I ought to know something about it,' said Letitia. 'Although I do think we could make it a more attractive colour. It's so . . .' she waved a large, be-ringed hand irritably, '. . . aggressively masculine.' 'Pink would be nice,' said Rincewind. 'And you could put in a pickled onion on a stick, perhaps.' 'Bloody good suggestion!' said Darleen, slapping him so hard on the back that his hat fell over his eyes. 'You wouldn't like to stay?' said Neilette. 'You look like someone with ideas.' Rincewind considered this attractive proposition, and then shook his head. 'It's a nice offer, but I think I ought to stick to what I do best,' he said. 'But everyone says you're no good at magic!' said Neilette. 'Er . . . yes, well, being no good at magic is what I do best,' said Rincewind. Thanks all the same.' 'At least let me give you a big wet sloppy kiss,' said Darleen, grabbing his shoulders. Out of the corner of his eye Rincewind saw Neilette's foot stamp down. 'All right, all right!' said Darleen, letting go and hopping away. 'It wasn't as if I was going to bite him, miss!' Neilette gave Rincewind a peck on the cheek. 'Well, drop in whenever you're passing,' she said. 'Certainly will!' said Rincewind. 'I'll look for the pubs with the mauve umbrellas outside, shall I?' Neilette gave him a wave and Darleen made an amusing gesture as they walked away, almost bumping into a group of men in white. One of them shouted, 'Hey, there he is . . . Sorry, ladies . . .' 'Oh, hello, Charley . . . Ron . . .' said Rincewind, as the chefs bore down on him. 'Heard you wuzzas was leavin',' said Ron. 'Wouldn't be fair to let you go without shaking you by the hand, Charley said.' The Peach Nellie went down a treat,' said Charley, beaming broadly. 'Glad to hear it,' said Rincewind. 'Good to see you looking so cheerful.' 'It gets better!' said Ron. There's a new soprano just been taken on and she's a winner if I'm any judge and . . . no, Charley, you tell him her name . . .' 'Germaine Trifle,' said Charley. A wider grin would have resulted in the top of his head slipping off. 'I'm very happy for you,' said Rincewind. 'Start whipping that cream right now, y'hear?' Ron patted him on the shoulder. 'We could always do with another hand in the kitchens,' he said. 'Just say the word, mate.' 'Well, it's very kind of you, and when I pull another tissue out of a box I'll always remember you blokes at the Opera House, but—' 'There he is!' The gaoler and the captain of the guard were jogging along the quay. The gaoler was waving encouragingly at him. 'Nah, nah, it's all right, you don't have to run!' he shouted. 'We've got a pardon for you!' 'Pardon?' said Rincewind. 'That's right!' The gaoler reached him, and fought for breath. 'Signed . . . by . . . the prime minister,' he managed. 'Says you're a . . . good bloke and we're not to . . . hang you . . .' He straightened up. 'Mind you, we wouldn't do that anyway, not now. Best bloody escape we've ever bloody had since Tinhead Ned!' Rincewind looked down at the writing on the official lined prison notepaper. 'Oh. Good,' he said weakly. 'At least someone thinks I didn't steal the damn thing.' 'Oh, everyone knows you stole it,' said the gaoler happily. 'But after that escape, we-ell . . . and that chase, eh? Bluey here says he's never seen anyone run like you, and that's a fact!' The guard punched Rincewind playfully on the arm. 'Good on yer, mate,' he said, grinning. 'But we'll catch yer next time!' Rincewind looked blankly at the pardon. 'You mean I'm getting this for being a good sport?' 'No worries!' said the gaoler. 'And there's a queue of farmers sayin' if you want to steal one of their sheep next time that'd be bonza, just so long as they get a verse in the ballad.' Rincewind gave up. 'What can I say?' he said. 'You keep one of the best condemned cells I've ever stayed in, and I've been in a few.' He looked at the glow of admiration in their faces and decided that, since fortune had been kind, it was time to give something back. 'Er . . . I'd take it kindly, though, if you'd never ever redecorate that cell.' 'No worries. Here, I thought we ought to give you this,' said the gaoler, handing him a little giftwrapped package. 'Got no use for it now, eh?' Rincewind unwrapped the hempen rope. 'I'm lost for words,' he said. 'How thoughtful. I'm bound to find lots of uses for it. And what's this . . . sandwiches?' 'Y'know that sticky brown stuff you made? Well, all the lads tried it and they all went "yukk" and then they all wanted some more, so we tried cooking up a batch,' said the gaoler. 'I was thinking of going into business. You don't mind, do you?' 'No worries. Be my guest.' 'Good on yer!' Someone else wandered up as he watched them hurry away. 'I heard you were going back,' said Bill Rincewind. 'Want to stay on here? I had a word with your Dean. He gave you a bloody good reference.' 'Did he? What did he say?' 'He said if I could get you to do any work for me I'd be lucky,' said Bill. Rincewind looked around at the city, glistening under the rain. 'It's a nice offer,' he said. 'But . . . oh, I dunno . . . all this sun, sea, surf and sand wouldn't be good for me. Thanks all the same.' 'You sure?' 'Yes.' Bill Rincewind held out his hand. 'No worries,' he said. I'll send you a card at Hogswatch, and some bit of clothing that doesn't fit properly. I'd better get back to the university now, I've got all the staff up on the roof mending the leaks . . .' And that was it. Rincewind sat for a while watching the last of the passengers get aboard, and took a final look around the rain-soaked harbour. Then he stood up. 'Come on, then,' he said. The Luggage followed him up the gangplank, and they went home. It rained. The flood gurgled along ancient creek beds and overflowed, spreading out in a lacework of gullies and rivulets. Further rain ensued. Near the centre of the last continent, where waterfalls streamed down the flanks of a great red rock that steamed with the heat of a ten-thousand-year summer, a small naked boy sat in the branches of a tree along with three bears, several possums, innumerable parrots and a camel. Apart from the rock, the world was a sea. And someone was wading through it. He was an old man, carrying a leather bag on his back. He stopped, waist deep in swirling water, and looked up at the sky. Something was coming. The clouds were twisting, spinning, leaving a silvery hole all the way up to the blue sky, and there was a sound that you might get if you took a roll of thunder and stretched it out thin. A dot appeared, growing bigger. The man raised a skinny arm and, suddenly, it was holding an oval of wood that trailed a cord, which hit his hand with a slap. The rain stopped. The last few drops hammered out a little rhythm that said: now we know where you are, we'll be coming back . . . The boy laughed. The old man looked up, caught sight of him, and grinned. He tucked the bullroarer into the string around his waist and took up a boomerang painted in more colours than the boy had ever seen in one place together. The man tossed it up and caught it a couple of times and then, glancing sideways to make sure his audience was watching him, he hurled it. It rose into the sky and went on climbing, long past the point where any normal thing should have started to fall back. It grew bigger, too. The clouds parted to let it through. And then it stopped, as if suddenly nailed to the sky. Like sheep which, having been driven to a pasture, can now spread out at their leisure, the clouds began to drift. Afternoon sunlight sliced through into the still waters. The boomerang hung in the sky, and the boy thought he would have to find a new word for the way the colours glowed. In the meantime, he looked down at the water and tried out the word he'd been taught by his grandfather, who'd been taught it by his grandfather, and which had been kept for thousands of years for when it would be needed. It meant the smell after rain. It had, he thought, been well worth waiting for. The End [1]Much easier to discover than fire, and only slightly harder to discover than water. [2]Not why is it anything. Just why it is. [3]A cross between a porter and a proctor. A bledlow is not chosen for his imagination, because he usually doesn't have any. [4]Ankh-Morpork's leading vet, generally called in by people faced with ailments too serious to be trusted to the general medical profession. Doughnut's one blind spot was his tendency to assume that every patient was, to a greater or lesser extent, a racehorse. [5]In the case of cold fusion, this was longer than usual. [6]Wizards are certain of the existence of the temporal gland, although not even the most invasive alchemist has ever found where it is located and current theory is that it has a non-corporeal existence, like a sort of ethereal appendix. It keeps track of how old your body is, and is so susceptible to the influence of a high magical field that it might even work in reverse, absorbing the body's normal supplies of chrono-nine. The alchemists say it is the key to immortality, but they say that about orange juice, crusty bread and drinking your own urine. An alchemist would cut his own head off if he thought it'd make him live longer. [7]Broadly speaking, the acceleration of a wizard through the ranks of wizardry by killing off more senior wizards. It is a practice currently in abeyance, since a few enthusiastic attempts to remove Mustrum Ridcully resulted in one wizard being unable to hear properly for two weeks. Ridcully felt that there was indeed room at the top, and he was occupying all of it. [8]Sometimes Ponder thought his skill with Hex was because Hex was very dever and very stupid at the same time. If you wanted it to understand something, you had to break the idea down into bite-sized pieces and make absolutely sure there was no room for any misunderstanding. The quiet hours with Hex were often a picnic after five minutes with the senior wizards. [9]The Lecturer in Creative Uncertainty, for example, held rather smugly that he was in a state of both in-ness and outness until such time as anyone knocked on his door and collapsed the field, and that it was impossible to be categorical before that event. Logic is a wonderful thing but doesn't always beat actual thought. [10]Wizards also enjoy a bit of fun but never have much of a chance to develop the appropriate vocabulary. [11]This isn't magic. It is a simple universal law. People always expect to use a holiday in the sun as an opportunity to read those books they've always meant to read, but an alchemical combination of sun, quartz crystals and coconut oil will somehow metamorphose any improving book into a rather thicker one with a name containing at least one Greek word or letter (The Gamma Imperative, The Delta Season, The Alpha Project and, in the more extreme cases, even The Mu Kau Pi Capern). Sometimes a hammer and sickle turn up on the cover. This is probably caused by sunspot activity, since they are invariably the wrong way round. It's just as well for the Librarian that he sneezed when he did, or he might have ended up a thousand pages thick and crammed with weapons specifications. [12]The Senior Wrangler had once walked past Mrs Whitlow's rooms when the door was open, and he'd caught sight of the bare, headless, armless dressmaker's dummy that she used to make all her own clothes. He'd had to go and lie down quietly after that and, ever since, had thought about Mrs Whitlow in a special way. [13]Wizards lack the HW chromosome in their genes. Feminist researchers have isolated this as the one which allows people to see the washing-up in the sinks before the life forms grow-ing there have actually invented the wheel. Or discovered slood. [14]There's a certain type of manager who is known by his call of 'My door is always open' and it is probably a good idea to beat yourself to death with your own CV rather than work for him. In Ridcully's case, however, he meant, 'My door is alvays open because then, when I'm bored, I can fire my crossbow right across the hall and into the target just above the Bursar's desk.' [15]That is to say, she secretly considered them to be vicious, selfish and untrustworthy. [16]Again, when people like Mrs Whitlow use this term they are not, for some inexplicable reason, trying to suggest that the subjects have a rich oral tradition, a complex system of tribal rights and a deep respect for the spirits of their ancestors. They are implying the kind of behaviour more generally associated, oddly enough, with people wearing a full suit of clothes, often with the same insignia. [17]Ponder had been that kind of child. He still had all the pieces for every game he'd ever been given. Ponder had been the kind of boy who carefully reads the label on every Hogswatch present before opening it, and notes down in a small book, who it is from, and has all the thank-you letters written by teatime. His parents had been impressed even then, realizing that they had given birth to a child who would achieve great things or, perhaps, be hunted down by a righteous citizenry by the time he was ten. [18]Any seasoned traveller soon learns to avoid anything wished on them as a 'regional speciality', because all the term means is that the dish is so unpleasant the people living everywhere else will bite off their own legs rather than eat it. But hosts still press it upon distant guests anyway: 'Go on, have the dog's head stuffed with macerated cabbage and pork noses – it's a regional speciality.' [19]In fact it's the view of the more thoughtful historians, particularly those who have spent time in the same bar as the theoretical physicists, that the entirety of human history can be considered as a sort of blooper reel. All those wars, all those famines caused by malign stupidity, all that determined, mindless repetition of the same old errors, are in the great cosmic scheme of things only equivalent to Mr Spock's ears falling off. [20]There is no such thing as an edible, nay delicious, meat pie floater, its mushy peas of just the right consistency, its tomato saucce piquant in its cheekiness, its pie filling tending even towards named parts of the animal. There are platonic burgers made of beef instead of cow lips and hooves. There are fish 'n' chips where the fish is more than just a white goo lurking at the bottom of a batter casing and you can't use the chips to shave with. There are hot dog fillings which have more in common with meat than mere pinkness, whose lucky consumers don't apply mustard because that would spoil the taste. It's just that people can be trained to prefer the other sort and seek it out. It's as if Machiavelli had written a cookery book. Even so, there is no excuse for putting pineapple on pizza. [21]This is why protesters against the wearing of animal skins by humans unaccountably fail to throw their paint over Hell's Angels. [22]It would be nice to say that this experience taught Ponder a valuable lesson and that he was a lot more considerate towards old people afterwards, and this was true for about five minutes. [23]Although of course it's not the most obvious thing and there are, in fact, some beguiling similarities, particularly the tendency to try to hide behind a big cloud of ink in difficult situations. [24]The one on the first floor, with the curious gravitational anomaly. 
The Truth - Terry Pratchett	----	The Truth Terry Pratchett - The Truth     Books by Terry Pratchett   TRUCKERS* DIGGERS* WINGS* THE CARPET PEOPLE* ONLY YOU CAN SAVE MANKIND* JOHNNY AND THE DEAD* JOHNNY AND THE BOMB* GOOD OMENS (with Neil Caiman) STRATA THE DARK SIDE OF THE SUN THE UNADULTERATED CAT (with Gray Jolliffe)† THE PRATCHETT PORTFOLIO (with Paul Kidby)†       The Discworld® series:   THE COLOUR OF MAGIC* THE LIGHT FANTASTIC* EQUAL RITES* MORT* SOURCERY* WYRD SISTERS* PYRAMIDS* GUARDS! GUARDS!* ERIC*† MOVING PICTURES* REAPER MAN* WITCHES ABROAD* SMALL GODS* LORDS AND LADIES* MEN AT ARMS* SOUL MUSIC*   INTERESTING TIMES* MASKERADE* FEET OF CLAY* HOGFATHER* JINGO* THE LAST CONTINENT* CARPE JUGULUM* THE FIFTH ELEPHANT*   THE COLOUR OF MAGIC - graphic novel THE LIGHT FANTASTIC - graphic novel MORT: A DISCWORLD BIG COMIC (with Graham Higgins)† SOUL MUSIC: The Illustrated Screenplay WYRD SISTERS: The Illustrated Screenplay MORT - THE PLAY (adapted by Stephen Briggs) WYRD SISTERS - THE PLAY (adapted by Stephen Briggs) GUARDS! GUARDS! - THE PLAY (adapted by Stephen Briggs) MEN AT ARMS - THE PLAY (adapted by Stephen Briggs) THE DISCWORLD COMPANION (with Stephen Briggs) THE STREETS OF ANKH-MORPORK (with Stephen Briggs) THE DISCWORLD MAPP (with Stephen Briggs) A TOURIST GUIDE TO LANCRE (with Stephen Briggs and Paul Kidby) DEATH'S DOMAIN (with Paul Kidby) NANY OGG'S COOKBOOK (with Stephen Briggs, Tina Hannan and Paul Kidby)   * also available in audio † published by Victor Gollancz                     THE TRUTH       Terry Pratchett                   Doubleday LONDON  •  NEW YORK  •  TORONTO  •  SYDNEY  •  AUCKLAND                       TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS 61-63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA a division of The Random House Group Ltd   RANDOM HOUSE AUSTRALIA (PTY) LTD 20 Alfred Street, Milsons Point, Sydney, New South Wales 2061, Australia   RANDOM HOUSE NEW ZEALAND 18 Poland Road, Glenfield, Auckland 10, New Zealand   RANDOM HOUSE SOUTH AFRICA (PTY) LTD Endulini, 5a Jubilee Road, Parktown 2193, South Africa   Published 2000 by Doubleday a division of Transworld Publishers   Copyright © Terry and Lyn Pratchett 2000   The right of Terry Pratchett to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.   All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.   Discworld® is a trade mark registered by Terry Pratchett   A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 0385 601026   All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.   Typeset in 101/2  / 14pt Meridien by Falcon Oast Graphic Art   Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives pic   1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2                     AUTHOR'S NOTE       Sometimes a fantasy author has to point out the strangeness of reality. The way Ankh-Morpork dealt with its flood problems (see p. 230 and onwards) is curiously similar to that adopted by the city of Seattle, Washington, towards the end of the nineteenth century. Really. Go and see. Try the clam chowder while you're there.                     The rumour spread through the city like wildfire (which had quite often spread through Ankh-Morpork since its citizens had learned the words 'fire insurance').             The dwarfs can turn lead into gold . . .             It buzzed through the fetid air of the Alchemists' quarter, where they had been trying to do the same thing for centuries without success but were certain that they'd manage it by tomorrow, or next Tuesday at least, or the end of the month for definite.             It caused speculation among the wizards at Unseen University, where they knew you could turn one element into another element, provided you didn't mind it turning back again next day, and where was the good in that? Besides, most elements were happy where they were.             It seared into the scarred, puffy and sometimes totally missing ears of the Thieves' Guild, where people put an edge on their crowbars. Who cared where the gold came from?             The dwarfs can turn lead into gold . . .             It reached the cold but incredibly acute ears of the Patrician, and it did that fairly quickly, because you did not stay ruler of Ankh-Morpork for long if you were second with the news. He sighed and made a note of it, and added it to a lot of other notes.             The dwarfs can turn lead into gold . . .             It reached the pointy ears of the dwarfs.             'Can we?'             'Damned if I know. I can't.'             'Yeah, but if you could, you wouldn't say. I wouldn't say, if I could.'             'Can you?'             'No!'             'Ah-ha!'   It came to the ears of the Night Watch of the city guard, as they did gate duty at ten o'clock on an icy night. Gate duty in Ankh-Morpork was not taxing. It consisted mainly of waving through anything that wanted to go through, although traffic was minimal in the dark and freezing fog.             They hunched in the shelter of the gate arch, sharing one damp cigarette.             'You can't turn something into something else,' said Corporal Nobbs. The Alchemists have been trying it for years.'             They can gen'rally turn a house into a hole in the ground,' said Sergeant Colon.             That's what I'm talking about,' said Corporal Nobbs. 'Can't be done. It's all to do with . . . elements. An alchemist told me. Everything's made up of elements, right? Earth, Water, Air, Fire and . . . sunnink. Well-known fact. Everything's got 'em all mixed up just right.'             He stamped his feet in an effort to get some warmth into them.             'If it was possible to turn lead into gold, everyone'd be doing it,' he said.             'Wizards could do it,' said Sergeant Colon.             'Oh, well, magic,' said Nobby dismissively.             A large cart rumbled out of the yellow clouds and entered the arch, splashing Colon as it wobbled through one of the puddles that were such a feature of Ankh-Morpork's highways.             'Bloody dwarfs,' he said, as it continued on into the city. But he didn't say it too loudly.             There were a lot of them pushing that cart,' said Corporal Nobbs reflectively. It lurched slowly round a corner and was lost to view.             'Prob'ly all that gold,' said Colon.             'Hah. Yeah. That'd be it, then.'   And the rumour came to the ears of William de Worde, and in a sense it stopped there, because he dutifully wrote it down.             It was his job. Lady Margolotta of Uberwald sent him five dollars a month to do it. The Dowager Duchess of Quirm also sent him five dollars. So did King Verence of Lancre, and a few other Ramtop notables. So did the Seriph of Al Khali, although in his case the payment was half a cartload of figs, twice a year.             All in all, he considered, he was on to a good thing. All he had to do was write one letter very carefully, trace it backwards on to a piece of boxwood provided for him by Mr Cripslock the engraver in the Street of Cunning Artificers, and then pay Mr Cripslock twenty dollars to carefully remove the wood that wasn't letters and make five impressions on sheets of paper.             Of course, it had to be done thoughtfully, with spaces left after To my Noble Client the', and so on, which he had to fill in later, but even deducting expenses it still left him the best part of thirty dollars for little more than one day's work a month.             A young man without too many responsibilities could live modestly in Ankh-Morpork on thirty or forty dollars a month; he always sold the figs, because although it was possible to live on figs you soon wished you didn't.             And there were always additional sums to be picked up here and there. The world of letters was a closed boo-- mysterious papery object to many of Ankh-Morpork's citizens, but if they ever did need to commit things to paper quite a few of them walked up the creaky stairs past the sign 'William de Worde: Things Written Down'.             Dwarfs, for example. Dwarfs were always coming to seek work in the city, and the first thing they did was send a letter home saying how well they were doing. This was such a predictable occurrence, even if the dwarf in question was so far down on his luck that he'd been forced to eat his helmet, that William had Mr Cripslock produce several dozen stock letters which needed only a few spaces filled in to be perfectly acceptable.             Fond dwarf parents all over the mountains treasured letters which looked something like this:   Dear [Mume & Dad],        Well, I arrived here all right and I am staying, at [109 Cockbill Street The Shades Ankh-Morpk]. Everythyng is fine. I have got a goode job working for [Mr C.M.O.T. Dibbler, Merchant Venturer] and will be makinge lots of money really soon now. I am rememberinge alle your gode advyce and am not drinkynge, in bars or mixsing with Trolls. Well thas about itte mu,'t goe now, looking forwade to seing you and [Emelia] agane, your loving son,        [Tomas Brokenbrow]               . . . who was usually swaying while he dictated it. It was twenty pence easily made, and as an additional service William carefully tailored the spelling to the client and allowed them to choose their own punctuation.             On this particular evening, with the sleet gurgling in the downspouts outside his lodgings, William sat in the tiny office over the Guild of Conjurors and wrote carefully, half listening to the hopeless but painstaking catechism of the trainee conjurors at their evening class in the room below.             '. . . pay attention. Are you ready? Right. Egg. Glass . . .'             'Egg. Glass,' the class droned listlessly.             '. . . Glass. Egg . . .'             'Glass. Egg . . .'             '. . . Magic word . . .'             'Magic word . . .  '             'Fazammm. Just like that. Ahahahahaha . . .'             'Faz-ammm. Just like that. Aha-ha-ha-ha-ha . . .'             William pulled another sheet of paper towards him, sharpened a fresh quill, stared at the wall for a moment and then wrote as follows:   And finally, on the lighter Side, it is being said that the Dwarfs can Turn Lead into Gold, though no one knows whence the rumour comes, and Dwarfs going about their lawful occa,'ions in the City are hailed with cries such as, e.g., 'Hollah, short stuff, let's see you make some Gold then!' although only Newcomers do this because all here know what happens if you call a Dwarf 'short stuff, viz., you are Dead.        Yr. obdt. servant, William de Worde               He always liked to finish his letters on a happy note.             He fetched a sheet of boxwood, lit another candle and laid the letter face down on the wood. A quick rub with the back of a spoon transferred the ink, and thirty dollars and enough figs to make you really ill were as good as in the bank.             He'd drop it into Mr Cripslock tonight, pick up the copies after a leisurely lunch tomorrow, and with any luck should have them all away by the middle of the week.             William put on his coat, wrapped the wood block carefully in some waxed paper and stepped out into the freezing night.   The world is made up of four elements: Earth, Air, Fire and Water. This is a fact well known even to Corporal Nobbs. It's also wrong. There's a fifth element, and generally it's called Surprise.             For example, the dwarfs found out how to turn lead into gold by doing it the hard way. The difference between that and the easy way is that the hard way works.   The dwarfs dwarfhandled their overloaded, creaking cart along the street, peering ahead in fog. Ice formed on the cart and hung from their beards.             All it needed was one frozen puddle.             Good old Dame Fortune. You can depend on her.   The fog closed in, making every light a dim glow and muffling all sounds. It was clear to Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobbs that no barbarian horde would be including the invasion of Ankh-Morpork in their travel plans for this evening. The watchmen didn't blame them.             They closed the gates. This was not the ominous activity that it might appear, since the keys had been lost long ago and latecomers usually threw gravel at the windows of the houses built on top of the wall until they found a friend to lift the bar. It was assumed that foreign invaders wouldn't know which windows to throw gravel at.             Then the two watchmen trailed through the slush and muck to the Water Gate, by which the river Ankh had the good fortune to enter the city. The water was invisible in the dark, but the occasional ghostly shape of an ice floe drifted past below the parapet.             'Hang on,' said Nobby, as they laid hands on the windlass of the portcullis. 'There's someone down there.'             'In the river?' said Colon.             He listened. There was the creak of an oar, far below.             Sergeant Colon cupped his hands around his mouth and issued the traditional policeman's cry of challenge.             'Oi! You!'             For a moment there was no sound but the wind and the gurgling of the water. Then a voice said: 'Yes?'             'Are you invading the city or what?'             There was another pause. Then:             'What?'             'What what?' said Colon, raising the stakes.             'What were the other options?'             'Don't mess me about . . . Are you, down there in the boat, invading this city?'             'No.'             'Fair enough,' said Colon, who on a night like this would happily take someone's word for it. 'Get a move on, then, 'cos we're going to drop the gate.'             After a while the splash of the oars resumed and disappeared downriver.             'You reckon that was enough, just askin' 'em?' said Nobby.             'Well, they ought to know,' said Colon.             'Yeah, but--'             'It was a tiny little rowin' boat, Nobby. Of course, if you want to go all the way down to them nice icy steps on the jetty--'             'No, sarge.'             'Then let's get back to the Watch House, all right?'   William turned up his collar as he hurried towards Cripslock the engraver. The usually busy streets were deserted. Only those people with the most pressing business were out of doors. It was turning out to be a very nasty winter indeed, a gazpacho of freezing fog, snow and Ankh-Morpork's ever-present, ever-rolling smog.             His eye was caught by a little pool of light by the Watchmakers' Guild. A small hunched figure was outlined in the glow.             He wandered over.             A hopeless sort of voice said, 'Hot sausages? Inna bun?'             'Mr Dibbler?' said William.             Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, Ankh-Morpork's most enterprisingly unsuccessful businessman, peered at William over the top of his portable sausage-cooking tray. Snowflakes hissed in the congealing fat.             William sighed. 'You're out late, Mr Dibbler,' he said politely.             'Ah, Mr Word. Times is hard in the hot sausage trade,' said Dibbler.             'Can't make both ends meat, eh?' said William. He couldn't have stopped himself for a hundred dollars and a shipload of figs.             'Definitely in a period of slump in the comestibles market,' said Dibbler, too sunk in gloom to notice. 'Don't seem to find anyone ready to buy a sausage in a bun these days.'             William looked down at the tray. If Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler was selling hot sausages, it was a sure sign that one of his more ambitious enterprises had gone wahoonie-shaped yet again. Selling hot sausages from a tray was by way of being the ground state of Dibbler's existence, from which he constantly sought to extricate himself and back to which he constantly returned when his latest venture went all runny. Which was a shame, because Dibbler was an extremely good hot sausage salesman. He had to be, given the nature of his sausages.             'I should have got a proper education like you,' said Dibbler despondently. 'A nice job indoors with no heavy lifting. I could have found my nitch, if'n I'd have got a good education.'             'Nitch?'             'One of the wizards told me about 'em,' said Dibbler. 'Everything's got a nitch. You know. Like: where they ought to be. What they was cut out for?'             William nodded. He was good with words. 'Niche?' he said.             'One of them things, yes.' Dibbler sighed. 'I missed out on the semaphore. Just didn't see it coming. Next thing you know, everyone's got a clacks company. Big money. Too rich for my blood. I could've done all right with the Fung Shooey, though. Sheer bloody bad luck there.'             'I've certainly felt better with my chair in a different position,' said William. That advice had cost him two dollars, along with an injunction to keep the lid down on the privy so that the Dragon of Unhappiness wouldn't fly up his bottom.             'You were my first customer and I thank you,' said Dibbler. 'I was all set up, I'd got the Dibbler wind-chimes and the Dibbler mirrors, it was gravy all the way - I mean, everything was positioned for maximum harmony, and then . . . smack. Bad karma plops on me once more.' ,             'It was a week before Mr Passmore was able to walk again, though,' said William. The case of Dibbler's second customer had been very useful for his news letter, which rather made up for the two dollars.             'I wasn't to know there really is a Dragon of Unhappiness,' said Dibbler.             'I don't think there was until you convinced him that one exists,' said William.             Dibbler brightened a little. 'Ah, well, say what you like, I've always been good at selling ideas. Can I convince you of the idea that a sausage in a bun is what you desire at this time?'             'Actually, I've really got to get this along to--' William began, and then said, 'Did you just hear someone shout?'             'I've got some cold pork pies, too, somewhere,' said Dibbler, ferreting in his tray. 'I can give you a convincingly bargain price on--'             'I'm sure I heard something,' said William.             Dibbler cocked an ear. 'Sort of like a rumbling?' he said.             'Yes.'             They stared into the slowly rolling clouds that filled Broad Way.             Which became, quite suddenly, a huge tarpaulin-covered cart, moving unstoppably and very fast. . .             And the last thing William remembered, before something flew out of the night and smacked him between the eyes, was someone shouting, 'Stop the press!'   The rumour, having been pinned to the page by William's pen like a butterfly to a cork, didn't come to the ears of some people, because they had other, darker things on their mind.             Their rowboat slid through the hissing waters of the river Ankh, which closed behind it slowly.             Two men were bent over the oars. The third sat in the pointy end. Occasionally he spoke.             He said things like 'My nose itches.'             'You'll just have to wait till we get there,' said one of the rowers.             'You could let me out again. It really itches.'             'We let you out when we stopped for supper.'             'It didn't itch then.'             The other rower said, 'Shall I hit him up alongside the --ing head with the --ing oar again, Mr Pin?'             'Good idea, Mr Tulip.'             There was a dull thump in the darkness.             'Ow.'             'Now no more fuss, friend, otherwise Mr Tulip will Jose his temper.'             Too --ing right.' Then there was a sound like an industrial pump.             'Hey, go easy on that stuff, why don't you?'             'Ain't --ing killed me yet, Mr Pin.'             The boat oozed to a halt alongside a tiny, little-used landing stage. The tall figure who had so recently been the focus of Mr Pin's attention was bundled ashore and hustled down an alley.             A moment later there was the sound of a carriage rolling away into the night.             It would seem quite impossible, on such a mucky night, that there could have been anyone to witness this scene.             But there was. The universe requires everything to be observed, lest it cease to exist.             A figure shuffled out from the shadows of the alley, close by. There was a smaller shape wobbling uncertainly by its side.             Both of them watched the departing coach as it disappeared into the snow.             The smaller of the two figures said, 'Well, well, well. There's a fing. Man all bundled up and hooded. An interesting fing, eh?'             The taller figure nodded. It wore a huge old greatcoat several sizes too big, and a felt hat that had been reshaped by time and weather into a soft cone that overhung the wearer's head.             'Scraplit,' it said. 'Thatch and trouser, a blewit the grawney man. I told 'im. I told 'im. Millennium hand and shrimp. Bugrit.'             After a pause it reached into its pocket and produced a sausage, which it broke into two pieces. One bit disappeared under the hat, and the other was tossed to the smaller figure, who was doing most of the talking or, at least, most of the coherent talking.             'Looks like a dirty deed to me,' said the smaller figure, which had four legs.             The sausage was consumed in silence. Then the pair set off into the night again.             In the same way that a pigeon can't walk without bobbing its head, the taller figure appeared unable to move without a sort of low-key, random mumbling:             'I told 'em, I told 'em. Millennium hand and shrimp. I said, I said, I said. Oh, no. But they only run out, I told 'em. Sod 'em. Doorsteps. I said, I said, I said. Teeth. Wassa name of age, I said I told 'em, not my fault, matterofact, matterofact, stands to reason . . .'             The rumour did come to his ears later on, but by then he was part of it.             As for Mr Pin and Mr Tulip, all that need be known about them at this point is that they are the kind of people who call you 'friend'. People like that aren't friendly.   William opened his eyes. I've gone blind, he thought.             Then he moved the blanket.             And then the pain hit him.             It was a sharp and insistent sort of pain, centred right over the eyes. He reached up gingerly. There seemed to be some bruising and what felt like a dent in the flesh, if not the bone.             He sat up. He was in a sloping-ceilinged room. A bit of grubby snow crusted the bottom of a small window. Apart from the bed, which was just a mattress and blanket, the room was unfurnished.             A thump shook the building. Dust drifted down from the ceiling) He got up, clutching at his forehead, and staggered to the door. It opened into a much larger room or, more accurately, a workshop.             Another thump rattled his teeth.             William tried to focus.             The room was full of dwarfs, toiling over a couple of long benches. But at the far end several of them were clustered around something like a complex piece of weaving machinery.             It went thump again.             William rubbed his head. 'What's happening?' he said.             The nearest dwarf looked up at him and nudged a colleague urgently. The nudge passed itself along the rows, and the room was suddenly filled wall to wall with a cautious silence. A dozen solemn dwarf faces looked hard at William.             No one can look harder than a dwarf. Perhaps it's because there is only quite a small amount of face between the statutory round iron helmet and the beard. Dwarf expressions are more concentrated.             'Urn,' he said. 'Hello?'             One of the dwarfs in front of the big machine was the first to unfreeze.             'Back to work, lads,' he said, and came and looked William sternly in the groin.             'You all right, your lordship?' he said.             William winced. 'Um . . . what happened?' he said. 'I, uh, remember seeing a cart, and then something hit. . .'             'It ran away from us,' said the dwarf. 'Load slipped, too. Sorry about that.'             'What happened to Mr Dibbler?'             The dwarf put his head on one side. 'The skinny man with the sausages?' he said.             'That's right. Was he hurt?'             'I don't think so,' said the dwarf carefully. 'He sold young Thunderaxe a sausage in a bun, I do know that.'             William thought about this. Ankh-Morpork had many traps for the unwary newcomer.             'Well, then, is Mr Thunderaxe all right?' he said.             'Probably. He shouted under the door just now that he was feeling a lot better but would stay where he was for the time being,' said the dwarf. He reached under a bench and solemnly handed William a rectangle wrapped in grubby paper.             'Yours, I think,'             William unwrapped his wooden block. It was split right across where a wheel of the cart had run over it, and the writing had been smudged. He sighed.             ' 'scuse me,' said the dwarf, 'but what was it meant to be?'             'It's a block prepared for a woodcut,' said William. He wondered how he could possibly explain the idea to a dwarf from outside the city. 'You know? Engraving? A . . . a sort of very nearly magical way of getting lots of copies of writing? I'm afraid I shall have to go and make another one now,'             The dwarf gave him an odd look, and then took the block from him and turned it over and over in his hands.             'You see,' said William, 'the engraver cuts away bits of--'             'Have you still got the original?' said the dwarf.             'Pardon?'             'The original,' said the dwarf patiently.             'Oh, yes,' William reached inside his jacket and produced it.             'Can I borrow it for a moment?'             'Well, all right, but I shall need it again to--'             The dwarf scanned the letter a while, and then turned and hit the nearest dwarf a resounding boing on the helmet.             'Ten point across three,' he said, handing him the paper. The struck dwarf nodded, and then its right hand moved quickly across the rack of little boxes, selecting things.             'I ought to be getting back so I can--' William began.             'This won't take long,' said the head dwarf. 'Just you step along this way, will you? This might be of interest to a man of letters such as yourself,'             William followed him along the avenue of busy dwarfs to the machine, which had been thumping away steadily.             'Oh. It's an engraving press,' said William vaguely.             'This one's a bit different,' said the dwarf. 'We've . . . modified it,' He took a large sheet of paper off a pile by the press and gave it to William, who read: GUNILLA GOODMOUNTAIN & CO.             Reƒpectfully Solicit             Work for their New             WORD SMITHY             A method of taking multiple impresfions                 the like of which               Hath not hiterto been Seen.               Reaƒbnable rates.               At the Sign of The Bucket, Gleam Street,             off Treacle Mine Road, Ankh-Morpork.                                                   'What do you think?' said the dwarf shyly.             'Are you Gunilla Goodmountain?'             'Yes. What do you think?'             'We-ell . . . you've got the letters nice and regular, I must say,' said William. 'But I can't see what's so new about it. And you've spelled "hitherto" wrong. There should be another h after the first t. You'll have to cut it all out again unless you want people to laugh at you,'             'Really?' said Goodmountain. He nudged one of his colleagues.             'Just give me a ninety-six-point lower-case h, will you, Caslong? Thank you,'             Goodmountain bent over the press, picked up a spanner and busied himself somewhere in the mechanical gloom.             'You must have a really steady hand to get the letters so neat,' said William. He felt a bit sorry that he'd pointed out the mistake. Probably no one would have noticed in any case. Ankh-Morpork people considered that spelling was a sort of optional extra. They believed in it in the same way they believed in punctuation; it didn't matter where you put it so long as it was there.             The dwarf finished whatever arcane activity he had been engaged in, dabbed with an inked pad at something inside the press, and got down.             'I'm sure it won't' - thump - 'matter about the spelling,' said William.             Goodmountain opened the press again and wordlessly handed William a damp sheet of paper.             William read it.             The extra h was in place.             'How--?' he began.             'This is a very nearly magical way of getting lots of copies quickly,' said Goodmountain. Another dwarf appeared at his elbow, holding a big metal rectangle. It was full of little metal letters, back to front. Goodmountain took it and gave William a big grin.             'Want to make any changes before we go to press?' he said. 'Just say the word. A couple of dozen prints be enough?'             'Oh dear,' said William. This is printing, isn't it. . . ?'   The Bucket was a tavern, of sorts. There was no passing trade. The street was if not a dead end then seriously wounded by the area's change in fortunes. Few businesses fronted on to it. It consisted mainly of the back ends of yards and warehouses. No one even remembered why it was called Gleam Street. There was nothing very sparkling about it.             Besides, calling a tavern the Bucket was not a decision destined to feature in Great Marketing Decisions of History. Its owner was Mr Cheese, who was thin, dry and only smiled when he heard news of some serious murder. Traditionally he had sold short measure but, to make up for it, had short-changed as well. However, the pub had been taken over by the City Watch as the unofficial policemen's pub, because policemen like to drink in places where no one else goes and they don't have to be reminded that they are policemen.             This had been a benefit in some ways. Not even licensed thieves tried to rob the Bucket now. Policemen didn't like their drinking disturbed. On the other hand, Mr Cheese had never found a bigger bunch of petty criminals than those wearing the Watch uniform. He saw more dud dollars and strange pieces of foreign currency cross his bar in the first month than he'd found in ten years in the business. It made you depressed, it really did. But some of the murder descriptions were quite funny.             He made part of his living by renting out the rat's nest of old sheds and cellars that backed on to the pub. They tended to be occupied very temporarily by the kind of enthusiastic manufacturer who believed that what the world really, really needed today was an inflatable dartboard.             But there was a crowd outside the Bucket now, reading one of the' slightly misprinted posters that Goodmountain had nailed up on the door. Goodmountain followed William out and nailed up the corrected version.             'Sorry about your head,' he said. 'Looks like we made a bit of an impression on you. Have this one on the house.'             William skulked home, keeping in the shadows in case he met Mr Cripslock. But he folded his printed sheets into their envelopes and took them down to the Hubward Gate and gave them to the messengers, reflecting as he did so that he was doing this several days before he had expected to.             The messengers gave him some very odd looks.             He went back to his lodgings and had a look at himself in the mirror over the washbasin. A large R, printed in bruise colours, Occupied a lot of his forehead.             He stuck a bandage over it.             And he still had eighteen more copies. As an afterthought, and feeling rather daring, he looked through his notes for the addresses of eighteen prominent citizens who could probably afford it, wrote a short covering letter to each one offering this service for . . . he thought for a while and then carefully wrote '$5' . . . and folded the free sheets into eighteen envelopes. Of course, he could always have asked Mr Cripslock to do more copies as well, but it had never seemed right. After the old boy had spent all day chipping out the words, asking him to sully his craftsmanship by making dozens of duplicates seemed disrespectful. But you didn't have to respect lumps of metal and machines. Machines weren't alive.             That, really, was where the trouble was going to start. And there was going to be trouble. The dwarfs had seemed quite unconcerned when he'd told them how much of it there was going to be.   The coach arrived at a large house in the city. A door was opened. A door was shut. Another door was knocked on. It was opened. It shut. The carriage pulled away.             One ground-floor room was heavily curtained, and only the barest gleam of light filtered out. Only the faintest of noises filtered out, too, but any listener would have heard a murmur of conversation die down. Then a chair was knocked over and several people shouted, all at once.             'That is him!'             'It's a trick . . . isn't it?'             'I'll be damned!'             'If it is him, so are we all!'             The hubbub died away. And then, very calmly, someone began to talk.             'Good. Good. Take him away, gentlemen. Make him comfortable in the cellar.'             There were footsteps. A door opened and closed.             A more querulous voice said, 'We could simply replace--'             'No, we could not. I understand that our guest is, fortunately, a man of rather low intelligence.' There was this about the first speaker's voice. It spoke as if disagreeing was not simply unthinkable but impossible. It was used to being in the company of listeners.             'But he looks the spit and image--'             'Yes. Astonishing, isn't it? Let us not overcomplicate matters, though. We are a bodyguard of lies, gentlemen. We are all that stands between the city and oblivion, so let us make this one chance work. Vetinari may be quite willing to see humans become a minority in their greatest city, but frankly his death by assassination would be . . . unfortunate. It would cause turmoil, and turmoil is hard to steer. And we all know that there are people who take too much of an interest. No. There is a third way. A gentle slide from one condition to another.'             'And what will happen to our new friend?'             'Oh,   our  employees  are  known  to  be   men   of  resource, gentlemen. I'm sure they know how to deal with a man whose face no longer fits, eh?'             There was laughter.   Things were a little fraught in Unseen University. The wizards were scuttling from building to building, glancing at the sky.             The problem, of course, was the frogs. Not rains of frogs, which were uncommon now in Ankh-Morpork, but specifically foreign treefrogs from the humid jungles of Klatch. They were small, brightly coloured, happy little creatures who secreted some of the nastiest toxins in the world, which is why the job of looking after the large vivarium where they happily passed their days was given to first-year students, on the basis that if they got things wrong there wouldn't be too much education wasted.             Very occasionally a frog was removed from the vivarium and put into a rather smaller jar where it briefly became a very happy frog indeed, and then went to sleep and woke up in that great big jungle in the sky.             And thus the University got the active ingredient which it made up into pills and fed to the Bursar, to keep him sane. At least, apparently sane, because nothing was that simple at good old UU. In fact he was incurably insane and hallucinated more or less continuously, but by a remarkable stroke of lateral thinking his fellow wizards had reasoned that, in that case, the whole business could be sorted out if only they could find a formula that caused him to hallucinate that he was completely sane*   [* This is a very common hallucination, shared by most people.]               This had worked well. There had been a few false starts. For several hours, at one point, he had hallucinated that he was a bookcase. But now he was permanently hallucinating that he was a bursar, and that almost made up for the small side-effect that also led him to hallucinate that he could fly.             Of course, many people in the universe have also had the misplaced belief that they can safely ignore gravity, mostly after taking some local equivalent of dried frog pills, and this has led to much extra work for elementary physics and caused brief traffic jams in the street below. When a wizard hallucinates that he can fly, things are different.             'Bursaar! You come down here right this minute!' Arch-chancellor Mustrum Ridcully barked through his megaphone. 'You know what I said about goin' higher than the walls!'             The Bursar floated gently down towards the lawn. 'You wanted me, Archchancellor?'             Ridcully waved a piece of paper at him. 'You were tellin' me the other day we were spendin' a ton of money with the engravers, weren't you?' he barked.             The Bursar got his mind up to something approaching the correct speed. 'I was?' he said.             'Breakin' the budget, you said. Remember it distinctly.'             A few cogs meshed in the jittery gearbox of the Bursar's brain. 'Oh. Yes. Yes. Very true,' he said. Another gear clonked into place. 'A fortune every year, I'm afraid. The Guild of Engravers--'             'Chap here says,' the Archchancellor glanced at the sheet, 'he can do us ten copies of a thousand words each for a dollar. Is that cheap?'             'I think, uh, there must be a mis-carving there, Archchancellor,' said the Bursar, finally managing to get his voice into the smooth and soothing tones he found best in dealing with Ridcully. That sum would not keep him in boxwood.'             'Says here' - rustle - 'down to ten-point size,' said Ridcully.             The Bursar lost control for a moment. 'Ridiculous!'             'What?'             'Sorry, Archchancellor. I mean, that can't be right. Even if anyone could consistently carve that fine, the wood would crumble after a couple of impressions.'             'Know about this sort of thing, do you?'             'Well, my great-uncle was an engraver, Archchancellor. And the print bill is a major drain, as you know. I think I can say with some justification that I have been able to keep the Guild down to a very--'             'Don't they invite you to their annual blow-out?'             'Well, as a major customer of course the University is invited to their official dinner and as the designated officer I naturally see it as part of my duties to--'             'Fifteen courses, I heard.'             '--and of course there is our policy of maintaining a friendly relationship with the other Gui--'             'Not including the nuts and coffee.'             The Bursar hesitated. The Archchancellor tended to combine wooden-headed stupidity with distressing insight.             The problem, Archchancellor,' he tried, 'is that we have always been very much against using movable type printing for magic purposes because--'             'Yes, yes, I know all about that,' said the Archchancellor. 'But there's all the other stuff, more of it every day . . . forms and charts and gods know what. You know I've always wanted a paperless office--'             'Yes, Archchancellor, that's why you hide it all in cupboards and throw it out of the window at night.'             'Clean desk, clean mind,' said the Archchancellor. He thrust the leaflet into the Bursar's hand.             'Just you trot down there, why don't you, and see if it's just a lot of hot air. But walk, please.'   William felt drawn back to the sheds behind the Bucket next day. Apart from anything else, he had nothing to do and he didn't like being useless.             There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty.             The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: 'What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass!             And at the other end of the bar the world is full of the other type of person, who has a broken glass, or a glass that has been carelessly knocked over (usually by one of the people calling for a larger glass), or who had no glass at all, because they were at the back of the crowd and had failed to catch the barman's eye.             William was one of the glassless. And this was odd, because he'd been born into a family that not only had a very large glass indeed but could afford to have people discreetly standing around with bottles to keep it filled up.             It was self-imposed glasslessness, and it had started at a fairly early age when he'd been sent away to school.             William's brother Rupert, being the elder, had gone to the Assassins' School in Ankh-Morpork, widely regarded as being the best school in the world for the full-glass class. William, as a less-important son, had been sent to Hugglestones, a boarding school so bleak and spartan that only the upper glasses would dream of sending their sons there.             Hugglestones was a granite building on a rain-soaked moor, and its  stated purpose was to make men  from boys.  The policy employed involved a certain amount of wastage, and consisted in William's recollection at least of very simple and violent games in the healthy outdoor sleet. The small, slow, fat or merely unpopular were  mown  down,   as  nature  intended,  but natural selection operates in many ways and William found that he had a certain capacity for survival. A good way to survive on the playing fields of Hugglestones was to run very fast and shout a lot while inexplicably always being a long way from the ball. This had earned him, oddly enough, a reputation for being keen, and keenness was highly prized at Hugglestones, if only because actual achievement was so rare. The staff at Hugglestones believed that in sufficient quantities 'being keen' could take the place of lesser attributes like intelligence, foresight and training.             He had been truly keen on anything involving words. At Hugglestones this had not counted for a great deal, since most of its graduates never expected to have to do much more with a pen than sign their names (a feat which most of them could manage after three or four years), but it had meant long mornings peacefully reading anything that took his fancy while around him the hulking front-row forwards who would one day be at least the deputy-leaders of the land learned how to hold a pen without crushing it.             William left with a good report, which tended to be the case with pupils that most of the teachers could only vaguely remember. Afterwards, his father had faced the problem of what to do with him.             He was the younger son, and family tradition sent youngest sons into some church or other, where they couldn't do much harm on a physical level. But too much reading had taken its toll. William found that he now thought of prayer as a sophisticated way of pleading with thunderstorms.             Going into land management was just about acceptable, but it seemed to William that land managed itself pretty well, on the whole. He was all in favour of the countryside, provided that it was on the other side of a window.             A military career somewhere was unlikely. William had a rooted objection to killing people he didn't know.             He enjoyed reading and writing. He liked words. Words didn't shout or make loud noises, which pretty much defined the rest of his family. They didn't involve getting muddy in the freezing cold. They didn't hunt inoffensive animals, either. They did what he told them to. So, he'd said, he wanted to write.             His father had erupted. In his personal world a scribe was only one step higher than a teacher. Good gods, man, they didn't even ride a horse! So there had been Words.             As a result, William had gone off to Ankh-Morpork, the usual destination for the lost and the aimless. There he'd made words his living, in a quiet sort of way, and considered that he'd got off easily compared to brother Rupert, who was big and good natured and a Hugglestones natural apart from the accident of birth.             And then there had been the war against Klatch . . .             It was an insignificant war, which was over before it started, the kind of war that both sides pretended hadn't really happened, but one of the things that did happen in the few confused days of wretched turmoil was the death of Rupert de Worde. He had died for his beliefs; chief among them was the very Hugglestonian one that bravery could replace armour, and that Klatchians would turn and run if you shouted loud enough.             William's father, during their last meeting, had gone on at some length about the proud and noble traditions of the de Wordes. These had mostly involved unpleasant deaths, preferably of foreigners, but somehow, William gathered, the de Wordes had always considered that it was a decent second prize to die themselves. A de Worde was always to the fore when the city called. That was why they existed. Wasn't the family motto Le Mot Juste? The Right Word In The Right Place, said Lord de Worde. He simply could not understand why William did not want to embrace this fine tradition and he dealt with it, in the manner of his kind, by not dealing with it.             And now a great frigid silence had descended between the de Wordes that made the winter chill seem like a sauna.             In this gloomy frame of mind it was positively cheering to wander into the print room to find the Bursar arguing the theory of words with Goodmountain.             'Hold on, hold on,' said the Bursar. 'Yes, indeed, figuratively a word is made up of individual letters but they have only a,' he waved his long fingers gracefully, 'theoretical existence, if I may put it that way. They are, as it were, words partis in potentia, and it is, I am afraid, unsophisticated in the extreme to imagine that they have any real existence unis et separata. Indeed, the very concept of letters having their own physical existence is, philosophically, extremely worrying. Indeed, it would be like noses and fingers running around the world all by themselves--'             That's three 'indeeds', thought William, who noticed things like that. Three indeeds used by a person in one brief speech generally meant an internal spring was about to break.             'We got whole boxes of letters,' said Goodmountain flatly. 'We can make any words you want.'             That's the trouble, you see,' said the Bursar. 'Supposing the metal remembers the words it has printed? At least engravers melt down their plates, and the cleansing effect of fire will--'             ' 'scuse me, your reverence,' said Goodmountain. One of the dwarfs had tapped him gently on the shoulder and handed him a square of paper. He passed it up to the Bursar.             'Young Caslong here thought you might like this as a souvenir,' he said. 'He took it down directly from the case and pulled it off on the stone. He's very quick like that.'             The Bursar tried to look the young dwarf sternly up and down, although this was a pretty pointless intimidatory tactic to use on dwarfs since they had very little up to look down from.             'Really?' he said. 'How very . . .' His eyes scanned the paper.             And then bulged.             'But these are . . . when I said . . . I only just said . . . How did you know I was going to say . . . I mean, my actual words . . .' he stuttered.             'Of course they're not properly justified,' said Goodmountain.             'Now just a moment--' the Bursar began.             William left them to it. The stone he could work out - even the engravers used a big flat stone as a workbench. And he'd seen dwarfs pulling paper sheets off the metal letters, so that made sense, too. And what the Bursar said had been unjustified. It wasn't as if metal had a soul.             He looked over the head of a dwarf who was busily assembling letters in a little metal hod, the stubby fingers darting from box to box in the big tray of type in front of him. Capital letters all in the top, small letters all in the bottom. It was even possible to get an idea of what the dwarf was assembling, just by watching the movements of his hands across the tray.             'M-a-k-e-$-$-$-I-n-n-Y-o-u-r-e-S-p-a-r-e-T-y-m--' he murmured.             A certainty formed. He glanced down at the sheets of grubby paper beside the tray.             They were covered with the dense spiky handwriting that identified its owner as an anal-retentive with a poor grip.             There were no flies on C.M.O.T. Dibbler. He would have charged them rent.             With barely a conscious thought, William pulled out his notebook, licked his pencil and wrote, very carefully, in his private shorthand:             'Amzg scenes hv ocrd in the Ct with the Openg o t Prntg Engn at the Sgn o t Bucket by G. Goodmountain, Dwf, which hs causd mch intereƒt amng all prts inc. chfs of commerƒe.'             He paused. The conversation at the other end of the room was definitely taking a more conciliatory turn.             'How much a thousand?' said the Bursar.             'Even cheaper for bulk rates,' said Goodmountain. 'Small runs no problem.'             The Bursar's face had that warm glaze of someone who deals in numbers and can see one huge and inconvenient number getting smaller in the very near future, and in those circumstances philosophy doesn't stand much of a chance. And what was visible of Goodmountain's face had the cheerful scowl of someone who's worked out how to turn lead into still more gold.             'Well, of course, a contract of this size would have to be ratified by the Archchancellor himself,' said the Bursar, 'but I can assure you that he listens very carefully to everything I say.'             I'm sure he does, your lordship,' said Goodmountain cheerfully.             'Uh, by the way,' said the Bursar, 'do you people have an Annual Dinner?'             'Oh, yes. Definitely,' said the dwarf.             'When is it?'             'When would you like it?'             William scribbled: 'Mch businƒs sms likly wth a Certain Educational Body in t Ct,' and then, because he had a truly honest nature, he added, 'we hear.'             Well, that was pretty good going. He'd got one letter away only this morning and already he had an important note for the next--             --except, of course, the customers weren't expecting another one for almost a month. He had a certain feeling that by then no one would be very interested. On the other hand, if he didn 't tell them about it, someone would be bound to complain. There had been all that trouble with the rain of dogs in Treacle Mine Road last year, and it wasn't as if that had even happened.             But even if he got the dwarfs to make the type really big, one item of gossip wasn't going to go very far.             Blast.             He'd have to scuttle around a bit and find some more.             On an impulse he wandered over to the departing Bursar.             'Excuse me, sir,' he said.             The Bursar, who was feeling in a very cheerful mood, raised an eyebrow in a good-humoured way.             'Hmm?' he said. 'It's Mr de Worde, isn't it?'             'Yes, sir. I--'             I'm afraid we do all our own writing down at the University,' said the Bursar.             'I wonder if I could just ask you what you think of Mr Good-mountain's new printing engine, sir?' said William.             'Why?'             'Er . . . Because I'd quite like to know? And I'd like to write it down for my news letter. You know? Views of a leading member of Ankh-Morpork's thaumaturgical establishment?'             'Oh?' The Bursar hesitated. 'This is the little thing you send out to the Duchess of Quirm and the Duke of Sto Helit and people like that, isn't it?'             'Yes, sir,' said William. Wizards were terrible snobs.             'Er. Well, then . . . you can say that I said it is a step in the right direction that will . . . er . . . be welcomed by all forward-thinking people and will drag the city kicking and screaming into the Century of the Fruitbat.' He watched eagle-eyed as William wrote this down. 'And my name is Dr A.A. Dinwiddie, D.M.(7th), D.Thau., B.Occ., M.Coll., B.R That's Dinwiddie with an o.'             'Yes, Dr Dinwiddie. Er . . . the Century of the Fruitbat is nearly over, sir. Would you like the city to be dragged kicking and screaming out of the Century of the Fruitbat?'             'Indeed.'             William wrote this down. It was a puzzle why things were always dragged kicking and screaming. No one ever seemed to want to, for example, lead them gently by the hand.             'And I'm sure you will send me a copy when it comes out, of course,' said the Bursar.             'Yes, Dr Dinwiddie.'             'And if you want anything from me at any other time, don't hesitate to ask.'             'Thank you, sir. But I'd always understood, sir, that Unseen University was against the use of movable type?'             'Oh, I think it's time to embrace the exciting challenges presented to us by the Century of the Fruitbat,' said the Bursar.             'We . . . That's the one we're just about to leave, sir.'             Then it's high time we embraced them, don't you think?'             'Good point, sir.'             'And now I must fly,' said the Bursar. 'Except that I mustn't.'   Lord Vetinari, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, poked at the ink in his inkwell. There was ice in it.             'Don't you even have a proper fire?' said Hughnon Ridcully, Chief Priest of Blind lo and unofficial spokesman for the city's religious establishment. I mean, I'm not one for stuffy rooms, but it's freezing in here!'             'Brisk, certainly,' said Lord Vetinari. 'It's odd, but the ice isn't as dark as the rest of the ink. What causes that, do you think?'             'Science, probably,' said Hughnon vaguely. Like his wizardly brother, Archchancellor Mustrum, he didn't like to bother himself with patently silly questions. Both gods and magic required solid, sensible men, and the brothers Ridcully were solid as rocks. And, in some respects, as sensible.             'Ah. Anyway . . . you were saying?'             'You must put a stop to this, Havelock. You know the . . . understanding.'             Vetinari seemed engrossed in the ink. 'Must, your reverence?' he said calmly, without looking up.             'You know why we're all against this movable type nonsense!'             'Remind me again . . . Look, it bobs up and down             Hughnon sighed. 'Words are too important to be left to machinery. We've got nothing against engraving, you know that. We've nothing against words being nailed down properly. But words that can be taken apart and used to make other words . . . well, that's downright dangerous. And I thought you weren't in favour, either?'             'Broadly, yes,' said the Patrician. 'But many years of ruling this city, your reverence, have taught me that you cannot apply brakes to a volcano. Sometimes it is best to let these things run their course. They generally die down again after a while.'             'You have not always taken such a relaxed approach, Havelock,' said Hughnon.             The Patrician gave him a cool stare that went on for a couple of seconds beyond the comfort barrier.             'Flexibility and understanding have always been my watchwords,' he said.             'My god, have they?'             'Indeed. And what I would like you and your brother to understand now, your reverence, in a flexible way, is that this enterprise is being undertaken by dwarfs. And do you know where the largest dwarf city is, your reverence?'             'What? Oh . . . let's see . . . there's that place in--'             'Yes, everyone starts by saying that. But it's Ankh-Morpork, in fact. There are more than fifty thousand dwarfs here now.'             'Surely not?'             'I assure you. We have currently very good relationships with the dwarf communities in Copperhead and Uberwald. In dealings with the dwarfs I have seen to it that the city's hand of friendship is permanently outstretched in a slightly downward direction. And in this current cold snap I am sure we are all very glad that bargeloads of coal and lamp oil are coming down from the dwarf mines every day. Do you catch my meaning?'             Hughnon glanced at the fireplace. Against all probability, one lump of coal was smouldering all by itself.             'And of course,' the Patrician went on, 'it is increasingly hard to ignore this new type, aha, of printing when vast printeries now exist in the Agatean Empire and, as I am sure you are aware, in Omnia. And from Omnia, as you no doubt know, the Omnians export huge amounts of their holy Book of Om and these pamphlets they're so keen on,'             'Evangelical nonsense,' said Hughnon. 'You should have banned them long ago,'             Once again the stare went on a good deal too long.             'Ban a religion, your reverence?'             'Well, when I say ban, I mean--'             'I'm sure no one could call me a despot, your reverence,' said Lord Vetinari severely.             Hughnon Ridcully made a misjudged attempt to lighten the mood. 'Not twice at any rate, ahaha,'             'I'm sorry?'             'I said . . . not twice at any rate . . . ahaha.'             'I do apologize, but you seem to have lost me there.'             'It was, uh, a minor witticism, Hav-- my lord.'             'Oh. Yes. Ahah,' said Vetinari, and the words withered in the air. 'No, I'm afraid you will find that the Omnians are quite free to distribute their good news about Om. But take heart! Surely you have some good news about Io?'             'What? Oh. Yes, of course. He had a bit of a cold last month, but he's up and about again.'             'Capital. That is good news. No doubt these printers will happily spread the word on your behalf. I'm sure they will work to your exacting requirements.'             'And these are your reasons, my lord?'             'Do you think I have others?' said Lord Vetinari. 'My motives, as ever, are entirely transparent.'             Hughnon reflected that 'entirely transparent' meant either that you could see right through them or that you couldn't see them at all.             Lord Vetinari shuffled through a file of paper. 'However, the Guild of Engravers has put its rates up three times in the past year.'             'Ah. I see,' said Hughnon.             'A civilization runs on words, your reverence. Civilization is words. Which, on the whole, should not be too expensive. The world turns, your reverence, and we must spin with it.' He smiled. 'Once upon a time nations fought like great grunting beasts in a swamp. Ankh-Morpork ruled a large part of that swamp because it had the best claws. But today gold has taken the place of steel and, my goodness, the Ankh-Morpork dollar seems to be the currency of choice. Tomorrow . . . perhaps the weaponry will be just words. The most words, the quickest words, the last words. Look out of the window. Tell me what you see.'             'Fog,' said the Chief Priest.             Vetinari sighed. Sometimes the weather had no sense of narrative convenience.             'If it was a fine day,' he said sharply, 'you would see the big semaphore tower on the other side of the river. Words flying back and forth from every corner of the continent. Not long ago it would take me the better part of a month to exchange letters with our ambassador in Genua. Now I can have a reply tomorrow. Certain things become easier, but this makes them harder in other ways. We have to change the way we think. We have to move with the times. Have you heard of c-commerce?'             'Certainly. The merchant ships are always--'             'I mean that you may now send a clacks all the way to Genua to order a . . . a pint of prawns, if you like. Is that not a notable thing?'             They would be pretty high when they got here, my lord!'             'Certainly. That was just an example. But now think of a prawn as merely an assemblage of information!' said Lord Vetinari, his eyes sparkling.             'Are you suggesting that prawns could travel by semaphore?' said the Chief Priest. I suppose that you might be able to flick them from--'             'I was endeavouring to point out the fact that information is also bought and sold,' said Lord Vetinari. 'And also that what was once considered impossible is now quite easily achieved. Kings and lords come and go and leave nothing but statues in a desert, while a couple of young men tinkering in a workshop change the way the world works.'             He walked over to a table on which was spread out a map of the world. It was a workman's map; this is to say, it was a map used by someone who needed to refer to it a lot. It was covered with notes and markers.             'We've always looked beyond the walls for the invaders,' he said. 'We always thought change came from outside, usually on the point of a sword. And then we look around and find that it comes from the inside of the head of someone you wouldn't notice in the street. In certain circumstances it may be convenient to remove the head, but there seem to be such a lot of them these days.'             He gestured towards the busy map.             'A thousand years ago we thought the world was a bowl,' he said. 'Five hundred years ago we knew it was a globe. Today we know it is flat and round and carried through space on the back of a turtle.' He turned and gave the High Priest another smile. 'Don't you wonder what shape it will turn out to be tomorrow?'             But a family trait of all the Ridcullys was not to let go of a thread until you've unravelled the whole garment.             'Besides, they have these little pincer things, you know, and would probably hang on like--'             'What do?'             'Prawns. They'd hang on to--'             'You are taking me rather too literally, your reverence,' said Vetinari sharply.             'Oh.'             'I was merely endeavouring to indicate that if we do not grab events by the collar they will have us by the throat.'             It'll end in trouble, my lord,' said Ridcully. He'd found it a good general comment in practically any debate. Besides, it was so often true.             Lord Vetinari sighed. In my experience, practically everything does,' he said. That is the nature of things. All we can do is sing as we go,'             He stood up. 'However, I will pay a personal visit to the dwarfs in question,' He reached out to ring a bell on his desk, stopped, and with a smile at the priest moved his hand instead to a brass and leather tube that hung from two brass hooks. The mouthpiece was in the shape of a dragon.             He whistled into it, and then said, 'Mr Drumknott? My coach, please,'             'Is it me,' said Ridcully, giving the new-fangled speaking tube a nervous glance, 'or is there a terrible smell in here?'             Lord Vetinari gave him a quizzical look and glanced down.             There was a basket just underneath his desk. In it was what appeared to be, at first glance and certainly at first smell, a dead dog. It lay with all four legs in the air. Only the occasional gentle expulsion of wind suggested that some living process was going on.             'It's his teeth,' he said coldly. The dog Wuffles turned over and regarded the priest with one baleful black eye.             'He's doing very well for a dog of his age,' said Hughnon, in a desperate attempt to climb a suddenly tilting slope. 'How old would he be now?'             'Sixteen,' said the Patrician. 'That's over a hundred in dog years.'             Wuffles dragged himself into a sitting position and growled, releasing a gust of stale odours from the depths of his basket.             'He's very healthy,' said Hughnon while trying not to breathe. 'For his age, I mean. I expect you get used to the smell.'             'What smell?' said Lord Vetinari.             'Ah. Yes. Indeed,' said Hughnon.   As Lord Vetinari's coach rattled off through the slush towards Gleam Street it may have surprised its occupant to know that, in a cellar quite near by, someone looking very much like him was chained to the wall.             It was quite a long chain, giving him access to a table and chair, a bed, and a hole in the floor.             Currently he was at the table. On the other side of it was Mr Pin. Mr Tulip was leaning menacingly against the wall. It would be clear to any experienced person that what was going on here was 'good cop, bad cop' with the peculiar drawback that there were no cops. There was just an apparently endless supply of Mr Tulip.             'So . . . Charlie,' said Mr Pin, 'how about it?'             'It's not illegal, is it?' said the man addressed as Charlie.             Mr Pin spread his hands. 'What's legality, Charlie? Just words on paper. But you won't be doing anything wrong.'             Charlie nodded uncertainly. 'But ten thousand dollars doesn't sound like the kind of money you get for doing something right,' he said. 'Not for just saying a few words,'             'Mr Tulip here once got even more money than that for saying just a few words, Charlie,' said Mr Pin soothingly.             'Yeah, I said, "Give me all the --ing cash or the girl gets it,"' said Mr Tulip.             'Was that right?' said Charlie, who seemed to Mr Pin to have a highly developed death wish.             'Absolutely right for that occasion, yes,' he said.             'Yes, but it's not often people make money like that,' said the suicidal Charlie. His eyes kept straying to the monstrous bulk of Mr Tulip, who was holding a paper bag in one hand and, in the other hand, a spoon. He was using the spoon to ferry a fine white powder to his nose, his mouth and once, Charlie would have sworn, his ear.             'Well, you are a special man, Charlie,' said Mr Pin. 'And afterwards you will have to stay out of sight for a long time.' 37             'Yeah,' said Mr Tulip, in a spray of powder. There was a sudden strong smell of mothballs.             'All right, but why did you have to kidnap me, then? One minute I was locking up for the night, next minute - bang! And you've got me chained up.'             Mr Pin decided to change tack. Charlie was arguing too much for a man in the same room as Mr Tulip, especially a Mr Tulip who was halfway through a bag of powdered mothballs. He gave him a big friendly smile.             'There's no point in dwelling on the past, my friend,' he said. 'This is business. All we want is a few days of your time, and then you end up with a fortune and - and I believe this is important, Charlie - a lifetime in which to spend it.'             Charlie was turning out to be very stupid indeed.             'But how do you know I won't tell someone?' he insisted.             Mr Pin sighed. 'We trust you, Charlie.'             The man had run a clothes shop in Pseudopolis. Small shopkeepers had to be smart, didn't they? They were usually sharp as knives when it came to making just the right amount of wrong change. So much for physiognomy, thought Mr Pin. This man could pass for the Patrician even in a good light, but while by all accounts Lord Vetinari would have already worked out all the nasty ways the future could go, Charlie was actually entertaining the idea that he was going to come out of this alive and might even outsmart Mr Pin. He was actually trying to be cunning. He was sitting a few feet away from Mr Tulip, a man trying to snort crushed moth repellant, and he was trying guile. You almost had to admire the man.             'I'll need to be back by Friday,' said Charlie. 'It'll all be over by Friday, will it?' ~blk~ The shed that was now leased by the dwarfs had in the course of its rickety life been a forge and a laundry and a dozen other enterprises, and had last been used as a rocking-horse factory by someone who had thought something was the Next Big Thing when it was by then one day away from becoming the Last Big Flop. Stacks of half-finished rocking horses that Mr Cheese had 38 been unable to sell for the back rent still filled one wall all the way to the tin roof. There was a shelf of corroding paint tins. Brushes had fossilized in their jars.             The press occupied the centre of the floor, with several dwarfs at work. William had seen presses. The engravers used them. This one had an organic quality, though. The dwarfs spent as much time changing the press as they did using it. Extra rollers appeared, endless belts were threaded into the works. The press grew by the hour.             Goodmountain was working in front of several of the large sloped boxes, each one of which was divided into several dozen compartments.             William watched the dwarf's hand fly over the little boxes of leaden letters.             'Why's there a bigger box for the Es?'             ' 'cos that's the letter we use most of.'             'Is that why it's in the middle of the box?'             'Right. Es then Ts then As . . .'             'I mean, people would expect to see A in the middle.'             'We put E.'             'But you've got more Ns than Us. And U is a vowel.'             'People use more Ns than you think.'             On the other side of the room Caslong's stubby dwarf fingers danced across his own boxes of letters.             'You can almost read what he's working on--' William began.             Goodmountain glanced up. His eyes narrowed for a moment.             ' ". . . Make . . . more . . . money . . . inn . . . youre . . . Spare . . . Time . . ." ' he said. 'Sounds like Mr Dibbler has been back.'             William stared down at the box of letters again. Of course, a quill pen potentially contained anything you wrote with it. He could understand that. But it did so in a clearly theoretical way, a safe way. Whereas these dull grey blocks looked threatening. He could understand why they worried people. Put us together in the right way, they seemed to say, and we can be anything you want. We could even be something you don't want. We can spell anything. We can certainly spell trouble.             The ban on movable type wasn't exactly a law. But he knew the 39 engravers didn't like it, because they had the world operating just as they wanted it, thank you very much. And Lord Vetinari was said not to like it, because too many words only upset people. And the wizards and the priests didn't like it because words were important.             An engraved page was an engraved page, complete and unique. But if you took the leaden letters that had previously been used to set the words of a god, and then used them to set a cookery book, what did that do to the holy wisdom? For that matter, what would it do to the pie? As for printing a book of spells, and then using the same type for a book of navigation - well, the voyage might go anywhere.             On cue, because history likes neatness, he heard the sound of a carriage drawing up in the street outside. A few moments later Lord Vetinari stepped inside and stood leaning heavily on his stick and surveying the room with mild interest.             'Why . . . Lord de Worde,' he said, looking surprised. I had no idea that you were involved in this enterprise             William coloured as he hurried over to the city's supreme ruler. 'It's Mister de Worde, my lord.'             'Ah, yes. Of course. Indeed.' Lord Vetinari's gaze traversed the inky room, paused a moment on the pile of madly smiling rocking horses, and then took in the toiling dwarfs. 'Yes. Of course. And are you in charge?'             'No one is, my lord,' said William. 'But Mr Goodmountain over there seems to do most of the talking.'             'So what exactly is your purpose here?'             'Er . . .' William paused, which he knew was never a good tactic with the Patrician. 'Frankly, sir, it's warm, my office is freezing, and . . . well, it's fascinating. Look, I know it's not really--'             Lord Vetinari nodded and raised a hand. 'Be so good as to ask Mr Goodmountain to come over here, will you?'             William tried to whisper a few instructions into Gunilla's ear as he hustled him over to the tall figure of the Patrician.             'Ah, good,' said the Patrician. 'Now, I would just like to ask one or two questions, if I may?'             Goodmountain nodded. 40             'Firstly, is Mr Cut-My-Own-Throat Dibbler involved in this enterprise in any significant managerial capacity?'             'What?' said William. He hadn't been expecting this.             'Shifty fellow, sells sausages--'             'Oh, him. No. Just the dwarfs.'             'I see. And is this building built on a crack in space-time?'             'What?' said Gunilla.             The Patrician sighed. 'When one has been ruler of this city as long as I have,' he said, 'one gets to know with a sad certainty that whenever some well-meaning soul begins a novel enterprise they always, with some kind of uncanny foresight, site it at the point where it will do maximum harm to the fabric of reality. There was that Holy Wood moving picture fiasco a few years ago, yes? And that Music with Rocks In business not long after, we never got to the bottom of that. And of course the wizards seem to break into the Dungeon Dimensions so often they might as well install a revolving door. And I'm sure I don't have to remind you what happened when the late Mr Hong chose to open his Three Jolly Luck Take-Away Fish Bar in Dagon Street during the lunar eclipse. Yes? You see, gentlemen, it would be nice to think that someone, somewhere in this city, is engaged in some simple enterprise that is hot going to end up causing tentacled monsters and dread apparitions to stalk the streets eating people. So . . . ?'             'What?' said Goodmountain.             'We haven't noticed any cracks,' said William.             'Ah, but possibly on this very site a strange cult once engaged in eldritch rites, the very essence of which permeated the neighbourhood, and which seeks only the rite, ahah, circumstances to once again arise and walk around eating people?'             'What?' said Gunilla. He looked helplessly at William, who could only add:             They made rocking horses here.'             'Really? I've always thought there was something slightly sinister about rocking horses,' said Lord Vetinari, but he looked subtly disappointed. Then he brightened up. He pointed to the big stone on which the type was arranged.             'Aha,' he said. 'Innocently taken from the overgrown ruins of a 41 megalithic stone circle, this stone is redolent with the blood of thousands, I have no doubt, who will emerge to seek revenge, you may depend upon it.'             'It was cut specially for me by my brother,' said Gunilla. 'And I don't have to take that kind of talk, mister. Who do you think you are, coming in here and talking daft like that?'             William stepped forward at a healthy fraction of the speed of terror.             'I wonder if I might just take Mr Goodmountain aside and explain one or two things to him?' he said quickly.             The Patrician's bright, enquiring smile did not so much as flicker.             'What a good idea,' he said, as William frogmarched the dwarf to a corner. 'He will be sure to thank you for it later.'             Lord Vetinari stood leaning on his stick and looking at the press with an air of benevolent interest, while behind him William de Worde explained the political realities of Ankh-Morpork, especially those relating to sudden death. With gestures.             After thirty seconds of this, Goodmountain came back and stood foursquare in front of the Patrician, with his thumbs in his belt.             'I speak as I find, me,' he said. 'Always have done, always will--'             'And what is it that you call a spade?' said Lord Vetinari.             'What? Never use spades,' said the glowering dwarf. 'Farmers use spades. But I call a shovel a shovel.'             'Yes, I thought you would,' said Lord Vetinari.             'Young William here says you're a ruthless despot who doesn't like printing. But I say you're a fair-minded man who won't stand in the way of an honest dwarf making a bit of a living, am I right?'             Once again Lord Vetinari's smile remained in place.             'Mr de Worde, a moment, please . . .'             The Patrician put his arm companionably around William's shoulders and walked him gently away from the watching dwarfs.             'I only said that some people call you--' William began.             'Now, sir,' said the Patrician, waving this away. 'I think I might just be persuaded, against all experience, that we have here a little endeavour that might just be pursued without filling my streets with inconvenient occult rubbish. It is hard to imagine such a thing 42 in Ankh-Morpork, but I could just about accept it as a possibility. And it so happens that I feel the question of "printing" is one that might, with care, be re-opened.'             'You do?'             'Yes. So I am minded to allow your friends to proceed with their folly.'             'Er, they're not exactly--' William began.             'Of course, I should add that, in the event of there being any problems of a tentacular nature, you would be held personally responsible.'             'Me? But I--'             'Ah. You feel that I am being unfair? Ruthlessly despotic, perhaps?'             'Well, I, er--'             'Apart from anything else, the dwarfs are a very hard-working and valuable ethnic grouping in the city,' said the Patrician. 'On the whole, I wish to avoid any low-level difficulties at this time, what with the unsettled situation in Uberwald and the whole Muntab question.'             'Where's Muntab?' said William.             'Exactly. How is Lord de Worde, by the way? You should write to him more often, you know.'             William said nothing.             'I always think it is a very sad thing when families fall out,' said Lord Vetinari. There is far too much mutton-headed ill-feeling in the world.' He gave William a companionable pat. 'I'm sure you will see to it that the printing enterprise stays firmly in the realms, of the cult, the canny and the scrutable. Do I make myself clear?'             'But I don't have any control ov--'             'Hmm?'             'Yes, Lord Vetinari,' said William.             'Good. Good!' The Patrician straightened up, turned, and beamed at the dwarfs.             'Jolly good,' he said. 'My word. Lots of little letters, all screwed together. Possibly an idea whose time has come. I may even have an occasional job for you myself.' 43             William waved frantically at Gunilla from behind the Patrician's back.             'Special rate for government jobs,' the dwarf muttered.             'Oh, but I wouldn't dream of paying any less than other customers,' said the Patrician.             'I wasn't going to charge you less than--'             'Well, I'm sure we've all been very pleased to see you here, your lordship,' said William brightly, swivelling the Patrician in the direction of the door. 'We look forward to the pleasure of your custom.'             'Are you quite sure Mr Dibbler isn't involved in this concern?'             'I think he's having some things printed, but that's all,' said William.             'Astonishing. Astonishing,' said Lord Vetinari, getting into his coach. 'I do hope he isn't ill.'             Two figures watched his departure from the rooftop opposite.             One of them said, very, very quietly, '--!'             The other said, 'You have a point of view, Mr Tulip?'             'And he's the man who runs the city?'             'Yeah,'             'So where's his --ing bodyguards?'             'If we wanted to scrag him, here and now, how useful would, say, four bodyguards be?'             'As a --ing chocolate kettle, Mr Pin.'             'There you are, then,'             'But I could knock him over from here with a --ing brick!'             'I gather there are many organizations who hold Views on that, Mr Tulip. People tell me this dump is thriving. The man at the top has a lot of friends when everything is going well. You would soon run out of bricks,'             Mr Tulip looked down at the departing coach. 'From what I hear he mostly doesn't do a --ing thing!' he complained.             'Yeah,' said Mr Pin smoothly. 'One of the hardest things to do properly, in politics.'             Mr Tulip and Mr Pin brought different things to their partnership, and in this instance what Mr Pin brought was political savvy. Mr Tulip respected this, even if he didn't understand it. He 44 contented himself with muttering, 'It'd be simpler to --ing kill him,'             'Oh, for a --ing simple world,' said Mr Pin. 'Look, lay off the honk, eh? That stuff's for trolls. It's worse than slab. And they cut it with ground glass,'              ' 's chemical,' said Mr Tulip sullenly.             Mr Pin sighed. 'Shall I try again?' he said. 'Listen carefully. Drugs equals chemicals, but, and please do listen to this part, sheesh, chemicals do not equal drugs. Remember all that trouble with the calcium carbonate? When you paid the man five dollars?'             'Made me feel good,' muttered Mr Tulip.             'Calcium carbonate?' said Mr Pin. 'Even for you, I mean . . . Look, you put up your actual nose enough chalk that someone could probably cut your head off and write on a blackboard with your neck?'             That was the major problem with Mr Tulip, he thought, as they made their way to the ground. It wasn't that he had a drugs habit. He wanted to have a drugs habit. What he had was a stupidity habit, which cut in whenever he found anything being sold in little bags, and this had resulted in Mr Tulip seeking heaven in flour, salt, baking powder and pickled beef sandwiches. In a street where furtive people were selling Clang, Slip, Chop, Rhino, Skunk, Triplin, Floats, Honk, Double Honk, Congers and Slack, Mr Tulip had an unerring way of finding the man who was retailing curry powder at what worked out as six hundred dollars a pound. It was so --ing embarrassing.             Currently he was experimenting with the whole range of recreational chemicals available to Ankh-Morpork's troll population, because at least when dealing with trolls Mr Tulip had a moderate chance of outsmarting somebody. In theory Slab and Honk shouldn't have any effect on the human brain, apart from maybe dissolving it. Mr Tulip was hanging in there. He'd tried normality once and hadn't liked it.             Mr Pin sighed again. 'Come on,' he said. 'Let's feed the geek,'             In Ankh-Morpork it is very hard to watch without being watched in turn, and the two furtive watchers were indeed under careful observation. 45             They were being watched by a small dog, variously coloured but mainly a rusty grey. Occasionally it scratched itself, with a noise like someone trying to shave a wire brush.             There was a piece of string around its neck. This was attached to another piece of string or, rather, to a length made up of pieces of string inexpertly knotted together.             The string was being held in the hand of a man. At least, such might be deduced from the fact that it disappeared into the same pocket of the grubby coat as one sleeve, which presumably had an arm in it, and theoretically therefore a hand on the end.             It was a strange coat. It stretched from the pavement almost to the brim of the hat above it, which was shaped rather like a sugar loaf. There was a suggestion of grey hair around the join. One arm burrowed in the suspicious depths of a pocket and produced a cold sausage.             'Two men spyin' on the Patrician,' said the dog. 'An interestin' fing.'             'Bugrem,' said the man, and broke the sausage into two democratic halves. ~blk~ William wrote a short paragraph about Patrician Visits The Bucket, and examined his notebook.             Amazing, really. He'd found no less than a dozen items for his news letter in only a day. It was astonishing what people would tell you if you asked them.             Someone had stolen one of the golden fangs of the statue of Offler the Crocodile God; he'd promised Sergeant Colon a drink for telling him that, but in any case had got some way towards payment by appending to his paragraph the sentence: The Watch are Mightily in Pursuit of the Wrongdoer, and are Confident of Apprehen,'ion at an Early Juncture.'             He was not entirely sure about this, although Sergeant Colon had looked very sincere when he said it.             The nature of truth always bothered William. He had been brought up to tell it or, more correctly, to 'own up' and some habits are hard to break if they've been beaten in hard enough. And Lord de Worde had inclined to the old proverb that, as you bend the twig, so grows the tree. William had not been a particularly flexible 46 twig. Lord de Worde had not, himself, been a violent man. He'd merely employed them. Lord de Worde, as far as William could recall, had no great enthusiasm for anything that involved touching people.             Anyway, William always told himself, he was no good at making things up; anything that wasn't the truth simply unravelled for him. Even little white lies, like 'I shall definitely have the money by the end of the week', always ended in trouble. That was 'telling stories', a sin in the de Worde compendium that was worse than lying; it was trying to make lies interesting.             So William de Worde told the truth, out of cosmic self defence. He'd found a hard truth less hard than an easy lie.             There had been rather a good fight in the Mended Drum. William was very pleased with that one: 'Whereupon Brezock the Barbarian picked up a table and delivered a blow to Moltin the Snatcher, who in his turn seized hold of the Chandeliers and swung thereon, the while crying, "Take that, thou B*st*rd that you are!!!", at which juncture, a ruckus commenced and 5 or 6 people were hurt.'             He took it all down to the Bucket.             Gunilla read it with interest; it seemed to take very little time for the dwarfs to set it up in type.             And it was odd, but. . .             . . . once it was in type, all the letters so neat and regular . . .             . . . it looked more real.             Boddony, who seemed to be second in command of the print room, squinted at the columns of type over Goodmountain's shoulders.             'Hmm,' he said.             'What do you think?' said William.             'Looks a bit . . . grey,' said the dwarf. 'All the type bunched up. Looks like a book,'             'Well, that's all right, isn't it?' said William. Looking like a book sounded like a good thing.             'Maybe you want it more sort of spaced out?' said Gunilla.             William stared at the printed page. An idea crept over him. It seemed to evolve from the page itself. 47             'How about,' he said, 'if we put a little title on each piece?'             He picked up a scrap of paper and doodled: 5,'6 Hurt in Tavern Brawl.             Boddony read it solemnly. 'Yes,' he said eventually. That looks . . . suitable. .' He passed the paper across the table.             'What do you call this news sheet?' he said.             'I don't,' said William.             'You've got to call it something,' said Boddony. 'What do you put at the top?'             'Generally something like "To my Lord the . . ." ' William began. Boddony shook his head.             'You can't put that,' he said. 'You want something a bit more general. More snappy.'             'How about "Ankh-Morpork Items"?' said William. 'Sorry, but I'm not much good at names.'             Gunilla pulled his little hod out of his apron and selected some letters from one of the cases on the table. He screwed them together, inked them, and rolled a sheet of paper over them.             William read: Ankh-Morpork times.             'Messed that up a bit. Wasn't paying attention,' muttered Gunilla, reaching for the type. William stopped him.             'I don't know,' he said. 'Er. Leave it as it is . . . just make it a bigger T and a smaller i.'             'That's it, then,' said Gunilla. 'All done. All right, lad? How many copies do you want?'             'Er . . . twenty? Thirty?'             'How about a couple of hundred?' Gunilla nodded at the dwarfs, who set to work. 'It's hardly worth going to press for less.'             'Good grief! I can't imagine there's enough people in the city that'd pay five dollars!'             'All right, charge 'em half a dollar. Then it'll be fifty dollars for us and the same for you.'             'My word! Really?' William stared at the beaming dwarf. 'But I've still got to sell them,' he said. 'It's not as though they're cakes in a shop. It's not like--'             He sniffed. His eyes began to water. 48             'Oh dear,' he said. 'We're going to have another visitor. I know that smell.'             'What smell?' said the dwarf.             The door creaked open.             There was this to be said about the Smell of Foul Ole Ron, an odour so intense that it took on a personality of its own and fully justified the capital letter: after the initial shock the organs of smell just gave up and shut down, as if no more able to comprehend the thing than an oyster can comprehend the ocean. After some minutes in its presence, wax would trickle out of people's ears and their hair would begin to bleach.             It had developed to such a degree that it now led a semi-independent life of its own, and often went to the theatre by itself, or read small volumes of poetry. Ron was outclassed by his Smell.             Foul Ole Ron's hands were thrust deeply into his pockets, but from one pocket issued a length of string, or rather a great many lengths of string tied into one length. The other end was attached to a small dog of the greyish persuasion. It was possibly a terrier. It walked with a limp and also in a kind of oblique fashion, as though it was trying to insinuate its way through the world. It walked like a dog who has long ago learned that the world contains more thrown boots than meaty bones. It walked like a dog that was prepared, at any moment, to run.             It looked up at William with crusted eyes and said: 'Woof.'             William felt that he ought to stand up for mankind.             'Sorry about the smell,' he said. Then he stared at the dog.             'What's this smell you keep on about?' said Gunilla. The rivets on his helmet were beginning to tarnish.             'It, er, belongs to Mr . . . er . . . Ron,' said William, still giving the dog a suspicious look. 'People say it's glandular.'             He was sure he'd seen the dog before. It was always in the corner of the picture, as it were - ambling through the streets, or just sitting on a corner, watching the world go by.             'What does he want?' said Gunilla. 'D'you think he wants us to print something?'             'Shouldn't think so,' said William. 'He's a sort of beggar. Only they won't let him in the Beggars' Guild any more.' 49             'He isn't saying anything.'             'Well, usually he just stands there until people give him something to go away. Er . . . you've heard of things like the Welcome Wagon, where various neighbours and traders greet newcomers to an area?'             'Yes.'             'Well, this is the dark side.'             Foul Ole Ron nodded and held out a hand, ' 's'right, Mister Push. Don't try the blarney gobble on me, juggins, I told 'em, I ain't slanging the gentry, bugrit. Millennium hand and shrimp. Dang.'             'Woof.'             William glared at the dog again.             'Growl,' it said.             Gunilla scratched somewhere in the recesses of his beard.             'One thing I already noticed about this here town,' he said, 'is that people'll buy practically anything off a man in the street.'             He picked up a handful of the news sheets, still damp from the press.             'Can you understand me, mister?' he said.             'Bugrit.'             Gunilla nudged William in the ribs. 'Does that mean yes or no, d'you think?'             'Probably yes.'             'Okay. Well, see here now, if you sell these things at, oh, twenty pence each, you can keep--'             'Hey, you can't sell it that cheap,' said William.             'Why not?'             'Why? Because . . . because . . because, well, anyone will be able to read it, that's why!'             'Good, 'cos that means anyone'll be able to pay twenty pence,' said Gunilla calmly. There's lots more poor folk than rich folk and it's easier to get money out of 'em.' He grimaced at Foul Ole Ron. 'This may seem a strange question,' he said, 'but have you got any friends?'             'I told 'em! I told 'em! Bugrem!'             'Probably yes,' said William. 'He hangs put with a bunch of . . . er . . . unfortunates who live under one of the bridges. Well, not exactly "hangs out". More "droops".' 50             'Well now,' said Gunilla, waving the copy of the Times at Ron, 'you can tell them that if they can sell these to people for twenty pence each, I'll let you keep one nice shiny penny.'             'Yeah? And you can put yer nice shiny penny where the sun don't shine,' said Ron.             'Oh, so you--' Gunilla began.             William laid a hand on his arm. 'Sorry, just a minute-- What was that you said, Ron?' he said.             'Bugrit,' said Foul Ole Ron.             It had sounded like Ron's voice and it had seemed to come from the general area of Ron's face, it was just that it had demonstrated a coherence you didn't often get.             'You want more than a penny?' said William carefully.             'Got to be worth five pence a time,' said Ron. More or less.             For some reason William's gaze was dragged down to the small grey dog. It returned it amiably and said, 'Woof?'             He looked back up again. 'Are you all right, Foul Ole Ron?' he said.             'Gottle o' geer, gottle o' geer,' said Ron mysteriously.             'All right . . . two pence,' said Gunilla.             'Four,' Ron seemed to say. 'But let's not mess about, okay? One dollar per thirty?'             'It's a deal,' said Goodmountain, who spat on his hand and would have held it out to seal the contract if William hadn't gripped it urgently.             'Don't.'             'What's wrong?'             William sighed. 'Have you got any horribly disfiguring diseases?'             'No!'             'Do you want some?'             'Oh.' Gunilla lowered his hand. 'You tell your friends to get round here right now, okay?' he said. He turned to William.             'Trustworthy, are they?'             'Well . . . sort of,' said William. 'It's probably not a good idea to leave paint thinners around.'             Outside, Foul Ole Ron and his dog ambled down the street. And the strange thing was that a conversation was going on, 51 even though there was technically only one person there.             'See? I told you. You just let me do the talkin', all right?'             'Bugrit.'             'Right. You stick with me and you won't go far wrong.'             'Bugrit.'             'Really? Well, I s'pose that'll have to do. Bark, bark.' ~blk~ Twelve people lived under the Misbegot Bridge and in a life of luxury, although luxury is not hard to achieve when you define it as something to eat at least once a day and especially when you have such a broad definition of 'something to eat'. Technically they were beggars, although they seldom had to beg. Possibly they were thieves, although they only took what had been thrown away, usually by people hurrying to be out of their presence.             Outsiders considered that the leader of the group was Coffin Henry, who would have been the city's champion expectorator if anyone else had wanted the title. But the group had the true democracy of the voteless. There was Arnold Sideways, whose lack of legs only served to give him an extra advantage in any pub fight, where a man with good teeth at groin height had it all his own way. And if it wasn't for the duck whose presence on his head he consistently denied, the Duck Man would have been viewed as well-spoken and educated and as sane as the next man. Unfortunately, the next man was Foul Ole Ron.             The other eight people were Altogether Andrews.             Altogether Andrews was one man with considerably more than one mind. In a rest state, when he had no particular problem to confront, there was no sign of this except a sort of background twitch and flicker as his features passed randomly under the control of, variously, Jossi, Lady Hermione, Little Sidney, Mr Viddle, Curly, the Judge and Tinker; there was also Burke, but the crew had only ever seen Burke once and never wanted to again, so the other seven personalities kept him buried. Nobody in the body answered to the name of Andrews. In the opinion of the Duck Man, who was probably the best in the crew at thinking in a straight line, Andrews had probably been some innocent and hospitable person of a psychic disposition who had simply been overwhelmed by the colonizing souls. 52             Only among the gentle crew under the bridge could a consensus person like Andrews find an accommodating niche. They'd welcomed him, or them, to the fraternity around the smoky fire. Someone who wasn't the same person for more than five minutes at a time could fit right in.             One other thing that united the crew - although probably nothing could unite Altogether Andrews - was a readiness to believe that a dog could talk. The group around the smouldering fire believed they had heard a lot of things talk, such as walls. A dog was easy by comparison. Besides, they respected the fact that Gaspode had the sharpest mind of the lot and never drank anything that corroded the container.             'Let's try this again, shall we?' he said. 'If you sell thirty of the things, you'll get a dollar. A whole dollar. Got that?'             'Bugrit.'             'Quack.'             'Haaargghhh . . . gak!'             'How much is that in old boots?'             Gaspode sighed. 'No, Arnold. You can use the money to buy as many old--'             There was a rumble from Altogether Andrews, and the rest of the crew went very still. When Altogether Andrews was quiet for a while you never knew who he was going to be.             There was always the possibility that it would be Burke.             'Can I ask a question?' said Altogether Andrews, in a rather hoarse treble.             The crew relaxed. That sounded like Lady Hermione. She wasn't a problem.             'Yes . . . your ladyship?' said Gaspode.             'This wouldn't be . . . work, would it?'             The mention of the word sent the rest of the crew into a fugue of stress and bewildered panic.             'Haaaruk . . . gak!'             'Bugrit!'             'Quack!'             'No, no, no,' said Gaspode hurriedly. 'It's hardly work, is it? Just handing out stuff and takin' money? Doesn't sound like work to me.' 53             'I ain't working!' shouted Coffin Henry. I am socially inadequate in the whole area of doin' anything!'             'We do not work,' said Arnold Sideways. 'We is gentlemen of les-u-are.'             'Ahem,' said Lady Hermione.             'Gentlemen and ladies of les-u-are,' said Arnold gallantly.             'This is a very nasty winter. Extra money would certainly come in handy,' said the Duck Man.             'What for?' said Arnold.             'We could live like kings on a dollar a day, Arnold,'             'What, you mean someone'd chop our heads off?'.             'No, I--'             'Someone'd climb up inside the privy with a red-hot poker and--'             'No! I meant--'             'Someone'd drown us in a butt of wine?'             'No, that's dying like kings, Arnold,'             'I shouldn't reckon there's a butt of wine big enough that you couldn't drink your way out of it,' muttered Gaspode. 'So, what about it, masters? Oh, and mistress, o' course. Shall I-- shall Ron tell that lad we're up for it?'             'Indeed,'             'Okay,'             'Gawwwark . . . pt!'             'Bugrit!'             They looked at Altogether Andrews. His lips moved, his face flickered. Then he held up five democratic fingers.             'The ayes have it,' said Gaspode. ~blk~ Mr Pin lit a cigar. Smoking was his one vice. At least, it was his only vice that he thought of as a vice. All the others were just job skills.             Mr Tulip's vices were also limitless, but he owned up to cheap aftershave because a man has to drink something. The drugs didn't count, if only because the only time he'd ever got real ones was when they'd robbed a horse doctor and he'd taken a couple of big pills that had made every vein in his body stand out like a purple hosepipe. 54             The pair were not thugs. At least they did not see themselves as thugs. Nor were they thieves. At least they never thought of themselves as thieves. They did not think of themselves as assassins. Assassins were posh and had rules. Pin and Tulip - the New Firm, as Mr Pin liked to refer to themselves - did not have rules.             They thought of themselves as facilitators. They were men who made things happen, men who were going places.             It has to be added that when one says 'they thought' it means 'Mr Pin thought'. Mr Tulip used his head all the time, from a distance of about eight inches, but he was not, except in one or two unexpected areas, a man given much to using his brain. On the whole, he left Mr Pin to do the polysyllabic cogitation.             Mr Pin, on the other hand, was not very good at sustained, mindless violence, and admired the fact that Mr Tulip had an apparently bottomless supply. When they had first met, and had recognized in each other the qualities that would make their partnership greater than the sum of its parts, he'd seen that Mr Tulip was not, as he appeared to the rest of the world, just another nutjob. Some negative qualities can reach a pitch of perfection that changes their very nature, and Mr Tulip had turned anger into an art.             It was not anger at anything. It was just pure, platonic anger from somewhere in the reptilian depths of the soul, a fountain of never-ending red-hot grudge; Mr Tulip lived his life on that thin line most people occupy just before they haul off and hit someone repeatedly with a spanner. For Mr Tulip, anger was the ground state of being. Pin had occasionally wondered what had happened to the man to make him as angry as that, but to Tulip the past was another country with very, very well-guarded borders. Sometimes Mr Pin heard him screaming at night.             It was quite hard to hire Mr Tulip and Mr Pin. You had to know the right people. To be more accurate, you had to know the wrong people, and you got to know them by hanging around a certain kind of bar and surviving, which was kind of a first test. The wrong people, of course, would not know Mr Tulip and Mr Pin. But they would know a man. And that man would, in a general sense, express the guarded opinion that he might know how to get in 55 touch with men of a Pin-like or Tulipolitic disposition. He could not exactly recall much more than that at the moment, due to memory loss brought on by lack of money. Once cured, he might indicate in a general kind of way another address where you would meet, in a dark corner, a man who would tell you emphatically that he had never heard of anyone called Tulip or Pin. He would also ask where you would be at, say, nine o'clock tonight.             And then you would meet Mr Tulip and Mr Pin. They would know you had money, they would know you had something on your mind and, if you had been really stupid, they now knew your address.             And it had therefore come as a surprise to the New Firm that their latest client had come straight to them. This was worrying. It was also worrying that he was dead. Generally the New Firm had no problem with corpses, but they didn't like them to speak.             Mr Slant coughed. Mr Pin noticed that this created a small cloud of dust. For Mr Slant was a zombie.             'I must reiterate,' said Mr Slant, 'that I am a mere facilitator in this matter--'             'Just like us,' said Mr Tulip.             Mr Slant indicated with a look that he would never in a thousand years be just like Mr Tulip, but he said: 'Quite so. My clients wished me to find some . . . experts. I found you. I gave you some sealed instructions. You have accepted the contract. And I understand that as a result of this you have made certain . . . arrangements. I do not know what those arrangements are. I will continue not to know what those arrangements are. My relationship with you is, as they say, on the long finger. Do you understand me?'             'What --ing finger is that?' said Mr Tulip. He was getting jittery in the presence of the dead lawyer.             'We see each other only when necessary, we say as little as possible.'             'I hate --ing zombies,' said Mr Tulip. That morning he'd tried something he'd found in a box under the sink. If it cleaned drains, he'd reasoned, that meant it was chemical. Now he was getting strange messages from his large intestine.             'I am sure the feeling is mutual,' said Mr Slant. 56             'I understand what you're saying,' said Mr Pin. 'You're saying that if this goes bad you've never seen us in your life--'             'Ahem . . .' Mr Slant coughed.             'Your afterlife,' Mr Pin corrected himself. 'Okay. What about the money?'             'As requested, thirty thousand dollars for special expenses will be included in the sum already agreed.'             'In gems. Not cash.'             'Of course. And my clients would hardly write you a cheque. It will be delivered tonight. And perhaps I should mention one other matter.' His dry fingers shuffled through the dry papers in his dry briefcase, and he handed Mr Pin a folder.             Mr Pin read it. He turned a few pages quickly.             'You may show it to your monkey,' said Mr Slant.             Mr Pin managed to grab Mr Tulip's arm before it reached the zombie's head. Mr Slant did not even flinch.             'He's got the story of our lives, Mr Tulip!'             'So? I can still rip his --ing stitched-on head right off!'             'No, you cannot,' said Mr Slant. 'Your colleague will tell you why,'             'Because our legal friend here will have made a lot of copies, won't you, Mr Slant? And probably lodged them in all kinds of places in case he di-- in case--'             '. . . of accidents,' said Mr Slant smoothly. 'Well done. You have had an interesting career so far, gentlemen. You are quite young. Your talents have taken you a long way in a short time and given you quite a reputation in your chosen profession. While of course I have no idea about the task you are undertaking - no idea whatsoever, I must stress - I have no doubt that you will impress us all.'             'Does he know about the contract in Quirm?' said Mr Tulip.             'Yes,' said Mr Pin.             That stuff with the wire netting and the crabs and that --ing banker?'             'Yes.'             'And the thing with the puppies and that kid?'             'He does now,' said Mr Pin. 'He knows nearly everything. Very 57 clever. You believe you know where the bodies are buried, Mr Slant?'             'I've talked to one or two of them,' said Mr Slant. 'But it would appear that you have never committed a crime within Ankh-Morpork, otherwise of course I could not talk to you.'             'Who says we've never committed a --ing crime in Ankh-Morpork?' Mr Tulip demanded in an offended tone.             'As I understand it, you have never been to this city before.'             'Well? We've had all --ing day!'             'Have you been caught?' said Mr Slant.             'No!'             Then you have committed no crime. May I express the hope that your business here does not involve any kind of criminal activity?'             'Perish the thought,' said Mr Pin.             'The City Watch here are quite dogged in some respects. And the various Guilds jealously guard their professional territories.'             'We hold the police in high regard,' said Mr Pin. 'We have a great respect for the work they do.'             'We --ing love policemen,' said Mr Tulip.             'If there was a policemen's ball, we would be among the first to buy a ticket,' said Mr Pin.             ' 'specially if it was mounted on a plinth, or a little display stand of some sort,' said Mr Tulip, ' 'cos we like beautiful things.'             'I just wanted to be sure that we understood one another,' said Mr Slant, snapping his case closed. He stood up, nodding to them, and walked stiffly out of the room.             'What a--' Mr Tulip began, but Mr Pin raised a finger to his lips. He crossed silently to the door and opened it. The lawyer had gone.             'He knows what we're --ing here for,' Mr Tulip whispered hotly. 'What's he --ing pretending for?'             'Because he's a lawyer,' said Mr Pin. 'Nice place, this,' he added, in a slightly over-loud voice.             Mr Tulip looked around. 'Nah,' he said dismissively. 'I fort that at the start, but it's just a late eighteenth-century copy of the --ing Baroque Style. They got the dimensions all wrong. Didja see them pillars in the hall? Didja? --ing sixth-century Ephebian with 58 Second-Empire Djelibeybian --ing finials! It was all I could do not to laugh,'             'Yes,' said Mr Pin. 'As I have remarked before, Mr Tulip, in many ways you are a very unexpected man.'             Mr Tulip walked over to a shrouded picture and tweaked the cloth aside.             'Well, -- me, it's a --ing da Quirm,' he said. 'I seen a print of it. Woman Holding Ferret. He did it just after he moved from Genua and was influenced by --ing Caravati. Look at that --ing brushwork, will ya? See the way the line of the hand draws the --ing eye into the picture? Look at the quality of the light on the landscape you can see through the --ing window there. See the way the ferret's nose follows you around the room? That's --ing genius, that is. I don't mind telling you that if I was here by myself I'd be in --ing tears.'             'It's very pretty.'             'Pretty?' said Mr Tulip, despairing of his colleague's taste. He walked over to a statue by the door and stared hard at it, then ran his fingers lightly across the marble.             'I fort so! This is a --ing Scolpini! I'd bet anything. But I've never seen it in a catalogue. And it's been left in an empty house, where anyone could just --ing walk in and nick it!'             This place is under powerful protection. You saw the seals on the door.'             'Guilds? Bunch of --ing amateurs. We could go through this place like a hot knife through --ing thin ice and you know it. Amateurs and rocks and lawn ornaments and dead men walking about . . . We could knock this --ing city over.'             Mr Pin said nothing. A similar idea had occurred to him, but unlike with his colleague deed did not automatically follow upon what passed for thought.             The Firm had, indeed, not operated in Ankh-Morpork before. Mr Pin had kept away because, well, there were plenty of other cities, and an instinct for survival had told him that the Big Wahoonie* ~blk~~foot~ * The world's rarest and most evil-smelling vegetable, and consequently much prized by connoisseurs (who seldom prize anything cheap and common). Also a slang name for Ankh-Morpork, although it does not smell as bad as that. 59 should wait a while. He'd had a Plan, ever since he'd met Mr Tulip and found that his own inventiveness combined with Tulip's incessant anger promised a successful career. He'd developed their business in Genua, Pseudopolis, Quirm - cities smaller and easier to navigate than Ankh-Morpork although, these days, it seemed they increasingly resembled it.             The reason that they had done well, he'd realized, was that sooner or later people went soft. Take the trollish Breccia, f'rinstance. Once the honk and slab route had been established all the way to Uberwald, and the rival clans had been eliminated, the trolls had got soft. The tons acted like society lords. It was the same everywhere - the big old gangs and families reached some kind of equilibrium with society and settled down to be a specialist kind of businessman. They cut down on henchmen and employed butlers instead. And then, when there was a bit of difficulty, they needed muscle that could think . . . and there was the New Firm, ready and willing.             And waiting.             One day there'd be time for a new generation, Mr Pin thought. One with a new way of doing things, one without the shackles of tradition holding them back. Happening people. Mr Tulip, for example, happened all the time.             'Hey, will you --ing look at this?' said the happening Tulip, who had uncovered another painting. 'Signed by Gogli, but it's a --ing fake. Look at the way the light falls here, willya? And the leaves on this tree? If --ing Gogli painted that, it was with his --ing foot. Probably by some --ing pupil             While they had been marking time in the city Mr Pin had followed Mr Tulip, trailing scouring powder and canine worming tablets, through one after another of the city's art galleries. The man had insisted. It had been an education, mostly for the curators.             Mr Tulip had the instinct for art which he did not have for chemistry. Sneezing icing sugar and dribbling foot powder, he was ushered into private galleries, where he ran his bloodshot eye over nervously proffered trays of ivory miniatures.             Mr Pin had watched in silent admiration while his colleague spoke colourfully and at length on the differences between ivory faked the 60 old way, with bones, and the --ing new way the --ing dwarfs had come up with, using --ing refined oil, chalk and --ing Spirits of Nacle.             He'd lurched over to the tapestries, declaimed at length about high and low weaving, burst into tears in front of a verdant scene, and then demonstrated that the gallery's prized thirteenth-century Sto Lat tapestry couldn't be more than a hundred years old because, see that -ing bit of purple there? No way was that --ing dye around then. 'And . . . what's this? An Agatean embalming pot from the P'gi Su Dynasty? Someone took you to the --ing cleaners, mister. The glaze is rubbish.'             It was astounding, and Mr Pin had been so enthralled that he had all but forgotten to slip a few small valuable items into his pocket. But in truth he was familiar with Tulip on art. When they had occasionally to torch a premises Mr Tulip always made sure that any truly irreplaceable pieces were removed first, even though that meant taking extra time to tie the inhabitants to their beds. Somewhere under that self-inflicted scar tissue and at the heart of that shuddering anger was the soul of a true connoisseur with an unerring instinct for beauty. It was a strange thing to find in the body of a man who would mainline bath salts.             The big doors at the other end of the room swung open, revealing the dark space beyond.             'Mr Tulip?' said Mr Pin.             Tulip drew himself away from a painstaking examination of a possible Tapasi table, with its magnificent inlay work involving dozens of --ing rare veneers.             'Huh?'             Time to meet the bosses again,' said Mr Pin. ~blk~ William was just getting ready to leave his office for good when someone knocked at his door.             He opened it cautiously, but it was pushed the rest of the way.             'You utterly, utterly - ungrateful person!'             It wasn't a nice thing to be called, especially by a young lady. She used a simple word like 'ungrateful' in a way that would require a dash and an 'ing' in the mouth of Mr Tulip. 61             William had seen Sacharissa Cripslock before, generally helping her grandfather in his tiny workshop. He'd never paid her much attention. She wasn't particularly attractive, but she wasn't particularly bad-looking, either. She was just a girl in an apron, doing slightly dainty things in the background, such as light dusting and arranging flowers. Insofar as he'd formed any opinion of her, it was that she suffered from misplaced gentility and the mistaken belief that etiquette meant good breeding. She mistook mannerisms for manners.             Now he could see her a lot plainer, mostly because she was advancing towards him across the room, and in the light-headed way of people who think they're just about to die he realized that she was quite good-looking if considered over several centuries. Concepts of beauty change over the years, and two hundred years ago Sacharissa's eyes would have made the great painter Caravati bite, his brush in half; three hundred years ago the sculptor Mauvaise would have taken one look at her chin and dropped his chisel on his foot; a thousand years ago the Ephebian poets would have agreed that her nose alone was capable of launching at least forty ships. And she had good medieval ears.             Her hand was quite modern, though, and it caught William a stinging blow on the cheek.             'That twenty dollars a month was nearly all we had!'             'Sorry? What?'             'All right, he isn't very fast, but in his day he was one of the best engravers in the business!'             'Oh . . . yes. Er . . .' William had a sudden flash of guilt about Mr Cripslock.             'And you took it away, just like that!'             'I didn't mean to! The dwarfs just. . . things just happened!'             'You're working for them?'             'Sort of. . . with them . . .' said William.             'While we starve, I suppose?'             Sacharissa stood there panting. She had a well-crafted supply of other features that never go out of fashion at all and are perfectly at home in any century. She clearly believed that severe, old-fashioned dresses toned these down. They did not. 62             'Look, I'm stuck with them,' said William, trying not to stare. 'I mean, stuck with the dwarfs. Lord Vetinari was very . . . definite about it. And it's suddenly all become very complicated--'             The Guild of Engravers is going to be livid about this, you do know that?' she demanded.             'Er . . . yes.' A desperate idea struck William rather harder than her hand. That's a point. You wouldn't like to, er, be official about that, would you? You know: "We are livid," says spokesm-- spokeswoman for the Guild of Engravers?'             'Why?' she said suspiciously.             'I'm desperate for things to put in my next edition,' said William desperately. 'Look, can you help me? I can give you - oh, twenty pence an item, and I could use at least five a day.'             She opened her mouth to snap a reply, but calculation cut in. 'A dollar a day?' she said.             'More, if they're nice and long,' said William wildly.             'For that letter thing you do?'             'Yes.'             'A dollar?'             'Yes.'             She eyed him with mistrust. 'You can't afford that, can you? I thought you only got thirty dollars yourself. You told grandfather.'             Things have moved on a bit. I haven't caught up with it myself, to tell you the truth.'             She was still looking at him doubtfully, but natural Ankh-Morpork interest in the distant prospect of a dollar was gaining the upper hand.             'Well, I hear things,' she began. 'And . . . well, writing things down? I suppose that's a suitable job for a lady, isn't it? It's practically cultural.'             'Er . . . close, I suppose.'             'I wouldn't like to do anything that wasn't . . . proper.'             'Oh, I'm sure it's proper.'             'And the Guild can't object to that, can they? You've been doing it for years, after all. . .'             'Look, I'm just me,' said William. 'If the Guild object, they'll have to sort it out with the Patrician.' 63             'Well . . . all right . . . if you're sure it's an acceptable job for a young lady             'Come down to the printing works tomorrow, then,' said William. 'I think we ought to be able to produce another paper of news in a few days.' ~blk~ This was a ballroom, still plush in red and gold, but musty in the semi-darkness and ghostly with its shrouded chandeliers. The candlelight in the centre was dimly reflected from the mirrors around the walls; they had probably once brightened the place up considerably but over the years some sort of curious tarnish had blotched its way across them, so that the reflections of the candles looked like dim sub-aqueous glows through a forest of seaweed.             Mr Pin was halfway across the floor when he realized that the only footsteps he could hear were his own. Mr Tulip had veered off in .the gloom and was dragging the shroud off something that had been pushed against one wall.             'Well. I'll be a . . .' the man began. 'This is a --ing treasure! I fort so! A genuine --ing Intaglio Ernesto, too. See that mother-of-pearl work there?'             'This isn't the time, Mr Tulip--'             'He only made six of them. Oh, no, they haven't even kept it --ing tuned!'             'Godsdammit, we're supposed to be professionals             'Perhaps your - colleague would like it as a present?' said a voice from the centre of the room.             There were half a dozen chairs around the circle of candlelight. They were an old-fashioned kind, and the backs curved out and up to form a deep leathery arch that had, presumably, been designed to keep out the draughts but now gave the occupants their own deep pools of shadow.             Mr Pin had been here before. He'd admired the set-up. Anyone inside the ring of candles couldn't see who was in the depths of the chairs, while at the same time being fully visible themselves.             It occurred to him now that the arrangement also meant that the people in the chairs couldn't see who was in the other chairs.             Mr Pin was a rat. He was quite happy with the description. Rats 64 had a lot to recommend them. And this layout had been dreamed up by someone who thought like him.             One of the chairs said, 'Your friend Daffodil--'             'Tulip,' said Mr Pin.             'Your friend Mr Tulip would perhaps like part of your payment to be the harpsichord?' said the chair.             'It's not a --ing harpsichord, it's a --ing virginal,' growled Mr Tulip. 'One --ing string to a note instead of two! So called because it was an instrument for --ing young ladies!'             'My word, was it?' said one of the chairs. 'I thought it was just a sort of early piano!'             'Intended to be played by young ladies,' said Mr Pin smoothly. 'And Mr Tulip does not collect art, he merely . . . appreciates it. Our payment will be in gems, as agreed.'             'As you wish. Please step into the circle . . .'             '--ing harpsichord,' muttered Mr Tulip.             The New Firm came under the hidden gaze of the chairs as they took up their positions.             What the chairs saw was this:             Mr Pin was small and slim and, like his namesake, slightly larger in the head than ought to be the case. If there was a word for him apart from 'rat' it was 'dapper'; he drank little, he watched what he ate and considered that his body, slightly malformed though it was, was a temple. He also used too much oil on his hair and parted it in the middle in a way that was twenty years out of style, and his black suit was on the greasy side, and his little eyes were constantly moving, taking in everything.             It was hard to see Mr Tulip's eyes, because of a certain puffiness probably caused by too much enthusiasm for things in bags.* The bags had also possibly caused the general blotchiness and the thick veins that stood out on his forehead, but Mr Tulip was in any case the kind of heavy-set man who is on the verge of bursting out of his clothes and, despite his artistic inclinations, projected the image of a would-be wrestler who had failed the intelligence test. If his ~blk~~foot~ * Your Brain On Drugs is a terrible sight, but Mr Tulip was living proof of the fact that so was Your Brain on a cocktail of horse liniment, sherbet and powdered water-retention pills. 65 body was a temple, it was one of those strange ones where people did odd things to animals in the basement, and if he watched what he ate it was only to see it wriggle.             Several of the chairs wondered, not if they were doing the right thing, since that was indisputable, but whether they were doing it with the right people. Mr Tulip, after all, wasn't a man you'd want to see standing too close to a naked flame.             'When will you be ready?' said a chair. 'How is your . . . protege today?'             'We think Tuesday morning would be a good time,' said Mr Pin. 'By then he'll be as good as he's going to get.'             'And there will be no deaths involved,' said a chair. 'This is important.'             'Mr Tulip will be as gentle as a lamb,' said Mr Pin.             Unseen gazes avoided the sight of Mr Tulip, who had chosen this moment to suck up his nose a large quantity of slab.             'Er, yes,' said a chair. 'His lordship is not to be harmed any more than is strictly necessary. Vetinari dead would be more dangerous than Vetinari alive.'             'And at all costs there must be no trouble with the Watch.'             'Yeah, we know about the Watch,' said Mr Pin. 'Mr Slant told us.'             'Commander Vimes is running a very . . . efficient Watch.'             'No problem,' said Mr Pin.             'And it employs a werewolf.'             White powder fountained into the air. Mr Pin had to slap his colleague on the back.             'A --ing werewolf? Are you --ing crazy?'             'Uh . . . why does your partner keep saying ' 'ing' ', Mr Pin?' said a chair.             'You must be out of your --ing minds!' Tulip growled.             'Speech impediment,' said Pin. 'A werewolf? Thank you for telling us. Thank you very much. They're worse than vampires when they're on the trail! You do know that, do you?'             'You were recommended to us as men of resource.'             'Expensive men of resource,' said Mr Pin.             A chair sighed. There are seldom any other kind. Very well, very well. Mr Slant will discuss this with you.' 66             'Yeah, but they've got a sense a' smell that you wouldn't believe,' Mr Tulip went on. 'Money's no use to a --ing dead man.'             'Are there any other surprises?' said Mr Pin. 'You've got bright watchmen and one of 'em's a werewolf. Anything else? They've got trolls too?'             'Oh, yes. Several. And dwarfs. And zombies.'             'In a Watch? What kind of a city are you running here?'             'We are not running the city,' said a chair.             'But we care about the way it is going,' said another.             'Ah,' said Mr Pin. 'Right. I remember. You are concerned citizens.' He knew about concerned citizens. Wherever they were, they all spoke the same private language, where 'traditional values' meant 'hang someone'. He did not have a problem with this, broadly speaking, but it never hurt to understand your employer.             'You could have got someone else,' he said. 'You've got a guild of Assassins here.'             A chair made a sucking sound between its teeth.             'The trouble with the city at present,' it said, 'is that a number of otherwise intelligent people find the status quo . . . convenient, even though it will undoubtedly ruin the city.'             'Ah,' said Mr Pin. They are unconcerned citizens.'             'Precisely, gentlemen.'             There's a lot of them?'             The chair ignored this.             'We look forward to seeing you again, gentlemen. Tomorrow night. When, I trust, you will announce your readiness. Good evening.'             The circle of chairs was silent for a while after the New Firm had left. Then a black-clad figure entered soundlessly through the big doors, approached the light, nodded and hurried away.             'They're well outside the building,' said a chair.             'What ghastly people.'             'We should have used the Assassins' Guild, though.'             'Hah! They've done rather well out of Vetinari. In any case, we do not want him dead. However, it occurs to me that we may eventually have a job for the Guild, later on.' 67             'Quite so. When our friends have safely left the city . . . the roads can be so dangerous at this time of year.'             'No, gentlemen. We will stick to our plan. The one called Charlie will be kept around until everything is entirely settled, in case he can be of further use, and then our gentlemen will take him a long, long way away to, hah, pay him off. Perhaps later we will call the Assassins in, just in case Mr Pin has any clever ideas.'             'Good point. Although it does seem such a waste. The things one could do with Charlie . . .'             'I told you, it would not work. The man is a clown.'             'I suppose you are right. Better something once-and-for-all, then.'             'I'm sure we understand one another. And now . . . this meeting of the Committee to Unelect the Patrician is declared closed. And hasn't happened.' ~blk~ Lord Vetinari by habit rose so early that bedtime was merely an excuse to change his clothes.             He liked the time just before a winter's dawn. It was generally foggy, which made it hard to see the city, and for a few hours there was no sound but the occasional brief scream.             But the tranquillity was broken this morning by a cry just outside the palace gates.             'Hoinarylup!'             He went to the window.             'Squidaped-oyt!'             The Patrician walked back to his desk and rang the bell for his clerk Drumknott, who was despatched to the walls to investigate.             'It is the beggar known as Foul Ole Ron, sir,' Drumknott reported five minutes later. 'Selling this . . . paper full of things.' He held it between two fingers as though expecting it to explode.             Lord Vetinari took it and read through it. Then he read through it again.             'Well, well,' he said.' "The Ankh-Morpork Times". Was anyone else buying this?'             'A number of people, my lord. People coming off the night shifts, market people and so on.' 68             'I see no mention of Hoinarylup or Squidaped-oyt.'             'No, my lord.'             'How very strange.' Lord Vetinari read for a moment and said, 'Hm-,'mz. Clear my appointments this morning, will you? I will see the Guild of Towncriers at nine o'clock and the Guild of Engravers at ten past.'             'I wasn't aware they had appointments, sir.'             'They will have,' said Lord Vetinari. 'When they see this, they will have. Well, well. . . I see fifty-six people were hurt in a tavern brawl.'             'That seems rather a lot, my lord.'             'It must be true, Drumknott,' said the Patrician. 'It's in the paper. Oh, and send a message to that nice Mr de Worde, too. I will see him at nine thirty.'             He ran his eye down the grey type again. 'And please also put out the word that I wish to see no harm coming to Mr de Worde, will you?'             Drumknott, usually so adept in his understanding of his master's requirements, hesitated a moment.             'My lord, do you mean that you want no harm to come to Mr de Worde, or that you want no harm to come to Mr de Worde?'             'Did you wink at me, Drumknott?'             'No, sir!'             'Drumknott, I believe it is the right of every citizen of Ankh-Morpork to walk the streets unmolested.'             'Good gods, sir! Is it?'             'Indeed.'             'But I thought you were very much against movable type, sir. You said that it would make printing too cheap, and people would--'             'Sheearna-plp!' shouted the newspaper seller, down by the gates.             'Are you poised for the exciting new millennium that lies before us, Drumknott? Are you ready to grasp the future with a willing hand?'             'I don't know, my lord. Is special clothing required?' ~blk~ The other lodgers were already at the breakfast table when William hurried down. He was hurrying because Mrs Arcanum had Views about people who were late for meals. 69             Mrs Arcanum, proprietress of Mrs Eucrasia Arcanum's Lodging House for Respectable Working Men, was what Sacharissa was unconsciously training to be. She wasn't just respectable, she was Respectable; it was a lifestyle, religion and hobby combined. She liked respectable people who were Clean and Decent; she used the phrase as if it was impossible to be one without being the other. She kept respectable beds and cooked cheap but respectable meals for her respectable lodgers, who apart from William were mostly middle-aged, unmarried and extremely sober. They were mainly craftsmen in small trades, and were almost all heavily built, well-scrubbed, owned serious boots and were clumsily polite at the dining table.             Oddly enough - or, at least, oddly enough to William's expectations of people like Mrs Arcanum - she wasn't averse to dwarfs and trolls. At least, the clean and decent ones. Mrs Arcanum rated Decency above species.             'It says here fifty-six people were hurt in a brawl,' said Mr Mackleduff, who by dint of being the longest-surviving lodger acted as a kind of president at mealtimes. He had bought a copy of the Times on his way home from the bakery, where he was night-shift foreman.             'Fancy,' said Mrs Arcanum.             'I think it must have been five or six,' said William.             'Says fifty-six here,' said Mr Mackleduff sternly. 'In black and white.'             'It must be right,' said Mrs Arcanum, to general agreement, 'otherwise they wouldn't let them put it in.'             'I wonder who's doing it?' said Mr Prone, who travelled in wholesale boots and shoes.             'Oh, they'd be special people for doing this,' said Mr Mackleduff.             'Really?' said William.             'Oh, yes,' said Mr Mackleduff, who was one of those large men who were instantly expert on anything. They wouldn't allow just anyone to write what they like. That stands to reason.'             So it was in a thoughtful mood that William made his way to the shed behind the Bucket. 70             Goodmountain looked up from the stone where he was carefully setting the type for a playbill.             'There's a spot of cash for you over there,' he said, nodding to a bench.             It was mostly in coppers. It was almost thirty dollars.             William stared at it. This can't be right,' he whispered.             'Mr Ron and his friends kept coming back for more,' said Goodmountain.             'But . . . but it was only usual stuff,' said William. 'It wasn't even anything very important. Just . . . stuff that happened.'             'Ah, well, people like to know about stuff that happened,' said the dwarf. 'And I reckon we can sell three times as many tomorrow if we halve the price.'             'Halve the price?'             'People like to be in the know. Just a thought.' The dwarf grinned again. There's a young lady in the back room.'             In the days when this place had been a laundry, back in the pre-rocking-horse age, one area had been partitioned off with some cheap panelling to waist height, to segregate the clerks and the person whose job it was to explain to customers where their socks had gone. Sacharissa was sitting primly on a stool, clutching her handbag to her with her elbows close to her sides in order to expose herself to as little of the grime as possible.             She gave him a nod.             Now, why had he asked her to come along? Oh, yes . . . she was sensible, more or less, and did her grandfather's books and, frankly, William didn't meet many literate people. He met the sort to whom a pen was a piece of difficult machinery. If she knew what an apostrophe was, he could put up with the fact that she acted as if she was living in a previous century.             'Is this your office now?' she whispered.             'I suppose so.'             'You didn't tell me about the dwarfs!'             'Do you mind?'             'Oh, no. Dwarfs are very law-abiding and respectable, in my experience.'             William now realized that he was talking to a girl who had 71 never been in certain streets when the bars were closing.             'I've already got two good items for you,' Sacharissa went on, as if imparting state secrets.             'Er . . . yes?'             'My grandfather says this is the longest, coldest winter he can remember.'             'Yes?'             'Well, he's eighty. That's a long time.'             'Oh.'             'And the meeting of the Dolly Sisters' Baking and Flower Circle Annual Competition had to be abandoned last night because the cake table got knocked over. I found out all about it from the secretary, and I've written it all down neatly.'             'Oh? Um. Is that really interesting, do you think?'             She handed him a page torn from a cheap exercise book.             He read: ' "The Dolly Sisters' Baking and Flower Circle Annual Competition was held in the Reading Room in Lobbin Clout Street, Dolly Sisters. Mrs H. Rivers was the President. She welcomed all members and commented on the Sumptuous Offerings. Prizes were awarded as follows             William ran his eye down the meticulous list of names and awards.             ' "Specimen in Jar"?' he queried.             'That was the competition for dahlias,' said Sacharissa.             William carefully inserted the word 'dahlia' after the word 'specimen', and read on.             ' "A fine display of Loose Stool Covers"?'             'Well?'             'Oh . . . nothing.' William carefully changed this to 'Loose Covers for stools', which was barely an improvement, and continued to read with the air of a jungle explorer who might expect any kind of exotic beast to spring out of the peaceful undergrowth. The story concluded:             ' "However, everyone's Spirits were Dampened when a naked man, hotly pursued by Members of the Watch, burst through the Window and ran around the Room, causing much Disarray of the Tarts before being Apprehended by the Trifles. The meeting 72 closed at 9 p.m. Mrs Rivers thanked all Members."'             'What do you think?' said Sacharissa, with just a hint of nervousness.             'You know,' said William, in a sort of distant voice, 'I think it is quite likely that it would be impossible to improve this piece in any way. Um . . . what would you say was the most important thing that happened at the meeting?'             Her hand flew to her mouth in dismay. 'Oh, yes! I forgot to put that in! Mrs Flatter won first prize for her sponge! She's been runner-up for six years, too.'             William stared at the wall. 'Well done,' he said. 'I should put that in, if I was you. But you could drop in at the Watch House in Dolly Sisters and ask about the naked man--'             'I shall do no such thing! Respectable women don't have anything to do with the Watch!'             'I meant, ask why he was being chased, of course.'             'But why should I do that?'             William tried to put words around a vague idea. 'People will want to know,' he said.             'But won't the Watch mind me asking?'             'Well, they're our Watch. I don't see why they should. And perhaps you could find some more really old people to ask about the weather? Who is the oldest inhabitant in the city?'             'I don't know. One of the wizards, I expect.'             'Could you go to the University and ask him if he remembers it ever being colder than this?'             'Is this where you put things in the paper?' said a voice at the doorway.             It belonged to a small man with a beaming red face, one of those people blessed with the permanent expression of someone who has just heard a rather saucy joke.             'Only I grew this carrot,' he went on, 'and I reckon it's grown into a very interesting shape. Eh? What d'you think, eh? Talk about a giggle, eh? I took it down the pub and everyone was killin' 'emselves! They said I should put it in your paper!'             He held it aloft. It was a very interesting shape. And William went a very interesting shade. 73             'That's a very strange carrot,' said Sacharissa, eyeing it critically. 'What do you think, Mr de Worde?'             'Er . . . er . . . you go along to the University, why don't you? And I'll see to this . . . gentleman,' said William, when he felt he could speak again.             'My wife couldn't stop laughin'!'             'What a lucky man you are, sir,' said William solemnly.             'It's a shame you can't put pictures in your paper, eh?'             'Yes, but I think I may be in enough trouble already,' said William, opening his notebook.             When the man and his hilarious vegetable had been dealt with, William wandered out into the printing shop. The dwarfs were talking in a group, around a trapdoor in the floor.             'Pump's frozen again,' said Goodmountain. 'Can't mix up any more ink. Old man Cheese says there used to be a well somewhere round here . . .'             There was a shout from below. A couple of dwarfs descended the ladder.             'Mr Goodmountain, can you think of any reason I should put this in the paper?' said William, handing him Sacharissa's report of the Flowers and Cookery meeting. It's a bit . . . dull. . .'             The dwarf read the copy. There's seventy-three reasons,' he said. 'That's 'cos there's seventy-three names. I expect people like to see their names in the paper.'             'But what about the naked man?'             'Yeah . . . shame she didn't get his name.'             There was another shout from below.             'Shall we have a look?' said Goodmountain.             To William's complete lack of surprise, the little cellar under the shed was much better built than the shed itself. But then, practically everywhere in Ankh-Morpork had cellars that were once the first or even second or third floors of ancient buildings, built at the time of one of the city's empires when men thought that the future was going to last for ever. And then the river had flooded and brought mud with it, and walls had gone higher and, now, what Ankh-Morpork was built on was mostly Ankh-Morpork. People said that anyone with a good sense of direction and a 74 pickaxe could cross the city underground by simply knocking holes in walls.             Rusted tins and piles of timber rotted to tissue strength were piled up against one wall. And in the middle of the wall was a bricked-up doorway, the more recent bricks already looking worn and tatty compared to the ancient stone surrounding them.             'What's through there?' said Boddony.             The old street, probably,' said William.             The street has a cellar? What does it keep there?'             'Oh, when parts of the city get badly flooded people just keep building on up,' said William. This was probably a ground-floor room once, you see. People just bricked up the doors and windows and built on another storey. In some parts of the city, they say, there's six or seven levels underground. Mostly full of mud. And that's choosing my words with care--'             'I am looking for Mister William der Worde,' rumbled a voice above them.             An enormous troll was blocking out the light from the cellar trapdoor.             That's me,' said William.             'Der Patrician will see you now,' said the troll.             'I don't have an appointment with Lord Vetinari!'             'Ah, well,' said the troll, 'you'd be amazed at how many people has appointments wid der Patrician an' dey don't know it. So you'd better hurry. I would hurry, if I was you.' ~blk~ There was no sound but the ticking of the clock. William watched in apprehension as, apparently forgetting his presence, Lord Vetinari read his way through the Times again.             'What a very . . . interesting document,' said the Patrician, suddenly laying it aside. 'But I'm forced to ask . . . Why?             'It's just my news sheet,' said William, 'but bigger. Er . . . people like to know things.'             'Which people?'             'Well . . . everyone, really.'             'Do they? Did they tell you this?' 75             William swallowed. 'Well . . . no. But you know I've been writing my news letter for some time now--'             'For various foreign notables and similar people.' Lord Vetinari nodded. 'People who need to know. Knowing things is part of their profession. But you are selling this to anyone in the street, is that correct?'             'I suppose so, sir.'             'Interesting. Then you wouldn't entertain the idea, would you, that a state is, say, rather like one of those old rowing galleys? The ones which had banks of oarsmen down below, and a helmsman and so on above? It is certainly in everyone's interest that the ship does not founder but, I put it to you, it is perhaps not in the interest of the rowers that they know of every shoal avoided, every collision fended off. It would only serve to worry them and put them off their stroke. What the rowers need to know is how to row, hmm?'             'And that the helmsman is a good one,' said William. He couldn't stop the sentence. It said itself. It was out there, hanging in the air.             Lord Vetinari gave him a stare that went on for several seconds beyond the necessary time. Then his face instantly broke into a broad smile.             'To be sure. And so they should, so they should. This is the age of words, after all. Fifty-six hurt in tavern brawl, eh? Astounding. What further news do you have for us, sir?'             'Well, er . . . it's been very cold             'Has it? Has it, indeed? My word!' On his desk the tiny iceberg bumped against the side of Lord Vetinari's inkwell.             'Yes, and there was a bit of a . . . fracas . . . at some cookery meeting last night. . .'             'A fracas, eh?'             'Well, probably more of a rumpus, really.* And someone has grown a funny-shaped vegetable.' ~blk~~foot~ * Words resemble fish in that some specialist ones can survive only in a kind of reef, where their curious shapes and usages are protected from the hurly-burly of the open sea. 'Rumpus' and 'fracas' are found only in certain newspapers (in much the same way that 'beverages' are found only in certain menus). They are never used in normal conversation. 76             That's the stuff. What shape?'             'A . . . an amusing shape, sir.'             'Could I give you a little bit of advice, Mr de Worde?'             'Please do, sir.'             'Be careful. People like to be told what they already know. Remember that. They get uncomfortable when you tell them new things. New things . . . well, new things aren't what they expect. They like to know that, say, a dog will bite a man. That is what dogs do. They don't want to know that a man bites a dog, because the world is not supposed to happen like that. In short, what people think they want is news, but what they really crave is olds. I can see you've got the hang of it already.'             'Yes, sir,' said William, not at all sure he fully understood this but certain that he didn't like the bit he did understand.             'I believe the Guild of Engravers has some things it wishes to discuss with Mr Goodmountain, William, but I have always thought that we should go forward to the future.'             'Yes, sir. Quite hard to go any other way.'             Once again, there was the too-long stare and then the sudden unfreezing of the face.             'Indeed. Good day, Mr de Worde. Oh . . . and do tread carefully. I'm sure you wouldn't want to become news . . . would you?' ~blk~ William turned over the Patrician's words as he walked back to Gleam Street, and it is not wise to be thinking too deeply when walking the streets of Ankh-Morpork.             He walked past Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler with barely a nod, but in any case Mr Dibbler was otherwise engaged. He had two customers. Two at once, unless one was daring another, was a great rarity. But these two were worrying him. They were inspecting the merchandise.             C.M.O.T. Dibbler sold his buns and pies all around the city, even outside the Assassins' Guild. He was a good judge of people, especially when it involved judging when to step innocently round a corner and then run like hell, and he had just decided that he was really unlucky to be standing here and also that it was too late. 77             He didn't often meet killers. Murderers, yes, but murderers usually had some strange reason and in any case generally murdered friends and relations. And he'd met plenty of assassins, but assassination had a certain style and even certain rules.             These men were killers. The big one with the powdery streaks down his jacket and the smell of mothballs was just a vicious thug, no problem there, but the small one with the lank hair had the smell of violent and spiteful death about him. You didn't often look into the eyes of someone who'd kill because it seemed like a good idea at the time.             Moving his hands carefully, Dibbler opened the special section of his tray, the high-class one that contained sausages whose contents were 1) meat, 2) from a known four-footed creature, 3) probably land-dwelling.             'Or may I recommend these, gentlemen,' he said, and because old habits died hard he couldn't stop himself from adding, 'Finest pork.'             'Good, are they?'             'You'll never want to eat another, sir.'             The other man said, 'How about the other sort?'             'Pardon?'             'Hooves and pig snot and rats what fell in the --ing mincer.'             'What Mr Tulip here means,' said Mr Pin, 'is a more organic sausage.'             'Yeah,' said Mr Tulip. I'm very --ing environmental like that.'             'Are you sure? No, no, fine!' Dibbler raised a hand. The manner of the two men had changed. They were clearly very sure of everything. 'We-ell, you want a bad-- a less good sausage, then . . . er?'             'With --ing fingernails in it,' said Mr Tulip.             'Well, er . . . I do . . . I could . . .' Dibbler gave up. He was a salesman. You sold what you sold. 'Let me tell you about these sausages,' he went on, smoothly shifting an internal motor into reverse. 'When someone chopped off his thumb in the abattoir, they didn't even stop the grinder. You prob'ly won't find any rat in them 'cos rats don't go near the place. There's animals in there that . . . well, 78 you know how they say life began in some kind of big soup? Same with these sausages. If you want a bad sausage, you won't get better than these.'             'You keep 'em for your special customers, do .you?' said Mr Pin.             'To me, sir, every customer is special.'             'And you got mustard?'             'People call it mustard,' Dibbler began, getting carried away, 'but I call it--'             'I like --ing mustard,' said Mr Tulip.             '--really great mustard,' said Dibbler, not missing a beat.             'We'll take two,' said Mr Pin. He did not reach for his wallet.             'On the house!' said Dibbler. He stunned two sausages, enbunned them and thrust them forward. Mr Tulip took both of them, and the mustard pot.             'Do you know what they called a sausage-in-a-bun in Quirm?' said Mr Pin, as the two walked away.             'No?' said Mr Tulip.             They called it le sausage-in-le-bun,'             'What, in a --ing foreign language? You're --ing kidding!'             'I'm not a --ing kidder, Mr Tulip.'             'I mean, they ought to call it a . . . a . . . sausage dans lar derriere,' said Mr Tulip. He took a bite of his Dibbler delight. 'Hey, that's what this --ing thing tastes of,' he added, with his mouth full.             'In a bun, Mr Tulip.'             'I know what I meant. This is a --ing awful sausage.'             Dibbler watched them go. It wasn't often you heard language like that in Ankh-Morpork. Most people talked without leaving gaps in their sentences, and he wondered what the word 'ing' meant. ~blk~ A crowd was gathered outside a large building in Welcome Soap, and the cart traffic was already backed up all the way to Broad Way. And, thought William, wherever a large crowd is gathered, someone ought to write down why.             The reason in this case was clear. A man was standing on the flat 79 parapet just outside the fourth-storey window, back against the wall, staring downwards with a frozen expression.             Far below, the crowd were trying to be helpful. It was not in the robust Ankh-Morpork nature to dissuade anyone in this position. It was a free city, after all. So was the advice.             'Much better to try the Thieves' Guild!' a man yelled. 'Six floors, and then you're on good solid cobbles! Crack your skull first go!'             'There's proper flagstones around the palace,' advised the man next to him.             'Well, certainly,' said his immediate neighbour. 'But the Patrician'll kill him if he tries to jump from up there, am I right?'             'Well?'             'Well, it's a question of style, isn't it?'             'Tower of Art's good,' said a woman confidently. 'Nine hundred feet, almost. And you get a good view.'             'Granted, granted. But you also get a long time to think about things. On the way down, I mean. Not a good time for introspection, in my view.'             'Look, I've got a load of prawns on my wagon and if I'm held up any longer they're gonna be walking home,' moaned a carter. 'Why doesn't he just jump?'             'He's thinking about it. It's a big step, after all.'             The man on the edge turned his head when he heard a shuffling noise. William was sidling along the ledge, trying hard not to look down.             ' 'Morning. Come to try and talk me out of it, 'ave yer?'             'I . . . I. . .' William really tried not to look down. The ledge had looked a lot wider from below. He was regretting the whole thing. 'I wouldn't dream of it. . .'             'I'm always open to being talked out of it.'             'Yes, yes . . . er . . . would you care to give me your name and address?' said William. There was a hitherto unsuspected nasty breeze up here, gusting treacherously around the rooftops. It fluttered the pages of his notebook.             'Why?'             'Er . . . because from this height on to solid ground it's often hard 80 to find out that sort of thing afterwards,' said William, trying not to breathe out too much. 'And if I'm going to put this in the paper, it'd look much better if I say who you were.'             'What paper?'             William pulled a copy of the Times out of his pocket. It rattled in the wind as he wordlessly handed it over.             The man sat down and read it, his lips moving, his legs dangling over the drop.             'So this is, like, things that happen?' he said. 'Like a towncrier, but written down?'             That's right. So, what was your name?'             'What do you mean, was?'             'Well, you know . . . obviously . . .' said William wretchedly. He waved his hand towards the void, and almost lost his balance. 'If you . . .'             'Arthur Crank.'             'And where did you live, Arthur?'             'Prattle Alley.'             'And what was your job?'             'There you go with the was again. The Watch usually give me a cup of tea, you know.'             A warning bell went off in William's head. 'You . . . jump a lot, do you?'             'Only the difficult bits.'             'And they are?'             'The climbing-up bits. I don't do the actual jumping, obviously. That's not a skilled job. I'm more into the "cry for help" aspect.'             William tried to grip sheer wall. 'And the help you want is . . . ?'             'Could you make it twenty dollars?'             'Or you jump?'             'Ah, well, not exactly jump, obviously. Not the whole jump. Not as per such. But I shall continue to threaten to jump, if you get my drift.'             The building seemed a lot higher to William than it had done when he climbed the stairs. The people below were a lot smaller. He could make out faces looking up. Foul Ole Ron was there, with his scabby dog and the rest of the crew, because they had an 81 uncanny gravitational attraction to impromptu street theatre. He could even make out Coffin Henry's 'Will Threaten For Food' sign. And he could see the queues of wagons, by now paralysing half the city. He could feel his knees buckling . . .             Arthur grabbed him. 'Oi, this is my patch,' he said. 'Find your own spot.'             'You said the jumping-off wasn't a skilled job,' said William, trying to concentrate on his notes as the world spun gently around him. 'What was your job, Mr Crank?'             'Steeplejack.'             'Arthur Crank, you come down here right this minute!'             Arthur looked down.             'Oh gawds, they've gone and fetched the wife,' he said.             'Constable Fiddyment here says you're . . .' the distant pink face of Mrs Crank paused to listen again to the watchman standing next to her, 'interferin' with the merc-ant-ile well-bein' of the city, you ole fool!'             'Can't argue with the wife,' said Arthur, giving William a sheepish look.             'I'll hide your trousers another time, you silly ole man! You come down here or I'll give you what for!'             'Three happy married years,' said Arthur cheerfully, waving at the distant figure. 'The other thirty-two haven't been too bad, either. But she can't cook cabbage worth a damn.'             'Really?' said William, and dreamily fell forward.             He woke up lying on the ground, which was what he'd expected, but still in a three-dimensional shape, which he hadn't. He realized that he was not dead. One reason for this was the face of Corporal Nobbs of the Watch looking down at him. William considered that he had lived a relatively blameless life and, if he died, did not expect to encounter anything with a face like Corporal Nobbs, the worst thing ever to hit a uniform if you didn't count seagulls.             'Ah, you're all right,' said Nobbs, looking slightly disappointed.             'Feel . . . faint,' William murmured.             'I could give you the kiss of life if you like,' said Nobbs.             Unbidden by William, various muscles spasmed and jerked him 82 vertical so fast that his feet momentarily left the ground.             'Much better now!' he shouted.             'Only we learned it down the Watch House and I haven't had a chance to try it yet             'Fit as a fiddle!' William wailed.             '. . . I've been practising on my hand and everything             'Never felt better!'             'Old Arthur Crank's always doing that,' said the watchman. 'He's just after tobacco money. Still, everyone clapped when he carried you down. It's amazing how he can still climb drainpipes like that.'             'Is it really . . . ?' William felt oddly empty.             'It was great when you were sick. I mean, from four storeys up it looked quite pretty. Someone ought to have taken a picture--'             'Got to be going!' William screamed.             I must be going mad, he thought, as he hurried towards Gleam Street. Why the hell did I do it? It wasn't as if it was my business.             Except, come to think of it, it is now. ~blk~ Mr Tulip burped. 'What're we going to do now?' he said.             Mr Pin had acquired a map of the city and was examining it closely.             'We are not your old-style bother boys, Mr Tulip. We are thinking men. We learn. We learn fast.'             'What're we going to do now?' Mr Tulip repeated. Sooner or later he'd be able to catch up.             'We're going to buy ourselves a little insurance, that's what we're going to do. I don't like no lawyer having all that muck on us. Ah . . . here we are. It's the other side of the University.'             'We're going to buy some magic?' said Mr Tulip.             'Not exactly magic.'             'I fort you said this city was a --ing pushover?'             'It has its good points, Mr Tulip.'             Mr Tulip grinned. '--ing right,' he said. 'I want to go back to the Museum of Antiquities!'             'Now, now, Mr Tulip. Business first, pleasure later,' said Mr Pin. 83             'I want to --ing see all of 'em!'             'Later on. Later on. Can you wait twenty minutes without exploding?'             The map led them to the Thaumatological Park, just hubwards of Unseen University. It was still so new that the modern flat-roofed buildings, winners of several awards from the Guild of Architects, hadn't even begun to let in water and shed window panes in a breeze.             An attempt had been made to pretty up the immediate area with grass and trees, but since the site had been built partly on the old ground known as the 'unreal estate' this had not worked as planned. The area had been a dump for Unseen University for thousands of years. There was a lot more below that turf than old mutton bones, and magic leaks. On any map of thaumic pollution the unreal estate would be the centre of some extremely concentric circles.             Already the grass was multi-coloured and some of the trees had walked away.             Nevertheless, several businesses were thriving there, products of what the Archchancellor, or at least his speech writer, had called 'a marriage between magic and modern business; after all, the modern world doesn't need very many magic rings and magic swords, but it does need some way to keep its appointments in order. Lot of garbage, really, but I suppose it makes everyone happy. Is it time for that lunch yet?'             One of the results of this joyful union was now on the counter in front of Mr Pin.             'It's the Mk II,' said the wizard, who was glad there was a counter between him and Mr Tulip. 'Er . . . cutting edge.'             'That's good,' said Mr Tulip. 'We --ing love cutting edges.'             'How does it work?' said Mr Pin.             'It's got contextual help,' said the wizard. 'All you have to do is, er, open the lid.'             To the wizard's horror a very thin knife appeared magically in his customer's hand and was used to release the catch.             The lid sprang back. A small green imp sprang up.             'Bingely-bingely-bee--' 84             It froze. Even a creation of biothaumic particles will hesitate when a knife is pressed to its throat.             'What the hell's this?' said Mr Pin. 'I said I want something that listensV             'It does listen, it does listen!' said the wizard hurriedly. 'But it can say things too!'             'Like what? Bingely-bingely?'             The imp gave a nervous cough. 'Good for you!' it said. 'You have wisely purchased the Dis-organizer Mk II, the latest in biothaumaturgic design, with a host of useful features and no resemblance whatsoever to the Mk I which you may have inadvertently destroyed by stamping on it heavily!' it said, adding, ~blk~~indent text~ 'This device is provided without warranty of any kind as to reliability, accuracy, existence or otherwise or fitness for any particular purpose and Bioalchemic Products specifically does not warrant, guarantee, imply or make any representations as to its merchantability for any particular purpose and furthermore shall have no liability for or responsibility to you or any other person, entity or deity with respect of any loss or damage whatsoever caused by this device or object or by any attempts to destroy it by hammering it against a wall or dropping it into a deep well or any other means whatsoever and moreover asserts that you indicate your acceptance of this agreement or any other agreement that may be substituted at any time by coming within five miles of the product or observing it through large telescopes or by any other means because you are such an easily cowed moron who will happily accept arrogant and unilateral conditions on a piece of highly priced garbage that you would not dream of accepting on a bag of dog biscuits and is used solely at your own risk.' ~blk~               The imp took a deep breath. 'May I introduce to you the rest of my wide range of interesting and amusing sounds, Insert Name Here?'             Mr Pin glanced at Mr Tulip. 'All right.'             'For example, I can go "tra-la!"'             'No.'             'An amusing bugle call?'             'No.'             ' "Ding!"?'             'No.'             'Or I can be instructed to make droll and diverting comments when performing various actions.'             'Why?'             'Er . . . some people like us to say things like "I'll be back when you open the box again", or something like that             'Why do you do noises?' said Mr Pin.             'People like noises.'             'We don't,' said Mr Pin. 85             'We --ing hate noises,' said Mr Tulip.             'Good for you! I can do lots of silence,' the imp volunteered. But suicidal programming forced it to continue: 'And would you like a different colour scheme?'             'What?'             'What colour would you like me to be?' As it spoke, one of the imp's long ears slowly turned purple and its nose became a vaguely disquieting shade of blue.             'We don't want any colours,' said Mr Pin. 'We don't want noises. We don't want cheerfulness. We just want you to do what you're told.'             'Perhaps you would like to take a moment to fill in your registration card?' said the imp desperately, holding it up.             A knife thrown at snake speed snapped the card out of its hand and nailed it to the desk.             'Or perhaps you would like to leave it until later . . .'             'Your man here--' Mr Pin began. 'Where did he go?'             Mr Tulip reached behind the counter and hauled up the wizard. ,             'Your man here says you're one of those imps that can repeat everything you hear,' said Pin.             'Yes, Insert Name Here, sir,' said the imp.             'And you don't make stuff up?'             'They can't,' the wizard panted. 'They have no imagination at all.'             'So if someone heard it, they'd know it was real?'             'Yes, indeed.'             'Sounds just the thing we're looking for,' said Mr Pin.             'And how will you be paying?' said the wizard.             Mr Pin snapped his fingers. Mr Tulip drew himself up and out, squared his shoulders and cracked knuckles that were like two bags of pink walnuts.             'Before we --ing talk about paying,' said Mr Tulip, 'we want to talk to the bloke that wrote that --ing warranty.' ~blk~ What William now had to think of as his office had changed quite a lot. The old laundry fixings, dismembered rocking horses and 86 other rubbish had been spirited away and two desks stood back to back in the middle of the floor.             They were ancient and battered and to stop them wobbling they needed, against all common sense, bits of folded cardboard under all four legs.             'I got them from the secondhand shop along the road,' said Sacharissa nervously. They weren't very expensive.'             'Yes, I can see that. Er . . . Miss Cripslock . . . I've been thinking . . . your grandfather can engrave a picture, can he?'             'Yes, of course. Why have you got mud all over you?'             'And if we got an iconograph and learned how to use it to take pictures,' William went on, ignoring this, 'could he engrave the picture that the imp paints?'             'I suppose so.'             'And do you know any good iconographers in the city?'             'I could ask around. What happened to you?'             'Oh, there was a threatened suicide in Welcome Soap.'             'Any good?' Sacharissa looked startled at the sound of her own voice. 'I mean, obviously I wouldn't wish anyone to die, but, er, we've got quite a lot of space             'I might be able to make something of it. He, er, saved the life of the man who climbed up to talk him down.'             'How brave. Did you get the name of the man who climbed up after him?'             'Urn, no. Er, he was a Mystery Man,' said William.             'Oh, well, that's something. There's some people waiting to see you outside,' said Sacharissa. She glanced at her notes. 'There's a man who's lost his watch, a zombie who . . . well, I can't make out what he wants. There's a troll who wants a job, and there's someone who's got a complaint about the story of the fight at the Mended Drum and wants to behead you.'             'Oh, dear. All right, one at a time             The watch-loser was easy.             'It was one of the new clockwork ones my father gave to me,' said the man. 'I've been looking for it all week!'             'It's not exactly--'             'If you can put in the paper that I've lost it, maybe someone 87 who has found it will turn it in?' said the man, with unwarranted hopefulness. 'And I'll give you sixpence for your trouble.'             Sixpence was sixpence. William made a few notes.             The zombie was more difficult. For a start he was grey, shading to green in places, and smelled very strongly of artificial hyacinth aftershave, some of the more recent zombies having realized that their chance of making friends in their new life would be greatly improved if they smelled of flowers rather than just smelled.             'People like to know about people who are dead,' he said. His name was Mr Bendy, and he pronounced it in a way that made it clear that the 'Mr' was very much a part of the name.             'They do?'             'Yes,' said Mr Bendy emphatically. 'Dead people can be very interesting. I expect people would be very interested in reading about dead people.'             'Do you mean obituaries?'             'Well, yes, I suppose they would be. I could write them in an interesting way.'             'All right. Twenty pence each, then.'             Mr Bendy nodded. It was clear that he would have done it for nothing. He handed William a wad of yellow, crackling paper.             'Here's an interesting one to start you off,' he said.             'Oh? Whose is it?'             'Mine. It's very interesting. Especially the bit where I died.'             The next man to come in was in fact a troll. Unusually for trolls, who usually wore just enough to satisfy humanity's mysterious demands for decency, this one actually wore a suit. At least, it was largely tubes of cloth that covered his body, and 'suit' was about the only word.             ' 'm Rocky,' he mumbled, looking down. Til take any job, guv.'             'What was your last job?' said William.             'Boxer, guv. But I wasn't happy wiv it. Kept getting knocked down.'             'Can you write or take pictures?' said William, wincing.             'No, guv. I can do heavy liftin'. 'n' I can'whistle tunes, guv.'             'That's . . . a good talent, but I don't think we--' 88             The door flew open and a thick-shouldered, leather-clad man burst in, flourishing an axe.             'You got no right putting that about me in the paper!' he said, waving the blade under William's nose.             'Who are you?'             'I'm Brezock the Barbarian, and I--'             The brain works fast when it thinks it is about to be cut in half.             'Oh, if it's a complaint you have, you have to take it up with the Complaints, Beheadings and Horsewhippings Editor,' said William. 'Mr Rocky here.'             'Dat's me,' boomed Rocky cheerfully, laying a hand on the man's shoulder. There was only room for three of his fingers. Brezock sagged.             'I. . . just. . . want to say,' said Brezock, slowly, 'that you put in I hit someone with a table. I never done that. What'd people think of me if they heard I go around hitting people with tables? What'd that do to my reputation?'             'I see.'             'I knifed him. A table's a cissy weapon.'             'We shall certainly print a correction,' said William, picking up his pencil.             'You couldn't add that I tore Slicer Gadley's ear off with my teeth, could you? That'd make people sit up. Ears aren't easy to do.'             When they had all gone, Rocky to sit on a chair outside the door, William and Sacharissa stared at one another.             'It's been a very strange morning,' he said.             'I've found out about the winter,' said Sacharissa. 'And there was an unlicensed theft from a jewellery shop in the Artificers Street. They got quite a lot of silver.'             'How did you find that out?'             'One of the journeyman jewellers told me.' Sacharissa gave a little cough. 'He, um, always comes to have a little chat with me when he sees me walking past.'             'Really? Well done!'             'And while I was waiting for you I had an idea. I got Gunilla to set this in type.' She shyly pushed a piece of paper across the desk.             'It looks more impressive at the top of the page,' she said nervously. 'What do you think?'             'What are all the fruit salads and leaves and things?' said William.             Sacharissa blushed. 'I did that. A bit of unofficial engraving. I thought it might make it look . . . you know, high class and impressive. Er . . . do you like it?'             'It's very good,' said William hurriedly. 'Very nice . . . er, cherries--'             '--grapes--'             'Yes, of course, I meant grapes. What's the quote from? It's very meaningful without, er, meaning anything very much.'             'I think it's just a quote,' said Sacharissa. ~blk~ Mr Pin lit a cigarette and blew a stream of smoke into the still damp air of the wine cellar.             'Now, it seems to me what we got here is a failure to communicate,' he said. 'I mean, it's not like we're asking you to memorize a book or anything. You just got to look at Mr Tulip here. Is this hard? Lots of people do it without any kinda special training.'             'I sort of . . . I-lose my bottle,' said Charlie. His feet clanked against several empty ones.             'Mr Tulip is not a scary man,' said Mr Pin. This was flying in the face of the current evidence, he had to admit. His partner had bought a twist of what the dealer had sworn was devil dust but which looked to Mr Pin very much like powdered copper sulphate, and this had apparently reacted with the chemicals from the Slab which had been Mr Tulip's afternoon snack and turned one of his sinuses into a small bag of electricity. His 90 right eye was spinning slowly, and sparks twinkled on his nasal hairs.             'I mean, does he look scary?' Mr Pin went on. 'Remember, you are Lord Vetinari. Understand? You're not going to take anything from some guard. If he talks back to you, just look at him.'             'Like this,' said Mr Tulip, half of his face flashing on and off.             Charlie leapt back.             'Not quite like that, perhaps,' said Mr Pin. 'But close.'             'I don't want to do this any more!' Charlie wailed.             'Ten thousand dollars, Charlie,' said Mr Pin. That's a lot of money.'             'I've heard of this Vetinari,' said Charlie. 'If this goes wrong he'll have me thrown into the scorpion pit!'             Mr Pin spread his hands expansively. 'Well, the scorpion pit isn't as bad as it's cracked up to be, you know?'             'It's a --ing picnic compared to me,' rumbled Mr Tulip, his nose lighting up.             Charlie's eyes sought a way out. Unfortunately, one of them was cleverness. Mr Pin hated the sight of Charlie trying to be clever. It was like watching a dog try to play the trombone.             'I'm not doing it for ten thousand dollars,' he said. 'I mean . . . you need me . . .'             He let it hang in the air, which was very much what Mr Pin was considering doing with Charlie.             'We had a deal, Charlie,' he said mildly.             'Yeah, well, I reckon there's more money in this now,' said Charlie.             'What do you think, Mr Tulip?'             Tulip opened his mouth to reply but sneezed instead. A thin bolt of lightning earthed itself on Charlie's chain.             'Maybe we could go to fifteen thousand,' said Mr Pin. 'And that's coming out of our share, Charlie.'             'Yeah, well. . .' said Charlie. He was as far away from Mr Tulip as possible now, because the man's dry hair was standing out from his head.             'But we want to see some extra effort, right?' said Mr Pin. 'Starting right now. All you have to do is say . . . What do you have to say?' 91             ' "You are relieved of your post, my man. Go away," ' said Charlie.             'Except we don't say it like that, do we, Charlie?' said Mr Pin. It's an order. You are his boss. And you have to give him a haughty stare . . . Look, how can I put it? You're a shopkeeper. Imagine that he's asked for credit.' ~blk~ It was six in the morning. Freezing fog held the city in its breathless grip.             Through the mists they came, and into the press room behind the Bucket they lurched, and out into the mists they went again, on a variety of legs, crutches and wheels.             'Mrpikeerah-tis!'             Lord Vetinari heard the cry and sent the overnight clerk down to the gate again.             He noted the title. He smiled at the motto.             He read the words: ~blk~~Frame~             IT IS THE COLDEST WINTER             IN LIVING MEMORY, AND             THAT IS OFFICIAL. ~blk~ Dr Fettle Dodgast (132) of Unfeen University, told the Times: 'It if as cold as I can remember. Mind you, we don't get the winter thefe days that we had when I was ,'^young.' ~blk~ Isicles as long as a man's arm have been seen on gutters about the city and many pumps have frozen. ~blk~ Dr Dodgast (132) says the winter is worse than the one in 1902 when wolves invaded te acity. He added 'and we were glad of that, because we hadn't seen fresh meat for a fortnight' . . . 92 Mr Josia Winder (45) of 12b Martlebury Street has %a Humerous Vegetable that he will exhibit to all comers upon payment of a small sum. It is most droll. . . . Mr Clarence Harry (39) begs to inform the public that he has lost a valuable watch, probably in the area of Dolly Sisters. Reward to finder. Please report to Times office. . . . A icongrapher with thier own equipptment vanted by this publication. Apply at the Times office. The sign of the Bucket.   A miscreatn stole $200 worth of silver from H. Hogland and Son, Jewllrs., of Nonsuch Street yesterday p.m. Mr Hogland, (32) who was threatened at knifepoint, told the Times: 'I shall recognise the man if I should see him again because not many people have a ftocking on their head.' ~blk~             And Lord Vetinari smiled.             And someone knocked softly at the door.             And he glanced at the clock.             'Come,' he said.             Nothing happened. After a few seconds, the soft knock came again.             'Come in.'             And there was the pregnant silence again.             And Lord Vetinari touched an apparently ordinary part of his desktop.             And a long drawer appeared out of what had seemed to be the solid walnut of the desk, sliding forward as though on oil. It contained a number of slim devices on a bed of black velvet, and a description of any one of them would certainly involve the word 'sharp'. 93             And he chose one, held it casually by his side, crossed soundlessly towards the door and turned the handle, stepping back quickly in case of a sudden rush.             No one pushed.             And the door, yielding to an unevenness in the hinges, swung inwards. ~blk~ Mr Mackleduff smoothed out the paper. It was already accepted by all around the breakfast table that, as the man who bought the paper, he was not simply its owner but, as it were, its priest, relaying its contents to the appreciative masses.             'It says here a man in Martlebury Street has grown a vegetable that's a funny shape,' he said.             'I should very much like to see that,' said Mrs Arcanum. There was a choking noise from further down the table. 'Are you all right, Mr de Worde?' she added, as Mr Prone thumped him on the back.             'Yes, yes, really,' gasped William. 'S-sorry. Some tea went down the wrong way.'             'There's good soil in that part of the city,' opined Mr Cartwright, travelling seed salesman.             William concentrated desperately on his toast, while over his head every news item was presented with the care and veneration of a blessed relic.             'Someone held up a shopkeeper at knifepoint,' Mr Mackleduff went on.             'Soon we will not be safe in our beds,' said Mrs Arcanum.             'I don't think this is the coldest winter for more than a hundred years, though,' said Mr Cartwright. I'm sure that one we had ten years ago was worse. Hit my sales something cruel.'             'It's in the paper,' said Mr Mackleduff, in the quiet voice of someone laying down an ace.             'It was a very strange obituary that you read out, too,' said Mrs Arcanum. William nodded silently over his boiled egg. I'm sure it's not usual to talk about the things someone's done since they died.'             Mr Longshaft, who was a dwarf and something in the jewellery business, helped himself to another slice of toast.             'I suppose it takes all sorts,' he said calmly. 94             The city is getting rather crowded, though,' said Mr Windling, who had some unspecified clerical job. 'Still, at least zombies are human. No offence meant, of course.'             Mr Longshaft smiled faintly as he buttered the toast, and William wondered why he always disliked people who said 'no offence meant'. Maybe it was because they found it easier to say 'no offence meant' than actually refrain from giving offence.             'Well, I suppose we have to move with the times,' said Mrs Arcanum. 'And I hope that other poor man finds his watch.'             In fact Mr Harry was waiting outside the office when William arrived. He grabbed William's hand and shook it.             'Amazing, sir, amazing!' he said. 'How did you do it? It must be magic! You put that notice in your paper and when I got home, blow me down if the watch wasn't in my other jacket! Gods bless your paper, say I!'             Inside, Goodmountain gave William the news. The Times had sold eight hundred copies so far today. At five pence each, William's share came to sixteen dollars. In pennies, it came to quite a large heap on the desk.             This is insane,' said William. 'All we did was write things down!'             'There is a bit of a problem, lad,' said Goodmountain. 'Are you going to want to do another one for tomorrow?'             'Good gods, I hope not!'             'Well, I've got a story for you,' said the dwarf glumly. 'I hear the Guild of Engravers are already setting up their own press. They've got a lot of money behind 'em, too. They could put us right out of business when it comes to general printing,'             'Can they do that?'             'Of course. They use presses anyway. Type isn't hard to make, especially when you've got a lot of engravers. They can do really good work. To be honest, we didn't reckon they'd cotton on this soon,'             'I'm amazed!'             'Well, younger members of the Guild have seen the work coming out of Omnia and the Agatean Empire. Turns out they've been looking for a chance like this. I hear there was a special meeting last night. A few changes of officers.' 95             'That must have been worth seeing.'             'So if you could keep your paper going . . .' said the dwarf.             'I don't want all this money!' William wailed. 'Money causes problems!'             'We could sell the Times cheaper,' said Sacharissa, giving him an odd look.             'We'd only make more money,' said William gloomily.             'We could . . . we could pay the street vendors more,' said Sacharissa.             'Tricky,' said Goodmountain. 'A body can only take so much turpentine.'             'Then we could at least make sure they get a good breakfast,' said Sacharissa. 'A big stew with named meat, perhaps.'             'But I'm not even sure there is enough news to fill a--' William began, and stopped. That wasn't the way it worked, was it? If it was in the paper, it was news. If it was news it went in the paper, and if it was in the paper it was news. And it was the truth.             He remembered the breakfast table. They' wouldn't let 'them' put it in the paper if it wasn't true, would they?             William wasn't a very political person. But he found himself using unfamiliar mental muscles when he thought about 'they'. Some of them had to do with memory.             'We could employ more people to help us get the news,' said Sacharissa. 'And what about news from other places? Pseudopolis and Quirm? We just have to talk to passengers getting off the coaches--'             'Dwarfs would like to hear what's been happening in Uberwald and Copperhead,' said Goodmountain, stroking his beard.             'It takes nearly a week for a coach to get there from here!' said William.             'So? It's still news.'             'I suppose we couldn't use the clacks, could we?' said Sacharissa.             'The semaphore towers? Are you mad?' said William. 'That's really expensive!'             'Well? You were the one who was worried we had too much money!'             There was a flash of light. William spun around. 96             A . . . . thing occupied the doorway. There was a tripod. There was a pair of skinny, black-clad legs behind it and a large black box on top of it. One black-clad arm extended out from behind the box and was holding a sort of small hod, which was smoking.             'Nice vun,' said a voice from behind the box. The light vas shinink so good off the dvarf's helmet, I could not resist it. You vanted an iconographer? My name is Otto Chriek.'             'Oh. Yes?' said Sacharissa. 'Are you any good?'             'I am a vizard in zer darkroom. I am experimenting all the time,' said Otto Chriek. 'And I have all my own eqvipment and also a keen and positive attitude!'             'Sacharissa!' hissed William urgently.             'We could probably start you at a dollar a day--'             'Sacharissa!'             'Yes? What?'             'He's a vampire!'             'I object most stronkly,' said the hidden Otto. 'It iss such an easy assumption to believe that everyvun with an Uberwald accent is a vampire, is it not? There are many thousands of people from Uberwald who are not vampires!'             William waved his hand aimlessly, trying to shrug off the embarrassment. 'All right, I'm sorry, but--'             'I am a vampire, as it happens,' Otto went on. 'But if I had said "Hello my cheeky cock sparrow mate old boy by crikey" vot vould you have said zen, eh?'             'We'd have been completely taken in,' said William.             'Anyvay, your notice did say "vanted", so I thought it vas, you know, affirmative action,' said Otto. 'Alzo, I have zis . . .' A thin, blue-veined hand was held up, gripping a small twist of shiny black ribbon.             'Oh? You've signed the pledge?' said Sacharissa.             'At the Meeting Rooms in Abattoirs Lane,' said Otto triumphantly, 'vhere I attend every veek for our big singsong and tea and a bun and wholesome conversation on themes of positive reinforcement keeping off the whole subject of bodily fluids by strict instruction. I am not any longer any stupid sucker!'             'What do you think, Mr Goodmountain?' said William.             Goodmountain scratched his nose. 'It's up to you,' he said. 'If he 97 tries anything with my lads he'll be looking for his legs. What's this pledge?'             'It's the Uberwald Temperance Movement,' said Sacharissa. 'A vampire signs up and forswears any human blood--'             Otto shuddered. 'Ve prefer "zer b-vord",' he said.             'The b-word,' Sacharissa corrected herself. The movement is becoming very popular. They know it's the only chance they've got.'             'Well . . . okay,' said William. He was uneasy about vampires himself, but turning the newcomer down after all this would be like kicking a puppy. 'Do you mind setting up your stuff in the cellar?'             'A cellar?' said Otto. Top hole!'             First the dwarfs had come, William thought as he went back to his desk. They'd been insulted because of their diligence and because of their height, but they had kept their heads down* and prospered. Then the trolls had come, and they got on a little better, because people don't throw as many stones at creatures seven feet tall who could throw rocks back. Then the zombies had come out of.the casket. One or two werewolves had crept in under the door. The gnomes had integrated quickly, despite a bad start, because they were tough and even more dangerous to cross than a troll; at least a troll couldn't run up your trouser leg. There weren't that many species left.             The vampires had never made it. They weren't sociable, even amongst themselves, they didn't think as a species, they were unpleasantly weird and they sure as hell didn't have their own food shops.             So now it was dawning on some of the brighter ones that the only way people would accept vampires was if they stopped being vampires. That was a large price to pay for social acceptability, but perhaps not so large as the one that involved having your head cut off and your ashes scattered on the river. A life of steak tartare wasn't too bad if you compared it with a death of stake au naturelle.+ ~blk~~foot~             * Which was not hard, as unkind people pointed out.    .             t In any case, anyone eating raw steak from an Ankh-Morpork slaughterhouse was embarking on a life of danger and excitement that should satisfy anyone. 98             'Er, I think we'd like to see who we're employing, though,' William said aloud.             Otto emerged, very slowly and nervously, from behind the lens. He was thin, pale and wore little oval dark glasses. He still clutched the twist of black ribbon as if it was a talisman, which it more or less was.             'It's all right, we won't bite you,' said Sacharissa.             'And one good turn deserves another, eh?' said Goodmountain.             'That was a bit tasteless, Mr Goodmountain,' said Sacharissa.             'So am I,' said the dwarf, turning back to the stone. 'Just so long as people know where I stand, that's all,'             'You vill not be sorry,' said Otto. 'I am completely reformed, I assure you. Vot is it you vant me to take pictures of, please?'             'News,' said William.             'Vot is news, please?'             'News is . . .' William began. 'News . . . is what we put in the paper--'             'What d'you think of this, eh?' said a cheerful voice.             William turned. There was a horribly familiar face looking at him over the top of a cardboard box.             'Hello, Mr Wintler,' he said. 'Er, Sacharissa, I wonder if you could go and--'             He wasn't quick enough. Mr Wintler, a man of the variety that thinks a whoopee cushion is the last word in repartee, was not the kind to let a mere freezing reception stand in his way. 'I was digging my garden this morning and up came this parsnip, and I thought: that young man at the paper will laugh himself silly when he sees it, 'cos my lady wife couldn't keep a straight face, and--'             To William's horror he was already reaching into the box. 'Mr Wintler, I really don't think--'             But the hand was already rising, and there was the sound of something scraping on the side of the box. 'I bet the young lady here would like a good chuckle too, eh?'             William shut his eyes.             He heard Sacharissa gasp. Then she said, 'Golly, it's amazingly lifelike!'             William opened his eyes. 'Oh, it's a nose,' he said. 'A parsnip with a sort of knobbly face and a huge noseV 99             'You vant I should take a picture?' said Otto.             'Yes!' said William, drunk with relief. 'Take a big picture of Mr Wintler and his wonderfully nasal parsnip, Otto! Your first job! Yes, indeed!'             Mr Wintler beamed. 'And shall I run back home and fetch my carrot?' he said.             'No!' said William and Goodmountain in whiplash unison.             'You vant the picture right now?' said Otto.             'We certainly do!' said William. The sooner we can let him go home, the sooner our Mr Wintler can find another wonderfully humorous vegetable, eh, Mr Wintler? What will it be next time? A bean with ears? A beetroot shaped like a potato? A sprout with an enormous hairy tongue?'             'Right here and now is ven you vant the picture?' said Otto, anxiety hanging off every syllable.             'Right now, yes!'             'As a matter of fact, there is a swede coming along that I've got great hopes of--' Mr Wintler began.             'Oh, veil. . . if you vill look zis vay, Mr Vintler,' said Otto. He got behind the iconograph and uncovered the lens. William got a glimpse of the imp peering out, brush poised. In his spare hand Otto slowly held up, on a stick, a cage containing a fat and drowsing salamander, finger poised on the trigger that would bring a small hammer down on its head just hard enough to annoy it.             'Be smiling, please!'             'Hold on,' said Sacharissa. 'Should a vampire really--?'             Click.             The salamander flared, etching the room with searing white light and dark shadows.             Otto screamed. He fell to the floor, clutching at his throat. He sprang to his feet, goggle-eyed and gasping, and staggered, knock-kneed and wobbly-legged, the length of the room and back again. He sank down behind a desk, scattering paperwork with a wildly flailing hand.             'Aarghaarghaaargh . . .'             And then there was a shocked silence. 100             Otto stood up, adjusted his cravat and dusted himself off. Only then did he look up at the row of shocked faces.             'Veil?' he said sternly. 'Vot are you all looking at? It is just a normal reaction, zat is all. I am vorking on it. Light in all its forms is mine passion. Light is my canvas, shadows are my brush.'             'But strong light hurts you!' said Sacharissa. 'It hurts vampires!'             'Yes. It iss a bit of a bugger, but zere you go.'             'And, er, that happens every time you take a picture, does it?' said William.             'No, sometimes it iss a lot vorse.'             'Worse?'             'I sometimes crumble to dust. But zat vich does not kill us makes us stronk.'             'Stronk?'             'Indeed!'             William caught Sacharissa's gaze. Her look said it all: we've hired him. Have we got the heart to fire him now? And don't make fun of his accent unless your Uberwaldean is really good, okay?             Otto adjusted the iconograph and inserted a fresh sheet.             'And now, shall ve try vun more?' he said brightly. 'And zis time - everybody smile!' ~blk~ Mail was arriving. William was used to a certain amount, usually from clients of his news letter complaining that he hadn't told them about the double-headed giants, plagues and rains of domestic animals that they had heard had been happening in Ankh-Morpork; his father had been right about one thing, at least, when he'd asserted that lies could run round the world before the truth could get its boots on. And it was amazing how people wanted to believe them.             These were . . . well, it was as if he'd shaken a tree and all the nuts had fallen out. Several letters were complaining that there had been much colder winters than this, although no two of them could agree when it was. One said vegetables were not as funny as they used to be, especially leeks. Another asked what the Guild of Thieves was doing about unlicensed crime in the city. There was one saying that all these robberies were down to dwarfs who 101 shouldn't be allowed into the city to steal the work out of honest humans' mouths.             'Put a title like "Letters" on the top and put them in,' said William. 'Except the one about the dwarfs. That sounds like Mr Windling. It sounds like my father, too, except that at least he can spell "undesirable" and wouldn't use crayon.'             'Why not that letter?'             'Because it's offensive.'             'Some people think it's true, though,' said Sacharissa. 'There's been a lot of trouble.'             'Yes, but we shouldn't print it.'             William called Goodmountain over and showed him the letter. The dwarf read it.             'Put it in,' he suggested. 'It'll fill a few inches.'             'But people will object,' said William.             'Good. Put their letters in, too.'             Sacharissa sighed. 'We'll probably need them,' she said. 'William, grandfather says no one in the Guild will engrave the iconographs for us.'             'Why not? We can afford the rates.'             'We're not Guild members. It's all getting unpleasant. Will you tell Otto?'             William sighed and walked over to the ladder.             The dwarfs used the cellar as a bedroom, being naturally happier with a floor over their heads. Otto had been allowed to use a dank corner, which he'd made his own by hanging an old sheet across on a rope.             'Oh, hello, Mr Villiam,' he said, pouring something noxious from one bottle into another.             'I'm afraid it looks as if we won't get anyone to engrave your pictures,' said William.             The vampire seemed unmoved by this. 'Yes, I vundered about zat.'             'So I'm sorry to say that--'             'No problem, Mr Villiam. Zere is alvays a yay.'             'How? You can't engrave, can you?'             'No, but . . . all ve are printing is black and vite, yes?   And zer 102 paper is vite zo all ve are really printink is black, okay? I looked at how zer dvarfs do zer letters, and zey haf all zese bits of metal lying around and . . . you know how zer engravers can engrave metal viz acid?'             'Yes?'             'Zo, all I haf to do is teach zer imps to paint viz acid. End of problem. Getting grey took a bit of thought, but I zink I haf--'             'You mean you can get the imps to etch the picture straight on to a plate?'             'Yes. It is vun of those ideas that are obvious ven you zink about it.' Otto looked wistful. 'And I zink about light all zer time. All zer . . . time.'             William vaguely remembered something someone had once said: the only thing more dangerous than a vampire crazed with blood lust was a vampire crazed with anything else. All the meticulous single-mindedness that went into finding young women who slept with their bedroom window open was channelled into some other interest, with merciless and painstaking efficiency.             'Er, why do you need to work in a dark room, though?' he said. 'The imps don't need it, do they?'             'Ah, zis is for my experiment,' said Otto proudly. 'You know zat another term for an iconographer would be "photographer"? From the old word photus in Latation, vhich means--'             ' "To prance around like a pillock ordering everyone about as if you owned the place",' said William.             'Ah, you know it!'             William nodded. He'd always wondered about that word.             'Veil, I am vorking on an obscurograph,'             William's forehead wrinkled. It was turning into a long day. Taking pictures with darkness?' he ventured.             'Viz true darkness, to be precise,' said Otto, excitement entering his voice. 'Not just absence of light. Zer light on zer ozzer side of darkness. You could call it . . . living darkness. Ve can't see it, but imps can. Did you know zer Uberwaldean Deep Cave land eel emits a burst of dark light ven startled?'             William glanced at a large glass jar on the bench. A couple of ugly things were coiled up in the bottom. 103             'And that will work, will it?'             'I zink so. Hold it vun minute.'             'I really ought to be getting back--'             'Zis vill not take a second             Otto gently lifted one of the eels out of its jar and put it into the hod usually occupied by a salamander. He carefully aimed one of his iconographs at William and nodded.             'Vun . . . two . . . three . . . BOO!'             There was--             --there was a soft noiseless implosion, a very brief sensation of the world being screwed up small, frozen, smashed into tiny little sharp pins and hammered through every cell of William's body.* Then the gloom of the cellar flowed back.             'That was . . . very strange,' said William, blinking. 'It was like something very cold walking through me.'             'Much may be learnt about dark light now ve have left our disgusting past behind us and haf emerged into zer bright new future vhere ve do not zink about zer b-vord all day in any vay at all,' said Otto,'fiddling with the iconograph. He looked hard at the picture the imp had painted and then glanced up at William. 'Oh veil, back to zer drawink board,' he said.             'Can I see?'             'It vould embarrass me,' said Otto, putting the square of cardboard down on his makeshift bench. 'All zer time I am doing things wronk.'             'Oh, but I'd--'             'Mister de Worde, dere's something happening!'             The bellow came from Rocky, whose head eclipsed the hole.             'What is it?'             'Something at der palace. Someone's been killed!'             William sprang up the ladder. Sacharissa was sitting at her desk, looking pale.             'Someone's assassinated Vetinari?' said William.             'Er, no,' said Sacharissa. 'Not . . . exactly,'             Down  in  the  cellar  Otto  Chriek  picked  up  the   dark  light ~blk~~foot~ * In many ways William de Worde had quite a graphic imagination. 104 iconograph and looked at it again. Then he scratched it with a long pale finger, as if trying to remove something.             'Strange . . ,' he said.             The imp hadn't imagined it, he knew. Imps had no imagination whatsoever. They didn't know how to lie.             He looked around the bare cellar suspiciously.             'Is zere anyvun zere?' he said. 'Is anyvun playink zer silly buggers?'             Thankfully there was no answer.             Dark light. Oh dear. There were lots of theories about dark light. . .             'Otto!'             He glanced up, shoving the picture into his pocket.             'Yes, Mr Villiam?'             'Get your stuff together and come with me! Lord Vetinari's murdered someone! Er, it is alleged,' William added. 'And it can't possibly be true.' ~blk~ It sometimes seemed to William that the whole population of Ankh-Morpork was simply a mob waiting to happen. It was mostly spread thin, like some kind of great amoeba, all across the city. But when something happened somewhere it contracted around that point, like a cell around a piece of food, filling the streets with people.             It was growing around the main gates to the palace. It came together apparently at random. A knot of people would attract other people, and become a bigger, more complicated knot. Carts and sedan chairs would stop to find out what was going on. The invisible beast grew bigger.             There were watchmen on the gate instead of the palace guard. This was a problem. 'Let me in, I'm nosy,' was not a request likely to achieve success. It lacked a certain authority.             'Vy are ve stoppink?' said Otto.             'That's Sergeant Detritus on the gate,' said William.             'Ah. A troll. Very stupid,' opined Otto.             'But hard to fool. I'm afraid I shall have to try the truth.'             'Vy vill zat vork?' 105             'He's a policeman. The truth usually confuses them. They don't often hear it.'             The big troll sergeant watched William impassively as he approached. It was a proper policeman's stare. It gave nothing away. It said: I can see you, now I'm waiting to see what you're going to do that's wrong.             'Good morning, sergeant,' said William.             A nod from the troll indicated that he was prepared to accept, on available evidence, that it was morning and, in certain circumstances, by some people, it might be considered good.             'I urgently need to see Commander Vimes.'             'Oh, yes?'             'Yes. Indeed.'             'And does he urgently need to see you?' The troll leaned closer. 'You're Mr de Worde, right?'             'Yes. I work for the Times.'             'I don't read dat,' said the troll.             'Really? We'll bring out a large-print edition,' said William.             'Dat was a very funny joke,' said Detritus. Ting is, fick though I am, I am der one that's sayin' you can stay outside, so-- What's dat vampire doing?'             'Hold it just vun second!' said Otto.             WHOOMPH.             '--damndamndamn!'             Detritus watched Otto roll around on the cobbles screaming.             'What was dat about?' he said, eventually.             'He's taken a picture of you not letting me into the palace,' said William.             Detritus, although born above the snowline on some distant mountain, a troll who had never seen a human until he was five years old, nevertheless was a policeman to his craggy, dragging fingertips and reacted accordingly.             'He can't do dat,' he said.             William pulled out his notebook and poised his pencil. 'Could you explain to my readers exactly why not?' he said.             Detritus looked around, a little worried. 'Where are dey?'             'No, I mean I'm going to write down what you say.' 106             Basic policing rushed to Detritus's aid once again. 'You can't do dat,' he said.             Then can I write down why I can't write anything down?' William said, smiling brightly.             Detritus reached up and moved a little lever on the side of his helmet. A barely audible whirring noise became fractionally louder. The troll had a helmet with a clockwork fan, to blow air across his silicon brain when overheating threatened to reduce its operating efficiency. Right now he obviously needed a cooler head.             'Ah. Dis is some kind of politics, right?' he said.             'Um, maybe. Sorry.'             Otto had staggered to his feet and was fiddling with the icono-graph again.             Detritus reached a decision. He nodded to a constable.             'Fiddyment, you take dese . . . two to Mister Vimes. Dey are not to fall down any steps on der way or any stuff like dat.'             Mister Vimes, thought William, as they hurried after the constable. All the watchmen called him that. The man had been a knight and was now a duke and a commander, but they called him Mister. And it was Mister, too, the full two syllables, not the everyday unheeded 'Mr'; it was the 'mister' you used when you wanted to say things like Tut down that crossbow and turn around real slow, mister.' He wondered why.             William had not been brought up to respect the Watch. They weren't our kind of people. It was conceded that they were useful, like sheepdogs, because clearly someone had to keep people in order, heavens knew, but only a fool would let a sheepdog sleep in the parlour. The Watch, in other words, was a regrettably necessary sub-set of the criminal classes, a section of the population informally defined by Lord de Worde as anyone with less than a thousand dollars a year.             William's family and everyone they knew also had a mental map of the city that was divided into parts where you found upstanding citizens and other parts where you found criminals. It had come as a shock to them . . . no, he corrected himself, it had come as an affront to learn that Vimes operated on a different map. Apparently he'd instructed his men to use the front door when calling at any 107 building, even in broad daylight, when sheer common sense said that they should use the back, just like any other servant.* The man simply had no idea.             That Vetinari had made him a duke was just another example of the Patrician's lack of grip.             William therefore felt predisposed to like Vimes, if only because of the type of enemies he made, but as far as he could see everything about the man could be prefaced by the word 'badly', as in -spoken, -educated and -in need of a drink.             Fiddyment stopped in the big hall of the palace.             'Don't you go anywhere and don't you do anything,' he said. 'I'll go and--'             But Vimes was already coming down the wide stairs, trailed by a giant of a man William recognized as Captain Carrot.             You could add '-dressed' to Vimes's list. It wasn't that he wore bad clothes. He just seemed to generate an internal scruffiness field. The man could rumple a helmet.             Fiddyment met them halfway. There was a muttered conversation, out of which the unmistakable words 'He's what?' arose, in Vimes's voice. He glared darkly at William. The expression was clear. It said: it's been a bad day and now there's you.             Vimes walked the rest of the way down the stairs and looked William up and down.             'What is it you're wanting?' he demanded.             'I want to know what's happened here, please,' said William.             'Why?'             'Because people will want to know.'             'Hah! They'll find out soon enough!'             'But who from, sir?'             Vimes walked round William as if he was examining some strange new thing.             'You're Lord de Worde's boy, aren't you?'             'Yes, your grace.'             'Commander will do,' said Vimes sharply. 'And you write that little gossipy thing, right?' ~blk~~foot~ * William's class understood that justice was like coal or potatoes. You ordered it when you needed it. 108             'Broadly, sir.'             'What was it you did to Sergeant Detritus?'             'I only wrote down what he said, sir.'             'Aha, pulled a pen on him, eh?'             'Sir?'             'Writing things down at people? Teh, tch . . . that sort of thing only causes trouble.'             Vimes stopped walking round William, but having him glare from a few inches away was no improvement.             'This has not been a nice day,' he said. 'And it's going to get a lot worse. Why should I waste my time talking to you?'             'I can tell you one good reason,' said William.             'Well, go on, then.'             'You should talk to me so that I can write it down, sir. All neat and correct. The actual words you say, right down there on the paper. And you know who I am, and if I get them wrong you know where to find me.'             'So? You're telling me that if I do what you want you'll do what you want?'             'I'm saying, sir, that a lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on.'             'Ha! Did you just make that up?'             'No, sir. But you know it's true.'             Vimes sucked on his cigar. 'And you'll let me see what you've written?'             'Of course. I'll make sure you get one of the first papers off the press, sir.'             'I meant before it gets published, and you know it.'             'To tell you the truth, no, I don't think I should do that, sir.'             'I am the Commander of the Watch, lad.'             'Yes, sir. And I'm not. I think that's my point, really, although I'll work on it some more.'             Vimes stared at him a little too long. Then, in a slightly different tone of voice, he said:             'Lord Vetinari was seen by three cleaning maids of the household staff, all respectable ladies, after they were alerted by the barking of his lordship's dog at about seven o'clock this morning. He said' 109 - here Vimes consulted his own notebook - ' "I've killed him, I've killed him, I'm sorry." They saw what looked very much like a body on the floor. Lord Vetinari was holding a knife. They ran downstairs to fetch someone. On their return they found his lordship missing. The body was that of Rufus Drumknott, the Patrician's personal secretary. He had been stabbed and is seriously ill. A search of the buildings located Lord Vetinari in the stables. He was unconscious on the floor. A horse was saddled. The saddlebags contained . . . seventy thousand dollars . . . Captain, this is damn stupid.'             'I know, sir,' said Carrot. They are the facts, sir.'             'But they're not the right facts! They're stupid facts!'             'I know, sir. I can't imagine his lordship trying to kill anyone.'             'Are you mad?' said Vimes. 'I can't imagine him saying sorry!'             Vimes turned and glared at William, as if surprised to find him still there. 'Yes?' he demanded.             'Why was his lordship unconscious, sir?'             Vimes shrugged. 'It looks as though he was trying to get on the horse. He's got a game leg. Maybe he slipped-- I can't believe I'm saying this. Anyway, that's your lot, understand?'             'I'd like to get an iconograph of you, please,' William persisted.             'Why?'    .             William thought fast. 'It will reassure the citizens that you are on the case and handling this personally, commander. My iconogra-pher is just downstairs. Otto!'             'Good gods, a damn vamp--' Vimes began.             'He's a Black Ribboner, sir,' Carrot whispered. Vimes rolled his eyes.             'Good mornink,' said Otto. 'Do not be movink, please, you are making a good pattern of light and shade.' He kicked out the legs of the tripod, peered into the iconograph and raised a salamander in its cage.             'Looking this vay, please--'             Click.             WHOOMPH.             '--oh, shee-yut!'             Dust floated to the floor. In the midst of it a twist of black ribbon spiralled down. 110             There was a moment of shocked silence. Then Vimes said, 'What the hell happened just then?'             'Too much flash, I think,' said William. He reached down with a trembling hand and retrieved a small square of card that was sticking out of the little grey cone of the late Otto Chriek.             ' "DO NOT BE ALARMED,"' he read. ' "The former bearer of this card has suffered a minor accident. You vill need a drop of blood from any species, and a dustpan and brush."'             'Well, the kitchens are over that way,' said Vimes. 'Sort him out. I don't want my men treading him in all over the damn place.'             'One last thing, sir. Would you like me to say that if anyone saw anything suspicious they should tell you, sir?' said William.             'In this town? We'd need every man on the Watch just to control the queue. Just you be careful what you write, that's all.'             The two watchmen strode away, Carrot giving William a wan smile as he passed.             William busied himself in carefully scraping up Otto with two pages from his notebook and depositing the dust in the bag the vampire used to carry his equipment.             Then it dawned on him that he was alone - Otto probably didn't count at the moment - in the palace with Commander Vimes's permission to be there, if 'the kitchens are over that way' could be parlayed into 'permission'. And William was good with words. Truth was what he told. Honesty was sometimes not the same thing.             He picked up the bag and found his way to the back stairs and the kitchen, whence came a hubbub.             Staff were wandering around with the bewildered air of people with nothing to do who were nevertheless still being paid to do it. William sidled over to a maid who was sobbing into a grubby handkerchief.             'Excuse me, miss, but could you let me have a drop of blood-- Yes, perhaps this isn't the right moment,' he added nervously, as she fled shrieking.             ' 'ere, what did you say to our Rene?' said a thickset man, putting down a tray of hot loaves.             'Are you the baker?' said William.             The man gave him a look. 'What does it look like?' 111             'I can see what it looks like,' said William. There was another look, but this one had just a measure of respect in it. 'I'm still asking the question,' he went on.             'I'm the butcher, as it happens,' said the man. 'Well done. The baker's off sick. And who are you, askin' me questions?'             'Commander Vimes sent me down here,' said William. He was appalled at the ease with which the truth turned into a something that was almost a lie, just by being positioned correctly. He opened his notebook. I'm from the Times. Did you--'             'What, the paper?' said the butcher.             That's right. Did you--'             'Hah! You got it completely up your bum about the winter, y'know. You should've said it was the Year of the Ant, that was the worst. You should've arsked me. I could've put you right.'             'And you are--?'             'Sidney Clancy and Son, aged 39, 11 Long Hogmeat, Purveyors of Finest Cat and Dog Meats to The Gentry . . . Why aren't you writing it down?'             'Lord Vetinari eats pet food?'             'He doesn't eat much of anything from what I hear. No, I delivers for his dog; Finest stuff. Prime. We sell only the best at 11 Long Hogmeat, open every day from 6 a.m. to mid--'             'Oh, his dog. Right,' said William. 'Er.' He looked around at the throng. Some of those people could tell him things, and he was talking to a dogmeat man. Still. . .             'Could you let me have a tiny piece of meat?' he said.             'Are you going to put it in the paper?'             'Yes. Sort of. In a way.' ~blk~ William found a quiet alcove hidden from the general excitement and gingerly let the piece of meat dribble one drop of blood on to the little grey pile.             The dust mushroomed up into the air, became a mass of coloured flecks, became Otto Chriek.             'How vas that vun?' he said. 'Oh             'I think you got the picture,' said William. 'Er, your jacket. . .'             Part of the sleeve of the vampire's jacket was now the colour and 112 texture of the stair carpet in the big hall, a rather dull pattern of red and blue.             'Carpet dust got mixed in, I expect,' said Otto. 'Do not be alarmed. Happens all zer time,' He sniffed the sleeve. 'Finest steak? Thank you!'             'It was dog food,' said William the Truthful.             'Dog food?'             'Yes. Grab your stuff and follow me.'             'Dog food?'             'You did say it was finest steak. Lord Vetinari is kind to his dog. Look, don't complain to me. If this sort of thing happens a lot then you ought to carry a little bottle of emergency blood! Otherwise people will do the best they can!'             'Veil, yes, fine, zank you anyvay,' the vampire mumbled, trailing behind him. 'Dog food, dog food, oh dear me . . . vhere are ve goink now?'             'To the Oblong Office to see where the attack was made,' said William. 'I just hope it isn't being guarded by someone clever.'             'Ve will get into a lot off trouble.'             'Why?' said William. He'd been thinking the same thing, but: why? The palace belonged to the city, more or less. The Watch probably wouldn't like him going in there, but William felt in his bones that you couldn't run a city on the basis of what the Watch liked. The Watch would probably like it if everyone spent their time indoors, with their hands on the table where people could see them.             The door to the Oblong Office was open. Guarding it, if you could truly be said to be on guard whilst leaning against the wall staring at the opposite wall, was Corporal Nobbs. He was smoking a surreptitious cigarette.             'Ah, just the man I was looking for!' said William. That was true. Nobby was more than he'd hoped for.             The cigarette disappeared by magic.             'Am I?' wheezed Nobbs, smoke curling out of his ears.             'Yes, I've been talking to Commander Vimes, and now I would like to see the room where the crime was committed.' William had great hopes of that sentence. It seemed to contain the 113 words 'and he gave me permission to' without actually doing so.             Corporal Nobbs looked uncertain, but then he noticed the notebook. And Otto. The cigarette appeared between his lips again.             ' 'ere, are you from that news paper?'             'That's right,' said William. 'I thought people would be interested in seeing how our brave Watch swings into action at a time like this.'             Corporal Nobbs's skinny chest visibly swelled.             'Corporal Nobby Nobbs, sir, probably 34, bin in uniform since prob'ly ten years old, man and boy.'             William felt he ought to make a show of writing this down. 'Probably 34?'             'Our mam has never been one for numbers, sir. Always a bit vague on fine detail, our mam.'             'And . . .' William took a closer look at the corporal. You had to assume he was a human being because he was broadly the right shape, could talk and wasn't covered in hair. 'Man and boy and . . . ?' he heard himself say.             'Just man and boy, sir,' said Corporal Nobbs reproachfully. 'Just man and boy.'             'And were you first on the scene, corporal?'             'Last on the scene, sir.'             'And your important job is to . . . ?'             'Stop anyone going through this door, sir,' said Corporal Nobbs, trying to read William's notes upside down. 'That's "Nobbs" without a "K", sir. It's amazing how people get that wrong. What's he. doing with that box?'             'Got to take a picture of Ankh-Morpork's finest,' said William, easing himself towards the door. Of course, that was a lie, but since it was such an obvious lie he considered that it didn't count. It was like saying the sky was green.             By now Corporal Nobbs was almost leaving the floor under the lifting power of pride.             'Could I have a copy for my mam?' he said.             'Smile, please . . .' said Otto.             'I am smilin'.'             'Stop smiling, please.' 114             Click. WHOOMPH.             'Aaarghaarghaargh             A screaming vampire is always the centre of attention. William slipped into the Oblong Office.             Just inside the door was a chalk outline. In coloured chalk. It must have been done by Corporal Nobbs, because he was the only person who would add a pipe and draw in some flowers and clouds.             There was also a stink of peppermint.             There was a chair, knocked over.             There was a basket, kicked upside down in the corner of the room.             There was a short, evil-looking metal arrow sticking into the floor at an angle; it had a City Watch label tied to it now.             There was a dwarf. He-- no, William corrected himself, on seeing the heavy leather skirt and the slight raised heels to the iron boots - she was lying down on her stomach, picking at something on the floor with a pair of tweezers. It looked like a smashed jar.             She glanced up. 'Are you new? Where's your uniform?' she said.             'Well, er, I, er . . .'             She narrowed her eyes. 'You're not a watchman, are you? Does Mister Vimes know you're here?'             The way of the truthful-by-nature is as a bicycle race in a pair of sandpaper underpants, but William clung to an indisputable fact.             'I spoke to him just now,' he said.             But the dwarf wasn't Sergeant Detritus, and certainly not Corporal Nobbs.             'And he said you could come in here?' she demanded.             'Not exactly said--'             The dwarf walked across and swiftly opened the door. 'Then get--'             'Ah, a vonderful framing effect!' said Otto, who'd been on the other side of the door.             Click!             William shut his eyes.             WHOOMPH. 115             '. . . oohhbuggerrrrr . . .'             This time William caught the little piece of paper before it hit the ground.             The dwarf stood open-mouthed. Then she closed her mouth. Then she opened it again to say: 'What the hell just happened?'             'I suppose you could call it a sort of industrial injury,' said William. 'Hang on, I think I've still got a piece of dog food somewhere. Honestly, there's got to be a better way than this             He unwrapped the meat from a grubby piece of newspaper and gingerly dropped it on to the heap.             The ash fountained and Otto arose, blinking.             'How vas that? Vun more? This time viz the obscurograph?' he said. He was already reaching for his bag.             'Get out of here right now!' said the dwarf.             'Oh, please' - William glanced at the dwarf's shoulder - 'corporal, let Mm do his job. Give him a chance, eh? He's a Black Ribboner, after all. . .' Behind the watchman Otto took an ugly, newt-like creature out of its jar.             'Do you want me to arrest the pair of you? You're interfering with the scene of a crime!'             'What crime, would you say?' said William, flipping open his notebook.             'Out, the pair of--'             'Boo,' said Otto softly.             The land eel must have been quite tense already. In response to thousands of years of evolution in a high magical environment it. discharged a night-time's worth of darkness all at once. It filled the room for a moment, sheer solid black laced with traceries of blue and violet. Again for a moment William thought he could feel it wash through him in a flood. Then light flowed back, like chilly water after a pebble has been dropped in the lake.             The corporal glared at Otto. 'That was dark light, wasn't it?'             'Ah, you too are from Uberwald--' Otto began happily.             'Yes, and I did not expect to see that here! Get out!'             They hurried past the startled Corporal Nobbs, down the wide stairs and out into the frosty air of the courtyard.             'Is there something you ought to be telling me,  Otto?' said 116 William. 'She seemed extremely angry when you took that second picture,'             'Veil, it's a little hard to explain,' said the vampire awkwardly.             'It's not harmful, is it?'             'Oh, no, zere are no physical effects vhatsoever--'             'Or mental effects?' said William, who had spun words too often to miss such a carefully misleading statement.             'Perhaps zis is not zer time. . .'             'That's true. Tell me about it later. Before you try it again, okay?'             William's head buzzed as he ran along Filigree Street. Barely an hour ago he'd been agonizing over what stupid letters to put in the newspaper and the world had seemed more or less normal. Now it had been turned upside down. Lord Vetinari was supposed to have tried to kill someone, and that didn't make sense, if only because the person he had tried to kill was apparently still alive. He'd been trying to get away with a load of money, too, and that didn't make sense either. Oh, it wasn't hard to imagine a person embezzling money and attacking someone, but if you mentally inserted someone like the Patrician into the picture it all fell apart. And what about the peppermint? The room had reeked of it.             There were a lot more questions. The look in the corporal's eye as she'd chased him out of the office suggested firmly to William that he was unlikely to get any more answers from the Watch.             And looming up in his mind was the gaunt shape of the press. Somehow he was going to have to make a coherent story about all this, and he'd have to do it now . . .             The happy figure of Mr Wintler greeted him as he strode into the press room.             'What do you think of this funny marrow, eh, Mr de Worde?'             'I suggest you stuff it, Mr Wintler,' said William, pushing past.             'Just as you say, sir, that's just what my lady wife said too.'             'I'm sorry, but he insisted on waiting for you,' Sacharissa whispered as William sat down. 'What's going on?'             'I'm not sure . . .' said William, staring hard at his notes.             'Who's been killed?'             'Er, no one . . . I think . . .' 117             That's a mercy, then.' Sacharissa looked down at the papers covering her desk.             I'm afraid we've had five other people in here with humorous vegetables,' she said.             'Oh.'             'Yes. They weren't all that funny, to tell the truth.'             'Oh.'             'No, they mainly looked like . . . um, you know.'             'Oh . . . what?'             'You know,' she said, beginning to go red. 'A man's . . . um, you             know.'             'Oh.'             'Not even very much like, um, you know, too. I mean, you had to want to see a . . . um, you know . . . there, if you understand             me.'             William hoped that no one was making notes about this conversation. 'Oh,' he said.             'But I took their names and addresses, just in case,' said Sacharissa. I thought it might be worth it if we're short of stuff.'             'We're never going to be that short,' said William quickly.             'You don't think so?'             I'm positive.'             'You may be right,' she said, looking at the mess of paper on her desk. 'It's been very busy in here while you were out. People have been queueing up with all sorts of news. Things that are going to happen, lost dogs, things they want to sell--'             'That's advertising,' said William, trying to concentrate on his notes. 'If they want it in the paper they have to pay.'             'I don't see that it's up to us to decide--'             William thumped the desk, to his own amazement and Sacharissa's shock.             'Something is happening, do you understand? Something really real is happening. And it's not an amusing shape! It's really serious! And I've got to write it down as soon as possible! Can you just let me do that?'             He realized Sacharissa was staring not at him but at his fist. He followed her gaze. 118             'Oh, no . . . what the hell is this?'             A long sharp nail projected straight upwards from the desk, an inch from his hand. It must have been at least six inches long. Pieces of paper had been impaled on it. When he picked it up he saw that it remained upright because it had been hammered through a wooden block.             'It's a spike,' said Sacharissa quietly. 'I, I, er, brought it in to keep our papers tidy. M-my grandfather always uses one. All . . . all the engravers do. It's . . . it's sort of a cross between a filing cabinet and a wastepaper basket. I thought it would be useful. Er, it'll save you using the floor.'             'Er, right, yes, good idea,' said William, looking at her reddening face. 'Er . . .'             He couldn't think straight. 'Mr Goodmountain?' he yelled.             The dwarf looked up from a playbill he was setting.             'Can you put stuff in type if I dictate to you?'             'Yes.'             'Sacharissa, please go and find Ron and his . . . friends. I want to get a small paper out as soon as possible. Not tomorrow morning. Right now. Please?'             She was about to protest, and then she saw the look in his eye. 'Are you sure you're allowed to do this?' she said.             'No! I'm not! I won't know until after I've done it! That's why I've got to do it! Then I'll know! And I'm sorry I'm shouting!'             He pushed his chair aside and went over to Goodmountain, who was standing patiently by a case of type.             'All right. . . we need a line at the top . . .' William shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose while he thought. 'Er . . . "Amazing Scenes In Ankh-Morpork" . . . got that? In very big type. Then in smaller type, underneath . . . "Patrician Attacks Clerk With Knife" . . . er. . .' That didn't sound right, he knew. It was grammatically inexact. It was the Patrician who had the knife, not the clerk. 'We can sort that out later . . . er . . . in smaller type again . . . "Mysterious Events In Stables" . . . go down another size of type . . . "Watch Baffled". Okay? And now we'll start the story . . .'             'Start it?' said Goodmountain, his hand dancing across the boxes of type. 'Aren't we nearly finished?' 119             William flicked back and forth through his notes. How to begin, how to begin . . . Something interesting . . . No, something amazing . . . Some amazing things . . . no . . . no . . . The story was surely the strangeness of it all. . .             '"Suspicious circumstances surround the attack" . . . make that "alleged attack" . . .'             'I thought you said he admitted it,' said Sacharissa, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief.             'I know, I know, it's just that I think that if Lord Vetinari wanted to kill someone they'd be dead . . . look him up in Twurp's Peerage, will you, I'm sure he was educated in the Assassins' Guild--'             'Alleged or not?' said Goodmountain, his hand hovering over the As. 'Just say the word.'             'Make it "the apparent attack",' said William, ' "by Lord Vetinari on Rufus Drumknott, his clerk, in the palace today. Er . . . er . . . Palace staff heard--"'             'Do you want me to work on this or do you want me to find the beggars?' Sacharissa demanded. 'I can't do both.' William gave her a blank stare. Then he nodded. 'Rocky?'             The troll by the door awoke with a snort. 'Yessir?' 'Go and find Foul Ole Ron and the others and get them up here as soon as possible. Tell them there'll be a bonus. Now, where was I?'             ' "Palace staff heard,"' Goodmountain prompted. '"--heard his lordship--"'             '"--who graduated with full honours from the Guild of Assassins in 1968,"' Sacharissa called out.             'Put that in,' said William urgently. 'And then go on with . . . "say 'I killed him, I killed him, I'm sorry'". . . Good grief, Vimes is right, this is insane, he'd have to be mad to talk like this.' 'Mr de Worde, is it?' said a voice. 'Oh, what the hell is it this time?'             William turned. He saw the trolls first, because even when they're standing at the back a group of four big trolls are metaphorically to the fore of any picture. The two humans in front of them were a mere detail, and in any case one of them was only 120 human by tradition. He had the grey pallor of a zombie and wore the expression of one who, while not seeking to be unpleasant in himself, was the cause of much unpleasantness in other people.             'Mr de Worde? I believe you know me. I am Mr Slant of the Guild of Lawyers,' said Mr Slant, bowing stiffly. This,' he indicated the slight young man next to him, 'is Mr Ronald Carney, the new chairman of the Guild of Engravers and Printers. The four gentlemen behind me do not belong to any guild, as far as I am aware--'             'Engravers and Printers?' said Goodmountain.             'Yes,' said Carney. 'We have expanded our charter. Guild membership is two hundred dollars a year--'             'I'm not--' William began, but Goodmountain laid a hand on his arm.             This is the shakedown, but it isn't as bad as I thought it might be,' he whispered. 'We haven't got time to argue and at this rate we'll make it back in a few days. End of problem!'             'However,' said Mr Slant, in his special lawyer's voice that sucked in money at every pore, 'in this instance, in view of the special circumstances, there will also be a one-off payment of, say, two thousand dollars.'             The dwarfs went quiet. Then there was a metallic chorus. Each dwarf had laid down his type, reached under the stone and pulled out a battle axe.             That's agreed, then, is it?' said Mr Slant, stepping aside. The trolls were straightening up. It didn't take a major excuse for trolls and dwarfs to fight; sometimes, being on the same world was enough.             This time it was William who restrained Goodmountain. 'Hold on, hold on, there must be a law against killing lawyers.'             'Are you sure?'             There're still some around, aren't there? Besides, he's a zombie. If you cut him in half both bits will sue you.' William raised his voice. 'We can't pay, Mr Slant.'             'In that case, accepted law and practice allows me--'             'I want to see your charter!' Sacharissa snapped. 'I've known you since we were kids, Ronnie Carney, and you're always up to something.' 121             'Good afternoon, Miss Cripslock,' said Mr Slant. 'As a matter of fact we thought someone might ask, so I brought the new charter with me. I hope we are all law-abiding here.'             Sacharissa snatched the impressive-looking scroll, with its large dangling seal, and glared at it as if trying to burn the words off the parchment by the mere friction of reading. 'Oh,' she said. 'It. . . seems to be in order.' 'Quite so.'             'Except for the Patrician's signature,' Sacharissa added, handing back the scroll.             That is a mere formality, my dear.'             'I'm not your dear and it's not on there, formal or not. So this isn't legal, is it?'             Mr Slant twitched. 'Clearly we cannot get a signature from a man in prison on a very serious charge,' he said.             Aha, that's a wallpaper word, thought William. When people say dearly something,  that  means  there's  a  huge  crack in  their argument and they know things aren't clear at all. 'Then who is running the city?' he said. 'I don't know,' said Mr Slant. 'That is not my concern. I--' 'Mr Goodmountain?' said William. 'Large type, please.' 'Got you,' said the dwarf. His hand hovered over a fresh case. 'In caps, size to fit,  "WHO RUNS ANKH-MORPORK?"' said William.  'Now into body type,  upper and lower case,  across two columns: "Who is governing the city while Lord Vetinari is imprisoned? Asked for an opinion today, a leading legal figure said' he did not know and it was no concern of his. Mr Slant of the Lawyers' Guild went on to say--"'             'You can't put that in your newspaper!' barked Slant. 'Set that directly, please, Mr Goodmountain.' 'Setting it already,' said the dwarf, the leaden slugs clicking into place. Out of the corner of his eye William saw Otto emerging from the cellar and looking puzzled at the noise.             ' "Mr Slant went on to say . . .?"' said William, glaring at the lawyer. 'You will find it very hard to print that,' said Mr Carney, ignoring the lawyer's frantic hand signals, 'with no damn press!'             '". . .   was the view of Mr Carney of the Guild of Engravers," 122 spelled with an e before the y,' said William, '"who earlier today tried to put the Times out of business by means of an illegal document.' William realized that although his mouth felt full of acid he was enjoying this immensely. ' "Asked for his opinion of this flagrant abuse of the city laws, Mr Slant said . . ."?'             'STOP TAKING DOWN EVERYTHING WE SAY!' yelled Slant.             'Full caps for the whole sentence, please, Mr Goodmountain.'             The trolls and the dwarfs were staring at William and the lawyer. They understood that a fight was going on, but they couldn't see any blood.             'And when you're ready, Otto?' said William, turning round.             'If the dvarfs vould just close up a bit more,' said Otto, squinting into the iconograph. 'Oh, zat'sgood, let's see the light gleam on zose big choppers . . . trolls, please vave your fists, zat's right . . . big smile, everyvun             It is amazing how people will obey a man pointing a lens at them. They'll come to their senses in a fraction of a second, but that's all he needs.             Click.             WHOOMPH.             '. . . aaarghaaarghaaarghaaaaaagh             William reached the falling iconograph just ahead of Mr Slant, who could move very fast for a man with no apparent knees.             'It's ours,' he said, holding it firmly, while the dust of Otto Chriek settled around them.             'What are you intending to do with this picture?'             'I don't have to tell you. This is our workshop. We didn't ask you to come here.'             'But I am here on legal business!'             'Then it can't be wrong to take a picture of you, can it?' said William. 'But if you think differently, then I will of course be happy to quote you!'             Slant glared at him and then marched back to the group by the door. William heard him say, 'It is my considered legal opinion that we leave at this juncture.'             'But you said you could--' Carney began, glaring at William. 123             'My very considered opinion,' said Mr Slant again, 'is that we go right now, in silence.'             'But you said--'             'In silence, I suggest!'             They left.             There was a group sigh of relief from the dwarfs, and a replacement of axes.             'You want me to set this properly?' said Goodmountain.             'There'll be trouble over it,' said Sacharissa.             'Yes, but how much trouble are we in already?' said William. 'On a scale of one to ten?'             'At the moment . . . about eight,' said Sacharissa. 'But when the next edition is on the streets . . .' she shut her eyes a moment and her lips moved in calculation '. . . about two thousand, three hundred and seventeen?'             'Then we'll put it in,' said William.             Goodmountain turned to his workers. 'Leave the axes where you can see 'em, boys,' he said.             'Look, I don't want anyone else to get into trouble,' said William. 'I'll even set the rest of the type myself, and I can run some copies off on the press.'             'Needs three to operate and you won't get much speed,' said Goodmountain. He saw William's expression, grinned and slapped him as high up the back as a dwarf could manage. 'Don't worry, lad. We want to protect our investment.'             'And I'm not leaving,' said Sacharissa. 'I need that dollar!'             'Two dollars,' said William absently. 'It's time for a rise. What about you, Ott-- Oh, can someone sweep up Otto, please?'             A few minutes later the restored vampire pulled himself upright against his tripod and lifted out a copper plate with trembling fingers.             'Vot is happenink next, please?'             'Are you staying with us? It could be dangerous,' said William, realizing that he was saying this to a vampire iconographer who undied every time he took a picture.             'Vot kind of danger?' said Otto, tilting the plate this way and that in order to examine it better. 'Well, legal, to start with.' 124             'Has anyvun mentioned garlic zo far?'             'No.'             'Can I have vun hundred and eighty dollars for the Akina TR-10 dual-imp iconograph viz the telescopic seat and big shiny lever?'             'Er . . . not yet,'             'Okay,' said Otto philosophically. 'Zen I shall require five dollars for repairs and improvements. I can see zis is a different kind of job.'             'All right. All right, then,' William looked around the press room. Everyone was silent, and everyone was watching him.             A few days ago he'd have expected today to be . . . well, dull. It usually was, just after he'd sent out his news letter. He generally spent the time wandering around the city or reading in his tiny office while waiting for the next client with a letter to be written or, sometimes, read out.             Often both kinds were difficult. People prepared to trust a postal system that largely depended on handing an envelope to some trustworthy-looking person who was heading in the right direction generally had something important to say. But the point was that they weren't his difficulties. It wasn't him making a last-minute plea to the Patrician, or hearing the terrible news about the collapse of shaft #3, although of course he did his best to make things easier for the customer. It had worked very well. If stress were food, he'd succeeded in turning his life into porridge.             The press waited. It looked, now, like a great big beast. Soon he'd throw a lot of words into it. And in a few hours it would be hungry again, as if those words had never happened. You could feed it, but you could never fill it up.             He shuddered. What had he got them all into?             But he felt on fire. There was a truth somewhere, and he hadn't found it yet. He was going to, because he knew, he knew that once this edition hit the streets--             'Bugrit!'             'Hawrrak . . . pwit!'             'Quack!'             He glanced at the crowd coming in. Of course, the truth hid in some unlikely places and had some strange handmaidens.             'Let's go to press,' he said. 125             It was an hour later. The sellers were already coming back for more. The rumbling of the press made the tin roof shake. The piles of copper mounting up in front of Goodmountain leapt into the air at every thump.             William examined his reflection in a piece of polished brass. Somehow he'd got ink all over himself. He did the best he could with his handkerchief.             He'd sent Altogether Andrews to sell the papers near Pseudopolis Yard, reckoning him to be the most consistently sane of the fraternity. At least five of his personalities could hold a coherent conversation.             By now, surely, the Watch would have had time to read the story, even if they'd had to send out for help with the longer words.             He. was aware of someone staring at him. He turned and saw Sacharissa's head bend down over her work again. Someone sniggered, behind him.             There was no one there who was paying him any attention. There was a three-way argument over a matter of sixpence going on between Goodmountain, Foul Ole Ron and Foul Ole Ron, Ron being capable of keeping a pretty good row going all by himself. The dwarfs were hard at work around the press. Otto had retired to his darkroom, where he was once again mysteriously also hard at work.             Only Ron's dog was watching William. He considered that it had, for a dog, a very offensive and knowing look.             A couple of months ago someone had tried to hand William the old story about there being a dog in the city that could talk. It was the third time this year. William had explained that it was an urban myth. It was always a friend of a friend who had heard it talk, and it was never anyone who had seen the dog. The dog in front of William didn't look as if it could talk, but it did look as if it could swear.             There seemed to be no stopping that kind of story. People swore that there was some long-lost heir to the throne of Ankh living incognito in the town. William certainly recognized wishful 126 thinking when he heard it. There was the other old chestnut about a werewolf being employed in the Watch, too. Until recently he'd dismissed that one, but he was having some doubts lately. After all, the Times employed a vampire . . .             He stared at the wall, tapping his teeth with his pencil.             'I'm going to see Commander Vimes,' he said at last. 'It's better than hiding.'             'We're being invited to all sorts of things,' said Sacharissa, looking up from her paperwork. 'Well, I say invited . . . Lady Selachii has ordered us to attend her ball on Thursday next week and write at least 500 words which we will of course let her see before publication.'             'Good idea,' Goodmountain called over his shoulder. 'Lots of names at balls, and--'             '--names sell newspapers,' said William. 'Yes. I know. Do you want to go?'             'Me? I haven't got anything to wear!' said Sacharissa. 'It'd cost forty dollars for the kind of dress you wear to that sort of thing. And we can't afford that kind of money.'             William hesitated. Then he said: 'Stand up and twirl around, could you?'             She actually blushed. 'Whatever for?'             'I want to see what size you are . . . you know, all over.'             She stood up and turned around nervously. There was a chorus of whistles from the crew and a number of untranslatable comments in dwarfish.             'You're pretty close,' said William. 'If I could get you a really good dress, could you find someone to make any adjustments you need? It might have to be let out a bit in the, in the, you know . . . in the top.'             'What kind of dress?' she said suspiciously.             'My sister's got hundreds of evening dresses and she spends all her time at our place in the country,'' said William. The family never comes back to the city these days. I'll give you the key to the town house this evening and you can go and help yourself.'             'Won't she mind?' „             'She'll probably never notice. Anyway,* think she'd be shocked 127 to find that anyone could spend as little as forty dollars on a dress. Don't worry about it.'             Town house? Place in the country?' said Sacharissa, displaying an inconveniently journalistic trait of picking on the words you hoped wouldn't be noticed.             'My family's rich,' said William. 'I'm not.'             He glanced at the rooftop opposite when he stepped outside, because something in its outline was different, and saw a spiky head outlined against the afternoon sky.             It was a gargoyle. William had got used to seeing them everywhere in the city. Sometimes one would stay in the same place for months at a time. You seldom saw them actually moving from one roof to another. But you also seldom saw them at all in districts like this. Gargoyles liked high stone buildings with lots of gutters and fiddly architecture, which attracted pigeons. Even gargoyles have to eat.             There was also something going on further down the street. Several large carts were outside one of the old warehouses, and crates were being carried inside.             He spotted several more gargoyles on the way across the bridge to Pseudopolis Yard. Every single one of them turned its head to watch him.             Sergeant Detritus was on duty at the desk. He looked at William in surprise.             'By damn, dat was quick. You run all der way?' he said.             'What are you talking about?'             'Mister Vimes only sent for you a coupla minutes ago,' said Detritus. 'Go on up, I should. Don't worry, he's stopped shoutin',' He gave William a rather-you-than-me look. 'But he are not glad about being in a tent, as dey say.'             'Has he ever been a happy camper?'             'Not much,' said Detritus, grinning evilly.             William climbed the stairs and knocked at the door, which swung open.             Commander Vimes looked up from his desk. His eyes narrowed.             'Well, well, that was quick,' he said. 'Ran all the way, did you?' 128             'No, sir, I was coming here hoping to ask you some questions.'             'That was kind of you,' said Vimes.             There was a definite feeling that although the little village was quiet at the moment - women hanging out washing, cats sleeping in the sun - soon the volcano was going to explode and hundreds were going to be buried in the ash.             'So--' William began.             'Why did you do this?' said Vimes. William could see the Times on the desk in front of the commander. He could read the headlines from here:   Patrician Attacks Clerk With Knife (He had the knife, not the clerk) ================================== MYSTERIOUS EVENTS IN STABLES Strange Smell of Peppermint   WATCH BAFFLED                 'Baffled, am I?' said Vimes.             'If you are telling me that you are not, commander, I will be happy to make a note of the fa--'             'Leave that notebook alone!'             William looked surprised. The notebook was the cheapest kind, made of paper recycled so many times you could use it as a towel, but once again someone was glaring at it as if it was a weapon.             'I won't have you doing to me what you did to Slant,' said Vimes.             'Every word of that story is true, sir.' 129             'I'd bet on it. It sounds like his style.'             'Look, commander, if there's something wrong with my story, tell me what it is.'             Vimes sat back and waved his hands.             'Are you going to print everything you hear?' he said. 'Do you intend to run around my city like some loose . . . loose siege weapon? You sit there clutching your precious integrity like a teddy bear and you haven't the faintest idea, have you, not the faintest idea how hard you can make my job?'             'It's not against the law to--'             'Isn't it? Isn't it, though? In Ankh-Morpork? Stuff like this? It reads like Behaviour Likely to Cause a Breach of the Peace to me\'             'It might upset people, but this is important--'             'And what will you write next, I wonder?'             'I haven't printed that you have a werewolf employed in the Watch,' said William. He regretted it instantly, but Vimes was getting on his nerves.             'Where did you hear that?' said a quiet voice behind him. He turned in his chair. A fair-haired young woman in Watch uniform was leaning against the wall. She must have been there all the time.             'This is Sergeant Angua,' said Vimes. 'You can speak freely in front of her.'             'I've . . . heard rumours,' said William. He'd seen the sergeant in the streets. She had a habit of staring a bit too sharply at people, he'd considered.             'And?'             'Look, I can see this is worrying you,' said William. 'Please let me assure you that Corporal Nobbs's secret is safe with me.'             No one spoke. William congratulated himself. It had been a shot in the dark, but he could tell by Sergeant Angua's face that he'd won this one. It seemed to have shut down, locking away all expression.             'We don't often talk about Corporal Nobbs's species,' said Vimes, after a while. 'I would deem it a small favour if you would take the same approach.'             'Yes, sir. So could I ask you why you're having me watched?' 130             'I am?'             The gargoyles. Everyone knows a lot of them work for the Watch these days.'             'We're not watching you. We're watching to see what happens to you,' said Sergeant Angua.             'Because of this,' said Vimes, slapping the newspaper.             'But I'm not doing anything wrong,' said William.             'No, it may just be you're not doing anything illegal,' said Vimes. 'Although you're coming damn close. Other people do not have my kind and understanding disposition, though. All I ask is that you try not to bleed all over the street.'             'I'll try.'             'And don't write that down.'             'Fine.'             'And don't write down that I said don't write that down.'             'Okay. Can I write down that you said that I shouldn't write down that you said--' William stopped. The mountain was rumbling. 'Only joking.'             'Haha. And no tapping my officers for information.'             'And no giving dog biscuits to Corporal Nobbs,' said Sergeant Angua. She walked around behind Vimes and peered over his shoulder. "The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret"?'             'Printer's error,' said William shortly. 'Anything else I shouldn't do, commander?'             'Just don't get in the way.'             'I'll make a-- I'll remember,' said William. 'But, if you don't mind my asking, what's in it for me?'             Tm Commander of the Watch and I'm asking you politely.'             'And that's it?'             'I could ask you impolitely, Mr de Worde.' Vimes sighed. 'Look, can you see things my way? A crime has been committed. The Guilds are in an uproar. You've heard of too many chiefs? Well, right now there's a hundred many chiefs. I've Captain Carrot and a lot of men I really can't spare guarding the Oblong Office and the rest of the clerks, which means I'm short-handed everywhere else. I've got to deal with all this and . . . actively pursue & state of non-bafflement. I've got Vetinari in the cells. And Drumknolt, too--' 131             'But wasn't he the victim, sir?'             'One of my men is tending him.'             'Not one of the city doctors?'             Vimes stared fixedly at the notebook. 'The doctors of this city are a fine body of men,' he said in a level tone, 'and I would not see a word written against them. One of my staff just happens to have . . . special skills.'             'You mean he can tell someone else's arse from their elbow?'             Vimes was a fast learner. He sat with his hands folded and a completely impassive expression.             'Can I ask another question?' said William.             'Nothing will stop you, will it?'             'Have you found Lord Vetinari's dog?'             Again, total blankness. But this time William had the impression that behind it several dozen wheels had begun to spin.             'Dog?' said Vimes.             'Wuffles, I believe he's called,' said William.             Vimes sat watching him impassively.             'A terrier, I think,' said William.             Vimes failed to move a muscle.             'Why was there a crossbow bolt sticking in the floor?' said William. 'That doesn't make sense to me, unless there was someone else in the room. And it had gone in a long way. That's not a rebound. Someone was firing at something on the floor. Dog-sized, perhaps?'             Not a feature twitched on the commander's face.             'And then there's the peppermint,' William went on. 'There's a. puzzle. I mean, why peppermint? And then I thought, maybe someone didn't want to be traced by their smell? Perhaps they'd heard about your werewolf too? A few jars of peppermint oil thrown down would confuse things a bit?'             There it was, a faint flicker as Vimes glanced momentarily at some paperwork in front of him. Lotto! thought William.*             At last, like some oracle that speaks once a year, Vimes said, 'I don't trust you, Mr de Worde. And I've just realized why. It's not just that you're going to cause trouble. Dealing with trouble is my             * At this point Bingo had not been introduced to Ankh-Morpork. 132 job, it's what I'm paid for, that's why they give me an armour allowance. But who are you responsible to? I have to answer for what I do, although right now I'm damned if I know who to. But you? It seems to me you can do what the hell you like.'             'I suppose I'm answerable to the truth, sir.'             'Oh, really? How, exactly?'             'Sorry?'             'If you tell lies, does the truth come and smack you in the face? I'm impressed. Ordinary everyday people like me are responsible to other people. Even Vetinari always had-- has one eye on the Guilds. But you . . . you are answerable to the truth. Amazing. What's its address? Does it read the paper?'             'She, sir,' said Sergeant Angua. There's a goddess of truth, I believe.'             'Can't have many followers, then,' said Vimes. 'Except our friend here,' He stared at William again over the top of his fingers, and once again the wheels turned.             'Supposing . . . just supposing . . . you came into possession of a little drawing of a dog,' he said. 'Could you print it in your paper?'             'We are talking about Wuffles, are we?' said William.             'Could you?'             'I'm sure I could.'             'We would be interested in knowing why he barked just before the . . . event,' said Vimes.             'And if you could find him Corporal Nobbs could speak to him in dog language, yes?' said William.             Once again Vimes did his impression of a statue. 'We could get a drawing of the dog to you in an hour,' he said.             Thank you. Who is running the city at the moment, commander?'             'I'm just a copper,' said Vimes. They don't tell me these things. But I imagine a new Patrician will be elected. It's all laid down in the city statutes.'             'Who can tell me more about them?' said William, mentally adding 'Just a capper' my bum!             'Mr Slant is your man there,' said Vimes, and thif time he smiled. 'Very helpful, I believe. Good afternoon, Mr de Worde. Sergeant, show Mr de Worde out, will you?' 133 1 want to see Lord Vetinari,' said William.             'You what?'             'It's a reasonable request, sir.'             'No. Firstly, he is still unconscious. Secondly, he is my prisoner.'             'Aren't you even letting a lawyer see him?'             'I think his lordship is in enough trouble already, lad.'             'What about Drumknott? He isn't a prisoner, is he?'             Vimes glanced up at Sergeant Angua, who shrugged.             'All right. There's no law against that, and we can't have people saying he's dead,' he said. He unhooked a speaking tube from a brass and leather construction on his desk and hesitated.             'Have they got that problem sorted out, sergeant?' he said, ignoring William.             'Yes, sir. The pneumatic message system and the speaking tubes are definitely separated now.'             'Are you sure? You do know Constable Keenside had all his teeth knocked out yesterday?'             They say it can't happen again, sir.'             'Well, obviously it can't. He hasn't got any more teeth. Oh, well . . .' Vimes picked up the tube, held it away from him for a moment and then spoke into it.             Tut me through to the cells, will you?'             'Wizzip? Wipwipwip?'             'Say again?'             'Sneedle flipsock?'             'This is Vimes!'             'Scitscrit?'             Vimes put the tube back on its cradle and stared at Sergeant Angua.             'They're still working on it, sir,' she said. 'They say rats have been nibbling at the tubes.'             'Rats?'             'I'm afraid so, sir.'             Vimes groaned and turned to William. 'Sergeant Angua will take you to the cells,' he said.             And then William was on the other side of the door.             'Come on,' said the sergeant. 134             'How did I do?' said William.             'I've seen worse.'             'Sorry to mention Corporal Nobbs, but--'             'Oh, don't worry about it,' said Sergeant Angua. 'Your powers of observation will be the talk of the station. Look, he's being kind to you because he hasn't worked out what you are yet, okay? Just be careful, that's all.'             'And you have worked out what I am, have you?' said William.             'Let's just say I don't rely on first impressions. Mind the step.'             She led the way down into the cells. William noted, without being so crass as to write it down, that there were two watchmen on duty at the bottom.             'Are there usually guards down here? I mean, the cells have locks, don't they?'             'I hear you've got a vampire working for you,' said Sergeant Angua.             'Otto? Oh, yes. Well, we're not prejudiced about that sort of thing             The sergeant did not answer. Instead she opened a door off the main cell corridor and called out: 'Visitor for the patients, Igor.'             'Right with you, thargent.'             The room within was brightly lit by an uncanny, flickering blue light. Jars lined shelves on one wall. Some had strange things moving in them - very strange things. Other things just floated. Blue sparks sizzled on some complex machine, all copper balls and glass rods, in the corner. But what mainly drew William's attention was the great big eye. ^             Before he could actually scream a hand reached up and what he'd thought was a huge eyeball was revealed as the largest magnifying glass he'd ever seen, swivelling up on a metal bracket attached to the forehead of its owner. But the face it revealed was barely an improvement, when it came to mouth-desiccating horror.             The eyes were on different levels. One ear was larger than the other. The face was a network of scars. But that was nothing compared to the deformed hairstyle; Igor's greasy black hair had been 135 brushed forward into an overhanging quiff in the manner of some of the city's noisier young musicians, but to a length that could take out the eye of any innocent pedestrian. By the looks of the . . . organic nature of Igor's work area, he would then be able to help             put it back.             There was a fish tank bubbling on one bench. Inside it some potatoes were idly swimming backwards and forwards.             'Young Igor here is part of our forensic department,' said Sergeant Angua. 'Igor, this is Mr de Worde. He wants to see the             patients.'             William saw the quick glance Igor gave the sergeant, who added,             'Mister Vimes says it's okay.'             'Right this way, then,' said Igor, lurching past William into the corridor. 'Always nice to get visitors down here, Mr de Worde. You will find we keep a very relaxed thell down here. I'll just go and get the keys.'             'Why does he only lisp the occasional s?' said William, as Igor limped towards a cupboard.             'He's trying to be modern. You never met an Igor before?'             'Not one like that, no! He's got two thumbs on his right hand!'             'He's from Uberwald,' said the sergeant. 'Igors are very much into self-improvement. Fine surgeons, though. Just don't shake hands with one in a thunderstorm--'             'Here we are, then,' said Igor, lurching back. 'Who first?'             'Lord Vetinari?' said William.             'He's still athleep,' said Igor.             'What, after all this time?'             'Not surprithing. It was a nasty blow he had--'             Sergeant Angua coughed loudly.             'I thought he fell off a horse,' said William.             'Well, yes . . . and caught himthelf a blow when he hit the floor, I've no doubt,' said Igor, glancing at Angua.             He turned the key.             Lord Vetinari lay on a narrow bed. His face looked pale but he seemed to be sleeping peacefully.             'He's not woken up at all?' said William.             'No. I look in on him every fifteen minutes or tho. It can 136 be like that. Sometimeth the body just says: thleep.'             'I heard he hardly ever sleeps,' said William.             'Maybe he's taking the opportunity,' said Igor, gently closing the door.             He unlocked the next cell.             Drumknott was sitting up in bed, his head bandaged. He was drinking some soup. He looked startled when he saw them, and nearly spilled it.             'And how are we?' said Igor, as cheerfully as a face full of stitches can allow.             'Er, I'm feeling much better . . .' The young man looked from one face to another, uncertain.             'Mr de Worde here would like to talk to you,' said Sergeant Angua. 'I'll go and help Igor sort out his eyeballs. Or something.'             William was left in an awkward silence. Drumknott was one of those people with no discernible character.             'You're Lord de Worde's son, aren't you?' said Drumknott. 'You write that news sheet.'             'Yes,' said William. It seemed he'd always be his father's son. 'Um. They say Lord Vetinari stabbed you.'             'So they say,' said the clerk.             'You were there, though.'             'I knocked on the door to take him his copy of the paper as he'd requested, his lordship opened it, I walked into the room . . . and the next thing I know I was waking up here with Mr Igor looking at me.'             That must have come as a shock,' said William, with a momentary flash of pride that the Times had figured in this in some small way.             'They say I'd have lost the use of my arm if Igor hadn't been so good with a needle,' said Drumknott earnestly.             'But your head's bandaged, too,' said William.             'I think I must have fallen over when . . . when whatever it was happened,' said Drumknott.             My gods, thought William, he's embarrassed.             'I have every confidence that there has been a mistake,' Drumknott went on. 137             'Has his lordship been preoccupied lately?'             'His lordship is always preoccupied. It's his job,' said the clerk.             'Do you know that three people heard him say that he'd killed             you?'             'I cannot explain that. They must have been mistaken.'             The words were clipped sharp. Any moment now, William told himself . . . 'Why do you think--' he began, and was proved right.             'I think I don't have to talk to you,' said Drumknott. 'Do I?'             'No, but--'             'Sergeant!' Drumknott shouted.             There were swift footsteps and the cell door opened.             'Yes?' said Sergeant Angua.             'I have finished talking to this gentleman,' said Drumknott. 'And I am tired.'             William sighed and put his notebook away. 'Thank you,' he said. 'You've been very . . . helpful.'             As he walked along the corridor he said, 'He doesn't want to believe his lordship might have attacked him.'             'Really,' said the sergeant.             'Looks like quite a bang he had on his head,' William went on.             'Does it?'             'Look, even I can see this smells funny.'             'Can you?'             'I see,' said William. 'You went to the Mister Vimes School of Communication, yes?'             'Did I?' said Sergeant Angua.             'Loyalty is a wonderful thing.'             'Is it? The way out is this way--'             After she had carefully ushered William into the street Sergeant Angua went back upstairs into Vimes's office and quietly shut the door behind her.             'So he only spotted the gargoyles?' said Vimes, who was watching William walk down the street.             'Apparently. But I wouldn't underestimate him, sir. He notices things. He was dead right about the peppermint bomb. And how 138 many officers would have noticed how deeply that arrow went into the floor?'             'That's unfortunately true.'             'And he spotted Igor's second thumb, and hardly anyone else has noticed the swimming potatoes.'             'Igor hasn't got rid of them yet?'             'Noi sir. He believes that instant fish and chips are only a generation away.'             Vimes sighed. 'All right, sergeant. Forget the potatoes. What are the odds?'             'Sir?'             'I know what goes on in the duty room. They wouldn't be watchmen if someone wasn't running a book.'             'On Mr de Worde?'             'Yes.'             'Well . . . six'll get you ten that he'll be dead by next Monday, sir.'             'You might just spread the word that I don't like that sort of thing, will you?'             'Yes, sir.'             'Find out who's running the book, and when you have found out that it is Nobby, take it off him.'             'Right, sir. And Mr de Worde?'             Vimes stared at the ceiling. 'How many officers are watching him?' he said.             'Two.'             'Nobby's usually good at judging odds. Think that'll be enough?'             'No.'             'Me neither. But we're stretched. He's going to have to learn the hard way. And the trouble with the hard way is you only get one lesson.'             Mr Tulip emerged from the alleyway where he had just negotiated the purchase of a very small packet of what would shortly prove to be rat poison cut with powdered washing crystals.             He found Mr Pin reading a large piece of paper. 'What's that?' he said. 139             "Trouble, I expect,' said Mr Pin, folding it up and putting it in his pocket. 'Yes, indeed.'             This city is getting on my --ing nerves,' said Mr Tulip, as they continued down the street. 'I got a --ing headache. And my leg hurts,'             'So? It bit me, too. You made a big mistake with that dog,' 'Are you saying I shouldn't've shot at it?' 'No, I'm saying you shouldn't've missed. It got away,' 'It's only a dog,' Mr Tulip grumbled. 'What's such a problem about a dog? It's not like it's a reliable --ing witness. They never told us about no --ing dog,' His ankle was beginning to get that hot, dark sensation that suggested that someone hadn't been brushing their teeth lately. 'You just try carrying a guy with a --ing dog snapping at your legs! And how come the --ing zombie never told us the guy was so --ing fasti If he hadn't been staring at the geek he'd have --ing gotmel'             Mr Pin shrugged. But he'd made a note of that. Mr Slant had failed to tell the New Firm quite a lot of things, and one of them was that Vetinari moved like a snake.             This was going to cost the lawyer a lot of money. Mr Pin had nearly got cut.             But he was proud of stabbing the clerk and shoving Charlie out on the landing to babble to the stupid servants. That hadn't been in the script. That was the kind of service you got from the New Firm. He snapped his fingers as he walked. Yeah! They could react, they could extemporize, they could get creative . . . 'Excuse me, gentlemen?'             A figure had stepped out of the alleyway ahead of them, a knife in each hand.             'Thieves' Guild,' it said. 'Excuse me? This is an official robbery,' To the surprise of the thief, Mr Pin and Mr Tulip seemed neither shocked nor frightened, despite the size of the knives. Instead they looked like a pair of lepidopterists who'd stumbled across an entirely new kind of butterfly and found it trying to wave a tiny little net.             'Official robbery?' said Mr Tulip slowly.             'Ah, you're visitors to our fair city?' said the thief. Then this is 140 your lucky day, sir and . . . sir. A theft of twenty-five dollars entitles you to immunity from further street theft for a period of a full six months plus, for this week only, the choice of this handsome box of crystal wine glasses or a useful set of barbecue tools which will be the envy of your friends,'             'You mean . . . you're legal?' said Mr Pin.             'What --ing friends?' said Mr Tulip.             'Yes, sir. Lord Vetinari feels that since there'll always be some crime in the city, it might as well be organized,'             Mr Tulip and Mr Pin looked at one another.             'Well, "Legal" is my middle name,' said Mr Pin, shrugging. 'Over to you, Mr Tulip,'             'And since you are newcomers I can offer you an introductory hundred-dollar theft, which will give you subsequent immunity for a full twenty-six months plus this booklet of restaurant, livery hire, clothing and entertainment vouchers worth a full twenty-five dollars at today's prices. Your neighbours will admire--'             Mr Tulip's arm moved in a blur. One banana-bunch hand caught the thief around the neck and slammed his head against the wall.             'Unfortunately, Mr Tulip's middle name is "Bastard",' said Mr Pin, lighting a cigarette. The meaty sounds of his colleague's permanent anger continued behind him as he picked up the wine glasses and examined them critically.             Teh . . . cheap paste, not crystal at all,' he said. 'Who can you trust these days? It makes you despair,'             The body of the thief slumped to the ground.             'I think I'll go for the --ing barbecue set,' said Mr Tulip, stepping over it. 'I see here where it contains a number of oh-so-useful skewers and spatulas that will add a --ing new dimension of enjoyment to those al fresco patio meals,'             He ripped open the box and dragged out a blue and white apron, which he examined critically.             ' "Kill the Cook!!!" ' he said, slipping it over his head. 'Hey, this is classy stuff. I'll have to get some --ing friends so's they can envy me when I'm having a meal with --ing Al Fresco. How about them --ing vouchers?'             There's never any good stuff in these things,' said Mr Pin. 'It's just 141 a way of shifting stuff no one can sell. See here . . . "25% off Happy Hour Prices at Furby's Castle of Cabbage".' He tossed the booklet aside.             'Not bad, though,' said Mr Tulip. 'And he only had twenty dollars on him, so it's a --ing bargain.'             I'll be glad when we leave this place,' said Mr Pin. 'It's too strange. Let's just frighten the dead man and get out of here.'             'Eyinnngg . . . GUT!'             The cry of the wild newspaper seller rang out across the twilit square as William set off back to Gleam Street. They were still selling well, he could see.             It was only by accident, as a citizen hurried past him, that he saw the headline:   WOMAN GIVES BIRTH TO COBRA               Surely Sacharissa hadn't got out another edition by herself, had she? He ran back to the seller.             It wasn't the Times. The title, in big bold type that was rather better than the stuff the dwarfs made, was:                   'What's all this?' he said to the seller, who was socially above Ron's group by several layers of grime.             'All this what?'             'All this thisV The stupid interview with Drumknott had left William very annoyed.             'Don't ask me, guv. I get a penny for every one I sell, that's all I know.'             ' "Rain of Soup in Genua"? "Hen Lays Egg Three Times In Hurricane"? Where'd all this come from?'             'Look, guv, if I was a readin' man I wouldn't be flogging papers, right?' 142             'Someone else has started a paper!' said William. He cast his eyes down to the small print at the bottom of the single page and, in this paper, even the small print wasn't very small. 'In Gleam Street?'             He recalled the workmen bustling around outside the old warehouse. How could-- But the Engravers' Guild could, couldn't they? They already had presses, and they certainly had the money. Tuppence was ridiculous, though, even for this single sheet of . . . of rubbish. If the seller got a penny, then how in the world could the printer make any money?             Then he realized: that wouldn't be the point, would it . . . the point was to put the Times out of business.             A big red and white sign for the Inquirer was already in place across the street from the Bucket. More carts were queueing outside.             One of Goodmountain's dwarfs was peering around from behind the wall.             'There's three presses in there already,' he said. 'You saw what they've done? They got it out in half an hour!'             'Yes, but it's only one sheet. And it's made-up stuff.'             'Is it? Even the one about the snake?'             'I'd bet a thousand dollars.' William remembered that the smaller print had said this had happened in Lancre. He revised his estimate. 'I'd bet at least a hundred dollars.'             'That's not the worst of it,' said the dwarf. 'You'd better come in.'             Inside the press was creaking away, but most of the dwarfs were idle.             'Shall I give you the headlines?' said Sacharissa, as he entered.             'You'd better,' said William, sitting down at his crowded desk.             'Engravers Offer Dwarfs One Thousand Dollars For Press.'             'Oh, no . . .'             'Vampire Iconographer and Hard-Working Writer Tempted with 500 Dollar Salaries,' Sacharissa went on.             'Oh, really . . .'             'Dwarfs Buggered For Paper.'             'What?             'That's a direct quote from Mr Goodmountain,' said Sacharissa. 'I don't pretend to know exactly what it means, but I understand 143 they've got enough for only one more edition.'             'And if we want any more it's five times the old price,' said Goodmountain, coming up. 'The Engravers are buying it up. Supply and demand, King says.'             'King?' William's brow wrinkled. 'You mean Mr King?'             'Yeah, King of the Golden River,' said the dwarf. 'And, yeah, we could just about pay that but if them across the road are going to sell their sheet for 2p we'll be working for practically nothing.'             'Otto told the man from the Guild that he'd break his pledge if he saw him here again,' said Sacharissa. 'He was very angry because the man was angling to find out how he was taking printable iconographs.'             'What about you?'             'I'm staying. I don't trust them, especially when they're so sneaky. They seemed very . . . low-class people,' said Sacharissa. 'But what are we going to do?'             William bit his thumbnail and stared at his desk. When he moved his feet a boot fetched up against the money chest with a reassuring thud.             'We could cut down a bit, I daresay,' said Goodmountain.             'Yes, but then people won't buy the paper,' said Sacharissa. 'And they ought to buy our paper, because it's got real news in it.'             The news in the Inquirer looks more interesting, I have to admit,' said Goodmountain.             That's because it doesn't actually have to have any facts in it!' she snapped. 'Now, I don't mind going back to a dollar a day and Otto says he'd work for half a dollar if he can go on living in the cellar.'             William was still staring at nothing. 'Apart from the truth,' he said in a distant voice, 'what have we got that the Guild hasn't got? Can we print faster?'             'One press against three? No,' said Goodmountain. 'But I bet we can set type faster.'             'And that means. . . ?'             'We can probably beat them in getting the first paper on to the street.'             'O-kay. That might help. Sacharissa, do you know anyone who wants a job?' 144             'Know? Haven't you been looking at the letters?'             'Not as such             'Lots of people want a job! This is Ankh-Morpork!'             'All right, find the three letters with the fewest spelling mistakes and send Rocky round to hire the writers.'             'One of them was Mr Bendy,' Sacharissa warned. 'He wants more work. Not many interesting people are dying. Did you know he attends meetings for fun and very carefully writes down everything that's said?'             'Does he do it accurately?'             'I'm sure he does. He's exactly that sort of person. But I don't think we've got the space--'             Tomorrow morning we'll go to four pages. Don't look like that. I've got more stuff about Vetinari, and we've got, oh, twelve hours to get some paper,'             'I told you, King won't sell us any more paper at a decent price,' said Goodmountain.             There's a story right there, then,' said William.             'I mean--'             'Yes, I know. I've got some stuff to write, and then you and I will go to see him. Oh, and send someone to the semaphore tower, will you? I want to send a clacks to the King of Lancre. I think I met him once.'             'Clacks cost money. Lots of money.'             'Do it anyway. We'll find the money somehow,' William leaned over towards the cellar ladder. 'Otto?'             The vampire emerged to waist height. He was holding a half-dismantled iconograph in his hand.             'Vot can I do for you?'             'Can you think of anything extra we can do to sell more papers?'             'Vot do you vant now? Pictures that jump out of zer page? Pictures zat talk? Pictures vhere zer eyes follow you around zer room?'             There's no need to take offence,' said William. 'It wasn't as if I asked for colour or anything--'             'Colour?' said the vampire. 'Is that all? Colour iss easy-peasy. How soon do you vant it?' 145             'Can't be done,' said Goodmountain firmly.             'Oh, zo you say? Is there somevhere here that makes coloured glass?'             'Yeah, I know the dwarf who runs the stained-glass works in Phedre Road,' said Goodmountain. 'They do hundreds of shades, but--'             'I vish to see samples right now. And of inks, too. You can get coloured inks alzo?'             'That's easy,' said the dwarf, 'but you'd need hundreds of different ones . . . wouldn't you?'             'No, ziss is not so. I vill make you a list of vot I reqvire. I cannot promise a Burleigh & Ztronginzerarm job first cat out of zer bag, off course. I mean you should not ask me for zer subtle play of light on autumn leafs or anyzing like zat. But zomething with stronk shades should be fine. Zis vill be okay?'             'It'd be amazing.'             'Zank you.'             William stood up. 'And now,' he said, 'let's go and see the King of the Golden River.'             'I've always been puzzled why people call him that,' said Sacharissa. 'I mean, there's no river of gold around here, is there?'             'Gentlemen.'             Mr Slant was waiting in the hall of the empty house. He stood up when the New Firm entered and clutched his briefcase. He looked as if he was in an unusually bad temper.             'Where have you been?'             'Getting a bite, Mr Slant. You didn't turn up this morning, and Mr Tulip gets hungry.'             'I told you to maintain a very low profile.'             'Mr Tulip isn't good at low profiles. Anyway, it all went off well. You must have heard. Oh, we nearly got killed because you didn't tell us a lot of stuff, and that's going to cost you but, hey, who cares about us? What's the problem?'             Mr Slant glared at them. 'My time is valuable, Mr Pin. So I will not spin this out. What did you do with the dog?'             'No one said anything to us about that dog,' said Mr Tulip, and Mr Pin knew he'd got the tone wrong. 146             'Ah, so you encountered the dog,' said Mr Slant. 'Where is it?'             'Gone. Ran off. Bit our --ing legs and ran off.'             Mr Slant sighed. It was like the wind from an ancient tomb.             'I did tell you that the Watch has a werewolf on the staff,' he said.             'Well? So what?' said Mr Pin.             'A werewolf would have no difficulty in talking to a dog.'             'What? You're telling us people will listen to a dog?' said Mr Pin.             'Unfortunately, yes,' said Mr Slant. 'A dog has got personality. Personality counts for a lot. And the legal precedents are clear. In the history of this city, gentlemen, we have put on trial at various times seven pigs, a tribe of rats, four horses, one flea and a swarm of bees. Last year a parrot was allowed as a prosecution witness in a serious murder case, and I had to arrange a witness protection scheme for it. I believe it is now pretending to be a very large budgerigar a long way away.' Mr Slant shook his head. 'Animals, alas, have their place in a court of law. There are all kinds of objections that could be made but the point is, Mr Pin, that Commander Vimes will build a case on it. He will start questioning . . . people. He already knows things are not right, but he has to work within the bounds of proof and evidence, and he has neither. If he finds the dog, I think things will unravel.'             'Slip him a few thousand dollars,' said Mr Pin. 'That always works with watchmen.'             'I believe that the last person who tried to bribe Vimes still doesn't have full use of one of his fingers,' said Mr Slant.             'We did everything you --ing told us!' shouted Mr Tulip, pointing a sausage-thick finger.             Mr Slant looked him up and down, as if seeing him for the first time.             '"Kill the Cook!!!"' he said. 'How amusing. However, I understood that we were employing professionals.'             Mr Pin had seen this one coming and once again caught Mr Tulip's fist in mid-air, being momentarily lifted off his feet.             The envelopes, Mr Tulip,' he sang. This man knows things             'Hard to know any --ing thing when you're dead,' snarled Mr Tulip. 147             'Actually the mind becomes crystal clear,' said Mr Slant. He stood up and Mr Pin noticed how a zombie rises, using pairs of muscles in turn, not so much standing as unfolding upwards.             'Your . . . other assistant is still safe?' Slant said.             'Back down in the cellar, drunk as a skunk,' said Mr Pin. 'I don't see why we don't just scrag him right now. He nearly turned and ran when he saw Vetinari. If the man hadn't been so surprised we'd have been in big trouble. Who'd notice one more corpse in a city like this?'             'The Watch, Mr Pin. How many times must I tell you this? They are uncannily good at noticing things.'             'Mr Tulip here won't leave 'em much to notice--' Mr Pin stopped. The Watch frighten you that much, do they?'             'This is Ankh-Morpork,' snapped the lawyer. 'We are a very cosmopolitan city. Being dead in Ankh-Morpork is sometimes only an inconvenience, do you understand? We have wizards, we have mediums of all sizes. And bodies do have a habit of turning up. We want nothing that is going to give the Watch a clue, do you understand?'             'They'd listen to a --ing dead man?' said Mr Tulip.             'I don't see why not. You are,' said the zombie. He relaxed a little. 'Anyway, it is always possible that there may be further use for your . . . colleague. Some further little outing to convince the unconvinced. He is too valuable an asset to . . retire just yet.'             'Yeah, okay. We'll keep him in a bottle. But we want extra for the dog,' said Mr Pin.             'It's only a dog, Mr Pin,' said Slant, raising his eyebrows. 'Even Mr Tulip could out-think a dog, I expect.'             'Got to find the dog first,' said Mr Pin, stepping smartly in front of his colleague. 'Lots of dogs in this town.'             The zombie sighed again. 'I can add another five thousand dollars in jewels to your fee,' he said. He held up a hand. 'And please don't insult both of us by saying "ten" automatically. The task is not hard. Lost dogs in this town either end up running with one of the feral packs or begin a new life as a pair of gloves,'             'I want to know who's giving me these orders,' said Mr Pin. He could feel the weight of the Dis-organizer inside his jacket. 148             Mr Slant looked surprised. 'Me, Mr Pin.'             'Your clients, I meant,'             'Oh, really!'             'This is going to get political,' Mr Pin persisted. 'You can't fight politics. I'm going to need to know how far we've got to run when people find out what happened. And who's going to protect us if we're caught,'             'In this city, gentlemen,' said Mr Slant, 'the facts are never what they seem. Take care of the dog, and . . . others will look after you. There are plans afoot. Who can say what really happened? People are easily confused, and here I speak as one who has spent centuries in court rooms. Apparently, they say, a lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on. What an obnoxious little phrase, don't you think? So . . . do not panic, and all will be well. And do not be stupid, either. My . . . clients have long memories and deep pockets. Other killers can be hired. Do you understand me?' He snapped the catches on his case. 'Good day to you,'             The door swung to behind him.             There was a rattling behind Mr Pin as Mr Tulip pulled out his set of stylish executive barbecue tools.             'What are you doing?'             That --ing zombie is going to end up on the end of a couple of --ing handy and versatile kebab skewers,' said Mr Tulip. 'An' then I'm gonna put an edge on this --ing spatula. An' then . . . then I'm gonna get medieval on his arse.'             There were more pressing problems, but this one intrigued Mr Pin.             'How, exactly?' he said.             'I thought maybe a maypole,' said Mr Tulip reflectively. 'An' then a display of country dancing, land tillage under the three-field system, several plagues and, if my --ing hand ain't too tired, the invention of the --ing horse collar,'             'Sounds good,' said Mr Pin. 'Now let's find that damn dog,'             'How we gonna do that?'             'Intelligently,' said Mr Pin.             'I hate that --ing way.' 149             He was called King of the Golden River. This was a recognition of his wealth and achievements and the source of his success, which •was not quite the classical river of gold. It was a considerable advance on his former nickname, which was Piss Harry.             Harry King had made his fortune by the careful application of the old adage: where there's muck there's brass. There was money to be made out of things that people threw away. Especially the very human things that people threw away.             The real foundations of his fortune came when he started leaving empty buckets at various hostelries around the city centre, especially those that were more than a gutter's length from the river. He charged a very modest fee to take them away when they were full. It became part of the life of every pub landlord; they'd hear a clank in the middle of the night and turn over in their sleep content in the knowledge that one of Piss Harry's men was, in a small way, making the world a better-smelling place.             They didn't wonder what happened to the full buckets, but Harry King had learned something that can be the key to great riches: there is very little, however disgusting, that isn't used somewhere in some industry. There are people out there who want large quantities of ammonia and saltpetre. If you can't sell it to the alchemists then the farmers probably want it. If even the farmers don't want it then there is nothing, nothing, however gross, that you can't sell to the tanners.             Harry felt like the only man in a mining camp who knows what gold looks like.             He started taking on whole streets at a time, and branched out. In the well-to-do areas the householders paid him, paid him, to take away night soil, the by now established buckets, the horse manure, the dustbins and even the dog muck. Dog muck? Did they have any idea how much the tanners paid for the finest white dog muck? It was like being paid to take away squishy diamonds.             Harry couldn't help it. The world fell over itself to give him money. Someone, somewhere, would pay him for a dead horse or two tons of prawns so far beyond their best-before date it couldn't be seen with a telescope, and the most wonderful part of all was that someone had already paid him to take them away. If anything 150 absolutely failed to find a buyer, not even from the catmeat men, not even from the tanners, not even from Mr Dibbler himself, there were his mighty compost heaps downstream of the city, where the volcanic heat of decomposition made fertile soil ('10p a bag, bring your own bag . . .') out of everything that was left including, according to rumour, various shadowy businessmen who had come second in a takeover battle ('. . . brings up your dahlias a treat').             He'd kept the woodpulp-and-rags business closer to home, though, along with the huge vats that contained the golden foundations of his fortune, because it was the only part of his business that his wife Effie would talk about. Rumour had it that she had also been behind the removal of the much-admired sign over the entrance to his yard, which said: H. King - Taking the Piss Since 1961. Now it read: H. King - Recycling Nature's Bounty.             A small door within the large gates was opened by a troll. Harry was very forward-looking when it came to employing the non-human races, and had been among the first employers in the city to give a job to a troll. As far as organic substances were concerned, they had no sense of smell.             'Yus?'             I'd like to speak to Mr King, please.'             'Whatabaht?'             'I want to buy a considerable amount of paper from him. Tell him it's Mr de Worde.'             'Right.'             The door slammed shut. They waited. After a few minutes the door opened again.             'Der King will see you now,' the troll announced.             And so William and Goodmountain were led into the yard of a man who, rumour said, was stockpiling used paper hankies against the day somebody found a way of extracting silver from bogeys.             On either side of the door huge black Rottweilers flung themselves against the bars of their day cages. Everyone knew Harry let them have the run of the yard at night. He made sure that everyone knew. And any nocturnal miscreant would have to be really good with dogs unless they wanted to end up as a few pounds of Tanners' Grade 1 (White). 151             The King of the Golden River had his office in a two-storey shed overlooking the yard, from where he could survey the steaming mounds and cisterns of his empire.             Even half hidden by his big desk Harry King was an enormous man, pink and shiny faced, with a few strands of hair teased across his head; it was hard to imagine him not in shirtsleeves and braces, even when he wasn't, or not smoking a huge cigar, which he'd never been seen without. Perhaps it was some kind of defence against the odours which were, in a way, his stock in trade.             "evenin', lads,' he said amiably. 'What can I do for you? As if I didn't know.'             'Do you remember me, Mr King?' said William.             Harry nodded. 'You're Lord de Worde's son, right? You put a piece in that letter of yourn last year when our Daphne got wed, right? My Effie was that impressed, all those nobs reading about our Daphne.'             'It's a rather bigger letter now, Mr King.'             'Yes, I did hear about that,' said the fat man. 'Some of 'em's already turnin' up in our collections. Useful stuff, I'm getting the lads to store it sep'rate.'             His cigar shifted from one side of his mouth to the other. Harry could not read or write, a fact which had never stopped him besting those who could. He employed hundreds of workers to sort through the garbage; it was cheap enough to employ a few more who could sort through words.             'Mr King--' William began.             'I ain't daft, lads,' said Harry. 'I know why you're here. But business is business. You know how it is.'             'We won't have a business without paper!' Goodmountain burst out.             The cigar shifted again. 'And you'd be--?'             This is Mr Goodmountain,' said William. 'My printer.'             'Dwarf, eh?' said Harry, looking Goodmountain up and down. 'Nothing against dwarfs, me, but you ain't good sorters. Gnolls don't cost much but the grubby little buggers eat half the rubbish. Trolls are okay. They stop with me 'cos I pays 'em well. Golems is best - they'll sort stuff all day and all night. Worth their weight in 152 gold, which is bloody near what they want payin' these days.' The cigar began another journey back across the mouth. 'Sorry, lads. A deal's a deal. Wish I could help you. Sold right out of paper. Can't.'             'You're knocking us back, just like that?' said Goodmountain.             Harry gave him a narrow-eyed look through the haze.             'You talking to me about knocking back? Don't know what a tosheroon is, do you?' he said. The dwarf shrugged.             'Yes. I do,' said William. There's several meanings, but I think you're referring to a big caked ball of mud and coins, such as you might find in some crevice in an old drain where the water forms an eddy. They can be quite valuable.'             'What? You've got hands on you like a girl,' said Harry, so surprised that the cigar momentarily drooped. 'How come you know that?'             'I like words, Mr King.'             'I started out as a muckraker when I was three,' said Harry, pushing his chair back. 'Found me first tosheroon on day one. O' course, one of the big kids nicked it off me right there. And you tell me about being knocked back? But I had a nose for the job even then. Then I--'             They sat and listened, William more patiently than Good-mountain. It was fascinating, anyway, if you had the right kind of mind, although he knew a lot of the story; Harry King told it at every opportunity.             Young Harry King had been a mudlark with vision, combing the banks of the river and even the surface of the turbid Ankh itself for lost coins, bits of metal, useful lumps of coal, anything that had some value somewhere. By the time he was eight he was employing other kids. Whole stretches of the river belonged to him. Other gangs kept away, or were taken over. Harry wasn't a bad fighter, and he could afford to employ those who were better.             And so it had gone on, the ascent of the King through horse manure sold by the bucket (guaranteed well stamped-down) to rags and bones and scrap metal and household dust and the famous buckets, where the future really was golden. It was a kind of history of civilization, but seen from the bottom looking up. 153             'You're not a member of a Guild, Mr King?' said William, during a pause for breath.             The cigar travelled from one side to the other and back quite fast, a sure sign that William had hit a nerve.             'Damn Guilds,' said its owner. They said I should join the Beggars! Me! I never begged for nothin', not in my whole life! The nervel But I've seen 'em all off. I won't deal with no Guild. I pay my lads well and they stand by me.'             'It's the Guilds that are trying to break us, Mr King. You know that. I know you get to hear about everything. If you can't sell us paper, we've lost.'             'What'd I be if I broke a deal?' said Harry King. 'This is my tosheroon, Mr King,' said William. 'And the kids who want to take it off me are big.'             Harry was silent for a while and then lumbered to his feet and crossed to the big window.             'Come and look here, lads,' he said.             At one end of the yard was a big treadmill, operated by a couple of golems. It powered a creaking endless belt which crossed most of the yard. At the other end, several trolls with broad shovels fed the belt from a heap of trash that was itself constantly refilled by the occasional cart.             Lining the belt itself were golems and trolls and even the occasional human. In the flickering torchlight they watched the moving debris carefully. Occasionally a hand would dart out and pitch something into a bin behind the worker.             'Fish heads, bones, rags, paper . . . I got twenty-seven different bins so far, including one for gold and silver, 'cos you'd be amazed what gets thrown away by mistake. Tinkle, tinkle, little spoon, wedding ring will follow soon . . . That's what I used to sing to my little girls. Stuff like your paper of news goes in bin six, Low Grade Paper Waste. I sells most of that to Bob Holtely up in Five and Seven Yard.'             'What does he do with it?' said William, noting the 'Low Grade'.             'Pulps it for lavatory paper,' said Harry. 'The wife swears by it.             Pers'n'ly I cut out the middle man.' He sighed, apparently oblivious             of the sudden sag in William's self-esteem. 'Y'know, sometimes I 154 stand here of an evenin' when the line is rumbling and the sunset is shinin' on the settlin' tanks and, I don't mind admitting it, a tear comes to my eye.'             'To tell you the truth, it comes to mine, too, sir,' said William.             'Now then, lad . . . when that kid nicked my first tosheroon, I didn't go around complaining, did I? I knew I'd got an eye for it, see? I carried on, and I found plenty more. And on my eighth birthday I paid a couple of trolls to seek out the man who'd pinched my first one and slap seven kinds of snot out of him. Did you know that?'             'No, Mr King.'             Harry King stared at William through the smoke. William felt that he was being turned over and examined, like something found in the trash.             'My youngest daughter, Hermione . . . she's getting married at the end of next week,' said Harry. 'Big show. Temple of Offler. Choirs and everything. I'm inviting all the top nobs. Effie insisted. They won't come, o' course. Not for Piss Harry.'             The Times would have been there, though,' said William. 'With coloured pictures. Except we go out of business tomorrow.'             'Coloured, eh? You get someone to paint 'em in, do you?'             'No. We've . . . got a special way,' said William, hoping against hope that Otto was serious. He wasn't just out on a limb here, he was dangerously out of the tree.             That'd be something to see,' said Harry. He took out his cigar, stared reflectively at the end and put it back in his mouth. Through the smoke he watched William carefully.             William felt the distinct unease of a well-educated man who has to confront the fact that the illiterate man watching him could probably out-think him three times over.             'Mr King, we really need that paper,' he said, to break the thoughtful silence.             There's something about you, Mr de Worde,' said the King. 'I buy and sell clerks when I need them, and you don't smell like a clerk to me. You've got the air about you of a man who'd scrabble through a ton o' shit to find a farthin', and I'm wonderin' why that is.' 155             'Look, Mr King, will you please sell us some paper at the old price?' said William.             'Couldn't do that. I told you. A deal's a deal. The Engravers've paid me,' said Harry shortly.             William opened his mouth but Goodmountain laid a hand on his arm. The King was clearly working his way to the end of a line of thought.             Harry went over to the window again and stared pensively at the yard with its steaming piles. Then . . .             'Oh, will you look at that,' he said, stepping back from the window in tremendous astonishment. 'See that cart at the other gate down there?'             They saw the cart.             'I must've told the lads a hundred times, don't leave a cart all laden up and ready to go right by an open gate like that. Someone'll nick it, I told 'em.'             William wondered who'd steal anything from the King of the Golden River, a man with all those red-hot compost heaps.             'That's the last quarter of the order for the Engravers' Guild,' said Harry, to the world in general. I'd have to repay 'em if it got half-inched right out of my yard. I'll have to tell the foreman. He's getting forgetful these days.'             'We should be leaving, William,' said Goodmountain, grabbing William's arm again.             'Why? We haven't--'             'However can we repay you, Mr King?' said the dwarf, dragging William towards the door.             The bridesmaids'll be wearing oh-de-nill, whatever that is,' said the King of the Golden River. 'Oh, and if I don't get eighty dollars from you by the end of the month you lads will be in deep' - the cigar did a double length of the mouth - 'trouble. Head downwards.'             Two minutes later the cart was creaking out of the yard, under the curiously uninterested eyes of the troll foreman.             'No, it's not stealing,' said Goodmountain emphatically, shaking the reins. 'The King pays the bastards back their money and we pay him the old price. So we're all happy 156 except for the Inquirer, and who cares about them?'             'I didn't like the bit about the deep pause trouble,' said William. 'Head downwards.'             'I'm shorter'n you so I lose out either way up,' said the dwarf.             After watching the cart disappear the King yelled downstairs for one of his clerks and told him to fetch a copy of the Times from Bin Six. He sat impassively, except for the oscillating cigar, while the stained and crumpled paper was read to him.             After a while his smile broadened and he asked the clerk to read a few extracts again.             'Ah,' he said, when the man had finished. 'I reckoned that was it. The boy's a born muckraker. Shame for him he was born a long way from honest muck.'             'Shall I do a credit note for the Engravers, Mr King?'             'Aye.'             'You reckon you'll get your money back, Mr King?'             Harry King usually didn't take this sort of thing from clerks. They were there to do the adding-up, not discuss policy. On the other hand, Harry had made a fortune seeing the sparkle in the mire, and sometimes you had to recognize expertise when you saw it.             'What colour's oh-de-nill?' he said.             'Oh, one of those difficult colours, Mr King. A sort of light blue with a hint of green.'             'Could you get ink that colour?'             'I could find out. It'd be expensive.'             The cigar made its traverse from one side of Harry King to the other. He was known to dote on his daughters, who he felt had suffered rather from having a father who needed to take two baths just to get dirty.             'We shall just have to keep an eye on our little writing man,' he said. Tip off the lads, will you? I wouldn't like to see our Effie disappointed.'             The dwarfs were working on the press again, Sacharissa noticed. It seldom stayed the same shape for more than a couple of hours. The dwarfs designed as they went along.             It looked to Sacharissa that the only tools a dwarf needed were 157 his axe and some means of making fire. That'd eventually get him a forge, and with that he could make simple tools, and with those he could make complex tools, and with complex tools a dwarf could more or less make anything.             A couple of them were rummaging around in the industrial junk that had been piled against the walls. A couple of metal mangles had been melted down for their iron already, and the rocking horses were being used to melt lead. One or two of the dwarfs had left the shed on mysterious errands, too, and had returned carrying small sacks and furtive expressions. A dwarf is also very good at making use of things other people have thrown away, even if they haven't actually thrown them away yet.             She was turning her attention to a report of the Nap Hill Jolly Pals annual meeting when a crash and some cursing in Uberwaldean, a good cursing language, made her run over to the cellar entrance.             'Are you all right, Mr Chriek? Do you want me to get the dustpan and brush?'             'Bodrozvachski zhaltziet! . . . oh, sorry, Miss Sacharissa! Zere has been a minor pothole on zer road to progress.'             Sacharissa made her way down the ladder.             Otto was at his makeshift bench. Boxes of demons hung on the wall. Some salamanders dozed in their cages. In a big dark jar, land eels slithered. But a jar next to it was broken.             'I vas clumsy and knocked it over,' said Otto, looking embarrassed. 'And now zer stupid eel 'as gone behind the bench.'             'Does it bite?'             'Oh no, zey are very lazy wretches--'             'What is this you've been working on, Otto?' Sacharissa said, turning to look closer at something big on the bench.             He tried to dart in front of her. 'Oh, it is all very experimental--'             The way of making coloured plates?'             'Yes, but it is just a crude lash-up--'             Sacharissa caught sight of a movement out of the corner of her eye. The escaped land eel, having got bored behind the bench, was making a very sluggish bid for new horizons where an eel could wriggle proud and horizontal. 158             'Please don't--' Otto began.             'Oh, it's all right, I'm not at all squeamish . . .'             Sacharissa's hand closed on the eel.             She came to with Otto's black handkerchief being flapped desperately in her face.             'Oh, my goodness. . .' she said, trying to sit up.             Otto's face was a picture of such terror that Sacharissa forgot her own splitting headache for a moment.             'What's happened to you?' she said. 'You look terrible.'             Otto jerked back, tried to stand up and half collapsed against the bench, clutching at his chest.             'Cheese!' he moaned. 'Please get me some cheese! Or a big apple! Something to bitel Pleeease!'             There's nothing like that down here--'             'Keep avay from me! And do not breathe like zat!' Otto wailed.             'Like what?'             'Zer bosoms going in and out and up and down like zat! I am a vampirel A fainting young lady, please understand, zer panting, zer heaving of zer bosoms . . . it calls somezing terrible from vithin With a lurch he pushed himself upright and gripped the black twist of ribbon from his lapel. 'But I vill be stronk!' he screamed. 'I vill not let everyvun down!'             He stood stiffly to attention, although slightly blurred because of the vibration shaking him from head to foot, and in a trembling voice sang: 'Oh vill you come to zer mission, vill you come, come, come, Zere's a nice cup of tea and a bun, and a bun--'             The ladder was suddenly alive with tumbling dwarfs.             'Are you all right, miss?' said Boddony, running forward with his axe. 'Has he tried anything?'             'No, no! He's--'             '--zer drink zat's in zer livink vein, Is not zer drink for me--' Sweat was running down Otto's face. He stood with one hand pressed over his heart.             That's right, Otto!' shouted Sacharissa. Tight it! Fight it!' She turned to the dwarfs. 'Have any of you got any raw meat?'             '. . . to life anew and temperance too. And to pure cold vater ve'll come . . .' Veins were throbbing on Otto's pale head. 159             'Got some fresh rat fillets upstairs,' muttered one of the dwarfs. 'Cost me tuppence 'You get them right now, Gowdie,' snapped Boddony. 'This looks             bad!'             ---oh ve can drink brandy and gin if it's handy, and ve can sup vhisky and rum, but zer drink ve abhor and ve drink no more, is zer--'             "Tuppence is tuppence, that's all I'm saying!'             'Look, he's starting to twitchY said Sacharissa.             'And he can't sing, either,' said Gowdie. 'All right, all right, I'm going, I'm going             Sacharissa patted Otto's clammy hand.             'You can beat it!' she said urgently. 'We're all here for you! Aren't we, everyone? Ann't we? Under her baleful gaze the dwarfs responded with a chorus of half-hearted 'yesses', even though Boddony's expression suggested that he wasn't certain what Otto was here for.             Gowdie came back with a small package. Sacharissa snatched it out of his hand and held it out to Otto, who reared back.             'No, it's just rat!' said Sacharissa. 'Perfectly okay! You're allowed rat, right?'             Otto froze for a moment and then snatched up the packet.             He bit into it.             In the sudden silence Sacharissa wondered if she wasn't hearing a very faint sound, like the straw at the bottom of a milkshake.             After a few seconds Otto opened his eyes and then looked sidelong at the dwarfs. He dropped the packet.             'Oh, vot shame! Vhere can I put my face? Oh, vot must you think of me             Sacharissa clapped with desperate enthusiasm. 'No, no! We're all very impressed! Aren't we, everyone?' Out of Otto's sight, she waved one hand very deliberately at the dwarfs. There was another ragged chorus of agreement.             'I mean, I haf been going through "cold bat" now for more than three months,' muttered Otto. 'It is such a disgusting thing to break down now and--'             'Oh, raw meat's nothing,' said Sacharissa. That's allowed, isn't it?' 160             'Yes, but for a second there I nearly--'             'Yes, but you didn't,' said Sacharissa. 'That's what's important. You wanted to and didn't.' She turned to the dwarfs. 'You can all go back to what you were doing,' she said. 'Otto is perfectly all right now.'             'Are you sure--' Boddony began, and then nodded. He'd rather have argued with a wild vampire than Sacharissa at this moment. 'Right you are, miss.'             Otto sat down, wiping his forehead, as the dwarfs filed out.             Sacharissa patted his hand. 'Do you want a drink--'             'Oh!'             '--of water, Otto?' said Sacharissa.             'No, no, everythink is okay, I think. Uh. Oh dear. My goodness. I am so sorry. You think you are on top of it, and then suddenly it all comes back to you. Vot a day . . .'             'Otto?'             'Yes, miss?'             'What actually happened when I grabbed the eel, Otto?'             He winced. 'I think zis is maybe not the time--'             'Otto, I saw things. There were . . . flames. And people. And noise. Just for a moment. It was like watching a whole day go past in a second! What happened?'             'Veil,' Otto said reluctantly, 'you know how salamanders absorb light?'             'Yes, of course.'             'Veil, zer eels absorb dark light. Not darkness, exactly, but zer light vithin darkness. Dark light. . . you see, dark light. . . veil, it has not been properly studied. It is heavier than normal light, you see, so most of it is under zer sea or in zer really deep caves in Uberwald, but zer is always a little of it even in normal darkness. It really is very fascinating--'             'It's a kind of magical light. Right. Could we just get more towards the point a bit?'             'I have heard it said that dark light is zer original light from vhich all other types of light came--'             'Otto!'             He held up a pale hand. 'I haf to tell you these things! Haf you 161 heard the theory that there is no such thing as zer present? Because if it is divisible, then it cannot be zer present, and if it is not divisible, then it cannot have a beginning which connects to zer past and an end that connects to zer future? The philosopher Heidehollen tells us that the universe is just a cold soup of time, all time mixed up together, and vot we call zer passage of time is merely qvantum fluctuations in zer fabric of space-time.'             'You have very long winter evenings in Uberwald, don't you?'             'You see, dark light is held to be zer proof of this,' Otto went on, ignoring her. 'It is a light vithout time. Vot it illuminates, you see . . . is not necessarily now.'             He paused, as if waiting for something.             'Are you saying it takes pictures of the past?' said Sacharissa.             'Or zer future. Or somevhere else. Of course, in reality zere is no difference.'             'And all this you point at people's heads?'             Otto looked worried. 'I am finding strange side things. Oh, zer dvarfs say that dark light has odd . . . effects, but zey are very superstitious people so I did not take that seriously. However             He scrabbled among the debris on his bench and picked up an iconograph.             'Oh, dear. Zis is so complicated,' said Otto. 'Look, zer philosopher Kling says zer mind has a dark side and a light side, you see, and dark light . . . is seen by zer dark eyes of zer mind             He paused again.             'Yes?' said Sacharissa politely.             'I vas vaiting for zer roll of thunder,' said the vampire. 'But, alas, zis is not Uberwald.'             'You've lost me there,' said Sacharissa.             'Veil, you see, if I vas to say something portentous like "zer dark eyes of zer mind" back home in Uberwald, zer would be a sudden crash of thunder,' said Otto. 'And if I vas to point at a castle on a towering crag and say "Yonder is . . . zer castle" a volf would be bound to howl mournfully.' He sighed. 'In zer old country, zer scenery is psychotropic and knows vot is expected of it. Here, alas, people just look at you in a funny vay.' 162             'All right, all right, it's a magical light that takes uncanny pictures,' said Sacharissa.             'That's a very . . . newspaper vay of putting it,' said Otto politely. He showed her the iconograph. 'Look at zis vun. I vanted a picture of a dvarf vorking in the Patrician's study and I got zis.'             The picture was a wash of blurs and swirls, and there was a vague outline of a dwarf, lying down on the floor and examining something. But superimposed on this was quite a clear picture of Lord Vetinari. Two pictures of Lord Vetinari, each figure staring at the other.             'Well, it's his office and he's always in there,' said Sacharissa. 'Does the . . . magic light pick that up?'             'Maybe,' said Otto. 'Ve know that vot is physically zere is not alvays vot is really zere. Look at zis vun.'             He handed her another picture.             'Oh, that's a good one of William,' she said. 'In the cellar. And . . . that's Lord de Worde standing just behind him, isn't it?'             'Is it?' said the vampire. 'I don't know zer man. I do know that he vas not in zer cellar ven I took the picture. But . . . you only have to talk to Mr Villiam for any length of time to see that, in a vay, his father is alvays looking over his shoulder--'             'That's creepy.'             Sacharissa looked around the cellar. The stone walls were old and stained, but they certainly weren't blackened.             'I just saw . . . people. Men fighting. Flames. And . . . silver rain. How can it rain underground?'             'I do not know. That's vy I study dark light.'             Noises above suggested that William and Goodmountain had returned.             'I wouldn't mention this to anyone else,' said Sacharissa, heading for the ladder. 'We've got enough to deal with. That's creepy.'             There was no name outside the bar, because those who knew what it was didn't need one. Those who didn't know what it was shouldn't go in. Ankh-Morpork's undead were, on the whole, a law-abiding bunch, if only because they knew the law paid them a certain amount of special attention, but if you walked into the 163 place known as Biers on a dark night and had no business there, who would ever know?             For the vampires*, it was a place to hang up. For the werewolves, it was where you let your hair down. For the bogeymen, it was a place to come out of the closet. For the ghouls, it did a decent meat pasty and chips.             All eyes, and that was not the same thing as the number of heads multiplied by two, turned to the door when it creaked open. The newcomers were surveyed from dark corners. They wore black, but that didn't mean anything. Anyone could wear black.             They walked up to the bar and Mr Pin rapped on the stained wood.             The barman nodded. The important thing, he'd found, was to make sure ordinary people paid for their drinks as they bought them. It wasn't good business to let them run a tab. That showed an unwarranted optimism about the future.             'What can I--' he began, before Mr Tulip's hand caught him around the back of the neck and rammed his head down hard on the bar.             'I am not having a nice day,' said Mr Pin, turning to the world in general, 'and Mr Tulip here suffers from unresolved personality conflicts. Has anyone got any questions?'             An indistinct hand rose in the gloom.             'What cook?' said a voice.             Mr Pin opened his mouth to reply and then turned to his colleague, who was examining the bar's array of very strange drinks. All cocktails are sticky; the ones in Biers tended to be stickier.             'Says "Kill the Cook!!!"' said the voice.             Mr Tulip rammed two long kebab skewers into the bar, where they vibrated. 'What cooks've you got?' he said.             'It's a good apron,' said the voice in the gloom.             'It is the --ing envy of all my friends,' Mr Tulip growled.             In the silence Mr Pin heard the unseen drinkers calculating the             * Those, that is, who weren't gathered around the harmonium at the Temperance Mission nervously singing songs about how much they liked cocoa. 164 likely number of friends of Mr Tulip. It was not a calculation that would involve a simple thinker taking off their shoes.             'Ah. Right,' said someone.             'Now, we don't want any trouble with you people,' said Mr Pin. 'Not as such. We simply wish to meet a werewolf.'             Another voice in the gloom said: 'Vy?'             'Got a job for him,' said Mr Pin.             There was some muffled laughter in the darkness and a figure shuffled forward. It was about the size of Mr Pin; it had pointy ears; it had a hairstyle that clearly continued to its ankles, inside its ragged clothes. Tufts of hair stuck out of holes in its shirt and densely thatched the backs of its hands.             "m part werewolf,' it said.             'Which part?'             That's a funny joke.'             'Can you talk to dogs?'             The self-confessed part-werewolf looked around at its unseen audience, and for the first time Mr Pin felt a twinge of disquiet. The sight of Mr Tulip's slowly spinning eye and throbbing forehead were not having their usual effect. There were rustlings in the dark. He was sure he heard a snigger.             'Yep,' said the werewolf.             The hell with this, thought Mr Pin. He pulled out his pistol bow in one practised movement and held it an inch from the werewolf's face.             This is tipped with silver,' he said.             He was amazed at the speed of movement. Suddenly a hand was against his neck and five sharp points pressed into his skin.             These ain't,' said the werewolf. 'Let's see who finishes squeezin' first, eh?'             'Yeah, right,' said Mr Tulip, who was also holding something.             That's just a barbecue fork,' said the werewolf, giving it barely a glance.             'You want to see how --ing fast I can throw it?' said Mr Tulip.             Mr Pin tried to swallow, but got only halfway. Dead people, he knew, didn't squeeze that hard, but it was at least ten steps to the door and the space seemed to be getting wider by the heart beat. 165             'Hey,' he said. 'There's no need for this, right? Why don't we all loosen up? And, hey, it would help me talk to you if you were your normal shape             'No problem, my friend.'             The werewolf winced and shuddered, but without at any point letting go of Mr Pin's neck. The face contorted so much, features flowing together, that even Mr Pin, who in other circumstances quite enjoyed that sort of thing, had to look away.             This allowed him to see the shadow on the wall. It was, contrary to expectations, growing. So were its ears.             'Any qvestions?' said the werewolf. Now its teeth seriously interfered with its speech. Its breath smelled even worse than Mr Tulip's suit.             'Ah . . .' said Mr Pin, standing on tiptoe. 'I think we've come to the wrong place.'             'I think zat also.'             At the bar Mr Tulip bit the top off a bottle in a meaningful way.             Once again the room was filled with the ferocious silence of calculation and the personal mathematics of profit and loss.             Mr Tulip smashed a bottle against his forehead. At this point, he did not appear to be paying much attention to the room. He'd just happened to have a bottle in his hand which he did not need any more. Putting it on to the bar would have required an unnecessary expenditure of hand-eye co-ordination.             People recalculated.             'Is he human?' said the werewolf.             'Well, of course, "human" is just a word,' said Mr Pin.             He felt weight slowly press down on to his toes as he was lowered to the floor.             'I think perhaps we'll just be going,' he said carefully.             'Right,' said the werewolf. Mr Tulip had smashed open a big jar of pickles, or at least things that were long, chubby and green, and was trying to insert one up his nose.             'If we wanted to stay, we would,' said Mr Pin.             'Right. But you want to go. So does your . . . friend,' said the werewolf.             Mr Pin backed towards the door. 'Mr Tulip, we have business 166 elsewhere,' he said. 'Sheesh, take the damn pickle out of your nose, will you? We're supposed to be professionals!'             That's not a pickle,' said a voice in the dark.             Mr Pin was uncharacteristically thankful when the door slammed behind them. To his surprise, he also heard the bolts shoot home.             'Well, that could have gone better,' he said, brushing dust and hair off his coat.             'What now?' said Mr Tulip.             'Time to think of a plan B,' said Pin.             'Why don't we just --ing hit people until someone tells us where the dog is?' said Mr Tulip.             'Tempting,' said Mr Pin. 'But we'll leave that for plan C--'             'Bugrit.'             They both turned.             'Bent treacle edges, I told 'em,' said Foul Ole Ron, lurching across the street, a wad of Timeses under one arm and the string of his nondescript mongrel in his other hand. He caught sight of the New Firm.             'Harglegarlyurp?' he said. 'LayamEnipl You gents want a paper?'             It seemed to Mr Pin that the last sentence, while in pretty much the same voice, had an intrusive, not-quite-right quality. Apart from anything else, it made sense.             'You got some change?' he said to Mr Tulip, patting his pockets.             'You're going to --ing buy one?' said his partner.             'There's a time and a place, Mr Tulip, a time and a place. Here you are, mister.'             'Millennium hand and shrimp, bugrit,' said Ron, adding, 'Much obliged, gents.'             Mr Pin opened the Times. 'This thing has got--' He stopped and looked closer.             ' "Have You Seen This Dog?"' he said. 'Sheesh . . .' He stared at Ron.             'You sell lots of these things?' he said.             'Qeedle the slops, I told 'em. Yeah, hundreds.'             There it was again, the slight sensation of two voices.             'Hundreds,' said Mr Pin. He looked down at the paper seller's 167 dog. It looked pretty much like the one in the paper, but all terriers looked alike. Anyway, this one was on a string. 'Hundreds,' he said again, and read the short article again.             He stared. 'I think we have a plan B,' he said.             At ground level the newspaper seller's dog watched them carefully as they walked away.             'That was too close for comfort,' it said, when they'd turned the corner.             Foul Ole Ron put down his papers in a puddle and pulled a cold sausage from the depths of his hulking coat.             He broke it into three equal pieces.      THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YE FRED • EXTRA! HAVE YOU SEEN THIS DOG? $25 Reward for Information                 William had dithered over that, but the Watch had supplied quite a good drawing and he felt right now that a little friendly gesture in that direction would be a good idea. If he found himself in deep trouble, head downwards, he'd need someone to pull him out.             He had re-written the Patrician story, too, adding as much as he was certain of, and there wasn't much of that. He was, frankly, stuck.             Sacharissa had penned a story about the opening of the Inquirer. William had hesitated about this, too. But it was news, after all. They couldn't just ignore it, and it filled some space.             Besides, he liked the opening line, which began: 'A would-be rival to Ankh-Morpork's old-established newspaper, the Times, has opened in Gleam Street 168             'You're getting good at this,' he said, looking across the desk.             'Yes,' she said. 'I now know that if I see a naked man I should definitely get his name and address, because--'             William joined in the chorus: '--names sell newspapers.'             He sat back and drank the really horrible tea the dwarfs made. Just for a moment there was an unusual feeling of bliss. Strange word, he thought. It's one of those words that described something that does not make a noise but if it did make a noise would sound just like that. Bliss. It's like the sound of a soft meringue melting gently on a warm plate.             Here, and now, he was free. The paper was put to bed, tucked up, had its prayers listened to. It was finished. The crew were already filing back in for more copies, cursing and spitting; they'd commandeered a variety of old trolleys and prams to cart their papers out into the streets. Of course, in an hour or so the mouth of the press would be hungry again and he'd be back pushing the huge rock uphill, just like that character in mythology . . . what was his name . . . ?             'Who was that hero who was condemned to push a rock up a hill and every time he got it to the top it rolled down again?' he said.             Sacharissa didn't look up. 'Someone who needed a wheelbarrow?' she said, spiking a piece of paper with some force.             William recognized the voice of someone who still has an annoying job to do.             'What are you working on?' he said.             'A report from the Ankh-Morpork Recovering Accordion Players Society,' she said, scribbling fast.             'Is there something wrong with it?'             'Yes. The punctuation. There isn't any. I think we might have to order an extra box of commas.'             'Why are you bothering with it, then?'             'Twenty-six people are mentioned by name.'             'As accordionists?'             'Yes.'             'Won't they complain?'             They didn't have to play the accordion. Oh, and there was a big crash on Broad Way. A cart overturned and several tons of flour 169 fell on to the road, causing a couple of horses to rear and upset their cartload of fresh eggs, and that caused another cart to shed thirty churns of milk . . . So what do you think of this as a headline?'             She held up a piece of paper on which she'd written:   CITY'S BIGGEST CAKE MIX-UP!!               William looked at it. Yes. Somehow it had everything. The sad attempt at humour was exactly right. It was just the sort of thing that would cause much mirth around Mrs Arcanum's table.             'Lose the second exclamation mark,' he said. 'Otherwise I think it's perfect. How did you hear about it?'             'Oh, Constable Fiddyment dropped in and told me,' said Sacharissa. She looked down and shuffled papers unnecessarily. 'I think he's a bit sweet on me, to tell you the truth.'             A tiny, hitherto-unregarded bit of William's ego instantly froze solid. An awful lot of young men seemed happy to tell Sacharissa things. He heard himself say: 'Vimes doesn't want any of his officers to speak to us.'             'Yes, well, I don't think telling me about a lot of smashed eggs counts, does it?'             'Yes, but--'             'Anyway, I can't help it if young men want to tell me things, can I?'             'I suppose not, but--'             'Anyway, that's it for tonight.' Sacharissa yawned. I'm going home.'             William got up so quickly he skinned his knees on the desk. I'll walk you there,' he said.             'Good grief, it's nearly a quarter to eight,' said Sacharissa, putting on her coat. 'Why do we keep on working?'             'Because the press doesn't go to sleep,' said William.             As they stepped out into the silent street he wondered if Lord Vetinari had been right about the press. There was something . . . 170 compelling about it. It was like a dog that stared at you until you fed it. A slightly dangerous dog. Dog bites man, he thought. But that's not news. That's olds.             Sacharissa let him walk her to the end of her street, where she made him stop.             'It'll embarrass grandfather if you're seen with me,' she said. 'I know it's stupid, but. . . neighbours, you know? And all this Guild stuff             'I know. Um.'             The air hung heavy for a moment as they looked at each other.             'Er, I don't know how to put this,' said William, knowing that sooner or later it had to be said, 'but I ought to say that, though you are a very attractive girl, you're not my type.'             She gave him the oldest look he had ever seen, and then said: That took a lot of saying, and I would like to thank you.'             'I just thought that with me and you working together all the time--'             'No, I'm glad one of us said it,' she said. 'And with smooth talk like that I bet you have the girls just lining up, right? See you tomorrow.'             He watched her walk down the street to her house. After a few seconds a lamp went on in an upper window.             By running very fast he arrived back at his lodgings just late enough for a Look from Mrs Arcanum, but not so late as to be barred from the table for impoliteness; serious latecomers had to eat their supper at the table in the kitchen.             It was curry tonight. And one of the strange things about eating at Mrs Arcanum's was that you got more leftovers than you got original meals. That is, there were far more meals made up from what were traditionally considered the prudently usable remains of earlier meals - stews, bubble-and-squeak, curry - than there were meals at which those remains could have originated.             The curry was particularly strange, since Mrs Arcanum considered foreign parts only marginally less unspeakable than private parts and therefore added the curious yellow curry powder with a very small spoon, lest everyone should suddenly tear their clothes off and do foreign things. The main ingredients appeared to be 171 swede and gritty rainwater-tasting sultanas and the remains of some cold mutton, although William couldn't remember when they'd had the original mutton, at any temperature.             This was not a problem for the other lodgers. Mrs Arcanum provided big helpings, and they were men who measured culinary achievement by the amount you got on your plate. It might not taste astonishing, but you went to bed full and that was what mattered.             At the moment, the news of the day was being discussed. Mr Mackleduff had bought the Inquirer and both editions of the Times, in his role as keeper of the fire of communication.             It was generally agreed that the news in the Inquirer was more interesting, although Mrs Arcanum ruled that the whole subject of snakes was not one for the dinner table and papers ought not to be allowed to disturb people like this. Rains of insects and so on, though, fully confirmed everyone's view of distant lands.             Olds, thought William, forensically dissecting a sultana. His lordship was right. Not news but olds, telling people that what they think they already know is true . . .             The Patrician, it was agreed, was a shifty one. The meeting concurred that they were all alike, the lot of them. Mr Windling said the city was in a mess and there ought to be some changes. Mr Longshaft said that he couldn't speak for the city, but from what he had heard the gemstone business had been very brisk of late. Mr Windling said that it was all right for some. Mr Prone put forth the opinion that the Watch could not find their bottom with both hands, a turn of phrase that almost earned him a place at the kitchen table to finish his meal. It was agreed that Vetinari had done it all right and should be put away. The main course adjourned at 8.45 p.m., and was followed by disintegrating plums in runny custard, Mr Prone getting slightly fewer plums as an unspoken reprimand.             William went up to his room early. He had adapted to Mrs Arcanum's cuisine, but nothing except radical surgery would make him like her coffee.             He lay down on the narrow bed in the dark (Mrs Arcanum supplied one candle weekly, and what with one thing and another he had forgotten to buy any extra) and tried to think. 172             Mr Slant walked across the floor of the empty ballroom, his feet echoing on the wood.             He took his position in the circle of candlelight with a slight twanging of nerves. As a zombie, he was always a little edgy about fire.             He coughed.             'Well?' said a chair.             'They didn't get the dog,' said Mr Slant. Tn all other respects, I have to say, they did a masterly job.'             'How bad could it be if the Watch find it?'             'As I understand it, J:he dog in question is quite old,' said Mr Slant, into the candlelight. 'I have instructed Mr Pin to look for it, but I don't believe he will find it easy to get access to the city's canine underground.'             'There are other werewolves here, aren't there?'             'Yes,' said Mr Slant smoothly. 'But they won't help. There are very few of them, and Sergeant Angua of the Watch is very important in the werewolf community. They won't help strangers, because she will find out.'             'And bring the Watch down on them?'             'I believe she would not bother with the Watch,' said Slant.             The dog is probably in some dwarf's stewpot by now,' said a chair. There was general laughter.             'If things go . . . wrong,' said a chair, 'who do these men know?'             They know me,' said Mr Slant. 'I would not worry unduly. Vimes works by the rules.'             'I've always understood him to be a violent and vicious man,' said a chair.             'Quite so. And because this is what he knows himself to be, he always works by the rules. In any case, the Guilds will be meeting tomorrow.'             'Who will be the new Patrician?' said a chair.             That will be a matter for careful discussion and the consideration of all shades of opinion,' said Mr Slant. His voice could have oiled watches.             'Mr Slant?' said a chair. 173             'Yes?'             'Do not try that on us. It is going to be Scrope, isn't it?'             'Mr Scrope is certainly well thought of by many of the leading figures in the city,' said the lawyer.             'Good.'             And the musty air was loud with unspoken conversation.             Absolutely no one needed to say: A lot of the most powerful men in the city owe their positions to Lord Vetinari.             And nobody replied: Certainly. But to the kind of men who seek power, gratitude has very poor keeping qualities. The kind of men who seek power tend to deal with matters as they are. They would never try to depose Vetinari, but if he was gone then they would be practical.             No one said: Will anyone speak up for Vetinari?             Silence replied: Oh, everyone. They'll say things like: 'Poor fellow . . . it was the strain of office, you know.' They'll say: 'It's the quiet ones that crack.' They'll say: 'Quite so . . . We should put him somewhere where he can do no harm to himself or others. Don't you think?' They'll say: 'Perhaps a small statue would be in order, too?' They'll say: The least we can do is call off the Watch, we owe him that much.' They'll say: 'We must look to the future.' And so, quietly, things change. No fuss, and very little mess.             No one said: Character assassination. What a wonderful idea. Ordinary assassination only works once, but this one works every day.             A chair did say: 'I wondered whether Lord Downey or even Mr Boggis--'             Another chair said: 'Oh, come now! Why should they? Much better this way.'             'True, true. Mr Scrope is a man of fine qualities.'             'A good family man, I understand.'             'Listens to the common people.'             'Not just to the common people, I trust?'             'Oh, no. He's very open to advice. From informed .-. . focus groups.'             'He'll need plenty of that.'             No one said: He's a useful idiot.             'Nevertheless . . . the Watch will have to be brought to heel.' 174             'Vimes will do what he is told. He must do. Scrope will be at least as legitimate a choice as Vetinari was. Vimes is the kind of man who must have a boss, because that gives him legitimacy.'             Slant coughed. 'Is that all, gentlemen?' he said.             'What about the Ankh-Morpork Times?' said a chair. 'Bit of a problem shaping up there?'             'People find it amusing,' said Mr Slant. 'And nobody takes it seriously. The Inquirer outsells it two to one already, after just one day. And it is underfinanced. And it has, uh, difficulty with supplies.'             'Good tale in the Inquirer about that woman and the snake,' said a chair.             'Was there?' said Mr Slant.             The chair that had first mentioned the Times had something on its mind.             'I'd feel happier if a few likely lads smashed up the press,' it said.             That would attract attention,' said a chair. The Times wants attention. The . . . writer craves to be noticed.'             'Oh, well, if you insist.'             'I would not dream of insisting. But the Times will collapse,' said the chair, and this was the chair that other chairs listened to. The young man is also an idealist. He has yet to find out that what's in the public interest is not what the public is interested in.'             'Say again?'             'I mean, gentlemen, that people probably think he's doing a good job, but what they are buying is the Inquirer. The news is more interesting. Did I ever tell you, Mr Slant, that a lie will go round the world before the truth has got its boots on?'             'A great many times, sir,' said Slant, with slightly less than his usual keen diplomacy. He realized this, and added, 'A valuable insight, I'm sure.'             'Good.' The most important chair sniffed. 'Keep an eye on our . . . workmen, Mr Slant.'             It was midnight in the Temple of Om in the Street of Small Gods, and one light burned in the vestry. It was a candle in a very heavy ornate candlestick and it was, in a way, sending a prayer to heaven. 175             The prayer, from the Gospel According to the Miscreants, was: don't let anyone find us pinching this stuff.             Mr Pin rummaged in a cupboard.             'I can't find anything in your size,' he said. 'It looks as though-- Oh, no . . . sheesh, incense is for burning.'             Tulip sneezed, pebble-dashing the opposite wall with sandal-wood.             'You could've --ing told me before,' he muttered. I've got some papers.'             'Have you been Chasing the Oven Cleaner again?' said Mr Pin accusingly. I want you focused, understand? Now, the only thing I can find in here that will fit you--'             The door creaked open and a small elderly priest wandered into the room. Mr Pin instinctively grasped the big candlestick.             'Hello? Are you here for the, mm, midnight service?' said the old man, blinking in the light.             This time it was Tulip who grabbed Mr Pin's arm as he raised the candlestick.             'Are you mad? What kind of person are you?' he growled.             'What? We can't let him--'             Mr Tulip snatched the silver stick out of his partner's hand.             'I mean, look at the --ing thing, will you?' he said, ignoring the bemused priest. 'That's a genuine Sellini! Five hundred years old! Look at the chasing work on that snuffer, will you? Sheesh, to you it's nothing more than five --ing pounds of silver, right?'             'Actually, mm, it's a Futtock,' said the old priest, who still hadn't yet got up to mental speed.             'What, the pupil?' said Mr Tulip, his eyes ceasing their spin out of surprise. He turned the candlestick over and looked at the base. 'Hey, that's right! There's the Sellini mark, but it's stamped with a little "f", too. First time I've ever seen his --ing early stuff. He was a better --ing silversmith, too, it's just a shame he had such a --ing stupid name. You know how much it'd sell for, reverend?'             'We thought about seventy dollars,' said the priest, looking hopeful. 'It was in a lot of furniture that an old lady left to the church. Really, we kept it for sentimental value             'Have you still got the box it came in?' said Mr Tulip, turning the 176 candlestick over and over in his hands. 'He did wonderful --ing presentation boxes. Cherrywood.'             'Er . . . no, I don't think so . . .'             '--ing shame.'             'Er . . . is it still worth anything? I think we've got another one somewhere.'             To the right collector, maybe four thousand --ing dollars,' said Mr Tulip. 'But I reckon you could get twelve thousand if you've got a --ing pair. Futtock is very collectable at the moment.'             'Twelve thousand!' burbled the old man. His eyes gleamed with a deadly sin.             'Could be more,' Mr Tulip nodded. 'It's a --ing delightful piece. I feel quite privileged to have seen it.' He looked sourly at Mr Pin. 'And you were going to use it as a --ing blunt instrument.'             He put the candlestick reverentially on the vestry table and buffed it carefully with his sleeve. Then he spun round and brought his fist down hard on the head of the priest, who folded up with a sigh.             'And they were just keepin' it in a --ing cupboard,' he said. 'Honestly, I could --ing spiti'             'You want to take it with us?' said Mr Pin, stuffing clothes into a bag.             'Nah, all the fences round here'd probably just melt it down for the silver,' said Mr Tulip. 'I couldn't have something like that on my --ing conscience. Let's find this --ing dog and get right out of this dump, shall we? It makes me so --ing despondent.'             William turned over, woke up and stared wide-eyed at the ceiling.             Two minutes later Mrs Arcanum came downstairs and into the kitchen armed with a lamp, a poker and most importantly with her hair in curlers. The combination would be a winner against all but the most iron-stomached intruder.             'Mr de Worde! What are you doing? It's midnight!'             William glanced up and then went back to opening cupboards. 'Sorry I knocked the saucepans over, Mrs Arcanum. I'll pay for any damage. Now, where are the scales?'             'Scales?' 177             'Scales! Kitchen scales! Where are they?'             'Mr de Worde, I--'             'Where are the damn scales, Mrs Arcanum?' said William desperately.             'Mr de Worde! For shame!'             The future of the city hangs in the balance, Mrs Arcanum!'             Perplexity slowly took the place of stern affront. 'What, in my scales?'             'Yes! Yes! It could very well be!'             'Well, er . . . they're in the pantry by the flour bag. The whole city, you say?'             'Quite possibly!' William felt his jacket sag as he forced the big brass weights into his pocket.             'Use the old potato sack, do,' said Mrs Arcanum, now quite flustered by events.             William grabbed the sack, rammed everything in and ran for the door.             'The University and the river and everything?' said the landlady nervously.             'Yes! Yes indeed!'             Mrs Arcanum set her jaw. 'You will wash it out thoroughly afterwards, won't you?' she said to his retreating back.             William's progress slowed towards the end of the road. Big iron kitchen scales and a full set of weights aren't carried lightly.             But that was the point, wasn't it? Weight! He ran and walked and dragged them through the freezing, foggy night until he reached Gleam Street.             The lights were still on in the Inquirer building. How late do you need to stay up when you can make up the news as you go along? thought William. But this is real. Heavy, even.             He hammered on the door of the Times shed until a dwarf opened up. The dwarf was amazed to see a frantic William de Worde rush past and drop the scales and weights on a desk.             'Please get Mr Goodmountain up. We've got to get out another edition! And can I have ten dollars, please?'             It took Goodmountain to sort things out when, night-shirted but still firmly helmeted, he clambered out of the cellar. 178             'No, ten dollars,' William was explaining to the bewildered dwarfs. 'Ten dollar coins. Not ten dollars' worth of money.'             'Why?'             'To see how much seventy thousand dollars weigh!'             'We haven't got seventy thousand dollars!'             'Look, even one dollar coin would do,' said William patiently. Ten dollars would just be more accurate, that's all. I can work it out from there.'             Ten assorted coins were eventually procured from the dwarfs' cash box and were duly weighed. Then William turned to a fresh page in his notebook and bent his head in ferocious calculation. The dwarfs watched him solemnly, as if he was conducting an alchemical experiment. Finally he looked up from his figures, the light of revelation in his eyes.             That's almost a third of a ton,' he said. That's how much seventy thousand dollar coins weigh. I suppose a really good horse could carry that and a rider, but . . . Vetinari walks with a stick, you saw him. It'd take him for ever to load the horse up, and even if he got away he could hardly travel fast. Vimes must have worked it out. He said the facts were stupid facts!'             Goodmountain had stationed himself before the rows of cases. 'Ready when you are, chief,' he said.             'All right. . .' William hesitated. He knew the facts, but what did the facts suggest?             'Er . . . make the heading: "Who framed Lord Vetinari?" and then the story starts . . . er . . .' William watched the hand pounce and grab among the little boxes of type, 'A . . . er . . . "Ankh-Morpork City Watch now believe that at least one other person was involved in the . . . the . . ."'             'Fracas?' suggested Goodmountain.             'No.'             'Rumpus?'             '". . . in the attack at the palace on Tuesday morning."' William waited until the dwarf had caught up. It was getting easier and easier to read the words forming in Goodmountain's hands as the fingers jumped from box to box: m-i-g-h-t . . .             'You got an m for an n there,' he said. 179             'Oh, yes. Sorry. Carry on.'             'Er . . . "Evidence suggests that far from attacking his clerk as believed, Lord Vetinari may have discovered a crime in progress."'             The hand flew across the type . . . c-r-i-m-e-space-i-n . . .             It stopped.             'Are you sure about this?' said Goodmountain.             'No, but it's as good a theory as any other,' said William. 'That horse hadn't been loaded to escape, it had been loaded to be discovered. Someone had some plan and it went wrong. I'm sure of that at least. Right . . . new paragraph. "A horse in the stables had been loaded with a third of a ton of coins, but in his current state of health the Patrician--"'             One of the dwarfs had lit the stove. Another was stripping out the formes that contained the last edition. The room was coming alive again.             'That's about eight inches plus the heading,' said Goodmountain, when William had finished. That should rattle people. You want to add any more stuff? Miss Sacharissa did something about Lady Selachii's ball, and there's a few small things.'             William yawned. He didn't seem to be getting enough sleep these days.             Tut them in,' he said.             'And there's this clacks from Lancre that came in when you'd gone home,' said the dwarf. 'That'll cost us another 5Op for the messenger. You remember you sent a clacks this afternoon? About snakes?' he added, in the face of William's blank expression.             William read the flimsy sheet of paper. The message had been carefully transcribed in the neat handwriting of the semaphore operator. It was probably the strangest message yet sent on the new technology.             King Verence of Lancre had also mastered the idea that the clacks charged by the word.             WOMEN OF LANCRE NOT RPT NOT IN HABIT BEARING SNAKES STOP CHILDREN BORN THIS MONTH WILLIAM WEAVER CONSTANCE THATCHER CATASTROPHE CARTER ALL PLUS ARMS LEGS MINUS SCALES FANGS 180             'Hah! We have them!' said William. 'Give me five minutes and I'll put together a story on this. We shall soon see if the sword of truth can't beat the dragon of lies.'             Boddony gave him a kind look. 'Didn't you say a lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on?' he said.             'But this is the truth.'             'So? Where's its boots?'             Goodmountain nodded to the other dwarfs, who were yawning. 'You get back to bed, lads. I'll pull it all together.'             He watched them disappear down the ladder to the cellar. Then he sat down, took out a small silver box and opened it.             'Snuff?' he said, offering the box to William. 'Best thing you humans ever invented. Watson's Red Roasted. Clears the mind a treat. No?'             William shook his head.             'What are you doing all this for, Mr de Worde?' said Goodmountain, taking a monstrous suction of snuff up each nostril.             'What do you mean?'             'I'm not saying we don't appreciate it, mark you,' said Goodmountain. 'It's keeping the money coming in. The jobbing stuff is drying up more every day. Seems like every engraving shop was poised to go over to printing. All we did was give the young rips an opening. They'll get us in the end, though. They've got money behind them. I don't mind saying some of the lads are talking about selling up and going back to the lead mines.'             'You can't do that!'             'Ah, well,' said Goodmountain. 'You mean you don't want us to. I understand that. But we've been putting money by. We should be all right. I daresay we can flog the press to someone. We might have a spot of cash to take back home. That's what this was all about. Money. What were you doing it for?'             'Me? Because--' William stopped. The truth was that he'd never decided to do anything. He'd never really made that kind of decision in his whole life. One thing had just gently led to another, and then the press had to be fed. It was waiting there now. You worked hard, you fed it, and it was still just as hungry an hour later and out in 181 the world all your work was heading for Bin Six in Piss Harry's and that was only the start of its troubles. Suddenly he had a proper job, with working hours, and yet everything he did was only as real as a sandcastle, on a beach where the tide only ever came in.             'I don't know,' he admitted. I suppose it's because I'm no good at anything else. Now I can't imagine doing anything else.'             'But I heard your family's got pots of money.'             'Mr Goodmountain, I'm useless. I was educated to be useless. What we've always been supposed to do is hang around until there's a war and do something really stupidly brave and then get killed. What we've mainly done is hang on to things. Ideas, mostly.'             'You don't get on with them, then.'             'Look, I don't need a heart-to-heart about this, can you understand? My father is not a nice man. Do I have to draw you a picture? He doesn't much like me and I don't like him. If it comes to that, he doesn't like anyone very much. Especially dwarfs and trolls.'             'No law says you have to like dwarfs and trolls,' said Goodmountain.             'Yes, but there ought to be a law against disliking them the way he does.'             'Ah. Now you've drawn me a picture.'             'Maybe you've heard the term "lesser races"?'             'And now you've coloured it in.'             'He won't even live in Ankh-Morpork any more. Says it's polluted.'             'That's observant of him.'             'No, I mean--'             'Oh, I know what you mean,' said Goodmountain. 'I've met humans like him.'             'You said this was all about money?' said William. 'Is that true?'             The dwarf nodded at the ingots of lead stacked up neatly by the press. 'We wanted to turn lead into gold,' he said. 'We'd got a lot of lead. But we need gold.'             William sighed. 'My father used to say that gold is all dwarfs think about.'             'Pretty much.' The dwarf took another pinch of snuff.  'But 182 where people go wrong is . . . see, if all a human thinks about is gold, well, he's a miser. If a dwarf thinks about gold, he's just being a dwarf. It's diffrent. What do you call them black humans that live in Howondaland?'             'I know what my father calls them,' said William. 'But I call them "people who live in Howondaland".'             'Do you really? Well, I hear tell there's one tribe where, before he can get married, a man has to kill a leopard and give the skin to the woman? It's the same as that. A dwarf needs gold to get married.'             'What. . . like a dowry? But I thought dwarfs didn't differentiate between--'             'No, no, the two dwarfs getting married each buy the other dwarf off their parents.'             'Buy? said William. 'How can you buy people?'             'See? Cultural misunderstanding once again, lad. It costs a lot of money to raise a young dwarf to marriageable age. Food, clothes, chain mail. . . it all adds up over the years. It needs repaying. After all, the other dwarf is getting a valuable commodity. And it has to be paid for in gold. That's traditional. Or gems. They're fine, too. You must've heard our saying "worth his weight in gold"? Of course, if a dwarf's been working for his parents that gets taken into account on the other side of the ledger. Why, a dwarf who's left off marrying till late in life is probably owed quite a tidy sum in wages - you're still looking at me in that funny way             'It's just that we don't do it like that. . .' mumbled William.             Goodmountain gave him a sharp look. 'Don't you, now?' he said. 'Really? What do you use instead, then?'             'Er . . . gratitude, I suppose,' said William. He wanted this conversation to stop, right now. It was heading out over thin ice.             'And how's that calculated?'             'Well . . . it isn't, as such . . .'             'Doesn't that cause problems?'             'Sometimes.'             'Ah. Well, we know about gratitude, too. But our way means the couple start their new lives in a state of . . . g'daraka . . . er, free, unencumbered, new dwarfs. Then their parents might well give 183 them a huge wedding present, much bigger than the dowry. But it is between dwarf and dwarf, out of love and respect, not between debtor and creditor . . . though I have to say these human words are not really the best way of describing it. It works for us. It's worked for a thousand years.'             'I suppose to a human it sounds a bit. . . chilly,' said William.             Goodmountain gave him another studied look.             'You mean by comparison to the warm and wonderful ways humans conduct their affairs?' he said. 'You don't have to answer that one. Anyway, me and Boddony want to open up a mine together, and we're expensive dwarfs. We know how to work lead, so we thought a year or two of this would see us right.'             'You're getting married?'             'We want to,' said Goodmountain.             'Oh . . . well, congratulations,' said William. He knew enough not to comment on the fact that both dwarfs looked like small barbarian warriors with long beards. All traditional dwarfs looked like that.*             Goodmountain grinned. 'Don't worry too much about your father, lad. People change. My grandmother used to think humans were sort of hairless bears. She doesn't any more.'             'What changed her mind?'             'I reckon it was the dying that did it.'             Goodmountain stood up and patted William on the shoulder. 'Come on, let's get the paper finished. We'll start the run when the lads wake up.'             Breakfast was cooking when William got back, and Mrs Arcanum was waiting. Her mouth was set in the firm line of someone hot on the trail of unrespectable behaviour.             'I shall require an explanation of last night's affair,' she said,             * Most dwarfs were still referred to as 'he' as well, even when they were getting married. It was generally assumed that somewhere under all that chain mail one of them was female and that both of them knew which one this was. But the whole subject of sex was one that traditionally minded dwarfs did not discuss, perhaps out of modesty, possibly because it didn't interest them very much and certainly because they took the view that what two dwarfs decided to do together was entirely their own business. 184 confronting him in the hallway, 'and a week's notice, if you please.'             William was too exhausted to lie. I wanted to see how much seventy thousand dollars weighed,' he said.             Muscles moved in various areas of the landlady's face. She knew William's background, being the kind of woman who finds out about that kind of thing very quickly, and the twitching was a sign of some internal struggle based around the definite fact that seventy thousand dollars was a respectable sum.             'I may perhaps have been a little hasty,' she ventured. 'Did you find out how much the money weighed?'             'Yes, thank you.'             'Would you like to keep the scales for a few days in case you want to weigh any more?'             'I think I've finished the weighing, Mrs Arcanum, but thank you all the same.'             'Breakfast has already begun, Mr de Worde, but . . . well, perhaps I can make allowances this time.'             He was given a second boiled egg, too. This was a rare sign of favour.             The latest news was already the subject of deep discussion.             'I am frankly amazed,' said Mr Cartwright. 'It beats me how they find this stuff out.'             'It certainly makes you wonder what's going on that we aren't told,' said Mr Windling.             William listened for a while, until he couldn't wait any longer.             'Something interesting in the paper?' he asked innocently.             'A woman in Kicklebury Street says her husband has been kidnapped by elves,' said Mr Mackleduff, holding up the Inquirer. The heading was very clear on the subject:             ELVES STOLE MY HUSBAND!             'That's made up!' said William.             'Can't be,' said Mackleduff. 'There's the lady's name and address, right there. They wouldn't put that in the paper if they were telling lies, would they?'             William looked at the name and address. 'I know this lady,' he said. 185             'There you are, then!'             'She was the one last month who said her husband had been carried off by a big silver dish that came out of the sky,' said William, who had a good memory for this sort of thing. He'd nearly put it in his news letter as an 'On a lighter note' but had thought better of it. 'And you, Mr Prone, said everyone knew her husband had carried himself off with a lady called Flo who used to work as a waitress in Harga's House of Ribs.'             Mrs Arcanum gave William a sharp look which said that the whole subject of nocturnal kitchenware theft could be re-opened at any time, extra egg or no.             'I am not partial to that kind of talk at the table,' she said coldly.             'Well, then, it's obvious,' said Mr Cartwright. 'He must've come back.'             'From the silver dish or from Flo?' said William.             'Mr de Worde!'             'I was only asking,' said William. 'Ah, I see they're revealing the name of the man who broke into the jeweller's the other day. Shame it's Done It Duncan, poor old chap.'             'A notorious criminal, by the sound of it,' said Mr Windling. 'It's shocking that the Watch won't arrest him.'             'Especially since he calls on them every day,' said William.             'Whatever for?'             'A hot meal and a bed for the night,' said William. 'Done It Duncan confesses to everything, you see. Original sin, murders, minor thefts . . . everything. When he's desperate he tries to turn himself in for the reward.'             'Then they ought to do something about him,' said Mrs Arcanum.             'I believe they generally give him a mug of tea,' said William. He paused and then ventured: 'Is there anything in the other paper?'             'Oh, they're still trying to say that Vetinari didn't do it,' said Mr Mackleduff. 'And the King of Lancre says women in Lancre don't give birth to snakes.'             'Well, he would say that, wouldn't he?' said Mrs Arcanum.             'Vetinari must've done something,' said Mr Windling. 'Otherwise why would he be helping the Watch with their inquiries? That's 186 not the action of an innocent man, in my humble opinion.'*             'I believe there's plenty of evidence that throws doubt on his guilt,' said William.             'Really,' said Mr Windling, making the word suggest that William's opinion was considerably more humble than his. 'Anyway, I understand the Guild leaders are meeting today.' He sniffed. 'It's time for a change. Frankly, we could do with a ruler who is a little more responsive to the views of ordinary people.'             William glanced at Mr Longshaft, the dwarf, who was peacefully cutting some toast into soldiers. Perhaps he hadn't noticed. Perhaps there was nothing to notice and William was being over sensitive. But years of listening to Lord de Worde's opinions had given him a certain ear. It told him when phrases like 'the views of ordinary people', innocent and worthy in themselves, were being used to mean that someone should be whipped.             'How do you mean?' he said.             The . . . city is getting too big,' said Mr Windling. 'In the old days the gates were kept shut, not left open to all and sundry. And people could leave their doors unlocked.'             'We didn't have anything worth stealing,' said Mr Cartwright.             That's true. There's more money around,' said Mr Prone.             'It doesn't all stay here, though,' said Mr Windling. That was true, at least. 'Sending money home' was the major export activity of the city, and dwarfs were right at the front of it. William also knew that most of it came back again, because dwarfs bought from the best dwarf craftsmen and, mostly, the best dwarf craftsmen worked in Ankh-Morpork these days. And they sent money back             * The best way to describe Mr Windling would be like this: you are at a meeting. You'd like to be away early. So would everyone else. There really isn't very much to discuss, anyway. And just as everyone can see Any Other Business coming over the horizon and is already putting their papers neatly together, a voice says 'If I can raise a minor matter, Mr Chairman . . .' and with a horrible wooden feeling in your stomach you know, now, that the evening will go on for twice as long with much referring back to the minutes of earlier meetings. The man who has just said that, and is now sitting there with a smug smile of dedication to the committee process, is as near Mr Windling as makes no difference. And something that distinguishes the Mr Windlings of the universe is the term 'in my humble opinion', which they think adds weight to their statements rather than indicating, in reality, 'these are the mean little views of someone with the social grace of duckweed'. 187 home. A tide of gold coins rolled back and forth and seldom had a chance to go cold. But it upset the Windlings of the city.             Mr Longshaft quietly picked up his boiled egg and inserted it into an eggcup.             'There's just too many people in the city,' Mr Windling repeated. 'I've nothing against . . . outsiders, heavens know, but Vetinari let it go far too far. Everyone knows we need someone who is prepared to be a little more firm.'             There was a metallic noise. Mr Longshaft, still staring fixedly at his egg, had reached down and drawn a smallish but still impressively axe-like axe from his bag. Watching the egg carefully, as if it was about to run away, he leaned slowly back, paused for a moment, then brought the blade round in an arc of silver.             The top of the egg flew up with hardly a noise, turned over in mid-air several feet above the plate, and landed beside the eggcup.             Mr Longshaft nodded to himself and then looked up at the frozen expressions.             'I'm sorry?' he said. 'I wasn't listening.'             At which point, as Sacharissa would have put it, the meeting broke up.             William purchased his own copy of the Inquirer on the way to Gleam Street and wondered, not for the first time, who was writing this stuff. They were better at it than he would be, that was certain. He'd wondered once about making up a few innocent paragraphs, when not much was happening in the city, and found that it was a lot harder than it looked. Try as he might, he kept letting common sense and intelligence get the better of him. Besides, telling lies was Wrong.             He noted glumly that they'd used the talking dog story. Oh, and one he hadn't heard before: a strange figure had been seen swooping around the rooftops of Unseen University at night, HALF MAN HALF MOTH? Half invented and half made up, more likely.             The curious thing was, if the breakfast table jury was anything to go by, that denying stories like this only proved that they were true. After all, no one would bother to deny something if it didn't exist, would they?             He took a short cut through the stables in Creek Alley. Like 188             Gleam Street, Creek Alley was there to mark the back of places. This part of the city had no real existence other than as a place you passed through to somewhere more interesting. The dull street was made up of high-windowed warehouses and broken-down sheds and, significantly, Hobson's Livery Stable.             It was huge, especially since Hobson had realized that you could go multi-storey.             Willie Hobson was another businessman in the mould of the King of the Golden River; he'd found a niche, occupied it and forced it open so wide that lots of money dropped in. Many people in the city occasionally needed a horse, and hardly anyone had a place to park one. You needed a stable, you needed a groom, you needed a hayloft. . . but to hire a horse from Willie you just needed a few dollars.             Lots of people kept their own horses there, too. People came and went all the time. The bandy-legged, goblin-like little men who ran the place never bothered to stop anyone unless they appeared to have hidden a horse about their person.             William looked around when a voice out of the gloom of the loose-boxes said, "scuse me, friend.'             He peered into the shadows. A few horses were watching him. In the distance, around him, other horses were being moved, people were shouting, there was the general bustle of the stables. But the voice had come out of a little pool of ominous silence.             'I've still got two months to go on my last receipt,' he said to the darkness. 'And may I say that the free canteen of cutlery seemed to be made of an alloy of lead and horse manure?'             'I'm not a thief, friend,' said the shadows.             'Who's there?'             'Do you know what's good for you?'             'Er . . . yes. Healthy exercise, regular meals, a good night's sleep.' William stared at the long lines of loose-boxes. 'I think what you meant to ask was: do I know what's bad for me, in the general context of blunt instruments and sharp edges. Yes?'             'Broadly, yes. No, don't move, mister. You stand where I can see you and no harm will come to you.'             William analysed this. 'Yes, but if I stand where you can't see me, 189             I don't see how any harm could come to me there, either.'             Something sighed. 'Look, meet me halfway here-- No! Don't move!'             'But you said to--'             'Just stand still and shut up and listen, will you?'             'All right.'             'I am hearing where there's a certain dog that people are lookin' for,' said the mystery voice.             'Ah. Yes. The Watch want him, yes. And . . . ?' William thought he could just make out a slightly darker shape. More importantly, he could smell a Smell, even above the general background odour of the horses.             'Ron?' he said.             'Do I sound like Ron?' said the voice.             'Not . . . exactly. So who am I talking to?'             'You can call me . . . Deep Bone.'             'Deep Bone?             'Anything wrong with that?'             'I suppose not. What can I do for you, Mr Bone?'             'Just supposin' someone knew where the doggie was but didn't want to get involved with the Watch?' said the voice of Deep Bone.             'Why not?'             'Let's just say the Watch can be trouble to a certain kind of person, eh? That's one reason.'             'All right.'             'And let's just say there's people around who'd much prefer the little doggie didn't tell what it knew, shall we? The Watch might not take enough care. They're very uncaring about dogs, the Watch.'             'Are they?'             'Oh yes, the Watch fink a dog has no human rights at all. That's another reason.'             'Is there a third reason?'             'Yes. I read in the paper where there's a reward.'             'Ah. Yes?'             'Only it got printed wrong, 'cos it said twenty-five dollars instead of a hundred dollars, see?' 190             'Oh. I see. But a hundred dollars is a lot of money for a dog, Mr Bone.'             'Not for this dog, if you know what I mean,' said the shadows. 'This dog's got a story to tell.'             'Oh, yes? It's the famous talking dog of Ankh-Morpork, is it?'             Deep Bone growled. 'Dogs can't talk, everyone knows that. But there's them as can understand dog language, if you catch my drift.'             'Werewolves, you mean?'             'Could be people of that style of kidney, yes.'             'But the only werewolf I know is in the Watch,' said William. 'So you're just telling me to pay you a hundred dollars so that I could hand Wuffles over to the Watch?'             That'd be a feather in your cap with old Vimes, wouldn't it?' said Deep Bone.             'But you said you didn't trust the Watch, Mr Bone. I do listen to what people say, you know.'             Deep Bone went quiet for a while. Then:             'All right, the dog and an interpreter, one hundred and fifty dollars.'             'And the story this dog could tell deals with events in the palace a few mornings ago?'             'Could be. Could be. Could very well be. Could be exactly the kind of fing I'm referrin' to.'             'I want to see who I'm talking to,' said William.             'Can't do that.'             'Oh, well,' said William. That's reassuring. I'll just go and get a hundred and fifty dollars, shall I, and bring it back to this place and hand it over to you, just like that?'             'Good idea.'             'Not a chance.'             'Oh, so you don't trust me, eh?' said Deep Bone.             'That's right.'             'Er . . . supposin' I was to tell you a little piece of free news information for gratis and nothin'. A lick of the lolly. A little taste, style of fing.'             'Go on . . .' 191             'It wasn't Vetinari who stabbed the other man. It was another man.'             William wrote this down, and then looked at it. 'Exactly how helpful is this?' he said.             That's a good bit of news, that is. Hardly anyone knows it.'             'There's not a lot to know! Isn't there a description?'             'He's got a dog bite on his ankle,' said Deep Bone.             'That'll make him easy to find in the street, won't it? What are you expecting me to do, try a little surreptitious trouser lifting?'             Deep Bone sounded hurt. That's kosher news, that is. It'd worry certain people if you put that in your paper.'             'Yes, they'd worry that I'd gone mad! You've got to tell me something better than that! Can you give me a description?'             Deep Bone went silent for a while, and when the voice spoke again it sounded uncertain. 'You mean, what he looked like?' it said.             'Well, yes!'             'Ah . . . well, it dunt work like that with dogs, see? What w-- what your average dog does, basic'ly, is look up. People are mostly just a wall with-a pair of nostril holes at the top, is my point.'             'Not a lot of help, then,' said William. 'Sorry we can't do busin--'             'What he smells like, now, that's somethin' else,' said the voice of Deep Bone, hurriedly.             'All right, tell me what he smells like.'             'Do I see a pile of cash in front of me? I don't think so.'             'Well, Mr Bone, I'm not even going to think about getting that kind of money together until I've got some proof that you really know something.'             'All right,' said the voice from the shadows after a while. 'You know there's a Committee to Unelect the Patrician? Now that's news.'             'What's new about that? People have plotted to get rid of him for years.'             There was another pause.             'Y'know,' said Deep Bone, 'it'd save a lot of trouble if you just gave me the money and I told you everything.' 192             'So far you haven't told me anything. Tell me everything, and then I'll pay you, if it's the truth.'             'Oh, yes, pull one of the others, it's got bells on!'             Then it looks like we can't do business,' said William, putting his notebook away.             'Wait, wait . . . this'll do. You ask Vimes what Vetinari did just before the attack.'             'Why, what did he do?'             'See if you can find out.'             That's not a lot to go on.'             There was no reply. William thought he heard a shuffling noise.             'Hello?'             He waited a moment and then very carefully stepped forward.             In the gloom a few horses turned to look at him. Of an invisible informant there was no sign.             A lot of thoughts jostled for space in his mind as he headed out into the daylight, but surprisingly enough it was a small and theoretically unimportant one that kept oozing into centre stage. What kind of expression was 'pull one of the others, it's got bells on'? Now, 'pull the other one, it's got bells on', he'd heard of - it stemmed from the days of a crueller than usual ruler in Ankh-Morpork who had had any Morris dancers ritually tortured. But 'one of the others' . . . where was the sense in that?             Then it struck him.             Deep Bone must be a foreigner. It made sense. It was like the way Otto spoke perfectly good Morporkian but hadn't got the hang of colloquialisms.             He made a note of this.             He smelled the smoke at the same time as he heard the pottery clatter of golem feet. Four of the clay people thudded past him, carrying a long ladder. Without thinking he fell in behind, automatically turning to a new page in his notebook.             Fire was always the terror in those parts of the city where wood and thatch predominated. That was why everyone had been so dead set against any form of fire brigade, reasoning -with impeccable Ankh-Morpork logic - that any bunch of men who were paid to put out fires would naturally see to 193 it that there was a plentiful supply of fires to put out.             Golems were different. They were patient, hard-working, intensely logical, virtually indestructible and they volunteered. Everyone knew golems couldn't harm people.             There was some mystery about how the golem fire brigade had got formed. Some said the idea had come from the Watch, but the generally held theory was that golems simply would not allow people and property to be destroyed. With eerie discipline and no apparent communication they would converge on a fire from all sides, rescue any trapped people, secure and carefully pile up all portable property, form a bucket chain along which the buckets moved at a blur, trample every last ember . . . and then hurry back to their abandoned tasks.             These four were hurrying to a blaze in Treacle Mine Road. Tongues of fire curled out of first-floor rooms.             'Are you from the paper?' said a man in the crowd.             'Yes,' said William.             'Well, I reckon this is another case of mysterious spontaneous combustion, just like you reported yesterday,' and he craned his neck to see if William was writing this down.             William groaned. Sacharissa had reported a fire in Lobbin Clout, in which one poor soul had died, and had left it at that. But the Inquirer had called it a Mystery Fire.             I'm not sure that one was very mysterious,' he said. 'Old Mr Hardy decided to light a cigar and forgot that he was bathing his feet in turpentine.' Apparently someone had told him this was a cure for athlete's foot and, in a way, they had been right.             That's what they say,' said the man, tapping his nose. 'But there's a lot we don't get told.'             'That's true,' said William. 'I heard only the other day that giant rocks hundreds of miles across crash into the country every week, but the Patrician hushes it up.'             There you are, then,' said the man. 'It's amazing the way they treat us as if we're stupid.'             'Yes, it's a puzzle to me, too,' said William.             'Gangvay, gangvay, please!'             Otto pushed through the onlookers, struggling under the weight 194 of a device the size and general shape of an accordion. He elbowed his way to the front of the crowd, balanced the device on its tripod and aimed it at a golem who was climbing out of a smoking window holding a small child.             'All right, boys, zis is zer big vun!' he said, and raised the flash cage. 'Vun, two, thre-- aarghaarghaarghaargh             The vampire became a cloud of gently settling dust. For a moment something hovered in the air. It looked like a small jar on a necklace made of string.             Then it fell and smashed on the cobbles.             The dust mushroomed up, took on a shape . . . and Otto stood blinking and running his hands over himself to check that he was all there. He caught sight of William and gave him the kind of big broad smile that only a vampire can give.             'Mr Villiam! It vorked, your idea!'             'Er . . . which one?' said William. A thin plume of yellow smoke was creeping out from under the lid of the big iconograph.             'You said carry a little drop of emergency b-vord,' said Otto. 'Zo I thought: if it is in a little bottle around my neck, zen if I crumble to dust, hoopla! It vill crash and smash unt here I am!'             He lifted the lid of the iconograph and waved the smoke away. There was the sound of very small coughing from within. 'And if I am not mistaken, ve have a successfully etched picture! All of vich only goes to show vot ve can achieve ven our brains are not clouded by thoughts of open vindows and bare necks, vich never cross my mind at all zese days because I am completely beetotal.'             Otto had made changes to his clothing. Away had gone the traditional black evening dress preferred by his species, to be replaced by an armless vest containing more pockets than William had ever seen on one garment. Many of them were stuffed with packets of imp food, extra paint, mysterious tools and other essentials of the iconographer's art.             In deference to tradition, though, Otto had made it black, with a red silk lining, and had added tails.             On making gentle inquiries of a family watching disconsolately as the smoke from the fire was turned to steam, William ascertained that the blaze had been mysteriously caused by mysterious 195 spontaneous combustion in an overflowing mysterious chip pan full of boiling fat.             William left them picking through the blackened remains of their home.             'And it's just a story,' he said, putting away the notebook. It does makes me feel a bit of a vampire-- oh . . . sorry.'             'It is okay,' said Otto. I understand. And I should like to thank you for givink me zis job. It means a lot to me, especially since I can see how nervous you are. Vich is understandable, of course.'             'I'm not nervous! I'm very much at home with other species!' said William hotly.             Otto's expression was amicable, but it was also as penetrative as the smile of a vampire can be.             'Yes, I notice how careful you are to be friendly with the dvarfs and you are kind to me, also. It is a big effort vich is very commendable--'             William opened his mouth to protest, and gave up. 'All right, look, it's the way I was brought up, all right? My father was definitely very . . . in favour of humanity, well, ha, not humanity in the sense of. . . I mean, it was more that he was against--'             'Yes, yes, I understand.'             'And that's all there is to it, okay? We can all decide who we're going to be!'             'Yes, yes, sure. And if you vant any advice about vimmin, you only have to ask.'             'Why should I want advice about vi-- women?'             'Oh, no reason. No reason at all,' said Otto innocently.             'Anyway, you're a vampire. What advice could a vampire give me about women?'             'Oh, my vord, vake up and smell zer garlic! Oh, zer stories I could tell you.' Otto paused. 'But I von't because I don't do zat sort of thing any more, now that I have seen the daylight.' He nudged William, who was red with embarrassment. 'Let us just say, zey don't alvays scream.'             'That's a bit tasteless, isn't it?'             'Oh, that vas in zer bad old days,' said Otto hurriedly. 'Now I like nothing better than a nice mug of cocoa and a good sing-song 196 around zer harmonium, I assure you. Oh, yes. My vord.'             Getting into the office to write up the story turned out to be a problem. In fact, so was getting into Gleam Street.             Otto caught William up as he stood and stared.             'Veil, I suppose ve asked for it,' he shouted. Tventy-five dollars is a lot of money.'             'What?' shouted William.             'I SAID TVENTY-FIVE DOLLARS IS A LOT OF MONEY, VILLIAM!'             'WHAT?'             Several people pushed past them. They were carrying dogs. Everyone in Gleam Street was carrying a dog, or leading a dog, or being dragged by a dog, or being savaged, despite the owner's best efforts, by a dog belonging to someone else. The barking had already gone beyond mere sounds, and was now some kind of perceptible force, hitting the eardrums like a hurricane made of scrap iron.             William pulled the vampire into a doorway, where the din was merely unbearable.             'Can't you do something?' he screamed. 'Otherwise we'll never get through!'             'Like vot?'             'Well, you know . . . all that children of the night business?'             'Oh, zat,' said Otto. He looked glum. 'Zat's really very stereotypical, you know. Vy don't you ask me to turn into a bat vhile you're about it? I told you, I don't do zat stuff no more!'             'Have you got a better idea?'             A few feet away a Rottweiler was doing its best to eat a spaniel.             'Oh, very veil.' Otto waved his hands vaguely.             The barking ceased instantly. And then every dog sat on its haunches and howled.             'Not a huge improvement, but at least they're not fighting,' said William, hurrying forward.             'Veil, I'm sorry. Stake me as you pass,' said Otto. 'I shall have a very embarrassing five minutes explaining this at the next meeting, you understand? I know it's not zer . . . sucking item, but I mean, vun should care about zer look of zer thing 197             They climbed over a rotting fence and entered the shed via the back door.             People and dogs were squeezing in through the other door and were only held at bay by a barricade of desks and also by Sacharissa, who was looking harassed as she faced a sea of faces and muzzles. William could just make out her voice above the din.             '--no, that's a poodle. It doesn't look a bit like the dog we're after--'             '--no, that's not it. How do I know? Because it's a cat. All right, then why's it washing itself? No, I'm sorry, dogs don't do that--'             '--no, madam, that's a bulldog--'             '--no, that's not it. No, sir, I know that's not it. Because it's a parrot, that's why. You've taught it to bark and you've painted "DoG" on the side of it but it's still a parrot--'             Sacharissa pushed her hair out of her eyes and caught sight of William.             'Well, now, who's been a clever boy?' she said.             'Wh's a cl'r boy? said the DoG.             'How many more out there?'             'Hundreds, I'm afraid,' said William.             'Well, I've just had the most unpleasant half-hour of-- That's a chicken! It's a chicken, you stupid woman, it's just laid an egg\ - of my life and I would like to thank you very much. You'll never guess what happened? No, that's a Shnauswitzer! And you know what, William?'             'What?' said William.             'Some complete muffin offered a reward! In Ankh-Morpork! Can you believe that? They were queueing three deep when I got here! I mean, what kind of idiot would do a thing like that? I mean, one man had a cow! A cowl I had a huge argument about animal physiology before Rocky hit him over the head! The poor troll's out there now trying to keep order! There's ferrets out there!'             'Look, I'm sorry--'             'I wonder, ah, if we can be of any assistance?'             They turned.             The speaker was a priest, dressed in the black, unadorned and unflattering habit of the Omnians. He had a flat, broad-brimmed 198 hat, the Omnians' turtle symbol around his neck, and an expression of almost terminal benevolence.             'Mm, I am Brother Upon-Which-The-Angels-Dance Pin,' said the priest, stepping aside to reveal a mountain in black, 'and this is Sister Jennifer, who is under a vow of silence.'             They stared up at the apparition of Sister Jennifer, while Brother Pin went on: That means she does not, mm, talk. At all. In any circumstances.'             'Oh dear,' said Sacharissa weakly. One of Sister Jennifer's eyes was revolving, in a face that was like a brick wall.             'Yes, mm, and we happened to be in Ankh-Morpork as part of the Bishop Horn Ministry to Animals and heard that you were looking for a little doggie who is in trouble,' said Brother Pin. 'I can see you are, mm, a little overwhelmed, and perhaps we can help? It would be our duty.'             'The dog's a little terrier,' said Sacharissa, 'but you'd be amazed at what people are bringing in--'             'Dear me,' said Brother Pin. 'But Sister Jennifer is very good at this sort of thing             Sister Jennifer strode to the front desk. A man hopefully held up what was clearly a badger.             'He's been a bit ill--'             Sister Jennifer brought her fist down on the man's head.             William winced.             'Sister Jennifer's order believes in tough love,' said Brother Pin. 'A little correction at the right time can prevent a lost soul taking the wrong path.'             'Vich order is this she belongs to, please?' said Otto, as the lost soul carrying his badger staggered out, his legs trying to take several paths at once.             Brother Pin gave him a damp smile. The Little Flowers of Perpetual Annoyance,' he said.             'Really? I had not heard of zis vun. Very . . . outreaching. Veil, I must go and see if the imps have done zere job properly . . .'             Certainly the crowd was thinning rapidly under the stress of seeing the advancing Sister Jennifer, especially that segment of it that had brought dogs which purred or ate sunflower seeds. Many 199 of those who had brought an actual living dog were looking nervous as well.             A sense of unease crept over William. He knew that some sections of the Omnian church still believed that the way to send a soul to heaven was to give the body hell. And Sister Jennifer couldn't be blamed for her looks, or even the size of her hands. And even if the backs of said hands were rather hairy, well, that was the sort of thing that happened out in the rural districts.             'What exactly is she doing?' he said. There were yelps and shouts in the queue as dogs were grabbed, glared at and thrust back with more than minimum force.             'As I said, we're trying to find the little dog,' said Brother Pin. 'It may need ministering to.'             'But. . . that wire-haired terrier there looks pretty much like the picture,' said Sacharissa. 'And she's just ignored it.'             'Sister Jennifer is very sensitive in these matters,' said Brother Pin.             'Oh well, this is not getting the next edition filled,' said Sacharissa, heading back to her desk.             'I expect it would help if we could print in colour,' said William, when he was left alone with Brother Pin.             'Probably,' said the reverend brother. 'It was a kind of greyish brown.'             William knew then that he was dead. It was only a matter of time.             'You know what colour you're looking for,' he said quietly.             'You just get on with sorting out the words, writer boy,' said Brother Pin, for his ears only. He opened the jacket of his frock coat just enough for William to see the range of cutlery bolstered there, and closed it again. This isn't anything to do with you, okay? Shout out and someone gets killed. Try to be a hero and someone gets killed. Make any kind of sudden move and someone gets killed. In fact, we might as well kill someone anyway and save some time, eh? You know that stuff about the pen being mightier than the sword?'             'Yes,' said William hoarsely.             'Want to try?' 200             'No.'             William caught sight of Goodmountain, who was staring at him.             'What's that dwarf doing?' said Brother Pin.             'He's setting type, sir,' said William. It was always wise to be polite to edged weapons.             'Tell him to get on with it,' said Pin.             'Er . . . if you could just get on with it, Mr Goodmountain,' said William, raising his voice over the growls and yelps. 'Everything is fine.'             Goodmountain nodded and turned his back. He held up one hand theatrically and then started to assemble type.             William watched. It was better than semaphore, as the hand dipped from box to box.             Hes [space] a [space]fawe ?             W was in the box next to K . . .             'Yes indeed,' said William.             Pin glanced at him. 'Yes indeed what?'             'I, er, it was just nerves,' said William. 'I'm always nervous in the presence of swords.'             Pin glanced at the dwarfs. They all had their backs to them.             Goodmountain's hand moved again, flicking letter after letter from its nest.             Armed?[space]coff[space]4[space]yes             'Something wrong with your throat?' said Pin, after William coughed.             'Just nerves again . . . sir.'             OK[space]will[space]get[space]Otto             'Oh no,' William muttered.             'Where's that dwarf going?' said Pin, his hand reaching into his coat.             'Just into the cellar, sir. To . . . fetch some ink.'             'Why? Looks like you've got lots of ink up here already.'             'Er, the white ink, sir. For the spaces. And the middle of the Os.' William leaned towards Mr Pin and shuddered when the hand reached inside the jacket again. 'Look, the dwarfs are all armed, too. With axes. And they get excited very easily. I'm the only person anywhere near you who hasn't got a weapon. Please? I 201 don't want to die just yet. Just do whatever you came to do and go?'             It was a pretty good impression of an abject coward, he thought, because it was casting for type.             Pin glanced away. 'How are we doing, Sister Jennifer?' he said.             Sister Jennifer held a struggling sack. 'Got all the --ing terriers,' he said.             Brother Pin shook his head sharply.             'Got all the --ing terriers!' fluted Sister Jennifer, in a much higher register. 'And there's --ing watchmen at the end of the street!'             Out of the corner of his eye William saw Sacharissa sit bolt upright. Death was certainly somewhere on the agenda now.             Otto was climbing unconcernedly up the cellar steps, one of his iconograph boxes swinging from his shoulder.             He nodded at William. Behind him Sacharissa was pushing her chair back.             Back in front of his case of type Goodmountain was feverishly setting:             Hide[space]your[space]eyes             Mr Pin turned to William. 'What do you mean, white ink for the spaces?'             Sacharissa was looking angry and determined, like Mrs Arcanum after an uncalled-for remark.             The vampire raised his box.             William saw the hod above it, crammed with Uberwaldean land eels.             Mr Pin thrust back his coat.             William leapt towards the advancing girl, rising through the air like a frog through treacle.             Dwarfs started to jump over the low barrier to the print room with axes in their hands. And . . .             'Boo,' said Otto.             Time stopped. William felt the universe fold away, the little globe of walls and ceilings peeling back like the skin of an orange, leaving a chilly, rushing darkness filled with needles of ice. There were voices, cut off, random syllables of sound, and again the feeling that he'd felt before, that his body was as thin and insubstantial as a shadow. 202             Then he landed on top of Sacharissa, threw his arms around her, and rolled them both behind the welcome barrier of the desks.             Dogs howled. People swore. Dwarfs yelled. Furniture smashed. William lay still until the thunder died away.             It was replaced by groans and swearing.             Swearing was a positive indication. It was dwarfish swearing, and it meant that the swearer was not only alive but angry too.             He raised his head carefully.             The far door was open. There was no queue, no dogs. There was the sound of running feet and furious barking out in the street.             The back door was swinging on its hinges.             William was aware of the pneumatic warmth of Sacharissa in his arms. This was an experience of the sort which, in a life devoted to arranging words in a pleasing order, he had not dreamed would - well, obviously dreamed, his inner editor corrected him, better make that expected - would have come his way.             'I'm dreadfully sorry,' he said. That was technically a white lie, the editor said. Like thanking your aunt for the lovely handkerchiefs. It's okay. It's okay.             He drew away carefully and got unsteadily to his feet. The dwarfs were also staggering upright. One or two of them were being noisily sick.             The body of Otto Chriek was crumpled on the floor. The departing Brother Pin had got one expert cut in, at neck height, before leaving.             'Oh, my gods,' said William. 'What a dreadful thing to happen . . .'             'What, having your head cut off?' said Boddony, who'd never liked the vampire. 'Yes, I expect you could say that.'             'We . . . ought to do something for him             'Really?'             'Yes! I'd have been killed for sure if he hadn't used those eels!'             'Excuse me? Excuse me, please?'             The sing-song voice was coming from under the printers' bench. Goodmountain knelt down.             'Oh, no . . .' he said. 203             'What is it?' said William.             'It's . . . er . . . well, it's Otto.'             'Excuse me, please? Could somevun get me out of here?' Goodmountain, grimacing, pushed his hand into the darkness, while the voice continued: 'Oh, crikey, zere is a dead rat under here, somevun must've dropped zere lunch, how sordid-- Not zer ear please, not zer ear . . . By the hair, please             The hand came out again, holding Otto's head by the hair as requested. The eyes swivelled.             'Everyvun all right?' said the vampire. 'Zat vas a close shave, yes?'             'Are you . . . all right, Otto?' said William, realizing that this was a winning entrant in the Really Stupid Things to Say contest.             'Vot? Oh, yes. Yes, I zink so. Mustn't grumble. Pretty good, really. It's just that I seem to have had my head cut off, vich you could say is a bit of a drawback--'             'That's not Otto,' said Sacharissa. She was shaking.             'Of course it is,' said William. 'I mean, who else could it--'             'Otto's taller than that,' said Sacharissa and burst out laughing. The dwarfs started to laugh, too, because at that moment they would laugh at anything. Otto didn't join in very enthusiastically.             'Oh, yes. Ho ho ho,' he said. 'Zer famous Ankh-Morpork sense of humour. Vot a funny joke. Talk about laugh. Do not mind me.'             Sacharissa was gasping for breath. William grabbed her as gently as he could, because this was the kind of laughter you died of. And now she was crying, great racking sobs that bubbled up through the laughs.             'I wish I was dead!' she sobbed.             'You should try it some time,' said Otto. 'Mr Goodmountain, take me to my body, please? It is around here somevhere.'             'Do you . . . should we . . . do you have to sew--' Goodmountain tried.             'No. Ve heal easily,' said Otto. 'Ah, zere it is. If you could just put me down by me, please? And turn round? Zis is a bit, you know, embarrassing? Like the making of zer vater?' Still wincing in the after-effects of the dark light, the dwarfs obeyed.             After a moment they heard: 'Okay, you can look now.' 204             Otto, all in one piece, was sitting up and dabbing at his neck with a handkerchief.             'Got to be a stake in zer heart as veil,' he said, as they stared. 'Zo . . . vot vas all zat about, please? Zer dvarf said to make a distraction--'             'We didn't know you used dark light!' snapped Goodmountain.             'Excuse me? All I had ready vas the land eels and you said it looked urgent! Vot did you expect me to do? I'm reformed*.'             'That's bad luck, that stuff!' said a dwarf William had come to know as Dozy.             'Oh yes? You zink? Veil, I'm zer vun who is going to have to have his collar laundered!' snapped Otto.             William did his best to comfort Sacharissa, who was still trembling.             'Who were they?' she said.             Tm . . . not sure, but they certainly wanted Lord Vetinari's dog . . .'             'I'm sure that she wasn't a proper virgin, you know!'             'Sister Jennifer certainly looked very odd,' was the most William was going to concede.             Sacharissa snorted. 'Oh, no, I was taught by worse than her at school,' she said. 'Sister Credenza could bite through a door . . . No, it was the language*. I'm sure "ing" is a bad word. She certainly used it like one. I mean, you could tell it was a bad word. And that priest, he had a knifeV             Behind them Otto was in trouble.             'You use it to take pictures!' said Goodmountain.             'Vy, yes.'             Several of the dwarfs slapped their thighs, half turned away and did the usual little pantomime that people do to indicate that they just can't believe someone else could be so damn stupid.             'You know it is dangerous!' said Goodmountain.             'Mere superstition!' said Otto. 'All zat possibly happens is that a subject's own morphic signature aligns zer resons, or thing-particles, in phase-space according to zer Temporal Relevance Theory, creating zer effect of multiple directionless vindows vich intersect vith the illusion of zer present and create metaphoric 205 images according to zer dictates of qvasi-historical extrapolation. You see? Nothing mysterious about it at all!'             'It certainly frightened off those people,' said William.             'It was the axes that did that,' said Goodmountain firmly.             'No, it was the feeling that the top of your head has been opened and icicles have been pounded into your brain,' said William.             Goodmountain blinked. 'Yeah, okay, that too,' he said, mopping his forehead. 'You've got a way with words, right enough . . .'             A shadow appeared in the doorway. Goodmountain grabbed his axe.             William groaned. It was Vimes. Worse, he was smiling, in a humourless predatory way.             'Ah, Mr de Worde,' he said, stepping inside. There are several thousand dogs stampeding through the city at the moment. This is an interesting fact, isn't it?'             He leaned against the wall and produced a cigar. 'Well, I say dogs,' he said, striking a match on Goodmountain's helmet. 'Mostly dogs, perhaps I should say. Some cats. More cats now, in fact, 'cos, hah, there's nothing like a, yes, a tidal wave of dogs, fighting and biting and howling, to sort of, how can I put it, give a city a certain . . . busyness. Especially underfoot, because - did I mention it? -they're very nervous dogs too. Oh, and did I mention cattle?' he went on, conversationally. 'You know how it is, market day and so on, people are driving the cows and, my goodness, around the corner comes a wall of wailing dogs . . . Oh, and I forgot about the sheep. And the chickens, although I imagine there's not much left of the chickens now             He stared at William. 'Anything you feel you want to tell me?' he said.             'Uh . . . we had a bit of a problem . . .'             'Never! Really? Do tell!'             'The dogs took fright when Mr Chriek took a picture of them,' said William. This was absolutely true. Dark light was frightening enough even if you knew what was happening.             Vimes glared at Otto, who looked miserably at his feet.             'Well now,' said Vimes. 'Shall I tell you something? They're electing a new Patrician today--' 206             'Who?' said William.             ',' don't know,' said Vimes.             Sacharissa blew her nose and said: 'It'll be Mr Scrope, of the Shoemakers and Leatherworkers.'             Vimes gave William a suspicious look. 'How do you know that?' he said.             'Everyone knows,' said Sacharissa. 'That's what the young man in the bakery said this morning.'             'Oh, where would we be without rumour?' said Vimes. 'So this is not a day, Mr de Worde, for . . . things to go wrong. My men are talking to some of the people who brought dogs along. Not many of them, I have to admit. Most of them don't want to talk to the Watch. Can't think why, we're very good listeners. Now is there anything you want to tell me?' Vimes looked around the room and back to William. 'Everyone's staring at you, I notice.'             The Times does not need any help from the Watch,' said William.             'Helping wasn't what I had in mind.'             'We haven't done anything wrong.'             'I'll decide that.'             'Really? That's an interesting point of view.'             Vimes glanced down. William had taken his notebook out of his pocket. 'Oh,' he said. 'I see.' He reached down to his own belt and pulled out a blunt, dark length of wood.             'You know what this is?' he said.             'It's a truncheon,' said William. 'A big stick.'             'Always the last resort, eh?' said Vimes evenly. 'Rosewood and Llamedos silver, a lovely piece of work. And it says on this little plate here that I'm supposed to keep the peace, and you, Mr de Worde, don't look like part of that right now.'             They locked gazes.             'What was the odd thing Lord Vetinari did just before the . . . accident?' said William, so quietly that probably only Vimes heard it.             Vimes didn't even blink. But after a moment he laid the truncheon down on the desk, with a click that sounded unnaturally loud in the silence.             'Now you put your notebook down, lad,' he suggested, in a quiet 207 voice. That way, it's just me and you. No . . . clash of symbols.'             This time, William could see where the path of wisdom lay. He put down the book.             'Right,' said Vimes. 'And now you and me are going to go over to the corner there, while your friends tidy up. Amazing, isn't it, how much furniture can get broken, just by taking a picture?'             He went and sat down on an upturned washtub. William made do with a rocking horse.             'All right, Mr de Worde, we'll do this your way,' said Vimes.             'I didn't know I had a way.'             'You're not going to tell me what you know, are you?'             'I'm not sure what I know,' said William. 'But I . . . think . . . Lord Vetinari did something remarkable not long before the crime.'             Vimes pulled out his own notebook and thumbed through it.             'He entered the palace by the stables some time before seven o'clock and dismissed the guard,' he said.             'He'd been out all night?'             Vimes shrugged. 'His lordship comes and goes. The guards don't ask him where and why. Have they been talking to you?'             William was ready for the question. He just didn't have an answer. But the palace guard, insofar as he'd met them, weren't men chosen for imagination or flair but for a kind of obstructive loyalty. They didn't sound like a potential Deep Bone.             'I don't think so,' he said.             'Oh, you don't think so?'             Hold on, hold on . . . Deep Bone claimed to know the dog Wuffles, and a dog ought to know if his master was acting oddly, dogs liked routine . . .             'I think it's very unusual for his lordship to be outside the palace at that time,' said William carefully. 'Not part of the . . . routine.'             'Nor is stabbing your clerk and trying to run off with a very heavy sack of cash,' said Vimes. 'Yes, we noticed that, too. We're not stupid. We only look stupid. Oh . . . and the guard said he smelled spirits on his lordship's breath.'             'Does he drink?'             'Not so's you'd notice.'             'He's got a drinks cabinet in his office,' 208             Vimes smiled. 'You noticed that? He likes other people to drink,'             'But all that might mean was that he was plucking up the courage to--' William began, and stopped. 'No, that's not Vetinari. He's not that sort,'             'No. He isn't,' said Vimes. He sat back. 'Perhaps you'd better . . . think again, Mr de Worde. Maybe . . . maybe . . . you can find someone to help you think better,'             Something in his manner suggested that the informal part of the discussion was well and truly over.             'Do you know much about Mr Scrope?' said William.             "Tuttle Scrope? Son of old Tuskin Scrope. President of the Guild of Cobblers and Leatherworkers for the past seven years,' said Vimes. 'Family man. Old-established shop in Wixon's Alley,'             That's all?'             'Mr de Worde, that's all the Watch knows about Mr Scrope. You understand? You wouldn't want to know about some of the people we know a lot about,'             'Ah,' William's brow wrinkled. 'But there's not a shoe shop in Wixon's Alley.'             'I never mentioned shoes,'             'In fact the only shop that is even, er, remotely connected with leather is--'             That's the one,' said Vimes.             'But that sells--'             'Comes under the heading of leatherwork,' said Vimes, picking up his truncheon.             'Well, yes . . . and rubber work, and . . . feathers . . . and whips . . . and . . . little jiggly things,' said William, blushing. 'But--'             'Never been in there myself, although I believe Corporal Nobbs gets their catalogue,' said Vimes. 'I don't think there's a Guild of Makers of Little Jiggly Things, though it's an interesting thought. Anyway, Mr Scrope is all nice and legal, Mr de Worde. Nice old family atmosphere, I understand. Makes buying . . . this and that, and little jiggly things . . . as pleasant as half a pound of humbugs, I don't doubt. And what rumour is telling me is that the first thing nice Mr Scrope will do is pardon Lord Vetinari.'             'What? Without a trial?' 209             'Won't that be nice?' said Vimes, with horrible cheerfulness. 'A good start to his term of office, eh? Clean sheet, fresh start, no sense in raking up unpleasantness. Poor chap. Overwork. Bound to crack. Didn't get enough fresh air. And so on. So he can be put away in some nice quiet place and we'll be able to stop worrying about this whole wretched affair. A bit of a relief, eh?'             'But you know he didn't--'             'Do I?' said Vimes. This is an official truncheon of office, Mr de Worde. If it was a club with a nail in it this'd be a different sort of city. I'm off now. You've been thinking, you tell me. Maybe you ought to think some more.'             William watched him go.             Sacharissa had pulled herself together, perhaps because no one was trying to comfort her any more.             'What are we going to do now?' she said.             'I don't know. Get a paper out, I suppose. That's our job.'             'But what happens if those men come back?'             'I don't think they will. This place is being watched now.'             Sacharissa started to pick papers up off the floor. 'I suppose I'll feel better if I do something . . .'             That's the spirit.'             'If you can give me a few paragraphs about that fire             'Otto got a decent picture,' said William. 'Didn't you, Otto?'             'Oh yes. That vun is okay. But. . .'             The vampire was staring down at his iconograph. It was smashed.             'Oh, I'm so sorry,' said William.             'I have ozzers.' Otto sighed. 'You know, I thought it vould be easy in zer big city,' he said. 'I thought it would be civilized. Zey told me mobs don't come after you viz pitchforks in zer big city like zey do back in Schiischien. I mean, I try. Gods know I try. Three months, four days and seven hours on zer vagon. I give up zer whole thing! Even zer pale ladies viz the velvet basques vorn on zer outside and zer fetching black lace dresses and zose little tiny, you know, high-heeled boots - and zat vas a wrench, I don't mind telling you . . .' He shook his head miserably, and stared at his ruined shirt. 'And stuff all gets broken and now my 210 best shirt is all covered viz . . . blood . . . covered viz red, red blood . . . rich dark blood . . . zer blood . . . covered with zer blood . . . zer blood. . .'             'Quick!' said Sacharissa, pushing past William. 'Mr Goodmountain, you hold his arms!' She waved at the dwarfs. 'I was ready for this! Two of you hold his legs! Dozy, there's a huge blutwurst in my desk drawer!'             '. . . Let me valk in sunshine, Living not in vein . . .' Otto crooned.             'Oh, my gods, his eyes are glowing red!' said William. 'What shall we do?'             'We could try cutting his head off again?' said Boddony.             That was a very poor joke, Boddony,' Sacharissa snapped.             'Joke? I was smiling?'             Otto stood up, the cursing dwarfs hanging off his sparse frame.             'Through thunderstorm and dreadful night, ve vill carry on zer fight. . :             'He's as strong as an ox!' said Goodmountain.             'Hang on, maybe it would help if we joined in!' said Sacharissa. She fumbled in her bag and produced a slim blue pamphlet. 'I picked this up this morning from the mission in Abattoirs Lane. It's their songbook! And,' she started to sniff again, 'it's so sad, it's called "Walking In Sunshine" and it's so--'             'You want us to have a singsong?' said Goodmountain, as the struggling Otto lifted him off the ground.             'Just to give him moral support!' Sacharissa dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. 'You can see he's trying to fight it! And he did lay down his life for us!'             'Yes, but then he picked it up again!'             William bent down and took up something from the wreckage of Otto's iconograph. The imp had escaped, but the picture that it had painted was just visible. Perhaps it'd show--             It wasn't a good one of the man who'd called himself Brother Pin; his face was just a white blob in the glare of the light that humans couldn't see. But the shadows behind him . . .             He looked closer.             'Oh, my gods . . .'             The shadows behind him were alive. 211             It was sleeting. Brother Pin and Sister Tulip slid and slithered through the freezing drops. Behind them, whistles were blowing in the murk.             'Come on!' Pin yelled.             'These --ing sacks are heavyV             There were whistles blowing off to one side now, too. Mr Pin wasn't used to this. Watchmen shouldn't be enthusiastic, or organized. He'd been chased by watchmen before, when plans hadn't quite worked out. Their job was to give up at the second corner, out of breath. He felt quite angry about that. The watchmen here were doing it wrong.             He was aware of an open space to one side of him, full of damp swirling flakes. Below him there was a sluggish sucking noise, like a very bad digestion.             This is a bridge! Chuck 'em in the river!' he commanded.             'I fort we wanted to find--'             'Doesn't matter! Get rid of all of 'em! Right now! End of problem!'             Sister Tulip grunted a reply and skidded to a halt at the parapet. The two whining, yapping sacks went straight on over.             'Did that sound like a --ing splash to you?' said Sister Tulip, peering through the sleet.             'Who cares? Now runV             Mr Pin shivered as he sped on. He didn't know what had been done to him back there, but he'd felt like he'd walked over his own grave.             He felt he had more than just watchmen after him. He speeded up.             In reluctant but marvellous harmony, because no one could sing like a group of dwarfs, even if the song was 'May I Suck Of Water Pure',* the dwarfs seemed to be calming Otto down.             Besides, the horrible black emergency blutwurst had finally been             * In other circumstances it would have been as likely as cows singing 'Let Me Be Covered In Rapturous Gravy'. 212 produced. For a vampire this was the equivalent of a cardboard cigarette to a terminal nicotine addict, but it was at least something he could get his teeth into. When William finally tore his gaze away from the horror of the shadows, Sacharissa was mopping Otto's brow.             'Oh, vunce again I am so ashamed, vhere can I put my head, it's so--'             William held up the picture. 'Otto, what's this?'             In the shadows were mouths, screaming. In the shadows were eyes, wide. They didn't move while you watched them, but if you looked at the picture a second time you got a feeling that they weren't quite in the same place.             Otto shuddered. 'Oh, I used all zer eels I had,' he said.             'And--?'             'Oh, they're awful,' breathed Sacharissa, looking away from the tortured shadows.             'I feel so wretched,' said Otto. 'Obviously they vere too stronk--'             'Tell us, Otto!'             'Veil. . . the iconograph does not lie, you have heard zis?'             'Of course.'             'Yes? Veil . . . under stronk dark light, the picture really does not lie. Dark light reveals zer truth to the dark eyes of zer mind . . .' He paused and sighed. 'Ah, vunce again no ominous roll of thunder, vot a vaste. But at least you could look apprehensively at the shadows.'             All heads turned towards the shadows, in the corner of the room and under the roof. They were simply shadows, haunted by nothing more than dust and spiders.             'But there's just dust and--' Sacharissa began.             Otto held up a hand. 'Dear lady . . . I have just told you. Philosophically, the truth can be vot is metaphorically there             William stared at the picture again.             'I had hoped that I could use filters and so on to cut down zer, er, unvanted effects,' said Otto behind him. 'But alas--'             'This gets worse and worse,' said Sacharissa. 'It gives me the humorous vegetables.' 213             Goodmountain shook his head. 'This is unholy stuff,' he said. 'No more meddling with it, understand?'             'I didn't think dwarfs were religious,' said William.             'We're not,' said Goodmountain. 'But we know unholy when we see it, and I'm looking at it right now, I'm telling you. I don't want any more of these, these . . . prints of darkness!'             William grimaced. It shows the truth, he thought. But how do we know the truth when we see it? The Ephebian philosophers think that a hare can never outrun a tortoise, and they can prove it. Is that the truth? I heard a wizard say that everything is made of little numbers, whizzing around so fast that they become stuff. Is that true? I think a lot of things that have been happening over the last few days are not what they seem, and I don't know why I think that, but I think it's not the truth . . .             'Yes, no more of this stuff, Otto,' he said.             'Damn right,' said Goodmountain.             'Let's just try to get back to normal and get a paper out, shall we?'             'You mean normal where mad priests start to collect dogs, or normal where vampires mess around with evil shadows?' said Gowdie.             'I mean like normal before that,' said William.             'Oh, I see. You mean like back in the old days,' said Gowdie.             After a while, though, silence settled on the press room, although there was an occasional sniff from the desk opposite.             William wrote a story about the fire. That was easy. Then he tried to write a coherent account of the recent events, but found he couldn't get beyond the first word. He'd written The'. It was a reliable word, the definite article. The trouble was, all the things he was definite about were bad.             He'd expected to . . . what? Inform people? Yes. Annoy people? Well, some people, at least. What he hadn't expected was that it wouldn 't make any difference. The paper came out, and it didn 't matter.             People just seemed to accept things. What was the point of writing another story on the Vetinari business? Well, of course, it had a lot of dogs in it, and there was always a lot of human interest in a story about animals. 214             'What did you expect?' said Sacharissa, as if she was reading his thoughts. 'Did you think people would be marching in the streets? Vetinari isn't a very nice man, from what I hear. People say he probably deserves to be locked up.'             'Are you saying people aren't interested in the truth?'             'Listen, what's true to a lot of people is that they need the money for the rent by the end of the week. Look at Mr Ron and his friends. What's the truth mean to them? They live under a bridge!'             She held up a piece of lined paper, crammed edge to edge with the careful looped handwriting of someone for whom holding a pen was not a familiar activity.             This is a report of the annual meeting of the Ankh-Morpork Caged Birds Society,' she said. They're just ordinary people who breed canaries and things as a hobby. Their chairman lives next door to me, which is why he gave me this. This stuff is important to him! My goodness, but it's dull. It's all about Best of Breed and some changes in the show rules about parrots which they argued about for two hours. But the people who were arguing were people who mostly spend their day mincing meat or sawing wood and basically leading little lives that are controlled by other people, do you see? They've got no say in who runs the city but they can damn well see to it that cockatoos aren't lumped in with parrots. It's not their fault. It's just how things are. Why are you sitting there with your mouth open like that?'             William closed his mouth. 'All right, I understand--'             'No, I don't think you do,' she snapped. 'I looked you up in Twurp's Peerage. Your family have never had to worry about the small stuff, have they? They've been some of the people who really run things. This . . . paper is a kind of hobby for you, isn't it? Oh, you believe in it, I'm sure you do, but if it all goes wahoonie-shaped you'll still have money. I won't. So if the way it can be kept going is by filling it with what you sneer at as olds, then that's what I'll do.'             'I don't have money! I make my own living!'             'Yes, but you were able to choose! Anyway, aristocrats don't like to see other toffs starving. They find them silly jobs to do for serious wages--' 215             She stopped, panting, and pushed some hair out of her eyes. Then she looked at him like someone who has lit the fuse and is now wondering if the barrel at the other end is bigger than they thought.             William opened his mouth, went to shape a word, and stopped. He did it again. Finally, a little hoarsely, he said: 'You're more or less right--'             The next word's going to be "but", I just know it,' said Sacharissa.             William was aware that the printers were all watching. 'Yes, it is--'             'Aha!'             'But it's a big but. Do you mind? It's important! Someone has to care about the . . . the big truth. What Vetinari mostly does not do is a lot of harm. We've had rulers who were completely crazy and very, very nasty. And it wasn't that long ago, either. Vetinari might not be "a very nice man", but I had breakfast today with someone who'd be a lot worse if he ran the city, and there are lots more like him. And what's happening now is wrong. And as for your damn parrot fanciers, if they don't care about anything much beyond things that go squawk in cages then one day there'll be someone in charge of this place who'll make them choke on their own budgies. You want that to happen? If we don't make an effort all they'll get is silly . . . stories about talking dogs and Elves Ate My Gerbil, so don't give me lectures on what's important and what's not, understand?'             They glared at one another.             'Don't you talk to me like that.'             'Don't you talk to me like that.'             'We're not getting enough advertising. The Inquirer's getting huge adverts from the big Guilds,' said Sacharissa. 'That's what'll keep us going, not stories about how much gold weighs.'             'What am I supposed to do about it?'             'Find a way of getting more ads!'             'That's not my job!' William shouted.             'It's part of saving your job! We're just getting penny-a-line advertisements from people wanting to sell surgical supports and backache cures!' 216             'So? The pennies add up!'             'So you want us to be known as The Paper You Can Put Your Truss In?'             'Er . . . excuse me, but are we producing an edition?' said Goodmountain. 'Not that we aren't enjoying all this, but the colour's going to take a lot of extra time.'             William and Sacharissa looked round. They were the focus of attention.             'Look, I know this means a lot to you,' said Sacharissa, lowering her voice, 'but all this . . . political stuff, this is the Watch's job, not ours. That's all I'm saying.'             They're stuck. That's what Vimes was telling me.'             Sacharissa stared at his frozen expression. Then she leaned over and, to his shock, patted his hand.             'Perhaps you are having an effect, then.'             'Hah!'             'Well, if they're going to pardon Vetinari, maybe it's because they're worried about you.'             'Hah! Anyway, who are "they"?'             'Well . . . you know . . . them. The people who run things. They notice things. They probably read the paper.'             William gave her a wan smile. Tomorrow we'll find someone to get more ads,' he said. 'And we'll definitely need those extra staff. Er . . . I'm going to go for a little walk,' he added. 'And I'll get you that key.'             'Key?'             'You wanted a dress for the ball?'             'Oh. Yes. Thank you.'             'And I don't think those men will be back,' said William. 'I've got a feeling that there isn't a shed anywhere in town that's as well guarded as this one right at the moment.'             Because Vimes is waiting to see who tries to get at us next, he thought. But he decided not to say so.             'What exactly are you going to do?' said Sacharissa.             'First, I'm going to the nearest apothecary,' said William, 'and then I'm going to drop in at my lodgings for that key, and then . . . I'm going to see a man about a dog.' 217             The New Firm hurtled through the door of the empty mansion and bolted it behind them.             Mr Tulip ripped off the bride of innocence outfit and hurled it on to the floor.             'I told you --ing clever plans never work!' he said.             'A vampire,' said Mr Pin. 'This is a sick city, Mr Tulip.'             'What was that he --ing did to us?'             'He took some kind of picture,' said Mr Pin. He closed his eyes for a moment. His head was aching.             'Well, I was in disguise,' said Mr Tulip.             Mr Pin shrugged. Even with a metal bucket over his head, which would probably begin to corrode after a few minutes, there would be something recognizable about Mr Tulip.             'I don't think that will do any good,' he said.             'I --ing hates pictures,' snarled Mr Tulip. 'Remember that time in Mouldavia? All them posters they did? It's bad for a man's health, seeing his --ing phiz on every wall with "Dead or Alive" under it. It's like they can't --ing decide.'             Mr Tulip fished out a small bag of what he had been assured was primo Smudge, but which would turn out to be sugar and powdered pigeon guano.             'Anyway, we must've got the --ing dog,' he said.             'We can't be sure,' said Mr Pin. He winced again. The headache was getting quite strong.             'Look, we done the --ing job,' said Mr Tulip. 'I don't recall no one telling us about --ing werewolves and vampires. That's their --ing problem! I say we scrag the geek, take the money and head for Pseudopolis or someplace!'             'You mean quit on a contract?'             'Yeah, when it's got small print you can't --ing see!'             'Someone'll recognize Charlie, though. Seems it's hard for the dead to stay dead around here.'             'I reckon I could help in that --ing respect,' said Mr Tulip.             Mr Pin chewed his lip. He knew better than Mr Tulip that men in their business needed a certain . . . reputation. Things didn't get written down. But the word got about. The New Firm sometimes 218 dealt with very serious players, and they were people who took a lot of notice of the word . . .             But Tulip did have a point. This place was getting to Mr Pin. It jarred his sensibilities. Vampires and werewolves . . . springing that sort of thing on a body, that wasn't according to the rules. That was taking liberties. Yes . . .             . . . there was more than one way to keep a reputation.             'I think we should go and explain things to our lawyer friend,' he said slowly.             'Right!' said Mr Tulip. 'And then I'll rip his head off.'             'That doesn't kill zombies.'             'Good, 'cos then he'll be able to see where I'm gonna --ing shove it.'             'And then . . . we'll pay another visit to that newspaper. When it's dark.'             To get that picture, he thought. That was a good reason. It was a reason that you could tell the world. But there was another reason. That . . . burst of darkness had frightened Mr Pin to his shrivelled soul. A lot of memories had come pouring back, all at once.             Mr Pin had made a lot of enemies, but that hadn't worried him until now because all his enemies were dead. But the dark light had fired off bits of his mind and it had seemed to him that those enemies had not vanished from the universe but had merely gone a long way away, from which point they were watching him. And it was a long way away only from his point of view - from their point of view they could reach out and touch him.             What he wouldn't say, even to Mr Tulip, was this: they'd need all the money from this job because, in a flash of dark, he'd seen that it was time to retire.             Theology was not a field in which Mr Pin had much knowledge, despite accompanying Mr Tulip to a number of the more well-designed temples and chapels, on one occasion to scrag a High Priest who'd tried to double-cross Frank 'Nutboy' Nabbs, but the little he had absorbed was suggesting to him that this might be the very best time to take a bit of an interest. He could send them some money, maybe, or at least return some of the stuff he'd taken. Hell, maybe he could start not eating beef on Tuesdays or whatever it 219 was you had to do. Maybe that would stop this feeling that the back of his head had just been unscrewed.             He knew that would have to be later, though. Right now, the code allowed them to do one of two things: they could follow Slant's instructions to the letter, which would mean they'd maintain a reputation for efficiency, or they could scrag Slant and maybe a few bystanders and leave, perhaps setting fire to a few things on the way out. That was also news that got around. People would understand how upset they were.             'But first we'll. . .' Mr Pin stopped, and in a strangled voice said: 'Is someone standing behind me?'             'No,' said Mr Tulip.             'I thought I heard . . . footsteps.'             'No one here but us.'             'Right. Right.' Mr Pin shuddered, straightened his jacket and then looked Mr Tulip up and down.             'Clean yourself up a bit, will you? Sheesh, you're leaking dust!'             'I can handle it,' said Mr Tulip. 'Keeps me sharp. Keeps me alert.'             Pin sighed. Mr Tulip had amazing faith in the contents of the next bag, whatever it was. And it was usually cat flea powder cut with dandruff.             'Force isn't going to work on Slant,' he said.             Mr Tulip cracked his knuckles. 'Works on everyone,' he said.             'No. A man like him will have a lot of muscle to call on,' said Pin. He patted his jacket. 'It's time Mr Slant said hello to my little friend.'             A plank thumped down on to the crusted surface of the river Ankh. Shifting his weight with care, and gripping the rope tightly in his teeth, Arnold Sideways swung himself on to it. It sank a little in the ooze, but stayed - for want of a better word - afloat.             A few feet away the depression that had been left by the first sack landing in the river was already filling up with - for want of a better word - water.             He reached the end of the plank, steadied himself and managed to lasso the remaining sack. It was moving.             'He's  got  it,'   shouted  the  Duck  Man,   who  was  watching 220 from under the bridge. 'Heave away, everybody!'             The sack came out of the muck with a sucking sound, and Arnold pulled himself aboard as it was dragged back to the bank.             'Oh, very well done, Arnold,' said the Duck Man, helping him off the sodden sack and back on to his trolley. 'I really doubted if the surface would support you at this stage of the tide!'             'Bit of luck for me, eh, when that cart ran over my legs all them years ago!' said Arnold Sideways. 'I'd have drowned, else!'             Coffin Henry slit the sacking with his knife and tipped the second lot of little terriers on to the ground, where they coughed and sneezed.             'One or two of the little buggers look done for,' he said. I'll give 'em mouth to mouth respiritoriation, shall I?'             'Certainly not, Henry,' said the Duck Man. 'Have you no idea of hygiene?'             'Jean who?'             'You can't kiss dogs!' said the Duck Man. They could catch something dreadful.'             The crew looked at the dogs that were clustering round their fire. How the dogs had landed in the river was something they didn't bother to wonder about. All sorts of things landed in the river. It was the kind of thing that happened all the time. The crew took a keen interest in floating things. But it was unusual to get this many all at once.             'Maybe it's been raining dogs?' said Altogether Andrews, who was being steered by the mind known as Curly. The crew liked Curly. He was easy to get along with. 'I heard the other day that's been happening lately.'             'You know what?' said Arnold Sideways. 'What we ort to do, right, is get some stuff, like . . . wood and stuff, and make a boat. We could get a lot more stuff if we had a boat.'             'Ah, yes,' said the Duck Man. 'I used to mess about in boats when I was a boy.'             'We could boat about in mess,' said Arnold. 'Same thing.'             'Not . . . exactly,' said the Duck Man. He looked at the circle of steaming, retching dogs. 221             'I wish Gaspode was here,' he said. 'He knows how to think about this sort of thing.'             'Ajar,' said the apothecary carefully.             'Sealed with wax,' William repeated.             'And you want an ounce each of. . .'             'Oil of aniseed, oil of rampion and oil of scallatine,' said William.             'I can do the first two,' said the apothecary, looking at the little list he'd been given. 'But there is no such thing as a whole ounce of oil of scallatine in the city, you realize? It's fifteen dollars for enough to go on a pinhead. We've got about enough to fill a mustard spoon and we have to keep that in a soldered lead box under water.'             'I'll take a pinhead's worth, then,'             'You'll never get it off your hands, you know. It isn't really for the average--'             'In a bottle,' said William patiently. 'Sealed with wax,'             'You won't even smell the other oils! What do you want them for?'             'Insurance,' said William. 'Oh, and after you've sealed it, wash off the bottle with ether, and then wash the ether off.'             'Is this going to be used for some illegal purpose?' said the apothecary. He caught William's expression. 'Just interesteti,' he added quickly.             When he'd gone to make up the order William called in at a couple of other shops and bought a pair of thick gloves. ,             When he returned, the apothecary was just bringing the oils to the counter. He held a small glass flask, filled with liquid. Inside floated a much smaller phial.             'The outer liquid's water,' he said, pulling some plugs out of his nose. 'Take it carefully, if you don't mind. Drop it and we can kiss our sinuses goodbye.'             'What does it smell of?' said William.             'Well, if I said "cabbage",' said the apothecary, 'I wouldn't be saying the half of it.'             Next, William went to his lodgings. Mrs Arcanum was averse to boarders coming back to their rooms during the day, but at the 222 moment William appeared to be outside her frame of reference and she merely gave him a nod as he went upstairs.             The keys were in the old trunk at the end of his bed. It was the one he'd taken to Hugglestones; he'd kept it ever since, so that he could kick it occasionally.             His cheque book was also in there. He took that, too.             His sword rattled as his hand brushed against it.             He'd enjoyed swordsmanship at Hugglestones. It was in the dry, you were allowed to wear protective clothing and no one attempted to stamp your face into the mud. He'd actually been the champion of the school. But this wasn't because he was much good. It was simply that most of the other boys were so bad. They approached the sport as they approached all others, in a great big keen screaming rush, using the sword as a sort of club. That meant that if William could avoid the first wild stroke, then he was going to win.             He left the sword in the trunk.             After some reflection he pulled out one of his old socks and pulled it over the apothecary's bottle. Hurting people with broken glass wasn't part of the plan, either.             Peppermint! Not a bad choice, but they hadn't known what else was available, had they . . . ?             Mrs Arcanum was a great believer in net curtains, so that she could see out while outsiders couldn't see in. William lurked behind the ones in his room until he was certain that an indistinct shape among the rooftops opposite was a gargoyle.             This wasn't natural gargoyle territory, any more than Gleam Street.             The thing about gargoyles, he reflected as he stepped back and headed down the stairs, was that they didn't get bored. They were happy to stay and watch anything for days. But, while they moved faster than people thought, they didn't move faster than people.             He ran through the kitchen so quickly that he only heard Mrs Arcanum gasp, and then he was through the back door and over the wall into the alley beyond.             Someone was sweeping it. For a moment William wondered if it was a watchman in disguise, or even Sister Jennifer in disguise, but 223 probably there was no one who'd disguise themselves as a gnoll. You'd have to strap a compost heap to your back, to begin with. Gnolls ate almost everything. What they didn't eat they collected obsessively. No one had ever studied them to find out why. Perhaps a carefully sorted collection of rotted cabbage stalks was a sign of big status in gnoll society.             "ar'tn'n, M'r W'rd,' croaked the creature, leaning on its shovel.             'Er . . . hello . . . er . . .'             'Sn'g'k.'             'Ah? Yes. Thank you. Goodbye.'             He hurried down another alley, crossed the street and found yet another alley. He wasn't sure how many gargoyles were watching him, but it took them some time to cross streets . . .             How was it that the gnoll had known his name? It wasn't as though they'd met at a party or something. Besides, the gnolls all worked for . . . Harry King . . .             Well, they did say that the King of the Golden River never forgot a debtor. . .             William ducked and dodged across several blocks, making as much use as he could of the alleys and walkthroughs and noisome courts. He was sure a normal person wouldn't be able to keep track of him. But then, he'd be amazed if a normal person was following him. Mister Vimes liked to refer to himself as a simple coppter, just as Harry King thought of himself as a rough diamond. William suspected that the world was littered with the remains of those people who had taken them at their word.             He slowed down and climbed some outside stairs. And then he waited.             You're a fool, said the internal editor. Some people have tried to kill you. You're concealing information from the Watch. You're mixing with strange people. You're about to do something that's going to get so far up Mister Vimes's nose it will raise his hat. And why?             Because it makes my blood tingle, he thought. And because I'm not going to be used. By anyone.             There was a faint sound at the end of the alley, which might not have been heard by anyone who wasn't expecting it. It was the sound of something sniffing. 224             William looked down and saw, in the gloom, a four-legged shape break into a trot while keeping its muzzle close to the ground.             William measured the distance carefully. Declaring independence was one thing. Assaulting a member of the Watch was a very different thing.             He lobbed the fragile bottle so that it would land twenty feet ahead of the werewolf. Then he dropped from the stairs on to the top of a wall and jumped down on to a privy roof just as the glass broke with a 'pof!' inside the sock.             There was a yelp, and the sound of scrabbling claws.             William jumped from the roof on to another wall, inched along the top of it and climbed down into another alley. Then he ran.             It took five minutes, dodging into convenient cover and cutting through buildings, to arrive at the livery stables. In the general bustle no one took any notice of him. He was just another man coming to fetch his horse.             The stall that might or might not have contained Deep Bone was occupied by a horse now. It looked down its nose at him.             'Don't turn round, Mister Paper Man,' said a voice behind him.             William tried to remember what had been behind him. Oh, yes . . . the hay lift. And huge bags of straw. Plenty of room for someone to hide.             'All right,' he said.             'Hark, hark, the dogs do bark,' said Deep Bone. 'You must be ment'l.'             'But I'm on the right track,' said William. 'I think I've--'             "ere, you sure you weren't followed?'             'Corporal Nobbs was on my trail,' said William. 'But I shook him off.'             'Hah! Walkin' round the corner'd shake off Nobby Nobbs!'             'Oh, no, he kept right up. I knew Vimes would have me tracked,' said William proudly.             'By Nobbs?'             'Yes. Obviously . . . in his werewolf shape . . .' There. He'd said it. But today was a day for shadows and secrets.             'A werewolf shape,' said Deep Bone flatly. 225             'Yes. I'd be grateful if you didn't tell anyone else.'             'Corporal Nobbs,' said Deep Bone, still in the same dull monotone.             'Yes. Look, Vimes told me not to--'             'Vimes told you Nobby Nobbs was a werewolf?'             'Well. . . no, not exactly. I worked that out for myself, and Vimes told me not to tell anyone else             'About Corporal Nobbs bein' a werewolf. . .'             'Yes.'             'Corporal Nobbs is not a werewolf, mister. In any way, shape or form. Whether he's human is another matter, but he ain't a lycr-- a lynco-- a lycantro-- a bloody werewolf, that's for sure!'             Then whose nose did I just drop a scent bomb in front of?' said William triumphantly.             There was silence. And then there was the sound of a thin trickle of water.             'Mr Bone?' said William.             'What kind of a scent bomb?' said the voice. It sounded rather strained.             'I think oil of scallatine was probably the most active ingredient.'             'Right in front of a werewolf's nose?'             'More or less, yes.'             'Mister Vimes is going to go round the twist,' said the' voice of Deep Bone. 'He's going to go totally Librarian-poo. He's going to invent new ways of being angry just so's he can try them out on you--'             Then I'd better get hold of Lord Vetinari's ,dog as soon as possible,' said William. He produced his chequebook. 'I can give you a cheque for fifty dollars, and that's all I can afford.'             'What's one of them, then?'             'It's like a legal IOU.'             'Oh, great,' said Deep Bone. 'Not much good to me when you're locked up, though.'             'Right now, Mr Bone, there's a couple of very nasty men hunting down every terrier in the city, by the sound of it--'             Terriers?' said Deep Bone. 'All terriers?'             'Yes, and while I don't expect you to--' 226             'Like . . . pedigree terriers, or just people who might happen to look a bit terrier-like?'             They didn't look like they were inspecting any paperwork. Anyway, what do you mean, "people who look like terriers"?'             Deep Bone went silent again.             William said, 'Fifty dollars, Mr Bone.'             At length the sacks of straw said, 'All right. Tonight. On the Misbegot Bridge. Just you. Er . . . I won't be there but there will be . . . a messenger.'             'Who shall I make the cheque to?' said William.             There was no answer. He waited a while and then eased himself into a position where he could peer around the sacks. There was a rustling from them. Probably rats, he thought, because certainly none of them could hold a man.             Deep Bone was a very tricky customer.             Some time after William had gone, looking surreptitiously into the shadows, one of the grooms turned up with a trolley and began to load up the sacks.             One of them said: Tut me down, mister.'             The man dropped the sack and then opened it cautiously.             A small terrier-like dog struggled out, shaking itself free of clinging wisps.             Mr Hobson did not encourage independence of thought and an enquiring mind, and at 50 pence a day plus all the oats you could steal he didn't get them. The groom looked owlishly at the dog.             'Did you just say that?' he said.             "course not,' said the dog. 'Dogs can't talk. Are you stupid or somethin'? Someone's playin' a trick on you. Gottle o' geer, gottle o' geer, vig viano.'             'You mean, like, throwing their voice? I saw a man do that down at the music hall.'             That's the ticket. Hold on to that thought.'             The groom looked around. 'Is that you playin' a trick, Tom?' he said.             That's right, it's me, Tom,' said the dog. 'I got the trick out of a 227 book. Throwin' my voice into this harmless little dog what cannot talk at all.'             'What? You never told me you were learnin' to read!'             'There were pictures,' said the dog hurriedly. Tongues an' teeth an' that. Dead easy to understand. Oh, now the little doggie's wanderin' off. . .'             The dog edged its way to the door.             'Sheesh,' it appeared to say. 'A couple of thumbs and they're lords of bloody creation             Then it ran for it.             'How will this work?' said Sacharissa, trying to look intelligent. It was much better to concentrate on something like this than think about strange men getting ready to invade again.             'Slowly,' mumbled Goodmountain, fiddling with the press. 'You realize that this means it'll take us much longer to print each paper?'             'You vanted colour, I gif you colour,' said Otto sulkily. 'You never said qvick.'             Sacharissa looked at the experimental iconograph. Most pictures were painted in colour these days. Only really cheap imps painted in black and white, even though Otto insisted that monochrome 'vas an art form in itself. But printing colour . . . '             Four imps were sitting on the edge of it, passing a very small cigarette from hand to hand and watching with interest the work on the press. Three of them wore goggles of coloured glass - red, blue and yellow.             'But not green . . .' she said. 'So . . . if something's green - have I got this right? - Guthrie there sees the . . . blue in the green and paints that on the plate in blue' - one of the imps gave her a wave - 'and Anton sees the yellow and paints that, and when you run it through the press--'             '. . . very, very slowly,' muttered Goodmountain. 'It'd be quicker to go round to everyone's house and tell 'em the news.'             Sacharissa looked at the test sheets that had been done of the recent fire. It was definitely a fire, with red, yellow and orange flames, and there was some, yes, blue sky, and the golems 228 were a pretty good reddish-brown, but the flesh tones . . . well, 'flesh-coloured' was a bit of a tricky one in Ankh-Morpork, where if you picked your subject it could be any colour except maybe light blue, but the faces of many of the bystanders did suggest that a particularly virulent plague had passed through the city. Possibly the Multi-coloured Death, she decided.             'Zis is only the beginning,' said Otto. 'Ve vill get better.'             'Better maybe, but we're as fast as we can go,' said Good-mountain. 'We can do maybe two hundred an hour. Maybe two hundred and fifty, but someone's going to be looking for their fingers before this day's out. Sorry, but we're doing the best we can. If we had a day to redesign and rebuild properly--'             'Print a few hundred and do the rest in black and white, then,' said Sacharissa, and sighed. 'At least it'll catch people's attention.'             'Vunce zey see it, the Inqvirer vill vork out how it vas done,' said Otto.             'Then at least we'll go down with our colours flying,' said Sacharissa. She shook her head as a little dust floated down from the ceiling.             'Hark at that,' said Boddony. 'Can you feel the floor shake? That's their big presses again.'             They're undermining us everywhere,' said Sacharissa. 'And we've all worked so hard. It's so unfair.'             I'm surprised the floor takes it,' said Goodmountain. 'It's not as though anything's on solid ground round here.'             'Undermining us, eh?' said Boddony.             One or two of the dwarfs looked up when he said this. Boddony said something in dwarfish. Goodmountain snapped something in reply. A couple of other dwarfs joined in.             'Excuse me,' said Sacharissa tartly.             The lads were . . . wondering about going in and having a look,' said Goodmountain.             'I tried going in the other day,' said Sacharissa. 'But the troll on the door was most impolite.'             'Dwarfs . . . approach matters differently,' said Goodmountain.             Sacharissa saw a movement. Boddony had pulled his axe out 229 from under the bench. It was a traditional dwarf axe. One side was a pickaxe, for the extraction of interesting minerals, and the other side was a war axe, because the people who own the land with the valuable minerals in it can be so unreasonable sometimes.             'You're not going to attack anyone, are you?' she said, shocked.             'Well, someone did say that if you want a good story you have to dig and dig,' said Boddony. 'We're just going to go for a walk.'             'In the cellar?' said Sacharissa, as they headed for the steps.             'Yeah, a walk in the dark,' said Boddony.             Goodmountain sighed. The rest of us will get on with the paper, shall we?' he said.             After a minute or two there was the sound of a few axe blows, below them, and then someone swore in dwarfish, very loudly.             'I'm going to see what they're doing,' said Sacharissa, unable to resist any more, and hurried away.             The bricks that once had filled the old doorway were already down when she got there. Since the stones of Ankh-Morpork were recycled over the generations no one had ever seen the point of making strong mortar, and especially not for blocking up an old doorway. Sand, dirt, water and phlegm would do the trick, they felt. They always had done up to now, after all. '             The dwarfs were peering into the darkness beyond. Each one had stuck a candle on his helmet.             'I thought your man said they filled up the old street,' said Boddony.             'He's not my man,' said Sacharissa evenly. 'What's in there?'             One of the dwarfs had stepped through with a lantern.             There's like . . . tunnels,' he said.             The old pavements,' said Sacharissa. 'It's like this all round this area, I think. After the big floods they built up the sides of the road with timber and filled it in, but they left the pavements on either side because not all the properties had built up yet and people objected.'             'What?' said Boddony. 'You mean the roads were higher than the pavements?'             'Oh, yes,' said Sacharissa, following him into the gap. 230             'What happened if a horse pi-- if a horse made water on the street?'             'I'm sure I don't know,' sniffed Sacharissa.             'How did people cross the street?'             'Ladders.'             'Oh, come on, miss!'             'No, they used ladders. And a few tunnels. It wasn't going to be for very long. And then it was simpler just to put heavy slabs over the old pavements. And so there's these - well, forgotten spaces.'             There's rats up here,' said Dozy, who was wandering into the distance.             'Hot damn!' said Boddony. 'Anyone brought the cutlery? Only joking, miss. Hey, what do we have here . . . ?'             He hacked at some planks, which crumbled away under the blows.             'Someone didn't want to use a ladder,' he said, peering into another hole.             'It goes right under the street?' said Sacharissa.             'Looks like it. Must have been allergic to horses.'             'And . . . er . . . you can find your way?'             'I'm a dwarf. We are underground. Dwarf. Underground. What was your question again?'             'You're not proposing to hack through to the cellars of the Inquirer, are you?' said Sacharissa.             'Who, us?'             'You are, aren't you.'             'We wouldn't do anything like that.'             'Yes, but you are, aren't you.'             That'd be tantamount to breaking in, wouldn't it?'             'Yes, and that's what you're planning to do, isn't it?'             Boddony grinned. 'Well. . . a little bit. Just to have a look round. You know.'             'Good.'             'What? You don't mind?'             'You're not going to kill anyone, are you?'             'Miss, we don't do that sort of thing!' 231             Sacharissa looked a little disappointed. She'd been a respectable young woman for some time. In certain people, that means there's a lot of dammed-up disreputability just waiting to burst out.             'Well. . . perhaps just make them a bit sorry, then?'             'Yes, we can probably do that.'             The dwarfs were already creeping along the tunnel at the other side of the buried street. By the light of their torches she saw old frontages, bricked-up doors, windows filled with rubble.             This should be about the right place,' said Boddony, pointing to a faint rectangle filled with more low-grade brick.             'You're just going to break in?' said Sacharissa.             'We'll say we were lost,' said Boddony.             'Lost underground? Dwarfs?'             'All right, we'll say we're drunk. People'll believe that. Okay, lads. . .'             The rotten bricks fell away. Light streamed out. In the cellar beyond a man looked up from his desk, mouth open.             Sacharissa squinted through the dust. 'You?' she said.             'Oh, it's you, miss,' said Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler. 'Hello, boys. Am I glad to see you . . .'             The crew were just leaving when Gaspode arrived at the gallop. He took one look at the other dogs that were huddled around trie fire, then dived under the trailing folds of Foul Ole Ron's dreadful coat and whined.             It took some time for the whole of the crew to understand what was going on. These were, after all, people who ,'could argue and expectorate and creatively misunderstand their way through a three-hour argument after someone said 'Good morning'.             It was the Duck Man who finally got the message. 'These men are hunting terriers?' he said.             'Right! It was the bloody newspaper! You can't bloody trust people who write in newspapers!'             They threw these doggies in the river?'             'Right!' said Gaspode. 'It's all gone fruit-shaped!'             'Well, we can protect you too.'             'Yeah, but I've got to be out and about! I'm a figure in this town! 232             I can't lie low! I need a disguise! Look, we could be looking at fifty dollars here, right? But you need me to get it!'             The crew were impressed with this. In their cashless economy fifty dollars was a fortune.             'Blewitt,' said Foul Ole Ron.             'A dog's a dog,' said Arnold Sideways. 'On account of bein' called a dog.'             'Gaarck!' crowed Coffin Henry.             That's true,' said the Duck Man. 'A false beard isn't going to work.'             'Well, your huge brains had better come up with somethin', 'cos I'm staying put until you do,' said Gaspode. 'I've seen these men. They are not nice.'             There was a rumble from Altogether Andrews. His face flickered as the various personalities reshuffled themselves, and then settled into the waxy bulges of Lady Hermione.             'We could disguise him,' she said.             'What could you disguise a dog as?' said the Duck Man. 'A cat?'             'A dog is not just a dog,' said Lady Hermione. 'Ai think ai have an idea . . .'             The dwarfs were in a huddle when William got back. The epicentre of the huddle, its huddlee, turned out to be Mr Dibbler, who looked just like anyone would look if they've been harangued. William had never seen anyone to whom the word 'harangued' could be so justifiably applied. It meant someone who had been talked at by Sacharissa for twenty minutes.             'Is there a problem?' he said. 'Hello, Mr Dibbler . . .'             Tell me, William,' said Sacharissa, while pacing slowly around Dibbler's chair. 'If stories were food, what kind of food would Goldfish Eats Cat be?'             'What?' William stared at Dibbler. Realization dawned. 'I think it would be a sort of long, thin kind of food,' he said.             'Filled with rubbish of suspicious origin?'             'Now, there's no need for anyone to take that tone--' Dibbler began, and then subsided under Sacharissa's glare.             'Yes, but rubbish that's sort of attractive. You'd keep on eating it 233 even though you wished you weren't,' said William. 'What's going on here?'             'Look, I didn't want to do it,' Dibbler protested.             'Do what?' said William.             'Mr Dibbler's been writing those stories for the Inquirer,' said Sacharissa.             'I mean, no one believes what they read in the paper, right?' said Dibbler.             William pulled up a chair and sat straddling it, resting his arms on the back.             'So, Mr Dibbler . . . when did you start pissing in the fountain of Truth?'             'William!' snapped Sacharissa.             'Look, times haven't been good, see?' said Dibbler. 'And I thought, this news business . . . well, people like to hear about stuff from a long way away, you know, like in the Almanacke--'             ' "Plague of Giant Weasels in Hersheba"?' said William.             'That's the style. Well, I thought . . . it doesn't sort of matter if they're, you know, really true . . . I mean . . .' William's glassy grin was beginning to make Dibbler uncomfortable. 'I mean . . . they're nearly true, aren't they? Everyone knows that sort of thing happens             'You didn't come to me' said William.             'Well, of course not. Everyone knows you're a bit . . . a bit unimaginative about that sort of thing.'             'You mean I like to know that things have actually happened?'             'That's it, yes. Mr Carney says people won't notice the difference anyway. He doesn't like you very much, Mr de Worde.'             'He's got wandering hands,' said Sacharissa. 'You can't trust a man like that.'             William pulled the latest copy of the Inquirer towards him and picked a story at random.             '"Man Stolen by Demons",' he said. 'This refers to Mr Ronnie "Trust Me" Begholder, known to owe Chrysoprase the troll more than two thousand dollars, last seen buying a very fast horse?'             'Well?'             'Where do the demons fit in?' 234             'Well, he could'Ve been stolen by demons,' said Dibbler. 'It could happen to anybody.'             'What you mean, then, is that there is no evidence that he wasn 't stolen by demons?'             That way people can make up their own minds,' said Dibbler. 'That's what Mr Carney says. People should be allowed to choose, he said.'             To choose what's true?'             'He doesn't clean his teeth properly, either,' said Sacharissa. 'I mean, I'm not one of those people who think cleanliness is next to godliness, but there are limits.'*             Dibbler shook his head sadly. 'I'm losin' my touch,' he said. 'Imagine - me, working for someone? I must've been mad. It's the cold weather getting to me, that's what it is. Even . . . wages,' he said the word with a shudder, 'looked attractive. D'you know,' he added, in a horrified voice, 'he was telling me what to do? Next time I'll have a quiet lie-down until the feeling goes away.'             'You are an immoral opportunist, Mr Dibbler,' said William.             'It's worked so far.'             'Can you sell some advertising for us?' said Sacharissa.             'I'm not going to work for anyone ag--'             'On commission,' snapped Sacharissa.             'What? You want to employ him?' said William.             'Why not? You can tell as many lies as you like if it's advertising. That's allowed,' said Sacharissa. 'Please? We need the money!'             'Commission, eh?' said Dibbler, rubbing his unshaven chin. 'Like . . . fifty per cent for you two and fifty per cent for me, too?'             'We'll discuss it, shall we?' said Goodmountain, patting him on the shoulder. Dibbler winced. When it came to hard bargaining, dwarfs were diamond-tipped.             'Have I got a choice?' he mumbled.             Goodmountain leaned forward.  His  beard was bristling.  He             * Classically, very few people have considered that cleanliness is next to godliness, apart from in a very sternly abridged dictionary. A rank loincloth and hair in an advanced state of matted entanglement have generally been the badges of office of prophets whose injunction to disdain earthly things starts with soap. 235 wasn't currently holding a weapon but Dibbler could see, as it were, the great big axe that wasn't there.             'Absolutely,' he said.             'Oh,' said Dibbler. 'So . . . what would I be selling, exactly?'             'Space,' said Sacharissa.             Dibbler beamed again. 'Just space? Nothing? Oh, I can do that. I can sell nothing like anything]' He shook his head sadly. 'It's only when I try to sell something that everything goes wrong.'             'How did you come to be here, Mr Dibbler?' William asked.             He was not happy with the answer.             'That sort of thing could work both ways,' he said. 'You can't just dig into other people's property!' He glared at the dwarfs. 'Mr Boddony, I want that hole blocked up right now, understand?'             'We only--'             'Yes, yes, you did it for the best. And now I want it bricked up, properly. I want the hole to look as though it has never been there, thank you. I don't want anyone coming up the cellar ladder that didn't climb down it. Right now, please!             'I think I'm on to a real story,' said William, as the disgruntled dwarfs filed away. 'I think I'm going to see Wuffles. I've got--'             As he pulled out his notebook something dropped on to the floor with a tinkle.             'Oh, yes . . . and I got the key to our town house,' he said. 'You wanted a dress             'It's a bit late,' said Sacharissa. 'I'd forgotten all about it, to tell the truth.'             'Why not go and have a look while everyone else is busy? You could take Rocky, too. You know . . . to be on the safe side. But the place is empty. My father stays at his club if he has to come to town. Go on. There's got to be more to life than correcting copy.'             Sacharissa looked uncertainly at the key in her hand.             'My sister has quite a lot of dresses,' said William. 'You want to go to the ball, don't you?'             'I suppose Mrs Hotbed could alter it for me if I take it to her in the morning,' said Sacharissa, expressing mildly peeved reluctance while her body language begged to be persuaded. 236             'That's right,' said William. 'And I'm sure you can find someone to do your hair properly.'             Sacharissa's eyes narrowed. 'It's true, you know, you have got an amazing way with words,' she said. 'What are you going to do?'             'I'm going,' said William, 'to see a dog about a man.'             Sergeant Angua peered up at Vimes through the steam from the bowl in front of her.             'Sorry about this, sir,' she said.             'His feet won't touch the ground,' said Vimes.             'You can't arrest him, sir,' said Captain Carrot, putting a fresh towel over Angua's head.             'Oh? Can't arrest him for assaulting an officer, eh?'             'Well, that's where it gets tricky, doesn't it, sir?' said Angua.             'You're an officer, sergeant, whatever shape you happen to be currently in!'             'Yes, but. . . it's always been a bit convenient to let the werewolf thing stay a rumour, sir,' said Carrot. 'Don't you think so? Mr de Worde writes things down. Angua and I aren't particularly keen on that. Those who need to know, know.'             Then I'll ban him from doing it!'             'How, sir?'             Vimes looked a little deflated. 'You can't tell me that as commander of police I can't stop some little ti-- some idiot from writing down anything he likes?'             'Oh, no, sir. Of course you can. But I'm not sure you can stop him writing down that you stopped him writing things down,' said Carrot.             'I'm amazed. Amazed! She's your . . . your--'             'Friend,' said Angua, taking another deep sniff of the steam. 'But Carrot's right, Mister Vimes. I don't want this going any further. It was my fault for underestimating him. I walked right into it. I'll be fine in an hour or two.'             'I saw what you were like when you came in,' said Vimes. 'You were a mess.'             'It was a shock. The nose just shuts down. It was like walking around a corner and running into Foul Ole Ron.' 237             'Ye gods! That bad?'             'Maybe not quite as bad as that. Let it lie, sir. Please.'             'He's a quick learner, our Mr de Worde,' said Vimes, sitting down at his desk. 'He's got a pen and a printing press and everyone acts like he's suddenly a major player. Well, he's going to have to learn a bit more. He doesn't want us watching? Well, we won't, any more. He can reap what he sows for a while. We've got more than enough other things to do, heavens know.'             'But he is technically--'             'See this sign on my desk, captain? See it, sergeant? It says "Commander Vimes". That means the buck starts here. It was a command you just got. Now, what else is new?'             Carrot nodded. 'Nothing good, sir. No one's found the dog. The Guilds are all battening down. Mr Scrope has been getting a lot of visitors. Oh, and High Priest Ridcully is telling everyone that he thinks Lord Vetinari went mad because the day before he'd been telling him about a plan to make lobsters fly through the air.'             'Lobsters flying through the air,' said Vimes flatly.             'And something about sending ships by semaphore, sir.'             'Oh, dear. And what is Mr Scrope saying?'             'Apparently he says he's looking forward to a new era in our history and will put Ankh-Morpork back on the path of responsible citizenship, sir.'             'Is that the same as the lobsters?'             'It's political, sir. Apparently he wants a return to the values and traditions that made the city great, sir.'             'Does he know what those values and traditions were?' said Vimes, aghast.             'I assume so, sir,' said Carrot, keeping a straight face.             'Oh my gods. I'd rather take a chance on the lobsters.'             It was sleeting again, out of a darkening sky. The Misbegot Bridge was more or less empty; William lurked in the shadows, his hat pulled down over his eyes.             Eventually a voice out of nowhere said, 'So . . . you got your bit of paper?'             'Deep Bone?' said William, startled out of the reverie. 238             I'm sending a . . . a guide for you to follow,' said the hidden informant. 'Name of. . . name of . . . Trixiebell. Just you follow him and everything will be okay. Ready?'             'Yes.'             Deep Bone is watching me, William thought. He must be really close.             Trixiebell trotted out of the shadows.             It was a poodle. More or less.             The staff at Le Foil du Chien, the doggie beauty salon, had done their very best, and a craftsman will give of his or her all if it means getting Foul Ole Ron out of the shop any faster. They'd cut, blown, permed, crimped, primped, coloured, woven, shampooed, and the manicurist had locked herself in the lavatory and refused to come out.             The result was . . . pink. The pinkness was only one aspect of the thing, but it was so . . . pink that it dominated everything else, even the topiary-effect tail with the fluffy knob on the end. The front of the dog looked as though it had been fired through a large pink ball and had only got halfway. Then there was also the matter of the large glittery collar. It glittered altogether too much; sometimes glass glitters more than diamonds because it has more to prove.             All in all, the effect was not of a poodle but of malformed poodleosity. That is to say, everything about it suggested 'poodle' except for the whole thing itself, which suggested walking away.             'Yip,' it said, and there was something wrong with this, too. William was aware that dogs like this yipped, but this one, he was sure, had said 'yip'.             There's a good . . .' he began, and finished '. . . dog?'             'Yip yipyip sheesh yip,' said the dog, and walked off.             William wondered about the 'sheesh', but decided the dog must have sneezed.             It trotted away through the slush and disappeared down an alley.             A moment later its muzzle appeared around the corner.             'Yip? Whine?'             'Oh, yes. Sorry,' said William.             Trixiebell led the way down greasy steps to the old path that ran 239 along the riverside. It was littered with rubbish, and anything that stays thrown away in Ankh-Morpork is real rubbish. The sun seldom got down here, even on a fine day. The shadows contrived to be freezing and running with water at the same time.             Nevertheless, there was a fire among the dark timbers under the bridge. William realized, as his nostrils shut down, that he was visiting the Canting Crew.             The old towpath had been deserted to start with, but Foul Ole Ron and the rest of them were the reason that it stayed that way. They had nothing to steal. They had precious little even to keep. Occasionally the Beggars' Guild considered running them out of town, but without much enthusiasm. Even beggars need someone to look down on, and the crew were so far down that in a certain light they sometimes appeared to be on top. Besides, the Guild recognized craftsmanship when they saw it; no one could spit and ooze like Coffin Henry, no one could be as legless as Arnold Sideways and nothing in the world could smell like Foul Ole Ron. He could have used oil of scallatine as a deodorant.             And, as that thought tripped through William's brain, he knew where Wuffles was. I             Trixiebell's ridiculous pink tail disappeared into the mass of old packing cases and cardboard known variously to the crew as 'What?', 'Bugrit!', Ttooi!' and Home.             William's eyes were already watering. There wasn't much breeze down here. He made his way to the pool of firelight.             'Oh . . . good evening, gentlemen,' he managed, nodding to the figures around the green-edged flames.             'Let's see the colour of your bit of paper,' commanded the voice of Deep Bone, from out of the shadows.             'It's, er, off-white,' said William, unfolding the cheque. It was taken by the Duck Man, who scanned it carefully and added noticeably to its off-whiteness.             'It seems to be in order. Fifty dollars, signed,' he said. 'I have explained the concept to my associates, Mr de Worde. It was not easy, I have to tell you.'             'Yeah, and if you don't put up we'll come to your house!' said Coffin Henry. 240             'Er . . . and do what?' said William.             'Stand outside for ever and ever and ever!' said Arnold Sideways.             'Lookin' at people in a funny way,' said the Duck Man.             'Gobbin' on their boots!' said Coffin Henry.             William tried not to think about Mrs Arcanum. He said: 'Now can I see the dog?'             'Show him, Ron,' commanded the voice of Deep Bone.             Ron's heavy coat fell open, revealing Wuffles blinking in the firelight.             'You had him?' said William. That was all there was to it?'             'Bugrit!'             'Who's going to search Foul Ole Ron?' said Deep Bone.             'Good point,' said William. 'Very good point. Or smell him out.'             'Now, you got to remember he's old,' said Deep Bone. 'An' he wasn't exactly Mr Brain to start with. I mean, we're talkin' dogs here - not talking dogs,' said the voice hurriedly, 'but talking about dogs, I mean - so don't expect a philosophical treatise, is what I'm sayin'.'             Wuffles begged geriatrically when he saw William looking at him.             'How did he come to be with you?' said William as Wuffles sniffed his hand.             'He came running out of the palace straight under Ron's coat,' said Deep Bone.             'Which is, as you point out, the last place anyone would look,' said William.             'You'd better believe it,'             'And not even a werewolf would find him there.' William took out his notebook, turned to a fresh page, and wrote: 'Wuffles,' He said, 'How old is he?'             Wuffles barked.             'Sixteen,' said Deep Bone. 'Is that important?'             'It's a newspaper thing,' said William. He wrote: 'Wuffles (16), formerly of The Palace, Ankh-Morpork,'             I'm interviewing a dog, he thought. Man Interviews Dog. That's nearly news.             'So . . . er, Wuffles, what happened before you ran out of the palace?' he said. 241             Deep Bone, from his hiding place, whined and growled. Wuffles cocked an ear and then growled back.             'He woke up and experienced a moment of horrible philosophical uncertainty,' said Deep Bone.             'I thought you said--'             'I'm translating right? And this was on account of there being two Gods in the room. That's two Lord Vetinaris, Wuffles being an old-fashioned kind of dog. But he knew one was wrong because he smelled wrong. And there were two other men. And then--'             William scribbled furiously.             Twenty seconds later Wuffles bit him hard on the ankle.             The clerk in Mr Slant's front office looked down from his high desk at the two visitors, sniffed and carried on with his laborious copperplate. He did not have a lot of time for the notion of customer service. The Law could not be hurried--             A moment later his head was rammed into the desktop and held down by some enormous weight.             Mr Pin's face appeared in his limited vision.             'I said,' said Mr Pin, 'that Mr Slant wants to see us . . .'             'Sngh,' said the clerk. Mr Pin nodded and the pressure was relieved slightly.             'Sorry? You were saying?' said Mr Pin, watching the man's hand creep along the edge of the desk.             'He's . . . not . . . seeing . . . anyone . . .' The words ended in a muffled yelp.             Mr Pin leaned down. 'Sorry about the fingers,' he said, 'but we can't have them naughty little things creeping to that little lever there, can we? No telling what might happen if you pulled that lever. Now . . . which one's Mr Slant's office?'             'Second . . . door . . . on . . . left. . .' the man groaned.             'See? It's so much nicer when we're polite. And in a week, two at the outside, you'll be able to pick up a pen again.' Mr Pin nodded to Mr Tulip, who let the man go. He slithered to the floor.             'You want I should --ing scrag him?'             'Leave him,' said Mr Pin. 'I think I'm going to be nice to people today.' 242             He had to hand it to Mr Slant. When the New Firm stepped into his office the lawyer looked up and his expression barely flickered.             'Gentlemen?' he said.             'Don't press a --ing thing,' said Mr Tulip.             'There's something you should know,' said Mr Pin, pulling a box out of his jacket.             'And what is that?' said Mr Slant.             Mr Pin flicked a catch on the side of the box.             'Let's hear about yesterday,' he said.             The imp blinked.             '. . . nyip . . . nyapnyip . . . nyapdit . . . nyip . . .' it said.             'It's just working its way backwards,' said Mr Pin.             'What is this?' said the lawyer.             '. . . nyapnyip . . . sipnyap . . . nip . . . is valuable, Mr Pin. So I will not spin this out. What did you do with the dog? Mr Pin's finger touched another lever. '. . . wheedlewheedle whee . . . My . . . clients have long memories and deep pockets. Other killers can be hired. Do you understand me?             There was a tiny 'Ouch' as the Off lever hit the imp on the head.             Mr Slant got up and walked across to an ancient cabinet.             'Would you like a drink, Mr Pin? I am afraid I have only embalming fluid             'Not yet, Mr Slant.'             '. . . and I think I probably have a banana somewhere             Mr Slant turned, smiling beatifically, at the sound of the smack of Mr Pin catching Mr Tulip's arm.             'I told you I'm gonna --ing kill him--'             'Too late, alas,' said the lawyer, sitting down again. 'Very well, Mr Pin. This is about money, is it?'             'All we're owed, plus another fifty thousand.'             'But you haven't found the dog.'             'Nor have the Watch. And they've got a werewolf. Everyone's looking for the dog. The dog's gone. But that doesn't matter. This little box matters.'             'That is very little in the way of evidence             'Really? You asking us about the dog? Talking about killers? I reckon that Vimes character will niggle away at something like 243 that. He doesn't sound like the sort to let things go.' Mr Pin smiled humourlessly. 'You've got stuff on us but, well, between you and me,' he leaned closer, 'some of the things we've done might be considered, well, tantamount to crimes--'             'All them --ing murders, for a start,' said Mr Tulip, nodding.             'Which, since we are criminals, could be called typical behaviour. Whereas,' Pin went on, 'you're a respectable citizen. Doesn't look good, respectable citizens getting involved in this sort of thing. People talk.'             'To save . . . misunderstandings,' said Mr Slant, 'I will do you a draft of--'             'Jewels,' said Mr Pin.             'We like jewels,' said Mr Tulip.             'You have made copies of that . . . thing?' said Slant.             'I'm not saying anything,' said Mr Pin, who hadn't and didn't even know how. But he took the view that Mr Slant was in no position to be other than cautious, and it looked as though Mr Slant thought so too.             'I wonder if I can trust you?' said Mr Slant, as if to himself.             'Well, you see, it's like this,' said Mr Pin, as patiently as he could. His head was feeling worse. 'If news got around that we'd shopped a client, that wouldn't be good. People would say, you can't trust a person of that kind of ilk. They do not know how to behave. But if the people we deal with heard we'd scragged a client because the client had not played fair, then they would say to themselves, these are businessmen. They are businesslike. They do business             He stopped and looked at the shadows in the corner of the room.             'And?' said Mr Slant.             'And . . . and . . . the hell with this,' said Mr Pin, blinking and shaking his head. 'Give us the jewels, Slant, or Mr Tulip'll do the asking, understand? We're getting out of here, with your damn dwarfs and vampires and trolls and dead men walking. This city gives me the creeps! So give me the diamonds! Right now!'             'Very well,' said Mr Slant. 'And the imp?'             'It goes with us. We get caught, it gets caught. We die mysteriously, then . . . some people find out about things. When we are 244 safely away . . . you're in no position to argue, Slant.' Mr Pin shuddered. 1 am not having a good day!'             Mr Slant pulled open a desk drawer and tossed three small velvet bags on to the leather top. Mr Pin mopped his brow with a handkerchief.             'Take a look at 'em, Mr Tulip.'             There was a pause while both men watched Mr Tulip pour the gems into one enormous palm. He scrutinized several through an eyeglass. He sniffed at them. He gingerly licked one or two.             Then he picked four out of the heap and tossed them back to the lawyer.             'You think I'm some kind of a --ing idiot?' he said.             'Don't even think of arguing,' said Mr Pin.             'Perhaps the jewellers made a mistake,' said Mr Slant.             'Yeah?' said Mr Pin. His hand darted into his jacket again, but this time came out holding a weapon.             Mr Slant looked into the muzzle of a spring-gonne. It was technically and legally a crossbow, in that human strength compressed the spring, but it had been reduced by patient technology to a point where it was more or less a pipe with a handle and a trigger. Anyone caught with one by the Assassins' Guild, it was rumoured, would find its ability to be hidden on the human body tested to extremes; any city watch that found one used against them would see to it that the offender's feet did not touch the ground but instead swung gently as the breeze pushed them around.             There must have been a switch in this desk, too. A door flew open and two men burst in, one armed with two long knives, one with a crossbow.             It was quite horrible, what Mr Tulip did to them.             It was, in its way, a kind of skill. When an armed man runs into a room in the knowledge that there is trouble he needs a fraction of a second to assess, to decide, to calculate, to think. Mr Tulip didn't need a fraction of a second. He didn't think. His hands moved by themselves.             It required, even for the calculating eyes of Mr Slant, a mental action replay. And even in the slow-mo of horror, it was hard to see Mr Tulip grab the nearest chair and swing it. At the end of the blur 245 two men lay unconscious, one with an arm twisted in a disconcerting way, and a knife was shuddering in the ceiling.             Mr Pin hadn't turned round. He kept the gonne pointed at the zombie. But he produced from a pocket a small cigarette lighter in the shape of a dragon, and then Mr Slant . . . Mr Slant, who crackled when he walked and smelled of dust . . . Mr Slant saw, wrapped around the evil little bolt that just projected from the tube, a wad of cloth.             Without taking his eyes off the lawyer Mr Pin applied the flame. The cloth flared. And Mr Slant was very dry indeed.             This is a bad thing I'm about to do,' Pin said, as if hypnotized. 'But I've done so many bad things, this one'll hardly count. It's like . . . a killing is a big thing, but another killing, that's kind of half the size. You know? So it's, like, when you've done twenty killings, they barely notice, on average. But . . . it's a nice day today, the birds is singing, there's stuff like . . . kittens and stuff, and the sun is shining off the snow, bringin' the promise of spring to come, with flowers, and fresh grass, and more kittens and hot summer days an' the gentle kiss of the rain and wonderful clean things which you won't ever see if you don't give us what's in that drawer 'cos you'll burn like a torch you double-dealing twisty dried-up cheating son of a bitch!'             Mr Slant scrabbled in the drawer and threw down another velvet bag. Glancing nervously at his partner, who'd never even mentioned kittens before except in the same sentence as 'water barrel', Mr Tulip took it and examined the contents.             'Rubies,' he said. '--ing good ones.'             'Now go away from here,' rasped Mr Slant. 'Right away. Never come back. I've never heard of you. I've never seen you.'             He stared at the spluttering flame.             Mr Slant had faced many bad things in the last few hundred years, but right now nothing seemed more menacing than Mr Pin. Or more erratically deranged, either. The man was swaying, and his gaze kept flickering into the shadowy corners of the room.             Mr Tulip shook his partner's shoulder. 'Let's --ing scrag him and go?' he suggested.             Pin blinked. 'Right,' he said, appearing to return to his own head. 'Right.' He glanced at the zombie. 'I think I shall let you live today,' 246 he said, blowing out the flame. 'Tomorrow . . . who knows?'             It wasn't a bad threat, but somehow his heart wasn't in it.             Then the New Firm had gone.             Mr Slant sat down and stared at the closed door. It was clear to him, and a dead man has experience in these matters, that his two armed clerks, veterans of many a legal battle, were beyond help. Mr Tulip was an expert.             He took a sheet of writing paper from a drawer, wrote a few words in block letters, sealed it in an envelope and sent for another clerk.             'Have arrangements made,' he said, when the man stared at his fallen colleagues, 'and then take this to de Worde.'             'Which one, sir?'             For a moment Mr Slant had forgotten that point.             'Lord de Worde,' he said. 'Definitely not the other one.'             William de Worde turned a page in his notebook and continued to scribble. The crew were watching him as if he was a public entertainment.             That's a grand gift you have there, sur,' said Arnold Sideways. 'It does the heart good to see the pencil waggling like that. I wish I had the knowing of it, but I've never been mechanical.'             'Would you care for a cup of tea?' said the Duck Man.             'You drink tea down here?'             'Of course. Why not? What kind of people do you think we are?' The Duck Man held up a blackened teapot and a rusty mug with an inviting smile.             It was probably a good moment to be polite, thought William. Besides, the water would have been boiled, wouldn't it?             '. . . no milk, though,' he said quickly. He could imagine what the milk would be like.             'Ah, I said you were a gentleman,' said the Duck Man, pouring a tarry brown liquid into the mug. 'Milk in tea is an abomination.' He picked up, with a dainty gesture, a plate and pair of tongs. 'Slice of lemon?' he added.             'Lemon? You have lemon?'             'Oh, even Mr Ron here would rather wash under his arms than 247 have anything but lemon in his tea,' said the Duck Man, plopping a slice into William's mug.             'And four sugars,' said Arnold Sideways.             William took a deep draught of the tea. It was thick and stewed, but it was also sweet and hot. And slightly lemony. All in all, he considered, it could have been much worse.             'Yes, we're very fortunate when it comes to slices of lemon,' said the Duck Man, busily fussing over the tea things. 'Why, it is indeed a bad day when we can't find two or three slices floating down the river.'             William stared fixedly at the river wall.             Spit or swallow, he thought, the eternal conundrum.             'Are you all right, Mr de Worde?'             'Mmf.'             'Too much sugar?'             'Mmf,'             'Not too hot?'             William gratefully sprayed the tea in the direction of the river.             'Ah!' he said. 'Yes! Too hot! That's what it was! Too hot! Lovely tea but - too hot! I'll just put the rest down here by my foot to cool down, shall I?'             He snatched up his pencil and pad.             'So . . . er, Wuffles, which man was it that you bit on the leg?'             Wuffles barked.             'He bit all of them,' said the voice of Deep Bone. 'When you're biting, why stop?'             'Would you know them if you bit them again?'             'He says he would. He says the big man tasted of . . . you know . . .' Deep Bone paused, 'like a . . . wossname . . . big, big bowl with hot water and soap in it.'             'A bath?'             Wuffles growled.             'That'd . . . be the word,' said Deep Bone. 'An' the other one smelled of cheap hair oil. And the one who looked like G-- like Lord Vetinari, he smelled of wine,'             'Wine?'             'Yes. Wuffles also says he'd like to apologize for biting you just 248 now, but he got carried away with the recollection. We-- that is to say, dogs have very physical memories, if you see what I mean,'             William nodded and rubbed his leg. The description of the invasion of the Oblong Office had been carried out in a succession of yelps, barks and growls, with Wuffles running around in circles and snapping at his own tail until he bumped into William's ankle.             'And Ron's been carrying him around in his coat ever since?'             'No one bothers Foul Ole Ron,' said Deep Bone.             'I believe you,' said William. He nodded at Wuffles.             'I want to get an iconograph of him,' he said. This is . . . amazing stuff. But we must have a picture to prove I've really talked to Wuffles. Well . . . via an interpreter, obviously. I wouldn't want people to think this is one of the Inquirer's stupid "talking dog" stories . . .'             There was some muttering amongst the crew. The request was not being favourably received.             This is a select neighbourhood, you know,' said the Duck Man. 'We don't allow just anybody down here,'             'But there's a path running right under the bridge!' said William. 'Anyone could walk right past!'             'Werll, yerss,' said Coffin Henry. They could.' He coughed and spat with great expertise into the fire. 'Only they don't no more.'             'Bugrit,' explained Foul Ole Ron. 'Choking a tinker? Garn! I told 'em. Millennium hand and shrimp!'             Then you'd better come back to the office with me,' said William. 'After all, you've been carrying him around while you've been selling the papers, haven't you?'             Too dangerous now,' said Deep Bone.             'Would it be less dangerous for another fifty dollars?' said William.             'Another fifty dollars?' said Arnold Sideways. That'll make it fifteen dollars!'             'A hundred dollars,' said William wearily. 'You do realize, don't you, that this is in the public interest?'             The crew craned their necks.             'Don't see anyone watching,' said Coffin Henry.             William stepped forward, quite accidentally knocking over his tea.             'Come on, then,' he said. 249             Mr Tulip was beginning to worry now. This was unusual. In the area of worry, he had tended to be the cause rather than the recipient. But Mr Pin was not acting right, and since Mr Pin was the man who did the thinking this was a matter of some concern. Mr Tulip was good at thinking in split-seconds, and when it came to art appreciation he could easily think in centuries, but he was not happy over middle distances. He needed Mr Pin for that.             But Mr Pin was talking to himself, and kept staring at shadows.             'We'll be heading off now?' said Mr Tulip, in the hope of directing matters. 'We've got the --ing payment with a --ing big bonus, no --ing point in hanging around?'             He was also worried about the way Mr Pin had acted with the --ing lawyer. It wasn't like him to point a weapon at someone and then not use it. The New Firm didn't go round threatening people. They were the threat. All that --ing stuff about 'letting you live for today' . . . that was amateur stuff.             'I said, are we heading--'             'What do you think happens to people when they die, Tulip?'             Mr Tulip was taken aback. 'What kind of --ing question is that? You &«owwhat happens!'             'Do I?'             'Certainly. Remember when we had to leave that guy in that --ing barn and it was a week before we got to bury him properly? Remember how his--'             'I don't mean bodies!'             'Ah. Religion stuff, then?'             'Yes!'             'I never worry about that --ing stuff.'             'Never?'             'Never --ing give it a thought. I've got my potato.'             Then Mr Tulip found that he'd walked a few feet alone, because Mr Pin had stopped dead.             'Potato?'             'Oh, yeah. Keep it on a string round my neck.' Mr Tulip tapped his huge chest. 250             'And that's religious?'             'Well, yeah. If you've got your potato when you die, everything will be okay.'             'What religion is that?'             'Dunno. Never ran across it outside our village. I was only a kid. I mean, it's like gods, right? When you're a kid, they say "that's God, that is". Then you grow up and you find there's --ing millions of 'em. Same with religion.'             'And it's all okay if you have a potato when you die?'             'Yep. You're allowed to come back and have another life.'             'Even if. . .' Mr Pin swallowed, for he was in territory which had never before existed on his internal atlas, '. . . even if you've done things which people might think were bad?'             'Like chopping up people and --ing shovin' 'em off cliffs?'             'Yeah, that kind of thing             Mr Tulip sniffed, causing his nose to flash. 'We-ell, it's okay so long as you're really --ing sorry about it.'             Mr Pin was amazed, and a little suspicious. But he could feel things. . . catching up. There were faces in the darkness and voices on the cusp of hearing. He dared not turn his head now, in case he saw anything behind him.             You could buy a sack of potatoes for a dollar.             'It works?' he said.             'Sure. Back home people'd been doing it for hundreds of --ing years. They wouldn't be doing it if it didn't --ing work, would they?'             'Where was that?'             Mr Tulip tried to concentrate on this question, but there were many scabs in his memory.             There was . . . forests,' he said. 'And . . . bright candles,' he muttered. 'An' . . . secrets,' he added, staring into nothing.             'And potatoes?'             Mr Tulip came back to the here and now.             'Yeah, them,' he said. 'Always lots of --ing potatoes. If you've got your potato, it will be all right.'             'But . . . I thought you had to pray in deserts and go to a temple every day, and sing songs, and give stuff to the poor . . . ?' 251             'Oh, you can do all that too, sure,' said Mr Tulip. 'Just so long as you've got your --ing potato.'             'And you come back alive?' said Mr Pin, still trying to find the small print.             'Sure. No point in coming back dead. Who'd notice the --ing difference?'             Mr Pin opened his mouth to reply, and Mr Tulip saw his expression change.             'Someone's got their hand on my shoulder!' he hissed.             'You feeling all right, Mr Pin?'             'You can't see anyone?'             'Nope.'             Clenching his fists, Mr Pin turned round. There were plenty of people in the street, but no one gave him a second glance.             He tried to reorganize the jigsaw that his mind was rapidly becoming.             'Okay. Okay,' he said. 'What we'll do . . . we'll go back to the house, okay, and . . . and we'll get the rest of the diamonds, and we'll scrag Charlie, and, and . . . we'll find a vegetable shop . . . any special kind of potato?'             'Nope.'             'Right. . . but first. . .' Mr Pin stopped, and his mind's ear heard footsteps stop behind him a moment later. The damn vampire had done something to him, he knew. The darkness had been like a tunnel, and there had been things . . .             Mr Pin believed in threats, and in violence, and at a time like this he believed in revenge. An inner voice that currently passed for sanity was making a clamour, but it was overruled by a deeper and more automatic response.             'That bloody vampire did this,' he said. 'And killing a vampire . . . hey . . . that's practically good, right?' He brightened. Salvation beckoned through Holy Works. 'Everyone knows they have evil occult powers. Could even count in a man's favour, eh?'             'Yeah. But . . . who cares?'             'I do.'             'Okay.' Even Mr Tulip didn't argue with that tone of voice. Mr ,Pin could be inventively unpleasant. Besides, part of the code was 252 that you did not leave an insult unavenged. Everyone knew that.             It was just that nervousness was beginning to percolate even into the bath-salt-and-worming-powder-ravaged pathways of his own brain. He'd always admired the way Mr Pin wasn't frightened of difficult things, like long sentences.             'What'll we use?' he said. 'A stake?'             'No,' said Mr Pin. 'With this one I want to be certain.'             He lit a cigarette, with a hand that shook just a little, and then let the match flare up.             'Ah. Right,' said Mr Tulip.             'Let's just do it,' said Mr Pin.             Rocky's brow furrowed as he looked at the seals nailed around the doors of the de Worde town house.             'What's dem things?' he said.             They're to say the Guilds will interest themselves in anyone who breaks in,' said Sacharissa, fumbling with the key. 'It's a sort of curse. Only it works.'             'Dat one's the Assassins?' said the troll, indicating a crude shield with the cloak-and-dagger and double-cross.             'Yes. It means there's an automatic contract out on anyone who breaks in.'             'Wouldn't want dem interested in me. Good job you got a key . . .'             The lock clicked. The door opened at a push.             Sacharissa had been in a number of Ankh-Morpork's great houses, when the owners had thrown parts of them open to the public in aid of some of the more respectable charities. She hadn't realized how a building could change when people no longer wanted to live in it. It felt threatening and out of scale. The doorways were too big, the ceilings too high. The musty, empty atmosphere descended on her like a headache.             Behind her Rocky lit a couple of lanterns. But even their light left her surrounded by shadows.             At least the main staircase wasn't hard to find, and William's hasty directions led her to a suite of rooms bigger than her house. 253             The wardrobe, when she found it, was simply a room full of rails and hangers.             Things glittered in the gloom. The dresses also smelled strongly of mothballs.             'Dat's interestin',' said Rocky, behind her.             'Oh, it's just to keep the moths away,' said Sacharissa.             'I'm lookin' at all the footprints,' said the troll. 'Dey were in the hall, too.'             She tore her gaze away from the rows of dresses and looked down. The dust was certainly disturbed.             'Er . . . cleaning lady?' she said. 'Someone must come in to keep an eye on things?'             'What she do, kick der dust to death?'             'I suppose there must be . . . caretakers and things?' said Sacharissa uncertainly. A blue dress was saying: wear me, I'm just your type. See me shimmer.             Rocky prodded a box of mothballs that had spilled out across a dressing table and rolled into the dust.             'Looks like dem moths are really keen on dese things,' he said.             'You don't think a dress like this would be a bit . . . forward, do you?' said Sacharissa, holding the dress against herself.             Rocky looked worried. He hadn't been hired for his dress sense, and certainly not for his grasp of colloquial Middle Class.             'You're quite a lot forward already,' he opined.             'I meant make me look like a fast woman!'             'Ah, right,' said Rocky, getting there. 'No. Def'nitly not.'             'Really?'             'Sure. No one could run much in a dress like dat.'             Sacharissa gave up. 'I suppose Mrs Hotbed could let it out a bit,' she said, reflectively. It was tempting to stay, because some of the racks were quite full, but she felt like a trespasser here and part of her was certain that a woman with hundreds of dresses was more likely to miss one than a woman with a dozen or so. In any case, the empty darkness was getting on her nerves. It was full of other people's ghosts. 'Let's get back.'             When they were halfway across the hall someone started to sing. The words were incoherent and the tune was being modulated by 254 alcohol, but it was singing of a sort and it was under their feet.             Rocky shrugged when Sacharissa glanced at him.             'Maybe all dem moths is having a ball?' he said.             There must be a caretaker, mustn't there? Maybe we'd better just, you know, mention we've been here?' Sacharissa agonized. It hardly seems polite, just taking things and running             She headed for a green door tucked away beside the staircase and pushed it open. The singing went louder for a moment but stopped as soon as she said, 'Excuse me?' into the darkness.             After a few moments' silence a voice said: 'Hello! How are you? I'm fine!'             'It's only, er, me? William said it was all right?' She presented the statement like a question, in the voice of someone who was apologizing to a burglar for discovering him.             'Mr Mothball Nose? Whoops!' said the voice in the shadows at the bottom of the stairs.             'Er . . . are you all right?'             'Can't get . . . it's a . . . hahaha . . . it's all chains . . . hahaha . . .'             'Are you . . . ill?'             'No, I'm fine, not ill at all, jus' had a few too many             'Few too many what?' said Sacharissa, speaking from a sheltered upbringing.             '. . . wazza . . . things you put drink in . . . barrels?'             'You're drunk!'             'Tha's right! Tha's the word! Drunk as a . . . thing . . . smellything . . . ahahaha . . .'             There was a tinkle of glass.             The lantern's weak glow showed what looked like a wine cellar, but a man was slumped on a bench against one wall and a chain ran from his ankle to a ring set in the floor.             'Are you . . . a prisoner?' said Sacharissa.             'Ahaha             'How long have you been down here?' She crept down.             'Years . . '             'Years?'             'Got lots of years . . .' The man picked up a bottle and peered at it. 'Now . . . Year of the Amending Camel . . . that was 255 bloodigoodyear . . . and this one . . . Year of the Translated Rat . . . another bloodigoodyear . . . bloodigoodyears, the lot of them. Could do with a biscuit, though.'             Sacharissa's knowledge of vintages extended just as far as knowing that Chateau Maison was a very popular wine. But people didn't have to be chained up to drink wine, even the stuff from Ephebe that stuck the glass to the table.             She moved a little closer and the light fell on the man's face. It was locked in the grin of the seriously drunk, but it was very recognizable. She saw it every day, on coins.             'Er. . . Rocky,' she said. 'Er. . . can you come down here a minute?'             The door burst open and the troll came down the steps at speed. Unfortunately, it was because he was rolling.             Mr Tulip appeared at the top of the stairs, massaging his fist.             'It's Mr Sneezy!' said Charlie, raising a bottle. The gang's all here! Whoopee!'             Rocky got up, weaving slightly. Mr Tulip strolled down the steps, ripping out the doorpost as he passed. The troll raised his fists in the classic boxer's pose, but Mr Tulip didn't bother with niceties of that kind and hit him hard with the length of ancient wood. Rocky went over like a tree.             Only then did the huge man with the revolving eyes try to focus them on Sacharissa.             'Who the --ing hell are you?'             'Don't you dare swear at me!' she said. 'How dare you swear in the presence of a lady!'             This seemed to nonplus him. 'I don't --ing swear!'             'Here, I've seen you before, you're that-- I knew you weren't a proper virgin!' said Sacharissa triumphantly.             There was the click of a crossbow. Some tiny sounds carry well and have considerable stopping power.             'There are some thoughts too dreadful to think,' said the skinny man looking at her from the top of the steps and down the length of a pistol bow. 'What are you doing here, lady?'             'And you were Brother Pin! You haven't got any right here! I've got a key!' Some areas of Sacharissa's mind that dealt with things like death and terror were signalling to be heard at this point, but, 256 being part of Sacharissa, they were trying to do it in a ladylike way, and so she ignored them.             'A key?' said Brother Pin, advancing down the stairs. The bow stayed pointing at her. Even in his current state of mind, Mr Pin knew how to aim. 'Who'd give you a key?'             'Don't you come near me! Don't you dare come near me! If you come near me I'll - I'll write it down!'             'Yeah? Well, one thing I know is, words don't hurt,' said Mr Pin. 'I've heard lots of--'             He stopped and grimaced, and for a moment it looked as if he'd fall to his knees. He righted himself and focused on her again.             'You are coming with us,' he said. 'An' don't say you're going to scream, because we're all alone here and I've . . . heard . . . lots . . . of. . . screams . . .'             Once again he seemed to run down, and again he recovered. Sacharissa stared in horror at the weaving crossbow. Those parts of her advocating silence as a survival aid had finally made themselves heard.             'What about these two?' said Mr Tulip. 'We're scragging 'em now?'             'Chain them up and leave them.'             'But we always--'             'Leave them!'             'You sure you feel all right?' said Mr Tulip.             'No! I don't! Just leave them, okay? We haven't got time!'             'We've got lots of--'             'I haven't!' Mr Pin strode up to Sacharissa. 'Who gave you that key?'             'I'm not going to--'             'Do you want Mr Tulip here to say goodbye to our drunken friends?' In his buzzing head, and with his shaky grasp of how things were supposed to work in a moral universe, Mr Pin reckoned that this was all right. After all, their shadows would follow Mr Tulip, not him . . .             'This house belongs to Lord de Worde and his son gave me the key!' said Sacharissa triumphantly. 'There! He was the one you met at the newspaper! Now you know what you've got yourself into, eh?'             Mr Pin stared at her. 257             Then he said, 'I'm going to find out. Don't run. Really don't scream. Walk normally and everything--' He paused. I was going to say it will be all right,' he said. 'But that would be silly, wouldn't it. . . ?'             It wasn't fast, going through the streets with the crew. To them the world was a permanent theatre, art gallery, music hall, restaurant and spittoon, and in any case no member of the crew would dream of going anywhere in a straight line.             The poodle Trixiebell accompanied them, keeping as close to the centre of the group as possible. Of Deep Bone there was no sign. William had offered to carry Wuffles, because in a way he felt he owned him. A hundred dollars' worth of him, at least. It was a hundred dollars he hadn't got but, well, surely tomorrow's edition would pay for that. And anyone after the dog now surely wouldn't try anything out here on the street, in broad daylight, especially since it was barely narrow daylight now. Clouds filled the sky like old eiderdowns, the fog that was descending was meeting the river mist coming up, and the light was draining out of everything.             He tried to think of the headline. He couldn't quite get a grip on it yet. There was too much to say, and he wasn't good at getting the huge complexities of the world into fewer than half a dozen words. Sacharissa was better at it, because she treated words as lumps of letters that could be hammered together any old how. Her best one had been on some tedious inter-Guild squabble and, in single column, read:             PROBE             INTO             SHOCK             GUILD             RUMPUS 258             William just wasn't used to the idea of evaluating words purely in terms of their length, whereas she'd picked up the habit in two days. He'd already had to stop her calling Lord Vetinari CITY BOSS. It was technically correct that if you spent some time with a thesaurus you could arrive at that description, and it did fit in a single column, but the sight of the words had made William feel extremely exposed.             It was self-absorption like this that allowed him to walk into the printing shed, with the crew tagging along, and not notice anything wrong until he saw the expression on the faces of the dwarfs.             'Ah, our writer man,' said Mr Pin, stepping forward. 'Shut the door, Mr Tulip.'             Mr Tulip slammed the door with one hand. The other was clamped over Sacharissa's mouth. She rolled her eyes at William.             'And you've brought me the little doggie,' said Mr Pin. Wuffles started to growl as he approached. William backed away.             'The Watch will be here soon,' said William. Wuffles still growled, on a rising note.             'Doesn't worry me now,' said Mr Pin. 'Not with what I know. Not with who I know. Where's the damn vampire?'             'I don't know! He's not always with us!' snapped William.             'Really? In that case let me retort!' said Mr Pin, his pistol bow inches from William's face. 'If it doesn't arrive within two minutes I will--'             Wuffles leapt out of William's arms. His bark was the frantic whurwhur of a small dog mad with fury. Pin reared back, one arm raised to protect his face. The bow fired. The arrow hit one of the lamps over the press. The lamp exploded.             A cloud of burning oil rained down. It splattered across type metal and old rocking horses and dwarfs.             Mr Tulip let go of Sacharissa to help his colleague, and in the slow dance of rushing events Sacharissa spun round and planted her knee hard and firmly in the place that made a parsnip a very funny thing indeed.             William grabbed her on the way past and rushed her out into the freezing air. When he fought his way back in through the 259 stampeding crew, who had the same instinctive reaction to fire as they did to soap and water, it was into a room full of burning debris. Dwarfs were fighting fires in the rubbish. Dwarfs were fighting fires in their beards. Several were advancing on Mr Tulip, who was on his hands and knees and throwing up. And Mr Pin was spinning around, flailing at an enraged Wuffles, who was managing to growl while sinking his teeth into Pin's arm all the way to the bone.             William cupped his hands. 'Get out right now!' he yelled. 'The tins!'             One or two dwarfs heard him, and looked around at the shelves of old paint tins just as the first one blew off its lid.             The tins were ancient, no more now than rust held together with chemical sludge. Several others were starting to burn.             Mr Pin danced across the floor, trying to shake the enraged dog from his arm.             'Get the damn thing off'f me!' he yelled.             'Forget the --ing dog, my --ing suit's on fire!' shouted Mr Tulip, flailing at his own sleeve.             A tin of what had once been enamel paint took off from the blazing mess, spinning with a wzipwzip noise, and exploded on the press.             William grabbed Goodmountain's shoulder. 'I said come on!'             'My press! It's on fire!'             'Better it than us! Come on\'             It was said of the dwarfs that they cared more about things like iron and gold than they did about people, because there was only a limited supply of iron and gold in the world whereas there seemed to be more and more people everywhere you looked. It was said mostly by people like Mr Windling.             But they did care fiercely about things. Without things, people were just bright animals.             The printers clustered around the doorway, axes at the ready. Choking brown smoke billowed out. Flames licked out among the roof eaves. Several sections of tin roof buckled and collapsed.             As they did so a smouldering ball rocketed out through the door 260 and three dwarfs who took a swipe only just missed hitting one another.             It was Wuffles. Patches of fur were still smoking, but his eyes gleamed and he was still whining and growling.             He let William pick him up. He had a triumphant air about him, and turned to watch the burning doorway with his ears cocked.             'That must be it, then,' said Sacharissa.             'They might have got out of the back door,' said Goodmountain. 'Boddony, some of you go round and check, will you?'             'Plucky dog, this,' said William.             ' "Brave" would be better,' said Sacharissa distantly. 'It's only five letters. It would look better in a single-column sidebar. No . . . "Plucky" would work, because then we'd get:             PLUCKY DOG PUTS             BITE ON VILLAINS             . . . although that first line is a bit shy.' 'I wish I could think in headlines,' said William, shivering.             It was cool and damp down here in the cellar.             Mr Pin dragged himself to a corner and slapped at the burns on his suit.             'We're --ing trapped,' moaned Tulip.             'Yeah? This is stone,' said Pin. 'Stone floor, stone walls, stone ceiling! Stone doesn't bum, okay? We just stay nice and calm down here and wait it out.'             Mr Tulip listened to the sound of the fire above them. Red and yellow light danced on the floor under the cellar hatchway.             'I don't --ing like it,' he said.             'We've seen worse.' 261             'I don't --ing like it!'             'Just keep cool. We're going to get out of this. I wasn't born to fry!'             The flames roared around the press. A few late paint tins pin-wheeled through the heat, spraying burning droplets.             The fire was yellow-white at the heart, and now it crackled around the metal formes that held the type.             Silver beads appeared around the leaden, inky slugs. Letters shifted, settled, ran together. For a moment the words themselves floated on the melting metal, innocent words like 'the' and 'truth' and 'shall make ye fere', and then they were lost. From the red-hot press, and the wooden boxes, and amongst the racks and racks of type, and even out of the piles of carefully stockpiled metal, thin streams began to flow. They met and merged and spread. Soon the floor Was a moving, rippling mirror in which the orange and yellow flames danced upside down.             On Otto's workbench the salamanders detected the heat. They liked heat. Their ancestors had evolved in volcanoes. They woke up and began to purr.             Mr Tulip, walking up and down the cellar like a trapped animal, picked up one of the cages and glared at the creatures.             'What're these --ing things?' he said, and dropped it back on the bench. Then he noticed the dark jar next to it. 'And why's it --ing got "Handle viz Care!!!" on this one?'             The eels were already edgy. They could detect heat too, and they were creatures of deep caves and buried, icy streams.             There was a flash of dark as they protested.             Most of it went straight through the brain of Mr Tulip. But such as was left of that ragged organ had survived his every attempt at scrambling and in any case Mr Tulip didn't use it much, because it hurt such a lot.             But there was a brief remembrance of snow, and fir woods, and burning buildings, and the church. They'd sheltered there. He'd been small. He remembered big shining paintings, more colours than he'd ever seen before . . . 262             He blinked and dropped the jar.             It shattered on the floor. There was another burst of dark from the eels. They wriggled desperately out of the wreckage and slithered along the edge of the wall, squeezing into the cracks between the stones.             Mr Tulip turned at a sound behind him. His colleague had collapsed to his knees and was clutching at his head.             'You all right?'             They're right behind me!' Pin whispered.             'Nah, just you and me down here, old friend.'             Mr Tulip patted Pin on the shoulder. The veins on his forehead stood out with the effort of thinking of something to do next. The memory had gone. Young Tulip had learned how to edit memories. What Mr Pin needed, he decided, was to remember the good times.             'Hey, remember when Gerhardt the Boot and his lads had us cornered in that --ing cellar in Quirm?' he said. 'Remember what we did to him afterwards?'             'Yes,' said Mr Pin, staring at the blank wall. I remember.'             'And that time with that old man who was in that house in Genua and we didn't --ing know? So we nailed up the door and--'             'Shut up! Shut up!'             'Just trying to look on the --ing bright side.'             'We shouldn't have killed all those people . . .' Mr Pin whispered, almost to himself.             'Why not?' said Mr Tulip, but Pin's nervousness had got through to him again. He pulled at the leather cord around his neck and felt the reassuring lump on the end. A potato can be a great help in times of trial.             A pattering behind him made him turn round, and he brightened up.             'Anyway, we're okay now,' he said. 'Looks like it's --ing raining.'             Silver droplets were pouring through the cellar hatch.             'That's not water!' screamed Pin, standing up.             The drops ran together, became a steady stream. It splashed oddly and mounded up under the hatch, but more liquid poured on top of it and spread out across the floor. 263             Pin and Tulip backed against the far wall.             'That's hot lead,' said Pin. They print their paper with it!'             'How --ing much is there going to be?'             'Down here? Can't end up more than a couple of inches, can it?'             At the other side of the cellar Otto's bench started to smoulder as the pool touched it.             'We need something to stand on,' said Pin. 'Just while it cools! It won't take long in this chill!'             'Yeah, but there's nothing here but us! We're --ing trapped*.'             Mr Pin put his hand over his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath of air that was already getting very warm in the soft silver rain.             He opened his eyes again. Mr Tulip was watching him obediently. Mr Pin was the thinker.             'I've . . . got a plan,' he said.             'Yeah, good. Right.'             'My plans are pretty good, right?'             'Yeah, you come up with some --ing wonders, I've always said. Like when you said we should twist the--'             'And I'm always thinking about the good of the Firm, right?'             'Yeah, sure, right.'             'So . . . this plan . . . it's not, like, a perfect plan, but . . . oh, the hell with it. Give me your potato.'             'What?'             Suddenly Mr Pin's arm was stretched out, his crossbow an inch from Mr Tulip's neck.             'No time to argue! Gimme the damn potato right now! This is no time for you to thinkV             Uncertain, but trusting as ever in Mr Pin's survival abilities in a tight corner, Mr Tulip pulled the thong of the potato over his head and handed it to Mr Pin.             'Right,' said Mr Pin, one side of his face beginning to twitch. The way I see it--'             'You better hurry!' said Mr Tulip. 'It's only a coupla inches away!' '--the way I see it, I'm a small man, Mr Tulip. You couldn't stand on me. I wouldn't do. You're a big man, Mr Tulip. I wouldn't want to see you suffer.' 264             And he pulled the trigger. It was a good shot. 'Sorry,' he whispered, as the lead splashed. 'Sorry. I'm sorry. Sorry. But I wasn't born to fry . . .'             Mr Tulip opened his eyes.             There was darkness around him, but with a suggestion of stars overhead behind an overcast sky. The air was still, but there was distant soughing, as of wind in dead trees.             He waited a while to see if anything would happen, and then said: 'Anyone --ing there?'             JUST ME, MR TULIP.             Some of the darkness opened its eyes, and two blue glows looked down at him.             'The --ing bastard stole my potato. Are you --ing Death?'             JUST DEATH WILL SUFFICE, I THINK. WHO WERE YOU EXPECTING?             'Eh? For what?'             TO CLAIM YOU AS ONE OF THEIRS.             'Dunno, really. I never --ing thought. . .'             YOU NEVER SPECULATED?             'All I know is, you got to have your potato, and then it will be all right.' Mr Tulip parroted the sentence without thinking, but it was coming back now in the total recall of the dead, from a vantage point of two feet off the ground and three years of age. Old men mumbling. Old women weeping. Shafts of light through holy windows. The sound of wind under the doors, and every ear straining to hear the soldiers. Us or theirs didn't matter, when a war had gone on this long . . .             Death gave the shade of Mr Tulip a long, cool stare.             AND THAT'S IT?             'Right.'             You DON'T THINK THERE WERE ANY BITS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED?             . . . the sound of wind under the doors, the smell of the oil lamps, the fresh acid smell of snow, blowing in through the . . .             'And . . . if I'm sorry for everything . . .' he mumbled. He was lost in a world of darkness, without a potato to his name.             . . . candlesticks . . . they'd been made of gold, hundreds of years ago . . . there were only ever potatoes to eat, grubbed up from 265 under the snow, but the candlesticks were of gold . . . and some old woman, she'd said: 'It'll all turn out right if you've got a potato             WAS ANY GOD OF SOME SORT MENTIONED TO YOU AT ANY POINT? 'NO . . .'             DAMN. I WISH THEY DIDN'T LEAVE ME TO DEAL WITH THIS SORT OF THING, Death sighed. You BELIEVE, BUT YOU DON'T BELIEVE IN ANYTHING.             Mr Tulip stood with his head bowed. More memories were trickling back now, like blood under a closed door. And the knob was rattling, and the lock had failed.             Death nodded at him.             AT LEAST YOU STILL HAVE YOUR POTATO, I SEE.             Mr Tulip's hand flew to his neck. There was something wizened and hard there, on the end of a string. It had a ghostly shimmer to it.             'I thought he got it!' he said, his face alight with hope.             AH, WELL. YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN A POTATO MIGHT TURN UP.             'So it's all going to be all right?'             WHAT DO YOU THINK?             Mr Tulip swallowed. Lies did not survive long out here. And more recent memories were squeezing under the door now, bloody and vengeful.             'I think it's gonna take more than a potato,' he said.             ARE YOU SORRY FOR EVERYTHING?             More unused bits of Mr Tulip's brain, which had shut down long ago or had never even opened up, came into play.             'How will I know?' he said.             Death waved a hand through the air. Along the arc described by the bony fingers appeared a line of hourglasses.             I UNDERSTAND YOU ARE A CONNOISSEUR, MR TULIP. IN A SMALL WAY, SO             AM I. Death selected one of the glasses and held it up. Images appeared around it, bright but insubstantial as shadow.             'What are they?' said Tulip.             LIVES, MR TULIP. JUST LIVES.- NOT ALL MASTERPIECES, OBVIOUSLY, OFTEN RATHER NAIF IN THEIR USE OF EMOTION AND ACTION, BUT NEVERTHELESS FULL OF INTEREST AND SURPRISE AND, EACH IN THEIR OWN WAY, A WORK OF SOME GENIUS. AND CERTAINLY VERY . . . COLLECTABLE. Death picked up an 266 hourglass as Mr Tulip tried to back away. YES. COLLECTABLE. BECAUSE, IF I HAD TO FIND A WAY TO DESCRIBE THESE LIVES, MR TULIP, THAT WORD WOULD BE 'SHORTER'.             Death selected another hourglass. AH. NUGGA VELSKI. You WILL             NOT REMEMBER HIM, OF COURSE. HE WAS SIMPLY A MAN WHO WALKED INTO HIS RATHER SIMPLE LITTLE HUT AT THE WRONG TIME, AND YOU ARE A BUSY MAN AND CANNOT BE EXPECTED TO REMEMBER EVERYONE. NOTE THE MIND, A BRILLIANT MIND THAT MIGHT IN OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES HAVE CHANGED THE WORLD, DOOMED TO BE BORN INTO A TIME AND PLACE WHERE LIFE WAS NOTHING BUT A DAILY, HOPELESS STRUGGLE. NEVERTHELESS, IN HIS TINY VILLAGE, RIGHT UP UNTIL THE DAY HE FOUND YOU STEALING HIS COAT, HE DID HIS BEST TO----             Mr Tulip raised a trembling hand. 'Is this the bit where my whole life passes in front of my eyes?' he said.             NO, THAT WAS THE BIT JUST NOW.             'Which bit?'             THE BIT, said Death, BETWEEN YOUR BEING BORN AND YOUR DYING. No, THIS . . . MR TULIP, THIS IS YOUR WHOLE LIFE AS IT PASSED BEFORE OTHER PEOPLE'S EYES . . .             By the time the golems arrived it was all over. The fire had been fierce but short-lived. It had stopped because there wasn't anything left to burn. The crowd that always turns up to watch a fire then dispersed until the next one, reckoning that this one had not scored very highly, what with no one dying.             The walls were still standing. Half the tin roof had fallen in. Sleet had begun to fall, too, and now it hissed on the hot stone as William picked his way cautiously through the debris.             The press was visible in the light of the few fires still smouldering. William heard it sizzling under the sleet.             'Repairable?' he said to Goodmountain, who was following him.             'Not a chance. The frame, maybe. We'll salvage what we can.'             'Look, I'm so sorry--'             'Not your fault,' said the dwarf, kicking at a smoking can. 'And look on the bright side . . . we still owe Harry King a lot of money.'             'Don't remind me . . .'             'I don't need to. He'll remind you. Us, rather.' 267             William wrapped his jacket around his sleeve and pushed aside some of the roof.             'The desks are still here!'             'Fire can be funny like that,' said Goodmountain gloomily. 'And the roof probably kept the worst of it away.'             'I mean, they're half charred but they're still usable!'             'Oh, well, we're home and dry, then,' said the dwarf, now sliding towards 'glumly'. 'How soon do you want the next edition?'             'Look, even the spike . . . there's even bits of paper that are hardly charred!'             'Life is full of unexpected treasure,' said Goodmountain. 'I don't think you should come in here, miss!'             This was to Sacharissa, who was picking her way across the smouldering ruins.             'It's where I work,' she said. 'Can you repair the press?'             'No! It's . . . done for! It's scrap! We've got no press and no type and no metal! Can you both hear me?'             'Okay, so we've got to get another press,' said Sacharissa evenly.             'Even an old scrap one would cost a thousand dollars!' said Goodmountain. 'Look, it's over. There is nothing leftY             'I've got some savings,' said Sacharissa, pushing the rubble off her desk. 'Perhaps we can get one of those little hand presses to be going on with.'             'I'm in debt,' said William, 'but I could probably go into debt another few hundred dollars.'             'Do you think we could go on working if we put a tarpaulin over the roof, or should we move to somewhere else?' said Sacharissa.             'I don't want to move. A few days' work should get this place in shape,' said William.             Goodmountain cupped his hands around his mouth. 'Hel-looo! This is sanity calling! We have no money.'             'There's not much room to expand, though,' said Sacharissa.             'In what way?'             'Magazines,' said Sacharissa, as the sleet settled in her hair. Around her the other dwarfs spread out on a hopeless salvage operation. 'Yes, I know the paper's important, but there's a lot of dead time on the press and, well, I'm sure there'd be a market 268 for something like, well, a magazine for ladies             'Dead time on the press?' said Goodmountain. The press is deadV             'What about?' said William, completely ignoring him.             'Oh . . . fashion. Pictures of women wearing new clothes. Knitting. That sort of thing. And don't you go telling me it's too dull. People will buy it,'             'Clothes? Knitting?'             'People are interested in that sort of thing.'             'I don't like that idea much,' said William. 'You might as well say we should have a magazine just for men.'             'Why not? What would you put in it?'             'Oh, I don't know. Articles about drink. Pictures of women not wearing . . . Anyway, we'd need more people to write for them,'             'Excuse me?' said Goodmountain.             'Lots of people can write well enough for that sort of thing,' said Sacharissa. 'If it was clever, we wouldn't be able to do it.'             That's true.'             'And there's another magazine that would sell, too,' said Sacharissa. Behind her a piece of the press collapsed.             'Hello? Hello? I know my mouth is opening and shutting,' said Goodmountain. 'Is any sound getting out?'             'Cats,' said Sacharissa. 'Lots of people like cats. Pictures of cats. Stories about cats. I've been thinking about it. It could be called . . . Completely Cats.'             To go with Completely Women, and Completely Men? Completely Knitting? Completely Cake?'             'I had thought of calling it something like The Ladies' Home Companion,' said Sacharissa, 'but your title has got a certain ring, I must admit. Ring . . . yes. Now, that's another thing. There's all the dwarfs in the city. We could produce a magazine for them. I mean . . . what's the modern dwarf wearing this season?'             'Chain mail and leather,' said Goodmountain, suddenly perplexed. 'What are you talking about? It's always chain mail and leather!'             Sacharissa ignored him. The two of them were in a world of their own, Goodmountain realized. It had nothing to do with the real one any more. 269             'Seems a bit of a waste, though,' said William. 'A waste of words, I mean.'             'Why? There's always more of them.' Sacharissa patted him gently on the cheek. 'You think you're writing words that'll last for ever? It's not like that. This newspaper stuff . . . that's words that last for a day. Maybe a week.'             'And then they get thrown away,' said William.             'Perhaps a few hang on. In people's heads.'             'That's not where the paper ends up,' said William. 'Quite the reverse.'             'What did you expect? These aren't books, they're . . . words that come and go. Cheer up.'             'There's a problem,' said William.             'Yes?'             'We haven't got enough money for a new press. Our shed has been burned down. We are out of business. It's all over. Do you understand?'             Sacharissa looked down. 'Yes,' she said meekly. 'I just hoped you didn't.'             'And we were so close. So close.' William pulled out his notebook. 'We could have run with this. I've got nearly the whole thing. All I can do with it now is give it to Vimes--'             'Where's the lead?'             William looked across the wreckage. Boddony was crouching by the smoking press, trying to see under it.             'There's not a sign of the lead!' he said.             'It's got to be somewhere,' said Goodmountain. 'In my experience twenty tons of lead does not just get up and walk away.'             It must've melted,' said Boddony. There's a few blobs on the floor             The cellar,' said Goodmountain. 'Give me a hand here, will you?' He grabbed a blackened beam.             'Here, I'll help,' said William, coming round the stricken desk. 'It's not as though I've got anything better to do . .-.'             He got a grip on a tangle of charred wood and pulled--             Mr Pin arose from the pit like a demon king. Smoke poured off him and he was screaming one long, incoherent scream. He rose 270 and rose and knocked Goodmountain aside with a round-arm sweep and then his hands clamped around William's neck and still his leap propelled him up.             William fell backwards. He landed on the desk and felt a stab of pain as some piece of debris went through the flesh of his arm. But there was no time to think about pain that had happened. It was imminent pain that occupied all his future. The face of the creature was inches away, eyes wide and staring through him at something horrible, but his hands were tight around William's neck.             William would never have dreamed of using a cliche as tired as 'vice-like grip' but, as consciousness became a red-walled tunnel, the editor inside him said, yes, that's what it would be like, the sheer mechanical pressures that. . .             The eyes crossed. The scream stopped. The man staggered sideways, half crouched.             As William raised his head he saw Sacharissa stepping backwards.             The editor chittered away in his head, watching him watching her. She'd kicked the man in the . . . Er, You Know. It had to be the influence of those humorous vegetables. It had to be.             And he had to get the Story.             William rose to his feet and waved frantically at the dwarfs, who were advancing with their axes at the ready.             'Wait! Wait! Look . . . you . . . er . . . Brother Pin . . .' He winced at the pain in his arm, looked down and saw, with horror, the evil length of the spike poking through the cloth of his jacket.             Mr Pin tried to focus on the boy grappling with his arm, but the shadows wouldn't let him. He wasn't certain, now, that he was still alive. Yes! That was it! He must be dead! All this smoke, people shouting, all the voices whispering in his ear, this was some kind of hell but, aha, he had a return ticket . . .             He managed to straighten up. He fished the potato of the late Mr Tulip out of his shirt. He held it aloft.             'G't m' 'tato,' he said proudly, "m all right, okay?'             William stared at the smoke-stained, red-eyed face, with its horrible expression of triumph, and then at the shrunken vegetable on the end of its string. His grip on reality was at the moment 271 almost as slippery as Mr Pin's, and people showing him a potato seemed to mean only one thing.             'Er . . . it's not a very funny one, is it?' he said, wincing as he tugged at the spike.             Mr Pin's last train of thought jumped the rails. He let go of the potato and with a movement that owed nothing to thought and everything to instinct pulled a long dagger from inside his jacket. The figure in front of him was fading into just another shadow among many now, and he lunged madly.             William pulled the metal free, and his hand flew out in front of him--             And that, for the moment, was everything that Mr Pin ever knew.             The sleet hissed on a few remaining embers.             William stared into the puzzled face as the light in the eyes went out and the attacker sagged slowly to the ground, one hand fiercely hanging on to the potato.             'Oh,' said Sacharissa distantly. 'You spiked him . . .'             Blood dripped down William's sleeve.             'I . . . er . . . I think I could do with a bandage,' he said. Ice shouldn't be hot, he knew, but shock was filling his veins with a burning chill. He was sweating ice.             Sacharissa ran forward, tearing at the sleeve of her blouse.             1 don't think it's bad,' said William, trying to back away. 'I just think it's one of those . . . enthusiastic wounds.'             'Vot has been happening here?'             William looked at the blood on his hand and then at Otto, standing on top of a pile of rubble with an amazed look on his face and a couple of packages in his hands.             'I just go avay for five minutes to buy some more acids and suddenly zer whole place . . . Oh dear . . . oh dear             Goodmountain pulled a tuning fork out of his pocket and twanged it on his helmet.             'Quick, lads!' He waved the fork in the air. ' "Oh will you come to the mission--"'             Otto waved his hand gently as the dwarfs began to sing.             'No, I am veil on top of it, thank you all the same,' he said. "Ve 272 know vot all this is about, don't ve? It vas a mob, yes? Zere is alvays a mob, sooner or later. Zey got my friend Boris. He showed them zer black ribbon but zey just laughed and--'             'I think they were after all of us,' said William. 'I wish I'd had a chance to ask him a few questions, even so . . .'             'You mean like "Is this the first time you've strangled anyone?"' said Boddony. 'Or "How old are you, Mr Killer?" '             Something started to cough.             It seemed to be coming from the pocket of the man's jacket.             William looked around at the stunned dwarfs to see if anyone else had a clue about what he should do next. Then he reluctantly patted the greasy suit with extreme care and pulled out a slim, polished box.             He opened it. A small green imp peered out of its slot.             "m?' it said.             'What? A personal Dis-organizer?' said William. 'A killer with a personal Dis-organizer?'             The Things To Do Today section is going to be interesting, then,' said Boddony.             The imp blinked at him. 'Do you want me to reply or not?' it said. 'Insert Name Here requested silence, despite my range of sounds to suit any mood or occasion.'             'Um . . . your previous owner is. . . previous,' said William, looking down at the cooling Mr Pin.             'You're a new owner?' said the imp.             'Well . . . possibly,'             'Congratulations!' said the imp. 'Warranty not applicable if said device is sold, hired, transferred, gifted or stolen unless in original packaging and extraneous materials which by then you will have thrown away and Part Two of the warranty card which you have lost has been filled in and sent to Thttv ggj, thhtfjhsssjk the Scors and quoting             the reference number which you did not in fact make a note of. DO yOU W3nt Hie tO WipC the             contents of my memory?' It produced a cotton-wool bud and prepared to insert it into one very large ear. 'Erase Memory Y,'N?'             'Your . . . memory . . . ?'             'Yes. Erase Memory Y,'N?'             'N!' said William. 'And now tell me what exactly it is you are remembering,' he added. 273             'You have to press the Recall button,' said the imp impatiently.             'And that will do what?'             'A small hammer hits me on the head and I look to see what button you pressed.'             'Why don't you just, well, recall?'             'Look, I don't make the rules. You've got to press the button. It's in the manual--'             William carefully pushed the box to one side. There were several velvet bags in the dead man's pocket. He put these on the desk, too.             Some of the dwarfs had gone a little way down the iron ladder into the cellar. Boddony climbed back out again, looking thoughtful.             There's a man down there,' he said. 'Lying in . . . lead.'             'Dead?' said William, looking carefully at the bags.             'I hope so. I really hope so. You could say he made a bit of an impression. He's a bit on the . . . cooked side. And there's an arrow through his head.'             'William, you realize that you are robbing a corpse?' said Sacharissa.             'Good,' said William distantly. 'Best time.' He upended a bag and jewels spilled across the charred wood.             There was a strangled noise from Goodmountain. Next to gold, jewels were a dwarf's best friend.             William emptied the other bags.             'How much do you think this lot is worth?' he said, when the gems stopped rolling and twinkling.             Goodmountain had already whipped an eye glass from an inside pocket and was inspecting a few of the larger stones. 'What? Hey? Oh, tens of thousands. Could be a hundred thousand. Could be a lot more. This one here is worth fifteen hundred, I reckon, and it's not the best of 'em,'             'He must've stolen them!' said Sacharissa.             'No,' said William calmly. 'We'd have heard about a theft this big. We hear about things. A young man would certainly have told you. Check to see if he has a wallet, will you?'             'The very idea! And what--'             'Check for a damn wallet, will you?' said William. 'This is a story. 274             I'm going to check his legs, and I'm not looking forward to that, either. But this is a story. We can have hysterics later. Do it. Please?'             There was a half-healed bite on the dead man's leg. William rolled up his own trouser leg for comparison while Sacharissa, her eyes averted, pulled a brown leather wallet out of the jacket.             'Any clue to who he is?' said William, carefully measuring tooth-marks with his pencil. His mind felt strangely calm. He wondered if he was actually thinking at all. It all seemed like some dream, happening in another world.             'Er . . . there's something done on the leather in pokerwork,' said Sacharissa.             'What does it say?'             ' "Not A Very Nice Person At All",' she read. 'I wonder what kind of person would put that on a wallet?'             'Someone who wasn't a very nice person,' said William. 'Anything else in there?'             There's a piece of paper with an address,' said Sacharissa. 'Er . . . I didn't have time to tell you this, er, William. Um             'What does it say?'             'It's 50 Nonesuch Street. Er. Which is where those men caught me. They had a key and everything. Er . . . that's your family's house, isn't it?'             'What do you want me to do with these jewels?' said Goodmountain.             'I mean, you gave me a key and everything,' said Sacharissa nervously. 'But there was this man in the cellar, highly inebriated, and he looked just like Lord Vetinari, and then these men turned up and knocked out Rocky and then--'             'I'm not suggesting anything,' said Goodmountain, 'but if these aren't stolen, then I know plenty of places that'd give us top dollar, even at this time of night--'             '--and of course they were most impolite but really there was nothing I could do--'             '--we could do with a bit of immediate cash, is the point I'm trying to make--'             It dawned on the girl and the dwarf that William was no longer listening. He seemed locked, blank-faced, in a little bubble of silence. 275             Slowly, he pulled the Dis-organizer towards him and pressed the button marked 'Recall'. There was a muffled 'Ouch'.             '. . . nyip-nyap mapnyap nyee-wheedlewheedlewheee             'What's that noise?' said Sacharissa.             'It's how an imp remembers,' said William distantly. 'It . . . sort of plays its life backwards. I used to have an early version of this,' he added.             The noise stopped. The imp said, very apprehensively, 'What happened to it?'             'I took it back to the shop because it wasn't working properly,' said William.             'That's a relief,' said the imp. 'You'd be amazed at some of the terrible things people did to the Mk I. What went wrong with it?'             'It got flung through a third-floor window,' said William, 'for being unhelpful.'             This imp was a little brighter than most of the species. It saluted smartly.             '. . . wheeeewheedlewheedle nyap-nyark . . . Testing, testing . . . seems okay--'             That's Brother Pin!' said Sacharissa.             '--say something, Mr Tulip,' and the voice became the damp growl of Sister Jennifer, 'What'III say? It's not natural, talkin' to a --ing box. This box, Mr Tulip, may be a passport to better times. I thought we were getting the --ing money. Yes, and this 'II help us keep it . . . nyip-nyip . . .'             'Go forward a bit,' William commanded.             '--whee . . . nyip dog has got personality. Personality counts for a lot. And the legal precedents--'             That's Slant!' said Boddony. That lawyer!'             'What shall I do with the jewels!' said Goodmountain.             '. . . nyipnyip . . . 7 can add another five thousand dollars in jewels to your fee . . . nyip . . . I want to know who's giving me these orders . . . nyip . . . not be stupid, either. My . . . clients have long memories and deep pockets . . .'In its terror the imp was skipping.             William pressed the Pause button.             'Slant gave him the money,' he said. 'Slant was paying him. Did you hear him mention clients? You understand? This is one of the 276 men who attacked Vetinari! And they had a key to our house?'             'But we can't just keep the money!' said Sacharissa.             William pressed the button again.             '. . . nyip . . . they say a lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on . . .'             'Obviously, we--' Sacharissa began.             He pressed the button.             'Wheeewheedlewheedle lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on.'             He pressed the button again.             'Wheeewheedlewheedle can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on.'             'Wheeewheedlewheedle round the world before the truth has got its boots on.'             'Wheeewheedle the truth has got its boots on.'             'Are you all right, William?' said Sacharissa, as he stood motionless.             'Delayed shock,' Goodmountain whispered. 'It can take people that way.'             'Mr Goodmountain,' said William sharply, still with his back to them. 'Did you say you could get me another press?'             'I said they cost a--'             '--handful of rubies, perhaps?'             Goodmountain opened his hand. 'Are these ours, then?'             'Yes!'             'Well . . . in the morning I could buy a dozen presses, but it's not like buying sweets--'             'I want to go to press in half an hour,' said William. 'Otto, I want pictures of Brother Pin's leg. I want quotes from everyone, even Foul Ole Ron. And a picture of Wuffles, Otto. And I want a printing press!'             'I told you, where could we get a printing press at this time of ni--'             The floor shook. The heaps of rubble shifted.             All eyes turned to the high lighted windows of the Inquirer.             Sacharissa, who had been watching William wide-eyed, breathed so heavily that Otto groaned and averted his face and started to hum frantically. 277             There's your press!' she shouted. 'All you have to do is get it!' 'Yeah, but just stealing a--' the dwarf began. 'Borrowing,' said William. 'And half the jewels are yours.' Goodmountain's nostrils flared. 'Let's just--' he began to yell, and then said, 'You did say half, did you?' 'Yes!' 'Let's just do it, lads!'             One of the Inquirer's overseers knocked politely on Mr Carney's door.             'Yes, Causley? Has Dibbler turned up yet?' said the Inquirer's proprietor.             'No, sir, but there's a young lady to see you. It's that Miss Cripslock,' said the overseer, wiping his hands on a rag.             Carney brightened up. 'Really?'             'Yes, sir. She's in a bit of a state. And that de Worde fellow is with her.'             Carney's smile faded a little. He'd watched the fire from his window with great glee, but he had been bright enough not to step out into the street. Those dwarfs were pretty vicious, from what he'd heard, and would be bound to blame him. In fact, he hadn't the faintest idea why the place had caught fire, but it was hardly unexpected, was it?             'So . . . it's time for the humble pie, is it?' he said, half to himself.             'Is it, sir?'             'Send them up, will you?'             He sat back and looked at the paper spread out on his desk. Damn that Dibbler! The odd thing was, though, that those things he wrote were like the wretched sausages he sold - you knew them for what they were, but nevertheless you kept on going to the end, and coming back for more. Making them up wasn't as easy as it looked, either. Dibbler had the knack. He'd make up some story about some huge monster being seen in the lake in Hide Park and five readers would turn up swearing that they'd seen it, too. Ordinary, everyday people, such as you might buy a loaf off. How did he do it? Carney's desk was covered with his own failed attempts.-You needed a special kind of imagi-- 278             'Why, Sacharissa,' he said, standing up as she crept into the room. 'Do take the chair. I'm afraid I don't have one for your . . . friend.' He nodded at William. 'May I say how sad I was to hear about the fire?'             'It's your office,' said William coldly. 'You can say anything you like.' Beyond the window he could see the torches of the Watch, arriving at the ruins of the old shed. He took a step back.             'Don't be like that, William,' said Sacharissa. 'It's because of that, you see, Ronnie, that we've come to you.'             'Really?' Carney smiled. 'You have been a bit of a silly girl, haven't you . . . ?'             'Yes, er . . . well, all our money was . . .' Sacharissa sniffed. 'The fact is . . . well, we've just got nothing now. We . . . worked so hard, so hard, and now it's all gone . . .' She started to sob.             Ronnie Carney leaned over the desk and patted her hand.             'Is there anything I can do?' he said.             'Well, I did hope . . . I wondered if . . . I mean, d'you think you could see your way clear to . . . letting us use one of your presses tonight?'             Carney rocked back. 'You what? Are you mad?'             Sacharissa blew her nose. 'Yes, I thought you'd probably say that,' she said sadly.             Carney, slightly mollified, leaned forward and patted her hand again. 'I know we used to play together when we were children--' he began.             'I don't think we actually played,' said Sacharissa, fishing in her handbag. 'You used to chase me and I used to hit you over the head with a wooden cow. Ah, here it is . . .' She dropped the bag, stood up and aimed one of the late Mr Pin's pistol bows straight at the editor.             'Let us use your "ing" presses or I'll "ing" shoot your "ing" head "ing" off!' she screamed. 'I think that's how you're supposed to say it, isn't it?'             'You wouldn't dare pull that trigger!' said Carney, trying to crouch in his chair.             'It was a lovely cow, and one day I hit you so hard one of the legs broke off,' said Sacharissa dreamily.             Carney looked imploringly at William. 'Can't you talk some sense into her?' he said. 279             'We just need the loan of one of your presses for an hour or so, Mr Carney,' said William, while Sacharissa kept the barrel of the bow aimed at the man's nose with what he judged to be a very strange smile on her face. 'And then we'll be gone.'             'What are you going to do?' said Carney hoarsely.             'Well, firstly I'm going to tie you up,' said William.             'No! I'll call the overseers!'             'I think they're . . . busy at the moment,' said Sacharissa.             Carney listened. It seemed unusually quiet downstairs.             He sagged.             The printing staff of the Inquirer were in a ring around Goodmountain.             'Right, lads,' said the dwarf, 'here's how it works. Every man who goes home early tonight 'cos of a headache gets a hundred dollars, all right? It's an old Klatchian custom.'             'And what happens if we don't go?' said the foreman, picking up a mallet.             'Veil,' said a voice by his ear, 'that's ven you get a . . . headache,'             There was a flash of lightning and a roll of thunder. Otto punched the air triumphantly.             'Yes!' he shouted, as the printers ran madly towards the doors. 'Ven you really, really need it, zere it is! Let's try vunce more . . . Castle!' The thunder rolled again. The vampire jumped up and down excitedly, vest tails flying. 'Vow! Now ve are cooking! Vunce more mit feelink! Vot a big . . . castle . . .' The thunder was even louder this time.             Otto did a little jig, beside himself with joy, tears running down his grey face.             'Music viz Rocks In!' he yelled.             In the silence after the thunder roll William pulled a velvet bag from his pocket and tipped it out on to the desk blotter.             Carney stared goggle-eyed at the jewels.             'Two thousand dollars' worth,' said William. 'At least. Our admission to the Guild. I'll just leave them here, shall I? No need for a receipt. We trust you.' 280             Carney said nothing, because of the gag. He had been tied to his chair.             At this point Sacharissa pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.             'I must've forgotten to put the pointy arrow bit in,' she said, as Carney fainted away. 'What a silly girl I am. "Ing". I feel so much better for saying that, you know? "Ing". "Inginginginging". I wonder what it means?'             Gunilla Goodmountain looked expectantly at William, who swayed as he tried to think.             'All right,' he said, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. 'Triple-decker heading, as wide as you can. First line: "Conspiracy Revealed!" Got that? Next line: "Lord Vetinari is Innocent!"' He hesitated at that one, but let it go. People could argue about its general application later on. That wasn't the important thing at the moment.             'Yes?' said Goodmountain. 'And the next line?'             'I've written it down,' said William, passing him a page torn from the notebook. 'Caps, please. Big caps. Big as you can. The sort the Inquirer used for elves and exploding people,'             This?' said the dwarf, reaching for a case of huge black letters. 'Is this news?'             'It is now,' said William. He flicked back through the pages of his notebook.             'Are you going to write the story down first?' said the dwarf.             'No time. Ready? "A plot to illegally seize control of Ankh-Morpork was exposed last night after days of patient detective work by the Watch." Paragraph. "The Times understands that two assassins, both now dead, were hired from outside the city to blacken the character of Lord Vetinari and depose him as Patrician." Paragraph. "They used an innocent man with a remarkable resemblance to Lord Vetinari in order to trick their way into the palace. Once inside"--'             'Hold on, hold on,' said Goodmountain. 'The Watch didn't get to the bottom of this, did they? You did!'             'I just said they've been working for days,' said William. That's true. I don't have to say they weren't getting anywhere.' He saw 281 the look in the dwarf's eye. 'Listen, very soon I'm going to have a lot more unpleasant enemies than anyone really needs. I'd like Vimes to be angry at me for making him look good rather than for making him look bad. Okay?'             'Even so--'             'Don't argue with me!'             Goodmountain didn't dare. There was a look in William's face. The boy had frozen when he was listening to the box, and now he'd unfrozen into . . . someone else.             Someone a lot more touchy and a lot less patient. He looked as though he was running a fever.             'Now . . . where was I?'             '"Once inside". . .' said the dwarf.             'Okay . . . "Once inside" . . . no . . . Make it: "The Times understands that Lord Vetinari was" - Sacharissa, you said the man in the cellar looked just like Vetinari?'             'Yes. Haircut and everything.'             'Right. "The Times understands that Lord Vetinari was overwhelmed in the moment of shock on seeing himself entering his office"--'             'Do we understand that?' said Sacharissa.             'Yes. It makes sense. Who's going to argue? Where was I . . . "Their plan was foiled by Lord Vetinari's dog, Wuffles (16), who attacked both men." Paragraph. "The noise of this attracted the attention of Lord Vetinari's clerk, Rufus Drumknott" - damn, I forgot to ask him how old he was - "who was then knocked unconscious." Paragraph. "The attackers tried to put the interruption to good use in their" - what's the good word? Oh, yes - "their dastardly plan and stabbed Drumknott with one of Lord Vetinari's own daggers in an attempt to make it look as if he was insane or murderous." Paragraph. "Acting with vicious cunning"--'             'You're getting really good at this,' said Sacharissa.             'Don't interrupt him,' hissed Boddony. 'I want to find out what the dastards did next!'             '--"with vicious cunning they forced the bogus Lord Vetinari"--'             'Good word, good word,' said Goodmountain, setting furiously.             'Are you-certain about "forced"?' said Sacharissa. 282             They aren't-- they weren't the kind of men who ask nicely,' said William brusquely. 'Er . . . "forced the bogus Lord Vetinari . . . to make a false confession to some servants who were attracted by the noise. Then all three, carrying the unconscious Lord Vetinari and harried by the dog, Wuffles (16), took the stairs to the stables." Paragraph. "There they had set up a scene to suggest that Lord Vetinari had been trying to rob the city, as already reported in"--'             ' "Exclusively in",' Sacharissa said.             'Right, "exclusively in the Times." Paragraph. "However, the dog Wuffles escaped dash and began a city-wide search by Watch and criminals alike. He was found by a group of public-spirited citizens, who"--'             A piece of type dropped from Goodmountain's fingers. 'You mean Foul Ole Ron and that bunch?'             '--"public-spirited citizens",' William repeated, nodding furiously, ' "who kept him hidden, while"--'             Cold winter storms had the whole of the Sto Plains in which to build up speed. By the time they hit Ankh-Morpork they were fast and heavy and laden with malice.             This time it took the form of hail. Fist-sized balls of ice smashed into tiles. They blocked gutters and filled the streets with shrapnel.             They hammered on the roof of the warehouse in Gleam Street. One or two windows smashed.             William paced up and down, shouting out his words above the force of the storm, occasionally flicking back and forth through the pages of his notebook. Otto came out and handed the dwarfs a couple of iconograph plates. The crew limped and sidled in, ready for the edition.             William stopped. The last letters clicked into place.             'Let's see what it looks like so far,' said William.             Goodmountain inked the type, put a piece of paper over the story and ran a hand-roller over it. Wordlessly, he handed it to Sacharissa.             'Are you sure of all this, William?' she said.             'Yes.' 283             'I mean, some bits - are you sure it's all true?'             'I'm sure it's all journalism,' said William.             'And what is that supposed to mean?'             'It means it's true enough for now.'               'But do you know the names of these people?'             William hesitated. Then he said:             'Mr Goodmountain, you can insert an extra paragraph anywhere in the story, can't you?'             'That's not a problem.'             'Right. Then set this: "The Times can reveal that the assassins were hired by a group of prominent citizens led by" . . . "The Times can reveal that" . . .' He took a deep breath. 'Start again: "The plotters, the Times can reveal, were headed by". . .' William shook his head.' "Evidence points to" . . . uh . . . "Evidence, the Times can reveal" . . . "All the evidence, the Times can reveal . . . can reveal. . ."' His voice trailed off.             'This is going to be a long paragraph?' said Goodmountain.             William stared miserably at the damp proof.             'No,' he said wretchedly. 'I think that's it. Let it go at that. Put in a line saying that the Times will be helping the Watch with its inquiries.'             'Why? We're not guilty of anything, are we?' said Goodmountain.             'Just do it, please.' William screwed the proof into a ball, tossed it on to a bench and wandered off towards the press.             Sacharissa found him a few minutes later. A print room offers a mass of holes and corners, mostly used by those whose duties require the occasional bunk-off for a quiet smoke. William was sitting on a pile of paper, staring at nothing.             'Is there something you want to talk about?' she said.             'No.'             'Do you know who the conspirators are?'             'No.'             'Then would it be true to say that you suspect you know who the conspirators are?'             He gave her an angry look. 'Are you trying journalism on me?'             'I'm just supposed to try it on everyone else,  then,  am I? 284             Not you, then?' she said, sitting down beside him.             William absent-mindedly pressed a button on the Dis-organizer.             'Wheeewheedle the truth has got its boots on . . .'             'You don't get on very well with your father, is tha--' Sacharissa began.             'What am I supposed to do?' said William. That's his favourite saying. He says it proves how gullible people are. Those men had the run of our house. He's in this up to his neck!'             'Yes, but perhaps he just did it as a favour to some other--'             'If my father is involved in anything, he'll be the leader,' said William flatly. 'If you don't know that you don't know the de Wordes. We don't join any team if we can't be captain.'             'But it'd be a bit silly, wouldn't it, to let them use your own house--'             'No, just very, very arrogant,' said William. 'We've always been privileged, you see. Privilege just means "private law". That's exactly what it means. He just doesn't believe the ordinary laws apply to him. He doesn't really believe they can touch him, and if they do he'll just shout until they go away. That's the de Worde tradition, and we're good at it. Shout at people, get your own way, ignore the rules. It's the de Worde way. Up until me, obviously.'             Sacharissa was careful not to let her expression change.             'And I didn't expect this,' William finished, turning the box over and over in his hands.             'You said you wanted to get at the truth, didn't you?'             'Yes, but not this! I . . . must have got something wrong. I must have. I must have. Even my father couldn't be this . . . this stupid. I've got to find out what's really been happening.'             'You're not going to see him, are you?' said Sacharissa.             'Yes. By now he'll know it's over.'             'Then you ought to take someone with you!'             'No!' snapped William. 'Look, you don't know what my father's friends are like. They are brought up to give orders, they know that they're on the right side because if they are on it then it must be the right side, by definition, and when they feel threatened they are bare-knuckle fighters, except that they never take their gloves off. They are thugs. Thugs and bullies, bullies, and the worst kind of 285 bully, because they aren 't cowards and if you stand up to them they only hit you harder. They grew up in a world where, if you were enough trouble, they could have you . . . disappeared. You think places like the Shades are bad? Then you don't know what goes on in Park Lane! And my father is one of the worst. But I'm family. We . . . care about family. So I'll be all right. You stay here and help them get the paper out, will you? Half a truth is better than nothing,' he added bitterly.             'Vot vas all zat about?' said Otto, coming up as William strode out of the room.             'Oh, he's . . . he's off to see his father,' said Sacharissa, still taken aback. 'Who is not a nice man, apparently. He was very . . . heated about him. Very upset.'             "scuse me,' said a voice. The girl turned, but there was no one behind her.             Now the invisible speaker sighed. 'No, down here,' it said. She looked down at the malformed pink poodle.             'Let's not mess around, eh?' it said. 'Yeah, yeah, dogs can't talk. Got it in one, well done. So maybe you've got some strange ment'l power. That's that sorted out, then. I couldn't help overhearin', 'cos I was listenin'. The lad's heading into trouble, right? I can smell trouble--'             'Are you some kind of verevolf?' said Otto.             'Yeah, right, I get very hairy every full moon,' said the dog dis-missively. 'Imagine how much that interferes with my social life. Now, look--'             'But surely dogs can't talk--' Sacharissa began.             'Oh dear oh dear oh dear,' said Gaspode. 'Did I say I was talking?'             'Well, not in so many words--'             'Right. Wonderful thing, phenomenology. Now, I just seen a hundred dollars walk out the door and I want to see it walk back, right? Lord de Worde is as nasty a piece of work as you'll find in this town.'             'You know nobility?' said Sacharissa.             'A cat can look at a king, right? That's legal.'             'I suppose so--'             'So it works for dogs, too. Got to work for dogs if it works for 286 ratbag moggies. I know everyone, I do. Lord de Worde used to get his butler to put down poisoned meat for the street dogs.'             'But he wouldn't hurt William, would he?'             'I'm not a betting man,' said Gaspode. 'But if he does, right, we still get the hundred dollars, yes?'             'Ve cannot stand by and let him do zis,' said Otto. 'I like Villiam. He was not brought up nice but he tries to be a nice person, vithout even cocoa and a singsong to help him. It is hard to go against your nature. Ve must. . . help him.'             Death placed the final hourglass back on to the air, where it faded away. THERE, he said, WASN'T THAT INTERESTING? WHAT NEXT, MR TULIP? ARE             YOU READY TO GO?             The figure sat on the cold sand, staring at nothing. MR TULIP? Death repeated. The wind flapped his robe, so that it streamed out a long ribbon of darkness. 'I . . . got to be really sorry . . . ?' OH YES. IT is SUCH A SIMPLE WORD. BUT HERE . . . IT HAS MEANING. IT             HAS . . . SUBSTANCE.             'Yeah. I know.' Mr Tulip looked up, his eyes red-rimmed, his face puffy. 'I reckon . . . to be that sorry, you got to take a --ing good run at it.'             YES.             'So . . . how long have I got?'             Death looked up at the strange stars.             ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD.             'Yeah . . . well, maybe that'll --ing do it. Maybe there won't be no more world to go back to by then.'             I BELIEVE IT DOES NOT WORK LIKE THAT. I UNDERSTAND REINCARNATION CAN TAKE PLACE ANYWHEN. WHO SAYS LIVES ARE SERIAL?             'You savin' . . . I could be alive before I was born?' YES.             'Maybe I can find me and kill myself,' said Mr Tulip, staring at the sand.             NO, BECAUSE YOU WILL NEVER KNOW. AND YOU MAY BE LEADING QUITE A DIFFERENT LIFE. 287             'Good . . .'             Death patted Mr Tulip on the shoulder, which flinched under his             touch.             I SHALL LEAVE YOU NOW----             Th't's a good scythe you got there,' said Mr Tulip, slowly and laboriously. That silverwork's craftsmanship if ever I saw it.'             THANK YOU, said Death. AND NOW, I REALLY MUST BE GOING. BUT I WILL PASS THROUGH' HERE SOMETIMES. MY DOOR, he added, is ALWAYS OPEN.             He strode off. The hunched figure fell behind into the darkness, but a new one appeared, running madly across the not-exactly-sand.             It was waving a potato on a string. It stopped when it saw Death and then, to Death's amazement, turned to look behind it. This had never happened before. Most people, upon coming face to face with Death, ceased worrying about anything behind them.             Is there anyone after me? Can you see anyone?'             ER . . . NO. WERE YOU EXPECTING ANYONE?             'Oh, right. No one, eh? Right!' said Mr Pin, squaring his shoulders. 'Yeah! Hah! Hey, look, I've got my potato!'             Death blinked and then took an hourglass out of his robe. .  MR PIN? AH. THE OTHER ONE. I HAVE BEEN EXPECTING YOU.             'That's me! And I've got my potato, look, and I'm very sorry about everything!' Mr Pin was feeling quite calm now. The mountains of madness have many little plateaux of sanity.             Death stared into the madly smiling face. You ARE VERY SORRY?             'Oh, yes!'             ABOUT EVERYTHING?             'Yep!'             AT THIS TIME? IN THIS PLACE? YOU DECLARE YOU ARE SORRY?'             'That's right. You got it. You're bright. So if you'll just show me how to get back--'             YOU WOULD NOT LIKE TO RECONSIDER?             'No arguing, I want what's due,' said Mr Pin. 'I've got my potato. Look.'             AND I SEE. Death reached into his robe and pulled out what looked to Mr Pin, at first sight, like a miniature model of himself. 288             But there was a rat skull looking out from under the tiny cowl. Death grinned. SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND, he said. The Death of Rats reached out and snatched the string. 'Hey--'             DO NOT PUT ALL YOUR TRUST IN ROOT VEGETABLES. WHAT THINGS SEEM MAY NOT BE WHAT THEY ARE, Said Death. YET LET NO ONE SAY I DON'T             HONOUR THE LAW. He snapped his fingers. RETURN, THEN, TO WHERE YOU             SHOULD GO . . .             Blue light flickered for a moment around the astonished Pin, and then he vanished. Death sighed and shook his head.             THE OTHER ONE . . . HAD SOMETHING IN HIM THAT COULD BE BETTER, he             said. BUT THAT ONE . . . He sighed deeply. WHO KNOWS WHAT EVIL LURKS             IN THE HEART OF MEN?             The Death of Rats looked up from the feast of potato.             SQUEAK, he said.             Death waved a hand dismissively. WELL, YES, OBVIOUSLY ME, he             Said. I JUST WONDERED IF THERE WAS ANYONE ELSE.             William, ducking from doorway to doorway, realized that he was taking the long way round. Otto would have said that it was because he didn't want to arrive.             The storm had abated slightly, although stinging hail still bounced off his hat. The much bigger balls from the initial onslaught filled the gutters and covered the roads. Carts had skidded, pedestrians were hanging on to the walls.             Despite the fire in his head, he took out his notebook and wrote: hlstns bggr than golf blls? and made a mental note to check one against a golf ball, just in case. Part of him was beginning to understand that his readers might have a very relaxed attitude about the guilt of politicians but were red hot on things like the size of the weather.             He stopped on the Brass Bridge and sheltered in the lee of one of the giant hippos. Hail peppered the surface of the river with a thousand tiny sucking noises.             The rage was cooling now.             For most of William's life Lord de Worde had been a distant 289 figure staring out of his study window, in a room lined with books that never got read, while William stood meekly in the middle of acres of good but threadbare carpet and listened to . . . well, viciousness mostly, now that he thought about it, the opinions of Mr Windling dressed up in more expensive words.             The worst part, the worst part, was that Lord de Worde was never wrong. It was not a position he understood in relation to his personal geography. People who took an opposing view were insane, or dangerous, or possibly even not really people. You couldn't have an argument with Lord de Worde. Not a proper argument. An argument, from arguer, meant to debate and discuss and persuade by reason. What you could have with William's father was a flaming row.             Icy water dripped off one of the statues and ran down William's neck.             Lord de Worde used words with a tone and a volume that made them as good as fists, but he'd never used actual violence.             He had people for that.             Another drop of thawed hail coursed down William's spine.             Surely even his father couldn't be this stupid?             He wondered if he should turn over everything to the Watch right now. But whatever they said about Vimes, in the end the man had a handful of men and a lot of influential enemies who had families going back a thousand years and the same amount of honour that you'd find in a dog fight.             No. He was a de Worde. The Watch was for other people, who couldn't sort out their problems their own way. And what was the worst that could happen?             So many things, he thought as he set out again, that it would be hard to decide which one was the worst.             A galaxy of candles burned in the middle of the floor. In the corroded mirrors around the room they looked like the lights of a shoal of deep-sea fishes.             William walked past overturned chairs. There was one upright, though, behind the candles.             He stopped. 290             'Ah . . . William,' said the chair. Then Lord de Worde slowly unfolded his lanky form from the embracing leather and stood up in the light.             'Father,' said William.             'I thought you'd come here. Your mother always liked the place, too. Of course, it was . . . different in those days.'             William said nothing. It had been.             'I think this nonsense has got to stop now, don't you?' said Lord de Worde.             'I think it is stopping, father.'             'But I don't think you mean what I mean,' said Lord de Worde.             'I don't know what you think you mean,' said William. 'I just want to hear the truth from you.'             Lord de Worde sighed. 'The truth? I had the best interests of the city at heart, you know. You'll understand, one day. Vetinari is ruining the place.'             'Yes . . . well . . that's where it all becomes difficult, doesn't it?' said William, amazed that his voice hadn't even begun to shake yet. 'I mean, everyone says that sort of thing, don't they? "I did it for the best", "the end justifies the means" - the same words, every time.'             'Don't you agree, then, that it's time for a ruler who listens to the people?'             'Maybe. Which people did you have in mind?'             Lord de Worde's mild expression changed. William was surprised it had survived this long.             'You are going to put this in your rag of a newspaper, aren't you?'             William said nothing.             'You can't prove anything. You know that.'             William stepped into the light and Lord de Worde saw the notebook.             'I can prove enough. That's all that matters, really. The rest will become a matter of . . . inquiry. Do you know they call Vimes "Vetinari's terrier"? Terriers dig and dig and don't let go.'             Lord de Worde put his hand on the hilt of his sword.             And William heard himself think: Thank you. Thank you. Up until now, I couldn 't believe it. . .             'You have no honour, do you?' said his father, still in the voice 291 of infuriating calm. 'Well, publish and be damned to you. And to the Watch. We gave no order to--'             'I expect you didn't,' said William. 'I expect you said "make it so" and left the details to people like Pin and Tulip. Bloody hands at arm's length.'             'As your father I order you to cease this . . . this             'You used to order me to tell the truth,' said William.             Lord de Worde drew himself up. 'Oh, William, Williaml Don't be so naive.'             William shut his notebook. The words came easier now. He'd leapt from the building and found that he could fly.             'And which one is this?' he said. The truth that is so precious it must be surrounded by a bodyguard of lies? The truth that is stranger than fiction? Or the truth that is still putting on its boots when a lie is running round the world?' He stepped forward. 'That's your little phrase, isn't it? It doesn't matter any more. I think Mr Pin was going to try blackmail and, you know, so am I, naive as I am. You're going to leave the city, right now. That shouldn't be too hard for you. And you had better hope that nothing happens to me, or anyone I work with, or anyone I know.'             'Really?'             'Right now!' screamed William, so loud that Lord de Worde rocked backwards. 'Have you gone deaf as well as insane? Right now and don't come back, because if you do I'll publish every damn word you've just said!' William pulled the Dis-organizer out of his pocket. 'Every damn word! D'you hear me? And not even Mr Slant will be able to grease your way out of that! You even had the arrogance, the stupid arrogance, to use our house! How dare you! Get out of the city! And either draw that sword or take . , . your . . . hand . . . off . . . it!'             He stopped, red-faced and panting.             The truth has got its boots on,' he said. 'It's going to start kicking.' His eyes narrowed. 'I told you to take your hand off that sword!'             'So silly, so silly. And I believed you were my son             'Ah, yes. I nearly forgot that,' said William, now rocketing on rage. 'You'know one of the customs of the dwarfs? No, of course 292 you don't, because they're not really people, are they? But I know one or two of them, you see, and so . . .' He pulled a velvet bag out of his pocket and threw it down in front of his father.             'And this is . . . ?' said Lord de Worde.             There's more than twenty thousand dollars in there, as close as a couple of experts could estimate,' said William. 'I didn't have a lot of time to work it out and I didn't want you to think I was being unfair, so I've erred on the generous side. That must cover everything I've cost you over the years. School fees, clothes, everything. I have to confess you didn't make such a good job of it, given that I'm the end result. I'm buying myself off you, you see.'             'Oh, I see. The dramatic gesture. Do you really think that family is a matter of money?' said Lord de Worde.             'We-ell, yes, according to history. Money, land and titles,' said William. 'It's amazing how often we failed to marry anyone who didn't have at least two out of three.'             'Cheap jibe. You know what I mean.'             'I don't know if I do,' said William. 'But I do know I got that money a few hours ago off a man who tried to kill me.'             'Tried to kill you?' For the first time there was a note of uncertainty.             'Why, yes. You're surprised?' said William. 'If you throw something into the air, don't you have to worry about where it bounces?'             'Indeed you do,' said Lord de Worde. He sighed, made a little hand signal, and William saw shadows detach themselves from deeper shadows. And he remembered that you couldn't run the de Worde estates without a lot of hired help, in every department of life. Hard men in little round hats, who knew how to evict and distrain and set mantraps . . .             'You have been overdoing it, I can see,' said his father, as they advanced. 'I think you need . . . yes, a long sea voyage. The Isles of Fog, perhaps, or possibly Fourecks. Or Bhangbhangduc. There's fortunes to be made there, I understand, by young men prepared to get their hands dirty. Certainly there's nothing for you here . . . nothing good.'             William made out four figures now. He'd seen them around on 293 the estates. They tended to have one-word names, like Jenks or Clamper, and no visible pasts at all.             One of them said, 'Now, if you'll just see a bit o' sense, Mr William, we can all do this nice and quiet             'Small sums of money will be sent to you periodically,' said Lord de Worde. 'You will be able to live in a style which--'             A few wisps of dust spiralled down from the shadowy ceiling, twirling like sycamore leaves.             They landed next to the velvet bag.             Overhead, a shrouded chandelier jingled gently.             William looked up. 'Oh, no,' he said. 'Please . . . don't kill anyone!'             'What?' said Lord de Worde.             Otto Chriek dropped to the floor, hands raised like talons.             'Good evening!' he said to a shocked bailiff. He looked at his hands. 'Oh, vot am I thinking of!' He bunched his fists and danced from foot to foot. Tut zem up in the traditional Ankh-Morpork pugilism!'             'Put them up?' said the man, raising a cudgel. 'Blow that!'             A jab from Otto lifted him off his feet. He landed on his back, spinning, and slid away across the polished floor. Otto spun round so fast that he blurred, and there was a smack as another man went down.             'Vot's this? Vot's this? I'm using your civilized fisticuffs, and you don't vant to fight?' he said, springing back and forth like an amateur boxer. 'Ah, you, sir, you show fight--' The fists blurred into invisibility and pummelled a man like a punchbag. Otto straightened up as the man fell, and absent-mindedly punched sideways to catch the charging fourth man on the chin. The man actually spun in the air.             This happened in a few seconds. And then William got enough of a grip to shout a warning. He was too late.             Otto looked down at the length of sword blade sticking too far into his chest.             'Oh, vill you look at zis,' he said. 'You know, in zis job I just cannot make a shirt last two days?'             He turned to Lord de Worde, who was backing away, and cracked his knuckles. 294             'Keep it away from me!' shouted his lordship.             William shook his head.             'Oh, yes?' said Otto, still advancing. 'You think I am an it? Veil, let me act like an it.'             He grabbed Lord de Worde's jacket and held him up in the air, with one hand, at arm's length.             'Ve have people like you back home,' he said. 'Zey are the vuns that tell the mob vot to do. I come here to Ankh-Morpork, zey tell me things are different, but really it is alvays the same. Alvays zere are damn people like you! And now, vot shall I do viz you?'             He wrenched at his own jacket and tossed the black ribbon aside.             'I never liked zer damn cocoa anyvay,' he said.             'Otto!'             The vampire turned. 'Yes, Villiam? Vot is it you vish?'             That's going too far.' Lord de Worde had gone pale. William had never seen him so obviously frightened before.             'Oh? You say? You think I bite him? Shall I bite you, Mister Lordship? Veil, maybe not, because Villiam here thinks I am a good person.' He pulled Lord de Worde close, so their faces were a few inches apart. 'Now, maybe I have to ask myself, how good am I? Or maybe I just have to ask myself . . . am I better zan you?' He hesitated for a second or two and then in a sudden movement jerked the man towards him.             With great delicacy, he planted a kiss on Lord de Worde's forehead. Then he put the trembling man back down on the floor and patted him on the head.             'Actually, maybe zer cocoa is not too bad and zer young lady who plays zer harmonium, sometimes she vinks at me,' he said, stepping aside.             Lord de Worde opened his eyes, and looked at William.             'How dare you--'             'Shut up,' said William. 'Now, I'm going to tell you what's going to happen. I'm not going to name names. That's my decision. I don't want my mother to have been married to a traitor, you see. Then there's Rupert. And my sisters. And me, too. I'm protecting the name. That's probably very wrong of me, and I'm going to do it anyway. I'm going to disobey you one more time, in fact. I won't 295 tell the truth. Not the whole truth. Besides, I am sure that those who want to know these things will find out soon enough. And I daresay they'll sort it out quietly. You know . . . just like you do,'             'Traitor?' whispered Lord de Worde.             'That is what people would say.'             Lord de Worde nodded, like a man caught in an unpleasant dream.             'I could not possibly take the money,' he said. 'I wish you joy of it, my son. Because . . . you are most certainly a de Worde. Good day to you.' He turned and walked away. After a few seconds the distant door creaked open and shut quietly.             William staggered to a pillar. He was shaking. He replayed the meeting in his head. His brain hadn't touched the ground the whole time.             'Are you okay, Villiam?' said Otto.             'I feel sick, but . . . yeah, I'm all right. Of all the bone-headed, stubborn, self-centred, arrogant--'             'But you make up for it in other vays,' said Otto.             'I meant my father.'             'Oh.'             'He's just so certain he's in the right all the time--'             'Sorry, this is still your father ve're talking about?'             'Are you saying I'm like him?'             'Oh, no. Qvite different. Absolutely qvite different. No similarities votsoever.'             'You didn't need to go that far!' He stopped. 'Did I say "thank you"?'             'No, you did not.'             'Oh, dear.'             'No, you noticed that you didn't, so zat is okay,' said Otto. 'Every day, in every vay, ve get better and better. By the vay, vould you mind pulling this sword out of me? Vot kind of idiot just sticks it in a vampire? All it does is mess up zer linen.'             'Let me help--' William gingerly withdrew the blade.             'Can I put zis shirt on my expenses?'             'Yes, I think so.' 296             'Good. And now it is all over and time for revards and medals,' said the vampire cheerfully, adjusting his jacket. 'So vhere are your troubles now?'             'Just starting,' said William. 'I think I'm going to be seeing the inside of the Watch House in less than an hour,'             In fact it was forty-three minutes later that William de Worde was Helping the Watch, as they say, with Their Inquiries.             On the other side of the table Commander Vimes was carefully re-reading the Times. He was, William knew, taking longer than necessary in order to make him nervous.             'I can help you with any long words you don't recognize,' he volunteered.             'It's very good,' said Vimes, ignoring this. 'But I need to know more. I need to know the names. I think you know the names. Where did they meet? Things like that. I need to know them,'             'Some things are a mystery to me,' said William. 'You've got more than enough evidence to release Lord Vetinari,'             'I want to know more,'             'Not from me,'             'Come on, Mr de Worde. We're on the same side here!'             'No. We're just on two different sides that happen to be side by side,'             'Mr de Worde, earlier today you assaulted one of my officers. Do you know how much trouble you are in already?'             'I expected better of you than that, Mister Vimes,' said William. 'Are you saying I assaulted an officer in uniform? An officer who identified themself to me?'             'Be careful, Mr de Worde,'             'I was being followed by a werewolf, commander. I took steps to . . . inconvenience it so that I could get away. Would you like to debate this publicly?'             I'm being an arrogant, lying, supercilious bastard, thought William. And I'm good at it.             'Then you give me no choice but to arrest you for concealing--'             'I demand a lawyer,' said William.             'Really? And who did you have in mind at this time of night?' 297             'Mr Slant.'             'Slant? You think he'll come out for you?'             'No. I know he'll come out. Believe me.'             'Oh, he will, will he?'             "Trust me.'             'Come now,' said Vimes, smiling. 'Do we need this? It's the duty of every citizen to help the Watch, isn't it?'             I don't know. I know the Watch think it is. I've never seen it written down,' said William. 'There again, I never knew it was the right of the Watch to spy on innocent people.'             He saw the smile freeze.             'It was for your own good,' Vimes growled.             'I didn't know it was your job to decide what was good for me.'             This time Vimes won a small prize. 'I'm not going to be led, either,' he said. 'But I have reason to believe that you are withholding information about a major crime, and that is an offence. That's against the law.'             'Mr Slant will come up with something. There's some precedent, I'll bet. He'll go back hundreds of years. The Patricians have always set great store by precedent. Mr Slant will dig and dig. For years if necessary. That's how he got where he is today, by digging.'             Vimes leaned forward. 'Between you and me, and without your notebook,' he muttered, 'Mr Slant is a devious dead bastard who can bend such law as we have into a puzzle ring.'             'Yep,' said William. 'And he's my lawyer. I guarantee it.'             'Why would Mr Slant speak up on your behalf?' said Vimes, staring at William.             William matched him eyeball for eyeball. It's true, he thought. I'm my father's son. All I have to do is use it.             'Because he's a very fair man?' he said. 'Now, are you going to send a runner to fetch him? Because if you're not you've got to let me go.'             Without taking his gaze off William, Vimes reached down and unhooked the speaking tube from the side of his desk. He whistled into it and then put it to his ear. There was a sound like a mouse pleading for mercy at the other end of a drainpipe.             'Yata whipsie poitl swup?' 298             Vimes put the tube to his mouth. 'Sergeant, send someone up to take Mr de Worde down to the cells, will you?'             'Swyddle yumyumpwipwipwip?'             Vimes sighed and replaced the pipe. He got up and opened the door.             'Fred, send someone to take Mr de Worde down to the cells, will you?' he yelled. 'I'm calling it protective custody for now,' he added, turning to William.             'Protecting me from whom?'             'Well, I personally have an overwhelming urge to give you a ding alongside the ear,' said Vimes. 'And I suspect there are others out there without my self-control.'             It was in fact quite peaceful in the cells. The bunk was comfortable. The walls were covered with graffiti, and William passed the time correcting the spelling.             The door was unlocked again. A stony-faced constable escorted William back up to Vimes's office.             Mr Slant was there. He gave William an impassive nod. Commander Vimes was sitting in front of a small yet significant pile of paper and had the look of a beaten man.             'I believe Mr de Worde can go free,' said Mr Slant.             Vimes shrugged. 'I'm only amazed you aren't asking me to give him a gold medal and an illuminated scroll of thanks. But I'm setting bail at one thou--'             'Ah?' said Mr Slant, raising a grey finger.             Vimes glowered. 'One hun--'             'Ah?'             Vimes grunted and reached into his pocket. He tossed William a dollar. 'Here,' he said, with extensive sarcasm. 'And if you aren't in front of the Patrician at ten o'clock tomorrow you've got to give it back. Satisfied?' he said to Slant.             'Which Patrician?' said William.             'Thank you for that smart answer,' said Vimes. 'Just you be there.'             Mr Slant was silent as he walked out into the night air with his new client, but after a while he said: 'I have presented a writ of exeo carco cum nihil pretii on the basis of olfacere violarum and sini plenis 299 pistis. Tomorrow I shall move that you are ab hamo, and in the event of this not working I--'             'Smelling of violets?' said William, who had been translating in his head, 'and pockets full of fish?'             'Based on a case some six hundred years ago when the defendant successfully pleaded that, although he had indeed pushed the victim into a lake, the man came out with his pockets full of fish, to his net benefit,' said Mr Slant crisply. 'In any case, I shall argue that if withholding information from the Watch is a crime, every person in the city is guilty.'             'Mr Slant, I do not wish to have to say how and where I got my information,' said William. 'If I have to, I shall have to reveal all of it.'             The light from the distant lamp over the Watch House door, behind its blue glass, illuminated the lawyer's face. He looked ill.             'You really believe those two men had . . . accomplices?' he said.             'I'm sure of it,' said William. 'I'd say it's a matter of. . . record.'             At that point he almost felt sorry for the lawyer. But only almost.             'That might not be in the public interest,' said Mr Slant slowly. 'This ought to be a time for . . . reconciliation.'             'Absolutely. So I'm sure you will see to it that I don't have to pour all those words into Commander Vimes's ear.'             'Strangely enough, there was a precedent in 1497 when a cat successfully--'             'Good. And you will have one of your special quiet words with the Engravers' Guild. You are good at quiet words.'             'Well, of course I will do my best. The bill, however--'             '--won't exist,' said William.             Only then did Mr Slant's parchment features really crease up in pain.             'Pro bono publico?' he croaked.             'Oh, yes. You will certainly be working for the public good,' said William. 'And what is good for the public, of course, is good for you. Isn't that nice?'             'On the other hand,' said Mr Slant, 'perhaps it would be in the interests of everyone to put this sorry affair behind us, and I will be, uh, happy to donate my services.' 300             Thank you. Mr Scrope is now Lo-- is now the Patrician?'             'Yes.'             'By the vote of the Guilds?'             'Yes. Of course.'             The unanimous vote?'             'I don't have to tell--'             William raised a finger. 'Ah?' he said.             Mr Slant squirmed. The Beggars and the Seamstresses voted to adjourn,' he said. 'So did the Launderers and the Guild of Exotic Dancers.'             'So . . . that would be Queen Molly, Mrs Palm, Mrs Manger and Miss Dixie Voom,' said William. 'What an interesting life Lord Vetinari must have led.'             'No comment.'             'And would you say Mr Scrope is looking forward to getting to grips with the manifold problems of running the city?'             Mr Slant considered this one. 'I think that may be the case,' he conceded.             'Not least of which is the fact that Lord Vetinari is, in fact, completely innocent? And that therefore there is a very large question mark over the appointment? Would you advise that he takes up his duties with several spare pairs of underpants? You don't have to answer that last one.'             'It is not my job to instruct the assembly of Guilds to reverse a legitimate decision, even if it turns out to have been based on . . . erroneous information. Nor is it my responsibility to advise Mr Scrope on his choice of undergarments.'             'See you tomorrow, Mr Slant,' said William.             William barely had time to undress and lie down before it was time to get up again. He washed as best he could, changed his shirt and went cautiously down to breakfast. He was in fact the first at the table.             There was the usual stolid silence as the other guests gathered. Most of Mrs Arcanum's boarders didn't bother to talk unless they had something to say. But when Mr Mackleduff sat down he pulled out a copy of the Times from his pocket. 301             'Couldn't get the paper,' said Mr Mackleduff, shaking it open. 'So I got the other one,'             William coughed. 'Anything much in it?' he said. He could see his headline from where he sat, in huge bold caps:             DOG BITES MAN!             He'd made it news.             'Oh . . . Lord Vetinari got away with it,' said Mr Mackleduff.             'Well, of course he would,' said Mr Prone. 'Very clever man, whatever they say,'             'And his dog's all right,' said Mr Mackleduff. William wanted to shake the man for reading so slowly.             'That's nice,' said Mrs Arcanum, pouring out the tea.             'Is that it?' said William.             'Oh, there's a lot of political stuff,' said Mr Mackleduff. 'It's all a bit far-fetched.'             'Any good vegetables today?' said Mr Cartwright.             Mr Mackleduff carefully inspected the other pages.             'No,' he said.             'My firm are thinking of approaching that man to see if he'd let us sell his seeds for him,' Mr Cartwright went on. 'It's just the sort of thing people like,' He caught Mrs Arcanum's eye. 'Only those vegetables suitable for a family environment, of course,' he added quickly.             'Aye, it does you good to laugh,' said Mr Mackleduff solemnly.             It crossed William's mind to wonder if Mr Wintler could grow an obscene pea. But of course he could.             'I would have thought it's quite important,' he said, 'if Lord Vetinari isn't guilty,'             'Oh, yes, I daresay, to them as has to deal with these things,' said Mr Mackleduff. 'I don't quite see where we come into it, though.'             'But surely--' William began.             Mrs Arcanum patted her hair. 'I've always thought Lord Vetinari was a most handsome man,' she said, and then looked flustered when they all stared at her. 'I meant, I'm just a little surprised there isn't a Lady Vetinari. As it were. Ahem.' 302             'Oh well, you know what they say,' said Mr Windling.             A pair of arms shot out across the table, grabbed the surprised man by the lapels and pulled him up so that his face was a few inches from William's.             7 don't know what they say, Mr Windling!' he shouted. 'But you know what they say, Mr Windling! Why don't you tell us what they say, Mr Windling! Why don't you tell us who told you, Mr Windling?'             'Mr de Worde! Really!' said Mrs Arcanum. Mr Prone pulled the toast out of the way.             I'm very sorry about this, Mrs Arcanum,' said William, still holding the struggling man, 'but I want to know what everyone knows and I want to know how they know it. Mr Windling?'             They say he's got some sort of a lady friend who's very important in Uberwald,' said Mr Windling. 'And I'll thank you to let go of me!'             'And that's it? What's so sinister about that? It's a friendly country!'             'Yes, but, yes, but they say--'             William let go. Windling rocked back into his chair, but William stayed standing, breathing heavily.             'Well, I wrote the article in the TimesV he snapped. 'And what's in there is what ,' say! Me! Because I found things out, and checked things, and people who say "ing" a lot tried to kill me! I'm not the man that's the brother of some man you met in the pub! I'm not some stupid rumour put about to make trouble! So just remember that, before you try any of that "everyone knows" stuff! And in an hour or so I've got to go up to the palace and see Commander Vimes and whoever is the Patrician and a lot of other people, to get this whole thing sorted out! And it's not going to be very nice, but I'm going to have to do it, because I wanted you to know things that are important. Sorry about the teapot, Mrs Arcanum, I'm sure it can be mended.'             In the ensuing silence Mr Prone picked up the paper and said: 'You write this?'             'Yes!'             'I . . . er . . . I thought they had special people . . .' 303             All heads turned back to William.             There isn't a they. There's just me and a young lady. We write it all!' 'But . . . who tells you what to put in?' The heads turned back to William. 'We just. . . decide.'             'Er . . . is it true about big silver discs kidnapping people?' 'No!'             To William's surprise Mr Cartwright actually raised his hand. 'Yes, Mr Cartwright?'             I've got quite an important question, Mr de Worde, what with you knowing all this stuff 'Yes?' 'Have you got the address of the funny vegetable man?'             William and Otto arrived at the palace at five minutes to ten. There was a small crowd around the gates.             Commander Vimes was standing in the courtyard, talking to Slant and some of the Guild leaders. He smiled in a humourless way when he saw William.             'You're rather late, Mr de Worde,' he said.             'I'm early!'             'I meant that things have been happening.'             Mr Slant cleared his throat. 'Mr Scrope has sent a note,' he said. 'It appears that he is ill.'             William pulled out his notebook.             The civic leaders focused on it. He hesitated. And then uncertainty evaporated. I'm a de Worde, he thought, don't you dare look down your noses at me! You 've got to move with the Times. Oh well . . . here goes. . .             'Was it signed by his mother?' he said.             'I don't follow your meaning,' said the lawyer, but several of the Guild leaders turned their heads away.             'What's happening now, then?' said William. 'We don't have a ruler?'             'Happily,' said Mr Slant, who looked like a man in a private hell, 'Lord Vetinari is feeling very much better and expects to resume his duties tomorrow.'             'Excuse me, is he allowed to write that down?' said Lord Downey, head of the Assassins' Guild, as William made a note.             'Allowed by who?' said Vimes.             'Whom,' said William, under his breath.             'Well, he can't just write down anything, can he?' said Lord Downey. 'Supposing he writes down something we don't want him to write down?'             Vimes looked William firmly in the eye.             There's no law against it,' he said.             'Lord Vetinari is not going to go on trial, then, Lord Downey?' said William, holding Vimes's gaze for a second.             Downey, baffled, turned to Slant.             'Can he ask me that?' he said. 'Just come out with a question, just like that?'             'Yes, my lord.'             'Do I have to answer it?'             'It is a reasonable question in the circumstances, my lord, but you don't have to.'             'Do you have a message for the people of Ankh-Morpork?' said William sweetly.             'Do we, Mr Slant?' said Lord Downey.             Mr Slant sighed. 'It may be advisable, my lord, yes.'             'Oh, well, then - no, there won't be a trial. Obviously.'             'And he's not going to be pardoned?' said William.             Lord Downey turned to Mr Slant, who gave a little sigh.             'Again, my lord, it is--'             'All right, all right . . . No, he's not going to be pardoned because it is quite clear that he is quite guiltless,' said Downey testily.             'Would you say that this has become clear because of the excellent work done by Commander Vimes and his dedicated band of officers, aided in a small way by the Times!' said William.             Lord Downey looked blank. 'Would I say that?' he said.             'I think you possibly would, yes, my lord,' said Slant, sinking further in gloom.             'Oh. Then I would,' said Downey. 'Yes.' He craned his neck to see what William was writing down. Out of the corner of his eye 304 305             William saw Vimes's expression; it was a strange mixture of amusement and anger.             'And would you say, as spokesman for the Guild Council, that you are commending Commander Vimes?' said William.             'Now see here--' Vimes began.             'I suppose we would, yes.'             'I expect there's a Watch Medal or a commendation in the offing?'             'Now look--' Vimes said.             'Yes, very probably. Very probably,' said Lord Downey, now thoroughly buffeted by the winds of change.             William painstakingly wrote this down, too, and closed his notebook. This caused a general air of relief among the others.             'Thank you very much, my lord, and ladies and gentlemen,' he said cheerfully. 'Oh, Mister Vimes . . . do you and I have anything to discuss?'             'Not right at this moment,' growled Vimes.             'Oh, that's good. Well, I must go and get this written up, so thank you once--'             'You will of course show this . . . article to us before you put it in the paper,' said Lord Downey, rallying a little.             William wore his haughtiness like an overcoat. 'Um, no, I don't think I will, my lord. It's my paper, you see.'             'Can he--?'             'Yes, my lord, he can,' said Mr Slant. 'I'm afraid he can. The right to free speech is a fine old Ankh-Morpork tradition.'             'Good heavens, is it?'             'Yes, my lord.'             'How did that one survive?'             'I couldn't say, my lord,' said Slant. 'But Mr de Worde,' he added, staring at William, 'is, I believe, a young man who would not go out of his way to upset the smooth running of the city.'             William smiled at him politely, nodded to the rest of the company and walked back across the courtyard and out into the street. He waited until he was some distance away before he burst out laughing.             A week went past. It was notable because of the things that didn 't happen. There was no protest from Mr Carney or the Engravers' Guild. William wondered if he had been carefully moved into the 'to be left alone' file. After all, people might be thinking, Vetinari probably owed the Times a favour, and no one would want to be that favour, would they? There was no visit from the Watch, either. There had been rather more street cleaners around than usual, but after William sent a hundred dollars to Harry King, plus a bouquet for Mrs King, Gleam Street was no longer gleaming.             They'd moved to another shed while the old one was being rebuilt. Mr Cheese had been easy to deal with. He just wanted money. You know where you stand with simple people like that, even if it is with your hand in your wallet.             A new press had been rolled in, and once again money had made the effort almost frictionless. It had already been substantially redesigned by the dwarfs.             This shed was smaller than the old one, but Sacharissa had contrived to partition off a tiny editorial space. She'd put a potted plant and a coat rack in it, and talked excitedly of the space they'd have when the new building was finished, but William reckoned that however big it was it would never be neat. Newspaper people thought the floor was a big flat filing cabinet.             He had a new desk, too. In fact it was better than a new desk; it was a genuine antique one, made of genuine walnut, inlaid with leather, and with two inkwells, lots of drawers and genuine woodworm. At a desk like that a man could write.             They hadn't brought the spike.             William was pondering over a letter from the Ankh-Morpork League of Decency when the sense that someone was standing nearby made him look up.             Sacharissa had ushered in a small group of strangers, although after a second or two he recognized one of them as the late Mr Bendy, who was merely strange.             'You remember you said we ought to get more writers?' she said. 'You know Mr Bendy, and this is Mrs Tilly' - a small white-haired woman bobbed a curtsey to William - 'who likes cats and really nasty murders, and Mr O'Biscuit' - a rangy young man - 'who's all 306 307 the way from Fourecks and looking for a job before he goes home.'             'Really? What did you do in Fourecks, Mr O'Biscuit?'             I was at Bugarup University, mate.'             'You're a wizard?'             'No, mate. They threw me out, 'cos of what I wrote in the student magazine.'             'What was that?'             'Everything, really.'             'Oh. And . . . Mrs Tilly, I think you wrote a lovely well-spelled and grammatical letter to us suggesting that everyone under the age of eighteen should be flogged once a week to stop them being so noisy?'             'Once a day, Mr de Worde,' said Mrs Tilly. 'That'll teach 'em to go around being young!'             William hesitated. But the press needed feeding, and he and Sacharissa needed time off. Rocky was supplying some sports news, and while it was unreadable to William he put it in on the basis that anyone keen on sport probably couldn't read. There had to be more staff. It was worth a try.             'Very well, then,' he said. 'We'll give you all a trial, starting right-- Oh.'             He stood up. Everyone turned round to see why.             'Please don't bother,' said Lord Vetinari from the doorway. 'This is meant to be an informal visit. Taking on new staff, I see?'             The Patrician walked across the floor, followed by Drumknott.             'Er, yes,' said William. 'Are you all right, sir?'             'Oh, yes. Busy, of course. Such a lot of reading to catch up on. But I thought I should take a moment to come and see this "free press" Commander Vimes has told me about at considerable length.' He tapped one of the iron pillars of the press with his cane. 'However, it appears to be firmly bolted down.'             'Er, no, sir. I mean "free" in the sense of what is printed, sir,' said William.             'But surely you charge money?'             'Yes, but--'             'Oh, I see. You meant you should be free to print what you like?'             There was no escape. 'Well . . . broadly, yes, sir.'             'Because that's in the, what was the other interesting term? Ah, yes . . . the public interest?' Lord Vetinari picked up a piece of type and inspected it carefully.             'I think so, sir.'             'These stories about man-eating goldfish and people's husbands disappearing in big silver dishes?'             'No, sir. That's what the public is interested in. We do the other stuff, sir.'             'Amusingly shaped vegetables?'             'Well, a bit of that, sir. Sacharissa calls them human interest stories.'             'About vegetables and animals?'             'Yes, sir. But at least they're real vegetables and animals.'             'So . . . we have what the people are interested in, and human interest stories, which is what humans are interested in, and the public interest, which no one is interested in.'             'Except the public, sir,' said William, trying to keep up.             'Which isn't the same as people and humans?'             'I think it's more complicated than that, sir.'             'Obviously. Do you mean that the public is a different thing from the people you just see walking about the place? The public thinks big, sensible, measured thoughts while people run around doing silly things?'             'I think so. I may have to work on that idea too, I admit.'             'Hmm. Interesting. 7 have certainly noticed that groups of clever and intelligent people are capable of really stupid ideas,' said Lord Vetinari. He gave William a look which said 'I can read your mind, even the small print', and then gazed around the press room again. 'Well, I can see you have an eventful future ahead of you, and I wouldn't wish to make it any more difficult than it is clearly going to be. I notice you have work going on . . . ?'             'We're putting up a semaphore post,' said Sacharissa proudly. 'We'll be able to get a clacks straight from the big trunk tower. And we're opening offices in Sto Lat and Pseudopolis!'             Lord Vetinari raised his eyebrows. 'My word,' he said. 'Many new deformed vegetables will become available. I shall look forward with interest to seeing them.' 308 309             William decided not to rise to this one.             'It amazes me how the news you have so neatly fits the space available,' Lord Vetinari went on, staring down at the page Boddony was working on. 'No little gaps anywhere. And every day something happens that is important enough to be at the top of the first page, too. How strange-- Oh, "receive" takes an e after the c . . .'             Boddony looked up. Lord Vetinari's cane swung around with a hiss and hovered in the middle of a densely packed column. The dwarf looked closer and nodded, and took out a small tool.             It's upside down to him, and back to front, thought William. And the word's in the middle of the text. And he spotted it.             Things that are back to front are often easier to comprehend if they are upside down as well,' said Lord Vetinari, tapping his chin with the silver knob of his cane in an absent-minded way. 'In life as in politics.'             'What have you done with Charlie?' said William.             Lord Vetinari looked at him in nothing but innocent surprise. 'Why, nothing. Should I have done something?'             'Have you locked him up,' said Sacharissa suspiciously, 'in a deep cell, and made him wear a mask all the time and have all his meals brought by a deaf and dumb jailer?'             'Er . . . no, I don't think so,' said Lord Vetinari, giving her a smile. 'Although it would make a very good story, I've no doubt. No, I understand he's enrolled in the Guild of Actors, though of course I realize that there are those who would consider a deep dungeon a preferred alternative. I foresee a happy career for him, nevertheless. Children's parties, and so on.'             'What. . . as being you?'             'Indeed. Very risible.'             'And perhaps when you have some boring duty to perform, or have to sit for an oil painting, you'll have a little job for him?' said William.             'Hmm?' said Vetinari. William had thought that Vimes had a blank look, but he'd been wreathed in smiles compared to his lordship when Lord Vetinari wanted to look blank. 'Do you have any more questions, Mr de Worde?'             'I will have a lot,' said William, pulling himself together. The Times will be taking a very close interest in civic affairs.'             'How commendable,' said the Patrician. 'If you contact Drumknott here I'm sure I will find time to grant you an interview.'             The Right Word in the Right Place, William thought. Unpleasant though the knowledge was, his ancestors had always been amongst the first to get to grips in any conflict. In every siege, every ambush, every stricken dash against fortified emplacements, some de Worde had galloped towards death or glory and sometimes both. No enemy was too strong, no wound was too deep, no sword was too heavy for a de Worde. No grave was too deep, either. As his instincts wrestled with his tongue, he could feel his ancestors behind him, pushing him into the fray. Vetinari was too obviously playing with him. Oh well, at least let's die for something decent. . . Onward to death or glory or both!             'I am sure, my lord, that whenever you wish for an interview, the Times will be quite prepared to grant you one,' he said. 'If space allows.'             He hadn't realized how much background noise there was until it stopped. Drumknott had closed his eyes. Sacharissa was staring straight ahead. The dwarfs stood like statues.             Finally, Lord Vetinari broke the silence.             The Times? You mean you, and this young lady here?' he said, raising his eyebrows. 'Oh, I see. It's like the Public. Well, if I can be of any help to the Times--'             'We won't be bribed, either,' said William. He knew he was galloping in among the sharpened stakes here, but he'd be damned before he'd be patronized.             'Bribed?' said Vetinari. 'My dear sir, seeing what you're capable of for nothing, I'd hesitate to press even a penny in your hand. No, I have nothing to offer you except thanks, which of course are notorious for their evaporative tendencies. Ah, a little idea occurs. I shall be having a small dinner on Saturday. Some of the Guild leaders, a few ambassadors . . . all rather dull, but perhaps you and your very bold young lady . . . I do beg your pardon, I meant of course the Times . . . would like to attend?'             'I don't--' William began, and stopped suddenly. A shoe scraping down your shin can do that. 310 311             'The Times would be delighted,' said Sacharissa, beaming.             'Capital. In that case--'             There is a favour I need to ask, to tell the truth,' said William.             Vetinari smiled. 'Of course. If I can do anything for the Ti--'             'Will you be going to Harry King's daughter's wedding on Saturday?'             To his secret delight, the look that Vetinari gave him seemed to be blank because the man hadn't got anything to fill it with. But Drumknott leaned towards him and there were a few whispered words.             'Ah?' said the Patrician. 'Harry King. Ah, yes. A positive incarnation of the spirit that has made our city what it is today. Haven't I always said that, Drumknott?'             'Yes indeed, sir.'             'I shall certainly attend. I expect a lot of other civic leaders will be there?'             The question was left delicately spinning in the air.             'As many as possible,' said William.             'Fine carriages, tiaras, stately robes?' said Lord Vetinari, to the knob of his cane.             'Lots.'             'Yes, I'm sure they will be there,' said Lord Vetinari, and William knew that Harry King would walk his daughter past more top nobs than he could count, and while the world of Mr King did not have a lot of space for letters he could count very carefully indeed. Mrs King was going to have joyful hysterics out of sheer passive snobbery.             'In return, however,' said the Patrician, 'I must ask you not to upset Commander Vimes.' He gave a little cough. 'More than necessary.'             'I'm sure we can pull together, sir.'             Lord Vetinari raised his eyebrows. 'Oh, I do hope not, I really do hope not. Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions.' He smiled. 'It's the only way to make progress. That and, of course, moving with the times. Good day to you.'             He nodded to them and walked out of the building. 312 1             'Why is everyone still here?' William demanded, when the spell had broken.             'Er . . . we still don't know what we should be doing,' said Mrs Tilly hopelessly.             'Go and find out things that people want to put in the paper,' said Sacharissa.             'And things that people don't want put in the paper,' William added.             'And interesting things,' said Sacharissa.             'Like that rain of dogs there was a few months ago?' said O'Biscuit.             There was no rain of dogs two months ago!' William snapped.             'But--'             'One puppy is not a rain. It fell out of a window. Look, we are not interested in pet precipitation, spontaneous combustion, or people being carried off by weird things from out of the sky--'             'Unless it happens,' said Sacharissa.             'Well, obviously we are if it does happen,' said William. 'But when it doesn't, we're not. Okay? News is unusual things happening--'             'And usual things happening,' said Sacharissa, screwing up a report from the Ankh-Morpork Funny Vegetable Society.             'And usual things, yes,' said William. 'But news is mainly what someone somewhere doesn't want you to put in the paper--'             'Except that sometimes it isn't,' said Sacharissa again.             'News is--' said William, and stopped. They watched him politely as he stood with his mouth open and one finger raised.             'News,' he said, 'all depends. But you'll know it when you see it. Clear? Right. Now go and find some.'             That was a bit abrupt,' said Sacharissa after they'd filed out.             'Well, I was thinking,' said William. 'I mean, it's been a . . . a funny old time all round, what with one thing and another--'             '--people trying to kill us, your being imprisoned, a plague of dogs, the place catching on fire, your being cheeky to Lord Vetinari--' said Sacharissa.             'Yes, well. . . so would it really matter if you and I, you know . . . you and I . . . took the afternoon off? I mean,' he added 313 desperately, 'it doesn't say anywhere that we have to publish every day, does it?'             'Except at the top of the newspaper,' said Sacharissa.             'Yes, but you can't believe everything you read in the newspapers.'             'Well . . . all right. I'll just finish this report--'             'Messages for you, Mr William,' said one of the dwarfs, dropping a pile of paper on his desk. William grunted and glanced through them. There were a few test clackses from Lancre and Sto Lat, and already he could see that pretty soon he'd have to go out into the country to train some real, yes, reporters of news, because he could see there was only a limited future in these earnest missives from village grocers and publicans who'd be paid a penny a line. There were a couple of carrier pigeon messages, too, from those people who couldn't get a grip on the new technology.             'Ye gods,' he said, under his breath. The Mayor of Quirm has been struck by a meteorite . . . again.'             'Can that happen?' said Sacharissa.             'Apparently. This is from Mr Pune at the council offices there. Sensible chap, not much imagination. He says that this time it was waiting for the mayor in an alley,'             'Really? The woman we get our linen from has got a son who is the lecturer in Vindictive Astronomy at the University.'             'Would he give us a quote?'             'He smiles at me when he sees me in the shop,' said Sacharissa firmly. 'So he will.'             'O-kay. If you can--'             'Afternoon, folks!'             Mr Wintler was standing at the counter. He was holding a cardboard box.             'Oh, dear . . .' murmured William.             'Just you take a look at this one,' said Mr Wintler, a man who would not take a hint if it was wrapped around a lead pipe.             'I think we've had enough funny ve--' William began.             And stopped.             It was a big potato that the rubicund man was lifting from his box. It was knobbly, too. William had seen knobbly potatoes before. They could look like faces, if that was the way you wanted 314 to amuse yourself. But with this one you didn't have to imagine a face. It had a face. It was made up of dents and knobs and potato eyes, but it looked very much like a face that had been staring madly into his and trying to kill him very recently. He remembered it quite well, because he still occasionally woke up around 3 a.m. with it in front of him.             'It's . . . not. . . exactly . . .funny,' said Sacharissa, glancing sideways at William.             'Amazing, isn't it?' said Mr Wintler. 'I wouldn't have brought it round, but you've always been very interested in them,'             'A day without a bifurcated parsnip,' said Sacharissa sweetly, 'is a day without sunshine, Mr Wintler. William?'             'Huh?' said William, tearing his eyes away from the potato head. 'Is it me, or does it look . . . surprised?'             'It does rather,' said Sacharissa.             'Did you just dig this up?' said William.             'Oh, no. It's been in one of my sacks for months,' said Wintler.             . . . which upset an occult train of thought that had started to trundle through William's head. But . . . the universe was a funny place. Cause and effect, effect and cause . . . He'd rip off his right arm rather than write that down, though.             'What are you going to do with it?' he said. 'Boil it?'             'Bless you, no. The variety's far too floury. No, this one's going to be chips.'             'Chips, eh?' said William. And it seemed, strangely, exactly the right thing to do.             'Yes. Yes, that's a good idea. Let it fry, Mr Wintler. Let it fry.'             The clock moved on.             One of the reporters came in to say that the Alchemists' Guild had exploded, and did this count as news? Otto was summoned from his crypt and sent out to get a picture. William finished his piece about yesterday's events and passed it over to the dwarfs. Someone came in and said there was a big crowd in Sator Square because the Bursar (71) was sitting on a roof seven floors up, looking puzzled. Sacharissa, wielding her pencil with care, crossed out every adjective in a report of the Ankh-Morpork Floral Arranging Society, reducing its length by half. 315             William went out to find out about the Bursar (71), then wrote a few short paragraphs. Wizards doing odd things wasn't news. Wizards doing odd things was wizards.             He threw the piece into the Out tray, and looked at the press.             It was black, and big, and complex. Without eyes, without a face, without life . . . It looked back at him.             He thought: you don't need old sacrificial stones. Lord Vetinari was wrong about that. He touched his forehead. The bruise had long ago faded.             You put your mark on me. Well, I'm wise to you.             'Let's go,' he said.             Sacharissa looked up, still preoccupied. 'What?'             'Let's go. Out. Now. For a walk, or tea, or shopping,' said William. 'Let's not be here. Don't argue, please. Coat on. Now. Before it realizes. Before it finds a way to stop us.'             'What are you talking about?'             He pulled her coat off the peg and grabbed her arm. 'No time to explain!'             She allowed herself to be dragged out into the street, where William took a deep breath and relaxed.             'Now would you mind telling me what that was all about?' said Sacharissa. 'I've got a pile of work in there, you know.'             'I know. Come on. We're probably not far enough away. There's a new noodle place opened in Elm Street. Everyone says it's pretty good. How about it?'             'But there's all that work to do!'             'So? It'll still be there tomorrow, won't it?'             She hesitated. 'Well, an hour or two won't hurt, probably,' she admitted.             'Good. Let's go.'             They'd reached the junction of Treacle Mine Road and Elm Street when it caught up with them.             There were cries further along the street. William swivelled his head, saw the four-horse brewer's dray thundering out of control. He saw the people diving and scuttling out of the way. He saw the soup-plate hooves throw up mud and ice. He saw the brasses on the harness, the gleam, the steam . . . 316             His head swivelled the other way. He saw the old woman with two sticks crossing the street, quite oblivious of the onrushing death. He saw the shawl, the white hair . . .             A blur went past him. The man twisted in the air, landed on his shoulder in the centre of the street, rolled upright, grabbed the woman, and leapt--             The wayward wagon went by in a rush of steam and slush. The team tried to corner at the crossroads. The dray behind them did not. A melee of hooves and horses and wheels and sleet and screams whirled onwards and took the windows out of several shops before the cart rammed up against a stone pillar and stopped dead.             In obedience to the laws of physics and the narrative of such things, its load did not. The barrels burst their bonds, crashed down on to the street and rolled onwards. A few smashed, filling the gutter with suds. The others, thumping and banging into one another, became the focus of attention of every upright citizen who could recognize a hundred gallons of beer which suddenly didn't belong to anyone any more and was heading for freedom.             William and Sacharissa looked at one another.             'Okay - I'll get the story, you go and find Otto!'             They said that at the same time, and then stared defiantly at each other.             'All right, all right,' said William. 'Find some kid, bribe him to get Otto, I'll talk to that Plucky Watchman who grabbed the old lady in A Mercy Dash, you cover the Big Smash, okay?'             'I'll find the kid,' said Sacharissa, pulling out her own notebook, 'but you cover the accident and the Beer Barrel Bonanza and I'll talk to the White-Haired Granny. Human interest, right?'             'All right!' William conceded. That was Captain Carrot who did the rescue. Make sure Otto gets a picture, and get his age!'             'Of course!'             William headed towards the crowd around the smashed wagon. Many people were in distant pursuit of the barrels, and the odd scream suggested that thirsty people seldom realize how hard it is to stop a hundred gallons of beer in a big oak cask when it's on a roll. 317             He dutifully noted down the name on the side of the dray. A couple of men were helping the horses up, but they did not appear to have much to do with beer delivery. They appeared to be men who simply wanted to help lost horses, and take them home and make them better. If this had to mean dyeing areas of their coats and swearing blind they'd owned them for the past two years, then so be it.             He approached a bystander not obviously engaged in any felonious activity.             'Exc--' he began. But the citizen's eyes had already detected the notebook.             'I saw it all,' he said.             'Did you?'             'It was a ter-ri-ble scene,' said the man, at dictation speed. 'But the watch-man made a death-defying plunge to res-cue the old lady and he de-serves a med-al.'             'Really?' said William, scribbling fast. 'And you are--'             'Sa-muel Arblaster (43), stone-mason, of lib The Scours,' said the man.             'I saw it too,' said a woman next to him, urgently. 'Mrs Florrie Perry, blonde mother of three, from Dolly Sisters. It was a scene of car-nage.'             William risked a glance at his pencil. It was a kind of magic wand.             'Where's the iconographer?' said Mrs Perry, looking around hopefully.             'Er . . . not here yet,' said William.             'Oh.' She looked disappointed. 'Shame about the poor woman with the snake, wasn't it? I expect he's off taking pictures of her.'             'Er . . . I hope not,' said William.             It was a long afternoon. One barrel had rolled into a barber shop and exploded. Some of the brewer's men turned up, and there was a fight with several of the barrels' new owners, who claimed rights of salvage. One enterprising man tapped a barrel by the roadside and set up a temporary pub. Otto arrived. He took pictures of barrel rescuers. He took a picture of the fight. He took pictures of the Watch arriving to arrest everyone still standing. He took pictures of the white-haired old lady and the proud Captain Carrot and, in his excitement, of his thumb! 318             It was a good story all round. And William was halfway through writing his part of it back at the Times when he remembered.             He'd watched it happening. And he'd reached for his notebook. That was a worrying thought, he told Sacharissa.             'So?' she said, from her side of the desk. How many Is in "gallant"?'             'Two,' said William. 'I mean, I didn't try to do anything. I thought: this is a Story, and I have to tell it.'             'Yep,' said Sacharissa, still bowed over her writing. 'We've been press-ganged.'             'But it's not--'             'Look at it like this,' said Sacharissa, starting a fresh page. 'Some people are heroes. And some people jot down notes.'             'Yes, but that's not very--'             Sacharissa glanced up and flashed him a smile. 'Sometimes they're the same person,' she said.             This time it was William who looked down, modestly.             'You think that's really true?' he said.             She shrugged. 'Really true? Who knows? This is a newspaper, isn't it? It just has to be true until tomorrow.'             William felt the temperature rise. Her smile had really been attractive. 'Are you . . . sure?'             'Oh, yes. True until tomorrow is good enough for me.'             And behind her the big black vampire of a printing press waited to be fed, and to be brought alive in the dark of the night for the light of the morning. It chopped the complexities of the world into little stories, and it was always hungry.             And it needed a double-column story for page two, William remembered.             And, a few inches under his hand, a woodworm chewed its way contentedly through the ancient timber. Reincarnation enjoys a joke as much as the next philosophical hypothesis. As it chewed, the woodworm thought: 'This is —ing good wood!'             Because nothing has to be true for ever. Just for long enough, to tell you the truth.               
Thief of Time - Terry Pratchett	----	Thief of Time     Thief of Time     By Terry Pratchett       According to the First Scroll of Wen the Eternally Surprised, Wen stepped out of the cave where he had received enlightenment and into the dawning light of the first day of the rest of his life. He stared at the rising sun for some time, because he had never seen it before.     He prodded with a sandal the dozing form of Clodpool the apprentice, and said: 'I have seen. Now I understand.'     Then he stopped, and looked at the thing next to Clodpool.     'What is that amazing thing?' he said.     'Er... er... it's a tree, master,' said Clodpool, still not quite awake. 'Remember? It was there yesterday.'     'There was no yesterday.'     'Er... er... I think there was, master,' said Clodpool, struggling to his feet. 'Remember? We came up here and I cooked a meal, and had the rind off your sklang because you didn't want it.'     'I remember yesterday,' said Wen thoughtfully. 'But the memory is in my head now. Was yesterday real? Or is it only the memory that is real? Truly, yesterday I was not born.'     Clodpool's face became a mask of agonized incomprehension.     'Dear stupid Clodpool, I have learned everything,' said Wen. 'In the cup of the hand there is no past, no future. There is only now. There is no time but the present. We have a great deal to do.'     Clodpool hesitated. There was something new about his master. There was a glow in his eyes and, when he moved, there were strange silvery-blue lights in the air, like reflections from liquid mirrors.     'She has told me everything,' Wen went on. 'I know that time was made for men, not the other way round. I have learned how to shape it and bend it. I know how to make a moment last for ever, because it already has. And I can teach these skills even to you, Clodpool. I have heard the heartbeat of the universe. I know the answers to many questions. Ask me.'     The apprentice gave him a bleary look. It was too early in the morning for it to be early in the morning. That was the only thing that he currently knew for sure.     'Er... what does master want for breakfast?' he said.     Wen looked down from their camp and across the snowfields and purple mountains to the golden daylight creating the world, and mused upon certain aspects of humanity.     'Ah,' he said. 'One of the difficult ones.'           For something to exist, it has to be observed.     For something to exist, it has to have a position in time and space. And this explains why nine-tenths of the mass of the universe is unaccounted for.     Nine-tenths of the universe is the knowledge of the position and direction of everything in the other tenth. Every atom has its biography, every star its file, every chemical exchange its equivalent of the inspector with a clipboard. It is unaccounted for because it is doing the accounting for the rest of it, and you cannot see the back of your own head.[1]     Nine-tenths of the universe, in fact, is the paperwork.     And if you want the story, then remember that a story does not unwind. It weaves. Events that start in different places and different times all bear down on that one tiny point in space-time, which is the perfect moment.     Supposing an emperor was persuaded to wear a new suit of clothes whose material was so fine that, to the common eye, the clothes weren't there. And suppose a little boy pointed out this fact in a loud, clear voice...     Then you have The Story of the Emperor Who Had No Clothes.     But if you knew a bit more, it would be The Story of the Boy Who Got a Well-Deserved Thrashing from His Dad for Being Rude to Royalty, and Was Locked Up.     Or The Story of the Whole Crowd Who Were Rounded Up by the Guards and Told 'This Didn't Happen, Okay? Does Anyone Want to Argue?'     Or it could be a story of how a whole kingdom suddenly saw the benefits of the 'new clothes', and developed an enthusiasm for healthy sports[2] in a lively and refreshing atmosphere which got many new adherents every year, and led to a recession caused by the collapse of the conventional clothing industry.     It could even be a story about The Great Pneumonia Epidemic of '09.     It all depends on how much you know.     Supposing you'd watched the slow accretion of snow over thousands of years as it was compressed and pushed over the deep rock until the glacier calved its icebergs into the sea, and you watched an iceberg drift out through the chilly waters, and you got to know its cargo of happy polar bears and seals as they looked forward to a brave new life in the other hemisphere where they say the ice floes are lined with crunchy penguins, and then wham! Tragedy loomed in the shape of thousands of tons of unaccountably floating iron and an exciting sound track...     ... you'd want to know the whole story.     And this one starts with desks.     This is the desk of a professional. It is clear that their job is their life. There are... human touches, but these are the human touches that strict usage allows in a chilly world of duty and routine.     Mostly they're on the only piece of real colour in this picture of blacks and greys. It's a coffee mug. Someone somewhere wanted to make it a jolly mug. It bears a rather unconvincing picture of a teddy bear, and the legend 'To The World's Greatest Grandad' and the slight change in the style of lettering on the word 'Grandad' makes it clear that this has come from one of those stalls that have hundreds of mugs like this, declaring that they're for the world's greatest Grandad/Dad/Mum/Granny/Uncle/Aunt/Blank. Only someone whose life contains very little else, one feels, would treasure a piece of gimcrackery like this.     It currently holds tea, with a slice of lemon.     The bleak desktop also contains a paperknife in the shape of a scythe and a number of hourglasses.     Death picks up the mug in a skeletal hand...     ... and took a sip, pausing only to look again at the wording he'd read thousands of times before, and then put it down.     VERY WELL, he said, in tones of funeral bells. SHOW ME.     The last item on the desktop was a mechanical contrivance. 'Contrivance' was exactly the right kind of word for it. Most of it was two discs. One was horizontal and contained a circlet of very small squares of what would prove to be carpet. The other was set vertically and had a large number of arms, each one of which held a very small slice of buttered toast. Each slice was set so that it could spin freely as the turning of the wheel brought it down towards the carpet disc.     I BELIEVE I AM BEGINNING TO GET THE IDEA, said Death.     The small figure by the machine saluted smartly and beamed, if a rat skull could beam. It pulled a pair of goggles over its eye sockets, hitched up its robe and clambered into the machine.     Death was never quite sure why he allowed the Death of Rats to have an independent existence. After all, being Death meant being the Death of everything, including rodents of all descriptions. But perhaps everyone needs a tiny part of themselves that can, metaphorically, be allowed to run naked in the rain[3], to think the unthinkable thoughts, to hide in corners and spy on the world, to do the forbidden but enjoyable deeds.     Slowly, the Death of Rats pushed the treadles. The wheels began to spin.     'Exciting, eh?' said a hoarse voice by Death's ear. It belonged to Quoth, the raven, who had attached himself to the household as the Death of Rats' personal transport and crony. He was, he always said, only in it for the eyeballs.     The carpets began to turn. The tiny toasties slapped down randomly, sometimes with a buttery squelch, sometimes without. Quoth watched carefully, in case any eyeballs were involved.     Death saw that some time and effort had been spent devising a mechanism to rebutter each returning slice. An even more complex one measured the number of buttered carpets.     After a couple of complete turns the lever of the buttered carpet ratio device had moved to 60 per cent, and the wheels stopped.     WELL? said Death. IF YOU DID IT AGAIN, IT COULD WELL BE THAT-     The Death of Rats shifted a gear lever and began to pedal again.     SQUEAK, it commanded. Death obediently leaned closer.     This time the needle went only as high as 40 per cent.     Death leaned closer still.     The eight pieces of carpet that had been buttered this time were, in their entirety, the pieces that had been missed first time round.     Spidery cogwheels whirred in the machinc. A sign emerged, rather shakily, on springs, with an effect that was the visual equivalent of the word 'boing'.     A moment later two sparklers spluttered fitfully into life and sizzled away on either side of the word: MALIGNITY.     Death nodded. It was just as he'd suspected.     He crossed his study, the Death of Rats scampering ahead of him, and reached a full-length mirror. It was dark, like the bottom of a well. There was a pattern of skulls and bones around the frame, for the sake of appearances; Death could not look himself in the skull in a mirror with cherubs and roses around it.     The Death of Rats climbed the frame in a scrabble of claws and looked at Death expectantly from the top. Quoth fluttered over and pecked briefly at his own reflection, on the basis that anything was worth a try.     SHOW ME, said Death. SHOW ME... MY THOUGHTS.     A chessboard appeared, but it was triangular, and so big that only the nearest point could be seen. Right on this point was the world - turtle, elephants, the little orbiting sun and all. It was the Discworld, which existed only just this side of total improbability and, therefore, in border country. In border country the border gets crossed, and sometimes things creep into the universe that have rather more on their mind than a better life for their children and a wonderful future in the fruit-picking and domestic service industries.     On every other black or white triangle of the chessboard, all the way to infinity, was a small grey shape, rather like an empty hooded robe.     Why now? thought Death.     He recognized them. They were not life forms. They were... non-life forms. They were the observers of the operation of the universe, its clerks, its auditors. They saw to it that things spun and rocks fell.     And they believed that for a thing to exist it had to have a position in time and space. Humanity had arrived as a nasty shock. Humanity practically was things that didn't have a position in time and space, such as imagination, pity, hope, history and belief. Take those away and all you had was an ape that fell out of trees a lot.     Intelligent life was, therefore, an anomaly. It made the filing untidy. The Auditors hated things like that. Periodically, they tried to tidy things up a little.     The year before, astronomers across the Discworld had been puzzled to see the stars wheel gently across the sky as the world-turtle executed a roll. The thickness of the world never allowed them to see why, but Great A'Tuin's ancient head had snaked out and down and had snapped right out of the sky the speeding asteroid that would, had it hit, have meant that no one would have needed to buy a diary ever again.     No, the world could take care of obvious threats like that. So now the grey robes preferred more subtle, cowardly skirmishes in their endless desire for a universe where nothing happened that was not completely predictable.     The butter-side-down effect was only a trivial but telling indicator. It showed an increase in activity. Give up, was their eternal message. Go back to being blobs in the ocean. Blobs are easy.     But the great game went on at many levels, Death knew. And often it was hard to know who was playing.     EVERY CAUSE HAS ITS EFFECT, he said aloud. SO EVERY EFFECT HAS ITS CAUSE.     He nodded at the Death of Rats. SHOW ME, said Death. SHOW ME... A BEGINNING.           Tick     It was a bitter winter's night. The man hammered on the back door, sending snow sliding off the roof.     The girl, who had been admiring her new hat in the mirror, tweaked the already low neckline of her dress for slightly more exposure, just in case the caller was male, and went and opened the door.     A figure was outlined against the freezing starlight. Flakes were already building up on his cloak.     'Mrs Ogg? The midwife?' he said.     'It's Miss, actually,' she said proudly. 'And witch, too, o'course.' She indicated her new black pointy hat. She was still at the stage of wearing it in the house.     'You must come at once. It's very urgent.'     The girl looked suddenly panic-stricken. 'Is it Mrs Weaver? I didn't reckon she was due for another couple of we-'     'I have come a long way,' said the figure. 'They say you are the best in the world.'     'What? Me? I've only delivered one!' said Miss Ogg, now looking hunted. 'Biddy Spective is a lot more experienced than me! And old Minnie Forthwright! Mrs Weaver was going to be my first solo, 'cos she's built like a wardro-'     'I do beg your pardon. I will not trespass further on your time.'     The stranger retreated into the flake-speckled shadows.     'Hello?' said Miss Ogg. 'Hello?'     But there was nothing there, except footprints. Which stopped in the middle of the snow-covered path...           Tick     There was a hammering on the door. Mrs Ogg put down the child that had been sitting on her knee and went and raised the latch.     A dark figure stood outlined against the warm summer evening sky, and there was something strange about its shoulders.     'Mrs Ogg? You are married now?'     'Yep. Twice,' said Mrs Ogg cheerfully. 'What can I do for y-'     'You must come at once. It's very urgent.'     'I didn't know anyone was-'     'I have come a long way,' said the figure.     Mrs Ogg paused. There was something in the way he had pronounced long. And now she could see that the whiteness on the cloak was snow, melting fast. Faint memory stirred.     'Well, now,' she said, because she'd learned a lot in the last twenty years or so, 'that's as may be, and I'll always do the best I can, ask anyone. But I wouldn't say I'm the best. Always learnin' something new, that's me.'     'Oh. In that case I will call at a more convenient... moment.'     'Why've you got snow on-?'     But, without ever quite vanishing, the stranger was no longer present...           Tick     There was a hammering on the door. Nanny Ogg carefully put down her brandy nightcap and stared at the wall for a moment. Now a lifetime of edge witchery[4] had honed senses that most people never really knew they had, and something in her head went 'click'.     On the hob the kettle for her hot-water bottle was just coming to the boil.     She laid down her pipe, got up and opened the door on this springtime midnight.     'You've come a long way, I'm thinking,' she said, showing no surprise at the dark figure.     'That is true, Mrs Ogg.'     'Everyone who knows me calls me Nanny.'     She looked down at the melting snow dripping off the cloak. It hadn't snowed up here for a month.     'And it's urgent, I expect?' she said, as memory unrolled.     'Indeed.'     'And now you got to say, "You must come at once."'     'You must come at once.'     'Well, now,' she said. 'I'd say, yes, I'm a pretty good midwife, though I do say it myself. I've seen hundreds into the world. Even trolls, which is no errand for the inexperienced. I know birthing backwards and forwards and damn near sideways at times. Always been ready to learn something new, though.' She looked down modestly. 'I wouldn't say I'm the best,' she said, 'but I can't think of anyone better, I have to say.'     'You must leave with me now.'     'Oh, I must, must I?' said Nanny Ogg.     'Yes!'     An edge witch thinks fast, because edges can shift so quickly. And she learns to tell when a mythology is unfolding, and when the best you can do is put yourself in its path and run to keep up.     'I'll just go and get-'     'There is no time.'     'But I can't just walk right out and-'     'Now.'     Nanny reached behind the door for her birthing bag, always kept there for just such occasions as this, full of the things she knew she'd want and a few of the things she always prayed she'd never need.     'Right,' she said.     She left.           Tick     The kettle was just boiling when Nanny walked back into her kitchen. She stared at it for a moment and then moved it off the fire.     There was still a drop of brandy left in the glass by her chair. She drained that, then refilled the glass to the brim from the bottle.     She picked up her pipe. The bowl was still warm. She pulled on it, and the coals crackled.     Then she took something out of her bag, which was now a good deal emptier, and, brandy glass in her hand, sat down to look at it.     'Well,' she said at last. 'That was... very unusual...'           Tick     Death watched the image fade. A few flakes of snow that had blown out of the mirror had already melted on the floor, but there was still a whiff of pipe smoke in the air.     AH, I SEE, he said. A BIRTHING, IN STRANGE CIRCUMSTANCES. BUT IS THAT WHAT THE PROBLEM WAS OR WAS THAT WHAT THE SOLUTION WILL BE?     SQUEAK, said the Death of Rats.     QUITE SO, said Death. YOU MAY VERY WELL BE RIGHT. I DO KNOW THAT THE MIDWIFE WILL NEVER TELL ME.     The Death of Rats looked surprised. SQUEAK?     Death smiled. DEATH? ASKING AFTER THE LIFE OF A CHILD? NO. SHE WOULD NOT.     ''scuse me,' said the raven, 'but how come Miss Ogg became Mrs Ogg? Sounds like a bit of a rural arrangement, if you catch my meaning.'     WITCHES ARE MATRILINEAL, said Death. THEY FIND IT MUCH EASIER TO CHANGE MEN THAN TO CHANGE NAMES.     He went back to his desk and opened a drawer.     There was a thick book there, bound in night. On the cover, where a book like this might otherwise say 'Our Wedding' or, 'Acme Photo Album', it said 'MEMORIES'.     Death turned the heavy pages carefully. Some of the memories escaped as he did so, forming brief pictures in the air before the page turned, and they went flying and fading into the distant, dark corners of the room. There were snatches of sound, too, of laughter, tears, screams and for some reason a brief burst of xylophone music, which caused him to pause for a moment.     An immortal has a great deal to remember. Sometimes its better to put things where they will be safe.     One ancient memory, brown and cracking round the edges, lingered in the air over the desk. It showed five figures, four on horseback, one in a chariot, all apparently riding out of a thunderstorm. The horses were at a flat gallop. There was a lot of smoke and flame and general excitement.     AH, THE OLD DAYS, said Death. BEFORE THERE WAS THIS FASHION FOR HAVING A SOLO CAREER.     SQUEAK? the Death of Rats enquired.     OH, YES, said Death. ONCE THERE WERE FIVE OF US. FIVE HORSEMEN. BUT YOU KNOW HOW THINGS ARE. THERE'S ALWAYS A ROW. CREATIVE DISAGREEMENTS, ROOMS BEING TRASHED, THAT SORT OF THING. He sighed. AND THINGS SAID THAT PERHAPS SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN SAID.     He turned a few more pages and sighed again. When you needed an ally, and you were Death, on whom could you absolutely rely?     His thoughtful gaze fell on the teddy bear mug.     Of course, there was always family. Yes. He'd promised not to do this again, but he'd never got the hang of promises.     He got up and went back to the mirror. There was not a lot of time. Things in the mirror were closer than they appeared.     There was a slithering noise, a breathless moment of silence, and a crash like a bag of skittles being dropped.     The Death of Rats winced. The raven took off hurriedly.     HELP ME UP, PLEASE, said a voice from the shadows. AND THEN PLEASE CLEAN UP THE DAMN BUTTER.           Tick     This desk was a field of galaxies.     Things twinkled. There were complex wheels and spirals, brilliant against the blackness...     Jeremy always liked the moment when he had a clock in pieces, with every wheel and spring carefully laid out on the black velvet cloth in front of him. It was like looking at Time, dismantled, controllable, every part of it understood...     He wished his life was like that. It would be nice to reduce it to bits, spread them all out on the table, clean and oil them properly and put them together so that they coiled and spun as they ought to. But sometimes it seemed that the life of Jeremy had been assembled by a not very competent craftsman, who had allowed a number of small but important things to go ping into the corners of the room.     He wished he liked people more, but somehow he could never get on with them. He never knew what to say. If life was a party, he wasn't even in the kitchen. He envied the people who made it as far as the kitchen. There would probably be the remains of the dip to eat, and a bottle or two of cheap wine that someone had brought along that'd probably be okay if you took out the drowned cigarette stubs. There might even be a girl in the kitchen, although Jeremy knew the limits of his imagination.     But Jeremy never even got an invitation.     Clocks, now... clocks were different. He knew what made clocks tick.     His full name was Jeremy Clockson, and that was no accident. He'd been a member of the Guild of Clockmakers since he was a few days old, and everyone knew what that meant. It meant his life had begun in a basket, on a doorstep. Everyone knew how it worked. All the Guilds took in the foundlings that arrived with the morning milk. It was an ancient form of charity, and there were far worse fates. The orphans got a life, and an upbringing of a sort, and a trade, and a future, and a name. Many a fine lady or master craftsman or city dignitary had a telltale surname like Ludd or Doughy or Pune or Clockson. They'd been named after trade heroes or patron deities, and this turned them into a family, of a sort. The older ones remembered where they came from, and at Hogswatch they were free with donations of food and clothing to the various younger brothers and sisters of the basket. It wasn't perfect, but, then, what is?     So Jeremy had grown up healthy, and rather strange, and with a gift for his adoptive craft that almost made up for every other personal endowment that he did not possess.     The shop bell rang. He sighed and put down his eyeglass. He didn't rush, though. There was a lot to look at in the shop. Sometimes he even had to cough to attract the customer's attention. That being said, sometimes Jeremy had to cough to attract the attention of his reflection when he was shaving.     Jeremy tried to be an interesting person. The trouble was that he was the kind of person who, having decided to be an interesting person, would first of all try to find a book called How to Be An Interesting Person and then see whether there were any courses available. He was puzzled that people seemed to think he was a boring conversationalist. Why, he could talk about all kinds of clock. Mechanical clocks, magical clocks, water clocks, fire clocks, floral clocks, candle clocks, sand clocks, cuckoo clocks, the rare Hershebian beetle clocks... But for some reason he always ran out of listeners before he ran out of clocks.     He stepped out into his shop, and stopped.     'Oh... I'm so sorry to have kept you,' he said. It was a woman. And two trolls had taken up positions just inside the door. Their dark glasses and huge ill-fitting black suits put them down as people who put people down. One of them cracked his knuckles when he saw Jeremy looking at him.     The woman was wrapped in an enormous and expensive white fur coat, which might have explained the trolls. Long black hair cascaded over her shoulders, and her face was made up so pale that it was almost the shade of the coat. She was... quite attractive, thought Jeremy, who was admittedly no judge whatsoever, but it was a monochromatic beauty. He wondered if she was a zombie. There were quite a few in the city now, and the prudent ones had taken it with them when they died, and probably could afford a coat like that.     'A beetle clock?' she said. She had turned away from the glass dome.     'Oh, er, yes... The Hershebian lawyer beetle has a very consistent daily routine,' said Jeremy. 'I, er, only keep it for, um, interest.'     'How very... organic,' said the woman. She stared at him as if he was another kind of beetle. 'We are Myria LeJean. Lady Myria LeJean.'     Jeremy obediently held out a hand. Patient men at the Clockmakers' Guild had spent a long time teaching him how to Relate to People before giving it up in despair, but some things had stuck.     Her ladyship looked at the waiting hand. Finally, one of the trolls lumbered over.     'Der lady does not shake hands,' it said, in a reverberating whisper. 'She are not a tactile kinda person.'     'Oh?' said Jeremy.     'But enough of this, perhaps,' said Lady LeJean, stepping back. 'You make clocks, and we-'     There was a jingling noise from Jeremy's shirt pocket. He pulled out a large watch.     'If that was chiming the hour, you are fast,' said the woman.     'Er... um... no... you might find it a good idea to, um, put your hands over your ears...'     It was three o'clock. And every clock struck it at once. Cuckoos cuckooed, the hour pins fell out of the candle clock, the water clocks gurgled and seesawed as the buckets emptied, bells clanged, gongs banged, chimes tinkled and the Hershebian lawyer beetle turned a somersault.     The trolls had clapped their huge hands over their ears, but Lady LeJean merely stood with her hands on her hips, head on one side, until the last echo died away.     'All correct, we see,' she said.     'What?' said Jeremy. He'd been thinking: perhaps a vampire, then?     'You keep all your clocks at the right time,' said Lady LeJean. 'You're very particular about that, Mr Jeremy?'     'A clock that doesn't tell the right time is... wrong,' said Jeremy. Now he was wishing she'd go away. Her eyes were worrying him. He'd heard about people having grey eyes, and her eyes were grey, like the eyes of a blind person, but she was clearly looking at him and through him.     'Yes, there was a little bit of trouble over that, wasn't there?' said Lady LeJean.     'I... I don't... I don't... don't know what you're-'     'At the Clockmakers' Guild? Williamson, who kept his clock five minutes fast? And you-'     'I am much better now,' said Jeremy stiffly. 'I have medicine. The Guild was very kind. Now please go away.'     'Mr Jeremy, we want you to build us a clock that is accurate.'     'All my clocks are accurate,' said Jeremy, staring at his feet. He wasn't due to take his medicine for another five hours and seventeen minutes, but he was feeling the need for it now. 'And now I must ask-'     'How accurate are your clocks?'     'Better than a second in eleven months,' said Jeremy promptly.     'That is very good?'     'Yes.' It had been very good. That was why the Guild had been so understanding. Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.     'We want much better accuracy than that.'     'It can't be done.'     'Oh? You mean that you can't do it?'     'No, I can't. And if I can't, then neither can any other clockmaker in the city. I'd know about it if they could!'     'So proud? Are you sure?'     'I'd know.' And he would. He'd know for certain. The candle clocks and the water clocks... they were toys, which he kept out of a sort of respect for the early days of timekeeping, and even then he'd spent weeks experimenting with waxes and buckets and had turned out primitive clocks that you could, well, very nearly set your watch by. It was okay that they couldn't be that accurate. They were simple, organic things, parodies of time. They didn't grind across his nerves. But a real clock... well, that was a mechanism, a thing of numbers, and numbers had to be perfect.     She put her head on one side again. 'How do you test to that accuracy?' she said.     They'd often asked him that in the Guild, once his talent had revealed itself. He hadn't been able to answer the question then, either, because it didn't make sense. You built a clock to be accurate. A portrait painter painted a picture. If it looked like the subject, then it was an accurate picture. If you built the clock right, it would be accurate. You didn't have to test it. You'd know.     'I'd know,' he said.     'We want you to build a clock that is very accurate.'     'How accurate?'     'Accurate.'     'But I can only build to the limit of my materials,' said Jeremy. 'I have... developed certain techniques, but there are things like... the vibration of the traffic in the street, little changes in temperature, that sort of thing.'     Lady LeJean was now inspecting a range of fat imp-powered watches. She picked one up and opened the back. There was the tiny saddle, and the pedals, but they were forlorn and empty.     'No imps?' she said.     'I keep them for historical interest,' said Jeremy. 'They were barely accurate to a few seconds a minute, and they'd stop completely overnight. They were only any good if your idea of accuracy was "around two-ish".' He grimaced when he used the term. It felt like hearing fingernails on a blackboard.     'How about invar?' said the lady, still apparently inspecting the museum of clocks.     Jeremy looked shocked. 'The alloy? I didn't think anyone outside the Guild knew about that. And it is very expensive. Worth a lot more than its weight in gold.'     Lady LeJean straightened up. 'Money is no object,' she said. 'Would invar allow you to reach total accuracy?'     'No. I already use it. It's true that it is not affected by temperature, but there are always... barriers. Smaller and smaller interferences become bigger and bigger problems. It's Xeno's Paradox.'     'Ah, yes. He was the Ephebian philosopher who said you couldn't hit a running man with an arrow, wasn't he?' said the lady.     'In theory, because-'     'But Xeno came up with four paradoxes, I believe,' said Lady LeJean. 'They involved the idea that there is such a thing as the smallest possible unit of time. And it must exist, mustn't it? Consider the present. It must have a length, because one end of it is connected to the past and the other is connected to the future, and if it didn't have a length then the present couldn't exist at all. There would be no time for it to be the present in.'     Jeremy was suddenly in love. He hadn't felt like this since he'd taken the back off the nursery clock when he was fourteen months old.     'Then you're talking about... the famous "tick of the universe",' he said. 'And no gear cutter could possibly make gears that small...'     'It depends on what you would call a gear. Have you read this?'     Lady LeJean waved a hand at one of the trolls, who lumbered over and dropped an oblong package on the counter.     Jeremy undid it. It contained a small book. 'Grim Fairy Tales?' he said.     'Read the story about the glass clock of Bad Schüschein,' said Lady LeJean.     'Children's stories?' said Jeremy. 'What can they tell me?'     'Who knows? We will call again tomorrow,' said Lady LeJean, 'to hear about your plans. In the meantime, here is a little token of our good faith.'     The troll laid a large leather bag on the counter. It clinked with the heavy, rich clink of gold. Jeremy didn't pay it a great deal of attention. He had quite a lot of gold. Even skilled clockmakers came to buy his clocks. Gold was useful because it gave him the time to work on more clocks. These earned him more gold. Gold was, more or less, something that occupied the space between clocks.     'I can also obtain invar for you, in large quantities,' she said. 'That will be part of your payment, although I agree that even invar will not serve your purpose. Mr Jeremy, both you and I know that your payment for making the first truly accurate clock will be the opportunity to make the first truly accurate clock, yes?'     He smiled nervously. 'It would be... wonderful, if it could be done,' he said. 'Really, it would... be the end of clockmaking.'     'Yes,' said Lady LeJean. 'No one would ever have to make a clock again.'           Tick     This desk is neat.     There is a pile of books on it, and a ruler.     There is also, at the moment, a clock made out of cardboard. Miss picked it up.     The other teachers in the school were known as Stephanie and Joan and so on, but to her class she was very strictly Miss Susan. 'Strict', in fact, was a word that seemed to cover everything about Miss Susan and, in the classroom, she insisted on the Miss in the same way that a king insists upon Your Majesty, and for pretty much the same reason.     Miss Susan wore black, which the headmistress disapproved of but could do nothing about because black was, well, a respectable colour. She was young, but with an indefinable air of age about her. She wore her hair, which was blond-white with one black streak, in a tight bun. The headmistress disapproved of that, too - it suggested an Archaic Image of Teaching, she said, with the assurance of someone who could pronounce a capital letter. But she didn't ever dare disapprove of the way Miss Susan moved, because Miss Susan moved like a tiger.     It was in fact always very hard to disapprove of Miss Susan in her presence, because if you did she gave you a Look. It was not in any way a threatening look. It was cool and calm. You just didn't want to see it again.     The Look worked in the classroom, too. Take homework, another Archaic Practice the headmistress was ineffectually Against. No dog ever ate the homework of one of Miss Susan's students, because there was something about Miss Susan that went home with them; instead the dog brought them a pen and watched imploringly while they finished it. Miss Susan seemed to have an unerring instinct for spotting laziness and effort, too. Contrary to the headmistress's instructions, Miss Susan did not let the children do what they liked. She let them do what she liked. It had turned out to be a lot more interesting for everyone.     Miss Susan held up the cardboard clock and said: 'Who can tell me what this is?'     A forest of hands shot up.     'Yes, Miranda?'     'It's a clock, miss.'     Miss Susan smiled, carefully avoided the hand that was being waved by a boy called Vincent, who was also making frantically keen 'ooo, ooo, ooo' noises, and chose the one behind him.     'Nearly right,' she said. 'Yes, Samuel?'     'It's all cardboard made to look like a clock,' said the boy.     'Correct. Always see what's really there. And I'm supposed to teach you to tell the time with this.' Miss Susan gave it a sneer and tossed it away.     'Shall we try a different way?' she said, and snapped her fingers.     'Yes!' the class chorused, and then it went 'Aah!' as the walls, floor and ceiling dropped away and the desks hovered high over the city.     A few feet away was the huge cracked face of the tower clock of Unseen University.     The children nudged one another excitedly. The fact that their boots were over three hundred feet of fresh air didn't seem to bother them. Oddly, too, they did not seem surprised. This was just an interesting thing. They acted like connoisseurs who had seen other interesting things. You did, when you were in Miss Susan's class.     'Now, Melanie,' said Miss Susan, as a pigeon landed on her desk. 'The big hand is on the twelve and the enormous hand is nearly on the ten, so it's...'     Vincent's hand shot up. 'Ooo, miss, ooo, ooo...'     'Nearly twelve o'clock,' Melanie managed.     'Well done. But here. ..'     The air blurred. Now the desks, still in perfect formation, were firmly on the cobbles of a plaza in a different city. So was most of the classroom. There were the cupboards, and the Nature Table, and the blackboard. But the walls still lagged behind.     No one in the plaza paid the visitors any attention but, oddly, no one tried to walk into them either. The air was warmer, and smelled of sea and swamp.     'Anyone know where this is?' said Miss Susan.     'Ooo, me, miss, ooo, ooo...' Vincent could only stretch his body taller if his feet left the ground.     'How about you, Penelope?' said Miss Susan.     'Oh, miss,' said a deflated Vincent.     Penelope, who was beautiful, docile and frankly dim, looked around at the thronged square and the whitewashed, awning-hung buildings with an expression close to panic.     'We came here in geography last week,' said Miss Susan. 'City surrounded by swamps. On the Vieux river. Famous cookery. Lots of seafood... ?'     Penelope's exquisite brow creased. The pigeon on Miss Susan's desk fluttered down and joined the pigeon flock prospecting for scraps among the flagstones, cooing gently to the others in pidgin pigeon.     Aware that a lot could happen while people waited for Penelope to complete a thought process, Miss Susan waved at a clock on a shop across the square and said: 'And who can tell me the time here in Genua, please?'     'Ooo, miss, miss, ooo...'     A boy called Gordon cautiously admitted that it might be three o'clock, to the audible disappointment of the inflatable Vincent.     'That's right,' said Miss Susan. 'Can anyone tell me why it's three o'clock in Genua while it's twelve o'clock in Ankh-Morpork?'     There was no avoiding it this time. If Vincent's hand had gone up any faster it would have fried by air friction. 'Yes, Vincent?'     'Ooo miss speed of light miss it goes at six hundred miles an hour and at the moment the sun's rising on the Rim near Genua so twelve o'clock takes three hours to get to us miss!'     Miss Susan sighed. 'Very good, Vincent,' she said, and stood up. Every eye in the room watched her as she crossed over to the Stationery Cupboard. It seemed to have travelled with them and now, if there had been anyone to note such things, they might have seen faint lines in the air that denoted walls and windows and doors. And if they were intelligent observers, they'd have said: so... this classroom is in some way still in Ankh-Morpork and also in Genua, is it? Is this a trick? Is this real? Is it imagination? or is it that, to this particular teacher, there is not much of a difference?     The inside of the cupboard was also present, and it was in that shadowy, paper-smelling recess that she kept the stars.     There were gold stars and silver stars. One gold star was worth three silver ones.     The headmistress disapproved of these, as well. She said they encouraged Competitiveness. Miss Susan said that was the point, and the headmistress scuttled away before she got a Look.     Silver stars weren't awarded frequently and gold stars happened less than once a fortnight, and were vied for accordingly. Right now Miss Susan selected a silver star. Pretty soon Vincent the Keen would have a galaxy of his very own. To give him his due, he was quite uninterested in which kind of star he got. Quantity, that was what he liked. Miss Susan had privately marked him down as Boy Most Likely to Be Killed One Day By His Wife.     She walked back to her desk and laid the star, tantalizingly, in front of her.     'And an extra-special question,' she said, with a hint of malice. 'Does that mean it's "then" there when it's "now" here?'     The hand slowed halfway in its rise.     'Ooo...' Vincent began, and then stopped. 'Doesn't make sense, miss...'     'Questions don't have to make sense, Vincent,' said Miss Susan. 'But answers do.'     There was a kind of sigh from Penelope. To Miss Susan's surprise the face that one day would surely cause her father to have to hire bodyguards was emerging from its normal happy daydream and wrapping itself around an answer. Her alabaster hand was rising, too.     The class watched expectantly.     'Yes, Penelope?'     'It's...'     'Yes?'     'It's always now everywhere, miss?'     'Exactly right. Well done! All right, Vincent, you can have the silver star. And for you, Penelope...'     Miss Susan went back to the cupboard of stars. Getting Penelope to step off her cloud long enough even to answer a question was worth a star, but a deep philosophical statement like that had to make it a gold one.     'I want you all to open your notebooks and write down what Penelope just told us,' she said brightly as she sat down.     And then she saw the inkwell on her desk beginning to rise like Penelope's hand. It was a ceramic pot, made to drop neatly into a round hole in the woodwork. It came up smoothly, and turned out to be balanced on the cheerful skull of the Death of Rats.     It winked one blue-glowing eye socket at Miss Susan.     With quick little movements, not even looking down, she whisked the inkwell aside with one hand and reached for a thick volume of stories with the other. She brought it down so hard on the hole that blue-black ink splashed onto the cobbles.     Then she raised the desk lid and peeped inside.     There was, of course, nothing there. At least, nothing macabre...     ... unless you counted the piece of chocolate half gnawed by rat teeth and a note in heavy gothic lettering saying:           SEE ME     and signed by a very familiar alpha-and-omega symbol and the word           Grandfather     Susan picked up the note and screwed it into a ball, aware that she was trembling with rage. How dare he? And to send the rat, too!     She tossed the ball into the wastepaper basket. She never missed. Sometimes the basket moved in order to ensure that this was the case.     'And now we'll go and see what the time is in Klatch,' she told the watching children.     On the desk, the book had fallen open at a certain page. And, later on, it would be story time. And Miss Susan would wonder, too late, why the book had been on her desk when she had never even seen it before.     And a splash of blue-black ink would stay on the cobbles of the square in Genua, until the evening rainstorm washed it away.           Tick     The first words that are read by seekers of enlightenment in the secret, gong-banging, yeti-haunted valleys near the hub of the world, are when they look into The Life of Wen the Eternally Surprised.     The first question they ask is: 'Why was he eternally surprised?'     And they are told: 'Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. Therefore, he understood, there is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he said, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it.'     The first words read by the young Lu-Tze when he sought perplexity in the dark, teeming, rain-soaked city of Ankh-Morpork were: 'Rooms For Rent, Very Reasonable'. And he was glad of it.           Tick     Where there is suitable country for grain, people farm. They know the taste of good soil. They grow grain.     Where there is good steel country, furnaces turn the sky to sunset red all night. The hammers never stop. People make steel.     There is coal country, and beef country, and grass country. The world is full of countries where one thing shapes the land and the people. And up here in the high valleys around the hub of the world, where the snow is never far away, this is enlightenment country.     Here are people who know that there is no steel, only the idea of steel.[5] They give names to new things, and to things that don't exist. They seek the essence of being and the nature of the soul. They make wisdom.     Temples command every glacier-headed valley, where there are particles of ice in the wind, even at the height of summer.     There are the Listening Monks, seeking to discern within the hubbub of the world the faint echoes of the sounds that set the universe in motion.     There are the Brothers of Cool, a reserved and secretive sect which believes that only through ultimate coolness can the universe be comprehended, and that black works with everything, and that chrome will never truly go out of style.     In their vertiginous temple criss-crossed with tightropes, the Balancing Monks test the tension of the world and then set out on long, perilous journeys to restore its equilibrium. Their work may be seen on high mountains and isolated islets. They use small brass weights, none of them bigger than a fist. They work. Well, obviously they work. The world has not tipped up yet.     And in the highest, greenest, airiest valley of all, where apricots are grown and the streams have floating ice in them even on the hottest day, is the monastery of Oi Dong and the fighting monks of the Order of Wen. The other sects call them the History Monks. Not much is known about what they do, although some have remarked on the strange fact that it is always a wonderful spring day in the little valley and that the cherry trees are always in bloom.     The rumour is that the monks have some kind of duty to see that tomorrow happens according to some mystic plan devised by some man who kept on being surprised.     In fact, for some time now, and it would be impossible and ridiculous to say how long, the truth has been stranger and more dangerous.     The job of the History Monks is to see that tomorrow happens at all.     The Master of Novices met with Rinpo, chief acolyte to the abbot. At the moment, at least, the position of chief acolyte was a very important post. In his current condition the abbot needed many things done for him, and his attention span was low. In circumstances like this, there is always someone willing to carry the load. There are Rinpos everywhere.     'It's Ludd again,' said the Master of Novices.     'Oh, dear. Surely one naughty child can't trouble you?'     'One ordinary naughty child, no. Where is this one from?'     'Master Soto sent him. You know? Of our Ankh-Morpork section? He found him in the city. The boy has a natural talent, I understand,' said Rinpo.     The Master of Novices looked shocked. 'Talent! He is a wicked thief! He'd been apprenticed to the Guild of Thieves!' he said.     'Well? Children sometimes steal. Beat them a little, and they stop stealing. Basic education,' said Rinpo.     'Ah. There is a problem.'     'Yes?'     'He is very, very fast. Around him, things go missing. Little things. Unimportant things. But even when he is watched closely, he is never seen to take them.'     'Then perhaps he does not?'     'He walks through a room and things vanish!' said the Master of Novices.     'He's that fast? It's just as well Soto did find him, then. But a thief is-'     'They turn up later, in odd places,' said the Master of Novices, apparently grudging the admission. 'He does it out of mischief, I'm sure.'     The breeze blew the scent of cherry blossom across the terrace.     'Look, I am used to disobedience,' said the Master of Novices. 'That is part of a novice's life. But he is also tardy.'     'Tardy?'     'He turns up late for his lessons.' 'How can a pupil be tardy here?'     'Mr Ludd doesn't seem to care. Mr Ludd seems to think he can do as he pleases. He is also... smart.'     The acolyte nodded. Ah. Smart. The word had a very specific meaning here in the valley. A smart boy thought he knew more than his tutors, and answered back, and interrupted. A smart boy was worse than a stupid one.     'He does not accept discipline?' said the acolyte.     'Yesterday, when I was taking the class for Temporal Theory in the Stone Room, I caught him just staring at the wall. Clearly not paying attention. But when I called out to him to answer the problem I'd chalked on the blackboard, knowing full well that he could not, he did so. Instantly. And correctly.'     'Well? You did say he was a smart boy.'     The Master of Novices looked embarrassed. 'Except... it was not the right problem. I had been instructing the Fifth Djim field agents earlier and had left part of the test on the board. An extremely complex phase-space problem involving residual harmonics in n histories. None of them got it right. To be honest, even I had to look up the answer.'     'So I take it you punished him for not answering the right question?'     'Obviously. But that sort of behaviour is disruptive. Most of the time I think he's not all there. He never pays attention, he always knows the answers, and he can never tell you how he knows. We can't keep thrashing him. He is a bad example to the other pupils. There's no educating a smart boy.'     The acolyte thoughtfully watched a flight of white doves circle the monastery roofs. 'We cannot send him away now,' he said at last. 'Soto said he saw him perform the Stance of the Coyote! That's how he was found! Can you imagine that? He'd had no training at all! Can you imagine what would happen if someone with that kind of skill ran around loose? Thank goodness Soto was alert.'     'But he has turned him into my problem. The boy disrupts tranquillity.'     Rinpo sighed. The Master of Novices was a good and conscientious man, he knew, but it had been a long time since he'd been out in the world. People like Soto spent every day in the world of time. They learned flexibility, because if you were stiff out there you were dead. People like Soto... now, there was an idea...     He looked towards the other end of the terrace, where a couple of servants were sweeping up the fallen cherry blossom.     'I see a harmonious solution,' he said.     'Oh, yes?'     'An unusually talented boy like Ludd needs a master, not the discipline of the schoolroom.'     'Possibly, but-'     The Master of Novices followed Rinpo's gaze.     'Oh,' he said, and he smiled in a way that was not entirely nice. It contained a certain anticipatory element, a hint that trouble might be in store for someone who, in his opinion, richly deserved it.     'A name occurs,' said Rinpo.     'To me also,' said the Master of Novices.     'A name I've heard too often,' Rinpo went on.     'I suppose that either he will break the boy, or the boy will break him, or it is always possible that they will break each other...' the Master mused.     'So, in the patois of the world,' said Rinpo, 'there is no actual downside.'     'Would the abbot approve, though?' said the Master, testing a welcome idea for any weak points. 'He has always had a certain rather tiresome regard for... the sweeper.'     'The abbot is a dear kind man but at the moment his teeth are giving him trouble and he is not walking at all well,' said Rinpo. 'And these are difficult times. I'm sure he will be pleased to accept our joint recommendation. Why, it's practically a minor matter of day-to-day affairs.'     And thus the future was decided.     They were not bad men. They had worked hard on behalf of the valley for hundreds of years. But it is possible, after a while, to develop certain dangerous habits of thought. One is that, while all important enterprises need careful organization, it is the organization that needs organizing, rather than the enterprise. And another is that tranquillity is always a good thing.           Tick     There was a row of alarm clocks on the table by Jeremy's bed. He did not need them, because he woke up when he wanted to. They were there for testing. He set them for seven, and woke up at 6.59 to check that they went off on time.     Tonight he went to bed early, with a drink of water and the Grim Fairy Tales.     He had never been interested in stories, at any age, and had never quite understood the basic concept. He'd never read a work of fiction all the way through. He did remember, as a small boy, being really annoyed at the depiction of Hickory Dickory Dock in a rag book of nursery rhymes, because the clock in the drawing was completely wrong for the period.     He tried to read Grim Fairy Tales. They had titles like 'How the Wicked Queen Danced in Red Hot Shoes!' and 'The Old Lady in the Oven'. There was simply no mention of clocks of any sort in any of them. Their authors seemed to have a thing about not mentioning clocks.     'The Glass Clock of Bad Schüschein', on the other hand, did have a clock. Of a sort. And it was... odd. A wicked man - readers could see he was wicked because it said he was wicked, right there on the page - built a clock of glass in which he captured Time herself, but things went wrong because there was one part of the clock, a spring, that he couldn't make out of glass, and it broke under the strain. Time was set free and the man aged ten thousand years in a second and crumbled to dust and - not surprisingly, in Jeremy's opinion - was never seen again. The story ended with a moral: Large Enterprises Depend upon Small Details. Jeremy couldn't see why it couldn't just as well have been It's Wrong to Trap Non-Existent Women in Clocks, or, It Would Have Worked with a Glass Spring.     But even to Jeremy's inexperienced eye, there was something wrong with the whole story. It read as though the writer was trying to make sense of something he'd seen, or been told, and had misunderstood. And - hah! - although it was set hundreds of years ago when even in Uberwald there were only natural cuckoo clocks, the artist had drawn a long-case clock of the sort that wasn't around even fifteen years ago. The stupidity of some people! You'd laugh if it wasn't so tragic!     He put the book aside and spent the rest of the evening doing a little design work for the Guild. They paid him handsomely for this, provided he promised never to turn up in person.     Then he put the work on the bedside table by the clocks. He blew out the candle. He went to sleep. He dreamed.     The glass clock ticked. It stood in the middle of the workshop's wooden floor, giving off a silvery light. Jeremy walked around it, or perhaps it spun gently around him.     It was taller than a man. Within the transparent case red and blue lights twinkled like stars. The air smelled of acid.     Now his point of view dived into the thing, the crystalline thing, plunging down through the layers of glass and quartz. They rose past him, their smoothness becoming walls hundreds of miles high, and still he fell between slabs that were becoming rough, grainy...     ... full of holes. The blue and red light was here too, pouring past him.     And only now was there sound. It came from the darkness ahead, a slow beat that was ridiculously familiar, a heartbeat magnified a million times...     ...tchum...tchum...     ... each beat slower than mountains and bigger than worlds, dark and blood red. He heard a few more and then his fall slowed, stopped, and he began to soar back up through the sleeting light until a brightness ahead became a room.     He had to remember all this! It was all so clear, once you saw it! So simple! So easy! He could see every part, how they interlocked, how they were made.     And now it began to fade .     Of course it was only a dream. He told himself that and was comforted by it. But he had gone to some lengths with this one, he had to admit. For example, there was a mug of tea steaming on the nearby workbench, and the sound of voices on the other side of the door...     There was a knocking at the door. Jeremy wondered if the dream would end when the door was opened, and then the door disappeared and the knocking went on. It was coming from downstairs.     The time was 6.47. Jeremy glanced at the alarm clocks to make sure they were right, then pulled his dressing gown around him and hurried downstairs. He opened the front door a crack. There was no one there.     'Nah, dahn 'ere, mister.'     Someone lower down was a dwarf.     'Name of Clockson?' it said.     'Yes?'     A clipboard was thrust through the gap.     'Sign 'ere, where it says "Sign 'Ere". Thank you. Okay, lads...'     Behind him, a couple of trolls tipped up a handcart. A large wooden crate crashed onto the cobbles.     'What is this?' said Jeremy.     'Express package,' said the dwarf, taking the clipboard. 'Come all the way from Uberwald. Must've cost someone a packet. Look at all them seals and stickers on it.'     'Can't you bring it in-?' Jeremy began, but the cart was already moving off, with the merry jingle and tinkle of fragile items.     It started to rain. Jeremy peered at the label on the crate. It was certainly addressed to him, in a neat round hand, and just above it was the seal with the double-headed bat of Uberwald. There was no other marking except, near the bottom, the words:     THIS SIDE UP [?this text upside down]     Then the crate started to swear. It was muffled, and in a foreign language, but all swearing has a certain international content.     'Er... hello?' said Jeremy.     The crate rocked, and landed on one of the long sides, with extra cursing. There was some thumping from inside, some louder swearing, and the crate teetered upright again with the alleged top the right way up.     A piece of board slid aside and a crowbar dropped out and onto the street with a clang. The voice that had lately been swearing said, 'If you would be tho good?'     Jeremy inserted the bar into a likely-looking crack, and pulled.     The crate sprang apart. He dropped the bar. There was a... a creature inside.     'I don't know,' it said, pulling bits of packing material off itself. 'Eight bloody dayth with no problemth, and thothe idiotth get it wrong on the doorthtep.' It nodded at Jeremy. 'Good morning, thur. I thuppothe you are Mithter Jeremy?'     'Yes, but-'     'My name ith Igor, thur. My credentialth, thur.'     A hand like an industrial accident held together with stitches thrust a sheaf of papers towards Jeremy. He recoiled instinctively, and then felt embarrassed and took them.     'I think there has been a mistake,' he said.     'No, no mithtake,' said Igor, pulling a carpet bag out of the ruins of the crate. 'You need an athithtant. And when it cometh to athithtantth, you cannot go wrong with an Igor. Everyone knowth that. Could we go in out of the rain, thur? It maketh my kneeth rutht.'     'But I don't need an assist-' Jeremy began, but that was wrong, wasn't it? He just couldn't keep assistants. They always left within a week.     'Morning, sir!' said a cheery voice.     Another cart had pulled up. This one was painted a gleaming, hygienic white and was full of milk churns, and had 'Ronald Soak, Dairyman' painted on the side. Distracted, Jeremy looked up at the beaming face of Mr Soak, who was holding a bottle of milk in each hand.     'One pint, squire, as per usual. And perhaps another one if you've got company?'     'Er, er, er... yes, thank you.'     'And the yoghurt is particularly fine this week, squire,' said Mr Soak encouragingly.     'Er, er, I think not, Mr Soak.'     'Need any eggs, cream, butter, buttermilk or cheese?'     'Not as such, Mr Soak.'     'Right you are, then,' said Mr Soak, unabashed. 'See you tomorrow, then.'     'Er, yes,' said Jeremy, as the cart moved on. Mr Soak was a friend, which in Jeremy's limited social vocabulary meant 'someone I speak to once or twice a week'. He approved of the milkman, because he was regular and punctual and had the bottles at the doorstep every morning on the stroke of 7a.m. 'Er, er... goodbye,' he said.     He turned to Igor.     'How did you know I needed-' he tried. But the strange man had gone indoors, and a frantic Jeremy tracked him down in the workshop.     'Oh yeth, very nithe,' said Igor, who was taking it all in with the air of a connoisseur. 'Thatth a Turnball Mk3 micro-lathe, ithn't it? I thaw it in their catalogue. Very nithe indee-'     'I didn't ask anyone for an assistant!' said Jeremy. 'Who sent you?'     'We are Igorth, thur.'     'Yes, you said! Look, I don't-'     'No, thur. "We R Igorth", thur. The organithathion, thur.'     'What organization?'     'For plathementth, thur. You thee, thur, the thing ith... an Igor often findth himthelf between marthterth through no fault of hith own, you thee. And on the other hand-'     '-you have two thumbs,' breathed Jeremy, who had just noticed and couldn't stop himself. 'Two on each hand.!'     'Oh, yeth thur, very handy,' said Igor, not even glancing down. 'On the other hand there ith no thortage of people wanting an Igor. Tho my Aunt Igorina runth our thelect little agenthy.'     'For... lots of Igors?' said Jeremy.     'Oh, there'th a fair number of uth. We're a big family.' Igor handed Jeremy a card.     He read:           We R Igors     'A Spare Hand When Needed'     The Old Rathaus     Bad Schüschein     c-mail: Yethmarthter Uberwald           Jeremy stared at the semaphore address. His normal ignorance of anything that wasn't to do with clocks did not apply here. He'd been quite interested in the new cross-continent semaphore system after hearing that it made quite a lot of use of clockwork mechanisms to speed up the message flow. So you could send a clacks message to hire an Igor? Well, that explained the speed, at least.     'Rathaus,' he said. 'That means something like a council hall, doesn't it?'     'Normally, thur... normally,' said Igor reassuringly.     'Do you really have semaphore addresses in Uberwald?'     'Oh, yeth. We are ready to grathp the future with both handth, thur.'     '-and four thumbs-'     'Yeth, thur. We can grathp like anything.'     'And then you mailed yourself here?'     'Thertainly, thur. We Igorth are no thtrangerth to dithcomfort.'     Jeremy looked down at the paperwork he'd been handed, and a name caught his eye.     The top paper was signed. In a way, at least. There was a message in neat capitals, as neat as printing, and a name at the end.     HE WILL BE USEFUL LEJEAN     He remembered. 'Oh, Lady LeJean is behind this. She had you sent to me?'     'That'th correct, thur.'     Feeling that Igor was expecting more of him, Jeremy made a show of reading through the rest of what turned out to be references. Some of them were written in what he could only hope was dried brown ink, one was in crayon, and several were singed around the edges. They were all fulsome. After a while, though, a certain tendency could be noted amongst the signatories.     'This one is signed by someone called Mad Doctor Scoop,' he said.     'Oh, he wathn't actually named mad, thur. It wath more like a nickname, ath it were.'     'Was he mad, then?'     'Who can thay, thur?' said Igor calmly.     'And Crazed Baron Haha? It says under Reason for Leaving that he was crushed by a burning windmill.'     'Cathe of mithtaken identity, thur.'     'Really?'     'Yeth, thur. I underthtand the mob mithtook him for Thcreaming Doctor Bertherk, thur.'     'Oh. Ah, yes.' Jeremy glanced down. 'Who you also worked for, I see.'     'Yeth, thur.'     'And who died of blood poisoning?'     'Yeth, thur. Cauthed by a dirty pitchfork.'     'And... Nipsie the Impaler?'     'Er, would you believe he ran a kebab thop, thur?'     'Did he?'     'Not conventhionally tho, thur.'     'You mean he was mad too?'     'Ah. Well, he did have hith little wayth, I mutht admit, but an Igor never patheth judgement on hith marthter or mithtreth, thur. That ith the Code of the Igorth, thur,' he added patiently. It would be a funny old world if we were all alike, thur.'     Jeremy was completely baffled as to his next move. He'd never been very good at talking to people, and this, apart from Lady LeJean and a wrangle with Mr Soak over an unwanted cheese, was the longest conversation he'd had for a year. Perhaps it was because it was hard to think of Igor as coming under the heading of people. Until now, Jeremy's definition of 'people' had not included anyone with more stitches than a handbag.     'I'm not sure I've got any work for you, though,' he said. 'I've got a new commission, but I'm not sure how... anyway, I'm not insane!'     'Thalth not compulthory, thur.'     I've actually got a piece of paper that says I'm not, you know.'     'Well done, thur.'     'Not many people have one of those!'     'Very true, thur.'     'I take medicine, you know.'     'Well done, thur,' said Igor. 'I'll jutht go and make thome breakfatht, thall I? While you get drethed... marthter.'     Jeremy clutched at his damp dressing gown. I'll be down shortly,' he said, and hurried up the stairs.     Igor's gaze took in the racks of tools. There was not a speck of dust on them; the files, hammers and pliers were ranged according to size, and the items on the work bench were positioned with geometrical exactitude.     He pulled open a drawer. Screws were laid in perfect rows.     He looked around at the walls. They were bare, except for the shelves of clocks. This was surprising - even Dribbling Doctor Vibes had had a calendar on the wall, which added a splash of colour. Admittedly it was from the Acid Bath and Restraint Co., in Ugli, and the colour it splashed was mostly red, but at least it showed some recognition of a world outside the four walls.     Igor was puzzled. Igor had never worked for a sane person before. He'd worked for a number of... well, the world called them madmen, and he'd worked for several normal people, in that they only indulged in minor and socially acceptable insanities, but he couldn't recall ever working for a completely sane person.     Obviously, he reasoned, if sticking screws up your nose was madness, then numbering them and keeping them in careful compartments was sanity, which was the opposite-     Ah. No. It wasn't, was it... ?     He smiled. He was beginning to feel quite at home already.           Tick     Lu-Tze the sweeper was in his Garden of Five Surprises, carefully cultivating his mountains. His broom leaned against the hedge.     Above him, looming over the temple gardens, the big stone statue of Wen the Eternally Surprised sat with its face locked in its permanent wide-eyed expression of, yes, pleasant surprise.     As a hobby, mountains appeal to those people who in normal circumstances are said to have a great deal of time on their hands. Lu-Tze had no time at all. Time was something that largely happened to other people; he viewed it in the same way that people on the shore viewed the sea. It was big and it was out there, and sometimes it was an invigorating thing to dip a toe into, but you couldn't live in it all the time. Besides, it always made his skin wrinkle.     At the moment, in the never-ending, ever-recreated moment of this peaceful, sunlit little valley, he was fiddling with the little mirrors and shovels and morphic resonators and even stranger devices required to make a mountain grow to no more than six inches high.     The cherry trees were still in bloom. They always were in bloom, here. A gong rang, somewhere back in the temple. A flock of white doves took off from the monastery roof.     A shadow fell over the mountain.     Lu-Tze glanced at the person who had entered the garden. He made the perfunctory symbol of servitude to the rather annoyed-looking boy in novice's robes.     'Yes, master?' he said.     'I am looking for the one they call Lu-Tze,' said the boy. 'Personally, I don't think he really exists.'     'I've got glaciation,' said Lu-Tze, ignoring this. 'At last. See, master? It's only an inch long, but already it's carving its own little valley. Magnificent, isn't it?'     'Yes, yes, very good,' said the novice, being kind to an underling. 'Isn't this the garden of Lu-Tze?'     'You mean, Lu-Tze who is famous for his bonsai mountains?'     The novice looked from the line of plates to the little wrinkled smiling man.     'You are Lu-Tze? But you're just a sweeper! I've seen you cleaning out the dormitories! I've seen people kick you!'     Lu-Tze, apparently not hearing this, picked up a plate about a foot across on which a small cinder cone was smoking.     'What do you think of this, master?' he said. 'Volcanic. And it is bloody hard to do, excuse my Klatchian.'     The novice took a step forward, and leaned down and looked directly into the sweeper's eyes.     Lu-Tze was not often disconcerted, but he was now.     'You are Lu-Tze?'     'Yes, lad. I am Lu-Tze.'     The novice took a deep breath and thrust out a skinny arm. It was holding a small scroll.     'From the abbot... er, venerable one!'     The scroll wobbled in the nervous hand.     'Most people call me Lu-Tze, lad. Or "Sweeper". Until they get to know me better, some call me "Get out of the way",' said Lu-Tze, carefully wrapping up his tools. 'I've never been very venerable, except in cases of bad spelling.'     He looked around the saucers for the miniature shovel he used for glacial work, and couldn't see it anywhere. Surely he'd put it down just a moment ago?     The novice was watching him with an expression of awe mixed with residual suspicion. A reputation like Lu-Tze's got around. This was the man who had - well, who had done practically everything, if you listened to the rumours. But he didn't look as though he had. He was just a little bald man with a wispy beard and a faint, amiable smile.     Lu-Tze patted the young man on the shoulder in an effort to put him at his ease.     'Let us see what the abbot wants,' he said, unrolling the rice paper. 'Oh. You are to take me to see him, it says here.'     A look of panic froze the novice's face. 'What? How can I do that? Novices aren't allowed inside the Inner Temple!'     'Really? In that case, let me take you, to take me, to see him,' said Lu-Tze.     'You are allowed into the Inner Temple?' said the novice, and then put his hand over his mouth. 'But you're just a swee- Oh...'     'That's right! Not even a proper monk, let alone a dong,' said the sweeper cheerfully. 'Amazing, isn't it?'     'But people talk about you as if you were as high as the abbot!'     'Oh, dear me, no,' said Lu-Tze. 'I'm nothing like as holy. Never really got a grip on the cosmic harmony.'     'But you've done all those incredible-'     'Oh, I didn't say I'm not good at what I do,' said Lu-Tz:e, ambling away with his broom over his shoulder. 'Just not holy. Shall we go?'     'Er... Lu-Tze?' said the novice, as they walked along the ancient brick path.     'Yes?'     'Why is this called the Garden of Five Surprises?'     'What was your name back in the world, hasty young man?' said Lu-Tze.     'Newgate. Newgate Ludd, ven-'     Lu-Tze held up a warning finger. 'Ah?'     'Sweeper, I mean.'     'Ludd, eh? Ankh-Morpork lad?'     'Yes, Sweeper,' said the boy. The suddenly dejected tones suggested he knew what was coming next.     'Raised by the Thieves' Guild? One of "Ludd's Lads"?'     The boy formerly known as Newgate looked the old man in the eye and, when he replied, it was in the singsong voice of someone who'd answered the question too many times. 'Yes, Sweeper. Yes, I was a foundling. Yes, we get called Ludd's Lads and Lasses after one of the founders of the Guild. Yes, that's my adopted surname. Yes, it was a good life and sometimes I wish I still had it.'     Lu-Tze appeared not to hear this. 'Who sent you here?'     'A monk called Soto discovered me. He said I had talent.'     'Marco? The one with all the hair?'     'That's right. Only I thought the rule was that all monks were shaved.'     'Oh, Soto says he is bald under the hair,' said Lu-Tze. 'He says the hair is a separate creature that just happens to live on him. They gave him a field posting really quickly after he came up with that one. Hard-working fellow, mark you, and friendly as anything provided you don't touch his hair. Important lesson there: you don't survive in the field by obeying all the rules, including those relating to mental processes. And what name were you given when you were enrolled?'     'Lobsang, ven- uh, Sweeper.'     'Lobsang Ludd?'     'Er... yes, Sweeper.'     'Amazing. So, Lobsang Ludd, you tried to count my surprises, did you? Everybody does. Surprise is the nature of Time, and five is the number of Surprise.'     'Yes, Sweeper. I found the little bridge that tilts and throws you into the carp pool...'     'Good. Good.'     '... and I have found the bronze sculpture of a butterfly that flaps its wings when you breathe on it...'     'That's two.'     'There's the surprising way those little daisies spray you with venomous pollen...'     'Ah, yes. Many people find them extremely surprising.'     'And I believe the fourth surprise is the yodelling stick insect.'     'Well done,' said Lu- Tze, beaming. 'It's very good, isn't it?'     'But I can't find the fifth surprise.'     'Really? Let me know when you find it,' said Lu-Tze.     Lobsang Ludd thought about this as he trailed after the sweeper.     'The Garden of Five Surprises is a test,' he said, at last.     'Oh, yes. Nearly everything is.'     Lobsang nodded. It was like the Garden of the Four Elements. Every novice found the bronze symbols of three of them - in the carp pond, under a rock, painted on a kite - but none of Lobsang's classmates found Fire. There didn't appear to be a fire anywhere in the garden.     After a while Lobsang had reasoned thus: there were in fact five elements, as they had been taught. Four made up the universe, and the fifth, Surprise, allowed it to keep on happening. No one had said that the four in the garden were the material four, so the fourth element in the Garden could be Surprise at the fact that Fire wasn't there. Besides, fire was not generally found in a garden, and the other signs were, truly, in their element. So he'd gone down to the bakeries and opened one of the ovens, and there, glowing red hot below the loaves, was Fire.     'Then... I expect that the fifth surprise is: there is no fifth surprise,' he said.     'Nice try, but no cylindrical smoking thing,' said Lu- Tze. 'And is it not written, "Oo, you are so sharp you'll cut yourself one of these days"?'     'Um, I haven't read that in the sacred texts yet, Sweeper,' said Lobsang uncertainly.     'No, you wouldn't have,' said Lu-Tze.     They stepped out of the brittle sunlight into the deep cold of the temple, and walked on through ancient halls and down stairways cut into the rock. The sound of distant chanting followed them. Lu-Tze, who was not holy and therefore could think unholy thoughts, occasionally wondered whether the chanting monks were chanting anything, or were just going 'aahaaahahah'. You could never tell with all that echo.     He turned off the main passage and reached for the handles of a pair of large, red-lacquered doors. Then he looked behind him. Lobsang had stopped dead, some yards away.     'Coming?'     'But not even dongs are allowed in there!' said Lobsang. 'You have to be a Third Djim ting at least!'     'Yeah, right. It's a short-cut. Come on, it's draughty out here.' With extreme reluctance, expecting at any moment the outraged scream of authority, Lobsang trailed after the sweeper.     And he was just a sweeper! One of the people who swept the floors and washed the clothes and cleaned the privies! No one had ever mentioned it! Novices heard about Lu-Tze from their very first day - how he'd gone into some of the most tangled knots of time and unravelled them, how he'd constantly dodged the traffic on the crossroads of history, how he could divert time with a word and used this to develop the most subtle arts of battle...     ... and here was a skinny little man who was sort of generically ethnic, so that he looked as if he could have come from anywhere, in a robe that had once been white before it fell to all those stains and patches, and the sandals repaired with string. And the friendly grin, as if he was constantly waiting for something amusing to happen. And no belt at all, just another piece of string to hold his robe closed. Even some novices got to the level of grey dong in their first year!     The dojo was busy with senior monks at practice. Lobsang had to dodge aside as a pair of fighters whirled past, arms and legs blurring as each sought an opening, paring time into thinner and thinner slivers-     'You! Sweeper!'     Lobsang looked round, but the shout had been directed at Lu-Tze. A ting, only just elevated to the Third Djim by the fresh look of his belt, was advancing on the little man, his face red with fury.     'What for are you coming in here, cleaner of filth? This is forbidden!'     Lu-Tze's little smile didn't change. But he reached in his robe and brought out a small bag.     ' 's a short-cut,' he said. He pulled a pinch of tobacco and, while the ting loomed over him, began to roll a cigarette. 'And there's dirt everywhere, too. I'll certainly have a word with the man who does this floor.'     'How dare you insult!' screamed the monk. 'Back to the kitchens with you, sweeper!'     Cowering behind Lu-Tze, Lobsang realized that the entire dojo had stopped to watch this. One or two of the monks were whispering to one another. The man in the brown robe of the dojo master was watching impassively from his chair, with his chin on his hand.     With great and patient and infuriating delicacy, like a samurai arranging flowers, Lu-Tze marshalled the shreds of tobacco in the flimsy cigarette paper.     'No, I reckon I'll go out of that door over there, if you don't mind,' he said.     'Impudence! Then you are ready to fight, enemy of dust?' The man leapt back and raised his hands to form the Combat of the Hake. He spun round and planted a kick on a heavy leather sack, hitting it so hard that its supporting chain broke. Then he was back to face Lu-Tze, hands held in the Advancement of the Snake.     'Ai! Shao! Hai-eee-' he began.     The dojo master stood up. 'Hold!' he commanded. 'Do you not want to know the name of the man you are about to destroy?'     The fighter held his stance, glaring at Lu-Tze. 'I don't need to know name of sweeper,' he said.     Lu-Tze rolled the cigarette into a skinny cylinder and winked at the angry man, which only stoked the anger.     'It is always wise to know the name of a sweeper, boy,' said the dojo master. 'And my question was not addressed to you.'           Tick     Jeremy stared at his bed sheets.     They were covered in writing. His own writing.     It trailed across the pillow and onto the wall. There were sketches, too, scored deeply into the plaster.     He found his pencil under the bed. He'd even sharpened it. In his sleep, he'd sharpened a pencil! And by the look of it he'd been writing and drawing for hours. Trying to draw a dream.     With, down one side of his eiderdown, a list of parts.     It had all made absolute sense when he'd seen it, like a hammer or a stick or Wheelbright's Gravity Escapement. It had been like meeting an old friend. And now... He stared at the scrawled lines. He had been writing so fast he'd ignored punctuation and some of the letters, too. But he could see some sense in there.     He'd heard of this sort of thing. Great inventions sometimes did arise from dreams and daydreams. Didn't Hepzibah Whitlow have the idea of the adjustable pendulum clock as a result of his work as the public hangman? Didn't Wilframe Balderton always say that the idea for the Fish Tail Escapement came after he'd eaten too much lobster?     Yes, it had all been so clear in the dream. By daylight, it needed a bit more work.     There was a clatter of dishes from the little kitchen behind his workshop. He hurried down, dragging the sheet behind him.     'I usually have-' he began.     'Toatht, thur,' said Igor, turning away from the range. 'Lightly browned, I thuthpect.'     'How did you know that?'     'An Igor learnth to antithipate, thur,' said Igor. 'What a wonderful little kitchen, thur. I've never theen a drawer marked 'Thpoonth' which jutht hath thpoonth in it.'     'Are you any good at working with glass, Igor?' said Jeremy, ignoring this.     'No, thur,' said Igor, buttering the toast.     'You're not?'     'No, thur. I am bloody amathing at it, thur. Many marthterth have needed... thpethial apparatuth not obtainable elthewhere, thur. What wath it you wanted?'     'How would we go about building this?' Jeremy spread the sheet on the table.     The slice of toast dropped from Igors black-nailed fingers.     'Is there something wrong?' said Jeremy.     'I thought thomeone wath walking over my grave, thur,' said Igor, still looking shocked.     'Er, you haven't actually ever had a grave, have you?' said Jeremy.     'Jutht a figure of thpeech, thur, jutht a figure of thpeech,' said Igor, looking hurt.     'This is an idea I've...I've had for a clock...'     'The Glath Clock,' said Igor. 'Yeth. I know about it. My grandfather Igor helped build the firtht one.'     'The first one? But it's just a story for children! And I dreamed about it, and-'     'Grandfather Igor alwayth thaid there wath thomething very thtrange about all that,' said Igor. 'The ecthplothion and everything.'     'It exploded? Because of the metal spring?'     'Not ecthactly an ecthplothion,' said Igor. 'We're no thtrangerth to ecthplothionth, uth Igorth. It wath... very odd. And we're no thtrangerth to odd, either.'     'Are you telling me it really existed?'     Igor seemed embarrassed about this. 'Yeth,' he said, 'and then again, no.'     'Things either exist or they don't,' said Jeremy. 'I am very clear about that. I have medicine.'     'It ecthithted,' said Igor, 'and then, after it did, it never had. Thith ith what my grandfather told me, and he built that clock with thethe very handth!'     Jeremy looked down. Igor's hands were gnarled, and, now he came to look at them, had a lot of scar tissue around the wrists. 'We really believe in heirloomth in our family,' said Igor, catching his gaze.     'Sort of... hand-me-downs, ahahaha,' said Jeremy. He wondered where his medicine was.     'Very droll, thur,' said Igor. 'But Grandfather Igor alwayth thaid that afterwardth it wath like... a dream, thur.'     'A dream...'     'The workthop wath different. The clock wathn't there. Demented Doctor Wingle, that wath hith marthter at the time, wathn't working on the glath clock at all but on a way of ecthtracting thunthine from orangeth. Thingth were different and they alwayth had been, thur. Like it had never happened.'     'But it turned up in a book for children!'     'Yeth, thur. Bit of a conundrum, thur.'     Jeremy stared at the sheet with its burden of scribbles. An accurate clock. That's all it was. A clock that'd make all other clocks unnecessary, Lady LeJean had said. Building a clock like that would mean the clockmaker went down in timekeeping history. True, the book had said that Time had got trapped in the clock, but Jeremy had no interest whatsoever in things that were Made Up. Anyway, a clock just measured. Distance didn't get tangled up in a tape measure. All a clock did was count teeth on a wheel. Or... light...     Light with teeth. He'd seen that in the dream. Light not as something bright in the sky, but as an excited line, going up and down like a wave.     'Could you... build something like this?' he said.     Igor looked at the drawings again. 'Yeth,' he said, nodding. Then he pointed to several large glass containers around the drawing of the central column of the clock. 'And I know what thethe are,' he said.     'In my dr- I mean, I imagined them as fizzing,' said Jeremy.     'Very, very thecret knowledge, thothe jarth,' said Igor, carefully ignoring the question. 'Can you get copper rodth here, thur?'     'In Ankh-Morpork? Easily.'     'And thinc?'     'Lots of it, yes.'     'Thulphuric athid?'     'By the carboy, yes.'     'I mutht have died and gone to heaven,' said Igor. ' Jutht put me near enough copper and thinc and athid, thur,' he said, 'and then we thall thee thparkth.'           Tick     'My name,' said Lu-Tze, leaning on his broom as the irate ting raised a hand, 'is Lu-Tze.'     The dojo went silent. The attacker paused in mid-bellow.     '-Ai! Hao-gng! Gnh? Ohsheeeeeeohsheeeeeee ...'     The man did not move but seemed instead to turn in on himself, sagging from the martial stance into a kind of horrified, penitent crouch.     Lu-Tze bent over and struck a match on his unprotesting chin.     'What's your name, lad?' he said, lighting his ragged cigarette.     'His name is mud, Lu-Tze,' said the dojo master, striding forward. He gave the unmoving challenger a kick. 'Well, Mud, you know the rules. Face the man you have challenged, or give up the belt.'     The figure remained very still for a moment, and then cautiously, in a manner almost theatrically designed not to give offence, started to fumble with his belt.     'No, no, we don't need that' said Lu-Tze kindly. 'It was a good challenge. A decent "Ai!" and a very passable "Hai-eee!", I thought. Good martial gibberish all round, such as you don't often hear these days. And we would not want his trousers falling down at a time like this, would we?' He sniffed and added, 'Especially at a time like this.'     He patted the shrinking man on the shoulder. 'Just you recall the rule your teacher here taught you on day one, eh? And... why don't you go and clean yourself up? I mean, some of us have to tidy up in here.'     Then he turned and nodded to the dojo master.     'While I am here, master, I should like to show young Lobsang the Device of Erratic Balls.'     The dojo master bowed deeply. 'It is yours, Lu-Tze the Sweeper.'     As Lobsang followed the ambling Lu-Tze he heard the dojo master, who like all teachers never missed an opportunity to drive home a lesson, say: 'Dojo! What is Rule One?'     Even the cowering challenger mumbled along to the chorus:     'Do not act incautiously when confronting little bald wrinkly smiling men!'     'Good rule, Rule One,' said Lu-Tze, leading his new acolyte into the next room. 'I have met many people who could have heeded it to good advantage.'     He stopped, without looking at Lobsang Ludd, and held out his hand.     'And now, if you please, you will return the little shovel you stole from me when first we met.'     'But I came nowhere near you, master!'     Lu-Tze's smile did not flicker. 'Oh. Yes. That is true. My apologies. The ramblings of an old man. Is it not written, "I'd forget my own head if it wasn't nailed on"? Let us proceed.'     The floor in here was wood, but the walls were high and padded. There were reddish-brown stains here and there.     'Er, we have one of these in the novices' dojo, Sweeper,' said Lobsang.     'But the balls in that are made of soft leather, yes?' said the old man, approaching a tall wooden cube. A row of holes ran halfway up the side that faced down the length of the room. 'And they travel quite slowly, I recall.'     'Er, yes,' said Lobsang, watching him pull on a very large lever. Down below there was the sound of metal on metal, and then of urgent gushing water. Air began to wheeze from joints in the box. 'These are wooden,' said Lu-Tze calmly. 'Catch one.'     Something touched Lobsang's ear and behind him the padding shook as a ball buried itself deeply and then dropped to the floor. 'Perhaps a shade slower...' said Lu-Tze, turning a knob.     After fifteen random balls, Lobsang caught one in his stomach. Lu-Tze sighed and pushed the big lever back.     'Well done,' he said.     'Sweeper, I'm not used to-' said the boy, picking himself up.     'Oh, I knew you wouldn't catch one,' said Lu-Tze. 'Even our boisterous friend out there in the dojo wouldn't catch one at that speed.'     'But you said you had slowed it down!'     'Only so that it wouldn't kill you. Just a test, see. Everything's a test. Let's go, lad. Can't keep the abbot waiting.'     Trailing cigarette smoke, Lu-Tze ambled away.     Lobsang followed, getting more and more nervous. This was Lu-Tze, the dojo had proved that. And he knew it, anyway. He'd looked at the little round face as it gazed amicably at the angry fighter and known it. But... just a sweeper? No insignia? No status? Well, obviously status, because the dojo master couldn't have bowed lower for the abbot, but...     And now he was following the man along passages where even a monk was not allowed to go, on pain of death. Sooner or later, there was surely going to be trouble.     'Sweeper, I really ought to be back at my duties in the kitchens-' he began.     'Oh, yes. Kitchen duties,' said Lu-Tze. 'To teach you the virtues of obedience and hard work, right?'     'Yes, Sweeper.'     'Are they working?'     'Oh, yes.'     'Really?'     'Well, no.'     'They're not all they're cracked up to be, I have to tell you,' said Lu-Tze. 'Whereas, my lad, what we have here' - he stepped through an archway - 'is an education!'     It was the biggest room Lobsang had ever seen. Shafts of light speared down from glazed holes in the roof. And below, more than a hundred yards across, and tended by senior monks who walked above it on delicate wire walkways, was...     Lobsang had heard about the Mandala.     It was as if someone had taken tons of coloured sands and thrown them across the floor in a great swirl of coloured chaos. But there was order fighting for survival in the chaos, rising and falling and spreading. Millions of randomly tumbling sand grains would nevertheless make a piece of pattern, which would replicate and spread across the circle, rebounding or merging with other patterns and eventually dissolving into the general disorder. It happened again and again, turning the Mandala into a silent raging war of colour.     Lu-Tze stepped out onto a frail-looking wood and rope bridge.     'Well?' he said. 'What d'you think?'     Lobsang took a deep breath. He felt that if he fell off the bridge he'd drop into the surging colours and never, ever hit the floor. He blinked and rubbed his forehead.     'It's... evil,' he said.     'Really?' said Lu-Tze. 'Not many people say that the first time. They use words like "wonderful".'     'It's going wrong!'     'What?'     Lobsang clutched the rope railing. 'The patterns-' he began.     'History repeating,' said Lu-Tze. 'They're always there.'     'No, they're-' Lobsang tried to take it all in. There were patterns under the patterns, disguised as part of the chaos. 'I mean... the other patterns...'     He slumped forward.     The air was cold, the world was spinning, and the ground rushed up to enfold him.     And stopped, a few inches away.     The air around him sizzled, as though it was being gently fried.     'Newgate Ludd?'     'Lu-Tze?' he said. The Mandala is...'     But where were the colours? Why was the air wet and smelling of the city? And then the ghost memories faded away. As they disappeared, they said: How can we be memories, when we have yet to happen? Surely what you remember is climbing all the way up onto the roof of the Bakers' Guild and finding that someone had loosened all the capping stones, because that just happened?     And a last dying memory said, Hey, that was months ago...     'No, we're not Lu-Tze, mysterious falling kid,' said the voice that had addressed him. 'Can you turn round?'     Newgate managed, with great difficulty, to move his head. It felt as though he was stuck in tar.     A heavy young man in a grubby yellow robe was sitting on an upturned box a few feet away. He looked a bit like a monk, except for his hair, because his hair looked a bit like an entirely separate organism. To say that it was black and bound up in a ponytail is to miss the opportunity of using the term 'elephantine'. It was hair with personality.     'Mostly my name's Soto,' said the man underneath. 'Marco Soto. I won't bother memorizing yours until we know if you're going to live or not, eh? So tell me, have you ever considered the rewards of the spiritual life?'     'Right now? Certainly!' said... yes, Newgate, he thought, that's my name, yes? So why do I remember Lobsang? 'Er, I was thinking about the possibility of taking up a new line of work!'     'Good career move,' said Soto.     'Is this some kind of magic?' Newgate tried to move but hung, turning gently, in the air just above the waiting ground.     'Not exactly. You seem to have shaped time.'     'Me? How did I do that?'     'You don't know?'     'No!'     'Hah, will you listen to him?' said Soto, as if talking to a genial companion. 'There's probably the spin time of a whole Procrastinator being used up to prevent your little trick causing untold harm to the entire world, and you don't know how you did it?'     'No!'     'Then we'll train you. It's a good life, and it offers excellent prospects. At least,' he added, sniffing, 'better than those that confront you now.'     Newgate strained to turn his head further. 'Train me in what, exactly?'     The man sighed. 'Still asking questions, kid? Are you coming or not?'     'How-?'     'Look, I'm offering you the opportunity of a lifetime, do you understand?'     'Why is it the opportunity of a lifetime, Mr Soto?'     'No, you misunderstand me. You, that is Newgate Ludd, are being offered, that is by me, the opportunity of having a lifetime. Which is more than you will have shortly.'     Newgate hesitated. He was aware of a tingling in his body. In a sense, it was still falling. He didn't know how he knew this, but the knowledge was as real as the cobbles just below him. If he made the wrong choice the fall would simply continue. It had been easy so far. The last few inches would be terminally hard.     'I must admit I don't like the way my life is going at the moment,' he said. 'It may be advantageous to find a new direction.'     'Good.' The be-haired man pulled something out of his robe. It looked like a folded abacus, but when he opened it up parts of it vanished with little flashes of light, as if they'd moved somewhere where they could not be seen.     'What are you doing?'     'Do you know what kinetic energy is?'     'No.'     'It's what you have far too much of.' Soto's fingers danced on the beads, sometimes disappearing and reappearing. 'I imagine you weigh about a hundred and ten pounds, yes?'     He pocketed the little device and strolled off to a nearby cart. He did something that Newgate couldn't see, and came back.     'In a few seconds you will complete your fall,' he said, reaching under him to place something on the ground. 'Try to think of it as a new start in life.'     Newgate fell. He hit the ground. The air flashed purple and the laden cart across the street jerked a foot into the air and collapsed heavily. One wheel bounced away.     Soto leaned down and shook Newgate's unresisting hand.     'How do you do?' he said. ' Any bruises?'     'It does hurt a bit,' said the shaken Newgate.     'Maybe you're a bit heavier than you look. Allow me...'     Soto grabbed Newgate under the shoulders and began to tug him off into the mists.     'Can I go and-?'     'No.'     'But the Guild-'     'You don't exist at the Guild.'     'That's stupid, I'm in the Guild records.'     'No, you're not. We'll see to that.'     'How? You can't rewrite history!'     'Bet you a dollar?'     'What have I joined?'     'We're the most secret society that you can imagine.'     'Really? Who are you, then?'     'The Monks of History.'     'Huh? I've never heard of you!'     'See? That's how good we are.'     And that was how good they were.     And then the time had just flown past.     And now the present came back.     'Are you all right, lad?'     Lobsang opened his eyes. His arm felt as though it was being wrenched off his body.     He looked up along the length of the arm to Lu-Tze, who was lying flat on the swaying bridge, holding him.     'What happened?'     'I think maybe you were overcome with the excitement, lad. Or vertigo, maybe. Just don't look down.'     There was a roaring below Lobsang, like a swarm of very angry bees. Automatically, he began to turn his head.     'I said don't look down! Just relax.'     Lu-Tze got to his feet. He raised Lobsang, at arm's length, as though he was a feather, until the boy's sandals were over the wood of the bridge. Below, monks were running along the walkways and shouting.     'Now, keep your eyes shut... don't look down! ... and I'll just walk us both to the far side, all right?'     'I, er, I remembered... back in the city, when Soto found me... I remembered...' said Lobsang weakly, tottering along behind the monk.     'Only to be expected,' said Lu-Tze, 'in the circumstances.'     'But, but I remember that back then I remembered about being here. You and the Mandala!'     'Is it not written in the sacred text, "There's a lot goes on we don't know about, in my opinion"?' said Lu-Tze.     'I... have not yet come across that one either, Sweeper,' said Lobsang. He felt cooler air around him, which suggested they had reached the rock tunnel on the far side of the room.     'Sadly, in the writings they have here you probably won't,' said Lu-Tze. 'Ah, you can open your eyes now.'     They walked on, with Lobsang rubbing his head to take away the strangeness of his thoughts.     Behind them the livid swirls in the wheel of colour, which had centred on the spot where Lobsang would have fallen, gradually faded and healed.     According to the First Scroll of Wen the Eternally Surprised, Wen and Clodpool reached the green valley between the towering mountains and Wen said: 'This is the place. Here there will be a temple dedicated to the folding and unfolding of time. I can see it.'     'I can't, master,' said Clodpool.     Wen said, 'It's over there.' He pointed, and his arm vanished.     'Ah,' said Clodpool. 'Over there.'     A few cherry blossom petals drifted down onto Wen's head from one of the trees that grew wild along the streamlets.     'And this perfect day will last for ever,' he said. 'The air is crisp, the sun is bright, there is ice in the streams. Every day in this valley will be this perfect day.'     'Could get a bit repetitive, master,' said Clodpool.     'That is because you don't yet know how to deal with time,' said Wen. 'But I will teach you to deal with time as you would deal with a coat, to be worn when necessary and discarded when not.'     'Will I have to wash it?' said Clodpool.     Wen gave him a long, slow look. 'That was either a very complex piece of thinking on your part, Clodpool, or you were just trying to overextend a metaphor in a rather stupid way. Which do you think it was?'     Clodpool looked at his feet. Then he looked at the sky. Then he looked at Wen.     'I think I am stupid, master.'     'Good,' said Wen. 'It is fortuitous that you are my apprentice at this time, because if I can teach you, Clodpool, I can teach anyone.'     Clodpool looked relieved, and bowed. 'You do me too much honour, master.'     'And there is a second part to my plan,' said Wen.     'Ah,' said Clodpool, with an expression that he thought made him look wise, although in reality it made him look like someone remembering a painful bowel movement. 'A plan with a second part is always a good plan, master.'     'Find me sands of all colours, and a flat rock. I will show you a way to make the currents of time visible.'     'Oh, right.'     'And there is a third part to my plan.'     'A third part, eh?'     'I can teach a gifted few to control their time, to slow it and speed it up and store it and direct it like the water in these streams. But most people will not, I fear, let themselves become able to do this. We have to help them. We will have to build... devices that will store and release time to where it is needed, because men cannot progress if they are carried like leaves on a stream. People need to be able to waste time, make time, lose time and buy time. This will be our major task.'     Clodpool's face twisted with the effort of understanding. Then he slowly raised a hand.     Wen sighed.     'You're going to ask what happened to the coat, aren't you?' he said.     Clodpool nodded.     'Forget about the coat, Clodpool. The coat is not important. Just remember that you are the blank paper on which I will write-' Wen held up a hand as Clodpool opened his mouth. 'Just another metaphor, just another metaphor. And now, please make some lunch.'     'Metaphorically or really, master?'     'Both.'     A flight of white birds burst out of the trees and wheeled overhead before swooping off across the valley.     'There will be doves,' said Wen, as Clodpool hurried off to light a fire. 'Every day, there will be doves.'     Lu-Tze left the novice in the anteroom. It might have surprised those who disliked him that he took a moment to straighten his robe before he entered the presence of the abbot, but Lu-Tze at least cared for people even if he did not care for rules. He pinched out his cigarette and stuck it behind his ear, too. He had known the abbot for almost six hundred years, and respected him. There weren't many people Lu-Tze respected. Mostly, they just got tolerated.     Usually, the sweeper got on with people in inverse proportion to their local importance, and the reverse was true. The senior monks... well, there could be no such thing as bad thoughts amongst people so enlightened, but it is true that the sight of Lu-Tze ambling insolently through the temple did tarnish a few karmas. To a certain type of thinker the sweeper was a personal insult, with his lack of any formal education or official status and his silly little Way and his incredible successes. So it was surprising that the abbot liked him, because never had there been an inhabitant of the valley so unlike the sweeper, so learned, so impractical and so frail. But then, surprise is the nature of the universe.     Lu-Tze nodded to the minor acolytes who opened the big varnished doors.     'How is his reverence today?' he said.     'The teeth are still giving him trouble, O Lu-Tze, but he is maintaining continuity and has just taken his first steps in a very satisfactory manner.'     'Yes, I thought I heard the gongs.'     The group of monks clustered in the centre of the room stepped aside as Lu-Tze approached the playpen. It was, unfortunately, necessary. The abbot had never mastered the art of circular ageing. He had therefore been forced to achieve longevity in a more traditional way, via serial reincarnation.     'Ah, Sweeper,' he burbled, awkwardly tossing aside a yellow ball and brightening up. 'And how are the mountains? Wanna bikkit wanna bikkit!'     'I'm definitely getting vulcanism, reverend one. It's very encouraging.'     'And you are in persistent good health?' said the abbot, while his pudgy little hand banged a wooden giraffe against the bars.     'Yes, your reverence. It's good to see you up and about again.'     'Only for a few steps so far, alas bikkit bikkit wanna bikkit. Unfortunately, young bodies have a mind of their own BIKKIT!     'You sent me a message, your reverence? It said, "Put this one to the test."'     'And what did you think of our want bikkit want bikkit want bikkit NOW young Lobsang Ludd?' An acolyte hurried forward with a plate of rusks. 'Would you care for a rusk, by the way?' the abbot added. 'Mmmm nicey bikkit!'     'No, reverend one, I have all the teeth I need,' said the sweeper.     'Ludd is a puzzle, is he not? His tutors have nicey bikkit mmm mmm bikkit told me he is very talented but somehow not all there. But you have never met him and don't know his history and so mmm bikkit and so I would value your uninfluenced observations mmm BIKKIT.'     'He is beyond fast,' said Lu-Tze. 'I think he may begin to react to things before they happen.'     'How can anyone tell that? Want teddy want teddy wanna wanna TEDDY!'     'I put him in front of the Device of Erratic Balls in the senior dojo and he was moving towards the right hole fractionally before the ball came out.'     'Some kind of gurgle telepathy, then?'     'If a simple machine has a mind of its own I think we're in really big trouble,' said Lu-Tze. He took a deep breath. 'And in the hall of the Mandala he saw the patterns in the chaos.'     'You let a neophyte see the Mandala?' said chief acolyte Rinpo, horrified.     'If you want to see if someone can swim, push him in the river,' said Lu-Tze, shrugging. 'What other way is there?'     'But to look at it without the proper training-'     'He saw the patterns,' said Lu-Tze. 'And reacted to the Mandala.' He did not add: and the Mandala reacted to him. He wanted to think about that. When you look into the abyss, it's not supposed to wave back.     'It was teddyteddyteddywahwah strictly forbidden, even so,' said the abbot. Clumsily, he fumbled among the toys on his mat and picked up a large wooden brick with a jolly blue elephant printed on it and hurled it clumsily at Rinpo. 'Sometimes you presume too much, Sweeper lookit 'lephant!'     There was some applause from the acolytes at the abbot's prowess in animal recognition. 'He saw the patterns. He knows what is happening. He just doesn't know what he knows,' said Lu-Tze doggedly. 'And within a few seconds of meeting me he stole a small object of value, and I'm still wondering how he did it. Can he really be as fast as that without training? Who is this boy?'           Tick     Who is this girl?     Madam Frout, headmistress of the Frout Academy and pioneer of the Frout Method of Learning Through Fun, often found herself thinking that when she had to interview Miss Susan. Of course, the girl was an employee, but... well, Madam Frout wasn't very good at discipline, which was possibly why she'd invented the Method, which didn't require any. She generally relied on talking to people in a jolly tone of voice until they gave in out of sheer embarrassment on her behalf.     Miss Susan didn't appear ever to be embarrassed about anything.     'The reason I've called you here, Susan, is that, er, the reason is-' Madam Frout faltered.     'There have been complaints?' said Miss Susan.     'Er, no... er... although Miss Smith has told me that the children coming up from your class are, er, restless. Their reading ability is, she says, rather unfortunately advanced...'     'Miss Smith thinks a good book is about a boy and his dog chasing a big red ball,' said Miss Susan. 'My children have learned to expect a plot. No wonder they get impatient. We're reading Grim Fairy Tales at the moment.'     'That is rather rude of you, Susan.'     'No, madam. That is rather polite of me. It would have been rude of me to say that there is a circle of Hell reserved for teachers like Miss Smith.'     'But that's a dreadf-' Madam Frout stopped, and began again. 'You should not be teaching them to read at all yet!' she snapped. But it was the snap of a soggy twig. Madam Frout cringed back in her chair when Miss Susan looked up. The girl had this terrible ability to give you her full attention. You had to be a better person than Madam Frout to survive in the intensity of that attention. It inspected your soul, putting little red circles around the bits it didn't like. When Miss Susan looked at you, it was as if she was giving you marks.     'I mean,' the headmistress mumbled, 'childhood is a time for play and-'     'Learning,' said Miss Susan.     'Learning through play,' said Madam Frout, grateful to find familiar territory. 'After all, kittens and puppies-'     '-grow up to be cats and dogs, which are even less interesting,' said Miss Susan, 'whereas children should grow up to be adults.'     Madam Frout sighed. There was no way she was going to make any progress. It was always like this. She knew she was powerless. News about Miss Susan had got around. Worried parents who'd turned to Learning Through Play because they despaired of their offspring ever Learning By Paying Attention to What Anyone Said were finding them coming home a little quieter, a little more thoughtful and with a pile of homework which, amazingly, they did without prompting and even with the dog helping them. And they came home with stories about Miss Susan.     Miss Susan spoke all languages. Miss Susan knew everything about everything. Miss Susan had wonderful ideas for school trips...     ... and that was particularly puzzling, because as far as Madam Frout knew, none had been officially organized. There was invariably a busy silence from Miss Susan's classroom when she went past. This annoyed her. It harked back to the bad old days when children were Regimented in classrooms that were no better than Torture Chambers for Little Minds. But other teachers said that there were noises. Sometimes there was the faint sound of waves, or a jungle. Just once, Madam Frout could have sworn, if she was the sort to swear, that as she passed there was a full-scale battle going on. This had often been the case with Learning Through Play, but this time the addition of trumpets, the swish of arrows and the screams of the fallen seemed to be going too far.     She'd thrown open the door and felt something hiss through the air above her head. Miss Susan had been sitting on a stool, reading from a book, with the class cross-legged in a quiet and fascinated semicircle around her. It was the sort of old-fashioned image Madam Frout hated, as if the children were Supplicants around some sort of Altar of Knowledge.     No one had said anything. All the watching children, and Miss Susan, made it clear in polite silence that they were waiting for her to go away.     She'd flounced back into the corridor and the door had clicked shut behind her. Then she noticed the long, crude arrow that was still vibrating in the opposite wall.     Madam Frout had looked at the door, with its familiar green paint, and then back at the arrow.     Which had gone.     She transferred Jason to Miss Susan's class. It had been a cruel thing to do, but Madam Frout considered that there was now some kind of undeclared war going on.     If children were weapons, Jason would have been banned by international treaty. Jason had doting parents and an attention span of minus several seconds, except when it came to inventive cruelty to small furry animals, when he could be quite patient. Jason kicked, punched, bit and spat. His artwork had even frightened the life out of Miss Smith, who could generally find something nice to say about any child. He was definitely a boy with special needs. In the view of the staff room, these began with an exorcism.     Madam Frout had stooped to listening at the keyhole. She had heard Jason's first tantrum of the day, and then silence. She couldn't quite make out what Miss Susan said next.     When she found an excuse to venture into the classroom half an hour later, Jason was helping two little girls to make a cardboard rabbit.     Later his parents said they were amazed at the change, although apparently now he would only go to sleep with the light on.     Madam Frout tried to question her newest teacher. After all, glowing references were all very well, but she was an employee, after all. The trouble was, Susan had a way of saying things to her, Madam Frout had found, so that she went away feeling quite satisfied and only realized that she hadn't really had a proper answer at all when she was back in her office, by which time it was always too late.     And it continued to be too late because suddenly the school had a waiting list. Parents were fighting to get their children enrolled in Miss Susan's class. As for some of the stories they brought home... well, everyone knew children had such vivid imaginations, didn't they? Even so, there was this essay by Richenda Higgs. Madam Frout fumbled for her glasses, which she was too vain to wear all the time and kept on a string around her neck, and looked at it again. In its entirety, it read:     A man with all bones came to talk to us he was not scarey at all, he had a big white hors. We pared the hors. He had a sighyve. He told us interesting things and to be careful when crosing the road.     Madam Frout handed the paper across the desk to Miss Susan, who looked at it gravely. She pulled out a red pencil, made a few little alterations, then handed it back.     'Well?' said Madam Frout.     'Yes, she's not very good at punctuation, I'm afraid. A good attempt at "scythe", though.'     'Who... What's this about a big white horse in the classroom?' Madam Frout managed.     Miss Susan looked at her pityingly and said, 'Madam, who could possibly bring a horse into a classroom? We're up two flights of stairs here.'     Madam Frout was not going to be deterred this time. She held up another short essay.     Today we were talked at by Mr Slumph who he is a bogeyman but he is nice now. He tole us what to do abot the other kind. You can put the blanket ove your head but it is bettr if you put it ove the bogeymans head then he think he do not exist and he is vanishs. He tole us lots of stores abot people he jump out on and he said sins Miss is our teachr he think no bogeymen will be in our houses bcos one thing a bogey dos not like is Miss finding him.     'Bogeymen, Susan?' said Madam Frout.     'What imaginations children have,' said Miss Susan, with a straight face.     'Are you introducing young children to the occult?' said Madam Frout suspiciously. This sort of thing caused a lot of trouble with parents, she was well aware.     'Oh, yes.'     'What? Why?'     'So that it doesn't come as a shock,' said Miss Susan calmly.     'But Mrs Robertson told me that her Emma was going round the house looking for monsters in the cupboards! And up until now she's always been afraid of them!'     'Did she have a stick?' said Susan.     'She had her father's sword!'     'Good for her.'     'Look, Susan... I think I see what you're trying to do,' said Madam Frout, who didn't really, 'but parents do not understand this sort of thing.'     'Yes,' said Miss Susan. 'Sometimes I really think people ought to have to pass a proper exam before they're allowed to be parents. Not just the practical, I mean.'     'Nevertheless, we must respect their views,' said Madam Frout, but rather weakly because occasionally she'd thought the same thing. There had been the matter of Parents' Evening. Madam had been too tense to pay much attention to what her newest teacher was doing. All she'd been aware of was Miss Susan sitting and talking quietly to the couples, right up to the point where Jason's mother had picked up her chair and chased Jason's father out of the room. Next day a huge bunch of flowers had arrived for Susan from Jason's mother, and an even bigger bunch from Jason's father.     Quite a few other couples had also come away from Miss Susan's desk looking worried or harassed. Certainly Madam Frout, when the time came for next term's fees to be paid, had never known people cough up so readily.     And there it was again. Madam Frout the headmistress, who had to worry about reputations and costs and fees, just occasionally heard the distant voice of Miss Frout who had been quite a good if rather shy teacher, and it was whistling and cheering Susan on.     Susan looked concerned. 'You are not satisfied with my work, madam?'     Madam Frout was stuck. No, she wasn't satisfied, but for all the wrong reasons. And it was dawning on her as this interview progressed that she didn't dare sack Miss Susan or, worse, let her leave of her own accord. If she set up a school and news got round, the Learning Through Play School would simply haemorrhage pupils and, importantly, fees.     'Well, of course... no, not... in many ways...' she began, and became aware that Miss Susan was staring past her.     There was... Madam Frout groped for her glasses, and found their string had got tangled with the buttons of her blouse. She peered at the mantelpiece and tried to make sense of the blur.     'Why, it looks like a... a white rat, in a little black robe,' she said. 'And walking on its hind legs, too! Can you see it?'     'I can't imagine how a rat could wear a robe,' said Miss Susan. Then she sighed, and snapped her fingers. The finger-snapping wasn't essential, but time stopped.     At least, it stopped for everyone but Miss Susan.     And for the rat on the mantelpiece.     Which was in fact the skeleton of a rat, although this was not preventing it from trying to steal Madam Frout's jar of boiled sweets for Good Children.     Susan strode over and grasped the collar of the tiny robe.     SQUEAK? said the Death of Rats.     'I thought it was you!' snapped Susan. 'How dare you come here again! I thought you'd got the message the other day. And don't think I didn't see you when you turned up to collect Henry the Hamster last month! Do you know how hard it is to teach geography when you can see someone kicking the poo out of a treadmill?'     The rat sniggered: SNH. SNH. SNH.     'And you're eating a sweet! Put it in the bin right now!'     Susan dropped the rat onto the desk in front of the temporally frozen Madam Frout, and paused.     She'd always tried to be good about this sort of thing, but sometimes you just had to acknowledge who you were. So she pulled open the bottom drawer to check the level in the bottle that was Madam's shield and comforter in the wonderful world that was education, and was pleased to see that the old girl was going a bit easier on the stuff these days. Most people have some means of filling up the gap between perception and reality, and, after all, in those circumstances there are far worse things than gin.     She also spent a little while going through Madam's private papers, and this has to be said about Susan: it did not occur to her that there was anything wrong about this, although she'd quite understand that it was probably wrong if you weren't Susan Sto Helit, of course. The papers were in quite a good safe that would have occupied a competent thief for at least twenty minutes. The fact that the door swung open at her touch suggested that special rules applied here.     No door was closed to Miss Susan. It ran in the family. Some genetics are passed on via the soul.     When she'd brought herself up to date on the school's affairs, mostly to indicate to the rat that she wasn't just someone who could be summoned at a moments notice, she stood up.     'All right,' she said wearily. 'You're just going to pester me, aren't you? For ever and ever and ever.'     The Death of Rats looked at her with its skull on one side.     SQUEAK, it said winsomely.     'Well, yes, I like him,' she said. 'In a way. But, I mean, you know, it's not right. Why does he need me? He's Death! He's not exactly powerless! I'm just human!'     The rat squeaked again, jumped down onto the floor and ran through the closed door. It reappeared for a moment and beckoned to her.     'Oh, all right,' said Susan to herself. 'Make that mostly human.'           Tick     And who is this Lu-Tze?     Sooner or later every novice had to ask this rather complex question. Sometimes it would be years before they found out that the little man who swept their floors and uncomplainingly carted away the contents of the dormitory cesspit and occasionally came out with outlandish foreign sayings was the legendary hero they'd been told they would meet one day. And then, when they'd confronted him, the brightest of them confronted themselves.     Mostly sweepers came from the villages in the valley. They were part of the staff of the monastery but they had no status. They did all the tedious, unregarded jobs. They were... figures in the background, pruning the cherry trees, washing the floors, cleaning out the carp pools and, always, sweeping. They had no names. That is, a thoughtful novice would understand that the sweepers must have names, some form by which they were known to other sweepers, but within the temple grounds at least they had no names, only instructions. No one knew where they went at night. They were just sweepers. But so was Lu-Tze.     One day a group of senior novices, for mischief, kicked over the little shrine that Lu-Tze kept beside his sleeping mat.     Next morning, no sweepers turned up for work. They stayed in their huts, with the doors barred. After making inquiries, the abbot, who at that time was fifty years old again, summoned the three novices to his room. There were three brooms leaning against the wall. He spoke as follows:     'You know that the dreadful Battle of Five Cities did not happen because the messenger got there in time?'     They did. They learned this early in their studies. And they bowed nervously, because this was the abbot, after all.     'And you know, then, that when the messenger's horse threw a shoe he espied a man trudging beside the road carrying a small portable forge and pushing an anvil on a barrow?'     They knew.     'And you know that man was Lu-Tze?'     They did.     'You surely know that Janda Trapp, Grand Master of okidoki, toro-fu and chang-fu, has only ever yielded to one man?'     They knew.     'And you know that man is Lu-Tze?'     They did.     'You know the little shrine you kicked over last night?'     They knew.     'You know it had an owner?'     There was silence. Then the brightest of the novices looked up at the abbot in horror, swallowed, picked up one of the three brooms and walked out of the room.     The other two were slower of brain and had to follow the story all the way through to the end.     Then one of them said, 'But it was only a sweeper's shrine!'     'You will take up the brooms and sweep,' said the abbot, 'and you will sweep every day, and you will sweep until the day you find Lu-Tze and dare to say "Sweeper, it was I who knocked over and scattered your shrine and now I will in humility accompany you to the dojo of the Tenth Djim, in order to learn the Right Way." Only then, if you are still able, may you resume your studies here. Understood?'[6]     Older monks sometimes complained, but someone would always say, 'Remember that Lu-Tze's Way is not our Way. Remember he learned everything by sweeping unheeded while students were being educated. Remember, he has been everywhere and done many things. Perhaps he is a little... strange, but remember that he walked into a citadel full of armed men and traps and nevertheless saw to it that the Pash of Muntab choked innocently on a fish bone. No monk is better than Lu-Tze at finding the Time and the Place.'     Some, who did not know, might say: 'What is this Way that gives him so much power?'     And they would be told: 'It is the Way of Mrs Marietta Cosmopilite, 3 Quirm Street, Ankh-Morpork, Rooms For Rent, Very Reasonable. No, we don't understand it, either. Some subsendential rubbish, apparently.'           Tick     Lu-Tze listened to the senior monks, while leaning on his broom. Listening was an art he had developed over the years, having learned that if you listened hard and long enough people would tell you more than they thought they knew.     'Soto is a good field operative,' he said at last. 'Weird but good.'     'The fall even showed up on the Mandala,' said Rinpo. 'The boy knew none of the appropriate actions. Soto said he'd done it reflexively. He said he thought the boy was as close to null as he has ever witnessed. He had him put on a cart for the mountains within the hour. He then spent three whole days performing the Closing of the Flower at the Guild of Thieves, where the boy had apparently been left as a baby.'     'The closure was successful?'     'We authorized the run time of two Procrastinators. Perhaps a few people will have faint memories, but the Guild is a large and busy place.'     'No brothers, no sisters. No love of parents. Just the brotherhood of thieves,' said Lu-Tze sadly.     'He was, however, a good thief.'     'I'll bet. How old is he?'     'Sixteen or seventeen, it appears.'     'Too old to teach, then.'     The senior monks exchanged glances.     'We cannot teach him anything,' said the Master of Novices. 'He-'     Lu-Tze held up a skinny hand. 'Let me guess. He knows it already?'     'It's as though he's being told something that had momentarily slipped his memory,' said Rinpo. 'And then he gets bored and angry. He's not all there, in my opinion.'     Lu-Tze scratched in his stained beard. 'Mystery boy,' he said thoughtfully. 'Naturally talented.'     'And we ask ourselves wanna potty wanna potty poo why now, why at this time?' said the abbot, chewing the foot of a toy yak.     'Ah, but is it not said, "There is a Time and a Place for Everything"?' said Lu-Tze. 'Anyway, reverend sirs, you have taught pupils for hundreds of years. I am but a sweeper.' Absentmindedly, he stuck out his hand just as the yak left the fumbling fingers of the abbot, and caught it in mid-air.     'Lu-Tze,' said the Master of Novices, 'to be brief, we were unable to teach you. Remember?'     'But then I found my Way,' said Lu-Tze.     'Will you teach him?' said the abbot. 'The boy needs to mmm brmmm find himself.'     'Is it not written, "I have only one pair of hands"?' said Lu-Tze.     Rinpo looked at the Master of Novices. 'I don't know,' he said. 'None of us ever sees this stuff you quote.'     Still looking thoughtful, as if his mind were busy elsewhere, Lu-Tze said, 'It could only be here and now. For it is written: "It never rains but it pours."'     Rinpo looked puzzled, and then enlightenment dawned. 'A jug,' he said, looking pleased. 'A jug never rains, but it pours!'     Lu-Tze shook his head sadly. 'And the sound of one hand clapping is a "cl",' he said. 'Very well, your reverence. I will help him to find a Way. Will there be anything else, reverend sirs?'           Tick     Lobsang stood up when Lu-Tze returned to the anteroom, but he did it hesitantly, embarrassed at appearing to show respect.     'Okay, here are the rules,' said Lu-Tze, walking straight past. 'Word one is, you don't call me "master" and I don't name you after some damn insect. It's not my job to discipline you, it's yours. For it is written, "I can't be having with that kind of thing." Do what I tell you and we'll get along fine. All right?'     'What? You want me as an apprentice?' said Lobsang, running to keep up.     'No, I don't want you as an apprentice, not at my age, but you're going to be so we'd both better make the best of it, okay?'     'And you will teach me everything?'     'I don't know about "everything". I mean, I don't know much forensic mineralogy. But I will teach you all that I know that is useful for you to know, yes.'     'When?'     'It's getting late-'     'At dawn tomorrow?'     'Oh, before dawn. I'll wake you.'           Tick     Some distance away from Madam Frout's Academy, in Esoteric Street, were a number of gentlemen's clubs. It would be far too cynical to say that here the term 'gentleman' was simply defined as 'someone who can afford five hundred dollars a year'; they also had to be approved of by a great many other gentlemen who could afford the same fee.     And they didn't much like the company of ladies. This was not to say that they were that kind of gentlemen, who had their own, rather better-decorated clubs in another part of town, where there was generally a lot more going on. These gentlemen were gentlemen of a class who were, on the whole, bullied by ladies from an early age. Their lives were steered by nurses, governesses, matrons, mothers and wives, and after four or five decades of that the average mild-mannered gentleman gave up and escaped as politely as possible to one of these clubs, where he could snooze the afternoon away in a leather armchair with the top button of his trousers undone. [7]     The most select of these clubs was Fidgett's, and it operated like this: Susan didn't need to make herself invisible, because she knew that the members of Fidgett's would simply not see her, or believe that she really existed even if they did. Women weren't allowed in the club at all except under Rule 34b, which grudgingly allowed for female members of the family or respectable married ladies over thirty to be entertained to tea in the Green Drawing Room between 3.15 and 4.30p.m., provided at least one member of staff was present at all times. This had been the case for so long that many members now interpreted it as being the only seventy-five minutes in the day when women were actually allowed to exist and, therefore, any women seen in the club at any other time were a figment of their imagination.     In the case of Susan, in her rather strict black schoolteaching outfit and button boots that somehow appeared to have higher heels when she was being Death's granddaughter, this might well have been true.     The boots echoed on the marble floor as she made her way to the library.     It was a mystery to her why Death had started using the place. Of course, he did have many of the qualities of a gentleman: he had a place in the country - a far, dark country - was unfailingly punctual, was courteous to all those he met - and sooner or later he met everyone - was well if soberly dressed, at home in any company and, proverbially, a good horseman.     The fact that he was the Grim Reaper was the only bit that didn't quite fit.     Most of the overstuffed chairs in the library were occupied by contented lunchers dozing happily under tented copies of the Ankh-Morpork Times. Susan looked around until she found the copy from which projected the bottom half of a black robe and two bony feet. There was also a scythe leaning against the back of the armchair. She raised the paper.     GOOD AFTERNOON, said Death. HAVE YOU HAD LUNCH? IT WAS JAM ROLY-POLY.     'Why do you do this, Grandfather? You know you don't sleep.'     I FIND IT RESTFUL. ARE YOU WELL?     'I was until the rat arrived.'     YOUR CAREER PROGRESSES? YOU KNOW I CARE FOR YOU.     'Thank you,' said Susan shortly. 'Now, why did-'     WOULD A LITTLE SMALL TALK HURT?     Susan sighed. She knew what was behind that, and it wasn't a happy thought. It was a small, sad and wobbly little thought, and it ran: each of them had no one else but the other. There. It was a thought that sobbed into its own handkerchief, but it was true.     Oh, Death had his manservant, Albert, and of course there was the Death of Rats, if you could call that company.     And as far as Susan was concerned...     Well, she was partly immortal, and that was all there was to it. She could see things that were really there,[8] she could put time on and off like an overcoat. Rules that applied to everyone else, like gravity, applied to her only when she let them. And, however hard you tried, this sort of thing did tend to get in the way of relationships. It was hard to deal with people when a tiny part of you saw them as a temporary collection of atoms that would not be around in another few decades.     And there she met the tiny part of Death that found it hard to deal with people when it thought of them as real.     Not a day went past but she regretted her curious ancestry. And then she'd wonder what it could possibly be like to walk the world unaware at every step of the rocks beneath your feet and the stars overhead, to have a mere five senses, to be almost blind and nearly deaf...     THE CHILDREN ARE WELL? I LIKED THEIR PAINTINGS OF ME.     'Yes. How is Albert?'     HE IS WELL.     ... and not really have any small talk, Susan added to herself. There wasn't room for small talk in a big universe.     THE WORLD IS COMING TO AN END.     Well, that was big talk. 'When?'     NEXT WEDNESDAY.     'Why?'     THE AUDITORS ARE BACK, said Death.     'Those evil little things?'     YES.     'I hate them.'     I, OF COURSE, DO NOT HAVE ANY EMOTIONS, said Death, poker-faced as only a skull can be.     'What are they up to this time?'     I CANNOT SAY.     'I thought you could remember the future!'     YES. BUT SOMETHING HAS CHANGED. AFTER WEDNESDAY, THERE IS NO FUTURE.     'There must be something, even if it's only debris!'     NO. AFTER ONE O'CLOCK NEXT WEDNESDAY THERE IS NOTHING. JUST ONE O'CLOCK NEXT WEDNESDAY, FOR EVER AND EVER. NO ONE WILL LIVE. NO ONE WILL DIE. THAT IS WHAT I NOW SEE. THE FUTURE HAS CHANGED. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?     'And what has this got to do with me?' Susan knew this would sound stupid to anyone else.     I WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THE END OF THE WORLD IS EVERYONE'S RESPONSIBILITY, WOULDN'T YOU?     'You know what I mean!'     I BELIEVE THIS HAS TO DO WITH THE NATURE OF TIME, WHICH IS BOTH IMMORTAL AND HUMAN. THERE HAVE BEEN CERTAIN... RIPPLES.     'They're going to do something to Time? I thought they weren't allowed to do things like that.'     NO. BUT HUMANS CAN. IT HAS BEEN DONE ONCE BEFORE.     'No one would be that stu-'     Susan stopped. Of course someone would be that stupid. Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.     She thought some more. Death was watching her intently.     Then she said, 'Funnily enough, there is this book I've been reading to the class. I found it on my desk one day. It's called Grim Fairy Tales...'     AH, HAPPY TALES FOR LITTLE FOLK, said Death, without a trace of irony.     '... which is mostly about wicked people dying in horrible ways. It's strange, really. The children seem quite happy with the idea. It doesn't seem to worry them.'     Death said nothing.     '... except in the case of the Glass Clock of Bad Schüschein,' said Susan, watching his skull. 'They found that quite upsetting, even though it's got a kind of happy ending.'     IT MAY BE BECAUSE THE STORY IS TRUE.     Susan had known Death long enough not to argue.     'I think I understand,' she said. 'You made sure the book was there.'     YES. OH, THE RUBBISH ABOUT THE HANDSOME PRINCE AND SO ON IS AN OBVIOUS ADDITION. THE AUDITORS DID NOT INVENT THE CLOCK, OF COURSE. THAT WAS THE WORK OF A MADMAN. BUT THEY ARE GOOD AT ADAPTING. THEY CANNOT CREATE, BUT THEY CAN ADAPT. AND THE CLOCK IS BEING REBUILT.     'Was time really stopped?'     TRAPPED. ONLY FOR A MOMENT, BUT THE RESULTS STILL LIE ALL AROUND US. HISTORY WAS SHATTERED, FRAGMENTED. PASTS WERE NO LONGER LINKED TO FUTURES. THE HISTORY MONKS HAD TO REBUILD IT PRACTICALLY FROM SCRATCH.     Susan did not waste breath saying things like, 'That's impossible,' at a time like this. Only people who believed that they lived in the real world said things like that.     'That must have taken some... time,' she said.     TIME, OF COURSE, WAS NOT THE ISSUE. THEY USE A FORM OF YEARS BASED ON THE HUMAN PULSE RATE. OF THOSE YEARS, IT TOOK ABOUT FIVE HUNDRED.     'But if history was shattered, where did they get-'     Death steepled his fingers.     THINK TEMPORALLY, SUSAN. I BELIEVE THEY STOLE SOME TIME FROM SOME EARLIER AGE OF THE WORLD, WHERE IT WAS BEING WASTED ON A LOT OF REPTILES. WHAT IS TIME TO A BIG LIZARD, AFTER ALL? HAVE YOU SEEN THOSE PROCRASTINATORS THE MONKS USE? WONDERFUL THINGS. THEY CAN MOVE TIME, STORE IT, STRETCH IT... QUITE INGENIOUS. AS FOR WHEN THIS HAPPENED, THE QUESTION ALSO MAKES NO SENSE. WHEN THE BOTTLE IS BROKEN, DOES IT MATTER WHERE THE GLASS WAS HIT? THE SHARDS OF THE EVENT ITSELF NO LONGER EXIST IN THIS REBUILT HISTORY, IN ANY CASE.     'Hold on, hold on... How can you take a piece of, oh, some old century, and stitch it into a modern one? Wouldn't people notice that...' Susan flailed a bit, 'oh, that people have got the wrong armour and the buildings are all wrong and they're still in the middle of wars that happened centuries ago?'     IN MY EXPERIENCE, SUSAN, WITHIN THEIR HEADS TOO MANY HUMANS SPEND A LOT OF TIME IN THE MIDDLE OF WARS THAT HAPPENED CENTURIES AGO.     'Very insightful, but what I meant was-'     YOU MUST NOT CONFUSE THE CONTENT WITH THE CONTAINER. Death sighed. YOU ARE MOSTLY HUMAN. YOU NEED A METAPHOR. AN OBJECT LESSON IS CLEARLY IN ORDER. COME.     He stood up and stalked into the dining room across the hall. There were still a few late lunchers frozen in their work, napkins tucked under their chins, in an atmosphere of happy carbohydrates.     Death walked up to a table that had been laid for dinner, and gripped a corner of the tablecloth.     TIME IS THE CLOTH, he said. THE CUTLERY AND PLATES ARE THE EVENTS THAT TAKE PLACE WITHIN TIME-     There was a drum roll. Susan glanced down. The Death of Rats was seated in front of a tiny drum kit.     OBSERVE.     Death pulled the cloth away. There was a rattle of cutlery and a moment of uncertainty regarding a vase of flowers, but almost all the tableware remained in place.     'I see,' said Susan.     THE TABLE REMAINS LAID, BUT THE CLOTH CAN NOW BE USED FOR ANOTHER MEAL.     'However, you knocked the salt over,' said Susan.     THE TECHNIQUE IS NOT PERFECT.     'And there are stains on the cloth from the previous meal, Grandfather.'     Death beamed. YES, he said. AS METAPHORS GO IT IS RATHER GOOD, DON'T YOU THINK?     'People would notice!'     REALLY? HUMANS ARE THE MOST UNOBSERVANT CREATURES IN THE UNIVERSE. OH, THERE ARE LOTS OF ANOMALIES, OF COURSE, A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF SPILLED SALT, BUT HISTORIANS EXPLAIN THEM AWAY. THEY ARE SO VERY USEFUL IN THAT RESPECT.     There was something called the Rules, Susan knew. They weren't written down, in the same way that mountains weren't written down. They were far more fundamental to the operation of the universe than mere mechanical things like gravity. The Auditors might hate the untidiness caused by the emergence of life, but the Rules did not allow them to do anything about it. The ascent of mankind must have been a boon to them. At last there was a species that could be persuaded to shoot itself in the foot.     'I don't know what you expect me to do about it,' she said.     EVERYTHING THAT YOU CAN, said Death. I, BY CUSTOM AND PRACTICE, HAVE OTHER DUTIES AT THIS TIME.     'Such as?'     IMPORTANT MATTERS.     'That you can't tell me about?'     THAT I DO NOT INTEND TO TELL YOU ABOUT. BUT THEY ARE IMPORTANT. IN ANY CASE, YOUR INSIGHT IS VALUABLE. YOU HAVE WAYS OF THINKING THAT WILL BE USEFUL. YOU CAN GO WHERE I CANNOT. I HAVE ONLY SEEN THE FUTURE. BUT YOU CAN CHANGE IT.     'Where is this clock being rebuilt?'     I CANNOT TELL. I HAVE DONE WELL TO DEDUCE WHAT I HAVE. THE ISSUE IS CLOUDED FROM ME.     'Why?'     BECAUSE THINGS HAVE BEEN HIDDEN. SOMEONE IS INVOLVED... WHO IS NOT SUBJECT TO ME. Death looked awkward.     'An immortal?'     SOMEONE SUBJECT TO... SOMEONE ELSE.     'You're going to have to be a lot clearer than that.'     SUSAN... YOU KNOW THAT I ADOPTED AND RAISED YOUR MOTHER, AND FOUND A SUITABLE HUSBAND FOR HER     'Yes, yes,' snapped Susan. 'How could I forget? I look in my mirror every day.'     THIS IS... DIFFICULT FOR ME. THE TRUTH IS, I WAS NOT THE ONLY ONE TO INVOLVE MYSELF LIKE THAT. WHY LOOK SURPRISED? IS IT NOT WELL KNOWN THAT GODS DO THIS SORT OF THING ALL THE TIME?     'Gods, yes, but people like you-'     PEOPLE LIKE US ARE STILL LIKE PEOPLE...     Susan did an unusual thing, and listened. That's not an easy task for a teacher.     SUSAN, YOU WILL KNOW THAT WE WHO ARE... OUTSIDE HUMANITY.     'I'm not outside humanity,' said Susan sharply. 'I just have a few... extra talents.'     I DID NOT MEAN YOU, OF COURSE. I MEANT THE OTHERS WHO ARE NOT HUMAN AND YET PART OF HUMANITY'S UNIVERSE - WAR AND DESTINY AND PESTILENCE AND THE REST OF US - WE ARE ENVISAGED AS HUMAN BY HUMANS AND THUS, IN VARIOUS FASHIONS, WE TAKE ON SOME ASPECTS OF HUMANITY. IT CAN BE NO OTHER WAY. EVEN THE VERY BODY SHAPE FORCES UPON OUR MINDS A CERTAIN WAY OF OBSERVING THE UNIVERSE. WE PICK UP HUMAN TRAITS... CURIOSITY, ANGER, RESTLESSNESS...     'This is basic stuff, Grandfather.'     YES. AND YOU KNOW, THEREFORE, THAT SOME OF US... TAKE AN INTEREST IN HUMANITY.     'I know. I am one of the results.'     YES. ER... AND SOME OF US TAKE AN INTEREST WHICH IS, ER, MORE...     'Interesting?'     ... PERSONAL. AND YOU HAVE HEARD ME SPEAK OF THE... PERSONIFICATION OF TIME...     'You didn't tell me much. She lives in a palace of glass, you once said.' Susan felt a small, shameful and yet curiously satisfying sensation in seeing Death discomfited. He looked like someone who was being forced to reveal a skeleton in the closet.     YES. ER... SHE FELL IN LOVE WITH A HUMAN...     'How very romantick,' said Susan, inserting the k. Now she was being childishly perverse, she knew, but life as Death's granddaughter was not easy, and just occasionally she had the irresistible urge to annoy.     AH. A PUN, OR PLAY ON WORDS, said Death wearily, ALTHOUGH I SUSPECT YOU WERE MERELY TRYING TO BE TIRESOME.     'Well, that sort of thing used to happen a lot in antiquity, didn't it?' said Susan. 'Poets were always falling in love with moonlight or hyacinths or something, and goddesses were forever-'     BUT THIS WAS REAL, said Death.     'How real do you mean?'     TIME HAD A SON.     'How could-'     TIME HAD A SON. SOMEONE MOSTLY MORTAL. SOMEONE LIKE YOU.           Tick     A member of the Clockmakers' Guild called on Jeremy once a week. It was nothing formal. In any case there was often some work for him to do, or some results to be collected, because whatever else you might say about him, the boy had a genius for clocks.     Informally, the visit was also a delicate way to make sure that the lad was taking his medicine and wasn't noticeably crazy.     The clockmakers were well aware that the intricate mechanisms of the human brain could occasionally throw a screw. The Guild's members tended to be meticulous people, always in pursuit of an inhuman accuracy, and this took its toll. It could cause problems. Springs were not the only things that got wound up. The Guild committee were, by and large, kind and understanding men. They were not, on the whole, men accustomed to guile.     Dr Hopkins, the Guild's secretary, was surprised when the door of Jeremy's shop was opened by a man who appeared to have survived a very serious accident.     'Er, I'm here to see Mr Jeremy,' he managed.     'Yeth, thir. The marthter ith in, thur.'     'And you, mm, are...?'     'Igor, thur. Mr Jeremy wath kind enough to take me on, thur.'     'You work for him?' said Dr Hopkins, looking Igor up and down.     'Yeth, thur.'     'Mm... Have you been standing too close to some dangerous machinery?'     'No, thur. He ith in the workthop, thur.'     'Mr Igor,' said Dr Hopkins, as he was ushered into the shop, 'you do know that Mr Jeremy has to take medicine, don't you?'     'Yeth, thur. He mentionth it often.'     'And he, mm, his general health is... ?'     'Good, thur. He ith enthuthiathtic for hith work, thur. Bright-eyed and buthy-tailed.'     'Buthy-tailed, eh?' said Dr Hopkins weakly. 'Mm... Mr Jeremy doesn't usually keep servants. I'm afraid he threw a clock at the head of the last assistant he had.'     'Really, thur?'     'Mm, he hasn't thrown a clock at your head, has he?'     'No, thur. He actth quite normally,' said Igor, a man with four thumbs and stitches all around his neck. He opened the door into the workshop. 'Dr Hopkinth, Mr Jeremy. I will make thome tea, thur.'     Jeremy was sitting bolt upright at the table, his eyes gleaming.     'Ah, doctor,' he said. 'How kind of you to come.'     Dr Hopkins took in the workshop.     There had been changes. Quite a large piece of lath-and-plaster wall, covered in pencilled sketches, had been removed from somewhere and stood on an easel on one side of the room. The benches, usually the resting places of clocks in various stages of assembly, were covered with lumps of crystal and slabs of glass. And there was a strong smell of acid.     'Mm... something new?' Dr Hopkins ventured.     'Yes, doctor. I've been examining the properties of certain superdense crystals,' said Jeremy.     Dr Hopkins took a deep breath of relief. 'Ah, geology. A wonderful hobby! I'm so glad. It's not good to think about clocks all the time, you know!' he added, jovially, and with a soupçon of hope.     Jeremy's brow wrinkled, as if the brain behind it was trying to fit around an unfamiliar concept.     'Yes,' he said at last. 'Did you know, doctor, that copper octirate vibrates exactly two million, four hundred thousand and seventy-eight times a second?'     'As much as that, eh?' said Dr Hopkins. 'My word.'     'Indeed. And light shone through a natural prism of octivium quartz splits into only three colours?'     'Fascinating,' said Dr Hopkins, reflecting that it could be worse. 'Mm... is it me, or is there a rather... sharp smell in the air?'     'Drains,' said Jeremy. 'We've been cleaning them. With acid. Which is what we needed the acid for. For cleaning the drains.'     'Drains, eh?' Dr Hopkins blinked. He wasn't at home in the world of drains. There was a crackling sound and blue light flickered under the door of the kitchen.     'Your, mm, man Igor,' he said. 'All right, is he?'     'Yes, thank you, doctor. He's from Uberwald, you know.'     'Oh. Very... big, Uberwald. Very big country.' That was one of only two things Dr Hopkins knew about Uberwald. He coughed nervously, and mentioned the other one. 'People there can be a bit strange, I've heard.'     'Igor says he's never had anything to do with that kind of person,' said Jeremy calmly.     'Good. Good. That is good,' said the doctor. Jeremy's fixed smile was beginning to unnerve him. 'He, mm, seems to have a lot of scars and stitches.'     'Yes. It's cultural.'     'Cultural, is it?' Dr Hopkins looked relieved. He was a man who tried to see the best in everybody, but the city had got rather complicated since he was a boy, with dwarfs and trolls and golems and even zombies. He wasn't sure he liked everything that was happening, but a lot of it was 'cultural', apparently, and you couldn't object to that, so he didn't. 'Cultural' sort of solved problems by explaining that they weren't really there.     The light under the door went out. A moment later Igor came in with two cups of tea on a tray.     It was good tea, the doctor had to admit, but the acid in the air was making his eyes water.     'So, mm, how is the work on the new navigation tables going?' he said.     'Ginger bithcuit, thur?' said Igor, by his ear.     'Oh, er, yes... Oh, I say, these are rather good, Mr Igor.'     'Take two, thur.'     'Thank you.' Now Dr Hopkins sprayed crumbs as he spoke. 'The navigation tables-' he repeated.     'I am afraid I have not been able to make very much progress,' said Jeremy. 'I have been engaged on the properties of crystals.'     'Oh. Yes. You said. Well, of course we are very grateful for any time that you feel you can spare,' said Dr Hopkins. 'And if I may say so, mm, it is good to see you with a new interest. Too much concentration on one thing is, mm, conducive to ill humours of the brain.'     'I have medicine,' said Jeremy.     'Yes, of course. Er, as a matter of fact, since I happened to be going past the apothecary today...' Dr Hopkins pulled a large, paper-wrapped bottle out of his pocket.     'Thank you.' Jeremy indicated the shelf behind him. 'As you can see, I have nearly run out.'     'Yes, I thought you might,' said Dr Hopkins, as if the level of the bottle on Jeremy's shelf wasn't something the clockmakers kept a very careful eye on. 'Well, I shall be going, then. Well done with the crystals. I used to collect butterflies when I was a boy. Wonderful things, hobbies. Give me a killing jar and a net and I was as happy as a little lark.'     Jeremy still smiled at him. There was something glassy about the smile.     Dr Hopkins swallowed the remainder of his tea and put the cup back in the saucer.     'And now I really must be on my way,' he mumbled. 'So much to do. Don't wish to keep you from your work. Crystals, eh? Wonderful things. So pretty.'     'Are they?' said Jeremy. He hesitated, as though he was trying to solve a minor problem. 'Oh, yes. Patterns of light.'     'Twinkly,' said Dr Hopkins.     Igor was waiting by the street door when Dr Hopkins reached it. He nodded.     'Mm... you are sure about the medicine?' the doctor said quietly.     'Oh yeth, thur. Twithe a day I watch him pour out a thpoonful.'     'Oh, good. He can be a little, er, sometimes he doesn't get on well with people.'     'Yeth, thur?'     'Very, um, very particular about accuracy...'     'Yeth, thur.'     '... which is a good thing, of course. Wonderful thing, accuracy,' said Dr Hopkins, and sniffed. 'Up to a point, of course. Well, good day to you.'     'Good day, thur.'     When Igor returned to the workshop Jeremy was carefully pouring the blue medicine into a spoon. When the spoon was exactly full, he tipped it into the sink. 'They check, you know,' he said. 'They think I don't notice.'     'I'm thure they mean well, thur.'     'I'm afraid I can't think so well when I take the medicine,' he said. 'In fact I think I'm getting on a lot better without it, don't you? It slows me down.'     Igor took refuge in silence. In his experience, many of the world's greatest discoveries were made by men who would be considered mad by conventional standards. Insanity depended on your point of view, he always said, and if it was the view through your own underpants then everything looked fine.     But young Master Jeremy was beginning to worry him. He never laughed, and Igor liked a good maniacal laugh. You could trust it. Since giving up the medicine, Jeremy had not, as Igor had expected, begun to gibber and shout things like 'Mad! They said I was mad! But I shall show them all! Ahahahaha!' He'd simply become more - focused.     Then there was that smile. Igor was not easily frightened, because otherwise he wouldnl be able to look in a mirror, but he was becoming a little troubled.     'Now, where were we... ?' said Jeremy. 'Oh, yes, give me a hand here.'     Together they moved the table aside. Under it, dozens of glass jars hissed.     'Not enough power,' said Igor. 'Altho, we have not got the mirrorth right yet, thur.'     Jeremy pulled the cloth off the device on the workbench. Glass and crystal glittered, and in some cases glittered very strangely. As Jeremy had remarked yesterday, in the clarity that was returning now that he was carefully pouring one spoonful of his medicine down the sink twice a day, some of the angles looked wrong. One crystal had disappeared when he'd locked it into place, but it was clearly still there because he could see the light reflecting off it.     'And we've thtill got too much metal in it, thur,' Igor grumbled. 'It wath the thpring that did for the latht one.'     'We'll find a way,' said Jeremy.     'Home-made lightning ith never ath good ath the real thort,' said Igor.     'Good enough to test the principle,' said Jeremy.     'Tetht the printhiple, tetht the printhiple,' muttered Igor. 'Thorry, thur, but Igorth do not "tetht the printhiple". Thtrap it to the bench and put a good thick bolt of lightning through it, thatth our motto. Thatth how you tetht thomething.'     'You seem ill at ease, Igor.'     'Well, I'm thorry, thur,' said Igor. 'It'th the climate dithagreeing with me. I'm uthed to regular thunderthtormth.'     'I've heard that some people really seem to come alive in thunderstorms,' said Jeremy, carefully adjusting the angle of a crystal.     'Ah, that wath when I worked for Baron Finklethtein,' said Igor.     Jeremy stood back. This wasn't the clock, of course. There was still a lot more work to do (but he could see it in front of him, if he closed his eyes) before they had a clock. This was just an essay, to see if he was on the right lines.     He was on the right lines. He knew it.           Tick     Susan walked back through the motionless streets, sat down in Madam Frout's office and let herself sink back into the stream of time.     She had never found out how this worked. It just did. Time didn't stop for the rest of the world, and it didn't stop for her - it was just that she entered a kind of loop of time, and everything else stayed exactly as it was until she'd finished what she needed to do.     It was another inherited family trait. It worked best if you didn't think about it, just like tightrope walking. Anyway, now she had other things to think about.     Madam Frout turned her gaze back from the rat-free mantelpiece. 'Oh,' she said. It seems to have gone.'     'It was probably a trick of the light, madam,' said Susan. Mostly human. Someone like me, she thought.     'Yes, er, of course...' Madam Frout managed to get her glasses on, despite the fact that the string was still tangled with the button. It meant that she'd moored herself to her own chest, but she was damned if she was going to do anything about it now.     Susan could unnerve a glacier. All she had to do was sit quietly, looking polite and alert.     'What precisely was it you wanted, madam?' she said. 'It's just that I've left the class doing algebra, and they get restless when they've finished.'     'Algebra?' said Madam Frout, perforce staring at her own bosom, which no one else had ever done. 'But that's far too difficult for seven-year-olds!'     'Yes, but I didn't tell them that and so far they haven't found out,' said Susan. It was time to move things along. 'I expect you wanted to see me about my letter, madam?' she said.     Madam Frout looked blank. 'Wh-' she began.     Susan sighed and snapped her fingers.     She walked round and opened a drawer by the motionless Madam Frout, removed a sheet of paper and spent some time carefully writing a letter. She let the ink dry, rustled the paper a bit to make it look slightly second-hand, and then put it just under the top of the pile of paperwork beside Madam Frout, with enough of it peeking out so that it would be easy to see.     She returned to her seat. She snapped her fingers again.     '-at letter?' said Madam Frout. And then she looked down at her desk. 'Oh.'     It was a cruel thing to do, Susan knew. But while Madam Frout was not by any means a bad person and was quite kind to children, in a haphazard way, she was silly. And Susan did not have a lot of time for silly.     'Yes, I asked if I might have a few days' leave,' said Susan. 'Pressing family matters, I'm afraid. I have prepared some work for the children to get on with, of course.'     Madam Frout hesitated. Susan didn't have time for this, either. She snapped her fingers.     'MY GOODNESS, THAT'D BE A RELIEF,' she said, in a voice whose harmonics went all the way into the subconscious. 'IF WE DON'T SLOW HER DOWN WE'LL RUN OUT OF THINGS TO TEACH THEM! SHE HAS BEEN PERFORMING SMALL MIRACLES ON A DAILY BASIS AND DESERVES A RAISE.'     Then she sat back, snapped her fingers again, and watched the words settle into the forefront of Madam Frours mind. The woman's lips actually moved.     'Why, yes, of course,' she murmured at last. 'You have been working very hard... and... and,' and since there are things even a voice of eldritch command can't achieve and one of them is to get extra money out of a head teacher, 'we shall have to think about a little increment for you one of these days.'     Susan returned to the classroom and spent the rest of the day performing small miracles, which included removing the glue from Richenda's hair, emptying the wee out of Billy's shoes and treating the class to a short visit to the continent of Fourecks.     When their parents came to pick them up they were all waving crayoned pictures of kangaroos, and Susan had to hope that the red dust on their shoes - red mud in the case of Billy's, whose sense of timing had not improved - would pass unnoticed. It probably would. Fidgett's was not the only place where adults didn't see what couldn't possibly be true.     Now she sat back.     There was something pleasant about an empty classroom. Of course, as any teacher would point out, one nice thing was that there were no children in it, and particularly no Jason.     But the tables and shelves around the room showed evidence of a term well spent. Paintings lined the walls, and displayed good use of perspective and colour. The class had built a full-size white horse out of cardboard boxes, during which time they'd learned a lot about horses and Susan learned about Jason's remarkably accurate powers of observation. She'd had to take the cardboard tube away from him and explain that this was a polite horse.     It had been a long day. She raised the lid of her desk and took out Grim Fairy Tales. This dislodged some paperwork, which in turn revealed a small cardboard box decorated in black and gold.     It had been a little present from Vincent's parents.     She stared at the box.     Every day she had to go through this. It was ridiculous. It wasn't even as if Higgs & Meakins did good chocolates. They were just butter and sugar and-     She scrabbled amongst the sad little scraps of brown paper inside the box and pulled out a chocolate. No one could be expected not to have just one chocolate, after all.     She put it in her mouth.     Damndamndamndamn! It was nougat inside! Her one chocolate today and it was damn artificial damn pink-and-white damn sickly damn stupid nougat!     Well, no one could be expected to believe that counted. [9] She was entitled to another-     The teacher part of her, which had eyes in the back of its head, caught the blur of movement. She spun round.     'No running with scythes!'     The Death of Rats stopped jogging along the Nature Table and gave her a guilty look.     SQUEAK?     'And no going into the Stationery Cupboard, either,' said Susan, automatically. She slammed the desk lid shut.     SQUEAK!     'Yes, you were. I could hear you thinking about it.' It was possible to deal with the Death of Rats provided you thought of him as a very small Jason.     The Stationery Cupboard! That was one of the great battlegrounds of classroom history, that and the playhouse. But the ownership of the playhouse usually sorted itself out without Susan's intervention, so that all she had to do was be ready with ointment, a nose-blow and mild sympathy for the losers, whereas the Stationery Cupboard was a war of attrition. It contained pots of powder paint and reams of paper and boxes of crayons and more idiosyncratic items like a spare pair of pants for Billy, who did his best. It also contained The Scissors, which under classroom rules were treated as some kind of Doomsday Machine, and, of course, the boxes of stars. The only people allowed in the cupboard were Susan and, usually, Vincent. Despite everything Susan had tried, short of actual deception, he was always the official 'best at everything' and won the coveted honour every day, which was to go into the Stationery Cupboard and fetch the pencils and hand them out. For the rest of the class, and especially Jason, the Stationery Cupboard was some mystic magic realm to be entered whenever possible.     Honestly, thought Susan, once you learn the arts of defending the Stationery Cupboard, outwitting Jason and keeping the class pet alive until the end of term, you've mastered at least half of teaching.     She signed the register, watered the sad plants on the windowsill, went and fetched some fresh privet from the hedge for the stick insects that were the successor to Henry the Hamster (chosen on the basis that it was quite hard to tell when they were dead), tidied a few errant crayons away and looked around the classroom at all those little chairs. It sometimes worried her that nearly everyone she knew well was three feet high.     She was never certain that she trusted her grandfather at times like this. It was all to do with the Rules. He couldn't interfere, but he knew her weaknesses and he could wind her up and send her out into the world...     Someone like me. Yes, he'd known how to engage her interest.     Someone like me. Suddenly there's some dangerous clock somewhere in the world, and suddenly I'm told that there's someone like me.     Someone like me. Except not like me. At least I knew my parents. And she'd listened to Death's account of the tall dark woman wandering from room to room in the endless castle of glass, weeping for the child she'd given birth to and could see every day but could never touch...     Where do I even begin?           Tick     Lobsang learned a lot. He learned that every room has at least four corners. He learned that the sweepers started work when the sky was light enough to see the dust, and continued until sunset.     As a master, Lu-Tze was kind enough. He would always point out those bits that Lobsang had not done properly.     After the initial anger, and the taunting of his former classmates, Lobsang found that the work had a certain charm. Days drifted past under his broom...     ... until, almost with an audible click in his brain, he decided that enough was enough. He finished his section of passageway, and found Lu-Tze dreamily pushing his brush along a terrace. 'Sweeper?'     'Yes, lad?'     'What is it you are trying to tell me?'     'I'm sorry?'     'I didn't expect to become a... a sweeper! You're Lu-Tze! I expected to be apprentice to... well, to the hero!'     'You did?' Lu-Tze scratched his beard. 'Oh, dear. Damn. Yes, I can see the problem. You should've said. Why didn't you say? I don't really do that sort of thing any more.'     'You don't?'     'All that playing with history, running about, unsettling people... No, not really. I was never quite certain we should be doing it, to be honest. No, sweeping is good enough for me. There's something... real about a nice clean floor.'     'This is a test, isn't it?' said Lobsang coldly.     'Oh, yes.'     'I mean, I understand how it works. The master makes the pupil do all the menial jobs, and then it turns out that really the pupil is learning things of great value... and I don't think I'm learning anything, really, except that people are pretty messy and inconsiderate.'     'Not a bad lesson, all the same,' said Lu-Tze. 'Is it not written, "Hard work never did anybody any harm"?'     'Where< is this written, Lu-Tze?' said Lobsang, thoroughly exasperated.     The sweeper brightened up. 'Ah,' he said. 'Perhaps the pupil is ready to learn. Is it that you don't wish to know the Way of the Sweeper, you wish to learn instead the Way of Mrs Cosmopilite?'     'Who?'     'We have swept well. Let's go to the gardens. For is it not written, "It does you good to get out in the fresh air"?'     'Is it?' said Lobsang, still bewildered.     Lu-Tze pulled a small tattered notebook out of his pocket.     'In here, it is,' he said. 'I should know.'           Tick     Lu-Tze patiently adjusted a tiny mirror to redirect sunlight more favourably on one of the bonsai mountains. He hummed tunelessly under his breath.     Lobsang, sitting cross-legged on the stones, carefully turned the yellowing pages of the ancient notebook on which was written, in faded ink, 'The Way of Mrs Cosmopilite'.     'Well?' said Lu-Tze.     'The Way has an answer for everything, does it?'     'Yes.'     'Then...' Lobsang nodded at the little volcano, which was gently smoking, 'how does that work? It's on a saucer!'     Lu-Tze stared straight ahead, his lips moving. 'Page seventy-six, I think,' he said.     Lobsang turned to the page. ' "Because,"' he read.     'Good answer,' said Lu-Tze, gently caressing a minute crag with a camel-hair brush.     'Just "Because", Sweeper? No reason?'     'Reason? What reason can a mountain have? And, as you accumulate years, you will learn that most answers boil down, eventually, to "Because".'     Lobsang said nothing. The Book of the Way was giving him problems. What he wanted to say was this: Lu-Tze, this reads like a book of the sayings of an old lady. It's the sort of thing old ladies say. What kind of koan is 'It won't get better if you pick at it,' or 'Eat it up, it'll make your hair curly,' or 'Everything comes to he who waits'? This is stuff you get in Hogswatch crackers!     'Really?' said Lu-Tze, still apparently engrossed in a mountain.     'I didn't say anything.'     'Oh. I thought you did. Do you miss Ankh-Morpork?'     'Yes. I didn't have to sweep floors there.'     'Were you a good thief?'     'I was a fantastic thief.'     A breeze blew the scent of cherry blossom. Just once, thought Lu-Tze, it would be nice to pick cherries.     'I have been to Ankh-Morpork,' he said, straightening up and moving on to the next mountain. 'You have seen the visitors we get here?'     'Yes,' said Lobsang. 'Everyone laughs at them.'     'Really?' Lu-Tze raised his eyebrows. 'When they have trekked thousands of miles seeking the truth?'     'But did not Wen say that if the truth is anywhere, it is everywhere?' said Lobsang.     'Well done. I see you've learned something, at least. But one day it seemed to me that everyone else had decided that wisdom can only be found a long way off. So I went to Ankh-Morpork. They were all coming here, so it seemed only fair.'     'Seeking enlightenment?'     'No. The wise man does not seek enlightenment, he waits for it. So while I was waiting it occurred to me that seeking perplexity might be more fun,' said Lu-Tze. 'After all, enlightenment begins where perplexity ends. And I found perplexity. And a kind of enlightenment, too. I had not been there five minutes, for example, when some men in an alley tried to enlighten me of what little I possessed, giving me a valuable lesson in the ridiculousness of material things.'     'But why Ankh-Morpork?' said Lobsang.     'Look in the back of the book,' said Lu-Tze.     There was a yellow, crackling scrap of paper tucked in there. The boy unfolded it.     'Oh, this is just a bit of the Almanack,' he said. 'It's very popular there.'     'Yes. A seeker after wisdom left it here.'     'Er... it's just got the Phases of the Moon on this page.'     'Other side,' said the sweeper.     Lobsang turned the paper over. 'It's just an advert from the Ankh-Morpork Guild of Merchants,' he said. '"Ankh-Morpork Has Everything!"' He stared at the smiling Lu-Tze. 'And... you thought that-'     'Ah, I am old and simple and understand,' said the sweeper. 'Whereas you are young and complicated. Didn't Wen see portents in the swirl of gruel in his bowl, and in the flight of birds? This was actually written. I mean, flights of birds are quite complex, but these were words. And, after a lifetime of searching, I saw at last the opening of the Way. My Way.'     'And you went all the way to Ankh-Morpork...' said Lobsang weakly.     'And I fetched up, calm of mind but empty of pocket, in Quirm Street,' said the sweeper, smiling serenely at the recollection, 'and espied a sign in a window saying "Rooms For Rent". Thus I met Mrs Cosmopilite, who opened the door when I knocked and then when I hesitated, not being sure of the language, she said, "I haven't got all day, you know." Almost to a word, one of the sayings of Wen! Instantly I knew that I had found what I was seeking! During the days I washed dishes in an eating house for twenty pence a day and all the scraps I could take away, and in the evenings I helped Mrs Cosmopilite clean the house and listened carefully to her conversation. She was a natural sweeper with a good rhythmical motion and had bottomless wisdom. Within the first two days she uttered to me the actual words said by Wen upon understanding the true nature of Time! It was when I asked for a reduced rate because of course I did not sleep in a bed, and she said "I was not born yesterday, Mr Tze!" Astonishing! And she could never have seen the Sacred Texts!'     Lobsang's face was a carefully drawn picture. '"I was not born yesterday"?' he said.     'Ah, yes, of course, as a novice you would not have got that far,' said Lu-Tze. 'It was when he fell asleep in a cave and in a dream saw Time appear to him and show him that the universe is recreated from second to second, endlessly, with the past just a memory. And he stepped out from the cave into the truly new world and said, "I was not born - yesterday"!'     'Oh, yes,' said Lobsang. 'But-'     'Ah, Mrs Cosmopilite,' said Lu-Tze, his eyes misting over. 'What a woman for keeping things clean! If she were a sweeper here, no one would be allowed to walk on the floor! Her house! So amazing! A palace! New sheets every other week! And cook? Just to taste her Beans Baked Upon the Toast a man would give up a cycle of the universe!'     'Um,' said Lobsang.     'I stayed for three months, sweeping her house as is fitting for the pupil, and then I returned here, my Way clear before me.'     'And, er, these stories about you...'     'Oh, all true. Most of them. A bit of exaggeration, but mostly true.'     'The one about the citadel in Muntab and the Pash and the fish bone?'     'Oh, yes.'     'But how did you get in where half a dozen trained and armed men couldn't even-?'     'I'm a little man and I carry a broom,' said Lu-Tze simply. 'Everyone has some mess that needs clearing up. What harm is a man with a broom?'     'What? And that was it?'     'Well, the rest was a matter of cookery, really. The Pash was not a good man, but he was a glutton for his fish pie.'     'No martial arts?' said Lobsang.     'Oh, always a last resort. History needs shepherds, not butchers.'     'Do you know okidoki?'     'Just a lot of bunny-hops.'     'Shiitake?'     'If I wanted to thrust my hand into hot sand I would go to the seaside.'     'Upsidazi?'     'A waste of good bricks.'     'No kando?'     'You made that one up.'     'Tung-pi?'     'Bad-tempered flower-arranging.'     'Déjà-fu?' That got a reaction. Lu Tze's eyebrows raised.     'Déjà-fu?' You heard that rumour? Ha! None of the monks here knows déjà-fu,' he said. 'I'd soon know about it if they did. Look, boy, violence is the resort of the violent. In most tight corners a broomstick suffices.'     'Only most, eh?' said Lobsang, not trying to hide the sarcasm.     'Oh, I see. You wish to face me in the dojo? For it's a very old truth: when the pupil can beat the master, there is nothing the master cannot tell him, because the apprenticeship is ended. You want to learn?'     'Ah! I knew there was something to learn!'     Lu-Tze stood up. 'Why you?' he said. 'Why here? Why now? "There is a time and a place for everything." Why this time and this place? If I take you to the dojo, you will return what you stole from me! Now!'     He looked down at the teak table where he worked on his mountains.     The little shovel was there.     A few cherry blossom petals fluttered to the ground.     'I see,' he said. 'You are that fast? I did not see you.'     Lobsang said nothing.     'It is a small and worthless thing,' said Lu-Tze. 'Why did you take it, please?'     'To see if I could. I was bored.'     'Ah. We shall see if we can make life more interesting for you, then. No wonder you are bored, when you can already slice time like that.'     Lu-Tze turned the little shovel over and over in his hand.     'Very fast,' he said. He leaned down and blew the petals away from a tiny glacier. 'You slice time as fast as a Tenth Djim. And as yet barely trained. You must have been a great thief! And now... Oh dear, I shall have to face you in the dojo...'     'No, there is no need!' said Lobsang, because now Lu-Tze looked frightened and humiliated and, somehow, smaller and brittle-boned.     'I insist,' said the old man. 'Let us get it done now. For it is written, "There is no time like the present", which is Mrs Cosmopilite's most profound understanding.' He sighed and looked up at the giant statue of Wen.     'Look at him,' he said. 'He was a lad, eh? Completely blissed out on the universe. Saw the past and future as one living person, and wrote the Books of History to tell how the story should go. We can't imagine what those eyes saw. And he never raised a hand to any man in his life.'     'Look, I really didn't want to-'     'And you've looked at the other statues?' said Lu-Tze, as if he'd completely forgotten about the dojo.     Distractedly, Lobsang followed his gaze. Up on the raised stone platform that ran the whole length of the gardens were hundreds of smaller statues, mostly carved of wood, all of them painted in garish colours. Figures with more eyes than legs, more tails than teeth, monstrous amalgamations of fish and squid and tiger and parsnip, things put together as if the creator of the universe had tipped out his box of spare parts and stuck them together, things painted pink and orange and purple and gold, looked down over the valley.     'Oh, the dhlang-' Lobsang began.     'Demons? That's one word for them,' said the sweeper. 'The abbot called them the Enemies of Mind. Wen wrote a scroll about them, you know. And he said that was the worst.'     He pointed to a little hooded grey shape, which looked out of place among the festival of wild extremities.     'Doesn't look very dangerous,' said Lobsang. 'Look, Sweeper, I don't want to-'     'They can be very dangerous, things that don't look dangerous,' said Lu-Tze. 'Not looking dangerous is what makes them dangerous. For it is written, "You can't tell a book by its cover."'     'Lu-Tze, I really don't want to fight you-'     'Oh, your tutors will tell you that the discipline of a martial art enables you to slice time, and that's true as far as it goes,' said Lu-Tze, apparently not listening. 'But so can sweeping, as perhaps you have found. Always find the perfect moment, Wen said. People just seem so keen on using it to kick other people on the back of the neck.'     'But it wasn't a challenge, I just wanted you to show me-'     'And I shall. Come on. I made a bargain. I must keep it, old fool that I am.'     The nearest dojo was the dojo of the Tenth Djim. It was empty except for two monks blurring as they danced across the mat and wrapped time around themselves.     Lu-Tze had been right, Lobsang knew. Time was a resource. You could learn to let it move fast or slow, so that a monk could walk easily through a crowd and yet be moving so fast that no one could see him. Or he could stand still for a few seconds, and watch the sun and moon chase one another across a flickering sky. He could meditate for a day in a minute. Here, in the valley, a day lasted for ever. Blossom never became cherries.     The blurred fighters became a couple of hesitant monks when they saw Lu-Tze. He bowed.     'I beg the use of this dojo for a short period while my apprentice teaches me the folly of old age,' he said.     'I really didn't mean-' Lobsang began, but Lu-Tze elbowed him in the ribs. The monks gave the old man a nervous look.     'It's yours, Lu-Tze,' said one of them. They hurried out, almost tripping over their own feet as they looked back.     'Time and its control is what we should teach here,' said Lu-Tze, watching them go. 'The martial arts are an aid. That is all they are. At least, that's all they were meant to be. Even out in the world a well-trained person may perceive, in the fray, how flexible time may be. Here, we can build on that. Compress time. Stretch time. Hold the moment. Punching people's kidneys out through their nose is only a foolish by-product.'     Lu-Tze took down a razor-edged pika sword from the rack and handed it to the shocked boy.     'You've seen one of these before? They're not really for novices, but you show promise.'     'Yes, Sweeper, but-'     'Know how to use it?'     'I'm good with the practice ones, but they're just made of-'     'Take it, then, and attack me.'     There was a rustling noise above them. Lobsang looked up and saw monks pouring into the observation gallery above the dojo. There were some very senior ones among them. News gets around quickly in a little world.     'Rule Two,' said Lu-Tze, 'is never refuse a weapon.' He took a few steps back. 'In your own time, boy.'     Lobsang wielded the curved sword uncertainly.     'Well?' said Lu-Tze.     'I can't just-'     'Is this the dojo of the Tenth Djim?' said Lu-Tze. 'Why, mercy me, I do believe it is. That means there are no rules, doesn't it? Any weapon, any strategy... anything is allowed. Do you understand? Are you stupid?'     'But I can't just kill someone because they've asked me to!'     'Why not? What happened to Mr Manners?'     'But-'     'You are holding a deadly weapon! You are facing an unarmed man in a pose of submission! Are you frightened?'     'Yes! Yes, I am!'     'Good. That's the Third Rule,' said Lu-Tze quietly. 'See how much you're learning already? Wiped the smile off your face, have I? All right, put the sword on the rack and take- Yes, take a dakka stick. The most you can do with that is bruise my old bones.'     'I would prefer it if you wore the protective padding-'     'You're that good with the stick, are you?'     'I'm very fast-'     'Then if you don't fight right now I shall wrest it from you and break it over your head,' said Lu-Tze, drawing back. 'Ready? The only defence is to attack well, I'm told.'     Lobsang tilted the stick in reluctant salute.     Lu-Tze folded his hands and, as Lobsang danced towards him, closed his eyes and smiled to himself.     Lobsang raised the stick again.     And hesitated.     Lu-Tze was grinning.     Rule Two, Rule Three... What had been Rule One?     Always remember Rule One...     'Lu-Tze!'     The abbot's chief acolyte arrived panting in the doorway, waving urgently.     Lu-Tze opened one eye, and then the other one, and then winked at Lobsang.     'Narrow escape there, eh?' he said. He turned to the acolyte. 'Yes, exalted sir?'     'You must come immediately! And all monks who are cleared for a tour in the world! To the Mandala Hall! Now!'     There was a scuffling in the gallery and several monks pushed their way out through the crowd.     'Ah, excitement,' said Lu-Tze, taking the stick from Lobsang's unresisting hands and putting it back into the rack. The hall was emptying fast. Around the whole of Oi Dong, gongs were being banged frantically.     'What's happening?' said Lobsang, as the last of the monks surged past.     'I daresay we shall soon be told,' said Lu-Tze, starting to roll himself a cigarette.     'Hadn't we better hurry? Everyone's going!' The sound of flapping sandals died away in the distance.     'Nothing seems to be on fire,' said Lu-Tze calmly. 'Besides, if we wait a little then by the time we get there everyone will have stopped shouting and perhaps they will be making some sense. Let us take the Clock Path. The display is particularly fine at this time of day.'     'But... but...'     'It is written "You've got to learn to walk before you can run,"' said Lu-Tze, putting his broom over his shoulder.     'Mrs Cosmopilite again?'     'Amazing woman. Dusted like a demon, too.'     The Clock Path wound out from the main complex, up through the terraced gardens, and then rejoined the wider path as it tunnelled into the cliff wall. Novices always asked why it was called the Clock Path, since there was no sign of a clock anywhere.     More gongs started to bang, but they were muffled by the greenery. Lobsang heard running feet up on the main path. Down here, humming birds flickered from flower to flower, oblivious of any excitement.     'I wonder what time it is,' said Lu-Tze, who was walking ahead.     Everything is a test. Lobsang glanced around at the flowerbed.     'A quarter past nine,' he said.     'Oh? And how do you know that?'     'The field marigold is open, the red sandwort is opening, the purple bindweed is closed, and the yellow goat's beard is closing,' said Lobsang.     'You worked out the floral clock all by yourself?'     'Yes. It's obvious.'     'Really? What time is it when the white waterlily opens?'     'Six in the morning.'     'You came to look?'     'Yes. You planted this garden, did you?'     'One of my little... efforts.'     'It's beautiful.'     'It's not very accurate in the small hours. There aren't too many night-blooming plants that grow well up here. They open for the moths, you know-'     'It's how time wants to be measured,' said Lobsang.     'Really? Of course I'm not an expert,' said Lu-Tze. He pinched out the end of his cigarette and stuck it behind his ear. 'Oh well, let's keep going. Everyone may have stopped arguing at cross purposes by now. How do you feel about going through the Mandala Hall again?'     'Oh, I'll be fine, I'd just... forgotten about it, that's all.'     'Really? And you'd never seen it before, too. But time plays funny tricks on us all. Why, I once-' Lu-Tze stopped, and stared at the apprentice.     'Are you all right?' he said. 'You've gone pale.'     Lobsang grimaced and shook his head.     'Something... felt odd,' he said. He waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the lowlands, spread out in a blue and grey pattern on the horizon. 'Something over there...'     The glass clock. The great glass house and here, where it shouldn't be, the glass clock. It was barely here: it showed up as shimmering lines in the air, as if it was possible to capture the sparkle of light off a shiny surface without the surface itself.     Everything here was transparent - delicate chairs, tables, vases of flowers. And now he realized that glass was not a word to use here. Crystal might be better; or ice - the thin, flawless ice you sometimes got after a sharp frost. Everything was visible only by its edges.     He could make out staircases through distant walls. Above and below and to every side, the glass rooms went on for ever.     And yet it was all familiar. It felt like home.     Sound filled the glass rooms. It streamed away in clear sharp notes, like the tones made by a wet finger around a wineglass rim. There was movement, too - a haze in the air beyond the transparent walls, shifting and wavering and... watching him...     'How can it come from over there? And how do you mean, odd?' said the voice of Lu-Tze.     Lobsang blinked. This was the odd place, the one right here, the rigid and unbending world...     And then the feeling passed, and faded.     'Just odd. For a moment,' he mumbled. There was dampness on his cheek. He raised his hand, and touched wetness.     'It's that rancid yak butter they put in the tea, I've always said so,' said Lu-Tze. 'Mrs Cosmopilite never- Now that is unusual,' he said, looking up.     'What? What?' said Lobsang, looking blankly at his wet fingertips and then up at the cloudless sky.     'A Procrastinator going overspeed.' He shifted position. 'Can't you feel it?'     'I can't hear anything!' said Lobsang.     'Not hear, feel. Coming up through your sandals? Oops, there goes another one... and another. You can't feel it? That one's... that's old Sixty-Six, they've never got it properly balanced. We'll hear them in a minute... Oh dear. Look at the flowers. Do look at the flowers!'     Lobsang turned.     The ice plants were opening. The field sowthistle was closing.     'Time-leak,' said Lu-Tze. 'Hark at that! You can hear them now, eh? They're dumping time randomly! Come on!'     According to the Second Scroll of Wen the Eternally Surprised, Wen the Eternally Surprised sawed the first Procrastinator from the trunk of a wamwam tree, carved certain symbols on it, fitted it with a bronze spindle and summoned the apprentice, Clodpool.     'Ah. Very nice, master,' said Clodpool. 'A prayer wheel, yes?'     'No, this is nothing like as complex,' said Wen. 'It merely stores and moves time.'     'That simple, eh?'     'And now I shall test it,' said Wen. He gave it a half-turn with his hand.     'Ah. Very nice, master,' said Clodpool. 'A prayer wheel, yes?'     'No, this is nothing like as complex,' said Wen. 'It merely stores and moves time.'     'That simple, eh?'     'And now I shall test it,' said Wen. He moved it a little less this time.     'That simple, eh?'     'And now I shall test it,' said Wen. This time he twisted it gently to and fro.     'That si-si-si That simple-ple, eh eheh simple, eh?' said Clodpool.     'And I have tested it,' said Wen.     'It worked, master?'     'Yes, I think so.' Wen stood up. 'Give me the rope that you used to carry the firewood. And... yes, a pit from one of those cherries you picked yesterday.'     He wound the frayed rope around the cylinder and tossed the pit onto a patch of mud. Clodpool jumped out of the way.     'See those mountains?' said Wen, tugging the rope. The cylinder spun and balanced there, humming gently.     'Oh yes, master,' said Clodpool obediently. There was practically nothing up here but mountains; there were so many that sometimes they were impossible to see; because they got in the way.     'How much time does stone need?' said Wen. 'Or the deep sea? We shall move it' - he placed his left hand just above the spinning blur - 'to where it is needed.'     He looked down at the cherry pit. His lips moved silently, as though he was working through some complex puzzle. Then he pointed his right hand at the pit.     'Stand back,' he said, and gently let a finger touch the cylinder.     There was no sound except the crack of the air as it moved aside, and a hiss of steam from the mud.     Wen looked up at the new tree, and smiled. 'I did say you should stand back,' he said.     'I, er, I shall get down now, then, shall I?' said a voice among the blossom-laden branches.     'But carefully,' said Wen, and sighed as Clodpool crashed down in a shower of petals.     'There will always be cherry blossom here,' he said.     Lu-Tze hitched up his robe and scurried back down the path. Lobsang ran after him. A high-pitched whine seemed to be coming out of the rocks. The sweeper skidded at the carp pond, which was now erupting in strange waves, and headed down a shady track alongside a stream. Red ibises erupted into flight-     He stopped, and threw himself flat on the paving slabs.     'Get down now!'     But Lobsang was already headlong. He heard something pass overhead with a plangent sound. He looked back and saw the last ibis tumbling in the air, shrinking, shedding feathers, surrounded by a halo of pale blue light. It squawked and vanished with a 'pop'.     Not vanished entirely. An egg followed the same trajectory for a few seconds, and then smashed on the stones.     'Random time! Come on, come on!' shouted Lu-Tze. He scrambled to his feet again, headed towards an ornamental grille in the cliff face ahead of them, and with surprising strength wrenched it out of the wall.     'It's a bit of a drop but if you roll when you land you'll be okay,' he said, lowering himself into the hole.     'Where does it go to?'     'The Procrastinators, of course!'     'But novices aren't allowed in there on pain of death!'     'That's a coincidence,' said Lu-Tze, lowering himself to the tips of his fingers. 'Because death is what awaits you if you stay out there, too.'     He dropped into the darkness. A moment later there was an unenlightened curse from below.     Lobsang climbed in, hung by his fingertips, dropped and rolled when he hit the floor.     'Well done,' said Lu-Tze in the gloom. 'When in doubt, choose to live. This way!'     The passageway opened into a wide corridor. The noise here was shattering. Something mechanical was in agony.     There was a 'crump' and, a few moments later, a babble of voices.     Several dozen monks, wearing thick cork hats as well as their traditional robes, came running round the corner. Most of them were yelling. A few of the brighter ones were saving their breath in order to cover the ground more quickly. Lu-Tze grabbed one of them, who tried to struggle free.     'Let me go!'     'What's happening?'     'Just get out of here before they all go!'     The monk shook himself free and sped after the rest of them. Lu-Tze bent down, picked up a fallen cork helmet, and solemnly handed it to Lobsang.     'Health and safety at work,' he said. 'Very important.'     'Will it protect me?' said Lobsang, putting it on.     'Not really. But when they find your head, it may be recognizable. When we get into the hall, don't touch anything.'     Lobsang had been expecting some vaulted, magnificent structure. People talked about the Procrastinator Hall as if it was some kind of huge cathedral. But what there was, at the end of the passage, was a haze of blue smoke. It was only when his eyes became accustomed to the swirling gloom that he saw the nearest cylinder.     It was a squat pillar of rock, about three yards across and six yards high. It was spinning so fast that it was a blur. Around it the air flickered with slivers of silver-blue light.     'See? They're dumping! Over here! Quick!'     Lobsang ran after Lu-Tze, and saw there were hundreds - no, thousands - of the cylinders, some of them reaching all the way to the cavern roof.     There were still monks in here, running to and from the wells with buckets of water, which flashed into steam when they threw it over the smoking stone bearings at the base of the cylinders.     'Idiots,' the sweeper muttered. He cupped his hands and shouted, 'Where-is-the-overseer?'     Lobsang pointed down to the edge of a wooden podium built onto the wall of the hall.     There was a rotting cork hat there, and a pair of ancient sandals. In between was a pile of grey dust.     'Poor fellow,' said Lu-Tze. 'A full fifty thousand years in one jolt, I'd say.' He glared at the scurrying monks again. 'Will you lot stop and come here! I ain't going to ask you twice!'     Several of them swept the sweat out of their eyes and trotted towards the podium, relieved to hear any kind of order, while behind them the Procrastinators screamed.     'Right!' said Lu-Tze, as they were joined by more and more. 'Now listen to me! This is just a surge cascade! You've all heard of them! We can deal with it! We just have to cross-link futures and pasts, fastest ones first-'     'Poor Mr Shoblang already tried that,' said a monk. He nodded at the sad pile.     'Then I want two teams-' Lu-Tze stopped. 'No, we haven't got time! We'll do it by the soles of our feet, like we used to do! One man to a spinner, just smack the bars when I say! Ready to go when I call the numbers!'     Lu-Tze climbed onto the podium and ran his eye over a board covered with wooden bobbins. A red or blue nimbus hovered over each one.     'What a mess,' he said. 'What a mess.'     'What do they mean?' said Lobsang.     Lu-Tze's hands hovered over the bobbins. 'Okay. The red-tinted ones are winding time out, speeding it up,' he said. 'The blue-tinted ones, they're winding time in, slowing it down. Brightness of the colour, that's how fast they're doing it. Except that now they're all freewheeling because the surge cut them loose, understand?'     'Loose from what?'     'From the load. From the world. See up there?' He waved a hand towards two long racks that ran all the way along the cavern wall. Each one held a row of swivelling shutters, one line blue, one line dark red.     'The more shutters showing a colour, the more time winding or unwinding?'     'Good lad! Got to keep it balanced! And the way we get through this is we couple the spinners up in twos, so that they wind and unwind one another. Cancel themselves out. Poor old Shoblang was trying to put them back into service, I reckon. Can't be done, not during a cascade. You've got to let it all fall over, and then pick up the pieces when it's nice and quiet.' He glanced at the bobbins and then at the crowd of monks. 'Right. You... l28 to 17, and then 45 to 89. Off you go. And you. .. 596 to, let's see... yes, 402...'     'Seven hundred and ninety!' shouted Lobsang, pointing to a bobbin.     'You what?'     'Seven hundred and ninety!'     'Don't be daft. That's still unwinding, lad. Four hundred and two is our man, right here.'     'Seven hundred and ninety is about to start winding time again!'     'It's still bright blue.'     'It's going to wind. I know it. Because' - the novice's finger moved over the lines of bobbins, hesitated, and pointed to a bobbin on the other side of the board - 'it's matching speeds with this one.'     Lu-Tze peered. 'It is written, "Well, I'll go to the foot of our stairs!"' he said. 'They're forming a natural inversion.' He squinted at Lobsang. 'You're not the reincarnation of someone, are you? That happens a lot in these parts.'     'I don't think so. It's just... obvious.'     'A moment ago you didn't know anything about these!'     'Yes, yes, but when you see them... it's obvious.'     'Is it? Is it? All right. Then the board's yours, wonder boy!' Lu-Tze stood back.     'Mine? But I-'     'Get on with it! That is an order.'     For a moment there was a suggestion of blue light around Lobsang. Lu-Tze wondered how much time he'd folded around himself in that second. Time enough to think, certainly.     Then the boy called out half a dozen pairs of numbers. Lu-Tze turned to the monks.     'Jump to it, boys. Mr Lobsang has the board! You boys just watch those bearings!'     'But he's a novice-' one of the monks began, and stopped and backed away when he saw Lu-Tze's expression. 'All right, Sweeper... all right...'     A moment later there was the sound of jumpers slamming into place. Lobsang called out another set of numbers.     While the monks dashed to and fro to the butter pits for grease, Lu-Tze watched the nearest column. It was still spinning fast, but he was sure he could see the carvings.     Lobsang ran his eye over the board again and stared up at the rumbling cylinders, and then back to the lines of shutters.     There wasn't anything written down about all this, Lu-Tze knew. You couldn't teach it in a classroom, although they tried. A good spin driver learned it through the soles of his feet, for all the theory that they taught you these days. He'd learn to feel the flows, to see the rows of Procrastinators as sinks or fountains of time. Old Shoblang had been so good that he'd been able to pull a couple of hours of wasted time from a classroom of bored pupils without their even noticing, and dump it into a busy workshop a thousand miles away as neat as you pleased.     And then there was that trick he used to do with an apple to amaze the apprentices. He'd put it on a pillar next to them, and then flick time at it off one of the small spindles. In an instant it'd be a collection of small, spindly trees before crumbling to dust. That's what'll happen to you if you get things wrong, he'd say.     Lu-Tze glanced down at the pile of grey dust under the disintegrating hat as he hurried past. Well, maybe it was the way he'd want to go-     A scream of tormented stone made him look up.     'Keep those bearings greased, you lazy devils!' he yelled, running down the rows. 'And watch those rails! Hands off the splines! We're doing fine!'     As he ran he kept his eyes on the columns. They were no longer turning randomly. Now, they had purpose.     'I think you're winning, lad!' he shouted to the figure on the podium.     'Yes, but I can't balance it! There's too much time wound up and nowhere to put it!'     'How much?'     'Almost forty years!'     Lu-Tze glanced at the shutters. Forty years looked about right, but surely-?     'How much?' he said.     'Forty! I'm sorry! There's nothing to take it up!'     'No problem! Steal it! Shed load! We can always pull it back later! Dump it!'     'Where?'     'Find a big patch of sea!' The sweeper pointed to a crude map of the world painted on the wall. 'Do you know how to- Can you see how to give it the right spin and direction?'     Once again, there was the blueness in the air.     'Yes! I think so!'     'Yes, I imagine you do! In your own time, then!'     Lu-Tze shook his head. Forty years? He was worried about forty years? Forty years was nothing! Apprentice drivers had dumped fifty thousand years before now. That was the thing about the sea. It just stayed big and wet. It always had been big and wet, it always would be big and wet. Oh, maybe fishermen would start to dredge up strange whiskery fish that they'd only ever seen before as fossils, but who cared what happened to a bunch of codfish?     The sound changed.     'What are you doing?'     'I've found space on number 422! It can take another forty years! No sense in wasting time! I'm pulling it back now!'     There was another change of tone.     'Got it! I'm sure I've got it!'     Some of the bigger cylinders were already slowing to a halt. Lobsang was moving pegs around the board now faster than the bewildered Lu-Tze could follow. And, overhead, the shutters were slamming back, one after another, showing age-blackened wood instead of colour.     No one could be that accurate, could they?     'You're down to months now, lad, months!' he shouted. 'Keep it up! No, blimey, you're down to days... days! Keep an eye on me!'     The sweeper ran towards the end of the hall, to where the Procrastinators were smaller. Time was fine-tuned here, on cylinders of chalk and wood and other short-lived materials. To his amazement, some of them were already slowing.     He raced down an aisle of oak columns a few feet high. But even the Procrastinators that could wind time in hours and minutes were falling silent.     There was a squeaking noise.     Beside him, one final little chalk cylinder at the end of a row rattled around on its bearing like a spinning-top.     Lu-Tze crept towards it, staring at it intently, one hand raised. The squeaking was the only sound now, apart from the occasional clink of cooling bearings.     'Nearly there,' he called out. 'Slowing down now... wait for it, wait... for... it...'     The chalk Procrastinator, no bigger than a reel of cotton, slowed, spun... stopped.     On the racks, the last two shutters closed.     Lu-Tze's hand fell.     'Now! Kill the board! No one touch a thing!'     For a moment there was dead silence in the hall. The monks watched, holding their breath.     This was a timeless moment, of perfect balance.           Tick     And in that timeless moment the ghost of Mr Shoblang, to whom the scene was hazy and fuzzy as though seen through a gauze, said, 'This is just impossible! Did you see that?'     SEE WHAT? said a dark figure behind him.     Shoblang turned. 'Oh,' he said, and added with sudden certainty, 'You're Death, right?'     YES. I AM SORRY I AM LATE.     The spirit formerly known as Shoblang looked down at the pile of dust that represented his worldly habitation for the previous six hundred years.     'So am I,' he said. He nudged Death in the ribs.     EXCUSE ME?     'I said, "I'm sorry I'm late." Boom, boom.'     I BEG YOUR PARDON?     'Er, you know... Sorry I'm late. Like... dead?'     Death nodded. OH, I SEE. IT WAS THE 'BOOM BOOM' I DID NOT UNDERSTAND.     'Er, that was to show it was a joke,' said Shoblang.     AH, YES. I CAN SEE HOW THAT WOULD BE NECESSARY. IN FACT, MR SHOBLANG, WHILE YOU ARE LATE, YOU ARE ALSO EARLY. BOOM, BOOM.     'Pardon?'     YOU HAVE DIED BEFORE YOUR TIME.     'Well, yes, I should think so!'     DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHY? IT'S VERY UNUSUAL.     'All I know is that the spinners went wild and I must've copped a load when one of 'em went overspeed,' said Shoblang. 'But, hey, what about that kid, eh? Look at the way he's making the buggers dance! I wish I'd had him training under me! What am I saying? He could give me a few tips!'     Death looked around. TO WHOM DO YOU REFER?     'That boy up on the podium, see him?'     NO, I'M AFRAID I SEE NO ONE THERE.     'What? Look, he's right there! Plain as the nose on your fa- Well, obviously not on your face...'     I SEE THE COLOURED PEGS MOVING...     'Well, who do you think is moving them? I mean, you are Death, right? I thought you could see everyone!'     Death stared at the dancing bobbins.     EVERYONE... THAT I SHOULD SEE, he said. He continued to stare.     'Ahem,' said Shoblang.     OH, YES. WHERE WERE WE?     'Look, if I'm, er, too early, then can't you-'     EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS STAYS HAPPENED.     'What kind of philosophy is that?'     THE ONLY ONE THAT WORKS. Death took out an hourglass and consulted it. I SEE THAT BECAUSE OF THIS PROBLEM YOU ARE NOT DUE TO REINCARNATE FOR SEVENTY-NINE YEARS. DO YOU HAVE ANYWHERE TO STAY?     'Stay? I'm dead. It's not like locking yourself out of your own house!' said Shoblang, who was beginning to fade.     PERHAPS YOU COULD BE BUMPED UP TO AN EARLIER BIRTH?     Shoblang vanished.     In the timeless moment Death turned back to stare at the hall of spinners...           Tick     The chalk cylinder started to spin again, squeaking gently.     One by one, the oak Procrastinators began to revolve, picking up the rising load. This time there was no scream of bearings. They twirled slowly, like old ballerinas, this way and that, gradually taking up the strain as millions of humans in the world outside bent time around themselves. The creaking sounded like a teaclipper rounding Cape Wrath on a gentle breeze.     Then the big stone cylinders groaned as they picked up the time their smaller brethren couldn't handle. A rumbling underlay the creaking now, but it was still gentle, controlled...     Lu-Tze lowered his hand gently and straightened up.     'A nice clean pick-up,' he said. 'Well done, everyone.' He turned to the astonished, panting monks and beckoned the most senior towards him.     Lu-Tze pulled a ragged cigarette end out of its lodging behind his ear and said, 'Well now, Rambut Handisides, what d'you think happened just now, eh?'     'Er, well, there was a surge which blew out-'     'Nah, nah, after that,' said Lu-Tze, striking a match on the sole of his sandal. 'See, what I don't think happened was that you boys ran around like a lot of headless chickens and a novice got up on the platform and did the sweetest, smoothest bit of rebalancing that I've ever seen. That couldn't have happened, because that sort of thing does not happen. Am I right?'     The monks of the Procrastinator floor were not among the temple's great political thinkers. Their job was to tend and grease and strip down and rebuild and follow the directions of the man on the platform. Rambut Handisides' brow wrinkled.     Lu-Tze sighed. 'See, what I think happened,' he said helpfully, 'was that you lads rose to the occasion, right, and left myself and the young man there aghast at the practical skills you all showed. The abbot will be impressed and blow happy bubbles. You could be looking at some extra momos in your thugpa come dinner-time, if you get my drift?'     Handisides ran this up his mental flagpole and it did indeed send prayers to heaven. He began to smile.     'However,' said Lu-Tze, stepping closer and lowering his voice, 'I'll probably be around again soon, this place looks as though it could do with a good sweeping, and if I don't find you boys pinsharp and prodding buttock inside a week you and I will have a... talk.'     The smile vanished. 'Yes, Sweeper.'     'You've got to test them all and see to those bearings.'     'Yes, Sweeper.'     'And someone clear up Mr Shoblang.'     'Yes, Sweeper.'     'Fair play to you, then. Me and young Lobsang here will be going. You've done a lot for his education.'     He took the unresisting Lobsang by the hand and led him out of the hall, past the long lines of turning, humming Procrastinators. A pall of blue smoke still hung under the high ceiling.     'Truly it is written, "You could knock me down with a feather,"' he muttered, as they headed up the sloping passage. 'You spotted that inversion before it happened. I'd have blown us into next week. At least.'     'Sorry, Sweeper.'     'Sorry? You don't have to be sorry. I don't know what you are, son. You're too quick. You're taking to this place like a duck to water. You don't have to learn stuff that takes other people years to get the hang of. Old Shoblang, may he be reincarnated somewhere nice and warm, even he couldn't balance the load down to a second. I mean, a second. Over a whole damn world!' He shuddered. 'Here's a tip. Don't let it show. People can be funny about that sort of thing.'     'Yes, Sweeper.'     'And another thing,' said Lu-Tze, leading the way out into the light. 'What was all that fuss just before the Procrastinators cut loose? You felt something?'     'I don't know. I just felt... everything went wrong for a moment.'     'Ever happened before?'     'No-o. It was a bit like what happened in the Mandala Hall.'     'Well, don't talk about it to anyone else. Most of the high-ups these days probably don't even know how the spinners work. No one cares about them any more. No one notices something that works too well. Of course, in the old days you weren't even allowed to become a monk until you'd spent six months in the hall, greasing and cleaning and fetching. And we were better for it! These days it's all about learning obedience and cosmic harmony. Well, in the old days you learned that in the halls. You learned that if you didn't jump out of the way when someone yelled, "She's dumping!" you got a couple of years where it hurt, and that there's no harmony better than all the spinners turning sweetly.'     The passage rose into the main temple complex. People were still scurrying around as they headed for the Mandala Hall.     'You're sure you can look at it again?' said Lu-Tze.     'Yes, Sweeper.'     'Okay. You know best.'     The balconies overlooking the hall were crowded with monks, but Lu-Tze worked his way forward by polite yet firm use of his broom. The senior monks were clustered at the edge.     Rinpo caught sight of him. 'Ah, Sweeper,' he said. 'Some dust delayed you?'     'Spinners cut free and went overspeed,' muttered Lu-Tze.     'Yes, but you were summoned by the abbot,' said the acolyte reproachfully.     'Upon a time,' said Lu-Tze, 'every man jack of us would have legged it down to the hall when the gongs went.'     'Yes, but-'     'BRRRRbrrrrbrrrr,' said the abbot, and Lobsang saw now that he was being carried in a sling on the acolyte's back, with an embroidered pixie hood on his head to keep off the chill. 'Lu-Tze always was very keen on the practical approach BRRRbrrr.' He blew milky suds into the acolyte's ear. 'I am glad matters have been resolved, Lu-Tze.'     The sweeper bowed, while the abbot started to beat the acolyte gently over the head with a wooden bear.     'History has repeated, Lu-Tze. DumDumBBBRRRR ...'     'Glass clock?' said Lu-Tze.     The senior monks gasped.     'How could you possibly know that?' said the chief acolyte. 'We haven't rerun the Mandala yet!'     'It is written, "I've got a feeling in my water,"' said Lu-Tze. 'And that was the only other time I ever heard of when all the spinners went wild like that. They all cut loose. Time-slip. Someone's building a glass clock again.'     'That is quite impossible,' said the acolyte. 'We removed every trace!'     'Hah! It is written, "I'm not as green as I'm cabbage-looking!"' snapped Lu-Tze. 'Something like that you can't kill. It leaks back. Stories. Dreams. Paintings on cave walls, whatever-'     Lobsang looked down at the Mandala floor. Monks were clustered around a group of tall cylinders at the far end of the hall. They looked like Procrastinators, but only one small one was spinning, slowly. The others were motionless, showing the mass of symbols that were carved into them from top to bottom.     Pattern storage. The thought arrived in his head. That is where the Mandala's patterns are kept, so that they can be replayed. Today's patterns on the little one, long-term storage on the big ones.     Below him the Mandala rippled, blotches of colour and scraps of pattern drifting across its surface. One of the distant monks called out something, and the small cylinder stopped.     The rolling sand grains were stilled.     'This is how it looked twenty minutes ago,' said Rinpo. 'See the blue-white dot there? And then it spreads-'     'I know what I'm looking at,' said Lu-Tze grimly. 'I was there when it happened before, man! Your reverence, get them to run the old Glass Clock sequence! We haven't got a lot of time!'     'I really think we-' the acolyte began, but he was interrupted by a blow from a rubber brick.     'Wannapottywanna if Lu-Tze is right, then we must not waste time, gentlemen, and if he is wrong then we have time to spare, is this not so? Pottynowwannawanna!'     'Thank you,' said the sweeper. He cupped his hands. 'Oi! You lot! Spindle two, fourth bhing, round about the nineteenth gupa! And jump to it!'     'I really must respectfully protest, your reverence,' said the acolyte. 'We have practised for just such an emergency as-'     'Yeah, I know all about practising procedures for emergencies,' said Lu-Tze. 'And there's always something missing.'     'Ridiculous! We take great pains to-'     'You always leave out the damn emergency.' Lu-Tze turned back to the hall and the apprehensive workers. 'Ready? Good! Put it on the floor now! Or I shall have to come down there! And I don't want to have to come down there!'     There was some frantic activity by the men around the cylinders, and a new pattern replaced the one below the balcony. The lines and colours were in different places, but a blue-white circle occupied the centre.     'There,' said Lu-Tze. 'That was less than ten days before the clock struck.'     There was silence from the monks.     Lu-Tze smiled grimly. 'And ten days later-'     'Time stopped,' said Lobsang.     'That's one way of putting it,' said Lu-Tze. He'd gone red in the face.     One of the monks put a hand on his shoulder.     'It's all right, Sweeper,' he said soothingly. 'We know you couldn't have got there in time.'     'Being in time is supposed to be what we do,' said Lu-Tze. 'I was nearly at the damn door, Charlie. Too many castles, not enough... time...'     Behind him the Mandala returned to its slow metering of the present.     'It wasn't your fault,' said the monk.     Lu-Tze shook the hand free and turned to face the abbot over the shoulder of the chief acolyte.     'I want permission to track this one down right now, reverend sir!' he said. He tapped his nose. 'I've got the smell of it! I've been waiting for this all these years! You won't find me wanting this time!'     In the silence the abbot blew a bubble.     'It'll be in Uberwald again,' said Lu-Tze, a hint of pleading in his voice. 'That's where they mess around with the electrick. I know every inch of that place! Give me a couple of men and we can nip this right in the bud!'     'Bababababa ... This needs discussion, Lu-Tze, but we thank you for your offer babababa,' said the abbot. 'Rinpo, I want all bdumbdumbdum senior field monks in the Room of Silence within five bababa minutes! Are the spinners working bdumbdum harmoniously?'     One of the monks looked up from a scroll he'd been handed.     'It appears so, your reverence.'     'My congratulations to the board master BIKKIT!'     'But Shoblang is dead,' murmured Lu-Tze.     The abbot stopped blowing bubbles. 'That is sad news. And he was a friend of yours, I understand.'     'Shouldn't've happened like that,' the sweeper muttered. 'Shouldn't've happened like that.'     'Compose yourself, Lu-Tze. I will talk to you shortly. Bikkit! The chief acolyte, spurred on by a blow across the ear with a rubber monkey, hurried away.     The press of monks began to thin out as they went about their duties. Lu-Tze and Lobsang were left on the balcony, looking down at the rippling Mandala.     Lu-Tze cleared his throat. 'See them spinners at the end?' he said. 'The little one records the patterns for a day, and then anything interesting is stored in the big ones.'     'I just premembered you were going to say that.'     'Good word. Good word. The lad has talent.' Lu-Tze lowered his voice. 'Anyone watching us?'     Lobsang looked around. 'There's a few people still here.'     Lu-Tze raised his voice again. 'You been taught anything about the Big Crash?'     'Only rumours, Sweeper.'     'Yeah, there were a lot of rumours. "The day time stood still", all that sort of thing.' Lu-Tze sighed. 'Y'know, most of what you get taught is lies. It has to be. Sometimes if you get the truth all at once, you can't understand it. You knew Ankh-Morpork pretty well, did you? Ever go to the opera house?'     'Only for pickpocket practice, Sweeper.'     'Ever wonder about it? Ever look at that little theatre just over the road? Called The Dysk, I think.'     'Oh, yes! We got penny tickets and sat on the ground and threw nuts at the stage.'     'And it didn't make you think? Big opera house, all plush and gilt and big orchestras, and then there's this little thatched theatre, all bare wood and no seats and one bloke playing a crumhorn for musical accompaniment?'     Lobsang shrugged. 'Well, no. That's just how things are.'     Lu-Tze almost smiled. 'Very flexible things, human minds,' he said. 'It's amazing what they can stretch to fit. We did a fine job there-'     'Lu-Tze?'     One of the lesser acolytes was waiting respectfully.     'The abbot will see you now,' he said.     'Ah, right,' said the sweeper. He nudged Lobsang and whispered, 'We're going to Ankh-Morpork, lad.'     'What? But you said you wanted to be sent to-'     Lu-Tze winked. ' 'cos it is written, "Them as asks, don't get," see. There's more than one way of choking a dangdang than stuffing it with pling, lad.'     'Is there?'     'Oh yes, if you've got enough pling. Now let's see the abbot, shall we? It'll be time for his feed now. Solids, thank goodness. At least he's done with the wetnurse. It was so embarrassing for him and the young lady, honestly, you didn't know where to put your face and neither did he. I mean, mentally he's nine hundred years old...'     'That must make him very wise.'     'Pretty wise, pretty wise. But age and wisdom don't necessarily go together, I've always found,' said Lu-Tze, as they approached the abbot's rooms. 'Some people just become stupid with more authority. Not his reverence, of course.'     The abbot was in his highchair, and had recently flicked a spoonful of nourishing pap all over the chief acolyte, who was smiling like a man whose job depended on looking happy that parsnip-and-gooseberry custard was dribbling down his forehead.     It occurred to Lobsang, not for the first time, that the abbot was a little bit more than purely random in his attacks on the man. The acolyte was, indeed, the kind of mildly objectionable person who engendered an irresistible urge in any right-thinking person to pour goo into his hair and hit him with a rubber yak, and the abbot was old enough to listen to his inner child.     'You sent for me, your reverence,' said Lu-Tze, bowing.     The abbot upturned his bowl down the chief acolyte's robe.     'Wahahaahaha ah, yes, Lu-Tze. How old are you now?'     'Eight hundred, your reverence. But that's no age at all!'     'Nevertheless, you have spent a lot of time in the world. I understood you were looking to retire and cultivate your gardens?'     'Yes, but-'     'But,' the abbot smiled angelically, like an old warhorse you say "haha!" at the sound of trumpets, yes?'     'I don't think so,' said Lu-Tze. 'There's nothing funny about trumpets, really.'     'I meant that you long to be out in the field again. But you have been helping to train world operatives for many years, haven't you? These gentlemen?'     A number of burly and muscular monks were sitting on one side of the room. They were kitted out for travel, with rolled sleeping mats on their backs, and dressed in loose black clothing. They nodded sheepishly at Lu-Tze, and their eyes above their half-masks looked embarrassed.     'I did my best,' said Lu-Tze. 'Of course, others trained them. I just tried to undo the damage. I never taught them to be ninjas.' He nudged Lobsang. 'That, apprentice, is Agatean for "the Passing Wind",' he said, in a stage whisper.     'I am proposing to send them out immediately WAH!' The abbot hit his highchair with his spoon. 'That is my order, Lu-Tze. You are a legend, but you have been a legend for a long time. Why not trust in the future? Bikkit!'     'I see,' said Lu-Tze sadly. 'Oh, well, it had to happen some time. Thank you for your consideration, your reverence.'     'Brrmbrrm ... Lu-Tze, I have known you a long time! You will not go within a hundred miles of Uberwald, will you?'     'Not at all, your reverence.'     'That is an order!'     'I understand, of course.'     'You've disobeyed my baababa orders before, though. In Omnia, I remember.'     'Tactical decision made by the man on the spot, your reverence. It was more what you might call an interpretation of your order,' said Lu-Tze.     'You mean, going where you had distinctly been told not to go and doing what you were absolutely forbidden to do?'     'Yes, your reverence. Sometimes you have to move the seesaw by pushing the other end. When I did what shouldn't be done in a place where I shouldn't have been, I achieved what needed to be done in the place where it should have happened.'     The abbot gave Lu-Tze a long hard stare, the kind that babies are good at giving.     'Lu-Tze, you are not nmnmnbooboo to go to Uberwald or anywhere near Uberwald, understand?' he said.     'I do, your reverence. You are right, of course. But, in my dotage, may I travel another path, of wisdom rather than violence? I wish to show this young man... the Way.'     There was laughter from the other monks.     'The Way of the Washerwoman?' said Rinpo.     'Mrs Cosmopilite is a dressmaker,' said Lu-Tze calmly.     'Whose wisdom is in sayings like "It won't get better if you pick at it"?' said Rinpo, winking at the rest of the monks.     'Few things get better if you pick at them,' said Lu-Tze, and now his calmness was a lake of tranquillity. 'It may be a mean little Way but, small and unworthy though it is, it is my Way.' He turned to the abbot. 'That was how it used to be, your reverence. You recall? Master and pupil go out into the world, where the pupil may pick up practical instruction by precept and example, and then the pupil finds his own Way and at the end of his Way-'     '-he finds himself bdum,' said the abbot.     'First, he finds a teacher,' said Lu-Tze.     'He is lucky that you will bdumbdum be that teacher.'     'Reverend sir,' said Lu-Tze. 'It is in the nature of Ways that none can be sure who the teacher may be. All I can do is show him a path.'     'Which will be in the direction of bdum the city,' said the abbot.     'Yes,' said Lu-Tze. 'And Ankh-Morpork is a long way from Uberwald. You won't send me to Uberwald because I am an old man. So, in all respect, I beg you to humour an old man.'     'I have no choice, when you put it like that,' said the abbot.     'Reverend sir-' began Rinpo, who felt that he did.     The spoon was banged on the tray again. 'Lu-Tze is a man of high reputation!' the abbot shouted. 'I trust him implicitly to do the correct action! I just wish I could blumblum trust him to do what I blumblum want! I have forbidden him to go to Uberwald! Now do you wish me to forbid him not to go to Uberwald? BIKKIT! I have spoken! And now, will all you gentlemen be so good as to leave? I have urgent business to attend to.'     Lu-Tze bowed and grabbed Lobsang's arm. 'Come on, lad!' he whispered. 'Let's bugger off quick before anyone works it out!'     On the way out they passed a lesser acolyte carrying a small potty with a pattern of bunny rabbits around it.     'It's not easy, reincarnating,' said Lu-Tze, running down the corridor. 'Now we've got to be out of here before someone gets any funny ideas. Grab your bag and bedroll!'     'But no one would countermand the abbot's orders, would they?' said Lobsang, as they skidded round a corner.     'Ha! It'll be his nap in ten minutes and if they give him a new toy when he wakes up he might end up being so busy banging square green pegs into round blue holes that he'll forget what he said,' said Lu-Tze. 'Politics, lad. Too many idiots will start saying what they're sure the abbot would have meant. Off you go, now. I'll see you in the Garden of Five Surprises in one minute.'     When Lobsang arrived Lu-Tze was carefully tying one of the bonsai mountains into a bamboo framework. He fastened the last knot and placed it in a bag over one shoulder.     'Won't it get damaged?' said Lobsang.     'It's a mountain. How can it get damaged?' Lu-Tze picked up his broom. 'And we'll just drop in and have a chat with an old mate of mine before we leave, though. Maybe we'll pick up some stuff.'     'What's going on, Sweeper?' said Lobsang, trailing after him.     'Well, it's like this, lad. Me and the abbot and the bloke we're going to see, we go back a long way. Things are a bit different now. The abbot can't just say, "Lu-Tze, you are an old rogue, it was you who put the idea of Uberwald into everyone's heads in the first place, but I see you're onto something so off you go and follow your nose."'     'But I thought he was the supreme ruler!'     'Exactly! And it's very hard to get things done when you're a supreme ruler. There're too many people in the way, mucking things up. This way, the new lads can have fun running around Uberwald going, "Hai!" and we, my lad, will be heading for Ankh-Morpork. The abbot knows that. Almost knows that.'     'How do you know the new clock is being built in Ankh Morpork?' said Lobsang, trailing behind Lu-Tze as he took a mossy, sunken path that led through rhododendron thickets to the monastery wall.     'I know. I'll tell you, the day someone pulls the plug out of the bottom of the universe, the chain will lead all the way to Ankh-Morpork and some bugger saying, "I just wanted to see what would happen." All roads lead to Ankh-Morpork.'     'I thought all roads led away from Ankh-Morpork.'     'Not the way we're going. Ah, here we are.'     Lu-Tze knocked on the door of a rough but large shed built right up against the wall. At the same moment there was an explosion within and someone - Lobsang corrected himself - half of someone tumbled very fast out of the unglazed window beside it and hit the path with bone-cracking force. Only when it stopped rolling did he realize that it was a wooden dummy in a monk's robe.     'Qu's having fun, I see,' said Lu-Tze. He hadn't moved as the dummy had sailed past his ear.     The door burst open and a plump old monk looked out excitedly.     'Did you see that? Did you see that?' he said. 'And that was with just one spoonful!' He nodded at them. 'Oh, hello, Lu-Tze. I was expecting you. I've got some things ready.'     'Got what?' said Lobsang.     'Who's the boy?' said Qu, ushering them in.     'The untutored child is called Lobsang,' said Lu-Tze, looking around the shed. There was a smoking circle on the stone floor, with drifts of blackened sand around it. 'New toys, Qu?'     'Exploding mandala,' said Qu happily, bustling forward. 'Just sprinkle the special sand on a simple design anywhere you like, and the first enemy to walk on it- Bang, instant karma! Don't touch that!'     Lu-Tze reached across and snatched from Lobsang's inquisitive hands the begging bowl that he had just picked up from a table.     'Remember Rule One,' he said, and hurled the bowl across the room. Hidden blades slid out as it spun, and the bowl buried itself in a beam.     'That would take a man's head right off!' said Lobsang. And then they heard the faint ticking.     '... three, four, five...' said Qu. 'Everybody duck... Now!'     Lu-Tze pushed Lobsang to the floor a moment before the bowl exploded. Metal fragments scythed overhead.     'I added just a little something extra since you last saw it,' said Qu proudly, as they got to their feet again. 'A very versatile device. Plus, of course, you can use it to eat rice out of. Oh, and have you seen this?'     He picked up a prayer drum. Both Lu-Tze and Lobsang took a step back.     Qu twirled the drum a few times, and the weighted cords pattered against the skins.     'The cord can be instantly removed for a handy garotte,' he said, 'and the drum itself can be removed - like so - to reveal this useful dagger.'     'Plus, of course, you can use it to pray with?' said Lobsang.     'Well spotted,' said Qu. 'Quick boy. A prayer is always useful in the last resort. In fact we've been working on a very promising mantra incorporating sonic tones that have a particular effect on the human nervous syst-'     'I don't think we need any of this stuff, Qu,' said Lu-Tze.     Qu sighed. 'At least you could let us turn your broom into a secret weapon, Lu-Tze. I've shown you the plans-'     'It is a secret weapon,' said Lu-Tze. 'It's a broom.'     'How about the new yaks we've been breeding? At the touch of a rein their horns will instantly-'     'We want the spinners, Qu.'     The monk suddenly looked guilty. 'Spinners? What spinners?'     Lu-Tze walked across the room and pressed a hand against part of the wall, which slid aside.     'These spinners, Qu. Don't muck me about, we haven't got time.'     Lobsang saw what looked very much like two small Procrastinators, each one within a metal framework mounted on a board. There was a harness attached to each board.     'You haven't told the abbot about them yet, have you?' said Lu-Tze, unhooking one of the things. 'He'd put a stop to them if you did, you know that.'     'I didn't think anyone knew!' said Qu. 'How did you-'     Lu-Tze grinned. 'No one notices a sweeper,' he said.     'They're still very experimental!' said Qu, close to panic. 'I was going to tell the abbot, of course, but I was waiting until I had something to demonstrate! And it would be terrible if they fell into the wrong hands!'     'Then we'll see to it that they don't,' said Lu-Tze, examining the straps. 'How're they powered now?'     'Weights and ratchets were too unreliable,' said Qu. 'I'm afraid I had to resort to... clockwork.'     Lu-Tze stiffened, and he glared at the monk. 'Clockwork?     'Only as a motive force, only as a motive force!' Qu protested. 'There's really no other choice!'     'Too late now, it'll have to do,' said Lu-Tze, unhooking the other board and passing it across to Lobsang. 'There you go, lad. With a bit of sacking round it it'll look just like a backpack.'     'What is it?'     Qu sighed. 'They're portable Procrastinators. Try not to break them, please.'     'What will we need them for?'     'I hope you won't have to find out,' said Lu-Tze. 'Thanks, Qu.'     Are you sure you wouldn't prefer some time bombs?' said Qu hopefully. 'Drop one on the floor and time will slow for-'     'Thanks, but no.'     'The other monks were fully equipped,' said Qu.     'But we're travelling light,' said Lu-Tze firmly. 'We'll go out the back way, Qu, okay?'     The back way led to a narrow path and a small gate in the wall. Dismembered wooden dummies and patches of scorched rock indicated that Qu and his assistants often came this way. And then there was another path, beside one of the many icy streamlet's.     'Qu means well,' said Lu-Tze, walking fast. 'But if you listen to him you end up clanking when you walk and exploding when you sit down.'     Lobsang ran to keep up. 'It'll take weeks to walk to Ankh-Morpork, Sweeper!'     'We'll slice our way there,' said Lu-Tze, and he stopped and turned. 'You think you can do that?'     'I've done it hundreds of times-' Lobsang began.     'In Oi Dong, yes,' said Lu-Tze. 'But there're all kinds of checks and safeguards in the valley. Oh, didn't you know that? Slicing in Oi Dong is easy, lad. It's different out there. The air tries to get in the way. Do it wrong and the air is a rock. You have to shape the slice around you so that you move like a fish in water. Know how to do that?'     'We learned a bit of the theory, but-'     'Soto said you stopped time for yourself back in the city. The Stance of the Coyote, it's called. Very hard to do, and I don't reckon they teach it in the Thieves' Guild, eh?'     'I suppose I was lucky, Sweeper.'     'Good. Keep it up. We'll have plenty of time for you to practise before we leave the snow. Get it right before you tread on grass, or kiss your feet goodbye.'     They called it slicing time. ..     There is a way of playing certain musical instruments that is called 'circular breathing', devised to allow people to play the didgeridoo or the bagpipes without actually imploding or being sucked down the tube. 'Slicing time' was very much the same, except time was substituted for air and it was a lot quieter. A trained monk could stretch a second further than an hour...     But that wasn't enough. He'd be moving in a rigid world. He'd have to learn to see by echo light and hear by ghost sound and let time leach into his immediate universe. It wasn't hard, once he found the confidence; the sliced world could almost seem normal, apart from the colours...     It was like walking in sunsets, although the sun was fixed high in the sky and barely moved. The world ahead shaded towards violet, and the world behind, when Lobsang looked round, was the shade of old blood. And it was lonely. But the worst of it, Lobsang realized, was the silence. There was noise, of a sort, but it was just a deep sizzle at the edge of hearing. His footsteps sounded strange and muffled, and the sound arrived in his ears out of sync with the tread of his feet.     They reached the edge of the valley and stepped out of the perpetual springtime into the real world of the snows. Now the cold crept in, slowly, like a sadist's knife.     Lu-Tze strode on ahead, seemingly oblivious of it.     Of course, that was one of the stories about him. Lu-Tze, it was said, would walk for miles during weather when the clouds themselves would freeze and crash out of the sky. Cold did not affect him, they said.     And yet-     In the stories Lu-Tze had been bigger, stronger... not a skinny little bald man who preferred not to fight.     'Sweeper!'     Lu-Tze stopped and turned. His outline blurred slightly, and Lobsang unwrapped himself from time. Colour came back into the world, and while the cold ceased to have the force of a drill it still struck hard.     'Yes, lad?'     'You're going to teach me, right?'     'If there's anything left that you don't know, wonder boy,' said Lu-Tze drily. 'You're slicing well, I can see that.'     'I don't know how you can stand this cold!'     'Ah, you don't know the secret?'     'Is it the Way of Mrs Cosmopilite that gives you such power?'     Lu-Tze hitched up his robe and did a little dance in the snow, revealing skinny legs encased in thick, yellowing tubes.     'Very good, very good,' he said. 'She still sends me these double-knit combinations, silk on the inside, then three layers of wool, reinforced gussets and a couple of handy trapdoors. Very reasonably priced at six dollars a pair because I'm an old customer. For it is written, "Wrap up warm or you'll catch your death."'     'It's just a trick?'     Lu-Tze looked surprised. 'What?' he said.     'Well, I mean, it's all tricks, isn't it? Everyone thinks you're a great hero and... you don't fight, and they think you possess all kinds of strange knowledge and... and it's just... tricking people. Isn't it? Even the abbot? I thought you were going to teach me... things worth knowing...'     'I've got her address, if that's what you want. If you mention my name- Oh. I see you don't mean that, right?'     'I don't want to be ungrateful I just thought-'     'You thought I should use mysterious powers derived from a lifetime of study just to keep my legs warm? Eh?'     'Well-'     'Debase the sacred teachings for the sake of my knees, you think?'     'If you put it like that-'     Then something made Lobsang look down.     He was standing in six inches of snow. Lu-Tze was not. His sandals were standing in two puddles. The ice was melting away around his toes. His pink, warm toes.     'Toes, now, that's another matter,' said the sweeper. 'Mrs Cosmopilite is a wizard with longjohns, but she can't turn a heel worth a damn.' Lobsang looked up into a wink. 'Always remember Rule One, eh?'     Lu-Tze patted the shaken boy on the arm. 'But you're doing well' he said. 'Let's have a quiet sit down and a brew-up.' He pointed to some rocks, which at least offered some protection from the wind; snow had piled up against them in big white mounds.     'Lu-Tze?'     'Yes, lad?'     'I've got a question. Can you give me a straight answer?'     'I'll try, of course.'     'What the hell is going on?'     Lu-Tze brushed the snow off a rock.     'Oh,' he said. 'One of the difficult questions.'           Tick     Igor had to admit it. When it came to getting weird things done, sane beat mad hands down.     He'd been used to masters who, despite doing wonderful handstands on the edge of the mental catastrophe curve, couldn't put their own trousers on without a map. Like all Igors, he'd learned how to deal with them. In truth, it wasn't a difficult job (although sometimes you had to work the graveyard shift) and once you got them settled into their routine you could get on with your own work and they wouldn't bother you until the lightning rod needed raising.     It wasn't like that with Jeremy. He was truly a man you could set your watch by. Igor had never seen a life so organized, so slimmed down, so timed. He found himself thinking of his new master as the tick-tock man.     One of Igors former masters had made a tick-tock man, all levers and gearwheels and cranks and clockwork. Instead of a brain, it had a long tape punched with holes. Instead of a heart, it had a big spring. Provided everything in the kitchen was very carefully positioned, the thing could sweep the floor and make a passable cup of tea. If everything wasn't carefully positioned, or if the ticking, clicking thing hit an unexpected bump, then it'd strip the plaster off the walls and make a furious cup of cat.     Then his master had conceived the idea of making the thing live, so that it could punch its own tapes and wind its own spring. Igor, who knew exactly when to follow instructions to the letter, dutifully rigged up the classic rising-table-and-lightning-rod arrangement on the evening of a really good storm. He didn't see exactly what happened thereafter, because he wasn't there when the lightning hit the clockwork. No, Igor was at a dead run halfway down the hill to the village, with all his possessions in a carpet bag. Even so, a white-hot cogwheel had whirred over his head and buried itself in a tree trunk.     Loyalty to a master was very important, but it took second place to loyalty to Igordom. If the world was going to be full of lurching servants, then they were damn well going to be called Igor.     It seemed to this Igor that if you could make a tick-tock man live, he'd be like Jeremy. And Jeremy was ticking faster, as the clock neared completion.     Igor didn't much like the clock. He was a people person. He preferred things that bled. And as the clock grew, with its shimmering crystal parts that didn't seem entirely all here, so Jeremy grew more absorbed and Igor grew more tense. There was definitely something new happening here, and while Igors were avid to learn new things there were limits. Igors did not believe in forbidden knowledge and 'Things Man Was Not Meant to Know', but obviously there were some things a man was not meant to know, such as what it felt like to have every single particle of your body sucked into a little hole, and that seemed to be one of the options available in the immediate future.     And then there was Lady LeJean. She gave Igor the willies, and he was a man not usually subject to even the smallest willy. She wasn't a zombie and she wasn't a vampire, because she didn't smell like one. She didn't smell like anything. In Igor's experience, everything smelled like something.     And there was the other matter.     'Her feet don't touch the ground, thur,' he said.     'Of course they do,' said Jeremy, buffing up part of the mechanism with his sleeve. 'She'll be here again in a minute and seventeen seconds. And I'm sure her feet will be touching the ground.'     'Oh, thometimeth they do, thur. But you watch when thee goeth up or down a thtep, thur. Thee doethn't get it egthactly right, thur. You can jutht thee the thadow under her thoeth.'     'Thoeth?'     'On her feet, thur,' sighed Igor. The lisp could be a problem, and in truth any Igor could easily fix it, but it was part of being an Igor. You might as well stop limping.     'Go and get ready by the door,' said Jeremy. 'Floating in the air doesn't make you a bad person.'     Igor shrugged. He was entertaining the idea that it didn't mean you were a person at all, and incidentally he was rather worried that Jeremy seemed to have dressed himself with a little more care this morning.     He'd decided in these circumstances not to broach the subject of his hiring, but he had been working that one out. He'd been hired before her ladyship had engaged Jeremy to do this work? Well, all that showed was that she knew her man. But she'd hired him herself in Bad Schüschein. And he'd got himself onto the mail coach that very day. And it turned out that Lady LeJean had visited Jeremy on that day, too.     The only thing faster than the mail coach between Uberwald and Ankh-Morpork was magic, unless someone had found a way to travel by semaphore. And Lady LeJean hardly looked like a witch.     The shop's clocks were putting up a barrage of noise to signal the passing of seven o'clock when Igor opened the front door. It always Did[10] to anticipate the knock. That was another part of the Code of the Igors.     He wrenched it open.     'Two pints, sir, lovely and fresh,' said Mr Soak, handing him the bottles. 'And a day like this just says fresh cream, doesn't it?'     Igor glared at him, but took the bottles. 'I prefer it when it'th going green,' he said haughtily. 'Good day to you, Mr Thoak.'     He shut the door.     'It wasn't her?' said Jeremy, when he arrived back in the workshop.     'It wath the milkman, thur.'     'She's twenty-five seconds late!' said Jeremy, looking concerned. 'Do you think anything could have happened to her?'     'Real ladieth are often fathionably late, thur,' said Igor, putting the milk away. It was icy cold under his fingers.     'Well, I'm sure her ladyship is a real lady.'     'I wouldn't know about that, thur,' said Igor, who in fact had the aforesaid very strong doubts in that area. He walked back into the shop and took up position with his hand on the door handle just as the knock came.     Lady LeJean swept past Igor. The two trolls ignored him and took up their positions just inside the workshop. Igor put them down as hired rock, anyone's for two dollars a day plus walking-around money.     Her ladyship was impressed.     The big clock was nearing completion. It wasn't the squat, blocky thing that Igor's grandfather had told him about. Jeremy had, much to Igor's surprise - for there wasn't a scrap of decoration anywhere in the house - gone for the impressive look.     'Your grandfather helped to make the first one,' Jeremy had said. 'So let's build a grandfather clock, eh?' And there it stood - a slim, long-case clock in crystal and spun glass, reflecting the light in worrying ways.     Igor had spent a fortune in the Street of Cunning Artificers. For enough money, you could buy anything in Ankh-Morpork, and that included people. He'd made sure that no crystal-cutter or glassworker had done enough of the work to give them any sort of clue about the finished clock, but he'd worried needlessly about that. Money could buy a lot of uninterest. Besides, who would believe you could measure time with crystals? Only in the workshop did it all come together.     Igor bustled around, polishing things, listening. carefully as Jeremy showed off his creation.     '-no need for any metal parts,' he was saying. 'We've come up with a way of making the tamed lightning flow across glass, and we've found a workman who can make glass that bends slightly-'     'We', Igor noticed. Well, that was always the way of it. 'We' discovering things meant the master asking for them and Igor thinking them up. Anyway, the flow of lightning was a family passion. With sand and chemicals and a few secrets, you could make lightning sit up and beg.     Lady LeJean reached out with a gloved hand and touched the side of the clock.     'This is the divider mechanism-' Jeremy began, picking up a crystalline array from the workbench.     But her ladyship was still staring up at the clock. 'You've given it a face and hands,' she said. 'Why?'     'Oh, it will function very well in the measurement of traditional time,' said Jeremy. 'Glass gears throughout, of course. In theory it will never need adjusting. It will take its time from the universal tick.'     'Ah. You found it, then?'     'The time it takes the smallest possible thing that can happen to happen. I know it exists.'     She looked almost impressed. 'But the clock is still unfinished.'     'There is a certain amount of trial and error,' said Jeremy. 'But we will do it. Igor says there will be a big storm on Monday. That should provide the power, he says. And then,' Jeremy's face lit up with a smile, 'I see no reason why every clock in the world shouldn't say precisely the same time!'     Lady LeJean glanced at Igor, who bustled with renewed haste.     'The servant is satisfactory?'     'Oh, he grumbles a bit. But he has got a good heart. And a spare, apparently. He is amazingly skilled in all crafts, too.'     'Yes, Igors generally are,' said the lady distantly. 'They seem to have mastered the art of inheriting talents.' She snapped her fingers and one of the trolls stepped forward and produced a couple of bags.     'Gold and invar,' she said. 'As promised.'     'Hah, but invar will be worthless when we've finished the clock,' said Jeremy.     'We're sorry? You want more gold?'     'No, no! You have been very generous.'     Right, thought Igor, dusting the workbench vigorously.     'Until next time, then,' said Lady LeJean. The trolls were already turning towards the door.     'You'll be here for the start?' said Jeremy, as Igor hurried into the hall to open the front door because, whatever he thought about her ladyship, there was such a thing as tradition.     'Possibly. But we have every confidence in you, Jeremy.'     'Um...'     Igor stiffened. He hadn't heard that tone in Jeremy's voice before. In the voice of a master, it was a bad tone.     Jeremy took a deep, nervous breath, as if contemplating some minute and difficult piece of clockwork that would, without tremendous care, unwind catastrophically and spray cogwheels across the floor.     'Um... I was wondering, um, your ladyship, um... perhaps, um, you would like to take dinner with me, um, tonight, um...'     Jeremy smiled. Igor had seen a better smile on a corpse.     Lady LeJean's expression flickered. It really did. It seemed to Igor to go from one expression to another as if they were a series of still pictures, with no perceptible movement of the features between each one. It went from her usual blankness to sudden thoughtfulness and then all the way to amazement. And then, to Igor's own astonishment, it began to blush.     'Why, Mr Jeremy, I... I don't know what to say,' her ladyship stammered, her icy composure turning into a warm puddle. 'I really... I don't know... perhaps some other time? I do have an important engagement, so glad to have met you, I must be going. Goodbye.'     Igor stood stiffly to attention, as upright as the average Igor could manage, and almost shut the door behind her ladyship as she hurried out of the building down the steps.     She ended up, just for a moment, half an inch above the street. It was only for a moment, and then she drifted downwards. No one except Igor, glaring balefully through the crack between door and frame, could possibly have noticed.     He darted back into the workshop. Jeremy still stood transfixed, blushing as pinkly as her ladyship had done.     'I'll jutht be nipping out to get that new glathwork for the multiplier, thur,' Igor said quickly. 'It thould be done by now. Yeth?'     Jeremy spun on his heel and marched very quickly over to the workbench.     'You do that, Igor. Thank you,' he said, his voice slightly muffled. Lady LeJean's party were down the street when Igor slipped out and moved quickly into the shadows.     At the crossroad her ladyship waved one hand vaguely and the trolls headed off by themselves. Igor stayed with her. For all the trademark limp, Igors could move fast when they had to. They often had to, when the mob hit the windmill.[11]     Out in the open he could see more wrong things. She didn't move quite right. It was as though she was controlling her body, rather than letting it control itself. That's what humans did. Even zombies got the hang of things after a while. The effect was subtle, but Igors had very good eyesight. She moved like someone unused to wearing skin.     The quarry headed down a narrow street, and Igor half hoped that some of the Thieves' Guild were around. He'd very much like to see what happened if one of them gave her the tap on the noggin that was their prelude to negotiations. One had tried it with Igor yesterday, and if the man had been surprised at the metallic clang, he'd been astonished to have his arm grabbed and broken with anatomical exactitude.     In fact, she turned into an alleyway between a couple of the buildings.     Igor hesitated. Letting yourself be outlined in the daylight at the mouth of an alley was item one on the local checklist of death. But, on the other hand, he wasn't actually doing anything wrong, was he? And she didn't look armed.     There was no sound of footsteps in the alley. He waited a moment and stuck his head round the corner.     There was no sign of Lady LeJean. There was also no way out of the alley - it was a dead end, full of rubbish.     But there was a fading grey shape in the air, which vanished even as he stared. It was a hooded robe, grey as fog. It merged into the general gloom and disappeared.     She'd turned into an alleyway, and then she'd turned into... something else.     Igor felt his hands twitch.     Individual Igors might have their particular specialities, but they were all expert surgeons and had an inbuilt desire not to see anybody wasted. Up in the mountains, where most of the employment was for woodchoppers and miners, having an Igor living locally was considered very fortunate. There was always the risk of an axe bouncing or a sawblade running wild, and then a man was glad to have an Igor around who could lend a hand - or even an entire arm, if you were lucky.     And while they practised their skills freely and generously in the community, the Igors were even more careful to use them amongst themselves. Magnificent eyesight, a stout pair of lungs, a powerful digestive system... It was terrible to think of such wonderful workmanship going to the worms. So they made sure it didn't. They kept it in the family.     Igor really did have his grandfather's hands. And now they were bunching into fists, all by themselves.           Tick     A very small kettle burned on a fire of wood shavings and dried yak dung.     'It was... a long time ago,' said Lu-Tze. 'Exactly when doesn't matter, 'cos of what happened. In fact asking exactly "when" doesn't make any sense any more. It depends where you are. In some places it was hundreds of years ago. Some other places... well, maybe it hasn't happened yet. There was this man in Uberwald. Invented a clock. An amazing clock. It measured the tick of the universe. Know what that is?'     'No.'     'Me neither. The abbot's your man for that kind of stuff. Lemme see... okay... think of the smallest amount of time that you can. Really small. So tiny that a second would be like a billion years. Got that? Well, the cosmic quantum tick - that's what the abbot calls it - the cosmic quantum tick is much smaller than that. It's the time it takes to go from now to then. The time it takes an atom to think of wobbling. It's-'     'It's the time it takes for the smallest thing that's possible to happen to happen?' said Lobsang.     'Exactly. Well done,' said Lu-Tze. He took a deep breath. 'It's also the time it takes for the whole universe to be destroyed in the past and rebuilt in the future. Don't look at me like that - that's what the abbot said.'     'Has it been happening while we've been talking?' said Lobsang.     'Millions of times. An oodleplex of times, probably.'     'How many's that?'     'It's one of the abbot's words. It means more numbers than you can imagine in a yonk.'     'What's a yonk?'     'A very long time.'     'And we don't feel it? The universe is destroyed and we don't feel it?'     'They say not. The first time it was explained to me I got a bit jumpy, but it's far too quick for us to notice.'     Lobsang stared at the snow for a while. Then he said, 'All right. Go on.'     'Someone in Uberwald built this clock out of glass. Powered by lightning, as I recall. It somehow got down to a level where it could tick with the universe.'     'Why did he want to do that?'     'Listen, he lived in a big old castle on a crag in Uberwald. People like that don't need a reason apart from "because I can". They have a nightmare and try to make it happen.'     'But, look, you can't make a clock like that, because it's inside the universe, so it'll... get rebuilt when the universe does, right?'     Lu-Tze looked impressed, and said so. 'I'm impressed,' he said.     'It'd be like opening a box with the crowbar that's inside.'     'The abbot believes that part of the clock was outside, though.'     'You can't have something outside the-'     'Tell that to a man who has been working on the problem for nine lifetimes,' said Lu-Tze. 'You want to hear the rest of the story?'     'Yes, Sweeper.'     'So... we were spread pretty thin in those days, but there was this young sweeper-'     'You,' said Lobsang. 'This is going to be you, right?'     'Yes, yes,' said Lu-Tze testily. 'I was sent to Uberwald. History hadn't diverged much in those days, and we knew something big was going to happen around Bad Schüschein. I must have spent weeks looking. You know how many remote castles there are along the gorges? You can't move for remote castles!'     'That's why you didn't find the right one in time,' said Lobsang. 'I remember what you told the abbot.'     'I was just down in the valley when the lightning struck the tower,' said Lu-Tze. 'You know it is written, "Big events always cast their shadows." But I couldn't detect where it was happening until too late. A half-mile sprint uphill faster than a lightning bolt... No one could do that. Nearly made it, though - I was actually through the door when it all went to hell!'     'No point in blaming yourself, then.'     'Yes, but you know how it is - you keep thinking "If only I'd got up earlier, or had gone a different way..."' said Lu-Tze.     'And the clock struck,' said Lobsang.     'No. It stuck. I told you part of it was outside the universe. It wouldn't go with the flow. It was trying to count the tick, not move with it.'     'But the universe is huge! It can't be stopped by a piece of clock work!'     Lu-Tze flicked the end of his cigarette into the fire.     'The abbot says the size wouldn't make any difference at all,' he said. 'Look, it's taken him nine lifetimes to know what he knows, so it's not our fault if we can't understand it, is it? History shattered. It was the only thing that could give. Very strange event. There were cracks left all over the place. The... oh, I can't remember the words... the fastenings that tell bits of the past which bits of the present they belong to, they were flapping allover the place. Some got lost for ever.' Lu-Tze stared into the dying flames. 'We stitched it up as best we could,' he added. 'Up and down history. Filling up holes with bits of time taken from somewhere else. It's a patchwork, really.'     'Didn't people notice?'     'Why should they? Once we'd done it, it had always been like that. You'd be amazed at what we got away with. F'rinstance-'     'I'm sure they'd spot it somehow.'     Lu-Tze gave Lobsang one of his sidelong glances. 'Funny you should say that. I've always wondered about it. People say things like "Where did the time go?" and "It seems like only yesterday." We had to do it, anyway. And it's healed up very nicely.'     'But people would look in the history books and see-'     'Words, lad. That's all. Anyway, people have been messing around with time ever since there were people. Wasting it, killing it, sparing it, making it up. And they do it. People's heads were made to play with time. Just like we do, except we're better trained and have a few extra skills. And we've spent centuries working to bring it all back in line. You watch the Procrastinators even on a quiet day. Moving time, stretching it here, compressing it there... it's a big job. I'm not going to see it smashed a second time. A second time, there won't be enough left to repair.'     He stared at the embers. 'Funny thing,' he said. 'Wen himself had some very curious ideas about time, come the finish. You remember I told you that he reckoned time was alive: He said it acted like a living thing, anyway. Very strange ideas indeed. He said he'd met Time, and she was a woman. To him, anyway. Everyone says that was just a very complicated metaphor, and maybe I was simply hit on the head or something, but on that day I looked at the glass clock just as it exploded and-'     He stood up and grabbed his broom.     'Best foot forward, lad. Another two or three seconds and we'll be down in Bong Phut.'     'What were you going to say?' said Lobsang, hurrying to his feet.     'Oh, just an old man rambling,' said Lu-Tze. 'The mind wanders a bit when you get to over seven hundred. Let's get moving.'     'Sweeper?'     'Yes, lad?'     'Why are we carrying spinners on our backs?'     'All in good time, lad. I hope.'     'We're carrying time, right? If time stops, we can keep going? Like... divers?'     'Full marks.'     'And-?'     'Another question?'     'Time is a "she"? None of the teachers have mentioned it and I don't recall anything in the scrolls.'     'Don't you think about that. Wen wrote... well, the Secret Scroll, it's called. They keep it in a locked room. Only the abbots and the most senior monks ever get to see it.'     Lobsang couldn't let that one pass. 'So how did you-?' he began.     'Well, you wouldn't expect men like that to do the sweeping up in there, would you ?' said Lu-Tze. 'Terribly dusty, it got.'     'What was it about?'     'I didn't read much of it. Didn't feel it was right,' said Lu-Tze.     'You? What was it about, then?'     'It was a love poem. And it was a good one...'     Lu-Tze's image blurred as he sliced time. Then it faded and vanished. A line of footprints appeared across the snowfield. Lobsang wrapped time around himself and followed. And a memory came from nowhere at all: Wen was right.           Tick     There were lots of places like the warehouse. There always are, in every old city, no matter how valuable the building land is. Sometimes, space just gets lost.     A workshop is built, and then another beside it. Factories and storerooms and sheds and temporary lean-tos crawl towards one another, meet and merge. Spaces between outside walls are roofed with tar paper. Odd-shaped bits of ground are colonized by nailing up a bit of wall and cutting a doorway. Old doorways are masked by piles of lumber or new tool racks. The old men who know what was where move on and die, just like the flies who punctuate the thick cobwebs on the grubby windows. Young men, in this noisome world of whirring lathes and paint shops and cluttered workbenches, don't have time to explore.     And so there were spaces like this, a small warehouse with a crusted skylight that no fewer than four factory owners thought was owned by one of the other three, when they thought about it at all. In fact each of them owned one wall, and certainly no one recalled who roofed the space. Beyond the walls on all four sides men and dwarfs bent iron, sawed planks, made string and turned screws. But in here was a silence known only to rats.     The air moved, for the first time in years. Dust balls rolled across the floor. Little motes sparkled and spun in the light that forced its way down from the roof. In the surrounding area, invisible and subtle, matter began to move. It came from workmen's sandwiches and gutter dirt and pigeon feathers, an atom here, a molecule there, and streamed unheeded into the centre of the space.     It spiralled. Eventually it became, after passing through some strange, ancient and horrible shapes, Lady LeJean.     She staggered, but managed to stay upright.     Other Auditors also appeared and, as they did so, it seemed that they had never really not been there. The dead greyness of the light merely took on shapes; they emerged like ships from a fog. You stared at the fog, and suddenly part of the fog was hull that had been there all along, and now there was nothing for it but to race for the lifeboats...     Lady LeJean said: 'I cannot keep doing this. It is too painful.'     One said, Ah, can you tell us what pain is like? We have often wondered.     'No. No, I don't think I can. It is... a body thing. It is not pleasant. From now on, I will retain the body.'     One said, That could be dangerous.     Lady LeJean shrugged. 'We have been through that before. It's only a matter of appearance,' she said. 'And it is remarkable how much easier it is to deal with humans in this form.'     One said, You shrugged. And you are talking with your mouth. A hole for food and air.     'Yes. It is remarkable, isn't it?' Lady LeJean's body found an old crate, pulled it over and sat on it. She hardly had to think about muscle movements at all.     One said, You aren't eating, are you?     'As yet, no.'     One said, As yet? That raises the whole dreadful subject of. .. orifices.     One said, And how did you learn to shrug?     'It comes with the body,' said her ladyship. 'We never realized this, did we? Most of the things it does it appears to do automatically. Standing upright takes no effort whatsoever. The whole business gets easier every time.'     The body shifted position slightly, and crossed its legs. Amazing, she thought. It did it to be comfortable. I didn't have to think about it at all. We never guessed.     One said, There will be questions.     The Auditors hated questions. They hated them almost as much as they hated decisions, and they hated decisions almost as much as they hated the idea of the individual personality. But what they hated most was things moving around randomly.     'Believe me, everything will be fine,' said Lady LeJean. 'We will not be breaking any of the rules, after all. All that will happen is that time will stop. Everything thereafter will be neat. Alive, but not moving. Tidy.'     One said, And we can get the filing finished.     'Exactly,' said Lady LeJean. 'And he wants to do it. That is the strange thing. He hardly thinks about the consequences.'     One said, Splendid.     There was one of those pauses when no one is quite ready to speak. And then:     One said, Tell us. ... What is it like?     'What is what like?'     One said, Being insane. Being human.     'Strange. Disorganized. Several levels of thinking go on at once. There are... things we have no word for. For example, the idea of eating seems now to have an attraction. The body tells me this.'     One said, Attraction? As in gravity?     'Ye-es. One is drawn towards food.'     One said, Food in large masses?     'Even in small amounts.'     One said, But eating is simply a function. What is the... attraction of performing a function? Surely the knowledge that it is necessary for continued survival is sufficient?     'I cannot say,' said Lady LeJean.     One Auditor said, You persist in using a personal pronoun.     And one added, And you have not died! To be an individual is to live, and to live is to die!     'Yes. I know. But it is essential for humans to use the personal pronoun. It divides the universe into two parts. The darkness behind the eyes, where the little voice is, and everything else. It is... a horrible feeling. It is like being... questioned, all the time.'     One said, What is the little voice?     'Sometimes thinking is like talking to another person, but that person is also you.'     She could tell this disturbed the other Auditors. 'I do not wish to continue in this way any longer than necessary,' she added. And realized that she had lied.     One said, We do not blame you.     Lady LeJean nodded.     The Auditors could see into human minds. They could see the pop and sizzle of the thoughts. But they could not read them. They could see the energies flow from node to node, they could see the brain glittering like a Hogswatch decoration. What they couldn't see was what was happening.     So they'd built one.     It was the logical thing to do. They'd used human agents before, because early on they'd worked out that there were many, many humans who would do anything for sufficient gold. This was puzzling, because gold did not seem to the Auditors to hold any significant value for a human body - it needed iron and copper and zinc, but only the most minute traces of gold. Therefore, they'd reasoned, this was further evidence that the humans who required it were flawed, and this was why attempts to make use of them were doomed. But why were they flawed?     Building a human being was easy; the Auditors knew exactly how to move matter around. The trouble was that the result didn't do anything but lie there and, eventually, decompose. This was annoying, since human beings, without any special training or education, seemed to be able to make working replicas quite easily.     Then they learned that they could make a human body which worked if an Auditor was inside it.     There were, of course, huge risks. Death was one of them. The Auditors avoided death by never going so far as to get a life. They strove to be as indistinguishable as hydrogen atoms, and with none of the latter's joie de vivre. Some luckless Auditor might be risking death by 'operating' the body. But lengthy consultation decided that if the driver took care, and liaised at all times with the rest of the Auditors, this risk was minimal and worth taking, considering the goal.     They built a woman. It was a logical choice. After all, while men wielded more obvious power than women, they often did so at the expense of personal danger, and no Auditor liked the prospect of personal danger. Beautiful women often achieved great things, on the other hand, merely by smiling at powerful men.     The whole subject of 'beauty' caused the Auditors a lot of difficulty. It made no sense at a molecular level. But research turned up the fact that the woman in the picture Woman Holding Ferret by Leonard of Quirm was considered the epitome of beauty, and so they'd based Lady LeJean on that. They had made changes, of course. The face in the picture was asymmetrical and full of minor flaws, which they had carefully removed.     The result would have been successful beyond the Auditors' wildest dreams, had they ever dreamed. Now that they had their stalking horse, their reliable human, anything was possible. They were learning fast, or at least collecting data, which they considered to be the same as learning.     So was Lady LeJean. She had been a human for two weeks, two astonishing, shocking weeks. Whoever would have guessed that a brain operated like this? Or that colours had a meaning that went way, way beyond spectral analysis? How could she even begin to describe the blueness of blue? Or how much thinking the brain did all by itself? It was terrifying. Half the time her thoughts seemed not to be her own.     She had been quite surprised to find that she did not want to tell the other Auditors this. She did not want to tell them a lot of things. And she didn't have to!     She had power. Oh, over Jeremy, that was not in question and was now, she had to admit, rather worrying. It was causing her body to do things by itself, like blush. But she had power over the other Auditors, too. She made them nervous.     Of course, she wanted the project to work. It was their goal. A tidy and predictable universe, where everything stayed in its place. If Auditors dreamed, this would be another dream.     Except... except...     The young man had smiled at her in a nervous, worrying way, and the universe was turning out to be a lot more chaotic than even the Auditors had ever suspected.     A lot of the chaos was happening inside Lady LeJean's head.           Tick     Lu-Tze and Lobsang passed through Bong Phut and Long Nap like ghosts in twilight. People and animals were blueish statues and were not, said Lu-Tze, to be touched in any circumstances.     Lu-Tze restocked his travel bag with food from some of the houses, making sure to leave little copper tokens in their place.     'It means we're obliged to them,' he said, filling Lobsang's bag as well. 'The next monk through here might have to give someone a minute or two.'     'A minute or two isn't much.'     'For a dying woman to say goodbye to her children, it's a lifetime,' said Lu-Tze. 'Is it not written, "Every second counts"? Let's go.'     'I'm tired, Sweeper.'     'I did say every second counts.'     'But everybody has to sleep!'     'Yes, but not yet,' Lu-Tze insisted. 'We can rest in the caves down at Songset. Can't fold time while you're asleep, see?'     'Can't we use the spinners?'     'In theory, yes.'     'In theory? They could wind out time for us. We'd only sleep for a few seconds-'     'They're for emergencies only,' said Lu-Tze bluntly.     'How do you define an emergency, Sweeper?'     'An emergency is when I decide its time to use a clockwork spinner designed by Qu, wonder boy. A lifebelt's for saving your life. That's when I'll trust an uncalibrated, unblessed spinner powered by springs. When I have to. I know Qu says-'     Lobsang blinked and shook his head. Lu-Tze grabbed his arm.     'You felt something again?'     'Ugh... like having a tooth out in my brain,' said Lobsang, rubbing his head. He pointed. 'It came from over there.'     'A pain came from over there?' said Lu-Tze. He glared at the boy. 'Like last time? But we've never found a way of detecting which way-'     He stopped and rummaged in his sack. Then he used the sack to sweep snow off a flat boulder.     'Well see what-'     Glass house.     This time Lobsang could concentrate on the tones that filled the air. Wet finger on a wineglass? Well, you could start there. But the finger would have to be the finger of a god on the glass of some celestial sphere. And the wonderful, complex, shifting tones did not simply fill the air, they were the air.     The moving blur beyond the walls was getting closer now. It was just beyond the closest wall, then it found the open doorway... and vanished.     Something was behind Lobsang.     He turned. There was nothing there that he could see, but he felt movement and, for just a moment, something warm brushed his cheek...     '-the sand says,' said Lu-Tze, tipping the contents of a small bag onto the rock.     The coloured grains bounced and spread. They did not have the sensitivity of the Mandala itself, but there was a blue bloom in the chaos.     He gave Lobsang a sharp look.     'It's been proved that no one can do what you just did,' he said. 'We've never found any way of detecting where a disturbance in time is actually being caused.'     'Er, sorry.' Lobsang raised a hand to his cheek. It was damp. 'Er, what did I do?'     'It takes a huge-' Lu-Tze stopped. 'Ankh-Morpork's that way,' he said. 'Did you know that?'     'No! Anyway, you said you had a feeling things would happen in Ankh-Morpork!'     'Yes, but I've had a lifetime of experience and cynicism!' Lu-Tze scooped the sand back into its bag. 'You're just gifted. Come on.'     Four more seconds, sliced thinly, took them below the snowline, into scree slopes that slid under their feet and then through alder forests not much taller than themselves. And it was there they met the hunters, gathered round in a wide circle.     The men did not pay them much attention. Monks were commonplace in these parts. The leader, or at least the one who was shouting, and this is usually the leader, looked up and waved them past.     Lu-Tze stopped, though, and looked amiably at the thing in the centre of the circle. It looked back at him.     'Good catch,' he said. 'What're you going to do now, boys?'     'Is it any business of yours?' said the leader.     'No, no, just asking,' said Lu-Tze. 'You boys up from the lowlands, yes?'     'Yeah. You'd be amazed at what you can get for catching one of these.'     'Yes,' said Lu-Tze. 'You would be amazed.'     Lobsang looked at the hunters. There were more than a dozen of them, all heavily armed and watching Lu-Tze carefully.     'Nine hundred dollars for a good pelt and another thousand for the feet,' said their leader.     'That much, eh?' said Lu-Tze. 'That's a lot of money for a pair of feet.'     'That's 'cos they're big feet,' said the hunter. 'And you know what they say about men with big feet, eh?'     'They need bigger shoes?'     'Yeah, right,' said the hunter, grinning. 'Load of nonsense, really, but there's rich old boys with young wives over on the Counterweight Continent who'll pay a fortune for a powdered yeti foot.'     'And there was me thinking they're a protected species,' said Lu-Tze, leaning his broom against a tree.     'They're only a kind of troll. Who's going to protect them out here?' said the hunter. Behind him, the local guides, who did know Rule One, turned and ran.     'Me,' said Lu-Tze.     'Oh?' said the hunter, and this time the grin was nasty. 'You don't even have a weapon.' He turned to look at the fleeing guides. 'You're one of the weird monks from up in the valleys, aren't you?'     'That's right,' said Lu-Tze. 'Small smiling, weird monk. Totally unarmed.'     'And there's fifteen of us,' said the hunter. 'Well armed, as you can see.'     'It's very important that you are all heavily armed,' said Lu-Tze, pulling his sleeves out of the way. 'It makes it fairer.'     He rubbed his hands together. No one seemed inclined to retreat. 'Er, any of you boys heard of any rules?' he said, after a while.     'Rules?' said one of the hunters. 'What rules?'     'Oh, you know,' said Lu-Tze. 'Rules like... Rule Two, say, or Rule Twenty-seven. Any kind of rules of that sort of description.'     The leading hunter frowned. 'What in damnation are you talking about, mister?'     'Er, not so much a "mister" as a small rather knowing, elderly, entirely unarmed, weird monk,' said Lu-Tze. 'I'm just wondering if there is anything about this situation that makes you, you know... slightly nervous?'     'You mean, us being well armed and outnumbering you, and you backing away like that?' said one of the hunters.     'Ah. Yes,' said Lu-Tze. 'Perhaps we're up against a cultural thing here. I know, how about... this?' He stood on one leg, wobbling a little, and raised both hands. 'Ai! Hai-eee! Ho? Ye-hi? No? Anyone?'     There was a certain amount of bewilderment amongst the hunters.     'Is it a book?' said one who was slightly intellectual. 'How many words?'     'What I'm trying to find out here,' said Lu-Tze, 'is whether you have any idea what happens when a lot of big armed men try to attack a small, elderly, unarmed monk?'     'To the best of my knowledge,' said the intellectual of the group, 'he turns out to be a very unlucky monk.'     Lu-Tze shrugged. 'Oh, well,' he said, 'then we'll just have to try it the hard way.'     A blur in the air hit the intellectual on the back of the neck. The leader stirred to step forward, and learned too late that his boot laces were tied together. Men reached for knives that were no longer in sheaths, for swords that were inexplicably leaning against a tree on the far side of the clearing. Legs were swept from underneath them, invisible elbows connected with soft parts of their bodies. Blows rained out of empty air. Those who fell down learned to stay that way. A raised head hurt.     The group was reduced to men lying humbly on the ground, groaning gently. It was then that they heard a low, rhythmic sound.     The yeti was clapping. It had to be a slow handclap, because of the creature's long arms. But when the hands met, they'd come a long way and were glad to see one another. They echoed around the mountains.     Lu-Tze reached down and raised the leader's chin.     'If you have enjoyed this afternoon, please tell your friends,' he said. 'Tell them to remember Rule One.'     He let the chin go, and walked across to the yeti and bowed.     'Shall I release you, sir, or would you like to do it yourself?' he said.     The yeti stood up, looked down at the cruel iron trap around one leg, and concentrated for a moment.     At the end of the moment, the yeti was a little way from the trap, which was still set and almost hidden in leaves.     'Well done,' said Lu-Tze. 'Methodical. And very smooth. Headed down to the lowlands?'     The yeti had to bend double to bring its long face close to Lu-Tze.     'Yaas,' it said.     'What do you want to do with these people?'     The yeti looked round at the cowering hunters.     'It bein' daark soon,' he said. 'No guides noaw.'     'They've got torches,' said Lu-Tze.     'Ha. Ha,' said the yeti, and it said it, rather than laughed. 'Dat's good. Torches show up aat night.'     'Hah! Yes. Can you give us a lift? It's really important.'     'You and daat whizzin' kid I seein' there?'     A patch of grey air at the edge of the clearing became Lobsang, out of breath. He dropped the broken branch he'd been holding.     'The lad is called Lobsang. I'm training him up,' said Lu-Tze.     'Looks like you gotta hurry before you runnin' out of things he don't knoow,' said the yeti. 'Ha. Ha.'     'Sweeper, what were you-' Lobsang began, hurrying forward.     Lu-Tze put his finger to his lips. 'Not in front of our fallen friends,' he said. 'I'm looking for Rule One to become a lot better respected in these parts as a result of this day's work.'     'But I had to do all the-'     'We must be going,' said Lu-Tze, waving him into silence. 'I reckon we can snooze quite happily while our friend here carries us.'     Lobsang glanced up at the yeti, and then back at Lu-Tze. And then back to the yeti. It was tall. In some ways it was like the trolls he'd met in the city, but rolled out thin. It was more than twice as high as he was, and most of the extra height was skinny legs and arms. The body was a ball of fur, and the feet were indeed huge.     'If he could've got out of the trap at any-' he began.     'You are the apprentice, right?' said Lu-Tze. 'Me, I'm the master? I'm sure I wrote that down somewhere...'     'But you said you weren't going to say any of those know-it-all-'     'Remember Rule One! Oh, and pick up one of those swords. We'll need it in a minute. Okay, yer honour...'     The yeti picked them up gently and firmly, cradled them in the crook of each arm, and strode away through the snow and trees.     'Snug, eh?' said Lu-Tze after a while. 'Their wool is spun out of rock in some way, but it's pretty comfy.'     There was no answer from the other arm.     'I spent some time with the yetis,' said Lu-Tze. 'Amazing people. They taught me a thing or two. Valuable stuff. For is it not written, "We live and learn"?'     Silence, a kind of sullen, deliberate silence, reigned.     'I'd think myself lucky if I was a boy your age actually being carried by an actual yeti. A lot of people back in the valley have never even seen one. Mind you, they don't come that close to settlements any more. Not since that rumour about their feet got around.'     Lu-Tze got the feeling that he was taking part in a dialogue of one.     'Something you want to say, is there?' he said.     'Well, as a matter of fact, yes, there is, actually,' said Lobsang. 'You let me do all the work back there! You weren't going to do anything!'     'I was making sure I had their full attention,' said Lu-Tze smoothly.     'Why?'     'So that you didn't have their full attention. I had every confidence in you, of course. A good master gives the pupil an opportunity to demonstrate his skills.'     'And what would you have done if I hadn't been here, pray?'     'Yes, probably,' said Lu-Tze.     'What?'     'But I expect I would have found some way to use their stupidity against them,' said Lu-Tze. 'There generally is one. Is there a problem here?'     'Well, I just... I thought... well, I just thought you'd be teaching me more, that's all.'     'I'm teaching you things all the time,' said Lu-Tze. 'You might not be learning them, of course.'     'Oh, I see,' said Lobsang. 'Very smug. Are you going to try to teach me about this yeti, then, and why you made me bring a sword?'     'You'll need the sword to learn about yetis,' said Lu-Tze.     'How?'     'In a few minutes we'll find a nice place to stop and you can cut his head off. Is that all right by you, sir?'     'Yaas. Sure,' said the yeti.     In the Second Scroll of Wen the Eternally Surprised a story is written concerning one day when the apprentice Clodpool, in a rebellious mood, approached Wen and spake thusly:     'Master, what is the difference between a humanistic, monastic system of belief in which wisdom is sought by means of an apparently nonsensical system of questions and answers, and a lot of mystic gibberish made up on the spur of the moment?'     Wen considered this for some time, and at last said: 'A fish!'     And Clodpool went away, satisfied.           Tick     The Code of the Igors was very strict.     Never Contradict: it was no part of an Igor's job to say things like 'No, thur, that'th an artery.' The marthter was always right.     Never Complain: an Igor would never say 'But that'th a thouthand mileth away!'     Never Make Personal Remarks: no Igor would dream of saying anything like 'I thould have thomething done about that laugh, if I wath you.'     And never, ever Ask Questions. Admittedly, Igor knew, that meant never ask BIG questions. 'Would thur like a cup of tea around now?' was fine, but 'What do you need a hundred virginth for?' or 'Where do you ecthpect me to find a brain at thith time of night?' was not. An Igor stood for loyal, dependable, discreet service with a smile, or at least a sort of lopsided grin, or possibly just a curved scar in the right place.[12]     And, therefore, Igor was getting worried. Things were wrong, and when an Igor thinks that, they are really wrong. Great difficulty lay in getting this across to Jeremy without breaking the Code, though. Igor was increasingly ill at ease with someone so clearly stark, staring sane. Nevertheless, he tried.     'Her ladythip will be along again thith morning,' he said, as they watched yet another crystal grow in its solution. And I know you know that, he thought, because you've smoothed your hair down with soap and put on a clean shirt.     'Yes,' said Jeremy. 'I wish we had better progress to report. However, I'm sure we're nearly there now.'     'Yeth, thatth very thtrange, ithn't it?' said Igor, seizing the opening.     'Strange, you say?'     'Call me Mithter Thilly, thur, but it theemth to me that we're alwayth on the point of thuctheth when her ladythip payth uth a vithit, but when thee'th gone we ecthperienth new difficultieth.'     'What are you suggesting, Igor?'     'Me, thur? I'm not a thuggethtive perthon, thur. But latht time part of the divider array had cracked.'     'You know I think that was because of dimensional instability!'     'Yeth, thur.'     'Why are you giving me that funny look, Igor?'     Igor shrugged. That is, one shoulder was momentarily as high as the other one. 'Goeth with the fathe, thur.'     'She'd hardly pay us so handsomely and then sabotage the project, would she? Why would she do that?'     Igor hesitated. He had his back right up against the Code now.     'I am thtill wondering if thee ith all thee theemth, thur.'     'Sorry? I didn't catch that.'     'I wonder if we can trutht her, thur,' said Igor patiently.     'Oh, go and calibrate the complexity resonator, will you?'     Grumbling, Igor obeyed.     The second time Igor'd followed their benefactor she'd gone to a hotel. Next day she'd headed for a large house in Kings Way, where she'd been met by an oily man who'd made a great play of presenting her with a key. Igor had followed the oleaginous man back to his office in a nearby street where - because there are few things that are kept from a man with a face full of stitches - he'd learned that she'd just bought the lease for a very large bar of gold.     After that, Igor had resorted to an ancient Ankh-Morpork tradition and paid someone to follow her ladyship. There was enough gold in the workshop, heavens knew, and the master took no interest in it.     Lady LeJean went to the opera. Lady LeJean went to art galleries. Lady LeJean was living life to the fullest. Except that Lady LeJean, as far as Igor could determine, never visited restaurants and had no food delivered to the house.     Lady LeJean was up to something. Igor could spot this easily. Lady LeJean also did not appear in Twurp's Peerage or the Almanack de Gothic or any of the other reference books Igor had checked as a matter of course, which meant that she had something to hide. Of course, he had worked for masters who occasionally had a great deal to hide, sometimes in deep holes at midnight. But this situation was morally different for two reasons. Her ladyship wasn't his master, Jeremy was, and that was where his loyalty lay. And Igor had decided it was morally different.     Now he reached the glass clock.     It looked almost complete. Jeremy had designed a mechanism to go behind the face and Igor had got it made up, all in glass. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the other mechanism, which flickered away down behind the pendulum and took up a disconcertingly small amount of room now that it was assembled; quite a few of its parts were no longer sharing the same set of dimensions as the rest of it. But the clock had a face, and a face needed hands, and so the glass pendulum swung and the glass hands moved and told normal, everyday time. The 'tick' had a slightly bell-like quality, as though someone were flicking a wineglass with a fingernail.     Igor looked at his hand-me-down hands. They were beginning to worry him. Now that the glass clock looked like a clock, they began to shake every time Igor came near it.           Tick     No one noticed Susan in the library of the Guild of Historians, leafing her way through a pile of books. Occasionally she made a note.     She didn't know if her other gift was from Death, but she'd always told the children that they had a lazy eye and a business eye. There were two ways of looking at the world. The lazy eye just saw the surface. The business eye saw through into the reality beneath.     She turned a page.     Seen through her business eye, history was very strange indeed. The scars stood out. The history of the country of Ephebe was puzzling, for example. Either its famous philosophers lived for a very long time, or they inherited their names, or extra bits had been stitched into history there. The history of Omnia was a mess. Two centuries had been folded into one, by the look of it, and it was only because of the mind-set of the Omnians, whose religion in any case mixed the past and future with the present, that it could possibly have passed unnoticed.     And what about Koom Valley? Everyone knew that there had been a famous battle there, between dwarfs and trolls and mercenaries on both sides, but how many battles had there actually been? Historians talked about the valley being in just the right place in disputed territory to become more or less the preferred local pitch for all confrontations, but you could just as easily believe - at least you could if you had a grandfather called Death - that a patch that just happened to fit had been welded into history several times, so that different generations went round through the whole stupid disaster again and again, shouting 'Remember Koom Valley!' as they did so.[13]     There were anomalies everywhere.     And no one had noticed.     You had to hand it to human beings. They had one of the strangest powers in the universe. Even her grandfather had remarked upon it. No other species anywhere in the world had invented boredom. Perhaps it was boredom, not intelligence, that had propelled them up the evolutionary ladder. Trolls and dwarfs had it, too, that strange ability to look at the universe and think 'Oh, the same as yesterday, how dull. I wonder what happens if I bang this rock on that head?'     And along with this had come an associated power, to make things normal. The world changed mightily, and within a few days humans considered it was normal. They had the most amazing ability to shut out and forget what didn't fit. They told themselves little stories to explain away the inexplicable, to make things normal.     Historians were especially good at it. If it suddenly looked as though hardly anything had happened in the fourteenth century, they'd weigh in with twenty different theories. Not one of these would be that maybe most of the time had been cut out and pasted into the nineteenth century, where the Crash had not left enough coherent time for everything that needed to happen, because it only takes a week to invent the horse collar.     The History Monks had done their job well, but their biggest ally was the human ability to think narratively. And humans had risen to the occasion. They'd say things like 'Thursday already? What happened to the week?' and 'Time seems to go a lot faster these days,' and 'It seems like only yesterday...'     But some things remained.     The Monks had carefully wiped out the time when the Glass Clock had struck. It had been surgically removed from history. Almost...     Susan picked up Grim Fairy Tales again. Her parents hadn't bought her books like this when she was a child. They'd tried to bring her up normally; they knew that it is not entirely a good idea for humans to be too close to Death. They taught her that facts were more important than fancy. And then she'd grown up and found out that the real fantasies weren't the Pale Rider or the Tooth Fairy or bogeymen - they were all solid facts. The big fantasy was that the world was the place where the toast didn't care if it came butter side down or not, where logic was sensible, and where things could be made not to have happened.     Something like the Glass Clock had been too big to hide. It had leaked out via the dark, hidden labyrinths of the human mind, and had become a folk tale. People had tried to coat it with sugar and magic swords, but its true nature still lurked like a rake in an overgrown lawn, ready to rise up at the incautious foot.     Now someone was treading on it again, and the point, the key point, was that the chin it was rising to meet belonged to...     ... someone like me.     She sat and stared at nothing for a while. Around her, historians climbed library ladders, fumbled books onto their lecterns and generally rebuilt the image of the past to suit the eyesight of today. One of them was in fact looking for his glasses.     Time had a son, she thought, someone who walks in the world.     There was a man who devoted himself to the study of time so wholeheartedly that, for him, time became real. He learned the ways of time and Time noticed him, Death had said. There was something there like love.     And Time had a son.     How? Susan had the kind of mind that would sour a narrative with a question like that. Time and a mortal man. How could they ever... ? Well, how could they?     Then she thought: my grandfather is Death. He adopted my mother. My father was his apprentice for a while. That's all that happened. They were both human, and I turned up in the normal way. There is no way I should be able to walk through walls and live outside time and be a little bit immortal, but I am, and so this is not an area where logic and, let's face it, basic biology have any part to play.     In any case, time is constantly creating the future. The future contains things that didn't exist in the past. A small baby should be easy for something... someone who rebuilds the universe once every instant.     Susan sighed. And you had to remember that Time probably wasn't time, in the same way that Death wasn't exactly the same as death and War wasn't exactly the same as war. She'd met War, a big fat man with an inappropriate sense of humour and a habit of losing the thread, and he certainly didn't personally attend every minor fracas. She disliked Pestilence, who gave her funny looks, and Famine was just wasted and weird. None of them ran their... call it their discipline. They personified it.     Given that she'd met the Tooth Fairy, the Soul Cake Duck and Old Man Trouble, it amazed Susan that she had grown up to be mostly human, nearly normal.     As she stared at her notes, her hair unwound itself from its tight bun and took up its ground-state position, which was the hair of someone who had just touched something highly electrical. It spread out around her head like a cloud, with one black streak of nearly normal hair.     Grandfather might be an ultimate destroyer of worlds and the final truth of the universe, but that wasn't to say he didn't take an interest in the little people. Perhaps Time did, too.     She smiled.     Time waited for no man, they said.     Perhaps she'd waited for one, once.     Susan was aware that someone was looking at her, turned and saw the Death of Rats peering through the lens of the glasses belonging to the mildly distracted man searching for them on the other side of the room. Up on a long-disregarded bust of a former historian the raven preened itself.     'Well?' she said.     SQUEAK!     'Oh, he is, is he?'     The doors of the library were nuzzled open and a white horse walked in. There is a terrible habit amongst horsy people to call a white horse 'grey', but even one of that bowlegged fraternity would have had to admit that this horse, at least, was white - not as white as snow, which is a dead white, but at least as white as milk, which is alive. His bridle and reins were black, and so was the saddle, but all of them were in a sense just for show. If the horse of Death was inclined to let you ride him, then you'd stay on, saddle or no. And there was no upper limit to the number of people he could carry. After all, plagues sometimes happened suddenly.     The historians paid him no attention. Horses did not walk into libraries.     Susan mounted. There were plenty of times when she wished she'd been born completely human and wholly normal, but the reality was that she'd give it all up tomorrow-     -apart from Binky.     A moment later, four hoofprints glowed like plasma in the air above the library, and then faded away.           Tick     The crunch-crunch of the yeti's feet over the snow and the eternal wind of the mountains were the only sounds.     Then Lobsang said, 'By "cut off his head", you actually mean... ?'     'Sever the head from the body,' said Lu-Tze.     'And,' said Lobsang, still in the tones of one carefully exploring every corner of the haunted cave, 'he doesn't mind?'     'Waal, it's a nuisance,' said the yeti. 'A bit of a paarty trick. But it's okaay, if it helps. The sweeper haas alwaays been a goood friend to us. We owe him faavours.'     'I've tried teaching 'em the Way,' said Lu-Tze proudly.     'Yaas. Ver' usefuul. "A washed pot never boils,"'said the yeti.     Curiosity vied with annoyance in Lobsang's head, and won.     'What have I missed here?' he said. 'You don't die?'     'I doon't die? Wit my head cut off? For laughing! Ho. Ho,' said the yeti. 'Of course I die. But this is not such a sizeaable traansaaction.'     'It took us years to work out what the yetis were up to,' said Lu-Tze. 'Their loops played hob with the Mandala until the abbot worked out how to allow for them. They've been extinct three times.'     'Three times, eh?' said Lobsang. 'That's a lot of times to go extinct. I mean, most species only manage it once, don't they?'     The yeti was entering taller forest now, of ancient pines.     'This'd be a good place,' said Lu-Tze. 'Put us down, sir.'     'And we'll chop your head off,' said Lobsang weakly. 'What am I saying? I'm not going to chop anyone's head off!'     'You heard him say it doesn't worry him,' said Lu-Tze, as they were gently lowered to the ground.     'That's not the point!' said Lobsang hotly.     'It's his head,' Lu-Tze pointed out.     'But I mind!'     'Oh, well, in that case,' said Lu-Tze, 'is it not written, "If you want a thing done properly you've got to do it yourself"?'     'Yaas, it is,' said the yeti.     Lu-Tze took the sword out of Lobsang's hand. He held it carefully, like someone unused to weapons. The yeti obligingly knelt.     'You're up to date?' said Lu-Tze.     'Yaas.'     'I cannot believe you're really doing this!' said Lobsang.     'Interesting,' said Lu-Tze. 'Mrs Cosmopilite says, "Seeing is believing," and, strangely enough, the Great Wen said, 'I have seen, and I believe"!'     He brought the sword down and cut off the yeti's head.           Tick     There was a sound rather like a cabbage being sliced in half, and then a head rolled into the basket to cheers and cries of 'Oh, I say, well done!' from the crowd. The city of Quirm was a nice, peaceful, law-abiding place and the city council kept it that way with a penal policy that combined the maximum of deterrence with the minimum of re-offending.     GRIPPER 'THE BUTCHER' SMARTZ?     The late Gripper rubbed his neck.     'I demand a retrial!' he said.     THIS MAY NOT BE A GOOD TIME, said Death.     'It couldn't possibly have been murder because the...' The soul of Gripper Smartz fumbled in its spectral pockets for a ghostly piece of paper, unfolded it and continued, in a voice of those to whom the written word is an uphill struggle, '... because the bal-ance of my mind was d... dess-turbed.'     REALLY, said Death. He found it best to let the recently departed get things off their chest.     'Yes, 'cos I really, really wanted to kill him, right? And you can't tell me that's a normal frame of mind, right? He was a dwarf, anyway, so I don't think that should count as manslaughter.'     I UNDERSTAND THAT WAS THE SEVENTH DWARF YOU KILLED, said Death.     'I'm very prone to being dess-turbed,' said Gripper. 'Really, it's me who's the victim here. All I needed was a bit of understanding, someone to see my point of view for five minutes...'     WHAT WAS YOUR POINT OF VIEW?     'All dwarfs need a damn good kicking, in my opinion. 'Ere, you're Death, right?'     YES INDEED.     'I'm a big fan! I've always wanted to meet you, y'know? I've got a tattoo of you on my arm, look here. Done it myself.'     The benighted Gripper turned at the sound of hooves. A young woman in black, entirely unregarded by the crowd, who were gathered around the food stalls and souvenir stands and the guillotine, was leading a large white stallion towards them.     'And you've even got valet parking!' said Gripper. 'Now that's what I call style!' and with that he faded.     WHAT A CURIOUS PERSON, said Death. AH, SUSAN. THANK YOU FOR COMING. OUR SEARCH NARROWS.     'Our search?'     YOUR SEARCH, IN FACT.     'It's just mine now, is it?'     I HAVE SOMETHING ELSE TO ATTEND TO.     'More important than the end of the world?'     IT IS THE END OF THE WORLD. THE RULES SAY THAT THE HORSEMEN SHALL RIDE OUT.     'That old legend? But you don't have to do that!'     IT IS ONE OF MY FUNCTIONS. I HAVE TO OBEY THE RULES.     'Why? They're breaking the rules!'     BENDING THEM. THEY HAVE FOUND A LOOPHOLE. I DO NOT HAVE THAT KIND OF IMAGINATION.     It was like Jason and the Battle for the Stationery Cupboard, Susan told herself. You soon learned that 'No one is to open the door of the Stationery Cupboard' was a prohibition that a seven year-old simply would not understand. You had to think, and rephrase it in more immediate terms, like, 'No one, Jason, no matter what, no, not even if they thought they heard someone shouting for help, no one - are you paying attention, Jason? - is to open the door of the Stationery Cupboard, or accidentally fall on the door handle so that it opens, or threaten to steal Richenda's teddy bear unless she opens the door of the Stationery Cupboard, or be standing nearby when a mysterious wind comes out of nowhere and blows the door open all by itself, honestly, it really did, or in any way open, cause to open, ask anyone else to open, jump up and down on the loose floorboard to open or in any other way seek to obtain entry to the Stationery Cupboard, Jason!'     'A loophole,' said Susan.     YES.     'Well, why can't you find one too?'     I AM THE GRIM REAPER. I DO NOT THINK PEOPLE WISH ME TO GET... CREATIVE. THEY WOULD WISH ME TO DO THE TASK ASSIGNED TO ME AT THIS TIME, BY CUSTOM AND PRACTICE.     'And that's just... riding out?'     YES.     'Where to?'     EVERYWHERE, I THINK. IN THE MEANTIME, YOU WILL NEED THIS.     Death handed her a lifetimer.     It was one of the special ones, slightly bigger than normal. She took it reluctantly. It looked like an hourglass, but all those little glittering shapes tumbling through the pinch were seconds.     'You know I don't like doing the... the whole scythe thing,' she said. 'It's not- Hey, this is really heavy!'     HE IS LU-TZE, A HISTORY MONK. EIGHT HUNDRED YEARS OLD. HE HAS AN APPRENTICE. I HAVE LEARNED THIS. BUT I CANNOT FEEL HIM, I CANNOT SEE HIM. HE IS THE ONE. BINKY WILL TAKE YOU TO THE MONK, YOU WILL FIND THE CHILD.     'And then what?'     I SUSPECT HE WILL NEED SOMEONE. WHEN YOU HAVE FOUND HIM, LET BINKY GO. I SHALL NEED HIM.     Susan's lips moved as a memory collided with a thought.     'To ride out on?' she said. 'Are you really talking about the Apocalypse? Are you serious? No one believes in that sort of thing any more!'     I DO.     Susan's jaw dropped. 'You're really going to do that? Knowing everything you know?'     Death patted Binky on the muzzle.     YES, he said.     Susan gave her grandfather a sideways look.     'Hold on, there's a trick, isn't there... ? You're planning something and you're not even going to tell me, right? You're not really going to just wait for the world to end and celebrate it, are you?'     WE WILL RIDE OUT.     'No!'     YOU WILL NOT TELL THE RIVERS NOT TO FLOW. YOU WILL NOT TELL THE SUN NOT TO SHINE. YOU WILL NOT TELL ME WHAT I SHOULD AND SHOULD NOT DO.     'But it's so-' Susan's expression changed, and Death flinched. 'I thought you cared!'     TAKE THIS ALSO.     Without wanting to, Susan took a smaller lifetimer from her grandfather.     SHE MAY TALK TO YOU.     'And who is this?'     THE MIDWIFE, said Death. NOW... FIND THE SON.     He faded.     Susan looked down at the lifetimers in her hands. He's done it to you again! she screamed at herself. You don't have to do this and you can put this thing down and you can go back to the classroom and you can be normal again and you just know that you won't, and so does he-     SQUEAK?     The Death of Rats was sitting between Binky's ears, grasping a lock of the white mane and giving the general impression of someone anxious to be going. Susan raised a hand to slap him off, and then stopped herself. Instead, she pushed the heavy lifetimers into the rat's paws.     'Make yourself useful,' she said, grasping the reins. 'Why do I do this?'     SQUEAK.     'I have not got a nice nature!'           Tick     There was not, surprisingly, a great deal of blood. The head rolled into the snow, and the body slowly toppled forward.     'Now you've killed-' Lobsang began.     'Just a second,' said Lu-Tze. 'Any moment now...'     The headless body vanished. The kneeling yeti turned his head to Lu-Tze, blinked and said, 'Thaat stung a biit.'     'Sorry.'     Lu-Tze turned to Lobsang. 'Now, hold on to that memory!' he commanded. 'It'll try to vanish, but you've had training. You've got to go on remembering that you saw something that now did not happen, understand? Remember that time's a lot less unbending than people think, if you get your head right! Just a little lesson! Seeing is believing!'     'How did it do that?'     'Good question. They can save their life up to a certain point and go back to it if they get killed,' said Lu-Tze. 'How it's done... well, the abbot spent the best part of a decade working that one out. Not that anyone else can understand it. There's a lot of quantum involved.' He took a pull of his permanent foul cigarette. 'Gotta be good working-out, if no one else can understand it.'[14]     'How is der abboott these daays?' said the yeti, getting to its feet again and picking up the pilgrims.     'Teething.'     'Ah. Reincarnation's alwaays a problem,' said the yeti, falling into its long, ground-eating lope.     'Teeth are the worst, he says. Always coming or going.'     'How fast are we going?' said Lobsang.     The yeti's stride was more like a continuous series of leaps from one foot to the other; there was so much spring in the long legs that each landing was a mere faint rocking sensation. It was almost restful.     'I reckon we're doing thirty miles an hour or so, clock time,' said Lu-Tze. 'Get some rest. We'll be above Copperhead in the morning. It's all downhill from there.'     'Coming back from the dead...' Lobsang murmured.     'It's more like not actually ever going in the first place,' said Lu-Tze. 'I've studied them a bit, but... well, unless it's built in you'd have to learn how to do it, and would you want to bet on getting it right first time? Tricky one. You'd have to be desperate. I hope I'm never that desperate.'           Tick     Susan recognized the country of Lancre from the air, a little bowl of woods and fields perched like a nest on the edge of the Ramtop mountains. And she found the cottage, too, which was not the corkscrew-chimneyed compost-heap kind of witch's house popularized by Grim Fairy Tales and other books, but a spanking new one with gleaming thatch and a manicured front lawn.     There were more ornaments - gnomes, toadstools, pink bunnies, big-eyed deer - around a tiny pond than any sensible gardener should have allowed. Susan spotted one brightly painted gnome fishi- No, that wasn't a rod he was holding, was it? Surely a nice old lady wouldn't put something like that in her garden, would she? Would she?     Susan was bright enough to go round to the back, because witches were allergic to front doors. The door was opened by a small, fat, rosy-cheeked woman whose little currant eyes said, yep, thars my gnome all right, and be thankful he's only widdling in the pond.     'Mrs Ogg? The midwife?'     There was a pause before Mrs Ogg said, 'The very same.'     'You don't know me, but-' said Susan, and realized that Mrs Ogg was looking past her at Binky, who was standing by the gate. The woman was a witch, after all.     'Maybe I do know you,' said Mrs Ogg. 'O'course, if you just stole that horse, you just don't know how much trouble you're in.'     'I borrowed it. The owner is... my grandfather.'     Another pause, and it was disconcerting how those friendly little eyes could bore into yours like an auger.     'You'd better come in,' said Mrs Ogg.     The inside of the cottage was as clean and new as the outside. Things gleamed, and there were a lot of them to gleam. The place was a shrine to bad but enthusiastically painted china ornaments, which occupied every flat surface. What space was left was full of framed pictures. Two harassed-looking women were polishing and dusting.     'I got comp'ny,' said Mrs Ogg sternly, and the women left with such alacrity that the word 'fled' might have been appropriate.     'My daughters-in-law,' said Mrs Ogg, sitting down in a plump armchair which, over the years, had shaped itself to fit her. 'They like to help a poor old lady who's all alone in the world.'     Susan took in the pictures. If they were all family members, Mrs Ogg was head of an army. Mrs Ogg, unashamedly caught out in a flagrant lie, went on: 'Sit down, girl, and say what's on your mind. There's tea brewing.'     'I want to know something.'     'Most people do,' said Mrs Ogg. 'And they can go on wantin'.'     'I want to know about... a birth,' said Susan, persevering.     'Oh, yes? Well, I done hundreds of confinements. Thousands, prob'ly.'     'I imagine this one was difficult.'     'A lot of them are,' said Mrs Ogg.     'You'd remember this one. I don't know how it started, but I'd imagine that a stranger came knocking.'     'Oh?' Mrs Ogg's face became a wall. The black eyes stared out at Susan as if she was an invading army.     'You're not helping me, Mrs Ogg.'     'That's right. I ain't,' said Mrs Ogg. 'I think I know about you, miss, but I don't care who you are, you see. You can go and get the other one, if you like. Don't think I ain't seen him, neither. I've been at plenty of deathbeds, too. But deathbeds is public, mostly, and birthbeds ain't. Not if the lady don't want them to be. So you get the other one, and I'll spit in his eye.'     'This is very important, Mrs Ogg.'     'You're right there,' said Mrs Ogg firmly.     'I can't say how long ago it was. It may have been last week, even. Time, that's the key.'     And there it was. Mrs Ogg was not a poker player, at least against someone like Susan. There was the tiniest flicker of the eyes.     Mrs Ogg's chair was rammed back in her effort to rise, but Susan got to the mantelpiece first and snatched what was there, hidden in plain view amongst the ornaments.     'You give that here!' shouted Mrs Ogg, as Susan held it out of her reach. She could feel the power in the thing. It seemed to pulse in her hand.     'Have you any idea what this is, Mrs Ogg?' she said, opening her hand to reveal the little glass bulbs.     'Yes, it's an eggtimer that don't work!' Mrs Ogg sat down hard in her overstuffed chair, so that her little legs rose off the floor for a moment.     'It looks to me like a day, Mrs Ogg. A day's worth of time.'     Mrs Ogg glanced at Susan, and then at the little hourglass in her hand.     'I reckoned there was something odd about it,' she said. 'The sand don't go through when you tip it up, see?'     'That's because you don't need it to yet, Mrs Ogg.'     Nanny Ogg appeared to relax. Once again Susan reminded herself that she was dealing with a witch. They tended to keep up.     'I kept it 'cos it was a gift,' said the old lady. 'And it looks so pretty, too. What do them letters round the edge say?'     Susan read the words etched on the metal base of the lifetimer: Tempus Redux. ' "Time Returned",' she said.     'Ah, that'd be it,' said Mrs Ogg. 'The man did say I'd be repaid for my time.'     'The man... ?' said Susan gently.     Nanny Ogg glanced up, her eyes ablaze.     'Don't you try to take advantage of me just 'cos I'm moment'r'ly a bit flustered,' she snapped. 'There's no way round Nanny Ogg!'     Susan looked at the woman, and this time not with the lazy eye. And there was, indeed, no way round Mrs Ogg. But there was another way, with Mrs Ogg. It went straight through the heart.     'A child needs to know his parents, Mrs Ogg,' she said. 'Now more than ever. He needs to know who he really is. It's going to be hard for him, and I want to help him.'     'Why?'     'Because I wish someone had helped me,' said Susan.     'Yes, but there's rules to midwifery,' said Nanny Ogg. 'You don't say what was said or what you saw. Not if the lady don't want you to.'     The witch wriggled awkwardly in her chair, her face going red. She wants to tell me, Susan knew. She's desperate to. But I've got to play it right, so she can square it with herself.     'I'm not asking for names, Mrs Ogg, because I expect you don't know them,' she went on.     'That's true.'     'But the child-'     'Look, miss, I'm not supposed to tell a living soul about-'     'If it helps, I'm not entirely certain that I am one,' said Susan. She watched Mrs Ogg for a while. 'But I understand. There have to be rules, don't there? Thank you for your time.'     Susan stood up and put the preserved day back on the mantelpiece. Then she walked out of the cottage, shutting the door behind her. Binky was waiting by the gate. She mounted up, and it wasn't until then that she heard the door open.     'That's what he said,' said Mrs Ogg. 'When he gave me the eggtimer. "Thank you for your time, Mrs Ogg," he said. You'd better come back in, my girl.'           Tick     Death found Pestilence in a hospice in Llamedos. Pestilence liked hospitals. There was always something for him to do.     Currently he was trying to remove the 'Now Wash Your Hands' sign over a cracked basin. He looked up.     'Oh, it's you,' he said. 'Soap? I'll give 'em soap!'     I SENT OUT THE CALL, said Death.     'Oh. Yes. Right. Yes,' said Pestilence, clearly embarrassed.     YOU'VE STILL GOT YOUR HORSE?     'Of course, but...'     YOU HAD A FINE HORSE.     'Look, Death... it's... look, it's not that I don't see your point, but- Excuse me...' Pestilence stepped aside as a white-robed nun, completely ignorant of the two Horsemen, passed between them. But he took the opportunity to breathe in her face.     'Just a mild flu,' he said, catching Death's expression.     SO WE CAN COUNT ON YOU, CAN WE?     'To ride out...'     YES.     'For the Big One...'     IT'S EXPECTED OF US.     'How many of the others have you got?'     YOU ARE THE FIRST.     'Er...'     Death sighed. Of course, there had been plenty of diseases, long before humans had been around. But humans had definitely created Pestilence. They had a genius for crowding together, for poking around in jungles, for siting the midden so handily next to the well. Pestilence was, therefore, part human, with all that this entailed. He was frightened.     I SEE, he said.     'The way you put it-'     YOU ARE AFRAID?     'I'll... think about it.'     YES. I AM SURE YOU WILL.           Tick     Quite a lot of brandy splashed into Mrs Ogg's mug. She waved the bottle vaguely at Susan, with an enquiring look.     'No, thank you.'     'Fair enough. Fair enough.' Nanny Ogg put the bottle aside and took a draught of the brandy as though it were beer.     'A man came knocking,' she said. 'Three times he came, in my life. Last time was, oh, maybe ten days ago. Same man every time. He wanted a midwife-'     'Ten days ago?' said Susan. 'But the boy's at least sixt-' She stopped.     'Ah, you've got it,' said Mrs Ogg. 'I could see you was bright. Time didn't matter to him. He wanted the best midwife. And it was, like, he'd found out about me but got the date wrong, just like you or me could knock on the wrong door. Can you understand what I mean?'     'More than you think,' said Susan.     'The third time' - another gulp at the brandy - 'he was in a bit of a state,' said Mrs Ogg. 'That's how I knew he was just a man, despite everything that happened after. It was because he was panicking, to tell you the truth. Pregnant fathers often panic. He was going on about me coming right away and how there was no time. He had all the time in the world, he just wasn't thinking properly, 'cos husbands never do when the time comes. They panic 'cos it ain't their world any more.'     'And what happened next?' said Susan.     'He took me in his, well, it was like one of them old chariots, he took me to...' Mrs Ogg hesitated. 'I've seen a lot of strange things in my life, I'll have you know,' she said, as if preparing the ground for a revelation.     'I can believe it.'     'It was a castle made of glass.' Mrs Ogg gave Susan a look that dared her to disbelieve. Susan decided to hurry things up.     'Mrs Ogg, one of my earliest memories is of helping to feed the Pale Horse. You know? The one outside? The horse of Death? His name is Binky. So please don't keep stopping. There is practically no limit to the things I find normal.'     'There was a woman... well eventually there was a woman,' said the witch. 'Can you imagine someone exploding into a million pieces? Yes, I expect you can. Well, imagine it happening the other way. There's a mist and it's all flying together and then, whoosh, there's a woman. Then, whoosh, back into a mist again. And all the time, this noise...' Mrs Ogg ran her finger round the edge of the brandy glass, making it hum.     'A woman kept... incarnating and then disappearing again? Why?'     'Because she was frightened, of course! First time, see?' Mrs Ogg grinned. 'I person'ly never had any problems in that area, but I've been at a lot of births when it's all new to the girl and she'll be frightened as hell and when push comes to shove, if you take my meaning, old midwifery term, she'll be yellin' and swearin' at the father and I reckon that she'd give anything to be somewhere else. Well, this lady could be somewhere else. We'd have been in a real pickle if it wasn't for the man, as it turned out.'     'The man who brought you?'     'He was kind of foreign, you know? Like the Hub people. Bald as a coot. I remember thinking "You look like a young man, mister, but you look like you've been a young man for a long, long time if I'm any judge." Normally I wouldn't have any man there, but he sat and talked to her in his foreign lingo and sang her songs and little poems and soothed her and back she came, out of thin air, and I was ready and it was one, two, done. And then she was gone. Except that she was still there, I think. In the air.'     'What did she look like?' said Susan.     Mrs Ogg gave her a Look. 'You've got to remember the view I got where I was sitting,' she said. 'The kind of description I might give you ain't a thing anyone'd put on a poster, if you get my meaning. And no woman looks at her best at a time like that. She was young, she had dark hair...' Mrs Ogg refilled her brandy glass and this meant the pause went on for some time. 'And she was old, too, if you're after the truth of it. Not old like me. I mean old.'     She stared at the fire. 'Old like darkness and stars,' she said, to the flames.     'The boy was left outside the Thieves' Guild,' said Susan, to break the silence. 'I suppose they thought that with gifts like that he'd be all right.'     'The boy? Hah. Tell me, miss... why are we talking about he?'           Tick     Lady LeJean was being strong.     She'd never realized how much humans were controlled by their bodies. The thing nagged night and day. It was always too hot, too cold, too empty, too full, too tired...     The key was discipline, she was sure. Auditors were immortal. If she couldn't tell her body what to do, she didn't deserve to have one. Bodies were a major human weakness.     Senses, too. The Auditors had hundreds of senses, since every possible phenomenon had to be witnessed and recorded. She could find only five available now. Five ought to be easy to deal with. But they were wired directly into the rest of the body! They didn't just submit information, they made demands!     She'd walked past a stall selling roasted meats and her mouth had started to drool! The sense of smell wanted the body to eat without consulting the brain! But that wasn't the worst of it! The brain itself did its own thinking!     That was the hardest part. The bag of soggy tissue behind the eyes worked away independently of its owner. It took in information from the senses, and checked it all against memory, and presented options. Sometimes the hidden parts of it even fought for control of the mouth! Humans weren't individuals, they were, each one, a committee!     Some of the other members of the committee were dark and red and entirely uncivilized. They had joined the brain before civilization; some of them had got aboard even before humanity. And the bit that did the joined-up thinking had to fight, in the darkness of the brain, to get the casting vote!     After little more than a couple of weeks as a human, the entity that was Lady LeJean was having real trouble.     Food, for example. Auditors did not eat. They recognized that feeble life forms had to consume one another to obtain energy and body-building material. The process was astonishingly inefficient, however, and her ladyship had tried assembling nutrients directly out of the air. This worked, but the process felt... What was the word? Oh, yes... creepy.     Besides, part of the brain didn't believe it was getting fed and insisted that it was hungry. Its incessant nagging interfered with her thought processes and so, despite everything, she'd had to face up to the whole, well, the whole orifices business.     The Auditors had known about these for a long time. The human body appeared to have up to eight of them. One didn't seem to work and the rest appeared to be multi-functional, although surprisingly there seemed to be only one thing that could be done by the ears.     Yesterday she'd tried a piece of dry toast.     It had been the single worst experience of her existence.     It had been the single most intense experience of her existence.     It had been something else, too. As far as she could understand the language, it had been enjoyable.     It seemed that the human sense of taste was quite different from the sense as employed by an Auditor. That was precise, measured, analytical. But the human sense of taste was like being hit in the mouth by the whole world. It had been half an hour of watching fireworks in her head before she remembered to swallow.     How did humans survive this?     She'd been fascinated by the art galleries. It was clear that some humans could present reality in a way that made it even more real, that spoke to the viewer, that seared the mind... but what could possibly transcend the knowledge that the genius of an artist had to poke alien substances into his face? Could it be that humans had got used to it? And that was only the start. ..     The sooner the clock was finished, the better. A species as crazy as this couldn't be allowed to survive. She was visiting the clockmaker and his ugly assistant every day now, giving them as much help as she dared, but they always seemed one vital step away from completion-     Amazing! She could even lie to herself! Because another voice in her head, which was part of the dark committee, said, 'You're not helping, are you? You're stealing parts and twisting parts... and you go back every day because of the way he looks at you, don't you?'     Parts of the internal committee that were so old they didn't have voices, only direct control of the body, tried to interfere at this point. She tried in vain to put them out of her mind.     And now she had to face the other Auditors. They would be punctual.     She pulled herself together. Water had taken to running out of her eyes lately for no reason at all. She did the best she could with her hair, and made her way to the large drawing room.     Greyness was already filling the air. In this space, there was not room for too many Auditors, but that did not really matter. One could speak for all.     Lady LeJean found the corners of her mouth turned up automatically as nine of them appeared. Nine was three threes, and the Auditors liked threes. Two would keep an eye on the other one. Each two would keep an eye on each other one. They don't trust themselves, said one of the voices in her head. Another voice cut in: It's we, we don't trust ourselves. And she thought: Oh, yes. We, not they. I must remember I'm a we.     An Auditor said, Why is there no further progress?     The corners of the mouth turned down again.     'There have been minor problems of precision and alignment,' said Lady LeJean. She found that her hands were rubbing themselves together slowly, and wondered why. She hadn't told them to.     Auditors had never needed body language, so they didn't understand it.     One said, What is the nature of-?     But another one cut in with, Why are you dwelling in this building? The voice was tinted with suspicion.     'The body requires one to do things that cannot be done on the street,' said Lady LeJean, and, because she'd got to know something about Ankh-Morpork, she added, 'at least, on many streets. Also, I believe the servant of the clockmaker is suspicious. I have allowed the body to yield to gravity, since that is what it was designed for. It is as well to give the appearance of humanity.'     One, and it was the same one, said, And what is the meaning of these?     It had noticed the paints and the easel. Lady LeJean wished fervently that she'd remembered to put them away.     The one said, You are making an image with pigments?     'Yes. Very badly, I am afraid.'     One said, For what reason?     'I wished to see how humans do it.'     One said, That is simple: the eye receives the input, the hand applies the pigment.     'That's what I thought, but it appears to be much more complex than that-'     The one who had raised the question of the painting drifted towards one of the chairs and said, And what is this?     'It is a cat. It arrived. It does not appear to wish to depart.'     The cat, a feral ginger tom, flicked a serrated ear and curled up in a tighter ball. Anything that could survive in Ankh-Morpork's alleys, with their abandoned swamp dragons, dog packs and furriers' agents, was not about to open even one eye for a bunch of floating nightdresses.     The one who was now getting on Lady LeJean's nerves said: And the reason for its presence?     'It appears to tolerate the company of hu- of apparent humans, asking nothing in return but food, water, shelter and comfort,' said Lady LeJean. 'This interests me. Our purpose is to learn, and thus I have, as you can see, begun.' She hoped it sounded better to them than it did to her.     One said, When will the clock problems you spoke of be resolved?     'Oh, soon. Very soon. Yes.'     The one that was beginning to terrify Lady LeJean said, We wonder: is it possible that you are slowing the work in some way?     Lady LeJean felt a prickling on her forehead. Why was it doing that?     'No. Why should I slow the work? There would be no logic to it!'     One said, Hmm.     And an Auditor did not say 'Hmm' by accident. 'Hmm' had a very precise meaning.     It went on: You are making moisture on your head.     'Yes. It's a body thing.'     One said, Yes. And that, too, had a very specific and ominous meaning.     One said, We wonder if too long in a solid body weakens resolve. Also, we find it hard to see your thoughts.     'Body again, I am afraid. The brain is a very imprecise instrument.' Lady LeJean got control of her hands at last.     One said, Yes.     Another said, When water fills a jug, it takes the shape of the jug. But the water is not the jug, nor is the jug the water.     'Of course,' said Lady LeJean. And, inside, a thought that she hadn't known she was thinking, a thought that turned up out of the darkness behind the eyes, said: We are surely the most stupid creatures in the universe.     One said, It is not good to act alone.     She said, 'Of course.' And once again a thought emerged from the darkness: I'm in trouble now.     One said, And therefore you will have companions. No blame attaches. One should never be alone. Together, resolve is strengthened.     Motes began to twinkle in the air.     Lady LeJean's body backed away automatically and, when she saw what was forming, she backed it away further. She had seen humans in all states of life and death, but seeing a body being spun out of raw matter was curiously disquieting when you were currently inhabiting a similar one. It was one of those times when the stomach did the thinking, and thought it wanted to throw up.     Six figures took shape, blinked and opened their eyes. Three of the figures were male, three were female. They were dressed in human-sized equivalents of the Auditors' robes.     The remaining Auditors drew back, but one said, They will accompany you to the clockmaker; and matters will be resolved today. They will not eat or breathe.     Hah! thought one of the little voices that made up Lady LeJean's thinking.     One of the figures whimpered.     'The body will breathe,' said her ladyship. 'You will not persuade it that air is not required.'     She was aware of the choking noises.     'You are thinking, yes, we can exchange necessary materials with the outside world, and this is true,' she went on. 'But the body does not know that. It thinks it is dying. Let it breathe.'     There was a series of gasps.     'And you will feel better shortly,' said her ladyship, and was enthralled to hear the inner voice think: These are your jailers, and you are already stronger than them.     One of the figures felt its face with a clumsy hand and, panting, said, 'Whom do you speak to with your mouth?'     'You,' said Lady LeJean.     'Us?'     'This will take some explaining-'     'No,' said the Auditor. 'Danger lies that way. We believe the body imposes a method of thought on the brain. No blame attaches. It is a... malfunction. We will accompany you to the clockmaker. We will do this now.'     'Not in those clothes,' said Lady LeJean. 'You will frighten him. It may lead to irrational actions.'     There was a moment of silence. The Auditors-made-flesh looked hopelessly at one another.     'You have to talk with your mouth,' Lady LeJean prompted. 'The minds stay inside the head.'     One said, 'What is wrong with these clothes? It is a simple shape found in many human cultures.'     Lady LeJean walked to the window. 'See the people down there?' she said. 'You must dress in appropriate city fashions.'     Reluctantly the Auditors did so, and, while they retained the greyness, they did give themselves clothes that would pass unnoticed in the street. Up to a point, anyway.     'Only those of female appearance should wear dresses,' Lady LeJean pointed out.     A hovering grey shape said, Warning. Danger. The one calling itself Lady LeJean may give unsafe advice. Warning.     'Understood,' said one of the incarnate ones. 'We know the way. We will lead.'     It walked into the door.     The Auditors clustered around the door for a while, and then one of them glared at Lady LeJean, who smiled.     'Doorknob,' she said.     The Auditor turned back to the door, stared at the brass knob, and then looked the door up and down. It dissolved into dust.     'Doorknob was simpler,' said Lady LeJean.           Tick     There were big mountains around the Hub. But the ones towering above the temple didn't all have names, because there were simply too many of them. Only gods have enough time to name all the pebbles on a beach, but gods don't have the patience.     Copperhead was small enough to be big enough to have a name. Lobsang awoke and saw its crooked peak, towering above the lesser local mountains, outlined against the sunrise.     Sometimes the gods have no taste at all. They allow sunrises and sunsets in ridiculous pink and blue hues that any professional artist would dismiss as the work of some enthusiastic amateur who'd never looked at a real sunset. This was one of those sunrises. It was the kind of sunrise a man looks at and says, 'No real sunrise could paint the sky Surgical Appliance Pink.'     Nevertheless, it was beautiful.[15]     Lobsang was half covered in a pile of dry bracken. There was no sign of the yeti.     It was springtime here. There was still snow, but with the occasional patch of bare soil and a hint of green. He stared around, and saw leaves in bud.     Lu-Tze was standing some way off, gazing up into a tree. He didn't turn his head as Lobsang approached.     'Where's the yeti?'     'He wouldn't go further than this. Can't ask a yeti to leave snow,' whispered Lu-Tze.     'Oh,' whispered Lobsang. 'Er, why are we whispering?'     'Look at the bird.'     It was perched on a branch by a fork in the tree, next to what looked like a birdhouse, and nibbling at a piece of roughly round wood it held in one claw.     'Must be an old nest they're repairing,' said Lu-Tze. 'Can't have got that advanced this early in the season.'     'Looks like some kind of old box to me,' said Lobsang. He squinted to see better. 'Is it an old... clock?' he added.     'Look at what the bird is nibbling,' suggested Lu-Tze.     'Well, it looks like... a crude gearwheel? But why-'     'Well spotted. That, lad, is a clock cuckoo. A young one, by the look of it, trying to build a nest that'll attract a mate. Not much chance of that... See? It's got the numerals all wrong and it's stuck the hands on crooked.'     'A bird that builds clocks? I thought a cuckoo clock was a clock with a mechanical cuckoo that came out when-'     'And where do you think people got such a strange idea from?'     'But that's some kind of miracle!'     'Why?' said Lu-Tze. 'They barely go for more than half an hour, they keep lousy time and the poor dumb males go frantic trying to keep them wound.'     'But even to-'     'Everything happens somewhere, I suppose,' said Lu-Tze. 'Not worth making too much of a fuss. Got any food left?'     'No. We finished it last night,' said Lobsang. He added, hopefully, 'Er... I heard tell that really advanced monks can live on the, er, life force in the actual air itself...'     'Only on the planet Sausage, I expect,' said Lu-Tze. 'No, we'll skirt Copperhead and find something in the valleys on the other side. Let's go, there's not much time.'     But time enough to watch a bird, thought Lobsang as he let the world around him become blue and fade, and the thought was comforting.     It was easier going without the snow on the ground, provided he avoided the strange resistance offered by bushes and long grass. Lu-Tze walked on ahead, looking oddly colourful and unreal against the faded landscape.     They went past the entrance to dwarf mines, but saw no one above ground. Lobsang was glad of that. The statues he had seen in the villages yesterday weren't dead, he knew, but merely frozen at a different speed of time. Lu-Tze had forbidden him to go near anyone, but he needn't have bothered. Walking around the living statues was invasive, somehow. It made it worse when you realized that they were moving, but very, very slowly...     The sun had barely moved from the horizon when they came down through warmer woods on the Rim side of the mountain. Here the landscape had a more domesticated air. It was woodland rather than forest. The game trail they d been following crossed a creek at a point where there were cart tracks, old but still not overgrown.     Lobsang looked behind him after he'd walked across the ford, and watched the water very slowly reclaim the shape of his footprints in the stream.     He'd been trained in time-slicing on the snowfields above the valley, like the rest of the novices. That was so they couldn't come to any harm, the monks had said, although no one actually explained what harm they might come to. Outside the monastery, this was the first time Lobsang had sliced in a living landscape.     It was marvellous! Birds hung in the sky. Early morning bumblebees hovered over the opening flowers. The world was a crystal made of living things.     Lobsang slowed near a group of deer cropping the grass, and watched as the nearer eye of one of them swivelled, with geological slowness, to watch him. He saw the skin move as the muscles underneath started to bunch for flight...     'Time for a smoko,' said Lu-Tze.     The world around Lobsang speeded up. The deer fled, along with the magic of the moment.     'What's a smoko?' said Lobsang. He was annoyed. The quiet slow world had been fun.     'You ever been to Fourecks?'     'No. There's a barman at the Bunch of Grapes from there, though.'     Lu-Tze lit one of his skinny cigarettes.     'Don't mean much,' he said. 'The barman everywhere is from there. Strange country. Big time source right in the middle, very useful. Time and space all tangled up. Probably all that beer. Nice place, though. Now, you see that country down there?'     On one side of the clearing the ground fell away steeply, showing treetops and, beyond, a small patchwork of fields tucked into a fold in the mountains. In the distance was a gorge, and Lobsang thought he could make out a bridge across it.     'Doesn't look much like a country,' he said. 'Looks more like a shelf.'     'That's witch country,' said Lu-Tze. 'And we're going to borrow a broomstick. Quickest way to Ankh-Morpork. Only way to travel.'     'Isn't that, er, interfering with history? I mean, I was told that sort of thing is all right up in the valleys, but down here in the world...'     'No, it's absolutely forbidden,' said Lu-Tze. ' 'cos it's Interfering With History. Got to be careful of your witch, of course. Some of them are pretty canny.' He caught Lobsang's expression. 'Look, that's why there's rules, understand? So that you think before you break 'em.'     'But-'     Lu-Tze sighed, and pinched out the end of his cigarette. 'We're being watched,' he said.     Lobsang spun round. There were only trees, and insects buzzing in the early-morning air.     'Up there,' said Lu-Tze.     There was a raven perched on the broken crown of a pine tree, shattered in some winter storm. It looked at them looking at it.     'Caw?' it said.     'It's just a raven,' said Lobsang. 'There's lots of them in the valley.'     'It was watching us when we stopped.'     'There's ravens all over the mountains, Sweeper.'     'And when we met the yeti,' Lu-Tze persisted.     'That settles it, then. It's coincidence. One raven couldn't move that fast.'     'Maybe it's a special raven,' said Lu-Tze. 'Anyway, it's not one of our mountain ravens. It's a lowland raven. Mountain ravens croak. They don't caw. Why's it so interested in us?'     'It's a bit... weird, thinking you're being followed by a bird,' said Lobsang.     'When you get to my age you notice things in the sky,' said Lu-Tze. He shrugged and gave a grin. 'You start worrying they might be vultures.'     They faded into time, and vanished.     The raven ruffled its feathers.     'Croak?' it said. 'Damn.'           Tick     Lobsang felt around under the thatched eaves of the cottage, and his hand closed on the bristles of a broomstick that had been thrust among the reeds.     'This is rather like stealing,' he said, as Lu-Tze helped him down.     'No, it's not,' said the sweeper, taking the broomstick and holding it up so he could look along its length. 'And I'll tell you why. If we sort things out, we'll drop it off on our way back and she'll never know it's gone... and if we don't sort things out, well, she'll still never know it's gone. Honestly, they don't take much care of their sticks, witches. Look at the bristles on this one. I wouldn't use it to clean a pond! Oh, well... back into clock time, lad. I'd hate to fly one of these things while I was slicing.'     He straddled the stick and gripped the handle. It rose a little way.     'Good suspension, at least,' he said. 'You can have the comfy seat on the back. Hold tight to my own broom and make sure you wrap your robe around you. These things are pretty breezy.'     Lobsang pulled himself aboard and the stick rose. As it drew level with the lower branches around the clearing, it brought Lu-Tze to eye level with a raven.     It shifted uneasily and turned its head this way and that, trying to fix both eyes on him.     'Are you going to caw or croak, I wonder,' said Lu-Tze, apparently to himself.     'Croak,' said the raven.     'So you're not the raven we saw on the other side of the mountain, then.'     'Me? Gosh, no,' said the raven. 'That's croaking territory over there.'     'Just checking.'     The broom rose higher, and set off above the trees in a Hubwards direction.     The raven ruffled its feathers and blinked.     'Damn!' it said. It shuffled around the tree to where the Death of Rats was sitting.     SQUEAK?     'Look, if you want me to do this undercover work you've got to get me a book on ornithology, okay?' said Quoth. 'Let's go, or I'll never keep up.'           Tick     Death found Famine in a new restaurant in Genua. He had a booth all to himself and was eating Duck and Dirty Rice.     'Oh,' said Famine. It's you.'     YES. WE MUST RIDE. YOU MUST HAVE GOT MY MESSAGE.     'Pull up a chair,' Famine hissed. 'They do a very good alligator sausage here.'     I SAID, WE MUST RIDE.     'Why?'     Death sat down and explained. Famine listened., although he never stopped eating.     'I see,' he said at last. 'Thank you, but I think I shall sit this one out.'     SIT IT OUT? YOU'RE A HORSEMAN!     'Yes, of course. But what is my role here?'     I BEG YOUR PARDON?     'No famine appears to be involved, does it? A shortage of food per se? As such?'     WELL, NO. NOT AS SUCH, OBVIOUSLY, BUT-     'So I would, as it were, be turning up just to wave. No, thank you.'     YOU USED TO RIDE OUT EVERY TIME, said Death accusingly.     Famine waved a bone airily. 'We had proper apocalypses in those days,' he said, and sucked at the bone. 'You could sink your teeth into them.'     NEVERTHELESS, THIS IS THE END OF THE WORLD.     Famine pushed his plate aside and opened the menu. 'There are other worlds,' he said. 'You're too sentimental, Death. I've always said so.'     Death drew himself up. Humans had created Famine, too. Oh, there had always been droughts and locusts, but for a really good famine, for fertile land to be turned into a dustbowl by stupidity and avarice, you needed humans. Famine was arrogant.     I AM SORRY, he said, TO HAVE TRESPASSED ON YOUR TIME.     He went outside, into the crowded street, all alone.           Tick     The stick swooped down towards the plains, and levelled off a few hundred feet above the ground.     'We're on our way now!' shouted Lu-Tze, pointing ahead. Lobsang looked down at a slim wooden tower hung with complicated boxes. There was another one in the far distance, a toothpick in the morning mist.     'Semaphore towers!' Lu-Tze shouted. 'Ever seen them?'     'Only in the city!' Lobsang shouted above the slipstream.     'It's the Grand Trunk!' the sweeper shouted back. 'Runs like an arrow all the way to the city! All we have to do is follow it!'     Lobsang clung on. There was no snow beneath them and it looked as though spring was well advanced. And therefore it was unfair that here, that much nearer the sun, the air was frigid and was being driven into his flesh by the wind of their travel.     'It's very cold up here!'     'Yes! Did I tell you about the double-knit combinations?'     'Yes!'     'I've got a spare pair in my sack. You can have them when we stop!'     'Your own personal pair?'     'Yes! Second-best but well darned!'     'No, thank you!'     'They've been washed!'     'Lu-Tze?'     'Yes?'     'Why can't we slice when we're on this thing?'     The tower was well past them. The next one was pencil-sized already. The black-and-white shutters on the boxes were twinkling in the sunlight.     'Do you know what happens if you slice time on a magically powered vehicle travelling at more than seventy miles an hour?'     'No!'     'Me neither! And I don't want to find out!'           Tick     Igor opened the door before the second knock. An Igor might be filling coffins with earth in the cellar, or up on the roof adjusting the lightning conductor, but a caller never had to knock twice.     'Ladythip,' he muttered, nodding his head. He looked blankly at the six figures behind her.     'We have called to inspect progress,' said Lady LeJean.     'And thethe ladieth and gentlemen, ladythip?'     'My associates,' said her ladyship, matching Igor's blank stare.     'If you will be tho kind ath to thtep inthide, I will thee if the marthter ith in,' said Igor, observing the convention that a true butler never knows the whereabouts of anyone in the house until they decide they want it to be known.     He backed through the door into the workshop and then lurched into the kitchen, where Jeremy was calmly pouring a spoonful of medicine down the sink.     'That woman ith here,' he said, 'and thee hath brought lawyerth.'     Jeremy held out a hand, palm downwards, and examined it critically.     'You see, Igor?' he said. 'Here we are, almost at the completion of our great work, and I remain absolutely calm. You could build a house on my hand, it is so steady.'     'Lawyerth, thur,' said Igor, giving the word some extra spin.     'And?'     'Well, we have had a lot of money,' said Igor, with the conviction of a man who has informally secreted a small but sensible amount of gold in his own bag.     'And we have finished the clock,' said Jeremy, still watching his hand.     'We've been nearly finithed for dayth,' said Igor darkly. 'If it wathn't for her, I reckon we could've caught that thunderthtorm two dayth ago.'     'When's the next one?'     Igor screwed up his face and banged his temple a couple of times with the palm of his hand.     'Unthettled conditionth with a low approaching from the Rim,' he said. 'Can't promith anything with the thloppy weather you get here. Hah, back home the thunderthtormth come running ath thoon ath they thee you put up the iron pole. Tho what do you want me to do about the lawyerth?'     'Show them in, of course. We have nothing to hide.'     'Are you thure, thur?' said Igor, whose carpet bag could not in fact be lifted with one hand.     'Please do it, Igor.'     Jeremy smoothed down his hair while the grumbling Igor disappeared into the shop and returned with the guests.     'Lady LeJean, thur. And thome other... people,' said Igor.     'It's good to see you, your ladyship,' said Jeremy, smiling glassily. He vaguely remembered something he had read. 'Won't you introduce me to your friends?'     Lady LeJean gave him a nervous look. Oh, yes... humans always needed to know names. And he was smiling again. It made it so hard to think.     'Mr Jeremy, these are my... associates,' she said. 'Mr Black. Mr Green. Miss Brown. Miss White. Miss... Yellow. And Mr Blue.'     Jeremy held out his hand. 'I am pleased to meet you,' he said.     Six pairs of eyes looked uncomprehendingly at the hand.     'The custom here is to shake hands,' said her ladyship.     In unison, the Auditors extended a hand and wiggled it slowly in the air.     'The hand of the other person,' said her ladyship. She gave Jeremy a thin-lipped smile. 'They are foreigners,' she said.     And she recognized the panic in their eyes, even if they didn't. We can count the number and types of atom in this room, they were thinking. How can there be anything in here we cannot understand?     Jeremy managed to catch one wavering hand in his. ' And you are Mr-?'     The Auditor turned worried eyes on Lady LeJean.     'Mr Black,' she said.     'I understood that we were Mr Black,' said another male-shaped Auditor.     'No, you are Mr Green.'     'Nevertheless, we would prefer Mr Black. We are the senior, and black is a more significant shade. We do not wish to be Mr Green.'     'The translation of your names is not, I think, important,' said Lady LeJean. She gave Jeremy another smile. 'They are my accountants,' she added, some reading on her part having suggested that this might excuse most oddities.     'You see, Igor?' said Jeremy. 'They are simply accountants.'     Igor grimaced. Where his baggage was concerned, accountants were probably worse news than lawyers.     'Grey would be acceptable,' said Mr Green.     'Nevertheless, you are Mr Green. We are Mr Black. It is a matter of status.'     'If that is the case,' said Miss White, 'white is higher status than black. Black is absence of colour.'     'The point is valid,' said Mr Black. 'Therefore we are now Mr White. You are Miss Red.'     'You previously indicated that you were Mr Black.'     'New information indicates a change of position. This does not indicate incorrectness of said previous position.'     It's happening already, thought Lady LeJean. It's in the darkness where your eyes can't see. The universe becomes two halves, and you live in the half behind the eyes. Once you have a body, you have a 'me'.     I have seen galaxies die. I have watched atoms dance. But until I had the dark behind the eyes, I didn't know the death from the dance. And we were wrong. When you pour water into a jug, it becomes jug-shaped and it is not the same water any more. An hour ago they never dreamed of having names, and now they are arguing about them...     And they can't hear what I think!     She wanted more time. The habits of a billion years don't yield entirely to a mouthful of bread, and she could see that a crazy life form like humanity should not be allowed to exist. Yes, indeed. Certainly. Of course.     But she wanted more time.     They should be studied. Yes, studied.     There should be... reports. Yes. Reports. Full reports. Long, long, full reports.     Caution. That was it. That was the word! Auditors loved that word. Always put off until tomorrow something that, tomorrow, you could put off until, let's say, next year.     It has to be said that Lady LeJean was not herself at this point. She didn't quite have a herself to be. The other six Auditors... in time, yes, they'd think the same way. But there wasn't time. If only she could persuade them to eat something. That would... yes, that would bring them to their senses. There seemed to be no food around, though.     She could see a very large hammer on the bench.     'How is progress, Mr Jeremy?' she said, walking over to the clock. Igor moved very fast, and stood almost protectively next to the glass pillar.     Jeremy hurried forward. 'We have carefully aligned all the systems-'     'Again,' Igor growled.     'Yes, again-'     'Theveral timeth, in fact,' Igor added.     'And now we simply await the right weather conditions.'     'But I thought you stored lightning?'     Her ladyship indicated the greenish glass cylinders bubbling and hissing along the wall of the workshop. Just by the bench with, yes, the hammer on it. And no one could read her thoughts! The power!     'There will easily be enough to keep the mechanism working, but to start the clock will require what Igor call's a jump,' said Jeremy.     Igor held up two crocodile clips the size of his head.     'th right,' he said. 'But you hardly ever get the right kind of thunderthtormth down here. Thould've built thith in Uberwald, I keep thaying.'     'What is the nature of this delay?' said - possibly - Mr White.     'We need a thunderstorm, sir. For the lightning,' said Jeremy. Lady LeJean stepped back, a little closer to the bench.     'Well? Arrange one,' said Mr White.     'Hah, well, if we were in Uberwald, of courthe-'     'It is merely a matter of pressures and potentials,' said Mr White. 'Can you not simply create one?'     Igor gave him a look of disbelief mixed with respect.     'You're not from Uberwald, are you?' he said. Then he gasped, and banged the side of his head.     'Hey, I felt that one,' he said. 'Whoopth! How did you do that? Prethure dropping like a thtone!'     Sparks glittered along his black fingernails. He beamed.     'I'll jutht go and raithe the lightning rod,' he said, hurrying to a pulley system on the wall.     Lady LeJean turned on the others. This time she wished they could read her thoughts. She didn't know enough pronounceable human swearwords.     'That is against the rules!' she hissed.     'Mere expediency,' said Mr White. If you had not been... lax, this would have been concluded by now!'     'I counselled further study!'     'Unnecessary!'     Is there a problem?' said Jeremy, in the diffident voice he used for conversations not involving clocks.     'The clock should not be started yet!' said Lady LeJean, not taking her eyes off the other Auditors.     'But you asked me... We've been... It's all set up!'     'There may be... problems! I think we should see another week of testing!'     But there weren't problems, she knew. Jeremy had built the thing as if he'd built a dozen like it before. It had been all Lady LeJean could do to spin things out this long, especially with the Igor watching her like a hawk.     'What is your "name", young person?' said Mr White to Jeremy.     The clockmaker backed away. 'Jeremy,' he said, 'and I... I don't understand, Mr, er, White. A clock tells the time. A clock isn't dangerous. How can a clock be a problem? It's a perfect clock!'     'Then start it!'     'But her ladyship-'     The door knocker thundered.     'Igor?' said Jeremy.     'Yeth, thur?' said Igor, from the hallway.     'How did the servant person get there?' said Mr White, still watching her ladyship.     'It's a, a sort of trick they, they have,' said Jeremy. 'I'm, I'm sure it's only-'     'It'th Dr Hopkinth, thur,' said Igor, entering from the hall. 'I told him you were buthy, but-'     -but Dr Hopkins, although apparently as mild-mannered as milk, was also a Guild official and had survived as such for several years. Ducking under Igor's arm was no problem at all for a man who could handle a meeting of clockmakers, no two of whom exactly ticked in time with the rest of humanity.     'I just happened to have business this way,' he began, smiling brightly, 'and it was no trouble to drop in at the apothecary to pick up- Oh, you have company?'     Igor grimaced, but there was the Code to think of.     'Thall I make thome tea, thur?' he said, as all the Auditors glared at the doctor.     'What is this tea?' Mr White demanded.     'It is protocol!' snapped Lady LeJean.     Mr White hesitated. Protocol was important.     'Er, er, er, yes,' said Jeremy. 'Tea, Igor, please. Please.'     'My word, I see you have finished your clock!' said Dr Hopkins, apparently oblivious of an atmosphere that could have floated iron. 'What a magnificent piece of work!'     The Auditors stared at one another as the doctor ambled past them and looked up at the glass face.     'Well done indeed, Jeremy!' he said, removing his glasses and polishing them enthusiastically. 'And what is this pretty blue glow?'     'It's, it's the crystal ring,' said Jeremy. 'It, it-'     'It spins light,' said Lady LeJean. 'And then it makes a hole in the universe.'     'Really?' said Dr Hopkins, putting his glasses back on. 'What an original idea! Does a cuckoo come out?'           Tick     Of the very worst words that can be heard by anyone high in the air, the pair known as 'Oh-oh' possibly combine the maximum of bowel-knotting terror with the minimum wastage of breath.     When Lu-Tze uttered them, Lobsang didn't need a translation. He'd been watching the clouds for some time. They were getting blacker, and thicker, and darker.     'The handle's tingling!' shouted Lu-Tze.     'That's because there's a storm right above us!' screamed Lobsang.     'The sky was as clear as a bell a few minutes ago!'     Ankh-Morpork was much closer now. Lobsang could make out some of the taller buildings, and see the river snaking across the plain. But the storm was coming up all around the city.     'I'm going to have to land this thing while I can!' Lu-Tze said. 'Hold on...'     The stick dropped until it was a few feet above the cabbage fields. The plants were a rushing green blur inches below Lobsang's sandals.     Lobsang heard another word that, while not the worst you can hear while airborne, is not at all good when it's said by the person steering.     'Er...'     'Do you know how to stop this?' yelled Lobsang.     'Not in so many words,' shouted Lu-Tze. 'Hold on, I'm going to try something...'     The stick tilted up but kept moving in the same direction. The bristles dipped into the cabbages.     It took the width of a field to slow down, at the end of a furrow with the smell that only squashed cabbage leaves can yield.     'How fine can you slice time?' the sweeper said, scrambling over the battered plants.     'I'm pretty good-' Lobsang began.     'Get better quick!'     Lu-Tze faded to blue as he ran towards the city. Lobsang caught him up within a hundred yards but the sweeper was still fading, still slicing time thinner and thinner. The apprentice gritted his teeth and followed, straining every muscle.     The old man might be a fraud when it came to fighting, but there was no kidding here. The world went from blue to indigo to an inky, unnatural darkness, like the shadow of an eclipse.     This was deep time. You couldn't stay there long, he knew. Even if you could tolerate the ghastly chill, there were parts of the body that just weren't designed for this. Go too far down, too, and you'd die if you came back too quickly...     He hadn't seen it, of course, no apprentice had, but there were some quite graphic drawings in the classrooms. A man's life could become very, very painful if his blood began to move through time faster than his bones. It would also be very short.     'I can't... keep this up...' he panted, running after Lu-Tze in the violet gloom.     'You can,' gasped the sweeper. 'You're fast, right?'     'I'm not... trained... for this!'     The city was getting closer.     'No one's trained for this!' growled Lu-Tze. 'You do it, and you find out that you're good at it!'     'What happens if you find out you're no good?' said Lobsang. The going felt easier now. He no longer had the feeling that his skin was trying to drag itself off him.     'Dead men don't find things out,' said Lu-Tze. He turned his head to his apprentice and his evil grin was a yellow-toothed curve in the shadows. 'Getting the hang?' he added.     'I'm... I'm on top of it...'     'Right! Then now that we've warmed up...'     To Lobsang's horror, the sweeper faded further into the dark.     He called up reserves he knew he didn't have. He screamed at his liver to stay with him, thought that he felt his brain creak, and plunged on.     The shape of Lu-Tze lightened as Lobsang drew level with him in time.     'Still here? One last effort, lad!'     'I can't!'     'You bloody well can!'     Lobsang gulped freezing air and fell onwards-     -where the light was suddenly a calm, pale blue and Lu-Tze was trotting gently between the frozen carts and unmoving people around the city's gate.     'See? Nothing to it,' said the sweeper. 'Just maintain, that's all. Nice and steady.'     It was like balancing on a wire. It was fine if you didn't think about it.     'But all the scrolls say you go to blue and violet and into the black and then you hit the Wall,' said Lobsang.     'Ah, well, scrolls,' said Lu-Tze, and left it there, as if the tone of voice said it all. 'This is Zimmerman's Valley, lad. It helps if you know it's here. The abbot said it's something to do with... what was it?... Oh, yeah, boundary conditions. Something like... the foam on the tide. We're right on the edge, boy!'     'But I can breathe easily!'     'Yeah. Shouldn't happen. Keep moving about, though, otherwise you'll exhaust all the good air around your body field. Good old Zimmerman, eh? One of the best, he was. And he reckoned there was another dip even closer to the Wall, too.'     'Did he ever find it?'     'Don't think so.'     'Why?'     'The way he exploded gave me a hint. Don't worry! You can maintain the slice easily here. You don't have to think about it. You've got other things to think about! Keep an eye on those clouds!'     Lobsang looked up. Even in this blue-on-blue landscape, the clouds over the city looked ominous.     'It's what happened back in Uberwald,' said Lu-Tze. 'The clock needs a lot of power. The storm blew up out of nowhere.'     'But the city's huge! How can we find a clock here?'     'First, we're going to head for the centre,' said Lu-Tze.     'Why?'     'Because with luck we won't have to run so far when the lightning strikes, of course.'     'Sweeper, no one can outrun lightning!'     Lu-Tze spun round and grabbed Lobsang by the robe, dragging him closer.     'Then tell me where to run, speedy boy!' he shouted. 'There's more to you than meets the third eye, lad! No apprentice should be able to find Zimmerman's Valley! It takes hundreds of years of training! And no one should be able to make the spinners sit up and dance to his tune the very first time he sees them! Think I'm daft, do you? Orphan boy, strange power... what the hell are you? The Mandala knew you! Well, I'm just a mortal human, and what I know is, I'll be damned if I'll see the world shattered a second time! So help me! Whatever it is you've got, I need it now! Use it!'     He let go, and stood back. A vein in his bald head was throbbing.     'But I don't know what I can do to-'     'Find out what you can do!'           Tick     Protocol. Rules. Precedent. Ways of doing things. That's how we've always worked, thought Lady LeJean. This and this must follow that. It has always been our strength. I wonder if it can be a weakness?     If looks could have killed, Dr Hopkins would have been a smear on the wall. The Auditors watched his every move like cats watching a new species of mouse.     Lady LeJean had been incarnate much longer than the others. Time can change a body, especially when you've never had one before. She wouldn't have stared and fumed. She would have clubbed the doctor to the ground. What was one more human?     She realized, with some amazement, that the thought there was a human thought.     But the other six were still wet behind the ears. They hadn't yet realized the dimensions of duplicity that you needed to survive as a human being. They clearly found it hard to think inside the little dark world behind the eyes, too. Auditors reached decisions in concert with thousands, millions of other Auditors.     Sooner or later they'd learn to be their own thinkers, though. It might take a while, because they'd try to learn from one another first.     At the moment they were watching Igor's tea tray with great suspicion.     'Drinking tea is protocol,' said Lady LeJean. 'I must insist.'     'Is this correct?' Mr White barked at Dr Hopkins.     'Oh, yes,' said the doctor. 'With a ginger biscuit, usually,' he added hopefully.     'A ginger biscuit,' repeated Mr White. ' A biscuit of red-brown colouring?'     'Yeth, thur,' said Igor. He nodded to the plate on his tray.     'I would like to try a ginger biscuit,' volunteered Miss Red.     Oh yes, thought Lady LeJean, please try the ginger biscuits.     'We do not eat or drink!' snapped Mr White. He gave Lady LeJean a look of deep suspicion. 'It could cause incorrect ways of thinking.'     'But it is the custom,' said Lady LeJean. 'To ignore protocol is to draw attention.'     Mr White hesitated. But he was a quick adaptor.     'It is against our religion!' he said. 'Correct!'     It was an amazing leap. It was inventive. And he'd come up with it all alone. Lady LeJean was impressed. The Auditors had tried to understand religion, because so much that made no sense whatsoever was done in its name. But it could also excuse practically any kind of eccentricity. Genocide, for example. By comparison, a lack of tea drinking was easy.     'Yes, indeed!' said Mr White, turning to the other Auditors. 'Is that not true?'     'Yes, that is not true. Indeed!' said Mr Green desperately.     'Oh?' said Dr Hopkins. 'I did not know there was any religion that forbade tea.'     'Indeed!' said Mr White. Lady LeJean could almost feel his mind racing. 'It is a... yes, it is a drink of the... correct... it is a drink of the... extremely bad negatively regarded gods. It is a... correct... it is a commandment of our religion to... yes... to shun ginger biscuits also.' There was sweat on his forehead. For an Auditor, this was genius-level creativity. 'Also,' he went on slowly, as if reading the words off some page invisible to everyone else, 'our religion... correct!... our religion demands that the clock be started now! For... who may know when the hour may be?'     Despite herself, Lady LeJean nearly applauded.     'Who indeed?' said Dr Hopkins.     'I, I absolutely agree,' said Jeremy, who had been staring at Lady LeJean. 'I don't understand who you... why there's all this fuss... I don't understand why... oh, dear... I'm having a headache...'     Dr Hopkins spilled his tea because of the speed with which he got up and reached into his coat pocket.     'AhitsohappensIwaspassingtheapothecaryonmywayhere-' he began, all in one breath.     'I feel it's not the time to start the clock,' said Lady LeJean, edging herself along the desk. The hammer was still invitingly there.     'I'm seeing those little flashes of light, Dr Hopkins,' said Jeremy urgently, staring into the middle distance.     'Not the flashes of light! Not the flashes of light!' said Dr Hopkins. He grabbed a teaspoon off Igor's tray, stared at it, threw it over his shoulder, tipped the tea out of a cup, opened the bottle of blue medicine by smashing the top off on the edge of the bench, and poured a cupful, spilling quite a lot of it in his hurry.     The hammer was inches away from her ladyship's hand. She didn't dare look round, but she could sense it there. While the Auditors stared at the trembling Jeremy, she let her fingers walk across the bench. She wouldn't even have to move. A brisk overarm throw should do it.     She saw Dr Hopkins try to put the cup to Jeremy's lips. The boy put his hands over his face and elbowed the cup out of the way, spilling the medicine across the floor.     Then Lady LeJean's fingers were grasping the handle. She brought her hand round and hurled the hammer directly at the clock.           Tick     The war was going badly for the weaker side. Their positioning was wrong, their tactics ragged, their strategy hopeless. The Red army advanced across the whole front, dismembering the scurrying remnant of the collapsing Black battalions.     There was room for only one anthill on this lawn...     Death found War down among the grass blades. He admired attention to detail. War was in full armour, too, but the human heads he normally had tied to his saddle had been replaced by ant heads, feelers and all.     DO THEY NOTICE YOU, DO YOU THINK? he said.     'I doubt it,' said War.     NEVERTHELESS, IF THEY DID, I'M SURE THEY WOULD APPRECIATE IT.     'Ha! Only decent theatre of war around these days,' said War. 'That's what I like about ants. The buggers don't learn, what?'     IT HAS BEEN RATHER PEACEFUL OF LATE, I AGREE, said Death.     'Peaceful?' said War. 'Ha! I may as well change m'name to "Police Action", or "Negotiated Settlement"! Remember the old days? Warriors used to froth at the mouth! Arms and legs bouncing in all directions! Great times, eh?' He leaned across and slapped Death on the back. 'I'll bag' em and you tag' em, what?'     This looked hopeful, Death thought.     TALKING OF THE OLD DAYS, he said carefully, I'M SURE YOU REMEMBER THE TRADITION OF RIDING OUT?     War gave him a puzzled look. 'Mind's a blank on that one, old boy.'     I SENT OUT THE CALL.     'Can't say it rings a bell...'     APOCALYPSE? said Death. END OF THE WORLD?     War continued to stare. 'Definitely knocking, old chap, but no one's home. And talking of home...' War looked around at the twitching remains of the recent slaughter. 'Spot of lunch?'     Around them the forest of grass grew shorter and smaller until it was, indeed, no more than grass, and became the lawn outside a house.     It was an ancient long-house. Where else would War live? But Death saw ivy growing over the roof. He remembered when War would never have allowed anything like that, and a little worm of worry began to gnaw.     War hung up his helmet as he entered, and once he would have kept it on. And the benches around the fire pit would have been crowded with warriors, and the air would have been thick with beer and sweat.     'Brought an old friend back, dear,' he said.     Mrs War was preparing something on the modern black iron kitchen range which, Death saw, had been installed in the fire pit, with shiny pipes extending up to the hole in the roof. She gave Death the kind of nod a wife gives a man whom her husband has, despite previous warnings, unexpectedly brought back from the pub.     'We're having rabbit,' she said, and added in the voice of one who has been put upon and will extract payment later, 'I'm sure I can make it stretch to three.'     War's big red face wrinkled. 'Do I like rabbit?'     'Yes, dear.'     'I thought I liked beef.'     'No, dear. Beef gives you wind.'     'Oh.' War sighed. 'Any chance of onions?'     'You don't like onions, dear.'     'I don't?'     'Because of your stomach, dear.'     'Oh.'     War smiled awkwardly at Death. 'It's rabbit,' he said. 'Erm... dear, do I ride out for Apocalypses?'     Mrs War took the lid off a saucepan and prodded viciously at something inside.     'No, dear,' she said firmly. 'You always come down with a cold.'     'I thought I rather, er, sort of liked that kind of thing... ?'     'No, dear. You don't.'     Despite himself, Death was fascinated. He had never come across the idea of keeping your memory inside someone else's head.     'Perhaps I would like a beer?' War ventured.     'You don't like beer, dear.'     'I don't?'     'No, it brings on your trouble.'     'Ah. Uh, how do I feel about brandy?'     'You don't like brandy, dear. You like your special oat drink with the vitamins.'     'Oh, yes,' said War mournfully. 'I'd forgotten I liked that.' He looked sheepishly at Death. 'It's quite nice,' he said.     COULD I HAVE A WORD WITH YOU, said Death, IN PRIVATE?     War looked puzzled. 'Do I like wo-'     IN PRIVATE, PLEASE, Death thundered.     Mrs War turned and gave Death a disdainful look.     'I understand, I quite understand,' she said haughtily. 'But don't you dare say anything to bring on his acid, that's all I shall say.'     Mrs War had been a Valkyrie once, Death remembered. It was another reason to be extremely careful on the battlefield.     'You've never been tempted by the prospect of marriage, old man?' said War, when she'd gone.     NO. ABSOLUTELY NOT. IN NO WAY.     'Why not?'     Death was nonplussed. It was like asking a brick wall what it thought of dentistry. As a question, it made no sense.     I HAVE BEEN TO SEE THE OTHER TWO, he said, ignoring it. FAMINE DOESN'T CARE AND PESTILENCE IS FRIGHTENED.     'The two of us, against the Auditors?' said War.     RIGHT IS ON OUR SIDE.     'Speaking as War,' said War, 'I'd hate to tell you what happens to very small armies that have Right on their side.'     I HAVE SEEN YOU FIGHT.     'My old right arm isn't what it was...' War murmured.     YOU ARE IMMORTAL. YOU ARE NOT ILL, said Death, but he could see the worried, slightly hunted look in Wars eyes and knew that there was only one way this was going to go.     To be human was to change, Death realized. The Horsemen... were horsemen. Men had wished upon them a certain shape, a certain form. And, just like the gods, and the Tooth Fairy, and the Hogfather, their shape had changed them. They would never be human, but they had caught aspects of humanity as though they were some kind of disease.     Because the point was that nothing, nothing, had one aspect and one aspect alone. Men would envisage a being called Famine, but once they gave him arms and legs and eyes, that meant he had to have a brain. That meant he'd think. And a brain can't think about plagues of locusts all the time.     Emergent behaviour again. Complications always crept in. Everything changed.     THANK GOODNESS, thought Death, THAT I AM COMPLETELY UNCHANGED AND EXACTLY THE SAME AS I EVER WAS.     And then there was one.           Tick     The hammer stopped, halfway across the room. Mr White walked over and picked it out of the air.     'Really, your ladyship,' he said. 'You think we don't watch you? You, the Igor, make the clock ready!'     Igor looked from him to Lady LeJean and back. 'I only take orderth from Marthter Jeremy, thank you,' he said.     'The world will end if you start that clock!' said Lady LeJean.     'What a foolish idea,' said Mr White. 'We laugh at it.'     'Hahaha,' said the other Auditors obediently.     'I don't need medicine!' Jeremy shouted, pushing Dr Hopkins out of the way. 'And I don't need people to tell me what to do. Shut up!'     In the silence, thunder grumbled in the clouds.     'Thank you,' said Jeremy, more calmly. 'Now, I hope I am a rational man, and I shall approach this rationally. A clock is a measuring device. I have built the perfect clock, my lady. I mean ladies. And gentlemen. It will revolutionize timekeeping.'     He reached up and moved the hands of the clock to almost one o'clock. Then he reached down, gripped the pendulum, and set it swinging.     The world continued to exist.     'You see? The universe doesn't stop even for my clock,' Jeremy went on. He folded his hands and sat down. 'Watch,' he said calmly.     The clock ticked gently. Then something rattled in the machinery around it, and the big green glass tubes of acid began to sizzle.     'Well, nothing seems to have happened,' said Dr Hopkins. 'That's a blessing.'     Sparks crackled around the lightning rod positioned above the clock.     'This is just making a path for the lightning,' said Jeremy happily. 'We send a little lightning up, and a lot more comes back-'     Things were moving inside the clock. There was a sound best represented as fizzle, and greenish-blue light filled the case.     'Ah, the cascade has initialized,' said Jeremy. 'As a little exercise, the, ah, more traditional pendulum clock has been slaved to the Big Clock, you'll see, so that every second it will be readjusted to the correct time.' He smiled, and one cheek twitched. 'Some day all clocks will be like this,' he said, and added, 'While I normally hate such an imprecise term as "any second now", nevertheless I-'           Tick     There was a fight going on in the square. In the strange colours involved in the time-slicing state known as Zimmerman's Valley, it was picked out in shades of light blue.     By the look of it, a couple of watchmen were trying to take on a gang. One man was airborne, and hung there without support. Another had fired a crossbow directly at one of the watchmen; the arrow was nailed unmoving in the air.     Lobsang examined it curiously.     'You're going to touch it, aren't you?' said a voice behind Lobsang. 'You're just going to reach out and touch it, despite everything I've told you. Pay attention to the damn sky!'     Lu-Tze was smoking nervously. When it got a few inches away from his body, the smoke went rigid in the air.     'Are you sure you can't feel where it is?' he snapped.     'It's all round us, Sweeper. We're so close, it... it's like trying to see the wood when you're standing under the trees!'     'Well, this is the Street of Cunning Artificers and that's the Guild of Clockmakers over there,' said Lu-Tze. 'I don't dare go inside if it's this close, not until we're certain.'     'What about the University?'     'Wizards aren't mad enough to try it!'     'You're going to try and race the lightning?'     'It's do-able, if we start from here in the Valley. Lightning ain't as quick as people think.'     'Are we waiting to see a little pointy bit of lightning coming out of a cloud?'     'Hah! Kids today, where do they get their education? The first stroke is from the ground to the air, lad. That makes a nice hole in the air for the main lightning to come down. Look for the glow. We've got to be giving the road plenty of sandal by the time it reaches the clouds. You holding up okay?'     'I could go on like this all day,' said Lobsang.     'Don't try it.' Lu-Tze scanned the sky again. 'Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it's just a storm. Sooner or later you get-'     He stopped. One look at Lobsang's face was enough.     'O-kay,' said the sweeper slowly. ' Just give me a direction. Point if you can't speak.'     Lobsang dropped to his knees, hands rising to his head. 'I don't know... don't know...'     Silvery light rose over the city, a few streets away. Lu-Tze grabbed the boy's elbow.     'Come on, lad. On your feet. Faster than lightning, eh? Okay?'     'Yeah... yeah, okay...'     'You can do it, right?'     Lobsang blinked. He could see the glass house again, stretching away as a pale outline overlaid the city.     'Clock,' he said thickly.     'Run, boy, run!' shouted Lu-Tze. 'And don't stop for anything.'     Lobsang plunged forward, and found it hard. Time moved aside for him, sluggishly at first, as his legs pumped. With every step he pushed himself faster and faster, the landscape changing colours again as the world slowed even further.     There was another stitch in time, the sweeper had said. Another valley, even closer to the null point. Insofar as he could think at all, Lobsang hoped he would reach it soon. His body felt as though it would fly apart; he could feel his bones creaking.     The glow ahead was halfway to the iron-heavy clouds now, but he'd reached a crossroads and he could see it was rising from a house halfway down the street.     He turned to look for the sweeper, and saw the man yards behind him, mouth open, a statue falling forward.     Lobsang turned, concentrated, let time speed up.     He reached Lu-Tze and caught him before he hit the ground. There was blood coming from the old man's ears.     'I can't do it, lad,' the sweeper mumbled. 'Get on! Get on!'     'I can do it! It's like running downhill!'     'Not for me it ain't!'     'I can't just leave you here like this!'     'Save us from heroes! Get that bloody clock!'     Lobsang hesitated. The downstroke was already emerging from the clouds, a drifting, glowing spike.     He ran. The lightning was falling towards a shop, a few buildings away. He could see a big clock hanging over its window.     He pushed against the flow of time ever further, and it yielded. But the lightning had reached the iron pole atop the building.     The window was closer than the door. He lowered his head and jumped through it, the glass shattering around him and then freezing in mid-air, clocks pinwheeling off the display and stopping as if caught in invisible amber.     There was another door ahead of him. He grabbed the knob and pulled, feeling the terrible resistance of a slab of wood urged to move at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light.     It was barely open a few inches when he saw, beyond, the slow ooze of lightning run down the rod and into the heart of the big clock.     The clock struck one.     Time stopped.           Ti-     Mr Soak the dairyman was washing bottles at the sink when the air dimmed and the water solidified.     He stared at it for a moment and then, with the manner of a man trying an experiment, held the bottle over the stone floor and let it go.     It remained hanging in the air.     'Dammit,' he said. 'Another idiot with a clock, eh?'     What he did then was not usual dairy practice. He walked into the centre of the room and made a few passes in the air with his hands.     The air brightened. The water splashed. The bottle smashed although, when Ronnie turned round and waved a hand at it, the glass slivers ran together again.     Then Ronnie Soak sighed and went into the cream-settling room. Large wide bowls stretched away into the distance and, if Ronnie had ever allowed another to notice this, the distance contained far more distance than is ever found in a normal building.     'Show me,' he said.     The surface of the nearest bowl of milk became a mirror, and then began to show pictures...     Ronnie went back into the dairy, took his peaked cap off its hook by the door, and crossed the courtyard to the stable. The sky overhead was a sullen, unmoving grey as he emerged, leading his horse. The horse was black, glistening with condition, and there was this about it that was odd: it shone as though it was illuminated by a red light. Redness spangled off its shoulders and flanks, even under the greyness.     And even when it was harnessed to the cart it didn't look like any kind of horse that should be hitched to any kind of wagon, but people never noticed this and, again, Ronnie took care to make sure that they didn't.     The cart gleamed with white paint, picked out here and there with a fresh green.     The wording on the side declared, proudly:     RONALD SOAK, HYGIENIC DAIRYMAN. ESTABLISHED     Perhaps it was odd that people never asked, 'Established when, exactly?' If they ever had, the answer would have had to be quite complicated.     Ronnie opened the gates to the yard and, milk crates rattling, set out into the timeless moment. lt was terrible, he thought, the way things conspired against the small businessman.           Lobsang Ludd awoke to a little clicking, spinning sound.     He was in darkness, but it yielded reluctantly to his hand. It felt like velvet, and it was. He'd rolled under one of the display cabinets.     There was a vibration in the small of his back. He reached around gingerly, and realized that the portable Procrastinator was revolving in its cage.     So...     How did it go, now? He was living on borrowed time. He'd got maybe an hour, perhaps a lot less. But he could slice it, so...     No. Something told him that trying that would be a really terminal idea with time stored in a device made by Qu. The mere thought made him feel that his skin was inches from a universe full of razorblades.     So... one hour, perhaps a lot less. But you could rewind a spinner, right?     No. The handle was at the back. You could rewind someone else's spinner. Thank you, Qu, and your experimental models.     Could you take it off, then? No. The harness was part of it. Without it, different parts of your body would be travelling at different speeds. The effect would probably be rather like freezing a human body solid, and then pushing it down a flight of stone stairs.     Open the box with the crowbar that you will find inside...     There was a green-blue glow through the crack in the door. He took a step towards it, and heard the spinner suddenly pick up speed. That meant it was shedding more time, and that was bad when you had an hour, perhaps a lot less.     He took a step away from the door and the Procrastinator settled back into its routine clicking.     So...     Lu-Tze was out in the street and he had a spinner and that should have cut in automatically too. In this timeless world, he was going to be the only person who could turn a handle.     The glass that he had broken in his leap through the window had opened around the hole like a great sparkling flower. He reached out to touch a piece. It moved as though alive, cut his finger, and then dropped towards the ground, stopping only when it fell out of the field around his body.     Don't touch people, Lu-Tze had said. Don't touch arrows. Don't touch things that were moving, that was the rule. But the glass-     -but the glass, in normal time, had been flying through the air. It'd still have that energy, wouldn't it?     He eased himself carefully around the glass, and opened the front door of the shop.     The wood moved very slowly, fighting against the enormous speed.     Lu-Tze was not in the street. But there was something new, hovering in the air just a few inches above the ground right where the old man had been. It had not been there before.     Someone with their own portable time had been here, and dropped this and moved on before it reached the ground.     It was a small glass jar, coloured blue by temporal effects. Now, how much energy could it have? Lobsang cupped his hand and gingerly brought it underneath and up, and there was a tingle and a sudden feeling of weight as the spinners field claimed it.     Now its true colours came back. The jar was a milky pink or, rather, clear glass that looked pink because of the contents. The paper lid was covered with badly printed pictures of unbelievably flawless strawberries, surrounding some ornate lettering which read:           Ronald Soak, Hygienic Dairyman     STRAWBERRY YOGHURT     'Fresh As The Morning Dew'           Soak? He knew the name! The man had delivered milk to the Guild! Good fresh milk, too, not the watery, green-tinted stuff the other dairies supplied. Very reliable, everyone said. But, reliable or not, he was just a milkman. All right, just a very good milkman, and if time had stopped, then why-     Lobsang looked around desperately. The people and carts that thronged the street were still there. No one had moved. No one could move.     But something was running along the gutter. It looked like a rat in a black robe, running along on its hind legs. It looked up at Lobsang, and he saw that it had a skull rather than a head. As skulls went, it was quite a cheerful one.     The word SQUEAK manifested itself inside his brain without bothering to go via his ears. Then the rat hopped onto the pavement and scampered down an alley.     Lobsang followed it.     A moment later someone behind him grabbed him by the neck. He went to break the lock, and realized how much he'd relied on slicing when he was fought. Besides, the person behind him had a very strong grip indeed.     'I just want to make sure you don't do anything silly,' it said. It was a female voice. 'What is this thing on your back?'     'Who are-?'     'The protocol in these matters,' said the voice, 'is that the person with the killer neck-grip asks the questions.'     'Er, it's a Procrastinator. Er, it stores time. Who-'     'Oh dear, there you go again. What is your name?'     'Lobsang. Lobsang Ludd. Look, could you wind me up, please? It's urgent.'     'Certainly. Lobsang Ludd, you are thoughtless and impulsive and deserve to die a stupid and pointless death.'     'What?'     'And you are also rather slow on the uptake. You are referring to this handle?'     'Yes. I'm running out of time. Now can I ask who you are?'     'Miss Susan. Hold still.'     He heard, behind him, the incredibly welcome sound of the Procrastinators clockwork being rewound.     'Miss Susan?' he said.     'That's what most people I know call me. Now, I'm going to let you go. I will add that trying anything stupid will be counterproductive. Besides, I'm the only person in the world right now who might be inclined to twiddle your handle again.'     The pressure was released. Lobsang turned slowly.     Miss Susan was a slightly built young woman, dressed severely all in black. Her hair stood out around her head like an aura, white-blond with one black streak. But the most striking thing about her was... was everything, Lobsang realized, everything from her expression to the way she stood. Some people fade into the background. Miss Susan faded into the foreground. She stood out. Everything she stood in front of became nothing more than background.     'Finished?' she said. 'Seen everything?'     'Sorry. Have you seen an old man? Dressed a bit like me? With one of these on his back?'     'No. Now it's my turn. Have you got rhythm?'     'What?'     Susan rolled her eyes. 'All right. Do you have music?'     'Not on me, no!'     'And you certainly haven't got a girl,' said Susan. 'I saw Old Man Trouble go past a few minutes ago. It'd be a good idea if you don't bump into him, then.'     'And is he likely to have taken my friend?'     'I doubt it. And Old Man Trouble is more an "it" than a "he". Anyway, there's far worse than him around right now. Even the bogeymen have gone to ground.'     'Look, time has stopped, right?' said Lobsang.     'Yes.'     'So how can you be here talking to me?'     'I'm not what you might call a creature of time,' said Susan. 'I work in it, but I don't have to live there. There are a few of us about.'     'Like this Old Man Trouble you mentioned?'     'Right. And the Hogfather, the Tooth Fairy, the Sandman, people like that.'     'I thought they were mythical?'     'So?' Susan glanced out of the mouth of the alley again.     'And you're not?'     'I take it you didn't stop the clock,' said Miss Susan, looking up and down the street.     'No. I was... too late. Perhaps I shouldn't have gone back to help Lu-Tze.'     'I'm sorry? You were dashing to prevent the end of the world but you stopped to help some old man? You... hero!'     'Oh, I wouldn't say that I was a-' And then Lobsang stopped. She hadn't said 'You hero' in the tone of voice of 'You star'; it had been the tone in which people say 'You idiot.'     'I see a lot of your sort,' Susan went on. 'Heroes have a very strange grasp of elementary maths, you know. If you'd smashed the clock before it struck, everything would have been fine. Now the world has stopped and we've been invaded and we're probably all going to die, just because you stopped to help someone. I mean, very worthy and all that, but very, very... human.'     She used the word as if she meant it to mean 'silly'.     'You mean you need cool calculating bastards to save the world, do you?' said Lobsang.     'The cool calculation does help, I must admit,' said Susan. 'Now, shall we go and look at this clock?'     'Why? The damage is done now. If we smash it, it'll only make things worse. Besides, uh, the spinner started to run wild and I, er, I felt-'     'Cautious,' said Susan. 'Good. Caution is sensible. But there's something I want to check.'     Lobsang tried to pull himself together. This strange woman had the air of someone who knew exactly what she was doing - who knew exactly what everyone was doing - and, besides, what alternative did he have? Then he remembered the yoghurt pot.     'Does this mean anything?' he said. 'I'm certain it was dropped in the street after time stopped.'     She took the pot and examined it. 'Oh,' she said casually. 'Ronnie's been around, has he?'     'Ronnie?'     'Oh, we all know Ronnie.'     'What's that supposed to mean?'     'Let's just say if he found your friend then your friend is going to be okay. Probably okay. More okay than he would be if just about anything else found him, at least. Look, this is not a time when you should be worrying about one person. Cold calculation, right?'     She stepped out into the street. Lobsang followed. Susan walked as if she owned the street. She scanned every alley and doorway, but not like a potential victim apprehensive of attackers. It seemed to Lobsang that she was disappointed to find nothing dangerous in the shadows.     She reached the shop, stepped inside, and paused for a moment to regard the floating flower of broken glass. Her expression suggested that she considered it to be a perfectly normal kind of thing to find, and had seen far more interesting things. Then she walked on and stopped at the inner door. There was still a glow from the crack, but it was dimmer now.     'Settling down,' she said. 'Shouldn't be too bad... but there's two people in here.'     'Who?'     'Wait, I'll open the door. And be careful.'     The door moved very slowly. Lobsang stepped into the workshop after the girl. The spinner began to speed up.     The clock glowed in the middle of the floor, painful to look at.     But he stared nevertheless. 'It's... it's just as I imagined it,' he said. 'It's the way to-'     'Don't go near it,' said Susan. 'It's uncertain death, believe me. Do pay attention.'     Lobsang blinked. The last couple of thoughts didn't seem to have belonged to him.     'What did you say?'     'I said it's uncertain death.'     'Is that worse than certain death?'     'Much. Watch.' Susan picked up a hammer that was lying on the floor and poked it gently towards the clock. It vibrated in her hand when she brought it closer, and she swore under her breath as it was dragged from her fingers and vanished. Just before it did there was a brief, contracting ring around the clock that might have been something like a hammer would be if you rolled it very flat and bent it into a circle.     'Have you any idea why that happened?' she said.     'No.'     'Nor have I. Now imagine that you were the hammer. Uncertain death, see?'     Lobsang looked at the two frozen people. One was medium-sized and had all the right number of appendages to qualify as a member of the human race, and so therefore probably had to be given the benefit of the doubt. It was staring at the clock. So was the other figure, which was that of a middle-aged, sheep-faced man still holding a cup of tea and, as far as Lobsang could make out, a biscuit.     'The one who wouldn't win a beauty contest even if he was the only entrant is an Igor,' said Susan. 'The other one is Dr Hopkins of the Clockmakers' Guild here.'     'So we know who built the clock, at least,' said Lobsang.     'I don't think so. Mr Hopkins's workshop is several streets away. And he makes novelty watches for a rather strange kind of discerning customer. It's his speciality.'     'Then the... Igor must've built it?'     'Good grief, no! Igors are professional servants. They never work for themselves.'     'You seem to know a lot,' said Lobsang, as Susan circled the clock like a wrestler trying to spy out a hold.     'Yes,' she said, without turning her head. 'I do. The first clock broke. This one's holding. Whoever designed it was a genius.'     'An evil genius?'     'It's hard to say. I can't see any signs.'     'What kind of signs?'     'Well, "Hahaha!!!!!" painted on the side would be a definite clue, don't you think?' she said, rolling her eyes.     'I'm in your way, am I?' said Lobsang.     'No, not at all,' said Susan, turning her attention to the workbench. 'Well, there's nothing here. I suppose he could have set a timer. A sort of alarm clock-'     She stopped. She picked up a length of rubber hosepipe that was coiled on a hook by the glass jars and looked hard at it. Then she tossed it into a corner and stared at it as if she had never seen anything like it before.     'Don't say a word,' she said quietly. 'They have some very acute senses. Just ease back among those big glass vats behind you and try to look inconspicuous. And do it NOW.'     The last word had odd harmonics to it and Lobsang felt his legs begin to move almost without his conscious control.     The door moved a little and a man came in.     What was strange about the face, Lobsang thought afterwards, was how unmemorable it was. He'd never seen a face so lacking in anything to mention. It had a nose and mouth and eyes, and they were all quite flawless, but somehow they didn't make up a face. They were just parts that made no proper whole. If they became anything at all it was the face of a statue, good looking but without anything looking out of it.     Slowly, like someone who had to think about his muscles, the man turned to look at Lobsang.     Lobsang felt himself bunch up to slice time. The spinner groaned a warning on his back.     'That's about enough, I think,' said Susan, stepping forward. The man was spun around. An elbow was jabbed into his stomach and then the palm of her hand caught him so hard under his chin that he was lifted off the floor and slammed against the wall.     As he fell, Susan hit him on the head with a wrench.     'We might as well be going,' she said, as if she'd just shuffled some paper that had been untidy. 'Nothing more for us here.'     'You killed him!'     'Certainly. He's not a human being. I have... a sense about these things. It's sort of inherited. Besides, go and pick up the hose. Go on.'     Since she was still holding the wrench, Lobsang did so. Or tried to do so. The coil she'd flung into the corner was knotted and tangled like rubber spaghetti.     'Malignancy, my grandfather calls it,' said Susan. 'The local hostility of things towards non-things always increases when there's an Auditor about. They can't help it. The hosepipe test is very reliable in the field, according to a rat I know.'     Rat, thought Lobsang, but he said: 'What's an Auditor?'     'And they have no sense of colour. They don't understand it. Look how he's dressed. Grey suit, grey shirt, grey shoes, grey cravat, grey everything.'     'Er... er... perhaps it was just someone trying to be very cool?'     'You think so? No loss there, then,' said Susan. 'Anyway, you're wrong. Watch.'     The body was disintegrating. It was a fast and quite un-gory process, a sort of dry evaporation. It simply became floating dust, which expanded away and vanished. But the last few handfuls formed, just for a few seconds, a familiar shape. That too vanished, with the merest whisper of a scream.     'That was a dhlang!' he said. 'An evil spirit! The peasants down in the valleys hang up charms against them! But I thought they were just a superstition!'     'No, they're a substition,' said Susan. 'I mean they're real, but hardly anyone really believes in them. Mostly everyone believes in things that aren't real. Something very strange is going on. These things are all over the place, and they've got bodies. That's not right. We've got to find the person who built the clock-'     'And, er, what are you, Miss Susan?'     'Me? I'm... a schoolteacher.'     She followed his gaze to the wrench that she still held in her hand, and shrugged.     'It can get pretty rough at break time, can it?' said Lobsang.     There was an overpowering smell of milk.     Lu-Tze sat bolt upright.     It was a large room, and he had been placed on a table in the middle of it. By the feel of the surface, it was sheeted with metal. There were churns stacked along the wall, and big metal bowls ranged beside a sink the size of a bath.     Under the milk smell were many others - disinfectant, well-scrubbed wood and a distant odour of horses.     Footsteps approached. Lu-Tze lay back hurriedly and shut his eyes.     He heard someone enter the room. They were whistling under their breath, and they had to be a man, because no woman in Lu-Tze's long experience had ever whistled in that warbling, hissing way. The whistling approached the slab, stayed still for a moment, then turned away and headed for the sink. It was replaced by the sound of a pump handle being operated.     Lu-Tze half opened one eye.     The man standing at the sink was quite short, so that the standard-issue blue-and-white striped apron he wore almost reached the floor. He appeared to be washing bottles.     Lu-Tze swung his legs off the slab, moving with a stealthiness that made the average ninja sound like a brass band, and let his sandals gently touch the floor.     'Feeling better?' said the man, without turning his head.     'Oh, er, yes. Fine,' said Lu-Tze.     'I thought, here's a little bald monk sort of a fellow,' said the man, holding a bottle up to the light to inspect it. 'With a wind-up thing on his back, and down on his luck. Fancy a cup of tea? Kettle's on. I've got yak butter.'     'Yak? Am I still in Ankh-Morpork?' Lu-Tze looked down at a rack of ladles beside him. The man still hadn't looked round.     'Hmm. Interestin' question,' said the bottle-washer. 'You could say you're sort of in Ankh-Morpork. No to yak milk? I can get cow's milk, or goat, sheep, camel, llama, horse, cat, dog, dolphin, whale or alligator if you prefer.'     'What? Alligators don't give milk!' said Lu-Tze, grasping the biggest ladle. It made no noise as it came off its hook.     'I didn't say it was easy.'     The sweeper got a good grip. 'What is this place, friend?' he said.     'You are in... the dairy.'     The man at the sink said the last word as if it was as portentous as 'castle of dread', placed another bottle on the draining board, and, still with his back to Lu-Tze, held up a hand. All the fingers were folded except for the middle digit, which was extended.     'You know what this is, monk?' he said.     'It's not a friendly gesture, friend.' The ladle felt good and heavy. Lu-Tze had used much worse weapons than this.     'Oh, a superficial interpretation. You are an old man, monk. I can see the centuries on you. Tell me what this is, and know what I am.'     The coldness in the dairy got a little colder.     'It's your middle finger,' said Lu-Tze.     'Pah!' said the man.     'Pah?'     'Yes, pah! You have a brain. Use it.'     'Look, it was good of you to-'     'You know the secret wisdoms that everyone seeks, monk.' The bottle-washer paused. 'No, I even suspect that you know the explicit wisdoms, the ones hidden in plain view, which practically no one looks for. Who am I?'     Lu-Tze stared at the solitary finger. The walls of the dairy faded. The cold grew deeper.     His mind raced, and the librarian of memory took over.     This wasn't a normal place, that wasn't a normal man: A finger. One finger. One of the five digits on a- One of five. One of Five. Faint echoes of an ancient legend signalled his attention.     One from five is four.     And one left over.     Lu-Tze very carefully hung the ladle back on its hook.     'One from Five,' he said. 'The Fifth of Four.'     'There we are. I could see you were educated.'     'You were... you were the one who left before they became famous?'     'Yes.'     'But... this is a dairy, and you're washing bottles!'     'Well? I had to do something with my time.'     'But... you were the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse!' said Lu-Tze.     'And I bet you can't remember my name.'     Lu-Tze hesitated. 'No,' he said. 'I don't think I ever heard it.'     The Fifth Horseman turned round. His eyes were black. Completely black. Shiny, and black, and without any whites at all.     'My name,' said the Fifth Horseman, 'is...'     'Yes?'     'My name is Ronnie.'     Timelessness grew like ice. Waves froze on the sea. Birds were pinned to the air. The world went still.     But not quiet. There was a sound like a finger running around the rim of a very large glass.     'Come on,' said Susan.     'Can't you hear it?' said Lobsang, stopping.     'But it's no use to us-'     She pushed Lobsang back into the shadows. The robed grey shape of an Auditor appeared in the air halfway down the street, and began to spin. The air around it filled with dust, which became a whirling cylinder, which became, slightly unsteady on its feet, something that looked human.     It rocked backwards and forwards for a moment. It raised its hands slowly and looked at them, turning them this way and that. Then it marched away, purposefully. Further along the street it was joined by another one, emerging from an alley.     'This really isn't like them,' said Susan, as the pair turned a corner. 'They're up to something. Let's follow them.'     'What about Lu-Tze?'     'What about him? How old did you say he was?'     'He says he's eight hundred years old.'     'Hard to kill, then. Ronnie's safe enough if you're alert and don't argue. Come on.'     She set off along the streets.     The Auditors were joined by others, weaving between the silent carts and motionless people and along the street towards, as it turned out, Sator Square, one of the biggest open spaces in the city. It was market day. Silent, motionless figures thronged the stalls. But, amongst them, there were scurrying grey shapes.     'There's hundreds of them,' said Susan. 'All human-shaped, and it looks like they're having a meeting.'     Mr White was losing patience. Until now he had never been aware that he had any, because if anything he had been all patience. But now he could feel it evaporating. It was a strange, hot sensation in his head. And how could a thought be hot?     The mass of incarnated Auditors watched him nervously.     'I am Mr White!' he said, to the luckless new Auditor that had been brought before him, and shuddered with the astonishment of using that singular word and surviving. 'You cannot be Mr White also. It would be a matter of confusion.'     'But we are running out of colours,' said Mr Violet, intervening.     'That cannot be the case,' said Mr White. 'There is an infinite number of colours.'     'But there are not that many names,' said Miss Taupe.     'That is not possible. A colour must have a name.'     'We can find only one hundred and three names for green before the colour becomes noticeably either blue or yellow,' said Miss Crimson.     'But the shades are endless!'     'Nevertheless, the names are not.'     'This is a problem that must be solved. Add it to the list, Miss Brown. We must name every possible shade.'     One of the female Auditors looked startled. 'I cannot remember all the things,' she said. 'Nor do I understand why you are giving orders.'     'Apart from the renegade, I have the greatest seniority as an incarnate.'     'Only by a matter of seconds,' said Miss Brown.     'That is immaterial. Seniority is seniority. This is a fact.'     It was a fact. Auditors respected facts. And it was also a fact, Mr White knew, that there were now more than seven hundred Auditors walking rather awkwardly around the city.     Mr White had put a stop to the relentless increase in incarnations as more and more of his fellows rushed into the trouble spot. It was too dangerous. The renegade had demonstrated, he pointed out, that the human shape forced the mind to think in a certain troublesome way. The utmost caution was necessary. This was a fact. Only those with a proven ability to survive the process should be allowed to incarnate and complete the work. This was a fact.     Auditors respected facts. At least until now. Miss Brown took a step back.     'Nevertheless,' she said, 'being here is dangerous. It is my view that we should discarnate.'     Mr White found his body replying by itself. It let out a breath of air.     'And leave things unknown?' he said. 'Things that are unknown are dangerous. We are learning much.'     'What we are learning makes no sense,' said Miss Brown.     'The more we learn, the more sense it will make. There is nothing we cannot understand,' said Mr White.     'I do not understand why it is that I now perceive a desire to bring my hand in sharp contact with your face,' said Miss Brown.     'Exactly my point,' said Mr White. 'You do not understand it, and therefore it is dangerous. Perform the act, and we will know more.'     She hit him.     He raised his hand to his cheek.     'Unbidden thoughts of avoidance of repetition are engendered,' he said. 'Also heat. Remarkably, the body does indeed appear to do some thinking on its own behalf.'     'For my part,' said Miss Brown, 'the unbidden thoughts are of satisfaction coupled with apprehension.'     'Already we learn more about humans,' said Mr White.     'To what end?' said Miss Brown, whose sensations of apprehension were increasing at the sight of the contorted expression on Mr White's face. 'For our purposes, they are no longer a factor. Time has ended. They are fossils. The skin under one of your eyes is twitching.'     'You are guilty of inappropriate thought,' said Mr White. 'They exist. Therefore we must study them in every detail. I wish to try a further experiment. My eye is functioning perfectly.'     He took an axe from a market stall. Miss Brown took another step back.     'Unbidden thoughts of apprehension increase markedly,' she said.     'Yet this is a mere lump of metal on a piece of wood,' said Mr White, hefting the axe. 'We, who have seen the hearts of stars. We, who have watched worlds burn. We, who have seen space tormented. What is there about this axe that could cause concern to us?'     He swung. It was a clumsy blow and the human neck is a lot tougher than people believe, but Miss Brown's neck exploded into coloured motes and she collapsed.     Mr White looked around at the nearest Auditors, who all stepped back.     'Is there anyone else who wishes to try the experiment?' he said.     There was a chorus of hasty refusals.     'Good,' said Mr White. 'Already we are learning a great deal!'     'He chopped her head off!'     'Don't shout! And keep your head down!' Susan hissed.     'But he-'     'I think she knows! Anyway, it's an it. And so's it.'     'What's going on?'     Susan drew back into the shadows. 'I'm not... entirely sure,' she said, 'but I think they've tried to make themselves human bodies. Pretty good copies, too. And now... they're acting human.'     'Do you call that acting human?'     Susan gave Lobsang a sad look. 'You don't get out much, do you? My grandfather says that if an intelligent creature takes a human shape, it starts to think human. Form defines function.'     'That was the action of an intelligent creature?' said Lobsang, still shocked.     'Not only doesn't get out much, also doesn't read history,' said Susan glumly. 'Do you know about the curse of the werewolves?'     'Isn't being a werewolf curse enough?'     'They don't think so. But if they stay wolf-shaped for too long, they stay a wolf,' said Susan. 'A wolf is a very strong... form, you see? Even though the mind is human, the wolf creeps in through the nose and the ears and the paws. Know about witches?'     'We, er, stole the broomstick of one of them to get here,' said Lobsang.     'Really? Bit of luck for you that the world's ended, then,' said Susan. 'Anyway, some of the best witches have this trick they call Borrowing. They can get into the mind of an animal. Very useful. But the trick is to know when to pull out. Be a duck for too long and a duck you'll stay. A bright duck, maybe, with some odd memories, but still a duck.'     'The poet Hoha once dreamed he was a butterfly, and then he awoke and said, "Am I a man who dreamed he was a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming he is a man?"' said Lobsang, trying to join in.     'Really?' said Susan briskly. 'And which was he?'     'What? Well... who knows?'     'How did he write his poems?' said Susan.     'With a brush, of course.'     'He didn't flap around making information-rich patterns in the air or laying eggs on cabbage leaves?'     'No one ever mentioned it.'     'Then he was probably a man,' said Susan. 'Interesting, but it doesn't move us on a lot. Except you could say that the Auditors are dreaming that they're human, and the dream is real. And they've got no imagination. Just like my grandfather, really. They can create a perfect copy of anything, but they can't make anything that's new. So what I think is happening is that they're finding out what being human really means.'     'Which is?'     'That you're not as much in control as you think.' She took another careful look at the crowd in the square. 'Do you know anything about the person who built the clock?'     'Me? No. Well, not really...'     'Then how did you find the place?'     'Lu-Tze thought this was where the clock was being built.'     'Really? Not a bad guess. You even got the right house.'     'I, er, it was me that found the house. It, er, I knew that was where I should be. Does that sound silly?'     'Oh, yes. With twinkly bells and bluebirds on it. But it might be true. I always know where I should be, too. And where should you be now?'     'Just a minute,' said Lobsang. 'Who are you? Time has stopped, the world is given over to... fairy tales and monsters, and there's a schoolteacher walking around?'     'Best kind of person to have,' said Susan. 'We don't like silliness. Anyway, I told you. I've inherited certain talents.'     'Like living outside time?'     'That's one of them.'     'It's a weird talent for a schoolteacher!'     'Good for marking, though,' said Susan calmly.     'Are you actually human?'     'Hah! As human as you are. I won't say I haven't got a few skeletons in the family closet, though.'     There was something about the way she said it...     'That wasn't just a figure of speech, was it?' said Lobsang flatly.     'No, not really,' said Susan. 'That thing on your back. What happens when it stops spinning?'     'I'll run out of time, of course.'     'Ah. So the fact that it slowed down and stopped back there when that Auditor practised its axemanship isn't a factor, then?'     'It's not turning?' Panicking, Lobsang tried to reach round to the small of his back, spinning himself in the effort.     'It looks as though you have a hidden talent,' said Susan, leaning against the wall and grinning.     'Please! Wind me up again!'     'All right. You are a-'     'That wasn't very funny the first time!'     'That's all right, I don't have much of a sense of humour.'     She grabbed his arms as he wrestled with the straps of the spinner.     'You don't need it, understand?' she said. 'It's just a dead weight! Trust me! Don't give in! You're making your own time. Don't wonder how.'     He stared at her in terror. 'What's happening?'     'It's okay, it's okay,' said Susan, as patiently as she could. 'This sort of thing always comes as a shock. When it happened to me there wasn't anyone around, so consider yourself lucky.'     'What happened to you?'     'I found out who my grandfather was. And don't ask. Now, concentrate. Where ought you to be?'     'Uh, uh...' Lobsang looked around. 'Uh... over that way, I think.'     'I wouldn't dream of asking you how you know,' said Susan. 'And it's away from that mob.'     She smiled. 'Look on the bright side,' she added. 'We're young, we've got all the time in the world...' She swung the wrench onto her shoulder. 'Let's go clubbing.'           If there had been such a thing as time, it would have been a few minutes after Susan and Lobsang left that a small robed figure, about six inches high, strutted into the workshop. It was followed by a raven, which perched on the door and regarded the glowing clock with considerable suspicion.     'Looks dangerous to me,' it said.     SQUEAK? said the Death of Rats, advancing on the clock.     'No, don't you go trying to be a hero,' said Quoth.     The rat walked up to the base of the clock, stared up at it with a the-bigger-they-are-the-harder-they-fall expression, and then whacked it with its scythe.     Or, at least, tried to. There was a flash as the blade made contact. For a moment the Death of Rats was a ring-shaped, black-and-white blur around the clock, and then it vanished.     'Told yer,' said the raven, preening its feathers. 'I bet you feel like Mister Silly now, right?'           * * *     '... and then I thought, what's a job that really needs someone with my talents?' said Ronnie. 'To me, time is just another direction. And then I thought, everyone wants fresh milk, yes? And everyone wants it delivered early in the morning.'     'Got to be better than the window-cleaning,' said Lu-Tze.     'I only went into that after they invented windows,' said Ronnie. 'It was the jobbing gardening before that. More rancid yak butter in that?'     'Please,' said Lu-Tze, holding out his cup.     Lu-Tze was eight hundred years old, and that was why he was having a rest. A hero would have leapt up and rushed out into the silent city and then-     And there you had it. Then a hero would have had to wonder what to do next. Eight hundred years had taught Lu-Tze that what happens stays happened. It might stay happened in a different set of dimensions, if you wanted to get technical, but you couldn't make it un-happen. The clock had struck, and time had stopped. Later, a solution would present itself. In the meantime, a cup of tea and conversation with his serendipitous rescuer might speed that time. After all, Ronnie was not your average milkman..     Lu-Tze had long considered that everything happens for a reason, except possibly football.     'It's the real stuff you got there, Ronnie,' he said, taking a sip. 'The butter we're getting these days, you wouldn't grease a cart with it.'     'It's the breed,' said Ronnie. 'I go and get this from the highland herds six hundred years ago.'     'Cheers,' said Lu-Tze, raising his cup. 'Funny, though. I mean, if you said to people there were originally five Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and then one of them left and is a milkman, well, they'd be a bit surprised. They'd wonder about why you...'     For a moment Ronnie's eyes blazed silver.     'Creative differences,' he growled. 'The whole ego thing. Some people might say... No, I don't like to talk about it. I wish them all the luck in the world, of course.'     'Of course,' said Lu-Tze, keeping his expression opaque.     'And I've watched their careers with great interest.'     'I'm sure.'     'Do you know I even got written out of the official history?' said Ronnie. He held up a hand and a book appeared in it. It looked brand new.     'This was before,' he said sourly. 'Book of Om. Ever meet him? Tall man, beard, tendency to giggle at nothing?'     'Before my time, Ronnie.'     Ronnie handed the book over. 'First edition. Try Chapter 2, verse 7,' he said.     And Lu-Tze read: ' "And the Angel clothèd all in white opened the Iron Book, and a fifth rider appeared in a chariot of burning ice, and there was a snapping of laws and a breaking of bonds and the multitude cried 'Oh God, we're in trouble now!' " '     'That was me,' said Ronnie proudly.     Lu-Tze's eyes strayed to verse 8: ' "And I saw, sort of like rabbits, in many colours but basically a plaid pattern, kind of spinning around, and there was a sound as of like big syrupy things."'     'That verse got cut for the next edition,' said Ronnie. 'Very open to visions of all sorts, old Tobrun. The fathers of Omnianism could pick and mix what they wanted. Of course, in those days everything was new. Death was Death, of course, but the rest were really just Localized Crop Failure, Scuffles and Spots.'     'And you-?' Lu-Tze ventured.     'The public wasn't interested in me any more,' said Ronnie. 'Or so I was told. Back in those days we were only playing to very small crowds. One plague of locusts, some tribe's waterhole drying up, a volcano exploding... We were glad of any gig going. There wasn't room for five.' He sniffed. 'So I was told.'     Lu-Tze put down his cup. 'Well, Ronnie, it's been very nice talking to you, but time's... time's not rushing, you see.'     'Yeah. Heard about that. The streets are full of the Law.' Ronnie's eyes blazed again.     'Law?'     'Dhlang. The Auditors. They've had the glass clock built again.'     'You know that?'     'Look, I might not be one of the Fearsome Four, but I do keep my eyes and ears open,' said Ronnie.     'But that's the end of the world!'     'No, it's not,' said Ronnie calmly. 'Everything's still here.'     'But it's not going anywhere!'     'Oh, well, that's not my problem, is it?' said Ronnie. 'I do milk and dairy products.'     Lu-Tze looked around the sparkling dairy, at the glistening bottles, at the gleaming churns. What a job for a timeless person. The milk would always be fresh.     He looked back at the bottles, and an unbidden thought rose in his mind.     The Horsemen were people-shaped, and people are vain. Knowing how to use other people's vanity was a martial art all in itself, and Lu-Tze had been doing it for a long time.     'I bet I can work out who you were,' he said. 'I bet I can work out your real name.'     'Hah. Not a chance, monk,' said Ronnie.     'Not a monk, just a sweeper,' said Lu-Tze calmly. 'Just a sweeper. You called them the Law, Ronnie. There's got to be a law, right? They make the rules, Ronnie. And you've got to have rules, isn't that true?'     'I do milk and milk products,' said Ronnie, but a muscle twitched under his eye. 'Also eggs by arrangement. It's a good steady business. I'm thinking of taking on more staff for the shop.'     'Why?' said Lu-Tze. 'There won't be anything for them to do.'     'And expand the cheese side,' said Ronnie, not looking at the sweeper. 'Big market for cheese. And I thought maybe I could get a c-mail address, people could send in orders, it could be a big market.'     'All the rules have won, Ronnie. Nothing moves any more. Nothing is unexpected because nothing happens.'     Ronnie sat staring at nothing.     'I can see you've found your niche, then, Ronnie,' said Lu-Tze soothingly. 'And you keep this place like a new pin, there's no doubt about it. I expect the rest of the lads'd be really pleased to know that you're, you know, getting on all right. Just one thing, uh... Why did you rescue me?'     'What? Well, it was my charitable duty-'     'You're the Fifth Horseman, Mr Soak. Charitable duty?' Except, Lu-Tze thought, you've been human-shaped a long time. You want me to find out... You want me to. Thousands of years of a life like this. It's curled you in on yourself. You'll fight me all the way, but you want me to drag your name out of you.     Ronnie's eyes glowed. 'I look after my own, Sweeper.'     'I'm one of yours, am I?'     'You have... certain worthwhile points.'     They stared at one another.     'I'll take you back to where I found you,' said Ronnie Soak. 'That's all. I don't do that other stuff any more.'           The Auditor lay on its back, mouth open. Occasionally it made a weak little noise, like the whimper of a gnat.     'Try again, Mr-'     'Dark Avocado, Mr White.'     'Is that a real colour?'     'Yes, Mr White!' said Mr Dark Avocado, who wasn't entirely sure that it was.     'Try again, then, Mr Dark Avocado.'     Mr Dark Avocado, with great reluctance, reached down towards the supine figure's mouth. His fingers were a few inches away when, apparently of its own volition, the figure's left hand moved in a blur and gripped them. There was a crackle of bone.     'I feel extreme pain, Mr White.'     'What is in its mouth, Mr Dark Avocado?'     'It appears to be cooked fermented grain product, Mr White. The extreme pain is continuing.'     'A foodstuff?'     'Yes, Mr White. The sensations of pain are really quite noticeable at this point.'     'Did I not give an order that there should be no eating or drinking or unnecessary experimentation with sensory apparatus?'     'Indeed you did, Mr White. The sensation known as extreme pain, which I mentioned previously, is now really quite acute. What shall I do now?'     The concept of 'orders' was yet another new and intensely unfamiliar one for any Auditor. They were used to decisions by committee, reached only when the possibilities of doing nothing whatsoever about the matter in question had been exhausted. Decisions made by everyone were decisions made by no one, which therefore precluded any possibility of blame.     But the bodies understood orders. This was clearly something that made humans human, and so the Auditors went along with it in a spirit of investigation. There was no choice, in any case. All kinds of sensations arose when they were given instructions by a man holding an edged weapon. It was surprising how smoothly the impulse to consult and discuss metamorphosed into a pressing desire to do what the weapon said.     'Can you not persuade him to let go of your hand?'     'He appears to be unconscious, Mr White. His eyes are bloodshot. He is making a little sighing noise. Yet the body seems determined that the bread should not be removed. Could I raise again the issue of the unbearable pain?'     Mr White signalled to two other Auditors. With considerable effort, they pried Mr Dark Avocado's fingers loose.     'This is something we will have to learn more about,' said Mr White. 'The renegade spoke of it. Mr Dark Avocado?'     'Yes, Mr White?'     'Do the sensations of pain persist?'     'My hand feels both hot and cold, Mr White.'     'How strange,' said Mr White. 'I see that we will need to investigate pain in greater depth.' Mr Dark Avocado found that a little voice in the back of his head screamed at the thought of this, while Mr White went on: 'What other foodstuffs are there?'     'We know the names of three thousand, seven hundred and nineteen foods,' said Mr Indigo-Violet, stepping forward. He had become the expert on such matters, and this was another new thing for the Auditors. They had never had experts before. What one knew, all knew. Knowing something that others did not know marked one as, in a small way, an individual. Individuals could die. But it also gave you power and value, which meant that you might not die quite so easily. It was a lot to deal with, and like some of the other Auditors he was already assembling a number of facial tics and twitches as his mind tried to cope.     'Name one,' said Mr White.     'Cheese,' said Mr Indigo-Violet smartly. 'It is rotted bovine lactation.'     'We will find some cheese,' said Mr White.           Three Auditors went past.     Susan peered out of a doorway. 'Are you sure we're going the right way?' she said. 'We're leaving the city centre.'     'This is the way I should be going,' said Lobsang.     'All right, but I don't like these narrow streets. I don't like hiding. I'm not a hiding kind of person.'     'Yes, I've noticed.'     'What's that place ahead?'     'That's the back of the Royal Art Museum. Broad Way's on the other side,' said Lobsang. 'And that's the way we need to go.'     'You know your way around for a man from the mountains.'     'I grew up here. I know five different ways to break into the museum, too. I used to be a thief.'     'I used to be able to walk through the walls,' said Susan. 'Can't seem to do it with time stopped. I think the power gets cancelled out somehow.'     'You could really walk through a solid wall?'     'Yes. It's a family tradition,' Susan snapped. 'Come on, let's go through the museum. At least no one moves about much in there at the best of times.'     Ankh-Morpork had not had a king for many centuries, but palaces tend to survive. A city might not need a king, but it can always use big rooms and some handy large walls, long after the monarchy is but a memory and the building is renamed the Glorious Memorial to the People's Industry.     Besides, although the last king of the city was no oil painting himself - especially when he'd been beheaded, after which no one looks their best, not even a short king - it was generally agreed that he had amassed some pretty good works of art. Even the common people of the city had a keen eye for works like Caravati's Three Large Pink Women and One Piece of Gauze or Mauvaise's Man with Big Figleaf and, besides, a city with a history the length of Ankh-Morpork's accumulated all kinds of artistic debris, and in order to prevent congestion in the streets it needed some sort of civic attic in which to store it. And thus, at little more cost than a few miles of plush red rope and a few old men in uniform to give directions to Three Large Pink Women and One Piece of Gauze, the Royal Art Museum was born.     Lobsang and Susan hurried through the silent halls. As with Fidgett's, it was hard to know if time had stopped here. Its passage was barely perceptible in any case. The monks at Oi Dong considered it a valuable resource.     Susan stopped and turned to look up at a huge, gilt-framed picture that occupied one whole wall of a lengthy corridor, and said, quietly: 'Oh...'     'What is it?'     'The Battle of Ar-Gash, by Blitzt,' said Susan.     Lobsang looked at the flaking, uncleaned paint and the yellow-brown varnish. The colours had faded to a dozen shades of mud, but something violent and evil shone through.     'Is that meant to be Hell?' he said.     'No, it was an ancient city in Klatch, thousands of years ago,' said Susan. 'But Grandfather did say that men made it Hell. Blitzt went mad when he painted it.'     'Er, he did good storm clouds, though,' said Lobsang, swallowing. 'Wonderful, er, light...'     'Look at what's coming out of the clouds,' said Susan.     Lobsang squinted into the crusted cumulus and fossilized lightning.     'Oh, yes. The Four Horsemen. You often get them in-'     'Count again,' said Susan.     Lobsang stared. 'There's two-'     'Don't be silly, there's fi-' she began, and then followed his gaze. He hadn't been interested in the art.     A couple of Auditors were hurrying away from them, towards the Porcelain Room.     'They're running away from us!' said Lobsang.     Susan grabbed his hand. 'Not exactly,' she said. 'They always consult! There have to be three of them to do that! And they'll be back, so come on!'     She grabbed his hand and towed him into the next gallery.     There were grey figures at the far end. The pair ran on, past dust-encrusted tapestries, and into another huge, ancient room.     'Ye gods, there's a picture of three huge pink women with only-' Lobsang began, as he was dragged past.     'Pay attention, will you? The way to the main door was back there! This place is full of Auditors!'     'But it's just an old art gallery! There's nothing for them here, is there?'     They slid to a stop on the marble slabs. A wide staircase led up to the next floor.     'We'll be trapped up there,' said Lobsang.     'There're balconies all round,' said Susan. 'Come on!' She dragged him up the stairs and through an archway. And stopped.     The galleries were several storeys high. On the first floor, visitors could look down on to the floor below. And, in the room below, the Auditors were very busy.     'What the hell are they doing now?' whispered Lobsang.     'I think,' said Susan grimly, 'that they are appreciating Art.'           Miss Tangerine was annoyed. Her body kept making strange demands of her, and the work with which she had been entrusted was going so very badly.     The frame of what once had been Sir Robert Cuspidor's Waggon Stuck In River was leaning against a wall in front of her. It was empty. The bare canvas was neatly rolled beside it. In front of the frame, carefully heaped in order of size, were piles of pigment.     Several dozen Auditors were breaking these down into their component molecules.     'Still nothing?' she said, striding along the line.     'No, Miss Tangerine. Only known molecules and atoms so far,' said an Auditor, its voice shaking slightly.     'Well, is it something to do with the proportions? The balance of molecules? The basic geometry?'     'We are continuing to-'     'Get on with it!'     The other Auditors in the gallery, clustered industriously in front of what had once been a painting and in fact still was, insofar as every single molecule was still present in the room, glanced up and then bent again to their tasks.     Miss Tangerine was getting even angrier because she couldn't work out why she was angry. One reason was probably that, when he gave her this task, Mr White had looked at her in a funny way. Being looked at was an unfamiliar experience for an Auditor in any case - no Auditor bothered to look at another Auditor very often because all Auditors looked the same - and neither were they used to the idea that you could say things with your face. Or even have a face. Or have a body that reacted in strange ways to the expression on another face belonging to, in this case, Mr White. When he looked at her like that she felt a terrible urge to claw his face off.     Which made absolutely no sense at all. No Auditor should feel like that about another Auditor. No Auditor should feel like that about anything. No Auditor should feel.     She felt livid. They'd all lost so many powers. It was ridiculous to have to communicate by flapping bits of your skin, and as for the tongue... Yuerkkk ...     As far as she knew, in the whole life of the universe, no Auditor had ever experienced the sensation of yuerkkk. This wretched body was full of opportunities for yuerkkk. She could leave it at any time and yet, and yet... part of her didn't want to. There was this horrible desire, second by second, to hang on.     And she felt hungry. And that also made no sense. The stomach was a bag for digesting food. It wasn't supposed to issue commands. The Auditors could survive quite well by exchanging molecules with their surroundings and making use of any local source of energy. That was a fact.     Try telling that to the stomach. She could feel it. It was sitting there, grumbling. She was being harassed by her internal organs. Why the... why the.. why had they copied internal organs? Yuerkkk.     It was all too much. She wanted to... she wanted to... express herself by shouting some, some, some terrible words...     'Discord! Confusion!'     The other Auditors looked around in terror.     But the words didn't work for Miss Tangerine. They just didn't have the same force that they used to. There had to be something worse. Ah, yes...     'Organs!' she shouted, pleased to have found it at last. 'And what are all you... organs looking at?' she added. 'Get on with it!'           'They're taking everything apart,' whispered Lobsang.     'That's the Auditors for you,' said Susan. 'They think that's how you find out about things. You know, I loathe them. I really do.'     Lobsang glanced sideways at her. The monastery was not a single-sex institution. That is to say, it was, but corporately it had never thought of itself like that because the possibility of females working there had never crossed even minds capable of thinking of sixteen dimensions. But the Thieves' Guild had recognized that girls were at least as good as boys in all areas of thieving - he had, for example, fond memories of his classmate Steff, who could steal the small change out of your back pocket and climb better than an Assassin. He was at home around girls. But Susan scared the life out of him. It was as if some secret place inside her boiled with wrath, and with the Auditors she let it out.     He remembered her hitting that one with the wrench. There had been just a faint frown of concentration, as if she was making certain the job was done properly.     'Shall we go?' he ventured.     'Look at them,' continued Susan. 'Only an Auditor would take a picture apart to see what made it a work of art.'     'There's a big pile of white dust over there,' said Lobsang.     'Man with Huge Figleaf' said Susan absently, her eyes still intent on the grey figures. 'They'd dismantle a clock to search for the tick.'     'How do you know its Man with Huge Figleaf?'     'I just happen to remember where it is, that's all.'     'You, er, you appreciate art?' Lobsang ventured.     'I know what I like,' said Susan, still staring at the busy grey figures. 'And right now I'd like quite a lot of weaponry.'     'We'd better move-'     'The bastards get into your head if you let them,' said Susan, not moving. 'When you find yourself thinking "There ought to be a law" or "I don't make the rules, after all" or-'     'I really think we should leave,' said Lobsang carefully. 'And I think this because there are some of them coming up the stairs.'     Her head jerked around. 'What are you standing about for, then?' she said.     They ran through the next arch and into a gallery of pottery, turning to look only when they reached the far end. Three Auditors were following them. They weren't running, but there was something about their synchronized step that had a horrible we'll-keep-on-coming quality.     'All right, let's go this way-'     'No, let's go this way,' said Lobsang.     'That's not the way we need to go!' Susan snapped.     'No, but the sign up there says "Arms and Armour"!'     'So? Are you any good with weapons?'     'No!' said Lobsang proudly, and then realized she'd taken this the wrong way. 'You see, I've been taught to fight without-'     'Maybe there's a sword I can use,' Susan growled, and strode forward.     By the time the Auditors entered the gallery there were more than three of them. The grey crowd paused.     Susan had found a sword, part of a display of Agatean armour. It had been blunted by disuse, but anger flared along the blade.     'Should we keep running?' said Lobsang.     'No. They always catch up. I don't know if we can kill them here, but we can make them wish we could. You still haven't got a weapon?'     'No, because, you see, I've been trained to-'     'Just keep out of my way, then, okay?'     The Auditors advanced cautiously, which struck Lobsang as odd.     'We can't kill them?' said Lobsang.     'It depends on how alive they've let themselves become.'     'But they look scared,' he said.     'They're human-shaped,' said Susan over her shoulder. 'Human bodies. Perfect copies. Human bodies have had thousands and thousands of years of not wanting to be cut in half. That sort of leaks into the brain, don't you think?'     And then the Auditors were circling and moving in. Of course they would all attack at once. No one would want to be first.     Three made a grab at Lobsang.     He'd enjoyed the fighting, back in the training dojos. Of course, everyone was padded, and no one was actually trying to kill you, and that helped. But Lobsang had done well because he was good at slicing. He could always find that extra edge. And if you had that edge, you didn't need quite so much skill.     There was no edge here. There was no time to slice.     He adopted a mixture of sna-fu and okidoki and anything that worked, because you were dead if you treated a real fight like the dojo. The grey men were no contest, in any case. They just attempted to grab and hug. A granny would have been able to fend them off.     He sent two reeling and turned to the third, which was trying to grab him around the neck. He broke the hold, spun around ready to chop, and hesitated.     'Oh, good grief!' said a voice.     Susan's blade whirled past Lobsang's face.     The head in front of him was parted from its former body in a shower not of blood but of coloured, floating dust. The body evaporated, became very briefly a grey-robed shape in the air, and vanished.     Lobsang heard a couple of thumps behind him, and then Susan grabbed his shoulder.     'You're not supposed to hesitate, you know!' she said.     'But it was a woman!'     'It was not! But it was the last one. Now let's go, before the rest get here.' She nodded at a second group of Auditors that were watching them very carefully from the end of the hall.     'They weren't much of a contest anyway,' said Lobsang, getting his breath. 'What are those doing?'     'Learning. Can you fight better than that?'     'Of course!'     'Good, because next time they'll be as good as you just were. Where to now?'     'Er, this way!'     The next gallery was full of stuffed animals. There'd been a vogue for it a few centuries before. These weren't the sad old hunting-trophy bears or geriatric tigers whose claws had faced a man armed with nothing more than five crossbows, twenty loaders and a hundred beaters. Some of these animals were arranged in groups. Quite small groups, of quite small animals.     There were frogs, seated around a tiny dining table. There were dogs, dressed in hunting jackets, in pursuit of a fox wearing a cap with feathers in it. There was a monkey playing a banjo.     'Oh, no, it's an entire band,' said Susan in tones of horrified astonishment. 'And just look at the little kittens dancing...'     'Horrible!'     'I wonder what happened when the man who did this met my grandfather.'     'Would he have met your grandfather?'     'Oh, yes,' said Susan. 'Oh, yes. And my grandfather is rather fond of cats.'     Lobsang paused at the foot of a staircase, half hidden behind a luckless elephant. A red rope, now hard as a bar, suggested that this wasn't part of the public museum. There was an added hint in the shape of a notice saying: 'Absolutely No Admittance'.     'I should be up there,' he said.     'Let's not hang around, then, eh?' said Susan, leaping over the rope.     The narrow stairs led up onto a large, bare landing. Boxes were stacked here and there.     'The attics,' said Susan. 'Hold on... What's that sign for?'     '"Keep left",' Lobsang read. 'Well, if they have to move heavy items around-'     'Look at the sign, will you?' said Susan. 'Don't see what you expect to see, see what's in front of you!'     Lobsang looked.           > KEEP LEFT >>     'What a stupid sign,' he said.     'Hmm. Interesting, certainly,' said Susan. 'Which way do you think we should go? I don't think it'll take them too long to decide to follow us.'     'We're so close! Any passage might do!' said Lobsang.     'Any passage it is, then.' Susan headed for a narrow gap between packing cases.     Lobsang followed. 'What do you mean, decide?' he said, as they entered the gloom.     'The sign on the stairs said there was no admittance.'     'You mean they'll disobey it?' He stopped.     'Eventually. But they'll have a terrible feeling that they ought not to. They obey rules. They are the rules, in a way.'     'But you can't obey the Keep Left/Right sign, no matter what you do... oh, I see...'     'Isn't learning fun? Oh, and here's another one.'     DO NOT FEED THE ELEPHANT.     'Now that,' said Susan, 'is good. You can't obey it...'     '... because there's no elephant,' said Lobsang. 'I think I'm getting the hang of this...'     'It's an Auditor trap,' said Susan, peering at a packing case.     'Here's another good one,' said Lobsang.     IGNORE THIS SIGN. By order     'Nice touch,' Susan agreed, 'but I'm wondering... who put up the signs?'     There were voices somewhere behind them. They were low, but then one was suddenly raised.     '-says Left but points Right! It has no sense!'     'The fault is yours! We disobeyed the first sign! Woe to them that stray onto the pathway of irregularity!'     'Don't you give me that, you organic thing! I raise my voice at you, you-'     There was a soft sound, a choking noise, and a scream that dopplered into nothing.     'Are they fighting one another?' said Lobsang.     'We can only hope so. Let's move,' said Susan. They crept on, weaving through the maze of spaces between the crates, and past a sign saying:     DUCK     'Ah... now we're getting metaphysical,' said Susan.     'Why duck?' said Lobsang.     'Why indeed?'     Somewhere amongst the cases a voice reached the end of its tether.     'What organic damn elephant? Where is the elephant?'     'There is no elephant!'     'How can there be a sign, then?'     It is a-'     ... and once again the little choke, and the vanishing scream. And then... running footsteps.     Susan and Lobsang backed into the shadows, and then Susan said, 'What have I put my foot in?'     She reached down and picked up the soft, sticky mess. And as she rose, she saw the Auditor come round the corner.     It was wild-eyed and frantic. It focused on the pair of them with difficulty, as if trying to remember who and what they were. But it was holding a sword, and holding it correctly.     A figure rose up behind it. One hand grabbed it by the hair and jerked its head back. The other was thrust over its open mouth.     The Auditor struggled for a moment, and then went rigid. And then disintegrated, tiny particles spinning away and disappearing into nothing.     For a moment the last few handfuls tried to form, in the air, the shape of a small cowled figure. Then it too was dragged apart, with a faint scream that was heard via the hairs on the back of the neck.     Susan glared at the figure in front of her. 'You're a... you can't be a... what are you?' she demanded.     The figure was silent. This might have been because thick cloth covered its nose and mouth. Heavy gloves encased its hands. And this was odd, because most of the rest of it was wearing a sequinned evening gown. And a mink stole. And a knapsack. And a huge picture hat with enough feathers to make three rare species totally extinct.     The figure rummaged in the knapsack, and then thrust out a piece of dark brown paper, as if proffering holy writ. Lobsang took it with care.     'It says here "Higgs & Meakins Luxury Assortment",' he said. 'Caramel Crunch, Hazelnut Surprise... They're chocolates?'     Susan opened her hand and looked at the crushed Strawberry Whirl she had picked up. She gave the figure a careful look.     'How did you know that would work?' she said.     'Please! You have nothing to fear from me,' said the muffled voice through the bandages. 'I'm down to the ones with the nuts in now, and they don't melt very quickly.'     'Sorry?' said Lobsang. 'You just killed an Auditor with a chocolate?'     'My last Orange Creme, yes. We are exposed here. Come with me.'     'An Auditor...' Susan breathed. 'You're an Auditor too. Aren't you? Why should I trust you?'     'There isn't anyone else.'     'But you are one of them,' said Susan. 'I can tell, even under all that... that stuff!'     'I was one of them,' said Lady LeJean. 'Now I rather think I'm one of me.'           People were living in the attic. There was a whole family up there. Susan wondered if their presence was official or unofficial or one of those in-between states that were so common in Ankh-Morpork, where there was always a chronic housing shortage. So much of the city's life took place on the street because there was no room for it inside. Whole families were raised in shifts, so that the bed could be used for twenty-four hours a day. By the look of it, the caretakers and men who knew the way to Caravati's Three Large Pink Women and One Piece of Gauze had moved their families in to the rambling attics.     The rescuer had simply moved in on top of them. A family, or at least one shift of it, was seated on benches around a table. frozen in timelessness. Lady LeJean removed her hat, hung it on the mother and shook out her hair. Then she unwrapped the heavy bandages from her nose and mouth.     'We are relatively safe here,' she said. 'They are mostly in the main streets. Good... day. My name is Myria LeJean. I know who you are, Susan Sto Helit. I do not know the young man, which surprises me. I take it you are here to destroy the clock?'     'To stop it,' said Lobsang.     'Hold on, hold on,' said Susan. 'This makes no sense. Auditors hate everything about life. And you are an Auditor, aren't you?'     'I have no idea what I am,' sighed Lady LeJean. 'But right now I know that I am everything an Auditor should not be. We... they... we have to be stopped!'     'With chocolate?' said Susan.     'The sense of taste is new to us. Alien. We have no defences.'     'But... chocolate?'     'A dry biscuit almost killed me,' said her ladyship. 'Susan, can you imagine what it is like to experience taste for the first time? We built our bodies well. Oh, yes. Lots of tastebuds. Water is like wine. But chocolate... Even the mind stops. There is nothing but the taste.' She sighed. 'I imagine it is a wonderful way to die.'     'It doesn't seem to affect you,' said Susan suspiciously.     'The bandages and the gloves,' said Lady LeJean. 'Even then it is all I can do not to give in. Oh, where are my manners? Do sit down. Pull up a small child.'     Lobsang and Susan exchanged a glance. Lady LeJean noticed it.     'I said something wrong?' she said.     'We don't use people as furniture,' said Susan.     'But surely they will not be aware of it?' said her ladyship.     'We will,' said Lobsang. 'That's the point, really.'     'Ah. I have so much to learn. There is... there is so much context to being human, I am afraid. You, sir, can you stop the clock?'     'I don't know how to,' said Lobsang. 'But I... I think I should know. I'll try.'     'Would the clockmaker know? He is here.'     'Where?' said Susan.     'Just down the passage,' said Lady LeJean.     'You carried him here?'     'He was barely able to walk. He was hurt badly in the fight.'     'What?' said Lobsang. 'How could he walk at all? We're outside time!'     Susan took a deep breath. 'He carries his own time, just like you,' she said. 'He's your brother.'     And it was a lie. But he wasn't ready for the truth. By the look on his face, he wasn't even ready for the lie.     'Twins,' said Mrs Ogg. She picked up the brandy glass, looked at it, and put it down. 'There wasn't one. There was twins. Two boys. But...'     She turned on Susan a glare like a thermic lance. 'You'll be thinking, this is an old biddy of a midwife,' she said. 'You'll be thinking, what does she know?'     Susan paid her the courtesy of not lying. 'Part of me was,' she admitted.     'Good answer! Part of us thinks all kinds of things,' said Mrs Ogg. 'Part of me is thinking, who's this haughty little miss who talks to me as if I was a kiddie of five? But most of me is thinking, she's got a heap of troubles of her own and has seen plenty of things a human shouldn't have to see. Mind you, part of me says, so have I. Seeing things a human shouldn't have to see makes us human. Well, miss... if you've any sense, part of you is thinking, there's a witch in front of me who's seen my granddad many times, when she's sat by a sickbed that's suddenly become a deathbed, and if she's ready to spit in his eye when the time comes then she could probably bother me considerably right now if she puts her mind to it. Understand? Let's all keep our parts to ourselves,' and suddenly she gave Susan a wink, 'as the High Priest said to the actress.'     'I absolutely agree,' said Susan. 'Completely.'     'Right,' said Mrs Ogg. 'So... twins ... well, it was her first time, and human wasn't exactly a familiar shape with her, I mean, you can't do what comes naturally when you ain't exactly natural and ... twins ain't quite the right word...'           'A brother,' said Lobsang. 'The clockmaker?'     'Yes,' said Susan.     'But I was a foundling!'     'So was he.'     'I want to see him now!'     'That might not be a good idea,' said Susan.     'I am not interested in your opinion, thank you.' Lobsang turned to Lady LeJean. 'Down that passage?'     'Yes. But he's asleep. I think the clock upset his mind, and also he was hit in the fight. He says things in his sleep.'     'Says what?'     'The last thing I heard him say before I came to find you was, "We're so close. Any passage might do,"' said her ladyship. She looked from one to the other. 'Have I said the wrong thing?'     Susan put her hand over her eyes. Oh dear...     'I said that,' said Lobsang. ' Just after we came up the stairs.' He glared at Susan. 'Twins, right? I've heard about this sort of thing! What one thinks the other thinks too?'     Susan sighed. Sometimes, she thought, I really am a coward. 'Something like that, yes,' she said.     'I'm going to see him, then, even if he can't see me!'     Damn, thought Susan, and hurried after Lobsang as he headed along the passage. The Auditor trailed behind them, looking concerned.     Jeremy was lying on a bed, although it was no softer than anything else in the timeless world. Lobsang stopped, and stared.     'He looks... quite like me,' he said.     'Oh, yes,' said Susan.     'Thinner, perhaps.'     'Could be, yes.'     'Different... lines on his face.'     'You've led different lives,' said Susan.     'How did you know about him and me?'     'My grandfather takes, er, an interest in this sort of thing. I found out some more by myself, too,' she said.     'Why should we interest anyone? We're not special.'     'This is going to be quite hard to explain.' Susan looked round at Lady LeJean. 'How safe are we here?'     'The signs upset them,' said her ladyship. 'They tend to keep away. I... shall we say?... took care of the ones who followed you.'     'Then you'd better sit down, Mr Lobsang,' said Susan. 'It might help if I told you about me.'     'Well?'     'My grandfather is Death.'     'That's a strange thing to say. Death is just the end of life. It's not a... a person-'     'PAY ATTENTION TO ME WHEN I AM TALKING TO YOU...'     A wind whipped around the room, and the light changed. Shadows formed on Susan's face. A faint blue light outlined her.     Lobsang swallowed.     The light faded. The shadows vanished.     'There is a process called death, and there is a person called Death,' said Susan. 'That is how it works. And I am Death's granddaughter. Am I going too fast for you?'     'Er, no, although right up until just now you looked human,' said Lobsang.     'My parents were human. There's more than one kind of genetics.' Susan paused. 'You look human, too. Human is a very popular look in these parts. You'd be amazed.'     'Except that I am human.'     Susan gave a little smile that, on anyone less obviously in full control of themself, might have seemed slightly nervous.     'Yes,' she said. 'And, then again, no.'     'No?'     'Take War, now,' said Susan, backing away from the point. 'Big man, hearty laugh, tends to fart after meals. As human as the next man, you say. But the next man is Death. He's human-shaped, too. And that's because humans invented the idea of... of... of ideas, and they think in human shapes-'     'Get back to the "and, then again, no", will you?'     'Your mother is Time.'     'No one knows who my mother is!'     'I could take you to the midwife,' said Susan. 'Your father found the best there's ever been. She delivered you. Your mother was Time.'     Lobsang sat with his mouth open.     'It was easier for me,' said Susan. 'When I was very small my parents used to let me visit my grandfather. I thought every grandfather had a long black robe and rode a pale horse. And then they decided that maybe that wasn't the right environment for a child. They were worried about how I was going to grow up!' She laughed mirthlessly. 'I had a very strange education, you know? Maths, logic, that sort of thing. And then, when I was a bit younger than you, a rat turned up in my room and suddenly everything I thought I knew was wrong.'     'I'm a human! I do human things! I'd know if-'     'You had to live in the world. Otherwise, how could you learn to be human?' said Susan, as kindly as she could.     'And my brother? What about him?'     Here it comes, Susan thought. 'He's not your brother,' she said. 'I lied a bit. I'm sorry.'     'But you said-'     'I had to lead up to it,' said Susan. 'It's one of those things you have to get hold of a bit at a time, I'm afraid. He's not your brother. He's you.'     'Then who am I?'     Susan sighed. 'You. Both of you... are you.'           'And there I was, and there she was,' said Mrs Ogg, 'and out the baby came, no problem there, but that's always a tryin' moment for the new mum, and there was ...' she paused, her eyes peering through the windows of memory, 'like ... like a feelin' that the world had stuttered, and I was holdin' the baby and I looked down and there was me deliverin' a baby, and I looked at me, and I looked at me, and I remember saying, "This is a fine to-do, Mrs Ogg," and she, who was me, said, "You never said a truer word, Mrs Ogg," and then it all went strange and there I was, just one of me, holdin' two babies.'     'Twins,' Susan said.     'You could call them twins, yes, I s'pose you could,' said Mrs Ogg. 'But I always thought that twins is two little souls born once, not one born twice.'     Susan waited. Mrs Ogg looked in the mood to talk.     'So I said to the man, I said, "What now?" and he said, "Is that any business of yours?" and I said he could be damn sure it was my business and he could look me in the eye and I'd speak my mind to anyone. But I was thinking, you're in trouble now, Mrs Ogg, 'cos it'd all gone myffic.'     'Mythic?' said schoolteacher Susan.     'Yep. With extra myff. And you can get into big trouble, with myffic. But the man just smiled and said that he must be brought up human until he's of age and I thought, yep, it's gone myffic all right. I could see he hadn't got a clue about what to do next and it was all going to be down to me.'     Mrs Ogg took a suck at her pipe and her eyes twinkled at Susan through the smoke. 'I don't know how much experience you have with this sort of thing, my girl, but sometimes when the high and mighty make big plans they don't always think about the fine detail, right?'     Yes. I'm a fine detail, Susan thought. One day Death took it into his skull to adopt a motherless child, and I'm a fine detail. She nodded.     'I thought, how does this go, in a myffic kind of way?' Mrs Ogg went on. 'I mean, technic'ly I could see we're in that area where the prince gets brought up as a swineherd until he manifests his destiny, but there's not that many swineherding jobs around these days, and poking hogs with a stick is not all it's cracked up to be, believe you me. So I said, well, I'd heard the Guilds down in the big cities took in foundlings out of charity, and looked after them well enough, and there's many well set-up men and women who started life that way. There's no shame in it, plus, if the destiny doesn't manifest as per schedule, he'd have set his hands to a good trade, which would be a consolation. Whereas swineherding 's just swineherding. You're giving me a stern look, miss.'     'Well, yes. It was rather a chilly decision, wasn't it?'     'Someone has to make 'em,' said Mrs Ogg sharply. 'Besides, I've been around for some time and I've noticed that them as has it in them to shine will shine through six layers of muck, whereas those who ain't shiny won't shine however much you buff' em. You may think otherwise, but it was me standing there.'     She investigated the bowl of her pipe with a matchstick.     Eventually she went on: 'And that was it. I would have stayed, of course, because there wasn't so much as a crib in the place, but the man took me aside and said thank you and that it was time to go. And why would I argue? There was love there. It was in the air. But I won't say that I don't sometimes wonder how it all turned out. I really do.'     There were differences, Susan had to admit. Two different lives had indeed burned their unique tracks on the faces. And the selves had been born a second or so apart, and a lot of the universe can change in a second.     Think of identical twins, she told herself. But they are two different selves occupying bodies that, at least, start out identical. They'don't start out as identical selves.     'He looks quite like me,' said Lobsang, and Susan blinked. She leaned closer to the unconscious form of Jeremy.     'Say that again,' she said.     'I said, he looks quite like me,' said Lobsang.     Susan glanced at Lady LeJean, who said, 'I saw it too, Susan.'     'Who saw what?' said Lobsang. 'What are you hiding from me?'     'His lips move when you speak,' said Susan. 'They try to form the same words.'     'He can pick up my thoughts?'     'It's more complicated than that, I think.' Susan picked up a limp hand and gently pinched the web of skin between thumb and forefinger.     Lobsang winced, and glanced at his own hand. A patch of white skin was reddening again.     'Not just thoughts,' said Susan. 'This close, you feel his pain. Your speech controls his lips.'     Lobsang stared down at Jeremy.     'Then what will happen,' he said slowly, 'when he comes round?'     'I'm wondering the same thing,' said Susan. 'Perhaps you shouldn't be here.'     'But this is where I have to be!'     'We at least should not stay here,' said Lady LeJean. 'I know my kind. They will have been discussing what to do. The signs will not hold them for ever. And I have run out of soft centres.'     'What are you supposed to do when you are where you're supposed to be?' said Susan.     Lobsang reached down and touched Jeremy's hand with his fingertip.     The world went white.     Susan wondered later if this was what it would be like at the heart of a star. It wouldn't be yellow, you wouldn't see fire, there would just be the searing whiteness of every overloaded sense screaming all at once.     It faded, gradually, into a mist. The walls of the room appeared, but she could see through them. There were other walls beyond, and other rooms, transparent as ice and visible only at the corners and where the light caught them. In each one another Susan was turning to look at her.     The rooms went on for ever.     Susan was sensible. It was, she knew, a major character flaw. It did not make you popular, or cheerful, and - this seemed to her to be the most unfair bit - it didn't even make you right. But it did make you definite, and she was definite that what was happening around her was not, in any accepted sense, real.     That was not in itself a problem. Most of the things humans busied themselves with weren't real, either. But sometimes the mind of the most sensible person encountered something so big, so complex, so alien to all understanding, that it told itself little stories about it instead. Then, when it felt it understood the story, it felt it understood the huge incomprehensible thing. And this, Susan knew, was her mind telling itself a story.     There was a sound like great heavy metal doors slamming, one after another, getting louder and faster...     The universe reached a decision.     The other glass rooms vanished. The walls clouded. Colour rose, pastel at first, then darkening as timeless reality flowed back.     The bed was empty. Lobsang had gone. But the air was full of slivers of blue light, turning and swirling like ribbons in a storm.     Susan remembered to breathe again. 'Oh,' she said aloud. 'Destiny.'     She turned. The bedraggled Lady LeJean was still staring at the empty bed.     'Is there another way out of here?'     'There's an elevator at the end of the corridor, Susan, but what happened to-?'     'Not Susan,' said Susan sharply. 'It's Miss Susan. I'm only Susan to my friends, and you are not one of them. I don't trust you at all.'     'I don't trust me either,' said Lady LeJean meekly. 'Does that help?'     'Show me this elevator, will you?'     It turned out to be nothing more than a large box the size of a small room, which hung from a web of ropes and pulleys in the ceiling. It had been installed recently, by the look of it, to move the large works of art around. Sliding doors occupied most of one wall.     'There are capstans in the cellar for winching it up,' said Lady LeJean. 'Downward journeys are slowed safely because of a mechanism by which the weight of the descending elevator causes water to be pumped up into rainwater cisterns on the roof, which in turn can be released back into a hollow counterweight that assists in the elevation of heavier items of-'     'Thank you,' said Susan quickly. 'But what it really needs in order to descend is time.' Under her breath she added, 'Can you help?'     The ribbons of blue light orbited her, like puppies anxious to play, and then drifted towards the elevator.     'However,' she added, 'I believe Time is on our side now.'           Miss Tangerine was amazed at how fast a body learned.     Until now Auditors had learned by counting. Sooner or later, everything came down to numbers. If you knew all the numbers, you knew everything. Often the later was a lot later, but that did not matter because for an Auditor time was just another number. But a brain, a few soggy pounds of gristle, counted numbers so fast that they stopped being numbers at all. She'd been astonished at how easily it could direct a hand to catch a ball in the air, calculating future positions of hand and ball without her even being aware of it.     The senses seemed to operate and present her with conclusions before she had time to think.     At the moment she was trying to explain to other Auditors that not feeding an elephant when there was no elephant not to feed was not in fact impossible. Miss Tangerine was one of the faster-learning Auditors and had already formulated a group of things, events and situations that she categorized as 'bloody stupid'. Things that were 'bloody stupid' could be dismissed.     Some of the others were having difficulty understanding this, but now she stopped in mid-harangue when she heard the rumble of the elevator.     'Do we have anyone upstairs?' she demanded.     The Auditors around her shook their heads. 'IGNORE THIS NOTICE' had produced too much confusion.     'Then someone is coming down!' said Miss Tangerine. 'They are out of place! They must be stopped!'     'We must discuss-' an Auditor began.     'Do what I say, you organic organ!'           'It's a matter of personalities,' said Lady LeJean, as Susan pushed open a door in the roof and stepped out onto the leads.     'Yes?' said Susan, looking around at the silent city. 'I thought you didn't have them.'     'They will have them now,' said Lady LeJean, climbing out behind her. 'And personalities define themselves in terms of other personalities.'     Susan, prowling along the parapet, considered this strange sentence.     'You mean there will be flaming rows?' she said.     'Yes. We have never had egos before.'     'Well, you seem to be managing.'     'Only by becoming completely and utterly insane,' said her ladyship.     Susan turned. Lady LeJean's hat and dress had become even more tattered, and she was shedding sequins. And then there was the matter of the face. An exquisite mask on a bone structure like fine china had been made up by a clown. Probably a blind clown. And one who was wearing boxing gloves. In a fog. Lady LeJean looked at the world through panda eyes and her lipstick touched her mouth only by accident.     'You don't look insane,' lied Susan. 'As such.'     'Thank you. But sanity is defined by the majority, I am afraid. Do you know the saying "The whole is greater than the sum of the parts"?'     'Of course.' Susan scanned the rooftops for a way down. She did not need this. The... thing seemed to want to talk. Or, rather, to chatter aimlessly.     'It is an insane statement. It is a nonsense. But now I believe that it is true.'     'Good. That elevator should be getting down about... now.'           Slivers of blue light, like trout slipping through a stream, danced around the elevator door.     The Auditors gathered. They had been learning. Many of them had acquired weapons. And a number of them had taken care not to communicate to the others that gripping something offensive in the hand seemed a very natural thing to do. It spoke to something right down in the back of the brain.     It was therefore unfortunate that when a couple of them pulled open the elevator door it was to reveal, slightly melting in the middle of the floor, a cherry liqueur chocolate.     The scent wafted.     There was only one survivor and, when Miss Tangerine ate the chocolate, there wasn't even that.           'One of life's little certainties,' said Susan, standing on the edge of the museum's parapet, 'is that there is generally a last chocolate hidden in all those empty wrappers.'     Then she reached down and grabbed the top of a drainpipe.     She wasn't certain how this would work. If she fell... but would she fall? There was no time to fall. She had her own personal time. In theory, if anything so definite as a theory existed in a case like this, that meant she could just drift down to the ground. But the time to test a theory like that was when you had no other choice. A theory was just an idea, but a drainpipe was a fact.     The blue light flickered around her hands.     'Lobsang?' she said quietly. 'It is you, isn't it?'     That name is as good as any for us. The voice was as faint as a breath.     'This may seem a stupid question, but where are you?'     We are just a memory. And I am weak.     'Oh.' Susan slid a little further.     But I will grow strong. Get to the clock.     'What's the point? There was nothing we could do!'     Times have changed.     Susan reached the ground. Lady LeJean followed, moving clumsily. Her evening dress had acquired several more tears.     'Can I offer a fashion tip?' said Susan.     'It would be welcomed,' said her ladyship politely.     'Long cerise bloomers with that dress? Not a good idea.'     'No? They are very colourful, and quite warm. What should I have chosen instead?'     'With that cut? Practically nothing.'     'That would have been acceptable?'     'Er...' Susan blanched at unfolding the complex laws of lingerie to someone who wasn't even, she felt, anybody. 'To anyone likely to find out, yes,' she finished. 'It would take too long to explain.'     Lady LeJean sighed. 'All of it does,' she said. 'Even clothing. Skin-substitutes to preserve body heat? So simple. So easy to say. But there are so many rules and exceptions, impossible to understand.'     Susan looked along Broad Way. It was thick with silent traffic, but there was no sign of an Auditor.     'We'll run into more of them,' she said aloud.     'Yes. There will be hundreds, at least,' said Lady LeJean.     'Why?'     'Because we have always wondered what life is like.'     'Then let's get up into Zephire Street,' said Susan.     'What is there for us?'     'Wienrich and Boettcher.'     'Who are they?'     'I think the original Herr Wienrich and Frau Boettcher died a long time ago. But the shop still does very good business,' said Susan, darting across the street. 'We need ammunition.'     Lady LeJean caught up. 'Oh. They make chocolate?' she said.     'Does a bear poo in the woods?' said Susan, and realized her mistake straight away.[16]     Too late. Lady LeJean looked thoughtful for a moment.     'Yes,' she said at last. 'Yes, I believe that most varieties do indeed excrete as you suggest, at least in the temperate zones, but there are several that-'     'I meant to say that, yes, they make chocolate,' said Susan.     Vanity, vanity, thought Lu-Tze, as the milk cart rattled through the silent city. Ronnie would have been like a god, and people of that stripe don't like hiding. Not really hiding. They like to leave a little clue, some emerald tablet somewhere, some code in some tomb under the desert, something to say to the keen researcher: I was here, and I was great.     What else had the first people been afraid of? Night, maybe. Cold. Bears. Winter. Stars. The endless sky. Spiders. Snakes. One another. People had been afraid of so many things.     He reached into his pack for the battered copy of the Way, and opened it at random.     Koan 97: 'Do unto otters as you would have them do unto you.' Hmm. No real help there. Besides, he'd occasionally been unsure that he'd written that one down properly, although it certainly had worked. He'd always left aquatic mammals well alone, and they had done the same to him.     He tried again.     Koan 124: 'It's amazing what you see if you keep your eyes open.'     'What's the book, monk?' said Ronnie.     'Oh, just... a little book,' said Lu-Tze. He looked around.     The cart was passing a funeral parlour. The owner had invested in a large plate-glass window, even though the professional undertaker does not, in truth, have that much to sell that looks good in a window and they usually make do with dark, sombre drapes and perhaps a tasteful urn.     And the name of the Fifth Horseman.     'Hah!' said Lu-Tze quietly.     'Something funny, monk?'     'Obvious, when you think about it,' said Lu-Tze, as much to himself as to Ronnie. Then he turned in his seat and stuck out his hand. 'Pleased to meet you,' he said. 'Let me guess your name.'     And said it.           Susan had been unusually inexact. To call Wienrich and Boettcher 'chocolate makers' was like calling Leonard of Quirm 'a decent painter who also tinkered with things', or Death 'not someone you'd want to meet every day'. It was accurate, but it didn't tell the whole story.     For one thing, they didn't make, they created. There's an important difference.[17] And, while their select little shop sold the results, it didn't do anything so crass as to fill the window with them. That would suggest... well, over-eagerness. Generally, W&B; had a display of silk and velvet drapes with, on a small stand, perhaps one of their special pralines or no more than three of their renowned frosted caramels. There was no price tag. If you had to ask the price of W&B;'s chocolates, you couldn't afford them. And if you'd tasted one, and still couldn't afford them, you'd save and scrimp and rob and sell elderly members of your family for just one more of those mouthfuls that fell in love with your tongue and turned your soul to whipped cream.     There was a discreet drain in the pavement in case people standing in front of the window drooled too much.     Wienrich and Boettcher were, naturally, foreigners, and according to Ankh-Morpork's Guild of Confectioners they did not understand the peculiarities of the city's tastebuds.     Ankh-Morpork people, said the Guild, were hearty, no-nonsense folk who did not want chocolate that was stuffed with cocoa liquor, and were certainly not like effete la-di-dah foreigners who wanted cream in everything. In fact they actually preferred chocolate made mostly from milk, sugar, suet, hooves, lips, miscellaneous squeezings, rat droppings, plaster, flies, tallow, bits of tree, hair, lint, spiders and powdered cocoa husks. This meant that according to the food standards of the great chocolate centres in Borogravia and Quirm, Ankh-Morpork chocolate was formally classed as 'cheese' and only escaped, through being the wrong colour, being defined as 'tile grout'.     Susan allowed herself one of their cheaper boxes per month. And she could easily stop at the first layer if she wanted to.     'You needn't come in,' she said, as she opened the shop door. Rigid customers lined the counter.     'Please call me Myria.'     'I don't think I-'     'Please?' said Lady LeJean meekly. 'A name is important.'     Suddenly, in spite of everything, Susan felt a brief pang of sympathy for the creature.     'Oh, very well. Myria, you needn't come in.'     'I can stand it.'     'But I thought chocolate was a raging temptation?' said Susan, being firm with herself.     'It is.'     They stared up at the shelves behind the counter.     'Myria... Myria,' said Susan, speaking only some of her thoughts aloud. 'From the Ephebian word myrios, meaning "innumerable". And LeJean as a crude pun of "legion"... Oh dear.'     'We thought a name should say what a thing is,' said her ladyship. 'And there is safety in numbers. I am sorry.'     'Well, these are their basic assortments,' said Susan, dismissing the shop display with a wave of her hand. 'Let's try the back room- Are you all right?'     'I am fine, I am fine...' murmured Lady LeJean, swaying.     'You're not going to pig out on me, are you?'     'We... I... know about will-power. The body craves the chocolate but the mind does not. At least, so I tell myself. And it must be true! The mind can overrule the body! Otherwise, what is it for?'     'I've often wondered,' said Susan, pushing open another door. 'Ah. The magician's cave...'     'Magic? They use magic here?'     'Nearly right.'     Lady LeJean leaned on the door frame for support when she saw the tables.     'Oh,' she said. 'Uh... I can detect... sugar, milk, butter, cream, vanilla, hazelnuts, almonds, walnuts, raisins, orange peel, various liqueurs, citrus pectin, strawberries, raspberries, essence of violets, cherries, pineapples, pistachios, oranges, limes, lemons, coffee, cocoa-'     'Nothing there to be frightened of, right?' said Susan, surveying the workshop for useful weaponry. 'Cocoa is just a rather bitter bean, after all.'     'Yes, but...' Lady LeJean clenched her fists, shut her eyes and bared her teeth, 'put them all together and they make-'     'Steady, steady...'     'The will can overrule the emotions, the will can overrule the instincts-' the Auditor intoned.     'Good, good, now just work your way up to the bit where it says chocolate, okay?'     'That's the hard one!'     In fact it seemed to Susan, as she walked past the vats and counters, that chocolate lost some of its attraction when you saw it like this. It was the difference between seeing the little heaps of pigment and seeing the whole picture. She selected a syringe that seemed designed to do something intensely personal to female elephants, athough she decided that here it was probably used for doing the wiggly bits of decoration.     And over here was a small vat of cocoa liquor.     She stared around at the trays and trays of fondant cremes, marzipans and caramels. Oh, and here was an entire table of Soul Cake eggs. But they weren't the hollow-shelled, cardboard tasting presents for children, oh, no - these were the confectionery equivalent of fine, intricate jewellery.     Out of the corner of her eye she saw movement. One of the statue-like workers bent over her tray of Praline Dreams was shifting almost imperceptibly.     Time was flowing into the room. Pale blue light glinted in the air.     She turned and saw a vaguely human figure hovering beside her. It was featureless and as transparent as mist, but in her head it said, I'm stronger. You are my anchor, my link to this world. Can you guess how hard it is to find it again in so many? Get me to the clock. ..     Susan turned and thrust the icing syringe into the arms of the groaning Myria. 'Grab that. And make some kind of... of sling or something. I want you to be carrying as many of those chocolate eggs as possible. And the cremes. And the liqueurs. Understand? You can do it!'     Oh, gods, there was no alternative. The poor thing needed some kind of morale boost. 'Please, Myria? And that's a stupid name! You're not many, you're one. Okay? Just be... yourself. Unity... that'd be a good name.'     The new Unity raised a mascara-streaked face. 'Yes, it is, it's a good name...'     Susan snatched as much merchandise as she could carry, aware of some rustling behind her, and turned to find Unity standing to attention holding, by the look of it, a bench-worth of assorted confectionery in...     ... a sort of big cerise sack.     'Oh. Good. Intelligent use of the materials to hand,' said Susan weakly. Then the teacher within her cut in and added, 'I hope you brought enough for everybody.'           * * *     'You were the first,' said Lu-Tze. 'You basically created the whole business. Innovative, you were.'     'That was then,' said Ronnie Soak. 'It's all changed now.'     'Not like it used to be,' agreed Lu-Tze.     'Take Death,' said Ronnie Soak. 'Impressive, I'll grant you, and who doesn't look good in black? But, after all, Death... What's death?'     'Just a big sleep,' said Lu-Tze.     'Just a big sleep,' said Ronnie Soak. 'As for the others... War? If war's so bad, why do people keep doing it?'     'Practically a hobby,' said Lu-Tze. He began to roll himself a cigarette.     'Practically a hobby,' said Ronnie Soak. 'As for Famine and Pestilence, well...'     'Enough said,' said Lu-Tze sympathetically.     'Exactly. I mean, Famine's a fearful thing, obviously-'     '-in an agricultural community, but you've got to move with the times,' said Lu-Tze, putting the roll-up in his mouth.     'That's it,' said Ronnie. 'You've got to move with the times. I mean, does your average city person fear famine?'     'No, he thinks food grows in shops,' said Lu-Tze. He was beginning to enjoy this. He had eight hundred years' worth of experience in steering the thoughts of his superiors, and most of them had been intelligent. He decided to strike out a little.     'Fire, now: city folk really fear fire,' he said. 'That's new. Your primitive villager, he reckoned fire was a good thing, didn't he? Kept the wolves away. If it burned down his hut, well, logs and turf are cheap enough. But now he lives in a street of crowded wooden houses and everyone's cooking in their rooms, well-'     Ronnie glared.     'Fire? Fire? Just a demi-god! Some little tea-leaf pinches the flame from the gods and suddenly he's immortal? You call that training and experience?' A spark leapt from Ronnie's fingers and ignited the end of Lu-Tze's cigarette. 'And as for gods-'     'Johnny-come-latelys, the pack of 'em,' said Lu-Tze quickly.     'Right! People started worshipping them because they were afraid of me,' said Ronnie. 'Did you know that?'     'No, really?' said Lu-Tze innocently.     But now Ronnie sagged. 'That was then, of course,' he said. 'It's different now. I'm not what I used to be.'     'No, no, obviously not, no,' said Lu-Tze soothingly. 'But it's all a matter of how you look at it, am I correct? Now, supposing a man- that is to say a-'     'Anthropomorphic personification,' said Ronnie Soak. 'But I've always preferred the term "avatar".'     Lu-Tze's brow wrinkled. 'You fly around a lot?' he said.     'That would be aviator.'     'Sorry. Well, supposing an avatar, thank you, who was perhaps a bit ahead of his time thousands of years ago, well, supposing he took a good look around now, he might just find the world is ready for him again.'     Lu-Tze waited. 'My abbot, now, he reckons you are the bees' knees,' he said, for a little reinforcement.     'Does he?' said Ronnie Soak suspiciously.     'Bee's knees, cat's pyjamas and dog's... elbows,' Lu-Tze finished. 'He's written scroll's and scroll's about you. Says you are hugely important in understanding how the universe works.'     'Yeah, but... he's just one man,' said Ronnie Soak, with all the sullen reluctance of someone cuddling a lifetime's huge snit like a favourite soft toy.     'Technically, yes,' said Lu-Tze. 'But he's an abbot. And brainy? He thinks such big thoughts he needs a second lifetime just to finish them off! Let a lot of peasants fear famine, I say, but someone like you should aim for quality. And you look at the cities, now. Back in the old days there were just heaps of mud bricks with names like Ur and Uh and Ugg. These days there's millions of people living in cities. Very, very complicated cities. Just you think about what they really, really fear. And fear... Well, fear is belief. Hmm?'     There was another long pause.     'Well, all right, but...' Ronnie began.     'Of course, they won't be living in 'em very long, because by the time the grey people have finished taking them to pieces to see how they work there won't be any belief left.'     'My customers do depend on me...' Ronnie Soak mumbled.     'What customers? That's Soak speaking,' said Lu-Tze. 'That's not the voice of Kaos.'     'Hah!' said Kaos bitterly. 'You haven't told me yet how you worked that one out.'     'Because I've got more than three brain cells and you're vain and you painted your actual name back to front on your cart whether you knew it or not and a dark window is a mirror and K and S are still recognizable in a reflection even when they're back to front, thought Lu-Tze. But that wasn't a good way forward.     'It was just obvious,' he said. 'You sort of shine through. It's like putting a sheet over an elephant. You might not be able to see it, but you're sure the elephants still there.'     Kaos looked wretched. 'I don't know,' he said. 'It's been a long time-'     'Oh? And I thought you said you were Number One?' said Lu-Tze, deciding on a new approach. 'Sorry! Still, I suppose it's not your fault you've lost a few skills over the centuries, what with one thing and-'     'Lost skills?' snapped Kaos, waving a finger under the sweeper's nose. 'I could certainly take you to the cleaners, you little maggot!'     'What with? A dangerous yoghurt?' said Lu-Tze, climbing off the cart.     Kaos leapt down after him. 'Where do you get off, talking to me like that?' he demanded.     Lu-Tze glanced up. 'Corner of Merchant and Broad Way,' he said. 'So what?'     Kaos roared. He tore off his striped apron and his white cap. He seemed to grow in size. Darkness evaporated off him like smoke.     Lu-Tze folded his hands and grinned. 'Remember Rule One,' he said.     'Rules? Rules? I'm Kaos!'     'Who was the first?' said Lu-Tze.     'Yes!'     'Creator and Destroyer?'     'Damn right!'     'Apparently complicated, apparently patternless behaviour that nevertheless has a simple, deterministic explanation and is a key to new levels of understanding of the multidimensional universe?'     'You'd better believe it- What?'     'Got to move with the times, mister, got to keep up!' shouted Lu-Tze excitedly, hopping from foot to foot. 'You're what people think you are! And they've changed you! I hope you're good at sums!'     'You can't tell me what to be!' Kaos roared. 'I'm Kaos!'     'You don't think so? Well, your big comeback ain't gonna happen now that the Auditors have taken over! The rules, mister! That's what they are! They're the cold dead rules!'     Silver lightning flickered in the walking cloud that had once been Ronnie. Then cloud, cart and horse vanished.     'Well, could have been worse, I suppose,' said Lu-Tze to himself. 'Not a very bright lad, really. Possibly a bit too old-fashioned.'     He turned round and found a crowd of Auditors watching him. There were dozens of them.     He sighed and grinned his sheepish little grin. He'd had just about enough for one day.     'Well I expect you have heard of Rule One, right?' he said.     That seemed to give them pause. One said, 'We know millions of rules, human.'     'Billions. Trillions,' said another.     'Well you can't attack me,' said Lu-Tze, ''cos of Rule One.'     The nearest Auditors went into a huddle.     'It must involve gravitation.'     'No, quantum effects. Obviously.'     'Logically there cannot be a Rule One because at that point there would be no concept of plurality.'     'But if there is not a Rule One, can there be any other rules? If there is no Rule One, where is Rule Two?'     'There are millions of rules! They cannot fail to be numbered!'     Wonderful thought Lu-Tze. All I have to do is wait until their heads melt.     But an Auditor stepped forward. It looked more wild-eyed than the others, and was much more unkempt. It was also carrying an axe.     'We do not have to discuss this!' it snapped. 'We must think: This is nonsense, we will not discuss it!'     'But what is Rule-' an Auditor began.     'You will call me Mr White!'     'Mr White, what is Rule One?'     'I am not glad you asked that question!' screamed Mr White, and swung the axe. The body of the other Auditor crumbled in around the blade, dissolving into floating motes that dispersed in a fine cloud.     'Anyone else got any questions?' said Mr White, raising the axe again.     One or two Auditors, not yet entirely in tune with current developments, opened their mouths to speak. And shut them again.     Lu-Tze took a few steps back. He prided himself on an incredibly well-honed ability to talk his way in or out of anything, but that rather depended on a passably sane entity being involved at the other end of the dialogue.     Mr White turned to Lu-Tze. 'What are you doing out of your place, organic?'     But Lu-Tze was overhearing another, whispered conversation. It was coming from the other side of a nearby wall, and it went like this:     'Who cares about the damn wording!'     'Accuracy is important, Susan. There is a precise description on the little map inside the lid. Look.'     'And you think that will impress anyone?'     'Please. Things should be done properly.'     'Oh, give it to me, then!'     Mr White advanced on Lu-Tze, axe raised. 'It is forbidden to-' he began.     'Eat... Oh, good grief... Eat... "a delicious fondant sugar creme infused with delightfully rich and creamy raspberry filling wrapped in mysterious dark chocolate" ... you grey bastards!'     A shower of small objects pattered down on the street. Several of them broke open.     Lu-Tze heard a whine or, rather, the silence caused by the absence of a whine he'd grown used to.     'Oh, no, I'm winding dow...'           Trailing smoke, but looking more like a milkman again, albeit one that'd just delivered to a blazing house, Ronnie Soak stormed into his dairy.     'Who does he think he is?' he muttered, gripping the spotless edge of a counter so hard that the metal bent. 'Hah, oh yes, they just toss you aside, but when they want you to make a comeback-'     Under his fingers the metal went white hot and then dripped.     'I've got customers. I've got customers. People depend on me. It might not be a glamorous job, but people will always need milk-'     He clapped a hand to his forehead. Where the molten metal touched his skin the metal evaporated.     The headache was really bad.     He could remember the time when there was only him. It was hard to remember, because... there was nothing, no colour, no sound, no pressure, no time, no spin, no light, no life...     Just Kaos.     And the thought arose: Do I want that again? The perfect order that goes with changelessness?     More thoughts were following that one, like little silvery eels in his mind. He was, after all, a Horseman, and had been ever since the time the people in mud cities on baking plains put together some hazy idea of Something that had existed before anyone else. And a Horseman picks up the noises of the world. The mud-city people and the skin-tent people, they'd known instinctively that the world swirled perilously through a complex and uncaring multiverse, that life was lived a mirrors thickness from the cold of space and the gulfs of night. They knew that everything they called reality, the web of rules that made life happen, was a bubble on the tide. They feared old Kaos. But now-     He opened his eyes and looked down at his dark, smoking hands. To the world in general, he said, 'Who am I now?'           Lu-Tze heard his voice speed up from nothing: '-wn...'     'No, you're wound up again,' said a young woman in front of him. She stood back, giving him a critical look. Lu-Tze, for the first time in eight hundred years, felt that he'd been caught doing something wrong. It was that kind of expression - searching, rummaging around inside his head.     'You'll be Lu-Tze, then,' said Susan. 'I'm Susan Sto Helit. No time for explanations. You've been out for... well, not for long. We have to get Lobsang to the glass clock. Are you any good? Lobsang thinks you're a bit of a fraud.'     'Only a bit? I'm surprised.' Lu-Tze looked around. 'What happened here?'     The street was empty, except for the ever-present statues. But scraps of silver paper and coloured wrappers littered the ground, and across the wall behind him was a long splash of what looked very much like chocolate icing.     'Some of them got away,' said Susan, picking up what Lu-Tze could only hope was a giant icing syringe. 'Mostly they fought with one another. Would you try to tear someone apart just for a coffee creme?'     Lu-Tze looked into those eyes. After eight hundred years you learn how to read people. And Susan was a story that went back a very long way. She probably even knew about Rule One, and didn't care. This was someone to treat with respect. But you couldn't let even someone like her have it all their own way.     'The kind with a coffee bean on the top, or the ordinary kind?' he said.     'The kind without the coffee bean, I think,' said Susan, holding his gaze.     'Nnn-o. No. No, I don't think I would,' said Lu-Tze.     'But they are learning,' said a woman's voice behind the sweeper. 'Some resisted. We can learn. That's how humans became humans.'     Lu-Tze regarded the speaker. She looked like a society lady who had just had a really bad day in a threshing machine.     'Can I just be clear here?' he said, staring from one woman to the other. 'You've been fighting the grey people with chocolate?'     'Yes,' said Susan, peering round the corner. 'It's the sensory explosion. They lose control of their morphic field. Can you throw at all? Good. Unity, give him as many chocolate eggs as he can carry. The secret is to get them to land hard so that there's lots of shrapnel-'     'And where is Lobsang?' said Lu-Tze.     'Him? You could say he's with us in spirit.'     There were blue sparkles in the air.     'Growing pains, I think,' Susan added.     Centuries of experience once again came to Lu-Tze's aid.     'He always looked like a lad who needed to find himself,' he said.     'Yes,' said Susan. 'And it came as a bit of a shock. Let's go.'           Death looked down at the world. Timelessness had reached the Rim now, and was expanding into the universe at the speed of light. The Discworld was a sculpture in crystal.     Not an apocalypse. There had always been plenty of those - small apocalypses, not the full shilling at all, fake apocalypses: apocryphal apocalypses. Most of them had been back in the old days, when the world as in 'end of the world' was often objectively no wider than a few villages and a clearing in the forest.     And those little worlds had ended. But there had always been somewhere else. There had been the horizon, to start with. The fleeing refugees would find that the world was bigger than they'd thought. A few villages in a clearing? Hah, how could they have been so stupid! Now they knew it was a whole island! Of course, there was that horizon again...     The world had run out of horizons.     As Death watched, the sun stopped in its orbit and its light became duller, redder.     He sighed, and nudged Binky. The horse stepped forward, in a direction that could not be found on any map.     And the sky was full of grey shapes. There was a ripple in the ranks of Auditors as the Pale Horse trotted forward.     One drifted towards Death and hung in the air a few feet away. It said, Should you not be riding out?     DO YOU SPEAK FOR ALL ?     You know the custom, said the voice in Death's mind. Among us, one speaks for all.     WHAT IS BEING DONE IS WRONG.     It is not your business.     NEVERTHELESS, WE ARE ALL ANSWERABLE.     The universe will last for ever, said the voice. Everything preserved, ordered, understood, lawful, filed. .. changeless. A perfect world. Finished.     NO.     It will all end one day in any case.     BUT THIS IS TOO SOON. THERE IS UNFINISHED BUSINESS.     And that is-?     EVERYTHING.     And, with a flash of light, a figure clothèd all in white appeared, holding a book in one hand.     It looked from Death to the endlessly massing ranks of the Auditors, and said: 'Sorry? Is this the right place?'           Two Auditors were measuring the number of atoms in a paving slab.     They looked up at a movement.     'Good afternoon,' said Lu-Tze. 'May I draw your attention to the notice my assistant is holding up?'     Susan held up the sign. It read: Mouths Must Be Open. By Order.     And Lu-Tze unfolded his hands. There was a caramel in each one, and he was a good shot.     The mouths shut. The faces went impassive. Then there was a sound somewhere between a purr and a wail, which disappeared into the ultrasonic. And then... the Auditors dissolved, gently, first going fuzzy around the edges and, as the process accelerated, swiftly becoming a spreading cloud.     'Hand-to-mouth fighting,' said Lu-Tze. 'Why doesn't it happen to humans?'     'It nearly does,' said Susan, and when they stared at her she blinked and said, 'To stupid, indulgent humans, anyway.'     'You don't have to concentrate to stay the same shape,' said Unity. 'And that was the last of the caramels, by the way.'     'No, there's six in one of W&B;'s Gold Selections,' said Susan. 'Three have got white chocolate cream in dark chocolate and three have got whipped cream in milk chocolate. They're the ones in the silver wrapp- Look, I just happen to know things, all right? Let's keep going, okay? Without mentioning chocolate.'           You have no power over us, said the Auditor. We are not alive.     BUT YOU ARE DEMONSTRATING ARROGANCE, PRIDE AND STUPIDITY. THESE ARE EMOTIONS. I WOULD SAY THEY ARE SIGNS OF LIFE.     'Excuse me?' said the shining figure in white.     But you are all alone here!     'Excuse me?'     YES? said Death. WHAT IS IT?     'This is the Apocalypse, yes?' said the shining figure petulantly.     WE ARE TALKING.     'Yes, right, but is it the Apocalypse? The actual end of the actual whole world?'     No, said the Auditor.     YES, said Death. IT IS.     'Great!' said the figure.     What? said the Auditor.     WHAT? said Death.     The figure looked embarrassed. 'Well, not great, obviously. Obviously not great, as such. But it's what I'm here for. It's what I'm for, really.' It held up the book. 'Er, I've got the place marked ready. Wow! It's been, you know, so long...'     Death glanced at the book. The cover and all the pages were made of iron. Realization dawned.     YOU ARE THE ANGEL CLOTHED ALL IN WHITE OF THE IRON BOOK FROM THE PROPHECIES OF TOBRUN, AM I CORRECT?     'That's right!' The pages clanged as the angel hurriedly thumbed through them. 'And it's clothèd, by the way, if you don't mind. Clo-theddd. Just a detail, I know, but I like to get it right.'     What is happening here? the Auditor growled.     I DON'T KNOW HOW TO TELL YOU THIS, said Death, ignoring the interruption, BUT YOU ARE NOT OFFICIAL.     The pages stopped clanking. 'What do you mean?' said the angel suspiciously.     THE BOOK OF TOBRUN HAS NOT BEEN CONSIDERED OFFICIAL CHURCH DOGMA FOR A HUNDRED YEARS. THE PROPHET BRUTHA REVEALED THAT THE WHOLE CHAPTER WAS A METAPHOR FOR A POWER STRUGGLE WITHIN THE EARLY CHURCH. IT IS NOT INCLUDED IN THE REVISED VERSION OF THE BOOK OF OM, AS DETERMINED BY THE CONVOCATION OF EE.     'Not at all?'     I'M SORRY.     'I've been thrown out? Just like the damn rabbits and the big syrupy things?'     YES.     'Even the bit where I blow the trumpet?'     OH, YES.     'You sure?'     ALWAYS.     'But you are Death and this is the Apocalypse, right?' said the angel, looking wretched. 'So therefore-'     UNFORTUNATELY, HOWEVER, YOU ARE NO LONGER A FORMAL PART OF THE PROCEEDINGS.     Out of the corner of his mind, Death was observing the Auditor. Auditors always listened when people spoke. The more people spoke, the closer to consensus every decision came, and the less responsibility anyone had. But the Auditor was showing signs of impatience and annoyance...     Emotions. And emotions made you alive. Death knew how to deal with the living.     The angel looked around at the universe. 'Then what am I supposed to do?' he wailed. 'This is what Ive been waiting for! For thousands of years!' He stared at the iron book. 'Thousands of dull, boring, wasted years...' he mumbled.     Have you quite finished? said the Auditor.     'One big scene. That's all I had. That was my purpose. You wait, you practise - and then you're just edited out because brimstone is no longer a fashionable colour?' Anger was infusing the bitterness in the angel's voice. 'No one told me, of course...'     He glared at the rusted pages. 'It ought to be Pestilence next,' he muttered.     'Am I late, then?' said a voice in the night.     A horse walked forward. It gleamed unhealthily, like a gangrenous wound just before the barber-surgeon would be called in with his hacksaw for a quick trim.     I THOUGHT YOU WEREN'T COMING, said Death.     'I didn't want to,' Pestilence oozed, 'but humans do get such interesting diseases. I'd rather like to see how weasles turn out, too.' One crusted eye winked at Death.     'You mean measles?' said the angel.     'Weasles, I'm afraid,' said Pestilence. 'People are getting really careless with this bio-artificing. We're talking boil's that really bite.'     Two of you will not suffice! snarled the Auditor in their heads.     A horse walked out of the darkness. Some toast racks had more flesh.     'I've been thinking,' said a voice. 'Maybe there are things worth putting up a fight for.'     'And they are-?' said Pestilence, looking round.     'Salad-cream sandwiches. You just can't beat them. That tang of permitted emulsifiers? Marvellous.'     'Hah! You're Famine, then?' said the Angel of the Iron Book. It fumbled with the heavy pages again.     What, what, what is this nonsense of 'salad cream'? [18] shouted the Auditor.     Anger, thought Death. A powerful emotion.     'Do I like salad cream?' said a voice in the dark.     A second, female voice replied: 'No, dear, it gives you hives.'     The horse of War was huge and red and the heads of dead warriors hung from the saddle horn. And Mrs War was hanging on to War, grimly.     'All four. Bingo!' said the Angel of the Iron Book. 'So much for the Convocation of Ee!'     War had a woolly scarf round his neck. He looked sheepishly at the other Horsemen.     'He's not to strain himself,' said Mrs War sharply. 'And you're not to let him do anything dangerous. He's not as strong as he thinks. And he gets confused.'     So, the gang is all here, said the Auditor.     Smugness, Death noticed. And self-satisfaction.     There was a clanging as of metal pages. The Angel of the Iron Book was looking puzzled.     'Actually, I don't think that's entirely correct,' it said.     No one paid it any attention.     Off you go on your little pantomime, said the Auditor.     And now irony and sarcasm, thought Death. They must be picking it up from the ones down in the world. All the little things that go to make up a... personality.     He looked along the row of Horsemen. They caught his eye, and there were almost imperceptible nods from Famine and Pestilence.     War turned in the saddle and spoke to his wife. 'Right now, dear, I'm not confused at all. Could you get down, please?'     'Remember what happened when-' Mrs War began.     'Right now, please, my dear,' said War, and this time his voice, which was still calm and polite, had echoes of steel and bronze.     'Er... oh.' Mrs War was suddenly flustered. 'That was just how you used to talk when-' She stopped, blushed happily for a moment, and slid off the horse.     War nodded at Death.     And now you must all go and bring terror and destruction and so on and so forth, said the Auditor. Correct?     Death nodded. Floating in the air above him, the Angel of the Iron Book slammed the pages back and forth in an effort to find his place.     EXACTLY. ONLY, WHILE IT IS TRUE WE HAVE TO RIDE OUT, Death added, drawing his sword, IT DOESN'T SAY ANYWHERE AGAINST WHOM.     Your meaning? hissed the Auditor, but now there was a flicker of fear. Things were happening that it didn't understand.     Death grinned. In order to fear, you had to be a me. Don't let anything happen to me. That was the song of fear.     'He means,' said War, 'that he asked us all to think about whose side we're really on.'     Four swords were drawn, blazing along their edges like flame. Four horses charged.     The Angel of the Iron Book looked down at Mrs War.     'Excuse me,' he said, 'but do you have a pencil?'           Susan peered round the corner into Artificers Street, and groaned. 'It's full of them... and I think they've gone mad.'     Unity took a look. 'No. They have not gone mad. They are being Auditors. They are taking measurements, assessing and standardizing where necessary.'     'They're taking up the paving slabs now!'     'Yes. I suspect it is because they are the wrong size. We do not like irregularities.'     'What the hell is the wrong size for a slab of rock?'     'Any size that is not the average size. I'm sorry.'     The air around Susan flashed blue. She was very briefly aware of a human shape, transparent, spinning gently, which vanished again.     But a voice in her ear, in her ear said: Nearly strong enough. Can you get to the end of the street?     'Yes. Are you sure? You couldn't do anything to the clock before!'     Before, I was not me.     A movement in the air made Susan look up. The lightning bolt that had stood rigid over the dead city had gone. The clouds were rolling like ink poured into water. There were flashes within them, sulphurous yellows and reds.     The Four Horsemen are fighting the other Auditors, Lobsang supplied.     'Are they winning?'     Lobsang did not answer.     'I said-'     It's hard for me to say. I can see... everything. Everything that could be...           Kaos listened to history.     There were new words. Wizards and philosophers had found Chaos, which is Kaos with his hair combed and a tie on, and had found in the epitome of disorder a new order undreamed of. There are different kinds of rules. From the simple comes the complex, and from the complex comes a different kind of simplicity. Chaos is order in a mask...     Chaos. Not dark, ancient Kaos, left behind by the evolving universe, but new, shiny Chaos, dancing in the heart of everything. The idea was strangely attractive. And it was a reason to go on living.     Ronnie Soak adjusted his cap. Oh, yes... there was one last thing.     The milk was always lovely and fresh. Everyone remarked on that. Of course, being everywhere at seven in the morning was no trouble to him. If even the Hogfather could climb down every chimney in the world in one night, doing a milk round for most of a city in one second was hardly a major achievement.     Keeping things cool was, however. But there he had been lucky. Mr Soak walked into the ice room, where his breath turned to fog in the frigid air. Churns were stacked across the floor, sparkling on the outside. Vats of butter and cream were piled on shelves that glistened with ice. Rack after rack of eggs were just visible through the frost. He'd been planning to add the ice-cream business in the summer. It was such an obvious step. Besides, he needed to use up the cold.     A stove was burning in the middle of the floor. Mr Soak always bought good coal from the dwarfs, and the iron plates were glowing red. The room, one felt, ought to be an oven, but there was a gentle sizzling on the stove as frost battled with the heat. With the stove roaring, the room was merely an ice-box. Without the stove...     Ronnie opened the door of a white-rimmed cupboard and smashed at the ice within with his fist. Then he reached inside.     What emerged, crackling with blue flame, was a sword.     It was a work of art, the sword. It had imaginary velocity, negative energy and positive cold, cold so cold that it met heat coming the other way and took on something of its nature. Burning cold. There had never been anything as cold as this since before the universe began. In fact, it seemed to Chaos, everything since then had been merely lukewarm.     'Well, I'm back,' he said.     The Fifth Horseman rode out, and a faint smell of cheese followed him.           Unity looked at the other two, and at the blue glow that still hovered around the group. They had taken cover behind a fruit barrow.     'If I may make a suggestion,' she said, 'it is that w- that Auditors are not good with surprises. The impulse is always to consult. And the assumption is always that there will be a plan.'     'So?' said Susan.     'I suggest total madness. I suggest you and... and the... young man run for the shop, and I will attract the attention of the Auditors. I believe this old man should assist me because he will die soon in any case.'     There was silence.     'Accurate yet unnecessary,' said Lu-Tze.     'That was not good etiquette?' she said.     'It could have been better. However, is it not written, "When you have got to go, you have got to go" ?' said Lu-Tze. 'And also that, "You should always wear clean underwear because you never know if you will be knocked down by a cart"?'     'Will it help?' said Unity, looking very puzzled.     'That is one of the great mysteries of the Way,' said Lu-Tze, nodding sagely. 'What chocolate do we have left?'     'We're down to the nougat now,' said Unity. 'And I believe nougat is a terrible thing to cover with chocolate, where it can ambush the unsuspecting. Susan?'     Susan was peering up the street. 'Mmm?'     'Do you have any chocolate left?'     Susan shook her head. 'Mmm-mmm.'     'I believe you were carrying the cherry cremes?'     'Mmm?'     Susan swallowed, and then gave a cough that expressed, in a remarkably concise way, embarrassment and annoyance.     'I just had one!' she snapped. 'I need the sugar.'     'I'm sure no one said you did have more than one,' said Unity meekly.     'We haven't been counting at all,' said Lu-Tze.     'If you have a handkerchief,' said Unity, still diplomatically, 'I could wipe away the chocolate around your mouth which must have inadvertently got there during the last engagement.'     Susan glared and used the back of her hand.     'It's just the sugar,' she said. 'That's all. It's fuel. And do stop going on about it! Look, we can't just let you die to get-'     Yes, we can, said Lobsang.     'Why?' said Susan, shocked.     Because I have seen everything.     'Would you like to tell everyone?' said Susan, reverting to Classroom Sarcasm. 'We'd all like to know how this ends!'     You misunderstand the meaning of 'everything'.     Lu-Tze rummaged in his sack of ammunition and produced two chocolate eggs and a paper bag. Unity went white at the sight of the bag.     'I didn't know we had any of those!' she said.     'Good, are they?'     'Coffee beans coated in chocolate,' breathed Susan. 'They should be outlawed!'     The two women watched in horror as Lu-Tze put one in his mouth. He gave them a surprised look.     'Quite nice, but I prefer liquorice,' he said.     'You mean you don't want another one?' said Susan.     'No, thank you.'     'Are you sure?'     'Yes. I'd quite like liquorice, though, if you have any...'     'Have you had some special monk training?'     'Well, not in chocolate combat, no,' said Lu-Tze. 'But is it not written, "If you have another one you won't have an appetite for your dinner"?'     'You really mean you will not eat a second chocolate coffee bean?'     'No, thank you.'     Susan looked across at Unity, who was trembling. 'You do have tastebuds, don't you?' she said, but she felt a pressure on her arm pulling her away.     'You two get behind that cart over there and run when you get the signal,' said Lu-Tze. 'Go now!'     'What signal?'     We'll know, said the voice of Lobsang.     Lu-Tze watched them hurry away. Then he picked up his broom in one hand and stepped out into the view of a street full of grey people.     'Excuse me?' he said. 'Could I have your attention, please?'     'What is he doing?' said Susan, crouching behind the cart.     They're all going towards him, said Lobsang. Some of them have weapons.     'They'll be the ones giving the orders,' said Susan.     Are you sure?     'Yes. They've learned from humans. Auditors aren't used to taking orders. They need persuading.'     He's telling them about Rule One, and that means he's got a plan. I think it's working. Yes!     'What's he done? What's he done?'     Come on! He'll be fine!     Susan leapt up. 'Good!'     Yes, they've cut his head off...           * * *     Fear, anger, envy... Emotions bring you alive, which is a brief period just before you die. The grey shapes fled in front of the swords.     But there were billions of them. And they had their own ways of fighting. Passive, subtle ways.     'This is stupid!' Pestilence shouted. 'They can't even catch a common cold!'     'No soul to damn, no arse to kick!' said War, hacking at grey shreds that rolled away from his blade.     'They have a kind of hunger,' said Famine. 'I just can't find a way to get at it!'     The horses were reined in. The wall of greyness hovered in the distance, and began to close in again.     THEY ARE FIGHTING BACK, said Death. CAN YOU NOT FEEL IT?     'I just feel we're too damn stupid,' said War.     AND WHERE DOES THAT FEELING COME FROM?     'Are you saying they're affecting our minds?' said Pestilence. 'We're Horsemen! How can they do that to us?'     WE HAVE BECOME TOO HUMAN.     'Us? Human? Don't make me lau-'     LOOK AT THE SWORD IN YOUR HAND, said Death. DON'T YOU NOTICE ANYTHING?     'It's a sword. Sword-shaped. Well?'     LOOK AT THE HAND. FOUR FINGERS AND A THUMB. A HUMAN HAND. HUMANS GAVE YOU THAT SHAPE. AND THAT IS THE WAY IN. LISTEN! DO YOU NOT FEEL SMALL IN A BIG UNIVERSE? THAT IS WHAT THEY ARE SINGING. IT IS BIG AND YOU ARE SMALL AND AROUND YOU THERE IS NOTHING BUT THE COLD OF SPACE AND YOU ARE SO VERY ALONE.     The other three Horsemen looked unsettled, nervous.     'That's coming from them?' said War.     YES. IT IS THE FEAR AND HATRED THAT MATTER HAS FOR LIFE AND THEY ARE THE BEARERS OF THAT HATRED.     'Then what can we do?' said Pestilence. 'There're too many of them!'     DID YOU THINK THAT THOUGHT, OR DID THEY? Death snapped.     'They're coming closer again,' said War.     THEN WE WILL DO WHAT WE CAN.     'Four swords against an army? That'll never work!'     YOU THOUGHT IT MIGHT A FEW MOMENTS AGO. WHO IS TALKING FOR YOU NOW? HUMANS HAVE ALWAYS FACED US AND THEY HAVE NOT SURRENDERED.     'Well, yes,' said Pestilence. 'But with us they could always hope for a remission.'     'Or a sudden truce,' said War.     'Or-' Famine began, and hesitated, and said finally, 'A shower of fish?' He looked at their expressions. 'That actually happened once,' he added defiantly.     IN ORDER TO HAVE A CHANGE OF FORTUNE AT THE LAST MINUTE YOU HAVE TO TAKE YOUR FORTUNE TO THE LAST MINUTE, said Death. WE MUST DO WHAT WE CAN.     'And if that doesn't work?' said Pestilence.     Death gathered up Binky's reins. The Auditors were much closer now. He could make out their individual, identical shapes. Remove one, and there were always a dozen more.     THEN WE DID WHAT WE COULD, he said, UNTIL WE COULD NOT.     On his cloud, the Angel Clothèd all in White wrestled with the Iron Book.     'What are they talking about?' said Mrs War.     'I don't know, I can't hear! And these two pages are stuck together!' said the angel. It scrabbled ineffectively at them for a moment.     'This is all because he wouldn't wear his vest,' said Mrs War firmly. 'It's just the sort of thing I-'     She had to stop because the angel had wrenched the halo from its head and was dragging it down the fused edge of the pages, with sparks and a sound like a cat slipping down a blackboard.     The pages clanged apart.     'Right, let's see...' It scanned the newly revealed text. 'Done that... done that... oh...' It stopped and turned a pale face to Mrs War.     'Oh, boy,' it said, 'we're in trouble now.'     A comet sprang up from the world below, growing visibly larger as the angel spoke. It flamed across the sky, burning fragments detaching and dropping away and revealing, as it closed with the Horsemen, a chariot on fire.     It was a blue flame. Chaos burned with cold.     The figure standing in the chariot wore a full-face helmet dominated by two eye holes that looked slightly like the wings of a butterfly and rather more like the eyes of some strange, alien creature. The burning horse, barely sweating, trotted to a halt; the other horses, regardless of their riders, moved aside to make room.     'Oh, no,' said Famine, waving a hand in disgust. 'Not him, too? I said what'd happen if he came back, didn't I? Remember that time he threw the minstrel out of the hotel window in Zok? Didn't I say-'     SHUT UP, said Death. He nodded. HELLO, RONNIE. GOOD TO SEE YOU. I WONDERED IF YOU WOULD COME.     A hand trailing cold steam came up and removed the helmet.     'Hello, boys,' said Chaos pleasantly.     'Uh... long time no see,' said Pestilence.     War coughed. 'Heard you were doing well,' he said.     'Yes, indeed,' said Ronnie, in a careful tone of voice. 'There's a real future in the retail milk and milk derivatives business.'     Death glanced at the Auditors. They'd stopped moving in but were circling, watchfully.     'Well, the world will always need cheese,' said War desperately. 'Haha.'     'Looks like there's some trouble here,' said Ronnie.     'We can handl-' Famine began.     WE CAN'T, said Death. YOU CAN SEE HOW IT IS, RONNIE. TIMES HAVE CHANGED. WOULD YOU CARE TO SIT IN FOR THIS ONE?     'Hey, we haven't discussed-' Famine began, but stopped when War glared at him.     Ronnie Soak put on his helmet, and Chaos drew his sword. It glinted and, like the glass clock, looked like the intrusion into the world of something a great deal more complex.     'Some old man told me you live and learn,' he said. 'Well. I have lived, and now I've learned that the edge of a sword is infinitely long. I've also learned how to make damn good yoghurt, although this is not a skill I intend to employ today. Shall we go get' em, boys?'           Far down, in the street, a few of the Auditors moved forward.     'What is Rule One?' said one of them.     'It does not matter. I am Rule One!' An Auditor with a big axe waved them back. 'Obedience is necessary!'     The Auditors wavered, watching the cleaver. They'd learned about pain. They'd never felt pain before, not in billions of years. Those who had felt it had no desire at all to feel it again.     'Very well,' said Mr White. 'Now get back to-'     A chocolate egg spun out of nowhere and smashed on the stones. The crowd of Auditors rippled forward, but Mr White slashed the axe through the air a few times.     'Stand back! Stand back!' he screamed. 'You three! Find out who threw that! It came from behind that stall! No one is to touch the brown material!'     He stooped carefully and picked up a large fragment of chocolate, on which could just be made out the shape of a smiling duck in yellow icing. Hand shaking and sweat beading his forehead, he raised it aloft and flourished the cleaver triumphantly. There was a collective sigh from the crowd.     'You see?' he shouted. 'The body can be overcome! You see? We can find a way to live! If you are good, there may be brown material! If you disobey, there will be the sharp edge! Ah...' He lowered his arms as a struggling Unity was dragged towards him.     'The pathfinder,' he said, 'the renegade...'     He walked towards the captive. 'What will it be?' he said. 'The cleaver or the brown material?'     'It's called chocolate,' snapped Unity. 'I do not eat it.'     'We shall see,' Mr White said. 'Your associate seemed to prefer the axe!'     He pointed to the body of Lu-Tze.     To the empty patch of cobbles where Lu-Tze had been.     A hand tapped him on the shoulder.     'Why is it,' said a voice by his ear, 'that no one ever believes in Rule One?'     Above him the sky began to burn blue.           Susan sped up the street to the clock shop.     She glanced sideways, and Lobsang was there, running beside her. He looked... human, except that not many humans had a blue glow around them.     'There will be grey men around the clock!' he shouted.     'Trying to find what makes it tick?'     'Hah! Yes!'     'What are you going to do?'     'Smash it!'     'That'll destroy history!'     'So?'     He reached out and took her hand. She felt a shock run up her arm.     'You won't need to open the door! You won't need to stop! Head straight for the clock!' he said.     'But-'     'Don't talk to me! I've got to remember!'     'Remember what?'     'Everything!'           Mr White was already raising the axe as he turned round. But you just can't trust a body. It thinks for itself. When it is surprised, it does a number of things even before the brain has been informed. The mouth opens, for example.     'Ah, good,' said Lu-Tze, raising his cupped hand. 'Eat this!'           The door was no more substantial than mist. There were Auditors in the workshop, but Susan moved through them like a ghost.     The clock glowed. And, as she ran towards it, it moved away. The floor unrolled in front of her, dragging her back. The clock accelerated towards some distant event horizon. At the same time it grew bigger but became more insubstantial, as if the same amount of clockness was trying to spread itself across more space.     Other things were happening. She blinked, but there was no flicker of darkness.     'Ah,' she said to herself, 'so I'm not seeing with my eyes. And what else? What's happening to me? My hand... looks normal, but does that mean it is? Am I getting smaller or bigger? Does-?'     'Are you always like this?' said the voice of Lobsang.     'Like what? I can feel your hand and I can hear your voice - at least, I think I can hear it, but maybe it's just in my head - but I can't feel myself running-'     'So... so analytical?'     'Of course. What am I supposed to be thinking? "Oh, my paws and whiskers"? Anyway, it's quite straightforward. It's all metaphorical. My senses are telling me stories because they can't cope with what is really happening-'     'Don't let go of my hand.'     'It's all right, I won't let you go.'     'I meant, don't let go of my hand because otherwise every part of your body will be compressed into a space much, much smaller than an atom.'     'Oh.'     'And don't try to imagine what this really looks like from outside. Here comes the cloooccckkkkkkk-'           Mr White's mouth closed. His expression of surprise became one of horror, and then one of shock, and then one of terrible, wonderful bliss.     He began to unravel. He came apart like a big and complex jigsaw puzzle made of tiny pieces, crumbling gently at the extremities and then vanishing into the air. The last piece to evaporate was the lips, and then they too were gone.     A half-chewed chocolate-coated coffee bean dropped onto the street. Lu-Tze reached down quickly, picked up the axe and flourished it at the other Auditors. They leaned back out of the way, mesmerized by authority.     'Who does this belong to now?' he demanded. 'Come on, whose is it?'     'It is mine! I am Miss Taupe!' shouted a woman in grey.     'I am Mr Orange and it belongs to me! No one is even sure that taupe is a proper colour!' screamed Mr Orange.     An Auditor in the crowd said, rather more thoughtfully, 'Is it the case, then, that hierarchy is negotiable?'     'Certainly not!' Mr Orange was jumping up and down.     'You have to decide it amongst yourselves,' said Lu-Tze. He tossed the axe into the air. A hundred pairs of eyes watched it fall.     Mr Orange got there first, but Miss Taupe trod on his fingers. After that, it became very busy and confusing and, to judge by the sounds from within the growing scrum, also very, very painful.     Lu-Tze took the arm of the astonished Unity.     'Shall we be going?' he said. 'Oh, don't worry about me. I was just desperate enough to try something I'd learned from a yeti. It did sting a bit...'     There was a scream from somewhere in the mob.     'Democracy at work,' said Lu-Tze happily. He glanced up. The flames above the world were dying out, and he wondered who'd won.           There was bright blue light ahead and dark red light behind, and it amazed Susan how she could see both kinds without opening her eyes and turning her head. Eyes open or shut, she couldn't see herself. All that told her that she was something else besides mere point of view was a slight pressure on what she remembered as her fingers. And the sound of someone laughing, close to her.     A voice said, 'The sweeper said everyone has to find a teacher and then find their Way.'     'And?' said Susan.     'This is my Way. It's the way home.'     And then, with a noise that was unromantically very similar to the kind Jason would make by putting a wooden ruler on the edge of his desk and twanging it, the journey ended.     It might not even have begun. The glass clock was in front of her, full size, glittering. There was no blue glow inside. It was just a clock, entirely transparent, and ticking.     Susan looked down the length of her arm, and up his arm to Lobsang. He let go of her hand.     'We're here,' he said.     'With the clock?' said Susan. She could feel herself gasping to get her breath back.     'This is only a part of the clock,' said Lobsang. 'The other part.'     'The bit outside the universe?'     'Yes. The clock has many dimensions. Do not be afraid.'     'I don't think I have ever been afraid of anything in my life,' said Susan, still gulping air. 'Not really afraid. I get angry. I'm getting angry now, in fact. Are you Lobsang or are you Jeremy?'     'Yes.'     'Yes, I walked into that. Are you Lobsang and are you Jeremy?'     'Much closer. Yes. I will always remember both of them. But I would prefer you to call me Lobsang. Lobsang has the better memories. I never liked the name Jeremy even when I was Jeremy.'     'You really are both of them?'     'I am... everything about them that was worth being, I hope. They were very different and they were both me, born just an instant apart, and neither of them was very happy by himself. It makes you wonder if there is anything to astrology after all.'     'Oh, there is,' said Susan. 'Delusion, wishful thinking and gullibility.'     'Don't you ever let go?'     'I haven't yet.'     'Why?'     'I suppose... because in this world, after everyone panics, there's always got to be someone to tip the wee out of the shoe.'     The clock ticked. The pendulum swung. But the hands did not move.     'Interesting,' said Lobsang. 'You're not a follower of the Way of Mrs Cosmopilite, are you?'     'I don't even know what it is,' said Susan.     'Have you got your breath back now?'     'Yes.'     'Let's turn around, then.'     Personal time moved on again, and a voice behind them said, 'Is this yours?'     Behind them there were glass steps. At the top of the steps was a man dressed like a History Monk, shaven-headed, besandalled. The eyes gave away a lot more. A young man who'd been alive for a very long time, Mrs Ogg had said, and she had been right.     He was holding a struggling Death of Rats by the scruff of his robe.     'Er, he's his own,' said Susan, as Lobsang bowed.     'Then please take him away with you. We cannot have him running around here. Hello, my son.'     Lobsang walked towards him and they embraced, briefly and formally.     'Father,' said Lobsang, straightening up. 'This is Susan. She has been... very helpful.'     'Of course she has,' said the monk, smiling at Susan. 'She is helpfulness personified.' He put the Death of Rats on the floor and prodded him forward.     'Yes, I'm very dependable,' said Susan.     'And interestingly sarcastic, too,' the monk added. 'I am Wen. Thank you for joining us. And for helping our son find himself.'     Susan looked from the father to the son. The words and the movements were stilted and chilly, but there was a communication going on that she wasn't party to, and it was happening a lot faster than speech.     'Aren't we supposed to be saving the world?' she said. 'I don't want to rush anybody, of course.'     'There's something I must do first,' said Lobsang. 'I must meet my mother.'     'Have we got ti-?' Susan began, and then added, 'We have, haven't we? All the time in the world.'     'Oh, no. Far more time than that,' said Wen. 'Besides, there's always time to save the world.'     Time appeared. Again there was the impression that a figure that was in the air, unfocused, was resolving itself into a million specks of matter that poured together and filled a shape in space, slowly at first and then... someone was there.     She was a tall woman, quite young, dark-haired, wearing a long red-and-black dress. By the look on her face, Susan thought, she had been weeping. But she was smiling now.     Wen took Susan by the arm, and gently pulled her aside.     'They'll want to talk,' he said. 'Shall we walk?'     The room vanished. Now there was a garden, with peacocks and fountains, and a stone seat, upholstered with moss.     Lawns unrolled towards woodlands that had the manicured look of an estate that had been maintained for hundreds of years so that nothing grew here that was not wanted, or in the wrong place. Long-tailed birds, their plumage like living jewels, flashed from treetop to treetop. Deeper in the woods, other birds called.     As Susan watched, a kingfisher alighted on the edge of a fountain. It glanced at her and flew away, its wingbeats sounding like a snapping of tiny fans.     'Look,' said Susan, 'I don't... I'm not... Look, I understand this sort of thing. Really. I'm not stupid. My grandfather has a garden where everything is black. But Lobsang built the clock! Well, part of him did. So he's saving the world and destroying it, all at once?'     'Family trait,' said Wen. 'It is what Time does at every instant.'     He gave Susan the look of a teacher confronted with a keen but stupid pupil.     'Think like this,' he said at last. 'Think of everything. It's an everyday word. But "everything" means... everything. It's a much bigger word than "universe". And everything contains all possible things that can happen at all possible times in all possible worlds. Don't look for complete solutions in anyone of them. Sooner or later, everything causes everything else.'     'Are you saying one little world is not important, then?' said Susan.     Wen waved a hand, and two glasses of wine appeared on the stone.     'Everything is as important as everything else,' he said.     Susan grimaced. 'You know, that's why I've never liked philosophers,' she said. 'They make it all sound grand and simple, and then you step out into a world that's full of complications. I mean, look around. I bet this garden needs regular weeding, and the fountains have to be unblocked, and the peacocks shed feathers and dig up the lawn... and if they don't do that, then this is just a fake.'     'No, everything is real' said Wen. 'At least, it is as real as anything else. But this is a perfect moment.' He smiled at Susan again. 'Against one perfect moment, the centuries beat in vain.'     'I'd prefer a more specific philosophy,' said Susan. She tried the wine. It was perfect.     'Certainly. I expected that you would. I see you cling to logic as a limpet clings to a rock in a storm. Let me see... Defend the small spaces, don't run with scissors, and remember that there is often an unexpected chocolate,' said Wen. He smiled. 'And never resist a perfect moment.'     A breeze made the fountains splash over the sides of their bowls, just for a second. Wen stood up.     'And now, I believe my wife and son have finished their meeting,' he said.     The garden faded. The stone seat melted like mist as soon as Susan got up, although until then it had felt as solid as, well rock. The wineglass vanished from her hand, leaving only a memory of its pressure on her fingers and the taste lingering in her mouth. Lobsang was standing in front of the clock. Time herself was not visible, but the song that wove through the rooms now had a different tone.     'She's happier,' said Lobsang. 'She's free now.'     Susan looked around. Wen had vanished along with the garden. There was nothing but the endless glass rooms.     'Don't you want to talk to your father?' she said.     'Later. There will be plenty of time,' said Lobsang. 'I shall see to it.'     The way he said it, so carefully dropping the words into place, made her turn.     'You're going to take over?' she said. 'You are Time now?'     'Yes.'     'But you're mostly human!'     'So?' Lobsang's smile took after his father. It was the gentle and, to Susan, the infuriating smile of a god.     'What's in all these rooms?' she demanded. 'Do you know?'     'One perfect moment. In each one. An oodleplex of oodleplexes.'     'I'm not certain there's such a thing as a genuinely perfect moment,' said Susan. 'Can we go home now?'     Lobsang wrapped the edge of his robe around his fist and smashed it against the glass front panel of the clock. It shattered, and dropped to the ground.     'When we get to the other side,' he said, 'don't stop and don't look back. There will be a lot of flying glass.'     'I'll try to dive behind one of the benches,' said Susan.     'They probably won't be there.'     SQUEAK?     The Death of Rats had scurried up the side of the clock and was peering cheerfully over the top.     'What do we do about that?' said Lobsang.     'That looks after itself,' said Susan. 'I never worry about it.'     Lobsang nodded. 'Take my hand,' he said. She reached out.     With his free hand Lobsang grasped the pendulum and stopped the clock.     A blue-green hole opened in the world.     The return journey was a lot swifter but, when the world existed again, she was falling into water. It was brown, muddy and stank of dead plants. Susan surfaced, fighting against the drag of her skirts, and trod water while she tried to get her bearings.     The sun was nailed to the sky, the air was heavy and humid, and a pair of nostrills was watching her from a few feet away.     Susan had been brought up to be practical and that meant swimming lessons. The Quirm College for Young Ladies had been very advanced in that respect, and its teachers took the view that a girl who couldn't swim two lengths of the pool with her clothes on wasn't making an effort. To their credit, she'd left knowing four swimming strokes and several life-saving techniques, and was entirely at home in the water. She also knew what to do if you were sharing the same stretch of water with a hippopotamus, which was to find another stretch of water. Hippos only look big and cuddly from a distance. Close up, they just look big.     Susan summoned up all the inherited powers of the deathly voice plus the terrible authority of the schoolroom, and yelled, GO AWAY!     The creature floundered madly in its effort to turn round, and Susan struck out for the shore. It was an unsure shore, the water becoming land in a tangle of sandbanks, sucking black muck, rotted tree roots and swamp. Insects swirled around and-     -the cobbles were muddy underfoot, and there was the sound of horsemen in the mist     -and ice, piled up against dead trees-     -and Lobsang, taking her arm.     'Found you,' he said.     'You just shattered history,' said Susan. 'You broke it!'     The hippo had come as a shock. She'd never realized one mouth could hold so much bad breath, or be so big and deep.     'I know. I had to. There was no other way. Can you find Lu-Tze? I know Death can locate any living thing, and since you-'     'All right, all right, I know,' said Susan darkly. She held out her hand and concentrated. An image of Lu-Tze's extremely heavy lifetimer appeared, and gathered weight.     'He's only a few hundred yards over there,' she said, pointing to a frozen drift.     'And I know when he is,' said Lobsang. 'Only sixty thousand years away. So...'     Lu-Tze, when they found him, was looking calmly up at an enormous mammoth. Under its huge hairy brow its eyes were squinting with the effort both of seeing him and of getting all three of its brain cells lined up so that it could decide whether to trample on him or gouge him out of the frost-bound landscape. One brain cell was saying 'gouge', one was going for 'trample' but the third had wandered off and was thinking about as much sex as possible.     At the far end of its trunk, Lu-Tze was saying, 'So, you've never heard of Rule One, then?'     Lobsang stepped out of the air beside him. 'We must go, Sweeper!'     The appearance of Lobsang did not seem to surprise Lu-Tze at all, although he did seem annoyed at the interruption.     'No rush, wonder boy,' he said. 'I've got this perfectly under control-'     'Where's the lady?' said Susan.     'Over by that snowdrift,' said Lu-Tze, indicating with his thumb while still trying to outstare a pair of eyes five feet apart. 'When this turned up she screamed and twisted her ankle. Look, you can see I've made it nervous-'     Susan waded into the drift and hauled Unity upright. 'Come on, we're leaving,' she said brusquely.     'I saw his head cut off!' Unity babbled. 'And then suddenly we were here!'     'Yes, that kind of thing happens,' said Susan.     Unity stared at her, wild-eyed.     'Life is full of surprises,' said Susan, but the sight of the creature's distress made her hesitate. All right, the thing was one of them, one that was merely wearing- Well, at least had started out merely wearing a body as a kind of coat, but now... After all, you could say that about everyone, couldn't you?     Susan had even wondered if the human soul without the anchor of a body would end up, eventually, as something like an Auditor. Which, to be fair, meant that Unity, who was getting more firmly wrapped in flesh by the minute, was something like a human. And that was a pretty good definition of Lobsang and, if it came to it, Susan as well. Who knew where humanity began and where it finished?     'Come along,' she said. 'We've got to stick together, right?'     Like shards of glass, spinning through the air, fragments of history drifted and collided and intersected in the dark.     There was a lighthouse, though. The valley of Oi Dong held on to the ever-repeating day. In the hall almost all of the giant cylinders stood silent, all time run out. Some had split. Some had melted. Some had exploded. Some had simply vanished. But one still turned.     Big Thanda, the oldest and largest, ground slowly on its basalt bearing, winding time out at one end and back on the other, ensuring as Wen had decreed that the perfect day would never end.     Rambut Handisides was all alone in the hall, sitting beside the turning stone in the light of a butter lamp and occasionally throwing a handful of grease onto the base.     A clink of stone made him peer into the darkness. It was heavy with the smoke of fried rock.     There the sound was again and, then, the scratch and flare of a match.     'Lu-Tze?' he said. 'Is that you?'     'I hope so, Rambut, but who knows, these days?' Lu-Tze stepped into the light and sat down. 'Keeping you busy, are they?'     Handisides sprang to his feet. 'It's been terrible, Sweeper! Everyone's up in the Mandala Hall! It's worse than the Great Crash! There's bits of history everywhere and we've lost half the spinners! We'll never be able to put it all-'     'Now, now, you look like a man who's had a busy day,' said Lu-Tze kindly. 'Not got a lot of sleep, eh? Tell you what, I'll take care of this. You go and get a bit of shut-eye, okay?'     'We thought you were lost out in the world, and-' the monk burbled.     'And now I'm back,' smiled Lu-Tze, patting him on the shoulder. 'There's still that little alcove round the corner where you repair the smaller spinners? And there's still those unofficial bunks for when it's the night shift and you only need a couple of lads to keep their eye on things?'     Handisides nodded, and looked guilty. Lu-Tze wasn't supposed to know about the bunks.     'You get along, then,' said Lu-Tze. He watched the man's retreating back and added, quietly, 'and if you wake up you might turn out to be the luckiest idiot that ever there was. Well, wonder boy? What next?'     'We put everything back,' said Lobsang, emerging from the shadows.     'You know how long that took us last time?'     'Yes,' said Lobsang, looking around the stricken hall and heading towards the podium, 'I do. I don't think it will take me as long.'     'I wish you sounded more certain,' said Susan.     'I'm... pretty certain,' said Lobsang, running his fingers over the bobbins on the board.     Lu-Tze waved a cautionary hand at Susan. Lobsang's mind was already on the way to somewhere else, and now she wondered how large a space it was occupying. His eyes were closed.     'The... spinners that are left... Can you move the jumpers?' he said.     'I can show the ladies how to,' said Lu-Tze.     'Are there not monks who know how to do this?' said Unity.     'It would take too long. I am an apprentice to a sweeper. They would run around asking questions,' said Lobsang. 'You will not.'     'He's got a point right enough,' said Lu-Tze. 'People will start saying "What is the meaning of this?" and "Bikkit!", and we'll never get anything done.'     Lobsang looked down at the bobbins and then across at Susan.     'Imagine... that there is a jigsaw, all in pieces. But... I am very good at spotting edges and shapes. Very good. And all the pieces are moving. But because they were once linked, they have by their very nature a memory of that link. Their shape is the memory. Once a few are in the right position, the rest will be easier. Oh, and imagine that all the bits are scattered across the whole of eventuality, and mixing randomly with pieces from other histories. Can you grasp all that?'     'Yes. I think so.'     'Good. Everything I have just said is nonsense. It bears no resemblance to the truth of the matter in any way at all. But it is a lie that you can... understand, I think. And then, afterwards-'     'You're going to go, aren't you,' said Susan. It was not a question.     'I will not have enough power to stay,' said Lobsang.     'You need power to stay human?' said Susan. She hadn't been aware of the rise of her heart, but now it was sinking.     'Yes. Even trying to think in a mere four dimensions is a terrible effort. I'm sorry. Even to hold in my mind the concept of something called "now" is hard. You thought I was mostly human. I'm mostly not.' He sighed. If only I could tell you what everything looks like to me... it's so beautiful.'     Lobsang stared into the air above the little wooden bobbins. Things twinkled. There were complex curves and spirals, brilliant against the blackness.     It was like looking at a clock in pieces, with every wheel and spring carefully laid out in the dark in front of him. Dismantled, controllable, every part of it understood... but a number of small but important things had gone ping into the corners of a very large room. If you were really good, then you could work out where they'd landed.     'You've only got about a third of the spinners,' came the voice of Lu-Tze. 'The rest are smashed.'     Lobsang couldn't see him. There was only the glittering show before his eyes.     'That... is true, but once they were whole,' he said. He raised his hands and lowered them onto the bobbins.     Susan looked around at the sudden grinding noise and saw row after row of columns rising out of the dust and debris. They stood like lines of soldiers, rubble cascading from them.     'Good trick!' Lu-Tze shouted to Susan's ear, above the thunder. 'Feeding time into the spinners themselves! Theoretically possible, but we never managed to do it!'     'Do you know what he's actually going to do?' Susan shouted back.     'Yeah! Snatch the extra time out of bits of history that are too far ahead and shove it into the bits that have fallen behind!'     'Sounds simple!'     'Just one problem!'     'What?'     'Can't do it! Losses!' Lu-Tze snapped his fingers, trying to explain time dynamics to a non-initiate. 'Friction! Divergence! All sorts of stuff! You can't create time on the spinners, you can only move it around-'     There was a sudden bright blue glow around Lobsang. It flickered over the board, and then snapped across the air to form arcs of light leading to all the Procrastinators. It crawled between the carved symbols and clung to them in a thickening layer, like cotton winding on a reel.     Lu-Tze looked at the whirling light and the shadow within it, almost lost against the glow.     '-at least,' he added, 'until now.'     The spinners wound up to their working speed and then went faster, under the lash of the light. It poured across the cavern in a solid, unending stream.     Flames licked around the bottom of the nearest cylinder. The base was glowing, and the noise from its stone bearing was joining a rising, cavern-filling scream of stone in distress.     Lu-Tze shook his head. 'You, Susan, buckets of water from the wells! You, Miss Unity, you follow her with the grease pails!'     'And what are you going to do?' said Susan, grabbing two buckets.     'I'm going to worry like hell and that's not an easy job, believe me!'     Steam built up then, and there was a smell of burning butter. There was no time for anything but to run from the wells to the nearest spitting bearing and back, and there was not enough time even for that.     The spinners turned back and forth. There was no need for the jumpers now. The crystal rods that had survived the crash hung uselessly from their hooks as time arced overhead from one Procrastinator to another, showing up as red or blue glows in the air. It was a sight to frighten the knoptas off any trained spinner driver, Lu-Tze knew. It looked like a cascade running wild, but there was some control in there, some huge pattern being woven.     Bearings squealed. Butter bubbled. The bases of some spinners were smoking. But things held. They're being held, Lu-Tze thought. He looked up at the registers. The boards slammed back and forth, sending lines of red or blue or bare wood across the wall of the cavern. There was a pall of white smoke around them as their own wooden bearings gently charred.     Past and future were streaming through the air. The sweeper could feel them.     On the podium, Lobsang was wrapped in the glow. The bobbins were not being moved any more. What was going on now was on some other level, which didn't need the intervention of crude mechanisms.     Lion tamer, Lu-Tze thought. He starts off needing chairs and whips but one day, if he's really good, he can go into the cage and do the show using nothing more than eye and voice. But only if he's really good, and you'll know if he's really good because he'll come out of the cage again-     He stopped his prowl along the thundering lines because there was a change in the sound.     One of the biggest spinners was slowing down. It stopped as Lu-Tze watched, and didn't start again.     Lu-Tze raced around the cavern until he found Susan and Unity. Three more spinners stopped before he reached them.     'He's doing it! He's doing it! Come away!' he shouted. With a jolt that shook the floor, another spinner stopped.     The three ran towards the end of the cavern, where the smaller Procrastinators were still whirling, but the halt was already speeding down the rows. Spinner after spinner slammed to a standstill, the domino effect overtaking the humans until, when they reached the little chalk spinners, they were in time to see the last ones rattle gently to a halt.     There was silence, except for the sizzle of grease and the click of cooling rock.     'Is it all over?' said Unity, wiping the sweat from her face with her dress and leaving a trail of sequins.     Lu-Tze and Susan looked at the glow at the other end of the hall, and then at one another.     'I... don't... think... so,' said Susan.     Lu-Tze nodded. 'I think it's just-' he began.     Bars of green light leapt from spinner to spinner and hung in the air as rigid as steel. They flickered on and off between the columns, filling the air with thunderclaps. Patterns of switching snapped back and forth across the cavern.     The tempo increased. The thunderclaps became one long roll of overpowering sound. The bars brightened, expanded and then the air was all one brilliant light     Which vanished. The sound ceased so abruptly that the silence clanged.     The trio got to their feet, slowly.     'What was that?' said Unity.     I think he made some changes,' said Lu-Tze.     The spinners were silent. The air was hot. Smoke and steam filled the roof of the cavern.     Then, responding to the routine of humanity's eternal wrestle with time, the spinners began to pick up the load.     It came gently, like a breeze. And the spinners took the strain, from the smallest to the largest, settling once again into their gentle, ponderous pirouette.     'Perfect,' said Lu-Tze. 'Almost as good as it was, I'll bet.'     'Only almost?' said Susan, wiping the butter off her face.     'Well, he's partly human,' said the sweeper. They turned to the podium, and it was empty. Susan was not surprised. He'd be weak now, of course. Of course, something like this would take it out of anyone. Of course, he'd need to rest. Of course.     'He's gone,' she said flatly.     'Who knows?' said Lu-Tze. 'For is it not written, "You never know what's going to turn up" ?'     The reassuring rumble of the Procrastinators now filled the cave. Lu-Tze could feel the time flows in the air. It was invigorating, like the smell of the sea. I ought to spend more time down here, he thought.     'He broke history and repaired it,' said Susan. 'Cause and cure. That makes no sense!'     'Not in four dimensions,' said Unity. 'In eighteen, it's all perfectly clear.'     'And now, may I suggest you ladies leave by the back way?' said Lu-Tze. 'People are going to come running down here in a minute and it's all going to get very excitable. Probably best if you aren't around.'     'What will you do?' said Susan.     'Lie,' said Lu-Tze happily. 'It's amazing how often that works.'           -ick     Susan and Unity stepped out of a door in the rock. A path led through rhododendron groves out of the valley. The sun was touching the horizon and the air was warm, although there were snowfields quite close by.     At the lip of the valley the water from the stream plunged over a cliff in a fall so long that it landed as a sort of rain. Susan pulled herself onto a rock, and settled down to wait.     'It is a long way to Ankh-Morpork,' said Unity.     'We'll have a lift,' said Susan. The first stars were already coming out.     'The stars are very pretty,' said Unity.     'Do you really think so?'     'I am learning to. Humans believe they are.'     'The thing is, I mean, there's times when you look at the universe and you think, "What about me?" and you can just hear the universe replying, "Well, what about you?"'     Unity appeared to consider this. 'Well, what about you?' she said.     Susan sighed. 'Exactly.' She sighed again. 'You can't think about just one person while you're saving the world. You have to be a cold, calculating bastard.'     'That sounded as if you were quoting somebody,' said Unity. 'Who said that?'     'Some total idiot,' said Susan. She tried to think of other things, and added, 'We didn't get all of them. There's still Auditors down there somewhere.'     'That will not matter,' said Unity calmly. 'Look at the sun.'     'Well?'     'It is setting.'     'And...?'     'That means time is flowing through the world. The body exacts its toll Susan. Soon my- my former colleagues, bewildered and fleeing, will become tired. They will have to sleep.'     'I follow you, but-'     'I am insane. I know this. But the first time it happened to me I found such horror that I cannot express it. Can you imagine what it is like? For an intellect a billion years old, in a body which is an ape on the back of a rat that grew out of a lizard? Can you imagine what comes out of the dark places, uncontrolled?'     'What are you telling me?'     'They will die in their dreams.'     Susan thought about this. Millions and millions of years of thinking precise, logical thoughts - and then humanity's murky past drops all its terrors on you in one go. She could almost feel sorry for them. Almost.     'But you didn't,' she said.     'No. I think I must be... different. It is a terrible thing to be different, Susan. Did you have romantic hopes in connection with the boy?'     The question came out of nowhere and there was no defence. Unity's face showed nothing but a kind of nervous concern.     'No,' said Susan. Unfortunately, Unity did not seem to have mastered some of the subtleties of human conversation, such as when a tone of voice means 'Stop this line of inquiry right now or may huge rats eat you by day and by night.'     'I confess to strange feelings regarding his... self that was the clockmaker. Sometimes, when he smiled, he was normal. I wanted to help him, because he seemed so closed in and sad.'     'You don't have to confess to things like that,' Susan snapped. 'How do you even know the word romantic, anyway?' she added.     'I found some books of poetry.' Unity actually looked embarrassed.     'Really? I've never trusted it,' said Susan. Huge, giant, hungry rats.     'I found it most curious. How can words on a page have a power like that? There is no doubt that being human is incredibly difficult and cannot be mastered in one lifetime,' said Unity sadly.     Susan felt a stab of guilt. It wasn't Unity's fault, after all. People learn things as they grow up, things that never get written down. And Unity had never grown up.     'What are you going to do now?' she said.     'I do have a rather human ambition,' said Unity.     'Well, if I can help in any way...'     It was, she realized later, one of those phrases like 'How are you?' People were supposed to understand that it wasn't a real question. But Unity hadn't learned that, either.     'Thank you. You can indeed help.'     'Uh, fine, if-'     'I wish to die.'     And, galloping out of the sunset, some riders were approaching.           Tick     Small fires burned in the rubble, brightening the night. Most of the houses had been completely destroyed, although, Soto considered, the word 'shredded' was much more accurate.     He was sitting by the side of the street, watching carefully, with his begging bowl in front of him. There were of course far more interesting and complex ways for a History Monk to avoid being noticed, but he'd adopted the begging bowl method ever since Lu-Tze had shown him that people never see anyone who wants them to give him money.     He'd watched the rescuers drag the bodies out of the house. Initially they'd thought that one of them had been hideously mutilated in the explosion, until it had sat up and explained that it was an Igor and in very good shape for an Igor, at that. The other he'd recognized as Dr Hopkins of the Guild of Clockmakers, who was miraculously unharmed.     Soto did not believe in miracles, however. He was also suspicious about the fact that the ruined house was full of oranges, that Dr Hopkins was babbling about getting sunlight out of them, and that his sparkling little abacus was telling him that something enormous had happened.     He decided to make a report and see what the boys at Oi Dong said.     Soto picked up the bowl and set off through the network of alleys back to his base. He didn't bother much about concealment now; Lu-Tze's time in the city had been a process of accelerated education for many citizens of the lurking variety. The people of Ankh-Morpork knew all about Rule One.     At least, they had known until now. Three figures lurched out of the dark, and one of them swung a heavy cleaver which would have connected with Soto's head if he hadn't ducked.     He was used to this sort of thing, of course. There was always the occasional slow learner, but they presented no peril that a neat slice couldn't handle.     He straightened up, ready to ease his way out of there, and a thick lock of black hair fell onto his shoulder, slithered down his robe and flopped onto the ground. It made barely a sound, but the expression on his face as Soto looked down and then up at his attackers made them draw back.     He could see, through the blood-red rage, that they all wore stained grey clothes and looked even crazier than the usual alley people; they looked like accountants gone mad.     One of them reached out towards the begging bowl.     Everyone has a conditional clause in their life, some little unspoken addition to the rules like 'except when I really need to' or 'unless no one is looking' or, indeed, 'unless the first one was nougat'. Soto had for centuries embraced a belief in the sanctity of all life and the ultimate uselessness of violence, but his personal conditional clause was 'but not the hair. No one touches the hair, okay?'     Even so, everyone ought to have a chance.     The attackers recoiled as he threw the bowl against the wall, where the hidden blades buried themselves in the woodwork.     Then it began to tick.     Solo ran back down the alley, skidded round the corner and then shouted, 'Duck!'     Unfortunately for the Auditors, alas, he was just a tiny, tiny fraction of a second too late-           Tick     Lu-Tze was in his Garden of Five Surprises when the air sparkled and fragmented and swirled into a shape in front of him.     He looked up from his ministrations to the yodelling stick insect, who'd been off its food.     Lobsang stood on the path. The boy was wearing a black robe dotted with stars, which blew and rattled its rags around him on this windless morning as if he was standing in the centre of a gale. Which, Lu-Tze supposed, he more or less was.     'Back again, wonder boy?' said the sweeper.     'In a way, I never leave,' said Lobsang. 'Things have gone well with you?'     'Don't you know?'     'I could. But part of me has to do this the traditional way.'     'Well, the abbot is mighty suspicious and there's some amazing rumours flying around the place. I didn't say much. What do I know about anything? I'm just a sweeper.'     With that, Lu-Tze turned his attention to the sick insect. He'd counted to four under his breath before Lobsang said: 'Please? I have to know. I believe that the fifth surprise is you. Am I right?'     Lu-Tze cocked his head. A low noise, which he'd heard for so long he no longer consciously heard it, had changed its tone.     'The spinners are all winding out,' he said. 'They know you're here, lad.'     'I shall not be here long, Sweeper. Please?'     'You just want to know my little surprise?'     'Yes. I know nearly everything else,' said Lobsang.     'But you are Time. What I tell you in the future you'll know now, right?'     'But I'm partly human. I want to stay partly human. That means doings things the right way round. Please?'     Lu-Tze sighed and looked for a while down the avenue of cherry blossom.     'When the pupil can beat the master, there is nothing the master cannot tell him,' he said. 'Remember?'     'Yes.'     'Very well. The Iron Dojo should be free.'     Lobsang looked surprised. 'Uh, the Iron Dojo... Isn't that the one with all the sharp spikes in the walls?'     'And the ceiling, yes. The one that's like being inside a giant porcupine turned inside out.'     Lobsang looked horrified. 'But that's not for practice! The rules say-'     'That's the one,' said Lu-Tze. 'And I say we use it.'     'Oh.'     'Good. No argument,' said Lu-Tze. 'This way, lad.'     Blossom cascaded from the trees as they passed. They entered the monastery, and took the same route they'd taken once before. This brought them into the Hall of the Mandala, and the sand rose like a dog welcoming its master and spiralled in the air far below Lobsang's sandals. Lu-Tze heard the shouts of the attendants behind him.     News like this spread throughout the valley like ink in water. Hundreds of monks, apprentices and sweepers were trailing the pair as they crossed the inner courtyards, like the tail of a comet.     Above them, all the time, petals of cherry blossom fell like snow. At last Lu-Tze reached the high, round metal door of the Iron Dojo. The clasp of the door was fifteen feet up. No one who did not belong there was supposed to open the door of the dojo.     The sweeper nodded at his former apprentice.     'You do it,' he said. I can't.'     Lobsang glanced at him, and then looked up at the high clasp. Then he pressed a hand against the iron.     Rust spread under his fingers. Red stains spread out across the ancient metal. The door began to creak, and then to crumble. Lu-Tze prodded it with an experimental finger, and a slab of biscuit-strong metal fell out and collapsed on the flagstones.     'Very impress-' he began. A squeaky rubber elephant bounced off his head.     'Bikkit!'     The crowd parted. The chief acolyte ran forward, carrying the abbot.     'What is the wanna bikkit BIKKIT meaning of this? Who is wozza funny man this person, Sweeper? The spinners are dancing in their hall!'     Lu-Tze bowed.     'He is Time, reverend one, as you have suspected,' he said. Still bent in the bow, he looked up and sideways at Lobsang.     'Bow!' he hissed.     Lobsang looked puzzled. 'I should bow even now?' he said.     'Bow, you little stonga, or I shall teach you such discipline! Show deserved respect! You are still my apprentice until I give you leave!'     Shocked, Lobsang bowed.     'And why do you visit us in our timeless valley?' said the abbot.     Tell the abbot!' Lu-Tze snapped.     'I... I wish to learn the Fifth Surprise,' said Lobsang.     '-reverend one-' said Lu-Tze.     '-reverend one,' Lobsang finished.     'You visit us just to learn of our clever sweeper's fancies?' said the abbot.     'Yes, er, reverend one.'     'Of all the things Time could be doing, you wish to see an old man's trick? Bikkit!'     'Yes, reverend one.' The monks stared at Lobsang. His robe still fluttered this way and that in the teeth of the intangible gale, the stars glinting when they caught the light.     The abbot smiled a cherubic smile. 'So should we all,' he said. 'None of us has ever seen it, I believe. None of us has ever been able to wheedle it out of him. But... this is the Iron Dojo. It has rules! Two may walk in, but only one can walk out! This is no practice dojo! Wanna 'lephant! Do you understand?'     'But I don't want-' Lobsang began, and the sweeper jerked an elbow into his ribs.     'You say "Yes, reverend one,"' he growled.     'But I never intended-'     This time the back of his head was slapped.     'This is no time to step back!' Lu-Tze said. 'You're too late, wonder boy!' He nodded to the abbot. 'My apprentice understands, reverend one.'     'Your apprentice, Sweeper?'     'Oh, yes, reverend one,' said Lu-Tze. 'My apprentice. Until I say otherwise.'     'Really? Bikkit! Then he may enter. You too, Lu-Tze.'     'But I only meant to-' Lobsang protested.     'Inside!' Lu-Tze roared. 'Will you shame me? Shall people think I have taught you nothing?'     The inside of the Iron Dojo was, indeed, a darkened dome full of spikes. They were needle thin and there were tens of thousands of them covering the nightmare walls.     'Who would build something like this?' said Lobsang, looking up at the glistening points that covered even the ceiling.     'It teaches the virtues of stealth and discipline,' said Lu-Tze, cracking his knuckles. Impetuosity and speed can be as dangerous to the attacker as to the attacked, as perhaps you will learn. One condition: we are all human here? Agreed?'     'Of course, Sweeper. We are all human here.'     'And shall we agree: no tricks?'     'No tricks,' said Lobsang. 'But-'     'Are we fighting, or are we talking?'     'But, look, if only one can walk out, that means I'll have to kill you-' Lobsang began.     'Or vice versa, of course,' said Lu-Tze. 'That is the rule, yes. Shall we get on?'     'But I didn't know that!'     'In life, as in breakfast cereal, it is always best to read the instructions on the box,' said Lu-Tze. 'This is the Iron Dojo, wonder boy!' He stepped back and bowed.     Lobsang shrugged, and bowed in return.     Lu-Tze took a few steps back. He closed his eyes for a moment, and then went through a series of simple moves, limbering up. Lobsang winced to hear the crackle of joints.     Around Lobsang there was a series of snapping noises, and for a moment he thought of the old sweeper's bones. But tiny hatches all over the curved wall were swinging open. He could hear whispers as people jostled for position. And by the sound of it, there were a great many people.     He extended his hands, and let himself rise gently in the air.     'I thought we said no tricks?' said Lu-Tze.     'Yes, Sweeper,' said Lobsang, poised in mid-air. 'And then I thought: never forget Rule One.'     'Aha! Well done. You've learned something!'     Lobsang drifted closer. 'You cannot believe the things that I have seen since last I saw you,' he said. 'Words cannot describe them. I have seen worlds nesting within worlds, like those dolls they carve in Uberwald. I have heard the music of the years. I know more than I can ever understand. But I do not know the Fifth Surprise. It is a trick, a conundrum... a test.'     'Everything is a test,' said Lu-Tze.     'Then show me the Fifth Surprise and I promise not to harm you.'     'You promise not to harm me?'     'I promise not to harm you,' Lobsang repeated solemnly.     'Fine. You only had to ask,' said Lu-Tze, smiling broadly.     'What? I asked before and you refused!'     'You only had to ask at the right time, wonder boy.'     'And is it the right time now?'     'It is written, "There's no time like the present,"' said Lu-Tze. 'Behold, the Fifth Surprise!'     He reached into his robe.     Lobsang floated closer.     The sweeper produced a cheap carnival mask. It was one of those that consisted of a fake pair of spectacles, glued above a big pink nose, and finished with a heavy black moustache.     He put it on and waggled his ears once or twice.     'Boo,' he said.     'What?' said Lobsang, bewildered.     'Boo,' Lu-Tze repeated. 'I never said it was a particularly imaginative surprise, did I?'     He waggled his ears again, and then waggled his eyebrows.     'Good, eh?' he said, and grinned.     Lobsang laughed. Lu-Tze grinned wider. Lobsang laughed louder, and lowered himself to the mat.     The blows came out of nowhere. They caught him in the stomach, on the back of his neck, in the small of his back and swept his legs from under him. He landed on his stomach, with Lu-Tze pinning him down in the Straddle of the Fish. The only way to get out of that was to dislocate your own shoulders.     There was a sort of collective sigh from the hidden watchers.     'Déjà-fu!'     'What?' said Lobsang, into the mat. 'You said none of the monks knew déjà-fu!'     'I never taught it to 'em, that's why!' said Lu-Tze. 'Promise not to harm me, would you? Thank you so very much! Submit?'     'You never told me you knew it!' Lu-Tze's knees, rammed into the secret pressure points, were turning Lobsang's arms into powerless lumps of flesh.     'I may be old but I'm not daft!' Lu-Tze shouted. 'You don't think I'd give away a trick like that, do you?'     'That's not fair-'     Lu-Tze leaned down until his mouth was an inch from Lobsang's ear.     'Didn't say "fair" on the box, lad. But you can win, you know. You could turn me into dust, just like that. How could I stop Time?'     'I can't do that!'     'You mean you won't, and we both know it. Submit?'     Lobsang could feel parts of his body trying to shut themselves down. His shoulders were on fire. I can discarnate, he thought. Yes, I can, I could turn him to dust with a thought. And lose. I'd walk out and he'd be dead and I'd have lost.     'Nothing to worry about, lad,' said Lu-Tze, calmly now. 'You just forgot Rule Nineteen. Submit?'     'Rule Nineteen?' said Lobsang, almost pushing himself off the mat until terrible pain forced him down again. 'What the hell is Rule Nineteen? Yes, yes, submit, submit!'     '"Remember Never to Forget Rule One",' said Lu-Tze. He released his grip. 'And always ask yourself: how come it was created in the first place, eh?'     Lu-Tze got to his feet, and went on: 'But you have performed well, all things considered, and therefore as your master I have no hesitation in recommending you for the yellow robe. Besides,' he lowered his voice to a whisper, 'everyone peeking in here has seen me beat Time and that's the sort of thing that'll look really good on my curriculum vitae, if you catch my meaning. Def'nitely give the o'l Rule One a fillip. Let me give you a hand up.'     He reached down.     Lobsang was about to take the hand when he hesitated. Lu-Tze grinned again, and gently pulled him upright.     'But only one of us can leave, Sweeper,' said Lobsang, rubbing his shoulders.     'Really?' said Lu-Tze. 'But playing the game changes the rules. I say the hell with it.'     The remains of the door were pushed aside by the hands of many monks. There was the sound of someone being hit with a rubber yak. 'Bikkit!'     '... and the abbot, I believe, is ready to present you with the robe,' said Lu-Tze. 'Don't make any comment if he dribbles on it, please.'     They left the dojo and, followed now by every soul in Oi Dong, headed for the long terrace.     It was, Lu-Tze reminisced later, an unusual ceremony. The abbot did not appear overawed, because babies generally aren't and will throw up over anyone. Besides, Lobsang might have been master of the gulfs of time, but the abbot was master of the valley, and therefore respect was a line that travelled in both directions.     But the handing over of the robe had caused a difficult moment.     Lobsang had refused it. It had been left to the chief acolyte to ask why, while the whispered current of surprise washed through the crowd.     'I am not worthy, sir.'     'Lu-Tze has declared that you have completed your apprenticeship, my lo- Lobsang Ludd.'     Lobsang bowed. 'Then I will take the broom and the robe of a sweeper, sir.'     This time the current was a tsunami. It crashed over the audience. Heads turned. There were gasps of shock, and one or two nervous laughs. And, from the lines of sweepers who had been allowed to pause in their tasks to watch the event, there was a watchful, intent silence.     The chief acolyte licked his suddenly dehydrated lips.     'But... but... you are the incarnation of Time...'     'In this valley, sir,' said Lobsang firmly, 'I am as worthy as a sweeper.'     The chief acolyte looked around, but there was no help anywhere. The other senior members of the monastery had no wish to share in the huge pink cloud of embarrassment. The abbot merely blew bubbles, and grinned the inward knowing grin of all babies everywhere.     'Do we have any... uh... do we present sweepers with... do we by any chance... ?' the acolyte mumbled.     Lu-Tze stepped up behind him. 'Can I be of any help, your acolytility?' he said, with a sort of mad keen subservience that was quite alien to his normal attitude.     'Lu-Tze? Ah...er...yes...er...'     'I could fetch a nearly new robe, sir, and the lad can have my old broom if you'll sign a chitty for me to get a new one from stores, sir,' said Lu-Tze, sweating helpfulness at every pore.     The chief acolyte, drowning well out of his depth, seized on this like a passing lifebelt.     'Oh, would you be so good, Lu-Tze? It is so kind of you...'     Lu-Tze vanished in a blur of helpful speed that, once again, quite surprised those who thought they knew him.     He reappeared with his broom and a robe made white and thin with frequent bashings on the stones by the river. He solemnly handed them over to the chief acolyte.     'Er, uh, thank you, er, is there a special ceremony for the, for the, er, for... er...' the man burbled.     'Very simple one, sir,' said Lu-Tze, still radiating eagerness. 'Wording is quite loose, sir, but generally we say, "This is your robe, look after it, it belongs to the monastery," sir, and then with the broom we say something like "Here's your broom, treat it well, it is your friend, you will be fined if you lose it, remember they do not grow on trees," sir.'     'Er, um, uh,' the chief acolyte murmured. 'And does the abbot-?'     'Oh no, the abbot would not make a presentation to a sweeper,' said Lobsang quickly.     'Lu-Tze, who does the, er, does, uh, does the...'     'It's generally done by a senior sweeper, your acolytility.'     'Oh? And, er, by some happy chance, er, do you happen to be-?'     Lu-Tze bobbed a bow. 'Oh, yes, sir.'     To the chief acolyte, still floundering in the flood of the turning tide, this was as welcome as the imminent prospect of dry land. He beamed manically.     'I wonder, I wonder, I wonder, then, if you would be so kind, er, then, er, to-'     'Happy to, sir.' Lu-Tze swung round. 'Right now, sir?'     'Oh, please, yes!'     'Right you are. Step forward, Lobsang Ludd!'     'Yes, Sweeper!'     Lu-Tze held out the worn robe and the elderly broom. 'Broom! Robe! Do not lose them, we are not made of money!' he announced.     'I thank you for them,' said Lobsang. I am honoured.'     Lobsang bowed. Lu-Tze bowed. With their heads close together and at the same height, Lu-Tze hissed, 'Very surprising.'     'Thank you.'     'Nicely mythic, the whole thing, definitely one for the scrolls, but bordering on smug. Do not try it again.'     'Right.'     They both stood up. 'And, er, what happens now?' said the chief acolyte. He was a broken man, and he knew it. Nothing was going to be the same after this.     'Nothing, really,' said Lu-Tze. 'Sweepers get on with sweeping. You take that side, lad, and I'll take this.'     'But he is Time!' said the chief acolyte. 'The son of Wen! There is so much we have to ask!'     'There is so much I will not tell,' said Lobsang, smiling. The abbot leaned forward and dribbled into the chief acolyte's ear.     He gave up. 'Of course, it is not up to us to question you,' he said, backing away.     'No,' said Lobsang. 'It is not. I suggest you all get on with your very important work, because this plaza is going to need all my attention.'     There were frantic hand signals amongst the senior monks and, gradually, reluctantly, the monastery staff moved away.     'They'll be watching us from every place they can hide,' mumbled Lu-Tze, when the sweepers were alone.     'Oh, yes,' said Lobsang.     'So, how are you, then?'     'Very well. And my mother is happy, and she will retire with my father.'     'What? A cottage in the country, that sort of thing?'     'Not quite. Similar, though.'     There was no sound for a while but the brushing of two brooms. Then Lobsang said, 'I'm aware, Lu-Tze, that it is usual for an apprentice to give a small gift or token to his master when he finishes his apprenticeship.'     'Possibly,' said Lu-Tze, straightening up. 'But I don't need anything. I've got my mat, my bowl and my Way.'     'Every man has something he desires,' said Lobsang.     'Hah! Got you there, then, wonder boy. I'm eight hundred years old. I've run through all my desires long ago.'     'Oh dear. That is a shame. I hoped I could find something.' Now Lobsang straightened up and swung his broom onto his shoulder.     'In any case, I must leave,' he said. 'There is so much still to do.'     'I'm sure there is,' said Lu-Tze. 'I'm sure there is. There's the whole stretch under the trees, for one thing. And while we're on the subject, wonder boy, did you let that witch have her broomstick back?'     Lobsang nodded. 'Let us just say... I put things back. It's a lot newer than it was, too.'     'Hah!' said Lu-Tze, sweeping up a few more petals. 'Just like that. Just like that. So easily does a thief of time repay his debts!'     Lobsang must have caught the rebuke in the tone. He stared down at his feet. 'Well, perhaps not all of them, I admit,' he said.     'Oh?' said Lu-Tze, still apparently fascinated by the end of his own broom.     'But when you have to save a world you cannot think of one person, you see, because one person is a part of that world,' Lobsang went on.     'Really?' said the sweeper. 'You think so? You've been talking to some very strange people, my lad.'     'But now I have time,' said Lobsang earnestly. 'And I hope she'll understand.'     'It's amazing what a lady will understand, if you find the right way of putting it,' said Lu-Tze. 'Best of luck, lad. You didn't do so bad, on the whole. And is it not written, "There's no time like the present"?'     Lobsang smiled at him, and vanished.     Lu-Tze went back to his sweeping. After a while, he smiled at a memory. An apprentice gives a gift to the master, eh? As if Lu-Tze could want anything that Time could give him...     And he stopped, and looked up, and laughed out loud. Overhead, swelling as he watched, the cherries were ripening.           Tick     In some place that had not existed before, and only existed now for this very purpose, stood a large, gleaming vat.     'Ten thousand gallons of delicate fondant sugar cream infused with essence of violet and stirred into dark chocolate,' said Chaos. 'There are also strata of hazelnut praline in rich butter cream, and areas of soft caramel for that special touch of delight.'     SO... YOU'RE SAYING THAT THIS VAT COULD EXIST SOMEWHERE IN A TRULY INFINITE EVERYWHERE AND THEREFORE IT CAN EXIST HERE? said Death.     'Indeed,' said Chaos.     BUT IT NO LONGER EXISTS IN THE PLACE WHERE IT SHOULD EXIST.     'No. It should, now, exist here. The maths is easy,' said Chaos.     AH? WELL, MATHS, said Death dismissively. GENERALLY I NEVER GET MUCH FURTHER THAN SUBTRACTION.     'In any case, chocolate is hardly a rare commodity,' said Chaos. 'There are planets covered in the stuff.'     REALLY?     'Indeed.'     IT MIGHT BE BEST, said Death, IF NEWS LIKE THAT DID NOT GET ABOUT. He walked back to where Unity was waiting in the darkness.     YOU DO NOT NEED TO DO THIS, he said.     'What else is there?' said Unity. 'I have betrayed my own kind. And I am hideously insane. I can never be at home anywhere. And staying here would be an agony.'     She stared into the chocolate abyss. A dusting of sugar sparkled on its surface.     Then she slipped out of her dress. To her amazement she felt embarrassed about doing so, but still drew herself up haughtily.     'Spoon,' she commanded, and held out her right hand imperiously. Chaos gave a silver ladle a final, theatrical polish and passed it to her.     'Goodbye,' said Unity. 'Do pass on my best wishes to your granddaughter.'     She walked a few steps back, turned, broke into a run, and took off into a perfect swallow dive.     The chocolate closed over her with barely a sound. Then the two watchers waited until the fat, lazy ripples had died away.     'Now there was a lady with style,' said Chaos. 'What a waste.'     YES. I THOUGHT SO.     'Well, it's been fun... up to that point, anyway. And now I must be off,' said Chaos.     YOU'RE CONTINUING WITH THE MILK ROUND?     'People rely on me.'     Death looked impressed. IT'S GOING TO BE... INTERESTING TO HAVE YOU BACK, he said.     'Yeah. It is,' said Chaos. 'You're not coming?'     I'M GOING TO WAIT HERE FOR A WHILE.     'Why?'     JUST IN CASE.     'Ah.'     YES.     It was some minutes later that Death reached into his robe and pulled out a lifetimer that was small and light enough to have been designed for a doll. He turned round.     'But... I died,' said the shade of Unity.     YES, said Death. THIS IS THE NEXT PART...           Tick     Emma Robertson sat in the classroom with wrinkled brow, chewing on her pencil. Then, rather slowly but with the air of one imparting great secrets, she set to work.     We went to Lanker where there are witches they are kind they grow erbs. We met this which she was very jole and sang us a snog abot a hedghog it had dificut words. Jason try to kick her cat it chase him up a tre. I know a lot about wiches now they do not have warts they do not eat you they are just like your grane except your grane does not know difult words.     At her high desk Susan relaxed. There was nothing like a classroom of bent heads. A good teacher used whatever materials there were to hand, and taking the class to visit Mrs Ogg was an education in herself. Two educations.     A classroom going well had its own smell: a hint of pencil shavings, poster paints, long-dead stick insect, glue and, of course, the faint aroma of Billy.     There had been an uneasy meeting with her grandfather. She'd raged that he hadn't told her things. And he'd said of course he hadn't. If you told humans what the future held, it wouldn't. That made sense. Of course it made sense. It was good logic. The trouble was that Susan was only mostly logical. And so, now, things were back in that uneasy, rather cool state where they spent most of their time, in the tiny little family that ran on dysfunctionality.     Maybe, she thought, that was a normal family state. When push came to shove - thank you, Mrs Ogg, she'd always remember that phrase now - they'd rely on each other automatically, without a thought. Apart from that, they kept out of one another's way.     She hadn't seen the Death of Rats lately. It was too much to hope that he was dead. In any case, it hadn't slowed him down so far. That made her think wistfully about the contents of her desk. Susan was very strict about eating in class and took the view that, if there were rules, then they applied to everyone, even her. Otherwise they were merely tyranny. But maybe rules were there to make you think before you broke them.     There was still half a box of Higgs & Meakins' cheapest assortment tucked in there amongst the books and papers.     Opening the lid carefully and slipping her hand in was easy, and so was the maintenance of a suitably teachery face while she did so. Questing fingers found a chocolate in the nest of empty paper cups, and told her that it was a damn nougat. But she was resolute. Life was tough. Sometimes you got nougat.     Then she briskly picked up the keys and walked to the Stationery Cupboard with what she hoped was the purposeful step of someone about to check on the supply of pencils. After all, you never knew, with pencils. They needed watching.     The door clicked behind her, leaving only the dim light through the transom. She put the chocolate in her mouth and shut her eyes.     A faint, cardboardy sound made her open them. The lids were gently lifting on the boxes of stars.     They spilled out and whirled up into the shadows of the cupboard, brilliant against the darkness, a galaxy in miniature, gently spinning.     Susan watched them for a while, and then said, 'All right, you have my full attention, whoever you are.'     At least, that was what she meant to say. The peculiar stickiness of the nougat caused it to come out as: 'Allite, you ot my fo' a'nen'on, oover ooah.' Damn!     The stars spiralled around her head, and the cupboard's interior darkened into interstellar black.     'If iss is oo, Def o' Raffs-' she began.     'It's me,' said Lobsang.           Tick     Even with nougat, you can have a perfect moment.           The End                   [1] Except in very small universes     [BACK]             [2] Mostly involving big, big beachballs.     [BACK]             [3] Quite an overrated activity.     [BACK]             [4] An edge witch is one who makes her living on the edges, in that moment when boundary conditions apply - between life and death, light and dark, good and evil and, most dangerously of all, today and tomorrow.     [BACK]             [5] But they still use forks, or, at least, the idea of forks. There may, as the philosopher says, be no spoon, although this begs the question of why there is the idea of soup.     [BACK]             [6] And the story continues: The novice who had protested that it was only the shrine of a sweeper ran away from the temple, the student who said nothing remained a sweeper for the rest of his life, and the student who had seen the inevitable shape of the story went, after much agonizing and several months of meticulous sweeping, to Lu-Tze and knelt and asked to be shown the Right Way. Whereupon the Sweeper took him to the dojo of the Tenth Djim. with its terrible multi-bladed fighting machines and its fearsome serrated weapons such as the clong-clong and the uppsi. The story runs that the Sweeper then opened a cupboard at the back of the dojo and produced a broom and spake thusly: 'One hand here and the other here, understand? People never get it right. Use good, even strokes and let the broom do most of the work. Never try to sweep up a big pile, you'll end up sweeping every bit of dust twice. Use your dustpan wisely, and remember: a small brush for the corners.'     [BACK]             [7] One reason for this was the club food. At his club, a gentleman could find the kind of food he'd got used to at school, like spotted dick, jam roly-poly and that perennial favourite, stodge and custard. Vitamins are eaten by wives.     [BACK]             [8] Which is much harder than seeing things that aren't there. Everyone does that.     [BACK]             [9] This is true. A chocolate you did not want to eat does not count as chocolate. This discovery is from the same branch of culinary physics that determined that food eaten while walking contains no calories.     [BACK]             [10] Not 'Did' anything, just 'Did'. Some things were Done, and some things were Not Done. And the things that were Done, Igors Did.     [BACK]             [11] Igors were loyal, but they were not stupid. A job was a job. When an employer had no further use for your services, for example because he'd just been staked through the heart by a crowd of angry villagers, it was time to move on before they decided that you ought to be on the next stake. An Igor soon learned a secret way out of any castle and where to stash an overnight bag. In the words of one of the founding Igors: 'We belong dead? Ecthcuthe me? Where doeth it thay..we"?     [BACK]             [12] And it has to be said that there was nothing intrinsically evil about Igors themselves. They just didn.t pass judgement on other people. Admittedly, that was because if you worked for werewolves and vampires and people who looked on surgery as modern art rather than science, passing judgement would mean you'd never have time to get anything done.     [BACK]             [13] Every society needs a cry like that, but only in a very few do they come out with the complete, unvarnished version, which is 'Remember-the-Atrocity-Committed-Against-Us-Last-Time-That-Will-Excuse-the-Atrocity-That-We're-About-to-Commit-Today! And So On! Hurrah!'     [BACK]             [14] The yeti of the Ramtops, where the Discworld's magical field is so intense that it is part of the very landscape, are one of the few creatures to utilize control of personal time for genetic advantage. The result is a kind of physical premonition - you find out what is going to happen next by allowing it to happen. Faced with danger, or any kind of task that involves risk of death, a yeti will save its life up to that point and then proceed with all due caution, yet in the comfortable knowledge that should everything go pancake-shaped, it will wake up at the point where it saved itself with, and this is the important part, knowledge of the events which have just happened but which will not now happen because it's not going to be such a damn fool next time. This is not quite the paradox it appears because, after it has taken place, it hasn't happened. All that actually remains is a memory in the yeti's head, which merely turns out to be a remarkably accurate premonition. The little eddies in time caused by all this are just lost in the noise of all the kinks, dips and knots put in time by every other living creature.     [BACK]             [15] But not tasteful.     [BACK]             [16] Teaching small children for any length of time can do this to a vocabulary.     [BACK]             [17] Up to ten dollars a pound, usually.     [BACK]             [18] If you live in a country where the tradition calls for mayonnaise, just don't ask. Just don't.   
Witches Abroad - Terry Pratchett	----	Witches Abroad Terry Pratchett Witches Abroad A Discworld Novel This is the Discworld, which travels through space on the back of four elephants which themselves stand on the shell of Great A’Tuin, the sky turtle. Once upon a time such a universe was considered unusual and, possibly, impossible. But then . . . it used to be so simple, once upon a time. Because the universe was full of ignorance all around and the scientist panned through it like a prospector crouched over a mountain stream, looking for the gold of knowledge among the gravel of unreason, the sand of uncertainty and the little whiskery eight-legged swimming things of superstition. Occasionally he would straighten up and say things like ‘Hurrah, I’ve discovered Boyle’s Third Law.” And everyone knew where they stood. But the trouble was that ignorance became more interesting, especially big fascinating ignorance about huge and important things like matter and creation, and people stopped patiently building their little houses of rational sticks in the chaos of the universe and started getting interested in the chaos itself - partly because it was a lot easier to be an expert on chaos, but mostly because it made really good patterns that you could put on a t-shirt. And instead of getting on with proper science scientists suddenly went around saying how impossible it was to know anything, and that there wasn’t really anything you could call reality to know anything about, and how all this was tremendously exciting, and incidentally did you know there were possibly all these little universes all over the place but no-one can see them because they are all curved in on themselves? Incidentally, don’t you think this is a rather good t-shirt? Compared to all this, a large turtle with a world on its back is practically mundane. At least it doesn’t pretend it doesn’t exist, and no-one on the Discworld ever tried to prove it didn’t exist in case they turned out to be right and found themselves suddenly floating in empty space. This is because the Discworld exists right on the edge of reality. The least little things can break through to the other side. So, on the Discworld, people take things seriously. Like stories. Because stories are important. People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it’s the other way around. Stories exist independently of their players. If you know that, the knowledge is power. Stories, great flapping ribbons of shaped space-time, have been blowing and uncoiling around the universe since the beginning of time. And they have evolved. The weakest have died and the strongest have survived and they have grown fat on the retelling . . . stories, twisting and blowing through the darkness. And their very existence overlays a faint but insistent pattern on the chaos that is history. Stories etch grooves deep enough for people to follow in the same way that water follows certain paths down a mountainside. And every time fresh actors tread the path of the story, the groove runs deeper. This is called the theory of narrative causality and it means that a story, once started, takes a shape. It picks up all the vibrations of all the other workings of that story that have ever been. This is why history keeps on repeating all the time. So a thousand heroes have stolen fire from the gods. A thousand wolves have eaten grandmother, a thousand princesses have been kissed. A million unknowing actors have moved, unknowing, through the pathways of story. It is now impossible for the third and youngest son of any king, if he should embark on a quest which has so far claimed his older brothers, not to succeed. Stories don’t care who takes part in them. All that matters is that the story gets told, that the story repeats. Or, if you prefer to think of it like this: stories are a parasitical life form, warping lives in the service only of the story itself. It takes a special kind of person to fight back, and become the bicarbonate of history. Once upon a time . . . Grey hands gripped the hammer and swung it, striking the post so hard that it sank a foot into the soft earth. Two more blows and it was fixed immovably. From the trees around the clearing the snakes and birds watched silently. In the swamp the alligators drifted like patches of bad-assed water. Grey hands took up the crosspiece and fixed it in place, tying it with creepers, pulling them so tight that they creaked. She watched him. And then she took up a fragment of mirror and tied it to the top of the post. “The coat,” she said. He took up the coat and fitted it over the crosspiece. The pole wasn’t long enough, so that the last few inches of sleeve draped emptily. “And the hat,” she said. It was tall, and round, and black. It glistened. The piece of mirror gleamed between the darkness of the hat and the coat. “Will it work?” he said. “Yes,” she said. “Even mirrors have their reflection. We got to fight mirrors with mirrors.” She glared up through the trees to a slim white tower in the distance. “We’ve got to find her reflection.” “It’ll have to reach out a long way, then.” “Yes. We need all the help we can get.” She looked around the clearing. She had called upon Mister Safe Way, Lady Bon Anna, Hotaloga Andrews and Stride Wide Man. They probably weren’t very good gods. But they were the best she’d been able to make. This is a story about stories. Or what it really means to be a fairy godmother. But it’s also, particularly, about reflections and mirrors. All across the multiverse there are backward tribes who distrust mirrors and images because, they say, they steal a bit of a person’s soul and there’s only so much of a person to go around. And the people who wear more clothes say this is just superstition, despite the fact that other people who spend their lives appearing in images of one sort or another seem to develop a thin quality. It’s put down to over-work and, tellingly, over-exposure instead. Just superstition. But a superstition doesn’t have to be wrong. A mirror can suck up a piece of soul. A mirror can contain the reflection of the whole universe, a whole skyful of stars in a piece of silvered glass no thicker than a breath. Know about mirrors and you nearly know everything. Look into the mirror . . . . . . further . . . . . . to an orange light on a cold mountaintop, thousands of miles from the vegetable warmth of that swamp . . . Local people called it the Bear Mountain. This was because it was a bare mountain, not because it had a lot of bears on it. This caused a certain amount of profitable confusion, though; people often strode into the nearest village with heavy duty crossbows, traps and nets and called haughtily for native guides to lead them to the bears. Since everyone locally was making quite a good living out of this, what with the sale of guide books, maps of bear caves, ornamental cuckoo-clocks with bears on them, bear walking-sticks and cakes baked in the shape of a bear, somehow no-one had time to go and correct the spelling. It was about as bare as a mountain could be. Most of the trees gave out about halfway to the top, only a few pines hanging on to give an effect very similar to the couple of pathetic strands teased across his scalp by a baldie who won’t own up. It was a place where witches met. Tonight a fire gleamed on the very crest of the hill. Dark figures moved in the flickering light. The moon coasted across a lacework of clouds. Finally, a tall, pointy-hatted figure said, “You mean everyone brought potato salad?” There was one Ramtop witch who was not attending the sabbat. Witches like a night out as much as anyone else but, in this case, she had a more pressing appointment. And it wasn’t the kind of appointment you can put off easily. Desiderata Hollow was making her will. When Desiderata Hollow was a girl, her grandmother had given her four important pieces of advice to guide her young footsteps on the unexpectedly twisting pathway of life. They were: Never trust a dog with orange eyebrows, Always get the young man’s name and address, Never get between two mirrors, And always wear completely clean underwear every day because you never knew when you were going to be knocked down and killed by a runaway horse and if people found you had unsatisfactory underwear on, you’d die of shame. And then Desiderata grew up to become a witch. And one of the minor benefits of being a witch is that you know exactly when you’re going to die and can wear what underwear you like. That had been eighty years earlier, when the idea of knowing exactly when you were going to die had seemed quite attractive because secretly, of course, you knew you were going to live forever. That was then. And this was now. Forever didn’t seem to last as long these days as once it did. Another log crumbled to ash in the fireplace. Desiderata hadn’t bothered to order any fuel for the winter. Not much point, really. And then, of course, there was this other thing . . . She’d wrapped it up carefully into a long, slim package. Now she folded up the letter, addressed it, and pushed it under the string. Job done. She looked up. Desiderata had been blind for thirty years, but this hadn’t been a problem. She’d always been blessed, if that was the word, with second sight. So when the ordinary eyes gave out you just trained yourself to see into the present, which anyway was easier than the future. And since the eyeball of the occult didn’t depend on light, you saved on candles. There was always a silver lining, if you knew where to look. In a manner of speaking. There was a mirror on the wall in front of her. The face in it was not her own, which was round and pink. It was the face of a woman who was used to giving orders. Desiderata wasn’t the sort to give orders. Quite the reverse, in fact. The woman said, “You are dying, Desiderata.” “I am that, too.” “You’ve grown old. Your sort always do. Your power is nearly gone.” “That’s a fact, Lilith,” said Desiderata mildly. “So your protection is withdrawing from her.” “ ‘Fraid so,” said Desiderata. “So now it’s just me and the evil swamp woman. And I will win.” “That’s how it seems, I’m afraid.” “You should have found a successor.” “Never had the time. I’m not the planning sort, you know.” The face in the mirror got closer, as if the figure had moved a little nearer to its side of the mirror. “You’ve lost, Desiderata Hollow.” “So it goes.” Desiderata got to her feet, a little unsteadily, and picked up a cloth. The figure seemed to be getting angry. It clearly felt that people who had lost ought to look downcast, and not as if they were enjoying a joke at your expense. “Don’t you understand what losing means?” “Some people are very clear about that,” said Desiderata. “Goodbye, m’lady.” She hung the cloth over the mirror. There was an angry intake of breath, and then silence. Desiderata stood as if lost in thought. Then she raised her head, and said: “Kettle boiled just now. Would you like a cup of tea?” NO, THANK YOU, said a voice right behind her. “How long have you been waiting?” FOREVER. “Not keeping you, am I?” IT’S A QUIET NIGHT. “I’m making a cup of tea. I think there’s one biscuit left.” NO, THANK YOU. “If you feel peckish, it’s in the jar on the mantelpiece. That’s genuine Klatchian pottery, you know. Made by a genuine Klatchian craftsman. From Klatch,” she added. INDEED? “I used to get about a lot in my younger days.” YES? “Great times.” Desiderata poked the fire. “It was the job, you see. Of course, I expect it’s very much the same for you.” YES. “I never knew when I was going to be called out. Well, of course you’d know about that, wouldn’t you. Kitchens, mainly. It always seemed to be kitchens. Balls sometimes, but generally it was kitchens.” She picked up the kettle and poured the boiling water into the teapot on the hearth. INDEED. “I used to grant their wishes.” Death looked puzzled. WHAT? YOU MEAN LIKE . . . FITTED CUPBOARDS? NEW SINKS? THAT KIND OF THING? “No, no. The people.” Desiderata sighed. “It’s a big responsibility, fairy godmothering. Knowing when to stop, I mean. People whose wishes get granted often don’t turn out to be very nice people. So should you give them what they want - or what they need?” Death nodded politely. From his point of view, people got what they were given. “Like this Genua thing - “ Desiderata began. Death looked up sharply. GENUA? “You know it? Well, of course you would.” I . . . KNOW EVERYWHERE, OF COURSE. Desiderata’s expression softened. Her inner eyes were looking elsewhere. “There were two of us. Godmothers go in twos, you know. Me and Lady Lilith? There’s a lot of power in godmothering. It’s like being part of history. Anyway, the girl was born, out of wedlock but none the worse for that, it wasn’t as if they couldn’t have married, they just never got round to it. . . and Lilith wished for her to have beauty and power and marry a prince. Hah! And she’s been working on that ever since. What could I do? You can’t argue with wishes like that. Lilith knows the power of a story. I’ve done the best I could, but Lilith’s got the power. I hear she runs the city now. Changing a whole country just to make a story work! And now it’s too late anyway. For me. So I’m handing on the responsibility. That’s how it goes, with fairy godmothering. No-one ever wants to be a fairy godmother. Except Lilith, of course. Got a bee in her bonnet about it. So I’m sending someone else. I may have left things too late.” Desiderata was a kindly soul. Fairy godmothers develop a very deep understanding about human nature, which makes the good ones kind and the bad ones powerful. She was not someone to use extreme language, but it was possible to be sure that when she deployed a mild term like ‘a bee in her bonnet’ she was using it to define someone whom she believed to be several miles over the madness horizon and accelerating. She poured out the tea. “That’s the trouble with second sight,” she said. “You can see what’s happenin’, but you don’t know what it means. I’ve seen the future. There’s a coach made out of a pumpkin. And that’s impossible. And there’s coachmen made out of mice, which is unlikely. And there’s a clock striking midnight, and something about a glass slipper. And it’s all going to happen. Because that’s how stories have to work. And then I thought: I knows some people who make stories work their way.” She sighed again. “Wish I was going to Genua,” she said. “I could do with the warmth. And it’s Fat Tuesday coming up. Always went to Genua for Fat Tuesday in the old days.” There was an expectant silence. Then Death said, YOU SURELY ARE NOT ASKING ME TO GRANT A WISH ? “Hah! No-one grants a fairy godmother’s wishes.” Desiderata had that inward look again, her voice talking to herself. “See? I got to get the three of them to Genua. Got to get ‘em there because I’ve seen ‘em there. Got to be all three. And that ain’t easy, with people like them. Got to use headology. Got to make ‘em send ‘emselves. Tell Esme Weatherwax she’s got to go somewhere and she won’t go out of contrariness, so tell her she’s not to go and she’ll run there over broken glass. That’s the thing about the Weatherwaxes, see. They don’t know how to be beaten.” Something seemed to strike her as funny. “But one of ‘em’s going to have to learn.” Death said nothing. From where he sat, Desiderata reflected, losing was something that everyone learned. She drained her tea. Then she stood up, put on her pointy hat with a certain amount of ceremony, and hobbled out of the back door. There was a deep trench dug under the trees a little way from the house, down into which someone had thoughtfully put a short ladder. She climbed in and, with some difficulty, heaved the ladder on to the leaves. Then she lay down. She sat up. “Mr Chert the troll down at the sawmill does a very good deal on coffins, if you don’t mind pine.” I SHALL DEFINITELY BEAR IT IN MIND. “I got Hurker the poacher to dig the hole out for me,” she said conversationally, “and he’s goin’ to come along and fill it in on his way home. I believe in being neat. Take it away, maestro.” WHAT? OH. A FIGURE OF SPEECH. He raised his scythe. Desiderata Hollow went to her rest. “Well,” she said, “that was easy. What happens now?” And this is Genua. The magical kingdom. The diamond city. The fortunate country. In the centre of the city a woman stood between two mirrors, watching herself reflected all the way to infinity. The mirrors were themselves in the centre of an octagon of mirrors, open to the sky on the highest tower of the palace. There were so many reflections, in fact, that it was only with extreme difficulty that you could tell where the mirrors ended and the real person began. Her name was Lady Lilith de Tempscire, although she had answered to many others in the course of a long and eventful life. And that was something you learned to do early on, she’d found. If you wanted to get anywhere in this world - and she’d decided, right at the start, that she wanted to get as far as it was possible to go - you wore names lightly, and you took power anywhere you found it. She had buried three husbands, and at least two of them had been already dead. And you moved around a lot. Because most people didn’t move around much. Change countries and your name and, if you had the right manner, the world was your mollusc. For example, she’d had to go a mere hundred miles to become a Lady. She’d go to any lengths now . . . The two main mirrors were set almost, but not quite, facing one another, so that Lilith could see over her shoulder and watch her images curve away around the universe inside the mirror. She could feel herself pouring into herself, multiplying itself via the endless reflections. When Lilith sighed and strode out from the Space between the mirrors the effect was startling. Images of Lilith hung in the air behind her for a moment, like three-dimensional shadows, before fading. So . . . Desiderata was dying. Interfering old baggage. She deserved death. She’d never understood the kind of power she’d had. She was one of those people afraid to do good for fear of doing harm, who took it all so seriously that they’d constipate themselves with moral anguish before granting the wish of a single ant. Lilith looked down and out over the city. Well, there were no barriers now. The stupid voodoo woman in the swamp was a mere distraction, with no understanding. Nothing stood in the way of what Lilith liked more than anything else. A happy ending. Up on the mountain, the sabbat had settled down a bit. Artists and writers have always had a rather exaggerated idea about what goes on at a witches’ sabbat. This comes from spending too much time in small rooms with the curtains drawn, instead of getting out in the healthy fresh air. For example, there’s the dancing around naked. In the average temperate climate there are very few nights when anyone would dance around at midnight with no clothes on, quite apart from the question of stones, thistles, and sudden hedgehogs. Then there’s all that business with goat-headed gods. Most witches don’t believe in gods. They know that the gods exist, of course. They even deal with them occasionally. But they don’t believe in them. They know them too well. It would be like believing in the postman. And there’s the food and drink - the bits of reptile and so on. In fact, witches don’t go for that sort of thing. The worst you can say about the eating habits of the older type of witch is that they tend to like ginger biscuits dipped in tea with so much sugar in it that the spoon won’t move and will drink it out of the saucer if they think it’s too hot. And do so with appreciative noises more generally associated with the cheaper type of plumbing system. Legs of toad and so on might be better than this. Then there’s the mystic ointments. By sheer luck, the artists and writers are on firmer ground here. Most witches are elderly, which is when ointments start to have an attraction, and at least two of those present tonight were wearing Granny Weatherwax’s famous goose-grease-and-sage chest liniment. This didn’t make you fly and see visions, but it did prevent colds, if only because the distressing smell that developed around about the second week kept everyone else so far away you couldn’t catch anything from them. And finally there’s sabbats themselves. Your average witch is not, by nature, a social animal as far as other witches are concerned. There’s a conflict of dominant personalities. There’s a group of ringleaders without a ring. There’s the basic unwritten rule of witchcraft, which is “Don’t do what you will, do what I say.” The natural size of a coven is one. Witches only get together when they can’t avoid it. Like now. The conversation, given Desiderata’s absence, had naturally turned to the increasing shortage of witches. “What, no-one?” said Granny Weatherwax. “No-one,” said Gammer Brevis. “I call that terrible,” said Granny. “That’s disgustin’.” “Eh?” said Old Mother Dismass. “She calls it disgusting!” shouted Gammer Brevis. “Eh?” “There’s no girl to put forward! To take Desiderata’s place!” “Oh.” The implications of this sank in. “If anyone doesn’t want their crusts I’ll ‘ave ‘em,” said Nanny Ogg. “We never had this sort of thing in my young days,” said Granny. “There was a dozen witches this side of the mountain alone. Of course, that was before all this” - she made a face - “making your own entertainment. There’s far too much of this making your own entertainment these days. We never made our own entertainment when I was a girl. We never had time.” “Tempers fuggit,” said Nanny Ogg. “What?” “Tempers fuggit. Means that was then and this is now,” said Nanny. “I don’t need no-one to tell me that, Gytha Ogg. I know when now is.” “You got to move with the times.” “I don’t see why. Don’t see why we - “ “So I reckon we got to shift the boundaries again,” said Gammer Brevis. “Can’t do that,” said Granny Weatherwax promptly. “I’m doing four villages already. The broomstick hardly has time to cool down.” “Well, with Mother Hollow passing on, we’re definitely short handed,” said Gammer Brevis. “I know she didn’t do a lot, what with her other work, but she was there. That’s what it’s all about. Being there. There’s got to be a local witch.” The four witches stared gloomily at the fire. Well, three of them did. Nanny Ogg, who tended to look on the cheerful side, made toast. “They’ve got a wizard in, down in Creel Springs,” said Gammer Brevis. “There wasn’t anyone to take over when old Granny Hopliss passed on, so they sent off to Ankh-Morpork for a wizard. An actual wizard. With a staff. He’s got a shop there and everything, with a brass sign on the door. It says “Wizard”.” The witches sighed. “Mrs Singe passed on,” said Gammer Brevis. “And Gammer Peavey passed on.” “Did she? Old Mabel Peavey?” said Nanny Ogg, through a shower of crumbs. “How old was she?” “One hundred and nineteen,” said Gammer Brevis. “I said to her, “You don’t want to go climbing mountains at your age” but she wouldn’t listen.” “Some people are like that,” said Granny. “Stubborn as mules. Tell them they mustn’t do something and they won’t stop till they’ve tried it.” “I actually heard her very last words,” said Gammer. “What did she say?” said Granny. “As I recall, “oh bugger”,” said Gammer. “It’s the way she would have wanted to go,” said Nanny Ogg. The other witches nodded. “You know . . . we could be looking at the end of witchcraft in these parts,” said Gammer Brevis. They stared at the fire again. “I don’t ‘spect anyone’s brought any marshmallows?” said Nanny Ogg, hopefully. Granny Weatherwax looked at her sister witches. Gammer Brevis she couldn’t stand; the old woman taught school on the other side of the mountain, and had a nasty habit of being reasonable when provoked. And Old Mother Dismass was possibly the most useless sibyl in the history of oracular revelation. And Granny really couldn’t be having at all with Nanny Ogg, who was her best friend. “What about young Magrat?” said Old Mother Dismass innocently. “Her patch runs right alongside Desiderata’s. Maybe she could take on a bit extra?” Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg exchanged glances. “She’s gone funny in the head,” said Granny. “Now, come on, Esme,” said Nanny Ogg. “ “Well, I call it funny,” said Granny. “You can’t tell me that saying all that stuff about relatives isn’t going funny in the head.” “She didn’t say that,” said Nanny. “She said she wanted to relate to herself.” “That’s what I said,” said Granny Weatherwax. “I told her: Simplicity Garlick was your mother, Araminta Garlick was your granny. Yolande Garlick is your aunt and you’re your . , . you’re your me.” She sat back with the satisfied look of someone who has solved everything anyone could ever want to know about a personal identity crisis. “She wouldn’t listen,” she added. Gammer Brevis wrinkled her forehead. “Magrat?” she said. She tried to get a mental picture of the Ramtops’ youngest witch and recalled - well, not a face, just a slightly watery-eyed expression of hopeless goodwill wedged between a body like a maypole and hair like a haystack after a gale. A relentless doer of good works. A worrier. The kind of person who rescued small lost baby birds and cried when they died, which is the function kind old Mother Nature usually reserves for small lost baby birds. “Doesn’t sound like her,” she said. “And she said she wanted to be more self-assertive,” said Granny. “Nothing wrong with being self-assertive,” said Nanny. “Self-asserting’s what witching’s all about.” “I never said there was anything wrong with it,” said Granny. “I told her there was nothing wrong with it. You can be as self-assertive as you like, I said, just so long as you do what you’re told.” “Rub this on and it’ll clear up in a week or two,” said Old Mother Dismass. The other three witches watched her expectantly, in case there was going to be anything else. It became clear that there wasn’t. “And she’s running - what’s that she’s running, Gytha?” said Granny. • “Self-defence classes,” said Nanny. “But she’s a witch,” Gammer Brevis pointed out. “I told her that,” said Granny Weatherwax, who had walked nightly without fear in the bandit-haunted forests of the mountains all her life in the certain knowledge that the darkness held nothing more terrible than she was. “She said that wasn’t the point. Wasn’t the point. That’s what she said.” “No-one goes to them, anyway,” said Nanny Ogg. “I thought she was going to get married to the king,” said Gammer Brevis. “Everyone did,” said Nanny. “But you know Magrat. She tends to be open to Ideas. Now she says she refuses to be a sex object.” They all thought about this. Finally Gammer Brevis said, slowly, in the manner of one surfacing from the depths of fascinated cogitation, “But she’s never been a sex object.” “I’m pleased to say I don’t even know what a sex object is,” said Granny Weatherwax firmly. “I do,” said Nanny Ogg. They looked at her. “Our Shane brought one home from foreign parts once.” They carried on looking at her. “It was brown and fat and had beads on and a face and two holes for the string.” This didn’t seem to avert their gaze. “Well, that’s what he said it was,” said Nanny. “I think you’re talking about a fertility idol,” said Gammer Brevis helpfully. Granny shook her head. “Doesn’t sound much like Magrat to me - “ she began. “You can’t tell me that’s worth tuppence,” said Old Mother Dismass, from whatever moment of time she was currently occupying. No-one was ever quite sure which it was. It was an occupational hazard for those gifted with second sight. The human mind isn’t really designed to be sent rocketing backwards and forwards along the great freeway of time and can become, as it were, detached from its anchorage, seeing randomly into the past and the future and only occasionally into the present. Old Mother Dismass was temporally unfocused. This meant that if you spoke to her in August she was probably listening to you in March. It was best just to say something now and hope she’d pick it up next time her mind was passing through. Granny waved her hands experimentally in front of Old Mother Dismass’s unseeing eyes. “She’s gone again,” she said. “Well, if Magrat can’t take it on there’s Millie Hopgood from over Slice way,” said Gammer Brevis. “She’s a hardworking girl. Mind you, she’s got a worse squint than Magrat.” “Nothing wrong with that. A squint looks good on a witch,” said Granny Weatherwax. “But you have to know how to use it,” said Nanny Ogg. “Old Gertie Simmons used to have a squint and she was always putting the evil influence on the end of her own nose. We can’t have people thinkin’ that if you upsets a witch she curses and mutters and then her own nose drops off.” They all stared at the fire again. “I suppose Desiderata wouldn’t have chosen her own successor?” said Gammer Brevis. “Can’t go doin’ that,” said Granny Weatherwax. “That’s not how we do things in these parts.” “Yes, but Desiderata didn’t spend much time in these parts. It was the job. She was always going off to foreign parts.” “I can’t be having with foreign parts,” said Granny Weatherwax. “You’ve been to Ankh-Morpork,” said Nanny mildly. “That’s foreign.” “No it’s not. It’s just a long way off. That’s not the same as foreign. Foreign’s where they gabble at you in heathen lingo and eat foreign muck and worship, you know, objects,” said Granny Weatherwax, goodwill diplomat. “Foreign can be quite close to, if you’re not careful. Huh,” she added witheringly. “Yes, she could bring back just about anything from foreign parts.” “She brought me back a nice blue and white plate once,” said Nanny Ogg. “That’s a point,” said Gammer Brevis. “Someone’d better go and see to her cottage. She had quite a lot of good stuff there. It’d be dreadful to think of some thief getting in there and having a rummage.” “Can’t imagine any thief’d want to break into a witch’s - “ Granny began, and then stopped abruptly. “Yes,” she said meekly. “Good idea. I’ll see to it directly.” “No, I’ll see to it,” said Nanny Ogg, who’d also had time to work something out. “It’s right on my way home. No problem.” “No, you’ll be wanting to get home early,” said Granny. “Don’t you bother yourself. It’d be no trouble.” “Oh, it won’t be any trouble at all,” said Nanny. “You don’t want to go tiring yourself out at your age,” said Granny Weatherwax. They glared at one another. “I really don’t see that it matters,” said Gammer Brevis. “You might as well go together rather than fight about it.” “I’m a bit busy tomorrow,” said Granny. “How about after lunch?” “Right,” said Nanny Ogg. “We’ll meet at her cottage. Right after lunch.” “We had one once but the bit you unscrew fell off and got lost,” said Old Mother Dismass. Hurker the poacher shovelled the last of the earth into the hole. He felt he ought to say a few words. “Well, that’s about it, then,” he said. She’d definitely been one of the better witches, he thought, as he wandered back to the cottage in the pre-dawn gloom. Some of the other ones - while of course being wonderful human beings, he added to himself hurriedly, as fine a bunch of women as you could ever hope to avoid - were just a bit overpowering. Mistress Hollow had been a listening kind of person. On the kitchen table was a long package, a small pile of coins, and an envelope. He opened the envelope, although it was not addressed to him. Inside was a smaller envelope, and a note. The note said: I’m watching you, Albert Hurker. Deliver the packige and the envlope and if you dare take a peek inside something dretful will happen to you. As a profesional Good Farey Godmother I aint allowed to curse anyone but I Predict it would probly involve bein bittern by an enraged wolf and your leg going green and runny and dropping off, dont arsk me how I know anyway you carnt because, I am dead. All the best, Desiderata. He picked up the package with his eyes shut. Light travels slowly in the Discworld’s vast magical field, which means that time does too. As Nanny Ogg would put it, when it’s teatime in Genua it’s Tuesday over here . . . In fact it was dawn in Genua. Lilith sat in her tower, using a mirror, sending her own image out to scan the world. She was searching. Wherever there was a sparkle on a wave crest, wherever there was a sheet of ice, wherever there was a mirror or a reflection then Lilith knew she could see out. You didn’t need a magic mirror. Any mirror would do, if you knew how to use it. And Lilith, crackling with the power of a million images, knew that very well. There was just a nagging doubt. Presumably Desiderata would have got rid of it. Her sort were like that. Conscientious. And presumably it would be to that stupid girl with the watery eyes who sometimes visited the cottage, the one with all the cheap jewellery and the bad taste in clothes. She looked just the type. But Lilith wanted to be sure. She hadn’t got where she was today without being sure. In puddles and windows all over Lancre, the face of Lilith appeared momentarily and then moved on . . . And now it was dawn in Lancre. Autumn mists rolled through the forest. Granny Weatherwax pushed open the cottage door. It wasn’t locked. The only visitor Desiderata had been expecting wasn’t the sort to be put off by locks. “She’s had herself buried round the back,” said a voice behind her. It was Nanny Ogg. Granny considered her next move. To point out that Nanny had deliberately come early, so as to search the cottage by herself, then raised questions about Granny’s own presence. She could undoubtedly answer them, given enough time. On the whole, it was probably best just to get on with things. “Ah,” she said, nodding. “Always very neat in her ways, was Desiderata.” “Well, it was the job,” said Nanny Ogg, pushing past her and eyeing the room’s contents speculatively. “You got to be able to keep track of things, in a job like hers. By gor’, that’s a bloody enormous cat.” “It’s a lion,” said Granny Weatherwax, looking at the stuffed head over the fireplace. “Must’ve hit the wall at a hell of a speed, whatever it was,” said Nanny Ogg. “Someone killed it,” said Granny Weatherwax, surveying the room. “Should think so,” said Nanny. “If I’d seen something like that eatin’ its way through the wall I’d of hit it myself with the poker.” There was of course no such thing as a typical witch’s cottage, but if there was such a thing as a non-typical witch’s cottage, then this was certainly it. Apart from various glassy-eyed animal heads, the walls were covered in bookshelves and water-colour pictures. There was a spear in the umbrella stand. Instead of the more usual earthenware and china on the dresser there were foreign-looking brass pots and fine blue porcelain. There wasn’t a dried herb anywhere in the place but there were a great many books, most of them filled with Desiderata’s small, neat handwriting. A whole table was covered with what were probably maps, meticulously drawn. Granny Weatherwax didn’t like maps. She felt instinctively that they sold the landscape short. “She certainly got about a bit,” said Nanny Ogg, picking up a carved ivory fan and flirting coquettishly. “Well, it was easy for her,” said Granny, opening a few drawers. She ran her fingers along the top of the mantelpiece and looked at them critically. “She could have found time to go over the place with a duster,” she said vaguely. “I wouldn’t go and die and leave my place in this state.” “I wonder where she left . . . you know . . . «?” said Nanny, opening the door of the grandfather clock and peering inside. “Shame on you, Gytha Ogg,” said Granny. “We’re not here to look for that.” “Of course not. I was just wondering . . .” Nanny Ogg tried to stand on tiptoe surreptitiously, in order to see on top of the dresser. “Gytha! For shame! Go and make us a cup of tea!” “Oh, all right.” Nanny Ogg disappeared, muttering, into the scullery. After a few seconds there came the creaking of a pump handle. Granny Weatherwax sidled towards a chair and felt quickly under the cushion. There was a clatter from the next room. She straightened up hurriedly. “I shouldn’t think it’d be under the sink, neither,” she shouted. Nanny Ogg’s reply was inaudible. Granny waited a moment, and then crept rapidly over to the big chimney. She reached up and felt cautiously around. “Looking for something, Esme?” said Nanny Ogg behind her. “The soot up here is terrible,” said Granny, standing up quickly. “Terrible soot there is.” “It’s not up there, then?” said Nanny Ogg sweetly. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.” “You don’t have to pretend. Everyone knows she must have had one,” said Nanny Ogg. “It goes with the job. It practic’ly is the job.” “Well . . . maybe I just wanted a look at it,” Granny admitted. “Just hold it a while. Not use it. You wouldn’t catch me using one of those things. I only ever saw it once or twice. There ain’t many of ‘em around these days.” Nanny Ogg nodded. “You can’t get the wood,” she said. “You don’t think she’s been buried with it, do you?” “Shouldn’t think so. I wouldn’t want to be buried with it. Thing like that, it’s a bit of a responsibility. Anyway, it wouldn’t stay buried. A thing like that wants to be used. It’d be rattling around your coffin the whole time. You know the trouble they are.” She relaxed a bit. “I’ll sort out the tea things,” she said. “You light the fire.” She wandered back into the scullery. Granny Weatherwax reached along the mantelpiece for the matches, and then realized that there wouldn’t be any. Desiderata had always said she was much too busy not to use magic around the house. Even her laundry did itself. Granny disapproved of magic for domestic purposes, but she was annoyed. She also wanted her tea. She threw a couple of logs into the fireplace and glared at them until they burst into flame out of sheer embarrassment. It was then that her eye was caught by the shrouded mirror. “Coverin’ it over?” she murmured. “I didn’t know old Desiderata was frightened of thunderstorms.” She twitched aside the cloth. She stared. Very few people in the world had more self-control than Granny Weatherwax. It was as rigid as a bar of cast iron. And about as flexible. She smashed the mirror. Lilith sat bolt upright in her tower of mirrors. Her? The face was different, of course. Older. It had been a long time. But eyes don’t change, and witches always look at the eyes. Her! Magrat Garlick, witch, was also standing in front of a mirror. In her case it was totally unmagical. It was also still in one piece, but there had been one or two close calls. She frowned at her reflection, and then consulted the small, cheaply-woodcut leaflet that had arrived the previous day. She mouthed a few words under her breath, straightened up, extended her hands in front of her, punched the air vigorously and said: “HAAAAiiiiieeeeeeehgh! Um.” Magrat would be the first to admit that she had an open mind. It was as open as a field, as open as the sky. No mind could be more open without special surgical implements. And she was always waiting for something to fill it up. What it was currently filling up with was the search for inner peace and cosmic harmony and the true essence of Being. When people say ‘An idea came to me’ it isn’t just a metaphor. Raw inspirations, tiny particles of self-contained thought, are sleeting through the cosmos all the time. They get drawn to heads like Magrat’s in the same way that water runs into a hole in the desert. It was all due to her mother’s lack of attention to spelling, she speculated. A caring parent would have spelled Margaret correctly. And then she could have been a Peggy, or a Maggie - big, robust names, full of reliability. There wasn’t much you could do with a Magrat. It sounded like something that lived in a hole in a river bank and was always getting flooded out. She considered changing it, but knew in her secret heart that this would not work. Even if she became a Chloe or an Isobel on top she’d still be a Magrat underneath. But it would be nice to try. It’d be nice not to be a Magrat, even for a few hours. It’s thoughts like this that start people on the road to Finding Themselves. And one of the earliest things Magrat had learned was that anyone Finding Themselves would be unwise to tell Granny Weatherwax, who thought that female emancipation was a women’s complaint that shouldn’t be discussed in front of men. Nanny Ogg was more sympathetic but had a tendency to come out with what Magrat thought of as double-intenders, although in Nanny Ogg’s case they were generally single entendres and proud of it. In short, Magrat had despaired of learning anything at all from her senior witches, and was casting her net further afield. Much further afield. About as far afield as a field could be. It’s a strange thing about determined seekers-after-wisdom that, no matter where they happen to be, they’ll always seek that wisdom which is a long way off. Wisdom is one of the few things that looks bigger the further away it is. Currently Magrat was finding herself through the Path of The Scorpion, which offered cosmic harmony, inner one-ness and the possibility of knocking an attacker’s kidneys out through his ears. She’d sent off for it. There were problems. The author, Grand Master Lobsang Dibbler, had an address in Ankh-Morpork. This did not seem like a likely seat of cosmic wisdom. Also, although he’d put in lots of stuff about the Way not being used for aggression and only to be used for cosmic wisdom, this was in quite small print between enthusiastic drawings of people hitting one another with rice flails and going ‘Hai!” Later on you learned how to cut bricks in half with your hand and walk over red hot coals and other cosmic things. Magrat thought that Ninja was a nice name for a girl. She squared up to herself in the mirror again. There was a knock at the door. Magrat went and opened it. “Hai?” she said. Hurker the poacher took a step backwards. He was already rather shaken. An angry wolf had trailed him part of the way through the forest. “Um,” he said. He leaned forward, his shock changing to concern. “Have you hurt your head, Miss?” She looked at him in incomprehension. Then realization dawned. She reached up and took off the headband with the chrysanthemum pattern on it, without which it is almost impossible to properly seek cosmic wisdom by twisting an opponent’s elbows through 360 degrees. “No,” she said. “What do you want?” “Got a package for you,” said Hurker, presenting it. It was about two feet long, and very thin. “There’s a note,” said Hurker helpfully. He shuffled around as she unfolded it, and tried to read it over her shoulder. “It’s private,” said Magrat. “Is it?” said Hurker, agreeably. “Yes!” “I was tole you’d give me a penny for delivering it,” said the poacher. Magrat found one in her purse. “Money forges the chains which bind the labouring classes,” she warned, handing it over. Hurker, who had never thought of himself as a labouring class in his life, but who was prepared to listen to almost any amount of gibberish in exchange for a penny, nodded innocently. “And I hope your head gets better, Miss,” he said. When Magrat was left alone in her kitchen-cum-dojo she unwrapped the parcel. It contained one slim white rod. She looked at the note again. It said, “I niver had time to Trane a replaysment so youll have to Do. You must goe to the city of Genua. I would of done thys myself only cannot by reason of bein dead. Ella Saturday muste NOTTE marry the prins. PS This is importent.” She looked at her reflection in the mirror. She looked down at the note again. “PSPS Tell those 2 Olde Biddys they are Notte to come with Youe, they will onlie Ruine everythin.” There was more. “PSPSPS It has tendincy to resett to pumpkins but you will gett the hange of it in noe time.” Magrat looked at the mirror again. And then down at the wand. One minute life is simple, and then suddenly it stretches away full of complications. “Oh, my,” she said. “I’m a fairy godmother!” Granny Weatherwax was still standing staring at the crazily-webbed fragments when Nanny Ogg ran in. “Esme Weatherwax, what have you done? That’s bad luck, that is . . . Esme?” “Her? Her?” “Are you all right?” Granny Weatherwax screwed up her eyes for a moment, and then shook her head as if trying to dislodge an unthinkable thought. “What?” “You’ve gone all pale. Never seen you go all pale like that before.” Granny slowly removed a fragment of glass from her hat. “Well. . . bit of a turn, the glass breaking like that. . .” she mumbled. Nanny looked at Granny Weatherwax’s hand. It was bleeding. Then she looked at Granny Weatherwax’s face, and decided that she’d never admit that she’d looked at Granny Weatherwax’s hand. “Could be a sign,” she said, randomly selecting a safe topic. “Once someone dies, you get that sort of thing. Pictures fallin’ off walls, clocks stopping . . . great big wardrobes falling down the stairs . . . that sort of thing.” “I’ve never believed in that stuff, it’s . . . what do you mean, wardrobes falling down the stairs?” said Granny. She was breathing deeply. If it wasn’t well known that Granny Weatherwax was tough, anyone might have thought she had just had the shock of her life and was practically desperate to take part in a bit of ordinary everyday bickering. “That’s what happened after my Great-Aunt Sophie died,” said Nanny Ogg. “Three days and four hours and six minutes to the very minute after she died, her wardrobe fell down the stairs. Our Darren and our Jason were trying to get it round the bend and it sort of slipped, just like that. Uncanny. Weeell, I wasn’t going to leave it there for her Agatha, was I, only ever visited her mum on Hogswatchday, and it was me that nursed Sophie all the way through to the end - “ Granny let the familiar, soothing litany of Nanny Ogg’s family feud wash over her as she groped for the teacups. The Oggs were what is known as an extended family - in fact not only extended but elongated, protracted and persistent. No normal sheet of paper could possibly trace their family tree, which in any case was more like a mangrove thicket. And every single branch had a low-key, chronic vendetta against every other branch, based on such well-established causes celebres as What Their Kevin Said About Our Stan At Cousin Di’s Wedding and Who Got The Silver Cutlery That Auntie Em Promised Our Doreen Was To Have After She Died, I’d Like To Know, Thank You Very Much, If You Don’t Mind. Nanny Ogg, as undisputed matriarch, encouraged all sides indiscriminately. It was the nearest thing she had to a hobby. The Oggs contained, in just one family, enough feuds to keep an entire Ozark of normal hillbillies going for a century. And sometimes this encouraged a foolish outsider to join in and perhaps make an uncomplimentary remark about one Ogg to another Ogg. Whereupon every single Ogg would turn on him, every part of the family closing up together like the parts of a well-oiled, blue-steeled engine to deal instant merciless destruction to the interloper. Ramtop people believed that the Ogg feud was a blessing. The thought of them turning their immense energy on the world in general was a terrible one. Fortunately, there was no-one an Ogg would rather fight than another Ogg. It was family. Odd things, families, when you came to think of it. . . “Esme? You all right?” “What?” “You’ve got them cups rattling like nobody’s business! And tea all over the tray.” Granny looked down blankly at the mess, and rallied as best she could. “Not my damn fault if the damn cups are too small,” she muttered. The door opened. “Morning, Magrat,” she added, without looking around. “What’re you doing here?” It was something about the way the hinges creaked. Magrat could even open a door apologetically. The younger witch sidled speechlessly into the room, face beetroot red, arms held behind her back. “We’d just popped in to sort out Desiderata’s things, as our duty to a sister witch,” said Granny loudly. “And not to look for her magic wand,” said Nanny. “Gytha Ogg!” Nanny Ogg looked momentarily guilty, and then hung her head. “Sorry, Esme.” Magrat brought her arms around in front of her. “Er,” she said, and blushed further. “You found it!” said Nanny. “Uh, no,” said Magrat, not daring to look Granny in the eyes. “Desiderata gave it to . . . me.” The silence crackled and hummed. “She gave it to you?” said Granny Weatherwax. “Uh. Yes.” Nanny and Granny looked at one another. “Well!” said Nanny. “She does know you, doesn’t she?” demanded Granny, turning back to Magrat. “I used to come over here quite often to look at her books,” Magrat confessed. “And . . . and she liked to cook foreign food and no-one else round here would eat it, so I’d come up to keep her company.” “Ah-hal Curryin’ favour!” snapped Granny. “But I never thought she’d leave me the wand,” said Magrat. “Really I didn’t!” “There’s probably some mistake,” said Nanny Ogg kindly. “She probably wanted you to give it to one of us.” “That’ll be it, right enough,” said Granny. “She knew you were good at running errands and so on. Let’s have a look at it.” She held out her hand. Magrat’s knuckles tightened on the wand. “. . . she gave it me . . .” she said, in a tiny voice. “Her mind was definitely wandering towards the end,” said Granny. “. . . she gave it me . . .” “Fairy godmotherin’s a terrible responsibility,” said Nanny. “You got to be resourceful and flexible and tactful and able to deal with complicated affairs of the heart and stuff. Desiderata would have known that.” “. . . yes, but she gave it me . . .” “Magrat Garlick, as senior witch I command you to give me the wand,” said Granny. “They cause nothing but trouble!” “Hold on, hold on,” said Nanny. “That’s going a bit far-‘ “. . . no . . .” said Magrat. “Anyway, you ain’t senior witch,” said Nanny. “Old Mother Dismass is older’n you.” “Shut up. Anyway, she’s non compost mental,” said Granny. “. . . you can’t order me. Witches are non-hierarchical . . .” said Magrat. “That is wanton behaviour, Magrat Garlick!” “No it’s not,” said Nanny Ogg, trying to keep the peace. “Wanton behaviour is where you go around without wearing any - “ She stopped. Both of the older witches watched a small piece of paper fall out of Magrat’s sleeve and zigzag down to the floor. Granny darted forward and snatched it up. “Aha!” she said triumphantly. “Let’s see what Desiderata really said . . .” Her lips moved as she read the note. Magrat tried to wind herself up tighter. A couple of muscles flickered on Granny’s face. Then, calmly, she screwed up the note. “Just as I thought,” she said, “Desiderata says we are to give Magrat all the help we can, what with her being young and everything. Didn’t she, Magrat?” Magrat looked up into Granny’s face. You could call her out, she thought. The note was very clear. . . well, the bit about the older witches was, anyway . . . and you could make her read it aloud. It’s as plain as day. Do you want to be third witch forever? And then the flame of rebellion, burning in a very unfamiliar hearth, died. “Yes,” she muttered hopelessly, “something like that.” “It says it’s very important we go to some place somewhere to help someone marry a prince,” said Granny. “It’s Genua,” said Magrat. “I looked it up in Desiderata’s books. And we’ve got to make sure she doesn’t marry a prince.” “A fairy godmother stopping a girl from marryin” a prince?” said Nanny. “Sounds a bit. . . contrary.” “Should be an easy enough wish to grant, anyway,” said Granny. “Millions of girls don’t marry a prince.” Magrat made an effort. “Genua really is a long way away,” she said. “I should ‘ope so,” said Granny Weatherwax. “The last thing we want is foreign parts up close.” “I mean, there’ll be a lot of travelling,” said Magrat wretchedly. “And you’re . . . not as young as you were.” There was a long, crowded silence. “We start tomorrow,” said Granny Weatherwax firmly. “Look,” said Magrat desperately, “why don’t I go by myself?” “ ‘Cos you ain’t experienced at fairy godmothering,” said Granny Weatherwax. This was too much even for Magrat’s generous soul. “Well, nor are you,” she said. “That’s true,” Granny conceded. “But the point is . . . the point is . . . the point is we’ve not been experienced for a lot longer than you.” “We’ve got a lot of experience of not having any experience,” said Nanny Ogg happily. “That’s what counts every time,” said Granny. There was only one small, speckled mirror in Granny’s house. When she got home, she buried it at the bottom of the garden. “There,” she said. “Now trying spyin’ on me.” It never seemed possible to people that Jason Ogg, master blacksmith and farrier, was Nanny Ogg’s son. He didn’t look as if he could possibly have been born, but as if he must have been constructed. In a shipyard. To his essentially slow and gentle nature genetics had seen fit to add muscles that should have gone to a couple of bullocks, arms like treetrunks, and legs like four beer barrels stacked in twos. To his glowing forge were brought the stud stallions, the red-eyed and foam-flecked kings of the horse nation, the soup-plate-hoofed beasts that had kicked lesser men through walls. But Jason Ogg knew the secret of the mystic Horseman’s Word, and he would go alone into the forge, politely shut the door, and lead the creature out again after half an hour, newly shod and strangely docile. Behind his huge brooding shape clustered the rest of Nanny Ogg’s endless family and a lot of other townsfolk who, seeing some interesting activity involving witches, couldn’t resist the opportunity for what was known in the Ramtops as a good oggle. “We’m off then, our Jason,” said Nanny Ogg. “They do say the streets in foreign parts are paved with gold. I could prob’ly make my fortune, eh?” Jason’s hairy brow creased in intense thought. “Us could do with a new anvil down forge,” he volunteered. “If I come back rich, you won’t never have to go down the forge ever again,” said Nanny. Jason frowned. “But I likes t’forge,” he said, slowly. Nanny looked momentarily taken aback. “Well, then -then you shall have an anvil made of solid silver.” “Wunt be no good, ma. It’d be too soft,” said Jason. “If I brings you back an anvil made of solid silver you shall have an anvil made of solid silver, my lad, whether you likes it or not!” Jason hung his huge head. “Yes, mum,” he said. “You see to it that someone comes in to keep the house aired every day reg’lar,” said Nanny. “I want a fire lit in that grate every morning.” “Yes, mum.” “And everyone’s to go in through the back door, you hear? I’ve put a curse on the front porch. Where’s those girls got to with my luggage?” She scurried off, a small grey bantam scolding a flock of hens. Magrat listened to all this with interest. Her own preparations had consisted of a large sack containing several changes of clothes to accommodate whatever weather foreign parts might suffer from, and a rather smaller one containing a number of useful-looking books from Desiderata Hollow’s cottage. Desiderata had been a great note-taker, and had filled dozens of little books with neat writing and chapter headings like ‘With Wand and Broomstick Across the Great Nef Desert”. What she had never bothered to do, it seemed, was write down any instructions for the wand. As far as Magrat knew, you waved it and wished. Along the track to her cottage, several unanticipated pumpkins bore witness to this as an unreliable strategy. One of them still thought it was a stoat. Now Magrat was left alone with Jason, who shuffled his feet. He touched his forelock. He’d been brought up to be respectful to women, and Magrat fell broadly into this category. “You will look after our mum, won’t you, Mistress Garlick?” he said, a hint of worry in his voice. “She’m acting awful strange.” Magrat patted him gently on the shoulder. “This sort of thing happens all the time,” she said. “You know, after a woman’s raised a family and so on, she wants to start living her own life.” “Whose life she bin living, then?” Magrat gave him a puzzled look. She hadn’t questioned the wisdom of the thought when it had first arrived in her head. “You see, what it is,” she said, making an explanation up as she went along, “there comes a time in a woman’s life when she wants to find herself.” “Why dint she start looking here?” said Jason plaintively. “I mean, I ain’t wanting to talk out of turn, Miss Garlick, but we was looking to you to persuade her and Mistress Weatherwax not to go.” “I tried,” said Magrat. “I really did. I said, you don’t want to go, I said. Anno domini, I said. Not as young as you used to be, I said. Silly to go hundreds of miles just for something like this, especially at your age.” Jason put his head on one side. Jason Ogg wouldn’t end up in the finals of the All-Discworld uptake speed trials, but he knew his own mother. “You said all that to our mum?” he said. “Look, don’t worry,” said Magrat, “I’m sure no harm can- “ There was a crash somewhere over their heads. A few autumn leaves spiralled gently towards the ground. “Bloody tree . . . who put that bloody tree there?” came a voice from on high. “That’ll be Granny,” said Magrat. It was one of the weak spots of Granny Weatherwax’s otherwise well-developed character that she’d never bothered to get the hang of steering things. It was alien to her nature. She took the view that it was her job to move and the rest of the world to arrange itself so that she arrived at her destination. This meant that she occasionally had to climb down trees she’d never climbed up. This she did now, dropping the last few feet and daring anyone to comment. “Well, now we’re all here,” said Magrat brightly. It didn’t work. Granny Weatherwax’s eyes focused immediately somewhere around Magrat’s knees. “And what do you think you’re wearing?” she said. “Ah. Um. I thought . . . I mean, it gets cold up there . . . what with the wind and everything,” Magrat began. She had been dreading this, and hating herself for being so weak. After all, they were practical. The idea had come to her one night. Apart from anything else, it was almost impossible to do Air Lobsang Dibbler’s cosmic harmony death kicks when your legs kept getting tangled in a skirt. “Trousers?” “They’re not exactly the same as ordinary - “ “And there’s men ‘ere lookin’,” said Granny. “I think it’s shameful!” “What is?” said Nanny Ogg, coming up behind her. “Magrat Garlick, standin’ there bifurcated,” said Granny, sticking her nose in the air. “Just so long as she got the young man’s name and address,” said Nanny Ogg amiably. “Nanny!” said Magrat. “I think they look quite comfy,” Nanny went on. “A bit baggy, though.” “I don’t ‘old with it,” said Granny. “Everyone can see her legs.” “No they can’t,” said Nanny. “The reason being, the material is in the way.” “Yes, but they can see where her legs are,” said Granny Weatherwax. “That’s silly. That’s like saying everyone’s naked under their clothes,” said Magrat. “Magrat Garlick, may you be forgiven,” said Granny Weatherwax. “Well, it’s true!” “I’m not,” said Granny flatly, “I got three vests on.” She looked Nanny up and down; Gytha Ogg, too, had made sartorial preparations for foreign parts. Granny Weatherwax could find little to disapprove of, although she made an effort. “And will you look at your hat,” she mumbled. Nanny, who had known Esme Weatherwax for seventy years, merely grinned. “All the go, ain’t it?” she said. “Made by Mr Vernissage over in Slice. It’s got willow reinforcing all the way up to the point and eighteen pockets inside. Can stop a blow with a hammer, this hat. And how about these?” Nanny raised the hem of her skirt. She was wearing new boots. As boots, Granny Weatherwax could find nothing to complain of in them. They were of proper witch construction, which is to say that a loaded cart could have run over them without causing a dent in the dense leather. As boots, the only thing wrong with them was the colour. “Red?” said Granny. “That’s no colour for a witch’s boots!” “I likes ‘em,” said Nanny. Granny sniffed. “You can please yourself, I’m sure,” she said. “I’m sure in foreign parts they goes in for all sorts of outlandish things. But you know what they say about women who wear red boots.” “Just so long as they also say they’ve got dry feet,” said Nanny cheerfully. She put her door key into Jason’s hand. “I’ll write you letters if you promise to find someone to read them to you,” she said. “Yes, mum. What about the cat, mum?” said Jason. “Oh, Greebo’s coming with us,” said Nanny Ogg. “What? But he’s a cat!” snapped Granny Weatherwax. “You can’t take cats with you! I’m not going travellin’ with no cat! It’s bad enough travellin’ with trousers and provocative boots!” “He’ll miss his mummy if he’s left behind, won’t he,” crooned Nanny Ogg, picking up Greebo. He hung limply, like a bag of water gripped around the middle. To Nanny Ogg Greebo was still the cute little kitten that chased balls of wool around the floor. To the rest of the world he was an enormous tomcat, a parcel of incredibly indestructible life forces in a skin that looked less like a fur than a piece of bread that had been left in a damp place for a fortnight. Strangers often took pity on him because his ears were non-existent and his face looked as though a bear had camped on it. They could not know that this was because Greebo, as a matter of feline pride, would attempt to fight or rape absolutely anything, up to and including a four-horse logging wagon. Ferocious dogs would whine and hide under the stairs when Greebo sauntered down the street. Foxes kept away from the village. Wolves made a detour. “He’s an old softy really,” said Nanny. Greebo turned upon Granny Weatherwax a yellow-eyed stare of self-satisfied malevolence, such as cats always reserve for people who don’t like them, and purred. Greebo was possibly the only cat who could snigger in purr. “Anyway,” said Nanny, “witches are supposed to like cats.” “Not cats like him, they’re not.” “You’re just not a cat person, Esme,” said Nanny, cuddling Greebo tightly. Jason Ogg pulled Magrat aside. “Our Gran read to me in the almanac where there’s all these fearsome wild beasts in foreign parts,” he whispered. “Huge hairy things that leap out on travellers, it said. I’d hate to think what’d happen if they leapt out on mum and Granny.” Magrat looked up into his big red face. “You will see no harm comes to them, won’t you,” said Jason. “Don’t you worry,” she said, hoping that he needn’t. “I’ll do my best.” Jason nodded. “Only it said in the almanac that some of them were nearly extinct anyway,” he said. The sun was well up when the three witches spiralled into the sky. They had been delayed for a while because of the intractability of Granny Weatherwax’s broomstick, the starting of which always required a great deal of galloping up and down. It never seemed to get the message until it was being shoved through the air at a frantic running speed. Dwarf engineers everywhere had confessed themselves totally mystified by it. They had replaced the stick and the bristles dozens of times. When it rose, eventually, it was to a chorus of cheers. The tiny kingdom of Lancre occupied little more than a wide ledge cut into the side of the Ramtop mountains. Behind it, knife-edge peaks and dark winding valleys climbed into the massive backbone of the central ranges. In front, the land dropped abruptly to the Sto plains, a blue haze of woodlands, a broader expanse of ocean and, somewhere in the middle of it all, a brown smudge known as Ankh-Morpork. A skylark sang, or at least started to sing. The rising point of Granny Weatherwax’s hat right underneath it completely put it off the rhythm. “I ain’t going any higher,” she said. “If we go high enough we might be able to see where we’re going,” said Magrat. “You said you looked at Desiderata’s maps,” said Granny. “It looks different from up here, though,” said Magrat. “More . . . sticking up. But I think we go . . . that way.” “You sure?” Which was the wrong question to ask a witch. Especially if the person doing the asking was Granny Weatherwax. “Positive,” said Magrat. Nanny Ogg looked up at the high peaks. “There’s a lot of big mountains that way,” she said. They rose tier on tier, speckled with snow, trailing endless pennants of ice crystals high overhead. No-one ski’d in the high Ramtops, at least for more than a few feet and a disappearing scream. No-one ran up them wearing dirndls and singing. They were not nice mountains. They were the kind of mountains where winters went for their summer holidays. “There’s passes and things through them,” said Magrat uncertainly. “Bound to be,” said Nanny. You can use two mirrors like this, if you know the way of it: you set them so that they reflect each other. For if images can steal a bit of you, then images of images can amplify you, feeding you back on yourself, giving you power. . . And your image extends forever, in reflections of reflections of reflections, and every image is the same, all the way around the curve of light. Except that it isn’t. Mirrors contain infinity. Infinity contains more things than you think. Everything, for a start. Including hunger. Because there’s a million billion images and only one soul to go around. Mirrors give plenty, but they take away lots. Mountains unfolded to reveal more mountains. Clouds gathered, heavy and grey. “I’m sure we’re going the right way,” said Magrat. Freezing rock stretched away. The witches flew along a maze of twisty little canyons, all alike. “Yeah,” said Granny. “Well, you won’t let me fly high enough,” said Magrat. “It’s going to snow like blazes in a minute,” said Nanny Ogg. It was early evening. Light was draining out of the high valleys like custard. “I thought . . . there’d be villages and things,” said Magrat, “where we could buy interesting native produce and seek shelter in rude huts.” “You wouldn’t even get trolls up here,” said Granny. The three broomsticks glided down into a bare valley, a mere notch in the mountain side. “And it’s bloody cold,” said Nanny Ogg. She grinned. “Why’re they called rude huts, anyway?” Granny Weatherwax climbed off her broomstick and looked at the rocks around her. She picked up a stone and sniffed it. She wandered over to a heap of scree that looked like any other heap of scree to Magrat, and prodded it. “Hmm,” she said. A few snow crystals landed on her hat. “Well, well,” she said. “What’re you doing, Granny?” said Magrat. “Cogitatin’.” Granny walked to the valley’s steep side and strolled along it, peering at the rock. Nanny Ogg joined her. “Up here?” said Nanny. “I reckon.” “ ‘S a bit high for ‘em, ain’t it?” “Little devils get everywhere. Had one come up in my kitchen once,” said Granny.” “Following a seam”, he said.” “They’re buggers for that,” said Nanny. “Would you mind telling me,” said Magrat, “what you’re doing? What’s so interesting about heaps of stones?” The snow was falling faster now. “They ain’t stones, they’re spoil,” said Granny. She reached a flat wall of ice-covered rock, no different in Magrat’s eyes from the rock available in a range of easy-to-die-on sizes everywhere in the mountains, and paused as if listening. Then she stood back, hit the rock sharply with her broomstick, and spake thusly: “Open up, you little sods!” Nanny Ogg kicked the rock. It made a hollow boom. “There’s people catching their death of cold out here!” she added. Nothing happened for a while. Then a section of rock swung in a few inches. Magrat saw the glint of a suspicious eye. “Yes?” “Dwarfs?” said Magrat. Granny Weatherwax leaned down until her nose was level with the eye. “My name,” she said, “is Granny Weatherwax.” She straightened up again, her face glowing with self-satisfaction. “Who’s that, then?” said a voice from somewhere below the eye. Granny’s expression froze. Nanny Ogg nudged her partner. “We must be more’n fifty miles away from home,” she said. “They might not have heard of you in these parts.” Granny leaned down again. Accumulated snowflakes cascaded off her hat. “I ain’t blaming you,” she said, “but I know you’ll have a King in there, so just you go and tell him Granny Weatherwax is here, will you?” “He’s very busy,” said the voice. “We’ve just had a bit of trouble.” “Then I’m sure he don’t want any more,” said Granny. The invisible speaker appeared to give this some consideration. “We put writing on the door,” it said sulkily. “In invisible runes. It’s really expensive, getting proper invisible runes done.” “I don’t go around readin’ doors,” said Granny. The speaker hesitated. “Weatherwax, did you say?” “Yes. With a W. As in “witch”.” The door slammed. When it was shut, there was barely a visible crack in the rock. The snow was falling fast now. Granny Weatherwax jiggled up and down a bit to keep warm. “That’s foreigners for you,” she said, to the frozen world in general. “I don’t think you can call dwarfs foreigners,” said Nanny Ogg. “Don’t see why not,” said Granny. “A dwarf who lives a long way off has got to be foreign. That’s what foreign means.” “Yeah? Funny to think of it like that,” said Nanny. They watched the door, their breath forming three little clouds in the darkening air. Magrat peered at the stone door. “I didn’t see any invisible runes,” she said. “ ‘Corse not,” said Nanny. “That’s ‘cos they’re invisible.” “Yeah,” said Granny Weatherwax. “Don’t be daft.” The door swung open again. “I spoke to the King,” said the voice. “And what did he say?” said Granny expectantly. “He said, “Oh, no! Not on top of everything else!”’ Granny beamed. “I knew ‘e would have heard of me,” she said. In the same way that there are a thousand Kings of the Gypsies, so there are a thousand Kings of the Dwarfs. The term means something like ‘senior engineer’. There aren’t any Queens of the Dwarfs. Dwarfs are very reticent about revealing their sex, which most of them don’t consider to be very important compared to things like metallurgy and hydraulics. This king was standing in the middle of a crowd of shouting miners. He looked up at the witches with the expression of a drowning man looking at a drink of water. “Are you really any good?” he said. Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax looked at one another. “I think ‘e’s talking to you, Magrat,” said Granny. “Only we’ve had a big fall in gallery nine,” said the King. “It looks bad. A very promising vein of gold-bearing quartz is irretrievably trapped.” One of the dwarfs beside him muttered something. “Oh, yeah. And some of the lads,” said the King vaguely. “And then you turn up. So the way I look at it, it’s probably fate.” Granny Weatherwax shook the snow off her hat and looked around. She was impressed, despite herself. You didn’t often see proper dwarf halls these days. Most dwarfs were off earning big money in the cities down in the lowlands, where it was much easier to be a dwarf - for one thing, you didn’t have to spend most of your time underground hitting your thumb with a hammer and worrying about fluctuations in the international metal markets. Lack of respect for tradition, that was the trouble these days. And take trolls. There were more trolls in Ankh-Morpork now than in the whole mountain range. Granny Weatherwax had nothing against trolls but she felt instinctively that if more trolls stopped wearing suits and walking upright, and went back to living under bridges and jumping out and eating people as nature intended, then the world would be a happier place. “You’d better show us where the problem is,” she said. “Lots of rocks fallen down, have they?” “Pardon?” said the King. It’s often said that eskimos have fifty words for snow. This is not true. It’s also said that dwarfs have two hundred words for rock. They don’t. They have no words for rock, in the same way that fish have no words for water. They do have words for igneous rock, sedimentary rock, metamorphic rock, rock underfoot, rock dropping on your helmet from above, and rock which looked interesting and which they could have sworn they left here yesterday. But what they don’t have is a word meaning ‘rock’. Show a dwarf a rock and he sees, for example, an inferior piece of crystalline sulphite of barytes. Or, in this case, about two hundred tons of lowgrade shale. When the witches arrived at the disaster site dozens of dwarfs were working feverishly to prop the cracked roof and cart away the debris. Some of them were in tears. “It’s terrible . . . terrible,” muttered one of them. “A terrible thing.” Magrat lent him her handkerchief. He blew his nose noisily. “Could mean a big slippage on the fault line and then we’ve lost the whole seam,” he said, shaking his head. Another dwarf patted him on the back. “Look on the bright side,” he said. “We can always drive a horizontal shaft off gallery fifteen. We’re bound to pick it up again, don’t you worry.” “Excuse me,” said Magrat, “there are dwarfs behind all that stuff, are there?” “Oh, yes,” said the King. His tone suggested that this was merely a regrettable side-effect of the disaster, because getting fresh dwarfs was only a matter of time whereas decent gold-bearing rock was a finite resource. Granny Weatherwax inspected the rockfall critically. “We shall have to have everyone out of here,” she said. “This is goin’ to have to be private.” “I know how it is,” said the King. “Craft secrets, I expect?” “Something like that,” said Granny. The King shooed the other dwarfs out of the tunnel, leaving the witches alone in the lantern light. A few bits of rock fell out of the ceiling. “Hmm,” said Granny. “You’ve gone and done it now,” said Nanny Ogg. “Anything’s possible if you set your mind to it,” said Granny vaguely. “Then you’d better set yours good and hard, Esme. If the Creator had meant us to shift rocks by witchcraft, he wouldn’t have invented shovels. Knowing when to use a shovel is what being a witch is all about. And put down that wheelbarrow, Magrat. You don’t know nothing about machinery.” “All right, then,” said Magrat. “Why don’t we try the wand?” Granny Weatherwax snorted. “Hah! Here? Whoever heard of a fairy godmother in a mine?” “If I was stuck behind a load of rocks under a mountain I’d want to hear of one,” said Magrat hotly. Nanny Ogg nodded. “She’s got a point there, Esme. There’s no rule about where you fairy godmother.” “I don’t trust that wand,” said Granny. “It looks wizardly to me.” “Oh, come on,” said Magrat, “generations of fairy godmothers have used it.” Granny flung her hands in the air. “All right, all right, all right,” she snapped. “Go ahead! Make yourself look daft!” Magrat took the wand out of her bag. She’d been dreading this moment. It was made of some sort of bone or ivory; Magrat hoped it wasn’t ivory. There had been markings on it once, but generations of plump fairy godmotherly hands had worn them almost smooth. Various gold and silver rings were set into the wand. Nowhere were there any instructions. Not so much as a rune or a sigil anywhere on its length indicated what you were supposed to do with it. “I think you’re supposed to wave it,” said Nanny Ogg. “I’m pretty sure it’s something like that.” Granny Weatherwax folded her arms. “That’s not proper witching,” she said. Magrat gave the wand an experimental wave. Nothing happened. “Perhaps you have to say something?” said Nanny. Magrat looked panicky. “What do fairy godmothers say?” she wailed. “Er,” said Nanny, “dunno.” “Huh!” said Granny. Nanny Ogg sighed. “Didn’t Desiderata tell you anything? “Nothing!” Nanny shrugged. “Just do your best, then,” she said. Magrat stared at the pile of rocks. She shut her eyes. She took a deep breath. She tried to make her mind a serene picture of cosmic harmony. It was all very well for monks to go on about cosmic harmony, she reflected, when they were nicely tucked away on snowy mountains with only yetis to worry about. They never tried seeking inner peace with Granny Weatherwax glaring at them. She waved the wand in a vague way and tried to put pumpkins out of her mind. She felt the air move. She heard Nanny gasp. She said, “Has anything happened?” After a while Nanny Ogg said, “Yeah. Sort of. I hope they’re hungry, that’s all.” And Granny Weathenvax said, “That’s fairy godmothering, is it?” Magrat opened her eyes. There was still a heap, but it wasn’t rock any more. “There’s a, wait for it, there’s a bit of a squash in here,” said Nanny. Magrat opened her eyes wider. “Still pumpkins?” “Bit of a squash. Squash,” said Nanny, in case anyone hadn’t got it. The top of the heap moved. A couple of small pumpkins rolled down almost to Magrat’s feet, and a small dwarfish face appeared in the hole. It stared down at the witches. Eventually Nanny Ogg said, “Everything all right?” The dwarf nodded. Its attention kept turning to the pile of pumpkins that filled the tunnel from floor to ceiling. “Er, yes,” it said. “Is dad there?” “Dad?” “The King.” “Oh.” Nanny Ogg cupped her hands around her mouth and turned to face up the tunnel. “Hey, King!” The dwarfs appeared. They looked at the pumpkins, too. The King stepped forward and stared up into the face of his son. “Everything all right, son?” “It’s all right, dad. No faulting or anything.” The King sagged with relief. Then, as an afterthought, he added, “Everyone all right?” “Fine, dad.” “I was quite worried for a time there. Thought we might have hit a section of conglomerate or something.” “Just a patch of loose shale, dad.” “Good.” The King looked at the heap again. He scratched his beard. “Can’t help noticing you seem to have struck pumpkin.” “I thought it was an odd kind of sandstone, dad.” The King walked back to the witches. “Can you turn anything into anything?” he said hopefully. Nanny Ogg looked sideways at Magrat, who was still staring at the wand in a sort of shock. “I think we only do pumpkins at the moment,” she said cautiously. The King looked a little disappointed. “Well, then,” he said, “if there’s anything I can do for you ladies . . . a cup of tea or something . . .” Granny Weatherwax stepped forward. “I was just thinking something like that myself,” she said. The King beamed. “Only more expensive,” said Granny. The King stopped beaming. Nanny Ogg sidled up to Magrat, who was shaking the wand and staring at it. “Very clever,” she whispered. “Why’d you think of pumpkins?” “I didn’t!” “Don’t you know how to work it?” “No! I thought you just had to, you know, want something to happen!” “There’s probably more to it than just wishing,” said Nanny, as sympathetically as possible. “There generally is.” Some time around dawn, in so far as dawn happened in the mines, the witches were led to a river somewhere deep in the mountains, where a couple of barges were moored. A small boat was pulled up to a stone jetty. “This’ll take you right through the mountains,” said the King. “I think it goes all the way to Genua, to tell the truth.” He took a large basket off an attendant dwarf. “And we’ve packed you some lovely food,” he said. “Are we going to go all the way in a boat?” said Magrat. She gave the wand a few surreptitious flourishes. “I’m not good at boats.” “Listen,” said Granny, climbing aboard, “the river knows its way out of the mountains, which is more than we do. We can use the brooms later on, where the landscape’s acting a bit more sensible.” “And we can have a bit of a rest,” said Nanny, sitting back. Magrat looked at the two older witches, who were making themselves comfortable in the stern like a couple of hens settling down on a nest. “Do you know how to row a boat?” she said. “We don’t have to,” said Granny. Magrat nodded gloomily. Then a tiny bit of self-assertion flashed a fin. “I don’t think I do, too,” she ventured. “That’s all right,” said Nanny. “If we sees you doing anything wrong, we’ll be sure to tell you. Cheerio, your kingship.” Magrat sighed, and picked up the oars. “The flat bits go in the water,” said Granny helpfully. The dwarfs waved. The boat drifted out into midstream, moving slowly in a circle of lantern light. Magrat found that all she really had to do was keep it pointing the right way in the current. She heard Nanny say: “Beats me why they’re always putting invisible runes on their doors. I mean, you pays some wizard to put invisible runes on your door, and how do you know you’ve got value for money?” She heard Granny say: “No problem there. If you can’t see ‘em, you know you’ve got proper invisible runes.” She heard Nanny say: “Ah, that’d be it. Right, let’s see what we’ve got for lunch.” There was a rustling noise. “Well, well, well.” “What is it, Gytha?” “Pumpkin.” “Pumpkin what?” “Pumpkin nothing. Just pumpkin pumpkin.” “Well, I suppose they’ve got a lot of pumpkin,” said Magrat. “You know how it is at the end of the summer, there’s always so much in the garden. I’m always at my wits’ end to think of new types of chutney and pickles to use it all up - “ In the dim light she could see Granny’s face which seemed to be suggesting that if Magrat was at her wits’ end, it was a short stroll. “I,” said Granny, “have never made a pickle in my life.” “But you like pickles,” said Magrat. Witches and pickles went together like - she hesitated before the stomach-curdling addition of peaches and cream, and mentally substituted ‘things that went together very well’. The sight of Nanny Ogg’s single remaining tooth at work on a pickled onion could bring tears to the eyes. “I likes ‘em fine,” said Granny. “I gets ‘em given to me.” “You know,” said Nanny, investigating the recesses of the basket, “whenever I deals with dwarfs, the phrase “Duck’s arse” swims across my mind.” “Mean little devils. You should see the prices they tries to charge me when I takes my broom to be repaired,” said Granny. “Yes, but you never pay,” said Magrat. “That’s not the point,” said Granny Weatherwax. “They shouldn’t be allowed to charge that sort of money. That’s thievin’, that is.” “I don’t see how it can be thieving if you don’t pay anyway,” Magrat persisted. “I never pay for anything,” said Granny. “People never let me pay. I can’t help it if people gives me things the whole time, can I? When I walks down the street people are always running out with cakes they’ve just baked, and fresh beer, and old clothes that’ve hardly been worn at all. “Oh, Mistress Weatherwax, pray take this basket of eggs”, they say. People are always very kind. Treat people right an’ they’ll treat you right. That’s respect. Not having to pay,” she finished, sternly, “is what bein’ a witch is all about.” “Here, what’s this?” said Nanny, pulling out a small packet. She unwrapped the paper and revealed several hard brown discs. “My word,” said Granny Weatherwax, “I take it all back. That’s the famous dwarf bread, that is. They don’t give that to just anyone.” Nanny tapped it on the edge of the boat. It made a noise very similar to the kind of noise you get when a wooden ruler is held over the edge of a desk and plucked; a sort of hollow boioioing sound. “They say it never goes stale even if you stores it for years,” said Granny. “It’d keep you going for days and days,” said Nanny Ogg- Magrat reached across, took one of the flat loaves, tried to break it, and gave up. “You’re supposed to eat it?” she said. “Oh, I don’t think it’s for eating,” said Nanny. “It’s more for sort of - “ “ - keeping you going,” said Granny. “They say that - “ She stopped. Above the noise of the river and the occasional drip of water from the ceiling they could all hear, now, the steady slosh-slosh of another craft heading towards them. “Someone’s following us!” hissed Magrat. Two pale glows appeared at the edge of the lamplight. Eventually they turned out to be the eyes of a small grey creature, vaguely froglike, paddling towards them on a log. It reached the boat. Long clammy fingers grabbed the side, and a lugubrious face rose level with Nanny Ogg’s. “ ‘ullo,” it said. “It’sss my birthday.” All three of them stared at it for a while. Then Granny Weatherwax picked up an oar and hit it firmly over the head. There was a splash, and a distant cursing. “Horrible little bugger,” said Granny, as they rowed on. “Looked like a troublemaker to me.” “Yeah,” said Nanny Ogg. “It’s the slimy ones you have to watch out for.” “I wonder what he wanted?” said Magrat. After half an hour the boat drifted out through a cave mouth and into a narrow gorge between cliffs. Ice glistened on the walls, and there were drifts of snow on some of the outcrops. Nanny Ogg looked around guilelessly, and then fumbled somewhere in the depths of her many skirts and produced a small bottle. There was a glugging noise. “I bet there’s a fine echo here,” she said, after a while. “Oh no you don’t,” said Granny firmly. “Don’t what?” “Don’t sing That Song.” “Pardon, Esme?” “I ain’t going,” said Granny, “if you insists on singing That Song.” “What song would that be?” said Nanny innocently. “You know the song to whom I am referring,” said Granny icily. “You always get drunk and let me down and sing it.” “Can’t recall any song like that, Esme,” said Nanny Ogg meekly. “The one,” said Granny, “about the rodent that can’t -that can’t ever be persuaded to care about anything.” “Oh,” said Nanny, beaming as light dawned, “you mean The Hedgehog Can Never Be Bugg- “ “That’s the one!” “But it’s traditional,” said Nanny. “Anyway, in foreign parts people won’t know what the words mean.” “They will the way you sings them,” said Granny. “The way you sings them, creatures what lives on the bottoms of ponds’d know what they mean.” Magrat looked over the side of the boat. Here and there the ripples were edged with white. The current was running a bit faster, and there were lumps of ice in it. “It’s only a folk song, Esme,” said Nanny Ogg. “Hah!” said Granny Weatherwax. “I should just say it is a folk song! I knows all about folk songs. Hah! You think you’re listenin’ to a nice song about . . . about cuckoos and fiddlers and nightingales and whatnot, and then it turns out to be about . . . about something else entirely,” she added darkly. “You can’t trust folk songs. They always sneak up on you.” Magrat fended them off a rock. An eddy spun them around slowly. “I know one about two little bluebirds,” said Nanny Ogg. “Um,” said Magrat. “They may start out by being bluebirds, but I bet they ends up some kind of mettyfor,” said Granny. “Er, Granny,” said Magrat. “It was bad enough Magrat telling me about maypoles and what’s behind ‘em,” said Granny. She added, wistfully, “I used to enjoy looking at a maypole of a spring morning.” “I think the river’s getting a bit sort of rough,” said Magrat. “I don’t see why people can’t just let things be,” said Granny. “I mean really quite rough, really . . .” said Magrat, pushing them away from a jagged rock. “She’s right, you know,” said Nanny Ogg. “It’s a bit on the choppy side.” Granny looked over Magrat’s shoulder at the river ahead. It had a cut-off look, such as might be associated with, for example, an imminent waterfall. The boat was now surging along. There was a muted roar. “They never said anything about a waterfall,” she said. “I ‘spect they thought we’d find out for ourselves,” said Nanny Ogg, gathering up her possessions and hauling Greebo out of the bottom of the boat by the scruff of his neck. “Very sparin’ with information, your average dwarf. Thank goodness witches float. Anyway, they knew we’d got the brooms.” “You’ve got brooms,” said Granny Weatherwax. “How’m I supposed to get mine started in a boat? Can’t run up and down, can I? And stop movin’ about like that, you’ll have us all over - “ “Get your foot out of the way, Esme - “ The boat rocked violently. Magrat rose to the occasion. She pulled out the wand, just as a wavelet washed over the boat. “Don’t worry,” she said, “I’ll use the wand. I think I’ve got the hang of it now - “ “No!” screamed Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg together. There was a large, damp noise. The boat changed shape. It also changed colour. It became a cheery sort of orange. “Pumpkins!” screamed Nanny Ogg, as she was gently tipped into the water. “More bloody pumpkins!” Lilith sat back. The ice around the river hadn’t been that good as a mirror, but it had been good enough. Well. A wishy-washy overgrown girl more suitable to the attentions of a fairy godmother than to being one, and a little old washerwoman-type who got drunk and sang songs. And a wand the stupid girl didn’t know how to use. It was annoying. More than that, it was demeaning. Surely Desiderata and Mrs Gogol could have achieved something better than this. You derived status by the strength of your enemies. Of course, there was her. After all this time . . . Of course. She approved of that. Because there would have to be three of them. Three was an important number for stories. Three wishes, three princes, three billy goats, three guesses . . . three witches. The maiden, the mother and the . . . other one. That was one of the oldest stories of all. Esme Weatherwax had never understood stories. She’d never understood how real reflections were. If she had, she’d probably have been ruling the world by now. “You’re always looking in mirrors!” said a petulant voice. “I hate it when you’re always looking in mirrors!” The Duc sprawled in a chair in one corner, all black silk and well-turned legs. Lilith would not normally allow anyone inside the nest of mirrors but it was, technically, his castle. Besides, he was too vain and stupid to know what was going on. She’d seen to that. At least, she’d thought she had. Lately, he seemed to be picking things up. . . “I don’t know why you have to do that,” he whined. “I thought magic was just a matter of pointing and going whoosh.” Lilith picked up her hat, and glanced at a mirror as she adjusted it. “This way’s safer,” she said. “It’s self-contained. When you use mirror magic, you don’t have to rely on anyone except yourself. That’s why no-one’s ever conquered the world with magic . . . yet. They try to take it from . . . other places. And there’s always a price. But with mirrors, you’re beholden to no-one but your own soul.” She lowered the veil from the hat brim. She preferred the privacy of a veil, outside the security of the mirrors. “I hate mirrors,” muttered the Duc. “That’s because they tell you the truth, my lad.” “It’s cruel magic, then.” Lilith tweaked the veil into a fetching shape. “Oh, yes. With mirrors, all the power is your own. There’s nowhere else it can come from,” she said. “The swamp woman gets it from the swamp,” said the Duc. “Ha! And it’ll claim her one day. She doesn’t understand what she’s doing.” “And you do?” She felt a pang of pride. He was actually resenting her! She really had done a good job there. “I understand stories,” she said. “That’s all I need.” “But you haven’t brought me the girl,” said the Duc. “You promised me the girl. And then it’ll be all over and I can sleep in a real bed and I won’t need any more reflecting magic —“ But even a good job can go too far. “You’ve had your fill of magic?” said Lilith sweetly. “You’d like me to stop? It would be the easiest thing in the world. I found you in the gutter. Would you like me to send you back?” His face became a mask of panic. “I didn’t mean that! I just meant . . . well, then everything will be real. Just one kiss, you said. I can’t see why that’s so hard to arrange.” “The right kiss at the right time,” said Lilith. “It has to be at the right time, otherwise it won’t work.” She smiled. He was trembling, partly out of lust, mainly out of terror, and slightly out of heredity. “Don’t worry,” she said. “It can’t not happen.” “And these witches you showed me?” “They’re just . . . part of the story. Don’t worry about them. The story will just absorb them. And you’ll get her because of stories. Won’t that be nice? And now . . . shall we go? I expect you’ve got some ruling to do?” He picked up the inflexion. It was an order. He stood up, extended an arm to take hers, and together they went down to the palace’s audience chamber. Lilith was proud of the Duc. Of course, there was his embarrassing little nocturnal problem, because his morphic field weakened when he slept, but that wasn’t yet a major difficulty. And there was the trouble with mirrors, which showed him as he really was, but that was easily overcome by banning all mirrors save hers. And then there were his eyes. She couldn’t do anything about the eyes. There was practically no magic that could do anything about someone’s eyes. All she had been able to come up with there were the smoked glasses. Even so, he was a triumph. And he was so grateful. She’d been good for him. She’d made a man of him, for a start. Some way downriver from the waterfall, which was the second highest anywhere on the Disc and had been discovered in the Year of the Revolving Crab by the noted explorer Guy de Yoyo, Granny Weatherwax sat in front of a small fire with a towel around her shoulders and steamed. “Still, look on the bright side,” said Nanny Ogg. “At least I was holding my broom and you at the same time. And Magrat had hers. Otherwise we’d all be looking at the waterfall from underneath.” “Oh, good. A silver lining,” said Granny, her eyes glinting evilly. “Bit of an adventure, really,” said Nanny, grinning encouragingly. “One day we’ll look back on this and laugh.” “Oh, good,” said Granny. Nanny dabbed at the claw marks on her arm. Greebo, with a cat’s true instinct for self-preservation, had clawed his way up his mistress and taken a flying leap to safety from the top of her head. Now he was curled up by the fire, dreaming cat dreams. A shadow passed over them. It was Magrat, who had been combing the riverbanks. “I think I’ve got nearly everything,” she said as she landed. ”Here’s Granny’s broomstick. And. . .oh, yes. . .the wand.” She gave a brave little smile. “Little pumpkins were bobbing to the surface. That’s how I found it.” “My word, that was lucky,” said Nanny Ogg encouragingly. “Hear that, Esme? We shan’t be wanting for food, at any rate.” “And I’ve found the basket with the dwarf bread in it,” said Magrat, “although I’m afraid it might be spoilt.” “It won’t be, take it from me,” said Nanny Ogg. “You can’t spoil dwarf bread. Well, well,” she said, sitting down again. “We’ve got quite a little picnic, haven’t we . . . and a nice bright fire and . . . and a nice place to sit and . . . I’m sure there’s lots of poor people in places like Howondaland and suchlike who’d give anything to be here right now . . .” “If you don’t stop being so cheerful, Gytha Ogg, I shall give you such a ding around the ear with the flat of my hand,” said Granny Weatherwax. “You sure you’re not catching a chill?” said Nanny Ogg. “I’m dryin’ out,” said Granny Weatherwax, “from the inside.” “Look, I’m really sorry,” said Magrat. “I said I was sorry.” Not that she was quite certain what for, she told herself. The boat wasn’t her idea. She hadn’t put the waterfall there. She hadn’t even been in a position to see it coming. She’d turned the boat into a pumpkin, but she hadn’t meant to. It could have happened to anyone. “I managed to save Desiderata’s notebooks, too,” she said. “Well, that’s a blessing,” said Nanny Ogg. “Now we know where we’re lost.” She looked around. They were through the worst of the mountains, but there were still peaks around and high meadows stretching to the snowline. From somewhere in the distance came the clonking of goat bells. Magrat unfolded a map. It was creased, damp, and the pencil had run. She pointed cautiously to a smudged area. “I think we’re here,” she said. “My word,” said Nanny Ogg, whose grasp of the principles of cartography was even shakier than Granny’s. “Amazing how we can all fit on that little bit of paper.” “I think perhaps it would be a good idea at the moment if we just followed the river,” said Magrat. “Without in any way going on it,” she added quickly. “I suppose you didn’t find my bag?” said Granny Weatherwax. “It had pers’nal items in.” “Probably sank like a stone,” said Nanny Ogg. Granny Weatherwax stood up like a general who’s just had news that his army has come second. “Come on,” she said. “Where to next, then?” What was next was forest - dark and ferociously coniferous. The witches flew over it in silence. There were occasional, isolated cottages half-hidden in the trees. Here and there a crag loomed over the sylvanian gloom, shrouded in mist even in mid-afternoon. Once or twice they flew past castles, if that’s what you could call them; they didn’t look built, more extruded from the landscape. It was the kind of landscape that had a particular type of story attached to it, featuring wolves and garlic and frightened women. A dark and thirsty story, a story that flapped wings against the moon . . . “Der flabberghast,” muttered Nanny. “What’s that?” said Magrat. “It’s foreign for bat.” “I’ve always liked bats,” said Magrat. “In general.” The witches found that, by unspoken agreement, they were flying closer together. “I’m getting hungry,” said Granny Weatherwax. “And don’t no-one mention pumpkin.” “There’s dwarf bread,” said Nanny. “There’s always the dwarf bread,” said Granny. “I fancy something cooked this year, thank you all the same.” They flew past another castle, occupying the entire summit of a crag. “What we need is a nice little town or something,” said Magrat. “But the one down there will have to do,” said Granny. They looked down at it. It wasn’t so much a town as a huddle of houses, clustering together against the trees. It looked as cheerless as an empty hearth, but the shadows of the mountains were already speeding across the forest and something about the landscape tacitly discouraged night-time flying. “Can’t see many people about,” said Granny. “Maybe they turn in early in these parts,” said Nanny Ogg. “It’s hardly even sunset,” said Magrat. “Perhaps we ought to go up to that castle?” They all looked at the castle. “No-o-o,” said Granny slowly, speaking for all of them. “We know our place.” So they landed, instead, in what was presumably the town square. A dog barked, somewhere behind the buildings. A shutter banged closed. “Very friendly,” said Granny. She walked over to a larger building that had a sign, unreadable under the grime, over the door. She gave the woodwork a couple of thumps. “Open up!” she said. “No, no, you don’t say that,” said Magrat. She shouldered her way past, and tapped on the door. “Excuse me! Bona fide travellers!” “Bona what?” said Nanny. “That’s what you need to say,” said Magrat. “Any inn has got to open up for bona fide travellers and give them succour.” “Has it?” said Nanny, with interest. “That sounds like a thing worth knowing.” The door remained shut. “Let me ‘ave a go,” said Nanny. “I know some foreign lingo.” She hammered on the door. “Openny vous, gunga din, chop-chop, pretty damn quick,” she said. Granny Weatherwax listened carefully. “That’s speaking foreign, is it?” “My grandson Shane is a sailor,” said Nanny Ogg. “You’d be amazed, the words he learns about foreign parts.” “I expects I would,” said Granny. “And I ‘opes they works better for him.” She thumped on the door again. And this time it opened, very slowly. A pale face peered around it. “Excuse me - “ Magrat began. Granny pushed the door open. The face’s owner had been leaning on it; they could hear the scrape of his boots over the floor as he was shoved gently backwards. “Blessings be on this house,” Granny said, perfunctorily. It was always a good opening remark for a witch. It concentrated people’s minds on what other things might be on this house, and reminded them about any fresh cakes, newly-baked bread or bundles of useful old clothing that might have temporarily escaped their minds. It looked like one of the other things had been on this house already. It was an inn, of sorts. The three witches had never seen such a cheerless place in their lives. But it was quite crowded. A score or more pale-faced people watched them solemnly from benches around the walls. Nanny Ogg sniffed. “Cor,” she said. “Talk about garlic!” And, indeed, bunches of it hung from every beam. “You can’t have too much garlic, I always say. I can see I’m going to like it here.” She nodded to a white-faced man behind the bar. “Gooden day, big-feller mine host! Trois beers pour favour avec us, silver plate.” “What’s a silver plate got to do with it?” demanded Granny. “It’s foreign for please,” said Nanny. “I bet it isn’t really,” said Granny. “You’re just making it up as you goes along.” The innkeeper, who worked on the fairly simple principle that anyone walking through the door wanted something to drink, drew three beers. “See?” said Nanny, triumphantly. “I don’t like the way everyone’s looking at us,” said Magrat, as Nanny babbled on to the perplexed man in her very own esperanto. “A man over there grinned at me.” Granny Weatherwax sat down on a bench, endeavouring to position herself so that as small an amount of her body as possible was in contact with the wood, in case being foreign was something you could catch. “There,” said Nanny, bustling up with a tray, “nothing to it. I just cussed at him until he understood.” “It looks horrible,” said Granny. “Garlic sausage and garlic bread,” said Nanny. “My favourite.” “You ought to have got some fresh vegetables,” said Magrat the dietitian. “I did. There’s some garlic,” said Nanny happily, cutting a generous slice of eye-watering sausage. “And I think I definitely saw something like pickled onions on one of the shelves.” “Yes? Then we’re going to need at least two rooms for tonight,” said Granny sternly. “Three,” said Magrat, very quickly. She risked another look around the room. The silent villagers were staring at them intently, with a look she could only describe to herself as a sort of hopeful sadness. Of course, anyone who spent much time in the company of Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg got used to being stared at; they were the kind of people that filled every space from edge to edge. And probably people in these parts didn’t often see strangers, what with the thick forests and all. And the sight of Nanny Ogg eating a sausage with extreme gusto would even outrank her pickled onion number as major entertainment anywhere. Even so . . . the way people were staring . . . Outside, deep in the trees, a wolf howled. The assembled villagers shivered in unison, as though they had been practising. The landlord muttered something to them. They got up, reluctantly, and filed out of the door, trying to keep together. An old lady laid her hand on Magrat’s shoulder for a moment, shook her head sadly, sighed, and then scuttled away. But Magrat was used to this, too. People often felt sorry for her when they saw her in Granny’s company. Eventually the landlord lurched across to them with a lighted torch, and motioned them to follow him. “How did you make him understand about the beds?” said Magrat. “I said, “Hey mister, jigajig toot sweet all same No. 3”,” said Nanny Ogg. Granny Weatherwax tried this under her breath, and nodded. “Your lad Shane certainly gets around a bit, doesn’t he,” she remarked. “He says it works every time,” said Nanny Ogg. In fact there were only two rooms, up a long, winding and creaky stairway. And Magrat got one to herself. Even the landlord seemed to want it that way. He’d been very attentive. She wished he hadn’t been so keen to bar the shutters, though. Magrat liked to sleep with a window open. As it was, it was too dark and stuffy. Anyway, she thought, I am the fairy godmother. The others are just accompanying me. She peered hopelessly at herself in the room’s tiny cracked mirror and then lay and listened to them on the far side of the paper-thin wall. “What’re you turning the mirror to the wall for, Esme?” “I just don’t like ‘em, staring like that.” “They only stares if you’re staring at ‘em, Esme.” Silence, and then: “Eh, what’s this round thing for, then?” “I reckon it’s supposed to be a pillow, Esme.” “Hah! I don’t call it a pillow. And there’s no proper blankets, even. What’d you say this thing’s called?” “I think it’s called a duvit, Esme.” “We call them an eiderdown where I come from. Hah!” There was a respite. Then: “Have you brushed your tooth?” And another pause. Then: “Oo, you haven’t half got cold feet, Esme.” “No, they ain’t. They’re lovely and snug.” And another silence. Then: “Boots! Your boots! You’ve got your boots on!” “I should just think I ‘ave got my boots on, Gytha Ogg.” “And your clothes! You haven’t even undressed!” “You can’t be too careful in foreign parts. There could be all sorts out there, a-creepin’ around.” Magrat snuggled under the - what was it? - duvit, and turned over. Granny Weatherwax appeared to need one hour’s sleep a night, whereas Nanny Ogg would snore on a fence rail. “Gytha? Gytha! GYTHA!” “Wha’?” “Are you awake?” “ ‘M now . . .” “I keep ‘earing a noise!” “. . . so do I . . .” Magrat dozed for a while. “Gytha? GYTHA!” “. . . wha’ now? . . .” “I’m sure someone rattled our shutters!” “. . . not at our time of life . . . now g’ back t’ slee’. . .” The air in the room was getting hotter and stuffier by the minute. Magrat got out of bed, unbolted the shutters and flung them back dramatically. There was a grunt, and a distant thud of something hitting the ground. The full moon streamed in. She felt a lot better for that, and got back into bed. It seemed no time at all before the voice from next door woke her again. “Gytha Ogg, what are you doing?” “I’m ‘aving a snack.” “Can’t you sleep?” “Just can’t seem to be able to get off, Esme,” said Nanny Ogg. “Can’t imagine why.” “Here, that’s garlic sausage you’re eating! I’m actually sharing a bed with someone eating garlic sausage.” “Hey, that’s mine! Give it back - “ Magrat was aware of booted footsteps in the pit of the night, and the sound of a shutter being swung back in the next room. She thought she heard a faint ‘oof and another muted thud. “I thought you liked garlic, Esme,” said Nanny Ogg’s resentful voice. “Sausage is all right in its place, and its place ain’t in bed. And don’t you say a word. Now move over. You keep taking all the duvit.” After a while the velvet silence was broken by Granny’s deep and resonant snore. Shortly afterwards it was joined by the genteel snoring of Nanny, who had spent far more time sleeping in company than Granny and had evolved a more accommodating nasal orchestra. Granny’s snore would have cut logs. Magrat folded the horrible round hard pillow over her ears and burrowed under the bedclothes. Somewhere on the chilly ground, a very large bat was trying to get airborne again. It had already been stunned twice, once by a carelessly opened shutter and once by a ballistic garlic sausage, and wasn’t feeling very well at all. One more setback, it was thinking, and it’s back off to the castle. Besides, it’d be sunrise soon. Its red eyes glinted as it looked up at Magrat’s open window. It tensed - A paw landed on it. The bat looked around. Greebo had not had a very good night. He had investigated the whole place with regard to female cats, and found none. He had prowled among the middens, and drawn a blank. People in this town didn’t throw the garbage away. They ate it. He’d trotted into the woods and found some wolves and had sat and grinned at them until they got uncomfortable and went away. Yes, it had been a very uneventful night. Until now. The bat squirmed under his claw. It seemed to Greebo’s small cat brain that it was trying to change its shape, and he wasn’t having any of that from a mouse with wings on. Especially now, when he had someone to play with. Genua was a fairytale city. People smiled and were joyful the livelong day. Especially if they wanted to see another livelong day. Lilith made certain of that. Of course, people had probably thought they were happy in the days before she’d seen to it that the Duc replaced the old Baron, but it was a random, untidy happiness, which was why it was so easy for her to move in. But it wasn’t a way of life. There was no pattern to it. One day they’d thank her. Of course, there were always a few difficult ones. Sometimes, people just didn’t know how to act. You did your best for them, you ruled their city properly, you ensured that their lives were worthwhile and full of happiness every hour of the day and then, for no reason at all, they turned on you. Guards lined the audience chamber. And there was an audience. Technically, of course, it was the ruler who gave the audience, but Lilith liked to see people watching. One pennyworth of example was worth a pound of punishment. There wasn’t a lot of crime in Genua these days. At least, not what would be considered crime elsewhere. Things like theft were easily dealt with and hardly required any kind of judicial process. Far more important, in Lilith’s book, were crimes against narrative expectation. People didn’t seem to know how they should behave. Lilith held a mirror up to Life, and chopped all the bits off Life that didn’t fit. . . The Duc lounged bonelessly on his throne, one leg dangling over the armrest. He’d never got the hang of chairs. “And what has this one done?” he said, and yawned. Opening his mouth wide was something he was good at, at least. A little old man cowered between two guards. There’s always someone willing to be a guard, even in places like Genua. Besides, you got a really smart uniform, with blue trousers and a red coat and a high black hat with a cockade in it. “But I. . . I can’t whistle,” quavered the old man. “I. . . I didn’t know it was compulsory . . .” “But you are a toymaker,” said the Duc. “Toymakers whistle and sing the whole day long.” He glanced at Lilith. She nodded. “I don’t know any . . . s-songs,” said the toymaker. “I never got taught s—songs. Just how to make toys. I was ‘prenticed at making toys. Seven years before the little hammer, man and boy . . .” “It says here,” said the Duc, making a creditable impersonation of someone reading the charge sheet in front of him, “that you don’t tell the children stories.” “No-one ever told me about telling . . . s-stories,” said the toymaker. “Look, I just make toys. Toys. That’s all I’m good at. Toys. I make good t-toys. I’m just a t-toymaker.” “You can’t be a good toymaker if you don’t tell stories to the children,” said Lilith, leaning forward. The toymaker looked up at the veiled face. “Don’t know any,” he said. “You don’t know any? “I could t-tell ‘em how to make toys,” the old man quavered. Lilith sat back. It was impossible to see her expression under the veil. “I think it would be a good idea if the People’s Guards here took you away,” she said, “to a place where you will certainly learn to sing. And possibly, after a while, you might even whistle. Won’t that be nice?” The old Baron’s dungeons had been disgusting. Lilith had had them repainted and refurnished. With a lot of mirrors. When the audience was over one member of the crowd slipped out through the palace kitchens. The guards on the side gate didn’t try to stop her. She was a very important person in the small compass of their lives. “Hello, Mrs Pleasant.” She stopped, reached into her basket and produced a couple of roast chicken legs. “Just tryin’ a new peanut coating,” she said. “Would value your opinions, boys.” They took them gratefully. Everyone liked to see Mrs Pleasant. She could do things with a chicken that would almost make it glad it had been killed. “And now I’m just going out to get some herbs,” she said. They watched her as she went like a fat, determined arrow in the direction of the market place, which was right on the edge of the river. Then they ate the chicken legs. Mrs Pleasant bustled among the market stalls; and she took great care to bustle. Even in Genua there were always people ready to tell a tale. Especially in Genua. She was a cook, so she bustled. And made sure she stayed fat and was, fortunately, naturally jolly. She made sure she had floury arms at all times. If she felt under suspicion, she’d say things like ‘Lawks!” She seemed to be getting away with it so far. She looked for the sign. And there it was. Perched up on die roof pole of a stall that was otherwise stacked with cages of hens, gazoots, Wheely cranes and other fowl, was a black cockerel. The voodoo doctor was In. Even as her eye found it the cockerel’s head turned to look at her. Set a little way back from the rest of the stalls was a small tent, similar to many around the market. A cauldron bubbled in front of it on a charcoal fire. There were bowls beside it, and a ladle, and beside them a plate with coins on it. There were quite a lot of coins; people paid for Mrs Gogol’s cooking whatever they thought it was worth, and the plate was hardly big enough. The thick liquid in the cauldron was an unappetizing brown. Mrs Pleasant helped herself to a bowlful, and waited. Mrs Gogol had certain talents. After a while a voice from the tent said, “What’s new, Mrs Pleasant?” “She’s shut up the toymaker,” said Mrs Pleasant, to the air in general. “And yesterday it was old Devereaux the innkeeper for not being fat and not having a big red face. That’s four times this month.” “You come in, Mrs Pleasant.” It was dark and hot inside the tent. There was another fire in there, and another pot. Mrs Gogol was hunched over it, stirring. She motioned the cook to a pair of bellows. “Blow up the coals a tad, and we’ll see what’s what,” she said. Mrs Pleasant obeyed. She didn’t use magic herself, other than that necessary to get a roux to turn or bread to rise, but she respected it in others. Especially in the likes of Mrs Gogol. The charcoal blazed white. The thick liquid in the pot began to churn. Mrs Gogol peered into the steam. “What’re you doing, Mrs Gogol?” said the cook anxiously. “Trying to see what’s goin’ to happen,” said the voodoo woman. The voice dropped into the rolling growl of the psychically gifted. Mrs Pleasant squinted into the roiling mass. “Someone’s going to be eatin’ shrimp?” she said helpfully. “Ye see that bit of okra?” said Mrs Gogol. “Ye see the way the crab legs keep coming up just there?” “You never were one to stint the crab meat,” said Mrs Pleasant. “See the way the bubbles is so thick by the okuh leaves? See the way it all spirals around that purple onion?” “I see it! I see it!” said Mrs Pleasant. “And you know what that means?” “Means it’s going to taste real tesme[?]!” “Sure,” said Mrs Gogol, kindly. “And it means some people’s coming.” “Wow! How many?” Mrs Gogol dipped a spoon into the seething mass and tasted it. “Three people,” she said. She smacked her lips thoughtfully. “Women.” She dipped the spoon again. “Have a taste,” she said. “There’s a cat, too. Ye can tell by the sassafras.” She smacked her lips. “Grey. One eye.” She explored the cavity of a tooth with her tongue. “The . . . left one.” Mrs Pleasant’s jaw dropped. “They’ll find you before they find me,” said Mrs Gogol. “You lead ‘em here.” Mrs Pleasant stared at Mrs Gogol’s grim smile and then back down at the mixture in the pot. “They coming all this way for a taste?” she said. “Sure.” Mrs Gogol sat back. “You been to see the girl in the white house?” Mrs Pleasant nodded. “Young Embers,” she said. “Yeah. When I can. When the Sisters are out at the palace. They got her real scared, Mrs Gogol.” She looked down at the pot again, and back up to Mrs Gogol. “Can you really see - ?” “I expect you’ve got things to marinate?” said Mrs Gogol. “Yeah. Yeah.” Mrs Pleasant backed out, but with reluctance. Then she halted. Mrs Pleasant, at rest, was not easily moved again until she wanted to be. “That Lilith woman says she can see the whole world in mirrors,” she said, in slightly accusing tones. Mrs Gogol shook her head. “All anyone gets in a mirror is themselves,” she said. “But what you gets in a good gumbo is everything.” Mrs Pleasant nodded. This was a well-known fact. She couldn’t dispute it. Mrs Gogol shook her head sadly when the cook had gone. A voodoo woman was reduced to all sorts of stratagems in order to appear knowing, but she felt slightly ashamed of letting an honest woman believe that she could see the future in a pot of gumbo. Because all you could see in a pot of Mrs Gogol’s gumbo was that the future certainly contained a very good meal. She’d really seen it in a bowl of jambalaya she’d prepared earlier. Magrat lay with the wand under her pillow. She wobbled gently between sleep and wakefulness. Certainly she was the best person for the wand. There was no doubt about that. Sometimes - and she hardly dared give the thought headroom, when she was under the same roof as Granny Weatherwax - she really wondered about the others’ commitment to witchcraft. Half the time they didn’t seem to bother. Take medicine, for example. Magrat knew she was much better than them at herbs. She’d inherited several large books on the subject from Goodie Whemper, her predecessor in the cottage, and had essayed a few tentative notes of her own as well. She could tell people things about the uses of Devil’s Bit Scabious that would interest them so much they’d rush off, presumably to look for someone else to tell. She could fractionally distil, and double-distil, and do things that meant sitting up all night watching the colour of the flame under the retort. She worked at it. Whereas Nanny just tended to put a hot poultice on everything and recommend a large glass of whatever the patient liked best on the basis that since you were going to be ill anyway you might as well get some enjoyment out of it. (Magrat forbade her patients alcohol, because of what it did to the liver; if they didn’t know what it did to the liver, she spent some time telling them.) And Granny . . . she just gave people a bottle of coloured water and told them they felt a lot better. And what was so annoying was that they often did. Where was the witchcraft in that? With a wand, though, things could be different. You could help people a lot with a wand. Magic was there to make life better. Magrat knew this in the pink fluttering boudoir of her heart. She dipped under the surface of sleep again. And there was an odd dream. She never mentioned it to anyone afterwards because, well, you didn’t. Not things like that. But she thought she’d got up in the night, awakened by the silence, to get some more air. And as she passed the mirror she saw a movement in it. It wasn’t her face. It looked a lot like Granny Weather-wax. It smiled at her - a much nicer and friendlier smile than she’d ever got from Granny, Magrat recalled - and then vanished, the cloudy silver surface closing over it. She hurried back to bed and awoke to the sound of a brass band, engaged in unrelenting oompah. People were shouting and laughing. Magrat got dressed quickly, went out into the corridor, and knocked on the door of the older witches. There was no reply. She tried the handle. After she’d rattled it a couple of times there was a thump as the chair wedged under the handle on the other side, the better to deter ravishers, burglars and other nocturnal intruders, fell over. Granny Weatherwax’s boots protruded from under the covers at one end of the bed. Nanny Ogg’s bare feet, Nanny being something of a night-time revolver, were beside them. Faint snores rattled the jug on the washbasin; these were no longer the full-nosed roars of a quick forty-winks catnapper, but the well-paced growls of someone who intends to make a night of it. Magrat knocked on the sole of Granny’s boot. “Hey, wake up! Something’s going on.” Granny Weather-wax waking up was quite an impressive sight, and one not seen by many people. Most people, on waking up, accelerate through a quick panicky pre-consciousness check-up: who am I, where am I, who is he/she, good god, why am I cuddling a policeman’s helmet, what happened last night? And this is because people are riddled by Doubt. It is the engine that drives them through their lives. It is the elastic band in the little model aeroplane of their soul, and they spend their time winding it up until it knots. Early morning is the worst time - there’s that little moment of panic in case You have drifted away in the night and something else has moved in. This never happened to Granny Weatherwax. She went straight from fast asleep to instant operation on all six cylinders. She never needed to find herself because she always knew who was doing the looking. She sniffed. “Something’s burning,” she said. “They’ve got a bonfire, too,” said Magrat. Granny sniffed again. “They’re roasting garlic”?” she said. “I know. I can’t imagine why. They’re ripping all the shutters off the windows and burning them in the square and dancing around the fire.” Granny Weatherwax gave Nanny Ogg a vicious jab with her elbow. “Wake up, you.” “Wstph?” “I didn’t get a wink of sleep all night,” said Granny reproachfully, “what with her snoring.” Nanny Ogg raised the covers cautiously. “It’s far too early in the morning for it to be early in the morning,” she said. “Come on,” said Granny. “We needs your skill with languages.” The owner of the inn flapped his arms up and down and ran around in circles. Then he pointed at the castle that towered over the forest. Then he sucked vigorously at his wrist. Then he fell over on his back. And then he looked expectantly at Nanny Ogg, while behind him the bonfire of garlic and wooden stakes and heavy window shutters burned merrily. “No,” said Nanny, after a while. “Still non conprendy, mine hair.” The man got up, and brushed some dust off his leather breeches. “I think he’s saying that someone’s dead,” said Magrat. “Someone in the castle.” “Well, I must say, everyone seems very cheerful about it,” said Granny Weatherwax severely. In the sunlight of the new day the village looked far more cheerful. Everyone kept nodding happily at the witches. “That’s because it was probably the landlord,” said Nanny Ogg. “Bit of a bloodsucker, I think he’s sayin’.” “Ah. That’d be it, then.” Granny rubbed her hands together and looked approvingly at the breakfast table, which had been dragged out into the sunshine. “Anyway, the food has certainly improved. Pass the bread, Magrat.” “Everyone keeps smiling and waving at us,” said Magrat. “And look at all this food!” “That’s only to be expected,” said Granny, with her mouth full. “They’ve only had us here one night and already they’re learnin’ it’s lucky to be kind to witches. Now help me get the lid off this honey.” Under the table, Greebo sat and washed himself. Occasionally he burped. Vampires have risen from the dead, the grave and the crypt, but have never managed it from the cat. Dear Jason and all at No. 21, No. 34, No. 15, No. 87 and No. 61 but not at No. 18 until she gives back the bowl she definitly borrowed whatever she says, Well here we are, cor what a lark so far, dont arsk ME about pumkins, still, no harm done. Im drawin a picture of where we stayed larst night I have put an X on our room where our room is. The weather – “What are you doing, Gytha? We’re ready to leave.” Nanny Ogg looked up, her face still creased with the effort of composition. “I thought it would be nice to send something to our Jason. You know, to stop him worryin’. So I done a drawing of this place on a piece of card and Mine Hair here will give it to someone going our way. You never know, it might get there.” - continues Fine. Nanny Ogg sucked the end of her pencil. Not for the first time in the history of the universe, someone for whom communication normally came as effortlessly as a dream was stuck for inspiration when faced with a few lines on the back of a card. Well that about wraps it up for now, will fight wright again soone MUM. P.S. the Cat is looking very Peeky I think he misses his Home. “Will you come on, Gytha? Magrat’s getting my broom started for me.” P.P.S. Granny sends her Love. Nanny Ogg sat back, content in the knowledge of a job well done.* Magrat reached the end of the town square and stopped to rest. Quite an audience had gathered to see a woman with legs. They were very polite about it. Somehow, that made it worse. “It doesn’t fly unless you run really fast,” she explained, aware even as she spoke how stupid this sounded, especially if you were listening in a foreign language. “I think it’s called hump starting.” She took a deep breath, scowled in concentration, and ran forward again. This time it started. It jolted in her hands. The bristles rustled. She managed to slip it into neutral before it could drag her along the ground. One thing about Granny Weatherwax’s broomstick - it was one of the very old-fashioned ones, built in the days when broomsticks were built to last and not fall apart with woodworm after ten years - was that while it might take some starting, when it went it didn’t hang about. Magrat had once considered explaining the symbolism of the witches’ broomstick to Granny Weatherwax, and decided not to. It would have been worse than the row about the significance of the maypole. Departure took some time. The villagers insisted on giving them little gifts of food. Nanny Ogg made a speech which no-one understood but which was generally cheered. Greebo, hiccuping occasionally, oozed into his accustomed place among the bristles of Nanny’s broomstick. As they rose above the forest a thin plume of smoke also rose from the castle. And then there were flames. “I see people dancing in front of it,” said Magrat. “Always a dangerous business, rentin’ property,” said Granny Weatherwax. “I expect he was a bit lax when it came to redecoratin’ and repairin’ the roof and suchlike. People take against that kind of thing. My landlord hasn’t done a hand’s turn on my cottage the whole time I’ve been there,” she added. “It’s shameful. And me an old woman, too.” “I thought you owned your place,” said Magrat, as the broomsticks set off over the forest. “She just ain’t paid no rent for sixty years,” said Nanny Ogg. “Is that my fault?” said Granny Weatherwax. “It’s not my fault. I’d be quite willin’ to pay.” She smiled a slow, self-confident smile. “All he has to do is ask,” she added. This is the Discworld, seen from above, its cloud formations circling in long curved patterns. Three dots emerged from the cloud layer. “I can see why travellin’ doesn’t catch on. I call this boring. Nothing but forest for hours and hours.” “Yes, but flying gets you to places quickly, Granny.” “How long’ve we been flying, anyway?” “About ten minutes since you last asked, Esme.” “You see? Boring.” “It’s sitting on the sticks I don’t like. I reckon there ought to be a special broomstick for going long distances, right? One you could stretch out on and have a snooze.” They all considered this. “And have your meals on,” added Nanny. “Proper meals, I mean. With gravy. Not just sandwiches and stuff.” An experiment in aerial cookery on a small oil burner had been hastily curtailed after it threatened to set fire to Nanny’s broomstick. “I suppose you could do it if you had a really big broomstick,” said Magrat. “About the size of a tree, perhaps. Then one of us could do the steering and another one could do the cooking.” “It’d never happen,” said Nanny Ogg. “The reason being, the dwarfs would make you pay a fortune for a stick that big.” “Yes, but what you could do,” said Magrat, warming to her subject, “is get people to pay you to give them rides. There must be lots of people fed up with highwaymen and . . . and being seasick and that sort of thing.” “How about it, Esme?” said Nanny Ogg. “I’ll do the steering and Magrat’ll do the cooking.” “What shall I do, then?” said Granny Weatherwax suspiciously. “Oh . . . well . . . there ought to be someone to, you know, welcome people onto the stick and give them their meals,” said Magrat. “And tell them what to do if the magic fails, for example.” “If the magic fails everyone’ll crash into the ground and die,” Granny pointed out. “Yes, but someone will have to tell them how to do that,” said Nanny Ogg, winking at Magrat. “They won’t know how to, not being experienced in flying.” “And we could call ourselves . . .” she paused. As always on the Discworld, which was right on the very edge of unreality, little bits of realness crept in whenever someone’s mind was resonating properly. This happened now. “. . . Three Witches Airborne,” she said. “How about that?” “Broomsticks Airborne,” said Magrat. “Or Pan . . . air . . .” “There’s no need to bring religion into it,” sniffed Granny. Nanny Ogg looked slyly from Granny to Magrat. “We could call it Vir - “ she began. A gust of wind caught all three sticks and whirled them up. There was a brief panic as the witches brought them under control. “Load of nonsense,” muttered Granny. “Well, it passes the time,” said Nanny Ogg. Granny looked morosely at the greenery below. “You’d never get people to do it,” she said. “Load of nonsense.” Dear Jason enfamile, Overleaf on the other side please find enclosed a sketch of somewhere some king died and was buried, search me why. It’s in some village wear we stopped last night. We had some stuff it was chewy you’ll never guess it was snails, and not bad and Esme had three helpins before she found out and then had a Row with the cook and Magrat was sick all night just at the thought of it and had the dire rear. Thinking of you your loving MUM. PS the privies here are DESGUSTING, they have them INDORES, so much for HIGEINE. Several days passed. In a quiet little inn in a tiny country Granny Weather-wax sat and regarded the food with deep suspicion. The owner hovered with the frantic expression of one who knows, even before he starts, that he’s not going to come out of this ahead of the game. “Good simple home cooking,” said Granny. “That’s all I require. You know me. I’m not the demanding sort. No-one could say I’m the demanding sort. I just want simple food. Not all grease and stuff. It comes to something when you complain about something in your lettuce and it turns out to be what you ordered.” Nanny Ogg tucked her napkin into the top of her dress and said nothing. “Like that place last night,” said Granny. “You’d think you’d be all right with sandwiches, wouldn’t you? I mean . . . sandwiches? Simplest food there is in the whole world. You’d think even foreigners couldn’t get sandwiches wrong. Hah!” “They didn’t call them sandwiches, Granny,” said Magrat, her eyes dwelling on the owner’s frying pan. “They called them . . . I think they called them smorgy’s board.” “They was nice,” said Nanny Ogg. “I’m very partial to a pickled herring.” “But they must think we’re daft, not noticing they’d left off the top slice,” said Granny triumphantly. “Well, I told them a thing or two! Another time they’ll think twice before trying to swindle people out of a slice of bread that’s theirs by rights!” “I expect they will,” said Magrat darkly. “And I don’t hold with all this giving things funny names so people don’t know what they’re eating,” said Granny, determined to explore the drawbacks of international cookery to the full. “I like stuff that tells you plain what it is, like . . . well . . . Bubble and Squeak, or . . . or . . .” “Spotted Dick,” said Nanny absently. She was watching the progress of the pancakes with some anticipation. “That’s right. Decent honest food. I mean, take that stuff we had for lunch. I’m not saying it wasn’t nice,” said Granny graciously. “In a foreign sort of way, of course. But they called it Cwuissses dee Grenolly, and who knows what that means?” “Frogs’ legs,” translated Nanny, without thinking. The silence was filled with Granny Weatherwax taking a deep breath and a pale green colour creeping across Magrat’s face. Nanny Ogg now thought quicker than she had done for a very long time. “Not actual frogs’ legs,” she said hurriedly. “It’s like Toad-in-the-Hole is really only sausage and batter puddin’. It’s just a joke name.” “It doesn’t sound very funny to me,” said Granny. She turned to glare at the pancakes. “At least they can’t muck up a decent pancake,” she said. “What’d they call them here?” “Crap suzette, I think,” said Nanny. Granny forbore to comment. But she watched with grim satisfaction as the owner finished the dish and gave her a hopeful smile. “Oh, now he expects us to eat them,” she said. “He only goes and sets fire to them, and then he still expects us to eat them!” It might later have been possible to chart the progress of the witches across the continent by some sort of demographic survey. Long afterwards, in some quiet, onion-hung kitchens, in sleepy villages nestling among hot hills, you might have found cooks who wouldn’t twitch and try to hide behind the door when a stranger came into the kitchen. Dear Jason, It is defnity more warmer here, Magrat says it is because we are getting further from the Hub and, a funny thing, all the money is different. You have to change it for other money which is all different shapes and is not proper money at all in my opnion. We generally let Esme sort that out, she gets a very good rate of exchange, it is amazing, Magrat says she will write a book called Travelling on One Dollar a Day, and it’s always the same dollar. Esme is getting to act just like a foreigner, yesterday she took her shawl off, next thing it will be dancing on tables. This is a picture of some famous bridge or other. Lots of love, MUM. The sun beat down on the cobbled street, and particularly on the courtyard of a little inn. “It’s hard to imagine,” said Magrat, “that it’s autumn back home.” “Garkon? Mucho vino aveck zei, grassy ass.” The innkeeper, who did not understand one word and was a good-natured man who certainly did not deserve to be called a garkon, smiled at Nanny. He’d smile at anyone with such an unlimited capacity for drink. “I don’t hold with putting all these tables out in the street, though,” said Granny Weatherwax, although without much severity. It was pleasantly warm. It wasn’t that she didn’t like autumn, it was a season she always looked forward to, but at her time of life it was nice to know that it was happening hundreds of miles away while she wasn’t there. Underneath the table Greebo dozed on his back with his legs in the air. Occasionally he twitched as he fought wolves in his sleep. “It says in Desiderata’s notes,” said Magrat, turning the stiff pages carefully, “that in the late summer here they have this special traditional ceremony where they let a lot of bulls run through the street.” “That’d be something worth seeing,” said Granny Weatherwax. “Why do they do it?” “So all the young men can chase them to show how brave they are,” said Magrat. “Apparently they pull their rosettes off.” A variety of expressions passed across Nanny Ogg’s wrinkled face, like weather over a stretch of volcanic badlands. “Sounds a bit strange,” she said at last. “What do they do that for?” “She doesn’t explain it very clearly,” said Magrat. She turned another page. Her lips moved as she read on. “What does cojones mean?” They shrugged. “Here, you want to slow down on that drink,” said Granny, as a waiter put down another bottle in front of Nanny Ogg. “I wouldn’t trust any drink that’s green.” “It’s not like proper drink,” said Nanny. “It says on the label it’s made from herbs. You can’t make a serious drink out of just herbs. Try a drop.” Granny sniffed the opened bottle. “Smells like aniseed,” she said. “It says “Absinthe” on the bottle,” said Nanny. “Oh, that’s just a name for wormwood,” said Magrat, who was good at herbs. “My herbal says it’s good for stomach disorders and prevents sickness after meals.” “There you are, then,” said Nanny. “Herbs. It’s practic’ly medicine.” She poured a generous measure for the other two. “Give it a go, Magrat. It’ll put a chest on your chest.” Granny Weatherwax surreptitiously loosened her boots. She was also debating whether to remove her vest. She probably didn’t need all three. “We ought to be getting on,” she said. “Oh, I’m fed up with the broomsticks,” said Nanny. “More than a couple of hours on a stick and I’ve gone rigid in the dairy air.” She looked expectantly at the other two. “That foreign for bum,” she added. “Although, it’s a funny thing, in some foreign parts “bum” means “tramp” and “tramp” means “hobo”. Funny things, words.” “A laugh a minute,” said Granny. “The river’s quite wide here,” said Magrat. “There’s big boats. I’ve never been on a proper boat. You know? The kind that doesn’t sink easily?” “Broomsticks is more witchy,” said Granny, but not with much conviction. She did not have Nanny Ogg’s international anatomical vocabulary, but bits of her she wouldn’t even admit to knowing the names of were definitely complaining. “I saw them boats,” said Nanny. “They looked like great big rafts with houses on. You wouldn’t hardly know you’re on a boat, Esme. “Ere, what’s he doing?” The innkeeper had hurried out and was taking the jolly little tables back inside. He nodded at Nanny and spoke with a certain amount of urgency. “I think he wants us to go inside,” said Magrat. “I likes it out here,” said Granny. “I LIKES IT OUT HERE, THANK YOU,” she repeated. Granny Weather-wax’s approach to foreign tongues was to repeat herself loudly and slowly. “ ‘Ere, you stop trying to take our table away!” snapped Nanny, thumping his hands. The innkeeper spoke hurriedly and pointed up the street. Granny and Magrat glanced inquiringly at Nanny Ogg. She shrugged. “Didn’t understand any of that,” she admitted. “WE’RE STOPPIN’ WHERE WE ARE, THANK YOU,” said Granny. The innkeeper’s eyes met hers. He gave in, waved his hands in the air in exasperation, and went inside. “They think they can take advantage of you when you’re a woman,” said Magrat. She stifled a burp, discreetly, and picked up the green bottle again. Her stomach was feeling a lot better already. “That’s very true. D’you know what?” said Nanny Ogg, “I barricaded meself in my room last night and a man didn’t even try to break in.” “Gytha Ogg, sometimes you - “ Granny stopped as she caught sight of something over Nanny’s shoulder. “There’s a load of cows coming down the street,” she said. Nanny turned her chair around. “It must be that bull thing Magrat mentioned,” she said. “Should be worth seein’.” Magrat glanced up. All along the street people were craning out of every second-storey window. A jostle of horns and hooves and steaming bodies was approaching rapidly. “There’s people up there laughing at us,” she said accusingly. Under the table Greebo stirred and rolled over. He opened his good eye, focused on the approaching bulls, and sat up. This looked like being fun. “Laughin’?” said Granny. She looked up. The people aloft did indeed appear to be enjoying a joke. Her eyes narrowed. “We’re just goin’ to carry on as if nothin’ is happening,” she declared. “But they’re quite big bulls,” said Magrat nervously. “They’re nothing to do with us,” said Granny. “It’s nothin’ to do with us if a lot of foreigners want to get excited about things. Now pass me the herbal wine.” As far as Lagro te Kabona, innkeeper, could remember the events of that day, they seemed to happen like this: It was the time of the Thing with the Bulls. And the mad women just sat there, drinking absinthe as if it was water! He tried to get them to come indoors, but the old one, the skinny one, just shouted at him. So he let them bide, but left the door open - people soon got the message when the bulls came down the street with the young men of the village after them. Whoever snatched the big red rosette from between the horns of the biggest bull got the seat of honour at that night’s feast plus - Lagro smiled a smile of forty years’ remembrance - a certain informal but highly enjoyable relationship with the young women of the town for quite some time after . . . And the mad women just sat there. The leading bull had been a bit uncertain about this. Its normal course of action would be to roar and paw the ground a bit to get the targets running in an interesting way and its mind wasn’t able to cope with this lack of attention, but that hadn’t been its major problem, because its major problem had been twenty other bulls right behind it. And even that ceased to be its major problem, because the terrible old woman, the one all in black, had stood up, muttered something at it and smacked it between the eyes. Then the horrible dumpy one whose stomach had the resilience and capacity of a galvanized water tank fell backwards off her chair, laughing, and the young one - that is, the one who was younger than the other two - started flapping at the bulls as if they were ducks. And then the street was full of angry, bewildered bulls, and a lot of shouting, terrified young men. It’s one thing to chase a lot of panicking bulls, and quite another to find that they’re suddenly trying to run the other way. The innkeeper, from the safety of his bedroom window, could hear the horrible women shouting things to one another. The dumpy one kept laughing and shouting some sort of battle cry- “TrytheHorsemanswordEsme!” and then the younger one, who was pushing her way through the animals as if being gored to death was something that only happened to other people, found the lead bull and took the rosette off it, with the same air of concern as an old woman may take a thorn out of her cat’s paw. She held it as if she didn’t know what it was or what she should do with it. . . The sudden silence affected even the bulls. Their tiny little bloodshot brains sensed something wrong. The bulls were embarrassed. Fortunately, the horrible women left on a riverboat that afternoon, after one of them rescued her cat which had cornered twenty-five stone of confused bull and was trying to toss it in the air and play with it. That evening Lagro te Kabona made a point of being very, very kind to his old mother. And the village held a flower festival next year, and no-one ever talked about the Thing with the Bulls ever, ever again. At least, not in front of the men. The big paddlewheel sloshed through the thick brown soup of the river. The motive power was several dozen trolls under a sun-shade, trudging along an endless belt. Birds sang in the trees on the distant banks. The scent of hibiscus wafted across the water, almost but unfortunately not quite overpowering the scent of the river itself. “Now this,” said Nanny Ogg, “is more like it.” She stretched out on the deckchair and turned to look at Granny Weatherwax, whose brows were knitted in the intense concentration of reading. Nanny’s mouth spread in an evil grin. “You know what this river’s called?” she said. “No.” “ ‘S called the Vieux River.” “Yes?” “Know what that means?” “No.” “The Old (Masculine) River,” said Nanny. “Yes?” “Words have sex in foreign parts,” said Nanny, hopefully. Granny didn’t budge. “Wouldn’t be at all surprised,” she murmured. Nanny sagged. “That’s one of Desiderata’s books, isn’t it?” “Yes,” said Granny. She licked her thumb decorously and turned the page. “Where’s Magrat gone?” “She’s having a lie-down in the cabin,” said Granny, without looking up. “Tummy upset?” “It’s her head this time. Now be quiet, Gytha. I’m having a read.” “What about?” said Nanny cheerfully. Granny Weatherwax sighed, and put her finger on the page to mark her place. “This place we’re going to,” she said. “Genua. Desiderata says it’s decadent.” Nanny Ogg’s smile remained fixed. “Yes?” she said. “That’s good, is it? I’ve never been to a city before.” Granny Weatherwax paused. She’d been pondering for some while. She wasn’t at all certain about the meaning of the word ‘decadent’. She’d dismissed the possibility that it meant ‘having ten teeth’ in the same sense that Nanny Ogg, for example, was unident. Whatever it meant, it was something Desiderata had felt necessary to write down. Granny Weatherwax did not generally trust books as a means of information, but now she had no choice. She had a vague idea that ‘decadent’ had something to do with not opening the curtains all day. “She says it’s also a city of art, wit and culture,” said Granny. “We shall be all right there, then,” said Nanny confidently. “Particularly noted for the beauty of its women, she says here.” “We shall fade right in, no trouble.” Granny turned the pages carefully. Desiderata had paid close attention to affairs all over the Disc. On the other hand, she hadn’t been writing for readers other than herself, so her notes tended to the cryptic and were aides memoire rather than coherent accounts. Granny read: “Now L. rules the citie as the power behint the throne, and Baron S. they say has been killd, drowned in the river. He was a wicked man tho not I think as wicked as L, for she says she wants to make it a Magic Kingdom, a Happy and Peaseful place, and wen people do that look out for Spies on every corner and no manne dare speak out, for who dare speke out against Evile done in the name of Happyness and Pease? All the Streetes are clean and Axes are sharp. But E. is safe at least, for now. L. has plans for her. And Mrs G who was the Baron’s amour hides in the swamp and fites back with swamp magic, but you cannot fite mirror magic which is all Reflection.” Fairy godmothers came in twos, Granny knew. So that was Desiderata and. . . and L. . . but who was this person in the swamp? “Gytha?” said Granny. “Wazzat?” said Nanny Ogg, who was dozing off. “Desiderata says some woman here is someone’s armour.” “Prob’ly a mettyfor,” said Nanny Ogg. “Oh,” said Granny darkly, “one of them things.” “ But no-one can stop Mardi Gras,” she read.” If anything canne be done it be on Samedi Nuit Morte, the last night of carnivale, the night halfway between the Living and the Dead, when magic flows in the streets. If L. is vooneruble it is then, for carnivale is everythinge she hates . . .” Granny Weatherwax pulled her hat down over her eyes to shield them from the sun. “It says here they have a great big carnival every year,” she said. “Mardi Gras, it’s called.” “That means Fat Lunchtime,” said Nanny Ogg, international linguist. “Garkon! Etcetra gross Mint Tulip avec petit bowl de peanuts, pour favour!” Granny Weatherwax shut the book. She would not of course admit it to a third party, least of all another witch, but as Genua drew nearer Granny was becoming less and less confident. She was waiting in Genua. After all this time! Staring at her out of the mirror! Smiling! The sun beat down. She tried defying it. Sooner or later she was going to have to give in, though. It was going to be time to remove another vest. Nanny Ogg sat and drew cards for her relatives for a while, and then yawned. She was a witch who liked noise and people around her. Nanny Ogg was getting bored. It was a big boat, more like a floating inn, and she felt certain there was some excitement somewhere. She laid her bag on her seat and wandered away to look for it. The trolls plodded on. The sun was red, fat and low when Granny Weatherwax awoke. She looked around guiltily from the shelter of her hatbrim in case anyone had noticed her asleep. Falling asleep during the day was something only old women did, and Granny Weatherwax was an old woman only when it suited her purposes. The only spectator was Greebo, curled up on Nanny’s chair. His one good eye was fixed on her, but it wasn’t so terrifying as the milky white stare of his blind one. “Just considerin’ our strategy,” she muttered, just in case. She closed the book and strode off to their cabin. It wasn’t a big one. Some of the staterooms looked huge, but what with the herbal wine and everything Granny hadn’t felt up to using any Influence to get one. Magrat and Nanny Ogg were sitting on a bunk, in gloomy silence. “I feels a bit peckish,” said Granny. “I smelled stew on the way here, so let’s go and have a look, eh? What about that?” The other two continued to stare at the floor. “I suppose there’s always pumpkin,” said Magrat. “And there’s always the dwarf bread.” “There’s always dwarf bread,” said Nanny automatically. She looked up, her face a mask of shame. “Er, Esme . . . er . . . you know the money . . .” “The money what we all gave you to keep in your knickers for safety?” said Granny. Something about the way the conversation was going suggested the first few pebbles slipping before a major landslide. “That’s the money I’m referrin’ to . . . er . . .” “The money in the big leather bag that we were goin’ to be very careful about spendin’?” said Granny. “You see . . . the money . . .” “Oh, that money,” said Granny. “. . . is gone . . .” said Nanny. “Stolen?” “She’s been gambling,” said Magrat, in tones of smug horror. “With men.” “It wasn’t gambling!” snapped Nanny. “I never gamble! They were no good at cards! I won no end of games!” “But you lost money,” said Granny. Nanny Ogg looked down again, and muttered something. “What?” said Granny. “I said I won nearly all of them,” said Nanny. “And then I thought, here, we could really have a bit of money to, you know, spend in the city, and I’ve always been very good at Cripple Mr Onion . . .” “So you decided to bet heavily,” said Granny. “How did you know that?” “Got a feelin’ about it,” said Granny wearily. “And suddenly everyone else was lucky, am I right ?” “It was weird,” said Nanny. “Hmm.” “Well, it’s not gambling,” said Nanny. “I didn’t see it was gambling. They were no good when I started playing. It’s not gambling to play against someone who’s no good. It’s common sense.” “There was nearly fourteen dollars in that bag,” said Magrat, “not counting the foreign money.” “Hmm.” Granny Weatherwax sat down on the bunk and drummed her fingers on the woodwork. There was a faraway look in her eyes. The phrase ‘card sharp’ had never reached her side of the Ramtops, where people were friendly and direct and, should they encounter a professional cheat, tended to nail his hand to the table in an easy and outgoing manner without asking him what he called himself. But human nature was the same everywhere. “You’re not upset, are you, Esme?” said Nanny anxiously. “Hmm.” “I expect I can soon pick up a new broom when we get home.” “Hm . . . what?” “After she lost all her money she bet her broom,” said Magrat triumphantly. “Have we got any money at all?” said Granny. A trawl of various pockets and knicker legs produced forty-seven pence. “Right,” said Granny. She scooped it up. “That ought to be enough. To start with, anyway. Where are these men?” “What are you going to do?” said Magrat. “I’m going to play cards,” said Granny. “You can’t do that!” said Magrat, who had recognized the gleam in Granny’s eye. “You’re going to use magic to win! You mustn’t use magic to win! Not to affect the laws of chance! That’s wicked^ The boat was practically a floating town, and in the balmy night air no-one bothered much about going indoors. The riverboat’s flat deck was dotted with groups of dwarfs, trolls and humans, lounging among the cargo. Granny threaded her way between them and headed for the long saloon that ran almost the entire length of the boat. There was the sound of revelry within. The riverboats were the quickest and easiest transport for hundreds of miles. On them you got, as Granny would put it, all sorts, and the riverboats going downstream were always crowded with a certain type of opportunist as Fat Lunchtime approached. She walked into the saloon. An onlooker might have thought it had a magic doorway. Granny Weatherwax, as she walked towards it, strode as she usually strode. As soon as she passed through, though, she was suddenly a bent old woman, hobbling along, and a sight to touch all but the wickedest heart. She approached the bar, and then stopped. Behind it was the biggest mirror Granny had ever seen. She stared fixedly at it, but it seemed safe enough. Well, she’d have to risk it. She hunched her back a little more and addressed the barman. “Excuzee moir, young homme,” she began.* The barman gave her a disinterested look and went on polishing a glass. “What can I do for you, old crone?” he said. There was only the faintest suggestion of a flicker in Granny’s expression of elderly imbecility. “Oh . . . you can understand me?” she said. “We get all sorts on the river,” said the barman. “Then I was wondering if you could be so kind as to loan me a deck, I thinks it’s called, of cards,” quavered Granny. “Going to play a game of Old Maid, are you?” said the barman. There was a chilly flicker across Granny’s eyes again as she said, “No. Just Patience. I’d like to try and get the hang of it.” He reached under the counter and tossed a greasy pack towards her. She thanked him effusively and tottered off to a small table in the shadows, where she dealt a few cards randomly on the drink-ringed surface and stared at them. It was only a few minutes later that a gentle hand was laid on her shoulder. She looked up into a friendly, open face that anyone would lend money to. A gold tooth glittered as the man spoke. “Excuse me, good mother,” he said, “but my friends and I” - he gestured to some more welcoming faces at a nearby table - “would feel much more comfortable in ourselves if you were to join us. It can be very dangerous for a woman travelling by herself.” Granny Weatherwax smiled nicely at him, and then waved vaguely at her cards. “I can never remember whether the ones are worth more or less than the pictures,” she said. “Forget my own head next, I expect!” They all laughed. Granny hobbled to the other table. She took the vacant seat, which put the mirror right behind her shoulder. She smiled to herself and then leaned forward, all eagerness. “So tell me,” she said, “how do you play this game, then?” All witches are very conscious of stories. They can feel stories, in the same way that a bather in a little pool can feel the unexpected trout. Knowing how stories work is almost all the battle. For example, when an obvious innocent sits down with three experienced card sharpers and says ‘How do you play this game, then?”, someone is about to be shaken down until their teeth fall out. Magrat and Nanny Ogg sat side by side on the narrow bunk. Nanny was distractedly tickling Greebo’s stomach, while he purred. “She’ll get into terrible trouble if she uses magic to win,” said Magrat. “And you know how she hates losing,” she added. Granny Weatherwax was not a good loser. From her point of view, losing was something that happened to other people. “It’s her eggo,” said Nanny Ogg. “Everyone’s got one o’ them. A eggo. And she’s got a great big one. Of course, that’s all part of bein’ a witch, having a big eggo.” “She’s bound to use magic,” said Magrat. “It’s tempting Fate, using magic in a game of chance,” said Nanny Ogg. “Cheatin’s all right. That’s practic’ly fair. I mean, anyone can cheat. But using magic - well, it’s tempting Fate.” “No. Not Fate,” said Magrat darkly. Nanny Ogg shivered. “Come on,” said Magrat. “We can’t let her do it.” “It’s her eggo,” said Nanny Ogg weakly. “Terrible thing, a big eggo.” “I got,” said Granny, “three little pictures of kings and suchlike and three of them funny number one cards.” The three men beamed and winked at one another. “That’s Triple Onion!” said the one who had introduced Granny to the table, and who had turned out to be called Mister Frank. “And that’s good, is it?” said Granny. “It means you win yet again, dear lady!” He pushed a pile of pennies towards her. “Gosh,” said Granny. “That means I’ve got . . . what would it be . . . almost five dollars now?” “Can’t understand it,” said Mister Frank. “It must be the famous beginner’s luck, eh?” “Soon be poor men if it goes on like this,” said one of his companions. “She’ll have the coats off our backs, right enough,” said the third man. “Haha.” “Think we should give up right now,” said Mister Frank. “Haha.” “Haha.” “Haha.” “Oh, I want to go on,” said Granny, grinning anxiously. “I’m just getting the hang of it.” “Well, you’d better give us a sporting chance to win a little bit back, haha,” said Mister Frank. “Haha.” “Haha.” “Haha.” “Haha. What about half a dollar a stake? Haha?” “Oh, I reckon she’ll want a dollar a stake, a sporting lady like her,” said the third man. “Haha!” Granny looked down at her pile of pennies. For a moment she looked uncertain and then, they could see, she realized: how much could she lose, the way the cards were going? “Yes!” she said. “A dollar a stake!” She blushed. “This is exciting, isn’t it!” “Yeah,” said Mister Frank. He drew the pack towards him. There was a horrible noise. All three men stared at the bar, where shards of mirror were cascading to the floor. “What happened?” Granny gave him a sweet old smile. She hadn’t appeared to look around. “I reckon the glass he was polishing must of slipped out of his hand and smashed right into the mirror,” she said. “I do hope he don’t have to pay for it out of his wages, the poor boy.” The men exchanged glances. “Come on,” said Granny, “I’ve got my dollar all ready.” Mister Frank looked nervously at the ravaged frame. Then he shrugged. The movement dislodged something somewhere. There was a muffled snapping noise, like a mousetrap carrying out the last rites. Mister Frank went white and gripped his sleeve. A small metal contraption, all springs and twisted metal, fell out. A crumpled-up Ace of Cups was tangled up in it. “Whoops,” said Granny. Magrat peered through the window into the saloon. “What’s she doin’ now?” hissed Nanny Ogg. “She’s grinning again,” said Magrat. Nanny Ogg shook her head. “Eggo,” she said. Granny Weatherwax had that method of play that has reduced professional gamblers to incoherent rage throughout the multiverse. She held her cards tightly cupped in her hands a few inches from her face, allowing the merest fraction of each one to protrude. She glared at them as if daring them to offend her. And she never seemed to take her eyes off them, except to watch the dealing. And she took far too long. And she never, ever, took risks. After twenty-five minutes she was down one dollar and Mister Frank was sweating. Granny had already helpfully pointed out three times that he’d accidentally dealt cards off the bottom of the deck, and she’d asked for another pack “because, look, this one’s got all little marks on the back.” It was her eyes, that was what it was. Twice he’d folded on a perfectly good three-card Onion only to find that she’d been holding a lousy double Bagel. Then the third time, thinking he’d worked out her play, he’d called her out and run a decent flush right into the maw of a five-card Onion that the old bag must have been patiently constructing for ages. And then - his knuckles went white - and then the dreadful, terrible hag had said, “Have I won? With all these little cards? Gorsh - aren’t I the lucky one!” And then she started humming when she looked at her cards. Normally, the three of them would have welcomed this sort of thing. The teeth tappers, the eyebrow raisers, the ear rubbers - they were as good as money in the sock under the mattress, to a man who knew how to read such things. But the appalling old crone was as transparent as a lump of coal. And the humming was . . . insistent. You found yourself trying to follow the tune. It made your teeth tingle. Next thing you were glumly watching while she laid down a measly Broken Flush in front of your even more measly two-card Onion and said, “What, is it me again?” Mister Frank was desperately trying to remember how to play cards without his sleeve device, a handy mirror and a marked deck. In the teeth of a hum like a fingernail down a blackboard. It wasn’t as if the ghastly old creature even knew how to play properly. After an hour she was four dollars ahead and when she said, “I am a lucky girl!” Mister Frank bit through his tongue. And then he got a natural Great Onion. There was no realistic way to beat a Great Onion. It was something that happened to you once or twice in a lifetime. She folded! The old bitch folded! She abandoned one blasted dollar and she folded! Magrat peered through the window again. “What’s happening?” said Nanny. “They all look very angry.” Nanny took off her hat and removed her pipe. She lit it and tossed the match overboard. “Ah. She’ll be humming, you mark my words. She’s got a very annoying hum, has Esme.” Nanny looked satisfied. “Has she started cleaning out her ear yet?” “Don’t think so.” “No-one cleans out her ear like Esme.” She was cleaning out her ear! It was done in a very ladylike way, and the daft old baggage probably wasn’t even aware she was doing it. She just kept inserting her little finger in her ear and swivelling it around. It made a noise like a small pool cue being chalked. It was displacement activity, that’s what it was. They all cracked in the end . . . She folded again! And it had taken him bloody five bloody minutes to put together a bloody double Onion! “I remember,” said Nanny Ogg, “when she come over our house for the party when King Verence got crowned and we played Chase My Neighbour Up the Passage with the kiddies for ha’pennies. She accused Jason’s youngest of cheating and sulked for a week afterwards.” “Was he cheating?” “I expect so,” said Nanny proudly. “The trouble with Esme is that she don’t know how to lose. She’s never had much practice.” “Lobsang Dibbler says sometimes you have to lose in order to win,” said Magrat. “Sounds daft to me,” said Nanny. “That’s Yen Buddhism, is it?” “No. They’re the ones who say you have to have lots of money to win,” said Magrat. “In the Path of the Scorpion, the way to win is to lose every fight except the last one. You use the enemy’s strength against himself.” “What, you get him to hit himself, sort of thing?” said Nanny. “Sounds daft.” Magrat glowered. “What do you know about it?” she said, with uncharacteristic sharpness. “What?” “Well, I’m fed up!” said Magrat. “At least I’m making an effort to learn things! I don’t go around just bullying people and acting bad-tempered all the time!” Nanny took her pipe out of her mouth. “I’m not bad-tempered,” she said mildly. “I wasn’t talking about you!” “Well, Esme’s always been bad-tempered,” said Nanny. “It comes natural to her.” “And she hardly ever does real magic. What good is being a witch if you don’t do magic? Why doesn’t she use it to help people?” Nanny peered at her through the pipe smoke. “ ‘Cos she knows how good she’d be at it, I suppose,” she said. “Anyway, I’ve known her a long time. Known the whole family. All the Weatherwaxes is good at magic, even the men. They’ve got this magical streak in ‘em. Kind of a curse. Anyway . . . she thinks you can’t help people with magic. Not properly. It’s true, too.” “Then what good - ?” Nanny prodded at the pipe with a match. “I seem to recall she come over and helped you out when you had that spot of plague in your village,” she said. “Worked the clock around, I recall. Never known her not treat someone ill who needed it, even when they, you know, were pretty oozy. And when the big ole troll that lives under Broken Mountain came down for help because his wife was sick and everyone threw rocks at him, I remember it was Esme that went back with him and delivered the baby. Hah . . . then when old Chickenwire Hopkins threw a rock at Esme a little while afterwards all his barns was mysteriously trampled flat in the night. She always said you can’t help people with magic, but you can help them with skin. By doin’ real things, she meant.” “I’m not saying she’s not basically a nice person –“ Magrat began. “Hah! I am. You’d have to go a long day’s journey to find someone basically nastier than Esme,” said Nanny Ogg, “and this is me sayin’ it. She knows exactly what she is. She was born to be good and she don’t like it.” Nanny tapped her pipe out on the rail and turned back to the saloon. “What you got to understand about Esme, my girl,” she said, “is that she’s got a psycholology as well as a big eggo. I’m damn glad I ain’t.” Granny was twelve dollars ahead. Everything else in the saloon had stopped. You could hear the distant splash of the paddles and the cry of the leadman. Granny won another five dollars with a three-card Onion. “What do you mean, a psycholology?” said Magrat. “Have you been reading books?” Nanny ignored her. “The thing to watch out for now,” she said, “is when she goes “tch, tch, tch” under her breath. That comes after the ear-cleanin’. It gen’rally means she’s plannin’ somethin’.” Mister Frank drummed his fingers on the table, realized to his horror that he was doing it, and bought three new cards to cover his confusion. The old baggage didn’t appear to notice. He stared at the new hand. He ventured two dollars and bought one more card. He stared again. What were the odds, he thought, against getting a Great Onion twice in one day? The important thing was not to panic. “I think,” he heard himself say, “that I may hazard another two dollars.” He glanced at his companions. They obediently folded, one after another. “Well, I don’t know,” said Granny, apparently talking to her cards. She cleaned her ear again. “Tch, tch, tch. What d’you call it when, you know, you want to put more money in, sort of thing?” “It’s called raising,” said Mister Frank, his knuckles going white. “I’ll do one of them raisins, then. Five dollars, I think.” Mister Frank’s knees ground together. “I’ll see you and raise you ten dollars,” he snapped. “I’ll do that too,” said Granny. “I can go another twenty dollars.” “I - “ Granny looked down, suddenly crestfallen. “I’ve . . . got a broomstick.” A tiny alarm bell rang somewhere at the back of Mister Frank’s mind, but now he was galloping headlong to victory. “Right!” He spread the cards on the table. The crowd sighed. He began to pull the pot towards him. Granny’s hand closed over his wrist. “I ain’t put my cards down yet,” she said archly. “You don’t need to,” snapped Mister Frank. “There’s no chance you could beat that, madam.” “I can if I can Cripple it,” said Granny. “That’s why it’s called Cripple Mister Onion, ain’t it?” He hesitated. “But - but - you could only do that if you had a perfect nine-card run,” he burbled, staring into the depths of her eyes. Granny sat back. “You know,” she said calmly, “I thought I had rather a lot of these black pointy ones. That’s good, is it?” She spread the hand. The collective audience made a sort of little gasping noise, in unison. Mister Frank looked around wildly. “Oh, very well done, madam,” said an elderly gentleman. There was a round of polite applause from the crowd. The big, inconvenient crowd. “Er. . . yes,” said Mister Frank. “Yes. Well done. You’re a very quick learner, aren’t you.” “Quicker’n you. You owe me fifty-five dollars and a broomstick,” said Granny. Magrat and Nanny Ogg were waiting for her as she swept out. “Here’s your broom,” she snapped. “And I hopes you’ve got all your stuff together, “cos we’re leaving.” “Why?” said Magrat. “Because as soon as it gets quiet, some men are going to come looking for us.” They scurried after her towards their tiny cabin. “You weren’t using magic?” said Magrat. “No.” “And not cheating?” said Nanny Ogg. “No. Just headology,” said Granny. “Where did you learn to play like that?” Nanny demanded. Granny stopped. They cannoned into her. “Remember last winter, when Old Mother Dismass was taken really bad and I went and sat up with her every night for almost a month?” “Yes?” “You sit up every night dealing Cripple Mister Onion with someone who’s got a detached retina in her second sight and you soon learn how to play,” said Granny. Dear Jason and everyone, What you get more of in foreign parts is smells, I am getting good at them. Esme is shouting at everyone, I think she thinks they’re beinforeinjust to Spite her, don’t know when I last saw her enjoi herselfe so much. Mind you they need a good Shakin up if you ask me, for lunch we stopped somehwere and they did Steak Tartere and they acted VERY snooty just becos I wanted myne well done. All the best, MUM The moon was closer here. The orbit of the Discworld’s moon meant that it was quite high when it passed over the high Ramtops. Here, nearer to the Rim, it was bigger And more orange. “Like a pumpkin,” said Nanny Ogg. “I thought we said we weren’t going to mention pumpkins,” said Magrat. “Well, we didn’t have any supper,” said Nanny. And there was another thing. Except during the height of summer the witches weren’t used to warm nights. It didn’t seem right, gliding along under a big orange moon over dark foliage that clicked and buzzed and whirred with insects. “We must be far enough from the river now,” said Magrat. “Can’t we land, Granny? No-one could have followed us!” Granny Weatherwax looked down. The river in this countryside meandered in huge glistening curves, taking twenty miles to cover five. The land between the snaking water was a patchwork of hillsides and woodlands. A distant glow might have been Genua itself. “Riding a broomstick all night is a right pain in the itinerant,” said Nanny. “Oh, all right.” “There’s a town over there,” said Magrat. “And a castle.” “Oh, not another one . . .” “It’s a nice little castle,” said Magrat. “Can’t we just call in? I’m fed up with inns.” Granny looked down. She had very good night vision. “Are you sure that’s a castle?” she said. “I can see the turrets and everything,” said Magrat. “Of course it’s a castle.” “Hmm. I can see more than turrets,” said Granny. “I think we’d better have a look at this, Gytha.” There was never any noise in the sleeping castle, except in the late summer when ripe berries fell off the bramble vines and burst softly on the floor. And sometimes birds would try to nest in the thorn thickets that now filled the throne room from floor to ceiling, but they never got very far before they, too, fell asleep. Apart from that, you’d need very keen hearing indeed to hear the growth of shoots and the opening of buds. It had been like this for ten years. There was no sound in the - “Open up there!” “Bony fidy travellers seeking sucker!” - no sound in the - “Here, give us a leg up, Magrat. Right. Now . . .” There was a tinkle of broken glass. “You’ve broken their window!” - not a sound in the - “You’ll have to offer to pay for it, you know.” The castle gate swung open slowly. Nanny Ogg peered around it at the other two witches, while pulling thorns and burrs from her hair. “It’s bloody disgusting in here,” she said. “There’s people asleep all over the place with spiders’ webs all over ‘em. You were right, Esme. There’s been magic going on.” The witches pushed their way through the overgrown castle. Dust and leaves had covered the carpets. Young sycamores were making a spirited attempt to take over the courtyard. Vines festooned every wall. Granny Weatherwax pulled a slumbering soldier to his feet. Dust billowed off his clothes. “Wake up,” she demanded. “Fzhtft,” said the soldier, and slumped back. “It’s like that everywhere,” said Magrat, fighting her way through a thicket of bracken that was growing up from the kitchen regions. “There’s the cooks all snoring and nothing but mould in the pots! There’s even mice asleep in the pantry!” “Hmm,” said Granny. “There’ll be a spinning wheel at the bottom of all this, you mark my words.” “A Black Aliss job?” said Nanny Ogg. “Looks like it,” said Granny. Then she added, quietly, “Or someone like her.” “Now there was a witch who knew how stories worked,” said Nanny. “She used to be in as many as three of ‘em at once.” Even Magrat knew about Black Aliss. She was said to have been the greatest witch who ever lived - not exactly bad, but so powerful it was sometimes hard to tell the difference. When it came to sending palaces to sleep for a hundred years or getting princesses to spin straw into Glod, no-one did it better than Black Aliss. “I met her once,” said Nanny, as they climbed the castle’s main staircase, which was a cascade of Old Man’s Trousers. “Old Deliria Skibbly took me to see her once, when I was a girl. Of course, she was getting pretty . . . eccentric by then. Gingerbread houses, that kind of thing.” She spoke sadly, as one might talk about an elderly relative who’d taken to wearing her underwear outside her clothes. “That must have been before those two children shut her up in her own oven?” said Magrat, untangling her sleeve from a briar. “Yeah. Sad, that. I mean, she didn’t really ever eat anyone,” said Nanny. “Well. Not often. I mean, there was talk, but. . .” “That’s what happens,” said Granny. “You get too involved with stories, you get confused. You don’t know what’s really real and what isn’t. And they get you in the end. They send you weird in the head. I don’t like stories. They’re not real. I don’t like things that ain’t real.” She pushed open a door. “Ah. A chamber,” she said sourly. “Could even be a bower.” “Doesn’t the stuff grow quickly!” said Magrat. “Part of the time spell,” said Granny. “Ah. There she is. Knew there’d be someone somewhere.” There was a figure lying on a bed, in a thicket of rose bushes. “And there’s the spinning wheel,” said Nanny, pointing to a shape just visible in a clump of ivy. “Don’t touch it!” said Granny. “Don’t worry, I’ll pick it up by the treadle and pitch it out of the window.” “How do you know all this?” said Magrat. “ ‘Cos it’s a rural myth,” said Nanny. “It’s happened lots of times.” Granny Weatherwax and Magrat looked down at the sleeping figure of a girl of about thirteen, almost silvery under the dust and pollen. “Isn’t she pretty,” sighed Magrat, the generous-hearted. From behind them came the crash of a spinning wheel on some distant cobbles, and then Nanny Ogg appeared, brushing her hands. “Seen it happen a dozen times,” she said. “No you ain’t,” said Granny. “Once, anyway,” said Nanny, unabashed. “And I heard about it dozens of times. Everyone has. Rural myth, like I said. Everyone’s heard about it happening in their cousin’s friend’s neighbour’s village - “ “That’s because it does,” said Granny. Granny picked up the girl’s wrist. “She’s asleep because she’ll have got a - “ Nanny said. Granny turned. “I know, I know. I know, right? I know as well as you. You think I don’t know?” She bent over the limp hand. “That’s fairy godmothering, this is,” she added, half to herself. “Always do it impressively. Always meddling, always trying to be in control! Hah! Someone got a bit of poison? Send everyone to sleep for a hundred years! Do it the easy way. All this for one prick. As if that was the end of the world.” She paused. Nanny Ogg was standing behind her. There was no possible way she could have detected her expression. “Gytha?” “Yes, Esme?” said Nanny Ogg innocently. “I can feel you grinnin’. You can save the tu’penny-ha’penny psycholology for them as wants it.” Granny shut her eyes and muttered a few words. “Shall I use my wand?” said Magrat hesitantly. “Don’t you dare,” said Granny, and went back to her muttering. Nanny nodded. “She’s definitely getting a bit of colour back,” she said. A few minutes later the girl opened her eyes and stared up blearily at Granny Weatherwax. “Time to get up,” said Granny, in an unusually cheerful voice, “you’re missing the best part of the decade.” The girl tried to focus on Nanny, then on Magrat, and then looked back at Granny Weatherwax. “You?” she said. Granny raised her eyebrows and looked at the other two. “Me?” “You are - still here?” “Still?” said Granny. “Never been here before in my life, Miss.” “But - “ the girl looked bewildered. And frightened, Magrat noticed. “I’m like that myself in the mornings, dear,” said Nanny Ogg, taking the girl’s other hand and patting it. “Never at my best till I’ve had a cup of tea. I expect everyone else’ll be waking up any minute. Of course, it’ll take ‘em a while to clean the rats’ nests out of the kettles - Esme?” Granny was staring at a dust-covered shape on the wall. “Meddling . . .” she whispered. “What’s up, Esme?” Granny Weatherwax strode across the room and wiped the dust off a huge ornate mirror. “Hah!” she said, and spun around. “We’ll be going now,” she said. “But I thought we were going to have a rest. I mean, it’s nearly dawn,” said Magrat. “No sense in outstaying our welcome,” said Granny, as she left the room. “But we haven’t even had a . . .” Magrat began. She glanced at the mirror. It was a big oval one, in a gilt frame. It looked perfectly normal. It wasn’t like Granny Weatherwax to be frightened of her own reflection. “She’s in one of her moods again,” said Nanny Ogg. “Come on. No sense in staying here.” She patted the bewildered princess on the head. “Cheerio, Miss. A couple of weeks with a broom and an axe and you’ll soon have the old place looking like new.” “She looked as if she recognized Granny,” said Magrat, as they followed the stiff hurrying figure of Esme Weather-wax down the stairs. “Well, we know she doesn’t, don’t we,” said Nanny Ogg. “Esme has never been in these parts in her life.” “But I still don’t see why we have to rush off,” Magrat persisted. “I expect people will be jolly grateful that we’ve broken the spell and everything.” The rest of the palace was waking up. They jogged past guards staring in amazement at their cobwebbed uniforms and the bushes that were growing everywhere. As they crossed the forested courtyard an older man in faded robes staggered out of a doorway and leaned against the wall, trying to get his bearings. Then he saw the accelerating figure of Granny Weatherwax. “You?” he shouted, and, “Guards!” Nanny Ogg didn’t hesitate. She snatched Magrat’s elbow and broke into a run, catching up with Granny Weatherwax at the castle gates. A guard who was better at mornings than his colleague staggered forward and made an attempt to bar their way with his pike, but Granny just pushed at it and swivelled him around gently. Then they were outside and running for the broomsticks leaning against a convenient tree. Granny snatched at hers without stopping and, for once, it fired up on almost the first attempt. An arrow whiffled past her hat and stuck in a branch. “I don’t call that gratitude,” said Magrat, as the brooms glided up and over the trees. “A lot of people are never at their best just after waking up,” said Nanny. “Everyone seemed to think they knew you. Granny,” said Magrat. Granny’s broomstick jerked in the wind. “They didn’t!” she shouted. “They never saw me before, all right?” They flew on in troubled silence for a while. Then Magrat, who in Nanny Ogg’s opinion had an innocent talent for treading on dangerous ground, said: “I wonder if we did the right thing? I’m sure it was a job for a handsome prince.” “Hah!” said Granny, who was riding ahead. “And what good would that be? Cutting your way through a bit of bramble is how you can tell he’s going to be a good husband, is it? That’s fairy godmotherly thinking, that is! Goin’ around inflicting happy endings on people whether they wants them or not, eh?” “There’s nothing wrong with happy endings,” said Magrat hotly. “Listen, happy endings is fine if they turn out happy,” said Granny, glaring at the sky. “ But you can’t make ‘em for other people. Like the only way you could make a happy marriage is by cuttin’ their heads off as soon as they say “I do”, yes? You can’t make happiness . . .” Granny Weatherwax stared at the distant city. “All you can do,” she said, “is make an ending.” They had breakfast in a forest clearing. It was grilled pumpkin. The dwarf bread was brought out for inspection. But it was miraculous, the dwarf bread. No-one ever went hungry when they had some dwarf bread to avoid. You only had to look at it for a moment, and instantly you could think of dozens of things you’d rather eat. Your boots, for example. Mountains. Raw sheep. Your own foot. Then they tried to get some sleep. At least, Nanny and Magrat did. But all it meant was that they lay awake and listened to Granny Weatherwax muttering under her breath. They’d never seen her so upset. Afterwards, Nanny suggested that they walk for a while. It was a nice day, she said. This was an interesting kind of forest, she said, with lots of new herbs which could do with bein’ looked at. Everyone’d feel better for a stroll in the sunshine, she said. It’d improve their tempers. And it was, indeed, a nice forest. After half an hour or so, even Granny Weatherwax was prepared to admit that in certain respects it wasn’t totally foreign and shoddy. Magrat wandered off the path occasionally, picking flowers. Nanny even sang a few verses of ‘A Wizard’s Staff Has A Knob On The End’ with no more than a couple of token protests from the other two. But there was still something wrong. Nanny Ogg and Magrat could feel something between them and Granny Weatherwax, some sort of mental wall, something important deliberately hidden and unsaid. Witches usually had few secrets from one another, if only because they were all so nosy that there was never any chance to have secrets. It was worrying. And then they turned a corner by a stand of huge oak trees and met the little girl in the red cloak. She was skipping along in the middle of the path, singing a song that was simpler and a good deal cleaner than any in Nanny Ogg’s repertoire. She didn’t see the witches until she was almost on top of them. She stopped, and then smiled innocently. “Hello, old women,” she said. “Ahem,” said Magrat. Granny Weatherwax bent down. “What’re you doing out in the forest all by yourself, young lady?” “I’m taking this basket of goodies to my granny,” said the girl. Granny straightened up, a faraway look in her eyes. “Esme,” said Nanny Ogg urgently. “I know. I know,” said Granny. Magrat leaned down and set her face in the idiot grimace generally used by adults who’d love to be good with children and don’t stand a dog’s chance of ever achieving it. “Er. Tell me, Miss . . . did your mother tell you to watch out for any bad wolves that might happen to be in the vicinity?” “That’s right.” “And your granny . . .” said Nanny Ogg. “I guess she’s a bit bed-bound at the moment, right?” “That’s why I’m taking her this basket of goodies - “ the child began. “Thought so.” “Do you know my granny?” said the child. “Ye-ess,” said Granny Weatherwax. “In a way.” “It happened over Skund way when I was a girl,” said Nanny Ogg quietly. “They never even found the gran - “ “And where is your granny’s cottage, little girl?” said Granny Weatherwax loudly, nudging Nanny sharply in the ribs. The girl pointed up a side track. “You’re not the wicked witch, are you?” she said. Nanny Ogg coughed. “Me? No. We’re - we’re - “ Granny began. “Fairies,” said Magrat. Granny Weatherwax’s mouth dropped open. Such an explanation would never have occurred to her. “Only my mummy warned me about the wicked witch too,” said the girl. She gave Magrat a sharp look. “What kind of fairies?” “Er. Flower fairies?” said Magrat. “Look, I’ve got a wand -‘ “Which ones?” “What?” “Which flowers?” “Er,” said Magrat. “Well. I’m . . . Fairy Tulip and that’s . . .” she avoided looking directly at Granny, “. . . Fairy . . . Daisy . . . and this is . . .” “Fairy Hedgehog,” said Nanny Ogg. This addition to the supernatural pantheon was given duc consideration. “You can’t be Fairy Hedgehog,” said the child, after some thought. “A hedgehog’s not a flower.” “How do you know?” “ ‘Cos it’s got spikes.” “So’s holly. And thistles.” “Oh.” “And I’ve got a wand,” said Magrat. Only now did she risk a look at Fairy Daisy. “We ought to be getting along,” said Granny Weather-wax. “You just stay here with Fairy Tulip, I think it was, and we’ll just go and make sure your granny’s all right. All right?” “I bet it’s not a real wand,” said the child, ignoring her and facing Magrat with a child’s unerring ability to find a weak link in any chain. “I bet it can’t turn things into things.” “Well - “ Magrat began. “I bet,” said the girl, “I bet you can’t turn that tree stump over there into . . . into . . . into a pumpkin. Haha, bet you anything you can’t. Bet you a trillion dollars you can’t turn that stump into a pumpkin.” “I can see the two of you are going to get along fine,” said Fairy Hedgehog. “We won’t be long.” Two broomsticks skimmed low above the forest path. “Could just be coincidence,” said Nanny Ogg. “ ‘T’aint,” said Granny. “The child even has a red cloak on!” “I had a red cloak when I was fifteen,” said Nanny. “Yes, but your granny lived next door. You didn’t have to worry about wolves when you visited her,” said Granny. “Except old Sumpkins the lodger.” “Yes, but that was just coincidence.” A trail of blue smoke drifted among the trees ahead of them. Somewhere away to one side there was the sound of a falling tree. “Woodcutters!” said Nanny. “It’s all right if there’s woodcutters! One of them rushes in - “ “That’s only what children get told,” said Granny, as they sped onwards. “Anyway, that’s no good to the grandmother, is it? She’s already been et!” “I always hated that story,” said Nanny. “No-one ever cares what happens to poor defenceless old women.” The path vanished abruptly on the edge of a glade. Hemmed in by the trees was a straggly kitchen garden, in which a few pathetic stalks fought for what little sun there was. In the middle of the garden was what had to be a thatched cottage because no-one would build a haystack that badly. They leapt off the broomsticks, leaving them to drift to a halt in the bushes, and hammered on the cottage door. “We could be too late,” said Nanny. “The wolf might - “ After a while there was the muffled sound of someone shuffling across the floor within, and then the door opened a crack. A suspicious eye was visible in the gloom. “Yes?” said a small and quavering voice from somewhere beneath the eye. “Are you grandmother?” Granny Weatherwax demanded. “Are you the taxgatherers, dear?” “No, ma’am, we’re - “ “- fairies,” said Fairy Hedgehog quickly. “I don’t open the door to people I don’t know, dear,” said the voice, and then it took on a slightly petulant tone. “ ‘Specially people who never does the washing up even after I leaves out a bowl of nearly fresh milk for ‘em.” “We’d like to talk to you for a few minutes,” said Fairy Daisy. “Yes? Have you got any identification, dear?” “I know we’ve got the right grandmother,” said Fairy Hedgehog. “There’s a family likeness. She’s got big ears.” “Look, it’s not her that’s got the big ears,” snapped Fairy Daisy. “It’ll be the wolf that’s got big ears. That’s the whole point. Don’t you ever pay attention?” The grandmother watched them with interest. After a lifetime of believing in them she was seeing fairies for the first time, and it was an experience. Granny Weatherwax caught her perplexed expression. “Put it like this, ma’am,” she said, in a despotically reasonable tone of voice, “how would you like to be eaten alive by a wolf?” “I don’t think I would like that, dear, no,” said the hidden grandmother. “The alternative’s us,” said Granny. “Lawks. Are you sure?” “On our word as fairies,” said Fairy Hedgehog. “Well. Really? All right. You can come in. But none of your tricks. And mind you do the washing up. You haven’t got a pot of gold about you, have you?” “That’s pixies, isn’t it?” “No, they’re the ones in wells. It’s goblins she means.” “Don’t be daft. They’re the ones you get under bridges.” “That’s trolls. Everyone knows that’s trolls.” “Not us, anyway.” “Oh,” said the grandmother. “I might have known.” Magrat liked to think she was good with children, and worried that she wasn’t. She didn’t like them very much, and worried about this too. Nanny Ogg seemed to be effortlessly good with children by alternately and randomly giving them either a sweet or a thick ear, while Granny Weatherwax ignored them for most of the time and that seemed to work just as well. Whereas Magrat cared. It didn’t seem fair. “Bet you a million trillion zillion dollars you can’t turn that bush into a pumpkin,” said the child. “But, look, all the others got turned into pumpkins,” Magrat pointed out. “It’s bound not to work sooner or later,” said the child placidly. Magrat looked helplessly at the wand. She’d tried everything- wishing, sub-vocalizing and even, when she’d thought the other witches were out of earshot, banging it against things and shouting, “Anything but pumpkins!” “You don’t know how to do it really, do you,” stated the child. “Tell me,” said Magrat, “you said your mummy knows about the big bad wolf in the woods, didn’t you?” “That’s right.” “But nevertheless she sent you out by yourself to take those goodies to your granny?” “That’s right. Why?” “Nothing. Just thinking. And you owe me a million trillion zillion squillion dollars.” There’s a certain freemasonry about grandmothers, with the added benefit that no-one has to stand on one leg or recite any oaths in order to join. Once inside the cottage, and with a kettle on the boil, Nanny Ogg was quite at home. Greebo stretched out in front of the meagre fire and dozed off as the witches tried to explain. “I don’t see how a wolf can get in here, dear,” said the grandmother kindly. “I mean, they’re wolves. They can’t open doors.” Granny Weatherwax twitched aside a rag of curtain and glared out at the clearing. “We know,” she said. Nanny Ogg nodded towards the little bed in an alcove by the fireplace. “Is that where you always sleep?” she said. “When I’m feeling poorly, dear. Other times I sleeps in the attic.” “I should get along up there now, if I was you. And take my cat up with you, will you? We don’t want him getting in the way.” “Is this the bit where you clean the house and do all the washing for a saucer of milk?” said the grandmother hopefully. “Could be. You never know.” “Funny, dear. I was expecting you to be shorter - “ “We get out in the fresh air a lot,” said Nanny. “Off you go now.” That left the two of them. Granny Weatherwax looked around the cave-like room. The rushes on the floor were well on the way to composthood. Soot encrusted the cobwebs on the ceiling. The only way housework could be done in this place was with a shovel or, for preference, a match. “Funny, really,” said Nanny, when the old woman had climbed the rickety stairs. “She’s younger’n me. Mind you, I take exercise.” “You never took exercise in your life,” said Granny Weatherwax, still watching the bushes. “You never did anything you didn’t want to do.” “That’s what I mean,” said Nanny happily. “Look, Esme, I still say this could all be just - “ “It ain’t! I can feel the story. Someone’s been making stories happen in these parts, I know it.” “And you know who, too. Don’t you, Esme?” said Nanny slyly. She saw Granny look around wildly at the grubby walls. “I reckon she’s too poor to afford a mirror,” said Nanny. “I ain’t blind, Esme. And I know mirrors and fairy godmothers go together. So what’s going on?” “I ain’t saying. I don’t want to look a fool if I’m wrong. I’m not going to - there’s something coming!” Nanny Ogg pressed her nose against the dirty window. “Can’t see anything.” “The bushes moved. Get into the bed!” “Me? I thought it was you who was going into the bed!” “Can’t imagine why you’d think that.” “No. Come to think of it, neither can I,” said Nanny wearily. She picked up the floppy mob-cap from the bedpost, put it on, and slid under the patchwork quilt. “ ‘Ere, this mattress is stuffed with straw!” “You won’t have to lie on it for long.” “It prickles! And I think there’s things in it.” Something bumped against the wall of the house. The witches fell silent. There was a snuffling noise under the back door. “You know,” whispered Nanny, as they waited, “the scullery’s terrible. There’s no firewood. And there’s hardly any food. And there’s a jug of milk that’s practically on the march –“ Granny sidled quickly across the room to the fireplace, and then back to her station by the front door. After a moment there was a scrabbling at the latch, as if it was being operated by someone who was unfamiliar either with doors or with fingers. The door creaked open slowly. There was an overwhelming smell of musk and wet fur. Uncertain footsteps tottered across the floor and towards the figure huddling under the bedclothes. Nanny raised the mob-cap’s floppy frill just enough to see out. “Wotcha,” she said, and then, “Oh, blimey, I never realized you had teeth that big - “ Granny Weatherwax pushed the door shut and stepped forward briskly. The wolf spun around, a paw raised protectively. “Nooaaaaaw!” Granny hesitated for a second, and then hit it very hard on the head with a cast-iron frying pan. The wolf crumpled. Nanny Ogg swung her legs out of the bed. “When it happened over Skund way they said it was a werewolf or something, and I thought, no, werewolves aren’t like that,” she said. “I never thought it was a real wolf. Gave me quite a turn, that.” “Real wolves don’t walk on their hind legs and open doors,” said Granny Weatherwax. “Come on, help me get it outside.” “Took me right back, seeing a great big hairy slathering thing heading towards me,” said Nanny, picking up one end of the stunned creature. “Did you ever meet old Sumpkins?” It was, indeed, a normal-looking wolf, except that it was a lot thinner than most. Ribs showed plainly under the skin and the fur was matted. Granny hauled a bucket of cloudy water from the well next to the privy and poured it over its head. Then she sat down on a tree stump and watched it carefully. A few birds sang, high in the branches. “It spoke,” she said. “It tried to say “no”.” “I wondered about that,” said Nanny. “Then I thought maybe I was imagining things.” “No point in imagining anything,” said Granny. “Things are bad enough as they are.” The wolf groaned. Granny handed the frying pan to Nanny Ogg. After a while she said, “I think I’m going to have a look inside its head.” Nanny Ogg shook her head. “I wouldn’t do that, if I was you.” “I’m the one who’s me, and I’ve got to know. Just you stand by with the frying pan.” Nanny shrugged. Granny concentrated. It is very difficult to read a human mind. Most humans are thinking about so many things at any given moment that it is almost impossible to pick out one stream in the flood. Animal minds are different. Far less cluttered. Carnivore minds are easiest of all, especially before meals. Colours don’t exist in the mental world, but, if they did, a hungry carnivore mind would be hot and purple and sharp as an arrow. And herbivore minds are simple, too - coiled silver springs, poised for flight. But this wasn’t any kind of normal mind. It was two minds. Granny had sometimes picked up the mind of hunters in the forest, when she was sitting quietly of an evening and letting her mind wander. Just occasionally they felt like this, or at least like a faint shadow of this. Just occasionally, when the hunter was about to make a kill, the random streams of thought came together. But this was different. This was the opposite - this was cracked and crippled attempts at cogitation peeling away from the sleek arrowhead of predatory intent. This was a predatory mind trying to think. No wonder it was going mad. She opened her eyes. Nanny Ogg held the frying pan over her head. Her arm trembled. “Well,” she said, “who’s there?” “I could do with a glass of water,” said Granny. Natural caution surfaced through the turmoil of her mind. “Only not out of that well, mind you.” Nanny relaxed a little. When a witch started rummaging in someone else’s mind, you could never be sure who was coming back. But Granny Weatherwax was the best. Magrat might always be trying to find herself, but Granny didn’t even understand the idea of the search. If she couldn’t find the way back to her own head, there wasn’t a path. “There’s that milk in the cottage,” Nanny volunteered. “What colour was it again?” “Well . . . still fairly white.” “Okay.” When Nanny Ogg’s back was safely turned Granny permitted herself a small shudder. She stared at the wolf, wondering what she could do for it. A normal wolf wouldn’t enter a cottage, even if it could open the door. Wolves didn’t come near humans at all, except if there were a lot of them and it was the end of a very hard winter. And they didn’t do that because they were big and bad and wicked, but because they were wolves. This wolf was trying to be human. There was probably no cure. “Here’s your milk,” said Nanny Ogg. Granny reached up and took it without looking. “Someone made this wolf think it was a person,” she said. “They made it think it was a person and then they didn’t think any more about it. It happened a few years ago.” “How do you know?” “I’ve . . . got its memories,” said Granny. And instincts, too, she thought. She knew it’d be some days before she’d stop wanting to chase sledges over the snow. “Oh.” “It’s stuck between species. In its head.” “Can we help it?” said Nanny. Granny shook her head. “It’s gone on for too long. It’s habit now. And it’s starving. It can’t go one way, it can’t go t’other. It can’t act like a wolf, and it can’t manage being a human. And it can’t go on like it is.” She turned to face Nanny for the first time. Nanny took a step back. “You can’t imagine how it feels,” she said. “Wandering around for years. Not capable of acting human, and not able to be a wolf. You can’t imagine how that feels.” “I reckon maybe I can,” said Nanny. “In your face. Maybe I can. Who’d do that to a creature?” “I’ve got my suspicions.” They looked around. Magrat was approaching, with the child. Beside them walked one of the woodcutters. “Hah,” said Granny. “Yes. Of course. There’s always got to be” - she spat the words - “a happy ending.” A paw tried to grip her ankle. Granny Weatherwax looked down into the wolf’s face. “Preeees,” it growled. “Annn enndinggg? Noaaaow?” She knelt down, and took the paw. “Yes?” she said. “Yessss!” She stood up again, all authority, and beckoned to the approaching trio. “Mr Woodcutter?” she said. “A job for you . . .” The woodcutter never understood why the wolf laid its head on the stump so readily. Or why the old woman, the one in whom anger roiled like pearl barley in a bubbling stew, insisted afterwards that it be buried properly instead of skinned and thrown in the bushes. She had been very insistent about that. And that was the end of the big bad wolf. It was an hour later. Quite a few of the woodcutters had wandered up to the cottage, where there seemed to be a lot of interesting activity going on. Woodcutting is not a job that normally offers much in the way of diversion. Magrat was washing the floor with as much magical assistance as could be afforded by a bucket of soapy water and a scrubbing brush. Even Nanny Ogg, whose desultory interest in the proud role of housewife had faded completely just as soon as her eldest daughter was old enough to hold a duster, was cleaning the walls. The old grandmother, who wasn’t entirely in touch with events, was anxiously following both of them around with a saucer of milk. Spiders who had inherited the ceiling for generations were urged gently but firmly out of the door. And Granny Weatherwax was walking around the clearing with the head woodcutter, a barrel-chested young man who clearly thought he looked better in his studded leather wristlets than was, in fact, the case. “It’s been around for years, right?” he said. “Always lurking around the edges of villages and that.” “And you never tried talking to it?” said Granny. “Talk to it? It’s a wolf, right? You don’t talk to wolves. Animals can’t talk.” “Hmm. I see. And what about the old woman? There’s a lot of you woodcutters. Did you ever, you know, drop in to see her?” “Huh? No fear!” “Why?” The head woodcutter leaned forward conspiratorially. “Well, they say she’s a witch, right?” “Really?” said Granny. “How do you know?” “She’s got all the signs, right?” “What signs are those?” The woodcutter was pricked by a slight uneasiness. “Well . . . she’s . . . she lives all by herself in the wood, right?” “Yes . . . ?” “And . . . and . . . she’s got a hook nose and she’s always muttering to herself. . .” “Yes . . . ?” “And she’s got no teeth, right?” “Lawks,” said Granny. “I can see where you wouldn’t want to be having with the likes of her, right?” “Right!” said the woodcutter, relieved. “Quite likely turn you into just about anything as soon as look at you, right?” Granny stuck her finger in her ear and twiddled it reflectively. “They can do that, you know.” “I bet they can. I bet they can,” said Granny. “Makes me glad there’s all you big strong lads around. Teh, tch. Hmm. Can I have a look at your chopper, young man?” He handed over his axe. Granny sagged dramatically as she grasped it. There were still traces of wolf blood on the blade. “Deary me, it’s a big one,” she said. “And you’re good with this, I expect.” “Won the silver belt two years running at the forest revels,” said the woodcutter proudly. “Two years running? Two years running? Lawks. That is good. That’s very good. And here’s me hardly able to lift it.” Granny grasped the axe in one hand and swung it inexpertly. The woodcutter jumped backwards as the blade whirred past his face and then buried itself a quarter of an inch deep in a tree. “Sorry about that,” said Granny Weatherwax. “Aren’t I a daft old woman! Never was any good with anything technical!” He grinned at her, and tried to pull the axe free. He sank to his knees, his face suddenly white. Granny leaned down until she was level with his ear. “You could have seen to the old woman,” she said quietly. “You could have talked to the wolf. But you didn’t, right?” He tried to speak, but his teeth didn’t seem to want to part. “I can see you’re very sorry about all that,” she said. “I can see you’re seein’ the error of your ways. I bet you can’t wait to be up and repairing her cottage for her, and getting the garden back in good order, and seeing she has fresh milk every day and a good supply of wood, right? In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if you wasn’t generous enough to build her a new cottage, with a proper well an’ all. Somewhere near the village so she don’t have to live alone, right? You know, I can see the future sometimes and I just know that’s what’s goin’ to happen, right?” Sweat ran off his face. Now his lungs didn’t seem to be operating, either. “An’ I knows you’re goin’ to keep your word, and I’m so pleased about it that I’m going to make sure you’re especially lucky,” said Granny, her voice still in the same pleasant monotone. “I knows it can be a dangerous job, woodchoppin’. People can get hurt. Trees can accidentally fall on ‘em, or the top of their chopper can suddenly come off and cut their head open.” The woodcutter shuddered as Granny went on: “So what I’m goin’ to do is a little spell to make sure that none of this ‘appens to you. On account of me bein’ so grateful. Because of you helpin’ the old lady. Right? Just nod.” He managed to move his head a fraction. Granny Weatherwax smiled. “There!” she said, standing up and brushing a speck of leafmould off her dress. “You see how sweet life can be, if we all helps one another?” The witches left around lunchtime. By then the old woman’s garden was full of people, and the air with the sound of sawing and hammering. News like Granny Weatherwax travels fast. Three woodcutters were digging over the vegetable plot, two more were fighting to clean the chimney, and four of them were halfway down a new well that was being dug with impressive speed. The old grandmother, who was still the kind of person who hangs on to one idea until another one dislodges it by force, was running out of saucers to put the milk in. The witches sneaked away in all the busyness. “There,” said Magrat, as they strolled down the path, “it just goes to show how people will pitch in and help, if only someone sets an example. You don’t have to bully people all the time, you know.” Nanny Ogg glanced at Granny. “I saw you talking to the head woodcutter,” she said. “What was you talking about?” “Sawdust,” said Granny. “Oh, yes?” “One of the woodcutters told me,” said Magrat, “that there’s been other odd things happening in this forest. Animals acting human, he said. There used to be a family of bears living not far away.” “Nothing unusual about a family of bears living together,” said Nanny. “They’re very convivial animals.” “In a cottage?” “That’s unusual.” “That’s what I mean,” said Magrat. “You’d definitely feel a bit awkward about going round to borrow a cup of sugar,” said Nanny. “I expect the neighbours had something to say about it.” “Yes,” said Magrat. “They said “oink”.” “What’d they say “oink” for?” “Because they couldn’t say anything else. They were pigs.” “We had people like that next door when we lived at - “ Nanny began. “I mean pigs. You know. Four legs? Curly tail? What pork is before it’s pork? Pigs.” “Can’t see anyone letting pigs live in a cottage,” said Granny. “He said they didn’t. The pigs built their own. There were three of them. Little pigs.” “What happened to them?” said Nanny. “The wolf ate them. They were the only animals stupid enough to let him get near them, apparently. Nothing was found of them except their spirit level.” “That’s a shame.” “The woodcutter says they didn’t build very good houses, mind you.” “Well, it’s only to be expected. What with the trotters and all,” said Nanny. “He says the roof leaks something dreadful, right over his bed.” The witches walked on in silence. “I remember hearing once,” said Nanny, with the occasional glance at Granny Weatherwax, “about some ole enchantress in history who lived on an island and turned shipwrecked sailors into pigs.” “That’s a terrible thing to do,” said Magrat, on cue. “I suppose it’s all according to what you really are, inside,” said Nanny. “I mean, look at Greebo here.” Greebo, curled around her shoulders like a smelly fur, purred. “He’s practically a human.” “You do talk a lot of tosh, Gytha,” said Granny Weatherwax. “That’s ‘cos people won’t tell me what they really think is going on,” said Nanny Ogg, grimly. “I said I’m not sure,” said Granny. “You looked into the wolf’s mind.” “Yes. I did.” “Well, then . . .” Granny sighed. “Someone’s been here before us. Passing through. Someone who knows about the power of stories, and uses ‘em. And the stories have . . . kind of hung around. They do that, when they get fed . . .” “What’d anyone want to do that for?” said Nanny. “Practice,” said Granny. “Practice? What for?” said Magrat. “I expect we’ll find out presently,” said Granny gnomically. “You ought to tell me what you think,” said Magrat. “I am the official godmother around here, you know. I ought to be told things. You’ve got to tell me things.” Nanny Ogg went chilly. This was the kind of emotional countryside with which she was, as head Ogg, extremely familiar. That sort of comment at this sort of time was like the tiny sliding of snow off the top branch of a tall tree high in the mountains during the thaw season. It was one end of a process that, without a doubt, would end with a dozen villages being engulfed. Whole branches of the Ogg family had stopped talking to other branches of the Ogg family because of a ‘Thank you very much’ in the wrong tones and the wrong place, and this was far worse. “Now,” she said hurriedly, “why don’t we - “ “I don’t have to explain anything,” said Granny Weatherwax. “But we’re supposed to be three witches,” said Magrat. “If you can call us witches,” she added. “What do you mean by that, pray?” said Granny. “Pray?” thought Nanny. Someone has ended a sentence with ‘pray?” That’s like that bit when someone hits someone else with a glove and then throws it on the floor. There’s no going back when someone’s ended a sentence with ‘pray?” But she tried, anyway. “How about a nice - “ Magrat plunged on with the brave desperation of someone dancing in the light of their burning bridges. “Well,” she said, “it seems to me - “ “Yes?” said Granny. “It seems to me,” Magrat tried again, “that the only magic we do is all, well, headology. Not what anyone else would call magic. It’s just glaring at people and tricking them. Taking advantage of their gullibility. It wasn’t what I expected when I set out to become a witch -‘ “And who says,” said Granny Weatherwax, slowly and deliberately, “that you’ve become a witch now?” “My word, the wind is getting up, perhaps we should - “ said Nanny Ogg. “What did you say?” said Magrat. Nanny Ogg put her hand over her eyes. Asking someone to repeat a phrase you’d not only heard very clearly but were also exceedingly angry about was around Defcon II in the lexicon of squabble. “I should have thought my voice was clear enough,” said Granny. “I’m very amazed my voice wasn’t clear enough. It sounded clear enough to me.” “Looks a bit gusty, why don’t we - ?” “Well, I should just think I can be smug and bad-tempered and ill-considerate enough to be a witch,” said Magrat. “That’s all that’s required, isn’t it?” “Ill-considerate? Me?” “You like people who need help, because when they need help they’re weak, and helping them makes you feel strong! What harm would a bit of magic do?” “Because it’d never stop at just a bit, you stupid girl!” Magrat backed off, her face flushed. She reached into her bag and pulled out a slim volume, which she flourished like a weapon. “Stupid I may be,” she panted, “but at least I’m trying to learn things! Do you know the kind of things people can use magic for? Not just illusion and bullying! There’s people in this book that can . . . can . . . walk on hot coals, and stick their hands in a fire and not get hurt!” “Cheap trickery!” said Granny. “They really can!” “Impossible. No-one can do that!” “It shows they can control things! Magic’s got to be more than just knowing things and manipulating people!” “Oh? It’s all wishing on stars and fairy dust, is it? Making people happier?” “There’s got to be some of that! Otherwise what’s the good of anything? Anyway. . . when I went to Desiderata’s cottage you were looking for the wand, weren’t you?” “I just didn’t want it falling into the wrong hands!” “Like any hands but yours, I expect!” They glared at each other. “Haven’t you got any romance in your soul?” said Magrat plaintively. “No,” said Granny. “I ain’t. And stars don’t care what you wish, and magic don’t make things better, and no-one doesn’t get burned who sticks their hand in a fire. If you want to amount to anything as a witch, Magrat Garlick, you got to learn three things. What’s real, what’s not real, and what’s the difference - “ “And always get the young man’s name and address,” said Nanny. “It worked for me every time. Only joking,” she said, as they both glared at her. The wind was rising, here on the edge of the forest. Bits of grass and leaves whirled through the air. “We’re going the right way, anyway,” said Nanny madly, seeking anything that would be a distraction. “Look. It says “Genua” on the signpost.” It did indeed. It was an old, worm-eaten signpost right on the edge of the forest. The end of the arm had been carved into the likeness of a pointing finger. “A proper road, too,” Nanny burbled on. The row cooled a bit, simply because both sides were not talking to each other. Not simply not exchanging vocal communication - that’s just an absence of speaking. This went right through that and out the other side, into the horrible glowering worlds of Not Talking to One Another. “Yellow bricks,” said Nanny. “Whoever heard of anyone making a road out of yellow bricks?” Magrat and Granny Weatherwax stood looking in opposite directions with their arms folded. “Brightens the place up, I suppose,” said Nanny. On the horizon, Genua sparkled in the middle of some more greenery. In between, the road dipped into a wide valley dotted with little villages. A river snaked through them on the way to the city. The wind whipped at their skirts. “We’ll never fly in this,” said Nanny, still womanfully trying to make enough conversation for three people. “So we’ll walk, then, eh?” she said, and added, because there’s a spark of spitefulness even in innocent souls like Nanny Ogg’s, “Singing as we go, how about it?” “I’m sure it’s not my place to mind what anyone chooses to do,” said Granny. “It’s nothing to do with me. I expect some people with wands and big ideas might have something to say.” “Huh!” said Magrat. They set off along the brick road towards the distant city, in single file with Nanny Ogg as a kind of mobile buffer state in the middle. “What some people need,” said Magrat, to the world in general, “is a bit more heart.” “What some people need,” said Granny Weatherwax, to the stormy sky, “is a lot more brain.” Then she clutched at her hat to stop the wind from blowing it off. What I need, thought Nanny Ogg fervently, is a drink. Three minutes later a farmhouse dropped on her head. By this time the witches were well spaced out. Granny Weatherwax was striding along in front, Magrat was sulking along at the rear, and Nanny was in the middle. As she said afterwards, it wasn’t even as if she was singing. It was just that one moment there was a small, plump witch, and the next there was the collapsing remains of a wooden farmhouse. Granny Weatherwax turned and found herself looking at a crumbling, unpainted front door. Magrat nearly walked into a back door of the same grey, bleached wood. There was no sound but the crackle of settling timber. “Gytha?” said Granny. “Nanny?” said Magrat. They both opened their doors. It was a very simple design of house, with two downstairs rooms separated by a front-to-back passageway. In the middle of the passageway, surrounded by shattered and termite-ridden floor-boards, under the pointy hat that had been rammed down to her chin, was Nanny Ogg. There was no sign of Greebo. “Wha’ happened?” she said. “Wha’ happened?” “A farmhouse dropped on your head,” said Magrat. “Oh. One o’ them things,” said Nanny vaguely. Granny gripped her by the shoulders. “Gytha? How many fingers am I holding up?” she said urgently. “Wha’ fingers? ‘S’all gone dark.” Magrat and Granny gripped the brim of Nanny’s hat and half lifted, half unscrewed it from her head. She blinked at them. “That’s the willow reinforcement,” she said, as the pointy hat creaked back into shape like a resurrecting umbrella. She was swaying gently. “Stop a hammer blow, a hat with willow reinforcement. All them struts, see. Distributes the force. I shall write to Mr Vernissage.” Magrat, bemused, looked around the little house. “It just dropped out of the sky!” she said. “Could have been a big tornado or something somewhere,” said Nanny Ogg. “Picked it up, see, then the wind drops and down it comes. You get funny things happening in high winds. Remember that big gale we had last year? One of my hens laid the same egg four times.” “She’s rambling,” said Magrat. “No I ain’t, that’s just my normal talking,” said Nanny. Granny Weatherwax peered into one of the rooms. “I suppose there wouldn’t be any food and drink about the place?” she said. “I think I could force myself to drink some brandy,” said Nanny quickly. Magrat peered up the stairs. “Coo-ee,” she called, in the strangled voice of someone who wants to be heard without doing anything so bad-mannered as raise their voice. “Is there anyone here?” Nanny, on the other hand, looked under the stairs. Greebo was a cowering ball of fur in a corner. She hauled him out by the scruff of his neck and gave him a slightly bewildered pat. Despite Mr Vernissage “s millinery masterpiece, despite the worm-eaten floor, and despite even the legendary thick skull of the Oggs, she was definitely feeling several twinkles short of a glitter and suffering a slight homesick-tinged dip in her usual sunny nature. People didn’t hit you over the head with farmhouses back home. “You know, Greebo,” she said, “I don’t think we’re in Lancre.” “I’ve found some jam,” said Granny Weatherwax, from the kitchen. It didn’t take a lot to cheer up Nanny Ogg. “That’s fine,” she called out. “It’ll go nicely on the dwarf bread.” Magrat came into the room. “I’m not sure we should be taking other people’s provisions,” she said. “I mean, this place must belong to someone.” “Oh. Did someone speak, Gytha?” said Granny Weather-wax archly. Nanny rolled her eyes. “I was merely saying, Nanny,” said Magrat, “that this isn’t our property.” “She says it don’t belong to us, Esme,” said Nanny. “Tell anyone who wants to know, Gytha, that it’s like salvage from a shipwreck,” said Granny. “She says finders keepers, Magrat,” said Nanny. Something flickered past the window. Magrat went and peered out through the grimy pane. “That’s funny. There’s a lot of dwarfs dancing round the house,” she said. “Oh, yes?” said Nanny, opening a cupboard. Granny stiffened. “Are they - I means, ask her if they’re singing,” she said. “They singing, Magrat?” “I can hear something,” said Magrat. “Sounds like “Dingdong, dingdong”.” “That’s a dwarf song all right,” said Nanny. “They’re the only people who can make a hiho last all day.” “They seem very happy about it,” said Magrat doubtfully. “Probably it was their farmhouse and they’re glad to get it back.” There was a hammering on the back door. Magrat opened it. A crowd of brightly dressed and embarrassed dwarfs stepped back hurriedly and then peered up at her. “Er,” said the one who was apparently the leader, “is . . . is the old witch dead?” “Which old witch?” said Magrat. The dwarf looked at her for a while with his mouth open. He turned and had a whispered consultation with his colleagues. Then he turned back. “How many have you got?” “There’s a choice of two,” said Magrat. She wasn’t feeling in a very good mood and wasn’t prompted to aid the conversation more than necessary. Uncharacteristic nastiness made her add, “Free for the asking.” “Oh.” The dwarf considered this. “Well, which old witch did the house land on?” “Nanny? No, she’s not dead. She’s just a bit stunned. But thanks all the same for asking,” said Magrat. “That’s very kind of you.” This seemed to puzzle the dwarfs. They went into a huddle. There was a lot of sotto voce arguing. Then the head dwarf turned back to Magrat. He removed his helmet and turned it around and around nervously in his hands. “Er,” he said, “can we have her boots?” “What?” “Her boots?” said the dwarf, blushing. “Can we have them, please?” “What do you want her boots for?” The dwarf looked at her. Then he turned and went into a huddle with his colleagues again. He turned back to Magrat. “We’ve just got this . . . feeling . . . that we ought to have her boots,” he said. He stood there blinking. “Well, I’ll go and ask,” said Magrat. “But I don’t think she’ll say yes.” As she went to close the door the dwarf twiddled his hat some more. “They are ruby-coloured, aren’t they?” he said. “Well, they’re red,” said Magrat. “Is red all right?” “They’ve got to be red.” All the other dwarfs nodded. “It’s no good if they’re not red.” Magrat gave him a blank look and shut the door. “Nanny,” she said slowly, when she was back in the kitchen, “there’s some dwarfs outside who want your boots.” Nanny looked up. She’d found a stale loaf in a cupboard and was industriously chewing. It was amazing what you’d eat if the alternative was dwarf bread. “What d’they want ‘em for?” she said. “Didn’t say. They just said they had a feeling they want your boots.” “That sounds highly suspicious to me,” said Granny. “Old Shaker Wistley over Creel Springs way was a devil for boots,” said Nanny, putting down the breadknife. “Especially black button boots. He used to collect ‘em. If he saw you going past in a new pair he had to go and have a lie-down.” “I reckon that’s a bit sophisticated for dwarfs,” said Granny. “Maybe they want to drink out of ‘em,” said Nanny. “What do you mean, drink out of them?” said Magrat. “Ah, well, that’s what they do in foreign parts,” said Nanny. “They drink fizzy wine out of ladies’ boots.” They all looked down at Nanny’s boots. Not even Nanny could imagine what anyone would want to drink out of them, or what they would do afterwards. “My word. That’s even more sophisticated than old Shaker Wistley,” said Nanny reflectively. “They seemed a bit puzzled about it,” said Magrat. “I expect they would be. It ain’t often people get a feeling they ought to go around pulling a decent witch’s boots off. This sounds like another story flapping around. I think,” said Granny Weatherwax, “that we ought to go and talk to these dwarfs.” She strode out into the passageway and opened the door. “Yes?” she demanded. The dwarfs backed away at the sight of her. There was a lot of whispering and elbowing and muttered comments in the nature of ‘No, yew’, and ‘I asked last time’. Finally a dwarf was pushed forward. It might have been the original dwarf. It was hard to tell, with dwarfs. “Er,” he said. “Er. Boots?” “What for?” said Granny. The dwarf scratched its head. “Damned if I know,” he said. “We were just wondering about it ourselves, “s’matterofact. We were just coming off shift in the coal mine half an hour ago, we saw the farmhouse land on . . . on the witch, an’ . . . well. . .” “You just knew you had to run up and steal her boots?” said Granny. The dwarf’s face widened into a relieved grin. “That’s right!” he said. “And sing the Ding-dong song. Only she was supposed to be squashed. No offence meant,” he added quickly. “It’s the willow reinforcement,” said a voice behind Granny. “Worth its weight in glod.” Granny stared for a while, and then smiled. “I think you lads ought to come inside,” she said. “I’ve got some questions to ask you.” The dwarfs looked very uncertain. “Um,” said the spokesdwarf. “Nervous of going into a house with witches in it?” said Granny Weatherwax. The spokesdwarf nodded, and then went red. Magrat and Nanny Ogg exchanged glances behind Granny’s back. Something had definitely gone wrong somewhere. In the mountains dwarfs certainly weren’t afraid of witches. The problem was to stop them digging up your floor. “You’ve been down from the mountains for some time, I expect,” said Granny. “Very promising seam of coal down here,” mumbled the spokesdwarf, twiddling his hat. “Bet it’s a long time since you’ve had proper dwarf bread, then,” said Granny. The spokesdwarf’s eyes misted over. “Baked from the finest stone-ground grit, just like mother used to jump up and down on it,” Granny went on. A sort of collective sigh went up from the dwarfs. “You just can’t get it down here,” said the spokesdwarf, to the ground. “It’s the water, or something. It falls to bits after hardly any years at all.” “They puts flour in it,” said someone behind him, sourly. “It’s worse’n that. The baker over in Genua puts dried fruit in it,” said another dwarf. “Well, now,” said Granny, rubbing her hands together, “I may be able to help you here. Could be I’ve got some dwarf bread to spare.” “Nah. Not proper dwarf bread,” said the spokesdwarf moodily. “Proper dwarf bread’s got to be dropped in rivers and dried out and sat on and left and looked at every day and put away again. You just can’t get it down here.” “This could be,” said Granny Weatherwax, “your lucky day.” “To be frank,” said Nanny Ogg, “I think the cat pissed on some of it.” The spokesdwarf looked up, his eyes aglow. “Hot damn!” Dear Jason et everybody, What a life, all kinds of thing gain on, what with talkin wolves and women asleep in castles, I shall have a story or two to tell you when I gets back and no mistake. Also, dont tawk to me about farmhouses, which reminds me, please send somone to Mr Vemissage over in Slice and present Mrs Ogg’s compluments and what a good hat he makes, he can say ‘As Approved by Nanny Ogg’, it stops 100% of all known farmhouses, also, if you writes to people saying how good their stuff is sometimes you get free stuff, there could be a new hat in this for me so see to it. Lilith stepped out from her room of mirrors. Shadowy images of herself trailed after her, fading. Witches ought to be squashed when a farmhouse lands on them. Lilith knew that. All squashed, except for their boots sticking out. Sometimes she despaired. People just didn’t seem able to play their parts properly. She wondered whether there was such a thing as the opposite of a fairy godmother. Most things had their opposite, after all. If so, she wouldn’t be a bad fairy godmother, because that’s just a good fairy godmother seen from a different viewpoint. The opposite would be someone who was poison to stories and, thought Lilith, quite the most evil creature in the world. Well, here in Genua was one story no-one could stop. It had momentum, this one. Try to stop it and it’d absorb you, make you part of its plot. She didn’t have to do a thing. The story would do it for her. And she had the comfort of knowing that she couldn’t lose. After all, she was the good one. She strolled along the battlements and down the stairs to her own room, where the two sisters were waiting. They were good at waiting. They could sit for hours without blinking. The Duc refused even to be in the same room as them. Their heads turned as she came in. She’d never given them voices. It wasn’t necessary. It was enough that they were beautiful and could be made to understand. “Now you must go to the house,” she said. “And this is very important. Listen to me. Some people will be coming to see Ella tomorrow. You must let them do so, do you understand?” They were watching her lips. They watched anything that moved. “We shall need them for the story. It won’t work properly unless they try to stop it. And afterwards . . . perhaps I will give you voices. You’ll like that, won’t you?” They looked at one another, and then at her. And then at the cage in the corner of the room. Lilith smiled, and reached in, and took out two white mice. “The youngest witch might be just your type,” she said. “I shall have to see what I can do with her. And now . . . open . . .” The broomsticks drifted through the afternoon air. For once, the witches weren’t arguing. The dwarfs had been a taste of home. It would have done anyone’s heart good to see the way they just sat and stared at the dwarf bread, as if consuming it with their eyes, which was the best way to consume dwarf bread. Whatever it was that had driven them to seek ruby-coloured boots seemed to wear off under its down-to-earth influence. As Granny said, you could look a long way before you found anything realer than dwarf bread. Then she’d gone off alone to talk to the head dwarf. She wouldn’t tell the others what he’d told her, and they didn’t feel bold enough to ask. Now she flew a little ahead of them. Occasionally she’d mutter something like ‘Godmothers!” or ‘Practising!” But even Magrat, who hadn’t had as much experience, could feel Genua now, as a barometer feels the air pressure. In Genua, stories came to life. In Genua, someone set out to make dreams come true. Remember some of your dreams? Genua nestled on the delta of the Vieux river, which was the source of its wealth. And Genua was wealthy. Genua had once controlled the river mouth and taxed its traffic in a way that couldn’t be called piracy because it was done by the city government, and therefore sound economics and perfectly all right. And the swamps and lakes back in the delta provided the crawling, swimming and flying ingredients of a cuisine that would have been world famous if, as has already been indicated, people travelled very much. Genua was rich, lazy and unthreatened, and had once spent quite a lot of time involved in that special kind of civic politics that comes naturally to some city states. For example, once it had been able to afford the largest branch of the Assassins’ Guild outside Ankh-Morpork, and its members were so busy that you sometimes had to wait for months. But the Assassins had all left years ago. Some things sicken even jackals. The city came as a shock. From a distance, it looked like a complicated white crystal growing out of the greens and browns of the swamp. Closer to, it resolved into, firstly, an outer ring of smaller buildings, then an inner ring of large, impressive white houses and, finally, at the very centre, a palace. It was tall and pretty and multi-turreted, like a toy castle or some kind of confectionery extravaganza. Every slim tower looked designed to hold a captive princess. Magrat shivered. But then she thought of the wand. A godmother had responsibilities. “Reminds me of another one of them Black Aliss stories,” said Granny Weatherwax. “I remember when she locked up that girl with the long pigtails in a tower just like one of them. Rumple-stiltzel or someone.” “But she got out,” said Magrat. “Yes, it does you good to let your hair down,” said Nanny. “Huh. Rural myths,” said Granny. They drew nearer to the city walls. Then Magrat said, “There’s guards on the gate. Are we going to fly over?” Granny stared at the highest tower through narrowed eyes. “No,” she said. “We’ll land and walk in. So’s not to worry people.” “There’s a nice flat green bit just behind those trees,” said Magrat. Granny walked up and down experimentally. Her boots squeaked and gurgled in watery accusation. “Look, I said I’m sorry,” said Magrat. “It just looked so flat!” “Water gen’rally does,” said Nanny, silting on a tree stump and wringing out her dress. “But even you couldn’t tell it was water,” said Magrat. “It looks so . . . so grassy with all that weed and stuff floating on it.” “Seems to me the land and the water round here can’t decide who is which,” said Nanny. She looked around at the miasmic landscape. Trees grew out of the swamp. They had a jagged, foreign look and seemed to be rotting as they grew. Where the water was visible, it was black like ink. Occasionally a few bubbles would eructate to the surface like the ghosts of beans on bath night. And somewhere over in the distance was the river, if it was possible to be that sure in this land of thick water and ground that wobbled when you set foot on it. She blinked. “That’s odd,” she said. “What?” said Granny. “Thought I saw . . . something running . . .” muttered Nanny. “Over there. Between the trees.” “Must be a duck then, in this place.” “It was bigger’n a duck,” said Nanny. “Funny thing is, it looked a bit like a little house.” “Oh yes, running along with smoke coming out of the chimney, I expect,” said Granny witheringly. Nanny brightened. “You saw it too?” Granny rolled her eyes. “Come on,” she said, “let’s get to the road.” “Er,” said Magrat, “how?” They looked at the nominal ground between their reasonably dry refuge and the road. It had a yellowish appearance. There were floating branches and tufts of suspiciously green grass. Nanny pulled a branch off the fallen tree she was sitting on and tossed it a few yards. It struck damply, and sank with the noise of someone trying to get the last bit out of the milkshake. “We fly over to it, of course,” Nanny said. “You two can,” said Granny. “There’s nowhere for me to run and get mine started.” In the end Magrat ferried her across on her broom, Nanny bringing up the rear with Granny’s erratic stick in tow. “I just ‘ope no-one saw us, that’s all,” said Granny, when they’d reached the comparative safety of the road. Other roads joined the swamp causeway as they got nearer to the city. They were crowded, and there was a long line at the gate. From ground level, the city was even more impressive. Against the steam of the swamps it shone like a polished stone. Coloured flags flew over the walls. “Looks very jolly,” said Nanny. “Very clean,” said Magrat. “It just looks like that from outside,” said Granny, who had seen a city before. “When you get inside it’ll be all beggars and noise and gutters full of I don’t know what, you mark my words.” “They’re turning quite a lot of people away,” said Nanny. “They said on the boat that lots of people come here for Fat Lunchtime,” said Granny. “Probably you get lots of people who ain’t the right sort.” Half a dozen guards watched them approach. “Very smartly turned out,” said Granny. “That’s what I like to see. Not like at home.” There were only six suits of chain mail in the whole of Lancre, made on the basis of one-size-doesn’t-quite-fit-all. Bits of string and wire had to be employed to take in the slack, since in Lancre the role of palace guard was generally taken by any citizen who hadn’t got much to do at the moment. These guards were all six-footers and, even Granny had to admit, quite impressive in their jolly red-and-blue uniforms. The only other real city guards she’d ever seen were those in Ankh-Morpork. The sight of Ankh-Morpork’s city guard made thoughtful people wonder who could possibly attack that was worse. They certainly weren’t anything to look at. To her amazement, two pikes barred her way as she stepped under the arched gateway. “We’re not attacking, you know,” she said. A corporal gave her a salute. “No ma’am,” he said. “But we have orders to stop borderline cases.” “Borderline?” said Nanny. “What’s borderline about us?” The corporal swallowed. Granny Weatherwax’s gaze was a hard one to meet. “Well,” he said, “you’re a bit. . . grubby.” There was a ringing silence. Granny took a deep breath. “We had a bit of an accident in the swamp,” said Magrat quickly. “I’m sure it’ll be all right,” said the corporal wretchedly. “The captain’ll be here directly. Only there’s all kinds of trouble if we let the wrong sort in. You’d be amazed at some of the people we get here.” “Can’t go letting the wrong sort in,” said Nanny Ogg. “We wouldn’t want you to let the wrong sort in. I daresay we wouldn’t want to come into the kind of city that’d let the wrong sort in, would we, Esme?” Magrat kicked her on the ankle. “Good thing we’re the right sort,” said Nanny. “What’s happening, corporal?” The captain of the guard strolled out of a door in the archway and walked over to the witches. “These . . . ladies want to come in, sir,” said the corporal. “Well?” “They’re a bit. . . you know, not one hundred per cent clean,” said the corporal, wilting under Granny’s stare. “And one of them’s got messy hair - “ “Well!” snapped Magrat. “- and one of them looks like she uses bad language.” “What?” said Nanny, her grin evaporating. “I’ll tan your hide, you little bugger!” “But, corporal, they have got brooms,” said the captain. “It’s very hard for cleaning staff to look tidy all the time.” “Cleaning staff?” said Granny. “I’m sure they’re as anxious as you are to get tidied up,” said the captain. “Excuse me,” said Granny, empowering the words with much the same undertones as are carried by words like ‘Charge!” and ‘Kill!”, “Excuse me, but does this pointy hat I’m wearing mean anything to you?” The soldiers looked at it politely. “Can you give me a clue?” said the captain, eventually. “It means - “ “We’ll just trot along in, if it’s all the same to you,” said Nanny Ogg. “Got a lot of cleaning up to do.” She flourished her broomstick. “Come, ladies.” She and Magrat grasped Granny’s elbows firmly and propelled her under the archway before her fuse burned out. Granny Weatherwax always held that you ought to count up to ten before losing your temper. No-one knew why, because the only effect of this was to build up the pressure and make the ensuing explosion a whole lot worse. The witches didn’t stop until they were out of sight of the gate. “Now, Esme,” said Nanny soothingly, “you shouldn’t take it personal. And we are a bit mucky, you must admit. They were just doing their job, all right? How about that?” “They treated us as if we was ordinary people,” said Granny, in a shocked voice. “This is foreign parts, Granny,” said Magrat. “Anyway, you said the men on the boat didn’t recognize the hat, either.” “But then I dint want ‘em to,” said Granny. “That’s different.” “It’s just an . . . an incident, Granny,” said Magrat. “They were just stupid soldiers. They don’t even know a proper free-form hairstyle when they see it.” Nanny looked around. Crowds milled past them, almost in silence. “And you must admit it’s a nice clean city,” she said. They took stock of their surroundings. It was certainly the cleanest place they’d ever seen. Even the cobblestones had a polished look. “You could eat your tea off the street,” said Nanny, as they strolled along. “Yes, but you’d eat your tea off the street anyway,” said Granny. “I wouldn’t eat all of it. Even the gutters are scrubbed. Not a Ronald in sight, look.” “Gytha!” “Well, you said that in Ankh-Morpork - “ “This is somewhere else!” “It’s so spotless,” said Magrat. “Makes you wish you’d cleaned your sandals.” “Yeah.” Nanny Ogg squinted along the street. “Makes you wish you were a better person, really.” “Why are you two whispering?” said Granny. She followed their gaze. There was a guard standing on the street corner. When he saw them looking at him he touched his helmet and gave them a brief smile. “Even the guards are polite,” said Magrat. “And there’s so many of them, too,” said Granny. “Amazing, really, needing all these guards in a city where people are so clean and quiet,” said Magrat. “Perhaps there’s so much niceness to be spread around they need a lot of people to do it,” said Nanny Ogg. The witches wandered through the packed streets. “Nice houses, though,” said Magrat. “Very decorative and olde-worlde.” Granny Weatherwax, who lived in a cottage that was as olde-worlde as it was possible to be without being a lump of metamorphic rock, made no comment. Nanny Ogg’s feet started to complain. “We ought to find somewhere to stop the night,” she said. “We can look for this girl in the morning. We’ll all do a lot better for a good night’s sleep.” “And a bath,” said Magrat. “With soothing herbs.” “Good idea. I could just go a bath too,” said Nanny. “My word, doesn’t autumn roll around quickly,” said Granny sourly. “Yeah? When did you last have a bath, Esme?” “What do you mean, last? “See? Then there’s no call to make comments about my ablutions.” “Baths is unhygienic,” Granny declared. “You know I’ve never agreed with baths. Sittin” around in your own dirt like that.” “What do you do, then?” said Magrat. “I just washes,” said Granny. “All the bits. You know. As and when they becomes available.” However available they were, and no further information was vouchsafed on this point, they were certainly more available than accommodation in Genua in Fat Lunchtime. All the taverns and inns were more than full. Gradually the press of crowds pushed them out of the main streets and into the less fashionable quarters of the city, but still there was no room for the three of them. Granny Weatherwax had had enough. “The very next place we see,” she said, setting her jaw firmly, “we’re goin’ in. What’s that inn over there?” Nanny Ogg peered at the sign. “Hotel . . . No . . . Va . . . cancies,” she muttered, and then brightened up. “Hotel Nova Cancies,” she repeated. “That means “new, er, Cancies” in foreign,” she added helpfully. “It’ll do,” said Granny. She pushed open the door. A round, red-faced man looked up from the desk. He was new to the job and very nervous; the last incumbent had disappeared for not being round and red-faced enough. Granny didn’t waste time. “You see this hat?” she demanded. “You see this broom?” The man looked from her to the broom, and back again. “Yes?” he said. “What’s that mean?” “Means we want three rooms for the night,” said Granny, looking smugly at the other two. “With sausage,” said Nanny. “And one vegetarian meal,” said Magrat. The man looked at all three of them. Then he went over to the door. “You see this door? You see this sign?” he said. “We don’t bother about signs,” said Granny. “Well, then,” said the man, “I give up. What’s a pointy hat and a broom really mean?” “That means I’m a witch,” said Granny. The man put his head on one side. “Yeah?” he said. “Is that another word for daft old woman?” Dear Jason and everyone,wrote Nanny Ogg , Dyou know, they dont know about witches here, thats how bakcward they are in foreign pans. -A man gave Esme some Cheek and she would of lost her Temper so me and Magrat and I got hold of her and rushed her out because if you make someone think they’ve been turned into something there’s always trouble, you remember what happened larst time when afterwards you had to go and dig a pond for Mr Wilkins to live in . . . They had managed to find a table to themselves in a tavern. It was packed with people of all species. The noise was at shouting level and smoke wreathed the air. “Will you stop that scribbling, Gytha Ogg. It gets on my nerves,” snapped Granny. “They must have witches here,” said Magrat. “Everywhere has witches. You’ve got to have witches abroad. You find witches everywhere.” “Like cockroaches,” said Nanny Ogg cheerfully. “You should’ve let me make him believe he was a frog,” muttered Granny. “You can’t do that, Esme. You can’t go around making people believe they’re things just because they’ve been cheeky and don’t know who you are,” said Gytha. “Otherwise we’d be up to here in people hopping about.” Despite many threats, Granny Weatherwax had never turned anyone into a frog. The way she saw it, there was a technically less cruel but cheaper and much more satisfying thing you could do. You could leave them human and make them think they were a frog, which also provided much innocent entertainment for passers-by. “I always felt sorry for Mr Wilkins,” said Magrat, staring moodily at the table top. “It was so sad watching him try to catch flies on his tongue.” “He shouldn’t have said what he said,” said Granny. “What, that you were a domineering old busybody?” said Nanny innocently. “I don’t mind criticism,” said Granny. “You know me. I’ve never been one to take offence at criticism. No-one could say I’m the sort to take offence at criticism - “ “Not twice, anyway,” said Nanny. “Not without blowing bubbles.” “It’s just that I can’t stand unfairness,” said Granny. “And you stop that grinning! Anyway, I don’t see why you’re making a fuss about it. It wore off after a couple of days.” “Mrs Wilkins says he still goes out swimming a lot,” said Magrat. “It’s given him a whole new interest, she said.” “Perhaps they have a different kind of witch in the city,” said Magrat hopelessly. “Perhaps they wear different sort of clothes.” “There’s only one kind of witch,” said Granny. “And we’re it.” She looked around the room. Of course, she thought, if someone was keeping witches out, people wouldn’t know about them. Someone who didn’t want anyone else meddling here. But she let us in . . . “Oh, well, at least we’re in the dry,” said Nanny. A drinker standing in a crowd behind her threw back his head to laugh and spilled beer down her back. She muttered something under her breath. Magrat saw the man look down to take another swig and stare, wide-eyed, into the mug. Then he dropped it and fought his way out of the room, clutching at his throat. “What did you do to his drink?” she said. “You ain’t old enough to be tole,” said Nanny. At home, if a witch wanted a table to herself it . . . just happened. The sight of the pointy hat was enough. People kept a polite distance, occasionally sending free drinks to her. Even Magrat got respect, not particularly because anyone was in awe of her, but because a slight to one witch was a slight to all witches and no-one wanted Granny Weatherwax coming around to explain this to them. Here they were being jostled, as if they were ordinary. Only Nanny Ogg’s warning hand on Granny Weatherwax’s arm was keeping a dozen jovial drinkers from unnatural amphibianhood, and even Nanny’s usually very elastic temper was beginning to twang. She always prided herself on being as ordinary as muck, but there was ordinary and there was ordinary. It was like being that Prince Whatsisname, in the nursery story, who liked to wander around his kingdom dressed up as a commoner; she’d always had a shrewd suspicion that the little pervert made sure people knew who he was beforehand, just in case anyone tried to get too common. It was like getting muddy. Getting muddy when you had a nice hot tub to look forward to was fun; getting muddy when all you had to look forward to was more mud was no fun at all. She reached a conclusion. “Hey, why don’t we have a drink?” said Nanny Ogg brightly. “We’d all feel better for a drink.” “Oh no,” said Granny. “You caught me with that herbal drink last time. I’m sure there was alcohol in that. I def’nitely felt a bit woozy after the sixth glass. I ain’t drinking any more foreign muck.” “You’ve got to drink something,” said Magrat soothingly. “I’m thirsty, anyway.” She looked vaguely at the crowded bar. “Perhaps they do some kind of fruit cup, or something.” “Bound to,” said Nanny Ogg. She stood up, glanced at the bar, and surreptitiously removed a hatpin from her hat. “Shan’t be a moment.” The two of them were left in their own private gloom. Granny sat staring fixedly in front of her. “You really shouldn’t take it so bad, just because people aren’t showing you any respect,” said Magrat, pouring soothing oil on the internal fires. “They’ve hardly ever shown me any respect at all. It’s not a problem.” “If you ain’t got respect, you ain’t got a thing,” said Granny distantly. “Oh, I don’t know. I’ve always managed to get along,” said Magrat. “That’s ‘cos you’re a wet hen, Magrat Garlick,” said Granny. There was a short, hot silence, ringing with the words that shouldn’t have escaped and a few grunts of pained surprise from the direction of the bar. I know she’s always thought that, Magrat told herself within the glowing walls of her embarrassment. I just never thought she’d ever say it. And she’ll never say sorry, because that’s not the kind of thing she does. She just expects people to forget things like that. I was just trying to be friends again. If she ever really has any friends. “Here we are then,” said Nanny Ogg, emerging from the crush with a tray. “Fruit drinks.” She sat down and looked from one to the other. “Made from bananas,” she said, in the hope of striking a spark of interest from either woman. “I remember our Shane brought a banana home once. My, we had a good laugh about that. I said to the man, “What kind of fruit drinks do people drink around here?” and this is what he gave me. Made from bananas. A banana drink. You’ll like it. It’s what everyone drinks here. It’s got bananas in it.” “It’s certainly very. . . strongly flavoured,” said Magrat, sipping hers cautiously. “Has it got sugar in it too?” “Very likely,” said Nanny. She looked at Granny’s middle-distance frown for a moment, and then picked up her pencil and licked the end professionally. Anywey one good thing is the drink here is v. cheap theres this one called a Bananana dakry which is basicly Rum with a banananana in it. I can feel it doin me good. It is v. damp here. I hope we find somewhere to stay tonigt I expect we shal becaus Esme alweys falls on her feet or at any rate on someones feet. I have drawern a picture of a banananana dakry you can see it is empty right down to the bottom. Love, MUM XXXX In the end they found a stable. It was, as Nanny Ogg cheerfully commented, probably warmer and more hygienic than any of the inns and there were millions of people in foreign parts who’d give their right arms for such a comfy, dry place to sleep. This cut about as much ice as a soap hacksaw. It doesn’t take much to make witches fall out. Magrat lay awake, using her sack of clothes as a pillow and listening to the warm soft rain on the roof. It’s all gone wrong before we’ve even started, she thought. I don’t know why I let them come with me. I’m perfectly capable of doing something by myself for once, but they always treat me as if I was a . . . a wet hen. I don’t see why I should have to put up with her sulking and snapping at me the whole time. What’s so special about her, anyway? She hardly ever does anything really magical, whatever Nanny says. She really does just shout a lot and bully people. And as for Nanny, she means well but she has no sense of responsibility, I thought I’d die when she started singing the Hedgehog Song in the inn, I just hope to goodness the people didn’t know what the words meant. I’m the fairy godmother around here. We’re not at home now. There’s got to be different ways of doing things, in foreign parts. She got up at first light. The other two were asleep, although ‘asleep’ was too moderate a word for the sounds Granny Weatherwax was making. Magrat put on her best dress, the green silk one that was unfortunately now a mass of creases. She took out a bundle of tissue paper and slowly unwrapped her occult jewellery; Magrat bought occult jewellery as a sort of distraction from being Magrat. She had three large boxes of the stuff and was still exactly the same person. She did her best to remove the straw from her hair. Then she unpacked the magic wand. She wished she had a mirror to inspect herself in. “I’ve got the wand,” she said quietly. “I don’t see why I need any help. Desiderata said I was to tell them not to help.” It crossed her mind to reflect that Desiderata had been very lax on that point. The one thing you could be sure of, if you told Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg not to help, was that they would rush to help if only out of spite. It was quite surprising to Magrat that anyone as clever as Desiderata should have slipped up on that minor point. She’d probably got a psycholology too - whatever that was. Moving quietly, so as not to wake the other two, she opened the door and stepped lightly into the damp air. Wand at the ready, she was prepared to give the world whatever it wished for. It would help if this included pumpkins. Nanny Ogg opened one eye as the door creaked shut. She sat up and yawned and scratched herself. She fumbled in her hat and retrieved her pipe. She nudged Granny Weatherwax in the ribs. “I ain’t asleep,” said Granny. “Magrat’s gone off somewhere.” “Hah!” “And I’m going out to get something to eat,” muttered Nanny. There was no talking to Esme when she was in that kind of mood. As she stepped out Greebo dropped lightly off a beam and landed on her shoulder. Nanny Ogg, one of life’s great optimists, stepped out to take whatever the future had to offer. Preferably with rum and bananas in it. The house wasn’t hard to find. Desiderata had made very exact notes. Magrat’s gaze took in the high white walls and ornate metal balconies. She tried to straighten a few wrinkles in her dress, tugged some recalcitrant bits of hay from her hair, and then marched up the driveway and knocked on the door. The knocker broke off in her hand. Looking around anxiously lest someone should have noted this vandalism, Magrat tried to wedge it back. It fell off, knocking a lump out of the marble step. Finally she knocked gently with her knuckle. A fine cloud of paint dust lifted off the door and floated down to the ground. That was the only effect. Magrat considered her next move. She was pretty sure that fairy godmothers weren’t supposed to leave a little card pushed under the door saying something like “Called today but you were out, please contact the depot for a further appointment.” Anyway, this wasn’t the kind of house that got left empty; there would be a score of servants infesting a place like this. She crunched over the gravel and peered around the side of the house. Maybe the back door . . . witches were generally more at home around back doors . . . Nanny Ogg always was. She was heading for the one belonging to the palace. It was easy enough to get into; this wasn’t a castle like the ones back home, which expressed very clear ideas about inside and outside and were built to keep the two separate. This was, well, a fairytale castle, all icing-sugar battlements and tiny, towering turrets. Anyway, no-one took much notice of little old ladies. Little old ladies were by definition harmless, although in a string of villages across several thousand miles of continent this definition was currently being updated. Castles, in Nanny Ogg’s experience, were like swans. They looked as if they were drifting regally through the waters of Time, but in fact there was a hell of a lot of activity going on underneath. There’d be a maze of pantries and kitchens and laundries and stables and breweries - she liked the idea of breweries - and people never noticed another old biddy around the place, eating any spare grub that was lying around. Besides, you got gossip. Nanny Ogg liked gossip, too. Granny Weatherwax wandered disconsolately along the clean streets. She wasn’t looking for the other two. She was quite certain of that. Of course, she might just happen to bump into them, sort of accidentally, and give them a meaningful look. But she certainly wasn’t looking for them. There was a crowd at the end of the street. Working on the reasonable assumption that Nanny Ogg might be in the middle of it, Granny Weatherwax drifted over. Nanny wasn’t there. But there was a raised platform. And a small man in chains. And some bright-uniformed guards. One of them was holding an axe. You did not have to be a great world traveller to understand that the purpose of this tableau was not to give the chained man a signed testimonial and a collection from everyone at the office. Granny nudged a bystander. “What’s happening?” The man looked sideways at her. “The guards caught him thieving,” he said. “Ah. Well, he looks guilty enough,” said Granny. People in chains had a tendency to look guilty. “So what’re they going to do to him?” “Teach him a lesson.” “How d’they do that, then?” “See the axe?” Granny’s eyes hadn’t left it the whole time. But now she let her attention rove over the crowd, picking up scraps of thought. An ant has an easy mind to read. There’s just one stream of big simple thoughts: Carry, Carry, Bite, Get Into The Sandwiches, Carry, Eat. Something like a dog is more complicated - a dog can be thinking several thoughts at the same time. But a human mind is a great sullen lightning-filled cloud of thoughts, all of them occupying a finite amount of brain processing time. Finding whatever the owner thinks they’re thinking in the middle of the smog of prejudices, memories, worries, hopes and fears is almost impossible. But enough people thinking much the same thing can be heard, and Granny Weatherwax was aware of the fear. “Looks like it’ll be a lesson he won’t forget in a hurry,” she murmured. “I reckon he’ll forget it quite quickly,” said the watcher, and then shuffled away from Granny, in the same way that people move away from lightning rods during a thunderstorm. And at this point Granny picked up the discordant note in the orchestra of thought. In the middle of it were two minds that were not human. Their shape was as simple, clean and purposeful as a naked blade. She’d felt minds like that before, and had never cherished the experience. She scanned the crowd and found the minds’ owners. They were staring unblinkingly at the figures on the platform. The watchers were women, or at least currently the same shape as women; taller than she was, slender as sticks, and wearing broad hats with veils that covered their faces. Their dresses shimmered in the sunlight - possibly blue, possibly yellow, possibly green. Possibly patterned. It was impossible to tell. The merest movement changed the colours. She couldn’t make out their faces. There were witches in Genua all right. One witch, anyway. A sound from the platform made her turn. And she knew why people in Genua were quiet and nice. There were countries in foreign parts, Granny had heard, where they chopped off the hands of thieves so that they wouldn’t steal again. And she’d never been happy with that idea. They didn’t do that in Genua. They cut their heads off so they wouldn’t think of stealing again. Granny knew exactly where the witches were in Genua now. They were in charge. Magrat reached the house’s back door. It was ajar. She pulled herself together again. She knocked, in a polite, diffident sort of way. “Er - “ she said. A bowlful of dirty water hit her full in the face. Through the tidal roaring of a pair of ears full of suds, she heard a voice say, “Gosh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know anyone was standing there.” Magrat wiped the water out of her eyes, and tried to focus on the dim figure in front of her. A kind of narrative certainty rose in her mind. “Is your name Ella?” she said. “That’s right. Who’re you?” Magrat looked her new-found god-daughter up and down. She was the most attractive young woman Magrat had ever seen - skin as brown as a nut, hair so blonde as to be almost white, a combination not totally unusual in such an easygoing city as Genua had once been. What were you supposed to say at a time like this? She removed a piece of potato peel from her nose. “I’m your fairy godmother,” she said. “Funny thing, it sounds silly now I come to tell someone - “ Ella peered at her. “You?” “Um. Yes. I’ve got the wand, and everything.” Magrat waggled the wand, in case this helped. It didn’t. Ella put her head on one side. “I thought you people were supposed to appear in a shower of glittering little lights and a twinkly noise,” she said suspiciously. “Look, you just get the wand,” said Magrat desperately. “You don’t get a whole book of instructions.” Ella gave her another searching look. Then she said, “I suppose you’d better come in, then. You’re just in time. I was making a cup of tea, anyway.” The iridescent women got into an open-topped carriage. Beautiful as they were, Granny noted, they walked awkwardly. Well, they would. They wouldn’t be used to legs. She also noticed the way people didn’t look at the carriage. It wasn’t that they didn’t see it. It was simply that they wouldn’t let their gaze dwell on it, as if merely recognizing it would lead them into trouble. And she noticed the coach horses. They had better senses than the humans did. They knew what was behind them, and they didn’t like it at all. She followed them as they trotted, flat-eared and wild-eyed, through the streets. Eventually they were driven into the driveway of a big and dilapidated house near the palace. Granny lurked by the wall and noted the details. Plaster was dropping off the house walls, and even the knocker had fallen off the door. Granny Weatherwax did not believe in atmospheres. She did not believe in psychic auras. Being a witch, she’d always thought, depended more on what you didn’t believe. But she was prepared to believe that there was something very unpleasant in that house. Not evil. The two not-exactly-women weren’t evil, in the same way that a dagger or a sheer cliff isn’t evil. Being evil means being able to make choices. But the hand wielding a dagger or pushing a body over a cliff could be evil, and something like that was going on. She really wished that she didn’t know who was behind it. People like Nanny Ogg turn up everywhere. It’s as if there’s some special morphic generator dedicated to the production of old women who like a laugh and aren’t averse to the odd pint, especially of some drink normally sold in very small glasses. You find them all over the place, often in pairs. They tend to attract one another. Possibly they broadcast inaudible signals indicating that here is someone who could be persuaded to go ‘Ooo’ at pictures of other people’s grandchildren. Nanny Ogg had found a friend. Her name was Mrs Pleasant, she was a cook, and she was the first black person Nanny had ever spoken to. She was also a cook of that very superior type who spends most of the time holding court in a chair in the centre of the kitchen, apparently taking very little heed of the activity going on around her. Occasionally she’d give an order. And they’d only need to be occasionally, because she’d seen to it over the years that people either did things her way or not at all. Once or twice, with some ceremony, she’d get up, taste something, and maybe add a pinch of salt. Such people are always ready to chat to any wandering pedlars, herbalists, or little old women with cats on their shoulders. Greebo rode on Nanny’s shoulder as though he’d just eaten the parrot. “You be a-comin’ here for Fat Lunchtime, then?” said Mrs Pleasant. “Helping a friend with a bit of business,” said Nanny. “My, these biscuits are tasty.” “I means, I see by your eye,” said Mrs Pleasant, pushing the plate nearer to her, “that you are of a magical persuasion.” “Then you sees a lot further than most people in these parts,” said Nanny. “Y’know, what’d improve these biscuits no end’d be something to dip ‘em in, what d’you think?” “How “bout something with bananas in it?” “Bananas would be just the thing,” said Nanny happily. Mrs Pleasant waved imperiously at one of the maids, who set to work. Nanny sat on her chair, swinging her stumpy legs and looking around the kitchen with interest. A score of cooks were working with the single-mindedness of an artillery platoon laying down a barrage. Huge cakes were being constructed. In the fireplaces whole carcasses of animals were being roasted; turnspit dogs galloped in their treadmills. A huge man with a bald head and a scar right across his face was patiently inserting little sticks into sausages. Nanny hadn’t had any breakfast. Greebo had had some breakfast, but this didn’t make any difference. They were both undergoing a sort of exquisite culinary torture. They both turned, as if hypnotized, to watch two maids stagger by under a tray of canapes. “I can see you is a very observant woman, Mrs Ogg,” said Mrs Pleasant. “Just a slice,” said Nanny, without thinking. “I also determines,” Mrs Pleasant said, after a while, “that you have a cat of no usual breed upon your shoulder there.” “You’re right there.” “I knows I’m right.” A brimming glass of yellow foam was slid in front of Nanny. She looked at it reflectively and tried to get back to the matter in hand. “So,” she said, “where would I go, do you think, to find out about how you do magic in - “ “Would you like somethin’ to eat?” said Mrs Pleasant. “What? My word!” Mrs Pleasant rolled her eyes. “Not this stuff. I wouldn’t eat this stuff,” she said bitterly. Nanny’s face fell. “But you cook it,” she pointed out. “Only ‘cos I’m told to. The old Baron knew what good food was. This stuff? It’s nothing but pork and beef and lamb and rubbish for them that never tasted anything better. The only thing on four legs that’s worth eating is alligator. I mean real food.” Mrs Pleasant looked around at the kitchen. “Sara!” she shouted. One of the sub-cooks turned around. “Yes, “m?” “Me and this lady is just going out. Just you see to everything, okay?” “Yes, “m.” Mrs Pleasant stood up and nodded meaningfully at Nanny Ogg. “Walls have ears,” she said. “Coo! Do they?” “We goin’ to go for a little stroll.” There were, it now seemed to Nanny Ogg, two cities in Genua. There was the white one, all new houses and blue-roofed palaces, and around it and even under it was the old one. The new one might not like the presence of the old one, but it couldn’t quite ever do without it. Someone, somewhere, has to do the cooking. Nanny Ogg quite liked cooking, provided there were other people around to do things like chop up the vegetables and wash the dishes afterwards. She’d always reckoned that she could do things to a bit of beef that the bullock had never thought of. But now she realized that wasn’t cooking. Not compared to cooking in Genua. It was just staying alive as pleasantly as possible. Cooking anywhere outside Genua was just heating up things like bits of animals and birds and fish and vegetables until they went brown. And yet the weird thing was that the cooks in Genua had nothing edible to cook; at least, not what Nanny would have thought of as food. To her mind, food went around on four legs, or possibly one pair of legs and one pair of wings. Or at least it had fins on. The idea of food with more than four legs was an entirely new kettle of fi-of miscellaneous swimming things. They didn’t have much to cook in Genua. So they cooked everything. Nanny had never heard of prawns or crawfish or lobsters; it just looked to her as though the citizens of Genua dredged the river bottom and boiled whatever came up. The point was that a good Genuan cook could more or less take the squeezings of a handful of mud, a few dead leaves and a pinch or two of some unpronounceable herbs and produce a meal to make a gourmet burst into tears of gratitude and swear to be a better person for the rest of their entire life if they could just have one more plateful. Nanny Ogg ambled along as Mrs Pleasant led her through the market. She peered at cages of snakes, and racks of mysteriously tendrilled herbs. She prodded trays of bivalves. She stopped for a chat to the Nanny Ogg-shaped ladies who ran the little stalls that, for a couple of pennies, dispensed strange chowders and shellfish in a bun. She sampled everything. She was enjoying herself immensely. Genua, city of cooks, had found the appetite it deserved. She finished a plate of fish and exchanged a nod and a grin with the little old woman who ran the fish stall. “Well, all this is - “ she began, turning to Mrs Pleasant. Mrs Pleasant had gone. Some people would have bustled off to look for her in the crowds, but Nanny Ogg just stood and thought. I asked about magic, she thought, and she brought me here and left me. Because of them walls with ears in, I expect. So maybe I got to do the rest myself. She looked around her. There was a very rough tent a little way from the stalls, right by the river. There was no sign outside it, but there was a pot bubbling gently over a fire. Rough clay bowls were stacked beside the pot. Occasionally someone would step out of the crowd, help themselves to a bowlful of whatever was in the pot, and then throw a handful of coins into the plate in front of the tent. Nanny wandered over and looked into the pot. Things came to the surface and sank again. The general colour was brown. Bubbles formed, grew, and burst stickily with an organic ‘blop’. Anything could be happening in that pot. Life could be spontaneously creating. Nanny Ogg would try anything once. Some things she’d try several thousand times. She unhooked the ladle, picked up a bowl, and helped herself. A moment later she pushed aside the tent flap and looked into the blackness of the interior. A figure was seated cross-legged in the gloom, smoking a pipe. “Mind if I step inside?” said Nanny. The figure nodded. Nanny sat down. After a decent interval she pulled out her own pipe. “Mrs Pleasant’s a friend of yours, I expect.” “She knows me.” “Ah.” From outside, there was the occasional clink as customers helped themselves. Blue smoke coiled from Nanny Ogg’s pipe. “I don’t reckon,” she said, “that many people goes away without paying.” “No.” After another pause Nanny Ogg said: “I ‘spects some of ‘em tries to pay with gold and jewels and scented ungulants and stuff like that?” “No.” “Amazin’.” Nanny Ogg sat in silence for a while, listening to the distant noises of the market and summoning her powers. “What’s it called?” “Gumbo.” “It’s good.” “I know.” “I reckon anyone who could cook like that could do anything” - Nanny Ogg concentrated - “Mrs . . . Gogol.” She waited. “Pretty near, Mrs Ogg.” The two women stared at one another’s shadowy outline, like plotters who had given the sign and countersign and were waiting to see what would happen next. “Where I come from, we call it witchcraft,” said Nanny, under her breath. “Where I come from, we call it voodoo,” said Mrs Gogol. Nanny’s wrinkled forehead wrinkled still further. “Ain’t that all messin’ with dolls and dead people and stuff?” she said. “Ain’t witchcraft all runnin’ around with no clothes on and stickin’ pins in people?” said Mrs Gogol levelly. “Ah,” said Nanny. “I sees what you mean.” She shifted uneasily. She was a fundamentally honest woman. “I got to admit, though . . .” she added, “sometimes . . . maybe just one pin . . .” Mrs Gogol nodded gravely. “Okay. Sometimes . . . maybe just one zombie,” she said. “But only when there ain’t no alternative.” “Sure. When there ain’t no alternative.” “When . . . you know . . . people ain’t showing respect, like.” “When the house needs paintin’.” Nanny grinned, toothily. Airs Gogol grinned, outnumbering her in teeth by a factor of thirty. “My full name’s Gytha Ogg,” she said. “People calls me Nanny.” “My full name’s Erzulie Gogol,” said Mrs Gogol. “People call me Mrs Gogol.” “The way I saw it,” said Nanny, “this is foreign parts, so maybe there’s a different kind of magic. Stands to reason. The trees is different, the people is different, the drinks is different and has got banana in ‘em, so the magic’d be different too. Then I thought . . . Gytha, my girl, you’re never too old to learn.” “Sure thing.” “There’s something wrong with this city. Felt it as soon as we set foot here.” Mrs Gogol nodded. There was no sound for a while but the occasional puffing of a pipe. Then there was a clink from outside, followed by a thoughtful pause. A voice said, “Gytha Ogg? I know you’re in there.” The outline of Mrs Gogol took its pipe out of its mouth. “That’s good,” she said. “Good sense of taste there.” The tent flap opened. “Hallo, Esme,” said Nanny Ogg. “Blessings be on this . . . tent,” said Granny Weather-wax, peering into the gloom. “This here’s Mrs Gogol,” said Nanny. “She’s by way of bein’ a voodoo lady. That’s what witches are in these parts.” “They ain’t the only witches in these parts,” said Granny. “Mrs Gogol was very impressed at you detecting me in here,” said Nanny. “It wasn’t hard,” said Granny. “Once I’d spotted that Greebo washing himself outside, the rest was all deduction.” In the gloom of the tent Nanny had formed a mental picture of Mrs Gogol as being old. What she hadn’t expected, when the voodoo lady stepped out into the open air, was a handsome middle-aged woman taller than Granny. Mrs Gogol wore heavy gold earrings, a white blouse and a full red skirt with flounces. Nanny could feel Granny Weatherwax’s disapproval. What they said about women with red skirts was even worse than whatever they said about women with red shoes, whatever that was. Mrs Gogol stopped and raised an arm. There was a flurry of wings. Greebo, who had been rubbing obsequiously against Nanny’s leg, looked up and hissed. The largest and blackest cockerel Nanny had ever seen had settled on Mrs Gogol’s shoulder. It turned on her the most intelligent stare she had ever seen on a bird. “My word,” she said, taken aback. “That’s the biggest cock I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a few in my time.” Mrs Gogol raised one disapproving eyebrow. “She never had no proper upbringing,” said Granny. “What with living next to a chicken farm and all, is what I was going to say next,” said Nanny. “This is Legba, a dark and dangerous spirit,” said Mrs Gogol. She leaned closer and spoke out of the corner of her mouth. “Between you and me, he just a big black cockerel. But you know how it is.” “It pays to advertise,” Nanny agreed. “This is Greebo. Between you and me, he’s a fiend from hell.” “Well, he’s a cat,” said Mrs Gogol, generously. “It’s only to be expected.” Dear Jason and everyone, Isn’t it amazing the things what happen when you dont expect it, for example we met Mrs Gogol who works as a coke by day but is a Voodoo witch, you mustnt bekive all the stuff about black magic, exetra, this is a Blind, shes just like us only different. Its true about the zombies though but its not what you think . . . Genua was a strange city, Nanny decided. You got off the main streets, walked along a side road, went through a little gate and suddenly there were trees everywhere, with moss and them llamas hanging from them, and the ground began to wobble underfoot and become swamp. On either side of the track there were dark pools in which, here and there, among the lilies, were the kind of logs the witches had never seen before. “Them’s bloody big newts,” she said. “They’re alligators.” “By gods. They must get good grub.” “Yeah!” Mrs Gogol’s house itself looked a simple affair of driftwood from the river, roofed with moss and built out over the swamp itself on four stout poles. It was close enough to the centre of the city that Nanny could hear street cries and the clip-clop of hooves, but the shack in its little swamp was wreathed in silence. “Don’t people bother you here?” said Nanny. “Not them as I don’t want to meet.” The lily pads moved. A v-shaped ripple drifted across the nearest pool. “Self-reliance,” said Granny approvingly. “That’s always very important.” Nanny regarded the reptiles with a calculating stare. They tried to match it, and gave up when their eyes started watering. “I reckon I could just do with a couple of them at home,” she said thoughtfully, as they slid away again. “Our Jason could dig another pond, no problem. What was it you said they et?” “Anything they want to.” “I knows a joke about alligators,” said Granny, in the tones of one announcing a great and solemn truth. “You never!” said Nanny Ogg. “I never heard you tell a joke in your whole life!” “Just because I don’t tell ‘em don’t mean I don’t know ‘em,” said Granny haughtily. “It’s about this man - “ “What man?” said Nanny. “This man went into an inn. Yes. It was an inn. And he saw a sign. The sign said “We serve every kind of sandwich.” So he said “Get me an alligator sandwich -and make it quick!” ‘ They looked at her. Nanny Ogg turned to Mrs Gogol. “So . . . you live alone here, then?” she said brightly. “Not a living soul around?” “In a manner of speakin’,” said Mrs Gogol. “You see, the point is, alligators are - “ Granny began, in a loud voice, and then stopped. The shack’s door had opened. This was another big kitchen. Once upon a time it had provided employment for half a dozen cooks. Now it was a cave, its far corners shadowy, its hanging saucepans and tureens dulled by dust. The big tables had been pushed to one side and stacked almost ceiling high with ancient crockery; the stoves, which looked big enough to take whole cows and cook for an army, stood cold. In the middle of the grey desolation someone had set up a small table by the fireplace. It was on a square of bright carpet. A jam-jar contained flowers that had been arranged by the simple method of grabbing a handful of them and ramming them in. The effect was a little area of slightly soppy brightness in the general gloom. Ella shuffled a few things around desperately and then stood looking at Magrat with a sort of defensively shy smile. “Silly of me, really. I expect you’re used to this sort of thing,” she said. “Um. Yes. Oh, yes. All the time,” said Magrat. “It was just that I expected you to be a bit . . . older? Apparently you were at my christening?” “Ah. Yes?” said Magrat. “Well, you see, the thing is - “ “Still, I expect you can look like whatever you want,” said Ella helpfully. “Ah. Yes. Er.” Ella looked slightly puzzled for a moment, as if trying to work out why - if Magrat could look like whatever she wanted - she’d chosen to look like Magrat. “Well, now,” she said. “What do we do next?” “You mentioned tea,” said Magrat, buying time. “Oh, sure.” Ella turned to the fireplace, where a blackened kettle hung over what Granny Weatherwax always called an optimist’s fire. “What’s your name?” she said over her shoulder. “Magrat,” said Magrat, sitting. “That’s a . . . nice name,” said Ella, politely. “Of course, you know mine. Mind you, I spend so much time cooking over this wretched thing now that Mrs Pleasant calls me Embers. Silly, isn’t it.” Emberella, thought Magrat. I’m fairy godmothering a girl who sounds like something you put up in the rain. “It could use a little work,” she conceded. “I haven’t the heart to tell her off, she thinks it sounds jolly,” she said. “I think it sounds like something you put up in the rain.” “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” said Magrat. “Uh. Who’s Mrs Pleasant?” “She’s the cook at the palace. She comes around to cheer me up when they’re out. . .” Ella spun around, holding the blackened kettle like a weapon. “I’m not going to that ball!” she snapped. “I’m not going to marry the prince! Do you understand?” The words came out like steel ingots. “Right! Right!” said Magrat, taken aback by their force. “He looks slimy. He makes my flesh crawl,” said Embers darkly. “They say he’s got funny eyes. And everyone knows what he does at night!” Everyone bar one, Magrat thought. No-one ever tells me things like that. Aloud, she said: “Well, it shouldn’t be too much to arrange. I mean, normally it’s marrying princes that’s the hard bit.” “Not for me it isn’t,” said Embers. “It’s all been arranged. My other godmother says I’ve got to do it. She says it’s my destiny.” “Other godmother?” said Magrat. “Everyone gets two,” said Ella. “The good one and the bad one. You know that. Which one are you?” Magrat’s mind raced. “Oh, the good one,” she said. “Definitely.” “Funny thing,” said Ella. “That’s just what the other one said, too.” Granny Weatherwax sat in her special knees-clenched, elbows-in way that put as little as possible of herself in contact with the outside world. “By gor’, this is good stuff,” said Nanny Ogg, polishing her plate with what Granny could only hope was bread. “You ought to try a drop, Esme.” “Another helping, Mrs Ogg?” said Mrs Gogol. “Don’t mind if I do, Mrs Gogol.” Nanny nudged Granny in the ribs. “It’s really good, Esme. Just like stew.” Mrs Gogol looked at Granny with her head on one side. “I think perhaps Mistress Weatherwax isn’t worried about the food,” she said. “I think Mistress Weatherwax is worried about the service.” A shadow loomed over Nanny Ogg. A grey hand took her plate away. Granny Weatherwax gave a little cough. “I’ve got nothing against dead people,” she said. “Some of my best friends are dead. It just don’t seem right, though, dead people walking about.” Nanny Ogg looked up at the figure even now ladling a third helping of mysterious liquid on to her plate. “What d’you think about it, Mr Zombie?” “It’s a great life, Mrs Ogg,” said the zombie. “There. See, Esme? He don’t mind. Better than being shut up in a stuffy coffin all day, I’ll be bound.” Granny looked up at the zombie. He was - or, technically, had been - a tall, handsome man. He still was, only now he looked like someone who had walked through a room full of cobwebs. “What’s your name, dead man?” she said. “I am called Saturday.” “Man Saturday, eh?” said Nanny Ogg. “No. Just Saturday, Mrs Ogg. Just Saturday.” Granny Weatherwax looked into his eyes. They were more sentient than most eyes she had seen that belonged to people who were, technically, alive. She was vaguely aware that there were things you had to do to a dead person to turn them into a zombie, although it was a branch of magic she’d never wanted to investigate. Yet you needed more than just a lot of weird fish innards and foreign roots - the person had to want to come back. They had to have some terrible dream or desire or purpose that would enable them to overcome the grave itself. . . Saturday’s eyes burned. She reached a decision. She held out a hand. “Very pleased to meet you, Mister Saturday,” she said. “And I’m sure I’d enjoy your lovely stew.” “It’s called gumbo,” said Nanny. “It’s got lady’s fingers in it.” “I know well enough that lady’s fingers is a kind of plant, thank you very much,” said Granny. “I’m not entirely ignorant.” “All right, but make sure you get a helping with snakes’ heads in it as well,” said Nanny Ogg. “They’re the best part.” “What kind of plant is snakes’ heads?” “Best if you just eat up, I reckon,” said Nanny. They were sitting on the warped wood veranda round the back of Mrs Gogol’s shack, overlooking the swamp. Mossy beards hung from every branch. Unseen creatures buzzed in the greenery. And everywhere there were v-shaped ripples cutting gently through the water. “I expect it’s really nice here when the sun’s out,” said Nanny. Saturday trudged into the shack and returned with a makeshift fishing pole, which he baited and cast over the rail. Then he sort of switched off; no-one has more patience than a zombie. Mrs Gogol leaned back in her rocking-chair and lit her pipe. “This used to be a great ole city,” she said. “What happened to it?” said Nanny. Greebo was having a lot of trouble with Legba the cockerel. For one thing, the bird refused to be terrorized. Greebo could terrorize most things that moved upon the face of the Discworld, even creatures nominally much bigger and tougher than he was. Yet somehow none of his well-tried tactics - the yawn, the stare and above all the slow grin -seemed to work. Legba merely looked down his beak at him, and pretended to scratch at the ground in a way that brought his two-inch spurs into even greater prominence. That only left the flying leap. This worked on nearly every creature. Very few animals remained calm in the face of an enraged ball of whirring claws in the face. In the case of this bird, Greebo suspected, it might well result in his becoming a furry kebab. But this had to be resolved. Otherwise generations of cats would laugh at him. Cat and bird circled through the swamp, each apparently paying the other no attention whatsoever. Things gibbered in the trees. Small iridescent birds barrelled through the air. Greebo glared up at them. He would sort them out later. And the cockerel had vanished. Greebo’s ears flattened against his head. There was still the birdsong and the whine of insects, but they were elsewhere. Here there was silence - hot, dark and oppressive - and trees that were somehow much closer together than he remembered. Greebo looked around. He was in a clearing. Around its sides, hanging from bushes or tied to trees, were things. Bits of ribbon. White bones. Tin pots. Perfectly ordinary things, anywhere else. And in the centre of the clearing, something like a scarecrow. An upright pole with a crosspiece, on which someone had put an old black coat. Above the coat, on the tip of the pole, was a top hat. On top of the hat, watching him thoughtfully, was Legba. A breeze blew through the stifling air, causing the coat to flap gently. Greebo remembered a day when he’d chased a rat into the village windmill and had suddenly found that what had seemed merely a room with odd furniture in it was a great big machine which would, if he put a paw wrong, crush him utterly. The air sizzled gently. He could feel his fur standing on end. Greebo turned and stalked away haughtily, until he judged himself out of sight, whereupon his legs spun so fast that his paws skidded. Then he went and grinned at some alligators, but his heart wasn’t in it. In the clearing, the coat moved gently again and then was still. Somehow, that was worse. Legba watched. The air grew heavier, just as it does before a storm. “This used to be a great old city. A happy place. No-one tried to make it happy. It just happened, all by itself,” said Airs Gogol. “That was when the old Baron was alive. But he was murdered.” “Who done it?” said Nanny Ogg. “Everyone knows it was the Duc,” said Mrs Gogol. The witches looked at one another. Royal intrigues were obviously a bit different in foreign parts. “Pecked to death, was he?” said Nanny. “A foul deed?” said Granny. “The Duc is a title, not a bird,” said Mrs Gogol patiently. “The Baron was poisoned. It was a terrible night. And, in the morning, the Duc was in the palace. Then there was the matter of the will.” “Don’t tell me,” said Granny. “I bet there was a will leaving everything to this Duc. I bet the ink was still wet.” “How did you know that?” said Mrs Gogol. “Stands to reason,” said Granny loftily. “The Baron had a young daughter,” said Mrs Gogol. “She’d be still alive, I reckon,” said Granny. “You surely know a lot of things, lady,” said Airs Gogol. “Why’d you think that, then?” “Well . . .” said Granny. She was about to say: because I know how the stories work. But Nanny Ogg interrupted. “If this Baron was as great as you say, he must have had a lot of friends in the city, right?” she said. “That is so. The people liked him.” “Well, if I was a Duc with no more claim on things than a smudgy will and a little bottle of ink with the cork still out, I’d be lookin’ for any chance to make things a bit more official,” said Nanny. “Marryin’ the real heir’d be favourite. He could thumb his nose at everyone, then. I bet she don’t know who she really is, eh?” “That’s right,” said Mrs Gogol. “The Duc’s got friends, too. Or keepers, maybe. Not people you’d want to cross. They’ve brought her up, and they don’t let her out much.” The witches sat in silence for a while. Granny thought: no. That’s not quite right. That’s how it’d appear in a history book. But that’s not the story. Then Granny said,” ‘Scuse me, Mrs Gogol, but where do you come in all this? No offence, but I reckon that out here in the swamp it’d be all the same whoever was doing the rulin’.” For the first time since they’d met her, Mrs Gogol looked momentarily uneasy. “The Baron was . . . a friend of mine,” she said. “Ah,” said Granny understandingly. “He wasn’t keen on zombies, mark you. He said he thought the dead should be allowed their rest. But he never insisted. Whereas this new one . . .” “Not keen on the Interestin’ Arts?” said Nanny. “Oh, I reckon he is,” said Granny. “He’d have to be. Not your magic, maybe, but I bet he’s got a lot of magic around him.” “Why d’you say that, lady?” said Mrs Gogol. “Well,” said Nanny, “I can see that you, being a lady o’ spirit, wouldn’t put up with this if you didn’t have to. There’s lots of ways to sort matters out, I ‘spect. I ‘spect, if you dint like someone, their legs might unexpectedly drop off, or they might find mysterious snakes in their boots . . .” “Alleygators under their bed,” suggested Granny. “Yes. He’s got protection,” said Mrs Gogol. “Ah.” “Powerful magic.” “More powerful’n you?” said Granny. There was a long and difficult pause. “Yes.” “Ah.” “For now,” Mrs Gogol added. There was another pause. No witch ever liked admitting to less than near-absolute power, or even hearing another witch doing so. “You’re biding your time, I expect,” said Granny kindly. “Wifing your strength,” said Nanny. “It’s powerful protection,” said Mrs Gogol. Granny sat back in her chair. When she spoke next, it was as a person who has certain ideas in their mind and wants to find out what someone else knows. “What sort?” she said. “Exactly?” Mrs Gogol reached into the cushions of her rocking-chair and, after some rummaging, produced a leather bag and a pipe. She lit the pipe and puffed a cloud of bluish smoke into the morning air. “You look in mirrors a lot these days, Mistress Weatherwax?” she said. Granny’s chair tipped backwards, almost throwing her off the veranda and into the inky waters. Her hat flew away into the lily pads. She had time to see it settle gently on the water. It floated for a moment and then - - was eaten. A very large alligator snapped its jaws shut and gazed smugly at Granny. It was a relief to have something to shout about. “My hat! It ate my hat! One of your alleygators ate my hatl It was my hat! Make it give it back!” She snatched a length of creeper off the nearest tree and flailed at the water. Nanny Ogg backed away. “You shouldn’t do that, Esme! You shouldn’t do that!” she quavered. The alligator backed water. “I can hit cheeky lizards if I want!” “Yes, you can, you can,” said Nanny soothingly, “but not. . . with a . . . snake . . .” Granny held up the creeper for inspection. A medium-sized Three-Banded Coit gave her a frightened look, considered biting her nose for a moment, thought better of it, and then shut its mouth very tightly in the hope she’d get the message. She opened her hand. The snake dropped to the boards and slithered away quickly. Mrs Gogol hadn’t stirred in her chair. Now she half turned. Saturday was still patiently watching his fishing line. “Saturday, go and fetch the lady’s hat,” she said. “Yes, m’m.” Even Granny hesitated at that. “You can’t make him do that!” she said. “But he’s dead,” said Mrs Gogol. “Yes, but it’s bad enough being dead without bein’ in bits too,” said Granny. “Don’t you go in there, Mr Saturday!” “But it was your hat, lady,” said Mrs Gogol. “Yes, but. . .” said Granny, “. . . a . . . hat was all it was. I wouldn’t send anyone into any alligators for any hat.” Nanny Ogg looked horrified. No-one knew better than Granny Weatherwax that hats were important. They weren’t just clothing. Hats defined the head. They defined who you were. No-one had ever heard of a wizard without a pointy hat - at least, no wizard worth speaking of. And you certainly never heard of a witch without one. Even Magrat had one, although she hardly ever wore it on account of being a wet hen. That didn’t matter too much; it wasn’t the wearing of the hats that counted so much as having one to wear. Every trade, every craft had its hat. That’s why kings had hats. Take the crown off a king and all you had was someone good at having a weak chin and waving to people. Hats had power. Hats were important. But so were people. Mrs Gogol took another puff at her pipe. “Saturday, go and get my best hat for holidays,” she said. “Yes, Mrs Gogol.” Saturday disappeared into the hut for a moment, and came out with a large and battered box securely wrapped with twine. “I can’t take that,” said Granny. “I can’t take your best hat.” “Yes you can,” said Mrs Gogol. “I’ve got another hat. Oh, yes. I’ve got another hat all right.” Granny put the box down carefully. “It occurs to me, Mrs Gogol,” she said, “that you ain’t everything you seem.” “Oh yes I is, Mistress Weatherwax. I never bin nothing else, just like you.” “You brought us here?” “No. You brought yourselves here. Of your own free will. To help someone, ain’t that right? You decided to do it, ain’t that right? No-one forced you, ain’t that right? ‘Cept yourselves.” “She’s right about all that,” said Nanny. “We’d have felt it, if it was magic.” “That’s right,” said Granny. “No-one forced us, except ourselves. What’s your game, Mrs Gogol?” “I ain’t playing no game, Mistress Weatherwax. I just want back what’s mine. I want justice. And I wants her stopped.” “Her who?” said Nanny Ogg. Granny’s face had frozen into a mask. “Her who’s behind all this,” said Mrs Gogol. “The Duc hasn’t got the brains of a prawn, Mrs Ogg. I mean her. Her with her mirror magic. Her who likes to control. Her who’s in charge. Her who’s tinkering with destiny. Her that Mistress Weatherwax knows all about.” Nanny Ogg was lost. “What’s she talking about, Esme?” she said. Granny muttered something. “What? Didn’t hear you,” Nanny said. Granny Weatherwax looked up, her face red with anger. “She means my sister, Gytha! Right? Got that? Do you understand? Did you hear? My sister! Want me to repeat it again? Want to know who she’s talking about? You want me to write it down? My sister! That’s who! My sister!” “They’re sisters?” said Magrat. Her tea had gone cold. “I don’t know,” said Ella. “They look . . . alike. They keep themselves to themselves most of the time. But I can feel them watching. They’re very good at watching.” “And they make you do all the work?” she said. “Well, I only have to cook for myself and the outside staff,” said Ella. “And I don’t mind the cleaning and the laundry all that much.” “Do they do their own cooking, then?” “I don’t think so. They walk around the house at night, after I’ve gone to bed. Godmother Lilith says I must be kind to them and pity them because they can’t talk, and always see that we’ve got plenty of cheese in the larder.” “They eat nothing but cheese?” said Magrat. “I don’t think so,” said Ella. “I should think the rats and mice get it, then, in an old place like this.” “You know, it’s a funny thing,” said Ella, “but I’ve never seen a mouse anywhere in this house.” Magrat shivered. She felt watched. “Why don’t you just walk away? I would.” “Where to? Anyway, they always find me. Or they send the coachmen and grooms after me.” “That’s horrible!” “I’m sure they think that sooner or later I’ll marry anyone to get away from laundry,” said Ella. “Not that the Prince’s clothes get washed, I expect,” she added bitterly. “I expect they get burned after he’s worn them.” “What you want to do is make a career of your own,” said Magrat encouragingly, to keep her spirits up. “You want to be your own woman. You want to emancipate yourself.” “I don’t think I want to do that,” said Ella, speaking with caution in case it was a sin to offend a fairy godmother. “You do really,” said Magrat. “Do I?” “Yes.” “Oh.” “You don’t have to marry anyone you don’t want to.” Ella sat back. “How good are you?” she said. “Er . . . well . . . I suppose I - “ “The dress arrived yesterday,” said Ella. “It’s up in the big front room, on a stand so it doesn’t get creased. So that it stays perfect. And they’ve polished up the coach specially. They’ve hired extra footmen, too.” “Yes, but perhaps - “ “I think I’m going to have to marry someone I don’t want to,” said Ella. Granny Weatherwax strode up and down the driftwood balcony. The whole shack trembled to her stamping. Ripples spread out as it bounced on the water. “Of course you don’t remember her!” she shouted. “Our mam kicked her out when she was thirteen! We was both tiny then! But I remember the rows! I used to hear them when I was in bed! She was wanton!” “You always used to say I was wanton, when we was younger,” said Nanny. Granny hesitated, caught momentarily off balance. Then she waved a hand irritably. “You was, of course,” she said dismissively. “But you never used magic for it, did you?” “Din’t have to,” said Nanny happily. “An off-the* shoulder dress did the trick most of the time.” “Right off the shoulder and on to the grass, as I recall,” said Granny. “No, she used magic. Not just ordinary magic, neither. Oh, she was willful.” Nanny Ogg was about to say: What? You mean not compliant and self-effacing like what you is, Esme? But she stopped herself. You didn’t juggle matches in a fireworks factory. “Young men’s fathers used to come round to complain,” said Granny darkly. “They never came round to complain about me,” said Nanny happily. “And always looking at herself in mirrors,” said Granny. “Prideful as a cat, she was. Prefer to look in a mirror than out of a window, she would.” “What’s her name?” “Lily.” “That’s a nice name,” said Nanny. “It isn’t what she calls herself now,” said Mrs Gogol. “I bet it isn’t!” “And she’s, like, in charge of the city?” said Nanny. “She was bossy, too!” “What’d she want to be in charge of a city for?” said Nanny. “She’s got plans,” said Mrs Gogol. “And vain? Really vain!” said Granny, apparently to the world in general. “Did you know she was here?” said Nanny. “I had a feelin’! Mirrors!” “Mirror magic isn’t bad,” protested Nanny. “I’ve done all kinds of stuff with mirrors. You can have a lot of fun with a mirror.” “She doesn’t just use one mirror,” said Mrs Gogol. “Oh.” “She uses two.” “Oh. That’s different.” Granny stared at the surface of the water. Her own face stared back at her from the darkness. She hoped it was her own face, anyway. “I’ve felt her watchin’ us, the whole way here,” she said. “That’s where she’s happiest, inside mirrors. Inside mirrors, making people into stories.” She prodded the image with a stick. “She even got a look at me in Desiderata’s house, just before Magrat came in. It ain’t nice, seeing someone else in your reflection - “ She paused. “Where is Magrat, anyway?” “Out fairy godmothering, I think,” said Nanny. “She said she didn’t need any help.” Magrat was annoyed. She was also frightened, which made her even more annoyed. It was hard for people when Magrat was annoyed. It was like being attacked by damp tissue. “You have my personal word on it,” she said. “You don’t have to go to the ball if you don’t want to.” “You won’t be able to stop them,” said Ella darkly. “I know how things work in this city.” “Look, I said you won’t have to go!” said Magrat. She looked thoughtful. “There isn’t someone else you’d rather marry, is there?” she said. “No. I don’t know many people. I don’t get much chance.” “Good,” said Magrat. “That makes it easier. I suggest we get you out of here and - and take you somewhere else.” “There isn’t anywhere else. I told you. There’s just swamp. I tried once or twice, and they sent the coachmen after me. They weren’t unkind. The coachmen, I mean. They’re just afraid. Everyone’s afraid. Even the Sisters are afraid, I think.” Magrat looked around at the shadows. “What of?” she said. “They say that people disappear. If they upset the Duc. Something happens to them. Everyone’s very polite in Genua,” said Ella sourly. “And no-one steals and no-one raises their voice and everyone stays indoors at night, except when it’s Fat Tuesday.” She sighed. “Now that’s something I’d like to go to. To the carnival. They always make me stay in, though. But I hear it passing through the city and I think: that’s what Genua ought to be. Not a few people dancing in palaces, but everyone dancing in the streets.” Magrat shook herself. She felt a long way from home. “I think perhaps I might need a bit of help with this one,” she said. “You’ve got a wand,” said Ella. “I think there’s times when you need more than a wand,” said Magrat. She stood up. “But I’ll tell you this,” she said. “I don’t like this house. I don’t like this city. Emberella?” “Yes?” “You won’t go to the ball. I’ll make sure of that - “ She turned around. “I told you,” murmured Ella, looking down. “You can’t even hear them.” One of the sisters was at the top of the steps leading into the kitchen. Her gaze was fixed immovably on Magrat. They say that everyone has the attributes of some kind of animal. Magrat possibly had a direct mental link to some small furry creature. She felt the terror of all small rodents in the face of unblinking death. Modulated over the menace of the gaze were all sorts of messages: the uselessness of flight, the stupidity of resistance, the inevitability of oblivion. She knew she could do nothing. Her legs weren’t under her control. It was as if commands were coming straight down that stare and into her spinal cord. The sense of helplessness was almost peaceful . . . “Blessings be upon this house.” The sister spun around much faster than any human should be able to move. Granny Weatherwax pushed open the door. “Oh deary me,” she thundered, “and lawks.” “Yeah,” said Nanny Ogg, crowding through the doorway behind her. “Lawks too.” “We’re just a couple of old beggar women,” said Granny, striding across the floor. “Begging from house to house,” said Nanny Ogg. “Not coming directly here by any manner o’ means.” They each caught one of Magrat’s elbows and lifted her off her feet. Granny turned her head. “What about you, Miss?” Ella shook her head without looking up. “No,” she said, “I mustn’t come.” Granny’s eyes narrowed. “I suppose not,” she said. “We all have our path to walk, or so it is said, although not by me. Come, Gytha.” “We’re just off,” said Nanny Ogg, brightly. They turned. Another sister appeared in the doorway. “Ye gods,” said Nanny Ogg. “I never saw her move!” “We was just going out,” said Granny Weatherwax loudly. “If it’s all the same with you, m’lady?” She met the stare head-on. The air tingled. Then Granny Weatherwax said, between gritted teeth, “When I say run, Gytha - “ “I hear you,” said Nanny. Granny groped behind her and found the teapot Magrat had just used. She weighed it in her hands, keeping the movements slow and gentle. “Ready, Gytha?” “Waitin’, Esme.” “Run!” Granny hurled the teapot high into the air. The heads of both sisters snapped around. Nanny Ogg helped the stumbling Magrat out of the door. Granny slammed it shut as the nearer sister darted forward, mouth open, too late. “We’re leaving the girl in there!” shouted Nanny, as they ran down the drive. “They’re guarding her,” said Granny. “They’re not going to harm her!” “I ain’t seen teeth like those on anyone before!” said Nanny. “That’s ‘cos they ain’t anyone! They’re snakes!” They reached the comparative security of the roadway and leaned against the wall. “Snakes?” Nanny wheezed. Magrat opened her eyes. “It’s Lily’s doing,” said Granny. “She was good at that kind of thing, I remember.” “Really snakes?” “Yeah,” said Granny darkly. “She made friends easily.” “Blimey! I couldn’t do that.” “She didn’t used to be able to either, for more’n a few seconds. That’s what using mirrors does for you.” “I - I –“ Magrat stuttered. “You’re all right,” said Nanny. She looked up at Esme Weatherwax. “We shouldn’t leave the girl, whatever you say. In a house with snakes walking around thinking they’re human,” she said. “It’s worse than that. They’re walking around thinking they’re snakes,” said Granny. “Well, whatever. You never do that sort of thing. The worst you ever did was make people a bit confused about what they was.” “That’s because I’m the good one,” said Granny bitterly. Magrat shuddered. “So are we going to get her out?” said Nanny. “Not yet. There’s going to be a proper time,” said Granny. “Can you hear me, Magrat Garlick?” “Yes, Granny,” said Magrat. “We’ve got to go somewhere and talk,” said Granny. “About stories.” “What about stories?” said Magrat. “Lily is using them,” said Granny. “Don’t you see that? You can feel it in this whole country. The stories collect round here because here’s where they find a way out. She feeds ‘em. Look, she don’t want your Ella to marry that Duc man just because of politics or something. That’s just an . . . explanation. “S not a reason. She wants the girl to marry the prince because that’s what the story demands.” “What’s in it for her?” said Nanny. “In the middle of ‘em all, the fairy godmother or the wicked witch . . . you remember? That’s where Lily is putting herself, like . . . like . . .” she paused, trying to find the right word. “Remember that time last year when the circus thing came to Lancre?” “I remember,” said Nanny. “Them girls in the spangly tights and the fellows pourin’ whitewash down their trousers. Never saw a elephant, though. They said there’d be elephants and there wasn’t any. It had elephants on the posters. I spent a whole tuppence and there wasn’t a single ele - “ “Yes, but what I’m sayin’,” said Granny, as they hurried along the street, “is there was that man in the middle, you remember. With the moustache and the big hat?” “Him? But he didn’t do anything much,” said Nanny. “He just stood in the middle of the tent and sometimes he cracked his whip and all the acts just went on round him.” “That’s why he was the most important one there,” said Granny. “It was the things going on around him that made him important.” “What’s Lily feeding the stories?” said Magrat. “People,” said Granny. She frowned. “Stories!” she said. “Well, we’ll have to see about that. . .” Green twilight covered Genua. The mists curled up from the swamp. Torches flared in the streets. In dozens of yards shadowy figures moved, pulling the covers off floats. In the darkness there was a flash of sequins and a jingle of bells. All year the people of Genua were nice and quiet. But history has always allowed the downtrodden one night somewhere in any calendar to restore temporarily the balance of the world. It might be called the Feast of Fools, or the King of the Bean. Or even Samedi Nuit Mort, when even those with the most taxing and responsible of duties can kick back and have fun. Most of them, anyway . . . The coachmen and the footmen were sitting in their shed at one side of the stable yard, eating their dinner and complaining about having to work on Dead Night. They were also engaging in the time-honoured rituals that go therewith, which largely consist of finding out what their wives have packed for them today and envying the other men whose wives obviously cared more. The head footman raised a crust cautiously. “I’ve got chicken neck and pickle,” he said. “Anyone got any cheese?” The second coachman inspected his box. “It’s boiled bacon again,” he complained. “She always gives me boiled bacon. She knows I don’t like it. She don’t even cut the fat off.” “Is it thick white fat?” said the first coachman. “Yeah. Horrible. Is this right for a holiday feast or what?” “I’ll swap you a lettuce and tomato.” “Right. Whatnot got, Jimmy?” The underfootman shyly opened his perfect package. There were four sandwiches, crusts cut off. There was a sprig of parsley. There was even a napkin. “Smoked salmon and cream cheese,” he said. “And still a bit of the wedding cake,” said the first coachman. “Ain’t you et that all up yet?” “We have it every night,” said the underfootman. The shed shook with the ensuing laughter. It is a universal fact that any innocent comment made by any recently-married young member of any workforce is an instant trigger for coarse merriment among his or her older and more cynical colleagues. This happens even if everyone concerned has nine legs and lives at the bottom of an ocean of ammonia on a huge cold planet. It’s just one of those things. “You make the most of it,” said the second coachman gloomily, when they’d settled down again. “It starts off kisses and cake and them cutting the crusts off, and next thing you know it’s down to tongue pie, cold bum and the copper stick.” “The way I see it,” the first coachman began, “it’s all about the way you - “ There was a knocking at the door. The underfootman, being the junior member, got up and opened it. “It’s an old crone,” he said. “What do you want, old crone?” “Fancy a drink?” said Nanny Ogg. She held up a jug over which hung a perceptible haze of evaporating alcohol, and blew a paper squeaker. “What?” said the footman. “Shame for you lads to be working. It’s a holiday! Whoopee!” “What’s going on?” the senior coachman began, and then he entered the cloud of alcohol. “Gods! What is that stuff? “Smells like rum, Air Travis.” The senior coachman hesitated. From the streets came music and laughter as the first of the processions got under way. Fireworks popped across the sky. It wasn’t a night to be without just a sip of alcohol. “What a nice old lady,” he said. Nanny Ogg waved the jug again. “Up your eye!” she said. “Mud in your bottom!” What might be called the classical witch comes in two basic varieties, the complicated and the simple, or, to put it another way, the ones that have a room full of regalia and the ones that don’t. Magrat was by inclination one of the former sort. For example, take magical knives. She had a complete collection of magical knives, all with the appropriate coloured handles and complicated runes all over them. It had taken many years under the tutelage of Granny Weatherwax for Magrat to learn that the common kitchen breadknife was better than the most ornate of magic knives. It could do all that the magical knife could do, plus you could also use it to cut bread. Every established kitchen has one ancient knife, its handle worn thin, its blade curved like a banana, and so inexplicably sharp that reaching into the drawer at night is like bobbing for apples in a piranha tank. Magrat had hers stuck in her belt. Currently she was thirty feet above the ground, one hand holding on to her broomstick, the other on to a drainpipe, both legs dangling. Housebreaking ought to be easy, when you had a broomstick. But this did not appear to be the case. Finally she got both legs around the pipe and a firm grip on a timely gargoyle. She waggled the knife in between the two halves of the window and lifted the latch. After a certain amount of grunting, she was inside, leaning against the wall and panting. Blue lights flashed in front of her eyes, echoing the fireworks that laced the night outside. Granny had kept on asking her if she was sure she wanted to do this. And she was amazed to find that she was sure. Even if the snake women were already wandering around the house. Being a witch meant going into places you didn’t want to go. She opened her eyes. There was the dress, in the middle of the floor, on a dressmaker’s dummy. A Klatchian Candle burst over Genua. Green and red stars exploded in the velvet darkness, and lit up the gems and silks in front of Magrat. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. She crept forward, her mouth dry. Warm mists rolled through the swamp. Mrs Gogol stirred the cauldron. “What are they doing?” said Saturday. “Stopping the story,” she said. “Or . . . maybe not. . .” She stood up. “One way or another, it’s our time now. Let’s go to the clearing.” She looked at Saturday’s face. “Are you frightened?” “I . . . know what will happen afterwards,” said the zombie. “Even if we win.” “We both do. But we’ve had twelve years.” “Yes. We’ve had twelve years.” “And Ella will rule the city.” “Yes.” In the coachmen’s shed Nanny Ogg and the coachmen were getting along, as she put it, like a maison en flambe. The underfootman smiled vaguely at the wall, and slumped forward. “That’s young pipple today,” said the head coachman, trying to fish his wig out of his mug. “Can’t hold their drin . . . their drine . . . stuff. . .” “Have a hair of the dog, Mr Travis?” said Nanny, filling the mug. “Or scale of the alligator or whatever you call it in these parts.” “Reckon,” said the senior footman, “we should be gettin’ the coesshe ready, what say?” “Reckon you’ve got time for one more yet,” said Nanny Ogg. “Ver’ generous,” said the coachman. “Ver’ generous. Here’s lookin’ at you, Mrsrsrs Goo . . .” Magrat had dreamed of dresses like this. In the pit of her soul, in the small hours of the night, she’d danced with princes. Not shy, hardworking princes like Verence back home, but real ones, with crystal blue eyes and white teeth. And she’d worn dresses like this. And they had fitted. She stared at the ruched sleeves, the embroidered bodice, the fine white lace. It was all a world away from her. . . well. . . Nanny Ogg kept calling them ‘Magrats’, but they were trousers, and very practical. As if being practical mattered at all. She stared for a long time. Then, with tears streaking her face and changing colour as they caught the light of the fireworks, she took the knife and began to cut the dress into very small pieces. The senior coachman’s head bounced gently off his sandwiches. Nanny Ogg stood up, a little unsteadily. She placed the junior footman’s wig under his slumbering head, because she was not an unkind woman. Then she stepped out into the night. A figure moved near the wall. “Magrat?” hissed Nanny. “Nanny?” “Did you see to the dress?” “Have you seen to the footmen?” “Right, then,” said Granny Weatherwax, stepping out of the shadows. “Then there’s just the coach.” She tiptoed theatrically to the coachhouse and opened the door. It grated loudly on the cobbles. “Shsss!” said Nanny. There was a stub of candle and some matches on a ledge. Magrat fumbled the candle alight. The coach lit up like a glitter ball. It was excessively ornate, as if someone had taken a perfectly ordinary coach and then gone insane with fretwork and gold paint. Granny Weatherwax walked around it. “A bit showy,” she said. “Seems a real shame to smash it up,” said Nanny sadly. She rolled up her sleeves and then, as an afterthought, tucked the hem of her skirt into her drawers. “Bound to be a hammer somewhere around here,” she said, turning to the benches along the walls. “Don’t! That’d make too much noise!” hissed Magrat. “Hang on a moment. . .” She pulled the despised wand out of her belt, gripped it tightly, and waved it towards the coach. There was a brief inrush of air. “Blow me down,” said Nanny Ogg. “I never would have thought of that.” On the floor was a large orange pumpkin. “It was nothing,” said Magrat, risking a touch of pride. “Hah! That’s one coach that’ll never roll again,” said Nanny. “Hey . . . can you do that to the horses too?” said Granny. Magrat shook her head. “Urn, I think that would be very cruel.” “You’re right. You’re right,” said Granny. “No excuse for cruelty to dumb animals.” The two stallions watched her with equine curiosity as she undid the loose-box gates. “Off you go,” she said. “Big green fields out there somewhere.” She glanced momentarily at Magrat. “You have been em-horse-sipated.” This didn’t seem to have much effect. Granny sighed. She climbed up onto the wooden wall that separated the boxes, reached up, grabbed a horse ear in either hand, and gently dragged their heads down level with her mouth. She whispered something. The stallions turned and looked one another in the eye. Then they looked down at Granny. She grinned at them, and nodded. Then . . . It is impossible for a horse to go instantly from a standing start to a gallop, but they almost managed it. “What on earth did you say to them?” said Magrat. “Mystic horseman’s word,” said Granny. “Passed down to Gytha’s Jason, who passed it up to me. Works every time.” “He told you it?” said Nanny. “Yes.” “What, all of it?” “Yes,” said Granny, smugly. Magrat tucked the wand back into her belt. As she did so, a square of white material fell on to the floor. White gems and silk glimmered in the candlelight as she reached down hurriedly to pick it up, but there wasn’t a lot that escaped Granny Weatherwax. She sighed. “Magrat Garlick . . .” she began. “Yes,” said Magrat meekly. “Yes. I know. I’m a wet hen.” Nanny patted her gently on the shoulder. “Never mind,” she said. “We’ve done a good night’s work here. That Ella has about as much chance of being sent to the ball tonight as I have of . . . of becoming queen.” “No dress, no footmen, no horses and no coach,” said Granny. “I’d like to see her get out of that one. Stories? Hah!” “So what’re we going to do now?” said Magrat, as they crept out of the yard. “It’s Fat Lunchtime!” said Nanny. “Hot diggety pig!” Greebo wandered out of the darkness and rubbed against her legs. “I thought Lily was trying to stamp it out,” said Magrat. “May as well try to stamp out a flood,” said Nanny. “Kick out a jam!” “I don’t agree with dancing in the streets,” said Granny. “How much of that rum did you drink?” “Oh, come on, Esme,” said Nanny. “They say if you can’t have a good time in Genua you’re probably dead.” She thought about Saturday. “You can probably have a bit of quiet fun even if you are dead, in Genua.” “Hadn’t we better stay here, though?” said Magrat. “Just to make sure?” Granny Weatherwax hesitated. “What do you think, Esme?” said Nanny Ogg. “You think she’s going to be sent to the ball in a pumpkin, eh? Get a few mice to pull it, eh? Heheh!” A vision of the snake women floated across Granny Weathenvax’s mind, and she hesitated. But, after all, it had been a long day. And it was ridiculous, when you came to think about it. . . “Well, all right,” she said. “But I’m not going to kick any jam, you understand.” “There’s dancing and all sorts,” said Nanny. “And banana drinks, I expect,” said Magrat. “It’s a million to one chance, yes,” said Nanny Ogg happily. Lilith de Tempscire smiled at herself in the double mirror. “Oh deary me,” she said. “No coach, no dress, no horses. What is a poor old godmother to do? Deary me. And probably lawks.” She opened a small leather case, such as a musician might use to carry his very best piccolo. There was a wand in there, the twin of the one carried by Magrat. She took it out and gave it a couple of twists, moving the gold and silver rings into a new position. The clicking sounded like the nastiest pump-action mechanism. “And me with nothing but a pumpkin, too,” said Lilith. And of course the difference between sapient and non-sapient things was that while it was hard to change the shape of the former it was not actually impossible. It was just a matter of changing a mental channel. Whereas a non-sapient thing like a pumpkin, and it was hard to imagine anything less sapient than a pumpkin, could not be changed by any magic short of sourcery. Unless its molecules remembered a time when they weren’t a pumpkin . . . She laughed, and a billion reflected Liliths laughed with her, all around the curve of the mirror universe. Fat Lunchtime was no longer celebrated in the centre of Genua. But in the shanty town around the high white buildings it strutted its dark and torchlit stuff. There were fireworks. There were dancers, and fire-eaters, and feathers, and sequins. The witches, whose idea of homely entertainment was a Morris dance, watched open-mouthed from the crowded sidewalk as the parades strutted by. “There’s dancing skeletons!” said Nanny, as a score of bony figures whirred down the street. “They’re not,” said Magrat. “They’re just men in black tights with bones painted on.” Someone nudged Granny Weatherwax. She looked up into the large, grinning face of a black man. He passed her a stone jug. “There you go, honey.” Granny took it, hesitated for a moment, and then took a swig. She nudged Magrat and passed on the bottle. “Frgtht!! Gizeer!” she said. “What?” shouted Magrat, above the noise of a marching band. “The man wants us to pass it on,” said Granny. Magrat looked at the bottle neck. She tried surreptitiously to wipe it on her dress, despite the self-evident fact that germs on it would have burned off long ago. She ventured a brief nip, and then nudged Nanny Ogg. “Kwizathugner!” she said, and dabbed at her eyes. Nanny up-ended the bottle. After a while Magrat nudged her again. “I think we’re meant to pass it on?” she ventured. Nanny wiped her mouth and passed the now rather lighter jug randomly to a tall figure on her left. “Here you go, mister,” she said. THANK YOU. “Nice costume you got there. Them bones are painted on really good.” Nanny turned back to watch a procession of juggling fire-eaters. Then a connection appeared to be made somewhere in the back of her mind. She looked up. The stranger had wandered off. She shrugged. “What shall we do next?” she said. Granny Weatherwax was staring fixedly at a group of ground-zero limbo dancers. A lot of the dances in the parades had this in common: they expressed explicitly what things like maypoles only hinted at. They covered it with sequins, too. “You’ll never feel safe in the privy again, eh?” said Nanny Ogg. At her feet Greebo sat primly watching some dancing women wearing nothing but feathers, trying to work out what to do about them. “No. I was thinkin’ of something else. I was thinkin’ about . . . how stories work. And now . . . I think I’d like something to eat,” said Granny weakly. She rallied a bit. “And I mean some proper food, not somethin’ scraped off the bottom of a pond. And I don’t want any of this cuisine stuff, neither.” “You ought to be more adventurous, Granny,” said Magrat. “I ain’t against adventure, in moderation,” said Granny, “but not when I’m eatin’.” “There’s a place back there that does alligator sandwiches,” said Nanny, turning away from the parade. “Can you believe that? Alligators in a sandwich?” “That reminds me of a joke,” said Granny Weatherwax. Something was nagging at her consciousness. Nanny Ogg started to cough, but it didn’t work. “This man went into an inn,” said Granny Weatherwax, trying to ignore the rising uneasiness. “And he saw this sign. And it said “We serve all kinds of sandwiches.” And he said, “Get me an alligator sandwich - and I want it right away!”’ “I don’t think alligator sandwiches is very kind to alligators,” said Magrat, dropping the observation into the leaden pause. “I always say a laugh does you good,” said Nanny. Lilith smiled at the figure of Ella, standing forlornly between the snake women. “And such a raggedy dress, too,” she said. “And the door to the room was locked. Tut-tut. However can it have happened?” Ella stared at her feet. Lilith smiled at the sisters. “Well,” she said, “we’ll just have to do the best we can with what we’ve got. Hmm? Fetch me . . . fetch me two rats and two mice. I know you can always find rats and mice. And bring in the big pumpkin.” She laughed. Not the mad, shrill laughter of the bad fairy who’s been defeated, but the rather pleasant laughter of someone who’s just seen the joke. She looked reflectively at the wand. “But first,” she said, transferring her gaze to Ella’s pale face, “you’d better bring in those naughty men who let themselves get so drunk. That’s not respectful. And if you haven’t got respect, you haven’t got anything.” The clicking of the wand was the only sound in the kitchen. Nanny Ogg poked at the tall drink in front of her. “Beats me why they puts an umbrella in it,” she said, sucking the cocktail cherry off the stick. “I mean, do they want to stop it getting wet or something?” She grinned at Magrat and Granny, who were both staring gloomily at the passing celebrations. “Cheer up,” she said. “Never seen such a pair of long faces in all my puff.” “That’s neat rum you’re drinking,” said Magrat. “You’re telling me,” said Nanny, taking a swig. “Cheers!” “It was too easy,” said Granny Weatherwax. “It was only easy ‘cos we done it,” said Nanny. “You want something done, we’re the girls to do it, eh? You show me anyone else who could have nipped in there and done all that in the nick of time, eh? Especially the coach bit.” “It doesn’t make a good story,” said Granny. “Oh, bugger stories,” said Nanny loftily. “You can always change a story.” “Only at the right places,” said Granny. “Anyway, maybe they could get her a new dress and horses and a coach and everything.” “Where? When?” said Nanny. “It’s a holiday. And there’s no time, anyway. They’ll be starting the ball at any moment.” Granny Weatherwax’s fingers drummed on the edge of the cafe table. Nanny sighed. “Now what?” she said. “It doesn’t happen like this,” said Granny. “Listen, Esme, the only kind of magic that’d work right now is wand magic. And Magrat’s got the wand.” Nanny nodded at Magrat. “Ain’t that so, Magrat?” “Um,” said Magrat. “Not lost it, have you?” “No, but - “ “There you are, then.” “Only. . . um . . . Ella said she’d got two godmothers . . .” Granny Weatherwax’s hand thumped down on the table. Nanny’s drink flew into the air and overturned. “That’s right!” roared Granny. “That was nearly full. That was a nearly full drink,” said Nanny reproachfully. “Come on!” “Best part of a whole glass of- “ “Gytha!” “Did I say I wasn’t coming? I was just pointing out - “ “Now!” “Can I just ask the man to get me ano- “ “Gytha!” The witches were halfway up the street when a coach rattled out of the driveway and trundled away. “That can’t be it!” said Magrat. “We got rid of it!” “We ort to have chopped it up,” said Nanny. “There’s good eating on a pumpk-‘ “They’ve got us,” said Granny, slowing down to a stop. “Can’t you get into the minds of the horses?” said Magrat. The witches concentrated. “They ain’t horses,” said Nanny. “They feel like . . .” “Rats turned into horses,” said Granny, who was even better at getting into people’s minds than she was at getting under their skins. “They feel like that poor old wolf. Minds like a firework display.” She winced at the taste of them in her own head. “I bet,” said Granny, thoughtfully, as the coach skidded around the corner, “I bet I could make the wheels fall right off.” “That’s not the way,” said Magrat. “Anyway, Ella’s in there!” “There may be another way,” said Nanny. “I know someone who could get inside them minds right enough.” “Who?” said Magrat. “Well, we’ve still got our brooms,” said Nanny. “It should be easy to overtake it, right?” The witches landed in an alleyway a few minutes ahead of the coach. “I don’t hold with this,” said Granny. “It’s the sort of thing Lily does. You can’t expect me to like this. Think of that wolf!” Nanny lifted Greebo out of his nest among the bristles. “But Greebo’s nearly human anyway,” she said. “Hah!” “And it’ll only be temp’ry, even with the three of us doing it,” she said. “Anyway, it’ll be int’resting to see if it works.” “Yes, but it’s wrong,” said Granny. “Not for these parts, it seems,” said Nanny. “Besides,” said Magrat virtuously, “it can’t be bad if we’re doing it. We’re the good ones.” “Oh yes, so we is,” said Granny, “and there was me forgetting it for a minute there.” Nanny stood back. Greebo, aware that something was expected of him, sat up. “You must admit we can’t think of anything better, Granny,” said Magrat. Granny hesitated. But under all the revulsion was the little treacherous flame of fascination with the idea. Besides, she and Greebo had hated one another cordially for years. Almost human, eh? Give him a taste of it, then, and see how he likes it . . . She felt a bit ashamed of the thought. But not much. “Oh, all right.” They concentrated. As Lily knew, changing the shape of an object is one of the hardest magics there is. But it’s easier if the object is alive. After all, a living thing already knows what shape it is. All you have to do is change its mind. Greebo yawned and stretched. To his amazement he went on stretching. Through the pathways of his feline brain surged a tide of belief. He suddenly believed he was human. He wasn’t simply under the impression that he was human; he believed it implicitly. The sheer force of the unshakeable belief flowed out into his morphic field, overriding its objections, rewriting the very blueprint of his self. Fresh instructions surged back. If he was human, he didn’t need all this fur. And he ought to be bigger . . . The witches watched, fascinated. “I never thought we’d do it,” said Granny. . . . no points on the ears, the whiskers were too long . . . . . . he needed more muscle, all these bones were the wrong shape, these legs ought to be longer . . . And then it was finished. Greebo unfolded himself and stood up, a little unsteadily. Nanny stared, her mouth open. Then her eyes moved downwards. “Cor,” she said. “I think,” said Granny Weatherwax, “that we d better imagine some clothes on him right now.” That was easy enough. When Greebo had been clothed to her satisfaction Granny nodded and stood back. “Magrat, you can open your eyes,” she said. “I hadn’t got them closed.” “Well, you should have had.” Greebo turned slowly, a faint, lazy smile on his scarred fpce. As a human, his nose was broken and a black patch covered his bad eye. But the other one glittered like the sins of angels, and his smile was the downfall of saints. Female ones, anyway. Perhaps it was pheromones, or the way his muscles rippled under his black leather shirt. Greebo broadcast a kind of greasy diabolic sexuality in the megawatt range. Just looking at him was enough to set dark wings fluttering in the crimson night. “Uh, Greebo,” said Nanny. He opened his mouth. Incisors glittered. “Wrowwwwl,” he said. “Can you understand me?” “Yessss, Nannyyy.” Nanny Ogg leaned against the wall for support. There was the sound of hooves. The coach had turned into the street. “Get out there and stop that coach!” Greebo grinned again, and darted out of the alley. Nanny fanned herself with her hat. “Whoo-eee,” she said. “And to think I used to tickle his tummy . . . No wonder all the lady cats scream at night.” “Gytha!” “Well, you’ve gone very red, Esme.” “I’m just out of breath,” said Granny. “Funny, that. It’s not as if you’ve been running.” The coach rattled down the street. The coachmen and footmen were not at all sure what they were. Their minds oscillated wildly. One moment they were men thinking about cheese and bacon rinds. And the next they were mice wondering why they had trousers on. As for the horses . . . horses are a little insane anyway, and being a rat as well wasn’t any help. So none of them were in a very stable frame of mind when Greebo stepped out of the shadows and grinned at them. He said, “Wrowwwl.” The horses tried to stop, which is practically impossible with a coach still piling along behind you. The coachmen froze in terror. “Wrowwwl?” The coach skidded around and came up broadside against a wall, knocking the coachmen off. Greebo picked one of them up by his collar and bounced him up and down while the maddened horses fought to get out of the shafts. “Run awayy, furry toy?” he suggested. Behind the frightened eyes man and mouse fought for supremacy. But they needn’t have bothered. They would lose either way. As consciousness flickered between the states it saw either a grinning cat or a six-foot, well-muscled, one-eyed grinning bully. The coachmouse fainted. Greebo patted him a few times, in case he was going to move . . . “Wake up, little mousey . . .” . . . and then lost interest. The coach door rattled, jammed, and then opened. “What’s happening?” said Ella. “Wrowwwwl!” Nanny Ogg’s boot hit Greebo on the back of his head. “Oh no you don’t, my lad,” she said. “Want to,” said Greebo sulkily. “You always do, that’s your trouble,” said Nanny, and smiled at Ella. “Out you come, dear.” Greebo shrugged, and then slunk off, dragging the stunned coachman after him. “What’s happening?” complained Ella. “Oh. Magrat. Did you do this?” Magrat allowed herself a moment’s shy pride. “I said you wouldn’t have to go to the ball, didn’t I?” Ella looked around at the disabled coach, and then back to the witches. “You ain’t got any snake women in there with you, have you?” said Granny. Magrat gripped the wand. “They went on ahead,” said Ella. Her face clouded as she recalled something. “Lilith turned the real coachmen into beetles,” she whispered. “I mean, they weren’t that bad! She made them get some mice and she made them human and then she said, there’s got to be balance, and the sisters dragged in the coachmen and she turned them into beetles and then . . . she trod on them . . .” She stopped, horrified. A firework burst in the sky, but in the street below a bubble of terrible silence hung in the air. “Witches don’t kill people,” said Magrat. “This is foreign parts,” muttered Nanny, looking away. “I think,” said Granny Weatherwax, “that you ought to get right away from here, young lady.” “They just went crack - “ “We’ve got the brooms,” said Magrat. “We could all get away.” “She’d send something after you,” said Ella darkly. “I know her. Something from out of a mirror.” “So we’d fight it,” said Magrat. “No,” said Granny.” Whatever’s going to happen’s going to happen here. We’ll send the young lady off somewhere safe and then . . . we shall see.” “But if I go away she’ll know,” said Ella. “She’s expecting to see me at the ball right now! And she’ll come looking!” “That sounds right, Esme,” said Nanny Ogg. “You want to face her somewhere you choose. I don’t want her lookin’ for us on a night like this. I want to see her coming.” There was a fluttering in the darkness above them. A small dark shape glided down and landed on the cobbles. Even in the darkness its eyes gleamed. It stared expectantly at the witches with far too much intelligence for a mere fowl. “That’s Mrs Gogol’s cockerel,” said Nanny, “ain’t it?” “Exactly what it is I might never exactly decide,” said Granny. “I wish I knew where she stood.” “Good or bad, you mean?” said Magrat. “She’s a good cook,” said Nanny. “I don’t think anyone can cook like she do and be that bad.” “Is she the woman who lives out in the swamp?” said Ella. “I’ve heard all kinds of stories about her.” “She’s a bit too ready to turn dead people into zombies,” said Granny. “And that’s not right.” “Well, we just turned a cat into a person - I mean, a human person” - Nanny, inveterate cat lover, corrected herself- “and that’s not strictly right either. It’s probably a long way from strictly right.” “Yes, but we did it for the right reasons,” said Granny. “We don’t know what Mrs Gogol’s reasons are - “ There was a growl from the alley-way. Nanny scuttled towards it, and they heard her scolding voice. “No! Put him down this minute!” “Mine! Mine!” Legba strutted a little way along the street, and then turned and looked expectantly at them. Granny scratched her chin, and walked a little way away from Magrat and Ella, sizing them up. Then she turned and looked around. “Hmm,” she said. “Lily is expecting to see you, ain’t she?” “She can look out of reflections,” said Ella nervously. “Hmm,” said Granny again. She stuck her finger in her ear and twiddled it for a moment. “Well, Magrat, you’re the godmother around here. What’s the most important thing we have to do?” Magrat had never played a card game in her life. “Keep Ella safe,” she said promptly, amazed at Granny suddenly admitting that she was, after all, the one who had been given the wand. “That’s what fairy godmothering is all about.” “Yes?” Granny Weatherwax frowned. “You know,” she said, “you two are just about the same size . . .” Magrat’s expression of puzzlement lasted for half a second before it was replaced by one of sudden horror. She backed away. “Someone’s got to do it,” said Granny. “Oh, no! No! It wouldn’t work! It really wouldn’t work! No!” “Magrat Garlick,” said Granny Weatherwax, triumphantly, “you shall go to the ball!” The coach cornered on two wheels. Greebo stood on the coachman’s box, swaying and grinning madly and cracking the whip. This was even better than his fluffy ball with a bell in it. . . Inside the coach Magrat was wedged between the two older witches, her head in her hands. “But Ella might get lost in the swamp!” “Not with that cockerel leading the way. She’ll be safer in Mrs Gogol’s swamp than at the ball, I know that,” said Nanny. “Thank you!” “You’re welcome,” said Granny. “Everyone’ll know I’m not her!” “Not with the mask on they won’t,” said Granny. “But my hair’s the wrong colour!” “I can tint that up a treat, no problem,” said Nanny. “I’m the wrong shape!” “We can - “ Granny hesitated. “Can you, you know, puff yourself out a bit more?” “No!” “Have you got a spare handkerchief, Gytha?” “I reckon I could tear a bit off my petticoat, Esme.” “Ouch!” “There!” “And these glass shoes don’t fit!” “They fit me fine,” said Nanny. “I gave ‘em a try.” “Yes, but I’ve got smaller feet than you!” “That’s all right,” said Granny. “You put on a couple of pairs of my socks and they’ll fit real snug.” Bereft of all further excuses, Magrat struck out in sheer desperation. “But I don’t know how to behave at balls!” Granny Weatherwax had to admit that she didn’t, either. She raised her eyebrows at Nanny. “You used to go dancin’ when you were young,” she said. “Well,” said Nanny Ogg, social tutor, “what you do is, you tap men with your fan - got your fan? - and say things like “La, sir!” It helps to giggle, too. And flutter your eyelashes a bit. And pout.” “How am I supposed to pout?” Nanny Ogg demonstrated. “Yuk!” “Don’t worry,” said Granny. “We’ll be there too.” “And that’s supposed to make me feel better, is it?” Nanny reached behind Magrat and grabbed Granny’s shoulder. Her lips formed the words: Won’t work. She’s all to pieces. No confidence. Granny nodded. “Perhaps I ought to do it,” said Nanny, in a loud voice. “I’m experienced at balls. I bet if I wore my hair long and wore the mask and them shiny shoes and we hemmed up the dress a foot no one’d know the difference, what do you say?” Magrat was so overawed by the sheer fascinating picture of this that she obeyed unthinkingly when Granny Weatherwax said, “Look at me, Magrat Garlick.” The pumpkin coach entered the palace drive at high speed, scattering horses and pedestrians, and braked by the steps in a shower of gravel. “That was fun,” said Greebo. And then lost interest. A couple of flunkies bustled forward to open the door, and were nearly thrown back by the sheer force of the arrogance that emanated from within. “Hurry up, peasants!” Magrat swept out, pushing the major-domo away. She gathered up her skirts and ran up the red carpet. At the top, a footman was unwise enough to ask her for her ticket. “You impertinent lackey!” The footman, recognizing instantly the boundless bad manners of the well-bred, backed away quickly. Down by the coach, Nanny Ogg said, “You don’t think you might have overdone it a little bit?” “I had to,” said Granny. “You know what she’s like.” “How are we going to get in? We ain’t got tickets. And we ain’t dressed properly, either.” “Get the broomsticks down off the rack,” said Granny. “We’re going straight to the top.” They touched down on the battlements of a tower overlooking the palace grounds. The strains of courtly music drifted up from below, and there was the occasional pop and flare of fireworks from the river. Granny opened a likely-looking door in the tower and descended the circular stairs, which led to a landing. “Posh carpet on the floor,” said Nanny. “Why’s it on the walls too?” “Them’s tapestries,” said Granny. “Cor,” said Nanny. “You live and learn. Well, I do anyway.” Granny stopped with her hand on a doorknob. “What do you mean by that?” she said. “Well, I never knew you had a sister.” “We never talked about her.” “It’s a shame when families break up like that,” said Nanny. “Huh! You said your sister Beryl was a greedy ingrate with the conscience of an oyster.” “Well, yes, but she is my sister.” Granny opened the door. “Well, well,” she said. “What’s up? What’s up? Don’t just stand there.” Nanny peered around her and into the room. “Coo,” she said. Magrat paused in the big, red-velvet ante-room. Strange thoughts fireworked around her head; she hadn’t felt like this since the herbal wine. But struggling among them like a tiny prosaic potato in a spray of psychedelic chrysanthemums was an inner voice screaming that she didn’t even know how to dance. Apart from in circles. But it couldn’t be difficult if ordinary people managed it. The tiny inner Magrat struggling to keep its balance on the surge of arrogant self-confidence wondered if this was how Granny Weatherwax felt all the time. She raised the hem of her dress slightly and looked down at her shoes. They couldn’t be real glass, or else she’d be hobbling towards some emergency first aid by now. Nor were they transparent. The human foot is a useful organ but is not, except to some people with highly specialized interests, particularly attractive to look at. The shoes were mirrors. Dozens of facets caught the light. Two mirrors on her feet. Magrat vaguely recalled something about . . . about a witch never getting caught between two mirrors, wasn’t it? Or was it never trust a man with orange eyebrows? Something she’d been taught, back when she’d been an ordinary person. Something. . . like . . . a witch should never stand between two mirrors because, because, because the person that walked away might not be the same person. Or something. Like . . . you were spread out among the images, your whole soul was pulled out thin, and somewhere in the distant images a dark part of you would get out and come looking for you, if you weren’t very careful. Or something. She overruled the thought. It didn’t matter. She stepped forward, to where a little knot of other guests were waiting to make their entrance. “Lord Henry Gleet and Lady Gleet!” The ballroom wasn’t a room at all, but a courtyard open to the soft night airs. Steps led down into it. At the far end, another much wider staircase, lined with nickering torches, led up into the palace itself. On the far wall, huge and easily visible, was a clock. “The Honourable Douglas Incessant!” The time was a quarter to eight. Magrat had a vague recollection of some old woman shouting something about the time, but. . . that didn’t matter either . . . “Lady Volentia D’Arrangement!” She reached the top of the stairs. The butler who was announcing the arrivals looked her up and down and then, in the manner of one who had been coached carefully all afternoon for this very moment, bellowed: “Er . . . Mysterious and beautiful stranger!” Silence spread out from the bottom of the steps like spilled paint. Five hundred heads turned to look at Magrat. A day before, even the mere thought of having five hundred people staring at her would have melted Magrat like butter in a furnace. But now she stared back, smiled, and raised her chin haughtily. Her fan snapped open like a gunshot. The mysterious and beautiful stranger, daughter of Simplicity Garlick, granddaughter of Araminta Garlick, her self-possession churning so strongly that it was crystallizing out on the sides of her personality . . . . . . stepped out. A moment later another guest stalked past the butler. The butler hesitated. Something about the figure worried him. It kept going in and out of focus. He wasn’t entirely certain if there was anyone else there at all. Then his common sense, which had temporarily gone and hidden behind something, took over. After all, it was Samedi Nuit Mort - people were supposed to dress up and look weird. You were allowed to see people like that. “Excuse me, er, sir,” he said. “Who shall I say it is?” I’M HERE INCOGNITO. The butler was sure nothing had been said, but he was also certain that he had heard the words. “Urn. . . fine . . .” he mumbled. “Go on in, then . . . urn.” He brightened. “Damn good mask, sir.” He watched the dark figure walk down the steps, and leaned against a pillar. Well, that was about it. He pulled a handkerchief out from his pocket, removed his powdered wig, and wiped his brow. He felt as though he’d just had a narrow escape, and what was even worse was that he didn’t know from what. He looked cautiously around, and then sidled into the ante-room and took up a position behind a velvet curtain, where he could enjoy a quiet roll-up. He nearly swallowed it when another figure loped silently up the red carpet. It was dressed like a pirate that had just raided a ship carrying black leather goods for the discerning customer. One eye had a patch over it. The other gleamed like a malevolent emerald. And no-one that big ought to be able to walk that quietly. The butler stuck the dog-end behind his ear. “Excuse me, milord,” he said, running after the man and touching him firmly yet respectfully on the arm. “I shall need to see your tic . . . your . . . tic . . ,’ The man transferred his gaze to the hand on his arm. The butler let go hurriedly. “Wrowwwl?” “Your . . . ticket. . .” The man opened his mouth and hissed. “Of course,” said the butler, backing away with the efficient speed of someone who certainly isn’t being paid enough to face a needle-toothed maniac in black leather, “I expect you’re one of the Duc’s friends, yes?” “Wrowwl.” “No problem . . . no problem . . . but Sir has forgotten Sir’s mask . . .” “Wrowwl?” The butler waved frantically to a side-table piled high with masks. “The Duc requested that everyone here is masked,” said the butler. “Er. I wonder if Sir would find something here to his liking?” There’s always a few of them, he thought to himself. It says ‘Masque’ in big curly letters on the invite, in gold yet, but there’s always a few buggers who thinks it means it’s from someone called Maskew. This one was quite likely looting towns when he should have been learning to read. The greasy man stared at the masks. All the good ones had been taken by earlier arrivals, but that didn’t seem to dismay him. He pointed. “Want that one,” he said. “Er . . . a . . . very good choice, my lord. Allow me to help you on - “ “Wrowwl!” The butler backed away, clutching at his own arm. The man glared at him, then dropped the mask over his head and squinted out through an eyehole at a mirror. Damn odd, the butler thought. I mean, it’s not the kind of mask the men choose. They go for skulls and birds and bulls and stuff like that. Not cats. The odd thing was that the mask had just been a pretty ginger cat head when it was on the table. On its wearer it was . . . still a cat head, only a lot more so, and somehow slightly more feline and a lot nastier than it should have been. “Aaalwaaays waanted to bee ginger,” said the man. “On you it looks good, sir,” trilled the butler. The cat-headed man turned his head this way and that, clearly in love with what he was seeing. Greebo yowled softly and happily to himself and ambled into the ball. He wanted something to eat, someone to fight, and then . . . well, he’d have to see. For wolves and pigs and bears, thinking that they’re human is a tragedy. For a cat, it’s an experience. Besides, this new shape was a lot more fun. No-one had thrown an old boot at him for over ten minutes. The two witches looked around the room. “Odd,” said Nanny Ogg. “Not what I’d expect in, you know, a royal bedroom.” “Is it a royal bedroom?” “There’s a crown on the door.” “Oh.” Granny looked around at the decor. “What do you know about royal bedrooms?” she said, more or less for something to say. “You’ve never been in a royal bedroom.” “I might have been,” said Nanny. “You never have!” “Remember young Verence’s coronation? We all got invited to the palace?” said Nanny. “When I went to have a - to powder my nose I saw the door open, so I went in and had a bit of a bounce up and down.” “That’s treason. You can get put in prison for that,” said Granny severely, and added, “What was it like?” “Very comfy. Young Magrat doesn’t know what she’s missing. And it was a lot better than this, I don’t mind saying,” said Nanny. The basic colour was green. Green walls, green floor. There was a wardrobe and a bedside table. Even a bedside rug, which was green. The light filtered in through a window filled with greenish glass. “Like being at the bottom of a pond,” said Granny. She swatted something. “And there’s flies everywhere!” She paused, as if thinking very hard, and said, “Hmm . . .” “A Duc pond,” said Nanny. There were flies everywhere. They buzzed on the window and zigzagged aimlessly back and forth across the ceiling. “Duc pond,” Nanny repeated, because people who make that kind of joke never let well alone, “like duck - “ “I heard,” said Granny. She flailed at a fat bluebottle. “Anyway, you’d think there wouldn’t be flies in a royal bedroom,” muttered Nanny. “You’d think there’d be a bed, in fact,” said Granny. Which there wasn’t. What there was instead, and what was preying somewhat on their minds, was a big round wooden cover on the floor. It was about six feet across. There were convenient handles. They walked around it. Flies rose up and hummed away. “I’m thinking of a story,” said Granny. “Me too,” said Nanny Ogg, her tone slightly shriller than usual. “There was this girl who married this man and he said you can go anywhere you like in the palace but you mustn’t open that door and she did and she found he’d murdered all his other . . .” Her voice trailed off. Granny was staring hard at the cover, and scratching her chin. “Put it like this,” said Nanny, trying to be reasonable against all odds. “What could we possibly find under there dial’s worse than we could imagine?” They each took a handle. Five minutes later Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg stepped outside the Duc’s bedroom. Granny closed the door very quietly. They stared at one another. “Cor,” said Nanny, her face still pale. “Yes,” said Granny. “Stories!” “I’d heard about . . . you know, people like him, but I never believed it. Yuk. I wonder what he looks like.” “You can’t tell just by lookin’,” said Granny. “It explains the flies, at any rate,” said Nanny Ogg. She raised a hand to her mouth in horror. “And our Magrat’s down there with him!” she said. “And you know what’s going to happen. They’re going to meet one another and - “ “But there’s hundreds of other people,” said Granny. “It’s hardly what you’d call intimate.” “Yes . . . but even the thought of him, you know, even touching her . . . I mean, it’d be like holding a -* “Does Ella count as a princess, d’you think?” said Granny. “What? Oh. Yeah. Probably. For foreign parts. Why?” “Then that means there’s more than one story here. Lily’s letting several happen all at the same time,” said Granny. “Think about it. It’s not touching that’s the trick. It’s kissing.” “We’ve got to get down there!” said Nanny. “We’ve got to stop it! I mean, you know me, I’m no prude, but . . . yuk . . .” “I say! Old woman!” They turned. A small fat woman in a red dress and a towering white wig was peering haughtily at them from behind a fox mask. “Yes?” snapped Granny. “Yes, my lady,” said the fat woman. “Where are your manners? I demand that you direct me to the powder room this instant! And what do you think you’re doing?” This was to Nanny Ogg, who was walking around her and staring critically at her dress. “You’re a 20, maybe a 22?” said Nanny. “What? What is this impertinence?” Nanny Ogg rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “Well, I dunno,” she said, “red in a dress has never been me. You haven’t got anything in blue, have you?” The choleric woman turned to strike Nanny with her fan, but a skinny hand tapped her on the shoulder. She looked up into Granny Weatherwax’s face. As she passed out dreamily she was aware of a voice, a long way off, saying, “Well, that’s me fitted. But she’s never a size 20. And if I had a face like that I’d never wear red . . .” Lady Volentia D’Arrangement relaxed in the inner sanctum of the ladies’ rest room. She removed her mask and fished an errant beauty spot from the depths of her decolletage. Then she reached around and down to try and adjust her bustle, an exercise guaranteed to produce the most ridiculous female gymnastics on every world except those where the panty girdle had been invented. Apart from being as well-adapted a parasite as the oak bracket fungus Lady Volentia D’Arrangement was, by and large, a blameless sort of person. She always attended events for the better class of charity, and made a point of knowing the first names of nearly all her servants - the cleaner ones, at least. And she was, on the whole, kind to animals and even to children if they had been washed and didn’t make too much noise. All in all, she didn’t deserve what was about to happen to her, which was the fate Mother Nature had in store for any woman in this room on this night who happened to have approximately the same measurements as Granny Weatherwax. She was aware of someone coming up beside her. “S’cuse me, missus.” It turned out to be a small, repulsive lower-class woman with a big ingratiating smile. “What do you want, old woman?” said Lady Volentia. “S’cuse me,” said Nanny Ogg. “My friend over there would like a word with you.” Lady Volentia looked around haughtily into . . . . . . icy, blue-eyed, hypnotic oblivion. “What’s this thing like an extra bu . . . hobo?” “It’s a bustle, Esme.” “It’s damn uncomfortable is what it is. I keep on feeling someone’s following me around.” “The white suits you, anyway.” “No it don’t. Black’s the only colour for a proper witch. And this wig is too hot. Who wants a foot of hair on their heads?” Granny donned her mask. It was an eagle’s face in white feathers stuck with sequins. Nanny adjusted some unmentionable underpinning somewhere beneath her crinoline and straightened up. “Cor, look at us,” she said. “Them feathers in your hair really look good.” “I’ve never been vain,” said Granny Weatherwax. “You know that, Gytha. No-one could ever call me vain.” “No, Esme,” said Nanny Ogg. Granny twirled a bit. “Are you ready then, Dame Ogg?” she said. “Yes. Let’s do it, Lady Weatherwax.” The dance floor was thronged. Decorations hung from every pillar, but they were black and silver, the colours of the festival of Samedi Nuit Mort. An orchestra was playing on a balcony. Dancers whirled. The din was immense. A waiter with a tray of drinks suddenly found that he was a waiter without a tray of drinks. He looked around, and then down to a small fox under a huge white wig. “Bugger off and get us some more,” said Nanny pleasantly. “Can you see her, your ladyship?” “There’s too many people.” “Well, can you see the Duc?” “How do I know? Everyone’s got masks on!” “Hey, is that food over there?” Many of the less energetic or more hungry of the Genua nobility were clustered around the long buffet. All they were aware of, apart from sharp digs with a pair of industrious elbows, was an amiable monotone at chest height, on the lines of “. . . mind your backs . . . stand aside there . . . comin’ through.” Nanny fought her way to the table and nudged a space for Granny Weatherwax. “Cor, what a spread, eh?” she said. “Mind you, they have tiny chickens in these parts.” She grabbed a plate. “Them’s quails.” “I’ll ‘ave three. “Ere, charlie chan!” A flunkey stared at her. “Got any pickles?” “I’m afraid not, ma’am.” Nanny Ogg looked along a table which included roast swans, a roasted peacock that probably wouldn’t have felt any better about it even if it had known that its tail feathers were going to be stuck back in afterwards, and more fruits, boiled lobsters, nuts, cakes, creams and trifles than a hermit’s dream. “Well, got any relish?” “No, ma’am.” “Tomato ketchup?” “No, ma’am.” “And they call this a gormay paradise,” muttered Nanny, as the band struck up the next dance. She nudged a tall figure helping himself to the lobster. “Some place, eh?” VERY NICE. “Good mask you’ve got there.” THANK YOU. Nanny was spun around by Granny Weatherwax’s hand on her shoulder. “There’s Magrat!” “Where? Where?” said Nanny. “Over there . . . sitting by the potted plants.” “Oh, yes. On the chassy longyew,” said Nanny. “That’s “sofa” in foreign, you know,” she added. “What’s she doing?” “Being attractive to men, I think.” “What, Magrat?” “Yeah. You’re really getting good at that hypnotism, ain’t you.” Magrat fluttered her fan and looked up at the Compte de Yoyo. “La, sir,” she said. “You may get me another plate of lark’s eggs, if you really must.” “Like a shot, dear lady!” The old man bustled off in the direction of the buffet. Magrat surveyed her empire of admirers, and then extended a languorous hand towards Captain de Vere of the Palace Guard. He stood to attention. “Dear captain,” she said, “you may have the pleasure of the next dance.” “Acting like a hussy,” said Granny disapprovingly. Nanny gave her an odd look. “Not really,” she said. “Anyway, a bit of hussing never did anyone any harm. At least none of those men look like the Duc. “Ere, what you doing?” This was to a small bald-headed man who was trying surreptitiously to set up a small easel in front of them. “Uh . . . if you ladies could just hold still for a few minutes,” he said shyly. “For the woodcut?” “What woodcut?” said Granny Weatherwax. “You know,” said the man, opening a small penknife. “Everyone likes to see their woodcut in the broadsheets after a ball like this? “Lady Thing enjoying a joke with Lord Whatsit”, that sort of thing?” Granny Weatherwax opened her mouth to reply, but Nanny Ogg laid a gentle hand on her arm. She relaxed a little and sought for something more suitable to say. “I knows a joke about alligator sandwiches,” she volunteered, and shook Nanny’s hand away. “There was a man, and he went into an inn and he said “Do you sell alligator sandwiches?” and the other man said “Yes” and he said, “Then give me an alligator sandwich - and don’t be a long time about it!”” She gave him a triumphant look. “Yes?” said the woodcutter, chipping away quickly, “And then what happened?” Nanny Ogg dragged Granny away quickly, searching for a distraction. “Some people don’t know a joke when they hear it,” said Granny. As the band launched into another number Nanny Ogg rumbled in a pocket and found the dance card that belonged to an owner now slumbering peacefully in a distant room. “This is,” she turned the card round, her lips moving wonderingly, “Sir, Roger the Coverley?” “Ma’am?” Granny Weatherwax looked around. A plump military man with big whiskers was bowing to her. He looked as though he’d enjoyed quite a few jokes in his time. “Yes?” “You promised me the honour of this dance, m’lady?” “No I didn’t.” The man looked puzzled. “But I assure you, Lady D’Arrangement . . . your card . . . my name is Colonel Moutarde . . .” Granny gave him a look of deep suspicion, and then read the dance card attached to her fan. “Oh.” “Do you know how to dance?” hissed Nanny. “Of course.” “Never seen you dance,” said Nanny. Granny Weatherwax had been on the point of giving the colonel as polite a refusal as she could manage. Now she threw back her shoulders defiantly. “A witch can do anything she puts her mind to, Gytha Ogg. Come, Mr Colonel.” Nanny watched as the pair disappeared into the throng. “ ‘Allo, foxy lady,” said a voice behind her. She looked around. There was no-one there. “Down here.” She looked down. A very small body wearing the uniform of a captain in the palace guard, a powdered wig and an ingratiating smile beamed up at her. “My name’s Casanunda,” he said. “I’m reputed to be the world’s greatest lover. What do you think?” Nanny Ogg looked him up and down or, at least, down and further down. “You’re a dwarf,” she said. “Size isn’t important.” Nanny Ogg considered her position. One colleague known for her shy and retiring nature was currently acting like that whatshername, the heathen queen who was always playing up to men and bathing in asses’ milk and stuff, and the other one was acting very odd and dancing with a man even though she didn’t know one foot from the other. Nanny Ogg felt she was at least owed a bit of time in which to be her own woman. “Can you dance as well?” she said wearily. “Oh yes. How about a date?” “How old do you think I am?” said Nanny. Casanunda considered. “All right, then. How about a prune?” Nanny sighed, and reached down for his hand. “Come on.” Lady Volentia D’Arrangement staggered limply along a passageway, a forlorn thin shape in complicated corsetry and ankle-length underwear. She wasn’t at all sure what had happened. There had been that frightful woman, and then this feeling of absolute bliss and then . . . she’d been sitting on the carpet with her dress off. Lady Volentia had been to enough balls in her dull life to know that there were occasions when you woke up in strange rooms with your dress off, but that tended to be later in the evening and at least you had some idea of why you were there . . . She eased her way along, holding on to the wall. Someone was definitely going to get told off about this. A figure came around a bend in the corridor, idly tossing a turkey leg into the air with one hand and catching it with the other. “I say,” said Lady Volentia, “I wonder if you would be so good as to - oh . . .” She looked up at a leather-clad figure with an eyepatch and a grin like a corsair raider. “Wroowwwwl!” “Oh. I say!” Nothing to this dancing, Granny Weatherwax told herself. It’s just moving around to music. It helped to be able to read her partner’s mind. Dancing is instinctive, after you’ve got past that stage of looking down to see what your feet are doing, and witches are good at reading resonating instincts. There was a slight struggle as the colonel tried to lead, but he soon gave in, partly in the face of Granny Weatherwax’s sheer refusal to compromise but mainly because of her boots. Lady D’Arrangement’s shoes hadn’t fitted. Besides, Granny was attached to her boots. They had complicated iron fixtures, and toecaps like battering rams. When it came to dancing, Granny’s boots went exactly wherever they wanted to go. She steered her helpless and slightly crippled partner towards Nanny Ogg, who had already cleared quite a space around her. What Granny could achieve with two pounds of hobnailed syncopation Nanny Ogg could achieve merely with her bosom. It was a large and experienced bosom, and not one that was subject to restraint. As Nanny Ogg bounced down, it went up; when she gyrated right, it hadn’t finished twirling left. In addition, Nanny’s feet moved in a complicated jig step regardless of the actual tempo, so that while her body actually progressed at the speed of a waltz her feet were doing something a bit nearer to a hornpipe. The total effect obliged her partner to dance several feet away, and many surrounding couples to stop dancing just to watch in fascination, in case the build-up of harmonic vibrations dropped her into the chandeliers. Granny and her helpless partner whirled past. “Stop showin’ off,” Granny hissed, and disappeared into the throng again. “Who’s your friend?” said Casanunda. “She’s - “ Nanny began. There was a blast of trumpets. “That was a bit off the beat,” she said. “No, that means the Duc is arriving,” said Casanunda. The band stopped playing. The couples, as one, turned and faced the main staircase. There were two figures descending in stately fashion. My word, he’s a sleek and handsome devil, Nanny told herself. It just goes to show. Esme’s right. You can never tell by lookin’. And her . . . . . . that’s Lily Weatherwax? The woman wasn’t masked. Give or take the odd laughter line and wrinkle, it was Granny Weatherwax to the life. Almost. . . Nanny found she was turning to find the white eagle head in the crowd. All heads were turned to die staircase, but there was one staring as if her gaze was a steel rod. Lily Weatherwax wore white. Until that point it had never occurred to Nanny Ogg that there could be different colours of white. Now she knew better. The white of Lily Weatherwax’s dress seemed to radiate; if all the lights went out, she felt, Lily’s dress would glow. It had style. It gleamed, and had puffed sleeves and was edged with lace. And Lily Weatherwax looked - Nanny Ogg had to admit it - younger. There was the same bone structure and fine Weatherwax complexion, but it looked . . . less worn. If that’s what bein’ bad does to you, Nanny thought, I could of done with some of that years ago. The wages of sin is death but so is the salary of virtue, and at least the evil get to go home early on Fridays. The eyes were the same, though. Somewhere in the genetics of the Weatherwaxes was a piece of sapphire. Maybe generations of them. The Duc was unbelievably handsome. But that was understandable. He was wearing black. Even his eyes wore black. Nanny surfaced, and pushed her way through the throng to Granny Weatherwax. “Esme?” She grabbed Granny’s arm. “Esme?” “Hmm?” Nanny was aware that the crowd was moving, parting like a sea, between the staircase and the chaise-longue at the far end of the hall. Granny Weatherwax’s knuckles were as white as her dress. “Esme? What’s happening? What are you doing?” said Nanny. “Trying . . . to . . . stop . . . the story,” said Granny. “What’s she doing, then?” “Letting . . . things . . . happen!” The crowd were pulling back past them. It didn’t seem to be a conscious thing. It was just happening that a sort of corridor was forming. The Prince walked slowly along it. Behind Lily, faint images hung in the air so that she appeared to be followed by a succession of fading ghosts. Magrat stood up. Nanny was aware of a rainbow hue in the air. Possibly there was the tweeting of bluebirds. The Prince took Magrat by the hand. Nanny glanced up at Lily Weatherwax, who had remained a few steps up from the foot of the stairs and was smiling beneficently. Then she tried to put a focus on the future. It was horribly easy. Normally the future is branching off at every turn and it’s only possible to have the haziest idea of what is likely to happen, even when you’re as temporally sensitive as a witch. But here there were stories coiled around the tree of events, bending it into a new shape. Granny Weatherwax wouldn’t know what a pattern of quantum inevitability was if she found it eating her dinner. If you mentioned the words ‘paradigms of space-time’ to her she’d just say ‘What?” But that didn’t mean she was ignorant. It just meant that she didn’t have any truck with words, especially gibberish. She just knew that there were certain things that happened continually in human history, like three-dimensional cliches. Stories. “And now we’re part of it! And I can’t stop it,” said Granny. “There’s got to be a place where I can stop it, and I can’t find it!” The band struck up. It was playing a waltz. Magrat and the Prince whirled around the dance floor once, never taking their eyes off each other. Then a few couples dared to join them. And then, as if the whole ball was a machine whose spring had been wound up again, the floor was full of dancing couples and the sounds of conversation flowed back into the void. “Are you going to introduce me to your friend?” said Casanunda, from somewhere near Nanny’s elbow. People swept past them. “It’s all got to happen,” said Granny, ignoring the low-level interruption. “Everything. The kiss, the clock striking midnight, her running out and losing the glass slipper, everything.” “Ur, yuk,” said Nanny, leaning on her partner’s head. “I’d rather lick toads.” “She looks just my type,” said Casanunda, his voice slightly muffled. “I’ve always been very attracted to dominant women.” The witches looked at the whirling couple, who were staring into one another’s eyes. “I could trip them up, no trouble,” said Nanny. “You can’t. That’s not something that can happen.” “Well, Magrat’s sensible . . . more or less sensible,” said Nanny. “Maybe she’ll notice something’s wrong.” “I’m good at what I do, Gytha Ogg,” said Granny. “She won’t notice nothing until the clock strikes midnight.” They both turned to look up. It was barely nine. “Y’know,” said Nanny Ogg. “Clocks don’t strike midnight. Seems to me they just strike twelve. I mean, it’s just a matter of bongs.” They both looked up at the clock again. In the swamp, Legba the black cockerel crowed. He always crowed at sunset. Nanny Ogg pounded up another flight of stairs and leaned against the wall to catch her breath. It had to be somewhere round here. “Another time you’ll learn to keep your mouth shut, Gytha Ogg,” she muttered. “I expect we’re leaving the hurly-burly of the ball for an intimate tete-a-tete somewhere?” said Casanunda hopefully, trotting along behind her. Nanny tried to ignore him and ran along a dusty passage. There was a balcony rail on one side, looking down into the ballroom. And there . . . . . . a small wooden door. She rammed it open with her elbow. Within, mechanisms whirred in counterpoint to the dancing figures below as if the clock was propelling them, which, in a metaphorical sense, it was. Clockwork, Nanny thought. Once you know about clockwork, you know about everything. I wish I bloody well knew about clockwork. “Very cosy,” said Casanunda. She squeezed through the gap and into the clock space. Cog-wheels clicked past her nose. She stared at them for a moment. Lawks. All this just to chop Time up into little bits. “It might be just the teensiest bit cramped,” said Casanunda, from somewhere near her armpit. “But needs must, ma’am. I remember once in Quirm, there was this sedan chair and . . .” Let’s see, thought Nanny. This bit is connected to that bit, this one turns, that one turns faster, this spiky bit wobbles backwards and forwards . . . Oh, well. Just twist the first thing you can grab, as the High Priest said to the vestal virgin. Nanny Ogg spat on her hands, gripped the largest cogwheel, and twisted. It carried on turning, pulling her with it. Blimey. Oh, well . . . Then she did what neither Granny Weatherwax nor Magrat would have dreamed of doing in the circumstances. But Nanny Ogg’s voyages on the sea of inter-sexual dalliance had gone rather further than twice around the lighthouse, and she saw nothing demeaning in getting a man to help her. She simpered at Casanunda. “Things would be a lot more comfortable in our little pie-de-terre if you could just push this little wheel around a bit,” she said. “I’m sure you could manage it,” she added. “Oh, no problem, good lady,” said Casanunda. He reached up with one hand. Dwarfs are immensely strong for their size. The wheel seemed to offer him no resistance at all. Somewhere in the mechanism something resisted for a moment and then went clonk. Big wheels turned reluctantly. Little wheels screamed on their axles. A small important piece flew out and pinged off Casanunda’s small bullet head. And, much faster than nature had ever intended, the hands sped round the face. A new noise right overhead made Nanny Ogg look up. Her self-satisfied expression faded. The hammer that struck the hours was swinging slowly backwards. It struck Nanny that she was standing right under the bell at the same time as the bell, too, was struck. Bong . . . “Oh, bugger!” . . . bong. . . . . . bong. . . . . . bong. . . Mist rolled through the swamp. And shadows moved with it, their shapes indistinct on this night when the difference between the living and the dead was only a matter of time. Mrs Gogol could feel them among the trees. The homeless. The hungry. The silent people. Those forsaken by men and gods. The people of the mists and the mud, whose only strength was somewhere on the other side of weakness, whose beliefs were as rickety and homemade as their homes. And the people from the city — not the ones who lived in the big white houses and went to balls in fine coaches, but the other ones. They were the ones that stories are never about. Stories are not, on the whole, interested in swineherds who remain swineherds and poor and humble shoe-makers whose destiny is to die slightly poorer and much humbler. These people were the ones who made the magical kingdom work, who cooked its meals and swept its floors and carted its night soil and were its faces in the crowd and whose wishes and dreams, undemanding as they were, were of no consequence. The invisibles. And me out here, she thought. Building traps for gods. There are various forms of voodoo in the multiverse, because it’s a religion that can be put together from any ingredients that happen to be lying around. And all of them try, in some way, to call down a god into the body of a human being. That was stupid, Mrs Gogol thought. That was dangerous. Mrs Gogol’s voodoo worked the other way about. What was a god? A focus of belief. If people believed, a god began to grow. Feebly at first, but if the swamp taught anything, it taught patience. Anything could be the focus of a god. A handful of feathers with a red ribbon around them, a hat and coat on a couple of sticks . . . anything. Because when all people had was practically nothing, then anything could be almost everything. And then you fed it, and lulled it, like a goose heading for pate, and let the power grow very slowly, and when the time was ripe you opened the path . . . backwards. A human could ride the god, rather than the other way around. There would be a price to pay later, but there always was. In Mrs Gogol’s experience, everyone ended up dying. She took a pull of rum and handed the jug to Saturday. Saturday took a mouthful, and passed the jug up to something that might have been a hand. “Let it begin,” said Mrs Gogol. The dead man picked up three small drums and began to beat out a rhythm, heartbeat fast. After a while something tapped Mrs Gogol on the shoulder and handed her the jug. It was empty. Might as well begin . . . “Lady Bon Anna smile on me. Mister Safe Way protect me. Stride Wide Man guide me. Hotaloga Andrews catch me. “I stand between the light and the dark, but that no matter, because I am between. “Here is rum for you. Tobacco for you. Food for you. A home for you. “Now you listen to me good . . .” . . . bong. For Magrat it was like waking from a dream into a dream. She’d been idly dreaming that she was dancing with the most handsome man in the room, and . . . she was dancing with the most handsome man in the room. Except that he wore two circles of smoked glass over his eyes. Although Magrat was soft-hearted, a compulsive daydreamer and, as Granny Weatherwax put it, a wet hen, she wouldn’t be a witch if she didn’t have certain instincts and the sense to trust them. She reached up and, before his hands could move, tweaked the things away. Magrat had seen eyes like that before, but never on something walking upright. Her feet, which a moment before had been moving gracefully across the floor, tripped over themselves. “Er . . .” she began. And she was aware that his hands, pink and well-manicured, were also cold and damp. Magrat turned and ran, knocking the couples aside in her madness to get away. Her legs tangled in the dress. The stupid shoes skittered on the floor. A couple of footmen blocked the stairs to the hall. Magrat’s eyes narrowed. Getting out was what mattered. “Hai!” “Ouch!” And then she ran on, slipping at the top of the stairs. A glass slipper slithered across the marble. “How the hell’s anyone supposed to move in these things?” she screamed at the world in general. Hopping frantically on one foot, she wrenched the other shoe off and ran into the night. The Prince walked slowly to the top of the steps and picked up the discarded slipper. He held it. The light glittered off its facets. Granny Weatherwax leaned against the wall in the shadows. All stories had a turning point, and it had to be close. She was good at getting into other people’s minds, but now she had to get into hers. She concentrated. Down deeper . . . past everyday thoughts and minor concerns, faster, faster . . . through layers of deep cogitation . . . deeper . . . past things sealed off and crusted over, old guilts and congealed regrets, but there was no time for them now . . . down . . . and there . . . the silver thread of the story. She’d been part of it, was part of it, so it had to be a part of her. It poured past. She reached out. She hated everything that predestined people, that fooled them, that made them slightly less than human. The story whipped along like a steel hawser. She gripped it. Her eyes opened in shock. Then she stepped forward. “Excuse me, Your Highness.” She snatched the shoe from the Duc’s hands, and raised it over her head. Her expression of evil satisfaction was terrible to behold. Then she dropped the shoe. It smashed on the stairs. A thousand glittering fragments scattered across the marble. Coiled as it was around the length of turtle-shaped space-time known as the Discworld, the story shook. One broken end flapped loose and flailed through the night, trying to find any sequence to feed on . . . In the clearing the trees moved. So did the shadows. Shadows shouldn’t be able to move unless the light moves. These did. The drumming stopped. In the silence there was the occasional sizzle as power crackled across the hanging coat. Saturday stepped forward. Green sparks flew out to his hands as he gripped the jacket and put it on. His body jerked. Erzulie Gogol breathed out. “You are here,” she said. “You are still yourself. You are exactly yourself.” Saturday raised his hands, with his fists clenched. Occasionally an arm or leg would jerk as the power inside him squirrel-caged around in its search for freedom, but she could see that he was riding it. “It will become easier,” she said, more gently now. Saturday nodded. With the power flowing inside him he had, she thought, the fire he’d had when he was alive. He had not been a particularly good man, she knew. Genua had not been a model of civic virtue. But at least he’d never told people that they wanted him to oppress them, and that everything he did was for their own good. Around the circle, the people of New Genua - the old New Genua - knelt or bowed. He hadn’t been a kind ruler. But he’d fitted. And when he’d been arbitrary or arrogant or just plain wrong, he’d never suggested that this was justified by anything other than the fact that he was bigger and stronger and occasionally nastier than other people. He’d never suggested that it was because he was better. And he’d never told people they ought to be happy, and imposed a kind of happiness on them. The invisible people knew that happiness is not the natural state of mankind, and is never achieved from the outside in. Saturday nodded again, this time in satisfaction. When he opened his mouth, sparks flashed between his teeth. And when he waded through the swamp, the alligators fought to get out of his way. It was quiet in the palace kitchens now. The huge trays of roast meat, the pigs’ heads with apples in their mouths, the multi-layered trifles had long ago been carried upstairs. There was a clattering from the giant sinks at the far end, where some of the maids were making a start on the washing up. Mrs Pleasant the cook had made herself a plate of red stripefish in crawfish sauce. She wasn’t the finest cook in Genua - no-one got near Mrs Gogol’s gumbo, people would almost come back from the dead for a taste of Mrs Gogol’s gumbo - but the comparison was as narrow as that between, say, diamonds and sapphires. She’d done her best to cook up a good banquet, because she had her professional pride, but there wasn’t much she felt she was able to do with lumps of meat. Genuan cooking, like the best cooking everywhere in the multiverse, had been evolved by people who had to make desperate use of ingredients their masters didn’t want. No-one would even try a bird’s nest unless they had to. Only hunger would make a man taste his first alligator. No-one would eat a shark’s fin if they were allowed to eat the rest of the shark. She poured herself a rum and was just picking up the spoon when she felt herself being watched. A large man in a black leather doublet was staring at her from the doorway, dangling a ginger cat mask from one hand. It was a very direct stare. Mrs Pleasant found herself wishing she’d done something about her hair and was wearing a better dress. “Yes?” she said. “What d’you want?” “Waaant foood, Miss-uss Pleassunt,” said Greebo. She looked him up and down. There were some odd types in Genua these days. This one must have been a guest at the ball, but there was something very. . .familiar about him. Greebo wasn’t a happy cat. People had made a fuss just because he’d dragged a roast turkey off the table. Then the skinny female with the teeth had kept simpering at him and saying she’d see him later in the rose garden, which wasn’t at all the cat way of doing things, and that’d got him confused, because this wasn’t the right kind of body and nor was hers. And there were too many other males around. Then he’d smelled the kitchen. Cats gravitate to kitchens like rocks gravitate to gravity. “I seen you somewhere before?” said Mrs Pleasant. Greebo said nothing. He’d followed his nose to a bowl on one of the big tables. “Waaant,” he demanded. “Fish heads?” said Mrs Pleasant. They were technically garbage, although what she was planning with some rice and a few special sauces would turn them into the sort of dish kings fight for. “Waant,” Greebo repeated. Mrs Pleasant shrugged. “You want raw fish heads, man, you take ‘em,” she said. Greebo lifted the bowl uncertainly. He wasn’t too good with fingers. Then he looked around conspiratorially and ducked under the table. There were the sounds of keen gurgitation and the bowl being scraped around on the floor. Greebo emerged. “Millluk?” he suggested. Fascinated, Mrs Pleasant reached for the milk jug and a cup- “Saaaaucerrr,” Greebo said. - and a saucer. Greebo took the saucer, gave it a long hard look, and put it on the floor. Mrs Pleasant stared. Greebo finished the milk, licking the remnant off his beard. He felt a lot better now. And there was a big fire over there. He padded over to it, sat down, spat on his paw and made an attempt to clean his ears, which didn’t work because inexplicably neither ears nor paw were the right shape, and then curled up as best he could. Which wasn’t very well, given that he seemed to have the wrong sort of backbone, too. After a while Mrs Pleasant heard a low, asthmatic rumble. Greebo was trying to purr. He had the wrong kind of throat. In a minute he was going to wake up in a bad temper and want to fight something. Mrs Pleasant got on with her own supper. Despite the fact that a hulking great man had just eaten a bowl offish heads and lapped a saucer of milk in front of her, and was now stretched out uncomfortably in front of the fire, she found she didn’t feel the least bit afraid. In fact she was fighting down an impulse to scratch his tummy. Magrat wrenched off the other slipper as she ran down the long red carpet towards the palace gateway and freedom. Just getting away, that was the important thing. From was more urgent than to. And then two figures drifted out of the shadows and faced her. She raised the slipper pathetically as they approached in absolute silence, but even in the twilight she could feel their gaze. The crowds parted. Lily Weatherwax glided through, in a rustle of silk. She looked Granny up and down, without any expression of surprise. “All in white, too,” she said, dryly. “My word, aren’t you the nice one.” “But I’ve stopped you,” said Granny, still panting with the effort. “I’ve broken it.” Lily Weatherwax looked past her. The snake sisters were coming up the steps, holding a limp Magrat between them. “Save us all from people who think literally,” said Lily. “The damn things come in pairs, you know.” She crossed to Magrat and snatched the second slipper out of her hand. “The clock was interesting,” she said, turning back to Granny. “I was impressed with the clock. But it’s no good, you know. You can’t stop this sort of thing. It has the momentum of inevitability. You can’t spoil a good story. I should know.” She handed the slipper to the Prince, but without taking her eyes off Granny. “It’ll fit her,” she said. Two of the courtiers held Magrat’s leg as the Prince wrestled the slipper past her protesting toes. “There,” said Lily, still without looking down. “And do stop trying that hedge-witch hypnotism on me, Esme.” “It fits,” said the Prince, but in a doubtful tone of voice. “Yes, anything would fit,” said a cheerful voice from somewhere towards the back of the crowd, “if you were allowed to put two pairs of hairy socks on first.” Lily looked down. Then she looked at Magrat’s mask. She reached out and pulled it off. “Ow!” “Wrong girl,” said Lily. “But it still doesn’t matter, Esme, because it is the right slipper. So all we have to do is find the girl whose foot it fits - “ There was a commotion at the back of the crowd. Courtiers parted, revealing Nanny Ogg, oil-covered and hung with spider webs. “If it’s a five-and-a-half narrow fit, I’m your man,” she said. “Just let me get these boots off. . .” “I wasn’t referring to you, old woman,” said Lily coldly. “Oh, yes you was,” said Nanny. “We know how this bit goes, see. The Prince goes all round the city with the slipper, trying to find the girl whose foot fits. That’s what you was plannin’. So I can save you a bit of trouble, how about it?” There was a flicker of uncertainty in Lily’s expression. “A girl,” she said, “of marriageable age.” “No problem there,” said Nanny cheerfully. The dwarf Casanunda nudged a courtier proudly in the knees. “She’s a very close personal friend of mine,” he said proudly. Lily looked at her sister. “You’re doing this. Don’t think I don’t know,” she said. “I ain’t doing a thing,” said Granny. “It’s real life happening all by itself.” Nanny grabbed the slipper out of the Prince’s hands and, before anyone else could move, slid it on to her foot. Then she waggled the foot in the air. It was a perfect fit. “There!” she said. “See? You could have wasted the whole day.” “Especially because there must be hundreds of five-and-a-half-‘ “ - narrow fit - “ “ - narrow fit wearers in a city this size,” Granny went on. “Unless, of course, you happened to sort of go to the right house right at the start. If you had, you know, a lucky guess?” “But that’d be cheatin’,” said Nanny. She nudged the Prince. “I’d just like to add,” she said, “that I don’t mind doin’ all the waving and opening things and other royal stuff, but I draw the line at sleepin’ in the same bed as sunny jim here.” “Because he doesn’t sleep in a bed,” said Granny. “No, he sleeps in a pond,” said Nanny. “We had a look. Just a great big indoor pond.” “Because he’s a frog,” said Granny. “With flies all over the place in case he wakes up in the night and fancies a snack,” said Nanny. “I thought so!” said Magrat, pulling herself out of the grip of the guards. “He had clammy hands!” “Lots of men have clammy hands,” said Nanny. “But this one’s got ‘em because he’s a frog.” “I’m a prince of blood royal!” said the Prince. “And a frog,” said Granny. “I don’t mind,” said Casanunda, from somewhere down below. “I enjoy open relationships. If you want to go out with a frog, that’s fine by me . . .” Lily looked around at the crowd. Then she snapped her fingers. Granny Weatherwax was aware of a sudden silence. Nanny Ogg looked up at the people on either side of her. She waved a hand in front of a guard’s face. “Coo,” she said. “You can’t do that for long,” said Granny. “You can’t stop a thousand people for long.” Lily shrugged. “They’re not important. Whoever will remember who was at the ball? They’ll just remember the flight and the slipper and the happy ending.” “I’ve told you. You can’t start it again. And he’s a frog. Even you can’t keep him in shape the whole day long. He turns back into his old shape at night. He’s got a bedroom with a pond in it. He’s a frog,” said Granny flatly. “But only inside,” said Lily. “Inside’s where it counts,” said Granny. “Outside’s quite important, mind,” said Nanny. “Lots of people are animals inside. Lots of animals are people inside,” said Lily. “Where’s the harm?” “He’s a frog.” “Especially at night,” said Nanny. It had occurred to her that a husband who was a man all night and a frog all day might be almost acceptable; you wouldn’t get the wage packet, but there’d be less wear and tear on the furniture. She also couldn’t put out of her mind certain private speculations about the length of his tongue. “And you killed the Baron,” said Magrat. “You think he was a particularly nice man?” said Lily. “Besides, he didn’t show me any respect. If you’ve got no respect, you’ve got nothing.” Nanny and Magrat found themselves looking at Granny. “He’s a frog.” “I found him in the swamp,” said Lily. “I could tell he was pretty bright. I needed someone . . . amenable to persuasion. Shouldn’t frogs have a chance? He’ll be no worse a husband than many. Just one kiss from a princess seals the spell.” “A lot of men are animals,” said Magrat, who’d picked up the idea from somewhere. “Yes. But he’s a frog,” said Granny. “Look at it my way,” said Lily. “You see this country? It’s all swamps and fogs. There’s no direction. But I can make this a great city. Not a sprawling place like Ankh-Morpork, but a place that works.” “The girl doesn’t want to marry a frog.” “What will that matter in a hundred years’ time?” “It matters now.” Lily threw up her hands. “What do you want, then? It’s your choice. There’s me . . . or there’s that woman in the swamp. Light or dark. Fog or sunshine. Dark chaos or happy endings.” “He’s a frog, and you killed the old Baron,” said Granny. “You’d have done the same,” said Lily. “No,” said Granny. “I’d have thought the same, but I wouldn’t have done it.” “What difference does that make, deep down?” “You mean you don’t know?” said Nanny Ogg. Lily laughed. “Look at the three of you,” she said. “Bursting with inefficient good intentions. The maiden, the mother and the crone.” “Who are you calling a maiden?” said Nanny Ogg. “Who are you calling a mother?” said Magrat. Granny Weatherwax glowered briefly like the person who has discovered that there is only one straw left and everyone else has drawn a long one. “Now, what shall I do with you?” said Lily. “I really am against killing people unless it’s necessary, but I can’t have you running around acting stupidly . . .” She looked at her fingernails. “So I think I shall have you put away somewhere until this has run its course. And then . . . can you guess what I’m going to do next? “I’m going to expect you to escape. Because, after all, I am the good one.” Ella walked cautiously through the moonlit swamp, following the strutting shape of Legba. She was aware of movement in the water, but nothing emerged - bad news like Legba gets around, even among alligators. An orange light appeared irrthe distance. It turned out to be Mrs Gogol’s shack, or boat, or whatever it was. In the swamp, the difference between the water and the land was practically a matter of choice. “Hallo? Is there anyone there?” “Come along in, child. Take a seat. Rest up a little.” Ella stepped cautiously on to the rocking veranda. Mrs Gogol was sitting in her chair, a white-clad raggedy doll in her lap. “Magrat said - “ “I know all about it. Come to Erzulie.” “Who are you?” “I am your - friend, girl.” Ella moved so as to be ready to run. “You’re not a godmother of any kind, are you?” “No. No gods. Just a friend. Did anyone follow you?” “I. . . don’t think so.” “It’s no matter if they did, girl. No matter if they did. Maybe we ought to move out into the river for a spell, even so. We’ll be a lot safer with water all round.” The shack lurched. “You better sit down. The feets make it shaky until we get into deep water.” Ella risked a look, nevertheless. Airs Gogol’s hut travelled on four large duck feet, which were now rising out of the swamp. They splashed their way through the shallows and, gently, sculled out into the river. Greebo woke up and stretched. And the wrong sort of arms and legs! Mrs Pleasant, who had been sitting watching him, put down her glass. “What do you want to do now, Mr Cat?” she said. Greebo padded over to the door into the outside world and scratched at it. “Waant to go owwwt, Miss-uss Pleas-unt,” he said. “You just have to turn the handle there,” she said. Greebo stared at the door handle like someone trying to come to terms with a piece of very advanced technology, and then gave her a pleading look. She opened the door for him, stood aside as he slunk out, and then shut it, locked it and leaned against it. “Ember’s bound to be safe with Mrs Gogol,” said Magrat. “Hah!” said Granny. “I quite liked her,” said Nanny Ogg. “I don’t trust anyone who drinks rum and smokes a pipe,” said Granny. “Nanny Ogg smokes a pipe and drinks anything,” Magrat pointed out. “Yes, but that’s because she’s a disgustin’ old baggage,” said Granny, without looking up. Nanny Ogg took her pipe out of her mouth. “That’s right,” she said amiably. “You ain’t nothing if you don’t maintain an image.” Granny looked up from the lock. “Can’t shift it,” she said. “It’s octiron, too. Can’t magic it open.” “It’s daft, locking us up,” said Nanny. “I’d have had us killed.” “That’s because you’re basically good,” said Magrat. “The good are innocent and create justice. The bad are guilty, which is why they invent mercy.” “No, I know why she’s done this,” said Granny, darkly. “It’s so’s we’ll know we’ve lost.” “But she said we’d escape,” said Magrat. “I don’t understand. She must know the good ones always win in the end!” “Only in stories,” said Granny, examining the door hinges. “And she thinks she’s in charge of the stories. She bends them round herself. She thinks she’s the good one.” “Mind you,” said Magrat, “I don’t like swamps. If it wasn’t for the frog and everything, I’d see Lily’s point - “ “Then you’re nothing but a daft godmother,” snapped Granny, still fiddling with the lock. “You can’t go around building a better world for people. Only people can build a better world for people. Otherwise it’s just a cage. Besides, you don’t build a better world by choppin’ heads off and giving decent girls away to frogs.” “But progress - “ Magrat began. “Don’t you talk to me about progress. Progress just means bad things happen faster. Anyone got another hatpin? This one’s useless.” Nanny, who had Greebo’s ability to make herself instantly at home wherever she happened to be, sat down in the corner of the cell. “I heard this story once,” she said, “where this bloke got locked up for years and years and he learned amazin’ stuff about the universe and everythin’ from another prisoner who was incredibly clever, and then he escaped and got his revenge.” “What incredibly clever stuff do you know about the universe, Gytha Ogg?” said Granny. “Bugger all,” said Nanny cheerfully. “Then we’d better bloody well escape right now.” Nanny pulled a scrap of pasteboard out of her hat, found a scrap of pencil up there too, licked the end and thought for a while. Then she wrote: Dear Jason unt so witer (as they say in foreign parts), Well here’s a thing yore ole Mum doin Time in prison again, Im a old lag, youll have to send me a cake with a phial in it and I shall have little arrows on my close just my joke. This is a Sketch of the dunjon. Im putting a X where we are, which is Inside. Magrat is shown wering a posh dress, she has been acting like a Courgette. Also inc. Esme getting fed up becaus she can’t get the lock to work but I expect it will all be OK because the good ones win in the end and that’s US. And all because some girl don’t want to marry a Prince who is a Duck who is really a Frog and I cant say I blame her, you don’t want descendants who have got Jenes and start off living in a jamjar and then hop about and get squashed. . . She was interrupted by the sound of a mandolin being played quite well, right on the other side of the wall, and a small but determined voice raised in song. “ — si consuenti d’amoure, ventre dimo tondreturo-ooo - “ “How I hunger my love for the dining-room of your warm maceration,” said Nanny, without looking up. “ - della della t’ozentro, audri t’dren vontarieeeeee - “ “The shop, the shop, I have a lozenge, the sky is pink,” said Nanny. Granny and Magrat looked at one another. “ - guarunto del tart, bella pore di larientos - “ “Rejoice, candlemaker, you have a great big - “ “I don’t believe any of this,” said Granny. “You’re making it up.” “Word for word translation,” said Nanny. “I can speak foreign like a native, you know that.” “Mrs Ogg? Is that you, my love?” They all looked up towards the barred window. There was a small face peering in. “Casanunda?” said Nanny. “That’s me, Mrs Ogg.” “My love,” muttered Granny. “How did you get up to the window?” said Nanny, ignoring this. “I always know where I can get my hands on a step-ladder, Mrs Ogg.” “I suppose you don’t know where you can get your hands on a key?” “Wouldn’t do any good. There’s too many guards outside your door, Mrs Ogg. Even for a famous swordsman like me. Her ladyship gave strict orders. No-one’s to listen to you or look at you, even.” “How come you’re in the palace guard, Casanunda?” “Soldier of fortune takes whatever jobs are going, Mrs Ogg,” said Casanunda earnestly. “But all the rest of ‘em are six foot tall and you’re - of the shorter persuasion.” “I lied about my height, Mrs Ogg. I’m a world-famous liar.” “Is that true?” “No.” “What about you being the world’s greatest lover?” There was silence for a while. “Well, maybe I’m only No. 2,” said Casanunda. “But I try harder.” “Can’t you go and find us a file or something, Mr Casanunda?” said Magrat. “I’ll see what I can do, Miss.” The face disappeared. “Maybe we could get people to visit us and then we could escape in their clothes?” said Nanny Ogg. “Now I’ve gone and stuck the pin in my finger,” muttered Granny Weatherwax. “Or maybe we could get Magrat to seduce one of the guards,” said Nanny. “Why don’t you?” said Magrat, as nastily as she could manage. “All right. I’m game.” “Shut up, the pair of you,” said Granny. “I’m trying to think - “ There was another sound at the window. It was Legba. The black cockerel peered in between the bars for a moment, and then fluttered away. “Gives me the creeps, that one,” said Nanny. “Can’t look at him without thinking wistfully of sage-and-onion and mashed potatoes.” Her crinkled face crinkled further. “Greebo!” she said. “Where’d we leave him?” “Oh, he’s only a cat,” said Granny Weatherwax. “Cats know how to look after themselves.” “He’s really just a big softie - “ Nanny began, before someone started pulling down the wall. A hole appeared. A grey hand appeared and grasped another stone. There was a strong smell of river mud. Rock crumbled under heavy fingers. “Ladies?” said a resonant voice. “Well, Mister Saturday,” said Nanny, “as I live and breathe - saving your presence, o’course.” Saturday grunted something and walked away. There was a hammering on the door and someone started fumbling with keys. “We don’t want to hang around here,” said Granny. “Come on.” They helped one another out through the hole. Saturday was on the other side of a small courtyard, striding towards the sound of the ball. And there was something behind him, trailing out like the tail of a comet. “What’s that?” “Mrs Gogol’s doing,” said Granny Weatherwax grimly. Behind Saturday, widening as it snaked through the palace grounds to the gate, was a stream of deeper darkness in the air. At first sight it seemed to contain shapes, but closer inspection indicated that they weren’t shapes at all but a mere suggestion of shapes, forming and reforming. Eyes gleamed momentarily in the swirl. There was the cluttering of crickets and the whine of mosquitoes, the smell of moss and the stink of river mud. “It’s the swamp,” said Magrat. “It’s the idea of the swamp,” said Granny. “It’s what you have to have first, before you have the swamp.” “Oh, dear,” said Nanny. She shrugged. “Well, Ella’s got away and so have we, so this is the part where we escape, yes? That’s what we’re supposed to do.” None of them moved. “They aren’t very nice people in there,” said Magrat, after a while, “but they don’t deserve alligators.” “You witches stand right there,” said a voice behind them. Half a dozen guards were crowded around the hole in the wall. “Life’s certainly busier in the city,” said Nanny, pulling another hatpin from her hat. “They’ve got crossbows,” warned Magrat. “There’s not much you can do against crossbows. Projectile weapons is Lesson Seven and I haven’t had that yet.” “They can’t pull triggers if they think they’ve got flippers,” said Granny menacingly. “Now,” said Nanny, “let’s not have any of that, eh? Everyone knows the good ones always win specially when they’re outnumbered.” The guards emerged. As they did so a tall black shape dropped noiselessly from the wall behind them. “There,” said Nanny, “I said he wouldn’t go far from his mummy, didn’t I?” One or two of the guards realized that she was staring proudly past them, and turned. As far as they were concerned, they confronted a tall, broad-shouldered man with a mane of black hair, an eyepatch and a very wide grin. He stood with his arms casually folded. He waited until he had their full attention, and then Greebo let his lips part slowly. Several of the men took a step backwards then. One of them said, “Why worry? It’s not as if he’s got a weap - “ Greebo raised one hand. Claws make no noise as they slide out, but they ought to. They ought to make a noise like ‘tzing’. Greebo’s grin widened. Ah! These still worked . . . One of the men was bright enough to raise his crossbow but stupid enough to do it with Nanny Ogg standing behind him with a hatpin. Her hand moved so swiftly that any wisdom-seeking saffron-clad youth would have started the Way of Mrs Ogg there and then. The man screamed and dropped the bow. “Wrowwwl. . .” Greebo leapt. Cats are like witches. They don’t fight to kill, but to win. There is a difference. There’s no point in killing an opponent. That way, they won’t know they’ve lost, and to be a real winner you have to have an opponent who is beaten and knows it. There’s no triumph over a corpse, but a beaten opponent, who will remain beaten every day of the remainder of their sad and wretched life, is something to treasure. Cats do not, of course, rationalize this far. They just like to send someone limping off minus a tail and a few square inches of fur. Greebo’s technique was unscientific and wouldn’t have stood a chance against any decent swordsmanship, but on his side was the fact that it is almost impossible to develop decent swordsmanship when you seem to have run into a food mixer that is biting your ear off. The witches watched with interest. “I think we can leave him now,” said Nanny. “I think he’s having fun.” They hurried towards the hall. The orchestra was in the middle of a complicated number when the lead violinist happened to glance towards the door, and then dropped his bow. The cellist turned to see what had caused this, followed his colleague’s fixed stare, and in a moment of confusion tried to play his instrument backwards. In a succession of squeaks and flats, the orchestra stopped playing. The dancers continued for a while out of sheer momentum, and then stopped and milled about in confusion. And then, one by one, they too looked up. Saturday stood at the top of the steps. In the silence came the drumming, making the music that had gone before seem as insignificant as the cluttering of crickets. This was the real blood music; every other music that had ever been written was merely a pitiful attempt to sing along. It poured into the room, and with it came the heat and the warm, vegetable smell of the swamp. There was a suggestion of alligator in the air - not the presence of them, but the promise. The drumming grew louder. There were complex counter-rhythms, much more felt than heard. Saturday brushed a speck of dust off the shoulder of his ancient coat, and reached out an arm. The tall hat appeared in his hand. He reached out his other hand. The black cane with the silver top whirred out of the empty air and was snatched up triumphantly. He put the hat on his head. He twirled the cane. The drums rolled. Except that . . . maybe it wasn’t drums now, maybe it was a beat in the floor itself, or in the walls, or in the air. It was fast and hot and people in the hall found their feet moving of their own accord, because the drumming seemed to reach the toes via the hindbrain without ever passing near the ears. Saturday’s feet moved too. They beat out their own staccato rhythms on the marble floor. He danced down the steps. He whirled. He leapt. The tails of his coat whipped through the air. And then he landed at the foot of the step, his feet striking the ground like the thud of doom. And only now was there a stirring. There was a croak from the Prince. “It can’t be him! He’s dead! Guards! Kill him!” He looked around madly at the guards by the stairs. The guard captain went pale. “I, uh, again? I mean, I don’t think . . .” he began. “Do it now!” The captain raised his crossbow nervously. The point of the bolt wove figures-of-eight in front of his eyes. “I said do it!” The bow twanged. There was a thud. Saturday looked down at the feathers buried in his chest, and then grinned and raised his cane. The captain looked up with the certain terror of death in his face. He dropped his bow and turned to run, and managed two steps before he toppled forward. “No,” said a voice behind the Prince. “This is how you kill a dead man.” Lily Weatherwax stepped forward, her face white with fury. “You don’t belong here any more,” she hissed. “You’re not part of the story.” She raised a hand. Behind her, the ghost images suddenly focused on her, so that she became more iridescent. Silver fire leapt across the room. Baron Saturday thrust out his cane. The magic struck, and coursed down him to earth, leaving little silver trails that crackled for a while and then winked out. “No, ma’am,” he said, “there ain’t no way to kill a dead man.” The three witches watched from the doorway. “I felt that,” said Nanny. “It should have blown him to bits!” “Blown what to bits?” said Granny. “The swamp? The river? The world? He’s all of them! Ooh, she’s a clever one, that Mrs Gogol!” “What?” said Magrat. “What do you mean, all of them?” Lily backed away. She raised her hand again and sent another fireball towards the Baron. It hit his hat and burst off it like a firework. “Stupid, stupid!” muttered Granny. “She’s seen it doesn’t work and she’s still trying it!” “I thought you weren’t on her side,” said Magrat. “I ain’t! But I don’t like to see people being stupid. That kind of stuff’s no use, Magrat Garlick, even you can . . . oh, no, surely not again . . .” The Baron laughed as a third attempt earthed itself harmlessly. Then he raised his cane. Two courtiers tumbled forward. Lily Weatherwax, still backing away, came up against the foot of the main staircase. The Baron strolled forward. “You want to try anything else, lady?” he said. Lily raised both hands. All three witches felt it - the terrible suction as she tried to concentrate all the power in the vicinity. Outside, the one guard remaining upright found that he was no longer fighting a man but merely an enraged tomcat, although this was no consolation. It just meant that Greebo had an extra pair of claws. The Prince screamed. It was a long, descending scream, and ended in a croak, somewhere around ground level. Baron Saturday took one heavy, deliberate step forward, and there was no more croak. The drums stopped abruptly. And then there was a real silence, broken only by the swish of Lily’s dress as she fled up the stairs. A voice behind the witches said, “Thank you, ladies. Could you step aside, please?” They looked around. Mrs Gogol was there, holding Embers by the hand. She had a fat, gaily-embroidered bag over her shoulder. All three watched as the voodoo woman led the girl down into the hall and through the silent crowds. “That’s not right either,” said Granny under her breath. “What?” said Magrat. “What?” Baron Saturday thumped his stick on the floor. “You know me,” he said. “You all know me. You know I was killed. And now here I am. I was murdered and what did you do -?” “How much did you do, Mrs Gogol?” muttered Granny. “No, we ain’t having this.” “Ssh, I can’t hear what he’s saying,” said Nanny. “He’s telling them they can have him ruling them again, or Embers,” said Magrat. “They’ll have Mrs Gogol,” muttered Granny. “She’ll be one o’ them eminences greases.” “Well, she’s not too bad,” said Nanny. “In the swamp she’s not too bad,” said Granny. “With someone to balance her up she’s not too bad. But Mrs Gogol tellin’ a whole city what to do . . . that’s not right. Magic’s far too important to be used for rulin’ people. Anyway, Lily only had people killed - Mrs Gogol’d set ‘em to choppin’ wood and doin’ chores afterwards. I reckon, after you’ve had a busy life, you ort to be able to relax a bit when you’re dead.” “Lie back and enjoy it, sort of thing,” said Nanny. Granny looked down at the white dress. “I wish I had my old clothes on,” she said. “Black’s the proper colour for a witch.” She strode down the steps, and then cupped her hands around her mouth. “Coo-ee! Mrs Gogol!” Baron Saturday stopped speaking. Mrs Gogol nodded at Granny. “Yes, Miss Weatherwax?” “Mistress,” snapped Granny, and then softened her voice again. “This ain’t right, you know. She’s the one who ought to rule, fair enough. And you used magic to help her this far, and that’s all right. But it stops right here. It’s up to her what happens next. You can’t make things right by magic. You can only stop making them wrong.” Mrs Gogol pulled herself up to her full, impressive height. “Who’s you to say what I can and can’t do here?” “We’re her godmothers,” said Granny. “That’s right,” said Nanny Ogg. “We’ve got a wand, too,” said Magrat. “But you hate godmothers, Mistress Weatherwax,” said Mrs Gogol. “We’re the other kind,” said Granny. “We’re the kind that gives people what they know they really need, not what we think they ought to want.” Among the fascinated crowd several pairs of lips moved as people worked this out. “Then you’ve done your godmothering,” said Mrs Gogol, who thought faster than most. “You did it very well.” “You didn’t listen,” said Granny. “There’s all sorts of things to godmotherin’. She might be quite good at ruling. She might be bad at it. But she’s got to find out for herself. With no interference from anyone.” “What if I say no?” “Then I expect we’ll just have to go on godmotherin’,” said Granny. “Do you know how long I worked to win?” said Mrs Gogol, haughtily. “Do you know what I lost? “And now you’ve won, and there’s the end of it,” said Granny. “Are you looking to challenge me, Mistress Weatherwax?” Granny hesitated, and then straightened her shoulders. Her arms moved away from her sides, almost imperceptibly. Nanny and Magrat moved away slightly. “If that’s what you want.” “My voodoo against your . . . headology?” “If you like.” “And what’s the stake?” “No more magic in the affairs of Genua,” said Granny. “No more stories. No more godmothers. Just people, deciding for themselves. For good or bad. Right or wrong.” “Okay.” “And you leave Lily Weatherwax to me.” Mrs Gogol’s intake of breath was heard around the hall. “Never!” “Hmm?” said Granny. “You don’t think you’re going to lose, do you?” “I don’t want to hurt you, Mistress Weatherwax,” said Mrs Gogol. “That’s good,” said Granny. “I don’t want you to hurt me either.” “I don’t want there to be any fighting,” said Ella. They all looked at her. “She’s the ruler now, ain’t she?” said Granny. “We’ve got to listen to what she says.” “I’ll keep out of the city,” said Mrs Gogol, ignoring her, “but Lilith is mine.” “No.” Mrs Gogol reached into her bag, and flourished the raggedy doll. “See this?” “Yes. I do,” said Granny. “It was going to be her. Don’t let it be you.” “Sorry, Mrs Gogol,” said Granny firmly, “but I see my duty plain.” “You’re a clever woman, Mistress Weatherwax. But you’re a long way from home.” Granny shrugged. Mrs Gogol held up the doll by its waist. It had sapphire blue eyes. “You know about magic with mirrors? This is my kind of mirror, Mistress Weatherwax. I can make it be you. And then I can make it suffer. Don’t make me do that. Please.” “Please yourself, Mrs Gogol. But I’ll deal with Lily.” “I should box a bit clever if I was you, Esme,” muttered Nanny Ogg. “She’s good at this sort of thing.” “I think she could be very ruthless,” said Magrat. “I’ve got nothing but the greatest respect for Mrs Gogol,” said Granny. “A fine woman. But talks a bit too much. If I was her, I’d have had a couple of big nails right through that thing by now.” “You would, too,” said Nanny. “It’s a good thing you’re good, ain’t it.” “Right,” said Granny, raising her voice again. “I’m going to find my sister, Mrs Gogol. This is family.” She walked steadfastly towards the stairs. Magrat took out the wand. “If she does anything bad to Granny, she’s going to go through the rest of her life bright orange and round, with seeds in,” she said. “I don’t think Esme would like it if you did something like that,” said Nanny. “Don’t worry. She doesn’t believe all that stuff about pins and dolls.” “She doesn’t believe anything. But that doesn’t matter!” said Magrat. “Mrs Gogol does! It’s her power! It’s what she thinks that matters.” “Don’t you reckon Esme knows that too?” Granny Weatherwax reached the foot of the stairs. “Mistress Weatherwax!” Granny turned. Mrs Gogol had a long sliver of wood in her hand. Shaking her head desperately, she jabbed it into the doll’s foot. Everyone saw Esme Weatherwax wince. Another sliver was thrust into a raggedy arm. Slowly, Granny raised her other hand and shuddered when she touched her sleeve. Then, limping slightly, she continued to climb the stairs. “I can do the heart next. Mistress Weatherwax!” shouted Mrs Gogol. “I’m sure you can. You’re good at it. You know you’re good at it,” said Granny, without looking around. Mrs Gogol stuck another sliver into a leg. Granny sagged, and clutched at the banister. Beside her, one of the big torches flamed. “Next time!” said Mrs Gogol. “Right? Next time. I can do it!” Granny turned around. She looked at the hundreds of upturned faces. When she spoke, her voice was so quiet that they had to strain to hear. “I know you can too, Mrs Gogol. You really believe. Just remind me again- we’re playin’ for Lily, right? And for the city?” “What does that matter now?” said Mrs Gogol. “Ain’t you going to give in?” Granny Weatherwax thrust a little finger into her ear and wiggled it thoughtfully. “No,” she said. “No, I don’t reckon that’s what I do now. Are you watchin’, Mrs Gogol? Are you watchin’ real close?” Her gaze travelled the room and rested for just a fraction of a second on Magrat. Then she reached over, carefully, and thrust her arm up to the elbow into the burning torch. And the doll in Erzulie Gogol’s hands burst into flame. It went on blazing even after the witch had screamed and dropped it on to the floor. It went on burning until Nanny Ogg ambled over with a jug of fruit juice from the buffet, whistling between her teeth, and put it out. Granny withdrew her hand. It was unscathed. “That’s headology,” she said. “It’s the only thing that matters. Everything else is just messin’ about. Hope I didn’t hurt you, Mrs Gogol.” She went on up the stairs. Mrs Gogol kept on staring at the damp ashes. Nanny Ogg patted her companionably on the shoulder. “How did she do that?” said Mrs Gogol. “She didn’t. She let you do it,” said Nanny. “You got to watch yourself around Esme Weatherwax. I’d like to see one of them Zen buggers come up against her one day.” “And she’s the good one?” said Baron Saturday. “Yeah,” said Nanny. “Funny how things work out, really.” She looked thoughtfully at the empty fruit juice jug in her hand. “What this needs,” she said, in the manner of one reaching a conclusion after much careful consideration, “is some bananas and rum and stuff in it - “ Magrat grabbed her dress as Nanny strode determinedly dak’rywards. “Not now,” she said. “We’d better get after Granny! She might need us!” “Shouldn’t think so for one minute,” said Nanny. “I wouldn’t like to be in Lily’s shoes when Esme catches up with her.” “But I’ve never seen Granny so agitated,” said Magrat. “Anything could happen.” “Good job if it does,” said Nanny. She nodded meaningfully at a flunkey who, being quick on the uptake, leapt to attention. “But she might do something - dreadful.” “Good. She’s always wanted to,” said Nanny. “Another banana dak’ry, mahatma coat, chopchop.” “No. It wouldn’t be a good idea,” Magrat persisted. “Oh, all right,” said Nanny. She handed the empty jug to Baron Saturday, who took it in a kind of hypnotic daze. “We’re just going to sort things out,” she said. “Sorry about this. On with the motley . . . if anyone’s got any left.” When the witches had gone Mrs Gogol reached down and picked up the damp remains of the doll. One or two people coughed. “Is that it?” said the Baron. “After twelve years?” “The Prince is dead,” said Mrs Gogol. “Such as he was.” “But you promised that I would be revenged on her,” the Baron said. “I think there will be revenge,” said Mrs Gogol. She tossed the doll on to the floor. “Lilith has been fighting me for twelve years and she never got through. This one didn’t even have to sweat. So I think there will be revenge.” “You don’t have to keep your word!” “I do. I’ve got to keep something.” Mrs Gogol put her arm around Ella’s shoulder. “This is it, girl,” she said. “Your palace. Your city. There isn’t a person here who will deny it.” She glared at the guests. One or two of them stepped backwards. Ella looked up at Saturday. “I feel I should know you,” she said. She turned to Mrs Gogol. “And you,” she added. “I’ve seen you both . . . before. A long time ago?” Baron Saturday opened his mouth to speak. Mrs Gogol held up her hand. “We promised,” she said. “No interference.” “Not from us?” “Not even from us.” She turned back to Ella. “We’re just people.” “You mean . . .” said Ella, “I’ve slaved in a kitchen for years . . . and now . . . I’m supposed to rule the city? Just like that?” “That’s how it goes.” Ella looked down, deep in thought. “And anything I say people have to do?” she said innocently. There were a few nervous coughs from the crowd. “Yes,” said Mrs Gogol. Ella stood looking down at the floor, idly biting a thumbnail. Then she looked up. “Then the first thing that’s going to happen is the end of the ball. Right now! I’m going to find the carnival. I’ve always wanted to dance in the carnival.” She looked around at the worried faces. “It’s not compulsory for anyone else to come,” she added. The nobles of Genua had enough experience to know what it means when a ruler says something is not compulsory. Within minutes the hall was empty, except for three figures. “But . . . but . . . I wanted revenge,” said the Baron. “I wanted death. I wanted our daughter in power.” TWO OUT OF THREE ISN’T BAD. Mrs Gogol and the Baron turned around. Death put down his drink and stepped forward. Baron Saturday straightened up. “I am ready to go with you,” he said. Death shrugged. Ready or not, he seemed to indicate, was all the same to him. “But I held you off,” the Baron added. “For twelve years!” He put his arm around Erzulie’s shoulders. “When they killed me and threw me in the river, we stole life from you!” YOU STOPPED LIVING. YOU NEVER DIED. I DID NOT COME FOR YOU THEN. “You didn’t?” I HAD AN APPOINTMENT WITH YOU TONIGHT. The Baron handed his cane to Mrs Gogol. He removed the tall black hat. He shrugged off the coat. Power crackled in its folds. “No more Baron Saturday,” he said. PERHAPS. IT’S A NICE HAT. The Baron turned to Erzulie. “I think I have to go.” “Yes.” “What will you do?” The voodoo woman looked down at the hat in her hands. “I will go back to the swamp,” she said. “You could stay here. I don’t trust that foreign witch.” “I do. So I will go back to the swamp. Because some stories have to end. Whatever Ella becomes, she’ll have to make it herself.” It was a short walk to the brown, heavy waters of the river. The Baron paused at the edge. “Will she live happily ever after?” he said. NOT FOREVER. BUT PERHAPS FOR LONG ENOUGH. And so stories end. The wicked witch is defeated, the ragged princess comes into her own, the kingdom is restored. Happy days are here again. Happy ever after. Which means that life stops here. Stories want to end. They don’t care what happens next. . . Nanny Ogg panted along a corridor. “Never seen Esme like that before,” she said. “She’s in a very funny mood. She could be a danger to herself.” “She’s a danger to everyone else,” said Magrat. “She - “ The snake women stepped out into the passageway ahead of them. “Look at it like this,” said Nanny, under her breath, “what can they do to us?” “I can’t stand snakes,” said Magrat quietly. “They’ve got those teeth, of course,” said Nanny, as if conducting a seminar. “More like fangs, really. Come on, girl. Let’s see if we can find another way.” “I hate them.” Nanny tugged at Magrat, who did not move. “Come on!” “I really hate them.” “You’ll be able to hate them even better from a long way off !” The sisters were nearly on them. They didn’t walk, they glided. Perhaps Lily wasn’t concentrating now, because they were more snake-like than ever. Nanny thought she could see scale patterns under the skin. The jawline was all wrong. “Magrat!” One of the sisters reached out. Magrat shuddered. The snake sister opened its mouth. Then Magrat looked up and, almost dreamily, punched it so hard that it was carried several feet along the passage. It wasn’t a blow that featured in any Way or Path. No-one ever drew this one as a diagram or practised it in front of a mirror with a bandage tied round their head. It was straight out of the lexicon of inherited, terrified survival reflexes. “Use the wand!” shouted Nanny, darting forward. “Don’t ninj at them! Use the wand! That’s what it’s for!” The other snake instinctively turned to follow the movement, which is why instinct is not always the keynote to survival, because Magrat clubbed it on the back of the head. With the wand. It sagged, losing shape as it fell. The trouble with witches is that they’ll never run away from things they really hate. And the trouble with small furry animals in a corner is that, just occasionally, one of them’s a mongoose. Granny Weatherwax had always wondered: what was supposed to be so special about a full moon? It was only a big circle of light. And the dark of the moon was only darkness. But half-way between the two, when the moon was between the worlds of light and dark, when even the moon lived on the edge . . . maybe then a witch could believe in the moon. Now a half-moon sailed above the mists of the swamp. Lily’s nest of mirrors reflected the cold light, as they reflected everything else. Leaning against the wall were the three broom-sticks. Granny picked up hers. She wasn’t wearing the right colour and she wasn’t wearing a hat; she needed something she was at home with. Nothing moved. “Lily?” said Granny softly. Her own image looked out at her from the mirrors. “It can all stop now,” said Granny. “You could take my stick and I’ll take Magrat’s. She can always share with Gytha. And Mrs Gogol won’t come after you. I’ve fixed that. And we could do with more witches back home. And no more godmothering. No more getting people killed so their daughters are ready to be in a story. I know that’s why you did it. Come on home. It’s an offer you can’t refuse.” The mirror slid back noiselessly. “You’re trying to be kind to me?” said Lily. “Don’t think it don’t take a lot of effort,” said Granny in a more normal voice. Lily’s dress rustled in the darkness as she stepped out. “So,” she said, “you beat the swamp woman.” “No.” “But you’re here instead of her.” “Yes.” Lily took the stick out of Granny’s hands, and inspected it. “Never used one of these things,” she said. “You just sit on it and away you go?” “With this one you have to be running quite fast before it takes off,” said Granny, “but that’s the general idea, yes.” “Hmm. Do you know the symbology of the broomstick?” said Lily. “Is it anything to do with maypoles and folksongs and suchlike?” said Granny. “Oh, yes.” “Then I don’t want to hear about it.” “No,” said Lily. “I imagine you don’t.” She handed the stick back. “I’m staying here,” she said. “Mrs Gogol may have come up with a new trick, but that doesn’t mean she has won.” “No. Things have come to an end, see,” said Granny. “That’s how it works when you turn the world into stories. You should never have done that. You shouldn’t turn the world into stories. You shouldn’t treat people like they was characters, like they was things. But if you do, then you’ve got to know when the story ends.” “You’ve got to put on your red-hot shoes and dance the night away?” said Lily. “Somethin’ like that, yes.” “While everyone else lives happily ever after?” “I don’t know about that,” said Granny. “That’s up to them. What I’m sayin’ is, you’re not allowed to go round one more time. You’ve lost.” “You know a Weatherwax never loses,” said Lily. “One of ‘em learns tonight,” said Granny. “But we’re outside the stories,” said Lily. “Me because I . . . am the medium through which they happen, and you because you fight them. We’re the ones in the middle. The free ones –“ There was a sound behind them. The faces of Magrat and Nanny Ogg appeared over the top of the stairwell. “You need any help, Esme?” said Nanny cautiously. Lily laughed. “Here’s your little snakes, Esme.” “You know,” she added, “you’re really just like me. Don’t you know that? There isn’t a thought that’s gone through my head that you haven’t thought, too. There isn’t a deed I’ve done that you haven’t contemplated. But you never found the courage. That’s the difference between people like me and people like you. We have the courage to do what you only dream of.” “Yes?” said Granny. “Is that what you think? You think I dream?” Lily moved a finger. Magrat floated up out of the stairwell, struggling. She waved her wand frantically. “That’s what I like to see,” said Lily. “People wishing. I never wished for anything in my life. I always made things happen. So much more rewarding.” Magrat gritted her teeth. “I’m sure I wouldn’t look good as a pumpkin, dear,” said Lily. She waved a hand airily. Magrat rose. “You’d be surprised at the things I can do,” said Lily dreamily, as the younger witch drifted smoothly over the flagstones. “You should have tried mirrors yourself, Esme. It does wonders for a soul. I only let the swamp woman survive because her hate was invigorating. I do like being hated, you know. And you do know. It’s a kind of respect. It shows you’re having an effect. It’s like a cold bath on a hot day. When stupid people find themselves powerless, when they fume in their futility, when they’re beaten and they’ve got nothing but that yawning in the acid pit of their stomachs - well, to be honest, it’s like a prayer. And the stories . . . to ride on stories . . . to borrow the strength of them . . . the comfort of them . . . to be in the hidden centre of them . . . Can you understand that? The sheer pleasure of seeing the patterns repeat themselves? I’ve always loved a pattern. Incidentally, if the Ogg woman continues to try to sneak up behind me I shall really let your young friend drift out over the courtyard and then, Esme, I might just lose interest.” “I was just walkin’ about,” said Nanny. “No law against it.” “You changed the story your way, and now I’m going to do it mine,” said Lily. “And once again . . . all you have to do is go. Just go away. What happens here doesn’t matter. It’s a city far away of which you know little. I’m not totally certain I could out-trick you,” she added, “but these two . . . they haven’t got the right stuff in them. I could make jam of them. I hope you know that. So tonight, I suggest, a Weatherwax learns to lose?” Granny stood silent for a while, leaning on her useless broom. “All right. Put her down,” she said. “And then I’ll say you’ve won.” “I wish I could believe that,” said Lily. “Oh . . . but you’re the nice one, aren’t you? You have to keep your word.” “Watch me,” said Granny. She walked to the parapet and looked down. The two-faced moon was still bright enough to illuminate the billowing fogs that surrounded the palace like a sea. “Magrat? Gytha?” she said. “Sorry about this. You’ve won, Lily. There ain’t nothing I can do.” She jumped. Nanny Ogg rushed forward and stared over the edge, just in time to see a dim figure vanish in the mists. All three figures left on the tower took a deep breath. “It’s a trick,” said Lily, “to get me off guard.” “It isn’t!” screamed Magrat, dropping to the stones. “She had her broomstick,” said Lily. “It don’t work! It won’t start!” shouted Nanny. “Right,” she said, menacingly, striding towards the slim shape of Lily. “We’ll soon wipe that smug look off your face - “ She halted as silver pain shot through her body. Lily laughed. “It’s true, then?” she said. “Yes. I can see it in your faces. Esme was bright enough to know she couldn’t win. Don’t be stupid. And don’t point that silly wand at me, Miss Garlick. Old Desiderata would have defeated me long ago if she could. People have no understanding.” “We ought to go down there,” said Magrat. “She might be lying there - “ “That’s it. Be good. It’s what you’re good at,” said Lily, as they ran to the stairwell. “But we’ll be back,” snarled Nanny Ogg. “Even if we have to live in the swamp with Mrs Gogol and eat snakes’ heads!” “Of course,” said Lily, arching an eyebrow. “That’s what I said. One needs people like you around. Otherwise one is never quite sure one is still working. It’s a way of keeping score.” She watched them disappear down the steps. A wind blew over the tower. Lily gathered up her skirts and walked to the end, where she could see the shreds of mist streaming over the rooftops far below. There were the faint strains of music from the distant carnival dance as it wound its way through the streets. It would soon be midnight. Proper midnight, not some cut-price version caused by an old woman crawling around in a clock. Lily tried to see through the murk to the bottom of the tower. “Really, Esme,” she murmured, “you did take losing hard.” Nanny reached out and restrained Magrat as they ran down the spiral stairs. “Slow down a bit, I should,” she said. “But she could be hurt -!” “So could you, if you trip. Anyway,” said Nanny, “I don’t reckon Esme is lyin’ in a crumpled heap somewhere. That’s not the way she’d go. I reckon she did it just to make sure Lily forgot about us and wouldn’t try anything on us. I reckon she thought we were - what was that Tsortean bloke who could only be wounded if you hit ‘im in the right place? No-one ever beat ‘im until they found out about it. His knee, I think it was. We’re her Tsortean knee, right?” “But we know you have to run really fast to get her broomstick going!” shouted Magrat. “Yeah, I know,” said Nanny. “That’s what I thought. And now I’m thinking. . . how fast do you go when you’re dropping? I mean, straight down?” “I. . . don’t know,” said Magrat. “I reckon Esme thought it was worth findin’ out,” said Nanny. “That’s what I reckon.” A figure appeared around the bend in the stairs, plodding upwards. They stood aside politely to let it pass. “Wish I could remember what bit of him you had to hit,” Nanny said. “That’s going to be nagging at me all night, now.” THE HEEL. “Right? Oh, thanks.” ANY TIME. The figure continued onwards and upwards. “He had a good mask on, didn’t he,” said Magrat, eventually. She and Nanny sought confirmation in each other’s face. Magrat went pale. She looked up the stairs. “I think we should run back up and - “ she began. Nanny Ogg was much older. “I think we should walk,” she said. Lady Volentia D’Arrangement sat in the rose garden under the big tower and blew her nose. She’d been waiting for half an hour and she’d had enough. She’d hoped for a romantic tete-a-tete: he’d seemed such a nice man, sort of eager and shy at the same time. Instead, she’d nearly been hit on the head when an old woman on a broom and wearing what looked, as far as she could see through the blur of speed, like Lady Volentia’s own dress, had screamed down out of the mist. Her boots had ploughed through the roses before the curve of her flight took her up again. And some filthy smelly tomcat kept brushing up against her legs. And it had started off as such a nice evening . . . “ ‘ullo, your Ladyship?” She looked around at the bushes. “My name’s Casanunda,” said a hopeful voice. Lily Weatherwax turned when she heard the tinkle of glass from within the maze of mirrors. Her brow wrinkled. She ran across the flagstones and opened the door into the mirror world. There was no sound but the rustle of her dress and the soft hiss of her own breathing. She glided into the place between the mirrors. Her myriad selves looked back at her approvingly. She relaxed. Then her foot struck something. She looked down and saw on the flagstones, black in the moonlight, a broomstick lying in shards of broken glass. Her horrified gaze rose to meet a reflection. It glared back at her. “Where’s the pleasure in bein’ the winner if the loser ain’t alive to know they’ve lost?” Lilith backed away, her mouth opening and shutting. Granny Weatherwax stepped through the empty frame. Lily looked down, beyond her avenging sister. “You broke my mirror!” “Was this what it was all for, then?” said Granny.” Playin’ little queens in some damp city? Serving stories? What sort of power is that?” “You don’t understand . . . you’ve broken the mirror . . .” “They say you shouldn’t do it,” said Granny. “But I reckoned: what’s another seven years’ bad luck?” Image after image shatters, all the way around the great curve of the mirror world, the crack flying out faster than light. . . “You have to break both to be safe. . . you’ve upset the balance . . .” “Hah! I did?” Granny stepped forward, her eyes two sapphires of bitterness. “I’m goin’ to give you the hidin’ our Mam never gave you, Lily Weatherwax. Not with magic, not with headology, not with a stick like our Dad had, aye, and used a fair bit as I recall - but with skin. And not because you was the bad one. Not because you meddled with stories. Everyone has a path they got to tread. But because, and I wants you to understand this prop’ly, after you went I had to be the good one. You had all the fun. An’ there’s no way I can make you pay for that, Lily, but I’m surely goin’ to give it a try . . .” “But. . . I. . . I. . . I’m the good one,” Lily murmured, her face pale with shock. “I’m the good one. I can’t lose. I’m the godmother. You’re the wicked witch . . . and you’ve broken the mirror . . .” . . . moving like a comet, the crack in the mirrors reaches its furthest point and curves back, speeding down the countless worlds . . . “You’ve got to help me put . . . the images must be balanced . . .” Lily murmured faintly, backing up against the remaining glass. “Good? Good? Feeding people to stories? Twisting people’s lives? That’s good, is it?” said Granny. “You mean you didn’t even have fun? If I’d been as bad as you, I’d have been a whole lot worse. Better at it than you’ve ever dreamed of.” She drew back her hand. . . . the crack returned towards its point of origin, carrying with it the fleeing reflections of all the mirrors . . . Her eyes widened. The glass smashed and crazed behind Lily Weatherwax. And in the mirror, the image of Lily Weatherwax turned around, smiled beatifically, and reached out of the frame to take Lily Weatherwax into its arms. “Lily!” All the mirrors shattered, exploding outwards in a thousand pieces from the top of the tower so that, just for a moment, it was wreathed in twinkling fairy dust. Nanny Ogg and Magrat came up onto the roof like avenging angels after a period of lax celestial quality control. They stopped. Where the maze of mirrors had been were empty frames. Glass shards covered the floor and, lying on them, was a figure in a white dress. Nanny pushed Magrat behind her and crunched forward cautiously. She prodded the figure with the toe of her boot. “Let’s throw her off the tower,” said Magrat. “All right,” said Nanny. “Do it, then.” Magrat hesitated. “Well,” she said, “when I said let’s throw her off the tower, I didn’t mean me personally throwing her off, I meant that if there was any justice she ought to be thrown off- “ “Then I shouldn’t say any more on that score, if I was you,” said Nanny, kneeling carefully on the crunching shards. “Besides, I was right. This is Esme. I’d know that face anywhere. Take off your petticoat.” “Why?” “Look at her arms, girl!” Magrat stared. Then she raised her hands to her mouth. “What has she been doing?” “Trying to reach straight through glass, by the looks of it,” said Nanny. “Now get it off and help me tear it into strips and then go and find Mrs Gogol and see if she’s got any ointments and can help us, and tell her if she can’t she’d better be a long way away by morning.” Nanny felt Granny Weatherwax’s wrist. “Maybe Lily Weatherwax could make jam of us but I’m damn sure I could knock Mrs Gogol’s eye out with the fender if it came to it.” Nanny removed her patent indestructible hat and fished around inside the point. She pulled out a velvet cloth and unwrapped it, revealing a little cache of needles and a spool of thread. She licked a thread and held a needle against the moon, squinting. “Oh, Esme, Esme,” she said, as she bent to her sewing, “you do take winning hard.” Lily Weatherwax looked out at the multi-layered, silvery world. “Where am I?” INSIDE THE MIRROR. “Am I dead?” THE ANSWER TO THAT, said Death, is SOMEWHERE BETWEEN NO AND YES. Lily turned, and a billion figures turned with her. “When can I get out?” WHEN YOU FIND THE ONE THAT’S REAL. Lily Weatherwax ran on through the endless reflections. A good cook is always the first one into the kitchen every morning and the last one to go home at night. Mrs Pleasant damped down the fires. She did a quick inventory of the silverware and counted the tureens. She - She was aware of being stared at. There was a cat in the doorway. It was big and grey. One eye was an evil yellow-green, the other one pearly white. What remained of its ears looked like the edge of a stamp. Nevertheless, it had a certain swagger, and generated an I-can-beat-you-with-one-paw feel that was strangely familiar. Airs Pleasant stared at it for a while. She was a close personal friend of Mrs Gogol and knew that shape is merely a matter of deeply-ingrained personal habit, and if you’re a resident of Genua around Samedi Nuit Mort you learn to trust your judgement rather more than you trust your senses. “Well now,” she said, with barely a trace of a tremor in her voice, “I expect you’d like some more fish legs, I mean heads, how about that?” Greebo stretched and arched his back. “And there’s some milk in the coolroom,” said Mrs Pleasant. Greebo yawned happily. Then he scratched his ear with his back leg. Humanity’s a nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there. It was a day later. “Mrs Gogol’s healing ointment really seems to work,” said Magrat. She held up a jar that was half-full of something pale green and strangely gritty and had a subtle smell which, you could quite possibly believe, occupied the whole world. “It’s got snakes’ heads in it,” said Nanny Ogg. “Don’t you try to upset me,” said Magrat. “I know the Snake’s Head is a kind of flower. A fritillary, I think. It’s amazing what you can do with flowers, you know.” Nanny Ogg, who had in fact spent an instructive if gruesome half-hour watching Mrs Gogol make the stuff, hadn’t the heart to say so. “That’s right,” she said. “Flowers. No getting anything past you, I can see that.” Magrat yawned. They had been given the run of the palace, although no-one felt like running anywhere. Granny had been installed in the next room. “Go and get some sleep,” said Nanny. “I’ll go and take over from Mrs Gogol in a moment.” “But Nanny . . . Gytha . . .” said Magrat. “Hmm?” “All that . . . stuff . . . she was saying, when we were travelling. It was so . . . so cold. Wasn’t it? Not wishing for things, not using magic to help people, not being able to do that fire thing - and then she went and did all those things! What am I supposed to make of that?” “Ah, well,” said Nanny. “It’s all according to the general and the specific, right?” “What does that mean?” Magrat lay down on the bed. “Means when Esme uses words like “Everyone” and “No-one” she doesn’t include herself.” “You know . . . when you think about it . . . that’s terrible.” “That’s witchcraft. Up at the sharp end. And now . . . get some sleep.” Magrat was too tired to object. She stretched out and was soon snoring in a genteel sort of way. Nanny sat and smoked her pipe for a while, staring at the wall. Then she got up and pushed open the door. Mrs Gogol looked up from her stool by the bed. “You go and get some sleep too,” said Nanny. “I’ll take over for a spell.” “There’s something not right,” said Mrs Gogol. “Her hands are fine. She just won’t wake up.” “It’s all in the mind, with Esme,” said Nanny. “I could make some new gods and get everyone to believe in ‘em real good. How about that?” said Mrs Gogol. Nanny shook her head. “I shouldn’t think Esme’d want that. She’s not keen on gods. She thinks they’re a waste of space.” “I could cook up some gumbo, then. People’ll come a long way to taste that.” “It might be worth a try,” Nanny conceded. “Every little helps, I always say. Why not see to it? Leave the rum here.” After the voodoo lady had gone Nanny smoked her pipe some more and drank a little rum in a thoughtful sort of way, looking at the figure on the bed. Then she bent down close to Granny Weatherwax’s ear, and whispered: “You ain’t going to lose, are you?” Granny Weatherwax looked out at the multi-layered, silvery world. “Where am I?” INSIDE THE MIRROR. “Am I dead?” THE ANSWER TO THAT, said Death, is SOMEWHERE BETWEEN NO AND YES. Esme turned, and a billion figures turned with her. “When can I get out?” WHEN YOU FIND THE ONE THAT’S REAL. “Is this a trick question?” NO. Granny looked down at herself. “This one,” she said. And stories just want happy endings. They don’t give a damn who they’re for. Dear Jason eksetra, Well so much for Genua but I leanred about Mrs Gogol’s zombie medicin and she gave me the Hityi Hidtfrt told me how to make banananana dakry and gave me a thing call a banjo youll be amazed and all in all is a decent soul I reckon if you keeps her where you can see her. It looks like we got Esme back but I don’t know shes actin funny and quiet not like herself normally so Im keepin an Eye on her just in case Lily puled a farst one in the mirror. But I think shes geting better because when she woke up she arsked Magra tfor a look at the wand and then she kind of twidled and twisted them rings on it and turned the po into a bunch of flowers and Magrat said she could never make the wand do that and Esme said no because, she wasted time wishing for thinges instead of working out how to make them happen. What I say is, what a good job Esme never got a wand when she was young, Lily would have bin a Picnic by comparisen. Enclosed is a picture of the cemtry here you can see folks are buried in boxes above ground the soil being so wet because you dont want to be dead and drownded at the same time, they say travelin brordens the mind, I reckon I could pull mine out my ears now and knot it under my chin, all the best, MUM. In the swamp Mrs Gogol the voodoo witch draped the tail coat over its crude stand, stuck the hat on the top of the pole and fastened the cane to one end of the crosspiece with a bit of twine. She stood back. There was a fluttering of wings. Legba dropped out of the sky and perched on the hat. Then he crowed. Usually he only crowed at nightfall, because he was a bird of power, but for once he was inclined to acknowledge the new day. It was said afterwards that, every year on Samedi Nuit Moit, when the carnival was at its height and the drums were loudest and the rum was nearly all gone, a man in a tail coat and a top hat and with the energy of a demon would appear out of nowhere and lead the dance. After all, even stories have to start somewhere. There was a splash, and then the waters of the river closed again. Magrat walked away. The wand settled into the rich mud, where it was touched only by the feet of the occasional passing crawfish, who don’t have fairy godmothers and aren’t allowed to wish for anything. It sank down over the months and passed, as most things do, out of history. Which was all anyone could wish for. The three broomsticks rose over Genua, with the mists that curled towards the dawn. The witches looked down at the green swamps around the city. Genua dozed. The days after Fat Lunchtirne were always quiet, as people slept it off. Currently they included Greebo, curled up in his place among the bristles. Leaving Mrs Pleasant had been a real wrench. “Well, so much for la douche vita,” said Nanny philosophically. “We never said goodbye to Mrs Gogol,” said Magrat. “I reckon she knows we’re going right enough,” said Nanny. “Very knowin’ woman, Mrs Gogol.” “But can we trust her to keep her word?” said Magrat. “Yes,” said Granny Weatherwax. “She’s very honest, in her way,” said Nanny Ogg. “Well, there’s that,” Granny conceded. “Also, I said I might come back.” Magrat looked across at Granny’s broomstick. A large round box was among the baggage strapped to the bristles. “You never tried on that hat she gave you,” she said. “I had a look at it,” said Granny coldly. “It don’t fit.” “I reckon Mrs Gogol wouldn’t give anyone a hat that didn’t fit,” said Nanny. “Let’s have a look, eh?” Granny sniffed, and undid the lid of the box. Balls of tissue paper tumbled down towards the mists as she lifted the hat out. Magrat and Nanny Ogg stared at it. They were of course used to the concept of fruit on a hat - Nanny Ogg herself had a black straw hat with wax cherries on for special family feuding occasions. But this one had rather more than just cherries. About the only fruit not on it somewhere was a melon. “It’s definitely very . . . foreign,” said Magrat. “Go on,” said Nanny. “Try it on.” Granny did so, a bit sheepishly, increasing her apparent height by two feet, most of which was pineapple. “Very colourful. Very . . . stylish,” said Nanny. “Not everyone could wear a hat like that.” “The pomegranates suit you,” said Magrat. “And the lemons,” said Nanny Ogg. “Eh? You two ain’t laughing at me, are you?” said Granny Weatherwax suspiciously. “Would you like to have a look?” said Magrat. “I have a mirror somewhere . . .” The silence descended like an axe. Magrat went red. Nanny Ogg glared at her. They watched Granny carefully. “Ye-ess,” she said, after what seemed a long time, “I think I should look in a mirror.” Magrat unfroze, fumbled in her pockets and produced a small, wooden-framed hand-mirror. She passed it across. Granny Weatherwax looked at her reflection. Nanny Ogg surreptitiously manoeuvred her broomstick a bit closer. “Hmm,” said Granny, after a while. “It’s the way the grapes hang over your ear,” said Nanny, encouragingly. “You know, that’s a hat of authority if ever I saw one.” “Hmm.” “Don’t you think?” said Magrat. “Well,” said Granny, grudgingly, “maybe it’s fine for foreign parts. Where I ain’t going to be seen by anyone as knows me. No-one important, anyway.” “And when we get home you can always eat it,” said Nanny Ogg. They relaxed. There was a feeling of a hill climbed, a dangerous valley negotiated. Magrat looked down at the brown river and the suspicious logs on its sandbanks. “What I want to know is,” she said, “was Mrs Gogol really good or bad? I mean, dead people and alligators and everything . . .” Granny looked at the rising sun, poking though the mists. “Good and bad is tricky,” she said. “I ain’t too certain about where people stand. P’raps what matters is which way you face. “You know,” she added, “I truly believe I can see the edge from here.” “Funny thing,” said Nanny, “they say that in some foreign parts you get elephants. You know, I’ve always wanted to see an elephant. And there’s a place in Klatch or somewhere where people climb up ropes and disappear.” “What for?” said Magrat. “Search me. There’s prob’ly some cunnin’ foreign reason.” “In one of Desiderata’s books,” said Magrat, “she says that there’s a very interesting thing about seeing elephants. She says that on the Sto plains, when people say they’re going to see the elephant, it means they’re simply going on a journey because they’re fed up with staying in the same place.” “It’s not staying in the same place that’s the problem,” said Nanny, “it’s not letting your mind wander.” “I’d like to go up towards the Hub,” said Magrat. “To see the ancient temples such as are described in Chapter One of The Way of the Scorpion.” “And they’d teach you anything you don’t know already, would they?” said Nanny, with unusual sharpness. Magrat glanced at Granny. “Probably not,” she said meekly. “Well,” said Nanny. “What’s it to be, Esme? Are we going home? Or are we off to see the elephant?” Granny’s broomstick turned gently in the breeze. “You’re a disgustin’ old baggage, Gytha Ogg,” said Granny. “That’s me,” said Nanny cheerfully. “And, Magrat Garlick - “ “I know,” said Magrat, overwhelmed with relief, “I’m a wet hen.” Granny looked back towards the Hub, and the high mountains. Somewhere back there was an old cottage with the key hanging in the privy. All sorts of things were probably going on. The whole kingdom was probably going to rack and ruin without her around to keep people on the right track. It was her job. There was no telling what stupidities people would get up to if she wasn’t there . . . Nanny kicked her red boots together idly. “Well, I suppose there’s no place like home,” she said. “No,” said Granny Weatherwax, still looking thoughtful. “No. There’s a billion places like home. But only one of ‘em’s where you live.” “So we’re going back?” said Magrat. “Yes.” But they went the long way, and saw the elephant. THE END 
Unseen Academicals - Terry Pratchett	----	Unseen Academicals Unseen Academicals A Novel of Discworld™ Terry Pratchett This book is dedicated to Rob Wilkins, who typed most of it and had the good sense to laugh occasionally. And to Colin Smythe for his encouragement. The chant of the goddess Pedestriana is a parody of the wonderful poem ‘Brahma’ by Ralph Waldo Emerson, but of course you knew that anyway. Contents Begin Reading About the Author Other Books by Terry Pratchett Credits Copyright About the Publisher IT WAS MIDNIGHT in Ankh-Morpork’s Royal Art Museum.* It occurred to new employee Rudolph Scattering about once every minute that on the whol e it might have been a good idea to tell the Curator about his nyctophobia, his fear of strange noises and, he now knew, his fear of absolutely every thing he could see (and, come to that, not see), hear, smell and feel crawling up his back during the endless h ours on guard during the night. It was no use telling himself that everything in here w as dead. That didn’t help at all. It meant that he stood out. And then he heard the sob. A scream might have been better. At least you are certain when you’ve heard a scream. A faint sob is something you have to wait to hear again, because you can’t be sure. He raised his lantern in a shaking hand. There shouldn’t be anyone in here. The place was securely locked; no one could get in. Or, now he came to think about it, out. He w ished he hadn’t thought about it. He was in the basement, which was not among the most scary places on his round. It was mostly just old shelves and drawers, full of the things that were almost, but very de finitely not entirely, thrown away. Museums don’t like things to be thrown away, in ca se they turn out to be very important later on. Another sob, and a sound like the scraping of…pottery? A rat, then, somewhere on the rear shelves? Rats didn’t sob, did they? ‘Look, I don’t want to have to come in there and get you!’ said Scattering with heartfel t accuracy. And the shelves exploded. It seemed to him to happen in slow motion, bits of pottery and statues spreading out as they drifted towards him. He went over backwards and the expanding cloud passing overhead crashed into the shelves on the other side of the r oom, which were demolished. Scattering lay on the floor in the dark, unable to move, expecting at any moment to b e torn apart by the phantoms bubbling up from his imagination… The day staff found him there in the morning, deeply asleep and covered in dust. They listened to his garbled explanation, treated him kindly, and agreed that a different c areer might suit his temperament. They wondered for a while about what he had been up to, night watchmen being rather puzzling people at the best of times, but put it out o f their heads…because of the find. Mr Scattering then got a job in a pet shop in Pellicool Steps, but left after three day s because the way the kittens stared at him gave him nightmares. The world can be very cruel to some people. But he never told anyone about the gloriously glittering lady hol ding a large ball over her head who smiled at him before she vanished. He did not want people to think he was strange. But perhaps it is time to talk about beds. Lectrology, the study of the bed and its associated surroundings, can be extremely usefu l and tell you a great deal about the owner, even if it’s only that they are a very know ing and savvy installations artist. The bed of Archchancellor Ridcully of Unseen University, for example, is at the very lea st a bed and a half, being an eight-poster. It encompasses a small library and a bar, an d artfully includes a shut-away privy, of mahogany and brass throughout, to save those l ong cold nocturnal excursions with their concomitant risk of tripping over slippers, emp ty bottles, shoes and all the other barriers presented to a man in the dark who is prayi ng that the next thing that stubs his toe will be porcelain, or at least easy to clean. The bed of Trevor Likely is anywhere: a friend’s floor, in the hayloft of any stable t hat has been left unlocked (which is usually a much more fragrant option), or in a roo m of an empty house (though there are precious few of those these days); or he sleeps at work (but he is always careful about that, because old man Smeems never seems to sl eep at all and might catch him at any time). Trev can sleep anywhere, and does. Glenda sleeps in an ancient iron bed,* whose springs and mattress have gently and kind ly shaped themselves around her over the years, leaving a generous depression. The bot tom of this catenary couch is held off the floor by a mulch of very cheap, yellowing r omantic novels of the kind to which the word ‘bodice’ comes naturally. She would die i f anyone found out, or possibly they will die if she finds out that they have found ou t. Usually there is, on the pillow, a very elderly teddy bear called Mr Wobble. Traditionally, in the lexicon of pathos, such a bear should have only one eye, but as th e result of a childhood error in Glenda’s sewing, he has three, and is more enlightened than the average bear. Juliet Stollop’s bed was marketed to her mother as fit for a princess, and is more or l ess like the Archchancellor’s bed, although almost all less, since it consists of some gauze curtains surrounding a very narrow, very cheap bed. Her mother is now dead. This can be inferred from the fact that when the bed collapsed under the weight of a growing girl, someone raised it up on beer crates. A mother would have made sure that at least they were, like everything else in the room, painted pink with little crowns on. Mr Nutt was seven years old before he found out that sleeping, for some people, involve d a special piece of furniture. Now it was two o’clock in the morning. A cloying silence reigned along the ancient corr idors and cloisters of Unseen University. There was silence in the Library; there was s ilence in the halls. There was so much silence you could hear it. Everywhere it went, i t stuffed the ears with invisible fluff. Gloing! The tiny sound flew past, a moment of liquid gold in the stygian silence. Silence ruled again above stairs, until it was interrupted by the shuffling of the offi cial thick-soled carpet slippers of Smeems, the Candle Knave, as he made his rounds thr oughout the long night from one candlestick to another, refilling them from his officia l basket. He was assisted tonight (although, to judge from his occasional grumbling, no t assisted enough) by a dribbler. He was called the Candle Knave because that was how the post had been described in th e university records when it was created, almost two thousand years before. Keeping t he candlesticks, sconces and, not least, the candelabra of the university filled was a never-ending job. It was, in fact, the most important job in the place, in the mind of the Candle Knave. Oh, Smeems would admit under pressure that there were men in po inty hats around, but they came and went and mostly just got in the way. Unseen Unive rsity was not rich in windows, and without the Candle Knave it would be in darkness w ithin a day. That the wizards would simply step outside and from the teeming crowds h ire another man capable of climbing ladders with pockets full of candles had never fe atured in his thoughts. He was irreplaceable, just like every other Candle Knave befo re him. And now, behind him, there was a clatter as the official folding stepladder unfolded. He spun around. ‘Hold the damn thing right!’ he hissed. ‘Sorry, master!’ said his temporary apprentice, trying to control the sliding, finger-cr ushing monster that every stepladder becomes at the first opportunity, and often without any opportunity at all. ‘And keep the noise down!’ Smeems bellowed. ‘Do you want to be a dribbler for the res t of your life?’ ‘Actually, I quite like being a dribbler, sir—’ ‘Ha! Want of ambition is the curse of the labouring class! Here, give me that thing!’ The Candle Knave snatched at the ladder just as his luckless assistant closed it. ‘Sorry about that, sir…’ ‘There’s always room for one more on the wick-dipping tank, you know,’ said Smeems , blowing on his knuckles. ‘Fair enough, sir.’ The Candle Knave stared at the grey, round, guileless face. There was an unshakeably amiable look about it that was very disconcerting, especially when you knew what it w as you were looking at. And he knew what it was, oh yes, but not what it was called. ‘What’s your name again? I can’t remember everybody’s name.’ ‘Nutt, Mister Smeems. With two t’s.’ ‘Do you think the second one helps matters, Nutt?’ ‘Not really, sir.’ ‘Where is Trev? He should be on tonight.’ ‘Been very ill, sir. Asked me to do it.’ The Candle Knave grunted. ‘You have to look smart to work above stairs, Nutts!’ ‘Nutt, sir. Sorry, sir. Was born not looking smart, sir.’ ‘Well, at least there’s no one to see you now,’ Smeems conceded. ‘All right, follow me, and try to look less…well, just try not to look.’ ‘Yes, master, but I think—’ ‘You are not paid to think, young…man.’ ‘Will try not to do so, master.’ Two minutes later Smeems was standing in front of the Emperor, watched by a suitabl y amazed Nutt. A mountain of silvery-grey tallow almost filled the isolated junction of stone corrido rs. The flame of this candle, which could just be made out to be a mega-candle aggrega ted from the stubs of many, many thousands of candles that had gone before, all dribbl ed and runnelled into one great whole, was a glow near the ceiling, too high to illumi nate anything very much. Smeems’s chest swelled. He was in the presence of History. ‘Behold, Nutts!’ ‘Yes, sir. Beholding, sir. It’s Nutt, sir.’ ‘Two thousand years look down on us from the top of this candle, Nutts. Of course, th ey look further down on you than on me.’ ‘Absolutely, sir. Well done, sir.’ Smeems glared at the round, amiable face, and saw nothing there but a slicked-down ke enness that was very nearly frightening. He grunted, then unfolded his ladder without much more than a pinched thumb, and cli mbed it carefully until it would take him no further. From this base camp generation s of Candle Knaves had carved and maintained steps up the hubward face of the giant. ‘Feast your eyes on this, lad,’ he called down, his ground-state bad temper somewhat moderated by this contact with greatness. ‘One day you might be the…man to climb th is hallowed tallow!’ For a moment, Nutt looked like someone trying hard to disguise the expression of a per son who seriously hopes that his future holds more than a big candle. Nutt was young a nd as such did not have that reverence for age that is had by, mostly, the aged. But t he cheerful not-quite-smile came back. It never went away for long. ‘Yessir,’ he said, on the basis that this generally worked. Some people claimed that the Emperor had been lit on the very night that UU was foun ded, and had never gone out since. Certainly the Emperor was huge, and was what you got when, every night for maybe two thousand years, you lit a new fat candle from th e guttering remains of the last one and pressed it firmly into the warm wax. There w as no visible candlestick now, of course. That was somewhere in the vast accumulatio n of waxy dribbles on the next floor down. Around a thousand years ago, the university had had a large hole made in the ceiling of the corridor below, and already the Emperor was seventeen feet high up here. There was thirty-eight feet in total of pure, natural, dribbled candle. It made Smeems proud. He was keeper of the candle that never went out. It was an example to everyone, a light t hat never failed, a flame in the dark, a beacon of tradition. And Unseen University too k tradition very seriously, at least when it remembered to. As now, in fact… From somewhere in the distance came a sound like a large duck being trodden on, foll owed by a cry of ‘Ho, the Megapode!’ And then all hell eventuated. A…creature plunged out of the gloom. There is a phrase ‘neither flesh nor fowl nor good red herring’. This thing was all of them, plus some other bits of beasts unknown to science or nightmare or even kebab. T here was certainly some red, and a lot of flapping, and Nutt was sure he caught a glim pse of an enormous sandal, but there were the mad, rolling, bouncing eyes, the huge ye llow and red beak and then the thing disappeared down another gloomy corridor, incessa ntly making that flat honking noise of the sort duck hunters make just before they are shot by other duck hunters. ‘Aho! The Megapode!’ It wasn’t clear where the cry came from. It seemed to be com ing from everywhere. ‘There she bumps! Ho, the Megapode!’ The cry was taken up on every side, and from the dark shadows of every corridor, bar t he one down which the beast had fled, galloped curious shapes, which turned out to be, by the flickering light of the Emperor, the senior faculty of the university. Each wi zard was being carried piggy-back by a stout bowler-hatted university porter, whom he was urging onward by means of a bottle of beer on a string held, as tradition demanded , ahead of the porter’s grasp on a long stick. The doleful quack rang out again, some distance away, and a wizard waved his staff in the air and yelled: ‘Bird is Flown! Ho, the Megapode!’ The colliding wizardry, who’d already crushed Smeems’s rickety ladder under the hobnail ed boots of their steeds, set off at once, butting and barging for position. For a little while ‘Aho! The Megapode!’ echoed in the distance. When he was certain they had gone, Nutt crept out from his refuge behind the Emperor, picked up what rem ained of the ladder, and looked around. ‘Master?’ he ventured. There was a grunt from above. He looked up. ‘Are you all right, master?’ ‘I have been better, Nutts. Can you see my feet?’ Nutt raised his lantern. ‘Yes, master. I’m sorry to say the ladder is broken.’ ‘Well, do something about it. I’m having to concentrate on my handholds here.’ ‘I thought I wasn’t paid to think, master.’ ‘Don’t you try to be smart!’ ‘Can I try to be smart enough to get you down safely, master?’ No answer was the stern reply. Nutt sighed, and opened up the big canvas tool bag. Smeems clung to the vertiginous candle as he heard, down below, mysterious scrapings and clinking noises. Then, with a silence and suddenness that made him gasp, a spik y shape rose up beside him, swaying slightly. ‘I’ve screwed together three of the big snuffer poles, master,’ said Nutt from below. ‘ And you’ll see there’s a chandelier hook stuck in the top, yes? And there’s a rope. Can you see it? I think that if you can make a loop around the Emperor it won’t slip much and you ought to be able to let yourself down slowly. Oh, and there’s a box of matches, too.’ ‘What for?’ said Smeems, reaching out for the hook. ‘Can’t help noticing that the Emperor has gone out, sir,’ said the voice from below, che erfully. ‘No it hasn’t!’ ‘I think you’ll find it has, sir, because I can’t see the—’ ‘There is no room in this university’s most important department for people with bad ey esight, Nutts!’ ‘I beg your pardon, master. I don’t know what came over me. Suddenly I can see the fl ame!’ From above came the sound of a match being struck, and a circle of yellow light expand ed on the ceiling as the candle that never went out was lit. Shortly afterwards Smeems very gingerly lowered himself to the floor. ‘Well done, sir,’ said Nutt. The Candle Knave flicked a length of congealed candle dribble off his equally greasy sh irt. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘But you’ll have to come back in the morning to recover the—’ B ut Nutt was already going up the rope like a spider. There was a clanging on the othe r side of the great candle as the lengths of snuffer pole were dropped, and then the boy abseiled back down to his master with the hook under his arm. And now he stood th ere all eagerness and scrubbed (if somewhat badly dressed) efficiency. There was some thing almost offensive about it. And the Candle Knave wasn’t used to this. He felt ob liged to take the lad down a peg, for his own good. ‘All candles in this university must be lit by long taper from a candle that still burns, boy,’ he said sternly. ‘Where did you get those matches?’ ‘I wouldn’t like to say, sir.’ ‘I dare say you wouldn’t, indeed! Now tell me, boy!’ ‘I don’t want to get anyone into trouble, master.’ ‘Your reluctance does you credit, but I insist,’ said the Candle Knave. ‘Er, they fell out of your jacket when you were climbing up, master.’ Off in the distance was one last cry: ‘The Megapode is catched!’ But around the Empero r silence listened with its mouth open. ‘You are mistaken, Nutts,’ said Smeems slowly. ‘I think you will find that one of the gentlemen must have dropped them.’ ‘Ah, yes, that’s certainly what must have happened, sir. I must learn not to jump to con clusions.’ Once again, the Candle Knave had that off-balance feeling. ‘Well, then, we will say no more about it,’ was all he managed. ‘What was it that happened just then, sir?’ said Nutt. ‘Oh, that? That was all part of one of the gentlemen’s magically essential magical activ ities, lad. It was vital to the proper running of the world, I’ll be bound, oh yes. Coul d be they was setting the stars in their courses, even. It’s one of them things we have to do, you know,’ he added, carefully insinuating himself into the company of wizardry. ‘Only it looked like a skinny man with a big wooden duck strapped to his head.’ ‘Ah, well, it may have looked like that, come to think of it, but that was because that’s how it looks to people like us, what are not gifted with the ocular sight.’ ‘You mean it was some sort of metaphor?’ Smeems handled this quite well in the circumstances, which included being so deeply at sea with that sentence that barnacles would be attracted to his underwear. ‘That’s righ t,’ he said. ‘It could be a meta for something that didn’t look so stupid.’ ‘Exactly, master.’ Smeems looked down at the boy. It’s not his fault, he thought, he can’t help what he is. An uncharacteristic moment of warmth overtook him. ‘You’re a bright lad,’ he said. ‘There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be head dribbler o ne day.’ ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Nutt, ‘but if you don’t mind I was rather hoping for something a b it more in the fresh air, so to speak.’ ‘Ah,’ said Smeems, ‘that could be a bit…tricky, as you might say.’ ‘Yes, sir. I know.’ ‘It’s just that there’s a lot of—well, look, it’s not me, it’s…it’s…well, you know. It’s people. You know what people are like.’ ‘Yes. I know what people are like.’ Looks like a scarecrow, talks posh like one of the gentlemen, Smeems thought. Bright as a button, grubby as a turd. He felt moved to pat the little…fellow on his curiously sp herical head, but desisted. ‘Best if you stay down in the vats,’ he said. ‘It’s nice and warm, you’ve got your own be droll, and it’s all snug and safe, eh?’ To his relief the boy was silent as they walked down the passages, but then Nutt said, in a thoughtful tone of voice, ‘I was just wondering, sir…How often has the candle th at never goes out…not gone out?’ Smeems bit back the stinging retort. For some reason he knew it could only build up tro uble in the long run. ‘The candle that never goes out has failed to go out three times since I’ve been Candle K nave, lad,’ he said. ‘It’s a record!’ ‘An enviable achievement, sir.’ ‘Damn right! And that’s even with all the strangeness there’s been happening lately.’ ‘Really, sir?’ said Nutt. ‘Have stranger than usual things been happening?’ ‘Young…man, stranger than usual things happen all the time.’ ‘One of the scullery boys told me that all the toilets on the Tesseractical floor turned in to sheep yesterday,’ said Nutt. ‘I should like to see that.’ ‘I shouldn’t go further than the sculleries, if I was you,’ said Smeems, quickly. ‘And don’t worry about what the gentlemen do. They are the finest minds in the world, let me tell you. If you was to ask ’em…’ He paused, trying to think of something really diffi cult, like, ‘What is 864 times 316…?’ ‘273,024,’ said Nutt, not quite under his breath. ‘What?’ said Smeems, derailed. ‘Just thinking aloud, master,’ said Nutt. ‘Oh. Right. Er…Well that’s it, see? They’d have an answer for you in a brace of shakes . Finest minds in the world,’ said Smeems, who believed in truth via repetition. ‘Fine st minds. Engaged in the business of the universe. Finest minds!’ ‘Well, that was fun,’ said Mustrum Ridcully, Archchancellor of the university, throw ing himself into a huge armchair in the faculty’s Uncommon Room with such force that it nearly threw him out again. ‘We must do it again some time.’ ‘Yes, sir. We will. In one hundred years,’ said the new Master of The Traditions smug ly, turning over the pages in his huge book. He reached the crackling leaf headed Hun ting the Megapode, wrote down the date and the amount of time it had taken to find th e aforesaid Megapode, and signed his name with a flourish: Ponder Stibbons. ‘What is a Megapode, anyway?’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, helping himself to the port. ‘A type of bird, I believe,’ said the Archchancellor, waving a hand towards the drinks t rolley. ‘After me.’ ‘The original Megapode was found in the under-butler’s pantry,’ said the Master of Th e Traditions. ‘It escaped in the middle of dinner and caused what my predecessor elev en hundred years ago called…’ he referred to the book, ‘“a veritable heyhoe-rumbelow as all the Fellows pursued it through the college buildings with much mirth and good spirits”.’ ‘Why?’ said the head of the Department of Post-Mortem Communications, deftly snatchin g the decanter full of good spirits as it went past. ‘Oh, you can’t have a Megapode running around loose, Doctor Hix,’ said Ridcully. ‘Any one’ll tell you that.’ ‘No, I meant why do we do it again every hundred years?’ said the head of the Depa rtment of Post-Mortem Communications.* The Senior Wrangler turned his face away and murmured, ‘Oh, good gods…’ ‘It’s a tradition,’ the Chair of Indefinite Studies explained, rolling a cigarette. ‘We have to have traditions.’ ‘They’re traditional,’ said Ridcully. He beckoned to one of the servants. ‘And I don’ t mind saying that this one has made me somewhat peckish. Can you fetch the cheeseboa rds one to five, please? And, um, some of that cold roast beef, some ham, a few biscu its and, of course, the pickle carts.’ He looked up. ‘Anyone want to add anything?’ ‘I could toy fitfully with a little fruit,’ said the Professor of Recondite Phenomena. ‘ How about you, Librarian?’ ‘Ook,’ growled the figure hogging the fire. ‘Yes, of course,’ said the Archchancellor. He waved a hand at the hovering waiter. ‘T he fruit trolley as well. See to it, please, Downbody. And…perhaps that new girl coul d bring it up? She ought to get used to the Uncommon Room.’ It was as if he had just spoken a magic spell. The room, its ceiling hazy with blue sm oke, was suddenly awash with a sort of heavy, curiously preoccupied silence mostly due to dreamy speculation, but in a few rare cases owing to distant memory. The new girl…At the mere thought, elderly hearts beat dangerously. Very seldom did beauty intrude into the daily life of UU, which was as masculine as th e smell of old socks and pipe smoke and, given the faculty’s general laxness when it c ame to knocking out their pipes, the smell of smoking socks as well. Mrs Whitlow, the housekeeper, she of the clanking chatelaine and huge creaking corset that caused the C hair of Indefinite Studies to swoon when he heard it, generally took great care to sel ect staff who, while being female, were not excessively so, and tended to be industrio us, clean in their habits, rosy cheeked and, in short, the kind of ladies who are neve r too far from gingham and an apple pie. This suited the wizards, who liked to be not far away from an apple pie themselves, although they could take gingham or leave it alone. Why, then, had the housekeeper employed Juliet? What could she have been thinking of? The girl had come into the place like a new world in a solar system, and the balance of the heavens was subtly wobbling. And, indeed, as she advanced, so was Juliet. By custom and practice, wizards were celibate, in theory because women were distracting and bad for the magical organs, but after a week of Juliet’s presence many of the facu lty were subject to (mostly) unfamiliar longings and strange dreams, and were finding t hings rather hard, but you couldn’t really put your finger on it: what she had went bey ond beauty. It was a sort of distillation of beauty that travelled around with her, unc oiling itself into the surrounding ether. When she walked past, the wizards felt the ur ge to write poetry and buy flowers. ‘You may be interested to know, gentlemen,’ said the new Master of The Traditions, ‘th at tonight’s was the longest chase ever recorded in the history of the tradition. I su ggest we owe a vote of thanks to tonight’s Megapode…’ He realized the statement had plummeted on to deaf ears. ‘Er, gentlemen?’ he said. He looked up. The wizards were staring, in a soulful sort of way, at whatever was going on inside their heads. ‘Gentlemen?’ he said again, and this time there was a collective sigh as they woke up from their sudden attack of daydreaming. ‘What say?’ said the Archchancellor. ‘I was just remarking that tonight’s Megapode was undoubtedly the finest on record, A rchchancellor. It was Rincewind. The official Megapode headdress suited him very well , all things considered. I think he’s gone for a lie down.’ ‘What? Oh, that. Well, yes. Indeed. Well done, that man,’ said Ridcully, and the wizar ds commenced that slow handclapping and table-thumping which is the mark of appreciati on amongst men of a certain age, class and girth, accompanied by cries of ‘Ver’, ver’ well done, that man!’ and ‘Jolly good!’ But eyes stayed firmly fixed on the doorway, a nd ears strained for the rattle of the trolley, which would herald the arrival of the new girl and, of course, one hundred and seven types of cheese, and more than seventy different varieties of pickles, chutneys and other tracklements. The new girl might be the very paradigm of beauty, but UU was not the place for a man who could forget his cheeses. Well, she was a distraction at least, Ponder thought as he snapped the book shut, and t he university needed a few of them right now. It had been tricky since the Dean had lef t, very tricky indeed. Whoever heard of a man resigning from UU? It was something that simply did not happen! Sometimes people left in disgrace, in a box or, in a few cases, in bits, but there was no tradition of resigning at all. Tenure at Unseen University wa s for life, and often a long way beyond. The office of Master of The Traditions had fallen inevitably on Ponder Stibbons, who tended to get all the jobs that required someone who thought that things should happe n on time and that numbers should add up. Regrettably, when he’d gone to check on things with the previous Master of The Tradit ions, who, everyone agreed, had not been seen around and about lately, he’d found tha t the man had been dead for two hundred years. This wasn’t a wholly unusual circumsta nce. Ponder, after years at Unseen, still didn’t know the full size of the faculty. H ow could you keep track of them in a place like this these days, where hundreds of st udies all shared one window, but only on the outside, or rooms drifted away from thei r doorways during the night, travelled intangibly through the slumbering halls and en ded up docking quite elsewhere? A wizard could do what he liked in his own study, and in the old days that had largely meant smoking anything he fancied and farting hugely without apologizing. These days it meant building out into a congruent set of dimensions. Even the Archchancellor was doing it, which made it hard for Ponder to protest: he had half a mile of trout stream in his bathroom, and claimed that messin’ about in his study was what kept a wizard o ut of mischief. And, as everyone knew, it did. It generally got him into trouble inste ad. Ponder had let that go, because he now saw it as his mission in life to stoke the fires that kept Mustrum Ridcully bubbling and made the university a happy place. As a dog re flects the mood of its owner, so a university reflects its Archchancellor. All he could do now, as the university’s sole self-confessed entirely sensible person, was to steer things as best he could, keep away from squalls involving the person previously known as the Dean, and find ways of keeping the Archchancellor too occupied to get under Pond er’s feet. Ponder was about to put the Book of Traditions away when the heavy pages flopped ov er. ‘That’s odd.’ ‘Oh, those old book bindings get very stiff,’ said Ridcully. ‘They have a life of their own, sometimes.’ ‘Has anyone heard of Professor H. F. Pullunder, or Doctor Erratamus?’ The faculty stopped watching the door and looked at one another. ‘Ring a bell, anyone?’ said Ridcully. ‘Not a tinkle,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, cheerfully. The Archchancellor turned to his left. ‘What about you, Dean? You know all the old— ’ Ponder groaned. The rest of the wizards shut their eyes and braced themselves. This mi ght be bad. Ridcully stared down at two empty chairs, with the imprint of a buttock in each one. On e or two of the faculty pulled their hats down over their faces. It had been two weeks now, and it had not got any better. He took a deep breath and roared: ‘Traitor!’–which was a terrible thing to say to two di mples in leather. The Chair of Indefinite Studies gave Ponder Stibbons a nudge, indicating that he was th e chosen sacrifice for today, again. Again. ‘Just for a handful of silver he left us!’ said Ridcully, to the universe in general. Ponder cleared his throat. He’d really hoped the Megapode hunt would take the Archcha ncellor’s mind off the subject, but Ridcully’s mind kept on swinging back to the abse nt Dean the way a tongue plunges back to the site of a missing tooth. ‘Er, in point of fact, I believe his remuneration is at least—’ he began, but in Ridcull y’s current mood no answer would be the right one. ‘Remuneration? Since when did a wizard work for wages? We are pure academics, Mis ter Stibbons! We do not care for mere money!’ Unfortunately, Ponder was a clear logical thinker who, in times of mental confusion, fell back on reason and honesty, which, when dealing with an angry Archchancellor, we re, to use the proper academic term, unhelpful. And he neglected to think strategical ly, always a mistake when talking to fellow academics, and as a result made the mista ke of employing, as at this point, common sense. ‘That’s because we never actually pay for anything very much,’ he said, ‘and if anyone needs any petty cash they just help themselves from the big jar—’ ‘We are part of the very fabric of the university, Mister Stibbons! We take only what we require! We do not seek wealth! And most certainly we do not accept a “post of vi tal importance which includes an attractive package of remuneration”, whatever the he lls that means, “and other benefits including a generous pension”! A pension, mark yo u! When ever has a wizard retired?’ ‘Well. Doctor Earwig—’ Ponder began, unable to stop himself. ‘He left to get married!’ snapped Ridcully. ‘That’s not retirin’, that’s the same as dyin’. ’ ‘What about Doctor Housemartin?’ Ponder went on. The Lecturer in Recent Runes kicked him on the ankle, but Ponder merely said, ‘Ouch!’ and continued. ‘He left with a bad case of work-related frogs, sir!’ ‘If you can’t stand the heat, get off the pot,’ muttered Ridcully. Things were subsidi ng a bit now, and the pointy hats were tentatively raised. The Archchancellor’s little moments only lasted a few minutes. This would have been more comforting were it not f or the fact that at approximately five-minute intervals something suddenly reminded hi m of what he considered to be the Dean’s totally treasonable activity, to wit, applyin g for and getting a job at another university via a common advertisement in a newspape r. That was not how a prince of magic behaved. He didn’t sit in front of a panel of dr apers, greengrocers and bootmakers (wonderful people though they may be, salt of the e arth, no doubt, but even so…) to be judged and assessed like some champion terrier (ha d his teeth counted, no doubt!). He’d let down the entire brotherhood of wizardry, tha t’s what he’d done— There was a squeaking of wheels out in the corridor, and every wizard stiffened in ant icipation. The door swung open and the first overloaded trolley was pushed in. There was a series of sighs as every eye focused on the maid who was pushing it, and th en some rather louder sighs when they realized that she was not, as it were, the intend ed. She wasn’t ugly. She might be called homely, perhaps, but it was quite a nice home, cl ean and decent and with roses round the door and a welcome on the mat and an apple pie in the oven. But the thoughts of the wizards were, astonishingly, not on food at this point, although some of them were still a bit hazy as to why not. She was, in fact, quite a pleasant looking girl, even if her bosom had clearly been intend ed for a girl two feet taller; but she was not Her.* The faculty was crestfallen, but it brightened up considerably as the caravan of trolley s wound its way into the room. There was nothing like a 3 a.m. snack to raise the spirit s, everyone knew that. Well, Ponder thought, at least we’ve got through the evening without anything breaking. Better than Tuesday, at least. It is a well-known fact in any organization that, if you want a job done, you should giv e it to someone who is already very busy. It has been the cause of a number of homicides , and in one case the death of a senior director from having his head shut repeatedly in quite a small filing cabinet. In UU, Ponder Stibbons was that busy man. He had come to enjoy it. For one thing, most of the jobs he was asked to do did not need doing, and most of the senior wizards did not care if they were not done, provided they were not not done by themselves. Beside s, Ponder was very good at thinking up efficient little systems to save time, and was, in particular, very proud of his system for writing the minutes of meetings, which he had devised with the help of Hex, the university’s increasingly useful thinking engin e. A detailed analysis of past minutes, coupled with Hex’s enormous predictive abiliti es, meant that for a simple range of easily accessible givens, such as the agenda (whi ch Ponder controlled in any case), the committee members, the time since breakfast, th e time to dinner, and so on, in most cases the minutes could be written beforehand. All in all, he considered that he was doing his bit in maintaining UU in its self-chose n course of amiable, dynamic stagnation. It was always a rewarding effort, knowing the alternative, to keep things that way. But a page that turns itself was, to Ponder, an anomaly. Now, while the sound of the p re-breakfast supper grew around him, he smoothed out the page and read, carefully. Glenda would have cheerfully broken a plate over Juliet’s sweet, empty head when the gi rl finally turned up in the Night Kitchen. At least, she would cheerfully have thought about it, in quite a deliberate way, but there was no point in losing her temper, becau se its target was not really much good at noticing what other people were thinking. The re wasn’t a nasty bone in Juliet’s body, it’s just that she had a great deal of trouble homing in on the idea that someone was trying to be unpleasant to her. So Glenda made do with ‘Where have you been? I told Mrs Whitlow you’d gone home ill. Your dad’ll be worried sick! And it looks bad to the other girls.’ Juliet slumped into a chair, with a movement so graceful that it seemed to sing. ‘Went to the football, didn’t I. You know, we were playing those buggers in Dimwell.’ ‘Until three in the morning?’ ‘That’s the rules, innit? Play until full time, first dead man or first score.’ ‘Who won?’ ‘Dunno.’ ‘You don’t know?’ ‘When we left it was being decided on head wounds. Anyway, I went with Rotten Johnn y, didn’t I.’ ‘I thought you’d broken up with him.’ ‘He bought me supper, didn’t ’e.’ ‘You shouldn’t have gone. That’s not the sort of thing you should do.’ ‘Like you know?’ said Juliet, who sometimes thought that questions were answers. ‘Just do the washing-up, will you?’ said Glenda. And I’ll have to do it again after you , she thought, as her best friend drifted over to the line of big stone sinks. Juliet d idn’t exactly wash dishes, she gave them a light baptism. Wizards weren’t the type of p eople who noticed yesterday’s dried egg on the plate, but Mrs Whitlow could see it from two rooms away. Glenda liked Juliet, she really did, although sometimes she wondered why. Of course, they’d grown up together, but it had always amazed her that Juliet, who was so beauti ful that boys went nervous and occasionally fainted as she passed, could be so, well, dumb about everything. In fact it was Glenda who had grown up. She wasn’t sure about Juliet; sometimes it seemed to Glenda that she had done the growing up for both of t hem. ‘Look, you just have to scrub a bit, that’s all,’ she snapped after a few seconds of list less dipping, and took the brush out of Juliet’s perfect hand, and then, as the grease wa s sent down the drain, she thought: I’ve done it again. Actually, I’ve done it again agai n. How many times is that? I even used to play with her dolls for her! Plate after plate sparkled under Glenda’s hands. Nothing cleans stubborn stains like su ppressed anger. Rotten Johnny, she thought. Ye gods, he smells of cat wee! He’s the only boy stupid en ough to think he’s got a chance. Good grief, she’s got a figure like that and all she ever dates are total knobheads! What would she do without me? After this brief excitement, the Night Kitchen settled into its routine and those who had been referred to as ‘the other girls’ got on with their familiar tasks. It has t o be said that girlhood for most of them had ended a long time previously, but they w ere good workers and Glenda was proud of them. Mrs Hedges ran the cheeseboards like a champion. Mildred and Rachel, known officially on the payroll as the vegetable women , were good and reliable, and indeed it was Mildred who had come up with the famous r ecipe for beetroot and cream cheese sandwiches. Everybody knew their job. Everybody did their job. The Night Kitchen was reliable and Glenda liked reliable. She had a home to go to and made sure she went to it at least once a day, but the Night Kitchen was where she lived. It was her fortress. Ponder Stibbons stared at the page in front of him. His mind filled up with nasty quest ions, the biggest and nastiest of which was simply: Is there any way at all in which pe ople can make out that this is my fault? No. Good! ‘Er, there is one tradition here that regrettably we don’t appear to have honoured for some considerable time, Archchancellor,’ he said, managing to keep the concern out of h is voice. ‘Well, does that matter?’ said Ridcully, stretching. ‘It is traditional, Archchancellor,’ said Ponder reproachfully. ‘Although I might go so f ar as to say that not observing it has now, alas, become the tradition.’ ‘Well, that’s fine, isn’t it?’ said Ridcully. ‘If we can make a tradition of not observing another tradition, then that’s doubly traditional, eh? What’s the problem?’ ‘It’s Archchancellor Preserved Bigger’s Bequest,’ said the Master of The Traditions. ‘T he university does very well out of the Bigger estates. They were a very rich family.’ ‘Hmm, yes. Name rings a faint bell. Decent of him. So?’ ‘Er, I would have been happier had my predecessor paid a little more attention to some of the traditions,’ said Ponder, who believed in drip-feeding bad news. ‘Well, he was dead.’ ‘Yes, of course. Perhaps, sir, we should, ahem, start a tradition of checking on the hea lth of the Master of The Traditions?’ ‘Oh, he was quite healthy,’ said the Archchancellor. ‘Just dead. Quite healthy for a de ad man.’ ‘He was a pile of dust, Archchancellor!’ ‘That’s not the same as being ill, exactly,’ said Ridcully, who believed in never giving i n. ‘Broadly speaking, it’s stable.’ Ponder said, ‘There is a condition attached to the bequest. It’s in the small print, sir.’ ‘Oh, I never bother with small print, Stibbons!’ ‘I do, sir. It says: “…and thys shall follow as long as the University shall enter a tea m in the game of foot-the-ball or Poore Boys’ Funne”.’ ‘Porree boy’s funny?’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. ‘That’s ridiculous!’ said Ridcully. ‘Ridiculous or not, Archchancellor, that is the condition of the bequest.’ ‘But we stopped taking part in that years ago,’ said Ridcully. ‘Mobs in the streets, kicking and punching and yelling…and they were the players! Mark you, the spectators were nearly as bad! There were hundreds of men in a team! A game could go on for days ! That’s why it was stopped.’ ‘Actually, it has never been stopped as such, Archchancellor,’ said the Senior Wrangle r. ‘We stopped, yes, and so did the guilds. It was no longer a game for gentlemen.’ ‘Nevertheless,’ said the Master of The Traditions, running a finger down the page, ‘suc h are the terms. There are all sorts of other conditions. Oh, dear. Oh, calamity. Oh, s urely not…’ His lips moved silently as he read on. The room craned as one neck. ‘Well, out with it, man!’ roared Ridcully. ‘I think I’d like to check a few things,’ said the Master of The Traditions. ‘I would no t wish to worry you unduly.’ He glanced down. ‘Oh, hells’ bells!’ ‘What are you talking about, man?’ ‘Well, it looks as though—No, it would be unfair to spoil your evening, Archchancel lor,’ Ponder protested. ‘I must be reading this wrongly. He surely can’t mean—Oh, g ood heavens…’ ‘In a nutshell, please, Stibbons,’ growled Ridcully. ‘I believe I am the Archchancellor o f this university? I’m sure it says so on my door.’ ‘Of course, Archchancellor, but it would be quite wrong of me to—’ ‘I appreciate that you do not wish to spoil my evening, sir,’ said Ridcully. ‘But I woul d not hesitate to spoil your day tomorrow. With that in mind, what the hells are you tal king about?’ ‘Er, it would appear, Archchancellor, that, er…When was the last game we took part i n, do you know?’ ‘Anyone?’ said Ridcully to the room in general. A mumbled discussion produced a cons ensus on the theme of ‘Around twenty years, give or take.’ ‘Give or take what, exactly?’ said Ponder, who hated this kind of thing. ‘Oh, you know. Something of that order. In the general vicinity of, so to speak. Round about then. You know.’ ‘About?’ said Ponder. ‘Can we be more precise?’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because if the university hasn’t played in the Poor Boys’ Fun for a period of twenty y ears or more, the bequest reverts to any surviving relatives of Archchancellor Bigger.’ ‘But it’s banned, man!’ the Archchancellor insisted. ‘Er, not as such. It’s common knowledge that Lord Vetinari doesn’t like it, but I unders tand that if the games are outside the city centre and confined to the back streets, the Watch turns a blind eye. Since I would imagine that the supporters and players easily o utnumber the entire Watch payroll, I suppose it is better than having to turn a broken n ose.’ ‘That’s quite a neat turn of phrase there, Mister Stibbons,’ said Ridcully. ‘I’m quite sur prised at you.’ ‘Thank you, Archchancellor,’ said Ponder. He had in fact got it from a leader in the T imes, which the wizards did not like much because it either did not print what they sa id or printed what they said with embarrassing accuracy. Emboldened, he added, ‘I should point out, though, that under UU law, Archchancellor, a ban doesn’t matter. Wizards are not supposed to take notice of such a ban. We are not subject to mundane law.’ ‘Of course. But nevertheless it is generally convenient to acknowledge the civil power ,’ said Ridcully, speaking like a man choosing his words with such care that he was me taphorically taking some of them outside to look at them more closely in daylight. The wizards nodded. What they had heard was: ‘Vetinari may have his little foibles, bu t he’s the sanest man we’ve had on the throne in centuries, he leaves us alone, and yo u never know what he’s got up his sleeve.’ You couldn’t argue with that. ‘All right, Stibbons, what do you suggest?’ said Ridcully. ‘These days you only ever te ll me about a problem when you’ve thought up a solution. I respect this, although I fin d it a bit creepy. Got a way to wriggle us out of this, have you?’ ‘I suppose so, sir. I thought we might, well, put up a team. It doesn’t say anything about winning, sir. We just have to play, that’s all.’ It was always beautifully warm in the candle vats. Regrettably, it was also extremely h umid and rather noisy in an erratic and unexpected way. This was because the giant pipe s of Unseen University’s central heating and hot water system passed overhead, slung fr om the ceiling on a series of metal straps with a greater or lesser coefficient of line ar expansion. That was only the start, however. There were also the huge pipes for bala ncing the slood differential across the university, the pipe for the anthropic particle flux suppressor, which did not work properly these days, the pipes for the air circula tion, which had not worked either since the donkey had been ill, and the very ancient t ubes that were all that remained of the ill-fated attempt by a previous archchancellor to operate a university communication system by means of trained marmosets. At certain times of the day all this piping broke into a subterranean symphony of gurgles, twangs, upsetting organic trickling sounds and, occasionally, an inexplicable boinging noise t hat would reverberate through the cellar levels. The general ad hoc nature of the system’s construction was enhanced by the fact that, as an economy measure, the big iron hot water pipes were lagged with old clothing he ld on by string. Since some of these items had once been wizards’ apparel, and howeve r hard you scrubbed you could never get all of the spells out, there were sporadic sh owers of multicoloured sparks and the occasional ping-pong ball. Despite everything, Nutt felt at home down among the vats. It was worrying; in the high country, people in the street had jeered at him that he’d been made in a vat. Although Brother Oats had told him that this was silly, the gently bubbling tallow called to hi m. He felt at peace here. He ran the vats now. Smeems didn’t know, because he hardly ever troubled to come down here. Trev knew, of course, but since Nutt doing his job for him meant that he could spend more time kicking a tin can around on some bit of wasteground he was happy. Th e opinion of the other dribblers and dippers didn’t really count; if you worked in th e vats it meant that, as far as the job market was concerned, you had been still acce lerating when you’d hit the bottom of the barrel and had been drilled into the bedroc k. It meant that you no longer had enough charisma to be a beggar. It meant that you were on the run from something, possibly the gods themselves, or the demons inside yo u. It meant that if you dared to look up you would see, high above you, the dregs of society. Best, then, to stay down here in the warm gloom, with enough to eat and no i nconvenient encounters and, Nutt added in his head, no beatings. No, the dippers were no problem. He did his best for them when he could. Life itself h ad beaten them so hard that they had no strength left to beat up anyone else. That was helpful. When people found out that you were a goblin, all you could expect was troub le. He remembered what the people in the villages had shouted at him when he was small and the word would be followed by a stone. Goblin. It was a word with an ox-train-load of baggage. It didn’t matter what you sai d or did, or made, the train ran right over you. He’d shown them the things he’d buil t, and the stones had smashed them while the villagers screamed at him like hunting h awks and shouted more words. That had stopped on the day Pastor Oats rode gently into town, if a bunch of hovels a nd one street of stamped mud could be called a town, and he had brought…forgiveness. But on that day, no one had wanted to be forgiven. In the darkness, Concrete the troll, who was so gooned out on Slab, Slice, Sleek and S lump, and who would even snort iron filings if Nutt didn’t stop him, whimpered on his mattress. Nutt lit a fresh candle and wound up his home-made dribbling aid. It whirred away hap pily, and made the flame go horizontal. He paid attention to his work. A good dribble r never turned the candle when he dribbled; candles in the wild, as it were, almost n ever dripped in more than one direction, which was away from the draught. No wonder t he wizards liked the ones he made; there was something disconcerting about a candle t hat appeared to have dribbled in every direction at once. It could put a man off his stroke.* He worked fast, and was putting the nineteenth well-dribbled candle in the delivery ba sket when he heard the clank of a tin can being bowled along the stone floor of the pa ssage. ‘Good morning, Mister Trev,’ he said, without looking up. A moment later an empty tin can landed in front of him, on end, with no more ceremony than a jigsaw piece fallin g into place. ‘How did you know it was me, Gobbo?’ ‘Your leitmotif, Mister Trev. And I’d prefer Nutt, thank you.’ ‘What’s one o’ them motifs?’ said the voice behind him. ‘It is a repeated theme or chord associated with a particular person or place, Mister T rev,’ said Nutt, carefully placing two more warm candles in the basket. ‘I was referrin g to your love of kicking a tin can about. You seem in good spirits, sir. How went the day?’ ‘You what?’ ‘Did Fortune favour Dimwell last night?’ ‘What are you on about?’ Nutt pulled back further. It could be dangerous not to fit in, not to be helpful, not to be careful. ‘Did you win, sir?’ ‘Nah. Another no-score draw. Waste of time, really. But it was only a friendly. Nobody d ied.’ Trev looked at the full baskets of realistically dribbled candles. ‘That’s a shitload you’ve done there, kid,’ he said kindly. Nutt hesitated again, and then said, very carefully, ‘Despite the scatological reference , you approve of the large but unspecified number of candles that I have dribbled for yo u?’ ‘Blimey, what was that all about, Gobbo?’ Frantically, Nutt sought for an acceptable translation. ‘I done okay?’ he ventured. Trev slapped him on the back. ‘Yeah! Good job! Respect! But you gotta learn to speak more proper, you know. You wu’nt last five minutes down our way. You’d probably get a half-brick heaved at yer.’ ‘That has, I mean ’as been known to…’appen,’ said Nutt, concentrating. ‘I never seen why people make such a to-do,’ said Trev generously. ‘So there were all th ose big battles? So what? It was a long time ago and a long way away, right, an’ it’s no t like the trolls and dwarfs weren’t as bad as you lot, ain’t I right? I mean, goblins? What was that all about? You lot jus’ cut throats and nicked stuff, right? That’s practi cally civilized in some streets round here.’ Probably, Nutt thought. No one could have been neutral when the Dark War had engulfed Far Uberwald. Maybe there had been true evil there, but apparently the evil was, odd ly enough, always on the other side. Perhaps it was contagious. Somehow, in all the c onfusing histories that had been sung or written, the goblins were down as nasty cowa rdly little bastards who collected their own earwax and were always on the other side . Alas, when the time came to write their story down, his people hadn’t even had a pe ncil. Smile at people. Like them. Be helpful. Accumulate worth. He liked Trev. He was good a t liking people. When you clearly liked people, they were slightly more inclined to li ke you. Every little helped. Trev, though, seemed genuinely unfussed about history, and had recognized that having someone in the vats who not only did not try to eat the tallow but also did most of hi s work for him and, at that, did it better than he could be bothered to do it himself, was an asset worth protecting. Besides, he was congenially lazy, except when it came to foot-the-ball, and bigotry took too much effort. Trev never made too much effort. T rev went through life on primrose paths. ‘Master Smeems came looking for you,’ said Nutt. ‘I sorted it all out.’ ‘Ta,’ said Trev, and that was that. No questions. He liked Trev. But the boy was standing there, just staring at him, as if trying to work him out. ‘Tell you what,’ Trev said. ‘Come on up to the Night Kitchen and we’ll scrounge break fast, okay?’ ‘Oh no, Mister Trev,’ said Nutt, almost dropping a candle. ‘I don’t think, sorry, fink, I ought to.’ ‘Come on, who’s going to know? And there’s a fat girl up there who cooks great stuff. Best food you ever tasted.’ Nutt hesitated. Always agree, always be helpful, always be becoming, never frighten a nyone. ‘I fink I will come with you,’ he said. There’s a lot to be said for scrubbing a frying pan until you can see your face in it, e specially if you’ve been entertaining ideas of gently tapping someone on the head with i t. Glenda was not in the mood for Trev when he came up the stone steps, kissed her on th e back of the neck and said cheerfully, ‘ ’ullo, darlin’, what’s hot tonight?’ ‘Nothing for the likes of you, Trevor Likely,’ she said, batting him away with the pan, ‘and you can keep your hands to yourself, thank you!’ ‘Not bin keeping somethin’ warm for your best man?’ Glenda sighed. ‘There’s bubble and squeak in the warming oven and don’t say a word i f anyone catches you,’ she said. ‘Just the job for a man who’s bin workin’ like a slave all night!’ said Trev, patting her far too familiarly and heading for the ovens. ‘You’ve been at the football!’ snapped Glenda. ‘You’re always at the football! And wh at kind of working do you call that?’ The boy laughed, and she glared at his companion, who backed away quickly as thoug h from armour-piercing eyes. ‘And you boys ought to wash before you come up here,’ she went on, glad of a target tha t didn’t grin and blow kisses at her. ‘This is a food-preparation area!’ Nutt swallowed. This was the longest conversation he’d ever had with a female apart from Ladyship and Miss Healstether and he hadn’t even said anything. ‘I assure you, I bath regularly,’ he protested. ‘But you’re grey!’ ‘Well, some people are black and some people are white,’ said Nutt, almost in tears. Oh, why had he, why had he left the vats? It was nice and uncomplicated down there, a nd quiet, too, when Concrete hadn’t been on the ferrous oxide. ‘It doesn’t work like that. You’re not a zombie, are you? I know they do their best, and none of us can help how we die, but I’m not having all that trouble again. Anyone might get their finger in the soup, but rolling around in the bottom of the bowl? That’s not right.’ ‘I am alive, miss,’ said Nutt helplessly. ‘Yes, but a live what, that’s what I’d like to know.’ ‘I’m a goblin, miss.’ He hesitated as he said it. It sounded like a lie. ‘I thought goblins had horns,’ said Glenda. ‘Only the grown-up ones, miss.’ Well, that was true, for some goblins. ‘You lot don’t do anything nasty, do you?’ said Glenda, glaring at Nutt. But he recognized it as a kind of residual glare; she’d said her piece, and now it was j ust a bit of play-acting, to show she was the boss here. And bosses can afford to be gen erous, especially when you look a little fearful and suitably impressed. It worked. Glenda said, ‘Trev, fetch Mister…?’ ‘Nutt,’ said Nutt. ‘Fetch Mister Nutt some bubble and squeak, will you? He looks half-starved.’ ‘I have a very fast metabolism,’ said Nutt. ‘I don’t mind about that,’ said Glenda, ‘so long as you don’t go showing it to people. I have enough—’ There was a crash from behind her. Trev had dropped the tray of bubble and squeak. He was stock still, staring at Juliet, w ho was returning the stare with a look of deep disgust. Finally, she said, in a voice li ke pearls, ‘ ’ad your bleedin’ eyeful? You got a nerve, largin’ it in here wiv that rag round your neck! Everyone knows Dimwell are well pants. Beasly couldn’t carry the ball i n a sack.’ ‘Oh yeah right? Well, I hear that the Lobbins walked all over you last week. Lobbin C lout! Everyone knows they’re a bunch o’ grannies!’ ‘Oh yeah, that’s all you know! Staple Upwright was let out of the Tanty the day befor e! See if you Dimmers like him stamping all over you!’ ‘Old Staple? Ha! He’ll clog away, yeah, but he can’t run above a canter! We’ll run ri ngs around—’ Glenda’s frying pan clanged loudly on top of the iron range. ‘Enough of that, the pair of you! I’ve got to clean up for the day, and I don’t want football dirtying up my nice surfaces, you hear me? You wait here, my girl, and you, Trevor Likely, you get back to your cellar, and I shall want that dish cleaned and back here by tomorrow night or you can try begging your meals off some other girl, right? Take your little friend with yo u. Nice to meet you, Mister Nutt, but I wish I could find you in better company.’ She paused. Nutt looked so lost and bewildered. Gods help me, she thought, I’m turnin g into my mum again. ‘No, wait.’ She reached down, opened one of the warming ovens an d came back again with another large dish. The scent of cooked apples filled the kitc hen. ‘This is for you, Mister Nutt, with my compliments. You need fattening up before you blow away. Don’t bother to share it with this scallywag, ’cos he’s a greedy begg ar, ask anyone. Now, I’ve got to clean up, and if you boys don’t want to help, get ou t of my kitchen! Oh, and I’ll want that dish back as well!’ Trev grabbed Nutt’s shoulder. ‘Come on, you heard what she said.’ ‘Yes, and I don’t mind helping—’ ‘Come on!’ ‘Thank you very much, miss,’ Nutt managed, as he was dragged down the stairs. Glenda folded her oven cloth neatly as she watched them go. ‘Goblins,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Have you ever seen a goblin before, Jools?’ ‘What?’ ‘Have you ever seen a goblin?’ ‘Dunno.’ ‘Do you think he’s a goblin?’ ‘What?’ ‘Mr Nutt. Is he a goblin, do you think?’ said Glenda, as patiently as possible. ‘He’s a posh one, then. I mean, he sounded like he reads books and stuff.’ This was a discrimination that was, in Glenda’s view, at practically forensic standards of observation for Juliet. She turned around and found to her surprise that Juliet had g one back to reading something, or at least staring intently at the words. ‘What have you got there?’ she asked. ‘It’s called Bu-bubble. It’s like, what important people are doing.’ Glenda looked over her friend’s shoulder as she leafed through the pages. As far as she could tell all the important people shared one smile and were wearing unsuitable cloth es for this time of year. ‘So what is it that makes them important?’ she asked. ‘Just b eing in a magazine?’ ‘There’s fashion tips too,’ said Juliet defensively. ‘Look, it says here chrome and copp er micromail is the look for the season.’ ‘That’s the page for dwarfs,’ sighed Glenda. ‘Come on, get your things and I’ll take y ou home.’ Juliet was still reading as they waited for the horse bus. Such sudden devotion to a p rinted page worried Glenda. The last thing she wanted was to see her friend getting id eas in her head. There was such a lot of room in there for them to bounce around and d o damage. Glenda herself was reading one of her cheap novels wrapped in a page of the Times. She read the way a cat eats: furtively, daring anyone to notice. While the horses plodded up towards Dolly Sisters, she took her scarf out of her bag an d absent-mindedly wrapped it around her wrist. Personally, she hated the violence of th e football, but it was important to belong. Not belonging, especially after a big game, could be dangerous to your health. It was important to show the right colours on your home turf. It was important to fit in. For some reason, that thought immediately turned her mind to Nutt. How strange he w as. Kind of ugly, but very clean. He had stunk of soap and seemed so nervous. There was something about him… The air in the Uncommon Room had gone as cold as meltwater. ‘Are you telling us, Mister Stibbons, that we should be seen to enter a game for bullies , louts and roughs?’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. ‘That would be impossible!’ ‘Unlikely, yes. Impossible? No,’ said Ponder wearily. ‘Most certainly not possible!’ said the Senior Wrangler, nodding at the Chair. ‘We wou ld be trading kicks with people from the gutters!’ ‘My grandfather scored two goals in a match against Dimwell,’ said Ridcully, in a quie t, matter-of-fact voice. ‘Most people never managed one in their lives, in those days. I think the most number of goals scored by one man in his whole life is four. That wa s Dave Likely, of course.’ There was a ripple of hurried rethinking and retrenchment. ‘Ah, well, of course, those were different times,’ said the Senior Wrangler, suddenly al l syrup. ‘I’m sure that even skilled workmen occasionally took part in a spirit of fun.’ ‘It wasn’t much fun if they ran into Granddad,’ said Ridcully, with a faint little grin . ‘He was a prizefighter. He knocked people down for money and pubs sent for him if the re was a really dangerous brawl. Of course, in a sense, this made it even more dangerou s, but by then most of it was out in the street.’ ‘He threw people out of the buildings?’ ‘Oh yes. In fairness, it was usually from the ground floor and he always opened the wi ndow first. He was a very gentle man, I understand. Made musical boxes for a living, v ery delicate, won awards for them. Teetotal, you know, and quite religious as well. Th e punching was just a job of casual work. I know for a fact he never tore off anything that couldn’t be stitched on again. A decent chap, by all accounts. Never met him, un fortunately. I’ve always wished I had something to remember the old boy by.’ As one wizard, the faculty looked down at Ridcully’s huge hands. They were the size o f frying pans. He cracked his knuckles. There was an echo. ‘Mister Stibbons, all we need to do is engage another team and lose?’ he said. ‘That’s right, Archchancellor,’ said Ponder. ‘You simply forfeit the game.’ ‘But losing means being seen not to win, am I right?’ ‘That would be so, yes.’ ‘Then I rather think we ought to win, don’t you?’ ‘Really, Mustrum, this is going too far,’ said the Senior Wrangler. ‘Excuse me?’ said Ridcully, raising his eyebrows. ‘May I remind you that the Archchance llor of this university is, by college statute, the first among equals?’ ‘Of course.’ ‘Good. Well, I am he. The word first is, I think, germane here. I see you scribbling in your little notebook, Mister Stibbons?’ ‘Yes, Archchancellor. I’m looking to see if we could manage without the bequest.’ ‘Good man,’ said the Senior Wrangler, glaring at Ridcully. ‘I knew there was no reason to panic.’ ‘In fact I’m pleased to say that I think we could rub along quite well with only a mini mal cut in expenditure,’ Ponder went on. ‘There,’ said the Senior Wrangler, looking triumphantly at the first among equals, ‘yo u see what happens if you don’t simply panic.’ ‘Indeed,’ said Ridcully calmly. With his gaze still fixed on the Senior Wrangler he adde d, ‘Mister Stibbons, would you be so kind as to enlighten the rest of us: to what, in re ality, does a “minimal cut in expenditure” equate?’ ‘The bequest is a trust,’ said Ponder, still scribbling. ‘We have the use of the signifi cant income from the very wise investments of the Bigger trustees, but we cannot touch t he capital. Nevertheless, the income is enough to cover-I’m sorry to be imprecise-about eighty-seven point four per cent of the university’s food bill.’ He waited patiently until the uproar had died away. It was amazing, he thought, how p eople would argue against figures on no better basis than ‘they must be wrong’. ‘I’m sure the Bursar would not agree with those figures,’ said the Senior Wrangler sour ly. ‘That is so,’ said Ponder, ‘but I’m afraid that is because he regards the decimal point as a nuisance.’ The faculty looked at one another. ‘Then who is dealing with our financial affairs?’ said Ridcully. ‘Since last month? Me,’ said Ponder, ‘but I would be happy to hand the responsibility ov er to the first volunteer.’ This worked. Regrettably, it always did. ‘In that case,’ he said, in the sudden silence, ‘I have worked out, with reference to calorific tables, a regime that will give every m an here a nourishing three meals a day—’ The Senior Wrangler frowned. ‘Three meals? Three meals? What kind of person has th ree meals a day?’ ‘Someone who can’t afford nine,’ said Ponder flatly. ‘We could eke out the money if we concentrate on a healthy diet of grains and fresh vegetables. That would allow us to keep the cheeseboard with a choice of, say, three types of cheese.’ ‘Three cheeses isn’t a choice, it’s a penance!’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. ‘Or we could play a game of football, gentlemen,’ said Ridcully, clapping his hands to gether cheerfully. ‘One game. That’s all. How hard would that be?’ ‘As hard as a face full of hobnails, perhaps?’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. ‘Peo ple get trodden into the cobbles!’ ‘If all else fails, we will find volunteers from the student body,’ said Ridcully. ‘Corpse might be a better word.’ The Archchancellor leaned back in his chair. ‘What makes a wizard, gentlemen? A facilit y with magic? Yes, of course, but around this table we know this is not, for the right kind of mind, hard to obtain. It does not, as it were, happen like magic. Good heavens, witches manage it. But what makes a magic user is a certain cast of mind which looks a little deeper into the world and the way it works, the way its currents twist the fort unes of mankind, et cetera, et cetera. In short, they should be the kind of person who might calculate that a guaranteed double first is worth the occasional inconvenience of sliding down the street on their teeth.’ ‘Are you seriously suggesting that we give out degrees for mere physical prowess?’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. ‘No, of course not. I am seriously suggesting that we give out degrees for extreme phy sical prowess. May I remind you that I rowed for this university for five years and go t a Brown?’ ‘And what good did that do, pray?’ ‘Well, it does say “Archchancellor” on my door. Do you remember why? The University Co uncil at the time took the very decent view that it might be the moment for a leader w ho was not stupid, mad or dead. Admittedly, most of these are not exactly qualificatio ns in the normal sense, but I like to think that the skill of leadership, tactics and creative cheating that I learned on the river also stood me in good stead. And thus fo r my sins, which I don’t actually remember committing but must have been quite crimson , I was at the top of a shortlist of one. Was that a choice of three cheeses, Mister S tibbons?’ ‘Yes, Archchancellor.’ ‘I was just checking.’ Ridcully leaned forward. ‘Gentlemen, in the morning, correction, later this morning, I propose to tell Vetinari firmly that this university intends to on ce again play football. And the task falls to me because I am the first among equals. If any of you would like to try your luck in the Oblong Office, you have only to say.’ ‘He’ll suspect something, you know,’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. ‘He suspects everything. That is why he is still Patrician.’ Ridcully stood up. ‘I dec lare this meet—this overly extended snack…over. Mister Stibbons, come with me!’ Ponder hurried after him, books clutched to his chest, happy for the excuse to get out of there before they turned on him. The bringer of bad news is never popular, especiall y when it’s on an empty plate. ‘Archchancellor, I—’ he began, but Ridcully held his finger to his lips. After a moment of cloying silence, there was a sudden festival of scuffling, as of men fi ghting in silence. ‘Good for them,’ Ridcully said, heading off down the corridor. ‘I wondered how long it would take them to realize that they might be seeing the last overloaded snack trolle y for some time. I’m almost tempted to wait and see them waddle out with their robes s agging.’ Ponder stared at him. ‘Are you enjoying this, Archchancellor?’ ‘Good heavens no,’ said Ridcully, his eyes sparkling. ‘How could you suggest such a th ing? Besides, in a few hours I have to tell Havelock Vetinari that we are intending to become a personal affront. The unschooled mob hacking at one another’s legs is one th ing. I don’t believe he will be happy with the prospect of our joining in.’ ‘Of course, sir. Er, there is a minor matter, sir, a small conundrum, if you will…Who is Nutt?’ There seemed to Ponder to be a rather longer pause than necessary before Ridcully sa id, ‘Nutt would be…?’ ‘He works in the candle vats, sir.’ ‘How do you know that, Stibbons?’ ‘I do the wages, sir. The Candle Knave says Nutt just turned up one night with a chit ty saying he was to be employed and paid minimal wage.’ ‘Well?’ ‘That’s all I know, sir, and I only found that out because I asked Smeems. Smeems says he’s a good lad but sort of odd.’ ‘Then he should fit right in, don’t you think, Stibbons? In fact, we are seeing how he fit s in.’ ‘Well yes, sir, no problem there, but he’s a goblin, apparently, and generally, you know, it’s a sort of odd tradition, but when the first people from other races first come to t he city they start out in the Watch…’ Ridcully cleared his throat, loudly. ‘The trouble with the Watch, Stibbons, is that t hey ask too many questions. We should not emulate them, I suggest.’ He looked at Pond er and appeared to reach a decision. ‘You know that you have a glowing future here at UU, Stibbons.’ ‘Yes, sir,’ said Ponder gloomily. ‘I would advise you, with this in mind, to forget all about Mister Nutt.’ ‘Excuse me, Archchancellor, but that simply will not do!’ Ridcully swayed backwards, like a man subjected to an attack by a hitherto comatose s heep. Ponder plunged on, because when you have dived off a cliff your only hope is to press f or the abolition of gravity. ‘I have twelve jobs in this university,’ he said. ‘I do all the paperwork. I do all th e adding up. In fact, I do everything that requires even a modicum of effort and respo nsibility! And I go on doing it even though Brazeneck have offered me the post of Burs ar! With a staff! I mean real people, not a stick with a knob on the end. Now…Will…You …Trust…Me? What is it about Nutt that is so important?’ ‘The bastard tried to lure you away?’ said Ridcully. ‘How sharper than a serpent’s too th it is to have a thankless Dean! Is there nothing he will not stoop to? How much did —’ ‘I didn’t ask,’ said Ponder quietly. There was a moment of silence and then Ridcully patted him a couple of times on the s houlder. ‘The problem with Mister Nutt is that people want to kill him.’ ‘What people?’ Ridcully stared into Ponder’s eyes. His lips moved. He squinted up and down like a m an engaged in complex calculation. He shrugged. ‘Probably everybody,’ he said. ‘Please have some more of my wonderful apple pie,’ said Nutt. ‘But she gave it to you,’ said Trev, grinning. ‘I’d never ’ear the end of it if I ate your pi e.’ ‘But you are my friend, Mister Trev,’ said Nutt. ‘And since it is my pie I can decide wha t to do with it.’ ‘Nah,’ said Trev, waving it away. ‘But there is a little errand you can do for me, me b eing a kind and understanding boss what lets you work all the hours you want.’ ‘Yes, Mister Trev?’ said Nutt. ‘Glenda will come in around midday. To be honest, she hardly ever leaves the place. I would like you to go and ask her the name of that girl who was up there tonight.’ ‘The one who shouted at you, Mister Trev?’ ‘The very same,’ said Trev. ‘Of course I will do that,’ said Nutt. ‘But why don’t you ask Miss Glenda yourself? S he knows you.’ Trev grinned again. ‘Yes, she does and that’s why I know she won’t tell me. If I am any judge, and I’m pretty sound, she would like to know you better. I’ve never met a lady so good at feelin’ sorry for people.’ ‘There’s not much of me to know,’ said Nutt. Trev gave him a long, thoughtful glance. Nutt had not taken his eyes off his work. Tr ev had never seen anyone who could be so easily engrossed. Other people who ended up working in the vats were a bit weird, it was almost a requirement, but the little dar k-grey fellow was somehow weird in the opposite direction. ‘You know, you ought to ge t out more, Mister Nutts,’ he said. ‘Oh, I don’t think I should like that at all,’ said Nutt, ‘and may I kindly remind you my name is not plural, thank you.’ ‘’ave you ever seen a game of football?’ ‘No, Mister Trev.’ ‘Then I’ll take you to the match tomorrow. I don’t play, o’course, but I never miss a g ame if I can ’elp it,’ said Trev. ‘No edged weapons, prob’ly. The season starts soon, e veryone’s warming up.’ ‘Well, that is very kind of you, but I—’ ‘Tell you what, I’ll pick you up down ’ere at one o’clock.’ ‘But people will look at me!’ said Nutt. And in his head he could hear Ladyship’s voice , calm and cool as ever: Do not stand out. Be part of the crowd. ‘No, they won’t. Trust me on that,’ said Trev. ‘I can sort that out. Enjoy your pie. I’m o ff.’ He pulled a tin can out of his coat pocket, dropped it on to his foot, flicked it into th e air, toed it a few times so it spun and twinkled like some celestial object and then ki cked it very hard so it sailed off down the huge gloomy room a few feet above the vats, r attling slightly. Against all probability it stopped in its flight a few feet from the fa r wall, spun for a moment and then started to come back with, it seemed to the amazed Nut t, a greater speed than before. Trev caught it effortlessly and dropped it back into his pocket. ‘How can you do that, Mister Trev?’ said Nutt, astonished. ‘Never thought about it,’ said Trev. ‘But I always wonder why everyone else can’t. It’s just about the spinning. It’s not hard. See yer tomorrow, okay? And don’t forget that name.’ The horse buses were not much faster than walking, but it wasn’t you doing the walking, and there were seats and a roof and a guard with a battle-axe and all in all it was, in the damp grey hours before dawn, good value for tuppence. Glenda and Juliet sat side by side, rocking gently to the sway, lost in their thoughts. At least Glenda was; Juliet co uld get lost in half a thought, if that. But Glenda had become an expert at knowing when Juliet was going to speak. It was rath er like the sense a sailor has that the wind is going to change. There were little sig ns, as if a thought had to get the beautiful brain warmed up and spinning before anyth ing could happen. ‘Who was that boy what come up for his bubble and squeak?’ she asked nonchalantly, or what she probably thought was nonchalantly, or again, what she might have though t was nonchalantly had she known that there was a word like nonchalantly. ‘That’s Trevor Likely,’ said Glenda. ‘And you don’t want anything to do with him.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘He’s a Dimmer! Fancies himself as a Face, too. And his dad was Big Dave Likely! Yo ur dad would go mad if he heard you’d even talked to him.’ ‘He’s got a lovely smile,’ said Juliet, with a wistfulness that rang all kinds of alarms f or Glenda. ‘He’s a scallywag,’ she said firmly. ‘He’ll try on anything. Can’t keep his hands to hims elf, too.’ ‘How come you knows that?’ said Juliet. That was another worrying thing about Juliet. Nothing much seemed to be going on bet ween those perfect ears for hours on end and then a question like that would come sp inning towards you with edges on it. ‘You know, you should try to speak better,’ Glenda said, to change the subject. ‘With your looks you could snag a man who thinks about more than beer and footie. Just spe ak with a little more class, eh? You don’t have to sound like—’ ‘My fare, lady?’ They looked up at the guard, who was holding his axe in a way that was very nearly no t threatening. And when it came to looking up, this was not a long way. The axe’s own er was very short. Glenda gently pushed the weapon out of the way. ‘Don’t wave it about, Roger,’ she sigh ed. ‘It doesn’t impress.’ ‘Oh, sorry, Miss Glenda,’ said the dwarf, what was visible of his face behind the beard colouring with embarrassment. ‘It’s been a long shift. That will be fourpence, ladies. Sorry about the axe, but we’ve been getting people jumping off without paying.’ ‘He ought to be sent back to where he came from,’ muttered Juliet, as the guard moved o n along the bus. Glenda chose not to rise to this. As far as she had been able to tell, up until today, at least, her friend had no opinions of her own, and simply echoed any thing other people said to her. But then she couldn’t resist. ‘That would be Treacle Mi ne Road, then. He was born in the city.’ ‘He’s a Miners fan, then? I suppose it could be worse.’ ‘I don’t think dwarfs bother much about football,’ said Glenda. ‘I don’t fink you can be a real Morporkian an’ not shout for your team,’ was the next piece of worn-out folk wisdom from Juliet. Glenda let this one pass. Sometimes, arguin g with her friend was like punching mist. Besides, the plodding horses were laboriousl y passing their street. They got off without missing a step. The door to Juliet’s house was covered in the ancient remnants of multiple layers of pa int, or, rather, multiple layers of paint that had bubbled up into tiny little mountain s over the years. It was always the cheapest paint possible. After all, you could affor d to buy beer or you could afford to buy paint and you couldn’t drink paint unless you were Mr Johnson at number fourteen, who apparently drank it all the time. ‘Now, I won’t tell your dad that you were late,’ said Glenda, opening the door for her. ‘But I want you in early tomorrow, all right?’ ‘Yes, Glenda,’ said Juliet meekly. ‘And no thinking about that Trevor Likely.’ ‘Yes, Glenda.’ It was a meek reply, but Glenda recognized the sparkle. She’d seen it in the mirror once. But now she cooked an early breakfast for widow Crowdy, who occupied the house on the other side and couldn’t get about much these days, made her comfortable, did the cho res in the rising light, and finally went to bed. Her last thought as she plummeted into sleep was: Don’t goblins steal chickens? Funn y, he doesn’t look the type… At half past eight, a neighbour woke her up by throwing gravel at her window. He want ed her to come and look at his father, described as ‘poorly’, and the day began. She had never needed to buy an alarm clock. Why did other people need so much sleep? It was a permanent puzzle for Nutt. It got b oring by himself. Back in the castle in Uberwald there had always been someone around to talk to. Ladysh ip liked the night-time and wouldn’t go out in bright sunshine at all, so a lot of vis itors came then. He had to stay out of sight, of course, but he knew all the passages in the walls and all the secret spy-holes. He saw the fine gentlemen, always in black, and the dwarfs with iron armour that gleamed like gold (later, down in his cellar tha t smelled of salt and thunderstorms, Igor showed him how it was made). There were trol ls, too, looking a bit more polished than the ones he’d learned to run away from in th e forests. He especially remembered the troll that shone like a jewel (Igor said his s kin was made of living diamond). That alone would have been enough to glue him into Nu tt’s memory, but there had been that moment, one day when the diamond troll was seated at the big table with other trolls and dwarfs, when the diamond eyes had looked up an d had seen Nutt, looking through a tiny, hidden spy-hole at the other end of the room. Nutt was convinced of it. He’d jerked away from the hole so quickly that he’d banged his head on the wall opposite. He’d grown to know his way around all the cellars and workshops in Ladyship’s castle . Go anywhere you wish, talk to everyone. Ask any questions; you will be given answe rs. When you want to learn, you will be taught. Use the library. Open any book. Those had been good days. Everywhere he went, men stopped work to show him how to p lane and carve and mould and fettle and smelt iron and make horseshoes–but not how to fit them, because any horse went mad when he entered the stables. One once kicke d the boards out of the rear wall. That particular afternoon he went up to the library, where Miss Healstether found him a book on scent. He read it so fast that his eyes should have left trails on the paper. He certainly left a trail in the library: the twenty-two volumes of Brakefast’s Compend ium of Odours were soon stacked on the long lectern, followed by Spout’s Trumpet of Equ estrianism, and then, via a detour through the history section, Nutt plunged into the f olklore section, with Miss Healstether pedalling after him on the mobile library steps. She watched him with a kind of gratified awe. He’d been barely able to read when he’d arrived, but the goblin boy had set out to improve his reading as a boxer trains for a fight. And he was fighting something, but she wasn’t sure in her own mind what it was and, of course, Ladyship never explained. He would sit all night under the lamp, book of the moment in front of him, dictionary and thesaurus on either side, wringing the meaning out of every word, punching ceaselessly at his own ignorance. When she came in the next morning there was a dictionary of Dwarfish and a copy of P ostalume’s The Speech of Trolls on the lectern too. Surely it’s not right to learn like this, she told herself. It can’t be settling properly. You can’t just fork it into your head. Learning has to be digested. You don’t just have t o know, you have to comprehend. She mentioned this to Fassel, the smith, who said, ‘Look, miss, he came up to me the other day and said he’d watched a smith before, and could he have a go? Well, you kno w her ladyship’s orders, so I gave him a bit of bar stock and showed him the hammer a nd tongs and next minute he was going at it like–well, hammer and tongs! Turned out a nice little knife, very nice indeed. He thinks about things. You can see his ugly li ttle mush working it all out. Have you ever met a goblin before?’ ‘Strange you should ask,’ she told him. ‘Our catalogue says we’ve got one of the very few copies of J. P. Bunderbell’s Five Hours and Sixteen Minutes Among the Goblins of F ar Uberwald, but I can’t find it anywhere. It’s priceless.’ ‘Five hours and sixteen minutes doesn’t sound very long,’ said the smith. ‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But according to a lecture Mr Blunderbell gave to the An kh-Morpork Trespassers’ Society,’* said Miss Healstether, ‘it was about five hours too long. He said they ranged in size from unpleasantly large to disgustingly small, had ab out the same level of culture as yogurt and spent their time picking their own noses an d missing. A complete waste of space, he said. It caused quite a stir. Anthropologists are not supposed to write that sort of thing.’ ‘And young Nutt is one of them?’ ‘Yes, that puzzled me, too. Did you see him yesterday? There’s something about him t hat frightens horses, so he came to the library and found some old book about the Ho rseman’s Word. They were a kind of secret society, which knew how to make special oi ls that would make horses obey them. Then he spent the afternoon down in Igor’s cryp t, brewing up gods know what, and this morning he was riding a horse around the yard ! It wasn’t happy, mind you, but he was winning.’ ‘I’m surprised his ugly little head doesn’t explode,’ said Fassel. ‘Ha!’ Miss Healstether sounded bitter. ‘Stand by, then, because he’s discovered the Bo nk School.’ ‘What’s that?’ ‘Not that, them. Philosophers. Well, I say philosophers, but, well…’ ‘Oh, the mucky ones,’ said Fassel cheerfully. ‘I wouldn’t say mucky,’ said Miss Healstether, and this was true. A ladylike librarian would not employ that word in the presence of a smith, especially one who was grinnin g. ‘Let’s say “indelicate”, shall we?’ There is not a lot of call for delicacy on an anvil, so the smith continued unabashed: ‘They are the ones who go on about what happens if ladies don’t get enough mutton, an d they say cigars are—’ ‘That is a fallacy!’ ‘That’s right, that’s what I read.’ The smith was clearly enjoying this. ‘And Ladyship le ts him read this stuff?’ ‘Indeed, she very nearly insists. I can’t imagine what she’s thinking.’ Or him, come to t hat, she thought to herself. There was a limit to how many candles he should make, Trev had told Nutt. It looked bad if he made too many, Trev explained. The pointy hats might decide that they didn ’t need all the people. That made sense to Nutt. What would No Face and Concrete and Weepy Mukko do? They would have nowhere else to go. They had to live in a simple wo rld; they too easily got knocked down by life in this one. He’d tried wandering around the other cellars, but there was nothing much happening at night, and people gave him funny looks. Ladyship did not rule here. But wizards a re a messy lot and nobody tidied up much and lived to tell the tale, so all sorts of old storerooms and junk-filled workshops became his for the use of. And there was s o much for a lad with keen night vision to find. He had already seen some luminous s poon ants carrying a fork, and, to his surprise, the forgotten mazes were home to th at very rare indoorovore, the Uncommon Sock Eater. There were some things living up in the pipes, too, which periodically murmured, ‘Awk! Awk!’ Who knew what strange mo nsters made their home here? He cleaned the pie plates very carefully indeed. Glenda had been kind to him. He must show that he was kind, too. It was important to be kind. And he knew where to find s ome acid. Lord Vetinari’s personal secretary stepped into the Oblong Office with barely a distur bance in the air. His lordship glanced up. ‘Ah, Drumknott. I think I shall have to wri te to the Times again. I am certain that one down, six across and nine down appeared i n that same combination three months ago. On a Friday, I believe.’ He dropped the cros sword page on to the desk with a look of disdain. ‘So much for a Free Press.’ ‘Well done, my lord. The Archchancellor has just entered the palace.’ Vetinari smiled. ‘He must have looked at the calendar at last. Thank goodness they hav e Ponder Stibbons. Show him straight in after the customary wait.’ Five minutes later, Mustrum Ridcully was ushered in. ‘Archchancellor! To what urgent matter do I owe this visit? Our usual meeting is not un til the day after tomorrow, I believe.’ ‘Er, yes,’ said Ridcully. As he sat down, a very large sherry was placed in front of him .* ‘Well, Havelock, the fact of the matter is—’ ‘But it is in fact quite providential that you have arrived just now,’ Vetinari went on, ignoring him, ‘because a problem has arisen on which I would like your advice.’ ‘Oh? Really?’ ‘Yes, indeed. It concerns this wretched game called foot-the-ball…’ ‘It does?’ The glass, now in Ridcully’s hand, trembled not a fraction. He’d held his job for a lon g time, right back to the days when a wizard who blinked died. ‘One has to move with the times, of course,’ said the Patrician, shaking his head. ‘We tend not to, over the road,’ said Ridcully. ‘It only encourages them.’ ‘People do not understand the limits of tyranny,’ said Vetinari, as if talking to himself . ‘They think that because I can do what I like I can do what I like. A moment’s thought reveals, of course, that this cannot be so.’ ‘Oh, it is the same with magic,’ said the Archchancellor. ‘If you flash spells around li ke there’s no tomorrow, there’s a good chance that there won’t be.’ ‘In short,’ Vetinari continued, still talking to the air, ‘I am intending to give my bless ing to the game of football, in the hope that its excesses can be more carefully controlle d.’ ‘Well, it worked with the Thieves’ Guild,’ Ridcully observed, amazed at his own calmnes s. ‘If there has to be crime, then it should be organized, I think that’s what you said .’ ‘Exactly. I have to admit to the view that all exercise for any purpose other than bodily health, the defence of the realm and the proper action of the bowels is barbaric.’ ‘Really? What about agriculture?’ ‘Defence of the realm against starvation. But I see no point in people just…running about. Did you catch your Megapode, by the way?’ How the hells does he do it? Ridcully wondered. I mean, how? Aloud, he said, ‘Indeed we did, but surely you are not suggesting that we were merely “running about”?’ ‘Of course not. All three exceptions apply. Tradition is at least as important as bowe ls, if not quite so useful. And, indeed, the Poor Boys’ Fun has some remarkable tradit ions of its own, which some might find it worthwhile exploring. Let me be frank, Mustr um. I cannot enforce a mere personal dislike against public pressure. Well, I can, str ictly speaking, but not without going to ridiculous and indeed tyrannical lengths. Ove r a game? I think not. So…as things stand, we find teams of burly men pushing and shov ing and kicking and biting in the faint hope, it seems to me, of propelling some wretc hed object at some distant goal. I have no problem with them trying to kill one anothe r, which has little in the way of a downside, but it has now become so popular once mo re that property is being damaged, and that cannot be tolerated. There have been comme nts in the Times. No, what the wise man cannot change he must channel.’ ‘And how do you intend to do that?’ ‘By giving the job to you. Unseen University has always had a fine sporting tradition.’ ‘“Had” is the right word,’ sighed Ridcully. ‘In my day we were all so…so relentlessly physical. But if I was to suggest so much as an egg and spoon race these days they’d u se the spoon to eat the egg.’ ‘Alas, I did not know your day was over, Mustrum,’ said Lord Vetinari, with a smile. The room, never normally noisy, sank into deeper silence. ‘Now look here—’ Ridcully began. ‘This afternoon I shall be speaking to the editor of the Times,’ said Vetinari, gently s urfing his voice over that of the wizard with all the skill of a born committee manipula tor, ‘who is, as we know, a very civic-minded person. I’m sure he will welcome the fact that I am asking the university to tame the demon foot-the-ball, and that you have, afte r careful thought, agreed to the task.’ I don’t have to do this, Ridcully thought carefully. On the other hand, since it is what I want, and thereby don’t have to ask for, this may be unwise. Damn! This is so like hi m! ‘You would not object if we raise our own team?’ he managed. ‘Indeed, I positively demand that you do so. But no magic, Mustrum. I must make that c lear. Magic is not sporting, unless you are playing against other wizards, of course.’ ‘Oh, I am a very sporting man, Havelock.’ ‘Capital! How is the Dean settling in at Brazeneck, by the way?’ If it had been anyone else asking, Ridcully thought, that would simply be a polite enquir y. But this is Vetinari, isn’t it… ‘I’ve been too busy to find out,’ he said loftily, ‘but I’m sure he will be fine when he finds his feet.’ Or manages to see them without a mirror, he added to himself. ‘I’m sure you must be pleased to see your old friend and colleague making his way in t he world,’ said Vetinari, innocently. ‘And so is Pseudopolis itself, of course. I must say, I admire the sturdy burghers of that city for embarking on their noble experimen t in this…this democracy,’ he went on. ‘It is always good to see it attempted again. A nd sometimes amusing, too.’ ‘There is something to be said for it, you know,’ grunted Ridcully. ‘Yes, I believe you practise it at the university,’ said the Patrician, with a little smi le. ‘However, on the matter of football we are in accord. Capital. I will tell Mister de Worde what you are doing. I’m sure that the keen players of foot-the-ball will be interes ted, when someone explains the longer words to them. Well done. Do try the sherry. I am t old it is highly palatable.’ Vetinari stood up, a signal that, in theory at least, the business of the meeting was c oncluded, and strolled over to a polished stone slab, set into a square wooden table. ‘ On a different note, Mustrum…How is your young visitor?’ ‘My visit—Oh, you mean the…uh…’ ‘That’s right.’ Vetinari smiled at the slab as if sharing a joke with it. ‘The, as you put it , Uh.’ ‘I note the sarcasm. As a wizard, I must tell you that words have power.’ ‘As a politician, I must tell you I already know. How is he getting along? Concerned minds would like to know.’ Ridcully glanced at the little carved men on the playing slab as if they were listenin g to him. In a roundabout way, they probably were. Certainly it was well known now tha t the hands that guided half the pieces lived in a big castle in Uberwald, and were fe male and belonged to a lady who was mostly rumour. ‘Smeems says he keeps himself to himself. He says he thinks the boy is cunning.’ ‘Oh, good,’ said Vetinari, still seeming to find something totally engrossing in the layo ut of playing pieces. ‘Good?’ ‘We need cunning people in Ankh-Morpork. We have a Street of Cunning Artificers, d o we not?’ ‘Well, yes, but—’ ‘Ah, then it is context that has power,’ said Vetinari, turning around with a look of u nmasked delight. ‘Did I say that I am a politician? Cunning: artful, sly, deceptive, sh rewd, astute, cute, on the ball and, indeed, arch. A word for any praise and every prej udice. Cunning…is a cunning word.’ ‘You don’t think that maybe this…experiment of yours might be a step too far?’ said R idcully. ‘People said that about the vampires, did they not? It’s alleged that they have no prope r language, but I am told he speaks several languages fluently.’ ‘Smeems did say he talked la-di-da,’ Ridcully admitted. ‘Mustrum, compared with Natchbull Smeems, trolls speak la-di-da.’ ‘The…boy was brought up by a priest of some sort, I know that,’ said Ridcully. ‘But what will he become when he grows up?’ ‘By the sound of him, a professor of linguistics.’ ‘You know what I mean, Havelock.’ ‘Possibly, although I wonder if you do. But he is, I suggest, unlikely to become a raven ing horde all by himself.’ Ridcully sighed. He glanced towards the game again, and Vetinari noticed. ‘Look at them. Ranks, files,’ he said, waving a hand over the little stone figures, ‘l ocked in everlasting conflict at the whim of the player. They fight, they fall, and th ey cannot turn back because the whips drive them on, and all they know is whips, kill or be killed. Darkness in front of them, darkness behind them, darkness and whips in t heir heads. But what if you could take one out of this game, get him before the whips do, take him to a place without whips–what might he become? One creature. One singular being. Would you deny them that chance?’ ‘You had three men hanged last week,’ said Ridcully, without quite understanding why . ‘They had their chances. They used them to kill, and worse. All we get is a chance. We don’t get a benison. He was chained to an anvil for seven years. He should get his ch ance, don’t you think?’ Suddenly Vetinari was smiling again. ‘Let us not get sombre, however. I look forward to your ushering in a new era of lively, healthy activity in the best sporting tradition. Indeed, tradition will be your friend he re, I am sure. Please don’t let me trespass any further on your time.’ Ridcully drained the sherry. That at least was palatable. It’s a short walk from the palace to Unseen University; positions of power like to keep an eye on one another. Ridcully walked back through the crowds, occasionally nodding at people he knew, which , in this part of the city, was practically everyone. Trolls, he thought, we get along with trolls, now that they remember to look where t hey’re putting their feet. Got ’em in the Watch and everything. Jolly decent types, bar a few bad apples, and gods know we have enough of those of our own. Dwarfs? Been here for ages. Can be a bit tricky, can be as tight as a duck’s arse–here he paused to think and edited that thought to ‘drive a hard bargain’. You always know where y ou are with them, anyway, and of course they are short, which is always a comfort pr ovided you know what they are doing down there. Vampires? Well, the Uberwald League of Temperance seemed to be working. Word on the street–or in the vault or whatever–w as that they policed their own. Any unreformed bloodsucker who tried to make a killi ng in the city would be hunted down by people who knew exactly how they thought and where they hung out. Lady Margolotta was behind all that. She was the person who, by diplomacy, and proba bly more direct means, had got things moving again in Uberwald, and she had some sor t of…relationship with Vetinari. Everyone knew it, and that was all everyone knew. A dot dot dot relationship. One of those. And nobody had been able to join up the dot s. She had been to the city on diplomatic visits, and not even the well-practised dowage rs of Ankh-Morpork had been able to detect a whisper of anything other than a busines slike amiability and international cooperation between the two of them. And he played endless and complex games with her, via the clacks system, and apart fr om that, that was, well, that…until now. And she’d sent him this Nutt to keep safe. Who knew why, apart from them? Politics, probably. Ridcully sighed. One of the monsters, all alone. It was hard to think of it. They came i n thousands, like lice, killing everything and eating the dead, including theirs. The Ev il Empire had bred them in huge cellars, grey demons without a hell. The gods alone knew what had happened to them when the Empire collapsed. But there was convincing evidence now that some still lived up in the far hills. What might t hey do? And one, right now, was making candles in Ridcully’s cellars. What might he become? ‘A bloody nuisance?’ said Ridcully aloud. ‘’ere, ’oo are you calling a nuisance, mister? It’s my road, same as yours!’ The wizard looked down at a young man who appeared to have stolen his clothes only fr om the best washing lines, though the tattered black and red scarf around his neck wa s probably his own. There was an edginess to him, a continual shifting of weight, as though he might at any moment run off in a previously unguessable direction. And he w as throwing a tin can up in the air and catching it again. For Ridcully it brought ba ck memories so sharp that they stung, but he pulled himself together. ‘I am Mustrum Ridcully, Archchancellor and Master of Unseen University, young man, and I see you are sporting colours. For some game? A game of football, I suggest?’ ‘As it happens, yes. So what?’ said the urchin, then realized that his hand was empty wh en it should now, under normal gravitational rules, be full again. The tin had not falle n back from its last ascent, and was in fact turning gently twenty feet up in the air. ‘Childish of me, I know,’ said Ridcully, ‘but I did want your full attention. I want to w itness a game of football.’ ‘Witness? Look, I never saw nuffin’—’ Ridcully sighed. ‘I mean I want to watch a game, okay? Today, if possible.’ ‘You? Are you sure? It’s your funeral, mister. Got a shilling?’ There was a clink, high above. ‘The tin will come back down with a sixpence in it. Time and place, please.’ ‘’ow do I know I can trust you?’ said the urchin. ‘I don’t know,’ said Ridcully. ‘The subtle workings of the brain are a mystery to me, too . But I’m glad that is your belief.’ ‘What?’ With a shrug, the boy decided to gamble, what with having had no breakfast. ‘Loop Alley off the Scours, ’arp arsed one, an’ I’ve never seen you before in my life, go t it?’ ‘That is quite probable,’ said Ridcully, and snapped his fingers. The tin dropped into the urchin’s waiting hand. He shook out the silver coin and grinned . ‘Best o’ luck to you, guv.’ ‘Is there anything to eat at these affairs?’ said Ridcully, for whom lunchtime was a sac rament. ‘There’s pies, guv, pease pudding, jellied eel pies, pie and mash, lobster…pies, but mostl y they are just pies. Just pies, sir. Made of pie.’ ‘What kind?’ His informant looked shocked. ‘They’re pies, guv. You don’t ask.’ Ridcully nodded. ‘And as a final transaction, I’ll pay you one penny for a kick of your can.’ ‘Tuppence,’ said the boy promptly. ‘You little scamp, we have a deal.’ Ridcully dropped the can on the toe of his boot, balanced it for a moment, then flicked i t into the air and, as it came down, hit it with a roundhouse kick that sent it spinning over the crowd. ‘Not bad, granddad,’ said the kid, grinning. In the distance there was a yell and the so und of someone bent on retribution. Ridcully plunged a hand into his pocket and looked down. ‘Two dollars to start running , kid. You won’t get a better deal today!’ The boy laughed, grabbed the coins and ran. Ridcully walked on sedately, while the years fell back on him like snow. He found Ponder Stibbons pinning up a notice on the board just outside the Great Hall. He did this quite a lot. Ridcully assumed it made him feel better in some way. He slapped Ponder on the back, causing him to spill drawing pins all over the flagstone s. ‘It is a bulletin from the Ankh Committee on Safety, Archchancellor,’ said Ponder, scr abbling for the spinning, wayward pins. ‘This is a university of magic, Stibbons. We have no business with safety. Just being a wizard is unsafe, and so it should be.’ ‘Yes, Archchancellor.’ ‘But I should pick up all those pins if I were you, you can’t be too careful. Tell me-did n’t we use to have a sports master here?’ ‘Yes, sir. Evans the Striped. He vanished about forty years ago, I believe.’ ‘Killed? It was dead men’s shoes in those days, you know.’ ‘I can’t imagine who would want his job. Apparently he evaporated while doing press-u ps in the Great Hall one day.’ ‘Evaporated? What kind of death is that for a wizard? Any wizard would die of shame if he just evaporated. We always leave something behind, even if it’s only smoke. Oh , well. Cometh the hour, cometh the…whatever. General comethness, perhaps. What is t hat thinking engine of yours doing these days?’ Ponder brightened. ‘As a matter of fact, Archchancellor, Hex has just discovered a new pa rticle. It travels faster than light in two directions at once!’ ‘Can we make it do anything interesting?’ ‘Well yes! It totally explodes Spolwhittle’s Trans-Congruency Theory!’ ‘Good,’ said Ridcully cheerfully. ‘Just so long as something explodes. Since it’s finishe d exploding, set it to finding either Evans or a decent substitute. Sports masters are pr etty elementary particles, it shouldn’t be difficult. And call a meeting of the Council i n ten minutes. We are going to play football!’ Truth is female, since truth is beauty rather than handsomeness; this, Ridcully reflect ed as the Council grumbled in, would certainly explain the saying that a lie could run around the world before Truth has got its, correction, her boots on, since she would ha ve to choose which pair–the idea that any woman in a position to choose would have just one pair of boots being beyond rational belief. Indeed, as a goddess she would have lo ts of shoes, and thus many choices: comfy shoes for home truths, hobnail boots for unpl easant truths, simple clogs for universal truths and possibly some kind of slipper for self-evident truth. More important right now was what kind of truth he was going to hav e to impart to his colleagues, and he decided not on the whole truth, but instead on no thing but the truth, which dispensed with the need for honesty. ‘Well, go on, then, what did he say?’ ‘He responded to reasoned argument.’ ‘He did? Where’s the catch?’ ‘None. But he wants the rules to be more traditional.’ ‘Surely not! Gather they are practically prehistoric as it is!’ ‘And he wants the university to take the lead in all this, and quickly. Gentlemen, there is a game going to be played in about three hours’ time. I suggest we observe it. And t o this end, I will require you to wear…trousers.’ After a while Ridcully took out his watch, which was one of the old-fashioned imp-drive n ones and was reliably inaccurate. He flipped up the gold lid and stared patiently as the little creature pedalled the hands around. When the expostulating had not stopped a fter a minute and a half, he snapped the lid shut. The click had an effect that no amou nt of extra shouting could have achieved. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said gravely. ‘We must partake of the game of the people–from whom, I might add, we derive. Has any of us, in the last few decades, even seen the game being played? I thought not. We should get outside more. Now, I’m not asking you to do this for me, or even for the hundreds of people who work to provide us with a life in whic h discomfort so seldom rears its head. Yes, many other ugly heads have reared, it is t rue, but dinner has always beckoned. We are, fellow wizards, the city’s last line of d efence against all the horrors that can be thrown against it. However, none of them ar e as potentially dangerous as us. Yes, indeed. I don’t know what might happen if wizar ds were really hungry. So do this, I implore you on this one occasion, for the sake of the cheeseboard.’ There had been some nobler calls to arms in history, Ridcully would be the first to adm it, but this one was well tailored to its target audience. There was some grumbling, bu t that was the same as saying that the sky was blue. ‘What about lunch?’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes suspiciously. ‘We’ll eat early,’ said Ridcully, ‘and I am told that the pies at the game are just–amazin g.’ Truth, in front of her huge walk-in wardrobe, selected black leather boots with stiletto heels for such a barefaced truth. Nutt was already waiting with a proud but worried look on his face when Glenda got in t o the Night Kitchen. She didn’t notice him at first, but she turned back from hanging h er coat on its peg and there he was, holding a couple of dishes in front of him like sh ields. She almost had to shade her eyes because they gleamed so brightly. ‘I hope this is all right,’ said Nutt nervously. ‘What have you done?’ ‘I plated them with silver, miss.’ ‘How did you do that?’ ‘Oh, there’s all kinds of old stuff in the cellars and, well, I know how to do things. It won’t cause trouble for anyone, will it?’ Nutt added, looking suddenly anxious. Glenda wondered if it would. It shouldn’t, but you could never be sure with Mrs Whit low. Well, she could solve that problem by hiding them somewhere until they tarnishe d. ‘It’s kind of you to take the trouble. I generally have to chase people to get plates back. You are a real gentleman,’ she said, and his face lit up like a sunrise. ‘You are very kind,’ he beamed, ‘and a very handsome lady with your two enormous ch ests that indicate bountifulness and fecundity—’ The morning air froze in one enormous block. He could tell he’d said something wrong, but he had no idea what it was. Glenda looked around to see if anyone had heard, but the huge gloomy room was otherw ise empty. She was always the first one in and the last one out. Then she said, ‘Sta y right there. Don’t you dare move an inch! Not an inch! And don’t steal any chicken s!’ she commanded as an afterthought. She should have trailed steam as she headed out of the room, her boots echoing on th e flagstones. What a thing to come out with! Who did he think he was? Come to that, who did she think he was? And what did she think he was? The cellars and undercrofts of the university were a small city in themselves, and bake rs and butchers turned to look as she clattered past. She didn’t dare stop now; it woul d be too embarrassing. If you knew all the passages and stairs, and if they stayed still for five minutes, it was possible to get to just about anywhere in the university without going above grou nd. Probably none of the wizards knew the maze. Not many of them cared to know the dul l details of domestic management. Hah, they thought the dinners turned up by magic! A small set of stone steps led up to the little door. Hardly anyone used it these days . The other girls wouldn’t go in there. But Glenda would. Even after the very first ti me that she had, in response to the bell, delivered the midnight banana, or rather had failed to deliver it on account of running away screaming, she knew she’d have to fac e it again. After all, we can’t help how we’re made, her mother had said, and nor can we help what a magical accident might turn us into through no fault of our own, as Mrs Whitlow had explained slightly more recently, when the screaming had stopped. And so Glenda had picked up the banana and had headed right back there. Now, of course, she was surprised that anyone might find it odd that the custodian of all the knowledge that could be was a reddish brown and generally hung several feet ab ove his desk, and she was pretty certain that she knew at least fourteen meanings of t he word ‘ook’. As it was daytime, the huge building beyond the little door was bustling, insofar as th e word can be applied to a library. She headed towards the nearest lesser librarian, wh o failed to look the other way in time, and demanded: ‘I need to see a dictionary of em barrassing words beginning with F!’ His haughty glance softened somewhat when he realized she was a cook. Wizards always had a place in their hearts for cooks, because it was near their stomach. ‘Ah, then I think Birdcatcher’s Discomforting Misusage will be our friend here,’ he sa id cheerfully, and led her to a lectern, where she spent several enlightening minutes before heading back the way she had come, a little wiser and a great deal more embarra ssed. Nutt was still standing where she’d told him to stand, and looked terrified. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know what you meant,’ she said, and thought: abundant, productive a nd fruitful. Well, yes, I can see how he got there, worse luck, but that’s not me, not r eally me. I think. I hope. ‘Um, it was kind of you to say that about me,’ she said, ‘but you should have used mor e appropriate language.’ ‘Ah, yes, I’m so sorry,’ said Nutt. ‘Mister Trev told me about this. I should not talk posh. I should have said that you have enormous t—’ ‘Just stop there, will you? Trevor Likely is teaching you elocution?’ ‘Don’t tell me, I know this one…You mean talkin’ proper?’ said Nutt. ‘Yes, and he’s p romised to take me to the football,’ he added proudly. This led to some explanation, which only made Glenda gloomy. Trev was right, of cours e. People who didn’t know long words tended to be edgy around people who did. That’s why her male neighbours, like Mr Stollop and his mates, distrusted nearly everybody. Their wives, on the other hand, shared a much larger if somewhat specialized vocabula ry owing to the cheap romantic novels that passed like contraband from scullery to wa shhouse, in every street. That’s why Glenda knew ‘elocution’, ‘torrid’, ‘boudoir’ and ‘reticule’, although she wasn’t too certain about ‘reticule’ and ‘boudoir’, and avoi ded using them, which in the general scheme of things was not hard. She was deeply su spicious about what a lady’s boudoir might be, and certainly wasn’t going to ask anyb ody, even in the Library, just in case they laughed. ‘And he’s going to take you to the football, is he? Mister Nutt, you will stand out like a diamond in a sweep’s earhole!’ Do not stand out from the crowd. There were so many things to remember! ‘He says he will look after me,’ said Nutt, hanging his head. ‘Er, I was wondering who that nice young lady was who was in here last night,’ he added desperately, as transpar ent as air. ‘He asked you to ask me, right?’ Lie. Stay safe. But Ladyship wasn’t here! And the nice apple-pie lady was right here in front of him! It was too complicated! ‘Yes,’ he said meekly. And Glenda surprised herself. ‘Her name is Juliet, and she lives bang next door to me so he’d better not come round, okay? Juliet Stollop, see if he likes that.’ ‘You fear he will press his suit?’ ‘Her dad will press a lot more than that if he sees he’s a Dimmer supporter!’ Nutt looked blank, so she went on: ‘Don’t you know anything? Dimwell Old Pals? The fo otball team? The Dollies are Dolly Sisters Football Club. Dollies hate the Dimmers, t he Dimmers hate the Dollies! It’s always been like that!’ ‘What could have caused such a difference between them?’ ‘What? There is no difference between them, not when you’ve got past the colours! The y’re two teams, alike in villainy! Dolly Sisters wears white and black, Dimwell wears pink and green. It’s all about football. Bloody, bloody, clogging, hacking, punching , gouging, silly football!’ The bitterness in Glenda’s voice would have soured cream. ‘But you have a Dolly Sisters scarf!’ ‘When you live there, it’s safer that way. Anyway, you have to support your own.’ ‘But is it not a game, like spillikins or halma or Thud?’ ‘No! It’s more like war, but without the kindness and consideration!’ ‘Oh, dear. But war is not kind, is it?’ said Nutt, bewilderment clouding his face. ‘No!’ ‘Oh, I see. You were being ironic.’ She gave him a sideways look. ‘I might have been,’ she conceded. ‘You are an odd one , Mister Nutt. Where are you from, really?’ The old panic contained again. Be harmless. Be helpful. Make friends. Lie. But how did you lie to friends? ‘I must go,’ he said, scurrying down the stone steps. ‘Mister Trev will be waiting!’ Nice but odd, Glenda thought, watching him leap down the steps. Clever, too. To spot my scarf on a hook ten yards away. The sound of a rattling tin can alerted Nutt to his boss’s presence before he had even hurried through the old archway to the vats. The other habitués had paused in their wor k, which, frankly, given its usual snaillike progress, meant hardly any change at all, and were watching him listlessly. But they were watching, at least. Even Concrete looke d vaguely alert, but Nutt saw a little dribble of brown in the corner of his mouth. Som eone had been giving him iron filings again. The can shot up as Trev caught it with his boot, flew over his head, and then came ba ck obliquely, as if rolling down an invisible slope, and landed in his waiting hand. There was a murmur of appreciation from the watchers and Concrete banged his hand on the table, which generally meant approval. ‘What kept you, Gobbo? Chatting up Glenda, were you? You’ve got no chance there, tak e it from me. Been there, tried that, oh yes. No chance, mate.’ He threw a grubby ba g towards Nutt. ‘Get these on quick, else you’ll stand out like a diamond in—’ ‘A sweep’s earhole?’ Nutt suggested. ‘Yeah! You’re gettin’ it. Now don’t hang about or we’ll be late.’ Nutt looked doubtfully at a long, a very long scarf in pink and green and a large yellow woolly hat with a pink bobble on it. ‘Pull it down hard so it covers your ears,’ Trev commanded. ‘Get a move on!’ ‘Er…pink?’ said Nutt doubtfully, holding up the scarf. ‘What about it?’ ‘Well, isn’t football a rough man’s game? Whereas pink, if you will excuse me, is rat her a…female colour?’ Trev grinned. ‘Yeah, that’s right. Think about it. You are the clever one around here. And you can walk and think at the same time, I know that. Makes you stand out from th e crowd in these parts.’ ‘Ah, I think I have it. The pink proclaims an almost belligerent masculinity, saying as it does: I am so masculine I can afford to tempt you to question it, giving me the opportunity to proclaim it anew by doing violence to you in response. I don’t know i f you have ever read Ofleberger’s Die Wesentlichen Ungewissheiten Zugehörig der Offen kundigen Männlichkeit?’ Trev grabbed his shoulder and spun him round. ‘Wot do you fink, Gobbo?’ he said, his red face a couple of inches from Nutt’s. ‘Wot is your problem? Wot are you all abou t? You come out with ten-dollar words an’ you lay ’em down like a man doin’ a jigsaw ! So how come you’re down in the vats, eh, workin’ for someone like me? It don’t mak e sense! Are you on the run from the Old Sam? No problem, there, unless you did up a n old lady or somethin’, but you got to tell me!’ Too dangerous, thought Nutt desperately. Change the subject! ‘She’s called Juliet!’ he gasped. ‘The girl you asked about! She lives next door to Glenda! Honestly!’ Trev looked suspicious. ‘Glenda told you that?’ ‘Yes!’ ‘She was windin’ you up. She knew you’d tell me.’ ‘I don’t think she would lie to me, Mister Trev. She is my friend.’ ‘I kept thinkin’ about her all last night,’ said Trev. ‘Well, she is a wonderful cook,’ Nutt agreed. ‘I meant Juliet!’ ‘Um, and Glenda said to tell you that Juliet’s other name is Stollop,’ said Nutt, hating to be the bearer of worse news. ‘What? That girl is a Stollop?’ ‘Yes. Glenda said I was to see how you liked that, but I know the meaning of irony.’ ‘But it’s like findin’ a strawberry in a dogmeat stew, yeah? I mean, the Stollops are bu ggers, the lot of ’em, biters and cloggers to a man, the kind of bastards who’ll kick yo ur family jewels up into your throat.’ ‘But you don’t play football, do you? You just watch.’ ‘Damn right! But I’m a Face, right? I’m known in all the boroughs. You can ask anyon e. Everyone knows Trev Likely. I’m Dave Likely’s lad. Every supporter in the city kn ows about him. Four goals! No one else scored that much in a lifetime! And gave as g ood as he got, did Dad. One game he picked up the Dolly bastard holding the ball and threw ’im over the line. He gave as good as ’e got, my dad, and then some.’ ‘So, he was a bugger and a clogger and a biter too, was he?’ ‘What? Are you pulling my tonker?’ ‘I would not wish to do so initially, Mister Trev,’ said Nutt, so solemnly that Trev ha d to grin, ‘but, you see, if he fought the opposing team with even more force than they used, does that not mean that he—’ ‘He was my dad,’ said Trev. ‘That means you don’t try any fancy maths, okay?’ ‘Okay indeed. And you never wanted to follow in his footsteps?’ ‘What, and get brung home on a stretcher? I got my brains from my ol’ mum, not from D ad. He was a good bloke and loved his football, but he wasn’t flush with brains to st art with an’ on that day some of ’em were leakin’ out of his ear. The Dollies got ’im in the melee and sorted ’im out good and proper. That’s not for me, Gobbo. I’m smart.’ ‘Yes, Mister Trev, I can see that.’ ‘Get the gear on and let’s go, okay? We don’t want to miss anything.’ ‘Fing,’ said Nutt automatically, as he started to wind the huge scarf around his neck. ‘What?’ said Trev, frowning. ‘Wot?’ said Nutt, his voice a little muffled. There was a lot of scarf. It was almost cov ering his mouth. ‘Are you pulling my chuff, Gobbo?’ said Trev, handing him an ancient sweater, faded and saggy with age. ‘Please, Mister Trev, I don’t know! There appears to be so much I might inadvertentl y pull!’ He tugged on the big woolly hat with the pink pompom on it. ‘They are so ve ry pink, Mister Trev. We must be bursting with machismo!’ ‘I don’t know what you person’ly are bursting with, Gobbo, but here’s somethin’ to le arn. “Come on if you think you’re hard enough.” Now you say it.’ ‘Come on if you think you’re hard enough,’ said Nutt obediently. ‘Well, okay,’ said Trev, inspecting him. ‘Just remember, if anyone starts pushing you around during the game, and givin’ you grief, just you say that to ’em and they’ll see you’re wearing the Dimmer colours and they’ll think twice. Got it?’ Nutt, somewhere in the space between the big bobbly hat and the boa constrictor of a s carf, nodded. ‘Wow, there you are, Gobbo, a complete…fan. Your own mother wouldn’t recognize y ou!’ There was a pause before a voice emerged from inside the mound of ancient woollens, which looked very much like a nursery layette made by a couple of giants who weren’t sure what to expect. ‘I believe you are accurate.’ ‘Yeah? Well, that’s good, innit? Now let’s go and meet the lads. Move fast, stay close.’ ‘Now remember, this is a pre-season friendly between the Angels and the Whoppers, rig ht?’ said Trev, as they stepped out into a fine rain which, because of Ankh-Morpork’s standing cloud of pollution, was morphing gently into smog. ‘They’re both pretty cra p, they’ll never amount to anythin’, but the Dimmers shout for the Angels, right?’ It took some explaining, but the core of it, as far as Nutt could understand it, was th is: All football teams in the city were rated by Dimwell in proportion to their closene ss, physical, psychological or general gut feeling, to the hated Dolly Sisters. It had just evolved that way. If you went to a match between two other teams, you automaticall y, according to some complex and ever-changing ready-reckoner of love and hate, cheered the team most nearly allied to your native turf or, more accurately, cobbles. ‘Do you see what I mean?’ Trev finished. ‘I have committed what you said to memory, Mister Trev.’ ‘Oh Brutha, an’ I’ll bet you ’ave, at that. And it’s just Trev when we’re not at work, right? We shout together, right?’ He punched Nutt playfully on the arm. ‘Why did you do that, Mister Trev?’ said Nutt. His eyes, almost the only part of him vi sible, looked hurt. ‘You struck me!’ ‘That wasn’t me hitting you, Gobbo! That was just a friendly punch! Big difference! Do n’t you know that? It’s a little tap on the arm, to show we’re mates. Go on, do it to me. Go on.’ Trev winked. …You will be polite and, most of all, you will never raise your hand in anger to anyo ne… But this wasn’t like that, was it? Nutt asked himself. Trev was his friend. This was fri endly. A friend thing. He punched the friendly arm. ‘That was a punch?’ said Trev. ‘You call that a punch? A girl could punch better’n tha t! How come you’re still alive with a weedy punch like that? Go on, try a proper punch !’ Nutt did. Be one of the crowd? It went against everything a wizard stood for, and a wizard would n ot stand for anything if he could sit down for it, but even sitting down, you had to sta nd out. There were, of course, times when a robe got in the way, especially when a wizar d was working in his forge, creating a magic metal or mobiloid glass or any of those oth er little exercises in practical magic where not setting fire to yourself is a happy bon us, so every wizard had some leather trousers and a stained, rotted-by-acid shirt. It wa s the shared dirty little secret, not very secret, but ingrained with deep-down dirt. Ridcully sighed. His colleagues had aimed for the look of the common man, but had on ly a hazy grasp of what the common man looked like these days, and now they were sni ggering and looking at one another and saying things like ‘Cor blimey, don’t you scr ub down well, as it were, my ol’ mate.’ Beside them, and looking extremely embarrass ed, were two of the university’s bledlows, not knowing what to do with their feet an d wishing that they were having a quiet smoke somewhere in the warm. ‘Gentlemen,’ Ridcully began, and then with a gleam in his eye added, ‘or should I sa y, fellow workers by hand and brain, this afternoon we—Yes, Senior Wrangler?’ ‘Are we, in point of fact, workers? This is a university, after all,’ said the Senior Wrang ler. ‘I agree with the Senior Wrangler,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. ‘Under universit y statute we are specifically forbidden to engage, other than within college precincts, in any magic above level four, unless specifically asked to do so by the civil power o r, under clause three, we really want to. We are acting as place holders, and as such, forbidden from working.’ ‘Would you accept “slackers by hand and brain”?’ said Ridcully, always happy to see how far he could go. ‘Slackers by hand and brain by statute,’ said the Senior Wrangler primly. Ridcully gave up. He could do this all day, but life couldn’t be all fun. ‘That being settled, then, I must tell you that I have asked the stalwart Mister Frankl y Ottomy and Mister Alf Nobbs to join us in this little escapade. Mister Nobbs says tha t since we are not wearing football favours we should not attract unwanted attention.’ The wizards nodded nervously at the bledlows. They were, of course, merely employees o f the university, while the wizards were, well, were the university, weren’t they? Aft er all, a university was not just about bricks and mortar, it was about people, specif ically wizards. But to a man, the bledlows scared them. They were all hefty men with a look of having been carved out of bacon. And they were all descendants of, and practically identical to, those men who had chased those wiz ards–younger and more limber, and it was amazing how fast you could run with a couple of bledlows behind you–through the foggy night-time streets. If caught, said bledlow s, who took enormous pleasure in the prosecution of the university’s private laws and idiosyncratic rules, would then drag you before the Archchancellor on a charge of At tempting to Become Rascally Drunk. That was preferable to fighting back, when the ble dlows were widely believed to take the opportunity for a little class warfare. That w as years ago, but even now the unexpected sight of a bledlow caused sullen, shameful terror to flow down the spines of men who had acquired more letters after their names than a game of Scrabble. Mr Ottomy, recognizing this, leered and touched the brim of his uniform cap. ‘Afternoo n, gents,’ he said. ‘Don’t you worry about a thing. Me and Alf here will see you right . We’d better get movin’, though, they bully off in half an hour.’ The Senior Wrangler would not have been the Senior Wrangler if he did not hate the s ound of silence. As they shuffled out of the back door, wincing at the unfamiliar ch afing of trouser upon knee, he turned to Mr Nobbs and said, ‘Nobbs…that’s not a comm on name. Tell me, Alf, are you by any chance related to the famous Corporal Nobby No bbs of the Watch?’ Mr Nobbs took it well, Ridcully thought, given the clumsy lack of protocol. ‘Nosir!’ ‘Ah, a distant branch of the name, then…’ ‘Nosir! Different tree!’ In the greyness of her front room, Glenda looked at the suitcase, and despaired. She’ d done her best with brown boot polish, week after week, but it had been bought from a shonky shop and the cardboard under the leather-ish exterior was beginning to show through. Her customers never seemed to notice, but she did, even when it was out of s ight. It was a secret part of a secret life that she lived for an hour or two on her half-day of f once a week, and maybe a little longer if today’s cold calls worked out. She looked at her face in the mirror, and said in a voice that was full of jaunt: ‘We a ll know the problem of underarm defoliation. It is so hard, isn’t it, to keep the liche ns healthy…But,’ she flourished a green and blue container with a golden stopper, ‘one spray with Verdant Spring will keep those crevices moist and forest fresh all day long…’ She faltered, because it really wasn’t her. She couldn’t do jaunty. The stuff was a doll ar a bottle! Who could afford that? Well, a lot of troll ladies, that’s who, but Mr Stro nginthearm said it was okay because they had the money, and anyway it did let the moss g row. She’d said all right, but a dollar for a fancy bottle of water with some plant food in it was a bit steep. And he’d said you are Selling the Dream. And they bought it. That was the worrying part. They bought it and recommended it to their friends. The city had discovered the Heavy Dollar now. She’d read about it in t he paper. There had always been trolls around, doing the heavy lifting and generally being there in the background if not being the actual background itself. But now they were raising families and running businesses, moving on and up and buying things, an d that made them people at last. And so you got other people like Mr Stronginthearm, a dwarf, selling beauty products to Miss and Mrs Troll, via ladies like Glenda, a hum an, because although dwarfs and trolls were officially great chums these days, becaus e of something called the Koom Valley Accord, that sort of thing only meant much to t he sort of people who signed treaties. Even the most well-intentioned dwarf would not walk down some of the roads along which Glenda, every week, dragged her nasty, semi-cardboard case, Selling the Dream. It got her out of the house and paid for the littl e treats. There was money to put away for a rainy day. Mr Stronginthearm had the knac k of coming up with new ideas, too. Who would have thought that lady trolls would go for fake-tan lotion? It sold. Everything sold. The Dream sold, and it was shallow and expensive and made her feel cheap. It— Her ever-straining ears caught the sound of next door’s front door opening very slowl y. Ha! Juliet jumped as Glenda suddenly loomed beside her. ‘Off somewhere?’ ‘Gonna watch the game, ain’t I?’ Glenda glanced up the street. A figure was disappearing rapidly around the corner. She grinned a grim grin. ‘Oh yes. Good idea. I wasn’t doing anything. Just wait while I fetch my scarf, will yo u?’ To herself she added, You just keep walking, Johnny! With a thump that caused pigeons to explode away like a detonating daisy, the Libraria n landed on his chosen rooftop. He liked football. Something about the shouting and the fighting appealed to his ances tral memories. And this was fascinating, because, strictly speaking, his ancestors had been blamelessly engaged for centuries as upstanding corn and feed merchants and, mor eover, were allergic to heights. He sat down on the parapet with his feet over the edge, and his nostrils flared as he sn uffed up the scents rising from below. It is said that the onlooker sees most of the game. But the Librarian could smell as w ell, and the game, seen from outside, was humanity. Not a day went past without his th anking the magical accident that had moved him a few little genes away from it. Apes h ad it worked out. No ape would philosophize, ‘The mountain is, and is not.’ They would think, ‘The banana is. I will eat the banana. There is no banana. I want another bana na.’ He peeled one now, in a preoccupied way, while watching the evolving tableau below. Not only does said onlooker see most of the game, he might even see more than one game. This street was indeed a crescent, which would probably have an effect on tactics if t he players had any truck with such high-flown concepts. People were pouring in from either end and also from a couple of alleyways. Mostly th ey were male-extremely so. The women fell into two categories: those who had been tug ged there by the ties of blood or prospective matrimony (after which they could stop pretending that this bloody mess was in any way engrossing), and a number of elderly women of a ‘sweet old lady’ construction, who bawled indiscriminately, in a rising cl oud of lavender and peppermint, screams of ‘Get ’im dahn an’ kick ’im inna nuts!’ and similar exhortations. And there was another smell now, one he’d learned to recognize but could not quite fa thom. It was the smell of Nutt. Tangled with it were the smells of tallow, cheap soap and shonky-shop clothing that the ape part of him categorized as belonging to ‘Tin F linging Man’. He had been just another servant in the maze of the university, but now he was a friend of Nutt, and Nutt was important. He was also wrong. He had no place in the world, but he was in it, and the world was becoming aware of him soon enough. The Librarian knew all about this sort of thing. There had been no space in the fabric o f reality marked ‘simian librarian’ until he’d been dropped into one, and the ripples ha d made his life a very strange one. Ah, another scent was riding the gentle updraught. It was easy: Screaming Banana Pie Woman. The Librarian liked her. Oh, she had screamed and run away the first time sh e’d seen him. They all did. But she had come back, and she’d smelled ashamed. She al so respected the primacy of words, and, as a primate, so did he. And sometimes she b aked him a banana pie, which was a kind act. The Librarian was not very familiar wit h love, which had always struck him as a bit ethereal and soppy, but kindness, on th e other hand, was practical. You knew where you were with kindness, especially if yo u were holding a pie it had just given you. She was a friend of Nutt, too. Nutt made friends easily for someone who had come from nowhere. Interesting… The Librarian, despite appearances, liked order. Books about cabbages went on the Bra ssica shelves, (blit) UUSSFY890–9046 (antiblit1.1), although obviously Mr Cauliflower ’s Big Adventure would be better placed in UUSS J3.2 (>blit) 9, while The Tau of Cabb age would certainly be a candidate for UUSS (blit+) 60-sp55-o9-hl (blit). To anyone f amiliar with a seven-dimensional library system in blit dimensional space it was as c lear as daylight, if you remembered to keep your eye on the blit. Ah, and here came his fellow wizards, walking awkwardly in the chafing trousers and try ing so hard not to stand out in a crowd that they would have stood out even more if the rest of the crowd had been the least bit interested. Nobody noticed. It was enthralling and exciting at the same time, Ridcully concluded. N ormally the pointy hat, robe and staff cleared the way faster than a troll with an axe. They were being pushed! And shoved! But it was not as unpleasant as the words suggest ed. There were moderate pressures on all sides as people poured in behind, as though the wizards were standing chest deep in the sea, and were swaying and shifting to the slow rhythm of the tide. ‘My goodness,’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. ‘Is this football? It’s a bit dull, isn’ t it?’ ‘Pies were mentioned,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, craning his neck. ‘People are still coming in, guv,’ said Ottomy. ‘But however do we see things?’ ‘Depends on the Shove, guv. Usually people near the action shout out.’ ‘Ah, I see a pie seller,’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. He took a couple of step s forward, there was a random shift and sway in the crowd, and he vanished. ‘How is it now, Mister Trev?’ said Nutt, as people surged around them. ‘Hurts like buggery, excuse my Klatchian,’ muttered Trev, clutching his injured arm t o his coat. ‘Are you sure you weren’t holding a hammer?’ ‘No hammer, Mister Trev. I’m sorry, but you did ask me—’ ‘I know, I know. Where did you learn to punch like that?’ ‘Never learned, Mister Trev. I must never raise my hand to another person! But you w ent on so, and—’ ‘I mean, you’re so skinny!’ ‘Long bones, Mister Trev, long muscles. I really am very sorry!’ ‘My fault, Gobbo, I didn’t know your own strength—’ Suddenly Trev shot forward, ca nnoning into Nutt. ‘Where’ve you been, my man?’ said the person who had just slapped him hard on the bac k. ‘We said to meet at the eel-pie stall!’ Now the speaker looked at Nutt and his eyes narrowed. ‘And who’s this stranger who th inks he’s one of us?’ He did not exactly glare at Nutt, but there was a definite sense of a weighing in the bal ance, and on unfriendly scales. Trev brushed himself off, looking uncharacteristically embarrassed. ‘Hi, Andy. Er, this is Nutt. He works for me.’ ‘What as? A bog brush?’ said Andy. There was laughter from the group behind him. Andy always got a laugh. It was the first thing you noticed, after the glint in his eye. ‘Andy’s dad is captain of Dimwell, Gobbo.’ ‘Pleased to meet you, sir,’ said Nutt, extending a hand. ‘Ooo, pleased to meet you, sir,’ Andy mimicked, and Trev grimaced as a calloused hand the size of a plate grasped Nutt’s cheese-straw fingers. ‘He’s got hands like a girl,’ Andy observed, taking a grip. ‘Mister Trev has been telling me wonderful things about the Dimmers, sir,’ said Nutt. Andy grunted. Trev saw his knuckles whiten with effort while Nutt chattered. ‘The ca maraderie of the sport must be a wonderful thing.’ ‘Yeah, right,’ Andy grunted, finally managing to pull his hand away, his face full of a ngry puzzlement. ‘And this is my mate, Maxie,’ said Trev quickly, ‘and this is Carter the Farter—’ ‘It’s Fartmeister now,’ said Carter. ‘Yeah, right. And this is Jumbo. You want to watch out for him. He’s a thief. Jumbo ca n pick a lock faster than you can pick your nose.’ The said Jumbo held up a small bronze badge. ‘Guild, of course,’ he said. ‘They nail you r ears to the door else.’ ‘You mean you break the law for a living?’ said Nutt, horrified. ‘Ain’t you ever heard of the Thieves’ Guild?’ said Andy. ‘Gobbo’s new,’ said Trev protectively. ‘Hasn’t got out much. He’s a goblin, from the h igh country.’ ‘Coming down here, taking our jobs, yeah?’ said Carter. ‘Like, how often do you do a hand’s turn?’ said Trev. ‘Well, I might want to one day.’ ‘Milking the cows when they come home?’ said Andy. This got another laugh, on cue. And that was the introductions sorted out, to Nutt’s surprise. He’d been expecting chicke n theft to be mentioned. Instead, Carter pulled a couple of tin cans out of a pocket a nd tossed them to Nutt and Trev. ‘Did a few hours’ unloading down the docks, didn’t I?’ he said defensively, as though a bit of casual labour was some kind of offence. ‘This come off a boat from Fourecks.’ Jumbo fished in his pocket again and pulled out someone else’s watch. ‘Game on in five minutes,’ he declared. ‘Let’s shove…er, if that’s all right with you, Andy?’ Andy nodded. Jumbo looked relieved. It was always important that things were all ri ght with Andy. And Andy was still watching Nutt as a cat watches an unexpectedly ch eeky mouse, while massaging his hand. Mr Ottomy cleared his throat, causing his red Adam’s apple to bob up and down like an i ndecisive sunset. Shouting in public, yes, he liked that, he was good at that. Speaking in public, now, that was a different kettle of humiliation. ‘Well, er, gents, what we will have here is your actual football, what is basically ab out the Shove, which is what you gentlemen will be doing soon—’ ‘I thought we watched two groups of players vie with one another to get the ball in the opponents’ goal?’ ‘Could be, sir, could very much be,’ the bledlow conceded, ‘but in the streets, see, your actual supporters on both sides try and endeavour to shorten the length of the field, as it were, depending on the flow of play, so to speak.’ ‘Like living walls, d’y’mean?’ said Ridcully. ‘That style of thing, sir, yes, sir,’ said Ottomy loyally. ‘What about the goals?’ ‘Oh, they’re allowed to move the goals, too.’ ‘Sorry?’ said Ponder. ‘The spectators can move the goals?’ ‘You have put your finger firmly on it, sir.’ ‘But that’s sheer anarchy! It’s a mess!’ ‘Some of the old boys do say the game has gone downhill, sir, that is true.’ ‘Downhill, into and out through the bottom of the world, I’d say.’ ‘Good one to play with magic, though,’ said Dr Hix. ‘Well worth a try.’ ‘A word to the wise, sir,’ said Ottomy with unwitting accuracy, ‘but you’d be wearing yo ur guts for garters if you tried it with some of the types who play these days. They tak e it seriously.’ ‘Mister Ottomy, I’m sure none of my blokes wear garters—’ Ridcully stopped and listened to Ponder Stibbons’s whispered interjection and continued, ‘well, possibly one, two at most, and it would be a very dull world if we were all the same, that’s what I say.’ H e looked around and shrugged. ‘So, this is football, is it? Rather a wizened shell of a game, yes? I, for one, don’t want to stand around all day in the rain while other peop le have all the fun. Let’s go and find the ball, gentlemen. We are wizards. That must c ount for something.’ ‘I thought we were blokes now,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. ‘Same thing,’ said Ridcully, straining to see over the heads of the crowd. ‘Surely not!’ ‘Well,’ said Ridcully, ‘isn’t a bloke someone who likes drinking with his mates and without the company of women? Anyway, I’m fed up with this. Form up behind me, never theless. We’re going to see some football.’ The progress of the wizards astonished Ottomy and Nobbs, who had hitherto seen them as fluffy plump creatures quite divorced from real life. But to get to be a senior wizard and stay there called for deep reserves of determination, viciousness and the sugared a rrogance that is the mark of every true gentleman, as in ‘Oh, was that your foot? I’m s o terribly sorry.’ And, of course, there was Dr Hix, a good man to have in a tight spot because he was (b y college statute) an officially bad person, in accordance with UU’s happy grasp of th e inevitable.* A less mature organization than UU might have taken the view that the way forward wou ld be to hunt such renegades down, at great risk and expense. UU, on the other hand, had given Hix and his team a department and a budget and a career structure, and also the chance to go out into dark caves occasionally and throw fireballs at unofficial evil wizards; it all worked rather well so long as nobody pointed out that the Depart ment of Post-Mortem Communications was really, when you got right down to it, just a politer form of n*e*c*r*o*m*a*n*c*y, wasn’t it? And so Dr Hix was now tolerated as a useful, if slightly irritating member of the Counc il largely because he was allowed (by statute) to say some of the naughty things that t he other wizards would really have liked to say themselves. Someone with a widow’s peak , a skull ring, a sinister staff and a black robe was expected to spread a little evil around the place, although university statute had redefined acceptable evil in this cas e as being inconveniences on a par with shoelaces tied together or a brief attack of gr oinal itch. It wasn’t the most satisfactory of arrangements, but it was in the best UU tradition: Hix occupied, amiably, a niche that might otherwise be occupied by someone w ho really got off on the whole mouldering corpses and peeled skulls thing. Admittedly, he was always giving fellow wizards free tickets to the various amateur dramatic produc tions he was obsessively involved with, but, on balance, they agreed, taking one thing with another, this was still better than peeled skulls. For Hix, a crowd like this was too good to waste. Not only was there a plethora of boot laces to be expertly tied together, but there were an awful lot of pockets as well. He always had some flyers for the next production in his robe,* and it wasn’t the same as picking pockets. Quite the reverse. He stuffed them into any he could find. The day was all a mystery to Nutt, and it stayed a mystery, becoming a little more m ysterious with every passing minute. In the distance a whistle was blown and somewhe re in this moving, jostling, crushing and in most cases drinking mob of people there was a game going on, apparently. He had to take Trev’s word for it. There were Oos and Aahs in the distance and the crowd ebbed and flowed in response. Trev and his ch ums, who called themselves, as far as Nutt could make out over the din, the Dimwell Massive Pussy, took advantage of every temporary space to move nearer and nearer to the mysterious game, holding their ground when the press went against them and pushi ng hard when an eddy went their way. Push, sway, shove…and something in this spoke t o Nutt. It came up through the soles of his feet and the palms of his hands, and sli d into his brain with a beguiling subtlety, warming him, stripping him away from him self and leaving him no more than a beating part of the living, moving thing around him. A chant came past. It had started somewhere at the other end of the game and, whatever it had been once, it was now just four syllables of roar, from hundreds of people and m any gallons of beer. As it faded, it took the warm, belonging feeling away with it, lea ving a hole. Nutt looked into the eyes of Trev. ‘Happened to you, did it?’ Trev said. ‘That was quick.’ ‘It was—’ Nutt began. ‘I know. We don’t talk about it,’ said Trev flatly. ‘But it spoke to me without—’ ‘We don’t talk about it, okay? Not that sort of thing. Look! They’re being pushed back. It’s opening up! Let’s shove!’ And Nutt was good at shoving…very good. Under his inexorable pressure people slid or gently spun out of the way, their hobnailed boots scraping on the stones as, short of an alternative, the owners were rolled and squeezed alongside Nutt and Trev and d eposited behind them, somewhat dizzy, bewildered and angry. Now, though, there was a frantic tugging at Nutt’s belt. ‘Stop pushing!’ Trev shouted. ‘We’ve left the others behind!’ ‘In fact my progress is now hindered by a pease pudding and chowder stand. I have bee n doing my best, Mister Trev, but it has really been slowing me down,’ said Nutt over his shoulder, ‘and also Miss Glenda. Hello, Miss Glenda.’ Trev glanced behind him. There was a fight going on back there, and he could hear An dy’s battle cry. There was generally a fight going on around Andy, and if there wasn ’t, he started one. But you had to like Andy, because…well, you just had to. He—Glen da was up ahead? Surely that meant that she would be there too?’ There was a commotion further on and a vaguely oblong thing, wrapped now in tatters of cloth, rose up in the air and fell back, to cheers and catcalls from the crowd. Trev had been right up to the game face many times before. It was no big deal. He’d seen th e ball dozens of times. But how long had Nutt been pushing a pudding stall in front of him like a snowplough? Oh my, Trev thought, I’ve found a player! How can ’e do it? He looks half-starved al l the time! In the absence of any way round in the press of people, Trev scrambled between Nutt’s legs, and for a moment looked down an avenue of coat hems, boots and, right in front o f him, a pair of legs that were considerably more attractive than those of Nutt. He su rfaced a few inches away from the milky-blue eyes of Juliet. She did not look surprise d; surprise is an instant thing, and by the time Juliet could register surprise, she g enerally wasn’t. Glenda, on the other hand, was the kind of person who instantly whack s surprise on the meat slab of indignation and hammers it into fury, and as their gaze s locked and metaphorical bluebirds cleared their throats for the big number, she appe ared between them and demanded: ‘What the hells were you doing down there, Trevor Like ly?’ The bluebirds evaporated. ‘What are you doin’ up front here?’ said Trev. It wasn’t repartee, but it was the best h e could do now, with his heart pounding. ‘We got shoved,’ growled Glenda. ‘You lot were shoving us!’ ‘Me? I never did!’ said Trev indignantly. ‘It was—’ He hesitated. Nutt? Look at him st anding there all nervous and skinny, like he’s never had a good meal in his life. I wo uldn’t believe me, and I am me. ‘It was them behind,’ he said lamely. ‘Trolls with big boots on, were they?’ said Glenda, her voice all vinegar. ‘We’d be in t he game if it wasn’t for Mister Nutt here, holding you all back!’ The unfairness of this took Trev aback, but he decided to stay there rather than argue with Glenda. Nutt could do no wrong in her eyes, and Trev could do no right, which he couldn’t contest, but rather felt should be amended to ‘never did any serious wrong’. But there was Juliet, smiling at him. When Glenda looked away to talk to Nutt she sli pped something into his hand and then turned her back on him as if nothing had happen ed. Trev opened his hand, heart pounding, and there was a little enamel badge in black and white, the colours of the hated enemy. It was still warm from Her hand. He closed his hand quickly and looked around to see if anyone had spotted this betray al of all that was good and true, i.e. the good name of Dimwell. Supposing he got kno cked down by a troll and one of the lads found it on him! Supposing Andy found it on him! But it was a gift from Her! He put it into his pocket and rammed it down to the bottom. This was going to be really difficult, and Trev was not a man who liked problems in hi s life. The owner of the pudding stand, having enterprisingly sold a number of portions to pass ing trade during its journey, strolled up to Trev and offered him a bag of hot pease. ‘Tough mate you got there,’ he said. ‘Some kind of troll, is he?’ ‘Not troll. Goblin,’ said Trev, as the sounds of the strife drew nearer. ‘I thought they were little buggers—?’ ‘This one isn’t,’ said Trev, wishing the man would go away. There was a sudden, localized silence. The kind of noise made by people who are holdin g their breath. He looked up and saw the ball, for the second time in the game. There was a core of ash wood in there somewhere, then a leather skin and finally dozen s of layers of cloth for grip, and it was dropping with pinpoint inevitability towards the beautiful, dreamy head of Juliet. Trev dived at her without a moment’s thought, d ragging her under the cart as the ball thumped on to the cobbles where She had been gr acing the world with Her presence. Many things went through Trev’s mind as the ball hit the ground. She was in his arms , even if She was complaining about getting mud on her coat. He had probably saved H er life, which from a romantic point of view was money in the bank, and—oh, yes. Dim mer or Dolly, if one of the hardcore posses found out about this the next thing to g o through his head would be a boot. She giggled. ‘Shush!’ he managed. ‘Not a good idea if you’d rather not know how you would look wit h that beautiful hair shaved off!’ Trev peeped out from under the stall, and attracted no attention at all. This is because Nutt had picked up the ball and was turning it over and over in his han ds with a frown on what was visible of, if you were kind, his face. ‘Is this all it is?’ he said to a bewildered Glenda. ‘A most inappropriate ending to a p leasant social gathering with interesting canapés! Where is this wretched thing supposed to be, then?’ Glenda, hypnotized by the sight, pointed a wavering finger in the general direction of d own the street. ‘There’s a big pole? Painted white…well, spattered with red at the bottom…’ ‘Oh yes, I see it. Well, in that case, I’ll—Look, will you men please stop pushing?’ Nu tt added to the crowd, who were craning to see. ‘But there’s no way you’ll ever get it there!’ Glenda yelled. ‘Just put it down and com e away!’ Trev heard a grunt from Nutt and absolute silence from the rest of the world. Oh, no, h e thought. Really no. It must be more than, what, a hundred and fifty yards to that goa l, and those things fly like a bucket. There is no way that he could— A distant pock broke the breathless silence, which healed itself instantly. Trev peered over a shoulder as the sixty-foot goal post gave up its battle with termites, rot, weather, gravity and Nutt, and fell into its own base in a cloud of dust. He was so astonished that he hardly noticed Juliet standing up next to him.* ‘Is that a kind of, like, sign?’ said Juliet, who believed in such things. At that moment, Trev believed in pointing a finger towards the other side of the stre et and shouting, ‘He went that way!’ and then hauling Juliet upright and butting Nutt in the stomach. ‘Let’s go!’ he added. He couldn’t do anything about Glenda, but that would not matter; while he held Juliet’s hand Glenda would follow him like a homing vulture. People were trying to run towards the hidden goal; others were making for th e apparent location of the long-distance scorer. Trev pointed in a random direction a nd yelled, ‘He went down there! Big man with a black hat!’ Confusion always helped, w hen it wasn’t yours; when it was time for a hue and cry, make sure who was hue. They halted a few alleys away. There was still a commotion far off, but a city crowd is ea sier to get lost in than a forest. ‘Look, perhaps I should go back and apologize,’ Nutt began. ‘I could make a new pole q uite easily.’ ‘I hate to tell you this, Gobbo, but I think you might have upset the kind of people wh o don’t listen to apologies,’ said Trev. ‘Keep moving, everyone.’ ‘Why might they be upset?’ ‘Well, Mister Nutt, first, you are not supposed to score a goal when it is not your gam e, and anyway you are a watcher, not a player,’ said Glenda. ‘And second, a shot like t hat gets right up people’s noses. You could have killed someone!’ ‘No, Miss Glenda, I assure you I could not. I deliberately aimed at the pole.’ ‘So? That doesn’t mean you were sure to hit it!’ ‘Er, I have to say it does, Miss Glenda,’ he mumbled. ‘How did you do it? You took the pole to bits! They don’t grow on trees! You’ll get us a ll into trouble!’ ‘Why can’t he be a player?’ said Juliet, staring at her reflection in a window. ‘What?’ said Glenda. ‘Bloody hell,’ said Trev. ‘With him on the team you wouldn’t need a team!’ ‘That’d save a lot of trouble, then,’ said Juliet. ‘So you say,’ said Glenda, ‘and where would be the fun in that? That wouldn’t be foo tball any more—’ ‘We are being watched,’ said Nutt. ‘I am sorry to interrupt you.’ Trev glanced around. The street was busy, but mostly with its own affairs. ‘There’s n o one interested, Gobbo. We’re well away.’ ‘I can feel it on my skin,’ Nutt insisted. ‘What, through all that wool?’ said Glenda. He turned round, soulful eyes on her. ‘Yes,’ he said, and remembered Ladyship testing him on that. It had seemed like a game at the time. He glanced up and a large head drew back quickly from a parapet. There was a very fa int smell of bananas. Ah, that one. He was nice. Nutt saw him sometimes, going hand over hand along the pipes. ‘You ought to get ’er home,’ said Trev to Glenda. Glenda shuddered. ‘Not a good idea. Old Stollop’ll ask her what she saw at the game.’ ‘Well?’ ‘She’ll tell him. And who she saw—’ ‘Can’t she lie?’ ‘Not in the way you can, Trev. She’s just no good at making stuff up. Look, let’s get back to the university. We all work there, and I often go in to catch up. We’ll go dir ectly now and you two go back the long way. We never saw one another, right? And for h eavens’ sake don’t let him do anything silly!’ ‘Excuse me, Miss Glenda,’ said Nutt meekly. ‘Yes, what?’ ‘Which of us were you addressing?’ ‘I have let you down,’ said Nutt, as they strolled through the post-match crowds. At l east, Trev ambled; Nutt moved with a strange gait that suggested there was something w rong with his pelvis. ‘Nah, it’s fixable,’ said Trev. ‘Everything is fixable. I’m a fixer, me. What did anyb ody really see? Just a bloke in Dimmer kit. There’s thousands of us. Don’t worry. Er, how come you’re so tough, Gobbo? You spent your life lifting weights, or what?’ ‘You are correct in your surmise, Mister Trev. Before I was born I did indeed use to lift weights. I was only a child then, of course.’ They strolled on and after a while Trev said, ‘Could you say that again? It’s got stuck in my head. Actually, I think part of it’s stickin’ out of my ear.’ ‘Ah, yes. Perhaps I have confused you. There was a time when my mind was full of dar kness. Then Brother Oats helped me to the light, and I was born.’ ‘Oh, religion stuff.’ ‘But here I am. You asked why I am strong? When I lived in the dark of the forge, I used to lift weights. The tongs at first, and then the little hammer and then the biggest ha mmer, and then one day I could lift the anvil. That was a good day. It was a little free dom.’ ‘Why was it so important to lift the anvil?’ ‘I was chained to the anvil.’ They walked on in silence again until Trev, picking each word with care, said, ‘I guess things must be sort of tough in the high country?’ ‘It is not so bad now, I think.’ ‘Makes you count your blessin’s, that sort of thing.’ ‘The presence of a certain lady, Mister Trev?’ ‘Yes, since you ask. I think about ’er all the time! I really like ’er! But she’s a Dolly! ’ A small group of supporters turned to glance at them, and he lowered his voice to a hiss . ‘She’s got brothers with fists the size of a bull’s arse!’ ‘I have read, Mister Trev, that love laughs at locksmiths.’ ‘Really? And what does it do when it’s been smacked in the face by a bull’s arse?’ ‘The poets are not forthcoming in that respect, Mister Trev.’ ‘Besides,’ said Trev, ‘locksmiths tend to be quiet blokes, you know? Careful and patien t and that. Like you. I reckon you could get away with a bit of a joke. You must ’ave m et girls. I mean, you’re no oil painting, that’s a fact, but they like a posh voice. I bet you ’ad them eatin’ out of your ’and…well, after you’d washed it, obviously.’ Nutt hesitated. There had been Ladyship, of course, and Miss Healstether, neither of wh om fitted easily into the category of ‘girl’. Of course, there were the Little Sisters, who were certainly young and apparently female but it had to be said looked rather lik e intelligent chickens, and certainly weren’t seen at their best when you watched them feeding–but once again, ‘girls’ did not seem the right word. ‘I have not met many girls,’ he volunteered. ‘There’s Glenda. She’s taken a real shine to you. Watch out, though, she’ll run your life for you if you let her. It’s what she does. She does it to everyone.’ ‘You two have a history, I think,’ said Nutt. ‘You are a sharp one, aren’t you? Quiet and sharp. Like a knife. Yeah, I suppose it was a history. I wanted it to be more of a geography, but she kept slappin’ my hand.’ Trev paused to search for any flicker in Nutt’s face. ‘That was a joke,’ he added, without much hope. ‘Thank you for telling me, Mister Trev. I will decipher it later.’ Trev sighed. ‘But I ain’t like that any more, and Juliet…well, I’d crawl a mile over bro ken glass just to hold ’er ’and, no funny business.’ ‘Writing a poem is often the way to the intended’s heart,’ said Nutt. Trev brightened. ‘Ah, I’m good with words. If I wrote ’er a letter, you could give it t o ’er, right? If I write it on posh paper, something like, let’s see…“I think you are r eally fit. How about a date? No hanky panky, promise. Luv, Trev.” How does that sound?’ ‘The soul of it is pure and noble, Mister Trev. But, ah, if I could assist in some way…? ’ ‘It needs longer words, right? And more sort of curly language?’ said Trev. But Nutt was not paying attention. ‘Sounds lovely to me,’ said a voice above Trev’s head. ‘Who do you know what can re ad, smart boy?’ There was this to be said about the Stollop brothers: they weren’t Andy. It was, in th e great scheme of things, not a huge difference when you couldn’t see for blood but, i n short, Stollops knew that force had always worked, and so had never bothered to try anything else, whereas Andy was a stone-cold psychopath who had a following only becau se it was safer than being in front of him. He could be quite charming when the franti cally oscillating mood swing took him; that was the best time to run. As for the Stoll ops, it would not take long for a researcher to realize that Juliet was the brains of the family outfit. One advantage from Trev’s viewpoint was that they thought they were clever, because no one had ever told them otherwise. ‘Ha, Mister so-called Trev,’ said Billy Stollop, prodding Trev with a finger like a hip popotamus sausage. ‘You full o’ smarts, you tell us who broke the goal, right?’ ‘I was in the Shove, Billy. Didn’t see a thing.’ ‘He gonna play for the Dimmers?’ Billy persisted. ‘Billy, not even your dad at his best could throw the ball half as far as everyone is sa ying. You know it, right? You couldn’t do it. I’m hearing that the Angels’ post just fel l apart and someone made up a story. Would I lie to you, Billy?’ Trev could make up lies that were very nearly truths. ‘Yeah, ’cos you’re a Dimmer.’ ‘All right, you got me, I’ll come clean,’ said Trev, holding out his hands. ‘Respect and all that, Billy…It was Nutt here that threw that ball. That’s my last offer.’ ‘I ought to smack your ’ead off for that,’ said Billy, sneering at Nutt. ‘That kid don’t lo ok like he could even lift the ball.’ And then a voice behind Trev said, ‘Why, Billy, have they let you out without your col lar on?’ Nutt heard Trev mutter, ‘Oh gods, and I was doing so well,’ under his breath, and then h is friend turned and said, ‘It’s a free street, Andy. No ’arm in passin’ the time, eh?’ ‘The Dollies killed your ol’ man, Trev. Ain’t you got no shame?’ The rest of the Massive Posse was standing behind Andy, their expressions a mix of def iance and the realization that, once again, they were going to be dragged into somethi ng. They were out in the main streets now. The Watch was not inclined to get involved in alley scuffles, but out in the open they had to do something in case the taxpayers complained, and since tired coppers didn’t like having to do something, they did it go od and hard, so with any luck they wouldn’t have to do it again any time soon. ‘What do you know about all this they’re saying about a Dimmer man and a Dolly tar t holding hands in the Shove?’ Andy demanded. He put a heavy hand on Trev’s should er. ‘Come on, you’re smart, you always know everything before anyone else.’ ‘Tart?’ That was Billy; it was a long way from his ears to his brain. ‘There’s not a girl in Dolly Sisters who’d look at you poxy lot!’ ‘Ah, so that’s where we got it from!’ said Carter the Farter. This struck Nutt as inflam matory in the circumstances. Perhaps, he thought, the ritual is that childish insults sh all be exchanged until both sides feel fully justified in attacking, just as Dr Vonmausb erger noted in Ritual Aggression in Pubescent Rats. But Andy had fished his short cutlass out of his shirt. It was a nasty little weapon, alien to the true spirit of foot-the-ball, which generally smiled indulgently on thing s that bruised, scared, fractured and, okay, worst case, heat of the moment and so on, blinded.* But then came Andy, who had issues. And once you had someone like Andy arou nd you, you got other Andys around too, and every kid who might otherwise have gone to a match with a pair of brass knuckles for bravado noticeably clanked when he walked, and needed to be helped up if he fell over. Now, weapons were being loosened here, too. ‘Careful now, everyone,’ Trev cautioned, stepping back and waving his empty hands in a conciliatory way. ‘This is a busy street, okay? If the Old Sam catch you fightin’, they’ll be down on you with big, big truncheons and they’ll beat you until you ’onk y our breakfast, ’cos for why? ’cos they hate you, ’cos you’re making paperwork for ’em and keepin’ ’em out of the doughnut shop.’ He stepped back a little further. ‘And then on account of you damagin’ their weapons with your ’eads they’ll run you down to the Tanty for a nice night in the Tank. Been there? Was it so much fun you want to go back again?’ He noted with satisfaction the looks of dismayed recollection on the faces of all exce pt Nutt, who couldn’t have any idea, and Andy, who was brother to the Tank. But even A ndy was not inclined to go up against the Sam. Kill just one of them, and Vetinari wou ld give you one chance to see if you could stand on air. They relaxed a little, but not too much. All it took in these sphincter-taut circumstanc es was one idiot… As it happened, one very clever person was able to do the job, when Nutt turned to Alge rnon, the youngest Stollop, and said cheerfully, ‘Do you know, sir, that your situation here is very similar to that described by Vonmausberger in his treatise on his experim ent with rats?’ At this point, Algernon, after one second of what passed for Algernon as thought, wha cked him hard with his club. Algernon was a big boy. Trev managed to grab his friend before he hit the cobbles. The club had hit Nutt square in the chest and torn the ancient sweater open. Blood was soaking through the stitches . ‘What did you ’ave to go and ’it him for, you bloody fool?’ Trev said to Algernon, agr eed even by his brothers to be as thick as elephant soup. ‘He wasn’t doin’ a thing. Wh at was that all about, eh?’ He sprang to his feet and before Algernon could move Trev had ripped his own shirt off and was ministering to Nutt, trying to staunch the wound. He came back up again after half a minute and flung the sodden shirt at Algernon. ‘Th ere’s no heartbeat, you moron! What did he ever do to you?’ Even Andy was frozen. No one had ever seen Trev like it, not old Trev. Even the Dolli es knew Trev was smart. Trev was slick. Trev wasn’t the sort to commit suicide by yel ling at a bunch of men who were already tensed for a fight. The luckless Algernon, with Trev’s rage baking his face, managed, ‘But, like…he’s a Dimmer…’ ‘Who are yer? You’re a bloody fool, that’s what you are!’ screamed Trev. He rounded on the others, finger shaking. ‘Who are yer? Who are yer? Nuffin! You’re r ubbish! You’re all shite!’ He jabbed the finger at Nutt. ‘And him? He made stuff. He knew things. And he’d never seen a game before today! He was only wearing the strip to fit in!’ ‘Don’t you worry, Trev, mate,’ Andy hissed and raised his cutlass menacingly. ‘There’s going to be a bloody war about this!’ But Trev was suddenly in his face like a wasp. ‘You what? You are mental! You just don’t get it, do you?’ ‘I can see helmets, Andy,’ said Jumbo urgently. ‘Me? What did I do?’ ‘As much as the stupid Stollops. Dimmers and Dollies? I hope the gods shit thin shit on both of you!’ ‘They’re getting really close, Andy.’ The Stollop boys, who were not altogether dumb, were already leaving. People in footb all strip were criss-crossing the city. The Watch couldn’t chase everyone. But, well, belting some bloke who then bled a lot and stopped breathing, well, that was tantamo unt to murder, and the Old Sam could develop quite a turn of speed in those circumsta nces. Andy shook a furious finger at Trev. ‘It’s a hard life in the Shove when you’re a dumb chuff with no mates.’ ‘This ain’t the Shove!’ ‘Better wake up, kid. It’s all Shove.’ The Posse left at speed, although Jumbo turned for a moment to mouth ‘sorry’. They wer en’t the only ones hurrying off. The street people were all for a free cabaret, but th is one might have associated difficulties: for example the asking of dangerous metaphy sical questions such as ‘Did you see anything?’ and similar. It was all very well for the Watch to say ‘the innocent have nothing to fear’, but what was that all about? Who cared about the innocent and their problems when the Watch were on their way? Trev knelt by the cooling body of the late Nutt. And now for the first time in a minute, it seemed to Trev, he started to breathe agai n. He had stopped when he had raged at Andy ’cos if you talked like that to Andy you were dead anyway, so why waste your breath? There were things you had to do, weren’t there? Weren’t you supposed to keep banging on the chest to, like, show the broken heart how to beat again? But he didn’t know ho w, and you didn’t need much smarts to know that it was not a good idea to try to lear n with the Watch on the way. It would not give a good first impression. That was why, when two watchmen turned up at speed, Trev was walking unsteadily towar ds them with Nutt in his arms. He was relieved to see that in charge was Constable Ha ddock: at least he was one of the ones who asked questions first. Behind him, and ecl ipsing most of the scenery, was Troll officer Bluejohn, who could clear a whole stree t just by walking down the centre of it. ‘Can you help me get him to the Lady Sybil, Mister Haddock? He’s very heavy,’ said T rev. Constable Haddock pulled the sodden shirt aside, and made a sad little clicking sound. With experience comes familiarity. ‘Morgue’s closer, lad.’ ‘No!’ Haddock nodded. ‘You’re Dave Likely’s son, aren’t you?’ ‘I don’t have to tell you!’ ‘No, ’cos I’m right,’ said Constable Haddock evenly. ‘Okay, Trev. Bluejohn here will take this man, who I expect you have never seen before in your life, and we’ll both r un to keep up. There was a decent thunderstorm the night before last. He might be luc ky. And so might you.’ ‘I never did it!’ ‘ ’course not. And now…let’s see who’s fastest at running, shall we? The hospital first. ’ ‘I want to stay with him,’ said Trev, as Bluejohn’s huge hand gently cradled Nutt. ‘No, lad,’ said Haddock. ‘You stay with me.’ It didn’t stop with Constable Haddock. It never did. Everyone called him Kipper, and h is calm unspoken message that since we’re all in this together, why make it hard for o ne another often worked, but sooner or later you’d be handed over to a senior copper w ho manufactured hard, in a little room with another copper at the door. And this one h ad been working double shifts, by the look of her. ‘I’m Sergeant Angua, sir, and I hope you are not in trouble.’ She opened a notebook and smoothed down the page. ‘Shall we go through the motions? You told Constable Haddock that you saw a fight goi ng on and when you got there all the big boys had run away and, amazingly, you found your workmate, Mister Nutts, bleeding to death. Well, I bet I can name all the big bo ys, every last one of them. I wonder why can’t you? And what, Trevor Likely, is this about?’ She flicked a black-and-white enamel token across the table, and by luck or j udgement its pin stuck in the wood a few inches from Trev’s hand. The unofficial motto of the Lady Sybil Free Hospital was ‘Not everybody dies’. It was true that, subsequent to the founding of the Lady Sybil, the chances of death from at least some causes in the city were quite amazingly reduced. Its surgeons were even kno wn to wash their hands before operating as well as after. But moving through its white corridors now was a figure who knew, from personal experience, that the unofficial mo tto was, in reality, entirely mistaken. Death stood by the well-scrubbed slab and looked down. MISTER NUTT? WELL, T HIS IS A SURPRISE, said Death, reaching into his robe. LET ME SEE WHAT I HA VE HERE. YOU KNOW, he said, I USED TO WONDER WHY PEOPLE SCRABBLED SO. A FTER ALL, COMPARED WITH THE LENGTH OF INFINITY, PEOPLE DO NOT LIVE ANY TIME AT ALL. EVEN YOU, MISTER NUTT. ALTHOUGH I CAN SE E THAT SCRABBLING WOULD WORK A LITTLE MAGIC IN YOUR CASE. ‘I can’t see you,’ said Nutt. JUST AS WELL, said Death. YOU WILL NOT REMEMBER ME, IN ANY CASE, L ATER ON. ‘I’m dying, then,’ said Nutt. ‘YES. DYING AND THEN AGAIN LIVING. He fished out a life-timer from his robe and watched as the sand fell upwards. SEE YOU LATER, MISTER NUTT. I FEAR THAT YOU WILL HAVE AN INTERESTING LIFE. ‘A Dolly favour on a good Dimmer boy? Gods bless my soul, I say, what can this be abo ut? And you know what? I will find out. It’s all a matter of shoving.’ Trev said nothing. He was out of options. Besides, he had seen the sergeant before, and she always seemed to be looking at his throat. ‘Constable Haddock tells me the Igor’s on duty down at the Lady Sybil. I hope he’s got a heart in his vats that’ll fit your friend, I really do,’ she said. ‘But it’ll still be a murder case, even if he comes walking in here tomorrow. Lord Vetinari’s rules: if it take s an Igor to bring you back, you were dead. Briefly dead, it’s true, which is why the mur derer will be briefly hanged. A quarter of a second usually does it.’ ‘I didn’t touch ’im!’ ‘I know. But you have to keep solid with your mates, right? Jumbo and, of course, Cart er, and, oh yes, Andy Shank, your mates, who aren’t here. Look, you are not under arre st–yet–you are helping the Watch with their inquiries. That means you can use the priv y, if you’re feeling brave. If you’re feeling suicidal, use the canteen. But if you tr y to run off I will hunt you down.’ She sniffed and added, ‘Like a dog. Understand?’ ‘Can’t I go and see how Nutt is gettin’ on?’ ‘No. Kipper’s still down there now. That’s Constable Haddock to you.’ ‘Everyone calls him Kipper.’ ‘Maybe, but not when it’s you talking to me.’ The sergeant twirled the favour around o n the table in an absent-minded way. ‘Has Mister Nutt got any next of kin? That means relatives.’ ‘I know what it means. He talks about people in Uberwald. That’s all I know,’ Trev lied instinctively. Saying that someone had spent his youth chained to an anvil was not goi ng to help here. ‘He gets on all right with the other guys in the vats.’ ‘How come he’s in there?’ ‘We never ask. There’s usually some bad story.’ ‘Anyone ever ask you?’ He stared at her. That was coppers for you. They came over all friendly, and just when you dropped your guard they stuck a pickaxe in your brain. ‘Was that an official copper question, or were you just bein’ nosy?’ ‘Coppers are never nosy, Mister Likely. However, sometimes we ask tangential questio ns.’ ‘So it wasn’t official?’ ‘Not really…’ ‘Then shove it where the sun does not shine.’ Sergant Angua smiled a copper’s smile. ‘You’ve got no card in your hand that you dar e play, and you come out with something like that. From Andy, yes, I’d expect it, bu t Kipper says you’re smart. How smart does someone have to be to be as stupid as you ?’ There was a tentative knock at the door and then a watchman put his head around it. So meone was shouting in the background in a large, authoritative voice. ‘—I mean, you de al with this sort of thing all the time, don’t you? For heavens’ sake, it’s not that h ard—’ ‘Yes, Nobby?’ ‘We’ve got a bit of a situation, sarge. That stiff that went to the Lady Sibyl? Doctor Lawn’s here and he says the man’s got up and gone home!’ ‘Did they get an Igor to look at him?’ ‘Yes. Sort of…er…’ The watchman was elbowed out of the way by an expansive man in a long green rubber r obe who was clearly trying to balance angry and friendly at the same time. He was ta iled by Constable Haddock, who was clearly trying to mollify him, and definitely fai ling. ‘Look, we try to help, all right?’ said Doctor Lawn. ‘You people say you’ve got a murde r case and I’ll pull old Igor off his slab and hang the overtime. But you tell Sam Vime s from me that I’d like him to send his boys down when they’re not busy for a bit of fi rst-aid tuition, to wit, the difference between dead and sleeping. It’s a fine line som etimes, but it’s generally possible to spot the clues. The profession has always tended to consider walking about to be among the more reliable, although in this city we’ve l earned to look on that as just a very good start. But when we pulled back the sheet he sat up and asked Igor if he had a sandwich, which is generally conclusive. Apart from a fever, he was fine. Strong heartbeat, which suggests he’s got one. Not a scratch on hi m, but he could certainly do with a good dinner. He must have been hungry because he at e the sandwich Igor made for him. On the subject of dinners, frankly I could do with mi ne!’ ‘You let him go?’ said Sergeant Angua, horrified. ‘Of course! I can’t keep a man in hospital for being inconveniently alive!’ She turned to Constable Haddock. ‘And you let him go, Kipper?’ ‘It looked like a case of doctor’s orders, sarge,’ said Haddock, giving Trev a wretched look. ‘He was covered in blood! He was really messed up!’ Trev exploded. ‘A prank, then?’ Angua tried. ‘I’d have sworn there wasn’t a heartbeat, Sergeant,’ Haddock volunteered. ‘Maybe he’ s one of those monks from the Hub that do the hocus-pocus stuff.’ ‘Then someone has been wasting Watch time,’ said Angua, glaring at Trev. He spotted that one for the desperate throw it was. ‘What would be in it for me?’ he sa id. ‘Do you think I want to be here?’ Constable Haddock cleared his throat. ‘It’s match night, sarge. The desk is heaving an d there are supporters roaming around all over the place and someone’s been feeding th em a lot of rumours. We’re stretched, that’s all I’m saying. We’ve had a couple of big shouts already. And he did walk away, after all.’ ‘Not a problem for me,’ said the doctor. ‘Came in horizontal, went out upright. It’s the preferred way. And I’ve got to get back, sergeant. We’re going to have a busy night, to o.’ The sergeant looked for someone to shout at, and there was Trev. ‘You! Trev Likely. This one’s down to you! Go and find your chum. And if there’s any more trouble, there’ll be…trouble. Is that clear?’ ‘Twice, sarge.’ He couldn’t resist it, he just couldn’t, not even with the cold sweat r olling down his spine. But he felt light…uplifted…released. But some people just can’t respect an epiphany when you’re having one. It’s not a cop skill. ‘It’s sergeant to you, Likely! Here!’ Trev managed to catch the favour as it was skimmed across the room. ‘Thanks, sarge!’ ‘Get out!’ He got out, and was half expecting the shadowy shape that stepped up to him when he wa s clear of the building. There was a faint odour in the grey air. Well, at least it wa sn’t Andy. He could do without Andy right now. ‘Yes, Carter?’ he said to the fog. ‘How did you know it was me?’ Trev sighed. ‘I guessed.’ He started to walk fast. ‘Andy’ll want to know what you said.’ ‘Don’t worry, it’s sorted.’ ‘Sorted! How?’ Carter, always a bit overweight, had to scurry to keep up. ‘Not going to tell you.’ Oh, the joy of the moment. ‘But can I tell him we’re in the clear?’ ‘It’s all sorted! Done and dusted! I blew it out. It’s fixed. All gone away. It never happ ened.’ ‘Are you sure?’ said Carter. ‘He was pretty busted up.’ ‘Hey, what can I tell you?’ Trev flung out his arms and twirled a pirouette. ‘I’m Trev L ikely!’ ‘Well, that’s firm, then. Hey, I bet Andy’ll let you back in the Posse now. That would b e great, eh?’ ‘Do you know what Nutt thought the Posse was called, Carter?’ ‘No. What?’ Trev told him. ‘Well, that’s—’ Carter began, but Trev interrupted. ‘It’s funny, Carter. It’s funny, and sort of sad and hopeless. It really is.’ Trev stoppe d walking so abruptly that Carter collided with him. ‘And here’s a tip: Carter the Farter isn’t gonna take you anywhere. And that goes for the Fartmeister, too. Trust me.’ ‘But everybody calls me Carter the Farter,’ the Fartmeister wailed. ‘Punch the next one who does. See a doctor. Cut down on carbohydrates. Keep out of co nfined spaces. Use aftershave,’ said Trev, speeding up again. ‘Where are you going, Trev?’ ‘I’m gettin’ out of the Shove!’ Trev called over his shoulder. Carter looked around desperately. ‘What Shove?’ ‘Haven’t you heard? It’s all Shove!’ Trev wondered if he glowed as he trotted through the fog. Things were going to be di fferent. As soon as Smeems got in, he’d go and see him about a better job or somethi ng… A figure appeared out of the mist ahead of him. This was something of an achievement since the figure was a head shorter than him. ‘Mithter Likely?’ it said. ‘Who’s askin’?’ said Trev and added, ‘What’s askin’?’ The figure sighed. ‘I underthtand that you are a friend of the gentleman rethently admitte d to the hothpital,’ it said. ‘What’s that to you?’ ‘Quite a lot,’ said the figure. ‘May I athk if you know very much about the gentleman? ’ ‘I don’t have to talk to you,’ said Trev. ‘Everything’s been fixed, okay?’ ‘Would that thith wath the cathe,’ said the figure. ‘I have to talk to you. My name ith Ig or.’ ‘You know, I had a feelin’ about that. Are you the one who made the sandwich for Nut t?’ asked Trev. ‘Yeth. Tuna, thpaghetti and jam, with thprinkleth. My thignature dith. Do you know a nything about hith background?’ ‘Not a thing, mister.’ ‘Really?’ ‘Look. In the vats you stir up tallow, not the past, okay? You just don’t, right? I know he’s had some bad times, an’ that’s all I’m telling you.’ ‘I thought tho,’ said Igor. ‘I believe he cometh from Uberwald. Thome thtrange and dangerouth thingth come from Uberwald.’ ‘This might sound a stupid question, but do you come from Uberwald, by any chance?’ said Trev. ‘Thinth you athk, yeth,’ said Igor. Trev hesitated. You saw Igors around occasionally. The only thing most people knew w as that they could stitch you up even better than the Watch and did strange things i n cellars and only tended to come out much when there were thunderstorms. ‘I think your friend may be very dangerouth,’ said Igor. Trev tried to picture Nutt as dangerous. It was quite hard until you remembered a thro w that knocked down a whole goal post half a street away. He wished he didn’t. ‘Why should I listen to you? How do I know you are not dangerous?’ he said. ‘Oh, I am,’ said Igor, ‘believe me. And Uberwald containth thingth that I would not wa nt to meet.’ ‘I am not gonna listen to you,’ said Trev. ‘And you are pretty hard to understand in any case.’ ‘Ith he thubject to thtrange moodth?’ Igor ploughed on. ‘Doth he get into a rage? Do y ou know anything about hith eating habitth?’ ‘Yes, he likes apple pies,’ said Trev. ‘What’re you on about?’ ‘I can thee you are great friendth,’ said Igor. ‘I am thorry that I have trethpathed on your time.’ ‘Trethpathed’ hanging in the air considerably added to the water drops hangi ng in the fog. ‘I will give you thome advith. When you need me, jutht thcream. I regret that you will find it very eathy to thcream.’ The figure turned and instantly vanished i nto the mist. And Igors moved about oddly, Trev remembered. And you never saw one at a footbal l game… He noticed that last thought go past. What had he tried to tell himself? That someone who did not watch football was not a real person? He couldn’t think of a proper answ er. He was amazed that he had even asked the question. Things were changing. Glenda arrived in the Night Kitchen with Juliet sworn to silence, and beneficently gave Mildred and Mrs Hedges the rest of the night off. That suited them both very well, as it always does, and a little favour had been done there that she could call upon when n ecessary. She took her coat off and rolled up her sleeves. She felt at home in the Night Kitchen, in charge, in control. Behind black iron ranges she could defy the world. ‘All right,’ she said to the subdued Juliet. ‘We weren’t there today. Today did not h appen. You were here helping me clean the ovens. I’ll see you get some overtime so yo ur dad won’t suspect. Okay? Have you got that?’ ‘Yes, Glenda.’ ‘And while we’re here we’ll make a start on the pies for tomorrow night. It’ll be nice to get ahead of ourselves, right?’ Juliet said nothing. ‘Say “Yes, Glenda”,’ Glenda prompted. ‘Yes, Glenda.’ ‘Go and chop some pork, then. Being busy takes your mind off things, that’s what I alw ays say.’ ‘Yes, Glenda, that’s what you always say,’ said Juliet. An inflection caught Glenda’s ear, and worried her a little. ‘Do I always say that? Whe n?’ ‘Every day when you come in and put your apron on, Glenda.’ ‘Mother used to say that,’ said Glenda, and tried to shake the thought out of her head. ‘And she was right, of course! Hard work never hurt anybody!’ And she tried to unthink the treacherous thought: except her. Pies, she thought. You can rely on pies. Pies don ’t give you grief. ‘I fink that Trev likes me,’ Juliet muttered. ‘He don’t give me funny looks like the othe r boys. He looks like a little puppy.’ ‘You want to watch out for that look, my girl.’ ‘I fink I luvim, Glendy.’ Wild boar, thought Glenda, and apricots. There’s some left in the cool room. And we’ve got mutton pies with a choice of tracklements…always popular. So…pork pies, I think, and there’s some decent oysters in the pump room, so they’ll do for the wet pie. I’ll do Sea Pie and the anchovies look good, so there’s always room for a Stargazey or two, even though I feel sorry for the little fishes, but right now I’ll bake some blind pa stries so that—‘What did you say?’ ‘I luvim.’ ‘You can’t!’ ‘He saved my life!’ ‘That’s no basis for a relationship! A polite thank you would have sufficed!’ ‘I’ve got a feelin’ about him!’ ‘That’s just silly!’ ‘Well? Silly’s not bad, is it?’ ‘Now you listen to me, young—Oh, hello, Mister Ottomy.’ It is in the way of the Ottomies all around the worlds to look as if they have been buil t out of the worst parts of two men and to be annoyingly hushen-footed on thick red rubb er soles, all the better to peep and pry. And they always assume that a free cup of tea is theirs by right. ‘What a day, miss, what a day! Were you at the match?’ he enquired, glancing from Gle nda to Juliet. ‘Been cleaning the ovens,’ said Glenda briskly. ‘Yes, today didn’t happen,’ Juliet added, and giggled. Glenda hated giggling. Ottomy looked around slowly and without embarrassment, noting the absence of dirt, discarded gloves, cloths— ‘And we’ve only just finished getting everything all neat and tidy,’ Glenda snarled. ‘ Would you like a cup of tea, Mister Ottomy? And then you can tell us all about the gam e.’ It has been said that crowds are stupid, but mostly they are simply confused, since as an eyewitness the average person is as reliable as a meringue lifejacket. It became o bvious, as Ottomy went on, that nobody had any clear idea about anything other than th at some bloke threw a goal from halfway down the street, and even then only maybe. ‘But, funny thing,’ Ottomy went on, as Glenda metaphorically let out a breath, ‘while we was in the Shove, I could’ve sworn I saw your lovely assistant here chatting to a l ad in the Dimmer strip…’ ‘No law against that!’ Glenda said. ‘Anyway, she was here, cleaning the ovens.’ It was clumsy, but she hated people like him, who lived for the exercise of third-hand authori ty and loved every little bit of power they could grab. He’d seen more than he’d told h er, that was certain, and wanted her to wriggle. And out of the corner of her mind, she could feel him looking at their coats. Their wet coats. ‘I thought you didn’t go to the football, Mister Ottomy?’ ‘Ah, well, there you have it. The pointies wanted to go and watch a game, and me and Mister Nobbs had to go with them in case they got breathed on by ordinary people. B limey, you wouldn’t believe it! Tutting and complaining and taking notes, like they owned the street. They’re up to something, you mark my words.’ Glenda didn’t like the word ‘pointies’, although it was a good description. Coming fro m Ottomy, though, it was an invitation to greasy conspiracy. But however you baked it, wizards were nobs, people who mattered, the movers and the shakers: and when people l ike that got interested in the doings of people who by definition did not matter, litt le people were about to be shaken, and shook. ‘Vetinari doesn’t like football,’ she said. ‘Well, o’course, they’re all in it together,’ said Ottomy, tapping his nose. This caused a small lump of dried matter to shoot from his other nostril into his tea. Glenda had a b rief struggle with her conscience over whether to point this out, but won. ‘I thought you should know this, on account of how people up in the Sisters look up t o you,’ said Ottomy. ‘I remember your mum. She was a saint, that woman. Always had a helping hand for everyone.’ Yes, and didn’t they grab, said Glenda to herself. She wa s lucky to die with all her fingers. Ottomy drained his mug and plonked it on the table with a sigh. ‘Can’t stand around her e all day, eh?’ ‘Yes, I’m sure you’ve got lots of other places to stand.’ Ottomy paused at the entrance arch, and turned to grin at Juliet. ‘A girl the spit and image of you, I’d swear it. With a Dimmer boy. Amazing. You mus t have one of those double gangers. Well, it’ll have to remain a mystery, as the man said when he found something that would have to remain a mystery. Toodle-oo—’ He stopped dead rather than walk into the silvery knife that Glenda was holding in a no t totally threatening way quite close to his throat. She had the satisfaction of seeing his Adam’s apple pop back up and down again like a sick yoyo. ‘Sorry about that,’ she said, lowering it. ‘I’ve always got a knife in my hand these d ays. We’ve been doing the pork. Very much like human flesh, pork, or so they say.’ She put her spare hand across his shoulders and said, ‘Probably not a good idea, spreadin g silly rumours, Mister Ottomy. You know how people can be so funny about that sort of thing. Nice of you to drop by and if you happen to be going past tomorrow I’ll see th at you get a pie. Do excuse us. I have a lot of chopping up to do.’ He left at speed. Glenda, her heart pounding, looked at Juliet; her mouth made a perfec t O. ‘What? What?’ ‘I fort you was goin’ to stab ’im!’ ‘I just happened to be holding a knife. You are holding a knife. We hold knives. This is a kitchen.’ ‘D’you fink he’s goin’ to tell?’ ‘He doesn’t really know anything.’ Eight inches, she thought. That’s as big as you ca n make a pie without a dish. How many pies could I make out of a weasel like Ottomy? The big mincer would make it easy. Ribcages and skulls must be a problem, though. Pro bably better, on the whole, to stick to pork. But the thought blazed away at the back of her mind, never to become action but unfami liar, exciting and oddly liberating. What were the wizards doing at the game? Making notes about what? A puzzle to think about. In the meantime, they were in a world of pies. Juliet could work quite well at repeti tive jobs when she put her mind to it, and she had a meticulousness often found in pe ople who were not very clever. Occasionally she sniffed, not a good thing when you ar e making pie filling. She was probably thinking about Trev, and pasting him, in her b eautiful and not very overcrowded head, into one of those glittery dreams sold by Bu-bubble and other junk, where all you had to do to be famous was just ‘be yourself’. H a! While Glenda had always known what she wanted. She worked long, poorly paid hours to get it, and here it was: her own kitchen, and power, more or less…over pies! A mom ent ago you were daydreaming of turning a man into pies! Why are you so angry all the time? What went wrong? I’ll tell you what went wrong! W hen you got there, there was no there there. You wanted to see Quirm from an open ca rriage while a nice young man drank champagne out of your slipper, but you never did , because they were a funny lot in Quirm, and you couldn’t trust the water, and how did that champagne thing work, anyway? Didn’t it drip out? What would happen if your toe trouble played up again…? So you never did. Never will. ‘I never said Trev’s a bad lad,’ she said aloud. ‘Not a gentleman, needs a slap to teach him manners and he takes life a good deal too easily, but he could make something of hi mself if he had reason to put his mind to it.’ Juliet did not seem to be listening, but you never could tell. ‘It’s just the football. You’re on different sides. It won’t work,’ Glenda finished. ‘S’posing I went and supported the Dimmers?’ A day ago that would have sounded like some kind of sacrilege; now it just presented a huge problem. ‘For a start, your dad wouldn’t speak to you ever again. Or your brothers.’ ‘They don’t now, much, anyway, except to ask when their grub is goin’ to be ready. D ’you know, today was the first time I ever saw the ball up close? And you know what? It weren’t worth it. Hey, and they’re goin’ to have a fashion show on at Shatta tom orrow. Why don’t we go?’ ‘Never heard of it,’ Glenda snorted. ‘It’s a dwarf store.’ ‘That sounds right. I can’t imagine humans naming anything like that. You’d be hostage to the first misprint.’ ‘We could go. Might be fun.’ Juliet waved a tattered copy of Bu-bubble. ‘And the new micromails are going to be really good and soft, and don’t chafe, it says here, plu s, horned helmets are making a return after too long in obs…curi…tea. Where’s that? And there’s this mat…in…a tomorrow.’ ‘Yes, but we’re not the kind of women who go to fashion shows, Jules.’ ‘You’re not. Why am I not?’ ‘Well, because…Well, I wouldn’t know what to wear.’ Glenda was getting desperate n ow. ‘That’s why you should go to fashion shows,’ said Juliet smugly. Glenda opened her mouth to snap a reply, and thought: it’s not about boys and it’s not ab out football. It’s safe. ‘All right. I suppose it might be fun. Look, we’ve done a woman’s job this evening. I’ll take you home now and do my chores and come back. Your dad might be worrying.’ ‘He’ll be in the pub,’ said Juliet accurately. ‘Well, he would be worrying if he wasn’t,’ said Glenda. She wanted some time to herself with her feet up. It hadn’t just been a long day, it had been a long and deep one as well. She needed some time for things to settle. ‘And we’ll take a chair, how about that?’ ‘They’re very expensive!’ ‘Well, you’re only young once, that’s what I say.’ ‘I never heard you say that before.’ Several troll chairs were waiting outside the university. They were expensive at fivepenc e for the ride, but the seats in panniers round the carrier’s neck were much more comfy t han the slats on the buses. Of course, it was posh, and curtains twitched and lips pursed . That was the strange thing about the street: if you were born there, people didn’t like it if you started not to fit in. Granny had called it ‘getting ideas above your station’ . It was letting the side up. She opened Juliet’s door for her because the girl always fumbled with the lock, and wat ched it shut. Only then did she open her own front door, which was as patched and peeling as the oth er one. She’d hardly taken her coat off when there was a hammering on the weatherbeate n woodwork. She flung it open to find Mr Stollop, Juliet’s father, one fist still rais ed and a little cloud of powdered paint flecks settling around him. ‘Heard you come in, Glendy,’ he said. ‘What’s this all about?’ His other huge hand rose, holding a crisp off-white envelope. You didn’t see many of th ese in Dolly Sisters. ‘It’s called a letter,’ said Glenda. The man held it out imploringly and now she noticed the large letter V on the dreade d government stamp, guaranteed to spread fear and despondency among those with taxes yet to pay. ‘It’s his lordship writing to me!’ said Mr Stollop in distress. ‘Why’d he want to go and write to me? I haven’t done nothing!’ ‘Have you thought about opening it?’ said Glenda. ‘That’s generally how we find out wh at’s in letters.’ There was another of those imploring looks. In Dolly Sisters reading and writing was s oft indoor work that was best left to the women. Real work required broad backs, stron g arms and calloused hands. Mr Stollop absolutely fitted the bill. He was captain of t he Dollies and in one match had bitten an ear off three men. She sighed and took the l etter from a hand which she noticed was slightly trembling and slit it open with her t humbnail. ‘It says here, Mister Stollop,’ she said, and the man winced. ‘Yes. That would be you, ’ Glenda added. ‘Is there anything about taxes or anything?’ he said. ‘Not that I can see. He writes that “I would greatly appreciate your company at a dinn er I am proposing to hold at Unseen University at eight o’clock Wednesday evening to d iscuss the future of the famous game foot-the-ball. I will be pleased to welcome you a s the captain of the Dolly Sisters team.”’ ‘Why has he picked on me?’ Stollop demanded. ‘He says,’ said Glenda, ‘because you’re the captain.’ ‘Yes, but why me?’ ‘Maybe he’s invited all the team captains,’ Glenda volunteered. ‘You could send a lad round with a white scarf and check, couldn’t you?’ ‘Yeah, but supposing it’s just me,’ said Stollop again, determined to plumb the horror to its depths. Glenda had a bright idea. ‘Well then, Mister Stollop, it would look like the captain of t he Dolly Sisters is the only one important enough to discuss the future of football with the ruler himself.’ Stollop didn’t square his shoulders because he wore them permanently squared, but wit h a muscular nudge he managed to achieve the effect of cubed. ‘Hah, he’s got that one right!’ he roared. Glenda sighed inwardly. The man was strong, but his muscles were melting into fat. She knew his knees hurt. She knew he got out of breath rather quickly these days and in t he presence of something he couldn’t bully, punch or kick, Mr Stollop was entirely at a loss. Down by his sides his hands flexed and unflexed themselves as they tried to do his thinking for him. ‘What’s this all about?’ ‘I don’t know, Mister Stollop.’ He shifted his weight. ‘Er, would it be about that Dimmer boy that got himself hurt tod ay, d’you think?’ Could be anyone, thought Glenda as cold dread blossomed. It’s not as though it doesn’t h appen every week. It doesn’t have to be either of them. It will be, of course, I know it , but I don’t know it, can’t possibly know it, and if I repeat that long enough it might all never have happened. Got himself hurt, thought Glenda in the roar of panic. That quite likely means he happe ned to be standing in the wrong place in the wrong strip, which is tantamount to a self -inflicted wound. He got himself killed. ‘My lads came in and said it was out in the street. That’s what they just heard. He got k illed, that’s what they heard.’ ‘They didn’t see anything?’ ‘That’s right, they didn’t see a thing.’ ‘But they were doing a lot of listening?’ That one went over Stollop’s head without even bothering to climb. ‘And it was a Dimmer boy?’ ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They heard he died, but you know how those Dimwell buggers lie.’ ‘Where are your boys now?’ For a moment the old man’s eyes blazed. ‘They’re stoppin’ indoors or I’ll thrash ’em . You get some nasty gangs out when something like that’s been happening.’ ‘One less now, then,’ said Glenda. Stollop’s face was painted in pigments of misery and dread. ‘They’re not bad boys, yo u know. Not at heart. People pick on them.’ Yes, down at the Watch House, she said to herself, where people say, ‘That’s them! T he big ones! I’d know them anywhere!’ She left him shaking his head and ran down the road. The troll would never expect to get a fare up here and there was no sense in hanging around and getting covered in pa int. She might just about be able to catch up with it on its way down town. After a m inute or two she realized that someone was following her. Chasing her in the gloom. I f only she’d remembered to bring the knife. She stepped into a patch of deeper shadow and, as the knife-wielding maniac drew level, stepped out and shouted, ‘Stop followi ng me!’ Juliet gave a little scream. ‘They’ve got Trev,’ she sobbed, as Glenda held her. ‘I know they have!’ ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Glenda. ‘There’s fighting all the time after a big match. No sense in getting too worried.’ ‘So why were you running?’ said Juliet sharply. And there was no answer to that. The bledlow nodded him through the staff door with a grunt and he headed straight away for the vats. A couple of the lads were dribbling in their meticulous and very slow w ay, but there was no sign of Nutt until Trev risked his sanity and nasal passages by c hecking the communal sleeping area, where he found Nutt sleeping on his bedroll, clutc hing his stomach. It was an extremely large stomach. Given the usual neat shape of Nut t, it made him look a little like a snake that had swallowed an extremely large goat. The curious face of the Igor and his worried voice came back to him. He looked down be side the bedroll and saw a small piece of piecrust and some crumbs. It smelled like a very good pie. In fact, he could think of only one person who could ever make a pie qu ite so beguiling. Whatever it was that had been filling Trev, the invisible illuminati on that had made him almost dance here from the Watch House, drained out through his f eet. He headed through the stone corridors to the Night Kitchen. Any optimism he might have retained was dashed one hope at a time by the trail of pie crumbs, but the illuminati on rose again as he saw Juliet and, oh yes, Glenda, standing in what was left of the N ight Kitchen, which was a mess of torn-open cupboards and pieces of piecrust. ‘Oh, Mister Trevor Likely,’ said Glenda, folding her arms. ‘Just one question: who ate a ll the pies?’ The illumination swelled until it filled Trev with a kind of silvery light. It had been t hree nights since he had slept in an actual bed and it had not been your normal sort of d ay. He smiled broadly at nothing at all and was caught by Juliet as he hit the ground. Trev woke up half an hour later, when Glenda brought him a cup of tea. ‘I thought we’d better let you sleep,’ she said. ‘Juliet said you looked awful, so obviously she’s comi ng to her senses.’ ‘He was dead,’ said Trev. ‘Dead as a doorknob, and then he wasn’t. What’s that all abou t?’ He levered himself up and realized that he had been put to bed on one of the grubby bedrolls in the vats. Nutt was lying on the roll next to him. ‘All right,’ said Glenda. ‘If you can do it without lying, tell me.’ She sat down and watched the sleeping Nutt for a while as Trev tried to make sense of the previous even ing. ‘What was in the sandwich again? The one the Igor gave him?’ ‘Tuna, spaghetti and jam. With sprinkles,’ said Trev, yawning. ‘Are you sure?’ ‘It’s not the kinda thing you forget.’ ‘What kind of jam?’ Glenda insisted. ‘Why ask?’ ‘I’m thinking it might work with quince. Or chilli. Can’t see any place for sprinkles, though. They don’t make any sense.’ ‘What? He’s an Igor. It doesn’t have to make sense!’ ‘But he warned you about Nutt?’ ‘Yes, but I don’t think he meant “lock up your pies”, do you? Are you gonna get into tr ouble about the pies?’ ‘No. I’ve got plenty more maturing in the cool room. They’re at their best when mature d. You have to keep ahead of yourself, with pies.’ She looked down at Nutt and went on, ‘Are you really telling me he got all smashed up by the Stollop boys and then walked out of the Lady Sibyl?’ ‘He was as dead as a doorknob. Even old ’addock could spot that.’ This time they both stared at Nutt. ‘He’s alive now,’ said Glenda, as if it was an accusation. ‘Look,’ said Trev, ‘all I know about people who come from Uberwald is that some of t hem are vampires and some are werewolves. Well, I don’t think vampires are much inte rested in pies. And it was a full moon last week and he didn’t act odd; well, odder than normal.’ Glenda lowered her voice. ‘Maybe he’s a zombie—No, they don’t eat pies either.’ She con tinued to stare at Nutt, but another part of her said, ‘There’s going to be a banquet o n Wednesday night. Lord Vetinari’s up to something with the wizards. It’s about the foo tball, I’m sure of it.’ ‘Well?’ ‘For some plan, I expect. Something nasty. The wizards were at the game today taking no tes! Don’t tell me that’s healthy. They want to shut down football, that’s what it is!’ ‘Good!’ ‘Trevor Likely, how can you say that! Your dad—’ ‘Died because he was dumb,’ said Trev. ‘And don’t tell me it was the way he would ha ve wanted to go. No one would want to go like that.’ ‘But he loved his football!’ ‘So? What does that mean? The Stollop boys love their football. Andy Shank loves ’is football! And what does it mean? Not countin’ today, how often have you seen the ball in play? Hardly ever, I bet.’ ‘Well, yes, but it’s not about the football.’ ‘You’re saying that football is not about football?’ Glenda wished she’d had a proper education, or, failing that, any real education at all. B ut she was not going to back off now. ‘It’s the sharing,’ she said. ‘It’s being part of th e crowd. It’s chanting together. It’s all of it. The whole thing.’ ‘I believe, Miss Glenda,’ said Nutt from his mattress, ‘that the work you are looking f or is Trousenblert’s Der Selbst uberschritten durch das Ganze.’ They looked down at Nutt again, mouths open. He had opened his eyes and appeared to be staring at the ceiling. ‘It is the lonely soul trying to reach out to the shared soul of all humanity, and possibly much further. W. E. G. Goodnight’s translation of In Se arch of The Whole is marred, while quite understandable, by the mistranslation of bewu ?tseinsschwelle as “haircut” throughout.’ Trev and Glenda looked at one another. Trev shrugged. Where could they start? Glenda coughed. ‘Mister Nutt, are you alive or dead or what?’ ‘Alive, thank you very much for asking.’ ‘I saw you killed!’ Trev shouted. ‘We ran all the way to the Lady Sybil!’ ‘Oh,’ said Nutt. ‘I am sorry, I do not recall. It would seem that diagnosis was in error. Am I right?’ They exchanged glances. Trev got the worst of it. When Glenda was angry, her glance mi ght just possibly etch glass. But Nutt had a point. It was hard to argue with a man wh o insisted that he was not dead. ‘Um, and then you came back here and ate nine pies,’ said Glenda. ‘Looks like they did you good,’ said Trev, with brittle cheerfulness. ‘But I can’t see where they’ve gone,’ Glenda finished. ‘Belly-busters, every one of the m.’ ‘You will be angry with me.’ Nutt looked frightened. ‘Let’s all calm down, shall we?’ said Trev. ‘Look, I was pretty worried, my oath, yes. Not angry, okay? We’re your friends.’ ‘I must be becoming. I must be helpful!’ This came from Nutt’s lips like a mantra. Glenda took his hands. ‘Look, I’m not bothered about the pies, really I’m not. I like to see a man with a good appetite. But you must tell us what’s wrong. Have you done something you shouldn’t?’ ‘I should be making myself worthy,’ Nutt said, pulling away gently and not meeting he r eyes. ‘I must be becoming. I must not lie. I must gain worth. Thank you for your ki ndness.’ He got up, walked down the length of the vats, picked up a basket of candles, came ba ck, wound up his dribbling machine and began to work, oblivious of their presence. ‘Do you know what goes on in his head?’ Glenda whispered. ‘When he was young, he was chained to an anvil for seven years,’ said Trev. ‘What? That’s terrible! Someone must have been very cruel to do something like that!’ ‘Or desperate to make sure he didn’t get free.’ ‘Things are never all they seem, Mister Trev,’ said Nutt, without looking up from his fe verish activity, ‘and the acoustics in these cellars are very good. Your father loved yo u, did he not?’ ‘Wot?’ Trev’s face reddened. ‘He loved you, took you to the football, shared a pie with you, taught you to cheer fo r the Dimmers? Did he hold you on his shoulders so that you could see more of the game ?’ ‘Stop talkin’ about my dad like that!’ Glenda took Trev’s arm. ‘It’s okay, Trev, it’s all right, it’s not a nasty question, really it isn’t!’ ‘But you hate him, because he became a mortal man, dying on the cobbles,’ said Nutt, picking up another undribbled candle. ‘That is nasty,’ said Glenda. Nutt ignored her. ‘He let you down, Mister Trev. He wasn’t the small boy’s god. It turned out that he wa s only a man. But he was not only a man. Everyone who has ever watched a game in this city has heard of Dave Likely. If he was a fool, then any man who has ever climbed a m ountain or swum a torrent is a fool. If he was a fool then so was the man who first tr ied to tame fire. If he was a fool then so was the man who tried the first oyster, he was a fool, too–although I’m bound to remark that, given the division of labour in ear ly hunter-gatherer cultures, he was probably a woman as well. Perhaps only a fool gets out of bed. But, after death, some fools shine like stars, and your father is such a one. After death, people forget the foolishness, but they do remember the shine. You c ould not have done anything. You could not have stopped him. If you could have stopped him he would not have been Dave Likely, a name that means football to thousands of pe ople.’ Nutt very carefully put down a beautifully dribbled candle and continued. ‘Thin k about this, Mister Trev. Don’t be smart. Smart is only a polished version of dumb. T ry intelligence. It will surely see you through.’ ‘That’s just a load of words!’ said Trev hotly, but Glenda saw the glistening lines down his cheeks. ‘Please think about them, Mister Trev,’ said Nutt and added, ‘There, I have done a comp lete basket. That is worth.’ It was the calmness. Nutt had been spinning, almost sick with anxiety. He’d been repeat ing himself, as if he’d had to learn things for a teacher. And then he was otherwise–to tally reserved and collected. Glenda looked from Trev to Nutt and back again. Trev’s mouth hung open. She didn’t bl ame it. What Nutt had said with quiet matter-of-factness had sounded like not an opin ion but the truth, winched out of some deep well. Then Trev broke the silence, speaking as if hypnotized, his voice hoarse. ‘He gave me his old jersey when I was five. It was like a tent. I mean, it was so greas y I never got wet—’ He stopped. After a moment Glenda pushed at his elbow. ‘He’s gone all stiff,’ she said, ‘as stiff as a piece of wood.’ ‘Ah, catatonic,’ said Nutt. ‘He is overwhelmed by his feelings. We should lay him dow n.’ ‘These old mattresses they sleep on in here are rubbish!’ said Glenda, looking around for a better alternative to cold flagstones. ‘I know the very thing!’ said Nutt, suddenly all action and plunging off down the passa ge. This left Glenda still holding a rigid Trev when Juliet appeared from the direction of the kitchens. She stopped instantly when she saw them, and burst into tears. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ ‘Er, no—’ Glenda began. ‘I talked to some of the bakery lads coming in to work and they’re telling me there’s b een fights all over the city and someone got himself murdered!’ ‘Trev’s just had a bit of a shock, that’s all. Mister Nutt’s gone to find something for hi m to lie down on.’ ‘Oh.’ Juliet sounded a little disappointed, presumably because ‘a bit of a shock’ was n ot sufficiently dramatic, but she rallied just as a loud, rough and uniquely wooden noi se from the other direction heralded Nutt pushing a large couch, which shuddered to a h alt in front of them. ‘There’s a big room piled up with old furniture up the hall,’ he said, patting the faded velvet. ‘It’s a bit musty, but I think all the mice have fallen out on the way here. Quit e a find actually. I believe it is a chaise longue from the workshop of the famous Gurnin g Upspire. I think I can probably restore it later. Let him down gently.’ ‘What happened to him?’ said Juliet. ‘Oh, the truth can be a little bit upsetting,’ said Nutt. ‘But he will get over it and feel be tter.’ ‘I would very much like to know the truth myself, Mister Nutt, thank you very much,’ said Glenda, folding her arms and trying to look stern while all the time a voice in her head was whispering Chaise longue! Chaise longue! When no one else is here you ca n have a go at languishing! ‘It’s a kind of medicine with words,’ said Nutt, carefully. ‘Sometimes people fool them selves into believing things that aren’t true. Sometimes that can be quite dangerous fo r the person. They see the world in a wrong way. They won’t let themselves see that wha t they believe is wrong. But often there is a part of the mind that does know, and the right words can let it out.’ He gave them a worried look. ‘Well, that’s nice,’ said Juliet. ‘It sounds like hocus pocus to me,’ said Glenda. ‘Folk know their own minds!’ She fol ded her arms again, and saw Nutt glance at them. ‘Well?’ she demanded. ‘Haven’t you ever seen elbows before?’ ‘Never such pretty dimpled ones, Miss Glenda, on such tightly folded arms.’ Up until that point Glenda had never realized that Juliet had such a dirty laugh, to whi ch, Glenda fervently hoped, she was not entitled. ‘Glenda’s got a bee-oh! Glenda’s got a bee-ooh!’ ‘It’s “beau”, actually,’ Glenda said, swiping to the back of her mind the recollection th at it had taken her years to find that out herself. ‘And I was just helping. We’re helpin g him, aren’t we, Mister Nutt?’ ‘Doesn’t he look sweet lying there?’ said Juliet. ‘All pink.’ She stroked Trev’s greasy hai r inexpertly. ‘Just like a little boy!’ ‘Yes, he’s always been good at that,’ said Glenda. ‘Why don’t you go and get the little boy a cup of tea? And a biscuit. Not one of the chocolate ones. That’ll take some time ,’ she said as the girl shimmied away. ‘She tends to get distracted. Her mind wanders a nd amuses itself elsewhere.’ ‘Trev tells me that despite your more mature appearance you are the same age as her,’ said Nutt. ‘You really don’t talk to many ladies, do you, Mister Nutt?’ ‘Oh dear, have I made another faux pas?’ said Nutt, suddenly all nerves again, to such an extent that she took pity on him. ‘Would this be “faux pas” that looks as if it should be said like “forks pass”?’ ‘Er, yes.’ Glenda nodded, satisfied, another literary puzzle solved. ‘Better not use the word “matu re” unless you are talking about cheese or wine. Not good to use it for ladies.’ She stared at him, wondering how to pose the next question. She opted for directness; she wasn’t very good at anything else. ‘Trev is sure you sort of died and came alive again.’ ‘So I understand.’ ‘Not many people do that.’ ‘The vast majority do not, I believe.’ ‘How did you do it?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘This is rather late in the day, I must admit, but you don’t feel any hunger for blood or brains, do you?’ ‘Not at all. Just pies. I like pies. I am very ashamed about the pies. It will not happe n again, Miss Glenda. I fear my body was acting on its own. It needed instant nourishmen t.’ ‘Trev says you used to be chained to an anvil?’ ‘Yes. That was because I was worthless. Then I was taken to see Ladyship and she told me: You are worthless but, I think, not unworthy, and I will give you worth.’ ‘But you must have had parents!’ ‘I do not know. There are many things I don’t know. There is a door.’ ‘What?’ ‘A door in my head. Some things are behind the door and I don’t know them. But that is all right, Ladyship says.’ Glenda felt like giving up. Nutt answered questions, yes, but really all you ended up w ith was more questions. But she persevered. It was like stabbing away at a tin can, hop ing to find a way in. ‘Ladyship is a real lady, is she? Castles and servants and whatno t?’ ‘Oh, yes. Even a whatnot. She is my friend. And she is mature like cheese and wine, bec ause she has lived for a long time and is not old.’ ‘But she sent you here, yes? Did she teach you…whatever it was you used on Trev?’ Beside Glenda, Trev stirred. ‘No,’ said Nutt. ‘I read the works of the masters in the library all by myself. But she d id tell me that people, too, were a kind of living book, and I would have to learn to rea d them.’ ‘Well, you read Trev well enough. Be told, though: don’t try that stuff on me or you’ll never see another pie!’ ‘Yes, Miss Glenda. Sorry, Miss Glenda.’ She sighed. What is it about me? The moment they look downcast I feel sorry for the m! She looked up. He was watching her. ‘Stop that!’ ‘Sorry, Miss Glenda.’ ‘But you got to see the football, at least. Did you enjoy it?’ Nutt’s face lit up. ‘Yes. It was wonderful. The noise, the crowds, the chanting, oh t he chanting! It becomes a second blood! The unison! To not be alone! To be not just o ne but one and all, of one mind and purpose!…excuse me.’ He had seen her face. ‘So you quite liked it, then,’ said Glenda. The intensity of Nutt’s outburst had been li ke opening an oven door. It was a mercy her hair hadn’t frizzled. ‘Oh yes! The ambience was wonderful!’ ‘I didn’t try those,’ Glenda hazarded, ‘but the pease pudding is usually good.’ The scrape of crockery and the tinkling of a teaspoon heralded the arrival of Juliet, or r ather of the cup of tea that she was holding in front of her as if it were a grail, so tha t she drifted along behind it like a comet’s tail. Glenda was impressed. The tea was in th e cup instead of in the saucer and it was the acceptable brown colour that is usually char acteristic of tea and was usually the only tea-like characteristic of tea made by Juliet. Trev sat up, and Glenda wondered how long he might have been paying attention. All ri ght, he might be good in an emergency, and at least he washed sometimes and owned a t oothbrush, but Juliet was special, wasn’t she? All she needed was a prince. Technical ly that meant Lord Vetinari, but he was far too old. Besides, no one was sure which s ide of the bed he got out of, or even if he went to bed at all. But one day a prince would come, even if Glenda had to drag him on a chain. She turned her head. Nutt was watching her intently again. Well, her book was locked down tightly. No one was going to riffle through her pages. And tomorrow she would fi nd out what the wizards were up to. That was easy. She’d be invisible. In the stillness of the night, Nutt sat in his special place, which was yet another room, very close to the vats. Candles burned as he sat at a rescued table, staring at a piece of paper and absent-mindedly cleaning out his ear with the point of his pencil. Nutt was technically an expert on love poetry throughout the ages and had discussed it a t length with Miss Healstether, the castle librarian. He had also tried to discuss it wi th Ladyship, but she had laughed and said it was frivolity, although quite helpful as a tutorial on the use of vocabulary, scansion, rhythm and affect as a means to an end, to wit getting a young lady to take all her clothes off. At that particular point, Nutt had not really understood what she meant. It sounded like some sort of conjuring trick. He tapped the pencil on the page. The castle library had been full of poetry and he’d read it avidly as he read all books, not knowing why it had been written or what exact ly it was supposed to achieve. But generally poems written by men to women followed a very similar format. Now, with a world’s worth of the finest poetry to choose from, he was lost for words. Then he nodded to himself. Ah, yes, Robert Scandal’s famous poem, ‘Oi! To his Deaf Mis tress’. It surely had the right shape and tempo. Of course, there had to be a muse. Oh , yes, all poetry needed a muse. That might present a difficulty. Juliet, while quite attractive, was also, in his mind, a kind of amiable ghost. Hmm. Ah, of course… Nutt pulled the pencil out of his ear, hesitated and wrote: I sing, but not of love, for love is blind, but celebrate instead the muse of kindness… The fires in the vats cooled, but Nutt’s brain was suddenly ablaze. Round about midnight, Glenda decided it was safe enough to leave the boys alone to ge t up to whatever it was boys got up to when women weren’t around to look after them, and made sure that she and Juliet were on the late cross-town bus. That meant she act ually got to sleep in her own bed. She looked around the tiny bedroom by candlelight and met the gaze, which was quite di fficult, of Mr Wobble, the three-eyed transcendental teddy bear. It would have been ni ce to have a bit of cosmic explanation at this point, but the universe never gave you explanations, it just gave you more questions. She reached down surreptitiously, even though there was only a three-eyed teddy bea r watching her, and picked up the latest Iradne Comb-Buttworthy from the cache unsu ccessfully hidden below. After ten minutes of reading, which took her some way into the book (Ms Comb-Buttworthy producing volumes that were even slimmer than her her oines), she experienced déjà vu. Moreover, the déjà vu was squared, because she had the feeling of having had the déjà vu before. ‘They’re really all the same, aren’t they?’ she said to the three-eyed teddy bear. ‘You know it’s going to be Mary the Maid, or someone like her, and there’s got to be two men and she will end up with the nice one, and there has to be misunderstandings, and they n ever do anything more than kiss and it’s absolutely guaranteed that, for example, an exc iting civil war or an invasion by trolls or even a scene with any cooking in it is not g oing to happen. The best you can expect is a thunderstorm.’ It really had nothing to do with real life at all, which, although short on civil wars and invasions by trolls, at l east had the decency to have lots of cooking. The book dropped out of her fingers and thirty seconds later she was sound asleep. Surprisingly, no neighbour needed her in the night so she got up, dressed and breakfa sted in what was an almost unfamiliar world. She opened her door to take breakfast to widow Crowdy and found Juliet on the doorstep. The girl took a step back. ‘Are you goin’ out, Glendy? It’s early!’ ‘Well, you’re up,’ said Glenda. ‘And with a newspaper, I’m pleased to see.’ ‘Isn’t it exciting?’ said Juliet, and thrust the paper at her. Glenda took one look at the picture on the front page, took a second, closer look, and t hen grabbed Juliet and pulled her inside. ‘You can see their tonkers,’ Juliet observed, in a voice that was much too matter-of-fac t for Glenda’s liking. ‘You shouldn’t know what they look like!’ she said, smacking the paper down on her ki tchen table. ‘What? I’ve got three brothers, ain’t I? Everyone bathes in a tub in front of the fire, don’t they? It’s not like they’re anything special. Anyway, it’s culture, all right? Rem ember when you took me to that place full of people in the nuddy. You stayed in there ho urs.’ ‘It was the Royal Art Museum,’ said Glenda, thanking her stars that they were indoors. ‘That’s different!’ She tried to read the story, but it was very difficult with that amazing picture beside it , just where an eye might stray again and again. Glenda enjoyed her job. She didn’t have a career; they were for people who could not h old down jobs. She was very good at what she did, so she did it all the time, without paying much attention to the world. But now her eyes were opened. In fact, it was time to blink. Under the headline ‘New Light on Ancient Game’ was a picture of a vase or, rather mo re grandly, an urn, in orange and black. It showed some very tall and skinny men–the ir masculinity was beyond doubt, but possibly beyond belief. They were apparently st ruggling for possession of a ball; one of them was lying on the ground, and looked a s if he was in some pain. The translation of the name of the urn was, said the capti on, THE TACKLE. According to the accompanying story, someone at the Royal Art Museum had found the ur n in an old storeroom, and it contained scrolls which, it said here, had the original rules of foot-the-ball laid down in the early years of the century of the Summer Wee vil, a thousand years ago, when the game was played in honour of the goddess Pedestri ana… Glenda skimmed through the rest of it, because there was a lot of rest to skim. An art ist’s impression of the aforesaid goddess adorned page three. She was, of course, beau tiful. You seldom saw a goddess portrayed as ugly. This probably had something to do w ith their ability to strike people down instantly. In Pedestriana’s case, she would pr obably have gone for the feet. Glenda put the paper down, seething with anger, and as a cook she knew how to seethe. This wasn’t football–except that the Guild of Historians said that it was, and could p rove it not only with old parchments but also with an urn, and she could see that you were on the wrong end of an argument if you were up against an urn. But it was too neat, wasn’t it? Except…why? His lordship didn’t like football, but here was an article saying that this game was very old and had its own goddess, and if there were two things this city liked, it was tradition and goddesses, especially if the godde sses were a bit short on the chiffon above the waist. Did his lordship let them put anyt hing in the paper? What was going on? ‘I’ve got business to attend to,’ she said sternly . ‘It’s good that you bought a decent paper, but you don’t want to read this kind of stu ff.’ ‘I didn’t. Who’s interested in that? I got it for the advert. Look.’ Glenda had never bothered much about the adverts in the paper, because they were pu t there by people who were after your money. But there it was, right there. Madame Sharn of Bonk gives you…micromail. ‘You said we could go,’ said Juliet pointedly. ‘Yes, well, that was before—’ ‘You said we could go.’ ‘Yes. But, well, has anyone from the Sisters ever gone to a fashion show? It’s not our ki nd of thing, is it?’ ‘Doesn’t say that in the paper. Says admission free. You said we could go!’ Two o’clock, thought Glenda. Suppose I could manage it…‘All right, meet at work at hal f past one, do you hear? Not a minute later! I’ve got things to do.’ The University Council meets every day at half past eleven, she thought to herself. Oh, to be a fly on that wall. She grinned… Trev was sitting in the battered old chair that served as his office in the vats. Work was proceeding at its usual reliable snail’s pace. ‘Ah, I see you are in early, Mister Trev,’ said Nutt. ‘I am sorry not to have been here . I had to go and deal with an emergency candelabra upset.’ He leaned closer. ‘I have d one what you asked, Mister Trev.’ Trev snapped out of his daydream of Juliet and said, ‘Huh?’ ‘You asked me to write…to improve your poem for Miss Juliet.’ ‘You’ve done it?’ ‘Perhaps you would like to have a look, Mister Trev?’ He handed the paper to Trev and stood nervously by the chair as a pupil stands by the teacher. After a very short while Trev’s forehead wrinkled. ‘What’s ee-er?’ ‘That’s “e’er”, sir, as in “where e’er she walks”.’ ‘You mean, like, she walks on air?’ said Trev. ‘No, Mister Trev. I should just put it down to poetry if I were you.’ Trev struggled on. He had never had much to do with poetry, except the sort that started ‘There was a young lady of Quirm’, but this looked like the real stuff. The page seemed to be crowded and yet full of space as well. Also, the writing was extremely curly and that was a sure sign, wasn’t it? You didn’t get that sort of thing from the lady of Quir m. ‘This is great stuff, Mister Nutt. This is really great stuff. This is poetry, but wh at really is it sayin’?’ Nutt cleared his throat. ‘Well, sir, the essence of poetry of this nature is to create a mood that will make the recipient, that is to say, sir, the young lady who you are going to send it to, feel very kindly disposed to the author of the poem, which would be you, s ir, in this case. According to Ladyship, everything else is just showing off. I have brou ght you a pen and an envelope; if you would kindly sign the poem I will ensure that it ge ts to Miss Juliet.’ ‘I bet no one’s ever written her a poem before,’ said Trev, skating quickly over the truth that he hadn’t either. ‘I’d love to be there when she reads it.’ ‘That would not be advised,’ said Nutt quickly. ‘The general consensus is that the lady concerned reads it in the absence of the hopeful swain, that is you, sir, and forms a be neficent mental picture of him. Your actual presence might actually get in the way, espe cially since I see you haven’t changed your shirt again today. Besides, I am informed th at there is a possibility that all her clothes will fall off.’ Trev, who had been struggling with the concept of ‘swain’, fast-forwarded to this infor mation at speed. ‘Er, say that again?’ ‘All her clothes might fall off. I am sorry about this, but it appears to be a by-produc t of the whole business of poetry. But broadly speaking, sir, it carries the message you have asked for, which is to say “I think you’re really fit. I really fancy you. Can we have a date? No hanky panky, I promise.” However, sir, since it is a love poem, I have t aken the liberty of altering it slightly to carry the suggestion that if hanky or panky should appear to be welcomed by the young lady she will not find you wanting in either d epartment.’ Archchancellor Ridcully rubbed his hands together. ‘Well, gentlemen, I hope we have al l seen the papers this morning, or glanced at them at any rate?’ ‘I thought that the front page was not the place,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. ‘I t quite put me off my breakfast. Metaphorically speaking, of course.’ ‘Apparently, the urn has been in the museum’s cellars for at least three hundred years, but for some reason it makes its presence felt now,’ said Ridcully. ‘Of course, they hav e tons of stuff in there that’s never really been looked at properly and the city was go ing through a prudish period then and didn’t care to know about that sort of thing.’ ‘What, that men have tonkers?’ said Dr Hix. ‘That sort of news gets out sooner or later. ’ He looked around at the disapproving faces and added, ‘Skull ring, remember? Under co llege statute the head of the Department of Post-Mortem Communications is entitled, n ay, required to make tasteless, divisive and moderately evil remarks. I’m sorry, but these are your rules.’ ‘Thank you, Doctor Hix. Your uncalled-for remarks are duly noted and appreciated.’ ‘You know, it seems very suspicious to me that this wretched urn has turned up at just this time,’ observed the Senior Wrangler, ‘and I hope I am not alone in this?’ ‘I know what you mean,’ said Hix. ‘If I didn’t know that the Archchancellor had his wor k cut out to persuade Vetinari to let us play, I would think that this was some sort of plan.’ ‘Ye-ess,’ said Ridcully thoughtfully. ‘The old rules look a lot more interesting, sir,’ said Ponder. ‘Ye-ess.’ ‘Did you read the bit that said players were not allowed to use their hands, sir? And the high priest takes to the field of play to ensure that the rules are honoured?’ ‘I can’t see that catching on these days,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. ‘He’s armed with a poisoned dagger, sir,’ said Ponder. ‘Ah? Well, that should make for a more interesting game, at least, eh, Mustrum?…Mu strum?’ ‘What? Oh, yes. Yes. Something to think about, indeed. Yes, indeed. One man, in charge…The onlooker who sees most of the game…the gamer, in fact…So what move ha ve I missed?’ ‘Sorry, Archchancellor?’ Ridcully blinked at Ponder Stibbons. ‘What? Oh, just composing my thoughts, as one doe s.’ He sat up straight. ‘In any case the rules don’t concern us at this point. We have to play this game in any eventuality and so we will abide by them in the best traditi ons of sportsmanship until we have worked out where they may be most usefully broken t o our advantage. Mister Stibbons, you are collating our studies of the game. The floor is yours.’ ‘Thank you, Archchancellor.’ Ponder cleared his throat. ‘Gentlemen, the game of footbal l is clearly about more than the rules and the nature of the play. In any case, these a re pure mechanical considerations; the chanting and, of course, the food are of more co ncern to us, I feel. They seem to be an integral part of the game. Regrettably, so do t he supporters’ clubs.’ ‘What is the nature of this problem?’ Ridcully enquired. ‘They hit one another over the head with them. It would be true to say that brawling an d mindless violence, such as occurred yesterday afternoon, is one of the cornerstones o f the sport.’ ‘A far cry from its ancient beginnings, then,’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, shaki ng his head. ‘Well, yes. I understand that in those days the losing team was throttled. However, I sup pose this would be called mindful violence that took place with the enthusiastic consent of the entire community, or at least that part of it that was still capable of breath. Fo rtunately, we do not yet have supporters, so that this is not at present our problem, and I propose we go directly to the pies.’ There was a chorus of general agreement from the wizards. Food was their cup of tea, an d if possible slice of cake too. Some of them were already watching the door in anticip ation of the tea trolley. It seemed like an age since nine. ‘Central to the game is the pie,’ Ponder went on, ‘which is generally of shortcrust past ry containing appropriate pie-like substances. I collected half a dozen and tested them on the usual subjects.’ ‘The students?’ said Ridcully. ‘Yes. They said they were pretty awful. Not a patch on the pies here, they said. They fi nished them off, however. Examination of the ingredients suggests that they consisted of gravy, fat and salt, and insofar as it was possible to tell, none of the students appea rs to have died…’ ‘So we are ahead on pies, then,’ said Ridcully cheerfully. ‘I suppose so, Archchancellor, although I do not believe that the pie quality plays any role—’ He stopped, because the door had swung open to allow the ingress of a reinforce d, heavy-duty tea trolley. Since it was not being propelled by Her, the wizards paid no further attention and settled down to the passing of cups, the handing round of the su gar bowl, the inspection of the quality of the chocolate biscuits with a view to taking more than one’s entitlement and all the other little diversions without which a commit tee would be a clever device for making worthwhile decisions quickly. When the rattling had ceased, and the last biscuit had been fought for, Ridcully tinkle d his teaspoon on the rim of his cup for silence, although since he was Ridcully this o nly added the crash of broken crockery to the hubbub. Once the girl in charge of the tr olley had sponged everybody down, he continued: ‘The chanting, gentlemen, appears to be another inconsequentiality at first sight, but I have reason to believe that it has a certain power, and we will ignore it at our peril. I see the museum’s translators say t he modern chants were originally hymns to the goddess calling on her to grant her favou rs to the team of choice, while naiads danced on the edges of the field of play, the be tter to encourage the players to greater feats of prowess.’ ‘Naiads?’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. ‘They’re water nymphs, aren’t they? Young women with very thin damp clothing? Why would anyone want them around? Besid es, didn’t they drown sailors by singing to them?’ Ridcully let the thoughtful pause hang in the air for a while before volunteering: ‘For tunately, I don’t think anyone these days would expect that we play football underwater .’ ‘The pies would float,’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. ‘Not necessarily,’ said Ponder. ‘What about clothing, Mister Stibbons? I assume there will be some?’ ‘Temperatures were somewhat warmer in olden days. I can assure you that no one will i nsist on nudity.’ Ponder might have noticed the rattle as the girl with the tea trolley almost dropped a c up, but was gracious enough not to notice that he had noticed. He went on. ‘Currently th e teams wear old shirts and short trousers.’ ‘How short?’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, urgency in his voice. ‘About mid-knee, I believe,’ said Ponder. ‘Is this likely to be a problem?’ ‘Yes, it is. The knees should be covered. It is a well-known fact that a glimpse of the male knee can drive women into a frenzy of libidinousness.’ There was another rattle fro m the tea trolley, but Ponder ignored it because his own head had rattled a bit, too. ‘Are you sure about that, sir?’ ‘It is established fact, young Stibbons.’ Ponder had found a grey hair on his comb that morning and was not in the mood to take this standing up. ‘And precisely in what books does—’ he began, but Ridcully interrupted with unusual di plomacy. Generally he liked little tiffs among the faculty. ‘A few more inches to prevent mobbing by the ladies should present us with no probl ems, surely, Mister Stibbons? Oops…’ This last was to Glenda, who had dropped two spoons on the carpet. She gave him a cur sory curtsy. ‘Er, yes…and we should sport the university colours,’ he went on, with a hint of nerv ousness. Ridcully prided himself on treating the staff well, and indeed did so whenev er he remembered them, but the expression of intelligent amusement on the face of the dumpy girl had unnerved him; it was as if a chicken had winked. ‘Um, yes, yes indeed,’ he said. ‘The good old red jersey we used to wear in my rowing days, with the big U’s on the front, bold as brass…’ He glanced at the maid, who was frowning. But he was Archchancellor, wasn’t he? It sai d so on his door, didn’t it? ‘That’s what we’ll do,’ he declared. ‘We’ll look into pies, although I’ve seen a few pi es that don’t bear looking into, haha, and we’ll adapt the good old red sweater. What’s next, Mister Stibbons?’ ‘With regard to the chanting, sir. I’ve asked the Master of the Music to work on some options,’ said Ponder smoothly. ‘We need to select a team as soon as possible.’ ‘I don’t see what the rush is,’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, who had almost nodd ed off in the arms of a chocolate biscuit surfeit. ‘The bequest, remember?’ said the head of the Department of Post-Mortem Communi cations. ‘We—’ ‘Pas devant la domestique!’ snapped the Lecturer in Recent Runes. Automatically, Ridcully turned again to look at Glenda, and got a distinct feeling tha t here was a woman about to learn a foreign language in a hurry. It was an odd but sli ghtly exciting idea. Until this moment, he had never thought of the maids in the singu lar. They were all…servants. He was polite to them, and smiled when appropriate. He as sumed they sometimes did other things than fetch and carry, and sometimes went off to get married and sometimes just…went off. Up until now, though, he’d never really thoug ht that they might think, let alone what they thought about, and least of all what the y thought about the wizards. He turned back to the table. ‘Who will be doing the chanting, Mister Stibbons?’ ‘The aforesaid supporters, fans, sir. It’s short for fanatics.’ ‘And ours will be…who?’ ‘Well, we are the largest employer in the city, sir.’ ‘As a matter of fact I think Vetinari is, and I wish to all hells I knew exactly who he is employing,’ said Ridcully. ‘I’m sure our loyal staff will support us,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. He turne d to Glenda, and to Ridcully’s dismay said, glutinously, ‘I’m sure you would be a fan, would you not, my child?’ The Archchancellor sat back. He had a definite feeling that this was going to be fun. W ell, she hadn’t blushed and she hadn’t yelled. In fact, she had not done anything, apar t from carefully pick up the china. ‘I support Dolly Sisters, sir. Always have done.’ ‘And are they any good?’ ‘Having a poor patch at the moment, sir.’ ‘Ah, then I expect you will want to support our team, which will be very good indeed!’ ‘Can’t do that, sir. You’ve got to support your team, sir.’ ‘But you just said they weren’t doing well.’ ‘That’s when you support your team, sir. Otherwise you’re a numper.’ ‘A numper being…?’ said Ridcully. ‘He’s someone who’s all cheering when things are going well, and then runs off to anot her team when there’s a losing streak. They always shouts the loudest.’ ‘So you support the same team all your life?’ ‘Well, if you move away it’s okay to change. No one will mind much unless you go to a real enemy.’ She looked at their puzzled expressions, sighed and went on: ‘Like Na phill United and the Whoppers, or Dolly Sisters and Dimwell Old Pals, or the Pigsty Hill Pork Packers and the Cockbill Boars. You know?’ When they clearly didn’t, she continued: ‘They hate each other. Always have done, al ways will. They are the bad matches. The shutters go up for those. I don’t know what my neighbours would say if they saw me cheering a Dimmer.’ ‘But that’s dreadful!’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. ‘Excuse me, miss,’ said Ponder, ‘but most of those pairs are quite close to one anothe r, so why do they hate one another so much?’ ‘That at least is easy,’ said Dr Hix. ‘It’s hard to hate people who are a long way away . You forget how dreadful they are. But you see a neighbour’s warts every day.’ ‘That’s just the sort of cynical comment I’d expect from a post-mortem communicator,’ grumbled the Chair of Indefinite Studies. ‘Or a realist,’ said Ridcully, smiling. ‘But Dolly Sisters and Dimwell are quite far apart , miss.’ Glenda shrugged. ‘I know, but it’s always been like that. That’s how it is. That’s all I know.’ ‘Well, thank you…?’ There was no mistaking the hanging question. ‘Glenda,’ she said. ‘I see there are a great many things we don’t yet understand.’ ‘Yes, sir. Everything.’ She hadn’t meant to say that aloud. It just escaped of its own ac cord. There was a stirring among the wizards, who were nonplussed because what had happen ed could not really have happened. The tea trolley might as well have neighed. Ridcully banged his hand on the table before the others could summon up words. ‘Well said, miss,’ he chuckled, as Glenda waited for the floor to open and swallow her . ‘And I’m sure that remark came from the heart, because I suspect it could not have c ome from the head.’ ‘Sorry, sir, but the gentleman did ask for my opinion.’ ‘Now, that one was from the head. Well done,’ said Ridcully. ‘So do, therefore, give us the benefit of your thinking, Miss Glenda.’ Still in a kind of shock, Glenda looked into the Archchancellor’s eyes and saw that it w as no time to be less than bold, but that was unnerving too. ‘Well, what’s this all about, sir? If you want to play, just go and do it, yes? Why chang e things?’ ‘The game of foot-the-ball is very behind the times, Miss Glenda.’ ‘Well, so are you—Sorry, sorry, but, well. You know. Wizards are always wizards. Not a l ot changes in here, does it? And then you talk about some Master of the Music to make a new chant, and that’s not how it goes. The Shove makes up the chants. They just happen. They just, like, come out of the air. And the pies are pretty awful, that’s true, but wh en you’re in the Shove, and it’s mucky weather, and the water’s coming through your coat , and your shoes are leaking, and then you bite into your pie, and you know that everyon e else is biting into their pie, and the grease slides down your sleeve, well, sir, I do n’t have the words for it, sir, I really don’t, sir. There’s a feeling I can’t describe, but it’s a bit like being a kid at Hogswatch, and you can’t just buy it, sir, you can’t write it down or organize it or make it shiny or make it tame. Sorry to speak out of tu rn, sirs, but that’s the long and the short of it. You must have known it, sir. Didn’t y our father ever take you to a game?’ Ridcully looked down the table at the Council and noted a certain moistness of eye. Wi zards were, largely, of that generation from which grandfathers are carved. They were also, largely, large, and awash with cynical crabbiness and the barnacles of the years , but…the smell of cheap overcoats in the rain, which always had a tint and taste of s oot in it, and your father, or maybe your grandfather, lifting you on to his shoulders , and there you were, above all those cheap hats and scarves, and you could feel the w armth of the Shove, watch its tides, feel its heartbeat, and then, certainly, a pie wo uld be handed up, or maybe half a pie if times were hard, and if they were really bad it might be a handful of fat greasy pease which were to be eaten one at a time to make them last longer…or when times were flush there might be a real treat, like a hot dog you didn’t have to share, or a plate of scouse, with yellow fat beading on the top an d lumps of gristle you could chew at on the way home, meat which now you would not giv e to a dog but which was sacred lotus eaten with the gods, in the rain, in the cheerin g, in the bosom of the Shove… The Archchancellor blinked. No time seemed to have passed, unless you count seventy ye ars which had gone past like that. ‘Er, very graphically argued,’ he said, and pulled himself together. ‘Interesting points well made. But, you see, we have a responsibilit y here. After all, this city was just a handful of villages before my university was b uilt. We are concerned about the fighting in the streets yesterday. We heard a rumour that someone was killed because he supported the wrong team. We can’t stand by and let this sort of thing happen.’ ‘So you’ll be shutting down the Assassins’ Guild, will you, sir?’ There was a gasp from every mouth, including her own. The only rational thought that d idn’t flee from her mind was: I wonder if that job is still going in the Fools’ Guild? The pay wasn’t much, but they do know how to appreciate a pie. When she dared look, the Archchancellor was staring at the ceiling, while his fingers drummed on the table. I should have been more careful, Glenda whined in her own ear. Don’t get chatty with nobs. You forget what you are, but they don’t. The drumming stopped. ‘Good point, well put,’ said Ridcully, ‘and I shall marshal my re sponses thusly.’ He flicked a finger and, with a smell of gooseberries and a pop, a sma ll red globe appeared in the air over the table. ‘One: the Assassins, while deadly, are not random, and indeed are mostly a danger to o ne another. Assassination is only to be feared, generally speaking, by those powerful enough to have a stab, as it were, at defending themselves.’ Another little globe appeared. ‘Two: it is an article of faith with them that property is undamaged. They are invariabl y courteous and considerate and notoriously silent, and would never dream of inhuming th eir target in a public street.’ A third globe appeared. ‘Three: they are organized and therefore amenable to civic influence. Lord Vetinari is v ery keen on that sort of thing.’ And another globe popped into life. ‘And four: Lord Vetinari is himself a trained Assassin, majoring in stealth and poisons . I am not sure he would share your opinion. And he is a Tyrant even if he has develope d tyranny to such a point of metaphysical perfection that it is a dream rather than a f orce. He does not have to listen to you, you see. He doesn’t even have to listen to me. He listens to the city. I don’t know how he does, but he does. And he plays it like a violin’–Ridcully paused, then went on–‘or like the most complicated game you can imagin e. The city works, not perfectly, but better than it has ever done. I think it’s time f or football to change too.’ He smiled at her expression. ‘What is your job, young lady? Because you are wasted in it.’ It was probably meant as a compliment, but Glenda, her head so bewilderingly full of th e Archchancellor’s words that they were trickling out of her ears, heard herself say, ‘ I’m certainly not wasted, sir! You’ve never eaten better pies than mine! I run the Nigh t Kitchen!’ The metaphysics of real politics were not a subject of interest to most of those present , but they knew where they were with pies. She was the centre of attention already, but now it blazed with interest. ‘You do?’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. ‘We thought it was the pretty girl.’ ‘Really?’ said Glenda brightly. ‘Well, I run it.’ ‘So who does that wonderful pie you send up here sometimes, with the cheese pastry an d the hot pickle layer?’ ‘The Ploughman’s Pie? Me, sir. My own recipe.’ ‘Really? How do you manage to get the pickled onions to stay so hard and crispy in the baking? It’s just amazing!’ ‘My own recipe, sir,’ said Glenda firmly. ‘It wouldn’t be mine if I told anyone else.’ ‘Well said,’ said Ridcully gleefully. ‘You can’t go around asking craftsmen the secret s of their trade, old chap. It’s a thing you just don’t do. Now, I am concluding this meeting, although what it has in fact concluded I shall decide later.’ He turned back to Glenda. ‘Thank you for coming here today, Miss Glenda, and I shall not enquire why a young lady who works in the Night Kitchen is pouring tea up here at nearly noon. Do you have any further advice for us?’ ‘Well,’ said Glenda, ‘since you ask…No, I really shouldn’t say…’ ‘This is hardly the moment for bashfulness, do you think?’ ‘Well, it’s about your strip, sir. That means your team colours. Nothing wrong with re d and yellow, no one else uses those two, but, well, you want two big U’s on the front , right? Like UU?’ She waved her hands in the air. ‘Yes, that is exactly right. After all, it’s what we are.’ Ridcully nodded. ‘Are you sure? I mean, I know you gentlemen are bachelors and all, but…well, you’ll look like you’ve got bosoms. Honestly.’ ‘Oh gods, sir, she’s right,’ said Ponder. ‘It will make a rather unfortunate shape…’ ‘What kind of mind would see something like that in a pair of innocent letters?’ the L ecturer in Recent Runes demanded angrily. ‘I don’t know, sir,’ said Glenda, ‘but every man watching the football has got one. A nd they would make up nicknames. They love doing that.’ ‘I suspect you may be right,’ said Ridcully, ‘but we never had any trouble when I was r owing in the old days.’ ‘Football followers are rather more robust in their language, sir,’ said Ponder. ‘Yes, and in those days we were pretty careless when it came to throwing fireballs, as I recall,’ Ridcully mused. ‘Oh dear, what a shame. I was looking forward to giving th e old rag a bit of an airing again. Still, I’m sure we can change the design a little to save embarrassment all round. Thank you once again, Miss Glenda. Bosoms, eh? Narrow escape there, all round. Good day to you.’ He shut the door after the trolley, which Glenda was pushing as if in a race… Molly, the head maid in the Day Kitchen, was fretting at the end of the corridor beyon d. She sagged with relief when Glenda came round the corner, teacups rattling. ‘Was it all right? Did anything go wrong? I’ll get into so much trouble if anything w ent wrong. Tell me nothing went wrong!’ ‘It was all fine,’ said Glenda. That got her a suspicious look. ‘Are you sure? You owe me for this!’ The laws of favours are amongst the most fundamental in the multiverse. The first law is : nobody asks for just one favour; the second request (after the granting of the first f avour), prefaced by ‘and can I be really cheeky…?’ is the asking of the second favour. I f the aforesaid second request is not granted, the second law ensures that the need for any gratitude for the first favour is nullified, and in accordance with the third law th e favour giver has not done any favours at all, and the favour field collapses. But Glenda reckoned she’d won a lot of favours over the years, and was owed a few he rself. Besides, she had reason to believe that Molly had been spending the welcome b reak in dalliance with her boyfriend, who worked in the bakery. ‘Can you get me in to the banquet on Wednesday night?’ ‘Sorry, the butler chooses who gets those jobs,’ said Molly. Ah yes, the tall, thin girls, Glenda thought. ‘Why in the world would you want to get in, anyway?’ Molly said. ‘It’s a lot of runnin g around and not much pay, when all’s said and done. I mean, we get some decent leftov ers after a big affair, but what’s that to you? Everyone knows that you’re the leftove r queen!’ She paused, too awkwardly. ‘I mean, we all know you’re really good at making wonderful food with always a little something left over,’ she gabbled. ‘That’s all I meant!’ ‘I didn’t think you meant anything else,’ said Glenda, keeping her voice level. But she raised it again to add, as Molly scurried off: ‘I can pay back the favour right now! Y ou’ve got two floury handprints on your arse!’ The glare that came back was a small victory, but you have to take what you can get. Still, that strange interlude, which she was sure she would regret, had taken up a lot o f time. She had to get the Night Kitchen organized. When the door had closed behind the rather forthright maid, Ridcully nodded meaningfu lly at Ponder. ‘All right, Mister Stibbons. You were glancing at your thaumometer the whole time I was talking to her. Out with it.’ ‘Some kind of entanglement,’ said Ponder. ‘And there was me thinking that Vetinari was behind the business with the urn,’ said Ri dcully gloomily. ‘I should have realized he’s never that unsubtle.’ ‘Oh, I assumed it was going to be something like that right at the start,’ said the Lectu rer in Recent Runes. ‘Indeed,’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. ‘It crossed my mind as soon as I saw it in the paper.’ ‘Gentlemen,’ said Ridcully. ‘I am humbled that as soon as I have an idea about what so mething is, it turns out that you all knew what it was. I am amazed.’ ‘Excuse me,’ said Dr Hix, ‘but I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.’ ‘You are out of touch! You’ve been spending too long underground, sir!’ said the Lectu rer in Recent Runes sternly. ‘You don’t often let me out, that’s why! And can I remind you that I have to maintain a vital line of cosmic defence in this establishment here with a staff of exactly one? A nd he’s dead!’ ‘You mean Charlie? I remember old Charlie, keen worker nevertheless,’ said Ridcully. ‘Yes, but I have to keep rewiring him all the time,’ sighed Hix. ‘I do try to keep you abreast of things in my monthly reports. I hope you read them…?’ ‘Tell me, Doctor Hix,’ said Ponder, ‘did you experience anything unusual when that y oung lady was speaking so eloquently?’ ‘Well, yes, I had a pleasant moment of happy recollection about my father.’ ‘So did we all, I am sure,’ said Ponder. There was sombre nodding around the table. ‘I never knew my father. I was brought up by my aunts. I had déjà vu without the origina l vu.’ ‘And it wasn’t magic?’ suggested the Lecturer in Recent Runes. ‘No. Religion, I suspect,’ said Ridcully. ‘A god invoked, that sort of thing.’ ‘Not invoked, Mustrum,’ said Dr Hix. ‘Summoned by bloodshed!’ ‘Oh, I hope not,’ said Ridcully, getting to his feet. ‘I would like to try a little exper iment this afternoon, gentlemen. We will not talk about football, we will not speculate a bout football, we will not worry about football—’ ‘You are going to make us play it, aren’t you?’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes glum ly. ‘Yes,’ said Ridcully, more than somewhat miffed at the spoiling of a perfectly good pero ration. ‘Just a little kick-about to help us get some hands-on experience of the game as it is played.’ ‘Er. Strictly, under the new rules, by which I mean the ancient rules we are taking as our model, hands-on experience means no hands,’ said Ponder. ‘Well pointed out, that man. Put the word out, will you? Football practice on the lawn a fter lunch!’ One thing you had to remember when dealing with dwarfs was that while they shared the same world as you did, metaphorically they thought about it as if it were upside down. Only the richest and most influential of dwarfs lived in the deepest caverns. For a d warf, a penthouse in the centre of the city would be some kind of slum. Dwarfs liked i t dark and cool. It didn’t stop there. A dwarf on the up and up was really on his uppers, and upper-c lass dwarfs were lower class. A dwarf who was rich, healthy and had respect and his own rat farm justifiably felt at rock bottom and was held in low esteem. When you ta lked to dwarfs, you turned your mind upside down. The city, too. Of course, when you dug down in Ankh-Morpork you just found more Ankh-Morpork. Thousands of years of it , ready to be dug out and shored up and walled in with the shiny dwarf brick. It was Lord Vetinari’s ‘Grand Undertaking’. The city’s walls corseted it like a fetishis t’s happiest dream. Gravity offered only a limited supply of up, but the deep loam of th e plain had a limitless supply of down. Glenda was surprised, therefore, to find Shatta right at the surface in the Maul, alon gside the really posh dress shops that were for human ladies. That made sense, however ; if you were going to make a scandalous profit selling clothes, it made sense to camo uflage yourself amongst other shops doing the same thing. She wasn’t sure about the na me, but apparently shatta meant ‘a wonderful surprise’ in Dwarfish, and if you started to laugh about that sort of thing then you would never have time to pause for breath. She approached the door with the apprehension of one who is certain that the moment s he sets foot inside she will be charged five dollars a minute for breathing and then be held upside down and have all her wealth removed with a hook. And it was, indeed, classy. But it was dwarf classy. That meant an awful lot of chain mail, and enough weaponry to take over a city-but if you paid attention, you realize d it was female chain mail and weaponry. That was how things were happening, apparent ly. Dwarf women had got fed up with looking like dwarf men all the time and were meta phorically melting down their breastplates in order to make something a little lighte r and with adjustable straps. Juliet had explained this on the way down, although, of course, Juliet did not use the word ‘metaphorically’, it being several syllables beyond her range. There were battle -axes and war hammers, but all with that certain feminine touch: one war axe, apparent ly capable of cleaving a backbone lengthwise, was beautifully engraved with flowers. I t was another world, and as she stood just inside the doorway looking around, Glenda f elt relieved that there were other humans in the place. In fact, there were quite a fe w, and that was surprising. One of them, a young human woman with steel boots six inch es high, gravitated towards them as if drawn by a magnet-and given the amount of ferro us metal on her body, a magnet was something she would never pass in a hurry. She was holding a tray of drinks. ‘There’s black mead, red mead and white mead,’ she said, and then lowered her voice by a few decibels and three social classes. ‘Actually, the red mead is really sherry and a ll the dwarf ladies are drinking it. They like not having to quaff.’ ‘Do we have to pay for this?’ said Glenda nervously. ‘It’s free,’ said the girl. She indicated a bowl of small black things on the tray, each on e pierced with a cocktail stick, and said slightly hopelessly, ‘And do try the rat fruit.’ Before Glenda could stop her, Juliet had taken one and was chewing enthusiastically. ‘What part of a rat is its fruit?’ asked Glenda. The girl with the tray did not look directl y at her. ‘Well, you know shepherd’s pie?’ she said. ‘I know twelve different recipes,’ said Glenda in a moment of rare smugness. This was actually a lie. She probably knew about four recipes because there was only so much yo u could do with meat and potatoes, but the glittering metallic grandeur of the place w as getting on her nerves and she felt the need to stick up for herself. And then reali zation dawned. ‘Oh, you mean like traditional shepherd’s pie,’ she said, ‘made with th e—’ ‘I’m afraid so,’ said the girl, ‘but they’re very popular with the ladies.’ ‘Don’t have any more, Jools,’ said Glenda quickly. ‘It’s quite nice,’ said Juliet. ‘Can’t I have one more?’ ‘Just one, then,’ said Glenda. ‘That should even up the rat.’ She helped herself to a sh erry and the girl, balancing carefully as she managed three different things with two di fferent hands, handed her a glossy brochure. Glenda glanced through it and knew her original impression had been right. This place was so expensive they didn’t tell you the price of anything. You could always be sure things were going to be expensive when they didn’t tell you the price. No point in loo king through it, it’d suck your wages out through your eyeballs. Free drinks? Oh, yes. With nothing else to do, she scanned the rest of the crowd. Everyone, except the growi ng and, in fact, quite large number of humans, had a beard. All dwarfs had beards. It was part of being a dwarf. Here, though, the beards were a little finer than you usual ly saw around the city and there had been some experimentation with perms and ponytail s. There were mining pickaxes on view, it was true, but carried in expensively tooled bags as if the owner might spot a likely-looking coal seam on the way to the shops and wouldn’t be able to help herself. She shared this thought with Juliet, who pointed down at the feet of another well-hee led customer and said, ‘Wot? And spoil those gorgeous boots? They’re Snaky Cleavehelm s, they are! Four hundred dollars a pop, an’ you’ve to wait for six months!’ Glenda couldn’t see the face of the boots’ owner, but she did see the change in her bod y language. The hint of preening, even from the rear. Well, she thought, I suppose if y ou’re going to spend all of a working family’s yearly income on a pair of boots it’s ni ce that someone notices. When you watch people, you forget that people are watching you. Glenda was not very t all, which meant that from her point of view dwarfs were not very short. And she real ized that they were being approached in a determined kind of way by two dwarfs, one o f whom was extremely expansive around the waist and wearing a breastplate so beautifu lly hammered and ornamented that taking it into battle would be an act of artistic va ndalism. He–and you had to remember that all dwarfs were he unless they asserted othe rwise–had, when he spoke, a voice that sounded like the darkest and most expensive ty pe of dark chocolate, possibly smoked. And the hand he offered had so many rings on e ach finger that you had to look with care to realize that he was not wearing a gauntl et. And she was a she, Glenda was sure of it: the chocolate was just too rich and fru ity. ‘So glad you could come, my dears,’ she said, and the chocolate swirled. ‘I am Madame Sharn. I wondered if you could be of assistance to me? I really would not dream of a sking, but I am, as you would put it, between a rock and a hard one.’ All this was, to Glenda’s annoyance, addressed to Juliet, who was eating rat fruit as i f there was no tomorrow, which presumably there had not been for the rat. She giggled. ‘She’s with me,’ said Glenda, and, without meaning to, added, ‘Madame?’ Madame waved another hand and more rings glistened. ‘This salon is technically a min e and that means that under dwarf law I am the king of the mine and in my mine my ru les go. And since I am King, I declare that I am Queen,’ she said. ‘Dwarf law bends and creaks but is not broken.’ ‘Well,’ Glenda began, ‘we—Hey!’ This was to Madame’s smaller companion, who was actually holding a tape measure up against Juliet. ‘That is Pepe,’ said Madame. ‘Well, if he’s going to take liberties like that I hope he’s a woman,’ said Glenda. ‘Pepe is…Pepe,’ said Madame calmly. ‘And there is no changing him, as it were, or her. Labels are such unhelpful things, I feel.’ ‘Especially yours, ’cos you don’t put the prices on them,’ said Glenda, out of sheer ne rvousness. ‘Ah yes, you notice these things,’ said Madame, with a wink that disarmed to the point of melting. Pepe looked up excitedly at Madame, who went on, ‘I wonder if you, if she…if you both would mind joining me backstage? The matter is a little delicate.’ ‘Ooh, yes,’ said Juliet immediately. Out of nowhere, other human girls materialized among the crowd and carefully opened a path towards the back of the enormous room along which Madame progressed as thou gh propelled by invisible forces. Glenda felt that the situation had suddenly got away from her, but it had been a good measure of sherry and it whispered to her, ‘Why not let a situation get away from yo u every once in a while? Or even just once’ She had no idea what she was expecting be hind the gilded door at the far end, but she had not expected smoke and flames and sh outing and someone screaming in a corner. The place looked like a foundry on the day they let the clowns in. ‘Come on through. Don’t let this disturb you,’ said Madame. ‘It’s always like this at show time. Nerves, you know. Of course, everyone in this business is lowly strung and there is always this problem to begin with with the micromail. It’s new, you see. Acco rding to dwarf law it must be hallmarked on every link and that would not only be sacr ilege, but also bloody difficult to do.’ Behind the scenes, it appeared that Madame be came a little less chocolatey and a little more earthy. ‘Micromail!’ said Juliet, as if she had been shown the gateway to riches. ‘You know what it is?’ said Madame. ‘She talks about nothing else,’ said Glenda. ‘Talks and talks.’ ‘Well, of course, it’s wonderful stuff,’ said Madame. ‘Almost as soft as cloth, certainl y better than leather—’ ‘—and it doesn’t chafe,’ said Juliet. ‘Which is always a consideration for the more traditional dwarf who will not wear clo th,’ said Madame. ‘Old tribal customs, how they hold us back, always pull us back. We haul ourselves out of the mine, but somehow we always drag a bit of the mine with us . If I had my way, silk would be reclassified as a metal. What is your name, young la dy?’ ‘Juliet,’ said Glenda automatically, and then blushed. That was mumming, pure and sim ple. It was almost as bad as getting someone to spit on their handkerchief and wiping their face for them. The young lady with the drinks had followed them in and chose t his moment to take Glenda’s sherry glass and replace it with a full one. ‘Would you mind just walking up and down a moment, Juliet?’ said Madame. Glenda wanted to ask why, but since her mouth was full of sherry as an anti-embarrass ment remedy, she let that one pass. Madame watched Juliet critically, one hand cupping the elbow of the other arm. ‘Yes, yes. But I mean slowly, as if you were not in a hurry to get there and didn’t care, ’ said Madame. ‘Imagine you’re a bird in the air, a fish in the sea. Wear the world.’ ‘Oh, right,’ said Juliet and started again. By the time Juliet was halfway across the floor for the second time, Pepe had burst in to tears. ‘Where has she been? Where was she trained?’ he, or conceivably she, squeake d while clapping his or her cheeks with both hands. ‘You must hire her at once!’ ‘She’s already got a good steady job at the university,’ Glenda said. But the sherry said, ‘Once in a while isn’t over yet. Don’t spoil it!’* Madame, who clearly had an instinct for this kind of thing, put an arm around her shoul ders. ‘The problem with dwarf ladies, you see, is that a lot of us are a little shy abo ut being the centre of attention. I also have to bear in mind that dwarf clothing is pr oving quite interesting to young humans of a certain turn of mind. Your daughter is hum an—’ Madame turned briefly to Juliet. ‘You are human, aren’t you, dear? I find it pays to check.’ Juliet, apparently staring rapturously into a private world, nodded enthusiastically. ‘Oh good,’ said Madame. ‘And while she is exquisitely well built and moves like a dre am, she is not too much taller than the average dwarf and frankly, my dear, some of t he ladies would aspire to being a little taller than they are. This may be letting th e side up, but that walk, my word. Dwarfs have hips, of course, but they seldom know what to do with them…I’m sorry, have I said something wrong?’ The half-pint of sherry so recently consumed by Glenda finally gave way under the pres sure of her rage. ‘I am not her mother. She is my friend.’ Madame shot her another of those looks that gave her the feeling that her brain was b eing taken out and examined minutely. ‘Then would you mind if I paid your friend’-the re was a pause-‘five dollars to model for me this afternoon?’ ‘All right,’ said the sherry to Glenda. ‘You wondered where I was going to take you and here you are. Can you see the view? What are you going to do now?’ ‘Twenty-five dollars,’ said Glenda. Pepe clapped her, or possibly his, cheeks again and screamed, ‘Yes! Yes!’ ‘And a shop discount,’ said Glenda. Madame gave her a long-drawn-out stare. ‘Excuse me one moment,’ said the dwarf. She walked over and took Pepe’s arm, walking him at some speed to the corner. Glenda could not hear what was said over some nearby riveting and someone having hysterics . Madame came back smirking artificially, Pepe trailing her. ‘I have a show starting in ten minutes and my best model has dropped her pickaxe on her foot. We shall nego tiate any future engagements. And will you please stop that jumping up and down, Pep e?’ Glenda blinked. I cannot believe I just did that, she thought. Twenty-five dollars for p utting some clothes on! That’s more than I earn in a month! That’s just not right. And t he sherry said, ‘What exactly is wrong here? Would you dress up in chain mail and parade in front of a lot of strangers for twenty-five dollars?’ Glenda shuddered. Certainly not, she thought. ‘Well, there you are then,’ said the sherry. But it will all end in tears, thought Glenda. ‘No, you’re just saying that because part of you thinks it should,’ said the sherry. ‘You know there are far worse things that a girl could do for twenty-five dollars than put so me clothes on. Take them off, for a start.’ But what will the neighbours say? was the last despairing argument from Glenda. ‘They can stick it up their jumper,’ said the sherry. ‘Anyway, they won’t know, will th ey? Dolly Sisters doesn’t shop in the Maul, it’s far too grand. Look, we’re looking at twenty-five dollars. Twenty-five dollars to do what you couldn’t stop her doing now wit h a length of lead pipe. Just look at her face! She looks as if someone has lit a lamp inside.’ It was true. Oh, all right then, thought Glenda. ‘Good,’ said the sherry. ‘And incidentally, I’m feeling lonely.’ And as the tray was at Glenda’s elbow again, she reached out automatically. Juliet was now surrounded by dwarfs and, by the sound of it, she was having a lightning educatio n in how to wear clothing. But it wouldn’t matter, would it? The truth of the matter w as that Juliet would look good in a sack. Somehow, everything she wore fitted perfectl y. Glenda, on the other hand, never found anything good in her size and indeed seldom found anything in her size. In theory, something should fit, but all she ever found wa s facts, which are so unbecoming. ‘Well, we have a nice day for it,’ said the Archchancellor. ‘Looks like rain,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes hopefully. ‘I suggest two teams of five on a side,’ said Ridcully. ‘Only a friendly game, of course, just to get the hang of it.’ Ponder Stibbons made no comment. Wizards were competitive. It was a part of wizardry. Wizards have no more idea of a friendly game than cats have of a friendly mouse. The college lawns stretched out in front of them. ‘Of course, next time we’ll have prope r jerseys,’ said Ridcully. ‘Mrs Whitlow already has her girls working on that. Mister Stibbons!’ ‘Yes, Archchancellor?’ ‘You shall be the keeper of the rules and adjudicate fairly. I will, of course, be captai n of one of the teams and you, Runes, will captain the other. As Archchancellor, I sugges t that I pick my team first and then you will be at liberty to choose yours.’ ‘It isn’t actually supposed to work like that, Archchancellor,’ said Ponder. ‘You pic k a team member and then he picks a team member until you have enough team members or have run out of team members who aren’t grossly fat or trembling with nerves. At lea st that’s how I remember it.’ Ponder, in his youth, had spent far too long standing n ext to the fat kid. ‘Oh well, if that’s how it’s done, then I suppose we shall have to do it that way,’ said the Archchancellor with bad grace. ‘Stibbons, it will be your task to penalize the oppo sing side for any infringements they make.’ ‘Don’t you mean that I should penalize either side for any infringements they make, Arch chancellor?’ he said. ‘It has to be fair.’ Ridcully looked at him with his mouth open as if Ponder had mentioned a concept that was totally alien. ‘Oh yes, I suppose it has to be like that.’ A variety of wizards had turned out this afternoon from curiosity, a suspicion that bei ng there might turn out to be a good career move, and the prospect of maybe seeing some colleagues travelling across the lawn on their noses. Oh dear, thought Ponder as the choosing began. It was just like school again, but at sc hool nobody wanted the fat boy. Here, of course, it had to be a case of nobody wanted t he fattest boy, which, since the departure of the Dean, was a matter of fine judgement. Ponder reached into his robes and pulled out a whistle or, perhaps, the grandfather of a ll whistles, eight inches long and as thick as a generous pork sausage. ‘Where did that come from, Mister Stibbons?’ said Ridcully. ‘As a matter of fact, Archchancellor, I found it in the study of the late Evans the Stripe d.’ ‘It’s a fine whistle,’ said Ridcully. It was an innocent sentence that managed to hint quite silently that such a fine whistle should not be in the hands of Ponder Stibbons when it could be in the ownership of, for example, the Archchancellor of a university. Ponder spotted this because he had been ex pecting it. ‘I shall need this to alert and control the behaviour of both teams,’ he sai d haughtily. ‘You made me the referee, Archchancellor, and I’m afraid that for the durat ion of the game I am, as it were,’ he hesitated, ‘in charge.’ ‘This university is a hierarchy, you understand, Stibbons?’ ‘Yes, sir, and this is a game of football. I believe that the procedure is to put the foo tball down and when the whistle is blown each side will attempt to hit the goal of the op posing side with the ball while trying to prevent the ball hitting their own goal. Have w e all understood that?’ ‘It seems pretty clear to me,’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. There was a murmur of agreement. ‘Nevertheless, before the game I demand a blow on the whistle.’ ‘Of course, Archchancellor, but then you must give it me back. I am the custodian of t he game.’ He handed over the whistle. On Ridcully’s first attempt at blowing he dislodged a spider that had been living a blam eless yet frugal life for the last twenty years and deposited him in the beard of the Pr ofessor of Natural Studies, who was just passing. The second blow shook free the fossilized pea inside and filled the air with echoes of liquid brass. And then… Ridcully froze. His face flushed from the neck upwards at speed. The sound of h is next drawn breath was like the vengeance of the gods. His stomach expanded, his eyes became pinpoints, thunder rolled overhead and he roared, ‘WHY HAVEN’T YOU BOYS BROUGHT YOUR KIT?!’ St Elmo’s fire roared along the length of the whistle. The sky darkened and fear gri pped every watching soul as time reversed and there stood the giant, maniacally scre aming Evans the Striped. The instigator of badly forged notes from your mother, the enthusiast for long runs in the sleet, the promoter of communal showers as a cure fo r adolescent shyness and the one who, if you didn’t bring your proper gear, would ma ke you PLAY IN YOUR PANTS. Venerable wizards who had faced down the most cunning of monsters through the decades trembled in damp adolescent fear as the scream went on and on, to be halted as sharply as it started. Ridcully fell forward on to the turf. ‘I do apologize for that,’ said Dr Hix, lowering his staff. ‘A slightly evil deed, of cou rse, but I’m sure you’ll agree that it was necessary in the circumstances. The skull ring , remember? University statute? And that was a clear case of possession by artefact if ev er I saw one.’ The collected wizards, the cold sweat beginning to evaporate, nodded sagely. Oh, yes. It was regrettably necessary, they agreed. For his own good, they agreed. Had to be done, they agreed. And this verdict was echoed by Ridcully himself when he opened his eyes and said, ‘What the hell was that?’ ‘Er, the soul of Evans the Striped, I think, Archchancellor,’ said Ponder. ‘In the whistle, was it?’ Ridcully rubbed his head. ‘Yes, I think so,’ said Ponder. ‘And who hit me?’ A general shuffling and murmuring indicated that by democratic agreement this was a question that could best be answered by Dr Hix. ‘It was acceptable treachery under college statute, sir. Wouldn’t mind the whistle for the Dark Museum, if nobody objects.’ ‘Quite so, quite so,’ said Ridcully. ‘Saw the problem, sorted it out. Well done that man. ’ ‘Do you think I could be allowed an evil chuckle, sir?’ Ridcully brushed himself down. ‘No. We shall forgo the whistle, Mister Stibbons. An d now, gentlemen, let the game commence.’ And thus, after a certain amount of bickering, Unseen University’s first football matc h in decades began. Instantly, from Ponder Stibbons’s point of view, various problems arose. The most pressing one was that all the wizards were dressed as wizards, which w as to say alike. Ponder ordered the teams to play hats on and hats off, which caused a nother row. And that particular problem was exacerbated further because there were so many collisions that even the officially hatted kept losing theirs. And then the game was paused because it was declared that the statue commemorating Archchancellor Scrubb s’s discovery of blit was in fact three inches narrower than the venerable statue of A rchchancellor Flanker discovering the Third Breakfast, thus giving an unfair advantage to the hatless squad. But all these problems, foreseeable and inescapable, paled into insignificance compare d with the problem of the ball. It was an official ball–Ponder had made certain of tha t. But pointy shoes, even if they have a very long point, cannot absorb the impact of the human foot kicking what is, when all is said and screamed, a piece of wood with a thin cloth and leather wrapping. Eventually, as another wizard was helped away with a sprained ankle, even Ridcully was moved to say, ‘This is damn nonsense, Stibbons! Ther e has got to be something better than this.’ ‘Bigger boots?’ suggested the Lecturer in Recent Runes. ‘The kind of boots you need for kicking this would slow you right down,’ said Ponder. ‘Besides, the men on the urn had nothing at all on their feet. I suggest we consider th is research. What do we need, Stibbons?’ ‘A better ball, sir. And some attempt at running about. And a general consensus that it is not a good idea to stop to re-light your pipe in the middle of play. A more sensibl e type of goal, because running into a stone statue is painful. Some grasp, however sma ll, of the notion of teamwork in a gaming situation. A resolution not to run away if a member of the opposing team is rushing towards you. An understanding of the fact that y ou do not handle the ball in any circumstances; may I remind you that I gave up stoppin g play because of this since you gentlemen, when you were excited, persisted in picking it up and, in one case, hiding it behind your back, and standing on it. I would like t o point out at this juncture that a sense of direction is worth cultivating vis-à-vis t he goal that is yours and the goal that is theirs; inviting as it may be, there is no p oint in kicking the ball into your own goal, and nor should you congratulate and pat on the back anyone who achieves this feat. Out of the three goals scored in our match, th e number scored by players into their own goal was’-he paused and looked down at his cl ipboard-‘three. This is a commendably high level of scoring, compared with football as currently played, though once again I must stress that issues of direction and goal own ership are of pivotal importance. A tactic, which I admit looked promising, was for the players to cluster thickly around their own goal so there was no possibility of anythi ng getting past them. I regret, however, that if both teams do this you do not have a g ame so much as a tableau. A more promising tactic, which seemed to be adopted by one or two of you, was to lurk near the opponents’ goal so that if the ball came in your dire ction you would be ideally placed to get it past the custodian of the goal. The fact th at in some cases you and the opposing custodian leaned companionably against the goal, sharing a cigarette and watching the play up-field, showed a decent spirit and may poss ibly be a good starting point for some more advanced tactics, but I do not think this should be encouraged. On this general topic, I h ave to assume that retiring from the field of play for the call of nature or a breather is acceptable, but doing so for a snack is not. My feeling, Archchancellor, is that our colleagues’ general desire to be never more than twenty minutes from some savouries may be satisfactorily catered for by a pause in the middle of the game. Happily, if they cha nged ends at that point, that would satisfy the complaints about one goal being larger t han the other. Yes?’ This was to the Chair of Indefinite Studies. ‘If we change ends,’ said the Chair, who had put his hand up, ‘will that then mean tha t the goals that were scored into our own goal will now become goals scored against th e opposing team since that goal is now physically theirs?’ Ponder considered the metaphysics of answering this one and settled for, ‘No, of course not. I have a whole list of other notes, Archchancellor, and regrettably they add up to us not being very good at football.’ The wizards fell silent. ‘Let’s start with the ball,’ said Ridcully. ‘I’ve got an idea about the ball.’ ‘Yes, sir. I thought you would.’ ‘Then come and see me after dinner.’ Juliet had been sucked into the manic circus that was the backstage area of Shatta, a nd no one was paying Glenda any attention whatsoever. Just for now, she was a hindran ce, surplus, no use to anyone, an obstruction to be worked around, an onlooker in the game. A little way away, a handsome young dwarf with a double ponytail beard was wai ting patiently while a temporary rivet was put into what looked like a silver cuirass . She was surrounded by workers in much the same way as a knight is when his vassals must dress him for combat. Standing a little apart from them were two taller dwarfs, whose weaponry looked slightly more functional than beautiful. They were male. Glenda knew this simply because any female of any sapient species knows the look of a man w ho has nothing very much to do in an environment that, for this time, is clearly occu pied by and totally under the control of females. It looked as though they were on gu ard. Propelled by the sherry, she wandered over. ‘That must cost a lot of money,’ she said to the nearest guard. He looked slightly embarrassed by the approach. ‘You’re telling me. Moonsilver, they call it. We’re even having to walk down the catwa lk with her. They say it’s the coming thing, but I dunno. It won’t take an edge and it wouldn’t stop a decent blade. You need Igors to help you smelt it, too. They say it’s worth even more than platinum. Looks good, though, and they say you hardly know you’r e wearing it. It’s not what my granddad would have called a metal, but they say that w e have to move with the times. Personally, I wouldn’t even hang it on the wall, but th ere you go.’ ‘Girl’s armour,’ said the other guard. ‘What about this micromail stuff?’ said Glenda. ‘Ah, different pocketful of rats entirely, miss,’ said the first guard. ‘I hear they set up and forge it right here in the city, ’cos the best craftsmen are here. Just the job, eh? Cha in mail as fine as cloth and strong as steel! It’ll get cheaper, too, they say, and most of all it doesn’t—’ ‘Wotcher, Glendy, guess who?’ Someone tapped Glenda on the shoulder. She turned round and saw a vision of heavily b ut tastefully armoured beauty. It was Juliet, but Glenda only knew this because of th e milky-blue eyes. Juliet was wearing a beard. ‘Madame says I’d better wear this,’ she said. ‘It’s not dwarf if it don’t include a beard . What d’you think?’ This time the sherry got in first. ‘It’s actually rather attractive,’ said Glenda, still in mild shock. ‘It’s very–silvery.’ It was a female beard, she could tell. It looked styled and stylish and didn’t have bits of r at in it. ‘Madame says there’s a place saved for you in the front row,’ said Juliet. ‘Oh, I couldn’t sit in the front row—’ Glenda began, on automatic, but the sherry cut i n with, ‘Shut up, stop thinking like your mother, will you, and go and sit down in the damn front row.’ One of the ever-present young ladies chose this exact moment to take Glenda by the han d and lead her slightly unsteady feet through the settling chaos, out through the door and back into fairyland. There was indeed a seat waiting for her. Fortunately, although in the front row it was off to one side. She would have died of s hame had it been right in the middle. She clutched her handbag in both hands and risked a look along the row. It was packed. It wasn’t exclusively dwarf, either; there were a number of human ladies, smartly dressed, a little on the skinny side (in her opinion), almost offensively at ease and all talking. Another sherry mystically appeared in her hand and, as the noise stopped with rat-tra p sharpness, Madame Sharn came out through the curtain and began to address the crowd ed hall. Glenda thought, I wish I’d worn a better coat…At which point the sherry tuck ed her up and put her to bed. Glenda only started to think properly again some time later, when she was hit on the h ead by a bunch of flowers. They struck her just over the ear and as expensive petals r ained around her she looked up at the beaming, radiant face of Juliet, at the very edg e of the catwalk, halfway through the motions of shouting ‘Duck!’ …And there were more flowers flying and people standing and cheering, and music, and i n general the feeling of being under a waterfall with no water but inexhaustible torre nts of sound and light. Out of it all Juliet exploded, throwing herself at Glenda and flinging her arms around h er neck. ‘She wants me to do it again!’ she panted. ‘She says I could go to Quirm and Genua, ev en! She says she’ll pay me more if I don’t work for no one else and the world is an oy ster. I never knew that.’ ‘But you’ve already got a steady job in the kitchen…’ said Glenda, only three-quarter s of her way into consciousness. Later, more often than she liked, she remembered say ing those words while the applause thundered all around them. There was a gentle pressure on her shoulder, and here was one of the interchangeable young women with a tray. ‘Madame sends her compliments, miss, and would like to invit e you and Miss Juliet to join her in her private boudoir.’ ‘That’s nice of her, but I think we should be getting—A boudoir, you say?’ ‘Oh yes. And would you like another drink? It’s a celebration, after all.’ Glenda looked around at the chattering, laughing and, above all, drinking crowd. The pl ace felt like an oven. ‘All right, but not that sherry, thank you all the same. Have you got something very col d and fizzy?’ ‘Why, yes, miss. Lots.’ The girl produced a large bottle and expertly filled a tall flute d glass with, apparently, bubbles. When Glenda drank it, the bubbles filled her, too. ‘Mm, quite nice,’ she ventured. ‘A bit like lemonade grown up.’ ‘That’s how Madame drinks it, certainly.’ ‘Er, this boudoir,’ Glenda tried, following the girl rather unsteadily. ‘How big is it?’ ‘Oh, pretty large, I think. There must be about forty people in there already.’ ‘Really? That’s a big boudoir.’ Well, thank goodness, Glenda thought. That at least is s orted out. They really ought to put proper explanations in these novels. She had never been sure, given that she had no idea what sort of thing a boudoir was, w hat sort of thing you would find in it when you did. She found that it contained people , heat and flowers-not flowers in bunches, but in pillars and towering stacks, filling most of the air with clouds of sticky perfume while the people below filled the rest of it with words, tightly packed. No one could possibly hear what they were saying, Glend a told herself, but perhaps that wasn’t important. Perhaps what was important was being there to be seen to say it. The crowd parted, and she saw Juliet, still in the glittering outfit, still in the bear d…being there. Salamanders were flashing on and off, which meant people with iconograph s, didn’t it? The trashy papers were full of people glittering for the picture. She had no time for them. What made it worse was that her disapproval mattered not a fig to an yone. The people glittered anyway. And here was Juliet, glittering most of all. ‘I think I could do with a little fresh air,’ she mumbled. Her guide led her gently to an unobtrusive doorway. ‘Restrooms through here, ma’am.’ A nd they were–except that the long, carefully lit room was like some kind of fairy tale , all velvet and drapes. Fifteen surprised visions of Glenda stared at her from as man y mirrors. It was overpowering enough to make her sit down in a very expensive bendy-l egged chair that turned out to be very restful, too… When she jerked awake, she staggered out, got lost in a dark world of smelly passages choked with packing cases and finally blundered into a very large room indeed. It wa s more like a cavern; at the far end were a pair of double doors, probably ashamed to let in a grey light which did not so much illuminate as accuse. Another chaos of emp ty clothes racks and packing cases was scattered around the floor. In one place, wate r had dripped from the roof, and a puddle had formed on the stone, soaking some cardb oard. ‘There they are, in there with their glitter and their finery, and it’s all muck and rubbi sh round the back, right, dear?’ said a voice in the dark. ‘You look like a lady who can s pot a metaphor when she stares it in the face.’ ‘Something like that,’ muttered Glenda. ‘Who’s doing the asking?’ An orange light glowed and faded in the gloom. Someone was smoking a cigarette in t he shadows. ‘It’s the same all over, love. If there was an award for the arse end of things, there’d be a real bloody squabble for first place. I’ve seen a few palaces in my time and they’ re all the same: turrets and banners in the front, maids’ bedrooms and water pipes round the back. Fancy a top-up? Can’t be walking around here with an empty glass, you’ll stan d out.’ The cooler air was making her feel better. She still had a glass in her hand. ‘What is thi s stuff?’ ‘Well, if this was any other party it’d probably be the cheapest fizzing wine you could strain through a sock, but Madame won’t stint. It’s the real stuff. Champagne.’ ‘What? I thought only nobby people drank that!’ ‘No, just people with money, love. Sometimes it’s the same thing.’ She looked closer, and gasped. ‘What? Are you Pepe?’ ‘That’s me, love.’ ‘But you’re not all…all…’ She waved her hands frantically. ‘Off duty, love. Don’t have to worry about…’ He waved his hands equally frantically. ‘ I’ve got a bottle here of our very own. Care to join me?’ ‘Well, I ought to be getting back in there—’ ‘Why? To fuss around her like an old hen? Leave her be, love. She’s a duck who’s just found water.’ Pepe looked taller in this gloom. Maybe it was the language and the lack of flappin g. And, of course, anyone next to Madame Sharn would look small. He was willowy, th ough, like someone made of sinews. ‘But anything could happen to her!’ Pepe’s grin gleamed. ‘Yes! But probably won’t. My word, she sold micromail for us, an d no mistake. Told Madame I had a good feeling. She’s got a great career in front of her.’ ‘No, she’s got a good, steady job in the Night Kitchen, with me,’ said Glenda. ‘It might not be big money, but it’ll turn up every week. On the nail, and she won’t lose it if s omeone prettier comes along.’ ‘Dolly Sisters, right? Sounds like the Botney Street area,’ said Pepe. ‘I’m sure of it. No t too bad, as I recall. I didn’t get beaten up much down there, but at the end of the day they’re all crab buckets.’ Glenda was taken aback. She’d expected anger or condescension, not this sharp little gr in. ‘You know a lot about our city for a dwarf from Uberwald, I must say.’ ‘No, love, I know a lot about Uberwald for a boy from Lobbin Clout,’ said Pepe smooth ly. ‘Old Cheese Alley, to be precise. Local lad, me. Wasn’t always a dwarf, you know. I just joined.’ ‘What? Can you do that?’ ‘Well, it’s not like they advertised. But yeah, if you know the right people. And Madam e knew the right people, ha, knew quite a lot about the right people. It wasn’t hard. I ’ve got to believe in a few things, there’s a few observances, and of course I have to keep off the old booze—’ He smiled as her glance pinned the glass in his hand, and went on: ‘Too quick, love, I was going to add “when I’m working”, and good job too. It does n’t matter if you are shoring up the mine roof or riveting a bodice, being a piss artis t is bloody stupid. And the moral of all this is, you have to grab life or drop back in to the crab bucket.’ ‘Oh yes, that’s all very well to say,’ Glenda snapped, wondering what crabs had got to do with anything. ‘But in real life people have responsibilities. We don’t have shiny j obs with lots of money, but they are real jobs doing things that people need! I’d be as hamed of myself, selling boots at four hundred dollars a go, which only rich people can afford. What’s the point of that?’ ‘Well, you must admit that it makes rich people less rich,’ said the chocolate voice of Madame behind her. Like many large people, she could move as quietly as the balloon sh e resembled. ‘That’s a good start, isn’t it? And it goes to wages for the miners and th e smiths. It all goes around, they tell me.’ She sat down heavily on a packing case, glass in hand. ‘Well, we’ve got most of them o ut now,’ she said, fumbling in her capacious breastplate with her spare hand and pulli ng out a thick wad of paper. ‘The big names want to be in on this and everyone wants it exclusively and we’re going t o need another forge. Tomorrow I’ll go and see the bank.’ She paused to dip into her met al bodice again. ‘As a dwarf I was raised in the faith that gold is the one true currenc y,’ she said, counting out some crisp notes, ‘but I have to admit this stuff is a lot wa rmer. That’s fifty dollars for Juliet, twenty-five from me and twenty-five from the cham pagne, which is feeling happy. Juliet said to give it to you to look after.’ ‘Miss Glenda thinks that we’ll lead her treasure into a lifetime of worthless sin and dep ravity,’ said Pepe. ‘Well, that’s a thought,’ said Madame, ‘but I can’t remember when I last had some depr avity.’ ‘Tuesday,’ said Pepe. ‘A whole box of chocolates is not depraved. Besides, you slid out the card between the l ayers, which confused me. I did not intend to eat the bottom layer. I did not want the b ottom layer. It was practically assault.’ Pepe coughed. ‘We’re scaring the normal lady, love.’ Madame smiled. ‘Glenda, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking we’re a couple of louche evil clowns who booze away in a world of smoke and mirrors. Well, that’s f airly accurate right now, but today was the end of a year’s hard work, you see.’ And you bicker like an old married couple, Glenda thought. Her head was aching. She’d tr ied a rat fruit, that was the trouble, she was sure of it. ‘In the morning I’m going to show these orders to the manager of the Royal Bank and as k him for a lot of money. If he trusts us, can you? We need Juliet. She just…sparkles. ’ And you two are holding hands. Tightly. Something soft snapped inside Glenda. ‘All right, look,’ she said. ‘It’s like this. Jools is going to come back home with me t onight, to get her head straight. Tomorrow…well, we’ll see.’ ‘We can’t ask for more than that. Can we?’ said Madame, patting Glenda on the knee. ‘Y ou know, Juliet thinks the world of you. She said she’d need you to say yes. She was t elling all the society ladies about your pies.’ ‘She’s been talking to society ladies?’ said Glenda in astonishment laced with trepidat ion and tinted with wonder. ‘Certainly. They all wanted a close look at the micromail, and she just chatted away, ch eery as you like. I don’t think anyone ever said “Wotcher!” to them in their lives befor e.’ ‘Oh no! I’m sorry!’ ‘Why be? They were rather taken by it. And apparently you can bake pickled onions int o a pie so that they stay crunchy?’ ‘She told them that?’ ‘Oh, yes. I gather that they all intend to get their cooks to try it out.’ ‘Hah. They’ll never find the way!’ said Glenda with satisfaction. ‘So Jools says.’ ‘We…generally call her Juliet,’ said Glenda. ‘She told us to call her Jools,’ said Madame. ‘Is there a problem?’ ‘Well, er, not really a problem,’ Glenda began wretchedly. ‘That’s good, then,’ said Madame, who clearly knew when not to notice subtleties. ‘Now let’s prise her away from her new friends, and you can see to it that she gets a good n ight’s sleep.’ There was laughter, and the girls helping with the show streamed out into the clammy place that was the midwife to beauty. Juliet was among them, and with the loudest lau gh. She broke away when she saw Glenda and gave her another hug. ‘Oh, Glendy, isn’t t his great? It’s like a fairy story!’ ‘Yes, well, it might be,’ said Glenda, ‘but they don’t all have happy endings. Just yo u remember you have a good job now, with prospects and regular leftovers to take home. That’s not to be lightly thrown away.’ ‘No, it should be hurled with great force,’ said Pepe. ‘I mean, what is this? Emberell a? The wand has been waved, the court is cheering, a score of handsome princes are wai ting to sign up for just a sniff of her slipper, and you want her to go back to work m aking pumpkins?’ He looked at their blank faces. ‘All right, perhaps that came out a little confused, but surely you can follow the seam? This is a big chance! As big as it gets. A way out of the bucket!’ ‘I think we’ll go home now,’ said Glenda primly. ‘Come along, Jools.’ ‘See,’ said Pepe, when they had gone, ‘it’s a crab bucket.’ Madame peered into a bottle to see if, against all probability, one glassful yet remaine d. ‘Did you know she more or less raised the kid? Jools will do what she says.’ ‘What a waste,’ said Pepe. ‘Don’t take the world by storm, stay here and make pies? You think that’s a life?’ ‘Someone has to make pies,’ Madame said, with an infuriating calm reasonableness. ‘Oh, pur-lease! Not her. Let it not be her. And for leftovers? Oh no!’ Madame picked up another empty bottle. She knew it was empty because it was in the vi cinity of Pepe at the end of a long day, but she examined it anyway because thirst sp rings eternal. ‘Hmm. It might not come to that,’ she said. ‘I have a feeling that Miss Glenda is just about to start thinking. There’s a powerful mind behind that rather sad cloak and those awful shoes. Today might be its lucky day.’ Ridcully strode through the corridors of Unseen University with his robes flapping con fidently behind him. He had a big stride and Ponder had to run in a semi-crabwise fash ion to keep up with him, his clipboard clutched protectively to his chest. ‘You know w e did agree that it wasn’t to be used for purposes other than pure research, Archchanc ellor. You actually signed the edict.’ ‘Did I? I don’t remember that, Stibbons.’ ‘I remember it most distinctly, sir. It was just after the case of Mister Floribunda.’ ‘Which one was he?’ said Ridcully, still striding purposefully ahead. ‘He was the one who felt a little peckish and asked the Cabinet for a bacon sandwich to see what would happen.’ ‘I thought that anything taken out of the Cabinet had to be returned in 14.14 hours recu rring?’ ‘Yes, sir. That is the case, but the Cabinet appears to have strange rules that we do n ot fully understand. In any case, Mister Floribunda’s defence was that he thought the f ourteen-hour rule didn’t apply to bacon sandwiches. Nor did he tell anybody and so the students on his floor were only alerted when they heard the screams some fourteen hours later.’ ‘Correct me if I’m wrong,’ said Ridcully, still covering the flagstones at an impressive rate, ‘but would it not have been digested by that point?’ ‘Yes, sir. But it still went back to the Cabinet, of its own accord, you might say. That was quite an interesting discovery. We did not know that could happen.’ Ridcully stopped and Ponder bumped into him. ‘What exactly did happen to him?’ ‘You wouldn’t want me to draw a picture, sir. However, the good news is that he will so on be out of the wheelchair. In fact, I gather he’s already walking quite well with a s tick. How we discipline him is, of course, up to you, sir. The file is on your desk, as are, indeed, a considerable number of other documents.’ Ridcully strode off again. ‘He did it to see what would happen, did he?’ he said cheerfu lly. ‘So he said, sir,’ said Ponder. ‘And this was against my express orders, was it?’ ‘Yes, absolutely definitely, sir,’ said Ponder, who knew his Archchancellor and alr eady had an inkling of how this one was going to end. ‘And so therefore, sir, I mus t insist that he—’ He walked into Ridcully again because the man had stopped outsid e a large door on which was a bright red notice saying, ‘No Item To Be Removed From This Room Without The Express Permission Of The Archchancellor. Signed Ponder Stib bons pp Mustrum Ridcully.’ ‘You signed this one for me?’ Ridcully said. ‘Yes, sir. You were busy at the time and we had agreed on this one.’ ‘Yes, of course, but I don’t think that you should pp just like that. Remember what tha t young lady said about the UU.’ Ponder produced a large key and opened the door. ‘May I also remind you, Archchancello r, that we agreed a moratorium on the use of the Cabinet of Curiosity until we had cle aned up some of the residual magic in the building. We still don’t seem to have got ri d of the squid.’ ‘Did we agree, Mister Stibbons,’ said Ridcully, turning around sharply, ‘or did you agr ee with yourself pp me, as it were?’ ‘Well, er, I think I understood the spirit of your thinking, sir.’ ‘Well, this is the spirit of pure research,’ said Ridcully. ‘It’s research into how we can hope to save our cheeseboard. Many would say there could be no greater goal. As f or young Floribunda…’ ‘Yes, sir?’ said Ponder wearily. ‘Promote him. Whatever level he is, move him up one.’ ‘I think that’ll send the wrong kind of signal,’ Ponder tried. ‘On the contrary, Mister Stibbons. It will send exactly the right message to the student body.’ ‘But he disobeyed an express order, may I point out?’ ‘That’s right. He showed independent thinking and a certain amount of pluck, and in th e course of so doing added valuable data to our understanding of the Cabinet.’ ‘But he might have destroyed the whole university, sir.’ ‘Right, in which case he would have been vigorously disciplined, if we’d been able to find anything left of him. But he didn’t and he was lucky and we need lucky wizards. P romote him, on the direct order of me, not pp’d at all. Incidentally, how loud were hi s screams?’ ‘As a matter of fact, Archchancellor, the first one was so heartfelt that it kept going long after he’d run out of breath and apparently adopted an independent existence. Resid ual magic again. We’ve had to lock it in one of the cellars.’ ‘Did he actually say what the bacon sandwich was like?’ ‘Coming or leaving, sir?’ said Ponder. ‘Only coming, I think,’ said Ridcully. ‘I do have a vivid imagination after all.’ ‘He said it was the most delightful bacon sandwich he’d ever eaten. It was the bacon sandwich that you dream of when you hear the words bacon sandwich and never, ever qui te get.’ ‘With brown sauce?’ said Ridcully. ‘Of course. Apparently, it was the bacon sandwich to end all bacon sandwiches.’ ‘It nearly did, for him, but isn’t that what you already know about the Cabinet? That it always delivers a perfect specimen?’ ‘Actually, we know very little for certain,’ said Ponder. ‘What we do know is that it wi ll hold nothing too large to fit inside a cube measuring 14.14 inches recurring on a sid e, that it will cease working if, we now know, a non-organic object is not replaced in i t in 14.14 hours recurring, and that none of its contents are pink, although we do not k now why this should be.’ ‘But bacon is definitely organic, Mister Stibbons,’ said Ridcully. Ponder sighed. ‘Yes, sir, we don’t know why that is either.’ The Archchancellor took pity on him. ‘Perhaps it was one of those very crispy ones,’ h e suggested kindly. ‘The kind that you can break between your fingers. I like that in a bacon sandwich.’ The door swung open and there it was. Small, in the centre of a very large room… The Cabinet of Curiosity. ‘Do you think this is wise?’ said Ponder. ‘Of course not,’ said Ridcully. ‘Now find me a football.’ On one wall was a white mask, such as one might wear to a carnival. Ponder turned towar ds it. ‘Hex. Please find me a ball suitable for the game of football.’ ‘That mask is new?’ said Ridcully. ‘I thought Hex’s voice travelled in blit space?’ ‘Yes, sir. It just comes out of the air, sir. But somehow, well, it feels better to have som ething to talk to.’ ‘What shape football do you require?’ said Hex, his voice as smooth as clarified butter. ‘Oval or spherical?’ ‘Spherical,’ said Ponder. Instantly the Cabinet shook. The thing had always worried Ridcully. It looked too smug, for a start. It seemed to b e saying: You don’t know what you are doing. You use me as a kind of lucky dip and I b et you have never thought of how many dangerous things can fit into a fourteen-inch cu be. In fact, Ridcully had thought about that, often at three in the morning, and never went into the room without a couple of sub-critical spells in his pocket just in case . And then there was Nutt…Well, hope for the best and prepare for the worst, that was the UU way. A drawer slid out and went on sliding until it reached the wall and presumably continu ed to slide into some other hospitable set of dimensions, because it never turned up o utside the room, no matter how often you looked. ‘Very smooth today,’ he observed, as another drawer rose up from under the floor and s prouted a further drawer exactly the same size as itself which began to move purposefu lly towards the far wall. ‘Yes. The lads at Brazeneck have come up with a new algorithm for handling wave spaces in higher-level blit. It speeds up something like the Cabinet by getting on for 2,000 Drinkies.’ Ridcully frowned. ‘Did you just make that up?’ ‘No, sir. Charlie Drinkie came up with it at Brazeneck. It’s a shorter way of saying 15,00 0 iterations to the first negative blit. And it’s a lot easier to remember.’ ‘So people you know at Brazeneck send you stuff?’ said Ridcully. ‘Oh, yes,’ said Ponder. ‘For free?’ ‘Of course, sir,’ said Ponder, looking surprised. ‘The free sharing of information is cent ral to the pursuit of natural philosophy.’ ‘And so you tell them things, do you?’ Ponder sighed. ‘Yes, of course.’ ‘I don’t think I approve of that,’ said Ridcully. ‘I’m all for the free sharing of informa tion, provided it’s them sharing their information with us.’ ‘Yes, sir, but I think we’re rather hampered by the meaning of the word “sharing”.’ ‘Nevertheless,’ Ridcully began and stopped. A sound so quiet that they had barely notic ed it had stopped. The Cabinet of Curiosity had folded itself up and was once again jus t a piece of wooden furniture in the centre of the room, but as they looked at it its t wo front doors opened and a brown ball dropped on to the floor and bounced with a sound like gloing! Ridcully marched over and picked it up, turning it in his hands. ‘Interesting,’ he said, slamming it towards the floor. It bounced up past his head, bu t he was quick enough to catch it on the way down. ‘Remarkable,’ he said. ‘What do you think of this, Stibbons?’ He flicked the ball into the air and kicked it hard across the room. It came back towards Ponder, who, to his own amazement, caught it. ‘Seems to have a life of its own.’ Ponder dropped it on to the floor and tried a kick. It flew. Ponder Stibbons was the quintessential, all-time holder of the one-hundred-metre note f rom his auntie, which also asked for him to be excused all sporting activities on accou nt of his athlete’s ear, erratic stigmatism, a grumbling nose and a revolving spleen. B y his own admission, he would rather run ten miles, leap a five-bar gate and climb a bi g hill than engage in any athletic activity. The ball sang to him. It sang gloing! A few minutes later, he and Ridcully walked back to the Great Hall, occasionally bounc ing the ball on the flagstones. There was something about the sound of gloing! that ma de you want to hear it again. ‘You know, Ponder, I think you’ve been doing it all wrong. There are more things in H eaven and Disc than are dreamed of in our philosophies.’ ‘I expect so, sir. I don’t have many things in my philosophies.’ ‘It’s all about the ball,’ said Ridcully, slamming it down hard on the flagstones agai n and catching it. ‘Tomorrow, we’ll bring it here and see what happens. You gave the b all a mighty kick, Mister Stibbons, and yet you are, by your own admission, a wet and a weed.’ ‘Yes, sir, and a wuss, and I am proud of the appellation. I’d better remind you, Archcha ncellor, that the thing mustn’t spend too long outside the Cabinet.’ Gloing! ‘But we could make a copy, couldn’t we?’ said Ridcully. ‘It’s only leather stitched tog ether, probably protecting a bladder of some sort. I bet any decent craftsman could mak e another one for us.’ ‘What, now?’ ‘The lights never go off on the Street of Cunning Artificers.’ By now, they were back in the Great Hall and Ridcully looked around until his gaze li ghted on two figures pushing a trolley laden with candles. ‘You lads, to me!’ he shou ted. They stopped pushing the trolley and walked over to him. ‘Mister Stibbons here w ould like you to run an errand for him. It’s of considerable importance. Who are you?’ ‘Trevor Likely, guv.’ ‘Nutt, Archchancellor.’ Ridcully’s eyes narrowed. ‘Yes…Nutt,’ he said, and thought about the spells in his po cket. ‘The candle dribbler, yes? Well, you can make yourselves useful. Over to you, M ister Stibbons.’ Ponder Stibbons held out the ball. ‘Have you any idea what this is?’ Nutt took it out of his hands and bounced it on the tiles a couple of times. Gloing! Gloing! ‘Yes. It appears to be a simple sphere, although technically I believe it to be, in act ual fact, a truncated icosahedron, made by stitching together a number of pentagons and hexagons of tough leather, and stitching means holes and holes let the air leak…Ah, th ere is lacing just here, you see? There must be some internal bladder–animal, probably. A balloon, as it were, for lightness and elasticity, encapsulated by leather, simple a nd elegant.’ He handed the ball back to Ponder, who was open-mouthed. ‘Do you know everything, Mister Nutt?’ he said with the sarcasm of a born pedagogue. Nutt’s reply was concentrated and there was a lengthy pause before he said, ‘I’m not sure about a lot of the detail, sir.’ Ponder heard a snigger behind him and felt himself redden. He’d been cheeked, by a dr ibbler, even if Nutt was the most incontinently erudite one he’d ever encountered. ‘Do you know where a copy of this may be made?’ said Ridcully loudly. ‘I expect so,’ said Nutt. ‘I believe dwarf rubber will be our friend here.’ ‘There’s plenty of dwarfs up at Old Cobblers who could knock one up, guv,’ said Trev. ‘They’re good at this sort of thing, but they’d want paying, they always want paying . Nuffin’s on credit when you’re dealing with a dwarf.’ ‘Give these young gentlemen twenty-five dollars, Mister Stibbons, will you?’ ‘That’s a lot of money, Archchancellor.’ ‘Yes, well, dwarfs, while the salt of the earth, don’t have much of a grasp of small num bers and I want this in a hurry. I’m sure I can trust Mister Likely and Mister Nutt with the money, can’t I?’ He said it jovially, but there was an edge to his voice. Trev, at least, got the message very quickly; a wizard could trust you because of the hellish fut ure he could unleash on you if his trust was betrayed. ‘You can certainly trust us, guv.’ ‘Yes, I thought I could,’ said Ridcully. When they had gone, Ponder Stibbons said, ‘You’re entrusting them with twenty-five d ollars?’ ‘Yes, indeed,’ said Ridcully cheerfully. ‘It will be interesting to see the outcome.’ ‘Nevertheless, sir, I have to say that it was an unwise move.’ ‘Thank you for your input, Mister Stibbons, but may I gently remind you who is the gu v around here?’ Glenda and Juliet took a trolley bus home, another huge extravagance but, of course, G lenda was carrying more money than she had ever seen at one go. She had stuffed the no tes into her bodice, à la Madame, and it seemed to generate a heat of its own. You wer e safe on a troll. Anyone wanting to mug a troll would have to use a building on a sti ck. Juliet was quiet. This puzzled Glenda; she had expected her to bubble like a fountain f ull of soap flakes. The silence was unnerving. ‘Look. I know it was a lot of fun,’ Glenda said, ‘but showing off clothes isn’t like a real job, is it?’ No. Real jobs pay a lot less, she thought. Where had that come from? Jools hadn’t opened her mouth and the troll was still cove red in mountain lichen and had a single-syllable vocabulary. It came from me, she th ought. This is about dreams, isn’t it? She is a dream. I dare say the micromail is g ood stuff, but she made it sparkle. And what can I say? You help in the kitchen. You are useful and helpful, at least when you’re not daydreaming, but you don’t know ho w to keep accounts or plan a weekly menu. What would you do without me? How would yo u get on away from here, in foreign parts where folks are so odd? ‘I’ll have to open a bank account for you,’ she said aloud. ‘It’ll be our little secret, all ri ght? It’ll be a nice little nest egg for you.’ ‘And if Dad don’t know I’ve got the money he won’t get it off me and piss it against t he wall,’ said Juliet, glancing up at the solemn, impassive face of the troll. If Glen da had known how to say ‘Pas devant le troll’ she would have done so. But it was true: Mr Stollop commanded that all family earnings were pooled, with him holding the pool, which was then pooled with his friends in the bar of the Turkey & Vegetables, and ult imately pooled again in the reeking alley behind it. She settled for: ‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that.’ Gloing! Gloing! The new ball was magic, that’s what it was. It bounced back to Trev’s waiting hand as if by its own free will. For two pins he’d risk kicking it, but he and Nutt and the ball w ere already picking up a trail of curious street urchins such that he would be guarantee d never to see it again. ‘Are you really sure you know ’ow it works?’ he said to Nutt. ‘Oh, yes, Mister Trev. It’s a lot simpler than it looks, although the polyhedrons will need some work, but overall—’ A hand landed on Trev’s shoulder. ‘Well, now. Trev Likely,’ said Andy. ‘And his little pet, harder to kill than a cockroach, by all accounts. Something’s going on, ain’t it, Trev? And you’re going to tell me what it is. Here, what’s that you’re holding?’ ‘Not today, Andy,’ said Trev, backing away. ‘You’re lucky you didn’t end up in the T anty with Mister One Drop measurin’ you up for a hemp collar.’ ‘Me?’ said Andy innocently. ‘I didn’t do a thing! Can’t blame me for what a thicko Stol lop does, but something is going on with the football, ain’t it? Vetinari wants to muck it about.’ ‘Just leave it alone, will you?’ said Trev. There was more than the usual gang behind Andy. The Stollop brothers had sensibly spa red the streets their presence lately, but people like Andy could always find followe rs. Like they said, it was better to be beside Andy than in front of him. And with An dy you never knew just when he was— The cutlass was out in one movement. That was Andy. Whatever it was inside that held b ack the primeval rage could flick off just like that. And here came the blade with Tre v’s future written on it in very short words. And it stopped in mid air and Nutt’s voi ce said, ‘I believe I could squeeze with enough pressure, Andy, to make your bones gri nd and flow. There are twenty-seven bones in the human hand. I truly believe that I co uld make every one of them useless with the slightest extra pressure. However, I would like to give you a chance to revise your current intentions.’ Andy’s face was a mix of colours: a white that was almost blue and a rage that was a lmost crimson. He was trying to pull away and Nutt stood calmly and was completely i mmoveable. ‘Get ’im!’ Andy hissed at the world in general. ‘Could I regretfully remind you gentlemen that I have another hand?’ said Nutt. He must have squeezed because Andy yelped as his hand ground against the weapon’s handle. Trev knew all too well that Andy did not have friends, he had followers. They were loo king at their stricken leader and they were looking at Nutt, and they could see very c learly not only that Nutt had a spare hand, but what he was capable of doing with it. They did not move. ‘Very well,’ said Nutt. ‘Perhaps this has been nothing more than an unfortunate misund erstanding. I am about to release my grip just enough for you to drop the cutlass, Mis ter Andy, please.’ There was another intake of breath from Andy as the cutlass landed on the stones. ‘Now, if you would excuse us, Mister Trev and I are going to walk away.’ ‘Take the bloody cutlass! Don’t leave the cutlass on the ground,’ said Trev. ‘I am sure Mister Andy would not come after us,’ said Nutt. ‘Are you bloody mad?’ said Trev. He reached down, snatched up the cutlass and said, ‘ Let ’im go and let’s get a move on.’ ‘Very well,’ said Nutt. He must have squeezed a little harder because now Andy slumpe d to his knees. Trev pulled Nutt away and towed him through the permanent city crowd. ‘That’s Andy!’ he said, hurrying them along. ‘You don’t expect logic with Andy. You don’t expect h im to “learn the error of his ways”. Don’t look for any sense when Andy’s after you. Got that? Don’t try talkin’ to ’im as if ’e’s a human being. Now, keep up with me.’ Dwarf shops were doing well these days, largely because they understood the first rul e of merchandising, which is this: I have got goods for sale and the customer has got money. I should have the money and, regrettably, that involves the customer having m y goods. To this end, therefore, I will not say ‘The one in the window is the last on e we have, and we can’t sell it to you, because if we did no one would know we have t hem for sale’, or ‘We’ll probably have some more on Wednesday’, or ‘We just can’t kee p them on the shelves’, or ‘I’m fed up with telling people there’s no demand for them ’ I will make a sale by any means short of physical violence, because without one I a m a waste of space. Glang Snorrisson lived by this rule, but he didn’t like people much, an affliction t hat affects many who have to deal with the general public over a long period, and th e two people on the other side of his counter were making him edgy. One was small an d looked harmless, but something so deep down in Glang’s psyche that it was probably stuffed in his genes was making him nervous. The other intru—customer was not much more than a boy and therefore likely to commit a crime any moment. Glang dealt with the situation by not understanding anything they said and uttering si lly insults in his native tongue. There was hardly a risk. Only the Watch learned Dwar fish, and it came as a surprise when the worryingly harmless one said, in better Llame dos Dwarfish than Glang himself spoke these days: ‘Such incivility to the amiable stra nger shames your beard and erases the writings of Tak, ancient merchant.’ ‘What did you say to him?’ Trev asked, as Glang spluttered out apologies. ‘Oh, just a traditional greeting,’ said Nutt. ‘Could you pass me the ball, please?’ He to ok the football and bounced it on the floor. Gloing! ‘I suspect you might know the trick of making brimstoned rubber?’ ‘That was my…my grandfather’s name,’ Glang stuttered. ‘Ah, a good omen,’ said Trev quickly. He caught the ball and batted it down again. Gloing! ‘I can cut out and stitch the outer cover if you will work on the bladder,’ said Nutt, ‘and we will pay you fifteen dollars and allow you a licence to make as many more as yo u wish.’ ‘You’ll make a fortune,’ said Trev encouragingly. Gloing! Gloing! went the ball, and Trev added, ‘That’d be a university licence, too. No one would dare mess with it.’ ‘How come you know about brimstoned rubber?’ said Glang. He had the look about hi m of someone who knows that he is outnumbered but will go down fighting. ‘Because King Rhys of the dwarfs presented a dress of brimstoned rubber and leather t o Lady Margolotta six months ago, and I’m pretty sure I understand the principle.’ ‘Her? The Dark Lady? She can kill people with a thought!’ ‘She is my friend,’ said Nutt calmly, ‘and I will help you.’ Glenda wasn’t quite sure why she tipped the troll tuppence. He was elderly and slow, bu t his upholstery was well kept and he had twin umbrellas and it was no fun for trolls t o come this far, because the kid gangs would have graffitied them to the waist by the t ime they got out of there. She felt hidden eyes on her as she walked up to her door, and it didn’t matter. ‘All right,’ she said to Juliet. ‘Have a night off, okay?’ ‘I’ll go back to work with you,’ said Juliet, to her surprise. ‘We need the money and I ca n’t tell Dad about the fifty dollars, can I?’ There was a small collision of expectations in Glenda’s head as Juliet went on: ‘You’r e right, it’s a steady job and I want to keep it an’ I’m so fick I’d prob’ly muck up t he other one. I mean, it was fun and all that, but then, I thought, well, you always g ave me good advice, an’ I remembered that time you kicked Greasy Damien in the goolies so hard when he was messin’ me around, he walked bent double for a week. Besides, if I go away with them it means leaving the street, and Dad and the lads. That’s really s cary. An’ you said be careful about fairy stories, and you’re right, half the time it’ s goblins. An’ I don’t know how I’d get on without you puttin’ me right. You are solid , you are. I can’t remember you not bein’ around, and when one of the girls sniggered about your old coat I told her you work very hard.’ Glenda thought, I used to be able to read you like a book–one with big colourful pages and not many words. And now I can’t. What’s happening? You’re agreeing with me and I ought to feel smug about it, but I don’t. I feel bad about it, and I don’t know why, a nd that hurts. ‘Maybe you ought to sleep on it,’ she suggested. ‘No, I’d mess it up, I know I would.’ ‘Do you feel all right?’ Something inside Glenda was shouting at her. ‘I’m okay,’ said Juliet. ‘Oh, it was fun and that, but it’s for nobby girls, not me. It’s a ll glitter, nuffin’ you can hold. But a pie’s a pie, right? Solid! Besides, who’d look afte r Dad and the lads?’ No, no, no, screamed Glenda’s voice in her own head, not that! I didn’t want that. Oh , didn’t I? Then what did I think I was doing, passing on all that old toot? She look s to me, and I’ve gone and given her a good example! Why? Because I wanted to protect her. She’s so…vulnerable. Oh dear, I’ve taught her to be me, and I’ve even made a ba d mess of that chore! ‘All right, then, you can head back with me.’ ‘Will we see the banquet? Our dad has been fretting about the banquet. He reckons Lor d Vetinari is going to have everyone murdered.’ ‘Does he do that a lot?’ ‘Yes, but it gets hushed up, our dad says.’ ‘There’s going to be hundreds of people there. That would need a lot of hush.’ And if I don’t like what I hear, there won’t be enough hush in all the world, she thought. Trev mooched aimlessly around the shop while Nutt and the dwarf put their heads togethe r over the ball. For some reason there was a faint scrabbling on the roof. It sounded l ike claws. Just a bird, he told himself. Even Andy wouldn’t come in through the roof. T here was another pressing matter. This place would have a privy, wouldn’t it? There was at least a back door and that would inevitably lead to a back alley and, well, what is a back alley for except for sleeping tramps and the call of nature? Possibly in the sa me place if you were feeling cruel. Trev unbuckled his belt, faced a noisome wall and stared upwards nonchalantly, as a man does in these circumstances. However, most men don’t look up into the astonish ed faces of two birdlike women who were standing, no, perching on the roof. They sc reeched Awk! Awk! and flew up into the darkness. Trev scuttled quickly and damply back into the shop. This city got bloody stranger eve ry day. After that, time flew past for Trev, and every second stank of sulphur. He’d seen Nutt dribbling candles, but that was at snail’s pace compared with the speed at which the le ather was cut for the ball. But that wasn’t creepy, that was just Nutt. What was creepy was that he didn’t measure anything. Eventually, Trev couldn’t stand it any more, and stopped leaning against the wall, pointed to one of the multi-sided little leather stri ps and said, ‘How long is that?’ ‘One and fifteen sixteenths of an inch.’ ‘How can you tell without measuring?’ ‘I do measure, with my eyes. It is a skill. It can be learned.’ ‘An’ that makes you worthy?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘An’ who judges?’ ‘I do.’ ‘Here we are, Mister Nutt, still warm,’ said Glang, arriving from the back of the sho p holding something that looked like something taken from an animal that was now, you hoped for its own sake, dead. ‘Of course, I could do a lot better with more time,’ he continued, ‘but if you blow down this little tube…’ Trev watched in wonder, and it occurred to him that in all his life he’d made a few c andles and a lot of mess. How much was he worth? Gloing! Gloing! Two balls in harmony, thought Trev, but clapped as Nutt and Glang shook hands, then, while they were still admiring their handiwork, he reached behind him and slipped a d agger off the bench and into his pocket. He wasn’t a thief. Oh, fruit off stalls, but everyone knew that didn’t count, and picki ng a toff’s pocket was just a case of social redistribution, everyone knew that, too, a nd maybe you found something that looked lost, well, someone would pick it up, so why n ot you? Weapons got you killed, often because you were holding one. But things were going t oo far. He had heard Andy’s bones creak and Nutt had brought the man to his knees w ithout sweating. And there were two reasons for taking precautions right there. One was that if you put Andy down you’d better put him out, right out, because he woul d come back, blood around the corner of his mouth. And two, the worst, was that rig ht now Nutt was more worrying than Andy. At least he knew what Andy was… Carrying a ball each, they hurried back to the university, with Trev keeping a watchful eye on high buildings. ‘It’s amazin’ what’s turnin’ up in this city,’ he said. ‘There were a couple of vampire types back there, did you know?’ ‘Oh, those? They work for Ladyship. They are there for protection.’ ‘Whose?’ said Trev. ‘Do not worry about them.’ ‘Hah! And do you know something even stranger has happened this evening?’ said Trev, a s the university hove into sight. ‘You offered that dwarf fifteen dollars and he didn’ t even haggle. Like, that’s unheard of. Must be the power of gloing!’ ‘Yes, but I actually gave him twenty dollars,’ said Nutt. ‘Why? He didn’t ask for anythin’ more.’ ‘No, but he did work very hard and the extra five dollars will more than repay him for the dagger you stole while our backs were turned.’ ‘I never did!’ said Trev hotly. ‘Your automatic, unthinking and spring-loaded reply is noted, Mister Trev. As was the sight of the dagger on the bench, shortly followed by the sight of the empty space whe re the dagger had been. I am not angry, because I saw you most sensibly toss Mister Sh ank’s wretched cutlass over a wall and I understand your nervousness, but nevertheless I must point out that this is stealing. And so I ask you, as my friend, to take the d agger back in the morning.’ ‘But that will leave ’im up by five dollars and his dagger back.’ Trev sighed. ‘But at le ast we’ve got a few dollars each,’ he said, as they entered the back door of the universi ty. ‘Yes, and then again no, Mister Trev. You will take the remaining five dollars and this rather grubby although genuine receipt for twenty dollars to Mister Stibbons, who thin ks you are no good, thus making him doubt his original assumption that you are a thief and a scallywag and assisting your progress in this university.’ ‘I’m not a—’ Trev began and stopped, honest enough to acknowledge the knife in his co at. ‘Honestly, Nutt, you’re one of a kind, you are.’ ‘Yes,’ said Nutt. ‘I am coming to that conclusion.’ WOTCHER! The word, in huge type, shouted out from the front page of the Times, next to a big pictur e of Juliet glittering in micromail and smiling right at the reader. Glenda, frozen for th e last fifteen seconds in the act of raising a piece of toast to her mouth, finally bit. Now she blinked and dropped the toast to read: Mystery model ‘Jewels’ was the toast of an astounding fashion show at Shatta yesterda y when she was the very incarnation of micromail, the remarkable metal ‘cloth’ about which there has been so much speculation in recent months and which, she confirms, Do es Not Chafe. She chatted happily and with fetching straightforward earthiness to dig nitaries to whom, this writer is certain, no one has ever said ‘Wotcher’ before. They appeared to find the experience refreshing and entirely without chafe… Glenda stopped reading at this point because the question ‘How much trouble are we go ing to get into about this?’ was attempting to fill her whole head. And there was no trouble, was there? And there would not be. There couldn’t be. First, who would think that the beauty in the silver beard, like some goddess of the forge, was a cook’s as sistant? And, second, there was no trouble to be had, unless someone tried to make it , in which case they would have to go through Glenda and Glenda would go through them , in very short order. Because Jools was wonderful. She had to admit it. The girl bro ught radiant sunshine to the page, and suddenly it was plain: it would be a crime to hide all that grace and beauty in a cellar. So what if she had a vocabulary of fewer than seven hundred words? There were more than enough people who were stuffed tight a s an egg with words, and who would want to see any of them on the front page? Anyway, she thought, as she pulled her coat on, it would be a nine-minute wonder in an y case and besides, she added to herself, it wasn’t as if anyone would spot it was Jul iet. After all, she was wearing a beard and that was amazing, because there was no way that a woman in a beard should look attractive, but it worked. Imagine that catching on! You’d have to spend twice as long at the hairdresser’s. Someone’s going to think a bout that, she thought. There was no sound from the Stollops’ house. She wasn’t surprised. Juliet did not hav e much grasp of the idea of punctuality. Glenda popped next door to see how the widow Crowdy was and then headed, in the drizzling rain, back to her safe haven of the Nig ht Kitchen. Halfway there an all but forgotten pressure in her bodice reminded her of her duty and she dared go into the Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork. Trembling with fear and defiance, she walked up to a clerk at his desk, slapped fifty wa rm dollars in front of him and said, ‘I want to start a bank account, all right?’ She le ft five minutes later with a shiny account book and the delightful recollection that a p osh-looking man at a posh-looking desk in a posh-looking building had called her madam, and enjoyed the sensation until it ran into the reality that madam had better roll up he r sleeves and get to work. There was a lot to do. She made pies at least a day ahead so that they could mature, and Mister Nutt’s appetite last night had put quite a large dent in her pantry. But at leas t there wouldn’t be much demand for pies tomorrow night. Even the wizards didn’t call fo r a pie after a banquet. Ah, yes, the banquet, she thought, as the rain started to soak into her coat. The banq uet. She would have to see about the banquet. Sometimes if you wanted to go to the bal l you had to be your own fairy godmother. There were several obstacles requiring the touch of a magic wand: Mrs Whitlow did indee d operate a certain kind of apartheid between the Night and Day Kitchens, as if one fli ght of stairs actually changed who you were. The next difficulty was that Glenda did no t have, according to the traditions of the university, the right kind of figure to serv e at table, at least when there were visitors, and, lastly, Glenda did not have the tem perament for serving at table. It wasn’t that she didn’t know how to smile; she was qui te capable of smiling, if you gave her enough warning, but she positively hated having to smile at people who actually merited, instead, a flick around the earhole with a nap kin. She hated taking away plates of unfinished food. She always had to suppress a tend ency to say things like ‘Why did you put it on your plate if you didn’t intend to finis h it?’ and ‘Look, you’ve left more than half of it and it cost a dollar a pound,’ and ‘ Of course it’s cold, but that’s because you’ve been playing footsie with the young lady opposite and haven’t been concentrating on your dinner,’ and when all else failed ‘The re’s little children in Klatch you know…’–it was a phrase of her mother’s, but she’d ob viously missed some significant part of it. She hated waste, she thought to herself as she walked along the stone corridor toward s the Night Kitchen. There never needed to be any if you knew your way around a kitch en and if your diners had the decency to take your food seriously. She was rambling t o herself. She knew that. Occasionally she would pull the front page of the Times out of her bag and take a look at it again. It had all really happened and there was the proof. But, it was a funny thing: every day something happened that was important en ough to be on the front page of the newspaper. She’d never bought it and seen a littl e sign that said ‘Not much happened yesterday, sorry about that’. And tomorrow, wonde rful though that picture was, it would be wrapping up fish and chips and everyone wou ld have forgotten about it. That would be a load off her mind. There was a polite cough. She recognized it as belonging to Nutt, who had the politest cough there could possibly be. ‘Yes, Mister Nutt?’ ‘Mister Trev has sent me with this letter for Miss Juliet, Miss Glenda,’ said Nutt, who had apparently been waiting by the steps. He held it out as if it were some double-edg ed sword. ‘She’s not come in yet, I’m afraid,’ said Glenda as Nutt followed her up the steps, ‘bu t I’ll put it on the shelf over here where she’ll be bound to see it.’ She looked at Nu tt and saw his eyes firmly fixed on the pie racks. ‘Oh, and I do seem to have made one apple pie more than called for. I wonder if you could assist me by removing it from the premises?’ He gave her a grateful smile, took the pie and hurried away. Alone again, Glenda looked at the envelope. It was the cheapest sort, the kind that lo oked as if it had been made from recycled lavatory paper. And somehow, it seemed to ha ve got a bit bigger. Inexplicably, she found herself recalling that the gum on those envelopes was so bad th at when it came to sealing them it was probably better to just have a very bad cold. An yone could simply open it up, see what it said, dig out a bit of earwax and no one woul d be any the wiser. But that would have been a very bad thing to do. Glenda thought that same thought fifteen times before Juliet walked into the Night Kitc hen, hung up her coat on the hook and put on her apron. ‘There was a man on the bus rea din’ the paper and it had a picture of me on the front,’ she said excitedly. Glenda nodded and handed over her own paper. ‘Well, I suppose it’s me,’ said Juliet, with her head on one side. ‘What shall we do now ?’ ‘Open the damn letter!’ shouted Glenda. ‘What?’ said Juliet. ‘Er, oh, Trev sent you a letter,’ said Glenda. She snatched it from the shelf and held it out. ‘Why don’t you read it right now?’ ‘He’s probably just mucking about.’ ‘No! Why don’t you just read it right now? I haven’t tried to open it!’ Juliet took the envelope. It opened more or less to a touch. Glenda’s evil side thought, hardly any gum at all! I could have just flicked it open! ‘I can’t read with you standin’ so close,’ said Juliet. After some time moving her lips she went on, ‘I don’t get it. It’s all kinda long words. Lovely curly writing, though. There’s a bit here saying that I look like a summer’s day. What’s that all about, then ?’ She pressed it into Glenda’s hand. ‘Can you read it for me, Glendy? You know I’m not good at complicated words.’ ‘Well, I’m a bit busy,’ said Glenda, ‘but since you ask.’ ‘First time I’ve ever had a letter that’s not all in capitals,’ said Juliet. Glenda sat down and started to read. A lifetime of what even she would call bad roman tic novels suddenly bore fruit. It read as though someone had turned on the poetry ta p and then absent-mindedly gone on holiday. But they were wonderful words, neverthele ss. There was the word swain, for example, which was a definite marker, and quite a l ot about flowers and quite a lot of what looked like pleading, wrapped up in fancy le tters, and after a while she took out her handkerchief and fanned the air around her face. ‘So, what’s it all about?’ said Juliet. Glenda sighed. How to begin? How did you talk to Juliet about similes and metaphors a nd poetic licence all wrapped up in wonderful curly writing? She did her best. ‘Weeell, basically he’s saying that he really fancies you, thinks you’r e really fit, how about a date, no hanky panky, he promises. And there’s three little x’s underneath.’ Juliet started to cry. ‘That’s loverlee. Fancy ’im sitting down and writing all those wo rds just for me. Real poetry just for me. I’m gonna sleep with it under my pillow.’ ‘Yes, I suspect that he had something like that in mind,’ said Glenda and thought, Trev Likely a poet? Not likely at all. There was a dreadful load on Pepe’s bladder, and he was stuck between a rock and a har d place, if that wasn’t too offensive a description of lying between Madame and a wall . She was still asleep. She snored magnificently, using the traditional multi-part sno re, known to those who are fortunate enough to have to listen to it every night as the ‘errgh, errgh, errghh, blorrrt!’ symphony. And she was lying on his leg. And the room was pitch dark. He managed to retrieve his leg, half of which had gone to sleep, and set out on the well-known search for porcelain, which began by him putting his foot do wn on an empty champagne bottle, which skittered away and left him flat on his back. I n the gloom he groped for it, found it, tested it for true emptiness, because you neve r knew your luck, and, as it were, filled it again, putting it down on what was probab ly a table, but in his mind and the darkness could just as well have been an armadillo. There was another sound syncopating with Madame’s virtuoso performance. It must have b een that which woke him. By groping, he located his shorts and after only three tries managed to get them the right way up and the right way round. They were a little chill y. That was the problem with micromail; it was, after all, metal. On the other hand, i t did not chafe and you never had to wash it. Five minutes on the fire and it was as h ygienic as anything. Besides, Pepe’s version of the shorts held a surprise all of thei r own. Thus feeling that he could face the world, or at least the part of it that would need to see only the top of him, he shuffled and stubbed his way to the shop’s door, checking e very bottle along the way for evidence of liquid content. Remarkably, a bottle of port h ad survived with fifty per cent remaining capacity. Any port in a storm, he thought, and drank his breakfast. The shop’s door was rattling. It had a small sliding aperture by which the staff could determine whether they wanted to let a prospective customer in, because when you are a posh shop like Shatta, you don’t sell things to just anyone. Pairs of eyeballs zigzagge d back and forth across his vision as people clustered on the other side of the door an d fought for attention. Somebody said, ‘We’re here to see Jewels.’ ‘She’s resting,’ said Pepe. That was always a good line and could mean anything. ‘Have you seen the picture in the Times?’ said a voice. Then, ‘Look,’ as a vision of Juli et was held up in front of the door. Blimey, he said to himself. ‘She had a very tiring day,’ he said. ‘The public wants to know all about her,’ said a sterner voice. And a rather less aggressive female voice said, ‘She seems to be rather amazing.’ ‘She is. She is,’ said Pepe, inventing desperately, ‘but a very private person and a bit a rtistic too, if you know what I mean.’ ‘Well, I’ve got a big order to place,’ said yet another voice as the owner managed to shu ffle for slot space. ‘Oh, well, we don’t have to wake her up for that. Just give me a moment and I’ll be r ight with you.’ He took another swig of the port. When he turned around, Madame, in a nightshirt that could have accommodated a platoon, at least if they were very friend ly, was bearing down on him with a glass in one hand and the champagne bottle in the other. ‘This stuff’s gone horribly flat,’ she said. ‘I’ll go and find some fresh,’ he replied, snatching it from her quickly. ‘We’ve got newspaper people and customers out there and they all want Jools. Can you remember wh ere she lives?’ ‘I’m sure she told me,’ said Madame, ‘but it all seems a long time ago. That other one , Glenda I think, works at some big place in the city, as a cook. Anyway, why do they want to see her?’ ‘There’s a wonderful picture in the Times,’ said Pepe. ‘You know when you said you th ought we’d get rich? Well, it looks like you weren’t thinking big enough.’ ‘What do you suggest, dear?’ ‘Me?’ said Pepe. ‘Take the order, because that’s good business, and tell the others that Jools will see them later.’ ‘Do you think they’ll go for that?’ ‘They’ll have to, because we don’t know where the hell she is. There’s a million dollars walking around this city on legs.’ Rhys, Low King of the Dwarfs, paid particular attention to the picture of the wonderful girl. The definition wasn’t too bad at all. The technique of translating the clacks se maphore signal into a black-and-white picture was quite well advanced these days. Even so, his people in Ankh-Morpork must have thought this particularly interesting to merit the expense of the bandwidth required. Certainly, it was exercising a lot of other dwa rfs, but in the Low King’s experience, it was possible to find someone, somewhere, who objected to anything. He looked at the grags in front of him. So simple for people like Vetinari, he thought. He just has religions to deal with. We don’t have religions. Bei ng a dwarf is a religion in itself, and no two priests ever agree, and sometimes it see ms that every other dwarf is a priest. ‘I see nothing here to disturb me,’ he said. ‘We believe the beard to be a false one,’ said one of the grags. ‘That is perfectly acceptable,’ said the King. ‘There is absolutely nothing in any prece dent that bans false beards. They are a great salvation to those who find beards hard to grow.’ ‘But she looks, well, alluring,’ said one of the other grags. They were indistinguishable under their tall, pointed leather cowls. ‘Attractive, certainly,’ said the King. ‘Gentlemen, is this going to take long?’ ‘It must be stopped. It’s not dwarfish.’ ‘Oh, but it manifestly is, is it not?’ said the King. ‘Micromail is one hundred per ce nt mail and you don’t get any more dwarfish than that. She is smiling and while I woul d agree that dwarfs do not appear to smile very much, certainly not when they come to see me, I think we could profit from her example.’ ‘It’s positively an offence against morality.’ ‘How? Where? Only in your heads, I feel.’ The tallest grag said, ‘So you intend to do nothing?’ The King paused for a moment, staring at the ceiling. ‘No, I intend to do something,’ h e said. ‘First of all, I shall see to it that my staff find out just how many orders th ere have been for micromail originating from here in Bonk today. I’m sure Shatta would not object to them seeing their records, especially since I intend to tell Madame Sharn that she can come back and establish her premises here.’ ‘You would do that?’ said a grag. ‘Yes, of course. We have nearly concluded the Koom Valley Accord, a peace with the tro lls that no one ever thought they would see. And I am fed up, gentlemen, with your whi ning, moaning and endless, endless attempts to re-fight battles that you have already lost. As far as I am concerned, this young lady is showing us a better future and now, if you are not out of my office in ten seconds, I will charge you rent.’ ‘There will be trouble over this.’ ‘Gentlemen, there is always trouble! But this time I will be making it for you.’ As the door slammed shut behind them, the King sat back in his chair. ‘Well done, sir,’ said his secretary. ‘They’ll keep on. I can’t imagine what being a dwarf would be like if we didn’t argue all the time.’ He squirmed a little in his chair. ‘You know, they’re right when they s ay it doesn’t chafe and it’s not as cold as you would imagine. Do ask our agent to exp ress my thanks to Madame Sharn for her generous gift, will you?’ Even this early in the day, the Great Hall of the University was a general thoroughfare. Most of the tables were pushed back against the walls or, if someone felt like showing off, levitated to the ceiling, and the huge black-and-white slabs of the floor, worn smo oth by the footfalls of millennia, were polished still further as today’s faculty and st udents took a short cut to various concerns, destinations and, very occasionally, when n o viable excuse presented itself, to lectures. The Great Chandelier had been swung down and off to one side for its daily replenishin g of candles, but there was, fortunately for Mustrum Ridcully’s purposes, a large expa nse of clear floor. He saw the figure he was waiting for hurrying towards him. ‘How did it go, Mister Sti bbons?’ ‘Extremely well, I have to say, sir,’ said Ponder. He opened the sack he was carrying. ‘ One of these is our original ball and one of them is the ball that Nutt and Trevor Likel y had made last night.’ ‘Ah, spot the ball,’ said Ridcully. He picked them both up in his enormous hands and dropped them on the flagstones. Gloing! Gloing! ‘Perfectly identical,’ he said. ‘Trevor Likely said they had it made by a dwarf for twenty dollars,’ said Ponder. ‘Did he really?’ ‘Yes, sir, and he gave me the change and the receipt.’ ‘You seem puzzled, Mister Stibbons?’ ‘Well, yes, sir. I feel I have been rather misjudging him.’ ‘Possibly even small leopards can change their shorts,’ said Ridcully, slamming him on the back convivially. ‘Call it score one for human nature. Now, which of these balls is the one that’s going back to the Cabinet?’ ‘Amazingly, sir, they did think to mark the new ball and there’s a tiny little dot of wh ite paint on this one here…I mean this one here…I think it was here…Ah! Here it is. It’s ours. I’ll send one of the students to put the other one back shortly. We still have an hour and a half.’ ‘No, I’d rather you did it yourself, Mister Stibbons, I’m sure it would only take a few m inutes. Do hurry back, I’d like to try a little experiment.’ When Ponder returned, he found Ridcully loitering unobtrusively by one of the big doo rs. ‘You have your notebook ready, Mister Stibbons?’ he said quietly. ‘And a fresh pencil, Archchancellor.’ ‘Very well, then. The experiment begins.’ Ridcully gently rolled the new football out on to the floor, straightened up and glanced at his stopwatch. ‘Ah, the ball has been kicked aside by the Professor of Illiberal Studies, quite poss ibly by accident…Now one of the bledlows, Mister Hipney I think his name is, has kick ed it somewhat uncertainly. One of the students, Pondlife, I believe, has prodded it back…We have momentum, Mister Stibbons. Undirected, it is true, but promising. Ah, bu t we can’t have this… ‘No touching the ball with your hands, gentlemen!’ shouted the Archchancellor, deftly tr apping the travelling ball with his boot. ‘That’s a rule! We really could do with that w histle, Stibbons.’ He bounced the ball on the stone floor. Gloing! ‘Don’t just mess about like kids kicking a tin! Play football! I am the Archchancellor o f this university, by Io, and I will rusticate, or otherwise expel, any man who skives o ff without a note from his mother, hah!’ Gloing! ‘You will arrange yourself into two teams, set up goals and strive to win! No man will leave the field of play unless injured! The hands are not to be used, is that clear? An y questions?’ A hand went up. Ridcully sought the attached face. ‘Ah, Rincewind,’ he said, and, because he was not a determinedly unpleasant man, amen ded this to, ‘Professor Rincewind, of course.’ ‘I would like permission to fetch a note from my mother, sir.’ Ridcully sighed. ‘Rincewind, you once informed me, to my everlasting puzzlement, th at you never knew your mother because she ran away before you were born. Distinctly remember writing it down in my diary. Would you like another try?’ ‘Permission to go and find my mother?’ Ridcully hesitated. The Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography had no students and n o real duties other than to stay out of trouble. Although Ridcully would never admit i t, it was against all reason an emeritus position. Rincewind was a coward and an unwit ting clown, but he had several times saved the world in slightly puzzling circumstance s. He was a luck sink, the Archchancellor had decided, doomed to being a lightning rod for the fates so that everyone else didn’t have to. Such a person was worth all his m eals and laundry (including an above-average level of soiled pants) and a bucket of co al every day even if he was, in Ridcully’s opinion, a bit of a whiner. However, he was fast, and therefore useful. ‘Look,’ said Rincewind, ‘a mysterious urn turns up and suddenly it’s all about footbal l. That bodes. It means something bad is going to happen.’ ‘Come now, it could be something wonderful,’ Ridcully protested. Rincewind appeared to give this due consideration. ‘Could be wonderful, will be dreadfu l. Sorry, that’s how it goes.’ ‘This is Unseen University, Rincewind. What is there to fear?’ Ridcully said. ‘Apart fr om me, of course. Good heavens, this is a sport.’ He raised his voice. ‘Arrange yoursel ves into two teams and play football!’ He stepped back and joined Ponder. The dragooned footballers, having been given clear instructions in a loud voice, went into a huddle to find out by hubbub what they shoul d actually do instead. ‘I can’t believe this,’ said Ridcully. ‘Every boy knows what to do when they’ve found something to kick, don’t they?’ He cupped his hands. ‘Come on, two captains step up. I don’t care who it is.’ This took rather more time than might have been expected since those who had not surreptitiously left the Hall could see that the post of football c aptain was one that offered a wonderful chance for being the target of the Archchancel lor’s mercurial wrath. Eventually two sacrifices were pushed forward and found it too difficult to push their way back into the ranks again. ‘Now, I say again, pick the teams alternately.’ He took off his hat and flung it to the ground. ‘Now we all understand this! It’s a boy thing! It’s like little girls and the colour pink! You know how to do this! Pick the teams alternately so one of you ends up with the weird kid and the other with the fat kid. Some of the fastest mathematics of a ll time has been achieved by team captains trying not to end up with the weird kid—Stay where you are, Rincewind!’ Ponder gave an involuntary shudder as his schooldays came running back, jeering at hi m. The fat kid in his class had been the unfortunately named ‘Piggy’ Love, whose fath er owned a sweet shop, which gave the son some weight in the community, not to mentio n clout. That had left only the weird kid as the natural target for the other boys, w hich meant a chronic hell for Ponder until that wonderful day when sparks came out of Ponder’s fingers and Martin Sogger’s pants caught fire. He could smell them now. Bes t days of your life be buggered; the Archchancellor could be a bit crass and difficul t at times, but at least he wasn’t allowed to give you a wedgie— ‘Are you listening to me, Stibbons?’ Ponder blinked. ‘Er, sorry, sir, I was…calculating.’ ‘I said, who’s the tall feller with the tan and the dinky beard?’ ‘Oh, that’s Professor Bengo Macarona, Archchancellor. From Genua, remember? He’s swapped with Professor Maidenhair for a year.’ ‘Oh, right. Poor old Maidenhair. Perhaps he won’t get laughed at so much in a foreign language. And Mister Macarona’s here to better himself, yes? Put a bit of polish on hi s career, no doubt.’ ‘Hardly, sir. He’s got doctorates from Unki, QIS and Chubb, thirteen in all, and a visit ing professorship at Bugarup, and he has been cited in two hundred and thirty-six papers and, er, one divorce petition.’ ‘What?’ ‘The rule about celibacy isn’t taken seriously over there, sir. Very hot-blooded peop le, I understand, of course. His family owns a huge ranch and the biggest coffee plan tation outside Klatch, and I think his grandmother owns the Macarona Shipping Company .’ ‘So why the hell did he come here?’ ‘He wants to work with the best, sir,’ said Ponder. ‘I think he’s serious.’ ‘Really? Oh, well, he seems like a sensible chap, then. Er, the divorce thing?’ ‘Don’t know much, sir, it got hushed up, I believe.’ ‘Angry husband?’ ‘Angry wife, as I heard it,’ said Ponder. ‘Oh, he was married, was he?’ ‘Not to my knowledge, Archchancellor.’ ‘I don’t think I quite understand,’ said Ridcully. Ponder, who was not at all at home in this area, said very slowly, ‘She was the wife of another man…I, er, believe, sir.’ ‘But I—’ To Ponder’s relief, light dawned on Ridcully’s huge face. ‘Oh, you mean he was like Professor Hayden. We used to have a name for him…’ Ponder braced himself. ‘Snakes. Very keen on them, you know. Could talk for hours about snakes with a side o rder of lizards. Very keen.’ ‘I’m glad you feel like that, Archchancellor, because I know that a number of the stud ents—’ ‘And then there was old Postule, who was in the rowing team. Coxed us through two won derful years.’ Ponder’s expression did not change, but for a few moments his face wen t pink and shiny. ‘A lot of that sort of thing about, apparently,’ said Ridcully. ‘Pe ople make such a fuss. Anyway, in my opinion there’s not enough love in the world. Be sides, if you didn’t like the company of men you wouldn’t come here in the first plac e. I say! Well done, that man!’ This was because, in the absence of Ridcully’s attent ion, the footballers had at last started their own kick-about and some quite fancy fo otwork was emerging. ‘Yes, what?’ A bledlow had appeared alongside Ridcully. ‘Gentleman to see the Archchancellor, sir. He’s a wizard, sir. The, er, the Dean, as was , only he says he’s an Archchancellor too.’ Ridcully hesitated, but you’d have had to be an experienced Ridcully watcher, like Po nder, to notice the moment. When the Archchancellor spoke, it was calmly and carefull y, every word hammered on the anvil of self-control. ‘What a pleasant surprise, Mister Nobbs. Do show the Dean in. Oh, and please do not gla nce at Mister Stibbons for confirmation, thank you. I am still the Archchancellor in th ese parts. The only one, in fact. Is there a problem, Mister Stibbons?’ ‘Well, sir, it is a bit public in here—’ Ponder stopped, because suddenly he had nobody ’s attention. He hadn’t seen the ball bounce towards Bledlow Nobbs (no relation). Nor t he vicious kick the latter gave it, just as he would an impertinent intrusion by a stre et urchin’s tin can. Ponder did see the ball curving majestically through the air, head ing for the other end of the Hall where, behind the organ, rose the stained-glass windo w dedicated to Archchancellor Abasti, which on a daily basis showed one of several thou sand scenes of a mystical or spiritual nature. The intuition with which Ponder had succ essfully calculated the distance and trajectory of the ball told him that the current g lowing picture of ‘Bishop Horn realizing that the alligator quiche was an unwise choice ’ had appeared just in time to be extremely unlucky. And then, like some new planet swimming into the ken of a watcher of the skies, as they are prone to do, a rusty red shape arose, unfolding as it came, snatched the ball out of the air and landed on the organ keyboard to the sound of gloing! in B flat. ‘Well done, that ape!’ the Archchancellor boomed. ‘A beautiful save, but, regrettably, a gainst the rules!’ To Ponder’s surprise there was a murmur of dissent from all the players. ‘I believe th at decision may benefit from some consideration,’ said a small voice behind them. ‘Who said that?’ said Ridcully, spinning round and looking into the suddenly terrified li ttle eyes of Nutt. ‘Nutt, sir. The candle dribbler. We met yesterday. I helped you with the ball…?’ ‘And you are telling me I’m wrong. Are you?’ ‘I would rather you thought of me as suggesting a way in which you could be even more right.’ Ridcully opened his mouth and then shut it again. I know what he is, he thought. Does he? Or did they spare him that? ‘Very well, Mister Nutt. Is there a point you wish to make?’ ‘Yes, sir. What is the purpose of this game?’ ‘To win, of course!’ ‘Indeed. Regrettably, it is not being played that way.’ ‘It isn’t?’ ‘No, sir. The players all want to kick the ball.’ ‘And so they should, surely?’ said Ridcully. ‘Only if you believe the purpose of the game is healthy exercise, sir. Do you play chess ?’ ‘Well, I have done.’ ‘And would you have thought it proper for all the pawns to swarm up the board in the hope of checkmating the king?’ For a moment, Ridcully had a mental vision of Lord Vetinari holding aloft a solitar y pawn and saying what it might become… ‘Oh, come now, that is quite different!’ he burst out. ‘Yes, but the skill lies in marshalling resources in the right way.’ Ridcully saw a face appear behind Nutt, like a rising moon of wrath. ‘You don’t talk to the gentlemen, Nutt, it is not your place to take up their time with y our chatter—’ Ridcully writhed in sympathy with Nutt, all the more so because Smeems, as is the habi t of such people, kept looking at the Archchancellor as if seeking and, worse, expecti ng approval of this petty tyranny. But authority must back up authority, in public at least, otherwise there is no authority, and therefore the senior authority is forced to back up the junior authority, even if he, t he senior authority, believes that the junior authority is a tiresome little tit. ‘Thank you for your concern, Mister Smeems,’ he said, ‘but in fact I asked Mister Nutt his opinion of our little kick-about, since it is the game of the people and he is rath er more people than I am. I will not keep him long from his duties, Mister Smeems, nor you from yours, which I know are both vital and pressing.’ Small, insecure authority can spot, if it is sensible, when a larger authority is giving it a chance to save face. ‘Right you are, sir!’ said Smeems after only a second’s hesitation, and he scurried off to safety. The thing called Nutt appeared to be trembling. He thinks he’s done something wrong, Ridcully thought, and I shouldn’t think of him as a thing. Some wizard’s sense made him look round into the face of–what was the la d’s name?–Trevor Likely. ‘Do you have anything else to add, Mister Likely? Only I’m a bit busy at the moment.’ ‘I gave Mister Stibbons the change and the receipt,’ said Trevor. ‘What is it you do around here, young man?’ ‘I run the candle vats, guv.’ ‘Oh, do you? We’re getting some very good dribbling from you fellows these days.’ Trev appeared to let this pass. ‘Mister Nutt is not in any trouble, is he, guv?’ ‘Not to my knowledge.’ But what do I know? Ridcully asked himself. Mr Nutt, by definition, is trouble. But th e Librarian says he potters about repairing things and is generally an amiable milksop , and he talks as though he’s giving a lecture.* This little man, who actually, when y ou look at him, is not as little as he appears because he weighs himself down with hum ility…this little man was born with a name so fearsome some peasants chained him to an anvil because they were too scared to kill him. Perhaps Vetinari and his friends are right in their smug way and a leopard can change his shorts. I hope so, because if the y aren’t, a leopard will be a picnic. And any minute now, the Dean is coming, damn his treacherous hide. ‘Only he’s my friend, guv.’ ‘Well, that’s good. Everyone should have a friend.’ ‘I’m not gonna let anyone touch ’im, guv.’ ‘A brave ambition, young man, if I may say so. Nevertheless, Mister Nutt, why did you object when I pointed out that the Librarian, wonderful though his rising save was, wa s in infringement of the rules?’ Nutt didn’t look up, but in a small voice said, ‘It was elegant. It was beautiful. The ga me should be beautiful, like a well-executed war.’ ‘Oh, I don’t think many people would say that war is very jolly,’ said Ridcully. ‘Beauty can be considered to be neutral, sir. It is not the same as nice or good.’ ‘I thought it was the same as truth, though,’ said Ponder, trying to keep up. ‘Which is often horrible, sir, but Mister Librarian’s leap was both beautiful, sir, and good, sir, and therefore must be true and therefore the rule which should prevent him fr om doing it again would be proved to be neither beautiful nor true and would, indeed, be a false law.’ ‘That’s right, guv,’ said Trev. ‘People will shout for that stuff.’ ‘Do you mean that they’d cheer for a goal not achieved?’ said Ponder. ‘Of course they will! And groan! It’s something happening,’ Ridcully snorted. ‘You saw the game the other day! If you were lucky, you got a glimpse of a lot of large, grubb y men fighting over a ball like a lump of wood. People want to see goals scored!’ ‘And saved, remember!’ Trev pointed out. ‘Exactly, young man,’ agreed Ridcully. ‘It must be a game of speed. This is the year of the Pensive Hare, after all. People get bored so easily. No wonder there are fights. W e need, do we not, to make a sport that is more exciting than beating other people over the head with big weapons.’ ‘That one’s always been very popular,’ said Ponder doubtfully. ‘Well, we are wizards, after all. And now I must go and greet the bloody, the so-called Archchancellor of Brazeneck so-called College in the correct damn spirit of fraternal goodwill!’ ‘So called,’ murmured Ponder, not quite softly enough. ‘What say?’ the Archchancellor bellowed. ‘Just wondering what you want me to do, Archchancellor?’ ‘Do? Keep ’em playing! See who’s good at it! Work out what the most beautiful rules ar e,’ Ridcully called out, heading out of the Hall at speed. ‘By myself?’ said Ponder, horrified. ‘I’ve got a huge workload!’ ‘Delegate!’ ‘You know I’m hopeless at delegating, sir!’ ‘Then delegate the job of delegating to someone who isn’t! Now, I must be off before he steals the silverware!’ It was very rare for Glenda to take time off. Being the head of the Night Kitchen was a mental state, not a physical one. The only meal she ever ate at home was breakfast, and that was always in a hurry. But now she’d stolen some time to sell the dream. May Hedges was looking after the kitchen and she was reliable and got on with everyone and so there were no worries there. The sun had come out and now she knocked on the rear door of Mr Stronginthearm’s wo rkshop. The dwarf opened the door with rouge all over his fingers. ‘Oh, hello, Glen da. How’s it going?’ She thumped a wad of orders on the table proudly and opened the suitcase. It was empty . ‘And I need a lot more samples,’ she said. ‘Oh, that’s wonderful,’ said the dwarf. ‘When did you get these?’ ‘This morning.’ It had been easy. Door after door seemed to have opened for her and every time a litt le voice in her head said, ‘Are you doing the right thing?’ a slightly deeper voice, which sounded remarkably like Madame Sharn, said, ‘He wants to make it. You want to s ell it. They want to buy it. The dream goes round and round and so does the money.’ ‘The lipstick went down very well,’ she said. ‘Those troll girls put it on with a trowel a nd I’m not kidding. So what you ought to do, sir, is sell a trowel. A pretty one, in a nic e box with sprinkles on it.’ He gave her an admiring look. ‘This isn’t like you, Glenda.’ ‘Not sure about that,’ said Glenda, as more samples were dropped into the battered cas e. ‘Have you thought about getting into shoes?’ ‘Do you think it would be worth a try? They don’t normally wear shoes.’ ‘They didn’t wear lipstick until they moved here,’ said Glenda. ‘It could be the coming thing.’ ‘But they’ve got feet like granite. They don’t need shoes.’ ‘But they’ll want them,’ said Glenda. ‘You could be in on the ground floor, as it were.’ Stronginthearm looked puzzled and Glenda remembered that even city dwarfs were used to the topsy-turvy language of home. ‘Oh, sorry, I meant to say the top floor.’ ‘And then there’s dresses,’ said Glenda. ‘I’ve been looking around and no one makes pro per dresses for trolls. They’re just outsized human dresses. And they’re cut to make th e troll look smaller, but they’d be better if they were cut to make them look bigger. M ore like a troll and less like a fat human. You know, you want the clothing to shout, “ I’m a great big troll lady and proud of it”.’ ‘Have you been hit on the head with something?’ said Stronginthearm. ‘Because, if so, I ’d like it to drop on me.’ ‘Well, it’s spreading the dream, isn’t it?’ said Glenda, carefully arranging the samples i n her suitcase. ‘It’s a bit more important than I thought.’ She made fourteen more successful calls before calling it a day, posted the orders thro ugh Stronginthearm’s letterbox and, with a light case and uncharacteristically light he art, went back to work. Ridcully turned the corner and there, right in front of him, was…His mind spun as it s ought for the correct mode of address: ‘Archchancellor’ was out of the question, ‘Dean ’ too obvious an insult, ‘Two Chairs’ ditto with knobs on, and ‘ungrateful, backstabbi ng, slimy bastard’ took too long to say. What the hell was the bastard’s name? Great h eavens, they’d been friends since their first day at UU…‘Henry!’ he exploded. ‘What a pleasant surprise. What brings you here to our miserable and sadly out-of-date little university?’ ‘Oh, come now, Mustrum. When I left, the lads were pushing back the boundaries of know ledge. It’s been a bit quiet since, I gather. By the way, this is Professor Turnipseed .’ There appeared from behind the self-styled Archchancellor of Brazeneck, like a moonle t moving out of the shadow of a gas giant, a sheepish young man who instantly reminde d Ridcully of Ponder Stibbons, although for the life of him he couldn’t make out why. Perhaps it was the look of someone permanently doing sums in his head, and not just proper sums either, but the sneaky sort with letters in them. ‘Oh, well, you know how it is with boundaries,’ Ridcully mumbled. ‘You look at what’s on the other side and you realize why there was a boundary in the first place. Good afternoon, Turnipseed. Your face is familiar.’ ‘I used to work here, sir,’ said Turnipseed sheepishly. ‘Oh yes, I recall. In the High Energy Magic Department, yes?’ ‘A coming man, our Adrian,’ said the former Dean, proprietorially. ‘We have our own High Energy Magic Building now, you know. We call it the Higher Energy Magic Buildin g, but I stress that this is only to avoid confusion. No slight on good old UU is in tended. Adopt, adapt, improve, that’s my motto.’ Well, if you adapted it then it’s now grab, copy and look innocent, Ridcully thought, but carefully. Senior wizards never rowed in public. The damage was apt to be appallin g. No, politeness ruled, but with sharpened edges. ‘I doubt there will be any confusion, Henry. We are the senior college, after all. And o f course I am the only Archchancellor in these parts.’ ‘By custom and practice, Mustrum, and times are changing.’ ‘Or being changed, at least. But I wear the Archchancellor’s Hat, Henry, as worn by my predecessors down the centuries. The Hat, Henry, of supreme authority in the affairs of the Wise, the Cunning and the Crafty. The hat, in fact, on my head.’ ‘It isn’t, you know,’ said Henry cheerfully. ‘You are wearing the everyday hat that you made yourself.’ ‘It would be on my head if I wanted it to be!’ Henry’s smile was glassy. ‘Of course, Mustrum, but the authority of the Hat has often been challenged.’ ‘Almost correct, old chap. In fact, it is the ownership of the Hat that has, in the past , been disputed, but the Hat itself, never. Now, I note that you yourself are wearing a particularly spiffy hat of a magnificence that goes beyond the sublime, but it is just a hat, old boy, just a hat. No offence meant, of course, and I am sure that in another mi llennium it will have become weighted with dignity and wisdom. I can see that you have l eft plenty of room.’ Turnipseed decided to make a run for the lavatories right now, and with a muted apol ogy pushed past Ridcully and sped away. Oddly enough, the sudden lack of an audience lowered the tension rather than increased it. Henry pulled a slim packet out of his pocket. ‘Cigarette? I know that you roll your own , but Verdant and Scour make these specially for me and they are rather fine.’ Ridcully took one, because a wizard, however haughty, who would not accept a free smok e or a drink would be in his coffin, but he took care not to notice the words ‘Archcha ncellor’s Choice’ in garish type on the packet. As he handed the packet back, something small and colourful dropped out on to the flo or. Henry, with an agility unexpected in a wizard so far up the main sequence as desc ribed in the well-known Owlspring/Tips Diagram,* reached down quickly and snatched it up, muttering something about ‘not letting it get dirty’. ‘You could eat your dinner off these floors,’ said Ridcully sharply, and probably would , he added to himself. ‘Only the collectors get so annoyed if there is a speck of dust on them and I give min e to the butler’s little boy,’ Henry went on blithely. He turned the pasteboard over a nd frowned. ‘Notable Wizards of our Time, No. 9 of 50: Dr Able Baker, BC (Hons), Fdl, Kp, PdF (escrow), Director of Blit Studies, Brazeneck. I’m sure he’s already got this one.’ He dropped it into a waistcoat pocket. ‘Never mind, good for swapsies.’ Ridcully could assess things quite fast, especially when fuelled by banked fires of rage. ‘The Wizla tobacco, snuff and rolling paper company,’ he said, ‘of Pseudopolis. Hmm, clever idea. Who’s in this from UU?’ ‘Ah. Well, I have to admit that the Assembly and people of Pseudopolis are rather…pat riotic in their outlook—’ ‘I think the word is “parochial”, don’t you?’ ‘Harsh words, considering that Ankh-Morpork’s the smuggest, most self-satisfied city in the world.’ This was self-evidently true, so Ridcully decided he hadn’t heard it. ‘You on one of these cards, then?’ he grunted. ‘They insisted, I’m afraid,’ said Henry. ‘I was born there, you see. Local boy and all tha t.’ ‘And no one from UU,’ said Ridcully flatly. ‘Technically no, but Professor Turnipseed is in there as the inventor of Pex.’ As Henry s aid it, guilt and defiance fought for space in the sentence. ‘Pex?’ said Ridcully slowly. ‘You mean like Hex?’ ‘Oh, no, not at all like Hex. Certainly not. The principle is quite different.’ Henry clear ed his throat. ‘It’s run by chickens. They trigger the morphic resonator, or whatever it’s called. Your Hex, as I recall, utilizes ants, which are far less efficient.’ ‘How so?’ ‘We get eggs we can eat.’ ‘That doesn’t sound all that different, you know.’ ‘Oh, come now. They are hundreds of times bigger! And Pex is in a purpose-built room , not strung haphazardly all over the place. Professor Turnipseed knows what he is d oing, and even you, Mustrum, must acknowledge that the river of progress is fed by a thousand springs!’ ‘And they didn’t all rise in bloody Brazeneck!’ said Ridcully. They glared at one another. Professor Turnipseed poked his head around the corner and pulled it back very quickly. ‘If we were the men our fathers were, we’d be throwing fireballs by now,’ said Henry. ‘The point is taken,’ said Ridcully. ‘Although, I must point out, our fathers were not wi zards.’ ‘That’s right, of course,’ said the former Dean. ‘Your father was a butcher, as I recall.’ ‘That’s right. And your father owned a lot of cabbage fields,’ said Ridcully. There was a moment’s silence and then the former Dean said, ‘Remember the day we b oth turned up at UU?’ ‘We fought like tigers as I recall,’ said Ridcully. ‘Good times, when you come to remember them,’ said the Dean. ‘Of course, we’ve all passed a lot of water over the bridge since then,’ said Ridcully. There was another pause and he added, ‘Fancy a drink?’ ‘I don’t mind if I do,’ said the former Dean. ‘So you are trying to play football?’ said Henry as they progressed majestically towards the Archchancellor’s office. ‘I did see something about it in the paper, but I thought it was a joke.’ ‘Why, pray?’ said Ridcully as they began to walk across the Great Hall. ‘We have a fin e sporting tradition, as well you know!’ ‘Ah yes, tradition is the scourge of endeavour. Be sensible, Mustrum. The leopard may c hange his shorts, but I think he’d have a job getting into the ones he wore forty years ago. Oh, I see that you still have Mister Stibbons here?’ ‘Er…’ began Ponder, looking from one to the other. Ponder Stibbons had once got one hundred per cent in a prescience exam by getting the re the previous day. He could see a little storm cloud when it was beginning to grow. ‘How’s the football going, lad?’ ‘Oh, it seems to be going very well, Archchancellor. Good to see you again, Dean.’ ‘Archchancellor,’ purred the former Dean. ‘I wonder how good you would be against m y university.’ ‘Well, we have a pretty nifty team built here,’ said Ridcully, ‘and, while it is our int ention to play our first game against a local side, I would take great pleasure in showi ng Brazeneck a thing or two on the field.’ By now they were almost in the middle of the Great Hall and their presence, not unexpectedly, had stopped play. ‘Archchancellor, I really feel that it might be a good idea to—’ Ponder began, but his voice was drowned out by the roar of approval that rang out from all sides around the G reat Hall. ‘And the prize would be?’ said Henry, smiling at the crowd. ‘What?’ spluttered the Archchancellor. ‘What prize?’ ‘We picked up a few rowing trophies when we were lads, didn’t we?’ ‘I believe the Patrician has got something planned for the league, yes.’ ‘I think that refreshments will be laid out in the Blue refectory shortly,’ said Ponder wi th a kind of desperate, sweaty cheerfulness. ‘There will, of course, be cake, but also, I believe, an interesting assortment of curries.’ On many occasions this might have worked, but the two senior wizards had locked glar es and would not so much as blink, even for a slice of Ploughman’s Pie. ‘But we men of craft are not interested in such paltry baubles as cups and medals, are w e?’ said Henry. ‘For us it’s huge great big baubles or nothing, is that not right, Mustr um?’ ‘You are after the Hat,’ said Ridcully flatly. The air between them was humming. ‘Yes, of course.’ There followed the menacing silence of a clash of wills, but Ponder Stibbons decided th at as he was, technically, twelve important people at the university, he formed, all by himself, a committee, and since he was therefore, de facto, very wise, he should inter vene. ‘And your stake, Dea—Sir, would be…?’ Ridcully turned his head slightly and growled, ‘He doesn’t have to have one. I have ra ther walked into this…’ There was a stirring from the more senior wizards, and Ponder heard a whispered phra se. ‘Dead man’s pointy shoes?’ ‘No, I forbid it!’ said Ponder. ‘You forbid it?’ said Henry. ‘You are but a chick, young Stibbons.’ ‘The accumulated votes of all the posts I hold on the University Council mean that I do, technically, control it,’ said Ponder, trying to stick out a skinny chest that was neve r built for sticking, but still buoyed up and awash with righteous rage and a certain am ount of terror about what might happen when it ran out of steam. The contenders relaxed a little more in the presence of this turning worm. ‘Didn’t anyone notice that you were getting all this power?’ said Ridcully. ‘Yes, sir, me. Only I thought it was responsibility and hard work. None of you ever bot her with details, you see. Technically, I have to report to other people, but usually t he other people are me. You have no idea, sirs. I’m even the Camerlengo, which means th at if you drop dead, Archchancellor, from any cause other than legitimate succession un der the Dead Man’s Pointy Shoes tradition, I run this place until a successor is electe d which, given the nature of wizardry, will mean a job for life, in which case the Libr arian, as an identifiable and competent member of the senior staff, will try to dischar ge his duties, and if he fails, the official procedure is for wizards everywhere to fig ht among themselves for the Hat, causing fire, destruction, doves, rabbits and billiard balls to appear from every orifice and much loss of life.’ After a short pause he cont inued. ‘Again. Which is why some of us get a little worried when we see powerful wizard s squabbling like this. To conclude, gentlemen, I have spoken at some length in order t o give you time to consider your intentions. Somebody has to.’ Ridcully cleared his throat. ‘Thank you for your input, Stibbons. We shall discuss this m atter further. Definitely something that needed to be said. These aren’t the old days, af ter all.’ ‘Your point is taken,’ said Henry, ‘except that, technically, these are going to be some body else’s old days.’ Ponder’s chest was still going up and down. ‘A very good point,’ said Ridcully. ‘I believe I heard mention of a curry?’ said Henry, with equal care. It was like listeni ng to two ancient dragons talking to each other with the help of an even older book of e tiquette written by nuns. ‘It’s a long time until lunch.* I tell you what, why don’t you accept the hospitality of my university? I believe we have left your room exactly as it was, although I under stand some quite amazing things have crawled out under the door. And perhaps you might like to stay on for tomorrow’s banquet?’ ‘Oh? Are you having a banquet?’ said Henry. ‘Indeed so, and I would be delighted if you would accept, old boy. We’ll be entertaini ng some of the solid citizenry. Salt-of-the-earth fellows, you understand. Wonderful p eople if you don’t watch them eat, but quite good conversationalists if you give them enough beer.’ ‘Funnily enough, I find that works with wizards too. Well, I must accept, of course. I h aven’t been to a banquet in ages.’ ‘You haven’t?’ said Ridcully. ‘I thought you would have a banquet every night.’ ‘We have a limited budget, you know,’ said the Archchancellor of Brazeneck. ‘It’s a g overnmental grant thing, you see.’ The wizards fell silent. It was as if a man had just told you his mother had died. Ridcully patted him on the hand. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ He paused at the doors of the Hal l and turned back to Ponder. ‘We will be having some high-level discussions, Stibbons. Keep them on their toes! The lads will help! Find out what football wants to be!’ The older members of the faculty exhaled as the two heads left. Most of them were old enough to recall at least two pitched battles among factions of wizards, the worst o f which had only been brought to a conclusion by Rincewind, wielding a half-brick in a sock… Ponder looked across at Rincewind now, and he was hopping awkwardly on one leg, tryi ng to put a sock back on. He thought it better not to comment. It was probably the s ame sock. The Chair of Indefinite Studies slapped Ponder on the back. ‘Well done, lad. Could hav e been a nasty incident there.’ ‘Thank you, sir.’ ‘I’m sorry we seem to have loaded you down a bit. I’m sure it wasn’t deliberate.’ ‘I’m sure it wasn’t, too, sir. Very little around here is.’ Ponder sighed. ‘I’m afraid that unthinking delegation and prevarication and procrastination are standard practice here.’ He looked expectantly at the remaining members of the Council. He wanted to be d isappointed, but knew he wouldn’t be. ‘A very bad state of affairs indeed,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. The Chair looked grave. ‘Hm…’ So go on, thought Ponder, say it. I know you’re going to, you just won’t be able to st op yourself, you really won’t— ‘I think, Stibbons, that you should sort it out when you have a moment,’ said the Chair. ‘Bingo!’ ‘I beg your pardon, Stibbons?’ ‘Oh, nothing, sir, not really. I was just pondering, as it were, on the unchangeable natur e of the universe.’ ‘I’m glad somebody is. Keep it up.’ The Lecturer in Recent Runes looked around and a dded, ‘It all seems to have quietened down. That curry sounds amusing.’ There was a general movement towards the doors on the part of those wizards who were well endowed with years, gravitation or both, but the scratch match went on among tho se less magnetically attracted to knives and forks. Ponder sat down, his clipboard balanced on his lap. ‘I don’t have the faintest idea wha t I’m doing here,’ he declared to the world around him. ‘May I be of some worth, sir?’ ‘Mister Nutt? Oh, well, it’s very kind of you, but I don’t think that your skill with a candle can be of much—’ ‘In games of this nature there are three classes of things to be considered: one, the rul es of the game in all their detail; two the correct skills, actions and philosophies requ ired for success, and three, an understanding of the real nature of the game. May I conti nue?’ ‘Huh,’ said Ponder, in that slight daze that overcame everyone hearing a Nutt lecture for the first time. ‘Got a fine jaw on him, ain’t he?’ said Trev. ‘He can say the long words where the like s of you an’ me would ’ave to stop for a rest ’alfway through! Me, anyway,’ he trailed off. ‘Er, do continue, Mister Nutt.’ ‘Thank you, sir. As I understand it, the purpose of this game is to score at least one more goal than your opponents. But our two teams just ran around, with everyone trying to kick the ball at once. Oh, goals were scored, but only opportunistically. As in ches s, you must secure the king, your goal. Yes, you are going to say that you have the cus todian of the goal, but he is only one man, figuratively speaking. Every ball he saves shames the team members who let the opponents get so close. Yet at the same time, they must maximize their chances of getting the ball into the opposing goal. This is a probl em I will have to address. I have mentioned chess, but this game, and particularly the ease with which the ball takes flight, means that the activity can go from one end of t he play to the other in seconds, just as one dwarf piece can upset the whole board in a game of Thud.’ He smiled up at their expressions and added, ‘You know, this game is surely one of th e simplest. Any little boy knows how to play it…and yet playing it optimally requires superhuman talents.’ He thought for a moment and added, ‘Or possibly subhuman. Certa inly the willing sublimation of the ego, which takes us into the realms of the metaph ysical. So simple and yet so complex. You know, this is wonderful. I am quite thrille d!’ The ring of silence around him was not ominous, but the air choked with bafflement. Fin ally, the wizard Rincewind said, ‘Er, Mister Nutt, I thought you told us we just had to get the ball between the pointy hats?’ ‘Professor Rincewind, you run very well, but you don’t do anything with it. Professor Macarona, you attempt to score as soon as you get the ball irrespective of anything el se that is happening. Dr Hix, you cheat and foul constantly—’ ‘Excuse me, skull ring,’ Hix intervened. ‘I am required to attempt to break the rules, un der college statutes.’ ‘Within acceptable limits,’ Ponder added quickly. ‘Bledlow Nobbs (no relation), you have a furiously powerful kick,’ Nutt continued, ‘but you don’t seem to care where the ball goes so long as it gets there. All of you have s trengths and weaknesses and it might be possible to make use of both of them. That is, if you want to win. But for now, a good exercise would be to get a lot more of these ba lls and learn how to control them. Running while kicking the ball ahead of you simply m eans that you will lose it to an opponent. You must learn to keep it at your feet. You were all looking down to check that you had the ball. Gentlemen, if you need to check t hat you still have the ball, you either do not have it or you will lose it in the next fraction of a second. Now, if you will excuse me, Mister Trev and I will get into troub le if we don’t get the chandelier back up soon.’ The spell broke. ‘What?’ said Ponder. ‘I mean, what? Stay there, Mister Nutt!’ Nutt immediately hunched and stared at his feet in their clumsy shoes. ‘I am sorry if I have transgressed in any way. I was only seeking worth.’ ‘Worth?’ said Ponder, looking at Trev for some kind of map of this new territory. ‘That’s how he talks, that’s all,’ said Trev. ‘He ’asn’t done anythin’ wrong, so why s hout at him like that? They were some bloody good ideas! You shouldn’t pick on ’im jus t ’cos he’s small and talks posh.’ Nutt seemed noticeably taller a little while ago, Ponder thought. Is he really just hun ched up? ‘I wasn’t exactly shouting at him,’ he said. ‘I just wondered what he’s doing dribbling candles! I mean, I know that’s what he’s doing, but why?’ ‘Ah, you have to have dribbled candles, sir,’ said Bledlow Nobbs (no relation), ‘and to my mind, the dribbling has been particularly fine just lately. Often, when I’m walking the corridors of a night, I think to myself—’ ‘Good heavens, man, he’s erudite! He radiates learning! He’s a polymath!’ said Ponder . ‘Are you saying he’s too smart to be a candle dribbler?’ said the bledlow, a militant l ook in his eye. ‘You wouldn’t want a stupid dribbler, would you? You’d get, like, manky dribbles all over the place.’ ‘I simply meant that—’ ‘…and blobs,’ said the bledlow firmly. ‘But you must admit that it is strange that—’ Probably everyone wants him dead. Ponder stopped as the chasm of memory opened. ‘That makes no sense. It can’t be true !’ ‘Sir?’ He realized that all the footballers were staring at him. Ridcully had refused to say a ny more, and in Ponder’s crowded mind he’d settled for believing that Nutt was on the r un in some way. It was not unknown. Occasionally a novice wizard working in a small tow n might find it a good idea to hurry back for a swift refresher course in the safety of the university’s hospitable stones until his little mistake had been rectified/forgott en/erased/caught and bottled. There had always been others given sanctuary for mysterio us reasons. The politics of wizardry were either very simple, and resolved by someone c easing to breathe, or as complex as one ball of yarn in a room with three bright-eyed l ittle kittens. But Nutt…What crime could he have done? And then you had to factor in that it was Rid cully who had allowed him to come here and indeed had put Ponder in this position. Th e sensible thing, therefore, was to–just get on with it. ‘I think Mister Nutt has some very good ideas,’ he said carefully, ‘and I think he shoul d continue. Do carry on, Mister Nutt.’ Watching Nutt look up was like watching the sun rise, but a hesitant sun afraid that a ny moment the gods might slap it back down into the night, and hungry for reassurance that this would not be so. ‘I am worthy?’ ‘Well, er…’ Ponder began, and saw Trev nodding frantically. ‘Well, er, yes, it would seem so, Mister Nutt. I’m amazed at your insight in so short a t ime.’ ‘I have a talent for pattern recognition in developing situations.’ ‘Really? Oh. Good. Carry on, then.’ ‘Excuse me, I have a question, if you would be so good?’ Looks like a bag of second-hand clothes, talks like a retired theologian, Ponder though t. ‘Ask away, Mister Nutt.’ ‘Can I carry on with the dribbling?’ ‘What? Do you want to?’ ‘Yes, thank you. I enjoy it and it does not take me long.’ Ponder glanced at Trev, who shrugged, made a face and nodded. ‘But I have a favour to ask,’ Nutt went on. ‘I rather expected you would,’ said Ponder, ‘but I’m sorry to say that the budget this term means—’ ‘Oh no, I don’t want any money,’ said Nutt. ‘I don’t really spend it anyway. I just wan t Mister Trev in the team. He is very modest, but you should know that he is a genius w ith his feet. I cannot see how you could lose with him in the team.’ ‘Oh no,’ said Trev, waving his hands and backing away. ‘No! Not me! I’m not a football er! I just kick tin cans around!’ ‘Thought that was at the heart and soul of foot-the-ball, isn’t it?’ said Ponder, who’d ne ver been allowed to play in the street. ‘I thought it was when early blokes kicked a dead enemy’s head around,’ Bledlow Nobb s (no relation) volunteered. A throat was cleared. ‘Unlikely in my opinion,’ said Hix. ‘Unless it’s in a bag or som e sort of metal brace, and then you have the problem of weight, because a human head c omes in at around ten pounds, which is a pain in the foot, I should think. Scooping it out would work for a while, of course, but mind you wire the jaw, because no one want s to be bitten in the foot. I do have some heads on ice if anyone wants to experiment. It’s amazing, but there are still those who leave their bodies to necromancy. There’s some strange people out there.’ At this point, the head of the Department of Post-Mortem Communications realized tha t he was not taking his audience with him. ‘There’s no need to look at me like that,’ he grumbled. ‘Skull ring, remember? I have t o know this wretched stuff.’ Ponder coughed politely. ‘Mister, er, Likely, isn’t it? Your colleague speaks very high ly of you. Won’t you join us?’ ‘Sorry, guv, but I promised my old mum that I’d never play football. It’s a good way of gettin’ your head caved in!’ ‘Trev Likely?’ roared Bledlow Nobbs (no relation). ‘Are you Dave Likely’s lad? He— ’ ‘Scored four goals, yeah, yeah, yeah,’ said Trev. ‘And then died in the street with th e rain washing his blood down the gutter and someone’s smelly overcoat over him. The P rince of Football?’ ‘Do we need a little talk, Mister Trev?’ Nutt said urgently. ‘No. No. I’m okay. Okay?’ ‘This isn’t that kind of football, Trev,’ said Nutt soothingly. ‘Yeah, I know. But I promised my old mum.’ ‘Then at least show them your moves, Mister Trev,’ Nutt pleaded. He turned to the play ers. ‘You must see this!’ Trev sighed, but Nutt knew just how to wheedle. ‘All right, if it shuts you up,’ he said, and pulled a tin can out of his pocket, to much laughter. ‘See?’ he complained to Nutt. ‘They just think it’s a joke.’ Nutt folded his arms. ‘Show them.’ Trev dropped the can on to his foot and with hardly any effort flicked it on to his shoulde r, where it rolled around his neck to his other shoulder and, after a tiny pause, righted i tself. He shrugged it on to his other foot, spun it into the air, and let it tumble and spi n on the toe of his boot with a faint rattling noise. Trev winked at Ponder Stibbons. ‘Don’t move, guv.’ The can sprang off the boot and up into the air, then, as it fell, he hit it with a rou ndhouse kick, driving it at Ponder. The people behind Ponder dived out of the way as it growled past his face and went into orbit, appearing for a moment to give him a silver necklace until it broke away and dropped into Trev’s hand like a beached salmon. In the silence, Ponder pulled his thaumometer out of his pocket and glanced at it. ‘Natural background,’ he said flatly. ‘No magic involved. How did you do that, Mister Likely?’ ‘You just ’ave to get the hang of it, guv. Getting the spins is the thing, but if I ’ave to think too much it don’t work.’ ‘Can you do it with a ball?’ ‘Dunno, never tried. But prob’ly no. Can’t get the long spin and the short spin, see? But you ort to be able to get somethin’ out of a ball.’ ‘But how would that help us?’ said Hix. ‘Mastery of the ball is everything,’ said Nutt. ‘The planned rule will, I think, allow the keeper of the goal to handle the ball. This is vital. There is, however, no explicit ban on nodding the ball, kneeing the ball or blocking the ball with the chest and letting it d rop neatly on to the foot. Remember, gentlemen, this ball flies. It will spend a lot of ti me in the air. You must learn not to think just about the ground.’ ‘I feel sure that using the head would be considered illegal,’ said Ponder. ‘Sir, you presume a rule where there is none. Remember what I said about the real natu re of the game.’ Ponder saw Nutt’s little half-smile, and gave in. ‘Mister Nutt, I am delegating the selec tion and training of our football team to you. You will report to me, of course.’ ‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. I will need the power to sequester team members from their normal duties when required.’ ‘Well, I suppose I must agree to that. Very well, I shall leave the team in your hands,’ said Ponder, thinking: how many bags of old clothes use the word ‘sequester’ as if they’r e used to it? Still, Ridcully likes the little goblin, if that’s what he is, and I’ve nev er seen the point of team games. ‘May I also, sir, request a very small budget?’ ‘Why?’ ‘With all due respect to the exigencies of university finances,’ said Nutt, ‘I believe it i s very necessary.’ ‘Why?’ ‘I wish to take the team to the ballet.’ ‘That’s ridiculous!’ Ponder snapped. ‘No, sir, it’s essential.’ The next day there was a piece in the Times about the mysterious disappearance of the fabulous ‘Jewels’, which made Glenda smile. They just haven’t read their fairy stories , she thought as she left the house. If you want to find a beauty, you look for her in the ashes. Because Glenda was Glenda and would always irredeemably be Glenda to the c ore, she added: although the ovens in the Night Kitchen are scrupulously maintained at all times and all ashes are immediately disposed of. To her surprise, Juliet stepped out of her doorway at almost the same time and looked a s if she was almost awake. ‘Do you think they’ll let me in on the banquet?’ she said as they waited for the bus. Theoretically yes, Glenda thought, but probably no, because she was a Night Kitchen gir l. Even though she was Juliet, she would be tarred by Mrs Whitlow as a Night Kitchen gi rl. ‘Juliet, you shall go to the banquet,’ she said aloud, ‘and so shall I.’ ‘But I think Mrs Whitlow won’t like that,’ said Juliet. Something was still bubbling inside Glenda. It had started in Shatta and lasted all day y esterday and there was still some left today. ‘I don’t care,’ she said. Juliet giggled and looked around in case Mrs Whitlow was hiding near the bus stop. And I really don’t care, Glenda thought. I don’t care. It was like drawing a sword. Ponder’s office always puzzled Mustrum Ridcully. The man used filing cabinets for he avens’ sake. Ridcully worked on the basis that anything you couldn’t remember wasn’t important and had developed the floor-heap method of document storage to a fine art . Ponder looked up. ‘Ah, good morning, Archchancellor.’ ‘Just had a look in at the Hall,’ said Ridcully. ‘Yes, Archchancellor?’ ‘Our lads were all doing ballet.’ ‘Yes, Archchancellor.’ ‘And there were some girls from the Opera House with those short dresses.’ ‘Yes, Archchancellor. They’re helping the team.’ Ridcully leaned over and put huge knuckles either side of the paper Ponder was worki ng on. ‘Why?’ ‘Mister Nutt’s idea, Archchancellor. Apparently they must learn balance, poise and ele gance.’ ‘Have you ever seen Bledlow Nobbs try to stand on one leg? Let me tell you, it’s an i mmediate cure for melancholy.’ ‘I can imagine,’ said Ponder, not looking up. ‘I thought the idea was to learn how to kick the ball into the goal.’ ‘Ah, yes, but Mister Nutt has a philosophy.’ ‘Does he?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘They’re runnin’ about all over the place, I know that,’ said Ridcully. ‘Yes, Mister Nutt and Mister Likely are preparing a little something extra for the banqu et,’ said Ponder, getting up and opening the top drawer of a filing cabinet. The sight o f filing cabinets opening tended to remind Ridcully that he should be elsewhere, but on this occasion the ruse failed to work. ‘Oh, and I believe we have some fresh balls.’ ‘Mister Snorrisson knows an opportunity when he sees one.’ ‘So it’s all going well, then?’ said Ridcully, in a kind of mystified voice. ‘Apparently so, sir.’ ‘Well, I suppose I’d better leave it alone,’ said Ridcully. He hesitated, feeling at a b it of a loose end, and found another thread to pull. ‘And how are those rules coming alo ng, Mister Stibbons?’ ‘Oh, quite well, thank you, Archchancellor. I’m keeping in some of the ones from the street game, of course, to keep everybody happy. Some of them are quite strange.’ ‘Mister Nutt is quite a decent chap, it appears.’ ‘Oh yes, Archchancellor.’ ‘Very good idea of his to redesign the goal, I thought. Makes it more fun.’ ‘Aren’t you going to train, sir?’ said Ponder, pulling another document towards him. ‘I am the captain! I do not need to train.’ Ridcully turned to leave and stopped with hi s hand on the doorknob. ‘Had a long chat with the former Dean last night. Decent soul at heart, of course,’ he said. ‘Yes, I understand the atmosphere in the Uncommon Room was very convivial, Archcha ncellor,’ said Ponder. And expensive, he added to himself. ‘You know young Adrian Turnipseed is a professor?’ ‘Oh, yes, Archchancellor.’ ‘You wanna be one?’ ‘Not really, Archchancellor. I think there should be one or two posts in this institution t hat I don’t hold.’ ‘Yes, but they’ve just called their machine Pex! Hardly a great leap of ingenuity, is it?’ ‘Oh, there are some significant differences. I believe he’s using chickens to generate th e blit diametric,’ said Ponder. ‘Apparently so,’ said Ridcully. ‘Something like that, anyway.’ ‘Hmmm,’ said Ponder. And it was quite a solid hmmm, possibly one you could moor a small boat to. ‘Something wrong?’ said Ridcully. ‘Oh, er, not really, Archchancellor. Did the former Dean mention anything about the nee d to totally rebuild the morphic resonator to allow for the necessary changes in the bl it/slood interface?’ ‘Shouldn’t think so,’ said Ridcully. ‘Oh,’ said Ponder, his face blank. ‘Well, Adrian is bound to get round to that. He is ver y clever.’ ‘Yes, but it was all based on your work. You built Hex. And now they’re putting out tha t he’s some big clever clogs. He’s even on a cigarette card.’ ‘That’s nice, sir. It’s good when researchers get recognition.’ Ridcully felt like a mosquito that was trying to sting a steel breastplate. ‘Hah, wizardr y has certainly changed since my day,’ he said. ‘Yes, sir,’ said Ponder noncommittally. ‘And by the way, Mister Stibbons,’ said Ridcully as he opened the door, ‘my day isn’t over yet.’ There was a yell in the distance. And then a crash. Ridcully smiled. The day had sudde nly brightened up. When he and Ponder reached the Great Hall, most of the team were gathered around one of their members lying on the floor, with Nutt kneeling over him. ‘What’s happened here?’ Ridcully demanded. ‘Badly bruised, sir. I shall put a compress on it.’ ‘Ah.’ His gaze fell upon a large, brass-bound chest. It looked at first sight like any othe r chest, until you saw the tiny little toes poking out. ‘Rincewind’s luggage,’ he growled. ‘And where that is, Rincewind can’t be far in fron t. Rincewind!’ ‘Actually, it wasn’t my fault,’ said Rincewind. ‘He’s right, sir,’ said Nutt. ‘I have to apologize for the fact that this was a group mis apprehension. I understand it is a remarkably magical chest on hundreds of little legs an d I am afraid that the gentlemen here believed that it would play football like stink, as they put it. In which surmise, I have to say, they were proved wrong.’ ‘I tried to tell them,’ said the former Dean from the edge of the crowd. ‘Morning, Mu strum. Good team you have here.’ ‘All its feet do is get in each other’s way,’ said Bengo Macarona. ‘And if it does get on top of the ball, it spins out of control and, alas, it crashed into Mister Sopworthy here. ’ ‘Oh, well, we learn by our mistakes,’ said Ridcully. ‘And now, do you happen to have something nice to show me?’ ‘I think I have the very thing, Archchancellor,’ said a cheerful but reedy voice behind him. Ridcully turned and looked into the face of a man with the shape and urgency of a picc olo. He seemed to be vibrating on the spot. ‘Professor Ritornello, Master of the Music,’ Ponder whispered into Ridcully’s ear. ‘Ah, Professor,’ said Ridcully smoothly, ‘and I see you have the choir with you.’ ‘Yes indeed, Archchancellor, and I must tell you, I am thrilled and filled with inner l ight by what I have witnessed this morning! Without ado, I have penned a chant, such as you asked for!’ ‘Did I?’ said Ridcully, out of the corner of his mouth. ‘You will remember that chanting was mentioned and so I thought it best to alert the p rofessor,’ whispered Ponder. ‘Another pp, eh? Oh, well.’ ‘Happily, it is based on the traditional plainchant or stolation form and is a valedicta, o r hail to the winner. May I?’ said Professor Ritornello. ‘It is a cappella, of course.’ ‘Go ahead, by all means,’ said Ridcully. The Master of the Music pulled a short baton out of his sleeve. ‘I’ve put the name of B engo Macarona in there for a marker at the moment, because he has apparently scored two fine “goals”, as I believe they are called,’ he said, dealing carefully with the word as one might deal with a large spider in the bathtub. Then he caught the eyes of his li ttle flock, nodded, and: Hail the unique qualities of Magister Bengo Macarona! Of Macarona the unique quali ties Hail! Hail the! Hail the! The singular talent possessed by no other! Hail! Ha il the! Hail the bountiful gods! Who to the, two the—SINGULA SINGULAR SINGULA! After a minute and a half of this Ridcully coughed loudly, and the Master waved the choi r into a stuttering silence. ‘Is there something untoward, Archchancellor?’ ‘Er, not as such, Master, but, er, do you not feel that it is a bit too, well, long?’ Rid cully was aware that the former Dean was not trying very hard to suppress a snigger. ‘Not at all. In fact, sir, I intend that when it is finished it will be scored for forty voi ces and, though I dare to say so, will be my masterwork!’ ‘But it is something for football fans to sing, you see?’ said Ridcully. ‘Well then,’ said the Master, holding his baton in a rather threatening manner, ‘is it no t the duty of the educated classes to raise the standards of the lower orders?’ ‘He’s got a point there, Mustrum,’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, and Ridcully felt his grandfather kick him in the heredity, and was glad that maid wasn’t here-wh at was her name now? Oh, yes, Glenda, smart woman-but although she was not there he s aw something of her expression in Trev Likely’s face. ‘During the week, possibly,’ he snapped, ‘but not on Saturdays, I think. But very well done, anyway, and I look forward to hearing more of your efforts.’ The Master of the Music flounced out with the choir flouncing out in perfect unison be hind him. Ridcully rubbed his hands together. ‘Well, gentlemen, perhaps you could show me you r moves.’ While the players spread out in the Hall, Nutt said, ‘I must say that Professor Macarona is excelling at the game. He clearly has excellent ball skills.’ ‘I’m not surprised,’ said Ridcully brightly. ‘The Librarian is, of course, an excellent keeper of the goal. Especially since he can st and in the middle and reach either side of it. I believe that it will be very hard for an y of our opponents to get past him. And, of course, you will be partaking also, Archchanc ellor.’ ‘Oh, you don’t become Archchancellor if you don’t get the hang of things quickly. I wi ll just watch for now.’ He watched. After the second occasion when Macarona, like a silver streak, ran the leng th of the Hall to flick the ball into the opponents’ goal, Ridcully turned to Ponder an d said, ‘We’re going to win, aren’t we?’ ‘If indeed he is still playing for you,’ put in the former Dean. ‘Oh, come now, Henry. Can we at least agree to just play one game at a time here?’ ‘Well, I think today’s session should end pretty soon, sir,’ said Ponder. ‘It’s the banque t tonight after all and it will take some time to get the place ready.’ ‘Excuse me, guv, that’s right,’ said Trev behind him, ‘and we’ve got to get the chandel ier down an’ put new candles in.’ ‘Yes, but we have been practising a little demonstration for tonight. Maybe the Archchan cellor would like to see it,’ said Nutt. Ridcully looked at his watch. ‘Well, yes, Mister Nutt, but time is getting on and so I lo ok forward to seeing it later. Splendid effort all round, though,’ he boomed. The night market was setting up in Sator Square as Glenda and Juliet arrived for work. A nkh-Morpork lived on the street, where it got its food, entertainment and, in a city wit h a ferocious housing shortage, a place to hang around until there was space on a floor. Stalls had been set up anywhere, and flares filled the early-evening air with stink and , almost as a by-product, a certain amount of light. Glenda could never resist looking, especially now. She was very good at all sorts of c ookery, she really was, and it was important to keep that knowledge at the calm centre of her spinning brain. And there was Verity Pushpram, queen of the sea. Glenda had a lot of time for Miss Pushpram, who was a self-made woman, although she could have used some help when it came to her eyes, which were set so far apart that she rather resembled a turbot. But Verity, like the ocean that was making her fortune these days, had hidden depths, because she’d made enough to buy a boat, and then another boat and a whole aisle in the fish market. But she still woman-handled her barrow to the square most evenings, where she sold whelks, shrimps, leather crabs, blossom prawns, monkey clams and her f amous hot fish sticks. Glenda often bought from her; there was the kind of respect you give to an equal who is , crucially, no threat to your own position. ‘Going to the big bun fight, girls?’ said Verity cheerfully, waving a halibut at them. ‘Yes,’ said Juliet proudly. ‘What, both of you?’ said Verity, with a glance towards Glenda, who said, firmly, ‘Th e Night Kitchen is expanding.’ ‘Oh well, so long as you’re having fun,’ said Verity, looking, in theory, from one to the other. ‘Here, have one of these, they’re lovely. My treat.’ She reached down and picked a crab out of a bucket. As it came up it turned out that th ree more were hanging on to it. ‘A crab necklace?’ giggled Juliet. ‘Oh, that’s crabs for you,’ said Verity, disentangling the ones who had hitched a ride. ‘Thick as planks, the lot of them. That’s why you can keep them in a bucket without a li d. Any that tries to get out gets pulled back. Yes, as thick as planks.’ Verity held the crab over an ominously bubbling cauldron. ‘Shall I cook it for you now?’ ‘No!’ said Glenda, much louder than she had intended. ‘Are you okay, dear?’ Verity enquired. ‘You look a bit ill.’ ‘I’m fine. Fine. Just a touch of a sore throat, that’s all.’ Crab bucket, she thought. I t hought Pepe was talking nonsense. ‘Erm, can you just truss it up for us? It’s going to be a long night.’ ‘Right you are,’ said Miss Pushpram, expertly wrapping the unresisting crab in twine. ‘ You know what to do, that’s certain. Lovely crabs, these, real good eating. But thick a s planks.’ Crab bucket, thought Glenda as they hurried towards the Night Kitchen. That’s how it wo rks. People from the Sisters disapproving when a girl takes the trolley bus. That’s cra b bucket. Practically everything my mum ever told me, that’s crab bucket. Practically e verything I’ve ever told Juliet, that’s crab bucket, too. Maybe it’s just another word for the Shove. It’s so nice and warm on the inside that you forget that there’s an outs ide. The worst of it is, the crab that mostly keeps you down is you…The realization had her mind on fire. A lot hinges on the fact that, in most circumstances, people are not allowed to hit you w ith a mallet. They put up all kinds of visible and invisible signs that say ‘Do not do th is’ in the hope that it’ll work, but if it doesn’t, then they shrug, because there is, re ally, no real mallet at all. Look at Juliet talking to all those nobby ladies. She didn’t know that she shouldn’t talk to them like that. And it worked! Nobody hit her on the hea d with a hammer. And custom and practice as embodied by Mrs Whitlow was that the Night Kitchen staff s hould not go above stairs, to where the light was comparatively clean and had not alr eady been through a lot of other eyeballs. Well, Glenda had done that, and nothing ba d had happened, had it? So now Glenda strode towards the Great Hall, her serviceable shoes hitting the floor enough to hurt. The Day girls said nothing as she marched in behind them. There was nothing for them to say. The real unwritten rule was that girl s on the dumpy side didn’t serve at table when guests were present, and Glenda had de cided tonight that she couldn’t read unwritten rules. Besides, there was a row alread y going on. The servants who were laying out the cutlery were trying to keep an eye o n it, which subsequently meant that more than one guest had to eat with two spoons. Glenda was amazed to see the Candle Knave waving his hands at Trev and Nutt, and she headed for them. She did not like Smeems very much; a man could be dogmatic, and th at was all right, or he could be stupid, and no harm done, but stupid and dogmatic a t the same time was too much, especially fluxed with body odour. ‘What’s this all about?’ It worked. The right tone from a woman with her arms folded always bounces an answer out of an unprepared man before he has time to think, and even before he has time to think up a lie. ‘They raised the chandelier! They raised it without lighting the candles! We won’t ha ve enough time now to get it down and up again before the guests come in!’ ‘But, Mister Smeems—’ Trev began. ‘And all I get is talking back and lies,’ Smeems complained bitterly. ‘But I can light them from here, Mister Smeems.’ Nutt spoke quietly, even his voice hu ddling. ‘Don’t give me that! Even wizards can’t do that without getting wax all over the place, you little—’ ‘That’s enough, Mister Smeems,’ said a voice that to Glenda’s surprise turned out to b e hers. ‘Can you light them, Mister Nutt?’ ‘Yes, miss. At the right time.’ ‘There you are, then,’ said Glenda. ‘I suggest you leave it to Mister Nutt.’ Smeems looke d at her, and she could see there was, as it were, an invisible mallet in his thinking, a feeling that he might get into some trouble here. ‘I should run along now,’ she said. ‘I can’t stand around. I’m a man with responsibilities.’ Smeems looked wrong-footed an d bewildered, but from his point of view absence was a good idea. Glenda almost saw hi s brain reach the conclusion. Not being there diluted the blame for whatever it was th at was going to go wrong. ‘Can’t stand around,’ he repeated. ‘Ha! You’d all be in the dark if it wasn’t for me!’ With that, he grabbed his greasy bag and scuttled off. Glenda turned to Nutt. He can’t possibly make himself smaller, she told herself. His cl othes would fit him even worse than they do already. I must be imagining it. ‘Can you really light the candles from here?’ she said aloud. Nutt carried on staring at t he floor. Glenda turned to Trev. ‘Can he really—’ but Trev was not there, because Trev was leani ng against the wall some distance away talking to Juliet. She could read it all at a glance, his possessive stance, her modestly downcast eyes: not hanky panky, as such, but certainly overture and beginners to hanky panky. Oh, t he power of words… As you watch, so are you watched. Glenda looked down into the penetrating eyes of Nu tt. Was that a frown? What had he seen in her expression? More than she wanted, that was certain. The tempo in the Hall was increasing. The football captains would be assembling in one of the anterooms, and she could imagine them there, in clean shirts, or at least in shi rts less grubby than usual, dragged here from the various versions of Botney Street all over the city, staring up at the wonderful vaulting and wondering if they were going t o walk out of there dead. Huh, she tagged on to that thought, more likely it would be d ead drunk. And, just as her brain began to pivot around that new thought, a severe voic e behind her said, ‘Hwe do not usually expect to see you in the Great Hall, Glenda?’ It had to be Mrs Whitlow. Only the housekeeper would pronounce ‘we’ with an H and fini sh a plain statement as if it were a question. Besides, without turning round, Glenda heard the clink of her silver chatelaine, reputed to hold the one key that could open any lock in the university, and the creaking of her fearsome corsetry.* Glenda turned. There is no mallet! ‘I thought you might need a few extra hands tonight , Mrs Whitlow,’ she said sweetly. ‘Nevertheless, custom and practice—’ ‘Ah, dear Mrs Whitlow, I think we’re ready to let them through now. His lordship’s coa ch will shortly be leaving the palace,’ said the Archchancellor, behind them. Mrs Whitlow could loom. But mostly only horizontally. Mustrum Ridcully could out-loom her by more than two feet. She turned hurriedly and gave the little half-curtsy whic h, he’d never dared tell her, he always found mildly annoying. ‘Oh, and Miss Glenda, isn’t it?’ said the Archchancellor happily. ‘Good to see you up h ere. Very useful young lady, Mrs Whitlow. Got initiative, fine grasp of things.’ ‘How kind of you to say so. She is one of my best girls,’ said the housekeeper, spittin g teeth and taking care not to meet Glenda’s suddenly cherubic gaze. ‘Big chandelier not lit, I see,’ said Ridcully. Glenda stepped forward. ‘Mister Nutt is planning a surprise for us, sir.’ ‘Mister Nutt is full of surprises. We’ve had an amazing day here today, Miss Glenda,’ said Ridcully. ‘Our Mister Nutt has been teaching the lads to play football his way. D o you know what he did yesterday? You’ll never guess. Tell them, Mister Nutt.’ ‘I took them along to the Royal Opera House to watch the dancers in training,’ said Nut t nervously. ‘You see, it is very important that they learn the skills of movement and poise.’ ‘And then when they came back,’ said Ridcully, with the same, slightly threatening jovi ality, ‘he had them playin’ here in the Hall blindfolded.’ Nutt coughed nervously. ‘It is vital for them to keep track of every other player,’ he said . ‘It is essential that they are a team.’ ‘And then he took them to see Lord Rust’s hunting dogs.’ Nutt coughed again, even more embarrassed. ‘When they hunt, every dog knows the positi on of every other dog. I wanted them to understand the duality of team and player. The strength of the player is the team and the strength of the team is the player.’ ‘Did you hear that?’ said Ridcully. ‘Great stuff! Oh, he’s had them running up and dow n here all day long. Balancing balls on their heads, doing big diagrams on a blackboar d. You’d think it was some kind of battle being planned.’ ‘It is a battle,’ said Nutt. ‘I mean, not with the opposing team, as such, but it is a bat tle between every man and himself.’ ‘That sounds very Uberwaldian,’ said Ridcully. ‘Still, they all seem full of vim and vi gour and ready for the evening. I think Mister Nutt is planning one of those sunny lumi nair things.’ ‘Just a little something to capture people’s attention,’ said Nutt. ‘Anything going to go off bang?’ said Ridcully. ‘No, sir.’ ‘Promise? Personally I like the occasional bit of Sturm and Drang, but Lord Vetinari is a tad particular about that sort of thing.’ ‘No thunder and lightning, sir. Possibly a brief haze, high up.’ It seemed to Glenda that the Archchancellor was paying some thoughtful attention to N utt. ‘How many languages do you speak, you…Nutt?’ ‘Three dead and twelve living, sir,’ said Nutt. ‘Really. Really,’ said Ridcully, as though filing this away and trying not to think H ow many of them were alive before you murdered them? ‘Well done. Thank you, Mister Nu tt, and you too, ladies. We will bring them in shortly.’ Glenda took this opportunity to get out of Mrs Whitlow’s way. She was not pleased to see that Trev and Juliet had already taken a slightly earlier opportunity to get out of her s. ‘Do not worry about Juliet,’ said Nutt, who had followed her. ‘Who said I was worried?’ Glenda snapped. ‘You did. Your expression, your stance, the set of your body, your…reactions, your ton e of voice. Everything.’ ‘You have no business to be looking at my everything–I mean the set of my body!’ ‘It is simply the way you stand, Miss Glenda.’ ‘And you can read my mind?’ ‘It may appear that way. I am so sorry.’ ‘And Juliet. What was she thinking?’ ‘I am not sure, but she likes Mister Trev, she thinks he is funny.’ ‘So have you read Trev’s everything? Bet that was a dirty book!’ ‘Er, no, miss. He is worried and confused. I would say he is trying to see what kind of man he is going to be.’ ‘Really? He’s always been a scallywag.’ ‘He is thinking of his future.’ Across the Hall, the big doors opened just as the last scurrying servants reached their st ations. This made no impression on Glenda, lost in thought as she wrestled with the prospect t hat a leopard might change his shorts. He has been a bit quiet lately, I must admit. A nd he did write her that lovely poem…That should mean a lot, a poem. Who’d have though t it? It’s not like him at all— With atomic speed Nutt was suddenly missing, and the doors stood wide, and here came the captains with their retinues, and all of them were nervous and some of them wer e wearing unaccustomed suits, and some of them were walking a little unsteadily even now, because the wizards’ idea of an aperitif had bite, and in the kitchen plates w ould be being filled and the chefs would be cursing and the ovens clanging as they…a s they…What was the menu, anyway? Life as an unseen part of Unseen University was a matter of alliances, feuds, obligation s and friendships, all stirred and twisted and woven together. Glenda was good at it. The Night Kitchen had always been generous to other toilers and right now the Great Hall owed her favours, even if all she had done was keep he r mouth shut. Now she bore down on Shiny Robert, one of the head waiters, who gave her the cautious nod due to someone who knew things about you that you wouldn’t wan t your mother to know. ‘Got a menu?’ she asked. One was produced from under a napkin. She read it in horror . ‘That’s not the stuff they like!’ ‘Oh dear, Glenda,’ Robert smirked. ‘Are you saying it’s too good for them?’ ‘You’re giving them Avec. Nearly every dish has got Avec in it, but stuff with Avec in the name is an acquired taste. I mean, do these look to you like people who habituall y eat in a foreign language? Oh dear, and you are giving them beer! Beer with Avec!’ ‘A choice of wines is available. They are choosing beer,’ said Robert coldly. Glenda stared at the captains. They seemed to be enjoying themselves now. Here was free food and drink and if the food tasted strange there was plenty of it, and the beer tas ted welcomely familiar and there was lots of that, too. She didn’t like this. Heavens knew that football had got pretty disgusting these days , but…well, she couldn’t quite work out what she was uneasy about, but— ‘ ’scuse me, miss?’ She looked down. A young footballer had decided to confide in the only uniformed wom an he could see who was not carrying at least two plates at once. ‘Can I help?’ He lowered his voice. ‘This chutney tastes of fish, miss.’ She looked at the other grinning faces around the table. ‘It’s called caviar, sir. It’ll put lead in your pencil.’ The table, as one well-oiled drinker, guffawed, but the youth only looked puzzled. ‘I haven’t got a pencil, miss.’ More amusement. ‘There’s not a lot of them around,’ said Glenda, and left them laughing. ‘So kind of you to invite me, Mustrum,’ said Lord Vetinari, waving away the hors d’oeu vres. He turned to the wizard on his right. ‘And the Archchancellor formerly known as Dean is back with you, I see. That is capital.’ ‘You may remember that Henry went to Pseudopolis-Brazeneck, you know. He is, er… ’ Ridcully slowed. ‘The new Archchancellor,’ said Vetinari. He picked up a spoon and perused it carefully, as if it were a rare and curious object. ‘Dear me. I thought that there could be only one Archchancellor. Is this not so? One above all others and one Hat, of course? But th ese are wizardly matters, of which I know little. So do excuse me if I have misundersto od.’ In the gently turning bowl of the spoon his nose went from long to short. ‘However , it occurs to me, as an onlooker, that this could lead to a little friction, perhaps.’ The spoon stopped in mid twirl. ‘A soupçon, perhaps,’ said Ridcully, not looking in the direction of Henry. ‘That much, indeed? But I surmise from the absence of people being turned into frogs that you gentlemen have forgone the traditional option of magical mayhem. Well done. When it comes to the pinch, old friends, united by the bonds of mutual disrespect, ca nnot bring themselves to actually kill one another. We have hope. Ah, soup.’ There was a brief interregnum as the ladle went from bowl to bowl, and then the Patricia n said, ‘Could I assist you? I am without any bias in this matter.’ ‘Excuse me, my lord, but I think it might be said that you would favour Ankh-Morpor k,’ said the Archchancellor formerly known as Dean. ‘Really? It might also be said that it would be in my interest to weaken the perceived power of this university. You take my meaning? The delicate balance between town and gown, the unseen and the mundane? The twin foci of power. It might be said that I coul d take the opportunity to embarrass my learned friend.’ He smiled a little smile. ‘Do you still own the official Archchancellor’s Hat, Mustrum? I notice that you don’t wear it these days and tend to prefer the snazzy number with the rather attractive drawers and the small drinks cabinet in the point.’ ‘I never liked wearing the official one. It grumbled all the time.’ ‘It really can talk?’ said Vetinari. ‘I think the word “nag” would be far more accurate, since its only topic of conversati on has been how much better things used to be. My only comfort here is that every Arch chancellor over the last thousand years has complained about it in exactly the same wa y.’ ‘So it can think and speak?’ said Vetinari innocently. ‘Well, I suppose you could put it like that.’ ‘Then you can’t own it, Mustrum: a hat that thinks and speaks cannot be enslaved. N o slaves in Ankh-Morpork, Mustrum.’ He waved a finger waggishly. ‘Yes, but it is the look of the thing. What would it look like if I gave up the uniquenes s of Archchancellorship without a fight?’ ‘I really could not say,’ said Lord Vetinari, ‘but since just about every genuine battl e between wizards has hitherto resulted in wholesale destruction, I feel that you would at least look a little embarrassed. And, of course, I will remind you that you were qu ite happy that Archchancellor Bill Rincewind at Bugarup University cheerfully calls him self Archchancellor.’ ‘Yes, but he’s a long way away,’ said Ridcully. ‘And Fourecks doesn’t really count a s anywhere, whereas in Pseudopolis we are talking about a Johnny-come-lately of an o rganization and its—’ ‘So are we then merely arguing over the question of distance?’ said Vetinari. ‘No, but—’ said Ridcully and stopped. ‘Is this worth the argument, I ask you?’ said Vetinari. ‘What we have here, gentlemen, is but a spat between the heads of a venerable and respected institution and an ambitio us, relatively inexperienced, and importunate new school of learning.’ ‘Yes, that’s what we’ve got all right,’ said Ridcully. Vetinari raised a finger. ‘I hadn’t finished, Archchancellor. Let me see now. I said th at what we have here is a spat between an antique and somewhat fossilized, elderly and rather hidebound institution and a college of vibrant newcomers full of fresh and excit ing ideas.’ ‘Here, hang on, you didn’t say that the first time,’ said Ridcully. Vetinari leaned back. ‘Indeed I did, Archchancellor. Do you not remember our talk abou t the meaning of words a little while ago? Context is everything. I suggest, therefore , that you allow the head of Brazeneck University the opportunity to wear the official Archchancellor’s Hat for a short time.’ You had to pay close attention to what Lord Vetinari said. Sometimes the words, while clearly docile, had a tendency to come back and bite. ‘Play the football for the Hat,’ said Vetinari. He looked at their faces. ‘Gentlemen. Gentlemen. Do take a moment to consider this. Th e importance of the Hat is enhanced. The means by which the wizards strive are not pri marily magical. The actual striving and indeed the rivalry will, I think, be good for both universities and people will be interested, whereas in the past when wizards have argued they have had to hide in the cellars. Please do not answer me too quickly, oth erwise I will think you have not thought about this enough.’ ‘As a matter of fact, I can think very fast indeed,’ said Ridcully. ‘It will simply be no co ntest. It will be totally unfair.’ ‘It certainly will,’ said Henry. ‘Ah, you both feel that it will be totally unfair,’ said Vetinari. ‘Indeed. We have a much younger faculty and the brisk and healthy playing fields of P seudopolis.’ ‘Capital,’ said Lord Vetinari. ‘It seems to me that we have a challenge. University again st university. City, as it were, against city. Warfare, as it were, without the tedious n ecessity of picking up all those heads and limbs afterwards. All things must strive, gent lemen.’ ‘I suppose I have to agree,’ said Ridcully. ‘It’s not as if I’m going to lose the Hat in any case. I must note, though, Havelock, that you do not allow many challenges to your position.’ ‘Oh, but I am challenged very frequently,’ said Lord Vetinari. ‘It’s just that they don ’t win. Incidentally, gentlemen, I did notice in today’s paper that the new voters of P seudopolis yesterday voted not to have to pay taxes. When you see the president again, please don’t hesitate to tell him that I will be more than happy to advise him when he feels it is necessary. Cheer up, gentlemen. Neither of you has got exactly what you wan t, but both of you have got exactly what you deserve. If the leopard can change his sho rts, a wizard can change his hat. And the leopard must change his shorts, gentlemen, or we are all doomed.’ ‘Are you referring to the Loko business?’ said Henry. ‘You needn’t look surprised.’ ‘I don’t intend to. I am surprised,’ said Vetinari, ‘but please credit me with not lookin g surprised unless, of course, there is some advantage in doing so.’ ‘We are going to have to do something. The expedition found a nest of the damn things !’ ‘Yes. Children, which they killed,’ said Vetinari. ‘Pups that they exterminated!’ ‘Indeed? And what do you suggest?’ ‘We are talking about a very evil force here!’ ‘Archchancellor, I see evil when I look in my shaving mirror. It is, philosophically, pre sent everywhere in the universe in order, apparently, to highlight the existence of good. I think there is more to this theory, but I tend to burst out laughing at this point. I take it that you are behind the idea of an expeditionary force to Far Uberwald?’ ‘Of course!’ said the former Dean. ‘It has been tried once before. It was tried twice before that. Why is there a certain c ast of the military mind which leads sensible people to do again, with gusto, what didn’ t work before?’ ‘Force is all they understand. You must know that.’ ‘Force is all that’s been tried, Archchancellor Henry. Besides, if they are animals, as some people claim, then they understand nothing, but if, as I am convinced, they are sap ient creatures, then some understanding is surely required by us.’ The Patrician took a sip of his beer. ‘I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I’m sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged on to a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split a nd I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to t he delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. On e of nature’s wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that’s when I first learned about evil. It is built in to the very nature of the un iverse. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself , it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.’ The two wizards exchanged a glance. Vetinari was staring into the depths of his beer mug and they were glad that they did not know what he saw in there. ‘Is it me or is it rather dark in here?’ said Henry. ‘Good heavens, yes! I forgot about the chandelier!’ exclaimed Ridcully. ‘Where is Mist er Nutt?’ ‘Here,’ said Nutt, rather closer than Ridcully would have preferred. ‘Why?’ ‘I said I would be ready when you needed me, sir.’ ‘What? Oh, yes, of course you did.’ He’s short and polite and amazingly helpful, he to ld himself. Nothing to worry about at all…‘Well, show us how to light the candles, Mis ter Nutt.’ ‘Could I possibly have a fanfare, sir?’ ‘I doubt it, young man, but I will bring the Hall to attention.’ Ridcully picked up a spoon and tapped the side of a wine glass, in the time-honoured ‘ Look, everybody, I’m trying to make a loud noise very quietly!’ procedure, which has s uccessfully eluded after-dinner speakers ever since the invention of glasses, spoons a nd dinners. ‘Gentlemen, pray silence, an expectant one, followed by appreciative applause for the l ighting of the chandelier!’ There was the silence. As a round of applause was followed by some more silence, people turned around in thei r chairs for a better view of nothing to see. ‘Would you please puff on your pipe and hand it to me, sir?’ said Nutt. Shrugging, Ridcully did so. Nutt took it, raised it in the air and— What happened? It was a topic of conversation for days. Did the red fire come up from t he pipe or down from the ceiling or simply out of the walls? All that was certain was t hat the darkness was suddenly fractured by glowing zigzags that vanished in a blink, le aving a total blackness which cleared like the sky at dawn as all at once every candle, in perfect unison, glowed into life. As the applause began to mount, Ridcully looked along the table at Ponder, who wave d his thaumometer, shook his head and shrugged. Then the Archchancellor turned to Nutt, took him out of earshot of the table and for th e benefit of watchers shook him by the hand. ‘Well done, Mister Nutt. Just one thing: that wasn’t magic, because we would know, s o how was it done?’ ‘Well, initially, dwarfish alchemy, sir. You know, the kind that works? It is how they l ight the big chandeliers in the caverns under Bonk. I worked that out by tests and analy sis. All the candle wicks are connected by a network of black cotton thread, which termi nates in one single thread, which barely shows up in this Hall. You see, the thread is s oaked in a formula which burns with extreme but brief ferocity when dry. My slightly alt ered solution burns considerably faster even than that, consuming the thread until it is nothing but gas. It is quite safe. Only the tips of the candle wicks are treated, you s ee, and they light as normal. You might be interested, sir, in the fact that the flame t ravels so fast as to be instantaneous by any human measure. Certainly faster than twenty miles a second, I calculate.’ Ridcully was good at looking blank. You couldn’t deal with Vetinari on a regular basis w ithout being able to freeze your expression at will. But, right now, he didn’t have to t ry. Nutt looked concerned. ‘Have I failed to achieve worth, sir?’ ‘What? Ah. Well.’ Ridcully’s face thawed. ‘A wonderful effort, Nutt. Well done! Er, h ow did you get hold of the ingredients?’ ‘Oh, there is an old alchemy room in the cellars.’ ‘Hmm. Well, thank you again,’ said Ridcully. ‘But as Master of this university I must ask you not to talk to anyone about this invention until we have spoken again on the m atter. Now, I must get back to the events in hand.’ ‘Don’t you worry, sir, I will see that it does not fall into the wrong hands,’ said Nutt, bu stling off. Except, of course, that you are the wrong hands, Ridcully thought, as he returned to the table. ‘An impressive display,’ said Vetinari, as Ridcully took his seat again. ‘Am I right in t hinking, Mustrum, that the Mister Nutt you referred to is indeed, as it were, the Mister Nutt?’ ‘That’s right, yes, quite a decent chap.’ ‘And you’re letting him do alchemy?’ ‘I think it was his own idea, sir.’ ‘And he’s been standing here all this time?’ ‘Very keen. Is there a problem, Havelock?’ ‘No, no, not at all,’ said Vetinari. It was indeed an impressive display, Glenda acknowledged, but while she watched it she could feel Mrs Whitlow’s gaze on her. In theory Glenda’s activities would merit anoth er kind of firework display later on, but it wasn’t going to happen, was it? She had n ailed the invisible hammer. But there were other, if less personal, matters on her min d. Stupid, silly, and thoughtless though some of her neighbours were, it was up to her, a s ever, to protect their interests. They had been dropped into a world they didn’t und erstand, so she had to understand it for them. She thought this because as she prowled between the tables she could make out a certain type of clink, clink noise, and, sure enough, the amount of silverware on the tables appeared to be diminishing. After watc hing carefully for a moment or two, she walked up behind Mr Stollop and without ceremo ny pulled three silver spoons and a silver fork out of his jacket pocket. He spun around and then had the decency to look a bit embarrassed when he saw that it was her. Glenda didn’t have to open her mouth. ‘They’ve got so many,’ he protested. ‘Who needs all those knives and forks?’ She reached into the man’s other pocket and pulled out three silver knives and a silver sa lt cellar. ‘Well, there’s such a lot,’ said Stollop. ‘I didn’t think they’d miss one or two.’ Glenda stared at him. The clinking of cutlery disappearing from the tables had been a small but noticeable part of the ambient noise for some time. She leaned down until he r face was an inch away from his. ‘Mr Stollop. I wonder if that’s what Lord Vetinari is expecting you all to do.’ His face went white. She nodded. ‘Just a word to the wise,’ she said. And words spread fast. As Glenda walked on she was gratified to hear behind her, spreadi ng along the tables, more clinking as a tide of cutlery flowed swiftly out of pockets an d back on to the tables. The tinkling flew up and down the tables like little fairy bell s. Glenda smiled to herself and hurried off to dare everything. Or at least everything that she dared. Lord Vetinari stood up. For some inexplicable reason he needed no fanfare. No ‘Would you put your hands together for’, no ‘Lend me your ears’, no ‘Be upstanding for’. He simply stood up and the noise went down. ‘Gentlemen, thank you for coming, and may I thank you, Archchancellor Ridcully, for being such a generous host this evening. May I also take this opportunity to put your minds at rest. ‘You see, there appears to be a rumour going around that I am against the playing of f ootball. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am completely in favour of the tra ditional game of football and, indeed, would be more than happy to see the game leave the fusty obscurity of the back streets. Moreover, while I know you have your own sche dule of games, I personally propose a league, as it were, of senior teams, who will va liantly vie with one another for a golden cup—’ There were cheers, of a beery nature. ‘—or should I say gold-ish cup—’ More cheers and more laughter. ‘—based on the recently discovered ancient urn known as The Tackle, which, I am sure , you have all seen?’ General sniggering. ‘And if you haven’t, then your wives certainly have.’ Silence, followed by a tsunami of laughter which, like most tidal waves, had a lot of fro th on the top. Glenda, lurking among the serving girls, was taken aback and affronted at the same ti me, which was a bit of a squeeze, and wondered…So, he’s planning something. They’re l apping it up along with the beer, too. ‘Never seen that before,’ said a wine waiter beside her. ‘Seen what before?’ ‘Seen his lordship drinking. He doesn’t even drink wine.’ Glenda looked at the skinny black figure and said, enunciating carefully, ‘When you say he does not drink wine, do you mean he does not drink wine, or he does not drink …wine?’ ‘He doesn’t have a bloody drink. That’s all I’m saying. That’s Lord Vetinari, that is. H e’s got ears everywhere.’ ‘I can only see two, but he’s quite handsome, in a way.’ ‘Oh, yeah, the ladies like him,’ said the waiter and sniffed. ‘Everyone knows he’s got something going on with that vampire up in Uberwald. You know? The one who in vented the Temperance League? Vampires who don’t suck blood? Hello, what’s this…?’ ‘Let no one suppose that I am alone in a desire to see a better future for this great g ame,’ Vetinari was saying. ‘Tonight, gentlemen, you will see football, hear football an d if you don’t duck, gentlemen, you might even eat football. Here to display a marriage of football from the past and I dare hope from the future, I present to you the first team of Unseen University…Unseen Academicals!’ The candles went out, all at once, even the ones high up in the chandelier; Glenda coul d see pale ghosts of smoke rising in the gloom. Beside her, Nutt started counting under his breath. One, two…At the count of three, the candles at the far end of the Hall bur st into life again, revealing Trevor Likely, wearing his most infectious grin. ‘Evenin’ all,’ he said, ‘an’ to you too, your lordship. My, but ain’t you lookin’ quite the swell tonight.’ As breaths were indrawn all around the Hall Trev pulled out his tin can, dropped it on to his foot and flicked it up on to his shoulder, where it travelled around the back of his neck and down his other arm. ‘At the start people used to kick rocks. That was sort of stupid. Then they tried skulls, but you had to get ’em off people and that led to fightin’.’ Beside Glenda, Nutt was still counting… ‘An’ now we’ve got what we call a ball,’ Trev continued, as his tin can rolled and climb ed around him, ‘but it ain’t all that, ’cos it’s a lump of firewood. You can’t kick it ’ less you’ve got big heavy boots on. It’s slow. It’s heavy. It don’t live, gentlemen, and football should live…’ The doors at the other end of the Hall opened and Bengo Macarona trotted in, bouncing t he new football. Its gloing, gloing echoed around the Hall. Some of the football captai ns had got to their feet, craning for a better view. ‘And with the old football, you couldn’t do this,’ said Trev, and dived for the floor a s Macarona spun in one balletic movement and sent the ball screaming up the aisle like an angry hornet. Some scenes are only ever a memory rather than an experience, because they happen too fast for immediate comprehension, and Glenda watched the subsequent events on the in ternal screen of horrified recollection. There were the two Archmages and the Tyrant of the city, watching with frozen interest as the spinning globe hummed towards them, dragging terrible consequences in its wake, and then there was the Librarian rising out of nowhere, stopping it dead in mid air with a hand like a shovel. ‘That’s us, gentlemen. And we’ll take on the first team that joins us on the Hippo on S aturday at one o’clock. We’ll be training all around the city. You can join in if you l ike. And don’t worry if you don’t have the balls! We’ll give you some!’ The candle flam es went out, which was just as well because it is hard to riot in the dark. When the fl ames rose again in their eerie way, shouting, arguments, laughter and even discussion w ere taking place on every table. Quietly, too, the servants went to and fro with their flagons. There always seemed to be another one, Glenda noticed. ‘What have they been drinking?’ she whispered to the nearest waiter. ‘Winkle’s Old Peculiar, Mages’ Special. It’s top stuff.’ ‘What about his lordship?’ He grinned. ‘Ha. Funny thing, some of ’em have asked me that, too. Just the same as the guests. Poured out of the same flagon, just like for everyone else, so it’s—’ He stopp ed. Lord Vetinari was on his feet again. ‘Gentlemen, who among you will accept the challeng e? It need not be Dimwell, it need not be Dolly Sisters, it need not be the Nappers, it just has to be a team, gentlemen; the Unseen Academicals will take on the best of you, in the best traditions of sportsmanship. I have set the date of the game for Saturday. As far as the Academicals are concerned, you can watch them train and Mister Stibbons will give you all the advice you may need. This will be a fair match, gentlemen, you ha ve my word on it.’ He paused. ‘Did I mention that when it is presented, the very nearly gold urn will be full of beer? The concept is quite popular, I gather, and I predict t hat for a reasonable period the golden cup will quite miraculously stay full of beer, n o matter how many drink thereof. I shall personally see to it.’ This got a big cheer, too. Glenda felt embarrassed for the men, but angry at them too. They were being led by the nose. Or, more accurately, by the beer. Vetinari didn’t need whips and thumbscrews; he just needed Winkle’s Old Peculiar, Mag es’ Special, and he was leading them like little lambs-and matching them pint for pin t. How could he manage that? Hey, look at me, he’s saying, I’m just like you, and he’ s not like them at all. They can’t have someone killed-she paused the thought to allo w consideration of some of the street fights when the pubs shut, and amended it to-an d get away with it. ‘My friend the Archchancellor has just informed me that, of course, the Unseen Academ icals will not on any account resort to magic! Nobody wants to see a team of frogs, I am sure!’ There was general laughter at this lame joke, but the plain fact was that right now the y would have laughed at a paper bag. ‘This will be a proper football match, gentlemen, no trickery, only skills,’ said the P atrician, his voice sharp again. ‘And on that note I am decreeing a new code, based on the hallowed and traditional rules of football so recently rediscovered, but including many familiar ones of more recent usage. The office of referee is there to ensure obedi ence to the rules. There must be rules, my friends. There must be. There is no game wit hout rules. No rules, no game.’ And there it was. No one else seemed to notice, through the fumes, the razor blade gli ttering for a moment in the candyfloss. Rules? thought Glenda. What are these new rule s? I never knew there were rules. But Lord Vetinari’s assistant, whoever he was, was q uietly putting a few sheets of paper in front of each man. She remembered old Stollop’s bafflement when confronted with a mere envelope. Som e of them could read, surely? But how many of them could read now? His lordship had not finished. ‘Finally, gentlemen, I would like you to peruse and si gn the copies of the rules Mister Drumknott has given you. And now I understand the A rchchancellor and his colleagues are looking forward to seeing you in the Uncommon Ro om for cigars and, I believe, an exceptionally rare brandy!’ Well, that would about wrap it up, wouldn’t it? The footballers were used to just bee r. To be fair, they were used to lots of just beer. Nevertheless, if she was any judg e, and she was pretty good, they would now be very nearly falling-down drunk. Althoug h some seasoned captains could stand up for some time while being, technically, falli ng-down drunk. And there is nothing more embarrassing than seeing a falling-down drun k except for when it is a falling-down drunk who is still standing up. And that was a mazing: the captains were the type of men who drank in quarts, and could belch the na tional anthem and bend steel bars with their teeth, or even somebody else’s teeth. Ok ay, they had never had much in the way of schooling, but why did they have to be so dumb? ‘Tell me,’ murmured Ridcully to Vetinari as they watched the guests file out unsteadily , ‘are you behind the discovery of the urn?’ ‘We have known one another for quite some time, Mustrum, have we not,’ said Vetinari, ‘and as you know, I would not lie to you.’ He paused for a moment and added, ‘Well, of course I would lie to you in acceptable circumstances, but on this occasion I can tru thfully say that the discovery of the urn came as a surprise to me as well, albeit a p leasant one. Indeed, I assumed that you gentlemen had had something to do with it.’ ‘We didn’t even know it was there,’ said Ridcully. ‘Personally, I suspect that religion i s involved.’ Vetinari smiled. ‘Well, of course, classically, gods play with the fates of men, so I sup pose there is no reason why it shouldn’t be football. We play and are played and the best we can hope for is to do it with style.’ It might have been possible to cut the air in the Uncommon Room with a knife, had anyo ne been able to find a knife. Or hold a knife the right way if found. From the point o f view of the wizards, it was business as usual, but while a number of captains were b eing wheeled away in a wheelbarrow, thoughtfully stationed there earlier in the evenin g, there were enough visitors still standing to make for a damp, hot hubbub. In an unr egarded corner, the Patrician and the two Archchancellors had found a space where they could relax unheeded in the big chairs and settle a few matters. ‘You know, Henry,’ said Vetinari to the former Dean, ‘I think it would be a very good i dea if you were to referee the match.’ ‘Oh, come on! I think that would be most unfair,’ said Ridcully. ‘To whom, pray?’ ‘Well, er,’ said Ridcully. ‘There could be a question of rivalry between wizards.’ ‘But on the other hand,’ said Vetinari, his voice all smoothness, ‘it might also be said that, for political reasons, another wizard would have a vested interest in not allowin g a fellow Archmage to be seen to be bested by people who, despite their often amazing t alents, skills, features and histories, are nevertheless lumped together in the term ord inary people.’ Ridcully raised a very big brandy glass in the general direction of the edge of the unive rse. ‘I have every faith in my friend Henry,’ he said. ‘Even though he’s a little bit on the tubby side.’ ‘Oh, unfair!’ snapped Henry. ‘A large man may be quite light on his feet. Is there any chance of me having the poisoned dagger?’ ‘In these modern times,’ said Vetinari, ‘I’m sorry to say that a whistle of some sort will have to suffice.’ At which point someone tried to slap Vetinari on the back. It happened with remarkable speed and ended possibly even faster than it began, with Vet inari still seated in his chair with his beer mug in one hand and the man’s wrist grippe d tightly at head height. He let go and said, ‘Can I help you, sir?’ ‘You’re that Lord Veterinary, ain’t ya? I seed you on them postage stamps.’ Ridcully glanced up. Some of Lord Vetinari’s clerks were briskly heading towards them , along with some of the slurred speaker’s friends, who could be defined at this poin t as people who were slightly more sober than he was and right now were sobering up v ery, very fast, because when you have just slapped a tyrant on the back you need all the friends you can get. Vetinari nodded at his gentlemen, who evaporated back into the crowd, and then he snap ped his fingers at one of the waiters. ‘A chair here, please, for my new friend.’ ‘Are you sure?’ said Ridcully, as a chair was pushed under the man who, by happy coi ncidence, was falling backwards in any case. ‘I mean,’ said the man, ‘everary one saysh you’re a bit of a wnacker, but I saysh you’r e awright over thish football fing. ’Sno future in jus’ shlogging away. I should know, I got kicked inna head quite a few times.’ ‘Really?’ said Lord Vetinari. ‘And what is your name?’ ‘Swithin, shir,’ said the man. ‘Any other name, by any chance?’ said Vetinari. ‘Dustworthy,’ he said. He raised a finger in a kind of salute. ‘Captain, the Cockbill Boa rs.’ ‘Ah, you aren’t having a good season,’ said Vetinari. ‘You need fresh blood in the s quad, especially since Jimmy Wilkins got put into the Tanty after eating someone’s n ose. Naphill walked all over you because you lost your backbone when both of the Pin chpenny brothers were taken to the Lady Sybil, and you’ve been stuck down in the mud for three seasons. Okay, everyone says that Harry Capstick is making a very good sh owing since you bought him from Treacle Mine Tuesday for two crates of Winkle’s Old Peculiar and a sack of pork scratchings, which is not bad for a man with a wooden le g, but there’s never anyone in support.’ A circle of silence spread outwards from Vetinari and the swaying Swithin. Ridcully’s mouth had dropped open and Henry’s brandy glass remained half empty, an unusual occu rrence for a glass that’s been in the hands of a wizard for more than fifteen seconds . ‘Also, I’m hearing that your pies are leaving a lot to be desired, such as dead, cooked , organic content,’ continued Vetinari. ‘Can’t get the Shove behind you when the pies a re seen to walk about.’ ‘My ladsh,’ said Swithin, ‘are the besht there ish. It’sh not their fault they’re up a gainsht better people. They never getsh a chance to play shomeone they can beat. They alwaysh gives it one hundred and twenty pershent and you can’t give more than that. An yhow, how come you know all this shtuff? It’s not like we’re big in the league.’ ‘Oh, I take an interest,’ said Vetinari. ‘I believe that football is a lot like life.’ ‘There ish that, shir, there ish that. You does your besht and then shomeone kicksh you inna fork.’ ‘Then I strongly advise you to take an interest in our new football,’ said Vetinari, ‘whi ch will be about speed, skill and thinking.’ ‘Oh, yeah, right, I can do all them,’ said Swithin, at which point he fell off his chair. ‘Does this poor man have any friends here?’ said Vetinari, turning to the crowd. There was some diffidence among them concerning whether or not it was a good idea to be friends with Swithin at this point. Vetinari raised his voice: ‘I would just like a couple of people to take him back to h is home. I would like them to put him to bed and see that no trouble comes to him. Per haps they ought to stay with him until morning too, because he just might try to commi t suicide when he wakes up.’ ‘New Dawn For Football’ said the Times when Glenda picked it up the next morning. A s was its wont when it was reporting something it thought was particularly importan t, the paper’s headline was followed by two others in descending sizes of font: ‘Fo otballers Sign Up For The New Game’ was on the next line down and then on the next ‘New Balls A Success’. To Glenda’s surprise and dismay, Juliet still had a place on the front page, with the picture of her used smaller than yesterday, under the headline ‘Mystery Lady Vanishes’ , and a paragraph which simply said that no one had seen the mystery model, Jewels, si nce her debut (Glenda had to look this one up) two days ago. Honestly, she thought, no t finding somebody is news? And she was surprised that there was room for even this, s ince most of the front page was dedicated to the football, but the Times liked to star t several stories on the front page and then, just when they were getting interesting, whisk them off to page 35, or somewhere, to end their days behind the crossword and t he permanent advert for surgical trusses. The leader column inside was headed ‘Score One For Vetinari’. Glenda never normally read the leader column because there was only a certain number of times she was prep ared to see the word ‘however’ used in a 120-word article. She read the front-page story at first glumly and then with rising anger. Vetinari had done it. He had got them drunk and the fools had signed away their football for a pale variety cooked up by the palace and the university. Of course, minds are never quite th at simple. She had to admit to herself that she hated the stupidity of the present game . She hated the idiot fighting and mindless shoving, but it was hers to hate. It was so mething that people themselves had put together and rickety and stupid though it was, i t was theirs. And now the nobs were again picking up something that wasn’t theirs and s aying how wonderful it was. The old football was going to be banned. That was another l ittle razor blade in Lord Vetinari’s alcoholic candyfloss. She was also deeply suspicious about the urn, the picture of which, for some reason, wa s still on her kitchen table. Since what was claimed to be the original rules was writt en in an ancient language, how could anyone other than a nob know what they meant? She ran her eye down the description of the new rules. Some of the rules of old street foot ball had survived in there like monsters from another era. She recognized one that she had always liked: the ball shall be called the ball. The ball is the ball that is playe d as the ball by any three consecutive players, at which point it is the ball. She’d lo ved it when she first read it for the sheer stupidity of its phraseology. Apparently, i t had been added on a day, centuries ago, when an unfortunately severed head had rolled into play and had rather absent-mindedly replaced the ball currently in play on accoun t of some body, formerly belonging to the head, now lying on the original ball. That ki nd of thing stuck in the memory, especially because after the match the owner of the he ad was credited with scoring the winning goal. That rule and a few others stood out as remnants of a vanished glory in the list of Lo rd Vetinari’s new regulations. A few nods at the old game had been left in as a kind o f sop to public opinion. He should not be allowed to get away with it. Just because he was a tyrant and capable of having just about anybody killed on a whim, people acted as if they were scared of him. Someone ought to tell him off. The world had turned ups ide down several times. She hadn’t quite got her bearings, but making sure that Lord V etinari did not get away with it was suddenly very important. It was up to the people to decide when they were being stupid and old-fashioned; it wasn’t up to nobs to tell them what to do. With great determination she put on her coat over her apron and, after a moment’s th ought, took two freshly made Jammy Devils from her cupboard. Where a battering ram c annot work, really good shortcrust pastry can often break through. In the Oblong Office, the Patrician’s personal secretary looked at the stopwatch. ‘Fifty seconds slower than your personal best, I’m afraid, my lord.’ ‘Proof indeed that strong drink is a mocker, Drumknott,’ said Vetinari severely. ‘I suspect that no further proof is needed,’ said Drumknott, with his little secretarial smi le. ‘Although I would, in fairness, point out that Charlotte of the Times is emerging as t he most fearsome crossword compiler of all time, and they are a pretty fearsome lot. B ut her? Initialisms, odds and evens, hidden words, container reverses, and now diagona ls! How does she do it?’ ‘Well, you did it, sir.’ ‘I undid it. That is much easier.’ Vetinari raised a finger. ‘It is that woman who runs the pet shop in Pellicool Steps, depend upon it. She hasn’t been mentioned as a winner r ecently. She must be compiling the things.’ ‘The female mind is certainly a devious one, my lord.’ Vetinari looked at his secretary in surprise. ‘Well, of course it is. It has to deal with t he male one. I think—’ There was a gentle tap at one of the doors. The Patrician turned back to the Times wh ile Drumknott slipped out of the room. After some whispered exchanges, the secretary returned. ‘It would appear that a young woman has got in via the back gate by bribing the guards , sir. They accepted the bribes, as per your standing orders, and she has been shown i nto the anteroom, which she will soon find is locked. She wishes to see you because, s he says, she has a complaint. She is a maid.’ Lord Vetinari looked over the top of the paper. ‘Tell her I can’t help her with that. Pe rhaps, oh, I don’t know, a different perfume would help?’ ‘I mean she is a member of the serving classes, sir. Her name is Glenda Sugarbean.’ ‘Tell her—’ Vetinari hesitated, and then smiled. ‘Ah, yes, Sugarbean. Did she bribe t he guards with food? Something baked, perhaps?’ ‘Well done, sir! A large Jammy Devil apiece. May I ask how—?’ ‘She is a cook, Drumknott, not a maid. Show her in, by all means.’ The secretary looked a little resentful. ‘Are you sure this is wise, sir? I have already t old the guards to throw the foodstuffs away.’ ‘Food cooked by a Sugarbean? You may have committed a crime against high art, Drumk nott. I shall see her now.’ ‘I must point out that you have a full schedule this morning, my lord.’ ‘Quite so. It is your job to point this out, and I respect that. But I did not return u ntil half past four this morning and I distinctly remember stubbing my toe on the stair s. I am as drunk as a skunk, Drumknott, which of course means skunks are just as drunk as I. I must say the term is unfamiliar to me, and I had not thought hitherto of skunks in this context, but Mustrum Ridcully was kind enough to enlighten me. Allow me, then, a moment of indulgence.’ ‘Well, you are the Patrician, sir,’ said Drumknott. ‘You can do as you please.’ ‘That is kind of you to say so, but I did not, in fact, need reminding,’ said Vetinari, wi th what was almost certainly a smile. When the severe thin man opened the door, it was too late to flee. When he said, ‘His l ordship will see you now, Miss Sugarbean,’ it was too late to faint. What had she been thinking of? Had she been thinking at all? Glenda followed the man into the next room, which was oak panelled and sombre and the most uncluttered office she had ever seen. The room of the average wizard was so stu ffed with miscellaneous things that the walls were invisible. Here, even the desk was clear, apart from a pot of quill pens, an inkwell, an open copy of the Ankh-Morpork Times and–her eye stayed fixed on this one, unable to draw itself away–a mug with the slogan ‘To the world’s Greatest Boss’. It was so out of place it might have been an intrusion from another universe. A chair was quietly placed behind her. This was just as well, because when the man at the desk looked up she sat down abruptly. Vetinari pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. ‘Miss…Sugarbean, there are whole r ooms in this palace full of people who want to see me, and they are powerful and impor tant people, or at least they think they are. Yet Mister Drumknott has kindly inserted in my schedule, ahead of the Postmaster General and the Mayor of Sto Lat, a meeting w ith a young cook with her coat on over her apron and an intent, it says here, of “havi ng it out with me”. And this is because I take notice of incongruity, and you, Miss Su garbean, are incongruous. What is it you want?’ ‘Who says I want anything?’ ‘Everyone wants something when they are in front of me, Miss Sugarbean, even if it is only to be somewhere else.’ ‘All right! You made all the captains drunk last night and got them to sign that letter in the paper!’ The stare did not flicker. That was much worse than, well, anything. ‘Young lady, drink levels all mankind. It is the ultimate democrat, if you like that sor t of thing. A drunk beggar is as drunk as a lord, and so is a lord. And have you ever no ticed that all drunks can understand one another, no matter how drunk they are and how d ifferent their native tongues? I take it for a certainty that you are a relation to Augu sta Sugarbean?’ The question, tagged on to the praises of inebriation, hit her between t he eyes, scattering her thoughts. ‘What? Oh. Well, yes. That’s right. She was my grandmother.’ ‘And she was a cook at the Guild of Assassins when she was younger?’ ‘That’s right. She always made a joke about how she wouldn’t let them use any—’ She s topped quickly, but Vetinari finished the sentence for her. ‘—of her cakes to poison people. And we always obeyed, too, because as you surely know , miss, no one likes to upset a good cook. Is she still with us?’ ‘She passed on two years ago, sir.’ ‘But since you are a Sugarbean, I assume you have acquired a few more grandmothers a s a replacement? Your grandmother was always a stalwart in the community and you mus t take all those little dainties for someone?’ ‘You can’t know that, you’re only guessing. But all right, they’re for all the old ladies that don’t get out much. Anyway, it’s a perk.’ ‘Oh, but of course. Every job has its little perks. Why, I don’t expect Drumknott here h as bought a paperclip in his life, eh, Drumknott?’ The secretary, tidying papers in the background, gave a wan little smile. ‘Look, I only take leftovers—’ Glenda began, but this was waved away. ‘You are here about the football,’ said Vetinari. ‘You were at the dinner last night, bu t the university likes its serving girls to be tall and I have an eye for such things. T herefore, I assume you made it your business to be there without bothering your superior s. Why?’ ‘You’re taking their football away from them!’ The Patrician steepled his fingers and rested his chin on them while he looked at her. He’s trying to make me nervous, she thought. It’s working, oh, it’s working. Vetinari filled in the silence. ‘Your grandmother used to do people’s thinking for th em. That trait runs in families, always on the female side. Capable women, scurrying about in a world where everyone else seems to be seven years old and keeps on falling over in the playground, picking them up and watching them run right out there again. I imagine you run the Night Kitchen? Too many people in the big one. You want spaces you can control, beyond the immediate reach of fools.’ If he’d added ‘Am I right?’ like some windbag seeking applause, she would have hated h im. But he was reading her from the inside of her head, in a calm, matter-of-fact way. She had to suppress a shiver, because it was all true. ‘I’m taking nothing from anybody, Miss Sugarbean. I am simply changing the playground, ’ the man went on. ‘What skill is there in the mob pushing and shoving? It is nothing more than a way of bringing on a sweat. No, we must move with the times. I know the Ti mes moves with me. The captains will moan, no doubt, but they are getting old. Dying i n the game is a romantic idea when you are young, but when you are older the boot is i n the other ear. They know this, even if they won’t admit it, and while they will prot est, they will take care not to be taken seriously. In fact, far from taking, I am giv ing much. Acceptance, recognition, a certain standing, a gold-ish cup and the chance t o keep what remains of their teeth.’ All she could manage after this was, ‘All right, but you tricked them!’ ‘Really? They did not have to drink to excess, did they?’ ‘You knew they would!’ ‘No. I suspected they might. They could have been more cautious. They should have been more cautious. I’d prefer to say that I led them along the correct path with a little g uile rather than drove them along it with sticks. I possess many types of stick, Miss S ugarbean.’ ‘And you’ve been spying on me! You knew about the dainties.’ ‘Spying? Madam, it was once said of a great prince that his every thought was of his pe ople. Like him, I watch over my people. I am just better at it, that’s all. As for the dainties business, that was a simple deduction from the known facts of human nature.’ There was a lot that Glenda wanted to say, but in some very definite way she sensed th at the interview–or at least the part of it that involved her opening her mouth–was ov er. Nevertheless, she said, ‘Why aren’t you drunk?’ ‘I beg your pardon?’ ‘You must weigh about half of what they do and all of ’em went home in wheelbarrows. You drank as much as them and you look fresh as a daisy. What is the trick? Did you get the wizards to magic the beer out of your stomach?’ She had stopped pushing her luck a long time ago. Now it was out of control, like a sta rtled carthorse that can’t stop because of the huge load bouncing and rumbling along be hind it. Vetinari frowned. ‘My dear lady, anyone drunk enough to let wizards, who themselves had just been partaking copiously of the fruit of the vine, I might add, take anything out of him would already be so drunk as to be dead. To forestall your next comment, the ho p is also, technically, a vine. I am, in fact, drunk. Is this not so, Drumknott?’ ‘You did indeed consume some twelve pints of very strong malted beverage, sir. Techn ically, you must be drunk.’ ‘Idiosyncratically put, Drumknott. Thank you.’ ‘You don’t act drunk!’ ‘No, but I do act sober quite well, don’t you think? And I must confess that this morn ing’s crossword was something of a tussle. Procatalepsis and pleonasm in one day? I ha d to use the dictionary! The woman is a fiend! Nevertheless, thank you for coming, Mis s Sugarbean. I recall your grandmother’s bubble and squeak with great fondness. If she had been a sculptress, it would have been an exquisite statue, with no arms and an en igmatic smile. It is such a shame that some masterpieces are so transitory.’ The proud cook in Glenda rose unstoppably. ‘But she passed the recipe on to me.’ ‘A legacy better than jewels,’ said Vetinari, nodding. Actually a few jewels would not have gone amiss, Glenda reflected. But there was a se cret of Bubble and Squeak, of course, right out there in the open where everyone coul d miss it. And as for the Truth of Salmagundi… ‘I believe this audience is at an end, Miss Sugarbean,’ said Vetinari. ‘I have so much to do and so have you, I am sure.’ He picked up his pen and turned his attention to t he documents in front of him. ‘Goodbye, Miss Sugarbean.’ And that was it. Somehow, she was at the door, and it had almost closed behind her wh en a voice said, ‘And thank you for your kindnesses to Nutt.’ The door clicked shut, nearly hitting her in the face as she spun round. ‘Was that a wise thing for me to have said, do you think?’ said Vetinari, when she had gone. ‘Possibly not, sir, but she will merely assume it is her that we are watching,’ said Dru mknott smoothly. ‘Possibly we should. That’s a Sugarbean woman for you, Drumknott, little domestic sl aves until they think someone has been wronged and then they go to war like Queen Yn ci of Lancre, with chariot wheels spinning and arms and legs all over the place.’ ‘And no father,’ observed Drumknott. ‘Not very good for a child in those days.’ ‘Only served to make her tougher. One can only hope she doesn’t take it into her head to enter politics.’ ‘Is that not what she is doing now, sir?’ ‘Well noted, Drumknott. Do I appear drunk?’ ‘In my opinion no, sir, but you seem unusually…talkative.’ ‘Coherently?’ ‘To the minutest scruple, sir. The Postmaster is waiting, sir, and some of the guild lead ers want to talk to you urgently.’ ‘I suspect they want to play football?’ ‘Yes, sir. They intend to form teams. I cannot for the life of me understand why.’ Vetinari put down his pen. ‘Drumknott, if you saw a ball lying invitingly on the ground , would you kick it?’ The secretary’s forehead wrinkled. ‘How would the invitation be couched, sir?’ ‘I’m sorry?’ ‘Would it be, for example, a written note attached to the ball by person or persons un known?’ ‘I was rather inclining to the idea that you might perhaps feel simply that the whole wor ld was silently willing you to give said ball a hearty kick?’ ‘No, sir. There are too many variables. Possibly an enemy or japester might have assum ed that I would take some action of the kind and made the ball out of concrete or simi lar material, in the hope I might do myself a serious or humorous injury. So, I would check first.’ ‘And then, if all was in order, you would kick the ball?’ ‘To what purpose or profit, sir?’ ‘Interesting question. I suppose for the joy of seeing it fly.’ Drumknott seemed to consider this for a while, and then shook his head. ‘I am sorry, sir , but you have lost me at this point.’ ‘Ah, you are a pillar of rock in a world of changes, Drumknott. Well done.’ ‘I was wondering if I could just add something, sir,’ said the secretary solemnly. ‘The floor is yours, Drumknott.’ ‘I would not like it thought that I do not buy my own paperclips, sir. I enjoy owning m y own paperclips. It means that they are mine. I thought it helpful I should tell you t hat in a measured and non-confrontational way.’ Vetinari looked at the ceiling for a few moments and then said: ‘Thank you for your fra nkness. I shall consider the record straightened and the matter closed.’ ‘Thank you, sir.’ Sator Square was where the city went when it was upset, baffled or fearful. People who had no real idea why they were doing so congregated to listen to other people who als o did not know anything, on the basis that ignorance shared is ignorance doubled. Ther e were clusters of people there this morning and several scratch teams, for it is writ ten, or more probably scrawled on a wall somewhere, that wherever two or more are gath ered together, at least one will have something to kick. Tin cans and tightly wound ba lls of rag were annoying adults on all sides, but as Glenda hurried nearer, the big do ors of the university opened and Ponder Stibbons stepped out, somewhat inexpertly boun cing one of the wretched new leather balls. Gloing! Silence clanged, as rolling cans r attled on unheeded. All eyes were on the wizard and on the ball. He threw it down and there was a double gloing! as it bounced off the stones. And then he kicked it. It was a bit wussy as kicks went, that kick, but no one in the square had ever kicked anythi ng even one tenth as far, and every male chased after it, propelled by ancient instinct. They’ve won, Glenda thought glumly. A ball that goes gloing! when others go clunk… Well, where’s the contest? She hurried on to the back entrance. In a world that was getting too complicated, wher e she could barge in on the black-hearted Tyrant and walk out unscathed, she needed a place to go that wasn’t spinning. The Night Kitchen was as familiar as her bedroom, he r place, under her control. She could face anything there. There was a figure lounging against the wall by the rubbish bins, and for some reason s he identified it right away, despite the heavy cloak and the hat pulled down over the e yes; no one she had ever met could relax as perfectly as Pepe. ‘Wotcher, Glenda,’ said a voice from under the hat. ‘What are you doing here?’ she said. ‘Do you know how hard it is to find somebody in this city when you can’t tell anyone what they look like and aren’t really sure you can remember their name?’ said Pepe. ‘ Where’s Jools?’ ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I haven’t seen her since last night.’ ‘It might be a good idea to find her before other people do,’ said Pepe. ‘What people?’ said Glenda. Pepe shrugged. ‘Everybody,’ he said. ‘They’re mostly looking in the dwarf districts rig ht now, but it can only be a matter of time. We can’t move down at the shop for them an d it was all I could do to sneak out.’ ‘What are they after her for?’ said Glenda, panic rising. ‘I saw in the paper that peopl e were trying to find her, but she hasn’t done anything wrong!’ ‘I don’t think you exactly grasp what’s going on,’ said the (possible) dwarf. ‘They want to find her to ask her a lot of questions.’ ‘Has this got anything to do with Lord Vetinari?’ said Glenda suspiciously. ‘I wouldn’t have thought so,’ said Pepe. ‘What sort of questions, then?’ ‘Oh, you know-What is your favourite colour? What do you like to eat? Are you an i tem with anybody? What advice do you have for young people today? Do you wax? Wher e do you get your hair done? What is your favourite spoon?’ ‘I don’t think she’s got a favourite spoon,’ said Glenda, waiting for the world to make some sense. Pepe patted her on the shoulder. ‘Look, she’s on the front page of the paper, isn’t she? And the Times keeps on at us about wanting to do a lifestyle profile of her. That might n ot actually be a bad thing, but it’s up to you.’ ‘I don’t think she’s got a lifestyle,’ said Glenda, a little bewildered. ‘She’s never sai d. And she doesn’t wax. She hardly even dusts. Anyway, just tell them all that she doesn’ t want to talk to anybody.’ Pepe’s expression went strange for a moment, then he said with care, like a man, or dwa rf, struggling to be heard across a cultural divide, ‘Do you think I was talking about furniture?’ ‘Well, what else? And I don’t think her housework is anyone else’s business.’ ‘Don’t you understand? She’s popular, and the more we tell people they can’t talk to h er, the more they want to, and the more you say no the more interested they become. Pe ople want to know all about her,’ said Pepe. ‘Like what her favourite spoon is?’ said Glenda. ‘I might have been a bit ironic,’ said Pepe. ‘But there’s newspaper writers all over th e city looking for her and Bu-bubble want to do a two-page spread on her.’ He paused. ‘ That means they’ll write about her and it’ll take two pages,’ he volunteered helpfully. ‘The Low King of the dwarfs has said that she is an icon for our times, according to S atblatt.’ ‘What’s Satblatt?’ said Glenda. ‘Oh, the dwarf newspaper,’ said Pepe. ‘You’ll probably never see it.’ ‘But she was just in a fashion show!’ wailed Glenda. ‘She was just walking up and down! I’m sure she doesn’t want to get involved in all that sort of thing.’ Pepe gave her a sharp look. ‘Are you?’ he said. And then she thought, really thought about Juliet, who would read Bu-bubble from cover to cover, wouldn’t generally go near the Times, but would absorb all kinds of rubbish a bout frivolous and silly people. People that glittered. ‘I don’t know where she is,’ sh e said. ‘I really haven’t seen her since yesterday.’ ‘Ah, a mystery disappearance,’ said Pepe. ‘Look, we’re already learning about this so rt of thing down at the shop. Can we go somewhere a bit more private? I hope none of them followed me up here.’ ‘Well, I can smuggle you in through the back entrance, as long as there isn’t a bledlow around,’ said Glenda. ‘Fine by me. I’m used to that sort of thing.’ She led him through the doorway and into the maze of cellars and yards that contrasted rather interestingly with the fine frontage of Unseen University. ‘Got anything to drink?’ said Pepe behind her. ‘Water!’ snapped Glenda. ‘I’ll drink water when fish climb out of it to take a piss, but thank you all the same,’ sa id Pepe. And then Glenda caught the smell of baking coming from the Night Kitchen. She was the only one who baked in her kitchen! No one else was supposed to bake in her kitchen. Baking was her responsibility. Hers. She ran up the steps with Pepe behind her and no ted that the mystery cook had yet to master the second most important rule of cooking , which was to tidy things up afterwards. The place was a mess. There were even lumps of dough on the floor. In fact, it looked as though it had been possessed by some ki nd of frenzy. And in the middle of it all, curled up on Glenda’s battered and slightl y rancid old armchair, was Juliet. ‘Just like Sleeping Beauty, ain’t it?’ said Pepe behind her. Glenda ignored him and hurried along the rows of ovens. ‘She’s been baking pies. What on earth did she want to come along and bake pies for? She’s never been any good at ba king pies.’ That’s because I’ve never let her bake a pie, she told herself. That’s bec ause as soon as she found anything difficult you took it away and did it yourself, her inner voice scolded. Glenda opened oven door after oven door. They had arrived just in time. By the smell of it, a couple of dozen assorted pies were cooked to a turn. ‘How about a drink?’ said Pepe, in whom thirst sprang eternal. ‘I’m sure there’s bran dy. Every kitchen has some brandy in it somewhere.’ He watched as Glenda pulled the pies out, using her apron to protect her hands. Pepe re garded the pies with the indifference of a man who likes to drink his meals and listene d to Glenda’s sotto voce monologue as pie after pie was laid out on the table. ‘I never told her to do this. Why did she do this?’ Because I did tell her to do this, sort of, that’s why. ‘And these are not half bad pies,’ she said more loudly. In surprise. Juliet opened her eyes, looked around blearily, and then her face contorted in panic. ‘It’s okay, I’ve taken them all out,’ said Glenda. ‘Well done.’ ‘I didn’t know what else to do and Trev was busy with the footballing and I thought th ey would be wantin’ pies tomorrow and I thought I better do some,’ said Juliet. ‘Sorry .’ Glenda took a step backwards. How to begin? she wondered. How to unravel it and then r avel it all back up again in a better shape because she had been wrong? Juliet hadn’t just walked up and down with clothes on, she had become some kind of a dream. A dream of clothes. Sparkling and alive and tantalizingly possible. And in Glenda’s memory of the fashion show, she literally shone, as if being lit from the inside. It was a kind of magic and it shouldn’t be making pies. She cleared her throat. ‘I’ve taught you a lot of things, haven’t I, Juliet?’ said Glenda. ‘Yes, Glenda,’ said Juliet. ‘And they’ve always been useful, haven’t they?’ ‘Yes, Glenda. I remember it was you that said I should always keep my hand on my ha’ penny and I’m very glad that you did.’ There was a strange noise from Pepe, and Glenda, feeling her face go red, didn’t dare l ook at him. ‘Then I’ve got a bit more advice for you, Juliet.’ ‘Yes, Glenda.’ ‘First, never, ever apologize for anything that doesn’t need apologizing for,’ said Glen da. ‘And especially never apologize for just being yourself.’ ‘Yes, Glenda.’ ‘Got that?’ ‘Yes, Glenda.’ ‘No matter what happens, always remember that you now know how to make a good pi e.’ ‘Yes, Glenda.’ ‘Pepe is here because Bu-bubble wants to write something about you,’ said Glenda. ‘You r picture was in the paper again this morning and—’ Glenda stopped. ‘She is going to b e all right, isn’t she?’ she said. Pepe paused in the act of surreptitiously removing a bottle from a cupboard. ‘You ca n trust me and Madame on that,’ he said. ‘Only people who are very trustworthy would dare to look as untrustworthy as me and Madame.’ ‘And all she will have to do is show off clothes—Don’t drink that, that’s cider vinegar! ’ ‘I’m only drinking the cider bit,’ said Pepe. ‘Yes, all she’ll have to do is show off cl othes, but to judge from the mob back at the shop there’s going to be people who want he r to show off shoes, hats, hairstyles…’ ‘No hanky panky,’ said Glenda. ‘I don’t think you’ll find, anywhere in the world, a greater expert in both hanky and p anky than Madame. In fact, I would be surprised if you, Glenda, knew one hundredth of t he hanky and panky that she does, especially as she invented quite a lot of it herself. And since we’ll notice it when we see it, we’ll keep an eye on her.’ ‘And she’s got to eat proper meals and get a good night’s sleep,’ said Glenda. Pepe nodded, although she expected that both those concepts were quite alien to him. ‘And paid,’ she added. ‘We’ll cut her in on the profits if she works exclusively for us,’ said Pepe. ‘Madame wan ts to talk to you about that.’ ‘Yes, someone might want to pay her more than you do,’ said Glenda. ‘My, my, my. How fast we learn. I’m sure Madame will have great fun talking to you.’ Juliet looked from one to the other, sleep still wreathing her face. ‘You want me to go back to the shop?’ ‘I don’t want you to do anything,’ said Glenda. ‘It’s up to you, okay? It’s just up to you , but it seems to me that if you stay here then basically what you’ll be doing is pies.’ ‘Well, not just pies,’ said Juliet. ‘Well, no, fair enough, there are also flans, bubble and squeak and assorted late-nigh t dainties,’ said Glenda. ‘But you know what I mean. On the other hand, you could go a nd show off all these fancy clothes and go to lots of fancy places a long, long way fr om here and see a lot of new people and you’d know that if it all goes pear-shaped you could always make it pie-shaped.’ ‘Hah, nice one,’ said Pepe, who’d found another bottle. ‘I really would like to go,’ said Juliet. ‘Then go now. I mean right now, or at least as soon as he’s finished drinking the ketchu p.’ ‘But I’ll have to go back for my stuff!’ Glenda reached down inside her vest and pulled out a burgundy-coloured booklet with the seal of Ankh-Morpork on it. ‘What’s that?’ said Juliet. ‘Your bank book. Your money’s safe in the bank and you can take it out any time you want.’ Juliet turned the bank book over and over in her hands. ‘I don’t fink anyone in my fa mily’s ever been in a bank except for Uncle Geoffrey and they caught up with ’im even before he got home.’ ‘Keep quiet about it. Don’t go home. Buy yourself lots of new stuff. Get yourself sor ted out and then go back and see your dad and everybody when you have. The point is, even if you don’t go right away, in your mind you should always be going. But the imp ortant thing is to go right now. Move out. Get on. Climb up. All the things I should have done.’ ‘What about Trev?’ said Juliet. Glenda had to think about that. ‘How are things with you and Trev, then? I saw you two talking last night.’ ‘Talking is allowed,’ said Juliet defensively. ‘Anyhow, he was only telling me how he w as going to get himself a better job.’ ‘Doing what?’ said Glenda. ‘I’ve never seen him doing a straight day’s work in all the years I’ve known him.’ ‘He says he’s going to find something,’ said Juliet. ‘He said Nutt told ’im to. He said Nutt said that when Trev finds out who Trev is, like, he will, like, know what he can do . So I told ’im he was Trevor Likely, and he said that was, you know, helpful.’ I’m stuck, aren’t I? Glenda told herself. I’m talking about changing and getting out, so I have to allow that maybe he’s going to, too. Aloud, she said, ‘It’s up to you. It’s all up to you, but just mind that he keeps his hands to himself.’ ‘He always keeps his hands to himself,’ said Juliet. ‘It’s a bit worryin’. I’ve never had to think about kneeing him in the tonker, not once.’ There was a strangled laugh from Pepe, who had just discovered the wow-wow sauce. T he bottle was almost empty and, in theory, he should have no stomach left. ‘Never, ever?’ said Glenda, mystified at this unnatural history. ‘No, he’s always very polite and just a bit sad.’ That must mean he’s planning something, Glenda’s inner self provided. She said, ‘Well, it’s up to you. I can’t help here, but remember, you’ve always got your knee.’ ‘And what about…?’ Juliet began. ‘Look,’ said Glenda firmly, ‘either you go off now and see the world and earn lots of mo ney and get your picture in the papers and all of the other things I know you would real ly like to do, or you have to sort it out for yourself.’ ‘We’re going to be here for some time,’ said Pepe. ‘You know, this sauce would be nice with a little bit of vodka in it. It really would give it a little bit of zest. A little bit of sparkle. Come to think of it, a lot of vodka would be even better.’ ‘But I love ’im!’ Juliet wailed. ‘That’s all right, then, stay here,’ said Glenda. ‘Have you even kissed?’ ‘No! He never quite gets round to it.’ ‘Perhaps he’s one of those gentlemen who don’t like the ladies,’ said Pepe primly. ‘And we could really do without your input,’ snapped Glenda, turning on him. ‘I mean, for some of the others, like Rotten Johnny, I nearly wear my knee out, but Tre v’s just…sweet, all the time.’ ‘Look, I know you told me to keep out of this, and I know I’ve been a terrible sinner i n my time and hope to remain so, but I have been around the houses more times than a po stman and the reason for this imp ass is obvious,’ Pepe volunteered. ‘He’s got the nous to see that she’s so beautiful that she should be painted standing on some shell somew here without her vest on and little fat pink babies inexplicably zooming around all ove r the place and he’s some kid with nothing more than a bit of street smarts. I mean, it ’s pointless, isn’t it? He’s not going to stand a chance and he knows it, even if he do esn’t know he knows it.’ ‘I’d give him a kiss if he wanted one and would definitely not knee him in the tonker,’ s aid Juliet. ‘You have to sort it out,’ said Glenda. ‘I can’t sort it out for you. If I tried, it would ge t sorted out all wrong.’ ‘But—’ Juliet began. ‘No, that’s it,’ said Glenda. ‘Off you go, buy yourself lots of nice stuff–it’s your mone y. And if you don’t look after her, Mister Pepe, a knee would only be the start.’ Pepe nodded and very gently tugged Juliet away and down the stone steps. Now what would I do at this point if I were in a romantic novel? Glenda said to hersel f as the footsteps died away. Her reading had left her pretty much an expert on what t o do if you were in a romantic novel, although one of the things that really annoyed h er about romantic novels, as she had confided to Mr Wobble, was that no one did any co oking in them. After all, cooking was important. Would it hurt to have a pie-making se quence? Would a novel called Pride and Buns be totally out of the question? Even a few tips on how to make fairy cakes would help, and be pretty much in period as well. She ’d be a little happier if, even, the lovers could be thrown into the mixing bowl of li fe. At least it would be some acknowledgement that people actually ate food. Around about now she knew, and knew all through her body, that she should be dissolvin g into a flood of tears. She started cleaning up the floor. Then she cleaned up the ov ens. She always left them sparkling, but that was no reason not to clean them again. S he used an old toothbrush to ease minute amounts of dirt from odd corners, scoured eve ry pot with fine sand, emptied the grates, riddled the cinders, swept the floor, tied two brooms together to dislodge the spider’s webs of years from the high wall, and scr ubbed again until the soapy water poured down the stone stairs and washed away the foo tprints. Oh, yes–and one other thing. There were some anchovies on the freezing slab. She warm ed up a couple and went to the large three-legged cauldron in the corner of the kitch en where last night she had chalked the words ‘Do Not Touch’. She took off the lid an d peered into its depths. The crab that Verity Pushpram had given her last night, whi ch seemed a very long time ago now, waved its eyeballs at her. ‘I wonder what would have happened if I had left the lid off?’ she said. ‘I wonder how f ast crabs learn?’ She dropped in the soggy anchovies, which seemed to meet with crabby approval. With th at done, she stood in the middle of the kitchen and looked for something else to clean . The black iron would never shine, but every surface had been scrubbed and dried. As for the plates, you could eat your dinner off them. If you wanted a job done properly, you had to do it yourself. Juliet’s version of cleanliness was next to godliness, whi ch was to say it was erratic, past all understanding and was seldom seen. Something brushed against her face. She absent-mindedly swiped at it and found her fi ngers holding a black feather. Those wretched things in the pipes. Someone ought to d o something about them. She took her longest broom and banged on a pipe. ‘Go on! Get out of there!’ she yelled. There was a scuffling in the darkness and a faint ‘Awk! Aw k!’ ‘ ’scuse me, miss,’ said a voice, and she looked down the steps into the misshapen fa ce of…What was his name? Oh, yes. ‘Good morning, Mister Concrete,’ she said to the tr oll. She couldn’t help but notice the brown stains coming from his nose. ‘Can’t find Mister Trev,’ Concrete stated. ‘Haven’t seen him all morning,’ said Glenda. ‘Can’t find Mister Trev,’ the troll repeated, louder. ‘Why do you need him?’ said Glenda. As far as she knew, the vats just about ran themse lves. You told Concrete to dribble candles and he dribbled candles until he’d run out of candles. ‘Mister Nutt sick,’ said Concrete. ‘Can’t find Mister Trev.’ ‘Take me to Mister Nutt right now!’ said Glenda. It’s a bit harsh to call anybody a denizen, but the people who lived and worked in the candle vats fitted the word to a T. The vats were, in fact, their den. If you ever saw them anywhere in the underground maze, they were always scuttling very fast, but most o f the time they just worked and slept and stayed alive. Nutt was lying on an old mattre ss with his arms wrapped tightly around himself. Glenda took one look and turned to the troll. ‘Go and find Mister Trev,’ she said. ‘Can’t find Mister Trev,’ said the troll. ‘Keep on looking!’ She knelt down beside Nutt. His eyes had rolled back inside his he ad. ‘Mister Nutt, can you hear me?’ He seemed to wake. ‘You must go away,’ he said. ‘It will be very dangerous. The door will open.’ ‘What door is that?’ she said, trying to remain cheerful. She looked at the denizens, who were watching her with a kind of meek horror. ‘Can’t one of you find something t o put over him?’ The mere question sent them scurrying in panic. ‘I have seen the door, so it will open again,’ said Nutt. ‘I can’t see any door, Mister Nutt,’ said Glenda, looking around. Nutt’s eyes opened wide. ‘It’s in my head.’ There was no privacy to the vats; it was just a wider room off the long, endless corridor . People went past all the time. ‘I think you may have been overdoing it, Mister Nutt,’ said Glenda. ‘You rush around w orking all hours, worrying yourself sick. You need a rest.’ To her surprise, one of th e denizens turned up holding a blanket, quite large parts of which were still flexible . She put it over him just as Trev arrived. He had no choice about arriving as Concret e was dragging him by the collar. He looked down at Nutt and then up at Glenda. ‘What’ s happened to him?’ ‘I don’t know.’ She raised a finger to her head and swivelled it a little, the universal s ymbol for ‘gone nuts’. ‘You must go away. Things will be very dangerous,’ Nutt moaned. ‘Please tell us what is going on,’ said Glenda. ‘Please tell me.’ ‘I can’t,’ said Nutt. ‘I cannot say the words.’ ‘There are words you want to say?’ said Trev. ‘Words that don’t want to be said. Strong words.’ ‘Can’t we help?’ Glenda persevered. ‘Are you sick?’ said Trev. ‘No, Mister Trev. I passed an adequate bowel motion this morning.’ That was a flash of the old Nutt-precise, but slightly odd. ‘Sick in the head?’ said Glenda. That came out of desperation. ‘Yes. In the head,’ said Nutt. ‘Shadows. Doors. Can’t tell you.’ ‘Is there anyone who can cure that kind of sickness?’ Nutt didn’t answer for a while and then said, ‘Yes. You must find me a philosopher tra ined in Uberwald. They will help the thoughts come straight.’ ‘Isn’t that what you did for Trev?’ said Glenda. ‘You told him what he was thinking abo ut his dad and everything, and that made him a lot happier, didn’t it, Trev?’ ‘Yes, it did,’ said Trev. ‘And there’s no need to elbow me in the ribs like that. It rea lly did help. Couldn’t you be hypnotized?’ he said to Nutt. ‘I saw a man in the music ha ll once and he just waved his shiny watch at them and it’s amazing the kind of things th ey did. Barked like dogs, even.’ ‘Yes. Hypnosis is an important part of the philosophy,’ said Nutt. ‘It helps to relax the patient so that the thoughts get a chance to be heard.’ ‘Well, there you are, then,’ said Glenda. ‘Why not try doing it on yourself? I’m sure I could find something shiny for you to wave.’ Trev pulled his beloved tin can out of his pocket. ‘Tra-la. And I think I’ve got a piece of string here somewhere.’ ‘That is all very well, but I would not be able to ask myself the right kinds of questio ns because I will have been hypnotized. How the questions are posed is very important,’ said Nutt. ‘I know what,’ said Trev. ‘I’ll tell you to ask yourself to ask the right questions. Yo u’d know what questions to ask if it was someone else, wouldn’t you?’ ‘Yes, Mister Trev.’ ‘You didn’t need to hypnotize Trev,’ Glenda pointed out. ‘No, but his thoughts were close to the surface. I fear that mine will not be so easy to a ccess.’ ‘Can you really be hypnotized to ask yourself the right questions?’ ‘In The Doors of Deception, Fussbinder did report on a way of hypnotizing himself,’ sai d Nutt. ‘It is conceivably possible…’ His voice trailed off. ‘Then let’s get on with it,’ said Trev. ‘Better out than in, as my old granny used to say.’ ‘I think perhaps that it is not such a good idea.’ ‘Didn’t do me any harm,’ said Trev robustly. ‘The things that I do not know…The things that I do not know…’ muttered Nutt. ‘What about them?’ said Glenda. ‘The things that I do not know…’ said Nutt, ‘I think are behind the door, because I thi nk I put them there because I think I do not want to know them.’ ‘So you must know what it is you don’t want to know?’ said Glenda. ‘Yes.’ ‘Well, how bad could it be?’ said Trev. ‘Perhaps it is very bad,’ said Nutt. ‘What would you say if it was me?’ said Glenda. ‘I want the truth, now.’ ‘Well,’ said Nutt, stuttering slightly, ‘I think I would say that you should look beh ind the door to face the things that you do not want to know so we may confront them together. That would certainly be the advice of Von Kladpoll in Doppelte Berührungsse mpfindung. Indeed, doing so would almost be a fundamental part of the analysis of the hidden mind.’ ‘Well then,’ said Glenda, standing back. ‘But what sort of bad things could possibly be in your head, Miss Glenda?’ said Nutt, m anaging gallantry even in the fetid circumstances of the vats. ‘Oh, there’s a few,’ said Glenda. ‘You don’t go through life without picking up a few.’ ‘I’ve had dreams in the night,’ said Nutt. ‘Oh, well, everyone has bad dreams,’ said Glenda. ‘These were more than dreams,’ said Nutt. He unfolded his arms and held up a hand. Trev whistled. Glenda said, ‘Oh,’ and then, ‘Should they be like that?’ ‘I have no idea,’ said Nutt. ‘Do they hurt?’ ‘No.’ ‘Well, maybe that sort of thing ’appens when goblins get a bit older,’ said Trev. ‘Yes, perhaps they need claws,’ said Glenda. ‘Yesterday was wonderful,’ said Nutt. ‘I was part of the team. The team were aroun d me. I was happy. And now…’ Trev held up a piece of grubby string and the battered but shiny tin can. ‘Perhaps you s hould find out?’ ‘I might be getting all this wrong,’ said Glenda, ‘but if you don’t want to know what t he things are that you don’t want to know, then that means that there are going to be e ven more things that you don’t want to know and I imagine that sooner or later, if that goes on, your head will cave in around the hole.’ ‘There is something in what both of you say,’ said Nutt reluctantly. ‘Then give me a hand to put him on the couch,’ said Trev. ‘Should he be covered in swe at like that?’ ‘I don’t think so,’ said Glenda. ‘I would be happier if you chained me down,’ said Nutt. ‘What? Why do you think we should do that?’ said Glenda. ‘I think you should beware. Some things leak around the door. They may be bad.’ Glenda looked at the claws. They were a shiny black and, in their way, quite neat, but it was hard to imagine them being used for, say, painting a picture or cooking an ome lette. They were claws, and claws were for clawing, weren’t they? But this was Mr Nutt . Even with claws it was still Mr Nutt. ‘Shall we get started?’ said Trev. ‘I insist on the chains,’ said Nutt. ‘There are all sorts of metal things in the old store room four doors down. I saw chains there. Please hurry.’ Automatically Glenda looked down at the claws and saw they had grown longer. ‘Yes, T rev, please hurry.’ Trev followed her gaze and said brightly, ‘I’ll be back before you know I’ve gone.’ In fact, it was less than a couple of minutes, and she could hear the clanking as he d ragged them all the way down the passageway. Glenda was fighting tears at the simple strangeness of the whole business. Nutt lay the re, looking at the ceiling, as they lifted him on to the couch and carefully wrapped th e chains around him. ‘There’s padlocks, but there’s no keys. I can close them, but I can’t open them.’ ‘Close them,’ said Nutt. Glenda had very seldom cried, and she was trying not to now. ‘I don’t think we should b e doing this,’ she said. ‘Not here in the vats. People are watching.’ ‘Please swing your pendulum, Mister Trev,’ said Nutt. Trev shrugged and did so. ‘Now you have to start telling me that I am feeling sleepy, Mister Trev,’ said Nutt. Trev cleared his throat and swung the shiny can back and forth. ‘You are definitely fee lin’ sleepy. Extremely sleepy.’ ‘That is good. I am feeling enormously sleepy,’ said Nutt wearily. ‘And now you must ask me to analyse myself.’ ‘What does that mean?’ said Glenda sharply, always on the lookout for dangerous word s. ‘I’m sorry,’ said Nutt. ‘I mean, help me examine in detail the workings of my own mi nd by means of question and answer.’ ‘But I don’t know the questions to ask,’ said Trev. ‘I do,’ said Nutt patiently, ‘but you must instruct me to do it.’ Trev shrugged. ‘Mister Nutt, you must find out what is wrong with Mister Nutt,’ he sai d. ‘Ah yes,’ said Nutt, his tone of voice changing slightly. ‘Are ve comfortable, Mister N utt? Yes, thank you. The chains hardly chafe at all. Verrry good. Now, tell me about yo ur mother, Mister Nutt. I am familiar with the concept, but I never had a mother as I r ecall. Thank you for asking anyway,’ said Nutt. And so the monological dialogue began. The other two sat on the stone steps as the quiet voice unravelled itself until: ‘Ah yes, ze library. Is zere something in ze library, Mi ster Nutt?’ ‘There are many books in the library.’ ‘What else is in ze library, Mister Nutt?’ ‘There are many chairs and ladders in the library.’ ‘And what is in ze library zat you do not want to tell me about, Mister Nutt?’ They waited. At last, the voice said, ‘There’s a cupboard in the library.’ ‘Is zere anything special about zis cupboard, Mister Nutt?’ Another pause, another faint little voice: ‘I must not open the cupboard.’ ‘Why is half of him talking like someone from Uberwald?’ said Glenda to Trev, forgetti ng the notoriously acute sense of hearing. ‘Questions asked in a mild Uberwaldian accent in examinations of zis nature appear to put ze patient more at ease,’ said Nutt. ‘And now I would be pleased if you would not make wiz ze interruptions.’ ‘Sorry,’ said Glenda. ‘Don’t mention it. So, why must you not open ze cupboard, Mister Nutt?’ ‘Because I promised Ladyship that I would not open the cupboard.’ ‘And did you open ze cupboard, Mister Nutt?’ ‘I promised Ladyship that I would not open the cupboard.’ ‘And did you open ze cupboard, Mister Nutt?’ A much longer pause this time. ‘I promised Ladyship that I would not open the cupboar d.’ ‘Did you learn many things in ze castle, Mister Nutt?’ ‘Many things.’ ‘Did you learn how to make ze lockpicks, Mister Nutt?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Where is ze door now, Mister Nutt?’ ‘It is in front of me.’ ‘You opened ze door, Mister Nutt. You think you did not, but you did. And now it is v ery important zat you open ze door again.’ ‘But what is inside the door is wrong!’ The two eavesdroppers craned to hear. ‘Nothing is wronk. Nothing is wronk at all. In ze past, you opened ze door in the fooli shness of chilthood. Now, to understand ze door, you must open it with ze wisdom of ze adult. Open ze door, Mister Nutt, and I will walk with you to it.’ ‘But I no longer have the lockpick.’ ‘Nature will provide, Mister Nutt.’ Glenda shivered. It had to be her imagination, but they didn’t seem to be in the candle vats any more. A corridor stretched in front of Nutt. He felt everything drop away from him. Chains, c lothes, flesh, thoughts. All there was was the corridor and, drifting gently towards hi m, the cupboard. It was glass-fronted. Light glinted off the bevelled edges. He raised a hand and extended the claw. It cut through wood and glass as if they were air. There was one shelf in the cupboard and one book on the shelf. There was a title on it in sil ver and chains around it in steel. These were much easier to break through than last ti me as well. He sat down on a chair that had not been there until he sat down and he beg an to read the book. The book was called ORC. When the scream came, it didn’t come from Nutt, but from overhead in the tangle of p ipes. A skinny woman in a long black robe, perhaps a witch, Glenda thought, shocked by the suddenness, dropped down on to the flagstones and looked around like a cat. No, more like a bird, Glenda thought. Jerky. And then it opened its mouth and screamed: ‘Awk! Awk! Danger! Danger! Beware! Bewar e!’ It made a lunge towards the couch, but Trev stepped in the way. ‘Foolish! The o rc will eat your eyes!’ And now this was a duet, because another of the creatures had slid down out of the glo om on what might have been a billowing cloak, or might have been wings. They never sto pped moving, each in a different direction, trying to get closer to the couch. ‘Do not be afraaaid,’ squawked one of them, ‘we are on your siiide. We are here to prot ect you.’ Glenda, trembling in shock, managed to stand up. She folded her arms. She always felt better like that. ‘Who do you think you are–dropping out of the ceiling and shouting a t people? And you’re shedding feathers. That’s disgusting. This is a—this is quite nea r a food-preparation area.’ ‘Yeah, push off,’ said Trev. ‘That’s telling them,’ said Glenda out of the corner of her mouth. ‘I bet that took a lot o f thinking.’ ‘You do not understand,’ said a creature. The faces really were strange, as if someon e had made a bird out of a woman. ‘You are in great danger! Awk!’ ‘From you?’ said Glenda. ‘From the orc,’ said the creature. And the word was a scream. ‘Awk!’ In the shadows in front of the open cupboard the soul of Nutt turned a page. He felt s omeone at his elbow and looked up into the face of Ladyship. ‘Why did you tell me not to open the book, Ladyship?’ ‘Because I wanted you to read it,’ said her voice. ‘You had to find the truth for yourself . That is how we all find the truth.’ ‘And if the truth is terrible?’ ‘I think you know the answer to that one, Nutt,’ said the voice of Ladyship. ‘The answer is that, terrible or not, it is still the truth,’ said Nutt. ‘And then?’ said her voice, like a teacher encouraging a promising pupil. ‘And then the truth can be changed,’ said Nutt. ‘Mister Nutt is a goblin,’ said Trev. ‘Yeah, right,’ said the creature. And the phrase seemed incredibly exotic for someone whose face was looking more birdlike all the time. ‘If I scream, a lot of people will come running,’ said Glenda. ‘And what will they do?’ said the creature. And what would they do? Glenda thought. They would stand around saying ‘What’s all thi s then?’ and asking all the same questions we are. She shuffled again as one of the th ings tried to get to the couch. ‘The orc will kill,’ said a third voice, and another of the things dropped down almost in front of Glenda’s face. Its breath was like carrion. ‘Mister Nutt is kind and gentle and has never hurt anyone,’ said Glenda. ‘Who didn’t deserve it,’ said Trev hurriedly. ‘But now the orc knows it is an orc,’ said a creature. And now they were milling back wards and forwards in a ghastly pavane. ‘I don’t think you’re allowed to touch us,’ said Trev. ‘I really don’t think you can touch us.’ He sat down suddenly beside the recumbent Nutt and dragged Glenda down next to him. ‘I think you ’ave to obey rules,’ said Trev. The moving figures stopped instantly. T hat was somehow creepier than their movement. They stood there as frozen as statues. ‘They’ve got talons,’ said Glenda, quietly. ‘I can see their talons.’ ‘Pounces,’ said Trev. ‘What’re you talking about?’ ‘Those big claws are called pounces. The ones at the back are called talons–the ones th ey carry the prey off with. Everyone gets that wrong.’ ‘Except you,’ said Glenda. ‘You’re like the big expert on horrible birdlike creatures all of a sudden.’ ‘I can’t help it. Sometimes you just pick stuff up,’ said Trev. ‘We must protect you,’ said one of the females. ‘We don’t need protecting from Mister Nutt! He’s our friend,’ said Glenda. ‘And how many of your friends have claws?’ ‘What have we got to worry about here, in Unseen University, which has got great big thick walls and is pretty much generally crawling with wizards?’ One of the women stretched her neck until her face was a few inches from Trev’s. ‘Ther e is an orc in here with you.’ There was a clink of chain. Nutt had moved slightly. ‘You work for somebody, don’t you?’ said Trev. ‘You’ve got tiny little heads. You can ’t ’ave enough brains to think this up for yourself. Do the wizards know you’re here? ’ Glenda screamed. She had never screamed before, not in a proper way, straight up from the bottom of her terror. Cutting her finger while using the knife carelessly didn’t count and almost certainly would never have been so loud. The scream echoed along th e passages, bounced into the cellars and made the undercrofts ring.* Glenda screamed a second time and, as her lungs had got into practice, she managed to make this one even louder. There were hurrying footsteps from both directions. That was reassuring. She was not certain how reassuring was the little clink and sliding of metal that sugges ted a chain had broken. The creatures went into an instant panic, trying to take wing at once. They were as cl umsy as herons and got in one another’s way. ‘And don’t come back!’ she yelled as they disappeared back into the dark. Then she tur ned to Trev, her heart thumping, and said, ‘What is an orc?’ ‘I dunno. I think it’s some kind of old bogey man,’ said Trev. ‘And what were those things?’ ‘I know it sounds silly,’ said Trev, ‘but we saw one of them the other night, and he see ms to think they’re, like…friends.’ Butchers, bakers, butlers and bledlows came hurrying out of the dark corridors and one of them was Bledlow Nobbs (no relation), who was inexplicably wearing just his official hat, a string vest and a pair of shorts, far too short and far too tight for a man the size of Bledlow Nobbs (no relation). He looked at Glenda and then glared at Trev. People like Trev were, as far as Bledlo w Nobbs (no relation) was concerned, an automatic enemy. ‘Did you scream? What’s bee n going on?’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, I made an improper suggestion,’ Trev said. He looked at Glenda, his expres sion saying, ‘Help me out here.’ ‘I’m afraid I let my girlish modesty get the better of me,’ she said, cursing him with he r eyes. ‘It must have been a pretty strange suggestion,’ said a baker, who seemed to think th at an extremely long loaf would have been a suitable aid to combat, but he was grinni ng–and grinning was good. If this ends up with no more than sniggering and grinning then we’ll all be happy, Glen da thought. Hard to live down afterwards, but still good. ‘But what’s that bloke chained to that bed for?’ said the bledlow. ‘Yeah, what kind of improper suggestions go on around here?’ said the baker. He reall y was having fun. I am going to kill someone before the end of all this and it might just have to be mysel f, thought Glenda. ‘Isn’t that Mister Nutt?’ said the bledlow. ‘We’re supposed to be in training in five min utes.’ There was another clink behind Glenda and Nutt’s voice said, ‘Don’t worry, Alphonse, I often do this trick. Dynamic tension you know, helps build up the muscles.’ ‘Alphonse?’ said the baker, looking incredulously at the bledlow. ‘I thought your nam e was Alfred, Alf for short. Alphonse is a Quirmian name if ever I’ve heard one. You’ re not from there, are you?’ That was an accusation as much as a question. ‘What’s wrong with Alf being short for Alphonse?’ said the bledlow. He had very large hands that might have troubled even Mustrum Ridcully in a game of pat-a-cake. Also, his ears were going red, never a good sign in a man of his size. ‘Oh, I never said it wasn’t a nice name,’ said the baker, belatedly using his loaf. ‘But I would never have figured you for an Alphonse. It just goes to show that you never can t ell.’ ‘I am an orc,’ said Nutt quietly. ‘Actually, Alphonse is quite a nice name,’ the baker went on. ‘The phonse spoils it a b it, but the Alf I quite like.’ He paused and turned to Nutt. ‘What do you mean, “orc”?’ ‘An orc,’ said Nutt again. And away in the distant central heating pipes there was a scream of ‘Awk! Awk!’ ‘Don’t be daft, there’s no such thing as orcs any more. They all got killed off hundreds of years ago. Bloody hard to kill, too, I read somewhere,’ said a butler. ‘In the latter part of your statement you are substantially correct,’ said Nutt, still cha ined to the couch. ‘However, nevertheless, I am an orc.’ Glenda looked down. ‘You told me you’re a goblin, Mister Nutt. You told me you’re a goblin.’ ‘I was misinformed,’ said Nutt. ‘I know I am an orc. I think I have always known that I am an orc. I have opened the door and read the book and I know the truth of my soul and I am an orc, and for some reason I am an orc with a terrible urge to smoke a cigar .’ ‘But they were like these big horrible monsters that wouldn’t stop fighting and were quite happy to tear off their own arm to use as a weapon,’ said Bledlow Nobbs (no rel ation). ‘There was an article about them in Bows & Ammo.’ Every eye turned to Nutt’s arms. ‘Certainly that is the judgement of history,’ said N utt. He looked up at Glenda. ‘I am so sorry,’ he said. ‘I disobeyed, everybody does i t, you see. Schnouzentintle says as much in his book The Obedience of Disobedience. S o I wondered what was in the cupboard. And I already had some expertise with lockpick s. I opened the cupboard, I read the book and…’His chains clinked as he shifted posit ion. ‘I disobeyed. I think everybody does it. We are very good at hiding from ourselv es what we do not want to know. Believe me; I was very good at keeping that from myse lf. But it leaks out, you see, in dreams and things when you have dropped your guard. I am an orc. There is no doubt about that.’ ‘Okay, right, if you are an orc, right, then why are you not tearing my head off?’ said Bledlow Nobbs (no relation). ‘Would you like me to?’ said Nutt. ‘Well, as it happens, no!’ ‘Who cares?’ said Trev. ‘It’s all ancient history anyway. These days you see vampires hangin’ around all over the place. An’ we’ve got trolls and golems and zombies and a ll kinds of people just graftin’ away. Who cares what ’appened ’undreds of years ago?’ ‘Hang on a minute. Hang on a minute,’ said the butler. ‘He’s not tearing your head off ’cos he’s chained down.’ ‘So, why did you get us to chain you down?’ said Glenda. ‘So I wouldn’t tear off anybody’s head. I suspected the truth, although I didn’t know what it was that I suspected. At least, I think it works like that.’ ‘So that means you can’t escape and tear us all limb from limb,’ said Bledlow Nobbs ( no relation). ‘No offence meant, but does this mean you won’t be training us?’ ‘I am sorry,’ said Nutt, ‘but as you can see, I’m rather inconvenienced.’ ‘Have you all gone loony?’ Astonishingly, this came from Juliet, standing in the corrid or. ‘He’s Nutt. He potters around making candles and stuff. I see ’im around all the ti me and ’e’s never ’olding someone else’s leg or head. And ’e likes his football, too!’ Glenda thought she could actually hear Trev’s heartbeat. She hurried over to the girl. ‘I told you to go,’ she hissed. ‘I’ve come back to tell Trev about everythin’. After all, he did write such a lovely poem .’ ‘She’s got a point,’ said a man in a butcher’s apron. ‘I’ve seen him running around ev erywhere and I’ve never seen him carrying any limbs.’ ‘That’s true,’ said the baker. ‘And anyway, didn’t he do all those lovely candles at the banquet last night? That doesn’t sound very orc-like to me.’ ‘And,’ said Bledlow Nobbs (no relation), ‘he was training us yesterday and he never once said, “Get in there, lads, and tear their ’eads off”.’ ‘Oh, yes,’ said the butler, who was making no friends as far as Glenda was concerned. ‘Humans don’t tear off heads, not like orcs.’ An ‘Awk! Awk!’ echoed in the distance. ‘He’s been teaching us kinds of stuff you’d never think about,’ said the bledlow, ‘like playing the game with a blindfold on. Amazing stuff. More like filosopy than football, but damn good stuff.’ ‘Tactical thinking and combat analysis is part of the orc make-up,’ said Nutt. ‘See! No one who uses make-up is going to tear your head off, right?’ ‘Didn’t you meet my ex-wife?’ said the baker. ‘Well, I’d draw the line if you wore make-up,’ said the butcher to general amusement. ‘Being an orc is one thing, but we don’t want a funny one.’ Glenda looked down at Nutt. He was crying. ‘My friends, I thank you for your trust in me,’ he said. ‘Well, you know, you’re like part of the team,’ said Bledlow Nobbs (no relation), who se smile almost managed to conceal his nervousness. ‘Thank you, Mister Nobbs, that means a lot to me,’ said Nutt, standing up. That was quite a complex movement. It stayed in Glenda’s mind for ever afterwards as a kind of slow-motion scene of burs ting chains and cracking wood when Nutt stood up as though he had been restrained by cobwebs. Pieces of chain spun off and hit the wall. Padlocks broke. As for the couch, barely one piece remained attached to another. It dropped to the floor as so much fi rewood. ‘RUN FOR IT, LADS!’ You would have needed some kind of special micrometer to work out which man said it f irst, but the stampede along the corridor was swift and over very quickly. ‘You know,’ said Trev, after a few moments’ silence, ‘at one point I thought this was al l goin’ very well.’ ‘Those women,’ said Glenda, ‘what were they?’ Nutt stood forlornly in the wreckage; a length of chain slithered off him like a serpen t and landed on the flagstones. ‘Them?’ he said. ‘They are the Little Sisters of Perpet ual Velocity. They come from Ephebe. I think the name for their species is Furies. I th ink Ladyship sent them in case I tried to hurt anybody.’ The words came out without emp hasis or emotion. ‘But you haven’t hurt anyone,’ said Glenda. ‘But they ran away,’ said Nutt, ‘because of what I am.’ ‘Well, you know, they’re ordinary people,’ said Glenda. ‘They’re—’ ‘Twits,’ said Trev. Nutt turned and walked down the opposite corridor, kicking off the remnants of wood an d chain. ‘But the world is full of ordinary people.’ ‘You can’t just let ’im go like that,’ said Juliet. ‘You just can’t. Look at ’im! ’e looks l ike ’e’s been kicked.’ ‘I’m ’is boss, that’s my job,’ said Trev. Glenda caught Trev by the arm. ‘No, I’ll sort this out. Now, you listen to me, Trev Lik ely, under all that gab, you’re a decent sort, so I’ll tell you this: see Juliet over t here? You know her, she works in the kitchens. You wrote her a lovely poem, didn’t you? Ever heard of Emberella? Everyone’s heard of Emberella. Well, you might not be my firs t choice for Prince Charming, but there’s probably plenty worse.’ ‘What the hell are you talkin’ about?’ said Trev. ‘Juliet’s going to be leaving soon, isn’t that right, Jools?’ Juliet’s face was a picture. ‘Well, er—’ ‘And that’s because she’s been that girl in the papers.’ ‘What, the shiny dwarf one? With a beard?’ ‘That’s her!’ said Glenda. ‘She’s going to go off with the circus, well, you know what I mean. With the fashion show, at least.’ ‘But she hasn’t got a beard,’ said Trev. Blushing, Juliet delved into her apron and to Glenda’s surprise produced the beard. ‘The y let me keep it,’ she said, with a nervous giggle. ‘Right,’ said Glenda. ‘You say you love him. Trev, I don’t know whether you love her o r not, time to make up your mind. You’re both grown up, well, strictly speaking, and s o you better sort yourselves out, ’cos I don’t see any fairy godmothers around. As for Mister Nutt, he hasn’t got anyone.’ ‘She’s gonna leave the city?’ said Trev, realization dawning slowly through a male min d. ‘Oh, yes. For quite a long time, I suspect,’ said Glenda. She watched his face carefully. You haven’t got much learning and you haven’t opened a book in your life, Trevor Likely, but you are smart and you must know there is a wr ong way and a right way to reply to what I have just told you. She watched the high-speed changes around his eyes as he thought, and then he said, ‘We ll, that’s nice. It’s the kind of thing she’s always dreamed of. I’m very happy for her .’ You cunning bastard, you actually got it right, Glenda thought. You’re not appearing to be thinking about yourself at all, ’cos you know I’d have no time for you if you were. And who knows, you might just be genuine. In fact, heavens help me, I think you are, b ut I’d pull all my own teeth out rather than tell you. ‘She likes you, you like her and I’ve made a lot of silly mistakes. The two of you, sor t out what you want to do. And now, if I were you I’d run, before anyone else beats you to it. And can I offer you a word of advice, Trev? Don’t be smart, be clever.’ Trev took Glenda by the shoulders and kissed her on both cheeks. ‘Was that smart or c lever?’ ‘Get away with you, Trev Likely!’ she said, pushing him away, in the hope that he wo uldn’t notice her blush. ‘And now I’m going to see where Mister Nutt has gone.’ ‘I know where he’s gone,’ said Trev. ‘I thought I just told you two to go off and live happily ever after,’ said Glenda. ‘You won’t find ’im without me,’ said Trev. ‘I’m sorry, Glenda, but we like him too.’ ‘Do you think we should tell somebody?’ said Juliet. ‘And what will they do?’ Glenda snapped. ‘It’ll just be like that lot back there. All hanging around in the hope that somebody will come up with an idea. Anyway,’ she added , ‘I’m sure the wizards upstairs know all about him. Oh yes, I bet they do.’ She had to admit, ten minutes later, that Trev had been right. She probably wouldn’t ha ve noticed the door on the other side of another cluttered, abandoned cellar. Light sho ne from under the door. ‘I followed ’im once,’ said Trev. ‘Everyone should have a place to call their own.’ ‘Yes,’ said Glenda, and she pushed open the door. She might as well have opened an oven. There were candles of every size and every colour and many of them were burni ng. And in the middle of it was Nutt, sitting behind a ramshackle table, which was covered w ith candles. In front of him they burned in every colour. He was staring at them with a blank expression, and did not look up as they approached. ‘You know, I fear that I will never really get the hang of blue,’ he said, as if to the air. ‘Orange, of course, is ri diculously easy and red goes without saying and green is not difficult at all, but the b est blue I could achieve, I have to admit, is very largely green…’ His voice trailed off. ‘Are you all right?’ said Glenda. ‘Do you mean, am I all right apart from being an orc?’ said Nutt, with a very small smi le. ‘Well, yes, but that’s not really your fault.’ ‘It can’t really be true, can it?’ said Trev. Glenda turned on him. ‘What good is it saying that?’ she said. ‘Well, they were supposed to have died out hundreds of years ago.’ ‘Annihilated,’ said Nutt. ‘But some survived. I fear that when this oversight is revealed , there will be those who will endeavour to rectify the situation.’ Trev looked blankly at Glenda. ‘He means he thinks they’re going to try to kill him,’ sh e said. Nutt stared at his candles. ‘I must accumulate worth. I must be helpful. I must be frien dly. I must make friends.’ ‘If anyone comes to hurt you,’ said Glenda, ‘I will kill them. I’m sure you won’t try to pull a leg off, but I might. Trev, this needs a woman’s touch.’ ‘Yes, I can see that.’ ‘That wasn’t clever, Trev Likely. No, Mister Nutt, you stay there,’ said Glenda, draggin g Trev and Juliet back out into the corridor. ‘Off you go, I want to talk to him alone.’ Nutt hung his head as she stepped back in. ‘I’m sorry I’m spoiling it for everyone,’ he s aid. ‘What’s happened to your claws, Mister Nutt?’ He stretched out his arm and with a faint noise the claws extended. ‘Oh, well, that’s convenient,’ said Glenda. ‘At least that means you can change your shi rt.’ She thumped the table so the candles jumped. ‘And now, get up!’ she screamed. ‘You a re supposed to be training the team, Mister Nutt, don’t you remember? You’re suppose d to be going out there and showing them how to play the football!’ ‘I must accumulate worth,’ said Nutt, staring at the candles. ‘Then train the team, Mister Nutt! How can you be so certain that the orcs were that ba d in any case?’ ‘We did terrible things.’ ‘They,’ said Glenda. ‘They, not we, not you. And one thing I am certain of is that in a war no one is going to say that the other side is made up of very nice people. Now, ho w about you just run along to training? How hard can it be?’ ‘You saw what happened,’ said Nutt. ‘It could be very bad indeed.’ He picked up a near ly blue candle. ‘I must think.’ ‘Okay,’ said Glenda. She shut the door carefully behind her, walked a little way along the corridor and look ed up at the dripping pipes. ‘I know someone is listening. I could hear the creaking pi pes. Come out right now.’ There was no reply. She shrugged and then hurried along the labyrinth until she reached the steps to the Library, ran up them and headed for the Librarian’s desk. As she approached it, his big grinning face appeared above it. ‘I want—’ she began. The Librarian rose slowly, put a finger to his lips and placed a book on the table in fron t of her. The three-letter title, silver on black, was ORC. He looked her up and down, as if trying to reach a conclusion, then opened the book, an d turned the pages with exquisite care, given the thickness of those fingers, until he found the page he had been looking for. He held it up in front of her. There had been n o time for breakfast today, but it’s still possible to throw up when there’s nothing le ft to throw. And if you needed to vomit, the woodcut held up beneath the Librarian’s ha nds would be a sure-fire medicine. He put the book down on the desktop, reached down again and produced a barely used handkerchief and, after some rummaging around, a glass of water. ‘I don’t have to believe that,’ said Glenda. ‘It’s a drawing. It’s not real.’ The Librarian’s thumb went up and he nodded. He put the book under one arm and grabbe d her with another and led her with surprising speed out of the door into the great m aze of halls and corridors of the university. Their breathless journey finished in front of a door on which was painted ‘Departmen t of Post-Mortem Communications’. The paint, however, had peeled somewhat and under the bright new title could just be made out the letters NECR and what could possibly be one half of a skull. The door opened–any door pushed by the Librarian would assuredly open. Glenda heard th e clink of the catch falling on to the floor inside. In the middle of the floor that was revealed stood a hideous figure. Its horrifying c ountenance had less than the effect it might have done, because from it dangled a qui te readable label that said ‘Boffo Novelty and Joke Emporium. Improved Necromancer’s Mask. Sale Price AM$3’. This was removed to reveal the more salubrious countenance of Dr Hix. ‘There really is no need to—’ he said, and then spotted the Librarian. ‘Oh, can I help y ou?’ The Librarian held up the book and Dr Hix groaned. ‘That again,’ he said. ‘All right, what do you want?’ ‘We’ve got an orc down in the cellars,’ said Glenda. ‘Yes, I know,’ said Dr Hix. The Librarian had a big face, but it nevertheless was not large enough to accommodate a ll of the surprise he wished to show. The head of the Department of Post-Mortem Communi cations shrugged and sighed. ‘Look,’ he said, as if weary of having to explain so often , and sighed again. ‘I am supposed to be the bad person as defined by university statut e, right? I am supposed to listen at doors. Supposed to dabble in the black arts. I’ve got the skull ring. I’ve got the staff with the silver skull on it—’ ‘And a joke-shop mask?’ said Glenda. ‘Quite serviceable as a matter of fact,’ said Hix, haughtily. ‘Rather more frightening than the original thing and washable, which is always a consideration in this departm ent. Anyway, the Archchancellor was down here weeks ago, after the same stuff you are, I very much imagine.’ ‘Were the orcs terrible creatures?’ said Glenda. ‘I think I can probably show you,’ said Hix. ‘This gentleman has already shown me the picture in the book,’ said Glenda. ‘Was it the one with the eyeballs?’ Glenda found the memory only too vivid. ‘Yes!’ ‘Oh, there’s worse than that,’ said Hix happily. ‘And I suppose you want the proof?’ He half turned his head. ‘Charlie?’ A skeleton walked out through black curtains at t he far end of the room. It was holding a mug. There was something curiously depressin g about the slogan on said mug, which ran: ‘Necromancers Do It All Night’. ‘Don’t be scared,’ said Dr Hix. ‘I’m not,’ Glenda said, terrified to her insteps. ‘I’ve seen the insides of a slaughterhous e. It’s part of the job and, anyway, he’s polished.’ ‘Thank you very much,’ the skeleton articulated. ‘But “Necromancers Do It All Night”? That’s a bit pathetic, isn’t it? I mean, don’t you t hink it’s trying a bit too hard?’ ‘It was hard enough to get that one made,’ said Dr Hix. ‘We’re not the most popular de partment in the university. Charlie, the young lady wants to know about orcs.’ ‘Again?’ said the skeleton, handing the mug to the doctor. It had a rather hoarse voice, but on the whole far less dreadful than it might have been. Apart from anything else, h is bones were, well, apart from anything else, and floated in the air as if they were th e only visible parts of an invisible body. The jaw moved as Charlie went on: ‘Well, I th ink we’ve still got the memory in the sump ’cos, you remember, we called it up for Ridcu lly. I haven’t got round to wiping it yet.’ ‘Memory of what?’ said Glenda. ‘It’s a kind of magic,’ said Hix loftily. He continued. ‘It would take too long to explain .’ Glenda didn’t like this. ‘Let’s have it in a nutshell, then.’ ‘Okay. We’re now quite certain that what we call the passage of time is in fact the univ erse being destroyed and instantly rebuilt in the smallest instant of eventuality that i t is possible to have. While the process is instant at every point, nevertheless to rene w the whole Universe takes approximately five days, we believe. Interestingly enough—’ ‘Can I have it in a smaller nut?’ ‘So you don’t want to hear about Houseman’s theory of the Universal Memory?’ ‘Possibly the size of a walnut,’ said Glenda. ‘Very well, then, can you imagine this: current thinking is that the old universe is no t destroyed in the instant the new universe is created, a process which, incidentally, has been happening an untold billion number of times since I have been talking—’ ‘Yes, I can believe that. Can we try for a pistachio?’ said Glenda. ‘Copies of the universe are kept. We don’t know how, we don’t know where, and it beats the hell out of me trying to imagine how it all works. But we’re finding that it is s ometimes possible to, er, read this memory in certain circumstances. How am I doing in terms of nut dimensions?’ ‘You’ve got some kind of magic mirror?’ said Glenda flatly. ‘That’s it, if you want the size of a pine nut,’ said Hix. ‘Pine nuts are actually seeds,’ said Glenda smugly. ‘So, what you’re saying is that e verything that happens stays happened somewhere and you can look at it if you have th e knowing?’ ‘That is a magnificent distillation of the situation,’ said Hix. ‘Which is incredibly h elpful while at the same time inaccurate in every possible way. But, as you put it, we use a’–and here he gave a little shudder–‘magic mirror, as you put it. We recently look ed at the battle of Orc Deep for the Archchancellor. That was the last known battle in which the race known as orcs were deployed.’ ‘Deployed?’ said Glenda. ‘Used,’ said Hix. ‘Used? And you can find something like that in the total history of everything there ha s ever been?’ ‘Ahem. It helps to have an anchor,’ said Hix. ‘Something that was present. And all I am going to tell you, young lady, is that there was a piece of a skull found on that battle field, and since it was a skull that firmly puts it into the responsibility of my depart ment.’ He turned to the Librarian. ‘It’s okay to show her, isn’t it?’ he said. The Libra rian shook his head. ‘Good. That means I can do it, then, under university statute. A ce rtain amount of surreptitious disobedience is demanded of me. We have it set up on an om niscope. Since my colleague is so certain that I should not be doing this, he will not m ind if I do. It’s only a very brief fragment of time, but it did impress the Archchancel lor, if impress is the right word.’ ‘I just want to get something clear,’ said Glenda. ‘You can actually disobey the order s of someone like the Archchancellor?’ ‘Oh, yes,’ said Hix. ‘I am under instruction to do so. It is expected of me.’ ‘But how can that possibly work?’ said Glenda. ‘What happens when he gives you an in struction that he doesn’t want you to disobey?’ ‘It works by common sense and good will on all sides,’ said Hix. ‘If, for example, the Archchancellor gives me a command that absolutely must not be disobeyed, he will add so mething like, “Hix, you little worm (by university statute), if you disobey this one, I ’ll smack your head.” Though in reality, a word to the wise, madam, is sufficient. It’s all done on the basis of trust, really. I am trusted to be untrustworthy. I don’t know what the Archchancellor would do without me.’ ‘Yeah, right,’ said Charlie, grinning. A few minutes later, Glenda was in another dark room, standing in front of a round, dark mirror, at least as high as she was. ‘Is this going to be like the Moving Pictures?’ sh e said sarcastically. ‘An amusing comparison,’ said Hix. ‘Except for, one, there is no popcorn and, two, you would not want to eat it if there was. What might be called the camera in this case w as the last thing one of the human fighters saw.’ ‘Is this the person whose skull you’ve got?’ ‘Well done! I see you have been following things,’ said Hix. There was a moment of silence. ‘This is going to be scary, isn’t it?’ ‘Yes,’ said Hix. ‘Nightmares? Very probably. Even I think it’s extremely disconcerting . Are you ready, Charlie?’ ‘Ready,’ said Charlie, from somewhere in the darkness. ‘Are you sure, miss?’ Glenda wasn’t sure, but anything would be better than facing Hix’s know-it-all smile. ‘ Yes,’ she said, keeping her voice firm. ‘The fragment we are able to show lasts less than three seconds, but I doubt whether y ou will want to see it again. Are we ready? Thank you, Charlie.’ Glenda’s chair went backwards very quickly and Hix, who had been hovering, caught her . ‘The only known representation of an orc in battle,’ said Hix, standing her upright . ‘Well done, by the way. Even the Archchancellor swore out loud.’ Glenda blinked, trying to slice slightly less than three seconds out of her memory. ‘And that’s true, is it?’ But it had to be true. There was something about the way the image w as sticking to the back of her brain that declared the truth of it. ‘I want to see it again.’ ‘You what?!’ said Hix. ‘There’s more to it,’ said Glenda. ‘It’s only a part of a picture.’ ‘It took us hours to work that out,’ said Hix severely. ‘How did you spot it the very firs t go?’ ‘Because I knew it had to be there,’ said Glenda. ‘She’s got you there, boss,’ said Charlie. ‘All right. Show it again and this time magnify the right-hand corner. It’s very blurry,’ he said to Glenda. ‘Can you stop it?’ said Glenda. ‘Oh, yes. Charlie has worked that one out.’ ‘Then you know the bit I mean.’ ‘Oh, yes.’ ‘Then show me it again.’ Charlie disappeared behind his curtain. There were a few flashes of light and then… ‘There!’ She pointed at the frozen image. ‘That’s men on horseback, isn’t it? And they’ ve got whips. I know it’s blurry, but you can tell that they’ve got whips.’ ‘Well, yes, of course,’ said Hix. ‘It’s quite hard to get anything to run into a hail of arrows unless you give it some encouragement.’ ‘They were weapons. Living creatures as weapons. And they don’t look so different f rom humans.’ ‘A lot of really interesting stuff happened under the Evil Emperor,’ said Hix, conversat ionally. ‘Evil stuff,’ said Glenda. ‘Yes,’ said Hix, ‘that was rather the point. Evil Emperor. Evil Empire. It did what it sa id on the iron maiden.’ ‘And what happened to them?’ ‘Well, officially they’re all dead,’ said Hix. ‘But there have been rumours.’ ‘And men drove them into battle,’ said Glenda. ‘If you want to put it like that, I suppose so,’ said Hix, ‘but I’m not certain that change s anything.’ ‘I think it changes everything,’ said Glenda. ‘It does if all that people talk about are the monsters and not the whips. Things that look very much like people, well, a kind of people. What can you make from people if you really try?’ ‘It’s an interesting theory,’ said Hix. ‘But I don’t think you can prove it.’ ‘When Kings fight other Kings and win, they chop off the other King’s head, don’t the y?’ said Glenda. ‘Sometimes,’ said Hix. ‘I mean, you can’t blame a weapon for how it’s used. What’s it they say? People can’t help how they were made. I think the orcs were made.’ Glenda glanced at the Librarian, who looked at the ceiling. ‘You work as a cook, don’t you? Would you like to work for my department?’ ‘Everyone knows women can’t be wizards,’ said Glenda. ‘Ah, yes, but Necro—Post-Mortem Communications is different,’ said Hix proudly. And a dded, ‘We could do with some sensible people here, heavens know. And the feminine tou ch would be very welcome. And don’t think I would require you to just come and do the dusting. We treasure our dust in this place and your cookery skills will be invaluab le. After all, basic butchery is all part of the job. And I do believe that Boffo’s s hop has a rather good female Necromancer’s costume in their sale, isn’t that right, C harlie?’ ‘Ten dollars including lace-up bodice. A bargain in anybody’s money,’ said Charlie fro m behind his curtain. ‘Very slinky.’ There had been no reply because Glenda’s mouth had stuck in the act of opening, but sh e finally managed a polite, but firm, ‘No.’ The head of the Department of Post-Mortem Communications gave a little sigh. ‘I though t as much, but we are part of the scheme of things. Light and dark. Night and day. Swe et and sour. Good and evil (within acceptable college statutes). It just helps if you can have sensible and reliable people on both sides, but I’m glad that we’ve been able to be of assistance. We don’t see many people down here. Well, not people as such.’ This time Glenda walked along the corridor. ‘Orc,’ she thought. ‘A thing that just kill s.’ Every time she blinked, the image came back to her. The teeth and claws of a creatu re in full leap seen, as far as one could tell, by whoever it was it was leaping at. Fi ghters you couldn’t stop. And Nutt had been killed, according to Trev, and then sort of became unkilled again before going back to Unseen University and eating all the pies. There was an awfully big gap in all this, but men with whips filled it. You can’t have s omething that just fights, she thought. It has to do other things as well. And Nutt isn’ t any stranger than most of the people you see around these days. It’s not a lot to go o n, though, but then again, the Evil Emperor was a sorcerer, everyone knew that. Everyone knows you can’t help how you’re made. Well, it’s worth a try. It’s a little bit of unce rtainty. As soon as she arrived back outside Nutt’s special place, she sensed that it would be e mpty. She pushed the door open and there was a definite absence of candles and, more im portantly, a very noticeable absence of Nutt. But I told him to go and help them train. That’s where he’s gone, to go and train, definitely, she said to herself. So no need t o worry, then. On edge, feeling that something was nevertheless wrong, she forced herself back to the Night Kitchen. She was nearly there when she met Mr Ottomy, his scrawny Adam’s apple as red and gli stening as chicken giblets. ‘So, we’ve got a man-eating orc down here, have we?’ he said. ‘People aren’t going to stand for that. I heard somewhere that they could go on fighting while their heads are chopped off.’ ‘That’s interesting,’ said Glenda. ‘How did they know which way to go?’ ‘Ah-ah! They could smell their way,’ said the bledlow. ‘How could they do that with their heads chopped off? Are you telling me they had a n ose up their arse?’ She was shocked at herself for saying that, it was bad language, but Ottomy was bad language made solid. ‘I don’t hold with it,’ he said, ignoring the question. ‘You know something else I hea rd? They were kind of made. When the Evil Emperor wanted fighters he got some of the I gors to turn goblins into orcs. They’re not really proper people at all. I’m going to complain to the Archchancellor.’ ‘He already knows,’ said Glenda. Well, he must do, she thought. And Vetinari, too, she added to herself. ‘You’re not going to make trouble for Mister Nutt, are you?’ she sa id. ‘Because if you are, Mister Ottomy’–she leaned forward–‘you will never be seen aga in.’ ‘You shouldn’t threaten me like that,’ he said. ‘You’re right, I shouldn’t,’ said Glenda. ‘I should have said that you will never be se en again, you egregious slimy little twerp. Go and tell the Archchancellor if you like and see how much good that does you.’ ‘They ate people alive!’ said Ottomy. ‘So did trolls,’ said Glenda. ‘Admittedly they spat them out again, but not in much of a state to enjoy life. We used to fight dwarfs once and when they cut you off at the kn ees they weren’t joking. We know, Mister Ottomy, that the leopard can change his shorts ,’ she sniffed, ‘and it might be a good idea if you did, too. And if I hear of any trou ble from you, you will hear from me. Up there it’s the Archchancellor. Down here in the dark, it’s cutlery.’ ‘I’ll tell him what you said,’ said the luckless bledlow, backing away. ‘I would be very grateful if you did,’ said Glenda. ‘Now push off.’ Why do we tell one another that the leopard cannot change his shorts? she mused as s he watched him scurry away. Has anyone ever seen a leopard wearing shorts? And how w ould they be able to put them on if they had them? But we go on saying it as if it w as some kind of holy truth, when it just means that we’ve run out of an argument. There was something she had to do, now what was it? Oh, yes. She went over once again to the cauldron on which she had chalked ‘Do Not Touch’ and lifted up the lid. The b eady eyes stared up at her from the watery depths and she went away and got a few scr aps of fish, which she dropped towards the waiting claws. ‘Well, I know what to do wi th you, at least,’ she said. A fully working kitchen holds a great many things, not least of which is a huge collect ion of ways of committing horrible murder, plus multiple ways of getting rid of the evi dence. This wasn’t the first time the thought had crossed her mind. She was quite glad about it. For now, she selected a really thick pair of gloves from a drawer, put her ol d coat on again, reached into the cauldron and picked up the crab. It snapped at her. S he knew it would. Never, ever expect gratitude from those you help. ‘Tide’s turning,’ she told the crustacean, ‘so we’re going to take a little walk.’ She d ropped it into her shopping bag and headed across the university lawns. A couple of graduate wizards were working in the university boatyard nearby. One loo ked at her and said, ‘Are you supposed to be walking on the university lawns, madam? ’ ‘No, it is absolutely forbidden to kitchen staff,’ said Glenda. The students looked at one another. ‘Oh, right,’ said one of them. And that was it. As easy as that. It was only a metaphorical hammer. It only hit you if you allowed it to be there. She pulled the crab out of her bag and it waved its claws irritably. ‘See that over the re?’ she said, waving her own spare hand. ‘That’s Hen and Chickens Field.’ It’s doubtfu l whether the crab’s beady eyes could focus on the grassy waste across the river, but a t least she pointed it in the right direction. ‘People think it’s because there was chi ckens kept there,’ she went on conversationally while the two wizards looked at one ano ther. ‘As a matter of fact, that’s not so. It used to be where people were hanged, and so when they walked out from the old gaol that used to be over there, the priest in fro nt of the procession with his billowing robes seemed to lead the line of doomed men and gaolers like a hen leading its chicks. That sort of thing is what we call a droll sens e of humour in these parts and I haven’t got the faintest idea why I’m talking to you. I’ve done my best. You now know more than any other crab.’ She walked down to the very edge of what passed for water as the river flowed through the city, and dropped the crab into it. ‘Stay clear of crab pots and don’t come back.’ She turned round and realized the wizards had been watching her. ‘Well?’ she snapped. ‘Is there any law about talking to crabs around here?’ She then gave them a little sm ile as she walked past. Back in the long corridors she wandered, feeling a little light-headed, towards the vat s. Some of its denizens eyed her nervously as she passed through, but there was no sign of Nutt, not that she was looking for him at all. As she walked on towards the Night K itchen, Trev and Juliet appeared. Glenda couldn’t help but notice that Juliet had a som ewhat bright-eyed and ruffled look. That is, she couldn’t help but notice because she m ade a point of noticing every time. Semi-parental responsibility was a terrible thing. ‘What are you still doing here?’ she said. They looked at her and there was more in their expressions than mere embarrassment. ‘I come back to say goodbye to the girls and I ’ad to wait for Trev because of the traini ng.’ Glenda sat down. ‘Make me a cup of tea, will you?’ And because old habits died hard she added, ‘Boil water in the kettle, two spoons of tea in the pot. Pour water from kettle into pot when it boils. Do not put tea in kettle.’ She turned to Trev. ‘Where’s Mister Nutt?’ she said, nonchalance booming in her voice. Trev looked down at his feet. ‘I don’t know, Glenda,’ he said. ‘I’ve been—’ ‘Busy,’ Glenda completed. ‘But no hanky panky,’ said Juliet quickly. Glenda realized that right now she would not have minded if there had been hanky pan ky or even spanky. There were things that were important and things that weren’t, an d times when you knew the difference. ‘So, how did Mister Nutt get on, then?’ Trev and Juliet looked at one another. ‘We don’t know. He wasn’t there,’ said Trev. ‘We kind of thought ’e might be with you,’ said Juliet, handing her a cup of what you get when you ask for a cup of tea from someone who tends to confuse the recipe even at the best of times. ‘He wasn’t in the Great Hall?’ said Glenda. ‘No, ’e wasn’t there—Wait one moment.’ Trev ran down the steps and after a few seconds they heard his footsteps coming back. ‘His toolbox ’as gone,’ said Trev. ‘I mean, it wasn’t much. He made it outta bits he found in the cellars, but as far as I know it’s all ’e owned.’ I knew it, thought Glenda. Of course I knew it. ‘Where could he be? He’s got nowhere el se to go but here,’ she said. ‘Well, there is that place up in Uberwald he talks about quite a lot,’ said Trev. ‘That’s getting on for about a thousand miles away,’ said Glenda. ‘Well, I suppose he thinks he might as well be there as here,’ said Juliet innocently. ‘ I mean, Orc, I’d want to run away from a name like that if I was me.’ ‘Look, I’m sure he’s just wandered off somewhere in the building,’ Glenda said, believ ing absolutely that he hadn’t. But if I believe he’s going to be around the next corne r or has just nipped off to…powder his nose, or has just wandered away for half an hou r–which, of course, is his right; perhaps he needs to go and buy a pair of socks?–if I keep believing he’ll turn up any minute, he might, even though I know he won’t. She put down the cup. ‘Half an hour,’ she said. ‘Juliet, you go and check around the Gr eat Hall. Trev, you go down the tunnels that way. I’ll go down the tunnels this way. If you find anyone you can trust, ask ’em.’ A little more than half an hour later, Glenda was the last to turn up back in the Nigh t Kitchen. She very nearly half expected that he would be there and knew that he would n’t. ‘Would he know about getting on a coach?’ she said. ‘I doubt ’e’s ever seen one,’ said Trev. ‘You know what I would do if I was ’im? I’d j ust run. It was like when Dad died, I spent all night walkin’ around the city. I wasn’ t bothered where I went. Just went. Wanted to run away from bein’ me.’ ‘How fast can an orc run?’ said Glenda. ‘Much faster than a man, I bet,’ said Trev. ‘An’ for a long time, too.’ ‘Listen.’ This was Juliet. ‘Can’t you ’ear it?’ ‘Hear what?’ said Glenda. ‘Nothing,’ said Juliet. ‘Well?’ ‘What happened to Awk! Awk!?’ ‘I think we’ll find them where we find him,’ said Trev. ‘Well, he can’t run all the way back to Uberwald,’ said Glenda. ‘You couldn’t.’ At last Glenda said it: ‘I think we should go after him.’ ‘I’ll come,’ said Trev. ‘Then I’m goin’ to come, too,’ insisted Juliet. ‘Besides, I’ve still got the money and you ’re goin’ to need it.’ ‘Your money’s in the bank,’ said Glenda, ‘and the bank is shut. But I think I’ve got a f ew dollars in my purse.’ ‘Then, excuse me,’ said Trev, ‘I won’t be a moment. I think there’s somethin’ we ough t to take…’ The driver of the horse bus to Sto Lat looked down and said, ‘Two dollars fifty pence e ach.’ ‘But you only go to Sto Lat,’ said Glenda. ‘Yes,’ said the man calmly. ‘That’s why it says Sto Lat on the front.’ ‘We might ’ave to go a lot further,’ said Trev. ‘Just about every coach in this part of the world goes through Sto Lat,’ he said. ‘How long will it take to get there?’ ‘Well, this is the late-night bus, okay? It’s for people who’ve got to be in Sto Lat ea rly and haven’t got much money, and there’s the rub, see? The less the money, the slowe r the travel. We get there in the end. Somewhere around about dawn, in fact.’ ‘All night? I think I could walk it faster.’ The man had the quiet, friendly air about him of someone who had found the best way to get through life was never to give much of a stuff about anything. ‘Be my guest,’ he said. ‘I’ll wave to you as we go past.’ Glenda looked down the length of the coach. It was half full of the kind of people who took the overnight bus because it wasn’t very expensive; the kind of people, in fact, who had brought their own dinner in a paper bag, and probably not a new paper bag at that. The three of them huddled. ‘It’s the only one we can afford,’ said Trev. ‘I don’t think we can even afford travel for one on the mail coaches.’ ‘Can’t we try and bargain with him?’ said Glenda. ‘Good idea,’ said Trev. He walked back to the coach. ‘Hello again,’ said the driver. ‘When are you gonna leave?’ said Trev. ‘In about five minutes.’ ‘So everyone who’s gonna be riding is on the coach.’ Glenda glanced past the driver. The passenger behind him was very meticulously peeli ng a hardboiled egg. ‘Could be,’ said the driver. ‘Then why not leave right now,’ said Trev, ‘and go faster? It’s very important.’ ‘Late-night,’ said the driver. ‘That’s what I said.’ ‘Supposing I was to threaten you with this lead pipe, would you go any faster?’ said Tr ev. ‘Trevor Likely!’ said Glenda. ‘You can’t go around threatening people with lead pipes! ’ The driver looked down at Trev and said, ‘Can you run that past me again?’ ‘I told you that I had this length of lead pipe,’ said Trev, banging it gently against the bus’s door. ‘Sorry, but we really need to get to Sto Lat.’ ‘Oh, right, yes,’ said the driver, ‘I see your lead pipe,’ and he reached down to the ot her side of his seat, ‘and I will raise you this battle-axe and would remind you that if I were to cut you in arf, the law would be on my side, no offence meant. You must think I am some kind of fool, but you’re all hopping about like nits on a griddle, so what’s this all about then?’ ‘We’ve got to catch up with our friend. He could be in danger,’ said Trev. ‘And it’s very romantic,’ said Juliet. The driver looked at her. ‘If you ’elp us catch up wiv him, I’ll give you a big kiss,’ she said. ‘There!’ said the driver to Trev. ‘Why didn’t you think of that?’ ‘All right, I’ll give you a kiss as well,’ said Trev. ‘No thanks, sir,’ said the driver, clearly enjoying himself. ‘In your case I think I’ll go for the lead pipe, although please don’t try anything ’cos it’s a devil’s own job to get the bloodstains off the seats. Nothing seems to shift them.’ ‘Okay, I’ll try to hit you with the lead pipe,’ said Trev. ‘We’re desperate.’ ‘And we’ll give you some money,’ said Juliet. ‘Sorry?’ said the driver. ‘Do I get the kiss, the money and the lead pipe? I mean, I’d rat her forgo the lead pipe for another kiss.’ ‘Two kisses, a whole three dollars and no lead pipe,’ said Juliet. ‘Or just the lead pipe and I’ll take my chances,’ said Trev. Glenda, who had been watching them with a fascinated horror, said, ‘And I’ll give you a kiss as well if you like.’ She couldn’t help noticing that this didn’t move the stakes e ither way. ‘But what about my passengers?’ said the driver. All four of them looked into the back of the bus and realized that they were the subject of at least a dozen fascinated stares. ‘Go for the kiss!’ said a woman, holding a large l aundry basket in front of her. ‘And the money!’ said one of the men. ‘I don’t give a stuff if she kisses him or hits him on the head with the lead pipe, so lon g as they drop us off first,’ said an old man towards the back of the bus. ‘Do any of us get kissed as well?’ said one half of a couple of giggling boys. ‘If you like,’ said Glenda viciously. They slumped back into their seats. Juliet grabbed the driver’s face and there was, for what seemed slightly too long, by th e internal clocks of both Glenda and Trev, the sound of a tennis ball being sucked throu gh the strings of a tennis racket. Juliet stepped back. The driver was smiling, in a sli ghtly stunned and cross-eyed way. ‘Well, that was pretty much of a lead pipe!’ ‘Perhaps I’d better drive,’ said Trev. The driver smiled at him. ‘I’ll drive, thank you very much, and don’t kid yourself, m ister, I know a dicey one when I see one and you don’t come close. My old mum would b e more likely to hit me with a lead pipe than you. Throw it away, why don’t you, or s omeone will give you a centre parting you won’t forget in a hurry.’ He winked at Juliet. ‘What with one thing or another it’s a good idea to give the horses a bit of a run every now and again. All aboard for Sto Lat.’ The horse buses did not usually travel very fast and the driver’s definition of a run w as only marginally faster than what most people would call a walk, but he managed to ge t them up to something that at least meant they did not have the time to get bored by a passing tree. The bus was for people, as the driver had pointed out, who couldn’t afford speed but co uld afford time. In its construction, therefore, no expense had been attempted. It was really no more than a cart with double seats all the way along it from the driver’s sli ghtly elevated bench. Tarpaulins on either side kept out the worst of the weather but f ortunately still let in enough of the wind to mitigate the smell of the upholstery, whi ch had experienced humanity in all its manifold moods and urgencies. Glenda got the impression that some of the travellers were regulars. An elderly woman was sitting quietly knitting. The boys were still engaged in the furtive giggling appr opriate to their age, and a dwarf was staring out of the window without looking at any thing in particular. No one really bothered about talking to anybody, except a man rig ht at the back, who was having a continuous conversation with himself. ‘This isn’t fast enough!’ Glenda shouted after ten minutes of bouncing over the potholes. ‘I could run faster than this.’ ‘I don’t think he’s gonna get that far,’ said Trev. The sun was going down and the shadows were already drawing across the cabbage field s, but there was a figure on the road ahead, struggling. Trev jumped off. ‘Awk! Awk!’ ‘It’s those wretched things,’ said Glenda, running up behind him. ‘Give me that lead pi pe.’ Nutt was half crouched in the dust on the road. The Sisters of Perpetual Velocity were half flying and half flapping around him while he tried to protect his face with his ha nds. The passengers of the bus were quite unnoticed until the lead pipe arrived, follow ed very shortly by Glenda. It didn’t have the effect she’d hoped. The Sisters were inde ed like birds. She couldn’t so much hit them as bat them through the air. ‘Awk! Awk!’ ‘You stop trying to hurt him!’ she screamed. ‘He hasn’t done anything wrong!’ Nutt raised an arm and grabbed her wrist. There wasn’t much pressure, but somehow she couldn’t move it at all. It was as if it had suddenly been embalmed in stone. ‘They’re not here to hurt me,’ he said. ‘They’re here to protect you.’ ‘Who from?’ ‘Me. At least that’s how it’s supposed to go.’ ‘But I don’t need any protection from you. That doesn’t make any sense.’ ‘They think you might,’ said Nutt. ‘But that is not the worst of it.’ The creatures were circling and the other passengers, sharing the endemic Ankh-Morpor k taste for impromptu street theatre, had piled out and had become an appreciative au dience, which clearly discomforted the Sisters. ‘What is the worst of it, then?’ said Glenda, waving the pipe at the nearest Sister, whi ch jumped back out of the way. ‘They may be right.’ ‘All right, so you’re an orc,’ said Trev. ‘So they used to eat people. Have you eaten an yone lately?’ ‘No, Mister Trev.’ ‘Well, there you are, then.’ ‘You can’t arrest someone for something he hasn’t done,’ said one of the bus passenge rs, nodding sagely. ‘A fundamental law, that.’ ‘What’s an orc?’ said the lady next to him. ‘Oh, back in the olden days up in Uberwald or somewhere they used to tear people to bi ts and eat them.’ ‘That’s foreigners for you,’ said the woman. ‘But they’re all dead now,’ said the man. ‘That’s nice,’ said the woman. ‘Would anyone like some tea? I’ve got a flask.’ ‘All dead, except me. But I am afraid that I am an orc,’ said Nutt. He looked up at Gle nda. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You have been very kind, but I can see that being an orc wi ll follow me around. There will be trouble. I would hate you to be involved.’ ‘Awk! Awk!’ The woman unscrewed the top of her flask. ‘But you’re not about to eat anyone, are y ou, dear? If you feel really hungry I’ve got some macaroons.’ She looked at the near est Sister and said, ‘What about you, love? I know none of us can help how we’re mad e, but how come you’ve been made to look like a chicken?’ ‘Awk! Awk!’ ‘Danger! Danger!’ ‘Dunno about that,’ said another passenger. ‘I don’t reckon he’s going to do anything.’ ‘Please, please,’ said Nutt. There was a box lying on the road beside him. He tore it open frantically and started to pull things out of it. They were candles. Knocking them over in his haste, picking them up in shaking fingers only to knock them over again, he finally had them upright on the flints of the road. He pulled matches out of another pocket, knelt down and once again got his shaking fi ngers tangled in themselves as he struggled to strike a match. Tears streamed down his face as the light of the candles rose. Rose…and changed. Blues, yellows, greens. They would go out for a few smoky seconds and then light again a different colour, to the oohs and aahs of the crowd. ‘See! See!’ said Nutt. ‘You like them? You like them?’ ‘I think you could make yourself a lot of money out of that,’ said one of the passengers . ‘They’re lovely,’ said the old lady. ‘Honestly, the things you young people can do toda y.’ Nutt turned to the nearest Sister and spat, ‘I am not worthless, I have worth.’ ‘My brother-in-law runs a novelty shop down in the smoke,’ said the erstwhile expert in orcs. ‘I’ll write his address down for you if you like? But I reckon that thing would go down very well on the kiddies’ birthday circuit.’ Glenda had watched all of this open-mouthed, as the kind of democracy practised by re asonable and amiable but not very clever people, the people whose education had never involved a book but had involved lots of other people, surrounded Nutt in its invisi ble, beneficent arms. It was heartwarming, but Glenda’s heart was a little bit calloused on this score. It was the crab bucket at its best. Sentimental and forgiving; but get it wrong–one wrong word , one wrong liaison, one wrong thought–and those nurturing arms could so easily end in f ists. Nutt was right: at best, being an orc was to live under a threat. ‘You lot have got no right treating the poor little devil like that,’ said the old lady, waving a finger at the nearest Sister. ‘If you want to live here, you have to do things our way, all right? And that means no pecking at people. That’s not how we do things in Ankh-Morpork.’ Even Glenda smiled at that one. Pecking was a picnic compared with what Ankh-Morpo rk could offer. ‘Vetinari’s letting all sorts in these days,’ said another passenger. ‘I won’t hear a wor d said against the dwarfs—’ ‘Good,’ said a voice at his back. He moved aside and Glenda saw the dwarf standing b ehind him. ‘Sorry, mate, I didn’t see you there, what with you being so little,’ said the man who had nothing against dwarfs. ‘As I was saying, you lot just settle down and get on with it and are no trouble to anybody, but we’re getting some weird ones now.’ ‘That woman they put in the Watch last month, for one,’ said the old lady. ‘The weird one from out Ephebe way. Gust of wind caught her sunglasses and three people turned into stone.’ ‘She was a Medusa,’ said Glenda, who had read about that in the Times. ‘The wizards managed to turn them back again, though.’ ‘Well, what I’m saying is,’ started the man who had nothing against dwarfs, ‘we don’t mind anyone, so long as they mind their own business and don’t do any funny stuff.’ This was the rhythm of the world to Glenda; she’d heard it so many times. But the feeli ng of the crowd was now very much against the Sisters. Sooner or later somebody was goi ng to pick up a stone. ‘I’d get out of here now,’ she said, ‘get out and go back to the lady you work for. I should do that right now, if I were you.’ ‘Awk! Awk!’ one of them screeched. But there were brains in those strange-shaped heads. And the three Sisters were clearl y bright enough to want to keep them there and ran for it, hopping and leaping like he rons until what seemed like cloaks turned out to be wings, which pounded on the air as they sought for height. There was a final scream of ‘Awk! Awk!’ The driver of the horse bus coughed. ‘Well, if that’s all sorted out then I suggest you all get back on board, please, ladies and gentlemen. And whoever. And don’t forget you r candles, mister.’ Glenda helped Nutt on to a wooden seat. He was holding his toolbox tightly across his knees, as if it would offer some sort of protection. ‘Where were you trying to go?’ sh e said as the horses began to move. ‘Home,’ said Nutt. ‘Back to Her?’ ‘She gave me worth,’ said Nutt. ‘I was nothing and she gave me worth.’ ‘How can you say you were nothing?’ said Glenda. On the pair of seats in front of them , Trev and Juliet were whispering together. ‘I was nothing,’ said Nutt. ‘I knew nothing, I understood nothing, I had no understandi ng, I had no skill—’ ‘But that doesn’t mean someone is worthless,’ said Glenda firmly. ‘It does,’ said Nutt. ‘But it does not mean they are bad. I was worthless. She showed me how to gain worth and now I have worth.’ Glenda had a feeling they were working from two different dictionaries. ‘What does “ worth” mean, Mister Nutt?’ ‘It means that you leave the world better than when you found it,’ said Nutt. ‘Good point,’ said the lady with the macaroons. ‘There’s far too many people around t he place who wouldn’t dream of doing a hand’s turn.’ ‘All right, but what about people who’re blind, for example?’ This from the hardboiled-egg man, sitting on the other side of the bus. ‘I know a blind bloke in Sto Lat who runs a bar,’ said an elderly gentleman. ‘Knows wh ere everything is and when you put your money on the counter he knows if it’s the righ t change just by listening. He does all right. It’s amazing, he can pick out a dud six pence halfway across a noisy bar.’ ‘I don’t think there are absolutes,’ said Nutt. ‘I think what Ladyship meant was that y ou do the best you can with what you have.’ ‘Sounds like a sensible lady,’ said the man who had nothing against dwarfs. ‘She’s a vampire,’ said Glenda maliciously. ‘Nothing against vampires, just so long as they keep themselves to themselves,’ said the macaroon lady, who was now engaged in licking something revoltingly pink. ‘We’ve got one working down at the kosher butcher’s on our street, and she’s as nice as you like.’ ‘I don’t think it’s about what you end up with,’ said the dwarf. ‘It’s about what you e nd up with compared with what you started with.’ Glenda leaned back with a smile as attempts at philosophy bounced their way from seat t o seat. She wasn’t at all certain about the whole thing, but Nutt was sitting there loo king far less bedraggled and the rest of them were treating him as one of themselves. There were dim lights ahead in the darkness. Glenda slipped from her seat and went up ahead to the driver. ‘Are we nearly there yet?’ ‘Another five minutes,’ said the driver. ‘Sorry about all that silly business with the lead pipe,’ she said. ‘Didn’t happen,’ said the man cheerfully. ‘Believe me, we get all sorts on the night bus . At least no one’s thrown up. Quite an interestin’ lad you’ve got back there with you.’ ‘You’ve no idea,’ said Glenda. ‘Of course, all he’s saying is you’ve got to do your best,’ said the driver. ‘And the mor e best you’re capable of, the more you should do. That’s it, really.’ Glenda nodded. That did seem to be it, really. ‘Do you go straight back?’ she said. ‘No. Me and the horses are stopping here and will go back in the morning.’ He gave her the wry look of a man who’s heard a great many things, and surprisingly seen a great many things, when to those behind him he was just a head facing forward keeping an eye on the road. ‘That was a wonderful kiss she give me. I’ll tell you what, the bus will be in the yard, there’s plenty of straw around and if anyone was to have a bit of a k ip, I wouldn’t know about it, would I? We’ll leave at six with fresh horses.’ He grinn ed at her expression. ‘I told you, we get all sorts on the late-night bus: kids runnin g away from home, wives running away from husbands, husbands running away from other w ives’ husbands. It’s called an omnibus, see, and omni means everything and damn near e verything happens on this bus, that’s why I have the axe, see? But the way I see it, l ife can’t be all axe.’ He raised his voice: ‘Sto Lat coming up, folks! Return trip six o’clock prompt.’ He winked at Glenda. ‘And if you’re not there, I’ll go withoutcha,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to catch the bus at bus-catching time.’ ‘Well, this hasn’t been so bad, has it?’ said Glenda, as the lights of the city grew bigger . ‘My dad’s going to fret,’ said Juliet. ‘He’ll think you’re with me.’ Trev said nothing. By the rules of the street, being exposed in front of your want-to-be girlfriend as the kind of man who can so easily be seen not to be the kind of man t hat would have the guts to belt someone over the head with a length of lead pipe was e xtremely shaming, although no one seemed to have noticed this. ‘Looks like a bit of trouble ahead,’ the driver called back. ‘The Lancre Flyer ain’t gone .’ All they could see were flares and lantern lights, illuminating the big coaching inn outside the city gate, where several coaches were standing. As they drew nearer, he c alled to one of the skinny, bandy-legged and weaselly-looking men who seemed to self-generate around any establishment that involved the movement of horses. ‘Flyer not go ne?’ he enquired. The weaselly man removed a cigarette end from his mouth. ‘ ’orse frowed a shoe.’ ‘Well? They’ve got a smith ’ere, ain’t they? Speed the mails and all that.’ ‘He’s not speedin’ nuffink on account of him just laminating his hand to the anvil,’ sai d the man. ‘There’ll be the devil to pay if the Flyer don’t go,’ said the driver. ‘That’s post, that i s. You should be able to set your watch by the Flyer.’ Nutt stood up. ‘I could certainly re-shoe a horse for you, sir,’ he said, picking up his wooden toolbox. ‘Perhaps you had better go and tell someone.’ The man sidled off and the bus came to rest in the big yard, where a rather better dre ssed man came hurrying up. ‘One of you a smith?’ he enquired, looking directly at Glen da. ‘Me,’ said Nutt. The man stared. ‘You don’t look much like a smith, sir.’ ‘Contrary to popular belief, most smiths are on the wiry side rather than bulky. It’s all a matter of sinews rather than muscle.’ ‘And you know your way around an anvil, do you?’ ‘You would be amazed, sir.’ ‘There’s shoes in the smithy,’ said the man. ‘You’ll have to work one to size.’ ‘I know how to do that,’ said Nutt. ‘Mister Trev, I would be glad if you would come a nd help me with the bellows.’ The inn was huge and crowded, because as with coaching inns everywhere its day lasted for twenty-four hours and not a moment less. There were no meal times, as such. Hot fo od for those who could afford it was available all the time and cold cuts of meat were on a large trestle in the main room. People arrived, were emptied and refilled in the speediest time possible and sent on their way again because the space was needed for the next arrivals. There never seemed to be a moment without the jangle of harnesses. Glenda found a quiet corner. ‘I tell you what,’ she said to Juliet, ‘go and fetch some sandwiches for the lads.’ ‘Fancy Mister Nutt being a blacksmith,’ said Juliet. ‘He’s a man of many parts,’ said Glenda. Juliet’s brow wrinkled. ‘’ow many parts?’ ‘It’s just a figure of speech, Juliet. Off you go now.’ She needed time to think. Those strange flying women. Mister Nutt. It was all a lot to take. You start the day and it’ s just another day and here you are, having mercifully not ended up as a highwayman, si tting in another city with nothing more than the clothes you’re standing up in, not kno wing what is going to happen next. Which, in a way, was exciting. She had to analyse that feeling for several moments be cause excitement was not a regular feature of her life. Pies, on the whole, do not ex cite. She got up and wandered unheeded through the crowds, with the vague idea of see ing what the kitchens were like, but found her path blocked by someone whose sweating face, flustered air and rotund body suggested he was the innkeeper. ‘If you could ju st wait a moment, ma’am,’ he said to her and then addressed a woman who was emerging from what looked like a private dining room. ‘So nice to see you again, your ladyship ,’ he said, bobbing up and down a little. ‘It’s always an honour to have you grace ou r humble establishment.’ Ladyship. Glenda looked up at the woman who was everything she had pictured when Nutt had first talked about her. Tall, thin, dark, forbidding, to be feared. Her expression was stern and she said, in what to Glenda were posh tones, ‘Far too noisy in here.’ ‘But the beef was superb,’ said another voice and Glenda realized that Ladyship had almo st eclipsed a smaller woman, quite pleasant, not particularly tall and with a slightly f ussy air about her. ‘Are you Lady Margolotta?’ said Glenda. The tall lady gave her a look of brief disdain and swept on towards the main doors, b ut her companion stopped and said, ‘Do you have business with her ladyship?’ ‘Is she coming to Ankh-Morpork?’ Glenda asked. ‘Everybody knows she’s Lord Vetinari’s squeeze.’ She felt instantly embarrassed as she said the word; it conjured up images t hat simply could not fit into the available space in her brain. ‘Really?’ said the woman. ‘They are certainly very close friends.’ ‘Well, I want to talk to her about Mister Nutt,’ said Glenda. The woman gave her a worried look and pulled her over to an empty bench. ‘There has been a problem?’ she said, sitting down and patting the wood beside her. ‘She told him he was worthless,’ said Glenda. ‘And sometimes I think all he worries ab out is being worthy.’ ‘Are you worthy?’ said the woman. ‘What sort of question is that to ask a stranger?’ ‘An interesting and possibly revealing one. Do you think the world is a better place wi th you in it, and would you do me the courtesy of actually thinking about your answer r ather than pulling one off the “affronted” rack? I’m afraid there’s far too much of tha t these days. People believe that acting and thinking are the same thing.’ Faced with that, Glenda settled for, ‘Yes.’ ‘You’ve made it better, have you?’ ‘Yes. I’ve helped lots of people and I invented the Ploughman’s Pie.’ ‘Did the people you helped want to be helped?’ ‘What? Yes, they came and asked.’ ‘Good. And the Ploughman’s Pie?’ Glenda told her. ‘Ah, you must be the cook at Unseen University,’ said the woman. ‘Which means that you have access to rather more than the average cook and, therefore, I would deduce that to keep the pickled onions crisp in the pie you put them in a cold room at very nearly freezing point for some time immediately before baking, possibly wrapping them in che ese for the sake of temporary insulation, and, if you have assembled your pie correctl y and paid attention to temperatures, I think that would do the trick.’ She paused. ‘H ello?’ ‘Are you a cook?’ said Glenda. ‘Good grief, no!’ ‘So you worked it out, just like that? Mister Nutt told me her ladyship employs very cl ever people.’ ‘Well, I’m embarrassed to say it, but that is true.’ ‘But she shouldn’t have told Mister Nutt that he’s worthless. She shouldn’t say that to people.’ ‘But he was worthless, yes? He couldn’t even talk properly when he was found. Surely what she has done has helped him?’ ‘But he frets all the time and it’s got out now that he’s an orc. What’s that all about?’ ‘And is he, in your mind, doing anything particularly orcish?’ Reluctantly, Glenda said, ‘Sometimes his fingernails turn into claws.’ The woman looked suddenly concerned. ‘And what does he do then?’ ‘Well, nothing,’ said Glenda. ‘They just sort of…go back in again. But he makes wonde rful candles,’ she added quickly. ‘He’s always making things. It’s as if…worth is som ething that drains away all the time so you have to keep topping it up.’ ‘Possibly, now you put it that way, she has been a little too brisk with him.’ ‘Does she love him?’ asked Glenda. ‘I beg your pardon?’ ‘I mean, has anyone ever loved him?’ ‘Oh, I think she does, in her way,’ said the woman. ‘Although she’s a vampire, you kno w. They tend to see the world rather differently.’ ‘Well, if I met her I’d give her a piece of my mind,’ said Glenda. ‘Muddling him about. Setting those wretched flying ladies on him. I wouldn’t let her do that sort of thing.’ ‘She’s immensely strong, I’m led to believe,’ said the woman. ‘That doesn’t give her the right,’ said Glenda. ‘And shall I tell you something? Mister N utt is right here. Oh yes, out in the yard, shoeing one of the horses for the Lancre Flye r. He really is amazing.’ ‘It sounds like it,’ said the woman with a faint little smile. ‘You certainly seem to be a vehement supporter.’ Glenda hesitated. ‘Is that something to do with foxes?’ she said. ‘It means with great passion,’ said the woman. ‘Do you have a great passion for Miste r Nutt, Miss Sugarbean? And remember, please, I do like people to do me the honour of thinking before they speak.’ ‘Well, I like him a lot,’ said Glenda hotly. ‘That is charming,’ said the woman. ‘It does occur to me that Mister Nutt might have achieved more worth than I had previously thought.’ ‘So you tell her ladyship what I said,’ said Glenda, feeling her neck on fire with blushe s. ‘Mister Nutt has got friends.’ ‘Indeed I will,’ said the woman, standing up. ‘And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m sure our coach is about to depart. I must fly.’ ‘Remember to tell her what I said!’ Glenda shouted after her. She saw the woman turn to smile at her and then she was lost as a party arriving from a new coach hurried in from the cold night air. Glenda, who had stood up at the same time as the woman, sat down heavily. Who on ear th did that woman think she was? Her ladyship’s librarian, probably. Nutt had mentio ned her several times. Altogether too many ideas above her station for Glenda’s liki ng. She hadn’t even had the decency to give Glenda her name. The faint, distant hunting horns of sheer terror began to sound in the back of her mi nd. Had the woman asked Glenda her name? No! But she’d certainly known it and how wou ld she know about the ‘cook’ at Unseen University? And she’d been so quick, she’d wor ked out the Ploughman’s Pie with a snap of her fingers. That little part of her that had first been liberated by the sherry chimed in with, The trouble with you is that y ou make assumptions. You see something and you think you know what you’ve seen. She c ertainly didn’t sound like a librarian, did she? Very slowly, Glenda raised her right hand into a fist and lowered it into her mouth, an d bit down very hard in an attempt to somehow retrieve the last fifteen minutes from th e records of the universe and replace them with something far less embarrassing, like h er knickers falling down. Even here, late into the night, the forge was the heart of attention. Coaches were arrivi ng and leaving constantly. The inn did not run according to the sun, it ran according to the timetable, and aimless people waiting for their connections gravitated to the forge a s a free show and a place of comfort in the chilly night air. Nutt was shoeing a horse. Trev had seen horses being shod before, but never like this. The animal stood as if transfixed, trembling very slightly. When Nutt wanted it to move , he clicked his tongue. When he wanted its leg raised, another click caused this to ha ppen. Trev felt that he wasn’t watching a man shoeing a horse, but a master demonstrati ng his skills to a world of amateurs. When the shoe was on, the horse walked backwards in front of the crowd, for all the world like a fashion model, turning as Nutt moved a hand or made a clicking noise. It didn’t seem to be a particularly happy horse, but, gr eat heavens, it was certainly an obedient one. ‘Yes, that all seems fine,’ Nutt said. ‘How much is that going to cost us?’ said the coachman. ‘Wonderful job, if I may say s o.’ ‘How much? How much? How much?’ said Nutt, turning it over in his mind. ‘Have I ea rned worth, sir?’ ‘I should say so, mate. I’ve never seen a horse shod as smooth as that.’ ‘Then worth will do,’ said Nutt. ‘And a ride for myself and my three friends back to Ankh-Morpork.’ ‘An’ five dollars,’ said Trev, coming away from his lounging spot near the wall with t he speed of money. The coachman sniffed. ‘A bit steep,’ he said. ‘What?’ said Trev. ‘For a late-night job? To better than Burleigh and Stronginthearm sp ecification? Not a bad deal, I think.’ A murmur from the other watchers backed Trev up. ‘I never seen anyone do anything like that,’ said Juliet. ‘He’d ’ave ’ad that ’orse dancing if you’d asked ’im.’ The coachman winked at Trev. ‘All right, lad. What can I say? Old Havacook there is a good lad, but a bit bad tempered, as it goes. Once kicked a coachman through the wall. I never thought I’d see him stand there and lift ’is leg up like a trained lap-dog. Y our chum has earned his money and his ride.’ ‘Please take him away,’ said Nutt. ‘But hold him with care because when he gets a litt le way away from me he might get a tiny bit frisky.’ The crowd dispersed. Nutt methodically damped down the forge and started to pack his tools into the box. ‘If we’re going to go back, we’d better go now. Has anyone seen Miss Glenda?’ ‘Here,’ said Glenda, advancing out of the shadows. ‘Trev, you and Jools go and get us s ome seats on the coach. I need to talk to Mister Nutt.’ ‘Her ladyship was here,’ said Glenda when they’d gone. ‘I would not be surprised,’ said Nutt calmly, snapping the catches shut on his box. ‘Jus t about everybody passes through here and she travels a great deal.’ ‘Why were you running away?’ ‘Because I know what will happen,’ said Nutt. ‘I am an orc. It’s as simple as that.’ ‘But the people on the bus were on your side,’ said Glenda. Nutt flexed his hands and the claws slid out, just for a moment. ‘And tomorrow?’ he said. ‘And if something goes wrong? Everybody knows orcs will tear your arms off. Ev erybody knows orcs will tear your head off. Everybody knows these things. That is no t good.’ ‘Well, then, why are you coming back?’ Glenda demanded. ‘Because you are kind and came after me. How could I refuse? But it does not change the things that everybody knows.’ ‘But every time you make a candle and every time you shoe a horse, you change the t hings that everybody knows,’ said Glenda. ‘You know that orcs were—’ She hesitated. ‘Sort of made?’ ‘Oh, yes, it was in the book.’ She nearly exploded. ‘Well, then, why didn’t you tell me?!’ ‘Is it important? We are what we are now.’ ‘But you don’t have to be!’ Glenda yelled. ‘Everybody knows trolls eat people and spi t them out. Everybody knows dwarfs cut your legs off. But at the same time everybody knows that what everybody knows is wrong. And orcs didn’t decide to be like they are. People will understand that.’ ‘It will be a dreadful burden.’ ‘I’ll help!’ Glenda was shocked at the speed of her response and then mumbled, ‘I’ll he lp.’ The coals in the forge crackled as they settled down. Fires in a busy forge seldom die out completely. After a while, Glenda said, ‘You wrote that poem for Trev, didn’t you ?’ ‘Yes, Miss Glenda. I hope she liked it.’ Glenda thought she’d better raise this carefully. ‘I think I ought to tell you that she d idn’t understand a lot of the words exactly. I sort of had to translate it for her.’ It h adn’t been too difficult, she reckoned. Most love poems were pretty much the same under t he curly writing. ‘Did you like it?’ said Nutt. ‘It was a wonderful poem,’ said Glenda. ‘I wrote it for you,’ said Nutt. He was looking at her with an expression that stirred to gether fear and defiance in equal measure. The cooling embers brightened up at this. After all, a forge has a soul. As if they h ad been waiting there, the responses lined themselves up in front of Glenda’s tongue. Whatever you do next is going to be very important, she told herself. Really, extrem ely, very important. Don’t start wondering about what Mary the bloody housemaid would do in one of those cheap novels you read, because Mary was made up by someone with a name suspiciously like an anagram for people like you. She is not real and you are. ‘We had better get on the coach,’ said Nutt, picking up his box. Glenda gave up on the thinking and burst into tears. It has to be said that they were not the gentle tears they would have been from Mary the housemaid, but the really bi g long-drawn-out blobby ones you get from someone who very rarely cries. They were gu mmy, with a hint of snot in there as well. But they were real. Mary the housemaid wou ld just not have been able to match them. So, of course, it will be just like Trev Likely to turn up out of the shadows and say, ‘They’re calling the coach now—Are you two all right?’ Nutt looked at Glenda. Tears aren’t readily retractable, but she managed to balance a smi le on them. ‘I believe this to be the case,’ said Nutt. Travelling on a fast coach, on even a mild autumn night, those passengers on the roof experience the temperature that can freeze doorknobs. There are leather covers and rug s of various age, thickness and smell. Survival is only possible by wrapping yourself in the biggest cocoon you can achieve, preferably with somebody else next to you; two people can heat up faster than one. In theory, all of this could lead to hanky panky, but the seats of the coach and the rockiness of the road mean that such things are not uppermost in the traveller’s mind, which dreams longingly of cushions. Furthermore, t here was a fine rain now. Juliet craned her head to look at the seats behind, but there were just the mounds of d amp rugs that were the coach company’s answer to the cold night air. ‘You don’t think t hey’re sweet on each other, do you?’ she said. Trev, who was himself cocooned in rugs, only managed a grunt, but then went on, ‘I thi nk ’e admires her. He always seems a bit tongue-tied when ’e’s near her, that’s all I know.’ This had to be a romance, Glenda thought. It wasn’t like the ones peddled every week by Iradne Comb-Buttworthy. It felt more real–more real and very, very strange. ‘Did you know that all of the orcs were hunted down after the war? All of them, childre n too,’ Nutt said. And people don’t say things like that in a romantic situation, thought Glenda. But it stil l is, she added. ‘But they were forced,’ she replied. ‘They had children. Okay?’ Should I tell him abo ut the magic mirror? she wondered. Would it make things better? Or worse? ‘They were very bad times,’ said Nutt. ‘Well, look at it like this,’ said Glenda. ‘Most of the people who talk about orcs now don’t know what they’re on about, but the only orc they are ever going to see is you. Y ou making beautiful candles. You training the football team. That will mean a lot. You’ ll show them that orcs don’t go around pulling people’s heads off. That’ll be something to be proud of.’ ‘Well, in fairness, I have to say that when I think of the amount of radial force that must have been necessary to effectively unscrew a human head against its owner’s wishes , I am a little impressed. But that’s now, sitting here with you. Then, I wanted to go up to the hills. I think that’s how we must have survived. If you didn’t keep away from humans you died.’ ‘Yes, that’s a very good point,’ said Glenda, ‘but I think you should keep it to yourself for now.’ She noticed a surprised owl, lit up briefly by the coach’s lamps. Then she said, keeping her eyes straight ahead, ‘The thing about the poem…’ ‘How did you know, Miss Glenda?’ said Nutt. ‘You talk about kindness a lot.’ She cleared her throat. ‘And under the circumstances, I think Glenda is sufficient.’ ‘You were kind to me,’ said Nutt. ‘You are kind to everybody.’ Glenda swiftly put aside a vision of Mr Ottomy and said, ‘No, I’m not, I’m shouting at everyone all the time!’ ‘Yes, but it’s for their own good.’ ‘What do we do now?’ Glenda said. ‘I have no idea. But can I tell you something very interesting about ships?’ It wasn’t exactly what Glenda had expected, but somehow it was one hundred per cent Nut t. ‘Please tell me the interesting thing about ships,’ she said. ‘The interesting thing about ships is that the captains of ships have to be very careful when two ships are close together at sea, particularly in calm conditions. They tend to c ollide.’ ‘Because of the wind blowing, and that?’ said Glenda, thinking: In theory this is a ro mantic-novel situation and I am about to learn about ships. Iradne Comb-Buttworthy nev er puts a ship in her books. They probably don’t have enough reticules. ‘No,’ said Nutt. ‘In fact, to put it simply, each ship shields the other ship from lateral waves on one side, so by small increments outside forces bring them together without thei r realizing it.’ ‘Oh! It’s a metaphor?’ said Glenda, relieved. ‘You think we’re being pushed together.’ ‘It’s something like that,’ said Nutt. They rocked as the coach hit a particularly nasty p othole. ‘So, if we don’t do anything we’ll just get closer and closer?’ ‘Yes,’ said Nutt. The coach jumped and rattled again, but Glenda felt as if she was travelling over very t hin ice. She’d hate to say the wrong thing. ‘You know Trev said that I’d died?’ Nutt continued. ‘Well, that was true. Probably. Lady ship said that we were made from goblins for the Evil Emperor. The Igors did it. And the y put in something very strange. It’s a part of you that isn’t quite a part of you. They called it the Little Brother. It’s tucked in deep inside and absolutely protected and i t’s like having your own hospital with you all the time. I know that I was hit very hard , but the Little Brother kept me alive and simply cured things again. There are ways to kill an orc, but there are not many of them and anyone trying them out on a living orc i s not going to have very much time to get it right. Does that worry you at all?’ ‘No, not really,’ said Glenda. ‘I don’t really understand it. I think it’s more important just to be who you are.’ ‘No, I don’t think I should be who I am, because I am an orc. But I have some plans in t hat direction.’ Glenda cleared her throat again. ‘This thing with the ships…Does it happen quite quick ly?’ ‘It starts quite slowly, but it’s quite quick towards the end,’ said Nutt. ‘The thing is,’ said Glenda, ‘I mean, I can’t just walk away from my job, and there’s ol d ladies I go and visit, and you’ll be busy with the football…’ ‘Yes. I think we should be doing the things we should be doing, and it’s the last train ing day tomorrow, which is actually today now,’ said Nutt. ‘And I’ve got to make a lot of pies.’ ‘It’s going to be a very busy time for both of us,’ said Nutt solemnly. ‘Yes. Um, er, do you mind me saying…in your lovely poem…the line “The crypt’s a han dsome place to be, but none I think leave after tea” didn’t quite—’ ‘Didn’t quite work? I know,’ said Nutt. ‘I feel rather bad about that.’ ‘Oh, please don’t! It’s a wonderful poem!’ Glenda burst out, and felt the ripples in the calm sea. The rising sun managed to peek around the vast column of smoke that forever rose from Ankh-Morpork, City of Cities, illustrating almost up to the edge of space that smoke m eans progress or, at least, people setting fire to things. ‘I think we’re going to be so busy that we’re not going to have much time for…ourselves,’ said Glenda. ‘I quite agree,’ said Nutt. ‘Leaving things alone would definitely be our wisest move.’ Glenda felt light as air as the coach trundled down Broad Way, and it wasn’t just from la ck of sleep. That stuff about boats, I really hope he doesn’t think it’s all about ships. There was a crowd outside the university when they arrived, just as yesterday, but it seemed to have a different complexion now. People were staring at her and Nutt, and there was something wrong with the way they were looking. She reached over to the mound that was Trev, pretended not to hear a girlish giggle and s aid, ‘Trev. Could you, er, have a look at this. I think there’s going to be trouble.’ Trev, very tousled, stuck his head out and said, ‘Hmm, me too. Let’s all nip in around t he back.’ ‘We could stay on and get off at the Post Office,’ said Glenda. ‘No,’ said Trev. ‘We ’aven’t done anythin’ wrong.’ As they dismounted from the coach a small boy said to Nutt, ‘Are you the orc, mister?’ ‘Yes,’ said Nutt, as he helped Glenda down. ‘I am an orc.’ ‘Cool! Have you ever twisted someone’s head off?’ ‘I don’t believe so. I am sure I would have remembered,’ said Nutt. This got if not applause then a certain amount of approval from some of the bystanders . It’s his voice, thought Glenda. He sounds posher than a wizard. You can’t imagine a voice like that with its hands around somebody’s head. At this point the back gate opened and Ponder Stibbons came hurrying through. ‘We sa w you from the Hall,’ he said, grabbing Nutt. ‘Come in quick. Where have you all bee n?’ ‘We ’ad to go to Sto Lat,’ said Trev. ‘On business,’ said Juliet. ‘Personal,’ said Glenda, daring Ponder to object. ‘Is there something wrong?’ ‘There was something in the paper this morning. We have not been having a very nice ti me,’ said Ponder, towing them into the relative safety of the undercrofts. ‘’ave they been sayin’ somethin’ nasty about Mister Nutt?’ said Trev. ‘Not exactly,’ said Ponder. ‘The editor of the Times came round, in person, and was kn ocking on the door to see the Archchancellor at midnight. He wanted to know all about you.’ This was said directly to Nutt. ‘I bet it was bloody Ottomy that told them,’ growled Glenda. ‘What have they done?’ ‘Well, of course, you know there was all that trouble over the Medusa in the Watch a li ttle while ago,’ Ponder began. ‘Yes, but you wizards sorted that out,’ said Trev. ‘But no one likes being turned into stone, even if it’s just for half an hour.’ Ponder s ighed. ‘The Times has done one of their thoughtful pieces. I suppose it isn’t too bad. I t quoted the Archchancellor, who says that Mister Nutt is a hardworking member of the un iversity staff and there have been no incidents of anyone’s leg being torn off.’ ‘They put it like that?’ said Glenda, wide-eyed. ‘Oh, you know the sort of thing if you read the papers a lot,’ said Ponder. ‘I seriously think they think that it’s their job to calm people down by first of all explaining why they should be overexcited and very worried.’ ‘Oh, yes, I know they do that,’ said Glenda. ‘How would people get worried if they we ren’t told how to be?’ ‘Well, it wasn’t all that bad,’ said Ponder, ‘but a few of the other papers have picked it up as well and some of the facts have become…elastic. The Inquirer said Nutt is train ing the football team.’ ‘That’s true,’ said Glenda. ‘Well, actually it’s me. I am merely delegating the task to him. I hope that’s understoo d? Anyway, they did a cartoon about it.’ Glenda put a hand over her eyes. She hated cartoons in newspapers. ‘Was it a football t eam of orcs?’ she said. Ponder’s look was almost admiring. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And they did an article about rais ing important questions about Vetinari’s open-door policy, while saying at the same ti me that rumours that Mister Nutt had to be chained down were quite likely false.’ ‘What about the Tanty Bugle?’ said Glenda. ‘They never write anything unless it’s got b lood and horrible murder in it.’ She paused and then added, ‘Or pictures of girls witho ut their vests on.’ ‘Oh, yes,’ said Ponder. ‘They did a rather grainy picture of a young lady with enormou s melons.’ ‘D’you mean—’ Trev began. ‘No, they were just enormous melons. The green ones. Slightly warty. She won a contest for growing them, apparently, but in the caption it said that she’s worried that she wo n’t be able to sleep easily in her bed now that orcs are coming into the city.’ ‘Is Lord Vetinari doing anything about this?’ ‘I haven’t heard,’ said Ponder. ‘Oh, and Bu-bubble want to interview Mister Nutt. What t hey call a lifestyle piece.’ He said the words as if trying to hold them at arm’s length . ‘Have people turned up for training?’ said Nutt calmly. ‘Oh, yes. The ground is heaving.’ ‘So we’ll go and train them,’ said Nutt. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t twist anybody’s head off. ’ ‘No, don’t make jokes,’ said Glenda. ‘I think this could be terribly bad.’ ‘We know something’s going on with the teams,’ said Ponder. ‘And there were lots of fi ghts during the night.’ ‘About what?’ ‘About who’s going to play us.’ Ponder stopped and looked Nutt up and down. ‘Command er Vimes is back in town and would like to lock you up,’ he said. ‘Only in protectiv e custody, of course.’ ‘You mean put him somewhere where they can all find him?’ said Glenda. ‘I would say that the chances of a mob breaking into Pseudopolis Yard are remote,’ sai d Ponder. ‘Yes, but you’re locking him up. That’s what it would be. He’d be locked up and coppe rs chat like everyone else. The orc would be locked up in prison and if people don’t know why, they’ll make it up, that’s how people are. Can’t you wizards do something?’ ‘Yes,’ said Ponder. ‘We can do practically anything, but we can’t change people’s min ds. We can’t magic them sensible. Believe me, if it were possible to do that, we woul d have done it a long time ago. We can stop people fighting by magic and then what do we do? We have to go on using magic to stop them fighting. We have to go on using ma gic to stop them being stupid. And where does all that end? So we make certain that i t doesn’t begin. That’s why the university is here. That’s what we do. We have to sit around not doing things because of the hundreds of times in the past it’s been prove d that once you get beyond the abracadabra, hey presto, changing-the-pigeons-into-pin g-pong-balls style of magic you start getting more problems than you’ve solved. It wa s bad enough finding ping-pong balls nesting in the attics.’ ‘Ping-pong balls nestin’?’ said Trev. ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ said Ponder glumly. ‘I remember when one of you gentlemen got hungry in the night and cast a spell for a b aked potato,’ said Glenda. Ponder shuddered. ‘That was the Bursar,’ he said. ‘He really does get confused about t he decimal point.’ ‘I remember all those wheelbarrows,’ said Glenda, slightly amused at Ponder’s discomfo rt. ‘Days and days it took to get them all out. I heard we were feeding every beggar i n the city and every pig farm out as far as Sto Lat for weeks.’ Ponder nearly gave a harrumph. ‘Well, yes, there’s an example of why we have to be ca reful.’ ‘But there’s still going to be a match tomorrow and I would like to conclude my traini ng programme,’ said Nutt. ‘Ah, there’s another problem. You know Lord Vetinari is allowing the Hippo to be used for the game? Well, some of the teams are doing their training there now. You know, a bit of a kick-about, and so on. It’s all about who will be playing Unseen Academica ls.’ ‘But that’s the other side of the city,’ said Glenda. ‘Commander Vimes has said the Watch will provide an escort,’ said Ponder. ‘Just for protection, you know?’ ‘Whose?’ said Glenda. ‘You can see what’s going on here. People will see Mister Nutt as the problem.’ ‘Oh, it’s all fun and games until someone loses a head,’ said a voice behind Glenda. Sh e recognized that voice and it always sounded as if it was trying to put its hand up he r jumper. ‘Pepe? What the hell are you doing here?’ ‘And how did you get in?’ Ponder demanded. ‘The Watch are all around this place.’ Pepe barely gave him a glance. ‘And who are you, smart boy?’ ‘I run this university!’ ‘Then I should go away and run it, because you’re not going to be any good around her e.’ ‘Is this–person–known to you, miss?’ Ponder demanded. ‘Er, yes. He, er, designs clothes.’ ‘I am a fashionista,’ said Pepe. ‘I can do things with clothing that you wouldn’t think w ere possible.’ ‘I’d believe that, at least,’ said Trev. ‘And I know a thing or two about riots and mobs.’ An idea struck Glenda and she whispered to the irate Ponder, ‘Very big in dwarf circles, sir. Knows a lot of influential people.’ ‘So do I,’ said Ponder. ‘Actually, I am one,’ he wailed. ‘But I had to do the training myself yesterday and I couldn’t remember all of the things Mister Nutt comes up with so I had them running on the spot, which I don’t think is very helpful.’ ‘There’s somethin’ goin’ bad,’ said Trev. ‘I know about this city. I’ll go and check a fe w things out. It’s not as if you really need me.’ ‘I do,’ said Juliet. Trev hesitated, but Nutt had shown him how to do this. He extended a hand and blew he r a kiss as he went through the door. ‘Did you see that?’ said Juliet. ‘He blew me.’ Glenda looked at Pepe, whose eyes were turned up so far in his head that she could see the whites–although they were red. A short while later, when most of the UU squad headed for the Hippo with Glenda and Jul iet trailing after them like camp followers, half a dozen watchmen appeared from the va rious places that they had selected for a quiet smoke and fell in after them, trying to make it look as if they all just happened to be strolling in the same direction. Trev was right, Glenda thought. It is going bad. Trev had not gone very far when his street sense told him he was being followed. He ji nked in and out of a few alleys and waited at the next corner to confront the follower …The follower who wasn’t there. The alley behind him was empty all the way to the last street. He realized this at the same time as someone pressed what definitely felt lik e a knife to his neck. ‘Cor, this takes me back and so it does,’ said a voice. ‘I reckon I can still remember eve ry back alley in this place.’ ‘I know you, it’s Pepe, isn’t it? You’re a dwarf?’ said Trev, trying not to turn round. ‘Sort of a dwarf,’ said Pepe. ‘But I don’t have no argument with you, do I?’ said Trev. Something small and shiny appeared on the edge of Trev’s vision. ‘Sample piece of moon silver,’ said Pepe’s voice. ‘I could do more damage with a broken champagne bottle–and I have, believe you me. I wouldn’t threaten a bloke like you with a knife, not with t hat little girl doting on you like she is. She seems very happy with you and I’d like to keep her happy.’ ‘Somethin’s goin’ down on the street,’ said Trev. ‘What, the whole street? Sounds like fun.’ ‘Somethin’s gone wrong, ’asn’t it?’ said Trev. Only now did Pepe enter his field of view. ‘Not really my problem at all,’ he said. ‘Bu t there’re some kinds of people I just don’t like. I’ve seen too many of ’em, bullies a nd bastards. If you want to learn athletics very quickly, be born around here with a ta lent for design and maybe a few other little preferences. Lord Vetinari has got it all wrong. He thought he could take on the football and it’s not working. It’s not like the Thieves’ Guild, see. He had it easy with the Thieves’ Guild. That’s because the Thieve s’ Guild is organized. Football ain’t organized. Just because he’s won over the captain s don’t mean that everyone’s going to meekly get into line after them. There was fights all over the place last night. Your chums with their shiny new football and their shin y new jerseys are going to get creamed tomorrow. No, worse than creamed–cheesed.’ ‘I thought you were just someone who made clothes?’ said Trev. ‘Just. Someone. Who. Made. Clothes. Just someone?! I am not anyone. I am Pepe and I don’t make clothes. I create gorgeous works of art that just happen to require a bod y to show them off as they should be seen. Tailors and dressmakers make clothes. I f orge history! Have you heard about micromail?’ ‘Got yer. Yep,’ said Trev. ‘Good,’ said Pepe. ‘Now, what have you heard about micromail?’ ‘Well, it doesn’t chafe.’ ‘It’s got one or two other little secrets, too…’ said Pepe. ‘Anyway, I can’t say I’ve got any time for the wizards, myself. Snooty lot. But it’s not going to be a game out there tomorrow, it’s going to be a war. Do you know a bloke called Andy? Andy Shank?’ Trev’s heart sank. ‘What’s he gotta do with it?’ ‘I just heard the name, but I reckon I know the type. Lord Vetinari has done what he wan ted. He’s broken the football, but that’s leaving a lot of sharp bits, if you get my mea ning.’ ‘The Watch’ll be there tomorrow,’ said Trev. ‘What’s this? What’s this? A street face like you being glad that the Watch is going to be anywhere?’ ‘There’ll be a lot of people watching.’ ‘Yeah, won’t that be fun?’ said Pepe. ‘And, you know, there’s people in this city that w ould watch a beheading and hold their kiddies up for a better view. So I’ll tell you wha t I’ll do. I’m not going to give you an edge, the last thing you’ll want to see tomorrow is an edge. I’ll give you something that’s much better than an edge. After all, you’re Dave Likely’s lad.’ ‘I’m not playing,’ said Trev. ‘I promised my ol’ mum.’ ‘You promised your old mum?’ said Pepe. There wasn’t even any attempt to hide the disd ain. ‘And you think that makes any difference, do you? You’ve got a star in your hand, lad. You’ll play, all right, so I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You come along and see me round the back entrance of Shatta, sorry about that, it sounds better in Dwarfish, an d kick on the door round about midnight. You can bring a chum with you if you like, bu t you better bloody well come.’ ‘Why do I ’ave to kick the door?’ said Trev. ‘Because you’ll have a bottle of best brandy in each hand. Don’t thank me. I’m not doi ng it for you. I’m protecting my investment and, on the way, that means protecting you rs as well. Off you go, boy. You’re late for training. And me? I’m a soddin’ genius!’ Trev noticed more watchmen around as he headed onwards. They could be absolute basta rds if they felt like it, but Sam Vimes had no use for coppers that couldn’t read th e streets. The Watch was jumpy. Carter used to live in his mum’s cellar until she rented it out to a family of dwarfs, and now he lived in the attic, which baked in the summer and froze in the winter. Car ter survived because the walls were insulated with copies of Bows & Ammo, Back Street Pins, Stanley Howler’s Stamp Monthly, Giggles, Girls and Garters, Golem Spotter Weekly , and Fretwork Today. These were only the top layer. In self-defence against the eleme nts, he glued old copies over the larger cracks and holes in the roof. As far as Trev knew, Carter had never persevered beyond a week with any of the hobbies indicated by h is rather embarrassing library except, possibly, the one notoriously associated with t he centrefolds of Giggles, Girls and Garters. Mrs Carter opened the door to him and indicated the stairs with all the hearty welcome a nd hospitality that mothers extend to their sons’ no-good street friends. ‘He’s been ill ,’ she announced, as if it were a matter of interest rather than concern. This turned out to be an understatement. One of Carter’s eyes was a technicolor mess and there was a livid scar on his face. It took some time for Trev to find this out because Carter kept telling him to go away, but since the ramshackle door was held shut with a piece of string, the application of Trev’s shoulder had seen to that, at least. Trev stared at the boy, who shrank back into his unspeakably dreadful bed as if he was expecting to be hit. He didn’t like Carter. No one liked Carter. It was impossible. Eve n Mrs Carter, who in theory at least should entertain some lukewarm affability to her s on, didn’t like Carter. He was fundamentally unlikeable. It was a sad thing to have to say, but Carter, farting or otherwise, was a wonderful example of charisntma. He could be fine for a day or two and then some utterly stupid comment or off-key joke or entire ly inappropriate action would break the spell. But Trev put up with him, seeing in him, perhaps, what Trev might have been had he not been, in fact, Trev. Maybe there was a b it of Carter the Farter in every bloke at some time in his life he had thought, but wit h Carter it wasn’t just a bit, it was everything. ‘What ’appened?’ Trev said. ‘Nuffin’.’ ‘This is Trev. I know about nothin’ ’appenin’. You need to get to the hospital with that. ’ ‘It’s worse than it looks,’ Carter moaned. Trev cracked. ‘Are you bloody stupid? That cut’s a quarter of an inch from your eye!’ ‘It was my fault,’ Carter protested. ‘I upset Andy.’ ‘Yeah, I can see where that’d have been your fault,’ Trev said. ‘Where were you last night?’ said Carter. ‘You wouldn’t believe me.’ ‘Well, it was a bloody war, that’s what it was.’ ‘I found it necessary to spend a little time down the Lat. There was fightin’, wasn’t the re?’ ‘The clubs ’ave signed up to this new football and some people ain’t ’appy.’ Trev said, ‘Andy?’ and looked at the livid, oozing scar again. Yep, that looked like A ndy being unhappy. It was hard to feel sorry for someone as basically unlikeable as Carter, but just becau se he had been born with Kick Me Up The Arse tattooed on to his soul was no reason for doing it. Not to Carter. That was like pulling wings off flies. ‘Not just Andy,’ said Carter. ‘There’s Tosher Atkinson and Jimmy the Spoon and Span ner.’ ‘Spanner?’ said Trev. ‘And Mrs Atkinson.’ ‘Mrs Atkinson?’ ‘And Willy Piltdown, Harry Capstick and the Brisket Boys.’ ‘Them? But we hate them. Andy hates them. They hate Andy. One foot on their turf and you get sent home in a sack!’ ‘Well, you know what they say,’ said Carter. ‘My enemy’s enemy is my enemy.’ ‘I think you got that wrong,’ said Trev. ‘But I know what you mean.’ Trev stared at nothing, utterly aghast. The subjects of that litany of names were Fac es. Hugely influential in the world of the teams and, more importantly, among the sup porters. They owned the Shove. Pepe had been right. Vetinari thought the captains wer e in charge and the captains were not in charge. The Shove was in charge and the Face s ran the Shove.* ‘There’s going to be a team put together for tomorrow and they’ll try to get as many of them in as possible,’ Carter volunteered. ‘Yeah, I heard.’ ‘They’re going to show Vetinari what they think of his new football.’ ‘I didn’t hear the name of the Stollops there,’ Trev said. ‘I hear their dad’s got them doing choir practice every night,’ said Carter. ‘The captains did sign up,’ said Trev, ‘so it’ll look bad for them. But ’ow much do yo u think Andy and his little chums care ’bout that?’ He leaned forward. ‘Vetinari’s got the Watch, though, ’asn’t he? And you know about the Watch. Okay, so there’s some dec ent bastards among ’em when you get ’em by theirselves, but if it all goes wahoonie-sh aped they’ve got big, big sticks and big, big trolls and they’ve not got to bother too much about who they hit because they’re the Watch, which means it’s all legal. And, i f you get ’em really pissed off, they’ll add a charge of damaging their truncheons wit h your face. And talking of faces, exactly ’ow come you’re a quarter-inch away from be ing a candidate for a white stick?’ ‘I told Andy I didn’t think it was a good idea,’ said Carter. Trev couldn’t hide his surprise. Even that much bravery was alien to Carter. ‘Well, as it ’appens, it might be a blessin’ in disguise. You just stay here in bed and you won ’t end up stuck between the Old Sam and Andy.’ He stopped because of a rustling noise. Since Carter glued pages of his used magazines to the walls with flour-and-water paste, the attic was home to some quite well fed mice, and for some reason, one of them had j ust gnawed its way to freedom via the chest of last year’s Miss April, thus giving her a third nipple, which was, in fact, staring at Trev and wobbling. It was a sight to put anyone off their tea. ‘What’re you goin’ to do?’ said Carter. ‘Anything I can,’ said Trev. ‘You know Andy’s out to get you? You and that weird bloke.’ ‘I’m not afraid of Andy,’ said Trev. As a statement, this was entirely true. He was not frightened of Andy. He was mortally terrified to his boots and back again, with a viscer al fear that dripped off his ribs like melting snow. ‘Everyone’s afraid of Andy, Trev. If they’re smart,’ said Carter. ‘Hey, Fartmeister, I’m Trevor Likely!’ ‘I think you’re goin’ to need a lot more than that.’ I am going to need a lot more than that, thought Trev, travelling at speed across the city. If even Pepe knew there was something on the boil, then surely the Old Sam would know too? Oops. He sprinted quickly to the horse bus’s rear platform and landed in the road before the conductor was anywhere near. If they didn’t catch you on the bus then they couldn’t c atch you at all, and while they were issued with those big shiny choppers to deter non -paying passengers, everyone knew that a) they were too scared to use them and b) the amount of trouble they would get into if they actually whacked a respectable member of society did not bear thinking of. He darted through the alley into Cockbill Street, spotted another bus plodding its way in the right direction, jumped on to the running board and held on. He was lucky this time. The conductor gave him a look and then very carefully did not see him. By the time he reached the big junction known as Five Ways, he had travelled almost the width of the city at an average speed faster than walking pace and had hardly had to r un very far at all. A near perfect result for Trev Likely, who wouldn’t walk if he coul d ride. And there, right in front of him, was the Hippo. It used to be a racetrack until all tha t was moved up to the far end of Ankh. Now, it was just a big space that every large tow n needs for markets, fairs, the occasional insurrection and, of course, the increasingly popular cart-tail sales, which were very fashionable with people who wanted to buy thei r property back. It was full today, without even a stolen shovel to be seen. All over the field, people w ere kicking footballs about. Trevor relaxed a little. There were pointy hats in the dist ance and no one seemed to be doing any murder. ‘Wotcher, howya doing?’ He adjusted his eyeline down a little bit. ‘How’s it goin’, Throat?’ ‘I’m hearing you’re kind of associated with Unseen Academicals,’ said Cut-Me-Own-Thr oat Dibbler, the city’s most enterprising but inexplicably least successful business man. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve come to sell pies?’ ‘Nah, nah, nah,’ said Dibbler. ‘Too many amateurs here today. My pies aren’t just knoc ked up out of rubbish for a load of drunken old football fans.’ ‘So your pies are for—?’ Trev left the question hanging in the air with a noose on the en d of it. ‘Anyway, pies are so yesterday,’ said Dibbler dismissively. ‘I am on the ground floor of football memorabilityness.’ ‘What’s that, then?’ ‘Like genuine autographed team jerseys and that sort of thing. I mean, look here.’ Dib bler produced from the large tray around his neck a smaller version of what one of the new gloing! gloing! footballs would be if it were about a half of the size and had be en badly carved out of wood. ‘See those white patches? That’s so they can be signed by the team.’ ‘You’re goin’ to get them signed, are you?’ ‘Well, no, I think people would like to get that done themselves. The personal touch, you know what I mean?’ ‘So they’re actually just painted balls of wood and nothin’ else?’ said Trev. ‘But authentic!’ said Dibbler. ‘Just like the shirts. Want one? Five dollars to you, an d that’s cutting me own throat.’ He produced a skimpy red cotton item and waved it enti cingly. ‘What’s that?’ ‘Your team colours, right?’ ‘Two big yellow Us on the front?’ said Trev. ‘That’s wrong! Ours has got two little Us i nterlocked on the left breast like a badge. Very stylish.’ ‘Pretty much the same,’ said Dibbler airily. ‘No one’ll notice. And I had to keep the pr ice down for the kiddies.’ He leaned closer. ‘Anything you can tell me about the game tomorrow, Trev? Looks like the teams are putting together a tough squad. Vetinari’s not going to get it all his o wn way for once?’ ‘We’ll play a good game, you’ll see,’ said Trev. ‘Right! Can’t lose with a Likely playing, right?’ ‘I just help around the place. I’m not playin’. I promised my ol’ mum after Dad died.’ Dibbler looked around at the crowded stadium of the Hippo. He appeared to have somethi ng else on his mind other than the need for the next dollar. ‘What happens if your lot lose?’ he said. ‘It’s only a game,’ said Trev. ‘Ah, but Vetinari’s got his reputation based on it.’ ‘It’s a game. One side wins, one side loses. Just a game.’ ‘A lot of people aren’t thinking like that,’ said Dibbler. ‘Things always come out well for Vetinari,’ he went on, staring at the sky. ‘And that’s the magic, see? Everyone thin ks he always gets it right. What do you think will happen if he gets things wrong?’ ‘It’s just a game, Throat, only a game…Be seein’ you.’ Trev wandered onwards. Peopl e were putting up tiers of wooden stands on one side of the arena, and because this was Ankh-Morpork, when two or more people gathered together thousands turned up ju st to wonder why. And there was Mr Ponder Stibbons, sitting at a long table with some of the football ca ptains. Oh, yes, the Rules Committee. There had been talk about that. Even with the ru les written down, and half of them as old as the game itself, there were a few things that had to be made clear. He arrived in time to hear Ponder say, ‘Look, you can’t hav e a situation in the new game where people hang around right next to the other team’s goal.’ ‘Worked all right before,’ said one of the captains. ‘Yes, but the ball flies. One really good kick would send it down half the length of th e Hippo. If someone gets that right the goalkeeper wouldn’t have a chance.’ ‘So, what you’re saying,’ said Mr Stollop, who had become a kind of spokesman for the captains, ‘is that there’s got to be two blokes from team A in front of a bloke from t eam B before he scores?’ ‘Yes, that’s about right,’ said Ponder stiffly, ‘but one of them is the goalkeeper.’ ‘So, what happens if one of them fellers nips past him downfield before he kicks the ba ll?’ ‘Then he will be what is traditionally known as off his side,’ said Ponder. ‘Off his head, more like,’ said one of the captains. And since this had the same shape a s humour, it got a laugh. ‘If that’s true, you could end up with loads of blokes rushing past one another, all trying to get the other poor buggers into an unlawful position wi thout any of the poor devils moving, right?’ ‘Nevertheless, we are standing by this rule. We have tried it out. It allows for free mo vement on the field. In the old game it wasn’t unusual for players to bring their lunch and a copy of Girls, Giggles and Garters and just wait for the ball to come along.’ ‘Hello, Trev, how are you getting on?’ It was Andy, and he was standing behind Trev. There must be a thousand people here today, Trev thought in a curiously slow and bliss ful sort of way. And a lot of watchmen. I can see a couple of them from here. Andy isn ’t going to try anything right here, is he? Well, yes, he might, because that’s what made him Andy. The little bee that buzzed in his brain might bang against the wrong bit and he would carve your face off. Oh, yes, and there was Tosher Atkinson and his mum, strolling about as if out for a walk. ‘Haven’t seen you about much lately, Trev,’ said Andy. ‘Been busy, I suspect?’ ‘I thought you were lyin’ low?’ said Trev hopelessly. ‘Well, you know what they say. Sooner or later all sins are forgiven.’ In your case, quite a bit later, Trev thought. ‘Besides,’ said Andy, ‘I’m turning over a new leaf, ain’t I?’ ‘Oh, yeah?’ ‘Got out of the Shove,’ said Andy. ‘Gotta put aside my scallywag ways. Time to fit in.’ ‘Glad to hear it,’ said Trev, waiting for the knife. ‘So I’m a key player for Ankh-Morpork United.’ It wasn’t a knife, but it had a rather si milar effect. ‘Apparently his lordship gave them the idea,’ Andy said, still speaking in the same greasy, friendly tone. ‘Of course, no one wants to be the team playing you wiz ards. So there is, like, a new one just for the occasion.’ ‘I thought you never played?’ said Trev weakly. ‘Ah, but that was in the bad old days before football was open to more individual effort and enterprise. See this shirt?’ he said. Trev looked down. He hadn’t thought much about what the man was wearing, just that he was there. ‘White with blue trim,’ said Andy cheerfully. ‘Very snazzy.’ He turned around. The numeral 1 was on the back in blue with the name Andy Shank above it. ‘My idea. Very sensible. Means we’ll know who we are from the back.’ ‘And I told your wizards that your gentlemen ought to do the same,’ said Mrs Atkin son, surely one of the most feared Faces who had ever wielded a sharpened umbrella with malice aforethought. Grown men would back away from Mrs Atkinson, otherwise grown men bled. Just what we need, thought Trev. Our names on the back as well. Saves them having the trouble to go round the front before they stab. ‘Still, I can’t stand here chattin’ all day with you. Got to talk to the team. Got to think a bout tactics.’ There will be a referee, thought Trev. The Watch will be there. Lord Vetinari will be the re. Unfortunately, Andy Shank will be there, too, and Nutt wants me as his assistant and so I’ve got to be there. If it all goes wrong, the floor of the arena isn’t going to be t he place to be and I’ll be in it. ‘And if you’re wondering where that dim little girl of yours is, she’s back there with t he fat girl. Honestly, what must you think of me?’ ‘Nothing, right up until you said that,’ said Trev. ‘And now I do.’ ‘Give my best to the orc,’ said Andy. ‘Shame to hear he’s the last one.’ They strolled on, but Trev was quick enough to get out of the way before Mrs Atkinson s liced at his leg with her stick. Find Juliet. Find Nutt. Find Glenda. Find help. Find a ticket to Fourecks. Trev had never fought. Never really fought. Oh, there had been times when he was you nger when he was drawn into a bit of a ruck and it was politic to be among the other kids, holding a makeshift weapon in his hands. He’d been so good at appearing to be everywhere, shouting a lot and then running into the thick of the fray, but never a ctually catching up with the real action. He could go to the Watch and tell them…tha t Andy had been threatening? Andy was always threatening. When trouble struck in the Shove as it sometimes did, when two tribes were brought into conjunction, there was always the forest of legs to dive between and once, when Trev had been really despe rate, a number of shoulders to run across…What was he thinking? He wouldn’t be there . He wasn’t going to play. He’d promised his old mum. Everyone knew he’d promised hi s old mum. He’d like to play, but his old mum wouldn’t like it. It was as if his old mum had written him a note: Dear Andy, please do not knife Trevor today because he has promised not to play. He blinked away the sensation that a knife was already hurtling towards him and heard the voice of Nutt saying, ‘Oh, I have heard about Bu-bubble.’ There was Glenda and Jul iet and Nutt and Juliet and a slightly worried young lady with a notebook and Juliet. There was also Juliet, but it was hard to even notice her because Juliet was there. ‘She says she wants to write an article,’ said Glenda, who had clearly waylaid the jou rnalist. ‘Her name is Miss—’ ‘Roz,’ said the girl. ‘Everyone’s talking about you, Mister Nutt. Would you answer a few questions, please? We have a very now audience.’* ‘Yes?’ he ventured. ‘How does it feel to be an orc, Mister Nutt?’ ‘I am not sure. How does it feel to be human?’ said Nutt. ‘Have your experiences as an orc affected the way you will play football?’ ‘I will only be playing as a substitute. My role is merely that of a trainer. And, I hav e to say, in answer to your question, I’m not sure I have had many experiences as an orc up until now.’ ‘But are you advising the players to rip opponents’ heads off?’ the girl giggled. Glenda opened her mouth, but Nutt said solemnly, ‘No, that would be against the rules. ’ ‘I hear they think you’re a very good trainer. Why do you think this is?’ Despite the patent stupidity of the question, Nutt seemed to think deeply. ‘One must c onsider the horizons of possibility,’ he said slowly. ‘E Pluribus Unum, the many becom e one, but it could just as easily be said that the one becomes many, Ex uno multi, an d indeed, as Von Sliss said in The Effluence of Reality, the one, when carefully consi dered, may in fact be a many in different clothing.’ Glenda looked at the girl’s face. Her expression hadn’t moved and neither had her penci l. Nutt smiled to himself and continued. ‘Now let us consider this in the light, as it may be, of the speeding ball. Where it has come from we believe we know, but where it w ill land is an ever-changing conundrum, even if only considered in four-dimensional spa ce. And there we have the existential puzzle that confronts the striker, for he is both striker and struck. As the ball flies, all possibilities are inexorably linked, as Her r Frugal said in Das Nichts des Wissens, “Ich kann mich nicht genau erinnern, aber es w ar so etwas wie eine Vanillehaltige süsse Nachspeisenbeigabe,” although I believe he wa s on some medication at the time. Who is mover and who is moved? Given that the solutio n can only be arrived at through conceptual manifestation using, I believe, some percep tion of transfinite space, it can clearly be seen that among the possibilities is that the ball will land everywhere at the same time or turn out never to have been kicked at all. It is my job to reduce this metaphysical overhead, as it were, and to give my lad s some acceptable paradigm, such as, it might be, whack it right down the middle, my so n, and at least if the goalie stops it you will have given him a hot handful he won’t f orget in a hurry. ‘You see, the thing about football is that it is not about football. It is a most fasci nating multi-dimensional philosophy, an extrusion, as it were, of what Doctor Maspinder promulgated in Das Meer von Unvermeidlichkeit. Now, you would say to me, I am sure,’ h e went on, ‘What of the 4–4–2 or even the 4–1–2–1–2, yes? And my answer to that would b e, there is only the one. Traditionally we say there are eleven players in the team, bu t that is because of our rather feeble perceptions. In truth, there is only the one and therefore, I would say,’ he gave a little laugh, ‘daring to adapt a line from The Door s of Deception: it does not matter whether you win or lose so long as you score the mos t goals.’ The girl looked down at her notepad. ‘Could you give that to me a little bit more simpl y?’ ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said Nutt. ‘I thought I had.’ ‘And I think that’s about enough,’ said Glenda, taking the girl by the arm. ‘But I haven’t asked him about his favourite spoon,’ she wailed. Nutt cleared his throat. ‘Well, I would have appreciated some notice of that question because it is quite a large field, but I think the Great Bronze Spoon of Cladh, which weighed more than a ton, would definitely have to be a runner, though we must not forg et the set of spoons, each one smaller than a grain of rice, crafted by some unknown g enius for the concubines of the Emperor Whezi. But undoubtedly, from what I can gather , these were surpassed by the notorious clockwork spoon, devised by Bloody Stupid John son, which could apparently stir coffee so fast that the cup would actually rise up fr om the saucer and hit the ceiling. Oh, to be a fly on that wall, but not too close, ob viously. Possibly less well known is the singing spoon of the learned sage Ly Tin Whee dle, which could entertain the dinner table by singing comic songs. Among other great spoons—’ ‘That is enough,’ said Glenda, tugging the girl away for her own good. ‘He’s an orc?’ the girl said. ‘So everyone says,’ said Glenda. ‘Were they all like that? I thought it was all about twisting heads off?’ ‘Well, I suspect people get bored with the same old thing.’ ‘But how does he know all about spoons?’ ‘Believe me, if anyone has ever written Great Spoons of the World, Mister Nutt has read it.’ Trev heard the girl’s plaintive voice as Glenda almost forcibly led her away, or at leas t away from Nutt. ‘I really wanted to talk to Jewels,’ Trev heard the girl say, as she w alked past Juliet without a glance. ‘But she’s hiding out, everyone says.’ He hurried across and pulled the other two in a huddle towards him. ‘There’s gonna b e murder tomorrow,’ he said. ‘The wizards can’t use magic and Ankh-Morpork United is gonna be made up out of the toughest, nastiest bunch of buggers that’re outside of the Tanty.’ ‘We shall have to change our tactics to suit, then,’ said Nutt. ‘Are you nu—insane? I’m talkin’ about people like Andy, Nutt. An’ he might not be th e worst one.’ ‘But everything is a matter of tactics. A respect for strengths and weaknesses and the p roper utilization of the knowledge,’ said Nutt. ‘Listen!’ said Trev. ‘There won’t be time for that sort of thing.’ ‘If I may quote—’ Nutt began. ‘I said listen! Do you know any quotes by people who have been knifed in the back an ’ then kicked in the nu—’ He stopped and then continued. ‘Kicked when they’re lyin’ on the ground, yes? Because that’s what you need to be thinkin’ about at the moment.’ ‘The Watch will be there,’ said Nutt. ‘But generally their way of dealing with a complicated event is to get everyone lyin’ on the ground,’ said Trev. ‘That makes it simpler.’ ‘I feel certain that we could beat any team at football,’ said Nutt soothingly. Trev looked around him in a desperate search for anyone who might have a grip. ‘It does n’t work like that! It’s not about the football!’ ‘I don’t think I want to see anyone hurt,’ said Juliet. ‘Then you’ll have to close your eyes,’ said Trev. ‘Nutt, you think that everythin’ is g oing to be nice and sportsmanlike ’cos that’s how the new football has been designed, b ut it’s the same old people out there. You know what I think?’ ‘My dad says it won’t look very good for Vetinari if the Academicals lose,’ said Juliet. ‘An’ will he be glad about that?’ said Trev. ‘Well, I suppose, yes, but even Dad says prob’ly better to have bloody Vetinari than m ost of the buggers we’ve had.’ That was because the city worked, thought Trev. It had been a mess before Vetinari h ad taken over and no one knew exactly how he’d done it. He’d got the Watch working p roperly. He’d got the war between the dwarfs and the trolls sorted out. He let peopl e do whatever they liked, provided they did whatever he liked. And above all, the ci ty was crammed with people and money. Everyone wanted to live in Ankh-Morpork. Could he really be shaken down because the new football went bad? Well, the answer was, o f course, yes–because that’s how people were. Trev mentioned this to Glenda as she came back from ushering the bemused Roz out of the range of more of Nutt’s philosophy. She looked at Trev and said, ‘Do you think V etinari knows about this?’ ‘Dunno,’ said Trev. ‘Well, I know he’s s’posed to have lots of spies, but I dunno whet her they’d know about this.’ ‘Do you think someone ought to tell him?’ said Glenda. Trev laughed. ‘What are you suggestin’? That we go over to the palace, walk right up t o him and say, “Excuse us, mister, there are a few things that have escaped your atten tion?”’ ‘Yes,’ said Glenda. ‘Thank you, Drumknott, that will be all for now,’ said Vetinari. ‘Yes, sir,’ said Drumknott. He nodded at Lady Margolotta and oiled his way noiselessl y out of the room. ‘Havelock, I appreciate that Drumknott is very competent, but he always seems to me to be a rather strange little man.’ ‘Well, it would be a funny old world if we were all alike, madam, although I admit not very funny if we were all like Drumknott. But he is loyal and excessively trustworthy,’ said Vetinari. ‘Hmm,’ said her ladyship. ‘Does he have much of a personal life?’ ‘I believe that he collects different types of stationery,’ said Vetinari. ‘I have someti mes speculated that he might change his life for the better should he meet a young lady w illing to dress up as a manila envelope.’ They were on the balcony outside the Oblong Office, which offered a perfect view of the centre of the city while leaving the viewer almost invisible. ‘The accord is going ahead?’ said Vetinari. ‘Certainly,’ said her ladyship. ‘Peace at last between dwarfs and trolls.’ Vetinari smiled. ‘The word “peace” is generally defined as a period of rest and rearm ament before the next war. Were many assassinations necessary?’ ‘Havelock, sometimes you are too direct!’ ‘I do beg your pardon, it’s just that the progress of history requires butchers as well as shepherds.’ ‘There were no assassinations,’ said her ladyship. She turned her eyes upwards. ‘There w as, however, a terrible mining accident and a rather unusual rock slide. But, of course, there is still the Loko business to sort out. The dwarfs still want total extermination .’ ‘How many orcs are there?’ ‘Nobody knows. Perhaps Nutt will be able to find them.’ ‘We must not have genocide,’ said Vetinari. ‘History has a way of repaying.’ ‘He is turning out to be quite a surprise.’ ‘So I understand. From the reports I have been receiving, all that the orcs were not, he i s.’ ‘But he will remain an orc underneath it all,’ said her ladyship. ‘I wonder what remains under all of us?’ said Vetinari. ‘You’ve taken a very big risk, you know,’ said Lady Margolotta. ‘Madam, this city is all risk, I assure you.’ ‘And power is a game of smoke and mirrors,’ said her ladyship, reaching for the wine. ‘Oddly enough, Commander Vimes reminds me of that nearly every day. No civil police fo rce could hold out against an irate and resolute population. The trick is not to let t hem realize that. Yes?’ There was a knock at the door. It was Drumknott again. ‘I am sorry to interrupt, sir, ma dam, but in the circumstances I thought it would be a good idea.’ He sniffed. ‘It’s the lady with the pies.’ ‘Ah, Miss Sugarbean, legendary inventor of the famous Ploughman’s Pie,’ said Vetinari . He glanced at her ladyship. ‘And Mister Nutt’s friend.’ ‘I have met her, Havelock. She harangued me.’ ‘Yes, she does it very well. You feel as if you’ve had a nice cold bath. Do show her in , Drumknott.’ ‘And there is a young man with her. I recognize him as Trevor Likely, son of the famo us footballer Dave Likely, and I am informed by her that she has indeed brought you a Ploughman’s Pie.’ ‘You would take untested food from a member of the public?’ said her ladyship, horrifi ed. ‘Certainly from this one,’ said Vetinari. ‘There is no possible way that she would ever put poison in anything. Not out of respect for me, you understand, but out of respect fo r the food. Don’t leave. I think you will find this…interesting.’ The pie was still warm in Glenda’s hands as she stepped into the Oblong Office. She her self almost froze at the sight of Lady Margolotta, but a certain robustness kicked in. ‘Do I have to curtsy?’ she said. ‘Not unless you really feel the need.’ ‘We’ve come to warn you,’ said Trev. ‘Indeed.’ Vetinari raised an eyebrow. ‘Ankh-Morpork United will walk all over Unseen Academicals with great big boots on. ’ ‘Oh, dear. Do you think that will be the case?’ ‘They’re not yer average players!’ Trev blurted out. ‘They’re from the Shove. They go armed.’ ‘Ah, yes. Football as warfare,’ said Vetinari. ‘Well, thank you for telling me.’ Silence fell. Vetinari broke it by saying, ‘Was there anything else you would like to sa y?’ He looked at the pie that Glenda was holding out in front of her like some kind of c hastity device. ‘Can’t you do something?’ she said. ‘It’s a game, Miss Sugarbean. Having suggested the match in the first place, what do you t hink I would look like if I intervened? There will, after all, be rules. There will, after all, be a referee.’ ‘They won’t care,’ said Trev. ‘Then I suppose the Watch will have to do its duty. And now, if you will excuse me, I hav e affairs of state to attend to, but please leave the pie.’ ‘One moment,’ said her ladyship. ‘Why have you come to warn his lordship, young lad y?’ ‘Isn’t that the sort of thing I ought to do?’ said Glenda. ‘And you walked in, just like that?’ ‘Well, the pie helped.’ ‘We have met before, you know,’ said her ladyship. She stared at Glenda and Glenda stared back, and she finally managed, ‘Yes, I know, a nd I’m not frightened and I’m not sorry.’ The battle of the stares went on for a year too long and then Lady Margolotta turned he r head away sharply and said, ‘Well, you have got one of them right, but I am sure I sh all enjoy the pie and also the match.’ ‘Yes, yes,’ said Vetinari. ‘Thank you both for calling, but if you will excuse us we do h ave matters of state to discuss.’ ‘Well!’ said Lady Margolotta as the door shut behind them. ‘What type of people are yo u incubating in this city of yours, Havelock?’ ‘I imagine some of the very best,’ said Vetinari. ‘Two common people can barge in on you without so much as an appointment?’ ‘But with a pie,’ said Vetinari quickly. ‘You were expecting them?’ ‘Let us just say that I was not unduly surprised,’ said Vetinari. ‘I certainly know ab out the make-up of Ankh-Morpork United. So does the Watch.’ ‘And you are going to let them into an arena with a bunch of old wizards who have pr omised not to do magic?’ ‘A bunch of old wizards and Mister Nutt,’ said Vetinari cheerfully. ‘Apparently he’s ve ry good at tactical planning.’ ‘I can’t allow that.’ ‘This is my city, Margolotta. There are no slaves in Ankh-Morpork.’ ‘He is my ward. I expect you will ignore that, though.’ ‘I have every intention of doing so. After all, it’s only a game.’ ‘But a game is not about games. And what sort of game do you think you will get tom orrow?’ ‘A war,’ said Vetinari. ‘And the thing about war is that it’s about war.’ Lady Margolotta shot out her long sleeve and a fine steel dagger was suddenly in her h and. ‘I suggest you cut it in half,’ said Vetinari, indicating the pie, ‘and I will choose which half to pick up.’ ‘But what if one half has more pickled onions than the other?’ ‘Then I think that will be open to negotiation. Would you like some more…wine?’ ‘Did you see that she tried to stare me down?’ said Margolotta. ‘Yes,’ said Vetinari. ‘I saw that she succeeded.’ When Glenda and Trev got back to the Hippo, Nutt looked at them expectantly. ‘He hard ly listened,’ said Trev. ‘Quite so,’ said Nutt. ‘I am confident of our success on the morrow. I am quite certain that we will be tactically supreme.’ ‘I’m just glad I won’t be playin’, that’s all,’ said Trev. ‘Yes, Mister Trev, that really is a great shame.’ From the nearby table where last-minute adjustments were being made by the Football Le ague came the voice of somebody saying, ‘Nah, nah. Look, you’ve still got it wrong. If a bloke from side B is closer to the goalkeeper–no, I tell a lie–if he’s closer to th e goal than the goalkeeper, then he surely puts one away there and then. Stands to rea son.’ There was a sigh that could only have come from Ponder Stibbons. ‘No, I don’t think you understand…’ Another voice chipped in. ‘If the goalkeeper is that far out of his goal then he’s a pilloc k!’ ‘Look, let’s start again,’ said another voice. ‘Supposing I’m this bloke here.’ Trev loo ked across and saw one of the men flick a screwed-up piece of paper across the table. ‘L ike, I’ve kicked the ball that far and this is me, this piece of paper. Then what?’ He f licked the paper once again, which hit Ponder’s pencil. ‘No! I’ve already explained that. And stop flicking bits of paper around, I find it very confusing.’ ‘But it must work if he dribbles on it,’ said a voice. ‘Hold on a minute, though,’ said yet another voice. ‘What happens, right, if you get the b all in your own half of the field and run all the way, not passing it to anyone else, and get it into the net?’ ‘That would be perfectly legal,’ said Ponder. ‘Yeah, but there’s no way that’s goin’ to happen, is there?’ said the man who had just flicked a soggy piece of paper and had enjoyed it so much that he’d flicked another one . ‘But if he tries and succeeds it would be magnificent football, would it not?’ said Ponde r. ‘Where’s our team?’ said Trev, looking around. ‘I’ve suggested they have an early night,’ said Ponder. ‘An early night for wizards is two o’clock in the morning,’ said Glenda. ‘I have also given instructions that the team are to have a special meal this evening,’ s aid Nutt. ‘On that note, Miss Glenda, I shall have to ask you to lock the Night Kitchen.’ Stony silence hung over the dining room that evening. ‘I don’t eat salads,’ said Bledlow Nobbs (no relation). ‘They gives me the wind.’ ‘How can a man live without pasta?’ said Bengo. ‘This is barbaric!’ ‘I hope you notice that my plate is as barren as yours, gentlemen,’ said Ridcully. ‘Mist er Nutt is training us and I’m allowing Mister Nutt the driver’s seat. Nor is there to b e any smoking this evening.’ There was a chorus of dismay and he raised his hand for silence. ‘Also, his instruction here…’ He looked closer at Nutt’s rather untidy writing and gave a little smile. ‘Ther e is to be no sexual congress.’ This did not meet with the reaction he had expected. ‘That means talking about it, doesn’t it?’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. ‘No, that’s oral sex,’ said Rincewind. ‘No, that’s listening to it.’ Bengo Macarona sat with a dazed look on his face. ‘Now, I don’t want any sneaking off for midnight snacks,’ said Ridcully. ‘There are rules. Mrs Whitlow and Miss Sugarbean have been told that I fully back Mister Nutt’s authority here. Surely you gentlemen could show some backbone?’ ‘In an attempt to show solidarity with the rest of the team,’ said the Lecturer in Recen t Runes, ‘I am led to believe that there is some cheese in the mousetrap in my room.’ Ridcully was left all alone with only the echo of falling chairs for company. The Archchancellor repaired to his own room and tossed his hat on to its stand. There ha ve to be rules, he said to himself, and there has to be a rule for them and a rule for m e. He went to his eight-poster bed and opened the hatch containing the tobacco jar. It n ow contained a little note instead, saying, ‘Dear Archchancellor, In accordance with your ratification of Mister Nutt’s instructions that the faculty are not to be allowed food or the implements of smoking this evening, I’ve taken the liber ty of clearing away your cigarettes and pipe tobacco. May I also mention that I have em ptied the cool cupboard of the usual cold cuts and pickles to avoid temptation.’ ‘Bugger,’ said Ridcully under his breath. He walked to his wardrobe and rummaged in the pocket of his smoking jacket, coming u p with a note that said, ‘In accordance with Mister Nutt’s rules, as ratified by yourself, Archchancellor [an d it was remarkable how reproachful Mrs Whitlow could make her handwriting], I have taken the liberty of removing your emergency peppermints.’ ‘Change and decay!’ Ridcully declared to the night air. ‘I am surrounded by traitors! They thwart me at every turn.’ He wandered disconsolately past his bookcase and pull ed out Boddrys’ Occult Companion, a book he knew by heart. And because he knew the bo ok by heart, page 14 opened on to a neat little cavity, which contained a packet of e xtra-strong liquorice mints, an ounce of Jolly Sailor tobacco and a packet of Wizzla’ s…And, as it turned out, a small note: ‘Dear Archchancellor, I just didn’t have the heart. Mrs Whitlow.’ It seemed darker than usual. Generally, the Archchancellor’s rulings were obeyed, an d it seemed to the members of Unseen Academicals that every door was closed, indeed slammed, as they searched for food. Every pantry was locked and spell-proofed. The t eam trudged helplessly from one hall to another. ‘I do have some reheatable pasta in my room,’ said Bengo Macarona. ‘My grandmother gav e it to me before I came down here. It will keep for ten years and my grandmother says that it will taste as good after ten years as it does now. I regret that she may have been telling the truth.’ ‘If you get it, we could cook it up in my room,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. ‘If you like. It contains alligator testicles, for nourishment. They are very popular at h ome.’ ‘I didn’t know alligators had testicles,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. ‘They haven’t got ’em any more,’ said Bledlow Nobbs (no relation). ‘I’ve got a biscuit, we could share that out,’ said Ponder Stibbons. He was immediately pierced by their questioning gazes. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I am not going to countermand the Archchancellor’s orders any further than that. I would never hear the last of it, gentl emen. Without a hierarchy we are nothing.’ ‘The Librarian will have some bananas,’ said Rincewind. ‘Are you sure?’ said Macarona. ‘I think the Librarian has a motto in these cases: “If you try to take my bananas from me, I will reclaim them from your cold dead hands.”’ Trev, who had been lurking in the shadows, waited until the rumble of stomachs died a way in the distance and then hurried back and knocked on the bolted door of the Night Kitchen. ‘They’ve all met up and they’re headed for the Library.’ ‘Good, I think he’ll share his bananas with them,’ said Nutt. ‘I don’t really see the point,’ said Glenda. ‘The point is they are friends. Partners in adversity. They are a team. That is football . You have to train a team to be a team and I will have no problem with them having a ve ry large breakfast in the morning.’ Nutt was changing, Trev thought. ‘Can I ask you a personal question, Mister Nutt?’ ‘Nearly all the questions people ask me are personal, though do go ahead, Mister Trev. ’ ‘Well, er, all right. Sometimes you look big and sometimes you look small. What’s that all about?’ ‘It is something built into us,’ said Nutt. ‘I believe that it is a product of the morphic field contracting and expanding. It affects your perceptions.’ ‘When you’re upset, you do look very small,’ said Glenda. ‘What size do I look now?’ ‘Pretty big,’ said Trev. ‘Good,’ said Nutt, helping himself to a slice of pie. ‘Tomorrow I intend to look even bi gger.’ ‘There’s somethin’ else we have to do,’ said Trev. ‘Pepe wants to help me. He thinks I ’m gonna play football.’ ‘Well, you are going to play football,’ said Nutt. ‘No! You know this! I promised my ol’ mum and you can’t break a promise to your ol’ mum, Gods rest her soul. Do you ’ave keys to the wine cellar, Glenda?’ ‘Do you think I’d tell you, Trev Likely?’ ‘Thought not. I want two bottles of best brandy. And, er, could you all come with me, please? I think Pepe means well, but he, er, well, you know him, it’s midnight and eve rythin’.’ ‘I think I know Pepe,’ said Glenda. There was a guard on the rear door of Shatta, but before he could even think of turnin g away Trev and his bodyguards, Pepe appeared. ‘Cor! Three chums. I must be very frigh tening,’ he said, leering. ‘Hello, chums, got the brandy?’ ‘Yes, what’s this all about, Pepe? You’ve been putting the willies up Trev,’ said Glend a. ‘I never have! I hardly ever put the willies up anyone these days. I just told him he was going to play in the football.’ ‘I promised my ol’ mum,’ said Trev, clinging to the declaration as if it were a tiny raft in a choppy sea. ‘But you’ve got a star in your hand and you don’t have much of a choice.’ Trev looked at his palm. ‘Just a lot of lines.’ ‘Well there’s them that has the sight and there again there’s them that don’t. I’m one of those that have. ’s metaphorical, see. But all it is is that I would like to give you a little something that may be of use to you tomorrow. What am I saying? It might damn well save your life,’ said Pepe. ‘It’ll certainly save your marriage. I’m sure the ladies her e would like to think that us at Shatta have done the best for you.’ ‘For what it’s worth, Trev, I trust Pepe,’ said Glenda. ‘And this is Mister Nutt,’ said Trev. ‘He’s a friend.’ ‘Yeah. I know what Mister Nutt is,’ said Pepe. ‘And you can come, too. I am pleased to make your…acquaintance.’ He turned to Glenda. ‘You girls stay here, miss,’ he said. ‘This is no errand for a la dy.’ He ushered the boys into the gloom. ‘What I’m going to show you gentlemen is top secret and if you cross me, Trev Likely, I will do things that will make Andy Shank lo ok like a playground bully.’ ‘Andy was a playground bully,’ said Trev, as they reached what was clearly a forge. ‘Micromail,’ said Pepe with satisfaction. ‘The world hasn’t seen the half of it yet.’ ‘It just looks like fine chain mail,’ said Nutt. ‘It’s strange stuff,’ said the dwarf. ‘I can give you a vest and pair of shorts and they better both come back here, boy, otherwise said implications will be performed on your ar se and I ain’t kidding. This stuff isn’t just for making the girls look pretty. You would be amazed what it can do with just a little change in the alloy.’ He pointed to a gliste ning heap. ‘It’s as light as a feather and doesn’t chafe, you know.’ ‘And what else does it do?’ ‘I’ll show you in a minute. Slip on a pair of the shorts.’ ‘Wot, here?’ said Trev. Somehow, Pepe looked like a small demon by the light of the forge. ‘Ooh, look at Mister Bashful!’ said Pepe. ‘Just pull a pair on over your trousers for now and I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’ll even turn my back while you’re doing that.’ He looked away, fiddlin g with the tools beside the anvil. ‘Got ’em on?’ he said, after listening to a few minu tes of heavy breathing. ‘Yes, they, er, well, they feel all right.’ ‘Okay,’ said Pepe. ‘Could you just wait ’ere one moment.’ He disappeared into the dar kness and, after a succession of strange noises, walked back into view, slowly and aw kwardly. ‘What’s that you’re wearin’, Pepe?’ said Trev. ‘It looks like a mass of cushions to me.’ ‘Oh, just a bit of protection,’ said Pepe. ‘Now if you could just go back a little way, Mister Nutt, and Trev, if you could oblige me by putting your hands on your head, it j ust helps to get the measurements right.’ He turned his back on them. ‘Okay, Trevor, ar e your hands on your head?’ ‘Yeah, yeah.’ At which point, Pepe spun round and hit him full force in the groin with a twenty-f our-pound sledgehammer… Surprisingly, the only effect was to send Pepe crashing into the opposite wall. ‘Perfect !’ said his voice, muffled by the padding. Morning came, but it seemed to Glenda that there was no night and no day, no work and no play, there was just football, ahead of them all, drawing them together. In the Gre at Hall the team had a table all to themselves. Servants and wizards side by side, fil ling up as only Unseen University could. Football owned the day. Nothing was happening that wasn’t about football. There were certainly no lectures. Of course, there never were, but at least today they weren’t b eing attended because of the excitement about the upcoming match rather than not bein g attended because no one wanted to go to them. And after a while, Glenda became awar e of the sound which was coming from the city itself. There were crowds outside the university; there were crowds, even now, queuing to get into the Hippo. The sound of a hundred thousand people at one purpose rose like the buzz of a distant swarm. Glenda went back to the sanctuary of the Night Kitchen and tried to pass some time by doing some baking, but the dough fell from her fingers. ‘Are you upset?’ said Juliet. ‘I hope we’re going to win,’ said Glenda. ‘Well, of course we’re going to win,’ said Juliet. ‘That’s all very well up until the time we lose,’ said Glenda. ‘Yes, who’s that?’ The door was pushed open and Pepe stepped in, looking smarter than usual. ‘Hello, lad ies,’ he said. ‘Got a little message for you. How was you expecting to watch the matc h?’ ‘Just so long as we can get close,’ said Glenda. ‘Tell you what, then,’ said Pepe. ‘Madame has got the best seats in the stadium. Nothi ng underhand, just open and above-board bribery. Shatta has got to be seen out and abo ut, you see? Got to keep micromail in the public eye.’ ‘I’d love to!’ Juliet shouted. And even Glenda found that her automatic, unthinking cy nicism was letting her down. ‘There will be sherry,’ said Pepe. ‘Will there be anyone famous there?’ said Juliet. Pepe walked over and prodded her gently in the chest and said, ‘Yes. You, miss. Every one wants to see Jewels.’ It seemed as if the clocks turned backwards. All Watch leave had been suspended, but it was hard to see what crime there could be in streets where nobody could move. A flood of humanity, well, mostly humanity, poured towards the stadium, bounced off it and overflowed and backfilled more and more of the city. The game was in the Hippo, the crowd stretched back to Sator Square and eventually the pressure of so many eye balls on the hands of so many clocks moved time forwards. Only the team, and Trev, remained in the Great Hall, everyone else having left much ear lier in a fruitless attempt at securing a seat. They milled around aimlessly prodding t he ball to one another until Ponder, Nutt and the Archchancellor turned up. ‘Well, big day, lads!’ said Ridcully. ‘Looks like there’s going to be a nice day for it as well. They’re all over there waiting for us to give them a show. I want you to appr oach this in the best traditions of Unseen University sportsmanship, which is to cheat whenever you are unobserved, though I fear that the chance of anyone being unobserved t oday is remote. But in any case, I want you all to give it one hundred and ten per cent.’ ‘Excuse me, Archchancellor,’ said Ponder Stibbons. ‘I understand the sense of what you are saying, but there is only one hundred per cent.’ ‘Well, they could give it one hundred and ten per cent if they tried harder,’ said Ridcull y. ‘Well, yes and no, sir. But, in fact, that would mean that you had just made the one hu ndred per cent bigger while it would still be one hundred per cent. Besides, there is o nly so fast a man can run, only so high a man can jump. I just wanted to make the point .’ ‘Good point, well made,’ said Ridcully, dismissing it instantly. He looked around at t he faces. ‘Ah, Mister Likely, I suppose there is nothing I can do that would get you o n to the team? Dave Likely’s boy playing for Unseen Academicals would be a bit of a fe ather in our cap. And I see my colleague Professor Rincewind has humorously already pu t a white one in his.’ ‘Well, sir, you know how I’m fixed,’ Trev mumbled. ‘Your old mum,’ said Ridcully, nodding understandingly. ‘I promised her,’ said Trev. ‘I know she’s passed away, but I’m certain that she still wa tches over me, sir.’ ‘Well, that’s nice and does you credit. Is there anything else that can be said? Let me think. Oh yes, gentlemen–Mrs Whitlow, as is her wont on these occasions, has organized her maids to dress up in appropriate costume and cheer us on from the sidelines.’ His face was a blank mask as he continued. ‘Mrs Whitlow unaccountably takes an enthusiastic and uncharacteristically athletic part in these things. There will be high kicking, I am told, but if you are careful where you let your gaze fall, you should see nothing th at will upset you too much.’ ‘Excuse me, sir,’ said Rincewind. ‘Is it true that some of the men in Ankh-Morpork Un ited are just a bunch of thugs from the Shove?’ ‘That might be a bit harsh,’ Ridcully began. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ said Trev, ‘that is quite true. I would say about half of them are hones t cloggers and the rest of them are bastards.’ ‘Well, I’m sure we will overcome,’ said Ridcully jovially. ‘I would also like to make a few comments before we leave, sir,’ said Nutt. ‘A few w ords of advice, perhaps? In these few days I have taught you everything I know, even if I do not know how I know it. As you know, I am an orc and whatever else we were, we were team players. You are playing, therefore, not as individuals, but as a team . I think it was Von Haudenbrau who said—’ ‘I don’t think we’ve got very much time to get through the crowds,’ said Ridcully, who had been expecting this. ‘Thank you, Mister Nutt, but I really think we ought to get going.’ Those watching from above would have seen the cramped streets of the city waver as the red caterpillar that was the Unseen Academicals made its way to the ground. The re were cheers and there were boos and because this was Ankh-Morpork, usually the c heers and the booing were done alternately by everyone concerned. By the time Lance-Constable Bluejohn of the Watch and two other trolls had forcibly p rised open the gates against the pressure of bodies, the noise was just one great ham mer of sound. The troll officers opened a path for them with the forethought and deli cacy that has made police crowd control such a byword. It led to a fenced-off and hea vily guarded area, in the centre of which was the Archchancellor formerly known as De an, the entire team of Ankh-Morpork United and His Grace the Duke of Ankh, Commander of the City Watch, Sir Samuel Vimes, with a face like a bad lunch. ‘What the hell are you clowns proposing to do to my city?’ he demanded and looked up at Vetinari in his box in the middle of the stand. He raised his voice. ‘I’ve been grafting like mad th is last month on getting the KV Accord sorted out and it turns out that just when the dwarfs and the trolls are shaking hands and being jolly good pals, you lot are start ing another KV of your very own.’ ‘Oh, come now, Sam,’ said Ridcully. ‘It’s only a jolly day out.’ ‘People are queueing up at the gates,’ said Vimes. ‘The actual city gates. How much of this is magical?’ ‘None, Sam, as far as we’re aware. There will be no magic used during the game, thi s has been discussed and agreed and the D—’ Ridcully swallowed hard. ‘The Archchanc ellor of Brazeneck University is making himself responsible for thaumic damping of the stadium.’ ‘Then let me tell you this,’ said the commander. ‘None of my men will set a foot on th e field of play, no matter what happens. Do I make myself clear?’ ‘As crystal, Sam.’ ‘Sorry, Archchancellor, for now I am Commander of the City Watch, not Sam, if it’s al l the same to you,’ said Vimes. ‘The whole damn city is an accident waiting to—no, an accident that already has happened and anything that goes bad will get worse very qu ickly. I’m not going to have it said that the Watch were the problem. Honestly, Mustr um, I really would have expected better from you.’ ‘That will be Archchancellor,’ said Ridcully coldly. ‘As far as I’m concerned,’ said Vimes, ‘this is a scuffle between rival gangs. Do you kn ow what my job is, Archchancellor? It’s to keep the peace, and for two pins, I’d arrest the whole boiling of ya, but his lordship won’t have it.’ Ridcully coughed. ‘May I extend my congratulations, sir, on the very good work you have been doing in Koom Valley.’ ‘Thank you,’ said Vimes. ‘And so I suspect you can imagine how cheerful I am to see yo u involved in another kind of war.’ The commander turned to Archchancellor Henry. ‘Nic e to see you again, sir,* it’s good to see that you’ve moved up in the world. I’m form ally telling you that I am laying down the law, here, and as the referee, you have to pick it up. Inside these lines it’s football–step over the line and it’s me.’ He turne d back to Ridcully. ‘Mind how you go, Archchancellor.’ He departed, watchmen falling into place behind him. ‘Well, now, I suspect the good commander has a lot on his mind these days,’ said Archc hancellor Henry, brightly. He pulled out his watch. ‘I would like to speak to the team captains.’ ‘Well, I know I’m one of them,’ said Ridcully. A man stepped forward from the ranks of United. ‘Joseph Hoggett, of the Pork Packers, as it happens. Captain, for my sins.’ Hoggett held out his hand to Ridcully and, to his credit, hardly winced when it was tak en in a firm handshake. ‘Well, gentlemen,’ said the former Dean. ‘I am sure you know the rules, we’ve been thr ough them often enough. I want a good clean game. One long, er, peep from my whistle m eans that I am interrupting play for an infringement or injury or for some other reaso n at that point known only to myself. One even longer peep, which I suppose will be mo re of a parrp, will mean the end of one half and time for refreshment, after which the game will recommence. During the interval, I believe that there will be a marching di splay by the Ankh-Morpork accordion band, but I suppose these things are sent to try u s. May I remind you gentlemen that you change ends at the half-time. Also, please impr ess on your team that the goal they are aiming for should not be behind them. If I see any serious infringement, that player will be removed from the pitch. A considerably longer parrp, which as far as I am concerned will continue until I am out of breath, w ill mark the end of the game. May I also remind you, as Commander Vimes has reminded u s, that within these four, rather sticky lines of chalk, I am a wielder of power secon d only to the gods themselves, and then only perhaps. If at any time it becomes clear that the rules themselves are impractical, I will change them. When I blow the whistle , I shall raise my staff and unleash a spell which will prevent any further magic bein g used within these hallowed lines until the close of play. Is that understood?’ ‘Yes, sir,’ said Mr Hoggett. ‘Mustrum?’ said the former Dean, in a meaningful voice. ‘Yes, yes, all right,’ grumbled Ridcully. ‘You are making the most of your little moment , aren’t you? Let’s get on with it, shall we?’ ‘Gentlemen, would you please form up your teams for the singing of the National Anth em. Mister Stibbons, I believe you have found me a megaphone, thank you very much.’ He raised the horn to his lips and shouted through it, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, be ups tanding for the National Anthem.’ The singing of the National Anthem was always a ragged affair, the good people of Ank h-Morpork feeling that it was unpatriotic to sing songs about how patriotic you were, taking the view that someone singing a song about how patriotic they were was either up to something or a Head of State.* An additional problem today lay in the acoustics of the arena, which were rather too g ood, coupled with the fact that the speed of sound at one end of the stadium was sligh tly off beat compared with the other end, a drawback exacerbated when both sides tried to recover the gap. These acoustical anomalies did not count for much if you were standing next to Mustru m Ridcully, as the Archchancellor was one of those gentlemen who will sing it beautif ully, correctly enunciated and very, very loudly. ‘“When dragons belch and hippos flee, my thoughts, Ankh-Morpork, are of thee,”’ he began. Trev noticed, to his surprise, that Nutt was standing stiffly to attention. His own mo uth operating on automatic, he looked along the massed rank of Ankh-Morpork United. Ab out fifty-fifty, he thought. Half of them decent old cloggers and half of them Andy an d his chums. His gaze lighted on Andy just as he thought that and Andy flashed him a l ittle smile and pointed a finger briefly. But I’m not playing, Trev thought, because o f my old mum. He glanced down at the palm of his hand, no star there, he was sure of t hat. Anyway, he thought, staring at the opponents, when it all goes bad the referee is a wizard, after all. ‘“Let others boast of martial dash, for we have boldly fought with cash,”’ roared the c rowd at various pitches and speeds. I mean, Trev thought, he wouldn’t switch off his own magic, would he? ‘“We own all your helmets, we own all your shoes.”’ I mean, he really wouldn’t do that, would he? The only person who could stop it if it all went wrong wouldn’t have made a mistake like that? ‘“We own all your generals–touch us and you’ll lose.”’ Yes, he has done! He has done just that! ‘“Morporkia! Morporkia! Morporkia owns the day,”’ Trev shouted to quell his own risi ng panic. He has done that, we all saw him! He’s kept his own staff inside the field where you can’t do magic. He looked at Andy and Andy nodded. Yes, he had worked it out as well. ‘“We can rule you wholesale. Touch us and you’ll pay.”’ It is considered in the Sto Plains that only scoundrels know the second verse of their national anthem, since anyone spending time memorizing that would be up to no good pu rpose. The Ankh-Morpork national anthem, therefore, had a second verse that was delibe rately written as ner ner ners and the occasional coherent word desperately trying to stay afloat, on the basis that this is how it would sound in any case. Trev listened t o it with even more agony than usual. But everyone joined in cheerful unison for the last line, which everybody knew, ‘“We c an rule you wholesale, credit where it’s due.”’ Glenda, one arm as far across her bosom as it would go, risked a look at what would still probably be called the Royal Box, just as Vetinari raised the gold-ish coloure d urn and a cheer went up. Ankh-Morpork was not particularly keen on cheering the Pa trician but it would cheer money any day of the week. Yet it seemed to Glenda that t here was some strange harmonic to the cheer, coming up from under the ground itself, as if the place was one huge mouth…Then the feeling went away. And the day came back. ‘Gentlemen? Team players to their places,’ said the Archchancellor of Brazeneck, haug htily. ‘Er, can I have a word with you, sir?’ said Trev, sidling up as quickly as possible. ‘Ah, yes. Dave Likely’s boy,’ said the former Dean. ‘We are about to play football, Mi ster Likely, I’m sure you’ve noticed.’ ‘Yes, sir, well, er, but…’ ‘Do you know of any good reason why I should hold up the game?’ the referee demand ed. Trev gave up. Henry produced a coin from his waistcoat pocket. ‘Mustrum?’ he said. ‘Heads,’ said the Archchancellor, and he turned out to be wrong. ‘Very well, Mister Hoggett…and who has the ball?’ Gloing! Gloing! Nutt picked the ball out of the air and handed it over. ‘Me, sir.’ ‘Ah, you are the coach for the Academicals.’ ‘Yes, but a player as well should it become necessary.’ ‘Gentlemen, you will see that I am placing the ball in the centre of the pitch.’ It ’s true that the Archchancellor formerly known as Dean did rather relish the occasi on. He took a few steps back, paused for dramatic effect, produced a whistle from h is pocket and flourished it. He gave a blow that only a man of that size could give ; his face began to twitch and go red. He raised his megaphone to his lips and shou ted, ‘ANY BOY WHO HAS NOT BROUGHT HIS KIT WILL PLAY IN HIS PANTS!’ followed by Pond er Stibbons shouting, ‘I want to know who gave that to him!’ The crowd roared and you could hear the laugh going away in the distance, rolling down the streets as every listener in the crowded city passed it on, bringing back such memo ries that at least two people started to forge letters from their mother. In his goal, the Librarian swung himself to the top of his posts to get a better look. In his goal, Charlie Barton, goalkeeper for United, methodically lit his pipe. And the man with the biggest problem within the ground that day apart possibly from Trev, was t he editor of the Times, Mr William de Worde, who had not trusted any underling with the reporting of this unique, most prestigious occasion, but wasn’t at all sure how it sho uld be done. At the whistle, he’d managed: The United chief, should I say chief? There must be a better word for him, but I can sor t that out in the office, does not actually appear to know what to do next. Archchancell or Ridcully (BF, No, no, I’ll fill that in later) has kicked the ball hard towards, well , actually it has hit Jimmy Wilkins, formerly of the Miners, who seems uncertain as to w hat to do with it. No, no, he’s picked it up! He’s picked up the ball! The referee, who is the former Dean of Unseen University, has called him over for what I imagine is to be a refresher course in the rules of this new game of football. A megaphone, thought de Worde, that’s what I need, an extremely big megaphone so I can tell everyone what’s going on. The ball has been handed to, let me see, number sixty-nine, oh yes, the multi-talente d Professor Bengo Macarona, who according to the regulations, the new rules, is allow ed what is known as a free kick from where the infringement took place and it’s, and here comes, Bengo Maca—sorry, Professor Bengo Macarona for Unseen Academicals and—oh my word! It has gone right down the pitch at shoulder height, making a noise like a p artridge (check with Nature Notes correspondence on whether I have the correct simile ). The ball has hit Mr Charlie ‘Big Boy’ Barton in the stomach with such force as to carry him into the back of the net! What a display! And this would appear to be a goa l! At least one goal, I should think! And the crowd are on their feet, though technic ally most of them were there already, anyhow [he wrote conscientiously, with a journa list’s well-known desire to get things right]. And yes, they are celebrating the hero of the moment and the refrain coming from the lips of the Academicals’ supporters in their unique patois seems to be: ‘One Makaronah, there’s only one Makaronah, one Mak aro-naah.’* No, no. Something seems to be happening; Macarona has left the pitch and is talking animatedly to the crowd. He appears to be haranguing them. Those he has be en talking to look subdued. At this point, one of the editor’s assistants hurried over with a brief digest of what had transpired on the other side of the pitch. De Worde wrote quickly, hoping that his home-made shorthand would not fail him: With that hot-blooded resolve that is so lovably typical of the native Genuan, Professor Macarona is apparently insisting that any celebratory chanting should include his full name and full list of honours and is helpfully writing them down. There also appears to be a bit of a hiatus around United’s goal as some of Charlie Barton’s team mates help hi m find his pipe and also, it transpires [the editor of the Times liked the word transpir e], the other half of the pork pie it transpired he had been eating at the time the goal was scored. It appears that, not unlike many of us, he had underestimated the speed of the new ball. And now the ball appears to be back in the centre of the pitch where there is another a rgument going on. ‘But they’ve just scored a goal!’ said Mr Hoggett. ‘Yes, quite so,’ said the former Dean, wheezing gently. ‘That means that they get to kic k off next.’ ‘That means we don’t, but we’ve just lost a goal!’ ‘Yes, but that’s what the rules say.’ ‘But that’s not fair, we want a kick, they kicked it last.’ ‘But it’s not about the kicks, Mister Hoggett, it’s what you do with them.’ And Archchancellor Ridcully runs towards the ball. He turns swiftly and has kicked th e ball towards his own goal! The editor wrote furiously: Almost all of United’s team are running up to take advantage of this strange faux pas, not entirely cognisant [the editor liked that word, too, it was so much better than awa re] but the famous Librarian of Unseen University has just— He stopped, blinked and grabbed one of his assistants who had turned up with a full l ist of Bengo Macarona’s honours and pushed him down in the chair. ‘Write down everything that I say!’ he shouted. ‘And I hope your shorthand is better tha n mine, and if it isn’t you’ll be sacked in the morning. This is insane!’ They did it on purpose, I’ll swear they did it on purpose. He kicked the ball directly at his own goalkeeper, knowing, I swear, that he could take advantage of the Librarian’ s renowned upper body strength to throw the ball almost the entire length of the pitch. And there is Bengo Macarona, more or less unnoticed by his opponents, heading towards the missile while United have streamed away from their citadel, like the ill-fated Mara nids during the first Prodostian war [the editor liked to think of himself as a classic ist]. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it!’ he shouted at his almost deafened assistant. ‘They’ve got United all in the wrong place.’ And there goes Macarona. The ball appears to be attached to his feet. And there ahea d of him appears to be the only member of the luckless United squad that knows what’ s going on. Mr Charles ‘Big Boy’ Barton, who nevertheless is staggering out of the g oalmouth, like the Giant Octopal, upon seeing the hordes of the Mormidons. The editor fell silent, forgetting everything as the ground between the two men shorte ned by the moment. ‘Oh, no!’ he said. There was a huge cheer from the crowd. ‘What happened?’ said the assistant, pencil po ised. ‘Didn’t you see it? Didn’t you see it?’ said the editor. His hair was dishevelled and h e looked like a man nearing madness. ‘Macarona ran round him! I don’t know how the ball stayed at his feet.’ ‘Do you mean he dodged past him, sir?’ said the assistant. The noise of the crowd would have been incandescent had it been visible. ‘Another goa l,’ said the editor slumping. ‘Two goals in as many minutes! No, he didn’t dodge him, he ran around him! Twice! And I’ll swear, ended up going faster.’ ‘Ah, yes,’ said the assistant, still writing. ‘I went to a lecture about that sort of thin g, once. It was about how things don’t hit the world turtle, sir. It was like a slingshot effect, he may have picked up additional speed as he rounded the goalkeeper’s enormous gir th, sir.’ ‘And listen to the crowd roar!’ said the editor. ‘And write it down.’ ‘Yes, sir, that would be: One Professor Macarona D. Thau (Bug), D. Maus (Chubb), M agistaludorum (QIS), Octavium (Hons), PHGK (Blit), DMSK, Mack, D. Thau (Bra), Visi ting Professor in Chickens (Jahn the Conqueror University (Floor 2, Shrimp Packers Building, Genua)), Primo Octo (Deux), Visiting Professor of Blit/Slood Exchanges (Al Khali), KCbfJ, Reciprocating Professor of Blit Theory (Unki), D. Thau (Unki), Didimus Supremius (Unki), Emeritus Professor in Blit Substrate Determinations (Chu bb), Chair of Blit and Music Studies (Quirm College for Young Ladies), there’s onl y one Professor Macarona D. Thau (Bug), D. Maus (Chubb), Magistaludorum (QIS), Oct avium (Hons), PHGK (Blit), DMSK, Mack, D. Thau (Bra), Visiting Professor in Chicke ns (Jahn the Conqueror University (Floor 2, Shrimp Packers Building, Genua)), Prim o Octo (Deux), Visiting Professor of Blit/Slood Exchanges (Al Khali), KCbfJ, Recip rocating Professor of Blit Theory (Unki), D. Thau (Unki), Didimus Supremius (Unki) , Emeritus Professor in Blit Substrate Determinations (Chubb), Chair of Blit and M usic Studies (Quirm College for Young Ladies), there’s only oooonnnnnnne Professor Bengo Macarooonaah D. Thau (Bug), D. Maus (Chubb), Magistaludorum (QIS), Octavium (Hons), PHGK (Blit), DMSK, Mack, D. Thau (Bra), Visiting Professor in Chickens (J ahn the Conqueror University (Floor 2, Shrimp Packers Building, Genua)), Primo Oct o (Deux), Visiting Professor of Blit/Slood Exchanges (Al Khali), KCbfJ, Reciprocat ing Professor of Blit Theory (Unki), D. Thau (Unki), Didimus Supremius (Unki), Eme ritus Professor in Blit Substrate Determinations (Chubb), Chair of Blit and Music Studies (Quirm College for Young Ladies), oooonnnnnnnly one Professor Bengo Macaro ooonaaaah D. Thau (Bug), D. Maus (Chubb), Magistaludorum (QIS), Octavium (Hons), P HGK (Blit), DMSK, Mack, D. Thau (Bra), Visiting Professor in Chickens (Jahn the Co nqueror University (Floor 2, Shrimp Packers Building, Genua)), Primo Octo (Deux), Visiting Professor of Blit/Slood Exchanges (Al Khali), KCbfJ, Reciprocating Professor of Blit Theory (Unki), D. Thau (Unki), Didimus Supremius (Unki), Emeritus Pro fessor in Blit Substrate Determinations (Chubb), Chair of Blit and Music Studies (Qu irm College for Young Ladies). But wouldn’t he be off-the-side, sir?’ ‘That would indeed appear to be the complaint of the luckless warriors of United,’ said the editor. ‘They are clustering around the referee and what would I give to be a fly on that wall?’ ‘There is no wall, sir.’ ‘It would seem—’ and the editor stopped dead. ‘Who is that?’ ‘What is that, sir?’ ‘Look over there at the stands! The upper-class stands, I might add, to which we were n ot invited.’ The sun usefully took this opportunity to appear from behind the clouds and the bowl of the Hippo seemed to fill with light. ‘That’s the micromail girl, sir,’ said the assistant. Even some of the protesting United team were looking up at the stands now. She hurt t he eyes, but they were dragged towards it again. ‘I’ve got her picture on my bedroom wall,’ said the assistant. ‘Everyone has been look ing for her.’ He coughed. ‘They say it doesn’t chafe, you know.’ Now, all the footballers on the field, bar the unfortunate Charlie Barton, who was havi ng a dizzy spell, were clustered around the referee, who said, ‘I repeat; it was a perf ectly acceptable goal. A trifle unkind and showy, perhaps, but nevertheless entirely wi thin the rules. You’ve watched the Unseen lads training. The game moves about. It doesn ’t send you a clacks to tell you what’s happening next.’ A voice a little lower down said, ‘It is an elementary mistake to believe that even the most doughty keeper of the net can single-handedly defend against the full might of th e opposing team.’ This was Nutt. ‘Mister Nutt, you are not supposed to tell them that sort of thing,’ said Ridcully. Mr Hoggett looked downcast. A man betrayed by team, history and expectations. ‘I can s ee we’ve got a lot to learn,’ he said. Trev pulled Nutt off to one side. ‘And this is where it all goes bad,’ he said. ‘Oh, come now, Mister Trev. We’re doing very well. Bengo is, anyway.’ ‘I’m not watching him. I’m watching Andy and Andy is watchin’ Bengo. They’re bidin’ the ir time. They’re lettin’ the poor old buggers get into a hell of a fix and then they’ll just take over.’ And then Trev was given a short lesson in why wizards are wizards. ‘I have a modest proposal and I wonder if you will hear me out, referee. While we at U nseen University are absolute novices, we have had rather more time to get to grips wi th the new football than our current opponents have. Therefore, I propose to give them one of our goals,’ said Ridcully. ‘You can’t do that, sir!’ said Ponder. ‘Why, is it against the rules?’ Ridcully’s tone deepened and became noticeably more po mpous. ‘I ask you, are good sportsmanship, fellowship and generosity against the rules , pray?’ By the end of the sentence, his voice was audible nearly to the very back of the stadium. ‘Well, of course there is nothing against it, sir. There isn’t a rule stopping you washi ng your laundry during the middle of the game-and that is because no one would do it.’ ‘Right. Mister Hoggett? One of our goals is now yours. We are, as it were, level.’ Hoggett, transfixed, looked around at his fellow players, ‘Well, er, if you insist, sir.’ ‘Wouldn’t dream of taking no for an answer,’ said Ridcully expansively. ‘What in the world made him do that?’ said the editor of the Times, as an exhausted r unner brought him the news. ‘It was a very generous gesture.’ ‘Why did you do it?’ said Ponder to Ridcully. ‘I am totally transparent, Stibbons. Generous to a fault, that’s me. It’s not my fault tha t they do not know they are inferior and this will play on their minds for the rest of the game.’ ‘That’s rather…cunning, sir.’ ‘Yes, it is, isn’t it? I’m rather proud of it. And once again, we get to kick first. No wo nder this is such a popular game.’ ‘That was a remarkable piece of psychology there,’ said Nutt to Trev as they walked bac k to the sidelines. ‘Somewhat cruel, possibly, but clever.’ Trev said nothing. There was the shrill call of the whistle for the game to r esume, followed instantly by the referee screaming, ‘A LITTLE BIT OF HAIL WON ’T HURT YOU, BOY, IT’S HEALTHY AND WILL DO YOU GOOD.’ ‘That’s magic,’ said Trev. ‘Should that be happening?’ ‘No,’ said Ponder Stibbons behind him. ‘It’s just possession.’ ‘Yes, the game is all about possession, Mister Trev,’ said Nutt. Trev looked up again at the stand. There was the shining shape of Juliet, only a few f eet away from Vetinari himself and flanked by Glenda and Pepe. She could be a goddess. It’s never going to happen, is it? he said to himself. Not her and a boy from the can dle vats. Not really going to happen. Not now. And then Bengo screamed and it seemed as though every voice in the stadium join ed in one communal ‘OOOOOH!’ And the whistle blew again. ‘What happened, sir?’ said the editorial assistant. ‘Can’t exactly be sure. They got the ball to Macarona again and then he collided with a couple of United players and they all ended up in a heap.’ Nutt, the first to reach the stricken Macarona, looked up at Trev gravely. ‘Both patell as dislocated,’ he said. ‘We’ll need a couple of men to take him down to the Lady Sybil .’ The former Dean looked around at the clustered footballers. ‘So, what happened here, M ister Shank?’ he said as perspiration dripped off his chin. Andy momentarily lifted a finger to his forelock. ‘Well, sir, I was rushing forward according to the rules to tackle Mister Macarona and I had no idea at all that Jimmy the Spoon, here, had got exactly the same idea and wa s coming from a different direction and suddenly we were all there together going arse over tip, if you would excuse my Klatchian.’ Trev glowered. The look on Andy’s face was transparent. He was lying. He knew he was lying. He knew everyone else knew he was lying and he didn’t care. In fact, he rather enjoyed the situation. Andy’s boots looked heavy enough to moor a boat. ‘They got ’im like the meat in a sandwich, sir,’ Trev complained to the referee. ‘Can you substantiate that, young man?’ ‘Well, you can see what’s happened to the poor bugger.’ ‘Yes, but do you have any evidence of collusion?’ Trev went blank and Nutt supplied in a whisper, ‘Can you prove it was a set-up?’ ‘Can anyone?’ said the referee, looking around the players. No one could. Trev wondere d how many might, were it not for the fact that Andy was standing there, innocent as a shark. ‘I am the referee, gentlemen, and I can only referee what I see and I saw noth ing.’ ‘Yes, because they made sure of that,’ said Trev. ‘Anyway, listen to the crowd. They all saw it!’ ‘Look! They’ve got boots on them that could strip bark,’ Ridcully protested. ‘Yes, indeed, Mustrum, I mean, sorry, captain, but as yet there are no rules about which boots should be worn and at the very least these are the boots that have been tradition ally worn for the game of foot-the-ball.’ ‘But they are man traps!’ ‘I can certainly see what you are getting at, but what would you like me to do?’ said H enry. ‘I have a suspicion that if I cancel this match at this point you and I would not get out of here alive, because even if we ourselves did escape the wrath of the crowd, we would by no means escape the wrath of Vetinari. The game will continue. Unseen Acad emicals can play a substitute and I will, let me see—’ He pulled out a notebook. ‘Ah, y es, I will award a free kick at the very point where this unfortunate incident took pla ce. And may I add that I will look askance at any future “incidents”. Mister Hoggett, I trust that you will make this clear to your team.’ ‘Blow that for a game of soldiers!’ Trev yelled. ‘They just took out our best player a n’ you’re gonna let ’em walk away grinning?’ But the referee was, after all, the former Dean. A man used to head-to-head confrontat ions with Mustrum Ridcully. He gave Trev a chilly look and turned very deliberately to the Archchancellor and said, ‘And I trust you, too, captain, will impress upon your t eam that my decisions are final. There will be a five-minute interlude for you to do t his and can some of you fellows take poor Professor Macarona off the field and see if you can find some quack to look at him.’ A voice behind him bellowed, ‘You have one right here, sir.’ They turned. A figure slig htly larger than life, wearing a top hat and carrying a small bag, nodded at them. ‘Doctor Lawn,’ said Ridcully. ‘I wouldn’t have expected to see you here.’ ‘Really?’ said the doctor. ‘Wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Now some of you men drag him over to that corner and I’ll take a look at him. I’ll send my bill to you, sha ll I, Mustrum?’ ‘Wouldn’t you like to take him somewhere nice and quiet?’ said the referee. ‘No fear! I want to keep my eye on the play.’ ‘They’re gettin’ away with it,’ said Trev, as he walked back to the line. ‘Everyone know s they’re gettin’ away with it.’ ‘We still have the rest of the team, Mister Trev,’ said Nutt, lacing up his boots. He ha d, of course, made them himself. They looked like foot gloves. ‘And me of course, I am t he first substitute. I promise that I will do my best, Mister Trev.’ Thus far, it had been a rather boring afternoon for the Librarian after his one little moment in the sun. It really was rather dull between the goal posts and he was getting hungry and so was pleasantly surprised by the appearance of a large banana in front of the goal. It was later agreed that, in a footballing context, mysteriously appearing fr uit should have been greeted with a certain amount of caution. But he was hungry, it wa s a banana and the metaphysics were sound. He ate it. Glenda, up in the stand, wondered if she was the only one to have seen the startlingly yellow fruit in its trajectory and then saw, looking up at her from the crowd, with a big grin on her face, Mrs Atkinson, mother of Tosher, himself something of an unguide d weapon. Anyone who had ever been in the Shove knew her as a perpetrator of all kinds of inventive assaults. She had always got away with it because no one in the Shove wo uld hit an old lady, especially one standing next to Tosher. ‘Excuse me,’ said Glenda, standing up. ‘I’ve got to get down there right now.’ ‘Not a chance, love,’ said Pepe. ‘It’s shoulder-to-shoulder. A Shove and a half.’ ‘Look after Juliet,’ said Glenda. She leaned forward and tapped on the shoulder of the n earest man. ‘I’ve got to get to the bottom of this as soon as possible. Mind if I jump?’ He looked past her at the glittering figure of Juliet and said, ‘Not at all, if you get your girlfriend to give me a big kiss.’ ‘No, but I’ll give you one.’ ‘Er, don’t trouble yourself, miss, but come on then, give me your hand.’ It was a reasonably fast descent, as she was passed from hand to hand, accompanied by ribaldry, much genial horseplay and a definite feeling of satisfaction on Glenda’s par t that she was wearing her biggest and most impenetrable pants.* Elbowing and kicking people out of the way, she reached the goal just as the banana was consumed in one gulp and stood panting helplessly in front of the Librarian. He gave her a wide smile, looked thoughtful for a moment and went over backwards. High up in the stand, Lady Margolotta turned to Vetinari. ‘Is that part of the game?’ ‘I fear not,’ he said. Ladyship yawned. ‘Well, it relieves the boredom, at least. They’ve spent far more time arguing than playing.’ Vetinari smiled. ‘Yes, madam. It does look as if football is very much like diplomacy: short periods of fighting followed by long periods of negotiation.’ Glenda prodded the Librarian. ‘Hello? Are you all right?’ All she could hear was a gurgling. She cupped her hands, ‘Man—er, someone down, here!’ To another chorus of boos, and, because this was Ankh-Morpork, cheers, the travell ing committee, which was what the game had now become, hastened over to the Unseen Academicals’ goal. ‘Someone threw a banana and I saw who did it and I think it’s poisoned,’ said Glenda, a ll in one breath. ‘He’s breathing very heavily,’ said Ridcully. The comment was unnecessary as the snor es were making the goal rattle. He crouched down and put his ear to the Librarian’s chest. ‘I don’t think he’s been pois oned,’ he said. ‘Why’s that, Archchancellor?’ said Ponder. ‘Because if anyone has poisoned our Librarian,’ said Ridcully, ‘then, although I am not, by nature, a vindictive man, I will see to it that this university hunts down the poiso ner by every thaumic, mystic and occult means available and makes the rest of their life not only as horrible as they can imagine it, but as horrible as I can imagine it. And y ou can depend on it, gentlemen, that I have already started work on it.’ Ponder looked around until he saw Rincewind. ‘Professor Rincewind. You were, I mean y ou are, his friend, can’t you stick your fingers down his throat or something?’ ‘Well, no,’ said Rincewind. ‘I am very attached to my fingers and I like to think of the m as attached to me.’ The noise of the crowd was getting louder. They were here to see football, not a debate . ‘But Doctor Lawn is still here,’ Rincewind volunteered. ‘He makes a living out of stick ing his hand in things. He’s got the knack.’ ‘Ah, yes,’ said the referee. ‘Perhaps we can impose upon him to take another patient.’ He turned to Ridcully. ‘You must play your other substitute.’ ‘That would be Trevor Likely,’ said the Archchancellor. ‘No!’ blurted out Trev. ‘I promised my ol’ mum.’ ‘I thought you were part of the team?’ said Ridcully. ‘Well, yes, sir, sort of…helpin’ out and all that…I promised my ol’ mum, sir, after Da d died. I know I was down on the list, but who would have thought it would have turned out like this?’ Ridcully stared at the sky. ‘Well, it seems to me, gentlemen, that we cannot ask a ma n to break a promise made to an old mum. That would be a crime more heinous than murd er. We will have to play with ten men. It appears that we will have to go without.’ Up in his ramshackle box, the editor of the Times picked up his notebook and said, ‘I’m going down there. It’s ridiculous to sit up here like this.’ ‘You’re going on the pitch, sir?’ ‘Yes. At least that way I can see what’s happening.’ ‘I don’t think the referee will allow that, sir!’ ‘You’re not going to play, Trev?’ said Glenda. ‘I told you! How many times do I need to tell people? I promised my ol’ mum!’ ‘But you are part of the team, Trev.’ ‘I promised my ol’ mum!’ ‘Yes, but I am sure she’d understand.’ ‘That’s easy for you to say. We’ll never know, will we?’ ‘Not necessarily,’ said a voice cheerfully. ‘Oh, hello, Doctor Hix,’ said Glenda. ‘I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation, and if Mister Likely could tell me where his mother is buried, and the referee was to give us a little leeway in regard to time, well it could be possible that I—’ ‘Don’t you put a shovel anywhere near my ol’ mum!’ Trev screamed, tears rolling down his face. ‘I’m sure we all understand, Trev,’ said Glenda. ‘It’s always difficult with old mums,’ and she added, not really thinking what she was saying, ‘and I think Juliet will underst and.’ She took him by the hand and towed him off the pitch. Trev had been right. It was all going wrong. The buoyant certainties of the beginning of the game were fading. ‘You gave away a goal, sir,’ said Ponder as he and Ridcully lined up for the next encou nter. ‘I have great faith in Mister Nutt in goal,’ said Ridcully. ‘And I’ll show them what ha ppens to people who try to poison a wizard.’ The whistle blew. ‘GET DOWN AND GIVE ME TWENTY! I’m sorry, gentlemen, I don’t quite know why I said that…’ What happens to people who try to poison a wizard, at least in the short run, is that they have an advantage in a game of football. The absence of Professor Macarona was a deadly blow. He had been the pillar around which the university strategy had been buil t. Emboldened, United went for the kill. Even so, the editor of the Times thought, as he lay down at the very edge of the pitch alongside his iconographer, the wizards were just about managing to hold their own. H e scribbled as fast as he could, trying hard to ignore the gentle shower of pie wrappi ngs, banana skins, empty greasy pea bags and the occasional beer bottle being tossed o n to the pitch. And who is that with the ball now? He glanced at the little crib-sheet of numbers he had managed to jot down. Ah, right. United had broken into the UU side of the field and there was Andy Shank, an unpleasant man by all accounts and…surely th at wasn’t a normal footballing procedure. Other players had lined up around him. So he was running in the middle of a group of bodyguards. Even the other team members thems elves did not seem to know what was going on, but Mr Shack nevertheless managed a cred itable strike at the goal, which was expertly snatched out of the air by…Mister Nutt. He glanced at his crib-sheet, ah yes, the orc, and added in his notebook: ‘who is clea rly adept at grasping big round objects’. But then he felt ashamed and crossed it out. Despite where we are lying, he said to himself, we are not the gutter press. The orc. Nutt danced back and forth outside his goal, trying to find someone who looked in a pos ition to be able to do something with a ball. ‘Can’t hang around all day, Orc,’ said Andy, staying in front of him. ‘Got to let it go soon, Orc. Not much help for you now, is there, Orc? They say you’ve got claws. Show u s your claws, Orc. That will bust your ball.’ ‘I believe that you are a man with unresolved issues, sir.’ ‘What?’ Nutt dropkicked the ball over Andy’s head and somewhere in the mob that fought for i t there was a crunch, which was followed by a yell, which was followed by the whistl e and the whistle was followed by the chant. It began somewhere in the region of Mrs Atkinson, but spread oh so quickly: ‘Orc! Orc! Orc! Orc! Orc! Orc! Orc!’ Ridcully got to his feet, standing unsteadily. ‘The buggers have got me, Henry,’ he ye lled, in a voice that could hardly be heard over the chant. ‘Kneecap! Bloody kneecap!’ ‘Who did it?’ the referee demanded. ‘How should I know? It’s a bloody mess, just like the old game! And can’t you get them to stop that bloody chant? That’s not the sort of thing we want to hear.’ Archchancellor Henry raised his megaphone. ‘Mister Hoggett?’ The captain of United pushed his way through the rabble, looking very sheepish. ‘Can’t you control your fans?’ Hoggett shrugged. ‘Sorry about that, sir, but what can you do?’ Henry looked around the Hippo. What could anyone do? It was the mob. The Shove. No on e was in charge. It hadn’t an arse to kick, a wrist to be slapped or even an address. It was just there and it was shouting because everybody else was. ‘Well, then can you at least control your team?’ he said. To his surprise Mr Hoggett l ooked down. ‘Not entirely, sir. Sorry about that, sir, it’s how things are.’ ‘One more incident of this kind and I will cancel the match. I suggest you leave the fi eld of play, Mustrum. Who is the substitute captain?’ ‘Me!’ said Ridcully, ‘but under the circumstances I appoint Mister Nobbs as my deputy .’ ‘Not Nobby Nobbs?’ exclaimed the former Dean. ‘No relation,’ said Bledlow Nobbs very quickly. ‘Well, that was a good choice at least,’ said Trev, sighing. ‘Nobbsy is a clogger at heart .’ ‘But it’s not supposed to be about clogging,’ said Glenda. ‘And you know what?’ she ad ded, raising her voice against the steel roar of the crowd. ‘Whatever the old Dean thi nks he can’t stop the game, now. This place would just blow up!’ ‘You think so?’ said Trev. ‘Listen,’ said Glenda. ‘Yes, I think you’re right. You ought to get out of here.’ ‘Me? Not a chance.’ ‘But you could make yourself useful and get Juliet out. Get her as far as Vimesy and his lot. I bet they’re waiting right outside the gates. Do it right now while you can still get down the steps. Won’t get a chance once they start to play again.’ As he left, Glenda walked unheeded down the touchline, to the little area where Dr Law n was standing guard over his patients. ‘You know that little bag you brought with you, sir?’ ‘Yes?’ ‘I think you’re going to need a bigger bag. How’s Professor Macarona?’ The professor was lying on his back, staring at the sky and wearing an expression of bland happiness. ‘Sorted him out easily enough,’ said the doctor. ‘He won’t be playin g again any time soon. I’ve given him a little something to make him happy. Correctio n, I have given him a big something to make him happy.’ ‘And the Librarian?’ ‘Well, I got a couple of lads to help me turn him upside down and he’s been throwing up a lot. He’s still pretty groggy, but I don’t think it’s too bad. He’s as sick as a parrot. ’* ‘This wasn’t how it was supposed to go, you know,’ said Glenda out of a feeling that she should defend the bloody mess. ‘It generally isn’t,’ said the doctor. They turned as the noise of the nearby crowd changed. Juliet was coming down the ste ps glittering. The silence followed her like a lovesick dog. So did Pepe and the rea ssuring bulk of Madame Sharn, who might be a useful barricade in case the Hippo beca me a cauldron. Trev, tagging along behind them, seemed like an afterthought in compa rison. ‘All right, dear, what’s this all about?’ said Pepe. ‘I ain’t going,’ said Juliet, ‘not while Trev’s in here. I ain’t leaving without Trev. Pep e says he’s going to win the match.’ ‘What have you been saying?’ said Glenda. ‘He’ll win,’ said Pepe, winking. ‘He’s got a star in his hand. You want to see him do it , missy?’ ‘What are you playin’ at?’ said Trev, angrily. ‘Oh, I’m a bit of a conjurer, me. Or maybe a fairy godmother.’ Pepe gestured around the arena. ‘See that lot? Their ancestors screamed to see men killing one another and beas ts tearing decent folks apart. Men with spears fighting men with nets and all that kind of ugly shite.’ ‘And they have cart-tail sales here every other Sunday,’ added Glenda. ‘It’s always been the same,’ said Pepe. ‘It’s one big creature. Never dies. Crying and screaming and loving and hating all down the generations and you can’t tame it and you can’t stop it. Just for you, young lady, and for the soul of Mister Trev, I’m going to throw it a bone. Won’t take a mo’.’ His slim and slightly spidery form disappeared back up the steps just as the whist le blew. Glenda made out Bledlow Nobbs taking the kick, but Ridcully had made the mistake of thinking that a man who was as big as he was was as clever as he was. A nd there it was, it was the old game all over again. United were stampeding down t he pitch, the old cloggers making way for Andy’s army as they bore down against Nu tt. The kick took him in the chest and lifted him into the back of the goal. The w histle blew and was followed by, ‘DON’T TOUCH THAT, BOYO! YOU DON’T KNOW WHERE IT’ S BEEN!’ which was followed by, ‘I really am very sorry about that, I don’t know w hy it happens,’ which was followed by…absolute silence. Which was broken by one voice, ‘Likely. Likely. Likely.’ It started up in the stand, somewhere near where Pepe had gone. The beast had forgotten the name ‘Orc’, but certainly remembered the name ‘Likely’, a name that had fed it so often, a name it had given birth to and eaten, a name that w as football, the very heart of the beast. And here, on this broken field, it was a na me to conjure with. ‘LIKELY! LIKELY! LIKELY!’ Hardly a grown man hadn’t seen him. He was the legend. Even after all these years, it was a name that cut through other loya lties. You told your grandchildren about him. You told them how he lay there bleeding and maybe how you dipped your handkerchief in his blood and kept it for a souvenir. ‘Likely,’ intoned the baritone of Madame Sharn. ‘Likely,’ whispered Glenda and then ‘LIKELY!’ She could see the little figure running al ong the top of the stands, the chant tailing after it. Tears streamed down Trev’s face. Mercilessly, Glenda looked him in the eye. ‘Likely! Likely!’ ‘But my ol’ mum!’ Trev wept. Then Juliet leaned over and kissed him and for a moment, the tears were silver. ‘Likely ?’ Trev stood clutching and unclutching his hands as the chant went on, then he gave a sort of shrug. Then he took his battered tin can out of his jacket pocket and handed it to G lenda, before turning to face the pitch again. ‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ he said, taking off his jacket, ‘but this is football. And I don’t even have a jersey.’ ‘We thought of that,’ said Glenda. ‘When they were being made.’ She pulled one out of the depths of her bag. ‘Number four. That was my dad’s number.’ ‘Yes,’ said Glenda. ‘We know. Listen to ’em cheering, Trev.’ Trev looked like someone trying to find an escape clause. ‘I’ve never even trained wit h the new football. You know me, it’s always been the tin can.’ ‘It’s a football. It’s just a football,’ said Nutt. ‘You’ll get the hang of it in a second.’ The former Dean strode up. ‘Well, this is all very gratifying with a touch of welcome p athos, ladies and gentlemen, but it is time we continued this football match and I woul d be very grateful if all non-players could stand back behind the touchlines,’ he said, shouting to make himself heard above the noise of the crowd. Trev left Nutt at the goal. ‘Don’t you worry, Mister Trev,’ said the orc, grinning. ‘W ith me saving and you striking we can’t lose. They won’t get me the same way a second time.’ He lowered his voice and grabbed Trev’s shoulder. ‘When it starts to get hot do wn this end, run like stink towards the other and I’ll make sure you get the ball.’ Tr ev nodded and walked across the turf to the cheers of the crowd. The editor of the Times later reported as follows: At this point, United seemed to feel that they had a working strategy and poured every r esource into the university side in a mêlée that was clearly beyond the referee to contr ol. The plucky orc custodian had also learned a lesson and two or three times recovered the day with magnificent saves, on one occasion kicking the ball, in our opinion, directly at the head of one of the milling opponents, stunning him and then catching it upon th e rebound, dropping it on to the boot and sending it far into the opposing half where T revor Likely, son of the famous football hero, ran pell-mell towards the goal where Mr Charlie Barton had happily been provided with a chair, a table, a late lunch and two st alwart defenders, whose clear purpose it was to see that none shall pass. All breathing in the park surely ceased as the young paladin fired off a tremendous sho t, which was, alas, out by a few inches and only served to rattle the woodwork and rebo unded towards the defenders. Nevertheless, Likely tackled like a man possessed and spir its lifted once again as the two defenders got in each other’s way just sufficiently fo r the boy to once again power the sphere back towards its intended resting place. Your correspondent believes that even the supporters of United joined in the groan as once again this second shot failed to find a slot and this time rebounded almost to th e feet of H. Capstick, who lost no time in sending it screaming towards the Academical s’ end before it could do more harm. Once again, the indefatigable Mr Nutt warded off a number of attacks while the rather pathetic remnant of the university boys’ defence proved that prowess with the magic wa nd is of little avail if you do not know what your feet are for. At this point, Master of the Dark Arts Dr J. Hix was summarily dismissed from the fiel d after the crowd’s persistent chant of ‘Who’s the bastard in the black?’ alerted the referee to his attempts at endeavouring to strike down F. Brisket, one of the notoriou s Brisket boys, with the soul-eating dagger of the Deadly Vampyre Spider Queen. Which, as it transpired, turned out to be neither magical nor, as it turned out, made of met al, but one of a number of similar items available in Boffo’s Joke Emporium, Tenth Egg Street. Ranting apparently fearful oaths about university statute, Dr Hix had to be d ragged from the field by members of his own team, leaving our spirited magicians in an even more depleted spell of difficulty, probably wishing they had a magic carpet to g et them out of there! At least Dr Hix’s tirade and attempts to drag the ground with him bought them some ti me. Glenda ran on to the pitch to a dishevelled and downcast Trev. ‘What happened, Trev?’ she said. ‘You had it right there in front of you. You had it in your hands, well, on your boot, anyway.’ ‘It doesn’t do what I want,’ said Trev. ‘You’re supposed to make it do what you want. It’s just a football.’ ‘Yeah, but I’m tryin’ to learn with all of this goin’ on.’ ‘Well, at least you nearly did it. We haven’t lost yet and it’s still only the first half.’ When play was resumed, according to the editor of the Times: A certain amount of backbone had been retrieved by the men in pointy hats and captain Nobbs led a concerted attack in an attempt to further interfere with Charlie Barton’s lunch, but to the dismay of all, the son of Dave Likely still appeared to have only a nodding acquaintance with the art of goal scoring and it appeared very much that his o nly chance of putting one away would be to have the ball wrapped up and sent via the P ost Office. And then, to the shock of all, the occult gang appeared to prove that they were far bet ter at billiards than football when another of Likely’s powerful, but directionless, at tempts rebounded again off the goal on to the head of Professor Rincewind, who was, in fact, running in the opposite direction, and was in the back of the goal before anyone, including Charlie, knew where it was. This got a cheer, but only because the game now appeared, in our opinion, to be a com edy routine. Alas, there was no comedy about the fact that in several parts of the Hi ppo, fights were breaking out between gangs of rival supporters, doubtless inspired b y some of the shameful performances on the pitch… As the two sides trooped or hobbled back to their places, the referee called the captain s together. ‘Gentlemen, I’m not quite sure what we are doing here, but I am quite certai n that it’s not exactly football and I look forward to the inquiry later on. In the mean time, before anyone else is injured and especially before the crowd start to tear this p lace apart and eat one another, I will tell you that the next goal scored will be the la st one, even though we are still only in the first half.’ He looked meaningfully at Hogg ett and said, ‘I sincerely hope that some players will examine their consciences. If I m ay coin a phrase, gentlemen, it’s sudden death either way. I will give you a few minutes to impress this upon your teams.’ ‘I am sorry, sir,’ said Hoggett, looking around, ‘some of my lads are not people I would have chosen, if you get my drift. I’ll give them a good talking to.’ ‘In my opinion that would only work if you were hitting them with a hammer at the s ame time, Mister Hoggett. They are a disgrace. And do you also understand me, Miste r Nobbs?’ ‘I think we’d like to carry on, too. Never say die.’ ‘And I would not like to see death here, either, but I suspect that your request for extr a time is in the hope that Mister Likely will learn how to play football, but I fear that will not happen in a month of Sundays.’ ‘Well, yes, sir, but can’t you—’ Hoggett began. ‘Mister Hoggett, I have spoken and I am the referee and right now I am the nearest thin g to the gods.’ I am the nearest thing to the gods. It came back as an echo. Softer. Brighter. He looke d around, ‘What? Did you chaps say something?’ Nearest thing to the gods. There was a s ound like gloing! But the ball was still in his hands, wasn’t it? He stared at it. And was it just him, or was there something in the air? Something…in the air…the silverynes s of fine winter days. Trev did an embarrassingly jiggly little run on the spot as he waited. When he looked up, there was Andy Shank watching him. ‘Your dear old dad must be ’aving a fit,’ said Andy cheerfully. ‘I know you, Andy,’ said Trev wearily, ‘I know what you do. You corner some poor tosser and taunt ’im until ’e loses ’is rag and so ’e starts it, doesn’t ’e? I’m not risin’ to it, Andy.’ ‘Not risin’ to anythin’ very much, are you?’ ‘Not listenin’, Andy,’ said Trev. ‘Oh, I reckon you are.’ Trev sighed again. ‘I’ve been watchin’ you. You and your chums are bloody masters at st ickin’ the boot in when the ref ain’t lookin’ and what ’e don’t see ’e can’t do nothin’ about.’ Andy lowered his voice. ‘Well, I can do something about you, Trev. You won’t be walking out of this place, I swear it. You’ll be carried out.’ There was the sound of the whistle, followed by the unstoppable ‘ANY BOY WHO HAS NOT BROUGHT HIS KIT WILL PLAY IN HIS PANTS!’ ‘Sudden death,’ the former Dean said and the sides collided, Andy emerging with the bal l at his feet and his dishonour guard flanking him at either side. Ponder Stibbons, in the path of their advance, calculated quite a lot of things very qui ckly, such as speed, wind direction and the likelihood of being physically trodden into the turf. He made an effort at any rate, but ended up flat on his back after the collisi on. As the editor of the Times put it: in this scene of despair, dismay and disarray, on e lone defender, Nutt, stood in the way of United’s winning goal… There was a roar immediately behind Nutt. He daren’t look round, but someone landed o n top of the goal, making it shake, dropped down and indicated by means of one huge a nd horny thumb that Mr Nutt’s assistance was no longer required. There was a green cr ust around the Librarian’s mouth, but this was nothing to the fire in his eyes. At this point, according to the editor of the Times: Seemingly nonplussed by the return of the wizards’ famous man of the forest, Shank ess ayed another attempt at the winning score, which was stopped one-handed by the Librari an and effortlessly thrown back into United’s turf. With everything to play for, it se emed to us that every man on the pitch was chasing the ball as if they were a pack of boys, scuffling in the gutter for the traditional tin can. However, Mr Nobbs, who we a re assured is no relation, was able to make some space to give the unlucky Mr Likely a nother attempt at following in his father’s footsteps, which he failed to do by the wi dth, from our estimation, of about half of one inch and the ball was snatched up by Bi g Boy Barton who then collapsed, choking, having stuffed, we understand, a considerabl e amount of pie into his face to keep his hands free. ‘It shouldn’t be like this,’ said Glenda, and the thought echoed back in her head: It shouldn’t be like this. ‘Trev has to win, it can’t go any other way.’ And her voice ca me back again; could you get echoes in your own head? They were going to lose, weren’t they? They were going to lose because Andy knew how to break the rules. The rules. I am the rules. She looked around, but apart from the doctor and his groaning or, in Ridcully’s case, cursing charges, there was no one near her apart from Juliet who was watching the game with her normal, faint smile. ‘Good heavens. All he needs is to get only one goal,’ said Glenda aloud. I am the goal, said the quiet voice from nowhere. ‘Did you hear that?’ said Glenda. ‘Wot?’ said Juliet. She turned and Glenda could see that she was crying. ‘Trev’s going t o lose.’ I am the ball. This time it had come from her pocket, and she pulled out Trev’s tin can. As Doctor Lawn gave a groan and hurried back up the pitch towards the choking Charlie (as the Times later put it), she followed him and caught up with Mr Nobbs. ‘If you e ver want a cup of tea and a piece of cake again in your life, Mr Nobbs, you kick the ball towards me. You will know where I am, because I will be screaming and acting sil ly. Do what I say, okay?’ Do what she says, okay? he heard her voice echo. ‘And what will you do, throw it back ?’ ‘Something like that,’ said Glenda. ‘And what good is this going to do?’ ‘It’s going to win you the match, that’s what. Can you remember rule 202?’ She left him wondering and then hurried along to Mrs Whitlow and the cheerleaders who, right now, had nothing to cheer about. ‘I think we should give the boys a really good display at this time,’ she suggested. ‘Don’t you agree, Juliet?’ Juliet, who had been dutifully following her said, ‘Yes, Glenda.’ Yes, Glenda. And there it was again. One sentence. Two voices. Mrs Whitlow was not the sort of person who would take an instruction from the head of the Night Kitchen, but Glenda leaned forward and said, ‘It’s the Archchancellor’s sp ecial request.’ The resurrection of Big Boy Barton was not an easy job and there were possibly fewer v olunteers for putting their fingers down his throat than there had been for the Librar ian. And his emptying and cleaning up took a little more time. As the referee summoned the teams back into position, Glenda arrived out of breath an d handed him a piece of paper. ‘What’s this?’ ‘It’s the rules, sir, but you will see that I have put a ring around one of them.’ He glanced at it, and said dismissively, ‘Looks like a lot of nonsense to me.’ ‘It’s not, sir, not if you look at it a bit at a time, sir, it’s the rules, sir.’ Archchancellor Henry shrugged and stuffed the paper into his pocket. For a moment, Bledlow Nobbs glanced at Glenda, defiantly out of place amongst the che erleaders. Glenda was known to be generous to her friends and she made the best tea i n the university. This wasn’t about football, this was about a hot mug of tea and pos sibly a doughnut. He leaned down to Nutt. ‘Glenda says I’ve got to remember rule 202, ’ he said. Nutt’s face brightened. ‘Clever idea and of course it will work. Did she tell you to kick the ball out of the pitch?’ ‘Yes, that’s right. Are we going to cheat?’ said Bledlow Nobbs. ‘No. We are going to stick to the rules. And the thing about sticking to the rules is that it’s sometimes better than cheating.’ Nobbs’s chance came soon enough, surprisingly with an obviously misdirected pass from Hoggett. Had Hoggett been standing very close when they had been talking? And had he just said ‘Go for it?’ It sounded very much like it. He kicked the ball straight tow ards the cheerleaders, where Glenda snatched it out of the air and pushed it into the folds of Mrs Whitlow’s skirt. ‘You haven’t seen this, ladies, you haven’t seen where it is and you’re not moving for anyone, okay?’ As the crowd booed and cheered, she pulled the tin can out of her bag and held it up in the air. ‘Ball lost!’ she yelled. ‘Substitute ball!’ and threw the can directly toward s the bledlow, who was quick enough to flick it on to Nutt. Before any other player had moved, it landed with a little gloing! sound on the end of Trev Likely’s boot… According to the editor of the Times: We have been assured that no magic was used on the day of the match and it is not my p lace to contradict the honourable faculty of Unseen University. All your correspondent will say is that Trevor Likely kicked the ‘ball’, against all probability, towards th e Academicals’ goal, where he stood, apparently waiting for the stampede of the enrage d United squad. What followed, your correspondent must declare, was not just a goal, b ut it was a punishment and it was a retribution. It was writing the name Likely, for t he second time, in the annals of football history, as Trevor, famous son of a famous f ather, wiped the floor with United, wrung them out and did it all over again. Running. Dodging. Sometimes obligingly kicking the ‘ball’ directly towards a defender who then found it heading off in quite a different direction, which just happened to be where Likely was now. He taunted them. He played with them. He caused them to collide with o ne another as they both went for a ball that, inexplicably, was no longer where they w ere sure it had been. And it must have come as a relief to the more steady members of United when he relented and skipped the ‘ball’ over the head of their standby keeper, Micky Pulford (latterly of the Whopping Street Wanderers) and into the net, where it c ircled and then returned to land precisely on the tip of Likely’s boot. The silence… …spread like warm butter. Glenda was sure she could hear distant birdsong or, possibl y, the noise of worms under the turf, but definitely the sound from Dr Lawn’s impromp tu field hospital, the sound of ‘Big Boy’ Barton chucking up again. And then, where silence had reigned, sound poured like the gush of water from a broken dam. It was physical and it was complex. Here and there the spectators started chanti ng. All the chants of all the teams, united and harmonizing in one perfect moment. Glenda watched in amazement as Juliet…It was like the fashion show all over again. She seemed to light up from the inside, bars of golden light floating away from the micro mail. She started to run towards Trev, tearing off her beard, and, Glenda could see, g radually rising from the ground as though she was running up a stairway. It was a strange and wonderful sight, and not even Charlie Barton, still throwing up, cou ld detract from it. ‘ ’scuse me,’ said Mister Hoggett. ‘That was a goal, wasn’t it?’ ‘Yes, Mister Hoggett, I think it was,’ said the referee. Hoggett was pushed out of the way by Andy Shank. ‘No! It went to one side! Are you b loody blind, or what? And it was a tin can.’ ‘No, Mister Shank, it was not. Gentlemen, can you not see what’s happening in front of y our faces? Look, everything that happened was perfectly legal under the rules of the gam e, rule 202, to be precise. It’s a fossil, but it is a rule, and I can assure you that n o magic was used. But right now, gentlemen, can you not see the golden lady floating up in the air?’ ‘Yeah, right, that’s just more weird kids’ stuff, just like that goal.’ ‘This is football, Mister Shank, it’s all weird kids’ stuff.’ ‘So the game is over,’ said Mr Hoggett. ‘Yes, Mister Hoggett, it is. Apart from, and I insist on drawing your attention to it, a beautiful golden lady floating over the pitch. Am I the only one seeing this?’ Hoggett glanced towards the rising Juliet. ‘Yeah, right, very pretty, but we’ve lost, hav e we?’ ‘Yes, Mister Hoggett, you have clearly and emphatically lost.’ ‘And, just to be precise,’ said Hoggett, ‘there are no more, like, rules, are there?’ ‘No, Mister Hoggett, you are no longer subject to the rules of football.’ ‘Thank you for that clarification, your worship, and may I also thank you on behalf of United for the way you handled the trying events of this afternoon.’ With this, he turned and punched Andy full in the face. Mister Hoggett was a mild man , but years of lifting a pig carcass in each hand meant that he had a punch that even Andy’s thick skin had to reckon with. Even so, after Andy had blinked a few times he managed to say, ‘You bastard.’ ‘You lost us the game,’ said Hoggett. ‘We could have won fair and square, but you had to muck it up.’ And those around him felt able to murmur in support of the accusatio n. ‘Me? It wasn’t me! It was that bloody Trev Likely and his little orc chum. They was u sing magic. You can’t say that wasn’t magic.’ ‘Just skill, I assure you,’ said the former Dean. ‘Amazing skill, certainly, but he is wel l known for his prowess with the tin can, which itself is a veritable icon of football.’ ‘Where is that bloody Likely, anyway?’ Glenda, eyes fixed on the centre of the pitch, said in the voice of someone half hypnotiz ed, ‘He’s rising up in the air as well.’ ‘Look, you can’t tell me that’s not magic,’ Andy insisted. ‘No,’ said Glenda. ‘You know what, I think it’s religion. Can’t you hear?’ ‘I can’t hear anything, dear, with all the noise from the crowd,’ said the former Dean. ‘Yes,’ said Glenda. ‘Listen to the crowd.’ He did. It was a roar, a great sky-filling roar, old and animal and coming up from th e gods knew where, but inside it, travelling like a hidden message, he made out the w ords. They swam into focus, if indeed the ear could focus and if he was actually hear ing them with his ears. They might have been coming through his bones… If the striker thinks he scores Or if the keeper cries in shame They understand not the crowd’s applause I make, and hear and earn again For I am the crowd and I am the ball I am the triumph and the blame I am the turf, the pies, the All Always and ever, I am the Game. It matters not who won or lost Nothing is the score you made Fame is a petal that curls in the frost But I will remember how you played. And it stays there, Glenda thought, like sound in a banner. Everybody one part of it. Juliet and Trev began to float down, hand in hand, turning gently until they landed ligh tly on the turf, still kissing. A sort of reality began to leak back into the arena, and there are some people who, even when hearing the voice of the nightingale, will say ‘Wh at’s that bloody noise?’ ‘Cheatin’ bastard,’ said Andy and launched himself directly at Trev, covering the grou nd at speed as the boy stood there with a very bemused but happy expression on his fac e. He did not notice the hell-bent Andy until a huge boot kicked him squarely in the g roin, so hard that the eyes of all male watchers watered in sympathetic pain. For the second time in twenty-four hours, Trev felt the micromail sing as the thousands of links moved and just as quickly settled down again. It was as if a little breeze had blown up his pants. Apart from that, he hadn’t felt a thing. Andy, on the other hand, had. He was lying on the ground, bent double, making a sort o f whistling noise through his teeth. Someone slapped Trev on the back. It was Pepe. ‘You did put my pants on, didn’t you? Well, obviously not my pants. You’d have to be su icidal to want to put my pants on. Anyway, I’ve come up with a name for the stuff: I’m going to call it Retribushium. Can’t ever say it will be an end to war, ’cos I can’t im agine anything putting an end to war, but it sends the force back the way it came. Didn ’t chafe either, did it?’ ‘No,’ said Trev, amazed. ‘Well, it did for him! My word, though, he’s a game one. That reminds me, I’ll need a picture of you in them.’ Andy was rising slowly, elevating himself to the vertical almost by willpower alone. Pepe grinned, and somehow it seemed obvious to Trev that anyone who was going to ge t up and try any threats with Pepe grinning at him was more than suicidal. ‘Got a knife, have you, you little squirt?’ said Andy. ‘No, Andy,’ said Nutt behind him. ‘No more. The game is over. Fortune has favoured U nseen Academicals and I believe the traditional ending is to exchange shirts in an a tmosphere of good fellowship.’ ‘But not pants,’ said Pepe under his breath. ‘What do you know about that sort of thing?’ growled Andy. ‘You’re a bloody orc. I k now all about you people. You can tear arms and legs off. You’re black magic. I’m no t scared of you.’ He came at Nutt with commendable speed for a man in such pain. Nutt dodged. ‘I believe there is a peaceful solution to the obvious enmity between us.’ ‘You what?!’ Pepe and some of the footballers were closing in. Andy had not been making friends. Nutt waved them away. ‘I’m sure I could help you, Andy. Yes, you are right, I am an orc, but doesn’t an orc have eyes? Doesn’t an orc have ears? Doesn’t an orc have arms and legs?’ ‘Yeah, at the moment,’ said Andy, and leaped. What happened next happened so fast that Trev didn’t see the middle of it. It started with Andy jumping and finished with him sitting on the ground with Nutt’s hands clampe d around his head, claws out. ‘Let me see now,’ Nutt mused as the man struggled in vai n. ‘Twisting the skull with enough force to snap the spine and spinal column should no t present much difficulty since it is a non-rotating joint. And, of course, the ear ho les and eye sockets allow for extra grip in the manner of a bowling ball,’ he added ha ppily. There was a horrified hush as he continued. ‘Using the unit of measurement of force in vented by Sir Rosewood Bunn, I should think that a mere 250 Bunns should do the trick. But, of course, and possibly surprisingly, it is the tearing of the skin, tendons and muscles that would present me with some difficulty. You are a young man and the tensi le strength would be quite high. I imagine the skin alone would require a force of abo ut a thousand Bunns.’ Andy yelped as his head was gently twisted. ‘Oh, I say! Look here now!’ said Ridcully. ‘A joke is a joke and all that, but…’ ‘From then on it gets rather messy,’ said Nutt. ‘Muscle would tear off the bones compar atively easily.’ Andy gave another strangled yelp. ‘But taking it all in all, I would think a force of between three to five Kilobunns shou ld do the trick.’ He paused. ‘Just my little joke, Andy. I know you like a laugh. I woul d also, I believe, be quite capable of putting one hand down your throat and pulling out your stomach.’ ‘Go ahead,’ croaked Andy. And around the arena of the Hippo, the beast smelled blood. After all, it wasn’t just horse racing that had taken place in the Hippo over the centuries. The comparatively s mall amount of blood that had been shed today was nothing compared with the oceans of the centuries gone by, but the beast knew blood when it smelled it. The cheering and t he chanting now picked up, and the words grew louder and louder as people rose to thei r feet: Orc! Orc! Orc! Nutt stood impassively and then turned to the former Dean. ‘Could I please ask every one else to leave? This may become messy.’ ‘Oh, come on!’ said Trev. ‘No way.’ ‘Ah, well,’ said Nutt, ‘maybe just the ladies?’ ‘Not likely,’ said Glenda. ‘In that case, would you please be so kind as to lend me your megaphone, referee, and I would be grateful if you would instruct some of the stronger players on the field to res train Mister Shank who is, I believe, sadly not in his right mind.’ Wordlessly it was handed over. Nutt took it as the storm of Orc! Orc! grew louder, wal ked a little way from the rest of the group and stood there impassively with his arms folded until the taunting stopped out of sheer lack of momentum. With every eye watchi ng him, he raised the megaphone to his lips and said, ‘Gentlemen. Yes, indeed, I am an orc and will always be one. And may I say that it’s been a privilege to play here tod ay and to see you all. But I do gather now that being an orc in this city may be seen as something of a problem to some of you.’ He paused. ‘So I would ask you to excuse me if I request that this matter be sorted out between us now.’ There was laughter and some jeers from various parts of the ground, but also, it seemed to Glenda, the beast was calling upon itself for silence. In that pin-drop silence the t hud of the megaphone hitting the ground could be heard in every corner. Then Nutt rolled up his sleeves and lowered his voice so that people had to strain to listen. He said, ‘Come on if you think you’re hard enough.’ First there was shock and then the silence of disbelief and the whisper of every head t urning to every other head and saying, ‘Did he really say that?’ and then someone high in the stands started to clap, at first slowly and then at an accelerating tempo, as it reached the crowd’s tipping point, when not clapping would be unthinkable. Ceasing to clap was also unthinkable and within a minute the applause was a storm. Nutt turned back to the rest of the team with tears streaming down his face. ‘Do I have worth?’ he said to Glenda. She ran towards him and hugged him. ‘You always did.’ ‘Then when the match is over there are things we have to do.’ ‘But it’s been over for ages,’ said Glenda. ‘No, it’s not over until the referee blows his whistle. Everyone knows that.’ ‘By Io he’s right,’ said Ridcully. ‘Go on, Dean. Give it the works!’ The Archchancellor of Brazeneck University felt gracious enough to let that one pass . He put the gigantic whistle to his lips, filled his lungs with air and sent the pe a rattling. Despite everything, the shade of Evans the Striped had the last word: ‘N O BOY IS TO FIDDLE ABOUT IN THE SHOWERS!’ As the crowd streamed down from the stands, trampling the now sacred turf, Ridcully ta pped a gloomy Mr Hoggett on the shoulder and said, ‘It would be my privilege to change shirts with you, sir.’ He dropped his hat on the ground, pulled off his shirt and rev ealed a chest so hairy that it looked like two sleeping lions. The United shirt he rec eived in return was somewhat of a tight fit, but that was unimportant because, as Andy had predicted, the Unseen Academicals were indeed picked up by the yelling crowd (exc ept for Mrs Whitlow who fought back) and carried in glory through the city. It was a t riumph. Whether you won or lost, it was still a triumph.* You think it’s all over? The wizards of Unseen University knew how to party. Pepe and Madame Sharn* were im pressed. However, business was business and they had to think about Juliet. ‘I can ’t see her anywhere,’ said Madame. ‘I think I saw two of her a while ago,’ said Pepe. ‘These fellows do themselves well– I have never seen such a large cheeseboard. It almost makes celibacy seem worthwhile. ’ ‘Oh, do you think so?’ ‘No. By the way, have you noticed that very tall wizard giving you the eye, my dear?’ ‘That’s Professor Bengo Macarona. Do you think he—’ Madame began. ‘Without a shadow of a doubt, my dear. I know he’s hurt his legs, but I doubt if that w ould be a problem.’ Once again, Madame craned to search the crowd for the glittering figure. ‘I do hope o ur young model is not getting involved in any hanky panky.’ ‘How could she? She’s totally surrounded by admirers.’ ‘It’s still possible.’ In fact, Juliet and Trev were sitting in the darkness of the Night Kitchen. ‘I’ll find som ethin’ to do,’ said Trev. ‘I’ll go wherever you go.’ ‘You ought to stay here and play football,’ said Juliet. ‘You know what some people said when we were drinking? They said Dave Likely was your father.’ ‘Well, yes, that’s true.’ ‘Yes,’ said Juliet, ‘but they used to say you were his son.’ ‘Well, maybe a bit of football,’ Trev conceded, ‘but I don’t think I’ll get away with the tin can again.’ They kissed. There and then, that was all that appeared necessary. However… Glenda and Nutt had also wanted to find a place a little out of the way and, if possib le, dark. Fortuitously she had pulled out of her pocket a pair of tickets, placed ther e by Dr Hix in his attempt to spread darkness and despondency throughout the world by the means of amateur dramatics, to the Dolly Sisters Players’ production of Starcrosse d by Hwel the Playwright. They sat hand in hand, watching it solemnly, feeling the rip ples move them, then discussed it as they walked back through the city, carefully skir ting the chanting bands of happy, drunken supporters. ‘What did you think?’ said Nutt, after a while. ‘About the play, I mean.’ ‘I don’t see that it was that romantic,’ said Glenda. ‘To be honest, I thought it was a bit silly.’ ‘It is widely regarded as one of the great romantic plays of the last fifty years,’ said Nut t. ‘Really? But what type of example are they setting? First of all, didn’t anyone in Gen ua, even in those days, know how to take a pulse? Is a little first-aid knowledge too much to expect? Even a hand mirror would have helped and there are quite a number of r espectable places where you can take a pulse.’ ‘I think that’s because neither of them were thinking about themselves, perhaps,’ said N utt. ‘Neither of them was thinking at all,’ said Glenda, ‘and they certainly weren’t thinkin g about each other as people. A little common sense and they would be alive. It’s made-up, like books. I don’t think anyone sensible would act like that.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘Sometimes you speak like Ladyship,’ he said, ‘and that remind s me.’ ‘Reminds you of what?’ ‘It’s time for me to meet my maker.’ Andy Shank walked unsteadily among the night-time alleys, secure in the knowledge tha t they contained nothing worse than him, a belief which, as it happened, was in error . ‘Mister Shank?’ ‘Who’s asking?’ he said, turning around and reaching instinctively into his coat for his new cutlass. But another knife, silver and thin, sliced twice and a foot expertly stamped the length of his shin and forced him to the ground. ‘Me! I’m the happy ending. You can call me t he good fairy. Don’t worry, you’ll be able to see by the time you wipe the blood out of your eyes and, as they say, now you won’t have to pay for a drink in any bar in this t own, though I suspect you never have.’ His attacker leaned nonchalantly against the wall. ‘And the reason I am doing this, Mister Shank, is that I am a bastard. I am an old bugg er. I am a sod. They let you get away with it because they were nice people and, you kn ow, the world needs someone like me to set the balance square. Since before you were bo rn I have known people like you. Tormentors, bullies and thieves. Ah yes, thieves. Thie ves of other people’s self-respect. Thieves of their peace of mind. Now Mister Nutt, he ’s an orc and I’ve heard that he can talk people better. Well, so be it, say I. If it w orks, he’s a genius, but that don’t square things, not in my book, so I thought you oug ht to meet Pepe, just to say hello. If I ever see you again, they’ll never find all the pieces, but just to show that I have a decent streak, here’s something to put on your wounds.’ Something landed softly near Andy’s groping hand. Andy, dripping blood and snot on to the pavement, reached around quickly as the trim li ttle footsteps disappeared, thinking only of getting the blood out of his eyes and reve nge and retribution out of his heart. And in the circumstances, therefore, he should no t have wiped the half-lemon across his face. You think it’s all over? It is a regrettable fact that when two people are dining at a very large and impressive dining table they sit at the opposite ends of the long axis. This is incredibly stupid a nd makes conversation difficult and the passing of food impossible, but even Lord Vetina ri and Lady Margolotta had apparently signed up to the idea. On the other hand, they both ate very little and so there wasn’t very much to pass. ‘Your secretary seems to be getting on very well with my librarian,’ said Lady Margolo tta. ‘Yes,’ observed Vetinari. ‘Apparently they are comparing ring binders. He has invente d a new one.’ ‘Well, for the proper working of the world,’ said Lady Margolotta, ‘it is essential that ring binders are important to at least one person.’ She put down her glass and looked t owards the door. ‘You seem nervous,’ said Vetinari. ‘Are you wondering how he will come?’ ‘He has had a very long day and a remarkably successful one. And you say he’s gone to an amateur dramatics performance?’ ‘Yes, with that very forthright young lady who makes the pies,’ said Vetinari. ‘I see,’ said Lady Margolotta. ‘He must know I am here and he’s gone off with a cook? ’ There was just a trace of a smile on Vetinari’s lips. ‘Not any cook. A genius amongst c ooks.’ ‘Well, I must admit to being surprised,’ said her ladyship. ‘And upset?’ said Vetinari. ‘A little jealous, perhaps?’ ‘Havelock, you go too far!’ ‘Would you expect otherwise? Besides, you must surely realize that his triumph is your s too?’ ‘Did I tell you that I’ve seen some of them?’ said Margolotta after a while. ‘The orcs?’ ‘Yes. They really are wretched. Of course, people say that about the goblins and while it i s true that they religiously save their own snot, and, frankly, just about everything else, at least there is a logic to it.’ ‘Well, a religious logic, at least,’ murmured Vetinari. ‘They tend to be quite stretchable .’ ‘The Igors made them from men, did you know?’ Vetinari, still holding his glass, walked to the other end of the table and picked up t he pepperpot. ‘No. However, now you tell me, it’s patently obvious. Goblins would not h ave been nearly ferocious enough.’ ‘And they had nothing,’ said Margolotta. ‘No culture, no legends, no history–he could give them those.’ ‘Everything they are not, he is,’ said Vetinari, adding, ‘but that’s an enormous weight you’re putting on his shoulders.’ ‘How much is on mine? How much of a weight is on yours?’ ‘It’s rather like being a carthorse,’ said Vetinari. ‘After a while one ceases to notice, it’ s just the way of life.’ ‘They deserve their chance and it must be taken now, while the world is at peace.’ ‘Peace?’ said Vetinari. ‘Ah, yes, defined as a period of time to allow for preparation fo r the next war.’ ‘Where did you learn such cynicism, Havelock?’ Vetinari spun around and began his absent-minded walk along the length of the table aga in. ‘Well, mostly from you, madam, though I have to say that the credit is not all your s, since I have had an extended period of further education as tyrant of this city.’ ‘I think you allow them too much freedom.’ ‘Oh, yes, I do. That’s why I am still tyrant of this city. The way to retain power, I hav e always thought, is to ensure the absolute unthinkability of oneself not being there. I shall help you in any way I can, of course. There should be no slaves, even slaves to ins tinct.’ ‘One person can make a difference,’ said Margolotta. ‘Look at Mister Shine who is no w Diamond King of Trolls. Look at yourself. If men can fall—’ Vetinari gave a sharp laugh. ‘Oh, they can, indeed.’ ‘—then orcs can rise,’ said Margolotta. ‘If that is not true then the universe is not true.’ There was a velvet-like knock at the double doors and Drumknott entered. ‘Mister Nutt is here, sir.’ He added with a certain disdain, ‘And he’s with that…woman, who cooks in the university.’ Vetinari glanced at Margolotta. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think we should see him in the main ha ll.’ Drumknott coughed. ‘I think I should tell you, sir, that Mister Nutt acquired entrance t o the building through gates that were securely locked.’ ‘Did he tear them off their hinges?’ asked Vetinari with apparent enthusiastic interest. ‘No, sir, he lifted the gates bodily off their hinges and stacked them neatly against the w all.’ ‘Ah, then there is still hope for the world.’ ‘And the guards?’ Drumknott glanced for a moment at Lady Margolotta. ‘I have taken the precaution of s tationing some of them inconspicuously in the Great Hall gallery with crossbows.’ ‘Stand them down,’ said Vetinari. ‘Stand them down?’ said Margolotta. ‘Stand them down,’ said Vetinari again, directly to Drumknott. He extended his arm to her ladyship. ‘I think the term is, as they put it, alea iacta est. The die, your ladyship, is cast, and we should both see how it falls.’ ‘Will you get into trouble for that?’ said Glenda, staying close to Nutt as they walked u p the steps. The main hall of the palace was an intimidating place when empty, because it had been designed for exactly that purpose. ‘Why didn’t you just knock like everyone else?’ ‘My dear Glenda, I am not like anyone else and neither are you.’ ‘Then what are you going to do?’ ‘I don’t know. What will Ladyship do? I have no idea, although I am becoming aware of how she thinks and there are a few possibilities I have in mind.’ They watched two figures coming down the broad staircase that extended up into the r est of the building. It had been built to accommodate hundreds; the two people comin g down looked uncharacteristically small. ‘Ah, Mister Nutt,’ said Vetinari as they had almost reached the bottom step, ‘and Miss Sugarbean. I must add my congratulations to the pair of you on the wonderful, albeit surprising, success of Unseen Academicals.’ ‘I think you are going to have to make a lot of changes to the rules, sir,’ said Nutt. ‘Such as?’ said Vetinari. ‘I think you need assistants for the referee. His eyes can’t be everywhere,’ said Nutt, ‘and there do need to be some more rules. Although Mister Hoggett did the honourable t hing, I think.’ ‘And Professor Rincewind might make a very capable attacker, if only you could persua de him to take the ball with him,’ said Vetinari. ‘I would never tell the Archchancellor this, my lord, but I think he may be better in a m ore defensive role.’ ‘Who would you suggest as an alternative?’ said Vetinari. ‘Well, Charlie, the animated skeleton who works in the Department of Post-Mortem Comm unications, did very well in trials. And, after all,’ he paused for a moment, ‘yes, a fter all, none of us can help how we’re made.’ They turned at a tap, tap, tapping behind them. It was Lady Margolotta’s foot. Nutt gave a little bow. ‘Ladyship. I trust I find you in adequate health.’ ‘And you likewise, Nutt,’ said Lady Margolotta. Nutt turned to Glenda. ‘What was that term you used once?’ ‘In the pink,’ said Glenda. ‘Yes, that’s right, I am deeply in the pink,’ said Nutt. ‘And it’s Mister Nutt, if you plea se, your ladyship.’ ‘Would the two of you care to join us upstairs for a late supper?’ asked Vetinari, watc hing them both very carefully. ‘No, I don’t think we will impose, but thank you very much. I have a lot to do. Lady M argolotta?’ ‘Yes?’ ‘Would you come here, please?’ Glenda watched the expressions: Vetinari’s faint smile, her look of affront, Nutt’s con fidence. The rustle of her long, black dress was an audible intoxication as she walked the last few steps towards the orc and stopped. ‘Do I have worth?’ asked Nutt. ‘Yes, Nutt, you do.’ ‘Thank you,’ said Nutt, ‘but I am learning that worth is something that must be con tinuously accumulated. You asked me to be becoming. Have I become?’ ‘Yes, Nutt, you have become.’ ‘And what is it you want me to do now?’ ‘Find the orcs that still live in Far Uberwald and bring them back out of the dark.’ ‘Then there are more orcs, like me?’ said Nutt. ‘A few dozen, perhaps,’ said Margolotta, ‘but in truth I could hardly say they are like you. They are a sorry bunch.’ ‘Is it they who should be sorry?’ said Nutt. Glenda watched the faces. Amazingly, Lady Margolotta looked taken aback. ‘Many bad things were done under the Evil Empire,’ she said. ‘The best we can do now is undo them. Will you assist in this endeavour?’ ‘In every way that I can,’ said Nutt. ‘I would like you to teach them civilized behaviour,’ said Ladyship coldly. He appeared to consider this. ‘Yes, of course, I think that would be quite possible,’ he said. ‘And who would you send to teach the humans?’ There was a brief outburst of laughter from Vetinari, who immediately cupped his hand over his mouth. ‘Oh, I do beg your pardon,’ he said. ‘But since it falls to me,’ continued Nutt, ‘then, yes, I shall go into Far Uberwald.’ ‘Pastor Oats will be very pleased to see you, I’m sure,’ said Margolotta. ‘He’s still alive?’ said Nutt. ‘Oh, yes, indeed, he is still quite young after all, and walks with forgiveness at his sid e. I think he would feel it very appropriate if you were to join him. In fact, he has told me on one of his all too infrequent visits that he would be honoured to pass the rate of forgiveness on to you.’ ‘Nutt doesn’t need forgiveness!’ Glenda burst out. Nutt smiled and patted her hand. ‘Uberwald is a wild country for a man to travel in,’ h e said, ‘even a holy man. Forgiveness is the name of Pastor Oats’s double-headed battle -axe. For Mister Oats the crusade against evil is not a metaphor. Forgiveness cut throu gh my chains. I will gladly carry it.’ ‘The kings of the trolls and the dwarfs will give you all the help that they can,’ said La dyship. Nutt nodded. ‘But first I have a small favour to ask you, my lord,’ he said to Vetinari. ‘By all means, ask.’ ‘I know the city has a number of golem horses. I wonder if I could borrow one of them ?’ ‘Be my guest,’ said the Patrician. Nutt turned to Glenda. ‘Miss Sugarbean. Juliet told me that you secretly want to rid e through Quirm on a warm summer’s evening, feeling the wind in your hair. We could leave now. I have saved money.’ All kinds of reasons why she shouldn’t foamed in Glenda’s head. Everywhere were res ponsibilities, commitments and the never-ending clamour of wanting. There were a th ousand and one reasons why she should say no. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘In that case, then, we will not take up any more of your valuable time, my lord, my lady , and will head off to the stables.’ ‘But—’ Lady Margolotta began. ‘I think all that needs to be said has been,’ said Nutt. ‘I will, we will, of course, v isit you shortly when I have settled my affairs here and I look forward very much to do ing so.’ He nodded to them and, with Glenda walking on air beside him, went back the wa y they had come. ‘Wasn’t that nice?’ said Vetinari. ‘Did you see that they held hands all the time?’ At the doorway, Nutt turned round. ‘Oh, just one more thing. Thank you for not posti ng archers up in the gallery. That would have been so…embarrassing.’ ‘I shall drink to your success, Margolotta,’ said Vetinari as their footsteps died away . ‘You know, I seriously intended to proposition Miss Sugarbean to be my cook.’ He sigh ed again. ‘Still, what is a pie to a happy ending?’ You think it’s all over? The following morning Ponder Stibbons was at work in the High Energy Magic Building wh en Ridcully limped in. There was a glowing silver band around his knee. ‘Grapeshot’s T herapeutic Squeezer,’ he announced. ‘A simple little spell. I’ll be right as rain in n o time. Mrs Whitlow wanted me to put a stocking on it, but I told her that I’m not int erested in that sort of thing.’ ‘I’m glad to see that you’re in such good spirits, Archchancellor,’ said Ponder, workin g his way down a long calculation. ‘Have you had a chance to see the papers yet this morning, Mister Stibbons?’ ‘No, sir. What with the football business, I’m a little behind with my work.’ ‘It may interest you to know that late last night a seventy-foot-high chicken broke ou t of what they are pleased to call the Higher Energy Magic Building at Brazeneck and i s apparently rampaging through Pseudopolis while being pursued by most of the faculty, who, I assume, would be quite capable of terrorizing the city all by themselves. Henr y has just had a frantic clacks and has had to rush off.’ ‘Oh, that is very disturbing, sir.’ ‘Yes, it is, isn’t it?’ said Ridcully. ‘Apparently it’s laying eggs very fast.’ ‘Ah, that sounds like a quasi-expansion blit phenomenon adapting itself to a living or ganism,’ said Ponder. He turned the page, his pencil moving neatly across the column o f figures. ‘The former Dean has egg all over his face,’ said Ridcully. ‘Well, I’m sure that Professor Turnipseed will be able to bring things back under contr ol,’ said Ponder. The tone of his voice was entirely unchanged. There was a busy little silence and Ridcully said, ‘How long do you think we should giv e him to get it under control?’ ‘What size are the eggs?’ ‘Eight or nine feet high, apparently,’ said Ridcully. ‘With calcium shells?’ ‘Yes, quite thick, so I’m told.’ Ponder looked thoughtfully at the ceiling. ‘Hmm, that’s not too bad, then. If you’d sai d steel it would have been rather worrying. It sounds very much like a blit devolution, possibly caused by…lack of experience.’ ‘I thought you taught Mister Turnipseed everything you know,’ said Ridcully, looking happier than Ponder had seen him in a very long time. ‘Well, sir, perhaps there was something he didn’t quite grasp. Are people at risk?’ ‘The wizards have told everyone to stay indoors.’ ‘Well, sir, I think if I got some of my equipment together we could leave about teatime. ’ ‘I’ll come, too, of course,’ said Ridcully. He looked at Ponder. ‘And—’ ‘What?’ said Ponder. He looked at Ridcully’s grin. ‘Yes, it might be a good idea if on e of the gentlemen from the Times came along to take pictures. They might be very good for instructional purposes.’ ‘An extremely good plan, Mister Stibbons, and I think we should take the senior facu lty as well. They will lend some much-needed…’ He snapped his fingers. ‘What’s the w ord?’ ‘Confusion,’ said Ponder. ‘No, not that,’ said Ridcully. ‘Appetite?’ said Ponder. ‘Weight?’ ‘Something like that…Ah, gravitas. Oh, yes, lots of gravitas. We aren’t the kind of fel lows who run around chasing strange birds. I’ll see you after lunch. And now I have oth er matters to deal with.’ ‘Yes, Archchancellor,’ said Ponder. ‘Oh, and, um…What about the proposed football match?’ ‘Regrettably, it appears that it will have to wait until they have rebuilt the university.’ ‘That’s a shame, Archchancellor,’ said Ponder. He carried on with the calculation until the very last figures danced into place, made sure the Archchancellor had left, gave a very small smile, which you might not have n oticed had you not expected it, and then pulled another ledger towards him. It was another good day. It is now! About the Author TERRY PRATCHETT’S novels have sold more than sixty-five million (give or take a few m illion) copies worldwide. In January 2009, Queen Elizabeth II made Pratchett a knight in recognition of his “services to literature.” Sir Terry lives in England with his wife. www.terrypratchettbooks.com Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollin s author. Also by Terry Pratchett The Carpet People The Dark Side of the Sun Strata The Bromeliad Trilogy: Truckers • Diggers • Wings Only You Can Save Mankind Johnny and the Dead Johnny and the Bomb The Unadulterated Cat (with Gray Jolliffe) Good Omens (with Neil Gaiman) The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents The Wee Free Men A Hat Full of Sky Wintersmith Nation The Discworld ™ Books The Color of Magic The Light Fantastic Equal Rites Mort Sourcery Wyrd Sisters Pyramids Guards! Guards! Eric (with Josh Kirby) Moving Pictures Reaper Man Witches Abroad Small Gods Lords and Ladies Men at Arms Soul Music Interesting Times Maskerade Feet of Clay Hogfather Jingo The Last Continent Carpe Jugulum The Fifth Elephant The Truth Thief of Time Night Watch Monstrous Regiment Going Postal Thud! Where’s My Cow? (with Melvyn Grant) Making Money The Last Hero (with Paul Kidby) The Art of Discworld (with Paul Kidby) Mort: A Discworld Big Comic (with Graham Higgins) The Streets of Ankh-Morpork (with Stephen Briggs) The Discworld Companion (with Stephen Briggs) The Discworld Mapp (with Stephen Briggs) The Wit and Wisdom of Discworld (with Stephen Briggs) The Discworld Graphic Novels: The Color of Magic • The Light Fantastic Credits Jacket design and illustration by Scott McKowan Copyright This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from t he author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual e vents or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. UNSEEN ACADEMICALS. Copyright © 2009 by Terry and Lyn Pratchett. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the requi red fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whe ther electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the expres s written permission of HarperCollins e-books. Adobe Digital Edition September 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-194203-7 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 About the Publisher Australia HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd. 25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321) Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au Canada HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 55 Avenue Road, Suite 2900 Toronto, ON, M5R, 3L2, Canada http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca New Zealand HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited P.O. Box 1 Auckland, New Zealand http://www.harpercollins.co.nz United Kingdom HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 77-85 Fulham Palace Road London, W6 8JB, UK http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk United States HarperCollins Publishers Inc. 10 East 53rd Street New York, NY 10022 http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com * Technically, the city of Ankh-Morpork is a Tyranny, which is not always the same th ing as a monarchy, and in fact even the post of Tyrant has been somewhat redefined by the incumbent, Lord Vetinari, as the only form of democracy that works. Everyone is entitled to vote, unless disqualified by reason of age or not being Lord Vetinari. And yet it does work. This has annoyed a number of people who feel, somehow, tha t it should not, and who want a monarch instead, thus replacing a man who has achieved his position by cunning, a deep understanding of the realities of the human psyche, b reathtaking diplomacy, a certain prowess with the stiletto dagger, and, all agree, a m ind like a finely balanced circular saw, with a man who has got there by being born. † However, the crown has hung on anyway, as crowns do–on the Post Office and the Ro yal Bank and the Mint and, not least, in the sprawling, brawling, squalling consciousne ss of the city itself. Lots of things live in that darkness. There are all kinds of dar kness, and all kinds of things can be found in them, imprisoned, banished, lost or hidd en. Sometimes they escape. Sometimes they simply fall out. Sometimes they just can’t ta ke it any more. † A third proposition, that the city be governed by a choice of respectable members of the community who would promise not to give themselves airs or betray the public trust at every turn, was instantly the subject of music-hall jokes all over the city. * That is to say Glenda officially sleeps in the old iron bedstead; in reality most of her sleeping is done in a huge and ancient armchair in the Night Kitchen, where she has very nearly mastered the art of doing without proper sleep altogether. So many crumbs, spoons, bits of pie dough, books and spilt drinks have gone down the sides of the cush ions of that chair that it might well now harbour a small, thriving civilization. * Strictly speaking, Dr Hix, spelled with an X, was the son of Mr and Mrs Hicks, but a man who wears a black robe with nasty symbols on it and has a skull ring would be m ad, or let us say even madder, to pass up the chance to have an X in his name. * The Egregious Professor of Grammar and Usage would have corrected this to ‘she was not she’, which would have caused the Professor of Logic to spit out his drink. * Employing professional dribblers might seem extravagant for a body like Unseen Univer sity. Nothing could be further from the truth. No traditional wizard worth his pointy h at could possibly work by the light of pure, smooth, dare one say virgin undribbled can dles. It would just not look right. The ambience would be totally shattered. And when i t did happen, the luckless wizard would mess about, as people do, with matchsticks and bent paperclips, to try to get nice little dribbles and channels of wax, as nature inte nded. However, this sort of thing never really works and invariably ends with wax all o ver the carpet and the wizard setting himself on fire. Candle dribbling, it has been de creed, is a job for a dribbler. * Originally the Explorers’ Society until Lord Vetinari forcibly insisted that most of the places ‘discovered’ by the society’s members already had people living in them, who were already trying to sell snakes to the newcomers. * There are those who say that sherry should not be drunk early in the morning. They a re wrong. * In short, every wizard knew that, whatever you did, you’d get some wizards creepi ng off to do weird and messy magic in some cave somewhere. * Hix had flatly refused to wear trousers. No self-disrespecting dark wizard would drea m of wearing such common garb as a trouser, he declared. It totally spoiled the effect. * In fact, Juliet’s rising from beneath the cart passed relatively unnoticed by all exc ept an art student who was almost blinded by the light at the spectacle, and many years later painted the picture known as Beauty Arising from the Pease Pudding Cart Attended by Cherubs Carrying Hot Dogs and Pies. It was widely regarded as a masterpiece, althou gh no one could ever work out exactly what the hell it was all about. But it was beauti ful and so it was true. * But you’d got another eye, right? And now you had solid proof that you were a hard m an, especially if you got one of those scars that run across the eye and down the chee k. Get a black eye-patch, and you would never have to wait to be served at a bar ever again. * Dwarfs have a straightforward approach to alcoholic drink: beer, mead, wine, sherry–on e large size fits all. * You didn’t get anywhere at Unseen University without being able to understand the v ast number of meanings that can be carried by the word ook . * This diagram was devised to chart the tendency of wizards, who start out small and pal e, to progress through the craft getting bigger and cholerically redder until at last th ey swell up and explode in a cloud of pomposity. * This may not be true. Wizards tend to think it’s a long time to the next meal, right up until they are consuming it. * It is said that if you want to stand up to someone you should picture them naked. In the case of Mrs Whitlow this would be, as Ponder Stibbons might put it, contra-indicate d. * Contrary to popular belief and hope, people don’t usually come running when they h ear a scream. That’s not how humans work. Humans look at other humans and say, ‘Did you hear a scream?’ because the first scream might just have been you screaming insi de your head, or a horse backfiring. * One other reason that you could call them Faces was that crude drawings of them ap peared on Watch posters, with hopeful messages asking people to let the Watch know i f said person had been seen around and about. * An archbishop in a house of negotiable affection might have looked a little more p uzzled than Nutt right now, but the amount of said puzzlement depends on how many ar chbishops you know. * Policemen have a way of pronouncing the word ‘sir’, as if they would really like to spe ll it ‘cur’. * i.e., up to something. * In his seat, the university’s Master of the Music fumbled for his notebook and wrot e down rapidly: Macarona Unum Est. Certes Macarona Est. And couldn’t wait to get back to the choir. * This was slightly modified when she realized that none of the spectators had tried a ny hanky panky whatsoever. * According to Fletcher’s Avian Nausea Index , parrot sickness stands at number five i n the ‘wishing yourself dead’ index. The highest level of sickness is that suffered by the great Combovered Eagle which can vomit over three countries at once. * It is traditional on these occasions for the conquering heroes to spray bottles of cha mpagne on the crowd. This did not happen. If a wizard succeeds in getting the cork out o f a champagne bottle, he certainly does not intend to pour it away. * Who was the same shape as most of the wizards and felt doubly at home. 
Wyrd Sisters - Terry Pratchett	----	Wyrd Sisters (Starring Three Witches, also kings, daggers, crowns, storms, dwarfs, cats, ghosts, spectres, apes, bandits, demons, forests, heirs, jesters, tortures, trolls, turntables, general rejoicing and drivers alarums.) The wind howled. Lightning stabbed at the earth erratically, like an inefficient assassin. Thunder rolled back and forth across the dark, rain-lashed hills. The night was as black as the inside of a cat. It was the kind of night, you could believe, on which gods moved men as though they were pawns on the chessboard of fate. In the middle of this elemental storm a fire gleamed among the dripping furze bushes like the madness in a weasel’s eye. It illuminated three hunched figures. As the cauldron bubbled an eldritch voice shrieked: “When shall we three meet again?” There was a pause. Finally another voice said, in far more ordinary tones: “Well, I can do next Tuesday.” Through the fathomless deeps of space swims the star turtle Great A”Tuin, bearing on its back the four giant elephants who carry on their shoulders the mass of the Discworld. A tiny sun and moon spin around them, on a complicated orbit to induce seasons, so probably nowhere else in the multiverse is it sometimes necessary for an elephant to cock a leg to allow the sun to go past. Exactly why this should be may never be known. Possibly the Creator of the universe got bored with all the usual business of axial inclination, albedos and rotational velocities, and decided to have a bit of fun for once. It would be a pretty good bet that the gods of a world like this probably do not play chess and indeed this is the case. In fact no gods anywhere play chess. They haven’t got the imagination. Gods prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight To Oblivion; a key to the understanding of all religion is that a god’s idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs. Magic glues the Discworld together – magic generated by the turning of the world itself, magic wound like silk out of the underlying structure of existence to suture the wounds of reality. A lot of it ends up in the Ramtop Mountains, which stretch from the frozen lands near the Hub all the way, via a lengthy archipelago, to the warm seas which flow endlessly into space over the Rim. Raw magic crackles invisibly from peak to peak and earths itself in the mountains. It is the Ramtops that supply the world with most of its witches and wizards. In the Ramtops the leaves on the trees move even when there is no breeze. Rocks go for a stroll of an evening. Even the land, at times, seems alive . . . At times, so does the sky. The storm was really giving it everything it had. This was its big chance. It had spent years hanging around the provinces, putting in some useful work as a squall, building up experience, making contacts, occasionally leaping out on unsuspecting shepherds or blasting quite small oak trees. Now an opening in the weather had given it an opportunity to strut its hour, and it was building up its role in the hope of being spotted by one of the big climates. It was a good storm. There was quite effective projection and passion there, and critics agreed that if it would only learn to control its thunder it would be, in years to come, a storm to watch. The woods roared their applause and were full of mists and flying leaves. On nights such as these the gods, as has already been pointed out, play games other than chess with the fates of mortals and the thrones of kings. It is important to remember that they always cheat, right up to the end . . . And a coach came hurtling along the rough forest track, jerking violently as the wheels bounced off tree roots. The driver lashed at the team, the desperate crack of his whip providing a rather neat counterpoint to the crash of the tempest overhead. Behind – only a little way behind, and getting closer -were three hooded riders. On nights such as this, evil deeds are done. And good deeds, of course. But mostly evil, on the whole. On nights such as this, witches are abroad. Well, not actually abroad. They don’t like the food and you can’t trust the water and the shamans always hog the deckchairs. But there was a full moon breasting the ragged clouds and the rushing air was full of whispers and the very broad hint of magic. In their clearing above the forest the witches spoke thus: “I’m babysitting on Tuesday,” said the one with no hat but a thatch of white curls so thick she might have been wearing a helmet. “For our Jason’s youngest. I can manage Friday. Hurry up with the tea, luv. I’m that parched.” The junior member of the trio gave a sigh, and ladled some boiling water out of the cauldron into the teapot. The third witch patted her hand in a kindly fashion. “You said it quite well,” she said. “Just a bit more work on the screeching. Ain’t that right, Nanny Ogg?” “Very useful screeching, I thought,” said Nanny Ogg hurriedly. “And I can see Goodie Whemper, may she rest in peace, gave you a lot of help with the squint.” “It’s a good squint,” said Granny Weatherwax. The junior witch, whose name was Magrat Garlick, relaxed considerably. She held Granny Weatherwax in awe. It was known throughout the Ramtop Mountains that Mss Weatherwax did not approve of anything very much. If she said it was a good squint, then Magrat’s eyes were probably staring up her own nostrils. Unlike wizards, who like nothing better than a complicated hierarchy, witches don’t go in much for the structured approach to career progression. It’s up to each individual witch to take on a girl to hand the area over to when she dies. Witches are not by nature gregarious, at least with other witches, and they certainly don’t have leaders. Granny Weatherwax was the most highly-regarded of the leaders they didn’t have. Magrat’s hands shook slightly as they made the tea. Of course, it was all very gratifying, but it was a bit nerve-racking to start one’s working life as village witch between Granny and, on the other side of the forest, Nanny Ogg. It’d been her idea to form a local coven. She felt it was more, well, occult. To her amazement the other two had agreed or, at least, hadn’t disagreed much. “An oven?” Nanny Ogg had said. “What’d we want to join an oven for?” “She means a coven, Gytha,” Granny Weatherwax had explained. “You know, like in the old days. A meeting.” “A knees up?” said Nanny Ogg hopefully. “No dancing,” Granny had warned. “I don’t hold with dancing. Or singing or getting over-excited or all that messing about with ointments and similar.” “Does you good to get out,” said Nanny happily. Magrat had been disappointed about the dancing, and was relieved that she hadn’t ventured one or two other ideas that had been on her mind. She fumbled in the packet she had brought with her. It was her first sabbat, and she was determined to do it right. “Would anyone care for a scone?” she said. Granny looked hard at hers before she bit. Magrat had baked bat designs on it. They had little eyes made of currants. The coach crashed through the trees at the forest edge, ran on two wheels for a few seconds as it hit a stone, righted itself against all the laws of balance, and rumbled on. But it was going slower now. The slope was dragging at it. The coachman, standing upright in the manner of a charioteer, pushed his hair out of his eyes and peered through the murk. No-one lived up here, in the lap of the Ramtops themselves, but there was a light ahead. By all that was merciful, there was a light there. An arrow buried itself in the coach roof behind him. Meanwhile King Verence, monarch of Lancre, was making a discovery. Like most people – most people, at any rate, below the age of sixty or so – Verence hadn’t exercised his mind much about what happened to you when you died. Like most people since the dawn of time, he assumed it all somehow worked out all right in the end. And, like most people since the dawn of time, he was now dead. He was in fact lying at the bottom of one of his own stairways in Lancre Castle, with a dagger in his back. He sat up, and was surprised to find that while someone he was certainly inclined to think of as himself was sitting up, something very much like his body remained lying on the floor. It was a pretty good body, incidentally, now he came to see it from outside for the first time. He had always been quite attached to it although, he had to admit, this did not now seem to be the case. It was big and well-muscled. He’d looked after it. He’d allowed it a moustache and long-flowing locks. He’d seen it got plenty of healthy outdoor exercise and lots of red meat. Now, just when a body would have been useful, it had let him down. Or out. On top of that, he had to come to terms with the tall, thin figure standing beside him. Most of it was hidden in a hooded black robe, but the one arm which extended from the folds to grip a large scythe was made of bone. When one is dead, there are things one instinctively recognises. HALLO. Verence drew himself up to his full height, or what would have been his full height if that part of him to which the word “height” could have been applied was not lying stiff on the floor and facing a future in which only the word “depth” could be appropriate. “I am a king, mark you,” he said. WAS,YOUR MAJESTY. “What?” Verence barked. I SAID WAS. IT’S CALLED THE PAST TENSE. YOU’LL SOON GET USED TO IT. The tall figure tapped its calcareous fingers on the scythe’s handle. It was obviously upset about something. If it came to that, Verence thought, so am I. But the various broad hints available in his present circumstances were breaking through even the mad brave stupidity that made up most of his character, and it was dawning on him that whatever kingdom he might currently be in, he wasn’t king of it. “Are you Death, fellow?” he ventured. I HAVE MANY NAMES. “Which one are you using at present?” said Verence, with a shade more deference. There were people milling around them; in fact, quite a few people were milling through them, like ghosts. “Oh, so it was Felmet,” the king added vaguely, looking at the figure lurking with obscene delight at the top of the stairs. “My father said I should never let him get behind me. Why don’t I feel angry?” GLANDS,said Death shortly.ADRENALIN AND SO FORTH. AND EMOTIONS. YOU DON’T HAVE THEM. ALL YOU HAVE NOW IS THOUGHT. The tall figure appeared to reach a decision. THIS IS VERY IRREGULAR,he went on, apparently to himself.HOWEVER, WHO AM I TO ARGUE? “Who indeed.” WHAT? “I said, who indeed.” SHUT UP. Death stood with his skull on one side, as though listening to some inner voice. As his hood fell away the late king noticed that Death resembled a polished skeleton in every way but one. His eye sockets glowed sky blue. Verence wasn’t frightened, however; not simply because it is difficult to be in fear of anything when the bits you need to be frightened with are curdling several yards away, but because he had never really been frightened of anything in his life, and wasn’t going to start now. This was partly because he didn’t have the imagination, but he was also one of those rare individuals who are totally focused in time. Most people aren’t. They live their lives as a sort of temporal blur around the point where their body actually is – anticipating the future, or holding on to the past. They’re usually so busy thinking about what happens next that the only time they ever find out what is happening now is when they come to look back on it. Most people are like this. They learn how to fear because they can actually tell, down at the subconscious level, what is going to happen next. It’s already happening to them. But Verence had always lived only for the present. Until now, anyway. Death sighed. I SUPPOSE NO-ONE MENTIONED ANYTHING TO YOU?he hazarded. “Say again?” NO PREMONITIONS? STRANGE DREAMS? MAD OLD SOOTHSAYERS SHOUTING THINGS AT YOU IN THE STREET? “About what? Dying?” NO, I SUPPOSE NOT. IT WOULD BE TOO MUCH TO EXPECT,said Death sourly.THEY LEAVE IT ALL TO ME. “Who do?” said Verence, mystified. FATE. DESTINY. ALL THE REST OF THEM.Death laid a hand on the king’s shoulder.THE FACT IS, I’M AFRAID, YOU’RE DUE TO BECOME A GHOST. “Oh.” He looked down at his . . . body, which seemed solid enough. Then someone walked through him. DON’T LET IT UPSET YOU. Verence watched his own stiff corpse being carried reverentially from the hall. “I’ll try,” he said. GOOD MAN. “I don’t think I will be up to all that business with the white sheets and the chains, though,” he said. “Do I have to walk around moaning and screaming?” Death shrugged.DO YOU WANT TO? he said. “No.” THEN I SHOULDN’T BOTHER, IF I WERE YOU.Death pulled an hour-glass from the recesses of his dark robe and inspected it closely. AND NOW I REALLY MUST BE GOING,he said. He turned on his heel, put his scythe over his shoulder and started to walk out of the hall through the wall. “I say? Just hold on there!” shouted Verence, running after him. Death didn’t look back. Verence followed him through the wall; it was like walking through fog. “Is that all?” he demanded. “I mean, how long will I be a ghost? Why am I a ghost? You can’t just leave me like this.” He halted and raised an imperious, slightly transparent finger. “Stop! I command you!” Death shook his head gloomily, and stepped through the next wall. The king hurried after him with as much dignity as he could still muster, and found Death fiddling with the girths of a large white horse standing on the battlements. It was wearing a nosebag. “You can’t leave me like this!” he repeated, in the face of the evidence. Death turned to him. I CAN,he said.YOU’RE UNDEAD, YOU SEE. GHOSTS INHABIT A WORLD BETWEEN THE LIVING AND THE DEAD. IT’s NOT MY RESPONSIBILITY. He patted the king on the shoulder. DON’T WORRY, he said,IT WON’T BE FOREVER. “Good.” IT MAY SEEM LIKE FOREVER. “How long will it really be?” UNTIL YOU HAVE FULFILLED YOUR DESTINY, I ASSUME. “And how will I know what my destiny is?” said the king, desperately. CAN’T HELP THERE. I’M SORRY. “Well, how can I find out?” THESE THINGS GENERALLY BECOME APPARENT, I UNDERSTAND,said Death, and swung himself into the saddle. “And until then I have to haunt this place.” King Verence stared around at the draughty battlements. “All alone, I suppose. Won’t anyone be able to see me?” OH, THE PSYCHICALLY INCLINED. CLOSE RELATIVES. AND CATS, OF COURSE. “I hate cats.” Death’s face became a little stiffer, if that were possible. The blue glow in his eye sockets flickered red for an instant. I SEE,he said. The tone suggested that death was too good for cat-haters.YOU LIKE GREAT BIG DOGS, I IMAGINE. “As a matter of fact, I do.” The king stared gloomily at the dawn. His dogs. He’d really miss his dogs. And it looked like such a good hunting day. He wondered if ghosts hunted. Almost certainly not, he imagined. Or ate, or drank either for that matter, and that was really depressing. He liked a big noisy banquet and had quaffed[1]many a pint of good ale. And bad ale, come to that. He’d never been able to tell the difference till the following morning, usually. He kicked despondently at a stone, and noted gloomily that his foot went right through it. No hunting, drinking, carousing, no wassailing, no hawking . . . It was dawning on him that the pleasures of the flesh were pretty sparse without the flesh. Suddenly life wasn’t worth living. The fact that he wasn’t living it didn’t cheer him up at all. SOME PEOPLE LIKE TO BE GHOSTS,said Death. “Hmm?” said Verence, gloomily. IT’S NOT SUCH A WRENCH, I ASSUME. THEY CAN SEE HOW THEIR DESCENDANTS GET ON. SORRY? IS SOMETHING THE MATTER? But Verence had vanished into the wall. DON’T MIND ME, WILL YOU,said Death, peevishly. He looked around him with a gaze that could see through time and space and the souls of men, and noted a landslide in distant Klatch, a hurricane in Howandaland, a plague in Hergen. BUSY, BUSY,he muttered, and spurred his horse into the sky. Verence ran through the walls of his own castle. His feet barely touched the ground – in fact, the unevenness of the floor meant that at times they didn’t touch the ground at all. As a king he was used to treating servants as if they were not there, and running through them as a ghost was almost the same. The only difference was that they didn’t stand aside. Verence reached the nursery, saw the broken door, the trailed sheets . . . Heard the hoofbeats. He reached the window, saw his own horse go full tilt through the open gateway in the shafts of the coach. A few seconds later three horsemen followed it. The sound of hooves echoed for a moment on the cobbles and died away. The king thumped the sill, his fist going several inches into the stone. Then he pushed his way out into the air, disdaining to notice the drop, and half flew, half ran down across the courtyard and into the stables. It took him a mere twenty seconds to learn that, to the great many things a ghost cannot do, should be added the mounting of a horse. He did succeed in getting into the saddle, or at least in straddling the air just above it, but when the horse finally bolted, terrified beyond belief by the mysterious things happening behind its ears, Verence was left sitting astride five feet of fresh air. He tried to run, and got about as far as the gateway before the air around him thickened to the consistency of tar. “You can’t,” said a sad, old voice behind him. “You have to stay where you were killed. That’s what haunting means. Take it from me. I know.” Granny Weatherwax paused with a second scone halfway to her mouth. “Something comes,” she said. “Can you tell by the pricking of your thumbs?” said Magrat earnestly. Magrat had learned a lot about witchcraft from books. “The pricking of my ears,” said Granny. She raised her eyebrows at Nanny Ogg. Old Goodie Whemper had been an excellent witch in her way, but far too fanciful. Too many flowers and romantic notions and such. The occasional flash of lightning showed the moorland stretching down to the forest, but the rain on the warm summer earth had filled the air with mist wraiths. “Hoofbeats?” said Nanny Ogg. “No-one would come up here this time of night.” Magrat peered around timidly. Here and there on the moor were huge standing stones, their origins lost in time, which were said to lead mobile and private lives of their own. She shivered. “What’s to be afraid of?” she managed. “Us,” said Granny Weatherwax, smugly. The hoofbeats neared, slowed. And then the coach rattled between the furze bushes, its horses hanging in their harnesses. The driver leapt down, ran around to the door, pulled a large bundle from inside and dashed towards the trio. He was halfway across the damp peat when he stopped and stared at Granny Weatherwax with a look of horror. “It’s all right,” she whispered, and the whisper cut through the grumbling of the storm as clearly as a bell. She took a few steps forward and a convenient lightning flash allowed her to look directly into the man’s eyes. They had the peculiarity of focus that told those who had the Know that he was no longer looking at anything in this world. With a final jerking movement he thrust the bundle into Granny’s arms and toppled forward, the feathers of a crossbow bolt sticking out of his back. Three figures moved into the firelight. Granny looked up into another pair of eyes, which were as chilly as the slopes of Hell. Their owner threw his crossbow aside. There was a glimpse of chain mail under his sodden cloak as he drew his sword. He didn’t flourish it. The eyes that didn’t leave Granny’s face weren’t the eyes of one who bothers about flourishing things. They were the eyes of one who knows exactly what swords are for. He reached out his hand. “You will give it to me,” he said. Granny twitched aside the blanket in her arms and looked down at a small face, wrapped in sleep. She looked up. “No,” she said, on general principles. The soldier glanced from her to Magrat and Nanny Ogg, who were as still as the standing stones of the moor. “You are witches?” he said. Granny nodded. Lightning skewered down from the sky and a bush a hundred yards away blossomed into fire. The two soldiers behind the man muttered something, but he smiled and raised a mailed hand. “Does the skin of witches turn aside steel?” he said. “Not that I’m aware,” said Granny, levelly. “You could give it a try.” One of the soldiers stepped forward and touched the man’s arm gingerly. “Sir, with respect, sir, it’s not a good idea—” “Be silent.” “But it’s terrible bad luck to—” “Must I ask you again?” “Sir,” said the man. His eyes caught Granny’s for a moment, and reflected hopeless terror. The leader grinned at Granny, who hadn’t moved a muscle. “Your peasant magic is for fools, mother of the night. I can strike you down where you stand.” “Then strike, man,” said Granny, looking over his shoulder. “If your heart tells you, strike as hard as you dare.” The man raised his sword. Lightning speared down again and split a stone a few yards away, filling the air with smoke and the stink of burnt silicon. “Missed,” he said smugly, and Granny saw his muscles tense as he prepared to bring the sword down. A look of extreme puzzlement crossed his face. He tilted his head sideways and opened his mouth, as if trying to come to terms with a new idea. His sword dropped out of his hand and landed point downwards in the peat. Then he gave a sigh and folded up, very gently, collapsing in a heap at Granny’s feet. She gave him a gentle prod with her toe. “Perhaps you weren’t aware of what I was aiming at,” she whispered. “Mother of the night, indeed!” The soldier who had tried to restrain the man stared in horror at the bloody dagger in his hand, and backed away. “I-I-I couldn’t let. He shouldn’t of. It’s – it’s not right to,” he stuttered. “Are you from around these parts, young man?” said Granny. He dropped to his knees. “Mad Wolf, ma”am,” he said. He stared back at the fallen captain. “They’ll kill me now!” he wailed. “But you did what you thought was right,” said Granny. “I didn’t become a soldier for this. Not to go round killing people.” “Exactly right. If I was you, I’d become a sailor,” said Granny thoughtfully. “Yes, a nautical career. I should start as soon as possible. Now, in fact. Run off, man. Run off to sea where there are no tracks. You will have a long and successful life, I promise.” She looked thoughtful for a moment, and added, “At least, longer than it’s likely to be if you hang around here.” He pulled himself upward, gave her a look compounded of gratitude and awe, and ran off into the mist. “And now perhaps someone will tell us what this is all about?” said Granny, turning to the third man. To where the third man had been. There was the distant drumming of hooves on the turf, and then silence. Nanny Ogg hobbled forward. “I could catch him,” she said. “What do you think?” Granny shook her head. She sat down on a rock and looked at the child in her arms. It was a boy, no more than two years old, and quite naked under the blanket. She rocked him vaguely and stared at nothing. Nanny Ogg examined the two corpses with the air of one for whom laying-out holds no fears. “Perhaps they were bandits,” said Magrat tremulously. Nanny shook her head. “A strange thing,” she said. “They both wear this same badge. Two bears on a black and gold shield. Anyone know what that means?” “It’s the badge of King Verence,” said Magrat. “Who’s he?” said Granny Weatherwax. “He rules this country,” said Magrat. “Oh. That king,” said Granny, as if the matter was hardly worth noting. “Soldiers fighting one another. Doesn’t make sense,” said Nanny Ogg. “Magrat, you have a look in the coach.” The youngest witch poked around inside the bodywork and came back with a sack. She upended it, and something thudded on to the turf. The storm had rumbled off to the other side of the mountain now, and the watery moon shed a thin gruel of light over the damp moorland. It also gleamed off what was, without any doubt, an extremely important crown. “It’s a crown,” said Magrat. “It’s got all spiky bits on it.” “Oh, dear,” said Granny. The child gurgled in its sleep. Granny Weatherwax didn’t hold with looking at the future, but now she could feel the future looking at her. She didn’t like its expression at all. King Verence was looking at the past, and had formed pretty much the same view. “You can see me?” he said. “Oh, yes. Quite clearly, in fact,” said the newcomer. Verence’s brows knotted. Being a ghost seemed to require considerably more mental effort than being alive; he’d managed quite well for forty years without having to think more than once or twice a day, and now he was doing it all me time. “Ah,” he said. “You’re a ghost, too.” “Well spotted.” “It was the head under your arm,” said Verence, pleased with himself. “That gave me a clue.” “Does it bother you? I can put it back on if it bothers you,” said the old ghost helpfully. He extended his free hand. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Champot, King of Lancre.” “Verence. Likewise.” He peered down at the old king’s features and added, “Don’t seem to recall seeing your picture in the Long Gallery . . .” “Oh, all that was after my time,” said Champot dismissively. “How long have you been here, then?” Champot reached down and rubbed his nose. “About a thousand years,” he said, his voice tinged with pride. “Man and ghost.” “A thousand years!” “I built this place, in fact. Just got it nicely decorated when my nephew cut my head off while I was asleep. I can’t tell you how much that upset me.” “But . . . a thousand years . . .” Verence repeated, weakly. Champot took his arm. “It’s not that bad,” he confided, as he led the unresisting king across the courtyard. “Better than being alive, in many ways.” “They must be bloody strange ways, then!” snapped Verence. “I liked being alive!” Champot grinned reassuringly. “You’ll soon get used to it,” he said. “I don’t want to get used to it!” “You’ve got a strong morphogenic field,” said Champot. “I can tell. I look for these things. Yes. Very strong, I should say.” “What’s that?” “I was never very good with words, you know,” said Champot. “I always found it easier to hit people with something. But I gather it all boils down to how alive you were. When you were alive, I mean. Something called—” he paused – “animal vitality. Yes, that was it. Animal vitality. The more you had, the more you stay yourself, as it were, if you’re a ghost. I expect you were one hundred per cent alive, when you were alive,” he added. Despite himself, Verence felt flattered. “I tried to keep myself busy,” he said. They had strolled through the wall into the Great Hall, which was now empty. The sight of the trestle tables triggered an automatic reaction in the king. “How do we go about getting breakfast?” he said. Champot’s head looked surprised. “We don’t,” he said. “We’re ghosts.” “But I’m hungry!” “You’re not, you know. It’s just your imagination.” There was a clattering from the kitchens. The cooks were already up and, in the absence of any other instructions, were preparing the castle’s normal breakfast menu. Familiar smells were wafting up from the dark archway that led to the kitchens. Verence sniffed. “Sausages,” he said dreamily. “Bacon. Eggs. Smoked fish.” He stared at Champot. “Black pudding,” he whispered. “You haven’t actually got a stomach,” the old ghost pointed out. “It’s all in the mind. Just force of habit. You just think you’re hungry.” “I think I’m ravenous.” “Yes, but you can’t actually touch anything, you see,” Champot explained gently. “Nothing at all.” Verence lowered himself gently on to a bench, so that he did not drift through it, and sank his head in his hands. He’d heard that death could be bad. He just hadn’t realised how bad. He wanted revenge. He wanted to get out of this suddenly horrible castle, to find his son. But he was even more terrified to find that what he really wanted, right now, was a plate of kidneys. A damp dawn flooded across the landscape, scaled the battlements of Lancre Castle, stormed the keep and finally made it through the casement of the solar. Duke Felmet stared out gloomily at the dripping forest. There was such a lot of it. It wasn’t, he decided, that he had anything against trees as such, it was just that the sight of so much of them was terribly depressing. He kept wanting to count them. “Indeed, my love,” he said. The duke put those who met him in mind of some sort of lizard, possibly the type that lives on volcanic islands, moves once a day, has a vestigial third eye and blinks on a monthly basis. He considered himself to be a civilised man more suited to the dry air and bright sun of a properly-organised climate. On the other hand, he mused, it might be nice to be a tree. Trees didn’t have ears, he was pretty sure of this. And they seemed to manage without the blessed state of matrimony. A male oak tree – he’d have to look this up – a male oak tree just shed its pollen on the breeze and all the business with the acorns, unless it was oak apples, no, he was pretty sure it was acorns, took place somewhere else . . . “Yes, my precious,” he said. Yes, trees had got it all worked out. Duke Felmet glared at the forest roof. Selfish bastards. “Certainly, my dear,” he said. “What?” said the duchess. The duke hesitated, desperately trying to replay the monologue of the last five minutes. There had been something about him being half a man, and . . . infirm on purpose? And he was sure there had been a complaint about the coldness of the castle. Yes, that was probably it. Well, those wretched trees could do a decent day’s work for once. “I’ll have some cut down and brought in directly, my cherished,” he said. Lady Felmet was momentarily speechless. This was by way of being a calendar event. She was a large and impressive woman, who gave people confronting her for the first time the impression that they were seeing a galleon under full sail; the effect was heightened by her unfortunate belief that red velvet rather suited her. However, it didn’t set off her complexion. It matched it. The duke often mused on his good luck in marrying her. If it wasn’t for the engine of her ambition he’d be just another local lord, with nothing much to do but hunt, drink and exercise his droit de seigneur.[2] Instead, he was now just a step away from the throne, and might soon be monarch of all he surveyed. Provided that all he surveyed was trees. He sighed. “Cut what down?” said Lady Felmet, icily. “Oh, the trees,” said the duke. “What have trees got to do with it?” “Well. . . there are such a lot of them,” said the duke, with feeling. “Don’t change the subject!” “Sorry, my sweet.” “What I said was, how could you have been so stupid as to let them get away? I told you that servant was far too loyal. You can’t trust someone like that.” “No, my love.” “You didn’t by any chance consider sending someone after them, I suppose?” “Bentzen, my dear. And a couple of guards.” “Oh.” The duchess paused. Bentzen, as captain of the duke’s personal bodyguard, was as efficient a killer as a psychotic mongoose. He would have been her choice. It annoyed her to be temporarily deprived of a chance to fault her husband, but she rallied quite well. “He wouldn’t have needed to go out at all, if only you’d listened to me. But you never do.” “Do what, my passion?” The duke yawned. It had been a long night. There had been a thunderstorm of quite unnecessarily dramatic proportions, and then there had been all that messy business with the knives. It has already been mentioned that Duke Felmet was one step away from the throne. The step in question was at the top of the flight leading to the Great Hall, down which King Verence had tumbled in the dark only to land, against all the laws of probability, on his own dagger. It had, however, been declared by his own physician to be a case of natural causes. Bentzen had gone to see the man and explained that falling down a flight of steps with a dagger in your back was a disease caused by unwise opening of the mouth. In fact it had already been caught by several members of the king’s own bodyguard who had been a little bit hard of hearing. There had been a minor epidemic. The duke shuddered. There were details about last night that were both hazy and horrible. He tried to reassure himself that all the unpleasantness was over now, and he had a kingdom. It wasn’t much of one, apparently being mainly trees, but it was a kingdom and it had a crown. If only they could find it. Lancre Castle was built on an outcrop of rock by an architect who had heard about Gormenghast but hadn’t got the budget. He’d done his best, though, with a tiny confection of cut-price turrets, bargain basements, buttresses, crenellations, gargoyles, towers, courtyards, keeps and dungeons; in fact, just about everything a castle needs except maybe reasonable foundations and the kind of mortar that doesn’t wash away in a light shower. The castle leaned vertiginously over the racing white water of the Lancre river, which boomed darkly a thousand feet below. Every now and again a few bits fell in. Small as it was, though, the castle contained a thousand places to hide a crown. The duchess swept out to find someone else to berate, and left Lord Felmet looking gloomily at the landscape. It started to rain. It was on this cue that there came a thunderous knocking at the castle door. It seriously disturbed the castle porter, who was playing Cripple Mister Onion with the castle cook and the castle’s Fool in the warmth of the kitchen. He growled and stood up. “There is a knocking without,” he said. “Without what?” said the Fool. “Without the door, idiot.” The Fool gave him a worried look. “A knocking without a door?” he said suspiciously. “This isn’t some kind of Zen, is it?” When the porter had grumbled off in the direction of the gatehouse the cook pushed another farthing into the kitty and looked sharply over his cards at the Fool. “What’s a Zen?” he said. The Fool’s bells tinkled as he sorted through his cards. Without thinking, he said: “Oh, a sub-sect of the Turnwise Klatch philosophical system of Sumtin, noted for its simple austerity and the offer of personal tranquillity and wholeness achieved through meditation and breathing techniques; an interesting aspect is the asking of apparently nonsensical questions in order to widen the doors of perception.” “How’s that again?” said the cook suspiciously. He was on edge. When he’d taken the breakfast up to the Great Hall he’d kept getting the feeling that something was trying to take the tray out of his hands. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, this new duke had sent him back for . . . He shuddered. Oatmeal! And a runny boiled egg! The cook was too old for this sort of thing. He was set in his ways. He was a cook in the real feudal tradition. If it didn’t have an apple in its mouth and you couldn’t roast it, he didn’t want to serve it. The Fool hesitated with a card in his hand, suppressed his panic and thought quickly. “I’faith, nuncle,” he squeaked, “thou’t more full of questions than a martlebury is of mizzensails.” The cook relaxed. “Well, okay,” he said, not entirely satisfied. The Fool lost the next three hands, just to be on the safe side. The porter, meanwhile, unfastened the hatch in the wicket gate and peered out. “Who dost knock without?” he growled. The soldier, drenched and terrified though he was, hesitated. “Without? Without what?” he said. “If you’re going to bugger about, you can bloody well stay without all day,” said the porter calmly. “No! I must see the duke upon the instant!” shouted the guard. “Witches are abroad!” The porter was about to come back with, “Good time of year for it”, or “Wish I was, too”, but stopped when he saw the man’s face. It wasn’t the face of a man who would enter into the spirit of the thing. It was the look of someone who had seen things a decent man shouldn’t wot of . . . “Witches?” said Lord Felmet. “Witches!” said the duchess. In the draughty corridors, a voice as faint as the wind in distant keyholes said, with a note of hope, “Witches!” The psychically inclined . . . “It’s meddling, that’s what it is,” said Granny Weatherwax. “And no good will come of it.” “It’s very romantic,” said Magrat breathily, and heaved a sigh. “Goochy goo,” said Nanny Ogg. “Anyway,” said Magrat, “you killed that horrid man!” “I never did. I just encouraged . . . things to take their course.” Granny Weatherwax frowned. “He didn’t have no respect. Once people lose their respect, it means trouble.” “Izzy wizzy wazzy, den.” “That other man brought him out here to save him!” shouted Magrat. “He wanted us to keep him safe! It’s obvious! It’s destiny!” “Oh, obvious,” said Granny. “I’ll grant you it’s obvious. Trouble is, just because things are obvious doesn’t mean they’re true.” She weighed the crown in her hands. It felt very heavy, in a way that went beyond mere pounds and ounces. “Yes, but the point is—” Magrat began. “The point is,” said Granny, “that people are going to come looking. Serious people. Serious looking. Pull-down-the-walls and burn-off-the-thatch looking. And—” “Howsa boy, den?” “—And, Gytha , I’m sure we’ll all be a lot happier if you’d stop gurgling like that!” Granny snapped. She could feel her nerves coming on. Her nerves always played up when she was unsure about things. Besides, they had retired to Magrat’s cottage, and the decor was getting to her, because Magrat believed in Nature’s wisdom and elves and the healing power of colours and the cycle of the seasons and a lot of other things Granny Weatherwax didn’t have any truck with. “You’re not after telling me how to look after a child,” snapped Nanny Ogg mildly. “And me with fifteen of my own?” “I’m just saying that we ought to think about it,” said Granny. The other two watched her for some time. “Well?” said Magrat. Granny’s fingers drummed on the edge of the crown. She frowned. “First, we’ve got to take him away from here,” she said, and held up a hand. “No, Gytha, I’m sure your cottage is ideal and everything, but it’s not safe. He’s got to be somewhere away from here, a long way away, where no-one knows who he is. And then there’s this.” She tossed the crown from hand to hand. “Oh, that’s easy,” said Magrat. “I mean, you just hide it under a stone or something. That’s easy. Much easier than babies.” “It ain’t,” said Granny. The reason being, the country’s full of babies and they all look the same, but I don’t reckon there’s many crowns. They have this way of being found, anyway. They kind of call out to people’s minds. If you bunged it under a stone up here, in a week’s time it’d get itself discovered by accident. You mark my words.” “It’s true, is that,” said Nanny Ogg, earnestly. “How many times have you thrown a magic ring into the deepest depths of the ocean and then, when you get home and have a nice bit of turbot for your tea, there it is?” They considered this in silence. “Never,” said Granny irritably. “And nor have you. Anyway, he might want it back. If it’s rightfully his, that is. Kings set a lot of store by crowns. Really, Gytha, sometimes you say the most—” “I’ll just make some tea, shall I?” said Magrat brightly, and disappeared into the scullery. The two elderly witches sat on either side of the table in polite and prickly silence. Finally Nanny Ogg said, “She done it up nice, hasn’t she? Flowers and everything. What are them things on the walls?” “Sigils,” said Granny sourly. “Or some such.” “Fancy,” said Nanny Ogg, politely. “And all them robes and wands and things too.” “Modern,” said Granny Weatherwax, with a sniff. “When I was a gel, we had a lump of wax and a couple of pins and had to be content. We had to make our own enchantment in them days.” “Ah, well, we’ve all passed a lot of water since then,” said Nanny Ogg sagely. She gave the baby a comforting jiggle. Granny Weatherwax sniffed. Nanny Ogg had been married three times and ruled a tribe of children and grandchildren all over the kingdom. Certainly, it was not actually forbidden for witches to get married. Granny had to concede that, but reluctantly. Very reluctantly. She sniffed again, disapprovingly; this was a mistake. “What’s that smell?” she snapped. “Ah,” said Nanny Ogg, carefully repositioning the baby. “I expect I’ll just go and see if Magrat has any clean rags, shall I?” And now Granny was left alone. She felt embarrassed, as one always does when left alone in someone else’s room, and fought the urge to get up and inspect the books on the shelf over the sideboard or examine the mantelpiece for dust. She turned the crown round and round in her hands. Again, it gave the impression of being bigger and heavier than it actually was. She caught sight of the mirror over the mantelpiece and looked down at the crown. It was tempting. It was practically begging her to try it for size. Well, and why not? She made sure that the others weren’t around and then, in one movement, whipped off her hat and placed the crown on her head. It seemed to fit. Granny drew herself up proudly, and waved a hand imperiously in the general direction of the hearth. “Jolly well do this,” she said. She beckoned arrogantly at the grandfather clock. “Chop his head off, what ho,” she commanded. She smiled grimly. And froze as she heard the screams, and the thunder of horses, and the deadly whisper of arrows and the damp, solid sound of spears in flesh. Charge after charge echoed across her skull. Sword met shield, or sword, or bone -relentlessly. Years streamed across her mind in the space of a second. There were times when she lay among the dead, or hanging from the branch of a tree; but always there were hands that would pick her up again, and place her on a velvet cushion . . . Granny very carefully lifted the crown off her head – it was an effort, it didn’t like it much – and laid it on the table. “So that’s being a king for you, is it?” she said softly. “I wonder why they all want the job?” “Do you take sugar?” said Magrat, behind her. “You’d have to be a born fool to be a king,” said Granny. “Sorry?” Granny turned. “Didn’t see you come in,” she said. “What was it you said?” “Sugar in your tea?” “Three spoons,” said Granny promptly. It was one of the few sorrows of Granny Weatherwax’s life that, despite all her efforts, she’d arrived at the peak of her career with a complexion like a rosy apple and all her teeth. No amount of charms could persuade a wart to take root on her handsome if slightly equine features, and vast intakes of sugar only served to give her boundless energy. A wizard she’d consulted had explained it was on account of her having a metabolism, which at least allowed her to feel vaguely superior to Nanny Ogg, who she suspected had never even seen one. Magrat dutifully dug out three heaped ones. It would be nice, she thought wistfully, if someone could say “thank you” occasionally. She became aware that the crown was staring at her. “You can feel it, can you?” said Granny. “I said, didn’t I? Crowns call out!” “It’s horrible.” “No, no. It’s just being what it is. It can’t help it.” “But it’s magic!” “It’s just being what it is,” Granny repeated. “It’s trying to get me to try it on,” said Magrat, her hand hovering. “It does that, yes.” “But I shall be strong,” said Magrat. “So I should think,” said Granny, her expression suddenly curiously wooden. “What’s Gytha doing?” “She’s giving the baby a wash in the sink,” said Magrat vaguely. “How can we hide something like this? What’d happen if we buried it really deeply somewhere?” “A badger’d dig it up,” said Granny wearily. “Or someone’d go prospecting for gold or something. Or a tree’d tangle its roots around it and then be blown over in a storm, and then someone’d pick it up and put it on—” “Unless they were as strong-minded as us,” Magrat pointed out. “Unless that, of course,” said Granny, staring at her finger-nails. Though the thing with crowns is, it isn’t the putting them on that’s the problem, it’s the taking them off.” Magrat picked it up and turned it over in her hands. “It’s not as though it even looks much like a crown,” she said. “You’ve seen a lot, I expect,” said Granny. “You’d be an expert on them, naturally.” “Seen a fair few. They’ve got a lot more jewels on them, and cloth bits in the middle,” said Magrat defiantly. “This is just a thin little thing—” “Magrat Garlick!” “I have. When I was being trained up by Goodie Whemper—” “—maysherestinpeace—” “—maysherestinpeace, she used to take me over to Razorback or into Lancre whenever the strolling players were in town. She was very keen on the theatre. They’ve got more crowns than you can shake a stick at although, mind—” she paused – “Goodie did say they’re made of tin and paper and stuff. And just glass for the jewels. But they look more realler than this one. Do you think that’s strange?” “Things that try to look like things often do look more like things than things. Well-known fact,” said Granny. “But I don’t hold with encouraging it. What do they stroll about playing, then, in these crowns?” “You don’t know about the theatre?” said Magrat. Granny Weatherwax, who never declared her ignorance of anything, didn’t hesitate. “Oh, yes,” she said. “It’s one of them style of things, then, is it?” “Goodie Whemper said it held a mirror up to life,” said Magrat. “She said it always cheered her up.” “I expect it would,” said Granny, striking out. “Played properly, at any rate. Good people, are they, these theatre players?” “I think so.” “And they stroll around the country, you say?” said Granny thoughtfully, looking towards the scullery door. “All over the place. There’s a troupe in Lancre now, I heard. I haven’t been because, you know.” Magrat looked down. “ “Tis not right, a woman going into such places by herself.” Granny nodded. She thoroughly approved of such sentiments so long as there was, of course, no suggestion that they applied to her. She drummed her fingers on Magrat’s tablecloth. “Right,” she said. “And why not? Go and tell Gytha to wrap the baby up well. It’s a long time since I heard a theatre played properly.” Magrat was entranced, as usual. The theatre was no more than some lengths of painted sacking, a plank stage laid over a few barrels, and half a dozen benches set out in the village square. But at the same time it had also managed to become The Castle, Another Part of the Castle, The Same Part A Little Later, The Battlefield and now it was A Road Outside the City. The afternoon would have been perfect if it wasn’t for Granny Weatherwax. After several piercing glares at the three-man orchestra to see if she could work out which instrument the theatre was, the old witch had finally paid attention to the stage, and it was beginning to become apparent to Magrat that there were certain fundamental aspects of the theatre that Granny had not yet grasped. She was currently bouncing up and down on her stool with rage. “He’s killed him,” she hissed. “Why isn’t anyone doing anything about it? He’s killed him! And right up there in front of everyone!” Magrat held on desperately to her colleague’s arm as she struggled to get to her feet. “It’s all right,” she whispered. “He’s not dead!” “Are you calling me a liar, my girl?” snapped Granny. “I saw it all!” “Look, Granny, it’s not really real, d’you see?” Granny Weatherwax subsided a little, but still grumbled under her breath. She was beginning to feel that things were trying to make a fool of her. Up on the stage a man in a sheet was giving a spirited monologue. Granny listened intently for some minutes, and then nudged Magrat in the ribs. “What’s he on about now?” she demanded. “He’s saying how sorry he was that the other man’s dead,” said Magrat, and in an attempt to change the subject added hurriedly, “There’s a lot of crowns, isn’t there?” Granny was not to be distracted. “What’d he go and kill him for, then?” she said. “Well, it’s a bit complicated—” said Magrat, weakly. “It’s shameful!” snapped Granny. “And the poor dead thing still lying there!” Magrat gave an imploring look to Nanny Ogg, who was masticating an apple and studying the stage with the glare of a research scientist. “I reckon,” she said slowly, “I reckon it’s all just pretendin’. Look, he’s still breathing.” The rest of the audience, who by now had already decided that this commentary was all part of the play, stared as one man at the corpse. It blushed. “And look at his boots, too,” said Nanny critically. “A real king’d be ashamed of boots like that.” The corpse tried to shuffle its feet behind a cardboard bush. Granny, feeling in some obscure way that they had scored a minor triumph over the purveyors of untruth and artifice, helped herself to an apple from the bag and began to take a fresh interest. Magrat’s nerves started to unknot, and she began to settle down to enjoy the play. But not, as it turned out, for very long. Her willing suspension of disbelief was interrupted by a voice saying: “What’s this bit?” Magrat sighed. “Well,” she hazarded, “he thinks that he is the prince, but he’s really the other king’s daughter, dressed up as a man.” Granny subjected the actor to a long analytical stare. “He is a man,” she said. “In a straw wig. Making his voice squeaky.” Magrat shuddered. She knew a little about the conventions of the theatre. She had been dreading this bit. Granny Weatherwax had Views. “Yes, but,” she said wretchedly, “it’s the Theatre, see. All the women are played by men.” “Why?” “They don’t allow no women on the stage,” said Magrat in a small voice. She shut her eyes. In fact, there was no outburst from the seat on her left. She risked a quick glance. Granny was quietly chewing the same bit of apple over and over again, her eyes never leaving the action. “Don’t make a fuss, Esme,” said Nanny, who also knew about Granny’s Views. “This is a good bit. I reckon I’m getting the hang of it.” Someone tapped Granny on the shoulder and a voice said, “Madam, will you kindly remove your hat?” Granny turned around very slowly on her stool, as though propelled by hidden motors, and subjected the interrupter to a hundred kilowatt diamond-blue stare. The man wilted under it and sagged back on to his stool, her face following him all the way down. “No,” she said. He considered the options. “All right,” he said. Granny turned back and nodded to the actors, who had paused to watch her. “I don’t know what you’re staring at,” she growled. “Get on with it.” Nanny Ogg passed her another bag. “Have a humbug,” she said. Silence again filled the makeshift theatre except for the hesitant voices of the actors, who kept glancing at the bristling figure of Granny Weatherwax, and the sucking sounds of a couple of boiled humbugs being relentlessly churned from cheek to cheek. Then Granny said, in a piercing voice that made one actor drop his wooden sword, “There’s a man over on the side there whispering to them!” “He’s a prompter,” said Magrat. “He tells them what to say.” “Don’t they know?” “I think they’re forgetting,” said Magrat sourly. “For some reason.” Granny nudged Nanny Ogg. “What’s going on now?” she said. “Why’re all them kings and people up there?” “It’s a banquet, see,” said Nanny Ogg authoritatively. “Because of the dead king, him in the boots, as was, only now if you look, you’ll see he’s pretending to be a soldier, and everyone’s making speeches about how good he was and wondering who killed him.” “Are they?” said Granny, grimly. She cast her eyes along the cast, looking for the murderer. She was making up her mind. Then she stood up. Her black shawl billowed around her like the wings of an avenging angel, come to rid the world of all that was foolishness and pretence and artifice and sham. She seemed somehow a lot bigger than normal. She pointed an angry finger at the guilty party. “He done it!” she shouted triumphantly. “We all seed ‘em! He done it with a dagger!” The audience filed out, contented. It had been a good play on the whole, they decided, although not very easy to follow. But it had been a jolly good laugh when all the kings had run off, and the woman in black had jumped up and did all the shouting. That alone had been well worth the ha’penny admission. The three witches sat alone on the edge of the stage. “I wonder how they get all them kings and lords to come here and do this?” said Granny, totally unabashed. “I’d have thought they’d been too busy. Ruling and similar.” “No,” said Magrat, wearily. “I still don’t think you quite understand.” “Well, I’m going to get to the bottom of it,” snapped Granny. She got back on to the stage and pulled aside the sacking curtains. “You!” she shouted. “You’re dead!” The luckless former corpse, who was eating a ham sandwich to calm his nerves, fell backwards off his stool. Granny kicked a bush. Her boot went right through it. “See?” she said to the world in general in a strangely satisfied voice. “Nothing’s real! It’s all just paint, and sticks and paper at the back.” “May I assist you, good ladies?” It was a rich and wonderful voice, with every diphthong gliding beautifully into place. It was a golden brown voice. If the Creator of the multiverse had a voice, it was a voice such as this. If it had a drawback, it was that it wasn’t a voice you could use, for example, for ordering coal. Coal ordered by this voice would become diamonds. It apparently belonged to a large fat man who had been badly savaged by a moustache. Pink veins made a map of quite a large city on his cheeks; his nose could have hidden successfully in a bowl of strawberries. He wore a ragged jerkin and holey tights with an aplomb that nearly convinced you that his velvet-and-vermine robes were in the wash just at the moment. In one hand he held a towel, with which he had clearly been removing the make-up that still greased his features. “I know you,” said Granny. “You done the murder.” She looked sideways at Magrat, and admitted, grudgingly, “Leastways, it looked like it.” “S o glad. It is always a pleasure to meet a true connoisseur. Olwyn Vitoller, at your service. Manager of this band of vagabonds,” said the man and, removing his moth-eaten hat, he treated her to a low bow. It was less an obeisance than an exercise in advanced topology. The hat swerved and jerked through a series of complex arcs, ending up at the end of an arm which was now pointing in the direction of the sky. One of his legs, meanwhile, had wandered off behind him. The rest of his body sagged politely until his head was level with Granny’s knees. “Yes, well,” said Granny. She felt that her clothes had grown a bit larger and much hotter. “I thought you was very good, too,” said Nanny Ogg. “The way you shouted all them words so graciously. I could tell you was a king.” “I hope we didn’t upset things,” said Magrat. “My dear lady,” said Vitoller. “Could I begin to tell you how gratifying it is for a mere mummer to learn that his audience has seen behind the mere shell of greasepaint to the spirit beneath?” “I expect you could,” said Granny. “I expect you could say anything, Mr. Vitoller.” He replaced his hat and their eyes met in the long and calculating stare of one professional weighing up another. Vitoller broke first, and tried to pretend he hadn’t been competing. “And now,” he said, “to what do I owe this visit from three such charming ladies?” In fact he’d won. Granny’s mouth fell open. She would not have described herself as anything much above “handsome, considering”. Nanny, on the other hand, was as gummy as a baby and had a face like a small dried raisin. The best you could say for Magrat was that she was decently plain and well-scrubbed and as flat-chested as an ironing board with a couple of peas on it, even if her head was too well stuffed with fancies. Granny could feel something, some sort of magic at work. But not the kind she was used to. It was Vitoller’s voice. By the mere process of articulation it transformed everything it talked about. Look at the two of them, she told herself, primping away like a couple of ninnies. Granny stopped her hand in the process of patting her own iron-hard bun, and cleared her throat meaningfully. “We’d like to talk to you, Mr. Vitoller.” She indicated the actors, who were dismantling the set and staying well out of her way, and added in a conspiratorial whisper, “Somewhere private.” “Dear lady, but of a certain,” he said. “Currently I have lodgings in yonder esteemed watering hole.” The witches looked around. Eventually Magrat risked, “You mean in the pub?” It was cold and draughty in the Great Hall of Lancre Castle, and the new chamberlain’s bladder wasn’t getting any younger. He stood and squirmed under the gaze of Lady Felmet. “Oh, yes,” he said. “We’ve got them all right. Lots.” “And people don’t do anything about them?” said the duchess. The chamberlain blinked. “I’m sorry?” he said. “People tolerate them?” “Oh, indeed,” said the chamberlain happily. “It’s considered good luck to have a witch living in your village. My word, yes.” “Why?” The chamberlain hesitated. The last time he had resorted to a witch it had been because certain rectal problems had turned the privy into a daily torture chamber, and the jar of ointment she had prepared had turned the world into a nicer place. “They smooth out life’s little humps and bumps,” he said. “Where I come from, we don’t allow witches,” said the duchess sternly. “And we don’t propose to allow them here. You will furnish us with their addresses.” “Addresses, ladyship?” “Where they live. I trust your tax gatherers know where to find them?” “Ah,” said the chamberlain, miserably. The duke leaned forward on his throne. “I trust,” he said, “that they do pay taxes?” “Not, exactly pay taxes, my lord,” said the chamberlain. There was silence. Finally the duke prompted, “Go on, man.” “Well, it’s more that they don’t pay, you see. We never felt, that is, the old king didn’t think . . . Well, they just don’t.” The duke laid a hand on his wife’s arm. “I see,” he said coldly. “Very well. You may go.” The chamberlain gave him a brief nod of relief and scuttled crabwise from the hall. “Well!” said the duchess. “Indeed.” “That was how your family used to run a kingdom, was it? You had a positive duty to kill your cousin. It was clearly in the interests of the species,” said the duchess. “The weak don’t deserve to survive.” The duke shivered. She would keep on reminding him. He didn’t, on the whole, object to killing people, or at least ordering them to be killed and then watching it happen. But killing a kinsman rather stuck in the throat or – he recalled – the liver. “Quite so,” he managed. “Of course, there would appear to be many witches, and it might be difficult to find the three that were on the moor.” “That doesn’t matter.” “Of course not.” “Put matters in hand.” “Yes, my love.” Matters in hand. He’d put matters in hand all right. If he closed his eyes he could see the body tumbling down the steps. Had there been a hiss of shocked breath, down in the darkness of the hall? He’d been certain they were alone. Matters in hand! He’d tried to wash the blood off his hand. If he could wash the blood off, he told himself, it wouldn’t have happened. He’d scrubbed and scrubbed. Scrubbed till he screamed. Granny wasn’t at home in public houses. She sat stiffly to attention behind her port-and-lemon, as if it were a shield against the lures of the world. Nanny Ogg, on the other hand, was enthusiastically downing her third drink and, Granny thought sourly, was well along that path which would probably end up with her usual dancing on the table, showing her petticoats and singing “The Hedgehog Can Never be Buggered at All”. The table was covered with copper coins. Vitoller and his wife sat at either end, counting. It was something of a race. Granny considered Mrs Vitoller as she snatched farthings from under her husband’s fingers. She was an intelligent-looking woman, who appeared to treat her husband much as a sheepdog treats a favourite lamb. The complexities of the marital relationship were known to Granny only from a distance, in the same way that an astronomer can view the surface of a remote and alien world, but it had already occurred to her that a wife to Vitoller would have to be a very special woman with bottomless reserves of patience and organisational ability and nimble fingers. “Mrs Vitoller,” she said eventually, “may I make so bold as to ask if your union has been blessed with fruit?” The couple looked blank. “She means—” Nanny Ogg began. “No, I see,” said Mrs Vitoller, quietly. “No. We had a little girl once.” A small cloud hung over the table. For a second or two Vitoller looked merely human-sized, and much older. He stared at the small pile of cash in front of him. “Only, you see, there is this child,” said Granny, indicating the baby in Nanny Ogg’s arms. “And he needs a home.” The Vitollers stared. Then the man sighed. “It is no life for a child,” he said. “Always moving. Always a new town. And no room for schooling. They say that’s very important these days.” But his eyes didn’t look away. Mrs Vitoller said, “Why does he need a home?” “He hasn’t got one,” said Granny. “At least, not one where he would be welcome.” The silence continued. Then Mrs Vitoller said, “And you, who ask this, you are by way of being his—?” “Godmothers,” said Nanny Ogg promptly. Granny was slightly taken aback. It never would have occurred to her. Vitoller played abstractly with the coins in front of him. His wife reached out across the table and touched his hand, and there was a moment of unspoken communion. Granny looked away. She had grown expert at reading faces, but there were times when she preferred not to. “Money is, alas, tight—” Vitoller began. “But it will stretch,” said his wife firmly. “Yes. I think it will. We should be happy to take care of him.” Granny nodded, and fished in the deepest recesses of her cloak. At last she produced a small leather bag, which she tipped out on to the table. There was a lot of silver, and even a few tiny gold coins. “This should take care of—” she groped – “nappies and suchlike. Clothes and things. Whatever.” “A hundred times over, I should think,” said Vitoller weakly. “Why didn’t you mention this before?” “If I’d had to buy you, you wouldn’t be worth the price.” “But you doh’t know anything about us!” said Mrs Vitoller. “We don’t, do we?” said Granny, calmly. “Naturally we’d like to hear how he gets along. You could send us letters and suchlike. But it would not be a good idea to talk about all this after you’ve left, do you see? For the sake of the child.” Mrs Vitoller looked at the two old women. “There’s something else here, isn’t there?” she said. “Something big behind all this?” Granny hesitated, and then nodded. “But it would do us no good at all to know it?” Another nod. Granny stood up as several actors came in, breaking the spell. Actors had a habit of filling all the space around them. “I have other things to see to,” she said. “Please excuse me.” “What’s his name?” said Vitoller. “Tom,” said Granny, hardly hesitating. “John,” said Nanny. The two witches exchanged glances. Granny won. “Tom John,” she said firmly, and swept out. She met a breathless Magrat outside the door. “I found a box,” she said. “It had all the crowns and things in. So I put it in, like you said, right underneath everything.” “Good,” said Granny. “Our crown looked really tatty compared to the others!” “It just goes to show, doesn’t it,” said Granny. “Did anyone see you?” “No, everyone was too busy, but—” Magrat hesitated, and blushed. “Out with it, girl.” “Just after that a man came up and pinched my bottom.” Magrat went a deep crimson and slapped her hand over her mouth. “Did he?” said Granny. “And then what?” “And then, and then—” “Yes?” “He said, he said—” “What did he say?” “He said, "Hallo, my lovely, what are you doing tonight?" “ Granny ruminated on this for a while and then she said, “Old Goodie Whemper, she didn’t get out and about much, did she?” “It was her leg, you know,” said Magrat. “But she taught you all the midwifery and everything?” “Oh, yes, that,” said Magrat. “I done lots.” “But—” Granny hesitated, groping her way across unfamiliar territory – “She never talked about what you might call the previous.” “Sorry?” “You know,” said Granny, with an edge of desperation in her voice. “Men and such.” Magrat looked as if she was about to panic. “What about them?” Granny Weatherwax had done many unusual things in her time, and it took a lot to make her refuse a challenge. But this time she gave in. “I think,” she said helplessly, “that it might be a good idea if you have a quiet word with Nanny Ogg one of these days. Fairly soon.” There was a cackle of laughter from the window behind them, a chink of glasses, and a thin voice raised in song: —with a giraffe, If you stand on a stool. But the hedgehog—” Granny stopped listening. “Only not just now,” she added. The troupe got under way a few hours before sunset, their four carts lurching off down the road that led towards the Sto plains and the big cities. Lancre had a town rule that all mummers, mountebanks and other potential criminals were outside the gates by sundown; it didn’t offend anyone really because the town had no walls to speak of, and no-one much minded if people nipped back in again after dark. It was the look of the thing that counted. The witches watched from Magrat’s cottage, using Nanny Ogg’s ancient green crystal ball. “It’s about time you learned how to get sound on this thing,” Granny muttered. She gave it a nudge, filling the image with ripples. “It was very strange,” said Magrat. “In those carts. The things they had! Paper trees, and all kinds of costumes, and—” she waved her hands – “there was this great big picture of forn parts, with all temples and things all rolled up. It was beautiful.” Granny grunted. “I thought it was amazing the way all those people became kings and things, didn’t you? It was like magic.” “Magrat Garlick, what are you saying? It was just paint and paper. Anyone could see that.” Magrat opened her mouth to speak, ran the ensuing argument through her head, and shut it again. “Where’s Nanny?” she said. “She’s lying out on the lawn,” said Granny. “She felt a bit poorly.” And from outside came the sound of Nanny Ogg being poorly at the top of her voice. Magrat sighed. “You know,” she said, “if we are his godmothers, we ought to have given him three gifts. It’s traditional.” “What are you talking about, girl?” “Three good witches are supposed to give the baby three gifts. You know, like good looks, wisdom and happiness.” Magrat pressed on defiantly. “That’s how it used to be done in the old days.” “Oh, you mean gingerbread cottages and all that,” said Granny dismissively. “Spinning wheels and pumpkins and pricking your finger on rose thorns and similar. I could never be having with all that.” She polished the ball reflectively. “Yes, but—” Magrat said. Granny glanced up at her. That was Magrat for you. Head full of pumpkins. Everyone’s fairy godmother, for two pins. But a good soul, underneath it all. Kind to small furry animals. The sort of person who worried about baby birds falling out of nests. “Look, if it makes you any happier,” she muttered, surprised at herself. She waved her hands vaguely over the image of the departing carts. “What’s it to be – wealth, beauty?” “Well, money isn’t everything, and if he takes after his father he’ll be handsome enough,” Magrat said, suddenly serious. “Wisdom, do you think?” “That’s something he’ll have to learn for himself,” said Granny. “Perfect eyesight? A good singing voice?” From the lawn outside came Nanny Ogg’s cracked but enthusiastic voice telling the night sky that A Wizard’s Staff Has A Knob On The End. “Not important,” said Granny loudly. “You’ve got to think headology, see? Not muck about with all this beauty and. wealth business. That’s not important.” She turned back to the ball and gestured half-heartedly. “You’d better go and get Nanny, then, seeing as there should be three of us.” Nanny was helped in, eventually, and had to have things explained to her. “Three gifts, eh?” she said. “Haven’t done one of them things since I was a gel, it takes me back – what’re you doing?” Magrat was bustling around the room, lighting candles. “Oh, we’ve got to create the right magical ambience,” she explained. Granny shrugged, but said nothing, even in the face of the extreme provocation. All witches did their magic in their own way, and this was Magrat’s house. “What’re we going to give him, then?” said Nanny. “We was just discussing it,” said Granny. “I know what he’ll want,” said Nanny. She made a suggestion, which was received in frozen silence. “I don’t see what use that would be,” said Magrat, eventually. “Wouldn’t it be rather uncomfortable?” “He’ll thank us when he grows up, you mark my words,” said Nanny. “My first husband, he always said—” “Something a bit less physical is generally the style of things,” interrupted Granny, glaring at Nanny Ogg. “There’s no need to go and spoil everything, Gytha. Why do you always have to—” “Well, at least I can say that I—” Nanny began. Both voices faded to a mutter. There was a long edgy silence. “I think,” said Magrat, with brittle brightness, “that perhaps it would be a good idea if we all go back to our little cottages and do it in our own way. You know. Separately. It’s been a long day and we’re all rather tired.” “Good idea,” said Granny firmly, and stood up. “Come, Nanny Ogg,” she snapped. “It’s been a long day and we’re all rather tired.” Magrat heard them bickering as they wandered down the path. She sat rather sadly amidst the coloured candles, holding a small bottle of extremely thaumaturgical incense that she had ordered from a magical supplies emporium in faraway Ankh-Morpork. She had been rather looking forward to trying it. Sometimes, she thought, it would be nice if people could be a bit kinder . . . She stared at the ball. Well, she could make a start. “He will make friends easily,” she whispered. It wasn’t much, she knew, but it was something she’d never been able to get the hang of. Nanny Ogg, sitting alone in her kitchen with her huge tomcat curled up on her lap, poured herself a nightcap and through the haze tried to remember the words of verse seventeen of the Hedgehog song. There was something about goats, she recalled, but the details eluded her. Time abraded memory. She toasted the invisible presence. “A bloody good memory is what he ought to have,” she said. “He’ll always remember the words.” And Granny Weatherwax, striding home alone through the midnight forest, wrapped her shawl around her and considered. It had been a long day, and a trying one. The theatre had been the worst part. All people pretending to be other people, things happening that weren’t real, bits of countryside you could put your foot through . . . Granny liked to know where she stood, and she wasn’t certain she stood for that sort of thing. The world seemed to be changing all the time. It didn’t use to change so much. It was bewildering. She walked quickly through the darkness with the frank stride of someone who was at least certain that the forest, on this damp and windy night, contained strange and terrible things and she was it. “Let him be whoever he thinks he is,” she said. “That’s all anybody could hope for in this world.” Like most people, witches are unfocused in time. The difference is that they dimly realise it, and make use of it. They cherish the past because part of them is still living there, and they can see the shadows the future casts before it. Granny could feel the shape of the future, and it had knives in it. It began at five the next morning. Four men rode through the woods near Granny’s cottage, tethered the horses out of earshot, and crept very cautiously through the mists. The sergeant in charge was not happy in his work. He was a Ramtops man, and wasn’t at all certain about how you went about arresting a witch. He was pretty certain, though, that the witch wouldn’t like the idea. He didn’t like the idea of a witch not liking the idea. The men were Ramtoppers as well. They were following him very closely, ready to duck behind him at the first sign of anything more unexpected than a tree. Granny’s cottage was a fungoid shape in the mist. Her unruly herb garden seemed to move, even in the still air. It contained plants seen nowhere else in the mountains, their roots and seeds traded across five thousand miles of the Discworld, and the sergeant could swear that one or two blooms turned towards him. He shuddered. “What now, sarge?” “We – we spread out,” he said. “Yes. We spread out, that’s what we do.” They moved carefully through the bracken. The sergeant crouched behind a handy log, and said, “Right. Very good. You’ve got the general idea. Now let’s spread out again, and this time we spread out separately.” The men grumbled a bit, but disappeared into the mist. The sergeant gave them a few minutes to take up positions, then said, “Right. Now we—” He paused. He wondered whether he dared shout, and decided against it. He stood up. He removed his helmet, to show respect, and sidled through the damp grass to the back door. He knocked, very gently. After a wait of several seconds he clamped his helmet back on his head, said, “No-one in. Blast”, and started to stride away. The door opened. It opened very slowly, and with the maximum amount of creak. Simple neglect wouldn’t have caused that depth of groan; you’d need careful work with hot water over a period of weeks. The sergeant stopped, and then turned round very slowly while contriving to move as few muscles as possible. He had mixed feelings about the fact that there was nothing in the doorway. In his experience, doors didn’t just open themselves. He cleared his throat nervously. Granny Weatherwax, right by his ear, said, “That’s a nasty cough you’ve got there. You did right in coming to me.” The sergeant looked up at her with an expression of mad gratitude. He said, “Argle.” “She did what?” said the duke. The sergeant stared fixedly at an area a few inches to the right of the duke’s chair. “She give me a cup of tea, sir,” he said. “And what about your men?” “She give them one too, sir.” The duke rose from his chair and put his arms around the sergeant’s rusting chain mail shoulders. He was in a bad mood. He had spent half the night washing his hands. He kept thinking that something was whispering in his ear. His breakfast oatmeal had been served up too salty and roasted with an apple in it, and the cook had hysterics in the kitchen. You could tell the duke was extremely annoyed. He was polite. The duke was the kind of man who becomes more and more agreeable as his temper drains away, until the point is reached where the words “Thank you so much” have the cutting edge of a guillotine. “Sergeant,” he said, walking the man slowly across the floor. “Sir?” “I’m not sure I made your orders clear, sergeant,” said the duke, in snake tones. “Sir?” “I mean, it is possible I may have confused you. I meant to say "Bring me a witch, in chains if necessary", but perhaps what I really said was "Go and have a cup of tea". Was this in fact the case?” The sergeant wrinkled his forehead. Sarcasm had not hitherto entered his life. His experience of people being annoyed with him generally involved shouting and occasional bits of wood. “No, sir,” he said. “I wonder why, then, you did not in fact do this thing that I asked?” “Sir?” “I expect she said some magic words, did she? I’ve heard about witches,” said the duke, who had spent the night before reading, until his bandaged hands shook too much, some of the more excitable works on the subject.[3]“I imagine she offered you visions of unearthly delight? Did she show you—” the duke shuddered – “dark fascinations and forbidden raptures, the like of which mortal men should not even think of, and demonic secrets that took you to the depths of man’s desires?” The duke sat down and fanned himself with his handkerchief. “Are you all right, sir?” said the sergeant. “What? Oh, perfectly, perfectly.” “Only you’ve gone all red.” “Don’t change the subject, man,” snapped the duke, pulling himself together a bit. “Admit it – she offered you hedonistic and licentious pleasures known only to those who dabble in the carnal arts, didn’t she?” The sergeant stood to attention and stared straight ahead. “No, sir,” he said, in the manner of one speaking the truth come what may. “She offered me a bun.” “A bun?” “Yes, sir. It had currants in it.” Felmet sat absolutely still while he fought for internal peace. Finally, all he could manage was, “And what did your men do about this?” “They had a bun too, sir. All except young Roger, who isn’t allowed fruit, sir, on account of his trouble.” The duke sagged back on the window seat and put his hand over his eyes. I was born to rule down on the plains, he thought, where it’s all flat and there isn’t all this weather and everything and there are people who don’t appear to be made of dough. He’s going to tell me what this Roger had. “He had a biscuit, sir.” The duke stared out at the trees. He was angry. He was extremely angry. But twenty years of marriage to Lady Felmet had taught him not simply to control his emotions but to control his instincts as well, and not so much as the twitching of a muscle indicated the workings of his mind. Besides, arising out of the black depths of his head was an emotion that, hitherto, he had little time for. Curiosity was flashing a fin. The duke had managed quite well for fifty years without finding a use for curiosity. It was not a trait much encouraged in aristocrats. He had found certainty was a much better bet. However, it occurred to him that for once curiosity might have its uses. The sergeant was standing in the middle of the floor with the stolid air of one who is awaiting a word of command, and who is quite prepared so to wait until continental drift budges him from his post. He had been in the undemanding service of the kings of Lancre for many years, and it showed. His body was standing to attention. Despite all his efforts his stomach stood at ease. The duke’s gaze fell on the Fool, who was sitting on his stool by the throne. The hunched figure looked up, embarrassed, and gave his bells a half-hearted shake. The duke reached a decision. The way to progress, he’d found, was to find weak spots. He tried to shut away the thought that these included such things as a king’s kidneys at the top of a dark stairway, and concentrated on the matter in hand. . . . hand. He’d scrubbed and scrubbed, but it seemed to have no effect. Eventually he’d gone down to the dungeons and borrowed one of the torturer’s wire brushes, and scrubbed and scrubbed with that, too. That had no effect, either. It made it worse. The harder he scrubbed, the more blood there was. He was afraid he might go mad . . . He wrestled the thought to the back of his mind. Weak spots. That was it. The Fool looked all weak spot. “You may go, sergeant.” “Sir,” said the sergeant, and marched out stiffly. “Fool?” “Marry, sir—” said the Fool nervously, and gave his hated mandolin a quick strum. The duke sat down on the throne. “I am already extremely married,” he said. “Advise me, my Fool.” “I’faith, nuncle—” said the Fool. “Nor am I thy nuncle. I feel sure I would have remembered,” said Lord Felmet, leaning down until the prow of his nose was a few inches from the Fool’s stricken face. “If you preface your next remark with nuncle, I’faith or marry, it will go hard with you.” The Fool moved his lips silently, and then said, “How do you feel about Prithee?” The duke knew when to allow some slack. “Prithee I can live with,” he said. “So can you. But no capering.” He grinned encouragingly. “How long have you been a Fool, boy?” “Prithee, sirrah—” “The sirrah,” said the duke, holding up a hand, “on the whole, I think not.” “Prithee, sirra – sir,” said the Fool, and swallowed nervously. “All my life, sir. Seventeen years under the bladder, man and boy. And my father before me. And my nuncle at the same time as him. And my grandad before them. And his-” “Your whole family have been Fools?” “Family tradition, sir,” said the Fool. “Prithee, I mean.” The duke smiled again, and the Fool was too worried to notice how many teeth it contained. “You come from these parts, don’t you?” said the duke. “Ma – Yes, sir.” “So you would know all about the native beliefs and so on?” “I suppose so, sir. Prithee.” “Good. Where do you sleep, my Fool?” “In the stables, sir.” “From now on you may sleep in the corridor outside my room,” said the duke beneficently. “Gosh!” “And now,” said the duke, his voice dripping across the Fool like treacle over a pudding, “tell me about witches . . .” That night the Fool slept on good royal flagstones in the whistling corridor above the Great Hall instead of the warm stuffy straw of the stables. “This is foolish,” he told himself. “Marry, but is it foolish enough!” He dozed off fitfully, into some sort of dream where a vague figure kept trying to attract his attention, and was only dimly aware of the voices of Lord and Lady Felmet on the other side of the door. “It’s certainly a lot less draughty,” said the duchess grudgingly. The duke sat back in the armchair and smiled at his wife. “Well?” she demanded. “Where are the witches?” “The chamberlain would appear to be right, beloved. The witches seem to have the local people in thrall. The sergeant of the guard came back empty-handed.” Handed . . . he came down heavily on the importunate thought. “You must have him executed,” she said promptly. “To make an example to the others.” “A course of action, my dear, which ultimately results in us ordering the last soldier to cut his own throat as an example to himself. By the way,” he added mildly, “there would appear to be somewhat fewer servants around the place. You know I would not normally interfere—” “Then don’t,” she snapped. “Housekeeping is under my control. I cannot abide slackness.” “I’m sure you know best, but—” “What of these witches? Will you stand idly by and let trouble seed for the future? Will you let these witches defy you? What of the crown?” The duke shrugged. “No doubt it ended in the river,” he said. “And the child? He was given to the witches? Do they do human sacrifice?” “It would appear not,” said the duke. The duchess looked vaguely disappointed. “These witches,” said the duke. “Apparently, they seem to cast a spell on people.” “Well, obviously—” “Not like a magic spell. They seem to be respected. They do medicine and so on. It’s rather strange. The mountain people seem to be afraid of them and proud of them at the same time. It might be a little difficult to move against them.” “I could come to believe,” said the duchess darkly, “that they have cast a glamour over you as well.” In fact,” said the duchess, who recognised the malign smile, “you like it, don’t you? The thought of the danger. I remember when we were married; all that business with the knotted rope—” She snapped her fingers in front of the duke’s glazed eyes. He sat up. “Not at all!” he shouted. “Then what will you do?” “Wait.” “Wait?” “Wait, and consider. Patience is a virtue.” The duke sat back. The smile he smiled could have spent a million years sitting on a rock. And then, just below one eye, he started to twitch. Blood was oozing between the bandages on his hand. Once again the full moon rode the clouds. Granny Weatherwax milked and fed the goats, banked the fire, put a cloth over the minor and pulled her broomstick out from behind the door. She went out, locked the back door behind her, and hung the key on its nail in the privy. This was quite sufficient. Only once, in the entire history of witchery in the Ramtops, had a thief broken into a witch’s cottage. The witch concerned visited the most terrible punishment on him.[4] Granny sat on the broom and muttered a few words, but without much conviction. After a further couple of tries she got off, fiddled with the binding, and had another go. There was a suspicion of glitter from one end of the stick, which quickly died away. “Drat,” she said, under her breath. She looked around carefully, in case anyone was watching. In fact it was only a hunting badger who, hearing the thumping of running feet, poked its head out from the bushes and saw Granny hurtling down the path with the broomstick held stiff-armed beside her. At last the magic caught, and she managed to vault clumsily on to it before it trundled into the night sky as gracefully as a duck with one wing missing. From above the trees came a muffled curse against all dwarfish mechanics. Most witches preferred to live in isolated cottages with the traditional curly chimneys and weed-grown thatch. Granny Weatherwax approved of this; it was no good being a witch unless you let people know. Nanny Ogg didn’t care much about what people knew and even less for what they thought, and lived in a new, knick-knack crammed cottage in the middle of Lancre town itself and at the heart of her own private empire. Various daughters and daughters-in-law came in to cook and clean on a sort of rota. Every flat surface was stuffed with ornaments brought back by far-travelling members of the family. Sons and grandsons kept the logpile stacked, the roof shingled, the chimney swept; the drinks cupboard was always full, the pouch by her rocking chair always stuffed with tobacco. Above the hearth was a huge pokerwork sign saying “Mother”. No tyrant in the whole history of the world had ever achieved a domination so complete. Nanny Ogg also kept a cat, a huge one-eyed grey torn called Greebo who divided his time between sleeping, eating and fathering the most enormous incestuous feline tribe. He opened his eye like a yellow window into Hell when he heard Granny’s broomstick land awkwardly on the back lawn. With the instinct of his kind he recognised Granny as an inveterate cat-hater and oozed gently under a chair. Magrat was already seated primly by the fire. It is one of the few unbendable rules of magic that its practitioners cannot change their own appearance for any length of time. Their bodies develop a kind of morphic inertia and gradually return to their original shape. But Magrat tried. Every morning her hair was long, thick and blond, but by the evening it had always returned to its normal worried frizz. To ameliorate the effect she had tried to plait violets and cowslips in it. The result was not all she had hoped. It gave the impression that a window box had fallen on her head. “Good evening,” said Granny. “Well met by moonlight,” said Magrat politely. “Merry meet. A star shines on—” “Wotcha,” said Nanny Ogg. Magrat winced. Granny sat down and started removing the pins that nailed her tall hat to her bun. Finally the sight of Magrat dawned on her. “Magrat!” The young witch jumped, and clamped her knuckly hands to the virtuous frontage of her gown. “Yes?” she quavered. “What have you got on your lap?” “It’s my familiar,” she said defensively. “What happened to that toad you had?” “It wandered off,” muttered Magrat. “Anyway, it wasn’t very good.” Granny sighed. Magrat’s desperate search for a reliable familiar had been going on for some time, and despite the love and attention she lavished on them they all seemed to have some terrible flaw, such as a tendency to bite, get trodden on or, in extreme cases, metamorphose. “That makes fifteen this year,” said Granny. “Not counting the horse. What’s this one?” “It’s a rock,” chuckled Nanny Ogg. “Well, at least it should last,” said Granny. The rock extended a head and gave her a look of mild amusement. “It’s a tortoyse,” said Magrat. “I bought it down in Sheep-ridge market. It’s incredibly old and knows many secrets, the man said.” “I know that man,” said Granny. “He’s the one who sells goldfish that tarnish after a day or two.” “Anyway, I shall call him Lightfoot,” said Magrat, her voice warm with defiance. “I can if I want.” “Yes, yes, all right, I’m sure,” said Granny. “Anyway, how goes it, sisters? It is two months since last we met.” “It should be every new moon,” said Magrat sternly. “Regular.” “It was our Grame’s youngest’s wedding,” said Nanny Ogg. “Couldn’t miss it.” “And I was up all night with a sick goat,” said Granny Weatherwax promptly. “Yes, well,” said Magrat doubtfully. She rummaged in her bag. “Anyway, if we’re going to start, we’d better light the candles.” The senior witches exchanged a resigned glance. “But we got this lovely new lamp our Tracie sent me,” said Nanny Ogg innocently. “And I was going to poke up the fire a bit.” “I have excellent night vision, Magrat,” said Granny sternly. “And you’ve been reading them funny books. Grimmers.” “Grimoires—” “You ain’t going to draw on the floor again, neither,” warned Nanny Ogg. “It took our Dreen days to clean up all those wossnames last time—” “Runes,” said Magrat. There was a look of pleading in her eyes. “Look, just one candle?” “All right,” said Nanny Ogg, relenting a bit. “If it makes you feel any better. Just the one, mind. And a decent white one. Nothing fancy.” Magrat sighed. It probably wasn’t a good idea to bring out the rest of the contents of her bag. “We ought to get a few more here,” she said sadly. “It’s not right, a coven of three.” “I didn’t know we was still a coven. No-one told me we was still a coven,” sniffed Granny Weatherwax. “Anyway, there’s no-one else this side of the mountain, excepting old Gammer Dismass, and she doesn’t get out these days.” “But a lot of young girls in my village . . .” said Magrat. “You know. They could be keen.” “That’s not how we do it, as well you know,” said Granny disapprovingly. “People don’t go and find witchcraft, it comes and finds them.” “Yes, yes,” said Magrat. “Sorry.” “Right,” said Granny, slightly mollified. She’d never mastered the talent for apologising, but she appreciated it in other people. “What about this new duke, then,” said Nanny, to lighten the atmosphere. Granny sat back. “He had some houses burned down in Bad Ass,” she said. “Because of taxes.” “How horrible,” said Magrat. “Old Kind Verence used to do that,” said Nanny. “Terrible temper he had.” “He used to let people get out first, though,” said Granny. “Oh yes,” said Nanny, who was a staunch royalist. “He could be very gracious like that. He’d pay for them to be rebuilt, as often as not. If he remembered.” “And every Hogswatchnight, a side of venison. Regular,” said Granny wistfully. “Oh, yes. Very respectful to witches, he was,” added Nanny Ogg. “When he was out hunting people, if he met me in the woods, it was always off with his helmet and "I hope I finds you well, Mistress Ogg" and next day he’d send his butler down with a couple of bottles of something. He was a proper king.” “Hunting people isn’t really right, though,” said Magrat. “Well, no,” Granny Weatherwax conceded. “But it was only if they’d done something bad. He said they enjoyed it really. And he used to let them go if they gave him a good run.” “And then there was that great hairy thing of his,” said Nanny Ogg. There was a perceptible change in the atmosphere. It became warmer, darker, filled at the corners with the shadows of unspoken conspiracy. “Ah,” said Granny Weatherwax distantly. “His droit de seigneur.” “Needed a lot of exercise,” said Nanny Ogg, staring at the fire. “But next day he’d send his housekeeper round with a bag of silver and a hamper of stuff for the wedding,” said Granny. “Many a couple got a proper start in life thanks to that.” “Ah,” agreed Nanny. “One or two individuals, too.” “Every inch a king,” said Granny. “What are you talking about?” said Magrat suspiciously. “Did he keep pets?” The two witches surfaced from whatever deeper current they had been swimming in. Granny Weatherwax shrugged. “I must say,” Magrat went on, in severe tones, “if you think so much of the old king, you don’t seem very worried about him being killed. I mean, it was a pretty suspicious accident.” “That’s kings for you,” said Granny. “They come and go, good and bad. His father poisoned the king we had before.” “That was old Thargum,” said Nanny Ogg. “Had a big red beard, I recall. He was very gracious too, you know.” “Only now no-one must say Felmet killed the king,” said Magrat. “What?” said Granny. “He had some people executed in Lancre, the other day for saying it,” Magrat went on. “Spreading malicious lies, he said. He said anyone saying different will see the inside of his dungeons, only not for long. He said Verence died of natural causes.” “Well, being assassinated is natural causes for a king,” said Granny. “I don’t see why he’s so sheepish about it. When old Thargum was killed they stuck his head on a pole, had a big bonfire and everyone in the palace got drunk for a week.” “I remember,” said Nanny. “They carried his head all round the villages to show he was dead. Very convincing, I thought. Specially for him. He was grinning. I think it was the way he would have liked to go.” “I think we might have to keep an eye on this one, though,” said Granny. “I think he might be a bit clever. That’s not a good thing, in a king. And I don’t think he knows how to show respect.” “A man came to see me last week to ask if I wanted to pay any taxes,” said Magrat. “I told him no.” “He came to see me, too,” said Nanny Ogg. “But our Jason and our Wane went out and tole him we didn’t want to join.” “Small man, bald, black cloak?” said Granny thoughtfully. “Yes,” said the other two. “He was hanging about in my raspberry bushes,” said Granny. “Only, when I went out to see what he wanted, he ran away.” “Actually, I gave him tuppence,” said Magrat. “He said he was going to be tortured, you see, if he didn’t get witches to pay their taxes . . .” Lord Felmet looked carefully at the two coins in his lap. Then he looked at his tax gatherer. “Well?” he said. The tax gatherer cleared his throat. “Well, sir, you see. I explained about the need to employ a standing army, ekcetra, and they said why, and I said because of bandits, ekcetra, and they said bandits never bothered them.” “And civil works?” “Ah. Yes. Well, I pointed out the need to build and maintain bridges, ekcetra.” “And?” “They said they didn’t use them.” “Ah,” said the duke knowledgeably. “They can’t cross running water.” “Not sure about that, sir. I think witches cross anything they like.” “Did they say anything else?” said the duke. The tax gatherer twisted the hem of his robe distractedly. “Well, sir. I mentioned how taxes help to maintain the King’s Peace, sir . . . “ “And?” “They said the king should maintain his own peace, sir. And then they gave me a look.” “What sort of look?” The duke sat with his thin face cupped in one hand. He was fascinated. “It’s sort of hard to describe,” said the taxman. He tried to avoid Lord Felmet’s gaze, which was giving him the distinct impression that the tiled floor was fleeing away in all directions and had already covered several acres. Lord Felmet’s fascination was to him what a pin is to a Purple Emperor. “Try,” the duke invited. The taxman blushed. “Well,” he said. “It . . . wasn’t nice.” Which demonstrates that the tax gatherer was much better at figures than words. What he would have said, if embarrassment, fear, poor memory and a complete lack of any kind of imagination hadn’t conspired against it, was: “When I was a little boy, and staying with my aunt, and she had told me not to touch the cream, ekcetra, and she had put it on a high shelf in the pantry, and I got a stool and went after it when she was out anyway, and she’d come back and I didn’t know, and I couldn’t reach the bowl properly and it smashed on the floor, and she opened the door and glared at me: it was that look. But the worst thing was, they knew it.” “Not nice,” said the duke. “No, sir.” The duke drummed the fingers of his left hand on the arm of his throne. The tax gatherer coughed again. “You’re – you’re not going to force me to go back, are you?” he said. “Um?” said the duke. He waved a hand irritably. “No, no,” he said. “Not at all. Just call in at the torturer on your way out. See when he can fit you in.” The taxman gave him a look of gratitude, and bobbed a bow. “Yes, sir. At once, sir. Thank you, sir. You’re very—” “Yes, yes,” said Lord Felmet, absently. “You may go.” The duke was left alone in the vastness of the hall. It was raining again. Every once in a while a piece of plaster smashed down on the tiles, and there was a crunching from the walls as they settled still further. The air smelled of old cellars. Gods, he hated this kingdom. It was so small, only forty miles long and maybe ten miles wide, and nearly all of it was cruel mountains with ice-green slopes and knife-edge crests, or dense huddled forests. A kingdom like that shouldn’t be any trouble. What he couldn’t quite fathom was this feeling that it had depth. It seemed to contain far too much geography. He rose and paced the floor to the balcony, with its unrivalled view of trees. It struck him that the trees were also looking back at him. He could feel the resentment. But that was odd, because the people themselves hadn’t objected. They didn’t seem to object to anything very much. Verence had been popular enough, in his way. There’d been quite a turnout for the funeral; he recalled the lines of solemn faces. Not stupid faces. By no means stupid. Just preoccupied, as though what kings did wasn’t really very important. He found that almost as annoying as trees. A jolly good riot, now, that would have been more – more appropriate. One could have ridden out and hanged people, there would have been the creative tension so essential to the proper development of the state. Back down on the plains, if you kicked people they kicked back. Up here, when you kicked people they moved away and just waited patiently for your leg to fall off. How could a king go down in history ruling a people like that? You couldn’t oppress them any more than you could oppress a mattress. He had raised taxes and burned a few villages on general principles, just to show everyone who they were dealing with. It didn’t seem to have any effect. And then there were these witches. They haunted him. “Fool!” The Fool, who had been having a quiet doze behind the throne, awoke in terror. “Yes!” “Come hither, Fool.” The Fool jingled miserably across the floor. “Tell me, Fool, does it always rain here?” “Marry, nuncle—” “Just answer the question,” said Lord Felmet, with iron patience. “Sometimes it stops, sir. To make room for the snow. And sometimes we get some right squand’ring orgulous fogs,” said the Fool. “Orgulous?” said the duke, absently. The Fool couldn’t stop himself. His horrified ears heard his mouth blurt out: “Thick, my lord. From the Latatian orgulum, a soup or broth.” But the duke wasn’t listening. Listening to the prattle of underlings was not, in his experience, particularly worthwhile. “I am bored, Fool.” “Let me entertain you, my lord, with many a merry quip and lightsome jest.” “Try me.” The Fool licked his dry lips. He hadn’t actually expected this. King Verence had been happy enough just to give him a kick, or throw a bottle at his head. A real king. “I’m waiting. Make me laugh.” The Fool took the plunge. “Why, sirrah,” he quavered, “why may a caudled fillhorse be deemed the brother to a hiren candle in the night?” The duke frowned. The Fool felt it better not to wait. “Withal, because a candle may be greased, yet a fillhorse be without a fat argier,” he said and, because it was part of the joke, patted Lord Felmet lightly with his balloon on a stick and twanged his mandolin. The duke’s index finger tapped an abrupt tattoo on the arm of the throne. “Yes?” he said. “And then what happened?” “That, er, was by way of being the whole thing,” said the Fool, and added, “My grandad thought it was one of his best.” “I daresay he told it differently,” said the duke. He stood up. “Summon my huntsmen. I think I shall ride out on the chase. And you can come too.” “My lord, I cannot ride!” For the first time that morning Lord Felmet smiled. “Capital!” he said. “We will give you a horse that can’t be ridden. Ha. Ha.” He looked down at his bandages. And afterwards, he told himself, I’ll get the armourer to send me up a file. A year went past. The days followed one another patiently. Right back at the beginning of the multiverse they had tried all passing at the same time, and it hadn’t worked. Tomjon sat under Hwel’s rickety table, watching his father as he walked up and down between the lattys, waving one arm and talking. Vitoller always waved his arms when he spoke; if you tied his hands behind his back he would be dumb. “All right,” he was saying, “how about The King’s Brides?” “Last year,” said the voice of Hwel. “All right, then. We’ll give them Mallo, the Tyrant of Klatch,” said Vitoller, and his larynx smoothly changed gear as his voice became a great rolling thing that could rattle the windows across the width of the average town square. “ "In blood I came, And by blood rule, That none will dare assay these walls of blood—" “ “We did it the year before,” said Hwel calmly. “Anyway, people are fed up with kings. They want a bit of a chuckle.” “They are not fed up with my kings,” said Vitoller. “My dear boy, people do not come to the theatre to laugh, they come to Experience, to Learn, to Wonder—” “To laugh,” said Hwel, flatly. “Have a look at this one.” Tomjon heard the rustle of paper and the creak of wicker-work as Vitoller lowered his weight on to a props basket. “A Wizard of Sons,” Vitoller read. “Or, Please Yourself” Hwel stretched his legs under the table and dislodged Tomjon. He hauled the boy out by one ear. “What’s this?” said Vitoller. “Wizards? Demons? Imps? Merchants?” “I’m rather pleased with Act II, Scene IV,” said Hwel, propelling the toddler towards the props box. “Comic Washing Up with Two Servants.” “Any death-bed scenes?” said Vitoller hopefully. “No-o,” said Hwel. “But I can do you a humorous monologue in Act III.” “A humorous monologue!” “All right, there’s room for a soliloquy in the last act,” said Hwel hurriedly. “I’ll write one tonight, no problem.” “And a stabbing,” said Vitoller, getting to his feet. “A foul murder. That always goes down well.” He strode away to organise the setting up of the stage. Hwel sighed, and picked up his quill. Somewhere behind the sacking walls was the town of Hangdog, which had somehow allowed itself to be built in a hollow perched in the nearly sheer walls of a canyon. There was plenty of flat ground in the Ramtops. The problem was that nearly all of it was vertical. Hwel didn’t like the Ramtops, which was odd because it was traditional dwarf country and he was a dwarf. But he’d been banished from his tribe years ago, not only because of his claustrophobia but also because he had a tendency to daydream. It was felt by the local dwarf king that this is not a valuable talent for someone who is supposed to swing a pickaxe without forgetting what he is supposed to hit with it, and so Hwel had been given a very small bag of gold, the tribe’s heartfelt best wishes, and a firm goodbye. It had happened that Vitoller’s strolling players had been passing through at the time, and the dwarf had ventured one small copper coin on a performance of The Dragon of the Plains. He had watched it without a muscle moving in his face, gone back to his lodgings, and in the morning had knocked on Vitoller’s latty with the first draft of King Under the Mountain. It wasn’t in fact very good, but Vitoller had been perceptive enough to see that inside the hairy bullet head was an imagination big enough to bestride the world and so, when the strolling players strolled off, one of them was running to keep up . . . Particles of raw inspiration sleet through the universe all the time. Every once in a while one of them hits a receptive mind, which then invents DNA or the flute sonata form or a way of making light bulbs wear out in half the time. But most of them miss. Most people go through their lives without being hit by even one. Some people are even more unfortunate. They get them all. Such a one was Hwel. Enough inspirations to equip a complete history of the performing arts poured continuously into a small heavy skull designed by evolution to do nothing more spectacular than be remarkably resistant to axe blows. He licked his quill and looked bashfully around the camp. No-one was watching. He carefully lifted up the Wizard and revealed another stack of paper. It was another potboiler. Every page was stained with sweat and the words themselves scrawled across the manuscript in a trellis of blots and crossings-out and tiny scribbled insertions. Hwel stared at it for a moment, alone in a world that consisted of him, the next blank page and the shouting, clamouring voices that haunted his dreams. He began to write. Free of Hwel’s never-too-stringent attention. Tomjon pushed open the lid of the props hamper and, in the methodical way of the very young, began to unpack the crowns. The dwarf stuck out his tongue as he piloted the errant quill across the ink-speckled page. He’d found room for the star-crossed lovers, the comic gravediggers and me hunchback king. It was the cats and the roller skates that were currently giving him trouble . . . A gurgle made him look up. “For goodness sake, lad,” he said. “It hardly fits. Put it back.” The Disc rolled into winter. Winter in the Ramtops could not honestly be described as a magical frosty wonderland, each twig laced with confections of brittle ice. Winter in the Ramtops didn’t mess about; it was a gateway straight through to the primeval coldness that lived before the creation of the world. Winter in the Ramtops was several yards of snow, the forests a mere collection of shadowy green tunnels under the drifts. Winter meant the coming of the lazy wind, which couldn’t be bothered to blow around people and blew right through them instead. The idea that Winter could actually be enjoyable would never have occurred to Ramtop people, who had eighteen different words for snow.[5] The ghost of King Verence prowled the battlements, bereft and hungry, and stared out across his beloved forests and waited his chance. It was a winter of portents. Comets sparkled against the chilled skies at night. Clouds shaped mightily like whales and dragons drifted over the land by day. In the village of Razorback a cat gave birth to a two-headed kitten, but since Greebo, by dint of considerable effort, was every male ancestor for the last thirty generations this probably wasn’t all that portentous. However, in Bad Ass a cockerel laid an egg and had to put up with some very embarrassing personal questions. In Lancre town a man swore he’d met a man who had actually seen with his own eyes a tree get up and walk. There was a short sharp shower of shrimps. There were odd lights in the sky. Geese walked backwards. Above all of this flared the great curtains of cold fire that were the Aurora Coriolis, the Hublights, whose frosty tints illuminated and coloured the midnight snows. There was nothing the least unusual about any of this. The Ramtops, which as it were lay across the Disc’s vast magical standing wave like an iron bar dropped innocently across a pair of subway rails, were so saturated with magic that it was constantly discharging itself into the environment. People would wake up in the middle of the night, mutter, “Oh, it’s just another bloody portent”, and go back to sleep. Hogswatchnight came round, marking the start of another year. And, with alarming suddenness, nothing happened. The skies were clear, the snow deep and crisped like icing sugar. The freezing forests were silent and smelled of tin. The only things that fell from the sky were the occasional fresh showers of snow. A man walked across the moors from Razorback to Lancre town without seeing a single marshlight, headless dog, strolling tree, ghostly coach or comet, and had to be taken in by a tavern and given a drink to unsteady his nerves. The stoicism of the Ramtoppers, developed over the years as a sovereign resistance to the thaumaturgical chaos, found itself unable to cope with the sudden change. It was like a noise which isn’t heard until it stops. Granny Weatherwax heard it now as she lay snug under a pile of quilts in her freezing bedroom. Hogswatchnight is, traditionally, the one night of the Disc’s long year when witches are expected to stay at home, and she’d had an early night in the company of a bag of apples and a stone hotwater bottle. But something had awoken her from her doze. An ordinary person would have crept downstairs, possibly armed with a poker. Granny simply hugged her knees and let her mind wander. It hadn’t been in the house. She could feel the small, fast minds of mice, and the fuzzy minds of her goats as they lay in their cosy flatulence in the outhouse. A hunting owl was a sudden dagger of alertness as it glided over the rooftops. Granny concentrated harder, until her mind was full of the tiny chittering of the insects in the thatch and the woodworm in the beams. Nothing of interest there. She snuggled down and let herself drift out into the forest, which was silent except for the occasional muffled thump as snow slid off a tree. Even in midwinter the forest was full of life, usually dozing in burrows or hibernating in the middle of trees. All as usual. She spread herself further, to the high moors and secret passes where the wolves ran silently over the frozen crust; she touched their minds, sharp as knives. Higher still, and there was nothing in the snowfields but packs of vermine.[6] Everything was as it should be, with the exception that nothing was right. There was something – yes, there was something alive out there, something young and ancient and . . . Granny turned over the feeling in her mind. Yes. That was it. Something forlorn. Something lost. And . . . Feelings were never simple, Granny knew. Strip them away and there were others underneath . . . Something that, if it didn’t stop feeling lost and forlorn very soon, was going to get angry. And still she couldn’t find it. She could feel the tiny minds of chrysalises down under the frozen leafmould. She could sense the earthworms, which had migrated below the frost line. She could even sense a few people, who were hardest of all – human minds were thinking so many thoughts all at the same time that they were nearly impossible to locate; it was like trying to nail fog to the wall. Nothing there. Nothing there. The feeling was all around her, and there was nothing to cause it. She’d gone down about as far as she could, to the smallest creature in the kingdom, and there was nothing there. Granny Weatherwax sat up in bed, lit a candle and reached for an apple. She glared at her bedroom wall. She didn’t like being beaten. There was something out there, something drinking in magic, something growing, something dial seemed so alive it was all around the house, and she couldn’t find it. She reduced the apple to its core and placed it carefully in the tray of the candlestick. Then she blew out the candle. The cold velvet of the night slid back into the room. Granny had one last try. Perhaps she was looking in the wrong way . . . A moment later she was lying on the floor with the pillow clasped around her head. And to think she had expected it to be small . . . Lancre Castle shook. It wasn’t a violent shaking, but it didn’t need to be, the construction of the castle being such that it swayed slightly even in a gentle breeze. A small turret toppled slowly into the depths of the misty canyon. The Fool lay on his flagstones and shivered in his sleep. He appreciated the honour, if it was an honour, but sleeping in the corridor always made him dream of the Fools’ Guild, behind whose severe grey walls he had trembled his way through seven years of terrible tuition. The flagstones were slightly softer than the beds there, though. A few feet away a suit of armour jingled gently. Its pike vibrated in its mailed glove until, swishing through the night air like a swooping bat, it slid down and shattered the flagstone by the Fool’s ear. The Fool sat up and realised he was still shivering. So was the floor. In Lord Felmet’s room the shaking sent cascades of dust down from the ancient four-poster. He awoke from a dream that a great beast was tramping around the castle, and decided with horror that it might be true. A portrait of some long-dead king fell off the wall. The duke screamed. The Fool stumbled in, trying to keep his balance on a floor that was now heaving like the sea, and the duke staggered out of bed and grabbed the little man by his jerkin. “What’s happening?” he hissed. “Is it an earthquake?” “We don’t have them in these parts, my lord,” said the Fool, and was knocked aside as a chaise-longue drifted slowly across the carpet. The duke dashed to the window, and looked out at the forests in the moonlight. The white-capped trees shook in the still night air. A slab of plaster crashed on to the floor. Lord Felmet spun around and this time his grip lifted the Fool a foot off the floor. Among the very many luxuries the duke had dispensed with in his life was that of ignorance. He liked to feel he knew what was going on. The glorious uncertainties of existence held no attraction for him. “It’s the witches, isn’t it?” he growled, his left cheek beginning to twitch like a landed fish. They’re out there, aren’t they? They’re putting an Influence on the castle, aren’t they?” “Marry, nuncle—” the Fool began. “They run this country, don’t they?” “No, my lord, they’ve never—” “Who asked you?” The Fool was trembling with fear in perfect anti-phase to the castle, so that he was the only thing that now appeared to be standing perfectly still. “Er, you did, my lord,” he quavered. “Are you arguing with me?” “No, my lord!” “I thought so. You’re in league with them, I suppose?” “My lord!” said the Fool, really shocked. “You’re all in league, you people!” the duke snarled. “The whole bunch of you! You’re nothing but a pack of ringleaders!” He flung the Fool aside and thrust the tall windows open, striding out into the freezing night air. He glared out over the sleeping kingdom. “Do you all hear me?” he screamed. “I am the king!” The shaking stopped, catching the duke off-balance. He steadied himself quickly, and brushed the plaster dust off his nightshirt. “Right, then,” he said. But this was worse. Now the forest was listening. The words he spoke vanished into a great vacuum of silence. There was something out there. He could feel it. It was strong enough to shake the castle, and now it was watching him, listening to him. The duke backed away, very carefully, fumbling behind him for the window catch. He stepped carefully into the room, shut the windows and hurriedly pulled the curtains across. “I am the king,” he repeated, quietly. He looked at the Fool, who felt that something was expected of him. The man is my lord and master, he thought. I have eaten his salt, or whatever all that business was. They told me at Guild school that a Fool should be faithful to his master until the very end, after all others have deserted him. Good or bad doesn’t come into it. Every leader needs his Fool. There is only loyalty. That’s the whole thing. Even if he is clearly three-parts bonkers, I’m his Fool until one of us dies. To his horror he realised the duke was weeping. The Fool fumbled in his sleeve and produced a rather soiled red and yellow handkerchief embroidered with bells. The duke took it with an expression of pathetic gratitude and blew his nose. Then he held it away from him and gazed at it with demented suspicion. “Is this a dagger I see before me?” he mumbled. “Um. No, my lord. It’s my handkerchief, you see. You can sort of tell the difference if you look closely. It doesn’t have as many sharp edges.” “Good fool,” said the duke, vaguely. Totally mad, the Fool thought. Several bricks short of a bundle. So far round the twist you could use him to open wine bottles. “Kneel beside me, my Fool.” The Fool did so. The duke laid a soiled bandage on his shoulder. “Are you loyal, Fool?” he said. “Are you trustworthy?” “I swore to follow my lord until death,” said the Fool hoarsely. The duke pressed his mad face close to the Fool, who looked up into a pair of bloodshot eyes. “I didn’t want to,” he hissed conspiratorially. “They made me do it. I didn’t want—” The door swung open. The duchess filled the doorway. In fact, she was nearly the same shape. “Leonal!” she barked. The Fool was fascinated by what happened to the duke’s eyes. The mad red flame vanished, was sucked backwards, and was replaced by the hard blue stare he had come to recognise. It didn’t mean, he realised, that the duke was any less mad. Even the coldness of his sanity was madness in a way. The duke had a mind that ticked like a clock and, like a clock, it regularly went cuckoo. Lord Felmet looked up calmly. “Yes, my dear?” “What is the meaning of all this?” she demanded. “Witches, I suspect,” said Lord Felmet. “I really don’t think—” the Fool began. Lady Felmet’s glare didn’t merely silence him, it almost nailed him to the wall. “That is clearly apparent,” she said. “You are an idiot.” “A Fool, my lady.” “As well,” she added, and turned back to her husband. “So,” she said, smiling grimly. “Still they defy you?” The duke shrugged. “How should I fight magic?” he said. “With words,” said the Fool, without thinking, and was instantly sorry. They were both staring at him. “What?” said the duchess. The Fool dropped his mandolin in his embarrassment. “In – in the Guild,” said the Fool, “we learned that words can be more powerful even than magic.” “Clown!” said the duke. “Words are just words. Brief syllables. Sticks and stones may break my bones—” he paused, savouring the thought – “but words can never hurt me.” “My lord, there are such words that can,” said the Fool. “Liar! Usurper! Murderer!” The duke jerked back and gripped the arms of the throne, wincing. “Such words have no truth,” said the Fool, hurriedly. “But they can spread like fire underground, breaking out to burn—” “It’s true! It’s true!” screamed the duke. “I hear them, all the time!” He leaned forward. “It’s the witches!” he hissed. “Then, then, then they can be fought with other words,” said the Fool, “Words can fight even witches,” “What words?” said the duchess, thoughtfully. The Fool shrugged. “Crone. Evil eye. Stupid old woman.” The duchess raised one thick eyebrow. “You are not entirely an idiot, are you,” she said. “You refer to rumour.” “Just so, my lady.” The Fool rolled his eyes. What had he got himself into? “It’s the witches,” whispered the duke, to no-one in particular. “We must tell the world about the witches. They’re evil. They make it come back, the blood. Even sandpaper doesn’t work.” There was another tremor as Granny Weatherwax hurried along the narrow, frozen pathways in the forest. A lump of snow slipped off a tree branch and poured over her hat. This wasn’t right, she knew. Never mind about the -whatever it was – but it was unheard of for a witch to go out on Hogswatchnight. It was against all tradition. No-one knew why, but that wasn’t the point. She came out on to the moorland and pounded across the brittle heather, which had been scoured of snow by the wind. There was a crescent moon near the horizon, and its pale glow lit up the mountains that towered over her. It was a different world up there, and one even a witch would rarely venture into; it was a landscape left over from the frosty birth of the world, all green ice and knife-edge ridges and deep, secret valleys. It was a landscape never intended for human beings – not hostile, any more than a brick or cloud is hostile, but terribly, terribly uncaring. Except that, this time, it was watching her. A mind quite unlike any other she had ever encountered was giving her a great deal of its attention. She glared up at the icy slopes, half expecting to see a mountainous shadow move against the stars. “Who are you?” she shouted. “What do you want?” Her voice bounced and echoed among the rocks. There was a distant boom of an avalanche, high among the peaks. On the crest of the moor, where in the summer partridges lurked among the bushes like small whirring idiots, was a standing stone. It stood roughly where the witches” territories met, although the boundaries were never formally marked out. The stone was about the same height as a tall man, and made of bluish tinted rock. It was considered intensely magical because, although there was only one of it, no-one had ever been able to count if, if it saw anyone looking at it speculatively, it shuffled behind them. It was the most self-effacing monolith ever discovered. It was also one of the numerous discharge points for the magic that accumulated in the Ramtops. The ground around it for several yards was bare of snow, and steamed gently. The stone began to edge away, and watched her suspiciously from behind a tree. She waited for ten minutes until Magrat came hurrying up the path from Mad Stoat, a village whose good-natured inhabitants were getting used to ear massage and flower-based homeopathic remedies for everything short of actual decapitation.[7]She was out of breath, and wore only a shawl over a nightdress that, if Magrat had anything to reveal, would have been very revealing. “You felt it too?” she said. Granny nodded. “Where’s Gytha?” she said. They looked down the path that led to Lancre town, a huddle of lights in the snowy gloom. There was a party going on. Light poured out into the street. A line of people were winding in and out of Nanny Ogg’s house, from inside which came occasional shrieks of laughter and the sounds of breaking glass and children grizzling. It was clear that family life was being experienced to its limits in that house. The two witches stood uncertainly in the street. “Do you think we should go in?” said Magrat diffidently. “It’s not as though we were invited. And we haven’t brought a bottle.” “Sounds to me as if there’s a deal too many bottles in there already,” said Granny Weatherwax disapprovingly. A man staggered out of the doorway, burped, bumped into Granny, said, “Happy Hogswatchnight, missus,” glanced up at her face and sobered up instantly. “Mss,” snapped Granny. “I am most frightfully sorry—” he began. Granny swept imperiously past him. “Come, Magrat,” she commanded. The din inside hovered around the pain threshold. Nanny Ogg got around the Hogswatchnight tradition by inviting the whole village in, and the air in the room was already beyond the reach of pollution controls. Granny navigated through the press of bodies by the sound of a cracked voice explaining to the world at large that, compared to an unbelievable variety of other animals, the hedgehog was quite fortunate. Nanny Ogg was sitting in a chair by the fire with a quart mug in one hand, and was conducting the reprise with a cigar. She grinned when she saw Granny’s face. “What ho, my old boiler,” she screeched above the din. “See you turned up, then. Have a drink. Have two. Wotcher, Magrat. Pull up a chair and call the cat a bastard.” Greebo, who was curled up in the inglenook and watching the festivities with one slit yellow eye, flicked his tail once or twice. Granny sat down stiffly, a ramrod figure of decency. “We’re not staying,” she said, glaring at Magrat, who was tentatively reaching out towards a bowl of peanuts. “I can see you’re busy. We just wondered whether you might have noticed – anything. Tonight. A little while ago.” Nanny Ogg wrinkled her forehead. “Our Darron’s eldest was sick,” she said. “Been at his dad’s beer.” “Unless he was extremely ill,” said Granny, “I doubt if it was what I was referring to.” She made a complex occult sign in the air, which Nanny totally ignored. “Someone tried to dance on the table,” she said. “Fell into our Reet’s pumpkin dip. We had a good laugh.” Granny waggled her eyebrows and placed a meaningful finger alongside her nose. “I was alluding to things of a different nature,” she hinted darkly. Nanny Ogg peered at her. “Something wrong with your eye, Esme?” she hazarded. Granny Weatherwax sighed. “Extremely worrying developments of a magical tendency are even now afoot,” she said loudly. The room went quiet. Everyone stared at the witches, except for Darron’s eldest, who took advantage of the opportunity to continue his alcoholic experiments. Then, swiftly as they had fled, several dozen conversations hurriedly got back into gear. “It might be a good idea if we can go and talk somewhere more private,” said Granny, as the comforting hubbub streamed over them again. They ended up in the washhouse, where Granny tried to give an account of the mind she had encountered. “It’s out there somewhere, in the mountains and the high forests,” she said. “And it is very big.” “I thought it was looking for someone,” said Magrat. “It put me in mind of a large dog. You know, lost. Puzzled.” Granny thought about this. Now she came to think of it . . . “Yes,” she said. “Something like that. A big dog.” “Worried,” said Magrat. “Searching,” said Granny. “And getting angry,” said Magrat. “Yes,” said Granny, staring fixedly at Nanny. “Could be a troll,” said Nanny Ogg. “I left best part of a pint in there, you know,” she added reproachfully. “I know what a troll’s mind feels like, Gytha,” said Granny. She didn’t snap the words out. In fact it was the quiet way she said them that made Nanny hesitate. “They say there’s really big trolls up towards the Hub,” said Nanny slowly. “And ice giants, and big hairy woss-names that live above the snowline. But you don’t mean anything like that, do you?” “No.” “Oh.” Magrat shivered. She told herself that a witch had absolute control over her own body, and the goosepimples under her tun nightdress were just a figment of her own imagination. The trouble was, she had an excellent imagination. Nanny Ogg sighed. “We’d better have a look, then,” she said, and took the lid off the copper. Nanny Ogg never used her washhouse., since all her washing was done by the daughers-in-law, a tribe of grey-faced, subdued women whose names she never bothered to remember. It had become, therefore, a storage place for dried-up old bulbs, burnt-out cauldrons and fermenting jars of wasp jam. No fire had been lit under the copper for ten years. Its bricks were crumbling, and rare ferns grew around the firebox. The water under the lid was inky black and, according to rumour, bottomless; the Ogg grandchildren were encouraged to believe that monsters from the dawn of time dwelt in its depths, since Nanny believed that a bit of thrilling and pointless terror was an essential ingredient of the magic of childhood. In summer she used it as a beer cooler. “It’ll have to do. I think perhaps we should join hands,” she said. “And you, Magrat, make sure the door’s shut.” “What are you going to try?” said Granny. Since they were on Nanny’s territory, the choice was entirely up to her. “I always say you can’t go wrong with a good Invocation,” said Nanny. “Haven’t done one for years.” Granny Weatherwax frowned. Magrat said, “Oh, but you can’t. Not here. You need a cauldron, and a magic sword. And an octogram. And spices, and all sorts of stuff.” Granny and Nanny exchanged glances. “It’s not her fault,” said Granny. “It’s all them grimmers she was bought.” She turned to Magrat. “You don’t need none of that,” she said. “You need head-ology.” She looked around the ancient washroom. “You just use whatever you’ve got,” she said. She picked up the bleached copper stick, and weighed it thoughtfully in her hand. “We conjure and abjure thee by means of this—” Granny hardly paused – “Sharp and terrible copper stick.” The waters in the boiler rippled gently. “S ee how we scatter—” Magrat sighed – “rather old washing soda and some extremely hard soap flakes in thy honour. Really, Nanny, I don’t think—” “Silence! Now you, Gytha.” “And I invoke and bind thee with the balding scrubbing brush of Art and the washboard of Protection,” said Nanny, waving it. The wringer attachment fell off. “Honesty is all very well,” whispered Magrat, wretchedly, “but somehow it isn’t the same.” “You listen to me, my girl,” said Granny. “Demons don’t care about the outward shape of things. It’s what you think that matters. Get on with it.” Magrat tried to imagine that the bleached and ancient bar of lye soap was the rarest of scented whatever, ungulants or whatever they were, from distant Klatch. It was an effort. The gods alone knew what kind of demon would respond to a summoning like this. Granny was also a little uneasy. She didn’t much care for demons in any case, and all this business with incantations and implements whiffed of wizardry. It was pandering to the things, making them feel important. Demons ought to come when they were called. But protocol dictated that the host witch had the choice, and Nanny quite liked demons, who were male, or apparently so. At this point Granny was alternately cajoling and threatening the nether world with two feet of bleached wood. She was impressed at her own daring. The waters seethed a little, became very still and then, with a sudden movement and a little popping noise, mounded up into a head. Magrat dropped her soap. It was a good-looking head, maybe a little cruel around the eyes and beaky about the nose-, but nevertheless handsome in a hard kind of way. There was nothing surprising about this; since the demon was only extending an image of itself into this reality, it might as well make a good job of it. It turned slowly, a gleaming black statue in the fitful moonlight. “Well?” it said. “Who’re you?” said Granny, bluntly. The head revolved to face her. “My name is unpronounceable in your tongue, woman,” it said. “I’ll be the judge of that,” warned Granny, and added, “Don’t you call me woman.” “Very well. My name is WxrtHltl-jwlpklz,” said the demon smugly. “Where were you when the vowels were handed out? Behind the door?” said Nanny Ogg. “Well, Mr—“ Granny hesitated only fractionally – “WxrtHltl-jwlpklz, I expect you’re wondering why we called you here tonight.” “You’re not supposed to say that,” said the demon. “You’re supposed to say—” “Shut up. We have the sword of Art and the octogram of Protection, I warn you.” “Please yourself. They look like a washboard and a copper stick to me,” sneered the demon. Granny glanced sideways. The corner of the washroom was stacked with kindling wood, with a big heavy sawhorse in front of it. She stared fixedly at the demon and, without looking, brought the stick down hard across the thick timber. The dead silence that followed was broken only by the two perfectly-sliced halves of the sawhorse teetering backwards and forwards and folding slowly into the heap of kindling. The demon’s face remained impassive. “You are allowed three questions,” it said. “Is there something strange at large in the kingdom?” said Granny. It appeared to think about it. “And no lying,” said Magrat earnestly. “Otherwise it’ll be the scrubbing brush for you.” “You mean stranger than usual?” “Get on with it,” said Nanny. “My feet are freezing out here.” “No. There is nothing strange.” “But we felt it—” Magrat began. “Hold on, hold on,” said Granny. Her lips moved soundlessly. Demons were like genies or philosophy professors — if you didn’t word things exactly right, they delighted in giving you absolutely accurate and completely misleading answers. “Is there something in the kingdom that wasn’t there before?” she hazarded. “No.” Tradition said that there could be only three questions. Granny tried to formulate one that couldn’t be deliberately misunderstood. Then she decided that this was playing the wrong kind of game. “What the hell’s going on?” she said carefully. “And no mucking about trying to wriggle out of it, otherwise I’ll boil you.” The demon appeared to hesitate. This was obviously a new approach. “Magrat, just kick that kindling over here, will you?” said Granny. “I protest at this treatment,” said the demon, its voice tinged with uncertainty. “Yes, well, we haven’t got time to bandy legs with you all night,” said Granny. These word games might be all right for wizards, but we’ve got other fish to fry.” “Or boil,” said Nanny. “Look,” said the demon, and now there was a whine of terror in its voice. “We’re not supposed to volunteer information just like that. There are rules, you know.” “There’s some old oil in the can on the shelf, Magrat,” said Nanny. “If I simply tell you—” the demon began. “Yes?” said Granny, encouragingly. “You won’t let on, will you?” it implored. “Not a word,” promised Granny. “Lips are sealed,” said Magrat. “There is nothing new in the kingdom,” said the demon, “but the land has woken up.” “What do you mean?” said Granny. “It’s unhappy. It wants a king that cares for it.” “How—” Magrat began, but Granny waved her into silence. “You don’t mean people, do you?” she said. The glistening head shook. “No, I didn’t think so.” “What—” Nanny began. Granny put a finger to her lips. She turned and walked to the washhouse’s window, a dusty spiderweb graveyard of faded butterfly wings and last summer’s bluebottles. A faint glow beyond the frosted panes suggested that, against all reason, a new day would soon dawn. “Can you tell us why?” she said, without turning round. She’d felt the mind of a whole country . . . She was rather impressed. “I’m just a demon. What do I know? Only what is, not the why and how of it.” “I see.” “May I go now?” “Um?” “Please?” Granny jerked upright again. “Oh. Yes. Run along,” she said distractedly. “Thank you.” The head didn’t move. It hung around, like a hotel porter who has just carried fifteen suitcases up ten flights of stairs, shown everyone where the bathroom is, plumped up the pillows, and feels he has adjusted all the curtains he is going to adjust. “You wouldn’t mind banishing me, would you?” said the demon, when no-one seemed to be taking the hint. “What?” said Granny, who was thinking again. “Only I’d feel better for being properly banished. "Run along" lacks that certain something,” said the head. “Oh. Well, if it gives you any pleasure. Magrat!” “Yes?” said Magrat, startled. Granny tossed the copper stick to her. “Do the honours, will you?” she said. Magrat caught the stick by what she hoped Granny was imagining as the handle, and smiled. “Certainly. Right. Okay. Um. Begone, foul fiend, unto the blackest pit—” The head smiled contentedly as the words rolled over it. This was more like it. It melted back into the waters of the copper like candlewax under a flame. Its last contemptuous comment, almost lost in the swirl, was, “Run aaaalonggg . . .” Granny went home alone as the cold pink light of dawn glided across the snow, and let herself into her cottage. The goats were uneasy in their outhouse. The starlings muttered and rattled their false teeth under the roof. The mice were squeaking behind the kitchen dresser. She made a pot of tea, conscious that every sound in the kitchen seemed slightly louder than it ought to be. When she dropped the spoon into the sink it sounded like a bell being hit with a hammer. She always felt uncomfortable after getting involved in organised magic or, as she would put it, out of sorts with herself. She found herself wandering around the place looking for things to do and then forgetting them when they were half-complete. She paced back and forth across the cold flagstones. It is at times like this that the mind finds the oddest jobs to do in order to avoid its primary purpose, i.e., thinking about things. If anyone had been watching they would have been amazed at the sheer dedication with which Granny tackled such tasks as cleaning the teapot stand, rooting ancient nuts out of the fruit bowl on the dresser, and levering fossilised bread crusts out of the cracks in the flagstones with the back of a teaspoon. Animals had minds. People had minds, although human minds were vague foggy things. Even insects had minds, little pointy bits of light in the darkness of non-mind. Granny considered herself something of an expert on minds. She was pretty certain things like countries didn’t have minds. They weren’t even alive, for goodness sake. A country was, well, was— Hold on. Hold on . . . A thought stole gently into Granny’s mind and sheepishly tried to attract her attention. There was a way in which those brooding forests could have a mind. Granny sat up, a piece of antique loaf in her hand, and gazed speculatively at the fireplace. Her mind’s eye looked through it, out at the snow-filled aisles of trees. Yes. It had never occurred to her before. Of course, it’d be a mind made up of all the other little minds inside it; plant minds, bird minds, bear minds, even the great slow minds of the trees themselves . . . She sat down in her rocking chair, which started to rock all by itself. She’d often thought of the forest as a sprawling creature, but only metterforicaily, as a wizard would put it; drowsy and purring with bumblebees in the summer, roaring and raging in autumn gales, curled in on itself and sleeping in the winter. It occurred to her that in addition to being a collection of other things, the forest was a thing in itself. Alive, only not alive in the way that, say, a shrew was alive. And much slower. That would have to be important. How fast did a forest’s heart beat? Once a year, maybe. Yes, that sounded about right. Out there the forest was waiting for the brighter sun and longer days that would pump a million gallons of sap several hundred feet into the sky in one great systolic thump too big and loud to be heard. And it was at about this point that Granny bit her lip. She’d just thought the word “Systolic”, and it certainly wasn’t in her vocabulary. Somebody was inside her head with her. Some thing. Had she just thought all those thoughts, or had they been thought through her? She glared at the floor, trying to keep her ideas to herself. But her mind was being watched as easily as if her head was made of glass. Granny Weatherwax got to her feet and opened the curtains. And they were out there on what – in warmer months -was the lawn. And every single one of them was staring at her. After a few minutes Granny’s front door opened. This was an event in its own right; like most Ramtoppers Granny lived her life via the back door. There were only three times in your life when it was proper to come through the front door, and you were carried every time. It opened with considerable difficulty, in a series of painful jerks and thumps. A few flakes of paint fell on to the snowdrift in front of the door, which sagged inward. Finally, when it was about halfway open, the door wedged. Granny sidled awkwardly through the gap and out on to the hitherto undisturbed snow. She had put her pointed hat on, and the long black cloak which she wore when she wanted anyone who saw her to be absolutely clear that she was a witch. There was an elderly kitchen chair half buried in snow. In summer it was a handy place to sit and do whatever hand chores were necessary, while keeping one eye on the track. Granny hauled it out, brushed the snow off the seat, and sat down firmly with her knees apart and her arms folded defiantly. She stuck out her chin. The sun was well up but the light on this Hogswatchday was still pink and slanting. It glowed on the great cloud of steam that hung over the assembled creatures. They hadn’t moved, although every now and again one of them would stamp a hoof or scratch itself. Granny looked up at a flicker of movement. She hadn’t noticed before, but every tree around her garden was so heavy with birds that it looked as though a strange brown and black spring had come early. Occupying the patch where the herbs grew in summer were the wolves, sitting or lolling with their tongues hanging out. A contingent of bears was crouched behind them, with a platoon of deer beside them. Occupying the metterforical stalls was a rabble of rabbits, weasels, vermine, badgers, foxes and miscellaneous creatures who, despite the fact that they live their entire lives in a bloody atmosphere of hunter and hunted, killing or being killed by claw, talon and tooth, are generally referred to as woodland folk. They rested together on the snow, their normal culinary relationships entirely forgotten, trying to outstare her. Two things were immediately apparent to Granny. One was that this seemed to represent a pretty accurate cross-section of the forest life. The other she couldn’t help saying aloud. “I don’t know what this spell is,” she said. “But I’ll tell you this for nothing – when it wears off, some of you little buggers had better get moving.” None of them stirred. There was no sound except for an elderly badger relieving itself with an embarrassed expression. “Look,” said Granny. “What can I do about it? It’s no good you coming to me. He’s the new lord. This is his kingdom. I can’t go meddling. It’s not right to go meddling, on account of I can’t interfere with people ruling. It has to sort itself out, good or bad. Fundamental rule of magic, is that. You can’t go round ruling people with spells, because you’d have to use more and more spells all the time.” She sat back, grateful that long-standing tradition didn’t allow the Crafty and the Wise to rule. She remembered what it had felt like to wear the crown, even for a few seconds. No, things like crowns had a troublesome effect on clever folk; it was best to leave all the reigning to the kind of people whose eyebrows met in the middle when they tried to think. In a funny sort of way, they were much better at it. She added, “People have to sort it out for themselves. Well-known fact.” She felt that one of the larger stags was giving her a particularly doubting look. “Yes, well, so he killed the old king,” she conceded. “That’s nature’s way, ain’t it? Your lot know all about this. Survival of the wossname. You wouldn’t know what an heir was, unless you thought it was a sort of rabbit.” She drummed her fingers on her knees. “Anyway, the old king wasn’t much of a friend to you, was he? All that hunting, and such.” Three hundred pairs of dark eyes bored in at her. “It’s no good you all looking at me,” she tried. “I can’t go around mucking about with kings just because you don’t like them. Where would it all end? It’s not as if he’s done me any harm.” She tried to avoid the gaze of a particularly cross-eyed stoat. “All right, so it’s selfish,” she said. “That’s what bein’ a witch is all about. Good day to you.” She stamped inside, and tried to slam the door. It stuck once or twice, which rather spoiled the effect. Once inside she drew the curtains and sat down in the rocking chair and rocked fiercely. “That’s the whole point,” she said. “I can’t go around meddling. That’s the whole point.” The lattys lurched slowly over the rutted roads, towards yet another little city whose name the company couldn’t quite remember and would instantly forget. The winter sun hung low over the damp, misty cabbage fields of the Sto Plains, and the foggy silence magnified the creaking of the wheels. Hwel sat with his stubby legs dangling over the backboard of the last latty. He’d done his best. Vitoller had left the education of Tomjon in his hands; “You’re better at all that business,” he’d said, adding with his usual tact, “Besides, you’re more his height.” But it wasn’t working. “Apple,” he repeated, waving the fruit in the air. Tomjon grinned at him. He was nearly three years old, and hadn’t said a word anyone could understand. Hwel was harbouring dark suspicions about the witches. “But he seems bright enough,” said Mrs Vitoller, who was travelling inside the latty and darning the chain mail. “He knows what things are. He does what he’s told. I just wish you’d speak,” she said softly, patting the boy on the cheek. Hwel gave the apple to Tomjon, who accepted it gravely. “I reckon them witches did you a bad turn, missus,” said the dwarf. “You know. Changelings and whatnot. There used to be a lot of that sort of thing. My great-great-grandmother said it was done to us, once. The fairies swapped a human and a dwarf. We never realised until he started banging his head on things, they say—” “They say this fruit be like unto the world So sweet. Or like, say I, the heart of man So red without and yet within, unclue’d, We find the worm, the rot, the flaw. However glows his bloom the bite Proves many a man be rotten at the core.” The two of them swivelled around to stare at Tomjon, who nodded to them and proceeded to eat the apple. “That was the Worm speech from The Tyrant,” whispered Hwel. His normal grasp of the language temporarily deserted him. “Bloody hell,” he said. “But he sounded just like—” “I’m going to get Vitoller,” said Hwel, and dropped off the tailboard and ran through the frozen puddles to the front of die convoy, where the actor-manager was whistling tunelessly and, yes, strolling. “What ho, b’zugda-hiara[8] ,” he said cheerfully. “You’ve got to come at once! He’s talking!” “Talking?” Hwel jumped up and down. “He’s quoting!” he shouted. “You’ve got to come! He sounds just like—” “Me?” said Vitoller, a few minutes later, after they had pulled the lattys into a grove of leafless trees by the roadside. “Do I sound like that?” “Yes,” chorused the company. Young Willikins, who specialised in female roles, prodded Tomjon gently as he stood on an upturned barrel in the middle of the clearing. “Here, boy, do you know my speech from Please Yourself!” he said. Tomjon nodded. “ "He is not dead, I say, who lies beneath the stone. For if Death could but hear—" “ They listened in awed silence as the endless mists rolled across the dripping fields and the red ball of the sun floated down the sky. When the boy had finished hot tears were streaming down Hwel’s face. “By all the gods,” he said, when Tomjon had finished, “I must have been on damn good form when I wrote that.” He blew his nose noisily. “Do I sound like that?” said Willikins, his face pale. Vitoller patted him gently on the shoulder. “If you sounded like that, my bonny,” he said, “you wouldn’t be standing arse-deep in slush in the middle of these forsaken fields, with nothing but liberated cabbage for thy tea.” He clapped his hands. “No more, no more,” he said, his breath making puffs of steam in the freezing air. “Backs to it, everybody. We must be outside the walls of Sto Lat by sunset.” As the grumbling actors awoke from the spell and wandered back to the shafts of the lattys Vitoller beckoned to the dwarf and put his arm around his shoulders, or rather around the top of his head. “Well?” he said. “You people know all about magic, or so it is said. What do you make of it?” “He spends all his time around the stage, master. It’s only natural that he should pick things up,” said Hwel vaguely. Vitoller leaned down. “Do you believe that?” “I believe I heard a voice that took my doggerel and shaped it and fired it back through my ears and straight into my heart,” said Hwel simply. “I believe I heard a voice that got behind the crude shape of the words and said the things I had meant them to say, but had not the skill to achieve. Who knows where such things come from?” He stared impassively into Vitoller’s red face. “He may have inherited it from his father,” he said. “But-” “And who knows what witches may achieve?” said the dwarf. Vitoller felt his wife’s hand pushed into his. As he stood up, bewildered and angry, she kissed him on the back of the neck. “Don’t torture yourself,” she said. “Isn’t it all for the best? Your son has declaimed his first word.” Spring came, and ex-King Verence still wasn’t taking being dead lying down. He prowled the castle relentlessly, seeking for a way in which its ancient stones would release their grip on him. He was also trying to keep out of the way of the other ghosts. Champot was all right, if a bit tiresome. But Verence had backed away at the first sight of the Twins, toddling hand in hand along the midnight corridors, their tiny ghosts a memorial to a deed darker even than the usual run of regicidal unpleasantness. And then there was the Troglodyte Wanderer, a rather faded monkeyman in a furry loincloth who apparently happened to haunt the castle merely because it had been built on his burial mound. For no obvious reason a chariot with a screaming woman in it occasionally rumbled through the laundry room. As for the kitchen . . . One day he’d given in, despite everything old Champot had said, and had followed the smells of cooking into the big, hot, high domed cavern that served the castle as kitchen and abattoir. Funny thing, that. He’d never been down there since his childhood. Somehow kings and kitchens didn’t go well together. It was full of ghosts. But they weren’t human. They weren’t even proto-human. They were stags. They were bullocks. They were rabbits, and pheasants, and partridges, and sheep, and pigs. There were even some round blobby things that looked unpleasantly like the ghosts of oysters. They were packed so tightly that in fact they merged and mingled, turning the kitchen into a silent, jostling nightmare of teeth and fur and horns, half-seen and misty. Several noticed him, and there was a weird blarting of noises that sounded far-off, tinny and unpleasantly out of register. Through them all the cook and his assistants wandered quite unconcernedly, making vegetarian sausages. Verence had stared for half a minute and then fled, wishing that he still had a real stomach so that he could stick his fingers down his throat for forty years and bring up everything he’d eaten. He’d sought solace in the stables, where his beloved hunting dogs had whined and scratched at the door and had generally been very ill-at-ease at his sensed but unseen presence. Now he haunted – and how he hated the word – the Long Gallery, where paintings of long-dead kings looked down at him from the dusty shadows. He would have felt a lot more kindly towards them if he hadn’t met a number of them gibbering in various parts of the premises. Verence had decided that he had two aims in death. One was to get out of the castle and find his son, and the other was to get his revenge on the duke. But not by killing him, he’d decided, even if he could find a way, because an eternity in that giggling idiot’s company would lend a new terror to death. He sat under a painting of Queen Bemery (670-722), whose rather stern good looks he would have felt a whole lot happier about if he hadn’t seen her earlier that morning walking through the wall. Verence tried to avoid walking through walls. A man had his dignity. He became aware that he was being watched. He turned his head. There was a cat sitting in the doorway, subjecting him to a slow blink. It was a mottled grey and extremely fat . . . No. It was extremely big. It was covered with so much scar tissue that it looked like a fist with fur on it. Its ears were a couple of perforated stubs, its eyes two yellow slits of easygoing malevolence, its tail a twitching series of question marks as it stared at him. Greebo had heard that Lady Felmet had a small white female cat and had strolled up to pay his respects. Verence had never seen an animal with so much built-in villainy. He didn’t resist as it waddled across the floor and tried to rub itself against his legs, purring like a waterfall. “Well, well,” said the king, vaguely. He reached down and made an effort to scratch it behind the two ragged bits on top of its head. It was a relief to find someone else besides another ghost who could see him, and Greebo, he couldn’t help feeling, was a distinctly unusual cat. Most of the castle cats were either pampered pets or flat-eared kitchen and stable habitue’s who generally resembled the very rodents they lived on. This cat, on the other hand, was its own animal. All cats give that impression, of course, but instead of the mindless animal self-absorption that passes for secret wisdom in the creatures. Greebo radiated genuine intelligence. He also radiated a smell that would have knocked over a wall and caused sinus trouble in a dead fox. Only one type of person kept a cat like this. The king tried to hunker down, and found he was sinking slightly into the floor. He pulled himself together and drifted upwards. Once a man allowed himself to go native in the ethereal world there would be no hope for him, he felt. Only close relatives and the psychically inclined, Death had said. There weren’t many of either in the castle. The duke qualified under the first heading, but his relentless self-interest made him about as psychically useful as a carrot. As for the rest, only the cook and the Fool seemed to qualify, but the cook spent a lot of his time weeping in the pantry because he wasn’t being allowed to roast anything more bloody than a parsnip and the Fool was already such a bundle of nerves that Verence had given up his attempts to get through. A witch, now. If a witch wasn’t psychically inclined, then he, King Verence, was a puff of wind. He had to get a witch into the castle. And then . . . He’d got a plan. In fact, it was more than that; it was a Plan. He spent months over it. He hadn’t got anything else to do, except think. Death had been right about that. All that ghosts had were thoughts, and although thoughts in general had always been alien to the king the absence of any body to distract him with its assorted humours had actually given him the chance to savour the joys of cerebration. He’d never had a Plan before, or at least one that went much further than “Let’s find something and kill it”. And here, sitting in front of him washing itself, was the key. “Here, pussy,” he ventured. Greebo gave him a penetrating yellow stare. “Cat,” the king amended hastily, and backed away, beckoning. For a moment it seemed that the cat wouldn’t follow and then, to his relief, Greebo stood up, yawned, and padded towards him. Greebo didn’t often see ghosts, and was vaguely interested in this tall, bearded man with the see-through body. The king led him along a dusty side corridor and towards a lumber room crammed with crumbling tapestries and portraits of long-dead kings. Greebo examined it critically, and then sat down in the middle of the dusty floor, looking at the king expectantly. “There’s plenty of mice and things in here, d”you see,” said Verence. “And the rain blows in through the broken window. Plus there’s all these tapestries to sleep on.” “Sorry,” the king added, and turned to the door. This was what he had been working on all these months. When he was alive he had always taken a lot of care of his body, and since being dead he had taken care to preserve its shape. It was too easy to let yourself go and become all fuzzy around the edges; there were ghosts in the castle who were mere pale blobs. But Verence had wielded iron self-control and exercised – well, had thought hard about exercise – and fairly bulged with spectral muscles. Months of pumping ectoplasm had left him in better shape than he had ever been, apart from being dead. Then he’d started out small, with dust motes. The first one had nearly killed him[9], but he’d persevered and progressed to sand grains, then whole dried peas; he still didn’t dare venture into the kitchens, but he had amused himself by oversalting Felmet’s food a pinch at a time until he pulled himself together and told himself that poisoning wasn’t honourable, even against vermin. Now he leaned all his weight on the door, and with every microgramme of his being forced himself to become as heavy as possible. The sweat of auto-suggestion dripped off his nose and vanished before it hit the floor. Greebo watched with interest as ghostly muscles moved on the king’s arms like footballs mating. The door began to move, creaked, then accelerated and hit the doorway with a thump. The latch clicked into place. It bloody well had to work now, Verence told himself. He’d never be able to lift the latch by himself. But a witch would certainly come looking for her cat – wouldn’t she? In the hills beyond the castle the Fool lay on his stomach and stared into the depths of a little lake. A couple of trout stared back at him. Somewhere on the Disc, reason told him, there must be someone more miserable than he was. He wondered who it was. He hadn’t asked to be a Fool, but it wouldn’t have mattered if he had, because he couldn’t recall anyone in his family ever listening to anything he said after Dad ran away. Certainly not Grandad. His earliest memory was of Grandad standing over him making him repeat the jokes by rote, and hammering home every punchline with his belt; it was thick leather, and the fact that it had bells on didn’t improve things much. Grandad was credited with seven official new jokes. He’d won the honorary cap and bells of the Grand Prix des Idiots Blithering at Ankh-Morpork four years in a row, which no-one else had ever done, and presumably they made him the funniest man who ever lived. He had worked hard at it, you had to give him that. The Fool recalled with a shudder how, at the age of six, he’d timidly approached the old man after supper with a joke he’d made up. It was about a duck. It had earned him the biggest thrashing of his life, which even then must have presented the old joker with a bit of a challenge. “You will learn, my lad—” he recalled, with every sentence punctuated by jingling cracks – “that there is nothing more serious than jesting. From now on you will never—” the old man paused to change hands – “never, never, ever utter a joke that has not been approved by the Guild. Who are you to decide what is amusing? Marry, let the untutored giggle at unskilled banter; it is the laughter of the ignorant. Never. Never. Never let me catch you joculating again.” After that he’d gone back to learning the three hundred and eighty-three Guild-approved jokes, which was bad enough, and the glossary, which was a lot bigger and much worse. And then he’d been sent to Ankh, and there, in the bare, severe rooms, he’d found there were books other than the great heavy brass-bound Monster Fun Book . There was a whole circular world out there, full of weird places and people doing interesting things, like . . . Singing. He could hear singing. He raised his head cautiously, and jumped at the tinkle of the bells on his cap. He gripped the hated things hurriedly. The singing went on. The Fool peeped cautiously through the drift of meadowsweet that was providing him with perfect concealment. The singing wasn’t particularly good. The only word the singer appeared to know was “la”, but she was making it work hard. The general tune gave the impression that the singer believed that people were supposed to sing “lalala” in certain circumstances, and was determined to do what the world expected of her. The Fool risked raising his head a little further, and saw Magrat for the first time. She had stopped dancing rather self-consciously through the narrow meadow and was trying to plait some daisies in her hair, without much success. The Fool held his breath. On long nights on the hard flagstones he had dreamed of women like her. Although, if he really thought about it, not much like her; they were better endowed around the chest, their noses weren’t so red and pointed, and their hair tended to flow more. But the Fool’s libido was bright enough to tell the difference between the impossible and the conceivably attainable, and hurriedly cut in some filter circuits. Magrat was picking flowers and talking to them. The Fool strained to hear. “Here’s Woolly Fellwort,” she said. “And Treacle Worm-seed, which is for inflammation of the ears . . .” Even Nanny Ogg, who took a fairly cheerful view of the world, would have been hard put to say anything complimentary about Magrat’s voice. But it fell on the Fool’s ears like blossom. “. . . and Five-leaved False Mandrake, sovereign against fluxes of the bladder. Ah, and here’s Old Man’s Frogbit. That’s for constipation.” The Fool stood up sheepishly, in a carillon of jingles. To Magrat it was as if the meadow, hitherto supporting nothing more hazardous than clouds of pale blue butterflies and a few self-employed bumblebees, had sprouted a large red-and-yellow demon. It was opening and shutting its mouth. It had three menacing horns. An urgent voice at the back of her mind said: You should run away now, like a timid gazelle; this is the accepted action in these circumstances. Common sense intervened. In her most optimistic moments Magrat would not have compared herself to a gazelle, timid or otherwise. Besides, it added, the basic snag about running away like a timid gazelle was that in all probability she would easily outdistance him. “Er,” said the apparition. Uncommon sense, which, despite Granny Weatherwax’s general belief that Magrat was several sticks short of a bundle, she still had in sufficiency, pointed out that few demons tinkled pathetically and appeared to be quite so breathless. “Hallo,” she said. The Fool’s mind was also working hard. He was beginning to panic. Magrat shunned the traditional pointed hat, as worn by the older witches, but she still held to one of the most fundamental rules of witchcraft. It’s not much use being a witch unless you look like one. In her case this meant lots of silver jewellery with octograms, bats, spiders, dragons and other symbols of everyday mysticism; Magrat would have painted her fingernails black, except that she didn’t think she would be able to face Granny’s withering scorn. It was dawning on the Fool that he had surprised a witch. “Whoops,” he said, and turned to run for it. “Don’t—” Magrat began, but the Fool was already pounding down the forest path that led back to the castle. Magrat stood and stared at the wilting posy in her hands. She ran her fingers through her hair and a shower of wilted petals fell out. She felt that an important moment had been allowed to slip out of her grasp as fast as a greased pig in a narrow passageway. She felt an overpowering urge to curse. She knew a great many curses. Goodie Whemper had been really imaginative in that department; even the creatures of the forest used to go past her cottage at a dead run. She couldn’t find a single one that fully expressed her feelings. “Oh, bugger,” she said. It was a full moon again that night, and most unusually all three witches arrived at the standing stone early; it was so embarrassed by this that it went and hid in some gorse bushes. “Greebo hasn’t been home for two days,” said Nanny Ogg, as soon as she arrived. “It’s not like him. I can’t find him anywhere.” “Cats can look after themselves,” said Granny Weatherwax. “Countries can’t. I have intelligence to report. Light the fire, Magrat.” “Mmm?” “I said, light the fire, Magrat.” “Mmm? Oh. Yes.” The two old women watched her drift vaguely across the moorland, tugging absently at dried-up whin clumps. Magrat seemed to have her mind on something. “Doesn’t seem to be her normal self,” said Nanny Ogg. “Yes. Could be an improvement,” said Granny shortly, and sat down on a rock. “She should of got it lit before we arrived. It’s her job.” “She means well,” said Nanny Ogg, studying Magrat’s back reflectively. “I used to mean well when I was a girl, but that didn’t stop the sharp end of Goodie Filter’s tongue. Youngest witch serves her time, you know how it is. We had it tougher, too. Look at her. Doesn’t even wear the pointy hat. How’s anyone going to know?” “You got something on your mind, Esme?” said Nanny. Granny nodded gloomily. “Had a visit yesterday,” she said. “Me too.” Despite her worries, Granny was slightly annoyed at this. “Who from?” she said. “The mayor of Lancre and a bunch of burghers. They’re not happy about the king. They want a king they can trust.” “I wouldn’t trust any king a burgher could trust,” said Granny. “Yes, but it’s not good for anyone, all this taxing and killing folk. The new sergeant they’ve got is a keen man when it comes to setting fire to cottages, too. Old Verence used to do it too, mind, but . . . well . . .” “I know, I know. It was more personal,” said Granny. “You felt he meant it. People like to feel they’re valued.” “This Felmet hates the kingdom,” Nanny went on. “They all say it. They say when they go to talk to him he just stares at them and giggles and rubs his hand and twitches a bit.” Granny scratched her chin. “The old king used to shout at them and kick them out of the castle, mind. He used to say he didn’t have no time for shopkeepers and such,” she added, with a note of personal approval. “But he was always very gracious about it,” said Nanny Ogg. “And he—” “The kingdom is worried,” said Granny. “Yes, I already said.” “I didn’t mean the people, I meant the kingdom.” Granny explained. Nanny interrupted a few times with brief questions. It didn’t occur to her to doubt anything she heard. Granny Weatherwax never made things up. At the end of it she said, “Well.” “My feelings exactly.” “Fancy that.” “Quite so.” “And what did the animals do then?” “Went away. It had brought them there, it let them go.” “No one et anyone else?” “Not where I saw.” “Funny thing.” “Right enough.” Nanny Ogg stared at the setting sun. “I don’t reckon a lot of kingdoms do that sort of thing,” she said. “You saw the theatre. Kings and such are killing one another the whole time. Their kingdoms just make the best of it. How come this one takes offence all of a sudden?” “It’s been here a long time,” said Granny. “So’s everywhere,” said Nanny, and added, with the air of a lifetime student, “Everywhere’s been where it is ever since it was first put there. It’s called geography.” “That’s just about land,” said Granny. “It’s not the same as a kingdom. A kingdom is made up of-all sorts of things. Ideas. Loyalties. Memories. It all sort of exists together. And then all these things create some kind of life. Not a body kind of life, more like a living idea. Made up of everything that’s alive and what they’re thinking. And what the people before them thought.” Magrat reappeared and began to lay the fire with the air of one in a trance. “I can see you’ve been thinking about this a lot,” said Nanny, speaking very slowly and carefully. “And this kingdom wants a better king, is that it?” “No! That is, yes. Look—” she leaned forward – “it doesn’t have the same kind of likes and dislikes as people, right?” Nanny Ogg leaned back. “Well, it wouldn’t, would it,” she ventured. “It doesn’t care if people are good or bad. I don’t think it could even tell, any more than you could tell if an ant was a good ant. But it expects the king to care for it.” “Yes, but,” said Nanny wretchedly. She was becoming a bit afraid of the gleam in Granny’s eye. “Lots of people have killed each other to become king of Lancre. They’ve done all kinds of murder.” “Don’t matter! Don’t matter!” said Granny, waving her arms. She started counting on her fingers. “For why,” she said. “One, kings go round killing each other because it’s all part of destiny and such and doesn’t count as murder, and two, they killed for the kingdom. That’s the important bit. But this new man just wants the power. He hates the kingdom.” “It’s a bit like a dog, really,” said Magrat. Granny looked at her with her mouth open to frame some suitable retort, and then her face softened. “Very much like,” she said. “A dog doesn’t care if its master’s good or bad, just so long as it likes the dog.” “Well, then,” said Nanny. “No-one and nothing likes Felmet. What are we going to do about it?” “Nothing. You know we can’t meddle.” “You saved that baby,” said Nanny. “That’s not meddling!” “Have it your way,” said Nanny. “But maybe one day he’ll come back. Destiny again. And you said we should hide the crown. It’ll all come back, mark my words. Hurry up with that tea, Magrat.” “What are you going to do about the burghers?” said Granny. “I told them they’ll have to sort it out themselves. Once we use magic, I said, it’d never stop. You know that.” “Right,” said Granny, but there was a hint of wistfulness in her voice. “I’ll tell you this, though,” said Nanny. “They didn’t like it much. They was muttering when they left.” Magrat blurted out, “You know the Fool, who lives up at the castle?” “Little man with runny eyes?” said Nanny, relieved that the conversation had returned to more normal matters. “Not that little,” said Magrat. “What’s his name, do you happen to know?” “He’s just called Fool,” said Granny. “No job for a man, that. Running around with bells on.” “His mother was a Beldame, from over Blackglass way,” said Nanny Ogg, whose knowledge of the genealogy of Lancre was legendary. “Bit of a beauty when she was younger. Broke many a heart, she did. Bit of a scandal there, I did hear. Granny’s right, though. At the end of the day, a Fool’s a Fool.” “Why d’you want to know, Magrat?” said Granny Weather-wax. “Oh . . . one of the girls in the village was asking me,” said Magrat, crimson to the ears. Nanny cleared her throat, and grinned at Granny Weatherwax, who sniffed aloofly. “It’s a steady job,” said Nanny. “I’ll grant you that.” “Huh,” said Granny. “A man who tinkles all day. No kind of husband for anyone, I’d say.” “You – she’d always know where he was,” said Nanny, who was enjoying this. “You’d just have to listen.” “Never trust a man with horns on his hat,” said Granny flatly. Magrat stood up and pulled herself together, giving the impression that some bits had to come quite a long way. “You’re a pair of silly old women,” she said quietly. “And I’m going home.” She marched off down the path to her village without another word. The old witches stared at one another. “Well!” said Nanny. “It’s all these books they read today,” said Granny. “It overheats the brain. You haven’t been putting ideas in her head, have you?” “What do you mean?” “You know what I mean.” Nanny stood up. “I certainly don’t see why a girl should have to be single her whole life just because you think it’s the right thing,” she said. “Anyway, if people didn’t have children, where would we be?” “None of your girls is a witch,” said Granny, also standing up. “They could have been,” said Nanny defensively. “Yes, if you’d let them work it out for themselves, instead of encouragin’ them to throw themselves at men.” “They’re good-lookin’. You can’t stand in the way of human nature. You’d know that if you’d ever—” “If I’d ever what?” said Granny Weatherwax, quietly. They stared at one another in shocked silence. They could both feel it, the tension creeping into their bodies from the ground itself, the hot, aching feeling that they’d started something they must finish, no matter what. “I knew you when you were a gel,” said Nanny sullenly. “Stuck-up, you were.” “At least I spent most of the time upright,” said Granny. “Disgustin’, that was. Everyone thought so.” “How would you know?” snapped Nanny. “You were the talk of the whole village,” said Granny. “And you were, too! They called you the Ice Maiden. Never knew that, did you?” sneered Nanny. “I wouldn’t sully my lips by sayin’ what they called you,” shouted Granny. “Oh yes?” shrieked Nanny. “Well, let me tell you, my good woman—” “Don’t you dare talk to me in that tone of voice! I’m not anyone’s good woman—” “Right!” There was another silence while they stared at one another, nose to nose, but this silence was a whole quantum level of animosity higher than the last one; you could have roasted a turkey in the heat of this silence. There was no more shouting. Things had got far too bad for shouting. Now the voices came in low and full of menace. “I should have known better than to listen to Magrat,” growled Granny. “This coven business is ridiculous. It attracts entirely the wrong sort of people.” “I’m very glad we had this little talk,” hissed Nanny Ogg. “Cleared the air.” She looked down. “And you’re in my territory, madam.” “Madam!” Thunder rolled in the distance. The permanent Lancre storm, after a trip through the foothills, had drifted back towards the mountains for a one-night stand. The last rays of sunset shone livid through the clouds, and fat drops of water began to thud on the witches’ pointed hats. “I really don’t have time for all this,” snapped Granny, trembling. “I have far more important things to do.” “And me,” said Nanny. “Good night to you.” “And you.” They turned their backs on one another and strode away into the downpour. The midnight rain drummed on Magrat’s curtained windows as she thumbed her way purposefully through Goodie Whemper’s books of what, for want of any better word, could be called natural magic. The old woman had been a great collector of such things and, most unusually, had written them down; witches didn’t normally have much use for literacy. But book after book was filled with tiny, meticulous handwriting detailing the results of patient experiments in applied magic. Goodie Whemper had, in fact, been a research witch.[10] Magrat was looking up love spells. Every time she shut her eyes she saw a red-and-yellow figure on the darkness inside. Something had to be done about it. She shut the book with a snap and looked at her notes. First, she had to find out his name. The old peel-the-apple trick should do that. You just peeled an apple, getting one length of peel, and threw the peel behind you; it’d land in the shape of his name. Millions of girls had tried it and had inevitably been disappointed, unless the loved one was called Scscs. That was because they hadn’t used an unripe Sunset Wonder picked three minutes before noon on the first frosty day in the autumn and peeled left-handedly using a silver knife with a blade less than half an inch wide; Goodie had done a lot of experimenting and was quite explicit on the subject. Magrat always kept a few by for emergencies, and this probably was one. She took a deep breath, and threw the peel over her shoulder. She turned slowly. I’m a witch, she told herself. This is just another spell. There’s nothing to be frightened of. Get a grip of yourself, girl. Woman. She looked down, and bit the back of her hand out of nervousness and embarrassment. “Who’d have thought it?” she said aloud. It had worked. She turned back to her notes, her heart fluttering. What was next? Ah, yes – gathering fern seed in a silk handkerchief at dawn. Goodie Whemper’s tiny handwriting went on for two pages of detailed botanical instructions which, if carefully followed, resulted in the kind of love potion that had to be kept in a tightly-stoppered jar at the bottom of a bucket of iced water. Magrat pulled open her back door. The thunder had passed, but now the first grey light of the new day was drowned in a steady drizzle. But it still qualified as dawn, and Magrat was determined. Brambles tugging at her dress, her hair plastered against her head by the rain, she set out into the dripping forest. The trees shook, even without a breeze. Nanny Ogg was also out early. She hadn’t been able to get any sleep anyway, and besides, she was worried about Greebo. Greebo was one of her few blind spots. While intellectually she would concede that he was indeed a fat, cunning, evil-smelling multiple rapist, she nevertheless instinctively pictured him as the small fluffy kitten he had been decades before. The fact that he had once chased a female wolf up a tree and seriously surprised a she-bear who had been innocently digging for roots didn’t stop her worrying that something bad might happen to him. It was generally considered by everyone else in the kingdom that the only thing that might slow Greebo down was a direct meteorite strike. Now she was using a bit of elementary magic to follow his trail, although anyone with a sense of smell could have managed it. It had led her through the damp streets and to the open gates of the castle. She gave the guards a nod as she went through. It didn’t occur to either of them to stop her because witches, like beekeepers and big gorillas, went where they liked. In any case, an elderly lady banging a bowl with a spoon was probably not the spearhead of an invasion force. Life as a castle guard in Lancre was extremely boring. One of them, leaning on his spear as Nanny went past, wished there could be some excitement in his job. He will shortly learn the error of his ways. The other guard pulled himself together, and saluted. “Mornin’, Mum.” “Mornin’, our Shawn,” said Nanny, and set off across the inner courtyard. Like all witches Nanny Ogg had an aversion to front doors. She went around the back and entered the keep via the kitchens. A couple of maids curtsied to her. So did the head housekeeper, whom Nanny Ogg vaguely recognised as a daughter-in-law, although she couldn’t remember her name. And so it was that when Lord Felmet came out of his bedroom he saw, coming along the passage towards him, a witch. There was no doubt about it. From the tip of her pointed hat to her boots, she was a witch. And she was coming for him. Magrat slid helplessly down a bank. She was soaked to the skin and covered in mud. Somehow, she thought bitterly, when you read these spells you always think of it being a fine sunny morning in late spring. And she had forgotten to check what bloody kind of bloody fern it bloody was. A tree tipped a load of raindrops on to her. Magrat pushed her sodden hair out of her eyes and sat down heavily on a fallen log, from which grew great clusters of pale and embarrassing fungus. It had seemed such a lovely idea. She’d had great hopes of the coven. She was sure it wasn’t right to be a witch alone, you could get funny ideas. She’d dreamed of wise discussions of natural energies while a huge moon hung in the sky, and then possibly they’d try a few of the old dances described in some of Goodie Whemper’s books. Not actually naked, or sky clad as it was rather delightfully called, because Magrat had no illusions about the shape of her own body and the older witches seemed solid across the hems, and anyway that wasn’t absolutely necessary. The books said that the old-time witches had sometimes danced in their shifts. Magrat had wondered about how you danced in shifts. Perhaps there wasn’t room for them all to dance at once, she’d thought. What she hadn’t expected was a couple of crochety old women who were barely civil at the best of times and simply didn’t enter into the spirit of things. Oh, they’d been kind to the baby, in their own way, but she couldn’t help feeling that if a witch was kind to someone it was entirely for deeply selfish reasons. And when they did magic, they made it look as ordinary as housekeeping. They didn’t wear any occult jewellery. Magrat was a great believer in occult jewellery. It was all going wrong. And she was going home. She stood up, wrapped her damp dress around her, and set off through the misty woods . . . . . . and heard the running feet. Someone was coming through them at high speed, without caring who heard him. and over the top of the sound of breaking twigs was a curious dull jingling. Magrat sidled behind a dripping holly bush and peered cautiously through the leaves. It was Shawn, the youngest of Nanny Ogg’s sons, and the metal noise was caused by his suit of chain mail, which was several sizes too big for him. Lancre is a poor kingdom, and over the centuries the chain mail of the palace guards has had to be handed down from one generation to another, often on the end of a long stick. This one made him look like a bulletproof bloodhound. She stepped out in front of him. “Is that you, Mss Magrat?” said Shawn, raising the flap of mail that covered his eyes. “It’s mam!” “What’s happened to her?” “He’s locked her up! Said she was coming to poison him! And I can’t get down to the dungeons to see because there’s all new guards! They say she’s been put in chains—” Shawn frowned – “and that means something horrible’s going to happen. You know what she’s like when she loses her temper. We’ll never hear the last of it, miz.” “Where were you going?” demanded Magrat. “To fetch our Jason and our Wane and our Darron and our—” “Wait a moment.” “Oh, Mss Magrat, suppose they try to torture her? You know what a tongue she’s got on her when she gets angry—” “I’m thinking,” said Magrat. “He’s put his own bodyguards on the gates and everything—” “Look, just shut up a minute, will you, Shawn?” “When our Jason finds out, he’s going to give the duke a real seeing-to, miz. He says it’s about time someone did.” Nanny Ogg’s Jason was a young man with the build and, Magrat had always thought, the brains of a herd of oxen. Thick-skinned though he was, she doubted whether he could survive a hail of arrows. “Don’t tell him yet,” she said thoughtfully. “There could be another way . . .” “I’ll go and find Granny Weatherwax, shall I, miz?” said Shawn, hopping from one leg to another. “S he’ll know what to do, she’s a witch.” Magrat stood absolutely still. She had thought she was angry before, but now she was furious. She was wet and cold and hungry and this person – once upon a time, she heard herself thinking, she would have burst into tears at this point. “Oops,” said Shawn. “Um. I didn’t mean. Whoops. Um . . .” He backed away. “If you happen to see Granny Weatherwax,” said Magrat slowly, in tones that should have etched her words into glass, “you can tell her that I will sort it all out. Now go away before I turn you into a frog. You look like one anyway.” She turned, hitched up her skirts, and ran like hell towards her cottage. Lord Felmet was one of nature’s gloaters. He was good at it. “Quite comfortable, are we?” he said. Nanny Ogg considered this. “Apart from these stocks, you mean?” she said. “I am impervious to your foul blandishments,” said the duke. “I scorn your devious wiles. You are to be tortured, I’ll have you know.” This didn’t appear to have the required effect. Nanny was staring around the dungeon with the vaguely interested gaze of a sightseer. “And then you will be burned,” said the duchess. “Okay,” said Nanny. “Okay?” “Well, it’s bloody freezing down here. What’s that big wardrobe thing with the spikes?” The duke was trembling. “Aha,” he said. “Now you realise, eh? That, my dear lady, is an Iron Maiden. It’s the latest thing. Well may you—” “Can I have a go in it?” “Your pleas fall on deaf . . . “ The duke’s voice trailed off. His twitch started up. The duchess leaned forward until her big red face was inches away from Nanny’s nose. “This insouciance gives you pleasure,” she hissed, “but soon you will laugh on the other side of your face!” “It’s only got this side,” said Nanny. The duchess fingered a tray of implements lovingly. “We shall see,” she said, picking up a pair of pliers. “And you need not think any others of your people will come to your aid,” said the duke, who was sweating despite the chill. “We alone hold the keys to this dungeon. Ha ha. You will be an example to all those who have been spreading malicious rumours about me. Do not protest your innocence! I hear the voices all the time, lying . . . “ The duchess gripped him ferociously by the arm. “Enough,” she rasped. “Come, Leonal. We will let her reflect on her fate for a while.” “. . .the faces . . . wicked lies . . . I wasn’t there, and anyway he fell . . . my porridge, all salty . . .” murmured the duke, swaying. The door slammed behind them. There was a click of locks and a thudding of bolts. Nanny was left alone in the gloom. A flickering torch high on the wall only made the surrounding darkness more forbidding. Strange metal shapes, designed for no more exalted purpose than the destruct-testing of the human body, cast unpleasant shadows. Nanny Ogg stirred in her chains. “All right,” she said. “I can see you. Who are you?” King Verence stepped forward. “I saw you making faces behind him,” said Nanny Ogg. “All I could do to keep a straight face myself.” “I wasn’t making faces, woman, I was scowling.” Nanny squinted. “Ere, I know you,” she said. “You’re dead.” “I prefer the term "passed over",” said the king. “I’d bow[11],” said Nanny. “Only there’s all these chains and things. You haven’t seen a cat around here, have you?” “Yes. He’s in the room upstairs, asleep.” Nanny appeared to relax. “That’s all right, then,” she said. “I was beginning to worry.” She stared around the dungeon again. “What’s that big bed thing over there?” “The rack,” said the king, and explained its use. Nanny Ogg nodded. “What a busy little mind he’s got,” she said. “I fear, madam, that I may be responsible for your present predicament,” said Verence, sitting down on or at least just above a handy anvil. “I wished to attract a witch.” “I suppose you’re no good at locks?” “I fear they would be beyond my capabilities as yet . . . but surely—” the ghost of the king waved a hand in a vague gesture which encompassed the dungeon, Nanny and the manacles – “to a witch all this is just so much—” “Solid iron,” said Nanny. “You might be able to walk through it, but I can’t.” “I didn’t realise,” said Verence. “I thought witches could do magic.” “Young man,” said Nanny, “you will oblige me by shutting up.” “Madam! I am a king!” “You are also dead, so I wouldn’t aspire to hold any opinions if I was you. Now just be quiet and wait, like a good boy.” Against all his instincts, the king found himself obeying. There was no gainsaying that tone of voice. It spoke to him across the years, from his days in the nursery. Its echoes told him that if he didn’t eat it all up he would be sent straight to bed. Nanny Ogg stirred in her chains. She hoped they would turn up soon. “Er,” said the king uneasily. “I feel I owe you an explanation . . .” “Thank you,” said Granny Weatherwax, and because Shawn seemed to be expecting it, added, “You’ve been a good boy.” “Yes’m,” said Shawn. “M’m?” “Was there something else?” Shawn twisted the end of his chain-mail vest out of embarrassment. “It’s not true what everyone’s been saying about our mam, is it, m’m?” he said. “She doesn’t go round putting evil curses on folk. Except for Daviss the butcher. And old Cakebread, after he kicked her cat. But they wasn’t what you’d call real curses, was they, m’m?” “You can stop calling me m’m.” “Yes, m’m.” “They’ve been saying that, have they?” “Yes, m’m.” “Well, your mam does upset people sometimes.” Shawn hopped from one leg to another. “Yes, m’m, but they says terrible things about you, m’m, savin’ your presence, m’m.” Granny stiffened. “What things?” “Don’t like to say, m’m.” “What things?” Shawn considered his next move. There weren’t many choices. “A lot of things what aren’t true, m’m,” he said, establishing his credentials as early as possible. “All sorts of things. Like, old Verence was a bad king and you helped him on the throne, and you caused that bad winter the other year, and old Norbut’s cow dint give no milk after you looked at it. Lot of lies, m’m,” he added, loyally. “Right,” said Granny. She shut the door in his panting face, stood in thought for a moment, and retired to her rocking chair. Eventually she said, once more, “Right.” A little later she added, “She’s a daft old besom, but we can’t have people going round doing things to witches. Once you’ve lost your respect, you ain’t got a thing. I don’t remember looking at old Norbut’s cow. Who’s old Norbut?” She stood up, took her pointed hat from its hook behind the door and, glaring into the mirror, skewered it in place with a number of ferocious hatpins. They slid on one by one by one, as unstoppable as the wrath of God. She vanished into the outhouse for a moment and came back with her witch’s cloak, which served as a blanket for sick goats when not otherwise employed. Once upon a time it had been black velvet; now it was just black. It was carefully and slowly fastened by a tarnished silver brooch. No samurai, no questing knight, was ever dressed with as much ceremony. Finally Granny drew herself up, surveyed her dark reflection in the glass, gave a thin little smile of approval, and left via the back door. The air of menace was only slightly dispelled by the sound of her running up and down outside, trying to get her broomstick started. Magrat was also regarding herself in the mirror. She’d dug out a startlingly green dress that was designed to be both revealing and clinging, and would have been if Magrat had anything to display or cling to, so she’d shoved a couple of rolled-up stockings down the front in an effort to make good the more obvious deficiencies. She had also tried a spell on her hair, but it was naturally magic-resistant and already the natural shape was beginning to assert itself (a dandelion clock at about 2pm). Magrat had also tried makeup. This wasn’t an unqualified success. She didn’t have much practice. She was beginning to wonder if she’d overdone the eyeshadow. Her neck, fingers and arms between them carried enough silverware to make a full-sized dinner service, and over everything she had thrown a black cloak lined with red silk. In a certain light and from a carefully chosen angle, Magrat was not unattractive. Whether any of these preparations did anything for her is debatable, but they did mean that a thin veneer of confidence overlaid her trembling heart. She drew herself up and turned this way and that. The clusters of amulets, magical jewellery and occult bangles on various parts of her body jingled together; any enemy wouldn’t only have to be blind to fail to notice that a witch was approaching, he’d have to be deaf as well. She turned to her worktable and examined what she rather self-consciously, and never in Granny’s hearing, called her Tools of the Craft. There was the white-handled knife, used in the preparation of magical ingredients. There was the black-handled knife, used in the magical workings themselves; Magrat had carved so many runes into its handle it was in constant danger of falling in half. They were undoubtedly powerful, but . . . Magrat shook her head regretfully, went over to the kitchen dresser and took out the breadknife. Something told her that at times like these a good sharp breadknife was probably the best friend a girl could have. “I spy, with my little eye,” said Nanny Ogg, “Something beginning with P.” The ghost of the king stared wearily around the dungeons. “Pliers,” he suggested. “No.” “Pilliwinks?” “That’s a pretty name. What is it?” “It’s a kind of thumbscrew. Look,” said the king. “It’s not that,” said Nanny. “Choke-pear?” he said desperately. “That’s a C, and anyway I don’t know what it is,” said Nanny Ogg. The king obligingly indicated it on the tray, and explained its use. “Definitely not,” said Nanny. “Smouldering Boot of Punishment?” said the king. “You’re a bit too good at these names,” said Nanny sharply. “You sure you didn’t use them when you were alive?” “Absolutely, Nanny,” said the ghost. “Boys that tell lies go to a bad place,” warned Nanny. “Lady Felmet had most of them installed herself, it’s the truth,” said the king desperately; he felt his position to be precarious enough without having any bad places to worry about. Nanny sniffed. “Right, then,” she said, slightly mollified. “It was "pinchers".” “But pinchers is just another name for pi—” the king began, and stopped himself in time. During his adult life he’d been afraid of no man, beast or combination of the two, but Nanny’s voice brought back old memories of schoolroom and nursery, of life under strict orders given by stern ladies in long skirts, and nursery food – mostly grey and brown -which seemed indigestible at the time but now appeared a distant ambrosia. “That’s five to me,” said Nanny happily. “They’ll be back soon,” said the king. “Are you sure you’ll be all right?” “If I’m not, precisely how much help can you be?” said Nanny. There was the sound of bolts sliding back. There was already a crowd outside the castle as Granny’s broomstick wobbled uncertainly towards the ground. They went quiet as she strode forward, and parted to let her pass. She had a basket of apples under her arm. “There’s a witch in the dungeons,” someone whispered to Granny. “And foul tortures, they say!” “Nonsense,” said Granny. “It couldn’t be. I expect Nanny Ogg has just gone to advise the king, or something.” “They say Jason Ogg’s gone to fetch his brothers,” said a stallholder, in awe. “I really advise you all to return home,” said Granny Weatherwax. “There has probably been a misunderstanding. Everyone knows a witch cannot be held against her will.” “It’s gone too far this time,” said a peasant. “All this burning and taxing and now this. I blame you witches. It’s got to stop. I know my rights.” “What rights are they?” said Granny. “Dunnage, cowhage-in-ordinary, badinage, leftovers, scrommidge, clary and spunt,” said the peasant promptly. “And acornage, every other year, and the right to keep two-thirds of a goat on the common. Until he set fire to it. It was a bloody good goat, too.” “A man could go far, knowing his rights like you do,” said Granny. “But right now he should go home.” She turned and looked at the gates. There were two extremely apprehensive guards on duty. She walked up to them, and fixed one of them with a look. “I am a harmless old seller of apples,” she said, in a voice more appropriate for the opening of hostilities in a middle-range war. “Pray let me past, dearie.” The last word had knives in it. “No-one must enter the castle,” said one of the guards. “Orders of the duke.” Granny shrugged. The apple-seller gambit had never worked more than once in the entire history of witchcraft, as far as she knew, but it was traditional. “I know you, Champett Poldy,” she said. “I recall I laid out your grandad and I brought you into the world.” She glanced at the crowds, which had regathered a little way off, and turned back to the guard, whose face was already a mask of terror. She leaned a little closer, and said, “I gave you your first good hiding in this valley of tears and by all the gods if you cross me now I will give you your last.” There was a soft metallic noise as the spear fell out of the man’s fearful fingers. Granny reached and gave the trembling man a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “But don’t worry about it,” she added. “Have an apple.” She made to step forward, and a second spear barred her way. She looked up with interest. The other guard was not a Ramtopper, but a city-bred mercenary brought up to swell the ranks depleted in recent years. His face was a patchwork of scar tissue. Several of the scars rearranged themselves into what was possibly a sneer. “So that’s witches’ magic, is it?” said the guard. “Pretty poor stuff. Maybe it frightens these country idiots, woman, but it doesn’t frighten me.” “I imagine it takes a lot to frighten a big strong lad like you,” said Granny, reaching up to her hat. “And don’t you try to put the wind up me, neither.” The guard stared straight ahead, and rocked gently on the balls of his feet. “Old ladies like you, twisting people around. It shouldn’t be stood for, like they say.” “Just as you like,” said Granny, pushing the spear aside. “Listen, I said—” the guard began, and grabbed Granny’s shoulder. Her hand moved so quickly it hardly seemed to move at all, but suddenly he was clutching at his arm and moaning. Granny replaced the hatpin in her hat and ran for it. “We will begin,” said the duchess, leering, “with the Showing of the Implements.” “Seen ‘em,”, said Nanny. “Leastways, all the ones beginning with P, S, I, T and W.” “Then let us see how long you can keep that light conversational tone. Light the brazier, Felmet,” snapped the duchess. “Light the brazier, Fool,” said the duke. The Fool moved slowly. He hadn’t expected any of this. Torturing people hadn’t been on his mental agenda. Hurting old ladies in cold blood wasn’t his cup of tea, and actually hurting witches in blood of any temperature whatsoever failed to be an entire twelve-course banquet. Words, he’d said. All this probably came under the heading of sticks and stones. “I don’t like doing this,” he murmured under his breath. “Fine,” said Nanny Ogg, whose hearing was superb. “I’ll remember that you didn’t like it.” “What’s that?” said the duke sharply. “Nothing,” said Nanny. “Is this going to take long? I haven’t had breakfast.” The Fool lit a match. There was the faintest disturbance in the air beside him, and it went out. He swore, and tried another. This time his shaking hands managed to get it as far as the brazier before it, too, flared and darkened. “Hurry up, man!” said the duchess, laying out a tray of tools. “Doesn’t seem to want to light—” muttered the Fool, as another match became a fluttering streak of flame and then went out. The duke snatched the box from his trembling fingers and caught him across the cheek with a handful of rings. “Can no orders of mine be obeyed?” he screamed. “Infirm of purpose! Weak! Give me the box!” The Fool backed away. Someone he couldn’t see was whispering things he couldn’t quite make out in his ear. “Go outside,” hissed the duke, “and see that we are not disturbed!” The Fool tripped over the bottom step, turned and, with a last imploring look at Nanny, scampered through the door He capered a little bit, out of force of habit. “The fire isn’t completely necessary,” said the Duchess. “It merely assists. Now, woman, will you confess?” “What to?” said Nanny. “It’s common knowledge. Treason. Malicious witchcraft. Harbouring the king’s enemies. Theft of the crown—” A tinkling noise made them look down. A blood-stained dagger had fallen off the bench, as though someone had tried to pick it up but just couldn’t get the strength together. Nanm heard the king’s ghost swear under its breath, or what would have been its breath. “—and spreading false rumours,” finished the duchess. “—salt in my food—” said the duke, nervously, staring at the bandages on his hand. He kept getting the feeling that there was a fourth person in the dungeon. “If you do confess,” said the duchess, “you will merely be burned at the stake. And, please, no humorous remarks.” “What false rumours?” The duke closed his eyes, but the visions were still there “Concerning the accidental death of the late King Verence.” he whispered hoarsely. The air swirled again. Nanny sat with her head cocked to one side, as though listening to a voice only she could hear. Except that the duke was certain that he could hear something too, not exactly a voice, something like the distant sighing of the wind. “Oh, I don’t know nothing false,” she said. “I know you stabbed him, and you gave him the dagger. It was at the top of the stairs.” She paused, head cocked, nodded, and added, “Just by the suit of armour with the pike, and you said, "If it’s to be done, it’s better if it’s done quickly", or something, and then you snatched the king’s own dagger, the very same what is now lying on the floor, out of his belt and—” “You lie! There were no witnesses. We made . . . there was nothing to witness! I heard someone in the dark, but there was no-one there! There couldn’t have been anyone seeing anything!” screamed the duke. His wife scowled at him. “Do shut up, Leonal,” she said. “I think within these four walls we can dispense with that sort of thing.” “Who told her? Did you tell her?” “And calm down. No-one told her. She’s a witch, for goodness sake, they find out about these things. Second glance, or something.” “Sight,” said Nanny. “Which you will not possess much longer, my good woman, unless you tell us who else knows and indeed, assist us on a number of other matters,” said the duchess grimly. “And you will do so, believe me. I am skilled in these things.” Granny glanced around the dungeon. It was beginning to get crowded. King Verence was bursting with such angry vitality that he was very nearly apparent, and was furiously trying to get a grip on a knife. But there were others behind – wavering, broken shapes, not exactly ghosts but memories, implanted in the very substances of the walls themselves by sheer pain and terror. “My own dagger! The bastards! They killed me with my own dagger,” said the ghost of King Verence silently, raising his transparent arms and imploring the netherworld in general to witness this ultimate humiliation. “Give me strength . . .” “Yes,” said Nanny. “It’s worth a try.” “And now we will commence,” said the duchess. “What?” said the guard. “I SAID,” said Magrat, “I’ve come to sell my lovely apples. Don’t you listen?” “There’s not a sale on, is there?” The guard was extremely nervous since his colleague had been taken off to the infirmary. He hadn’t taken the job in order to deal with this sort of thing. It dawned on him. “You’re not a witch, are you?” he said, fumbling awkwardly with his pike. “Of course not. Do I look like one?” The guard looked at her occult bangles, her lined cloak, her trembling hands and her face. The face was particulary worrying. Magrat had used a lot of powder to make her face pale and interesting. It combined with the lavishly applied mascara to give the guard the impression that he was looking at two flies that had crashed into a sugar bowl. He found his fingers wanted to make a sign to ward off the evil eyeshadow. “Right,” he said uncertainly. His mind was grinding through the problem. She was a witch. Just lately there’d been a lot of gossip about witches being bad for your health. He’d been told not to let witches pass, but no-one had said anything about apple sellers. Apple sellers were not a problem. It was witches that were the problem. She’d said she was an apple seller and he wasn’t about to doubt a witch’s word. Feeling happy with this application of logic, he stood to one side and gave an expansive wave. “Pass, apple seller,” he said. “Thank you,” said Magrat sweetly. “Would you like an apple?” “No, thanks. I haven’t finished the one the other witch gave me.” His eyes rolled. “Not a witch. Not a witch, an apple seller. An apple seller. She ought to know.” “How long ago was this?” “Just a few minutes . . .” Granny Weatherwax was not lost. She wasn’t the kind of person who ever became lost. It was just that, at the moment, while she knew exactly where SHE was, she didn’t know the position of anywhere else. Currently she had arrived in the kitchens again, precipitating a breakdown in the cook, who was trying to roast some celery. The fact that several people had tried to buy apples from her wasn’t improving her temper. Magrat found her way to the Great Hall, empty and deserted at this time of day except for a couple of guards who were playing dice. They wore the tabards of Felmet’s own personal bodyguard, and stopped their game as soon as she appeared. “Well, well,” said one, leering. “Come to keep us company have you, my pretty.[12]“ “I was looking for the dungeons,” said Magrat, to whom the words “Sexual harassment” were a mere collection of syllables. “Just fancy,” said one of the guards, winking at the other. “I reckon we can help you there.” They got up and stood either side of her; she was aware of two chins you could strike matches on and an overpowering smell of stale beer. Frantic signals from outlying portions of her mind began to break down her iron-hard conviction that bad things only happened to bad people. They escorted her down several flights of steps into a maze of dank, arched passageways as she sought hurriedly for some polite way of disengaging herself. “I should warn you,” she said, “I am not, as I may appear, a simple apple seller.” “Fancy that.” “I am, in fact, a witch.” This did not make the impression she had hoped. The guards exchanged glances. “Fair enough,” said one. “I’ve always wondered what it was like to kiss a witch. Around here they do say you gets turned into a frog.” The other guard nudged him. “I reckon, then,” he said, in the slow, ripe tones of one who thinks that what he is about to say next is going to be incredibly funny, “you kissed one years ago.” The brief guffaw was suddenly interrupted when Magrat was flung against the wall and treated to a close up view of the guard’s nostrils. “Now listen to me, sweetheart,” he said. “You ain’t the first witch we’ve had down here, if witch you be, but you could be lucky and walk out again. If you are nice to us, d’you see?” There was a shrill, short scream from somewhere nearby. “That, you see,” said the guard, “was a witch having it the hard way. You could do us all a favour, see? Lucky you met us, really.” His questing hand stopped its wandering. “What’s this?” he said to Magrat’s pale face. “A knife? A knife? I reckon we’ve got to take that very seriously, don’t you, Hron?” “You got to tie her hands and gag her,” said Hron hurriedly. “They can’t do no magic if they can’t speak or wave their hands about . . .” “You can take your hands off her!” All three stared down the passage at the Fool. He was jingling with rage. “Let her go this minute!” he shouted. “Or I’ll report you!” “Oh, you’ll report us, will you?” said Hron. “And will anyone listen to you, you earwax-coloured little twerp?” “This is a witch we have here,” said the other guard. “So you can go and tinkle somewhere else.” He turned back to Magrat. “I like a girl with spirit,” he said, incorrectly as it turned out. The Fool advanced with the bravery of the terminally angry. “I told you to let her go,” he repeated. Hron drew his sword and winked at his companion. Magrat struck. It was an unplanned, instinctive blow, its stopping power considerably enhanced by the weight of rings and bangles; her arm whirred around in an arc that connected with her captor’s jaw and spun him twice before he folded up in a heap with a quiet little sigh, and incidentally with several symbols of occult significance embossed on his cheek. Hron gaped at him, and then looked at Magrat. He raised his sword at about the same moment that the Fool cannoned into him, and the two men went down in a struggling heap. Like most small men the Fool relied on the initial mad rush to secure an advantage and was at a loss for a follow-through and it would probably have gone hard with him if Hron hadn’t suddenly become aware that a breadknife was pressed to his neck. “Let go of him,” said Magrat, pushing her hair out of her eyes. He stiffened. “You’re wondering whether I really would cut your throat,” panted Magrat. “I don’t know either. Think of the fun we could have together, finding out.” She reached down with her other hand and hauled the Fool to his feet by his collar. “Where did that scream come from?” she said, without taking her eyes off the guard. “It was down this way. They’ve got her in the torture dungeon and I don’t like it, it’s going too far, and I couldn’t get in and I came to look for someone—” “Well, you’ve found me,” said Magrat. “You,” she said to Hron, “will stay here. Or run away, for all I care. But you won’t follow us.” He nodded, and stared after them as they hurried down the passage. “The door’s locked,” said the Fool. “There’s all sorts of noises, but the door’s locked.” “Well, it’s a dungeon, isn’t it?” “They’re not supposed to lock from the inside!” It was, indeed, unbudgeable. Silence came from the other side – a busy, thick silence that crawled through the cracks and spilled out into the passage, a kind of silence that is worse than screams. The Fool hopped from one foot to the other as Magrat explored the door’s rough surface. “Are you really a witch?” he said. “They said you were a witch, are you really? You don’t look like a witch, you look very . . . that is . . .” He blushed. “Not like a, you know, crone at all, but absolutely beautiful . . .” His voice trailed into silence . . . I am totally in control of the situation, Magrat told herself. I never thought I would be, but I am thinking absolutely clearly. And she realised, in an absolutely clear way, that her padding had slipped down to her waist, her head felt as though a family of unhygienic birds had been nesting in it, and her eyeshadow had not so much run as sprinted. Her dress was torn in several places, her legs were scratched, her arms were bruised, and for some reason she felt on top of the world. “I think you’d better stand back, Verence,” she said. “I’m not sure how this is going to work.” There was a sharp intake of breath. “How did you know my name?” Magrat sized up the door. The oak was old, centuries old, but she could sense just a little sap under a surface varnished by the years into something that was nearly as tough as stone. Normally what she had in mind would require a day’s planning and a bagful of exotic ingredients. At least, so she’d always believed. Now she was prepared to doubt it. If you could conjure demons out of washtubs, you could do anything. She became aware that the Fool had spoken. “Oh, I expect I heard it somewhere,” she said vaguely. “I shouldn’t think so, I never use it,” said the Fool. “I mean, it’s not a popular name with the duke. It was me mam, you see. They like to name you after kings, I suppose. My grandad said I had no business having a name like that and he said I shouldn’t go around—” Magrat nodded. She was looking around the dank tunnel with a professional’s eye. It wasn’t a promising place. The old oak planks had been down here in the darkness all these years, away from the clock of the seasons . . . On the other hand . . . Granny had said that somehow all trees were one tree, or something like that. Magrat thought she understood it, although she didn’t know exactly what it meant. And it was springtime up there. The ghost of life that still lived in the wood must know that. Or if it had forgotten, it must be told. She put her palms flat on the door again and shut her eyes, tried to think her way out through the stone, out of the castle, and into the thin, black soil of the mountains, into the air, into the sunlight . . . The Fool was merely aware that Magrat was standing very still. Then her hair stood out from her head, gently, and there was a smell of leafmould. And then, without warning, the hammer that can drive a marshmallow-soft toadstool through six inches of solid pavement or an eel across a thousand miles of hostile ocean to a particular pond in an upland field, struck up through her and into the door. She stepped back carefully, her mind stunned, fighting against a desperate urge to bury her toes into the rock and put forth leaves. The Fool caught her, and the shock nearly knocked him over. Magrat sagged against the faintly jingling body, and felt triumphant. She had done it! And with no artificial aids! If only the others could have seen this . . . “Don’t go near it,” she mumbled. “I think I gave it rather . . . a lot.” The Fool was still holding her toastrack body in his arms and was too overcome to utter a word, but she still got a reply. “I reckon you did,” said Granny Weatherwax, stepping out of the shadows. “I never would have thought of it myself.” Magrat peered at her. “You’ve been here all the time?” “Just a few minutes.” Granny glanced at the door. “Good technique,” she said, “but it’s old wood. Been in a fire, too, I reckon. Lot of iron nails and stuff in there. Can’t see it working, I’d have tried the stones if it was me, but—” She was interrupted by a soft “pop”. There was another, and then a whole series of them together, like a shower of meringues. Behind her, very gently, the door was breaking into leaf. Granny stared at it for a few seconds, and then met Magrat’s terrified gaze. “Run!” she yelled. They grabbed the Fool and scurried into the shelter of a convenient buttress. The door gave a warning creak. Several of its planks twisted in vegetable agony and there was a shower of rock splinters when nails were expelled like thorns from a wound, ricocheting off the stonework. The Fool ducked as part of the lock whirred over his head and smashed into the opposite wall. The lower parts of the planks extended questing white roots, which slithered across the damp stone to the nearest crack and began to auger in. Knotholes bulged, burst and thrust out branches which hit the stones of the doorway and tumbled them aside. And all the time there was a low groan, the sound of the cells of the wood trying to contain the surge of raw life pounding through them. “If it had been me,” said Granny Weatherwax, as part of the ceiling caved in further along the passage, “I wouldn’t have done it like that. Not that I’m objecting, mind you,” she said, as Magrat opened her mouth. “It’s a reasonable job. I think you might have overdone it a bit, that’s all.” “Excuse me,” said the Fool. “I can’t do rocks,” said Magrat. “Well, no, rocks is an acquired taste—” “Excuse me.” The two witches stared at him, and he backed away. “Weren’t you supposed to be rescuing someone?” he said. “Oh,” said Granny. “Yes. Come on, Magrat. We’d better see what she’s been getting up to.” “There were screams,” said the Fool, who couldn’t help feeling they weren’t taking things seriously enough. “I daresay,” said Granny, pushing him aside and stepping over a writhing taproot. “If anyone locked me in a dungeon, there’d be screams.” There was a lot of dust inside the dungeon, and by the nimbus of light around its one torch Magrat could dimly make out two figures cowering in the furthest corner. Most of the furniture had been overturned and scattered across the floor; it didn’t look as though any of it had been designed to be the last word in comfort. Nanny Ogg was sitting quite calmly in what appeared to be a sort of stocks. “Took your time,” she observed. “Let me out of this, will you? I’m getting cramp.” And there was the dagger. It spun gently in the middle of the room, glinting when the turning blade caught the light. “My own dagger!” said the ghost of the king, in a voice only the witches could hear. “All this time and I never knew it! My own dagger! They bloody well did me in with my own bloody knife!” He took another step towards the royal couple, waving the dagger. A faint gurgle escaped from the lips of the duke, glad to be out of there. “He’s doing well, isn’t he,” said Nanny, as Magrat helped her out of her prison. “Isn’t that the old king? Can they see him?” “Shouldn’t think so.” King Verence staggered slightly under the weight. He was too old for such poltergeist activity; you had to be an adolescent for this . . . “Let me just get a grip on this thing,” he said. “Oh, damn . . .” The knife dropped from the ghost’s tenuous grasp and clattered to the floor. Granny Weatherwax stepped forward smartly and put her foot on it. “The dead shouldn’t kill the living,” she said. “It could be a dangerous wossname, precedent. We’d all be outnumbered for one thing.” The duchess surfaced from her terror first. There had been knives swooping through the air and exploding doors, and now these women were defying her in her own dungeons. She couldn’t be sure how she was supposed to react to the supernatural items, but she had very firm ideas about how she should tackle the last one. Her mouth opened like the gateway to a red hell. “Guards!” she yelled, and spotted the Fool hovering near the door. “Fool! Fetch the guards!” “They’re busy. We were just leaving,” said Granny. “Which one of you is the duke?” Felmet stared pink-eyed up at her from his half-crouch in the corner. A thin dribble of saliva escaped from the corner of his mouth, and he giggled. Granny looked closer. In the centre of those streaming eyes something else looked back at her. “I’m going to give you no cause,” she said quietly. “But it would be better for you if you left this country. Abdicate, or whatever.” “In favour of whom?” said the duchess icily. “A witch?” “I won’t,” said the duke. “What did you say?” The duke pulled himself upright, brushed some of the dust off his clothes, and looked Granny full in the face. The coldness in the centre of his eyes was larger. “I said I won’t,” he said. “Do you think a bit of simple conjuring would frighten me? I am the king by right of conquest, and you cannot change it. It is as simple as that, witch.” He moved closer. Granny stared at him. She hadn’t faced anything like this before. The man was clearly mad, but at the heart of his madness was a dreadful cold sanity, a core of pure interstellar ice in the centre of the furnace. She’d thought him weak under a thin shell of strength, but it went a lot further than that. Somewhere deep inside his mind, somewhere beyond the event horizon of rationality, the sheer pressure of insanity had hammered his madness into something harder than diamond. “If you defeat me by magic, magic will rule,” said the duke. “And you can’t do it. And any king raised with your help would be under your power. Hag-ridden, I might say. That which magic rules, magic destroys. It would destroy you, too. You know it. Ha. Ha.” Granny’s knuckles whitened as he moved closer. “You could strike me down,” he said. “And perhaps you could find someone to replace me. But he would have to be a fool indeed, because he would know he was under your evil eye, and if he mispleased you, why, his life would be instantly forfeit. You could protest all you wished, but he’d know he ruled with your permission. And that would make him no king at all. Is this not true?” Granny looked away. The other witches hung back, ready to duck. “I said, is this not true?” “Yes,” said Granny. “It is true . . .” “Yes.” “. . . but there is one who could defeat you,” said Granny slowly. “The child? Let him come when he is grown. A young man with a sword, seeking his destiny.” The duke sneered. “Very romantic. But I have many years to prepare. Let him try.” Beside him King Verence’s fist smashed through the air and quite failed to connect. The duke leaned closer until his nose was an inch from Granny’s face. “Get back to your cauldrons, wyrd sisters,” he said softly. Granny Weatherwax stalked through the passages of Lancre Castle like a large, angry bat, the duke’s laughter echoing around her head. “You could give him boils or something,” said Nanny Ogg. “Haemorrhoids are good. That’s allowed. It won’t stop him ruling, it just means he’ll have to rule standing up. Always good for a laugh, that. Or piles.” Granny Weatherwax said nothing. If fury were heat, her hat would have caught fire. “Mind you, that’d probably make him worse,” said Nanny, running to keep up. “Same with toothache.” She gave a sideways glance at Granny’s twitching features. “You needn’t fret,” she said. “They didn’t do anything much. But thanks, anyway.” “I ain’t worried about you, Gytha Ogg,” snapped Granny. “I only come along ‘cos Magrat was fretting. What I say is, if a witch can’t look after herself, she’s got no business calling herself a witch.” “Magrat done well with the woodwork, I thought.” Even in the grip of her sullen fury, Granny Weatherwax spared a nod. “She’s coming along,” she said. She looked up and down the corridor, and then leaned closer to Nanny Ogg’s ear. “I ain’t going to give him the pleasure of saying it,” she said, “but he’s got us beaten.” “Well, I don’t know,” said Nanny. “Our Jason and a few sharp lads could soon—” “You saw some of his guards. These aren’t the old sort. These are a tough kind.” “We could give the boys just a bit of help—” “It wouldn’t work. People have to sort this sort of thing out for themselves.” “If you say so, Esme,” said Nanny meekly. “I do. Magic’s there to be ruled, not for ruling.” Nanny nodded and then, remembering a promise, reached down and picked up a fragment of stone from the rubble on the tunnel floor. “I thought you’d forgotten,” said the ghost of the king, by her ear. Further down the passage the Fool was capering after Magrat. “Can I see you again?” he said. “Well . . . I don’t know,” said Magrat, her heart singing a smug song. “How about tonight?” said the Fool. “Oh, no,” said Magrat. “I’m very busy tonight.” She had intended to curl up with a hot milk drink and Goodie Whemper’s notebooks on experimental astrology, but instinct told her that any suitor should have an uphill struggle put in front of him, just to make him keener. “Tomorrow night, then?” the Fool persisted. “I think I should be washing my hair.” “I could get Friday night free.” “We do a lot of work at night, you see—” “The afternoon, then.” Magrat hesitated. Perhaps instinct had got it wrong. “Well—” she said. “About two o”clock. In the meadow by the pond, all right?” “Well—” “See you there, then. All right?” said the Fool desperately. “Fool!” The duchess’s voice echoed along the passage, and a look of terror crossed his face. “I’ve got to go,” he said. “The meadow, okay? I’ll wear something so you recognise me. All right?” “All right,” echoed Magrat, hypnotised by the sheer pressure of his persistence. She turned and ran after the other witches. There was pandemonium outside the castle. The crowd that had been there at Granny’s arrival had grown considerably, and had flowed in through the now unguarded gateway and lapped around the keep. Civil disobedience was new to Lancre, but its inhabitants had already mastered some of its more elementary manifestations, viz, the jerking of rakes and sickles in the air with simple up-and-down motions accompanied by grimaces and cries of “Gerrh!”, although a few citizens, who hadn’t quite grasped the idea, were waving flags and cheering. Advanced students were already eyeing the more combustible buildings inside the walls. Several sellers of hot meat pies and sausages in a bun had appeared from nowhere[13]and were doing a brisk trade. Pretty soon someone was going to throw something. The three witches stood at the top of the steps that led to the keep’s main door and surveyed the seas of faces. “There’s our Jason,” said Nanny happily. “And Wane and Darron and Kev and Trev and Nev—” “I will remember their faces,” said Lord Felmet, emerging between them and putting a hand on their shoulders. “And do you see my archers, on the wails?” “I see ‘em,” said Granny grimly. “Then smile and wave,” said the duke. “So that the people may know that all is well. After all, have you not been to see me today on matters of state?” He leaned closer to Granny. “Yes, there are a hundred things you could do,” he said. “But the ending would always be the same.” He drew back. “I’m not an unreasonable man, I hope,” he added, in cheerful tones. “Perhaps, if you persuade the people to be calm, I may be prevailed upon to moderate my rule somewhat. I make no promises, of course.” Granny said nothing. “Smile and wave,” commanded the duke. Granny raised one hand in a vague motion and produced a brief rictus that had nothing whatsoever to do with humour. Then she scowled and nudged Nanny Ogg, who was waving and mugging like a maniac. “No need to get carried away,” she hissed. “But there’s our Reel and our Sharleen and their babbies,” said Nanny. “Coo-eee!” “Will you shut up, you daft old besom!” snapped Granny. “And pull yourself together!” “Jolly good, well done,” said the duke. He raised his hands, or at least his hand. The other still ached. He’d tried the grater again last night, but it hadn’t worked. “People of Lancre,” he cried, “do not be afeared! I am your friend. I will protect you from the witches! They have agreed to leave you in peace!” Granny stared at him as he spoke. He’s one of these here maniac depressives, she said. Up and down like a woss-name. Kill you one minute and ask you how you’re feeling the next. She became aware that he was looking at her expectantly. “What?” “I said, I’ll now call upon the respected Granny Weatherwax to say a few words, ha ha,” he said. “You said that, did you?” “Yes!” “You’ve gone a long way too far,” said Granny. “I have, haven’t I!” The duke giggled. Granny turned to the expectant crowds, which went silent. “Go home,” she said. There was a further long silence. “Is that all?” said the duke. “Yes.” “What about pledges of eternal allegiance?” “What about them? Gytha, will you stop waving at people!” “Sorry.” “And now we are going to go, too,” said Granny. “But we were getting on so well,” said the duke. “Come, Gytha,” said Granny icily. “And where’s Magrat got to?” Magrat looked up guiltily. She had been deep in conversation with the Fool, although it was the kind of conversation where both parties spend a lot of time looking at their feet and picking at their fingernails. Ninety per cent of true love is acute, ear-burning embarrassment. “We’re leaving,” said Granny. “Friday afternoon, remember,” hissed the Fool. “Well, if I can,” said Magrat. Nanny Ogg leered. And so Granny Weatherwax swept down the steps and through the crowds, with the other two running behind her. Several of the grinning guards caught her eye and wished they hadn’t, but here and there, among the watching crowd, was a barely suppressed snigger. She hurtled through the gateway, across the drawbridge and through the town. Granny walking fast could beat most other people at a run. Behind them the duke, who had crested the latest maniac peak on the switchback of his madness and was coasting speedily towards the watersplash of despair, laughed. “Ha ha.” Granny didn’t stop until she was outside the town and under the welcoming eaves of the forest. She turned off the road and flumped down on a log, her face in her hands. The other two approached her carefully. Magrat patted her on the back. “Don’t despair,” she said. “You handled it very well, we thought.” “I ain’t despairing, I’m thinking,” said Granny. “Go away.” Nanny Ogg raised her eyebrows at Magrat in a warning fashion. They backed off to a suitable distance although, with Granny in her present mood, the next universe might not be far enough, and sat down on a moss-grown stone. “Are you all right?” said Magrat. “They didn’t do anything, did they?” “Never laid a finger on me,” said Nanny. She sniffed. “They’re not your real royalty,” she added. “Old King Gruneweld, for one, he wouldn’t have wasted time waving things around and menacing people. It’d been bang, needles right under the fingernails from the word go, and no messing. None of this evil laughter stuff. He was a real king. Very gracious.” “He was threatening to burn you.” “Oh, I wouldn’t of stood for it. I see you’ve got a follower,” said Nanny. “Sorry?” said Magrat. The young fellow with the bells,” said Nanny. “And the face like a spaniel what’s just been kicked.” “Oh, him.” Magrat blushed hotly under her pale makeup. “Really, he’s just this man. He just follows me around.” “Can be difficult, can that,” said Nanny sagely. “Besides, he’s so small. And he capers all over the place,” said Magrat. “Looked at him carefully, have you?” said the old witch. “Pardon?” “You haven’t, have you? I thought not. He’s a very clever man, that Fool. He ought to have been one of them actor men.” “What do you mean?” “Next time you have a look at him like a witch, not like a woman,” said Nanny, and gave Magrat a conspiratorial nudge. “Good bit of work with the door back there,” she added. “Coming on well, you are. I hope you told him about Greebo.” “He said he’d let him out directly, Nanny.” There was a snort from Granny Weatherwax. “Did you hear the sniggering in the crowd?” she said. “Someone sniggered!” Nanny Ogg sat down beside her. “And a couple of them pointed,” she said. “I know.” “It’s not to be borne!” Magrat sat down on the other end of the log. “There’s other witches,” she said. “There’s lots of witches further up the Ramtops. Maybe they can help.” The other two looked at her in pained surprise. “I don’t think we need go that far,” sniffed Granny. “Asking for help. ” “Very bad practice,” nodded Nanny Ogg. “But you asked a demon to help you,” said Magrat. “No, we didn’t,” said Granny. “Right. We didn’t.” “We ordered it to assist.” “S’right.” Granny Weatherwax stretched out her legs and looked at her boots. They were good strong boots, with hobnails and crescent-shaped scads; you couldn’t believe a cobbler had made them, someone had laid down a sole and built up from there. “I mean, there’s that witch over Skund way,” she said. “Sister Whosis, wossname, her son went off to be a sailor – you know, Gytha, her who sniffs and puts them antimassacres on the backs of chairs soon as you sits down—” “Grodley,” said Nanny Ogg. “Sticks her little finger out when she drinks her tea and drops her Haitches all the time.” “Yes. Hwell. I haven’t hlowered myself to talk to her hever since that business with the gibbet, you recall. I daresay she’d just love to come snooping haround here, running her fingers over heverything and sniffing, telling us how to do things. Oh. yes. Help. We’d all be in a fine to-do if we went around helping all the time.” “Yes, and over Skund way the trees talk to you and walk around of night,” said Nanny. “Without even asking permission. Very poor organisation.” “Not really good organisation, like we’ve got here?” said Magrat. Granny stood up purposefully. “I’m going home,” she said. There are thousands of good reasons why magic doesn’t rule the world. They’re called witches and wizards. Magrat reflected, as she followed the other two back to the road. It was probably some wonderful organisation on the part of Nature to protect itself. It saw to it that everyone with any magical talent was about as ready to co-operate as a she-bear with toothache, so all that dangerous power was safely dissipated as random bickering and rivalry. There were differences in style, of course. Wizards assassinated each other in draughty corridors, witches just cut one another dead in the street. And they were all as self-centred as a spinning top. Even when they help other people, she thought, they’re secretly doing it for themselves. Honestly, they’re just like big children. Except for me, she thought smugly. “She’s very upset, isn’t she,” said Magrat to Nanny Ogg. “Ah, well,” said Nanny. “There’s the problem, see. The more you get used to magic, the more you don’t want to use it. The more it gets in your way. I expect, when you were just starting out, you learned a few spells from Goodie Whemper, maysherestinpeace, and you used them all the time, didn’t you?” “Well, yes. Everyone does.” “Well-known fact,” agreed Nanny. “But when you get along in the Craft, you learn that the hardest magic is the sort you don’t use at all.” Magrat considered the proposition cautiously. “This isn’t some kind of Zen, is it?” she said. “Dunno. Never seen one.” “When we were in the dungeons, Granny said something about trying the rocks. That sounded like pretty hard magic.” “Well, Goodie wasn’t much into rocks,” said Nanny. “It’s not really hard. You just prod their memories. You know, of the old days. When they were hot and runny.” She hesitated, and her hand flew to her pocket. She gripped the lump of castle stone and relaxed. “Thought I’d forgotten it, for a minute there,” she said, lifting it out. “You can come out now.” He was barely visible in the brightness of day, a mere shimmer in the air under the trees. King Verence blinked. He wasn’t used to daylight. “Esme,” said Nanny. “There’s someone to see you.” Granny turned slowly and squinted at the ghost. “I saw you in the dungeon, didn’t I?” she said. “Who’re you?” “Verence, King of Lancre,” said the ghost, and bowed. “Do I have the honour of addressing Granny Weatherwax, doyenne of witches?” It has already been pointed out that just because Verence came from a long line of kings didn’t mean that he was basically stupid, and a year without the distractions of the flesh had done wonders as well. Granny Weatherwax considered herself totally unsusceptible to buttering up, but the king was expertly applying the equivalent of the dairy surplus of quite a large country. Bowing was a particularly good touch. A muscle twitched at the corner of Granny’s mouth. She gave a stiff little bow in return, because she wasn’t quite sure what “doyenne” meant. “I’m her,” she conceded. “You can get up now,” she added, regally. King Verence remained kneeling, about two inches above the actual ground. “I crave a boon,” he said urgently. “Here, how did you get out of the castle?” said Granny. “The esteemed Nanny Ogg assisted me,” said the king. “I reasoned, if I am anchored to the stones of Lancre, then I can also go where the stones go. I am afraid I indulged in a little trickery to arrange matters. Currently I am haunting her apron.” “Not the first, either,” said Granny, automatically. “Esme!” “And I beg you, Granny Weatherwax, to restore my son to the throne.” “Restore?” “You know what I mean. He is in good health?” Granny nodded. “The last time we looked at him, he was eating an apple,” she said. “It is his destiny to be King of Lancre!” “Yes, well. Destiny is tricky, you know,” said Granny. “You will not help?” Granny looked wretched. “It’s meddling, you see,” she said. “It always goes wrong if you meddle in politics. Like, once you start, you can’t stop. Fundamental rule of magic, is that. You can’t go around messing with fundamental rules.” “You’re not going to help?” “Well . . . naturally, one day, when your lad is a bit older . . .” “Where is he now?” said the king, coldly. The witches avoided one another’s faces. “We saw him safe out of the country, you see,” said Granny awkwardly. “Very good family,” Nanny Ogg put in quickly. “What kind of people?” said the king. “Not commoners, I trust?” “Absolutely not,” said Granny with considerable firmness as a vision of Vitoller floated across her imagination. “Not common at all. Very uncommon. Er.” Her eyes implored Magrat for help. “They were Thespians,” said Magrat firmly, her voice radiating such approval that the king found himself nodding automatically. “Oh,” he said. “Good.” “Were they?” whispered Nanny Ogg. “They didn’t look it.” “Don’t show your ignorance, Gytha Ogg,” sniffed Granny. She turned back to the ghost of the king. “Sorry about that, your majesty. It’s just her showing off. She don’t even know where Thespia is .” “Wherever it is, I hope that they know how to school a man in the arts of war,” said Verence. “I know Felmet. In ten years he’ll be dug in here like a toad in a stone.” The king looked from witch to witch. “What kind of kingdom will he have to come back to? I hear what the kingdom is becoming, even now. Will you watch it change, over the years, become shoddy and mean?” The king’s ghost faded. His voice hung in the air, faint as a breeze. “Remember, good sisters,” he said, “the land and the king are one.” And he vanished. The embarrassed silence was broken by Magrat blowing her nose. “One what?” said Nanny Ogg. “We’ve got to do something,” said Magrat, her voice choked with emotion. “Rules or no rules!” “It’s very vexing,” said Granny, quietly. “Yes, but what are you going to do?” she said. “Reflect on things,” said Granny. “Think about it all.” “You’ve been thinking about it for a year,” Magrat said. “One what? Are one what?” said Nanny Ogg. “It’s no good just reacting,” said Granny. “You’ve got to—” A cart came bouncing and rumbling along the track from Lancre. Granny ignored it. “—give these things careful consideration.” “You don’t know what to do, do you?” said Magrat. “Nonsense. I—” “There’s a cart coming, Granny.” Granny Weatherwax shrugged. “What you youngsters don’t realise—” she began. Witches never bothered with elementary road safety. Such traffic as there was on the roads of Lancre either went around them or, if this was not possible, waited until they moved out of the way. Granny Weatherwax had grown up knowing this for a fact; the only reason she didn’t die knowing that it wasn’t was that Magrat, with rather better reflexes, dragged her into the ditch. It was an interesting ditch. There were jiggling corkscrew things in it which were direct descendants of things which had been in the primordial soup of creation. Anyone who thought that ditchwater was dull could have spent an instructive half-hour in that ditch with a powerful microscope. It also had nettles in it, and now it had Granny Weatherwax. She struggled up through the weeds, incoherent with rage, and rose from the ditch like Venus Anadyomene, only older and with more duckweed. “T-t-t,” she said, pointing a shaking finger at the disappearing cart. “It was young Nesheley from over Inkcap way,” said Nanny Ogg, from a nearby bush. “His family were always a bit wild. Of course, his mother was a Whipple.” “He ran us down!” said Granny. “You could have got out of the way,” said Magrat. “Get out of the way?” said Granny. “We’re witches! People get out of our way!” She squelched on to the track, her finger still pointing at the distant cart. “By Hoki, I’ll make him wish he’d never been born—” “He was quite a big baby, I recall,” said the bush. “His mother had a terrible time.” “It’s never happened to me before, ever,” said Granny, still twanging like a bowstring. “I’ll teach him to run us down as though, as though, as though we was ordinary people!” “He already knows,” said Magrat. “Just help me get Nanny out of this bush, will you?” “I’ll turn his-” “People haven’t got any respect any more, that’s what it is,” said Nanny, as Magrat helped her with the thorns. “It’s all due to the king being one, I expect.” “We’re witches!” screamed Granny, turning her face towards the sky and shaking her fists. “Yes, yes,” said Magrat. “The harmonious balance of the universe and everything. I think Nanny’s a bit tired.” “What’ve I been doing all this time?” said Granny, with a rhetorical flourish that would have made even Vitoller gasp. “Not a lot,” said Magrat. “Laughed at! Laughed at! On my own roads! In my own country!” screamed Granny. “That just about does it! I’m not taking ten more years of this! I’m not taking another day of it!” The trees around her began to sway and the dust from the road sprang up into, writhing shapes that tried to swirl out of her way. Granny Weatherwax extended one long arm and at the end of it unfolded one long finger and from the rip of its curving nail there was a brief flare of octarine fire. Half a mile down the track all four wheels fell off the cart at once. “Lock up a witch, would he?” Granny shouted at the trees. Nanny struggled to her feet. “We’d better grab her,” she whispered to Magrat. The two of them leapt at Granny and forced her arms down to her sides. “I’ll bloody well show him what a witch could do!” she yelled. “Yes, yes, very good, very good,” said Nanny. “Only perhaps not just now and not just like this, eh?” “Wyrd sisters, indeed!” Granny yelled. “I’ll make his—” “Hold her a minute, Magrat,” said Nanny Ogg, and rolled up her sleeve. “It can be like this with the highly-trained ones,” she said, and brought her palm round in a slap that lifted both witches off their feet. On such a flat, final note the universe ought have ended. At the conclusion of the breathless silence which followed Granny Weatherwax said, “Thank you.” She adjusted her dress with some show of dignity, and added, “But I meant it. We’ll meet tonight at the stone and do what must be done. Ahem.” She reset the pins in her hat and set off unsteadily in the direction of her cottage. “Whatever happened to the rule about not meddling in politics?” said Magrat, watching her retreating back. Nanny Ogg massaged some life back into her fingers. “By Hoki, that woman’s got a jaw like an anvil,” she said “What was that?” “I said, what about this rule about not meddling?” said Magrat. “Ah,” said Nanny. She took the girl’s arm. “The thing is,” she explained, “as you progress in the Craft, you’ll learn there is another rule. Esme’s obeyed it all her life.” “And what’s that?” “When you break rules, break ‘em good and hard,” said Nanny, and grinned a set of gums that were more menacing than teeth. The duke smiled out over the forest. “It works,” he said. “The people mutter against the witches. How do you do it, Fool?” “Jokes, nuncle. And gossip. People are halfway ready to believe it anyway. Everyone respects the witches. The point is that no-one actually likes them very much.” Friday afternoon, he thought. I’ll have to get some flowers. And my best suit, the one with the silver bells. Oh gosh. “This is very pleasing. If it goes on like this, Fool, you shall have a knighthood.” This was no.302, and the Fool knew better than to let a feed line go hungry. “Marry, nuncle,” he said wearily, ignoring the spasm of pain that crawled across the duke’s face, “if n I had a Knighthood (Night Hood), why, it would keep my ears Warm in Bedde; I’faith, if many a Knight is a Fool, why, should a—” “Yes, yes, all right,” snapped Lord Felmet. In fact he was feeling much better already. His porridge hadn’t been oversalted this evening, and there was a decently empty feel about the castle. There were no more voices on the cusp of hearing. He sat down on the throne. It felt really comfortable for the first time . . . The duchess sat beside him, her chin on her hand, watching the Fool intently. This bothered him. He thought he knew where he stood with the duke, it was just a matter of hanging on until his madness curved back to the cheerful stage, but the duchess genuinely frightened him. “It seems that words are extremely powerful,” she said. “Indeed, lady.” “You must have made a lengthy study.” The Fool nodded. The power of words had sustained him through the hell of the Guild. Wizards and witches used words as if they were tools to get things done, but the Fool reckoned that words were things in their own right. “Words can change the world,” he said. Her eyes narrowed. “So you have said before. I remain unconvinced. Strong men change the world,” she said. “Strong men and their deeds. Words are just like marzipan on a cake. Of course you think words are important. You are weak, you have nothing else.” “Your ladyship is wrong.” The duchess’s fat hand drummed impatiently on the arm of her throne. “You had better,” she said, “be able to substantiate that comment.” “Lady, the duke wishes to chop down the forests, is this not so?” “The trees talk about me,” whispered Lord Felmet. “I hear them whisper when I go riding. They tell lies about me!” The duchess and the Fool exchanged glances. “But,” the Fool continued, “this policy has met with fanatical opposition.” “What?” “People don’t like it.” The duchess exploded. “What does that matter?” she roared. “We rule! They will do what we say or they will be pitilessly executed!” The Fool bobbed and capered and waved his hands in a conciliatory fashion. “But, my love, we will run out of people,” murmured the duke. “No need, no need!” said the Fool desperately. “You don’t have to do that at all! What you do is, you—” he paused for a moment, his lips moving quickly – “you embark upon a far-reaching and ambitious plan to expand the agricultural industry, provide long-term employment in the sawmills, open new land for development, and reduce the scope for banditry.” This time the duke looked baffled. “How will I do that?” he said. “Chop down the forests.” “But you said—” “Shut up, Felmet,” said the duchess. She subjected the Fool to another long, thoughtful stare. “Exactly how,” she said, eventually, “does one go about knocking over the houses of people one does not like?” “Urban clearance,” said the Fool. “I was thinking of burning them down.” “Hygienic urban clearance,” the Fool added promptly. “And sowing the ground with salt.” “Marry, I suspect that is hygienic urban clearance and a programme of environmental improvements. It might be a good idea to plant a few trees as well.” “No more trees!” shouted Felmet. “Oh, it’s all right. They won’t survive. The important thing is to have planted them.” “But I also want us to raise taxes,” said the duchess. “Why, nuncle—” “And I am not your nuncle.” “N’aunt?” said the Fool. “No.” “Why . . . prithee . . . you need to finance your ambitious programme for the country.” “Sorry?” said the duke, who was getting lost again. “He means that chopping down trees costs money,” said the duchess. She smiled at the Fool. It was the first time he had ever seen her look at him as if he was other than a disgusting little cockroach. There was still a large element of cockroach in her glance, but it said: good little cockroach, you have learned a trick. “Intriguing,” she said. “But can your words change the past?” The Fool considered this. “More easily, I think,” he said. “Because the past is what people remember, and memories are words. Who knows how a king behaved a thousand years ago? There is only recollection, and stories. And plays, of course.” “Ah, yes. I saw a play once,” said Felmet. “Bunch of funny fellows in tights. A lot of shouting. The people liked it.” “You tell me history is what people are told?” said the duchess. The Fool looked around the throne room and found King Gruneberry the Good (906-967). “Was he?” he said, pointing. “Who knows, now? What was he good at? But he will be Gruneberry the Good until the end of the world.” The duke was leaning forward in his throne, his eyes gleaming. “I want to be a good ruler,” he said. “I want people to like me. I would like people to remember me fondly.” “Let us assume,” said the duchess, “that there were other matters, subject to controversy. Matters of historical record that had . . . been clouded.” “I didn’t do it, you know,” said the duke, quickly. “He slipped and fell. That was it. Slipped and fell. I wasn’t even there. He attacked me. It was self-defence. That’s it. He slipped and fell on his own dagger in self-defence.” His voice fell to a mumble. “I have no recollection of it at this time,” he murmured. He rubbed his dagger hand, although the word was becoming inappropriate. “Be quiet, husband,” snapped the duchess. “I know you didn’t do it. I wasn’t there with you, you may recall. It was I who didn’t hand you the dagger.” The duke shuddered again. “And now, Fool,” said Lady Felmet. “I was saying, I believe, that perhaps there are matters that should be properly recorded. ” “Marry, that you were not there at the time?” said the Fool, brightly. It is true that words have power, and one of the things they are able to do is get out of someone’s mouth before the speaker has the chance to stop them. If words were sweet little lambs, then the Fool watched them bound cheerfully away into the flamethrower of the duchess’s glare. “Not where?” she said. “Anywhere,” said the Fool hastily. “Stupid man! Everyone is somewhere.” “I mean, you were everywhere but at the top of the stairs,” said the Fool. “Which stairs?” “Any stairs,” said the Fool, who was beginning to sweat. “I distinctly remember not seeing you!” The duchess eyed him for a while. “So long as you remember it,” she said. The duchess rubbed her chin, which made an audible rasping noise. “Reality is only weak words, you say. Therefore, words are reality. But how can words become history?” “It was a very good play, the play that I saw,” said Felmet dreamily. “There were fights, and no-one really died. Some very good speeches, I thought.” There was another sandpapery sound from the duchess. “Fool?” she said. “Lady?” “Can you write a play? A play that will go around the world, a play that will be remembered long after rumour has died?” “No, lady. It is a special talent.” “But can you find someone who has it?” “There are such people, lady.” “Find one,” murmured the duke. “Find the best. Find the best. The truth will out. Find one.” The storm was resting. It didn’t want to be, but it was. It had spent a fortnight understudying a famous anticyclone over the Circle Sea, turning up every day, hanging around in the cold front, grateful for a chance to uproot the occasional tree or whirl a farmhouse to any available emerald city of its choice. But the big break in the weather had never come. It consoled itself with the thought that even the really great storms of the past – the Great Gale of 1789, for example, or Hurricane Zelda and Her Amazing Raining Frogs – had gone through this sort of thing at some stage in their career. It was just part of the great tradition of the weather. Besides, it had had a good stretch in the equivalent of pantomime down on the plains, bringing seasonal snow and terminal frostbite to millions. It just had to be philosophical about being back up here now with nothing much to do except wave the heather about. If weather was people, this storm would be filling in time wearing a cardboard hat in a hamburger hell. Currently it was observing three figures moving slowly over the moor, converging with some determination on a bare patch where the standing stone stood, or usually stood, though just at the moment it wasn’t visible. It recognised them as old friends and connoisseurs, and conjured up a brief unseasonal roll of thunder as a form of greeting. This was totally ignored. “The bloody stone’s gone,” said Granny Weatherwax. “However many there is of it.” Her face was pale. It might also have been drawn; if so, then it was by a very neurotic artist. She looked as though she meant business. Bad business. “Light the fire, Magrat,” she added automatically. “I daresay we’ll all feel better for a cup of tea,” said Nanny Ogg, mouthing the words like a mantra. She fumbled in the recesses of her shawl. “With something in it,” she added, producing a small bottle of applejack. “Alcohol is a deceiver and tarnishes the soul,” said Magrat virtuously. “I never touch the stuff,” said Granny Weatherwax. “We should keep a clear head, Gytha.” “Just a drop in your tea isn’t drinking,” said Nanny. “It’s medicine. It’s a chilly old wind up here, sisters.” “Very well,” said Granny. “But just a drop.” They drank in silence. Eventually Granny said, “Well, Magrat. You know all about the coven business. We might as well do it right. What do we do next?” Magrat hesitated. She wasn’t up to suggesting dancing naked. “There’s a song,” she said. “In praise of the full moon.” “It ain’t full,” Granny pointed out. “It’s wossname. Bulging.” “Gibbous,” said Nanny obligingly. “I think it’s in praise of full moons in general,” Magrat hazarded. “And then we have to raise our consciousness. It really ought to be full moon for that, I’m afraid. Moons are very important.” Granny gave her a long, calculating look. “That’s modern witchcraft for you, is it?” she said. “It’s part of it, Granny. There’s a lot more.” Granny Weatherwax sighed. “Each to her own, I suppose. I’m blowed if I’ll let a ball of shiny rock tell me what to do.” “Yes, bugger all that,” said Nanny. “Let’s curse somebody.” The Fool crept cautiously along the nighttime corridors. He wasn’t taking any chances either. Magrat had given him a graphic account of Greebo’s general disposition, and the Fool had borrowed a couple of gloves and a sort of metal wimple from the castle’s store of hereditary chain mail. He reached the lumber room, lifted the latch cautiously, pushed the door and then flung himself against the wall. The corridor became slightly darker as the more intense darkness inside the room spilled out and mingled with the rather lighter darkness already there. Apart from that, nothing. The number of spitting, enraged balls of murderous fur pouring through the door was zero. The Fool relaxed, and slipped inside. Greebo dropped on his head. It had been a long day. The room did not offer the kind of full life that Greebo had come to expect and demand. The only point of interest had been the discovery, around mid-morning, of a colony of mice who had spent generations eating their way through a priceless tapestry history of Lancre and had just got as far as King Murune (709-745), who met a terrible fate[14], when they did, too. He had sharpened his claws on a bust of Lancre’s only royal vampire, Queen Grimnir the Impaler (1514-1553, 1553-1557, 1557-1562, 1562-1567 and 1568-1573). He had performed his morning ablutions on a portrait of an unknown monarch, which was beginning to dissolve. Now he was bored, and also angry. He raked his claws across the place where the Fool’s ears should have been, and was rewarded with nothing more than a metallic scraping noise. “Who’s a good boy, den?” said the Fool. “Wowsa wowsa whoosh.” This intrigued Greebo. The only other person who had ever spoken to him like this was Nanny Ogg; everyone else addressed him as “Yarrgeroffoutofityahbarstard”. He leaned down very carefully, intrigued by the new experience. From the Fool’s point of view an upside-down cat face lowered itself slowly into his field of vision, wearing an expression of evil-eyed interest. “Does oo want to go home, den?” said the Fool hopefully. “Look, Mr. Door is open.” Greebo increased his grip. He had found a friend. The Fool shrugged, very carefully, turned, and walked back into the passage. He made his way down through the hall, out into the courtyard, around the side of the guardroom and out through the main gate, nodding – carefully – to the guards. “Man just went past with a cat on his head,” one of them remarked, after a minute or two’s reflection. “See who it was?” “The Fool, I think.” There was a thoughtful pause. The second guard shifted his grip on his halberd. “It’s a rotten job,” he said. “But I suppose someone’s got to do it.” “We ain’t going to curse anyone,” said Granny firmly. “It hardly ever works if they don’t know you’ve done it.” “What you do is, you send him a doll of himself with pins in.” “No, Gytha.” “All you have to do is get hold of some of his toenails,” Nanny persisted, enthusiastically. “No.” “Or some of his hair or anything. I’ve got some pins.” “No.” “Cursing people is morally unsound and extremely bad for your karma,” said Magrat. “Well, I’m going to curse him anyway,” said Nanny. “Under my breath, like. I could of caught my death in that dungeon for all he cared.” “We ain’t going to curse him,” said Granny. “We’re going to replace him. What did you do with the old king?” “I left the rock on the kitchen table,” said Nanny. “I couldn’t stand it any more.” “I don’t see why,” said Magrat. “He seemed very pleasant. For a ghost.” “Oh, he was all right. It was the others,” said Nanny. “Others?” “ "Pray carry a stone out of the palace so’s I can haunt it, good mother," he says,” said Nanny Ogg. “ "It’s bloody boring in here, Mistress Ogg, excuse my Klatchian," he says, so of course I did. I reckon they was all listening. Ho yes, they all thinks, all aboard, time for a bit of a holiday. I’ve nothing against ghosts. Especially royal ghosts,” she added loyally. “But my cottage isn’t the place for them. I mean, there’s some woman in a chariot yelling her head off in the washhouse. I ask you. And there’s a couple of little kiddies in the pantry, and men without heads all over the place, and someone screaming under the sink, and there’s this little hairy man wandering around looking lost and everything. It’s not right.” “Just so long as he’s not here,” said Granny. “We don’t want any men around.” “He’s a ghost, not a man,” said Magrat. “We don’t have to go into details,” Granny said icily. “But you can’t put the old king back on the throne,” said Magrat. “Ghosts can’t rule. You’d never get the crown to stay on. It’d drop through.” “We’re going to replace him with his son,” said Granny. “Proper succession.” “Oh, we’ve been through all that,” said Nanny, dismissively. “In about fifteen years” time, perhaps, but—” “Tonight,” said Granny. “A child on the throne? He wouldn’t last five minutes.” “Not a child,” said Granny quietly. “A grown man. Remember Aliss Demurrage?” There was silence. Then Nanny Ogg sat back. “Bloody hell,” she whispered. “You ain’t going to try that, are you?” “I mean to have a go.” “Bloody hell,” said Nanny again, very quietly, and added. “You’ve been thinking about this, have you?” “Yes.” “See here, Esme. I mean, Black Aliss was one of the best. I mean, you’re very good at, well, headology and thinking and that. I mean, Black Aliss, well, she just upped and went at it.” “You saying I couldn’t do it, are you?” “Excuse me,” said Magrat. “No. No. Of course not,” said Nanny, ignoring her. “Right.” “Only . . . well, she was a, you know, a hoyden of witches, like the king said.” “Doyenne,” said Granny, who had looked it up. “Not hoyden.” “Excuse me,” said Magrat, louder this time. “Who was Black Aliss? And,” she added quickly, “none of this exchanging meaningful glances and talking over my head. There’s three witches in this coven, remember?” “She was before your time,” said Nanny Ogg. “Before mine, really. She lived over Skunid way. Very powerful witch.” “If you listen to rumour,” said Granny. “She turned a pumpkin into a royal coach once,” said Nanny. “Showy,” said Granny Weatherwax. “That’s no help to anyone, turning up at a ball smelling like a pie. And that business with the glass slipper. Dangerous, to my mind.” “But the biggest thing she ever did,” said Nanny, ignoring the interruption, “was to send a whole palace to sleep for a hundred years until. . .” She hesitated. “Can’t remember. Was there rose bushes involved, or was it spinning wheels in that one? I think some princess had to finger . . . no, there was a prince. That was it.” “Finger a prince?” said Magrat, uneasily. “No . . .he had to kiss her. Very romantic, Black Aliss was. There was always a bit of romance in her spells. She liked nothing better than Girl meets Frog.” “Why did they call her Black Aliss?” “Fingernails,” said Granny. “And teeth,” said Nanny Ogg. “She had a sweet tooth. Lived in a real gingerbread cottage. Couple of kids shoved her in her own oven at the end. Shocking.” “And you’re going to send the castle to sleep?” said Magrat. “She never sent the castle to sleep,” said Granny. “That’s just an old wives” tale,” she added, glaring at Nanny. “She just stirred up time a little. It’s not as hard as people think. Everyone does it all the time. It’s like rubber, is time. You can stretch it to suit yourself.” Magrat was about to say, that’s not right, time is time, every second lasts a second, that’s what it’s for, that’s its job . . . And then she recalled weeks that had flown past and afternoons that had lasted forever. Some minutes had lasted hours, some hours had gone past so quickly she hadn’t been aware they’d gone past at all . . . “But that’s just people’s perception,” she said. “Isn’t it?” “Oh, yes,” said Granny, “of course it is. It all is. What difference does that make?” “A hundred years’d be over-egging it, mind,” said Nanny. “I reckon fifteen’d be a nice round number,” said Granny. “That means the lad will be eighteen at the finish. We just do the spell, go and fetch him, he can manifest his destiny, and everything will be nice and neat.” Magrat didn’t comment on this, because it had occurred to her that destinies sounded easy enough when you talked about them but were never very bankable where real human beings were concerned. But Nanny Ogg sat back and tipped another generous measure of apple brandy in her tea. “Could work out nice,” she said. “A bit of peace and quiet for fifteen years. If I recall the spell, after you say it you have to fly around the castle before cock crow.” “I wasn’t thinking about that,” said Granny. “It wouldn’t be right. Felmet would still be king all that time. The kingdom would still get sick. No, what I was thinking of doing was moving the whole kingdom.” She beamed at them. “The whole of Lancre?” said Nanny. “Yes.” “Fifteen years into the future?” “Yes.” Nanny looked at Granny’s broomstick. It was a well-made thing, built to last, apart from the occasional starting problem. But there were limits. “You’ll never do it,” she said. “Not around the whole kingdom in that. That’s all the way up to Powderknife and down to Drumlin’s Fell. You just couldn’t carry enough magic.” “I’ve thought of that,” said Granny. She beamed again. It was terrifying. She explained the plan. It was dreadful. A minute later the moor was deserted, as the witches hurried to their tasks. It was silent for a while, apart from the squeak of bats and the occasional rustle of the wind in the heather. Then there was a bubbling from the nearby peat bog. Very slowly, crowned with a thicket of sphagnum moss, the standing stone surfaced and peered around the landscape with an air of deep distrust. Greebo was really enjoying this. At first he thought his new friend was taking him to Magrat’s cottage, but for some reason he’d wandered off the path in the dark and was taking a stroll in the forest. In one of the more interesting bits, Greebo had always felt. It was a hummocky area, rich in hidden potholes and small, intense swamps, full of mist even in fine weather. Greebo often came up here on the offchance that a wolf was lying up for the day. “I thought cats could find their own way home,” the Fool muttered. He cursed himself under his breath. It would have been easy to take this wretched creature back to Nanny Ogg’s house, which was only a few streets away, almost in the shadow of the castle. But then he’d had the idea of delivering it to Magrat. It would impress her, he thought. Witches were very keen on cats. And then she’d be bound to ask him in, for a cup of tea or something . . . He put his foot in another water-filled hole. Something wriggled underneath it. The Fool groaned, and stepped back on to a tumescent mushroom. “Look, cat,” he said. “You’ve got to come down, right? And then you can find your way home and I’ll follow you. Cats are good at seeing in the dark and finding their own way home,” he added hopefully. He reached up. Greebo sank his claws into his arm as a friendly warning, and found to his surprise that this had no effect on chain mail. “There’s a good cat,” said the Fool, and lowered him to the ground. “Go on, find your way home. Any home will do.” Greebo’s grin gradually faded, until there was nothing left but the cat. This was nearly as spooky as the opposite way round. He stretched and yawned to hide his embarrassment. Being called a good cat in the middle of one of his favourite stalking grounds wasn’t going to do anything for his prowl-credibility. He disappeared into the undergrowth. The Fool peered into the gloom. It dawned on him that while he liked forests, he liked them at one remove, as it were; it was nice to know that they were there, but the forests of the mind were not quite the same as real forests that, for example, you got lost in. They had more mighty oaks and fewer brambles. They also tended to be viewed in daylight, and the trees didn’t have malevolent faces and long scratchy branches. The trees of the imagination were proud giants of the forest. Most of the trees here appeared to be vegetable gnomes, mere trellises for fungi and ivy. The Fool was vaguely aware that you could tell which direction the Hub lay by seeing which side of the trees the moss grew on. A quick inspection of the nearby trunks indicated that, in defiance of all normal geography, the Hub lay everywhere. Greebo had vanished. The Fool sighed, removed his chain mail protection, and tinkled gently through the night in search of high ground. High ground seemed a good idea. The ground he was on at the moment appeared to be trembling. He was sure it shouldn’t do that. Magrat hovered on her broomstick several hundred feet above the Turnwise borders of Lancre, looking down on a sea of mist through which the occasional treetop poked like a seaweed-covered rock at high tide. A bulging moon floated above her, probably gibbous again. Even a decent thin crescent would have been better, she felt. More appropriate. She shivered, and wondered where Granny Weatherwax was at this moment. The old witch’s broomstick was known and feared throughout the skies of Lancre. Granny had been introduced to flying quite late in life, and after some initial suspicion had taken to it like a bluebottle to an ancient fish-head. A problem, however, was that Granny saw every flight simply as a straight line from A to B and was unable to get alongside the idea that other users of the air might have any rights whatsoever; the flight migration patterns of an entire continent had been changed because of that simple fact. High-speed evolution among local birds had developed a generation that flew on their backs, so that they could keep a watchful eye on the skies. Granny’s implicit belief that everything should get out of her way extended to other witches, very tall trees and, on occasion, mountains. Granny had also browbeaten the dwarfs who lived under the mountains and in fear of their lives into speeding the thing up. Many an egg had been laid in mid-air by unsuspecting fowls who had suddenly glimpsed Granny bearing down on them, scowling over the top of the broomstick. “Oh dear,” thought Magrat. “I hope she hasn’t happened to someone.” A midnight breeze turned her gently around in the air, like an unsupported weathercock. She shivered and squinted at the moonlit mountains, the high Ramtops, whose freezing crags and ice-green chasms acknowledged no king or cartographer. Only on the Rim ward side was Lancre open to the world; the rest of its borders looked as jagged as a wolfs mouth and far more impassable. From up here it was possible to see the whole kingdom . . . There was a ripping noise in the sky above her, a blast of wind that spun her around again, and a Doppler-distorted cry of, “Stop dreaming, girl!” She gripped the bristles with her knees and urged the stick upward. It took several minutes to catch up with Granny, who was lying almost full length along her broomstick to reduce wind resistance. Dark treetops roared far below them as Magrat came alongside. Granny turned to her, holding her hat on with one hand. “Not before time,” she snapped. “I don’t reckon this one’s got more’n a few minutes flight left. Come on, get a move on.” She reached out a hand. So did Magrat. Unsteadily, the broomsticks bucking and dipping in one another’s slipstream, they touched fingertips. Magrat’s arm tingled as the power flowed up it.[15]Granny’s broomstick jerked forward. “Leave me a bit,” shouted Magrat. “I’ve got to get down!” “Shouldn’t be difficult,” screamed Granny, above the noise of the wind. “I mean get down safely!” “You’re a witch, ain’t you? By the way, did you bring the cocoa? I’m freezing up here!” Magrat nodded desperately, and with her spare hand passed up a straw bag. “Right,” said Granny. “Well done. See you at Lancre Bridge.” She uncurled her fingers. Magrat whirled away in the buffeting wind, clinging tightly to a broomstick which now, she feared, had about as much buoyancy as a bit of firewood. It certainly wasn’t capable of sustaining a full-grown woman against the beckoning fingers of gravity. As she plunged down towards the forest roof in a long shallow dive she reflected that there was possibly something complimentary in the way Granny Weatherwax resolutely refused to consider other people’s problems. It implied that, in her considerable opinion, they were quite capable of sorting them out by themselves. Some kind of Change spell was probably in order. Magrat concentrated. Well, that seemed to work. Nothing in the sight of mortal man had in fact changed. What Magrat had achieved was a mere adjustment of the mental processes, from a bewildered and slightly frightened woman gliding inexorably towards the inhospitable ground to a clearheaded, optimistic and positive thinking woman who had really got it together, was taking full responsibility for her own life and in general knew where she was coming from although, unfortunately, where she was heading had not changed in any way. But she felt a lot better about it. She dug her heels in and forced the broomstick to yield the last dregs of its power in a brief burst, sending it skimming erratically a few feet from the trees. As it sagged again and started to plough a furrow among the midnight leaves she tensed herself, prayed to whatever gods of the forest might be listening that she would land on something soft, and let go. There are three thousand known major gods on the Disc, and research theologians discover more every week. Apart from the minor gods of rock, tree and water, there are two that haunt the Ramtops – Hoki, half a man, half a goat, and entirely a bad practical joker, who was banished from Dunmanifestin for pulling the old exploding mistletoe joke on Blind Io, chief of all the gods; and also Herne the Hunted, the terrified and apprehensive deity of all small furry creatures whose destiny it is to end their lives as a brief, crunchy squeak . . . Either could have been candidates for the small miracle which then occurred, for – in a forest full of cold rocks, jagged stumps and thorn bushes – Magrat landed on something soft. Granny, meanwhile, was accelerating towards the mountains on the second leg of the journey. She consumed the regrettably tepid cocoa and, with proper environmental consideration, dropped the bottle as she passed over an upland lake. It turned out that Magrat’s idea of sustaining food was two rounds of egg and cress sandwiches with the crusts cut off and, Granny noticed before the wind whipped it away, a small piece of parsley placed with consideration and care on top of each one. Granny regarded them for some time. Then she ate them. A chasm loomed, still choked with winter snow. Like a tiny spark in the darkness, a dot of light against the hugeness of the Ramtops, Granny tackled the maze of the mountains. Back in the forest, Magrat sat up and absent-mindedly pulled a twig from her hair. A few yards away the broomstick dropped through the trees, showering leaves. A groan and a small, half-hearted tinkle caused her to peer into the gloom. An indistinct figure was on its hands and knees, searching for something. “Did I land on you?” said Magrat. “Someone did,” said the Fool. They crawled nearer to one another. “You?” “You!” “What are you doing here?” “Marry, I was walking along the ground,” said the Fool. “A lot of people do, you know. I mean, I know it’s been done before. It’s not original. It probably lacks imagination but, well, it’s always been good enough for me.” “Did I hurt you?” “I think I’ve got one or two bells that won’t be the same again.” The Fool scrabbled through the leafmould, and finally located his hated hat. It clonked. “Totally crushed, I’faith,” he said, putting it on anyway. He seemed to feel better for that, and went on, “Rain, yes, hail, yes, even lumps of rock. Fish and small frogs, okay. Women no, up till now. Is it going to happen again?” “You’ve got a bloody hard head,” said Magrat, pulling herself to her feet. “Modesty forbids me to comment,” said the Fool, and then remembered himself and added, quickly, “Prithee.” They stared at one another again, their minds racing. Magrat thought: Nanny said look at him properly. I’m looking at him. He just looks the same. A sad thin little man in a ridiculous jester’s outfit, he’s practically a hunchback. Then, in the same way that a few random bulges in a cloud can suddenly become a galleon or a whale in the eye of the beholder, Magrat realised that the Fool was not a little man. He was at least of average height, but he made himself small, by hunching his shoulders, bandying his legs and walking in a half-crouch that made him appear as though he was capering on the spot. I wonder what else Gytha Ogg noticed? she thought, intrigued. He rubbed his arm and gave her a lopsided grin. “I suppose you haven’t got any idea where we are?” he said. “Witches never get lost,” said Magrat firmly. “Although they can become temporarily mislaid. Lancre’s over that way, I think. I’ve got to find a hill, if you’ll excuse me.” “To see where you are?” “To see when, I think. There’s a lot of magic going on tonight.” “Is there? Then I think I’ll accompany you,” the Fool added chivalrously, after peering cautiously into the tree-haunted gloom that apparently lay between him and his flagstones. “I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.” Granny lay low over the broomstick as it plunged through the trackless chasms of the mountains, leaning from side to side in the hope that this might have some effect on the steering which seemed, strangely, to be getting worse. Falling snow behind her was whipped and spiralled into odd shapes by the wind of her passage. Rearing waves of crusted snow, poised all winter over the glacial valleys, trembled and then began the long, silent fall. Her flight was punctuated by the occasional boom of an avalanche. She looked down at a landscape of sudden death and jagged beauty, and knew it was looking back at her, as a dozing man may watch a mosquito. She wondered if it realised what she was doing. She wondered if it’d make her fall any softer, and mentally scolded herself for such softness. No, the land wasn’t like that. It didn’t bargain. The land gave hard, and took hard. A dog always bit deepest on the veterinary hand. And then she was through, vaulting so low over the last peak that one of her boots filled with snow, and barrelling down towards the lowlands. The mist, never far away in the mountains, was back again, but this time it was making a fight of it and had become a thick, silver sea in front of her. She groaned. Somewhere in the middle of it Nanny Ogg floated, taking the occasional pull from a hip flask as a preventative against the chill. And thus it was that Granny, her hat and iron-grey hair dripping with moisture, her boots shedding lumps of ice, heard the distant and muffled sound of a voice enthusiastically explaining to the invisible sky that the hedgehog had less to worry over than just about any other mammal. Like a hawk that has spotted something small and fluffy in the grass, like a wandering interstellar flu germ that has just seen a nice blue planet drifting by, Granny turned the stick and plunged down through the choking billows. “Come on!” she screamed, drunk with speed and exhilaration, and the sound from five hundred feet overhead put a passing wolf severely off its supper. “This minute, Gytha Ogg!” Nanny Ogg caught her hand with considerable reluctance and the pair of broomsticks swept up again and into the clear, starlit sky. The Disc, as always, gave the impression that the Creator has designed it specifically to be looked at from above. Streamers of cloud in white and silver stretched away to the rim, stirred into thousand-mile swirls by the turning of the world. Behind the speeding brooms the sullen roof of the fog was dragged up into a curling tunnel of white vapour, so that the watching gods – and they were certainly watching – could see the terrible flight as a furrow in the sky. A thousand feet and rising fast into the frosty air, the two witches were bickering again. “It was a bloody stupid idea,” moaned Nanny. “I never liked heights.” “Did you bring something to drink?” “Certainly. You said.” “Well?” “I drank it, didn’t I,” said Nanny. “Sitting around up there at my age. Our Jason would have a fit.” Granny gritted her teeth. “Well, let’s have the power,” she said. “I’m running out of up. Amazing how—” Granny’s voice ended in a scream as; without any warning at all, her broomstick pinwheeled sharply across the clouds and dropped from sight. The Fool and Magrat sat on a log on a small outcrop that looked out across the forest. The lights of Lancre town were in fact not very far away, but neither of them had suggested leaving. The air between them crackled with unspoken thoughts and wild surmisings. “You’ve been a Fool long?” said Magrat, politely. She blushed in the darkness. In that atmosphere it sounded the most impolite of questions. “All my life,” said the Fool bitterly. “I cut my teeth on a set of bells.” “I suppose it gets handed on, from father to son?” said Magrat. “I never saw much of my father. He went off to be Fool for the Lords of Quirm when I was small,” said the Fool. “Had a row with my grandad. He comes back from time to time, to see my mam.” “That’s terrible.” There was a sad jingle as the Fool shrugged. He vaguely recalled his father as a short, friendly little man, with eyes like a couple of oysters. Doing something as brave as standing up to the old boy must have been quite outside his nature. The sound of two suits of bells shaken in anger still haunted his memory, which was full enough of bad scenes as it was. “Still,” said Magrat, her voice higher than usual and with a vibrato of uncertainty, “it must be a happy life. Making people laugh, I mean.” When there was no reply she turned to look at the man. His face was like stone. In a low voice, talking as though she was not there, the Fool spoke. He spoke of the Guild of Fools and Joculators in Ankh-Morpork. Most visitors mistook it at first sight for the offices of the Guild of Assassins, which in fact was the rather pleasant,- airy collection of buildings next door (the Assassins always had plenty of money); sometimes the young Fools, slaving at their rote in rooms that were always freezing, even in high summer, heard the young Assassins at play over the wall and envied them, even though, of course, the number of piping voices grew noticeably fewer towards the end of term (the Assassins also believed in competitive examination). In fact all sorts of sounds managed to breach the high grim windowless walls, and from keen questioning of servants the younger Fools picked up a vision of the city beyond. There were taverns out there, and parks. There was a whole bustling world, in which the students and apprentices of the various Guilds and Colleges took a full ripe part, either by playing tricks on it, running through it shouting, or throwing parts of it up. There was laughter which paid no attention to the Five Cadences or Twelve Inflections. And – although the students debated this news in the dormitories at night – there was apparently unauthorised humour, delivered freestyle, with no reference to the Monster Fun Book or the Council or anyone. Out there, beyond the stained stonework, people were telling jokes without reference to the Lords of Misrule. It was a sobering thought. Well, not a sobering thought in actual fact, because alcohol wasn’t allowed in the Guild. But if it was, it would have been. There was nowhere more sober than the Guild. The Fool spoke bitterly of the huge, redfaced Brother Prankster, of evenings learning the Merry Jests, of long mornings in the freezing gymnasium learning the Eighteen Pratfalls and the accepted trajectory for a custard pie. And juggling. Juggling! Brother Jape, a man with a soul like cold boiled string, taught juggling. It wasn’t that the Fool was bad at juggling that reduced him to incoherent fury. Fools were expected to be bad at juggling, especially if juggling inherently funny items like custard pies, flaming torches or extremely sharp cleavers. What had Brother Jape laying about him in red-hot, clanging rage was the fact that the Fool was bad at juggling because he wasn‘t any good at it. “Didn’t you want to be anything else?” said Magrat. “What else is there?” said the Fool. “I haven’t seen anything else I could be.” Student Fools were allowed out, in the last year of training, but under a fearsome set of restrictions. Capering miserably through the streets he’d seen wizards for the first time, moving like dignified carnival floats. He’d seen the surviving assassins, foppish, giggling young men in black silk, as sharp as knives underneath; he’d seen priests, their fantastic costumes only slightly marred by the long rubber sacrificial aprons they wore for major services. Every trade and profession had its costume, he saw, and he realised for the first time that the uniform he was wearing had been carefully and meticulously designed for no other purpose than making its wearer look like a complete and utter pillock. Even so, he’d persevered. He’d spent his whole life persevering. He persevered precisely because he had absolutely no talent, and because grandfather would have flayed him alive if he didn’t. He memorised the authorised jokes until his head rang, and got up even earlier in the morning to juggle until his elbows creaked. He had perfected his grasp of the comic vocabulary until only the very senior Lords could understand him. He’d capered and clowned with an impenetrable grim determination and he’d graduated top of his year and had been awarded the Bladder of Honour. He’d dropped it down the privy when he came home. Magrat was silent. The Fool said, “How did you get to be a witch?” “Um?” “I mean, did you go to a school or something?” “Oh. No. Goodie Whemper just walked down to the village one day, got all us girls lined up, and chose me. You don’t choose the Craft, you see. It chooses you.” “Yes, but when do you actually become a witch?” “When the other witches treat you as one, I suppose.” Magrat sighed. “If they ever do,” she added. “I thought they would after I did that spell in the corridor. It was pretty good, after all.” “Marry, t’was a rite of passage,” said the Fool, unable to stop himself. Magrat gave him a blank look. He coughed. “The other witches being those two old ladies?” he said, relapsing into his usual gloom. “Yes.” “Very strong characters, I imagine.” “Very,” said Magrat, with feeling. “I wonder if they ever met my grandad,” said the Fool. Magrat looked at her feet. “They’re quite nice really,” she said. “It’s just that, well, when you’re a witch you don’t think about other people. I mean, you think about them, but you don’t actually think about their feelings, if you see what I mean. At least, not unless you think about it.” She looked at her feet again. “You’re not like that,” said the Fool. “Look, I wish you’d stop working for the duke,” said Magrat desperately. “You know what he’s like. Torturing people and setting fire to their cottages and everything.” “But I’m his Fool,” said the Fool. “A Fool has to be loyal to his master. Right up until he dies. I’m afraid it’s tradition. Tradition is very important.” “But you don’t even like being a Fool!” “I hate it. But that’s got nothing to do with it. If I’ve got to be a Fool, I’ll do it properly.” “That’s really stupid,” said Magrat. “Foolish, I’d prefer.” The Fool had been edging along the log. “If I kiss you,” he added carefully, “do I turn into a frog?” Magrat looked down at her feet again. They shuffled themselves under her dress, embarrassed at all this attention. She could sense the shades of Gytha Ogg and Esme Weatherwax on either side of her. Granny’s spectre glared at her. A witch is master of every situation, it said. Mistress, said the vision of Nanny Ogg, and made a brief gesture involving much grinning and waving of forearms. “We shall have to see,” she said. It was destined to be the most impressive kiss in the history of foreplay. Time, as Granny Weatherwax had pointed out, is a subjective experience. The Fool’s years in the Guild had been an eternity whereas the hours with Magrat on the hilltop passed like a couple of minutes. And, high above Lancre, a double handful of seconds extended like taffy into hours of screaming terror. “Ice!” screamed Granny. “It’s iced up!” Nanny Ogg came alongside, trying vainly to match courses with the tumbling, bucking broomstick. Octarine fire crackled over the frozen bristles, shorting them out at random. She leaned over and snatched a handful of Granny’s skirt. “I tole you it was daft!” she shouted. “You went all through all that wet mist and then up into the cold air, you daft besom!” “You let go of my skirt, Gytha Ogg!” “Come on, grab hold o’mine. You’re on fire at the back there!” They shot through the bottom of the cloud bank and screamed in unison as the shrub-covered ground emerged from nowhere and aimed itself directly at them. And went past. Nanny looked down a black perspective at the bottom of which a boil of white water was dimly visible. They had flown over the edge of Lancre Gorge. Blue smoke was pouring out of Granny’s broomstick but she hung on, determined, and forced it around. “What the hell you doing?” roared Nanny. “I can follow the river,” Granny Weatherwax screamed, above the crackle of flames. “Don’t you worry!” “You come aboard, d’you hear? It’s all over, you can’t do it . . .” There was a small explosion behind Granny and several handfuls of burning bristles broke off and whirled away into the booming depths of the gorge. Her stick jerked sideways and Nanny grabbed her around the shoulders as a gout of fire snapped another binding. The blazing broomstick shot from between her legs, twisted in the air, and went straight upwards, trailing sparks and making a noise like a wet finger dragged around the top of a wineglass. This left Nanny flying upside down, supporting Granny Weatherwax at arm’s length. They stared into one another’s face and screamed. “I can’t pull you up!” “Well, I can’t climb up, can I? Act your age, Gytha!” Nanny considered this. Then she let go. Three marriages and an adventurous girlhood had left Nanny Ogg with thigh muscles that could crack coconuts, and the G-forces sucked at her as she forced the speeding stick down and around in a tight loop. Ahead of her she made out Granny Weatherwax dropping like a stone, one hand clutching her hat, the other trying to prevent gravity from seeing up her skirts. She urged the stick forwards until it creaked, snatched the falling witch around the waist, fought the plunging stick back up to level flight, and sagged. The subsequent silence was broken by Granny Weatherwax saying, “Don’t you ever do that again, Gytha Ogg.” “I promise.” “Now turn us around. We’re heading for Lancre Bridge, remember?” Nanny obediently turned the broomstick, brushing the canyon walls as she did so. “It’s still miles to go,” she said. “I mean to do it,” said Granny. “There’s plenty of night left.” “Not enough, I’m thinking.” “A witch doesn’t know the meaning of the word "failure". Gytha.” They shot up into the clear air again. The horizon was a line of golden light as the slow dawn of the Disc sped across the land, bulldozing the suburbs of the night. “Esme?” said Nanny Ogg, after a while. “What?” “It means "lack of success".” They flew in chilly silence for several seconds. “I was speaking wossname. Figuratively,” said Granny. “Oh. Well. You should of said.” The line of light was bigger, brighter. For the first time a flicker of doubt invaded Granny Weatherwax’s mind, puzzled to find itself in such unfamiliar surroundings. “I wonder how many cockerels there are in Lancre?” she said quietly. “Was that one of them wossname questions?” “I was just wondering.” Nanny Ogg sat back. There were thirty-two of crowing age, she knew. She knew because she’d worked it out last night – tonight - and had given Jason his instructions. She had fifteen grown-up children and innumerable grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and they’d had most of the evening to get into position. It should be enough. “Did you hear that?” said Granny. “Over Razorback way?” Nanny looked innocently across the misty landscape. Sound travelled very clearly in these early hours. “What?” she said. “Sort of an "urk" noise?” “No.” Granny spun around. “Over there,” she said. “I definitely heard it this time. Something like "cock-a-doo-arrgh".” “Can’t say I did, Esme,” said Nanny, smiling at the sky. “Lancre Bridge up ahead.” “And over there! Right down there! It was a definite squawk!” “Dawn chorus, Esme, I expect. Look, only half a mile to go.” Granny glared at the back of her colleague’s head. “There’s something going on here,” she said. “Search me, Esme.” “Your shoulders are shaking!” “Lost my shawl back there. I’m a bit chilly. Look, we’re nearly there.” Granny glared ahead, her mind a maze of suspicions. She was going to get to the bottom of this. When she had time. The damp logs of Lancre’s main link to the outside world drifted gently underneath them. From the chicken farm half a mile away came a chorus of strangled squawks and a thud. “And that? What was that, then?” demanded Granny. “Fowl pest. Careful, I’m bringing us down.” “Are you laughing at me?” “Just pleased for you, Esme. You’ll go down in history for this, you know.” They drifted between the timbers of the bridge. Granny Weatherwax alighted cautiously on the greasy planking and adjusted her dress. “Yes. Well,” she added, nonchalantly. “Better than Black Aliss, everyone”ll say,” Nanny Ogg went on. “Some people will say anything,” said Granny. She peered over the parapet at the foaming torrent far below, and then up at the distant outcrop on which stood Lancre Castle. “Do you think they will?” she added, nonchalantly. “Mark my words.” “Hmm.” “But you’ve got to complete the spell, mind.” Granny Weatherwax nodded. She turned to face the dawn, raised her arms, and completed the spell. It is almost impossible to convey the sudden passage of fifteen years and two months in words. It’s a lot easier in pictures, when you just use a calendar with lots of pages blowing off, or a clock with hands moving faster and faster until they blur, or trees bursting into blossom and fruiting in a matter of seconds . . . Well, you know. Or the sun becomes a fiery streak across the sky, and days and nights flicker past jerkily like a bad zoetrope, and the fashions visible in the clothes shop across the road whip on and off faster than a lunchtime stripper with five pubs to do. There are any amount of ways, but they won’t be required because, in fact, none of this happened. The sun did jerk sideways a bit, and it seemed that the trees on the rimward side of the gorge were rather taller, and Nanny couldn’t shake off the sensation that someone had just sat down heavily on her, squashed her flat, and then opened her out again. This was because the kingdom did not, in so many words, move through time in the normal flickering sky, high-speed photography sense of the word. It moved around it, which is much cleaner, considerably easier to achieve, and saves all that travelling around trying to find a laboratory opposite a dress shop that will keep the same dummy in the window for sixty years, which has traditionally been the most time-consuming and expensive bit of the whole business. The kiss lasted more than fifteen years. Not even frogs can manage that. The Fool drew back, his eyes glazed, his expression one of puzzlement. “Did you feel the world move?” he said. Magrat peered over his shoulder at the forest. “I think she’s done it,” she said. “Done what?” Magrat hesitated. “Oh. Nothing. Nothing much, really.” “Shall we have another try? I don’t think we got it quite right that time.” Magrat nodded. This time it lasted only fifteen seconds. It seemed longer. A tremor ran through the castle, shaking the breakfast tray from which the Duke Felmet, much to his relief, was eating porridge that wasn’t too salty. It was felt by the ghosts that now filled Nanny Ogg’s cottage like a rugby team in a telephone box. It spread to every henhouse in the kingdom, and a number of hands relaxed their grip. And thirty-two purple-faced cockerels took a deep bream and crowed like maniacs, but they were too late, too late . . . “I still reckon you were up to something,” said Granny Weatherwax. “Have another cup of tea,” said Nanny pleasantly. “You won’t go and put any drink in it, will you,” Granny said flatly. “It was the drink what did it last night. I would never have put myself forward like that. It’s shameful.” “Black Aliss never done anything like it,” said Nanny, encouragingly. “I mean, it was a hundred years, all right, but it was only one castle she moved. I reckon anyone could do a castle.” Granny’s frown puckered at the edge. “And she let all weeds grow over it,” she observed primly. “Right enough.” “Very well done,” said King Verence, eagerly. “We all thought it was superb. Being in the ethereal plane, of course, we were in a position to observe closely.” “Very good, your graciousness,” said Nanny Ogg. She turned and observed the crowding ghosts behind him, who hadn’t been granted the privilege of sitting at, or partly through, the kitchen table. “But you lot can bugger off back to the outhouse,” she said. “The cheek! Except the kiddies, they can stay,” she added. “Poor little mites.” “I am afraid it feels so good to be out of the castle,” said the king. Granny Weatherwax yawned. “Anyway,” she said, “we’ve got to find the boy now. That’s the next step.” “We shall look for him directly after lunch.” “Lunch?” “It’s chicken,” said Nanny. “And you’re tired. Besides, making a decent search will take a long time.” “He’ll be in Ankh-Morpork,” said Granny. “Mark my words. Everyone ends up there. We’ll start with Ankh-Morpork. You don’t have to search for people when destiny is involved, you just wait for them in Ankh-Morpork.” Nanny brightened up. “Our Karen got married to an innkeeper from there,” she said. “I haven’t seen the baby yet. We could get free board and everything.” “We needn’t actually go. The whole point is that he should come here. There’s something about that city,” said Granny. “It’s like a drain.” “It’s five hundred miles away!” said Magrat. “You’ll be away for ages!” “I can’t help it,” said the Fool. “The duke’s given me special instructions. He trusts me.” “Huh! To hire more soldiers, I expect?” “No. Nothing like that. Not as bad as that.” The Fool hesitated. He’d introduced Felmet to the world of words. Surely that was better than hitting people with swords? Wouldn’t that buy time? Wouldn’t it be best for everybody, in the circumstances? “But you don’t have to go! You don’t want to go!” “That doesn’t have much to do with it. I promised to be loyal to him—” “Yes, yes, until you’re dead. But you don’t even believe that! You were telling me how much you hated the whole Guild and everything!” “Well, yes. But I still have to do it. I gave my word.” Magrat came close to stamping her foot, but didn’t sink so low. “Just when we were getting to know one another!” she shouted. “You’re pathetic!” The Fool’s eyes narrowed. “I’d only be pathetic if I broke my word,” he said. “But I may be incredibly ill-advised. I’m sorry. I’ll be back in a few weeks, anyway.” “Don’t you understand I’m asking you not to listen to him?” “I said I’m sorry. I couldn’t see you again before I go, could I?” “I shall be washing my hair,” said Magrat stiffly. “When?” “Whenever!” Hwel pinched the bridge of his nose and squinted wearily at the wax-spattered paper. The play wasn’t going at all well. He’d sorted out the falling chandelier, and found a place for a villain who wore a mask to conceal his disfigurement, and he’d rewritten one of the funny bits to allow for the fact that the hero had been born in a handbag. It was the clowns who were giving him trouble again. They kept changing every time he thought about them. He preferred them in twos, that was traditional, but now there seemed to be a third one, and he was blowed if he could think of any funny lines for him. His quill moved scratchily over the latest sheet of paper, trying to catch the voices that had streamed through his dreaming mind and had seemed so funny at the time. His tongue began to stick out of the corner of his mouth. He was sweating. This iss My Little Study, he wrote. Hey, with a Little Study youe could goe a Long Way. And I wishe youed start now. Iffe You can’t leave yn a Cab then leave yn a Huff. Iffthates too soone, thenn leave yn a minute and a Huff. Say, have you Gott a Pensil? A crayon?— Hwel stared at this in horror. On the page it looked nonsensical, ridiculous. And yet, and yet, in the thronged auditorium of his mind . . . He dipped the quill in the inkpot, and chased the echoes further. Seconde Clown: Atsa right, Boss. Third Clowne:[businesse with bladder on stick] Honk. Honk. Hwel gave up. Yes, it was funny, he knew it was funny, he’d heard the laughter in his dreams. But it wasn’t right. Not yet. Maybe never. It was like the other idea about the two clowns, one fat, one thin . . . Thys ys amain Dainty Messe youe have got me into, Stanleigh . . . He had laughed until his chest ached, and the rest of the company had looked at him in astonishment. But in his dreams it was hilarious. He laid down the pen and rubbed his eyes. It must be nearly midnight, and the habit of a lifetime told him to spare the candles although, for a fact, they could afford all the candles they could eat now, whatever Vitoller might say. Hour gongs were being struck all across the city and nightwatchmen were proclaiming that it was indeed midnight and also that, in the face of all the evidence, all was well. Many of them got as far as the end of the sentence before being mugged. Hwel pushed open the shutters and looked out at Ankh-Morpork. It would be tempting to say the twin city was at its best this time of year, but that wouldn’t be entirely correct. It was at its most typical. The river Ankh, the cloaca of half a continent, was already pretty wide and silt laden when it reached the city’s outskirts. By the time it left it didn’t so much flow as exude. Owing to the accretion of the mud of centuries the bed of the river was in fact higher than some of the low lying areas and now, with the snow melt swelling the flow, many of the low-rent districts on the Morpork side were flooded, if you can use that word for a liquid you could pick up in a net. This sort of thing happened every year and would have caused havoc with the drains and sewage systems, so it is just as well that the city didn’t have very many. Its inhabitants merely kept a punt handy in the back yard and, periodically, built another storey on the house. It was reckoned to be very healthy there. Very few germs were able to survive. Hwel looked across a sort of misty sea in which buildings clustered like a sandcastle competition at high tide. Flares and lighted windows made pleasing patterns on the iridescent surface, but there was one glare of light, much closer to hand, which particularly occupied his attention. On a patch of slightly higher ground by the river, bought by Vitoller for a ruinous sum, a new building was rising. It was growing even by night, like a mushroom – Hwel could see the cressets burning all along the scaffolding as the hired craftsmen and even some of the players themselves refused to let the mere shade of the sky interrupt their labours. New buildings were rare in Morpork, but this was even a new type of building. The Dysk. Vitoller had been aghast at the idea at first, but young Tomjon had kept at him. And everyone knew that once the lad had got the feel of it he could persuade water to flow uphill. “But we’ve always moved around, laddie,” said Vitoller, in the desperate voice of one who knows that, at the end of it all, he’s going to lose the argument. “I can’t go around settling down at my time of life.” “It’s not doing you any good,” said Tomjon firmly. “All these cold nights and frosty mornings. You’re not getting any younger. We should stay put somewhere, and let people come to us. And they will, too. You know the crowds we’re getting now. Hwel’s plays are famous.” “It’s not my plays,” Hwel had said. “It’s the players.” “I can’t see me sitting by a fire in a stuffy room and sleeping on feather beds and all that nonsense,” said Vitoller, but he’d seen the look on his wife’s face and had given in. And then there had been the theatre itself. Making water run uphill was a parlour trick compared to getting the cash out of Vitoller but, it was a fact, they had been doing well these days. Ever since Tomjon had been big enough to wear a ruff and say two words without his voice cracking. Hwel and Vitoller had watched the first few beams of the wooden framework go up. “It’s against nature,” Vitoller had complained, leaning on his stick. “Capturing the spirit of the theatre, putting it in a cage. It’ll kill it.” “Oh, I don’t know,” said Hwel diffidently. Tomjon had laid his plans well, he’d devoted an entire evening to Hwel before even broaching the subject to his father, and now the dwarfs mind was on fire with the possibilities of backdrops and scenery changes and wings and flies and magnificent engines that could lower gods from the heavens and trapdoors that could raise demons from hell. Hwel was no more capable of objecting to the new theatre than a monkey was of resenting a banana plantation. “Damn thing hasn’t even got a name,” Vitoller had said. “I should call it the Golde Mine, because that’s what it’s costing me. Where’s the money going to come from, that’s what I’d like to know.” In fact they’d tried a lot of names, none of which suited Tomjon. “It’s got to be a name that means everything,” he said. “Because there’s everything inside it. The whole world on the stage, do you see?” And Hwel had said, knowing as he said it that what he was saying was exactly right, “The Disc.” And now the Dysk was nearly done, and still he hadn’t written the new play. He shut the window and wandered back to his desk, picked up the quill, and pulled another sheet of paper towards him. A thought struck him. The whole world was a stage, to the gods . . . Presently he began to write. All the Disc it is but an Theater, he wrote, Aite alle men and wymmen are but Players. He made the mistake of pausing, and another inspiration sleeted down, sending his train of thought off along an entirely new track. He looked at what he had written and added: Except Those who selle popcorn. After a while he crossed this out, and tried: Like unto thee Staje of a Theater ys the World, whereon alle Persons strut as Players. This seemed a bit better. He thought for a bit, and continued conscientiously: Sometimes they walke on. Sometimes they walke off. He seemed to be losing it. Time, time, what he needed was an infinity . . . There was a muffled cry and a thump from the next room. Hwel dropped the quill and pushed open the door cautiously. The boy was sitting up in bed, white-faced. He relaxed when Hwel came in. “Hwel?” “What’s up, lad? Nightmares?” “Gods, it was terrible! I saw them again! I really thought for a minute that—” Hwel, who was absent-mindedly picking up the clothes that Tomjon had strewn around the room, paused in his work. He was keen on dreams. That was when the ideas came. “That what?” he said. “It was like . . . I mean, I was sort of inside something, like a bowl, and there were these three terrible faces peering in at me.” “Aye?” “Yes, and then they all said, "All hail . . ." and then they started arguing about my name, and then they said, "Anyway, who shall be king hereafter?" And then one of them said, "Here after what?" and one of the other two said, "Just hereafter, girl, it’s what you’re supposed to say in these circumstances, you might try and make an effort", and then they all peered closer, and one of the others said, "He looks a bit peaky, I reckon it’s all that foreign food", and then the youngest one said, "Nanny, I’ve told you already, there’s no such place as Thespia", and then they bickered a bit, and one of the old ones said, "He can’t hear us, can he? He’s tossing and turning a bit", and the other one said, "You know I’ve never been able to get sound on this thing, Esme", and then they bickered some more, and it went cloudy, and then . . . I woke up . . .” he finished lamely. “It was horrible, because every time they came close to the bowl it sort of magnified everything, so all you could see was eyes and nostrils.” Hwel hoisted himself on to the edge of the narrow bed. “Funny old things, dreams,” he said. “Not much funny about that one.” “No, but I mean, last night, I had this dream about a little bandy-legged man walking down a road,” said Hwel. “He had a little black hat on, and he walked as though his boots were full of water.” Tomjon nodded politely. “Yes?” he said. “And—?” “Well, that was it. And nothing. He had this little cane which he twirled and, you know, it was incredibly . . .” The dwarfs voice trailed off. Tomjon’s face had that familiar expression of polite and slightly condescending puzzlement that Hwel had come to know and dread. “Anyway, it was very amusing,” he said, half to himself. But he knew he’d never convince the rest of the company. If it didn’t have a custard pie in it somewhere, they said, it wasn’t funny. Tomjon swung his legs out of bed and reached for his britches. “I’m not going back to sleep,” he said. “What’s the time?” “It’s after midnight,” said Hwel. “And you know what your father said about going to bed late.” “I’m not,” said Tomjon, pulling on his boots. “I’m getting up early. Getting up early is very healthy. And now I’m going out for a very healthy drink. You can come too,” he added, “to keep an eye on me.” Hwel gave him a doubting look. “You also know what your father says about going out drinking,” he said. “Yes. He said he used to do it all the time when he was a lad. He said he’d think nothing of quaffing ale all night and coming home at 5 a.m., smashing windows. He said he was a bit of a roister-doister, not like these white-livered people today who can’t hold their drink.” Tomjon adjusted his doublet in front of the mirror, and added, “You know, Hwel, I reckon responsible behaviour is something to get when you grow older. Like varicose veins.” Hwel sighed. Tomjon’s memory for ill-judged remarks was legendary. “All right,” he said. “Just the one, though. Somewhere decent.” “I promise.” Tomjon adjusted his hat. It had a feather in it. “By the way,” he said, “exactly how does one quaff?” “I think it means you spill most of it,” said Hwel. If the water of the river Ankh was rather thicker and more full of personality than ordinary river water, so the air in the Mended Drum was more crowded than normal air. It was like dry fog. Tomjon and Hwel watched it spilling out into the street. The door burst open and a man came through backwards, not actually touching the ground until he hit the wall on the opposite side of the street. An enormous troll, employed by the owners to keep a measure of order in the place, came out dragging two more limp bodies which he deposited on the cobbles, kicking them once or twice in soft places. “I reckon they’re roistering in there, don’t you?” said Tomjon. “It looks like it,” said Hwel. He shivered. He hated taverns. People always put their drinks down on his head. They scurried in quickly while the troll was holding one unconscious drinker up by one leg and banging his head on the cobbles in a search for concealed valuables. Drinking in the Drum has been likened to diving in a swamp, except that in a swamp the alligators don’t pick your pockets first. Two hundred eyes watched the pair as they pushed their way through the crowd to the bar, a hundred mouths paused in the act of drinking, cursing or pleading, and ninety-nine brows crinkled with the effort of working out whether the newcomers fell into category A, people to be frightened of or B, people to frighten. Tomjon walked through the crowd as though it was his property and, with the impetuosity of youth, rapped on the bar. Impetuosity was not a survival trait in the Mended Drum. “Two pints of your finest ale, landlord,” he said, in tones so carefully judged that the barman was astonished to find himself obediently filling the first mug before the echoes had died away. Hwel looked up. There was an extremely big man on his right, wearing the outside of several large bulls and more chains than necessary to moor a warship. A face that looked like a building site with hair on it glared down at him. “Bloody hell,” it said. “It’s a bloody lawn ornament.” Hwel went cold. Cosmopolitan as they were, the people of Morpork had a breezy, no-nonsense approach to the non-human races, i.e., hit them over the head with a brick and throw them in the river. This did not apply to trolls, naturally, because it is very difficult to be racially prejudiced against creatures seven feet tall who can bite through walls, at least for very long. But people three feet high were absolutely designed to be discriminated against. The giant prodded Hwel on the top of his head. “Where’s your fishing rod, lawn ornament?” he said. The barman pushed the mugs across the puddled counter. “Here you are,” he said, leering. “One pint. And one half pint.” Tomjon opened his mouth to speak, but Hwel nudged him sharply in the knee. Put up with it, put up with it, slip out as soon as possible, it was the only way . . . “Where’s your little pointy hat, then?” said the bearded man. The room had gone quiet. This looked like being cabaret time. “I said, where’s your pointy hat, dopey?” The barman got a grip of the blackthorn stick with nails in which lived under the counter, just in case, and said, “Er—” “I was talking to the lawn ornament here.” The man took the dregs of his own drink and poured them carefully over the silent dwarfs head. “I ain’t drinking here again,” he muttered, when even this tailed to have any effect. “It’s bad enough they let monkeys drink here, but pygmies—” Now the silence in the bar took on a whole new intensity in which the sound of a stool being slowly pushed back was like the creak of doom. All eyes swivelled to the other end of the room, where sat the one drinker in the Mended Drum who came into category C. What Tomjon had thought was an old sack hunched over the bar was extending arms and – other arms, except that they were its legs. A sad, rubbery face turned towards the speaker, its expression as melancholy as the mists of evolution. Its funny lips curled back. There was abolutely nothing funny about its teeth. “Er,” said the barman again, his voice frightening even him in that terrible simian silence. “I don’t think you meant that, did you? Not about monkeys, eh? You didn’t really, did you?” “What the hell’s that?” hissed Tomjon. “I think it’s an orang-utan,” said Hwel. “An ape.” “A monkey’s a monkey,” said the bearded man, at which several of the Drum’s more percipient customers started to edge for the door. “I mean, so what? But these bloody lawn ornaments—” Hwel’s fist struck out at groin height. Dwarfs have a reputation as fearsome fighters. Any race of three-foot tall people who favour axes and go into battle as into a championship tree-felling competition soon get talked about. But years of wielding a pen instead of a hammer had relieved Hwel’s punches of some of their stopping power, and it could have been the end of him when the big man yelled and drew his sword if a pair of delicate, leathery hands hadn’t instantly jerked the thing from his grip and, with only a small amount of effort, bent it double.[16] When the giant growled, and turned around, an arm like a couple of broom handles strung together with elastic and covered with red fur unfolded itself in a complicated motion and smacked him across the jaw so hard that he rose several inches in the air and landed on a table. By the time that the table had slid into another table and overturned a couple of benches there was enough impetus to start the night’s overdue brawl, especially since the big man had a few friends with him. Since no-one felt like attacking the ape, who had dreamily pulled a bottle from the shelf and smashed the bottom off on the counter, they hit whoever happened to be nearest, on general principles. This is absolutely correct etiquette for a tavern brawl. Hwel walked under a table and dragged Tomjon, who was watching all this with interest, after him. “So this is roistering. I always wondered.” “I think perhaps it would be a good idea to leave,” said the dwarf firmly. “Before there’s, you know, any trouble.” There was a thump as someone landed on the table above them, and a tinkle of broken glass. “Is it real roistering, do you suppose, or merely rollicking?” said Tomjon, grinning. “It’s going to be bloody murder in a minute, my lad!” Tomjon nodded, and crawled back out into the fray. Hwel heard him thump on the bar counter with something and call for silence. Hwel put his arms over his head in panic. “I didn’t mean—” he began. In fact calling for silence was a sufficiently rare event in the middle of a tavern brawl that silence was what Tomjon got. And silence was what he filled. Hwel started as he heard the boy’s voice ring out, full of confidence and absolutely first-class projection. “Brothers! And yet may I call all men brother, for on this night—” The dwarf craned up to see Tomjon standing on a chair, one hand raised in the prescribed declamatory fashion. Around him men were frozen in the act of giving one another a right seeing-to, their faces turned to his. Down at tabletop height Hwel’s lips moved in perfect synchronisation with the words as Tomjon went through the familiar speech. He risked another look. The fighters straightened up, pulled themselves together, adjusted the hang of their tunics, glanced apologetically at one another. Many of them were in fact standing to attention. Even Hwel felt a fizz in his blood, and he’d written those words. He’d slaved half a night over them, years ago, when Vitoller had declared that they needed another five minutes in Act III of The King of Ankh. “Scribble us something with a bit of spirit in it,” he’d said. “A bit of zip and sizzle, y’know. Something to summon up the blood and put a bit of backbone in our friends in the ha’penny seats. And just long enough to give us time to change the set.” He’d been a bit ashamed of that play at the time. The famous Battle of Morpork, he strongly suspected, had consisted of about two thousand men lost in a swamp on a cold, wet day, hacking one another into oblivion with rusty swords. What would the last King of Ankh have said to a pack of ragged men who knew they were outnumbered, outflanked and outgeneralled? Something with bite, something with edge, something like a drink of brandy to a dying man; no logic, no explanation, just words that would reach right down through a tired man’s brain and pull him to his feet by his testicles. Now he was seeing its effect. He began to think the walls had fallen away, and there was a cold mist blowing over the marshes, its choking silence broken only by the impatient cries of the carrion birds . . . And this voice. And he’d written the words, they were his, no half-crazed king had ever really spoken like this. And he’d written all this to fill in a gap so that a castle made of painted sacking stretched over a frame could be shoved behind a curtain, and this voice was taking the coal dust of his words and filling the room with diamonds. I made these words, Hwel thought. But they don’t belong to me. They belong to him. Look at those people. Not a patriotic thought among them, but if Tomjon asked them, this bunch of drunkards would storm die Patrician’s palace tonight. And they’d probably succeed. I just hope his mouth never falls into the wrong hands . . . As the last syllables died away, their white-hot echoes searing across every mind in the room, Hwel shook himself and crawled out of hiding and jabbed Tomjon on the knee. “Come away now, you fool,” he hissed. “Before it wears off.” He grasped the boy firmly by the arm, handed a couple of complimentary tickets to the stunned barman, and hurried up the steps. He didn’t stop until they were a street away. “I thought I was doing rather well there,” said Tomjon. “A good deal too well, I reckon.” The boy rubbed his hands together. “Right. Where shall we go next?” “Next?” “Tonight is young!” “No, tonight is dead. It’s today that’s young,” said the dwarf hurriedly. “Well, I’m not going home yet. Isn’t there somewhere a bit more friendly? We haven’t actually drunk anything.” Hwel sighed. “A troll tavern,” said Tomjon. “I’ve heard about them. There’s some down in the Shades.[17]I’d like to see a troll tavern.” “They’re for trolls only, boy. Molten lava to drink and rock music and cheese ‘n’ chutney flavoured pebbles.” “What about dwarf bars?” “You’d hate it,” said Hwel, fervently. “Besides, you’d run out of headroom.” “Low dives, are they?” “Look at it like this – how long do you think you could sing about gold?” “ "It’s yellow and it goes chink and you can buy things with it," “ said Tomjon experimentally, as they strolled through the crowds on the Plaza of Broken Moons. “Four seconds, I think.” “Right. Five hours of it gets a bit repetitive.” Hwel kicked a pebble gloomily. He’d investigated a few dwarf bars last time they were in town, and hadn’t approved. For some reason his fellow expatriates, who at home did nothing more objectionable than mine a bit of iron ore and hunt small creatures, felt impelled, once in the big city, to wear chain mail underwear, go around with axes in their belts, and call themselves names like Timkin Rumbleguts. And no-one could beat a city dwarf when it came to quaffing. Sometimes they missed their mouths altogether. “Anyway,” he added, “you’d get thrown out for being too creative. The actual words are, "Gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold".” “Is there a chorus?” “ "Gold, gold, gold, gold, gold",” said Hwel. “You left out a "gold" there.” “I think it’s because I wasn’t cut out to be a dwarf.” “Cut down, lawn ornament,” said Tomjon. There was a little hiss of indrawn breath. “Sorry,” said Tomjon hurriedly. “It’s just that father—” “I’ve known your father for a long time,” said Hwel “Through thick and thin, and there was a damn sight more thin than thick. Since before you were bor—” He hesitated “Times were hard in those days,” he mumbled. “So what I’m saying is . . . well, some things you earn.” “Yes. I’m sorry.” “You see, just—” Hwel paused at the mouth of a dark alley “Did you hear something?” he said. They squinted into the alley, once again revealing themselves as newcomers to the city. Morporkians don’t look down dark alleys when they hear strange noises. If they see four struggling figures their first instinct is not to rush to anyone’s assistance, or at least not to rush to the assistance of the one who appears to be losing and on the wrong end of someone else’s boot. Nor do they shout “Oi!” Above all, they don’t look surprised when the assailants, instead of guiltily running off flourish a small piece of cardboard in front of them. “What’s this?” said Tomjon. “It’s a clown!” said Hwel. “They’ve mugged a clown!” “ "Theft Licence"?” said Tomjon, holding the card up to the light. “That’s right,” said the leader of the three. “Only don’t expect us to do you too, ‘cos we’re on our way home.” “S’right,” said one of his assistants. “It’s the thingy, the quota.” “But you were kicking him!” “Worl, not a lot. Not what you’d call actual kicking.” “More foot nudging, sort of thing,” said the third thief. “Fair’s fair. He bloody well went and fetched Ron here a right thump, didn’t he?” “Yeah. Some people have no idea.” “Why, you heartless—” Hwel began, but Tomjon laid a cautioning hand on his head. The boy turned the card over. The obverse read: J. H. “Flannelfoot” Boggis and Nephews Bespoke Thieves “The Old Firm” (Estblshd AM 1789) All type Theft carryed out Professionly and with Disgression Houses cleared. 24-hr service. No job too small. LET US QUOTE YOU FOR OUR FAMILY RATE “It seems to be in order,” he said reluctantly. Hwel paused in the act of helping the dazed victim to his feet. “In order?” he shouted. “To rob someone?” “We’ll give him a chitty, of course,” said Boggis. “Lucky we found him first, really. Some of these newcomers in the business, they’ve got no idea.”[18] “Cowboys,” agreed a nephew. “How much did you steal?” said Tomjon. Boggis opened the clown’s purse, which was stuck in his belt. Then he went pale. “Oh, bleeding hell,” he said, The Nephews clustered around. “We’re for it, sort of thing.” “Second time this year, uncle.” Boggis glared at the victim. “Well, how was I to know? I wasn’t to know, was I? I mean, look at him, how much would you expect him to have on him? Couple of coppers, right? I mean, we’d never have done for him, only it was on our way home. You try and do someone a favour, this is what happens.” “How much has he got, then?” said Tomjon. “There must be a hundred silver dollars in here,” moaned Boggis, waving a purse. “I mean, that’s not my league. That’s not my class. I can’t handle that sort of money. You’ve got to be in the Guild of Lawyers or something to steal that much. It’s way over my quota, is that.” “Give it back then,” said Tomjon. “But I done him a receipt!” “They’ve all got, you know, numbers on,” explained the younger of the nephews. “The Guild checks up, sort of . . .” Hwel grabbed Tomjon’s hand. “Will you excuse us a moment?” he said to the frantic thief, and dragged Tomjon to the other side of the alley. “Okay,” he said. “Who’s gone mad? Them? Me? You?” Tomjon explained. “It’s legal?” “Up to a certain point. Fascinating, isn’t it? Man in a pub told me about it, sort of thing.” “But he’s stolen too much?” “So it appears. I gather the Guild is very strict about it.” There was a groan from the victim hanging between them. He tinkled gently. “Look after him,” said Tomjon. “I’ll sort this out.” He went back to the thieves, who were looking very worried. “My client feels,” he said, “that the situation could be resolved if you give the money back.” “Ye-es,” said Boggis, approaching the idea as if it was a brand new theory of cosmic creation. “But it’s the receipt. See, we have to fill it up, time and place, signed and everything . . .” “My client feels that possibly you could rob him of, let us say, five copper pieces,” said Tomjon, smoothly. “—I bloody don’t!—” shouted the Fool, who was coming round. That represents two copper pieces as the going rate, plus expenses of three copper pieces for time, call-out fees—” “Wear and tear on cosh,” said Boggis. “Exactly.” “Very fair. Very fair.” Boggis looked over Tomjon’s head at the Fool, who was now completely conscious and very angry. “Very fair,” he said loudly. “Statesmanlike. Much obliged, I’m sure.” He looked down at Tomjon. “And anything for yourself, sir?” he added. “Just say the word. We’ve got a special on GBH this season. Practically painless, you’ll barely feel a thing.” “Hardly breaks the skin,” said the older nephew. “Plus you get choice of limb.” “I believe I am well served in that area,” said Tomjon smoothly. “Oh. Well. Right you are then. No problem.” “Which merely leaves,” continued Tomjon, as the thieves started to walk away, “the question of legal fees.” The gentle greyness at the stump of the night flowed across Ankh-Morpork. Tomjon and Hwel sat on either side of the table in their lodgings, counting. “Three silver dollars and eighteen copper pieces in profit, I make it,” said Tomjon. “That was amazing,” said the Fool. “I mean, the way they volunteered to go home and get some more money as well, after you gave them that speech about the rights of man.” He dabbed some more ointment on his head. “And the youngest one started to cry,” he added. “Amazing.” “It wears off,” said Hwel. “You’re a dwarf, aren’t you?” Hwel didn’t feel he could deny this. “I can tell you’re a Fool,” he said. “Yes. It’s the bells, isn’t it?” said the Fool wearily, rubbing his ribs. “Yes, and the bells.” Tomjon grimaced and kicked Hwel under the table. “Well, I’m very grateful,” said the Fool. He stood up, and winced. “I’d really like to show my gratitude,” he added. “Is there a tavern open around here?” Tomjon joined him at the window, and pointed down the length of the street. “See all those tavern signs?” he said. “Yes. Gosh. There’s hundreds.” “Right. See the one at the end, with the blue and white sign?” “Yes. I think so.” “Well, as far as I know, that’s the only one around here that’s ever closed.” “Then pray allow me to treat you to a drink. It’s the least I can do,” said the Fool nervously. “And I’m sure the little fellow would like something to quaff.” Hwel gripped the edge of the table and opened his mouth to roar. And stopped. He stared at the two figures. His mouth stayed open. It closed again with a snap. “Something the matter?” said Tomjon. Hwel looked away. It had been a long night. “Trick of the light,” he muttered. “And I could do with a drink,” he added. “A bloody good quaff.” In fact, he thought, why fight it? “I’ll even put up with the singing,” he said. “Was’ the nex’ wor’?” “S’gold. I think.” “Ah.” Hwel looked unsteadily into his mug. Drunkenness had this to be said for it, it stopped the flow of inspirations. “And you left out the "gold",” he said. “Where?” said Tomjon. He was wearing the Fool’s hat. Hwel considered this. “I reckon,” he said, concentrating, “it was between the "gold" and the "gold". An” I reckon,” he peered again into the mug. It was empty, a horrifying sight. “I reckon,” he tried again, and finally gave up, and substituted, “I reckon I could do with another drink.” “My shout this time,” said the Fool. “Hahaha. My squeak. Hahaha.” He tried to stand up, and banged his head. In the gloom of the bar a dozen axes were gripped more firmly. The part of Hwel that was sober, and was horrified to see the rest of him being drunk, urged him to wave his hand at the beetling brows glaring at them through the gloom. “S’all right,” he said, to the bar at large. “He don’t mean it, he ve’ funny wossname, idiot. Fool. Ver’ funny Fool, all way from wassisplace.” “Lancre,” said the Fool, and sat down heavily on the bar. “S’right. Long way away from wossname, sounds like foot disease. Don’t know how to behave. Don’t know many dwarfs.” “Hahaha,” said the Fool, clutching his head. “Bit short of them where I come from.” Someone tapped Hwel on the shoulder. He turned and looked into a craggy, hairy face under an iron helmet. The dwarf in question was tossing a throwing axe up and down in a meaningful way. “You ought to tell your friend to be a bit less funny,” he suggested. “Otherwise he will be amusing the demons in Hell!” Hwel squinted at him through the alcoholic haze. “Who’re you?” he said. “Grabpot Thundergust,” said the dwarf, striking his chain-mailed torso. “And I say—” Hwel peered closer. “Here, I know you,” he said. “You got a cosmetics mill down Hobfast Street. I bought a lot of greasepaint off you last week—” A look of panic crossed Thundergust’s face. He leaned forward in panic. “Shutup, shutup,” he whispered. “That’s right, it said the Halls of Elven Perfume and Rouge Co.,” said Hwel happily. “Ver’ good stuff,” said Tomjon, who was trying to stop himself from sliding off the tiny bench. “Especially your No. 19, Corpse Green, my father swears it’s the best. First class.” The dwarf hefted-his axe uneasily. “Well, er,” he said. “Oh. But. Yes. Well, thank you. Only the finest ingredients, mark you.” “Chop them up with that, do you?” said Hwel innocently, pointing to the axe. “Or is it your night off?” Thundergust’s brows beetled again like a cockroach convention. “Here, you’re not with the theatre?” “Tha’s us,” said Tomjon. “Strolling players.” He corrected himself. “Standing-still players now. Haha. Slidin’-down players now.” The dwarf dropped his axe and sat down on the bench, his face suddenly softened with enthusiasm. “I went last week,” he said. “Bloody good, it was. There was this girl and this fellow, but she was married to this old man, and there was this other fellow, and they said he’d died, and she pined away and took poison, but then it turned out this man was the other man really, only he couldn’t tell her on account of—” Thundergust stopped, and blew his nose. “Everyone died in the end,” he said. “Very tragic. I cried all the way home, I don’t mind telling you. She was so pale.” “No. 19 and a layer of powder,” said Tomjon cheerfully. “Plus a bit of brown eyeshadow.” “Eh?” “And a couple of hankies in the vest,” he added. “What’s he saying?” said the dwarf to the company at, for want of a better word, large. Hwel smiled into his tankard. “Give “em a bit of Gretalina’s soliloquy, boy,” he said. “Right.” Tomjon stood up, hit his head, sat down and then knelt on the floor as a compromise. He clasped his hands to what would have been, but for a few chance chromosomes, his bosom. “You lie who call it Summer . . .” he began. The assembled dwarfs listened in silence for several minutes. One of them dropped his axe, and was noisily hushed by the rest of them. “. . . and melting snow. Farewell,” Tomjon finished. “Drinks phial, collapses behind battlements, down ladder, out of dress and into tabard for Comic Guard No.2, wait one, entrance left. What ho, good—” “That’s about enough,” said Hwel quietly. Several of the dwarfs were crying into their helmets. There was a chorus of blown noses. Thundergust dabbed at his eyes with a chain-mail handkerchief. “That was the most saddest thing I’ve ever heard,” he said. He glared at Tomjon. “Hang on,” he said, as realisation dawned. “He’s a man. I bloody fell in love with that girl on stage.” He nudged Hwel. “He’s not a bit of an elf, is he?” “Absolutely human,” said Hwel. “I know his father.” Once again he stared hard at the Fool, who was watching them with his mouth open, and looked back at Tomjon. Nah, he thought. Coincidence. “S’acting,” he said. “A good actor can be anything, right?” He could feel the Fool’s eye boring into the back of his short neck. “Yes, but dressing up as women, it’s a bit—” said Thundergust doubtfully. Tomjon slipped off his shoes and knelt down on them, bringing his face level with the dwarfs. He gave him a calculating stare for a few seconds, and then adjusted his features. And there were two Thundergusts. True, one of them was kneeling and had apparently been shaved. “What ho, what ho,” said Tomjon in the dwarf’s voice. This was by way of being a hilarious gag to the rest of the dwarfs, who had an uncomplicated sense of humour. As they gathered round the pair Hwel felt a gentle touch on the shoulder. “You two are with a theatre?” said the Fool, now almost sober. “S’right.” “Then I’ve come five hundred miles to find you.” It was, as Hwel would have noted in his stage directions, Later the Same Day. The sounds of hammering as the Dysk theatre rose from its cradle of scaffolding thumped through Hwel’s head and out the other side. He could remember the drinking, he was certain. And the dwarfs bought lots more rounds when Tomjon did his impersonations. Then they had all gone to another bar Thundergust knew, and then they’d gone to a Klatchian takeaway, and after that it was just a blur . . . He wasn’t very good at quaffing. Too much of the drink actually landed in his mouth. Judging by the taste in it, some incontinent creature of the night had also scored a direct hit. “Can you do it?” said Vitoller. Hwel smacked his lips to get rid of the taste. “I expect,” said Tomjon. “It sounded interesting, the way he told it. Wicked king ruling with the help of evil witches. Storms. Ghastly forests. True Heir to Throne in Life-and-Death Struggle. Flash of Dagger. Screams, alarums. Evil king dies. Good triumphs. Bells ring out.” “Showers of rose petals could be arranged,” said Vitoller. “I know a man who can get them at practically cost.” They both looked at Hwel, who was drumming his fingers on his stool. All three found their attention drawn to the bag of silver the Fool had given Hwel. Even by itself it represented enough money to complete the Dysk. And there had been talk of more to follow. Patronage, that was the thing. “You’ll do it then, will you?” said Vitoller. “It’s got a certain something,” Hwel conceded. “But . . . I don’t know . . .” “I’m not trying to pressure you,” said Vitoller. All three pairs of eyes swivelled back to the money bag. “It seems a bit fishy,” Tomjon conceded. “I mean, the Fool is decent enough. But the way he tells it . . . it’s very odd. His mouth says the words, and his eyes say something else. And I got the impression he’d much rather we believed his eyes.” “On the other hand,” said Vitoller hurriedly, “what harm could it do? The pay’s the thing.” Hwel raised his head. “What?” he said muzzily. “I said, the play’s the thing,” said Vitoller. There was silence again, except for the drumming of Hwel’s fingertips. The bag of silver seemed to have grown larger. In fact, it seemed to fill the room. “The thing is—” Vitoller began, unnecessarily loudly. “The way I see it—” Hwel began. They both stopped. “After you. Sorry.” “It wasn’t important. Go ahead.” “I was going to say, we could afford to build the Dysk anyway,” said Hwel. “Just the shell and the stage,” said Vitoller. “But not all the other things. Not the trapdoor mechanism, or the machine for lowering gods out of heaven. Or the big turntable, or the wind fans.” “We used to manage without all that stuff,” said Hwel. “Remember the old days? All we had was a few planks and a bit of painted sacking. But we had a lot of spirit. If we wanted wind we had to make it ourselves.” He drummed his fingers for a while. “Of course,” he added quietly, “we should be able to afford a wave machine. A small one. I’ve got this idea about this ship wrecked on an island, where there’s this—” “Sorry.” Vitoller shook his head. “ “But we’ve had some huge audiences!” said Tomjon. “Sure, lad. Sure. But they pay in ha’pennies. The artificers want silver. If we wanted to be rich men – people,” he corrected hurriedly, “we should have been born carpenters.” Vitoller shifted uneasily. “I already owe Chrystophrase the Troll more than I should.” The other two stared. “He’s the one that has people’s limbs torn off!” said Tomjon. “How much do you owe him?” said Hwel. “It’s all right,” said Vitoller hurriedly, I’m keeping up the interest payments. More or less.” “Yes, but how much does he want?” “An arm and a leg.” The dwarf and boy stared at him in horror. “How could you have been so—” “I did it for you two! Tomjon deserves a better stage, he doesn’t want to go ruining his health sleeping in lattys and never knowing a home, and you, my man, you need somewhere settled, with all the proper things you ought to have, like trapdoors and . . . wave machines and so forth. You talked me into it, and I thought, they’re right. It’s no life out on the road, giving two performances a day to a bunch of farmers and going round with a hat afterwards, what sort of future is that? I thought, we’ve got to get a place somewhere, with comfortable seats for the gentry, people who don’t throw potatoes at the stage. I said, blow the cost. I just wanted you to—” “All right, all right!” shouted Hwel. “I’ll write it!” “I’ll act it,” said Tomjon. “I’m not forcing you, mind,” said Vitoller. “It’s your own choice.” Hwel frowned at the table. There were, he had to admit, some nice touches. Three witches was good. Two wouldn’t be enough, four would be too many. They could be meddling with the destinies of mankind, and everything. Lots of smoke and green light. You could do a lot with three witches. It was surprising no-one had thought of it before. “So we can tell this Fool that we’ll do it, can we?” said Vitoller, his hand on the bag of silver. And of course you couldn’t go wrong with a good storm. And there was the ghost routine that Vitoller had cut out of Please Yourself, saying they couldn’t afford the muslin. And perhaps he could put Death in, too. Young Dafe would make a damn good Death, with white makeup and platform soles . . . “How far away did he say he’d come from?” he said. “The Ramtops,” said the playmaster. “Some little kingdom no-one has ever heard of. Sounds like a chest infection.” “It’d take months to get there.” “I’d like to go, anyway,” said Tomjon. “That’s where I was born.” Vitoller looked at the ceiling. Hwel looked at the floor. Anything was better, just at that moment, than looking at each other’s face. “That’s what you said,” said the boy. “When you did a tour of the mountains, you said.” “Yes, but I can’t remember where,” said Vitoller. “All those little mountain towns looked the same to me. We spent more time pushing the lattys across rivers and dragging them up hills than we ever did on the stage.” “I could take some of the younger lads and we could make a summer of it,” said Tomjon. “Put on all the old favourites. And we could still be back by Soulcake Day. You could stay here and see to the theatre, and we could be back for a Grand Opening.” He grinned at his father. “It’d be good for them,” he said slyly. “You always said some of the young lads don’t know what a real acting life is like.” “Hwel’s still got to write the play,” Vitoller pointed out. Hwel was silent. He was staring at nothing at all. After a while one hand fumbled in his doublet and brought out a sheaf of paper, and then disappeared in the direction of his belt and produced a small corked ink pot and a bundle of quills. They watched as, without once looking at them, the dwarf smoothed out the paper, opened the ink pot, dipped a quill, held it poised like a hawk waiting for its prey, and then began to write. Vitoller nodded at Tomjon. Walking as quietly as they could, they left the room. Around mid-afternoon they took up a tray of food and a bundle of paper. The tray was still there at teatime. The paper had gone. A few hours later a passing member of the company reported hearing a yell of “It can’t work! It’s back to front!” and the sound of something being thrown across the room. Around supper Vitoller heard a shouted request for more candles and fresh quills. Tomjon tried to get an early night, but sleep was murdered by the sound of creativity from the next room. There were mutterings about balconies, and whether the world really needed wave machines. The rest was silence, except for the insistent scratching of quills. Eventually, Tomjon dreamed. “Now. Have we got everything this time?” “Yes, Granny.” “Light the fire, Magrat.” “Yes, Granny.” “Right. Let’s see now—” “I wrote it all down, Granny.” “I can read, my girl, thank you very much. Now, what’s this. "Round about the cauldron go, In the poisoned entrails throw. . ." What are these supposed to be?” “Our Jason slaughtered a pig yesterday, Esme.” “These look like perfectly good chitterlin’s to me, Gytha. There’s a couple of decent meals in them, if I’m any judge.” “Please, Granny.” “There’s plenty of starvin” people in Klatch who wouldn’t turn up their nose at ‘em, that’s all I’m saying . . . All right, all right. "Whole grain wheat and lentils too, In the cauldron seethe and stew"? What happened to the toad?” “Please, Granny. You‘re slowing it down. You know Goodie was against all unnecessary cruelty. Vegetable protein is a perfectly acceptable substitute.” “That means no newt or fenny snake either, I suppose?” “No, Granny.” “Or tiger’s chaudron?” “Here.” “What the hell’s this, excuse my Klatchian?” “It’s a tiger’s chaudron, Our Wane brought it off a merchant from forn parts.” “You sure?” “Our Wane asked special, Esme.” “Looks like any other chaudron to me. Oh, well. "Double nubble, stubble trouble, Fire burn and cauldron bub—" WHY isn’t the cauldron bubbling, Magrat?” Tomjon awoke, shivering. The room was dark. Outside a few stars pierced the mists of the city, and there was the occasional whistle of burglars and footpads as they went about their strictly lawful occasions. There was silence from the next room, but he could see the light of a candle under the door. He went back to bed. Across the turgid river the Fool had also awakened. He was staying in the Fool’s Guild, not out of choice but because the duke hadn’t given him any money for anything else, and getting to sleep had been difficult in any case. The chilly walls had brought back too many memories. Besides, if he listened hard he could hear the muted sobs and occasional whimpers from the students’ dormitories, as they contemplated with horror the life that lay ahead of them. He punched the rock-hard pillow, and sank into a fitful sleep. Perchance to dream. “S lab and grue, yes. But it doesn ‘t say how slab and grue.” “Goodie Whemper recommended testing a bit in a cup of cold water, like toffee.” “How inconvenient that we didn’t think to bring one, Magrat.” “I think we should begettingon, Esme. The night’s nearly gone.” “Just don’t blame me if it doesn’t work properly, that’s all. Lessee . . . "Baboon hair and. . ." Who’s got the baboon hair? Oh, thank you, Gytha, though it looks more like cat hair to me, but never mind. "Baboon hair and mandrake root", and if that’s real mandrake I’m very surprised, "carrot juice and tongue of boot", I see, a little humour, I suppose . . .” “Please hurry!” “All right, all right. "Owl hoot and glow-worm glimmer. Boil – and then allow to simmer." “ “You know, Esme, this doesn’t taste half bad.” “You ‘re not supposed to drink it, you daft doyenne!” Tomjon sat bolt upright in bed. That was them again, the same faces, the bickering voices, distorted by time and space. Even after he looked out of the window, where fresh daylight was streaming through the city, he could still hear the voices grumbling into the distance, like old thunder, fading away . . . “I for one didn’t believe it about the tongue of boot.” “It’s still very runny. Do you think we should put some cornflour into it?” “It won’t matter. Either he’s on his way, or he isn’t. . .” He got up and doused his face in the washbasin. Silence rolled in swathes from Hwel’s room. Tomjon slipped on his clothes and pushed open the door. It looked as though it had snowed indoors, great heavy flakes that had drifted into odd corners of the room. Hwel sat at his low table in the middle of the floor, his head pillowed on a pile of paper, snoring. Tomjon tiptoed across the room and piled up a discarded ball of paper at random. He smoothed it out and read: KING: Now, I’m just going to put the crown on this bush here, and you will tell me if anyone tries to take it, won’t you? GROUNDLINGS: Yes! KING: Now if I could just find my horsey . . . (1st assassin pops up behind rock.) AUDIENCE: Behind you! (1st assassin disappears.) KING: You’re trying to play tricks on old Kingy, you naughty . . . There was a lot of crossing out, and a large blot. Tomjon threw it aside and selected another ball at random. KING: Is this aduckknife dagger I seebehindbesidein front of before me, itsbeak handle pointing atme my hand? 1ST MURDERER: I’faith, it is not so.Oh, no it isn’t! 2ND MURDERER: Thou speakest truth, sire.Oh, yes it is! Judging by the creases in the paper, this one had been thrown at the wall particularly hard. Hwel had once explained to Tomjon his theory about inspirations, and by the look of it a whole shower had fallen last night. Fascinated by this insight into the creative processes, however, Tomjon tried a third discarded attempt: QUEEN: Faith, there is a sound without! Mayhap it is my husband returning! Quick, into the garderobe, and wait not upon the order of your going! MURDERER: Marry, but your maid still has my pantoufles! MAID( opening door): The Archbishop, your majesty. PRIEST( under bed): Bless my soul! ( Divers alarums) Tomjon wondered vaguely what divers alarums, which Hwel always included somewhere in the stage directions, actually were. Hwel always refused to say. Perhaps they referred to dangerous depths, or lack of air pressure. He sidled towards the table and, with great care, pulled the sheaf of paper from under the sleeping dwarfs head, lowering it gently on to a cushion. The top sheet read: VerenceFelmetSmall God’s EveA Night OfKnivesDaggers Kings, by, Hwel of Vitoller’s Men. AComedy Tragedy inEightFiveSixThree Nine Acts. Characters: Felmet, A Good King. Verence, A Bad King. Wethewacs, Ane Evil Witch Hogg, Ane Likewise Evil Witch Magerat, Ane Sirene . . . Tomjon flicked over the page. Scene:A Drawing RoomShip at SeeStreet in Pseudopolis Blasted Moor. Enter Three Witches . . . The boy read for a while and then turned to the last page. Gentles, leave us dance and sing, and wish good health unto the king (Exeunt all, singing falala, etc. Shower of rose petals. Ringing of bells. Gods descend from heaven, demons rise from hell, much ado with turntable, etc.) The End. Hwel snored. In his dreams gods rose and fell, ships moved with cunning and art across canvas oceans, pictures jumped and ran together and became flickering images; men flew on wires, flew without wires, great ships of illusion fought against one another in imaginary skies, seas opened, ladies were sawn in half, a thousand special effects men giggled and gibbered. Through it all he ran with his arms open in desperation, knowing that none of this really existed or ever would exist and all he really had was a few square yards of planking, some canvas and some paint on which to trap the beckoning images that invaded his head. Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages. “It’s a good play,” said Vitoller, “apart from the ghost.” “The ghost stays,” said Hwel sullenly. “But people always jeer and throw things. Anyway, you know how hard it is to get all the chalk dust out of the clothes.” “The ghost stays. It’s a dramatic necessity.” “You said it was a dramatic necessity in the last play.” “Well, it was.” “And in Please Yourself, and in A Wizard of Ankh, and all the rest of them.” “I like ghosts.” They stood to one side and watched the dwarf artificers assembling the wave machine. It consisted of half a dozen long spindles, covered in complex canvas spirals painted in shades of blue and green and white, and stretching the complete width of the stage. An arrangement of cogs and endless belts led to a treadmill in the wings. When the spirals were all turning at once people with weak stomachs had to look away. “Sea battles,” breathed Hwel. “Shipwrecks. Tritons. Pirates!” “Squeaky bearings, laddie,” groaned Vitoller, shifting his weight on his stick. “Maintenance expenses. Overtime.” “It does look extremely . . . intricate,” Hwel admitted. “Who designed it?” “A daft old chap in the Street of Cunning Artificers,” said Vitoller. “Leonard of Quirm. He’s a painter really. He just does this sort of thing for a hobby. I happened to hear that he’s been working on this for months. I just snapped it up quick when he couldn’t get it to fly.” They watched the mock waves turn. “You’re bent on going?” said Vitoller, at last. “Yes. Tomjon’s still a bit wild. He needs an older head around the place.” “I’ll miss you, laddie. I don’t mind telling you. You’ve been like a son to me. How old are you, exactly? I never did know.” “A hundred and two.” Vitoller nodded gloomily. He was sixty, and his arthritis was playing him up. “You’ve been like a father to me, then,” he said. “It evens out in the end,” said Hwel diffidently. “Half the height, twice the age. You could say that on the overall average we live about the same length of time as humans.” The playmaster sighed. “Well, I don’t know what I will do without you and Tomjon around, and that’s a fact.” “It’s only for the summer, and a lot of the lads are staying. In fact it’s mainly the apprentices that are going. You said yourself it’d be good experience.” Vitoller looked wretched and, in the chilly air of the half-finished theatre, a good deal smaller than usual, like a balloon two weeks after the party. He prodded some wood shavings distractedly with his stick. “We grow old, Master Hwel. At least,” he corrected himself, “I grow old and you grow older. We have heard the gongs at midnight.” “Aye. You don’t want him to go, do you?” “I was all for it at first. You know. Then I thought, there’s destiny afoot. Just when things are going well, there’s always bloody destiny. I mean, that’s where he came from. Somewhere up in the mountains. Now fate is calling him back. I shan’t see him again.” “It’s only for the summer—” Vitoller held up a hand. “Don’t interrupt. I’d got the right dramatic flow there.” “Sorry.” Flick, flick, went the stick on the wood shavings, knocking them into the air. “I mean, you know he’s not my flesh and blood.” “He’s your son, though,” said Hwel. “This hereditary business isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.” “It’s fine of you to say that.” “I mean it. Look at me. I wasn’t supposed to be writing plays. Dwarfs aren’t even supposed to be able to read. I shouldn’t worry too much about destiny, if I was you. I was destined to be a miner. Destiny gets it wrong half the time.” “But you said he looks like the Fool person. I can’t see it myself, mark you.” “The light’s got to be right.” “Could be some destiny at work there.” Hwel shrugged. Destiny was funny stuff, he knew. You couldn’t trust it. Often you couldn’t even see it. Just when you knew you had it cornered, it turned out to be something else – coincidence, maybe, or providence. You barred the door against it, and it was standing behind you. Then just when you thought you had it nailed down it walked away with the hammer. He used destiny a lot. As a tool for his plays it was even better than a ghost. There was nothing like a bit of destiny to get the old plot rolling. But it was a mistake to think you could spot the shape of it. And as for thinking it could be controlled . . . Granny Weatherwax squinted irritably into Nanny Ogg’s crystal ball. It wasn’t a particularly good one, being a greenish glass fishing float brought back from forn seaside parts by one of her sons. It distorted everything including, she suspected, the truth. “He’s definitely on his way,” she said, at last. “In a cart.” “A fiery white charger would have been favourite,” said Nanny Ogg. “You know. Caparisoned, and that.” “Has he got a magic sword?” said Magrat, craning to see. Granny Weatherwax sat back. “You’re a disgrace, the pair of you,” she said. “I don’t know – magic chargers, fiery swords. Ogling away like a couple of milkmaids.” “A magic sword is important,” said Magrat. “You’ve got to have one. We could make him one,” she added wistfully. “Out of thunderbolt iron. I’ve got a spell for that. You take some thunderbolt iron,” she said uncertainly, “and then you make a sword out of it.” “I can’t be having with that old stuff,” said Granny. “You can wait days for the damn things to hit and then they nearly take your arm off.” “And a strawberry birthmark,” said Nanny Ogg, ignoring the interruption. The other two looked at her expectantly. “A strawberry birthmark,” she repeated. “It’s one of those things you’ve got to have if you’re a prince coming to claim your kingdom. That’s so’s everyone will know. O’course, I don’t know how they know it’s strawberry.” “Can’t abide strawberries,” said Granny vaguely, quizzing the crystal again. In its cracked green depths, smelling of bygone lobsters, a minute Tomjon kissed his parents, shook hands or hugged the rest of the company, and climbed aboard the leading latty. It must of worked, she told herself. Else he wouldn’t be coming here, would he? All those others must be his trusty band of good companions. After all, common sense, he’s got to come five hundred miles across difficult country, anything could happen. I daresay the armour and swords is in the carts. She detected a twinge of doubt, and set out to quell it instantly. There isn’t any other reason for him to come, stands to reason. We got the spell exactly right. Except for the ingredients. And most of the poetry. And it probably wasn’t the right time. And Gytha took most of it home for the cat, which couldn’t of been proper. But he’s on his way. What can’t speak, can’t lie. “Best put the cloth over it when you’ve done, Esme,” said Nanny. “I always get worried someone”ll peer in at me when I’m having my bath.” “He’s on his way,” said Granny, the satisfaction in her voice so strong you could have ground corn with it. She dropped the black velvet bag over the ball. “It’s a long road,” said Nanny. “There’s many a slip twixt dress and drawers. There could be bandits.” “We shall watch over him,” said Granny. “That’s not right. If he’s going to be king he ought to be able to fight his own battles,” said Magrat. “We don’t want him to go wasting his strength,” said Nanny primly. “We want him good and fresh for when he gets here.” “And then, I hope, we shall leave him to fight his battles in his own way,” said Magrat. Granny clapped her hands together in a businesslike fashion. “Quite right,” she said. “Provided he looks like winning.” They had been meeting at Nanny Ogg’s cottage. Magrat made an excuse to tarry after Granny left, around dawn, allegedly to help Nanny with tidying up. “Whatever happened to not meddling?” she said. “What do you mean?” “You know, Nanny.” “It’s not proper meddling,” said Nanny awkwardly. “Just helping matters along.” “Surely you can’t really think that!” Nanny sat down and fidgeted with a cushion. “Well, see, all this not meddling business is fine in the normal course of things,” she said. “Not meddling is easy when you don’t have to. And then I’ve got the family to think about. Our Jason’s been in a couple of fights because of what people have been saying. Our Shawn was thrown out of the army. The way I see it, when we get the new king in, he should owe us a few favours. It’s only fair.” “But only last week you were saying—” Magrat stopped, shocked at this display of pragmatism. “A week is a long time in magic,” said Nanny. “Fifteen years, for one thing. Anyway, Esme is determined and I’m in no mood to stop her.” “So what you’re saying,” said Magrat, icily, “is that this "not meddling" thing is like taking a vow not to swim. You’ll absolutely never break it unless of course you happen to find yourself in the water?” “Better than drowning,” Nanny said. She reached up to the mantelpiece and took down a clay pipe that was like a small tar pit. She lit it with a spill from the remains of the fire, while Greebo watched her carefully from his cushion. Magrat idly lifted the hood from the ball and glared at it. “I think,” she said, “that I will never really understand about witchcraft. Just when I think I’ve got a grip on it, it changes.” “We’re all just people.” Nanny blew a cloud of blue smoke at the chimney. “Everyone’s just people.” “Can I borrow the crystal?” said Magrat suddenly. “Feel free,” said Nanny. She grinned at Magrat’s back. “Had a row with your young man?” she said. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about.” “Haven’t seen him around for weeks.” “Oh, the duke sent him to—” Magrat stopped, and went on – “Sent him away for something or other. Not that it bothers me at all, either way.” “So I see. Take the ball, by all means.” Magrat was glad to get back home. No-one was about on the moors at night anyway, but over the last couple of months things had definitely been getting worse. On top of the general suspicion of witches, it was dawning on the few people in Lancre who had any dealings with the outside world that a) either more things had been happening than they had heard about before or b) time was out of joint. It wasn’t easy to prove[19], but the few traders who came along the mountain tracks after the winter seemed to be rather older than they should have been. Unexplained happenings were always more or less expected in the Ramtops because of the high magical potential, but several years disappearing overnight was a bit of a first. She locked the door, fastened the shutters, and carefully laid the green glass globe on the kitchen table. She concentrated . . . The Fool dozed under the tarpaulins of the river barge, heading up the Ankh at a steady two miles an hour. It wasn’t an exciting method of transport but it got you there eventually. He looked safe enough, but he was tossing and turning in his sleep. Magrat wondered what it was like, spending your whole life doing something you didn’t want to do. Like being dead, she considered, only worse, the reason being, you were alive to suffer it. She considered the Fool to be weak, badly led and sorely in need of some backbone. And she was longing for him to get back, so she could look forward to never seeing him again. It was a long, hot summer. They didn’t rush things. There was a lot of country between Ankh-Morpork and the Ramtops. It was, Hwel had to admit, fun. It wasn’t a word dwarfs were generally at home with. Please Yourself went over well. It always did. The apprentices excelled themselves. They forgot lines, and played jokes; in Sto Lat the whole third act of Gretalina and Mellias was performed against the backdrop for the second act of The Mage Wars, but no-one seemed to notice that the greatest love scene in history was played on a set depicting a tidal wave sweeping across a continent. That was possibly because Tomjon was playing Gretalina. The effect was so disconcertingly riveting that Hwel made him swap roles for the next house, if you could apply the term to a barn hired for the day, and the effect still had more rivets than a suit of plate armour, including the helmet, and even though Gretalina in this case was now young Wimsloe, who was a bit simple and tended to stutter and whose spots might eventually clear up. The following day, in some nameless village in the middle of an endless sea of cabbages, he let Tomjon play Old Miskin in Please Yourself, a role that Vitoller always excelled in. You couldn’t let anyone play it who was under the age of forty, not unless you wanted an Old Miskin with a cushion up his jerkin and greasepaint wrinkles. Hwel didn’t consider himself old. His father had still been digging three tons of ore a day at the age of two hundred. Now he felt old. He watched Tomjon hobble off the stage, and for a fleeting instant knew what it was to be a fat old man, pickled in wine, fighting old wars that no-one cared about any more, hanging grimly on to the precipice of late middle-age for fear of dropping off into antiquity, but only with one hand, because with the other he was raising two fingers at Death. Of course, he’d known that when he wrote the part. But he hadn’t known it. The same magic didn’t seem to infuse the new play. They tried it a few times, just to see how it went. The audience watched attentively, and went home. They didn’t even bother to throw anything. It wasn’t that they thought it was bad. They didn’t think it was anything. But all the right ingredients were there, weren’t they? Tradition was full of people giving evil rulers a well-justified seeing to. Witches were always a draw. The apparition of Death was particularly good, with some lovely lines. Mix them all together . . . and they seemed to cancel out, become a mere humdrum way of filling the stage for a couple of hours. Late at night, when the cast was alseep, Hwel would sit up in one of the carts and feverishly rewrite. He rearranged scenes, cut lines, added lines, introduced a clown, included another fight, and tuned up the special effects. It didn’t seem to have any effect. The play was like some marvellous intricate painting, a feast of impressions close to, a mere blur from the distance. When the inspirations were sleeting fast he even tried changing the style. In the morning the early risers grew accustomed to finding discarded experiments decorating the grass around the carts, like extremely literate mushrooms. Tomjon kept one of the strangest: 1ST WITCHE: He’s late. (Pause) 2ND WITCHE: He said he would come. (Pause) 3RD WITCHE: He said he would come but he hasn’t. This is my last newt. I saved it for him. And he hasn’t come. (Pause) “I think,” said Tomjon, later, “you ought to slow down a bit. You’ve done what was ordered. No-one said it had to sparkle.” “It could, you know. If I could just get it right.” “You’re absolutely sure about the ghost, are you?” said Tomjon. The way he threw the line away made it clear that he wasn’t. “There’s nothing wrong with the ghost,” snapped Hwel. “The scene with the ghost is the best I’ve done.” “I was just wondering if this is the right play for it, that’s all.” “The ghost stays. Now let’s get on, boy.” Two days later, with the Ramtops a blue and white wall that was beginning to dominate the Hubward horizon, the company was attacked. There wasn’t much drama; they had just manhandled the lattys across a ford and were resting in the shade of a grove of trees, which suddenly fruited robbers. Hwel looked along the line of half a dozen stained and rusty blades. Their owners seemed slightly uncertain about what to do next. “We’ve got a receipt somewhere—” he began. Tomjon nudged him. “These don’t look like Guild thieves,” he hissed. “They definitely look freelance to me.” It would be nice to say that the leader of the robbers was a black-bearded, swaggering brute, with a red headscarf and one gold earring and a chin you could clean pots with. Actually it would be practically compulsory. And, in fact, this was so. Hwel thought the wooden leg was overdoing it, but the man had obviously studied the role. “Well now,” said the bandit chief. “What have we here, and do they have any money?” “We’re actors,” said Tomjon. “That ought to answer both questions,” said Hwel. “And none of your repartee,” said the bandit. “I’ve been to the city, I have. I know repartee when I see it and—” he half turned to his followers, raising an eyebrow to indicate that the next remark was going to be witty – “if you’re not careful I can make a few cutting remarks of my own.” There was dead silence behind him until he made an impatient gesture with his cutlass. “All right,” he said, against a chorus of uncertain laughter. “We’ll just take any loose change, valuables, food and clothing you might be having.” “Could I say something?” said Tomjon. The company backed away from him. Hwel smiled at his own feet. “You’re going to beg for mercy, are you?” said the bandit. “That’s right.” Hwel thrust his hands deep into his pockets and looked up at the sky, whistling under his breath and trying not to break into a maniac grin. He was aware that the other actors were also looking expectantly at Tomjon. He’s going to give them the mercy speech from The Troll’s Tale, he thought . . . “The point I’d just like to make is that—” said Tomjon, and his stance changed subtly, his voice became deeper, his right hand flung out dramatically – “ "The worth of man lies not in feats of arms, Or the fiery hunger o” the ravening—" “ It’s going to be like when that man tried to rob us back in Sto Lat, Hwel thought. If they end up giving us their swords, what the hell can we do with them? And it’s so embarrassing when they start crying. It was at this moment that the world around him took a green tint and he thought he could make out, right on the cusp of hearing, other voices. “There’s men with swords, Granny!” “—rend with glowing blades the marvel of the world—” Tomjon said, and the voices at the edge of imagination said. “No king of mine is going to beg anything off anyone. Give me that milk jug, Magrat.” “—the heart of compassion, the kiss—” “That was a present from my aunt.” “—this jewel of jewels, this crown of crowns.” There was silence. One or two of the bandits were weeping silently into their hands. Their chief said, “Is that it?” For the first time in his life Tomjon looked nonplussed. “Well, yes,” he said. “Er. Would you like me to repeat it?” “It was a good speech,” the bandit conceded. “But I don’t see what it’s got to do with me. I’m a practical man. Hand over your valuables.” His sword came up until it was level with Tomjon’s throat. “And all the rest of you shouldn’t be standing there like idiots,” he added. “Come on. Or the boy gets it.” Wimsloe the apprentice raised a cautious hand. “What?” said the bandit. “A-are you s-sure you listened carefully, sir?” “I won’t tell you again! Either I hear the clink of coins, or you hear a gurgle!” In fact what they all heard was a whistling noise, high in the air, and the crash as a milk jug, its sides frosted with the ice of altitude, dropped out of the sky on to the spike atop the chief’s helmet. The remaining bandits took one look at the results, and fled. The actors stared down at the recumbent bandit. Hwel prodded a lump of frozen milk with his boot. “Well, well,” he said weakly. “He didn’t take any notice!” whispered Tomjon. “A born critic,” said the dwarf. It was a blue and white jug. Funny how little details stood out at a time like this. It had been smashed several times in the past, he could see, because the pieces had been carefully glued together again. Someone had really loved that jug. “What we’re dealing with here,” he said, rallying some shreds of logic, “is a freak whirlwind. Obviously.” “But milk jugs don’t just drop out of the sky,” said Tomjon, demonstrating the astonishing human art of denying the obvious. “I don’t know about that. I’ve heard of fish and frogs and rocks,” said Hwel. “There’s nothing against crockery.” He began to rally. “It’s just one of these uncommon phenomenons. They happen all the time in this part of the world, there’s nothing unusual about it.” They got back on to the carts and rode on in unaccustomed silence. Young Wimsloe collected every bit of jug he could find and stored them carefully in the props box, and spent the rest of the day watching the sky, hoping for a sugar basin. The lattys toiled up the dusty slopes of the Ramtops, mere motes in the foggy glass of the crystal. “Are they all right?” said Magrat. “They’re wandering all over the place,” said Granny. “They may be good at the acting, but they’ve got something to learn about the travelling.” “It was a nice jug,” said Magrat. “You can’t get them like that any more. I mean, if you’d have said what was on your mind, there was a flatiron on the shelf.” “There’s more to life than milk jugs.” “It had a daisy pattern round the top.” Granny ignored her. “I think,” she said, “it’s time we had a look at this new king. Close up.” She cackled. “You cackled, Granny,” said Magrat darkly. “I did not! It was,” Granny fumbled for a word, “a chuckle.” “I bet Black Aliss used to cackle.” “You want to watch out you don’t end up the same way as she did,” said Nanny, from her seat by the fire. “She went a bit funny at the finish, you know. Poisoned apples and suchlike.” “Just because I might have chuckled a . . . a bit roughly,” sniffed Granny. She felt that she was being unduly defensive. “Anyway, there’s nothing wrong with cackling. In moderation.” “I think,” said Tomjon, “that we’re lost.” Hwel looked at the baking purple moorland around them, which stretched up to the towering spires of the Ramtops themselves. Even in the height of summer there were pennants of snow flying from the highest peaks. It was a landscape of describable beauty. Bees were busy, or at least endeavouring to look and sound busy, in the thyme by the trackside. Cloud shadows flickered over the alpine meadows. There was the kind of big, empty silence made by an environment that not only doesn’t have any people in it, but doesn’t need them either. Or signposts. “We were lost ten miles ago,” said Hwel. “There’s got to be a new word for what we are now.” “You said the mountains were honeycombed with dwarf mines,” said Tomjon. “You said a dwarf could tell wherever he was in the mountains.” “Underground, I said. It’s all a matter of strata and rock formations. Not on the surface. All the landscape gets in the way.” “We could dig you a hole,” said Tomjon. But it was a nice day and, as the road meandered through clumps of hemlock and pine, outposts of the forest, it was pleasant enough to let the mules go at their own pace. The road, Hwel felt, had to go somewhere. This geographical fiction has been the death of many people. Roads don’t necessarily have to go anywhere, they just have to have somewhere to start. “We are lost, aren’t we?” said Tomjon, after a while. “Certainly not.” “Where are we, then?” “The mountains. Perfectly clear on any atlas.” “We ought to stop and ask someone.” Tomjon gazed around at the rolling countryside. Somewhere a lonely curlew howled, or possibly it was a badger – Hwel was a little hazy about rural matters, at least those that took place higher than about the limestone layer. There wasn’t another human being within miles. “Who did you have in mind?” he said sarcastically. “That old woman in the funny hat,” said Tomjon, pointing. “I’ve been watching her. She keeps ducking down behind a bush when she thinks I’ve seen her.” Hwel turned and looked down at a bramble bush, which wobbled. “Ho there, good mother,” he said. The bush sprouted an indignant head. “Whose mother?” it said. Hwel hesitated. “Just a figure of speech, Mrs . . . Miss . . .” “Mistress,” snapped Granny Weatherwax. “And I’m a poor old woman gathering wood,” she added defiantly. She cleared her throat. “Lawks,” she went on. “You did give me a fright, young master. My poor old heart.” There was silence from the carts. Then Tomjon said, “I’m sorry?” “What?” said Granny. “Your poor old heart what?” “What about my poor old heart?” said Granny, who wasn’t used to acting like an old woman and had a very limited repertoire in this area. But it’s traditional that young heirs seeking their destiny get help from mysterious old women gathering wood, and she wasn’t about to buck tradition. “It’s just that you mentioned it,” said Hwel. “Well, it isn’t important. Lawks. I expect you’re looking for Lancre,” said Granny testily, in a hurry to get to the point. “Well, yes,” said Tomjon. “All day.” “You’ve come too far,” said Granny. “Go back about two miles, and take the track on the right, past the stand of pines.” Wimsloe tugged at Tomjon’s shirt. “When you m-meet a m-mysterious old lady in the road,” he said, “you’ve got to offer to s-share your lunch. Or help her across the r-river.” “You have?” “It’s t-terribly b-bad luck not to.” Tomjon gave Granny a polite smile. “Would you care to share our lunch, good mo – old wo – ma’am?” Granny looked doubtful. “What is it?” “Salt pork.” She shook her head. “Thanks all the same,” she said graciously. “But it gives me wind.” She turned on her heel and set off through the bushes. “We could help you across the river if you like,” shouted Tomjon after her. “What river?” said Hwel. “We’re on the moor, there can’t be a river in miles.” “Y-you’ve got to get them on y-your side,” said Wimsloe. “Then t-they help you.” “Perhaps we should have asked her to wait while we went and looked for one,” said Hwel sourly. They found the turning. It led into a forest criss-crossed with as many tracks as a marshalling yard, the sort of forest where the back of your head tells you the trees are turning around to watch you as you go past and the sky seems to be very high up and a long way off. Despite the heat of the day a dank, impenetrable gloom hovered among the tree trunks, which crowded up to the track as if intending to obliterate it completely. They were soon lost again, and decided that being lost somewhere where you didn’t know where you were was even worse than being lost in the open. “She could have given more explicit instructions,” said Hwel. “Like ask at the next crone,” said Tomjon. “Look over there.” He stood up in the seat. “Ho there, old . . . good . . .” he hazarded. Magrat pushed back her shawl. “Just a humble wood gatherer,” she snapped. She held up a twig for proof. Several hours waiting with nothing but trees to talk to hadn’t improved her temper. Wimsloe nudged Tomjon, who nodded and fixed his face in an ingratiating smile. “Would you care to share our lunch, old . . . good wo . . . miss?” he said. “It’s only salt pork, I’m afraid.” “Meat is extremely bad for the digestive system,” said Magrat. “If you could see inside your colon you’d be horrified.” “I think I would,” muttered Hwel. “Did you know that an adult male carries up to five pounds of undigested red meat in his intestines at all times?” said Magrat, whose informative lectures on nutrition had been known to cause whole families to hide in the cellar until she went away. “Whereas pine kernels and sunflower seeds—” “There aren’t any rivers around that you need helping over, are there?” said Tomjon desperately. “Don’t be silly,” said Magrat. “I’m just a humble wood gatherer, lawks, collecting a few sticks and mayhap directing lost travellers on the road to Lancre.” “Ah,” said Hwel, “I thought we’d get to that.” “You fork left up ahead and turn right at the big stone with the crack in it, you can’t miss it,” said Magrat. “Fine,” growled Hwel. “Well, we won’t keep you. I’m sure you’ve got a lot of wood to collect and so forth.” He whistled the mules into a plod again, grumbling to himself. When, an hour later, the track ran out among a landscape of house-sized boulders, Hwel laid down the reins carefully and folded his arms. Tomjon stared at him. “What do you think you’re doing?” he said. “Waiting,” said the dwarf grimly. “It’ll be getting dark soon.” “We won’t be here long,” said Hwel. Eventually Nanny Ogg gave up and came out from behind her rock. “It’s salt pork, understand?” said Hwel sharply. “Take it or leave it, okay? Now – which way’s Lancre?” “Keep on, left at the ravine, then you pick up the track that leads to a bridge, you can’t miss it,” said Nanny promptly. Hwel grabbed the reins. “You forgot about the lawks.” “Bugger. Sorry. Lawks.” “And you’re a humble old wood gatherer, I expect,” Hwel went on. “Spot on, lad,” said Nanny cheerfully. “Just about to make a start, as a matter of fact.” Tomjon nudged the dwarf. “You forgot about the river,” he said. Hwel glared at him. “Oh yes,” he muttered, “and can you wait here while we go and find a river.” “To help you across,” said Tomjon carefully. Nanny Ogg gave him a bright smile. “There’s a perfectly good bridge,” she said. “But I wouldn’t say no to a lift. Move over.” To Hwel’s irritation Nanny Ogg hitched up her skirts and scrambled on to the board, inserting herself between Tomjon and the dwarf and then twisting like an oyster knife until she occupied half the seat. “You mentioned salt pork,” she said. “There wouldn’t be any mustard, would there?” “No,” said Hwel sullenly. “Can’t abide salt pork without condiments,” said Nanny conversationally. “But pass it over, anyway.” Wimsloe wordlessly handed over the basket holding the troupe’s supper. Nanny lifted the lid and gave it a critical assessment. “That cheese in there is a bit off,” she said. “It needs eating up quick. What’s in the leather bottle?” “Beer,” said Tomjon, a fraction of a second before Hwel had the presence of mind to say, “Water.” “Pretty weak stuff,” said Nanny, eventually. She fumbled in her apron pocket for her tobacco pouch. “Has anyone got a light?” she inquired. A couple of actors produced bundles of matches. Nanny nodded, and put the pouch away. “Good,” she said. “Now, has anyone got any tobacco?” Half an hour later the lattys rattled over the Lancre Bridge, across some of the outlying farmlands, and through the forests that made up most of the kingdom. “This is it?” said Tomjon. “Well, not all of it,” said Nanny, who had been expecting rather more enthusiasm. “There’s lots more of it behind the mountains over there. But this is the flat bit.” “You call this flat?” “Flattish,” Nanny conceded. “But the air’s good. That’s the palace up there, offering outstanding views of the surrounding countryside.” “You mean forests.” “You’ll like it here,” said Nanny encouragingly. “It’s a bit small.” Nanny thought about this. She’d spent nearly all her life inside the boundaries of Lancre. It had always seemed about the right size to her. “Bijou,” she said. “Handy for everywhere.” “Everywhere where?” Nanny gave up. “Everywhere close,” she said. Hwel said nothing. The air was good, rolling down the unclimbable slopes of the Ramtops like a sinus wash, tinted with turpentine from the high forests. They passed through a gateway into what was, up here, probably called a town; the cosmopolitan he had become decided that, down on the plains, it would just about have qualified, as an open space. “There’s an inn,” said Tomjon doubtfully. Hwel followed his gaze. “Yes,” he said, eventually. “Yes, it probably is.” “When are we going to do the play?” “I don’t know. I think we just send up to the castle and say we’re here.” Hwel scratched his chin. “Fool said the king or whoever would want to see the script.” Tomjon looked around Lancre town. It seemed peaceful enough. It didn’t look like the kind of place likely to turn actors out at nightfall. It needed the population. “This is the capital city of the kingdom,” said Nanny Ogg. “Well-designed streets, you’ll notice.” “Streets?” said Tomjon. “Street,” corrected Granny. “Also houses in quite good repair, stone’s throw from river—” “Throw?” “Drop,” Nanny conceded. “Neat middens, look, and extensive—” “Madam, we’ve come to entertain the town, not buy it,” said Hwel. Nanny Ogg looked sidelong at Tomjon. “Just wanted you to see how attractive it is,” she said. “Your civic pride does you credit,” said Hwel. “And now, please, leave the cart. I’m sure you’ve got some wood to gather. Lawks.” “Much obliged for the snack,” said Nanny, climbing down. “Meals,” corrected Hwel. Tomjon nudged him. “You ought to be more polite,” he said. “You never know.” He turned to Nanny. “Thank you, good – oh, she’s gone.” “They’ve come to do a theatre,” said Nanny. Granny Weatherwax carried on shelling beans in the sun, much to Nanny’s annoyance. “Well? Aren’t you going to say something? I’ve been finding out things,” she said. “Picking up information. Not sitting around making soup—” “Stew.” “I reckon it’s very important,” sniffed Nanny. “What kind of a theatre?” “They didn’t say. Something for the duke, I think.” “What’s he want a theatre for?” “They didn’t say that, either.” “It’s probably all a trick to get in the castle,” Granny said knowingly. “Very clever idea. Did you see anything in the carts?” “Boxes and bundles and such.” “They’ll be full of armour and weapons, depend upon it.” Nanny Ogg looked doubtful. “They didn’t look very much like soldiers to me. They were awfully young and spotty.” “Clever. I expect in the middle of the play the king will manifest his destiny, right where everyone can see him. Good plan.” “That’s another thing,” said Nanny, picking up a bean pod and chewing it. “He doesn’t seem to like the place much.” “Of course he does. It’s in his blood.” “I brought him the pretty way. He didn’t seem very impressed.” Granny hesitated. “He was probably suspicious of you,” she concluded. “He was probably too overcome to speak, really.” She put down the bowl of beans and looked thoughtfully at the trees. “Have you got any family still working up at the castle?” she said. “Shirl and Daff help out in the kitchens since the cook went off his head.” “Good. I’ll have a word with Magrat. I think we should see this theatre.” “Perfect,” said the duke. “Thank you,” said Hwel. “You’ve got it exactly spot on about that dreadful accident,” said the duke. “You might almost have been there. Ha. Ha.” “You weren’t, were you?” said Lady Felmet, leaning forward and glaring at the dwarf. “I just used my imagination,” said Hwel hurriedly. The duchess glared at him, suggesting that his imagination could consider itself lucky it wasn’t being dragged off to the courtyard to explain itself to four angry wild horses and a length of chain. “Exactly right,” said the duke, leafing one-handedly through the pages. “This is exactly, exactly, exactly how it was.” “Will have been,” snapped the duchess. The duke turned another page. “You’re in this too,” he said. “Amazing. It’s a word for word how I’m going to remember it. I see you’ve got Death in it, too.” “Always popular,” said Hwel. “People expect it.” “How soon can you act it?” “Stage it,” corrected Hwel, and added, “We’ve tried it out. As soon as you like.” And then we can get away from here, he said to himself, away from your eyes like two raw eggs and this female mountain in the red dress and this castle which seems to act like a magnet for the wind. This is not going to go down as one of my best plays, I know that much. “How much did we say we were going to pay you?” said the duchess. “I think you mentioned another hundred silver pieces,” said Hwel. “Worth every penny,” said the duke. Hwel left hurriedly, before the duchess could start to bargain. But he felt he’d gladly pay something to be out of this place. Bijou, he thought. Gods, how could anyone like a kingdom like this? The Fool waited in the meadow with the lake. He stared wistfully at the sky and wondered where the hell Magrat was. This was, she said, their place; the fact that a few dozen cows also shared it at the moment didn’t appear to make any difference. She turned up in a green dress and a filthy temper. “What’s all this about a play?” she said. The Fool sagged on to a willow log. “Aren’t you glad to see me?” he said. “Well, yes. Of course. Now, this play . . .” “My lord wants something to convince people that he is the rightful King of Lancre. Himself mostly, I think.” “Is that why you went to the city?” “Yes.” “It’s disgusting!” The Fool sat calmly. “You would prefer the duchess’s approach?” he said. “She just thinks they ought to kill everyone. She’s good at that sort of thing. And then there’d be fighting, and everything. Lots of people would die anyway. This way might be easier.” “Oh, where’s your spunk, man?” “Pardon?” “Don’t you want to die nobly for a just cause?” “I’d much rather live quietly for one. It’s all right for you witches, you can do what you like, but I’m circumscribed,” said the Fool. Magrat sat down beside him. Find out all about this play, Granny had ordered. Go and talk to that jingling friend of yours. She’d replied, He’s very loyal. He might not tell me anything. And Granny had said, This is no time for half measures. If you have to, seduct him. “When’s this play going to be, then?” she said, moving closer. “Marry, I’m sure I’m not allowed to tell you,” said the Fool. “The duke said to me, he said, don’t tell the witches that it’s tomorrow night.” “I shouldn’t, then,” agreed Magrat. “At eight o’clock.” “I see.” “But meet for sherry beforehand at seven-thirty, I’faith.” “I expect you shouldn’t tell me who is invited, either,” said Magrat. “That’s right. Most of the dignitaries of Lancre. You understand I’m not telling you this.” “That’s right,” said Magrat. “But I think you have a right to know what it is you’re not being told.” “Good point. Is there still that little gate around the back, that leads to the kitchens?” “The one that is often left unguarded?” “Yes.” “Oh, we hardly ever guard it these days.” “Do you think there might be someone guarding it at around eight o’clock tomorrow?” “Well, I might be there.” “Good.” The Fool pushed away the wet nose of an inquisitive cow. “The duke will be expecting you,” he added. “You said he said we weren’t to know.” “He said I mustn’t tell you. But he also said, "They’ll come anyway, I hope they do." Strange, really. He seemed in a very good mood when he said it. Um. Can I see you after the show?” “Is that all he said?” “Oh, there was something about showing witches their future. I didn’t understand it. I really would like to see you after the show, you know. I brought—” “I think I might be washing my hair,” said Magrat vaguely. “Excuse me, I really ought to be going.” “Yes, but I brought you this pres—” said the Fool vaguely, watching her departing figure. He sagged as she disappeared between the trees, and looked down at the necklace wound tightly between his nervous fingers. It was, he had to admit, terribly tasteless, but it was the sort of thing she liked, all silver and skulls. It had cost him too much. A cow, misled by his horns, stuck its tongue in his ear. It was true, the Fool thought. Witches did do unpleasant things to people, sometimes. Tomorrow night came, and the witches went by a roundabout route to the castle, with considerable reluctance. “If he wants us to be here, I don’t want to go,” said Granny. “He’s got some plan. He’s using headology on us.” “There’s something up,” said Magrat. “He had his men set fire to three cottages in our village last night. He always does that when he’s in a good mood. That new sergeant is a quick man with the matches, too.” “Our Daff said she saw them actors practisin’ this morning,” said Nanny Ogg, who was carrying a bag of walnuts and a leather bottle from which rose a rich, sharp smell. “She said it was all shouting and stabbing and then wondering who done it and long bits with people muttering to themselves in loud voices.” “Actors,” said Granny, witheringly. “As if the world weren’t full of enough history without inventing more.” “They shout so loud, too,” said Nanny. “You can hardly hear yourself talk.” She was also carrying, deep in her apron pocket, a lump of haunted castle rock. The king was getting in free. Granny nodded. But, she thought, it was going to be worth it. She hadn’t got the faintest idea what Tomjon had in mind, but her inbuilt sense of drama assured her that the boy would be bound to do something important. She wondered if he would leap off the stage and stab the duke to death, and realised that she was hoping like hell that he would. “All hail wossname,” she said under her breath, “who shall be king here, after.” “Let’s get a move on,” said Nanny. “All the sherry’ll be gone.” The Fool was waiting despondently inside the little wicket gate. His face brightened when he saw Magrat, and then froze in an expression of polite surprise when he saw the other two. “There’s not going to be any trouble, is there?” he said. “I don’t want there to be any trouble. Please.” “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” said Granny regally, sweeping past. “Wotcha, jinglebells,” said Nanny, elbowing the man in the ribs. “I hope you haven’t been keeping our girl here up late o’nights!” “Nanny!” said Magrat, shocked. The Fool gave the terrified, ingratiating rictus of young men everywhere when confronted by importunate elderly women commenting on their intimately personal lives. The older witches brushed past. The Fool grabbed Magrat’s hand. “I know where we can get a good view,” he said. She hesitated. “It’s all right,” said the Fool urgently. “You’ll be perfectly safe with me.” “Yes, I will, won’t I,” said Magrat, trying to look around him to see where the others had gone. “They’re staging the play outside, in the big courtyard. We’ll get a lovely view from one of the gate towers, and no-one else will be there. I put some wine up there for us, and everything.” When she still looked half-reluctant he added, “And there’s a cistern of water and a fireplace that the guards use sometimes. In case you want to wash your hair.” The castle was full of people standing around in that polite, sheepish way affected by people who see each other all day and are now seeing each other again in unusual social circumstances, like an office party. The witches passed quite unremarked among them and found seats in the rows of benches in the main courtyard, set up before a hastily assembled stage. Nanny Ogg waved her bag of walnuts at Granny. “Want one?” she said. An alderman of Lancre shuffled past her and pointed politely to the seat on her left. “Is anyone sitting here?” he said. “Yes,” said Nanny. The alderman looked distractedly at the rest of the benches, which were filling up fast, and then down at the clearly empty space in front of him. He hitched up his robes with a determined expression. “I think that since the play is commencing to start, your friends must find a seat elsewhere, when they arrive,” he said, and sat down. Within seconds his face went white. His teeth began to chatter. He clutched at his stomach and groaned. [20] “I told you,” said Nanny, as he lurched away. “What’s the good of asking if you’re not going to listen?” She leaned towards the empty seat. “Walnut?” “No, thank you,” said King Verence, waving a spectral hand. “They go right through me, you know.” “Pray, gentles all, list to our tale . . .” “What’s this?” hissed Granny. “Who’s the fellow in the tights?” “He’s the Prologue,” said Nanny. “You have to have him at the beginning so everyone knows what the play’s about.” “Can’t understand a word of it,” muttered Granny. “What’s a gentle, anyway?” “Type of maggot,” said Nanny. “That’s nice, isn’t it? "Hallo maggots, welcome to the show." Puts people in a nice frame of mind, doesn’t it?” There was a chorus of “Sshs”. “These walnuts are damn tough,” said Nanny, spitting one out into her hand. “I’m going to have to take my shoe off to this one.” Granny subsided into unaccustomed, troubled silence, and tried to listen to the prologue. The theatre worried her. It had a magic of its own, one that didn’t belong to her, one that wasn’t in her control. It changed the world, and said things were otherwise than they were. And it was worse than that. It was magic that didn’t belong to magical people. It was commanded by ordinary people, who didn’t know the rules. They altered the world because it sounded better. The duke and duchess were sitting on their thrones right in front of the stage. As Granny glared at them the duke half turned, and she saw his smile. I want the world the way it is, she thought. I want the past the way it was. The past used to be a lot better than it is now. And the band struck up. Hwel peered around a pillar and signalled to Wimsloe and Brattsley, who hobbled out into the glare of the torches. OLD MAN(an Elder): “What hath befell the land?” OLD WOMAN(a Crone): ““Tis a terror—” The dwarf watched them for a few seconds from the wings, his lips moving soundlessly. Then he scuttled back to the guardroom where the rest of the cast were still in the last hasty stages of dressing. He uttered the stage manager’s traditional scream of rage. “C’mon,” he ordered. “Soldiers of the king, at the double! And the witches – where are the blasted witches?” Three junior apprentices presented themselves. “I’ve lost my wart!” “The cauldron’s all full of yuk!” “There’s something living in this wig!” “Calm down, calm down,” screamed Hwel. “It’ll all be all right on the night!” “This is the night, Hwel!” Hwel snatched a handful of putty from the makeup table and slammed on a wart like an orange. The offending straw wig was rammed on its owner’s head, livestock and all and the cauldron was very briefly inspected and pronounced full of just the right sort of yuk, nothing wrong with yuk like that. On stage a guard dropped his shield, bent down to pick it up, and dropped his spear. Hwel rolled his eyes and offered up a silent prayer to any gods that might be watching. It was already going wrong. The earlier rehearsals had their little teething troubles, it was true, but Hwel had known one or two monumental horrors in his time and this one was shaping up to be the worst. The company was more jittery than a potful of lobsters. Out of the corner of his ear he heard the on-stage dialogue falter, and scurried to the wings. “—avenge the terror of thy father’s death—” he hissed, and hurried back to the trembling witches. He groaned. Divers alarums. This lot were supposed to be terrorising a kingdom. He had about a minute before the cue. “Right!” he said, pulling himself together. “Now, what are you? You’re evil hags, right?” “Yes, Hwel,” they said meekly. “Tell me what you are,” he commanded. “We’re evil hags, Hwel.” “Louder!” “We’re Evil Hags!” Hwel stalked the length of the quaking line, then turned abruptly on his heel, “And what are you going to do?” The 2nd Witche scratched his crawling wig. “We’re going to curse people?” he ventured. “It says in the script—” “I-can’t-HEAR-you!” “We’re going to curse people!” they chorused, springing to attention and staring straight ahead to avoid his gaze. Hwel stumped back along the line. “What are you?” “We’re hags, Hwel!” “What kind of hags?” “We’re black and midnight hags!” they yelled, getting into the spirit. “What kind of black and midnight hags?” “Evil black and midnight hags!” “Are you scheming?” “Yeah!” “Are you secret?” “Yeah!” Hwel drew himself to his full height, such as it was. “What-are-you?” he screamed. “We’re scheming evil secret black and midnight hags!” “Right!” He pointed a vibrating finger towards the stage and lowered his voice and, at that moment, a dramatic inspiration dived through the atmosphere and slammed into his creative node, causing him to say, “Now I want you to get out there and give ‘em hell. Not for me. Not for the goddam captain.” He shifted the butt of an imaginary cigar from one side of his mouth to the other, and pushed back a non-existent tin helmet, and rasped, “But for Corporal Walkowski and his little dawg.” They stared at him in disbelief. On cue, someone shook a sheet of tin and broke the spell. Hwel rolled his eyes. He’d grown up in the mountains, where thunderstorms stalked from peak to peak on legs of lightning. He remembered thunderstorms that left mountains a different shape and flattened whole forests. Somehow, a sheet of tin wasn’t the same, no matter how enthusiastically it was shaken. Just once, he thought, just once. Let me get it right just once. He opened his eyes and glared at the witches. “What are you hanging around here for?” he yelled. “Get out there and curse them!” He watched them scamper on to the stage, and then Tomjon tapped him on the head. “Hwel, there’s no crown.” “Hmm?” said the dwarf, his mind wrestling with ways of building thunder-and-lightning machines. “There’s no crown, Hwel. I’ve got to wear a crown.” “Of course there’s a crown. The big one with the red glass, very impressive, we used it in that place with the big square—” “I think we left it there.” There was another tinny roll of thunder but, even so, the part of Hwel that was living the play heard a faltering voice on stage. He darted to the wings. “—I have smother’d many a babe—” he hissed, and sprinted back. “Well, just find another one, then,” he said vaguely. “In the props box. You’re the Evil King, you’ve got to have a crown. Get on with it, lad, you’re on in a few minutes. Improvise.” Tomjon wandered back to the box. He’d grown up among crowns, big golden crowns made of wood and plaster, studded with finest glass. He’d cut his teeth on the hat-brims of Authority. But most of them had been left in the Dysk now. He pulled out collapsible daggers and skulls and vases, the strata of the years and, right at the bottom, his fingers closed on something thin and crown shaped, which no-one had ever wanted to wear because it looked so uncrownly. It would be nice to say it tingled under his hand. Perhaps it did. Granny was sitting as still as a statue, and almost as cold. The horror of realisation was stealing over her. “That’s us,” she said. “Round that silly cauldron. That’s meant to be us, Gytha.” Nanny Ogg paused with a walnut halfway to her gums. She listened to the words. “I never shipwrecked anybody!” she said. “They just said they shipwreck people! I never did!” Up in the tower Magrat elbowed the Fool in the ribs. “Green blusher,” she said, staring at the 3rd Witche. “I don’t look like that. I don’t, do I?” “Absolutely not,” said the Fool. “And that hair!” The Fool peered through the crenellations like an over-eager gargoyle. “It looks like straw,” he said. “Not very clean, either.” He hesitated, picking at the lichened stonework with his fingers. Before he’d left the city he’d asked Hwel for a few suitable words to say to a young lady, and he had been memorising them on the way home. It was now or never. “I’d like to know if I could compare you to a summer’s day. Because – well, June 12th was quite nice, and . . .Oh. You’ve gone . . .” King Verence gripped the edge of his seat; his fingers went through it. Tomjon had strutted on to the stage. “That’s him, isn’t it? That’s my son?” The uncracked walnut fell from Nanny Ogg’s fingers and rolled on to the floor. She nodded. Verence turned a haggard, transparent face towards her. “But what is he doing? What is he saying?” Nanny shook her head. The king listened with his mouth open as Tomjon, lurching crabwise across the stage, launched into his major speech. “I think he’s meant to be you,” said Nanny, distantly. “But I never walked like that! Why’s he got a hump on his back? What’s happened to his leg?” He listened some more, and added, in horrified tones, “And I certainly never did that! Or that. Why is he saying I did that?” The look he gave Nanny was full of pleading. She shrugged. The king reached up, lifted off his spectral crown, and examined it. “And it’s my crown he’s wearing! Look, this is it! And he’s saying I did all those—” He paused for a minute, to listen to the latest couplet, and added, “All right. Maybe I did that. So I set fire to a few cottages. But everyone does that. It’s good for the building industry, anyway.” He put the ghostly crown back on his head. “Why’s he saying all this about me?” he pleaded. “It’s art,” said Nanny. “It wossname, holds a mirror up to life.” Granny turned slowly in her seat to look at the audience. They were staring at the performance, their faces rapt. The words washed over them in the breathless air. This was real. This was more real even than reality. This was history. It might not be true, but that had nothing to do with it. Granny had never had much time for words. They were so insubstantial. Now she wished that she had found the time. Words were indeed insubstantial. They were as soft as water, but they were also as powerful as water and now they were rushing over the audience, eroding the levees of veracity, and carrying away the past. That’s us down there, she thought. Everyone knows who we really are, but the things down there are what they’ll remember – three gibbering old baggages in pointy hats. All we’ve ever done, all we’ve ever been, won’t exist any more. She looked at the ghost of the king. Well, he’d been no worse than any other king. Oh, he might burn down the odd cottage every now and again, in a sort of absent-minded way, but only when he was really angry about something, and he could give it up any time he liked. Where he wounded the world, he left the kind of wounds that healed. Whoever wrote this Theatre knew about the uses of magic. Even I believe what’s happening, and I know there’s no truth in it. This is Art holding a Mirror up to Life. That’s why everything is exactly the wrong way round. We’ve lost. There is nothing we can do against this without becoming exactly what we aren’t. Nanny Ogg gave her a violent nudge in the ribs. “Did you hear that?” she said. “One of ‘em said we put babbies in the cauldron! They’ve done a slander on me! I’m not sitting here and have ‘em say we put babbies in a cauldron!” Granny grabbed her shawl as she tried to stand up. “Don’t do anything!” she hissed. “It’ll make things worse.” “ "Ditch-delivered by adrabe", they said. That”ll be young Millie Hipwood, who didn’t dare tell her mum and then went out gathering firewood. I was up all night with that one,” Nanny muttered. “Fine girl she produced. It’s a slander! What’s a drabe?” she added. “Words,” said Granny, half to herself. “That’s all that’s left. Words.” “And now there’s a man with a trumpet come on. What’s he going to do? Oh. End of Act One,” said Nanny. The words won’t be forgotten, thought Granny. They’ve got a power to them. They’re damn good words, as words go. There was yet another rattle of thunder, which ended with the kind of crash made, for example, by a sheet of tin escaping from someone’s hands and hitting the wall. In the world outside the stage the heat pressed down like a pillow, squeezing the very life out of the air. Granny saw a footman bend down to the duke’s ear. No, he won’t stop the play. Of course he won’t. He wants it to run its course. The duke must have felt the heat of her gaze on the back of his neck. He turned, focused on her, and gave her a strange little smile. Then he nudged his wife. They both laughed. Granny Weatherwax was often angry. She considered it one of her strong points. Genuine anger was one of the world’s great creative forces. But you had to learn how to control it. That didn’t mean you let it trickle away. It meant you dammed it, carefully, let it develop a working head, let it drown whole valleys of the mind and then, just when the whole structure was about to collapse, opened a tiny pipeline at the base and let the iron-hard stream of wrath power the turbines of revenge. She felt the land below her, even through several feet of foundations, flagstones, one thickness of leather and two thicknesses of sock. She felt it waiting. She heard the king say, “My own flesh and blood? Why has he done this to me? I’m going to confront him!” She gently took Nanny Ogg’s hand. “Come, Gytha,” she said. Lord Felmet sat back in his throne and beamed madly at the world, which was looking good right at the moment. Things were working out better than he had dared to hope. He could feel the past melting behind him, like ice in the spring thaw. On an impulse he called the footman back. “Call the captain of the guard,” he said, “and tell him to find the witches and arrest them.” The duchess snorted. “Remember what happened last time, foolish man?” “We left two of them loose,” said the duke. “This time . . . all three. The tide of public feeling is on our side. That sort of thing affects witches, depend upon it.” The duchess cracked her knuckles to indicate her view of public opinion. “You must admit, my treasure, that the experiment seems to be working.” “It would appear so.” “Very well. Don’t just stand there, man. Before the play ends, tell him. Those witches are to be under lock and key.” Death adjusted his cardboard skull in front of the mirror, twitched his cowl into a suitable shape, stood back and considered the general effect. It was going to be his first speaking part. He wanted to get it right. “Cower now, Brief Mortals,” he said. “For I am Death, “Gainst Whom No . . . no . . . no . . . Hwel, “gainst whom no?” “Oh, good grief, Dafe. " “Gainst whom no lock will hold nor fasten’d portal bar", I really don’t see why you have difficulty with . . . not that way up, you idiots!” Hwel strode off through the backstage melee in pursuit of a pair of importunate scene shifters. “Right,” said Death, to no-one in particular. He turned back to the mirror. “ “Gainst Whom No . . . Tumpty-Tum . . . nor Tumpty-Tumpty bar,” he said, uncertainly, and flourished his scythe. The end fell off. “Do you think I’m fearsome enough?” he said, as he tried to fix it on again. Tomjon, who was sitting on his hump and trying to drink some tea, gave him an encouraging nod. “No problem, my friend,” he said. “Compared to a visit from you, even Death himself would hold no fears. But you could try a bit more hollowness.” “How d’you mean?” Tomjon put down his cup. Shadows seemed to move across his face; his eyes sank, his lips drew back from his teeth, his skin stretched and paled. “I HAVE COME TO GET YOU, YOU TERRIBLE ACTOR,” he intoned, each syllable falling into place like a coffin lid. His features sprang back into shape. “Like that,” he said. Dafe, who had flattened himself against the wall, relaxed a bit and gave a nervous giggle. “Gods, I don’t know how you do it,” he said. “Honestly, I’ll never be as good as you.” “There really isn’t anything to it. Now run along, Hwel’s fit to be tied as it is.” Dafe gave him a look of gratitude and ran off to help with the scene shifting. Tomjon sipped his tea uneasily, the backstage noises whirring around him like so much fog. He was worried. Hwel had said that everything about the play was fine, except for the play itself. And Tomjon kept thinking that the play itself was trying to force itself into a different shape. His mind had been hearing other words, just too faint for hearing. It was almost like eavesdropping on a conversation. He’d had to shout more to drown out the buzzing in his head. This wasn’t right. Once a play was written it was, well, written. It shouldn’t come alive and start twisting itself around. No wonder everyone needed prompting all the time. The play was writhing under their hands, trying to change itself. Ye gods, he’d be glad to get out of this spooky castle, and away from this mad duke. He glanced around, decided that it would be some time before the next act was called, and wandered aimlessly in search of fresher air. A door yielded to his touch and he stepped out on to the battlements. He pushed it shut behind him, cutting off the sounds of the stage and replacing them by a velvet hush. There was a livid sunset imprisoned behind bars of cloud, but the air was as still as a mill pond and as hot as a furnace. In the forest below some night bird screamed. He walked to the other end of the battlements and peered down into the sheer depths of the gorge. Far beneath, the Lancre boiled in its eternal mists. He turned, and walked into a draught of such icy coldness that he gasped. Unusual breezes plucked at his clothing. There was a strange muttering in his ear, as though someone was-trying to talk to him but couldn’t get the speed right. He stood rigid for a moment, getting his breath, and then fled for the door. “But we’re not witches!” “Why do you look like them, then? Tie their hands, lads.” “Yes, excuse me, but we’re not really witches!” The captain of the guard looked from face to face. His gaze took in the pointy hats, the disordered hair smelling of damp haystacks, the sickly green complexions and the herd of warts. Guard captain for the duke wasn’t a job that offered long-term prospects for those who used initiative. Three witches had been called for, and these seemed to fit the bill. The captain never went to the theatre. When he was on the rack of adolescence he’d been badly frightened by a Punch and Judy show, and since then had taken pains to avoid any organised entertainment and had kept away from anywhere where crocodiles could conceivably be expected. He’d spent the last hour enjoying a quiet drink in the guardroom. “I said tie their hands, didn’t I?” he snapped. “Shall we gag them as well, cap’n?” “But if you’d just listen, we’re with the theatre—” “Yes,” said the captain, shuddering. “Gag them.” “Please . . .” The captain leaned down and stared at three pairs of frightened eyes. He was trembling. “That,” he said, “is the last time you’ll eat anyone’s sausage.” He was aware that now the soldiers were giving him odd looks as well. He coughed and pulled himself together. “Very well then, my theatrical witches,” he said. “You’ve done your show, and now it’s time for your applause.” He nodded to his men. “Clap them in chains,” he said. Three other witches sat in the gloom behind the stage, staring vacantly into the darkness. Granny Weatherwax had picked up a copy of the script, which she peered at from time to time, as if seeking ideas. “ "Divers alarums and excursions",” she read, uncertainly. “That means lots of terrible happenings,” said Magrat. “You always put that in plays.” “Alarums and what?” said Nanny Ogg, who hadn’t been listening. “Excursions,” said Magrat patiently. “Oh.” Nanny Ogg brightened a bit. “The seaside would be nice,” she said. “Do shut up, Gytha,” said Granny Weatherwax. “They’re not for you. They’re only for divers, like it says. Probably so they can recover from all them alarums.” “We can’t let this happen,” said Magrat, quickly and loudly. “If this gets about, witches’ll always be old hags with green blusher.” “And meddlin’ in the affairs of kings,” said Nanny. “Which we never do, as is well known.” “It’s not the meddlin’ I object to,” said Granny Weatherwax, her chin on her hand. “It’s the evil meddling.” “And the unkindness to animals,” muttered Magrat. “All that stuff about eye of dog and ear of toad. No-one uses that kind of stuff.” Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg carefully avoided one another’s faces. “Drabe!” said Nanny Ogg bitterly. “Witches just aren’t like that,” said Magrat. “We live in harmony with the great cycles of Nature, and do no harm to anyone, and it’s wicked of them to say we don’t. We ought to fill their bones with hot lead.” The other two looked at her with a certain amount of surprised admiration. She blushed, although not greenly, and looked at her knees. “Goodie Whemper did a recipe,” she confessed. “It’s quite easy. What you do is, you get some lead, and you—” “I don’t think that would be appropriate,” said Granny carefully, after a certain amount of internal struggle. “It could give people the wrong idea.” “But not for long,” said Nanny wistfully. “No, we can’t be having with that sort of thing,” said Granny, a little more firmly this time. “We’d never hear the last of it.” “Why don’t we just change the words?” said Magrat. “When they come back on stage we could just put the ‘fluence on them so they forget what they’re saying, and give them some new words.” “I suppose you’re an expert at theatre words?” said Granny sarcastically. “They’d have to be the proper sort, otherwise people would suspect.” “Shouldn’t be too difficult,” said Nanny Ogg dismissively. “I’ve been studyin’ it. You go tumpty-tumpty-tumpty.” Granny gave this some consideration. “There’s more to it than that, I believe,” she said. “Some of those speeches were very good. I couldn’t understand hardly any of it.” “There’s no trick to it at all,” Nanny Ogg insisted. “Anyway, half of them are forgetting their lines as it is. It’ll be easy.” “We could put words in their mouths?” said Magrat. Nanny Ogg nodded. “I don’t know about new words,” she said. “But we can make them forget these words.” They both looked at Granny Weatherwax. She shrugged. “I suppose it’s worth a try,” she conceded. “Witches as yet unborn will thank us for it,” said Magrat ardently. “Oh, good,” said Granny. “At last! What are you three playing at? We’ve been looking for you everywhere!” The witches turned to see an irate dwarf trying to loom over them. “Us?” said Magrat. “But we’re not in—” “Oh yes you are, remember, we put it in last week. Act Two, Downstage, around the cauldron. You haven’t got to say anything. You’re symbolising occult forces at work. Just be as wicked as you can. Come on, there’s good lads. You’ve done well so far.” Hwel slapped Magrat on the bottom. “Good complexion you’ve got mere, Wilph,” he said encouragingly. “But for goodness’ sake use a bit more padding, you’re still the wrong shape. Fine warts there, Billem. I must say,” he added, standing back, “you look as nasty a bunch of hags as a body might hope to clap eyes on. Well done. Shame about the wigs. Now run along. Curtain up in one minute. Break a leg.” He gave Magrat another ringing slap on her rump, slightly hurting his hand, and hurried off to shout at someone else. None of the witches dared to speak. Magrat and Nanny Ogg found themselves instinctively turning towards Granny. She sniffed. She looked up. She looked around. She looked at the brightly lit stage behind her. She brought her hands together with a clap that echoed around the castle, and then rubbed them together. “Useful,” she said grimly. “Let’s do the show right here.” Nanny squinted sullenly after Hwel. “Break your own leg,” she muttered. Hwel stood in the wings and gave the signal for the curtains. And for the thunder. It didn’t come. “Thunder!” he hissed, in a voice heard by half the audience. “Get on with it!” A voice from behind the nearest pillar wailed, “I went and bent the thunder, Hwel! It just goes clonk-clonk!” Hwel stood silent for a moment, counting. The company watched him, awestruck but not, unfortunately, thunderstruck. At last he raised his fists to the open sky and said, “I wanted a storm! Just a storm. Not even a big storm. Any storm. Now I want to make myself absolutely CLEAR! I have had ENOUGH! I want thunder right NOW!” The stab of lightning that answered him turned the multi-hued shadows of the castle into blinding white and searing black. It was followed by a roll of thunder, on cue. It was the loudest noise Hwel had ever heard. It seemed to start inside his head and work its way outwards. It went on and on, shaking every stone in the castle. Dust rained down. A distant turret broke away with balletic slowness and, tumbling end over end, dropped gently into the hungry depths of the gorge. When it finished it left a silence that rang like a bell. Hwel looked up at the sky. Great black clouds were blowing across the castle, blotting out the stars. The storm was back. It had spent ages learning its craft. It had spent years lurking in distant valleys. It had practised for hours in front of a glacier. It had studied the great storms of the past. It had honed its art to perfection. And now, tonight, with what it could see was clearly an appreciative audience waiting for it, it was going to take them by, well . . . tempest. Hwel smiled. Perhaps the gods did listen, after all. He wished he’d asked for a really good wind machine as well. He gestured frantically at Tomjon. “Get on with it!” The boy nodded, and launched into his main speech. “And now our domination is complete—” Behind him on the stage the witches bent over the cauldron. “It’s just tin, this one,” hissed Nanny. “And it’s full of all yuk.” “And the fire is just red paper,” whispered Magrat. “It looked so real from up there, it’s just red paper! Look, you can poke it—” “Never mind,” said Granny. “Just look busy, and wait until I say.” As the Evil King and the Good Duke began the exchange that was going to lead to the exciting Duel Scene they became uncomfortably aware of activity behind them, and occasional chuckles from the audience. After a totally inappropriate burst of laughter Tomjon risked a sideways glance. One of the witches was taking their fire to bits. Another one was trying to clean the cauldron. The third one was sitting with her arms folded, glaring at him. “The very soil cries out at tyranny—” said Wimsloe, and then caught the expression on Tomjon’s face and followed his gaze. His voice trailed into silence. “ "And calls me forth for vengeance",” prompted Tomjon helpfully. “B-but—” whispered Wimsloe, trying to point surreptitiously with his dagger. “I wouldn’t be seen dead with a cauldron like this,” said Nanny Ogg, in a whisper loud enough to carry to the back of the courtyard. “Two days’ work with a scourer and a bucket of sand, is this.” “ "And calls me forth for vengeance" “ hissed Tomjon. Out of the tail of his eye he saw Hwel in the wings, frozen in an attitude of incoherent rage. “How do they make it flicker?” said Magrat. “Be quiet, you two,” said Granny. “You’re upsetting people.” She raised her hat to Wimsloe. “Go ahead, young man. Don’t mind us.” “Wha?” said Wimsloe. “Aha, it calls you forth for vengeance, does it?” said Tomjon in desperation. “And the heavens cry revenge, too, I expect.” On cue, the storm produced a thunderbolt that blew the top off another tower . . . The duke crouched in his seat, his face a panorama of fear. He extended what had once been a finger. “There they are,” he breathed. “That’s them. What are they doing in my play? Who said they could be in my play?” The duchess, who was less inclined to deal in rhetorical questions, beckoned to the nearest guard. On stage Tomjon was sweating under the load of the script. Wimsloe was incoherent. Now Gumridge, who was playing the part of the Good Duchess in a wig of flax, had lost the thread as well. “Aha, thou callst me an evil king, though thou wisperest it so none save I may hear it,” Tomjon croaked. “And thou hast summoned the guard, possibly by some most secret signal, owing nought to artifice of lips or tongue.” A guard came on crabwise, still stumbling from Hwel’s shove. He stared at Granny Weatherwax. “Hwel says what the hell’s going on?” he hissed. “What was that?” said Tomjon. “Did I hear you say / come, my lady?” “Get these people off, he says!” Tomjon advanced to the front of the stage. “Thou babblest, man. See how I dodge thy tortoise spear. I said, see how I dodge thy tortoise spear. Thy spear, man. You’re holding it in thy bloody hand, for goodness’ sake.” The guard gave him a desperate, frozen grin. Tomjon hesitated. Three other actors around him were staring fixedly at the witches. Looming up in front of him with all the inevitability of a tax demand was a sword fight during which, it was beginning to appear, he would have to parry his own wild thrusts and stab himself to death. He turned to the three witches. His mouth opened. For the first time in his life his awesome memory let him down. He could think of nothing to say. Granny Weatherwax stood up. She advanced to the edge of the stage. The audience held its breath. She held up a hand. “Ghosts of the mind and all device away, I bid the Truth to have—” she hesitated – “its tumpty-tumpty day.” Tomjon felt the chill engulf him. The others, too, jolted into life. Up from out of the depths of their blank minds new words rushed, words red with blood and revenge, words that had echoed among the castle’s stones, words stored in silicon, words that would have themselves heard, words that gripped their mouths so tightly that an attempt not to say them would result in a broken jaw. “Do you fear him now?” said Gumridge. “And he so mazed with drink? Take his dagger, husband – you are a blade’s width from the kingdom.” “I dare not,” Wimsloe said, trying to look in astonishment at his own lips. “Who will know?” Gumridge waved a hand towards the audience. He’d never act so well again. “See, there is only eyeless night. Take the dagger now, take the kingdom tomorrow. Have a stab at it, man.” Wimsloe’s hand shook. “I have it, wife,” he said. “Is this a dagger I see before me?” “Of course it’s a bloody dagger. Come on, do it now. The weak deserve no mercy. We’ll say he fell down the stairs.” “But people will suspect!” “Are there no dungeons? Are there no pilliwinks? Possession is nine parts of the law, husband, when what you possess is a knife.” Wimsloe drew his arm back. “I cannot! He has been kindness itself to me!” “And you can be Death itself to him . . .” Dafe could hear the voices a long way off. He adjusted his mask, checked the deathliness of his appearance in the mirror, and peered at the script in the empty backstage gloom. “Cower Now, Brief Mortals,” he said. “I Am Death, “Gainst Who – “Gainst Who—” WHOM. “Oh, thanks,” said the boy distractedly. “ “Gainst Whom No Lock May Hold—” WILL HOLD. “Will Hold Nor Fasten’d Portal Bar, Here To – to – to” HERE TO TAKE MY TALLY ON THIS NIGHT OF KINGS. Dafe sagged. “You’re so much better at it,” he moaned. “You’ve got the right voice and you can remember the words.” He turned around. “It’s only three lines and Hwel will . . . have . . . my . . . guts . . . for.” He froze. His eyes widened and became two saucers of fear as Death snapped his fingers in front of the boy’s rigid face. FORGET, he commanded, and turned and stalked silently towards the wings. His eyeless skull took in the line of costumes, the waxy debris of the makeup table. His empty nostrils snuffed up the mixed smells of mothballs, grease and sweat. There was something here, he thought, that nearly belonged to the gods. Humans had built a world inside the world, which reflected it in pretty much the same way as a drop of water reflects the landscape. And yet . . . and yet . . . Inside this little world they had taken pains to put all the things, you might think they would want to escape from – hatred, fear, tyranny, and so forth. Death was intrigued. They thought they wanted to be taken out of themselves, and every art humans dreamt up took them further in. He was fascinated. He was here for a very particular and precise purpose. There was a soul to be claimed. There was no time for inconsequentialities. But what was time, after all? His feet did an involuntary little clicking dance across the stones. Alone, in the grey shadows, Death tapdanced. —THE NEXT NIGHT IN YOUR DRESSING ROOM THEY HANG A STAR— He pulled himself together, adjusted his scythe, and waited silently for his cue. He’d never missed one yet. He was going to get out there and slay them. “And you can be Death itself to him. Now!” Death entered, his feet clicking across the stage.COWER NOW, BRIEF MORTALS, he said,FOR I AM DEATH, ‘GAINST WHOM NO . . . NO . . . ‘GAINST WHOM . . . He hesitated. He hesitated, for the very first time in the eternity of his existence. For although the Death of the Discworld was used to dealing with people by the million, at the same time every death was intimate and personal. Death was seldom seen except by those of an occult persuasion and his clients themselves. The reason that no-one else saw him was that the human brain is clever enough to edit sights too horrible for it to cope with, but the problem here was that several hundred people were in fact expecting to see Death at this point, and were therefore seeing him. Death turned slowly and stared back at hundreds of watching eyes. Even in the grip of the truth Tomjon recognised a fellow actor in distress, and fought for mastery of his lips. “ ". . . lock will hold . . ." “ he whispered, through teeth fixed in a grimace. Death gave him a manic grin of stagefright. WHAT?he whispered, in a voice like an anvil being hit with a small lead hammer. “ ". . . lock will hold, nor fasten’d portal . . .",” said Tomjon encouragingly. . . . LOCK WILL HOLD NOR FASTEN’d PORTAL . . . UH . . .repeated Death desperately, watching his lips. “ ". . . bar! . . ." “ BAR. “No, I cannot do it!” said Wimsloe. “I will be seen! Down there in the hall, someone watches!” “There is no-one!” “I feel the stare!” “Dithering idiot! Must I put it in for you? See, his foot is upon the top stair!” Wimsloe’s face contorted with fear and uncertainty. He drew back his hand. “No!” The scream came from the audience. The duke was half-risen from his seat, his tortured knuckles at his mouth. As they watched he lurched forward between the shocked people. “No! I did not do it! It was not like that! You cannot say it was like that! You were not there!” He stared at the upturned faces around him, and sagged. “Nor was I,” he giggled. “I was asleep at the time, you know. I remember it quite well. There was blood on the counterpane, there was blood on the floor, I could not wash off the blood, but these are not proper subjects for the inquiry. I cannot allow the discussion of national security. It was just a dream, and when I awoke, he’d be alive tomorrow. And tomorrow it wouldn’t have happened because it was not done. And tomorrow you can say I did not know. And tomorrow you can say I had no recollection. What a noise he made in falling! Enough to wake the dead . . . who would have thought he had so much blood in him? . . .” By now he had climbed on to the stage, and grinned brightly at the assembled company. “I hope that sorts it all out,” he said. “Ha. Ha.” In the silence that followed Tomjon opened his mouth to utter something suitable, something soothing, and found that there was nothing he could say. But another personality stepped into him, took over his lips, and spoke thusly: “With my own bloody dagger, you bastard! I know it was you! I saw you at the top of the stairs, sucking your thumb! I’d kill you now, except for the thought of having to spend eternity listening to your whining. I, Verence, formerly King of-” “What testimony is this?” said the duchess. She stood in front of the stage, with half a dozen soldiers beside her. “These are just slanders,” she added. “And treason to boot. The rantings of mad players.” “I was bloody King of Lancre!” shouted Tomjon. “In which case you are the alleged victim,” said the duchess calmly. “And unable to speak for the prosecution. It is against all precedent.” Tomjon’s body turned towards Death. “You were there! You saw it all!” I SUSPECT I WOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED AN APPROPRIATE WITNESS. “Therefore there is no proof, and where there is no proof there is no crime,” said the duchess. She motioned the soldiers forward. “So much for your experiment,” she said to her husband. “I think my way is better.” She looked around the stage, and found the witches. “Arrest them,” she said. “No,” said the Fool, stepping out of the wings. “What did you say?” “I saw it all,” said the Fool, simply. “I was in the Great Hall that night. You killed the king, my lord.” “I did not!” screamed the duke. “You were not there! I did not see you there! I order you not to be there!” “You did not dare say this before,” said Lady Felmet. “Yes, lady. But I must say it now.” The duke focused unsteadily on him. “You swore loyalty unto death, my Fool,” he hissed. “Yes, my lord. I’m sorry.” “You’re dead.” The duke snatched a dagger from Wimsloe’s-unresisting hand, darted forward, and plunged it to the hilt into the Fool’s heart. Magrat screamed. The Fool rocked back and forth unsteadily. “Thank goodness that’s over,” he said, as Magrat pushed her way through the actors and clasped him to what could charitably be called her bosom. It struck the Fool that he had never looked a bosom squarely in the face, at least since he was a baby, and it was particularly cruel of the world to save the experience until after he was dead. He gently moved one of Magrat’s arms and pulled the despicable horned cowl from his head, and tossed it as far as possible. He didn’t have to be a Fool any more or, he realised, bother about vows or anything. What with bosoms as well, death seemed to be an improvement. “I didn’t do it,” said the duke. No pain, thought the Fool. Funny, that. On the other hand, you obviously can’t feel pain when you are dead. It would be wasted. “You all saw that I didn’t do it,” said the duke. Death gave the Fool a puzzled look. Then he reached into the recesses of his robes and pulled out an hourglass. It had bells on it. He gave it a gentle shake, which made them tinkle. “I gave no orders that any such thing should be done,” said the duke calmly. His voice came from a long way off, from wherever his mind was now. The company stared at him wordlessly. It wasn’t possible to hate someone like this, only to feel acutely embarrassed about being anywhere near him. Even the Fool felt embarrassed, and he was dead. Death tapped the hourglass, and then peered at it to see if it had gone wrong. “You are all lying,” said the duke, in tranquil tones. “Telling lies is naughty.” He stabbed several of the nearest actors in a dreamy, gentle way, and then held up the blade. “You see?” he said. “No blood! It wasn’t me.” He looked up at the duchess, towering over him now like a red tsunami over a small fishing village. “It was her,” he said. “She did it.” He stabbed her once or twice, on general principles, and then stabbed himself and let the dagger drop from his fingers. After a few seconds reflection he said, in a voice far nearer the worlds of sanity, “You can’t get me now.” He turned to Death. “Will there be a comet?” he said. “There must be a comet when a prince dies. I’ll go and see, shall I?” He wandered away. The audience broke into applause. “You’ve got to admit he was real royalty,” said Nanny Ogg, eventually. “It only goes to show, royalty goes eccentric far better than the likes of you and me.” Death held the hourglass to his skull, his face radiating puzzlement. Granny Weatherwax picked up the fallen dagger and tested the blade with her finger. It slid into the handle quite easily, with a faint squeaking noise. She passed it to Nanny. “There’s your magic sword,” she said. Magrat looked at it, and then back at the Fool. “Are you dead or not?” she said. “I must be,” said the Fool, his voice slightly muffled. “I think I’m in paradise.” “No, look, I’m serious.” “I don’t know. But I’d like to breathe.” “Then you must be alive.” “Everyone’s alive,” said Granny. “It’s a trick dagger. Actors probably can’t be trusted with real ones.” “After all, they can’t even keep a cauldron clean,” said Nanny. “Whether everyone is alive or not is a matter for me,” said the duchess. “As ruler it is my pleasure to decide. Clearly my husband has lost his wits.” She turned to her soldiers. “And I decree—” “Now!” hissed King Verence in Granny’s ear. “Now!” Granny Weatherwax drew herself up. “Be silent, woman!” she said. “The true King of Lancre stands before you!” She clapped Tomjon on the shoulder. “What, him?” “Who, me?” “Ridiculous,” said the duchess. “He’s a mummer, of sorts.” “She’s right, miss,” said Tomjon, on the edge of panic. “My father runs a theatre, not a kingdom.” “He is the true king. We can prove it,” said Granny. “Oh, no,” said the duchess. “We’re not having that. There’s no mysterious returned heirs in this kingdom. Guards – take him.” Granny Weatherwax held up a hand. The soldiers lurched from foot to foot, uncertainly. “She’s a witch, isn’t she?” said one of them, tentatively. “Certainly,” said the duchess. The guards shifted uneasily. “We seen where they turn people into newts,” said one. “And then shipwreck them.” “Yeah, and alarum the divers.” “Yeah.” “We ought to talk about this. We ought to get extra for witches.” “She could do anything to us, look. She could be a drabe, even.” “Don’t be foolish,” said the duchess. “Witches don’t do that sort of thing. They’re just stories to frighten people.” The guard shook his head. “It looked pretty convincing to me.” “Of course it did, it was meant—” the duchess began. She sighed, and snatched a spear out of the guard’s hand. “I’ll show you the power of these witches,” she said, and hurled it at Granny’s face. Granny moved her hand across at snakebite speed and caught the spear just behind the head. “So,” she said, “and it comes to this, does it?” “You don’t frighten me, wyrd sisters,” said the duchess. Granny stared her in the eye for a few seconds. She gave a grunt of surprise. “You’re right,” she said. “We really don’t, do we . . .” “Do you think I haven’t studied you? Your witchcraft is all artifice and illusion, to amaze weak minds. It holds no fears for me. Do your worst.” Granny studied her for a while. “My worst?” she said, eventually. Magrat and Nanny Ogg shuffled gently out of her way. The duchess laughed. “You’re clever,” she said. “I’ll grant you that much. And quick. Come on, hag. Bring on your toads and demons, I’ll . . .” She stopped, her mouth opening and shutting a bit without any words emerging. Her lips drew back in a rictus of terror, her eyes looked beyond Granny, beyond the world, towards something else. One knuckled hand flew to her mouth and she made a little whimpering noise. She froze, like a rabbit that has just seen a stoat and knows, without any doubt, that it is the last stoat that it will ever see. “What have you done to her?” said Magrat, the first to dare to speak. Granny smirked. “Headology,” said Granny, and smirked. “You don’t need any Black Aliss magic for it.” “Yes, but what have you done?” “No-one becomes like she is without building walls inside their head,” she said. “I’ve just knocked them down. Every scream. Every plea. Every pang of guilt. Every twinge of conscience. All at once. There’s a little trick to it.” She gave Magrat a condescending smile. “I’ll show you one day, if you like.” Magrat thought about it. “It’s horrible,” she said. “Nonsense,” Granny smiled terribly. “Everyone wants to know their true self. Now, she does.” “Sometimes you have to be kind to be cruel,” said Nanny Ogg approvingly. “I think it’s probably the worst thing that could happen to anyone,” said Magrat, as the duchess swayed backwards and forwards. “For goodness’ sake use your imagination, girl,” said Granny. “There are far worse things. Needles under the fingernails, for one. Stuff with pliers.” “Red-hot knives up the jacksie,” said Nanny Ogg. “Handle first, too, so you cut your fingers trying to pull them out—” “This is simply the worst that I can do,” said Granny Weatherwax primly. “It’s all right and proper, too. A witch should act like that, you know. There’s no need for any dramatic stuff. Most magic goes on in the head. It’s headology. Now, if you’d—” A noise like a gas leak escaped from the duchess’s lips. Her head jerked back suddenly. She opened her eyes, blinked, and focused on Granny. Sheer hatred suffused her features. “Guards!” she said. “I told you to take them!” Granny’s jaw sagged. “What?” she said. “But – but I showed you your true self . . .” “I’m supposed to be upset by that, am I?” As the soldiers sheepishly grabbed Granny’s arms the duchess pressed her face close to Granny’s, her tremendous eyebrows a V of triumphant hatred. “I’m supposed to grovel on the floor, is that it? Well, old woman, I’ve seen exactly what I am, do you understand, and I’m proud of it! I’d do it all again, only hotter and longer! I enjoyed it, and I did it because I wanted to!” She thumped the vast expanse of her chest. “You gawping idiots!” she said. “You’re so weak. You really think that people are basically decent underneath, don’t you?” The crowd on the stage backed away from the sheer force of her exultation. “Well, I’ve looked underneath,” said the duchess. “I know what drives people. It’s fear. Sheer, deep-down fear. There’s not one of you who doesn’t fear me, I can make you widdle your drawers out of terror, and now I’m going to take—” At this point Nanny Ogg hit her on the back of the head with the cauldron. “She does go on, doesn’t she?” she said conversationally, as the duchess collapsed. “She was a bit eccentric, if you ask me.” There was a long, embarrassed silence. Granny Weatherwax coughed. Then she treated the soldiers holding her to a bright, friendly smile, and pointed to the mound that was now the duchess. “Take her away and put her in a cell somewhere,” she commanded. The men snapped to attention, grabbed the duchess by her arms, and pulled her upright with considerable difficulty. “Gently, mind,” said Granny. She rubbed her hands together and turned to Tomjon, who was watching her with his mouth open. “Depend on it,” she hissed. “Here and now, my lad, you don’t have a choice. You’re the King of Lancre.” “But I don’t know how to be a king!” “We all seed you! You had it down just right, including the shouting.” “That’s just acting!” “Act, then. Being a king is, is—” Granny hesitated, and snapped her fingers at Magrat. “What do you call them things, there’s always a hundred of them in anything?” Magrat looked bewildered. “Do you mean per cents?” she said. “Them,” agreed Granny. “Most of the per cents in being a king is acting, if you ask me. You ought to be good at it.” Tomjon looked for help into the wings, where Hwel should have been. The dwarf was in fact there, but he wasn’t paying much attention. He had the script in front of him, and was rewriting furiously. BUT I ASSURE YOU, YOU ARE NOT DEAD. TAKE IT FROM ME. The duke giggled. He had found a sheet from somewhere and had draped it over himself, and was sidling along some of the castle’s more deserted corridors. Sometimes he would go “whoo-oo” in a low voice. This worried Death. He was used to people claiming that they were not dead, because death always came as a shock, and a lot of people had some trouble getting over it. But people claiming that they were dead with every breath in their body was a new and unsettling experience. “I shall jump out on people,” said the duke dreamily. “I shall rattle my bones all night, I shall perch on the roof and foretell a death in the house—” THAT’S BANSHEES. “I shall if I want,” said the duke, with a trace of earlier determination. “And I shall float through walls, and knock on tables, and drip ectoplasm on anyone I don’t like. Ha. Ha.” IT WON’T WORK. LIVING PEOPLE ARENT ALLOWED TO BE GHOSTS. I’M SORRY. The duke made an unsuccessful attempt to float through a wall, gave up, and opened a door out on to a crumbling section of the battlements. The storm had died away a bit, and a thin rind of moon lurked behind the clouds like a ticket tout for eternity. Death stalked through the wall behind him. “Well then,” said the duke, “if I’m not dead, why are you here?” He jumped up on to the wall and flapped his sheet. WAITING. “Wait forever, bone face!” said the duke triumphantly. “I shall hover in the twilight world, I shall find some chains to shake, I shall—” He stepped backwards, lost his balance, landed heavily on the wall and slid. For a moment the remnant of his right hand scrabbled ineffectually at the stonework, and then it vanished. Death is obviously potentially everywhere at the same time, and in one sense it is no more true to say that he was on the battlements, picking vaguely at non-existent particles of glowing metal on the edge of his scythe blade, than that he was waist-deep in the foaming, rock-toothed waters in the depths of Lancre gorge, his calcareous gaze sweeping downwards and stopping abruptly at a point where the torrent ran a few treacherous inches over a bed of angular pebbles. After a while the duke sat up, transparent in the phosphorescent waves. “I shall haunt their corridors,” he said, “and whisper under the doors on still nights.” His voice grew fainter, almost lost in the ceaseless roar of the river. “I shall make basket chairs creak most alarmingly, just you wait and see.” Death grinned at him. NOW YOU’RE TALKING. It started to rain. Ramtop rain has a curiously penetrative quality which makes ordinary rain seem almost arid. It poured in torrents over the castle roofs, and somehow seemed to go right through the tiles and fill the Great Hall with a warm, uncomfortable moistness.[21] The hall was crowded with half the population of Lancre. Outside, the rushing of the rain even drowned out the distant roar of the river. It soaked the stage. The colours ran and mingled in the painted backdrop, and one of the curtains sagged away from its rail and flapped sadly into a puddle. Inside, Granny Weatherwax finished speaking. “You forgot about the crown,” whispered Nanny Ogg. “Ah,” said Granny. “Yes, the crown. It’s on his head, d’you see? We hid it among the crowns when the actors left, the reason being, no-one would look for it there. See how it fits him so perfectly.” It was a tribute to Granny’s extraordinary powers of persuasion that everyone did see how perfectly it fitted Tomjon. In fact the only one who didn’t was Tomjon himself, who was aware that it was only his ears that were stopping it becoming a necklace. “Imagine the sensation when he put it on for the first time,” she went on. “I expect there was an eldritch tingling sensation.” “Actually, it felt rather—” Tomjon began, but no-one was listening to him. He shrugged and leaned over to Hwel, who was still scribbling busily. “Does eldritch mean uncomfortable?” he hissed. The dwarf looked at him with unfocused eyes. “What?” “I said, does eldritch mean uncomfortable?” “Eh? Oh. No. No, I shouldn’t think so.” “What does it mean then?” “Dunno. Oblong, I think.” Hwel’s glance returned to his scrawls as though magnetised. “Can you remember what he said after all those tomorrows? I didn’t catch the bit after that . . .” “And there wasn’t any need for you to tell everyone I was – adopted,” said Tomjon. “That’s how it was, you see,” said the dwarf vaguely. “Best to be honest about these things. Now then, did he actually stab her, or just accuse her?” “I don’t want to be a king!” Tomjon whispered hoarsely. “Everyone says I take after dad!” “Funny thing, all this taking after people,” said the dwarf vaguely. “I mean, if I took after my dad, I’d be a hundred feet underground digging rocks, whereas—” His voice died away. He stared at the nib of his pen as though it held an incredible fascination. “Whereas what?” “Eh?” “Aren’t you even listening?” “I knew it was wrong when I wrote it, I knew it was the wrong way round . . . What? Oh, yes. Be a king. It’s a good job. It seems there’s a lot of competition, at any rate. I’m very happy for you. Once you’re a king, you can do anything you want.” Tomjon looked at the faces of the Lancre worthies around the table. They had a keen, calculating look, like the audience at a fatstock show. They were weighing him up. It crept upon him in a cold and clammy way that once he was king, he could do anything he wanted. Provided that what he wanted to do was be king. “You could build your own theatre,” said Hwel, his eyes lighting up for a moment. “With as many trapdoors as you wanted, and magnificent costumes. You could act in a new play every night. I mean, it would make the Dysk look like a shed.” “Who would come to see me?” said Tomjon, sagging in his seat. “Everyone.” “What, every night?” “You could order them to,” said Hwel, without looking up. I knew he was going to say that, Tomjon thought. He can’t really mean it, he added charitably. He’s got his play. He doesn’t really exist in this world, not right now at the moment. He took off the crown and turned it over and over in his hands. There wasn’t much metal in it, but it felt heavy. He wondered how heavy it would get if you wore it all the time. At the head of the table was an empty chair containing, he had been assured, the ghost of his real father. It would have been nice to report that he had experienced anything more, when being introduced to it, than an icy sensation and a buzzing in the ears. “I suppose I could help father pay off on the Dysk,” he said. “That would be nice, yes,” said Hwel. He spun the crown in his fingers and listened glumly to the talk flowing back and forth over his head. “Fifteen years?” said the Mayor of Lancre. “We had to,” said Granny Weatherwax. “I thought the baker was a bit early last week.” “No, no,” said the witch impatiently. “It doesn’t work like that. No-one’s lost anything.” “According to my figuring,” said the man who doubled as Lancre’s beadle, town clerk and gravedigger, “we’ve all lost fifteen years.” “No, we’ve all gained them,” said the mayor. “It stands to reason. Time’s like this sort of wiggly road, see, but we took a short cut across the fields.” “Not at all,” said the clerk, sliding a sheet of paper across the table. “Look here . . .” Tomjon let the waters of debate close over him again. Everyone wanted him to be king. No-one thought twice about what he wanted. His views didn’t count. Yes, that was it. No-one wanted him to be king, not precisely him. He just happened to be convenient. Gold does not tarnish, at least physically, but Tomjon felt that the thin band of metal in his hands had an unpleasant depth to its lustre. It had sat on too many troubled heads. If you held it to your ear, you could hear the screams. He became aware of someone else looking at him, their gaze playing across his face like a blowlamp on a lolly. He looked up. It was the third witch, the young . . . the youngest one, with the intense expression and the hedgerow hairstyle. Sitting next to old Fool as though she owned a controlling interest. It wasn’t his face she was examining. It was his features. Her eyeballs were tracking him from nape to nose like a pair of calipers. He gave her a little brave smile, which she ignored. Just like everyone else, he thought. Only the Fool noticed him, and returned the smile with an apologetic grin and a tiny conspiratorial wave of the fingers that said: “What are we doing here, two sensible people like us?” The woman was looking at him again, turning her head this way and that and narrowing her eyes. She kept glancing at Fool and back to Tomjon. Then she turned to the oldest witch, the only person in the entire hot, damp room who seemed to have acquired a mug of beer, and whispered in her ear. The two started a spirited, whispered conversation. It was, thought Tomjon, a particularly feminine way of talking. It normally took place on doorsteps, with all the participants standing with their arms folded and, if anyone was so ungracious as to walk past, they’d stop abruptly and watch them in silence until they were safely out of earshot. He became aware that Granny Weatherwax had stopped talking, and that the entire hall was staring at him expectantly. “Hallo?” he said. “It might be a good idea to hold the coronation tomorrow,” said Granny. “It’s not good for a kingdom to be without a ruler. It doesn’t like it.” She stood up, pushed back her chair, and came and took Tomjon’s hand. He followed her unprotestingly across the flagstones and up the steps to the throne, where she put her hands on his shoulders and pressed him gently down on to the threadbare red plush cushions. There was a scraping of benches and chairs. He looked around in panic. “What’s happening now?” he said. “Don’t worry,” said Granny firmly. “Everyone wants to come and swear loyalty to you. You just nod graciously and ask everyone what they do and if they enjoy it. Oh, and you’d better give them the crown back.” Tomjon removed it quickly. “Why?” he said. “They want to present it to you.” “But I’ve already got it!” said Tomjon desperately. Granny gave a patient sigh. “Only in the wossname, real sense,” she said. “This is more ceremonial.” “You mean unreal?” “Yes,” said Granny. “But much more important.” Tomjon gripped the arms of the throne. “Fetch me Hwel,” he said.” “No, you must do it like that. It’s precedent, you see, first you meet the—” “I said, fetch me the dwarf. Didn’t you hear me, woman?” This time Tomjon got the spin and pitch of his voice just right, but Granny rallied magnificently. “I don’t think you quite realise who you are talking to, young man,” she said. Tomjon half rose in his seat. He had played a great many kings, and most of them weren’t the kind of kings who shook hands graciously and asked people whether they enjoyed their work. They were far more the type of kings who got people to charge into battle at five o’clock on a freezing morning and still managed to persuade them that this was better than being in bed. He summoned them all, and treated Granny Weatherwax to a blast of royal hauteur, pride and arrogance. “We thought we were talking to a subject,” he said. “Now do as we say!” Granny’s face was immobile for several seconds as she worked out what to do next. Then she smiled to herself, said lightly, “As you wish,” and went and dislodged Hwel, who was still writing. The dwarf gave a stiff bow. “None of that,” snapped Tomjon. “What do I do next?” “I don’t know. Do you want me to write an acceptance speech?” “I told you. I don’t want to be king!” “Could be a problem with an acceptance speech, then,” the dwarf agreed. “Have you really thought about this? Being king is a great role.” “But it’s the only one you get to play!” “Hmm. Well, just tell them "no", then.” “Just like that? Will it work?” “It’s got to be worth a try.” A group of Lancre dignitaries were approaching with the crown on a cushion. They wore expressions of constipated respect coupled with just a hint of self-satisfaction. They carried the crown as if it was a Present for a Good Boy. The Mayor of Lancre coughed behind his hand. “A proper coronation will take some time to arrange,” he began, “but we would like—” “No,” said Tomjon. The mayor hesitated. “Pardon?” he said. “I won’t accept it.” The mayor hesitated again. His lips moved and his eyes glazed slightly. He felt that he had got lost somewhere, and decided it would be best to start again. “A proper coronation will take—” he ventured. “It won’t,” said Tomjon. “I will not be king.” The mayor was mouthing like a carp. “Hwel?” said Tomjon desperately. “You’re good with words.” The problem we’ve got here,” said the dwarf, “is that "no" is apparently not among the options when you are offered a crown. I think he could cope with "maybe".” Tomjon stood up, and grabbed the crown. He held it above his head like a tambourine. “Listen to me, all of you,” he said. “I thank you for your offer, it’s a great honour. But I can’t accept it. I’ve worn more crowns than you can count, and the only kingdom I know how to rule has got curtains in front of it. I’m sorry.” Dead silence greeted this. They did not appear to have been the right words. “Another problem,” said Hwel conversationally, “is that you don’t actually have a choice. You are the king, you see. It’s a job you are lined up for when you’re born.” “I’d be no good at it!” “That doesn’t matter. A king isn’t something you’re good at, it’s something you are.” “You can’t leave me here! There’s nothing but forests!” Tomjon felt the suffocating cold sensation again, and the slow buzzing in his ears. For a moment he thought he saw, faint as a mist, a tall sad man in front of him, stretching out a hand in supplication. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I really am.” Through the fading shape he saw the witches, watching him intently. Beside him Hwel said, “The only chance you’d have is if there was another heir. You don’t remember any brothers and sisters, do you?” “I don’t remember anyone! Hwel, I—” There was another ferocious argument among the witches. And then Magrat was striding, striding across the hall, moving like a tidal wave, moving like a rush of blood to the head, shaking off Granny Weatherwax’s restraining hand, bearing down on the throne like a piston, and dragging the Fool behind her. “I say?” “Er. Hallo ee!” “Er, I say, excuse me, can anyone hear us?” The castle up above was full of hubbub and general rejoicing, and there was no-one to hear the polite and frantic voices that echoed along the dungeon passages, getting politer and more frantic with each passing hour. “Um, I say? Excuse me? Billem’s got this terrible thing about rats, if you don’t mind. Cooeee!” Let the camera of the mind’s eye pan slowly back along the dim, ancient corridors, taking in the dripping fungi, the rusting chains, the damp, the shadows . . . “Can anyone hear us? Look, it’s really too much. There’s been some laughable mistake, look, the wigs come right off. . .” Let the plaintive echoes dwindle among the cobwebbed corners and rodent-haunted tunnels, until they’re no more than a reedy whisper on the cusp of hearing. “I say? I say, excuse me, help?” Someone is bound to come down here again one of these days. Some time afterwards Magrat asked Hwel if he believed in long engagements. The dwarf paused in the task of loading up the latty.[22] “About a week, maximum,” he said at last. “With matinees, of course.” A month went past. The early damp-earth odours of autumn drifted over the velvety-dark moors, where the watery starlight was echoed by one spark of a fire. The standing stone was back in its normal place, but still poised to run if any auditors came into view. The witches sat in careful silence. This was not going to rate among the hundred most exciting coven meetings of all time. If Mussorgsky had seen them, the night on the bare mountain would have been over by teatime. Then Granny Weatherwax said, “It was a good banquet, I thought.” “I was nearly sick,” said Nanny Ogg proudly. “And my Shirl helped out in the kitchen and brought me home some scraps.” “I heard,” said Granny coldly. “Halfa pig and three bottles of fizzy wine went missing, they say.” “It’s nice that some people think of the old folk,” said Nanny Ogg, completely unabashed. “I got a coronation mug, too.” She produced it. “It says "Viva Verence II Rex". Fancy him being called Rex. I can’t say it’s a good likeness, mind you. I don’t recall him having a handle sticking out of his ear.” There was another long, terribly polite pause. Then Granny said, “We were a bit surprised you weren’t there, Magrat.” “We thought you’d be up at the top of the table, kind of thing,” said Nanny. “We thought you’d have moved in up there.” Magrat stared fixedly at her feet. “I wasn’t invited,” she said meekly. “Well, I don’t know about invited,” said Granny. “We weren’t invited. People don’t have to invite witches, they just know we’ll turn up if we want to. They soon find room for us,” she added, with some satisfaction. “You see, he’s been very busy,” said Magrat to her feet. “Sorting everything out, you know. He’s very clever, you know. Underneath.” “Very sober lad,” said Nanny. “Anyway, it’s full moon,” said Magrat quickly. “You’ve got to go to coven meetings at full moon, no matter what other pressing engagements there may be.” “Have y—?” Nanny Ogg began, but Granny nudged her sharply in the ribs. “It’s a very good thing he’s paying so much attention to getting the kingdom working again,” said Granny, soothingly. “It shows proper consideration. I daresay he’ll get around to everything, sooner or later. It’s very demanding, being a king.” “Yes,” said Magrat, her voice barely audible. The silence that followed was almost solid. It was broken by Nanny, in a voice as bright and brittle as ice. “Well, I brought a bottle of that fizzy wine with me,” she said. “In case he’d . . . in case . . . in case we felt like a drink,” she rallied, and waved it at the other two. “I don’t want any,” said Magrat sullenly. “You drink up, girl,” said Granny Weatherwax. “It’s a chilly night. It’d be good for your chest.” She squinted at Magrat as the moon drifted out from behind its cloud. “Here,” she said. “Your hair looks a bit grubby. It looks as though you haven’t washed it for a month.” Magrat burst into tears. The same moon shone down on the otherwise unremarkable town of Rham Nitz, some ninety miles from Lancre. Tomjon left the stage to thunderous applause at the concluding act of The Troll ofAnkh. A hundred people would go home tonight wondering whether trolls were really as bad as they had hitherto thought although, of course, this wouldn’t actually stop them disliking them in any way whatsoever. Hwel patted him on the back as he sat down at the makeup table and started scraping off the thick grey sludge that was intended to make him look like a walking rock. “Well done,” he said. “The love scene – just right. And when you turned around and roared at the wizard I shouldn’t think there was a dry seat in the house.” “I know.” Hwel rubbed his hands together. “We can afford a tavern tonight,” he said. “So if we just—” “We’ll sleep in the carts,” said Tomjon firmly, squinting at himself in the shard of mirror. “But you know how much the Fo – the king gave us! It could be feather beds all the way home!” “It’s straw mattresses and a good profit for us,” said Tomjon. “And that’ll buy you gods from heaven and demons from hell and the wind and the waves and more trapdoors than you can count, my lawn ornament.” Hwel’s hand rested on Tomjon’s shoulder for a moment. Then he said, “You’re right, boss.” “Certainly I am. How’s the play going?” “Hmm? What play?” said Hwel, innocently. Tomjon carefully removed a plaster brow ridge. “You know,” he said. “That one. The Lancre King.” “Oh. Coming along. Coming along, you know. I’ll get it right one of these days.” Hwel changed the subject with speed. “You know, we could work our way down to the river and take a boat home. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?” “But we could work our way home over land and pick up some more cash. That would be better, wouldn’t it?” Tomjon grinned. “We took one hundred and three pence tonight; I counted heads during the Judgement speech. That’s nearly one silver piece after expenses.” “You’re your father’s son, and no mistake,” said Hwel. Tomjon sat back and looked at himself in the mirror. “Yes,” he said, “I thought I had better be.” Magrat didn’t like cats and hated the idea of mousetraps. She’d always felt that it should be possible to come to some sort of arrangement with creatures like mice so that all available food was rationed in the best interest of all parties. This was a very humanitarian outlook, which is to say that it was not a view shared by mice, and therefore her moonlit kitchen was alive. When there was a knocking at the door the entire floor appeared to rush towards the walls. After a few seconds the knocking came again. There was another pause. Then the knocking rattled the door on its hinges, and a voice cried, “Open in the name of the king!” A second voice said, in hurt tones, “You don’t have to shout like that. Why did you shout like that? I didn’t order you to shout like that. It’s enough to frighten anybody, shouting like that.” “Sorry, sire! It goes with the job, sire!” “Just knock again. A bit more gently, please.” The knocking might have been a bit softer. Magrat’s apron dropped off its hook on the back of the door. “Are you sure I can’t do it myself?” “It’s not done, sire, kings knocking at humble cottage doors. Best leave it to me. OPEN IN THE—” “Sergeant!” “Sorry, sire. Forgot myself.” “Try the latch.” There was the sound of someone being extremely hesitant. “Don’t like the sound of that, sire,” said the invisible sergeant. “Could be dangerous. If you want my advice, sire, I’d set fire to the thatch.” “Set fire?” “Yessire. We always do that if they don’t answer the door. Brings them out a treat.” “I don’t think that would be appropriate, sergeant. I think I’ll try the latch, if it’s all the same to you.” “Breaks my heart to see you do it, sire.” “Well, I’m sorry.” “You could at least let me buff it up for you.” “No!” “Well, couldn’t I just set fire to the privy—?” “Absolutely not!” “That chicken house over there looks as if it would go up like-” “S ergeant!” “Sire!” “Go back to the castle!” “What, and leave you all alone, sire?” “This is a matter of extreme delicacy, sergeant. I am sure you are a man of sterling qualities, but there are times when even a king needs to be alone. It concerns a young woman, you understand.” “Ah. Point taken, sire,” “Thank you. Help me dismount, please.” “Sorry about all that, sire. Tactless of me.” “Don’t mention it.” “If you need any help getting her alight—” “Please go back to the castle, sergeant.” “Yes, sire. If you’re sure, sire. Thank you, sire.” “Sergeant?” “Yes, sire?” “I shall need someone to take my cap and bells back to the Fools’ Guild in Ankh-Morpork now I’m leaving. It seems to me you’re the ideal man.” “Thank you, sire. Much obliged.” “It’s your, ah, burning desire to be of service.” “Yes, sire?” “Make sure they put you up in one of the guest rooms.” “Yes, sire. Thank you, sire.” There was the sound of a horse trotting away. A few seconds later the latch clonked and the Fool crept in. It takes considerable courage to enter a witch’s kitchen in the dark, but probably no more than it takes to wear a purple shirt with velvet sleeves and scalloped edges. It had this in its favour, though. There were no bells on it. He had brought a bottle of sparkling wine and a bouquet of flowers, both of which had gone flat during the journey. He laid them on the table, and sat down by the embers of the fire. He rubbed his eyes. It had been a long day. He wasn’t, he felt, a good king, but he’d had a lifetime of working hard at being something he wasn’t cut out to be, and he was persevering. As far as he could see, none of his predecessors had tried at all. So much to do, so much to repair, so much to organise . . . On top of it all there was the problem with the duchess. Somehow he’d felt moved to put her in a decent cell in an airy tower. She was a widow, after all. He felt he ought to be kind to widows. But being kind to the duchess didn’t seem to achieve much, she didn’t understand it, she thought it was just weakness. He was dreadfully afraid that he might have to have her head cut off. No, being a king was no laughing matter. He brightened up at the thought. There was that to be said about it. And, after a while, he fell asleep. The duchess was not asleep. She was currently halfway down the castle wall on a rope of knotted sheets, having spent the previous day gradually chipping away the mortar around the bars of her window although, in truth, you could hack your way out of the average Lancre Castle wall with a piece of cheese. The fool! He’d given her cutlery, and plenty of bedclothes! That was how these people reacted. They let their fear do their thinking for them. They were scared of her, even when they thought they had her in their power (and the weak never had the strong in their power, never truly in their power). If she’d thrown herself in prison, she would have found considerable satisfaction in making herself regret she’d ever been born. But they’d just given her blankets, and worried about her. Well, she’d be back. There was a big world out there, and she knew how to pull the levers that made people do what she wanted. She wouldn’t burden herself with a husband this time, either. Weak! He was the worst of them, no courage in him to be as bad as he knew he was, inside. She landed heavily on the moss, paused to catch her breath and then, with the knife ready in her hand, slipped away along the castle walls and into the forest. She’d go all the way down to the far border and swim the river there, or maybe build a raft. By morning she’d be too far away for them ever to find her, and she doubted very much that they’d ever come looking. Weak! She moved through the forest with surprising speed. There were tracks, after all, wide enough for carts, and she had a pretty good sense of direction. Besides, all she needed to do was go downhill. If she found the gorge then she just had to follow the flow. And then there seemed to be too many trees. There was still a track, and it went more or less in the right direction, but the trees on either side of it were planted rather more thickly than one might expect and, when she tried to turn back, there was no track at all behind her. She took to turning suddenly, half expecting to see the trees moving, but they were always standing stoically and firmly rooted in the moss. She couldn’t feel a wind, but there was a sighing in the treetops. “All right,” she said, under her breath. “All right. I’m going anyway. I want to go. But I will be back.” It was at this point that the track opened out into a clearing that hadn’t been there the day before and wouldn’t be there tomorrow, a clearing in which the moonlight glittered off assembled antlers and fangs and serried ranks of glowing eyes. The weak banded together can be pretty despicable, but it dawned on the duchess that an alliance of the strong can be more of an immediate problem. There was total silence for a few seconds, broken only by a faint panting, and then the duchess grinned, raised her knife, and charged the lot of them. The front ranks of the massed creatures opened to let her pass, and then closed in again. Even the rabbits. The kingdom exhaled. On the moors under the very shadow of the peaks the mighty nocturnal chorus of nature had fallen silent. The crickets had ceased their chirping, the owls had hooted themselves into silence, and the wolves had other matters to attend to. There was a song that echoed and boomed from cliff to cliff, and resounded up the high hidden valleys, causing miniature avalanches. It funnelled along the secret tunnels under glaciers, losing all meaning as it rang between the walls of ice. To find out what was actually being sung you would have to go all the way back down to the dying fire by the standing stone, where the cross-resonances and waves of conflicting echoes focused on a small, elderly woman who was waving an empty bottle. “—with a snail if you slow to a crawl, but the hedgehog—” “It tastes better at the bottom of the bottle, doesn’t it,” Magrat said, trying to drown out the chorus. “That’s right,” said Granny, draining her cup. “Is there any more?” “I think Gytha finished it, by the sound of it.” They sat on the fragrant heather and stared up at the moon. “Well, we’ve got a king,” said Granny. “And there’s an end of it.” “It’s thanks to you and Nanny, really,” said Magrat, and hiccupped. “Why?” “None of them would have believed me if you hadn’t spoken up.” “Only because we was asked,” said Granny. “Yes, but everyone knows witches don’t lie, that’s the important thing. I mean, everyone could see they looked so alike, but that could have been coincidence. You see,” Magrat blushed, “I looked up droit de seigneur. Goodie Whemper had a dictionary.” Nanny Ogg stopped singing. “Yes,” said Granny Weatherwax. “Well.” Magrat became aware of an uncomfortable atmosphere. “You did tell the truth, didn’t you?” she said. “They really are brothers, aren’t they?” “Oh yes,” said Gytha Ogg. “Definitely. I saw to his mother when your – when the new king was born. And to the queen when young Tomjon was born, and she told me who his father was.” “Gytha!” “Sorry.” The wine was going to her head, but the wheels in Magrat’s mind still managed to turn. “Just a minute,” she said. “I remember the Fool’s father,” said Nanny Ogg, speaking slowly and deliberately. “Very personable young man, he was. He didn’t get on with his dad, you know, but he used to visit sometimes. To see old friends.” “He made friends easily,” said Granny. “Among the ladies,” agreed Nanny. “Very athletic, wasn’t he? Could climb walls like nobody’s business, I remember hearing.” “He was very popular at court,” said Granny. “I know that much.” “Oh, yes. With the queen, at any rate.” “The king used to go out hunting such a lot,” said Granny. “It was that droit of his,” said Nanny. “Always out and about with it, he was. Hardly ever home o’nights.” “Just a minute,” Magrat repeated. They looked at her. “Yes?” said Granny. “You told everyone they were brothers and that Verence was the older!” “That’s right.” “And you let everyone believe that—” Granny Weatherwax pulled her shawl around her. “We’re bound to be truthful,” she said. “But there’s no call to be honest.” “No, no, what you’re saying is that the King of Lancre isn’t really—” “What I’m saying is,” said Granny firmly, “that we’ve got a king who is no worse than most and better than many and who’s got his head screwed on right—” “Even if it is against the thread,” said Nanny. “—and the old king’s ghost has been laid to rest happy, there’s been an enjoyable coronation and some of us got mugs we weren’t entitled to, them being only for the kiddies and, all in all, things are a lot more satisfactory than they might be. That’s what I’m saying. Never mind what should be or what might be or what ought to be. It’s what things are that’s important.” “But he’s not really a king!” “He might be,” said Nanny. “But you just said—” “Who knows? The late queen wasn’t very good at counting. Anyway, he doesn’t know he isn’t royalty.” “And you’re not going to tell him, are you?” said Granny Weatherwax. Magrat stared at the moon, which had a few clouds across it. “No,” she said. “Right, then,” said Granny. “Anyway, look at it like this. Royalty has to start somewhere. It might as well start with him. It looks as though he means to take it seriously, which is a lot further than most of them take it. He’ll do.” Magrat knew she had lost. You always lost against Granny Weatherwax, the only interest was in seeing exactly how. “But I’m surprised at the two of you, I really am,” she said. “You’re witches. That means you have to care about things like truth and tradition and destiny, don’t you?” “That’s where you’ve been getting it all wrong,” said Granny, “Destiny is important, see, but people go wrong when they think it controls them. It’s the other way around.” “Bugger destiny,” agreed Nanny. Granny glared at her. “After all, you never thought being a witch was going to be easy, did you?” “I’m learning,” said Magrat. She looked across the moor, where a thin rind of dawn glowed on the horizon. “I think I’d better be off,” she said. “It’s getting early.” “Me too,” said Nanny Ogg. “Our Shirl frets if I’m not home when she comes to get my breakfast.” Granny carefully scuffed over the remains of the fire. “When shall we three meet again?” she said. “Hmm?” The witches looked at one another sheepishly. “I’m a bit busy next month,” said Nanny. “Birthdays and such. Er. And the work has really been piling up with all this hurly-burly. You know. And there’s all the ghosts to think about.” “I thought you sent them back to the castle,” said Granny. “Well, they didn’t want to go,” said Nanny vaguely. “To be honest, I’ve got used to them around the place. They’re company of an evening. They hardly scream at all, now.” “That’s nice,” said Granny. “What about you, Magrat?” “There always seems to be such a lot to do at this time of year, don’t you find?” said Magrat. “Quite,” said Granny Weatherwax, pleasantly. “It’s no good getting yourself tied down to appointments all the time, is it? Let’s just leave the whole question open, shall we?” They nodded. And, as the new day wound across the landscape, each one busy with her own thoughts, each one a witch alone, they went home.[23] The End [1]Quaffing is like drinking, but you spill more. [2]Whatever that was. He’d never found anyone prepared to explain it to him. But it was definitely something a feudal lord ought to have and, he was pretty sure, it needed regular exercise. He imagined it was some kind of large hairy dog. He was definitely going to get one, and damn well exercise it. [3]Written by wizards, who are celibate and get some pretty funny ideas around four o”clock in the morning. [4]She did nothing, although sometimes when she saw him in the village she’d smile in a faint, puzzled way. After three weeks of this the suspense was too much for him and he took his own life; in fact he took it all the way across the continent, where he became a reformed character and never went home again. [5]All of them, unfortunately, unprintable. [6]The vermine is a small black and white furry creature, much famed for its pelt. It is a more careful relative of the lemming; it only throws itself over small pebbles. [7]They worked. Witches” remedies generally did, regardless of the actual form of delivery. [8]A killing insult in Dwarfish, but here used as a term of endearment. It means “lawn ornament”. [9]In a manner of speaking. [10]Someone has to do it. It’s all very well calling for eye of newt, but do you mean Common, Spotted or Great Crested? Which eye, anyway? Will tapioca do just as well? If we substitute egg white will the spell a) work b) fail or c) melt the bottom out of the cauldron? Goodie Whemper’s curiosity about such things was huge and insatiable*. * Nearly insatiable. It was probably satiated in her last flight to test whether a broomstick could survive having its bristles pulled out one by one in mid-air. According to the small black raven she had trained as a flight recorder, the answer was almost certainly no. [11]Witches never curtsey. [12]No-one knows why men say things like this. Any minute now he is probably going to say he likes a girl with spirit. [13]They always do, everywhere. No-one sees them arrive. The logical explanation is that the franchise includes the stall, the paper hat and a small gas-powered time machine. [14]Involving a red hot poker, a privy, ten pounds of live eels, a three mile stretch of frozen river, a butt of wine, a couple of tulip bulbs, a number of poisoned eardrops, an oyster and a large man with a mallet. King Murune didn’t make friends easily. [15]Possibly the first attempt at the in-flight refuelling of a broomstick. [16]An explanation may be needed at this point. The Librarian of the magic library at Unseen University, the Disc’s premier college of wizardry, had been turned into an orang-utan some years previously by a magical accident in that accident-prone academy, and since then had strenuously resisted all well-meaning efforts to turn him back. For one thing, longer arms and prehensile toes made getting around the higher shelves a whole lot easier, and being an ape meant you didn’t have to bother with all this angst business. He had also been rather pleased to find that his new body, although looking deceptively like a rubber sack full of water, gave him three times the strength and twice the reach of his old one. [17]The Shades is an ancient part of Ankh-Morpork considered considerably more unpleasant and disreputable than the rest of the city. This always amazes visitors. [18]Ankh-Morpork’s enviable system of licensed criminals owes much to the current Patrician, Lord Vetinari. He reasoned that the only way to police a city of a million inhabitants was to recognise the various gangs and robber guilds, give them professional status, invite the leaders to large dinners, allow an acceptable level of street crime and then make the guild leaders responsible for enforcing it, on pain of being stripped of their new civic honours along with large areas of their skins. It worked. Criminals, it turned out, made a very good police force; unauthorised robbers soon found, for example, that instead of a night in the cells they could now expect an eternity at the bottom of the river. However, there was the problem of apportioning the crime statistics, and so there arose a complex system of annual budgeting, chits and allowances to see that a) the members could make a reasonable living and b) no citizen was robbed or assaulted more than an agreed number of times. Many foresighted citizens in fact arranged to get an acceptable minimum of theft, assault, etc, over at the beginning of the financial year, often in the privacy and comfort of their own homes, and thus be able to walk the streets quite safely for the rest of the year. It all ticked over extremely peacefully and efficiently, demonstrating once again that compared to the Patrician of Ankh, Machiavelli could not have run a whelk stall. [19]Because of the way time was recorded among the various states, kingdoms and cities. After all, when over an area of a hundred square miles the same year is variously the Year of the Small Bat, and Anticipated Monkey, the Hunting Cloud, Fat Cows, Three Bright Stallions and at least nine numbers recording the time since* assorted kings, prophets, and strange events were either crowned, born or happened, and each year has a different number of months, and some of them don’t have weeks, and one of them refuses to accept the day as a measure of time, the only thing it is possible to be sure of is that good sex doesn’t last long enough.† * The calendar of the Theocracy of Muntab counts down, not up. No-one knows why, but it might not be a good idea to hang around and find out. † Except for the Zabingo tribe of the Great Nef, of course. [20]The observant will realise that this was because the king was already seated there. It was not because the man had used the phrase “commence to start” in cold blood. But it ought to have been. [21]Like Bognor. [22]At least, of supervising the loading. Actual physical assistance was a little difficult because he had, the day before, slipped on something and broken his leg. [23]There is a school of thought that says that witches and wizards can never go home. They went, though, just the same.